Because it's really frustrating and boring waiting for the bloody stuff to dry enough so I can paint it and start putting the new kitchen in.
You don't have to watch - it will still dry unobserved.
It actually dries more quickly if you don't watch it, fact.
Really? I was hoping the hot air as I sigh in frustration might speed it up.
The best way to dry plaster.
1) Go for a long walk to a really good pub. Preferably in company of friend/family. 2) A good pub lunch 3) Lazy afternoon. 4) Arrive back after dark. 5) Go to bed. 6) Next morning the plaster is solid, if still a touch delicate.
Ukraine has just deployed one of its strongest units to the front. They had been holding a lot of these in reserve. This unit is equipped with the UK's Challenger tanks. Hopefully good news that a breach can be exploited.
Ukraine has reportedly deployed one of its strongest units - the heavy-punching 82nd Air Assault Brigade - at Robotyne
"A force tailored to advance quickly to seize ground... Looks very much like a formation task-organized to drive through a breach in defensive lines"
The 82nd's battle-hardened troopers are equipped with formidable Challenger tanks and night-capable Marder/Stryker IFVs
3 A* and one A for my nephew, so off to Cambridge at a different College to his sister. Completely Comprehensive education, with no additional tutoring. Smart lad. Both are destined for great things.
Well done him! Must have taken a load of intelligence, self belief and hard work to get there. Cambridge is lucky to have him. But tell him to prepare for a lifetime of poshos like Nigel Farage telling him he is now a member of an out of touch elite.
A good reality check is to imagine that someone who we really like and approve of does these things in a political scene with just two entrenched parties - would we find excuses, or decide to vote against them even if it meant supporting someone we disliked? If Starmer or Corbyn as Labour leaders past and present tried to rig an election, I wouldn't vote Labour. If the only realistic alternative was UKIP led by Farage, though, would I vote UKIP? Gulp.
For a hardened Republican who believes the Democrats are alien to everything they hold dear, it must be a bit like that.
Except Biden is pretty centrist, so it's a strange comparison. There are many currents in US politics which just don't map into ours.
There's a huge gulf between the two Americas, so Nick's illustration is all too apposite.
If you're all good I may give you an Indy thread on Sunday.
A thread on the Catalonian Indy movement would certainly be relevant at the moment given the inconclusive Spanish election with Catalan Nationalists hold the balance of power
That's a good point.
If @felix is OK (haven't seen him around recently) maybe he could do a guest thread?
Incidentally, the Spanish situation demonstrates the key reason why Britain should eschew PR: successive governments would be beholden to Scottish nationalists.
Every electoral system has pluses and minuses. PR in Britain would operate to destabilise the union.
The SNP (and SF and PC for that matter) win more seats under FPTP than they would under PR. FPTP is destabilising the union.
FPTP rewards a geographically concentrated vote, so it always rewards separatists.
Gardenwalker, this is what FPTP does:
2019 general election
SNP: 48 MPs, official third party status at PMQs 1,242,380 votes
LibDem: 11 MPs 3,696,419 votes
The (unionist) party with three times as many votes gets fewer than a quarter of as many seats. A separatist party gets awarded with a higher profile.
Or:
Plaid Cymru: 4 MPs 153,265 votes
Green Party: 1 MP 835,597 votes
Didn't UKIP get about 15% of the vote at a GE and only returned 1 MP? You don't have to be a kipper to feel the injustice of that.
Lots of electoral system punish the smaller parties like that. Don't quite a few proportional systems put a floor in of % vote before the party starts getting seats?
If you're all good I may give you an Indy thread on Sunday.
A thread on the Catalonian Indy movement would certainly be relevant at the moment given the inconclusive Spanish election with Catalan Nationalists hold the balance of power
That's a good point.
If @felix is OK (haven't seen him around recently) maybe he could do a guest thread?
Incidentally, the Spanish situation demonstrates the key reason why Britain should eschew PR: successive governments would be beholden to Scottish nationalists.
Every electoral system has pluses and minuses. PR in Britain would operate to destabilise the union.
The SNP (and SF and PC for that matter) win more seats under FPTP than they would under PR. FPTP is destabilising the union.
FPTP rewards a geographically concentrated vote, so it always rewards separatists.
One further thought -
"PR rewards the separatists"
vs
"FPTP rewards the separatists"
are views both fervently held on PB as arguments for and against PR. "Look at the SNP! Of course they want PR at Westminster!"
The missing element is the unspoken PBUnionist "when the separatists do well" - and sometimes they do more than well on FPTP, but other times less than well.
FPTP can have these unpredictable "tipping point" effects, yes. Is that a desirable property in a voting system? I mean, it offers more betting opportunities...
If you're all good I may give you an Indy thread on Sunday.
A thread on the Catalonian Indy movement would certainly be relevant at the moment given the inconclusive Spanish election with Catalan Nationalists hold the balance of power
That's a good point.
If @felix is OK (haven't seen him around recently) maybe he could do a guest thread?
Incidentally, the Spanish situation demonstrates the key reason why Britain should eschew PR: successive governments would be beholden to Scottish nationalists.
Every electoral system has pluses and minuses. PR in Britain would operate to destabilise the union.
The SNP (and SF and PC for that matter) win more seats under FPTP than they would under PR. FPTP is destabilising the union.
FPTP rewards a geographically concentrated vote, so it always rewards separatists.
Logic fail. These parties don't campaign across the UK. So whether the vote is concentrated ir not is irrelevant.
Plus FPTP has the same distorting effect with the more UK wide parties. Just llok at the bit of the Labour Party that is in Scotland. Some electionms it's had far more than its share, others, fewer.
More fundamentally, we elect MPs. Not parties on a regional list, which is what your argument seeks, ultimately.
Edit: the single constituency by definition rewards geographically concentrated votes, for all parties. What happens elsewhere is irrelevant in first principle.
There are arguments for and against FPTP and for and against various forms of PR. (I'd favour STV over a regional list system, or at least a list system with intra-party list choice.) If you accept the logic of FPTP and want that, fair enough, that's your choice.
I'm just saying that Gardenwalker is mistaken on this particular point, that PR would destabilise the union. How FPTP works, whether you go with its logic or not, means that party's with geographically concentrated votes, which is how separatist parties work, do well from it.
If you want an electoral system that does not destabilise the union, you want a system that looks at votes over a larger area.
Wasn't expressing a personal choice - just struck by the arguments pro and con. The SNP has always (well, within my living memory) been for electoral reform (which would mean that they lose some seats in some elections but don't do so badly in other years).
And parties with geographically concentrated votes would do well from it if they had the same votes pro rata across the UK.
A-Level results are irrelevant in the long term, the amount of emphasis placed on them is really ridiculous.
But nonetheless, well done to all those getting their results today. Results day was one of the worst days of my life but I came through the other side, so if you or relatives didn't get what they hoped, all will be okay in the end.
Definitely not a russian bot - not a "mate" in there - and a cracking rant about all kinds, including PB Tories, who as someone upthread noted, is anyone to the right of Corbyn, and their polo-playing, fine wine drinking, breakfast in Kyrrbasystan-posting dilettantism.
Where he/she/it is bang on the money is that there are certain topics where it is not allowed to have a dissenting view (as in it draws a particular kind of vituperative response). The Russian invasion of Ukraine being one of them.
I find it amusing that any identification of the practicalities of the war, its historical context, or any hint that Ukrainian forces won't be sipping tea in the Kremlin by next Tuesday is met with a barrage of what I can only believe is insecurity and fear, manifest in the most gung ho (Russia will be defeated because Russia must be defeated) rhetoric.
Usually we just put you right on the historical context. 😊
Always happy to discuss the practicalities of both the war, and any likely peace.
If you're all good I may give you an Indy thread on Sunday.
A thread on the Catalonian Indy movement would certainly be relevant at the moment given the inconclusive Spanish election with Catalan Nationalists hold the balance of power
That's a good point.
If @felix is OK (haven't seen him around recently) maybe he could do a guest thread?
Incidentally, the Spanish situation demonstrates the key reason why Britain should eschew PR: successive governments would be beholden to Scottish nationalists.
Every electoral system has pluses and minuses. PR in Britain would operate to destabilise the union.
The SNP (and SF and PC for that matter) win more seats under FPTP than they would under PR. FPTP is destabilising the union.
FPTP rewards a geographically concentrated vote, so it always rewards separatists.
Gardenwalker, this is what FPTP does:
2019 general election
SNP: 48 MPs, official third party status at PMQs 1,242,380 votes
LibDem: 11 MPs 3,696,419 votes
The (unionist) party with three times as many votes gets fewer than a quarter of as many seats. A separatist party gets awarded with a higher profile.
Or:
Plaid Cymru: 4 MPs 153,265 votes
Green Party: 1 MP 835,597 votes
Didn't UKIP get about 15% of the vote at a GE and only returned 1 MP? You don't have to be a kipper to feel the injustice of that.
Pick a different Scottish election - and get the complete opposite ... plus, look at Labour in Scotland. If you define Labour in Scotland as a separate party, which it isn't in practice, but is technically thanks to the fiddle in electoral law in Scotland allowing itself to advertise as Scottish Labour, then you get diametrically opposite results from an argument based on Labour UK.
Also, reading yesterday's posts, @Gardenwalker and @HYUFD are bang on the money. Things got ugly post-Brexit on PB and the UK is now divided along Remain/Leave lines.
What a time to be an historian in fifty years time.
In Leaverstan thing were ugly *before* Brexit. That is why we saw such a massive turnout of non-voters to vote for it.
I'm not talking about southern well-off pensioners with a wartime fetish. They vote anyway. I'm talking about the poor sods stuck in rust belt communities where just like in Bon Jovi's Dry County where the jobs are gone and the money's gone and people were hanging on.
These communities were utterly broken, a perpetual state of decay and decline. A few "executive" housing developments built on an old pit is not enough to rescue them. The sad thing is that post-Brexit they are even worse. The promised moon on a stick has not been delivered...
If you're all good I may give you an Indy thread on Sunday.
A thread on the Catalonian Indy movement would certainly be relevant at the moment given the inconclusive Spanish election with Catalan Nationalists hold the balance of power
That's a good point.
If @felix is OK (haven't seen him around recently) maybe he could do a guest thread?
Incidentally, the Spanish situation demonstrates the key reason why Britain should eschew PR: successive governments would be beholden to Scottish nationalists.
Every electoral system has pluses and minuses. PR in Britain would operate to destabilise the union.
The SNP (and SF and PC for that matter) win more seats under FPTP than they would under PR. FPTP is destabilising the union.
FPTP rewards a geographically concentrated vote, so it always rewards separatists.
Logic fail. These parties don't campaign across the UK. So whether the vote is concentrated ir not is irrelevant.
Plus FPTP has the same distorting effect with the more UK wide parties. Just llok at the bit of the Labour Party that is in Scotland. Some electionms it's had far more than its share, others, fewer.
More fundamentally, we elect MPs. Not parties on a regional list, which is what your argument seeks, ultimately.
Edit: the single constituency by definition rewards geographically concentrated votes, for all parties. What happens elsewhere is irrelevant in first principle.
There are arguments for and against FPTP and for and against various forms of PR. (I'd favour STV over a regional list system, or at least a list system with intra-party list choice.) If you accept the logic of FPTP and want that, fair enough, that's your choice.
I'm just saying that Gardenwalker is mistaken on this particular point, that PR would destabilise the union. How FPTP works, whether you go with its logic or not, means that party's with geographically concentrated votes, which is how separatist parties work, do well from it.
If you want an electoral system that does not destabilise the union, you want a system that looks at votes over a larger area.
Wasn't expressing a personal choice - just struck by the arguments pro and con. The SNP has always (well, within my living memory) been for electoral reform (which would mean that they lose some seats in some elections but don't do so badly in other years).
And parties with geographically concentrated votes would do well from it if they had the same votes pro rata across the UK.
I note that the FPTP enthusiasts don't tend to be fans of it being instituted at Holyrood, though tbf many of them seem more interested in abolishing the place than applying electoral reform to it.
Ukraine has just deployed one of its strongest units to the front. They had been holding a lot of these in reserve. This unit is equipped with the UK's Challenger tanks. Hopefully good news that a breach can be exploited.
Ukraine has reportedly deployed one of its strongest units - the heavy-punching 82nd Air Assault Brigade - at Robotyne
"A force tailored to advance quickly to seize ground... Looks very much like a formation task-organized to drive through a breach in defensive lines"
The 82nd's battle-hardened troopers are equipped with formidable Challenger tanks and night-capable Marder/Stryker IFVs
If you're all good I may give you an Indy thread on Sunday.
A thread on the Catalonian Indy movement would certainly be relevant at the moment given the inconclusive Spanish election with Catalan Nationalists hold the balance of power
That's a good point.
If @felix is OK (haven't seen him around recently) maybe he could do a guest thread?
Incidentally, the Spanish situation demonstrates the key reason why Britain should eschew PR: successive governments would be beholden to Scottish nationalists.
Every electoral system has pluses and minuses. PR in Britain would operate to destabilise the union.
The SNP (and SF and PC for that matter) win more seats under FPTP than they would under PR. FPTP is destabilising the union.
FPTP rewards a geographically concentrated vote, so it always rewards separatists.
Gardenwalker, this is what FPTP does:
2019 general election
SNP: 48 MPs, official third party status at PMQs 1,242,380 votes
LibDem: 11 MPs 3,696,419 votes
The (unionist) party with three times as many votes gets fewer than a quarter of as many seats. A separatist party gets awarded with a higher profile.
Or:
Plaid Cymru: 4 MPs 153,265 votes
Green Party: 1 MP 835,597 votes
Didn't UKIP get about 15% of the vote at a GE and only returned 1 MP? You don't have to be a kipper to feel the injustice of that.
12.6% of the vote, 1 MP, in 2015. Slightly more votes than the LibDems and SNP put together, who got 64 MPs between them.
The SDLP got 3 MPs with less than 1/38th of the UKIP vote.
The SNP got the third most MPs (56 versus 8 for the LibDems and 8 for the DUP) yet were only fifth in votes (behind Con, Lad, UKIP, LD).
3 A* and one A for my nephew, so off to Cambridge at a different College to his sister. Completely Comprehensive education, with no additional tutoring. Smart lad. Both are destined for great things.
Well done them.
Overall though A* and A grades at A level have collapsed this year to 27% from 44% in the pandemic
A good reality check is to imagine that someone who we really like and approve of does these things in a political scene with just two entrenched parties - would we find excuses, or decide to vote against them even if it meant supporting someone we disliked? If Starmer or Corbyn as Labour leaders past and present tried to rig an election, I wouldn't vote Labour. If the only realistic alternative was UKIP led by Farage, though, would I vote UKIP? Gulp.
For a hardened Republican who believes the Democrats are alien to everything they hold dear, it must be a bit like that.
Except Biden is pretty centrist, so it's a strange comparison. There are many currents in US politics which just don't map into ours.
There's a huge gulf between the two Americas, so Nick's illustration is all too apposite.
I'm not sure it is.
I think there would be far less tolerance over here for that kind of blatant attempt to overturn an election.
3 A* and one A for my nephew, so off to Cambridge at a different College to his sister. Completely Comprehensive education, with no additional tutoring. Smart lad. Both are destined for great things.
Well done him! Must have taken a load of intelligence, self belief and hard work to get there. Cambridge is lucky to have him. But tell him to prepare for a lifetime of poshos like Nigel Farage telling him he is now a member of an out of touch elite.
Or, worse, being told he is allowed in at the cost of deserving private or grammar educated children who have been cast out into the darkness for socialist reasons. But don't tell him that. It'sd nonsense anyway.
Irrespective of that: congratulations. Very best of wishes for the 3 or 4 more years of hard work - perhaps more - that now loom. As well as all the other things that come with being a student.
Definitely not a russian bot - not a "mate" in there - and a cracking rant about all kinds, including PB Tories, who as someone upthread noted, is anyone to the right of Corbyn, and their polo-playing, fine wine drinking, breakfast in Kyrrbasystan-posting dilettantism.
Where he/she/it is bang on the money is that there are certain topics where it is not allowed to have a dissenting view (as in it draws a particular kind of vituperative response). The Russian invasion of Ukraine being one of them.
I find it amusing that any identification of the practicalities of the war, its historical context, or any hint that Ukrainian forces won't be sipping tea in the Kremlin by next Tuesday is met with a barrage of what I can only believe is insecurity and fear, manifest in the most gung ho (Russia will be defeated because Russia must be defeated) rhetoric.
Usually we just put you right on the historical context. 😊
Always happy to discuss the practicalities of both the war, and any likely peace.
Says the guy who posted a twitter link to a video game with suitably hysterical accompanying commentary about the efficacy of Ukrainian armed forces.
If you're all good I may give you an Indy thread on Sunday.
