Also, we were talking about men and male childlessness and how it is an undiscussed pain, for some
Philip Larkin wrote THE poem about it. So many glints of genius in this, the deliberate hesitations, the ceasuras, the lyrical run-ons, the sad chiming rhymes
Dockery and Son
BY PHILIP LARKIN
‘Dockery was junior to you, Wasn’t he?’ said the Dean. ‘His son’s here now.’ Death-suited, visitant, I nod. ‘And do You keep in touch with—’ Or remember how Black-gowned, unbreakfasted, and still half-tight We used to stand before that desk, to give ‘Our version’ of ‘these incidents last night’? I try the door of where I used to live:
Locked. The lawn spreads dazzlingly wide. A known bell chimes. I catch my train, ignored. Canal and clouds and colleges subside Slowly from view. But Dockery, good Lord, Anyone up today must have been born In ’43, when I was twenty-one. If he was younger, did he get this son At nineteen, twenty? Was he that withdrawn
High-collared public-schoolboy, sharing rooms With Cartwright who was killed? Well, it just shows How much ... How little ... Yawning, I suppose I fell asleep, waking at the fumes And furnace-glares of Sheffield, where I changed, And ate an awful pie, and walked along The platform to its end to see the ranged Joining and parting lines reflect a strong
Unhindered moon. To have no son, no wife, No house or land still seemed quite natural. Only a numbness registered the shock Of finding out how much had gone of life, How widely from the others. Dockery, now: Only nineteen, he must have taken stock Of what he wanted, and been capable Of ... No, that’s not the difference: rather, how
Convinced he was he should be added to! Why did he think adding meant increase? To me it was dilution. Where do these Innate assumptions come from? Not from what We think truest, or most want to do: Those warp tight-shut, like doors. They’re more a style Our lives bring with them: habit for a while, Suddenly they harden into all we’ve got
And how we got it; looked back on, they rear Like sand-clouds, thick and close, embodying For Dockery a son, for me nothing, Nothing with all a son’s harsh patronage. Life is first boredom, then fear. Whether or not we use it, it goes, And leaves what something hidden from us chose, And age, and then the only end of age.
BRRRR. That’s tough to read. But brilliantly clear
A poem that hits much harder in my 40s than it did in my 30s.
As to why we don't have poets any more, I suspect the advent of popular music killed it off. All our greatest poets are songwriters now. Hence NigelB's suggestion of Bob Dylan, downthread. When people think Dylan, they think Bob, not Thomas.
F/w 30th - 31st January. Changes vs. 18th December 2023.
Daveygate not cutting through as predicted by the fan boys. Most perplexing.
Apart from the Con to RefUK switch in the last quarter of 2023 (and that seems to have stabilised), pretty much nothing has cut through for over a year.
Is the swingback train ever going to leave the station?
Not if ASLEF and the RMT have anything to do with it.
If Rishi is in charge, the station will not even be built.....
Its entertaining that there is now a post-HS2 working group led Andy Burnham and Andy Street. Finding solutions to the catastrophic capacity issues which the Brum-only scheme creates. Turns out that there is a really good investment opportunity to build a new railway line from a place called Handsacre to another place called High Legh to connect up these two other bits of railway.
Even better is that the land is both already purchased and has legal powers to build a railway line. As the evil plot to sell the land before Labour gets in hasn't happened (and what do you do with a ribbon strip of land which has planning permission for chuffa tracks?), it would be relatively fast and cheap for a consortium to build it...
What's the betting it gets sold before the election ?
The government clearly wants to sell the land, so not a hope in hell of it actually being sold.
F/w 30th - 31st January. Changes vs. 18th December 2023.
Daveygate not cutting through as predicted by the fan boys. Most perplexing.
Apart from the Con to RefUK switch in the last quarter of 2023 (and that seems to have stabilised), pretty much nothing has cut through for over a year.
Is the swingback train ever going to leave the station?
Not if ASLEF and the RMT have anything to do with it.
I'm fully behind pay restoration to 2008 levels for train drivers.
Salaries are comparable to the average for a commercial airline pilot:
So long as the revenue comes from the tickets of those they are driving around, I don't see a problem with that. The problem however is that it does not, it comes from taxpayers.
Abolish subsidies and let trains be staffed by whatever revenue comes from their customers - put up the prices if need be, and if the price goes up too far that fewer people travel by train, then fewer drivers will be needed and some will lose their jobs. That's supply and demand.
Supply and demand does not take into account the externalities. It is of benefit to society generally if more people travel on trains.
No it isn't.
I bow before your robust and well-argued case.
I gave you as much argument as you gave me.
Its hard to prove a negative, its upon the person making the assertion to make their claim before it can be rebutted.
I'm not making some wild claim here. That trains are, for example, less polluting than road traffic is well-established. Do you need me to evidence that bears shit in the woods next?
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2215454 "Many governments subsidize regional rail service as an alternative to road traffic. This paper assesses whether increases in service frequency reduce road traffic externalities. We exploit differences in service frequency growth by procurement mode following a railway reform in Germany to address endogeneity of service growth. Increases in service frequency reduce the number of severe road traffic accidents, carbon monoxide, nitrogen monoxide, nitrogen dioxide pollution and infant mortality. Placebo regressions with sulfur dioxide and ozone yield no effect. Service frequency growth between 1994 and 2004 improves environmental quality by an amount that is worth approximately 28-40% of total subsidies. An analysis of household behavior shows that the effects of railway services on outcome variables are driven by substitution from road to rail."
Also, we were talking about men and male childlessness and how it is an undiscussed pain, for some
Philip Larkin wrote THE poem about it. So many glints of genius in this, the deliberate hesitations, the ceasuras, the lyrical run-ons, the sad chiming rhymes
Dockery and Son
BY PHILIP LARKIN
‘Dockery was junior to you, Wasn’t he?’ said the Dean. ‘His son’s here now.’ Death-suited, visitant, I nod. ‘And do You keep in touch with—’ Or remember how Black-gowned, unbreakfasted, and still half-tight We used to stand before that desk, to give ‘Our version’ of ‘these incidents last night’? I try the door of where I used to live:
Locked. The lawn spreads dazzlingly wide. A known bell chimes. I catch my train, ignored. Canal and clouds and colleges subside Slowly from view. But Dockery, good Lord, Anyone up today must have been born In ’43, when I was twenty-one. If he was younger, did he get this son At nineteen, twenty? Was he that withdrawn
High-collared public-schoolboy, sharing rooms With Cartwright who was killed? Well, it just shows How much ... How little ... Yawning, I suppose I fell asleep, waking at the fumes And furnace-glares of Sheffield, where I changed, And ate an awful pie, and walked along The platform to its end to see the ranged Joining and parting lines reflect a strong
Unhindered moon. To have no son, no wife, No house or land still seemed quite natural. Only a numbness registered the shock Of finding out how much had gone of life, How widely from the others. Dockery, now: Only nineteen, he must have taken stock Of what he wanted, and been capable Of ... No, that’s not the difference: rather, how
Convinced he was he should be added to! Why did he think adding meant increase? To me it was dilution. Where do these Innate assumptions come from? Not from what We think truest, or most want to do: Those warp tight-shut, like doors. They’re more a style Our lives bring with them: habit for a while, Suddenly they harden into all we’ve got
And how we got it; looked back on, they rear Like sand-clouds, thick and close, embodying For Dockery a son, for me nothing, Nothing with all a son’s harsh patronage. Life is first boredom, then fear. Whether or not we use it, it goes, And leaves what something hidden from us chose, And age, and then the only end of age.
BRRRR. That’s tough to read. But brilliantly clear
A poem that hits much harder in my 40s than it did in my 30s.
As to why we don't have poets any more, I suspect the advent of popular music killed it off. All our greatest poets are songwriters now. Hence NigelB's suggestion of Bob Dylan, downthread. When people think Dylan, they think Bob, not Thomas.
Larkin and Plath are the end of the grand English poetic tradition, 1500 years old. It ended with them
Two great poets tho, so maybe a fitting end. Nothing since has matched them, 21st century poetry is the most awful sentimental gibberish - yes yes, I’m an old man shouting at clouds, I’m also right
Art forms come and go, poetry has gone. Other things replace them - video games are becoming a mighty new art form
But that Larkin poem is a powerful reminder of how poetry can console you even in the darkest moments. That was clearly a dark moment for Larkin, yet he made something beautiful out of it, and he says to us: someone else has felt this, too. Which is itself a solace
Talking of Betjeman, although he occasionally hit the heights, there's a certain repressed-but-dirty-raincoat-brigade aspect to both him and Larkin that I find a bit off-putting.
They disliked the more generous and colourful culture of the 1960's, but you get the feeling that they went around with their hands rather too deeply in their pockets when they saw "the young people"..
Larkin's last collection was published 50 years ago, in 1974, after which he published only one more major work, Aubade in 1977. Yes, he disliked much about the post 1960s culture with its various liberations (see Annus Mirabilis on 1963!).
But an issue is this: Since Larkin has there been a poet of stature that lots of people actually read?
Both Betjeman and Larkin were highly self aware, and knew that if they produced gold it was out of dross. As Yeats knew:
Now that my ladder's gone I must lie down where all the ladders start In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.
Betjeman was a really fine poet. Larkin is one of the greatest poets in the English language. It is really hard to think of many poets who produced as many memorable and resonant lines as Larkin
I could quote a dozen now from They fuck you up to What will survive of us is love
Only Yeats and Eliot equal him in the 20th century; and maybe Plath in her cometary way
Was he a racist, misogynist, curmudgeonly old git obsessed with lesbian schoolgirl spanking? Yes. Was he a genius poet, so who cares? Also yes
Was he a racist, misogynist, curmudgeonly old git obsessed with lesbian schoolgirl spanking? Yes. Was he a genius flint knapper, so who cares? Also yes
Talking of Betjeman, although he occasionally hit the heights, there's a certain repressed-but-dirty-raincoat-brigade aspect to both him and Larkin that I find a bit off-putting.
They disliked the more generous and colourful culture of the 1960's, but you get the feeling that they went around with their hands rather too deeply in their pockets when they saw "the young people"..
Larkin's last collection was published 50 years ago, in 1974, after which he published only one more major work, Aubade in 1977. Yes, he disliked much about the post 1960s culture with its various liberations (see Annus Mirabilis on 1963!).
But an issue is this: Since Larkin has there been a poet of stature that lots of people actually read?
Both Betjeman and Larkin were highly self aware, and knew that if they produced gold it was out of dross. As Yeats knew:
Now that my ladder's gone I must lie down where all the ladders start In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.
Betjeman was a really fine poet. Larkin is one of the greatest poets in the English language. It is really hard to think of many poets who produced as many memorable and resonant lines as Larkin
I could quote a dozen now from They fuck you up to What will survive of us is love
Only Yeats and Eliot equal him in the 20th century; and maybe Plath in her cometary way
Was he a racist, misogynist, curmudgeonly old git obsessed with lesbian schoolgirl spanking? Yes. Was he a genius poet, so who cares? Also yes
Was he a racist, misogynist, curmudgeonly old git obsessed with lesbian schoolgirl spanking? Yes. Was he a genius flint knapper, so who cares? Also yes
There are parallels
But thankfully I’ve gotten a lot more sex than poor philip Larkin stuck in his library in Hull, occasionally secreting these genius poems
Larkin would also have LOVED south east Asia, the booze, the warmth, the easy sensuality, the lack of reasons to be a grumpy old fuck, it’s a shame he missed out on global travel
Talking of Betjeman, although he occasionally hit the heights, there's a certain repressed-but-dirty-raincoat-brigade aspect to both him and Larkin that I find a bit off-putting.
They disliked the more generous and colourful culture of the 1960's, but you get the feeling that they went around with their hands rather too deeply in their pockets when they saw "the young people"..
Larkin's last collection was published 50 years ago, in 1974, after which he published only one more major work, Aubade in 1977. Yes, he disliked much about the post 1960s culture with its various liberations (see Annus Mirabilis on 1963!).
But an issue is this: Since Larkin has there been a poet of stature that lots of people actually read?
Both Betjeman and Larkin were highly self aware, and knew that if they produced gold it was out of dross. As Yeats knew:
Now that my ladder's gone I must lie down where all the ladders start In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.
Betjeman was a really fine poet. Larkin is one of the greatest poets in the English language. It is really hard to think of many poets who produced as many memorable and resonant lines as Larkin
I could quote a dozen now from They fuck you up to What will survive of us is love
Only Yeats and Eliot equal him in the 20th century; and maybe Plath in her cometary way
Was he a racist, misogynist, curmudgeonly old git obsessed with lesbian schoolgirl spanking? Yes. Was he a genius poet, so who cares? Also yes
Was he a racist, misogynist, curmudgeonly old git obsessed with lesbian schoolgirl spanking? Yes. Was he a genius flint knapper, so who cares? Also yes
There are parallels
But thankfully I’ve gotten a lot more sex than poor philip Larkin stuck in his library in Hull, occasionally secreting these genius poems
Larkin would also have LOVED south east Asia, the booze, the warmth, the easy sensuality, the lack of reasons to be a grumpy old fuck, it’s a shame he missed out on global travel
My tip to drink wine out of a sherry glass is as relevant to weight loss as it is to combatting alcoholism btw.
Dunno. The sherry glass (and contents) are lighter than the wine glass, assuming otherwise similar materials and construction. So each lift of glass burns fewer calories with the sherry glass than the wine glass. Might offset any reduced calorie intake from reduced drinking.
