Completely OT there is a new group on Facebook I have discovered and would heartily recommend to anyone with an interest in proper archaeology.
It is called Fraudulent Archaeology Wall of Shame and does pretty much what is wrtten on the tin. Unsurprisingly Graham Hancock features regularly.
Hancock is unfairly maligned by needle-dicked Woke archaeologists, who are basically just jealous that he makes so much money
He happily admits that he writes highly speculative "history", but he has good ideas amongst the woowoo, he is also clever and articulate, and his central notion is actually proving MORE likely with recent discoveries
What he does is make false claims based on absolutely no evidence and the try and use those as a foundation for even more outlandish ideas.
His books follow a familiar pattern
"some have claimed that ..."
becomes
"it is likely that..."
and then becomes
"as we have seen it is now well established that..."
All for the same unfounded hypothesis for which he never presents any actual evidence.
And no, recent discoveries have done nothing to support his views. Any more than they have the claims of Von Daniken.
They do well in your novels but have no place in real archaeology.
Except, it turns out he might be right about Gobekli Tepe, and the Tas Tepeler. There really WAS an ancient, advanced, long-buried civilisation, which seems to have ended around 10,000-9,000 BC - ie at the end of the last Ice Age
So you're just tiresomely fucking WRONG, and I am bored of pointing this out, and I am right now ready to go back to Saudi to recommit to my lucrative deal of alcohol-free commenting for $$$$$
Also bear in mind the HUGE losses of land when the glaciers melted at the end of the Ice Age. Destroying any evidence of human activity on the areas inundated. My money (um, if I had any!) is on Sundaland being somewhere special. Slap bang on the equator, it would have been an ideal Ice Age refugium. I can't believe this essay is 20 years old!
The fundamental mistake that pollsters make is to presume that the public are voting FOR an individual, a party or an idea.
In fact, in my opinion, a very large proportion of people are voting AGAINST the status quo, often through a feeling of marginalisation or disempowerment.
This, I am sure was the appeal of Corbyn, Farage, BoJo, the Red Wall, Trump etc. Now we are seeing not just a vote against the Tories, but against anyone in power. The SNP are in rapid retreat, and in London Khan may well lose the mayoral election. Even in Mike Smithson's beloved Bedford, the incumbent Lib Dem mayor got booted out, not that he had done anything terribly wrong but just because he had become part of the status quo.
So it's not just the Tories who are in trouble, but essentially anyone who is seem to be part of the system, and it is one of the challenges that Kier Starmer will have to face.
I got no help from the “bank of mum and dad”. Does that make me unique on here?
My best friend was gifted a house in London, now worth around £3M, about ten years ago.
I got no help either.
Like most of my generation I got the joy of spending many years paying a landlord's mortgage, but am now in the fortunate position of owning my own home we bought last year.
I couldn't care less if I end up in negative equity, having bought at the peak of the market. If it means that more of my compatriots end up being able to save a deposit and buy their own home too, then I say bring it on.
People should be able to save a deposit from their own efforts in their 20s, not their 40s.
You see I used to be the same as you. With exactly that attitude to negative equity. Indeed personally I still am.
The trouble is that it wasn't about peple like you and me. We are the minority of mortgage holders. Last time this ht hard 1/3rd of all mortgage holders ended up in negative equity. 350,000 people lost their homes because they couldn't pay the mortgage and hundreds of thousands of others found themselves unable to move, even though they had to because of divorce or jobs or one of the myriad other reasons that people move house even when they don't want to.
Negative equity is meaningless if you don't have to move and can pay the mortgage. It is not meaningless for all those people - the overwhelming majority of whom will be first time buyers who have only just started paying down their mortgages - who have no choice but to move.
Which is worse?
350,000 losing their homes because they can't afford a mortgage?
Or millions never getting their homes in the first place because they can't afford a deposit?
I'm very sorry for anyone who loses their homes because they can't afford a mortgage. I'm equally sorry for anyone who loses their opportunity to get a home because they can't afford a deposit. They are both awful situations, but the problem is recent decades have meant there's millions not thousands of the latter.
People trapped not for years but for decades renting is every bit as awful as people being in negative equity.
But most of those people who lose their homes are the first time buyers. Those who have managed to scrape enough together over the years to get that deposit. Which they will lose along with everything else. You don't get it back again when they take your house away from you.
People like us who have been on the ladder for decades, unless we are really stupid, will never be in a position of negative equity. And as I said the other day, when negative equity comes along the market seizes up. People stop selling unless they absolutely have to. So there are even fewer houses on the market than ususal. Yes the price come sdown in theory but in reality for most people it might as well still be as high as it was because no one is selling those cheaper houes. (well apart from the banks selling off those 350,000 houses they reclaimed).
Meanwhile the builders stop building because they don't want to sell houses on the cheap. This is already happening right now even with the small drop we have seen in the last few months.
You consider the market seizing up for months or a year a problem as you're in the fortuitous problem that is all you had to face.
The average young adult today faces not months or years of waiting to be able to get a home, but decades. Most 39 year olds are still renting. I now own, but was renting on my 40th birthday, that is not atypical.
The market seizing for a few months or a year is not a problem. Needing to save more than a whole year's take home pay to pay for a deposit, is a much bigger problem.
Last time it was 4 years.
Not decades. Good.
So worst case scenario a 20-something can save for a couple of years to get 10% of a much lower multiple, then buy when its not ceased up anymore. Rather than face two decades of renting as is the norm currently.
What's the objection to that?
The 350,000 buyers who just did that and then lost it all.
Are not trumped by the millions more tenants who currently spend decades paying someone else's mortgage because they can't afford their own.
The average young adult today faces two decades paying someone else's mortgage because they can't afford a deposit without aid from the bank of mum and dad. When a 10% deposit today means more than a year's take home pay, rather than about 2 months pay in the past, then how are you supposed to afford that?
Spend two decades paying someone else's mortgage rather than your own, you've essentially paid off a house, just not in your own name. You've bought a home for someone else essentially.
Its tragic if people lose a home they've bought. Its every bit as tragic if people can't buy one in the first place because deposits are out of their reach without support from someone else as prices are too high.
The Only Republican Case Against Trump That Could Work
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/08/nikki-haley-trump-alternative-republican-primary.html … As a liberal, it was quite satisfying to watch former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie take the fight directly and pugnaciously to Trump, calling his behavior in the aftermath of the 2020 election “beneath the office of the president” and warning his fellow Republicans that “someone’s got to stop normalizing this conduct.” But judging from the audible boos in the Milwaukee debate venue and the snap polls afterward, Christie is about as popular with hardcore Republican partisans as the U.S. women’s soccer team. You can appreciate him for doing God’s work here, but he has zero chance of winning.
So far only Haley, who at least isn’t despised by the voters she needs, has begun to make the kind of case against Trump that will work with Republicans. And that means facing this hard truth: GOP partisans are still largely in thrall to Trump, but they also want to win in 2024 after four years in the wilderness. And Haley’s tactical decision to refrain from substantive attacks on Trump in favor of arguments about his unpopularity with the American people and many liabilities as a candidate is probably the only way that she—or anyone—can really reach Republican voters without alienating them. She pointed out that a supermajority of Americans desperately want to avoid a Biden-Trump rematch. And Republicans, she said, “have to face the fact that Trump is the most disliked politician in America. We can’t win a general election that way.”..
I suspect the GOP. isn’t yet ready to listen to reasoned arguments. And whether Haley would get credit, even if they were, is also doubtful.
I got no help from the “bank of mum and dad”. Does that make me unique on here?
My best friend was gifted a house in London, now worth around £3M, about ten years ago.
I got no help either.
Like most of my generation I got the joy of spending many years paying a landlord's mortgage, but am now in the fortunate position of owning my own home we bought last year.
I couldn't care less if I end up in negative equity, having bought at the peak of the market. If it means that more of my compatriots end up being able to save a deposit and buy their own home too, then I say bring it on.
People should be able to save a deposit from their own efforts in their 20s, not their 40s.
You see I used to be the same as you. With exactly that attitude to negative equity. Indeed personally I still am.
The trouble is that it wasn't about peple like you and me. We are the minority of mortgage holders. Last time this ht hard 1/3rd of all mortgage holders ended up in negative equity. 350,000 people lost their homes because they couldn't pay the mortgage and hundreds of thousands of others found themselves unable to move, even though they had to because of divorce or jobs or one of the myriad other reasons that people move house even when they don't want to.
Negative equity is meaningless if you don't have to move and can pay the mortgage. It is not meaningless for all those people - the overwhelming majority of whom will be first time buyers who have only just started paying down their mortgages - who have no choice but to move.
Which is worse?
350,000 losing their homes because they can't afford a mortgage?
Or millions never getting their homes in the first place because they can't afford a deposit?
I'm very sorry for anyone who loses their homes because they can't afford a mortgage. I'm equally sorry for anyone who loses their opportunity to get a home because they can't afford a deposit. They are both awful situations, but the problem is recent decades have meant there's millions not thousands of the latter.
People trapped not for years but for decades renting is every bit as awful as people being in negative equity.
But most of those people who lose their homes are the first time buyers. Those who have managed to scrape enough together over the years to get that deposit. Which they will lose along with everything else. You don't get it back again when they take your house away from you.
People like us who have been on the ladder for decades, unless we are really stupid, will never be in a position of negative equity. And as I said the other day, when negative equity comes along the market seizes up. People stop selling unless they absolutely have to. So there are even fewer houses on the market than ususal. Yes the price come sdown in theory but in reality for most people it might as well still be as high as it was because no one is selling those cheaper houes. (well apart from the banks selling off those 350,000 houses they reclaimed).
Meanwhile the builders stop building because they don't want to sell houses on the cheap. This is already happening right now even with the small drop we have seen in the last few months.
You consider the market seizing up for months or a year a problem as you're in the fortuitous problem that is all you had to face.
The average young adult today faces not months or years of waiting to be able to get a home, but decades. Most 39 year olds are still renting. I now own, but was renting on my 40th birthday, that is not atypical.
The market seizing for a few months or a year is not a problem. Needing to save more than a whole year's take home pay to pay for a deposit, is a much bigger problem.
Last time it was 4 years.
Not decades. Good.
So worst case scenario a 20-something can save for a couple of years to get 10% of a much lower multiple, then buy when its not ceased up anymore. Rather than face two decades of renting as is the norm currently.
What's the objection to that?
The 350,000 buyers who just did that and then lost it all.
Are not trumped by the millions more tenants who currently spend decades paying someone else's mortgage because they can't afford their own.
The average young adult today faces two decades paying someone else's mortgage because they can't afford a deposit without aid from the bank of mum and dad. When a 10% deposit today means more than a year's take home pay, rather than about 2 months pay in the past, then how are you supposed to afford that?
Spend two decades paying someone else's mortgage rather than your own, you've essentially paid off a house, just not in your own name. You've bought a home for someone else essentially.
Its tragic if people lose a home they've bought. Its every bit as tragic if people can't buy one in the first place because deposits are out of their reach without support from someone else as prices are too high.
It certainly wasn't 2 months pay when I bought my first house in 1989.
I got no help from the “bank of mum and dad”. Does that make me unique on here?
My best friend was gifted a house in London, now worth around £3M, about ten years ago.
I got no help either.
Like most of my generation I got the joy of spending many years paying a landlord's mortgage, but am now in the fortunate position of owning my own home we bought last year.
I couldn't care less if I end up in negative equity, having bought at the peak of the market. If it means that more of my compatriots end up being able to save a deposit and buy their own home too, then I say bring it on.
People should be able to save a deposit from their own efforts in their 20s, not their 40s.
You see I used to be the same as you. With exactly that attitude to negative equity. Indeed personally I still am.
The trouble is that it wasn't about peple like you and me. We are the minority of mortgage holders. Last time this ht hard 1/3rd of all mortgage holders ended up in negative equity. 350,000 people lost their homes because they couldn't pay the mortgage and hundreds of thousands of others found themselves unable to move, even though they had to because of divorce or jobs or one of the myriad other reasons that people move house even when they don't want to.
Negative equity is meaningless if you don't have to move and can pay the mortgage. It is not meaningless for all those people - the overwhelming majority of whom will be first time buyers who have only just started paying down their mortgages - who have no choice but to move.
Which is worse?
350,000 losing their homes because they can't afford a mortgage?
Or millions never getting their homes in the first place because they can't afford a deposit?
I'm very sorry for anyone who loses their homes because they can't afford a mortgage. I'm equally sorry for anyone who loses their opportunity to get a home because they can't afford a deposit. They are both awful situations, but the problem is recent decades have meant there's millions not thousands of the latter.
People trapped not for years but for decades renting is every bit as awful as people being in negative equity.
But most of those people who lose their homes are the first time buyers. Those who have managed to scrape enough together over the years to get that deposit. Which they will lose along with everything else. You don't get it back again when they take your house away from you.
People like us who have been on the ladder for decades, unless we are really stupid, will never be in a position of negative equity. And as I said the other day, when negative equity comes along the market seizes up. People stop selling unless they absolutely have to. So there are even fewer houses on the market than ususal. Yes the price come sdown in theory but in reality for most people it might as well still be as high as it was because no one is selling those cheaper houes. (well apart from the banks selling off those 350,000 houses they reclaimed).
Meanwhile the builders stop building because they don't want to sell houses on the cheap. This is already happening right now even with the small drop we have seen in the last few months.
You consider the market seizing up for months or a year a problem as you're in the fortuitous problem that is all you had to face.
The average young adult today faces not months or years of waiting to be able to get a home, but decades. Most 39 year olds are still renting. I now own, but was renting on my 40th birthday, that is not atypical.
The market seizing for a few months or a year is not a problem. Needing to save more than a whole year's take home pay to pay for a deposit, is a much bigger problem.
Last time it was 4 years.
Not decades. Good.
So worst case scenario a 20-something can save for a couple of years to get 10% of a much lower multiple, then buy when its not ceased up anymore. Rather than face two decades of renting as is the norm currently.
What's the objection to that?
The 350,000 buyers who just did that and then lost it all.
Are not trumped by the millions more tenants who currently spend decades paying someone else's mortgage because they can't afford their own.
The average young adult today faces two decades paying someone else's mortgage because they can't afford a deposit without aid from the bank of mum and dad. When a 10% deposit today means more than a year's take home pay, rather than about 2 months pay in the past, then how are you supposed to afford that?
Spend two decades paying someone else's mortgage rather than your own, you've essentially paid off a house, just not in your own name. You've bought a home for someone else essentially.
Its tragic if people lose a home they've bought. Its every bit as tragic if people can't buy one in the first place because deposits are out of their reach without support from someone else as prices are too high.
It certainly wasn't 2 months pay when I bought my first house in 1989.
Which is why first time buyers went up in the 1990s versus 1989, because it was about that then.
Which is easier? Saving 10% of 2-3x your income, or saving 10% of 6-8x your income?
If you only need to save 10% of 2x your income to get on the ladder then you can do that much more viably.
