The opinions of a middle-class, middle-aged, historically aware but vaguely gammony man on St. George:
It's hard to get too excited about him either way as an individual. Clearly he was introduced in the plantaganet era by foreign kings with different values. It would have been nice to have retained one of our pre-Norman actually English saints as our patron saint - Cuthbert, say, or Alban. But largely they all had daft names. So maybe not. In any case, the concept of a patron saint is a bit foreign now: we don't really have much more in common with the values of Cuthbert or Alban than we do with George. It's hard to get too enthusiastic about the concept of early English Christians: mostly they tend to come across as on the side of Christianity, rather than of the English. It's hard, for the vaguely partisan 21st century Englishman, to side with dark ages English Christians over dark ages English pagans; and harder still to be unequivocally sure that the right side won at the synod of Whitby. Essentially it would be hard to find an English saint who we could be unequivocally supportive of.
Still, everyone apparently has to have a patron saint, and St. George is probably no worse than anyone else. He has a nice flag. And more to the point, he's who we've got; he's been our patron saint for generations, and that is more important (for the English or anyone else) than whatever qualities he himself might have possessed. Frankly the qualities of the saint himself are incidental: it's a national day, which again, everyone apparently has to have, and one in mid-Spring seems the right sort of time to have one.
We don't make a massive fuss, but we don't let the day go past entirely uncommented on as we might with, say, Rogation Sunday. Seems about right.
I once heard an American describe Bonfire Night as the British national day. I initially thought this a cultural misreading: they have fireworks on 4th July, which is their national day; our fireworks are on 5th November, so that must be our national day. A big oversimplification. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought it to be true. Bonfire night is when we are at our most unselfconsciously British. It's one of the very few solely British traditions, and one which we do without really thinking about. We rehash the historical story, but we don't really think about the significance of it: we just set fire to things and blow things up. You could, if you want, see it as the first win for parliamentary democracy over absolutism, but most people don't really think about things that deeply, and it's not really in the British tradition to do so. You don't HAVE to do anything; your presence isn't required anywhere. No-one needs to fall out about its significance. It's just something that happens. That to me makes it a true national day.
I thought Liverpool/Manchester had a sizeable catholic population? Do they celebrate Bonfire Night too?
Yes, you can happily emphasise the democracy over absolutism aspect of it as you want. Or decide that Guy Fawkes is the tragic hero of the piece. It is a tradition you can take anything you want from. No-one expects you to buy in to any particular interpretation of it, nor to interpret it at all. Just enjoy it for what it is. So yes, Catholics enjoy it too.
A member of my extended family, by marriage, attended, very much later, the same school as the late Mr Fawkes, by then a girls boarding school. She said that the girls were allowed a bonfire, but not a guy.
It has been easy to make fun of the book by Liz Truss, Ten Years to Save the West. Reviewers have mocked the paranoia, lack of self-awareness and blaming of others for the disasters of her short premiership. It didn’t help when she held the book upside down on television. Most people have probably joined in the mirth and otherwise tried to forget it all. But for Conservatives like me, it is a reminder of the most excruciatingly embarrassing period in the modern history of our party, one for which a severe electoral price is still being paid.
It might come as a surprise, therefore, when I say that this book has to be taken seriously. Not because Truss is about to return to power, or because it is a deep study of how politics works, or because its proposals deserve support. I haven’t, as a critic of how government was conducted in those infamous 49 days, changed my mind. But I do think that the ideas this former prime minister expresses have become the common currency of many people on the right, in this country and abroad.
They tell us a great deal about the struggle over the future of conservatism — a struggle already taking place around the world and that will become urgent and intense in Britain if the Tories go into opposition after the coming election.
Truss perceives many of the institutions of government to have been “captured by left-wing ideology” or become excessively powerful, knitting together in a “deep state” that frustrates elected leaders. Her answer is to abolish a great many of them. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) would be eliminated, the Bank of England weakened, the Supreme Court abolished and the European Convention on Human Rights abandoned. Internationally, we would withdraw from the climate negotiations at Cop summits and seek to abolish the United Nations. The elected government — albeit elected by a very small number of people in her own case — would be liberated from all these agreements and constraints.
Before dismissing such notions as the rantings of a very disappointed ex-leader, we should note that they have a lot in common with the policies of more successful leaders overseas. In America, the Republicans have become largely subservient to a Trump agenda that includes “dismantling the deep state”, firing civil servants by presidential order, removing “Marxist” prosecutors and justifying the brazen attempt to overturn the outcome of the last presidential election.
The irony is that economically Truss wasn't far from what was needed. She was cackhanded in it, but had some good ideas.
Cutting instead of raising NI to make work pay better? Very, very good idea, and one Hunt has continued, quite rightly.
Going for growth? Good idea.
It was the economy that brought her down, but it was on economics she was closest to what was needed and if she'd kept stumpt now then in the future I think her tenure could be looked back at better as badly handled but with some kernels of good ideas that her successors have adopted.
But instead she's going full MAGAite batshit crazy deep state conspiracy theory lunatic.
She'll be talking about pizza, sexual abuse and Pepe the Frog soon.
That's the most irritating thing about much of the Right across the Western world. Sensible criticisms get mixed in with total batshittery.
The flag of St George was first flown in England by yeomen and peasants of the Weald of Sussex and Kent, rebelling against their corrupt and incompetent overlords.
Just so you know.
I loathe these people that ALWAYS say on St George’s Day, in a wanky and sneering tone “oh don’t you know he’s actually from Syria, he would be a refugee” as if it’s some amazing discovery they’ve made, and proves some fucking ludicrous point they don’t have
Always Remainers. Midwit Remainers. Guaranteed
To be fair, I don't think James was taking that line. We can side cheerfully with the yeomen and peasants of the Weald over their corrupt and incompetent overlords (possibly Norman?) without getting all Gary Lineker about it. (Or maybe that's the point you're making?)
The opinions of a middle-class, middle-aged, historically aware but vaguely gammony man on St. George:
It's hard to get too excited about him either way as an individual. Clearly he was introduced in the plantaganet era by foreign kings with different values. It would have been nice to have retained one of our pre-Norman actually English saints as our patron saint - Cuthbert, say, or Alban. But largely they all had daft names. So maybe not. In any case, the concept of a patron saint is a bit foreign now: we don't really have much more in common with the values of Cuthbert or Alban than we do with George. It's hard to get too enthusiastic about the concept of early English Christians: mostly they tend to come across as on the side of Christianity, rather than of the English. It's hard, for the vaguely partisan 21st century Englishman, to side with dark ages English Christians over dark ages English pagans; and harder still to be unequivocally sure that the right side won at the synod of Whitby. Essentially it would be hard to find an English saint who we could be unequivocally supportive of.
Still, everyone apparently has to have a patron saint, and St. George is probably no worse than anyone else. He has a nice flag. And more to the point, he's who we've got; he's been our patron saint for generations, and that is more important (for the English or anyone else) than whatever qualities he himself might have possessed. Frankly the qualities of the saint himself are incidental: it's a national day, which again, everyone apparently has to have, and one in mid-Spring seems the right sort of time to have one.
We don't make a massive fuss, but we don't let the day go past entirely uncommented on as we might with, say, Rogation Sunday. Seems about right.
I once heard an American describe Bonfire Night as the British national day. I initially thought this a cultural misreading: they have fireworks on 4th July, which is their national day; our fireworks are on 5th November, so that must be our national day. A big oversimplification. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought it to be true. Bonfire night is when we are at our most unselfconsciously British. It's one of the very few solely British traditions, and one which we do without really thinking about. We rehash the historical story, but we don't really think about the significance of it: we just set fire to things and blow things up. You could, if you want, see it as the first win for parliamentary democracy over absolutism, but most people don't really think about things that deeply, and it's not really in the British tradition to do so. You don't HAVE to do anything; your presence isn't required anywhere. No-one needs to fall out about its significance. It's just something that happens. That to me makes it a true national day.
Speak for yourself , I am certainly not British on 5th November or any other date.
You just don't identify as British, malcolm. It would take another referendum, or your renouncing your citizenship, to change the uncomfortable fact.
Neither of those things would change that fact. Scotland voting for independence wouldn't change its geography, and Malcolm becoming stateless would not change his origin.
Of course they would. Scottish independence would make malcolm solely Scottish, without the taint of Britain.
I might as well say that you are European.
I assume you're being sarcastic, but just in case, I am European.
The answer is going to depend on what you mean. Our objective and legal citizenship (for most of us) is that of the UK of GB and NI. Our subjective one is whatsoever you will. Hope that ends the discussion......
The flag of St George was first flown in England by yeomen and peasants of the Weald of Sussex and Kent, rebelling against their corrupt and incompetent overlords.
Just so you know.
Wasn’t the flag of Wessex a White Dragon? Or was that Anglia?
Doesn't change the situation. Look more closely, as I poined out on the previous thread. The default filters exclude critical verified purchases, so far as I can see.
In fact there are some one-star verified purchases, so AndyJS is entirely accurate even if one sticks to verified purchases.
Plus verified just means bought through Amazon - nothing more. And some of the critical reviews have obviously read the book.
More generally, the unreliability of the review system on online purchases, bookings etc. is a major concern [edit] for online merchants, broadly speaking. See link in my post on the last thread.
Why would the filters do that? It appears they include reviews only (as opposed to just ratings).
There are no negative reviews from verified purchasers.
Ah - conflating 'reviews' in the written sense with 'ratings'. Sorry. But Andy plainly means star ratings, and when one switches the filters round, one gets
Filtered by Critical, Verified purchases 3 total ratings, 0 with reviews
Pointe du Raz. The Celtic Sublime on a glorious day - skylarks trill above the sea-thrift
That’s the Ile de Sein out there. Mythically the end of the world, and home to an ancient little town and port
In lost Celtic times it was the domain of virgin druid priestesses prone to human sacrifice. By the 17th century it boasted a tribe of black capped wrecking witches who would lure sailors to their deaths on the many lethal reefs
Perhaps to make up for this chequered record, when Charles de Gaulle made his famous appeal to France from London on June 18, 1940, every single able bodied male inhabitant of the island - some 150 men - got in a fishing boat and sailed to Britain to join the Free French
Superbe
I rather love the Celtic (and possibly also Scandi/Germanic) concept of the mysterious west. That somewhere over the limitless sea where the sun sets, there was - what? The afterlife? Tir-na-nog? A place where you never age (the final destination of King Arthur and his remaining entourage)? Tolkein's land of elves? Giants? There are a hundred stories of mysterious lands over the sea to the west. I find it tremendously satisfying that my ancestors grew up at the edge of the known world, with a huge mysterious blank slate beyond, and the stories and myths that were associated with this. Oceans are so much more satisfying to gaze at than seas.
Yes, and you can find it in every Celtic country. Right down to Galicia. There is a strain of Celtic self-mythologising that says that’s why the Celts came here - to the west - they weren’t chased here they chose these places. Where they could yearn for the isles of the blessed. For fated Lyonesse, now lost beneath the sea. Always lost
The myth was so powerful in Roman times that when the legions reached the river of the dead in northern Portugal/Galicia - which led to the lands of the ghosts, the soldiers refused to cross this relatively tiny river. Julius Caesar himself had to swim it, to prove you could survive on the other side
I had a nice cafe pingado there
There’s the lost land under Cardigan Bay too. And that between Lands End and the Scilly Isles.
The opinions of a middle-class, middle-aged, historically aware but vaguely gammony man on St. George:
It's hard to get too excited about him either way as an individual. Clearly he was introduced in the plantaganet era by foreign kings with different values. It would have been nice to have retained one of our pre-Norman actually English saints as our patron saint - Cuthbert, say, or Alban. But largely they all had daft names. So maybe not. In any case, the concept of a patron saint is a bit foreign now: we don't really have much more in common with the values of Cuthbert or Alban than we do with George. It's hard to get too enthusiastic about the concept of early English Christians: mostly they tend to come across as on the side of Christianity, rather than of the English. It's hard, for the vaguely partisan 21st century Englishman, to side with dark ages English Christians over dark ages English pagans; and harder still to be unequivocally sure that the right side won at the synod of Whitby. Essentially it would be hard to find an English saint who we could be unequivocally supportive of.
Still, everyone apparently has to have a patron saint, and St. George is probably no worse than anyone else. He has a nice flag. And more to the point, he's who we've got; he's been our patron saint for generations, and that is more important (for the English or anyone else) than whatever qualities he himself might have possessed. Frankly the qualities of the saint himself are incidental: it's a national day, which again, everyone apparently has to have, and one in mid-Spring seems the right sort of time to have one.
We don't make a massive fuss, but we don't let the day go past entirely uncommented on as we might with, say, Rogation Sunday. Seems about right.
I once heard an American describe Bonfire Night as the British national day. I initially thought this a cultural misreading: they have fireworks on 4th July, which is their national day; our fireworks are on 5th November, so that must be our national day. A big oversimplification. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought it to be true. Bonfire night is when we are at our most unselfconsciously British. It's one of the very few solely British traditions, and one which we do without really thinking about. We rehash the historical story, but we don't really think about the significance of it: we just set fire to things and blow things up. You could, if you want, see it as the first win for parliamentary democracy over absolutism, but most people don't really think about things that deeply, and it's not really in the British tradition to do so. You don't HAVE to do anything; your presence isn't required anywhere. No-one needs to fall out about its significance. It's just something that happens. That to me makes it a true national day.
Speak for yourself , I am certainly not British on 5th November or any other date.
You just don't identify as British, malcolm. It would take another referendum, or your renouncing your citizenship, to change the uncomfortable fact.
Neither of those things would change that fact. Scotland voting for independence wouldn't change its geography, and Malcolm becoming stateless would not change his origin.
Of course they would. Scottish independence would make malcolm solely Scottish, without the taint of Britain.
I might as well say that you are European.
I assume you're being sarcastic, but just in case, I am European.
The answer is going to depend on what you mean. Our objective and legal citizenship (for most of us) is that of the UK of GB and NI. Our subjective one is whatsoever you will. Hope that ends the discussion......