However, the trips to refill the sherry glass could outweigh that, if the bottle is kept at a reasonable distance.
Needs a whole life cycle analysis before any extravagant claims are made, I'd say
Just wait till he finds out about the PPE mountains.
On a serious note - why disposable PPE? Yes, it is somewhat convenient to just bin stuff. But dressing medical staff in light weight biodegradable plastic, with tons of gaps will be a fail when we get hit by an airborne virus. aside form the supply issues.
The issues of overheating, fogging, airtightness etc have all been solved for other applications. Making re-useable materials that can survive being dunked in a variety of cleaning chemicals is solved as well. Even electronics that can survive dramatic cleaning measures is a done thing. Fitted masks, using a 3D printed dam to fit exactly to the facial profile of the person using it, is a done thing.
Put it together and you could have a comfortable, easy to use, long lasting system that modularly fits together - so that you could deal with basic threats, but take it all the way to "space suit" level, if required.
Mm, not suggesting you are wrong, but even airborne viruses are very well transmitted by touch when ti comes to snot and sneezes.
As for reusability, the obvious issues are (a) ensuring the cleaning is done properly (e.g. in removing all clotted gunge and (b) the question of contamination with prions and similar, which can't be removed by 'sterilisation' of any remotely reasonable kind. Also the capital and energetic costs of the cleaning. And the degree to which complex mixtures of polymers are downgraded by reuse and cleaning - remember medical infection-proof stuff can tolerate much less damage than, say, a painter's work glove where a spot of paint on the skin isn't (usually) a serious disaster.
Edit: as Selebian says in a slightly different context, lifecycle costs are where it's at.
Talking of Betjeman, although he occasionally hit the heights, there's a certain repressed-but-dirty-raincoat-brigade aspect to both him and Larkin that I find a bit off-putting.
They disliked the more generous and colourful culture of the 1960's, but you get the feeling that they went around with their hands rather too deeply in their pockets when they saw "the young people"..
Larkin's last collection was published 50 years ago, in 1974, after which he published only one more major work, Aubade in 1977. Yes, he disliked much about the post 1960s culture with its various liberations (see Annus Mirabilis on 1963!).
But an issue is this: Since Larkin has there been a poet of stature that lots of people actually read?
Both Betjeman and Larkin were highly self aware, and knew that if they produced gold it was out of dross. As Yeats knew:
Now that my ladder's gone I must lie down where all the ladders start In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.
Betjeman was a really fine poet. Larkin is one of the greatest poets in the English language. It is really hard to think of many poets who produced as many memorable and resonant lines as Larkin
I could quote a dozen now from They fuck you up to What will survive of us is love
Only Yeats and Eliot equal him in the 20th century; and maybe Plath in her cometary way
Was he a racist, misogynist, curmudgeonly old git obsessed with lesbian schoolgirl spanking? Yes. Was he a genius poet, so who cares? Also yes
Was he a racist, misogynist, curmudgeonly old git obsessed with lesbian schoolgirl spanking? Yes. Was he a genius flint knapper, so who cares? Also yes
There are parallels
But thankfully I’ve gotten a lot more sex than poor philip Larkin stuck in his library in Hull, occasionally secreting these genius poems
Larkin would also have LOVED south east Asia, the booze, the warmth, the easy sensuality, the lack of reasons to be a grumpy old fuck, it’s a shame he missed out on global travel
Also... Larkin will be remembered.
I’m not dead yet. Gimme a chance
I had to make the money first. I’ve done that. Nicely. Now for immortality…
A flyer from the Ashfield Independents appears. This is presumably what Jason Zadrozny thinks will help him win the election.
They missed off dog poo bins.
Also underlined just about everything. Makes one wonder if they were crossing their fingers behind their backs and hoping about the bits they didn't underline, and if the bits they did underline were really that important.
Also, we were talking about men and male childlessness and how it is an undiscussed pain, for some
Philip Larkin wrote THE poem about it. So many glints of genius in this, the deliberate hesitations, the ceasuras, the lyrical run-ons, the sad chiming rhymes
Dockery and Son
BY PHILIP LARKIN
‘Dockery was junior to you, Wasn’t he?’ said the Dean. ‘His son’s here now.’ Death-suited, visitant, I nod. ‘And do You keep in touch with—’ Or remember how Black-gowned, unbreakfasted, and still half-tight We used to stand before that desk, to give ‘Our version’ of ‘these incidents last night’? I try the door of where I used to live:
Locked. The lawn spreads dazzlingly wide. A known bell chimes. I catch my train, ignored. Canal and clouds and colleges subside Slowly from view. But Dockery, good Lord, Anyone up today must have been born In ’43, when I was twenty-one. If he was younger, did he get this son At nineteen, twenty? Was he that withdrawn
High-collared public-schoolboy, sharing rooms With Cartwright who was killed? Well, it just shows How much ... How little ... Yawning, I suppose I fell asleep, waking at the fumes And furnace-glares of Sheffield, where I changed, And ate an awful pie, and walked along The platform to its end to see the ranged Joining and parting lines reflect a strong
Unhindered moon. To have no son, no wife, No house or land still seemed quite natural. Only a numbness registered the shock Of finding out how much had gone of life, How widely from the others. Dockery, now: Only nineteen, he must have taken stock Of what he wanted, and been capable Of ... No, that’s not the difference: rather, how
Convinced he was he should be added to! Why did he think adding meant increase? To me it was dilution. Where do these Innate assumptions come from? Not from what We think truest, or most want to do: Those warp tight-shut, like doors. They’re more a style Our lives bring with them: habit for a while, Suddenly they harden into all we’ve got
And how we got it; looked back on, they rear Like sand-clouds, thick and close, embodying For Dockery a son, for me nothing, Nothing with all a son’s harsh patronage. Life is first boredom, then fear. Whether or not we use it, it goes, And leaves what something hidden from us chose, And age, and then the only end of age.
BRRRR. That’s tough to read. But brilliantly clear
A poem that hits much harder in my 40s than it did in my 30s.
As to why we don't have poets any more, I suspect the advent of popular music killed it off. All our greatest poets are songwriters now. Hence NigelB's suggestion of Bob Dylan, downthread. When people think Dylan, they think Bob, not Thomas.
Larkin and Plath are the end of the grand English poetic tradition, 1500 years old. It ended with them
Two great poets tho, so maybe a fitting end. Nothing since has matched them, 21st century poetry is the most awful sentimental gibberish - yes yes, I’m an old man shouting at clouds, I’m also right
Art forms come and go, poetry has gone. Other things replace them - video games are becoming a mighty new art form
But that Larkin poem is a powerful reminder of how poetry can console you even in the darkest moments. That was clearly a dark moment for Larkin, yet he made something beautiful out of it, and he says to us: someone else has felt this, too. Which is itself a solace
I quite like some of Dana Gioia's stuff - and he gets props for having been a Stanford business graduate, and VP marketing at General Foods (though perhaps not for reviving the Jello brand).
My tip to drink wine out of a sherry glass is as relevant to weight loss as it is to combatting alcoholism btw.
Dunno. The sherry glass (and contents) are lighter than the wine glass, assuming otherwise similar materials and construction. So each lift of glass burns fewer calories with the sherry glass than the wine glass. Might offset any reduced calorie intake from reduced drinking.
However, the trips to refill the sherry glass could outweigh that, if the bottle is kept at a reasonable distance.
Needs a whole life cycle analysis before any extravagant claims are made, I'd say
Also I don’t believe it. No true alcoholic is gonna be fooled by ‘serving wine in tiny glasses’, you’d - I’d - just get angry and demand the entire bottle
I’m not sure @kinabalu’s claims of alcoholism stack up. Seems like a lightweight
F/w 30th - 31st January. Changes vs. 18th December 2023.
Daveygate not cutting through as predicted by the fan boys. Most perplexing.
Apart from the Con to RefUK switch in the last quarter of 2023 (and that seems to have stabilised), pretty much nothing has cut through for over a year.
Is the swingback train ever going to leave the station?
Not if ASLEF and the RMT have anything to do with it.
I'm fully behind pay restoration to 2008 levels for train drivers.
Salaries are comparable to the average for a commercial airline pilot:
So long as the revenue comes from the tickets of those they are driving around, I don't see a problem with that. The problem however is that it does not, it comes from taxpayers.
Abolish subsidies and let trains be staffed by whatever revenue comes from their customers - put up the prices if need be, and if the price goes up too far that fewer people travel by train, then fewer drivers will be needed and some will lose their jobs. That's supply and demand.
Supply and demand does not take into account the externalities. It is of benefit to society generally if more people travel on trains.
No it isn't.
I bow before your robust and well-argued case.
I gave you as much argument as you gave me.
Its hard to prove a negative, its upon the person making the assertion to make their claim before it can be rebutted.
I'm not making some wild claim here. That trains are, for example, less polluting than road traffic is well-established. Do you need me to evidence that bears shit in the woods next?
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2215454 "Many governments subsidize regional rail service as an alternative to road traffic. This paper assesses whether increases in service frequency reduce road traffic externalities. We exploit differences in service frequency growth by procurement mode following a railway reform in Germany to address endogeneity of service growth. Increases in service frequency reduce the number of severe road traffic accidents, carbon monoxide, nitrogen monoxide, nitrogen dioxide pollution and infant mortality. Placebo regressions with sulfur dioxide and ozone yield no effect. Service frequency growth between 1994 and 2004 improves environmental quality by an amount that is worth approximately 28-40% of total subsidies. An analysis of household behavior shows that the effects of railway services on outcome variables are driven by substitution from road to rail."
So your claim is based on the fact that diesel and unleaded vehicles from 20 years go were more polluting than trains?
It may have missed your attention, but we're switching over to hybrid and electric vehicles which eliminates the pollution problem. Clean vehicles aren't emitting emissions, so get your head out of the sand and come up with a new excuse to hate private transportation.
My tip to drink wine out of a sherry glass is as relevant to weight loss as it is to combatting alcoholism btw.
Dunno. The sherry glass (and contents) are lighter than the wine glass, assuming otherwise similar materials and construction. So each lift of glass burns fewer calories with the sherry glass than the wine glass. Might offset any reduced calorie intake from reduced drinking.
However, the trips to refill the sherry glass could outweigh that, if the bottle is kept at a reasonable distance.
Needs a whole life cycle analysis before any extravagant claims are made, I'd say
'Studies have shown' that smaller glasses lead to lower consumption. Really.
Just wait till he finds out about the PPE mountains.
On a serious note - why disposable PPE? Yes, it is somewhat convenient to just bin stuff. But dressing medical staff in light weight biodegradable plastic, with tons of gaps will be a fail when we get hit by an airborne virus. aside form the supply issues.
The issues of overheating, fogging, airtightness etc have all been solved for other applications. Making re-useable materials that can survive being dunked in a variety of cleaning chemicals is solved as well. Even electronics that can survive dramatic cleaning measures is a done thing. Fitted masks, using a 3D printed dam to fit exactly to the facial profile of the person using it, is a done thing.
Put it together and you could have a comfortable, easy to use, long lasting system that modularly fits together - so that you could deal with basic threats, but take it all the way to "space suit" level, if required.
Mm, not suggesting you are wrong, but even airborne viruses are very well transmitted by touch when ti comes to snot and sneezes.
As for reusability, the obvious issues are (a) ensuring the cleaning is done properly (e.g. in removing all clotted gunge and (b) the question of contamination with prions and similar, which can't be removed by 'sterilisation' of any remotely reasonable kind. Also the capital and energetic costs of the cleaning. And the degree to which complex mixtures of polymers are downgraded by reuse and cleaning - remember medical infection-proof stuff can tolerate much less damage than, say, a painter's work glove where a spot of paint on the skin isn't (usually) a serious disaster.
Some of the chemicals used in cleaning for welding can degrade anything. Probably helium with a bit of effort. The protective gear has to survive them.
You can stockpile the cleaning chemical, if you like.
Just looking at the protective gear you use for welding chromium steels vs the flimsy "PPE"....
Also, we were talking about men and male childlessness and how it is an undiscussed pain, for some
Philip Larkin wrote THE poem about it. So many glints of genius in this, the deliberate hesitations, the ceasuras, the lyrical run-ons, the sad chiming rhymes
Dockery and Son
BY PHILIP LARKIN
‘Dockery was junior to you, Wasn’t he?’ said the Dean. ‘His son’s here now.’ Death-suited, visitant, I nod. ‘And do You keep in touch with—’ Or remember how Black-gowned, unbreakfasted, and still half-tight We used to stand before that desk, to give ‘Our version’ of ‘these incidents last night’? I try the door of where I used to live:
Locked. The lawn spreads dazzlingly wide. A known bell chimes. I catch my train, ignored. Canal and clouds and colleges subside Slowly from view. But Dockery, good Lord, Anyone up today must have been born In ’43, when I was twenty-one. If he was younger, did he get this son At nineteen, twenty? Was he that withdrawn
High-collared public-schoolboy, sharing rooms With Cartwright who was killed? Well, it just shows How much ... How little ... Yawning, I suppose I fell asleep, waking at the fumes And furnace-glares of Sheffield, where I changed, And ate an awful pie, and walked along The platform to its end to see the ranged Joining and parting lines reflect a strong
Unhindered moon. To have no son, no wife, No house or land still seemed quite natural. Only a numbness registered the shock Of finding out how much had gone of life, How widely from the others. Dockery, now: Only nineteen, he must have taken stock Of what he wanted, and been capable Of ... No, that’s not the difference: rather, how
Convinced he was he should be added to! Why did he think adding meant increase? To me it was dilution. Where do these Innate assumptions come from? Not from what We think truest, or most want to do: Those warp tight-shut, like doors. They’re more a style Our lives bring with them: habit for a while, Suddenly they harden into all we’ve got
And how we got it; looked back on, they rear Like sand-clouds, thick and close, embodying For Dockery a son, for me nothing, Nothing with all a son’s harsh patronage. Life is first boredom, then fear. Whether or not we use it, it goes, And leaves what something hidden from us chose, And age, and then the only end of age.