A thread on the Catalonian Indy movement would certainly be relevant at the moment given the inconclusive Spanish election with Catalan Nationalists hold the balance of power
That's a good point.
If @felix is OK (haven't seen him around recently) maybe he could do a guest thread?
Incidentally, the Spanish situation demonstrates the key reason why Britain should eschew PR: successive governments would be beholden to Scottish nationalists.
Every electoral system has pluses and minuses. PR in Britain would operate to destabilise the union.
The SNP (and SF and PC for that matter) win more seats under FPTP than they would under PR. FPTP is destabilising the union.
FPTP rewards a geographically concentrated vote, so it always rewards separatists.
Gardenwalker, this is what FPTP does:
2019 general election
SNP: 48 MPs, official third party status at PMQs 1,242,380 votes
LibDem: 11 MPs 3,696,419 votes
The (unionist) party with three times as many votes gets fewer than a quarter of as many seats. A separatist party gets awarded with a higher profile.
Or:
Plaid Cymru: 4 MPs 153,265 votes
Green Party: 1 MP 835,597 votes
Didn't UKIP get about 15% of the vote at a GE and only returned 1 MP? You don't have to be a kipper to feel the injustice of that.
Lots of electoral system punish the smaller parties like that. Don't quite a few proportional systems put a floor in of % vote before the party starts getting seats?
True, but the system we have is pretty extreme. It survives only through inertia and the self-interest of the status quo.
Ukraine has just deployed one of its strongest units to the front. They had been holding a lot of these in reserve. This unit is equipped with the UK's Challenger tanks. Hopefully good news that a breach can be exploited.
Ukraine has reportedly deployed one of its strongest units - the heavy-punching 82nd Air Assault Brigade - at Robotyne
"A force tailored to advance quickly to seize ground... Looks very much like a formation task-organized to drive through a breach in defensive lines"
The 82nd's battle-hardened troopers are equipped with formidable Challenger tanks and night-capable Marder/Stryker IFVs
Because it's really frustrating and boring waiting for the bloody stuff to dry enough so I can paint it and start putting the new kitchen in.
You don't have to watch - it will still dry unobserved.
It actually dries more quickly if you don't watch it, fact.
Really? I was hoping the hot air as I sigh in frustration might speed it up.
The best way to dry plaster.
1) Go for a long walk to a really good pub. Preferably in company of friend/family. 2) A good pub lunch 3) Lazy afternoon. 4) Arrive back after dark. 5) Go to bed. 6) Next morning the plaster is solid, if still a touch delicate.
If you are going to paint it, best wait at least a week, depending on what you plastered. Open all doors and windows and hope for non-humid weather.
If you actually watched it continuously you'd be risking the quantum Zeno effect and would indeed be stuck waiting for it to dry for all eternity.
Definitely not a russian bot - not a "mate" in there - and a cracking rant about all kinds, including PB Tories, who as someone upthread noted, is anyone to the right of Corbyn, and their polo-playing, fine wine drinking, breakfast in Kyrrbasystan-posting dilettantism.
Where he/she/it is bang on the money is that there are certain topics where it is not allowed to have a dissenting view (as in it draws a particular kind of vituperative response). The Russian invasion of Ukraine being one of them.
I find it amusing that any identification of the practicalities of the war, its historical context, or any hint that Ukrainian forces won't be sipping tea in the Kremlin by next Tuesday is met with a barrage of what I can only believe is insecurity and fear, manifest in the most gung ho (Russia will be defeated because Russia must be defeated) rhetoric.
Usually we just put you right on the historical context. 😊
Always happy to discuss the practicalities of both the war, and any likely peace.
Says the guy who posted a twitter link to a video game with suitably hysterical accompanying commentary about the efficacy of Ukrainian armed forces.
We all make mistakes, and you have a very long memory for them.
There was some excitement around this yesterday, with various pb luminaries rushing to take big prices. Not me, sadly. I cannot see how it works.
Surely, either Trump wins or Trump does not run, in which case his support will be spread amongst Trump-friendly candidates. I do not see the mechanism by which Trump being forced to withdraw results in the MAGA scales falling from his supporters' eyes so they now see Christie was right about Trump all along.
Christie claiming second place is, however, consistent with non-Trump Republicans falling out of love with Ron DeSantis as RDS moves to out-Trump Trump.
It's a little more complex than that.
Republicans split three ways (according to NYTimes polling):
- Love and support Trump: c. 38% - Like Trump, but worry about his electability: 26% - Don't like Trump: 36%
Also remember that the US primary system means that if that "Don't Like Trump" group consolidates quickly, then they could do very well. (Also remember two things. One: John Kasich was a decent second in New Hampshire last time around. And two: NH allows cross over voting; it's not impossible that Christie could get a lot of Dem and Independent votes in NH.)
This is the thing, you don't have to be a registered Republican now to vote in the Republican primaries next year. I don't know how the pollsters are getting their samples, but it's really hard to know who's going to turn out. People who are just enthusiastic voters will likely vote on the GOP side, since there's (probably) no meaningful Dem contest. In general primaries against incumbents have tended to produce moderates.
Like, if you're American and you're not enthusiastic about Biden and you find nominating an egomaniac criminal alarming, isn't that a good reason to actually vote in the primary, even if you wouldn't normally?
Blimey.
If there are any Democrats voting I hope they have sounder judgement than the idiotic 'Tories for Corbyn.'
£3 to make Labour unelectable for a generation in the face of the most ridiculous Conservative Governments was something of a bargain I would have thought.
Shame about the damage to the country and their own party along the way.
Yep - it doesn't take many steps to come to a conclusion that the £3 vote / Ed Miliband is the reason for Brexit.
That story starts with a drunk Eric Joyce, taking a swing at someone in a Commons bar in 2012.
If you're all good I may give you an Indy thread on Sunday.
A thread on the Catalonian Indy movement would certainly be relevant at the moment given the inconclusive Spanish election with Catalan Nationalists hold the balance of power
That's a good point.
If @felix is OK (haven't seen him around recently) maybe he could do a guest thread?
Incidentally, the Spanish situation demonstrates the key reason why Britain should eschew PR: successive governments would be beholden to Scottish nationalists.
Every electoral system has pluses and minuses. PR in Britain would operate to destabilise the union.
The SNP (and SF and PC for that matter) win more seats under FPTP than they would under PR. FPTP is destabilising the union.
FPTP rewards a geographically concentrated vote, so it always rewards separatists.
Gardenwalker, this is what FPTP does:
2019 general election
SNP: 48 MPs, official third party status at PMQs 1,242,380 votes
LibDem: 11 MPs 3,696,419 votes
The (unionist) party with three times as many votes gets fewer than a quarter of as many seats. A separatist party gets awarded with a higher profile.
Or:
Plaid Cymru: 4 MPs 153,265 votes
Green Party: 1 MP 835,597 votes
Didn't UKIP get about 15% of the vote at a GE and only returned 1 MP? You don't have to be a kipper to feel the injustice of that.
12.6% of the vote, 1 MP, in 2015. Slightly more votes than the LibDems and SNP put together, who got 64 MPs between them.
The SDLP got 3 MPs with less than 1/38th of the UKIP vote.
The SNP got the third most MPs (56 versus 8 for the LibDems and 8 for the DUP) yet were only fifth in votes (behind Con, Lad, UKIP, LD).
Sure, but the SNP stood in far fewer constituencies, so in that sense they were handicapping themselves. That's where the argument for fairness falls down. As noted below, consider the Labour party as one whole, or as Scottish Labour + rUK Labour as they overtly claim to be at elections. The result is the same bvut the fairness analysis quite different.
Also, reading yesterday's posts, @Gardenwalker and @HYUFD are bang on the money. Things got ugly post-Brexit on PB and the UK is now divided along Remain/Leave lines.
What a time to be an historian in fifty years time.
In Leaverstan thing were ugly *before* Brexit. That is why we saw such a massive turnout of non-voters to vote for it.
I'm not talking about southern well-off pensioners with a wartime fetish. They vote anyway. I'm talking about the poor sods stuck in rust belt communities where just like in Bon Jovi's Dry County where the jobs are gone and the money's gone and people were hanging on.
These communities were utterly broken, a perpetual state of decay and decline. A few "executive" housing developments built on an old pit is not enough to rescue them. The sad thing is that post-Brexit they are even worse. The promised moon on a stick has not been delivered...
There is a great documentary somewhere about Lee Selby, the boxer. He grew up in Barry. And a more bleak depiction of life in modern Britain it is difficult to imagine and yes, this was going on for years hence my response to @Malmesbury that it was people looking for a way out/up and the politicians pitched to them that Brexit was it.
A-Level results are irrelevant in the long term, the amount of emphasis placed on them is really ridiculous.
But nonetheless, well done to all those getting their results today. Results day was one of the worst days of my life but I came through the other side, so if you or relatives didn't get what they hoped, all will be okay in the end.
If you're all good I may give you an Indy thread on Sunday.
A thread on the Catalonian Indy movement would certainly be relevant at the moment given the inconclusive Spanish election with Catalan Nationalists hold the balance of power
That's a good point.
If @felix is OK (haven't seen him around recently) maybe he could do a guest thread?
Incidentally, the Spanish situation demonstrates the key reason why Britain should eschew PR: successive governments would be beholden to Scottish nationalists.
Every electoral system has pluses and minuses. PR in Britain would operate to destabilise the union.
If no party or coalition gets a majority yes, plus ReformUK would get significant numbers of MPs as Vox has as would the Corbynite populist left as Podemos has.
Ironically in Spain PR rather than helping the centrist liberals has seen them go extinct which is a warning to the LDs
If you're all good I may give you an Indy thread on Sunday.
A thread on the Catalonian Indy movement would certainly be relevant at the moment given the inconclusive Spanish election with Catalan Nationalists hold the balance of power
That's a good point.
If @felix is OK (haven't seen him around recently) maybe he could do a guest thread?
Incidentally, the Spanish situation demonstrates the key reason why Britain should eschew PR: successive governments would be beholden to Scottish nationalists.
Every electoral system has pluses and minuses. PR in Britain would operate to destabilise the union.
The SNP (and SF and PC for that matter) win more seats under FPTP than they would under PR. FPTP is destabilising the union.
FPTP rewards a geographically concentrated vote, so it always rewards separatists.
Gardenwalker, this is what FPTP does:
2019 general election
SNP: 48 MPs, official third party status at PMQs 1,242,380 votes
LibDem: 11 MPs 3,696,419 votes
The (unionist) party with three times as many votes gets fewer than a quarter of as many seats. A separatist party gets awarded with a higher profile.
Or:
Plaid Cymru: 4 MPs 153,265 votes
Green Party: 1 MP 835,597 votes
Didn't UKIP get about 15% of the vote at a GE and only returned 1 MP? You don't have to be a kipper to feel the injustice of that.
Lots of electoral system punish the smaller parties like that. Don't quite a few proportional systems put a floor in of % vote before the party starts getting seats?
There are an array of explicit and implicit thresholds in different systems. PR systems with explicit thresholds usually have a cut off around 5% (Germany, Poland, New Zealand, or 4% in Sweden and Slovenia). Israel used to have a 1% threshold, but have increased that to 3.25%. Turkey's is one of the highest, at 7%. I think Liechtenstein's is the highest at 8%.
FPTP has an implicit threshold. If your vote is spread out, you need high vote shares to win seats, well above 30%. If your vote is geographically concentrated, however, you don't have a problem.
Ukraine has just deployed one of its strongest units to the front. They had been holding a lot of these in reserve. This unit is equipped with the UK's Challenger tanks. Hopefully good news that a breach can be exploited.
Ukraine has reportedly deployed one of its strongest units - the heavy-punching 82nd Air Assault Brigade - at Robotyne
"A force tailored to advance quickly to seize ground... Looks very much like a formation task-organized to drive through a breach in defensive lines"
The 82nd's battle-hardened troopers are equipped with formidable Challenger tanks and night-capable Marder/Stryker IFVs
Definitely not a russian bot - not a "mate" in there - and a cracking rant about all kinds, including PB Tories, who as someone upthread noted, is anyone to the right of Corbyn, and their polo-playing, fine wine drinking, breakfast in Kyrrbasystan-posting dilettantism.
Where he/she/it is bang on the money is that there are certain topics where it is not allowed to have a dissenting view (as in it draws a particular kind of vituperative response). The Russian invasion of Ukraine being one of them.
I find it amusing that any identification of the practicalities of the war, its historical context, or any hint that Ukrainian forces won't be sipping tea in the Kremlin by next Tuesday is met with a barrage of what I can only believe is insecurity and fear, manifest in the most gung ho (Russia will be defeated because Russia must be defeated) rhetoric.
Usually we just put you right on the historical context. 😊
Always happy to discuss the practicalities of both the war, and any likely peace.
Says the guy who posted a twitter link to a video game with suitably hysterical accompanying commentary about the efficacy of Ukrainian armed forces.
We all make mistakes, and you have a very long memory for them.
I do. But the serious point is one that I have made from February 24th - you can't look on Twitter and derive any or much sensible analysis of what is happening in Ukraine.
And when I point this out you lot, opening another can of Stella and firing up your special "Apache" mouse, rant and rage at how I want Putin to win and am a traitor to something or other.
3 A* and one A for my nephew, so off to Cambridge at a different College to his sister. Completely Comprehensive education, with no additional tutoring. Smart lad. Both are destined for great things.
Well done him! Must have taken a load of intelligence, self belief and hard work to get there. Cambridge is lucky to have him. But tell him to prepare for a lifetime of poshos like Nigel Farage telling him he is now a member of an out of touch elite.
Nigel Farrago is posh?
His father was a stockbroker. He went to a private school. He worked as a commodities trader. Seems posh.
3 A* and one A for my nephew, so off to Cambridge at a different College to his sister. Completely Comprehensive education, with no additional tutoring. Smart lad. Both are destined for great things.
Well done him! Must have taken a load of intelligence, self belief and hard work to get there. Cambridge is lucky to have him. But tell him to prepare for a lifetime of poshos like Nigel Farage telling him he is now a member of an out of touch elite.
Nigel Farrago is posh?
His father was a stockbroker. He went to a private school. He worked as a commodities trader. Seems posh.
Plus he banks at Coutts. How could you two forget?!
A-Level results are irrelevant in the long term, the amount of emphasis placed on them is really ridiculous.
But nonetheless, well done to all those getting their results today. Results day was one of the worst days of my life but I came through the other side, so if you or relatives didn't get what they hoped, all will be okay in the end.
A good reality check is to imagine that someone who we really like and approve of does these things in a political scene with just two entrenched parties - would we find excuses, or decide to vote against them even if it meant supporting someone we disliked? If Starmer or Corbyn as Labour leaders past and present tried to rig an election, I wouldn't vote Labour. If the only realistic alternative was UKIP led by Farage, though, would I vote UKIP? Gulp.
For a hardened Republican who believes the Democrats are alien to everything they hold dear, it must be a bit like that.
Except Biden is pretty centrist, so it's a strange comparison. There are many currents in US politics which just don't map into ours.
There's a huge gulf between the two Americas, so Nick's illustration is all too apposite.
I'm not sure it is.
I think there would be far less tolerance over here for that kind of blatant attempt to overturn an election.
Yes, agreed, but my hypothesis was an unscrupulous election-stealing Labour vs a far-right near-fascist UKIP with no other choices. That's how a hardcore GOP voter may see it, don't you think?
Also, reading yesterday's posts, @Gardenwalker and @HYUFD are bang on the money. Things got ugly post-Brexit on PB and the UK is now divided along Remain/Leave lines.
What a time to be an historian in fifty years time.
In Leaverstan thing were ugly *before* Brexit. That is why we saw such a massive turnout of non-voters to vote for it.
I'm not talking about southern well-off pensioners with a wartime fetish. They vote anyway. I'm talking about the poor sods stuck in rust belt communities where just like in Bon Jovi's Dry County where the jobs are gone and the money's gone and people were hanging on.
These communities were utterly broken, a perpetual state of decay and decline. A few "executive" housing developments built on an old pit is not enough to rescue them. The sad thing is that post-Brexit they are even worse. The promised moon on a stick has not been delivered...
There is a great documentary somewhere about Lee Selby, the boxer. He grew up in Barry. And a more bleak depiction of life in modern Britain it is difficult to imagine and yes, this was going on for years hence my response to @Malmesbury that it was people looking for a way out/up and the politicians pitched to them that Brexit was it.
I think it fair to say that for both sides, BREXIT became a totem for larger issues.
If you're all good I may give you an Indy thread on Sunday.
A thread on the Catalonian Indy movement would certainly be relevant at the moment given the inconclusive Spanish election with Catalan Nationalists hold the balance of power
That's a good point.
If @felix is OK (haven't seen him around recently) maybe he could do a guest thread?
