All this talk about the finer gradations of social class perfectly illustrates why there can never be a successful British fascist movement. We actually despise each other.
When I go to the pub for a session with my mates we keep a running count of how many times each of us has to go for a pee. Lowest number wins. It adds quite a buzz to proceedings since we all want to be The Man (as it were).
Anybody else do this?
Number of pints before a piss is the RN variant. I've seen eight done, never seen nine and ten exists only in hushed and reverent whispers of legendary heroics. Interestingly, many matches end with throwing up rather than the contestant pissing themselves.
I gather there are one or two posh regiments in the Army where going for a pee at a formal dinner before the end of the evening is over is enough to derail a rupert's career. Even if it is his guest or wife who doesn't have a bladder like a fuel tank (and even if she is expecting etc).
I may be thinking of the previous generation, however. More female officers these days, for a start.
That's what did for Tycho Brahe. He was on a drinking binge with the king(?) and it wasn't the done thing to be the first to go to the toilet. Died of a burst bladder.
Anyone remember that Japanese endurance show where one task was to drink loads of water then the next was not to pee. People who lost had to jump into a pond and relieved themselves in the water.
I change the way I pronounce words depending on where I am, and don't see anything wrong with doing so.
Code switching; nothing wrong with that if you do it well.
I have to. My original accent is not great for professional purposes. I really do have to dial it back.
I was brought up in Fife and Newcastle. My dad is from London, my mum from the West country. I've lived in the Caribbean and the United States. I'm married to someone who spent most of her childhood in the East Midlands. I've lived in SE London for the last decade and a half. My accent is a fucking car crash.
I sympathise. My parents were Welsh and my father was in the oil industry. We moved around quite a bit - Gloucester, Leeds, Bristol, Horsham, the US, France and the Middle East. I picked up accents and dialects as if they were going out of fashion. Nobody can place my accent now. They lean in to listen and usually say "I'm trying to place where you're from..."
As an aside, I ended up at uni in St Andrews for my undergraduate degree. After graduation I ran some restaurants and hotels in and around Fife for a few years before returning to academia. Naturally, when you pick up accents quickly you... have a habit of slipping back into them when meeting somebody from that place. Always a bit awkward if you're front of house and the guest thinks you're patronising them...
Ha, I grew up in St Andrews and worked in a restaurant there, I bet we know people in common. I have exactly that problem, my wife always knows when I'm on the phone to a Scottish call centre... When I meet English people they always say "you don't sound very Scottish" whereas Scots ask where in Scotland I'm from, because I sound 5x more Scottish talking to the latter. On work calls I'm RP. I talk to a northerner, the Newcastle comes out. In the states I find myself going a bit transatlantic. In the Caribbean I'm slightly Bajan. Out and about in SE14 I'm a bit south London. No doubt this points to some kind of fakeness or insecurity on my part but I do it completely subconsciously. I'm jealous of people with completely immutable accents.
Some from both the upper class and the working class are just as snot-nosed as the middle classes. There is even snobbery on council estates.
There used to be an upper class bod in this parish who kept going on about where he shopped and how he "grew up on an estate", har har. Others from the upper class don't give a fuck about class, aren't credulous believers either in science or in non-scientific religions, call a ghost a ghost when they experience one, and generally try to see things as they are. See for example what Charles Spencer has written about boarding school. Good on him. You'd never get a nouve from the middle classes like Rishi Sunak writing anything like that in a million years.
Another example of someone from the upper class who has been telling it how it really is recently is Constance Marten, from the dock at the Old Bailey. 👍 Constance. No middle class wanker will ever share this view. The case is a great shibboleth.
Of course many working class people "would" do the same if they could, but generally their minds get smashed at school, and the rebellious ones [*] get very severely worked over.
*For those who don't already know: this doesn't mean gangsters.
PS I learnt yesterday that Dillibe Onyeama had died. RIP Dillibe.
As the grandson of humble immigrants to this country I’ve struggled to understand the class system in this country.
The worst sort are upper middle class people who try and pass themselves off as working class (whilst denigrating the working classes.)
I'm the son of a humble immigrant to this country. Native-English London slum background on the other side. But there's more to background than parentage.
I probably have a wider experience of Britain's class system than anyone here FWIW.
(I can't go into that. Quite sure that many here have a substantial breadth of experience, though - broader than the experience of many of their mates.)
All my fellow loony lefty friends would hate me for praising Spencer's book. But they don't have such a wide experience, so what do they know?
Firm believer in giving credit WHEREVER it's due and that this is good for both intellect and soul.
I find I vary it according to company; I’ve even caught myself saying “restroom” in certain circumstances
Toilet or loo, depending on how many syllables I have time to pronounce. Lavatory is ridiculous.
I remember an American woman I used to work with being absolutely scandalised I'd used the word 'toilet'. It was as if I'd sworn. "You must say 'bathroom'", she chided. I'm not having a bath, though, am I? And given I'm in the office it's unlikely there is a bath. Whereas there will be a toilet. Now I can see the desire to euphemise toilet in a way I absolutely can't with pudding. But still. It's not that great a taboo. I'm not ashamed to be going to the loo. I'm not asking anyone to watch; just explaining my temporary absence from the room.
But “toilet” is also a euphemism. A French word for washing. You’re not actually having a wash
The only word that isn’t a euphemism is “shitter” but despite my lifelong desires to epater les bourgeois even i draw the line at “shitter”
Whereas using the “crapper” is just like hoovering
I change the way I pronounce words depending on where I am, and don't see anything wrong with doing so.
Code switching; nothing wrong with that if you do it well.
I have to. My original accent is not great for professional purposes. I really do have to dial it back.
I was brought up in Fife and Newcastle. My dad is from London, my mum from the West country. I've lived in the Caribbean and the United States. I'm married to someone who spent most of her childhood in the East Midlands. I've lived in SE London for the last decade and a half. My accent is a fucking car crash.
I sympathise. My parents were Welsh and my father was in the oil industry. We moved around quite a bit - Gloucester, Leeds, Bristol, Horsham, the US, France and the Middle East. I picked up accents and dialects as if they were going out of fashion. Nobody can place my accent now. They lean in to listen and usually say "I'm trying to place where you're from..."
As an aside, I ended up at uni in St Andrews for my undergraduate degree. After graduation I ran some restaurants and hotels in and around Fife for a few years before returning to academia. Naturally, when you pick up accents quickly you... have a habit of slipping back into them when meeting somebody from that place. Always a bit awkward if you're front of house and the guest thinks you're patronising them...
Ha, I grew up in St Andrews and worked in a restaurant there, I bet we know people in common. I have exactly that problem, my wife always knows when I'm on the phone to a Scottish call centre... When I meet English people they always say "you don't sound very Scottish" whereas Scots ask where in Scotland I'm from, because I sound 5x more Scottish talking to the latter. On work calls I'm RP. I talk to a northerner, the Newcastle comes out. In the states I find myself going a bit transatlantic. In the Caribbean I'm slightly Bajan. Out and about in SE14 I'm a bit south London. No doubt this points to some kind of fakeness or insecurity on my part but I do it completely subconsciously. I'm jealous of people with completely immutable accents.
It was a standing joke in our house that we could always tell who my late mother was on the phone to because she started to sound like them and would even start using their phrases. It was entirely unconscious on her part. My brother inherited this gift to some extent which made fitting into new schools easier but I never mastered it.
I will entertain no further discussions on this topic with plebs who think it rhymes with gone.
Makes you sound like Hyacinth Bucket, rather than the proud, yet modest working class Yorkshireman we all recognise.
At least no one is rhyming it with 'done'.
Yes, “scone” to rhyme with “cone” is surely a lower middle class genteelism, like “serviette”. I can see John Betjeman quietly wincing when I hear it
Opposite - the short 'o' for scone sounds odd and pretentious to me. Maybe because the only person I know who says it that way is odd and pretentious.
My favourite on this is when you get people who naturally do short 'a's (eg people from the North) trying too hard to change to the (perceived) classier Southern long 'a' sound.
It can lead to horrors such as the "garse cooker".
The truth is scone is one of few words without a strong class or North-South aspect to its pronunciation. It's a complex fractured map. So everyone things their way is the normal and natural way and the other way is pretentious, but they're mistaken.
I struggle to think of another word like that in the English language.
The late Queen said scone to rhyme with gone. That’s the posh and proper way. Below that is a layer of insecure middle class people. Or working class people trying to be middle class - @kinabalu - they say scone like cone
Below that is the uncaring working class and the feral Celts, they say it like the Queen
This isn’t actually an unusual pattern in British life. See the Brexit vote. Working class and very posh: Leave. Insecure middle: Remain
No, look at the map - the "cone" pronunciation is most prevalent in the midlands, the deindustrialised north and the Thames estuary, prime Leave areas, and least prevalent in the Remain heartland of Scotland. It's just another example of Leave voters being wrong about everything.
Belief in ghosts also exhibits this weird social pattern - it is found in the working and upper classes. The insecure middle is profoundly skeptic
This is true, btw. Its a sociological known
Another thing the middle classes are right about.
Quite possibly so. I’m not being down on the aspiring middle classes
They are the people that get things done. The strivers. The shopkeepers. The accountants. The money men and the IT people and the managers of things. I just keep my social intercourse with them to a minimum because of the Cringe Factor
I’ve heard that you try to avoid the tradesman’s entrance.
Though we Scots are less class obsessed I always liked counter jumper as an anachronistic class based insult. Tbf it would probably describe most of our political class nowadays, and PB for that matter.
The Scots have sectarianism, the English have class. As it were
The Scots have class too, watch (or read) Trainspotting, it's all about class.
I remember watching an interview after Scotland had beaten England in rugby again and the difference in accent between John Barclay and Finn Russell despite being growing up in the same part of Scotland around Stirling is remarkable.
I change the way I pronounce words depending on where I am, and don't see anything wrong with doing so.
Code switching; nothing wrong with that if you do it well.
I have to. My original accent is not great for professional purposes. I really do have to dial it back.
I was brought up in Fife and Newcastle. My dad is from London, my mum from the West country. I've lived in the Caribbean and the United States. I'm married to someone who spent most of her childhood in the East Midlands. I've lived in SE London for the last decade and a half. My accent is a fucking car crash.
I sympathise. My parents were Welsh and my father was in the oil industry. We moved around quite a bit - Gloucester, Leeds, Bristol, Horsham, the US, France and the Middle East. I picked up accents and dialects as if they were going out of fashion. Nobody can place my accent now. They lean in to listen and usually say "I'm trying to place where you're from..."
