I think it's obvious that the next generation of royals don't see much less value in the "visibility" work that the last Queen was so keen on.
I've been keeping an eye on the Court Circular for the past 6 months (yeah, interesting, I know...)
Princess Anne does lots of sports, rural, and health-related visits Prince Richard does lots of buildings, engineering, built environment-related visits Prince Edward does some theatre, arts, and youth-related visits
And, er, that's it.
Prince William does virtually none of that stuff, even accounting for time off with his wife being ill. He goes to some dinners, and does a feww investiture ceremonies - the rest of his official engagements tend to be for personal projects like the Earthshot Prize. The contrast between his diary in 2023 and Charles' in, say, 2003 is rather eye-opening.
But who's to say that's a bad thing - if you've got a new university building that needs opened, say, why do you need Prince Richard rather than a Lord Mayor, ex-government minister, or someone from off the telly anyway?
At this point, it looks almost like a hobby for the older ones - or something they do because they've always done it, not because there's much need for it.
I’ve never even heard of Prince Richard.
I do think it’s fascinating, though, these subtle shifts in kingly responsibilities. It’s not obvious to me why William is maintaining a low profile. Is he just lazy?
I think William needs to be a little careful with this “normal life priorities” thing. I get he wants to have as normal a family life as possible and wants to be with his wife whilst she convalesces however he needs to not miss the glaring great issue, which Harry doesn’t get, in that the only reason they can live the lifestyle they do, with the access to properties, staff, money, top notch medical, security is because they are Royals.
Neither of them have made their money off their own efforts, or the contacts or access to people and networks, and so they have/had a responsibility to the tax payer to put their duties first. If you don’t want the duty then you don’t get the massive perks.
So if William wants the lifestyle he has then he has to buck up and if he doesn’t want to do the duties as he wants to be normal then he needs to get a career in something appropriate to his abilities and see how much time he gets off to be a family man as I’m sure most fathers in the UK don’t get that much and don’t get what he considers a family life.
They ar eblood sucking parasites with no idea of real life. They just sponge off the state as they are told it is their god given right and the morons bow and scrape and doff their caps.
I think it's obvious that the next generation of royals don't see much less value in the "visibility" work that the last Queen was so keen on.
I've been keeping an eye on the Court Circular for the past 6 months (yeah, interesting, I know...)
Princess Anne does lots of sports, rural, and health-related visits Prince Richard does lots of buildings, engineering, built environment-related visits Prince Edward does some theatre, arts, and youth-related visits
And, er, that's it.
Prince William does virtually none of that stuff, even accounting for time off with his wife being ill. He goes to some dinners, and does a feww investiture ceremonies - the rest of his official engagements tend to be for personal projects like the Earthshot Prize. The contrast between his diary in 2023 and Charles' in, say, 2003 is rather eye-opening.
But who's to say that's a bad thing - if you've got a new university building that needs opened, say, why do you need Prince Richard rather than a Lord Mayor, ex-government minister, or someone from off the telly anyway?
At this point, it looks almost like a hobby for the older ones - or something they do because they've always done it, not because there's much need for it.
I’ve never even heard of Prince Richard.
I do think it’s fascinating, though, these subtle shifts in kingly responsibilities. It’s not obvious to me why William is maintaining a low profile. Is he just lazy?
I think William needs to be a little careful with this “normal life priorities” thing. I get he wants to have as normal a family life as possible and wants to be with his wife whilst she convalesces however he needs to not miss the glaring great issue, which Harry doesn’t get, in that the only reason they can live the lifestyle they do, with the access to properties, staff, money, top notch medical, security is because they are Royals.
Neither of them have made their money off their own efforts, or the contacts or access to people and networks, and so they have/had a responsibility to the tax payer to put their duties first. If you don’t want the duty then you don’t get the massive perks.
So if William wants the lifestyle he has then he has to buck up and if he doesn’t want to do the duties as he wants to be normal then he needs to get a career in something appropriate to his abilities and see how much time he gets off to be a family man as I’m sure most fathers in the UK don’t get that much and don’t get what he considers a family life.
They ar eblood sucking parasites with no idea of real life. They just sponge off the state as they are told it is their god given right and the morons bow and scrape and doff their caps.
William was an air sea rescue pilot and any head of state would be funded by the state
Interim verdict: Putin looks healthy enough. Quite on top of his brief. Remember when we were told he was dying?
Also: not mad. Obsessive. Autocratic. But not insane. Not immediately off putting. Wily. Cunning. Duplicitous
I sense he really doesn’t want to invade and conquer Eastern Europe. But he really does want a large chunk of Ukraine. And he is genuinely aggrieved about NATO expansion - it’s not a pretext
So a dangerous man but not a Hitler
Interim verdict on tucker: doing the best he can. His main achievement is getting the interview in the first place - creating the envy of all his peers
He also asks some quite devious questions that make Putin look a little credulous or clumsy but he does it in a way that Putin doesn’t notice
It is not 120 minutes of sycophancy. But I am only halfway through
Yet still 50 minutes longer than most people with their heads actually screwed on have managed.
Some of us still remember the days when you were telling us all that Putin would be our saviour.
Another one that didn’t surprise on the upside.
It it a constant source of amazement to me that your only friend is a dog, given the ready wit, personal charm and that sly, playful charisma you regularly exhibit on this site
You are wasted on this site Leon. Your charm charisma and intelligence is too much for the regulars to handle.
I know. I sometimes feel I am more approached in Sverdlovsk than Swindon
A prophet without honour etc
What's happened to you, Leon? Are you OK?
Cambodia. Doing good professional knapping but bereft of social life - a self inflicted monastic solitude which I now possibly regret. Because it makes me reliant on PB for discourse at a time when PB has turned to shit
No wonder so many have fled the site
But I will end up with some excellent flints - I think - and it will all be worth it. Head down. Do the graft
Good work SHOULD be hard
Is PB not just in a lull waiting for some significant political betting to start? The general election could be mere weeks away and the US election is definitely in November. Calm before the storm (and the opportunity to fleece some less savvy punters on the markets?)
No. Absolutely no
It is in a terrible decline
Recall we used to compare it to a pub. You had the regulars, with their cranky obsessions and ancient gossip, you had frequent visitors - sometimes drunk, sometimes high, often amusing - you had passers by with brilliant new stories or total bewilderment. Crucially you had a core of really intelligent open minded people gathered round the bar
It seems to me that open minded core has gone. Now PB resembles a tedious HR meeting dominated by fucking boring lawyers and accountants and IT nerds who insist they are right, won’t allow dissent, and either chase away interesting people or bore everyone else
The wokeness prevails, there is no intellectual curiosity, no surprising new views from that guy on the corner by the slot machine
The only reason I am still here is because i have invested 15 years of conversation in this place and it will be a large wrench to leave, and I am particularly reliant on it out here in Phnom Penh
I will leave it as soon as I can
It's probably because there's a lack of ideological issues on which to be partisan, hence the weird obsession with trans people and other wedge issues.
More or less everybody agrees that the country is buggered, more or less everybody agrees why on all the salient points - stagnant productivity, lack of investment, insane house prices, rentier economy, etc. There are few on here who think differently.
The trouble is, these are problems that need managerial solutions rather than ideological ones.
While it might be fun to debate the motion that This House Would Hang All Landlords and Confiscate the Bank Balances, Walking Canes, and Cats of All Pensioners, it's a lot simpler and duller to agree "well, everything would be better if we built more houses and stopped subsidising pensioners to the detriment of everyone else."
"Dull solutions for bloody obvious problems". That should be Labour's 2024 campaign slogan and, to all effects and purposes, is.
One area that I agree with Leon is that PB's approach to the war in the Ukraine is somewhat unnuanced.
The prevailing consensensus here on PB is that the conflict very closely mirrors World War II, with only the occasional visit from real Russian trolls, or real demented Trumpist-Putinists, to put o any dissenting view. In fact the war is not that simple.
PBs approach to the Ukraine war is Putin is bad therefore he must lose so he will lose.
One area that I agree with Leon is that PB's approach to the war in the Ukraine is somewhat unnuanced.
The prevailing sense is that the conflict very closely mirrors World War II, with only the occasional visit from real Russian trolls, or real Trump-Putinists, to challenge this. In fact the war is not that simple.
To be fair about 50% of recent posts about the Ukraine war seem to involve people declaring that PB's approach to the war is unnuanced and bemoaning the fact it doesn't understand the Russian world view or realise Ukraine is a decaying swamp of corruption.
But Ukraine is one of those topics, like Brexit or Gaza or the power of AI, where people spend their time on internet forums defensively reacting to the perceived agendas of others, which makes their own arguments come across as agenda driven which in turn leads others to react defensively and so ad infinitum. But that's nothing new.
The West should be more open to negotiating with Vladimir Putin, Nigel Farage has suggested.
The founder of Reform UK said he was “shocked” by the “absolute reluctance” to consider negotiations with Russia since Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022..
More Ronald Reagan, but this time on peace.
Then he was talking about 'liberals', but it's even more relevant today for Farage, the neo right and their weird appeasement of Putin.
Interim verdict: Putin looks healthy enough. Quite on top of his brief. Remember when we were told he was dying?
Also: not mad. Obsessive. Autocratic. But not insane. Not immediately off putting. Wily. Cunning. Duplicitous
I sense he really doesn’t want to invade and conquer Eastern Europe. But he really does want a large chunk of Ukraine. And he is genuinely aggrieved about NATO expansion - it’s not a pretext
So a dangerous man but not a Hitler
Interim verdict on tucker: doing the best he can. His main achievement is getting the interview in the first place - creating the envy of all his peers
He also asks some quite devious questions that make Putin look a little credulous or clumsy but he does it in a way that Putin doesn’t notice
It is not 120 minutes of sycophancy. But I am only halfway through
Yet still 50 minutes longer than most people with their heads actually screwed on have managed.
Some of us still remember the days when you were telling us all that Putin would be our saviour.
Another one that didn’t surprise on the upside.
It it a constant source of amazement to me that your only friend is a dog, given the ready wit, personal charm and that sly, playful charisma you regularly exhibit on this site
You are wasted on this site Leon. Your charm charisma and intelligence is too much for the regulars to handle.
I know. I sometimes feel I am more approached in Sverdlovsk than Swindon
A prophet without honour etc
What's happened to you, Leon? Are you OK?
Cambodia. Doing good professional knapping but bereft of social life - a self inflicted monastic solitude which I now possibly regret. Because it makes me reliant on PB for discourse at a time when PB has turned to shit
No wonder so many have fled the site
But I will end up with some excellent flints - I think - and it will all be worth it. Head down. Do the graft
Good work SHOULD be hard
Is PB not just in a lull waiting for some significant political betting to start? The general election could be mere weeks away and the US election is definitely in November. Calm before the storm (and the opportunity to fleece some less savvy punters on the markets?)
No. Absolutely no
It is in a terrible decline
Recall we used to compare it to a pub. You had the regulars, with their cranky obsessions and ancient gossip, you had frequent visitors - sometimes drunk, sometimes high, often amusing - you had passers by with brilliant new stories or total bewilderment. Crucially you had a core of really intelligent open minded people gathered round the bar
It seems to me that open minded core has gone. Now PB resembles a tedious HR meeting dominated by fucking boring lawyers and accountants and IT nerds who insist they are right, won’t allow dissent, and either chase away interesting people or bore everyone else
The wokeness prevails, there is no intellectual curiosity, no surprising new views from that guy on the corner by the slot machine
The only reason I am still here is because i have invested 15 years of conversation in this place and it will be a large wrench to leave, and I am particularly reliant on it out here in Phnom Penh
I will leave it as soon as I can
I think reflects the broader politics. Nobody believes in the Brexit fairy anymore, the idea of supporting the Tories is risible, and Starmer is about to offer the blandest prospectus ever put to the British public. Even the Lib Dems have nothing to say.
The world is pivoting, the kaleidoscope has been shaken, but Britain has given up. For the moment, at least.
Yes. The wider world is definitely part of it. Politics is more polarised so pb is part of that
Also everyone here is just older and crankier perhaps. But fuck knows why I have to respect these geriatric twats - I still travel the world and do stuff - I stay open minded. Pb does not
Hey ho
If I’m still here in a year please please please tease me mercilessly until I am shamed into going. I need to find a replacement forum - it’s not easy. Pb of old was special
I am looking hard
Do you not think you've played a large part in driving away people who disagree with you?
Absolutely not. I love a good argument. That’s why I come here. Yes I can be bruising but I always respect someone who articulately disagrees, and I never whine if someone is nasty
What’s ruined the site is the dead hand of orthodoxy. Plus you’re all a bunch of fucking lawyers and accountants and business dudes and retired IT geeks. Twats
We desperately need more arty types. Poets. Violinists. Dancers. Opera singers. Anyone creative, anyone, literally anyone. Anyone!
One area that I agree with Leon is that PB's approach to the war in the Ukraine is somewhat unnuanced.
The prevailing consensensus here on PB is that the conflict very closely mirrors World War II, with only the occasional visit from real Russian trolls, or real demented Trumpist-Putinists, to put o any dissenting view. In fact the war is not that simple.
Genuinely interested in more, given you're neither a real Russian troll, nor a real demented Trumpist-Putinist, as far as I can tell
I mean, I know Leon says we all hate conflicting opinions, but I actually welcome them, particularly on things I don't know a great deal about. Hence I'm as interested in DA's take on the conflict as JJ's.
One area that I agree with Leon is that PB's approach to the war in the Ukraine is somewhat unnuanced.
The prevailing consensensus here on PB is that the conflict very closely mirrors World War II, with only the occasional visit from real Russian trolls, or real demented Trumpist-Putinists, to put o any dissenting view. In fact the war is not that simple.
PBs approach to the Ukraine war is Putin is bad therefore he must lose so he will lose.
"Putin is bad therefore he must lose" is as far as it goes I am afraid. All bets are off if Putin shill Trump wins the Presidency.
I think it's obvious that the next generation of royals don't see much less value in the "visibility" work that the last Queen was so keen on.
I've been keeping an eye on the Court Circular for the past 6 months (yeah, interesting, I know...)
Princess Anne does lots of sports, rural, and health-related visits Prince Richard does lots of buildings, engineering, built environment-related visits Prince Edward does some theatre, arts, and youth-related visits
And, er, that's it.
Prince William does virtually none of that stuff, even accounting for time off with his wife being ill. He goes to some dinners, and does a feww investiture ceremonies - the rest of his official engagements tend to be for personal projects like the Earthshot Prize. The contrast between his diary in 2023 and Charles' in, say, 2003 is rather eye-opening.
But who's to say that's a bad thing - if you've got a new university building that needs opened, say, why do you need Prince Richard rather than a Lord Mayor, ex-government minister, or someone from off the telly anyway?
At this point, it looks almost like a hobby for the older ones - or something they do because they've always done it, not because there's much need for it.
I'm a Republican by conviction (and ironically, partly inheritance - my mother's view is that hereditary monarch is a silly idea). But. I've been in the presence of Royalty precisely twice, and it made an impression on me both times.
First time, the then Prince of Wales, now KCIII, visited my place of work, a state-funded scientific organisation, and have a short speech to us all. The second time, the present Duke of Edinburgh did the honours at my daughter's graduation.
Despite my Republican views I was definitely more impressed then I would have been by some minor government minister, or local functionary, performing the same tasks. There is definitely something a bit different about being in the Royal presence. I'm certain that anyone who was in the not particularly fussed one way or the other category would be considerably swayed by a similar experience.
If William, and that generation onwards, do hide themselves away, it will be a huge boost for the Republican cause.
Queen Victoria after Albert died ... big boost for republicanism, and not the Irish kind either (though it didn't do any harm).
William isn't King, Charles is and he was doing regular events until his illness and the Queen is still doing duties on his behalf. William also resumed duties this week
LOL, shake a few hands , stuff their pie holes and pocket as much public money as they can get by any means possible
Seattle Times ($) - U.S. Rep. McMorris Rodgers [WA CD05, eastern WA] won’t seek reelection
U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Spokane, announced Thursday she will not seek reelection this fall, joining a wave of retirements in a House of Representatives whose dysfunction has been on full public display this week.
In giving up on nearly two decades of seniority — and a powerful committee chair position — at just 54 years old, McMorris Rodgers’ decision was taken by some Washington Republican political observers as a clear sign that remaining in the fractious GOP House majority was just not worth it any more. . . .
The announcement makes McMorris Rodgers the second member of Washington’s congressional delegation to decline to run for reelection this year. U.S. Rep. Derek Kilmer, D-Gig Harbor, announced in November he wouldn’t seek a seventh term . . .
McMorris Rodgers’ choice to step aside comes at a high point in her seniority and power in the House of Representatives, as she chairs the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee, where she has been a vocal critic of Biden administration policies and of plans to potentially tear down four Lower Snake River dams.
She had socked away more than $1.6 million for her reelection campaign and faced no big-name challengers in the solidly Republican 5th Congressional District, where she was reelected in 2022 with nearly 60% of the vote.
In that context, her decision was seen by some observers locally and nationally as a further sign of just how unappealing the House has become for politicians who want to get things done.
“When a new chair of a top committee retires, it tells you exactly how bad a workplace Congress has become,” said Doug Heye, a former Republican National Committee communications director, in a post on the social media platform X. . . .
Former state GOP Chair Chris Vance, now an independent, noted that McMorris Rodgers had previously risen to be part of GOP leadership as conference chair and then gave that up in favor of the Energy and Commerce post.
“She was on the leadership track and then jumped into the policy track, and the House Republicans aren’t making policy any more,” said Vance. “What does it even matter being chairman of the most powerful committee and you’re not doing anything and you have to put up with Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene screaming at you all the time?”
Unlike some congressional Republicans, McMorris Rodgers wasn’t facing a primary threat from the MAGA wing of the GOP.
She was the only member of the Washington congressional delegation to vote against impeaching former President Donald Trump for his actions stoking the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol. . . .
I think it's obvious that the next generation of royals don't see much less value in the "visibility" work that the last Queen was so keen on.
I've been keeping an eye on the Court Circular for the past 6 months (yeah, interesting, I know...)
Princess Anne does lots of sports, rural, and health-related visits Prince Richard does lots of buildings, engineering, built environment-related visits Prince Edward does some theatre, arts, and youth-related visits
And, er, that's it.
Prince William does virtually none of that stuff, even accounting for time off with his wife being ill. He goes to some dinners, and does a feww investiture ceremonies - the rest of his official engagements tend to be for personal projects like the Earthshot Prize. The contrast between his diary in 2023 and Charles' in, say, 2003 is rather eye-opening.
But who's to say that's a bad thing - if you've got a new university building that needs opened, say, why do you need Prince Richard rather than a Lord Mayor, ex-government minister, or someone from off the telly anyway?
At this point, it looks almost like a hobby for the older ones - or something they do because they've always done it, not because there's much need for it.
I’ve never even heard of Prince Richard.
I do think it’s fascinating, though, these subtle shifts in kingly responsibilities. It’s not obvious to me why William is maintaining a low profile. Is he just lazy?
I think William needs to be a little careful with this “normal life priorities” thing. I get he wants to have as normal a family life as possible and wants to be with his wife whilst she convalesces however he needs to not miss the glaring great issue, which Harry doesn’t get, in that the only reason they can live the lifestyle they do, with the access to properties, staff, money, top notch medical, security is because they are Royals.
Neither of them have made their money off their own efforts, or the contacts or access to people and networks, and so they have/had a responsibility to the tax payer to put their duties first. If you don’t want the duty then you don’t get the massive perks.
So if William wants the lifestyle he has then he has to buck up and if he doesn’t want to do the duties as he wants to be normal then he needs to get a career in something appropriate to his abilities and see how much time he gets off to be a family man as I’m sure most fathers in the UK don’t get that much and don’t get what he considers a family life.
They ar eblood sucking parasites with no idea of real life. They just sponge off the state as they are told it is their god given right and the morons bow and scrape and doff their caps.
William was an air sea rescue pilot and any head of state would be funded by the state
But you said downthread that he's not funded by the state, but through proceeds from private property/business.
That's perhaps the ambiguity at present - for an elected head of state it would be clear that the funding was state, not privately held, and was linked to doing the job and would end when the job ended.
Interim verdict: Putin looks healthy enough. Quite on top of his brief. Remember when we were told he was dying?
Also: not mad. Obsessive. Autocratic. But not insane. Not immediately off putting. Wily. Cunning. Duplicitous
I sense he really doesn’t want to invade and conquer Eastern Europe. But he really does want a large chunk of Ukraine. And he is genuinely aggrieved about NATO expansion - it’s not a pretext
So a dangerous man but not a Hitler
Interim verdict on tucker: doing the best he can. His main achievement is getting the interview in the first place - creating the envy of all his peers
He also asks some quite devious questions that make Putin look a little credulous or clumsy but he does it in a way that Putin doesn’t notice
It is not 120 minutes of sycophancy. But I am only halfway through
Yet still 50 minutes longer than most people with their heads actually screwed on have managed.
Some of us still remember the days when you were telling us all that Putin would be our saviour.
Another one that didn’t surprise on the upside.
It it a constant source of amazement to me that your only friend is a dog, given the ready wit, personal charm and that sly, playful charisma you regularly exhibit on this site
You are wasted on this site Leon. Your charm charisma and intelligence is too much for the regulars to handle.
I know. I sometimes feel I am more approached in Sverdlovsk than Swindon
A prophet without honour etc
What's happened to you, Leon? Are you OK?
Cambodia. Doing good professional knapping but bereft of social life - a self inflicted monastic solitude which I now possibly regret. Because it makes me reliant on PB for discourse at a time when PB has turned to shit
No wonder so many have fled the site
But I will end up with some excellent flints - I think - and it will all be worth it. Head down. Do the graft
Good work SHOULD be hard
Is PB not just in a lull waiting for some significant political betting to start? The general election could be mere weeks away and the US election is definitely in November. Calm before the storm (and the opportunity to fleece some less savvy punters on the markets?)
No. Absolutely no
It is in a terrible decline
Recall we used to compare it to a pub. You had the regulars, with their cranky obsessions and ancient gossip, you had frequent visitors - sometimes drunk, sometimes high, often amusing - you had passers by with brilliant new stories or total bewilderment. Crucially you had a core of really intelligent open minded people gathered round the bar
It seems to me that open minded core has gone. Now PB resembles a tedious HR meeting dominated by fucking boring lawyers and accountants and IT nerds who insist they are right, won’t allow dissent, and either chase away interesting people or bore everyone else
The wokeness prevails, there is no intellectual curiosity, no surprising new views from that guy on the corner by the slot machine
The only reason I am still here is because i have invested 15 years of conversation in this place and it will be a large wrench to leave, and I am particularly reliant on it out here in Phnom Penh
I will leave it as soon as I can
It's probably because there's a lack of ideological issues on which to be partisan, hence the weird obsession with trans people and other wedge issues.
More or less everybody agrees that the country is buggered, more or less everybody agrees why on all the salient points - stagnant productivity, lack of investment, insane house prices, rentier economy, etc. There are few on here who think differently.
The trouble is, these are problems that need managerial solutions rather than ideological ones.
While it might be fun to debate the motion that This House Would Hang All Landlords and Confiscate the Bank Balances, Walking Canes, and Cats of All Pensioners, it's a lot simpler and duller to agree "well, everything would be better if we built more houses and stopped subsidising pensioners to the detriment of everyone else."
"Dull solutions for bloody obvious problems". That should be Labour's 2024 campaign slogan and, to all effects and purposes, is.
Spot on. It is also part of why I expected Sunak would be reasonably good as PM. Head down, bit more investment with the odd gimmick. Instead he has gone for recreating The Thick of It but making it less plausible.
Interim verdict: Putin looks healthy enough. Quite on top of his brief. Remember when we were told he was dying?
Also: not mad. Obsessive. Autocratic. But not insane. Not immediately off putting. Wily. Cunning. Duplicitous
I sense he really doesn’t want to invade and conquer Eastern Europe. But he really does want a large chunk of Ukraine. And he is genuinely aggrieved about NATO expansion - it’s not a pretext
So a dangerous man but not a Hitler
Interim verdict on tucker: doing the best he can. His main achievement is getting the interview in the first place - creating the envy of all his peers
He also asks some quite devious questions that make Putin look a little credulous or clumsy but he does it in a way that Putin doesn’t notice
It is not 120 minutes of sycophancy. But I am only halfway through
Yet still 50 minutes longer than most people with their heads actually screwed on have managed.
Some of us still remember the days when you were telling us all that Putin would be our saviour.
Another one that didn’t surprise on the upside.
It it a constant source of amazement to me that your only friend is a dog, given the ready wit, personal charm and that sly, playful charisma you regularly exhibit on this site
You are wasted on this site Leon. Your charm charisma and intelligence is too much for the regulars to handle.
I know. I sometimes feel I am more approached in Sverdlovsk than Swindon
A prophet without honour etc
What's happened to you, Leon? Are you OK?
Cambodia. Doing good professional knapping but bereft of social life - a self inflicted monastic solitude which I now possibly regret. Because it makes me reliant on PB for discourse at a time when PB has turned to shit
No wonder so many have fled the site
But I will end up with some excellent flints - I think - and it will all be worth it. Head down. Do the graft
Good work SHOULD be hard
Is PB not just in a lull waiting for some significant political betting to start? The general election could be mere weeks away and the US election is definitely in November. Calm before the storm (and the opportunity to fleece some less savvy punters on the markets?)
No. Absolutely no
It is in a terrible decline
Recall we used to compare it to a pub. You had the regulars, with their cranky obsessions and ancient gossip, you had frequent visitors - sometimes drunk, sometimes high, often amusing - you had passers by with brilliant new stories or total bewilderment. Crucially you had a core of really intelligent open minded people gathered round the bar
It seems to me that open minded core has gone. Now PB resembles a tedious HR meeting dominated by fucking boring lawyers and accountants and IT nerds who insist they are right, won’t allow dissent, and either chase away interesting people or bore everyone else
The wokeness prevails, there is no intellectual curiosity, no surprising new views from that guy on the corner by the slot machine
The only reason I am still here is because i have invested 15 years of conversation in this place and it will be a large wrench to leave, and I am particularly reliant on it out here in Phnom Penh
I will leave it as soon as I can
I think reflects the broader politics. Nobody believes in the Brexit fairy anymore, the idea of supporting the Tories is risible, and Starmer is about to offer the blandest prospectus ever put to the British public. Even the Lib Dems have nothing to say.
The world is pivoting, the kaleidoscope has been shaken, but Britain has given up. For the moment, at least.
Yes. The wider world is definitely part of it. Politics is more polarised so pb is part of that
Also everyone here is just older and crankier perhaps. But fuck knows why I have to respect these geriatric twats - I still travel the world and do stuff - I stay open minded. Pb does not
Hey ho
If I’m still here in a year please please please tease me mercilessly until I am shamed into going. I need to find a replacement forum - it’s not easy. Pb of old was special
I am looking hard
Do you not think you've played a large part in driving away people who disagree with you?
Absolutely not. I love a good argument. That’s why I come here. Yes I can be bruising but I always respect someone who articulately disagrees, and I never whine if someone is nasty
What’s ruined the site is the dead hand of orthodoxy. Plus you’re all a bunch of fucking lawyers and accountants and business dudes and retired IT geeks. Twats
We desperately need more arty types. Poets. Violinists. Dancers. Opera singers. Anyone creative, anyone, literally anyone. Anyone!
