Lib Dems & Green this is why we ask you to lend us your vote
These look like the numbers from the Survation poll - the YouGov MRP had the LDs in front 33-32 with Labour on 18 and Reform on 11 so make of that what you will.
Surely there’s some wider context to this piece of footage, and a Met Police sargeant didn’t actually threaten to arrest a man for “being openly Jewish in a public place”?
Victim blaming. Presumably women will be told that wearing attractive clothes will provoke men, who may not have a handy brothel nearby and so on.
You are absolutely right in every way except that if you were that Police chap and you see something that could turn into a clusterfuck you have to try and stop it. I have stopped many fights in my life where the person was right to want to make the point but it would be me that had to batter the crap out of someone to get him out safely.
The Jewish guy should not have had to try and make the point because those marches should have stopped long ago, frankly should never have started, and that’s the problem. That copper was in a no-win situation. I think we’ve exchanged a PM about our opinion on Israel/Gaza and I rein myself in here but this situation was a problem that the police could not really win.
I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd
The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.
Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of.
This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.
We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.
Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.
That's why I think revolution - or societal tumult/collapse - is now the only way out. With AI looming, and so much else, this is quite possible. Woke is peaking to a Frenzy
I think it is peaking to a frenzy and burning itself out.
I hope you are right, and the first backlash against Trans is maybe a hint that the tide is turning, but I fear that Woke might have years to go, and get even worse, before the madness collapses. It is weirdly reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge - I'm not saying the Woke are murdering millions, I am saying the Woke are following the historico-ideological pattern, searching for evermore purity, challenging each other to be even more Woke, just as the KR constantly tried to prove ever greater loyalty to Angkar, and ended up executing people for laughing
Woke is certainly getting crazier, and like the KR it has internecine wars (cf the Trans-TERF war, fought mainly on the progressive left). All of the 21,000 prisoners tortured and killed at Tuol Sleng were Khmer Rouge cadres, deemed suspect or denounced by other cadres
I discovered this evening that our local former Green councillor and twice London greens mayoral candidate Darren Johnson has been tweeting against his party for their uncritical beliefs on puberty blockers and rejection of the Cass report, so there you have it.
Internecine war is always the nastiest. Witness the last 8 years of the Tories. Unfortunately us Lib Dems don’t really do internecine wars very well. Occasionally the membership grumble loudly about something, like the party position on housebuilding, but the bloodletting is limited to a few raised voices.
When it comes to internecine fighting and all the fighting on PB I firmly believe that if the Guardian Comment is Free mob piled in here or the Con Home tried a coup we would stand together and smash them. Malcolm with NigelForeremain like men at arms at Agincourt, Donkeys and everyone sane like mates on the beaches at Dunkirk, Cyclefree and Leon making out in a barn behind enemy lines then saving the day with a waspish and inventive attack, Cyclefree’s facts with Leon’s prose.
We should make a list of PB posters and their nemeses. Most of you probably have a nemesis: one poster whose views or attitude are diametrically opposed to yours, or who winds you up more than anyone else.
That fucker kle4
Every time. I dunno how. But every single time he leaves me seething
It's because you see through my facade.
You do actually possess a latent power. Because you are so unfeasible well-mannered, polite, centrist and reasonable, if you ever came out and got angry, it would be explosive. You could destroy a PB-er with one tart paragraph. Use this power sparingly!
Not unlike the shock of Nick Palmer Night. The night @kle4 goes off the leash and tears a strip off someone. Years later people will say ‘I was there’.
Surely there’s some wider context to this piece of footage, and a Met Police sargeant didn’t actually threaten to arrest a man for “being openly Jewish in a public place”?
Surely there’s some wider context to this piece of footage, and a Met Police sargeant didn’t actually threaten to arrest a man for “being openly Jewish in a public place”?
Victim blaming. Presumably women will be told that wearing attractive clothes will provoke men, who may not have a handy brothel nearby and so on.
"It's absolutely not the basis on which we make decisions...except it was in this case since it was said, and could be the basis again if we think it is 'provocative'".
It is also evidence of outright racism. As another PB-er pointed out, there is no way a Met copper would use the words "openly Muslim" or "openly black", for fear of losing his job 20 minutes later. But it's somehow OK to say "openly Jewish"?
I do have sympathies for the Met, but the more THEY sympathise with the Woke Islamists, then my goodwill drains away, and I am not the type to abhor the police
The next James Bond will be brilliant. The first ten minutes will be a transsexual genderfluid Jemelia Bond draped in a Pride flag and wearing vegan sandals and a tofu hat and sobbing over a nine metre high knitted photo of George Floyd, sobbing so violently that them doesn't notice the Chinese spy behind they that kills she-they. Roll credits
The rumour is that Barbara Broccoli is waiting so long to announce a new film and a new Bond because she's hoping for woke to fuck off. Potentially if Trump gets in there will be at least be alternative voices. At the moment a Bond film would be even more piss poor than the last effort.
Personally, I like Quentin Tarantino’s suggestion. Re boot to the 1950s/60s, when the books were set. Bond in a Bentley Blower - all guarantees from Bentley lost when his gets the supercharger fitted.
Recently rewatched the DS9 "Bond" episode where Garak is amazed that a spy could live so ostentatiously. But the point is, at a time when few people travelled internationally, being part of the jet set _was_ good cover for an international traveller.
Now we live in an era where any old Norbert Noname can hop on an easyjet to destinations that seemed fantastic and exotic in 1963, it's no longer good cover - it stands out like a red pimple on an alabaster buttock. The Bond character and cover story works for that era, not ours. Keeping the stories in that era makes sense.
See also The Scarlet Pimpernel, I think?
I think Tarantino wanted to make a Bond film set in the 1950s. Given the epic and epically weird British aircraft of the 50/60s it would be fantastic I think.
Also it would remove the problem of mobile phones and the internet. I know some friends that write mysteries/thrillers etc, and they say that the mobile and t'net are the absolute bane, because every time you manage to get your character in a sticky situation, of course they can either call for help on their phone, or if they meet a mysterious character or uncover some strangeness, they can google it and work it out in 2 minutes. It's an absolute fucker
This is only going to get worse with AI so imminent. How can you have a good mystery when you can consult a super intelligent machine which literally knows everything and can tell you the solution in 5 nanoseconds, while also giving you a superb blow job and making excellent tea. AI is the end of so much
It probably explains why most of the crime novels I see at the library are period pieces, be it Roman times to the pre mobile phone era.
There's only so many times you can pull the old 'the phones/comms are [conveniently] down'. Even sci-fi pulls that crap because otherwise it's too easy.
Or you have the main character have to turn their phone off to avoid being tracked down. Or there are lots of sorts of vital information which aren't online.
The Tories must shoulder some of the blame for this. They have been in power for 14 years and they've had ample opportunity to extirpate this vile, damaging Woke nonsense, to drive it out of public life and to punish those that proselytise it. Instead they have actively let it spread, it has got worse, to the extent that we now refuse to deport known sex offenders back to Afghanistan, because they might suffer for being sex offenders, and so they rape and murder British people instead. That is where we are. That is what the Tories have allowed to flourish, that level of insanity
The only way we retrieve the situation is something close to revolution. An entire class of people needs to be exiled from power forever, and a grotesque ideology needs to be forcibly eliminated. We need the Labour party to fuck up massively and a proper right wing party to assume power
Either that or let the machines take over
"Fourteen years of Tory rule have left Britain a lazy, dangerous, Left-wing mess It hardly matters that Labour will be worse, when voters feel so betrayed by the Tories
Surely there’s some wider context to this piece of footage, and a Met Police sargeant didn’t actually threaten to arrest a man for “being openly Jewish in a public place”?
Victim blaming. Presumably women will be told that wearing attractive clothes will provoke men, who may not have a handy brothel nearby and so on.
"It's absolutely not the basis on which we make decisions...except it was in this case since it was said, and could be the basis again if we think it is 'provocative'".
It is also evidence of outright racism. As another PB-er pointed out, there is no way a Met copper would use the words "openly Muslim" or "openly black", for fear of losing his job 20 minutes later. But it's somehow OK to say "openly Jewish"?
I do have sympathies for the Met, but the more THEY sympathise with the Woke Islamists, then my goodwill drains away, and I am not the type to abhor the police
Surely there’s some wider context to this piece of footage, and a Met Police sargeant didn’t actually threaten to arrest a man for “being openly Jewish in a public place”?
Victim blaming. Presumably women will be told that wearing attractive clothes will provoke men, who may not have a handy brothel nearby and so on.
You are absolutely right in every way except that if you were that Police chap and you see something that could turn into a clusterfuck you have to try and stop it. I have stopped many fights in my life where the person was right to want to make the point but it would be me that had to batter the crap out of someone to get him out safely.
The Jewish guy should not have had to try and make the point because those marches should have stopped long ago, frankly should never have started, and that’s the problem. That copper was in a no-win situation. I think we’ve exchanged a PM about our opinion on Israel/Gaza and I rein myself in here but this situation was a problem that the police could not really win.
They could win, by enforcing the law as it is, which is their job, not kowtowing to a mob, which is not.
Would they be so quick to tell threaten to arrest someone for being "openly black" or "openly Muslim" near a Britain First rally? Would those diminishing what the Met has done because the victim was Jewish be so quick to excuse it if it was done like that?
Surely there’s some wider context to this piece of footage, and a Met Police sargeant didn’t actually threaten to arrest a man for “being openly Jewish in a public place”?
Victim blaming. Presumably women will be told that wearing attractive clothes will provoke men, who may not have a handy brothel nearby and so on.
"It's absolutely not the basis on which we make decisions...except it was in this case since it was said, and could be the basis again if we think it is 'provocative'".
It is also evidence of outright racism. As another PB-er pointed out, there is no way a Met copper would use the words "openly Muslim" or "openly black", for fear of losing his job 20 minutes later. But it's somehow OK to say "openly Jewish"?
I do have sympathies for the Met, but the more THEY sympathise with the Woke Islamists, then my goodwill drains away, and I am not the type to abhor the police
Woke Islamism is an oxymoron?
True. I should have said the Woke AND the Islamists. My bad
The next James Bond will be brilliant. The first ten minutes will be a transsexual genderfluid Jemelia Bond draped in a Pride flag and wearing vegan sandals and a tofu hat and sobbing over a nine metre high knitted photo of George Floyd, sobbing so violently that them doesn't notice the Chinese spy behind they that kills she-they. Roll credits
The rumour is that Barbara Broccoli is waiting so long to announce a new film and a new Bond because she's hoping for woke to fuck off. Potentially if Trump gets in there will be at least be alternative voices. At the moment a Bond film would be even more piss poor than the last effort.
Personally, I like Quentin Tarantino’s suggestion. Re boot to the 1950s/60s, when the books were set. Bond in a Bentley Blower - all guarantees from Bentley lost when his gets the supercharger fitted.
Recently rewatched the DS9 "Bond" episode where Garak is amazed that a spy could live so ostentatiously. But the point is, at a time when few people travelled internationally, being part of the jet set _was_ good cover for an international traveller.
Now we live in an era where any old Norbert Noname can hop on an easyjet to destinations that seemed fantastic and exotic in 1963, it's no longer good cover - it stands out like a red pimple on an alabaster buttock. The Bond character and cover story works for that era, not ours. Keeping the stories in that era makes sense.
See also The Scarlet Pimpernel, I think?
I think Tarantino wanted to make a Bond film set in the 1950s. Given the epic and epically weird British aircraft of the 50/60s it would be fantastic I think.
Also it would remove the problem of mobile phones and the internet. I know some friends that write mysteries/thrillers etc, and they say that the mobile and t'net are the absolute bane, because every time you manage to get your character in a sticky situation, of course they can either call for help on their phone, or if they meet a mysterious character or uncover some strangeness, they can google it and work it out in 2 minutes. It's an absolute fucker
This is only going to get worse with AI so imminent. How can you have a good mystery when you can consult a super intelligent machine which literally knows everything and can tell you the solution in 5 nanoseconds, while also giving you a superb blow job and making excellent tea. AI is the end of so much
It probably explains why most of the crime novels I see at the library are period pieces, be it Roman times to the pre mobile phone era.
There's only so many times you can pull the old 'the phones/comms are [conveniently] down'. Even sci-fi pulls that crap because otherwise it's too easy.
It really really really does. They are a massive issue for anyone writing a novel/play/movie which requires danger and mystery, and that is probably most of them
Imagine Pride and Prejudice with google and the iPhone. Liz Bennett would have the real persona of Darcy cracked in 15 seconds. End of novel
How about something set in a bothy up at Cape Wrath or similar. You tend to get an interesting mix of people - tourists, students, outdoor enthusiasts. Some arrive by boat, others walking or mountain biking.
I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd
The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.
Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of.
This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.
We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.
Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.
That's why I think revolution - or societal tumult/collapse - is now the only way out. With AI looming, and so much else, this is quite possible. Woke is peaking to a Frenzy
I think it is peaking to a frenzy and burning itself out.
"Woke" can NOT die UNTIL its progenitors, namely Anti-Woke Wack-Jobs (for fun and/or profit) say so.
Which AIN'T gonna happen until AFTER the upcoming US POTUS and UK GE.
The next James Bond will be brilliant. The first ten minutes will be a transsexual genderfluid Jemelia Bond draped in a Pride flag and wearing vegan sandals and a tofu hat and sobbing over a nine metre high knitted photo of George Floyd, sobbing so violently that them doesn't notice the Chinese spy behind they that kills she-they. Roll credits
The rumour is that Barbara Broccoli is waiting so long to announce a new film and a new Bond because she's hoping for woke to fuck off. Potentially if Trump gets in there will be at least be alternative voices. At the moment a Bond film would be even more piss poor than the last effort.
Personally, I like Quentin Tarantino’s suggestion. Re boot to the 1950s/60s, when the books were set. Bond in a Bentley Blower - all guarantees from Bentley lost when his gets the supercharger fitted.
Recently rewatched the DS9 "Bond" episode where Garak is amazed that a spy could live so ostentatiously. But the point is, at a time when few people travelled internationally, being part of the jet set _was_ good cover for an international traveller.
Now we live in an era where any old Norbert Noname can hop on an easyjet to destinations that seemed fantastic and exotic in 1963, it's no longer good cover - it stands out like a red pimple on an alabaster buttock. The Bond character and cover story works for that era, not ours. Keeping the stories in that era makes sense.
See also The Scarlet Pimpernel, I think?
I think Tarantino wanted to make a Bond film set in the 1950s. Given the epic and epically weird British aircraft of the 50/60s it would be fantastic I think.
Also it would remove the problem of mobile phones and the internet. I know some friends that write mysteries/thrillers etc, and they say that the mobile and t'net are the absolute bane, because every time you manage to get your character in a sticky situation, of course they can either call for help on their phone, or if they meet a mysterious character or uncover some strangeness, they can google it and work it out in 2 minutes. It's an absolute fucker
This is only going to get worse with AI so imminent. How can you have a good mystery when you can consult a super intelligent machine which literally knows everything and can tell you the solution in 5 nanoseconds, while also giving you a superb blow job and making excellent tea. AI is the end of so much
It probably explains why most of the crime novels I see at the library are period pieces, be it Roman times to the pre mobile phone era.
There's only so many times you can pull the old 'the phones/comms are [conveniently] down'. Even sci-fi pulls that crap because otherwise it's too easy.
It really really really does. They are a massive issue for anyone writing a novel/play/movie which requires danger and mystery, and that is probably most of them
Imagine Pride and Prejudice with google and the iPhone. Liz Bennett would have the real persona of Darcy cracked in 15 seconds. End of novel
I'm not sure the internet, social media or mobile phones for that matter help anyone determine the true character of a new acquaintance.