BRRRR. That’s tough to read. But brilliantly clear
A poem that hits much harder in my 40s than it did in my 30s.
As to why we don't have poets any more, I suspect the advent of popular music killed it off. All our greatest poets are songwriters now. Hence NigelB's suggestion of Bob Dylan, downthread. When people think Dylan, they think Bob, not Thomas.
Larkin and Plath are the end of the grand English poetic tradition, 1500 years old. It ended with them
Two great poets tho, so maybe a fitting end. Nothing since has matched them, 21st century poetry is the most awful sentimental gibberish - yes yes, I’m an old man shouting at clouds, I’m also right
Art forms come and go, poetry has gone. Other things replace them - video games are becoming a mighty new art form
But that Larkin poem is a powerful reminder of how poetry can console you even in the darkest moments. That was clearly a dark moment for Larkin, yet he made something beautiful out of it, and he says to us: someone else has felt this, too. Which is itself a solace
I quite like some of Dana Gioia's stuff - and he gets props for having been a Stanford business graduate, and VP marketing at General Foods (though perhaps not for reviving the Jello brand).
But nothing to match the best of Larkin.
Poetry is also unbelievably Woke. Weirdly it is arguably the worst affected of the ‘great’ art forms - perhaps because it is not so great and no one gives a fuck anymore and the rewards are tinier than they’ve ever been
But yeah, the Wokeness is incredible. Its incestuous relationship with academe is an issue. Virtually no poets can make a living so they are all employed by universities teaching poetry, and academe is itself the Hadean Pit of Wokery
Just wait till he finds out about the PPE mountains.
On a serious note - why disposable PPE? Yes, it is somewhat convenient to just bin stuff. But dressing medical staff in light weight biodegradable plastic, with tons of gaps will be a fail when we get hit by an airborne virus. aside form the supply issues.
The issues of overheating, fogging, airtightness etc have all been solved for other applications. Making re-useable materials that can survive being dunked in a variety of cleaning chemicals is solved as well. Even electronics that can survive dramatic cleaning measures is a done thing. Fitted masks, using a 3D printed dam to fit exactly to the facial profile of the person using it, is a done thing.
Put it together and you could have a comfortable, easy to use, long lasting system that modularly fits together - so that you could deal with basic threats, but take it all the way to "space suit" level, if required.
Mm, not suggesting you are wrong, but even airborne viruses are very well transmitted by touch when ti comes to snot and sneezes.
As for reusability, the obvious issues are (a) ensuring the cleaning is done properly (e.g. in removing all clotted gunge and (b) the question of contamination with prions and similar, which can't be removed by 'sterilisation' of any remotely reasonable kind. Also the capital and energetic costs of the cleaning. And the degree to which complex mixtures of polymers are downgraded by reuse and cleaning - remember medical infection-proof stuff can tolerate much less damage than, say, a painter's work glove where a spot of paint on the skin isn't (usually) a serious disaster.
Some of the chemicals used in cleaning for welding can degrade anything. Probably helium with a bit of effort. The protective gear has to survive them.
You can stockpile the cleaning chemical, if you like.
Just looking at the protective gear you use for welding chromium steels vs the flimsy "PPE"....
Ha! It's still easierr for my friend the eye surgeon to use disposable gloves and disposable scalpels etc. on eye surgery (I believe a major prion concern) than it is to wear welding gloves and a welding mask.
F/w 30th - 31st January. Changes vs. 18th December 2023.
Daveygate not cutting through as predicted by the fan boys. Most perplexing.
Apart from the Con to RefUK switch in the last quarter of 2023 (and that seems to have stabilised), pretty much nothing has cut through for over a year.
Is the swingback train ever going to leave the station?
Not if ASLEF and the RMT have anything to do with it.
I'm fully behind pay restoration to 2008 levels for train drivers.
Salaries are comparable to the average for a commercial airline pilot:
So long as the revenue comes from the tickets of those they are driving around, I don't see a problem with that. The problem however is that it does not, it comes from taxpayers.
Abolish subsidies and let trains be staffed by whatever revenue comes from their customers - put up the prices if need be, and if the price goes up too far that fewer people travel by train, then fewer drivers will be needed and some will lose their jobs. That's supply and demand.
Supply and demand does not take into account the externalities. It is of benefit to society generally if more people travel on trains.
No it isn't.
I bow before your robust and well-argued case.
I gave you as much argument as you gave me.
Its hard to prove a negative, its upon the person making the assertion to make their claim before it can be rebutted.
I'm not making some wild claim here. That trains are, for example, less polluting than road traffic is well-established. Do you need me to evidence that bears shit in the woods next?
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2215454 "Many governments subsidize regional rail service as an alternative to road traffic. This paper assesses whether increases in service frequency reduce road traffic externalities. We exploit differences in service frequency growth by procurement mode following a railway reform in Germany to address endogeneity of service growth. Increases in service frequency reduce the number of severe road traffic accidents, carbon monoxide, nitrogen monoxide, nitrogen dioxide pollution and infant mortality. Placebo regressions with sulfur dioxide and ozone yield no effect. Service frequency growth between 1994 and 2004 improves environmental quality by an amount that is worth approximately 28-40% of total subsidies. An analysis of household behavior shows that the effects of railway services on outcome variables are driven by substitution from road to rail."
So your claim is based on the fact that diesel and unleaded vehicles from 20 years go were more polluting than trains?
It may have missed your attention, but we're switching over to hybrid and electric vehicles which eliminates the pollution problem. Clean vehicles aren't emitting emissions, so get your head out of the sand and come up with a new excuse to hate private transportation.
Trains transport a lot more people than private cars. You're moving lots more car per person. Ergo, more pollution. Trains are really efficient because they run on rails. Electric cars change neither of these.
F/w 30th - 31st January. Changes vs. 18th December 2023.
Daveygate not cutting through as predicted by the fan boys. Most perplexing.
Apart from the Con to RefUK switch in the last quarter of 2023 (and that seems to have stabilised), pretty much nothing has cut through for over a year.
Is the swingback train ever going to leave the station?
Not if ASLEF and the RMT have anything to do with it.
I'm fully behind pay restoration to 2008 levels for train drivers.
Front End Seat Warmers as referred to by some in the industry….
My tip to drink wine out of a sherry glass is as relevant to weight loss as it is to combatting alcoholism btw.
Dunno. The sherry glass (and contents) are lighter than the wine glass, assuming otherwise similar materials and construction. So each lift of glass burns fewer calories with the sherry glass than the wine glass. Might offset any reduced calorie intake from reduced drinking.
However, the trips to refill the sherry glass could outweigh that, if the bottle is kept at a reasonable distance.
Needs a whole life cycle analysis before any extravagant claims are made, I'd say
'Studies have shown' that smaller glasses lead to lower consumption. Really.
Removing largest wine glass serving cuts amount people drink, study says
My tip to drink wine out of a sherry glass is as relevant to weight loss as it is to combatting alcoholism btw.
Sorry but this is ridiculous. Alcoholism is a disease not a throwaway word.
If you're an alcoholic then the safe amount of alcohol to consume is zero, glass size doesn't matter.
If you're not an alcoholic, then don't abuse the word.
It's not ridiculous; it's badly worded.
Personally, I'm not convinced by the sherry glass suggestion - they're just *too* small. But using smaller glasses will help someone who wants to cut down from, say, 25 units a week to 15.
Just wait till he finds out about the PPE mountains.
On a serious note - why disposable PPE? Yes, it is somewhat convenient to just bin stuff. But dressing medical staff in light weight biodegradable plastic, with tons of gaps will be a fail when we get hit by an airborne virus. aside form the supply issues.
The issues of overheating, fogging, airtightness etc have all been solved for other applications. Making re-useable materials that can survive being dunked in a variety of cleaning chemicals is solved as well. Even electronics that can survive dramatic cleaning measures is a done thing. Fitted masks, using a 3D printed dam to fit exactly to the facial profile of the person using it, is a done thing.
Put it together and you could have a comfortable, easy to use, long lasting system that modularly fits together - so that you could deal with basic threats, but take it all the way to "space suit" level, if required.
Mm, not suggesting you are wrong, but even airborne viruses are very well transmitted by touch when ti comes to snot and sneezes.
As for reusability, the obvious issues are (a) ensuring the cleaning is done properly (e.g. in removing all clotted gunge and (b) the question of contamination with prions and similar, which can't be removed by 'sterilisation' of any remotely reasonable kind. Also the capital and energetic costs of the cleaning. And the degree to which complex mixtures of polymers are downgraded by reuse and cleaning - remember medical infection-proof stuff can tolerate much less damage than, say, a painter's work glove where a spot of paint on the skin isn't (usually) a serious disaster.
Some of the chemicals used in cleaning for welding can degrade anything. Probably helium with a bit of effort. The protective gear has to survive them.
You can stockpile the cleaning chemical, if you like.
Just looking at the protective gear you use for welding chromium steels vs the flimsy "PPE"....
Ha! It's still easierr for my friend the eye surgeon to use disposable gloves and disposable scalpels etc. on eye surgery (I believe a major prion concern) than it is to wear welding gloves and a welding mask.
You haven't tries some of the latest welding masks. Far, far better than the view through one of those disposable face shield pieces of crap. And a zillion times more comfortable.
F/w 30th - 31st January. Changes vs. 18th December 2023.
Daveygate not cutting through as predicted by the fan boys. Most perplexing.
Apart from the Con to RefUK switch in the last quarter of 2023 (and that seems to have stabilised), pretty much nothing has cut through for over a year.
Is the swingback train ever going to leave the station?
Not if ASLEF and the RMT have anything to do with it.
I'm fully behind pay restoration to 2008 levels for train drivers.
Salaries are comparable to the average for a commercial airline pilot:
So long as the revenue comes from the tickets of those they are driving around, I don't see a problem with that. The problem however is that it does not, it comes from taxpayers.
Abolish subsidies and let trains be staffed by whatever revenue comes from their customers - put up the prices if need be, and if the price goes up too far that fewer people travel by train, then fewer drivers will be needed and some will lose their jobs. That's supply and demand.
Supply and demand does not take into account the externalities. It is of benefit to society generally if more people travel on trains.
No it isn't.
I bow before your robust and well-argued case.
I gave you as much argument as you gave me.
Its hard to prove a negative, its upon the person making the assertion to make their claim before it can be rebutted.
I'm not making some wild claim here. That trains are, for example, less polluting than road traffic is well-established. Do you need me to evidence that bears shit in the woods next?
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2215454 "Many governments subsidize regional rail service as an alternative to road traffic. This paper assesses whether increases in service frequency reduce road traffic externalities. We exploit differences in service frequency growth by procurement mode following a railway reform in Germany to address endogeneity of service growth. Increases in service frequency reduce the number of severe road traffic accidents, carbon monoxide, nitrogen monoxide, nitrogen dioxide pollution and infant mortality. Placebo regressions with sulfur dioxide and ozone yield no effect. Service frequency growth between 1994 and 2004 improves environmental quality by an amount that is worth approximately 28-40% of total subsidies. An analysis of household behavior shows that the effects of railway services on outcome variables are driven by substitution from road to rail."
So your claim is based on the fact that diesel and unleaded vehicles from 20 years go were more polluting than trains?
It may have missed your attention, but we're switching over to hybrid and electric vehicles which eliminates the pollution problem. Clean vehicles aren't emitting emissions, so get your head out of the sand and come up with a new excuse to hate private transportation.
Trains transport a lot more people than private cars. You're moving lots more car per person. Ergo, more pollution. Trains are really efficient because they run on rails. Electric cars change neither of these.
Don't go all HYUFD on us.
If trains are actually efficient they'll be able operate not just without subsidies but be as heavily taxed per mile as road transport is.
My tip to drink wine out of a sherry glass is as relevant to weight loss as it is to combatting alcoholism btw.
Sorry but this is ridiculous. Alcoholism is a disease not a throwaway word.
If you're an alcoholic then the safe amount of alcohol to consume is zero, glass size doesn't matter.
If you're not an alcoholic, then don't abuse the word.
It's not ridiculous; it's badly worded.
Personally, I'm not convinced by the sherry glass suggestion - they're just *too* small. But using smaller glasses will help someone who wants to cut down from, say, 25 units a week to 15.
I have a set of old crystal wine glasses, and they are way smaller than today's ones. The matching sherry glasses are like thimbles - so good for soju shots.
My tip to drink wine out of a sherry glass is as relevant to weight loss as it is to combatting alcoholism btw.
Sorry but this is ridiculous. Alcoholism is a disease not a throwaway word.
If you're an alcoholic then the safe amount of alcohol to consume is zero, glass size doesn't matter.
If you're not an alcoholic, then don't abuse the word.
It's not ridiculous; it's badly worded.
Personally, I'm not convinced by the sherry glass suggestion - they're just *too* small. But using smaller glasses will help someone who wants to cut down from, say, 25 units a week to 15.
Someone who wants to cut down is not an alcoholic though.