But no
I expect arty types have too much time being arty and attending cultural events, museums, theatres and galleries, festivals, clubs and concerts, cinemas and watching arty TV, with lovers, eating and cooking good food and wine, reading arty books, on arty websites, exercising and travelling to spend a great deal of time debating politics and other geeky issues on PB
Interim verdict: Putin looks healthy enough. Quite on top of his brief. Remember when we were told he was dying?
Also: not mad. Obsessive. Autocratic. But not insane. Not immediately off putting. Wily. Cunning. Duplicitous
I sense he really doesn’t want to invade and conquer Eastern Europe. But he really does want a large chunk of Ukraine. And he is genuinely aggrieved about NATO expansion - it’s not a pretext
So a dangerous man but not a Hitler
Interim verdict on tucker: doing the best he can. His main achievement is getting the interview in the first place - creating the envy of all his peers
He also asks some quite devious questions that make Putin look a little credulous or clumsy but he does it in a way that Putin doesn’t notice
It is not 120 minutes of sycophancy. But I am only halfway through
Yet still 50 minutes longer than most people with their heads actually screwed on have managed.
Some of us still remember the days when you were telling us all that Putin would be our saviour.
Another one that didn’t surprise on the upside.
It it a constant source of amazement to me that your only friend is a dog, given the ready wit, personal charm and that sly, playful charisma you regularly exhibit on this site
You are wasted on this site Leon. Your charm charisma and intelligence is too much for the regulars to handle.
I know. I sometimes feel I am more approached in Sverdlovsk than Swindon
A prophet without honour etc
What's happened to you, Leon? Are you OK?
Cambodia. Doing good professional knapping but bereft of social life - a self inflicted monastic solitude which I now possibly regret. Because it makes me reliant on PB for discourse at a time when PB has turned to shit
No wonder so many have fled the site
But I will end up with some excellent flints - I think - and it will all be worth it. Head down. Do the graft
Good work SHOULD be hard
Is PB not just in a lull waiting for some significant political betting to start? The general election could be mere weeks away and the US election is definitely in November. Calm before the storm (and the opportunity to fleece some less savvy punters on the markets?)
No. Absolutely no
It is in a terrible decline
Recall we used to compare it to a pub. You had the regulars, with their cranky obsessions and ancient gossip, you had frequent visitors - sometimes drunk, sometimes high, often amusing - you had passers by with brilliant new stories or total bewilderment. Crucially you had a core of really intelligent open minded people gathered round the bar
It seems to me that open minded core has gone. Now PB resembles a tedious HR meeting dominated by fucking boring lawyers and accountants and IT nerds who insist they are right, won’t allow dissent, and either chase away interesting people or bore everyone else
The wokeness prevails, there is no intellectual curiosity, no surprising new views from that guy on the corner by the slot machine
The only reason I am still here is because i have invested 15 years of conversation in this place and it will be a large wrench to leave, and I am particularly reliant on it out here in Phnom Penh
I will leave it as soon as I can
I think reflects the broader politics. Nobody believes in the Brexit fairy anymore, the idea of supporting the Tories is risible, and Starmer is about to offer the blandest prospectus ever put to the British public. Even the Lib Dems have nothing to say.
The world is pivoting, the kaleidoscope has been shaken, but Britain has given up. For the moment, at least.
Yes. The wider world is definitely part of it. Politics is more polarised so pb is part of that
Also everyone here is just older and crankier perhaps. But fuck knows why I have to respect these geriatric twats - I still travel the world and do stuff - I stay open minded. Pb does not
Hey ho
If I’m still here in a year please please please tease me mercilessly until I am shamed into going. I need to find a replacement forum - it’s not easy. Pb of old was special
I am looking hard
Do you not think you've played a large part in driving away people who disagree with you?
Do they not just laugh and roll about the floor. Hardly shocking to be savaged by an old codger who spends most of his time in Bangkok.
I was watching a clip of SKS on Sky explaining why he was rowing back on his green policies. He appeared to slip in that this would also impact on housebuilding.
It isn't just home ownership of course. There's a sense that opportunities are shrinking more generally.
Rent / House prices Stagnant wages Student loans Higher taxes on the class-formerly-known-as-upwardly mobile. Extortionate childcare. Degraded public services. Harder to export. Harder to travel and work in Europe.
The obvious question is, do you feel better off now or in 2010?
But.
The problem is I have to adjust for the fact that the 2010s were my 30s, where my middle-class professional career advanced in leaps and bounds and I made a lot of money, although that probably wasn't the case for the majority of people.
So, ceteris paribus, I ask myself, would I prefer to be 30 now, or 30 in 2010? And on that metric, it's clear to me that the economy, opportunities, public services, housing and all the other things you mention have clearly degraded in that time. Meaning that measure for measure, I would now have fewer opportunities to get ahead, enjoy a worse standard of living, and worst of all, have that sinking feeling that things will only get worse, not better, from here, under the current government.
Isn't this the wrong question though? Most (or at least many) people progress in their careers - get promoted, move jobs for better pay etc. So almost all of us would feel better off now than in 2010. My situation is definitely better (promotions etc).
The comparison would surely be better for an equivalent person now vs me in 2010. So someone aged 38, grade X at a University etc etc. I suspect they would feel significantly worse off than I did.
So far as I can tell from family etc, today’s professional 20-somethings are in a significantly worse position than I was when I was a professional 20-something.
Yes its probably better to be a 20 something in China now especially if you are intelligent.
I'm not sure it is better to be a 20 something in China. There's high unemployment amongst recent graduates in China. High rents and educational debts apply to them and then you have the 996 working pattern. 9am to 9pm 6 days a week is normal office hours.
Interim verdict: Putin looks healthy enough. Quite on top of his brief. Remember when we were told he was dying?
Also: not mad. Obsessive. Autocratic. But not insane. Not immediately off putting. Wily. Cunning. Duplicitous
I sense he really doesn’t want to invade and conquer Eastern Europe. But he really does want a large chunk of Ukraine. And he is genuinely aggrieved about NATO expansion - it’s not a pretext
So a dangerous man but not a Hitler
Interim verdict on tucker: doing the best he can. His main achievement is getting the interview in the first place - creating the envy of all his peers
He also asks some quite devious questions that make Putin look a little credulous or clumsy but he does it in a way that Putin doesn’t notice
It is not 120 minutes of sycophancy. But I am only halfway through
Yet still 50 minutes longer than most people with their heads actually screwed on have managed.
Some of us still remember the days when you were telling us all that Putin would be our saviour.
Another one that didn’t surprise on the upside.
It it a constant source of amazement to me that your only friend is a dog, given the ready wit, personal charm and that sly, playful charisma you regularly exhibit on this site
You are wasted on this site Leon. Your charm charisma and intelligence is too much for the regulars to handle.
I know. I sometimes feel I am more approached in Sverdlovsk than Swindon
A prophet without honour etc
What's happened to you, Leon? Are you OK?
Cambodia. Doing good professional knapping but bereft of social life - a self inflicted monastic solitude which I now possibly regret. Because it makes me reliant on PB for discourse at a time when PB has turned to shit
No wonder so many have fled the site
But I will end up with some excellent flints - I think - and it will all be worth it. Head down. Do the graft
Good work SHOULD be hard
Is PB not just in a lull waiting for some significant political betting to start? The general election could be mere weeks away and the US election is definitely in November. Calm before the storm (and the opportunity to fleece some less savvy punters on the markets?)
No. Absolutely no
It is in a terrible decline
Recall we used to compare it to a pub. You had the regulars, with their cranky obsessions and ancient gossip, you had frequent visitors - sometimes drunk, sometimes high, often amusing - you had passers by with brilliant new stories or total bewilderment. Crucially you had a core of really intelligent open minded people gathered round the bar
It seems to me that open minded core has gone. Now PB resembles a tedious HR meeting dominated by fucking boring lawyers and accountants and IT nerds who insist they are right, won’t allow dissent, and either chase away interesting people or bore everyone else
The wokeness prevails, there is no intellectual curiosity, no surprising new views from that guy on the corner by the slot machine
The only reason I am still here is because i have invested 15 years of conversation in this place and it will be a large wrench to leave, and I am particularly reliant on it out here in Phnom Penh
I will leave it as soon as I can
I think reflects the broader politics. Nobody believes in the Brexit fairy anymore, the idea of supporting the Tories is risible, and Starmer is about to offer the blandest prospectus ever put to the British public. Even the Lib Dems have nothing to say.
The world is pivoting, the kaleidoscope has been shaken, but Britain has given up. For the moment, at least.
Yes. The wider world is definitely part of it. Politics is more polarised so pb is part of that
Also everyone here is just older and crankier perhaps. But fuck knows why I have to respect these geriatric twats - I still travel the world and do stuff - I stay open minded. Pb does not
Hey ho
If I’m still here in a year please please please tease me mercilessly until I am shamed into going. I need to find a replacement forum - it’s not easy. Pb of old was special
I am looking hard
Do you not think you've played a large part in driving away people who disagree with you?
Absolutely not. I love a good argument. That’s why I come here. Yes I can be bruising but I always respect someone who articulately disagrees, and I never whine if someone is nasty
What’s ruined the site is the dead hand of orthodoxy. Plus you’re all a bunch of fucking lawyers and accountants and business dudes and retired IT geeks. Twats
We desperately need more arty types. Poets. Violinists. Dancers. Opera singers. Anyone creative, anyone, literally anyone. Anyone!
But no
Well, I do. I do think that you have played a large part in driving away interesting posters with your aggressive mode of debate. You've also driven away boring posters with your aggressive mode of debate too, but I guess you don't miss those posters as much.
I think it's obvious that the next generation of royals don't see much less value in the "visibility" work that the last Queen was so keen on.
I've been keeping an eye on the Court Circular for the past 6 months (yeah, interesting, I know...)
Princess Anne does lots of sports, rural, and health-related visits Prince Richard does lots of buildings, engineering, built environment-related visits Prince Edward does some theatre, arts, and youth-related visits
And, er, that's it.
Prince William does virtually none of that stuff, even accounting for time off with his wife being ill. He goes to some dinners, and does a feww investiture ceremonies - the rest of his official engagements tend to be for personal projects like the Earthshot Prize. The contrast between his diary in 2023 and Charles' in, say, 2003 is rather eye-opening.
But who's to say that's a bad thing - if you've got a new university building that needs opened, say, why do you need Prince Richard rather than a Lord Mayor, ex-government minister, or someone from off the telly anyway?
At this point, it looks almost like a hobby for the older ones - or something they do because they've always done it, not because there's much need for it.
I’ve never even heard of Prince Richard.
I do think it’s fascinating, though, these subtle shifts in kingly responsibilities. It’s not obvious to me why William is maintaining a low profile. Is he just lazy?
Richard is the Duke of Gloucester - the King's cousin, I think. Did an architecture course in the 70s, and has been stuck opening shopping centres ever since...
As for William, I know there've been rumours about problems in his personal life - and at the very least his wife must have been very ill for some time to need such a hugely serious operation. But I doubt that's enough have stopped him taking some of Anne/Richard/Edward's more prestigious gigs if he'd felt it was necessary to do so - he just doesn't see the value in it.
Yes, Duke of Gloucester. I just never hear him referred to as Prince Richard, for some reason. I agree with the original notion that we’re frankly short of a few royals. Philip and Zara look the most “papabile” to my eye.
William needs to pull his finger out. The deal is that we pay for their luxury, and they perform their duties like Stakhanovites.
Speaking of which, the King is also the King of NZ. I know he’s due for a visit in November, but we kind of need him more often than every five or six years.
The days of organising the monarchy around the contingencies of boat-plane via BOAC are well and truly over.
Profits of the crown estates and duchies pay for the Prince and Princess of Wales actually, taxpayers pay for nothing more than their security.
The Governor General does the day to day things in NZ for the King and is currently a Maori woman
The crown estates belong to the country, they are not the private property of the monarch.
If we became a republic the crown estates would just be rebranded to something else, just as everything that is currently HM whatever will get rebranded then too.
If we became a republic taxpayers would fund a President and their family direct
A damn sight cheaper than the Royals I'd wager. Especially after we have sold of all the crown estate to the Chinese...
No, with no royal wedding, jubilee or coronation revenue whether and the Crown estate certainly won't be sold off, it is our heritage.
I certainly don't want President Johnson or President Blair either
It might not be sold off, but the revenues wouldn't go to Chas or William.
The replacement doesn't need to be a President - that would require such a major constitutional overhaul that it'll never happen.
Simply pass an act of parliament that deems Boris or Blair or whoever to be the next "Heir of the Body of Princess Sophia, Electress and Dowager Duchess of Hanover, Daughter of the late Queen of Bohemia, Daughter of King James the First". Make sure you first require them to submit a letter of abdication post-dated for ten years in the future.
Problem solved. And even if we ended up with King Boris, it'd be fine. He'd do the job for (much) less than the current one, he'd be happy to turn up and open all the new bus stations you could possibly wish for, and he'd be colourful enough to keep the tabloids happy.
You'd want to make sure that letter of abdication was pretty watertight, and that there were enough counselors of state who could sign bills into law on his behalf in case he gets into a strop and refuses to play nicely. But otherwise, job done.
What this site needs is me getting drunker and drunker and calling everyone twats until about 3am when the police come and I throw a brick at them and try and blame it on @carnyx then the coppers actually arrest @rcs1000 and take him to the nick and sodomise him with a frozen halibut but a team of us break into the station and free him and then go on a Xanax and ecstasy binge in Kidderminster where we burn a huge pagan idol in the shape of ex Lib Dem MP Chris “creases” Huhne and then we all pass out and wake up in Stornoway cottage hospital being injected in the buttocks by a nurse who resembles a young Mo Mowlam but with a fetish for yuzu fruit and the d’hondt version of AV
Lol, Prince Regent Harry would be hilarious - and again, could add a lot of otherwise pro monarchy people onto the republican side. Also, who else is there? Andrew? lol once more
Some of us at the time said Charles's plan to slim down the Royal Family made no sense when Harry and Andrew had already left, and he and Anne and the Kents are no spring chickens.
Did I read upthread that only two working royals are under 50?
Interim verdict: Putin looks healthy enough. Quite on top of his brief. Remember when we were told he was dying?
Also: not mad. Obsessive. Autocratic. But not insane. Not immediately off putting. Wily. Cunning. Duplicitous
I sense he really doesn’t want to invade and conquer Eastern Europe. But he really does want a large chunk of Ukraine. And he is genuinely aggrieved about NATO expansion - it’s not a pretext
So a dangerous man but not a Hitler
Interim verdict on tucker: doing the best he can. His main achievement is getting the interview in the first place - creating the envy of all his peers
He also asks some quite devious questions that make Putin look a little credulous or clumsy but he does it in a way that Putin doesn’t notice
It is not 120 minutes of sycophancy. But I am only halfway through
Yet still 50 minutes longer than most people with their heads actually screwed on have managed.
Some of us still remember the days when you were telling us all that Putin would be our saviour.
Another one that didn’t surprise on the upside.
It it a constant source of amazement to me that your only friend is a dog, given the ready wit, personal charm and that sly, playful charisma you regularly exhibit on this site
You are wasted on this site Leon. Your charm charisma and intelligence is too much for the regulars to handle.
I know. I sometimes feel I am more approached in Sverdlovsk than Swindon
A prophet without honour etc
What's happened to you, Leon? Are you OK?
Cambodia. Doing good professional knapping but bereft of social life - a self inflicted monastic solitude which I now possibly regret. Because it makes me reliant on PB for discourse at a time when PB has turned to shit
No wonder so many have fled the site
But I will end up with some excellent flints - I think - and it will all be worth it. Head down. Do the graft
Good work SHOULD be hard
Is PB not just in a lull waiting for some significant political betting to start? The general election could be mere weeks away and the US election is definitely in November. Calm before the storm (and the opportunity to fleece some less savvy punters on the markets?)
No. Absolutely no
It is in a terrible decline
Recall we used to compare it to a pub. You had the regulars, with their cranky obsessions and ancient gossip, you had frequent visitors - sometimes drunk, sometimes high, often amusing - you had passers by with brilliant new stories or total bewilderment. Crucially you had a core of really intelligent open minded people gathered round the bar
It seems to me that open minded core has gone. Now PB resembles a tedious HR meeting dominated by fucking boring lawyers and accountants and IT nerds who insist they are right, won’t allow dissent, and either chase away interesting people or bore everyone else
The wokeness prevails, there is no intellectual curiosity, no surprising new views from that guy on the corner by the slot machine
The only reason I am still here is because i have invested 15 years of conversation in this place and it will be a large wrench to leave, and I am particularly reliant on it out here in Phnom Penh
I will leave it as soon as I can
It's probably because there's a lack of ideological issues on which to be partisan, hence the weird obsession with trans people and other wedge issues.
More or less everybody agrees that the country is buggered, more or less everybody agrees why on all the salient points - stagnant productivity, lack of investment, insane house prices, rentier economy, etc. There are few on here who think differently.
The trouble is, these are problems that need managerial solutions rather than ideological ones.
While it might be fun to debate the motion that This House Would Hang All Landlords and Confiscate the Bank Balances, Walking Canes, and Cats of All Pensioners, it's a lot simpler and duller to agree "well, everything would be better if we built more houses and stopped subsidising pensioners to the detriment of everyone else."
"Dull solutions for bloody obvious problems". That should be Labour's 2024 campaign slogan and, to all effects and purposes, is.
No. Managerial solutions are fools gold.
The answer is ideology. The British public has swallowed the lie that the government can manage their lives better than they can. The answer is to cut government back to doing a few things well and let people lead their own lives. No excessive administration or endless regulation.
£66bn on a railway line which gets you to Birmingham more slowly is where mangerialism gets you. No dentists, fucked up postmasters, no houses, armies without troops. Weve been living with more managerialism each year. It doesnt work.
I think it's obvious that the next generation of royals don't see much less value in the "visibility" work that the last Queen was so keen on.
I've been keeping an eye on the Court Circular for the past 6 months (yeah, interesting, I know...)
Princess Anne does lots of sports, rural, and health-related visits Prince Richard does lots of buildings, engineering, built environment-related visits Prince Edward does some theatre, arts, and youth-related visits
And, er, that's it.
Prince William does virtually none of that stuff, even accounting for time off with his wife being ill. He goes to some dinners, and does a feww investiture ceremonies - the rest of his official engagements tend to be for personal projects like the Earthshot Prize. The contrast between his diary in 2023 and Charles' in, say, 2003 is rather eye-opening.
But who's to say that's a bad thing - if you've got a new university building that needs opened, say, why do you need Prince Richard rather than a Lord Mayor, ex-government minister, or someone from off the telly anyway?
At this point, it looks almost like a hobby for the older ones - or something they do because they've always done it, not because there's much need for it.
I’ve never even heard of Prince Richard.
I do think it’s fascinating, though, these subtle shifts in kingly responsibilities. It’s not obvious to me why William is maintaining a low profile. Is he just lazy?
Richard is the Duke of Gloucester - the King's cousin, I think. Did an architecture course in the 70s, and has been stuck opening shopping centres ever since...
As for William, I know there've been rumours about problems in his personal life - and at the very least his wife must have been very ill for some time to need such a hugely serious operation. But I doubt that's enough have stopped him taking some of Anne/Richard/Edward's more prestigious gigs if he'd felt it was necessary to do so - he just doesn't see the value in it.
I don't think William is anything other than that which appears to be: a nervous wreck of a middle aged man with a haggard wife and weird kids that look like they are off the cover of an Enid Blyton book.
What this site needs is me getting drunker and drunker and calling everyone twats until about 3am when the police come and I throw a brick at them and try and blame it on @carnyx then the coppers actually arrest @rcs1000 and take him to the nick and sodomise him with a frozen halibut but a team of us break into the station and free him and then go on a Xanax and ecstasy binge in Kidderminster where we burn a huge pagan idol in the shape of ex Lib Dem MP Chris “creases” Huhne and then we all pass out and wake up in Stornoway cottage hospital being injected in the buttocks by a nurse who resembles a young Mo Mowlam but with a fetish for yuzu fruit and the d’hondt version of AV
That shit used to be a daily occurrence on PB.
Sic transit Gloria mundi
Chris Huhne claiming for a trouser press on expenses produced one of PBs best puns
Interim verdict: Putin looks healthy enough. Quite on top of his brief. Remember when we were told he was dying?
Also: not mad. Obsessive. Autocratic. But not insane. Not immediately off putting. Wily. Cunning. Duplicitous
I sense he really doesn’t want to invade and conquer Eastern Europe. But he really does want a large chunk of Ukraine. And he is genuinely aggrieved about NATO expansion - it’s not a pretext
So a dangerous man but not a Hitler
Interim verdict on tucker: doing the best he can. His main achievement is getting the interview in the first place - creating the envy of all his peers
He also asks some quite devious questions that make Putin look a little credulous or clumsy but he does it in a way that Putin doesn’t notice
It is not 120 minutes of sycophancy. But I am only halfway through
Yet still 50 minutes longer than most people with their heads actually screwed on have managed.
Some of us still remember the days when you were telling us all that Putin would be our saviour.
Another one that didn’t surprise on the upside.
It it a constant source of amazement to me that your only friend is a dog, given the ready wit, personal charm and that sly, playful charisma you regularly exhibit on this site
You are wasted on this site Leon. Your charm charisma and intelligence is too much for the regulars to handle.
I know. I sometimes feel I am more approached in Sverdlovsk than Swindon
A prophet without honour etc
What's happened to you, Leon? Are you OK?
Cambodia. Doing good professional knapping but bereft of social life - a self inflicted monastic solitude which I now possibly regret. Because it makes me reliant on PB for discourse at a time when PB has turned to shit
No wonder so many have fled the site
But I will end up with some excellent flints - I think - and it will all be worth it. Head down. Do the graft
Good work SHOULD be hard
Is PB not just in a lull waiting for some significant political betting to start? The general election could be mere weeks away and the US election is definitely in November. Calm before the storm (and the opportunity to fleece some less savvy punters on the markets?)
No. Absolutely no
It is in a terrible decline
Recall we used to compare it to a pub. You had the regulars, with their cranky obsessions and ancient gossip, you had frequent visitors - sometimes drunk, sometimes high, often amusing - you had passers by with brilliant new stories or total bewilderment. Crucially you had a core of really intelligent open minded people gathered round the bar
It seems to me that open minded core has gone. Now PB resembles a tedious HR meeting dominated by fucking boring lawyers and accountants and IT nerds who insist they are right, won’t allow dissent, and either chase away interesting people or bore everyone else
The wokeness prevails, there is no intellectual curiosity, no surprising new views from that guy on the corner by the slot machine
The only reason I am still here is because i have invested 15 years of conversation in this place and it will be a large wrench to leave, and I am particularly reliant on it out here in Phnom Penh
I will leave it as soon as I can
It's probably because there's a lack of ideological issues on which to be partisan, hence the weird obsession with trans people and other wedge issues.
More or less everybody agrees that the country is buggered, more or less everybody agrees why on all the salient points - stagnant productivity, lack of investment, insane house prices, rentier economy, etc. There are few on here who think differently.
The trouble is, these are problems that need managerial solutions rather than ideological ones.
While it might be fun to debate the motion that This House Would Hang All Landlords and Confiscate the Bank Balances, Walking Canes, and Cats of All Pensioners, it's a lot simpler and duller to agree "well, everything would be better if we built more houses and stopped subsidising pensioners to the detriment of everyone else."
"Dull solutions for bloody obvious problems". That should be Labour's 2024 campaign slogan and, to all effects and purposes, is.
Except, we don't really want it to be true, do we?
I mean, I'm as suburban centrist dad science master as they come. I totally buy into the "it's going to be shit for a significant number of years while things are fixed" and accept it's going to happen and if it doesn't hurt me, the government isn't doing it right.
But I can't get enthusiastic about it.
It would be nice to just press a magic button and make everything nice again, whether that button is Brexit, Brejoin, Automated Luxury Socialism, Johnsonian Unleashing, Trussite Tax Cutting Liberalisation or Whatever The Hell Sunak is offering today. But while those buttons exist and have been pressed, they have tended to make things worse.
It's a bit like diet fads. Deep down, we know that the thing to do is get rid of the chocolate biscuits and to do some more exercise, but faced with that prospect, it's easier to look for the ONE WEIRD TRICK that will do the job for us.
One area that I agree with Leon is that PB's approach to the war in the Ukraine is somewhat unnuanced.
The prevailing consensensus here on PB is that the conflict very closely mirrors World War II, with only the occasional visit from real Russian trolls, or real demented Trumpist-Putinists, to put o any dissenting view. In fact the war is not that simple.
The thing is, that unlike a lot of wars, one of the sides does not have any justification.
It isn't just home ownership of course. There's a sense that opportunities are shrinking more generally.
Rent / House prices Stagnant wages Student loans Higher taxes on the class-formerly-known-as-upwardly mobile. Extortionate childcare. Degraded public services. Harder to export. Harder to travel and work in Europe.
The obvious question is, do you feel better off now or in 2010?
But.
The problem is I have to adjust for the fact that the 2010s were my 30s, where my middle-class professional career advanced in leaps and bounds and I made a lot of money, although that probably wasn't the case for the majority of people.
So, ceteris paribus, I ask myself, would I prefer to be 30 now, or 30 in 2010? And on that metric, it's clear to me that the economy, opportunities, public services, housing and all the other things you mention have clearly degraded in that time. Meaning that measure for measure, I would now have fewer opportunities to get ahead, enjoy a worse standard of living, and worst of all, have that sinking feeling that things will only get worse, not better, from here, under the current government.
Isn't this the wrong question though? Most (or at least many) people progress in their careers - get promoted, move jobs for better pay etc. So almost all of us would feel better off now than in 2010. My situation is definitely better (promotions etc).
The comparison would surely be better for an equivalent person now vs me in 2010. So someone aged 38, grade X at a University etc etc. I suspect they would feel significantly worse off than I did.
So far as I can tell from family etc, today’s professional 20-somethings are in a significantly worse position than I was when I was a professional 20-something.
Yes its probably better to be a 20 something in China now especially if you are intelligent.
Bit like being better having a hole in the head perhaps
Interim verdict: Putin looks healthy enough. Quite on top of his brief. Remember when we were told he was dying?
Also: not mad. Obsessive. Autocratic. But not insane. Not immediately off putting. Wily. Cunning. Duplicitous
I sense he really doesn’t want to invade and conquer Eastern Europe. But he really does want a large chunk of Ukraine. And he is genuinely aggrieved about NATO expansion - it’s not a pretext
So a dangerous man but not a Hitler
Interim verdict on tucker: doing the best he can. His main achievement is getting the interview in the first place - creating the envy of all his peers
He also asks some quite devious questions that make Putin look a little credulous or clumsy but he does it in a way that Putin doesn’t notice
It is not 120 minutes of sycophancy. But I am only halfway through
Yet still 50 minutes longer than most people with their heads actually screwed on have managed.
Some of us still remember the days when you were telling us all that Putin would be our saviour.
Another one that didn’t surprise on the upside.
It it a constant source of amazement to me that your only friend is a dog, given the ready wit, personal charm and that sly, playful charisma you regularly exhibit on this site
You are wasted on this site Leon. Your charm charisma and intelligence is too much for the regulars to handle.
