That's the first time I've seen "DEAD" in these sorts of analyses. Is it usually there and I've just not noticed before?
I guess they can be safely included in 'would not vote'
(This kind of tracking is not that common, I think - usually these, often as alluvial plots, are based on a current sample - not dead! - and either recall or previously recorded information. This presumably either requires linkage to deaths data, which may be possible from e.g. BES, or is just based on assumptions based on age, SES etc of previous respondents)
ETA: Sorry - BES = British Election Study; SES = socio-economic status
They're floating in a different sense, aren't they. Ok so that's quite interesting. Thought it was new. I'm guessing it's an estimate because you don't know how somebody now deceased voted at GE19 unless it's in their will.
"To each of my children £1000 in cash, the remainder of my modest estate to my beloved spouse. And to assist with the polling data, I can disclose I voted Tory at the last general election. I'm sorry for that. I hope I can still get in."
On some kind of topic I have just stuck a fiver on David Cameron next Cons leader at 19s (bf).
Will the Cons go bonkerser after the GE or will they try to claw back some sanity. Obvs it will likely be the former but as they form a circular firing squad perhaps the problem will solve itself.
The Conservative Party leader has to be a Conservative MP, so you need to calculate the likelihood of David Cameron relinquishing his right to sit in the House of Lords, then Lord Cameron (he would still be a peer but not a sitting one) being elected to the Commons after finding a Tory MP with a safe seat and persuading them to step aside, and then being elected leader, and doing all those things before Rishi Sunak resigns and is replaced by someone else. I'd want more than 18/1.
I can only conclude that she's being extremely well paid.
I heard an interview with her yesterday about why, after being brought up by Soviet sympathetic, CND supporting, ECO voting parents who took her to live in, behind the Iron Curtain, Poland, she explained why she became a Conservative. Her narrative and her tone was beautifully child-like. If one didn't recognise the voice, one could be forgiven for thinking she was a youngster about to embark on a new adventure at "big school".
Maybe she's inherited their dogma and fanaticism but simply decided to apply it elsewhere.
This is pretty important in trying to understand a lot of people in the political realm. They are dogmatic and fanatical. Getting their way, and having attention, and controlling others matters much more than what particular cause it is they happen to be fanatical and dogmatic about.
On which note, it has been claimed that the people most likely to adopt a new religion are the already-religious.
Meanwhile, the GOP in Congress has been focused on passing articles of impeachment for Mayorkas, who is Homeland Security Secretary and responsible for the US/Mexico border. Yesterday, the Senate voted to not even commence the trial that the GOP in Congress was asking for.
The GOP under Johnson is the most hapless and hopeless party I can recall. Even the current Tory party, even the SNP, are not so hamstrung by internal dissent and sheer lunacy. The malevolent hand of a somewhat distracted Trump plays a large part in this. There is now talk of some Republicans supporting the Democrats in forcing a vote on the Senate bill authorising aid for Ukraine. We can only hope that they do and that it is soon enough.
I mean, I don't think that Johnson is specifically the issue - the House GOP cohort is just ungovernable (in part because much of their ideology doesn't really believe in governing). I'm not really sure why Johnson is interested in doing anything over not (Mitch McConnell was more than happy with pure obstructionism), but it's probably because the money people want aid getting to Israel and Ukraine because military spending is big $$$.
More that the House GOP cohort is adamant (or trying to sell the story that they are adamant) that they will not compromise, even slightly with Evul! Democruts!
In their lexicon, even the slightest compromise is evidence of being a RINO.
Yes - I'm pretty sure the Ukraine stuff on the Republican side is coming from big defence contractors. Getting rid of stocks of old weapons and ammunition means bringing forward and committing to the replacement programs. This means both sales of old stuff (easy money on exiting production lines) and development contracts (where the big money in defence is). So even just sending the Ukraine old stuff means lots of spending on new. It also means earlier commitment to the new programs, which will boost share prices nicely.
I read the plot summary of James Joyce's Ulysses on Wiki last night and I thought it sounded deranged.
I've little to no interest in reading the rambling monologues of three individuals who happen to bumble around Dublin on one day in 1904, even if it does contain a handful of great quotes.
It's one book I'm confident I'll never read, and I don't think my life will be any the worse for it.
LOL
Could be a pb competition. Sum up magnificent works of art in blithe, uninformed, yet pithy soundbites.
Ignorance is nothing to be proud of. Hang your head that you are not going to subject yourself to this masterpiece.
Finnegan's Wake, however...
It's more the "take that you sneering metropolitan elite! I'm not falling for your snakeoil. I'm brave and different for not liking...Ulysses" attitude that is a little sad.
The Labour candidate for the Rochdale by-election repeated an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, and apologised for doing so when later challenged. It might have taken a day or two, but Starmer decided he had to disown the candidate.
Liz Truss repeats an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory in her book. What is she going to do? Will she apologise? Will she remove it from sale?
What is Sunak going to do? He has the grace of the day or so that Starmer took to deliberate in similar circumstances, but surely the outcome isn't in doubt? Is it?
Do you really think she is repeating the conspiracy from the anti-semitism angle or more likely trying to make a clumsy point about controlling money being more important than laws because she’s a bit too intellectually lazy to examine the theories and background of things she’s read that she has allowed to shape her worldview.
I doubt for one minute there is an antisemitic bone in her body to be fair to her.
I think that a conspiracy theory about the Rothschilds using money to control the world is about as obviously anti-Semitic as you can get. If Truss isn't an anti-Semite then she is at the very least very, very stupid, and perhaps so caught up in explaining away her own failure that she'll latch onto any vile conspiracy theory that will deflect blame.
I don't think Starmer disowned Ali in Rochdale, or took the whip away from Corbyn, because he had looked inside their souls and found irrefutable evidence of the dark canker of anti-Semitism there. It's not about whether Liz Truss is an anti-Semite in her soul. It's about her actions in repeating an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.
I read the plot summary of James Joyce's Ulysses on Wiki last night and I thought it sounded deranged.
I've little to no interest in reading the rambling monologues of three individuals who happen to bumble around Dublin on one day in 1904, even if it does contain a handful of great quotes.
It's one book I'm confident I'll never read, and I don't think my life will be any the worse for it.
LOL
Could be a pb competition. Sum up magnificent works of art in blithe, uninformed, yet pithy soundbites.
Ignorance is nothing to be proud of. Hang your head that you are not going to subject yourself to this masterpiece.
Finnegan's Wake, however...
It's more the "take that you sneering metropolitan elite! I'm not falling for your snakeoil. I'm brave and different for not liking...Ulysses" attitude that is a little sad.
Then again, there are lots of things that are hyped that are later seen as being not quite as good as they were initially sold. It happens all the time in fashion, or music: the Big Thing becomes forgotten. Witness most Booker Prize winners.
I haven't read Ulysses, but it often seems to be more of a bragging rights book: "I read it and liked it! You haven't? You uncultured peasant!" Like it is a right-of-passage book, something to be read to say you've read it, not because it's actually good or enjoyable.
Brilliant prose does not make a complete good book; in this, most talk I read about Ulysses seems to show it is a very flawed book.
Also this wasn't an offhand comment Truss made in an interview, or at a meeting. This was something that she wrote in her book, that survived several rounds of drafting and editing before being committed to print.
I read the plot summary of James Joyce's Ulysses on Wiki last night and I thought it sounded deranged.
I've little to no interest in reading the rambling monologues of three individuals who happen to bumble around Dublin on one day in 1904, even if it does contain a handful of great quotes.
It's one book I'm confident I'll never read, and I don't think my life will be any the worse for it.
LOL
Could be a pb competition. Sum up magnificent works of art in blithe, uninformed, yet pithy soundbites.
Ignorance is nothing to be proud of. Hang your head that you are not going to subject yourself to this masterpiece.
Finnegan's Wake, however...
It's more the "take that you sneering metropolitan elite! I'm not falling for your snakeoil. I'm brave and different for not liking...Ulysses" attitude that is a little sad.
Then again, there are lots of things that are hyped that are later seen as being not quite as good as they were initially sold. It happens all the time in fashion, or music: the Big Thing becomes forgotten. Witness most Booker Prize winners.
I haven't read Ulysses, but it often seems to be more of a bragging rights book: "I read it and liked it! You haven't? You uncultured peasant!" Like it is a right-of-passage book, something to be read to say you've read it, not because it's actually good or enjoyable.
Brilliant prose does not make a complete good book; in this, most talk I read about Ulysses seems to show it is a very flawed book.
I tend to find more people admit to not having been able to finish it than actually boast of having done so. In fact it took me years of false starts.
On some kind of topic I have just stuck a fiver on David Cameron next Cons leader at 19s (bf).
Will the Cons go bonkerser after the GE or will they try to claw back some sanity. Obvs it will likely be the former but as they form a circular firing squad perhaps the problem will solve itself.
You could see how he could be an interim steady the ship type like Michael Howard, but he couldnt lead them in to an election.
Probably right but that's why I think it's not a dreadful bet
Meanwhile, the GOP in Congress has been focused on passing articles of impeachment for Mayorkas, who is Homeland Security Secretary and responsible for the US/Mexico border. Yesterday, the Senate voted to not even commence the trial that the GOP in Congress was asking for.
The GOP under Johnson is the most hapless and hopeless party I can recall. Even the current Tory party, even the SNP, are not so hamstrung by internal dissent and sheer lunacy. The malevolent hand of a somewhat distracted Trump plays a large part in this. There is now talk of some Republicans supporting the Democrats in forcing a vote on the Senate bill authorising aid for Ukraine. We can only hope that they do and that it is soon enough.
There's a lot of speculation about why Mike Johnson has decided to push the Ukraine aid bill through now. My suspicion he realised he literally cannot work with his own party so he's decided to work with the Democrats instead.
How does that work? Mike Johnson is a religious fundamentalist who tried to overturn Biden's 2020 election win, doesn't believe climate change is caused by humans (or at least is paid lots of money by fossil fuel companies to say this), and doesn't believe in the separation of church and state. He wants to recriminalise sex between consenting adults who are the same sex. And claims all his policies are from the Bible.
I think FF43 was specifically referring to working with the Democrats on this bill rather than more generally. It will probably cost him dearly so, whilst I have no time for him generally, credit to him for this action at least.
I read the plot summary of James Joyce's Ulysses on Wiki last night and I thought it sounded deranged.
I've little to no interest in reading the rambling monologues of three individuals who happen to bumble around Dublin on one day in 1904, even if it does contain a handful of great quotes.
It's one book I'm confident I'll never read, and I don't think my life will be any the worse for it.
LOL
Could be a pb competition. Sum up magnificent works of art in blithe, uninformed, yet pithy soundbites.
Ignorance is nothing to be proud of. Hang your head that you are not going to subject yourself to this masterpiece.
Finnegan's Wake, however...
It's more the "take that you sneering metropolitan elite! I'm not falling for your snakeoil. I'm brave and different for not liking...Ulysses" attitude that is a little sad.
Then again, there are lots of things that are hyped that are later seen as being not quite as good as they were initially sold. It happens all the time in fashion, or music: the Big Thing becomes forgotten. Witness most Booker Prize winners.
