Your hound looks like he is having a grand old time.
Hopefully, although as a road trip heading for Finland he also gets to spend a lot of time in the car.
What's your itinerary Ian? I have often fancied driving up the coast of Norway.
Ferries to Holland and Norway - gets the car to Norway with only three hours driving on the continent, then zigzagging up through the fjords, taking in Stavanger, Bergen, Alesund and Trondheim, a few days on an island out to sea, then just reaching the arctic circle before cutting down through Sweden and the ferry to Finland, doing about ten days in Finland finishing in Helsinki, long ferry back to Travemunde then driving back for the ferry from Holland, hopefully taking in the world's largest model railway en route.
Adam Payne @adampayne26 Government is looking at reviving post-Brexit plans to restore imperial measurements, @politicshome is told
My problem with this is it is so transparently a gimmick. I refuse to believe there are serious people seriously thinking that we have a major problem with a lack of imperial measurements. Day to day people use a hodgepotch of imperial and metric, and that will continue regardless, so it is utterly pointless but designed as some kind of signal to some idiot out there who feels oppressed whenver they see something refer to kilometres or kilos.
"Captain Tom's daughter 'used hero veteran's name to build spa and pool complex at home'
Captain Tom's daughter, Hannah Ingram-Moore, and her husband Colin reportedly put forward the planning application in their own names, but then used the charity's name in their design and access statement"
Provided they were not using charitable donations to pay for it, why should we care? Getting planning permission in the wrong name seems a technical foul at most.
Your hound looks like he is having a grand old time.
Hopefully, although as a road trip heading for Finland he also gets to spend a lot of time in the car.
What's your itinerary Ian? I have often fancied driving up the coast of Norway.
Ferries to Holland and Norway - gets the car to Norway with only three hours driving on the continent, then zigzagging up through the fjords, taking in Stavanger, Bergen, Alesund and Trondheim, a few days on an island out to sea, then just reaching the arctic circle before cutting down through Sweden and the ferry to Finland, doing about ten days in Finland finishing in Helsinki, long ferry back to Travemunde then driving back for the ferry from Holland, hopefully taking in the world's largest model railway en route.
Sounds brilliant! Shame the Newcastle to Norway ferry is no longer running but perhaps it will be back in 2026?
Adam Payne @adampayne26 Government is looking at reviving post-Brexit plans to restore imperial measurements, @politicshome is told
This will revive their electoral fortunes and no mistake. As a 49 and a half year old brought up with metric I, and those younger than me, relish the idea of spending the many years we have until retirement fucking reeducating ourselves in systems of measurement used by precisely one other country for the benefit of Boomer nostalgics. Great idea. Bring back pounds, shillings and pence while you’re at it - I missed those entirely. My vote’s in the fucking bag Rishi!
The decimal system is woke. Bring back Babylonian base 60. (Not a Leon post.)
SNP 37% (-1) LAB 34% (+2) CON 17% (-1) LD 9% (nc) OTH 4% (nc)
F/w 23rd - 28th June. Changes vs. 27th April - 3 May.
24 SNP seats would go Labour on that swing since 2019, giving Labour most seats in Scotland again, albeit only by 1 MP.
However it could be more if Conservatives and LDs tactically vote Labour to beat the SNP. Zero swing between SNP and Tories so the Tories would hold all their Scottish seats
Surely Labour would get many more than that, as Conservatives vote tactically to keep the SNP out?
Starmer needs LD tactical votes in England to beat the Tories and Tory tactical votes in Scotland to help beat the SNP
Sunak on the other hand need a feckin' miracle of biblical proportions.
We all Noah that.
He certainly needs faith in the Job.
I think everyone is now expecting many Lamentations from Conservative candidates on election night.
After which, with any luck, they will wander about in the wilderness for 40 years.
Labour will only have wandered for another 9 years after their leader displayed a giant stone tablet with commands on it.
As I recall, the Edstone had 5 pledges. Presumably he has another 5 on the next one.
Hopefully one pledge will be the free owls. I was very disappointed when that was dropped.
If anyone can name any of the pledges they win PB for the day. It turns out there were six.
According to wikipedia sometime PB reader John Rentoul called it the "most absurd, ugly, embarrassing, childish, silly, patronising, idiotic, insane, ridiculous gimmick I have ever seen". He left out hilarious.
Your hound looks like he is having a grand old time.
Hopefully, although as a road trip heading for Finland he also gets to spend a lot of time in the car.
What's your itinerary Ian? I have often fancied driving up the coast of Norway.
Ferries to Holland and Norway - gets the car to Norway with only three hours driving on the continent, then zigzagging up through the fjords, taking in Stavanger, Bergen, Alesund and Trondheim, a few days on an island out to sea, then just reaching the arctic circle before cutting down through Sweden and the ferry to Finland, doing about ten days in Finland finishing in Helsinki, long ferry back to Travemunde then driving back for the ferry from Holland, hopefully taking in the world's largest model railway en route.
If Orkney becomes part of Norway, you should be able to get a ferry directly from Kirkwall to Bergen.
Adam Payne @adampayne26 Government is looking at reviving post-Brexit plans to restore imperial measurements, @politicshome is told
My problem with this is it is so transparently a gimmick. I refuse to believe there are serious people seriously thinking that we have a major problem with a lack of imperial measurements. Day to day people use a hodgepotch of imperial and metric, and that will continue regardless, so it is utterly pointless but designed as some kind of signal to some idiot out there who feels oppressed whenver they see something refer to kilometres.
Roads I’m less concerned with, they never went metric, it’s weights and measures. What’s the f’in point?
Your hound looks like he is having a grand old time.
Hopefully, although as a road trip heading for Finland he also gets to spend a lot of time in the car.
What's your itinerary Ian? I have often fancied driving up the coast of Norway.
Ferries to Holland and Norway - gets the car to Norway with only three hours driving on the continent, then zigzagging up through the fjords, taking in Stavanger, Bergen, Alesund and Trondheim, a few days on an island out to sea, then just reaching the arctic circle before cutting down through Sweden and the ferry to Finland, doing about ten days in Finland finishing in Helsinki, long ferry back to Travemunde then driving back for the ferry from Holland, hopefully taking in the world's largest model railway en route.
Sounds brilliant! Shame the Newcastle to Norway ferry is no longer running but perhaps it will be back in 2026?
I was impressed how easy it was to get the car to Norway. Left the Island mid afternoon Saturday, drive to Harwich, overnight on the ferry, dog in the cabin, an easy three hour drive through the Netherlands, overnight on another ferry with the dog in the cabin again, arrive Norway early Monday morning. Biggest hassle was driving to Harwich, which is always further than you think.
Your hound looks like he is having a grand old time.
Hopefully, although as a road trip heading for Finland he also gets to spend a lot of time in the car.
What's your itinerary Ian? I have often fancied driving up the coast of Norway.
Ferries to Holland and Norway - gets the car to Norway with only three hours driving on the continent, then zigzagging up through the fjords, taking in Stavanger, Bergen, Alesund and Trondheim, a few days on an island out to sea, then just reaching the arctic circle before cutting down through Sweden and the ferry to Finland, doing about ten days in Finland finishing in Helsinki, long ferry back to Travemunde then driving back for the ferry from Holland, hopefully taking in the world's largest model railway en route.
Sounds brilliant! Shame the Newcastle to Norway ferry is no longer running but perhaps it will be back in 2026?
SNP 37% (-1) LAB 34% (+2) CON 17% (-1) LD 9% (nc) OTH 4% (nc)
F/w 23rd - 28th June. Changes vs. 27th April - 3 May.
24 SNP seats would go Labour on that swing since 2019, giving Labour most seats in Scotland again, albeit only by 1 MP.
However it could be more if Conservatives and LDs tactically vote Labour to beat the SNP. Zero swing between SNP and Tories so the Tories would hold all their Scottish seats
Surely Labour would get many more than that, as Conservatives vote tactically to keep the SNP out?
Starmer needs LD tactical votes in England to beat the Tories and Tory tactical votes in Scotland to help beat the SNP
Sunak on the other hand need a feckin' miracle of biblical proportions.
We all Noah that.
He certainly needs faith in the Job.
I think everyone is now expecting many Lamentations from Conservative candidates on election night.
After which, with any luck, they will wander about in the wilderness for 40 years.
Labour will only have wandered for another 9 years after their leader displayed a giant stone tablet with commands on it.
As I recall, the Edstone had 5 pledges. Presumably he has another 5 on the next one.
Hopefully one pledge will be the free owls. I was very disappointed when that was dropped.
If anyone can name any of the pledges they win PB for the day. It turns out there were six.
According to wikipedia sometime PB reader John Rentoul called it the "most absurd, ugly, embarrassing, childish, silly, patronising, idiotic, insane, ridiculous gimmick I have ever seen". He left out hilarious.
