On topic, the first Party Conference after a General Election is or can be a non event. For the victors, it becomes a celebration, for the losers, a wake.
The LD Conference kicks off in Brighton today - it's good to see much more outside interest now the party has 72 MPs and is clear third largest in terms of seats. Yet the Party faces some tough questions and challenges and needs to set out the next stage of the journey. As is so often the case, its fate is not in its own hands - yesterday's More In Common suggests the Labour fragmentation is going to the LDs, Greens and Reform rather than the Conservatives as you might expect.
The LDs will, I suspect, focus on the next 50 targets and 38 of them are Conservative-held but of Reform's next 50 targets, 23 are also Conservative held so the potential pincer movement on the Tories is evident but how do the Conservatives simultaenously recapture votes lost to both the LDs and Reform as well as those who stayed at home in July?
As an aside, of the first 150 Conservative targets, only 27 are LD seats
In 2019, the Conservatives won 12,710,845 votes in England (47.2%) - in July they won 6,279.411 (25.9%). Basically, nearly 6.5 million people who voted Conservative in 2019 didn't in July.
Where did all the Tories go?
The Tories went to Labour, Reform and LD and stay at home. I doubt if many are quickly coming back.
The LD plan undoubtedly should be to become the second party, and the way to it is open.
(Speaking of English seats - the rest are too complicated) They are not in a direct contest with Labour, so crucially they need Labour to continue to do well. Have they worked this out? In Lab/Con contests the LDs are unengaged, but it is essential not to have the Tories taking seats off Labour - if they do the Tories continue to come second. So LD need Labour and Reform to continue to eat the Tory vote.
As long as, and only as long as, the Tories are doing relatively badly WRT everyone else, the LD plan works itself. Astonishingly the LDs only need: Labour to hold on in relation to the Tories and LDs to take further 25 Tory seats to become the official opposition.
This of course would suit Labour, as the LDs can come second, but can't come first, now or probably ever.
The voters are electing Nazis to deal with mass immigration and Olaf Scholz’s reaction is to import, en masse, a quarter of a million Kenyans
That’s not just pouring fuel on the fire, that’s buying the entire global reserves of Exxon and dropping it in the erupting volcano
This surging crisis could easily lead to the end of the EU. The underlying illogic of the EU, the crucial flaw, is that each country purports to have its own migration policy but, perforce, you must accept the migration policy of your EU neighbour, because Free Movement
Once those Kenyans get residency in Germany they are free to move anywhere in the EU, even though other EU countries might not want them. In the end that cannot be sustained
The BBC piece says:
"Migration agreements are a central pillar in the German government's efforts to curb immigration."
There's no explanation of what that means as far as I can see.
Does anyone know what happens if in the next round of the Tory leadership contest the two bottom candidates get the same number of votes? Would they both be eliminated at the same time for instance.
They will do what they did in 2001, all candidates go through to the next round and the bottom two are eliminated.
I've just dealt with cash for the first time in ages, sold an old iPad to CEX and was given some new twenties and a fiver with King Charles III on them.
I regret to say that I have absolutely no interest in the Tory leadership election. None of the candidates has attracted my interest, let alone enthusiasm. Jenrick probably annoys me the most, both for his vile treatment of young, refugee children and his frankly appalling endorsement of Trump but I am not really persuaded that any of the others will be an improvement. In any event, the "winner" will struggle to hold their party together and then lose badly (if not quite as badly) in 2028 or 2029, at which point they will probably resign so who cares?
I cannot recall having this attitude to the leadership of either of the 2 main parties in my adult lifetime. The Conservatives have a hell of a long road back and their adventures down the road less travelled look likely to lose me altogether.
Absolutely stunning early autumn day in Devon. Mists first off, now bright blue skies.
Why would anyone want to go anywhere else? (Remind me of this when I'm in the UAE in a fortnight...)
Canada isn’t ALL bad
Yebbut...I get this from the house every day....
That is lovely. Indeed lovelier
I continue to have mixed feelings about the Okanagan. Sometimes it can look strikingly beautiful, but my god the tourist tat, the kitsch resort architecture, the strip malls and the overdevelopment
Yuk. North Americans really know how to fuck up a place, unless it is protected by National Park status
The wine is excellent. I was talking to a winemaker today and I told her I presumed it was global warming that made wine growing ever easier in this northerly latitude. She scoffed and said the first wine was made in 1860 - a Catholic priest needing communion wine for his settler congregation
They just needed to apply science. The terroir is amazingly fertile with all kinds of slopes and elevations and soils (volcanic, sandy, old lakebed)
They can make almost any wine they want
But is it beautiful? Not really. Not for a European. Especially a European who has just come from ravishingly pretty Montenegro. Or indeed south Devon
With the possible exception of some bits of coastal California or New England, I’d say North America is beautiful only when it’s empty. The deserts, the more national parky mountains, the Canadian lakes and forests. They just don’t do pretty villages, that’s the problem.
Quite so. Some of the ribbon development around here seems WILFULLY ugly. Not just accidentally tatty, but consciously striving to make the view worse. Garish colours and cheap materials and a total refusal to consider context
The comparison with the sublime empty beauty of Manning Park that I visited en route - just pine forests and whispering lakes - is stark
Weirdly, they can do beautiful cities that are entirely American. New York. Chicago
There are beautiful small towns in the US. But most were developed before the automobile.
The car, of course, is why the majority of development there is so hideous. It's not a mystery.
Yep. The car
Today I watched some people having a croissant in a European style pavement cafe in Osoyoos
Only problem, it was right next to a four lane urban motorway. Like pretending you’re in cobbled Covent Garden right by the M4
It was poignant and a little sad, from my Eurocentric perspective
There’s something of a new urbanist thing going on in the US. Here and there. They know how to build beautiful towns and cities; it’s just that a lot of stuff militates against that.
