...You misunderstand the fundamental nature of British society. Things arrange around a three-level structure and stabilize when the social forces acting upon them balance (i'll need to put that in a better phrase)...
...Brothel-keeping, pimping and solicitation are illegal.
You are allowed to do it, but not allowed to do the ancilliary activities relating to it. The results of that setup is predictable: a class structure with evah-so-sophisticated courtesans at one end that are never interrogated, and strung-out drug addicts at the other that are never cared for. This happened with prostitution and drugs and did happen with male homosexuality before AIDS forced a different settlement. It's a very distinctively British structure...
...In fact, this "tripartite settlement" deserves its own article, with illustrations from the history of gambling in the UK
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 It has been superseded by another article which is in the process.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...
...This is the article in question. I'll restart on the Solarpunk ASAP
Is the blurry screenshot part of the joke? He should really be having a prolapse about the important stuff like calling for the Met Commissioner to resign because one of his cops was a bit of a twat.
Many thanks, Viewcode. I'm struck by the similarity to the history of stage and film censorship with similar elements - also alcohol consumption and licensing. Not exact analogies, of course - but they are there.
Also fascinated by the tote machine. Now off to find out how it worked ...
Many thanks, Viewcode. I'm struck by the similarity to the history of stage and film censorship with similar elements - also alcohol consumption and licensing. Not exact analogies, of course - but they are there.
Also fascinated by the tote machine. Now off to find out how it worked ...
Magic.
All machines work by magic. In the case of computers, we Wizards tell the mere mortals that the Black Smoke that emerges from computers when they go bang is capacitors blowing.
Pah!
In reality, it is the Magic escaping. All the components in a computer contain Magic - held in its most condensed form in the processors. The designers pray and commit Strange Ephemeral Acts to ensure the right sort of magic will appear in the plastic or ceramic casing when it goes to the Holy Church known as the 'Fab' for invoking.
I am a heretic for letting you know all of this. If I disappear, it will be that the Guardians of the Magic (Greybeards) have got me.
Thanks for this overview -- which I'll have to think about.
In the US, most gambling was banned in most states, and then has come back in two ways: State-run lotteries, and Indian casinos. (The Indian reservations are not controlled by state laws.)
Most famous example: "The phrase was popularised by its usage on RMS Titanic.[14] Second Officer Charles Lightoller suggested to Captain Smith, "Hadn't we better get the women and children into the boats, sir?", to which the captain responded: "Put the women and children in and lower away."[15] The first and second officers (William McMaster Murdoch and Lightoller) interpreted the evacuation order differently; Murdoch took it to mean women and children first, while Lightoller took it to mean women and children only. Second Officer Lightoller lowered lifeboats with empty seats if there were no women and children waiting to board, while First Officer Murdoch allowed a limited number of men to board if all the nearby women and children had embarked.[16] As a consequence, 74% of the women and 52% of the children on board were saved, but only 20% of the men.[17] Some officers on the Titanic misinterpreted the order from Captain Smith, and tried to prevent men from boarding the lifeboats.[18][19] It was intended that women and children would board first, with any remaining free spaces for men. Because not all women and children were saved on the Titanic, the few men who survived, like White Star official J. Bruce Ismay, were initially branded as cowards."
Thanks for this overview -- which I'll have to think about.
In the US, most gambling was banned in most states, and then has come back in two ways: State-run lotteries, and Indian casinos. (The Indian reservations are not controlled by state laws.)
Both have grown considerably in recent decades.
IIUC, gambling in the States was forbad by religion and hence dominated by organised crime, but in the UK the Church (in fact the Churches: Scotland did this as well) took a cut of the profits and the biggest mob of all - the Monarch - gambled. Charles II and Queen Anne did, and every race course has a Royal Charter. So in the UK it's tied up with the class structure (hence the article), but in the US it's different.
I do wonder how much technology affected gambling. Before mass communications, you could only gamble with people you knew or had met, often over immediate bets.
But with the rise of the telegraph, and the telephone, betting became more geographically disparate. You could bet on events happening on the other side of the country, with people you may never meet. And you might not know if the person you were betting with was rich or poor. Or a person or a group. Or even, heaven forfend, female. And the events being bet on could likewise be spread all over the country, or wider. And better systems and companies needed to be formed to manage gambling.
Similarly, the codification of sports. Football in its various forms existed for centuries, often in the form of mass brawls (Hi, Ashbourne!). But if you are going to send teams to play each other over a wide area, they all need to play by the same rules. Therefore the rules need codifying. It can be no coincidence that association football was codified in Cambridge in 1848. Cambridge railway station opened in 1845...
I do wonder how much technology affected gambling. Before mass communications, you could only gamble with people you knew or had met, often over immediate bets.
But with the rise of the telegraph, and the telephone, betting became more geographically disparate. You could bet on events happening on the other side of the country, with people you may never meet. And you might not know if the person you were betting with was rich or poor. Or a person or a group. Or even, heaven forfend, female. And the events being bet on could likewise be spread all over the country, or wider. And better systems and companies needed to be formed to manage gambling...
Indeed. You used to be able to bet by post. Telephone betting goes back to at least the 1930s and I think the 20's. Totalisers/totalisators/The Tote were bought in in the 1920s thanks to the Home Secretary(?) of the time, one WS Churchill.
Great piece, Viewcode. I suspect much of the regulation up until the 1950s was driven, in large part, because we were still quite a religious society and gambling was seen as a sin.
Today's censure is for when it becomes addictive and ruins people but it's worth bearing in mind most people who do gamble, and most of us have at least once (and very large numbers play the lottery), do not have a problem.
FPT: Robert Heinlein's writings still have the ability to provoke controversy. Most of it, I am sorry to say, does not recognize the range of his thinking. His early novel, "Beyond this Horizon", explores scientific eugenics. In his early "juvenile", "Rocketship Galileo", boys battle Nazis on the moon. In "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", he describes an almost completely libertarian society. Which he followed with "Glory Road", with its absolute monarchy.
And so on, and so on.
What there is not a trace of in any of his writing is fascism -- though he has often been charged with that.
(For the record: I find many of his ideas provocative. But he was wrong, wrong, wrong, with his Malthusian predictions of population growth.
On the other hand, "The Man Who Sold the Moon" inspired both Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, a case of life imitating art.)
I think the liberalisation of gambling laws under the last Labour government was symptomatic of what I saw as its largest weaknesses.
When Mandelson said that New Labour was "intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich as long as they pay their taxes" he should have added, "and we don't care who gets hurt in the process."
In this area we saw a government that was captured by the interests of the industry it ought to have been seeking to regulate, and promoted the interests of that industry above those of the country's citizens. And this was a pattern that we saw with New Labour again and again and again.
The former Tory MP Mark Menzies is quitting parliament after allegations that he misused campaign funds.
The MP for Fylde announced that he would not stand at the next election after the allegations were referred to Lancashire police.
The Conservative party said that an internal investigation could not conclude there had been a misuse of party funds. However, it said that Menzies had demonstrated a “pattern of behaviour” that fell below the standards expected of MP.
In a statement, he said: “It has been an enormous privilege representing the people of Fylde since 2010, but due to the pressures on myself and my elderly mother, I have decided to resign from the Conservative party and will not stand at the forthcoming general election.
“This has been a very difficult week for me and I request that my family’s privacy is respected.”
And yet apparently I’m “making it up” and my “photos mean nothing” and “Paris is fine” and “oh I went there last autumn and went straight to one nice restaurant then left and everything was great”
Or you could listen to the actual travel expert, his mind expertly attuned to the vibrations of the world, after decades of exploration. Thankyou. I’m here all week
The former Tory MP Mark Menzies is quitting parliament after allegations that he misused campaign funds.
The MP for Fylde announced that he would not stand at the next election after the allegations were referred to Lancashire police.
The Conservative party said that an internal investigation could not conclude there had been a misuse of party funds. However, it said that Menzies had demonstrated a “pattern of behaviour” that fell below the standards expected of MP.
In a statement, he said: “It has been an enormous privilege representing the people of Fylde since 2010, but due to the pressures on myself and my elderly mother, I have decided to resign from the Conservative party and will not stand at the forthcoming general election.
“This has been a very difficult week for me and I request that my family’s privacy is respected.”