Adam Payne @adampayne26 Government is looking at reviving post-Brexit plans to restore imperial measurements, @politicshome is told
My problem with this is it is so transparently a gimmick. I refuse to believe there are serious people seriously thinking that we have a major problem with a lack of imperial measurements. Day to day people use a hodgepotch of imperial and metric, and that will continue regardless, so it is utterly pointless but designed as some kind of signal to some idiot out there who feels oppressed whenver they see something refer to kilometres or kilos.
Presumably the idea is being pushed by someone like Rees-Mogg who doesn’t use or understand computers or calculators.
SNP 37% (-1) LAB 34% (+2) CON 17% (-1) LD 9% (nc) OTH 4% (nc)
F/w 23rd - 28th June. Changes vs. 27th April - 3 May.
24 SNP seats would go Labour on that swing since 2019, giving Labour most seats in Scotland again, albeit only by 1 MP.
However it could be more if Conservatives and LDs tactically vote Labour to beat the SNP. Zero swing between SNP and Tories so the Tories would hold all their Scottish seats
Surely Labour would get many more than that, as Conservatives vote tactically to keep the SNP out?
Starmer needs LD tactical votes in England to beat the Tories and Tory tactical votes in Scotland to help beat the SNP
Sunak on the other hand need a feckin' miracle of biblical proportions.
We all Noah that.
He certainly needs faith in the Job.
I think everyone is now expecting many Lamentations from Conservative candidates on election night.
After which, with any luck, they will wander about in the wilderness for 40 years.
Labour will only have wandered for another 9 years after their leader displayed a giant stone tablet with commands on it.
"Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said: It is a people that do err in their hearts, for they have not known my ways; Unto whom I sware in my wrath: that they should not enter into my rest." Psalm 95
Of the 56 "brave, patriotic" men who signed the Declaration of Independence - which avows that "all men are created equal" - 41 of the signatories owned slaves, including Thomas Jefferson, who actually wrote the document. Indeed Jefferson used his slaves for sex
Depends if Africans were defined as human beings ("men"), though [edit: not that it makes it any better if they weren't, obvs]. I don't know enough about the thinking of Jefferson et al. But in the mid-19th century, many Americans always showed a worrying interest in taxonomies which regarded Homo sapiens as being more than one species.
What I hadn’t realised, but found very disturbing, was that they bred slaves to sell the children. If you see them as economic units of production rather than people that makes sense. But still… urrgh!
Yes. For some reason, the following picture shocks people, in a different way.
All together now. "If it's legal you should be able to advocate for it". If cannibalism was legal, people'd be boasting about eating the poor and how teens should be overfed and beaten to marbleize the flesh. Normal is highly situational (duh) and PB finds it very difficult to understand on a gut level that the past was different.
I recently stood in front of this building. The fact it is still there is disturbing in itself, weirdly
No more disturbing than Auschwitz etc being preserved, it shows what reality was.
It's different, rather than "more or less disturbing"
Auschwitz is infinitely more evil even than the horror of slavery, as it was a unique attempt to destroy a nation of many millions with industrialised homicide, for no other reason than to get rid of them all. Even slavery doesn't match that
However I find that photo quite uniquely chilling because in so many senses it is familiar. It is a brick building of late Georgian/early Victorian type, of which there are millions in the UK. Right down to the sash windows. The font in the sign is Victorian British
It could be an old photo of a shopfront in Camden High Street, 80 yards from me, and it would say "Dealers in Linens and Cloths". And yet it says "Dealers in Slaves"
Deeply disquieting
There’s a line about dealing with slaves in Tangled Up in Blue
“Then he started into dealing with slaves And something inside of him died”
Guess there’s world of difference between in and with, or maybe Dylan has seen the sign.
Adam Payne @adampayne26 Government is looking at reviving post-Brexit plans to restore imperial measurements, @politicshome is told
My problem with this is it is so transparently a gimmick. I refuse to believe there are serious people seriously thinking that we have a major problem with a lack of imperial measurements. Day to day people use a hodgepotch of imperial and metric, and that will continue regardless, so it is utterly pointless but designed as some kind of signal to some idiot out there who feels oppressed whenver they see something refer to kilometres.
Roads I’m less concerned with, they never went metric, it’s weights and measures. What’s the f’in point?
Which is more troubling - that this cretinous idea is being floated in a desperate attempt to attain some Brexit Bonus, however stupidly, or that the party things (and may be correct), that their core demographic would adore it?
We'll have a comment in a moment about how it is unfair people who grew up with those measurements to continue to exist in a world where litres show up on things. A rather infantilising view of their ability to comprehend things.
Or, we'll get a claim it won't really change anything anyway, in which case why even bother?
Your hound looks like he is having a grand old time.
Hopefully, although as a road trip heading for Finland he also gets to spend a lot of time in the car.
What's your itinerary Ian? I have often fancied driving up the coast of Norway.
Ferries to Holland and Norway - gets the car to Norway with only three hours driving on the continent, then zigzagging up through the fjords, taking in Stavanger, Bergen, Alesund and Trondheim, a few days on an island out to sea, then just reaching the arctic circle before cutting down through Sweden and the ferry to Finland, doing about ten days in Finland finishing in Helsinki, long ferry back to Travemunde then driving back for the ferry from Holland, hopefully taking in the world's largest model railway en route.
If Orkney becomes part of Norway, you should be able to get a ferry directly from Kirkwall to Bergen.
I do wonder what the Orcadians would think of Norwegian alcohol taxation.
Adam Payne @adampayne26 Government is looking at reviving post-Brexit plans to restore imperial measurements, @politicshome is told
This will revive their electoral fortunes and no mistake. As a 49 and a half year old brought up with metric I, and those younger than me, relish the idea of spending the many years we have until retirement fucking reeducating ourselves in systems of measurement used by precisely one other country for the benefit of Boomer nostalgics. Great idea. Bring back pounds, shillings and pence while you’re at it - I missed those entirely. My vote’s in the fucking bag Rishi!
Ever tried to translate ells, rods, poles and perches from old title deeds? Doesn't help that they can sometimes be both linear and areal.
SNP 37% (-1) LAB 34% (+2) CON 17% (-1) LD 9% (nc) OTH 4% (nc)
F/w 23rd - 28th June. Changes vs. 27th April - 3 May.
24 SNP seats would go Labour on that swing since 2019, giving Labour most seats in Scotland again, albeit only by 1 MP.
However it could be more if Conservatives and LDs tactically vote Labour to beat the SNP. Zero swing between SNP and Tories so the Tories would hold all their Scottish seats
Surely Labour would get many more than that, as Conservatives vote tactically to keep the SNP out?
Starmer needs LD tactical votes in England to beat the Tories and Tory tactical votes in Scotland to help beat the SNP
Sunak on the other hand need a feckin' miracle of biblical proportions.
We all Noah that.
He certainly needs faith in the Job.
I think everyone is now expecting many Lamentations from Conservative candidates on election night.
After which, with any luck, they will wander about in the wilderness for 40 years.
Labour will only have wandered for another 9 years after their leader displayed a giant stone tablet with commands on it.
As I recall, the Edstone had 5 pledges. Presumably he has another 5 on the next one.
Hopefully one pledge will be the free owls. I was very disappointed when that was dropped.
If anyone can name any of the pledges they win PB for the day. It turns out there were six.
According to wikipedia sometime PB reader John Rentoul called it the "most absurd, ugly, embarrassing, childish, silly, patronising, idiotic, insane, ridiculous gimmick I have ever seen". He left out hilarious.
Did we ever find out for sure where it ended up?
Wiki states a restaurant in West London claims to have snapped it up, but that the going theory is the real one was demolished.
To my mind that makes it even better though, if someone created a replica EdStone.
It was also a bargain at less than £8k, which by the way they failed to declare properly.
Your hound looks like he is having a grand old time.
Hopefully, although as a road trip heading for Finland he also gets to spend a lot of time in the car.
What's your itinerary Ian? I have often fancied driving up the coast of Norway.
Ferries to Holland and Norway - gets the car to Norway with only three hours driving on the continent, then zigzagging up through the fjords, taking in Stavanger, Bergen, Alesund and Trondheim, a few days on an island out to sea, then just reaching the arctic circle before cutting down through Sweden and the ferry to Finland, doing about ten days in Finland finishing in Helsinki, long ferry back to Travemunde then driving back for the ferry from Holland, hopefully taking in the world's largest model railway en route.
Sounds brilliant! Shame the Newcastle to Norway ferry is no longer running but perhaps it will be back in 2026?
I was impressed how easy it was to get the car to Norway. Left the Island mid afternoon Saturday, drive to Harwich, overnight on the ferry, dog in the cabin, an easy three hour drive through the Netherlands, overnight on another ferry with the dog in the cabin again, arrive Norway early Monday morning. Biggest hassle was driving to Harwich, which is always further than you think.
...especially with the f*ck-up they are making of the A12 at the moment.
Your hound looks like he is having a grand old time.
Hopefully, although as a road trip heading for Finland he also gets to spend a lot of time in the car.
What's your itinerary Ian? I have often fancied driving up the coast of Norway.