The next James Bond will be brilliant. The first ten minutes will be a transsexual genderfluid Jemelia Bond draped in a Pride flag and wearing vegan sandals and a tofu hat and sobbing over a nine metre high knitted photo of George Floyd, sobbing so violently that them doesn't notice the Chinese spy behind they that kills she-they. Roll credits
The rumour is that Barbara Broccoli is waiting so long to announce a new film and a new Bond because she's hoping for woke to fuck off. Potentially if Trump gets in there will be at least be alternative voices. At the moment a Bond film would be even more piss poor than the last effort.
Personally, I like Quentin Tarantino’s suggestion. Re boot to the 1950s/60s, when the books were set. Bond in a Bentley Blower - all guarantees from Bentley lost when his gets the supercharger fitted.
Recently rewatched the DS9 "Bond" episode where Garak is amazed that a spy could live so ostentatiously. But the point is, at a time when few people travelled internationally, being part of the jet set _was_ good cover for an international traveller.
Now we live in an era where any old Norbert Noname can hop on an easyjet to destinations that seemed fantastic and exotic in 1963, it's no longer good cover - it stands out like a red pimple on an alabaster buttock. The Bond character and cover story works for that era, not ours. Keeping the stories in that era makes sense.
See also The Scarlet Pimpernel, I think?
I think Tarantino wanted to make a Bond film set in the 1950s. Given the epic and epically weird British aircraft of the 50/60s it would be fantastic I think.
Also it would remove the problem of mobile phones and the internet. I know some friends that write mysteries/thrillers etc, and they say that the mobile and t'net are the absolute bane, because every time you manage to get your character in a sticky situation, of course they can either call for help on their phone, or if they meet a mysterious character or uncover some strangeness, they can google it and work it out in 2 minutes. It's an absolute fucker
This is only going to get worse with AI so imminent. How can you have a good mystery when you can consult a super intelligent machine which literally knows everything and can tell you the solution in 5 nanoseconds, while also giving you a superb blow job and making excellent tea. AI is the end of so much
It probably explains why most of the crime novels I see at the library are period pieces, be it Roman times to the pre mobile phone era.
There's only so many times you can pull the old 'the phones/comms are [conveniently] down'. Even sci-fi pulls that crap because otherwise it's too easy.
It really really really does. They are a massive issue for anyone writing a novel/play/movie which requires danger and mystery, and that is probably most of them
Imagine Pride and Prejudice with google and the iPhone. Liz Bennett would have the real persona of Darcy cracked in 15 seconds. End of novel
How about something set in a bothy up at Cape Wrath or similar. You tend to get an interesting mix of people - tourists, students, outdoor enthusiasts. Some arrive by boat, others walking or mountain biking.
This is precisely why so many modern mysteries are set on remote Scottish islands, or remote Scottish castles, or weddings in a weirdly lost bit of Connemara
@CalumAM Edwina Currie suggests to @kaitborsay on @TimesRadio (sarcastically?) that she may open an agency to provide reputable escorts for MPs to keep them off Tinder and Grindr.
Lib Dems & Green this is why we ask you to lend us your vote
These look like the numbers from the Survation poll - the YouGov MRP had the LDs in front 33-32 with Labour on 18 and Reform on 11 so make of that what you will.
Oh well thats Labours PPC for you
Although on this occasion I think she is correct and you aren't (see link)
The Tories must shoulder some of the blame for this. They have been in power for 14 years and they've had ample opportunity to extirpate this vile, damaging Woke nonsense, to drive it out of public life and to punish those that proselytise it. Instead they have actively let it spread, it has got worse, to the extent that we now refuse to deport known sex offenders back to Afghanistan, because they might suffer for being sex offenders, and so they rape and murder British people instead. That is where we are. That is what the Tories have allowed to flourish, that level of insanity
The only way we retrieve the situation is something close to revolution. An entire class of people needs to be exiled from power forever, and a grotesque ideology needs to be forcibly eliminated. We need the Labour party to fuck up massively and a proper right wing party to assume power
Either that or let the machines take over
"Fourteen years of Tory rule have left Britain a lazy, dangerous, Left-wing mess It hardly matters that Labour will be worse, when voters feel so betrayed by the Tories
Imagine being called lazy by someone who writes newspaper columns for a living.
Have you ever had the job of newspaper columnist? I doubt it. Do you think they just sit there and toss out any old crap in half an hour and pocket £2k per column, ta very much? If it is that easy, surely everyone would do it? eg You?
But of course they don't. Because it is hard. And only a few people can do it and make it really pay
Surely there’s some wider context to this piece of footage, and a Met Police sargeant didn’t actually threaten to arrest a man for “being openly Jewish in a public place”?
Victim blaming. Presumably women will be told that wearing attractive clothes will provoke men, who may not have a handy brothel nearby and so on.
You are absolutely right in every way except that if you were that Police chap and you see something that could turn into a clusterfuck you have to try and stop it. I have stopped many fights in my life where the person was right to want to make the point but it would be me that had to batter the crap out of someone to get him out safely.
The Jewish guy should not have had to try and make the point because those marches should have stopped long ago, frankly should never have started, and that’s the problem. That copper was in a no-win situation. I think we’ve exchanged a PM about our opinion on Israel/Gaza and I rein myself in here but this situation was a problem that the police could not really win.
They could win, by enforcing the law as it is, which is their job, not kowtowing to a mob, which is not.
Would they be so quick to tell threaten to arrest someone for being "openly black" or "openly Muslim" near a Britain First rally? Would those diminishing what the Met has done because the victim was Jewish be so quick to excuse it if it was done like that?
Would you prefer the, to just say “on you go sir” and then watch the beating, watch what it spirals into.
If you were at the last game of the season, you could only get tickets at Anfield in the Away end, Liverpool v Everton and if Liverpool win they win the league and Everton go down. Liverpool win with a Salah goal last minute and you are jumping around and suddenly, unsurprisingly a lot of blues decide they want to beat you senseless. Should the police have maybe pulled you out of there earlier?
I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd
The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.
Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of.
This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.
We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.
Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.
That's why I think revolution - or societal tumult/collapse - is now the only way out. With AI looming, and so much else, this is quite possible. Woke is peaking to a Frenzy
I think it is peaking to a frenzy and burning itself out.
I hope you are right, and the first backlash against Trans is maybe a hint that the tide is turning, but I fear that Woke might have years to go, and get even worse, before the madness collapses. It is weirdly reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge - I'm not saying the Woke are murdering millions, I am saying the Woke are following the historico-ideological pattern, searching for evermore purity, challenging each other to be even more Woke, just as the KR constantly tried to prove ever greater loyalty to Angkar, and ended up executing people for laughing
Woke is certainly getting crazier, and like the KR it has internecine wars (cf the Trans-TERF war, fought mainly on the progressive left). All of the 21,000 prisoners tortured and killed at Tuol Sleng were Khmer Rouge cadres, deemed suspect or denounced by other cadres
I discovered this evening that our local former Green councillor and twice London greens mayoral candidate Darren Johnson has been tweeting against his party for their uncritical beliefs on puberty blockers and rejection of the Cass report, so there you have it.
Internecine war is always the nastiest. Witness the last 8 years of the Tories. Unfortunately us Lib Dems don’t really do internecine wars very well. Occasionally the membership grumble loudly about something, like the party position on housebuilding, but the bloodletting is limited to a few raised voices.
When it comes to internecine fighting and all the fighting on PB I firmly believe that if the Guardian Comment is Free mob piled in here or the Con Home tried a coup we would stand together and smash them. Malcolm with NigelForeremain like men at arms at Agincourt, Donkeys and everyone sane like mates on the beaches at Dunkirk, Cyclefree and Leon making out in a barn behind enemy lines then saving the day with a waspish and inventive attack, Cyclefree’s facts with Leon’s prose.
We should make a list of PB posters and their nemeses. Most of you probably have a nemesis: one poster whose views or attitude are diametrically opposed to yours, or who winds you up more than anyone else.
That fucker kle4
Every time. I dunno how. But every single time he leaves me seething
It's because you see through my facade.
You do actually possess a latent power. Because you are so unfeasible well-mannered, polite, centrist and reasonable, if you ever came out and got angry, it would be explosive. You could destroy a PB-er with one tart paragraph. Use this power sparingly!
Not unlike the shock of Nick Palmer Night. The night @kle4 goes off the leash and tears a strip off someone. Years later people will say ‘I was there’.
We should actually and genuinely celebrate Nick Palmer night. Can anyone remember the date?
On Nick Palmer Night we must all be nice and friendly, and we should all being a shameful or weird or sensational secret to the chat, which we then reveal. That would be FUN
If 10 "rights for whites" types had turned up to demonstrations after the New Cross fire or near protests in favour of Black Lives Matter, armed with cameras and provoking altercations with non-white policemen, I'm sure they could have got a quote or two that played to their "Is it because I is white?" talking point.
They might not have liked the reply "No, it's not because you're white. It's because you're an arsehole." Or even "You've got a small willy, your tattoos are ugly, and Millwall are shite."
A genocide is underway.
A disgusting racist lobby organisation doesn't like people opposing it.
"In 1770, British explorer James Cook made a significant discovery during his voyage in the Pacific Ocean. What notable landmass did Captain Cook first sight during this expedition?"
The options: Hawaii New Zealand Tahaiti Australia.
They think the correct answer is Australia...
According to wiki Captain Cook on his first Pacific voyage sighted
Tahiti - April 1769 New Zealand - October 1769 Australia - April 1770
Do agree the question is poorly written, as the ACTUAL question asked does NOT mention "1770" though the leadup does.
Australia was discovered by the Dutch. Cook discovered the eastern/northeastern coast; but they knew *something* was in that rough area. So he did "first sight" Australia's eastern coast, but he did not discover Australia. A badly-written question, even leaving aside the existence of indigenous Australians.
My favourite Cook fact is that he sailed further south than anyone else has ever done without finding Antarctica. By going to the precise and only longitude where there was no visible land at that latitude.
The Tories must shoulder some of the blame for this. They have been in power for 14 years and they've had ample opportunity to extirpate this vile, damaging Woke nonsense, to drive it out of public life and to punish those that proselytise it. Instead they have actively let it spread, it has got worse, to the extent that we now refuse to deport known sex offenders back to Afghanistan, because they might suffer for being sex offenders, and so they rape and murder British people instead. That is where we are. That is what the Tories have allowed to flourish, that level of insanity
The only way we retrieve the situation is something close to revolution. An entire class of people needs to be exiled from power forever, and a grotesque ideology needs to be forcibly eliminated. We need the Labour party to fuck up massively and a proper right wing party to assume power
Either that or let the machines take over
"Fourteen years of Tory rule have left Britain a lazy, dangerous, Left-wing mess It hardly matters that Labour will be worse, when voters feel so betrayed by the Tories
Imagine being called lazy by someone who writes newspaper columns for a living.
Have you ever had the job of newspaper columnist? I doubt it. Do you think they just sit there and toss out any old crap in half an hour and pocket £2k per column, ta very much? If it is that easy, surely everyone would do it? eg You?
But of course they don't. Because it is hard. And only a few people can do it and make it really pay
Is it really hard in the same way as, say, managing a big construction project is? Or running a hospital? Or successfully integrating a merger of two companies?
Lib Dems & Green this is why we ask you to lend us your vote
These look like the numbers from the Survation poll - the YouGov MRP had the LDs in front 33-32 with Labour on 18 and Reform on 11 so make of that what you will.
How does the tactical voter decide which is the tactical vote and which the wasted vote?
If 10 "rights for whites" types had turned up to demonstrations after the New Cross fire or near protests in favour of Black Lives Matter, armed with cameras and provoking altercations with non-white policemen, I'm sure they could have got a quote or two that played to their "Is it because I is white?" talking point.
They might not have liked the reply "No, it's not because you're white. It's because you're an arsehole." Or even "You've got a small willy, your tattoos are ugly, and Millwall are shite."
A genocide is underway.
A disgusting racist lobby organisation doesn't like people opposing it.
What genocide? The one Russia is perpetrating in Ukraine?
I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd
The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.
Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of.
This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.
We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.
Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.
That's why I think revolution - or societal tumult/collapse - is now the only way out. With AI looming, and so much else, this is quite possible. Woke is peaking to a Frenzy
I think it is peaking to a frenzy and burning itself out.
I hope you are right, and the first backlash against Trans is maybe a hint that the tide is turning, but I fear that Woke might have years to go, and get even worse, before the madness collapses. It is weirdly reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge - I'm not saying the Woke are murdering millions, I am saying the Woke are following the historico-ideological pattern, searching for evermore purity, challenging each other to be even more Woke, just as the KR constantly tried to prove ever greater loyalty to Angkar, and ended up executing people for laughing
Woke is certainly getting crazier, and like the KR it has internecine wars (cf the Trans-TERF war, fought mainly on the progressive left). All of the 21,000 prisoners tortured and killed at Tuol Sleng were Khmer Rouge cadres, deemed suspect or denounced by other cadres
I discovered this evening that our local former Green councillor and twice London greens mayoral candidate Darren Johnson has been tweeting against his party for their uncritical beliefs on puberty blockers and rejection of the Cass report, so there you have it.
Internecine war is always the nastiest. Witness the last 8 years of the Tories. Unfortunately us Lib Dems don’t really do internecine wars very well. Occasionally the membership grumble loudly about something, like the party position on housebuilding, but the bloodletting is limited to a few raised voices.
When it comes to internecine fighting and all the fighting on PB I firmly believe that if the Guardian Comment is Free mob piled in here or the Con Home tried a coup we would stand together and smash them. Malcolm with NigelForeremain like men at arms at Agincourt, Donkeys and everyone sane like mates on the beaches at Dunkirk, Cyclefree and Leon making out in a barn behind enemy lines then saving the day with a waspish and inventive attack, Cyclefree’s facts with Leon’s prose.
We should make a list of PB posters and their nemeses. Most of you probably have a nemesis: one poster whose views or attitude are diametrically opposed to yours, or who winds you up more than anyone else.
It’s a funny one, I can vehemently disagree with posters’ views but I know that if we were having a few pints in a pub it would be fun and alright. It’s actually fantastic that you get the training on here so if you are at a dinner party or a bar and someone brings up politics you are so “done” that you can just laugh it off and pretend not to care.
In all honesty I think I would love to have drinks with every single poster on here because in real life we are all ok.
I’ve not been to a PB social. I’d like to go to the next one, for that reason.
Absolutely, and also we get to see Topping and Kinabalu have a fight like Hugh Grant and Colin Firth in Bridget Jones so well worth it.
Exhibit A below.
I mean in principle it's not a great idea to get others to perform for your pleasure but we've got to the no you fuck off stage so I'm down with it.
We could arrange a charity fight off for Dementia charities on behalf of OGH where you can choose your opponent, PB can bet on who wins and the joy is that nobody knows who they have been kicking off with and giving it large at which could be really good fun.
It could turn out that Correct Horse is a massive MMA fighter and Dura Ace is a tiny nerd mechanic and every perception is turned on its head.
So the next PB meet can be white collar boxing drawn at random - or maybe red and blue teams.
It's a while since I last did a white collar boxing gig. Dawn at least has the benefit of not having to hang around all evening if your fight is at the end of the card.