I know. I sometimes feel I am more approached in Sverdlovsk than Swindon
A prophet without honour etc
What's happened to you, Leon? Are you OK?
Cambodia. Doing good professional knapping but bereft of social life - a self inflicted monastic solitude which I now possibly regret. Because it makes me reliant on PB for discourse at a time when PB has turned to shit
No wonder so many have fled the site
But I will end up with some excellent flints - I think - and it will all be worth it. Head down. Do the graft
Good work SHOULD be hard
Is PB not just in a lull waiting for some significant political betting to start? The general election could be mere weeks away and the US election is definitely in November. Calm before the storm (and the opportunity to fleece some less savvy punters on the markets?)
No. Absolutely no
It is in a terrible decline
Recall we used to compare it to a pub. You had the regulars, with their cranky obsessions and ancient gossip, you had frequent visitors - sometimes drunk, sometimes high, often amusing - you had passers by with brilliant new stories or total bewilderment. Crucially you had a core of really intelligent open minded people gathered round the bar
It seems to me that open minded core has gone. Now PB resembles a tedious HR meeting dominated by fucking boring lawyers and accountants and IT nerds who insist they are right, won’t allow dissent, and either chase away interesting people or bore everyone else
The wokeness prevails, there is no intellectual curiosity, no surprising new views from that guy on the corner by the slot machine
The only reason I am still here is because i have invested 15 years of conversation in this place and it will be a large wrench to leave, and I am particularly reliant on it out here in Phnom Penh
I will leave it as soon as I can
I think reflects the broader politics. Nobody believes in the Brexit fairy anymore, the idea of supporting the Tories is risible, and Starmer is about to offer the blandest prospectus ever put to the British public. Even the Lib Dems have nothing to say.
The world is pivoting, the kaleidoscope has been shaken, but Britain has given up. For the moment, at least.
Yes. The wider world is definitely part of it. Politics is more polarised so pb is part of that
Also everyone here is just older and crankier perhaps. But fuck knows why I have to respect these geriatric twats - I still travel the world and do stuff - I stay open minded. Pb does not
Hey ho
If I’m still here in a year please please please tease me mercilessly until I am shamed into going. I need to find a replacement forum - it’s not easy. Pb of old was special
I am looking hard
Do you not think you've played a large part in driving away people who disagree with you?
Absolutely not. I love a good argument. That’s why I come here. Yes I can be bruising but I always respect someone who articulately disagrees, and I never whine if someone is nasty
What’s ruined the site is the dead hand of orthodoxy. Plus you’re all a bunch of fucking lawyers and accountants and business dudes and retired IT geeks. Twats
We desperately need more arty types. Poets. Violinists. Dancers. Opera singers. Anyone creative, anyone, literally anyone. Anyone!
But no
I expect arty types have too much time being arty and attending cultural events, museums, theatres and galleries, festivals, clubs and concerts, cinemas and watching arty TV, with lovers, eating and cooking good food and wine, reading arty books, on arty websites, exercising and travelling to spend a great deal of time debating politics and other geeky issues on PB
I tend to regard myself as a bit of an arty-arsey sort of type, but I'm also interested in politics.
Leon is broadly right that the site needs more ; they are also prone to moree pronounced right or leftwing views than the centre/centre-right consensus here ; but he also fails to see that describing people as twats tends to put off said arty types he needs.
I think it's obvious that the next generation of royals don't see much less value in the "visibility" work that the last Queen was so keen on.
I've been keeping an eye on the Court Circular for the past 6 months (yeah, interesting, I know...)
Princess Anne does lots of sports, rural, and health-related visits Prince Richard does lots of buildings, engineering, built environment-related visits Prince Edward does some theatre, arts, and youth-related visits
And, er, that's it.
Prince William does virtually none of that stuff, even accounting for time off with his wife being ill. He goes to some dinners, and does a feww investiture ceremonies - the rest of his official engagements tend to be for personal projects like the Earthshot Prize. The contrast between his diary in 2023 and Charles' in, say, 2003 is rather eye-opening.
But who's to say that's a bad thing - if you've got a new university building that needs opened, say, why do you need Prince Richard rather than a Lord Mayor, ex-government minister, or someone from off the telly anyway?
At this point, it looks almost like a hobby for the older ones - or something they do because they've always done it, not because there's much need for it.
I’ve never even heard of Prince Richard.
I do think it’s fascinating, though, these subtle shifts in kingly responsibilities. It’s not obvious to me why William is maintaining a low profile. Is he just lazy?
Richard is the Duke of Gloucester - the King's cousin, I think. Did an architecture course in the 70s, and has been stuck opening shopping centres ever since...
As for William, I know there've been rumours about problems in his personal life - and at the very least his wife must have been very ill for some time to need such a hugely serious operation. But I doubt that's enough have stopped him taking some of Anne/Richard/Edward's more prestigious gigs if he'd felt it was necessary to do so - he just doesn't see the value in it.
Yes, Duke of Gloucester. I just never hear him referred to as Prince Richard, for some reason. I agree with the original notion that we’re frankly short of a few royals. Philip and Zara look the most “papabile” to my eye.
William needs to pull his finger out. The deal is that we pay for their luxury, and they perform their duties like Stakhanovites.
Speaking of which, the King is also the King of NZ. I know he’s due for a visit in November, but we kind of need him more often than every five or six years.
The days of organising the monarchy around the contingencies of boat-plane via BOAC are well and truly over.
Profits of the crown estates and duchies pay for the Prince and Princess of Wales actually, taxpayers pay for nothing more than their security.
The Governor General does the day to day things in NZ for the King and is currently a Maori woman
The crown estates belong to the country, they are not the private property of the monarch.
If we became a republic the crown estates would just be rebranded to something else, just as everything that is currently HM whatever will get rebranded then too.
If we became a republic taxpayers would fund a President and their family direct
A damn sight cheaper than the Royals I'd wager. Especially after we have sold of all the crown estate to the Chinese...
No, with no royal wedding, jubilee or coronation revenue whether and the Crown estate certainly won't be sold off, it is our heritage.
I certainly don't want President Johnson or President Blair either
It might not be sold off, but the revenues wouldn't go to Chas or William.
The replacement doesn't need to be a President - that would require such a major constitutional overhaul that it'll never happen.
Simply pass an act of parliament that deems Boris or Blair or whoever to be the next "Heir of the Body of Princess Sophia, Electress and Dowager Duchess of Hanover, Daughter of the late Queen of Bohemia, Daughter of King James the First". Make sure you first require them to submit a letter of abdication post-dated for ten years in the future.
Problem solved. And even if we ended up with King Boris, it'd be fine. He'd do the job for (much) less than the current one, he'd be happy to turn up and open all the new bus stations you could possibly wish for, and he'd be colourful enough to keep the tabloids happy.
You'd want to make sure that letter of abdication was pretty watertight, and that there were enough counselors of state who could sign bills into law on his behalf in case he gets into a strop and refuses to play nicely. But otherwise, job done.
Then you still end up with an ex politician President, which defeats the point of an apolitical head of state. Neither have royal blood that I can see either
I think it's obvious that the next generation of royals don't see much less value in the "visibility" work that the last Queen was so keen on.
I've been keeping an eye on the Court Circular for the past 6 months (yeah, interesting, I know...)
Princess Anne does lots of sports, rural, and health-related visits Prince Richard does lots of buildings, engineering, built environment-related visits Prince Edward does some theatre, arts, and youth-related visits
And, er, that's it.
Prince William does virtually none of that stuff, even accounting for time off with his wife being ill. He goes to some dinners, and does a feww investiture ceremonies - the rest of his official engagements tend to be for personal projects like the Earthshot Prize. The contrast between his diary in 2023 and Charles' in, say, 2003 is rather eye-opening.
But who's to say that's a bad thing - if you've got a new university building that needs opened, say, why do you need Prince Richard rather than a Lord Mayor, ex-government minister, or someone from off the telly anyway?
At this point, it looks almost like a hobby for the older ones - or something they do because they've always done it, not because there's much need for it.
I’ve never even heard of Prince Richard.
I do think it’s fascinating, though, these subtle shifts in kingly responsibilities. It’s not obvious to me why William is maintaining a low profile. Is he just lazy?
I think William needs to be a little careful with this “normal life priorities” thing. I get he wants to have as normal a family life as possible and wants to be with his wife whilst she convalesces however he needs to not miss the glaring great issue, which Harry doesn’t get, in that the only reason they can live the lifestyle they do, with the access to properties, staff, money, top notch medical, security is because they are Royals.
Neither of them have made their money off their own efforts, or the contacts or access to people and networks, and so they have/had a responsibility to the tax payer to put their duties first. If you don’t want the duty then you don’t get the massive perks.
So if William wants the lifestyle he has then he has to buck up and if he doesn’t want to do the duties as he wants to be normal then he needs to get a career in something appropriate to his abilities and see how much time he gets off to be a family man as I’m sure most fathers in the UK don’t get that much and don’t get what he considers a family life.
They ar eblood sucking parasites with no idea of real life. They just sponge off the state as they are told it is their god given right and the morons bow and scrape and doff their caps.
William was an air sea rescue pilot and any head of state would be funded by the state
I was watching a clip of SKS on Sky explaining why he was rowing back on his green policies. He appeared to slip in that this would also impact on housebuilding.
Is he also ditching the one policy he has left ?
I bloody well hope so!
Why ? We need houses and its about the only sensible thing SKS has said,
I think it's obvious that the next generation of royals don't see much less value in the "visibility" work that the last Queen was so keen on.
I've been keeping an eye on the Court Circular for the past 6 months (yeah, interesting, I know...)
Princess Anne does lots of sports, rural, and health-related visits Prince Richard does lots of buildings, engineering, built environment-related visits Prince Edward does some theatre, arts, and youth-related visits
And, er, that's it.
Prince William does virtually none of that stuff, even accounting for time off with his wife being ill. He goes to some dinners, and does a feww investiture ceremonies - the rest of his official engagements tend to be for personal projects like the Earthshot Prize. The contrast between his diary in 2023 and Charles' in, say, 2003 is rather eye-opening.
But who's to say that's a bad thing - if you've got a new university building that needs opened, say, why do you need Prince Richard rather than a Lord Mayor, ex-government minister, or someone from off the telly anyway?
At this point, it looks almost like a hobby for the older ones - or something they do because they've always done it, not because there's much need for it.
I’ve never even heard of Prince Richard.
I do think it’s fascinating, though, these subtle shifts in kingly responsibilities. It’s not obvious to me why William is maintaining a low profile. Is he just lazy?
Richard is the Duke of Gloucester - the King's cousin, I think. Did an architecture course in the 70s, and has been stuck opening shopping centres ever since...
As for William, I know there've been rumours about problems in his personal life - and at the very least his wife must have been very ill for some time to need such a hugely serious operation. But I doubt that's enough have stopped him taking some of Anne/Richard/Edward's more prestigious gigs if he'd felt it was necessary to do so - he just doesn't see the value in it.
Yes, Duke of Gloucester. I just never hear him referred to as Prince Richard, for some reason. I agree with the original notion that we’re frankly short of a few royals. Philip and Zara look the most “papabile” to my eye.
William needs to pull his finger out. The deal is that we pay for their luxury, and they perform their duties like Stakhanovites.
Speaking of which, the King is also the King of NZ. I know he’s due for a visit in November, but we kind of need him more often than every five or six years.
The days of organising the monarchy around the contingencies of boat-plane via BOAC are well and truly over.
Profits of the crown estates and duchies pay for the Prince and Princess of Wales actually, taxpayers pay for nothing more than their security.
The Governor General does the day to day things in NZ for the King and is currently a Maori woman
The crown estates belong to the country, they are not the private property of the monarch.
If we became a republic the crown estates would just be rebranded to something else, just as everything that is currently HM whatever will get rebranded then too.
If we became a republic taxpayers would fund a President and their family direct
They could be fully covered by the 'republic estates' or whatever they're rebranded to and then some since there'd only be one figurehead to fund not an entire sprawling family of them.
One area that I agree with Leon is that PB's approach to the war in the Ukraine is somewhat unnuanced.
The prevailing consensensus here on PB is that the conflict very closely mirrors World War II, with only the occasional visit from real Russian trolls, or real demented Trumpist-Putinists, to put o any dissenting view. In fact the war is not that simple.
PBs approach to the Ukraine war is Putin is bad therefore he must lose so he will lose.
"Putin is bad therefore he must lose" is as far as it goes I am afraid. All bets are off if Putin shill Trump wins the Presidency.
How doltish.
You are engaging in JJ's historical inevitablism. He may lose (by many metrics he has already lost) but we have no idea whether he will or not. Harper, whoever the hell they are and wherever the hell they come from, is doing nothing other than articulating the truth.
PB has a weird fixation that because people want something to happen it will happen.
Interim verdict: Putin looks healthy enough. Quite on top of his brief. Remember when we were told he was dying?
Also: not mad. Obsessive. Autocratic. But not insane. Not immediately off putting. Wily. Cunning. Duplicitous
I sense he really doesn’t want to invade and conquer Eastern Europe. But he really does want a large chunk of Ukraine. And he is genuinely aggrieved about NATO expansion - it’s not a pretext
So a dangerous man but not a Hitler
Interim verdict on tucker: doing the best he can. His main achievement is getting the interview in the first place - creating the envy of all his peers
He also asks some quite devious questions that make Putin look a little credulous or clumsy but he does it in a way that Putin doesn’t notice
It is not 120 minutes of sycophancy. But I am only halfway through
Yet still 50 minutes longer than most people with their heads actually screwed on have managed.
Some of us still remember the days when you were telling us all that Putin would be our saviour.
Another one that didn’t surprise on the upside.
It it a constant source of amazement to me that your only friend is a dog, given the ready wit, personal charm and that sly, playful charisma you regularly exhibit on this site
You are wasted on this site Leon. Your charm charisma and intelligence is too much for the regulars to handle.
I know. I sometimes feel I am more approached in Sverdlovsk than Swindon
A prophet without honour etc
What's happened to you, Leon? Are you OK?
Cambodia. Doing good professional knapping but bereft of social life - a self inflicted monastic solitude which I now possibly regret. Because it makes me reliant on PB for discourse at a time when PB has turned to shit
No wonder so many have fled the site
But I will end up with some excellent flints - I think - and it will all be worth it. Head down. Do the graft
Good work SHOULD be hard
Is PB not just in a lull waiting for some significant political betting to start? The general election could be mere weeks away and the US election is definitely in November. Calm before the storm (and the opportunity to fleece some less savvy punters on the markets?)
No. Absolutely no
It is in a terrible decline
Recall we used to compare it to a pub. You had the regulars, with their cranky obsessions and ancient gossip, you had frequent visitors - sometimes drunk, sometimes high, often amusing - you had passers by with brilliant new stories or total bewilderment. Crucially you had a core of really intelligent open minded people gathered round the bar
It seems to me that open minded core has gone. Now PB resembles a tedious HR meeting dominated by fucking boring lawyers and accountants and IT nerds who insist they are right, won’t allow dissent, and either chase away interesting people or bore everyone else
The wokeness prevails, there is no intellectual curiosity, no surprising new views from that guy on the corner by the slot machine
The only reason I am still here is because i have invested 15 years of conversation in this place and it will be a large wrench to leave, and I am particularly reliant on it out here in Phnom Penh
I will leave it as soon as I can
It's probably because there's a lack of ideological issues on which to be partisan, hence the weird obsession with trans people and other wedge issues.
More or less everybody agrees that the country is buggered, more or less everybody agrees why on all the salient points - stagnant productivity, lack of investment, insane house prices, rentier economy, etc. There are few on here who think differently.
The trouble is, these are problems that need managerial solutions rather than ideological ones.
While it might be fun to debate the motion that This House Would Hang All Landlords and Confiscate the Bank Balances, Walking Canes, and Cats of All Pensioners, it's a lot simpler and duller to agree "well, everything would be better if we built more houses and stopped subsidising pensioners to the detriment of everyone else."
"Dull solutions for bloody obvious problems". That should be Labour's 2024 campaign slogan and, to all effects and purposes, is.
No. Managerial solutions are fools gold.
The answer is ideology. The British public has swallowed the lie that the government can manage their lives better than they can. The answer is to cut government back to doing a few things well and let people lead their own lives. No excessive administration or endless regulation.
£66bn on a railway line which gets you to Birmingham more slowly is where mangerialism gets you. No dentists, fucked up postmasters, no houses, armies without troops. Weve been living with more managerialism each year. It doesnt work.
I don't think there's any dispute that in terms of generating pointless form-filling and excessive middle management, we are the world leader.
Crapita, paid a fortune to deter people from joining the armed forces, is the perfect example.
What this site needs is me getting drunker and drunker and calling everyone twats until about 3am when the police come and I throw a brick at them and try and blame it on @carnyx then the coppers actually arrest @rcs1000 and take him to the nick and sodomise him with a frozen halibut but a team of us break into the station and free him and then go on a Xanax and ecstasy binge in Kidderminster where we burn a huge pagan idol in the shape of ex Lib Dem MP Chris “creases” Huhne and then we all pass out and wake up in Stornoway cottage hospital being injected in the buttocks by a nurse who resembles a young Mo Mowlam but with a fetish for yuzu fruit and the d’hondt version of AV
One area that I agree with Leon is that PB's approach to the war in the Ukraine is somewhat unnuanced.
The prevailing consensensus here on PB is that the conflict very closely mirrors World War II, with only the occasional visit from real Russian trolls, or real demented Trumpist-Putinists, to put o any dissenting view. In fact the war is not that simple.
Surely this is just a manifestation of one of the fundamental laws of the Internet - that it's impossible to do anything so bad that people won't defend it - or pretend to - online.
It isn't just home ownership of course. There's a sense that opportunities are shrinking more generally.
Rent / House prices Stagnant wages Student loans Higher taxes on the class-formerly-known-as-upwardly mobile. Extortionate childcare. Degraded public services. Harder to export. Harder to travel and work in Europe.
The obvious question is, do you feel better off now or in 2010?
But.
The problem is I have to adjust for the fact that the 2010s were my 30s, where my middle-class professional career advanced in leaps and bounds and I made a lot of money, although that probably wasn't the case for the majority of people.
So, ceteris paribus, I ask myself, would I prefer to be 30 now, or 30 in 2010? And on that metric, it's clear to me that the economy, opportunities, public services, housing and all the other things you mention have clearly degraded in that time. Meaning that measure for measure, I would now have fewer opportunities to get ahead, enjoy a worse standard of living, and worst of all, have that sinking feeling that things will only get worse, not better, from here, under the current government.
Isn't this the wrong question though? Most (or at least many) people progress in their careers - get promoted, move jobs for better pay etc. So almost all of us would feel better off now than in 2010. My situation is definitely better (promotions etc).
The comparison would surely be better for an equivalent person now vs me in 2010. So someone aged 38, grade X at a University etc etc. I suspect they would feel significantly worse off than I did.
So far as I can tell from family etc, today’s professional 20-somethings are in a significantly worse position than I was when I was a professional 20-something.
Yes its probably better to be a 20 something in China now especially if you are intelligent.
I'm not sure it is better to be a 20 something in China. There's high unemployment amongst recent graduates in China. High rents and educational debts apply to them and then you have the 996 working pattern. 9am to 9pm 6 days a week is normal office hours.
I wouldn't say no to being a 20 something again. Even in China.
What this site needs is me getting drunker and drunker and calling everyone twats until about 3am when the police come and I throw a brick at them and try and blame it on @carnyx then the coppers actually arrest @rcs1000 and take him to the nick and sodomise him with a frozen halibut but a team of us break into the station and free him and then go on a Xanax and ecstasy binge in Kidderminster where we burn a huge pagan idol in the shape of ex Lib Dem MP Chris “creases” Huhne and then we all pass out and wake up in Stornoway cottage hospital being injected in the buttocks by a nurse who resembles a young Mo Mowlam but with a fetish for yuzu fruit and the d’hondt version of AV
Interim verdict: Putin looks healthy enough. Quite on top of his brief. Remember when we were told he was dying?
Also: not mad. Obsessive. Autocratic. But not insane. Not immediately off putting. Wily. Cunning. Duplicitous
I sense he really doesn’t want to invade and conquer Eastern Europe. But he really does want a large chunk of Ukraine. And he is genuinely aggrieved about NATO expansion - it’s not a pretext
So a dangerous man but not a Hitler
Interim verdict on tucker: doing the best he can. His main achievement is getting the interview in the first place - creating the envy of all his peers
He also asks some quite devious questions that make Putin look a little credulous or clumsy but he does it in a way that Putin doesn’t notice
It is not 120 minutes of sycophancy. But I am only halfway through
Yet still 50 minutes longer than most people with their heads actually screwed on have managed.
Some of us still remember the days when you were telling us all that Putin would be our saviour.
Another one that didn’t surprise on the upside.
It it a constant source of amazement to me that your only friend is a dog, given the ready wit, personal charm and that sly, playful charisma you regularly exhibit on this site
You are wasted on this site Leon. Your charm charisma and intelligence is too much for the regulars to handle.
I know. I sometimes feel I am more approached in Sverdlovsk than Swindon
A prophet without honour etc
What's happened to you, Leon? Are you OK?
Cambodia. Doing good professional knapping but bereft of social life - a self inflicted monastic solitude which I now possibly regret. Because it makes me reliant on PB for discourse at a time when PB has turned to shit
No wonder so many have fled the site
But I will end up with some excellent flints - I think - and it will all be worth it. Head down. Do the graft
Good work SHOULD be hard
Is PB not just in a lull waiting for some significant political betting to start? The general election could be mere weeks away and the US election is definitely in November. Calm before the storm (and the opportunity to fleece some less savvy punters on the markets?)
No. Absolutely no
It is in a terrible decline
Recall we used to compare it to a pub. You had the regulars, with their cranky obsessions and ancient gossip, you had frequent visitors - sometimes drunk, sometimes high, often amusing - you had passers by with brilliant new stories or total bewilderment. Crucially you had a core of really intelligent open minded people gathered round the bar
It seems to me that open minded core has gone. Now PB resembles a tedious HR meeting dominated by fucking boring lawyers and accountants and IT nerds who insist they are right, won’t allow dissent, and either chase away interesting people or bore everyone else
The wokeness prevails, there is no intellectual curiosity, no surprising new views from that guy on the corner by the slot machine
The only reason I am still here is because i have invested 15 years of conversation in this place and it will be a large wrench to leave, and I am particularly reliant on it out here in Phnom Penh
I will leave it as soon as I can
It's probably because there's a lack of ideological issues on which to be partisan, hence the weird obsession with trans people and other wedge issues.
More or less everybody agrees that the country is buggered, more or less everybody agrees why on all the salient points - stagnant productivity, lack of investment, insane house prices, rentier economy, etc. There are few on here who think differently.
The trouble is, these are problems that need managerial solutions rather than ideological ones.
While it might be fun to debate the motion that This House Would Hang All Landlords and Confiscate the Bank Balances, Walking Canes, and Cats of All Pensioners, it's a lot simpler and duller to agree "well, everything would be better if we built more houses and stopped subsidising pensioners to the detriment of everyone else."
"Dull solutions for bloody obvious problems". That should be Labour's 2024 campaign slogan and, to all effects and purposes, is.
No. Managerial solutions are fools gold.
The answer is ideology. The British public has swallowed the lie that the government can manage their lives better than they can. The answer is to cut government back to doing a few things well and let people lead their own lives. No excessive administration or endless regulation.
£66bn on a railway line which gets you to Birmingham more slowly is where mangerialism gets you. No dentists, fucked up postmasters, no houses, armies without troops. Weve been living with more managerialism each year. It doesnt work.
Look Britain is a more diverse and very different country now. Solutions that may have worked in the past will not work now.
I think it's obvious that the next generation of royals don't see much less value in the "visibility" work that the last Queen was so keen on.
I've been keeping an eye on the Court Circular for the past 6 months (yeah, interesting, I know...)
Princess Anne does lots of sports, rural, and health-related visits Prince Richard does lots of buildings, engineering, built environment-related visits Prince Edward does some theatre, arts, and youth-related visits
And, er, that's it.
Prince William does virtually none of that stuff, even accounting for time off with his wife being ill. He goes to some dinners, and does a feww investiture ceremonies - the rest of his official engagements tend to be for personal projects like the Earthshot Prize. The contrast between his diary in 2023 and Charles' in, say, 2003 is rather eye-opening.
But who's to say that's a bad thing - if you've got a new university building that needs opened, say, why do you need Prince Richard rather than a Lord Mayor, ex-government minister, or someone from off the telly anyway?
At this point, it looks almost like a hobby for the older ones - or something they do because they've always done it, not because there's much need for it.
I’ve never even heard of Prince Richard.
I do think it’s fascinating, though, these subtle shifts in kingly responsibilities. It’s not obvious to me why William is maintaining a low profile. Is he just lazy?
Richard is the Duke of Gloucester - the King's cousin, I think. Did an architecture course in the 70s, and has been stuck opening shopping centres ever since...
As for William, I know there've been rumours about problems in his personal life - and at the very least his wife must have been very ill for some time to need such a hugely serious operation. But I doubt that's enough have stopped him taking some of Anne/Richard/Edward's more prestigious gigs if he'd felt it was necessary to do so - he just doesn't see the value in it.
Yes, Duke of Gloucester. I just never hear him referred to as Prince Richard, for some reason. I agree with the original notion that we’re frankly short of a few royals. Philip and Zara look the most “papabile” to my eye.
William needs to pull his finger out. The deal is that we pay for their luxury, and they perform their duties like Stakhanovites.
Speaking of which, the King is also the King of NZ. I know he’s due for a visit in November, but we kind of need him more often than every five or six years.
The days of organising the monarchy around the contingencies of boat-plane via BOAC are well and truly over.
Profits of the crown estates and duchies pay for the Prince and Princess of Wales actually, taxpayers pay for nothing more than their security.
The Governor General does the day to day things in NZ for the King and is currently a Maori woman
The crown estates belong to the country, they are not the private property of the monarch.
If we became a republic the crown estates would just be rebranded to something else, just as everything that is currently HM whatever will get rebranded then too.
If we became a republic taxpayers would fund a President and their family direct
They could be fully covered by the 'republic estates' or whatever they're rebranded to and then some since there'd only be one figurehead to fund not an entire sprawling family of them.
Legally arguably not, the crown estates belong to the monarch as corporate sole, just George III surrendered their revenues to the Treasury.
They would also bring in far less tourism revenue and we are moving to a working royals of just the King and Queen and heir and their family anyway, so no different to say the US system of President and First Lady and family and VP and spouse and family
Interim verdict: Putin looks healthy enough. Quite on top of his brief. Remember when we were told he was dying?
Also: not mad. Obsessive. Autocratic. But not insane. Not immediately off putting. Wily. Cunning. Duplicitous
I sense he really doesn’t want to invade and conquer Eastern Europe. But he really does want a large chunk of Ukraine. And he is genuinely aggrieved about NATO expansion - it’s not a pretext
So a dangerous man but not a Hitler
Interim verdict on tucker: doing the best he can. His main achievement is getting the interview in the first place - creating the envy of all his peers
He also asks some quite devious questions that make Putin look a little credulous or clumsy but he does it in a way that Putin doesn’t notice
It is not 120 minutes of sycophancy. But I am only halfway through
Yet still 50 minutes longer than most people with their heads actually screwed on have managed.
Some of us still remember the days when you were telling us all that Putin would be our saviour.