Ferries to Holland and Norway - gets the car to Norway with only three hours driving on the continent, then zigzagging up through the fjords, taking in Stavanger, Bergen, Alesund and Trondheim, a few days on an island out to sea, then just reaching the arctic circle before cutting down through Sweden and the ferry to Finland, doing about ten days in Finland finishing in Helsinki, long ferry back to Travemunde then driving back for the ferry from Holland, hopefully taking in the world's largest model railway en route.
If Orkney becomes part of Norway, you should be able to get a ferry directly from Kirkwall to Bergen.
I do wonder what the Orcadians would think of Norwegian alcohol taxation.
Yes, and they still have those funny monopoly shops as the only places you can buy wine and spirits, where you choose from a catalogue and pass your order through a little hatch with a grille and they bring it out to you in a brown paper bag. Buying a porn mag when we were young was easier.
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
Another nugget from my recent reading. The soldiers of the Union were often as brutally racist as the Confederates
eg They would "liberate" a Southern Plantation and immediately rape all the young, attractive, female slaves. Then they'd set the slaves to work, cooking, cleaning, farming - for no money. So life got no better for slaves at all, unless you could get away, and for the women slaves it got worse
A cruel cruel war
I'd be interested to know what life was like in Canada for black people at that time, (acknowledging that there probably weren't many of them).
There were the descendants of ex-slaves who fought for the British against the Americans in the Revolution and 1812. Unfortunately, like the Mohawks and other Native allies, while they did a lot better in Canada than they would have in the US they were still treated very poorly.
Just a reminder that racism wasn't rare in the US North. Recall the horrible Draft Riots in New York and other cities which were really Race Riots aimed at murdering Blacks and Abolitionists.
Re: current caper "The Case of the Disappearing Bank Account" which side do PBers give odds on being proven correct (as opposed to right) when dust settles: Nigel Farage or Coutts & Co?
Adam Payne @adampayne26 Government is looking at reviving post-Brexit plans to restore imperial measurements, @politicshome is told
My problem with this is it is so transparently a gimmick. I refuse to believe there are serious people seriously thinking that we have a major problem with a lack of imperial measurements. Day to day people use a hodgepotch of imperial and metric, and that will continue regardless, so it is utterly pointless but designed as some kind of signal to some idiot out there who feels oppressed whenver they see something refer to kilometres.
Roads I’m less concerned with, they never went metric, it’s weights and measures. What’s the f’in point?
Which is more troubling - that this cretinous idea is being floated in a desperate attempt to attain some Brexit Bonus, however stupidly, or that the party things (and may be correct), that their core demographic would adore it?
We'll have a comment in a moment about how it is unfair people who grew up with those measurements to continue to exist in a world where litres show up on things. A rather infantilising view of their ability to comprehend things.
Or, we'll get a claim it won't really change anything anyway, in which case why even bother?
The odd thing is that metrication took place in the 1970s and 1980s. I was schooled in the 1960s and 1970s and saw the shift. I can cope with both systems, e.g. an acre = a furlong long and a cricket [green strip in the middle] [edit] wide. So, this proposal must pander to folk older than me. In their seventies and above, pretty much.
Re: current caper "The Case of the Disappearing Bank Account" which side do PBers give odds on being proven correct (as opposed to right) when dust settles: Nigel Farage or Coutts & Co?
Seems to me an open question right now.
Shady bankers or shady politicians, it is not an easy one.
Your hound looks like he is having a grand old time.
Hopefully, although as a road trip heading for Finland he also gets to spend a lot of time in the car.
What's your itinerary Ian? I have often fancied driving up the coast of Norway.
Ferries to Holland and Norway - gets the car to Norway with only three hours driving on the continent, then zigzagging up through the fjords, taking in Stavanger, Bergen, Alesund and Trondheim, a few days on an island out to sea, then just reaching the arctic circle before cutting down through Sweden and the ferry to Finland, doing about ten days in Finland finishing in Helsinki, long ferry back to Travemunde then driving back for the ferry from Holland, hopefully taking in the world's largest model railway en route.
If Orkney becomes part of Norway, you should be able to get a ferry directly from Kirkwall to Bergen.
I do wonder what the Orcadians would think of Norwegian alcohol taxation.
Yes, and they still have those funny monopoly shops for wine and spirits, where you choose from a catalogue and pass your order through a little hatch with a grille and they bring it out to you in a brown paper bag. Buying a porn mag when we were young was easier.
Adam Payne @adampayne26 Government is looking at reviving post-Brexit plans to restore imperial measurements, @politicshome is told
My problem with this is it is so transparently a gimmick. I refuse to believe there are serious people seriously thinking that we have a major problem with a lack of imperial measurements. Day to day people use a hodgepotch of imperial and metric, and that will continue regardless, so it is utterly pointless but designed as some kind of signal to some idiot out there who feels oppressed whenver they see something refer to kilometres.
Roads I’m less concerned with, they never went metric, it’s weights and measures. What’s the f’in point?
Which is more troubling - that this cretinous idea is being floated in a desperate attempt to attain some Brexit Bonus, however stupidly, or that the party things (and may be correct), that their core demographic would adore it?
We'll have a comment in a moment about how it is unfair people who grew up with those measurements to continue to exist in a world where litres show up on things. A rather infantilising view of their ability to comprehend things.
Or, we'll get a claim it won't really change anything anyway, in which case why even bother?
The odd thing is that metrication took place in the 1970s and 1980s. I was schooled in the 1960s and 1970s and saw the shift. I can cope with both systems, e.g. an acre = a furlong long and a cricket [green strip in the middle] long. So, this proposal must pander to folk older than me. In their seventies and above, pretty much.
Snap. It's such a fucking stupid idea, it's surely a spoof?
If the Tories put it in their manifesto I would wet myself laughing.
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
Sunak is quite a good campaigner and on balance more charismatic than Starmer. I think he will be fine and in election debates charisma often trumps lawyerly aggression. Not to say Sunak isn't sharp but you are trying to win over the average floating voter in a semi in the Midlands in an election campaign not win a technical point of law in the High Court or a Parliamentary Cttee
Of the 56 "brave, patriotic" men who signed the Declaration of Independence - which avows that "all men are created equal" - 41 of the signatories owned slaves, including Thomas Jefferson, who actually wrote the document. Indeed Jefferson used his slaves for sex
Depends if Africans were defined as human beings ("men"), though [edit: not that it makes it any better if they weren't, obvs]. I don't know enough about the thinking of Jefferson et al. But in the mid-19th century, many Americans always showed a worrying interest in taxonomies which regarded Homo sapiens as being more than one species.
What I hadn’t realised, but found very disturbing, was that they bred slaves to sell the children. If you see them as economic units of production rather than people that makes sense. But still… urrgh!
Yes. For some reason, the following picture shocks people, in a different way.
All together now. "If it's legal you should be able to advocate for it". If cannibalism was legal, people'd be boasting about eating the poor and how teens should be overfed and beaten to marbleize the flesh. Normal is highly situational (duh) and PB finds it very difficult to understand on a gut level that the past was different.
The past was different but is it shocking that something called the slave trade involved trade in slaves? Surely the clue is in the name.
We understand it intellectually, not at gut level. People do horrific things and we eventually sanitize it. We don't hold the memory of pain in long-term memory and (as @SeanT wrote about in the Spectator) we remember wars but forget pandemics.
You sound as if you are selling psychopathy as a natural and laudable characteristic. Your imagination may have a 100 year cut off, mine does not. So please don't write "We" when you mean "I".
Re: current caper "The Case of the Disappearing Bank Account" which side do PBers give odds on being proven correct (as opposed to right) when dust settles: Nigel Farage or Coutts & Co?
Seems to me an open question right now.
Coutts & Co.
Charles, late of this parish, used to tease me about having a Coutts & Co account, and said I should have demanded a Drummonds account.
Turns out he was right, imagine banking at the same establishment as Nigel Farage.
This is, in my opinion, a must read Twitter thread on the Ukraine offensive. It lays out why things are taking a while but how the author is convinced that a Ukraine victory is inevitable.
Your hound looks like he is having a grand old time.
Hopefully, although as a road trip heading for Finland he also gets to spend a lot of time in the car.
What's your itinerary Ian? I have often fancied driving up the coast of Norway.
Ferries to Holland and Norway - gets the car to Norway with only three hours driving on the continent, then zigzagging up through the fjords, taking in Stavanger, Bergen, Alesund and Trondheim, a few days on an island out to sea, then just reaching the arctic circle before cutting down through Sweden and the ferry to Finland, doing about ten days in Finland finishing in Helsinki, long ferry back to Travemunde then driving back for the ferry from Holland, hopefully taking in the world's largest model railway en route.
Sounds brilliant! Shame the Newcastle to Norway ferry is no longer running but perhaps it will be back in 2026?
Ooh, that would be good. I used that route a couple of times before it stopped - it was very convenient, and we much preferred adventuring in Norway to the Alps, even when the weather was a bit rubbish at times. [Head East if it is]
Another nugget from my recent reading. The soldiers of the Union were often as brutally racist as the Confederates
eg They would "liberate" a Southern Plantation and immediately rape all the young, attractive, female slaves. Then they'd set the slaves to work, cooking, cleaning, farming - for no money. So life got no better for slaves at all, unless you could get away, and for the women slaves it got worse
A cruel cruel war
I'd be interested to know what life was like in Canada for black people at that time, (acknowledging that there probably weren't many of them).