I haven't read Ulysses, but it often seems to be more of a bragging rights book: "I read it and liked it! You haven't? You uncultured peasant!" Like it is a right-of-passage book, something to be read to say you've read it, not because it's actually good or enjoyable.
Brilliant prose does not make a complete good book; in this, most talk I read about Ulysses seems to show it is a very flawed book.
I tend to find more people admit to not having been able to finish it than actually boast of having done so. In fact it took me years of false starts.
As a matter of interest, why did you try to read it so often, if you kept on abandoning it?
I generally try my darndest to complete a book once I start it, to plough on through. But those I do abandon I generally do not pick up again. There're so many other books to read...
Also this wasn't an offhand comment Truss made in an interview, or at a meeting. This was something that she wrote in her book, that survived several rounds of drafting and editing before being committed to print.
My point was more that I believe she was too lazy or stupid to really think about the background to the Rothschild slurs and too focussed on the idea of money being more a lever of power than law and so just grabbed Rothschild off her mental bookshelf and chucked it in there.
There are a lot of people who have knowledge that’s a mile wide and a millimetre thick, who can pull references out in arguments and make themselves feel and look clever, there is that Barb about Stephen Fry that he is “a stupid person’s idea of an intelligent person”.
I think we have seen by her bullish and stubborn charges at things that she has an “idea” backed by some “theories” and some “facts” and then keeps going. So again I very much doubt she is remotely antisemitic but just wasn’t remotely mentally inquisitive enough to think about what she wrote and I doubt the editor assigned to the book gave it much thought either.
Certainly there have been increasing problems with drugs being unavailable in recent years, often fairly longstanding generic ones included.
Fucks sake people, the article explicitly says that the recent spike is NOT due to Brexit.
There are many issues. It’s complex. Can we not resort to the same trivial shit of its all down to being in the EU (pre 2016) and it’s all down to Brexit (post 2016). Seriously Scott, move on.
Absolutism. Nobody has claimed that its "all down to Brexit". But you said the article explicitly says its not down to Brexit. And yet:
"The report shows that the EU Exit has not caused the recent spike in medicine shortages, but it is likely to significantly weaken the UK’s ability to respond to them by splitting it from European supply chains, authorisations and collective efforts to respond to shortages."
Brexit - more specifically the choices we have made after Brexit" is "explicitly" as you put it responsible for making our position worse than the EU nations. Would we have shortages if we hadn't done what we have done since Brexit? Yes, absolutely. But we have made those shortages *worse*.
And not just shortages. "The UK has been slower to approve drugs than the EU for new drugs that are authorised centrally. Of drugs authorised in the year to December 2023, 56 drugs authorised in Europe were approved later in the UK and eight have not been approved. Four were approved faster."
So please. Stop trying to make this black and white where everything or nothing is Brexit, everything is impossible so it must be nothing. It isn't nothing. Read the article again.
Your last point on approval is meaningless without context. What is the cause of the delays? Is it because testing is more stringent? The fact that 8 drugs approved by the EU have not been approved by the UK coud be because there are concerns in the UK about them. The automatic presumption that because they were approved by the EU they must be fine is incorrect. There are numerous drugs approved by one set of testing authorities in one part of the world that do not obtain approval in others. Just look at the differences between the EU and the US for that.
Also what time scale are we talking about? Is it weeks, months or years? Without all this analysis your claims are, as I say, meaningless.
Yebbut. The cause and effect is clear, which is the point RP is making, even if we don't know the root cause.
My suspicion FWIW is that drugs companies are slower in processing the years long expensive approvals process for a relatively small market compared with one of their two key markets. That's the main reason why the UK has approved fewer new machines, not because it lacks certification capability.
Apparently, reading around it, it is exactly the opposite. It is approval times not submission times. But again, is this days, weeks or months? If it is a matter of days or weeks then the report is being thoroughly disingenuous. Note also they say "it is likely to significantly weaken the UK’s ability to respond to them". No actual evidence, simply a supposition.
Meanwhile, the GOP in Congress has been focused on passing articles of impeachment for Mayorkas, who is Homeland Security Secretary and responsible for the US/Mexico border. Yesterday, the Senate voted to not even commence the trial that the GOP in Congress was asking for.
The GOP under Johnson is the most hapless and hopeless party I can recall. Even the current Tory party, even the SNP, are not so hamstrung by internal dissent and sheer lunacy. The malevolent hand of a somewhat distracted Trump plays a large part in this. There is now talk of some Republicans supporting the Democrats in forcing a vote on the Senate bill authorising aid for Ukraine. We can only hope that they do and that it is soon enough.
Mayorkas shouldn't have been impeached - he should have been sacked.
That Biden hasn't done so suggests he's happy to have no control of the southern border.
Its sensible politics for the GOP to focus attention on something which both unites themselves and is also damaging to the Dems.
Also this wasn't an offhand comment Truss made in an interview, or at a meeting. This was something that she wrote in her book, that survived several rounds of drafting and editing before being committed to print.
Yes, though do we know it survived 'several rounds of drafting and editing'?
Truss is an idiot, but I agree with her about one thing - in the last 30 years too much power has been taken away from elected representatives and given to unelected organisations. At least in the case of choosing Conservative party leaders - if it had stayed with elected MPs we would never have had Prime Minister Truss.
Meanwhile, the GOP in Congress has been focused on passing articles of impeachment for Mayorkas, who is Homeland Security Secretary and responsible for the US/Mexico border. Yesterday, the Senate voted to not even commence the trial that the GOP in Congress was asking for.
The GOP under Johnson is the most hapless and hopeless party I can recall. Even the current Tory party, even the SNP, are not so hamstrung by internal dissent and sheer lunacy. The malevolent hand of a somewhat distracted Trump plays a large part in this. There is now talk of some Republicans supporting the Democrats in forcing a vote on the Senate bill authorising aid for Ukraine. We can only hope that they do and that it is soon enough.
There's a lot of speculation about why Mike Johnson has decided to push the Ukraine aid bill through now. My suspicion he realised he literally cannot work with his own party so he's decided to work with the Democrats instead.
How does that work? Mike Johnson is a religious fundamentalist who tried to overturn Biden's 2020 election win, doesn't believe climate change is caused by humans (or at least is paid lots of money by fossil fuel companies to say this), and doesn't believe in the separation of church and state. He wants to recriminalise sex between consenting adults who are the same sex. And claims all his policies are from the Bible.
I think FF43 was specifically referring to working with the Democrats on this bill rather than more generally. It will probably cost him dearly so, whilst I have no time for him generally, credit to him for this action at least.
I'll wait until he has seen it through and the bill is passed and signed before getting too excited about giving him credit, but it does look like that's the way things are heading, and so my previous cynicism may have been a bit overdone.
I read the plot summary of James Joyce's Ulysses on Wiki last night and I thought it sounded deranged.
I've little to no interest in reading the rambling monologues of three individuals who happen to bumble around Dublin on one day in 1904, even if it does contain a handful of great quotes.
It's one book I'm confident I'll never read, and I don't think my life will be any the worse for it.
LOL
Could be a pb competition. Sum up magnificent works of art in blithe, uninformed, yet pithy soundbites.
Ignorance is nothing to be proud of. Hang your head that you are not going to subject yourself to this masterpiece.
Finnegan's Wake, however...
It's more the "take that you sneering metropolitan elite! I'm not falling for your snakeoil. I'm brave and different for not liking...Ulysses" attitude that is a little sad.
Then again, there are lots of things that are hyped that are later seen as being not quite as good as they were initially sold. It happens all the time in fashion, or music: the Big Thing becomes forgotten. Witness most Booker Prize winners.
I haven't read Ulysses, but it often seems to be more of a bragging rights book: "I read it and liked it! You haven't? You uncultured peasant!" Like it is a right-of-passage book, something to be read to say you've read it, not because it's actually good or enjoyable.
Brilliant prose does not make a complete good book; in this, most talk I read about Ulysses seems to show it is a very flawed book.
I tend to find more people admit to not having been able to finish it than actually boast of having done so. In fact it took me years of false starts.
As a matter of interest, why did you try to read it so often, if you kept on abandoning it?
I generally try my darndest to complete a book once I start it, to plough on through. But those I do abandon I generally do not pick up again. There're so many other books to read...
Wasn't just Ulysses but that was the worst. Admittedly, I had a problem with my focus (I thought I had ADHD but it I now think it was more depression related bad habits exacerbated by the advent of the smartphone) and made a real effort to get off social media and pick up an awful lot of books I had abandoned. It's one of the reasons I drop off here for a month or two occasionally.
Meanwhile, the GOP in Congress has been focused on passing articles of impeachment for Mayorkas, who is Homeland Security Secretary and responsible for the US/Mexico border. Yesterday, the Senate voted to not even commence the trial that the GOP in Congress was asking for.
The GOP under Johnson is the most hapless and hopeless party I can recall. Even the current Tory party, even the SNP, are not so hamstrung by internal dissent and sheer lunacy. The malevolent hand of a somewhat distracted Trump plays a large part in this. There is now talk of some Republicans supporting the Democrats in forcing a vote on the Senate bill authorising aid for Ukraine. We can only hope that they do and that it is soon enough.
Mayorkas shouldn't have been impeached - he should have been sacked.
That Biden hasn't done so suggests he's happy to have no control of the southern border.
Its sensible politics for the GOP to focus attention on something which both unites themselves and is also damaging to the Dems.
I mean, Biden's lack of control over the southern border is more related to state GOP (like Texas Governor) doing insane stuff (backed by SCOTUS) than it has anything to do with migrants and border crossings. Biden is still being extremely harsh on people seeking asylum or crossing the border - and has asked Congress to pass extremely draconian legislation to let him be more so. The thing is that the GOP can always just say the border is a nightmare and their base will eat it up without much evidence.
As an aside, this morning I am reminded once again how far ahead in content and quality France 24 is compared to any of the UK news offerings. Sky with the self inflated Kay Burley is unwatchable, BBC Breakfast is turgid and GB news is just weird. France 24 cover more topics in more detail and from a far more international perspective in 10 minutes than any UK news channel does in half a day.
The Labour candidate for the Rochdale by-election repeated an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, and apologised for doing so when later challenged. It might have taken a day or two, but Starmer decided he had to disown the candidate.
Liz Truss repeats an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory in her book. What is she going to do? Will she apologise? Will she remove it from sale?
What is Sunak going to do? He has the grace of the day or so that Starmer took to deliberate in similar circumstances, but surely the outcome isn't in doubt? Is it?
Do you really think she is repeating the conspiracy from the anti-semitism angle or more likely trying to make a clumsy point about controlling money being more important than laws because she’s a bit too intellectually lazy to examine the theories and background of things she’s read that she has allowed to shape her worldview.
I doubt for one minute there is an antisemitic bone in her body to be fair to her.
I think that a conspiracy theory about the Rothschilds using money to control the world is about as obviously anti-Semitic as you can get. If Truss isn't an anti-Semite then she is at the very least very, very stupid, and perhaps so caught up in explaining away her own failure that she'll latch onto any vile conspiracy theory that will deflect blame.