The Tories must shoulder some of the blame for this. They have been in power for 14 years and they've had ample opportunity to extirpate this vile, damaging Woke nonsense, to drive it out of public life and to punish those that proselytise it. Instead they have actively let it spread, it has got worse, to the extent that we now refuse to deport known sex offenders back to Afghanistan, because they might suffer for being sex offenders, and so they rape and murder British people instead. That is where we are. That is what the Tories have allowed to flourish, that level of insanity
The only way we retrieve the situation is something close to revolution. An entire class of people needs to be exiled from power forever, and a grotesque ideology needs to be forcibly eliminated. We need the Labour party to fuck up massively and a proper right wing party to assume power
Either that or let the machines take over
"Fourteen years of Tory rule have left Britain a lazy, dangerous, Left-wing mess It hardly matters that Labour will be worse, when voters feel so betrayed by the Tories
Imagine being called lazy by someone who writes newspaper columns for a living.
Have you ever had the job of newspaper columnist? I doubt it. Do you think they just sit there and toss out any old crap in half an hour and pocket £2k per column, ta very much? If it is that easy, surely everyone would do it? eg You?
But of course they don't. Because it is hard. And only a few people can do it and make it really pay
Hahaha!
I had to like that post just for the hilarity of your response. How dare OnlyLivingBoy slur the noble art of the hack, eh?
The Tories must shoulder some of the blame for this. They have been in power for 14 years and they've had ample opportunity to extirpate this vile, damaging Woke nonsense, to drive it out of public life and to punish those that proselytise it. Instead they have actively let it spread, it has got worse, to the extent that we now refuse to deport known sex offenders back to Afghanistan, because they might suffer for being sex offenders, and so they rape and murder British people instead. That is where we are. That is what the Tories have allowed to flourish, that level of insanity
The only way we retrieve the situation is something close to revolution. An entire class of people needs to be exiled from power forever, and a grotesque ideology needs to be forcibly eliminated. We need the Labour party to fuck up massively and a proper right wing party to assume power
Either that or let the machines take over
"Fourteen years of Tory rule have left Britain a lazy, dangerous, Left-wing mess It hardly matters that Labour will be worse, when voters feel so betrayed by the Tories
Imagine being called lazy by someone who writes newspaper columns for a living.
Have you ever had the job of newspaper columnist? I doubt it. Do you think they just sit there and toss out any old crap in half an hour and pocket £2k per column, ta very much? If it is that easy, surely everyone would do it? eg You?
But of course they don't. Because it is hard. And only a few people can do it and make it really pay
Is it really hard in the same way as, say, managing a big construction project is? Or running a hospital? Or successfully integrating a merger of two companies?
I don't know for sure, of course, but all I can say is that I know lots of talented journalists who have tried to be columnists, and failed badly. And these are professional journalists - they already have the skillset, theoretically
The job of columnist is really quite strange. You have to express a forthright, interesting and eloquent opinion, in an engaging way, at least once a week. For week after week and year after year. When you examine it, that is much harder than it seems, which is why very few do it well, and very very few make good money at it - but when they do, the money is great, because readers will return for a particular writer they like, and editors know this
The celeb columnist is a different genre. Boris straddles both. He is a rather good columnist anyway, if not quite a fighter ace, but his celebrity value surely triples his salary
The Tories must shoulder some of the blame for this. They have been in power for 14 years and they've had ample opportunity to extirpate this vile, damaging Woke nonsense, to drive it out of public life and to punish those that proselytise it. Instead they have actively let it spread, it has got worse, to the extent that we now refuse to deport known sex offenders back to Afghanistan, because they might suffer for being sex offenders, and so they rape and murder British people instead. That is where we are. That is what the Tories have allowed to flourish, that level of insanity
The only way we retrieve the situation is something close to revolution. An entire class of people needs to be exiled from power forever, and a grotesque ideology needs to be forcibly eliminated. We need the Labour party to fuck up massively and a proper right wing party to assume power
Either that or let the machines take over
"Fourteen years of Tory rule have left Britain a lazy, dangerous, Left-wing mess It hardly matters that Labour will be worse, when voters feel so betrayed by the Tories
Imagine being called lazy by someone who writes newspaper columns for a living.
Have you ever had the job of newspaper columnist? I doubt it. Do you think they just sit there and toss out any old crap in half an hour and pocket £2k per column, ta very much? If it is that easy, surely everyone would do it? eg You?
But of course they don't. Because it is hard. And only a few people can do it and make it really pay
Is it really hard in the same way as, say, managing a big construction project is? Or running a hospital? Or successfully integrating a merger of two companies?
The Tories must shoulder some of the blame for this. They have been in power for 14 years and they've had ample opportunity to extirpate this vile, damaging Woke nonsense, to drive it out of public life and to punish those that proselytise it. Instead they have actively let it spread, it has got worse, to the extent that we now refuse to deport known sex offenders back to Afghanistan, because they might suffer for being sex offenders, and so they rape and murder British people instead. That is where we are. That is what the Tories have allowed to flourish, that level of insanity
The only way we retrieve the situation is something close to revolution. An entire class of people needs to be exiled from power forever, and a grotesque ideology needs to be forcibly eliminated. We need the Labour party to fuck up massively and a proper right wing party to assume power
Either that or let the machines take over
"Fourteen years of Tory rule have left Britain a lazy, dangerous, Left-wing mess It hardly matters that Labour will be worse, when voters feel so betrayed by the Tories
Imagine being called lazy by someone who writes newspaper columns for a living.
Have you ever had the job of newspaper columnist? I doubt it. Do you think they just sit there and toss out any old crap in half an hour and pocket £2k per column, ta very much? If it is that easy, surely everyone would do it? eg You?
But of course they don't. Because it is hard. And only a few people can do it and make it really pay
Is it really hard in the same way as, say, managing a big construction project is? Or running a hospital? Or successfully integrating a merger of two companies?
In fact I'll go further and illustrate my point. Your comparison is absurd, because you are making a category error
You're essentially asking which is harder, running a health trust, or being a brilliant premier league striker?
The query makes no sense. The latter requires skills which are much rarer than the former, even though the former is surely very hard work. But if you have the skills to be a great striker, if you are Erling Haaland, you will make it look effortless, but that is because you are very talented, and almost no one else has your talent. You might even appear "lazy" to people who don't understand football
Surely there’s some wider context to this piece of footage, and a Met Police sargeant didn’t actually threaten to arrest a man for “being openly Jewish in a public place”?
Victim blaming. Presumably women will be told that wearing attractive clothes will provoke men, who may not have a handy brothel nearby and so on.
You are absolutely right in every way except that if you were that Police chap and you see something that could turn into a clusterfuck you have to try and stop it. I have stopped many fights in my life where the person was right to want to make the point but it would be me that had to batter the crap out of someone to get him out safely.
The Jewish guy should not have had to try and make the point because those marches should have stopped long ago, frankly should never have started, and that’s the problem. That copper was in a no-win situation. I think we’ve exchanged a PM about our opinion on Israel/Gaza and I rein myself in here but this situation was a problem that the police could not really win.
They could win, by enforcing the law as it is, which is their job, not kowtowing to a mob, which is not.
Would they be so quick to tell threaten to arrest someone for being "openly black" or "openly Muslim" near a Britain First rally? Would those diminishing what the Met has done because the victim was Jewish be so quick to excuse it if it was done like that?
Would you prefer the, to just say “on you go sir” and then watch the beating, watch what it spirals into.
If you were at the last game of the season, you could only get tickets at Anfield in the Away end, Liverpool v Everton and if Liverpool win they win the league and Everton go down. Liverpool win with a Salah goal last minute and you are jumping around and suddenly, unsurprisingly a lot of blues decide they want to beat you senseless. Should the police have maybe pulled you out of there earlier?
No, of course not.
I would prefer them to just say "on you go sir" and if anyone tries to beat anyone up, they get arrested, charged and prosecuted.
Again, enforce the law as it is.
Beating someone up is illegal. Threatening to beat someone up is illegal. Last time I checked, being openly Jewish in London is not, yet, illegal.
The Tories must shoulder some of the blame for this. They have been in power for 14 years and they've had ample opportunity to extirpate this vile, damaging Woke nonsense, to drive it out of public life and to punish those that proselytise it. Instead they have actively let it spread, it has got worse, to the extent that we now refuse to deport known sex offenders back to Afghanistan, because they might suffer for being sex offenders, and so they rape and murder British people instead. That is where we are. That is what the Tories have allowed to flourish, that level of insanity
The only way we retrieve the situation is something close to revolution. An entire class of people needs to be exiled from power forever, and a grotesque ideology needs to be forcibly eliminated. We need the Labour party to fuck up massively and a proper right wing party to assume power
Either that or let the machines take over
"Fourteen years of Tory rule have left Britain a lazy, dangerous, Left-wing mess It hardly matters that Labour will be worse, when voters feel so betrayed by the Tories
Imagine being called lazy by someone who writes newspaper columns for a living.
Have you ever had the job of newspaper columnist? I doubt it. Do you think they just sit there and toss out any old crap in half an hour and pocket £2k per column, ta very much? If it is that easy, surely everyone would do it? eg You?
But of course they don't. Because it is hard. And only a few people can do it and make it really pay
Hahaha!
I had to like that post just for the hilarity of your response. How dare OnlyLivingBoy slur the noble art of the hack, eh?
I know you're not the brightest, so I've made a special extra comment for the PB midwits, you can find it below. There I illustrate my point with an easy-to-understand example, for people with an IQ 0f 93-116
@CalumAM Edwina Currie suggests to @kaitborsay on @TimesRadio (sarcastically?) that she may open an agency to provide reputable escorts for MPs to keep them off Tinder and Grindr.
I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd
The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.
Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of.
This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.
We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.
Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.
That's why I think revolution - or societal tumult/collapse - is now the only way out. With AI looming, and so much else, this is quite possible. Woke is peaking to a Frenzy
I think it is peaking to a frenzy and burning itself out.
I hope you are right, and the first backlash against Trans is maybe a hint that the tide is turning, but I fear that Woke might have years to go, and get even worse, before the madness collapses. It is weirdly reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge - I'm not saying the Woke are murdering millions, I am saying the Woke are following the historico-ideological pattern, searching for evermore purity, challenging each other to be even more Woke, just as the KR constantly tried to prove ever greater loyalty to Angkar, and ended up executing people for laughing
Woke is certainly getting crazier, and like the KR it has internecine wars (cf the Trans-TERF war, fought mainly on the progressive left). All of the 21,000 prisoners tortured and killed at Tuol Sleng were Khmer Rouge cadres, deemed suspect or denounced by other cadres
I discovered this evening that our local former Green councillor and twice London greens mayoral candidate Darren Johnson has been tweeting against his party for their uncritical beliefs on puberty blockers and rejection of the Cass report, so there you have it.
Internecine war is always the nastiest. Witness the last 8 years of the Tories. Unfortunately us Lib Dems don’t really do internecine wars very well. Occasionally the membership grumble loudly about something, like the party position on housebuilding, but the bloodletting is limited to a few raised voices.
When it comes to internecine fighting and all the fighting on PB I firmly believe that if the Guardian Comment is Free mob piled in here or the Con Home tried a coup we would stand together and smash them. Malcolm with NigelForeremain like men at arms at Agincourt, Donkeys and everyone sane like mates on the beaches at Dunkirk, Cyclefree and Leon making out in a barn behind enemy lines then saving the day with a waspish and inventive attack, Cyclefree’s facts with Leon’s prose.
We should make a list of PB posters and their nemeses. Most of you probably have a nemesis: one poster whose views or attitude are diametrically opposed to yours, or who winds you up more than anyone else.
That fucker kle4
Every time. I dunno how. But every single time he leaves me seething
It's because you see through my facade.
You do actually possess a latent power. Because you are so unfeasible well-mannered, polite, centrist and reasonable, if you ever came out and got angry, it would be explosive. You could destroy a PB-er with one tart paragraph. Use this power sparingly!
Not unlike the shock of Nick Palmer Night. The night @kle4 goes off the leash and tears a strip off someone. Years later people will say ‘I was there’.
We should actually and genuinely celebrate Nick Palmer night. Can anyone remember the date?
On Nick Palmer Night we must all be nice and friendly, and we should all being a shameful or weird or sensational secret to the chat, which we then reveal. That would be FUN
I can think of a better way to celebrate Nick Palmer Night. Unfortunately that requires the co operation of a couple of others.
I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd
The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.
Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of.
This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.
We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.
Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.
That's why I think revolution - or societal tumult/collapse - is now the only way out. With AI looming, and so much else, this is quite possible. Woke is peaking to a Frenzy
I think it is peaking to a frenzy and burning itself out.
I hope you are right, and the first backlash against Trans is maybe a hint that the tide is turning, but I fear that Woke might have years to go, and get even worse, before the madness collapses. It is weirdly reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge - I'm not saying the Woke are murdering millions, I am saying the Woke are following the historico-ideological pattern, searching for evermore purity, challenging each other to be even more Woke, just as the KR constantly tried to prove ever greater loyalty to Angkar, and ended up executing people for laughing
Woke is certainly getting crazier, and like the KR it has internecine wars (cf the Trans-TERF war, fought mainly on the progressive left). All of the 21,000 prisoners tortured and killed at Tuol Sleng were Khmer Rouge cadres, deemed suspect or denounced by other cadres
I discovered this evening that our local former Green councillor and twice London greens mayoral candidate Darren Johnson has been tweeting against his party for their uncritical beliefs on puberty blockers and rejection of the Cass report, so there you have it.
Internecine war is always the nastiest. Witness the last 8 years of the Tories. Unfortunately us Lib Dems don’t really do internecine wars very well. Occasionally the membership grumble loudly about something, like the party position on housebuilding, but the bloodletting is limited to a few raised voices.
When it comes to internecine fighting and all the fighting on PB I firmly believe that if the Guardian Comment is Free mob piled in here or the Con Home tried a coup we would stand together and smash them. Malcolm with NigelForeremain like men at arms at Agincourt, Donkeys and everyone sane like mates on the beaches at Dunkirk, Cyclefree and Leon making out in a barn behind enemy lines then saving the day with a waspish and inventive attack, Cyclefree’s facts with Leon’s prose.
We should make a list of PB posters and their nemeses. Most of you probably have a nemesis: one poster whose views or attitude are diametrically opposed to yours, or who winds you up more than anyone else.
It’s a funny one, I can vehemently disagree with posters’ views but I know that if we were having a few pints in a pub it would be fun and alright. It’s actually fantastic that you get the training on here so if you are at a dinner party or a bar and someone brings up politics you are so “done” that you can just laugh it off and pretend not to care.
In all honesty I think I would love to have drinks with every single poster on here because in real life we are all ok.
I’ve not been to a PB social. I’d like to go to the next one, for that reason.
Absolutely, and also we get to see Topping and Kinabalu have a fight like Hugh Grant and Colin Firth in Bridget Jones so well worth it.
Exhibit A below.
I mean in principle it's not a great idea to get others to perform for your pleasure but we've got to the no you fuck off stage so I'm down with it.
We could arrange a charity fight off for Dementia charities on behalf of OGH where you can choose your opponent, PB can bet on who wins and the joy is that nobody knows who they have been kicking off with and giving it large at which could be really good fun.
It could turn out that Correct Horse is a massive MMA fighter and Dura Ace is a tiny nerd mechanic and every perception is turned on its head.
So the next PB meet can be white collar boxing drawn at random - or maybe red and blue teams.
It's a while since I last did a white collar boxing gig. Dawn at least has the benefit of not having to hang around all evening if your fight is at the end of the card.