Great piece, Viewcode. I suspect much of the regulation up until the 1950s was driven, in large part, because we were still quite a religious society and gambling was seen as a sin.
Today's censure is for when it becomes addictive and ruins people but it's worth bearing in mind most people who do gamble, and most of us have at least once (and very large numbers play the lottery), do not have a problem.
Indeed (and thank you!). Bear in mind the 19th and early 20th centuries had periodic religious revivals. But the decline in religion and the impact of returning soldiers loosened things up
Thanks for the alert. I've been meaning to watch this for ages.
It's a great series. It's easy enough to download as a torrent.
For counterpoint, also see Jacob Bronowski's "Ascent of Man".
The episode in which Clark praises the French rioters and strikers of May 1968 is superb, as also is the episode (which may in fact be the same one) in which he denounces computers. 👍👍
Fact: he was seriously feted for this series, but he was embarrassed because he thought the picture he gave of the history of European culture (Iona, Catholic church, Renaissance, printing, Protestant Reformation - lots of Italy, Netherlands, German region, England) was weaker than it should have been because he left out Spain.
Thanks for this overview -- which I'll have to think about.
In the US, most gambling was banned in most states, and then has come back in two ways: State-run lotteries, and Indian casinos. (The Indian reservations are not controlled by state laws.)
Both have grown considerably in recent decades.
IIUC, gambling in the States was forbad by religion and hence dominated by organised crime, but in the UK the Church (in fact the Churches: Scotland did this as well) took a cut of the profits and the biggest mob of all - the Monarch - gambled. Charles II and Queen Anne did, and every race course has a Royal Charter. So in the UK it's tied up with the class structure (hence the article), but in the US it's different.
Not sure about the Kirk of Scotland, if we ignore modern day things like National Lottery Fund grants for buildings or social programmes. The Kirk didn't have the huge estates of the C of E (some of which of course pertained to specific Bishoprics, such as Southwark, which had no equivalent in the Reformed Kirk of Scotland, the Episcopalians being strictly unofficial): still less the Secession and Free Churches and their various mergers and splits.
More generally your model fails to allow for the many Churches which denounced gambling and which went to make up the sort of middle class plus aspiring working class which didn't approve of things like gambling, dirty movies and drink: so perhaps you need to add that element in, more explicitly?
The former Tory MP Mark Menzies is quitting parliament after allegations that he misused campaign funds.
The MP for Fylde announced that he would not stand at the next election after the allegations were referred to Lancashire police.
The Conservative party said that an internal investigation could not conclude there had been a misuse of party funds. However, it said that Menzies had demonstrated a “pattern of behaviour” that fell below the standards expected of MP.
In a statement, he said: “It has been an enormous privilege representing the people of Fylde since 2010, but due to the pressures on myself and my elderly mother, I have decided to resign from the Conservative party and will not stand at the forthcoming general election.
“This has been a very difficult week for me and I request that my family’s privacy is respected.”
That sounds somewhat as if he is hoping that there won't be an investigation.
Whilst it sounds as if it is very important that there IS one.
Hmm ... Tories by implication expect that his family's privacy will be respected. In contrast to a certain female MP wearing a red rosette. Against whom there is so little evidence that Mr Daly MP couldn't and wouldn't say what the Tories were complaining about, unless it was her being a female socialist?
- You don't mention the football pools! Littlewoods had collectors covering practically every urban and suburban street in the country. For many people, this was the only gambling in which they partook.
- After the Gaming Act of 1960 the US-based mafia muscled in in a big way, and a decade or so later it was thought things had gone a tad too far.
- Up until I am not sure when (the 1990s?) both "quality" and tabloid newspapers devoted pages to horseracing...and other pages to share prices. So if you're interested in the class divide...
In the US, some states allowed betting on horse races, when most other gambling was still illegal. (I think the argument was that horse racing needed gambling, in order to "improve the breed".)
Not sure how I feel about gambling. It's been a plus in my life but for many that's not the case. And its victims are often those who can least afford it, sucked in by the delusional hope of big payout for small stake.
I remember reading about the woman reported to be the UK's biggest taxpayer, the owner/CEO of Bet365.com. She'd taken them online and presided over an astonishing growth in profits - hence the personal remuneration and the consequent tax.
It was presented as a very positive story, female entrepreneur, innovation, business success, jobs created in the north, benefits to the exchequer, and that's all true, but still I thought, hmm, so the country's shining example of SME growth is coining it from people making losing bets. How good is that really?
In the US, some states allowed betting on horse races, when most other gambling was still illegal. (I think the argument was that horse racing needed gambling, in order to "improve the breed".)
Are online betting exchanges still banned in the US?
Incredible tweet, but not as incredible as the three penalty decisions. I backed the Forest penalty taker anytime scorer! All three were definite pens, if you didn’t know better you’d think it was bent
The growth of gambling with the internet and various betting apps is actually troubling. The growth of firms like Betfair, Betway, Ladbrokes etc has been exponential and it is causing a lot of misery.
Forest being denied three clear penalties today should be the final nail in the coffin for VAR. The Premier League are clearly incapable of managing the system. Forest should take them to court. And it sounds like they plan to.
I’m trying to investigate, but it looks like this quite nasty riot - by Afghan “asylum seekers” - trashing an entire boulevard in the Onze - was going on even as I wandered around Paris noting the air of decay and the definite sense of menace - and I was being mocked for it on here
Incredible tweet, but not as incredible as the three penalty decisions. I backed the Forest penalty taker anytime scorer! All three were definite pens, if you didn’t know better you’d think it was bent
I know, the handball one was the most egregious of them all.
Just to translate Zemmour for those who don't know French: he's saying French people shouldn't feel guilty any more, that Afghans come over 'ere and start riots, and they should all be sent back where they come from. Clearly a true thinker of exceptional wisdom and not a bit like a Britain Firster knuckledragger.
He's just Marine Le Pen's pet by the way. He'll end up backing her like he did last time.
Someone like Brigitte Bardot has much more integrity and backed Jean-Luc Melenchon in the first round.
And that's nothing like a war zone. Some lads have positioned some smoke grenades, is all.
As @isam has implied it’s an intemperate tweet but Forest have a good case here. The VAR should never been appointed to that match in the first place. The fact that he has declined three clear penalties will destroy whatever dregs are left of faith in the system. And it will probably relegate Forest.
The growth of gambling with the internet and various betting apps is actually troubling. The growth of firms like Betfair, Betway, Ladbrokes etc has been exponential and it is causing a lot of misery.
- You don't mention the football pools! Littlewoods had collectors covering practically every urban and suburban street in the country. For many people, this was the only gambling in which they partook.
- After the Gaming Act of 1960 the US-based mafia muscled in in a big way, and a decade or so later it was thought things had gone a tad too far.
- Up until I am not sure when (the 1990s?) both "quality" and tabloid newspapers devoted pages to horseracing...and other pages to share prices. So if you're interested in the class divide...
I did mention the pools: see the text "like the totaliser and football pools" in the second para of "1906-1945"
I don't know about the Mafia. It wouldn't surprise me. But I also know that some of the bookies in Britain came over from Ireland and/or Northern Ireland and were not afraid of a bit of gunplay.
- You don't mention the football pools! Littlewoods had collectors covering practically every urban and suburban street in the country. For many people, this was the only gambling in which they partook.
- After the Gaming Act of 1960 the US-based mafia muscled in in a big way, and a decade or so later it was thought things had gone a tad too far.
- Up until I am not sure when (the 1990s?) both "quality" and tabloid newspapers devoted pages to horseracing...and other pages to share prices. So if you're interested in the class divide...
I did mention the pools: see the text "like the totaliser and football pools" in the second para of "1906-1945"
I don't know about the Mafia. It wouldn't surprise me. But I also know that some of the bookies in Britain came over from Ireland and/or Northern Ireland and were not afraid of a bit of gunplay.
Sorry - missed the bit about the football pools!
The Colony Club in London was a big hangout for the US mafia in the 1960s as I recall.