Mixed. But indisputably better than further south.
Of the 56 "brave, patriotic" men who signed the Declaration of Independence - which avows that "all men are created equal" - 41 of the signatories owned slaves, including Thomas Jefferson, who actually wrote the document. Indeed Jefferson used his slaves for sex
Depends if Africans were defined as human beings ("men"), though [edit: not that it makes it any better if they weren't, obvs]. I don't know enough about the thinking of Jefferson et al. But in the mid-19th century, many Americans always showed a worrying interest in taxonomies which regarded Homo sapiens as being more than one species.
I've read a lot of American history in the last years, and I reckon at least some of the signatories - the Founding Fathers - sincerely meant all mankind by the phrase "all men are created equal". They just didn[t want to give up the profitable, easeful convenience of slaves any time soon, it was something they would get round to. Eventually. Like Augustine and celibacy
They also realised that extending freedom to slaves would have kicked off civil war as soon as Independence was achieved, as the slave owning south entirely depended on slaves for its riches
Other Founding Fathers were out and out racists and misogynists and surely believed true freedom was only meant for white men (probably men of property)
Other facts I've learned in my recent travels. Lincoln never meant for the freed slaves, post bellum, to stay in the USA. His idea was they could all go live in central America. He envisaged they would be either a burden or a menace, he was quite racist himself
"Never" is incorrect. His views evolved considerably over the course of the war.
That's right, Lincoln's views evolved a lot reflecting the experience of the war - seeing black soldiers fighting for the union - and his interactions with figures such as Frederick Douglass. His views reflected the times he lived in but by the standards of those times he was woke in the extreme. Lincoln is in my opinion the greatest political leader in the history of the English speaking world. To have come from where he came from, to have basically taught himself everything he knew, and to have led his country through such difficult times and effected such positive change while remaining so kind and humble in his dealings with everyone he encountered is simply extraordinary. I really can't think of a single other political leader I admire as much as Lincoln.
"Woke in the extreme" seems a tad generous
"In a debate, at Charleston, Illinois, on September 18, 1858, Lincoln made his position clear. “I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and Black races,” he began, going on to say that he opposed Black people having the right to vote, to serve on juries, to hold office and to intermarry with whites. "
But as OLB says, those views changed. How many of them did he still hold in 1864? I genuinely don't know but it certainly seems like he had shifted a great deal.
Edit: I have just checked and 3 days before his assassination he gave a speech supporting votes for blacks. Indeed it is claimed that it was Wilkes' presence at this speech which finally decided him on assassination.
I am willing to believe he moved on black voting, but the evidence is that he did NOT change his mind on colonisation. He wanted freed blacks to be "repatriated" to Africa or be sent to central America/Caribbean. He only piped down about it as it made others angry - the more pure abolitionists and the black soldiers he wanted to recruit
He was a great man, but a man of his time, and "Woke in the extreme" sounds like nonsense
If you were to plot the spectrum of views that white people in America held towards black people and the issue of slavery at the time then Lincoln's views were at the extreme liberal/progressive end without a doubt, especially as they evolved during the course of the war. I spent a year studying the US Civil War in CSYS history at school, and came away quite in awe of Lincoln.
This doesn't sound like a particularly extreme liberal/progressive position:
"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that."
Of course when Lincoln was President the Republicans won all the North East, the West coast and most of the Mid West.
The Democrats however won virtually all the South and Missouri, almost the reverse of now. Indeed Biden's Democrats are arguably closer to the party of Lincoln now and Trump's Republicans closer to the Confederacy
The Republicans have always been the party of businessmen. The Democrats have generally been the party of labour. Almost everything else has been volatile.
'Always' is pitching it very strong there. Since 1932, arguably, but before World War 1 you could make a very good case it was the other way around.
Before 1930s BOTH Republicans and Democrats vied to represent business, at least SOME business interests and businessmen. NOTE that they tended to appeal (for votes AND contributions) upon different economic sectors:
> Republicans being the party of protectionism, with support from manufacturing including mainly business but also plenty of working people, as well as some farmers (for example, sugar planters in south Louisiana) also concerned with foreign competition.
> Democrats being the party of free trade, with support from many commercial interests who mostly wanted open markets and low tariffs for imports, and many farmers and other ag-based concerns, who wanted to open the door to EXPORT their produce to foreign markets.
Toward and after turn of 19th>20th century this basic pattern started to get scrambled, first by dispute between hard dollar versus expanded money supply. With farmers being mostly in favor of the latter (for example Greenbackers > Populists) and providing the mass, joined by silver mining.
And while "bimetalism" waned as a burning issue after 1896 (due in part to major gold-rushes in Yukon and South Africa) its place was taken by rising tide of concern and controversy over rise of corporate "trusts" dominating the economy, AND worsening conditions for labor.
Which again scrambled, or substantially blurred, party lines, and in 1912 split the GOP (Theodore Roosevelt versus Wm Howard Taft) giving victory to Democrats under Woodrow Wilson. His administration opened the door, a bit anyway, for organized labor of moderate tendency, but WW1 and aftermath led to both significant labor strife, particularly with more radical and broad-based unions (such as IWW = Wobblies) and seriously diminished even moderate (AFL) unionism.
Note that in the midst of the economic boom for (many but hardly all) American of the "Roaring Twenties" the Democrats nominated . . . a Wall Street lawyer (and Wilson's ambassador to Court of St. James) John W. Davis (originally from WVa). This along with GOP nomination of stand-pat Calvin Coolidge, prompted a serious 3rd-party Progressive campaign lead by Republican insurgent Robert "Fighting Bob" LaFollette that united disaffected liberals, farmers and labor - with the result that Davis was the WORST performing Democratic nominee of 20th century.
Odd you should mention bimetallism. I was just trying to explain the concept of an allegory to my daughters (the oldest of whom is keen to audition for the part of Cheryl Stoat in the school production of The Wind in The Willows), and landed upon discussing The Wizard of Oz as an allegory for the virtues of the Gold Standard ("Follow the Yellow Brick Road") and the evils of bimetallism in late 19thcentury America. I couldn't however remember what bimetallism was, who benefited from it, or why, so have taken the opportunity to look it up. Fascinating what arcanery was important to our forebears. The fact that the Wizard-of-Oz-as-allegory-for-bimetallism theory probably holds very little water makes it no less fun or interesting.
Adam Payne @adampayne26 Government is looking at reviving post-Brexit plans to restore imperial measurements, @politicshome is told
My problem with this is it is so transparently a gimmick. I refuse to believe there are serious people seriously thinking that we have a major problem with a lack of imperial measurements. Day to day people use a hodgepotch of imperial and metric, and that will continue regardless, so it is utterly pointless but designed as some kind of signal to some idiot out there who feels oppressed whenver they see something refer to kilometres.
Roads I’m less concerned with, they never went metric, it’s weights and measures. What’s the f’in point?
Which is more troubling - that this cretinous idea is being floated in a desperate attempt to attain some Brexit Bonus, however stupidly, or that the party things (and may be correct), that their core demographic would adore it?
We'll have a comment in a moment about how it is unfair people who grew up with those measurements to continue to exist in a world where litres show up on things. A rather infantilising view of their ability to comprehend things.
Or, we'll get a claim it won't really change anything anyway, in which case why even bother?
The odd thing is that metrication took place in the 1970s and 1980s. I was schooled in the 1960s and 1970s and saw the shift. I can cope with both systems, e.g. an acre = a furlong long and a cricket [green strip in the middle] long. So, this proposal must pander to folk older than me. In their seventies and above, pretty much.
Snap. It's such a fucking stupid idea, it's surely a spoof?
If the Tories put it in their manifesto I would wet myself laughing.
SNP 37% (-1) LAB 34% (+2) CON 17% (-1) LD 9% (nc) OTH 4% (nc)
F/w 23rd - 28th June. Changes vs. 27th April - 3 May.
24 SNP seats would go Labour on that swing since 2019, giving Labour most seats in Scotland again, albeit only by 1 MP.
However it could be more if Conservatives and LDs tactically vote Labour to beat the SNP. Zero swing between SNP and Tories so the Tories would hold all their Scottish seats
Surely Labour would get many more than that, as Conservatives vote tactically to keep the SNP out?
Starmer needs LD tactical votes in England to beat the Tories and Tory tactical votes in Scotland to help beat the SNP
Sunak on the other hand need a feckin' miracle of biblical proportions.
We all Noah that.
He certainly needs faith in the Job.
I think everyone is now expecting many Lamentations from Conservative candidates on election night.
After which, with any luck, they will wander about in the wilderness for 40 years.
Labour will only have wandered for another 9 years after their leader displayed a giant stone tablet with commands on it.
As I recall, the Edstone had 5 pledges. Presumably he has another 5 on the next one.