Talking of fighting at dawn the world would be a better place if duelling was legalised. Everyone would know that if they are a dick they might be called out. They will not know if the person calling them out is actually quite good with a sword or pistol and so best to just say sorry and be polite. Those that are good win, those that are full of shit either die in a duel or have to lose face.
It would make life more civilised. I’m sure of it. I know nothing but I’m sure of it.
The Tories must shoulder some of the blame for this. They have been in power for 14 years and they've had ample opportunity to extirpate this vile, damaging Woke nonsense, to drive it out of public life and to punish those that proselytise it. Instead they have actively let it spread, it has got worse, to the extent that we now refuse to deport known sex offenders back to Afghanistan, because they might suffer for being sex offenders, and so they rape and murder British people instead. That is where we are. That is what the Tories have allowed to flourish, that level of insanity
The only way we retrieve the situation is something close to revolution. An entire class of people needs to be exiled from power forever, and a grotesque ideology needs to be forcibly eliminated. We need the Labour party to fuck up massively and a proper right wing party to assume power
Either that or let the machines take over
"Fourteen years of Tory rule have left Britain a lazy, dangerous, Left-wing mess It hardly matters that Labour will be worse, when voters feel so betrayed by the Tories
Imagine being called lazy by someone who writes newspaper columns for a living.
Have you ever had the job of newspaper columnist? I doubt it. Do you think they just sit there and toss out any old crap in half an hour and pocket £2k per column, ta very much? If it is that easy, surely everyone would do it? eg You?
But of course they don't. Because it is hard. And only a few people can do it and make it really pay
Is it really hard in the same way as, say, managing a big construction project is? Or running a hospital? Or successfully integrating a merger of two companies?
I don't know for sure, of course, but all I can say is that I know lots of talented journalists who have tried to be columnists, and failed badly. And these are professional journalists - they already have the skillset, theoretically
The job of columnist is really quite strange. You have to express a forthright, interesting and eloquent opinion, in an engaging way, at least once a week. For week after week and year after year. When you examine it, that is much harder than it seems, which is why very few do it well, and very very few make good money at it - but when they do, the money is great, because readers will return for a particular writer they like, and editors know this
The celeb columnist is a different genre. Boris straddles both. He is a rather good columnist anyway, if not quite a fighter ace, but his celebrity value surely triples his salary
I do take your point, to a certain extent. But there are lots of very good blog writers out there, which suggests the art of writing such pieces was mainly restricted by access and barriers to entry. And I don't rate the skill of bog standard journalists that highly, given how easily replaceable by AI it was.
More idiocy from the Tories . Planning a stamp duty cut which will just fuel the housing market. Many still can’t get on the housing ladder .
Stamp duty shouldn't be cut, it should be abolished.
An annual property tax everyone who owns land has to pay should replace stamp duty and Council Tax, stamp duty being a perverse tax on those trying to get on the housing ladder or those who are mobile and move homes.
It is a tax that shafts those of working age who get on the ladder the most, while those who are retired in a "forever home" never pay the tax.
Why you'd object to it being cut is beyond me. It makes those trying to get on the ladder more affordable if they only have to pay a deposit and not stamp duty on top of the deposit.
The Tories must shoulder some of the blame for this. They have been in power for 14 years and they've had ample opportunity to extirpate this vile, damaging Woke nonsense, to drive it out of public life and to punish those that proselytise it. Instead they have actively let it spread, it has got worse, to the extent that we now refuse to deport known sex offenders back to Afghanistan, because they might suffer for being sex offenders, and so they rape and murder British people instead. That is where we are. That is what the Tories have allowed to flourish, that level of insanity
The only way we retrieve the situation is something close to revolution. An entire class of people needs to be exiled from power forever, and a grotesque ideology needs to be forcibly eliminated. We need the Labour party to fuck up massively and a proper right wing party to assume power
Either that or let the machines take over
"Fourteen years of Tory rule have left Britain a lazy, dangerous, Left-wing mess It hardly matters that Labour will be worse, when voters feel so betrayed by the Tories
Imagine being called lazy by someone who writes newspaper columns for a living.
Have you ever had the job of newspaper columnist? I doubt it. Do you think they just sit there and toss out any old crap in half an hour and pocket £2k per column, ta very much? If it is that easy, surely everyone would do it? eg You?
But of course they don't. Because it is hard. And only a few people can do it and make it really pay
Is it really hard in the same way as, say, managing a big construction project is? Or running a hospital? Or successfully integrating a merger of two companies?
I don't know for sure, of course, but all I can say is that I know lots of talented journalists who have tried to be columnists, and failed badly. And these are professional journalists - they already have the skillset, theoretically
The job of columnist is really quite strange. You have to express a forthright, interesting and eloquent opinion, in an engaging way, at least once a week. For week after week and year after year. When you examine it, that is much harder than it seems, which is why very few do it well, and very very few make good money at it - but when they do, the money is great, because readers will return for a particular writer they like, and editors know this
The celeb columnist is a different genre. Boris straddles both. He is a rather good columnist anyway, if not quite a fighter ace, but his celebrity value surely triples his salary
I do take your point, to a certain extent. But there are lots of very good blog writers out there, which suggests the art of writing such pieces was mainly restricted by access and barriers to entry. And I don't rate the skill of bog standard journalists that highly, given how easily replaceable by AI it was.
You are confusing workrate with talent (as I explain below). You need a special talent to be a good columnist, and it is surprisingly rare (otherwise the good ones would not get so well paid). If you haven't got the basic talent, the gift with words AND opinions, then you could work at it 24/7 and you'd still be shit
Travel writing is similar. A lot of very skilled journalists think Fuck that, looks easy, free booze and a five star hotel, I'm in! - then it turns out they can't do it, because it requires a very particular skill with words invoking place, which is surprisingly uncommon
I agree with the threat of AI, it will take a lot of these jobs, AI can write brilliantly. Thankfully it can't eat oysters in St Malo. Yet
"More than half of a £900m military fund for Ukraine run by the British Ministry of Defence has not been used because of bureaucratic delays in handing out contracts."
The Tories must shoulder some of the blame for this. They have been in power for 14 years and they've had ample opportunity to extirpate this vile, damaging Woke nonsense, to drive it out of public life and to punish those that proselytise it. Instead they have actively let it spread, it has got worse, to the extent that we now refuse to deport known sex offenders back to Afghanistan, because they might suffer for being sex offenders, and so they rape and murder British people instead. That is where we are. That is what the Tories have allowed to flourish, that level of insanity
The only way we retrieve the situation is something close to revolution. An entire class of people needs to be exiled from power forever, and a grotesque ideology needs to be forcibly eliminated. We need the Labour party to fuck up massively and a proper right wing party to assume power
Either that or let the machines take over
"Fourteen years of Tory rule have left Britain a lazy, dangerous, Left-wing mess It hardly matters that Labour will be worse, when voters feel so betrayed by the Tories
Imagine being called lazy by someone who writes newspaper columns for a living.
Have you ever had the job of newspaper columnist? I doubt it. Do you think they just sit there and toss out any old crap in half an hour and pocket £2k per column, ta very much? If it is that easy, surely everyone would do it? eg You?
But of course they don't. Because it is hard. And only a few people can do it and make it really pay
Hahaha!
I had to like that post just for the hilarity of your response. How dare OnlyLivingBoy slur the noble art of the hack, eh?
I know you're not the brightest, so I've made a special extra comment for the PB midwits, you can find it below. There I illustrate my point with an easy-to-understand example, for people with an IQ 0f 93-116
Just get over yourself - you're a second rate hack and you know it.
I met a Russian, Nikolai, earlier. He was sat next to me on the plane.i realised he was Russian when he took his passport out about half an hour before we landed
Once we'd landed, and he'd taken his earphones out, I said "Privyet! Kak tibiya zavoot?" in quite a serious voice (the only way to speak Russian)
I think that, just for a moment, he looked a bit scared. Then he smiled and said, in English, "You speak Russian?"
I told him that I'd learnt it at school thirty years ago for eighteen months. He said I had a very good accent
Top tip - speak Russian like you're pretending to be KGB
Thanks for the kindness shown when I had a bad day yesterday and was a little irate. Youse know who you are. My eye is fine and I had a lovely day today, which, together with your words and support made it all so much easier. Really felt I made a difference. Cheers!
More idiocy from the Tories . Planning a stamp duty cut which will just fuel the housing market. Many still can’t get on the housing ladder .
Stamp duty shouldn't be cut, it should be abolished.
An annual property tax everyone who owns land has to pay should replace stamp duty and Council Tax, stamp duty being a perverse tax on those trying to get on the housing ladder or those who are mobile and move homes.
It is a tax that shafts those of working age who get on the ladder the most, while those who are retired in a "forever home" never pay the tax.
Why you'd object to it being cut is beyond me. It makes those trying to get on the ladder more affordable if they only have to pay a deposit and not stamp duty on top of the deposit.
First time buyers don't pay stamp duty on property up to £425,000.
Whilst rationally, I know that jobs I have never tried are probably a bit trickier than I think.... there are some which I cannot believe are that hard.
First and foremost among them is news presenter. You need to sound serious, and read an autocue. I believe almost any actor could do this, as well as at least 10% of the public given a small amount of training.
Newspaper columnist... I suspect not that hard to be mediocre. Many are just phoning it in and only got the job through connections. But the best are noticeably much better.
The Tories must shoulder some of the blame for this. They have been in power for 14 years and they've had ample opportunity to extirpate this vile, damaging Woke nonsense, to drive it out of public life and to punish those that proselytise it. Instead they have actively let it spread, it has got worse, to the extent that we now refuse to deport known sex offenders back to Afghanistan, because they might suffer for being sex offenders, and so they rape and murder British people instead. That is where we are. That is what the Tories have allowed to flourish, that level of insanity
The only way we retrieve the situation is something close to revolution. An entire class of people needs to be exiled from power forever, and a grotesque ideology needs to be forcibly eliminated. We need the Labour party to fuck up massively and a proper right wing party to assume power
Either that or let the machines take over
"Fourteen years of Tory rule have left Britain a lazy, dangerous, Left-wing mess It hardly matters that Labour will be worse, when voters feel so betrayed by the Tories
Imagine being called lazy by someone who writes newspaper columns for a living.
Have you ever had the job of newspaper columnist? I doubt it. Do you think they just sit there and toss out any old crap in half an hour and pocket £2k per column, ta very much? If it is that easy, surely everyone would do it? eg You?
But of course they don't. Because it is hard. And only a few people can do it and make it really pay
Hahaha!
I had to like that post just for the hilarity of your response. How dare OnlyLivingBoy slur the noble art of the hack, eh?
I know you're not the brightest, so I've made a special extra comment for the PB midwits, you can find it below. There I illustrate my point with an easy-to-understand example, for people with an IQ 0f 93-116
Just get over yourself - you're a second rate hack and you know it.
I'm off to France tomorrow. Eurostar to Paris, two days there, then TGV to Qumper. It's all free. All expenses paid, driving around Brittany, eating oysters in fine restaurants, staying in quaint hotels, and guzzling fine wine by the sea. Enjoy my photos
The Tories must shoulder some of the blame for this. They have been in power for 14 years and they've had ample opportunity to extirpate this vile, damaging Woke nonsense, to drive it out of public life and to punish those that proselytise it. Instead they have actively let it spread, it has got worse, to the extent that we now refuse to deport known sex offenders back to Afghanistan, because they might suffer for being sex offenders, and so they rape and murder British people instead. That is where we are. That is what the Tories have allowed to flourish, that level of insanity
The only way we retrieve the situation is something close to revolution. An entire class of people needs to be exiled from power forever, and a grotesque ideology needs to be forcibly eliminated. We need the Labour party to fuck up massively and a proper right wing party to assume power
Either that or let the machines take over
"Fourteen years of Tory rule have left Britain a lazy, dangerous, Left-wing mess It hardly matters that Labour will be worse, when voters feel so betrayed by the Tories
Imagine being called lazy by someone who writes newspaper columns for a living.
Have you ever had the job of newspaper columnist? I doubt it. Do you think they just sit there and toss out any old crap in half an hour and pocket £2k per column, ta very much? If it is that easy, surely everyone would do it? eg You?
But of course they don't. Because it is hard. And only a few people can do it and make it really pay
Is it really hard in the same way as, say, managing a big construction project is? Or running a hospital? Or successfully integrating a merger of two companies?
In fact I'll go further and illustrate my point. Your comparison is absurd, because you are making a category error
You're essentially asking which is harder, running a health trust, or being a brilliant premier league striker?
The query makes no sense. The latter requires skills which are much rarer than the former, even though the former is surely very hard work. But if you have the skills to be a great striker, if you are Erling Haaland, you will make it look effortless, but that is because you are very talented, and almost no one else has your talent. You might even appear "lazy" to people who don't understand football
Erling Haaland runs two 5km runs back to back every 3 days. Plus all the training and weightlifting behind the scenes. I am going to go out on a limb and declare him less lazy than an OpEd writer.
More idiocy from the Tories . Planning a stamp duty cut which will just fuel the housing market. Many still can’t get on the housing ladder .
Stamp duty shouldn't be cut, it should be abolished.
An annual property tax everyone who owns land has to pay should replace stamp duty and Council Tax, stamp duty being a perverse tax on those trying to get on the housing ladder or those who are mobile and move homes.
It is a tax that shafts those of working age who get on the ladder the most, while those who are retired in a "forever home" never pay the tax.
Why you'd object to it being cut is beyond me. It makes those trying to get on the ladder more affordable if they only have to pay a deposit and not stamp duty on top of the deposit.
Land Value Taxation - a good old Liberal idea whose time has finally come?
More idiocy from the Tories . Planning a stamp duty cut which will just fuel the housing market. Many still can’t get on the housing ladder .
Stamp duty shouldn't be cut, it should be abolished.
An annual property tax everyone who owns land has to pay should replace stamp duty and Council Tax, stamp duty being a perverse tax on those trying to get on the housing ladder or those who are mobile and move homes.
It is a tax that shafts those of working age who get on the ladder the most, while those who are retired in a "forever home" never pay the tax.
Why you'd object to it being cut is beyond me. It makes those trying to get on the ladder more affordable if they only have to pay a deposit and not stamp duty on top of the deposit.
First time buyers don't pay stamp duty on property up to £425,000.
But someone who bought for the first time only a few years ago, but changes jobs and now wants to move does.
Or someone who's a first time buyer now but knows they may need to move in the next few years needs to factor it in too.
Why should there be a tax only paid by those who are moving etc?
Did I miss the promised Solarpunk thread, or is it still coming?
It is still coming @dixiedean. It has been superseded by another article which is in the process. When that's out I shall return to the Solarpunk article which will (gods of PB willing) appear about 7-10 days later.
The Tories must shoulder some of the blame for this. They have been in power for 14 years and they've had ample opportunity to extirpate this vile, damaging Woke nonsense, to drive it out of public life and to punish those that proselytise it. Instead they have actively let it spread, it has got worse, to the extent that we now refuse to deport known sex offenders back to Afghanistan, because they might suffer for being sex offenders, and so they rape and murder British people instead. That is where we are. That is what the Tories have allowed to flourish, that level of insanity
The only way we retrieve the situation is something close to revolution. An entire class of people needs to be exiled from power forever, and a grotesque ideology needs to be forcibly eliminated. We need the Labour party to fuck up massively and a proper right wing party to assume power
Either that or let the machines take over
"Fourteen years of Tory rule have left Britain a lazy, dangerous, Left-wing mess It hardly matters that Labour will be worse, when voters feel so betrayed by the Tories
Imagine being called lazy by someone who writes newspaper columns for a living.