Incidentally, the Spanish situation demonstrates the key reason why Britain should eschew PR: successive governments would be beholden to Scottish nationalists.
Every electoral system has pluses and minuses. PR in Britain would operate to destabilise the union.
The SNP (and SF and PC for that matter) win more seats under FPTP than they would under PR. FPTP is destabilising the union.
FPTP rewards a geographically concentrated vote, so it always rewards separatists.
Logic fail. These parties don't campaign across the UK. So whether the vote is concentrated ir not is irrelevant.
Plus FPTP has the same distorting effect with the more UK wide parties. Just llok at the bit of the Labour Party that is in Scotland. Some electionms it's had far more than its share, others, fewer.
More fundamentally, we elect MPs. Not parties on a regional list, which is what your argument seeks, ultimately.
Edit: the single constituency by definition rewards geographically concentrated votes, for all parties. What happens elsewhere is irrelevant in first principle.
There are arguments for and against FPTP and for and against various forms of PR. (I'd favour STV over a regional list system, or at least a list system with intra-party list choice.) If you accept the logic of FPTP and want that, fair enough, that's your choice.
I'm just saying that Gardenwalker is mistaken on this particular point, that PR would destabilise the union. How FPTP works, whether you go with its logic or not, means that party's with geographically concentrated votes, which is how separatist parties work, do well from it.
If you want an electoral system that does not destabilise the union, you want a system that looks at votes over a larger area.
Wasn't expressing a personal choice - just struck by the arguments pro and con. The SNP has always (well, within my living memory) been for electoral reform (which would mean that they lose some seats in some elections but don't do so badly in other years).
And parties with geographically concentrated votes would do well from it if they had the same votes pro rata across the UK.
If my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a bicycle. The point about separatist parties is that they don't have the same votes pro rata across the UK and cannot. Separatist parties often build support on grievance politics against other parts of the country. That's a more successful formula under an electoral system with smaller constituencies and no ordinality, i.e. FPTP.
3 A* and one A for my nephew, so off to Cambridge at a different College to his sister. Completely Comprehensive education, with no additional tutoring. Smart lad. Both are destined for great things.
Well done him! Must have taken a load of intelligence, self belief and hard work to get there. Cambridge is lucky to have him. But tell him to prepare for a lifetime of poshos like Nigel Farage telling him he is now a member of an out of touch elite.
Nigel Farrago is posh?
His father was a stockbroker. He went to a private school. He worked as a commodities trader. Seems posh.
Wears mustard coloured cords and a barber jacket. Talks extremely posh. Absolutely a posho.
If you're all good I may give you an Indy thread on Sunday.
A thread on the Catalonian Indy movement would certainly be relevant at the moment given the inconclusive Spanish election with Catalan Nationalists hold the balance of power
That's a good point.
If @felix is OK (haven't seen him around recently) maybe he could do a guest thread?
Incidentally, the Spanish situation demonstrates the key reason why Britain should eschew PR: successive governments would be beholden to Scottish nationalists.
Every electoral system has pluses and minuses. PR in Britain would operate to destabilise the union.
The SNP (and SF and PC for that matter) win more seats under FPTP than they would under PR. FPTP is destabilising the union.
FPTP rewards a geographically concentrated vote, so it always rewards separatists.
Logic fail. These parties don't campaign across the UK. So whether the vote is concentrated ir not is irrelevant.
Plus FPTP has the same distorting effect with the more UK wide parties. Just llok at the bit of the Labour Party that is in Scotland. Some electionms it's had far more than its share, others, fewer.
More fundamentally, we elect MPs. Not parties on a regional list, which is what your argument seeks, ultimately.
Edit: the single constituency by definition rewards geographically concentrated votes, for all parties. What happens elsewhere is irrelevant in first principle.
There are arguments for and against FPTP and for and against various forms of PR. (I'd favour STV over a regional list system, or at least a list system with intra-party list choice.) If you accept the logic of FPTP and want that, fair enough, that's your choice.
I'm just saying that Gardenwalker is mistaken on this particular point, that PR would destabilise the union. How FPTP works, whether you go with its logic or not, means that party's with geographically concentrated votes, which is how separatist parties work, do well from it.
If you want an electoral system that does not destabilise the union, you want a system that looks at votes over a larger area.
Wasn't expressing a personal choice - just struck by the arguments pro and con. The SNP has always (well, within my living memory) been for electoral reform (which would mean that they lose some seats in some elections but don't do so badly in other years).
And parties with geographically concentrated votes would do well from it if they had the same votes pro rata across the UK.
If my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a bicycle. The point about separatist parties is that they don't have the same votes pro rata across the UK and cannot. Separatist parties often build support on grievance politics against other parts of the country. That's a more successful formula under an electoral system with smaller constituencies and no ordinality, i.e. FPTP.
Surely if your grandmother had wheels she would be a dalek.
3 A* and one A for my nephew, so off to Cambridge at a different College to his sister. Completely Comprehensive education, with no additional tutoring. Smart lad. Both are destined for great things.
Well done him! Must have taken a load of intelligence, self belief and hard work to get there. Cambridge is lucky to have him. But tell him to prepare for a lifetime of poshos like Nigel Farage telling him he is now a member of an out of touch elite.
Nigel Farrago is posh?
His father was a stockbroker. He went to a private school. He worked as a commodities trader. Seems posh.
The posh people I went to school with - their families wouldn't have invited him round for tea.
3 A* and one A for my nephew, so off to Cambridge at a different College to his sister. Completely Comprehensive education, with no additional tutoring. Smart lad. Both are destined for great things.
Well done him! Must have taken a load of intelligence, self belief and hard work to get there. Cambridge is lucky to have him. But tell him to prepare for a lifetime of poshos like Nigel Farage telling him he is now a member of an out of touch elite.
Nigel Farrago is posh?
His father was a stockbroker. He went to a private school. He worked as a commodities trader. Seems posh.
Wears mustard coloured cords and a barber jacket. Talks extremely posh. Absolutely a posho.
Just flicked through the last thread. Leon's last post is a good one. 'Must read' posters are a rarity and everyone will have their own. Ishmael and Stuart Dickson were two of mine and apparently Leon's too. Rather than have long standing and entertaining posters just disappear perhaps a short obit might make the decisions feel less arbitrary?
Definitely not a russian bot - not a "mate" in there - and a cracking rant about all kinds, including PB Tories, who as someone upthread noted, is anyone to the right of Corbyn, and their polo-playing, fine wine drinking, breakfast in Kyrrbasystan-posting dilettantism.
Where he/she/it is bang on the money is that there are certain topics where it is not allowed to have a dissenting view (as in it draws a particular kind of vituperative response). The Russian invasion of Ukraine being one of them.
I find it amusing that any identification of the practicalities of the war, its historical context, or any hint that Ukrainian forces won't be sipping tea in the Kremlin by next Tuesday is met with a barrage of what I can only believe is insecurity and fear, manifest in the most gung ho (Russia will be defeated because Russia must be defeated) rhetoric.
Usually we just put you right on the historical context. 😊
Always happy to discuss the practicalities of both the war, and any likely peace.
Says the guy who posted a twitter link to a video game with suitably hysterical accompanying commentary about the efficacy of Ukrainian armed forces.
We all make mistakes, and you have a very long memory for them.
I do. But the serious point is one that I have made from February 24th - you can't look on Twitter and derive any or much sensible analysis of what is happening in Ukraine.
And when I point this out you lot, opening another can of Stella and firing up your special "Apache" mouse, rant and rage at how I want Putin to win and am a traitor to something or other.
I've never done that to you, and the rest of that paragraph is pretty vituperative in turn.
As far as combat losses are concerned, the best Twitter analysts like Oryx are probably superior to anyone. Please explain why you think their numbers are wrong (of course they can only count what is seen, but that goes for everyone).
Your line seems to be that it's impossible for anyone to have any idea of what's happening there. But your cool analysis is that a negotiated peace now is imperative.
3 A* and one A for my nephew, so off to Cambridge at a different College to his sister. Completely Comprehensive education, with no additional tutoring. Smart lad. Both are destined for great things.
Well done him! Must have taken a load of intelligence, self belief and hard work to get there. Cambridge is lucky to have him. But tell him to prepare for a lifetime of poshos like Nigel Farage telling him he is now a member of an out of touch elite.
Nigel Farrago is posh?
His father was a stockbroker. He went to a private school. He worked as a commodities trader. Seems posh.
Wears mustard coloured cords and a barber jacket. Talks extremely posh. Absolutely a posho.
Also, reading yesterday's posts, @Gardenwalker and @HYUFD are bang on the money. Things got ugly post-Brexit on PB and the UK is now divided along Remain/Leave lines.
What a time to be an historian in fifty years time.
In Leaverstan thing were ugly *before* Brexit. That is why we saw such a massive turnout of non-voters to vote for it.
I'm not talking about southern well-off pensioners with a wartime fetish. They vote anyway. I'm talking about the poor sods stuck in rust belt communities where just like in Bon Jovi's Dry County where the jobs are gone and the money's gone and people were hanging on.
These communities were utterly broken, a perpetual state of decay and decline. A few "executive" housing developments built on an old pit is not enough to rescue them. The sad thing is that post-Brexit they are even worse. The promised moon on a stick has not been delivered...
There is a great documentary somewhere about Lee Selby, the boxer. He grew up in Barry. And a more bleak depiction of life in modern Britain it is difficult to imagine and yes, this was going on for years hence my response to @Malmesbury that it was people looking for a way out/up and the politicians pitched to them that Brexit was it.
So the challenge for the next government is what the hell do they do about it? The country is supposedly broke, yet always finds money for the beautiful people.
The post-Covid economy offered the prospects of a transformation in working patterns - unless you need to be in a physical location you can be anywhere. Some of us live that (hi...), but the government clamped down very hard on making it widespread so that people would go back to the status quo ante and spend money buying overpriced coffee.
Other countries are offering digital nomad deals to get people who don;'t need to be in an office to go there. Why can't we do the same? Was chatting with an English lassie on the plane north last night - she moved up with her bf to Inverurie whilst working for a business based in London. Her job is in the digital industry, so could be anywhere there is broadband.
We could allow places which have been left as rust belt to offer local tax incentives to move there. There are surprising amounts of fast fibre in the countryside (and if not, Starlink...) so why not seek to build digital work communities in places desperate for jobs?
3 A* and one A for my nephew, so off to Cambridge at a different College to his sister. Completely Comprehensive education, with no additional tutoring. Smart lad. Both are destined for great things.
Well done him! Must have taken a load of intelligence, self belief and hard work to get there. Cambridge is lucky to have him. But tell him to prepare for a lifetime of poshos like Nigel Farage telling him he is now a member of an out of touch elite.
Nigel Farrago is posh?
His father was a stockbroker. He went to a private school. He worked as a commodities trader. Seems posh.
The posh people I went to school with - their families wouldn't have invited him round for tea.
He always came across as Arthur Daley to me.
This just illustrates how poshness is an entirely relative concept. If he doesn't seem posh to you, could it be that you are posher than he is? I mean, he seems posh to me because I am less posh than he is, but plenty of people think I am posh even though my background is just basic middle class.
Also, reading yesterday's posts, @Gardenwalker and @HYUFD are bang on the money. Things got ugly post-Brexit on PB and the UK is now divided along Remain/Leave lines.
What a time to be an historian in fifty years time.
In Leaverstan thing were ugly *before* Brexit. That is why we saw such a massive turnout of non-voters to vote for it.
I'm not talking about southern well-off pensioners with a wartime fetish. They vote anyway. I'm talking about the poor sods stuck in rust belt communities where just like in Bon Jovi's Dry County where the jobs are gone and the money's gone and people were hanging on.
These communities were utterly broken, a perpetual state of decay and decline. A few "executive" housing developments built on an old pit is not enough to rescue them. The sad thing is that post-Brexit they are even worse. The promised moon on a stick has not been delivered...
You are both right and wrong on this. Obviously I live in one of these rust belt communities and the vote for Brexit was not a surprise at all.
There _were_ jobs - more than there were for many years post de-mining - but they were not very well paid. The perception in many quarters, right or wrong, was that this was due to competition from an endless supply of cheap labour from eastern Europe. The removal of a large local factory to Italy with EU money / legislation also didn't help (although that factory had been struggling for many years).
Prior to the pandemic I frequented a number of WMCs or ex-WMCs (many of which are closing down or are only kept running by legacies from companies which no longer exist). I did not hear any direct racism or mutterings about furriners as per the stereotype but there was a definite air that something needed to change.
Brexit probably _has_ helped in some industries and pay has gone up. Unfortunately with externally imposed inflation, that pay rise hasn't gone very far. People are still struggling.
The one thing that helps is that houses are still relatively cheap.
The main problem is none of these things though. The problem is that the London hoovers up all the talent. Why stay in the rustbelt? It has become a vicious circle.
"Levelling up" was a good slogan - a shame it turned out to be just that and nothing more.
A good reality check is to imagine that someone who we really like and approve of does these things in a political scene with just two entrenched parties - would we find excuses, or decide to vote against them even if it meant supporting someone we disliked? If Starmer or Corbyn as Labour leaders past and present tried to rig an election, I wouldn't vote Labour. If the only realistic alternative was UKIP led by Farage, though, would I vote UKIP? Gulp.
For a hardened Republican who believes the Democrats are alien to everything they hold dear, it must be a bit like that.
Except Biden is pretty centrist, so it's a strange comparison. There are many currents in US politics which just don't map into ours.
There's a huge gulf between the two Americas, so Nick's illustration is all too apposite.
I'm not sure it is.
I think there would be far less tolerance over here for that kind of blatant attempt to overturn an election.
Yes, agreed, but my hypothesis was an unscrupulous election-stealing Labour vs a far-right near-fascist UKIP with no other choices. That's how a hardcore GOP voter may see it, don't you think?
And my point was that I don't think it a realistic scenario. If our politics were that messed up, we probably wouldn't be able to think about it rationally anyway.
3 A* and one A for my nephew, so off to Cambridge at a different College to his sister. Completely Comprehensive education, with no additional tutoring. Smart lad. Both are destined for great things.
Well done him! Must have taken a load of intelligence, self belief and hard work to get there. Cambridge is lucky to have him. But tell him to prepare for a lifetime of poshos like Nigel Farage telling him he is now a member of an out of touch elite.
Nigel Farrago is posh?
His father was a stockbroker. He went to a private school. He worked as a commodities trader. Seems posh.
Wears mustard coloured cords and a barber jacket. Talks extremely posh. Absolutely a posho.
3 A* and one A for my nephew, so off to Cambridge at a different College to his sister. Completely Comprehensive education, with no additional tutoring. Smart lad. Both are destined for great things.
Well done him! Must have taken a load of intelligence, self belief and hard work to get there. Cambridge is lucky to have him. But tell him to prepare for a lifetime of poshos like Nigel Farage telling him he is now a member of an out of touch elite.
Nigel Farrago is posh?
His father was a stockbroker. He went to a private school. He worked as a commodities trader. Seems posh.
Wears mustard coloured cords and a barber jacket. Talks extremely posh. Absolutely a posho.
Definitely not a russian bot - not a "mate" in there - and a cracking rant about all kinds, including PB Tories, who as someone upthread noted, is anyone to the right of Corbyn, and their polo-playing, fine wine drinking, breakfast in Kyrrbasystan-posting dilettantism.
Where he/she/it is bang on the money is that there are certain topics where it is not allowed to have a dissenting view (as in it draws a particular kind of vituperative response). The Russian invasion of Ukraine being one of them.
I find it amusing that any identification of the practicalities of the war, its historical context, or any hint that Ukrainian forces won't be sipping tea in the Kremlin by next Tuesday is met with a barrage of what I can only believe is insecurity and fear, manifest in the most gung ho (Russia will be defeated because Russia must be defeated) rhetoric.
Usually we just put you right on the historical context. 😊
Always happy to discuss the practicalities of both the war, and any likely peace.
Says the guy who posted a twitter link to a video game with suitably hysterical accompanying commentary about the efficacy of Ukrainian armed forces.
We all make mistakes, and you have a very long memory for them.
I do. But the serious point is one that I have made from February 24th - you can't look on Twitter and derive any or much sensible analysis of what is happening in Ukraine.
And when I point this out you lot, opening another can of Stella and firing up your special "Apache" mouse, rant and rage at how I want Putin to win and am a traitor to something or other.
I've never done that to you, and the rest of that paragraph is pretty vituperative in turn.
As far as combat losses are concerned, the best Twitter analysts like Oryx are probably superior to anyone. Please explain why you think their numbers are wrong (of course they can only count what is seen, but that goes for everyone).
Your line seems to be that it's impossible for anyone to have any idea of what's happening there. But your cool analysis is that a negotiated peace now is imperative.