I don't think Starmer disowned Ali in Rochdale, or took the whip away from Corbyn, because he had looked inside their souls and found irrefutable evidence of the dark canker of anti-Semitism there. It's not about whether Liz Truss is an anti-Semite in her soul. It's about her actions in repeating an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.
Imagine if Corbyn had become PM and then started blaming sinister puppet masters in the financial world when the markets violently turned against his first budget. Who on the Right wouldn't be saying there was some anti-Semitism afoot?
Also this wasn't an offhand comment Truss made in an interview, or at a meeting. This was something that she wrote in her book, that survived several rounds of drafting and editing before being committed to print.
My point was more that I believe she was too lazy or stupid to really think about the background to the Rothschild slurs and too focussed on the idea of money being more a lever of power than law and so just grabbed Rothschild off her mental bookshelf and chucked it in there.
There are a lot of people who have knowledge that’s a mile wide and a millimetre thick, who can pull references out in arguments and make themselves feel and look clever, there is that Barb about Stephen Fry that he is “a stupid person’s idea of an intelligent person”.
I think we have seen by her bullish and stubborn charges at things that she has an “idea” backed by some “theories” and some “facts” and then keeps going. So again I very much doubt she is remotely antisemitic but just wasn’t remotely mentally inquisitive enough to think about what she wrote and I doubt the editor assigned to the book gave it much thought either.
We could argue all day - at least! - about whether Truss is genuinely an anti-Semite, because there's no way to truly know, is there?
Like Good Queen Bess we should be more concerned about people's actions, rather than trying to discern the nature of their deepest beliefs. And in this case, her actions have reached a bar that precedent has established merits disciplinary action.
I read the plot summary of James Joyce's Ulysses on Wiki last night and I thought it sounded deranged.
I've little to no interest in reading the rambling monologues of three individuals who happen to bumble around Dublin on one day in 1904, even if it does contain a handful of great quotes.
It's one book I'm confident I'll never read, and I don't think my life will be any the worse for it.
LOL
Could be a pb competition. Sum up magnificent works of art in blithe, uninformed, yet pithy soundbites.
Ignorance is nothing to be proud of. Hang your head that you are not going to subject yourself to this masterpiece.
Finnegan's Wake, however...
It's more the "take that you sneering metropolitan elite! I'm not falling for your snakeoil. I'm brave and different for not liking...Ulysses" attitude that is a little sad.
There is a very depressing streak in UK society, from top to bottom, that someone is "too clever by half".
I read the plot summary of James Joyce's Ulysses on Wiki last night and I thought it sounded deranged.
I've little to no interest in reading the rambling monologues of three individuals who happen to bumble around Dublin on one day in 1904, even if it does contain a handful of great quotes.
It's one book I'm confident I'll never read, and I don't think my life will be any the worse for it.
LOL
Could be a pb competition. Sum up magnificent works of art in blithe, uninformed, yet pithy soundbites.
Ignorance is nothing to be proud of. Hang your head that you are not going to subject yourself to this masterpiece.
Finnegan's Wake, however...
It's more the "take that you sneering metropolitan elite! I'm not falling for your snakeoil. I'm brave and different for not liking...Ulysses" attitude that is a little sad.
Then again, there are lots of things that are hyped that are later seen as being not quite as good as they were initially sold. It happens all the time in fashion, or music: the Big Thing becomes forgotten. Witness most Booker Prize winners.
I haven't read Ulysses, but it often seems to be more of a bragging rights book: "I read it and liked it! You haven't? You uncultured peasant!" Like it is a right-of-passage book, something to be read to say you've read it, not because it's actually good or enjoyable.
Brilliant prose does not make a complete good book; in this, most talk I read about Ulysses seems to show it is a very flawed book.
I mean you really have nothing whatsoever, and certainly nothing of value to say about Ulysses if you haven't read it.
Meanwhile, the GOP in Congress has been focused on passing articles of impeachment for Mayorkas, who is Homeland Security Secretary and responsible for the US/Mexico border. Yesterday, the Senate voted to not even commence the trial that the GOP in Congress was asking for.
The GOP under Johnson is the most hapless and hopeless party I can recall. Even the current Tory party, even the SNP, are not so hamstrung by internal dissent and sheer lunacy. The malevolent hand of a somewhat distracted Trump plays a large part in this. There is now talk of some Republicans supporting the Democrats in forcing a vote on the Senate bill authorising aid for Ukraine. We can only hope that they do and that it is soon enough.
Mayorkas shouldn't have been impeached - he should have been sacked.
That Biden hasn't done so suggests he's happy to have no control of the southern border.
Its sensible politics for the GOP to focus attention on something which both unites themselves and is also damaging to the Dems.
I mean, Biden's lack of control over the southern border is more related to state GOP (like Texas Governor) doing insane stuff (backed by SCOTUS) than it has anything to do with migrants and border crossings. Biden is still being extremely harsh on people seeking asylum or crossing the border - and has asked Congress to pass extremely draconian legislation to let him be more so. The thing is that the GOP can always just say the border is a nightmare and their base will eat it up without much evidence.
Stop waving the pompoms and deal with reality.
Biden has been extremely weak on border control, the opposite to Obama in fact, and the evidence is millions of illegal immigrants.
Trying to blame it on the other side will not work.
Also this wasn't an offhand comment Truss made in an interview, or at a meeting. This was something that she wrote in her book, that survived several rounds of drafting and editing before being committed to print.
My point was more that I believe she was too lazy or stupid to really think about the background to the Rothschild slurs and too focussed on the idea of money being more a lever of power than law and so just grabbed Rothschild off her mental bookshelf and chucked it in there.
There are a lot of people who have knowledge that’s a mile wide and a millimetre thick, who can pull references out in arguments and make themselves feel and look clever, there is that Barb about Stephen Fry that he is “a stupid person’s idea of an intelligent person”.
I think we have seen by her bullish and stubborn charges at things that she has an “idea” backed by some “theories” and some “facts” and then keeps going. So again I very much doubt she is remotely antisemitic but just wasn’t remotely mentally inquisitive enough to think about what she wrote and I doubt the editor assigned to the book gave it much thought either.
We could argue all day - at least! - about whether Truss is genuinely an anti-Semite, because there's no way to truly know, is there?
Like Good Queen Bess we should be more concerned about people's actions, rather than trying to discern the nature of their deepest beliefs. And in this case, her actions have reached a bar that precedent has established merits disciplinary action.
I await Sunak's response.
What is the rcord for the number of MPs from a party having the whip removed in one Parliament? The Tories must be getting close here.
As an aside, this morning I am reminded once again how far ahead in content and quality France 24 is compared to any of the UK news offerings. Sky with the self inflated Kay Burley is unwatchable, BBC Breakfast is turgid and GB news is just weird. France 24 cover more topics in more detail and from a far more international perspective in 10 minutes than any UK news channel does in half a day.
Yes it’s excellent. Better than either Al Jazeera or CNN too.
I remember being told at a pharmaceutical conference in 2017 (I think) that cutting ourselves adrift from Europe would have adverse pharmaceutical consequences.
They were huge, and with much of this stuff those impacts aren't obvious to the man in the street. As you know my wife was responsible for UK drug safety in one of the worlds largest pharmaceutical companies. The European regulatory authority was UK based. The loss of that had a knock on effect to UK based pharmaceutical employment. Much moving to Europe and other stuff outsourced to India being cheaper and now a reason for being UK based has now been removed. The Irish subsidiary of my wife's company was going to moved to the UK. That was abandoned. The labelling regulations was a nightmare with the Northern Ireland issue as the arrangements meant the labelling and safety instructions were different and in some places contradictory. The industry was tearing its hair out for decisions. Regulation is now duplicated and unlike other industries the regulation costs are huge. Regulation audits are frequent and sometimes performed by surprise or at very short notice. This is non trivial as the consequence of these audits are huge. My wife was on the sharp end of them. They are not like financial audits. It is a different league.
But of course the man in the street is unaware of these impacts.
I read the plot summary of James Joyce's Ulysses on Wiki last night and I thought it sounded deranged.
I've little to no interest in reading the rambling monologues of three individuals who happen to bumble around Dublin on one day in 1904, even if it does contain a handful of great quotes.
It's one book I'm confident I'll never read, and I don't think my life will be any the worse for it.
LOL
Could be a pb competition. Sum up magnificent works of art in blithe, uninformed, yet pithy soundbites.
Ignorance is nothing to be proud of. Hang your head that you are not going to subject yourself to this masterpiece.
Finnegan's Wake, however...
It's more the "take that you sneering metropolitan elite! I'm not falling for your snakeoil. I'm brave and different for not liking...Ulysses" attitude that is a little sad.
There is a very depressing streak in UK society, from top to bottom, that someone is "too clever by half".
Indeed. But they are often right with the criticism: there's often a great deal of snobbery by people who go on about how intelligent they are, or how high their IQ is. Such people are often idiots in some rather obvious ways.
It's a good job we don't have an example of this on PB....
As an aside, this morning I am reminded once again how far ahead in content and quality France 24 is compared to any of the UK news offerings. Sky with the self inflated Kay Burley is unwatchable, BBC Breakfast is turgid and GB news is just weird. France 24 cover more topics in more detail and from a far more international perspective in 10 minutes than any UK news channel does in half a day.
Isn't France 24 aimed at the international market? You'd have to compare it to the BBC World Service
Also this wasn't an offhand comment Truss made in an interview, or at a meeting. This was something that she wrote in her book, that survived several rounds of drafting and editing before being committed to print.
My point was more that I believe she was too lazy or stupid to really think about the background to the Rothschild slurs and too focussed on the idea of money being more a lever of power than law and so just grabbed Rothschild off her mental bookshelf and chucked it in there.
There are a lot of people who have knowledge that’s a mile wide and a millimetre thick, who can pull references out in arguments and make themselves feel and look clever, there is that Barb about Stephen Fry that he is “a stupid person’s idea of an intelligent person”.
I think we have seen by her bullish and stubborn charges at things that she has an “idea” backed by some “theories” and some “facts” and then keeps going. So again I very much doubt she is remotely antisemitic but just wasn’t remotely mentally inquisitive enough to think about what she wrote and I doubt the editor assigned to the book gave it much thought either.
We could argue all day - at least! - about whether Truss is genuinely an anti-Semite, because there's no way to truly know, is there?
Like Good Queen Bess we should be more concerned about people's actions, rather than trying to discern the nature of their deepest beliefs. And in this case, her actions have reached a bar that precedent has established merits disciplinary action.
I await Sunak's response.
What is the rcord for the number of MPs from a party having the whip removed in one Parliament? The Tories must be getting close here.
Yebbut Rayner has done something so wrong that the complainant can't say what it is. She - and her whatever it is - is the real scandal. Not any of these Tories.
I read the plot summary of James Joyce's Ulysses on Wiki last night and I thought it sounded deranged.
I've little to no interest in reading the rambling monologues of three individuals who happen to bumble around Dublin on one day in 1904, even if it does contain a handful of great quotes.
It's one book I'm confident I'll never read, and I don't think my life will be any the worse for it.