Have you ever had the job of newspaper columnist? I doubt it. Do you think they just sit there and toss out any old crap in half an hour and pocket £2k per column, ta very much? If it is that easy, surely everyone would do it? eg You?
But of course they don't. Because it is hard. And only a few people can do it and make it really pay
Hahaha!
I had to like that post just for the hilarity of your response. How dare OnlyLivingBoy slur the noble art of the hack, eh?
I know you're not the brightest, so I've made a special extra comment for the PB midwits, you can find it below. There I illustrate my point with an easy-to-understand example, for people with an IQ 0f 93-116
Just get over yourself - you're a second rate hack and you know it.
I'm off to France tomorrow. Eurostar to Paris, two days there, then TGV to Qumper. It's all free. All expenses paid, driving around Brittany, eating oysters in fine restaurants, staying in quaint hotels, and guzzling fine wine by the sea. Enjoy my photos
The Tories must shoulder some of the blame for this. They have been in power for 14 years and they've had ample opportunity to extirpate this vile, damaging Woke nonsense, to drive it out of public life and to punish those that proselytise it. Instead they have actively let it spread, it has got worse, to the extent that we now refuse to deport known sex offenders back to Afghanistan, because they might suffer for being sex offenders, and so they rape and murder British people instead. That is where we are. That is what the Tories have allowed to flourish, that level of insanity
The only way we retrieve the situation is something close to revolution. An entire class of people needs to be exiled from power forever, and a grotesque ideology needs to be forcibly eliminated. We need the Labour party to fuck up massively and a proper right wing party to assume power
Either that or let the machines take over
"Fourteen years of Tory rule have left Britain a lazy, dangerous, Left-wing mess It hardly matters that Labour will be worse, when voters feel so betrayed by the Tories
Imagine being called lazy by someone who writes newspaper columns for a living.
Have you ever had the job of newspaper columnist? I doubt it. Do you think they just sit there and toss out any old crap in half an hour and pocket £2k per column, ta very much? If it is that easy, surely everyone would do it? eg You?
But of course they don't. Because it is hard. And only a few people can do it and make it really pay
Is it really hard in the same way as, say, managing a big construction project is? Or running a hospital? Or successfully integrating a merger of two companies?
In fact I'll go further and illustrate my point. Your comparison is absurd, because you are making a category error
You're essentially asking which is harder, running a health trust, or being a brilliant premier league striker?
The query makes no sense. The latter requires skills which are much rarer than the former, even though the former is surely very hard work. But if you have the skills to be a great striker, if you are Erling Haaland, you will make it look effortless, but that is because you are very talented, and almost no one else has your talent. You might even appear "lazy" to people who don't understand football
Erling Haaland runs two 5km runs back to back every 3 days. Plus all the training and weightlifting behind the scenes. I am going to go out on a limb and declare him less lazy than an OpEd writer.
That's what I am saying. Haaland will look lazy to people who don't understand football. Those that do, know that Yes he's bloody talented, but he still has to train like a bastard because the competition is insane
I actually KNOW some newspaper columnists. They will spend days raging for an idea, exploring themes, engaging concepts, rejecting duds. They have to read tons of news and books and other stuff, to gather material. Vanishingly few - in fact, probably none - can constantly toss out brilliant columns in half an hour then piss off to the swimming pool
You really don't know what you're talking about, on this point
I then met a South Korean lady called Lee (or Li?)
We were both dithering next to the bus that said San Marco (a town/suburb between the airport and Santiago) on the front of it. We agreed, before any other discussion, to share a cab to the cathedral if the bus didn't go there
The bus did go there, for one euro, and we chatted the whole way
She's an epidemiology research fellow at Cambridge and has come to Santiago on her own for the weekend because it's her birthday on Sunday
She's studied and worked in Glasgow, Leeds and Leicester, before Cambridge, in her seven years in the UK
I asked her about the Lab Leak theory, and she said "Leon sent you "
I didn't really (Eta- I didn't ask about lab leak, but I did meet her!)
The Tories must shoulder some of the blame for this. They have been in power for 14 years and they've had ample opportunity to extirpate this vile, damaging Woke nonsense, to drive it out of public life and to punish those that proselytise it. Instead they have actively let it spread, it has got worse, to the extent that we now refuse to deport known sex offenders back to Afghanistan, because they might suffer for being sex offenders, and so they rape and murder British people instead. That is where we are. That is what the Tories have allowed to flourish, that level of insanity
The only way we retrieve the situation is something close to revolution. An entire class of people needs to be exiled from power forever, and a grotesque ideology needs to be forcibly eliminated. We need the Labour party to fuck up massively and a proper right wing party to assume power
Either that or let the machines take over
"Fourteen years of Tory rule have left Britain a lazy, dangerous, Left-wing mess It hardly matters that Labour will be worse, when voters feel so betrayed by the Tories
Imagine being called lazy by someone who writes newspaper columns for a living.
Have you ever had the job of newspaper columnist? I doubt it. Do you think they just sit there and toss out any old crap in half an hour and pocket £2k per column, ta very much? If it is that easy, surely everyone would do it? eg You?
But of course they don't. Because it is hard. And only a few people can do it and make it really pay
Hahaha!
I had to like that post just for the hilarity of your response. How dare OnlyLivingBoy slur the noble art of the hack, eh?
I know you're not the brightest, so I've made a special extra comment for the PB midwits, you can find it below. There I illustrate my point with an easy-to-understand example, for people with an IQ 0f 93-116
Just get over yourself - you're a second rate hack and you know it.
I'm off to France tomorrow. Eurostar to Paris, two days there, then TGV to Qumper. It's all free. All expenses paid, driving around Brittany, eating oysters in fine restaurants, staying in quaint hotels, and guzzling fine wine by the sea. Enjoy my photos
All alone?
No, various guides and PR people from Brittany Tourism. They can be fun, they can be a drag. I often prefer to do these things entirely alone but not this time
Lib Dems & Green this is why we ask you to lend us your vote
These look like the numbers from the Survation poll - the YouGov MRP had the LDs in front 33-32 with Labour on 18 and Reform on 11 so make of that what you will.
How does the tactical voter decide which is the tactical vote and which the wasted vote?
What a mess.
Sometimes they just have a sixth sense about these things.
In 2017 Labour and the Tories were arguing about who was best placed to defeat the SNP in East Renfreshire. It had been a Labour seat for 10 years before being lost in the SNP wave, with SNP on just over 40, Labour on 34, and Tories on 22.
Even going into 2017 with Labour looking like doing very badly, which they then recovered from to some extent of course, it might seem a reasonable case that Labour were the most likely challengers, and Conservatives the spoilers.
Yet the Tories won in the end on 40, SNP 31, Labour 27.
In some of the southern leafy seats the LDs have not recovered even second place in many of them, so Labour are in with a shout as the reasonable challenger. But the LDs shouldn't give up, since they may well point to local strength and longer term history as a sign they have a better chance of tapping in to wider support.
So both will need to go for it, and the tactical voter will need to trust their gut.
I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd
The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.
Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of.
This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.
We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.
Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.
That's why I think revolution - or societal tumult/collapse - is now the only way out. With AI looming, and so much else, this is quite possible. Woke is peaking to a Frenzy
I think it is peaking to a frenzy and burning itself out.
I hope you are right, and the first backlash against Trans is maybe a hint that the tide is turning, but I fear that Woke might have years to go, and get even worse, before the madness collapses. It is weirdly reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge - I'm not saying the Woke are murdering millions, I am saying the Woke are following the historico-ideological pattern, searching for evermore purity, challenging each other to be even more Woke, just as the KR constantly tried to prove ever greater loyalty to Angkar, and ended up executing people for laughing
Woke is certainly getting crazier, and like the KR it has internecine wars (cf the Trans-TERF war, fought mainly on the progressive left). All of the 21,000 prisoners tortured and killed at Tuol Sleng were Khmer Rouge cadres, deemed suspect or denounced by other cadres
I discovered this evening that our local former Green councillor and twice London greens mayoral candidate Darren Johnson has been tweeting against his party for their uncritical beliefs on puberty blockers and rejection of the Cass report, so there you have it.
Internecine war is always the nastiest. Witness the last 8 years of the Tories. Unfortunately us Lib Dems don’t really do internecine wars very well. Occasionally the membership grumble loudly about something, like the party position on housebuilding, but the bloodletting is limited to a few raised voices.
When it comes to internecine fighting and all the fighting on PB I firmly believe that if the Guardian Comment is Free mob piled in here or the Con Home tried a coup we would stand together and smash them. Malcolm with NigelForeremain like men at arms at Agincourt, Donkeys and everyone sane like mates on the beaches at Dunkirk, Cyclefree and Leon making out in a barn behind enemy lines then saving the day with a waspish and inventive attack, Cyclefree’s facts with Leon’s prose.
We should make a list of PB posters and their nemeses. Most of you probably have a nemesis: one poster whose views or attitude are diametrically opposed to yours, or who winds you up more than anyone else.
That fucker kle4
Every time. I dunno how. But every single time he leaves me seething
It's because you see through my facade.
You do actually possess a latent power. Because you are so unfeasible well-mannered, polite, centrist and reasonable, if you ever came out and got angry, it would be explosive. You could destroy a PB-er with one tart paragraph. Use this power sparingly!
Not unlike the shock of Nick Palmer Night. The night kle4 goes off the leash and tears a strip off someone. Years later people will say ‘I was there’.
I regret to say you've missed it as I once allcaps told a poster to go f*ck themselves, but they have a very thick skin so it had no effect.
Did I miss the promised Solarpunk thread, or is it still coming?
It is still coming @dixiedean. It has been superseded by another article which is in the process. When that's out I shall return to the Solarpunk article which will (gods of PB willing) appear about 7-10 days later.
I met a Russian, Nikolai, earlier. He was sat next to me on the plane.i realised he was Russian when he took his passport out about half an hour before we landed
Once we'd landed, and he'd taken his earphones out, I said "Privyet! Kak tibiya zavoot?" in quite a serious voice (the only way to speak Russian)
I think that, just for a moment, he looked a bit scared. Then he smiled and said, in English, "You speak Russian?"
I told him that I'd learnt it at school thirty years ago for eighteen months. He said I had a very good accent
Top tip - speak Russian like you're pretending to be KGB
Did you tell him that you were on a pilgrimage to a cathedral?
Surely there’s some wider context to this piece of footage, and a Met Police sargeant didn’t actually threaten to arrest a man for “being openly Jewish in a public place”?
Victim blaming. Presumably women will be told that wearing attractive clothes will provoke men, who may not have a handy brothel nearby and so on.
You are absolutely right in every way except that if you were that Police chap and you see something that could turn into a clusterfuck you have to try and stop it. I have stopped many fights in my life where the person was right to want to make the point but it would be me that had to batter the crap out of someone to get him out safely.
The Jewish guy should not have had to try and make the point because those marches should have stopped long ago, frankly should never have started, and that’s the problem. That copper was in a no-win situation. I think we’ve exchanged a PM about our opinion on Israel/Gaza and I rein myself in here but this situation was a problem that the police could not really win.
I feel slightly bad for the copper in question for expressing something clunkily which has caused it to blow up, but on the other hand I think it clunkily reveals a dangerous attitude on behalf of the Met and so his impolitic language has helpfully crystallised the situation.
Sometimes you need to cut out the bullshit, and his instinctive response, defended by the Met in meally mouthed 'apologetic' fashion as essentially correct in principle but poorly expressed, reveals the problem inherent in their attitude.
I then met a South Korean lady called Lee (or Li?)
We were both dithering next to the bus that said San Marco (a town/suburb between the airport and Santiago) on the front of it. We agreed, before any other discussion, to share a cab to the cathedral if the bus didn't go there
The bus did go there, for one euro, and we chatted the whole way
She's an epidemiology research fellow at Cambridge and has come to Santiago on her own for the weekend because it's her birthday on Sunday
She's studied and worked in Glasgow, Leeds and Leicester, before Cambridge, in her seven years in the UK
I asked her about the Lab Leak theory, and she said "Leon sent you "
I didn't really
'Lee' doesn't actually have a sounded consonant in Korean - it's closer to 'ee'.
Lib Dems & Green this is why we ask you to lend us your vote
These look like the numbers from the Survation poll - the YouGov MRP had the LDs in front 33-32 with Labour on 18 and Reform on 11 so make of that what you will.
How does the tactical voter decide which is the tactical vote and which the wasted vote?
What a mess.
Sometimes they just have a sixth sense about these things.
In 2017 Labour and the Tories were arguing about who was best placed to defeat the SNP in East Renfreshire. It had been a Labour seat for 10 years before being lost in the SNP wave, with SNP on just over 40, Labour on 34, and Tories on 22.
Even going into 2017 with Labour looking like doing very badly, which they then recovered from to some extent of course, it might seem a reasonable case that Labour were the most likely challengers, and Conservatives the spoilers.
Yet the Tories won in the end on 40, SNP 31, Labour 27.
In some of the southern leafy seats the LDs have not recovered even second place in many of them, so Labour are in with a shout as the reasonable challenger. But the LDs shouldn't give up, since they may well point to local strength and longer term history as a sign they have a better chance of tapping in to wider support.
So both will need to go for it, and the tactical voter will need to trust their gut.
The Tories must shoulder some of the blame for this. They have been in power for 14 years and they've had ample opportunity to extirpate this vile, damaging Woke nonsense, to drive it out of public life and to punish those that proselytise it. Instead they have actively let it spread, it has got worse, to the extent that we now refuse to deport known sex offenders back to Afghanistan, because they might suffer for being sex offenders, and so they rape and murder British people instead. That is where we are. That is what the Tories have allowed to flourish, that level of insanity
The only way we retrieve the situation is something close to revolution. An entire class of people needs to be exiled from power forever, and a grotesque ideology needs to be forcibly eliminated. We need the Labour party to fuck up massively and a proper right wing party to assume power
Either that or let the machines take over
"Fourteen years of Tory rule have left Britain a lazy, dangerous, Left-wing mess It hardly matters that Labour will be worse, when voters feel so betrayed by the Tories
Imagine being called lazy by someone who writes newspaper columns for a living.
Have you ever had the job of newspaper columnist? I doubt it. Do you think they just sit there and toss out any old crap in half an hour and pocket £2k per column, ta very much? If it is that easy, surely everyone would do it? eg You?
But of course they don't. Because it is hard. And only a few people can do it and make it really pay
Is it really hard in the same way as, say, managing a big construction project is? Or running a hospital? Or successfully integrating a merger of two companies?
In fact I'll go further and illustrate my point. Your comparison is absurd, because you are making a category error
You're essentially asking which is harder, running a health trust, or being a brilliant premier league striker?
The query makes no sense. The latter requires skills which are much rarer than the former, even though the former is surely very hard work. But if you have the skills to be a great striker, if you are Erling Haaland, you will make it look effortless, but that is because you are very talented, and almost no one else has your talent. You might even appear "lazy" to people who don't understand football
Erling Haaland runs two 5km runs back to back every 3 days. Plus all the training and weightlifting behind the scenes. I am going to go out on a limb and declare him less lazy than an OpEd writer.
Being pedantic, isn’t two 5K runs back to back, a 10K run?