Hopefully one pledge will be the free owls. I was very disappointed when that was dropped.
If anyone can name any of the pledges they win PB for the day. It turns out there were six.
According to wikipedia sometime PB reader John Rentoul called it the "most absurd, ugly, embarrassing, childish, silly, patronising, idiotic, insane, ridiculous gimmick I have ever seen". He left out hilarious.
Did we ever find out for sure where it ended up?
Wiki states a restaurant in West London claims to have snapped it up, but that the going theory is the real one was demolished.
To my mind that makes it even better though, if someone created a replica EdStone.
It was also a bargain at less than £8k, which by the way they failed to declare properly.
Smithson the Younger recently regaled us all, by recounting his ancestor's famous gift to the young United States.
For which I think you and OGH on this 4th of July!
And which makes me wonder IF perhaps some of vast income generated by PB, might be devoted to preserving the EdStone - be it genuine or replica - for future (dare I say?) "generations" of the Great British Public?
With a bit left over to pay for the long-awaited Political Betting Dot Com By-Election Bottle Bus!!!
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
Your hound looks like he is having a grand old time.
Hopefully, although as a road trip heading for Finland he also gets to spend a lot of time in the car.
What's your itinerary Ian? I have often fancied driving up the coast of Norway.
Ferries to Holland and Norway - gets the car to Norway with only three hours driving on the continent, then zigzagging up through the fjords, taking in Stavanger, Bergen, Alesund and Trondheim, a few days on an island out to sea, then just reaching the arctic circle before cutting down through Sweden and the ferry to Finland, doing about ten days in Finland finishing in Helsinki, long ferry back to Travemunde then driving back for the ferry from Holland, hopefully taking in the world's largest model railway en route.
If Orkney becomes part of Norway, you should be able to get a ferry directly from Kirkwall to Bergen.
I do wonder what the Orcadians would think of Norwegian alcohol taxation.
Yes, and they still have those funny monopoly shops as the only places you can buy wine and spirits, where you choose from a catalogue and pass your order through a little hatch with a grille and they bring it out to you in a brown paper bag. Buying a porn mag when we were young was easier.
That was the situation in BC in the 80's. Well. The state monopoly shops anyways. There were only 4 in Greater Victoria. For about a quarter of a million people. They weren't big either. Selection no better than your average supermarket here.
Another nugget from my recent reading. The soldiers of the Union were often as brutally racist as the Confederates
eg They would "liberate" a Southern Plantation and immediately rape all the young, attractive, female slaves. Then they'd set the slaves to work, cooking, cleaning, farming - for no money. So life got no better for slaves at all, unless you could get away, and for the women slaves it got worse
A cruel cruel war
This is about as much of a parody as that fake Twit woman.
Did such things happen? Yes. Were they the norm? Way less than you might guess from Leon's commentary.
Note that slaves started heading toward Union lines, as soon as there were Union troops in reasonable proximity. In significant numbers, that way before the Emancipation they'd been nicknamed "Contrabands" which in fact was used as justification for putting them to work but NOT re-enslaving them, say by selling to Union slave holders.
EDIT - Implication that lives of former slaves re: Union army, got WORSE in general than their previous condition of servitude, is NOT correct, again in general.
In the immediate aftermath of the ACW the position of former slaves was quite good. It was with the withdrawal of Union forces and the end or Reconstruction that conditions deteriorated, and the exodus to the Northern cities happened.
Your hound looks like he is having a grand old time.
Hopefully, although as a road trip heading for Finland he also gets to spend a lot of time in the car.
What's your itinerary Ian? I have often fancied driving up the coast of Norway.
Ferries to Holland and Norway - gets the car to Norway with only three hours driving on the continent, then zigzagging up through the fjords, taking in Stavanger, Bergen, Alesund and Trondheim, a few days on an island out to sea, then just reaching the arctic circle before cutting down through Sweden and the ferry to Finland, doing about ten days in Finland finishing in Helsinki, long ferry back to Travemunde then driving back for the ferry from Holland, hopefully taking in the world's largest model railway en route.
Sounds brilliant! Shame the Newcastle to Norway ferry is no longer running but perhaps it will be back in 2026?
Ooh, that would be good. I used that route a couple of times before it stopped - it was very convenient, and we much preferred adventuring in Norway to the Alps, even when the weather was a bit rubbish at times. [Head East if it is]
We sailed from Newcastle to Oslo in 1964 on our honeymoon
Indeed we have been to Norway quite a few times but the best way to see the coast is on the Hurtigruten coastal express which bobs in and out of the fjords all the way up to the North Cape
Indeed it was Hurtigruten who took us on our Antarctica expedition
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
Sunak is quite a good campaigner and on balance more charismatic than Starmer. I think he will be fine and in election debates charisma often trumps lawyerly aggression. Not to say Sunak isn't sharp but you are trying to win over the average floating voter in a semi in the Midlands in an election campaign not win a technical point of law in the High Court or a Parliamentary Cttee
Yes. Great campaigner. The only reason he lost to Truss was her immense talent. And the only reason Truss lost to the Lettuce was advised by Sunak. Or something. Does that make sense. Reading it back I’m not sure.
Doesn't this imperial measure thingie come around every few months? Then we discuss it for a day and nowt happens. Then it comes around again. It's a less frequent version of our weekly Russian troll.
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
Adam Payne @adampayne26 Government is looking at reviving post-Brexit plans to restore imperial measurements, @politicshome is told
My problem with this is it is so transparently a gimmick. I refuse to believe there are serious people seriously thinking that we have a major problem with a lack of imperial measurements. Day to day people use a hodgepotch of imperial and metric, and that will continue regardless, so it is utterly pointless but designed as some kind of signal to some idiot out there who feels oppressed whenver they see something refer to kilometres.
Roads I’m less concerned with, they never went metric, it’s weights and measures. What’s the f’in point?
Which is more troubling - that this cretinous idea is being floated in a desperate attempt to attain some Brexit Bonus, however stupidly, or that the party things (and may be correct), that their core demographic would adore it?
We'll have a comment in a moment about how it is unfair people who grew up with those measurements to continue to exist in a world where litres show up on things. A rather infantilising view of their ability to comprehend things.
Or, we'll get a claim it won't really change anything anyway, in which case why even bother?
“this cretinous idea”
But the UK isn’t really metric though, and never will be, is it? Do you know your own size and weight in metric? When planning your journey, are you using miles or kilometres? How far is the Grand National in metric? In the pub do you buy pints?
Adam Payne @adampayne26 Government is looking at reviving post-Brexit plans to restore imperial measurements, @politicshome is told
My problem with this is it is so transparently a gimmick. I refuse to believe there are serious people seriously thinking that we have a major problem with a lack of imperial measurements. Day to day people use a hodgepotch of imperial and metric, and that will continue regardless, so it is utterly pointless but designed as some kind of signal to some idiot out there who feels oppressed whenver they see something refer to kilometres or kilos.
Presumably the idea is being pushed by someone like Rees-Mogg who doesn’t use or understand computers or calculators.
As any fule kno the Scots invented calculators in 1614:
But I would still place Mr R-M in a Zeitgeist where they hadn't even got round to standardising English units, never mind Scottish and Irish ones ... 'hogsheads' and 'tuns' and 'bushels' alkl different from place to place and from one material weighed to the next.
Adam Payne @adampayne26 Government is looking at reviving post-Brexit plans to restore imperial measurements, @politicshome is told
This will revive their electoral fortunes and no mistake. As a 49 and a half year old brought up with metric I, and those younger than me, relish the idea of spending the many years we have until retirement fucking reeducating ourselves in systems of measurement used by precisely one other country for the benefit of Boomer nostalgics. Great idea. Bring back pounds, shillings and pence while you’re at it - I missed those entirely. My vote’s in the fucking bag Rishi!
The decimal system is woke. Bring back Babylonian base 60. (Not a Leon post.)
From the looks of the Code of Hammurabi the Babylonians had their own non-British measures, if you can believe it, so that's clearly a no go.
fifty ka of corn one-third of a mina of gold for each ten gan (area) ten gur of grain shall be paid
I can see they were bloody nimby's too though, so many building regs.
59. If any man, without the knowledge of the owner of a garden, fell a tree in a garden he shall pay half a mina in money. 233. If a builder build a house for some one, even though he has not yet completed it; if then the walls seem toppling, the builder must make the walls solid from his own means.
Rishi Sunak is 43, there is zero chance he gives a shit about Imperial measurements. So as a sign of desperation it is pretty striking.
Most people use imperial measurements for height, weight, long distances.
And yet some measures have succeeded more than I expected. Petrol in litres, car speeds in kph, temperatures in Celsius.
Petrol is not measured in litres. It is measured in tenners or "fill her ups". Car speeds are measured in mph not kph, unless you forgot to read the manual and have the wrong display.