Alcoholism is a disease whereby when you're drinking you don't stop drinking. You can take as many small glasses as you want, but if you're polishing off that bottle and the next one each day and can't stop then that's alcoholism.
My tip to drink wine out of a sherry glass is as relevant to weight loss as it is to combatting alcoholism btw.
Sorry but this is ridiculous. Alcoholism is a disease not a throwaway word.
If you're an alcoholic then the safe amount of alcohol to consume is zero, glass size doesn't matter.
If you're not an alcoholic, then don't abuse the word.
It's not ridiculous; it's badly worded.
Personally, I'm not convinced by the sherry glass suggestion - they're just *too* small. But using smaller glasses will help someone who wants to cut down from, say, 25 units a week to 15.
Day 2 of my dry month. Its not passing quickly, that's for sure.
Stop being such a dogmatic, tin-eared, insensitive twat. I was teasing him earlier but actually @kinabalu has written quite eloquently if briefly about his problems with booze addiction. He knows this subject
PB has morphed into a self help group for ageing and cantankerous men who know too much about polling and often need to lose weight but we are also that, a social group, and your remarks are antisocial and crude, so do shut up
Extraordinary, if true. The total pathetic decadence of our politicians
"Newsnight asked (Labour MP) Bell Ribeiro-Addy and (Tory MP) Caroline Nokes about the fact the alkali attacker was granted asylum on his 3rd attempt after a sexual assault conviction
BRA: "His asylum status is not really the issue of concern"
CN: "I think it's wrong to comment on that""
WHY IS IT WRONG TO COMMENT ON THAT. HOW CAN HIS ASYLUM STATUS AND CRIMINAL RECORD NOT BE AN ISSUE OF CONCERN
Stop being such a dogmatic, tin-eared, insensitive twat. I was teasing him earlier but actually @kinabalu has written quite eloquently if briefly about his problems with booze addiction. He knows this subject
PB has morphed into a self help group for ageing and cantankerous men who know too much about polling and often need to lose weight but we are also that, a social group, and your remarks are antisocial and crude, so do shut up
I apologise, I hadn't read anything anything he has written about problems with booze and was completely unaware of that.
Stop being such a dogmatic, tin-eared, insensitive twat. I was teasing him earlier but actually @kinabalu has written quite eloquently if briefly about his problems with booze addiction. He knows this subject
PB has morphed into a self help group for ageing and cantankerous men who know too much about polling and often need to lose weight but we are also that, a social group, and your remarks are antisocial and crude, so do shut up
I apologise, I hadn't read anything anything he has written about problems with booze and was completely unaware of that.
I didn't mean to be insensitive.
Fair enough, and fair play. I’ll accept your apologies on behalf of @kinabalu if he is not around right now, then I will give them to him in a weirdly tiny flask
My tip to drink wine out of a sherry glass is as relevant to weight loss as it is to combatting alcoholism btw.
Sorry but this is ridiculous. Alcoholism is a disease not a throwaway word.
If you're an alcoholic then the safe amount of alcohol to consume is zero, glass size doesn't matter.
If you're not an alcoholic, then don't abuse the word.
It's not ridiculous; it's badly worded.
Personally, I'm not convinced by the sherry glass suggestion - they're just *too* small. But using smaller glasses will help someone who wants to cut down from, say, 25 units a week to 15.
Day 2 of my dry month. Its not passing quickly, that's for sure.
My tip to drink wine out of a sherry glass is as relevant to weight loss as it is to combatting alcoholism btw.
Sorry but this is ridiculous. Alcoholism is a disease not a throwaway word.
If you're an alcoholic then the safe amount of alcohol to consume is zero, glass size doesn't matter.
If you're not an alcoholic, then don't abuse the word.
It's not ridiculous; it's badly worded.
Personally, I'm not convinced by the sherry glass suggestion - they're just *too* small. But using smaller glasses will help someone who wants to cut down from, say, 25 units a week to 15.
Someone who wants to cut down is not an alcoholic though.
Alcoholism is a disease whereby when you're drinking you don't stop drinking. You can take as many small glasses as you want, but if you're polishing off that bottle and the next one each day and can't stop then that's alcoholism.
Yes, I'm not disputing that. But if you replace 'combating alcoholism' with 'alcohol reduction', it's reasonably sensible advice and even more so as a general principle to serve smaller measures. Not everyone who wants to reduce alcohol intake is an alcoholic.
My tip to drink wine out of a sherry glass is as relevant to weight loss as it is to combatting alcoholism btw.
Dunno. The sherry glass (and contents) are lighter than the wine glass, assuming otherwise similar materials and construction. So each lift of glass burns fewer calories with the sherry glass than the wine glass. Might offset any reduced calorie intake from reduced drinking.
However, the trips to refill the sherry glass could outweigh that, if the bottle is kept at a reasonable distance.
Needs a whole life cycle analysis before any extravagant claims are made, I'd say
'Studies have shown' that smaller glasses lead to lower consumption. Really.
Removing largest wine glass serving cuts amount people drink, study says
No, the article says ‘a study suggests’. Pretty meaningless study from anti alcohol lobbyists who, by their own admission, struggled to get bars to participate.
21 bars not being representative of the licensed trade as a whole is meaningless.
My tip to drink wine out of a sherry glass is as relevant to weight loss as it is to combatting alcoholism btw.
Sorry but this is ridiculous. Alcoholism is a disease not a throwaway word.
If you're an alcoholic then the safe amount of alcohol to consume is zero, glass size doesn't matter.
If you're not an alcoholic, then don't abuse the word.
It's not ridiculous; it's badly worded.
Personally, I'm not convinced by the sherry glass suggestion - they're just *too* small. But using smaller glasses will help someone who wants to cut down from, say, 25 units a week to 15.
Day 2 of my dry month. Its not passing quickly, that's for sure.
it gets worse
Just to let you and @DavidL know, I enjoyed a nice pint of 'Ghost Ship' last night.
Stop being such a dogmatic, tin-eared, insensitive twat. I was teasing him earlier but actually @kinabalu has written quite eloquently if briefly about his problems with booze addiction. He knows this subject
PB has morphed into a self help group for ageing and cantankerous men who know too much about polling and often need to lose weight but we are also that, a social group, and your remarks are antisocial and crude, so do shut up
Someone has to fulfil the role of insensitive cantankerous twat now the old soak, Ishmael, is no longer here spouting venom.
Fair play to Bart for the genuine apology.
It is worth remembering behind every poster is a h human being and, irrespective of their views, most people in real life are decent people. We should be kind.
My tip to drink wine out of a sherry glass is as relevant to weight loss as it is to combatting alcoholism btw.
Dunno. The sherry glass (and contents) are lighter than the wine glass, assuming otherwise similar materials and construction. So each lift of glass burns fewer calories with the sherry glass than the wine glass. Might offset any reduced calorie intake from reduced drinking.
However, the trips to refill the sherry glass could outweigh that, if the bottle is kept at a reasonable distance.
Needs a whole life cycle analysis before any extravagant claims are made, I'd say
'Studies have shown' that smaller glasses lead to lower consumption. Really.
Removing largest wine glass serving cuts amount people drink, study says
No, the article says ‘a study suggests’. Pretty meaningless study from anti alcohol lobbyists who, by their own admission, struggled to get bars to participate.
21 bars not being representative of the licensed trade as a whole is meaningless.
Surely as representative as a 2000 people poll is of the UK voting intention?
My tip to drink wine out of a sherry glass is as relevant to weight loss as it is to combatting alcoholism btw.
Sorry but this is ridiculous. Alcoholism is a disease not a throwaway word.
If you're an alcoholic then the safe amount of alcohol to consume is zero, glass size doesn't matter.
If you're not an alcoholic, then don't abuse the word.
It's not ridiculous; it's badly worded.
Personally, I'm not convinced by the sherry glass suggestion - they're just *too* small. But using smaller glasses will help someone who wants to cut down from, say, 25 units a week to 15.
Day 2 of my dry month. Its not passing quickly, that's for sure.
it gets worse
Just to let you and @DavidL know, I enjoyed a nice pint of 'Ghost Ship' last night.
My tip to drink wine out of a sherry glass is as relevant to weight loss as it is to combatting alcoholism btw.
Sorry but this is ridiculous. Alcoholism is a disease not a throwaway word.
If you're an alcoholic then the safe amount of alcohol to consume is zero, glass size doesn't matter.
If you're not an alcoholic, then don't abuse the word.
It's not ridiculous; it's badly worded.
Personally, I'm not convinced by the sherry glass suggestion - they're just *too* small. But using smaller glasses will help someone who wants to cut down from, say, 25 units a week to 15.
Day 2 of my dry month. Its not passing quickly, that's for sure.
it gets worse
Just to let you and @DavidL know, I enjoyed a nice pint of 'Ghost Ship' last night.
My tip to drink wine out of a sherry glass is as relevant to weight loss as it is to combatting alcoholism btw.
Sorry but this is ridiculous. Alcoholism is a disease not a throwaway word.
If you're an alcoholic then the safe amount of alcohol to consume is zero, glass size doesn't matter.
If you're not an alcoholic, then don't abuse the word.
It's not ridiculous; it's badly worded.
Personally, I'm not convinced by the sherry glass suggestion - they're just *too* small. But using smaller glasses will help someone who wants to cut down from, say, 25 units a week to 15.
Day 2 of my dry month. Its not passing quickly, that's for sure.
it gets worse
Just to let you and @DavidL know, I enjoyed a nice pint of 'Ghost Ship' last night.
If you are having Adnams it should be Broadside (or plain bitter if it is a nice day and you want a lighter drink) in my opinion.
Nothing in my opinion beats a pint of Shere Drop but I suspect you have to be within a limited range of Dorking for that
Stop being such a dogmatic, tin-eared, insensitive twat. I was teasing him earlier but actually @kinabalu has written quite eloquently if briefly about his problems with booze addiction. He knows this subject
PB has morphed into a self help group for ageing and cantankerous men who know too much about polling and often need to lose weight but we are also that, a social group, and your remarks are antisocial and crude, so do shut up
I apologise, I hadn't read anything anything he has written about problems with booze and was completely unaware of that.
I didn't mean to be insensitive.
Well said.
I do think a lot of the problem with discussing drinking, cutting down drinking, comes from the fact that what works for some people doesn't work for others.
If someone offered me wine in a sherry glass, I would go full Get Carter. "You don't serve a man like Jack a drink in those piddling little glasses! Bring him the bloody bottle!" But if it works for others, that's great. And I suspect it does work for Kinabalu.
I know someone (Ghedebrav? sorry if it wasn't you) mentioned AA the other day, and they do seem to go for the "one drink is too much for an alcoholic" approach. I find their views are dogmatic in the extreme, but it's definitely a popular view.
One thing I'm considering is that my relationship with alcohol has changed since Lockdown, pre Lockdown I could take it or leave it, now I wonder if I'm falling into the 'one drink means going on a long drunk' category. Lockdown really destroyed my impulse control in a lot of ways, hence why I still have anger issues in other areas (a lot of Nokia throwing, which I never used to do pre-Lockdown). So I think I have a problem with impulse control in general, not just with drinking.
The trick is not to delude oneself. If one drink is fine, and you can take it or leave, it, great. If you're just kidding yourself about that, because one drink becomes six, and you find yourself down the offie the next day just to take the edge off, it's time to stop kidding yourself. Which is I think where I'm at post-Lockdown. Maybe that will change over time, though. I have a couple of friends who did AA and NA in their thirties and were convinced they could never touch a drop again, but a decade on they have an occasional drink or in one case smokes weed, without it leading to harder things. They grew up and got better with time, it just took a very long break to reset themselves.
My tip to drink wine out of a sherry glass is as relevant to weight loss as it is to combatting alcoholism btw.
Sorry but this is ridiculous. Alcoholism is a disease not a throwaway word.
If you're an alcoholic then the safe amount of alcohol to consume is zero, glass size doesn't matter.
If you're not an alcoholic, then don't abuse the word.
It's not ridiculous; it's badly worded.
Personally, I'm not convinced by the sherry glass suggestion - they're just *too* small. But using smaller glasses will help someone who wants to cut down from, say, 25 units a week to 15.
Day 2 of my dry month. Its not passing quickly, that's for sure.
Year 49 of my dry, er, life started three months ago
F/w 30th - 31st January. Changes vs. 18th December 2023.
Daveygate not cutting through as predicted by the fan boys. Most perplexing.
Apart from the Con to RefUK switch in the last quarter of 2023 (and that seems to have stabilised), pretty much nothing has cut through for over a year.
Is the swingback train ever going to leave the station?
Not if ASLEF and the RMT have anything to do with it.
I'm fully behind pay restoration to 2008 levels for train drivers.
Salaries are comparable to the average for a commercial airline pilot:
Stop being such a dogmatic, tin-eared, insensitive twat. I was teasing him earlier but actually @kinabalu has written quite eloquently if briefly about his problems with booze addiction. He knows this subject
PB has morphed into a self help group for ageing and cantankerous men who know too much about polling and often need to lose weight but we are also that, a social group, and your remarks are antisocial and crude, so do shut up
I apologise, I hadn't read anything anything he has written about problems with booze and was completely unaware of that.
I didn't mean to be insensitive.
Well said.
I do think a lot of the problem with discussing drinking, cutting down drinking, comes from the fact that what works for some people doesn't work for others.
If someone offered me wine in a sherry glass, I would go full Get Carter. "You don't serve a man like Jack a drink in those piddling little glasses! Bring him the bloody bottle!" But if it works for others, that's great. And I suspect it does work for Kinabalu.