As an aside, I ended up at uni in St Andrews for my undergraduate degree. After graduation I ran some restaurants and hotels in and around Fife for a few years before returning to academia. Naturally, when you pick up accents quickly you... have a habit of slipping back into them when meeting somebody from that place. Always a bit awkward if you're front of house and the guest thinks you're patronising them...
Ha, I grew up in St Andrews and worked in a restaurant there, I bet we know people in common. I have exactly that problem, my wife always knows when I'm on the phone to a Scottish call centre... When I meet English people they always say "you don't sound very Scottish" whereas Scots ask where in Scotland I'm from, because I sound 5x more Scottish talking to the latter. On work calls I'm RP. I talk to a northerner, the Newcastle comes out. In the states I find myself going a bit transatlantic. In the Caribbean I'm slightly Bajan. Out and about in SE14 I'm a bit south London. No doubt this points to some kind of fakeness or insecurity on my part but I do it completely subconsciously. I'm jealous of people with completely immutable accents.
Ah, the great Call Centre conversation. Where you spend more time talking to somebody from 'your neck of the woods' (so to speak) than actually dealing with the reason you've called them in the first place.
You worked in a restaurant in St Andrews... How long ago?
Some from both the upper class and the working class are just as snot-nosed as the middle classes. There is even snobbery on council estates.
There used to be an upper class bod in this parish who kept going on about where he shopped and how he "grew up on an estate", har har. Others from the upper class don't give a fuck about class, aren't credulous believers either in science or in non-scientific religions, call a ghost a ghost when they experience one, and generally try to see things as they are. See for example what Charles Spencer has written about boarding school. Good on him. You'd never get a nouve from the middle classes like Rishi Sunak writing anything like that in a million years.
Another example of someone from the upper class who has been telling it how it really is recently is Constance Marten, from the dock at the Old Bailey. 👍 Constance. No middle class wanker will ever share this view. The case is a great shibboleth.
Of course many working class people "would" do the same if they could, but generally their minds get smashed at school, and the rebellious ones [*] get very severely worked over.
*For those who don't already know: this doesn't mean gangsters.
PS I learnt yesterday that Dillibe Onyeama had died. RIP Dillibe.
Rishi isn't a "nouve".
We must be working from different definitions. Or else there's info I'm missing about his parents. They're outside Britain's top decile by net worth, or at least they were - am I right?
He * went to a famous school that his father (an NHS GP) didn't go to * must have been a right crawler of a goody two shoes when he was there * married loadsamoney * joined the nouves' favourite political party to boot.
He's a textbook nouve. Or he would be if I wrote the textbook.
Admittedly he's a different kind of nouve from the son of a barrow boy who builds his own business to become a self-made millionaire, always loves a day at the races, has tastes that are considered vulgar, and comes across as a boastful extrovert with a loud mouth. Still a nouve though.
He isn't a "nouve" because he is of immigrant stock and hence he is making his way in society as best he can from no particular definition of a starting point. The slate is clean.
I change the way I pronounce words depending on where I am, and don't see anything wrong with doing so.
Code switching; nothing wrong with that if you do it well.
I have to. My original accent is not great for professional purposes. I really do have to dial it back.
I was brought up in Fife and Newcastle. My dad is from London, my mum from the West country. I've lived in the Caribbean and the United States. I'm married to someone who spent most of her childhood in the East Midlands. I've lived in SE London for the last decade and a half. My accent is a fucking car crash.
I sympathise. My parents were Welsh and my father was in the oil industry. We moved around quite a bit - Gloucester, Leeds, Bristol, Horsham, the US, France and the Middle East. I picked up accents and dialects as if they were going out of fashion. Nobody can place my accent now. They lean in to listen and usually say "I'm trying to place where you're from..."
As an aside, I ended up at uni in St Andrews for my undergraduate degree. After graduation I ran some restaurants and hotels in and around Fife for a few years before returning to academia. Naturally, when you pick up accents quickly you... have a habit of slipping back into them when meeting somebody from that place. Always a bit awkward if you're front of house and the guest thinks you're patronising them...
Ha, I grew up in St Andrews and worked in a restaurant there, I bet we know people in common. I have exactly that problem, my wife always knows when I'm on the phone to a Scottish call centre... When I meet English people they always say "you don't sound very Scottish" whereas Scots ask where in Scotland I'm from, because I sound 5x more Scottish talking to the latter. On work calls I'm RP. I talk to a northerner, the Newcastle comes out. In the states I find myself going a bit transatlantic. In the Caribbean I'm slightly Bajan. Out and about in SE14 I'm a bit south London. No doubt this points to some kind of fakeness or insecurity on my part but I do it completely subconsciously. I'm jealous of people with completely immutable accents.
Ah, the great Call Centre conversation. Where you spend more time talking to somebody from 'your neck of the woods' (so to speak) than actually dealing with the reason you've called them in the first place.
You worked in a restaurant in St Andrews... How long ago?
When I go to the pub for a session with my mates we keep a running count of how many times each of us has to go for a pee. Lowest number wins. It adds quite a buzz to proceedings since we all want to be The Man (as it were).
Anybody else do this?
Number of pints before a piss is the RN variant. I've seen eight done, never seen nine and ten exists only in hushed and reverent whispers of legendary heroics. Interestingly, many matches end with throwing up rather than the contestant pissing themselves.
Ah no, that's another level. We wouldn't last long in that company.
Although there is a certain 'hare v tortoise' aspect to this. You can use that if you know what you're doing.
All this talk about the finer gradations of social class perfectly illustrates why there can never be a successful British fascist movement. We actually despise each other.
Applying the bigotry quota theory (BQT) - that every culture has its own equilibrium level of bigotry, and that more chauvinistic views on one spectrum mean fewer on another - there is possibly some truth in that.
So the British expend so much of their bigotry quota on class and nationality that there is less left over for race, gender or sexuality. Or the Americans with their less well defined class system have to turn to racial, religious or ideological differences to satisfy their bigotry needs.
Of course one country could be more bigoted in toto than another as a result of history, education or demographics. And in fact the whole idea might be a load of old cobblers, but it's fun to speculate.
I will entertain no further discussions on this topic with plebs who think it rhymes with gone.
Makes you sound like Hyacinth Bucket, rather than the proud, yet modest working class Yorkshireman we all recognise.
At least no one is rhyming it with 'done'.
Yes, “scone” to rhyme with “cone” is surely a lower middle class genteelism, like “serviette”. I can see John Betjeman quietly wincing when I hear it
Opposite - the short 'o' for scone sounds odd and pretentious to me. Maybe because the only person I know who says it that way is odd and pretentious.
My favourite on this is when you get people who naturally do short 'a's (eg people from the North) trying too hard to change to the (perceived) classier Southern long 'a' sound.
It can lead to horrors such as the "garse cooker".
The truth is scone is one of few words without a strong class or North-South aspect to its pronunciation. It's a complex fractured map. So everyone things their way is the normal and natural way and the other way is pretentious, but they're mistaken.
I struggle to think of another word like that in the English language.
The late Queen said scone to rhyme with gone. That’s the posh and proper way. Below that is a layer of insecure middle class people. Or working class people trying to be middle class - @kinabalu - they say scone like cone
Below that is the uncaring working class and the feral Celts, they say it like the Queen
This isn’t actually an unusual pattern in British life. See the Brexit vote. Working class and very posh: Leave. Insecure middle: Remain
No, look at the map - the "cone" pronunciation is most prevalent in the midlands, the deindustrialised north and the Thames estuary, prime Leave areas, and least prevalent in the Remain heartland of Scotland. It's just another example of Leave voters being wrong about everything.
Belief in ghosts also exhibits this weird social pattern - it is found in the working and upper classes. The insecure middle is profoundly skeptic
This is true, btw. Its a sociological known
Another thing the middle classes are right about.
Quite possibly so. I’m not being down on the aspiring middle classes
They are the people that get things done. The strivers. The shopkeepers. The accountants. The money men and the IT people and the managers of things. I just keep my social intercourse with them to a minimum because of the Cringe Factor
I’ve heard that you try to avoid the tradesman’s entrance.
Though we Scots are less class obsessed I always liked counter jumper as an anachronistic class based insult. Tbf it would probably describe most of our political class nowadays, and PB for that matter.
The Scots have sectarianism, the English have class. As it were
The Scots have class too, watch (or read) Trainspotting, it's all about class.
I remember watching an interview after Scotland had beaten England in rugby again and the difference in accent between John Barclay and Finn Russell despite being growing up in the same part of Scotland around Stirling is remarkable.
I've just looked them both up on Wikipedia. There is a charming euphemism on Finn Russell's page: at school, Russell "did not feel drawn to academic work". I can imagine his teachers possibly putting it a little more colourfully in private.
All this talk about the finer gradations of social class perfectly illustrates why there can never be a successful British fascist movement. We actually despise each other.
For a similar reason there won't be a successful Yorkshire independence movement any time soon.
It is bad enough being lumped in South Yorkshire with Sheffield, but joining up with Harrogate (pron. Hah-roh-gat-ee)? Nah.
I change the way I pronounce words depending on where I am, and don't see anything wrong with doing so.
Code switching; nothing wrong with that if you do it well.
I have to. My original accent is not great for professional purposes. I really do have to dial it back.
I was brought up in Fife and Newcastle. My dad is from London, my mum from the West country. I've lived in the Caribbean and the United States. I'm married to someone who spent most of her childhood in the East Midlands. I've lived in SE London for the last decade and a half. My accent is a fucking car crash.
I sympathise. My parents were Welsh and my father was in the oil industry. We moved around quite a bit - Gloucester, Leeds, Bristol, Horsham, the US, France and the Middle East. I picked up accents and dialects as if they were going out of fashion. Nobody can place my accent now. They lean in to listen and usually say "I'm trying to place where you're from..."
As an aside, I ended up at uni in St Andrews for my undergraduate degree. After graduation I ran some restaurants and hotels in and around Fife for a few years before returning to academia. Naturally, when you pick up accents quickly you... have a habit of slipping back into them when meeting somebody from that place. Always a bit awkward if you're front of house and the guest thinks you're patronising them...