Worry keeping an eye on tropical storm (soon to be hurricane) Idalia which will make landfall in Western Florida on Wednesday evening.
Could intensify very rapidly as it’s over - surprise surprise - record high sea surface temperatures and ocean heat content. Widely 31C. Category 3 not unlikely.
All happening quite quickly. Then in a few days we have what looks like the first proper Cape Verde storm making its way toward the lesser Antilles.
On topic, is the key thing that SKS managed to turn things around? Disappointing and drifting until Summer 2021, but improving since then.
The odd thing is that I'm not sure it's obvious what caused the reapprasial. It's a bit early for the sequence of government scandals. Paterson, parties and I'm sure there was another one...
I've no wish to mark my return with a massive stramash, nor do I desire to humilate another PB local. but I can't - in all honesty - let this go by from @Richard_Tyndall
It is just so wrong, it is beyond ignorance
"There has been not a single domesticated bone fragment nor husk of domesticated cereal found at Gobleki Tepe. Out of all of the hundreds of thousands of bones found covering the whole site - not one"
The actual science:
"The high frequency of artifacts is unusual for contemporary sites in the region. Using an integrated approach of formal, experimental, and macro- / microscopical use-wear analyses we show that Neolithic people at Göbekli Tepe have produced standardized and efficient grinding tools, most of which have been used for the processing of cereals. Additional phytolith analysis confirms the massive presence of cereals at the site, filling the gap left by the weakly preserved charred macro-rests. "
The whole pivotal point of the Tas Tepeler, Gobekli included, is that they are situated in the very same place where wild grasses were turned into cereals round 9000-8000BC, and where wild animals became domesticated
"The Göbekli Tepe people of Anatolia were probably the first plant breeders on earth. There, they settled 12,000 years ago and selected einkorn wheat for their nutrition. About 6000 years later, this culture arrived in Europe."
On topic, is the key thing that SKS managed to turn things around? Disappointing and drifting until Summer 2021, but improving since then.
The odd thing is that I'm not sure it's obvious what caused the reapprasial. It's a bit early for the sequence of government scandals. Paterson, parties and I'm sure there was another one...
No Tory poll lead since December 6th 2021, and that was R+W.
On topic, is the key thing that SKS managed to turn things around? Disappointing and drifting until Summer 2021, but improving since then.
The odd thing is that I'm not sure it's obvious what caused the reapprasial. It's a bit early for the sequence of government scandals. Paterson, parties and I'm sure there was another one...
Sunak increasing National Insurance.
Predated both Paterson and parties, and the polls already began to turn then.
I've no wish to mark my return with a massive stramash, nor do I desire to humilate another PB local. but I can't - in all honesty - let this go by from @Richard_Tyndall
It is just so wrong, it is beyond ignorance
"There has been not a single domesticated bone fragment nor husk of domesticated cereal found at Gobleki Tepe. Out of all of the hundreds of thousands of bones found covering the whole site - not one"
The actual science:
"The high frequency of artifacts is unusual for contemporary sites in the region. Using an integrated approach of formal, experimental, and macro- / microscopical use-wear analyses we show that Neolithic people at Göbekli Tepe have produced standardized and efficient grinding tools, most of which have been used for the processing of cereals. Additional phytolith analysis confirms the massive presence of cereals at the site, filling the gap left by the weakly preserved charred macro-rests. "
The whole pivotal point of the Tas Tepeler, Gobekli included, is that they are situated in the very same place where wild grasses were turned into cereals round 9000-8000BC, and where wild animals became domesticated
"The Göbekli Tepe people of Anatolia were probably the first plant breeders on earth. There, they settled 12,000 years ago and selected einkorn wheat for their nutrition. About 6000 years later, this culture arrived in Europe."
On topic, is the key thing that SKS managed to turn things around? Disappointing and drifting until Summer 2021, but improving since then.
The odd thing is that I'm not sure it's obvious what caused the reapprasial. It's a bit early for the sequence of government scandals. Paterson, parties and I'm sure there was another one...
Labour retaining Batley and Spen felt like a Battle of Britain / Marne/ gates of Kyiv moment at the time. The Tory invasion of the old heartland faltering.
At the same time the shine started to come off the short term Covid vaccine boost, as the early running of the UK was caught up elsewhere. I think the spring 2021 vaccine effect probably masked and delayed a more typical decline in incumbent fortunes.
According to today's Times, Red Wall voters regard SKS as being "off-the-scale posh". He's actually from a working-class background. I seem to recall they thought the same sort of thing about William Hague. Actually finding out the facts doesn't seem to interest them.
I've no wish to mark my return with a massive stramash, nor do I desire to humilate another PB local. but I can't - in all honesty - let this go by from @Richard_Tyndall
It is just so wrong, it is beyond ignorance
"There has been not a single domesticated bone fragment nor husk of domesticated cereal found at Gobleki Tepe. Out of all of the hundreds of thousands of bones found covering the whole site - not one"
The actual science:
"The high frequency of artifacts is unusual for contemporary sites in the region. Using an integrated approach of formal, experimental, and macro- / microscopical use-wear analyses we show that Neolithic people at Göbekli Tepe have produced standardized and efficient grinding tools, most of which have been used for the processing of cereals. Additional phytolith analysis confirms the massive presence of cereals at the site, filling the gap left by the weakly preserved charred macro-rests. "
The whole pivotal point of the Tas Tepeler, Gobekli included, is that they are situated in the very same place where wild grasses were turned into cereals round 9000-8000BC, and where wild animals became domesticated
"The Göbekli Tepe people of Anatolia were probably the first plant breeders on earth. There, they settled 12,000 years ago and selected einkorn wheat for their nutrition. About 6000 years later, this culture arrived in Europe."
Yes, now we have seen what has emerged from Kurdish Turkey, who can say they aren't other similar, confounding sites across the world, waiting to be discovered? Particularly underwater
One of the most exciting things about Tas Tepeler is that the older sites are MORE advanced than the younger sites. Gobekli Tepe might be the ENDpoint of an extraordinary civilisation, not its zenith. We just don't know. We need them to dig things up fast
Trouble is, the ethos of modern archaeology is to leave lots of stuff underground for a later, more sophisticated archaeology to sort out. While I can see the merits of that, morally, it leaves us - here, now - rather in the dark. And who is to say our descendants will be better at this?
I've no wish to mark my return with a massive stramash, nor do I desire to humilate another PB local. but I can't - in all honesty - let this go by from @Richard_Tyndall
It is just so wrong, it is beyond ignorance
"There has been not a single domesticated bone fragment nor husk of domesticated cereal found at Gobleki Tepe. Out of all of the hundreds of thousands of bones found covering the whole site - not one"
The actual science:
"The high frequency of artifacts is unusual for contemporary sites in the region. Using an integrated approach of formal, experimental, and macro- / microscopical use-wear analyses we show that Neolithic people at Göbekli Tepe have produced standardized and efficient grinding tools, most of which have been used for the processing of cereals. Additional phytolith analysis confirms the massive presence of cereals at the site, filling the gap left by the weakly preserved charred macro-rests. "
The whole pivotal point of the Tas Tepeler, Gobekli included, is that they are situated in the very same place where wild grasses were turned into cereals round 9000-8000BC, and where wild animals became domesticated
"The Göbekli Tepe people of Anatolia were probably the first plant breeders on earth. There, they settled 12,000 years ago and selected einkorn wheat for their nutrition. About 6000 years later, this culture arrived in Europe."
According to today's Times, Red Wall voters regard SKS as being "off-the-scale posh". He's actually from a working-class background. I seem to recall they thought the same sort of thing about William Hague. Actually finding out the facts doesn't seem to interest them.
Balanced by Waitrose shoppers in the leafy zones not being scared of that nice Keir man, and happily giving the government a red or yellow kicking at the ballot box.
I mean, a man with a knighthood doesn’t seem likely to raise your taxes too much or be beastly to those nice Europeans.
I've no wish to mark my return with a massive stramash, nor do I desire to humilate another PB local. but I can't - in all honesty - let this go by from @Richard_Tyndall
It is just so wrong, it is beyond ignorance
"There has been not a single domesticated bone fragment nor husk of domesticated cereal found at Gobleki Tepe. Out of all of the hundreds of thousands of bones found covering the whole site - not one"
The actual science:
"The high frequency of artifacts is unusual for contemporary sites in the region. Using an integrated approach of formal, experimental, and macro- / microscopical use-wear analyses we show that Neolithic people at Göbekli Tepe have produced standardized and efficient grinding tools, most of which have been used for the processing of cereals. Additional phytolith analysis confirms the massive presence of cereals at the site, filling the gap left by the weakly preserved charred macro-rests. "
The whole pivotal point of the Tas Tepeler, Gobekli included, is that they are situated in the very same place where wild grasses were turned into cereals round 9000-8000BC, and where wild animals became domesticated
"The Göbekli Tepe people of Anatolia were probably the first plant breeders on earth. There, they settled 12,000 years ago and selected einkorn wheat for their nutrition. About 6000 years later, this culture arrived in Europe."
Yes, now we have seen what has emerged from Kurdish Turkey, who can say they aren't other similar, confounding sites across the world, waiting to be discovered? Particularly underwater
One of the most exciting things about Tas Tepeler is that the older sites are MORE advanced than the younger sites. Gobekli Tepe might be the ENDpoint of an extraordinary civilisation, not its zenith. We just don't know. We need them to dig things up fast
Trouble is, the ethos of modern archaeology is to leave lots of stuff underground for a later, more sophisticated archaeology to sort out. While I can see the merits of that, morally, it leaves us - here, now - rather in the dark. And who is to say our descendants will be better at this?
Dig the stones up NOW!
Something I’ve not paid much attention to. I must do some reading on this, whoever’s right.
According to today's Times, Red Wall voters regard SKS as being "off-the-scale posh". He's actually from a working-class background. I seem to recall they thought the same sort of thing about William Hague. Actually finding out the facts doesn't seem to interest them.
I've no wish to mark my return with a massive stramash, nor do I desire to humilate another PB local. but I can't - in all honesty - let this go by from @Richard_Tyndall
It is just so wrong, it is beyond ignorance
"There has been not a single domesticated bone fragment nor husk of domesticated cereal found at Gobleki Tepe. Out of all of the hundreds of thousands of bones found covering the whole site - not one"
The actual science:
"The high frequency of artifacts is unusual for contemporary sites in the region. Using an integrated approach of formal, experimental, and macro- / microscopical use-wear analyses we show that Neolithic people at Göbekli Tepe have produced standardized and efficient grinding tools, most of which have been used for the processing of cereals. Additional phytolith analysis confirms the massive presence of cereals at the site, filling the gap left by the weakly preserved charred macro-rests. "
The whole pivotal point of the Tas Tepeler, Gobekli included, is that they are situated in the very same place where wild grasses were turned into cereals round 9000-8000BC, and where wild animals became domesticated
"The Göbekli Tepe people of Anatolia were probably the first plant breeders on earth. There, they settled 12,000 years ago and selected einkorn wheat for their nutrition. About 6000 years later, this culture arrived in Europe."
According to today's Times, Red Wall voters regard SKS as being "off-the-scale posh". He's actually from a working-class background. I seem to recall they thought the same sort of thing about William Hague. Actually finding out the facts doesn't seem to interest them.
And yet they thought Bozo was a man of the people ! Disturbing. I find my tolerance of thick voters at an all time low .
its not posh as such ,its being establishment. Johnson was never seen as establishment ,KS is defo establishment (as was Hague) . WWC are suspicious of establishment (see the republican base in the US for instance) whether in government or general 'bosses'
According to today's Times, Red Wall voters regard SKS as being "off-the-scale posh". He's actually from a working-class background. I seem to recall they thought the same sort of thing about William Hague. Actually finding out the facts doesn't seem to interest them.
According to today's Times, Red Wall voters regard SKS as being "off-the-scale posh". He's actually from a working-class background. I seem to recall they thought the same sort of thing about William Hague. Actually finding out the facts doesn't seem to interest them.
And yet they thought Bozo was a man of the people ! Disturbing. I find my tolerance of thick voters at an all time low .
They knew Boris was posh. But he was safely several tiers beyond them so could be humoured.
We all know how British snobbery and inverse snobbery works: the greatest bile is reserved for those just one notch above, or one notch below, one’s own station. The foundation for countless sitcoms. And there’s no greater mutual class resentment that than between the lower middle and middle-middle.
According to today's Times, Red Wall voters regard SKS as being "off-the-scale posh". He's actually from a working-class background. I seem to recall they thought the same sort of thing about William Hague. Actually finding out the facts doesn't seem to interest them.
I've no wish to mark my return with a massive stramash, nor do I desire to humilate another PB local. but I can't - in all honesty - let this go by from @Richard_Tyndall
It is just so wrong, it is beyond ignorance
"There has been not a single domesticated bone fragment nor husk of domesticated cereal found at Gobleki Tepe. Out of all of the hundreds of thousands of bones found covering the whole site - not one"
The actual science:
"The high frequency of artifacts is unusual for contemporary sites in the region. Using an integrated approach of formal, experimental, and macro- / microscopical use-wear analyses we show that Neolithic people at Göbekli Tepe have produced standardized and efficient grinding tools, most of which have been used for the processing of cereals. Additional phytolith analysis confirms the massive presence of cereals at the site, filling the gap left by the weakly preserved charred macro-rests. "
The whole pivotal point of the Tas Tepeler, Gobekli included, is that they are situated in the very same place where wild grasses were turned into cereals round 9000-8000BC, and where wild animals became domesticated
"The Göbekli Tepe people of Anatolia were probably the first plant breeders on earth. There, they settled 12,000 years ago and selected einkorn wheat for their nutrition. About 6000 years later, this culture arrived in Europe."
that sounds like one of those cryptic crossword clues I can never do
During the Ice Age, the Ice Sheets were so thick and extensive that sea level was about 100 m (328 ft) lower, give or take, at the so-called Last Glacial Maximum about 20,000 years ago, and vast lands were exposed. Including, but certainly not limited to: Doggerland in the North Sea, the entire floor of the Persian Gulf, the land bridge linking India and Sri Lanka, and a bigger land bridge between Oz and New Guinea. But a HUGE area was exposed in the area bounded by Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, the Sunda Shelf (or Sundaland). Slap bang on the equator, and fed by at least four major rivers, this surely would have been the most ideal place for an Ice Age Refugium.
I've no wish to mark my return with a massive stramash, nor do I desire to humilate another PB local. but I can't - in all honesty - let this go by from @Richard_Tyndall
It is just so wrong, it is beyond ignorance
"There has been not a single domesticated bone fragment nor husk of domesticated cereal found at Gobleki Tepe. Out of all of the hundreds of thousands of bones found covering the whole site - not one"
The actual science:
"The high frequency of artifacts is unusual for contemporary sites in the region. Using an integrated approach of formal, experimental, and macro- / microscopical use-wear analyses we show that Neolithic people at Göbekli Tepe have produced standardized and efficient grinding tools, most of which have been used for the processing of cereals. Additional phytolith analysis confirms the massive presence of cereals at the site, filling the gap left by the weakly preserved charred macro-rests. "
The whole pivotal point of the Tas Tepeler, Gobekli included, is that they are situated in the very same place where wild grasses were turned into cereals round 9000-8000BC, and where wild animals became domesticated
"The Göbekli Tepe people of Anatolia were probably the first plant breeders on earth. There, they settled 12,000 years ago and selected einkorn wheat for their nutrition. About 6000 years later, this culture arrived in Europe."