At least the Australians/Americans have an excuse - their square grids and car dependency came first in many places, so they are having to retrofit human living conditions. They have 60 years of "one more lane bro" to contend with.
It was us who destroyed our alleys(closes), trams, squares. An inheritance discarded.
To the undecided voter this isn’t a simple choice between stability and peril. It’s a choice between two candidates and coalitions that for different reasons don’t merit public confidence. And in a democracy, if you keep offering voters two bad options, you shouldn’t be surprised that they will often choose the one you are sure is worse.
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico There's an interplay btwn immigration debates & the birth-rate issue that is only rarely acknowledged. World birth rates are below replacement levels in every continent except Africa. China's popn is already decreasing & almost every country's popn will be shrinking by 2040.+
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 1h +None of this means we shld hv no immigration controls or that immigration does not present problems of its own. But I think history will look back on the past 25 years & pronounce our high immigration an act of geopolitical genius, massively enhancing the UK's long-term status.
Absolutely stunning early autumn day in Devon. Mists first off, now bright blue skies.
Why would anyone want to go anywhere else? (Remind me of this when I'm in the UAE in a fortnight...)
Canada isn’t ALL bad
Yebbut...I get this from the house every day....
That is lovely. Indeed lovelier
I continue to have mixed feelings about the Okanagan. Sometimes it can look strikingly beautiful, but my god the tourist tat, the kitsch resort architecture, the strip malls and the overdevelopment
Yuk. North Americans really know how to fuck up a place, unless it is protected by National Park status
The wine is excellent. I was talking to a winemaker today and I told her I presumed it was global warming that made wine growing ever easier in this northerly latitude. She scoffed and said the first wine was made in 1860 - a Catholic priest needing communion wine for his settler congregation
They just needed to apply science. The terroir is amazingly fertile with all kinds of slopes and elevations and soils (volcanic, sandy, old lakebed)
They can make almost any wine they want
But is it beautiful? Not really. Not for a European. Especially a European who has just come from ravishingly pretty Montenegro. Or indeed south Devon
With the possible exception of some bits of coastal California or New England, I’d say North America is beautiful only when it’s empty. The deserts, the more national parky mountains, the Canadian lakes and forests. They just don’t do pretty villages, that’s the problem.
Quite so. Some of the ribbon development around here seems WILFULLY ugly. Not just accidentally tatty, but consciously striving to make the view worse. Garish colours and cheap materials and a total refusal to consider context
The comparison with the sublime empty beauty of Manning Park that I visited en route - just pine forests and whispering lakes - is stark
Weirdly, they can do beautiful cities that are entirely American. New York. Chicago
There are beautiful small towns in the US. But most were developed before the automobile.
The car, of course, is why the majority of development there is so hideous. It's not a mystery.
Yep. The car
Today I watched some people having a croissant in a European style pavement cafe in Osoyoos
Only problem, it was right next to a four lane urban motorway. Like pretending you’re in cobbled Covent Garden right by the M4
It was poignant and a little sad, from my Eurocentric perspective
There’s something of a new urbanist thing going on in the US. Here and there. They know how to build beautiful towns and cities; it’s just that a lot of stuff militates against that.
At least the Australians/Americans have an excuse - their square grids and car dependency came first in many places, so they are having to retrofit human living conditions. They have 60 years of "one more lane bro" to contend with.
It was us who destroyed our alleys(closes), trams, squares. An inheritance discarded.
I don't think that's right. The American city of 100 years ago was dense and gloriously walkable, often with plentiful public transport. Car dependency, when it came, had to be crowbarred in, often by knocking down huge swathes of perfectly good urban form.
That is a big old put-down, but can I raise you 33 slam-dunk Trump fact check "booms" from the same event?
With Donald Trump the challenge is to find something he says that isn't a lie.
If you run a typical 3 hour speech of his through a special tool which extracts the truthy bits you'll get, what, maybe 5 minutes?
5 minutes of truth in 3 hours?
When did you join MAGA?
Yes, perhaps a bit toppy there.
But, you know, you get the occasional "China is full of Chinese people" and "my rallies are like nothing else in politics" and all of that does add up.
Loomer possibly has mental health issues. But whatever the truth or otherwise about that, it’s crazy that a presidential candidate currently has her as his closest adviser.
Laura Loomer and her allies are now accusing Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of participating in a conspiracy against her in partnership with top Democratic attorney Marc Elias and Fulton County DA Fani Willis. https://x.com/yashar/status/1834761544946921620
Absolutely stunning early autumn day in Devon. Mists first off, now bright blue skies.
Why would anyone want to go anywhere else? (Remind me of this when I'm in the UAE in a fortnight...)
Canada isn’t ALL bad
Yebbut...I get this from the house every day....
That is lovely. Indeed lovelier
I continue to have mixed feelings about the Okanagan. Sometimes it can look strikingly beautiful, but my god the tourist tat, the kitsch resort architecture, the strip malls and the overdevelopment
Yuk. North Americans really know how to fuck up a place, unless it is protected by National Park status
The wine is excellent. I was talking to a winemaker today and I told her I presumed it was global warming that made wine growing ever easier in this northerly latitude. She scoffed and said the first wine was made in 1860 - a Catholic priest needing communion wine for his settler congregation
They just needed to apply science. The terroir is amazingly fertile with all kinds of slopes and elevations and soils (volcanic, sandy, old lakebed)
They can make almost any wine they want
But is it beautiful? Not really. Not for a European. Especially a European who has just come from ravishingly pretty Montenegro. Or indeed south Devon
With the possible exception of some bits of coastal California or New England, I’d say North America is beautiful only when it’s empty. The deserts, the more national parky mountains, the Canadian lakes and forests. They just don’t do pretty villages, that’s the problem.