Another one that didn’t surprise on the upside.
It it a constant source of amazement to me that your only friend is a dog, given the ready wit, personal charm and that sly, playful charisma you regularly exhibit on this site
You are wasted on this site Leon. Your charm charisma and intelligence is too much for the regulars to handle.
I know. I sometimes feel I am more approached in Sverdlovsk than Swindon
A prophet without honour etc
What's happened to you, Leon? Are you OK?
Cambodia. Doing good professional knapping but bereft of social life - a self inflicted monastic solitude which I now possibly regret. Because it makes me reliant on PB for discourse at a time when PB has turned to shit
No wonder so many have fled the site
But I will end up with some excellent flints - I think - and it will all be worth it. Head down. Do the graft
Good work SHOULD be hard
Is PB not just in a lull waiting for some significant political betting to start? The general election could be mere weeks away and the US election is definitely in November. Calm before the storm (and the opportunity to fleece some less savvy punters on the markets?)
No. Absolutely no
It is in a terrible decline
Recall we used to compare it to a pub. You had the regulars, with their cranky obsessions and ancient gossip, you had frequent visitors - sometimes drunk, sometimes high, often amusing - you had passers by with brilliant new stories or total bewilderment. Crucially you had a core of really intelligent open minded people gathered round the bar
It seems to me that open minded core has gone. Now PB resembles a tedious HR meeting dominated by fucking boring lawyers and accountants and IT nerds who insist they are right, won’t allow dissent, and either chase away interesting people or bore everyone else
The wokeness prevails, there is no intellectual curiosity, no surprising new views from that guy on the corner by the slot machine
The only reason I am still here is because i have invested 15 years of conversation in this place and it will be a large wrench to leave, and I am particularly reliant on it out here in Phnom Penh
I will leave it as soon as I can
It's probably because there's a lack of ideological issues on which to be partisan, hence the weird obsession with trans people and other wedge issues.
More or less everybody agrees that the country is buggered, more or less everybody agrees why on all the salient points - stagnant productivity, lack of investment, insane house prices, rentier economy, etc. There are few on here who think differently.
The trouble is, these are problems that need managerial solutions rather than ideological ones.
While it might be fun to debate the motion that This House Would Hang All Landlords and Confiscate the Bank Balances, Walking Canes, and Cats of All Pensioners, it's a lot simpler and duller to agree "well, everything would be better if we built more houses and stopped subsidising pensioners to the detriment of everyone else."
"Dull solutions for bloody obvious problems". That should be Labour's 2024 campaign slogan and, to all effects and purposes, is.
No. Managerial solutions are fools gold.
The answer is ideology. The British public has swallowed the lie that the government can manage their lives better than they can. The answer is to cut government back to doing a few things well and let people lead their own lives. No excessive administration or endless regulation.
£66bn on a railway line which gets you to Birmingham more slowly is where mangerialism gets you. No dentists, fucked up postmasters, no houses, armies without troops. Weve been living with more managerialism each year. It doesnt work.
Look Britain is a more diverse and very different country now. Solutions that may have worked in the past will not work now.
One area that I agree with Leon is that PB's approach to the war in the Ukraine is somewhat unnuanced.
The prevailing consensensus here on PB is that the conflict very closely mirrors World War II, with only the occasional visit from real Russian trolls, or real demented Trumpist-Putinists, to put o any dissenting view. In fact the war is not that simple.
PBs approach to the Ukraine war is Putin is bad therefore he must lose so he will lose.
"Putin is bad therefore he must lose" is as far as it goes I am afraid. All bets are off if Putin shill Trump wins the Presidency.
How doltish.
You are engaging in JJ's historical inevitablism. He may lose (by many metrics he has already lost) but we have no idea whether he will or not. Harper, whoever the hell they are and wherever the hell they come from, is doing nothing other than articulating the truth.
PB has a weird fixation that because people want something to happen it will happen.
It's bizarro.
Topping has been abducted and made to watch the full Tucker interview and has now gone full TONTO.
Interim verdict: Putin looks healthy enough. Quite on top of his brief. Remember when we were told he was dying?
Also: not mad. Obsessive. Autocratic. But not insane. Not immediately off putting. Wily. Cunning. Duplicitous
I sense he really doesn’t want to invade and conquer Eastern Europe. But he really does want a large chunk of Ukraine. And he is genuinely aggrieved about NATO expansion - it’s not a pretext
So a dangerous man but not a Hitler
Interim verdict on tucker: doing the best he can. His main achievement is getting the interview in the first place - creating the envy of all his peers
He also asks some quite devious questions that make Putin look a little credulous or clumsy but he does it in a way that Putin doesn’t notice
It is not 120 minutes of sycophancy. But I am only halfway through
Yet still 50 minutes longer than most people with their heads actually screwed on have managed.
Some of us still remember the days when you were telling us all that Putin would be our saviour.
Another one that didn’t surprise on the upside.
It it a constant source of amazement to me that your only friend is a dog, given the ready wit, personal charm and that sly, playful charisma you regularly exhibit on this site
You are wasted on this site Leon. Your charm charisma and intelligence is too much for the regulars to handle.
I know. I sometimes feel I am more approached in Sverdlovsk than Swindon
A prophet without honour etc
What's happened to you, Leon? Are you OK?
Cambodia. Doing good professional knapping but bereft of social life - a self inflicted monastic solitude which I now possibly regret. Because it makes me reliant on PB for discourse at a time when PB has turned to shit
No wonder so many have fled the site
But I will end up with some excellent flints - I think - and it will all be worth it. Head down. Do the graft
Good work SHOULD be hard
Is PB not just in a lull waiting for some significant political betting to start? The general election could be mere weeks away and the US election is definitely in November. Calm before the storm (and the opportunity to fleece some less savvy punters on the markets?)
No. Absolutely no
It is in a terrible decline
Recall we used to compare it to a pub. You had the regulars, with their cranky obsessions and ancient gossip, you had frequent visitors - sometimes drunk, sometimes high, often amusing - you had passers by with brilliant new stories or total bewilderment. Crucially you had a core of really intelligent open minded people gathered round the bar
It seems to me that open minded core has gone. Now PB resembles a tedious HR meeting dominated by fucking boring lawyers and accountants and IT nerds who insist they are right, won’t allow dissent, and either chase away interesting people or bore everyone else
The wokeness prevails, there is no intellectual curiosity, no surprising new views from that guy on the corner by the slot machine
The only reason I am still here is because i have invested 15 years of conversation in this place and it will be a large wrench to leave, and I am particularly reliant on it out here in Phnom Penh
I will leave it as soon as I can
I think reflects the broader politics. Nobody believes in the Brexit fairy anymore, the idea of supporting the Tories is risible, and Starmer is about to offer the blandest prospectus ever put to the British public. Even the Lib Dems have nothing to say.
The world is pivoting, the kaleidoscope has been shaken, but Britain has given up. For the moment, at least.
Yes. The wider world is definitely part of it. Politics is more polarised so pb is part of that
Also everyone here is just older and crankier perhaps. But fuck knows why I have to respect these geriatric twats - I still travel the world and do stuff - I stay open minded. Pb does not
Hey ho
If I’m still here in a year please please please tease me mercilessly until I am shamed into going. I need to find a replacement forum - it’s not easy. Pb of old was special
I am looking hard
Do you not think you've played a large part in driving away people who disagree with you?
Absolutely not. I love a good argument. That’s why I come here. Yes I can be bruising but I always respect someone who articulately disagrees, and I never whine if someone is nasty
What’s ruined the site is the dead hand of orthodoxy. Plus you’re all a bunch of fucking lawyers and accountants and business dudes and retired IT geeks. Twats
We desperately need more arty types. Poets. Violinists. Dancers. Opera singers. Anyone creative, anyone, literally anyone. Anyone!
But no
I expect arty types have too much time being arty and attending cultural events, museums, theatres and galleries, festivals, clubs and concerts, cinemas and watching arty TV, with lovers, eating and cooking good food and wine, reading arty books, on arty websites, exercising and travelling to spend a great deal of time debating politics and other geeky issues on PB
It’s a good point. I guess the overlap between “arty” and “minutely obsessed with politics” is not large. In fact it might just be me
I think it's obvious that the next generation of royals don't see much less value in the "visibility" work that the last Queen was so keen on.
I've been keeping an eye on the Court Circular for the past 6 months (yeah, interesting, I know...)
Princess Anne does lots of sports, rural, and health-related visits Prince Richard does lots of buildings, engineering, built environment-related visits Prince Edward does some theatre, arts, and youth-related visits
And, er, that's it.
Prince William does virtually none of that stuff, even accounting for time off with his wife being ill. He goes to some dinners, and does a feww investiture ceremonies - the rest of his official engagements tend to be for personal projects like the Earthshot Prize. The contrast between his diary in 2023 and Charles' in, say, 2003 is rather eye-opening.
But who's to say that's a bad thing - if you've got a new university building that needs opened, say, why do you need Prince Richard rather than a Lord Mayor, ex-government minister, or someone from off the telly anyway?
At this point, it looks almost like a hobby for the older ones - or something they do because they've always done it, not because there's much need for it.
I’ve never even heard of Prince Richard.
I do think it’s fascinating, though, these subtle shifts in kingly responsibilities. It’s not obvious to me why William is maintaining a low profile. Is he just lazy?
Richard is the Duke of Gloucester - the King's cousin, I think. Did an architecture course in the 70s, and has been stuck opening shopping centres ever since...
As for William, I know there've been rumours about problems in his personal life - and at the very least his wife must have been very ill for some time to need such a hugely serious operation. But I doubt that's enough have stopped him taking some of Anne/Richard/Edward's more prestigious gigs if he'd felt it was necessary to do so - he just doesn't see the value in it.
Yes, Duke of Gloucester. I just never hear him referred to as Prince Richard, for some reason. I agree with the original notion that we’re frankly short of a few royals. Philip and Zara look the most “papabile” to my eye.
William needs to pull his finger out. The deal is that we pay for their luxury, and they perform their duties like Stakhanovites.
Speaking of which, the King is also the King of NZ. I know he’s due for a visit in November, but we kind of need him more often than every five or six years.
The days of organising the monarchy around the contingencies of boat-plane via BOAC are well and truly over.
Profits of the crown estates and duchies pay for the Prince and Princess of Wales actually, taxpayers pay for nothing more than their security.
The Governor General does the day to day things in NZ for the King and is currently a Maori woman
The crown estates belong to the country, they are not the private property of the monarch.
If we became a republic the crown estates would just be rebranded to something else, just as everything that is currently HM whatever will get rebranded then too.
If we became a republic taxpayers would fund a President and their family direct
They could be fully covered by the 'republic estates' or whatever they're rebranded to and then some since there'd only be one figurehead to fund not an entire sprawling family of them.
Legally arguably not, the crown estates belong to the monarch as corporate sole, just George III surrendered their revenues to the Treasury.
They would also bring in far less tourism revenue and we are moving to a working royals of just the King and Queen and heir and their family anyway, so no different to say the US system of President and First Lady and family and VP and spouse and family
Do you support the monarchy because we are here now and it would be a faff to change it while recognising the inherent absurdity of having such a system; or do you believe that the Royal Family is divinely chosen to rule over us (small r; we know that actually Rishi rules over us).
Interim verdict: Putin looks healthy enough. Quite on top of his brief. Remember when we were told he was dying?
Also: not mad. Obsessive. Autocratic. But not insane. Not immediately off putting. Wily. Cunning. Duplicitous
I sense he really doesn’t want to invade and conquer Eastern Europe. But he really does want a large chunk of Ukraine. And he is genuinely aggrieved about NATO expansion - it’s not a pretext
So a dangerous man but not a Hitler
Interim verdict on tucker: doing the best he can. His main achievement is getting the interview in the first place - creating the envy of all his peers
He also asks some quite devious questions that make Putin look a little credulous or clumsy but he does it in a way that Putin doesn’t notice
It is not 120 minutes of sycophancy. But I am only halfway through
Yet still 50 minutes longer than most people with their heads actually screwed on have managed.
Some of us still remember the days when you were telling us all that Putin would be our saviour.
Another one that didn’t surprise on the upside.
It it a constant source of amazement to me that your only friend is a dog, given the ready wit, personal charm and that sly, playful charisma you regularly exhibit on this site
You are wasted on this site Leon. Your charm charisma and intelligence is too much for the regulars to handle.
I know. I sometimes feel I am more approached in Sverdlovsk than Swindon
A prophet without honour etc
What's happened to you, Leon? Are you OK?
Cambodia. Doing good professional knapping but bereft of social life - a self inflicted monastic solitude which I now possibly regret. Because it makes me reliant on PB for discourse at a time when PB has turned to shit
No wonder so many have fled the site
But I will end up with some excellent flints - I think - and it will all be worth it. Head down. Do the graft
Good work SHOULD be hard
Is PB not just in a lull waiting for some significant political betting to start? The general election could be mere weeks away and the US election is definitely in November. Calm before the storm (and the opportunity to fleece some less savvy punters on the markets?)
No. Absolutely no
It is in a terrible decline
Recall we used to compare it to a pub. You had the regulars, with their cranky obsessions and ancient gossip, you had frequent visitors - sometimes drunk, sometimes high, often amusing - you had passers by with brilliant new stories or total bewilderment. Crucially you had a core of really intelligent open minded people gathered round the bar
It seems to me that open minded core has gone. Now PB resembles a tedious HR meeting dominated by fucking boring lawyers and accountants and IT nerds who insist they are right, won’t allow dissent, and either chase away interesting people or bore everyone else
The wokeness prevails, there is no intellectual curiosity, no surprising new views from that guy on the corner by the slot machine
The only reason I am still here is because i have invested 15 years of conversation in this place and it will be a large wrench to leave, and I am particularly reliant on it out here in Phnom Penh
I will leave it as soon as I can
It's probably because there's a lack of ideological issues on which to be partisan, hence the weird obsession with trans people and other wedge issues.
More or less everybody agrees that the country is buggered, more or less everybody agrees why on all the salient points - stagnant productivity, lack of investment, insane house prices, rentier economy, etc. There are few on here who think differently.
The trouble is, these are problems that need managerial solutions rather than ideological ones.
While it might be fun to debate the motion that This House Would Hang All Landlords and Confiscate the Bank Balances, Walking Canes, and Cats of All Pensioners, it's a lot simpler and duller to agree "well, everything would be better if we built more houses and stopped subsidising pensioners to the detriment of everyone else."
"Dull solutions for bloody obvious problems". That should be Labour's 2024 campaign slogan and, to all effects and purposes, is.
No. Managerial solutions are fools gold.
The answer is ideology. The British public has swallowed the lie that the government can manage their lives better than they can. The answer is to cut government back to doing a few things well and let people lead their own lives. No excessive administration or endless regulation.
£66bn on a railway line which gets you to Birmingham more slowly is where mangerialism gets you. No dentists, fucked up postmasters, no houses, armies without troops. Weve been living with more managerialism each year. It doesnt work.
I would argue if we had "managerial" ministers who would typically expect to be in cabinet or shadow cabinet for 10-15 years they would be interested in reducing and managing the cost of a new railway line.
Whereas if they are all just short termists trying to either be top dog or get their ideologically sound mate top dog, and it has to happen in the next five years, as that is longer than most cabinet careers, they will pay minimum attention to such things and put all their focus into backstabbing each other and making up trivial but newsworthy rows for the media.
Interim verdict: Putin looks healthy enough. Quite on top of his brief. Remember when we were told he was dying?
Also: not mad. Obsessive. Autocratic. But not insane. Not immediately off putting. Wily. Cunning. Duplicitous
I sense he really doesn’t want to invade and conquer Eastern Europe. But he really does want a large chunk of Ukraine. And he is genuinely aggrieved about NATO expansion - it’s not a pretext
So a dangerous man but not a Hitler
Interim verdict on tucker: doing the best he can. His main achievement is getting the interview in the first place - creating the envy of all his peers
He also asks some quite devious questions that make Putin look a little credulous or clumsy but he does it in a way that Putin doesn’t notice
It is not 120 minutes of sycophancy. But I am only halfway through
Yet still 50 minutes longer than most people with their heads actually screwed on have managed.
Some of us still remember the days when you were telling us all that Putin would be our saviour.
Another one that didn’t surprise on the upside.
It it a constant source of amazement to me that your only friend is a dog, given the ready wit, personal charm and that sly, playful charisma you regularly exhibit on this site
You are wasted on this site Leon. Your charm charisma and intelligence is too much for the regulars to handle.
I know. I sometimes feel I am more approached in Sverdlovsk than Swindon
A prophet without honour etc
What's happened to you, Leon? Are you OK?
Cambodia. Doing good professional knapping but bereft of social life - a self inflicted monastic solitude which I now possibly regret. Because it makes me reliant on PB for discourse at a time when PB has turned to shit
No wonder so many have fled the site
But I will end up with some excellent flints - I think - and it will all be worth it. Head down. Do the graft
Good work SHOULD be hard
Is PB not just in a lull waiting for some significant political betting to start? The general election could be mere weeks away and the US election is definitely in November. Calm before the storm (and the opportunity to fleece some less savvy punters on the markets?)
No. Absolutely no
It is in a terrible decline
Recall we used to compare it to a pub. You had the regulars, with their cranky obsessions and ancient gossip, you had frequent visitors - sometimes drunk, sometimes high, often amusing - you had passers by with brilliant new stories or total bewilderment. Crucially you had a core of really intelligent open minded people gathered round the bar
It seems to me that open minded core has gone. Now PB resembles a tedious HR meeting dominated by fucking boring lawyers and accountants and IT nerds who insist they are right, won’t allow dissent, and either chase away interesting people or bore everyone else
The wokeness prevails, there is no intellectual curiosity, no surprising new views from that guy on the corner by the slot machine
The only reason I am still here is because i have invested 15 years of conversation in this place and it will be a large wrench to leave, and I am particularly reliant on it out here in Phnom Penh
I will leave it as soon as I can
It's probably because there's a lack of ideological issues on which to be partisan, hence the weird obsession with trans people and other wedge issues.
More or less everybody agrees that the country is buggered, more or less everybody agrees why on all the salient points - stagnant productivity, lack of investment, insane house prices, rentier economy, etc. There are few on here who think differently.
The trouble is, these are problems that need managerial solutions rather than ideological ones.
While it might be fun to debate the motion that This House Would Hang All Landlords and Confiscate the Bank Balances, Walking Canes, and Cats of All Pensioners, it's a lot simpler and duller to agree "well, everything would be better if we built more houses and stopped subsidising pensioners to the detriment of everyone else."
"Dull solutions for bloody obvious problems". That should be Labour's 2024 campaign slogan and, to all effects and purposes, is.
No. Managerial solutions are fools gold.
The answer is ideology. The British public has swallowed the lie that the government can manage their lives better than they can. The answer is to cut government back to doing a few things well and let people lead their own lives. No excessive administration or endless regulation.
£66bn on a railway line which gets you to Birmingham more slowly is where mangerialism gets you. No dentists, fucked up postmasters, no houses, armies without troops. Weve been living with more managerialism each year. It doesnt work.
Look Britain is a more diverse and very different country now. Solutions that may have worked in the past will not work now.
Out of interest, which part of the UK are you from Harper? Brum? Chichester? Man of Kent perhaps?
One area that I agree with Leon is that PB's approach to the war in the Ukraine is somewhat unnuanced.
The prevailing consensensus here on PB is that the conflict very closely mirrors World War II, with only the occasional visit from real Russian trolls, or real demented Trumpist-Putinists, to put o any dissenting view. In fact the war is not that simple.
PBs approach to the Ukraine war is Putin is bad therefore he must lose so he will lose.
"Putin is bad therefore he must lose" is as far as it goes I am afraid. All bets are off if Putin shill Trump wins the Presidency.
How doltish.
You are engaging in JJ's historical inevitablism. He may lose (by many metrics he has already lost) but we have no idea whether he will or not. Harper, whoever the hell they are and wherever the hell they come from, is doing nothing other than articulating the truth.
PB has a weird fixation that because people want something to happen it will happen.
It's bizarro.
You're misunderstanding the point.
Whether or not Putin loses is entirely within the gift of the west. 'Must lose' is just shorthand for we must make sure it happens.
Whether or not we do (particularly the US) is clearly an open question.
One area that I agree with Leon is that PB's approach to the war in the Ukraine is somewhat unnuanced.
The prevailing consensensus here on PB is that the conflict very closely mirrors World War II, with only the occasional visit from real Russian trolls, or real demented Trumpist-Putinists, to put o any dissenting view. In fact the war is not that simple.
PBs approach to the Ukraine war is Putin is bad therefore he must lose so he will lose.
"Putin is bad therefore he must lose" is as far as it goes I am afraid. All bets are off if Putin shill Trump wins the Presidency.
How doltish.
You are engaging in JJ's historical inevitablism. He may lose (by many metrics he has already lost) but we have no idea whether he will or not. Harper, whoever the hell they are and wherever the hell they come from, is doing nothing other than articulating the truth.
PB has a weird fixation that because people want something to happen it will happen.
It's bizarro.
Topping has been abducted and made to watch the full Tucker interview and has now gone full TONTO.
Haven't seen it, Malc. Can't think of anything more boring. Despite its status as #1 on Le Monde website.
Point is, "PBs approach to the Ukraine war is Putin is bad therefore he must lose so he will lose" is bang on.
I think it's obvious that the next generation of royals don't see much less value in the "visibility" work that the last Queen was so keen on.
I've been keeping an eye on the Court Circular for the past 6 months (yeah, interesting, I know...)
Princess Anne does lots of sports, rural, and health-related visits Prince Richard does lots of buildings, engineering, built environment-related visits Prince Edward does some theatre, arts, and youth-related visits
And, er, that's it.
Prince William does virtually none of that stuff, even accounting for time off with his wife being ill. He goes to some dinners, and does a feww investiture ceremonies - the rest of his official engagements tend to be for personal projects like the Earthshot Prize. The contrast between his diary in 2023 and Charles' in, say, 2003 is rather eye-opening.
But who's to say that's a bad thing - if you've got a new university building that needs opened, say, why do you need Prince Richard rather than a Lord Mayor, ex-government minister, or someone from off the telly anyway?
At this point, it looks almost like a hobby for the older ones - or something they do because they've always done it, not because there's much need for it.
I’ve never even heard of Prince Richard.
I do think it’s fascinating, though, these subtle shifts in kingly responsibilities. It’s not obvious to me why William is maintaining a low profile. Is he just lazy?
Richard is the Duke of Gloucester - the King's cousin, I think. Did an architecture course in the 70s, and has been stuck opening shopping centres ever since...
As for William, I know there've been rumours about problems in his personal life - and at the very least his wife must have been very ill for some time to need such a hugely serious operation. But I doubt that's enough have stopped him taking some of Anne/Richard/Edward's more prestigious gigs if he'd felt it was necessary to do so - he just doesn't see the value in it.
Yes, Duke of Gloucester. I just never hear him referred to as Prince Richard, for some reason. I agree with the original notion that we’re frankly short of a few royals. Philip and Zara look the most “papabile” to my eye.
William needs to pull his finger out. The deal is that we pay for their luxury, and they perform their duties like Stakhanovites.
Speaking of which, the King is also the King of NZ. I know he’s due for a visit in November, but we kind of need him more often than every five or six years.
The days of organising the monarchy around the contingencies of boat-plane via BOAC are well and truly over.
Profits of the crown estates and duchies pay for the Prince and Princess of Wales actually, taxpayers pay for nothing more than their security.
The Governor General does the day to day things in NZ for the King and is currently a Maori woman
The crown estates belong to the country, they are not the private property of the monarch.
If we became a republic the crown estates would just be rebranded to something else, just as everything that is currently HM whatever will get rebranded then too.
If we became a republic taxpayers would fund a President and their family direct
They could be fully covered by the 'republic estates' or whatever they're rebranded to and then some since there'd only be one figurehead to fund not an entire sprawling family of them.
Legally arguably not, the crown estates belong to the monarch as corporate sole, just George III surrendered their revenues to the Treasury.
They would also bring in far less tourism revenue and we are moving to a working royals of just the King and Queen and heir and their family anyway, so no different to say the US system of President and First Lady and family and VP and spouse and family
No, you are totally wrong and the law is explicitly clear.
The monarch holds the crown estates by virtue of the crown, they are quite explicitly NOT the private property of the monarch.
If the UK becomes a republic then everything that belongs to 'the crown' will now belong to however the state is now run, not the royal family who quite explicitly do not privately own it.
If we become a republic the private property of the Windsors will remain their private property, but the crown is the states, not theirs.
Interim verdict: Putin looks healthy enough. Quite on top of his brief. Remember when we were told he was dying?
Also: not mad. Obsessive. Autocratic. But not insane. Not immediately off putting. Wily. Cunning. Duplicitous
I sense he really doesn’t want to invade and conquer Eastern Europe. But he really does want a large chunk of Ukraine. And he is genuinely aggrieved about NATO expansion - it’s not a pretext
So a dangerous man but not a Hitler
Interim verdict on tucker: doing the best he can. His main achievement is getting the interview in the first place - creating the envy of all his peers
He also asks some quite devious questions that make Putin look a little credulous or clumsy but he does it in a way that Putin doesn’t notice
It is not 120 minutes of sycophancy. But I am only halfway through
Yet still 50 minutes longer than most people with their heads actually screwed on have managed.
Some of us still remember the days when you were telling us all that Putin would be our saviour.
Another one that didn’t surprise on the upside.
It it a constant source of amazement to me that your only friend is a dog, given the ready wit, personal charm and that sly, playful charisma you regularly exhibit on this site
You are wasted on this site Leon. Your charm charisma and intelligence is too much for the regulars to handle.
I know. I sometimes feel I am more approached in Sverdlovsk than Swindon
A prophet without honour etc
What's happened to you, Leon? Are you OK?
Cambodia. Doing good professional knapping but bereft of social life - a self inflicted monastic solitude which I now possibly regret. Because it makes me reliant on PB for discourse at a time when PB has turned to shit
No wonder so many have fled the site
But I will end up with some excellent flints - I think - and it will all be worth it. Head down. Do the graft
Good work SHOULD be hard
Is PB not just in a lull waiting for some significant political betting to start? The general election could be mere weeks away and the US election is definitely in November. Calm before the storm (and the opportunity to fleece some less savvy punters on the markets?)
No. Absolutely no
It is in a terrible decline
Recall we used to compare it to a pub. You had the regulars, with their cranky obsessions and ancient gossip, you had frequent visitors - sometimes drunk, sometimes high, often amusing - you had passers by with brilliant new stories or total bewilderment. Crucially you had a core of really intelligent open minded people gathered round the bar
It seems to me that open minded core has gone. Now PB resembles a tedious HR meeting dominated by fucking boring lawyers and accountants and IT nerds who insist they are right, won’t allow dissent, and either chase away interesting people or bore everyone else
The wokeness prevails, there is no intellectual curiosity, no surprising new views from that guy on the corner by the slot machine
The only reason I am still here is because i have invested 15 years of conversation in this place and it will be a large wrench to leave, and I am particularly reliant on it out here in Phnom Penh
I will leave it as soon as I can
It's probably because there's a lack of ideological issues on which to be partisan, hence the weird obsession with trans people and other wedge issues.
More or less everybody agrees that the country is buggered, more or less everybody agrees why on all the salient points - stagnant productivity, lack of investment, insane house prices, rentier economy, etc. There are few on here who think differently.