Ha, I grew up in St Andrews and worked in a restaurant there, I bet we know people in common. I have exactly that problem, my wife always knows when I'm on the phone to a Scottish call centre... When I meet English people they always say "you don't sound very Scottish" whereas Scots ask where in Scotland I'm from, because I sound 5x more Scottish talking to the latter. On work calls I'm RP. I talk to a northerner, the Newcastle comes out. In the states I find myself going a bit transatlantic. In the Caribbean I'm slightly Bajan. Out and about in SE14 I'm a bit south London. No doubt this points to some kind of fakeness or insecurity on my part but I do it completely subconsciously. I'm jealous of people with completely immutable accents.
Ah, the great Call Centre conversation. Where you spend more time talking to somebody from 'your neck of the woods' (so to speak) than actually dealing with the reason you've called them in the first place.
You worked in a restaurant in St Andrews... How long ago?
1991-95.
In the days when there was a 24-hour bakery on Bell Street, Cardinals was a great Turkish restaurant and before the Doll's House came along.
Trump trade advisers plot dollar devaluation Advisers close to the former president — particularly his former trade chief Robert Lighthizer — are considering policies that would weaken the dollar relative to other currencies, which could juice U.S. exports but also fuel inflation. https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/15/devaluing-dollar-trump-trade-war-00152009
When I go to the pub for a session with my mates we keep a running count of how many times each of us has to go for a pee. Lowest number wins. It adds quite a buzz to proceedings since we all want to be The Man (as it were).
Anybody else do this?
Number of pints before a piss is the RN variant. I've seen eight done, never seen nine and ten exists only in hushed and reverent whispers of legendary heroics. Interestingly, many matches end with throwing up rather than the contestant pissing themselves.
Ah no, that's another level. We wouldn't last long in that company.
Although there is a certain 'hare v tortoise' aspect to this. You can use that if you know what you're doing.
I disagree. If you're going to consume a lot before breaking the seal, you have to be doing so quickly. You've got, say, an hour or so before that first pint starts making its presence known in the bladder. Your only hope is to try to get pints 2, 3, 4 and so on in before it does so. The hare approach is definitely the one here. This I suppose is why so many matches in DA's experience end with the participants vomiting.
I've got a bottle of bespoke pomegranate vinegar given to me by the pomegranate grower (and famous Pinot Noir winemaker) on his Mornington Peninsula vineyard in Victoria Australia just before we got on his private plane to go visit his inland vineyard and have a picnic
I've got a bottle of bespoke pomegranate vinegar given to me by the pomegranate grower (and famous Pinot Noir winemaker) on his Mornington Peninsula vineyard in Victoria Australia just before we got on his private plane to go visit his inland vineyard and have a picnic
I've got a bottle of bespoke pomegranate vinegar given to me by the pomegranate grower (and famous Pinot Noir winemaker) on his Mornington Peninsula vineyard in Victoria Australia just before we got on his private plane to go visit his inland vineyard and have a picnic
Here's a photo of the picnic
I win! I'm the poshest
-1 no dog for scale
But if you look closely you can see the greatest cheese in the world (Holy Goat - Victoria)
Actually that photo is making me weep with nostalgia. That was an amazing adventure. The Gazette told me to go do a two week "foodie road trip" from Melbourne to Sydney, where I had to stop off at all the best restaurants, bars, gastropubs - plus vineyards, cheesemakers, olive growers, truffle hunters - en route. Imagine. Fuck me. It was heaven. That bit of Oz where NSW meets Victoria is like the Garden of Eden. And empty. And the oysters of Wapengo!
I will entertain no further discussions on this topic with plebs who think it rhymes with gone.
Makes you sound like Hyacinth Bucket, rather than the proud, yet modest working class Yorkshireman we all recognise.
At least no one is rhyming it with 'done'.
Yes, “scone” to rhyme with “cone” is surely a lower middle class genteelism, like “serviette”. I can see John Betjeman quietly wincing when I hear it
Opposite - the short 'o' for scone sounds odd and pretentious to me. Maybe because the only person I know who says it that way is odd and pretentious.
My favourite on this is when you get people who naturally do short 'a's (eg people from the North) trying too hard to change to the (perceived) classier Southern long 'a' sound.
It can lead to horrors such as the "garse cooker".
The truth is scone is one of few words without a strong class or North-South aspect to its pronunciation. It's a complex fractured map. So everyone things their way is the normal and natural way and the other way is pretentious, but they're mistaken.
I struggle to think of another word like that in the English language.
The late Queen said scone to rhyme with gone. That’s the posh and proper way. Below that is a layer of insecure middle class people. Or working class people trying to be middle class - @kinabalu - they say scone like cone
Below that is the uncaring working class and the feral Celts, they say it like the Queen
This isn’t actually an unusual pattern in British life. See the Brexit vote. Working class and very posh: Leave. Insecure middle: Remain
No, look at the map - the "cone" pronunciation is most prevalent in the midlands, the deindustrialised north and the Thames estuary, prime Leave areas, and least prevalent in the Remain heartland of Scotland. It's just another example of Leave voters being wrong about everything.
Belief in ghosts also exhibits this weird social pattern - it is found in the working and upper classes. The insecure middle is profoundly skeptic
This is true, btw. Its a sociological known
Another thing the middle classes are right about.
Quite possibly so. I’m not being down on the aspiring middle classes
They are the people that get things done. The strivers. The shopkeepers. The accountants. The money men and the IT people and the managers of things. I just keep my social intercourse with them to a minimum because of the Cringe Factor
I’ve heard that you try to avoid the tradesman’s entrance.
Though we Scots are less class obsessed I always liked counter jumper as an anachronistic class based insult. Tbf it would probably describe most of our political class nowadays, and PB for that matter.
The Scots have sectarianism, the English have class. As it were
The Scots have class too, watch (or read) Trainspotting, it's all about class.
I remember watching an interview after Scotland had beaten England in rugby again and the difference in accent between John Barclay and Finn Russell despite being growing up in the same part of Scotland around Stirling is remarkable.
Interestingly Russell grew up in a pretty establishment sports orientated family (RU, cricket, badminton) so I'm guessing his accent and demeanour is something of a choice. Mind you his school has the Raploch in its catchment so may be a bit of adaption to his environment thing going on.
I change the way I pronounce words depending on where I am, and don't see anything wrong with doing so.
Code switching; nothing wrong with that if you do it well.
I have to. My original accent is not great for professional purposes. I really do have to dial it back.
I was brought up in Fife and Newcastle. My dad is from London, my mum from the West country. I've lived in the Caribbean and the United States. I'm married to someone who spent most of her childhood in the East Midlands. I've lived in SE London for the last decade and a half. My accent is a fucking car crash.
I sympathise. My parents were Welsh and my father was in the oil industry. We moved around quite a bit - Gloucester, Leeds, Bristol, Horsham, the US, France and the Middle East. I picked up accents and dialects as if they were going out of fashion. Nobody can place my accent now. They lean in to listen and usually say "I'm trying to place where you're from..."
As an aside, I ended up at uni in St Andrews for my undergraduate degree. After graduation I ran some restaurants and hotels in and around Fife for a few years before returning to academia. Naturally, when you pick up accents quickly you... have a habit of slipping back into them when meeting somebody from that place. Always a bit awkward if you're front of house and the guest thinks you're patronising them...
Ha, I grew up in St Andrews and worked in a restaurant there, I bet we know people in common. I have exactly that problem, my wife always knows when I'm on the phone to a Scottish call centre... When I meet English people they always say "you don't sound very Scottish" whereas Scots ask where in Scotland I'm from, because I sound 5x more Scottish talking to the latter. On work calls I'm RP. I talk to a northerner, the Newcastle comes out. In the states I find myself going a bit transatlantic. In the Caribbean I'm slightly Bajan. Out and about in SE14 I'm a bit south London. No doubt this points to some kind of fakeness or insecurity on my part but I do it completely subconsciously. I'm jealous of people with completely immutable accents.
It was a standing joke in our house that we could always tell who my late mother was on the phone to because she started to sound like them and would even start using their phrases. It was entirely unconscious on her part. My brother inherited this gift to some extent which made fitting into new schools easier but I never mastered it.
I don't know if it's a gift or not. I worry that it makes me seem shifty or insubstantial. Is your brother younger? I think it's a bit of a youngest child trait, always trying to fit in and be liked. My older brother never tried to fit in anywhere and I spent most of my childhood watching him getting bullied (1980s Newcastle was not a friendly place for nonconformists).
When I go to the pub for a session with my mates we keep a running count of how many times each of us has to go for a pee. Lowest number wins. It adds quite a buzz to proceedings since we all want to be The Man (as it were).
Anybody else do this?
Number of pints before a piss is the RN variant. I've seen eight done, never seen nine and ten exists only in hushed and reverent whispers of legendary heroics. Interestingly, many matches end with throwing up rather than the contestant pissing themselves.
Ah no, that's another level. We wouldn't last long in that company.
Although there is a certain 'hare v tortoise' aspect to this. You can use that if you know what you're doing.
A reminder that a significant number of road accidents involve a ruptured bladder.
As bad as the services might be, don't try and hold it in on a long journey.
I've got a bottle of bespoke pomegranate vinegar given to me by the pomegranate grower (and famous Pinot Noir winemaker) on his Mornington Peninsula vineyard in Victoria Australia just before we got on his private plane to go visit his inland vineyard and have a picnic
Here's a photo of the picnic
I win! I'm the poshest
-1 no dog for scale
But if you look closely you can see the greatest cheese in the world
'Aussie Cossack @aussiecossack Broadcasting from Sydney's Russian Consulate since December 2022 for Sputnik News. Follow my main account on Telegram: http://t.me/AussieCossack'
Whipping up accord and mutual understanding wherever he goes, I'm sure.
Trump trade advisers plot dollar devaluation Advisers close to the former president — particularly his former trade chief Robert Lighthizer — are considering policies that would weaken the dollar relative to other currencies, which could juice U.S. exports but also fuel inflation. https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/15/devaluing-dollar-trump-trade-war-00152009
I've got a bottle of bespoke pomegranate vinegar given to me by the pomegranate grower (and famous Pinot Noir winemaker) on his Mornington Peninsula vineyard in Victoria Australia just before we got on his private plane to go visit his inland vineyard and have a picnic
Here's a photo of the picnic
I win! I'm the poshest
-1 no dog for scale
But if you look closely you can see the greatest cheese in the world
I've got a bottle of bespoke pomegranate vinegar given to me by the pomegranate grower (and famous Pinot Noir winemaker) on his Mornington Peninsula vineyard in Victoria Australia just before we got on his private plane to go visit his inland vineyard and have a picnic
I've got a bottle of bespoke pomegranate vinegar given to me by the pomegranate grower (and famous Pinot Noir winemaker) on his Mornington Peninsula vineyard in Victoria Australia just before we got on his private plane to go visit his inland vineyard and have a picnic
Here's a photo of the picnic
I win! I'm the poshest
-1 no dog for scale
But if you look closely you can see the greatest cheese in the world
Dairylea?