Quite so. Some of the ribbon development around here seems WILFULLY ugly. Not just accidentally tatty, but consciously striving to make the view worse. Garish colours and cheap materials and a total refusal to consider context
The comparison with the sublime empty beauty of Manning Park that I visited en route - just pine forests and whispering lakes - is stark
Weirdly, they can do beautiful cities that are entirely American. New York. Chicago
There are beautiful small towns in the US. But most were developed before the automobile.
The car, of course, is why the majority of development there is so hideous. It's not a mystery.
Yep. The car
Today I watched some people having a croissant in a European style pavement cafe in Osoyoos
Only problem, it was right next to a four lane urban motorway. Like pretending you’re in cobbled Covent Garden right by the M4
It was poignant and a little sad, from my Eurocentric perspective
There’s something of a new urbanist thing going on in the US. Here and there. They know how to build beautiful towns and cities; it’s just that a lot of stuff militates against that.
At least the Australians/Americans have an excuse - their square grids and car dependency came first in many places, so they are having to retrofit human living conditions. They have 60 years of "one more lane bro" to contend with.
It was us who destroyed our alleys(closes), trams, squares. An inheritance discarded.
I don't think that's right. The American city of 100 years ago was dense and gloriously walkable, often with plentiful public transport. Car dependency, when it came, had to be crowbarred in, often by knocking down huge swathes of perfectly good urban form.
And the surviving Streetcar Suburbs tend to be very desirable places to live. Pricing implies we should have more of them.
The paradox of cars. In a place that doesn't have space for cars, people want to live there and it's fairly easy to live in a fairly car-light way. Once you incorporate space for cars, they quickly become essential and the place is less of a place.
The voters are electing Nazis to deal with mass immigration and Olaf Scholz’s reaction is to import, en masse, a quarter of a million Kenyans
That’s not just pouring fuel on the fire, that’s buying the entire global reserves of Exxon and dropping it in the erupting volcano
This surging crisis could easily lead to the end of the EU. The underlying illogic of the EU, the crucial flaw, is that each country purports to have its own migration policy but, perforce, you must accept the migration policy of your EU neighbour, because Free Movement
Once those Kenyans get residency in Germany they are free to move anywhere in the EU, even though other EU countries might not want them. In the end that cannot be sustained
I CANNOT BELIEVE I MISSED THE CASH THREAD YESTERDAY
Working too hard. But yes @TheScreamingEagles is right - cash is absolutely pointless. The arguments of the very few PBers who contested his view were incredibly weak.
C.A.S.H.
Bad news for cash fans at LD Conference - all of the food outlets in the Brighton Centre are card only. Though I did have a comedy moment buying a copy of the Liberator songbook for Monday night’s Glee Club and got an “ooh, paying with your watch?” response which felt. Bit 1995…
I regret to say that I have absolutely no interest in the Tory leadership election. None of the candidates has attracted my interest, let alone enthusiasm. Jenrick probably annoys me the most, both for his vile treatment of young, refugee children and his frankly appalling endorsement of Trump but I am not really persuaded that any of the others will be an improvement. In any event, the "winner" will struggle to hold their party together and then lose badly (if not quite as badly) in 2028 or 2029, at which point they will probably resign so who cares?
I cannot recall having this attitude to the leadership of either of the 2 main parties in my adult lifetime. The Conservatives have a hell of a long road back and their adventures down the road less travelled look likely to lose me altogether.
Right now I feel party less.
Two reasons it might, unfortunately, matter.
One is that another bad defeat in 2028 pushes the next Conservative government back to 2037 or so.
The other is how the Conservatives respond to a hypothetical (but plausible) defeat under Jenrick. Will it be taken as a sign for the party to move closer to the voters, or will he also be seen as Not Sufficiently Tory? God knows what they try in the second case.
Absolutely stunning early autumn day in Devon. Mists first off, now bright blue skies.
Why would anyone want to go anywhere else? (Remind me of this when I'm in the UAE in a fortnight...)
Canada isn’t ALL bad
Yebbut...I get this from the house every day....
That is lovely. Indeed lovelier
I continue to have mixed feelings about the Okanagan. Sometimes it can look strikingly beautiful, but my god the tourist tat, the kitsch resort architecture, the strip malls and the overdevelopment
Yuk. North Americans really know how to fuck up a place, unless it is protected by National Park status
The wine is excellent. I was talking to a winemaker today and I told her I presumed it was global warming that made wine growing ever easier in this northerly latitude. She scoffed and said the first wine was made in 1860 - a Catholic priest needing communion wine for his settler congregation
They just needed to apply science. The terroir is amazingly fertile with all kinds of slopes and elevations and soils (volcanic, sandy, old lakebed)
They can make almost any wine they want
But is it beautiful? Not really. Not for a European. Especially a European who has just come from ravishingly pretty Montenegro. Or indeed south Devon
With the possible exception of some bits of coastal California or New England, I’d say North America is beautiful only when it’s empty. The deserts, the more national parky mountains, the Canadian lakes and forests. They just don’t do pretty villages, that’s the problem.
Quite so. Some of the ribbon development around here seems WILFULLY ugly. Not just accidentally tatty, but consciously striving to make the view worse. Garish colours and cheap materials and a total refusal to consider context
The comparison with the sublime empty beauty of Manning Park that I visited en route - just pine forests and whispering lakes - is stark
Weirdly, they can do beautiful cities that are entirely American. New York. Chicago
There are beautiful small towns in the US. But most were developed before the automobile.
The car, of course, is why the majority of development there is so hideous. It's not a mystery.
Yep. The car
Today I watched some people having a croissant in a European style pavement cafe in Osoyoos
Only problem, it was right next to a four lane urban motorway. Like pretending you’re in cobbled Covent Garden right by the M4
It was poignant and a little sad, from my Eurocentric perspective
There’s something of a new urbanist thing going on in the US. Here and there. They know how to build beautiful towns and cities; it’s just that a lot of stuff militates against that.