LOL
Could be a pb competition. Sum up magnificent works of art in blithe, uninformed, yet pithy soundbites.
Ignorance is nothing to be proud of. Hang your head that you are not going to subject yourself to this masterpiece.
Finnegan's Wake, however...
It's more the "take that you sneering metropolitan elite! I'm not falling for your snakeoil. I'm brave and different for not liking...Ulysses" attitude that is a little sad.
Then again, there are lots of things that are hyped that are later seen as being not quite as good as they were initially sold. It happens all the time in fashion, or music: the Big Thing becomes forgotten. Witness most Booker Prize winners.
I haven't read Ulysses, but it often seems to be more of a bragging rights book: "I read it and liked it! You haven't? You uncultured peasant!" Like it is a right-of-passage book, something to be read to say you've read it, not because it's actually good or enjoyable.
Brilliant prose does not make a complete good book; in this, most talk I read about Ulysses seems to show it is a very flawed book.
I mean you really have nothing whatsoever, and certainly nothing of value to say about Ulysses if you haven't read it.
The Labour candidate for the Rochdale by-election repeated an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, and apologised for doing so when later challenged. It might have taken a day or two, but Starmer decided he had to disown the candidate.
Liz Truss repeats an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory in her book. What is she going to do? Will she apologise? Will she remove it from sale?
What is Sunak going to do? He has the grace of the day or so that Starmer took to deliberate in similar circumstances, but surely the outcome isn't in doubt? Is it?
Do you really think she is repeating the conspiracy from the anti-semitism angle or more likely trying to make a clumsy point about controlling money being more important than laws because she’s a bit too intellectually lazy to examine the theories and background of things she’s read that she has allowed to shape her worldview.
I doubt for one minute there is an antisemitic bone in her body to be fair to her.
I think that a conspiracy theory about the Rothschilds using money to control the world is about as obviously anti-Semitic as you can get. If Truss isn't an anti-Semite then she is at the very least very, very stupid, and perhaps so caught up in explaining away her own failure that she'll latch onto any vile conspiracy theory that will deflect blame.
I don't think Starmer disowned Ali in Rochdale, or took the whip away from Corbyn, because he had looked inside their souls and found irrefutable evidence of the dark canker of anti-Semitism there. It's not about whether Liz Truss is an anti-Semite in her soul. It's about her actions in repeating an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.
Also this wasn't an offhand comment Truss made in an interview, or at a meeting. This was something that she wrote in her book, that survived several rounds of drafting and editing before being committed to print.
My point was more that I believe she was too lazy or stupid to really think about the background to the Rothschild slurs and too focussed on the idea of money being more a lever of power than law and so just grabbed Rothschild off her mental bookshelf and chucked it in there.
There are a lot of people who have knowledge that’s a mile wide and a millimetre thick, who can pull references out in arguments and make themselves feel and look clever, there is that Barb about Stephen Fry that he is “a stupid person’s idea of an intelligent person”.
I think we have seen by her bullish and stubborn charges at things that she has an “idea” backed by some “theories” and some “facts” and then keeps going. So again I very much doubt she is remotely antisemitic but just wasn’t remotely mentally inquisitive enough to think about what she wrote and I doubt the editor assigned to the book gave it much thought either.
We could argue all day - at least! - about whether Truss is genuinely an anti-Semite, because there's no way to truly know, is there?
Like Good Queen Bess we should be more concerned about people's actions, rather than trying to discern the nature of their deepest beliefs. And in this case, her actions have reached a bar that precedent has established merits disciplinary action.
I await Sunak's response.
What is the rcord for the number of MPs from a party having the whip removed in one Parliament? The Tories must be getting close here.
We could do with a list which includes details of their personal and political lives to see if there are recurring patterns.
As an aside, this morning I am reminded once again how far ahead in content and quality France 24 is compared to any of the UK news offerings. Sky with the self inflated Kay Burley is unwatchable, BBC Breakfast is turgid and GB news is just weird. France 24 cover more topics in more detail and from a far more international perspective in 10 minutes than any UK news channel does in half a day.
Isn't France 24 aimed at the international market? You'd have to compare it to the BBC World Service
The trouble is that the BBC has now dumped its World Service on TV and merged it into a single BBC news channel. There is nothing to compare it with.
And besides, it is not just the content but the style. The self important presenters and journalists (I use that workd loosely for most of them) on UK TV news channels think THEY are the news.
Also this wasn't an offhand comment Truss made in an interview, or at a meeting. This was something that she wrote in her book, that survived several rounds of drafting and editing before being committed to print.
My point was more that I believe she was too lazy or stupid to really think about the background to the Rothschild slurs and too focussed on the idea of money being more a lever of power than law and so just grabbed Rothschild off her mental bookshelf and chucked it in there.
There are a lot of people who have knowledge that’s a mile wide and a millimetre thick, who can pull references out in arguments and make themselves feel and look clever, there is that Barb about Stephen Fry that he is “a stupid person’s idea of an intelligent person”.
I think we have seen by her bullish and stubborn charges at things that she has an “idea” backed by some “theories” and some “facts” and then keeps going. So again I very much doubt she is remotely antisemitic but just wasn’t remotely mentally inquisitive enough to think about what she wrote and I doubt the editor assigned to the book gave it much thought either.
We could argue all day - at least! - about whether Truss is genuinely an anti-Semite, because there's no way to truly know, is there?
Like Good Queen Bess we should be more concerned about people's actions, rather than trying to discern the nature of their deepest beliefs. And in this case, her actions have reached a bar that precedent has established merits disciplinary action.
I await Sunak's response.
What is the rcord for the number of MPs from a party having the whip removed in one Parliament? The Tories must be getting close here.
I’m sure R4 said this morning there are 7 Tory and 7 Labour at the moment. Considering the relative party sizes if the stat is true it’s surely more embarrassing for Labour?
Or are the Labour ones because SKS is great for getting rid of bad actors and the Tory ones because Rishi is terrible and allowed in lots of bad apples?
Why can't some nice Tory join these together? A nice £107m contract from the government - awarded without tender to someone who doesn't own any planes or any knowledge of aviation - to fly refugees directly from the Sinai to Rwanda?
Important service update – Young Person’s Gender Service
Referrals from the Sandyford Sexual Health Services to Paediatric Endocrinology for the prescription of Puberty Suppressing Hormones have been paused for any new patients assessed by our Young Person’s Gender Service.
Meanwhile, the GOP in Congress has been focused on passing articles of impeachment for Mayorkas, who is Homeland Security Secretary and responsible for the US/Mexico border. Yesterday, the Senate voted to not even commence the trial that the GOP in Congress was asking for.
The GOP under Johnson is the most hapless and hopeless party I can recall. Even the current Tory party, even the SNP, are not so hamstrung by internal dissent and sheer lunacy. The malevolent hand of a somewhat distracted Trump plays a large part in this. There is now talk of some Republicans supporting the Democrats in forcing a vote on the Senate bill authorising aid for Ukraine. We can only hope that they do and that it is soon enough.
There's a lot of speculation about why Mike Johnson has decided to push the Ukraine aid bill through now. My suspicion he realised he literally cannot work with his own party so he's decided to work with the Democrats instead.
How does that work? Mike Johnson is a religious fundamentalist who tried to overturn Biden's 2020 election win, doesn't believe climate change is caused by humans (or at least is paid lots of money by fossil fuel companies to say this), and doesn't believe in the separation of church and state. He wants to recriminalise sex between consenting adults who are the same sex. And claims all his policies are from the Bible.
I think FF43 was specifically referring to working with the Democrats on this bill rather than more generally. It will probably cost him dearly so, whilst I have no time for him generally, credit to him for this action at least.
Agreed. God knows what his motivations are at this point - perhaps just survival in post for another few weeks and some sort of record of achievement ? But if the bill gets to the floor for a vote, then good for him (for the first and probably last time).
As an aside, this morning I am reminded once again how far ahead in content and quality France 24 is compared to any of the UK news offerings. Sky with the self inflated Kay Burley is unwatchable, BBC Breakfast is turgid and GB news is just weird. France 24 cover more topics in more detail and from a far more international perspective in 10 minutes than any UK news channel does in half a day.
Isn't France 24 aimed at the international market? You'd have to compare it to the BBC World Service
The trouble is that the BBC has now dumped its World Service on TV and merged it into a single BBC news channel. There is nothing to compare it with.
And besides, it is not just the content but the style. The self important presenters and journalists (I use that workd loosely for most of them) on UK TV news channels think THEY are the news.
@TSE may be right about this although it seems to be a shift from previous posts suggesting that independence is dead? I love Scotland and know it fairly well, but not enough to judge if there’s a provable differentiation in voters’ minds between ‘Independence’ and ‘Voting Intention in a Westminster election’? Any Scots care to respond to that?
I also wonder to what extent Gordon Brown helped carry Scotland for Labour? It was when Labour went from a Scottish leader to a London Metropolitan that they plunged from 41 to 1 seat. From which they have never recovered, or not yet. Will Londoner Keir Starmer be able to reverse it?
Might London and Scotland be weaker results for Labour than their otherwise national performance?
The Labour candidate for the Rochdale by-election repeated an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, and apologised for doing so when later challenged. It might have taken a day or two, but Starmer decided he had to disown the candidate.
Liz Truss repeats an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory in her book. What is she going to do? Will she apologise? Will she remove it from sale?
What is Sunak going to do? He has the grace of the day or so that Starmer took to deliberate in similar circumstances, but surely the outcome isn't in doubt? Is it?
Do you really think she is repeating the conspiracy from the anti-semitism angle or more likely trying to make a clumsy point about controlling money being more important than laws because she’s a bit too intellectually lazy to examine the theories and background of things she’s read that she has allowed to shape her worldview.
I doubt for one minute there is an antisemitic bone in her body to be fair to her.
I think that a conspiracy theory about the Rothschilds using money to control the world is about as obviously anti-Semitic as you can get. If Truss isn't an anti-Semite then she is at the very least very, very stupid, and perhaps so caught up in explaining away her own failure that she'll latch onto any vile conspiracy theory that will deflect blame.
I don't think Starmer disowned Ali in Rochdale, or took the whip away from Corbyn, because he had looked inside their souls and found irrefutable evidence of the dark canker of anti-Semitism there. It's not about whether Liz Truss is an anti-Semite in her soul. It's about her actions in repeating an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.
“GIVE me control of a nation’s money supply, and I care not who makes its laws.” So said Mayer Amschel Rothschild, founder of the Rothschild banking dynasty.
Otherwise I’m travelling at the moment and, like the 2/3rds of other Brits travelling abroad this year, conscious once more of the ceaseless disaster called Brexit.
Meanwhile, the GOP in Congress has been focused on passing articles of impeachment for Mayorkas, who is Homeland Security Secretary and responsible for the US/Mexico border. Yesterday, the Senate voted to not even commence the trial that the GOP in Congress was asking for.