Holy Goat, it literally won an award as best cheese in the world the year I was there (IIRC)
I change the way I pronounce words depending on where I am, and don't see anything wrong with doing so.
Code switching; nothing wrong with that if you do it well.
I have to. My original accent is not great for professional purposes. I really do have to dial it back.
I was brought up in Fife and Newcastle. My dad is from London, my mum from the West country. I've lived in the Caribbean and the United States. I'm married to someone who spent most of her childhood in the East Midlands. I've lived in SE London for the last decade and a half. My accent is a fucking car crash.
I sympathise. My parents were Welsh and my father was in the oil industry. We moved around quite a bit - Gloucester, Leeds, Bristol, Horsham, the US, France and the Middle East. I picked up accents and dialects as if they were going out of fashion. Nobody can place my accent now. They lean in to listen and usually say "I'm trying to place where you're from..."
As an aside, I ended up at uni in St Andrews for my undergraduate degree. After graduation I ran some restaurants and hotels in and around Fife for a few years before returning to academia. Naturally, when you pick up accents quickly you... have a habit of slipping back into them when meeting somebody from that place. Always a bit awkward if you're front of house and the guest thinks you're patronising them...
Ha, I grew up in St Andrews and worked in a restaurant there, I bet we know people in common. I have exactly that problem, my wife always knows when I'm on the phone to a Scottish call centre... When I meet English people they always say "you don't sound very Scottish" whereas Scots ask where in Scotland I'm from, because I sound 5x more Scottish talking to the latter. On work calls I'm RP. I talk to a northerner, the Newcastle comes out. In the states I find myself going a bit transatlantic. In the Caribbean I'm slightly Bajan. Out and about in SE14 I'm a bit south London. No doubt this points to some kind of fakeness or insecurity on my part but I do it completely subconsciously. I'm jealous of people with completely immutable accents.
Ah, the great Call Centre conversation. Where you spend more time talking to somebody from 'your neck of the woods' (so to speak) than actually dealing with the reason you've called them in the first place.
You worked in a restaurant in St Andrews... How long ago?
1991-95.
In the days when there was a 24-hour bakery on Bell Street, Cardinals was a great Turkish restaurant and before the Doll's House came along.
Just before my time there!
I thought the 24hr bakery was at the Eastern end of the town? Crawfords was on Bell Street but I don't remember it being 24hrs. Used to drink at Aikman's in Bell Street.
I will entertain no further discussions on this topic with plebs who think it rhymes with gone.
Makes you sound like Hyacinth Bucket, rather than the proud, yet modest working class Yorkshireman we all recognise.
At least no one is rhyming it with 'done'.
Yes, “scone” to rhyme with “cone” is surely a lower middle class genteelism, like “serviette”. I can see John Betjeman quietly wincing when I hear it
Opposite - the short 'o' for scone sounds odd and pretentious to me. Maybe because the only person I know who says it that way is odd and pretentious.
My favourite on this is when you get people who naturally do short 'a's (eg people from the North) trying too hard to change to the (perceived) classier Southern long 'a' sound.
It can lead to horrors such as the "garse cooker".
The truth is scone is one of few words without a strong class or North-South aspect to its pronunciation. It's a complex fractured map. So everyone things their way is the normal and natural way and the other way is pretentious, but they're mistaken.
I struggle to think of another word like that in the English language.
The late Queen said scone to rhyme with gone. That’s the posh and proper way. Below that is a layer of insecure middle class people. Or working class people trying to be middle class - @kinabalu - they say scone like cone
Below that is the uncaring working class and the feral Celts, they say it like the Queen
This isn’t actually an unusual pattern in British life. See the Brexit vote. Working class and very posh: Leave. Insecure middle: Remain
No, look at the map - the "cone" pronunciation is most prevalent in the midlands, the deindustrialised north and the Thames estuary, prime Leave areas, and least prevalent in the Remain heartland of Scotland. It's just another example of Leave voters being wrong about everything.
Belief in ghosts also exhibits this weird social pattern - it is found in the working and upper classes. The insecure middle is profoundly skeptic
This is true, btw. Its a sociological known
Another thing the middle classes are right about.
Quite possibly so. I’m not being down on the aspiring middle classes
They are the people that get things done. The strivers. The shopkeepers. The accountants. The money men and the IT people and the managers of things. I just keep my social intercourse with them to a minimum because of the Cringe Factor
I’ve heard that you try to avoid the tradesman’s entrance.
Though we Scots are less class obsessed I always liked counter jumper as an anachronistic class based insult. Tbf it would probably describe most of our political class nowadays, and PB for that matter.
The Scots have sectarianism, the English have class. As it were
The Scots have class too, watch (or read) Trainspotting, it's all about class.
I remember watching an interview after Scotland had beaten England in rugby again and the difference in accent between John Barclay and Finn Russell despite being growing up in the same part of Scotland around Stirling is remarkable.
Interestingly Russell grew up in a pretty establishment sports orientated family (RU, cricket, badminton) so I'm guessing his accent and demeanour is something of a choice. Mind you his school has the Raploch in its catchment so may be a bit of adaption to his environment thing going on.
His wiki page hints that he possibly had something of an awkward streak.
I've got a bottle of bespoke pomegranate vinegar given to me by the pomegranate grower (and famous Pinot Noir winemaker) on his Mornington Peninsula vineyard in Victoria Australia just before we got on his private plane to go visit his inland vineyard and have a picnic
I've got a bottle of bespoke pomegranate vinegar given to me by the pomegranate grower (and famous Pinot Noir winemaker) on his Mornington Peninsula vineyard in Victoria Australia just before we got on his private plane to go visit his inland vineyard and have a picnic
Here's a photo of the picnic
I win! I'm the poshest
-1 no dog for scale
But if you look closely you can see the greatest cheese in the world
'Afters' is fine - perfectly acceptable to say, though as you say, quite working class, which means that if you are middle class and use it you sound like you're needlessly trying to give the impression that you aren't middle class. 'Sweet' is slightly ridiculous, but still probably better than 'dessert'. But both - along with dessert - have the feeling of a euphemism for something that really doesn't need a euphemism. I blame the sort of women who think that pudding is somehow naughty.
There's a gender difference? Personally I think "pudding" suggests something large and slightly indigestible, as in "bread and butter pudding", and just wrong if you're referring to, say, creme caramel. I routinely say "dessert" or "sweet".
All of which just shows there isn't really a consensus...
Men, in my experience, don't tend to think of pudding as in any way transgressive. But they do often think of it as not-particularly masculine. Back in my 20s, when all day drinking in all male company was more common, I tended to be the lone voice in the pub adding a pudding to my pub lunch/tea.
But you're quite right, there isn't a consensus on what the name should be, and I apologise if I came across as dictatorial on the matter. I have my views (which are surprisingly strongly negative on the word 'dessert') but I recognise that they're not universal and I don't claim that they should be.
After the picnic we went to an artisanal gin distillery to drink loads of gin before flying back in our private plane to Melbourne. Here it is. The distillery. Bottom left
I'm going to stop now and do some work because this is making me cry like Proust recherching temps perdu
'Aussie Cossack @aussiecossack Broadcasting from Sydney's Russian Consulate since December 2022 for Sputnik News. Follow my main account on Telegram: http://t.me/AussieCossack'
Whipping up accord and mutual understanding wherever he goes, I'm sure.
People are odd. A day or so ago, a police inspector was being lauded for tackling the shopping mall attacker. Now they're apparently attacking the police for.... reasons.
I change the way I pronounce words depending on where I am, and don't see anything wrong with doing so.
Code switching; nothing wrong with that if you do it well.
I have to. My original accent is not great for professional purposes. I really do have to dial it back.
I was brought up in Fife and Newcastle. My dad is from London, my mum from the West country. I've lived in the Caribbean and the United States. I'm married to someone who spent most of her childhood in the East Midlands. I've lived in SE London for the last decade and a half. My accent is a fucking car crash.
I sympathise. My parents were Welsh and my father was in the oil industry. We moved around quite a bit - Gloucester, Leeds, Bristol, Horsham, the US, France and the Middle East. I picked up accents and dialects as if they were going out of fashion. Nobody can place my accent now. They lean in to listen and usually say "I'm trying to place where you're from..."
As an aside, I ended up at uni in St Andrews for my undergraduate degree. After graduation I ran some restaurants and hotels in and around Fife for a few years before returning to academia. Naturally, when you pick up accents quickly you... have a habit of slipping back into them when meeting somebody from that place. Always a bit awkward if you're front of house and the guest thinks you're patronising them...
Ha, I grew up in St Andrews and worked in a restaurant there, I bet we know people in common. I have exactly that problem, my wife always knows when I'm on the phone to a Scottish call centre... When I meet English people they always say "you don't sound very Scottish" whereas Scots ask where in Scotland I'm from, because I sound 5x more Scottish talking to the latter. On work calls I'm RP. I talk to a northerner, the Newcastle comes out. In the states I find myself going a bit transatlantic. In the Caribbean I'm slightly Bajan. Out and about in SE14 I'm a bit south London. No doubt this points to some kind of fakeness or insecurity on my part but I do it completely subconsciously. I'm jealous of people with completely immutable accents.
It was a standing joke in our house that we could always tell who my late mother was on the phone to because she started to sound like them and would even start using their phrases. It was entirely unconscious on her part. My brother inherited this gift to some extent which made fitting into new schools easier but I never mastered it.
Get two Geordies talking to each other and everyone else needs subtitles to understand what's going on.
I've got a bottle of bespoke pomegranate vinegar given to me by the pomegranate grower (and famous Pinot Noir winemaker) on his Mornington Peninsula vineyard in Victoria Australia just before we got on his private plane to go visit his inland vineyard and have a picnic
Here's a photo of the picnic
I win! I'm the poshest
Nice. Very nice. Merricks? Trofeo?