Of course it doesn't. Citizenship has nothing to do with it. People from Britain are British - it's simply a function of geography. Just like the most ardent remainer and the fiercest leaver are still European, because geographically we're in Europe. We haven't gone anywhere. If and when Scotland ever becomes independent it will be as British the day after it as it was the day before.
The flag of St George was first flown in England by yeomen and peasants of the Weald of Sussex and Kent, rebelling against their corrupt and incompetent overlords.
Just so you know.
I loathe these people that ALWAYS say on St George’s Day, in a wanky and sneering tone “oh don’t you know he’s actually from Syria, he would be a refugee” as if it’s some amazing discovery they’ve made, and proves some fucking ludicrous point they don’t have
Always Remainers. Midwit Remainers. Guaranteed
To be fair, I don't think James was taking that line. We can side cheerfully with the yeomen and peasants of the Weald over their corrupt and incompetent overlords (possibly Norman?) without getting all Gary Lineker about it. (Or maybe that's the point you're making?)
How things have changed over the centuries. Dragons, the plague, corrupt and incompetent overlords...
Philosophical question: I wonder if it's a sign of democratic failure when large numbers of people start using the legal system to engage in political arguments? For instance, how often do people in places like Norway and Denmark use the legal system to conduct what are essentially political disagreements instead of relying on elected politicians.
Doesn't change the situation. Look more closely, as I poined out on the previous thread. The default filters exclude critical verified purchases, so far as I can see.
In fact there are some one-star verified purchases, so AndyJS is entirely accurate even if one sticks to verified purchases.
Plus verified just means bought through Amazon - nothing more. And some of the critical reviews have obviously read the book.
More generally, the unreliability of the review system on online purchases, bookings etc. is a major concern [edit] for online merchants, broadly speaking. See link in my post on the last thread.
Why would the filters do that? It appears they include reviews only (as opposed to just ratings).
There are no negative reviews from verified purchasers.
Ah - conflating 'reviews' in the written sense with 'ratings'. Sorry. But Andy plainly means star ratings, and when one switches the filters round, one gets
Filtered by Critical, Verified purchases 3 total ratings, 0 with reviews
I am not 'conflating' anything, I made very clear I was speaking about reviews at the outset and throughout.
The flag of St George was first flown in England by yeomen and peasants of the Weald of Sussex and Kent, rebelling against their corrupt and incompetent overlords.
Just so you know.
I loathe these people that ALWAYS say on St George’s Day, in a wanky and sneering tone “oh don’t you know he’s actually from Syria, he would be a refugee” as if it’s some amazing discovery they’ve made, and proves some fucking ludicrous point they don’t have
Always Remainers. Midwit Remainers. Guaranteed
Despite being a Remainer, and a Scot by birth, I bedeck our house with beautiful plastic St George's cross bunting during any major international football tournament. Do you?
People that walk slowly should be thrown in the Atlantic
Never try the Royal Mile at Festival time. There are lichen on the forest floor that move faster and with a more obvious purpose.
They do my nut. I think it’s a London thing - we walk fast, you have to, then you go outside London and everyone plods along like a fucking donkey that missed the bus. Also people that walk slowly are stupid - this is a known correlation. Look at two year olds - barely able to cover 20 metres and also incapable of sardonic humour
I endorse this view. Slow walkers are the absolute dregs of humanity. Similarly people who don't walk up the escalator on the tube. What is wrong with these people? Slow walking isn't universal outside of London, growing up in Scotland we tended to walk fast in order to stay warm. Hmm London and Scotland... Maybe fast walkers = Remainers? Would explain the IQ correlation anyway!
We are told from a young age that we must be able to walk 500 miles and then 500 more.
Only Hibernian-supporting wimps need to take a break in the middle.
Pointe du Raz. The Celtic Sublime on a glorious day - skylarks trill above the sea-thrift
That’s the Ile de Sein out there. Mythically the end of the world, and home to an ancient little town and port
In lost Celtic times it was the domain of virgin druid priestesses prone to human sacrifice. By the 17th century it boasted a tribe of black capped wrecking witches who would lure sailors to their deaths on the many lethal reefs
Perhaps to make up for this chequered record, when Charles de Gaulle made his famous appeal to France from London on June 18, 1940, every single able bodied male inhabitant of the island - some 150 men - got in a fishing boat and sailed to Britain to join the Free French
Superbe
I've just been fishing out, for rereading, a history of the RN blockade of that coast in all weathers during the Napoleonic war - "Those far distant, storm-beaten ships, upon which the Grand Army never looked, stood between it and the dominion of the world.” So this is absolutely ideal.
The importance of the Royal Naval Blockades, in the Napoleonic War, and both World Wars, can't really be overstated. The economic and logistical impact on the enemy was devastating.
The blockade prevented the French from sending troops or supplies to Spain by sea. They relied upon two roads, one via Irun the other via Barcelona, which were infested with partisans.
Prior to the invention of railways, water was the only way of transporting large volumes of military supplies.
The flag of St George was first flown in England by yeomen and peasants of the Weald of Sussex and Kent, rebelling against their corrupt and incompetent overlords.
Just so you know.
I loathe these people that ALWAYS say on St George’s Day, in a wanky and sneering tone “oh don’t you know he’s actually from Syria, he would be a refugee” as if it’s some amazing discovery they’ve made, and proves some fucking ludicrous point they don’t have
Always Remainers. Midwit Remainers. Guaranteed
Despite being a Remainer, and a Scot by birth, I bedeck our house with beautiful plastic St George's cross bunting during any major international football tournament. Do you?
The flag of St George was first flown in England by yeomen and peasants of the Weald of Sussex and Kent, rebelling against their corrupt and incompetent overlords.
Just so you know.
Wasn’t the flag of Wessex a White Dragon? Or was that Anglia?
The White Dragon represented the Anglo Saxons, but I think this was in Celtic myth rather than being self-selected as such. (The story is, ISTR, of a red dragon fighting a white dragon in Oxford, of all places.) Had our ancestors been so disposed, there would have been an opportunity for some sort of flag and associated myths which involved both the red and white dragons. Alas, far too late now.
The flag of St George was first flown in England by yeomen and peasants of the Weald of Sussex and Kent, rebelling against their corrupt and incompetent overlords.
Just so you know.
Wasn’t the flag of Wessex a White Dragon? Or was that Anglia?
The flag of St George was first flown in England by yeomen and peasants of the Weald of Sussex and Kent, rebelling against their corrupt and incompetent overlords.
Just so you know.
I loathe these people that ALWAYS say on St George’s Day, in a wanky and sneering tone “oh don’t you know he’s actually from Syria, he would be a refugee” as if it’s some amazing discovery they’ve made, and proves some fucking ludicrous point they don’t have
Always Remainers. Midwit Remainers. Guaranteed
To be fair, I don't think James was taking that line. We can side cheerfully with the yeomen and peasants of the Weald over their corrupt and incompetent overlords (possibly Norman?) without getting all Gary Lineker about it. (Or maybe that's the point you're making?)
Correct, I not really interested in semi-legendary religious cults, but am interested in real history.
Pointe du Raz. The Celtic Sublime on a glorious day - skylarks trill above the sea-thrift
That’s the Ile de Sein out there. Mythically the end of the world, and home to an ancient little town and port
In lost Celtic times it was the domain of virgin druid priestesses prone to human sacrifice. By the 17th century it boasted a tribe of black capped wrecking witches who would lure sailors to their deaths on the many lethal reefs
Perhaps to make up for this chequered record, when Charles de Gaulle made his famous appeal to France from London on June 18, 1940, every single able bodied male inhabitant of the island - some 150 men - got in a fishing boat and sailed to Britain to join the Free French
Superbe
I rather love the Celtic (and possibly also Scandi/Germanic) concept of the mysterious west. That somewhere over the limitless sea where the sun sets, there was - what? The afterlife? Tir-na-nog? A place where you never age (the final destination of King Arthur and his remaining entourage)? Tolkein's land of elves? Giants? There are a hundred stories of mysterious lands over the sea to the west. I find it tremendously satisfying that my ancestors grew up at the edge of the known world, with a huge mysterious blank slate beyond, and the stories and myths that were associated with this. Oceans are so much more satisfying to gaze at than seas.
Yes, and you can find it in every Celtic country. Right down to Galicia. There is a strain of Celtic self-mythologising that says that’s why the Celts came here - to the west - they weren’t chased here they chose these places. Where they could yearn for the isles of the blessed. For fated Lyonesse, now lost beneath the sea. Always lost
The myth was so powerful in Roman times that when the legions reached the river of the dead in northern Portugal/Galicia - which led to the lands of the ghosts, the soldiers refused to cross this relatively tiny river. Julius Caesar himself had to swim it, to prove you could survive on the other side
I had a nice cafe pingado there
There’s the lost land under Cardigan Bay too. And that between Lands End and the Scilly Isles.
Philosophical question: I wonder if it's a sign of democratic failure when large numbers of people start using the legal system to engage in political arguments? For instance, how often do people in places like Norway and Denmark use the legal system to conduct what are essentially political disagreements instead of relying on elected politicians.
The legal system has *always* been an active part of democratic politics, and indeed was an important part of the development of democracy.
See, for example, the legal cases over taxation in the run-up to the English Civil War, or the cases around slavery in the 18th/19th century.
If there is a deficit it's in the narrow focus on democracy=elections, when elections are in some ways only a small part of the overall whole, a periodic stock-take of where the democratic process as a whole has taken us, in terms of public debate more generally, and the changes in public opinion produced as a result.
Pointe du Raz. The Celtic Sublime on a glorious day - skylarks trill above the sea-thrift
That’s the Ile de Sein out there. Mythically the end of the world, and home to an ancient little town and port
In lost Celtic times it was the domain of virgin druid priestesses prone to human sacrifice. By the 17th century it boasted a tribe of black capped wrecking witches who would lure sailors to their deaths on the many lethal reefs
Perhaps to make up for this chequered record, when Charles de Gaulle made his famous appeal to France from London on June 18, 1940, every single able bodied male inhabitant of the island - some 150 men - got in a fishing boat and sailed to Britain to join the Free French
Superbe
I rather love the Celtic (and possibly also Scandi/Germanic) concept of the mysterious west. That somewhere over the limitless sea where the sun sets, there was - what? The afterlife? Tir-na-nog? A place where you never age (the final destination of King Arthur and his remaining entourage)? Tolkein's land of elves? Giants? There are a hundred stories of mysterious lands over the sea to the west. I find it tremendously satisfying that my ancestors grew up at the edge of the known world, with a huge mysterious blank slate beyond, and the stories and myths that were associated with this. Oceans are so much more satisfying to gaze at than seas.
Yes, and you can find it in every Celtic country. Right down to Galicia. There is a strain of Celtic self-mythologising that says that’s why the Celts came here - to the west - they weren’t chased here they chose these places. Where they could yearn for the isles of the blessed. For fated Lyonesse, now lost beneath the sea. Always lost
The myth was so powerful in Roman times that when the legions reached the river of the dead in northern Portugal/Galicia - which led to the lands of the ghosts, the soldiers refused to cross this relatively tiny river. Julius Caesar himself had to swim it, to prove you could survive on the other side
I had a nice cafe pingado there
There’s the lost land under Cardigan Bay too. And that between Lands End and the Scilly Isles.
And Doggerland where every freeborn Englishman can watch his neighbours at it.
Doesn't change the situation. Look more closely, as I poined out on the previous thread. The default filters exclude critical verified purchases, so far as I can see.
In fact there are some one-star verified purchases, so AndyJS is entirely accurate even if one sticks to verified purchases.
Plus verified just means bought through Amazon - nothing more. And some of the critical reviews have obviously read the book.
More generally, the unreliability of the review system on online purchases, bookings etc. is a major concern [edit] for online merchants, broadly speaking. See link in my post on the last thread.
It's a mystery. Who on earth buys reads this stuff? Has a single PB reader/contributor bought it? I never meet anyone who would contemplate it, even next month for 50p in the Oxfam shop. All politics wonks know that it would be self justifying drivel, and that the reviews will point up anything interesting; non-politics people would (rightly) prefer to read The People's Friend or Finnegans Wake.
Does anyone know?
Despite my conflating reviews with star ratings, the thing that strikes me is how few people have bought it and bothered to comment on it one way or another, even as star ratings. And a few of the [edit] reviews linked to five star ratings are actually ironic and extremely critical - "Wonderfully absorbant!" and "I just got the sample, and wouldn't dream of buying the book. But the sample made me laugh out loud a few times, which amply repaid the effort of wading through the turgid prose. This woman will entertain us for years!"
As for "Everyone should read this - but most are incapable of understanding it", that's decidedly back-handed praise especially when there is such a chorus of "well written" in the positive reviews.
More generally, that sort of wildly uneven distribution of star ratings is a key warning sign on any internet marketplace that the review system isn't working, for whatever reason. Sometimes it's being fiddled; here, it's far more likely to be political partisanship, on both sides, as is pretty clear from the written reviews.
I once heard an American describe Bonfire Night as the British national day. I initially thought this a cultural misreading: they have fireworks on 4th July, which is their national day; our fireworks are on 5th November, so that must be our national day. A big oversimplification. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought it to be true. Bonfire night is when we are at our most unselfconsciously British. It's one of the very few solely British traditions, and one which we do without really thinking about. We rehash the historical story, but we don't really think about the significance of it: we just set fire to things and blow things up. You could, if you want, see it as the first win for parliamentary democracy over absolutism, but most people don't really think about things that deeply, and it's not really in the British tradition to do so. You don't HAVE to do anything; your presence isn't required anywhere. No-one needs to fall out about its significance. It's just something that happens. That to me makes it a true national day.
There's a couple things worth saying about Bonfire Night.
On the timing, the 5th of November is pretty much bang on the cross-quarter day of Samhain, and therefore the start of winter in the Celtic calendar, which would traditionally have been marked by the lighting of fires, to ward away the cold of winter. So *that's* a big coincidence.