Also, reading yesterday's posts, @Gardenwalker and @HYUFD are bang on the money. Things got ugly post-Brexit on PB and the UK is now divided along Remain/Leave lines.
What a time to be an historian in fifty years time.
In Leaverstan thing were ugly *before* Brexit. That is why we saw such a massive turnout of non-voters to vote for it.
I'm not talking about southern well-off pensioners with a wartime fetish. They vote anyway. I'm talking about the poor sods stuck in rust belt communities where just like in Bon Jovi's Dry County where the jobs are gone and the money's gone and people were hanging on.
These communities were utterly broken, a perpetual state of decay and decline. A few "executive" housing developments built on an old pit is not enough to rescue them. The sad thing is that post-Brexit they are even worse. The promised moon on a stick has not been delivered...
You are both right and wrong on this. Obviously I live in one of these rust belt communities and the vote for Brexit was not a surprise at all.
There _were_ jobs - more than there were for many years post de-mining - but they were not very well paid. The perception in many quarters, right or wrong, was that this was due to competition from an endless supply of cheap labour from eastern Europe. The removal of a large local factory to Italy with EU money / legislation also didn't help (although that factory had been struggling for many years).
Prior to the pandemic I frequented a number of WMCs or ex-WMCs (many of which are closing down or are only kept running by legacies from companies which no longer exist). I did not hear any direct racism or mutterings about furriners as per the stereotype but there was a definite air that something needed to change.
Brexit probably _has_ helped in some industries and pay has gone up. Unfortunately with externally imposed inflation, that pay rise hasn't gone very far. People are still struggling.
The one thing that helps is that houses are still relatively cheap.
The main problem is none of these things though. The problem is that the London hoovers up all the talent. Why stay in the rustbelt? It has become a vicious circle.
"Levelling up" was a good slogan - a shame it turned out to be just that and nothing more.
Driving through the former Durham or South Yorkshire coalfields its very clear what happened. The jobs for life with comradeship went. New jobs did pop up, but in the form of distribution warehouses. There seem to be DCs and new link roads in so many of these places, where the secure and decently paid jobs have gone and instead there are transitory and poorly paid jobs requiring little skill.
What left was pride and purpose. These communities had a strong sense of pride and self-belief. That has all gone. Unless we find a way to bring it back there will never be a fix for the decline.
If you're all good I may give you an Indy thread on Sunday.
A thread on the Catalonian Indy movement would certainly be relevant at the moment given the inconclusive Spanish election with Catalan Nationalists hold the balance of power
That's a good point.
If @felix is OK (haven't seen him around recently) maybe he could do a guest thread?
Incidentally, the Spanish situation demonstrates the key reason why Britain should eschew PR: successive governments would be beholden to Scottish nationalists.
Every electoral system has pluses and minuses. PR in Britain would operate to destabilise the union.
If no party or coalition gets a majority yes, plus ReformUK would get significant numbers of MPs as Vox has as would the Corbynite populist left as Podemos has.
Ironically in Spain PR rather than helping the centrist liberals has seen them go extinct which is a warning to the LDs
If you're all good I may give you an Indy thread on Sunday.
A thread on the Catalonian Indy movement would certainly be relevant at the moment given the inconclusive Spanish election with Catalan Nationalists hold the balance of power
That's a good point.
If @felix is OK (haven't seen him around recently) maybe he could do a guest thread?
Incidentally, the Spanish situation demonstrates the key reason why Britain should eschew PR: successive governments would be beholden to Scottish nationalists.
Every electoral system has pluses and minuses. PR in Britain would operate to destabilise the union.
If no party or coalition gets a majority yes, plus ReformUK would get significant numbers of MPs as Vox has as would the Corbynite populist left as Podemos has.
Ironically in Spain PR rather than helping the centrist liberals has seen them go extinct which is a warning to the LDs
It all depends on the system of PR you adopt, young HY. If you have absolute PR, where the entire country is taken as a single constituency, things might work out rather as you say.
But if you adopt STV - the Single Transferable Vote in Multi-Member constituencies - which is the system that the Lib Dems advocate, then a candidate would need to have over 20% of the vote in order to win a seat. Representation in Parliament would not be as fragmented. as you suggest.
Under the current system, where you have only one candidate for a party in each constitency, you have no choice if you are a party animal. If you are a Conservative, as I think you are, you might have to vote for Rees-Mogg or irresponsibly mad Nad. Or else another party entirely.
If, however, your single vote is transferable if your preferred candidate does not need it, then you can have it transferred to another candidate - of the same party or a diferent one.
So to finish off with the threat you are making, with STV it would not matter if the Lib Dems ceased to exist. I could still use my vote for liberal-minded candidates in other parties. And we would end up with a House of Commons which came close to reflecting what the country wanted to see.
That is why extremists like Sunak and Starmer are opposed to any kind of PR. They both prefer their own kind of dictatorship.
Also, reading yesterday's posts, @Gardenwalker and @HYUFD are bang on the money. Things got ugly post-Brexit on PB and the UK is now divided along Remain/Leave lines.
What a time to be an historian in fifty years time.
In Leaverstan thing were ugly *before* Brexit. That is why we saw such a massive turnout of non-voters to vote for it.
I'm not talking about southern well-off pensioners with a wartime fetish. They vote anyway. I'm talking about the poor sods stuck in rust belt communities where just like in Bon Jovi's Dry County where the jobs are gone and the money's gone and people were hanging on.
These communities were utterly broken, a perpetual state of decay and decline. A few "executive" housing developments built on an old pit is not enough to rescue them. The sad thing is that post-Brexit they are even worse. The promised moon on a stick has not been delivered...
There is a great documentary somewhere about Lee Selby, the boxer. He grew up in Barry. And a more bleak depiction of life in modern Britain it is difficult to imagine and yes, this was going on for years hence my response to @Malmesbury that it was people looking for a way out/up and the politicians pitched to them that Brexit was it.
So the challenge for the next government is what the hell do they do about it? The country is supposedly broke, yet always finds money for the beautiful people.
The post-Covid economy offered the prospects of a transformation in working patterns - unless you need to be in a physical location you can be anywhere. Some of us live that (hi...), but the government clamped down very hard on making it widespread so that people would go back to the status quo ante and spend money buying overpriced coffee.
Other countries are offering digital nomad deals to get people who don;'t need to be in an office to go there. Why can't we do the same? Was chatting with an English lassie on the plane north last night - she moved up with her bf to Inverurie whilst working for a business based in London. Her job is in the digital industry, so could be anywhere there is broadband.
We could allow places which have been left as rust belt to offer local tax incentives to move there. There are surprising amounts of fast fibre in the countryside (and if not, Starlink...) so why not seek to build digital work communities in places desperate for jobs?
Plenty of firms are now getting people back into the office. There is a corporate insecurity it seems that can't tolerate people wfh.
3 A* and one A for my nephew, so off to Cambridge at a different College to his sister. Completely Comprehensive education, with no additional tutoring. Smart lad. Both are destined for great things.
Well done him! Must have taken a load of intelligence, self belief and hard work to get there. Cambridge is lucky to have him. But tell him to prepare for a lifetime of poshos like Nigel Farage telling him he is now a member of an out of touch elite.
Nigel Farrago is posh?
His father was a stockbroker. He went to a private school. He worked as a commodities trader. Seems posh.
The posh people I went to school with - their families wouldn't have invited him round for tea.
He always came across as Arthur Daley to me.
This just illustrates how poshness is an entirely relative concept. If he doesn't seem posh to you, could it be that you are posher than he is? I mean, he seems posh to me because I am less posh than he is, but plenty of people think I am posh even though my background is just basic middle class.
Different metrics.
I'm definitely not posh in the sense I mean (old money, land) - got invited for tea, but wasn't "one of them". I'm middle class (very) but can socialise with them. Then again, I can't recall any group of people I *can't* socialise with.
You are using the money, clothes, aspirations metric, I think. The difference is that anyone can put on that uniform. To the people I'm talking about, that is stupid cosplay at best. At worst, it is indicating that someone is very rum.
“So you think this chap is as much in society as we were, do you?”
I preferred not to think so myself. We had cause enough for jealousy without that. But Raffles raised his eyebrows an eloquent half-inch.
“As much, my dear Bunny? He is not only in it, but of it; there’s no comparison between us there. Society is in rings like a target, and we never were in the bull’s-eye, however thick you may lay on the ink!
A-Level results are irrelevant in the long term, the amount of emphasis placed on them is really ridiculous.
But nonetheless, well done to all those getting their results today. Results day was one of the worst days of my life but I came through the other side, so if you or relatives didn't get what they hoped, all will be okay in the end.
Damned if I can remember anything about results day, not even whether we got them from school or through the post.
Definitely not a russian bot - not a "mate" in there - and a cracking rant about all kinds, including PB Tories, who as someone upthread noted, is anyone to the right of Corbyn, and their polo-playing, fine wine drinking, breakfast in Kyrrbasystan-posting dilettantism.
Where he/she/it is bang on the money is that there are certain topics where it is not allowed to have a dissenting view (as in it draws a particular kind of vituperative response). The Russian invasion of Ukraine being one of them.
I find it amusing that any identification of the practicalities of the war, its historical context, or any hint that Ukrainian forces won't be sipping tea in the Kremlin by next Tuesday is met with a barrage of what I can only believe is insecurity and fear, manifest in the most gung ho (Russia will be defeated because Russia must be defeated) rhetoric.
Usually we just put you right on the historical context. 😊
Always happy to discuss the practicalities of both the war, and any likely peace.
Says the guy who posted a twitter link to a video game with suitably hysterical accompanying commentary about the efficacy of Ukrainian armed forces.
We all make mistakes, and you have a very long memory for them.
I do. But the serious point is one that I have made from February 24th - you can't look on Twitter and derive any or much sensible analysis of what is happening in Ukraine.
And when I point this out you lot, opening another can of Stella and firing up your special "Apache" mouse, rant and rage at how I want Putin to win and am a traitor to something or other.
I've never done that to you, and the rest of that paragraph is pretty vituperative in turn.
As far as combat losses are concerned, the best Twitter analysts like Oryx are probably superior to anyone. Please explain why you think their numbers are wrong (of course they can only count what is seen, but that goes for everyone).
Your line seems to be that it's impossible for anyone to have any idea of what's happening there. But your cool analysis is that a negotiated peace now is imperative.
There's a failure of logic there.
When did I say a negotiated peace is imperative?
"Seems to be". If I'm wrong, then apologies. What do you think NATO/our policy should be ?
3 A* and one A for my nephew, so off to Cambridge at a different College to his sister. Completely Comprehensive education, with no additional tutoring. Smart lad. Both are destined for great things.
Well done him! Must have taken a load of intelligence, self belief and hard work to get there. Cambridge is lucky to have him. But tell him to prepare for a lifetime of poshos like Nigel Farage telling him he is now a member of an out of touch elite.
Nigel Farrago is posh?
His father was a stockbroker. He went to a private school. He worked as a commodities trader. Seems posh.
Wears mustard coloured cords and a barber jacket. Talks extremely posh. Absolutely a posho.
Barbour
Even knowing the spelling is a class marker.
Poshos wear Barbours when doing unspeakable posh things to innocent wildlife in the mud and rain. Actually these days they wear green Mustos which cost even more and work about equally badly. Wearing the things clean, on telly, in the city is trying too hard. but yes, Dulwich, so he is probably lower middle posh.
And don't get me started on covert coats, they are for hacking to the covert in.
Ukraine has just deployed one of its strongest units to the front. They had been holding a lot of these in reserve. This unit is equipped with the UK's Challenger tanks. Hopefully good news that a breach can be exploited.
Ukraine has reportedly deployed one of its strongest units - the heavy-punching 82nd Air Assault Brigade - at Robotyne
"A force tailored to advance quickly to seize ground... Looks very much like a formation task-organized to drive through a breach in defensive lines"
The 82nd's battle-hardened troopers are equipped with formidable Challenger tanks and night-capable Marder/Stryker IFVs
Also, reading yesterday's posts, @Gardenwalker and @HYUFD are bang on the money. Things got ugly post-Brexit on PB and the UK is now divided along Remain/Leave lines.
What a time to be an historian in fifty years time.
In Leaverstan thing were ugly *before* Brexit. That is why we saw such a massive turnout of non-voters to vote for it.
I'm not talking about southern well-off pensioners with a wartime fetish. They vote anyway. I'm talking about the poor sods stuck in rust belt communities where just like in Bon Jovi's Dry County where the jobs are gone and the money's gone and people were hanging on.
These communities were utterly broken, a perpetual state of decay and decline. A few "executive" housing developments built on an old pit is not enough to rescue them. The sad thing is that post-Brexit they are even worse. The promised moon on a stick has not been delivered...
There is a great documentary somewhere about Lee Selby, the boxer. He grew up in Barry. And a more bleak depiction of life in modern Britain it is difficult to imagine and yes, this was going on for years hence my response to @Malmesbury that it was people looking for a way out/up and the politicians pitched to them that Brexit was it.
I think it fair to say that for both sides, BREXIT became a totem for larger issues.
Yes, the divide between Remainia and Leaverstan has been around for some time; Brexit just allowed us to give it a name. That said, those bits of Leaverstan that I am familiar with are not without hope. Blyth, Wigan, Amber Valley, Chesterfield/NE Derbys; these places are much improved from what they were 20 years ago. This is not, AFAICS, down to any one thing in particular anyone has done, though there will be dozens of individual policy success stories at local and national level. Rather, it is because Remainia is becoming too expensive. Young middle class couples can't afford to live in Gosforth any more, so they live in Blyth, and take their spending with them.
There may be parts of Leaverstan that are bleaker than they were 20 years ago, or no less bleak, but I haven't come across them (I wouldn't be surprised if it takes rather more to push people to move to Easington than it does to Blyth). Wales may be a special case, as it seems perversely determined to be permanently poor.
I've just caught up with last night's contretemps, and would like to contribute as follows:
1. I really enjoy this site much of the time; the quality of debate is often good, and I've learned some stuff (USA politics, travel, cookery etc).
2. However, there aren't enough a) dissenting voices or b) female contributors - so there is a tendency for male centrism to dominate.
3. Worst of all, though, is the repetition. For me, a small minority of posters damage the site by repeating the same point ad infinitum. This may be 'political' points (cars, housing, Brexit, cash etc.) or even 'jokes' (once you've read about 'woke trans aliens' and seen photos of a topless Putin a few times, that's enough). It makes some threads really boring.
The solution is to go for more awesome puns, to ensure that this site is the home of Britain's leading punned its.
Also, reading yesterday's posts, @Gardenwalker and @HYUFD are bang on the money. Things got ugly post-Brexit on PB and the UK is now divided along Remain/Leave lines.
What a time to be an historian in fifty years time.
In Leaverstan thing were ugly *before* Brexit. That is why we saw such a massive turnout of non-voters to vote for it.
I'm not talking about southern well-off pensioners with a wartime fetish. They vote anyway. I'm talking about the poor sods stuck in rust belt communities where just like in Bon Jovi's Dry County where the jobs are gone and the money's gone and people were hanging on.
These communities were utterly broken, a perpetual state of decay and decline. A few "executive" housing developments built on an old pit is not enough to rescue them. The sad thing is that post-Brexit they are even worse. The promised moon on a stick has not been delivered...
There is a great documentary somewhere about Lee Selby, the boxer. He grew up in Barry. And a more bleak depiction of life in modern Britain it is difficult to imagine and yes, this was going on for years hence my response to @Malmesbury that it was people looking for a way out/up and the politicians pitched to them that Brexit was it.
So the challenge for the next government is what the hell do they do about it? The country is supposedly broke, yet always finds money for the beautiful people.
The post-Covid economy offered the prospects of a transformation in working patterns - unless you need to be in a physical location you can be anywhere. Some of us live that (hi...), but the government clamped down very hard on making it widespread so that people would go back to the status quo ante and spend money buying overpriced coffee.
Other countries are offering digital nomad deals to get people who don;'t need to be in an office to go there. Why can't we do the same? Was chatting with an English lassie on the plane north last night - she moved up with her bf to Inverurie whilst working for a business based in London. Her job is in the digital industry, so could be anywhere there is broadband.
We could allow places which have been left as rust belt to offer local tax incentives to move there. There are surprising amounts of fast fibre in the countryside (and if not, Starlink...) so why not seek to build digital work communities in places desperate for jobs?
Plenty of firms are now getting people back into the office. There is a corporate insecurity it seems that can't tolerate people wfh.
It is crap management by insecure managers. I hire people I trust to do the job. Teams need to meet face to face at times, but so much office time is a waste. Pointless meetings where little value is added for most of the participants. Chat and gossip and banter which isn't work. And in my industry the sales aren't done sat at a desk anyway.
And yet there are still dinosaur managers who think their magnificence needs to be enjoyed in person so the minions can bask in awe in their experience and learn from them.