I've no wish to mark my return with a massive stramash, nor do I desire to humilate another PB local. but I can't - in all honesty - let this go by from @Richard_Tyndall
It is just so wrong, it is beyond ignorance
"There has been not a single domesticated bone fragment nor husk of domesticated cereal found at Gobleki Tepe. Out of all of the hundreds of thousands of bones found covering the whole site - not one"
The actual science:
"The high frequency of artifacts is unusual for contemporary sites in the region. Using an integrated approach of formal, experimental, and macro- / microscopical use-wear analyses we show that Neolithic people at Göbekli Tepe have produced standardized and efficient grinding tools, most of which have been used for the processing of cereals. Additional phytolith analysis confirms the massive presence of cereals at the site, filling the gap left by the weakly preserved charred macro-rests. "
The whole pivotal point of the Tas Tepeler, Gobekli included, is that they are situated in the very same place where wild grasses were turned into cereals round 9000-8000BC, and where wild animals became domesticated
"The Göbekli Tepe people of Anatolia were probably the first plant breeders on earth. There, they settled 12,000 years ago and selected einkorn wheat for their nutrition. About 6000 years later, this culture arrived in Europe."
that sounds like one of those cryptic crossword clues I can never do
During the Ice Age, the Ice Sheets were so thick and extensive that sea level was about 100 m (328 ft) lower, give or take, at the so-called Last Glacial Maximum about 20,000 years ago, and vast lands were exposed. Including, but certainly not limited to: Doggerland in the North Sea, the entire floor of the Persian Gulf, the land bridge linking India and Sri Lanka, and a bigger land bridge between Oz and New Guinea. But a HUGE area was exposed in the area bounded by Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, the Sunda Shelf (or Sundaland). Slap bang on the equator, and fed by at least four major rivers, this surely would have been the most ideal place for an Ice Age Refugium.
I've no wish to mark my return with a massive stramash, nor do I desire to humilate another PB local. but I can't - in all honesty - let this go by from @Richard_Tyndall
It is just so wrong, it is beyond ignorance
"There has been not a single domesticated bone fragment nor husk of domesticated cereal found at Gobleki Tepe. Out of all of the hundreds of thousands of bones found covering the whole site - not one"
The actual science:
"The high frequency of artifacts is unusual for contemporary sites in the region. Using an integrated approach of formal, experimental, and macro- / microscopical use-wear analyses we show that Neolithic people at Göbekli Tepe have produced standardized and efficient grinding tools, most of which have been used for the processing of cereals. Additional phytolith analysis confirms the massive presence of cereals at the site, filling the gap left by the weakly preserved charred macro-rests. "
The whole pivotal point of the Tas Tepeler, Gobekli included, is that they are situated in the very same place where wild grasses were turned into cereals round 9000-8000BC, and where wild animals became domesticated
"The Göbekli Tepe people of Anatolia were probably the first plant breeders on earth. There, they settled 12,000 years ago and selected einkorn wheat for their nutrition. About 6000 years later, this culture arrived in Europe."
that sounds like one of those cryptic crossword clues I can never do
During the Ice Age, the Ice Sheets were so thick and extensive that sea level was about 100 m (328 ft) lower, give or take, at the so-called Last Glacial Maximum about 20,000 years ago, and vast lands were exposed. Including, but certainly not limited to: Doggerland in the North Sea, the entire floor of the Persian Gulf, the land bridge linking India and Sri Lanka, and a bigger land bridge between Oz and New Guinea. But a HUGE area was exposed in the area bounded by Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, the Sunda Shelf (or Sundaland). Slap bang on the equator, and fed by at least four major rivers, this surely would have been the most ideal place for an Ice Age Refugium.
According to today's Times, Red Wall voters regard SKS as being "off-the-scale posh". He's actually from a working-class background. I seem to recall they thought the same sort of thing about William Hague. Actually finding out the facts doesn't seem to interest them.
I've no wish to mark my return with a massive stramash, nor do I desire to humilate another PB local. but I can't - in all honesty - let this go by from @Richard_Tyndall
It is just so wrong, it is beyond ignorance
"There has been not a single domesticated bone fragment nor husk of domesticated cereal found at Gobleki Tepe. Out of all of the hundreds of thousands of bones found covering the whole site - not one"
The actual science:
"The high frequency of artifacts is unusual for contemporary sites in the region. Using an integrated approach of formal, experimental, and macro- / microscopical use-wear analyses we show that Neolithic people at Göbekli Tepe have produced standardized and efficient grinding tools, most of which have been used for the processing of cereals. Additional phytolith analysis confirms the massive presence of cereals at the site, filling the gap left by the weakly preserved charred macro-rests. "
The whole pivotal point of the Tas Tepeler, Gobekli included, is that they are situated in the very same place where wild grasses were turned into cereals round 9000-8000BC, and where wild animals became domesticated
"The Göbekli Tepe people of Anatolia were probably the first plant breeders on earth. There, they settled 12,000 years ago and selected einkorn wheat for their nutrition. About 6000 years later, this culture arrived in Europe."
Your problem is you don't actually understand what you are reading. None of the paper you are quoting actually disputes what I wrote. Yes they were grinding cereals at Gobekli Tepe. But they were not domesticating either the cereals nor the animals.
The site is remarkable because of this. But it is a million miles away from your ancient civilisations. No one working on the site seriously considers this is the remains of some advanced civilisation. It is only lunatics like you and Graham Hancock who believe that rubbish.
I like Maryport and all that West Cumbrian coast really. This is my local beach, for instance.
I love Whitehaven and Cockermouth too. I was at the latter's agricultural show a couple of weekends back - I love these! - where I met the local MP, Mark Jenkinson, and bent his ear about the Post Office.
This weekend we had our local agricultural show: it was the most glorious day so we spent it lolling about on the grass, picknicking and drinking until late in the evening and having a very jolly dejeuner sur l'herbe sort of day. Then walking back through the woods and fields to Broughton to continue the merriment.
I very nearly brought one of these home.
And this was the view on our walk home -
Also endorse @Algakirk's recommendation of Bragg's book: "Back in the Day". Outstanding. One of the last events I went to just before Covid was a talk by him in Ambleside (where, incidentally, I met Hazel Blears - who is lovely in real life) and he told us then about how he was writing this and how he was trying to approach it, to dig deep and recreate a vanished world.
According to today's Times, Red Wall voters regard SKS as being "off-the-scale posh". He's actually from a working-class background. I seem to recall they thought the same sort of thing about William Hague. Actually finding out the facts doesn't seem to interest them.
And yet they thought Bozo was a man of the people ! Disturbing. I find my tolerance of thick voters at an all time low .
its not posh as such ,its being establishment. Johnson was never seen as establishment ,KS is defo establishment (as was Hague) . WWC are suspicious of establishment (see the republican base in the US for instance) whether in government or general 'bosses'
If that is the case, (and you may well be right), then what the heck is the definition of "establishment"?
I've no wish to mark my return with a massive stramash, nor do I desire to humilate another PB local. but I can't - in all honesty - let this go by from @Richard_Tyndall
It is just so wrong, it is beyond ignorance
"There has been not a single domesticated bone fragment nor husk of domesticated cereal found at Gobleki Tepe. Out of all of the hundreds of thousands of bones found covering the whole site - not one"
The actual science:
"The high frequency of artifacts is unusual for contemporary sites in the region. Using an integrated approach of formal, experimental, and macro- / microscopical use-wear analyses we show that Neolithic people at Göbekli Tepe have produced standardized and efficient grinding tools, most of which have been used for the processing of cereals. Additional phytolith analysis confirms the massive presence of cereals at the site, filling the gap left by the weakly preserved charred macro-rests. "
The whole pivotal point of the Tas Tepeler, Gobekli included, is that they are situated in the very same place where wild grasses were turned into cereals round 9000-8000BC, and where wild animals became domesticated
"The Göbekli Tepe people of Anatolia were probably the first plant breeders on earth. There, they settled 12,000 years ago and selected einkorn wheat for their nutrition. About 6000 years later, this culture arrived in Europe."
Yes, now we have seen what has emerged from Kurdish Turkey, who can say they aren't other similar, confounding sites across the world, waiting to be discovered? Particularly underwater
One of the most exciting things about Tas Tepeler is that the older sites are MORE advanced than the younger sites. Gobekli Tepe might be the ENDpoint of an extraordinary civilisation, not its zenith. We just don't know. We need them to dig things up fast
Trouble is, the ethos of modern archaeology is to leave lots of stuff underground for a later, more sophisticated archaeology to sort out. While I can see the merits of that, morally, it leaves us - here, now - rather in the dark. And who is to say our descendants will be better at this?
Dig the stones up NOW!
Something I’ve not paid much attention to. I must do some reading on this, whoever’s right.
Begin with this Spectator article. It is the best summation
According to today's Times, Red Wall voters regard SKS as being "off-the-scale posh". He's actually from a working-class background. I seem to recall they thought the same sort of thing about William Hague. Actually finding out the facts doesn't seem to interest them.
And yet they thought Bozo was a man of the people ! Disturbing. I find my tolerance of thick voters at an all time low .
its not posh as such ,its being establishment. Johnson was never seen as establishment ,KS is defo establishment (as was Hague) . WWC are suspicious of establishment (see the republican base in the US for instance) whether in government or general 'bosses'
If that is the case, (and you may well be right), then what the heck is the definition of "establishment"?
According to today's Times, Red Wall voters regard SKS as being "off-the-scale posh". He's actually from a working-class background. I seem to recall they thought the same sort of thing about William Hague. Actually finding out the facts doesn't seem to interest them.
And yet they thought Bozo was a man of the people ! Disturbing. I find my tolerance of thick voters at an all time low .
its not posh as such ,its being establishment. Johnson was never seen as establishment ,KS is defo establishment (as was Hague) . WWC are suspicious of establishment (see the republican base in the US for instance) whether in government or general 'bosses'
If that is the case, (and you may well be right), then what the heck is the definition of "establishment"?
well its saying the right things , not upsetting the right people, being safe and guarded , pretending to care , being (too) smooth and slick ,being corporate . All the things bosses do basically. Boris/Farage - Posh ,private school but not establishment (hence effective and popular with WWC)
Anyway, before I condemn myself as an utter cad and a churl, I can genuinely say it is nice to be back after my PB holibobs
I definitely missed everyone. I even missed the chats abour tram networks. Sorta
*buys virtual round for the entire pub, from Messrs Smithson*
Chahz
Welcome home Leon 👍
..I know this super highway This bright familiar sun I guess that I'm the lucky one Who wrote that tired sea song Set on this peaceful shore You think you've heard this one before
Well the danger on the rocks is surely past Still I remain tied to the mast Could it be that I have found my home at last Home at last..
I've no wish to mark my return with a massive stramash, nor do I desire to humilate another PB local. but I can't - in all honesty - let this go by from @Richard_Tyndall
It is just so wrong, it is beyond ignorance
"There has been not a single domesticated bone fragment nor husk of domesticated cereal found at Gobleki Tepe. Out of all of the hundreds of thousands of bones found covering the whole site - not one"
The actual science:
"The high frequency of artifacts is unusual for contemporary sites in the region. Using an integrated approach of formal, experimental, and macro- / microscopical use-wear analyses we show that Neolithic people at Göbekli Tepe have produced standardized and efficient grinding tools, most of which have been used for the processing of cereals. Additional phytolith analysis confirms the massive presence of cereals at the site, filling the gap left by the weakly preserved charred macro-rests. "
The whole pivotal point of the Tas Tepeler, Gobekli included, is that they are situated in the very same place where wild grasses were turned into cereals round 9000-8000BC, and where wild animals became domesticated
"The Göbekli Tepe people of Anatolia were probably the first plant breeders on earth. There, they settled 12,000 years ago and selected einkorn wheat for their nutrition. About 6000 years later, this culture arrived in Europe."
Your problem is you don't actually understand what you are reading. None of the paper you are quoting actually disputes what I wrote. Yes they were grinding cereals at Gobekli Tepe. But they were not domesticating either the cereals nor the animals.
The site is remarkable because of this. But it is a million miles away from your ancient civilisations. No one working on the site seriously considers this is the remains of some advanced civilisation. It is only lunatics like you and Graham Hancock who believe that rubbish.
Maaaaate, stop
I actually personally know one of the authors of that paper, Jens Notroff, the second in command of the dig under the late Klaus Schmidt
I could get him on here to embarrass you. But I shall spare your blushes
You don't understand the site, you certainly don't understand its significance, nor the profound and startling implications of what has been unearthed in the last four or five digging seasons. You are an oil-man in Lincolnshire, I have been visiting Gobekli Tepe for two decades, so: meh, whatevs
I got no help from the “bank of mum and dad”. Does that make me unique on here?
My best friend was gifted a house in London, now worth around £3M, about ten years ago.
I got no help either.
Like most of my generation I got the joy of spending many years paying a landlord's mortgage, but am now in the fortunate position of owning my own home we bought last year.
I couldn't care less if I end up in negative equity, having bought at the peak of the market. If it means that more of my compatriots end up being able to save a deposit and buy their own home too, then I say bring it on.
People should be able to save a deposit from their own efforts in their 20s, not their 40s.
You see I used to be the same as you. With exactly that attitude to negative equity. Indeed personally I still am.
The trouble is that it wasn't about peple like you and me. We are the minority of mortgage holders. Last time this ht hard 1/3rd of all mortgage holders ended up in negative equity. 350,000 people lost their homes because they couldn't pay the mortgage and hundreds of thousands of others found themselves unable to move, even though they had to because of divorce or jobs or one of the myriad other reasons that people move house even when they don't want to.
Negative equity is meaningless if you don't have to move and can pay the mortgage. It is not meaningless for all those people - the overwhelming majority of whom will be first time buyers who have only just started paying down their mortgages - who have no choice but to move.
Which is worse?
350,000 losing their homes because they can't afford a mortgage?
Or millions never getting their homes in the first place because they can't afford a deposit?
I'm very sorry for anyone who loses their homes because they can't afford a mortgage. I'm equally sorry for anyone who loses their opportunity to get a home because they can't afford a deposit. They are both awful situations, but the problem is recent decades have meant there's millions not thousands of the latter.
People trapped not for years but for decades renting is every bit as awful as people being in negative equity.
But most of those people who lose their homes are the first time buyers. Those who have managed to scrape enough together over the years to get that deposit. Which they will lose along with everything else. You don't get it back again when they take your house away from you.