At least the Australians/Americans have an excuse - their square grids and car dependency came first in many places, so they are having to retrofit human living conditions. They have 60 years of "one more lane bro" to contend with.
It was us who destroyed our alleys(closes), trams, squares. An inheritance discarded.
I don't think that's right. The American city of 100 years ago was dense and gloriously walkable, often with plentiful public transport. Car dependency, when it came, had to be crowbarred in, often by knocking down huge swathes of perfectly good urban form.
Yes, read Caro’s The Power Broker, or anything Jane Jacobs wrote.
But much of urban America was built more recently. And the US population is nearly 2.5 times what it was post WWII, when the automobile age got going with a vengeance.
On this sporting theme, over to the horseracing and the final Classic race of the season, the St Leger will be run at Doncaster racecourse.
Even non-racing fans will know of the race from such aphorisms as Winter comes in on the tail of the last horse in the St Leger, or the stock market's Sell in May and go away; come back on St Leger day.
The St Leger is also the world's oldest Classic race. It was first run in 1776, an otherwise unremarkable year.
I guess you being ironic. It was the founding of the first USA Republic (1776-2025). If Trump gets his way.
The voters are electing Nazis to deal with mass immigration and Olaf Scholz’s reaction is to import, en masse, a quarter of a million Kenyans
That’s not just pouring fuel on the fire, that’s buying the entire global reserves of Exxon and dropping it in the erupting volcano
This surging crisis could easily lead to the end of the EU. The underlying illogic of the EU, the crucial flaw, is that each country purports to have its own migration policy but, perforce, you must accept the migration policy of your EU neighbour, because Free Movement
Once those Kenyans get residency in Germany they are free to move anywhere in the EU, even though other EU countries might not want them. In the end that cannot be sustained
The BBC piece says:
"Migration agreements are a central pillar in the German government's efforts to curb immigration."
There's no explanation of what that means as far as I can see.
Surely it is quite simple. Legal immigration with a return agreement at end of contract is better for everybody, and Germany gets to pick who comes.
Or are we supposed to object purely because they are Africans?
The voters are electing Nazis to deal with mass immigration and Olaf Scholz’s reaction is to import, en masse, a quarter of a million Kenyans
That’s not just pouring fuel on the fire, that’s buying the entire global reserves of Exxon and dropping it in the erupting volcano
This surging crisis could easily lead to the end of the EU. The underlying illogic of the EU, the crucial flaw, is that each country purports to have its own migration policy but, perforce, you must accept the migration policy of your EU neighbour, because Free Movement
Once those Kenyans get residency in Germany they are free to move anywhere in the EU, even though other EU countries might not want them. In the end that cannot be sustained
If this is the response of "The Left" to political challenges with immigration then, yes, we will end up with actual Nazis in power.
Extremely depressing.
… Correction 14 September 2024: An earlier version of this article put a figure on how many Kenyan workers would be allowed into Germany under the deal. The German interior ministry corrected this to state that the deal did not specify a figure...
Hello from the LD conference fringe! About to start: how the LDs can provide a positive alternative to Labour. Not being quite as miserly as Keith Donkey would be a good start. He’s starting to remind me of Harry Seacombe in Oliver.
Nonsense. Harry Seacombe had an excellent voice and presence. Starmer is whinny.
Absolutely stunning early autumn day in Devon. Mists first off, now bright blue skies.
Why would anyone want to go anywhere else? (Remind me of this when I'm in the UAE in a fortnight...)
Canada isn’t ALL bad
Yebbut...I get this from the house every day....
That is lovely. Indeed lovelier
I continue to have mixed feelings about the Okanagan. Sometimes it can look strikingly beautiful, but my god the tourist tat, the kitsch resort architecture, the strip malls and the overdevelopment
Yuk. North Americans really know how to fuck up a place, unless it is protected by National Park status
The wine is excellent. I was talking to a winemaker today and I told her I presumed it was global warming that made wine growing ever easier in this northerly latitude. She scoffed and said the first wine was made in 1860 - a Catholic priest needing communion wine for his settler congregation
They just needed to apply science. The terroir is amazingly fertile with all kinds of slopes and elevations and soils (volcanic, sandy, old lakebed)
They can make almost any wine they want
But is it beautiful? Not really. Not for a European. Especially a European who has just come from ravishingly pretty Montenegro. Or indeed south Devon
With the possible exception of some bits of coastal California or New England, I’d say North America is beautiful only when it’s empty. The deserts, the more national parky mountains, the Canadian lakes and forests. They just don’t do pretty villages, that’s the problem.
Quite so. Some of the ribbon development around here seems WILFULLY ugly. Not just accidentally tatty, but consciously striving to make the view worse. Garish colours and cheap materials and a total refusal to consider context
The comparison with the sublime empty beauty of Manning Park that I visited en route - just pine forests and whispering lakes - is stark
Weirdly, they can do beautiful cities that are entirely American. New York. Chicago
There are beautiful small towns in the US. But most were developed before the automobile.
The car, of course, is why the majority of development there is so hideous. It's not a mystery.
Yep. The car
Today I watched some people having a croissant in a European style pavement cafe in Osoyoos
Only problem, it was right next to a four lane urban motorway. Like pretending you’re in cobbled Covent Garden right by the M4
It was poignant and a little sad, from my Eurocentric perspective
There’s something of a new urbanist thing going on in the US. Here and there. They know how to build beautiful towns and cities; it’s just that a lot of stuff militates against that.
At least the Australians/Americans have an excuse - their square grids and car dependency came first in many places, so they are having to retrofit human living conditions. They have 60 years of "one more lane bro" to contend with.