The trouble is, these are problems that need managerial solutions rather than ideological ones.
While it might be fun to debate the motion that This House Would Hang All Landlords and Confiscate the Bank Balances, Walking Canes, and Cats of All Pensioners, it's a lot simpler and duller to agree "well, everything would be better if we built more houses and stopped subsidising pensioners to the detriment of everyone else."
"Dull solutions for bloody obvious problems". That should be Labour's 2024 campaign slogan and, to all effects and purposes, is.
No. Managerial solutions are fools gold.
The answer is ideology. The British public has swallowed the lie that the government can manage their lives better than they can. The answer is to cut government back to doing a few things well and let people lead their own lives. No excessive administration or endless regulation.
£66bn on a railway line which gets you to Birmingham more slowly is where mangerialism gets you. No dentists, fucked up postmasters, no houses, armies without troops. Weve been living with more managerialism each year. It doesnt work.
Look Britain is a more diverse and very different country now. Solutions that may have worked in the past will not work now.
Out of interest, which part of the UK are you from Harper? Brum? Chichester? Man of Kent perhaps?
Interim verdict: Putin looks healthy enough. Quite on top of his brief. Remember when we were told he was dying?
Also: not mad. Obsessive. Autocratic. But not insane. Not immediately off putting. Wily. Cunning. Duplicitous
I sense he really doesn’t want to invade and conquer Eastern Europe. But he really does want a large chunk of Ukraine. And he is genuinely aggrieved about NATO expansion - it’s not a pretext
So a dangerous man but not a Hitler
Interim verdict on tucker: doing the best he can. His main achievement is getting the interview in the first place - creating the envy of all his peers
He also asks some quite devious questions that make Putin look a little credulous or clumsy but he does it in a way that Putin doesn’t notice
It is not 120 minutes of sycophancy. But I am only halfway through
Yet still 50 minutes longer than most people with their heads actually screwed on have managed.
Some of us still remember the days when you were telling us all that Putin would be our saviour.
Another one that didn’t surprise on the upside.
It it a constant source of amazement to me that your only friend is a dog, given the ready wit, personal charm and that sly, playful charisma you regularly exhibit on this site
You are wasted on this site Leon. Your charm charisma and intelligence is too much for the regulars to handle.
I know. I sometimes feel I am more approached in Sverdlovsk than Swindon
A prophet without honour etc
What's happened to you, Leon? Are you OK?
Cambodia. Doing good professional knapping but bereft of social life - a self inflicted monastic solitude which I now possibly regret. Because it makes me reliant on PB for discourse at a time when PB has turned to shit
No wonder so many have fled the site
But I will end up with some excellent flints - I think - and it will all be worth it. Head down. Do the graft
Good work SHOULD be hard
Is PB not just in a lull waiting for some significant political betting to start? The general election could be mere weeks away and the US election is definitely in November. Calm before the storm (and the opportunity to fleece some less savvy punters on the markets?)
No. Absolutely no
It is in a terrible decline
Recall we used to compare it to a pub. You had the regulars, with their cranky obsessions and ancient gossip, you had frequent visitors - sometimes drunk, sometimes high, often amusing - you had passers by with brilliant new stories or total bewilderment. Crucially you had a core of really intelligent open minded people gathered round the bar
It seems to me that open minded core has gone. Now PB resembles a tedious HR meeting dominated by fucking boring lawyers and accountants and IT nerds who insist they are right, won’t allow dissent, and either chase away interesting people or bore everyone else
The wokeness prevails, there is no intellectual curiosity, no surprising new views from that guy on the corner by the slot machine
The only reason I am still here is because i have invested 15 years of conversation in this place and it will be a large wrench to leave, and I am particularly reliant on it out here in Phnom Penh
I will leave it as soon as I can
It's probably because there's a lack of ideological issues on which to be partisan, hence the weird obsession with trans people and other wedge issues.
More or less everybody agrees that the country is buggered, more or less everybody agrees why on all the salient points - stagnant productivity, lack of investment, insane house prices, rentier economy, etc. There are few on here who think differently.
The trouble is, these are problems that need managerial solutions rather than ideological ones.
While it might be fun to debate the motion that This House Would Hang All Landlords and Confiscate the Bank Balances, Walking Canes, and Cats of All Pensioners, it's a lot simpler and duller to agree "well, everything would be better if we built more houses and stopped subsidising pensioners to the detriment of everyone else."
"Dull solutions for bloody obvious problems". That should be Labour's 2024 campaign slogan and, to all effects and purposes, is.
No. Managerial solutions are fools gold.
The answer is ideology. The British public has swallowed the lie that the government can manage their lives better than they can. The answer is to cut government back to doing a few things well and let people lead their own lives. No excessive administration or endless regulation.
£66bn on a railway line which gets you to Birmingham more slowly is where mangerialism gets you. No dentists, fucked up postmasters, no houses, armies without troops. Weve been living with more managerialism each year. It doesnt work.
That was perhaps true in an era where capitalism could be relied upon to do its job. But one only needs to glance at Cory Doctorow's article in this week's FT on the enshittification cycle, to understand that "the free market" isn't doing its job very well at all these days. It's become about extracting as much value as possible then doing a runner, rather than providing a good service over any length of time.
What we need right now is a government that is willing to look at the structural problems UK PLC has as a whole, and take long term steps to invest in them and correct decades of underinvestment. Schools, hospitals, dentists, roads, housebuilding, etc.
I agree with you that we probably need a lot less regulation - say, making it easier to build houses, and no more windowless houses because it's the cheapest way to meet insulation standards. Or school vouchers to give parents greater choice - let the good schools build more good schools, and let the bad ones perish. To suggest a couple of examples.
But the idea that a laissez-faire attitude is going to fix decades-long underinvestment in vital infrastructure is, unfortunately, for the birds. It isn't managerialism that's brought us to this point, it's short-termism. The government cancelling HS2 and rerouting the money to pothole repair in the south, for example. That's short term, cost cutting, quick-buck, MBA-cookie-cutter managerialism, with inevitable results. Britain PLC is being run like Boeing, and the wings are falling off.
What we need is long term management strategy, as Stuartinromford says downthread, while the 'quick fix' is always tempting, it's those quick fixes that have brought us to where we are now. I am unconvinced that quick-buck-capitalism, as it stands in 2024, has any interest in fixing the long term structural problems of the country. The problem is the government, whose job it should be to consider these problems, appears to have no interest in it, either.
One area that I agree with Leon is that PB's approach to the war in the Ukraine is somewhat unnuanced.
The prevailing consensensus here on PB is that the conflict very closely mirrors World War II, with only the occasional visit from real Russian trolls, or real demented Trumpist-Putinists, to put o any dissenting view. In fact the war is not that simple.
PBs approach to the Ukraine war is Putin is bad therefore he must lose so he will lose.
"Putin is bad therefore he must lose" is as far as it goes I am afraid. All bets are off if Putin shill Trump wins the Presidency.
How doltish.
You are engaging in JJ's historical inevitablism. He may lose (by many metric he has already lost) but we have no idea whether he will or not. Harper, whoever the hell they are and wherever the hell they come from, is doing nothing other than articulating the truth.
PB has a weird fixation that because people want something to happen it will happen.
It's bizarro.
I'm unsure where you get this idea that I'm engaging in "historical inevitablism". I'm not.
I want Ukraine to win, and I think the best way of preventing wider conflict is for Ukraine to win. I therefore tend to think that we need to do much more to help Ukraine win.
But do I see a Ukrainian victory as inevitable? Do I heck, and I've never said so.
I have said, however. that I feel that Russia has strategically lost, and it is very hard to see how they get a real 'win' out of this. They already had Crimea and most of the Donbass pre-2022, and the new areas they've gained are not particularly strategic. And the cost in men, material and money has been immense. Worst of all from their point of view, their strategic enemies had spent a few decades spending less and less on their militaries, and Putin's little adventure will probably reverse that. Russia is a reduced entity thanks to Putin, and it could all have been so different.
But I'd argue there's something else we see: "Ukraine cannot win, therefore they shouldn't fight". IMV that's wrong.
What this site needs is me getting drunker and drunker and calling everyone twats until about 3am when the police come and I throw a brick at them and try and blame it on @carnyx then the coppers actually arrest @rcs1000 and take him to the nick and sodomise him with a frozen halibut but a team of us break into the station and free him and then go on a Xanax and ecstasy binge in Kidderminster where we burn a huge pagan idol in the shape of ex Lib Dem MP Chris “creases” Huhne and then we all pass out and wake up in Stornoway cottage hospital being injected in the buttocks by a nurse who resembles a young Mo Mowlam but with a fetish for yuzu fruit and the d’hondt version of AV
That shit used to be a daily occurrence on PB.
Sic transit Gloria mundi
Chris Huhne claiming for a trouser press on expenses produced one of PBs best puns
"the riches of creases"
Hence my reference
Around about that time - when we all jointly (IIRC) conjured that genius “creases” nickname - was pretty much peak PB
It was argumentative but also really funny and congenial and full of interesting types. I miss it
One area that I agree with Leon is that PB's approach to the war in the Ukraine is somewhat unnuanced.
The prevailing consensensus here on PB is that the conflict very closely mirrors World War II, with only the occasional visit from real Russian trolls, or real demented Trumpist-Putinists, to put o any dissenting view. In fact the war is not that simple.
PBs approach to the Ukraine war is Putin is bad therefore he must lose so he will lose.
"Putin is bad therefore he must lose" is as far as it goes I am afraid. All bets are off if Putin shill Trump wins the Presidency.
How doltish.
You are engaging in JJ's historical inevitablism. He may lose (by many metrics he has already lost) but we have no idea whether he will or not. Harper, whoever the hell they are and wherever the hell they come from, is doing nothing other than articulating the truth.
PB has a weird fixation that because people want something to happen it will happen.
It's bizarro.
Topping has been abducted and made to watch the full Tucker interview and has now gone full TONTO.
Haven't seen it, Malc. Can't think of anything more boring. Despite its status as #1 on Le Monde website.
Point is, "PBs approach to the Ukraine war is Putin is bad therefore he must lose so he will lose" is bang on.
Putin is bad: Undeniable fact.
The reasons why people think he will lose vary but are more complicated than "he is bad".
One area that I agree with Leon is that PB's approach to the war in the Ukraine is somewhat unnuanced.
The prevailing consensensus here on PB is that the conflict very closely mirrors World War II, with only the occasional visit from real Russian trolls, or real demented Trumpist-Putinists, to put o any dissenting view. In fact the war is not that simple.
PBs approach to the Ukraine war is Putin is bad therefore he must lose so he will lose.
"Putin is bad therefore he must lose" is as far as it goes I am afraid. All bets are off if Putin shill Trump wins the Presidency.
How doltish.
You are engaging in JJ's historical inevitablism. He may lose (by many metrics he has already lost) but we have no idea whether he will or not. Harper, whoever the hell they are and wherever the hell they come from, is doing nothing other than articulating the truth.
PB has a weird fixation that because people want something to happen it will happen.
It's bizarro.
You're misunderstanding the point.
Whether or not Putin loses is entirely within the gift of the west. 'Must lose' is just shorthand for we must make sure it happens.
Whether or not we do (particularly the US) is clearly an open question.
We evidently don't believe that he should lose to the extent that he has a comprehensive military defeat. We evidently are happy that his forces have been bogged down for months and resources thrown at the effort. Perhaps that is losing in the minds of Western governments. In which case fair enough.
It's not the kind of losing that I think many on here have in mind, that said.
Interim verdict: Putin looks healthy enough. Quite on top of his brief. Remember when we were told he was dying?
Also: not mad. Obsessive. Autocratic. But not insane. Not immediately off putting. Wily. Cunning. Duplicitous
I sense he really doesn’t want to invade and conquer Eastern Europe. But he really does want a large chunk of Ukraine. And he is genuinely aggrieved about NATO expansion - it’s not a pretext
So a dangerous man but not a Hitler
Interim verdict on tucker: doing the best he can. His main achievement is getting the interview in the first place - creating the envy of all his peers
He also asks some quite devious questions that make Putin look a little credulous or clumsy but he does it in a way that Putin doesn’t notice
It is not 120 minutes of sycophancy. But I am only halfway through
Yet still 50 minutes longer than most people with their heads actually screwed on have managed.
Some of us still remember the days when you were telling us all that Putin would be our saviour.
Another one that didn’t surprise on the upside.
It it a constant source of amazement to me that your only friend is a dog, given the ready wit, personal charm and that sly, playful charisma you regularly exhibit on this site
You are wasted on this site Leon. Your charm charisma and intelligence is too much for the regulars to handle.
I know. I sometimes feel I am more approached in Sverdlovsk than Swindon
A prophet without honour etc
What's happened to you, Leon? Are you OK?
Cambodia. Doing good professional knapping but bereft of social life - a self inflicted monastic solitude which I now possibly regret. Because it makes me reliant on PB for discourse at a time when PB has turned to shit
No wonder so many have fled the site
But I will end up with some excellent flints - I think - and it will all be worth it. Head down. Do the graft
Good work SHOULD be hard
Is PB not just in a lull waiting for some significant political betting to start? The general election could be mere weeks away and the US election is definitely in November. Calm before the storm (and the opportunity to fleece some less savvy punters on the markets?)
No. Absolutely no
It is in a terrible decline
Recall we used to compare it to a pub. You had the regulars, with their cranky obsessions and ancient gossip, you had frequent visitors - sometimes drunk, sometimes high, often amusing - you had passers by with brilliant new stories or total bewilderment. Crucially you had a core of really intelligent open minded people gathered round the bar
It seems to me that open minded core has gone. Now PB resembles a tedious HR meeting dominated by fucking boring lawyers and accountants and IT nerds who insist they are right, won’t allow dissent, and either chase away interesting people or bore everyone else
The wokeness prevails, there is no intellectual curiosity, no surprising new views from that guy on the corner by the slot machine
The only reason I am still here is because i have invested 15 years of conversation in this place and it will be a large wrench to leave, and I am particularly reliant on it out here in Phnom Penh
I will leave it as soon as I can
It's probably because there's a lack of ideological issues on which to be partisan, hence the weird obsession with trans people and other wedge issues.
More or less everybody agrees that the country is buggered, more or less everybody agrees why on all the salient points - stagnant productivity, lack of investment, insane house prices, rentier economy, etc. There are few on here who think differently.
The trouble is, these are problems that need managerial solutions rather than ideological ones.
While it might be fun to debate the motion that This House Would Hang All Landlords and Confiscate the Bank Balances, Walking Canes, and Cats of All Pensioners, it's a lot simpler and duller to agree "well, everything would be better if we built more houses and stopped subsidising pensioners to the detriment of everyone else."
"Dull solutions for bloody obvious problems". That should be Labour's 2024 campaign slogan and, to all effects and purposes, is.
No. Managerial solutions are fools gold.
The answer is ideology. The British public has swallowed the lie that the government can manage their lives better than they can. The answer is to cut government back to doing a few things well and let people lead their own lives. No excessive administration or endless regulation.
£66bn on a railway line which gets you to Birmingham more slowly is where mangerialism gets you. No dentists, fucked up postmasters, no houses, armies without troops. Weve been living with more managerialism each year. It doesnt work.
I don't think there's any dispute that in terms of generating pointless form-filling and excessive middle management, we are the world leader.
Crapita, paid a fortune to deter people from joining the armed forces, is the perfect example.
I think that's British negative exceptionalism at play. We're not world leading at managerial bureaucracy, there are plenty of worse examples, and some better.
The other bureaucracy I have to deal with from time to time is France. In some areas - planning consents, council tax, paying traffic fines, booking trains - it's slicker and easier than Britain. In many others, notably anything touching a notary's office, it's ten times worse.
Interim verdict: Putin looks healthy enough. Quite on top of his brief. Remember when we were told he was dying?
Also: not mad. Obsessive. Autocratic. But not insane. Not immediately off putting. Wily. Cunning. Duplicitous
I sense he really doesn’t want to invade and conquer Eastern Europe. But he really does want a large chunk of Ukraine. And he is genuinely aggrieved about NATO expansion - it’s not a pretext
So a dangerous man but not a Hitler
Interim verdict on tucker: doing the best he can. His main achievement is getting the interview in the first place - creating the envy of all his peers
He also asks some quite devious questions that make Putin look a little credulous or clumsy but he does it in a way that Putin doesn’t notice
It is not 120 minutes of sycophancy. But I am only halfway through
Yet still 50 minutes longer than most people with their heads actually screwed on have managed.
Some of us still remember the days when you were telling us all that Putin would be our saviour.
Another one that didn’t surprise on the upside.
It it a constant source of amazement to me that your only friend is a dog, given the ready wit, personal charm and that sly, playful charisma you regularly exhibit on this site
You are wasted on this site Leon. Your charm charisma and intelligence is too much for the regulars to handle.
I know. I sometimes feel I am more approached in Sverdlovsk than Swindon
A prophet without honour etc
What's happened to you, Leon? Are you OK?
Cambodia. Doing good professional knapping but bereft of social life - a self inflicted monastic solitude which I now possibly regret. Because it makes me reliant on PB for discourse at a time when PB has turned to shit
No wonder so many have fled the site
But I will end up with some excellent flints - I think - and it will all be worth it. Head down. Do the graft
Good work SHOULD be hard
Is PB not just in a lull waiting for some significant political betting to start? The general election could be mere weeks away and the US election is definitely in November. Calm before the storm (and the opportunity to fleece some less savvy punters on the markets?)
No. Absolutely no
It is in a terrible decline
Recall we used to compare it to a pub. You had the regulars, with their cranky obsessions and ancient gossip, you had frequent visitors - sometimes drunk, sometimes high, often amusing - you had passers by with brilliant new stories or total bewilderment. Crucially you had a core of really intelligent open minded people gathered round the bar
It seems to me that open minded core has gone. Now PB resembles a tedious HR meeting dominated by fucking boring lawyers and accountants and IT nerds who insist they are right, won’t allow dissent, and either chase away interesting people or bore everyone else
The wokeness prevails, there is no intellectual curiosity, no surprising new views from that guy on the corner by the slot machine
The only reason I am still here is because i have invested 15 years of conversation in this place and it will be a large wrench to leave, and I am particularly reliant on it out here in Phnom Penh
I will leave it as soon as I can
It's probably because there's a lack of ideological issues on which to be partisan, hence the weird obsession with trans people and other wedge issues.
More or less everybody agrees that the country is buggered, more or less everybody agrees why on all the salient points - stagnant productivity, lack of investment, insane house prices, rentier economy, etc. There are few on here who think differently.
The trouble is, these are problems that need managerial solutions rather than ideological ones.
While it might be fun to debate the motion that This House Would Hang All Landlords and Confiscate the Bank Balances, Walking Canes, and Cats of All Pensioners, it's a lot simpler and duller to agree "well, everything would be better if we built more houses and stopped subsidising pensioners to the detriment of everyone else."
"Dull solutions for bloody obvious problems". That should be Labour's 2024 campaign slogan and, to all effects and purposes, is.
No. Managerial solutions are fools gold.
The answer is ideology. The British public has swallowed the lie that the government can manage their lives better than they can. The answer is to cut government back to doing a few things well and let people lead their own lives. No excessive administration or endless regulation.
£66bn on a railway line which gets you to Birmingham more slowly is where mangerialism gets you. No dentists, fucked up postmasters, no houses, armies without troops. Weve been living with more managerialism each year. It doesnt work.
Look Britain is a more diverse and very different country now. Solutions that may have worked in the past will not work now.
Out of interest, which part of the UK are you from Harper? Brum? Chichester? Man of Kent perhaps?
More to the point, which of these is not a great university of England?
Interim verdict: Putin looks healthy enough. Quite on top of his brief. Remember when we were told he was dying?
Also: not mad. Obsessive. Autocratic. But not insane. Not immediately off putting. Wily. Cunning. Duplicitous
I sense he really doesn’t want to invade and conquer Eastern Europe. But he really does want a large chunk of Ukraine. And he is genuinely aggrieved about NATO expansion - it’s not a pretext
So a dangerous man but not a Hitler
Interim verdict on tucker: doing the best he can. His main achievement is getting the interview in the first place - creating the envy of all his peers
He also asks some quite devious questions that make Putin look a little credulous or clumsy but he does it in a way that Putin doesn’t notice
It is not 120 minutes of sycophancy. But I am only halfway through
Yet still 50 minutes longer than most people with their heads actually screwed on have managed.
Some of us still remember the days when you were telling us all that Putin would be our saviour.
Another one that didn’t surprise on the upside.
It it a constant source of amazement to me that your only friend is a dog, given the ready wit, personal charm and that sly, playful charisma you regularly exhibit on this site
You hugely underestimate PB’ers if you think that a response about my dog will distract them from noticing that you offer no response whatsoever on your unhealthy fascination with Putin, your now clearly flawed prior adulation of him, and your many failed predictions of other putative saviours who have simply gone on to crash and burn.
I think it's obvious that the next generation of royals don't see much less value in the "visibility" work that the last Queen was so keen on.
I've been keeping an eye on the Court Circular for the past 6 months (yeah, interesting, I know...)
Princess Anne does lots of sports, rural, and health-related visits Prince Richard does lots of buildings, engineering, built environment-related visits Prince Edward does some theatre, arts, and youth-related visits
And, er, that's it.
Prince William does virtually none of that stuff, even accounting for time off with his wife being ill. He goes to some dinners, and does a feww investiture ceremonies - the rest of his official engagements tend to be for personal projects like the Earthshot Prize. The contrast between his diary in 2023 and Charles' in, say, 2003 is rather eye-opening.
But who's to say that's a bad thing - if you've got a new university building that needs opened, say, why do you need Prince Richard rather than a Lord Mayor, ex-government minister, or someone from off the telly anyway?
At this point, it looks almost like a hobby for the older ones - or something they do because they've always done it, not because there's much need for it.
I’ve never even heard of Prince Richard.
I do think it’s fascinating, though, these subtle shifts in kingly responsibilities. It’s not obvious to me why William is maintaining a low profile. Is he just lazy?
Richard is the Duke of Gloucester - the King's cousin, I think. Did an architecture course in the 70s, and has been stuck opening shopping centres ever since...
As for William, I know there've been rumours about problems in his personal life - and at the very least his wife must have been very ill for some time to need such a hugely serious operation. But I doubt that's enough have stopped him taking some of Anne/Richard/Edward's more prestigious gigs if he'd felt it was necessary to do so - he just doesn't see the value in it.
Yes, Duke of Gloucester. I just never hear him referred to as Prince Richard, for some reason. I agree with the original notion that we’re frankly short of a few royals. Philip and Zara look the most “papabile” to my eye.
William needs to pull his finger out. The deal is that we pay for their luxury, and they perform their duties like Stakhanovites.
Speaking of which, the King is also the King of NZ. I know he’s due for a visit in November, but we kind of need him more often than every five or six years.
The days of organising the monarchy around the contingencies of boat-plane via BOAC are well and truly over.
Profits of the crown estates and duchies pay for the Prince and Princess of Wales actually, taxpayers pay for nothing more than their security.
The Governor General does the day to day things in NZ for the King and is currently a Maori woman
The crown estates belong to the country, they are not the private property of the monarch.
If we became a republic the crown estates would just be rebranded to something else, just as everything that is currently HM whatever will get rebranded then too.
If we became a republic taxpayers would fund a President and their family direct
They could be fully covered by the 'republic estates' or whatever they're rebranded to and then some since there'd only be one figurehead to fund not an entire sprawling family of them.
Legally arguably not, the crown estates belong to the monarch as corporate sole, just George III surrendered their revenues to the Treasury.
They would also bring in far less tourism revenue and we are moving to a working royals of just the King and Queen and heir and their family anyway, so no different to say the US system of President and First Lady and family and VP and spouse and family
No, you are totally wrong and the law is explicitly clear.
The monarch holds the crown estates by virtue of the crown, they are quite explicitly NOT the private property of the monarch.
If the UK becomes a republic then everything that belongs to 'the crown' will now belong to however the state is now run, not the royal family who quite explicitly do not privately own it.
If we become a republic the private property of the Windsors will remain their private property, but the crown is the states, not theirs.
Good luck untangling it all. What is the meaning of "private property" in the context of the Royals when every sock or acre they "own" comes as a result of their being Royals.
I think it's obvious that the next generation of royals don't see much less value in the "visibility" work that the last Queen was so keen on.
I've been keeping an eye on the Court Circular for the past 6 months (yeah, interesting, I know...)
Princess Anne does lots of sports, rural, and health-related visits Prince Richard does lots of buildings, engineering, built environment-related visits Prince Edward does some theatre, arts, and youth-related visits
And, er, that's it.
Prince William does virtually none of that stuff, even accounting for time off with his wife being ill. He goes to some dinners, and does a feww investiture ceremonies - the rest of his official engagements tend to be for personal projects like the Earthshot Prize. The contrast between his diary in 2023 and Charles' in, say, 2003 is rather eye-opening.
But who's to say that's a bad thing - if you've got a new university building that needs opened, say, why do you need Prince Richard rather than a Lord Mayor, ex-government minister, or someone from off the telly anyway?
At this point, it looks almost like a hobby for the older ones - or something they do because they've always done it, not because there's much need for it.
I’ve never even heard of Prince Richard.
I do think it’s fascinating, though, these subtle shifts in kingly responsibilities. It’s not obvious to me why William is maintaining a low profile. Is he just lazy?
Richard is the Duke of Gloucester - the King's cousin, I think. Did an architecture course in the 70s, and has been stuck opening shopping centres ever since...
As for William, I know there've been rumours about problems in his personal life - and at the very least his wife must have been very ill for some time to need such a hugely serious operation. But I doubt that's enough have stopped him taking some of Anne/Richard/Edward's more prestigious gigs if he'd felt it was necessary to do so - he just doesn't see the value in it.
Yes, Duke of Gloucester. I just never hear him referred to as Prince Richard, for some reason. I agree with the original notion that we’re frankly short of a few royals. Philip and Zara look the most “papabile” to my eye.
William needs to pull his finger out. The deal is that we pay for their luxury, and they perform their duties like Stakhanovites.
Speaking of which, the King is also the King of NZ. I know he’s due for a visit in November, but we kind of need him more often than every five or six years.
The days of organising the monarchy around the contingencies of boat-plane via BOAC are well and truly over.
Profits of the crown estates and duchies pay for the Prince and Princess of Wales actually, taxpayers pay for nothing more than their security.
The Governor General does the day to day things in NZ for the King and is currently a Maori woman
The crown estates belong to the country, they are not the private property of the monarch.
If we became a republic the crown estates would just be rebranded to something else, just as everything that is currently HM whatever will get rebranded then too.
If we became a republic taxpayers would fund a President and their family direct
A damn sight cheaper than the Royals I'd wager. Especially after we have sold of all the crown estate to the Chinese...
No, with no royal wedding, jubilee or coronation revenue whether and the Crown estate certainly won't be sold off, it is our heritage.
I certainly don't want President Johnson or President Blair either
It might not be sold off, but the revenues wouldn't go to Chas or William.
The replacement doesn't need to be a President - that would require such a major constitutional overhaul that it'll never happen.
Simply pass an act of parliament that deems Boris or Blair or whoever to be the next "Heir of the Body of Princess Sophia, Electress and Dowager Duchess of Hanover, Daughter of the late Queen of Bohemia, Daughter of King James the First". Make sure you first require them to submit a letter of abdication post-dated for ten years in the future.