People like us who have been on the ladder for decades, unless we are really stupid, will never be in a position of negative equity. And as I said the other day, when negative equity comes along the market seizes up. People stop selling unless they absolutely have to. So there are even fewer houses on the market than ususal. Yes the price come sdown in theory but in reality for most people it might as well still be as high as it was because no one is selling those cheaper houes. (well apart from the banks selling off those 350,000 houses they reclaimed).
Meanwhile the builders stop building because they don't want to sell houses on the cheap. This is already happening right now even with the small drop we have seen in the last few months.
You consider the market seizing up for months or a year a problem as you're in the fortuitous problem that is all you had to face.
The average young adult today faces not months or years of waiting to be able to get a home, but decades. Most 39 year olds are still renting. I now own, but was renting on my 40th birthday, that is not atypical.
The market seizing for a few months or a year is not a problem. Needing to save more than a whole year's take home pay to pay for a deposit, is a much bigger problem.
Last time it was 4 years.
Not decades. Good.
So worst case scenario a 20-something can save for a couple of years to get 10% of a much lower multiple, then buy when its not ceased up anymore. Rather than face two decades of renting as is the norm currently.
What's the objection to that?
The 350,000 buyers who just did that and then lost it all.
Are not trumped by the millions more tenants who currently spend decades paying someone else's mortgage because they can't afford their own.
The average young adult today faces two decades paying someone else's mortgage because they can't afford a deposit without aid from the bank of mum and dad. When a 10% deposit today means more than a year's take home pay, rather than about 2 months pay in the past, then how are you supposed to afford that?
Spend two decades paying someone else's mortgage rather than your own, you've essentially paid off a house, just not in your own name. You've bought a home for someone else essentially.
Its tragic if people lose a home they've bought. Its every bit as tragic if people can't buy one in the first place because deposits are out of their reach without support from someone else as prices are too high.
It certainly wasn't 2 months pay when I bought my first house in 1989.
Which is why first time buyers went up in the 1990s versus 1989, because it was about that then.
Which is easier? Saving 10% of 2-3x your income, or saving 10% of 6-8x your income?
If you only need to save 10% of 2x your income to get on the ladder then you can do that much more viably.
My income was £7,000 a year. My house cost £35,000.
According to today's Times, Red Wall voters regard SKS as being "off-the-scale posh". He's actually from a working-class background. I seem to recall they thought the same sort of thing about William Hague. Actually finding out the facts doesn't seem to interest them.
And yet they thought Bozo was a man of the people ! Disturbing. I find my tolerance of thick voters at an all time low .
Establishment vs non-establishment
DPP lawyer is a man of The System.
Self made working class hero Boris plays well against silver-spoon Starmer. Rishi is also a self -made man. He married well.
Both Rishi and Starmer are The Right Sort and Rishi was (and Starmer will be) welcomed by the the large number of senior permanent officials, leaders of Quangos, charities etc who make up the permanent apparatus of government.
Boris wasn’t.
It’s nothing to do with wealth. Corbyn, an MP for decades and from a privileged, monied, background was another Outsider.
According to today's Times, Red Wall voters regard SKS as being "off-the-scale posh". He's actually from a working-class background. I seem to recall they thought the same sort of thing about William Hague. Actually finding out the facts doesn't seem to interest them.
And yet they thought Bozo was a man of the people ! Disturbing. I find my tolerance of thick voters at an all time low .
its not posh as such ,its being establishment. Johnson was never seen as establishment ,KS is defo establishment (as was Hague) . WWC are suspicious of establishment (see the republican base in the US for instance) whether in government or general 'bosses'
If that is the case, (and you may well be right), then what the heck is the definition of "establishment"?
well its saying the right things , not upsetting the right people, being safe and guarded , pretending to care , being (too) smooth and slick ,being corporate . All the things bosses do basically. Boris/Farage - Posh ,private school but not establishment (hence effective and popular with WWC)
It’s also about sharing the Common Purpose (ha!) of the group.
According to today's Times, Red Wall voters regard SKS as being "off-the-scale posh". He's actually from a working-class background. I seem to recall they thought the same sort of thing about William Hague. Actually finding out the facts doesn't seem to interest them.
And yet they thought Bozo was a man of the people ! Disturbing. I find my tolerance of thick voters at an all time low .
Establishment vs non-establishment
DPP lawyer is a man of The System.
Self made working class hero Boris plays well against silver-spoon Starmer. Rishi is also a self -made man. He married well.
Both Rishi and Starmer are The Right Sort and Rishi was (and Starmer will be) welcomed by the the large number of senior permanent officials, leaders of Quangos, charities etc who make up the permanent apparatus of government.
Boris wasn’t.
It’s nothing to do with wealth. Corbyn, an MP for decades and from a privileged, monied, background was another Outsider.
Corbyn was simply Billy no mates. Johnson the outsider was just more smoke and mirrors nonsense. He was as inside as one could get. Boris the maverick outsider was simply an excuse for his bad behaviour.
Off topic but i love a bit of arrogance in sport people where they can back it up - For instance just loved Ronnie O Sullivan a few years back asking the ref what the prize was for a 147 when he had just potted one red (he then went on to do a reluctant 147 when told there was not a big prize) .
Saw another example last night in the athletics where in the 5000m the norwegian Ingebritsten was a couple of metres behind the leading guy coming into the home straight but took time to look behind him obviously thinking he could overtake the leader no bother but just checking nothing gonna surprise him from behind. He then caught the leader with a metre to go to the line . Class !
It has recently re-emerged. It is known as "Skinny Bob"
There are many weird things about it. eg it is one of four or five vids posted by a guy named "Ivan0135" in 2011. Ivan posted this then never posted again. If it is a fake -surely it is a fake - it is quite brilliant (esp for 2011). The old time clicking overlay is tiresome and bogus (and proved to be so), but the underlying footage is still deeply impressive. The blinking!
It is now the subject of much wild discussion. If it is a hoax (my guess) how did they do it? Consensus is it would have taken a serious professional in Hollywood, using puppets and CGI perhaps in combo, and with a lot of money
According to today's Times, Red Wall voters regard SKS as being "off-the-scale posh". He's actually from a working-class background. I seem to recall they thought the same sort of thing about William Hague. Actually finding out the facts doesn't seem to interest them.
I like Maryport and all that West Cumbrian coast really. This is my local beach, for instance.
I love Whitehaven and Cockermouth too. I was at the latter's agricultural show a couple of weekends back - I love these! - where I met the local MP, Mark Jenkinson, and bent his ear about the Post Office.
This weekend we had our local agricultural show: it was the most glorious day so we spent it lolling about on the grass, picknicking and drinking until late in the evening and having a very jolly dejeuner sur l'herbe sort of day. Then walking back through the woods and fields to Broughton to continue the merriment.
I very nearly brought one of these home.
And this was the view on our walk home -
Also endorse @Algakirk's recommendation of Bragg's book: "Back in the Day". Outstanding. One of the last events I went to just before Covid was a talk by him in Ambleside (where, incidentally, I met Hazel Blears - who is lovely in real life) and he told us then about how he was writing this and how he was trying to approach it, to dig deep and recreate a vanished world.
It has recently re-emerged. It is known as "Skinny Bob"
There are many weird things about it. eg it is one of four or five vids posted by a guy named "Ivan0135" in 2011. Ivan posted this then never posted again. If it is a fake -surely it is a fake - it is quite brilliant (esp for 2011). The old time clicking overlay is tiresome and bogus (and proved to be so), but the underlying footage is still deeply impressive. The blinking!
It is now the subject of much wild discussion. If it is a hoax (my guess) how did they do it? Consensus is it would have taken a serious professional in Hollywood, using puppets and CGI perhaps in combo, and with a lot of money
Why make such an elaborate hoax but then, apparently, never profit from it?
For the sport of it? I mean back in the days when the BBC had a sense of humour still they did some hoaxes themselves -including a staged fight on Grandstand
I like Maryport and all that West Cumbrian coast really. This is my local beach, for instance.
I love Whitehaven and Cockermouth too. I was at the latter's agricultural show a couple of weekends back - I love these! - where I met the local MP, Mark Jenkinson, and bent his ear about the Post Office.
This weekend we had our local agricultural show: it was the most glorious day so we spent it lolling about on the grass, picknicking and drinking until late in the evening and having a very jolly dejeuner sur l'herbe sort of day. Then walking back through the woods and fields to Broughton to continue the merriment.
I very nearly brought one of these home.
And this was the view on our walk home -
Also endorse @Algakirk's recommendation of Bragg's book: "Back in the Day". Outstanding. One of the last events I went to just before Covid was a talk by him in Ambleside (where, incidentally, I met Hazel Blears - who is lovely in real life) and he told us then about how he was writing this and how he was trying to approach it, to dig deep and recreate a vanished world.
Was that Lowick show?
No - the Millom and Broughton show. In a couple of weeks there's the Westmorland County Show, which is the big one.
I've no wish to mark my return with a massive stramash, nor do I desire to humilate another PB local. but I can't - in all honesty - let this go by from @Richard_Tyndall
It is just so wrong, it is beyond ignorance
"There has been not a single domesticated bone fragment nor husk of domesticated cereal found at Gobleki Tepe. Out of all of the hundreds of thousands of bones found covering the whole site - not one"
The actual science:
"The high frequency of artifacts is unusual for contemporary sites in the region. Using an integrated approach of formal, experimental, and macro- / microscopical use-wear analyses we show that Neolithic people at Göbekli Tepe have produced standardized and efficient grinding tools, most of which have been used for the processing of cereals. Additional phytolith analysis confirms the massive presence of cereals at the site, filling the gap left by the weakly preserved charred macro-rests. "
The whole pivotal point of the Tas Tepeler, Gobekli included, is that they are situated in the very same place where wild grasses were turned into cereals round 9000-8000BC, and where wild animals became domesticated
"The Göbekli Tepe people of Anatolia were probably the first plant breeders on earth. There, they settled 12,000 years ago and selected einkorn wheat for their nutrition. About 6000 years later, this culture arrived in Europe."
Your problem is you don't actually understand what you are reading. None of the paper you are quoting actually disputes what I wrote. Yes they were grinding cereals at Gobekli Tepe. But they were not domesticating either the cereals nor the animals.
The site is remarkable because of this. But it is a million miles away from your ancient civilisations. No one working on the site seriously considers this is the remains of some advanced civilisation. It is only lunatics like you and Graham Hancock who believe that rubbish.
Maaaaate, stop
I actually personally know one of the authors of that paper, Jens Notroff, the second in command of the dig under the late Klaus Schmidt
I could get him on here to embarrass you. But I shall spare your blushes
You don't understand the site, you certainly don't understand its significance, nor the profound and startling implications of what has been unearthed in the last four or five digging seasons. You are an oil-man in Lincolnshire, I have been visiting Gobekli Tepe for two decades, so: meh, whatevs
Go on then. Get Jens on here and get him to tell us what he thinks of Graham Hancock's theories about his site and the whole advanced ancient civilisation idea.
In fact I can tell you because he himself has referred to it as "pseudoarchaeology in scientific disguise".
Meanwhile I can dig up a couple of people from the Northern Syrian pre-ceramic Neolithic project I have been helping out for the last decade or so and they can give you their opinion of him as well.
It has recently re-emerged. It is known as "Skinny Bob"
There are many weird things about it. eg it is one of four or five vids posted by a guy named "Ivan0135" in 2011. Ivan posted this then never posted again. If it is a fake -surely it is a fake - it is quite brilliant (esp for 2011). The old time clicking overlay is tiresome and bogus (and proved to be so), but the underlying footage is still deeply impressive. The blinking!
It is now the subject of much wild discussion. If it is a hoax (my guess) how did they do it? Consensus is it would have taken a serious professional in Hollywood, using puppets and CGI perhaps in combo, and with a lot of money
Why make such an elaborate hoax but then, apparently, never profit from it?
For the sport of it? I mean back in the days when the BBC had a sense of humour still they did some hoaxes themselves -including a staged fight on Grandstand
However most hoaxers eventually come forward and claim the glory. There is actually a large cash prize - $30k I believe - waiting for the first person to uncover the truth behind these "alien" vids. No one has yet claimed it
Here is a debate, apparently between Hollywood pros, discussing how difficult it might be to make this fake in 2011
Bloomberg News (via Seattle Times) - Trump’s standing drops in poll taken after debate and Georgia booking
Donald Trump’s standing in the Republican presidential primary race dropped slightly in a poll taken after he skipped his party’s first debate and was booked in a Georgia jail on felony charges, although he remains the frontrunner.
In a survey taken on Friday and Saturday by Emerson College Polling, Trump had the support of 50% of Republican primary voters, down six percentage points from a pre-debate survey by the same pollster.
The poll also showed slight increases for several other candidates, with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis up two points to 12%, former Vice President Mike Pence up four points to 7% and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley up five points to 7%.
Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, meantime, dropped one point to 9% despite drawing attention for his debate performance.
“While Trump saw a slight dip in support, the question from this poll is whether this is a blip for Trump or if the other Republican candidates will be able to rally enough support to be competitive for the caucus and primary season,” said Emerson Executive Director Spencer Kimball.
The poll of 1,000 registered voters nationwide was conducted Aug. 25-26. It has a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.
I've no wish to mark my return with a massive stramash, nor do I desire to humilate another PB local. but I can't - in all honesty - let this go by from @Richard_Tyndall
It is just so wrong, it is beyond ignorance
"There has been not a single domesticated bone fragment nor husk of domesticated cereal found at Gobleki Tepe. Out of all of the hundreds of thousands of bones found covering the whole site - not one"
The actual science:
"The high frequency of artifacts is unusual for contemporary sites in the region. Using an integrated approach of formal, experimental, and macro- / microscopical use-wear analyses we show that Neolithic people at Göbekli Tepe have produced standardized and efficient grinding tools, most of which have been used for the processing of cereals. Additional phytolith analysis confirms the massive presence of cereals at the site, filling the gap left by the weakly preserved charred macro-rests. "
The whole pivotal point of the Tas Tepeler, Gobekli included, is that they are situated in the very same place where wild grasses were turned into cereals round 9000-8000BC, and where wild animals became domesticated
"The Göbekli Tepe people of Anatolia were probably the first plant breeders on earth. There, they settled 12,000 years ago and selected einkorn wheat for their nutrition. About 6000 years later, this culture arrived in Europe."
Your problem is you don't actually understand what you are reading. None of the paper you are quoting actually disputes what I wrote. Yes they were grinding cereals at Gobekli Tepe. But they were not domesticating either the cereals nor the animals.
The site is remarkable because of this. But it is a million miles away from your ancient civilisations. No one working on the site seriously considers this is the remains of some advanced civilisation. It is only lunatics like you and Graham Hancock who believe that rubbish.
Maaaaate, stop
I actually personally know one of the authors of that paper, Jens Notroff, the second in command of the dig under the late Klaus Schmidt
I could get him on here to embarrass you. But I shall spare your blushes
You don't understand the site, you certainly don't understand its significance, nor the profound and startling implications of what has been unearthed in the last four or five digging seasons. You are an oil-man in Lincolnshire, I have been visiting Gobekli Tepe for two decades, so: meh, whatevs
Go on then. Get Jens on here and get him to tell us what he thinks of Graham Hancock's theories about his site and the whole advanced ancient civilisation idea.