Adam Payne @adampayne26 Government is looking at reviving post-Brexit plans to restore imperial measurements, @politicshome is told
My problem with this is it is so transparently a gimmick. I refuse to believe there are serious people seriously thinking that we have a major problem with a lack of imperial measurements. Day to day people use a hodgepotch of imperial and metric, and that will continue regardless, so it is utterly pointless but designed as some kind of signal to some idiot out there who feels oppressed whenver they see something refer to kilometres.
Roads I’m less concerned with, they never went metric, it’s weights and measures. What’s the f’in point?
Which is more troubling - that this cretinous idea is being floated in a desperate attempt to attain some Brexit Bonus, however stupidly, or that the party things (and may be correct), that their core demographic would adore it?
We'll have a comment in a moment about how it is unfair people who grew up with those measurements to continue to exist in a world where litres show up on things. A rather infantilising view of their ability to comprehend things.
Or, we'll get a claim it won't really change anything anyway, in which case why even bother?
“this cretinous idea”
But the UK isn’t really metric though, and never will be, is it? Do you know your own size and weight in metric? When planning your journey, are you using miles or kilometres? How far is the Grand National in metric? In the pub do you buy pints?
That's why it is cretinous - we don't need to 'bring back' imperial measures, because we're already using them plenty. We use what we find convenient.
It's not cretinous because I'm a huge fan of metric and use it for all everyday things, I don't (though I do know my height and weight in metric). It's cretinous because it's unnecessary and pointless to 'restore' it when we already use them, and thus any restoration would be to make things more inconvenient by pushing it in places we don't use it.
Your attempt to defend it is ridiculous, but that's the best they can probably come up with.
That's an interesting question. Some potential factors I've plucked out of my posterior:
*) Documentation. The more photographs and names of victims, and recorded testimony of survivors there are, the more it will be mentioned. *) Long-term effect. Does the effect of what happened still cause ripples in world events today? *) (Sadly) how like us are the victims and the perpetrators? Could they have been / be us? *) Are there groups trying to raise awareness of the events? *) Are there groups / countries claiming that the event was *not* as stated?
Good analysis. I'd add "Seen as interesting to Western media", because the West does dominate global news, and massacres in, say, the DRC or indeed Rwanda struggle to get attention outside the local area. Arguably even the Khmer Rouge got as much attention as they did because they related to the Cold War.
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
If the Tories embraced Rejoin they would cease to be the main party of the right in the UK, RefUK under a newly returned Farage would replace them as the main right of centre party and opposition to Labour.
Even Labour wouldn't embrace Rejoin now because of the redwall, at most they would consider EEA if they win and are then re elected.
The only UK wide party whose voter coalition would allow them to consider Rejoin are the LDs you vote for
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
Sunak is quite a good campaigner and on balance more charismatic than Starmer. I think he will be fine and in election debates charisma often trumps lawyerly aggression. Not to say Sunak isn't sharp but you are trying to win over the average floating voter in a semi in the Midlands in an election campaign not win a technical point of law in the High Court or a Parliamentary Cttee
Yes. Great campaigner. The only reason he lost to Truss was her immense talent. And the only reason Truss lost to the Lettuce was advised by Sunak. Or something. Does that make sense. Reading it back I’m not sure.
Post debate polls with the public, as opposed to Tory members, showed Sunak beat Truss.
Sunak is no Boris, Cameron or Blair on the charisma scales but is certainly more charismatic than Starmer
This is, in my opinion, a must read Twitter thread on the Ukraine offensive. It lays out why things are taking a while but how the author is convinced that a Ukraine victory is inevitable.
I cannot read it on twitter right now, but even if it is the case things have not simply collapsed on the Russian side it would seem pretty dumb to declare the Ukrainian offensive a failure at this point. It took them months to get into place to take Kherson, and that without taking on areas of massive entrenchment and mining.
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
I am firmly of the opinion that, at some point during the next Labour decade, a Tory leadership contender will run on a Rejoin platform. And do surprisingly well. He/she probably isn't in government yet, and maybe not in Parliament.
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
If the Tories embraced Rejoin they would cease to be the main party of the right in the UK, RefUK under a newly returned Farage would replace them as the main right of centre party and opposition to Labour.
Even Labour wouldn't embrace Rejoin now because of the redwall, at most they would consider EEA if they win and are then re elected.
The only UK wide party whose voter coalition would allow them to consider Rejoin are the LDs you vote for
Of the 56 "brave, patriotic" men who signed the Declaration of Independence - which avows that "all men are created equal" - 41 of the signatories owned slaves, including Thomas Jefferson, who actually wrote the document. Indeed Jefferson used his slaves for sex
Depends if Africans were defined as human beings ("men"), though [edit: not that it makes it any better if they weren't, obvs]. I don't know enough about the thinking of Jefferson et al. But in the mid-19th century, many Americans always showed a worrying interest in taxonomies which regarded Homo sapiens as being more than one species.
I've read a lot of American history in the last years, and I reckon at least some of the signatories - the Founding Fathers - sincerely meant all mankind by the phrase "all men are created equal". They just didn[t want to give up the profitable, easeful convenience of slaves any time soon, it was something they would get round to. Eventually. Like Augustine and celibacy
They also realised that extending freedom to slaves would have kicked off civil war as soon as Independence was achieved, as the slave owning south entirely depended on slaves for its riches
Other Founding Fathers were out and out racists and misogynists and surely believed true freedom was only meant for white men (probably men of property)
Other facts I've learned in my recent travels. Lincoln never meant for the freed slaves, post bellum, to stay in the USA. His idea was they could all go live in central America. He envisaged they would be either a burden or a menace, he was quite racist himself
"Never" is incorrect. His views evolved considerably over the course of the war.
That's right, Lincoln's views evolved a lot reflecting the experience of the war - seeing black soldiers fighting for the union - and his interactions with figures such as Frederick Douglass. His views reflected the times he lived in but by the standards of those times he was woke in the extreme. Lincoln is in my opinion the greatest political leader in the history of the English speaking world. To have come from where he came from, to have basically taught himself everything he knew, and to have led his country through such difficult times and effected such positive change while remaining so kind and humble in his dealings with everyone he encountered is simply extraordinary. I really can't think of a single other political leader I admire as much as Lincoln.
"Woke in the extreme" seems a tad generous
"In a debate, at Charleston, Illinois, on September 18, 1858, Lincoln made his position clear. “I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and Black races,” he began, going on to say that he opposed Black people having the right to vote, to serve on juries, to hold office and to intermarry with whites. "
But as OLB says, those views changed. How many of them did he still hold in 1864? I genuinely don't know but it certainly seems like he had shifted a great deal.
Edit: I have just checked and 3 days before his assassination he gave a speech supporting votes for blacks. Indeed it is claimed that it was Wilkes' presence at this speech which finally decided him on assassination.
I am willing to believe he moved on black voting, but the evidence is that he did NOT change his mind on colonisation. He wanted freed blacks to be "repatriated" to Africa or be sent to central America/Caribbean. He only piped down about it as it made others angry - the more pure abolitionists and the black soldiers he wanted to recruit
He was a great man, but a man of his time, and "Woke in the extreme" sounds like nonsense
If you were to plot the spectrum of views that white people in America held towards black people and the issue of slavery at the time then Lincoln's views were at the extreme liberal/progressive end without a doubt, especially as they evolved during the course of the war. I spent a year studying the US Civil War in CSYS history at school, and came away quite in awe of Lincoln.
This doesn't sound like a particularly extreme liberal/progressive position:
"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that."
Of course when Lincoln was President the Republicans won all the North East, the West coast and most of the Mid West.
The Democrats however won virtually all the South and Missouri, almost the reverse of now. Indeed Biden's Democrats are arguably closer to the party of Lincoln now and Trump's Republicans closer to the Confederacy
The Republicans have always been the party of businessmen. The Democrats have generally been the party of labour. Almost everything else has been volatile.
'Always' is pitching it very strong there. Since 1932, arguably, but before World War 1 you could make a very good case it was the other way around.
Before 1930s BOTH Republicans and Democrats vied to represent business, at least SOME business interests and businessmen. NOTE that they tended to appeal (for votes AND contributions) upon different economic sectors:
> Republicans being the party of protectionism, with support from manufacturing including mainly business but also plenty of working people, as well as some farmers (for example, sugar planters in south Louisiana) also concerned with foreign competition.
> Democrats being the party of free trade, with support from many commercial interests who mostly wanted open markets and low tariffs for imports, and many farmers and other ag-based concerns, who wanted to open the door to EXPORT their produce to foreign markets.
Toward and after turn of 19th>20th century this basic pattern started to get scrambled, first by dispute between hard dollar versus expanded money supply. With farmers being mostly in favor of the latter (for example Greenbackers > Populists) and providing the mass, joined by silver mining.
And while "bimetalism" waned as a burning issue after 1896 (due in part to major gold-rushes in Yukon and South Africa) its place was taken by rising tide of concern and controversy over rise of corporate "trusts" dominating the economy, AND worsening conditions for labor.