And yet apparently I’m “making it up” and my “photos mean nothing” and “Paris is fine” and “oh I went there last autumn and went straight to one nice restaurant then left and everything was great”
Or you could listen to the actual travel expert, his mind expertly attuned to the vibrations of the world, after decades of exploration. Thankyou. I’m here all week
I didn't disbelieve you. I was just surprised how you only needed 10 minutes to suss the City's problems. It was like you'd been primed and hit the ground running, looking for what you'd already been told about. Which is absolutely fine. Nothing wrong with that. But probably a different person could file a different (slightly sunnier) report and they wouldn't be making it up either. Paris being Paris. Enjoyable and interesting anyway.
And yet apparently I’m “making it up” and my “photos mean nothing” and “Paris is fine” and “oh I went there last autumn and went straight to one nice restaurant then left and everything was great”
Or you could listen to the actual travel expert, his mind expertly attuned to the vibrations of the world, after decades of exploration. Thankyou. I’m here all week
I didn't disbelieve you. I was just surprised how you only needed 10 minutes to suss the City's problems. It was like you'd been primed and hit the ground running, looking for what you'd already been told about. Which is absolutely fine. Nothing wrong with that. But probably a different person could file a different (slightly sunnier) report and they wouldn't be making it up either. Paris being Paris. Enjoyable and interesting anyway.
No, I’m just really really REALLY good at detecting urban moods and national ambience and “sense of place” - and doing it super quickly - after constantly travelling for forty years and having to THINK about it jolly hard, because I have to write about it
I bet a massively experienced restaurant critic - Jay Rayner - can walk into most restaurants and work out what he’s going to eat and what the staff will be like and how the menu will go, within 5 minutes. Moreover if he returns to a restaurant he knows very well - and loves - but hasn’t visited in half a decade, he will pretty much instantly detect a problem and have a good chance of diagnosing why and what that is: he will also be expert at noting details, especially changes
The growth of gambling with the internet and various betting apps is actually troubling. The growth of firms like Betfair, Betway, Ladbrokes etc has been exponential and it is causing a lot of misery.
A telltale sign for me of my misanthropy rising is disgust with advertising, and gambling ads are the creepiest of all. They seem to be targeted at young people and harp on about convenience and tailoring their products to your needs while scattering fig leafs on responsible gambling. Ban that crap for a start..
And yet apparently I’m “making it up” and my “photos mean nothing” and “Paris is fine” and “oh I went there last autumn and went straight to one nice restaurant then left and everything was great”
Or you could listen to the actual travel expert, his mind expertly attuned to the vibrations of the world, after decades of exploration. Thankyou. I’m here all week
I didn't disbelieve you. I was just surprised how you only needed 10 minutes to suss the City's problems. It was like you'd been primed and hit the ground running, looking for what you'd already been told about. Which is absolutely fine. Nothing wrong with that. But probably a different person could file a different (slightly sunnier) report and they wouldn't be making it up either. Paris being Paris. Enjoyable and interesting anyway.
No, I’m just really really REALLY good at detecting urban moods and national ambience and “sense of place” - and doing it super quickly - after constantly travelling for forty years and having to THINK about it jolly hard, because I have to write about it
I bet a massively experienced restaurant critic - Jay Rayner - can walk into most restaurants and work out what he’s going to eat and what the staff will be like and how the menu will go, within 5 minutes. Moreover if he returns to a restaurant he knows very well - and loves - but hasn’t visited in half a decade, he will pretty much instantly detect a problem and have a good chance of diagnosing why and what that is: he will also be expert at noting details, especially changes
Think of me as the “Jay Rayner of Place”
You’re all over the place on London though, it’s been BACK more times than Boris into the (not always his own) marital home.
The growth of gambling with the internet and various betting apps is actually troubling. The growth of firms like Betfair, Betway, Ladbrokes etc has been exponential and it is causing a lot of misery.
A telltale sign for me of my misanthropy rising is disgust with advertising, and gambling ads are the creepiest of all. They seem to be targeted at young people and harp on about convenience and tailoring their products to your needs while scattering fig leafs on responsible gambling. Ban that crap for a start..
Bit embarrassed by my cheap attempts at prose here, but I think the gist of it sums up your feelings
And yet apparently I’m “making it up” and my “photos mean nothing” and “Paris is fine” and “oh I went there last autumn and went straight to one nice restaurant then left and everything was great”
Or you could listen to the actual travel expert, his mind expertly attuned to the vibrations of the world, after decades of exploration. Thankyou. I’m here all week
I didn't disbelieve you. I was just surprised how you only needed 10 minutes to suss the City's problems. It was like you'd been primed and hit the ground running, looking for what you'd already been told about. Which is absolutely fine. Nothing wrong with that. But probably a different person could file a different (slightly sunnier) report and they wouldn't be making it up either. Paris being Paris. Enjoyable and interesting anyway.
No, I’m just really really REALLY good at detecting urban moods and national ambience and “sense of place” - and doing it super quickly - after constantly travelling for forty years and having to THINK about it jolly hard, because I have to write about it
I bet a massively experienced restaurant critic - Jay Rayner - can walk into most restaurants and work out what he’s going to eat and what the staff will be like and how the menu will go, within 5 minutes. Moreover if he returns to a restaurant he knows very well - and loves - but hasn’t visited in half a decade, he will pretty much instantly detect a problem and have a good chance of diagnosing why and what that is: he will also be expert at noting details, especially changes
Incredible tweet, but not as incredible as the three penalty decisions. I backed the Forest penalty taker anytime scorer! All three were definite pens, if you didn’t know better you’d think it was bent
I know, the handball one was the most egregious of them all.
Best league in the world has clowns as referees.
Genuinely incredible that both ref and VAR thought none of them were pens.
And yet apparently I’m “making it up” and my “photos mean nothing” and “Paris is fine” and “oh I went there last autumn and went straight to one nice restaurant then left and everything was great”
Or you could listen to the actual travel expert, his mind expertly attuned to the vibrations of the world, after decades of exploration. Thankyou. I’m here all week
I didn't disbelieve you. I was just surprised how you only needed 10 minutes to suss the City's problems. It was like you'd been primed and hit the ground running, looking for what you'd already been told about. Which is absolutely fine. Nothing wrong with that. But probably a different person could file a different (slightly sunnier) report and they wouldn't be making it up either. Paris being Paris. Enjoyable and interesting anyway.
No, I’m just really really REALLY good at detecting urban moods and national ambience and “sense of place” - and doing it super quickly - after constantly travelling for forty years and having to THINK about it jolly hard, because I have to write about it
I bet a massively experienced restaurant critic - Jay Rayner - can walk into most restaurants and work out what he’s going to eat and what the staff will be like and how the menu will go, within 5 minutes. Moreover if he returns to a restaurant he knows very well - and loves - but hasn’t visited in half a decade, he will pretty much instantly detect a problem and have a good chance of diagnosing why and what that is: he will also be expert at noting details, especially changes
Think of me as the “Jay Rayner of Place”
You’re all over the place on London though, it’s been BACK more times than Boris into the (not always his own) marital home.
That’s rather perceptive. I am all over the place on London. It’s because it’s my home and my city and I’m so invested in it. The diagnostic skills I can apply elsewhere go missing when it comes to london. Maybe it’s like a football reporter who finds it difficult to report on his own team because he supports them so emotionally, so he is always too hopeful - or too despairing
Or take you. You have a good political brain but I bet it goes AWOL when it comes to Scotland and the SNP
Incredible tweet, but not as incredible as the three penalty decisions. I backed the Forest penalty taker anytime scorer! All three were definite pens, if you didn’t know better you’d think it was bent
I know, the handball one was the most egregious of them all.
Best league in the world has clowns as referees.
Genuinely incredible that both ref and VAR thought none of them were pens.
Thanks for this overview -- which I'll have to think about.
In the US, most gambling was banned in most states, and then has come back in two ways: State-run lotteries, and Indian casinos. (The Indian reservations are not controlled by state laws.)
Both have grown considerably in recent decades.
IIUC, gambling in the States was forbad by religion and hence dominated by organised crime, but in the UK the Church (in fact the Churches: Scotland did this as well) took a cut of the profits and the biggest mob of all - the Monarch - gambled. Charles II and Queen Anne did, and every race course has a Royal Charter. So in the UK it's tied up with the class structure (hence the article), but in the US it's different.
How much of 'wire fraud" and similar laws in the USA were inspired by Gambling etc? These were stretched incredibly widely, as has happened with RICO laws.
The closest widely used analogue I can think of in the UK is perhaps the sweeping assumptions made in application of laws around the Proceeds of Crime Act.