In fact I can tell you because he himself has referred to it as "pseudoarchaeology in scientific disguise".
Meanwhile I can dig up a couple of people from the Northern Syrian pre-ceramic Neolithic project I have been helping out for the last decade or so and they can give you their opinion of him as well.
This is like me lecturing you on hydrocarbon extraction in hostile oceanic environments. Honestly
I've got drunk with these archeologists, many of them, over decades. IN GOBEKLI TEPE/SANLIURFA. You haven't done that, have you? You're a "member of a Facebook group"
Give over, My Tyndall
BTW I am not saying Hancock's overall thesis is right. It's surely bonkers, and he makes insane non sequitur leaps. But is an unknown civilisation, buried since the Ice Age, apparently emerging near Dyarbakir, Anatolia? Absolutely, yes it is. Hancock was right on that specific point, and his doubters were wrong
I've no wish to mark my return with a massive stramash, nor do I desire to humilate another PB local. but I can't - in all honesty - let this go by from @Richard_Tyndall
It is just so wrong, it is beyond ignorance
"There has been not a single domesticated bone fragment nor husk of domesticated cereal found at Gobleki Tepe. Out of all of the hundreds of thousands of bones found covering the whole site - not one"
The actual science:
"The high frequency of artifacts is unusual for contemporary sites in the region. Using an integrated approach of formal, experimental, and macro- / microscopical use-wear analyses we show that Neolithic people at Göbekli Tepe have produced standardized and efficient grinding tools, most of which have been used for the processing of cereals. Additional phytolith analysis confirms the massive presence of cereals at the site, filling the gap left by the weakly preserved charred macro-rests. "
The whole pivotal point of the Tas Tepeler, Gobekli included, is that they are situated in the very same place where wild grasses were turned into cereals round 9000-8000BC, and where wild animals became domesticated
"The Göbekli Tepe people of Anatolia were probably the first plant breeders on earth. There, they settled 12,000 years ago and selected einkorn wheat for their nutrition. About 6000 years later, this culture arrived in Europe."
Your problem is you don't actually understand what you are reading. None of the paper you are quoting actually disputes what I wrote. Yes they were grinding cereals at Gobekli Tepe. But they were not domesticating either the cereals nor the animals.
The site is remarkable because of this. But it is a million miles away from your ancient civilisations. No one working on the site seriously considers this is the remains of some advanced civilisation. It is only lunatics like you and Graham Hancock who believe that rubbish.
Maaaaate, stop
I actually personally know one of the authors of that paper, Jens Notroff, the second in command of the dig under the late Klaus Schmidt
I could get him on here to embarrass you. But I shall spare your blushes
You don't understand the site, you certainly don't understand its significance, nor the profound and startling implications of what has been unearthed in the last four or five digging seasons. You are an oil-man in Lincolnshire, I have been visiting Gobekli Tepe for two decades, so: meh, whatevs
Go on then. Get Jens on here and get him to tell us what he thinks of Graham Hancock's theories about his site and the whole advanced ancient civilisation idea.
In fact I can tell you because he himself has referred to it as "pseudoarchaeology in scientific disguise".
Meanwhile I can dig up a couple of people from the Northern Syrian pre-ceramic Neolithic project I have been helping out for the last decade or so and they can give you their opinion of him as well.
Only possible if Corbyn splits the Lab vote, and the Tory limps home.
I think though that there is something true in the backlash against the incumbent. It was true of Lab in Leicester and Slough in the Locals, but is a worldwide phenomenon. Ours isn't the only country that seems to be in decline, and where nothing works.
According to today's Times, Red Wall voters regard SKS as being "off-the-scale posh". He's actually from a working-class background. I seem to recall they thought the same sort of thing about William Hague. Actually finding out the facts doesn't seem to interest them.
And yet they thought Bozo was a man of the people ! Disturbing. I find my tolerance of thick voters at an all time low .
its not posh as such ,its being establishment. Johnson was never seen as establishment ,KS is defo establishment (as was Hague) . WWC are suspicious of establishment (see the republican base in the US for instance) whether in government or general 'bosses'
If that is the case, (and you may well be right), then what the heck is the definition of "establishment"?
well its saying the right things , not upsetting the right people, being safe and guarded , pretending to care , being (too) smooth and slick ,being corporate . All the things bosses do basically. Boris/Farage - Posh ,private school but not establishment (hence effective and popular with WWC)
That's interesting. Never thought of it like that before. Keep on explaining me to myself.
Only possible if Corbyn splits the Lab vote, and the Tory limps home.
I think though that there is something true in the backlash against the incumbent. It was true of Lab in Leicester and Slough in the Locals, but is a worldwide phenomenon. Ours isn't the only country that seems to be in decline, and where nothing works.
I've no wish to mark my return with a massive stramash, nor do I desire to humilate another PB local. but I can't - in all honesty - let this go by from @Richard_Tyndall
It is just so wrong, it is beyond ignorance
"There has been not a single domesticated bone fragment nor husk of domesticated cereal found at Gobleki Tepe. Out of all of the hundreds of thousands of bones found covering the whole site - not one"
The actual science:
"The high frequency of artifacts is unusual for contemporary sites in the region. Using an integrated approach of formal, experimental, and macro- / microscopical use-wear analyses we show that Neolithic people at Göbekli Tepe have produced standardized and efficient grinding tools, most of which have been used for the processing of cereals. Additional phytolith analysis confirms the massive presence of cereals at the site, filling the gap left by the weakly preserved charred macro-rests. "
The whole pivotal point of the Tas Tepeler, Gobekli included, is that they are situated in the very same place where wild grasses were turned into cereals round 9000-8000BC, and where wild animals became domesticated
"The Göbekli Tepe people of Anatolia were probably the first plant breeders on earth. There, they settled 12,000 years ago and selected einkorn wheat for their nutrition. About 6000 years later, this culture arrived in Europe."
According to today's Times, Red Wall voters regard SKS as being "off-the-scale posh". He's actually from a working-class background. I seem to recall they thought the same sort of thing about William Hague. Actually finding out the facts doesn't seem to interest them.
And yet they thought Bozo was a man of the people ! Disturbing. I find my tolerance of thick voters at an all time low .
its not posh as such ,its being establishment. Johnson was never seen as establishment ,KS is defo establishment (as was Hague) . WWC are suspicious of establishment (see the republican base in the US for instance) whether in government or general 'bosses'
If that is the case, (and you may well be right), then what the heck is the definition of "establishment"?
well its saying the right things , not upsetting the right people, being safe and guarded , pretending to care , being (too) smooth and slick ,being corporate . All the things bosses do basically. Boris/Farage - Posh ,private school but not establishment (hence effective and popular with WWC)
I mostly agree with the definition, but I think despite being unconventional in style Boris cannot really escape being pretty darn establishment.
Boris was not really an outsider in the way a Farage type was. He had a conventional entry into politics, he had a conventional kind of career as an MP, he wasn't some toiling backbencher or rebel no one ever thought would go for a major role, and it was often noted that despite how his opponents criticised him for being so he really wasn't all that extreme in most of his policy positions either, nor that unconventional.
It can't be denied he was perceived differently in many ways, hence the broader appeal he had, and that's not nothing especially when noting Sunak just cannot persuade peopel of the same thing for all sorts of reasons, but I just cannot see how he can avoid an establishment label just because he had that broader appeal (Brexit does not count, despite being outnumbered it was a position held by hundreds of MPs at various times, it had not been a fringe view for quite some time, it was an internal war as much as anything).
Heck, Starmer seems to be in part getting supprot (or at least acceptance) from the same group in part because he is so much more establishment seeming that the last chap - workmanlike if not slick, definitely safe and guarded, a knight of the realm, not wanting to upset people.
I've no wish to mark my return with a massive stramash, nor do I desire to humilate another PB local. but I can't - in all honesty - let this go by from @Richard_Tyndall
It is just so wrong, it is beyond ignorance
"There has been not a single domesticated bone fragment nor husk of domesticated cereal found at Gobleki Tepe. Out of all of the hundreds of thousands of bones found covering the whole site - not one"
The actual science:
"The high frequency of artifacts is unusual for contemporary sites in the region. Using an integrated approach of formal, experimental, and macro- / microscopical use-wear analyses we show that Neolithic people at Göbekli Tepe have produced standardized and efficient grinding tools, most of which have been used for the processing of cereals. Additional phytolith analysis confirms the massive presence of cereals at the site, filling the gap left by the weakly preserved charred macro-rests. "
The whole pivotal point of the Tas Tepeler, Gobekli included, is that they are situated in the very same place where wild grasses were turned into cereals round 9000-8000BC, and where wild animals became domesticated
"The Göbekli Tepe people of Anatolia were probably the first plant breeders on earth. There, they settled 12,000 years ago and selected einkorn wheat for their nutrition. About 6000 years later, this culture arrived in Europe."
Your problem is you don't actually understand what you are reading. None of the paper you are quoting actually disputes what I wrote. Yes they were grinding cereals at Gobekli Tepe. But they were not domesticating either the cereals nor the animals.
The site is remarkable because of this. But it is a million miles away from your ancient civilisations. No one working on the site seriously considers this is the remains of some advanced civilisation. It is only lunatics like you and Graham Hancock who believe that rubbish.
Maaaaate, stop
I actually personally know one of the authors of that paper, Jens Notroff, the second in command of the dig under the late Klaus Schmidt
I could get him on here to embarrass you. But I shall spare your blushes
You don't understand the site, you certainly don't understand its significance, nor the profound and startling implications of what has been unearthed in the last four or five digging seasons. You are an oil-man in Lincolnshire, I have been visiting Gobekli Tepe for two decades, so: meh, whatevs
Go on then. Get Jens on here and get him to tell us what he thinks of Graham Hancock's theories about his site and the whole advanced ancient civilisation idea.
In fact I can tell you because he himself has referred to it as "pseudoarchaeology in scientific disguise".
Meanwhile I can dig up a couple of people from the Northern Syrian pre-ceramic Neolithic project I have been helping out for the last decade or so and they can give you their opinion of him as well.
"You are an oil-man in Lincolnshire"
Isn't Richard also an archaeologist?
Yes I am but don't tell Leon that, it would spoil his fun
And I do work with the Northern Syria Early Neolithic project. I was fortunate enough about a decade ago to acquire the library of Sir Max Mallowan including many of his field notebooks of his work in Northern Syria. This resulted in me making contacts with the archaeologists working there and I have done the occasional bits of research work over the years. Although there was a long hiatus during the ISIS takeover.
Some of my collection is also on display at the Vessuna Roman Museum in Perigueux and I have been providing research materials on early cylinder seals to the Lebanese author Hooda Shawa.
But apparently I am just a dumb oilman who knows nothing compared to a tourist who likes a drink.
I got no help from the “bank of mum and dad”. Does that make me unique on here?
My best friend was gifted a house in London, now worth around £3M, about ten years ago.
I got no help either.
Like most of my generation I got the joy of spending many years paying a landlord's mortgage, but am now in the fortunate position of owning my own home we bought last year.
I couldn't care less if I end up in negative equity, having bought at the peak of the market. If it means that more of my compatriots end up being able to save a deposit and buy their own home too, then I say bring it on.
People should be able to save a deposit from their own efforts in their 20s, not their 40s.
You see I used to be the same as you. With exactly that attitude to negative equity. Indeed personally I still am.
The trouble is that it wasn't about peple like you and me. We are the minority of mortgage holders. Last time this ht hard 1/3rd of all mortgage holders ended up in negative equity. 350,000 people lost their homes because they couldn't pay the mortgage and hundreds of thousands of others found themselves unable to move, even though they had to because of divorce or jobs or one of the myriad other reasons that people move house even when they don't want to.
Negative equity is meaningless if you don't have to move and can pay the mortgage. It is not meaningless for all those people - the overwhelming majority of whom will be first time buyers who have only just started paying down their mortgages - who have no choice but to move.
Which is worse?
350,000 losing their homes because they can't afford a mortgage?
Or millions never getting their homes in the first place because they can't afford a deposit?
I'm very sorry for anyone who loses their homes because they can't afford a mortgage. I'm equally sorry for anyone who loses their opportunity to get a home because they can't afford a deposit. They are both awful situations, but the problem is recent decades have meant there's millions not thousands of the latter.
People trapped not for years but for decades renting is every bit as awful as people being in negative equity.
But most of those people who lose their homes are the first time buyers. Those who have managed to scrape enough together over the years to get that deposit. Which they will lose along with everything else. You don't get it back again when they take your house away from you.
People like us who have been on the ladder for decades, unless we are really stupid, will never be in a position of negative equity. And as I said the other day, when negative equity comes along the market seizes up. People stop selling unless they absolutely have to. So there are even fewer houses on the market than ususal. Yes the price come sdown in theory but in reality for most people it might as well still be as high as it was because no one is selling those cheaper houes. (well apart from the banks selling off those 350,000 houses they reclaimed).
Meanwhile the builders stop building because they don't want to sell houses on the cheap. This is already happening right now even with the small drop we have seen in the last few months.
You consider the market seizing up for months or a year a problem as you're in the fortuitous problem that is all you had to face.
The average young adult today faces not months or years of waiting to be able to get a home, but decades. Most 39 year olds are still renting. I now own, but was renting on my 40th birthday, that is not atypical.
The market seizing for a few months or a year is not a problem. Needing to save more than a whole year's take home pay to pay for a deposit, is a much bigger problem.
Last time it was 4 years.
Not decades. Good.
So worst case scenario a 20-something can save for a couple of years to get 10% of a much lower multiple, then buy when its not ceased up anymore. Rather than face two decades of renting as is the norm currently.
What's the objection to that?
The 350,000 buyers who just did that and then lost it all.
Are not trumped by the millions more tenants who currently spend decades paying someone else's mortgage because they can't afford their own.
The average young adult today faces two decades paying someone else's mortgage because they can't afford a deposit without aid from the bank of mum and dad. When a 10% deposit today means more than a year's take home pay, rather than about 2 months pay in the past, then how are you supposed to afford that?
Spend two decades paying someone else's mortgage rather than your own, you've essentially paid off a house, just not in your own name. You've bought a home for someone else essentially.
Its tragic if people lose a home they've bought. Its every bit as tragic if people can't buy one in the first place because deposits are out of their reach without support from someone else as prices are too high.
It certainly wasn't 2 months pay when I bought my first house in 1989.
Which is why first time buyers went up in the 1990s versus 1989, because it was about that then.
Which is easier? Saving 10% of 2-3x your income, or saving 10% of 6-8x your income?
If you only need to save 10% of 2x your income to get on the ladder then you can do that much more viably.
My income was £7,000 a year. My house cost £35,000.
Pretty typical, homes in 1989 reached a 4-5x multiple.