It was us who destroyed our alleys(closes), trams, squares. An inheritance discarded.
I don't think that's right. The American city of 100 years ago was dense and gloriously walkable, often with plentiful public transport. Car dependency, when it came, had to be crowbarred in, often by knocking down huge swathes of perfectly good urban form.
Yes, read Caro’s The Power Broker, or anything Jane Jacobs wrote.
But much of urban America was built more recently. And the US population is nearly 2.5 times what it was post WWII, when the automobile age got going with a vengeance.
Boston's big dig is an example of both - European style city that had highways pushed through it, now reverted back to an extent. There is a nascent campaign for the same to happen to Glasgow.
Loomer possibly has mental health issues. But whatever the truth or otherwise about that, it’s crazy that a presidential candidate currently has her as his closest adviser.
Laura Loomer and her allies are now accusing Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of participating in a conspiracy against her in partnership with top Democratic attorney Marc Elias and Fulton County DA Fani Willis. https://x.com/yashar/status/1834761544946921620
Odds of Loomer becoming the next Mrs. Donald Trump after Melania divorces him post-election?
Absolutely stunning early autumn day in Devon. Mists first off, now bright blue skies.
Why would anyone want to go anywhere else? (Remind me of this when I'm in the UAE in a fortnight...)
Canada isn’t ALL bad
Yebbut...I get this from the house every day....
That is lovely. Indeed lovelier
I continue to have mixed feelings about the Okanagan. Sometimes it can look strikingly beautiful, but my god the tourist tat, the kitsch resort architecture, the strip malls and the overdevelopment
Yuk. North Americans really know how to fuck up a place, unless it is protected by National Park status
The wine is excellent. I was talking to a winemaker today and I told her I presumed it was global warming that made wine growing ever easier in this northerly latitude. She scoffed and said the first wine was made in 1860 - a Catholic priest needing communion wine for his settler congregation
They just needed to apply science. The terroir is amazingly fertile with all kinds of slopes and elevations and soils (volcanic, sandy, old lakebed)
They can make almost any wine they want
But is it beautiful? Not really. Not for a European. Especially a European who has just come from ravishingly pretty Montenegro. Or indeed south Devon
With the possible exception of some bits of coastal California or New England, I’d say North America is beautiful only when it’s empty. The deserts, the more national parky mountains, the Canadian lakes and forests. They just don’t do pretty villages, that’s the problem.
Quite so. Some of the ribbon development around here seems WILFULLY ugly. Not just accidentally tatty, but consciously striving to make the view worse. Garish colours and cheap materials and a total refusal to consider context
The comparison with the sublime empty beauty of Manning Park that I visited en route - just pine forests and whispering lakes - is stark
Weirdly, they can do beautiful cities that are entirely American. New York. Chicago
There are beautiful small towns in the US. But most were developed before the automobile.
The car, of course, is why the majority of development there is so hideous. It's not a mystery.
Yep. The car
Today I watched some people having a croissant in a European style pavement cafe in Osoyoos
Only problem, it was right next to a four lane urban motorway. Like pretending you’re in cobbled Covent Garden right by the M4
It was poignant and a little sad, from my Eurocentric perspective
There’s something of a new urbanist thing going on in the US. Here and there. They know how to build beautiful towns and cities; it’s just that a lot of stuff militates against that.
At least the Australians/Americans have an excuse - their square grids and car dependency came first in many places, so they are having to retrofit human living conditions. They have 60 years of "one more lane bro" to contend with.
It was us who destroyed our alleys(closes), trams, squares. An inheritance discarded.
I don't think that's right. The American city of 100 years ago was dense and gloriously walkable, often with plentiful public transport. Car dependency, when it came, had to be crowbarred in, often by knocking down huge swathes of perfectly good urban form.
Yes, read Caro’s The Power Broker, or anything Jane Jacobs wrote.
But much of urban America was built more recently. And the US population is nearly 2.5 times what it was post WWII, when the automobile age got going with a vengeance.
Boston's big dig is an example of both - European style city that had highways pushed through it, now reverted back to an extent. There is a nascent campaign for the same to happen to Glasgow.
Absolutely stunning early autumn day in Devon. Mists first off, now bright blue skies.
Why would anyone want to go anywhere else? (Remind me of this when I'm in the UAE in a fortnight...)
Canada isn’t ALL bad
Yebbut...I get this from the house every day....
That is lovely. Indeed lovelier
I continue to have mixed feelings about the Okanagan. Sometimes it can look strikingly beautiful, but my god the tourist tat, the kitsch resort architecture, the strip malls and the overdevelopment
Yuk. North Americans really know how to fuck up a place, unless it is protected by National Park status
The wine is excellent. I was talking to a winemaker today and I told her I presumed it was global warming that made wine growing ever easier in this northerly latitude. She scoffed and said the first wine was made in 1860 - a Catholic priest needing communion wine for his settler congregation
They just needed to apply science. The terroir is amazingly fertile with all kinds of slopes and elevations and soils (volcanic, sandy, old lakebed)
They can make almost any wine they want
But is it beautiful? Not really. Not for a European. Especially a European who has just come from ravishingly pretty Montenegro. Or indeed south Devon
With the possible exception of some bits of coastal California or New England, I’d say North America is beautiful only when it’s empty. The deserts, the more national parky mountains, the Canadian lakes and forests. They just don’t do pretty villages, that’s the problem.
Quite so. Some of the ribbon development around here seems WILFULLY ugly. Not just accidentally tatty, but consciously striving to make the view worse. Garish colours and cheap materials and a total refusal to consider context
The comparison with the sublime empty beauty of Manning Park that I visited en route - just pine forests and whispering lakes - is stark
Weirdly, they can do beautiful cities that are entirely American. New York. Chicago
There are beautiful small towns in the US. But most were developed before the automobile.