Very good! Trofeo I think
Let me check the photolocation
Trofeo is quality in a glass. Pinot Gris is very good too.
On topic, I'm not sure there's any seat right now that's safe for the Conservatives.
What I don't know is how things would play out in a GE campign and what pitch Sunak and CCHQ can cry to rally (some) centre-right support around them.
I half expect them to start with we have successfully sent 1 flight of 300 people to Rwanda.
Which would allow the opposition to list the total cost over £1m per person and the fact that’s 1/6th of the people who would be sent there every year
And if HMG is unlucky, more people will arrive on R-Day than leave.
The government are also going to have to be very careful about the tone of the announcement. The temptation will be to celebrate a significant success, but that could easily fall into revelling in cruelty. It's not as if Rishi has shown mastery of political tone.
(See also the tension between Rwanda has to be a deterrent but not too much because the UK aren't heartless bastards. It's possible to walk the tightrope, but it's easy to get it wrong.)
What happens when the first deportee to Rwanda finds their way back here and is offered asylum as a result of being politically persecuted by the Rwandan government?
They mentioned on the news this morning that the government were in talks with other countries about replicating the Rwanda plan and one of those countries listed was Costa Rica.
It made me think, if Costa Rica became the destination it would make sense for anyone from the UK who is on their uppers to get over to France, lose their passport and pretend they can’t speak English and get on a small boat. You get moved to Costa Rica free of charge for a new start in the sun.
Funny, I thought similar. I found myself applying the Place in the Sun filter to the destinations mentioned. Armenia was another one. Why would Armenia be interested in Britain's asylum seekers? What if some of them were Azerbaijanis fleeing persecution in Iran? Or Turks?
Armenia might just be the worst country I’ve ever visited. In terms of hideous buildings and depressing architecture and awful weather. Despite its latitude it’s on a high plateau so it’s windy and cold most of the time. The Soviets left behind a ton of dreadful buildings and the Armenians have only added to that. In addition, the women are beautiful, the people are friendly, and the food is surprisingly good apart from the dried fish. I loved it
I always think countries with a lot of turmoil such as invasions and revolutions have the most beautiful women. Its natural selection as women compete for scarce men. Sadly the uk hasnt had an invasion or revolution for a long time.
I'm not sure natural selection works that quickly.
That said, I think it's true that during and immediately after wars, there tends to be a slight abundance of daughters born over sons (submariners and policemen, famously, tend to have daughters, ISTR). Not sure why that is. (Though I understand it's also true that men with a lot of testosterone disproportionately have daughters - perhaps that's the reason; during wars, men produce more testosterone?)
The submariners one, from a quick google, looks like a case of green jelly beans giving you acne. There is a dose response in one article[1] (although not consistently) but for things like this you really want a randomised sample. Survey may not cut it, particularly if the expected association is known - fathers of girls think, "hey I wonder if there really is anything in that rumour; I'll respond". Only some studies find associations [1,2,3]
See also "IDF pilots only have daughters". Which was, for a brief period of time, a thing.
Another casualty of the replication crisis.
Fortunately we have less* of a replication crisis in epidemiology than social science
*That may only be because it's harder, takes longer and is more expensive to do a replication study in epidemiology than in social sciences
'Afters' is fine - perfectly acceptable to say, though as you say, quite working class, which means that if you are middle class and use it you sound like you're needlessly trying to give the impression that you aren't middle class. 'Sweet' is slightly ridiculous, but still probably better than 'dessert'. But both - along with dessert - have the feeling of a euphemism for something that really doesn't need a euphemism. I blame the sort of women who think that pudding is somehow naughty.
There's a gender difference? Personally I think "pudding" suggests something large and slightly indigestible, as in "bread and butter pudding", and just wrong if you're referring to, say, creme caramel. I routinely say "dessert" or "sweet".
All of which just shows there isn't really a consensus...
Men, in my experience, don't tend to think of pudding as in any way transgressive. But they do often think of it as not-particularly masculine. Back in my 20s, when all day drinking in all male company was more common, I tended to be the lone voice in the pub adding a pudding to my pub lunch/tea.
But you're quite right, there isn't a consensus on what the name should be, and I apologise if I came across as dictatorial on the matter. I have my views (which are surprisingly strongly negative on the word 'dessert') but I recognise that they're not universal and I don't claim that they should be.
Something in this
I always find it a bit jarring when I see otherwise quite masculine Italian men, in impecccable tailoring, standing around chatting as they lick their ice creams. Even the really hardnut 'Ndrangheta in Calabria, they stop killing people at 4pm to go have some gelati in Reggio
I've got a bottle of bespoke pomegranate vinegar given to me by the pomegranate grower (and famous Pinot Noir winemaker) on his Mornington Peninsula vineyard in Victoria Australia just before we got on his private plane to go visit his inland vineyard and have a picnic
Here's a photo of the picnic
I win! I'm the poshest
-1 no dog for scale
But if you look closely you can see the greatest cheese in the world
I've got a bottle of bespoke pomegranate vinegar given to me by the pomegranate grower (and famous Pinot Noir winemaker) on his Mornington Peninsula vineyard in Victoria Australia just before we got on his private plane to go visit his inland vineyard and have a picnic
Here's a photo of the picnic
I win! I'm the poshest
Nice. Very nice. Merricks? Trofeo?
Very good! Trofeo I think
Let me check the photolocation
Trofeo is quality in a glass. Pinot Gris is very good too.
iPhone is telling me I went to a whole bunch of vineyards and estates, Trofeo was amongst them - also Merricks and Montalto, so I don't know who flew us up to the Yarra Valley, but it was fucking ace. The whole deal. It was just five of us, three famous winemakers, one Master of Wine, and the humble flint knapper. Getting steadily drunker and drunker as we flew around Victoria, meeting other wine makers and gin distillers and champagne dudes. Fuck
I would possibly die of cringe if I had to sit with someone who said “scone” to rhyme with “cone”. It could literally be lethal. Happily, no one in my social circle is that naff
Only naff people have used the word "naff" since 2006....
I’m trying to revive it. “Naff” is a great word which should be retrieved from the wagger pagger bagger of lexical history
"Naff orf" should certainly be revived by posh lasses.
It occurs to me that Nuneaton is at the North Western edge of a peculiarly under-known region of England that is our closest equivalent to the flyover states of the US mid-west. If Birmingham is our Chicago, as has often been claimed, then these places are our Kansas and Oklahoma. The drive-over counties.
The region is bounded in the South West by Banbury and the M40, in the North by Nuneaton, Hinckley and the Southern outskirts of Leicester, it contains half of Warwickshire and most of Northants, and nudges the borders of Bedford and Milton Keynes in the South East.
This is where the M1, M6, A14 and national rail freight systems converge, with the Watford Gap or the Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal its spiritual centre.
Is there a region more accessible yet less known to the British mind than this little oval of logistics parks on the way to somewhere else? As familiar yet mysterious as Troyes, St Dizier or the Plateau de Langres in France.
Lincolnshire is accessible but remains unknown. As does much of Cumbria outside the National park area, though the M6 runs through the middle of much of it.
Yes the area where the East Midlands meets the South East and East Anglia - Bedford, Northampton, Lincoln, Peterborough - seems the most anonymous and unknown to me. What's the accent? What are the regional food items? What do they call a bread roll or a small pedestrian alley? How do they pronounce scone? No idea.
It occurs to me that Nuneaton is at the North Western edge of a peculiarly under-known region of England that is our closest equivalent to the flyover states of the US mid-west. If Birmingham is our Chicago, as has often been claimed, then these places are our Kansas and Oklahoma. The drive-over counties.
The region is bounded in the South West by Banbury and the M40, in the North by Nuneaton, Hinckley and the Southern outskirts of Leicester, it contains half of Warwickshire and most of Northants, and nudges the borders of Bedford and Milton Keynes in the South East.
This is where the M1, M6, A14 and national rail freight systems converge, with the Watford Gap or the Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal its spiritual centre.
Is there a region more accessible yet less known to the British mind than this little oval of logistics parks on the way to somewhere else? As familiar yet mysterious as Troyes, St Dizier or the Plateau de Langres in France.
Lincolnshire is accessible but remains unknown. As does much of Cumbria outside the National park area, though the M6 runs through the middle of much of it.
Yes the area where the East Midlands meets the South East and East Anglia - Bedford, Northampton, Lincoln, Peterborough - seems the most anonymous and unknown to me. What's the accent? What are the regional food items? What do they call a bread roll or a small pedestrian alley? How do they pronounce scone? No idea.
Lincolnshire is north of Leicester so 'scon'. The rest scone.
suggests that while the scone/scone pronunciation divide is geographical, it's not THAT geographical - most locations contain a far wedge of both 'scone' and 'scone'.
Scotland appears far more 'scone' however - I suppose that is where my pronunciation comes from, as my Scottish grandmother was by far the most influential scone-maker in the family.
Anyway, Devon seems ambivalent/in places scone (cone) favouring and Cornwall goes for scone (cone). So surely that seals it. Plus parts of God's Own County, plus much of Essex.
The debate is over, my friends.
ETA: And the great seat of learning that is Kingston Upon Hull
The late Queen pronounce it 'scon'. And TSE is, of course, a republican.
But let us not stoop to the misplaced pedantry of Professor Higgins.
...An Englishman's way of speaking absolutely classifies him,
The moment he talks he makes some other Englishman despise him. One common language I'm afraid we'll never get. Oh, why can't the English learn to set
A good example to people whose English is painful to your ears? The Scotch and the Irish leave you close to tears. There even are places where English completely
Disappears. In America, they haven't used it for years!..
The Queen's mother was Scottish, of course, which may account for her pronunciation.
I think 'scon' is RP. Though the notion of RP is also hotly contested these days.
Indeed. It's fascinating to observe how HMQE2's accent evolved over the years.
When it came to scones, she remained adamantine.
A sad statement on the times that no one gives a feck how her etiolated heirs and their marry-ins pronounce it. Though no doubt the Mail is preparing a hit piece on Meghan pronouncing it skawn.
You could argue that RP - with all its modulations over the decades - died with her.
It really hasn’t. My older daughter goes to a quite posh, highly coveted state Sixth Form in north London. They all speak pretty standard RP - not extreme like the young QE2 but deffo RP
It is still the accepted and necessary accent if you want to get on. Thank god. Because Multicultural London English is HIDEOUS
My daughter goes to a fairly average state primary school in Brockley with a mixed intake, and the children almost all speak RP with a few ethnic and national variations on the theme. In most cases they sound much posher than their parents or their teachers. No idea where it comes from.