Which again scrambled, or substantially blurred, party lines, and in 1912 split the GOP (Theodore Roosevelt versus Wm Howard Taft) giving victory to Democrats under Woodrow Wilson. His administration opened the door, a bit anyway, for organized labor of moderate tendency, but WW1 and aftermath led to both significant labor strife, particularly with more radical and broad-based unions (such as IWW = Wobblies) and seriously diminished even moderate (AFL) unionism.
Note that in the midst of the economic boom for (many but hardly all) American of the "Roaring Twenties" the Democrats nominated . . . a Wall Street lawyer (and Wilson's ambassador to Court of St. James) John W. Davis (originally from WVa). This along with GOP nomination of stand-pat Calvin Coolidge, prompted a serious 3rd-party Progressive campaign lead by Republican insurgent Robert "Fighting Bob" LaFollette that united disaffected liberals, farmers and labor - with the result that Davis was the WORST performing Democratic nominee of 20th century.
Odd you should mention bimetallism. I was just trying to explain the concept of an allegory to my daughters (the oldest of whom is keen to audition for the part of Cheryl Stoat in the school production of The Wind in The Willows), and landed upon discussing The Wizard of Oz as an allegory for the virtues of the Gold Standard ("Follow the Yellow Brick Road") and the evils of bimetallism in late 19thcentury America. I couldn't however remember what bimetallism was, who benefited from it, or why, so have taken the opportunity to look it up. Fascinating what arcanery was important to our forebears. The fact that the Wizard-of-Oz-as-allegory-for-bimetallism theory probably holds very little water makes it no less fun or interesting.
IIRC author of Wizard of Oz (whole series), Frank Baum, was a SUPPORTER of bimetalism, and an opponent of the "Gold Bugs". With the Yellow Brick road being the way to ruination thanks to Eastern corporate con artists and frauds personified by the Great and Powerful Wizard.
Whereas the REAL power lies with the farmers and workers, esp. the former - provided they start doing what one agrarian activist urged: "grow less corn and more hell!"
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
If the Tories embraced Rejoin they would cease to be the main party of the right in the UK, RefUK under a newly returned Farage would replace them as the main right of centre party and opposition to Labour.
Even Labour wouldn't embrace Rejoin now because of the redwall, at most they would consider EEA if they win and are then re elected.
The only UK wide party whose voter coalition would allow them to consider Rejoin are the LDs you vote for
The Tories are on course for ceasing to be the main party of the right if they embrace the blood and soil nationalism of the New Tories.
Rishi Sunak is 43, there is zero chance he gives a shit about Imperial measurements. So as a sign of desperation it is pretty striking.
Most people use imperial measurements for height, weight, long distances.
So what problem needs fixing?
There isn't a problem. It's just a chunk of maggoty red meat thrown to the terminally stupid.
I say bring back miles, chains and links! (80 chains to a mile; 100 links to a chain)
Railways are measured in miles and chains. Cranks who meticulously record their mileage do so to the nearest chain.
As an aside, I always see this as an example of the difference between precision and accuracy, as the actual distance travelled between two stations can vary, depending on which platforms you depart from and arrive at.
Re: current caper "The Case of the Disappearing Bank Account" which side do PBers give odds on being proven correct (as opposed to right) when dust settles: Nigel Farage or Coutts & Co?
Seems to me an open question right now.
Both will be broadly correct.
No dispute he doesnt have enough cash with them to meet the account limits. In the past that may have been ignored as perceived risks to the bank lower. Banks now getting ultra cautious on keeping accounts open thanks to massive fines. Farage likely right that PEP important in rejection from other banks.
And Farage right to draw attention to an issue, but typically muddles and obfuscates over details.
Another nugget from my recent reading. The soldiers of the Union were often as brutally racist as the Confederates
eg They would "liberate" a Southern Plantation and immediately rape all the young, attractive, female slaves. Then they'd set the slaves to work, cooking, cleaning, farming - for no money. So life got no better for slaves at all, unless you could get away, and for the women slaves it got worse
A cruel cruel war
This is about as much of a parody as that fake Twit woman.
Did such things happen? Yes. Were they the norm? Way less than you might guess from Leon's commentary.
Note that slaves started heading toward Union lines, as soon as there were Union troops in reasonable proximity. In significant numbers, that way before the Emancipation they'd been nicknamed "Contrabands" which in fact was used as justification for putting them to work but NOT re-enslaving them, say by selling to Union slave holders.
EDIT - Implication that lives of former slaves re: Union army, got WORSE in general than their previous condition of servitude, is NOT correct, again in general.
I’ve read and seen much worse.
All about how slaves were treated just like family members or beloved pets, and that freeing them did them no favours.
Then, I saw “Turn: Washington’s Female Spies. “. The dastardly Brits offer freedom to any slaves who defect to them. Some of the young, stupid, slaves are tempted by this offer, until a wise old matriarch puts them right, explaining that freedom won’t feed or clothe them, and they’re much better off with a kind mistress. This was only made a few years ago.
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
I'm not a writer of thrillers (that noise you can hear is classes I have taught saying "yes, we know".)
But the satisfying narrative from here goes something like this.
Starmer and his successor move the UK to SM+CU. Probably via an improved TCA and something like the May plan. Basically, each step makes sense economically.
Then the next Conservative PM (who probably doesn't realise that is their destiny yet) campaigns on the perception that this is national humiliation; "If we're this closely entwined, we should be running the show, not stuck waiting in the corridor."
(NB It doesn't matter what the reality is. Even if Norway really have the optimal way of engaging with Europe, politicians won't see it that way.)
And whilst Boris may be dead or gaga by then, maybe one of his children will do the deed. Statistically, there's a higher than average chance that one of them will be PM.
Adam Payne @adampayne26 Government is looking at reviving post-Brexit plans to restore imperial measurements, @politicshome is told
My problem with this is it is so transparently a gimmick. I refuse to believe there are serious people seriously thinking that we have a major problem with a lack of imperial measurements. Day to day people use a hodgepotch of imperial and metric, and that will continue regardless, so it is utterly pointless but designed as some kind of signal to some idiot out there who feels oppressed whenver they see something refer to kilometres.
Roads I’m less concerned with, they never went metric, it’s weights and measures. What’s the f’in point?
Which is more troubling - that this cretinous idea is being floated in a desperate attempt to attain some Brexit Bonus, however stupidly, or that the party things (and may be correct), that their core demographic would adore it?
We'll have a comment in a moment about how it is unfair people who grew up with those measurements to continue to exist in a world where litres show up on things. A rather infantilising view of their ability to comprehend things.
Or, we'll get a claim it won't really change anything anyway, in which case why even bother?
“this cretinous idea”
But the UK isn’t really metric though, and never will be, is it? Do you know your own size and weight in metric? When planning your journey, are you using miles or kilometres? How far is the Grand National in metric? In the pub do you buy pints?
That's why it is cretinous - we don't need to 'bring back' imperial measures, because we're already using them plenty. We use what we find convenient.
It's not cretinous because I'm a huge fan of metric and use it for all everyday things, I don't (though I do know my height and weight in metric). It's cretinous because it's unnecessary and pointless to 'restore' it when we already use them, and thus any restoration would be to make things more inconvenient by pushing it in places we don't use it.
Your attempt to defend it is ridiculous, but that's the best they can probably come up with.
UK will never be a fully metricasized nation is what you are saying, and you are right, it’s true. But going for how sensible it is if everyone used the same thing for communication and business, is little different than saying do away with languages and everyone on earth using just one language isn’t? why are you not arguing for that too?
If an English pint is half of a Scottish pint, it’s the same thing as talking a different language isn’t it?
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
I'm not a writer of thrillers (that noise you can hear is classes I have taught saying "yes, we know".)
But the satisfying narrative from here goes something like this.
Starmer and his successor move the UK to SM+CU. Probably via an improved TCA and something like the May plan. Basically, each step makes sense economically.
Then the next Conservative PM (who probably doesn't realise that is their destiny yet) campaigns on the perception that this is national humiliation; "If we're this closely entwined, we should be running the show, not stuck waiting in the corridor."
(NB It doesn't matter what the reality is. Even if Norway really have the optimal way of engaging with Europe, politicians won't see it that way.)
And whilst Boris may be dead or gaga by then, maybe one of his children will do the deed. Statistically, there's a higher than average chance that one of them will be PM.
Rishi Sunak is 43, there is zero chance he gives a shit about Imperial measurements. So as a sign of desperation it is pretty striking.
Most people use imperial measurements for height, weight, long distances.
This was the predictable missing-the-point response. I use them for my height and weight, and turns out I don't need any government action to do so.
With government policies we should always ask:
i) what problem is the problem trying to be fixed? ii) is it actually a problem? iii) does the proposal actually address that problem? iv) does it have any other negative effects?
You tell me, what problem is being fixed by 'restoring' imperial measurements?
As far as I know you will not get arrested for saying you are 5ft 8 inches, and no one is harmed if they should see reference to 2.2 litres on a milk container.
Are we saying people are too confused after 40 years? What an insulting thing to say.
Are they simply going to not 'punish' people who sell sausages only by the pound with no reference to kilos? Fine, no harm done - but what benefit is there?