Thankfully for the rest of the country that home would presumably have been worth less a few years later. Meaning an alternate you a few years later would have needed a much smaller deposit. Which as we've discussed a few times is how even after the sale of council houses in the 80s, by the end of the 90s the home ownership rates were even higher than the end of the 80s, because affordability improved, something that has been reversed this century with predictable and catastrophic results for generations of people doomed to decades not years of renting as a result.
Unfortunately for the country, today that home would be many hundreds of thousands of pounds - and wages have quite simply not kept track.
Yes losing a home, or losing your equity is bad.
Dooming millions to a life of penury paying someone else's mortgage in a broken system because there's no way to reach a deposit without 'mum and dad' or decades saving is simply worse than that.
I wonder how they perceived Tony Blair. I am not sure this "posh" thing is as important as they say.
I don't think it's something to which a hard and fast rule can be attached, it's more nebulous and gut feeling.
If people generally like (or at least do not dislike) someone they will find all manner of reasons to excuse that which they dislike in another person, up to and including denying they are what they are.
Boris was posh but people never really minded. Cameron was posh and he got some stick for it, but they didn't care that much in the circumstances, and I believe people perceived him as more centrist than he actually was. Sunak comes across as posh despite his early background, and people don't really like it, but that's more about the situation and his place in it, and inability to overcome any negative perception. If the economy was doing gangbusters and Corbyn was on the other side Sunak might still struggle, but he'd find fewer people cared he was posh.
I've no wish to mark my return with a massive stramash, nor do I desire to humilate another PB local. but I can't - in all honesty - let this go by from @Richard_Tyndall
It is just so wrong, it is beyond ignorance
"There has been not a single domesticated bone fragment nor husk of domesticated cereal found at Gobleki Tepe. Out of all of the hundreds of thousands of bones found covering the whole site - not one"
The actual science:
"The high frequency of artifacts is unusual for contemporary sites in the region. Using an integrated approach of formal, experimental, and macro- / microscopical use-wear analyses we show that Neolithic people at Göbekli Tepe have produced standardized and efficient grinding tools, most of which have been used for the processing of cereals. Additional phytolith analysis confirms the massive presence of cereals at the site, filling the gap left by the weakly preserved charred macro-rests. "
The whole pivotal point of the Tas Tepeler, Gobekli included, is that they are situated in the very same place where wild grasses were turned into cereals round 9000-8000BC, and where wild animals became domesticated
"The Göbekli Tepe people of Anatolia were probably the first plant breeders on earth. There, they settled 12,000 years ago and selected einkorn wheat for their nutrition. About 6000 years later, this culture arrived in Europe."
Your problem is you don't actually understand what you are reading. None of the paper you are quoting actually disputes what I wrote. Yes they were grinding cereals at Gobekli Tepe. But they were not domesticating either the cereals nor the animals.
The site is remarkable because of this. But it is a million miles away from your ancient civilisations. No one working on the site seriously considers this is the remains of some advanced civilisation. It is only lunatics like you and Graham Hancock who believe that rubbish.
Maaaaate, stop
I actually personally know one of the authors of that paper, Jens Notroff, the second in command of the dig under the late Klaus Schmidt
I could get him on here to embarrass you. But I shall spare your blushes
You don't understand the site, you certainly don't understand its significance, nor the profound and startling implications of what has been unearthed in the last four or five digging seasons. You are an oil-man in Lincolnshire, I have been visiting Gobekli Tepe for two decades, so: meh, whatevs
Go on then. Get Jens on here and get him to tell us what he thinks of Graham Hancock's theories about his site and the whole advanced ancient civilisation idea.
In fact I can tell you because he himself has referred to it as "pseudoarchaeology in scientific disguise".
Meanwhile I can dig up a couple of people from the Northern Syrian pre-ceramic Neolithic project I have been helping out for the last decade or so and they can give you their opinion of him as well.
"You are an oil-man in Lincolnshire"
Isn't Richard also an archaeologist?
Yes I am but don't tell Leon that, it would spoil his fun
And I do work with the Northern Syria Early Neolithic project. I was fortunate enough about a decade ago to acquire the library of Sir Max Mallowan including many of his field notebooks of his work in Northern Syria. This resulted in me making contacts with the archaeologists working there and I have done the occasional bits of research work over the years. Although there was a long hiatus during the ISIS takeover.
Some of my collection is also on display at the Vessuna Roman Museum in Perigueux and I have been providing research materials on early cylinder seals to the Lebanese author Hooda Shawa.
But apparently I am just a dumb oilman who knows nothing compared to a tourist who likes a drink.
People should respect oilmen anyway, I've seen Armageddon, those dudes are amazingly versatile.
Telegraph says that SKS should stop the ULEZ rollout.
How on Earth would he do that? Are they saying SKS is now the PM in which case sign me right up.
More importantly, he's got about half an hour to do it.
Have the Conservatives gamed out the next bit? It's one thing to promise to Stop Something. It's another to make that promise when you can't actually keep it (see also: boats), and yet another to make it an issue when it's likely to die a death pretty quickly.
After all, having gone to the trouble of becoming ULEZ compliant, people aren't going to want yo switch back, are they?
I've no wish to mark my return with a massive stramash, nor do I desire to humilate another PB local. but I can't - in all honesty - let this go by from @Richard_Tyndall
It is just so wrong, it is beyond ignorance
"There has been not a single domesticated bone fragment nor husk of domesticated cereal found at Gobleki Tepe. Out of all of the hundreds of thousands of bones found covering the whole site - not one"
The actual science:
"The high frequency of artifacts is unusual for contemporary sites in the region. Using an integrated approach of formal, experimental, and macro- / microscopical use-wear analyses we show that Neolithic people at Göbekli Tepe have produced standardized and efficient grinding tools, most of which have been used for the processing of cereals. Additional phytolith analysis confirms the massive presence of cereals at the site, filling the gap left by the weakly preserved charred macro-rests. "
The whole pivotal point of the Tas Tepeler, Gobekli included, is that they are situated in the very same place where wild grasses were turned into cereals round 9000-8000BC, and where wild animals became domesticated
"The Göbekli Tepe people of Anatolia were probably the first plant breeders on earth. There, they settled 12,000 years ago and selected einkorn wheat for their nutrition. About 6000 years later, this culture arrived in Europe."
Your problem is you don't actually understand what you are reading. None of the paper you are quoting actually disputes what I wrote. Yes they were grinding cereals at Gobekli Tepe. But they were not domesticating either the cereals nor the animals.
The site is remarkable because of this. But it is a million miles away from your ancient civilisations. No one working on the site seriously considers this is the remains of some advanced civilisation. It is only lunatics like you and Graham Hancock who believe that rubbish.
Maaaaate, stop
I actually personally know one of the authors of that paper, Jens Notroff, the second in command of the dig under the late Klaus Schmidt
I could get him on here to embarrass you. But I shall spare your blushes
You don't understand the site, you certainly don't understand its significance, nor the profound and startling implications of what has been unearthed in the last four or five digging seasons. You are an oil-man in Lincolnshire, I have been visiting Gobekli Tepe for two decades, so: meh, whatevs
Go on then. Get Jens on here and get him to tell us what he thinks of Graham Hancock's theories about his site and the whole advanced ancient civilisation idea.
In fact I can tell you because he himself has referred to it as "pseudoarchaeology in scientific disguise".
Meanwhile I can dig up a couple of people from the Northern Syrian pre-ceramic Neolithic project I have been helping out for the last decade or so and they can give you their opinion of him as well.
This is like me lecturing you on hydrocarbon extraction in hostile oceanic environments. Honestly
I've got drunk with these archeologists, many of them, over decades. IN GOBEKLI TEPE/SANLIURFA. You haven't done that, have you? You're a "member of a Facebook group"
Give over, My Tyndall
BTW I am not saying Hancock's overall thesis is right. It's surely bonkers, and he makes insane non sequitur leaps. But is an unknown civilisation, buried since the Ice Age, apparently emerging near Dyarbakir, Anatolia? Absolutely, yes it is. Hancock was right on that specific point, and his doubters were wrong
FYI Urfa, nearby and with a population of 600,000, does not have a decent tram system.
Indeed, Trolleybus Magazine explains that despite work starting in 2017 on a 78km network, only one vehicle is in operation.
Telegraph says that SKS should stop the ULEZ rollout.
How on Earth would he do that? Are they saying SKS is now the PM in which case sign me right up.
More importantly, he's got about half an hour to do it.
Have the Conservatives gamed out the next bit? It's one thing to promise to Stop Something. It's another to make that promise when you can't actually keep it (see also: boats), and yet another to make it an issue when it's likely to die a death pretty quickly.
After all, having gone to the trouble of becoming ULEZ compliant, people aren't going to want yo switch back, are they?
They should remember that politicians often rail against all manner of things, but when they get into power it's not worth expending political capital to reverse many of them, or take away time from more important concerns. It seems pretty optimistic for this one that it will continue to be a live issue of sufficient value to change the current trajectory.
"America's Failure in Afghanistan: 20 Years of Occupation" an animated history by the Armchair Historian, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-M-QpYakBO0 , duration 15 mins.
Telegraph says that SKS should stop the ULEZ rollout.
How on Earth would he do that? Are they saying SKS is now the PM in which case sign me right up.
More importantly, he's got about half an hour to do it.
Have the Conservatives gamed out the next bit? It's one thing to promise to Stop Something. It's another to make that promise when you can't actually keep it (see also: boats), and yet another to make it an issue when it's likely to die a death pretty quickly.
After all, having gone to the trouble of becoming ULEZ compliant, people aren't going to want yo switch back, are they?
For the ones who can afford to become compliant its not such a big deal. So long as they are selfish and don't give a damn about anyone else who can't afford to do so. And so long as what's currently compliant isn't suddenly going to be non-compliant when the system ratchets again.
But that's kind of the problem - its already the law that these old vehicles can't be manufactured or sold anymore. People buying new vehicles aren't buying these polluting vehicles in the first place as they've already been outlawed from new.
The people who suffer from this isn't anyone who can afford a new car, who already is automatically compliant when they do. Its people who can't afford it.
"America's Failure in Afghanistan: 20 Years of Occupation" an animated history by the Armchair Historian, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-M-QpYakBO0 , duration 15 mins.
They really did have a hubristic attitude while over there.
Good to see @Leon re-emerge. I do agree with the sentiment though that this website is turning in to an echo chamber with an increasingly limited acceptable range of opinion. It is reading like a forum for widespread agreement on progressive talking points. Ironically when I started reading the comments on this website, perhaps 8 years ago, it was to try and challenge my own 'left/liberal' beliefs as many (but by no means all) of the commentators were taking an informed 'right wing', pro Brexit perspective. It is mostly now just evidence of the problem of progressive groupthink. The problem with those who have succumbed to this viewpoint is that there will be things that happen in the future in politics that go against your worldview and you have no way of explaining, because you have lost the ability to understand the other side of the argument.
Good to see @Leon re-emerge. I do agree with the sentiment though that this website is turning in to an echo chamber with an increasingly limited acceptable range of opinion. It is reading like a forum for widespread agreement on progressive talking points. Ironically when I started reading the comments on this website, perhaps 8 years ago, it was to try and challenge my own 'left/liberal' beliefs as many (but by no means all) of the commentators were taking an informed 'right wing', pro Brexit perspective. It is mostly now just evidence of the problem of progressive groupthink. The problem with those who have succumbed to this viewpoint is that there will be things that happen in the future in politics that go against your worldview and you have no way of explaining, because you have lost the ability to understand the other side of the argument.
Some examples of what you mean? The clearest example I can think of of an "unacceptable" (if you mean swiftly condemned) opinion on here is someone suggesting something like the West should force Ukraine to accept a ceasefire and negotiated peace. But I'm not sure that is an example of progressive groupthink.
Good to see @Leon re-emerge. I do agree with the sentiment though that this website is turning in to an echo chamber with an increasingly limited acceptable range of opinion. It is reading like a forum for widespread agreement on progressive talking points. Ironically when I started reading the comments on this website, perhaps 8 years ago, it was to try and challenge my own 'left/liberal' beliefs as many (but by no means all) of the commentators were taking an informed 'right wing', pro Brexit perspective. It is mostly now just evidence of the problem of progressive groupthink. The problem with those who have succumbed to this viewpoint is that there will be things that happen in the future in politics that go against your worldview and you have no way of explaining, because you have lost the ability to understand the other side of the argument.
Some examples of what you mean? The clearest example I can think of of an "unacceptable" (if you mean swiftly condemned) opinion on here is someone suggesting something like the West should force Ukraine to accept a ceasefire and negotiated peace. But I'm not sure that is an example of progressive groupthink.
I think rather it's about the widely held view that minor assaults on women are not something to be taken notice of.
Darkage is right to say that there's a strong consensus here against that viewpoint. But it's wrong to say I don't understand that viewpoint, when I argue against it. I just think it's quite wrong.
Lib Dem councillor in Sutton on BBC Breakfast strongly against ULEZ. I hadn’t really thought about their policy on this, but it does look like they are generally opposed.
I guess they are in a bind. They know how unpopular it is and don’t want to give the Tories an edge in Surrey and South West London.
Good to see @Leon re-emerge. I do agree with the sentiment though that this website is turning in to an echo chamber with an increasingly limited acceptable range of opinion. It is reading like a forum for widespread agreement on progressive talking points. Ironically when I started reading the comments on this website, perhaps 8 years ago, it was to try and challenge my own 'left/liberal' beliefs as many (but by no means all) of the commentators were taking an informed 'right wing', pro Brexit perspective. It is mostly now just evidence of the problem of progressive groupthink. The problem with those who have succumbed to this viewpoint is that there will be things that happen in the future in politics that go against your worldview and you have no way of explaining, because you have lost the ability to understand the other side of the argument.
Erm, the problem as I see it with Leon's posts are nothing to do with his anti-woke agenda. It's because he is constantly attention seeking, highly aggressive and nasty to people with whom he disagrees (especially after he's been at the bottle), and worst of all filling it up with utterly irrelevant posts or photos about his latest travel.
... on your broader point @darkage , this site has a wide range of opinions. My view is that it has generally become a bit more representative of a demographically older, mostly white male, anti-progressive type. But I wouldn't want to overstate this. There are many alternative viewpoints.
Also, don't pigeon hole people. Nor assume you always know where they stand. Almost everyone on here has the capacity to surprise, mainly because barring one or two exceptions they are not parroting a party political line.
If you want a personal example: I argued that NATO should stand up to Putin from the outset and install a No-Fly Zone over Ukraine. I believe this now more than ever. Some Leftie, eh?
Good to see @Leon re-emerge. I do agree with the sentiment though that this website is turning in to an echo chamber with an increasingly limited acceptable range of opinion. It is reading like a forum for widespread agreement on progressive talking points. Ironically when I started reading the comments on this website, perhaps 8 years ago, it was to try and challenge my own 'left/liberal' beliefs as many (but by no means all) of the commentators were taking an informed 'right wing', pro Brexit perspective. It is mostly now just evidence of the problem of progressive groupthink. The problem with those who have succumbed to this viewpoint is that there will be things that happen in the future in politics that go against your worldview and you have no way of explaining, because you have lost the ability to understand the other side of the argument.