The car, of course, is why the majority of development there is so hideous. It's not a mystery.
Yep. The car
Today I watched some people having a croissant in a European style pavement cafe in Osoyoos
Only problem, it was right next to a four lane urban motorway. Like pretending you’re in cobbled Covent Garden right by the M4
It was poignant and a little sad, from my Eurocentric perspective
There’s something of a new urbanist thing going on in the US. Here and there. They know how to build beautiful towns and cities; it’s just that a lot of stuff militates against that.
At least the Australians/Americans have an excuse - their square grids and car dependency came first in many places, so they are having to retrofit human living conditions. They have 60 years of "one more lane bro" to contend with.
It was us who destroyed our alleys(closes), trams, squares. An inheritance discarded.
I don't think that's right. The American city of 100 years ago was dense and gloriously walkable, often with plentiful public transport. Car dependency, when it came, had to be crowbarred in, often by knocking down huge swathes of perfectly good urban form.
Yes, read Caro’s The Power Broker, or anything Jane Jacobs wrote.
But much of urban America was built more recently. And the US population is nearly 2.5 times what it was post WWII, when the automobile age got going with a vengeance.
Boston's big dig is an example of both - European style city that had highways pushed through it, now reverted back to an extent. There is a nascent campaign for the same to happen to Glasgow.
On this sporting theme, over to the horseracing and the final Classic race of the season, the St Leger will be run at Doncaster racecourse.
Even non-racing fans will know of the race from such aphorisms as Winter comes in on the tail of the last horse in the St Leger, or the stock market's Sell in May and go away; come back on St Leger day.
The St Leger is also the world's oldest Classic race. It was first run in 1776, an otherwise unremarkable year.
I guess you being ironic. It was the founding of the first USA Republic (1776-2025). If Trump gets his way.
1776 is also the publication date of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, and the year of David Hume's death. So a major year in the glorious history of the Scottish enlightenment. Smith, Hume and the St Leger will, I suspect, outlive the USA republic in its present form.
The voters are electing Nazis to deal with mass immigration and Olaf Scholz’s reaction is to import, en masse, a quarter of a million Kenyans
That’s not just pouring fuel on the fire, that’s buying the entire global reserves of Exxon and dropping it in the erupting volcano
This surging crisis could easily lead to the end of the EU. The underlying illogic of the EU, the crucial flaw, is that each country purports to have its own migration policy but, perforce, you must accept the migration policy of your EU neighbour, because Free Movement
Once those Kenyans get residency in Germany they are free to move anywhere in the EU, even though other EU countries might not want them. In the end that cannot be sustained
Absolutely stunning early autumn day in Devon. Mists first off, now bright blue skies.
Why would anyone want to go anywhere else? (Remind me of this when I'm in the UAE in a fortnight...)
Canada isn’t ALL bad
Yebbut...I get this from the house every day....
That is lovely. Indeed lovelier
I continue to have mixed feelings about the Okanagan. Sometimes it can look strikingly beautiful, but my god the tourist tat, the kitsch resort architecture, the strip malls and the overdevelopment
Yuk. North Americans really know how to fuck up a place, unless it is protected by National Park status
The wine is excellent. I was talking to a winemaker today and I told her I presumed it was global warming that made wine growing ever easier in this northerly latitude. She scoffed and said the first wine was made in 1860 - a Catholic priest needing communion wine for his settler congregation
They just needed to apply science. The terroir is amazingly fertile with all kinds of slopes and elevations and soils (volcanic, sandy, old lakebed)
They can make almost any wine they want
But is it beautiful? Not really. Not for a European. Especially a European who has just come from ravishingly pretty Montenegro. Or indeed south Devon
With the possible exception of some bits of coastal California or New England, I’d say North America is beautiful only when it’s empty. The deserts, the more national parky mountains, the Canadian lakes and forests. They just don’t do pretty villages, that’s the problem.
Quite so. Some of the ribbon development around here seems WILFULLY ugly. Not just accidentally tatty, but consciously striving to make the view worse. Garish colours and cheap materials and a total refusal to consider context
The comparison with the sublime empty beauty of Manning Park that I visited en route - just pine forests and whispering lakes - is stark
Weirdly, they can do beautiful cities that are entirely American. New York. Chicago
There are beautiful small towns in the US. But most were developed before the automobile.
The car, of course, is why the majority of development there is so hideous. It's not a mystery.
Yep. The car
Today I watched some people having a croissant in a European style pavement cafe in Osoyoos
Only problem, it was right next to a four lane urban motorway. Like pretending you’re in cobbled Covent Garden right by the M4
It was poignant and a little sad, from my Eurocentric perspective
There’s something of a new urbanist thing going on in the US. Here and there. They know how to build beautiful towns and cities; it’s just that a lot of stuff militates against that.
At least the Australians/Americans have an excuse - their square grids and car dependency came first in many places, so they are having to retrofit human living conditions. They have 60 years of "one more lane bro" to contend with.
It was us who destroyed our alleys(closes), trams, squares. An inheritance discarded.
I don't think that's right. The American city of 100 years ago was dense and gloriously walkable, often with plentiful public transport. Car dependency, when it came, had to be crowbarred in, often by knocking down huge swathes of perfectly good urban form.
Yes, read Caro’s The Power Broker, or anything Jane Jacobs wrote.
But much of urban America was built more recently. And the US population is nearly 2.5 times what it was post WWII, when the automobile age got going with a vengeance.
Boston's big dig is an example of both - European style city that had highways pushed through it, now reverted back to an extent. There is a nascent campaign for the same to happen to Glasgow.
On this sporting theme, over to the horseracing and the final Classic race of the season, the St Leger will be run at Doncaster racecourse.