The growth of gambling with the internet and various betting apps is actually troubling. The growth of firms like Betfair, Betway, Ladbrokes etc has been exponential and it is causing a lot of misery.
A telltale sign for me of my misanthropy rising is disgust with advertising, and gambling ads are the creepiest of all. They seem to be targeted at young people and harp on about convenience and tailoring their products to your needs while scattering fig leafs on responsible gambling. Ban that crap for a start..
Bit embarrassed by my cheap attempts at prose here, but I think the gist of it sums up your feelings
Nothing embarrassing about it, it does sum up my feelings quite well. Selling gambling as a lifestyle particularly to the not clued up does make me puke.
And yet apparently I’m “making it up” and my “photos mean nothing” and “Paris is fine” and “oh I went there last autumn and went straight to one nice restaurant then left and everything was great”
Or you could listen to the actual travel expert, his mind expertly attuned to the vibrations of the world, after decades of exploration. Thankyou. I’m here all week
I didn't disbelieve you. I was just surprised how you only needed 10 minutes to suss the City's problems. It was like you'd been primed and hit the ground running, looking for what you'd already been told about. Which is absolutely fine. Nothing wrong with that. But probably a different person could file a different (slightly sunnier) report and they wouldn't be making it up either. Paris being Paris. Enjoyable and interesting anyway.
No, I’m just really really REALLY good at detecting urban moods and national ambience and “sense of place” - and doing it super quickly - after constantly travelling for forty years and having to THINK about it jolly hard, because I have to write about it
I bet a massively experienced restaurant critic - Jay Rayner - can walk into most restaurants and work out what he’s going to eat and what the staff will be like and how the menu will go, within 5 minutes. Moreover if he returns to a restaurant he knows very well - and loves - but hasn’t visited in half a decade, he will pretty much instantly detect a problem and have a good chance of diagnosing why and what that is: he will also be expert at noting details, especially changes
Think of me as the “Jay Rayner of Place”
You’re all over the place on London though, it’s been BACK more times than Boris into the (not always his own) marital home.
That’s rather perceptive. I am all over the place on London. It’s because it’s my home and my city and I’m so invested in it. The diagnostic skills I can apply elsewhere go missing when it comes to london. Maybe it’s like a football reporter who finds it difficult to report on his own team because he supports them so emotionally, so he is always too hopeful - or too despairing
Or take you. You have a good political brain but I bet it goes AWOL when it comes to Scotland and the SNP
Or perhaps... you're just wrong about everywhere. Cluelessly, hopelessly wrong. Fictionally wrong. Dionysius Lardner levels of wrongness. It's just that too few people *know* you're wrong to point it out, because they don't know the places. But many of us know London, so can point it out...
And yet apparently I’m “making it up” and my “photos mean nothing” and “Paris is fine” and “oh I went there last autumn and went straight to one nice restaurant then left and everything was great”
Or you could listen to the actual travel expert, his mind expertly attuned to the vibrations of the world, after decades of exploration. Thankyou. I’m here all week
I didn't disbelieve you. I was just surprised how you only needed 10 minutes to suss the City's problems. It was like you'd been primed and hit the ground running, looking for what you'd already been told about. Which is absolutely fine. Nothing wrong with that. But probably a different person could file a different (slightly sunnier) report and they wouldn't be making it up either. Paris being Paris. Enjoyable and interesting anyway.
No, I’m just really really REALLY good at detecting urban moods and national ambience and “sense of place” - and doing it super quickly - after constantly travelling for forty years and having to THINK about it jolly hard, because I have to write about it
I bet a massively experienced restaurant critic - Jay Rayner - can walk into most restaurants and work out what he’s going to eat and what the staff will be like and how the menu will go, within 5 minutes. Moreover if he returns to a restaurant he knows very well - and loves - but hasn’t visited in half a decade, he will pretty much instantly detect a problem and have a good chance of diagnosing why and what that is: he will also be expert at noting details, especially changes
Think of me as the “Jay Rayner of Place”
You’re all over the place on London though, it’s been BACK more times than Boris into the (not always his own) marital home.
That’s rather perceptive. I am all over the place on London. It’s because it’s my home and my city and I’m so invested in it. The diagnostic skills I can apply elsewhere go missing when it comes to london. Maybe it’s like a football reporter who finds it difficult to report on his own team because he supports them so emotionally, so he is always too hopeful - or too despairing
Or take you. You have a good political brain but I bet it goes AWOL when it comes to Scotland and the SNP
Take it easy and spend a day in each of your city's 32 boroughs to get a better handle on it.
Dionysus Lardner was the product of one of my ancestor's expert farms:
"Whilst lecturing in America Lardner was paid by Norris Brothers, the largest firm of locomotive builders, to investigate a fatal accident in Reading, near Philadelphia, where a boiler had exploded on a newly made train. Lardner pronounced that the accident had been caused by lightning, which meant that Norris Brothers were not personally liable for the accident. A committee of the Franklin Institute pointed out that there was no lightning present at that time and that the pumps had been faulty, the water indicator was ill-designed and the bridge bands made of cast iron rather than wrought iron. The Coroner's inquest jury were persuaded by Lardner that the accident was an 'act of God' but the company were careful to design their later locomotives with wrought-iron bands."
An interesting one that has come across my social media today. A road safety activist in Ealing who has been recording speeding and dangerously parked vehicles around his road and local primary school for some time, and calling Ealing Council out for doing little or nothing, has been served a "Community Protection Notice" by the Metropolitan Police
His basic case is valid, as his (20mpg iirc) residential street is the entrance to a shopping centre car park, and many vehicles drive down it at dangerous speeds every day.
Some may know the context. I think it is perhaps overreach. There were similar instances by the Blair-Brown Govt in their late authoritarian phase, when they were calling everyone who moved "terrorists" to justify stop and search, and trying to crack down on photography in public spaces.
It seems to me to be in the same category as some PSPO cockups, which will rely on the target being cowed.
This may get picked up by media, and probably will by the Black Belt Barrister on YT.
And yet apparently I’m “making it up” and my “photos mean nothing” and “Paris is fine” and “oh I went there last autumn and went straight to one nice restaurant then left and everything was great”
Or you could listen to the actual travel expert, his mind expertly attuned to the vibrations of the world, after decades of exploration. Thankyou. I’m here all week
I didn't disbelieve you. I was just surprised how you only needed 10 minutes to suss the City's problems. It was like you'd been primed and hit the ground running, looking for what you'd already been told about. Which is absolutely fine. Nothing wrong with that. But probably a different person could file a different (slightly sunnier) report and they wouldn't be making it up either. Paris being Paris. Enjoyable and interesting anyway.
No, I’m just really really REALLY good at detecting urban moods and national ambience and “sense of place” - and doing it super quickly - after constantly travelling for forty years and having to THINK about it jolly hard, because I have to write about it
I bet a massively experienced restaurant critic - Jay Rayner - can walk into most restaurants and work out what he’s going to eat and what the staff will be like and how the menu will go, within 5 minutes. Moreover if he returns to a restaurant he knows very well - and loves - but hasn’t visited in half a decade, he will pretty much instantly detect a problem and have a good chance of diagnosing why and what that is: he will also be expert at noting details, especially changes
Think of me as the “Jay Rayner of Place”
You’re all over the place on London though, it’s been BACK more times than Boris into the (not always his own) marital home.
That’s rather perceptive. I am all over the place on London. It’s because it’s my home and my city and I’m so invested in it. The diagnostic skills I can apply elsewhere go missing when it comes to london. Maybe it’s like a football reporter who finds it difficult to report on his own team because he supports them so emotionally, so he is always too hopeful - or too despairing
Or take you. You have a good political brain but I bet it goes AWOL when it comes to Scotland and the SNP
Or perhaps... you're just wrong about everywhere. Cluelessly, hopelessly wrong. Fictionally wrong. Dionysius Lardner levels of wrongness. It's just that too few people *know* you're wrong to point it out, because they don't know the places. But many of us know London, so can point it out...