Erm, the problem as I see it with Leon's posts are nothing to do with his anti-woke agenda. It's because he is constantly attention seeking, highly aggressive and nasty to people with whom he disagrees (especially after he's been at the bottle), and worst of all utterly irrelevant posts or photos about his latest travel.
On your broader point ...
I'd say the broader problems are people getting into sub-thread level feuds and pile-ons and making the same narrow point over and over and over again, whether it be about subsamples or schools or house prices or whatever. If you've not convinced your opponents after two or three goes, the 17th time in the same thread will probably not do the trick either so just agree to differ and move on. https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/duty_calls.png
It'll be interesting to see how things look after the Conferences a month or so from now. Mid-October is when we should pay close attention to the lie of the land. The Media will be on election footing e.g. 'the last Conference before the election' memes which will begin to feed their narrative over the winter.
Sunak really has two realistic 2024 election options: May/June or October
Good to see @Leon re-emerge. I do agree with the sentiment though that this website is turning in to an echo chamber with an increasingly limited acceptable range of opinion. It is reading like a forum for widespread agreement on progressive talking points. Ironically when I started reading the comments on this website, perhaps 8 years ago, it was to try and challenge my own 'left/liberal' beliefs as many (but by no means all) of the commentators were taking an informed 'right wing', pro Brexit perspective. It is mostly now just evidence of the problem of progressive groupthink. The problem with those who have succumbed to this viewpoint is that there will be things that happen in the future in politics that go against your worldview and you have no way of explaining, because you have lost the ability to understand the other side of the argument.
Erm, the problem as I see it with Leon's posts are nothing to do with his anti-woke agenda. It's because he is constantly attention seeking, highly aggressive and nasty to people with whom he disagrees (especially after he's been at the bottle), and worst of all utterly irrelevant posts or photos about his latest travel.
On your broader point ...
I'd say the broader problems are people getting into sub-thread level feuds and pile-ons and making the same narrow point over and over and over again, whether it be about subsamples or schools or house prices or whatever. If you've not convinced your opponents after two or three goes, the 17th time in the same thread will probably not do the trick either so just agree to differ and move on. https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/duty_calls.png
Good point John. I don't come on here in the evenings or night for that very reason. I find it tends to become a bit of a bear pit.
Lib Dem councillor in Sutton on BBC Breakfast strongly against ULEZ. I hadn’t really thought about their policy on this, but it does look like they are generally opposed.
I guess they are in a bind. They know how unpopular it is and don’t want to give the Tories an edge in Surrey and South West London.
I would assume they are strongly opposed in the newly affected area and the surrounding counties and fully in favour elsewhere.
It'll be interesting to see how things look after the Conferences a month or so from now. Mid-October is when we should pay close attention to the lie of the land. The Media will be on election footing e.g. 'the last Conference before the election' memes which will begin to feed their narrative over the winter.
Sunak really has two realistic 2024 election options: May/June or October
May, surely? He won't want to go a mere month after the locals, or try to postpone them. I know May did, but that was for other reasons.
I've no wish to mark my return with a massive stramash, nor do I desire to humilate another PB local. but I can't - in all honesty - let this go by from @Richard_Tyndall
It is just so wrong, it is beyond ignorance
"There has been not a single domesticated bone fragment nor husk of domesticated cereal found at Gobleki Tepe. Out of all of the hundreds of thousands of bones found covering the whole site - not one"
The actual science:
"The high frequency of artifacts is unusual for contemporary sites in the region. Using an integrated approach of formal, experimental, and macro- / microscopical use-wear analyses we show that Neolithic people at Göbekli Tepe have produced standardized and efficient grinding tools, most of which have been used for the processing of cereals. Additional phytolith analysis confirms the massive presence of cereals at the site, filling the gap left by the weakly preserved charred macro-rests. "
The whole pivotal point of the Tas Tepeler, Gobekli included, is that they are situated in the very same place where wild grasses were turned into cereals round 9000-8000BC, and where wild animals became domesticated
"The Göbekli Tepe people of Anatolia were probably the first plant breeders on earth. There, they settled 12,000 years ago and selected einkorn wheat for their nutrition. About 6000 years later, this culture arrived in Europe."
I've no wish to mark my return with a massive stramash, nor do I desire to humilate another PB local. but I can't - in all honesty - let this go by from @Richard_Tyndall
It is just so wrong, it is beyond ignorance
"There has been not a single domesticated bone fragment nor husk of domesticated cereal found at Gobleki Tepe. Out of all of the hundreds of thousands of bones found covering the whole site - not one"
The actual science:
"The high frequency of artifacts is unusual for contemporary sites in the region. Using an integrated approach of formal, experimental, and macro- / microscopical use-wear analyses we show that Neolithic people at Göbekli Tepe have produced standardized and efficient grinding tools, most of which have been used for the processing of cereals. Additional phytolith analysis confirms the massive presence of cereals at the site, filling the gap left by the weakly preserved charred macro-rests. "
The whole pivotal point of the Tas Tepeler, Gobekli included, is that they are situated in the very same place where wild grasses were turned into cereals round 9000-8000BC, and where wild animals became domesticated
"The Göbekli Tepe people of Anatolia were probably the first plant breeders on earth. There, they settled 12,000 years ago and selected einkorn wheat for their nutrition. About 6000 years later, this culture arrived in Europe."
The fundamental mistake that pollsters make is to presume that the public are voting FOR an individual, a party or an idea.
In fact, in my opinion, a very large proportion of people are voting AGAINST the status quo, often through a feeling of marginalisation or disempowerment.
This, I am sure was the appeal of Corbyn, Farage, BoJo, the Red Wall, Trump etc. Now we are seeing not just a vote against the Tories, but against anyone in power. The SNP are in rapid retreat, and in London Khan may well lose the mayoral election. Even in Mike Smithson's beloved Bedford, the incumbent Lib Dem mayor got booted out, not that he had done anything terribly wrong but just because he had become part of the status quo.
So it's not just the Tories who are in trouble, but essentially anyone who is seem to be part of the system, and it is one of the challenges that Kier Starmer will have to face.
I see zero polling suggesting Sadiq Khan is in danger of losing. Dave Hodgson did lose the Bedford mayoralty, but his percentage share was within the range of his previous winning performances. The big change there was the switch from SV to FPTP, not a turn against the status quo.
I've no wish to mark my return with a massive stramash, nor do I desire to humilate another PB local. but I can't - in all honesty - let this go by from @Richard_Tyndall
It is just so wrong, it is beyond ignorance
"There has been not a single domesticated bone fragment nor husk of domesticated cereal found at Gobleki Tepe. Out of all of the hundreds of thousands of bones found covering the whole site - not one"
The actual science:
"The high frequency of artifacts is unusual for contemporary sites in the region. Using an integrated approach of formal, experimental, and macro- / microscopical use-wear analyses we show that Neolithic people at Göbekli Tepe have produced standardized and efficient grinding tools, most of which have been used for the processing of cereals. Additional phytolith analysis confirms the massive presence of cereals at the site, filling the gap left by the weakly preserved charred macro-rests. "
The whole pivotal point of the Tas Tepeler, Gobekli included, is that they are situated in the very same place where wild grasses were turned into cereals round 9000-8000BC, and where wild animals became domesticated
"The Göbekli Tepe people of Anatolia were probably the first plant breeders on earth. There, they settled 12,000 years ago and selected einkorn wheat for their nutrition. About 6000 years later, this culture arrived in Europe."
that sounds like one of those cryptic crossword clues I can never do
During the Ice Age, the Ice Sheets were so thick and extensive that sea level was about 100 m (328 ft) lower, give or take, at the so-called Last Glacial Maximum about 20,000 years ago, and vast lands were exposed. Including, but certainly not limited to: Doggerland in the North Sea, the entire floor of the Persian Gulf, the land bridge linking India and Sri Lanka, and a bigger land bridge between Oz and New Guinea. But a HUGE area was exposed in the area bounded by Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, the Sunda Shelf (or Sundaland). Slap bang on the equator, and fed by at least four major rivers, this surely would have been the most ideal place for an Ice Age Refugium.
I've no wish to mark my return with a massive stramash, nor do I desire to humilate another PB local. but I can't - in all honesty - let this go by from @Richard_Tyndall
It is just so wrong, it is beyond ignorance
"There has been not a single domesticated bone fragment nor husk of domesticated cereal found at Gobleki Tepe. Out of all of the hundreds of thousands of bones found covering the whole site - not one"
The actual science:
"The high frequency of artifacts is unusual for contemporary sites in the region. Using an integrated approach of formal, experimental, and macro- / microscopical use-wear analyses we show that Neolithic people at Göbekli Tepe have produced standardized and efficient grinding tools, most of which have been used for the processing of cereals. Additional phytolith analysis confirms the massive presence of cereals at the site, filling the gap left by the weakly preserved charred macro-rests. "
The whole pivotal point of the Tas Tepeler, Gobekli included, is that they are situated in the very same place where wild grasses were turned into cereals round 9000-8000BC, and where wild animals became domesticated
"The Göbekli Tepe people of Anatolia were probably the first plant breeders on earth. There, they settled 12,000 years ago and selected einkorn wheat for their nutrition. About 6000 years later, this culture arrived in Europe."
Really? Did he get paid extra to do that one quickly?
I am presuming that we are going to get a tour de force comparing Edinburgh's trams with every system and even potential system in the history of the world. It may not even be limited to this planet.
Good to see @Leon re-emerge. I do agree with the sentiment though that this website is turning in to an echo chamber with an increasingly limited acceptable range of opinion. It is reading like a forum for widespread agreement on progressive talking points. Ironically when I started reading the comments on this website, perhaps 8 years ago, it was to try and challenge my own 'left/liberal' beliefs as many (but by no means all) of the commentators were taking an informed 'right wing', pro Brexit perspective. It is mostly now just evidence of the problem of progressive groupthink. The problem with those who have succumbed to this viewpoint is that there will be things that happen in the future in politics that go against your worldview and you have no way of explaining, because you have lost the ability to understand the other side of the argument.
Erm, the problem as I see it with Leon's posts are nothing to do with his anti-woke agenda. It's because he is constantly attention seeking, highly aggressive and nasty to people with whom he disagrees (especially after he's been at the bottle), and worst of all filling it up with utterly irrelevant posts or photos about his latest travel.
On your broader point ...
Indeed. Not helped by his ability to see a good story being way ahead of his ability to think about or even understand complex real world stuff, and almost all of his 'beliefs' being chosen transparently and simply because they happen to be the most exciting or dramatic version of events
I've no wish to mark my return with a massive stramash, nor do I desire to humilate another PB local. but I can't - in all honesty - let this go by from @Richard_Tyndall
It is just so wrong, it is beyond ignorance
"There has been not a single domesticated bone fragment nor husk of domesticated cereal found at Gobleki Tepe. Out of all of the hundreds of thousands of bones found covering the whole site - not one"
The actual science:
"The high frequency of artifacts is unusual for contemporary sites in the region. Using an integrated approach of formal, experimental, and macro- / microscopical use-wear analyses we show that Neolithic people at Göbekli Tepe have produced standardized and efficient grinding tools, most of which have been used for the processing of cereals. Additional phytolith analysis confirms the massive presence of cereals at the site, filling the gap left by the weakly preserved charred macro-rests. "
The whole pivotal point of the Tas Tepeler, Gobekli included, is that they are situated in the very same place where wild grasses were turned into cereals round 9000-8000BC, and where wild animals became domesticated
"The Göbekli Tepe people of Anatolia were probably the first plant breeders on earth. There, they settled 12,000 years ago and selected einkorn wheat for their nutrition. About 6000 years later, this culture arrived in Europe."
Really? Did he get paid extra to do that one quickly?
I am presuming that we are going to get a tour de force comparing Edinburgh's trams with every system and even potential system in the history of the world. It may not even be limited to this planet.
If I say that certain Nationalists have been consulted about extra-terrestrial systems, will I be a target for ballistic turnips for the rest of the day?
Good to see @Leon re-emerge. I do agree with the sentiment though that this website is turning in to an echo chamber with an increasingly limited acceptable range of opinion. It is reading like a forum for widespread agreement on progressive talking points. Ironically when I started reading the comments on this website, perhaps 8 years ago, it was to try and challenge my own 'left/liberal' beliefs as many (but by no means all) of the commentators were taking an informed 'right wing', pro Brexit perspective. It is mostly now just evidence of the problem of progressive groupthink. The problem with those who have succumbed to this viewpoint is that there will be things that happen in the future in politics that go against your worldview and you have no way of explaining, because you have lost the ability to understand the other side of the argument.
Erm, the problem as I see it with Leon's posts are nothing to do with his anti-woke agenda. It's because he is constantly attention seeking, highly aggressive and nasty to people with whom he disagrees (especially after he's been at the bottle), and worst of all filling it up with utterly irrelevant posts or photos about his latest travel.
On your broader point ...
Indeed. Not helped by his ability to see a good story being way ahead of his ability to think about or even understand complex real world stuff, and almost all of his 'beliefs' being chosen transparently and simply because they happen to be the most exciting or dramatic version of events
It is nicer when PB is discussing reality rather than fantasy.
Re: public perceptions of politicians discussed upthread. Twice I've seen quiz shows where contestants were asked to name a Post War British Prime Minister who didn't go to University and contestants have said Harold Wilson, when in reality Wilson was one of the most academic PMs we have had.
This week’s charts from R&W – politicalbetting.com
Comments
I definitely missed everyone. I even missed the chats abour tram networks. Sorta
*buys virtual round for the entire pub, from Messrs Smithson*
Chahz
https://grahamhancock.com/drsunilatlantis/
In fact, in my opinion, a very large proportion of people are voting AGAINST the status quo, often through a feeling of marginalisation or disempowerment.
This, I am sure was the appeal of Corbyn, Farage, BoJo, the Red Wall, Trump etc. Now we are seeing not just a vote against the Tories, but against anyone in power. The SNP are in rapid retreat, and in London Khan may well lose the mayoral election. Even in Mike Smithson's beloved Bedford, the incumbent Lib Dem mayor got booted out, not that he had done anything terribly wrong but just because he had become part of the status quo.
So it's not just the Tories who are in trouble, but essentially anyone who is seem to be part of the system, and it is one of the challenges that Kier Starmer will have to face.
The average young adult today faces two decades paying someone else's mortgage because they can't afford a deposit without aid from the bank of mum and dad. When a 10% deposit today means more than a year's take home pay, rather than about 2 months pay in the past, then how are you supposed to afford that?
Spend two decades paying someone else's mortgage rather than your own, you've essentially paid off a house, just not in your own name. You've bought a home for someone else essentially.