3 A* and one A for my nephew, so off to Cambridge at a different College to his sister. Completely Comprehensive education, with no additional tutoring. Smart lad. Both are destined for great things.
Well done him! Must have taken a load of intelligence, self belief and hard work to get there. Cambridge is lucky to have him. But tell him to prepare for a lifetime of poshos like Nigel Farage telling him he is now a member of an out of touch elite.
Nigel Farrago is posh?
His father was a stockbroker. He went to a private school. He worked as a commodities trader. Seems posh.
The posh people I went to school with - their families wouldn't have invited him round for tea.
He always came across as Arthur Daley to me.
This just illustrates how poshness is an entirely relative concept. If he doesn't seem posh to you, could it be that you are posher than he is? I mean, he seems posh to me because I am less posh than he is, but plenty of people think I am posh even though my background is just basic middle class.
Different metrics.
I'm definitely not posh in the sense I mean (old money, land) - got invited for tea, but wasn't "one of them". I'm middle class (very) but can socialise with them. Then again, I can't recall any group of people I *can't* socialise with.
You are using the money, clothes, aspirations metric, I think. The difference is that anyone can put on that uniform. To the people I'm talking about, that is stupid cosplay at best. At worst, it is indicating that someone is very rum.
“So you think this chap is as much in society as we were, do you?”
I preferred not to think so myself. We had cause enough for jealousy without that. But Raffles raised his eyebrows an eloquent half-inch.
“As much, my dear Bunny? He is not only in it, but of it; there’s no comparison between us there. Society is in rings like a target, and we never were in the bull’s-eye, however thick you may lay on the ink!
I think you have to have gone to a certain kind of school and been around these people enough to read their rituals and be a part of their world - even if both you and they recognise you are are ultimately not "one if them". You might be unaware of how closed off that world is for the rest of us. To me anyone who exists in that ecosystem seems posh - I don't have the inside knowledge to differentiate clearly within it. For working class people who haven't been to university perhaps it's similar - to them Ed Miliband and David Cameron probably seem equally posh even though I can recognise that they're not, because I went to university with people like them and can recognise that they come from different tribes.
3 A* and one A for my nephew, so off to Cambridge at a different College to his sister. Completely Comprehensive education, with no additional tutoring. Smart lad. Both are destined for great things.
Well done him! Must have taken a load of intelligence, self belief and hard work to get there. Cambridge is lucky to have him. But tell him to prepare for a lifetime of poshos like Nigel Farage telling him he is now a member of an out of touch elite.
Nigel Farrago is posh?
His father was a stockbroker. He went to a private school. He worked as a commodities trader. Seems posh.
Wears mustard coloured cords and a barber jacket. Talks extremely posh. Absolutely a posho.
Barbour
Even knowing the spelling is a class marker.
Poshos wear Barbours when doing unspeakable posh things to innocent wildlife in the mud and rain. Actually these days they wear green Mustos which cost even more and work about equally badly. Wearing the things clean, on telly, in the city is trying too hard. but yes, Dulwich, so he is probably lower middle posh.
And don't get me started on covert coats, they are for hacking to the covert in.
I perceive your last sentence is in English but I have no idea what any of it means!
Last night was fucking hilarious. I am sorry I missed it 'live'.
Leon was clearly having an episode after having been taken down to funky town and had manners put on him by Barty Bobs. The flounce will not take. No chance.
Then DJ41 does a comeback with the pb.com equivalent of Zurich to the Finland Station gets up in our business spitting truth in his own version of Chto Delat'.
Oh, DJ41 made a comeback? I must go back and have a look.
Give us the TLDR. It looked twice as long as a Cyclefree header, and devoid of every quality that makes those readable.
TLDR: I’m a genius, not a Russian bot, and the rest of you are all morons. Bye.
I think he called me a genius, but I suspect that was tongue-in-cheek
3 A* and one A for my nephew, so off to Cambridge at a different College to his sister. Completely Comprehensive education, with no additional tutoring. Smart lad. Both are destined for great things.
Well done him! Must have taken a load of intelligence, self belief and hard work to get there. Cambridge is lucky to have him. But tell him to prepare for a lifetime of poshos like Nigel Farage telling him he is now a member of an out of touch elite.
Nigel Farrago is posh?
His father was a stockbroker. He went to a private school. He worked as a commodities trader. Seems posh.
The posh people I went to school with - their families wouldn't have invited him round for tea.
He always came across as Arthur Daley to me.
This just illustrates how poshness is an entirely relative concept. If he doesn't seem posh to you, could it be that you are posher than he is? I mean, he seems posh to me because I am less posh than he is, but plenty of people think I am posh even though my background is just basic middle class.
Different metrics.
I'm definitely not posh in the sense I mean (old money, land) - got invited for tea, but wasn't "one of them". I'm middle class (very) but can socialise with them. Then again, I can't recall any group of people I *can't* socialise with.
You are using the money, clothes, aspirations metric, I think. The difference is that anyone can put on that uniform. To the people I'm talking about, that is stupid cosplay at best. At worst, it is indicating that someone is very rum.
“So you think this chap is as much in society as we were, do you?”
I preferred not to think so myself. We had cause enough for jealousy without that. But Raffles raised his eyebrows an eloquent half-inch.
“As much, my dear Bunny? He is not only in it, but of it; there’s no comparison between us there. Society is in rings like a target, and we never were in the bull’s-eye, however thick you may lay on the ink!
I think you have to have gone to a certain kind of school and been around these people enough to read their rituals and be a part of their world - even if both you and they recognise you are are ultimately not "one if them". You might be unaware of how closed off that world is for the rest of us. To me anyone who exists in that ecosystem seems posh - I don't have the inside knowledge to differentiate clearly within it. For working class people who haven't been to university perhaps it's similar - to them Ed Miliband and David Cameron probably seem equally posh even though I can recognise that they're not, because I went to university with people like them and can recognise that they come from different tribes.
And equally, other "tribes" close themselves off. "Not for the likes of us" etc.
3 A* and one A for my nephew, so off to Cambridge at a different College to his sister. Completely Comprehensive education, with no additional tutoring. Smart lad. Both are destined for great things.
Well done him! Must have taken a load of intelligence, self belief and hard work to get there. Cambridge is lucky to have him. But tell him to prepare for a lifetime of poshos like Nigel Farage telling him he is now a member of an out of touch elite.
Nigel Farrago is posh?
His father was a stockbroker. He went to a private school. He worked as a commodities trader. Seems posh.
The posh people I went to school with - their families wouldn't have invited him round for tea.
He always came across as Arthur Daley to me.
This just illustrates how poshness is an entirely relative concept. If he doesn't seem posh to you, could it be that you are posher than he is? I mean, he seems posh to me because I am less posh than he is, but plenty of people think I am posh even though my background is just basic middle class.
Different metrics.
I'm definitely not posh in the sense I mean (old money, land) - got invited for tea, but wasn't "one of them". I'm middle class (very) but can socialise with them. Then again, I can't recall any group of people I *can't* socialise with.
You are using the money, clothes, aspirations metric, I think. The difference is that anyone can put on that uniform. To the people I'm talking about, that is stupid cosplay at best. At worst, it is indicating that someone is very rum.
“So you think this chap is as much in society as we were, do you?”
I preferred not to think so myself. We had cause enough for jealousy without that. But Raffles raised his eyebrows an eloquent half-inch.
“As much, my dear Bunny? He is not only in it, but of it; there’s no comparison between us there. Society is in rings like a target, and we never were in the bull’s-eye, however thick you may lay on the ink!
I think you have to have gone to a certain kind of school and been around these people enough to read their rituals and be a part of their world - even if both you and they recognise you are are ultimately not "one if them". You might be unaware of how closed off that world is for the rest of us. To me anyone who exists in that ecosystem seems posh - I don't have the inside knowledge to differentiate clearly within it. For working class people who haven't been to university perhaps it's similar - to them Ed Miliband and David Cameron probably seem equally posh even though I can recognise that they're not, because I went to university with people like them and can recognise that they come from different tribes.
And equally, other "tribes" close themselves off. "Not for the likes of us" etc.
Oh absolutely, it is the ongoing tragedy of the English.
3 A* and one A for my nephew, so off to Cambridge at a different College to his sister. Completely Comprehensive education, with no additional tutoring. Smart lad. Both are destined for great things.
Well done him! Must have taken a load of intelligence, self belief and hard work to get there. Cambridge is lucky to have him. But tell him to prepare for a lifetime of poshos like Nigel Farage telling him he is now a member of an out of touch elite.
Nigel Farrago is posh?
His father was a stockbroker. He went to a private school. He worked as a commodities trader. Seems posh.
Wears mustard coloured cords and a barber jacket. Talks extremely posh. Absolutely a posho.
Barbour
Even knowing the spelling is a class marker.
Poshos wear Barbours when doing unspeakable posh things to innocent wildlife in the mud and rain. Actually these days they wear green Mustos which cost even more and work about equally badly. Wearing the things clean, on telly, in the city is trying too hard. but yes, Dulwich, so he is probably lower middle posh.
And don't get me started on covert coats, they are for hacking to the covert in.
I perceive your last sentence is in English but I have no idea what any of it means!
"Levelling up" was a good slogan - a shame it turned out to be just that and nothing more.
I liked "Big Society" as well. But, as you say, you need the execution as well as the slogan.
One thing I really like about the LibDems is community politics. The red team were very dismissive of LD tactics like getting street repairs done and then talking about it. But this is stupid politics. Community starts on your doorstep - literally. People used to sweep their own doorstep. Which meant they had an interest in their local environment. Community. Place.
So we should start there. Pride in your own environment. Councils can no longer afford to employ an army of people to pick up the junk you shouldn't have dropped. People do not drive their dogs in from the next town to walk their dogs and have them crap on the pavement. Those are your turds - so lets start having the community agree to basically shame people into not leaving turds and litter. And have community clean up to blitz an area if it looks bad. Plant flowers / wildflower seeds etc.
Slogans do nothing when people have been hardened to not care about anyone else. So we need to reverse the right wing weaponisation of ignorance and stupidity. Make people care about Other People.
Just flicked through the last thread. Leon's last post is a good one. 'Must read' posters are a rarity and everyone will have their own. Ishmael and Stuart Dickson were two of mine and apparently Leon's too. Rather than have long standing and entertaining posters just disappear perhaps a short obit might make the decisions feel less arbitrary?
There are some must-read posters and some mustn't-read posters and a few in between. Of the former, has anyone seen @MarqueeMark lately? I have an image of him being pursued across the Devon landscape by a swarm of indignant giant moths.
3 A* and one A for my nephew, so off to Cambridge at a different College to his sister. Completely Comprehensive education, with no additional tutoring. Smart lad. Both are destined for great things.
Well done him! Must have taken a load of intelligence, self belief and hard work to get there. Cambridge is lucky to have him. But tell him to prepare for a lifetime of poshos like Nigel Farage telling him he is now a member of an out of touch elite.
Nigel Farrago is posh?
His father was a stockbroker. He went to a private school. He worked as a commodities trader. Seems posh.
The posh people I went to school with - their families wouldn't have invited him round for tea.
He always came across as Arthur Daley to me.
This just illustrates how poshness is an entirely relative concept. If he doesn't seem posh to you, could it be that you are posher than he is? I mean, he seems posh to me because I am less posh than he is, but plenty of people think I am posh even though my background is just basic middle class.
Different metrics.
I'm definitely not posh in the sense I mean (old money, land) - got invited for tea, but wasn't "one of them". I'm middle class (very) but can socialise with them. Then again, I can't recall any group of people I *can't* socialise with.
You are using the money, clothes, aspirations metric, I think. The difference is that anyone can put on that uniform. To the people I'm talking about, that is stupid cosplay at best. At worst, it is indicating that someone is very rum.
“So you think this chap is as much in society as we were, do you?”
I preferred not to think so myself. We had cause enough for jealousy without that. But Raffles raised his eyebrows an eloquent half-inch.
“As much, my dear Bunny? He is not only in it, but of it; there’s no comparison between us there. Society is in rings like a target, and we never were in the bull’s-eye, however thick you may lay on the ink!
I think you have to have gone to a certain kind of school and been around these people enough to read their rituals and be a part of their world - even if both you and they recognise you are are ultimately not "one if them". You might be unaware of how closed off that world is for the rest of us. To me anyone who exists in that ecosystem seems posh - I don't have the inside knowledge to differentiate clearly within it. For working class people who haven't been to university perhaps it's similar - to them Ed Miliband and David Cameron probably seem equally posh even though I can recognise that they're not, because I went to university with people like them and can recognise that they come from different tribes.
There's always those Hugh Grant / Richard Curtis films ?
3 A* and one A for my nephew, so off to Cambridge at a different College to his sister. Completely Comprehensive education, with no additional tutoring. Smart lad. Both are destined for great things.
Well done him! Must have taken a load of intelligence, self belief and hard work to get there. Cambridge is lucky to have him. But tell him to prepare for a lifetime of poshos like Nigel Farage telling him he is now a member of an out of touch elite.
Nigel Farrago is posh?
His father was a stockbroker. He went to a private school. He worked as a commodities trader. Seems posh.
Wears mustard coloured cords and a barber jacket. Talks extremely posh. Absolutely a posho.
Barbour
Even knowing the spelling is a class marker.
Poshos wear Barbours when doing unspeakable posh things to innocent wildlife in the mud and rain. Actually these days they wear green Mustos which cost even more and work about equally badly. Wearing the things clean, on telly, in the city is trying too hard. but yes, Dulwich, so he is probably lower middle posh.
And don't get me started on covert coats, they are for hacking to the covert in.
Hipster poshos should wear Filson which costs yet more, dunno how many posho hipsters there are though.
Also, reading yesterday's posts, @Gardenwalker and @HYUFD are bang on the money. Things got ugly post-Brexit on PB and the UK is now divided along Remain/Leave lines.
What a time to be an historian in fifty years time.
In Leaverstan thing were ugly *before* Brexit. That is why we saw such a massive turnout of non-voters to vote for it.
I'm not talking about southern well-off pensioners with a wartime fetish. They vote anyway. I'm talking about the poor sods stuck in rust belt communities where just like in Bon Jovi's Dry County where the jobs are gone and the money's gone and people were hanging on.
These communities were utterly broken, a perpetual state of decay and decline. A few "executive" housing developments built on an old pit is not enough to rescue them. The sad thing is that post-Brexit they are even worse. The promised moon on a stick has not been delivered...
There is a great documentary somewhere about Lee Selby, the boxer. He grew up in Barry. And a more bleak depiction of life in modern Britain it is difficult to imagine and yes, this was going on for years hence my response to @Malmesbury that it was people looking for a way out/up and the politicians pitched to them that Brexit was it.
I think it fair to say that for both sides, BREXIT became a totem for larger issues.
Yes, the divide between Remainia and Leaverstan has been around for some time; Brexit just allowed us to give it a name. That said, those bits of Leaverstan that I am familiar with are not without hope. Blyth, Wigan, Amber Valley, Chesterfield/NE Derbys; these places are much improved from what they were 20 years ago. This is not, AFAICS, down to any one thing in particular anyone has done, though there will be dozens of individual policy success stories at local and national level. Rather, it is because Remainia is becoming too expensive. Young middle class couples can't afford to live in Gosforth any more, so they live in Blyth, and take their spending with them.
There may be parts of Leaverstan that are bleaker than they were 20 years ago, or no less bleak, but I haven't come across them (I wouldn't be surprised if it takes rather more to push people to move to Easington than it does to Blyth). Wales may be a special case, as it seems perversely determined to be permanently poor.
Well Blyth will gentrify within the next 20 years as a trendy commuter town with its renewable energy industry and its new railway to Newcastle.
Also, reading yesterday's posts, @Gardenwalker and @HYUFD are bang on the money. Things got ugly post-Brexit on PB and the UK is now divided along Remain/Leave lines.
What a time to be an historian in fifty years time.
In Leaverstan thing were ugly *before* Brexit. That is why we saw such a massive turnout of non-voters to vote for it.
I'm not talking about southern well-off pensioners with a wartime fetish. They vote anyway. I'm talking about the poor sods stuck in rust belt communities where just like in Bon Jovi's Dry County where the jobs are gone and the money's gone and people were hanging on.
These communities were utterly broken, a perpetual state of decay and decline. A few "executive" housing developments built on an old pit is not enough to rescue them. The sad thing is that post-Brexit they are even worse. The promised moon on a stick has not been delivered...
There is a great documentary somewhere about Lee Selby, the boxer. He grew up in Barry. And a more bleak depiction of life in modern Britain it is difficult to imagine and yes, this was going on for years hence my response to @Malmesbury that it was people looking for a way out/up and the politicians pitched to them that Brexit was it.