THE NECKLACE
That was me being the “Jay Rayner of Place” but using it on a politician’s sexuality. The same instant comprehension, beyond the wit of mere mortals
Think of me as “the Jay Rayner of Place” and the “Michiko Kakutani of Unexpected Kinkiness in Politics” tho the second isn’t as pithy I accept. And I am a pith artist. Think of me as the Pith Artist de Nos Jours and the
And yet apparently I’m “making it up” and my “photos mean nothing” and “Paris is fine” and “oh I went there last autumn and went straight to one nice restaurant then left and everything was great”
Or you could listen to the actual travel expert, his mind expertly attuned to the vibrations of the world, after decades of exploration. Thankyou. I’m here all week
I didn't disbelieve you. I was just surprised how you only needed 10 minutes to suss the City's problems. It was like you'd been primed and hit the ground running, looking for what you'd already been told about. Which is absolutely fine. Nothing wrong with that. But probably a different person could file a different (slightly sunnier) report and they wouldn't be making it up either. Paris being Paris. Enjoyable and interesting anyway.
No, I’m just really really REALLY good at detecting urban moods and national ambience and “sense of place” - and doing it super quickly - after constantly travelling for forty years and having to THINK about it jolly hard, because I have to write about it
I bet a massively experienced restaurant critic - Jay Rayner - can walk into most restaurants and work out what he’s going to eat and what the staff will be like and how the menu will go, within 5 minutes. Moreover if he returns to a restaurant he knows very well - and loves - but hasn’t visited in half a decade, he will pretty much instantly detect a problem and have a good chance of diagnosing why and what that is: he will also be expert at noting details, especially changes
Think of me as the “Jay Rayner of Place”
You’re all over the place on London though, it’s been BACK more times than Boris into the (not always his own) marital home.
That’s rather perceptive. I am all over the place on London. It’s because it’s my home and my city and I’m so invested in it. The diagnostic skills I can apply elsewhere go missing when it comes to london. Maybe it’s like a football reporter who finds it difficult to report on his own team because he supports them so emotionally, so he is always too hopeful - or too despairing
Or take you. You have a good political brain but I bet it goes AWOL when it comes to Scotland and the SNP
Or perhaps... you're just wrong about everywhere. Cluelessly, hopelessly wrong. Fictionally wrong. Dionysius Lardner levels of wrongness. It's just that too few people *know* you're wrong to point it out, because they don't know the places. But many of us know London, so can point it out...
THE NECKLACE
That was me being the “Jay Rayner of Place” but using it on a politician’s sexuality. The same instant comprehension, beyond the wit of mere mortals
Think of me as “the Jay Rayner of Place” and the “Michiko Kakutani of Unexpected Kinkiness in Politics” tho the second isn’t as pithy I accept. And I am a pith artist. Think of me as the Pith Artist de Nos Jours and the
(Continued page 197)
I refer the dishonourable gentleman to my previous response.
The Telegraph is really giving it some in the run-up to next Saturday's pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli demonstrations in London and the expected genocidal assault on Rafah.
They are absolutely loving it that someone is stirring it up among "rank and file" police officers, with Rick Prior, chair of the Metropolitan Police Federation, which represents them, saying that police needed more authority to stove in lefty and Muslim protestors' heads "stamp out anti-Semitism".
PS I have encountered several white non-Jews who are going on about "anti-Semitism" at the moment having previously shown NO interest in the subject as far as I am aware, who are using the term as code for sticking it to non-whites and especially to British people from Pakistani backgrounds. None of these dickheads would know the difference between the blood libel and a pogrom, or between Cable Street and Kristallnacht.
An interesting one that has come across my social media today. A road safety activist in Ealing who has been recording speeding and dangerously parked vehicles around his road and local primary school for some time, and calling Ealing Council out for doing little or nothing, has been served a "Community Protection Notice" by the Metropolitan Police
His basic case is valid, as his (20mpg iirc) residential street is the entrance to a shopping centre car park, and many vehicles drive down it at dangerous speeds every day.
Some may know the context. I think it is perhaps overreach. There were similar instances by the Blair-Brown Govt in their late authoritarian phase, when they were calling everyone who moved "terrorists" to justify stop and search, and trying to crack down on photography in public spaces.
This may get picked up by media, and probably will by the Black Belt Barrister on YT.
I don't get number 1, filming things in public certainly should be legal and there's no excuse I can see for the Police saying that at all.
#2 is what strikes me as weird straight off the bat. Contacting a specifically named Councillor or members of her family. That's weird. Why only her, and why her family?
If her family are getting harassed, I can understand perhaps this action, but if not, this is just extremely bizarre.
Contacting an elected representative should always be legal, but not harassing their family members.
#3 Harassment etc is illegal, so fair enough. If harassment has been happening, if not, again this is unjustified.
#4 IANAL but this seems like standard practice, to require consent to post images of other people online.
And yet apparently I’m “making it up” and my “photos mean nothing” and “Paris is fine” and “oh I went there last autumn and went straight to one nice restaurant then left and everything was great”
Or you could listen to the actual travel expert, his mind expertly attuned to the vibrations of the world, after decades of exploration. Thankyou. I’m here all week
And yet apparently I’m “making it up” and my “photos mean nothing” and “Paris is fine” and “oh I went there last autumn and went straight to one nice restaurant then left and everything was great”
Or you could listen to the actual travel expert, his mind expertly attuned to the vibrations of the world, after decades of exploration. Thankyou. I’m here all week
I didn't disbelieve you. I was just surprised how you only needed 10 minutes to suss the City's problems. It was like you'd been primed and hit the ground running, looking for what you'd already been told about. Which is absolutely fine. Nothing wrong with that. But probably a different person could file a different (slightly sunnier) report and they wouldn't be making it up either. Paris being Paris. Enjoyable and interesting anyway.
No, I’m just really really REALLY good at detecting urban moods and national ambience and “sense of place” - and doing it super quickly - after constantly travelling for forty years and having to THINK about it jolly hard, because I have to write about it
I bet a massively experienced restaurant critic - Jay Rayner - can walk into most restaurants and work out what he’s going to eat and what the staff will be like and how the menu will go, within 5 minutes. Moreover if he returns to a restaurant he knows very well - and loves - but hasn’t visited in half a decade, he will pretty much instantly detect a problem and have a good chance of diagnosing why and what that is: he will also be expert at noting details, especially changes
I think the liberalisation of gambling laws under the last Labour government was symptomatic of what I saw as its largest weaknesses.
When Mandelson said that New Labour was "intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich as long as they pay their taxes" he should have added, "and we don't care who gets hurt in the process."
In this area we saw a government that was captured by the interests of the industry it ought to have been seeking to regulate, and promoted the interests of that industry above those of the country's citizens. And this was a pattern that we saw with New Labour again and again and again.
New Labour casino fandom involved its deification of "the markets" and the Conservatives were as bad. For instance, a Conservative MP on the committee examining supercasinos (which never took off in the end) told me we did not need consumer protection measures because market competition would take care of it. First, competition would not maximise consumer protection; second, the proposal involved regional monopolies so there would not be any competition.
The Telegraph is really giving it some in the run-up to next Saturday's pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli demonstrations in London and the expected genocidal assault on Rafah.
They are absolutely loving it that someone is stirring it up among "rank and file" police officers, with Rick Prior, chair of the Metropolitan Police Federation, which represents them, saying that police needed more authority to stove in lefty and Muslim protestors' heads "stamp out anti-Semitism".
PS I have encountered several white non-Jews who are going on about "anti-Semitism" at the moment having previously shown NO interest in the subject as far as I am aware, who are using the term as code for sticking it to non-whites and especially to British people from Pakistani backgrounds. None of these dickheads would know the difference between the blood libel and a pogrom, or between Cable Street and Kristallnacht.
That's easy. Kristallnacht is the one that happened under Jeremy Corbyn. Or so Margaret Hodge claimed.
An interesting one that has come across my social media today. A road safety activist in Ealing who has been recording speeding and dangerously parked vehicles around his road and local primary school for some time, and calling Ealing Council out for doing little or nothing, has been served a "Community Protection Notice" by the Metropolitan Police
His basic case is valid, as his (20mpg iirc) residential street is the entrance to a shopping centre car park, and many vehicles drive down it at dangerous speeds every day.
Some may know the context. I think it is perhaps overreach. There were similar instances by the Blair-Brown Govt in their late authoritarian phase, when they were calling everyone who moved "terrorists" to justify stop and search, and trying to crack down on photography in public spaces.