At secondary school the girls' and boys' accents diverge in a weird way. The girls are all Oh yah and the boys are You get me, blud?
When Yah rhymes with Raa you know what company you are in. Time for a sharp exit.
Australia has the bluest skies in the world, I reckon: and they shed an incredible light. Something to do with its emptiness and dryness, and of course it has never been polluted by industry....
'Afters' is fine - perfectly acceptable to say, though as you say, quite working class, which means that if you are middle class and use it you sound like you're needlessly trying to give the impression that you aren't middle class. 'Sweet' is slightly ridiculous, but still probably better than 'dessert'. But both - along with dessert - have the feeling of a euphemism for something that really doesn't need a euphemism. I blame the sort of women who think that pudding is somehow naughty.
There's a gender difference? Personally I think "pudding" suggests something large and slightly indigestible, as in "bread and butter pudding", and just wrong if you're referring to, say, creme caramel. I routinely say "dessert" or "sweet".
All of which just shows there isn't really a consensus...
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that an ex-MP who does not appreciate bread and butter pudding must be in want of more time spent with Eric Pickles, and an English culinary education.
I change the way I pronounce words depending on where I am, and don't see anything wrong with doing so.
Code switching; nothing wrong with that if you do it well.
I have to. My original accent is not great for professional purposes. I really do have to dial it back.
I was brought up in Fife and Newcastle. My dad is from London, my mum from the West country. I've lived in the Caribbean and the United States. I'm married to someone who spent most of her childhood in the East Midlands. I've lived in SE London for the last decade and a half. My accent is a fucking car crash.
I sympathise. My parents were Welsh and my father was in the oil industry. We moved around quite a bit - Gloucester, Leeds, Bristol, Horsham, the US, France and the Middle East. I picked up accents and dialects as if they were going out of fashion. Nobody can place my accent now. They lean in to listen and usually say "I'm trying to place where you're from..."
As an aside, I ended up at uni in St Andrews for my undergraduate degree. After graduation I ran some restaurants and hotels in and around Fife for a few years before returning to academia. Naturally, when you pick up accents quickly you... have a habit of slipping back into them when meeting somebody from that place. Always a bit awkward if you're front of house and the guest thinks you're patronising them...
Ha, I grew up in St Andrews and worked in a restaurant there, I bet we know people in common. I have exactly that problem, my wife always knows when I'm on the phone to a Scottish call centre... When I meet English people they always say "you don't sound very Scottish" whereas Scots ask where in Scotland I'm from, because I sound 5x more Scottish talking to the latter. On work calls I'm RP. I talk to a northerner, the Newcastle comes out. In the states I find myself going a bit transatlantic. In the Caribbean I'm slightly Bajan. Out and about in SE14 I'm a bit south London. No doubt this points to some kind of fakeness or insecurity on my part but I do it completely subconsciously. I'm jealous of people with completely immutable accents.
It was a standing joke in our house that we could always tell who my late mother was on the phone to because she started to sound like them and would even start using their phrases. It was entirely unconscious on her part. My brother inherited this gift to some extent which made fitting into new schools easier but I never mastered it.
Get two Geordies talking to each other and everyone else needs subtitles to understand what's going on.
I change the way I pronounce words depending on where I am, and don't see anything wrong with doing so.
Code switching; nothing wrong with that if you do it well.
I have to. My original accent is not great for professional purposes. I really do have to dial it back.
I was brought up in Fife and Newcastle. My dad is from London, my mum from the West country. I've lived in the Caribbean and the United States. I'm married to someone who spent most of her childhood in the East Midlands. I've lived in SE London for the last decade and a half. My accent is a fucking car crash.
I sympathise. My parents were Welsh and my father was in the oil industry. We moved around quite a bit - Gloucester, Leeds, Bristol, Horsham, the US, France and the Middle East. I picked up accents and dialects as if they were going out of fashion. Nobody can place my accent now. They lean in to listen and usually say "I'm trying to place where you're from..."
As an aside, I ended up at uni in St Andrews for my undergraduate degree. After graduation I ran some restaurants and hotels in and around Fife for a few years before returning to academia. Naturally, when you pick up accents quickly you... have a habit of slipping back into them when meeting somebody from that place. Always a bit awkward if you're front of house and the guest thinks you're patronising them...
Ha, I grew up in St Andrews and worked in a restaurant there, I bet we know people in common. I have exactly that problem, my wife always knows when I'm on the phone to a Scottish call centre... When I meet English people they always say "you don't sound very Scottish" whereas Scots ask where in Scotland I'm from, because I sound 5x more Scottish talking to the latter. On work calls I'm RP. I talk to a northerner, the Newcastle comes out. In the states I find myself going a bit transatlantic. In the Caribbean I'm slightly Bajan. Out and about in SE14 I'm a bit south London. No doubt this points to some kind of fakeness or insecurity on my part but I do it completely subconsciously. I'm jealous of people with completely immutable accents.
It was a standing joke in our house that we could always tell who my late mother was on the phone to because she started to sound like them and would even start using their phrases. It was entirely unconscious on her part. My brother inherited this gift to some extent which made fitting into new schools easier but I never mastered it.
I don't know if it's a gift or not. I worry that it makes me seem shifty or insubstantial. Is your brother younger? I think it's a bit of a youngest child trait, always trying to fit in and be liked. My older brother never tried to fit in anywhere and I spent most of my childhood watching him getting bullied (1980s Newcastle was not a friendly place for nonconformists).
He was younger (now deceased, sadly) and always a lot more anxious to fit in. Its possible the 2 were linked but I am not certain.
One of the "joys" of doing trials is that quite a lot of evidence is taken on commission before the event. When I have done the commission and hear my own voice I am often startled in that I don't sound like what I think I sound like. Its odd.
Jesus F Christ. I'd like to dismiss this but the trouble is: I can't
The more I think about Israel's position the more I see the logic of them striking back. If they let this go then Iran will be emboldened, and will do it again, and again, slowly making Israel unviable. Even though Israel shot down almost every missile, a couple did get through. And one day one of those lucky missiles could be nuke-tipped, or chemical, or a dirty bomb
So Israel must strike back to frighten Iran and deter them, which means the Israeli attack has to be pretty major. Which means they might as well try and take out the Iranian nuclear sites. Which means an all out Middle East War. Which means....
Jesus F Christ. I'd like to dismiss this but the trouble is: I can't
The more I think about Israel's position the more I see the logic of them striking back. If they let this go then Iran will be emboldened, and will do it again, and again, slowly making Israel unviable. Even though Israel shot down almost every missile, a couple did get through. And one day one of those lucky missiles could be nuke-tipped, or chemical, or a dirty bomb
So Israel must strike back to frighten Iran and deter them, which means the Israeli attack has to be pretty major. Which means they might as well try and take out the Iranian nuclear sites. Which means an all out Middle East War. Which means....
You can see where this goes. I pray I am wrong
It's Jason Hinkle, FFS. A known spreader of lies and disinformation. A MAGA Communist, of all things.
Jesus F Christ. I'd like to dismiss this but the trouble is: I can't
The more I think about Israel's position the more I see the logic of them striking back. If they let this go then Iran will be emboldened, and will do it again, and again, slowly making Israel unviable. Even though Israel shot down almost every missile, a couple did get through. And one day one of those lucky missiles could be nuke-tipped, or chemical, or a dirty bomb
So Israel must strike back to frighten Iran and deter them, which means the Israeli attack has to be pretty major. Which means they might as well try and take out the Iranian nuclear sites. Which means an all out Middle East War. Which means....
You can see where this goes. I pray I am wrong
Leon you really should be on stage ! Your theatrical dramatic postings on this topic suggest you missed your true vocation .
Jesus F Christ. I'd like to dismiss this but the trouble is: I can't
The more I think about Israel's position the more I see the logic of them striking back. If they let this go then Iran will be emboldened, and will do it again, and again, slowly making Israel unviable. Even though Israel shot down almost every missile, a couple did get through. And one day one of those lucky missiles could be nuke-tipped, or chemical, or a dirty bomb
So Israel must strike back to frighten Iran and deter them, which means the Israeli attack has to be pretty major. Which means they might as well try and take out the Iranian nuclear sites. Which means an all out Middle East War. Which means....
You can see where this goes. I pray I am wrong
It's Jason Hinkle, FFS. A known spreader of lies and disinformation. A MAGA Communist, of all things.
Ignore.
Ignore Mark Urban? He's made exactly the same extrapolation
"Israel + Allied success fending off the weekend's Iranian attacks relieved many. But my concerns... - about taboos being broken, by Israel on 1st Apr + Iran on Saturday - that Iran's conclusion may be it needs nuclear deterrence, & faster - which hastens an Israeli strike against nuke facilities"
Jesus F Christ. I'd like to dismiss this but the trouble is: I can't
The more I think about Israel's position the more I see the logic of them striking back. If they let this go then Iran will be emboldened, and will do it again, and again, slowly making Israel unviable. Even though Israel shot down almost every missile, a couple did get through. And one day one of those lucky missiles could be nuke-tipped, or chemical, or a dirty bomb
So Israel must strike back to frighten Iran and deter them, which means the Israeli attack has to be pretty major. Which means they might as well try and take out the Iranian nuclear sites. Which means an all out Middle East War. Which means....
You can see where this goes. I pray I am wrong
It's Jason Hinkle, FFS. A known spreader of lies and disinformation. A MAGA Communist, of all things.
Ignore.
Ignore Mark Urban? He's made exactly the same extrapolation
"Israel + Allied success fending off the weekend's Iranian attacks relieved many. But my concerns... - about taboos being broken, by Israel on 1st Apr + Iran on Saturday - that Iran's conclusion may be it needs nuclear deterrence, & faster - which hastens an Israeli strike against nuke facilities"
When I go to the pub for a session with my mates we keep a running count of how many times each of us has to go for a pee. Lowest number wins. It adds quite a buzz to proceedings since we all want to be The Man (as it were).
Anybody else do this?
Number of pints before a piss is the RN variant. I've seen eight done, never seen nine and ten exists only in hushed and reverent whispers of legendary heroics. Interestingly, many matches end with throwing up rather than the contestant pissing themselves.
Ah no, that's another level. We wouldn't last long in that company.