I know someone (Ghedebrav? sorry if it wasn't you) mentioned AA the other day, and they do seem to go for the "one drink is too much for an alcoholic" approach. I find their views are dogmatic in the extreme, but it's definitely a popular view.
One thing I'm considering is that my relationship with alcohol has changed since Lockdown, pre Lockdown I could take it or leave it, now I wonder if I'm falling into the 'one drink means going on a long drunk' category. Lockdown really destroyed my impulse control in a lot of ways, hence why I still have anger issues in other areas (a lot of Nokia throwing, which I never used to do pre-Lockdown). So I think I have a problem with impulse control in general, not just with drinking.
The trick is not to delude oneself. If one drink is fine, and you can take it or leave, it, great. If you're just kidding yourself about that, because one drink becomes six, and you find yourself down the offie the next day just to take the edge off, it's time to stop kidding yourself. Which is I think where I'm at post-Lockdown. Maybe that will change over time, though. I have a couple of friends who did AA and NA in their thirties and were convinced they could never touch a drop again, but a decade on they have an occasional drink or in one case smokes weed, without it leading to harder things. They grew up and got better with time, it just took a very long break to reset themselves.
I know people like that. They have reset
I sometimes think AA and NA’’s insistence on total abstinence is overdone; but of course it works for a lot of people and in some cases - near liver failure or constant overdosing - it is the only choice for survival
Sounds like @kinabalu might be worth talking to. He’s moved from a problematic relationship with booze to genial moderation, so I shall stop laughing at his sherry glasses and give him respect
And also, it’s nearly 10pm and time to watch Netflix and sleep. I am basically living like a hard working monk, except with cheap martinis and nice sunshine
Also, we were talking about men and male childlessness and how it is an undiscussed pain, for some
Philip Larkin wrote THE poem about it. So many glints of genius in this, the deliberate hesitations, the ceasuras, the lyrical run-ons, the sad chiming rhymes
Dockery and Son
BY PHILIP LARKIN
‘Dockery was junior to you, Wasn’t he?’ said the Dean. ‘His son’s here now.’ Death-suited, visitant, I nod. ‘And do You keep in touch with—’ Or remember how Black-gowned, unbreakfasted, and still half-tight We used to stand before that desk, to give ‘Our version’ of ‘these incidents last night’? I try the door of where I used to live:
Locked. The lawn spreads dazzlingly wide. A known bell chimes. I catch my train, ignored. Canal and clouds and colleges subside Slowly from view. But Dockery, good Lord, Anyone up today must have been born In ’43, when I was twenty-one. If he was younger, did he get this son At nineteen, twenty? Was he that withdrawn
High-collared public-schoolboy, sharing rooms With Cartwright who was killed? Well, it just shows How much ... How little ... Yawning, I suppose I fell asleep, waking at the fumes And furnace-glares of Sheffield, where I changed, And ate an awful pie, and walked along The platform to its end to see the ranged Joining and parting lines reflect a strong
Unhindered moon. To have no son, no wife, No house or land still seemed quite natural. Only a numbness registered the shock Of finding out how much had gone of life, How widely from the others. Dockery, now: Only nineteen, he must have taken stock Of what he wanted, and been capable Of ... No, that’s not the difference: rather, how
Convinced he was he should be added to! Why did he think adding meant increase? To me it was dilution. Where do these Innate assumptions come from? Not from what We think truest, or most want to do: Those warp tight-shut, like doors. They’re more a style Our lives bring with them: habit for a while, Suddenly they harden into all we’ve got
And how we got it; looked back on, they rear Like sand-clouds, thick and close, embodying For Dockery a son, for me nothing, Nothing with all a son’s harsh patronage. Life is first boredom, then fear. Whether or not we use it, it goes, And leaves what something hidden from us chose, And age, and then the only end of age.
BRRRR. That’s tough to read. But brilliantly clear
A poem that hits much harder in my 40s than it did in my 30s.
As to why we don't have poets any more, I suspect the advent of popular music killed it off. All our greatest poets are songwriters now. Hence NigelB's suggestion of Bob Dylan, downthread. When people think Dylan, they think Bob, not Thomas.
Larkin and Plath are the end of the grand English poetic tradition, 1500 years old. It ended with them
Two great poets tho, so maybe a fitting end. Nothing since has matched them, 21st century poetry is the most awful sentimental gibberish - yes yes, I’m an old man shouting at clouds, I’m also right
Art forms come and go, poetry has gone. Other things replace them - video games are becoming a mighty new art form
But that Larkin poem is a powerful reminder of how poetry can console you even in the darkest moments. That was clearly a dark moment for Larkin, yet he made something beautiful out of it, and he says to us: someone else has felt this, too. Which is itself a solace
I quite like some of Dana Gioia's stuff - and he gets props for having been a Stanford business graduate, and VP marketing at General Foods (though perhaps not for reviving the Jello brand).
But nothing to match the best of Larkin.
Poetry is also unbelievably Woke. Weirdly it is arguably the worst affected of the ‘great’ art forms - perhaps because it is not so great and no one gives a fuck anymore and the rewards are tinier than they’ve ever been
But yeah, the Wokeness is incredible. Its incestuous relationship with academe is an issue. Virtually no poets can make a living so they are all employed by universities teaching poetry, and academe is itself the Hadean Pit of Wokery
My kids studied poetry in English. Mainly modern Scottish rubbish about not very much, some of it positively irritating. But amongst the dross was Assisi by Norman MacCaig:
The dwarf with his hands on backwards sat, slumped like a half-filled sack on tiny twisted legs from which sawdust might run, outside the three tiers of churches built in honour of St Francis, brother of the poor, talker with birds, over whom he had the advantage of not being dead yet.
A priest explained how clever it was of Giotto to make his frescoes tell stories that would reveal to the illiterate the goodness of God and the suffering of His Son. I understood the explanation and the cleverness.
A rush of tourists, clucking contentedly, fluttered after him as he scattered the grain of the Word. It was they who had passed the ruined temple outside, whose eyes wept pus, whose back was higher than his head, whose lopsided mouth said Grazie in a voice as sweet as a child’s when she speaks to her mother or a bird’s when it spoke to St Francis.
It captures why poetry is worth persevering with. You just can't pack that much meaning and insight into so few words any other way.
My tip to drink wine out of a sherry glass is as relevant to weight loss as it is to combatting alcoholism btw.
Sorry but this is ridiculous. Alcoholism is a disease not a throwaway word.
If you're an alcoholic then the safe amount of alcohol to consume is zero, glass size doesn't matter.
If you're not an alcoholic, then don't abuse the word.
It's not ridiculous; it's badly worded.
Personally, I'm not convinced by the sherry glass suggestion - they're just *too* small. But using smaller glasses will help someone who wants to cut down from, say, 25 units a week to 15.
Day 2 of my dry month. Its not passing quickly, that's for sure.
it gets worse
Just to let you and @DavidL know, I enjoyed a nice pint of 'Ghost Ship' last night.
If you are having Adnams it should be Broadside (or plain bitter if it is a nice day and you want a lighter drink) in my opinion.
Nothing in my opinion beats a pint of Shere Drop but I suspect you have to be within a limited range of Dorking for that
Ghost Ship is a very acceptable no-alcohol bitter.
My tip to drink wine out of a sherry glass is as relevant to weight loss as it is to combatting alcoholism btw.
Sorry but this is ridiculous. Alcoholism is a disease not a throwaway word.
If you're an alcoholic then the safe amount of alcohol to consume is zero, glass size doesn't matter.
If you're not an alcoholic, then don't abuse the word.
It's not ridiculous; it's badly worded.
Personally, I'm not convinced by the sherry glass suggestion - they're just *too* small. But using smaller glasses will help someone who wants to cut down from, say, 25 units a week to 15.
Day 2 of my dry month. Its not passing quickly, that's for sure.
it gets worse
Just to let you and @DavidL know, I enjoyed a nice pint of 'Ghost Ship' last night.
If you are having Adnams it should be Broadside (or plain bitter if it is a nice day and you want a lighter drink) in my opinion.
Nothing in my opinion beats a pint of Shere Drop but I suspect you have to be within a limited range of Dorking for that
Stop being such a dogmatic, tin-eared, insensitive twat. I was teasing him earlier but actually @kinabalu has written quite eloquently if briefly about his problems with booze addiction. He knows this subject
PB has morphed into a self help group for ageing and cantankerous men who know too much about polling and often need to lose weight but we are also that, a social group, and your remarks are antisocial and crude, so do shut up
I apologise, I hadn't read anything anything he has written about problems with booze and was completely unaware of that.
I didn't mean to be insensitive.
Well said.
I do think a lot of the problem with discussing drinking, cutting down drinking, comes from the fact that what works for some people doesn't work for others.
If someone offered me wine in a sherry glass, I would go full Get Carter. "You don't serve a man like Jack a drink in those piddling little glasses! Bring him the bloody bottle!" But if it works for others, that's great. And I suspect it does work for Kinabalu.
I know someone (Ghedebrav? sorry if it wasn't you) mentioned AA the other day, and they do seem to go for the "one drink is too much for an alcoholic" approach. I find their views are dogmatic in the extreme, but it's definitely a popular view.
One thing I'm considering is that my relationship with alcohol has changed since Lockdown, pre Lockdown I could take it or leave it, now I wonder if I'm falling into the 'one drink means going on a long drunk' category. Lockdown really destroyed my impulse control in a lot of ways, hence why I still have anger issues in other areas (a lot of Nokia throwing, which I never used to do pre-Lockdown). So I think I have a problem with impulse control in general, not just with drinking.
The trick is not to delude oneself. If one drink is fine, and you can take it or leave, it, great. If you're just kidding yourself about that, because one drink becomes six, and you find yourself down the offie the next day just to take the edge off, it's time to stop kidding yourself. Which is I think where I'm at post-Lockdown. Maybe that will change over time, though. I have a couple of friends who did AA and NA in their thirties and were convinced they could never touch a drop again, but a decade on they have an occasional drink or in one case smokes weed, without it leading to harder things. They grew up and got better with time, it just took a very long break to reset themselves.
Yeah I talked about it the other day. I don't think I have a dependency (five weeks in now, and hearing some other people's stories of how they struggled with kicking - forcing themselves to live minute to minute without a drink, such is the need - I haven't had that experience) but I do have a compulsive and ruinous relationship with booze. I'm quite shy and introverted by nature, but a jolly social drunk - wishing every night to be a carnival. But then especially through lockdown became habituated to home drinking, a few nights a week turning to every night, one or two becoming three or four - or more. Never really getting wasted but looking for that glow.
Many would not define me as an alcoholic, but the AA definition is looser tbh - it's about whether you're capable of having a normal relationship with drinking, which if I'm honest I do not. I find the groups and the ritual and the shared understanding very helpful.
It may be that I'm like your friends, and when I retire I'll enjoy the odd stout every now and again. Right now abstinence is the only way for me - but it's not for everyone.
With episode 3 of Masters of the Air just released today, the explosive closing statements from the lawyers filling the last day of the latest phase of the PO/Horizon/Fujitsu enquiry streamed live, and the first episode of the latest Apprentice now online, it is impressive now many of you have so much time to post here today
Further to my post re the Met hiring Post Office investigators, this is yet another example of a body which does not understand the vital importance of avoiding conflicts of interest.
The Met is supposed to be investigating the Post Office - both individuals within it and as a corporate body. So why on earth does it think it appropriate to hire employees from there who are likely to be under investigation or witnesses? How can it reassure others that such people might not seek to share information about the investigation in breach of all duties of confidentiality? After all the investigations are into possible perversion of the course of justice which makes it even more imperative that it might otherwise be to ensure that no Met staff could possibly be accused of this.
It is an extraordinary hiring decision, quite as bizarre as the CPS being content with one of its directors being on the Board of the Post Office at the same time as the CPS has hired a KC to look into possible criminal charges against the Post Office and some of its past or present staff.
Also, we were talking about men and male childlessness and how it is an undiscussed pain, for some
Philip Larkin wrote THE poem about it. So many glints of genius in this, the deliberate hesitations, the ceasuras, the lyrical run-ons, the sad chiming rhymes
Dockery and Son
BY PHILIP LARKIN
‘Dockery was junior to you, Wasn’t he?’ said the Dean. ‘His son’s here now.’ Death-suited, visitant, I nod. ‘And do You keep in touch with—’ Or remember how Black-gowned, unbreakfasted, and still half-tight We used to stand before that desk, to give ‘Our version’ of ‘these incidents last night’? I try the door of where I used to live:
Locked. The lawn spreads dazzlingly wide. A known bell chimes. I catch my train, ignored. Canal and clouds and colleges subside Slowly from view. But Dockery, good Lord, Anyone up today must have been born In ’43, when I was twenty-one. If he was younger, did he get this son At nineteen, twenty? Was he that withdrawn
High-collared public-schoolboy, sharing rooms With Cartwright who was killed? Well, it just shows How much ... How little ... Yawning, I suppose I fell asleep, waking at the fumes And furnace-glares of Sheffield, where I changed, And ate an awful pie, and walked along The platform to its end to see the ranged Joining and parting lines reflect a strong
Unhindered moon. To have no son, no wife, No house or land still seemed quite natural. Only a numbness registered the shock Of finding out how much had gone of life, How widely from the others. Dockery, now: Only nineteen, he must have taken stock Of what he wanted, and been capable Of ... No, that’s not the difference: rather, how
Convinced he was he should be added to! Why did he think adding meant increase? To me it was dilution. Where do these Innate assumptions come from? Not from what We think truest, or most want to do: Those warp tight-shut, like doors. They’re more a style Our lives bring with them: habit for a while, Suddenly they harden into all we’ve got
And how we got it; looked back on, they rear Like sand-clouds, thick and close, embodying For Dockery a son, for me nothing, Nothing with all a son’s harsh patronage. Life is first boredom, then fear. Whether or not we use it, it goes, And leaves what something hidden from us chose, And age, and then the only end of age.