The Tories must shoulder some of the blame for this. They have been in power for 14 years and they've had ample opportunity to extirpate this vile, damaging Woke nonsense, to drive it out of public life and to punish those that proselytise it. Instead they have actively let it spread, it has got worse, to the extent that we now refuse to deport known sex offenders back to Afghanistan, because they might suffer for being sex offenders, and so they rape and murder British people instead. That is where we are. That is what the Tories have allowed to flourish, that level of insanity
The only way we retrieve the situation is something close to revolution. An entire class of people needs to be exiled from power forever, and a grotesque ideology needs to be forcibly eliminated. We need the Labour party to fuck up massively and a proper right wing party to assume power
Either that or let the machines take over
"Fourteen years of Tory rule have left Britain a lazy, dangerous, Left-wing mess It hardly matters that Labour will be worse, when voters feel so betrayed by the Tories
Imagine being called lazy by someone who writes newspaper columns for a living.
Have you ever had the job of newspaper columnist? I doubt it. Do you think they just sit there and toss out any old crap in half an hour and pocket £2k per column, ta very much? If it is that easy, surely everyone would do it? eg You?
But of course they don't. Because it is hard. And only a few people can do it and make it really pay
Is it really hard in the same way as, say, managing a big construction project is? Or running a hospital? Or successfully integrating a merger of two companies?
I don't know for sure, of course, but all I can say is that I know lots of talented journalists who have tried to be columnists, and failed badly. And these are professional journalists - they already have the skillset, theoretically
The job of columnist is really quite strange. You have to express a forthright, interesting and eloquent opinion, in an engaging way, at least once a week. For week after week and year after year. When you examine it, that is much harder than it seems, which is why very few do it well, and very very few make good money at it - but when they do, the money is great, because readers will return for a particular writer they like, and editors know this
The celeb columnist is a different genre. Boris straddles both. He is a rather good columnist anyway, if not quite a fighter ace, but his celebrity value surely triples his salary
I do take your point, to a certain extent. But there are lots of very good blog writers out there, which suggests the art of writing such pieces was mainly restricted by access and barriers to entry. And I don't rate the skill of bog standard journalists that highly, given how easily replaceable by AI it was.
You are confusing workrate with talent (as I explain below). You need a special talent to be a good columnist, and it is surprisingly rare (otherwise the good ones would not get so well paid). If you haven't got the basic talent, the gift with words AND opinions, then you could work at it 24/7 and you'd still be shit
Travel writing is similar. A lot of very skilled journalists think Fuck that, looks easy, free booze and a five star hotel, I'm in! - then it turns out they can't do it, because it requires a very particular skill with words invoking place, which is surprisingly uncommon
I agree with the threat of AI, it will take a lot of these jobs, AI can write brilliantly. Thankfully it can't eat oysters in St Malo. Yet
Though going back to the jumping off point for this conversation, the issue was Camilla T complaining about the laziness of the nation. And doing that from the perch of a Telegraph column is a bit off.
That isn't to say that she isn't talented (and I don't mean that in a snide way), or that she doesn't deserve the income she gets. But it's not hard work... nor is it (really) important work.
There are lots of people whose work is more key to the functioning of society than newspaper columnists, and lots who work harder for less reward. Even in the rather guilded set here. But in broad terms, that's OK.
But there's the caveat Michael Young feared. If you take Meritocracy too seriously, life's winners (Tominey, say, or Sunak) start to think that their winning is down to their talent and industry and that life's losers deserve to lose.
I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd
The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.
Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of.
This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.
We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.
Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.
That's why I think revolution - or societal tumult/collapse - is now the only way out. With AI looming, and so much else, this is quite possible. Woke is peaking to a Frenzy
I think it is peaking to a frenzy and burning itself out.
I hope you are right, and the first backlash against Trans is maybe a hint that the tide is turning, but I fear that Woke might have years to go, and get even worse, before the madness collapses. It is weirdly reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge - I'm not saying the Woke are murdering millions, I am saying the Woke are following the historico-ideological pattern, searching for evermore purity, challenging each other to be even more Woke, just as the KR constantly tried to prove ever greater loyalty to Angkar, and ended up executing people for laughing
Woke is certainly getting crazier, and like the KR it has internecine wars (cf the Trans-TERF war, fought mainly on the progressive left). All of the 21,000 prisoners tortured and killed at Tuol Sleng were Khmer Rouge cadres, deemed suspect or denounced by other cadres
I discovered this evening that our local former Green councillor and twice London greens mayoral candidate Darren Johnson has been tweeting against his party for their uncritical beliefs on puberty blockers and rejection of the Cass report, so there you have it.
Internecine war is always the nastiest. Witness the last 8 years of the Tories. Unfortunately us Lib Dems don’t really do internecine wars very well. Occasionally the membership grumble loudly about something, like the party position on housebuilding, but the bloodletting is limited to a few raised voices.
When it comes to internecine fighting and all the fighting on PB I firmly believe that if the Guardian Comment is Free mob piled in here or the Con Home tried a coup we would stand together and smash them. Malcolm with NigelForeremain like men at arms at Agincourt, Donkeys and everyone sane like mates on the beaches at Dunkirk, Cyclefree and Leon making out in a barn behind enemy lines then saving the day with a waspish and inventive attack, Cyclefree’s facts with Leon’s prose.
We should make a list of PB posters and their nemeses. Most of you probably have a nemesis: one poster whose views or attitude are diametrically opposed to yours, or who winds you up more than anyone else.
It’s a funny one, I can vehemently disagree with posters’ views but I know that if we were having a few pints in a pub it would be fun and alright. It’s actually fantastic that you get the training on here so if you are at a dinner party or a bar and someone brings up politics you are so “done” that you can just laugh it off and pretend not to care.
In all honesty I think I would love to have drinks with every single poster on here because in real life we are all ok.
I’ve not been to a PB social. I’d like to go to the next one, for that reason.
Absolutely, and also we get to see Topping and Kinabalu have a fight like Hugh Grant and Colin Firth in Bridget Jones so well worth it.
Exhibit A below.
I mean in principle it's not a great idea to get others to perform for your pleasure but we've got to the no you fuck off stage so I'm down with it.
We could arrange a charity fight off for Dementia charities on behalf of OGH where you can choose your opponent, PB can bet on who wins and the joy is that nobody knows who they have been kicking off with and giving it large at which could be really good fun.
It could turn out that Correct Horse is a massive MMA fighter and Dura Ace is a tiny nerd mechanic and every perception is turned on its head.
So the next PB meet can be white collar boxing drawn at random - or maybe red and blue teams.
It's a while since I last did a white collar boxing gig. Dawn at least has the benefit of not having to hang around all evening if your fight is at the end of the card.
Talking of fighting at dawn the world would be a better place if duelling was legalised. Everyone would know that if they are a dick they might be called out. They will not know if the person calling them out is actually quite good with a sword or pistol and so best to just say sorry and be polite. Those that are good win, those that are full of shit either die in a duel or have to lose face.
It would make life more civilised. I’m sure of it. I know nothing but I’m sure of it.
Possibly, but until then don't duel if you ever plan to serve in the Kentucky House of Representatives.
The Tories must shoulder some of the blame for this. They have been in power for 14 years and they've had ample opportunity to extirpate this vile, damaging Woke nonsense, to drive it out of public life and to punish those that proselytise it. Instead they have actively let it spread, it has got worse, to the extent that we now refuse to deport known sex offenders back to Afghanistan, because they might suffer for being sex offenders, and so they rape and murder British people instead. That is where we are. That is what the Tories have allowed to flourish, that level of insanity
The only way we retrieve the situation is something close to revolution. An entire class of people needs to be exiled from power forever, and a grotesque ideology needs to be forcibly eliminated. We need the Labour party to fuck up massively and a proper right wing party to assume power
Either that or let the machines take over
"Fourteen years of Tory rule have left Britain a lazy, dangerous, Left-wing mess It hardly matters that Labour will be worse, when voters feel so betrayed by the Tories
Imagine being called lazy by someone who writes newspaper columns for a living.
Have you ever had the job of newspaper columnist? I doubt it. Do you think they just sit there and toss out any old crap in half an hour and pocket £2k per column, ta very much? If it is that easy, surely everyone would do it? eg You?
But of course they don't. Because it is hard. And only a few people can do it and make it really pay
Is it really hard in the same way as, say, managing a big construction project is? Or running a hospital? Or successfully integrating a merger of two companies?
In fact I'll go further and illustrate my point. Your comparison is absurd, because you are making a category error
You're essentially asking which is harder, running a health trust, or being a brilliant premier league striker?
The query makes no sense. The latter requires skills which are much rarer than the former, even though the former is surely very hard work. But if you have the skills to be a great striker, if you are Erling Haaland, you will make it look effortless, but that is because you are very talented, and almost no one else has your talent. You might even appear "lazy" to people who don't understand football
Erling Haaland runs two 5km runs back to back every 3 days. Plus all the training and weightlifting behind the scenes. I am going to go out on a limb and declare him less lazy than an OpEd writer.
That's what I am saying. Haaland will look lazy to people who don't understand football. Those that do, know that Yes he's bloody talented, but he still has to train like a bastard because the competition is insane
I actually KNOW some newspaper columnists. They will spend days raging for an idea, exploring themes, engaging concepts, rejecting duds. They have to read tons of news and books and other stuff, to gather material. Vanishingly few - in fact, probably none - can constantly toss out brilliant columns in half an hour then piss off to the swimming pool
You really don't know what you're talking about, on this point
The competition for newspaper columnists isn't the same.
You get the job through connections and if your standards slip you don't get replaced, particularly if you're well known.
Most of them seem to be writing books at the same time or appearing on TV.
Did I miss the promised Solarpunk thread, or is it still coming?
It is still coming @dixiedean. It has been superseded by another article which is in the process. When that's out I shall return to the Solarpunk article which will (gods of PB willing) appear about 7-10 days later.
What's the solarpunk thread ?
It's an article about Solarpunk. The thread will be attached to it.
Lib Dems & Green this is why we ask you to lend us your vote
These look like the numbers from the Survation poll - the YouGov MRP had the LDs in front 33-32 with Labour on 18 and Reform on 11 so make of that what you will.
How does the tactical voter decide which is the tactical vote and which the wasted vote?
What a mess.
Sometimes they just have a sixth sense about these things.
In 2017 Labour and the Tories were arguing about who was best placed to defeat the SNP in East Renfreshire. It had been a Labour seat for 10 years before being lost in the SNP wave, with SNP on just over 40, Labour on 34, and Tories on 22.
Even going into 2017 with Labour looking like doing very badly, which they then recovered from to some extent of course, it might seem a reasonable case that Labour were the most likely challengers, and Conservatives the spoilers.
Yet the Tories won in the end on 40, SNP 31, Labour 27.
In some of the southern leafy seats the LDs have not recovered even second place in many of them, so Labour are in with a shout as the reasonable challenger. But the LDs shouldn't give up, since they may well point to local strength and longer term history as a sign they have a better chance of tapping in to wider support.
So both will need to go for it, and the tactical voter will need to trust their gut.
More idiocy from the Tories . Planning a stamp duty cut which will just fuel the housing market. Many still can’t get on the housing ladder .
Stamp duty shouldn't be cut, it should be abolished.
An annual property tax everyone who owns land has to pay should replace stamp duty and Council Tax, stamp duty being a perverse tax on those trying to get on the housing ladder or those who are mobile and move homes.
It is a tax that shafts those of working age who get on the ladder the most, while those who are retired in a "forever home" never pay the tax.
Why you'd object to it being cut is beyond me. It makes those trying to get on the ladder more affordable if they only have to pay a deposit and not stamp duty on top of the deposit.
First time buyers don't pay stamp duty on property up to £425,000.
But someone who bought for the first time only a few years ago, but changes jobs and now wants to move does.
Or someone who's a first time buyer now but knows they may need to move in the next few years needs to factor it in too.
Why should there be a tax only paid by those who are moving etc?
Isn't the catch that the market response to a stamp duty cut will be to nudge prices higher? After all, the going rate for housing in the UK is still "every single penny that can be prised from the buyer/renter".
Did I miss the promised Solarpunk thread, or is it still coming?
It is still coming @dixiedean. It has been superseded by another article which is in the process. When that's out I shall return to the Solarpunk article which will (gods of PB willing) appear about 7-10 days later.
What's the solarpunk thread ?
It's an article about Solarpunk. The thread will be attached to it.
The SF genre, or a speculative look at actual industrial development ?
Fancied something different tonight so tried an ostrich burger from Morrisons.
Was really tasty, would recommend.
They had some venison next to it, for our vegan friends here.
I’m way ahead of you - had ostrich when working in NZ in 1998. Scarily that’s over a quarter of a century, and half my life ago. If I recall it, it was pretty good.
I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd
The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.
Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of.
This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.
We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.
Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.
That's why I think revolution - or societal tumult/collapse - is now the only way out. With AI looming, and so much else, this is quite possible. Woke is peaking to a Frenzy
I think it is peaking to a frenzy and burning itself out.
I hope you are right, and the first backlash against Trans is maybe a hint that the tide is turning, but I fear that Woke might have years to go, and get even worse, before the madness collapses. It is weirdly reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge - I'm not saying the Woke are murdering millions, I am saying the Woke are following the historico-ideological pattern, searching for evermore purity, challenging each other to be even more Woke, just as the KR constantly tried to prove ever greater loyalty to Angkar, and ended up executing people for laughing
Woke is certainly getting crazier, and like the KR it has internecine wars (cf the Trans-TERF war, fought mainly on the progressive left). All of the 21,000 prisoners tortured and killed at Tuol Sleng were Khmer Rouge cadres, deemed suspect or denounced by other cadres
I discovered this evening that our local former Green councillor and twice London greens mayoral candidate Darren Johnson has been tweeting against his party for their uncritical beliefs on puberty blockers and rejection of the Cass report, so there you have it.
Internecine war is always the nastiest. Witness the last 8 years of the Tories. Unfortunately us Lib Dems don’t really do internecine wars very well. Occasionally the membership grumble loudly about something, like the party position on housebuilding, but the bloodletting is limited to a few raised voices.
When it comes to internecine fighting and all the fighting on PB I firmly believe that if the Guardian Comment is Free mob piled in here or the Con Home tried a coup we would stand together and smash them. Malcolm with NigelForeremain like men at arms at Agincourt, Donkeys and everyone sane like mates on the beaches at Dunkirk, Cyclefree and Leon making out in a barn behind enemy lines then saving the day with a waspish and inventive attack, Cyclefree’s facts with Leon’s prose.
We should make a list of PB posters and their nemeses. Most of you probably have a nemesis: one poster whose views or attitude are diametrically opposed to yours, or who winds you up more than anyone else.
It’s a funny one, I can vehemently disagree with posters’ views but I know that if we were having a few pints in a pub it would be fun and alright. It’s actually fantastic that you get the training on here so if you are at a dinner party or a bar and someone brings up politics you are so “done” that you can just laugh it off and pretend not to care.
In all honesty I think I would love to have drinks with every single poster on here because in real life we are all ok.
I’ve not been to a PB social. I’d like to go to the next one, for that reason.
Absolutely, and also we get to see Topping and Kinabalu have a fight like Hugh Grant and Colin Firth in Bridget Jones so well worth it.
Exhibit A below.
I mean in principle it's not a great idea to get others to perform for your pleasure but we've got to the no you fuck off stage so I'm down with it.
We could arrange a charity fight off for Dementia charities on behalf of OGH where you can choose your opponent, PB can bet on who wins and the joy is that nobody knows who they have been kicking off with and giving it large at which could be really good fun.
It could turn out that Correct Horse is a massive MMA fighter and Dura Ace is a tiny nerd mechanic and every perception is turned on its head.
So the next PB meet can be white collar boxing drawn at random - or maybe red and blue teams.
It's a while since I last did a white collar boxing gig. Dawn at least has the benefit of not having to hang around all evening if your fight is at the end of the card.