On bonfires themselves, listening to early Modern English history and you find that the English were mad about bonfires at the time. Anytime they ever had anything to celebrate, they'd all spontaneously rush out and celebrate with a bonfire. So it's a very appropriate link with the past to have an annual bonfire, even if there was a distinct lack of bonfires to celebrate the passing of the Rwanda Bill, and there won't be any to celebrate the impending Tory rout in the general election either, the reflexive urge to light a bonfire in response to good news now being in abeyance.
Interesting. The last two weddings I went to, plus a few Hogmanay celebrations, featured bonfires. My first ever "date" was on bonfire night too - held hands and everything.
I haven't worked out what the history of this is, but I don't think it's an environmental thing. They still let people cut turf for heating homes, which has to be one of the worst things you could do environmentally, in terms of the ratio of benefit: harm.
Yes, there are essentially no restrictions at all on having a bonfire in your garden here, even in parts of the country, like London, where you can't have a fire in your house (if your neighbour has bonfires all the time you can report it as a nuisance, but that's it). We had a massive bonfire once as the easiest way to dispose of a garden shed and I checked the rules before going ahead. There are no rules.
Pointe du Raz. The Celtic Sublime on a glorious day - skylarks trill above the sea-thrift
That’s the Ile de Sein out there. Mythically the end of the world, and home to an ancient little town and port
In lost Celtic times it was the domain of virgin druid priestesses prone to human sacrifice. By the 17th century it boasted a tribe of black capped wrecking witches who would lure sailors to their deaths on the many lethal reefs
Perhaps to make up for this chequered record, when Charles de Gaulle made his famous appeal to France from London on June 18, 1940, every single able bodied male inhabitant of the island - some 150 men - got in a fishing boat and sailed to Britain to join the Free French
Superbe
I rather love the Celtic (and possibly also Scandi/Germanic) concept of the mysterious west. That somewhere over the limitless sea where the sun sets, there was - what? The afterlife? Tir-na-nog? A place where you never age (the final destination of King Arthur and his remaining entourage)? Tolkein's land of elves? Giants? There are a hundred stories of mysterious lands over the sea to the west. I find it tremendously satisfying that my ancestors grew up at the edge of the known world, with a huge mysterious blank slate beyond, and the stories and myths that were associated with this. Oceans are so much more satisfying to gaze at than seas.
Yes, and you can find it in every Celtic country. Right down to Galicia. There is a strain of Celtic self-mythologising that says that’s why the Celts came here - to the west - they weren’t chased here they chose these places. Where they could yearn for the isles of the blessed. For fated Lyonesse, now lost beneath the sea. Always lost
The myth was so powerful in Roman times that when the legions reached the river of the dead in northern Portugal/Galicia - which led to the lands of the ghosts, the soldiers refused to cross this relatively tiny river. Julius Caesar himself had to swim it, to prove you could survive on the other side
I had a nice cafe pingado there
There’s the lost land under Cardigan Bay too. And that between Lands End and the Scilly Isles.
And Doggerland where every freeborn Englishman can watch his neighbours at it.
Doesn't change the situation. Look more closely, as I poined out on the previous thread. The default filters exclude critical verified purchases, so far as I can see.
In fact there are some one-star verified purchases, so AndyJS is entirely accurate even if one sticks to verified purchases.
Plus verified just means bought through Amazon - nothing more. And some of the critical reviews have obviously read the book.
More generally, the unreliability of the review system on online purchases, bookings etc. is a major concern [edit] for online merchants, broadly speaking. See link in my post on the last thread.
Why would the filters do that? It appears they include reviews only (as opposed to just ratings).
There are no negative reviews from verified purchasers.
Ah - conflating 'reviews' in the written sense with 'ratings'. Sorry. But Andy plainly means star ratings, and when one switches the filters round, one gets
Filtered by Critical, Verified purchases 3 total ratings, 0 with reviews
I am not 'conflating' anything, I made very clear I was speaking about reviews at the outset and throughout.
Doesn't change the situation. Look more closely, as I poined out on the previous thread. The default filters exclude critical verified purchases, so far as I can see.
In fact there are some one-star verified purchases, so AndyJS is entirely accurate even if one sticks to verified purchases.
Plus verified just means bought through Amazon - nothing more. And some of the critical reviews have obviously read the book.
More generally, the unreliability of the review system on online purchases, bookings etc. is a major concern [edit] for online merchants, broadly speaking. See link in my post on the last thread.
It's a mystery. Who on earth buys reads this stuff? Has a single PB reader/contributor bought it? I never meet anyone who would contemplate it, even next month for 50p in the Oxfam shop. All politics wonks know that it would be self justifying drivel, and that the reviews will point up anything interesting; non-politics people would (rightly) prefer to read The People's Friend or Finnegans Wake.
Does anyone know?
Despite my conflating reviews with star ratings, the thing that strikes me is how few people have bought it and bothered to comment on it one way or another, even as star ratings. And a few of the five star ratings are actually extremely critical - "Wonderfully absorbant!" and "I just got the sample, and wouldn't dream of buying the book. But the sample made me laugh out loud a few times, which amply repaid the effort of wading through the turgid prose. This woman will entertain us for years!"
As for "Everyone should read this - but most are incapable of understanding it", that's decidedly back-handed praise especially when there is such a chorus of "well written" in the positive reviews.
More generally, that sort of wildly uneven distribution of star ratings is a key warning sign on any internet marketplace that the review system isn't working, for whatever reason. Sometimes it's being fiddled; here, it's far more likely to be political partisanship, on both sides, as is pretty clear from the written reviews.
Amazon reviews start to work well with 100+ samples, and work very well in my experience at the 1000+ level.
Of course book reviews with a handful of comments are meaningless. Could be the authors mum or the authors jilted ex!
Philosophical question: I wonder if it's a sign of democratic failure when large numbers of people start using the legal system to engage in political arguments? For instance, how often do people in places like Norway and Denmark use the legal system to conduct what are essentially political disagreements instead of relying on elected politicians.
The legal system has *always* been an active part of democratic politics, and indeed was an important part of the development of democracy.
See, for example, the legal cases over taxation in the run-up to the English Civil War, or the cases around slavery in the 18th/19th century.
If there is a deficit it's in the narrow focus on democracy=elections, when elections are in some ways only a small part of the overall whole, a periodic stock-take of where the democratic process as a whole has taken us, in terms of public debate more generally, and the changes in public opinion produced as a result.
I'd go for it being a sign of a legal system which is being used outside its rational bounds, so yes probably a consequence of a failure in some way of democratic politics.
The flag of St George was first flown in England by yeomen and peasants of the Weald of Sussex and Kent, rebelling against their corrupt and incompetent overlords.
Just so you know.
I loathe these people that ALWAYS say on St George’s Day, in a wanky and sneering tone “oh don’t you know he’s actually from Syria, he would be a refugee” as if it’s some amazing discovery they’ve made, and proves some fucking ludicrous point they don’t have
Always Remainers. Midwit Remainers. Guaranteed
Years ago when I was at UEA the local pub was refused permission for extended hours on St Georges Day, despite it being granted for St Patricks the month before. I sense their is less of an issue around St George now. I'm also reminded that when England won the world cup in 1966 most of the flags on show were Union Jacks. Its heartening (to me at least) that the English identity has emerged now, and that most are comfortable with it. Sadly not all, as our dear beloved @Heathener proclaimed a week or two back.
Philosophical question: I wonder if it's a sign of democratic failure when large numbers of people start using the legal system to engage in political arguments? For instance, how often do people in places like Norway and Denmark use the legal system to conduct what are essentially political disagreements instead of relying on elected politicians.
The legal system has *always* been an active part of democratic politics, and indeed was an important part of the development of democracy.
See, for example, the legal cases over taxation in the run-up to the English Civil War, or the cases around slavery in the 18th/19th century.
If there is a deficit it's in the narrow focus on democracy=elections, when elections are in some ways only a small part of the overall whole, a periodic stock-take of where the democratic process as a whole has taken us, in terms of public debate more generally, and the changes in public opinion produced as a result.
I'd go for it being a sign of a legal system which is being used outside its rational bounds, so yes probably a consequence of a failure in some way of democratic politics.
The US is probably the worst example of lawfare, being used to make political decisions.
is this the same Andy Thornton who was involved in an experiment in community known as The Late, Late Service in Glasgow around 1990 - sounds quite like it?
I met him at a fascinating day conference on future forms of worship / church in London in 1991 organised by the Greenbelt Festival.
The very same. He was part of the Greenbelt organisation for many years.
He was also in the band that Ricki Ross (his flatmate) poached to form Deacon Blue
The flag of St George was first flown in England by yeomen and peasants of the Weald of Sussex and Kent, rebelling against their corrupt and incompetent overlords.
Just so you know.
I loathe these people that ALWAYS say on St George’s Day, in a wanky and sneering tone “oh don’t you know he’s actually from Syria, he would be a refugee” as if it’s some amazing discovery they’ve made, and proves some fucking ludicrous point they don’t have
Always Remainers. Midwit Remainers. Guaranteed
Despite being a Remainer, and a Scot by birth, I bedeck our house with beautiful plastic St George's cross bunting during any major international football tournament. Do you?
As an Englishman, I’m about to eat a dozen Breton oysters PAID FOR BY THE FRENCH
Doesn't change the situation. Look more closely, as I poined out on the previous thread. The default filters exclude critical verified purchases, so far as I can see.
In fact there are some one-star verified purchases, so AndyJS is entirely accurate even if one sticks to verified purchases.
Plus verified just means bought through Amazon - nothing more. And some of the critical reviews have obviously read the book.
More generally, the unreliability of the review system on online purchases, bookings etc. is a major concern [edit] for online merchants, broadly speaking. See link in my post on the last thread.
It's a mystery. Who on earth buys reads this stuff? Has a single PB reader/contributor bought it? I never meet anyone who would contemplate it, even next month for 50p in the Oxfam shop. All politics wonks know that it would be self justifying drivel, and that the reviews will point up anything interesting; non-politics people would (rightly) prefer to read The People's Friend or Finnegans Wake.
Does anyone know?
You might be surprised how few books get sold...
Piers Morgan's latest effort sold <6,000 copies, despite having 8m twitter followers, a US following etc
Doesn't change the situation. Look more closely, as I poined out on the previous thread. The default filters exclude critical verified purchases, so far as I can see.
In fact there are some one-star verified purchases, so AndyJS is entirely accurate even if one sticks to verified purchases.
Plus verified just means bought through Amazon - nothing more. And some of the critical reviews have obviously read the book.
More generally, the unreliability of the review system on online purchases, bookings etc. is a major concern [edit] for online merchants, broadly speaking. See link in my post on the last thread.
It's a mystery. Who on earth buys reads this stuff? Has a single PB reader/contributor bought it? I never meet anyone who would contemplate it, even next month for 50p in the Oxfam shop. All politics wonks know that it would be self justifying drivel, and that the reviews will point up anything interesting; non-politics people would (rightly) prefer to read The People's Friend or Finnegans Wake.
Does anyone know?
Despite my conflating reviews with star ratings, the thing that strikes me is how few people have bought it and bothered to comment on it one way or another, even as star ratings. And a few of the five star ratings are actually extremely critical - "Wonderfully absorbant!" and "I just got the sample, and wouldn't dream of buying the book. But the sample made me laugh out loud a few times, which amply repaid the effort of wading through the turgid prose. This woman will entertain us for years!"
As for "Everyone should read this - but most are incapable of understanding it", that's decidedly back-handed praise especially when there is such a chorus of "well written" in the positive reviews.
More generally, that sort of wildly uneven distribution of star ratings is a key warning sign on any internet marketplace that the review system isn't working, for whatever reason. Sometimes it's being fiddled; here, it's far more likely to be political partisanship, on both sides, as is pretty clear from the written reviews.
You seem to have a pathological need for people to hate and trash this book, for which you have my sympathy, but there's really nothing strange going on here. Of those we know have actually bought the book, there are 9 total reviews, all of which are positive. There are a further 14 ratings with no reviews, of which 3 are negative and 11 are positive.
The rest is people taking it upon themselves to log in to Amazon to trash the book and its author, for sad reasons of their own, and you only need a quick look at Truss's Twitter feed to see that's all too common.
The opinions of a middle-class, middle-aged, historically aware but vaguely gammony man on St. George:
It's hard to get too excited about him either way as an individual. Clearly he was introduced in the plantaganet era by foreign kings with different values. It would have been nice to have retained one of our pre-Norman actually English saints as our patron saint - Cuthbert, say, or Alban. But largely they all had daft names. So maybe not. In any case, the concept of a patron saint is a bit foreign now: we don't really have much more in common with the values of Cuthbert or Alban than we do with George. It's hard to get too enthusiastic about the concept of early English Christians: mostly they tend to come across as on the side of Christianity, rather than of the English. It's hard, for the vaguely partisan 21st century Englishman, to side with dark ages English Christians over dark ages English pagans; and harder still to be unequivocally sure that the right side won at the synod of Whitby. Essentially it would be hard to find an English saint who we could be unequivocally supportive of.
Still, everyone apparently has to have a patron saint, and St. George is probably no worse than anyone else. He has a nice flag. And more to the point, he's who we've got; he's been our patron saint for generations, and that is more important (for the English or anyone else) than whatever qualities he himself might have possessed. Frankly the qualities of the saint himself are incidental: it's a national day, which again, everyone apparently has to have, and one in mid-Spring seems the right sort of time to have one.
We don't make a massive fuss, but we don't let the day go past entirely uncommented on as we might with, say, Rogation Sunday. Seems about right.
I once heard an American describe Bonfire Night as the British national day. I initially thought this a cultural misreading: they have fireworks on 4th July, which is their national day; our fireworks are on 5th November, so that must be our national day. A big oversimplification. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought it to be true. Bonfire night is when we are at our most unselfconsciously British. It's one of the very few solely British traditions, and one which we do without really thinking about. We rehash the historical story, but we don't really think about the significance of it: we just set fire to things and blow things up. You could, if you want, see it as the first win for parliamentary democracy over absolutism, but most people don't really think about things that deeply, and it's not really in the British tradition to do so. You don't HAVE to do anything; your presence isn't required anywhere. No-one needs to fall out about its significance. It's just something that happens. That to me makes it a true national day.