The GOP under Johnson is the most hapless and hopeless party I can recall. Even the current Tory party, even the SNP, are not so hamstrung by internal dissent and sheer lunacy. The malevolent hand of a somewhat distracted Trump plays a large part in this. There is now talk of some Republicans supporting the Democrats in forcing a vote on the Senate bill authorising aid for Ukraine. We can only hope that they do and that it is soon enough.
Mayorkas shouldn't have been impeached - he should have been sacked.
That Biden hasn't done so suggests he's happy to have no control of the southern border.
Its sensible politics for the GOP to focus attention on something which both unites themselves and is also damaging to the Dems.
I mean, Biden's lack of control over the southern border is more related to state GOP (like Texas Governor) doing insane stuff (backed by SCOTUS) than it has anything to do with migrants and border crossings. Biden is still being extremely harsh on people seeking asylum or crossing the border - and has asked Congress to pass extremely draconian legislation to let him be more so. The thing is that the GOP can always just say the border is a nightmare and their base will eat it up without much evidence.
And block the legislation to do anything about it.
I read the plot summary of James Joyce's Ulysses on Wiki last night and I thought it sounded deranged.
I've little to no interest in reading the rambling monologues of three individuals who happen to bumble around Dublin on one day in 1904, even if it does contain a handful of great quotes.
It's one book I'm confident I'll never read, and I don't think my life will be any the worse for it.
LOL
Could be a pb competition. Sum up magnificent works of art in blithe, uninformed, yet pithy soundbites.
Ignorance is nothing to be proud of. Hang your head that you are not going to subject yourself to this masterpiece.
Finnegan's Wake, however...
It's more the "take that you sneering metropolitan elite! I'm not falling for your snakeoil. I'm brave and different for not liking...Ulysses" attitude that is a little sad.
There is a very depressing streak in UK society, from top to bottom, that someone is "too clever by half".
TBF, we do have the evidence of Leon's enormous IQ to back up that idea.
Meanwhile, the GOP in Congress has been focused on passing articles of impeachment for Mayorkas, who is Homeland Security Secretary and responsible for the US/Mexico border. Yesterday, the Senate voted to not even commence the trial that the GOP in Congress was asking for.
The GOP under Johnson is the most hapless and hopeless party I can recall. Even the current Tory party, even the SNP, are not so hamstrung by internal dissent and sheer lunacy. The malevolent hand of a somewhat distracted Trump plays a large part in this. There is now talk of some Republicans supporting the Democrats in forcing a vote on the Senate bill authorising aid for Ukraine. We can only hope that they do and that it is soon enough.
Mayorkas shouldn't have been impeached - he should have been sacked.
That Biden hasn't done so suggests he's happy to have no control of the southern border.
Its sensible politics for the GOP to focus attention on something which both unites themselves and is also damaging to the Dems.
I mean, Biden's lack of control over the southern border is more related to state GOP (like Texas Governor) doing insane stuff (backed by SCOTUS) than it has anything to do with migrants and border crossings. Biden is still being extremely harsh on people seeking asylum or crossing the border - and has asked Congress to pass extremely draconian legislation to let him be more so. The thing is that the GOP can always just say the border is a nightmare and their base will eat it up without much evidence.
Stop waving the pompoms and deal with reality.
Biden has been extremely weak on border control, the opposite to Obama in fact, and the evidence is millions of illegal immigrants.
Trying to blame it on the other side will not work.
Biden has made more executive orders on immigration and the border than Trump has. He defended and tried to continue the Title 42 powers that were preventing people entering the country due to Covid. There was a huge backlog of people trying to enter the country under Covid, who kept getting turned away, and when Title 42 stopped the government had to start processing them. That's why the huge increase in numbers.
As for the problems associated with it - that is mostly GOP caused. You have GOP governors basically lying to migrants to get them on to buses to move them across country to different states - in part breaking the infrastructure used to track people whilst also trying to put pressure on blue states infrastructure. You have Texas National Guard being deployed to put out razor wire bouys to essentially kill people trying to cross into the country (and also killing themselves in large numbers via drunk driving, and not getting paid overtime for the privilege). You have the GOP in the House and Senate refusing to pass legislation they want because if it passes under Biden it takes away a huge political attack for Trump in the GE.
I do not like Biden's approach to immigration - it is still punitive and draconian. If you are a right winger you should look at how Biden is managing the border and beaming because he has conceded in every way to GOP policies. The GOP has gone so far now that they're basically proposing a ground invasion of Mexico as the only way of dealing with immigration and drugs - that's in part because everything they've ever wanted in the past has been given to them. If you are upset that "the border isn't working" (which in essence I would agree with), it isn't because Biden is "weak" on the border - it's because a highly militarised border with a policy of trying to stop anyone too brown into the country will not work, especially when your foreign policy is designed to fuck with every country in the Western hemisphere for centuries.
As an aside, this morning I am reminded once again how far ahead in content and quality France 24 is compared to any of the UK news offerings. Sky with the self inflated Kay Burley is unwatchable, BBC Breakfast is turgid and GB news is just weird. France 24 cover more topics in more detail and from a far more international perspective in 10 minutes than any UK news channel does in half a day.
BBC Breakfast is rubbish but so are all those morning tv shows. They're a squirmfest. BBC rolling news is pretty good though imo. And on the non-rolling front CH4 news has to be amongst the best in the world.
As an aside, this morning I am reminded once again how far ahead in content and quality France 24 is compared to any of the UK news offerings. Sky with the self inflated Kay Burley is unwatchable, BBC Breakfast is turgid and GB news is just weird. France 24 cover more topics in more detail and from a far more international perspective in 10 minutes than any UK news channel does in half a day.
Isn't France 24 aimed at the international market? You'd have to compare it to the BBC World Service
The trouble is that the BBC has now dumped its World Service on TV and merged it into a single BBC news channel. There is nothing to compare it with.
And besides, it is not just the content but the style. The self important presenters and journalists (I use that workd loosely for most of them) on UK TV news channels think THEY are the news.
Even before the BBC dumped the World Service when I was regularly abroad France 24 both provided a better news service and a slightly more upbeat one
I read the plot summary of James Joyce's Ulysses on Wiki last night and I thought it sounded deranged.
I've little to no interest in reading the rambling monologues of three individuals who happen to bumble around Dublin on one day in 1904, even if it does contain a handful of great quotes.
It's one book I'm confident I'll never read, and I don't think my life will be any the worse for it.
LOL
Could be a pb competition. Sum up magnificent works of art in blithe, uninformed, yet pithy soundbites.
Ignorance is nothing to be proud of. Hang your head that you are not going to subject yourself to this masterpiece.
Finnegan's Wake, however...
My English teacher once told me that whilst Ulysses is a great novel, '....Life is too short for Finnegan's Wake.'
I read the former and found it boring and baffling in about equal measure. I took his word for it on the latter.
The comments on books reminds me of the time someone pretentiously said something like: "You can only fully understand the bible if you read it in its original Latin."
I read the plot summary of James Joyce's Ulysses on Wiki last night and I thought it sounded deranged.
I've little to no interest in reading the rambling monologues of three individuals who happen to bumble around Dublin on one day in 1904, even if it does contain a handful of great quotes.
It's one book I'm confident I'll never read, and I don't think my life will be any the worse for it.
LOL
Could be a pb competition. Sum up magnificent works of art in blithe, uninformed, yet pithy soundbites.
Ignorance is nothing to be proud of. Hang your head that you are not going to subject yourself to this masterpiece.
Finnegan's Wake, however...
It's more the "take that you sneering metropolitan elite! I'm not falling for your snakeoil. I'm brave and different for not liking...Ulysses" attitude that is a little sad.
There is a very depressing streak in UK society, from top to bottom, that someone is "too clever by half".
Not always; sometimes the emperor's new clothes don't exist; sometimes when someone seems to be vapidly speaking in abstractions it's because they are all words and no substance; sometimes people with nothing really to say rely on us forgetting that 'everything that can be said can be said clearly'.
Or, going back to the recent mention of Middlemarch, I have reached the age where I realise that super clever and idealistic Dorothea was wrong about everything, and her sister Celia, who was too ordinary to write a book about, was right about everything.
Not exactly the most important thing, but Mark Menzies's suspension as a Conservative MP means the threshold for triggering a confidence vote in Rishi Sunak has fallen from 53 MPs writing letters to 52
Of course, if Menzies has written a letter then nothing changes as the gap between those with a letter in and the needed target would stay the same.
If he hasn't, then its one step closer.
But a challenge isn't going to happen now. Not before the locals......
Also this wasn't an offhand comment Truss made in an interview, or at a meeting. This was something that she wrote in her book, that survived several rounds of drafting and editing before being committed to print.
My point was more that I believe she was too lazy or stupid to really think about the background to the Rothschild slurs and too focussed on the idea of money being more a lever of power than law and so just grabbed Rothschild off her mental bookshelf and chucked it in there.
There are a lot of people who have knowledge that’s a mile wide and a millimetre thick, who can pull references out in arguments and make themselves feel and look clever, there is that Barb about Stephen Fry that he is “a stupid person’s idea of an intelligent person”.
I think we have seen by her bullish and stubborn charges at things that she has an “idea” backed by some “theories” and some “facts” and then keeps going. So again I very much doubt she is remotely antisemitic but just wasn’t remotely mentally inquisitive enough to think about what she wrote and I doubt the editor assigned to the book gave it much thought either.
We could argue all day - at least! - about whether Truss is genuinely an anti-Semite, because there's no way to truly know, is there?
Like Good Queen Bess we should be more concerned about people's actions, rather than trying to discern the nature of their deepest beliefs. And in this case, her actions have reached a bar that precedent has established merits disciplinary action.
I await Sunak's response.
What is the rcord for the number of MPs from a party having the whip removed in one Parliament? The Tories must be getting close here.
I’m sure R4 said this morning there are 7 Tory and 7 Labour at the moment. Considering the relative party sizes if the stat is true it’s surely more embarrassing for Labour?
Or are the Labour ones because SKS is great for getting rid of bad actors and the Tory ones because Rishi is terrible and allowed in lots of bad apples?
Are the numbers really comparable, as parties will have different approaches on suspension of the whip?
I don't say that to defend Labour necessarily as I don't know which party has a higher bar for suspension. Just that the numbers aren't comparable.
It's also not necessarily the case that you can compare with previous Parliaments as rules will have differed. As an example, I don't recall Neil Hamilton losing the whip despite serious allegations, and indeed he stood in 1997. The approach on administrative suspension changed a lot in light of that and other cases involving all parties.
Meanwhile, the GOP in Congress has been focused on passing articles of impeachment for Mayorkas, who is Homeland Security Secretary and responsible for the US/Mexico border. Yesterday, the Senate voted to not even commence the trial that the GOP in Congress was asking for.
The GOP under Johnson is the most hapless and hopeless party I can recall. Even the current Tory party, even the SNP, are not so hamstrung by internal dissent and sheer lunacy. The malevolent hand of a somewhat distracted Trump plays a large part in this. There is now talk of some Republicans supporting the Democrats in forcing a vote on the Senate bill authorising aid for Ukraine. We can only hope that they do and that it is soon enough.
Mayorkas shouldn't have been impeached - he should have been sacked.