Problem solved. And even if we ended up with King Boris, it'd be fine. He'd do the job for (much) less than the current one, he'd be happy to turn up and open all the new bus stations you could possibly wish for, and he'd be colourful enough to keep the tabloids happy.
You'd want to make sure that letter of abdication was pretty watertight, and that there were enough counselors of state who could sign bills into law on his behalf in case he gets into a strop and refuses to play nicely. But otherwise, job done.
Then you still end up with an ex politician President, which defeats the point of an apolitical head of state. Neither have royal blood that I can see either
After, what, 13? (14?) generations since Electress Sophia, I suspect that whatever royal magic might have been in her blood has been diluted beyond the threshold of detectability by now.
Her living descendents today likely number in the tens or possibly even hundreds of millions. All of them have roughly as much royal blood as Charles. Even if you did restrict the list of candidates to them, there'd still be plenty to choose from!
(And I note that Charles has never offered any actual evidence of his supposed magic inheritance - you'd think that someone who had built their entire life around heredity would have at least got himself a basic 23andme or AncestryDNA test kit!)
I think it's obvious that the next generation of royals don't see much less value in the "visibility" work that the last Queen was so keen on.
I've been keeping an eye on the Court Circular for the past 6 months (yeah, interesting, I know...)
Princess Anne does lots of sports, rural, and health-related visits Prince Richard does lots of buildings, engineering, built environment-related visits Prince Edward does some theatre, arts, and youth-related visits
And, er, that's it.
Prince William does virtually none of that stuff, even accounting for time off with his wife being ill. He goes to some dinners, and does a feww investiture ceremonies - the rest of his official engagements tend to be for personal projects like the Earthshot Prize. The contrast between his diary in 2023 and Charles' in, say, 2003 is rather eye-opening.
But who's to say that's a bad thing - if you've got a new university building that needs opened, say, why do you need Prince Richard rather than a Lord Mayor, ex-government minister, or someone from off the telly anyway?
At this point, it looks almost like a hobby for the older ones - or something they do because they've always done it, not because there's much need for it.
I’ve never even heard of Prince Richard.
I do think it’s fascinating, though, these subtle shifts in kingly responsibilities. It’s not obvious to me why William is maintaining a low profile. Is he just lazy?
Richard is the Duke of Gloucester - the King's cousin, I think. Did an architecture course in the 70s, and has been stuck opening shopping centres ever since...
As for William, I know there've been rumours about problems in his personal life - and at the very least his wife must have been very ill for some time to need such a hugely serious operation. But I doubt that's enough have stopped him taking some of Anne/Richard/Edward's more prestigious gigs if he'd felt it was necessary to do so - he just doesn't see the value in it.
Yes, Duke of Gloucester. I just never hear him referred to as Prince Richard, for some reason. I agree with the original notion that we’re frankly short of a few royals. Philip and Zara look the most “papabile” to my eye.
William needs to pull his finger out. The deal is that we pay for their luxury, and they perform their duties like Stakhanovites.
Speaking of which, the King is also the King of NZ. I know he’s due for a visit in November, but we kind of need him more often than every five or six years.
The days of organising the monarchy around the contingencies of boat-plane via BOAC are well and truly over.
Profits of the crown estates and duchies pay for the Prince and Princess of Wales actually, taxpayers pay for nothing more than their security.
The Governor General does the day to day things in NZ for the King and is currently a Maori woman
The crown estates belong to the country, they are not the private property of the monarch.
If we became a republic the crown estates would just be rebranded to something else, just as everything that is currently HM whatever will get rebranded then too.
If we became a republic taxpayers would fund a President and their family direct
They could be fully covered by the 'republic estates' or whatever they're rebranded to and then some since there'd only be one figurehead to fund not an entire sprawling family of them.
Legally arguably not, the crown estates belong to the monarch as corporate sole, just George III surrendered their revenues to the Treasury.
They would also bring in far less tourism revenue and we are moving to a working royals of just the King and Queen and heir and their family anyway, so no different to say the US system of President and First Lady and family and VP and spouse and family
Do you support the monarchy because we are here now and it would be a faff to change it while recognising the inherent absurdity of having such a system; or do you believe that the Royal Family is divinely chosen to rule over us (small r; we know that actually Rishi rules over us).
A bit of both and also because I don't want a politician head of state
One area that I agree with Leon is that PB's approach to the war in the Ukraine is somewhat unnuanced.
The prevailing consensensus here on PB is that the conflict very closely mirrors World War II, with only the occasional visit from real Russian trolls, or real demented Trumpist-Putinists, to put o any dissenting view. In fact the war is not that simple.
PBs approach to the Ukraine war is Putin is bad therefore he must lose so he will lose.
"Putin is bad therefore he must lose" is as far as it goes I am afraid. All bets are off if Putin shill Trump wins the Presidency.
How doltish.
You are engaging in JJ's historical inevitablism. He may lose (by many metrics he has already lost) but we have no idea whether he will or not. Harper, whoever the hell they are and wherever the hell they come from, is doing nothing other than articulating the truth.
PB has a weird fixation that because people want something to happen it will happen.
It's bizarro.
You're misunderstanding the point.
Whether or not Putin loses is entirely within the gift of the west. 'Must lose' is just shorthand for we must make sure it happens.
Whether or not we do (particularly the US) is clearly an open question.
We evidently don't believe that he should lose to the extent that he has a comprehensive military defeat. We evidently are happy that his forces have been bogged down for months and resources thrown at the effort. Perhaps that is losing in the minds of Western governments. In which case fair enough.
It's not the kind of losing that I think many on here have in mind, that said.
I'm not in the slightest bit happy about that.
The outcome is entirely unknowable at this point - but it needn't be.
One area that I agree with Leon is that PB's approach to the war in the Ukraine is somewhat unnuanced.
The prevailing consensensus here on PB is that the conflict very closely mirrors World War II, with only the occasional visit from real Russian trolls, or real demented Trumpist-Putinists, to put o any dissenting view. In fact the war is not that simple.
PBs approach to the Ukraine war is Putin is bad therefore he must lose so he will lose.
"Putin is bad therefore he must lose" is as far as it goes I am afraid. All bets are off if Putin shill Trump wins the Presidency.
How doltish.
You are engaging in JJ's historical inevitablism. He may lose (by many metrics he has already lost) but we have no idea whether he will or not. Harper, whoever the hell they are and wherever the hell they come from, is doing nothing other than articulating the truth.
PB has a weird fixation that because people want something to happen it will happen.
It's bizarro.
You're misunderstanding the point.
Whether or not Putin loses is entirely within the gift of the west. 'Must lose' is just shorthand for we must make sure it happens.
Whether or not we do (particularly the US) is clearly an open question.
We evidently don't believe that he should lose to the extent that he has a comprehensive military defeat. We evidently are happy that his forces have been bogged down for months and resources thrown at the effort. Perhaps that is losing in the minds of Western governments. In which case fair enough.
It's not the kind of losing that I think many on here have in mind, that said.
The important thing is surely that Ukraine can "win", which means getting its people from under the yoke of the Russians and their economy back able to develop without missiles and Shahed drones being lobbed at it every few days.
Interim verdict: Putin looks healthy enough. Quite on top of his brief. Remember when we were told he was dying?
Also: not mad. Obsessive. Autocratic. But not insane. Not immediately off putting. Wily. Cunning. Duplicitous
I sense he really doesn’t want to invade and conquer Eastern Europe. But he really does want a large chunk of Ukraine. And he is genuinely aggrieved about NATO expansion - it’s not a pretext
So a dangerous man but not a Hitler
Interim verdict on tucker: doing the best he can. His main achievement is getting the interview in the first place - creating the envy of all his peers
He also asks some quite devious questions that make Putin look a little credulous or clumsy but he does it in a way that Putin doesn’t notice
It is not 120 minutes of sycophancy. But I am only halfway through
Yet still 50 minutes longer than most people with their heads actually screwed on have managed.
Some of us still remember the days when you were telling us all that Putin would be our saviour.
Another one that didn’t surprise on the upside.
It it a constant source of amazement to me that your only friend is a dog, given the ready wit, personal charm and that sly, playful charisma you regularly exhibit on this site
You are wasted on this site Leon. Your charm charisma and intelligence is too much for the regulars to handle.
I know. I sometimes feel I am more approached in Sverdlovsk than Swindon
A prophet without honour etc
What's happened to you, Leon? Are you OK?
Cambodia. Doing good professional knapping but bereft of social life - a self inflicted monastic solitude which I now possibly regret. Because it makes me reliant on PB for discourse at a time when PB has turned to shit
No wonder so many have fled the site
But I will end up with some excellent flints - I think - and it will all be worth it. Head down. Do the graft
Good work SHOULD be hard
Is PB not just in a lull waiting for some significant political betting to start? The general election could be mere weeks away and the US election is definitely in November. Calm before the storm (and the opportunity to fleece some less savvy punters on the markets?)
No. Absolutely no
It is in a terrible decline
Recall we used to compare it to a pub. You had the regulars, with their cranky obsessions and ancient gossip, you had frequent visitors - sometimes drunk, sometimes high, often amusing - you had passers by with brilliant new stories or total bewilderment. Crucially you had a core of really intelligent open minded people gathered round the bar
It seems to me that open minded core has gone. Now PB resembles a tedious HR meeting dominated by fucking boring lawyers and accountants and IT nerds who insist they are right, won’t allow dissent, and either chase away interesting people or bore everyone else
The wokeness prevails, there is no intellectual curiosity, no surprising new views from that guy on the corner by the slot machine
The only reason I am still here is because i have invested 15 years of conversation in this place and it will be a large wrench to leave, and I am particularly reliant on it out here in Phnom Penh
I will leave it as soon as I can
It's probably because there's a lack of ideological issues on which to be partisan, hence the weird obsession with trans people and other wedge issues.
More or less everybody agrees that the country is buggered, more or less everybody agrees why on all the salient points - stagnant productivity, lack of investment, insane house prices, rentier economy, etc. There are few on here who think differently.
The trouble is, these are problems that need managerial solutions rather than ideological ones.
While it might be fun to debate the motion that This House Would Hang All Landlords and Confiscate the Bank Balances, Walking Canes, and Cats of All Pensioners, it's a lot simpler and duller to agree "well, everything would be better if we built more houses and stopped subsidising pensioners to the detriment of everyone else."
"Dull solutions for bloody obvious problems". That should be Labour's 2024 campaign slogan and, to all effects and purposes, is.
No. Managerial solutions are fools gold.
The answer is ideology. The British public has swallowed the lie that the government can manage their lives better than they can. The answer is to cut government back to doing a few things well and let people lead their own lives. No excessive administration or endless regulation.
£66bn on a railway line which gets you to Birmingham more slowly is where mangerialism gets you. No dentists, fucked up postmasters, no houses, armies without troops. Weve been living with more managerialism each year. It doesnt work.
I don't think there's any dispute that in terms of generating pointless form-filling and excessive middle management, we are the world leader.
Crapita, paid a fortune to deter people from joining the armed forces, is the perfect example.
I think that's British negative exceptionalism at play. We're not world leading at managerial bureaucracy, there are plenty of worse examples, and some better.
The other bureaucracy I have to deal with from time to time is France. In some areas - planning consents, council tax, paying traffic fines, booking trains - it's slicker and easier than Britain. In many others, notably anything touching a notary's office, it's ten times worse.
The USA is also seriously bad. Try getting an ivisa as a journalist for the knappers gazette
Interim verdict: Putin looks healthy enough. Quite on top of his brief. Remember when we were told he was dying?
Also: not mad. Obsessive. Autocratic. But not insane. Not immediately off putting. Wily. Cunning. Duplicitous
I sense he really doesn’t want to invade and conquer Eastern Europe. But he really does want a large chunk of Ukraine. And he is genuinely aggrieved about NATO expansion - it’s not a pretext
So a dangerous man but not a Hitler
Interim verdict on tucker: doing the best he can. His main achievement is getting the interview in the first place - creating the envy of all his peers
He also asks some quite devious questions that make Putin look a little credulous or clumsy but he does it in a way that Putin doesn’t notice
It is not 120 minutes of sycophancy. But I am only halfway through
Yet still 50 minutes longer than most people with their heads actually screwed on have managed.
Some of us still remember the days when you were telling us all that Putin would be our saviour.
Another one that didn’t surprise on the upside.
It it a constant source of amazement to me that your only friend is a dog, given the ready wit, personal charm and that sly, playful charisma you regularly exhibit on this site
You are wasted on this site Leon. Your charm charisma and intelligence is too much for the regulars to handle.
I know. I sometimes feel I am more approached in Sverdlovsk than Swindon
A prophet without honour etc
What's happened to you, Leon? Are you OK?
Cambodia. Doing good professional knapping but bereft of social life - a self inflicted monastic solitude which I now possibly regret. Because it makes me reliant on PB for discourse at a time when PB has turned to shit
No wonder so many have fled the site
But I will end up with some excellent flints - I think - and it will all be worth it. Head down. Do the graft
Good work SHOULD be hard
Is PB not just in a lull waiting for some significant political betting to start? The general election could be mere weeks away and the US election is definitely in November. Calm before the storm (and the opportunity to fleece some less savvy punters on the markets?)
No. Absolutely no
It is in a terrible decline
Recall we used to compare it to a pub. You had the regulars, with their cranky obsessions and ancient gossip, you had frequent visitors - sometimes drunk, sometimes high, often amusing - you had passers by with brilliant new stories or total bewilderment. Crucially you had a core of really intelligent open minded people gathered round the bar
It seems to me that open minded core has gone. Now PB resembles a tedious HR meeting dominated by fucking boring lawyers and accountants and IT nerds who insist they are right, won’t allow dissent, and either chase away interesting people or bore everyone else
The wokeness prevails, there is no intellectual curiosity, no surprising new views from that guy on the corner by the slot machine
The only reason I am still here is because i have invested 15 years of conversation in this place and it will be a large wrench to leave, and I am particularly reliant on it out here in Phnom Penh
I will leave it as soon as I can
It's probably because there's a lack of ideological issues on which to be partisan, hence the weird obsession with trans people and other wedge issues.
More or less everybody agrees that the country is buggered, more or less everybody agrees why on all the salient points - stagnant productivity, lack of investment, insane house prices, rentier economy, etc. There are few on here who think differently.
The trouble is, these are problems that need managerial solutions rather than ideological ones.
While it might be fun to debate the motion that This House Would Hang All Landlords and Confiscate the Bank Balances, Walking Canes, and Cats of All Pensioners, it's a lot simpler and duller to agree "well, everything would be better if we built more houses and stopped subsidising pensioners to the detriment of everyone else."
"Dull solutions for bloody obvious problems". That should be Labour's 2024 campaign slogan and, to all effects and purposes, is.
No. Managerial solutions are fools gold.
The answer is ideology. The British public has swallowed the lie that the government can manage their lives better than they can. The answer is to cut government back to doing a few things well and let people lead their own lives. No excessive administration or endless regulation.
£66bn on a railway line which gets you to Birmingham more slowly is where mangerialism gets you. No dentists, fucked up postmasters, no houses, armies without troops. Weve been living with more managerialism each year. It doesnt work.
Look Britain is a more diverse and very different country now. Solutions that may have worked in the past will not work now.
Out of interest, which part of the UK are you from Harper? Brum? Chichester? Man of Kent perhaps?
More to the point, which of these is not a great university of England?
Oxford
Cambridge
Hull
Perhaps there are some interesting spires to be admired in these fine cities?
I’m sure @Harper has an opinion. We should ask them.
I think it's obvious that the next generation of royals don't see much less value in the "visibility" work that the last Queen was so keen on.
I've been keeping an eye on the Court Circular for the past 6 months (yeah, interesting, I know...)
Princess Anne does lots of sports, rural, and health-related visits Prince Richard does lots of buildings, engineering, built environment-related visits Prince Edward does some theatre, arts, and youth-related visits
And, er, that's it.
Prince William does virtually none of that stuff, even accounting for time off with his wife being ill. He goes to some dinners, and does a feww investiture ceremonies - the rest of his official engagements tend to be for personal projects like the Earthshot Prize. The contrast between his diary in 2023 and Charles' in, say, 2003 is rather eye-opening.
But who's to say that's a bad thing - if you've got a new university building that needs opened, say, why do you need Prince Richard rather than a Lord Mayor, ex-government minister, or someone from off the telly anyway?
At this point, it looks almost like a hobby for the older ones - or something they do because they've always done it, not because there's much need for it.
I’ve never even heard of Prince Richard.
I do think it’s fascinating, though, these subtle shifts in kingly responsibilities. It’s not obvious to me why William is maintaining a low profile. Is he just lazy?
Richard is the Duke of Gloucester - the King's cousin, I think. Did an architecture course in the 70s, and has been stuck opening shopping centres ever since...
As for William, I know there've been rumours about problems in his personal life - and at the very least his wife must have been very ill for some time to need such a hugely serious operation. But I doubt that's enough have stopped him taking some of Anne/Richard/Edward's more prestigious gigs if he'd felt it was necessary to do so - he just doesn't see the value in it.
Yes, Duke of Gloucester. I just never hear him referred to as Prince Richard, for some reason. I agree with the original notion that we’re frankly short of a few royals. Philip and Zara look the most “papabile” to my eye.
William needs to pull his finger out. The deal is that we pay for their luxury, and they perform their duties like Stakhanovites.
Speaking of which, the King is also the King of NZ. I know he’s due for a visit in November, but we kind of need him more often than every five or six years.
The days of organising the monarchy around the contingencies of boat-plane via BOAC are well and truly over.
Profits of the crown estates and duchies pay for the Prince and Princess of Wales actually, taxpayers pay for nothing more than their security.
The Governor General does the day to day things in NZ for the King and is currently a Maori woman
The crown estates belong to the country, they are not the private property of the monarch.
If we became a republic the crown estates would just be rebranded to something else, just as everything that is currently HM whatever will get rebranded then too.
If we became a republic taxpayers would fund a President and their family direct
A damn sight cheaper than the Royals I'd wager. Especially after we have sold of all the crown estate to the Chinese...
No, with no royal wedding, jubilee or coronation revenue whether and the Crown estate certainly won't be sold off, it is our heritage.
I certainly don't want President Johnson or President Blair either
It might not be sold off, but the revenues wouldn't go to Chas or William.
The replacement doesn't need to be a President - that would require such a major constitutional overhaul that it'll never happen.
Simply pass an act of parliament that deems Boris or Blair or whoever to be the next "Heir of the Body of Princess Sophia, Electress and Dowager Duchess of Hanover, Daughter of the late Queen of Bohemia, Daughter of King James the First". Make sure you first require them to submit a letter of abdication post-dated for ten years in the future.
Problem solved. And even if we ended up with King Boris, it'd be fine. He'd do the job for (much) less than the current one, he'd be happy to turn up and open all the new bus stations you could possibly wish for, and he'd be colourful enough to keep the tabloids happy.
You'd want to make sure that letter of abdication was pretty watertight, and that there were enough counselors of state who could sign bills into law on his behalf in case he gets into a strop and refuses to play nicely. But otherwise, job done.
Then you still end up with an ex politician President, which defeats the point of an apolitical head of state. Neither have royal blood that I can see either
After, what, 13? (14?) generations since Electress Sophia, I suspect that whatever royal magic might have been in her blood has been diluted beyond the threshold of detectability by now.
Her living descendents today likely number in the tens or possibly even hundreds of millions. All of them have roughly as much royal blood as Charles. Even if you did restrict the list of candidates to them, there'd still be plenty to choose from!
(And I note that Charles has never offered any actual evidence of his supposed magic inheritance - you'd think that someone who had built their entire life around heredity would have at least got himself a basic 23andme or AncestryDNA test kit!)
The web claims to identify 4973 descendants of Sophia of Hanover.
Edit: another source claims closer to 6000, but those only being the legitimate, Protestant, descendants, who's are in the line of succession.
I think it's obvious that the next generation of royals don't see much less value in the "visibility" work that the last Queen was so keen on.
I've been keeping an eye on the Court Circular for the past 6 months (yeah, interesting, I know...)
Princess Anne does lots of sports, rural, and health-related visits Prince Richard does lots of buildings, engineering, built environment-related visits Prince Edward does some theatre, arts, and youth-related visits
And, er, that's it.
Prince William does virtually none of that stuff, even accounting for time off with his wife being ill. He goes to some dinners, and does a feww investiture ceremonies - the rest of his official engagements tend to be for personal projects like the Earthshot Prize. The contrast between his diary in 2023 and Charles' in, say, 2003 is rather eye-opening.
But who's to say that's a bad thing - if you've got a new university building that needs opened, say, why do you need Prince Richard rather than a Lord Mayor, ex-government minister, or someone from off the telly anyway?
At this point, it looks almost like a hobby for the older ones - or something they do because they've always done it, not because there's much need for it.
I’ve never even heard of Prince Richard.
I do think it’s fascinating, though, these subtle shifts in kingly responsibilities. It’s not obvious to me why William is maintaining a low profile. Is he just lazy?
Richard is the Duke of Gloucester - the King's cousin, I think. Did an architecture course in the 70s, and has been stuck opening shopping centres ever since...
As for William, I know there've been rumours about problems in his personal life - and at the very least his wife must have been very ill for some time to need such a hugely serious operation. But I doubt that's enough have stopped him taking some of Anne/Richard/Edward's more prestigious gigs if he'd felt it was necessary to do so - he just doesn't see the value in it.
Yes, Duke of Gloucester. I just never hear him referred to as Prince Richard, for some reason. I agree with the original notion that we’re frankly short of a few royals. Philip and Zara look the most “papabile” to my eye.
William needs to pull his finger out. The deal is that we pay for their luxury, and they perform their duties like Stakhanovites.
Speaking of which, the King is also the King of NZ. I know he’s due for a visit in November, but we kind of need him more often than every five or six years.
The days of organising the monarchy around the contingencies of boat-plane via BOAC are well and truly over.
Profits of the crown estates and duchies pay for the Prince and Princess of Wales actually, taxpayers pay for nothing more than their security.
The Governor General does the day to day things in NZ for the King and is currently a Maori woman
The crown estates belong to the country, they are not the private property of the monarch.
If we became a republic the crown estates would just be rebranded to something else, just as everything that is currently HM whatever will get rebranded then too.
If we became a republic taxpayers would fund a President and their family direct
They could be fully covered by the 'republic estates' or whatever they're rebranded to and then some since there'd only be one figurehead to fund not an entire sprawling family of them.
Legally arguably not, the crown estates belong to the monarch as corporate sole, just George III surrendered their revenues to the Treasury.
They would also bring in far less tourism revenue and we are moving to a working royals of just the King and Queen and heir and their family anyway, so no different to say the US system of President and First Lady and family and VP and spouse and family
No, you are totally wrong and the law is explicitly clear.
The monarch holds the crown estates by virtue of the crown, they are quite explicitly NOT the private property of the monarch.
If the UK becomes a republic then everything that belongs to 'the crown' will now belong to however the state is now run, not the royal family who quite explicitly do not privately own it.
If we become a republic the private property of the Windsors will remain their private property, but the crown is the states, not theirs.
'The UK government does not own The Crown Estate either.' Whoever held the Crown at the time would therefore have a strong legal argument to maintain it, even if some of the revenues still went to the State
One area that I agree with Leon is that PB's approach to the war in the Ukraine is somewhat unnuanced.
The prevailing consensensus here on PB is that the conflict very closely mirrors World War II, with only the occasional visit from real Russian trolls, or real demented Trumpist-Putinists, to put o any dissenting view. In fact the war is not that simple.
PBs approach to the Ukraine war is Putin is bad therefore he must lose so he will lose.
"Putin is bad therefore he must lose" is as far as it goes I am afraid. All bets are off if Putin shill Trump wins the Presidency.
How doltish.
You are engaging in JJ's historical inevitablism. He may lose (by many metric he has already lost) but we have no idea whether he will or not. Harper, whoever the hell they are and wherever the hell they come from, is doing nothing other than articulating the truth.
PB has a weird fixation that because people want something to happen it will happen.
It's bizarro.
I'm unsure where you get this idea that I'm engaging in "historical inevitablism". I'm not.
I want Ukraine to win, and I think the best way of preventing wider conflict is for Ukraine to win. I therefore tend to think that we need to do much more to help Ukraine win.
But do I see a Ukrainian victory as inevitable? Do I heck, and I've never said so.
I have said, however. that I feel that Russia has strategically lost, and it is very hard to see how they get a real 'win' out of this. They already had Crimea and most of the Donbass pre-2022, and the new areas they've gained are not particularly strategic. And the cost in men, material and money has been immense. Worst of all from their point of view, their strategic enemies had spent a few decades spending less and less on their militaries, and Putin's little adventure will probably reverse that. Russia is a reduced entity thanks to Putin, and it could all have been so different.
But I'd argue there's something else we see: "Ukraine cannot win, therefore they shouldn't fight". IMV that's wrong.
It's the critical question. It is up to the Ukrainians to determine whether they fight on and is no one else's business (unless perhaps POTUS thinks by them fighting on it would threaten escalation).
Most conflicts end in negotiation so I don't think it is beyond the pale to ponder whether this one should as well.
I probably said at the outset of the conflict that it would. I probably still think it will. I don't see a resolution in the near term and we have @Sean_F's experts saying it will only be another 2-3 years before Ukraine is in a position to do something or other. And perhaps this is the case. But a lot of people are dying in the meantime.
Interim verdict: Putin looks healthy enough. Quite on top of his brief. Remember when we were told he was dying?
Also: not mad. Obsessive. Autocratic. But not insane. Not immediately off putting. Wily. Cunning. Duplicitous
I sense he really doesn’t want to invade and conquer Eastern Europe. But he really does want a large chunk of Ukraine. And he is genuinely aggrieved about NATO expansion - it’s not a pretext
So a dangerous man but not a Hitler
Interim verdict on tucker: doing the best he can. His main achievement is getting the interview in the first place - creating the envy of all his peers
He also asks some quite devious questions that make Putin look a little credulous or clumsy but he does it in a way that Putin doesn’t notice
It is not 120 minutes of sycophancy. But I am only halfway through
Yet still 50 minutes longer than most people with their heads actually screwed on have managed.
Some of us still remember the days when you were telling us all that Putin would be our saviour.
Another one that didn’t surprise on the upside.
It it a constant source of amazement to me that your only friend is a dog, given the ready wit, personal charm and that sly, playful charisma you regularly exhibit on this site
You are wasted on this site Leon. Your charm charisma and intelligence is too much for the regulars to handle.
I know. I sometimes feel I am more approached in Sverdlovsk than Swindon
A prophet without honour etc
What's happened to you, Leon? Are you OK?
Cambodia. Doing good professional knapping but bereft of social life - a self inflicted monastic solitude which I now possibly regret. Because it makes me reliant on PB for discourse at a time when PB has turned to shit
No wonder so many have fled the site
But I will end up with some excellent flints - I think - and it will all be worth it. Head down. Do the graft
Good work SHOULD be hard
Is PB not just in a lull waiting for some significant political betting to start? The general election could be mere weeks away and the US election is definitely in November. Calm before the storm (and the opportunity to fleece some less savvy punters on the markets?)