Although there is a certain 'hare v tortoise' aspect to this. You can use that if you know what you're doing.
I disagree. If you're going to consume a lot before breaking the seal, you have to be doing so quickly. You've got, say, an hour or so before that first pint starts making its presence known in the bladder. Your only hope is to try to get pints 2, 3, 4 and so on in before it does so. The hare approach is definitely the one here. This I suppose is why so many matches in DA's experience end with the participants vomiting.
Ok but I was talking about our Hampstead Seniors code of the sport not Dura Ace's Navy Ratings variation. Reminder: It's who goes least over a multi-hour afternoon session NOT how many can you sink before you go at all. Totally different skillset required.
Jesus F Christ. I'd like to dismiss this but the trouble is: I can't
The more I think about Israel's position the more I see the logic of them striking back. If they let this go then Iran will be emboldened, and will do it again, and again, slowly making Israel unviable. Even though Israel shot down almost every missile, a couple did get through. And one day one of those lucky missiles could be nuke-tipped, or chemical, or a dirty bomb
So Israel must strike back to frighten Iran and deter them, which means the Israeli attack has to be pretty major. Which means they might as well try and take out the Iranian nuclear sites. Which means an all out Middle East War. Which means....
You can see where this goes. I pray I am wrong
Leon you really should be on stage ! Your theatrical dramatic postings on this topic suggest you missed your true vocation .
No Leon makes things exciting with dramatic flourishes.
Jesus F Christ. I'd like to dismiss this but the trouble is: I can't
The more I think about Israel's position the more I see the logic of them striking back. If they let this go then Iran will be emboldened, and will do it again, and again, slowly making Israel unviable. Even though Israel shot down almost every missile, a couple did get through. And one day one of those lucky missiles could be nuke-tipped, or chemical, or a dirty bomb
So Israel must strike back to frighten Iran and deter them, which means the Israeli attack has to be pretty major. Which means they might as well try and take out the Iranian nuclear sites. Which means an all out Middle East War. Which means....
You can see where this goes. I pray I am wrong
It's Jason Hinkle, FFS. A known spreader of lies and disinformation. A MAGA Communist, of all things.
Ignore.
Ignore Mark Urban? He's made exactly the same extrapolation
"Israel + Allied success fending off the weekend's Iranian attacks relieved many. But my concerns... - about taboos being broken, by Israel on 1st Apr + Iran on Saturday - that Iran's conclusion may be it needs nuclear deterrence, & faster - which hastens an Israeli strike against nuke facilities"
You may note that those two tweets are very different, and actually saying different things.
I don't see that at all. Urban has not speculated on the timing, but his thinking mirrors mine in its sequencing
BUT I really really really hope my fears are unfounded. Presumably smart people in Washington can also extrapolate this and they are telling Israel to chill the fuck out. Fingers x'd
Jesus F Christ. I'd like to dismiss this but the trouble is: I can't
The more I think about Israel's position the more I see the logic of them striking back. If they let this go then Iran will be emboldened, and will do it again, and again, slowly making Israel unviable. Even though Israel shot down almost every missile, a couple did get through. And one day one of those lucky missiles could be nuke-tipped, or chemical, or a dirty bomb
So Israel must strike back to frighten Iran and deter them, which means the Israeli attack has to be pretty major. Which means they might as well try and take out the Iranian nuclear sites. Which means an all out Middle East War. Which means....
You can see where this goes. I pray I am wrong
This is the problem. Next time, feasibly in as little as six months from now, Iran could have 8-10 nukes ready. The attack at the weekend looks scarily like a dry run.
If they fire off 100 ballistic missiles, 10 of them nuclear, along with a drone swarm as interference, add a few cruise missiles to confuse things further... only one of those nukes has got to hit. To borrow the old saying, Israel have to be lucky every time, Iran only have to be lucky once.
I'm not saying Iran are actually mad enough to do this, but once they have the nukes, even if only a few of them, they have a very strong deterrent and are much more able to project power regionally, with everything that entails.
I said it at the weekend, I'm not coming at this as a hawk or from a pro intervention standpoint. I'm saying there may be a choice between "go in now" or "face potentially much more serious consequences later".
There's no good option for Israel. Going in now is bad, going in later could be the end of civilization as we know it, and doing nothing at all eventually means an Iran with a nuclear deterrent, while actively funding all the groups that want to see Israel wiped off the map.
Shall we pencil in the apocalypse for September? Be nice to get summer out the way, first.
Jesus F Christ. I'd like to dismiss this but the trouble is: I can't
The more I think about Israel's position the more I see the logic of them striking back. If they let this go then Iran will be emboldened, and will do it again, and again, slowly making Israel unviable. Even though Israel shot down almost every missile, a couple did get through. And one day one of those lucky missiles could be nuke-tipped, or chemical, or a dirty bomb
So Israel must strike back to frighten Iran and deter them, which means the Israeli attack has to be pretty major. Which means they might as well try and take out the Iranian nuclear sites. Which means an all out Middle East War. Which means....
You can see where this goes. I pray I am wrong
I'm reasonably sanguine. I think there are multiple opportunities for de-escalation because the two countries do not border each other, and neither is seeking particularly to take anything from the other.
Israel might decide to leave things be - they had a successful defence of the missile attack and Iran had already said that they're done.
If Israel instead decides to hit Iranian nuclear sites then Iran will doubtless respond with even more missiles - but if the Israeli missile defence holds then that might be the end of it again.
I'm not sure that Hezbollah really wants to take a pasting from Israel on Iran's behalf for example.
Jesus F Christ. I'd like to dismiss this but the trouble is: I can't
The more I think about Israel's position the more I see the logic of them striking back. If they let this go then Iran will be emboldened, and will do it again, and again, slowly making Israel unviable. Even though Israel shot down almost every missile, a couple did get through. And one day one of those lucky missiles could be nuke-tipped, or chemical, or a dirty bomb
So Israel must strike back to frighten Iran and deter them, which means the Israeli attack has to be pretty major. Which means they might as well try and take out the Iranian nuclear sites. Which means an all out Middle East War. Which means....
You can see where this goes. I pray I am wrong
This is the problem. Next time, feasibly in as little as six months from now, Iran could have 8-10 nukes ready. The attack at the weekend looks scarily like a dry run.
If they fire off 100 ballistic missiles, 10 of them nuclear, along with a drone swarm as interference, add a few cruise missiles to confuse things further... only one of those nukes has got to hit. To borrow the old saying, Israel have to be lucky every time, Iran only have to be lucky once.
I'm not saying Iran are actually mad enough to do this, but once they have the nukes, even if only a few of them, they have a very strong deterrent and are much more able to project power regionally, with everything that entails.
I said it at the weekend, I'm not coming at this as a hawk or from a pro intervention standpoint. I'm saying there may be a choice between "go in now" or "face potentially much more serious consequences later".
There's no good option for Israel. Going in now is bad, going in later could be the end of civilization as we know it, and doing nothing at all eventually means an Iran with a nuclear deterrent, while actively funding all the groups that want to see Israel wiped off the map.
Shall we pencil in the apocalypse for September? Be nice to get summer out the way, first.
Yep. And see here
🚨 #BREAKING: US officials are concerned that Israel may respond to Irans attack as soon as today - WSJ.
Jesus F Christ. I'd like to dismiss this but the trouble is: I can't
The more I think about Israel's position the more I see the logic of them striking back. If they let this go then Iran will be emboldened, and will do it again, and again, slowly making Israel unviable. Even though Israel shot down almost every missile, a couple did get through. And one day one of those lucky missiles could be nuke-tipped, or chemical, or a dirty bomb
So Israel must strike back to frighten Iran and deter them, which means the Israeli attack has to be pretty major. Which means they might as well try and take out the Iranian nuclear sites. Which means an all out Middle East War. Which means....
You can see where this goes. I pray I am wrong
It's Jason Hinkle, FFS. A known spreader of lies and disinformation. A MAGA Communist, of all things.
Ignore.
Ignore Mark Urban? He's made exactly the same extrapolation
"Israel + Allied success fending off the weekend's Iranian attacks relieved many. But my concerns... - about taboos being broken, by Israel on 1st Apr + Iran on Saturday - that Iran's conclusion may be it needs nuclear deterrence, & faster - which hastens an Israeli strike against nuke facilities"
You may note that those two tweets are very different, and actually saying different things.
I don't see that at all. Urban has not speculated on the timing, but his thinking mirrors mine in its sequencing
BUT I really really really hope my fears are unfounded. Presumably smart people in Washington can also extrapolate this and they are telling Israel to chill the fuck out. Fingers x'd
(Sighs)
Urban's tweet expresses *his* concerns: ignoring the 'taboos' have been broken in the past. But they're reasonable concerns. He then guesses that it might lead to an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. Which is a guess, but a reasonable and not unprecedented one - although perhaps unlikely for various reasons. It's a reasonable tweet that explains his thinking.
Hinkle's tweet starts with an appeal to authority - an unnamed Israeli official. He then jumps straight from that to OMG!!!! there might be a major war!!!!! It's bullshit. Also note the use of CAPS, like all GOOD TRUMP MAGA SUPPORTERS use!!!!!
The two tweets are very different, and are saying different things.
This site (https://grid.iamkate.com/) has fossil fuels at 2.6% atm. That's the lowest I've ever seen it. I'm not sure whether it's practically possible to drive it any lower.
The problem is that ICEs produce something like 3x the energy of the national grid. If we are going to largely move to electric vehicles the capacity of the grid is going to have to be more than doubled.
Jesus F Christ. I'd like to dismiss this but the trouble is: I can't
The more I think about Israel's position the more I see the logic of them striking back. If they let this go then Iran will be emboldened, and will do it again, and again, slowly making Israel unviable. Even though Israel shot down almost every missile, a couple did get through. And one day one of those lucky missiles could be nuke-tipped, or chemical, or a dirty bomb
So Israel must strike back to frighten Iran and deter them, which means the Israeli attack has to be pretty major. Which means they might as well try and take out the Iranian nuclear sites. Which means an all out Middle East War. Which means....
You can see where this goes. I pray I am wrong
It's Jason Hinkle, FFS. A known spreader of lies and disinformation. A MAGA Communist, of all things.
Ignore.
Ignore Mark Urban? He's made exactly the same extrapolation
"Israel + Allied success fending off the weekend's Iranian attacks relieved many. But my concerns... - about taboos being broken, by Israel on 1st Apr + Iran on Saturday - that Iran's conclusion may be it needs nuclear deterrence, & faster - which hastens an Israeli strike against nuke facilities"
You may note that those two tweets are very different, and actually saying different things.