That Biden hasn't done so suggests he's happy to have no control of the southern border.
Its sensible politics for the GOP to focus attention on something which both unites themselves and is also damaging to the Dems.
I mean, Biden's lack of control over the southern border is more related to state GOP (like Texas Governor) doing insane stuff (backed by SCOTUS) than it has anything to do with migrants and border crossings. Biden is still being extremely harsh on people seeking asylum or crossing the border - and has asked Congress to pass extremely draconian legislation to let him be more so. The thing is that the GOP can always just say the border is a nightmare and their base will eat it up without much evidence.
And block the legislation to do anything about it.
So why didn't the Dems do something in the two years they controlled Presidency, House and Senate ?
The answer is they didn't want to.
Finally forced to accept that this might lead to electoral disaster in 2024 they agree some reforms in the Senate but these are then blocked by a House GOP playing political games.
Followed by some "we gave them everything they wanted" whining from the Dems.
Which merely emphasises the point that the GOP are more committed (at least in theory) to border control than the Dems.
I read the plot summary of James Joyce's Ulysses on Wiki last night and I thought it sounded deranged.
I've little to no interest in reading the rambling monologues of three individuals who happen to bumble around Dublin on one day in 1904, even if it does contain a handful of great quotes.
It's one book I'm confident I'll never read, and I don't think my life will be any the worse for it.
LOL
Could be a pb competition. Sum up magnificent works of art in blithe, uninformed, yet pithy soundbites.
Ignorance is nothing to be proud of. Hang your head that you are not going to subject yourself to this masterpiece.
Finnegan's Wake, however...
My English teacher once told me that whilst Ulysses is a great novel, '....Life is too short for Finnegan's Wake.'
I read the former and found it boring and baffling in about equal measure. I took his word for it on the latter.
You both might as well get the title right. It's Finnegans Wake, not Finnegan's Wake.
But it's best understood like this: NEGANS - FIN - WAKE. That is a teddibly sophisticated joke that I won't explain.
The comments on books reminds me of the time someone pretentiously said something like: "You can only fully understand the bible if you read it in its original Latin."
A comment that was wrong on so many levels...
Incidentally, Naomi Wolf's latest reinvention is as a biblical scholar. She thinks the Bible has been translated all wrong:
I read the plot summary of James Joyce's Ulysses on Wiki last night and I thought it sounded deranged.
I've little to no interest in reading the rambling monologues of three individuals who happen to bumble around Dublin on one day in 1904, even if it does contain a handful of great quotes.
It's one book I'm confident I'll never read, and I don't think my life will be any the worse for it.
LOL
Could be a pb competition. Sum up magnificent works of art in blithe, uninformed, yet pithy soundbites.
Ignorance is nothing to be proud of. Hang your head that you are not going to subject yourself to this masterpiece.
Finnegan's Wake, however...
It's more the "take that you sneering metropolitan elite! I'm not falling for your snakeoil. I'm brave and different for not liking...Ulysses" attitude that is a little sad.
There is a very depressing streak in UK society, from top to bottom, that someone is "too clever by half".
Indeed. But they are often right with the criticism: there's often a great deal of snobbery by people who go on about how intelligent they are, or how high their IQ is. Such people are often idiots in some rather obvious ways.
It's a good job we don't have an example of this on PB....
What a bizarre line to take. You continue to argue the toss about a book you haven't read and now are becoming abusive towards those who have an opinion on it who might have read it. Weird.
But then again, looking at your posts about other subjects (here's me being abusive now), it is no surprise whatsoever. Becoming hugely angry about something you are completely clueless about.
The comments on books reminds me of the time someone pretentiously said something like: "You can only fully understand the bible if you read it in its original Latin."
A comment that was wrong on so many levels...
Lots of pious folk of a generation now mostly dead truly believed that the AV was the original.
The comments on books reminds me of the time someone pretentiously said something like: "You can only fully understand the bible if you read it in its original Latin."
Otherwise I’m travelling at the moment and, like the 2/3rds of other Brits travelling abroad this year, conscious once more of the ceaseless disaster called Brexit.
I do love the ultra generalised whine - it really does suggest you cannot think of anything specific to complain about.
The comments on books reminds me of the time someone pretentiously said something like: "You can only fully understand the bible if you read it in its original Latin."
A comment that was wrong on so many levels...
Incidentally, Naomi Wolf's latest reinvention is as a biblical scholar. She thinks the Bible has been translated all wrong:
I read the plot summary of James Joyce's Ulysses on Wiki last night and I thought it sounded deranged.
I've little to no interest in reading the rambling monologues of three individuals who happen to bumble around Dublin on one day in 1904, even if it does contain a handful of great quotes.
It's one book I'm confident I'll never read, and I don't think my life will be any the worse for it.
LOL
Could be a pb competition. Sum up magnificent works of art in blithe, uninformed, yet pithy soundbites.
Ignorance is nothing to be proud of. Hang your head that you are not going to subject yourself to this masterpiece.
Finnegan's Wake, however...
It's more the "take that you sneering metropolitan elite! I'm not falling for your snakeoil. I'm brave and different for not liking...Ulysses" attitude that is a little sad.
There is a very depressing streak in UK society, from top to bottom, that someone is "too clever by half".
Not always; sometimes the emperor's new clothes don't exist; sometimes when someone seems to be vapidly speaking in abstractions it's because they are all words and no substance; sometimes people with nothing really to say rely on us forgetting that 'everything that can be said can be said clearly'.
Or, going back to the recent mention of Middlemarch, I have reached the age where I realise that super clever and idealistic Dorothea was wrong about everything, and her sister Celia, who was too ordinary to write a book about, was right about everything.
It's a lazy line to take.
Look at Emin's My Bed. Or any conceptual art produced. Or Carl Andre, who I suppose set this ball rolling in recent times (and before him Duchamp). Always had its lazy detractors who haven't taken the trouble to try to understand what the intention was.
Now, there's no problem with not making the effort. I would like to read Don Quixote in the original Spanish but I'm not about to learn Spanish to do so. But neither would I say that Don Quixote in the Spanish is likely a useless book because other people have said it is.
(Note: I have read Don Quixote in translation and it was superb.)
Meanwhile, the GOP in Congress has been focused on passing articles of impeachment for Mayorkas, who is Homeland Security Secretary and responsible for the US/Mexico border. Yesterday, the Senate voted to not even commence the trial that the GOP in Congress was asking for.
The GOP under Johnson is the most hapless and hopeless party I can recall. Even the current Tory party, even the SNP, are not so hamstrung by internal dissent and sheer lunacy. The malevolent hand of a somewhat distracted Trump plays a large part in this. There is now talk of some Republicans supporting the Democrats in forcing a vote on the Senate bill authorising aid for Ukraine. We can only hope that they do and that it is soon enough.
Mayorkas shouldn't have been impeached - he should have been sacked.
That Biden hasn't done so suggests he's happy to have no control of the southern border.
Its sensible politics for the GOP to focus attention on something which both unites themselves and is also damaging to the Dems.
I mean, Biden's lack of control over the southern border is more related to state GOP (like Texas Governor) doing insane stuff (backed by SCOTUS) than it has anything to do with migrants and border crossings. Biden is still being extremely harsh on people seeking asylum or crossing the border - and has asked Congress to pass extremely draconian legislation to let him be more so. The thing is that the GOP can always just say the border is a nightmare and their base will eat it up without much evidence.
Stop waving the pompoms and deal with reality.
Biden has been extremely weak on border control, the opposite to Obama in fact, and the evidence is millions of illegal immigrants.
Trying to blame it on the other side will not work.
Biden has made more executive orders on immigration and the border than Trump has. He defended and tried to continue the Title 42 powers that were preventing people entering the country due to Covid. There was a huge backlog of people trying to enter the country under Covid, who kept getting turned away, and when Title 42 stopped the government had to start processing them. That's why the huge increase in numbers.
As for the problems associated with it - that is mostly GOP caused. You have GOP governors basically lying to migrants to get them on to buses to move them across country to different states - in part breaking the infrastructure used to track people whilst also trying to put pressure on blue states infrastructure. You have Texas National Guard being deployed to put out razor wire bouys to essentially kill people trying to cross into the country (and also killing themselves in large numbers via drunk driving, and not getting paid overtime for the privilege). You have the GOP in the House and Senate refusing to pass legislation they want because if it passes under Biden it takes away a huge political attack for Trump in the GE.
I do not like Biden's approach to immigration - it is still punitive and draconian. If you are a right winger you should look at how Biden is managing the border and beaming because he has conceded in every way to GOP policies. The GOP has gone so far now that they're basically proposing a ground invasion of Mexico as the only way of dealing with immigration and drugs - that's in part because everything they've ever wanted in the past has been given to them. If you are upset that "the border isn't working" (which in essence I would agree with), it isn't because Biden is "weak" on the border - it's because a highly militarised border with a policy of trying to stop anyone too brown into the country will not work, especially when your foreign policy is designed to fuck with every country in the Western hemisphere for centuries.
In reality, the biggest single driver in the increase in immigration is nothing at all to do with domestic policy; rather it is Venezuala becoming a failed state.
Neither party has really addressed that - though Biden did make an attempt to improve matters, by conditionally lifting oil sanctions.
The GOP are in any event blocking any attempts by the administration to "get tougher' on the border by refusing to pass the necessary legislation, unless they're allowed to entirely dictate its terms.
The comments on books reminds me of the time someone pretentiously said something like: "You can only fully understand the bible if you read it in its original Latin."
A comment that was wrong on so many levels...
Quite right. The bible was written in English.
Not just English but proper English.
If it wasn't for the KJB we might all be speaking more like Shakespeare.
The comments on books reminds me of the time someone pretentiously said something like: "You can only fully understand the bible if you read it in its original Latin."
Meanwhile, the GOP in Congress has been focused on passing articles of impeachment for Mayorkas, who is Homeland Security Secretary and responsible for the US/Mexico border. Yesterday, the Senate voted to not even commence the trial that the GOP in Congress was asking for.
The GOP under Johnson is the most hapless and hopeless party I can recall. Even the current Tory party, even the SNP, are not so hamstrung by internal dissent and sheer lunacy. The malevolent hand of a somewhat distracted Trump plays a large part in this. There is now talk of some Republicans supporting the Democrats in forcing a vote on the Senate bill authorising aid for Ukraine. We can only hope that they do and that it is soon enough.
Mayorkas shouldn't have been impeached - he should have been sacked.
That Biden hasn't done so suggests he's happy to have no control of the southern border.
Its sensible politics for the GOP to focus attention on something which both unites themselves and is also damaging to the Dems.
I mean, Biden's lack of control over the southern border is more related to state GOP (like Texas Governor) doing insane stuff (backed by SCOTUS) than it has anything to do with migrants and border crossings. Biden is still being extremely harsh on people seeking asylum or crossing the border - and has asked Congress to pass extremely draconian legislation to let him be more so. The thing is that the GOP can always just say the border is a nightmare and their base will eat it up without much evidence.
And block the legislation to do anything about it.
So why didn't the Dems do something in the two years they controlled Presidency, House and Senate ?
The answer is they didn't want to.