Even non-racing fans will know of the race from such aphorisms as Winter comes in on the tail of the last horse in the St Leger, or the stock market's Sell in May and go away; come back on St Leger day.
The St Leger is also the world's oldest Classic race. It was first run in 1776, an otherwise unremarkable year.
I guess you being ironic. It was the founding of the first USA Republic (1776-2025). If Trump gets his way.
1776 is also the publication date of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, and the year of David Hume's death. So a major year in the glorious history of the Scottish enlightenment. Smith, Hume and the St Leger will, I suspect, outlive the USA republic in its present form.
I regret to say that I have absolutely no interest in the Tory leadership election. None of the candidates has attracted my interest, let alone enthusiasm. Jenrick probably annoys me the most, both for his vile treatment of young, refugee children and his frankly appalling endorsement of Trump but I am not really persuaded that any of the others will be an improvement. In any event, the "winner" will struggle to hold their party together and then lose badly (if not quite as badly) in 2028 or 2029, at which point they will probably resign so who cares?
I cannot recall having this attitude to the leadership of either of the 2 main parties in my adult lifetime. The Conservatives have a hell of a long road back and their adventures down the road less travelled look likely to lose me altogether.
Right now I feel party less.
Two reasons it might, unfortunately, matter.
One is that another bad defeat in 2028 pushes the next Conservative government back to 2037 or so.
The other is how the Conservatives respond to a hypothetical (but plausible) defeat under Jenrick. Will it be taken as a sign for the party to move closer to the voters, or will he also be seen as Not Sufficiently Tory? God knows what they try in the second case.
In true British Tory fashion, they will sell the party to the GOP at a knockdown price for some backhanders and become a subsidiary of Trump Inc.
I CANNOT BELIEVE I MISSED THE CASH THREAD YESTERDAY
Working too hard. But yes @TheScreamingEagles is right - cash is absolutely pointless. The arguments of the very few PBers who contested his view were incredibly weak.
C.A.S.H.
Bad news for cash fans at LD Conference - all of the food outlets in the Brighton Centre are card only. Though I did have a comedy moment buying a copy of the Liberator songbook for Monday night’s Glee Club and got an “ooh, paying with your watch?” response which felt. Bit 1995…
Hello from the LD conference fringe! About to start: how the LDs can provide a positive alternative to Labour. Not being quite as miserly as Keith Donkey would be a good start. He’s starting to remind me of Harry Seacombe in Oliver.
Nonsense. Harry Seacombe had an excellent voice and presence. Starmer is whinny.
Although, like Starmer, he presided over a collection of Goons.
Loomer possibly has mental health issues. But whatever the truth or otherwise about that, it’s crazy that a presidential candidate currently has her as his closest adviser.
Laura Loomer and her allies are now accusing Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of participating in a conspiracy against her in partnership with top Democratic attorney Marc Elias and Fulton County DA Fani Willis. https://x.com/yashar/status/1834761544946921620
I hadn’t realised that JENRICK had endorsed Trump. Dear me, what an absolute tool.
Indeed. And should rule him out of high office in this country for the rest of his career.
He is siding with this country's enemies.
The Conservative base and voter bloc is anti-Trump at the moment, unlike Reform. It’s also strongly pro-Ukraine and hawkish on Russia. But a Trump-positive Jenrick as leader, and especially a new Trump presidency, could well shift that particular Overton side-window. I really don’t want to see the party dragged into MAGA land. It’ll have us pining for the good old days of honourable, honest leaders like Boris Johnson.
It is quite possible to be a Ukrainian Ultra and want to fuck Trump's 'Neck Pussy' as bro living in the Ballardesque nightmare of the Trucial States vividly demonstrates on the reg.
I haven't a clue what any of that means but I am nonetheless convinced it deserves a "like". Absurd you may believe, but not as absurd as the man who expects to be our next Prime Minister endorsing Trump.
@viewcode will put a few florins in his lecky meter and be along to decode presently.
The para is a reference to @Sandpit, who is pro-Ukraine (see his sigil) and pro-Trump (see his comments) and who works in one of the Gulf states, presumably Dubai or UAE (the "Sandpit") in the Horn of Africa.
It wasn't a bad analogy and a lesser writer would have gone for cyberpunk instead of the better Ballard reference, although the pedant in me insists he should have used "Ballardian" instead.
On this sporting theme, over to the horseracing and the final Classic race of the season, the St Leger will be run at Doncaster racecourse.
Even non-racing fans will know of the race from such aphorisms as Winter comes in on the tail of the last horse in the St Leger, or the stock market's Sell in May and go away; come back on St Leger day.
The St Leger is also the world's oldest Classic race. It was first run in 1776, an otherwise unremarkable year.
I guess you being ironic. It was the founding of the first USA Republic (1776-2025). If Trump gets his way.
1776 is also the publication date of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, and the year of David Hume's death. So a major year in the glorious history of the Scottish enlightenment. Smith, Hume and the St Leger will, I suspect, outlive the USA republic in its present form.
Aren’t Smith and Hume already dead ?
In the same sense that Anthony St Leger died in 1786 I suppose they are.
Does anyone know what happens if in the next round of the Tory leadership contest the two bottom candidates get the same number of votes? Would they both be eliminated at the same time for instance.
They will do what they did in 2001, all candidates go through to the next round and the bottom two are eliminated.
Could be dangerous for the One Nation wing of the party since they're relying on votes to switch between Cleverly and Tugendhat or the other way round. They need to avoid that tie situation.