This may get picked up by media, and probably will by the Black Belt Barrister on YT.
I don't get number 1, filming things in public certainly should be legal and there's no excuse I can see for the Police saying that at all.
#2 is what strikes me as weird straight off the bat. Contacting a specifically named Councillor or members of her family. That's weird. Why only her, and why her family?
If her family are getting harassed, I can understand perhaps this action, but if not, this is just extremely bizarre.
#3 Harassment etc is illegal, so fair enough. If harassment has been happening, if not, again this is unjustified.
#4 IANAL but this seems like standard practice, to require consent to post images of other people online.
My impression is that the roots may be around being too persistent in calling out Councillors by name, and the 'harassment' being too many complaint emails asking for action, or tagging in on tweets.
In public consent to photograph should be irrelevant as there is no expectation of privacy - but possible issues around recognisable individuals (), though no 'copyright' issue as no commercial motive, and afaik it is all motor vehicles anyway and number plates are not traceable by the public.
I surmise that this Councillor is perhaps the only one who complained, and that the ward may be this Councillor's ward. (checked - it is).
I think the notice is essentially an attempt at intimidation to say "stop bothering us and go away" using a threatening sounding procedure. They are relying imo on the nebulous definitions of "harassment, alarm or distress".
There are a number of problems with the notice itself, as the legislation relies heavily on tests of "reasonableness". He is certainly more aggressive than I would be, but then I haven't had mine and my neighbours' childrens' safety placed at risk for years.
The relevent road is Windsor Road, Ealing. It is a long, narrow residential road used as the entrance to a 600-800 space car park for Ealing Broadway shopping centre.
The stuff near the primary school may potentially be more awkward, with parents getting out of vehicles when they have parked illegally on yellow zigzags putting kids on the footway, crossing to school at risk etc, or drive the wrong way through one ways. This stuff is always more controversial in identifiable communities,
Dionysus Lardner was the product of one of my ancestor's expert farms:
"Whilst lecturing in America Lardner was paid by Norris Brothers, the largest firm of locomotive builders, to investigate a fatal accident in Reading, near Philadelphia, where a boiler had exploded on a newly made train. Lardner pronounced that the accident had been caused by lightning, which meant that Norris Brothers were not personally liable for the accident. A committee of the Franklin Institute pointed out that there was no lightning present at that time and that the pumps had been faulty, the water indicator was ill-designed and the bridge bands made of cast iron rather than wrought iron. The Coroner's inquest jury were persuaded by Lardner that the accident was an 'act of God' but the company were careful to design their later locomotives with wrought-iron bands."
Perhaps he could be resurrected and appear at the Post Office inquiry? He'd still appear a more reliable expert than the current ones...
If ever we wonder how we ended up with governments employing their own independent experts to report impartially on transport accidents, well there’s your answer.
An interesting one that has come across my social media today. A road safety activist in Ealing who has been recording speeding and dangerously parked vehicles around his road and local primary school for some time, and calling Ealing Council out for doing little or nothing, has been served a "Community Protection Notice" by the Metropolitan Police
His basic case is valid, as his (20mpg iirc) residential street is the entrance to a shopping centre car park, and many vehicles drive down it at dangerous speeds every day.
Some may know the context. I think it is perhaps overreach. There were similar instances by the Blair-Brown Govt in their late authoritarian phase, when they were calling everyone who moved "terrorists" to justify stop and search, and trying to crack down on photography in public spaces.
This may get picked up by media, and probably will by the Black Belt Barrister on YT.
I don't get number 1, filming things in public certainly should be legal and there's no excuse I can see for the Police saying that at all.
#2 is what strikes me as weird straight off the bat. Contacting a specifically named Councillor or members of her family. That's weird. Why only her, and why her family?
If her family are getting harassed, I can understand perhaps this action, but if not, this is just extremely bizarre.
#3 Harassment etc is illegal, so fair enough. If harassment has been happening, if not, again this is unjustified.
#4 IANAL but this seems like standard practice, to require consent to post images of other people online.
My impression is that the roots may be around being too persistent in calling out Councillors by name, and the 'harassment' being too many complaint emails asking for action, or tagging in on tweets.
In public consent to photograph should be irrelevant as there is no expectation of privacy - but possible issues around recognisable individuals (), though no 'copyright' issue as no commercial motive, and afaik it is all motor vehicles anyway and number plates are not traceable by the public.
I surmise that this Councillor is perhaps the only one who complained, and that the ward may be this Councillor's ward. (checked - it is).
I think the notice is essentially an attempt at intimidation to say "stop bothering us and go away" using a threatening sounding procedure. They are relying imo on the nebulous definitions of "harassment, alarm or distress".
There are a number of problems with the notice itself, as the legislation relies heavily on tests of "reasonableness". He is certainly more aggressive than I would be, but then I haven't had mine and my neighbours' childrens' safety placed at risk for years.
The relevent road is Windsor Road, Ealing. It is a long, narrow residential road used as the entrance to a 600-800 space car park for Ealing Broadway shopping centre.
Calling out Councillors by name and emailing them asking for action should be entirely legal, that is the Councillors job afterall. The Councillor can choose to ignore them if they please, but its undemocratic to say that they can't be called out on their job.
Harassing members of the Councillors family OTOH is an entirely different matter.
It seems reading into it a bit there's more to the story than meets the eye, in particular a particular grudge between this person and the Councillor named. It seems the Councillor named has complained to the Police but the Police acting on behalf of a Councillor when the member of the public has done nothing wrong is not their job.
Dealing with harassment is their job.
Difficult to know without knowing more. The "or their family" is the troubling bit, why is that there? Harassing someone's family is absolutely not OK.
PS I have encountered several white non-Jews who are going on about "anti-Semitism" at the moment having previously shown NO interest in the subject as far as I am aware, who are using the term as code for sticking it to non-whites and especially to British people from Pakistani backgrounds. None of these dickheads would know the difference between the blood libel and a pogrom, or between Cable Street and Kristallnacht.
An unfortunate side effect of raising the issue of antisemitism is that some unsavory types might jump on the bandwagon. But thinking THAT is the main issue rather than antisemitism itself is just deflection.
I want to stand up (a little) for the officer involved on the ground. He was only doing what seems to be standard Met policy. Appeasement of 'pro palestine' thugs who they fear might cause trouble or violence. It's not this incident that needs analysing it's the Met's own policy for the marches.
- You don't mention the football pools! Littlewoods had collectors covering practically every urban and suburban street in the country. For many people, this was the only gambling in which they partook.
- After the Gaming Act of 1960 the US-based mafia muscled in in a big way, and a decade or so later it was thought things had gone a tad too far.
- Up until I am not sure when (the 1990s?) both "quality" and tabloid newspapers devoted pages to horseracing...and other pages to share prices. So if you're interested in the class divide...
I did mention the pools: see the text "like the totaliser and football pools" in the second para of "1906-1945"
I don't know about the Mafia. It wouldn't surprise me. But I also know that some of the bookies in Britain came over from Ireland and/or Northern Ireland and were not afraid of a bit of gunplay.
A lot of the early bookies were Jewish. Of course, thanks to the popularity of wars at the time, most men were familiar with guns although they were not much used.
The former Tory MP Mark Menzies is quitting parliament after allegations that he misused campaign funds.
The MP for Fylde announced that he would not stand at the next election after the allegations were referred to Lancashire police.
The Conservative party said that an internal investigation could not conclude there had been a misuse of party funds. However, it said that Menzies had demonstrated a “pattern of behaviour” that fell below the standards expected of MP.
In a statement, he said: “It has been an enormous privilege representing the people of Fylde since 2010, but due to the pressures on myself and my elderly mother, I have decided to resign from the Conservative party and will not stand at the forthcoming general election.
“This has been a very difficult week for me and I request that my family’s privacy is respected.”
According to the BBC, the reason why they could not conclude that party funds had been misused was because the money came from something called the Fylde Westminster group, which was "outside of the remit" of both the Conservative Party and the local Fylde Conservative Association.
I wonder whether that is a normal way of dealing with political donations.
The Telegraph is really giving it some in the run-up to next Saturday's pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli demonstrations in London and the expected genocidal assault on Rafah.