Speak for yourself , I am certainly not British on 5th November or any other date.
You just don't identify as British, malcolm. It would take another referendum, or your renouncing your citizenship, to change the uncomfortable fact.
Neither of those things would change that fact. Scotland voting for independence wouldn't change its geography, and Malcolm becoming stateless would not change his origin.
Of course they would. Scottish independence would make malcolm solely Scottish, without the taint of Britain.
I might as well say that you are European.
I assume you're being sarcastic, but just in case, I am European.
The answer is going to depend on what you mean. Our objective and legal citizenship (for most of us) is that of the UK of GB and NI. Our subjective one is whatsoever you will. Hope that ends the discussion......
Of course it doesn't. Citizenship has nothing to do with it. People from Britain are British - it's simply a function of geography. Just like the most ardent remainer and the fiercest leaver are still European, because geographically we're in Europe. We haven't gone anywhere. If and when Scotland ever becomes independent it will be as British the day after it as it was the day before.
I don't think that's right. 'British' has a legal status as in, for example, 'British citizen'.
Something like 'European' mostly doesn't, (though of course 'EU citizen' does - and when the UK left the EU most British citizens lost that EU citizen status.
Doesn't change the situation. Look more closely, as I poined out on the previous thread. The default filters exclude critical verified purchases, so far as I can see.
In fact there are some one-star verified purchases, so AndyJS is entirely accurate even if one sticks to verified purchases.
Plus verified just means bought through Amazon - nothing more. And some of the critical reviews have obviously read the book.
More generally, the unreliability of the review system on online purchases, bookings etc. is a major concern [edit] for online merchants, broadly speaking. See link in my post on the last thread.
It's a mystery. Who on earth buys reads this stuff? Has a single PB reader/contributor bought it? I never meet anyone who would contemplate it, even next month for 50p in the Oxfam shop. All politics wonks know that it would be self justifying drivel, and that the reviews will point up anything interesting; non-politics people would (rightly) prefer to read The People's Friend or Finnegans Wake.
Does anyone know?
Despite my conflating reviews with star ratings, the thing that strikes me is how few people have bought it and bothered to comment on it one way or another, even as star ratings. And a few of the five star ratings are actually extremely critical - "Wonderfully absorbant!" and "I just got the sample, and wouldn't dream of buying the book. But the sample made me laugh out loud a few times, which amply repaid the effort of wading through the turgid prose. This woman will entertain us for years!"
As for "Everyone should read this - but most are incapable of understanding it", that's decidedly back-handed praise especially when there is such a chorus of "well written" in the positive reviews.
More generally, that sort of wildly uneven distribution of star ratings is a key warning sign on any internet marketplace that the review system isn't working, for whatever reason. Sometimes it's being fiddled; here, it's far more likely to be political partisanship, on both sides, as is pretty clear from the written reviews.
You seem to have a pathological need for people to hate and trash this book, for which you have my sympathy, but there's really nothing strange going on here. Of those we know have actually bought the book, there are 9 total reviews, all of which are positive. There are a further 14 ratings with no reviews, of which 3 are negative and 11 are positive.
The rest is people taking it upon themselves to log in to Amazon to trash the book and its author, for sad reasons of their own, and you only need a quick look at Truss's Twitter feed to see that's all too common.
No: I have *expressed no opinion about the book*. I've simply said that the evidence you submit for its quality is unreliable.
Consumers Association studies have been very interesting about how easily this sort of supposed customer review system can be subverted, and how one can spot it. This sort of distribution of the star rating is a key warning.
The flag of St George was first flown in England by yeomen and peasants of the Weald of Sussex and Kent, rebelling against their corrupt and incompetent overlords.
Just so you know.
I loathe these people that ALWAYS say on St George’s Day, in a wanky and sneering tone “oh don’t you know he’s actually from Syria, he would be a refugee” as if it’s some amazing discovery they’ve made, and proves some fucking ludicrous point they don’t have
Always Remainers. Midwit Remainers. Guaranteed
Despite being a Remainer, and a Scot by birth, I bedeck our house with beautiful plastic St George's cross bunting during any major international football tournament. Do you?
As an Englishman, I’m about to eat a dozen Breton oysters PAID FOR BY THE FRENCH
Doesn’t get more patriotically English than that
Soon all good oyster eating stout yeomen of Merrie Englande will be able to wash them down for the first time in history with AUTHENTIC English Muscadet.
It won’t of course be allowed to use the name Muscadet. It’s only Muscadet if it comes from the Muscadet appellation in Southern Brittany. So it will have to use the grape variety, “Melon de Bourgogne”.
From 2026.
EDIT: I realised that read very much like a post in the style of @SeaShantyIrish2 so I’ve compounded the effect by capitalising one word.
The opinions of a middle-class, middle-aged, historically aware but vaguely gammony man on St. George:
It's hard to get too excited about him either way as an individual. Clearly he was introduced in the plantaganet era by foreign kings with different values. It would have been nice to have retained one of our pre-Norman actually English saints as our patron saint - Cuthbert, say, or Alban. But largely they all had daft names. So maybe not. In any case, the concept of a patron saint is a bit foreign now: we don't really have much more in common with the values of Cuthbert or Alban than we do with George. It's hard to get too enthusiastic about the concept of early English Christians: mostly they tend to come across as on the side of Christianity, rather than of the English. It's hard, for the vaguely partisan 21st century Englishman, to side with dark ages English Christians over dark ages English pagans; and harder still to be unequivocally sure that the right side won at the synod of Whitby. Essentially it would be hard to find an English saint who we could be unequivocally supportive of.
Still, everyone apparently has to have a patron saint, and St. George is probably no worse than anyone else. He has a nice flag. And more to the point, he's who we've got; he's been our patron saint for generations, and that is more important (for the English or anyone else) than whatever qualities he himself might have possessed. Frankly the qualities of the saint himself are incidental: it's a national day, which again, everyone apparently has to have, and one in mid-Spring seems the right sort of time to have one.
We don't make a massive fuss, but we don't let the day go past entirely uncommented on as we might with, say, Rogation Sunday. Seems about right.
I once heard an American describe Bonfire Night as the British national day. I initially thought this a cultural misreading: they have fireworks on 4th July, which is their national day; our fireworks are on 5th November, so that must be our national day. A big oversimplification. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought it to be true. Bonfire night is when we are at our most unselfconsciously British. It's one of the very few solely British traditions, and one which we do without really thinking about. We rehash the historical story, but we don't really think about the significance of it: we just set fire to things and blow things up. You could, if you want, see it as the first win for parliamentary democracy over absolutism, but most people don't really think about things that deeply, and it's not really in the British tradition to do so. You don't HAVE to do anything; your presence isn't required anywhere. No-one needs to fall out about its significance. It's just something that happens. That to me makes it a true national day.
Speak for yourself , I am certainly not British on 5th November or any other date.
You just don't identify as British, malcolm. It would take another referendum, or your renouncing your citizenship, to change the uncomfortable fact.
Neither of those things would change that fact. Scotland voting for independence wouldn't change its geography, and Malcolm becoming stateless would not change his origin.
Of course they would. Scottish independence would make malcolm solely Scottish, without the taint of Britain.
I might as well say that you are European.
I assume you're being sarcastic, but just in case, I am European.
The answer is going to depend on what you mean. Our objective and legal citizenship (for most of us) is that of the UK of GB and NI. Our subjective one is whatsoever you will. Hope that ends the discussion......
Of course it doesn't. Citizenship has nothing to do with it. People from Britain are British - it's simply a function of geography. Just like the most ardent remainer and the fiercest leaver are still European, because geographically we're in Europe. We haven't gone anywhere. If and when Scotland ever becomes independent it will be as British the day after it as it was the day before.
I don't think that's right. 'British' has a legal status as in, for example, 'British citizen'.
Something like 'European' mostly doesn't, (though of course 'EU citizen' does - and when the UK left the EU most British citizens lost that EU citizen status.
It doesn't matter what political dimensions or identities overlay it, it is still a simple geographical fact that Scotland is part of Britain, and will remain so until it finds a way to tow itself to Sweden.
Is @Malmesbury still around ? I was re-reading this, and for some reason thought of him.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto ...The proposed use for nuclear-powered ramjets would be to power a cruise missile, called SLAM, for Supersonic Low Altitude Missile. It would have many advantages over other nuclear weapons delivery systems. It was estimated that the reactor would weigh between 23,000 and 91,000 kilograms (50,000 and 200,000 lb), permitting a payload of over 23,000 kilograms (50,000 lb). Operating at Mach 3, or around 3,700 kilometers per hour (2,300 mph) and flying as low as 150 meters (500 ft), it would be invulnerable to interception by contemporary air defenses. It would carry sixteen nuclear warheads with nuclear weapon yields of up to 10 megatonnes of TNT (42 PJ) and would deliver them with greater accuracy than was possible with ICBMs at the time and, unlike them, it could be recalled.[7] It was estimated that the unit cost of each missile would be less than $5 million (equivalent to $38.00 million in 2023), making them much cheaper than a Boeing B-52 Stratofortress bomber.
Scarily, the thing seemed eminently buildable with 1950s technology.
The flag of St George was first flown in England by yeomen and peasants of the Weald of Sussex and Kent, rebelling against their corrupt and incompetent overlords.
Just so you know.
I loathe these people that ALWAYS say on St George’s Day, in a wanky and sneering tone “oh don’t you know he’s actually from Syria, he would be a refugee” as if it’s some amazing discovery they’ve made, and proves some fucking ludicrous point they don’t have
Always Remainers. Midwit Remainers. Guaranteed
Despite being a Remainer, and a Scot by birth, I bedeck our house with beautiful plastic St George's cross bunting during any major international football tournament. Do you?
As an Englishman, I’m about to eat a dozen Breton oysters PAID FOR BY THE FRENCH
Doesn’t get more patriotically English than that
Soon all good oyster eating stout yeomen of Merrie Englande will be able to wash them down for the first time in history with authentic English Muscadet.
It won’t of course be allowed to use the name Muscadet. It’s only Muscadet if it comes from the Muscadet appellation in Southern Brittany. So it will have to use the grape variety, “Melon de Bourgogne”.
From 2026.
Haven't British (I hesitate to narrow it down to English) oysters been significantly impacted by all the poop in the water? Might be able to wash them down with something else authetically English.
The opinions of a middle-class, middle-aged, historically aware but vaguely gammony man on St. George:
It's hard to get too excited about him either way as an individual. Clearly he was introduced in the plantaganet era by foreign kings with different values. It would have been nice to have retained one of our pre-Norman actually English saints as our patron saint - Cuthbert, say, or Alban. But largely they all had daft names. So maybe not. In any case, the concept of a patron saint is a bit foreign now: we don't really have much more in common with the values of Cuthbert or Alban than we do with George. It's hard to get too enthusiastic about the concept of early English Christians: mostly they tend to come across as on the side of Christianity, rather than of the English. It's hard, for the vaguely partisan 21st century Englishman, to side with dark ages English Christians over dark ages English pagans; and harder still to be unequivocally sure that the right side won at the synod of Whitby. Essentially it would be hard to find an English saint who we could be unequivocally supportive of.
Still, everyone apparently has to have a patron saint, and St. George is probably no worse than anyone else. He has a nice flag. And more to the point, he's who we've got; he's been our patron saint for generations, and that is more important (for the English or anyone else) than whatever qualities he himself might have possessed. Frankly the qualities of the saint himself are incidental: it's a national day, which again, everyone apparently has to have, and one in mid-Spring seems the right sort of time to have one.
We don't make a massive fuss, but we don't let the day go past entirely uncommented on as we might with, say, Rogation Sunday. Seems about right.
I once heard an American describe Bonfire Night as the British national day. I initially thought this a cultural misreading: they have fireworks on 4th July, which is their national day; our fireworks are on 5th November, so that must be our national day. A big oversimplification. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought it to be true. Bonfire night is when we are at our most unselfconsciously British. It's one of the very few solely British traditions, and one which we do without really thinking about. We rehash the historical story, but we don't really think about the significance of it: we just set fire to things and blow things up. You could, if you want, see it as the first win for parliamentary democracy over absolutism, but most people don't really think about things that deeply, and it's not really in the British tradition to do so. You don't HAVE to do anything; your presence isn't required anywhere. No-one needs to fall out about its significance. It's just something that happens. That to me makes it a true national day.
Speak for yourself , I am certainly not British on 5th November or any other date.
You just don't identify as British, malcolm. It would take another referendum, or your renouncing your citizenship, to change the uncomfortable fact.
Neither of those things would change that fact. Scotland voting for independence wouldn't change its geography, and Malcolm becoming stateless would not change his origin.
Of course they would. Scottish independence would make malcolm solely Scottish, without the taint of Britain.
I might as well say that you are European.
I assume you're being sarcastic, but just in case, I am European.
The answer is going to depend on what you mean. Our objective and legal citizenship (for most of us) is that of the UK of GB and NI. Our subjective one is whatsoever you will. Hope that ends the discussion......
Of course it doesn't. Citizenship has nothing to do with it. People from Britain are British - it's simply a function of geography. Just like the most ardent remainer and the fiercest leaver are still European, because geographically we're in Europe. We haven't gone anywhere. If and when Scotland ever becomes independent it will be as British the day after it as it was the day before.
I don't think that's right. 'British' has a legal status as in, for example, 'British citizen'.
Something like 'European' mostly doesn't, (though of course 'EU citizen' does - and when the UK left the EU most British citizens lost that EU citizen status.
It doesn't matter what political dimensions or identities overlay it, it is still a simple geographical fact that Scotland is part of Britain, and will remain so until it finds a way to tow itself to Sweden.
In any case, Britain is meaningless legally. It's 'United Kingdom' albeit with the complication of NI being part of the EU for certain purposes.