So the challenge for the next government is what the hell do they do about it? The country is supposedly broke, yet always finds money for the beautiful people.
The post-Covid economy offered the prospects of a transformation in working patterns - unless you need to be in a physical location you can be anywhere. Some of us live that (hi...), but the government clamped down very hard on making it widespread so that people would go back to the status quo ante and spend money buying overpriced coffee.
Other countries are offering digital nomad deals to get people who don;'t need to be in an office to go there. Why can't we do the same? Was chatting with an English lassie on the plane north last night - she moved up with her bf to Inverurie whilst working for a business based in London. Her job is in the digital industry, so could be anywhere there is broadband.
We could allow places which have been left as rust belt to offer local tax incentives to move there. There are surprising amounts of fast fibre in the countryside (and if not, Starlink...) so why not seek to build digital work communities in places desperate for jobs?
Plenty of firms are now getting people back into the office. There is a corporate insecurity it seems that can't tolerate people wfh.
It is crap management by insecure managers. I hire people I trust to do the job. Teams need to meet face to face at times, but so much office time is a waste. Pointless meetings where little value is added for most of the participants. Chat and gossip and banter which isn't work. And in my industry the sales aren't done sat at a desk anyway.
And yet there are still dinosaur managers who think their magnificence needs to be enjoyed in person so the minions can bask in awe in their experience and learn from them.
Flexibility. A team, smoothly running, with a relatively stable task, with the right management structure and support can work for months from home. The same team, when a new person joins, or when switching to a totally new project, may well benefit from in-office time.
WFH requires a good team, good management and the right systems.
Lots of places sent people home, to balance a laptop on an ironing board and said that was WFH.
Which is like jumping out of a plane with a bed sheet and calling it parachuting.
Also, reading yesterday's posts, @Gardenwalker and @HYUFD are bang on the money. Things got ugly post-Brexit on PB and the UK is now divided along Remain/Leave lines.
What a time to be an historian in fifty years time.
In Leaverstan thing were ugly *before* Brexit. That is why we saw such a massive turnout of non-voters to vote for it.
I'm not talking about southern well-off pensioners with a wartime fetish. They vote anyway. I'm talking about the poor sods stuck in rust belt communities where just like in Bon Jovi's Dry County where the jobs are gone and the money's gone and people were hanging on.
These communities were utterly broken, a perpetual state of decay and decline. A few "executive" housing developments built on an old pit is not enough to rescue them. The sad thing is that post-Brexit they are even worse. The promised moon on a stick has not been delivered...
There is a great documentary somewhere about Lee Selby, the boxer. He grew up in Barry. And a more bleak depiction of life in modern Britain it is difficult to imagine and yes, this was going on for years hence my response to @Malmesbury that it was people looking for a way out/up and the politicians pitched to them that Brexit was it.
I think it fair to say that for both sides, BREXIT became a totem for larger issues.
Yes, the divide between Remainia and Leaverstan has been around for some time; Brexit just allowed us to give it a name. That said, those bits of Leaverstan that I am familiar with are not without hope. Blyth, Wigan, Amber Valley, Chesterfield/NE Derbys; these places are much improved from what they were 20 years ago. This is not, AFAICS, down to any one thing in particular anyone has done, though there will be dozens of individual policy success stories at local and national level. Rather, it is because Remainia is becoming too expensive. Young middle class couples can't afford to live in Gosforth any more, so they live in Blyth, and take their spending with them.
There may be parts of Leaverstan that are bleaker than they were 20 years ago, or no less bleak, but I haven't come across them (I wouldn't be surprised if it takes rather more to push people to move to Easington than it does to Blyth). Wales may be a special case, as it seems perversely determined to be permanently poor.
There ware places that are way bleaker than they were 20 years.
A poor example would be Shildon where because of Locomotion I've being going to regularly for over 20 years - that definitely has got worse over the years.
Then there are sone villages around Ferryhill (shudder) which make Ferryhill look like a Metropolis.
And if you head towards Durham it's almost random as to whether a surrounding village has improved, stayed the same or got worse over the past 30 years...
3 A* and one A for my nephew, so off to Cambridge at a different College to his sister. Completely Comprehensive education, with no additional tutoring. Smart lad. Both are destined for great things.
Well done him! Must have taken a load of intelligence, self belief and hard work to get there. Cambridge is lucky to have him. But tell him to prepare for a lifetime of poshos like Nigel Farage telling him he is now a member of an out of touch elite.
Nigel Farrago is posh?
His father was a stockbroker. He went to a private school. He worked as a commodities trader. Seems posh.
The posh people I went to school with - their families wouldn't have invited him round for tea.
He always came across as Arthur Daley to me.
This just illustrates how poshness is an entirely relative concept. If he doesn't seem posh to you, could it be that you are posher than he is? I mean, he seems posh to me because I am less posh than he is, but plenty of people think I am posh even though my background is just basic middle class.
Farage is posh in Burnley, Liverpool and Clacton but in Kensington and Chelsea or Oxford he is just a jumped up oik
3 A* and one A for my nephew, so off to Cambridge at a different College to his sister. Completely Comprehensive education, with no additional tutoring. Smart lad. Both are destined for great things.
Well done him! Must have taken a load of intelligence, self belief and hard work to get there. Cambridge is lucky to have him. But tell him to prepare for a lifetime of poshos like Nigel Farage telling him he is now a member of an out of touch elite.
Nigel Farrago is posh?
His father was a stockbroker. He went to a private school. He worked as a commodities trader. Seems posh.
Wears mustard coloured cords and a barber jacket. Talks extremely posh. Absolutely a posho.
Barbour
Even knowing the spelling is a class marker.
Poshos wear Barbours when doing unspeakable posh things to innocent wildlife in the mud and rain. Actually these days they wear green Mustos which cost even more and work about equally badly. Wearing the things clean, on telly, in the city is trying too hard. but yes, Dulwich, so he is probably lower middle posh.
And don't get me started on covert coats, they are for hacking to the covert in.
Hipster poshos should wear Filson which costs yet more, dunno how many posho hipsters there are though.
Oooh I like the look of tin cloth
Also their rather coy note about the fuller figured US gentleman: All Filson sizes are US sizes which can be larger for a European stature, so we recommend sizing down.
Just flicked through the last thread. Leon's last post is a good one. 'Must read' posters are a rarity and everyone will have their own. Ishmael and Stuart Dickson were two of mine and apparently Leon's too. Rather than have long standing and entertaining posters just disappear perhaps a short obit might make the decisions feel less arbitrary?
There are some must-read posters and some mustn't-read posters and a few in between. Of the former, has anyone seen @MarqueeMark lately? I have an image of him being pursued across the Devon landscape by a swarm of indignant giant moths.
On the subject of @Leon the vertiginous contrast between the intense excitement of foreign travel and the tedium of daily British life is probably a poor career choice for anyone with manic-depressive tendencies. I hope this morning he calms down, or calms up, as the case may be.
3 A* and one A for my nephew, so off to Cambridge at a different College to his sister. Completely Comprehensive education, with no additional tutoring. Smart lad. Both are destined for great things.
Well done him! Must have taken a load of intelligence, self belief and hard work to get there. Cambridge is lucky to have him. But tell him to prepare for a lifetime of poshos like Nigel Farage telling him he is now a member of an out of touch elite.
Nigel Farrago is posh?
His father was a stockbroker. He went to a private school. He worked as a commodities trader. Seems posh.
The posh people I went to school with - their families wouldn't have invited him round for tea.
He always came across as Arthur Daley to me.
This just illustrates how poshness is an entirely relative concept. If he doesn't seem posh to you, could it be that you are posher than he is? I mean, he seems posh to me because I am less posh than he is, but plenty of people think I am posh even though my background is just basic middle class.
Different metrics.
I'm definitely not posh in the sense I mean (old money, land) - got invited for tea, but wasn't "one of them". I'm middle class (very) but can socialise with them. Then again, I can't recall any group of people I *can't* socialise with.
You are using the money, clothes, aspirations metric, I think. The difference is that anyone can put on that uniform. To the people I'm talking about, that is stupid cosplay at best. At worst, it is indicating that someone is very rum.
“So you think this chap is as much in society as we were, do you?”
I preferred not to think so myself. We had cause enough for jealousy without that. But Raffles raised his eyebrows an eloquent half-inch.
“As much, my dear Bunny? He is not only in it, but of it; there’s no comparison between us there. Society is in rings like a target, and we never were in the bull’s-eye, however thick you may lay on the ink!
I think you have to have gone to a certain kind of school and been around these people enough to read their rituals and be a part of their world - even if both you and they recognise you are are ultimately not "one if them". You might be unaware of how closed off that world is for the rest of us. To me anyone who exists in that ecosystem seems posh - I don't have the inside knowledge to differentiate clearly within it. For working class people who haven't been to university perhaps it's similar - to them Ed Miliband and David Cameron probably seem equally posh even though I can recognise that they're not, because I went to university with people like them and can recognise that they come from different tribes.
And equally, other "tribes" close themselves off. "Not for the likes of us" etc.
Oh absolutely, it is the ongoing tragedy of the English.
I still remember the blank incomprehension from a middle class manager that I drank in a "local" pub. Because it had a good pool table.
The "locals" were a bit more accepting - I ended up on the pool team. But I was always the odd one out. Which showed in how they protected me from the consequences of their doing something a bit controversial - I got a call not to come to the pub.
"Levelling up" was a good slogan - a shame it turned out to be just that and nothing more.
I liked "Big Society" as well. But, as you say, you need the execution as well as the slogan.
One thing I really like about the LibDems is community politics. The red team were very dismissive of LD tactics like getting street repairs done and then talking about it. But this is stupid politics. Community starts on your doorstep - literally. People used to sweep their own doorstep. Which meant they had an interest in their local environment. Community. Place.
So we should start there. Pride in your own environment. Councils can no longer afford to employ an army of people to pick up the junk you shouldn't have dropped. People do not drive their dogs in from the next town to walk their dogs and have them crap on the pavement. Those are your turds - so lets start having the community agree to basically shame people into not leaving turds and litter. And have community clean up to blitz an area if it looks bad. Plant flowers / wildflower seeds etc.
Slogans do nothing when people have been hardened to not care about anyone else. So we need to reverse the right wing weaponisation of ignorance and stupidity. Make people care about Other People.
Also, reading yesterday's posts, @Gardenwalker and @HYUFD are bang on the money. Things got ugly post-Brexit on PB and the UK is now divided along Remain/Leave lines.
What a time to be an historian in fifty years time.
In Leaverstan thing were ugly *before* Brexit. That is why we saw such a massive turnout of non-voters to vote for it.
I'm not talking about southern well-off pensioners with a wartime fetish. They vote anyway. I'm talking about the poor sods stuck in rust belt communities where just like in Bon Jovi's Dry County where the jobs are gone and the money's gone and people were hanging on.
These communities were utterly broken, a perpetual state of decay and decline. A few "executive" housing developments built on an old pit is not enough to rescue them. The sad thing is that post-Brexit they are even worse. The promised moon on a stick has not been delivered...
There is a great documentary somewhere about Lee Selby, the boxer. He grew up in Barry. And a more bleak depiction of life in modern Britain it is difficult to imagine and yes, this was going on for years hence my response to @Malmesbury that it was people looking for a way out/up and the politicians pitched to them that Brexit was it.
I think it fair to say that for both sides, BREXIT became a totem for larger issues.
Yes, the divide between Remainia and Leaverstan has been around for some time; Brexit just allowed us to give it a name. That said, those bits of Leaverstan that I am familiar with are not without hope. Blyth, Wigan, Amber Valley, Chesterfield/NE Derbys; these places are much improved from what they were 20 years ago. This is not, AFAICS, down to any one thing in particular anyone has done, though there will be dozens of individual policy success stories at local and national level. Rather, it is because Remainia is becoming too expensive. Young middle class couples can't afford to live in Gosforth any more, so they live in Blyth, and take their spending with them.
There may be parts of Leaverstan that are bleaker than they were 20 years ago, or no less bleak, but I haven't come across them (I wouldn't be surprised if it takes rather more to push people to move to Easington than it does to Blyth). Wales may be a special case, as it seems perversely determined to be permanently poor.
Well Blyth will gentrify within the next 20 years as a trendy commuter town with its renewable energy industry and its new railway to Newcastle.
It certainly has a huge potential for it that's for sure. Probably the next Whitley Bay.
3 A* and one A for my nephew, so off to Cambridge at a different College to his sister. Completely Comprehensive education, with no additional tutoring. Smart lad. Both are destined for great things.
Well done him! Must have taken a load of intelligence, self belief and hard work to get there. Cambridge is lucky to have him. But tell him to prepare for a lifetime of poshos like Nigel Farage telling him he is now a member of an out of touch elite.
Nigel Farrago is posh?
His father was a stockbroker. He went to a private school. He worked as a commodities trader. Seems posh.
The posh people I went to school with - their families wouldn't have invited him round for tea.
He always came across as Arthur Daley to me.
This just illustrates how poshness is an entirely relative concept. If he doesn't seem posh to you, could it be that you are posher than he is? I mean, he seems posh to me because I am less posh than he is, but plenty of people think I am posh even though my background is just basic middle class.
Farage is posh in Burnley, Liverpool and Clacton but in Kensington and Chelsea or Oxford he is just a jumped up oik
3 A* and one A for my nephew, so off to Cambridge at a different College to his sister. Completely Comprehensive education, with no additional tutoring. Smart lad. Both are destined for great things.
Well done him! Must have taken a load of intelligence, self belief and hard work to get there. Cambridge is lucky to have him. But tell him to prepare for a lifetime of poshos like Nigel Farage telling him he is now a member of an out of touch elite.
Nigel Farrago is posh?
His father was a stockbroker. He went to a private school. He worked as a commodities trader. Seems posh.
Wears mustard coloured cords and a barber jacket. Talks extremely posh. Absolutely a posho.
Barbour
Even knowing the spelling is a class marker.
Poshos wear Barbours when doing unspeakable posh things to innocent wildlife in the mud and rain. Actually these days they wear green Mustos which cost even more and work about equally badly. Wearing the things clean, on telly, in the city is trying too hard. but yes, Dulwich, so he is probably lower middle posh.
And don't get me started on covert coats, they are for hacking to the covert in.
Hipster poshos should wear Filson which costs yet more, dunno how many posho hipsters there are though.
Oooh I like the look of tin cloth
Also their rather coy note about the fuller figured US gentleman: All Filson sizes are US sizes which can be larger for a European stature, so we recommend sizing down.
You would look a bit of a twat if you wrestled a bird from a picker up or took it from your dog and stuffed it in the Tin Cloth Game Bag before you headed over to the next drive.
Also, reading yesterday's posts, @Gardenwalker and @HYUFD are bang on the money. Things got ugly post-Brexit on PB and the UK is now divided along Remain/Leave lines.
What a time to be an historian in fifty years time.
In Leaverstan thing were ugly *before* Brexit. That is why we saw such a massive turnout of non-voters to vote for it.
I'm not talking about southern well-off pensioners with a wartime fetish. They vote anyway. I'm talking about the poor sods stuck in rust belt communities where just like in Bon Jovi's Dry County where the jobs are gone and the money's gone and people were hanging on.
These communities were utterly broken, a perpetual state of decay and decline. A few "executive" housing developments built on an old pit is not enough to rescue them. The sad thing is that post-Brexit they are even worse. The promised moon on a stick has not been delivered...
You are both right and wrong on this. Obviously I live in one of these rust belt communities and the vote for Brexit was not a surprise at all.
There _were_ jobs - more than there were for many years post de-mining - but they were not very well paid. The perception in many quarters, right or wrong, was that this was due to competition from an endless supply of cheap labour from eastern Europe. The removal of a large local factory to Italy with EU money / legislation also didn't help (although that factory had been struggling for many years).
Prior to the pandemic I frequented a number of WMCs or ex-WMCs (many of which are closing down or are only kept running by legacies from companies which no longer exist). I did not hear any direct racism or mutterings about furriners as per the stereotype but there was a definite air that something needed to change.
Brexit probably _has_ helped in some industries and pay has gone up. Unfortunately with externally imposed inflation, that pay rise hasn't gone very far. People are still struggling.
The one thing that helps is that houses are still relatively cheap.
The main problem is none of these things though. The problem is that the London hoovers up all the talent. Why stay in the rustbelt? It has become a vicious circle.
"Levelling up" was a good slogan - a shame it turned out to be just that and nothing more.
Driving through the former Durham or South Yorkshire coalfields its very clear what happened. The jobs for life with comradeship went. New jobs did pop up, but in the form of distribution warehouses. There seem to be DCs and new link roads in so many of these places, where the secure and decently paid jobs have gone and instead there are transitory and poorly paid jobs requiring little skill.