Talking of fighting at dawn the world would be a better place if duelling was legalised. Everyone would know that if they are a dick they might be called out. They will not know if the person calling them out is actually quite good with a sword or pistol and so best to just say sorry and be polite. Those that are good win, those that are full of shit either die in a duel or have to lose face.
It would make life more civilised. I’m sure of it. I know nothing but I’m sure of it.
Possibly, but until then don't duel if you ever plan to serve in the Kentucky House of Representatives.
Fancied something different tonight so tried an ostrich burger from Morrisons.
Was really tasty, would recommend.
They had some venison next to it, for our vegan friends here.
Are you really just eating meat and nothing else, so no bun, slaw or sauce with that burger, or have I misunderstood?
I had two fried eggs with it.
No bun, slaw, sauce etc - though I'm not against sauce so long as its not loaded with sugar, been having hot sauce quite a bit, you get good hot sauces that have next to no carbs per serving.
I do love GPs receptionists. I mean why do we even need medical schools, when we can just use GP receptionists… I get the concept of triage, but really would rather someone with actual medical training undertakes it, not someone whose last job was as a receptionist at the beauty parlour.
Fancied something different tonight so tried an ostrich burger from Morrisons.
Was really tasty, would recommend.
They had some venison next to it, for our vegan friends here.
I’m way ahead of you - had ostrich when working in NZ in 1998. Scarily that’s over a quarter of a century, and half my life ago. If I recall it, it was pretty good.
We had ostrich in college dinners in the late 90s during the BSE crisis. And kangaroo casserole. Both quite venison-like really, lean and dark. Funny looking back. Couldn’t eat beef on the bone so presumably they went and bought stuff from their land holdings down under.
More idiocy from the Tories . Planning a stamp duty cut which will just fuel the housing market. Many still can’t get on the housing ladder .
Stamp duty shouldn't be cut, it should be abolished.
An annual property tax everyone who owns land has to pay should replace stamp duty and Council Tax, stamp duty being a perverse tax on those trying to get on the housing ladder or those who are mobile and move homes.
It is a tax that shafts those of working age who get on the ladder the most, while those who are retired in a "forever home" never pay the tax.
Why you'd object to it being cut is beyond me. It makes those trying to get on the ladder more affordable if they only have to pay a deposit and not stamp duty on top of the deposit.
First time buyers don't pay stamp duty on property up to £425,000.
But someone who bought for the first time only a few years ago, but changes jobs and now wants to move does.
Or someone who's a first time buyer now but knows they may need to move in the next few years needs to factor it in too.
Why should there be a tax only paid by those who are moving etc?
Isn't the catch that the market response to a stamp duty cut will be to nudge prices higher? After all, the going rate for housing in the UK is still "every single penny that can be prised from the buyer/renter".
Oh indeed it might nudge prices higher, but that's only because supply and demand is out of whack and we need to build, build, build millions more homes. Ten million plus, not a few hundred thousand per year which doesn't even address population growth.
But still, it makes it more affordable to not have to pay the tax up-front for those who are moving etc - why should a worker who relocates town or city be lumped with stamp duty while someone who lives in the same home for decades does not?
Fancied something different tonight so tried an ostrich burger from Morrisons.
Was really tasty, would recommend.
They had some venison next to it, for our vegan friends here.
I’m way ahead of you - had ostrich when working in NZ in 1998. Scarily that’s over a quarter of a century, and half my life ago. If I recall it, it was pretty good.
We had ostrich in college dinners in the late 90s during the BSE crisis. And kangaroo casserole. Both quite venison-like really, lean and dark. Funny looking back. Couldn’t eat beef on the bone so presumably they went and bought stuff from their land holdings down under.
Interestingly the BSE crisis never came to anything, yet it was a huge concern back in the day.
Did I miss the promised Solarpunk thread, or is it still coming?
It is still coming @dixiedean. It has been superseded by another article which is in the process. When that's out I shall return to the Solarpunk article which will (gods of PB willing) appear about 7-10 days later.
What's the solarpunk thread ?
It's an article about Solarpunk. The thread will be attached to it.
The SF genre, or a speculative look at actual industrial development ?
Its place in British politics. But let's not get into spoiler territory.
I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd
The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.
Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of.
This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.
We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.
Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.
That's why I think revolution - or societal tumult/collapse - is now the only way out. With AI looming, and so much else, this is quite possible. Woke is peaking to a Frenzy
I think it is peaking to a frenzy and burning itself out.
I hope you are right, and the first backlash against Trans is maybe a hint that the tide is turning, but I fear that Woke might have years to go, and get even worse, before the madness collapses. It is weirdly reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge - I'm not saying the Woke are murdering millions, I am saying the Woke are following the historico-ideological pattern, searching for evermore purity, challenging each other to be even more Woke, just as the KR constantly tried to prove ever greater loyalty to Angkar, and ended up executing people for laughing
Woke is certainly getting crazier, and like the KR it has internecine wars (cf the Trans-TERF war, fought mainly on the progressive left). All of the 21,000 prisoners tortured and killed at Tuol Sleng were Khmer Rouge cadres, deemed suspect or denounced by other cadres
I discovered this evening that our local former Green councillor and twice London greens mayoral candidate Darren Johnson has been tweeting against his party for their uncritical beliefs on puberty blockers and rejection of the Cass report, so there you have it.
Internecine war is always the nastiest. Witness the last 8 years of the Tories. Unfortunately us Lib Dems don’t really do internecine wars very well. Occasionally the membership grumble loudly about something, like the party position on housebuilding, but the bloodletting is limited to a few raised voices.
When it comes to internecine fighting and all the fighting on PB I firmly believe that if the Guardian Comment is Free mob piled in here or the Con Home tried a coup we would stand together and smash them. Malcolm with NigelForeremain like men at arms at Agincourt, Donkeys and everyone sane like mates on the beaches at Dunkirk, Cyclefree and Leon making out in a barn behind enemy lines then saving the day with a waspish and inventive attack, Cyclefree’s facts with Leon’s prose.
We should make a list of PB posters and their nemeses. Most of you probably have a nemesis: one poster whose views or attitude are diametrically opposed to yours, or who winds you up more than anyone else.
It’s a funny one, I can vehemently disagree with posters’ views but I know that if we were having a few pints in a pub it would be fun and alright. It’s actually fantastic that you get the training on here so if you are at a dinner party or a bar and someone brings up politics you are so “done” that you can just laugh it off and pretend not to care.
In all honesty I think I would love to have drinks with every single poster on here because in real life we are all ok.
I’ve not been to a PB social. I’d like to go to the next one, for that reason.
Absolutely, and also we get to see Topping and Kinabalu have a fight like Hugh Grant and Colin Firth in Bridget Jones so well worth it.
Exhibit A below.
I mean in principle it's not a great idea to get others to perform for your pleasure but we've got to the no you fuck off stage so I'm down with it.
We could arrange a charity fight off for Dementia charities on behalf of OGH where you can choose your opponent, PB can bet on who wins and the joy is that nobody knows who they have been kicking off with and giving it large at which could be really good fun.
It could turn out that Correct Horse is a massive MMA fighter and Dura Ace is a tiny nerd mechanic and every perception is turned on its head.
So the next PB meet can be white collar boxing drawn at random - or maybe red and blue teams.
It's a while since I last did a white collar boxing gig. Dawn at least has the benefit of not having to hang around all evening if your fight is at the end of the card.
Talking of fighting at dawn the world would be a better place if duelling was legalised. Everyone would know that if they are a dick they might be called out. They will not know if the person calling them out is actually quite good with a sword or pistol and so best to just say sorry and be polite. Those that are good win, those that are full of shit either die in a duel or have to lose face.
It would make life more civilised. I’m sure of it. I know nothing but I’m sure of it.
Possibly, but until then don't duel if you ever plan to serve in the Kentucky House of Representatives.
Fancied something different tonight so tried an ostrich burger from Morrisons.
Was really tasty, would recommend.
They had some venison next to it, for our vegan friends here.
Are you really just eating meat and nothing else, so no bun, slaw or sauce with that burger, or have I misunderstood?
I had two fried eggs with it.
No bun, slaw, sauce etc - though I'm not against sauce so long as its not loaded with sugar, been having hot sauce quite a bit, you get good hot sauces that have next to no carbs per serving.
Your diet really is fascinating. You should write a newspaper column about it.
Reminds me of the Louis Theroux Bear Grylls interview. Bear gave up on most carbs and cereals a few years ago and now eats steak every night, meaty breakfasts and god knows what for lunch. He said “my poos are the cleanest they’ve ever been. They just slip out and I rarely need to wipe”.
Did I miss the promised Solarpunk thread, or is it still coming?
It is still coming @dixiedean. It has been superseded by another article which is in the process. When that's out I shall return to the Solarpunk article which will (gods of PB willing) appear about 7-10 days later.
What's the solarpunk thread ?
It's an article about Solarpunk. The thread will be attached to it.
The SF genre, or a speculative look at actual industrial development ?
Its place in British politics. But let's not get into spoiler territory.
I mean who wants their spies to be strong and urgent anyway? We need them to be more diversely lazy complacent weak and ineffectual and constantly thinking of the death of George Floyd
The key to being a spy is not appearing to be a spy; to fit in, be normal. Whatever combination of MICE are motivating you should not be too visible. Also, spraying bullets about Bond-style is not fitting in.
Who is the most successful criminal ever? Someone you have never heard of.
This is the whole point, most of the places we need spies aren’t woke, lovely, fluffy, LGBtQ friendly etc and so if you’ve deterred or refused employment to spies because they didn’t confirm to the new orthodoxy then you send the ones who fit in at the BBC to Belarus and they start crying when people start misgendering people, eating kittens, shooting people for shits and gigs, they are going to be spotted really quickly.
We don’t really need to do a lot of spying in like-minded countries. When they send you to spy in Iran and you get dragged to a jolly where they hang a gay person off a crane if you are so indoctrinated by being lovely and fluffy it’s not going to work.
I think everyone’s been watching too much Bond. Most intelligence services employees work at desks, in Britain.
Modernising the culture of the intelligence services is one thing - but I would say that the problem here is that promotion of 'LGBT lanyard/george floyd' stuff is turning something politically contested and ideological in to the 'norm'. It suggests that the civil service has been captured; it is no longer politically neutral, which is the basis of its historic claim to credibility.
Consider this - imagine a government was elected with a democratic mandate to repeal the equalities act. I don't think this could happen as the civil service could not enact it due to its 'values'.
That's why I think revolution - or societal tumult/collapse - is now the only way out. With AI looming, and so much else, this is quite possible. Woke is peaking to a Frenzy
I think it is peaking to a frenzy and burning itself out.
I hope you are right, and the first backlash against Trans is maybe a hint that the tide is turning, but I fear that Woke might have years to go, and get even worse, before the madness collapses. It is weirdly reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge - I'm not saying the Woke are murdering millions, I am saying the Woke are following the historico-ideological pattern, searching for evermore purity, challenging each other to be even more Woke, just as the KR constantly tried to prove ever greater loyalty to Angkar, and ended up executing people for laughing
Woke is certainly getting crazier, and like the KR it has internecine wars (cf the Trans-TERF war, fought mainly on the progressive left). All of the 21,000 prisoners tortured and killed at Tuol Sleng were Khmer Rouge cadres, deemed suspect or denounced by other cadres
I discovered this evening that our local former Green councillor and twice London greens mayoral candidate Darren Johnson has been tweeting against his party for their uncritical beliefs on puberty blockers and rejection of the Cass report, so there you have it.
Internecine war is always the nastiest. Witness the last 8 years of the Tories. Unfortunately us Lib Dems don’t really do internecine wars very well. Occasionally the membership grumble loudly about something, like the party position on housebuilding, but the bloodletting is limited to a few raised voices.
When it comes to internecine fighting and all the fighting on PB I firmly believe that if the Guardian Comment is Free mob piled in here or the Con Home tried a coup we would stand together and smash them. Malcolm with NigelForeremain like men at arms at Agincourt, Donkeys and everyone sane like mates on the beaches at Dunkirk, Cyclefree and Leon making out in a barn behind enemy lines then saving the day with a waspish and inventive attack, Cyclefree’s facts with Leon’s prose.
We should make a list of PB posters and their nemeses. Most of you probably have a nemesis: one poster whose views or attitude are diametrically opposed to yours, or who winds you up more than anyone else.
It’s a funny one, I can vehemently disagree with posters’ views but I know that if we were having a few pints in a pub it would be fun and alright. It’s actually fantastic that you get the training on here so if you are at a dinner party or a bar and someone brings up politics you are so “done” that you can just laugh it off and pretend not to care.
In all honesty I think I would love to have drinks with every single poster on here because in real life we are all ok.
I’ve not been to a PB social. I’d like to go to the next one, for that reason.
Absolutely, and also we get to see Topping and Kinabalu have a fight like Hugh Grant and Colin Firth in Bridget Jones so well worth it.
Exhibit A below.
I mean in principle it's not a great idea to get others to perform for your pleasure but we've got to the no you fuck off stage so I'm down with it.
We could arrange a charity fight off for Dementia charities on behalf of OGH where you can choose your opponent, PB can bet on who wins and the joy is that nobody knows who they have been kicking off with and giving it large at which could be really good fun.
It could turn out that Correct Horse is a massive MMA fighter and Dura Ace is a tiny nerd mechanic and every perception is turned on its head.
So the next PB meet can be white collar boxing drawn at random - or maybe red and blue teams.
It's a while since I last did a white collar boxing gig. Dawn at least has the benefit of not having to hang around all evening if your fight is at the end of the card.
Talking of fighting at dawn the world would be a better place if duelling was legalised. Everyone would know that if they are a dick they might be called out. They will not know if the person calling them out is actually quite good with a sword or pistol and so best to just say sorry and be polite. Those that are good win, those that are full of shit either die in a duel or have to lose face.
It would make life more civilised. I’m sure of it. I know nothing but I’m sure of it.
Possibly, but until then don't duel if you ever plan to serve in the Kentucky House of Representatives.
The Tories must shoulder some of the blame for this. They have been in power for 14 years and they've had ample opportunity to extirpate this vile, damaging Woke nonsense, to drive it out of public life and to punish those that proselytise it. Instead they have actively let it spread, it has got worse, to the extent that we now refuse to deport known sex offenders back to Afghanistan, because they might suffer for being sex offenders, and so they rape and murder British people instead. That is where we are. That is what the Tories have allowed to flourish, that level of insanity
The only way we retrieve the situation is something close to revolution. An entire class of people needs to be exiled from power forever, and a grotesque ideology needs to be forcibly eliminated. We need the Labour party to fuck up massively and a proper right wing party to assume power
Either that or let the machines take over
"Fourteen years of Tory rule have left Britain a lazy, dangerous, Left-wing mess It hardly matters that Labour will be worse, when voters feel so betrayed by the Tories
Imagine being called lazy by someone who writes newspaper columns for a living.
Have you ever had the job of newspaper columnist? I doubt it. Do you think they just sit there and toss out any old crap in half an hour and pocket £2k per column, ta very much? If it is that easy, surely everyone would do it? eg You?
But of course they don't. Because it is hard. And only a few people can do it and make it really pay
Is it really hard in the same way as, say, managing a big construction project is? Or running a hospital? Or successfully integrating a merger of two companies?