The flag of St George was first flown in England by yeomen and peasants of the Weald of Sussex and Kent, rebelling against their corrupt and incompetent overlords.
Just so you know.
I loathe these people that ALWAYS say on St George’s Day, in a wanky and sneering tone “oh don’t you know he’s actually from Syria, he would be a refugee” as if it’s some amazing discovery they’ve made, and proves some fucking ludicrous point they don’t have
Always Remainers. Midwit Remainers. Guaranteed
Despite being a Remainer, and a Scot by birth, I bedeck our house with beautiful plastic St George's cross bunting during any major international football tournament. Do you?
As an Englishman, I’m about to eat a dozen Breton oysters PAID FOR BY THE FRENCH
Doesn’t get more patriotically English than that
Soon all good oyster eating stout yeomen of Merrie Englande will be able to wash them down for the first time in history with authentic English Muscadet.
It won’t of course be allowed to use the name Muscadet. It’s only Muscadet if it comes from the Muscadet appellation in Southern Brittany. So it will have to use the grape variety, “Melon de Bourgogne”.
From 2026.
Haven't British (I hesitate to narrow it down to English) oysters been significantly impacted by all the poop in the water? Might be able to wash them down with something else authetically English.
A little something for SKS's St George's Day patriotism initiative:
St George, it seems, was born a Grecian And got bumped off by Diocletian An Englishman he really ain’t So how come he’s their patron saint?
And you will find, in similar vein, He’s claimed by Moscow *and* Ukraine, Georgia, Malta, Bosnia too, And several others in the queue
And as for all that dragon stuff, It really is a load of guff It’s just another permutation Of fables found in every nation
So given that the English are Almost entirely secular They sure don’t need a patron saint The notion is entirely quaint.
Ha ha, that's pisspoor
Oh freddled gruntbuggly, Thy micturations are to me, (with big yawning) As plurdled gabbleblotchits, in midsummer morning On a lurgid bee, That mordiously hath blurted out, Its earted jurtles, grumbling Into a rancid festering confectious organ squealer. [drowned out by moaning and screaming] Now the jurpling slayjid agrocrustles, Are slurping hagrilly up the axlegrurts, And living glupules frart and stipulate, Like jowling meated liverslime, Groop, I implore thee, my foonting turlingdromes, And hooptiously drangle me, With crinkly bindlewurdles,mashurbitries. Or else I shall rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon, See if I don't!
I will be unimpressed unless that was typed from memory, not Googled.
"Overall, government debt was around 98.3% of the UK's annual gross domestic product (GDP) in March - up 2.6 percentage points from the previous year and at levels not seen since the early 1960s."
But didn't Rishi Rich tell us that he would bring down the debt?
Unfunded NI cuts pushing up the debt!
This will keep interest rates higher for longer.
Indeed, NI cuts should be fully funded by raising income tax.
Merging Income Tax and NI would depending upon your political bent allow real tax cuts for people in work, or raise billions for expenditure. Win/win either way.
Only people who lose out are those not working for a living, who want to be subsidised by those who are working.
Well they can just go and get a job.
Er no. NI is there for people to contribute towards their state pension.
Current state pension recipients have paid for their state pension so it's only fair that current workers should do so
👍
No current state pension recipients have not paid for their state pension.
If they have, then let's use their savings they've set aside to pay for it to fully fund their pensions and not have today's workers pay for it instead.
Give it a rest you nutjob. Most people have little to no savings. What bit of they paid NI for 50 years and that was always designated as funding state pensions. You are always desperate to get something for nothing.
What he wants is for you to work all your life to pay other people's pensions and when it comes to claiming your own it's a case of "tough shit", dig into your savings.
Very fair.
If people like you or I could have put the money we paid into other people's pensions into our own pot we wouldn't have this issue.
In the long term NEST may well solve this.
I'm quite OK with him claiming a pension.
I also think he should pay for it.
All income, from all people, of all ages, should be paying for today's pensioners.
What happened for funding previous pensioners is neither here nor there, today's pensioners have not set aside funding for their pension and it needs paying so everyone should pay equitably. Its not already been paid for.
The flag of St George was first flown in England by yeomen and peasants of the Weald of Sussex and Kent, rebelling against their corrupt and incompetent overlords.
Just so you know.
I loathe these people that ALWAYS say on St George’s Day, in a wanky and sneering tone “oh don’t you know he’s actually from Syria, he would be a refugee” as if it’s some amazing discovery they’ve made, and proves some fucking ludicrous point they don’t have
Always Remainers. Midwit Remainers. Guaranteed
Despite being a Remainer, and a Scot by birth, I bedeck our house with beautiful plastic St George's cross bunting during any major international football tournament. Do you?
As an Englishman, I’m about to eat a dozen Breton oysters PAID FOR BY THE FRENCH
Doesn’t get more patriotically English than that
Soon all good oyster eating stout yeomen of Merrie Englande will be able to wash them down for the first time in history with authentic English Muscadet.
It won’t of course be allowed to use the name Muscadet. It’s only Muscadet if it comes from the Muscadet appellation in Southern Brittany. So it will have to use the grape variety, “Melon de Bourgogne”.
From 2026.
Haven't British (I hesitate to narrow it down to English) oysters been significantly impacted by all the poop in the water? Might be able to wash them down with something else authetically English.
Pointe du Raz. The Celtic Sublime on a glorious day - skylarks trill above the sea-thrift
That’s the Ile de Sein out there. Mythically the end of the world, and home to an ancient little town and port
In lost Celtic times it was the domain of virgin druid priestesses prone to human sacrifice. By the 17th century it boasted a tribe of black capped wrecking witches who would lure sailors to their deaths on the many lethal reefs
Perhaps to make up for this chequered record, when Charles de Gaulle made his famous appeal to France from London on June 18, 1940, every single able bodied male inhabitant of the island - some 150 men - got in a fishing boat and sailed to Britain to join the Free French
Superbe
Mythically, the end of the world. Well, apart from a bit further on, England.
How very French.
And Ireland. Let's not forget. All one linked association in the Celtic days, and still too to some extent.
The ancient ley lines - a straight line through from Skellig via St Michael's Mount to Mont St. Michel - may or may not be coincidence....
"Overall, government debt was around 98.3% of the UK's annual gross domestic product (GDP) in March - up 2.6 percentage points from the previous year and at levels not seen since the early 1960s."
But didn't Rishi Rich tell us that he would bring down the debt?
Unfunded NI cuts pushing up the debt!
This will keep interest rates higher for longer.
Indeed, NI cuts should be fully funded by raising income tax.
Merging Income Tax and NI would depending upon your political bent allow real tax cuts for people in work, or raise billions for expenditure. Win/win either way.
Only people who lose out are those not working for a living, who want to be subsidised by those who are working.
Well they can just go and get a job.
Er no. NI is there for people to contribute towards their state pension.
Current state pension recipients have paid for their state pension so it's only fair that current workers should do so
👍
No current state pension recipients have not paid for their state pension.
If they have, then let's use their savings they've set aside to pay for it to fully fund their pensions and not have today's workers pay for it instead.
Give it a rest you nutjob. Most people have little to no savings. What bit of they paid NI for 50 years and that was always designated as funding state pensions. You are always desperate to get something for nothing.
What he wants is for you to work all your life to pay other people's pensions and when it comes to claiming your own it's a case of "tough shit", dig into your savings.
Very fair.
If people like you or I could have put the money we paid into other people's pensions into our own pot we wouldn't have this issue.
In the long term NEST may well solve this.
What happened for funding previous pensioners is neither here nor there,
"Overall, government debt was around 98.3% of the UK's annual gross domestic product (GDP) in March - up 2.6 percentage points from the previous year and at levels not seen since the early 1960s."
But didn't Rishi Rich tell us that he would bring down the debt?
Unfunded NI cuts pushing up the debt!
This will keep interest rates higher for longer.
Indeed, NI cuts should be fully funded by raising income tax.
Merging Income Tax and NI would depending upon your political bent allow real tax cuts for people in work, or raise billions for expenditure. Win/win either way.
Only people who lose out are those not working for a living, who want to be subsidised by those who are working.
Well they can just go and get a job.
Er no. NI is there for people to contribute towards their state pension.
Current state pension recipients have paid for their state pension so it's only fair that current workers should do so
👍
NI gives you an entitlement to the state pension. The idea that the NI someone has paid has fully funded their pension is ridiculous.
My NI payments over 50+years would have yielded a far better deal than the state pension guaranteed.
And my fuel duty over 20+ years would have yielded far better roads had it actually been spend on the roads than gone into the general pot too.
Unfortunately we don't get to control how individual taxes are directed.
Your NI payments in the past, like my fuel duty payments in the past, like all other taxes, have already been spent. They weren't ever set aside to fund your pension.
I will get a jackhammer see if I can penetrate the thickness. fuel duty was never sold as being for road improvement. NI was introduced to pay for state pensions and sold as such. Fact that arsehole governments do not put it away does not mean that they are not responsible to pay it. Not sure why your pea brain cannot register that fact.
You're the one being thick.
Yes they have a responsibility to pay for it, and the payments need to come from general taxation, just as it always has done.
NI is a form of general taxation. However it was sold is neither here nor there, it is no more and no less than general taxation.
All general taxation should be paid equally by all people. Its long past time to abolish NI. Your pension can be paid out of the general pot, out of taxes that you, I and everyone else in this country needs to pay equitably.
The flag of St George was first flown in England by yeomen and peasants of the Weald of Sussex and Kent, rebelling against their corrupt and incompetent overlords.
Just so you know.
I loathe these people that ALWAYS say on St George’s Day, in a wanky and sneering tone “oh don’t you know he’s actually from Syria, he would be a refugee” as if it’s some amazing discovery they’ve made, and proves some fucking ludicrous point they don’t have
Always Remainers. Midwit Remainers. Guaranteed
Despite being a Remainer, and a Scot by birth, I bedeck our house with beautiful plastic St George's cross bunting during any major international football tournament. Do you?
As an Englishman, I’m about to eat a dozen Breton oysters PAID FOR BY THE FRENCH
Doesn’t get more patriotically English than that
Soon all good oyster eating stout yeomen of Merrie Englande will be able to wash them down for the first time in history with authentic English Muscadet.
It won’t of course be allowed to use the name Muscadet. It’s only Muscadet if it comes from the Muscadet appellation in Southern Brittany. So it will have to use the grape variety, “Melon de Bourgogne”.
From 2026.
Haven't British (I hesitate to narrow it down to English) oysters been significantly impacted by all the poop in the water? Might be able to wash them down with something else authetically English.
By 2026 our coastal waters will be sparklingly limpid, healthy and clean.
"Overall, government debt was around 98.3% of the UK's annual gross domestic product (GDP) in March - up 2.6 percentage points from the previous year and at levels not seen since the early 1960s."
But didn't Rishi Rich tell us that he would bring down the debt?
Unfunded NI cuts pushing up the debt!
This will keep interest rates higher for longer.
Indeed, NI cuts should be fully funded by raising income tax.
Merging Income Tax and NI would depending upon your political bent allow real tax cuts for people in work, or raise billions for expenditure. Win/win either way.
Only people who lose out are those not working for a living, who want to be subsidised by those who are working.
Well they can just go and get a job.
Er no. NI is there for people to contribute towards their state pension.
Current state pension recipients have paid for their state pension so it's only fair that current workers should do so
👍
No current state pension recipients have not paid for their state pension.
If they have, then let's use their savings they've set aside to pay for it to fully fund their pensions and not have today's workers pay for it instead.
Give it a rest you nutjob. Most people have little to no savings. What bit of they paid NI for 50 years and that was always designated as funding state pensions. You are always desperate to get something for nothing.
What he wants is for you to work all your life to pay other people's pensions and when it comes to claiming your own it's a case of "tough shit", dig into your savings.
Very fair.
If people like you or I could have put the money we paid into other people's pensions into our own pot we wouldn't have this issue.
In the long term NEST may well solve this.
What happened for funding previous pensioners is neither here nor there,
It is to those of us who paid it
Except you never paid for yourself. That's the problem.
You paid perhaps for a much smaller generation, that had much lower payments, no triple lock, and lived much less time while retired.
It is neglect that there have been no savings made for the boomers. Economists and demographers have been warning about this for 40 years. I was learning about this as an economic issue in the 1990s. Well its too late now, it needs paying for and since it wasn't paid while you were working, it will need paying for while you're retired instead. Everyone needs to pay taxes equitably, those who are working should pay no more than those who are not.
Philosophical question: I wonder if it's a sign of democratic failure when large numbers of people start using the legal system to engage in political arguments? For instance, how often do people in places like Norway and Denmark use the legal system to conduct what are essentially political disagreements instead of relying on elected politicians.
It seems to me that the overuse of legal systems to do what is conventionally done by political and admin processes is an indicator of several things. Here are three.
Firstly it is a product of copious legislation and treaty obligation whereby governments fetter themselves to literally millions of pages of regulation which they themselves are bound by. At the same time they are, at the moment, subject to the rule of law whereby government agrees to obey the courts. Democracy has become a process in which 800 years of the past limits the possibilities as long as the deal is that government can't break its own laws. Deocracy is so new that we don't really know what happens when it ages. Perhaps we are finding out.
Secondly it is one of the few ways in which, in a massive and centralised state, people feel they can be involved in decision making.
Thirdly it is a lucrative industry for lawyers etc, and a diversion for trouble makers.
Doesn't change the situation. Look more closely, as I poined out on the previous thread. The default filters exclude critical verified purchases, so far as I can see.
In fact there are some one-star verified purchases, so AndyJS is entirely accurate even if one sticks to verified purchases.
Plus verified just means bought through Amazon - nothing more. And some of the critical reviews have obviously read the book.
More generally, the unreliability of the review system on online purchases, bookings etc. is a major concern [edit] for online merchants, broadly speaking. See link in my post on the last thread.