Its tragic if people lose a home they've bought. Its every bit as tragic if people can't buy one in the first place because deposits are out of their reach without support from someone else as prices are too high.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/08/nikki-haley-trump-alternative-republican-primary.html
… As a liberal, it was quite satisfying to watch former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie take the fight directly and pugnaciously to Trump, calling his behavior in the aftermath of the 2020 election “beneath the office of the president” and warning his fellow Republicans that “someone’s got to stop normalizing this conduct.” But judging from the audible boos in the Milwaukee debate venue and the snap polls afterward, Christie is about as popular with hardcore Republican partisans as the U.S. women’s soccer team. You can appreciate him for doing God’s work here, but he has zero chance of winning.
So far only Haley, who at least isn’t despised by the voters she needs, has begun to make the kind of case against Trump that will work with Republicans. And that means facing this hard truth: GOP partisans are still largely in thrall to Trump, but they also want to win in 2024 after four years in the wilderness. And Haley’s tactical decision to refrain from substantive attacks on Trump in favor of arguments about his unpopularity with the American people and many liabilities as a candidate is probably the only way that she—or anyone—can really reach Republican voters without alienating them. She pointed out that a supermajority of Americans desperately want to avoid a Biden-Trump rematch. And Republicans, she said, “have to face the fact that Trump is the most disliked politician in America. We can’t win a general election that way.”..
I suspect the GOP. isn’t yet ready to listen to reasoned arguments.
And whether Haley would get credit, even if they were, is also doubtful.
Which is easier? Saving 10% of 2-3x your income, or saving 10% of 6-8x your income?
If you only need to save 10% of 2x your income to get on the ladder then you can do that much more viably.
Could intensify very rapidly as it’s over - surprise surprise - record high sea surface temperatures and ocean heat content. Widely 31C. Category 3 not unlikely.
All happening quite quickly. Then in a few days we have what looks like the first proper Cape Verde storm making its way toward the lesser Antilles.
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2023/08/hurricane-and-storm-surge-warnings-for-florida-as-idalia-heads-north/
The odd thing is that I'm not sure it's obvious what caused the reapprasial. It's a bit early for the sequence of government scandals. Paterson, parties and I'm sure there was another one...
It is just so wrong, it is beyond ignorance
"There has been not a single domesticated bone fragment nor husk of domesticated cereal found at Gobleki Tepe. Out of all of the hundreds of thousands of bones found covering the whole site - not one"
The actual science:
"The high frequency of artifacts is unusual for contemporary sites in the region. Using an integrated approach of formal, experimental, and macro- / microscopical use-wear analyses we show that Neolithic people at Göbekli Tepe have produced standardized and efficient grinding tools, most of which have been used for the processing of cereals. Additional phytolith analysis confirms the massive presence of cereals at the site, filling the gap left by the weakly preserved charred macro-rests. "
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6493732/
The whole pivotal point of the Tas Tepeler, Gobekli included, is that they are situated in the very same place where wild grasses were turned into cereals round 9000-8000BC, and where wild animals became domesticated
"The Göbekli Tepe people of Anatolia were probably the first plant breeders on earth. There, they settled 12,000 years ago and selected einkorn wheat for their nutrition. About 6000 years later, this culture arrived in Europe."
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/mono/10.1201/b22334-1/introduction-rolf-schlegel
Predated both Paterson and parties, and the polls already began to turn then.
At the same time the shine started to come off the short term Covid vaccine boost, as the early running of the UK was caught up elsewhere. I think the spring 2021 vaccine effect probably masked and delayed a more typical decline in incumbent fortunes.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/keir-starmers-knighthood-puts-off-red-wall-voters-kqmfvp66z
One of the most exciting things about Tas Tepeler is that the older sites are MORE advanced than the younger sites. Gobekli Tepe might be the ENDpoint of an extraordinary civilisation, not its zenith. We just don't know. We need them to dig things up fast
Trouble is, the ethos of modern archaeology is to leave lots of stuff underground for a later, more sophisticated archaeology to sort out. While I can see the merits of that, morally, it leaves us - here, now - rather in the dark. And who is to say our descendants will be better at this?
Dig the stones up NOW!
I mean, a man with a knighthood doesn’t seem likely to raise your taxes too much or be beastly to those nice Europeans.
Fortunately for Labour, the one thing everyone knows about Rishi Sunak is how unimaginably wealthy he is.
We all know how British snobbery and inverse snobbery works: the greatest bile is reserved for those just one notch above, or one notch below, one’s own station. The foundation for countless sitcoms. And there’s no greater mutual class resentment that than between the lower middle and middle-middle.
DPP lawyer is a man of The System.
https://grahamhancock.com/drsunilatlantis/
The site is remarkable because of this. But it is a million miles away from your ancient civilisations. No one working on the site seriously considers this is the remains of some advanced civilisation. It is only lunatics like you and Graham Hancock who believe that rubbish.
I love Whitehaven and Cockermouth too. I was at the latter's agricultural show a couple of weekends back - I love these! - where I met the local MP, Mark Jenkinson, and bent his ear about the Post Office.
This weekend we had our local agricultural show: it was the most glorious day so we spent it lolling about on the grass, picknicking and drinking until late in the evening and having a very jolly dejeuner sur l'herbe sort of day. Then walking back through the woods and fields to Broughton to continue the merriment.
I very nearly brought one of these home.
And this was the view on our walk home -
Also endorse @Algakirk's recommendation of Bragg's book: "Back in the Day". Outstanding. One of the last events I went to just before Covid was a talk by him in Ambleside (where, incidentally, I met Hazel Blears - who is lovely in real life) and he told us then about how he was writing this and how he was trying to approach it, to dig deep and recreate a vanished world.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/most-read-2022-is-an-unknown-extraordinarily-ancient-civilisation-buried-under-eastern-turkeymost-read-2022/
(I'm not, either.)
Boris/Farage - Posh ,private school but not establishment (hence effective and popular with WWC)
This bright familiar sun
I guess that I'm the lucky one
Who wrote that tired sea song
Set on this peaceful shore
You think you've heard this one before
Well the danger on the rocks is surely past
Still I remain tied to the mast
Could it be that I have found my home at last
Home at last..
I actually personally know one of the authors of that paper, Jens Notroff, the second in command of the dig under the late Klaus Schmidt
I could get him on here to embarrass you. But I shall spare your blushes
You don't understand the site, you certainly don't understand its significance, nor the profound and startling implications of what has been unearthed in the last four or five digging seasons. You are an oil-man in Lincolnshire, I have been visiting Gobekli Tepe for two decades, so: meh, whatevs
Boris wasn’t.
It’s nothing to do with wealth. Corbyn, an MP for decades and from a privileged, monied, background was another Outsider.
Saw another example last night in the athletics where in the 5000m the norwegian Ingebritsten was a couple of metres behind the leading guy coming into the home straight but took time to look behind him obviously thinking he could overtake the leader no bother but just checking nothing gonna surprise him from behind. He then caught the leader with a metre to go to the line . Class !
I would be interested in PB-ers views of this footage of an alien, filmed - purportedly - by the KGB some time in the 1940s-70s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsQCXN4o4Ps
It has recently re-emerged. It is known as "Skinny Bob"
There are many weird things about it. eg it is one of four or five vids posted by a guy named "Ivan0135" in 2011. Ivan posted this then never posted again. If it is a fake -surely it is a fake - it is quite brilliant (esp for 2011). The old time clicking overlay is tiresome and bogus (and proved to be so), but the underlying footage is still deeply impressive. The blinking!
It is now the subject of much wild discussion. If it is a hoax (my guess) how did they do it? Consensus is it would have taken a serious professional in Hollywood, using puppets and CGI perhaps in combo, and with a lot of money
Forensic analysis here
https://skinnybob.info/
Why make such an elaborate hoax but then, apparently, never profit from it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4fBrZj1uXM
In fact I can tell you because he himself has referred to it as "pseudoarchaeology in scientific disguise".
Meanwhile I can dig up a couple of people from the Northern Syrian pre-ceramic Neolithic project I have been helping out for the last decade or so and they can give you their opinion of him as well.
However most hoaxers eventually come forward and claim the glory. There is actually a large cash prize - $30k I believe - waiting for the first person to uncover the truth behind these "alien" vids. No one has yet claimed it
Here is a debate, apparently between Hollywood pros, discussing how difficult it might be to make this fake in 2011
https://www.reddit.com/r/AliensAndUFOs/comments/bibcmh/skinny_bob_analysis/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1
Conclusion: it is (was) certainly do-able, but you would need time, money, resources, a team
Bloomberg News (via Seattle Times) - Trump’s standing drops in poll taken after debate and Georgia booking
Donald Trump’s standing in the Republican presidential primary race dropped slightly in a poll taken after he skipped his party’s first debate and was booked in a Georgia jail on felony charges, although he remains the frontrunner.
In a survey taken on Friday and Saturday by Emerson College Polling, Trump had the support of 50% of Republican primary voters, down six percentage points from a pre-debate survey by the same pollster.
The poll also showed slight increases for several other candidates, with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis up two points to 12%, former Vice President Mike Pence up four points to 7% and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley up five points to 7%.
Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, meantime, dropped one point to 9% despite drawing attention for his debate performance.
“While Trump saw a slight dip in support, the question from this poll is whether this is a blip for Trump or if the other Republican candidates will be able to rally enough support to be competitive for the caucus and primary season,” said Emerson Executive Director Spencer Kimball.
The poll of 1,000 registered voters nationwide was conducted Aug. 25-26. It has a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.
This is like me lecturing you on hydrocarbon extraction in hostile oceanic environments. Honestly
I've got drunk with these archeologists, many of them, over decades. IN GOBEKLI TEPE/SANLIURFA. You haven't done that, have you? You're a "member of a Facebook group"
Give over, My Tyndall
BTW I am not saying Hancock's overall thesis is right. It's surely bonkers, and he makes insane non sequitur leaps. But is an unknown civilisation, buried since the Ice Age, apparently emerging near Dyarbakir, Anatolia? Absolutely, yes it is. Hancock was right on that specific point, and his doubters were wrong
Isn't Richard also an archaeologist?
I think though that there is something true in the backlash against the incumbent. It was true of Lab in Leicester and Slough in the Locals, but is a worldwide phenomenon. Ours isn't the only country that seems to be in decline, and where nothing works.
Keep on explaining me to myself.
How on Earth would he do that? Are they saying SKS is now the PM in which case sign me right up.
Drunk man (not a reference to anyone specific) looking under the street light for his keys because that's the only place where the light is ...
Boris was not really an outsider in the way a Farage type was. He had a conventional entry into politics, he had a conventional kind of career as an MP, he wasn't some toiling backbencher or rebel no one ever thought would go for a major role, and it was often noted that despite how his opponents criticised him for being so he really wasn't all that extreme in most of his policy positions either, nor that unconventional.
It can't be denied he was perceived differently in many ways, hence the broader appeal he had, and that's not nothing especially when noting Sunak just cannot persuade peopel of the same thing for all sorts of reasons, but I just cannot see how he can avoid an establishment label just because he had that broader appeal (Brexit does not count, despite being outnumbered it was a position held by hundreds of MPs at various times, it had not been a fringe view for quite some time, it was an internal war as much as anything).
Heck, Starmer seems to be in part getting supprot (or at least acceptance) from the same group in part because he is so much more establishment seeming that the last chap - workmanlike if not slick, definitely safe and guarded, a knight of the realm, not wanting to upset people.
And I do work with the Northern Syria Early Neolithic project. I was fortunate enough about a decade ago to acquire the library of Sir Max Mallowan including many of his field notebooks of his work in Northern Syria. This resulted in me making contacts with the archaeologists working there and I have done the occasional bits of research work over the years. Although there was a long hiatus during the ISIS takeover.
Some of my collection is also on display at the Vessuna Roman Museum in Perigueux and I have been providing research materials on early cylinder seals to the Lebanese author Hooda Shawa.
But apparently I am just a dumb oilman who knows nothing compared to a tourist who likes a drink.
Thankfully for the rest of the country that home would presumably have been worth less a few years later. Meaning an alternate you a few years later would have needed a much smaller deposit. Which as we've discussed a few times is how even after the sale of council houses in the 80s, by the end of the 90s the home ownership rates were even higher than the end of the 80s, because affordability improved, something that has been reversed this century with predictable and catastrophic results for generations of people doomed to decades not years of renting as a result.
Unfortunately for the country, today that home would be many hundreds of thousands of pounds - and wages have quite simply not kept track.
Yes losing a home, or losing your equity is bad.
Dooming millions to a life of penury paying someone else's mortgage in a broken system because there's no way to reach a deposit without 'mum and dad' or decades saving is simply worse than that.
If people generally like (or at least do not dislike) someone they will find all manner of reasons to excuse that which they dislike in another person, up to and including denying they are what they are.
Boris was posh but people never really minded. Cameron was posh and he got some stick for it, but they didn't care that much in the circumstances, and I believe people perceived him as more centrist than he actually was. Sunak comes across as posh despite his early background, and people don't really like it, but that's more about the situation and his place in it, and inability to overcome any negative perception. If the economy was doing gangbusters and Corbyn was on the other side Sunak might still struggle, but he'd find fewer people cared he was posh.
Have the Conservatives gamed out the next bit? It's one thing to promise to Stop Something. It's another to make that promise when you can't actually keep it (see also: boats), and yet another to make it an issue when it's likely to die a death pretty quickly.
After all, having gone to the trouble of becoming ULEZ compliant, people aren't going to want yo switch back, are they?
Indeed, Trolleybus Magazine explains that despite work starting in 2017 on a 78km network, only one vehicle is in operation.
But that's kind of the problem - its already the law that these old vehicles can't be manufactured or sold anymore. People buying new vehicles aren't buying these polluting vehicles in the first place as they've already been outlawed from new.
The people who suffer from this isn't anyone who can afford a new car, who already is automatically compliant when they do. Its people who can't afford it.
The clearest example I can think of of an "unacceptable" (if you mean swiftly condemned) opinion on here is someone suggesting something like the West should force Ukraine to accept a ceasefire and negotiated peace. But I'm not sure that is an example of progressive groupthink.
Darkage is right to say that there's a strong consensus here against that viewpoint.
But it's wrong to say I don't understand that viewpoint, when I argue against it. I just think it's quite wrong.
I guess they are in a bind. They know how unpopular it is and don’t want to give the Tories an edge in Surrey and South West London.
On your broader point ...
Also, don't pigeon hole people. Nor assume you always know where they stand. Almost everyone on here has the capacity to surprise, mainly because barring one or two exceptions they are not parroting a party political line.
If you want a personal example: I argued that NATO should stand up to Putin from the outset and install a No-Fly Zone over Ukraine. I believe this now more than ever. Some Leftie, eh?
Good morning all by the way
It is ever thus.
https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/duty_calls.png
It'll be interesting to see how things look after the Conferences a month or so from now. Mid-October is when we should pay close attention to the lie of the land. The Media will be on election footing e.g. 'the last Conference before the election' memes which will begin to feed their narrative over the winter.
Sunak really has two realistic 2024 election options: May/June or October