What left was pride and purpose. These communities had a strong sense of pride and self-belief. That has all gone. Unless we find a way to bring it back there will never be a fix for the decline.
We need to start making more things again, but I don't know how it can be made economic post globalisation. There is definitely a pride in turning useful things out, be it coal (even if we view that differently now) or Mallard.
There are still a few manufacturers holding on - we still have the most profitable glassworks in Europe (so I am told) and a number of other international niche companies (such as Bridon Ropes) but few are now locally owned.
I don't think anyone can reasonably expect a job for life (excepting the public sector) but we do need some larger employers providing something better than the task shuffling Chinese tat round a warehouse, even if it is better paid now (and the adverts specifying "Russian an advantage" have stopped).
Also, reading yesterday's posts, @Gardenwalker and @HYUFD are bang on the money. Things got ugly post-Brexit on PB and the UK is now divided along Remain/Leave lines.
What a time to be an historian in fifty years time.
In Leaverstan thing were ugly *before* Brexit. That is why we saw such a massive turnout of non-voters to vote for it.
I'm not talking about southern well-off pensioners with a wartime fetish. They vote anyway. I'm talking about the poor sods stuck in rust belt communities where just like in Bon Jovi's Dry County where the jobs are gone and the money's gone and people were hanging on.
These communities were utterly broken, a perpetual state of decay and decline. A few "executive" housing developments built on an old pit is not enough to rescue them. The sad thing is that post-Brexit they are even worse. The promised moon on a stick has not been delivered...
There is a great documentary somewhere about Lee Selby, the boxer. He grew up in Barry. And a more bleak depiction of life in modern Britain it is difficult to imagine and yes, this was going on for years hence my response to @Malmesbury that it was people looking for a way out/up and the politicians pitched to them that Brexit was it.
I think it fair to say that for both sides, BREXIT became a totem for larger issues.
Yes, the divide between Remainia and Leaverstan has been around for some time; Brexit just allowed us to give it a name. That said, those bits of Leaverstan that I am familiar with are not without hope. Blyth, Wigan, Amber Valley, Chesterfield/NE Derbys; these places are much improved from what they were 20 years ago. This is not, AFAICS, down to any one thing in particular anyone has done, though there will be dozens of individual policy success stories at local and national level. Rather, it is because Remainia is becoming too expensive. Young middle class couples can't afford to live in Gosforth any more, so they live in Blyth, and take their spending with them.
There may be parts of Leaverstan that are bleaker than they were 20 years ago, or no less bleak, but I haven't come across them (I wouldn't be surprised if it takes rather more to push people to move to Easington than it does to Blyth). Wales may be a special case, as it seems perversely determined to be permanently poor.
There ware places that are way bleaker than they were 20 years.
A poor example would be Shildon where because of Locomotion I've being going to regularly for over 20 years - that definitely has got worse over the years.
Then there are sone villages around Ferryhill (shudder) which make Ferryhill look like a Metropolis.
And if you head towards Durham it's almost random as to whether a surrounding village has improved, stayed the same or got worse over the past 30 years...
I confess* I haven't been to Ferryhill for over 20 years; nor to the surrounding villages. And Shildon: the last time I was there was February 1997, and even back then it felt more like going back in time than anywhere else I'd been in the UK that wasn't a heritage museum. It even smelled of the 1960s. It's almost incredible to believe it's gone backwards since then.
*confess for the purposes of how informed I am for this argument. Outside of that, I feel no personal shame at this fact.
Also, reading yesterday's posts, @Gardenwalker and @HYUFD are bang on the money. Things got ugly post-Brexit on PB and the UK is now divided along Remain/Leave lines.
What a time to be an historian in fifty years time.
In Leaverstan thing were ugly *before* Brexit. That is why we saw such a massive turnout of non-voters to vote for it.
I'm not talking about southern well-off pensioners with a wartime fetish. They vote anyway. I'm talking about the poor sods stuck in rust belt communities where just like in Bon Jovi's Dry County where the jobs are gone and the money's gone and people were hanging on.
These communities were utterly broken, a perpetual state of decay and decline. A few "executive" housing developments built on an old pit is not enough to rescue them. The sad thing is that post-Brexit they are even worse. The promised moon on a stick has not been delivered...
There is a great documentary somewhere about Lee Selby, the boxer. He grew up in Barry. And a more bleak depiction of life in modern Britain it is difficult to imagine and yes, this was going on for years hence my response to @Malmesbury that it was people looking for a way out/up and the politicians pitched to them that Brexit was it.
So the challenge for the next government is what the hell do they do about it? The country is supposedly broke, yet always finds money for the beautiful people.
The post-Covid economy offered the prospects of a transformation in working patterns - unless you need to be in a physical location you can be anywhere. Some of us live that (hi...), but the government clamped down very hard on making it widespread so that people would go back to the status quo ante and spend money buying overpriced coffee.
Other countries are offering digital nomad deals to get people who don;'t need to be in an office to go there. Why can't we do the same? Was chatting with an English lassie on the plane north last night - she moved up with her bf to Inverurie whilst working for a business based in London. Her job is in the digital industry, so could be anywhere there is broadband.
We could allow places which have been left as rust belt to offer local tax incentives to move there. There are surprising amounts of fast fibre in the countryside (and if not, Starlink...) so why not seek to build digital work communities in places desperate for jobs?
Plenty of firms are now getting people back into the office. There is a corporate insecurity it seems that can't tolerate people wfh.
It is crap management by insecure managers. I hire people I trust to do the job. Teams need to meet face to face at times, but so much office time is a waste. Pointless meetings where little value is added for most of the participants. Chat and gossip and banter which isn't work. And in my industry the sales aren't done sat at a desk anyway.
And yet there are still dinosaur managers who think their magnificence needs to be enjoyed in person so the minions can bask in awe in their experience and learn from them.
Flexibility. A team, smoothly running, with a relatively stable task, with the right management structure and support can work for months from home. The same team, when a new person joins, or when switching to a totally new project, may well benefit from in-office time.
WFH requires a good team, good management and the right systems.
Lots of places sent people home, to balance a laptop on an ironing board and said that was WFH.
Which is like jumping out of a plane with a bed sheet and calling it parachuting.
I WFH'd from 2012 onwards, long before it was fashionable. A couple of observations: day to day work did not suffer; some people went to the office anyway because they preferred it; most people ended up creating a designated home office in a spare room or garage; new joiners never achieved the high integration that older hands had from years of sitting near each other.
And the last two are real problems. If you can't integrate new members, teams fall apart. And many people do not have spare rooms available. It's the same with online schooling during Covid. Great for children with their own laptops in their own rooms; less good for larger, poorer families sharing one machine on the kitchen table.
Also, reading yesterday's posts, @Gardenwalker and @HYUFD are bang on the money. Things got ugly post-Brexit on PB and the UK is now divided along Remain/Leave lines.
What a time to be an historian in fifty years time.
In Leaverstan thing were ugly *before* Brexit. That is why we saw such a massive turnout of non-voters to vote for it.
I'm not talking about southern well-off pensioners with a wartime fetish. They vote anyway. I'm talking about the poor sods stuck in rust belt communities where just like in Bon Jovi's Dry County where the jobs are gone and the money's gone and people were hanging on.
These communities were utterly broken, a perpetual state of decay and decline. A few "executive" housing developments built on an old pit is not enough to rescue them. The sad thing is that post-Brexit they are even worse. The promised moon on a stick has not been delivered...
There is a great documentary somewhere about Lee Selby, the boxer. He grew up in Barry. And a more bleak depiction of life in modern Britain it is difficult to imagine and yes, this was going on for years hence my response to @Malmesbury that it was people looking for a way out/up and the politicians pitched to them that Brexit was it.
I think it fair to say that for both sides, BREXIT became a totem for larger issues.
Yes, the divide between Remainia and Leaverstan has been around for some time; Brexit just allowed us to give it a name. That said, those bits of Leaverstan that I am familiar with are not without hope. Blyth, Wigan, Amber Valley, Chesterfield/NE Derbys; these places are much improved from what they were 20 years ago. This is not, AFAICS, down to any one thing in particular anyone has done, though there will be dozens of individual policy success stories at local and national level. Rather, it is because Remainia is becoming too expensive. Young middle class couples can't afford to live in Gosforth any more, so they live in Blyth, and take their spending with them.
There may be parts of Leaverstan that are bleaker than they were 20 years ago, or no less bleak, but I haven't come across them (I wouldn't be surprised if it takes rather more to push people to move to Easington than it does to Blyth). Wales may be a special case, as it seems perversely determined to be permanently poor.
Well Blyth will gentrify within the next 20 years as a trendy commuter town with its renewable energy industry and its new railway to Newcastle.
It certainly has a huge potential for it that's for sure. Probably the next Whitley Bay.
And meanwhile, Whitley Bay is becoming - what? Something far chichier than the Whitley Bay of the 1990s, at any rate. Still the coldest seaside resort I have ever been to, mind! They can't gentrify that. OTOH, surprisingly sunny. Would be a lovely place to live.
3 A* and one A for my nephew, so off to Cambridge at a different College to his sister. Completely Comprehensive education, with no additional tutoring. Smart lad. Both are destined for great things.
Well done him! Must have taken a load of intelligence, self belief and hard work to get there. Cambridge is lucky to have him. But tell him to prepare for a lifetime of poshos like Nigel Farage telling him he is now a member of an out of touch elite.
Nigel Farrago is posh?
His father was a stockbroker. He went to a private school. He worked as a commodities trader. Seems posh.
The posh people I went to school with - their families wouldn't have invited him round for tea.
He always came across as Arthur Daley to me.
This just illustrates how poshness is an entirely relative concept. If he doesn't seem posh to you, could it be that you are posher than he is? I mean, he seems posh to me because I am less posh than he is, but plenty of people think I am posh even though my background is just basic middle class.
Different metrics.
I'm definitely not posh in the sense I mean (old money, land) - got invited for tea, but wasn't "one of them". I'm middle class (very) but can socialise with them. Then again, I can't recall any group of people I *can't* socialise with.
You are using the money, clothes, aspirations metric, I think. The difference is that anyone can put on that uniform. To the people I'm talking about, that is stupid cosplay at best. At worst, it is indicating that someone is very rum.
“So you think this chap is as much in society as we were, do you?”
I preferred not to think so myself. We had cause enough for jealousy without that. But Raffles raised his eyebrows an eloquent half-inch.
“As much, my dear Bunny? He is not only in it, but of it; there’s no comparison between us there. Society is in rings like a target, and we never were in the bull’s-eye, however thick you may lay on the ink!
I think you have to have gone to a certain kind of school and been around these people enough to read their rituals and be a part of their world - even if both you and they recognise you are are ultimately not "one if them". You might be unaware of how closed off that world is for the rest of us. To me anyone who exists in that ecosystem seems posh - I don't have the inside knowledge to differentiate clearly within it. For working class people who haven't been to university perhaps it's similar - to them Ed Miliband and David Cameron probably seem equally posh even though I can recognise that they're not, because I went to university with people like them and can recognise that they come from different tribes.
There's always those Hugh Grant / Richard Curtis films ?
Wasn't Amber Rudd employed as a kind of poshness consultant on Four Weddings?
Also, reading yesterday's posts, @Gardenwalker and @HYUFD are bang on the money. Things got ugly post-Brexit on PB and the UK is now divided along Remain/Leave lines.
What a time to be an historian in fifty years time.
In Leaverstan thing were ugly *before* Brexit. That is why we saw such a massive turnout of non-voters to vote for it.
I'm not talking about southern well-off pensioners with a wartime fetish. They vote anyway. I'm talking about the poor sods stuck in rust belt communities where just like in Bon Jovi's Dry County where the jobs are gone and the money's gone and people were hanging on.
These communities were utterly broken, a perpetual state of decay and decline. A few "executive" housing developments built on an old pit is not enough to rescue them. The sad thing is that post-Brexit they are even worse. The promised moon on a stick has not been delivered...
There is a great documentary somewhere about Lee Selby, the boxer. He grew up in Barry. And a more bleak depiction of life in modern Britain it is difficult to imagine and yes, this was going on for years hence my response to @Malmesbury that it was people looking for a way out/up and the politicians pitched to them that Brexit was it.
I think it fair to say that for both sides, BREXIT became a totem for larger issues.
Yes, the divide between Remainia and Leaverstan has been around for some time; Brexit just allowed us to give it a name. That said, those bits of Leaverstan that I am familiar with are not without hope. Blyth, Wigan, Amber Valley, Chesterfield/NE Derbys; these places are much improved from what they were 20 years ago. This is not, AFAICS, down to any one thing in particular anyone has done, though there will be dozens of individual policy success stories at local and national level. Rather, it is because Remainia is becoming too expensive. Young middle class couples can't afford to live in Gosforth any more, so they live in Blyth, and take their spending with them.
There may be parts of Leaverstan that are bleaker than they were 20 years ago, or no less bleak, but I haven't come across them (I wouldn't be surprised if it takes rather more to push people to move to Easington than it does to Blyth). Wales may be a special case, as it seems perversely determined to be permanently poor.
There ware places that are way bleaker than they were 20 years.
A poor example would be Shildon where because of Locomotion I've being going to regularly for over 20 years - that definitely has got worse over the years.
Then there are sone villages around Ferryhill (shudder) which make Ferryhill look like a Metropolis.
And if you head towards Durham it's almost random as to whether a surrounding village has improved, stayed the same or got worse over the past 30 years...
I confess* I haven't been to Ferryhill for over 20 years; nor to the surrounding villages. And Shildon: the last time I was there was February 1997, and even back then it felt more like going back in time than anywhere else I'd been in the UK that wasn't a heritage museum. It even smelled of the 1960s. It's almost incredible to believe it's gone backwards since then.
*confess for the purposes of how informed I am for this argument. Outside of that, I feel no personal shame at this fact.
Once in a while we go the pretty way back from Scotland which means the A68 from Haltwhistle to Darlington.
Shall we just say you can tell, almost instantly, when you go from Northumberland into County Durham...
I am definitely posh but have enough intelligence to realise that Keir Starmer is in no way posh, despite that being something the Tories like to throw at him.
They seem to fail to realise that not only is Rishi Sunak posh, he's also an arsehole.
Also, reading yesterday's posts, @Gardenwalker and @HYUFD are bang on the money. Things got ugly post-Brexit on PB and the UK is now divided along Remain/Leave lines.
What a time to be an historian in fifty years time.
In Leaverstan thing were ugly *before* Brexit. That is why we saw such a massive turnout of non-voters to vote for it.
I'm not talking about southern well-off pensioners with a wartime fetish. They vote anyway. I'm talking about the poor sods stuck in rust belt communities where just like in Bon Jovi's Dry County where the jobs are gone and the money's gone and people were hanging on.
These communities were utterly broken, a perpetual state of decay and decline. A few "executive" housing developments built on an old pit is not enough to rescue them. The sad thing is that post-Brexit they are even worse. The promised moon on a stick has not been delivered...
There is a great documentary somewhere about Lee Selby, the boxer. He grew up in Barry. And a more bleak depiction of life in modern Britain it is difficult to imagine and yes, this was going on for years hence my response to @Malmesbury that it was people looking for a way out/up and the politicians pitched to them that Brexit was it.
I think it fair to say that for both sides, BREXIT became a totem for larger issues.
Yes, the divide between Remainia and Leaverstan has been around for some time; Brexit just allowed us to give it a name. That said, those bits of Leaverstan that I am familiar with are not without hope. Blyth, Wigan, Amber Valley, Chesterfield/NE Derbys; these places are much improved from what they were 20 years ago. This is not, AFAICS, down to any one thing in particular anyone has done, though there will be dozens of individual policy success stories at local and national level. Rather, it is because Remainia is becoming too expensive. Young middle class couples can't afford to live in Gosforth any more, so they live in Blyth, and take their spending with them.
There may be parts of Leaverstan that are bleaker than they were 20 years ago, or no less bleak, but I haven't come across them (I wouldn't be surprised if it takes rather more to push people to move to Easington than it does to Blyth). Wales may be a special case, as it seems perversely determined to be permanently poor.
Well Blyth will gentrify within the next 20 years as a trendy commuter town with its renewable energy industry and its new railway to Newcastle.
It certainly has a huge potential for it that's for sure. Probably the next Whitley Bay.
And meanwhile, Whitley Bay is becoming - what? Something far chichier than the Whitley Bay of the 1990s, at any rate. Still the coldest seaside resort I have ever been to, mind! They can't gentrify that. OTOH, surprisingly sunny. Would be a lovely place to live.
I've got a mate who lives in Whitley Bay, it looks mint now, like South East London but by the sea and with more affordable houses. I remember it in the eighties, Spanish City etc, even as a primary age kid I could tell it was a bit rough. Cullercoats has a nicer beach.
"Levelling up" was a good slogan - a shame it turned out to be just that and nothing more.