They are absolutely loving it that someone is stirring it up among "rank and file" police officers, with Rick Prior, chair of the Metropolitan Police Federation, which represents them, saying that police needed more authority to stove in lefty and Muslim protestors' heads "stamp out anti-Semitism".
PS I have encountered several white non-Jews who are going on about "anti-Semitism" at the moment having previously shown NO interest in the subject as far as I am aware, who are using the term as code for sticking it to non-whites and especially to British people from Pakistani backgrounds. None of these dickheads would know the difference between the blood libel and a pogrom, or between Cable Street and Kristallnacht.
That's easy. Kristallnacht is the one that happened under Jeremy Corbyn. Or so Margaret Hodge claimed.
That looks weird, but is it Liz Truss in the middle?
I don’t know why some images are coming out blurry recently?
I think it is because too many pictures are being embedded recently and Vanilla is struggling to cope.
We saw something similar when Vanilla shrank pictures when too many pics were previously embedded.
Surely this is configurable (and might involve crossing Vanilla's palm with silver). I'd rather go back to the shrunk but legible pictures we still get from pasted images rather than the massive but illegible messes; even when clear there is no point displaying a photo which cannot be viewed on screen at once and we need to scroll down to see the dog cat for scale. What else would be handy is if we must have massive images, can they at least be shrunk when quoted? I've no idea whether Vanilla allows this.
That looks weird, but is it Liz Truss in the middle?
I don’t know why some images are coming out blurry recently?
I think it is because too many pictures are being embedded recently and Vanilla is struggling to cope.
We saw something similar when Vanilla shrank pictures when too many pics were previously embedded.
I shall rein it in
If you're regularly going to post images, then try to upload them elsewhere rather than using vanilla to upload them. Won't count against the quota then.
Free sites you can use online to easily upload them, like imgbb.com
Then to post here use the simple code open-triangular-bracket a href="urlofimage.jpg"backslash close-triangular-bracket and the image will go up without wasting the sites quota.
That looks weird, but is it Liz Truss in the middle?
I don’t know why some images are coming out blurry recently?
I think it is because too many pictures are being embedded recently and Vanilla is struggling to cope.
We saw something similar when Vanilla shrank pictures when too many pics were previously embedded.
Surely this is configurable (and might involve crossing Vanilla's palm with silver). I'd rather go back to the shrunk but legible pictures we still get from pasted images rather than the massive but illegible messes; even when clear there is no point displaying a photo which cannot be viewed on screen at once and we need to scroll down to see the dog cat for scale. What else would be handy is if we must have massive images, can they at least be shrunk when quoted? I've no idea whether Vanilla allows this.
Comments
https://x.com/stephencvgraham/status/1782024115349565671?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
He should really be having a prolapse about the important stuff like calling for the Met Commissioner to resign because one of his cops was a bit of a twat.
https://x.com/zemmoureric/status/1782023161359265929
Would that be a blow ?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-68869020
https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/video/punters-look-for-substitutes-during-foot-and-mouth-news-footage/810018540
And of totalisers/totalisators/"The tote"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqTD7L6-2Ws
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYP3tcnYpbU
Also fascinated by the tote machine. Now off to find out how it worked ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilisation_(TV_series)
(*) Sorry, not the game.
All machines work by magic. In the case of computers, we Wizards tell the mere mortals that the Black Smoke that emerges from computers when they go bang is capacitors blowing.
Pah!
In reality, it is the Magic escaping. All the components in a computer contain Magic - held in its most condensed form in the processors. The designers pray and commit Strange Ephemeral Acts to ensure the right sort of magic will appear in the plastic or ceramic casing when it goes to the Holy Church known as the 'Fab' for invoking.
I am a heretic for letting you know all of this. If I disappear, it will be that the Guardians of the Magic (Greybeards) have got me.
https://www.britishpathe.com/asset/222173/
https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/video/ladbrokes-clerks-b-england-london-ladbrokes-clerks-as-news-footage/812589758
In the US, most gambling was banned in most states, and then has come back in two ways: State-run lotteries, and Indian casinos. (The Indian reservations are not controlled by state laws.)
Both have grown considerably in recent decades.
I hope you don't mind me doxxing your ancestor.
I especially like:
"Born in the town of Mumpf." Manchester (or Wales) needs somewhere called Mumpf. *
"Invented the right to privacy".
and Napoleon Bonaparte as NOT the father-in-law.
https://www.enlacejudio.com/2020/06/02/rachel-felix-la-actriz-que-invento-el-derecho-a-la-intimidad/
* I would say Notts, but we need somewhere called "Humpf" which would be pronounced 'umpf. .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_and_children_first
Most famous example: "The phrase was popularised by its usage on RMS Titanic.[14] Second Officer Charles Lightoller suggested to Captain Smith, "Hadn't we better get the women and children into the boats, sir?", to which the captain responded: "Put the women and children in and lower away."[15] The first and second officers (William McMaster Murdoch and Lightoller) interpreted the evacuation order differently; Murdoch took it to mean women and children first, while Lightoller took it to mean women and children only. Second Officer Lightoller lowered lifeboats with empty seats if there were no women and children waiting to board, while First Officer Murdoch allowed a limited number of men to board if all the nearby women and children had embarked.[16] As a consequence, 74% of the women and 52% of the children on board were saved, but only 20% of the men.[17] Some officers on the Titanic misinterpreted the order from Captain Smith, and tried to prevent men from boarding the lifeboats.[18][19] It was intended that women and children would board first, with any remaining free spaces for men. Because not all women and children were saved on the Titanic, the few men who survived, like White Star official J. Bruce Ismay, were initially branded as cowards."
But with the rise of the telegraph, and the telephone, betting became more geographically disparate. You could bet on events happening on the other side of the country, with people you may never meet. And you might not know if the person you were betting with was rich or poor. Or a person or a group. Or even, heaven forfend, female. And the events being bet on could likewise be spread all over the country, or wider. And better systems and companies needed to be formed to manage gambling.
Similarly, the codification of sports. Football in its various forms existed for centuries, often in the form of mass brawls (Hi, Ashbourne!). But if you are going to send teams to play each other over a wide area, they all need to play by the same rules. Therefore the rules need codifying. It can be no coincidence that association football was codified in Cambridge in 1848. Cambridge railway station opened in 1845...
https://journals.openedition.org/angles/1278
Today's censure is for when it becomes addictive and ruins people but it's worth bearing in mind most people who do gamble, and most of us have at least once (and very large numbers play the lottery), do not have a problem.
And so on, and so on.
What there is not a trace of in any of his writing is fascism -- though he has often been charged with that.
(For the record: I find many of his ideas provocative. But he was wrong, wrong, wrong, with his Malthusian predictions of population growth.
On the other hand, "The Man Who Sold the Moon" inspired both Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, a case of life imitating art.)
When Mandelson said that New Labour was "intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich as long as they pay their taxes" he should have added, "and we don't care who gets hurt in the process."
In this area we saw a government that was captured by the interests of the industry it ought to have been seeking to regulate, and promoted the interests of that industry above those of the country's citizens. And this was a pattern that we saw with New Labour again and again and again.
The MP for Fylde announced that he would not stand at the next election after the allegations were referred to Lancashire police.
The Conservative party said that an internal investigation could not conclude there had been a misuse of party funds. However, it said that Menzies had demonstrated a “pattern of behaviour” that fell below the standards expected of MP.
In a statement, he said: “It has been an enormous privilege representing the people of Fylde since 2010, but due to the pressures on myself and my elderly mother, I have decided to resign from the Conservative party and will not stand at the forthcoming general election.
“This has been a very difficult week for me and I request that my family’s privacy is respected.”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/apr/21/former-tory-mp-mark-menzies-quits-amid-claims-he-misused-party-funds
Or you could listen to the actual travel expert, his mind expertly attuned to the vibrations of the world, after decades of exploration. Thankyou. I’m here all week
Whilst it sounds as if it is very important that there IS one.
For counterpoint, also see Jacob Bronowski's "Ascent of Man".
The episode in which Clark praises the French rioters and strikers of May 1968 is superb, as also is the episode (which may in fact be the same one) in which he denounces computers. 👍👍
Fact: he was seriously feted for this series, but he was embarrassed because he thought the picture he gave of the history of European culture (Iona, Catholic church, Renaissance, printing, Protestant Reformation - lots of Italy, Netherlands, German region, England) was weaker than it should have been because he left out Spain.