No. Absolutely no
It is in a terrible decline
Recall we used to compare it to a pub. You had the regulars, with their cranky obsessions and ancient gossip, you had frequent visitors - sometimes drunk, sometimes high, often amusing - you had passers by with brilliant new stories or total bewilderment. Crucially you had a core of really intelligent open minded people gathered round the bar
It seems to me that open minded core has gone. Now PB resembles a tedious HR meeting dominated by fucking boring lawyers and accountants and IT nerds who insist they are right, won’t allow dissent, and either chase away interesting people or bore everyone else
The wokeness prevails, there is no intellectual curiosity, no surprising new views from that guy on the corner by the slot machine
The only reason I am still here is because i have invested 15 years of conversation in this place and it will be a large wrench to leave, and I am particularly reliant on it out here in Phnom Penh
I will leave it as soon as I can
It's probably because there's a lack of ideological issues on which to be partisan, hence the weird obsession with trans people and other wedge issues.
More or less everybody agrees that the country is buggered, more or less everybody agrees why on all the salient points - stagnant productivity, lack of investment, insane house prices, rentier economy, etc. There are few on here who think differently.
The trouble is, these are problems that need managerial solutions rather than ideological ones.
While it might be fun to debate the motion that This House Would Hang All Landlords and Confiscate the Bank Balances, Walking Canes, and Cats of All Pensioners, it's a lot simpler and duller to agree "well, everything would be better if we built more houses and stopped subsidising pensioners to the detriment of everyone else."
"Dull solutions for bloody obvious problems". That should be Labour's 2024 campaign slogan and, to all effects and purposes, is.
No. Managerial solutions are fools gold.
The answer is ideology. The British public has swallowed the lie that the government can manage their lives better than they can. The answer is to cut government back to doing a few things well and let people lead their own lives. No excessive administration or endless regulation.
£66bn on a railway line which gets you to Birmingham more slowly is where mangerialism gets you. No dentists, fucked up postmasters, no houses, armies without troops. Weve been living with more managerialism each year. It doesnt work.
That was perhaps true in an era where capitalism could be relied upon to do its job. But one only needs to glance at Cory Doctorow's article in this week's FT on the enshittification cycle, to understand that "the free market" isn't doing its job very well at all these days. It's become about extracting as much value as possible then doing a runner, rather than providing a good service over any length of time.
What we need right now is a government that is willing to look at the structural problems UK PLC has as a whole, and take long term steps to invest in them and correct decades of underinvestment. Schools, hospitals, dentists, roads, housebuilding, etc.
I agree with you that we probably need a lot less regulation - say, making it easier to build houses, and no more windowless houses because it's the cheapest way to meet insulation standards. Or school vouchers to give parents greater choice - let the good schools build more good schools, and let the bad ones perish. To suggest a couple of examples.
But the idea that a laissez-faire attitude is going to fix decades-long underinvestment in vital infrastructure is, unfortunately, for the birds. It isn't managerialism that's brought us to this point, it's short-termism. The government cancelling HS2 and rerouting the money to pothole repair in the south, for example. That's short term, cost cutting, quick-buck, MBA-cookie-cutter managerialism, with inevitable results. Britain PLC is being run like Boeing, and the wings are falling off.
What we need is long term management strategy, as Stuartinromford says downthread, while the 'quick fix' is always tempting, it's those quick fixes that have brought us to where we are now. I am unconvinced that quick-buck-capitalism, as it stands in 2024, has any interest in fixing the long term structural problems of the country. The problem is the government, whose job it should be to consider these problems, appears to have no interest in it, either.
you will never get solutions while government and industry are stuck in a space which allows nothing to move and while the space available becomes more restricted annually. What we have is not capitalism but corporatism and its failing. If we want things to be better we have to free up the productive end of the economy and get government back to doing the essentials well. We could also do with pushing more responsibility closer to communities.
As for a national framework, I agree with you we need one in key infrastructure the general drift in the UK is helping no one
I think it's obvious that the next generation of royals don't see much less value in the "visibility" work that the last Queen was so keen on.
I've been keeping an eye on the Court Circular for the past 6 months (yeah, interesting, I know...)
Princess Anne does lots of sports, rural, and health-related visits Prince Richard does lots of buildings, engineering, built environment-related visits Prince Edward does some theatre, arts, and youth-related visits
And, er, that's it.
Prince William does virtually none of that stuff, even accounting for time off with his wife being ill. He goes to some dinners, and does a feww investiture ceremonies - the rest of his official engagements tend to be for personal projects like the Earthshot Prize. The contrast between his diary in 2023 and Charles' in, say, 2003 is rather eye-opening.
But who's to say that's a bad thing - if you've got a new university building that needs opened, say, why do you need Prince Richard rather than a Lord Mayor, ex-government minister, or someone from off the telly anyway?
At this point, it looks almost like a hobby for the older ones - or something they do because they've always done it, not because there's much need for it.
I’ve never even heard of Prince Richard.
I do think it’s fascinating, though, these subtle shifts in kingly responsibilities. It’s not obvious to me why William is maintaining a low profile. Is he just lazy?
Richard is the Duke of Gloucester - the King's cousin, I think. Did an architecture course in the 70s, and has been stuck opening shopping centres ever since...
As for William, I know there've been rumours about problems in his personal life - and at the very least his wife must have been very ill for some time to need such a hugely serious operation. But I doubt that's enough have stopped him taking some of Anne/Richard/Edward's more prestigious gigs if he'd felt it was necessary to do so - he just doesn't see the value in it.
Yes, Duke of Gloucester. I just never hear him referred to as Prince Richard, for some reason. I agree with the original notion that we’re frankly short of a few royals. Philip and Zara look the most “papabile” to my eye.
William needs to pull his finger out. The deal is that we pay for their luxury, and they perform their duties like Stakhanovites.
Speaking of which, the King is also the King of NZ. I know he’s due for a visit in November, but we kind of need him more often than every five or six years.
The days of organising the monarchy around the contingencies of boat-plane via BOAC are well and truly over.
Profits of the crown estates and duchies pay for the Prince and Princess of Wales actually, taxpayers pay for nothing more than their security.
The Governor General does the day to day things in NZ for the King and is currently a Maori woman
The crown estates belong to the country, they are not the private property of the monarch.
If we became a republic the crown estates would just be rebranded to something else, just as everything that is currently HM whatever will get rebranded then too.
If we became a republic taxpayers would fund a President and their family direct
A damn sight cheaper than the Royals I'd wager. Especially after we have sold of all the crown estate to the Chinese...
No, with no royal wedding, jubilee or coronation revenue whether and the Crown estate certainly won't be sold off, it is our heritage.
I certainly don't want President Johnson or President Blair either
It might not be sold off, but the revenues wouldn't go to Chas or William.
The replacement doesn't need to be a President - that would require such a major constitutional overhaul that it'll never happen.
Simply pass an act of parliament that deems Boris or Blair or whoever to be the next "Heir of the Body of Princess Sophia, Electress and Dowager Duchess of Hanover, Daughter of the late Queen of Bohemia, Daughter of King James the First". Make sure you first require them to submit a letter of abdication post-dated for ten years in the future.
Problem solved. And even if we ended up with King Boris, it'd be fine. He'd do the job for (much) less than the current one, he'd be happy to turn up and open all the new bus stations you could possibly wish for, and he'd be colourful enough to keep the tabloids happy.
You'd want to make sure that letter of abdication was pretty watertight, and that there were enough counselors of state who could sign bills into law on his behalf in case he gets into a strop and refuses to play nicely. But otherwise, job done.
Then you still end up with an ex politician President, which defeats the point of an apolitical head of state. Neither have royal blood that I can see either
After, what, 13? (14?) generations since Electress Sophia, I suspect that whatever royal magic might have been in her blood has been diluted beyond the threshold of detectability by now.
Her living descendents today likely number in the tens or possibly even hundreds of millions. All of them have roughly as much royal blood as Charles. Even if you did restrict the list of candidates to them, there'd still be plenty to choose from!
(And I note that Charles has never offered any actual evidence of his supposed magic inheritance - you'd think that someone who had built their entire life around heredity would have at least got himself a basic 23andme or AncestryDNA test kit!)
Yes but descendants with as much claim as Charles would still be aristocratic and royal by blood
Interim verdict: Putin looks healthy enough. Quite on top of his brief. Remember when we were told he was dying?
Also: not mad. Obsessive. Autocratic. But not insane. Not immediately off putting. Wily. Cunning. Duplicitous
I sense he really doesn’t want to invade and conquer Eastern Europe. But he really does want a large chunk of Ukraine. And he is genuinely aggrieved about NATO expansion - it’s not a pretext
So a dangerous man but not a Hitler
Interim verdict on tucker: doing the best he can. His main achievement is getting the interview in the first place - creating the envy of all his peers
He also asks some quite devious questions that make Putin look a little credulous or clumsy but he does it in a way that Putin doesn’t notice
It is not 120 minutes of sycophancy. But I am only halfway through
Yet still 50 minutes longer than most people with their heads actually screwed on have managed.
Some of us still remember the days when you were telling us all that Putin would be our saviour.
Another one that didn’t surprise on the upside.
It it a constant source of amazement to me that your only friend is a dog, given the ready wit, personal charm and that sly, playful charisma you regularly exhibit on this site
You are wasted on this site Leon. Your charm charisma and intelligence is too much for the regulars to handle.
I know. I sometimes feel I am more approached in Sverdlovsk than Swindon
A prophet without honour etc
What's happened to you, Leon? Are you OK?
Cambodia. Doing good professional knapping but bereft of social life - a self inflicted monastic solitude which I now possibly regret. Because it makes me reliant on PB for discourse at a time when PB has turned to shit
No wonder so many have fled the site
But I will end up with some excellent flints - I think - and it will all be worth it. Head down. Do the graft
Good work SHOULD be hard
Is PB not just in a lull waiting for some significant political betting to start? The general election could be mere weeks away and the US election is definitely in November. Calm before the storm (and the opportunity to fleece some less savvy punters on the markets?)
No. Absolutely no
It is in a terrible decline
Recall we used to compare it to a pub. You had the regulars, with their cranky obsessions and ancient gossip, you had frequent visitors - sometimes drunk, sometimes high, often amusing - you had passers by with brilliant new stories or total bewilderment. Crucially you had a core of really intelligent open minded people gathered round the bar
It seems to me that open minded core has gone. Now PB resembles a tedious HR meeting dominated by fucking boring lawyers and accountants and IT nerds who insist they are right, won’t allow dissent, and either chase away interesting people or bore everyone else
The wokeness prevails, there is no intellectual curiosity, no surprising new views from that guy on the corner by the slot machine
The only reason I am still here is because i have invested 15 years of conversation in this place and it will be a large wrench to leave, and I am particularly reliant on it out here in Phnom Penh
I will leave it as soon as I can
It's probably because there's a lack of ideological issues on which to be partisan, hence the weird obsession with trans people and other wedge issues.
More or less everybody agrees that the country is buggered, more or less everybody agrees why on all the salient points - stagnant productivity, lack of investment, insane house prices, rentier economy, etc. There are few on here who think differently.
The trouble is, these are problems that need managerial solutions rather than ideological ones.
While it might be fun to debate the motion that This House Would Hang All Landlords and Confiscate the Bank Balances, Walking Canes, and Cats of All Pensioners, it's a lot simpler and duller to agree "well, everything would be better if we built more houses and stopped subsidising pensioners to the detriment of everyone else."
"Dull solutions for bloody obvious problems". That should be Labour's 2024 campaign slogan and, to all effects and purposes, is.
No. Managerial solutions are fools gold.
The answer is ideology. The British public has swallowed the lie that the government can manage their lives better than they can. The answer is to cut government back to doing a few things well and let people lead their own lives. No excessive administration or endless regulation.
£66bn on a railway line which gets you to Birmingham more slowly is where mangerialism gets you. No dentists, fucked up postmasters, no houses, armies without troops. Weve been living with more managerialism each year. It doesnt work.
I don't think there's any dispute that in terms of generating pointless form-filling and excessive middle management, we are the world leader.
Crapita, paid a fortune to deter people from joining the armed forces, is the perfect example.
I think that's British negative exceptionalism at play. We're not world leading at managerial bureaucracy, there are plenty of worse examples, and some better.
The other bureaucracy I have to deal with from time to time is France. In some areas - planning consents, council tax, paying traffic fines, booking trains - it's slicker and easier than Britain. In many others, notably anything touching a notary's office, it's ten times worse.
The USA is also seriously bad. Try getting an ivisa as a journalist for the knappers gazette
OMFG
US public sector is especially bad. Much of this is due to affirmative action hiring.
Just War Tradition maintains that it is morally permissible for a state to wage war only if certain conditions are met. These conditions are divided into two sets, six concerning when it is permissible to go to war, referred to as Jus ad Bellum, and two concerning how war may be legitimately conducted, referred to as Jus in Bello. Most notable in the Jus ad Bellum (JaB) conditions is that a state must have just cause to enter into war, while the Jus in Bello (JiB) conditions state firstly, that military action must be proportional, i.e. not use more force and cause more casualties than is necessary to attaining its objectives and, secondly, that military action must discriminate between combatants and non-combatants, observing the principle of non-combatant immunity.
Building on the Just War Tradition, just war theorists including Walzer add a third element, the moral equality of combatants (MEC). The concept of MEC maintains that combatants on both sides of a war are equally permitted to kill and equally liable to be killed. This equality is irrespective of whether their side entered into the conflict in accordance with the JaB conditions. The distinction between the applicability of the JaB and JiB conditions is central to this position; it may be regarded that the JaB conditions only apply to politicians who make the decision to go to war, while it is only the JiB conditions that apply to combatants doing the fighting. By this argument, combatants on both sides in a war may be regarded as equivalent and fighting justly, provided they adhere to the JiB conditions.
Interim verdict: Putin looks healthy enough. Quite on top of his brief. Remember when we were told he was dying?
Also: not mad. Obsessive. Autocratic. But not insane. Not immediately off putting. Wily. Cunning. Duplicitous
I sense he really doesn’t want to invade and conquer Eastern Europe. But he really does want a large chunk of Ukraine. And he is genuinely aggrieved about NATO expansion - it’s not a pretext
So a dangerous man but not a Hitler
Interim verdict on tucker: doing the best he can. His main achievement is getting the interview in the first place - creating the envy of all his peers
He also asks some quite devious questions that make Putin look a little credulous or clumsy but he does it in a way that Putin doesn’t notice
It is not 120 minutes of sycophancy. But I am only halfway through
Yet still 50 minutes longer than most people with their heads actually screwed on have managed.
Some of us still remember the days when you were telling us all that Putin would be our saviour.
Another one that didn’t surprise on the upside.
It it a constant source of amazement to me that your only friend is a dog, given the ready wit, personal charm and that sly, playful charisma you regularly exhibit on this site
You are wasted on this site Leon. Your charm charisma and intelligence is too much for the regulars to handle.
I know. I sometimes feel I am more approached in Sverdlovsk than Swindon
A prophet without honour etc
What's happened to you, Leon? Are you OK?
Cambodia. Doing good professional knapping but bereft of social life - a self inflicted monastic solitude which I now possibly regret. Because it makes me reliant on PB for discourse at a time when PB has turned to shit
No wonder so many have fled the site
But I will end up with some excellent flints - I think - and it will all be worth it. Head down. Do the graft
Good work SHOULD be hard
Is PB not just in a lull waiting for some significant political betting to start? The general election could be mere weeks away and the US election is definitely in November. Calm before the storm (and the opportunity to fleece some less savvy punters on the markets?)
No. Absolutely no
It is in a terrible decline
Recall we used to compare it to a pub. You had the regulars, with their cranky obsessions and ancient gossip, you had frequent visitors - sometimes drunk, sometimes high, often amusing - you had passers by with brilliant new stories or total bewilderment. Crucially you had a core of really intelligent open minded people gathered round the bar
It seems to me that open minded core has gone. Now PB resembles a tedious HR meeting dominated by fucking boring lawyers and accountants and IT nerds who insist they are right, won’t allow dissent, and either chase away interesting people or bore everyone else
The wokeness prevails, there is no intellectual curiosity, no surprising new views from that guy on the corner by the slot machine
The only reason I am still here is because i have invested 15 years of conversation in this place and it will be a large wrench to leave, and I am particularly reliant on it out here in Phnom Penh
I will leave it as soon as I can
I think reflects the broader politics. Nobody believes in the Brexit fairy anymore, the idea of supporting the Tories is risible, and Starmer is about to offer the blandest prospectus ever put to the British public. Even the Lib Dems have nothing to say.
The world is pivoting, the kaleidoscope has been shaken, but Britain has given up. For the moment, at least.
Yes. The wider world is definitely part of it. Politics is more polarised so pb is part of that
Also everyone here is just older and crankier perhaps. But fuck knows why I have to respect these geriatric twats - I still travel the world and do stuff - I stay open minded. Pb does not
Hey ho
If I’m still here in a year please please please tease me mercilessly until I am shamed into going. I need to find a replacement forum - it’s not easy. Pb of old was special
I am looking hard
But you're not particularly open-minded. Nor a particularly free-thinker. What you mainly do is haul the same old prejudices and obsessions from one far-flung location to another. One day we get a bunch of right wing tropes posted from Camden. Next day the same from Cambodia. And so on and so forth.
There's rarely anything surprising let alone original about the view expressed. You seem to confuse (in yourself) a lively intelligence and advanced English language skills for some sort of serious intellect (which you do not have). I'm afraid that is probably your defining characteristic as regards here - an inflated self-image. Eg this regular moanfest about how PB has gone to the dogs. It's just you bigging yourself up again, isn't it?
Anyway, whatever, I'm not sure I can be bothered to post this. It's spot on but what - really - is the point? Perhaps you can tell me.
Thoughts on the Partisan Attack on Biden's Memory The Special Counsel report is going to make Biden's age and competence centerstage for the foreseeable future https://www.messageboxnews.com/p/thoughts-on-the-partisan-attack-on ...I want to stipulate that the report is very bad and poses some real political peril for Biden. I don’t want to sugarcoat it. Biden’s age is his biggest impediment to reelection and this description could be very damaging. However, I have a few thoughts to help you navigate conversations about this annoying topic.
1. This is a Partisan Hit Job
Robert Hur is described in press reports as a “well-respected U.S. attorney,” and maybe he once was, but this report is a partisan hit job. He swerves out of his lane to drive a negative narrative about Biden, the same message the Republican Party uses against Biden. In the report, Hur generously describes memory lapses from others but hammers Biden for the same.
It’s hard to read the report and not think that, without the ability to charge Biden with a crime, Hur wanted to damage him politically...
Interim verdict: Putin looks healthy enough. Quite on top of his brief. Remember when we were told he was dying?
Also: not mad. Obsessive. Autocratic. But not insane. Not immediately off putting. Wily. Cunning. Duplicitous
I sense he really doesn’t want to invade and conquer Eastern Europe. But he really does want a large chunk of Ukraine. And he is genuinely aggrieved about NATO expansion - it’s not a pretext
So a dangerous man but not a Hitler
Interim verdict on tucker: doing the best he can. His main achievement is getting the interview in the first place - creating the envy of all his peers
He also asks some quite devious questions that make Putin look a little credulous or clumsy but he does it in a way that Putin doesn’t notice
It is not 120 minutes of sycophancy. But I am only halfway through
Yet still 50 minutes longer than most people with their heads actually screwed on have managed.
Some of us still remember the days when you were telling us all that Putin would be our saviour.
Another one that didn’t surprise on the upside.
It it a constant source of amazement to me that your only friend is a dog, given the ready wit, personal charm and that sly, playful charisma you regularly exhibit on this site
You are wasted on this site Leon. Your charm charisma and intelligence is too much for the regulars to handle.
I know. I sometimes feel I am more approached in Sverdlovsk than Swindon
A prophet without honour etc
What's happened to you, Leon? Are you OK?
Cambodia. Doing good professional knapping but bereft of social life - a self inflicted monastic solitude which I now possibly regret. Because it makes me reliant on PB for discourse at a time when PB has turned to shit
No wonder so many have fled the site
But I will end up with some excellent flints - I think - and it will all be worth it. Head down. Do the graft
Good work SHOULD be hard
Is PB not just in a lull waiting for some significant political betting to start? The general election could be mere weeks away and the US election is definitely in November. Calm before the storm (and the opportunity to fleece some less savvy punters on the markets?)
No. Absolutely no
It is in a terrible decline
Recall we used to compare it to a pub. You had the regulars, with their cranky obsessions and ancient gossip, you had frequent visitors - sometimes drunk, sometimes high, often amusing - you had passers by with brilliant new stories or total bewilderment. Crucially you had a core of really intelligent open minded people gathered round the bar
It seems to me that open minded core has gone. Now PB resembles a tedious HR meeting dominated by fucking boring lawyers and accountants and IT nerds who insist they are right, won’t allow dissent, and either chase away interesting people or bore everyone else
The wokeness prevails, there is no intellectual curiosity, no surprising new views from that guy on the corner by the slot machine
The only reason I am still here is because i have invested 15 years of conversation in this place and it will be a large wrench to leave, and I am particularly reliant on it out here in Phnom Penh
I will leave it as soon as I can
I think reflects the broader politics. Nobody believes in the Brexit fairy anymore, the idea of supporting the Tories is risible, and Starmer is about to offer the blandest prospectus ever put to the British public. Even the Lib Dems have nothing to say.
The world is pivoting, the kaleidoscope has been shaken, but Britain has given up. For the moment, at least.
Yes. The wider world is definitely part of it. Politics is more polarised so pb is part of that
Also everyone here is just older and crankier perhaps. But fuck knows why I have to respect these geriatric twats - I still travel the world and do stuff - I stay open minded. Pb does not
Hey ho
If I’m still here in a year please please please tease me mercilessly until I am shamed into going. I need to find a replacement forum - it’s not easy. Pb of old was special
I am looking hard
Do you not think you've played a large part in driving away people who disagree with you?
Absolutely not. I love a good argument. That’s why I come here. Yes I can be bruising but I always respect someone who articulately disagrees, and I never whine if someone is nasty
What’s ruined the site is the dead hand of orthodoxy. Plus you’re all a bunch of fucking lawyers and accountants and business dudes and retired IT geeks. Twats
We desperately need more arty types. Poets. Violinists. Dancers. Opera singers. Anyone creative, anyone, literally anyone. Anyone!
But no
I expect arty types have too much time being arty and attending cultural events, museums, theatres and galleries, festivals, clubs and concerts, cinemas and watching arty TV, with lovers, eating and cooking good food and wine, reading arty books, on arty websites, exercising and travelling to spend a great deal of time debating politics and other geeky issues on PB
It’s a good point. I guess the overlap between “arty” and “minutely obsessed with politics” is not large. In fact it might just be me
Artier types are more commonly on the left, and tend to be most interested in politics when it's at it's most idealistic. The second common arty type is the waspish rightwinger, not populist but satirical.
In Britain and the US, not only politics but also mass media and broadcasting don't cater for these types as much any more either, which is not a coincidence. The Left is crusading but not utopian ; the Right is angry but not satirical.
I think it's obvious that the next generation of royals don't see much less value in the "visibility" work that the last Queen was so keen on.
I've been keeping an eye on the Court Circular for the past 6 months (yeah, interesting, I know...)
Princess Anne does lots of sports, rural, and health-related visits Prince Richard does lots of buildings, engineering, built environment-related visits Prince Edward does some theatre, arts, and youth-related visits
And, er, that's it.
Prince William does virtually none of that stuff, even accounting for time off with his wife being ill. He goes to some dinners, and does a feww investiture ceremonies - the rest of his official engagements tend to be for personal projects like the Earthshot Prize. The contrast between his diary in 2023 and Charles' in, say, 2003 is rather eye-opening.
But who's to say that's a bad thing - if you've got a new university building that needs opened, say, why do you need Prince Richard rather than a Lord Mayor, ex-government minister, or someone from off the telly anyway?
At this point, it looks almost like a hobby for the older ones - or something they do because they've always done it, not because there's much need for it.
I’ve never even heard of Prince Richard.
I do think it’s fascinating, though, these subtle shifts in kingly responsibilities. It’s not obvious to me why William is maintaining a low profile. Is he just lazy?
Richard is the Duke of Gloucester - the King's cousin, I think. Did an architecture course in the 70s, and has been stuck opening shopping centres ever since...
As for William, I know there've been rumours about problems in his personal life - and at the very least his wife must have been very ill for some time to need such a hugely serious operation. But I doubt that's enough have stopped him taking some of Anne/Richard/Edward's more prestigious gigs if he'd felt it was necessary to do so - he just doesn't see the value in it.
Yes, Duke of Gloucester. I just never hear him referred to as Prince Richard, for some reason. I agree with the original notion that we’re frankly short of a few royals. Philip and Zara look the most “papabile” to my eye.
William needs to pull his finger out. The deal is that we pay for their luxury, and they perform their duties like Stakhanovites.
Speaking of which, the King is also the King of NZ. I know he’s due for a visit in November, but we kind of need him more often than every five or six years.
The days of organising the monarchy around the contingencies of boat-plane via BOAC are well and truly over.
Profits of the crown estates and duchies pay for the Prince and Princess of Wales actually, taxpayers pay for nothing more than their security.
The Governor General does the day to day things in NZ for the King and is currently a Maori woman
The crown estates belong to the country, they are not the private property of the monarch.
If we became a republic the crown estates would just be rebranded to something else, just as everything that is currently HM whatever will get rebranded then too.
If we became a republic taxpayers would fund a President and their family direct
A damn sight cheaper than the Royals I'd wager. Especially after we have sold of all the crown estate to the Chinese...
No, with no royal wedding, jubilee or coronation revenue whether and the Crown estate certainly won't be sold off, it is our heritage.
I certainly don't want President Johnson or President Blair either
It might not be sold off, but the revenues wouldn't go to Chas or William.
The replacement doesn't need to be a President - that would require such a major constitutional overhaul that it'll never happen.
Simply pass an act of parliament that deems Boris or Blair or whoever to be the next "Heir of the Body of Princess Sophia, Electress and Dowager Duchess of Hanover, Daughter of the late Queen of Bohemia, Daughter of King James the First". Make sure you first require them to submit a letter of abdication post-dated for ten years in the future.
Problem solved. And even if we ended up with King Boris, it'd be fine. He'd do the job for (much) less than the current one, he'd be happy to turn up and open all the new bus stations you could possibly wish for, and he'd be colourful enough to keep the tabloids happy.
You'd want to make sure that letter of abdication was pretty watertight, and that there were enough counselors of state who could sign bills into law on his behalf in case he gets into a strop and refuses to play nicely. But otherwise, job done.
Then you still end up with an ex politician President, which defeats the point of an apolitical head of state. Neither have royal blood that I can see either
After, what, 13? (14?) generations since Electress Sophia, I suspect that whatever royal magic might have been in her blood has been diluted beyond the threshold of detectability by now.
Her living descendents today likely number in the tens or possibly even hundreds of millions. All of them have roughly as much royal blood as Charles. Even if you did restrict the list of candidates to them, there'd still be plenty to choose from!
(And I note that Charles has never offered any actual evidence of his supposed magic inheritance - you'd think that someone who had built their entire life around heredity would have at least got himself a basic 23andme or AncestryDNA test kit!)
Yes but descendants with as much claim as Charles would still be aristocratic and royal by blood
We could always restore the Plantagenets by making Danny Dyer king.