I don't see that at all. Urban has not speculated on the timing, but his thinking mirrors mine in its sequencing
BUT I really really really hope my fears are unfounded. Presumably smart people in Washington can also extrapolate this and they are telling Israel to chill the fuck out. Fingers x'd
(Sighs)
Urban's tweet expresses *his* concerns: ignoring the 'taboos' have been broken in the past. But they're reasonable concerns. He then guesses that it might lead to an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. Which is a guess, but a reasonable and not unprecedented one - although perhaps unlikely for various reasons. It's a reasonable tweet that explains his thinking.
Hinkle's tweet starts with an appeal to authority - an unnamed Israeli official. He then jumps straight from that to OMG!!!! there might be a major war!!!!! It's bullshit. Also note the use of CAPS, like all GOOD TRUMP MAGA SUPPORTERS use!!!!!
The two tweets are very different, and are saying different things.
Ah sorry, I thought you were contrasting Urban's thoughts with mine
Yes, Jackson Hinkle is a fucking loony, I agree. And - as I said - I would normally ignore him. But unfortunately I can see a logic in Israel striking back hard. Imagine if Britain had been attacked with 300 missiles and drones, from a country that wants us destroyed and is developing nukes. Even if those missiles were entirely ineffective, would we just sit there and wait for the next lot? Or would we hit back as a deterrent?
""It is clear from Dr Cass's report that these basic safeguards for our children and young people have been overlooked in the field of gender medicine, and that this has disproportionately affected some of the most vulnerable children and young people in our society."
Comments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPwqsrI0L8Y
Although in your case people might misunderstand…
But I also enjoy half-euphemism, rendered useless by the inclusion of the word you've been trying to avoid e.g. just going to do a poo at the pool.
I probably have a wider experience of Britain's class system than anyone here FWIW.
(I can't go into that. Quite sure that many here have a substantial breadth of experience, though - broader than the experience of many of their mates.)
All my fellow loony lefty friends would hate me for praising Spencer's book. But they don't have such a wide experience, so what do they know?
Firm believer in giving credit WHEREVER it's due and that this is good for both intellect and soul.
Whereas using the “crapper” is just like hoovering
You worked in a restaurant in St Andrews... How long ago?
But thankfully we do now have a bottle of Sarsons for my chips.
Although there is a certain 'hare v tortoise' aspect to this. You can use that if you know what you're doing.
So the British expend so much of their bigotry quota on class and nationality that there is less left over for race, gender or sexuality. Or the Americans with their less well defined class system have to turn to racial, religious or ideological differences to satisfy their bigotry needs.
Of course one country could be more bigoted in toto than another as a result of history, education or demographics. And in fact the whole idea might be a load of old cobblers, but it's fun to speculate.
It is bad enough being lumped in South Yorkshire with Sheffield, but joining up with Harrogate (pron. Hah-roh-gat-ee)? Nah.
Just before my time there!
How to pick a jury that can judge Donald Trump
Tailoring questions to probe prospective jurors’ political biases and opinions of the former president is more art than science.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/14/jury-selection-donald-trump-00151962
(Note my avatar.)
Big mistake.
https://x.com/aussiecossack/status/1779841686878990585
Trump trade advisers plot dollar devaluation
Advisers close to the former president — particularly his former trade chief Robert Lighthizer — are considering policies that would weaken the dollar relative to other currencies, which could juice U.S. exports but also fuel inflation.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/15/devaluing-dollar-trump-trade-war-00152009
Here's a photo of the picnic
I win! I'm the poshest
Actually that photo is making me weep with nostalgia. That was an amazing adventure. The Gazette told me to go do a two week "foodie road trip" from Melbourne to Sydney, where I had to stop off at all the best restaurants, bars, gastropubs - plus vineyards, cheesemakers, olive growers, truffle hunters - en route. Imagine. Fuck me. It was heaven. That bit of Oz where NSW meets Victoria is like the Garden of Eden. And empty. And the oysters of Wapengo!
Aussie seafood can be the best EVER
As bad as the services might be, don't try and hold it in on a long journey.
Half a litre of water has a lot of momentum.
@aussiecossack
Broadcasting from Sydney's Russian Consulate since December 2022 for Sputnik News. Follow my main account on Telegram: http://t.me/AussieCossack'
Whipping up accord and mutual understanding wherever he goes, I'm sure.
It is quite big.
For a cheese.
https://www.holygoatcheese.com.au/
OMG they've closed down this year!! UGH. Why does everything have to change
https://wingsoverscotland.com/the-mutability-of-history/
Let me check the photolocation
It might be big but far. Or small but near.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-68817872
But you're quite right, there isn't a consensus on what the name should be, and I apologise if I came across as dictatorial on the matter. I have my views (which are surprisingly strongly negative on the word 'dessert') but I recognise that they're not universal and I don't claim that they should be.
I'm going to stop now and do some work because this is making me cry like Proust recherching temps perdu
Fortunately we have less* of a replication crisis in epidemiology than social science
*That may only be because it's harder, takes longer and is more expensive to do a replication study in epidemiology than in social sciences
I always find it a bit jarring when I see otherwise quite masculine Italian men, in impecccable tailoring, standing around chatting as they lick their ice creams. Even the really hardnut 'Ndrangheta in Calabria, they stop killing people at 4pm to go have some gelati in Reggio
(Just kiddin'!)
Here's a video of the priest talking about visiting Palestine. Very good, but the ending was a bit off-putting to me.
https://twitter.com/Partisangirl/status/1779821382609867200
Fantastic news coverage, not.
*sigh*
https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/politics/politics-headlines/pickles-told-to-come-up-with-something-not-involving-food-201202224923
The scene outside 100 Centre St
ISRAELI OFFICIAL: Tel Aviv is moving to respond DEEP INSIDE IRAN!
This could mean a MAJOR WAR.
https://x.com/jacksonhinklle/status/1779842116530954343
One of the "joys" of doing trials is that quite a lot of evidence is taken on commission before the event. When I have done the commission and hear my own voice I am often startled in that I don't sound like what I think I sound like. Its odd.
The more I think about Israel's position the more I see the logic of them striking back. If they let this go then Iran will be emboldened, and will do it again, and again, slowly making Israel unviable. Even though Israel shot down almost every missile, a couple did get through. And one day one of those lucky missiles could be nuke-tipped, or chemical, or a dirty bomb
So Israel must strike back to frighten Iran and deter them, which means the Israeli attack has to be pretty major. Which means they might as well try and take out the Iranian nuclear sites. Which means an all out Middle East War. Which means....
You can see where this goes. I pray I am wrong
He is an example of where the horseshoe theory of politics join to form a circle. In his case, meaning horseshit.
Ignore.
Derek Underwood has died.
"Israel + Allied success fending off the weekend's Iranian attacks relieved many. But my concerns...
- about taboos being broken, by Israel on 1st Apr + Iran on Saturday
- that Iran's conclusion may be it needs nuclear deterrence, & faster
- which hastens an Israeli strike against nuke facilities"
https://x.com/MarkUrban01/status/1779816551652164030
https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk
BUT I really really really hope my fears are unfounded. Presumably smart people in Washington can also extrapolate this and they are telling Israel to chill the fuck out. Fingers x'd
If they fire off 100 ballistic missiles, 10 of them nuclear, along with a drone swarm as interference, add a few cruise missiles to confuse things further... only one of those nukes has got to hit. To borrow the old saying, Israel have to be lucky every time, Iran only have to be lucky once.
I'm not saying Iran are actually mad enough to do this, but once they have the nukes, even if only a few of them, they have a very strong deterrent and are much more able to project power regionally, with everything that entails.
I said it at the weekend, I'm not coming at this as a hawk or from a pro intervention standpoint. I'm saying there may be a choice between "go in now" or "face potentially much more serious consequences later".
There's no good option for Israel. Going in now is bad, going in later could be the end of civilization as we know it, and doing nothing at all eventually means an Iran with a nuclear deterrent, while actively funding all the groups that want to see Israel wiped off the map.
Shall we pencil in the apocalypse for September? Be nice to get summer out the way, first.
Israel might decide to leave things be - they had a successful defence of the missile attack and Iran had already said that they're done.
If Israel instead decides to hit Iranian nuclear sites then Iran will doubtless respond with even more missiles - but if the Israeli missile defence holds then that might be the end of it again.
I'm not sure that Hezbollah really wants to take a pasting from Israel on Iran's behalf for example.
Jimmy Anderson is currently on 682. Truly giants walk amongst us.
🚨 #BREAKING: US officials are concerned that Israel may respond to Irans attack as soon as today - WSJ.
https://x.com/PKurzin/status/1779856585889632646
I'm trying to remember where the crisis in THREADS begins. Ah yes. Iran
That's not a nice thing to type on a spring afternoon
Urban's tweet expresses *his* concerns: ignoring the 'taboos' have been broken in the past. But they're reasonable concerns. He then guesses that it might lead to an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. Which is a guess, but a reasonable and not unprecedented one - although perhaps unlikely for various reasons. It's a reasonable tweet that explains his thinking.
Hinkle's tweet starts with an appeal to authority - an unnamed Israeli official. He then jumps straight from that to OMG!!!! there might be a major war!!!!! It's bullshit. Also note the use of CAPS, like all GOOD TRUMP MAGA SUPPORTERS use!!!!!
The two tweets are very different, and are saying different things.
https://twitter.com/benfeuerherd/status/1779785174617624734
Its a remarkable achievement, it really is.
The problem is that ICEs produce something like 3x the energy of the national grid. If we are going to largely move to electric vehicles the capacity of the grid is going to have to be more than doubled.
Yes, Jackson Hinkle is a fucking loony, I agree. And - as I said - I would normally ignore him. But unfortunately I can see a logic in Israel striking back hard. Imagine if Britain had been attacked with 300 missiles and drones, from a country that wants us destroyed and is developing nukes. Even if those missiles were entirely ineffective, would we just sit there and wait for the next lot? Or would we hit back as a deterrent?
EHRC:
""It is clear from Dr Cass's report that these basic safeguards for our children and young people have been overlooked in the field of gender medicine, and that this has disproportionately affected some of the most vulnerable children and young people in our society."
https://x.com/soniasodha/status/1779858425922334883?