BRRRR. That’s tough to read. But brilliantly clear
A poem that hits much harder in my 40s than it did in my 30s.
As to why we don't have poets any more, I suspect the advent of popular music killed it off. All our greatest poets are songwriters now. Hence NigelB's suggestion of Bob Dylan, downthread. When people think Dylan, they think Bob, not Thomas.
Larkin and Plath are the end of the grand English poetic tradition, 1500 years old. It ended with them
Two great poets tho, so maybe a fitting end. Nothing since has matched them, 21st century poetry is the most awful sentimental gibberish - yes yes, I’m an old man shouting at clouds, I’m also right
Art forms come and go, poetry has gone. Other things replace them - video games are becoming a mighty new art form
But that Larkin poem is a powerful reminder of how poetry can console you even in the darkest moments. That was clearly a dark moment for Larkin, yet he made something beautiful out of it, and he says to us: someone else has felt this, too. Which is itself a solace
I quite like some of Dana Gioia's stuff - and he gets props for having been a Stanford business graduate, and VP marketing at General Foods (though perhaps not for reviving the Jello brand).
But nothing to match the best of Larkin.
Poetry is also unbelievably Woke. Weirdly it is arguably the worst affected of the ‘great’ art forms - perhaps because it is not so great and no one gives a fuck anymore and the rewards are tinier than they’ve ever been
But yeah, the Wokeness is incredible. Its incestuous relationship with academe is an issue. Virtually no poets can make a living so they are all employed by universities teaching poetry, and academe is itself the Hadean Pit of Wokery
My kids studied poetry in English. Mainly modern Scottish rubbish about not very much, some of it positively irritating. But amongst the dross was Assisi by Norman MacCaig:
The dwarf with his hands on backwards sat, slumped like a half-filled sack on tiny twisted legs from which sawdust might run, outside the three tiers of churches built in honour of St Francis, brother of the poor, talker with birds, over whom he had the advantage of not being dead yet.
A priest explained how clever it was of Giotto to make his frescoes tell stories that would reveal to the illiterate the goodness of God and the suffering of His Son. I understood the explanation and the cleverness.
A rush of tourists, clucking contentedly, fluttered after him as he scattered the grain of the Word. It was they who had passed the ruined temple outside, whose eyes wept pus, whose back was higher than his head, whose lopsided mouth said Grazie in a voice as sweet as a child’s when she speaks to her mother or a bird’s when it spoke to St Francis.
It captures why poetry is worth persevering with. You just can't pack that much meaning and insight into so few words any other way.
Ha I did that poem at school too! I'd completely forgotten about it until now but it is very good. I'm currently working on an epic poem about colonialism, ecocide and toxic masculinity, a kind of dystopian verse novel set in paradise. Maybe it is woke.
Nothing's changing, is it? Not that there is any reason for it to change.
Ho hum, back to the porn then.
No reason yet as we are not into the election campaign period and no-one is pushing Labour for actual policies and answers to the manifest problems we have.
With episode 3 of Masters of the Air just released today, the explosive closing statements from the lawyers filling the last day of the latest phase of the PO/Horizon/Fujitsu enquiry streamed live, and the first episode of the latest Apprentice now online, it is impressive now many of you have so much time to post here today
Its friday, last day of the inter-semester break and I have 10 things to get done, so naturally I am avoiding all to post crap on PB...
My tip to drink wine out of a sherry glass is as relevant to weight loss as it is to combatting alcoholism btw.
Sorry but this is ridiculous. Alcoholism is a disease not a throwaway word.
If you're an alcoholic then the safe amount of alcohol to consume is zero, glass size doesn't matter.
If you're not an alcoholic, then don't abuse the word.
It's not ridiculous; it's badly worded.
Personally, I'm not convinced by the sherry glass suggestion - they're just *too* small. But using smaller glasses will help someone who wants to cut down from, say, 25 units a week to 15.
Day 2 of my dry month. Its not passing quickly, that's for sure.
it gets worse
Just to let you and @DavidL know, I enjoyed a nice pint of 'Ghost Ship' last night.
If you are having Adnams it should be Broadside (or plain bitter if it is a nice day and you want a lighter drink) in my opinion.
Nothing in my opinion beats a pint of Shere Drop but I suspect you have to be within a limited range of Dorking for that
Ghost Ship is a very acceptable no-alcohol bitter.
Ghost Ship Low Tide –– yep that is extraordinarily good for an alcohol free beer.
Further to my post re the Met hiring Post Office investigators, this is yet another example of a body which does not understand the vital importance of avoiding conflicts of interest.
The Met is supposed to be investigating the Post Office - both individuals within it and as a corporate body. So why on earth does it think it appropriate to hire employees from there who are likely to be under investigation or witnesses? How can it reassure others that such people might not seek to share information about the investigation in breach of all duties of confidentiality? After all the investigations are into possible perversion of the course of justice which makes it even more imperative that it might otherwise be to ensure that no Met staff could possibly be accused of this.
It is an extraordinary hiring decision, quite as bizarre as the CPS being content with one of its directors being on the Board of the Post Office at the same time as the CPS has hired a KC to look into possible criminal charges against the Post Office and some of its past or present staff.
Do try and avoid being sidetracked from the main story..
Further to my post re the Met hiring Post Office investigators, this is yet another example of a body which does not understand the vital importance of avoiding conflicts of interest.
The Met is supposed to be investigating the Post Office - both individuals within it and as a corporate body. So why on earth does it think it appropriate to hire employees from there who are likely to be under investigation or witnesses? How can it reassure others that such people might not seek to share information about the investigation in breach of all duties of confidentiality? After all the investigations are into possible perversion of the course of justice which makes it even more imperative that it might otherwise be to ensure that no Met staff could possibly be accused of this.
It is an extraordinary hiring decision, quite as bizarre as the CPS being content with one of its directors being on the Board of the Post Office at the same time as the CPS has hired a KC to look into possible criminal charges against the Post Office and some of its past or present staff.
I normally agree with you on this topic but think this is a stretch.
The CPS having a Director who is also on the Board of the Post Office at the same time is bizarre and problematic, it is a real conflict of interest.
But people change careers all the time. So long as the person who used to work for the Post Office has quit them now and retains no ties, then they're fully entitled to seek employment elsewhere.
People can't be shunned and blacklisted for life because they once worked for a dodgy institution.
Further to my post re the Met hiring Post Office investigators, this is yet another example of a body which does not understand the vital importance of avoiding conflicts of interest.
The Met is supposed to be investigating the Post Office - both individuals within it and as a corporate body. So why on earth does it think it appropriate to hire employees from there who are likely to be under investigation or witnesses? How can it reassure others that such people might not seek to share information about the investigation in breach of all duties of confidentiality? After all the investigations are into possible perversion of the course of justice which makes it even more imperative that it might otherwise be to ensure that no Met staff could possibly be accused of this.
It is an extraordinary hiring decision, quite as bizarre as the CPS being content with one of its directors being on the Board of the Post Office at the same time as the CPS has hired a KC to look into possible criminal charges against the Post Office and some of its past or present staff.
I look forward to the day; July, I think, when the organ grinders from the Post Office are cross questioned, rather than just the monkeys! Although I suspect it will be a bean feast for a number of lawyers!
Stop being such a dogmatic, tin-eared, insensitive twat. I was teasing him earlier but actually @kinabalu has written quite eloquently if briefly about his problems with booze addiction. He knows this subject
PB has morphed into a self help group for ageing and cantankerous men who know too much about polling and often need to lose weight but we are also that, a social group, and your remarks are antisocial and crude, so do shut up
I apologise, I hadn't read anything anything he has written about problems with booze and was completely unaware of that.
I didn't mean to be insensitive.
Well said.
I do think a lot of the problem with discussing drinking, cutting down drinking, comes from the fact that what works for some people doesn't work for others.
If someone offered me wine in a sherry glass, I would go full Get Carter. "You don't serve a man like Jack a drink in those piddling little glasses! Bring him the bloody bottle!" But if it works for others, that's great. And I suspect it does work for Kinabalu.
I know someone (Ghedebrav? sorry if it wasn't you) mentioned AA the other day, and they do seem to go for the "one drink is too much for an alcoholic" approach. I find their views are dogmatic in the extreme, but it's definitely a popular view.
One thing I'm considering is that my relationship with alcohol has changed since Lockdown, pre Lockdown I could take it or leave it, now I wonder if I'm falling into the 'one drink means going on a long drunk' category. Lockdown really destroyed my impulse control in a lot of ways, hence why I still have anger issues in other areas (a lot of Nokia throwing, which I never used to do pre-Lockdown). So I think I have a problem with impulse control in general, not just with drinking.
The trick is not to delude oneself. If one drink is fine, and you can take it or leave, it, great. If you're just kidding yourself about that, because one drink becomes six, and you find yourself down the offie the next day just to take the edge off, it's time to stop kidding yourself. Which is I think where I'm at post-Lockdown. Maybe that will change over time, though. I have a couple of friends who did AA and NA in their thirties and were convinced they could never touch a drop again, but a decade on they have an occasional drink or in one case smokes weed, without it leading to harder things. They grew up and got better with time, it just took a very long break to reset themselves.
I know people like that. They have reset
I sometimes think AA and NA’’s insistence on total abstinence is overdone; but of course it works for a lot of people and in some cases - near liver failure or constant overdosing - it is the only choice for survival
Sounds like @kinabalu might be worth talking to. He’s moved from a problematic relationship with booze to genial moderation, so I shall stop laughing at his sherry glasses and give him respect
And also, it’s nearly 10pm and time to watch Netflix and sleep. I am basically living like a hard working monk, except with cheap martinis and nice sunshine
Ciaociao
A lot of it is "the nature of addiction". Most mothers are fed a ton of opiates and yet close-to-zero become addicts. But give opiates to a homeless person, or a stressed-out office worker who lives alone, and the likelihood of becoming an addict is that much higher. The reverse is true (more homeless people kick addictive behaviours when they cease to be homeless for example).
My tip to drink wine out of a sherry glass is as relevant to weight loss as it is to combatting alcoholism btw.
Sorry but this is ridiculous. Alcoholism is a disease not a throwaway word.
If you're an alcoholic then the safe amount of alcohol to consume is zero, glass size doesn't matter.
If you're not an alcoholic, then don't abuse the word.
It's not ridiculous; it's badly worded.
Personally, I'm not convinced by the sherry glass suggestion - they're just *too* small. But using smaller glasses will help someone who wants to cut down from, say, 25 units a week to 15.
Day 2 of my dry month. Its not passing quickly, that's for sure.
it gets worse
Just to let you and @DavidL know, I enjoyed a nice pint of 'Ghost Ship' last night.
If you are having Adnams it should be Broadside (or plain bitter if it is a nice day and you want a lighter drink) in my opinion.
Nothing in my opinion beats a pint of Shere Drop but I suspect you have to be within a limited range of Dorking for that
Ghost Ship is a very acceptable no-alcohol bitter.
Stop being such a dogmatic, tin-eared, insensitive twat. I was teasing him earlier but actually @kinabalu has written quite eloquently if briefly about his problems with booze addiction. He knows this subject
PB has morphed into a self help group for ageing and cantankerous men who know too much about polling and often need to lose weight but we are also that, a social group, and your remarks are antisocial and crude, so do shut up
I apologise, I hadn't read anything anything he has written about problems with booze and was completely unaware of that.
I didn't mean to be insensitive.
Well said.
I do think a lot of the problem with discussing drinking, cutting down drinking, comes from the fact that what works for some people doesn't work for others.
If someone offered me wine in a sherry glass, I would go full Get Carter. "You don't serve a man like Jack a drink in those piddling little glasses! Bring him the bloody bottle!" But if it works for others, that's great. And I suspect it does work for Kinabalu.
I know someone (Ghedebrav? sorry if it wasn't you) mentioned AA the other day, and they do seem to go for the "one drink is too much for an alcoholic" approach. I find their views are dogmatic in the extreme, but it's definitely a popular view.
One thing I'm considering is that my relationship with alcohol has changed since Lockdown, pre Lockdown I could take it or leave it, now I wonder if I'm falling into the 'one drink means going on a long drunk' category. Lockdown really destroyed my impulse control in a lot of ways, hence why I still have anger issues in other areas (a lot of Nokia throwing, which I never used to do pre-Lockdown). So I think I have a problem with impulse control in general, not just with drinking.
The trick is not to delude oneself. If one drink is fine, and you can take it or leave, it, great. If you're just kidding yourself about that, because one drink becomes six, and you find yourself down the offie the next day just to take the edge off, it's time to stop kidding yourself. Which is I think where I'm at post-Lockdown. Maybe that will change over time, though. I have a couple of friends who did AA and NA in their thirties and were convinced they could never touch a drop again, but a decade on they have an occasional drink or in one case smokes weed, without it leading to harder things. They grew up and got better with time, it just took a very long break to reset themselves.