Nottingham Forest have just tweeted this.
Three extremely poor decisions - three penalties not given - which we simply cannot accept.
We warned the PGMOL that the VAR is a Luton fan before the game but they didn’t change him. Our patience has been tested multiple times.
NFFC will now consider its options.
https://twitter.com/NFFC/status/1782056187652960764
More generally your model fails to allow for the many Churches which denounced gambling and which went to make up the sort of middle class plus aspiring working class which didn't approve of things like gambling, dirty movies and drink: so perhaps you need to add that element in, more explicitly?
- You don't mention the football pools! Littlewoods had collectors covering practically every urban and suburban street in the country. For many people, this was the only gambling in which they partook.
- After the Gaming Act of 1960 the US-based mafia muscled in in a big way, and a decade or so later it was thought things had gone a tad too far.
- Up until I am not sure when (the 1990s?) both "quality" and tabloid newspapers devoted pages to horseracing...and other pages to share prices. So if you're interested in the class divide...
Not sure how I feel about gambling. It's been a plus in my life but for many that's not the case. And its victims are often those who can least afford it, sucked in by the delusional hope of big payout for small stake.
I remember reading about the woman reported to be the UK's biggest taxpayer, the owner/CEO of Bet365.com. She'd taken them online and presided over an astonishing growth in profits - hence the personal remuneration and the consequent tax.
It was presented as a very positive story, female entrepreneur, innovation, business success, jobs created in the north, benefits to the exchequer, and that's all true, but still I thought, hmm, so the country's shining example of SME growth is coining it from people making losing bets. How good is that really?
Tchoh!
Best league in the world has clowns as referees.
He's just Marine Le Pen's pet by the way. He'll end up backing her like he did last time.
Someone like Brigitte Bardot has much more integrity and backed Jean-Luc Melenchon in the first round.
And that's nothing like a war zone. Some lads have positioned some smoke grenades, is all.
Zemmour's parents came from Algeria.
I don't know about the Mafia. It wouldn't surprise me. But I also know that some of the bookies in Britain came over from Ireland and/or Northern Ireland and were not afraid of a bit of gunplay.
The Colony Club in London was a big hangout for the US mafia in the 1960s as I recall.
I bet a massively experienced restaurant critic - Jay Rayner - can walk into most restaurants and work out what he’s going to eat and what the staff will be like and how the menu will go, within 5 minutes. Moreover if he returns to a restaurant he knows very well - and loves - but hasn’t visited in half a decade, he will pretty much instantly detect a problem and have a good chance of diagnosing why and what that is: he will also be expert at noting details, especially changes
Think of me as the “Jay Rayner of Place”
http://aboutasfarasdelgados.blogspot.com/2014/08/luis-louis-ladbrokes-life.html
report on his own team because he supports them so emotionally, so he is always too hopeful - or too despairing
Or take you. You have a good political brain but I bet it goes AWOL when it comes to Scotland and the SNP
Leon: Something’s wrong, I can feel it in my waters.
The closest widely used analogue I can think of in the UK is perhaps the sweeping assumptions made in application of laws around the Proceeds of Crime Act.
"Whilst lecturing in America Lardner was paid by Norris Brothers, the largest firm of locomotive builders, to investigate a fatal accident in Reading, near Philadelphia, where a boiler had exploded on a newly made train. Lardner pronounced that the accident had been caused by lightning, which meant that Norris Brothers were not personally liable for the accident. A committee of the Franklin Institute pointed out that there was no lightning present at that time and that the pumps had been faulty, the water indicator was ill-designed and the bridge bands made of cast iron rather than wrought iron. The Coroner's inquest jury were persuaded by Lardner that the accident was an 'act of God' but the company were careful to design their later locomotives with wrought-iron bands."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionysius_Lardner
Perhaps he could be resurrected and appear at the Post Office inquiry? He'd still appear a more reliable expert than the current ones...
His basic case is valid, as his (20mpg iirc) residential street is the entrance to a shopping centre car park, and many vehicles drive down it at dangerous speeds every day.
Some may know the context. I think it is perhaps overreach. There were similar instances by the Blair-Brown Govt in their late authoritarian phase, when they were calling everyone who moved "terrorists" to justify stop and search, and trying to crack down on photography in public spaces.
It seems to me to be in the same category as some PSPO cockups, which will rely on the target being cowed.
This may get picked up by media, and probably will by the Black Belt Barrister on YT.
https://twitter.com/CitizenUddin/status/1781716222775611558
(can't make it embed - you will have to visit the link)
That was me being the “Jay Rayner of Place” but using it on a politician’s sexuality. The same instant comprehension, beyond the wit of mere mortals
Think of me as “the Jay Rayner of Place” and the “Michiko Kakutani of Unexpected Kinkiness in Politics” tho the second isn’t as pithy I accept. And I am a pith artist. Think of me as the Pith Artist de Nos Jours and the
(Continued page 197)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/21/police-call-robust-presence-pro-palestine-protests/
They are absolutely loving it that someone is stirring it up among "rank and file" police officers, with Rick Prior, chair of the Metropolitan Police Federation, which represents them, saying that police needed more authority to stove in lefty and Muslim protestors' heads "stamp out anti-Semitism".
PS I have encountered several white non-Jews who are going on about "anti-Semitism" at the moment having previously shown NO interest in the subject as far as I am aware, who are using the term as code for sticking it to non-whites and especially to British people from Pakistani backgrounds. None of these dickheads would know the difference between the blood libel and a pogrom, or between Cable Street and Kristallnacht.
#2 is what strikes me as weird straight off the bat. Contacting a specifically named Councillor or members of her family. That's weird. Why only her, and why her family?
If her family are getting harassed, I can understand perhaps this action, but if not, this is just extremely bizarre.
Contacting an elected representative should always be legal, but not harassing their family members.
#3 Harassment etc is illegal, so fair enough. If harassment has been happening, if not, again this is unjustified.
#4 IANAL but this seems like standard practice, to require consent to post images of other people online.
In public consent to photograph should be irrelevant as there is no expectation of privacy - but possible issues around recognisable individuals (), though no 'copyright' issue as no commercial motive, and afaik it is all motor vehicles anyway and number plates are not traceable by the public.
I surmise that this Councillor is perhaps the only one who complained, and that the ward may be this Councillor's ward. (checked - it is).
I think the notice is essentially an attempt at intimidation to say "stop bothering us and go away" using a threatening sounding procedure. They are relying imo on the nebulous definitions of "harassment, alarm or distress".
There are a number of problems with the notice itself, as the legislation relies heavily on tests of "reasonableness". He is certainly more aggressive than I would be, but then I haven't had mine and my neighbours' childrens' safety placed at risk for years.
The relevent road is Windsor Road, Ealing. It is a long, narrow residential road used as the entrance to a 600-800 space car park for Ealing Broadway shopping centre.
The stuff near the primary school may potentially be more awkward, with parents getting out of vehicles when they have parked illegally on yellow zigzags putting kids on the footway, crossing to school at risk etc, or drive the wrong way through one ways. This stuff is always more controversial in identifiable communities,
We saw something similar when Vanilla shrank pictures when too many pics were previously embedded.
Harassing members of the Councillors family OTOH is an entirely different matter.
It seems reading into it a bit there's more to the story than meets the eye, in particular a particular grudge between this person and the Councillor named. It seems the Councillor named has complained to the Police but the Police acting on behalf of a Councillor when the member of the public has done nothing wrong is not their job.
Dealing with harassment is their job.
Difficult to know without knowing more. The "or their family" is the troubling bit, why is that there? Harassing someone's family is absolutely not OK.
I want to stand up (a little) for the officer involved on the ground. He was only doing what seems to be standard Met policy. Appeasement of 'pro palestine' thugs who they fear might cause trouble or violence. It's not this incident that needs analysing it's the Met's own policy for the marches.
I wonder whether that is a normal way of dealing with political donations.
dogcat for scale. What else would be handy is if we must have massive images, can they at least be shrunk when quoted? I've no idea whether Vanilla allows this.Free sites you can use online to easily upload them, like imgbb.com
Then to post here use the simple code open-triangular-bracket a href="urlofimage.jpg"backslash close-triangular-bracket and the image will go up without wasting the sites quota.