I liked "Big Society" as well. But, as you say, you need the execution as well as the slogan.
One thing I really like about the LibDems is community politics. The red team were very dismissive of LD tactics like getting street repairs done and then talking about it. But this is stupid politics. Community starts on your doorstep - literally. People used to sweep their own doorstep. Which meant they had an interest in their local environment. Community. Place.
So we should start there. Pride in your own environment. Councils can no longer afford to employ an army of people to pick up the junk you shouldn't have dropped. People do not drive their dogs in from the next town to walk their dogs and have them crap on the pavement. Those are your turds - so lets start having the community agree to basically shame people into not leaving turds and litter. And have community clean up to blitz an area if it looks bad. Plant flowers / wildflower seeds etc.
Slogans do nothing when people have been hardened to not care about anyone else. So we need to reverse the right wing weaponisation of ignorance and stupidity. Make people care about Other People.
hang on, I head HY shrieking in horror...
Why? I have done litter picks
Community payback?
Some have questioned whether associating community spirit or menial jobs with criminal punishment might have undesirable side effects.
3 A* and one A for my nephew, so off to Cambridge at a different College to his sister. Completely Comprehensive education, with no additional tutoring. Smart lad. Both are destined for great things.
Well done him! Must have taken a load of intelligence, self belief and hard work to get there. Cambridge is lucky to have him. But tell him to prepare for a lifetime of poshos like Nigel Farage telling him he is now a member of an out of touch elite.
Nigel Farrago is posh?
His father was a stockbroker. He went to a private school. He worked as a commodities trader. Seems posh.
Wears mustard coloured cords and a barber jacket. Talks extremely posh. Absolutely a posho.
Barbour
Even knowing the spelling is a class marker.
Poshos wear Barbours when doing unspeakable posh things to innocent wildlife in the mud and rain. Actually these days they wear green Mustos which cost even more and work about equally badly. Wearing the things clean, on telly, in the city is trying too hard. but yes, Dulwich, so he is probably lower middle posh.
And don't get me started on covert coats, they are for hacking to the covert in.
Hipster poshos should wear Filson which costs yet more, dunno how many posho hipsters there are though.
Oooh I like the look of tin cloth
Also their rather coy note about the fuller figured US gentleman: All Filson sizes are US sizes which can be larger for a European stature, so we recommend sizing down.
You would look a bit of a twat if you wrestled a bird from a picker up or took it from your dog and stuffed it in the Tin Cloth Game Bag before you headed over to the next drive.
LOL, looks like something a bankrupt farmer would wear in The Grapes Of Wrath
Loader has the cartridges, birds straight into game cart.
"Levelling up" was a good slogan - a shame it turned out to be just that and nothing more.
I liked "Big Society" as well. But, as you say, you need the execution as well as the slogan.
One thing I really like about the LibDems is community politics. The red team were very dismissive of LD tactics like getting street repairs done and then talking about it. But this is stupid politics. Community starts on your doorstep - literally. People used to sweep their own doorstep. Which meant they had an interest in their local environment. Community. Place.
So we should start there. Pride in your own environment. Councils can no longer afford to employ an army of people to pick up the junk you shouldn't have dropped. People do not drive their dogs in from the next town to walk their dogs and have them crap on the pavement. Those are your turds - so lets start having the community agree to basically shame people into not leaving turds and litter. And have community clean up to blitz an area if it looks bad. Plant flowers / wildflower seeds etc.
Slogans do nothing when people have been hardened to not care about anyone else. So we need to reverse the right wing weaponisation of ignorance and stupidity. Make people care about Other People.
hang on, I head HY shrieking in horror...
Why? I have done litter picks
Community payback?
Some have questioned whether associating community spirit or menial jobs with criminal punishment might have undesirable side effects.
Don't they have weird schemes in the US where stretches of road are "sponsored" by local groups?
You'd have to jump through a lot of H&S hoops to do that here, though.
Also, reading yesterday's posts, @Gardenwalker and @HYUFD are bang on the money. Things got ugly post-Brexit on PB and the UK is now divided along Remain/Leave lines.
What a time to be an historian in fifty years time.
In Leaverstan thing were ugly *before* Brexit. That is why we saw such a massive turnout of non-voters to vote for it.
I'm not talking about southern well-off pensioners with a wartime fetish. They vote anyway. I'm talking about the poor sods stuck in rust belt communities where just like in Bon Jovi's Dry County where the jobs are gone and the money's gone and people were hanging on.
These communities were utterly broken, a perpetual state of decay and decline. A few "executive" housing developments built on an old pit is not enough to rescue them. The sad thing is that post-Brexit they are even worse. The promised moon on a stick has not been delivered...
You are both right and wrong on this. Obviously I live in one of these rust belt communities and the vote for Brexit was not a surprise at all.
There _were_ jobs - more than there were for many years post de-mining - but they were not very well paid. The perception in many quarters, right or wrong, was that this was due to competition from an endless supply of cheap labour from eastern Europe. The removal of a large local factory to Italy with EU money / legislation also didn't help (although that factory had been struggling for many years).
Prior to the pandemic I frequented a number of WMCs or ex-WMCs (many of which are closing down or are only kept running by legacies from companies which no longer exist). I did not hear any direct racism or mutterings about furriners as per the stereotype but there was a definite air that something needed to change.
Brexit probably _has_ helped in some industries and pay has gone up. Unfortunately with externally imposed inflation, that pay rise hasn't gone very far. People are still struggling.
The one thing that helps is that houses are still relatively cheap.
The main problem is none of these things though. The problem is that the London hoovers up all the talent. Why stay in the rustbelt? It has become a vicious circle.
"Levelling up" was a good slogan - a shame it turned out to be just that and nothing more.
Driving through the former Durham or South Yorkshire coalfields its very clear what happened. The jobs for life with comradeship went. New jobs did pop up, but in the form of distribution warehouses. There seem to be DCs and new link roads in so many of these places, where the secure and decently paid jobs have gone and instead there are transitory and poorly paid jobs requiring little skill.
What left was pride and purpose. These communities had a strong sense of pride and self-belief. That has all gone. Unless we find a way to bring it back there will never be a fix for the decline.
Yes, but - it's possible to over-romanticise the coal mining era. Pride and self-belief, yes, but there were a lot of hard jobs, not especially well-paid, which led to an early death. And comradeship, yes, but it tended to be a very insular community from which escape was hard. There are good and bad aspects to this, of course. And of course secure jobs have gone everywhere. We no longer expect a job for life in Manchester, just as we no longer expect a job for life in Wigan. It's just easier to find another one in Manchester.
That said, mining nowadays would no doubt be a different proposition: higher skill and less labour intensive. A good job if you could get it, but employing far fewer people.
Comments
1) Go for a long walk to a really good pub. Preferably in company of friend/family.
2) A good pub lunch
3) Lazy afternoon.
4) Arrive back after dark.
5) Go to bed.
6) Next morning the plaster is solid, if still a touch delicate.
And parties with geographically concentrated votes would do well from it if they had the same votes pro rata across the UK.
Always happy to discuss the practicalities of both the war, and any likely peace.
I'm not talking about southern well-off pensioners with a wartime fetish. They vote anyway. I'm talking about the poor sods stuck in rust belt communities where just like in Bon Jovi's Dry County where the jobs are gone and the money's gone and people were hanging on.
These communities were utterly broken, a perpetual state of decay and decline. A few "executive" housing developments built on an old pit is not enough to rescue them. The sad thing is that post-Brexit they are even worse. The promised moon on a stick has not been delivered...
The SDLP got 3 MPs with less than 1/38th of the UKIP vote.
The SNP got the third most MPs (56 versus 8 for the LibDems and 8 for the DUP) yet were only fifth in votes (behind Con, Lad, UKIP, LD).
It's a massive Boost for the economy.
Overall though A* and A grades at A level have collapsed this year to 27% from 44% in the pandemic
"A-level results 2023: Top grades fall to pre-Covid levels, with fall steepest in England - BBC News" https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/education-66454164
I think there would be far less tolerance over here for that kind of blatant attempt to overturn an election.
Irrespective of that: congratulations. Very best of wishes for the 3 or 4 more years of hard work - perhaps more - that now loom. As well as all the other things that come with being a student.
So either they are about to exploit a breakthrough, or they need to use the units reserved for the breakthrough to continue the attack.
If you actually watched it continuously you'd be risking the quantum Zeno effect and would indeed be stuck waiting for it to dry for all eternity.
Ironically in Spain PR rather than helping the centrist liberals has seen them go extinct which is a warning to the LDs
FPTP has an implicit threshold. If your vote is spread out, you need high vote shares to win seats, well above 30%. If your vote is geographically concentrated, however, you don't have a problem.
They only got handful of Leopard 2s - and the Leopard 1 is very lightly armoured.
And when I point this out you lot, opening another can of Stella and firing up your special "Apache" mouse, rant and rage at how I want Putin to win and am a traitor to something or other.
And what, in life, is like a closed book exam?
And round and round it goes.
He always came across as Arthur Daley to me.
As far as combat losses are concerned, the best Twitter analysts like Oryx are probably superior to anyone. Please explain why you think their numbers are wrong (of course they can only count what is seen, but that goes for everyone).
Your line seems to be that it's impossible for anyone to have any idea of what's happening there. But your cool analysis is that a negotiated peace now is imperative.
There's a failure of logic there.
This is posh - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQLYHt-DM0Q
The post-Covid economy offered the prospects of a transformation in working patterns - unless you need to be in a physical location you can be anywhere. Some of us live that (hi...), but the government clamped down very hard on making it widespread so that people would go back to the status quo ante and spend money buying overpriced coffee.
Other countries are offering digital nomad deals to get people who don;'t need to be in an office to go there. Why can't we do the same? Was chatting with an English lassie on the plane north last night - she moved up with her bf to Inverurie whilst working for a business based in London. Her job is in the digital industry, so could be anywhere there is broadband.
We could allow places which have been left as rust belt to offer local tax incentives to move there. There are surprising amounts of fast fibre in the countryside (and if not, Starlink...) so why not seek to build digital work communities in places desperate for jobs?
There _were_ jobs - more than there were for many years post de-mining - but they were not very well paid. The perception in many quarters, right or wrong, was that this was due to competition from an endless supply of cheap labour from eastern Europe. The removal of a large local factory to Italy with EU money / legislation also didn't help (although that factory had been struggling for many years).
Prior to the pandemic I frequented a number of WMCs or ex-WMCs (many of which are closing down or are only kept running by legacies from companies which no longer exist). I did not hear any direct racism or mutterings about furriners as per the stereotype but there was a definite air that something needed to change.
Brexit probably _has_ helped in some industries and pay has gone up. Unfortunately with externally imposed inflation, that pay rise hasn't gone very far. People are still struggling.
The one thing that helps is that houses are still relatively cheap.
The main problem is none of these things though. The problem is that the London hoovers up all the talent. Why stay in the rustbelt? It has become a vicious circle.
"Levelling up" was a good slogan - a shame it turned out to be just that and nothing more.
If our politics were that messed up, we probably wouldn't be able to think about it rationally anyway.
What left was pride and purpose. These communities had a strong sense of pride and self-belief. That has all gone. Unless we find a way to bring it back there will never be a fix for the decline.
But if you adopt STV - the Single Transferable Vote in Multi-Member constituencies - which is the system that the Lib Dems advocate, then a candidate would need to have over 20% of the vote in order to win a seat. Representation in Parliament would not be as fragmented. as you suggest.
Under the current system, where you have only one candidate for a party in each constitency, you have no choice if you are a party animal. If you are a Conservative, as I think you are, you might have to vote for Rees-Mogg or irresponsibly mad Nad. Or else another party entirely.
If, however, your single vote is transferable if your preferred candidate does not need it, then you can have it transferred to another candidate - of the same party or a diferent one.
So to finish off with the threat you are making, with STV it would not matter if the Lib Dems ceased to exist. I could still use my vote for liberal-minded candidates in other parties. And we would end up with a House of Commons which came close to reflecting what the country wanted to see.
That is why extremists like Sunak and Starmer are opposed to any kind of PR. They both prefer their own kind of dictatorship.
I'm definitely not posh in the sense I mean (old money, land) - got invited for tea, but wasn't "one of them". I'm middle class (very) but can socialise with them. Then again, I can't recall any group of people I *can't* socialise with.
You are using the money, clothes, aspirations metric, I think. The difference is that anyone can put on that uniform. To the people I'm talking about, that is stupid cosplay at best. At worst, it is indicating that someone is very rum.
“So you think this chap is as much in society as we were, do you?”
I preferred not to think so myself. We had cause enough for jealousy without that. But Raffles raised his eyebrows an eloquent half-inch.
“As much, my dear Bunny? He is not only in it, but of it; there’s no comparison between us there. Society is in rings like a target, and we never were in the bull’s-eye, however thick you may lay on the ink!
If I'm wrong, then apologies. What do you think NATO/our policy should be ?
And don't get me started on covert coats, they are for hacking to the covert in.
A British TV Institution if ever there was one.
That said, those bits of Leaverstan that I am familiar with are not without hope. Blyth, Wigan, Amber Valley, Chesterfield/NE Derbys; these places are much improved from what they were 20 years ago. This is not, AFAICS, down to any one thing in particular anyone has done, though there will be dozens of individual policy success stories at local and national level. Rather, it is because Remainia is becoming too expensive. Young middle class couples can't afford to live in Gosforth any more, so they live in Blyth, and take their spending with them.
There may be parts of Leaverstan that are bleaker than they were 20 years ago, or no less bleak, but I haven't come across them (I wouldn't be surprised if it takes rather more to push people to move to Easington than it does to Blyth).
Wales may be a special case, as it seems perversely determined to be permanently poor.
https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=357168
And yet there are still dinosaur managers who think their magnificence needs to be enjoyed in person so the minions can bask in awe in their experience and learn from them.
So we should start there. Pride in your own environment. Councils can no longer afford to employ an army of people to pick up the junk you shouldn't have dropped. People do not drive their dogs in from the next town to walk their dogs and have them crap on the pavement. Those are your turds - so lets start having the community agree to basically shame people into not leaving turds and litter. And have community clean up to blitz an area if it looks bad. Plant flowers / wildflower seeds etc.
Slogans do nothing when people have been hardened to not care about anyone else. So we need to reverse the right wing weaponisation of ignorance and stupidity. Make people care about Other People.
hang on, I head HY shrieking in horror...
WFH requires a good team, good management and the right systems.
Lots of places sent people home, to balance a laptop on an ironing board and said that was WFH.
Which is like jumping out of a plane with a bed sheet and calling it parachuting.
A poor example would be Shildon where because of Locomotion I've being going to regularly for over 20 years - that definitely has got worse over the years.
Then there are sone villages around Ferryhill (shudder) which make Ferryhill look like a Metropolis.
And if you head towards Durham it's almost random as to whether a surrounding village has improved, stayed the same or got worse over the past 30 years...
Also their rather coy note about the fuller figured US gentleman: All Filson sizes are US sizes which can be larger for a European stature, so we recommend sizing down.
The "locals" were a bit more accepting - I ended up on the pool team. But I was always the odd one out. Which showed in how they protected me from the consequences of their doing something a bit controversial - I got a call not to come to the pub.
Probably the next Whitley Bay.
There are still a few manufacturers holding on - we still have the most profitable glassworks in Europe (so I am told) and a number of other international niche companies (such as Bridon Ropes) but few are now locally owned.
I don't think anyone can reasonably expect a job for life (excepting the public sector) but we do need some larger employers providing something better than the task shuffling Chinese tat round a warehouse, even if it is better paid now (and the adverts specifying "Russian an advantage" have stopped).
*confess for the purposes of how informed I am for this argument. Outside of that, I feel no personal shame at this fact.
And the last two are real problems. If you can't integrate new members, teams fall apart. And many people do not have spare rooms available. It's the same with online schooling during Covid. Great for children with their own laptops in their own rooms; less good for larger, poorer families sharing one machine on the kitchen table.
Still the coldest seaside resort I have ever been to, mind! They can't gentrify that. OTOH, surprisingly sunny. Would be a lovely place to live.
Shall we just say you can tell, almost instantly, when you go from Northumberland into County Durham...
They seem to fail to realise that not only is Rishi Sunak posh, he's also an arsehole.
Some have questioned whether associating community spirit or menial jobs with criminal punishment might have undesirable side effects.
Loader has the cartridges, birds straight into game cart.
You'd have to jump through a lot of H&S hoops to do that here, though.
And of course secure jobs have gone everywhere. We no longer expect a job for life in Manchester, just as we no longer expect a job for life in Wigan. It's just easier to find another one in Manchester.
That said, mining nowadays would no doubt be a different proposition: higher skill and less labour intensive. A good job if you could get it, but employing far fewer people.