Yeah I talked about it the other day. I don't think I have a dependency (five weeks in now, and hearing some other people's stories of how they struggled with kicking - forcing themselves to live minute to minute without a drink, such is the need - I haven't had that experience) but I do have a compulsive and ruinous relationship with booze. I'm quite shy and introverted by nature, but a jolly social drunk - wishing every night to be a carnival. But then especially through lockdown became habituated to home drinking, a few nights a week turning to every night, one or two becoming three or four - or more. Never really getting wasted but looking for that glow.
Many would not define me as an alcoholic, but the AA definition is looser tbh - it's about whether you're capable of having a normal relationship with drinking, which if I'm honest I do not. I find the groups and the ritual and the shared understanding very helpful.
It may be that I'm like your friends, and when I retire I'll enjoy the odd stout every now and again. Right now abstinence is the only way for me - but it's not for everyone.
If it works for you, keep going! I'm definitely in the "abstinence only" mindset too, dunno when or even if I'll get back to normal. I suspect impulse control in other areas (like anger) will be a pretty good pointer for me, though.
The other possibility is lockdown bingeing has permanently rewired my brain, and now it's gone for good. I think it was Jay McInerney who said everyone gets one swimming pool of vodka and one bathtub of cocaine in their lifetime, the trick is to stop before you hit your second...
My tip to drink wine out of a sherry glass is as relevant to weight loss as it is to combatting alcoholism btw.
Sorry but this is ridiculous. Alcoholism is a disease not a throwaway word.
If you're an alcoholic then the safe amount of alcohol to consume is zero, glass size doesn't matter.
If you're not an alcoholic, then don't abuse the word.
It's not ridiculous; it's badly worded.
Personally, I'm not convinced by the sherry glass suggestion - they're just *too* small. But using smaller glasses will help someone who wants to cut down from, say, 25 units a week to 15.
Day 2 of my dry month. Its not passing quickly, that's for sure.
it gets worse
Just to let you and @DavidL know, I enjoyed a nice pint of 'Ghost Ship' last night.
If you are having Adnams it should be Broadside (or plain bitter if it is a nice day and you want a lighter drink) in my opinion.
Nothing in my opinion beats a pint of Shere Drop but I suspect you have to be within a limited range of Dorking for that
Only the Ghost Ship on tap at the pub I was at.
Presumably not close to Southwold then. I think Ghost Ship (both alcoholic and non-alcoholic versions) is the one they transport most. It is popular.
Broadside is quite dark, heavier and a lot more flavour but still a bitter and quite strong. Southwold bitter is light refreshing and under 4%.
Even His Majesty’s Government has now abandoned the wet market theory of the origins of Covid
Now it’s no longer ‘of course it came from that pangolin in the market, you racist’ and it has moved to ‘oh well, we’ll never really know, those Chinese are inscrutable, yes maybe the lab but only 20 million died, do you want a biscuit’
Quite incredible. And they will probably get away with it
"Where do we stand on the lab leak theory for Covid?"
@JustinOnWeb asks Government Chief Science Adviser Prof Dame Angela McLean, who says 'we are very unlikely to ever know' the origins of coronavirus.
Twenty million dead. Trillions of debt accrued. It almost certainly came from misplaced science in a stupid lab. And they just want us to shrug and forget
My tip to drink wine out of a sherry glass is as relevant to weight loss as it is to combatting alcoholism btw.
Sorry but this is ridiculous. Alcoholism is a disease not a throwaway word.
If you're an alcoholic then the safe amount of alcohol to consume is zero, glass size doesn't matter.
If you're not an alcoholic, then don't abuse the word.
It's not ridiculous; it's badly worded.
Personally, I'm not convinced by the sherry glass suggestion - they're just *too* small. But using smaller glasses will help someone who wants to cut down from, say, 25 units a week to 15.
Day 2 of my dry month. Its not passing quickly, that's for sure.
it gets worse
Just to let you and @DavidL know, I enjoyed a nice pint of 'Ghost Ship' last night.
If you are having Adnams it should be Broadside (or plain bitter if it is a nice day and you want a lighter drink) in my opinion.
Nothing in my opinion beats a pint of Shere Drop but I suspect you have to be within a limited range of Dorking for that
Shere Drop makes it at least as far as Horsell (near Woking). One of my dad's favourites.
Stop being such a dogmatic, tin-eared, insensitive twat. I was teasing him earlier but actually @kinabalu has written quite eloquently if briefly about his problems with booze addiction. He knows this subject
PB has morphed into a self help group for ageing and cantankerous men who know too much about polling and often need to lose weight but we are also that, a social group, and your remarks are antisocial and crude, so do shut up
Well this makes a pleasant change. Normally if I see I've been tagged by you I brace myself for something gratuitous and upsetting.
Even His Majesty’s Government has now abandoned the wet market theory of the origins of Covid
Now it’s no longer ‘of course it came from that pangolin in the market, you racist’ and it has moved to ‘oh well, we’ll never really know, those Chinese are inscrutable, yes maybe the lab but only 20 million died, do you want a biscuit’
Quite incredible. And they will probably get away with it
"Where do we stand on the lab leak theory for Covid?"
@JustinOnWeb asks Government Chief Science Adviser Prof Dame Angela McLean, who says 'we are very unlikely to ever know' the origins of coronavirus.
Twenty million dead. Trillions of debt accrued. It almost certainly came from misplaced science in a stupid lab. And they just want us to shrug and forget
I and many others told you this from the start. It is not provable either way given the way Chinese society is structured and the vested interests in making us believe one thing or the other. Both are possible and society should act to reduce the chances of both paths in future regardless of whichever one it was this time. Move on.
Even His Majesty’s Government has now abandoned the wet market theory of the origins of Covid
Now it’s no longer ‘of course it came from that pangolin in the market, you racist’ and it has moved to ‘oh well, we’ll never really know, those Chinese are inscrutable, yes maybe the lab but only 20 million died, do you want a biscuit’
Quite incredible. And they will probably get away with it
"Where do we stand on the lab leak theory for Covid?"
@JustinOnWeb asks Government Chief Science Adviser Prof Dame Angela McLean, who says 'we are very unlikely to ever know' the origins of coronavirus.
Twenty million dead. Trillions of debt accrued. It almost certainly came from misplaced science in a stupid lab. And they just want us to shrug and forget
She does not say that it did not come from the wet market. She said she didn't know.
Stop being such a dogmatic, tin-eared, insensitive twat. I was teasing him earlier but actually @kinabalu has written quite eloquently if briefly about his problems with booze addiction. He knows this subject
PB has morphed into a self help group for ageing and cantankerous men who know too much about polling and often need to lose weight but we are also that, a social group, and your remarks are antisocial and crude, so do shut up
Well this makes a pleasant change. Normally if I see I've been tagged by you I brace myself for something gratuitous and upsetting.
Well, if you stopped your effete attempts to get me banned, or your snide accusations that I’m some lurid Nazi, perhaps I’d be a little nicer to you
However you are a valued old voice in the pub of PB, which is pleasantly situated in the Belsize Park of civilised debate, and I will defend any of the regulars against obviously unfair criticism, or crude insults, even including you
Also, we were talking about men and male childlessness and how it is an undiscussed pain, for some
Philip Larkin wrote THE poem about it. So many glints of genius in this, the deliberate hesitations, the ceasuras, the lyrical run-ons, the sad chiming rhymes
Dockery and Son
BY PHILIP LARKIN
‘Dockery was junior to you, Wasn’t he?’ said the Dean. ‘His son’s here now.’ Death-suited, visitant, I nod. ‘And do You keep in touch with—’ Or remember how Black-gowned, unbreakfasted, and still half-tight We used to stand before that desk, to give ‘Our version’ of ‘these incidents last night’? I try the door of where I used to live:
Locked. The lawn spreads dazzlingly wide. A known bell chimes. I catch my train, ignored. Canal and clouds and colleges subside Slowly from view. But Dockery, good Lord, Anyone up today must have been born In ’43, when I was twenty-one. If he was younger, did he get this son At nineteen, twenty? Was he that withdrawn
High-collared public-schoolboy, sharing rooms With Cartwright who was killed? Well, it just shows How much ... How little ... Yawning, I suppose I fell asleep, waking at the fumes And furnace-glares of Sheffield, where I changed, And ate an awful pie, and walked along The platform to its end to see the ranged Joining and parting lines reflect a strong
Unhindered moon. To have no son, no wife, No house or land still seemed quite natural. Only a numbness registered the shock Of finding out how much had gone of life, How widely from the others. Dockery, now: Only nineteen, he must have taken stock Of what he wanted, and been capable Of ... No, that’s not the difference: rather, how
Convinced he was he should be added to! Why did he think adding meant increase? To me it was dilution. Where do these Innate assumptions come from? Not from what We think truest, or most want to do: Those warp tight-shut, like doors. They’re more a style Our lives bring with them: habit for a while, Suddenly they harden into all we’ve got
And how we got it; looked back on, they rear Like sand-clouds, thick and close, embodying For Dockery a son, for me nothing, Nothing with all a son’s harsh patronage. Life is first boredom, then fear. Whether or not we use it, it goes, And leaves what something hidden from us chose, And age, and then the only end of age.
BRRRR. That’s tough to read. But brilliantly clear
A poem that hits much harder in my 40s than it did in my 30s.
As to why we don't have poets any more, I suspect the advent of popular music killed it off. All our greatest poets are songwriters now. Hence NigelB's suggestion of Bob Dylan, downthread. When people think Dylan, they think Bob, not Thomas.
Even His Majesty’s Government has now abandoned the wet market theory of the origins of Covid
Now it’s no longer ‘of course it came from that pangolin in the market, you racist’ and it has moved to ‘oh well, we’ll never really know, those Chinese are inscrutable, yes maybe the lab but only 20 million died, do you want a biscuit’
Quite incredible. And they will probably get away with it
"Where do we stand on the lab leak theory for Covid?"
@JustinOnWeb asks Government Chief Science Adviser Prof Dame Angela McLean, who says 'we are very unlikely to ever know' the origins of coronavirus.
Twenty million dead. Trillions of debt accrued. It almost certainly came from misplaced science in a stupid lab. And they just want us to shrug and forget
I and many others told you this from the start. It is not provable either way given the way Chinese society is structured and the vested interests in making us believe one thing or the other. Both are possible and society should act to reduce the chances of both paths in future regardless of whichever one it was this time. Move on.
Yeah, let’s move on, eh
It’s only now 20 million dead. Compare it to the post office scandal where literally hundreds of nice people lost money, and maybe one person committed suicide
This is trivial in comparison. 20 million dead people and entire economies crippled. Why isn’t there an itv drama. What we need to do as a society is forget this ever happened so no one has to take any blame for the greatest human health disaster in a century. That’s the main thing
Also, let’s allow scientists to carry on fucking about with bugs. That seems like a good idea
My tip to drink wine out of a sherry glass is as relevant to weight loss as it is to combatting alcoholism btw.
Sorry but this is ridiculous. Alcoholism is a disease not a throwaway word.
If you're an alcoholic then the safe amount of alcohol to consume is zero, glass size doesn't matter.
If you're not an alcoholic, then don't abuse the word.
It's not ridiculous; it's badly worded.
Personally, I'm not convinced by the sherry glass suggestion - they're just *too* small. But using smaller glasses will help someone who wants to cut down from, say, 25 units a week to 15.
Day 2 of my dry month. Its not passing quickly, that's for sure.
it gets worse
Just to let you and @DavidL know, I enjoyed a nice pint of 'Ghost Ship' last night.
If you are having Adnams it should be Broadside (or plain bitter if it is a nice day and you want a lighter drink) in my opinion.
Nothing in my opinion beats a pint of Shere Drop but I suspect you have to be within a limited range of Dorking for that
Ghost Ship is a very acceptable no-alcohol bitter.
Ghost Ship Low Tide –– yep that is extraordinarily good for an alcohol free beer.
Absolutely first class. There are some excellent low and no alcohol beers available now.
My tip to drink wine out of a sherry glass is as relevant to weight loss as it is to combatting alcoholism btw.
Dunno. The sherry glass (and contents) are lighter than the wine glass, assuming otherwise similar materials and construction. So each lift of glass burns fewer calories with the sherry glass than the wine glass. Might offset any reduced calorie intake from reduced drinking.
However, the trips to refill the sherry glass could outweigh that, if the bottle is kept at a reasonable distance.
Needs a whole life cycle analysis before any extravagant claims are made, I'd say
Great bit of drilldown. Yes, ideally the bottle should be kept in the attic, accessible only by torch and creaky stepladder.
But seriously (since I see there's been some disquiet) this is a perfectly sincere tip for keeping a lid on things once you are no longer in the throes of the addiction (which is me) but obviously it's no silver bullet for someone who is.
Even His Majesty’s Government has now abandoned the wet market theory of the origins of Covid
Now it’s no longer ‘of course it came from that pangolin in the market, you racist’ and it has moved to ‘oh well, we’ll never really know, those Chinese are inscrutable, yes maybe the lab but only 20 million died, do you want a biscuit’
Quite incredible. And they will probably get away with it
"Where do we stand on the lab leak theory for Covid?"
@JustinOnWeb asks Government Chief Science Adviser Prof Dame Angela McLean, who says 'we are very unlikely to ever know' the origins of coronavirus.
Twenty million dead. Trillions of debt accrued. It almost certainly came from misplaced science in a stupid lab. And they just want us to shrug and forget
I and many others told you this from the start. It is not provable either way given the way Chinese society is structured and the vested interests in making us believe one thing or the other. Both are possible and society should act to reduce the chances of both paths in future regardless of whichever one it was this time. Move on.