Finally forced to accept that this might lead to electoral disaster in 2024 they agree some reforms in the Senate but these are then blocked by a House GOP playing political games.
Followed by some "we gave them everything they wanted" whining from the Dems.
Which merely emphasises the point that the GOP are more committed (at least in theory) to border control than the Dems.
The GOP has no interest in border "control" - they have an interest in nativism and stoking white resentment. If they had any interest in border "control" they wouldn't keep doing failed punitive policies and would increase international aid and actually increase the ability to process migrants at the border rather than propose more authoritarian and violent measure; and now move to a policy essentially calling for the invasion of Mexico. It's not that dissimilar to the rhetoric and policies here in the UK.
The comments on books reminds me of the time someone pretentiously said something like: "You can only fully understand the bible if you read it in its original Latin."
A comment that was wrong on so many levels...
Incidentally, Naomi Wolf's latest reinvention is as a biblical scholar. She thinks the Bible has been translated all wrong:
Thanks for the link. Bad start, she believes there is such a thing as a 'literal' translation from another language of 2000 years ago to the English of today. From such a primary school start recovery would be a struggle:
"so. I skipped ahead to the New Testament, with a Koine Greek - English side-by-side literal translation"
The comments on books reminds me of the time someone pretentiously said something like: "You can only fully understand the bible if you read it in its original Latin."
A comment that was wrong on so many levels...
Incidentally, Naomi Wolf's latest reinvention is as a biblical scholar. She thinks the Bible has been translated all wrong:
Thanks for the link. Bad start, she believes there is such a thing as a 'literal' translation from another language of 2000 years ago to the English of today. From such a primary school start recovery would be a struggle:
"so. I skipped ahead to the New Testament, with a Koine Greek - English side-by-side literal translation"
She should get a life. So should anyone thinking of writing 5000 words telling her to get one.
Lowest government approval by PM (Gallup/MORI): Attlee 31% Churchill (51-55) 40% Eden 34% Macmillan: 30% Douglas-Home 36% Wilson (64-70) 17% Heath 22% Wilson (74-76) 27% Callaghan 17% Thatcher 16% Major 8% Blair 22% Brown 16% Cameron 24% May 8% Johnson 14% Truss 11% Sunak 10%
Also this wasn't an offhand comment Truss made in an interview, or at a meeting. This was something that she wrote in her book, that survived several rounds of drafting and editing before being committed to print.
My point was more that I believe she was too lazy or stupid to really think about the background to the Rothschild slurs and too focussed on the idea of money being more a lever of power than law and so just grabbed Rothschild off her mental bookshelf and chucked it in there.
There are a lot of people who have knowledge that’s a mile wide and a millimetre thick, who can pull references out in arguments and make themselves feel and look clever, there is that Barb about Stephen Fry that he is “a stupid person’s idea of an intelligent person”.
I think we have seen by her bullish and stubborn charges at things that she has an “idea” backed by some “theories” and some “facts” and then keeps going. So again I very much doubt she is remotely antisemitic but just wasn’t remotely mentally inquisitive enough to think about what she wrote and I doubt the editor assigned to the book gave it much thought either.
We could argue all day - at least! - about whether Truss is genuinely an anti-Semite, because there's no way to truly know, is there?
Like Good Queen Bess we should be more concerned about people's actions, rather than trying to discern the nature of their deepest beliefs. And in this case, her actions have reached a bar that precedent has established merits disciplinary action.
I await Sunak's response.
What is the rcord for the number of MPs from a party having the whip removed in one Parliament? The Tories must be getting close here.
I’m sure R4 said this morning there are 7 Tory and 7 Labour at the moment. Considering the relative party sizes if the stat is true it’s surely more embarrassing for Labour?
Or are the Labour ones because SKS is great for getting rid of bad actors and the Tory ones because Rishi is terrible and allowed in lots of bad apples?
Are the numbers really comparable, as parties will have different approaches on suspension of the whip?
I don't say that to defend Labour necessarily as I don't know which party has a higher bar for suspension. Just that the numbers aren't comparable.
It's also not necessarily the case that you can compare with previous Parliaments as rules will have differed. As an example, I don't recall Neil Hamilton losing the whip despite serious allegations, and indeed he stood in 1997. The approach on administrative suspension changed a lot in light of that and other cases involving all parties.
This is a dangerous path. Suspending MPs makes no political difference to comparative voting strength in the Commons, but in a tight or hung parliament it will, and there will be a sustained trawling effort on all sides to find real or spurious allegations against opponents.
The comments on books reminds me of the time someone pretentiously said something like: "You can only fully understand the bible if you read it in its original Latin."
A comment that was wrong on so many levels...
Incidentally, Naomi Wolf's latest reinvention is as a biblical scholar. She thinks the Bible has been translated all wrong:
Thanks for the link. Bad start, she believes there is such a thing as a 'literal' translation from another language of 2000 years ago to the English of today. From such a primary school start recovery would be a struggle:
"so. I skipped ahead to the New Testament, with a Koine Greek - English side-by-side literal translation"
Not sure she believes that - but many people do, which isn't the same thing but is highly relevant to the Bible. However, there's translations and there's translations which add quite a lot.
The comments on books reminds me of the time someone pretentiously said something like: "You can only fully understand the bible if you read it in its original Latin."
A comment that was wrong on so many levels...
Quite right. The bible was written in English.
By King James?
By a committee, including both Oxford and Cambridge scholars, and thereby confounding at least two cherished PB shibboleths.
I read the plot summary of James Joyce's Ulysses on Wiki last night and I thought it sounded deranged.
I've little to no interest in reading the rambling monologues of three individuals who happen to bumble around Dublin on one day in 1904, even if it does contain a handful of great quotes.
It's one book I'm confident I'll never read, and I don't think my life will be any the worse for it.
LOL
Could be a pb competition. Sum up magnificent works of art in blithe, uninformed, yet pithy soundbites.
Ignorance is nothing to be proud of. Hang your head that you are not going to subject yourself to this masterpiece.
Finnegan's Wake, however...
It's more the "take that you sneering metropolitan elite! I'm not falling for your snakeoil. I'm brave and different for not liking...Ulysses" attitude that is a little sad.
There is a very depressing streak in UK society, from top to bottom, that someone is "too clever by half".
Not always; sometimes the emperor's new clothes don't exist; sometimes when someone seems to be vapidly speaking in abstractions it's because they are all words and no substance; sometimes people with nothing really to say rely on us forgetting that 'everything that can be said can be said clearly'.
Or, going back to the recent mention of Middlemarch, I have reached the age where I realise that super clever and idealistic Dorothea was wrong about everything, and her sister Celia, who was too ordinary to write a book about, was right about everything.
It's a lazy line to take.
Look at Emin's My Bed. Or any conceptual art produced. Or Carl Andre, who I suppose set this ball rolling in recent times (and before him Duchamp). Always had its lazy detractors who haven't taken the trouble to try to understand what the intention was.
Now, there's no problem with not making the effort. I would like to read Don Quixote in the original Spanish but I'm not about to learn Spanish to do so. But neither would I say that Don Quixote in the Spanish is likely a useless book because other people have said it is.
(Note: I have read Don Quixote in translation and it was superb.)
Expecting people on here - anywhere - to only comment on things they know something about is somewhat, well, quixotic.
The comments on books reminds me of the time someone pretentiously said something like: "You can only fully understand the bible if you read it in its original Latin."
The comments on books reminds me of the time someone pretentiously said something like: "You can only fully understand the bible if you read it in its original Latin."
A comment that was wrong on so many levels...
Quite right. The bible was written in English.
By King James?
Who by all accounts spoke English with a strong Scotch accent. He’ll be wearing a satisfied skeletal smile after the passing of the smoking legislation.
The Labour candidate for the Rochdale by-election repeated an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, and apologised for doing so when later challenged. It might have taken a day or two, but Starmer decided he had to disown the candidate.
Liz Truss repeats an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory in her book. What is she going to do? Will she apologise? Will she remove it from sale?
What is Sunak going to do? He has the grace of the day or so that Starmer took to deliberate in similar circumstances, but surely the outcome isn't in doubt? Is it?
Do you really think she is repeating the conspiracy from the anti-semitism angle or more likely trying to make a clumsy point about controlling money being more important than laws because she’s a bit too intellectually lazy to examine the theories and background of things she’s read that she has allowed to shape her worldview.
I doubt for one minute there is an antisemitic bone in her body to be fair to her.
I think that a conspiracy theory about the Rothschilds using money to control the world is about as obviously anti-Semitic as you can get. If Truss isn't an anti-Semite then she is at the very least very, very stupid, and perhaps so caught up in explaining away her own failure that she'll latch onto any vile conspiracy theory that will deflect blame.
I don't think Starmer disowned Ali in Rochdale, or took the whip away from Corbyn, because he had looked inside their souls and found irrefutable evidence of the dark canker of anti-Semitism there. It's not about whether Liz Truss is an anti-Semite in her soul. It's about her actions in repeating an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.
In her defence, we do know that she is very, very stupid.
The bible is interesting as a socio-historical document and as such every iteration of it is important in telling us what the people of the time thought about religion, formal or otherwise, together with the prevailing morality at the time.
It is of course of no value whatsoever as an insight into "The Truth".
The comments on books reminds me of the time someone pretentiously said something like: "You can only fully understand the bible if you read it in its original Latin."
A comment that was wrong on so many levels...
Quite right. The bible was written in English.
By King James?
Who by all accounts spoke English with a strong Scotch accent. He’ll be wearing a satisfied skeletal smile after the passing of the smoking legislation.
What if we weight the figures according to how likely it is, in the opinion of respondents, that Reform will actually field a candidate in their constituency?
Personally I would vote for the Workers Party [1][2] if I could, but I know damned well I won't get the chance.
1) No apostrophe for them either. But unlike James Joyce they have no good reason for the omission.
2) Because of Gaza. Their policy on Brexit is rubbish. I don't even particularly like Gorgeous. But genocide is wrong.
The comments on books reminds me of the time someone pretentiously said something like: "You can only fully understand the bible if you read it in its original Latin."
A comment that was wrong on so many levels...
Quite right. The bible was written in English.
I guess Jesus taught John and Matthew English after picking it up himself when his feet, in ancient time, walked upon England's mountains green?
The comments on books reminds me of the time someone pretentiously said something like: "You can only fully understand the bible if you read it in its original Latin."
A comment that was wrong on so many levels...
Incidentally, Naomi Wolf's latest reinvention is as a biblical scholar. She thinks the Bible has been translated all wrong:
Thanks for the link. Bad start, she believes there is such a thing as a 'literal' translation from another language of 2000 years ago to the English of today. From such a primary school start recovery would be a struggle:
"so. I skipped ahead to the New Testament, with a Koine Greek - English side-by-side literal translation"
Is there, in any language, a word or short phrase for “He/she looked at a new area of knowledge. Instead of absorbing the vast amount of existing knowledge, he/she declared that what they didn’t understand was New Knowledge. And so making extremely naive mistakes”?
If not, I hearby and forthwith declare that this shall be known as Pestoing.