It's a mystery. Who on earth buys reads this stuff? Has a single PB reader/contributor bought it? I never meet anyone who would contemplate it, even next month for 50p in the Oxfam shop. All politics wonks know that it would be self justifying drivel, and that the reviews will point up anything interesting; non-politics people would (rightly) prefer to read The People's Friend or Finnegans Wake.
Does anyone know?
Good luck finding a book for 50p in Oxfam. £2.99 is more par for the course. There is quite a range in paperback costs between the various charity shops - Oxfam the highest prices, and others ranging down to the 65p or "two for £1" mark. The challenge is, of course, finding something worth reading in amongst the chick-lit, murder stories (most of which have the word "death" in the title), and weird shit. But that is all part of the pleasure of browsing the book shelves of a charity shop.
Better value still is the book exchange at the station - completely free.
Full disclosure: I have a backlog of 30 fiction paperbacks on my "to be read" shelf, all purchased from charity shops, except for one that was picked up at the station. (I have donated more than I've taken, btw.)
Yesterday I made a start on "Look Homeward, Angel" by Thomas Wolfe. So far so good - excellent prose and an interesting storyline. Only another 510 pages to go...
The flag of St George was first flown in England by yeomen and peasants of the Weald of Sussex and Kent, rebelling against their corrupt and incompetent overlords.
Just so you know.
I loathe these people that ALWAYS say on St George’s Day, in a wanky and sneering tone “oh don’t you know he’s actually from Syria, he would be a refugee” as if it’s some amazing discovery they’ve made, and proves some fucking ludicrous point they don’t have
Always Remainers. Midwit Remainers. Guaranteed
Despite being a Remainer, and a Scot by birth, I bedeck our house with beautiful plastic St George's cross bunting during any major international football tournament. Do you?
As an Englishman, I’m about to eat a dozen Breton oysters PAID FOR BY THE FRENCH
Doesn’t get more patriotically English than that
Soon all good oyster eating stout yeomen of Merrie Englande will be able to wash them down for the first time in history with authentic English Muscadet.
It won’t of course be allowed to use the name Muscadet. It’s only Muscadet if it comes from the Muscadet appellation in Southern Brittany. So it will have to use the grape variety, “Melon de Bourgogne”.
From 2026.
Haven't British (I hesitate to narrow it down to English) oysters been significantly impacted by all the poop in the water? Might be able to wash them down with something else authetically English.
By 2026 our coastal waters will be sparklingly limpid, healthy and clean.
Aren't you confusing them with your wine? (Which does sound very promising.)
Mr. rkrkr, with the likes of tips/bits/superchats, the 'depth' of an audience can matter as much as the breadth. If a guy has 100 followers but two of those are generous millionaires, that can still make him plenty of cash.
Watching a YouTube video is pretty easy but one view isn't worth a lot, and few subscribe, with even fewer donating/joining a Patreon. It's quite interesting how that sort of thing works regarding viability. Headline numbers on followers or viewcount might not mean a huge amount.
The flag of St George was first flown in England by yeomen and peasants of the Weald of Sussex and Kent, rebelling against their corrupt and incompetent overlords.
Just so you know.
Wasn’t the flag of Wessex a White Dragon? Or was that Anglia?
The White Dragon represented the Anglo Saxons, but I think this was in Celtic myth rather than being self-selected as such. (The story is, ISTR, of a red dragon fighting a white dragon in Oxford, of all places.) Had our ancestors been so disposed, there would have been an opportunity for some sort of flag and associated myths which involved both the red and white dragons. Alas, far too late now.
In the Welsh book of the Mabinogi, there is a legend of a Red Dragon of the Britons (Welsh) fighting a White Dragon (Saxons).
The flag of St George was first flown in England by yeomen and peasants of the Weald of Sussex and Kent, rebelling against their corrupt and incompetent overlords.
Just so you know.
I loathe these people that ALWAYS say on St George’s Day, in a wanky and sneering tone “oh don’t you know he’s actually from Syria, he would be a refugee” as if it’s some amazing discovery they’ve made, and proves some fucking ludicrous point they don’t have
Always Remainers. Midwit Remainers. Guaranteed
Despite being a Remainer, and a Scot by birth, I bedeck our house with beautiful plastic St George's cross bunting during any major international football tournament. Do you?
As an Englishman, I’m about to eat a dozen Breton oysters PAID FOR BY THE FRENCH
Doesn’t get more patriotically English than that
Soon all good oyster eating stout yeomen of Merrie Englande will be able to wash them down for the first time in history with authentic English Muscadet.
It won’t of course be allowed to use the name Muscadet. It’s only Muscadet if it comes from the Muscadet appellation in Southern Brittany. So it will have to use the grape variety, “Melon de Bourgogne”.
From 2026.
Haven't British (I hesitate to narrow it down to English) oysters been significantly impacted by all the poop in the water? Might be able to wash them down with something else authetically English.
The flag of St George was first flown in England by yeomen and peasants of the Weald of Sussex and Kent, rebelling against their corrupt and incompetent overlords.
Just so you know.
I loathe these people that ALWAYS say on St George’s Day, in a wanky and sneering tone “oh don’t you know he’s actually from Syria, he would be a refugee” as if it’s some amazing discovery they’ve made, and proves some fucking ludicrous point they don’t have
Always Remainers. Midwit Remainers. Guaranteed
Despite being a Remainer, and a Scot by birth, I bedeck our house with beautiful plastic St George's cross bunting during any major international football tournament. Do you?
As an Englishman, I’m about to eat a dozen Breton oysters PAID FOR BY THE FRENCH
Doesn’t get more patriotically English than that
Soon all good oyster eating stout yeomen of Merrie Englande will be able to wash them down for the first time in history with authentic English Muscadet.
It won’t of course be allowed to use the name Muscadet. It’s only Muscadet if it comes from the Muscadet appellation in Southern Brittany. So it will have to use the grape variety, “Melon de Bourgogne”.
From 2026.
Haven't British (I hesitate to narrow it down to English) oysters been significantly impacted by all the poop in the water? Might be able to wash them down with something else authetically English.
By 2026 our coastal waters will be sparklingly limpid, healthy and clean.
Aren't you confusing them with your wine? (Which does sound very promising.)
Haven’t you been reading the Lib Dems’ Twitter feed? All it takes is a few Blue Wall seats to go yellow and shitty water bodies will be a thing of the past.
A little something for SKS's St George's Day patriotism initiative:
St George, it seems, was born a Grecian And got bumped off by Diocletian An Englishman he really ain’t So how come he’s their patron saint?
And you will find, in similar vein, He’s claimed by Moscow *and* Ukraine, Georgia, Malta, Bosnia too, And several others in the queue
And as for all that dragon stuff, It really is a load of guff It’s just another permutation Of fables found in every nation
So given that the English are Almost entirely secular They sure don’t need a patron saint The notion is entirely quaint.
Ha ha, that's pisspoor
Oh freddled gruntbuggly, Thy micturations are to me, (with big yawning) As plurdled gabbleblotchits, in midsummer morning On a lurgid bee, That mordiously hath blurted out, Its earted jurtles, grumbling Into a rancid festering confectious organ squealer. [drowned out by moaning and screaming] Now the jurpling slayjid agrocrustles, Are slurping hagrilly up the axlegrurts, And living glupules frart and stipulate, Like jowling meated liverslime, Groop, I implore thee, my foonting turlingdromes, And hooptiously drangle me, With crinkly bindlewurdles,mashurbitries. Or else I shall rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon, See if I don't!
I will be unimpressed unless that was typed from memory, not Googled.
The opinions of a middle-class, middle-aged, historically aware but vaguely gammony man on St. George:
It's hard to get too excited about him either way as an individual. Clearly he was introduced in the plantaganet era by foreign kings with different values. It would have been nice to have retained one of our pre-Norman actually English saints as our patron saint - Cuthbert, say, or Alban. But largely they all had daft names. So maybe not. In any case, the concept of a patron saint is a bit foreign now: we don't really have much more in common with the values of Cuthbert or Alban than we do with George. It's hard to get too enthusiastic about the concept of early English Christians: mostly they tend to come across as on the side of Christianity, rather than of the English. It's hard, for the vaguely partisan 21st century Englishman, to side with dark ages English Christians over dark ages English pagans; and harder still to be unequivocally sure that the right side won at the synod of Whitby. Essentially it would be hard to find an English saint who we could be unequivocally supportive of.
Still, everyone apparently has to have a patron saint, and St. George is probably no worse than anyone else. He has a nice flag. And more to the point, he's who we've got; he's been our patron saint for generations, and that is more important (for the English or anyone else) than whatever qualities he himself might have possessed. Frankly the qualities of the saint himself are incidental: it's a national day, which again, everyone apparently has to have, and one in mid-Spring seems the right sort of time to have one.
We don't make a massive fuss, but we don't let the day go past entirely uncommented on as we might with, say, Rogation Sunday. Seems about right.
I once heard an American describe Bonfire Night as the British national day. I initially thought this a cultural misreading: they have fireworks on 4th July, which is their national day; our fireworks are on 5th November, so that must be our national day. A big oversimplification. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought it to be true. Bonfire night is when we are at our most unselfconsciously British. It's one of the very few solely British traditions, and one which we do without really thinking about. We rehash the historical story, but we don't really think about the significance of it: we just set fire to things and blow things up. You could, if you want, see it as the first win for parliamentary democracy over absolutism, but most people don't really think about things that deeply, and it's not really in the British tradition to do so. You don't HAVE to do anything; your presence isn't required anywhere. No-one needs to fall out about its significance. It's just something that happens. That to me makes it a true national day.
Speak for yourself , I am certainly not British on 5th Novemner or any other date.
I’d have thought you’d be opposed to blowing up the first Scottish King of whole of the island?
The flag of St George was first flown in England by yeomen and peasants of the Weald of Sussex and Kent, rebelling against their corrupt and incompetent overlords.
Just so you know.
I loathe these people that ALWAYS say on St George’s Day, in a wanky and sneering tone “oh don’t you know he’s actually from Syria, he would be a refugee” as if it’s some amazing discovery they’ve made, and proves some fucking ludicrous point they don’t have
Always Remainers. Midwit Remainers. Guaranteed
Despite being a Remainer, and a Scot by birth, I bedeck our house with beautiful plastic St George's cross bunting during any major international football tournament. Do you?
As an Englishman, I’m about to eat a dozen Breton oysters PAID FOR BY THE FRENCH
Doesn’t get more patriotically English than that
Soon all good oyster eating stout yeomen of Merrie Englande will be able to wash them down for the first time in history with authentic English Muscadet.
It won’t of course be allowed to use the name Muscadet. It’s only Muscadet if it comes from the Muscadet appellation in Southern Brittany. So it will have to use the grape variety, “Melon de Bourgogne”.
From 2026.
Haven't British (I hesitate to narrow it down to English) oysters been significantly impacted by all the poop in the water? Might be able to wash them down with something else authetically English.
The opinions of a middle-class, middle-aged, historically aware but vaguely gammony man on St. George:
It's hard to get too excited about him either way as an individual. Clearly he was introduced in the plantaganet era by foreign kings with different values. It would have been nice to have retained one of our pre-Norman actually English saints as our patron saint - Cuthbert, say, or Alban. But largely they all had daft names. So maybe not. In any case, the concept of a patron saint is a bit foreign now: we don't really have much more in common with the values of Cuthbert or Alban than we do with George. It's hard to get too enthusiastic about the concept of early English Christians: mostly they tend to come across as on the side of Christianity, rather than of the English. It's hard, for the vaguely partisan 21st century Englishman, to side with dark ages English Christians over dark ages English pagans; and harder still to be unequivocally sure that the right side won at the synod of Whitby. Essentially it would be hard to find an English saint who we could be unequivocally supportive of.
Still, everyone apparently has to have a patron saint, and St. George is probably no worse than anyone else. He has a nice flag. And more to the point, he's who we've got; he's been our patron saint for generations, and that is more important (for the English or anyone else) than whatever qualities he himself might have possessed. Frankly the qualities of the saint himself are incidental: it's a national day, which again, everyone apparently has to have, and one in mid-Spring seems the right sort of time to have one.
We don't make a massive fuss, but we don't let the day go past entirely uncommented on as we might with, say, Rogation Sunday. Seems about right.
I once heard an American describe Bonfire Night as the British national day. I initially thought this a cultural misreading: they have fireworks on 4th July, which is their national day; our fireworks are on 5th November, so that must be our national day. A big oversimplification. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought it to be true. Bonfire night is when we are at our most unselfconsciously British. It's one of the very few solely British traditions, and one which we do without really thinking about. We rehash the historical story, but we don't really think about the significance of it: we just set fire to things and blow things up. You could, if you want, see it as the first win for parliamentary democracy over absolutism, but most people don't really think about things that deeply, and it's not really in the British tradition to do so. You don't HAVE to do anything; your presence isn't required anywhere. No-one needs to fall out about its significance. It's just something that happens. That to me makes it a true national day.
Speak for yourself , I am certainly not British on 5th Novemner or any other date.
You should get down on your knees on November 5th, and thank the English for saving and preserving democracy, and then having the generosity to share it with the ungrateful Scots
Um... "interesting" reading of history, the leader of the plot, Robert Catesby was from Warwickshire and Guido Fawkes, of course, was a Yorkshireman. The Gunpowder plot was of course attempting to murder the King in Parliament and overthrow of the established Protestant political order and its replacement with a Catholic dictatorship. The conspirators: Fawkes and Catesby together with 11 others, Thomas Wintour, Jack Wright, Thomas Percy Robert Keyes, Robert Wintour, John Grant, Kit Wright, Thomas Bates, Ambrose Rookwood, Francis Tresham and Sir Everard Digby were all, of course, English.
The King in question, His Grace and Majestie King James VI and I, was, of course, Scottish. We celebrate the FAILURE of the plot, and the punishment of Catesby et al... so, as always here we see the PB reactionary -as usual- trying to fake history to serve his own radical political agenda...namely annoying Scots.
Honestly, Hanging, Drawing and Quartering is too good for him...