I don't know for sure, of course, but all I can say is that I know lots of talented journalists who have tried to be columnists, and failed badly. And these are professional journalists - they already have the skillset, theoretically
The job of columnist is really quite strange. You have to express a forthright, interesting and eloquent opinion, in an engaging way, at least once a week. For week after week and year after year. When you examine it, that is much harder than it seems, which is why very few do it well, and very very few make good money at it - but when they do, the money is great, because readers will return for a particular writer they like, and editors know this
The celeb columnist is a different genre. Boris straddles both. He is a rather good columnist anyway, if not quite a fighter ace, but his celebrity value surely triples his salary
I do take your point, to a certain extent. But there are lots of very good blog writers out there, which suggests the art of writing such pieces was mainly restricted by access and barriers to entry. And I don't rate the skill of bog standard journalists that highly, given how easily replaceable by AI it was.
You are confusing workrate with talent (as I explain below). You need a special talent to be a good columnist, and it is surprisingly rare (otherwise the good ones would not get so well paid). If you haven't got the basic talent, the gift with words AND opinions, then you could work at it 24/7 and you'd still be shit
Travel writing is similar. A lot of very skilled journalists think Fuck that, looks easy, free booze and a five star hotel, I'm in! - then it turns out they can't do it, because it requires a very particular skill with words invoking place, which is surprisingly uncommon
I agree with the threat of AI, it will take a lot of these jobs, AI can write brilliantly. Thankfully it can't eat oysters in St Malo. Yet
Though going back to the jumping off point for this conversation, the issue was Camilla T complaining about the laziness of the nation. And doing that from the perch of a Telegraph column is a bit off.
That isn't to say that she isn't talented (and I don't mean that in a snide way), or that she doesn't deserve the income she gets. But it's not hard work... nor is it (really) important work.
There are lots of people whose work is more key to the functioning of society than newspaper columnists, and lots who work harder for less reward. Even in the rather guilded set here. But in broad terms, that's OK.
But there's the caveat Michael Young feared. If you take Meritocracy too seriously, life's winners (Tominey, say, or Sunak) start to think that their winning is down to their talent and industry and that life's losers deserve to lose.
I don't think any of the other compared tasks are that hard or even that important. Running a company, running a hospital, merging whatever the fuck? - who cares, it is cognitive gruntwork and it is ALL going to be automated in the next 5 years, 10 absolute max, and anyone who doesn't expect this is an idiot. It is coming, it really is coming
It's just sorting data and managing info and maximising whatever, and AI will be brilliant at that, it already is brilliant at that. I've got a video showing what AI can do ALREADY, it is just 1 minute 30 seconds and I showed it to my SAS friend today at lunch and he reacted the same as my tog friend yesterday, his jaw dropped and he was speechless then he said "fuck"
AI is coming for all of us who work in the cognitive industries, so the entire argument is fairly pointless. The interesting question is who will be LEFT. As I say, travel writers, weirdly, might just survive
Managers and all that? No chance. There is no human personality needed, just efficiency
Fancied something different tonight so tried an ostrich burger from Morrisons.
Was really tasty, would recommend.
They had some venison next to it, for our vegan friends here.
Are you really just eating meat and nothing else, so no bun, slaw or sauce with that burger, or have I misunderstood?
I had two fried eggs with it.
No bun, slaw, sauce etc - though I'm not against sauce so long as its not loaded with sugar, been having hot sauce quite a bit, you get good hot sauces that have next to no carbs per serving.
Your diet really is fascinating. You should write a newspaper column about it.
Reminds me of the Louis Theroux Bear Grylls interview. Bear gave up on most carbs and cereals a few years ago and now eats steak every night, meaty breakfasts and god knows what for lunch. He said “my poos are the cleanest they’ve ever been. They just slip out and I rarely need to wipe”.
Well I wouldn't say that, I wipe, but yes cutting out carbs essentially also means cutting out fibre which has done wonders for my health. Much better now.
I think the diet will eventually become more mainstream as it works and there's increasing evidence for it, future people will wonder how 20th century health advice got it so badly wrong in advocating carbs, vegetables, fibre etc as essential and fats, protein, red meat etc as dangerous. So very wrong and has led to ever expanding amounts of obesity.
Fancied something different tonight so tried an ostrich burger from Morrisons.
Was really tasty, would recommend.
They had some venison next to it, for our vegan friends here.
I’m way ahead of you - had ostrich when working in NZ in 1998. Scarily that’s over a quarter of a century, and half my life ago. If I recall it, it was pretty good.
We had ostrich in college dinners in the late 90s during the BSE crisis. And kangaroo casserole. Both quite venison-like really, lean and dark. Funny looking back. Couldn’t eat beef on the bone so presumably they went and bought stuff from their land holdings down under.
Interestingly the BSE crisis never came to anything, yet it was a huge concern back in the day.
I remember a Panorama where they were speculating that up to half of the population of the country could end up contracting variant CJD.
Its shadow continues to hang over France. You’ll never, and I mean never, see English beef in a French supermarket or restaurant. By law they have to state the provenance of their beef products, and I’ve seen Irish occasionally (it’s usually France) and once “Scotland” on the basis that’s not Anglais, but never ever English. Probably the most successful conflation of food safety concerns and agri-nationalism the world has ever seen.
A French colleague a few years ago said it took him several years of living in England before he would dare try a piece of beef here.
Comments
The Jewish guy should not have had to try and make the point because those marches should have stopped long ago, frankly should never have started, and that’s the problem. That copper was in a no-win situation. I think we’ve exchanged a PM about our opinion on Israel/Gaza and I rein myself in here but this situation was a problem that the police could not really win.
I do have sympathies for the Met, but the more THEY sympathise with the Woke Islamists, then my goodwill drains away, and I am not the type to abhor the police
Would they be so quick to tell threaten to arrest someone for being "openly black" or "openly Muslim" near a Britain First rally? Would those diminishing what the Met has done because the victim was Jewish be so quick to excuse it if it was done like that?
This is is straight out of a novel, for example: https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/dec/11/scotland
Edwina Currie suggests to @kaitborsay on @TimesRadio (sarcastically?) that she may open an agency to provide reputable escorts for MPs to keep them off Tinder and Grindr.
His path to winning needs other states. Penn being absolutely crucial.
Although on this occasion I think she is correct and you aren't (see link)
https://www.bestforbritain.org/spring-2024-polling
But of course they don't. Because it is hard. And only a few people can do it and make it really pay
If you were at the last game of the season, you could only get tickets at Anfield in the Away end, Liverpool v Everton and if Liverpool win they win the league and Everton go down. Liverpool win with a Salah goal last minute and you are jumping around and suddenly, unsurprisingly a lot of blues decide they want to beat you senseless. Should the police have maybe pulled you out of there earlier?
On Nick Palmer Night we must all be nice and friendly, and we should all being a shameful or weird or sensational secret to the chat, which we then reveal. That would be FUN
They might not have liked the reply "No, it's not because you're white. It's because you're an arsehole." Or even "You've got a small willy, your tattoos are ugly, and Millwall are shite."
A genocide is underway.
A disgusting racist lobby organisation doesn't like people opposing it.
By going to the precise and only longitude where there was no visible land at that latitude.
What a mess.
I had to like that post just for the hilarity of your response. How dare OnlyLivingBoy slur the noble art of the hack, eh?
The job of columnist is really quite strange. You have to express a forthright, interesting and eloquent opinion, in an engaging way, at least once a week. For week after week and year after year. When you examine it, that is much harder than it seems, which is why very few do it well, and very very few make good money at it - but when they do, the money is great, because readers will return for a particular writer they like, and editors know this
The celeb columnist is a different genre. Boris straddles both. He is a rather good columnist anyway, if not quite a fighter ace, but his celebrity value surely triples his salary
If Muslims do sit out the election and it makes the difference, I will have zero sympathy at all for what Trump does to them.
You're essentially asking which is harder, running a health trust, or being a brilliant premier league striker?
The query makes no sense. The latter requires skills which are much rarer than the former, even though the former is surely very hard work. But if you have the skills to be a great striker, if you are Erling Haaland, you will make it look effortless, but that is because you are very talented, and almost no one else has your talent. You might even appear "lazy" to people who don't understand football
I would prefer them to just say "on you go sir" and if anyone tries to beat anyone up, they get arrested, charged and prosecuted.
Again, enforce the law as it is.
Beating someone up is illegal.
Threatening to beat someone up is illegal.
Last time I checked, being openly Jewish in London is not, yet, illegal.
Unfortunately that requires the co operation of a couple of others.
It would make life more civilised. I’m sure of it. I know nothing but I’m sure of it.
11€ including wine last time I was out there.
An annual property tax everyone who owns land has to pay should replace stamp duty and Council Tax, stamp duty being a perverse tax on those trying to get on the housing ladder or those who are mobile and move homes.
It is a tax that shafts those of working age who get on the ladder the most, while those who are retired in a "forever home" never pay the tax.
Why you'd object to it being cut is beyond me. It makes those trying to get on the ladder more affordable if they only have to pay a deposit and not stamp duty on top of the deposit.
Travel writing is similar. A lot of very skilled journalists think Fuck that, looks easy, free booze and a five star hotel, I'm in! - then it turns out they can't do it, because it requires a very particular skill with words invoking place, which is surprisingly uncommon
I agree with the threat of AI, it will take a lot of these jobs, AI can write brilliantly. Thankfully it can't eat oysters in St Malo. Yet
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/apr/19/ministry-of-defence-accused-of-go-slow-ukraine-fund-unused
"More than half of a £900m military fund for Ukraine run by the British Ministry of Defence has not been used because of bureaucratic delays in handing out contracts."
Once we'd landed, and he'd taken his earphones out, I said "Privyet! Kak tibiya zavoot?" in quite a serious voice (the only way to speak Russian)
I think that, just for a moment, he looked a bit scared. Then he smiled and said, in English, "You speak Russian?"
I told him that I'd learnt it at school thirty years ago for eighteen months. He said I had a very good accent
Top tip - speak Russian like you're pretending to be KGB
My eye is fine and I had a lovely day today, which, together with your words and support made it all so much easier. Really felt I made a difference.
Cheers!
PS. Guess I wouldn't make a good Leon spy.
First and foremost among them is news presenter. You need to sound serious, and read an autocue. I believe almost any actor could do this, as well as at least 10% of the public given a small amount of training.
Newspaper columnist... I suspect not that hard to be mediocre. Many are just phoning it in and only got the job through connections. But the best are noticeably much better.
But yeh, I agree, "already lost" was a bit strong from me.
Or someone who's a first time buyer now but knows they may need to move in the next few years needs to factor it in too.
Why should there be a tax only paid by those who are moving etc?
I actually KNOW some newspaper columnists. They will spend days raging for an idea, exploring themes, engaging concepts, rejecting duds. They have to read tons of news and books and other stuff, to gather material. Vanishingly few - in fact, probably none - can constantly toss out brilliant columns in half an hour then piss off to the swimming pool
You really don't know what you're talking about, on this point
We were both dithering next to the bus that said San Marco (a town/suburb between the airport and Santiago) on the front of it. We agreed, before any other discussion, to share a cab to the cathedral if the bus didn't go there
The bus did go there, for one euro, and we chatted the whole way
She's an epidemiology research fellow at Cambridge and has come to Santiago on her own for the weekend because it's her birthday on Sunday
She's studied and worked in Glasgow, Leeds and Leicester, before Cambridge, in her seven years in the UK
I asked her about the Lab Leak theory, and she said "Leon sent you "
I didn't really (Eta- I didn't ask about lab leak, but I did meet her!)
In 2017 Labour and the Tories were arguing about who was best placed to defeat the SNP in East Renfreshire. It had been a Labour seat for 10 years before being lost in the SNP wave, with SNP on just over 40, Labour on 34, and Tories on 22.
Even going into 2017 with Labour looking like doing very badly, which they then recovered from to some extent of course, it might seem a reasonable case that Labour were the most likely challengers, and Conservatives the spoilers.
Yet the Tories won in the end on 40, SNP 31, Labour 27.
In some of the southern leafy seats the LDs have not recovered even second place in many of them, so Labour are in with a shout as the reasonable challenger. But the LDs shouldn't give up, since they may well point to local strength and longer term history as a sign they have a better chance of tapping in to wider support.
So both will need to go for it, and the tactical voter will need to trust their gut.
Sometimes you need to cut out the bullshit, and his instinctive response, defended by the Met in meally mouthed 'apologetic' fashion as essentially correct in principle but poorly expressed, reveals the problem inherent in their attitude.
Was really tasty, would recommend.
They had some venison next to it, for our vegan friends here.
That isn't to say that she isn't talented (and I don't mean that in a snide way), or that she doesn't deserve the income she gets. But it's not hard work... nor is it (really) important work.
There are lots of people whose work is more key to the functioning of society than newspaper columnists, and lots who work harder for less reward. Even in the rather guilded set here. But in broad terms, that's OK.
But there's the caveat Michael Young feared. If you take Meritocracy too seriously, life's winners (Tominey, say, or Sunak) start to think that their winning is down to their talent and industry and that life's losers deserve to lose.
The cause of those giggles is the Kentucky Constitution, which for nearly two centuries has required officials to swear that they've never fought a duel with deadly weapons or been involved in one in any way.
https://eu.courier-journal.com/story/news/politics/2023/07/03/why-kentuckys-oath-of-office-includes-language-about-dueling/70313772007/
Could you possibly be more woke?
What pronoun would you like us to use for you in future?
You get the job through connections and if your standards slip you don't get replaced, particularly if you're well known.
Most of them seem to be writing books at the same time or appearing on TV.
If I recall it, it was pretty good.
No bun, slaw, sauce etc - though I'm not against sauce so long as its not loaded with sugar, been having hot sauce quite a bit, you get good hot sauces that have next to no carbs per serving.
Prosecutor:
"We are not supplying the names of the witness to a defendant who contumaciously assails witnesses on social media.
The judge calls that explanation compelling.
https://twitter.com/KlasfeldReports/status/1781420111007535411
But still, it makes it more affordable to not have to pay the tax up-front for those who are moving etc - why should a worker who relocates town or city be lumped with stamp duty while someone who lives in the same home for decades does not?
But let’s have more sword fights, honour restored, energy expelled, blood spilled and everyone had a good time.
Reminds me of the Louis Theroux Bear Grylls interview. Bear gave up on most carbs and cereals a few years ago and now eats steak every night, meaty breakfasts and god knows what for lunch. He said “my poos are the cleanest they’ve ever been. They just slip out and I rarely need to wipe”.
Western Union, maybe?
It's just sorting data and managing info and maximising whatever, and AI will be brilliant at that, it already is brilliant at that. I've got a video showing what AI can do ALREADY, it is just 1 minute 30 seconds and I showed it to my SAS friend today at lunch and he reacted the same as my tog friend yesterday, his jaw dropped and he was speechless then he said "fuck"
AI is coming for all of us who work in the cognitive industries, so the entire argument is fairly pointless. The interesting question is who will be LEFT. As I say, travel writers, weirdly, might just survive
Managers and all that? No chance. There is no human personality needed, just efficiency
I think the diet will eventually become more mainstream as it works and there's increasing evidence for it, future people will wonder how 20th century health advice got it so badly wrong in advocating carbs, vegetables, fibre etc as essential and fats, protein, red meat etc as dangerous. So very wrong and has led to ever expanding amounts of obesity.
Its shadow continues to hang over France. You’ll never, and I mean never, see English beef in a French supermarket or restaurant. By law they have to state the provenance of their beef products, and I’ve seen Irish occasionally (it’s usually France) and once “Scotland” on the basis that’s not Anglais, but never ever English. Probably the most successful conflation of food safety concerns and agri-nationalism the world has ever seen.
A French colleague a few years ago said it took him several years of living in England before he would dare try a piece of beef here.