Yeah, let’s move on, eh
It’s only now 20 million dead. Compare it to the post office scandal where literally hundreds of nice people lost money, and maybe one person committed suicide
This is trivial in comparison. 20 million dead people and entire economies crippled. Why isn’t there an itv drama. What we need to do as a society is forget this ever happened so no one has to take any blame for the greatest human health disaster in a century. That’s the main thing
Also, let’s allow scientists to carry on fucking about with bugs. That seems like a good idea
You really are struggling with reading comprehension this week...."society should act to reduce the chances of both paths in future regardless of whichever one it was this time".....what do you think that means?
Comments
As to why we don't have poets any more, I suspect the advent of popular music killed it off. All our greatest poets are songwriters now. Hence NigelB's suggestion of Bob Dylan, downthread. When people think Dylan, they think Bob, not Thomas.
“I try the door of where I used to live:
Locked. The lawn spreads dazzlingly wide.”
What gave him the idea to make a stanza break there, after a colon, then the first word. LOCKED.
Magnificently emphatic
And
a style
Our lives bring with them: habit for a while,
Suddenly they harden into all we’ve got
Is one of the best lines about ageing, ever written
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2215454 "Many governments subsidize regional rail service as an alternative to road traffic. This paper assesses whether increases in service frequency reduce road traffic externalities. We exploit differences in service frequency growth by procurement mode following a railway reform in Germany to address endogeneity of service growth. Increases in service frequency reduce the number of severe road traffic accidents, carbon monoxide, nitrogen monoxide, nitrogen dioxide pollution and infant mortality. Placebo regressions with sulfur dioxide and ozone yield no effect. Service frequency growth between 1994 and 2004 improves environmental quality by an amount that is worth approximately 28-40% of total subsidies. An analysis of household behavior shows that the effects of railway services on outcome variables are driven by substitution from road to rail."
https://dergipark.org.tr/en/download/article-file/361350 has some detailed figures.
Two great poets tho, so maybe a fitting end. Nothing since has matched them, 21st century poetry is the most awful sentimental gibberish - yes yes, I’m an old man shouting at clouds, I’m also right
Art forms come and go, poetry has gone. Other things replace them - video games are becoming a mighty new art form
But that Larkin poem is a powerful reminder of how poetry can console you even in the darkest moments. That was clearly a dark moment for Larkin, yet he made something beautiful out of it, and he says to us: someone else has felt this, too. Which is itself a solace
A flyer from the Ashfield Independents appears. This is presumably what Jason Zadrozny thinks will help him win the election.
But thankfully I’ve gotten a lot more sex than poor philip Larkin stuck in his library in Hull, occasionally secreting these genius poems
Larkin would also have LOVED south east Asia, the booze, the warmth, the easy sensuality, the lack of reasons to be a grumpy old fuck, it’s a shame he missed out on global travel
However, the trips to refill the sherry glass could outweigh that, if the bottle is kept at a reasonable distance.
Needs a whole life cycle analysis before any extravagant claims are made, I'd say
As for reusability, the obvious issues are (a) ensuring the cleaning is done properly (e.g. in removing all clotted gunge and (b) the question of contamination with prions and similar, which can't be removed by 'sterilisation' of any remotely reasonable kind. Also the capital and energetic costs of the cleaning. And the degree to which complex mixtures of polymers are downgraded by reuse and cleaning - remember medical infection-proof stuff can tolerate much less damage than, say, a painter's work glove where a spot of paint on the skin isn't (usually) a serious disaster.
Edit: as Selebian says in a slightly different context, lifecycle costs are where it's at.
I had to make the money first. I’ve done that. Nicely. Now for immortality…
But nothing to match the best of Larkin.
I’m not sure @kinabalu’s claims of alcoholism stack up. Seems like a lightweight
So your claim is based on the fact that diesel and unleaded vehicles from 20 years go were more polluting than trains?
It may have missed your attention, but we're switching over to hybrid and electric vehicles which eliminates the pollution problem. Clean vehicles aren't emitting emissions, so get your head out of the sand and come up with a new excuse to hate private transportation.
Really.
If you're an alcoholic then the safe amount of alcohol to consume is zero, glass size doesn't matter.
If you're not an alcoholic, then don't abuse the word.
You can stockpile the cleaning chemical, if you like.
Just looking at the protective gear you use for welding chromium steels vs the flimsy "PPE"....
But yeah, the Wokeness is incredible. Its incestuous relationship with academe is an issue. Virtually no poets can make a living so they are all employed by universities teaching poetry, and academe is itself the Hadean Pit of Wokery
Don't go all HYUFD on us.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/wine-glass-drink-alcohol-how-much-b2480920.html#
Personally, I'm not convinced by the sherry glass suggestion - they're just *too* small. But using smaller glasses will help someone who wants to cut down from, say, 25 units a week to 15.
Disposable gloves I'll give you.
Next.
The matching sherry glasses are like thimbles - so good for soju shots.
Alcoholism is a disease whereby when you're drinking you don't stop drinking. You can take as many small glasses as you want, but if you're polishing off that bottle and the next one each day and can't stop then that's alcoholism.
New research finds that former President Donald J. Trump’s tariffs did not bring back U.S. jobs, but voters appeared to reward him for the levies anyway.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/02/us/politics/trump-tariffs-jobs-voters.html
Stop being such a dogmatic, tin-eared, insensitive twat. I was teasing him earlier but actually @kinabalu has written quite eloquently if briefly about his problems with booze addiction. He knows this subject
PB has morphed into a self help group for ageing and cantankerous men who know too much about polling and often need to lose weight but we are also that, a social group, and your remarks are antisocial and crude, so do shut up
I didn't mean to be insensitive.
The nation’s employers delivered a stunning burst of hiring to begin 2024, adding 353,000 jobs in January in the latest sign of the economy’s continuing ability to shrug off the highest interest rates in two decades
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/us-jobs-report-january-show-steady-hiring-growth-106887552
https://x.com/waynegb88/status/1753384306615947526?s=61&t=s0ae0IFncdLS1Dc7J0P_TQ
21 bars not being representative of the licensed trade as a whole is meaningless.
Fair play to Bart for the genuine apology.
It is worth remembering behind every poster is a h human being and, irrespective of their views, most people in real life are decent people. We should be kind.
Nothing in my opinion beats a pint of Shere Drop but I suspect you have to be within a limited range of Dorking for that
I do think a lot of the problem with discussing drinking, cutting down drinking, comes from the fact that what works for some people doesn't work for others.
If someone offered me wine in a sherry glass, I would go full Get Carter. "You don't serve a man like Jack a drink in those piddling little glasses! Bring him the bloody bottle!" But if it works for others, that's great. And I suspect it does work for Kinabalu.
I know someone (Ghedebrav? sorry if it wasn't you) mentioned AA the other day, and they do seem to go for the "one drink is too much for an alcoholic" approach. I find their views are dogmatic in the extreme, but it's definitely a popular view.
One thing I'm considering is that my relationship with alcohol has changed since Lockdown, pre Lockdown I could take it or leave it, now I wonder if I'm falling into the 'one drink means going on a long drunk' category. Lockdown really destroyed my impulse control in a lot of ways, hence why I still have anger issues in other areas (a lot of Nokia throwing, which I never used to do pre-Lockdown). So I think I have a problem with impulse control in general, not just with drinking.
The trick is not to delude oneself. If one drink is fine, and you can take it or leave, it, great. If you're just kidding yourself about that, because one drink becomes six, and you find yourself down the offie the next day just to take the edge off, it's time to stop kidding yourself. Which is I think where I'm at post-Lockdown. Maybe that will change over time, though. I have a couple of friends who did AA and NA in their thirties and were convinced they could never touch a drop again, but a decade on they have an occasional drink or in one case smokes weed, without it leading to harder things. They grew up and got better with time, it just took a very long break to reset themselves.
https://twitter.com/alaynatreene/status/1753401173963379163
Trump calls Fed chair Jay Powell “political” on Fox Business & claims he’s considering cutting interest rates to help Democrats
“I think he’s going to do something to probably help the Democrats, I think, if he lowers interest rates,” Trump said
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDl-atwBzf0
“Commercial airline pilot” also covers a lot of smaller jobs flying little planes and helicopters around.
Ho hum, back to the porn then.
I sometimes think AA and NA’’s insistence on total abstinence is overdone; but of course it works for a lot of people and in some cases - near liver failure or constant overdosing - it is the only choice for survival
Sounds like @kinabalu might be worth talking to. He’s moved from a problematic relationship with booze to genial moderation, so I shall stop laughing at his sherry glasses and give him respect
And also, it’s nearly 10pm and time to watch Netflix and sleep. I am basically living like a hard working monk, except with cheap martinis and nice sunshine
Ciaociao
The dwarf with his hands on backwards
sat, slumped like a half-filled sack
on tiny twisted legs from which
sawdust might run,
outside the three tiers of churches built
in honour of St Francis, brother
of the poor, talker with birds, over whom
he had the advantage
of not being dead yet.
A priest explained
how clever it was of Giotto
to make his frescoes tell stories
that would reveal to the illiterate the goodness
of God and the suffering
of His Son. I understood
the explanation and
the cleverness.
A rush of tourists, clucking contentedly,
fluttered after him as he scattered
the grain of the Word. It was they who had passed
the ruined temple outside, whose eyes
wept pus, whose back was higher
than his head, whose lopsided mouth
said Grazie in a voice as sweet
as a child’s when she speaks to her mother
or a bird’s when it spoke
to St Francis.
It captures why poetry is worth persevering with. You just can't pack that much meaning and insight into so few words any other way.
Many would not define me as an alcoholic, but the AA definition is looser tbh - it's about whether you're capable of having a normal relationship with drinking, which if I'm honest I do not. I find the groups and the ritual and the shared understanding very helpful.
It may be that I'm like your friends, and when I retire I'll enjoy the odd stout every now and again. Right now abstinence is the only way for me - but it's not for everyone.
The Met is supposed to be investigating the Post Office - both individuals within it and as a corporate body. So why on earth does it think it appropriate to hire employees from there who are likely to be under investigation or witnesses? How can it reassure others that such people might not seek to share information about the investigation in breach of all duties of confidentiality? After all the investigations are into possible perversion of the course of justice which makes it even more imperative that it might otherwise be to ensure that no Met staff could possibly be accused of this.
It is an extraordinary hiring decision, quite as bizarre as the CPS being content with one of its directors being on the Board of the Post Office at the same time as the CPS has hired a KC to look into possible criminal charges against the Post Office and some of its past or present staff.
I'm currently working on an epic poem about colonialism, ecocide and toxic masculinity, a kind of dystopian verse novel set in paradise. Maybe it is woke.
Two weeks to two big by-elections; postal votes will be going out about now.
The CPS having a Director who is also on the Board of the Post Office at the same time is bizarre and problematic, it is a real conflict of interest.
But people change careers all the time. So long as the person who used to work for the Post Office has quit them now and retains no ties, then they're fully entitled to seek employment elsewhere.
People can't be shunned and blacklisted for life because they once worked for a dodgy institution.
Although I suspect it will be a bean feast for a number of lawyers!
The other possibility is lockdown bingeing has permanently rewired my brain, and now it's gone for good. I think it was Jay McInerney who said everyone gets one swimming pool of vodka and one bathtub of cocaine in their lifetime, the trick is to stop before you hit your second...
Broadside is quite dark, heavier and a lot more flavour but still a bitter and quite strong. Southwold bitter is light refreshing and under 4%.
Now it’s no longer ‘of course it came from that pangolin in the market, you racist’ and it has moved to ‘oh well, we’ll never really know, those Chinese are inscrutable, yes maybe the lab but only 20 million died, do you want a biscuit’
Quite incredible. And they will probably get away with it
"Where do we stand on the lab leak theory for Covid?"
@JustinOnWeb asks Government Chief Science Adviser Prof Dame Angela McLean, who says 'we are very unlikely to ever know' the origins of coronavirus.
#R4Today
https://x.com/bbcr4today/status/1752311404844232719?s=61&t=GGp3Vs1t1kTWDiyA-odnZg
Twenty million dead. Trillions of debt accrued. It almost certainly came from misplaced science in a stupid lab. And they just want us to shrug and forget
However you are a valued old voice in the pub of PB, which is pleasantly situated in the Belsize Park of civilised debate, and I will defend any of the regulars against obviously unfair criticism, or crude insults, even including you
And now all is good because @BartholomewRoberts has apologised. As you were
🔴 Lab 45% (-2)
🔵 Con 23% (NC)
⚪ Ref 11% (-1)
🟠 LD 9% (NC)
🟢 Green 5% (-1)
🟡 SNP 3% (+1)
I see no shortage of poets.
It’s only now 20 million dead. Compare it to the post office scandal where literally hundreds of nice people lost money, and maybe one person committed suicide
This is trivial in comparison. 20 million dead people and entire economies crippled. Why isn’t there an itv drama. What we need to do as a society is forget this ever happened so no one has to take any blame for the greatest human health disaster in a century. That’s the main thing
Also, let’s allow scientists to carry on fucking about with bugs. That seems like a good idea
No real overall movement as YouGov's and Savanta's changes are opposite and effectively cancel each other out.
But seriously (since I see there's been some disquiet) this is a perfectly sincere tip for keeping a lid on things once you are no longer in the throes of the addiction (which is me) but obviously it's no silver bullet for someone who is.