The comments on books reminds me of the time someone pretentiously said something like: "You can only fully understand the bible if you read it in its original Latin."
A comment that was wrong on so many levels...
Quite right. The bible was written in English.
By King James?
By a committee, including both Oxford and Cambridge scholars, and thereby confounding at least two cherished PB shibboleths.
I read a history of it - fascinating - not only “a committee” but committees of committees - of academics, many of whom heartily despised each other - If I wanted something to fail I could hardly think of a better way to guarantee disaster, and yet…..
The comments on books reminds me of the time someone pretentiously said something like: "You can only fully understand the bible if you read it in its original Latin."
A comment that was wrong on so many levels...
Quite right. The bible was written in English.
By King James?
Who by all accounts spoke English with a strong Scotch accent. He’ll be wearing a satisfied skeletal smile after the passing of the smoking legislation.
Basically a more literate Donald Trump ?
On the contrary. Extremely successful king. Managed a takeover of GB with complete success, and without getting involved in too many wars, let alone starting a civil war or provoking a major uprising. Shame about his sons and grandsons, though.
Comments
"To each of my children £1000 in cash, the remainder of my modest estate to my beloved spouse. And to assist with the polling data, I can disclose I voted Tory at the last general election. I'm sorry for that. I hope I can still get in."
It happens, I suppose, but surely not very often.
In their lexicon, even the slightest compromise is evidence of being a RINO.
Yes - I'm pretty sure the Ukraine stuff on the Republican side is coming from big defence contractors. Getting rid of stocks of old weapons and ammunition means bringing forward and committing to the replacement programs. This means both sales of old stuff (easy money on exiting production lines) and development contracts (where the big money in defence is). So even just sending the Ukraine old stuff means lots of spending on new. It also means earlier commitment to the new programs, which will boost share prices nicely.
I don't think Starmer disowned Ali in Rochdale, or took the whip away from Corbyn, because he had looked inside their souls and found irrefutable evidence of the dark canker of anti-Semitism there. It's not about whether Liz Truss is an anti-Semite in her soul. It's about her actions in repeating an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.
I haven't read Ulysses, but it often seems to be more of a bragging rights book: "I read it and liked it! You haven't? You uncultured peasant!" Like it is a right-of-passage book, something to be read to say you've read it, not because it's actually good or enjoyable.
Brilliant prose does not make a complete good book; in this, most talk I read about Ulysses seems to show it is a very flawed book.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tory-mp-mark-menzies-under-investigation-campaign-funds-bhksggpwl
or it's a poll showing Evelyn Waugh having higher favourability ratings than James Joyce
I generally try my darndest to complete a book once I start it, to plough on through. But those I do abandon I generally do not pick up again. There're so many other books to read...
There are a lot of people who have knowledge that’s a mile wide and a millimetre thick, who can pull references out in arguments and make themselves feel and look clever, there is that Barb about Stephen Fry that he is “a stupid person’s idea of an intelligent person”.
I think we have seen by her bullish and stubborn charges at things that she has an “idea” backed by some “theories” and some “facts” and then keeps going. So again I very much doubt she is remotely antisemitic but just wasn’t remotely mentally inquisitive enough to think about what she wrote and I doubt the editor assigned to the book gave it much thought either.
That Biden hasn't done so suggests he's happy to have no control of the southern border.
Its sensible politics for the GOP to focus attention on something which both unites themselves and is also damaging to the Dems.
Truss is an idiot, but I agree with her about one thing - in the last 30 years too much power has been taken away from elected representatives and given to unelected organisations. At least in the case of choosing Conservative party leaders - if it had stayed with elected MPs we would never have had Prime Minister Truss.
The bigger news is the bloc shares though: 62:32, a 30 point gap.
Like Good Queen Bess we should be more concerned about people's actions, rather than trying to discern the nature of their deepest beliefs. And in this case, her actions have reached a bar that precedent has established merits disciplinary action.
I await Sunak's response.
Biden has been extremely weak on border control, the opposite to Obama in fact, and the evidence is millions of illegal immigrants.
Trying to blame it on the other side will not work.
It's a good job we don't have an example of this on PB....
And besides, it is not just the content but the style. The self important presenters and journalists (I use that workd loosely for most of them) on UK TV news channels think THEY are the news.
Or are the Labour ones because SKS is great for getting rid of bad actors and the Tory ones because Rishi is terrible and allowed in lots of bad apples?
1. Michael Green won't deny that the RAF may be used for the deportation flight to Gaza
2. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2024/apr/18/rwanda-bill-raf-planes-grant-shapps-conservatives-labour-rishi-sunak-uk-politics-latest-updates
3. Gaza refugees in Egypt are getting no support to either claim asylum in Egypt or travel to Europe to claim asylum.
4. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/apr/18/people-are-begging-us-to-feed-their-children-gaza-refugees-in-cairo-find-little-help
Why can't some nice Tory join these together? A nice £107m contract from the government - awarded without tender to someone who doesn't own any planes or any knowledge of aviation - to fly refugees directly from the Sinai to Rwanda?
Referrals from the Sandyford Sexual Health Services to Paediatric Endocrinology for the prescription of Puberty Suppressing Hormones have been paused for any new patients assessed by our Young Person’s Gender Service.
Emphasis added
https://www.sandyford.scot/sexual-health-services/gender-service-at-sandyford/gender-young-people-service/
God knows what his motivations are at this point - perhaps just survival in post for another few weeks and some sort of record of achievement ?
But if the bill gets to the floor for a vote, then good for him (for the first and probably last time).
I also wonder to what extent Gordon Brown helped carry Scotland for Labour? It was when Labour went from a Scottish leader to a London Metropolitan that they plunged from 41 to 1 seat. From which they have never recovered, or not yet. Will Londoner Keir Starmer be able to reverse it?
Might London and Scotland be weaker results for Labour than their otherwise national performance?
https://x.com/dorianlynskey/status/1780575826506875320?s=46&t=BXfRXqZ4RcCOdvlSgUjZSg
Note : has anyone verified that the quoted text is actually in the Truss book?
Edit : trying to get a Google search of the contents of the book, found this - https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2012/09/29/monetarists-anonymous
“GIVE me control of a nation’s money supply, and I care not who makes its laws.” So said Mayer Amschel Rothschild, founder of the Rothschild banking dynasty.
In the Economist….
As for the problems associated with it - that is mostly GOP caused. You have GOP governors basically lying to migrants to get them on to buses to move them across country to different states - in part breaking the infrastructure used to track people whilst also trying to put pressure on blue states infrastructure. You have Texas National Guard being deployed to put out razor wire bouys to essentially kill people trying to cross into the country (and also killing themselves in large numbers via drunk driving, and not getting paid overtime for the privilege). You have the GOP in the House and Senate refusing to pass legislation they want because if it passes under Biden it takes away a huge political attack for Trump in the GE.
I do not like Biden's approach to immigration - it is still punitive and draconian. If you are a right winger you should look at how Biden is managing the border and beaming because he has conceded in every way to GOP policies. The GOP has gone so far now that they're basically proposing a ground invasion of Mexico as the only way of dealing with immigration and drugs - that's in part because everything they've ever wanted in the past has been given to them. If you are upset that "the border isn't working" (which in essence I would agree with), it isn't because Biden is "weak" on the border - it's because a highly militarised border with a policy of trying to stop anyone too brown into the country will not work, especially when your foreign policy is designed to fuck with every country in the Western hemisphere for centuries.
I read the former and found it boring and baffling in about equal measure. I took his word for it on the latter.
A comment that was wrong on so many levels...
Or, going back to the recent mention of Middlemarch, I have reached the age where I realise that super clever and idealistic Dorothea was wrong about everything, and her sister Celia, who was too ordinary to write a book about, was right about everything.
If he hasn't, then its one step closer.
But a challenge isn't going to happen now. Not before the locals......
I don't say that to defend Labour necessarily as I don't know which party has a higher bar for suspension. Just that the numbers aren't comparable.
It's also not necessarily the case that you can compare with previous Parliaments as rules will have differed. As an example, I don't recall Neil Hamilton losing the whip despite serious allegations, and indeed he stood in 1997. The approach on administrative suspension changed a lot in light of that and other cases involving all parties.
The answer is they didn't want to.
Finally forced to accept that this might lead to electoral disaster in 2024 they agree some reforms in the Senate but these are then blocked by a House GOP playing political games.
Followed by some "we gave them everything they wanted" whining from the Dems.
Which merely emphasises the point that the GOP are more committed (at least in theory) to border control than the Dems.
But it's best understood like this: NEGANS - FIN - WAKE.
That is a teddibly sophisticated joke that I won't explain.
https://x.com/naomirwolf/status/1780385997416497153
But then again, looking at your posts about other subjects (here's me being abusive now), it is no surprise whatsoever. Becoming hugely angry about something you are completely clueless about.
Look at Emin's My Bed. Or any conceptual art produced. Or Carl Andre, who I suppose set this ball rolling in recent times (and before him Duchamp). Always had its lazy detractors who haven't taken the trouble to try to understand what the intention was.
Now, there's no problem with not making the effort. I would like to read Don Quixote in the original Spanish but I'm not about to learn Spanish to do so. But neither would I say that Don Quixote in the Spanish is likely a useless book because other people have said it is.
(Note: I have read Don Quixote in translation and it was superb.)
https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/apt44-unearthing-sandworm.pdf
Neither party has really addressed that - though Biden did make an attempt to improve matters, by conditionally lifting oil sanctions.
Maduro, being an idiot as well as a dictator, carried on as before, and sanctions have just been reimposed.
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/4600555-biden-administration-reinstates-sanctions-on-venezuelan-oil/
The GOP are in any event blocking any attempts by the administration to "get tougher' on the border by refusing to pass the necessary legislation, unless they're allowed to entirely dictate its terms.
If it wasn't for the KJB we might all be speaking more like Shakespeare.
Lab: 44%
Con: 19%
Reform: 13%
Lib Dems: 9%
Greens: 9%
Other: 6%
Lowest the Conservatives have ever polled with us across 45 years of surveys (breaking last month’s record)
ipsos.com/en-uk/rishi-su…
https://x.com/camerongarrett_/status/1780863186759041492?s=46
"so. I skipped ahead to the New Testament, with a Koine Greek - English side-by-side literal translation"
Attlee 31%
Churchill (51-55) 40%
Eden 34%
Macmillan: 30%
Douglas-Home 36%
Wilson (64-70) 17%
Heath 22%
Wilson (74-76) 27%
Callaghan 17%
Thatcher 16%
Major 8%
Blair 22%
Brown 16%
Cameron 24%
May 8%
Johnson 14%
Truss 11%
Sunak 10%
It is of course of no value whatsoever as an insight into "The Truth".
Personally I would vote for the Workers Party [1][2] if I could, but I know damned well I won't get the chance.
1) No apostrophe for them either. But unlike James Joyce they have no good reason for the omission.
2) Because of Gaza. Their policy on Brexit is rubbish. I don't even particularly like Gorgeous. But genocide is wrong.
If not, I hearby and forthwith declare that this shall be known as Pestoing.
“She pestoed Biblical translation”