I don't know if it's already been mentioned, but Lloyd Bentley, a Texan who went to fight for Putin in Ukraine, and was an enthusiastic blogger on Youtube, was mistaken by Russian soldiers for a spy, so they chopped his head off.
Doesn't change the situation. Look more closely, as I poined out on the previous thread. The default filters exclude critical verified purchases, so far as I can see.
In fact there are some one-star verified purchases, so AndyJS is entirely accurate even if one sticks to verified purchases.
Plus verified just means bought through Amazon - nothing more. And some of the critical reviews have obviously read the book.
More generally, the unreliability of the review system on online purchases, bookings etc. is a major concern [edit] for online merchants, broadly speaking. See link in my post on the last thread.
It's a mystery. Who on earth buys reads this stuff? Has a single PB reader/contributor bought it? I never meet anyone who would contemplate it, even next month for 50p in the Oxfam shop. All politics wonks know that it would be self justifying drivel, and that the reviews will point up anything interesting; non-politics people would (rightly) prefer to read The People's Friend or Finnegans Wake.
Does anyone know?
Good luck finding a book for 50p in Oxfam. £2.99 is more par for the course. There is quite a range in paperback costs between the various charity shops - Oxfam the highest prices, and others ranging down to the 65p or "two for £1" mark. The challenge is, of course, finding something worth reading in amongst the chick-lit, murder stories (most of which have the word "death" in the title), and weird shit. But that is all part of the pleasure of browsing the book shelves of a charity shop.
Better value still is the book exchange at the station - completely free.
Full disclosure: I have a backlog of 30 fiction paperbacks on my "to be read" shelf, all purchased from charity shops, except for one that was picked up at the station. (I have donated more than I've taken, btw.)
Yesterday I made a start on "Look Homeward, Angel" by Thomas Wolfe. So far so good - excellent prose and an interesting storyline. Only another 510 pages to go...
There was a good one on Twitter a couple of days ago - a Bonne Maman jam jar for £2.50 from the BHF.
Also available at ASDA, for £2.60, full of strawberry jam !
The opinions of a middle-class, middle-aged, historically aware but vaguely gammony man on St. George:
It's hard to get too excited about him either way as an individual. Clearly he was introduced in the plantaganet era by foreign kings with different values. It would have been nice to have retained one of our pre-Norman actually English saints as our patron saint - Cuthbert, say, or Alban. But largely they all had daft names. So maybe not. In any case, the concept of a patron saint is a bit foreign now: we don't really have much more in common with the values of Cuthbert or Alban than we do with George. It's hard to get too enthusiastic about the concept of early English Christians: mostly they tend to come across as on the side of Christianity, rather than of the English. It's hard, for the vaguely partisan 21st century Englishman, to side with dark ages English Christians over dark ages English pagans; and harder still to be unequivocally sure that the right side won at the synod of Whitby. Essentially it would be hard to find an English saint who we could be unequivocally supportive of.
Still, everyone apparently has to have a patron saint, and St. George is probably no worse than anyone else. He has a nice flag. And more to the point, he's who we've got; he's been our patron saint for generations, and that is more important (for the English or anyone else) than whatever qualities he himself might have possessed. Frankly the qualities of the saint himself are incidental: it's a national day, which again, everyone apparently has to have, and one in mid-Spring seems the right sort of time to have one.
We don't make a massive fuss, but we don't let the day go past entirely uncommented on as we might with, say, Rogation Sunday. Seems about right.
I once heard an American describe Bonfire Night as the British national day. I initially thought this a cultural misreading: they have fireworks on 4th July, which is their national day; our fireworks are on 5th November, so that must be our national day. A big oversimplification. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought it to be true. Bonfire night is when we are at our most unselfconsciously British. It's one of the very few solely British traditions, and one which we do without really thinking about. We rehash the historical story, but we don't really think about the significance of it: we just set fire to things and blow things up. You could, if you want, see it as the first win for parliamentary democracy over absolutism, but most people don't really think about things that deeply, and it's not really in the British tradition to do so. You don't HAVE to do anything; your presence isn't required anywhere. No-one needs to fall out about its significance. It's just something that happens. That to me makes it a true national day.
Speak for yourself , I am certainly not British on 5th Novemner or any other date.
You should get down on your knees on November 5th, and thank the English for saving and preserving democracy, and then having the generosity to share it with the ungrateful Scots
Um... "interesting" reading of history, the leader of the plot, Robert Catesby was from Warwickshire and Guido Fawkes, of course, was a Yorkshireman. The Gunpowder plot was of course attempting to murder the King in Parliament and overthrow of the established Protestant political order and its replacement with a Catholic dictatorship. The conspirators: Fawkes and Catesby together with 11 others, Thomas Wintour, Jack Wright, Thomas Percy Robert Keyes, Robert Wintour, John Grant, Kit Wright, Thomas Bates, Ambrose Rookwood, Francis Tresham and Sir Everard Digby were all, of course, English.
The King in question, His Grace and Majestie King James VI and I, was, of course, Scottish. We celebrate the FAILURE of the plot, and the punishment of Catesby et al... so, as always here we see the PB reactionary -as usual- trying to fake history to serve his own radical political agenda...namely annoying Scots.
Honestly, Hanging, Drawing and Quartering is too good for him...
Or I’m just poking @malcolmg to see if he reacts. PB’s very own version of bear baiting, a traditional English sport, which we should really revive on the South Bank, along with the Bishop of Winchester’s Geese
The flag of St George was first flown in England by yeomen and peasants of the Weald of Sussex and Kent, rebelling against their corrupt and incompetent overlords.
Just so you know.
Wasn’t the flag of Wessex a White Dragon? Or was that Anglia?
The White Dragon represented the Anglo Saxons, but I think this was in Celtic myth rather than being self-selected as such. (The story is, ISTR, of a red dragon fighting a white dragon in Oxford, of all places.) Had our ancestors been so disposed, there would have been an opportunity for some sort of flag and associated myths which involved both the red and white dragons. Alas, far too late now.
In the Welsh book of the Mabinogi, there is a legend of a Red Dragon of the Britons (Welsh) fighting a White Dragon (Saxons).
The Wessex Flag was/is a Wyvern not a Dragon.
Yes, that's the one I'm thinking of, I think.
Point of order: OTTOMH, I think the Wyvern was the flag of Mercia (later incorporated into the flag of, possibly, the Midland Railway, or possibly the Great Central, or one of the others, for reasons associated with the Midlands). I think.
It's turned a bit rainy here today, so I have retreated into this characterful place for a Ligurian lunch of misto mare and rabbit. The only other customers just left so it's private dining for me and the dog (temporarily unavailable for scaling duty owning to being asleep on the floor)
I don't know if it's already been mentioned, but Lloyd Bentley, a Texan who went to fight for Putin in Ukraine, and was an enthusiastic blogger on Youtube, was mistaken by Russian soldiers for a spy, so they chopped his head off.
I don't know if it's already been mentioned, but Lloyd Bentley, a Texan who went to fight for Putin in Ukraine, and was an enthusiastic blogger on Youtube, was mistaken by Russian soldiers for a spy, so they chopped his head off.
I don't know if it's already been mentioned, but Lloyd Bentley, a Texan who went to fight for Putin in Ukraine, and was an enthusiastic blogger on Youtube, was mistaken by Russian soldiers for a spy, so they chopped his head off.
How do you know they were mistaken?
I suppose it must seem suspicious, very suspicious, that someone would actually want to move there.
The opinions of a middle-class, middle-aged, historically aware but vaguely gammony man on St. George:
It's hard to get too excited about him either way as an individual. Clearly he was introduced in the plantaganet era by foreign kings with different values. It would have been nice to have retained one of our pre-Norman actually English saints as our patron saint - Cuthbert, say, or Alban. But largely they all had daft names. So maybe not. In any case, the concept of a patron saint is a bit foreign now: we don't really have much more in common with the values of Cuthbert or Alban than we do with George. It's hard to get too enthusiastic about the concept of early English Christians: mostly they tend to come across as on the side of Christianity, rather than of the English. It's hard, for the vaguely partisan 21st century Englishman, to side with dark ages English Christians over dark ages English pagans; and harder still to be unequivocally sure that the right side won at the synod of Whitby. Essentially it would be hard to find an English saint who we could be unequivocally supportive of.
Still, everyone apparently has to have a patron saint, and St. George is probably no worse than anyone else. He has a nice flag. And more to the point, he's who we've got; he's been our patron saint for generations, and that is more important (for the English or anyone else) than whatever qualities he himself might have possessed. Frankly the qualities of the saint himself are incidental: it's a national day, which again, everyone apparently has to have, and one in mid-Spring seems the right sort of time to have one.
We don't make a massive fuss, but we don't let the day go past entirely uncommented on as we might with, say, Rogation Sunday. Seems about right.
I once heard an American describe Bonfire Night as the British national day. I initially thought this a cultural misreading: they have fireworks on 4th July, which is their national day; our fireworks are on 5th November, so that must be our national day. A big oversimplification. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought it to be true. Bonfire night is when we are at our most unselfconsciously British. It's one of the very few solely British traditions, and one which we do without really thinking about. We rehash the historical story, but we don't really think about the significance of it: we just set fire to things and blow things up. You could, if you want, see it as the first win for parliamentary democracy over absolutism, but most people don't really think about things that deeply, and it's not really in the British tradition to do so. You don't HAVE to do anything; your presence isn't required anywhere. No-one needs to fall out about its significance. It's just something that happens. That to me makes it a true national day.
Speak for yourself , I am certainly not British on 5th Novemner or any other date.
You should get down on your knees on November 5th, and thank the English for saving and preserving democracy, and then having the generosity to share it with the ungrateful Scots
Um... "interesting" reading of history, the leader of the plot, Robert Catesby was from Warwickshire and Guido Fawkes, of course, was a Yorkshireman. The Gunpowder plot was of course attempting to murder the King in Parliament and overthrow of the established Protestant political order and its replacement with a Catholic dictatorship. The conspirators: Fawkes and Catesby together with 11 others, Thomas Wintour, Jack Wright, Thomas Percy Robert Keyes, Robert Wintour, John Grant, Kit Wright, Thomas Bates, Ambrose Rookwood, Francis Tresham and Sir Everard Digby were all, of course, English.
The King in question, His Grace and Majestie King James VI and I, was, of course, Scottish. We celebrate the FAILURE of the plot, and the punishment of Catesby et al... so, as always here we see the PB reactionary -as usual- trying to fake history to serve his own radical political agenda...namely annoying Scots.
Honestly, Hanging, Drawing and Quartering is too good for him...
Or I’m just poking @malcolmg to see if he reacts. PB’s very own version of bear baiting, a traditional English sport, which we should really revive on the South Bank, along with the Bishop of Winchester’s Geese
Is @Malmesbury still around ? I was re-reading this, and for some reason thought of him.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto ...The proposed use for nuclear-powered ramjets would be to power a cruise missile, called SLAM, for Supersonic Low Altitude Missile. It would have many advantages over other nuclear weapons delivery systems. It was estimated that the reactor would weigh between 23,000 and 91,000 kilograms (50,000 and 200,000 lb), permitting a payload of over 23,000 kilograms (50,000 lb). Operating at Mach 3, or around 3,700 kilometers per hour (2,300 mph) and flying as low as 150 meters (500 ft), it would be invulnerable to interception by contemporary air defenses. It would carry sixteen nuclear warheads with nuclear weapon yields of up to 10 megatonnes of TNT (42 PJ) and would deliver them with greater accuracy than was possible with ICBMs at the time and, unlike them, it could be recalled.[7] It was estimated that the unit cost of each missile would be less than $5 million (equivalent to $38.00 million in 2023), making them much cheaper than a Boeing B-52 Stratofortress bomber.
Scarily, the thing seemed eminently buildable with 1950s technology.
An old, old favourite.
Making a guidance system that could survive the radiation flux from the engines was a big problem.
As was shielding the nuclear warheads - they don’t like too much radiation either.
Philosophical question: I wonder if it's a sign of democratic failure when large numbers of people start using the legal system to engage in political arguments? For instance, how often do people in places like Norway and Denmark use the legal system to conduct what are essentially political disagreements instead of relying on elected politicians.
The legal system has *always* been an active part of democratic politics, and indeed was an important part of the development of democracy.
See, for example, the legal cases over taxation in the run-up to the English Civil War, or the cases around slavery in the 18th/19th century.
If there is a deficit it's in the narrow focus on democracy=elections, when elections are in some ways only a small part of the overall whole, a periodic stock-take of where the democratic process as a whole has taken us, in terms of public debate more generally, and the changes in public opinion produced as a result.
I'd go for it being a sign of a legal system which is being used outside its rational bounds, so yes probably a consequence of a failure in some way of democratic politics.
The US is probably the worst example of lawfare, being used to make political decisions.
One thing that I have always found interesting has been the continuing resilience of inherited UK style legal systems in evidently corrupt countries - examples would be Zimbabwe, Uganda, South Africa post-independence.
Is @Malmesbury still around ? I was re-reading this, and for some reason thought of him.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto ...The proposed use for nuclear-powered ramjets would be to power a cruise missile, called SLAM, for Supersonic Low Altitude Missile. It would have many advantages over other nuclear weapons delivery systems. It was estimated that the reactor would weigh between 23,000 and 91,000 kilograms (50,000 and 200,000 lb), permitting a payload of over 23,000 kilograms (50,000 lb). Operating at Mach 3, or around 3,700 kilometers per hour (2,300 mph) and flying as low as 150 meters (500 ft), it would be invulnerable to interception by contemporary air defenses. It would carry sixteen nuclear warheads with nuclear weapon yields of up to 10 megatonnes of TNT (42 PJ) and would deliver them with greater accuracy than was possible with ICBMs at the time and, unlike them, it could be recalled.[7] It was estimated that the unit cost of each missile would be less than $5 million (equivalent to $38.00 million in 2023), making them much cheaper than a Boeing B-52 Stratofortress bomber.
Scarily, the thing seemed eminently buildable with 1950s technology.