I think it's obvious that the next generation of royals don't see much less value in the "visibility" work that the last Queen was so keen on.
I've been keeping an eye on the Court Circular for the past 6 months (yeah, interesting, I know...)
Princess Anne does lots of sports, rural, and health-related visits Prince Richard does lots of buildings, engineering, built environment-related visits Prince Edward does some theatre, arts, and youth-related visits
And, er, that's it.
Prince William does virtually none of that stuff, even accounting for time off with his wife being ill. He goes to some dinners, and does a feww investiture ceremonies - the rest of his official engagements tend to be for personal projects like the Earthshot Prize. The contrast between his diary in 2023 and Charles' in, say, 2003 is rather eye-opening.
But who's to say that's a bad thing - if you've got a new university building that needs opened, say, why do you need Prince Richard rather than a Lord Mayor, ex-government minister, or someone from off the telly anyway?
At this point, it looks almost like a hobby for the older ones - or something they do because they've always done it, not because there's much need for it.
I’ve never even heard of Prince Richard.
I do think it’s fascinating, though, these subtle shifts in kingly responsibilities. It’s not obvious to me why William is maintaining a low profile. Is he just lazy?
Richard is the Duke of Gloucester - the King's cousin, I think. Did an architecture course in the 70s, and has been stuck opening shopping centres ever since...
As for William, I know there've been rumours about problems in his personal life - and at the very least his wife must have been very ill for some time to need such a hugely serious operation. But I doubt that's enough have stopped him taking some of Anne/Richard/Edward's more prestigious gigs if he'd felt it was necessary to do so - he just doesn't see the value in it.
Yes, Duke of Gloucester. I just never hear him referred to as Prince Richard, for some reason. I agree with the original notion that we’re frankly short of a few royals. Philip and Zara look the most “papabile” to my eye.
William needs to pull his finger out. The deal is that we pay for their luxury, and they perform their duties like Stakhanovites.
Speaking of which, the King is also the King of NZ. I know he’s due for a visit in November, but we kind of need him more often than every five or six years.
The days of organising the monarchy around the contingencies of boat-plane via BOAC are well and truly over.
Profits of the crown estates and duchies pay for the Prince and Princess of Wales actually, taxpayers pay for nothing more than their security.
The Governor General does the day to day things in NZ for the King and is currently a Maori woman
The crown estates belong to the country, they are not the private property of the monarch.
If we became a republic the crown estates would just be rebranded to something else, just as everything that is currently HM whatever will get rebranded then too.
If we became a republic taxpayers would fund a President and their family direct
A damn sight cheaper than the Royals I'd wager. Especially after we have sold of all the crown estate to the Chinese...
No, with no royal wedding, jubilee or coronation revenue whether and the Crown estate certainly won't be sold off, it is our heritage.
I certainly don't want President Johnson or President Blair either
It might not be sold off, but the revenues wouldn't go to Chas or William.
The replacement doesn't need to be a President - that would require such a major constitutional overhaul that it'll never happen.
Simply pass an act of parliament that deems Boris or Blair or whoever to be the next "Heir of the Body of Princess Sophia, Electress and Dowager Duchess of Hanover, Daughter of the late Queen of Bohemia, Daughter of King James the First". Make sure you first require them to submit a letter of abdication post-dated for ten years in the future.
Problem solved. And even if we ended up with King Boris, it'd be fine. He'd do the job for (much) less than the current one, he'd be happy to turn up and open all the new bus stations you could possibly wish for, and he'd be colourful enough to keep the tabloids happy.
You'd want to make sure that letter of abdication was pretty watertight, and that there were enough counselors of state who could sign bills into law on his behalf in case he gets into a strop and refuses to play nicely. But otherwise, job done.
Then you still end up with an ex politician President, which defeats the point of an apolitical head of state. Neither have royal blood that I can see either
After, what, 13? (14?) generations since Electress Sophia, I suspect that whatever royal magic might have been in her blood has been diluted beyond the threshold of detectability by now.
Her living descendents today likely number in the tens or possibly even hundreds of millions. All of them have roughly as much royal blood as Charles. Even if you did restrict the list of candidates to them, there'd still be plenty to choose from!
(And I note that Charles has never offered any actual evidence of his supposed magic inheritance - you'd think that someone who had built their entire life around heredity would have at least got himself a basic 23andme or AncestryDNA test kit!)
Yes but descendants with as much claim as Charles would still be aristocratic and royal by blood
After a few more generations it would be homeopathic royal blood. Rather fitting for descendants of Charles.
One area that I agree with Leon is that PB's approach to the war in the Ukraine is somewhat unnuanced.
The prevailing consensensus here on PB is that the conflict very closely mirrors World War II, with only the occasional visit from real Russian trolls, or real demented Trumpist-Putinists, to put o any dissenting view. In fact the war is not that simple.
PBs approach to the Ukraine war is Putin is bad therefore he must lose so he will lose.
"Putin is bad therefore he must lose" is as far as it goes I am afraid. All bets are off if Putin shill Trump wins the Presidency.
How doltish.
You are engaging in JJ's historical inevitablism. He may lose (by many metrics he has already lost) but we have no idea whether he will or not. Harper, whoever the hell they are and wherever the hell they come from, is doing nothing other than articulating the truth.
PB has a weird fixation that because people want something to happen it will happen.
It's bizarro.
You're misunderstanding the point.
Whether or not Putin loses is entirely within the gift of the west. 'Must lose' is just shorthand for we must make sure it happens.
Whether or not we do (particularly the US) is clearly an open question.
We evidently don't believe that he should lose to the extent that he has a comprehensive military defeat. We evidently are happy that his forces have been bogged down for months and resources thrown at the effort. Perhaps that is losing in the minds of Western governments. In which case fair enough.
It's not the kind of losing that I think many on here have in mind, that said.
The important thing is surely that Ukraine can "win", which means getting its people from under the yoke of the Russians and their economy back able to develop without missiles and Shahed drones being lobbed at it every few days.
Which they seem to be fighting for. I have no idea whether this is possible at the current level of Western military aid.
My point all along is that people are ignoring the reality of the situation which is that Russia has decided to invade Ukraine for whatever historical reasons and the West is being shown to be completely powerless to do anything about it.
And PB has a huge problem with this for some understandable but illogical reason.
One area that I agree with Leon is that PB's approach to the war in the Ukraine is somewhat unnuanced.
The prevailing consensensus here on PB is that the conflict very closely mirrors World War II, with only the occasional visit from real Russian trolls, or real demented Trumpist-Putinists, to put o any dissenting view. In fact the war is not that simple.
PBs approach to the Ukraine war is Putin is bad therefore he must lose so he will lose.
"Putin is bad therefore he must lose" is as far as it goes I am afraid. All bets are off if Putin shill Trump wins the Presidency.
How doltish.
You are engaging in JJ's historical inevitablism. He may lose (by many metric he has already lost) but we have no idea whether he will or not. Harper, whoever the hell they are and wherever the hell they come from, is doing nothing other than articulating the truth.
PB has a weird fixation that because people want something to happen it will happen.
It's bizarro.
I'm unsure where you get this idea that I'm engaging in "historical inevitablism". I'm not.
I want Ukraine to win, and I think the best way of preventing wider conflict is for Ukraine to win. I therefore tend to think that we need to do much more to help Ukraine win.
But do I see a Ukrainian victory as inevitable? Do I heck, and I've never said so.
I have said, however. that I feel that Russia has strategically lost, and it is very hard to see how they get a real 'win' out of this. They already had Crimea and most of the Donbass pre-2022, and the new areas they've gained are not particularly strategic. And the cost in men, material and money has been immense. Worst of all from their point of view, their strategic enemies had spent a few decades spending less and less on their militaries, and Putin's little adventure will probably reverse that. Russia is a reduced entity thanks to Putin, and it could all have been so different.
But I'd argue there's something else we see: "Ukraine cannot win, therefore they shouldn't fight". IMV that's wrong.
It's the critical question. It is up to the Ukrainians to determine whether they fight on and is no one else's business (unless perhaps POTUS thinks by them fighting on it would threaten escalation).
Most conflicts end in negotiation so I don't think it is beyond the pale to ponder whether this one should as well.
I probably said at the outset of the conflict that it would. I probably still think it will. I don't see a resolution in the near term and we have @Sean_F's experts saying it will only be another 2-3 years before Ukraine is in a position to do something or other. And perhaps this is the case. But a lot of people are dying in the meantime.
The trouble from Ukraine's perspective is that a ceasefire now would only be a stay of execution. It's all well and good talking about Nato and EU membership but the former looks increasingly flaky with President Trump on the way and the latter will be far from straightforward eg agriculture.
Interim verdict: Putin looks healthy enough. Quite on top of his brief. Remember when we were told he was dying?
Also: not mad. Obsessive. Autocratic. But not insane. Not immediately off putting. Wily. Cunning. Duplicitous
I sense he really doesn’t want to invade and conquer Eastern Europe. But he really does want a large chunk of Ukraine. And he is genuinely aggrieved about NATO expansion - it’s not a pretext
So a dangerous man but not a Hitler
Interim verdict on tucker: doing the best he can. His main achievement is getting the interview in the first place - creating the envy of all his peers
He also asks some quite devious questions that make Putin look a little credulous or clumsy but he does it in a way that Putin doesn’t notice
It is not 120 minutes of sycophancy. But I am only halfway through
Yet still 50 minutes longer than most people with their heads actually screwed on have managed.
Some of us still remember the days when you were telling us all that Putin would be our saviour.
Another one that didn’t surprise on the upside.
It it a constant source of amazement to me that your only friend is a dog, given the ready wit, personal charm and that sly, playful charisma you regularly exhibit on this site
You are wasted on this site Leon. Your charm charisma and intelligence is too much for the regulars to handle.
I know. I sometimes feel I am more approached in Sverdlovsk than Swindon
A prophet without honour etc
What's happened to you, Leon? Are you OK?
Cambodia. Doing good professional knapping but bereft of social life - a self inflicted monastic solitude which I now possibly regret. Because it makes me reliant on PB for discourse at a time when PB has turned to shit
No wonder so many have fled the site
But I will end up with some excellent flints - I think - and it will all be worth it. Head down. Do the graft
Good work SHOULD be hard
Is PB not just in a lull waiting for some significant political betting to start? The general election could be mere weeks away and the US election is definitely in November. Calm before the storm (and the opportunity to fleece some less savvy punters on the markets?)
No. Absolutely no
It is in a terrible decline
Recall we used to compare it to a pub. You had the regulars, with their cranky obsessions and ancient gossip, you had frequent visitors - sometimes drunk, sometimes high, often amusing - you had passers by with brilliant new stories or total bewilderment. Crucially you had a core of really intelligent open minded people gathered round the bar
It seems to me that open minded core has gone. Now PB resembles a tedious HR meeting dominated by fucking boring lawyers and accountants and IT nerds who insist they are right, won’t allow dissent, and either chase away interesting people or bore everyone else
The wokeness prevails, there is no intellectual curiosity, no surprising new views from that guy on the corner by the slot machine
The only reason I am still here is because i have invested 15 years of conversation in this place and it will be a large wrench to leave, and I am particularly reliant on it out here in Phnom Penh
I will leave it as soon as I can
I think reflects the broader politics. Nobody believes in the Brexit fairy anymore, the idea of supporting the Tories is risible, and Starmer is about to offer the blandest prospectus ever put to the British public. Even the Lib Dems have nothing to say.
The world is pivoting, the kaleidoscope has been shaken, but Britain has given up. For the moment, at least.
Yes. The wider world is definitely part of it. Politics is more polarised so pb is part of that
Also everyone here is just older and crankier perhaps. But fuck knows why I have to respect these geriatric twats - I still travel the world and do stuff - I stay open minded. Pb does not
Hey ho
If I’m still here in a year please please please tease me mercilessly until I am shamed into going. I need to find a replacement forum - it’s not easy. Pb of old was special
I am looking hard
But you're not particularly open-minded. Nor a particularly free-thinker. What you mainly do is haul the same old prejudices and obsessions from one far-flung location to another. One day we get a bunch of right wing tropes posted from Camden. Next day the same from Cambodia. And so on and so forth.
There's rarely anything surprising let alone original about the view expressed. You seem to confuse (in yourself) a lively intelligence and advanced English language skills for some sort of serious intellect (which you do not have). I'm afraid that is probably your defining characteristic as regards here - an inflated self-image. Eg this regular moanfest about how PB has gone to the dogs. It's just you bigging yourself up again, isn't it?
Anyway, whatever, I'm not sure I can be bothered to post this. It's spot on but what - really - is the point? Perhaps you can tell me.
(have you been to Gran Canaria btw?)
Really Kinabalu I always had some respect for Hampstead liberals until I started observing your posts. But you are a parody a south yorkshire boy trying to desperately fit in amongst people who despise you by becoming the wokiest fool in the village. Please be authentic and move back to south yorkshire you would fit in better there.
Comments
More or less everybody agrees that the country is buggered, more or less everybody agrees why on all the salient points - stagnant productivity, lack of investment, insane house prices, rentier economy, etc. There are few on here who think differently.
The trouble is, these are problems that need managerial solutions rather than ideological ones.
While it might be fun to debate the motion that This House Would Hang All Landlords and Confiscate the Bank Balances, Walking Canes, and Cats of All Pensioners, it's a lot simpler and duller to agree "well, everything would be better if we built more houses and stopped subsidising pensioners to the detriment of everyone else."
"Dull solutions for bloody obvious problems". That should be Labour's 2024 campaign slogan and, to all effects and purposes, is.
But Ukraine is one of those topics, like Brexit or Gaza or the power of AI, where people spend their time on internet forums defensively reacting to the perceived agendas of others, which makes their own arguments come across as agenda driven which in turn leads others to react defensively and so ad infinitum. But that's nothing new.
Then he was talking about 'liberals', but it's even more relevant today for Farage, the neo right and their weird appeasement of Putin.
https://youtu.be/qXBswFfh6AY?si=v9ifMhqkNw--6lke&t=1477
What’s ruined the site is the dead hand of orthodoxy. Plus you’re all a bunch of fucking lawyers and accountants and business dudes and retired IT geeks. Twats
We desperately need more arty types. Poets. Violinists. Dancers. Opera singers. Anyone creative, anyone, literally anyone. Anyone!
But no
I mean, I know Leon says we all hate conflicting opinions, but I actually welcome them, particularly on things I don't know a great deal about. Hence I'm as interested in DA's take on the conflict as JJ's.
U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Spokane, announced Thursday she will not seek reelection this fall, joining a wave of retirements in a House of Representatives whose dysfunction has been on full public display this week.
In giving up on nearly two decades of seniority — and a powerful committee chair position — at just 54 years old, McMorris Rodgers’ decision was taken by some Washington Republican political observers as a clear sign that remaining in the fractious GOP House majority was just not worth it any more. . . .
The announcement makes McMorris Rodgers the second member of Washington’s congressional delegation to decline to run for reelection this year. U.S. Rep. Derek Kilmer, D-Gig Harbor, announced in November he wouldn’t seek a seventh term . . .
McMorris Rodgers’ choice to step aside comes at a high point in her seniority and power in the House of Representatives, as she chairs the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee, where she has been a vocal critic of Biden administration policies and of plans to potentially tear down four Lower Snake River dams.
She had socked away more than $1.6 million for her reelection campaign and faced no big-name challengers in the solidly Republican 5th Congressional District, where she was reelected in 2022 with nearly 60% of the vote.
In that context, her decision was seen by some observers locally and nationally as a further sign of just how unappealing the House has become for politicians who want to get things done.
“When a new chair of a top committee retires, it tells you exactly how bad a workplace Congress has become,” said Doug Heye, a former Republican National Committee communications director, in a post on the social media platform X. . . .
Former state GOP Chair Chris Vance, now an independent, noted that McMorris Rodgers had previously risen to be part of GOP leadership as conference chair and then gave that up in favor of the Energy and Commerce post.
“She was on the leadership track and then jumped into the policy track, and the House Republicans aren’t making policy any more,” said Vance. “What does it even matter being chairman of the most powerful committee and you’re not doing anything and you have to put up with Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene screaming at you all the time?”
Unlike some congressional Republicans, McMorris Rodgers wasn’t facing a primary threat from the MAGA wing of the GOP.
She was the only member of the Washington congressional delegation to vote against impeaching former President Donald Trump for his actions stoking the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol. . . .
"Grows up to 80kg"
Alligator snapping turtle found in Cumbrian tarn
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-68250382
That's perhaps the ambiguity at present - for an elected head of state it would be clear that the funding was state, not privately held, and was linked to doing the job and would end when the job ended.
Or it may be simply that Harper's bizarre.
The replacement doesn't need to be a President - that would require such a major constitutional overhaul that it'll never happen.
Simply pass an act of parliament that deems Boris or Blair or whoever to be the next "Heir of the Body of Princess Sophia, Electress and Dowager Duchess of Hanover, Daughter of the late Queen of Bohemia, Daughter of King James the First". Make sure you first require them to submit a letter of abdication post-dated for ten years in the future.
Problem solved. And even if we ended up with King Boris, it'd be fine. He'd do the job for (much) less than the current one, he'd be happy to turn up and open all the new bus stations you could possibly wish for, and he'd be colourful enough to keep the tabloids happy.
You'd want to make sure that letter of abdication was pretty watertight, and that there were enough counselors of state who could sign bills into law on his behalf in case he gets into a strop and refuses to play nicely. But otherwise, job done.
That shit used to be a daily occurrence on PB.
Sic transit Gloria mundi
ETA: The new 'GONE' profile pic presumably being an accidental crop from 'GONE FISHING'
The answer is ideology. The British public has swallowed the lie that the government can manage their lives better than they can. The answer is to cut government back to doing a few things well and let people lead their own lives. No excessive administration or endless regulation.
£66bn on a railway line which gets you to Birmingham more slowly is where mangerialism gets you. No dentists, fucked up postmasters, no houses, armies without troops. Weve been living with more managerialism each year. It doesnt work.
Biden faces his ‘Comey moment’
Campaign insiders seethe over a special counsel’s findings.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/09/biden-comey-moment-00140655
Now they just need to do the rest of the math.
"the riches of creases"
I mean, I'm as suburban centrist dad science master as they come. I totally buy into the "it's going to be shit for a significant number of years while things are fixed" and accept it's going to happen and if it doesn't hurt me, the government isn't doing it right.
But I can't get enthusiastic about it.
It would be nice to just press a magic button and make everything nice again, whether that button is Brexit, Brejoin, Automated Luxury Socialism, Johnsonian Unleashing, Trussite Tax Cutting Liberalisation or Whatever The Hell Sunak is offering today. But while those buttons exist and have been pressed, they have tended to make things worse.
It's a bit like diet fads. Deep down, we know that the thing to do is get rid of the chocolate biscuits and to do some more exercise, but faced with that prospect, it's easier to look for the ONE WEIRD TRICK that will do the job for us.
Leon is broadly right that the site needs more ; they are also prone to moree pronounced right or leftwing views than the centre/centre-right consensus here ; but he also fails to see that describing people as twats tends to put off said arty types he needs.
You are engaging in JJ's historical inevitablism. He may lose (by many metrics he has already lost) but we have no idea whether he will or not. Harper, whoever the hell they are and wherever the hell they come from, is doing nothing other than articulating the truth.
PB has a weird fixation that because people want something to happen it will happen.
It's bizarro.
Crapita, paid a fortune to deter people from joining the armed forces, is the perfect example.
Even in China.
They would also bring in far less tourism revenue and we are moving to a working royals of just the King and Queen and heir and their family anyway, so no different to say the US system of President and First Lady and family and VP and spouse and family
Whereas if they are all just short termists trying to either be top dog or get their ideologically sound mate top dog, and it has to happen in the next five years, as that is longer than most cabinet careers, they will pay minimum attention to such things and put all their focus into backstabbing each other and making up trivial but newsworthy rows for the media.
Whether or not Putin loses is entirely within the gift of the west. 'Must lose' is just shorthand for we must make sure it happens.
Whether or not we do (particularly the US) is clearly an open question.
Even stupid old Tony Abbott gets that.
https://www.politico.eu/article/us-republicans-shameful-blocking-ukraine-aid-australia-tony-abbott/
Point is, "PBs approach to the Ukraine war is Putin is bad therefore he must lose so he will lose" is bang on.
The monarch holds the crown estates by virtue of the crown, they are quite explicitly NOT the private property of the monarch.
"Does The Crown Estate belong to the King?"
No.
https://www.thecrownestate.co.uk/about-us/faqs
If the UK becomes a republic then everything that belongs to 'the crown' will now belong to however the state is now run, not the royal family who quite explicitly do not privately own it.
If we become a republic the private property of the Windsors will remain their private property, but the crown is the states, not theirs.
What we need right now is a government that is willing to look at the structural problems UK PLC has as a whole, and take long term steps to invest in them and correct decades of underinvestment. Schools, hospitals, dentists, roads, housebuilding, etc.
I agree with you that we probably need a lot less regulation - say, making it easier to build houses, and no more windowless houses because it's the cheapest way to meet insulation standards. Or school vouchers to give parents greater choice - let the good schools build more good schools, and let the bad ones perish. To suggest a couple of examples.
But the idea that a laissez-faire attitude is going to fix decades-long underinvestment in vital infrastructure is, unfortunately, for the birds. It isn't managerialism that's brought us to this point, it's short-termism. The government cancelling HS2 and rerouting the money to pothole repair in the south, for example. That's short term, cost cutting, quick-buck, MBA-cookie-cutter managerialism, with inevitable results. Britain PLC is being run like Boeing, and the wings are falling off.
What we need is long term management strategy, as Stuartinromford says downthread, while the 'quick fix' is always tempting, it's those quick fixes that have brought us to where we are now. I am unconvinced that quick-buck-capitalism, as it stands in 2024, has any interest in fixing the long term structural problems of the country. The problem is the government, whose job it should be to consider these problems, appears to have no interest in it, either.
I want Ukraine to win, and I think the best way of preventing wider conflict is for Ukraine to win. I therefore tend to think that we need to do much more to help Ukraine win.
But do I see a Ukrainian victory as inevitable? Do I heck, and I've never said so.
I have said, however. that I feel that Russia has strategically lost, and it is very hard to see how they get a real 'win' out of this. They already had Crimea and most of the Donbass pre-2022, and the new areas they've gained are not particularly strategic. And the cost in men, material and money has been immense. Worst of all from their point of view, their strategic enemies had spent a few decades spending less and less on their militaries, and Putin's little adventure will probably reverse that. Russia is a reduced entity thanks to Putin, and it could all have been so different.
But I'd argue there's something else we see: "Ukraine cannot win, therefore they shouldn't fight". IMV that's wrong.
Around about that time - when we all jointly (IIRC) conjured that genius “creases” nickname - was pretty much peak PB
It was argumentative but also really funny and congenial and full of interesting types. I miss it
The reasons why people think he will lose vary but are more complicated than "he is bad".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Mock_a_Mockingbird
It's not the kind of losing that I think many on here have in mind, that said.
White House press briefing likely to focus on Biden age, memory: Watch live
https://thehill.com/homenews/4458155-white-house-spokesperson-briefs-press-after-report-on-biden-memory-watch-live/
The other bureaucracy I have to deal with from time to time is France. In some areas - planning consents, council tax, paying traffic fines, booking trains - it's slicker and easier than Britain. In many others, notably anything touching a notary's office, it's ten times worse.
Her living descendents today likely number in the tens or possibly even hundreds of millions. All of them have roughly as much royal blood as Charles. Even if you did restrict the list of candidates to them, there'd still be plenty to choose from!
(And I note that Charles has never offered any actual evidence of his supposed magic inheritance - you'd think that someone who had built their entire life around heredity would have at least got himself a basic 23andme or AncestryDNA test kit!)
The outcome is entirely unknowable at this point - but it needn't be.
OMFG
I’m sure @Harper has an opinion. We should ask them.
Edit: another source claims closer to 6000, but those only being the legitimate, Protestant, descendants, who's are in the line of succession.
Most conflicts end in negotiation so I don't think it is beyond the pale to ponder whether this one should as well.
I probably said at the outset of the conflict that it would. I probably still think it will. I don't see a resolution in the near term and we have @Sean_F's experts saying it will only be another 2-3 years before Ukraine is in a position to do something or other. And perhaps this is the case. But a lot of people are dying in the meantime.
As for a national framework, I agree with you we need one in key infrastructure the general drift in the UK is helping no one
Just War Tradition maintains that it is morally permissible for a state to wage war only if certain conditions are met. These conditions are divided into two sets, six concerning when it is permissible to go to war, referred to as Jus ad Bellum, and two concerning how war may be legitimately conducted, referred to as Jus in Bello. Most notable in the Jus ad Bellum (JaB) conditions is that a state must have just cause to enter into war, while the Jus in Bello (JiB) conditions state firstly, that military action must be proportional, i.e. not use more force and cause more casualties than is necessary to attaining its objectives and, secondly, that military action must discriminate between combatants and non-combatants, observing the principle of non-combatant immunity.
Building on the Just War Tradition, just war theorists including Walzer add a third element, the moral equality of combatants (MEC). The concept of MEC maintains that combatants on both sides of a war are equally permitted to kill and equally liable to be killed. This equality is irrespective of whether their side entered into the conflict in accordance with the JaB conditions. The distinction between the applicability of the JaB and JiB conditions is central to this position; it may be regarded that the JaB conditions only apply to politicians who make the decision to go to war, while it is only the JiB conditions that apply to combatants doing the fighting. By this argument, combatants on both sides in a war may be regarded as equivalent and fighting justly, provided they adhere to the JiB conditions.
Make of that what you will.
There's rarely anything surprising let alone original about the view expressed. You seem to confuse (in yourself) a lively intelligence and advanced English language skills for some sort of serious intellect (which you do not have). I'm afraid that is probably your defining characteristic as regards here - an inflated self-image. Eg this regular moanfest about how PB has gone to the dogs. It's just you bigging yourself up again, isn't it?
Anyway, whatever, I'm not sure I can be bothered to post this. It's spot on but what - really - is the point? Perhaps you can tell me.
(have you been to Gran Canaria btw?)
Thoughts on the Partisan Attack on Biden's Memory
The Special Counsel report is going to make Biden's age and competence centerstage for the foreseeable future
https://www.messageboxnews.com/p/thoughts-on-the-partisan-attack-on
...I want to stipulate that the report is very bad and poses some real political peril for Biden. I don’t want to sugarcoat it. Biden’s age is his biggest impediment to reelection and this description could be very damaging. However, I have a few thoughts to help you navigate conversations about this annoying topic.
1. This is a Partisan Hit Job
Robert Hur is described in press reports as a “well-respected U.S. attorney,” and maybe he once was, but this report is a partisan hit job. He swerves out of his lane to drive a negative narrative about Biden, the same message the Republican Party uses against Biden. In the report, Hur generously describes memory lapses from others but hammers Biden for the same.
It’s hard to read the report and not think that, without the ability to charge Biden with a crime, Hur wanted to damage him politically...
In Britain and the US, not only politics but also mass media and broadcasting don't cater for these types as much any more either, which is not a coincidence. The Left is crusading but not utopian ; the Right is angry but not satirical.
My point all along is that people are ignoring the reality of the situation which is that Russia has decided to invade Ukraine for whatever historical reasons and the West is being shown to be completely powerless to do anything about it.
And PB has a huge problem with this for some understandable but illogical reason.