To announce things like this they must think it a winner. Why?
Rishi Sunak is 43, there is zero chance he gives a shit about Imperial measurements. So as a sign of desperation it is pretty striking.
Most people use imperial measurements for height, weight, long distances.
So what problem needs fixing?
There isn't a problem. It's just a chunk of maggoty red meat thrown to the terminally stupid.
I say bring back miles, chains and links! (80 chains to a mile; 100 links to a chain)
Railways are measured in miles and chains. Cranks who meticulously record their mileage do so to the nearest chain. (Snip)
I know, why do you think I mentioned it! Any excuse to move PB onto arcane railway trivia!
(There used to be a series of books called 'miles and chains', showing the stations and structures across the railways. I note HS1 - and HS2 to come - will use km instead, and there were plans for the entire network to move over to metric.)
Comments
https://ferrygogo.com/plans-for-ferry-between-newcastle-and-norway-in-2026/
According to wikipedia sometime PB reader John Rentoul called it the "most absurd, ugly, embarrassing, childish, silly, patronising, idiotic, insane, ridiculous gimmick I have ever seen". He left out hilarious.
Edit: 8 April 2024 in the US of course too. For anyone who's not seen a total eclipse, you really should!
Unto whom I sware in my wrath: that they should not enter into my rest." Psalm 95
“Then he started into dealing with slaves
And something inside of him died”
Guess there’s world of difference between in and with, or maybe Dylan has seen the sign.
We'll have a comment in a moment about how it is unfair people who grew up with those measurements to continue to exist in a world where litres show up on things. A rather infantilising view of their ability to comprehend things.
Or, we'll get a claim it won't really change anything anyway, in which case why even bother?
To my mind that makes it even better though, if someone created a replica EdStone.
It was also a bargain at less than £8k, which by the way they failed to declare properly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EdStone
Just a reminder that racism wasn't rare in the US North. Recall the horrible Draft Riots in New York and other cities which were really Race Riots aimed at murdering Blacks and Abolitionists.
https://twitter.com/AuschwitzMuseum
Names, faces and stories; the victims and perpetrators all too similar to us.
Seems to me an open question right now.
If the Tories put it in their manifesto I would wet myself laughing.
Charles, late of this parish, used to tease me about having a Coutts & Co account, and said I should have demanded a Drummonds account.
Turns out he was right, imagine banking at the same establishment as Nigel Farage.
I say bring back miles, chains and links! (80 chains to a mile; 100 links to a chain)
In Germany @derspiegel, @welt, @ntvde and in Austria @derStandardat write that "the Ukrainian Offensive has failed"... ...
That is wild nonsense.
This nonsense happens, because all of them interviewed the same expert, who doesn't understand Ukraine's Offensive phases, of
https://twitter.com/noclador/status/1676278761342345216?s=20
But indisputably better than further south.
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/black-history-until-1900
The fact that the Wizard-of-Oz-as-allegory-for-bimetallism theory probably holds very little water makes it no less fun or interesting.
Smithson the Younger recently regaled us all, by recounting his ancestor's famous gift to the young United States.
For which I think you and OGH on this 4th of July!
And which makes me wonder IF perhaps some of vast income generated by PB, might be devoted to preserving the EdStone - be it genuine or replica - for future (dare I say?) "generations" of the Great British Public?
With a bit left over to pay for the long-awaited Political Betting Dot Com By-Election Bottle Bus!!!
@Leon what say you?
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
Well. The state monopoly shops anyways.
There were only 4 in Greater Victoria. For about a quarter of a million people.
They weren't big either. Selection no better than your average supermarket here.
They leave that to GB News.
Indeed we have been to Norway quite a few times but the best way to see the coast is on the Hurtigruten coastal express which bobs in and out of the fjords all the way up to the North Cape
Indeed it was Hurtigruten who took us on our Antarctica expedition
We should be using Kelvin.
Then we discuss it for a day and nowt happens.
Then it comes around again.
It's a less frequent version of our weekly Russian troll.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
2023 - Can you give us a groat, guv?
But the UK isn’t really metric though, and never will be, is it? Do you know your own size and weight in metric? When planning your journey, are you using miles or kilometres? How far is the Grand National in metric? In the pub do you buy pints?
https://www.nms.ac.uk/explore-our-collections/stories/science-and-technology/napiers-bones/
But I would still place Mr R-M in a Zeitgeist where they hadn't even got round to standardising English units, never mind Scottish and Irish ones ... 'hogsheads' and 'tuns' and 'bushels' alkl different from place to place and from one material weighed to the next.
fifty ka of corn
one-third of a mina of gold
for each ten gan (area) ten gur of grain shall be paid
I can see they were bloody nimby's too though, so many building regs.
59. If any man, without the knowledge of the owner of a garden, fell a tree in a garden he shall pay half a mina in money.
233. If a builder build a house for some one, even though he has not yet completed it; if then the walls seem toppling, the builder must make the walls solid from his own means.
That seems insane to me. They must be doomed, surely.
It's not cretinous because I'm a huge fan of metric and use it for all everyday things, I don't (though I do know my height and weight in metric). It's cretinous because it's unnecessary and pointless to 'restore' it when we already use them, and thus any restoration would be to make things more inconvenient by pushing it in places we don't use it.
Your attempt to defend it is ridiculous, but that's the best they can probably come up with.
Even Labour wouldn't embrace Rejoin now because of the redwall, at most they would consider EEA if they win and are then re elected.
The only UK wide party whose voter coalition would allow them to consider Rejoin are the LDs you vote for
Sunak is no Boris, Cameron or Blair on the charisma scales but is certainly more charismatic than Starmer
And do surprisingly well.
He/she probably isn't in government yet, and maybe not in Parliament.
(The LDs don't stand for election in NI.)
Whereas the REAL power lies with the farmers and workers, esp. the former - provided they start doing what one agrarian activist urged: "grow less corn and more hell!"
Addendum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Frank_Baum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Elizabeth_Lease
As an aside, I always see this as an example of the difference between precision and accuracy, as the actual distance travelled between two stations can vary, depending on which platforms you depart from and arrive at.
I oppose
@Nigel_Farage
on many issues but it's outrageous that his bank accounts have been closed on ‘political grounds’
Banks are out of control & unaccountable
They are policing people's thoughts
Defend free speech & banking without discrimination'
https://twitter.com/PeterTatchell/status/1676161503634890752?s=20
Though apparently Farage was turned down by Coutts as he wasn't wealthy enough to bank with them, they offered him a Natwest account instead
No dispute he doesnt have enough cash with them to meet the account limits.
In the past that may have been ignored as perceived risks to the bank lower.
Banks now getting ultra cautious on keeping accounts open thanks to massive fines.
Farage likely right that PEP important in rejection from other banks.
And Farage right to draw attention to an issue, but typically muddles and obfuscates over details.
All about how slaves were treated just like family members or beloved pets, and that freeing them did them no favours.
Then, I saw “Turn: Washington’s Female Spies. “. The dastardly Brits offer freedom to any slaves who defect to them. Some of the young, stupid, slaves are tempted by this offer, until a wise old matriarch puts them right, explaining that freedom won’t feed or clothe them, and they’re much better off with a kind mistress. This was only made a few years ago.
Glasgow's a *cool* place...
This July 4, the nation is convulsed with revolution
David Samuels"
https://unherd.com/2023/07/the-puritan-spirit-of-americas-civil-war/
But the satisfying narrative from here goes something like this.
Starmer and his successor move the UK to SM+CU. Probably via an improved TCA and something like the May plan. Basically, each step makes sense economically.
Then the next Conservative PM (who probably doesn't realise that is their destiny yet) campaigns on the perception that this is national humiliation; "If we're this closely entwined, we should be running the show, not stuck waiting in the corridor."
(NB It doesn't matter what the reality is. Even if Norway really have the optimal way of engaging with Europe, politicians won't see it that way.)
And whilst Boris may be dead or gaga by then, maybe one of his children will do the deed. Statistically, there's a higher than average chance that one of them will be PM.
If an English pint is half of a Scottish pint, it’s the same thing as talking a different language isn’t it?
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4080498-former-trump-press-secretary-says-he-showed-classified-documents-to-people-on-mar-a-lago-dining-patio/
With government policies we should always ask:
i) what problem is the problem trying to be fixed?
ii) is it actually a problem?
iii) does the proposal actually address that problem?
iv) does it have any other negative effects?
You tell me, what problem is being fixed by 'restoring' imperial measurements?
As far as I know you will not get arrested for saying you are 5ft 8 inches, and no one is harmed if they should see reference to 2.2 litres on a milk container.
Are we saying people are too confused after 40 years? What an insulting thing to say.
Are they simply going to not 'punish' people who sell sausages only by the pound with no reference to kilos? Fine, no harm done - but what benefit is there?
To announce things like this they must think it a winner. Why?
(There used to be a series of books called 'miles and chains', showing the stations and structures across the railways. I note HS1 - and HS2 to come - will use km instead, and there were plans for the entire network to move over to metric.)