An old, old favourite.
Making a guidance system that could survive the radiation flux from the engines was a big problem.
As was shielding the nuclear warheads - they don’t like too much radiation either.
I like that they christened the nuclear engine "Tory".
A couple years earlier, and they'd probably have test flown the mad device.
(And it's one railway Sunil will never travel on.)
The flag of St George was first flown in England by yeomen and peasants of the Weald of Sussex and Kent, rebelling against their corrupt and incompetent overlords.
Just so you know.
Wasn’t the flag of Wessex a White Dragon? Or was that Anglia?
The White Dragon represented the Anglo Saxons, but I think this was in Celtic myth rather than being self-selected as such. (The story is, ISTR, of a red dragon fighting a white dragon in Oxford, of all places.) Had our ancestors been so disposed, there would have been an opportunity for some sort of flag and associated myths which involved both the red and white dragons. Alas, far too late now.
In the Welsh book of the Mabinogi, there is a legend of a Red Dragon of the Britons (Welsh) fighting a White Dragon (Saxons).
The Wessex Flag was/is a Wyvern not a Dragon.
Yes, that's the one I'm thinking of, I think.
Point of order: OTTOMH, I think the Wyvern was the flag of Mercia (later incorporated into the flag of, possibly, the Midland Railway, or possibly the Great Central, or one of the others, for reasons associated with the Midlands). I think.
Also a red dragon of Somerset (not a wyvern, though, I believe?)
I don't know if it's already been mentioned, but Lloyd Bentley, a Texan who went to fight for Putin in Ukraine, and was an enthusiastic blogger on Youtube, was mistaken by Russian soldiers for a spy, so they chopped his head off.
And the winner of April's Darwin award is- Lloyd Bentley (applause).
Finally! Am sitting outside having lunch in the sunshine!
About time.
Also agog at Susan Crichton's evidence at the PO Inquiry .....
Is this from 2013 ? ...Counsel to the inquiry Julian Blake asks Crichton to clarify what these tensions were.
She says she felt that she was trying to ensure that Second Sight's review "was independent and by that I meant that they had been given an appropriate level of support to enable them to deliver the report".
Crichton continues by saying "I felt that I was being accused of not managing the process properly and not controlling the process enough".
Blake proceeds to ask whether there were also tensions with the minister.
“That’s as I understood it, yes," Crichton says...
While I'm not into 'days' (though Saint George is at least the national saint), it'd be nice to go a year without the repetitive chorus of "He wasn't born here, you know".
Yes, I know. People bang on about it every year.
The passing of the Rwanda bill on St George's day makes the fact even more apt today.
Saint George killed a dragon?
It’s up there with a virgin birth.
Let’s be honest he was high on magic mushrooms and in all likelihood killed a dragonfly.
Dragon mythology is global and rather hard to explain.
I like to think that it's a deep-rooted instinct inherited from proto-mammal ancestors who lived in the shadows of dinosaurs 66m years ago. That's bollocks of course but I still like to think it.
Isn’t it just an uninformed explanation for dinosaur fossils?
Not sure I believe that one. How often did our ancient ancestors come across well preserved, relatively complete dinosaur fossils?
I don't think dinosaur fossils entirely explain dragon myths, but our ancient ancestors came across enough fossils that we know they had ideas about them. E.g., see "The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in Greek and Roman Times" by Adrienne Mayor (2011).
Doesn't change the situation. Look more closely, as I poined out on the previous thread. The default filters exclude critical verified purchases, so far as I can see.
In fact there are some one-star verified purchases, so AndyJS is entirely accurate even if one sticks to verified purchases.
Plus verified just means bought through Amazon - nothing more. And some of the critical reviews have obviously read the book.
More generally, the unreliability of the review system on online purchases, bookings etc. is a major concern [edit] for online merchants, broadly speaking. See link in my post on the last thread.
Why would the filters do that? It appears they include reviews only (as opposed to just ratings).
There are no negative reviews from verified purchasers.
Ah - conflating 'reviews' in the written sense with 'ratings'. Sorry. But Andy plainly means star ratings, and when one switches the filters round, one gets
Filtered by Critical, Verified purchases 3 total ratings, 0 with reviews
I am not 'conflating' anything, I made very clear I was speaking about reviews at the outset and throughout.
Philosophical question: I wonder if it's a sign of democratic failure when large numbers of people start using the legal system to engage in political arguments? For instance, how often do people in places like Norway and Denmark use the legal system to conduct what are essentially political disagreements instead of relying on elected politicians.
The legal system has *always* been an active part of democratic politics, and indeed was an important part of the development of democracy.
See, for example, the legal cases over taxation in the run-up to the English Civil War, or the cases around slavery in the 18th/19th century.
If there is a deficit it's in the narrow focus on democracy=elections, when elections are in some ways only a small part of the overall whole, a periodic stock-take of where the democratic process as a whole has taken us, in terms of public debate more generally, and the changes in public opinion produced as a result.
I don't know if it's already been mentioned, but Lloyd Bentley, a Texan who went to fight for Putin in Ukraine, and was an enthusiastic blogger on Youtube, was mistaken by Russian soldiers for a spy, so they chopped his head off.
They raped him first. Then decided they couldn't leave him alive, so chopped his head off.
I was wondering what the best of Britain is. Cool the way Starmer has debunked symbols and sentiment by using tons of symbols and sentiment.
This was ny favourite
Yes, the cross of St George was a glorious symbol of inclusion in the Crusades, famously it denoted a “safe space” where people of all faiths and genders could discuss microagressions in the Levant
If the "head of legal" was not "implicated in" decisions to prosecute, who has the overall responsibility for them ? ...Continuing with the minutes from the board meeting, Susan Crichton is shown a note that asks if she was implicated in the prosecutions - to which she tells the inquiry she was not.
She says it was her understanding the board wanted to know if it was her who was bringing the prosecutions against the sub-postmasters...
Comments
(Or maybe that's the point you're making?)
Filtered by
Critical, Verified purchases
3 total ratings, 0 with reviews
The blockade prevented the French from sending troops or supplies to Spain by sea. They relied upon two roads, one via Irun the other via Barcelona, which were infested with partisans.
Prior to the invention of railways, water was the only way of transporting large volumes of military supplies.
Had our ancestors been so disposed, there would have been an opportunity for some sort of flag and associated myths which involved both the red and white dragons. Alas, far too late now.
See, for example, the legal cases over taxation in the run-up to the English Civil War, or the cases around slavery in the 18th/19th century.
If there is a deficit it's in the narrow focus on democracy=elections, when elections are in some ways only a small part of the overall whole, a periodic stock-take of where the democratic process as a whole has taken us, in terms of public debate more generally, and the changes in public opinion produced as a result.
As for "Everyone should read this - but most are incapable of understanding it", that's decidedly back-handed praise especially when there is such a chorus of "well written" in the positive reviews.
More generally, that sort of wildly uneven distribution of star ratings is a key warning sign on any internet marketplace that the review system isn't working, for whatever reason. Sometimes it's being fiddled; here, it's far more likely to be political partisanship, on both sides, as is pretty clear from the written reviews.
But star ratings also count.
Of course book reviews with a handful of comments are meaningless. Could be the authors mum or the authors jilted ex!
Sadly not all, as our dear beloved @Heathener proclaimed a week or two back.
He was also in the band that Ricki Ross (his flatmate) poached to form Deacon Blue
Doesn’t get more patriotically English than that
Piers Morgan's latest effort sold <6,000 copies, despite having 8m twitter followers, a US following etc
https://www.elysian.press/p/no-one-buys-books
The rest is people taking it upon themselves to log in to Amazon to trash the book and its author, for sad reasons of their own, and you only need a quick look at Truss's Twitter feed to see that's all too common.
Something like 'European' mostly doesn't, (though of course 'EU citizen' does - and when the UK left the EU most British citizens lost that EU citizen status.
Consumers Association studies have been very interesting about how easily this sort of supposed customer review system can be subverted, and how one can spot it. This sort of distribution of the star rating is a key warning.
It won’t of course be allowed to use the name Muscadet. It’s only Muscadet if it comes from the Muscadet appellation in Southern Brittany. So it will have to use the grape variety, “Melon de Bourgogne”.
From 2026.
EDIT: I realised that read very much like a post in the style of @SeaShantyIrish2 so I’ve compounded the effect by capitalising one word.
I was re-reading this, and for some reason thought of him.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto
...The proposed use for nuclear-powered ramjets would be to power a cruise missile, called SLAM, for Supersonic Low Altitude Missile. It would have many advantages over other nuclear weapons delivery systems. It was estimated that the reactor would weigh between 23,000 and 91,000 kilograms (50,000 and 200,000 lb), permitting a payload of over 23,000 kilograms (50,000 lb). Operating at Mach 3, or around 3,700 kilometers per hour (2,300 mph) and flying as low as 150 meters (500 ft), it would be invulnerable to interception by contemporary air defenses. It would carry sixteen nuclear warheads with nuclear weapon yields of up to 10 megatonnes of TNT (42 PJ) and would deliver them with greater accuracy than was possible with ICBMs at the time and, unlike them, it could be recalled.[7]
It was estimated that the unit cost of each missile would be less than $5 million (equivalent to $38.00 million in 2023), making them much cheaper than a Boeing B-52 Stratofortress bomber.
Scarily, the thing seemed eminently buildable with 1950s technology.
I did get the first two lines from memory.
I also think he should pay for it.
All income, from all people, of all ages, should be paying for today's pensioners.
What happened for funding previous pensioners is neither here nor there, today's pensioners have not set aside funding for their pension and it needs paying so everyone should pay equitably. Its not already been paid for.
https://theproof.com/eating-oysters-and-mussels-as-a-vegan/#:~:text=In short, ostrovegans believe that,mussels pack a nutritional punch.
It is to those of us who paid it
Yes they have a responsibility to pay for it, and the payments need to come from general taxation, just as it always has done.
NI is a form of general taxation. However it was sold is neither here nor there, it is no more and no less than general taxation.
All general taxation should be paid equally by all people. Its long past time to abolish NI. Your pension can be paid out of the general pot, out of taxes that you, I and everyone else in this country needs to pay equitably.
You paid perhaps for a much smaller generation, that had much lower payments, no triple lock, and lived much less time while retired.
It is neglect that there have been no savings made for the boomers. Economists and demographers have been warning about this for 40 years. I was learning about this as an economic issue in the 1990s. Well its too late now, it needs paying for and since it wasn't paid while you were working, it will need paying for while you're retired instead. Everyone needs to pay taxes equitably, those who are working should pay no more than those who are not.
Firstly it is a product of copious legislation and treaty obligation whereby governments fetter themselves to literally millions of pages of regulation which they themselves are bound by. At the same time they are, at the moment, subject to the rule of law whereby government agrees to obey the courts. Democracy has become a process in which 800 years of the past limits the possibilities as long as the deal is that government can't break its own laws. Deocracy is so new that we don't really know what happens when it ages. Perhaps we are finding out.
Secondly it is one of the few ways in which, in a massive and centralised state, people feel they can be involved in decision making.
Thirdly it is a lucrative industry for lawyers etc, and a diversion for trouble makers.
Better value still is the book exchange at the station - completely free.
Full disclosure: I have a backlog of 30 fiction paperbacks on my "to be read" shelf, all purchased from charity shops, except for one that was picked up at the station. (I have donated more than I've taken, btw.)
Yesterday I made a start on "Look Homeward, Angel" by Thomas Wolfe. So far so good - excellent prose and an interesting storyline. Only another 510 pages to go...
Watching a YouTube video is pretty easy but one view isn't worth a lot, and few subscribe, with even fewer donating/joining a Patreon. It's quite interesting how that sort of thing works regarding viability. Headline numbers on followers or viewcount might not mean a huge amount.
The Wessex Flag was/is a Wyvern not a Dragon.
Oui, c’est Muscadet
The King in question, His Grace and Majestie King James VI and I, was, of course, Scottish. We celebrate the FAILURE of the plot, and the punishment of Catesby et al... so, as always here we see the PB reactionary -as usual- trying to fake history to serve his own radical political agenda...namely annoying Scots.
Honestly, Hanging, Drawing and Quartering is too good for him...
(just kiddin')
Also available at ASDA, for £2.60, full of strawberry jam !
Point of order: OTTOMH, I think the Wyvern was the flag of Mercia (later incorporated into the flag of, possibly, the Midland Railway, or possibly the Great Central, or one of the others, for reasons associated with the Midlands).
I think.
Russian army less than 3km from main Ukrainian defensive line west of Avdiivka
After entering into Ocheretyne thanks to a failed Ukrainian relieving operation, they are now advancing westward.
https://twitter.com/clement_molin/status/1782450145675620676
Lean to it @Dura_Ace, you are, after all, an old man yourself
Making a guidance system that could survive the radiation flux from the engines was a big problem.
As was shielding the nuclear warheads - they don’t like too much radiation either.
A couple years earlier, and they'd probably have test flown the mad device.
(And it's one railway Sunil will never travel on.)
About time.
Also agog at Susan Crichton's evidence at the PO Inquiry .....
...Counsel to the inquiry Julian Blake asks Crichton to clarify what these tensions were.
She says she felt that she was trying to ensure that Second Sight's review "was independent and by that I meant that they had been given an appropriate level of support to enable them to deliver the report".
Crichton continues by saying "I felt that I was being accused of not managing the process properly and not controlling the process enough".
Blake proceeds to ask whether there were also tensions with the minister.
“That’s as I understood it, yes," Crichton says...
Big PDF: https://www.nationalgrideso.com/document/294511/download
Yes, the cross of St George was a glorious symbol of inclusion in the Crusades, famously it denoted a “safe space” where people of all faiths and genders could discuss microagressions in the Levant
...Continuing with the minutes from the board meeting, Susan Crichton is shown a note that asks if she was implicated in the prosecutions - to which she tells the inquiry she was not.
She says it was her understanding the board wanted to know if it was her who was bringing the prosecutions against the sub-postmasters...
Or was it no one ?