The voters are electing Nazis to deal with mass immigration and Olaf Scholz’s reaction is to import, en masse, a quarter of a million Kenyans
That’s not just pouring fuel on the fire, that’s buying the entire global reserves of Exxon and dropping it in the erupting volcano
This surging crisis could easily lead to the end of the EU. The underlying illogic of the EU, the crucial flaw, is that each country purports to have its own migration policy but, perforce, you must accept the migration policy of your EU neighbour, because Free Movement
Once those Kenyans get residency in Germany they are free to move anywhere in the EU, even though other EU countries might not want them. In the end that cannot be sustained
"Once those Kenyans get residency in Germany they are free to move anywhere in the EU" well that is flat out wrong for a start. But congrats on maintaining your record of 100% of your posts that mention Germany containing ignorant bullshit.
How will they stop them in reality with the Shengen Area? Like practically speaking?
Hello from the LD conference fringe! About to start: how the LDs can provide a positive alternative to Labour. Not being quite as miserly as Keith Donkey would be a good start. He’s starting to remind me of Harry Seacombe in Oliver.
Nonsense. Harry Seacombe had an excellent voice and presence. Starmer is whinny.
Although, like Starmer, he presided over a collection of Goons.
I have a bit of a problem with words like 'miserly' or 'greedy' being used to describe people who are not profligate with other people's money, or 'generous' for those who are. Is SKS miserly? I have no idea. But whether he is or not is really demonstrated by what he does with his own resources, not those of the country at large.
FWIW, an excellent man I know - my father in law - is both miserly and generous. He will not spend money on himself - but thinks nothing of giving time and money to others. Which he can do easily because he never spends money on himself. Miserliness need not be a negative.
He's outwardly respectable. (They say he cheats at cards.) And his footprints are not found in any file of Scotland Yard's And when the larder's looted, or the jewel-case is rifled, Or when the milk is missing, or another Peke's been stifled, Or the greenhouse glass is broken, and the trellis past repair Ay, there's the wonder of the thing! Larry's not there!
The voters are electing Nazis to deal with mass immigration and Olaf Scholz’s reaction is to import, en masse, a quarter of a million Kenyans
That’s not just pouring fuel on the fire, that’s buying the entire global reserves of Exxon and dropping it in the erupting volcano
This surging crisis could easily lead to the end of the EU. The underlying illogic of the EU, the crucial flaw, is that each country purports to have its own migration policy but, perforce, you must accept the migration policy of your EU neighbour, because Free Movement
Once those Kenyans get residency in Germany they are free to move anywhere in the EU, even though other EU countries might not want them. In the end that cannot be sustained
That is not exactly true.
They would need to be permanently resident in Germany for 5 years. Then they apply for an EU long term residency permit. Then they can move around and work/settle in other EU countries. But if they live outside Germany for more than 6 years after that they lose their long term residency permit and so will lose their right to stay in the EU.
I mean they can move freely because of Schenghen. Other pan-EU rights accrue later
There are thousands of Turks in Germany who were meant to be temporary residents to fill labour shortages. few ever went back and now their children have much lower levels of social mobility than and wages than the general population because of various reasons.
It seems Germany has learnt litttle from past mistakes. Are thre really not enough migrants they could bus in from a Romanian backwater or unemployed Spanish youth? They have to get them from Kenya? It makes no sense.
Final of the T20 Blast today. Sadly, it being mid-September now, no-one's really interested. Which is fair enough. I'm the first to complain when football starts trampling all over the cricket season, but cricket really ought to have finished by now. If only they hadn't had to break off from this tournament for a pointless sixteen-and-a-bit tournament between some arbitrary made up teams, this would have been pleasantly concluded in August.
The voters are electing Nazis to deal with mass immigration and Olaf Scholz’s reaction is to import, en masse, a quarter of a million Kenyans
That’s not just pouring fuel on the fire, that’s buying the entire global reserves of Exxon and dropping it in the erupting volcano
This surging crisis could easily lead to the end of the EU. The underlying illogic of the EU, the crucial flaw, is that each country purports to have its own migration policy but, perforce, you must accept the migration policy of your EU neighbour, because Free Movement
Once those Kenyans get residency in Germany they are free to move anywhere in the EU, even though other EU countries might not want them. In the end that cannot be sustained
The BBC piece says:
"Migration agreements are a central pillar in the German government's efforts to curb immigration."
There's no explanation of what that means as far as I can see.
I think the plan is to send them back after a while but there are so many loopholes, most will never go back in reality. Just like the many "temporary" Turkish migrants.
"While most of the great reforming governments, such as Blair’s and Thatcher’s, took years before they found their stride, they had a clear strategy right from the beginning. For Thatcher it was to make Britain great again by ending the economic post war economic consensus; for Blair it was and to drag the country into modernity through constitutional reforms and European levels of public sector investment. Starmer’s government has no equivalent purpose. Any of his five “missions” could be adopted by the Conservative Party without any controversy: “Kickstarting economic growth,” “Making Britain a clean energy superpower; “Halving serious violent crime; “Breaking down barriers to opportunity”; and “building an NHS fit for the future.” Is anyone opposed to these ambitions? Are they even political?"
The voters are electing Nazis to deal with mass immigration and Olaf Scholz’s reaction is to import, en masse, a quarter of a million Kenyans
That’s not just pouring fuel on the fire, that’s buying the entire global reserves of Exxon and dropping it in the erupting volcano
This surging crisis could easily lead to the end of the EU. The underlying illogic of the EU, the crucial flaw, is that each country purports to have its own migration policy but, perforce, you must accept the migration policy of your EU neighbour, because Free Movement
Once those Kenyans get residency in Germany they are free to move anywhere in the EU, even though other EU countries might not want them. In the end that cannot be sustained
The BBC piece says:
"Migration agreements are a central pillar in the German government's efforts to curb immigration."
There's no explanation of what that means as far as I can see.
I think the plan is to send them back after a while but there are so many loopholes, most will never go back in reality. Just like the many "temporary" Turkish migrants.
Final of the T20 Blast today. Sadly, it being mid-September now, no-one's really interested. Which is fair enough. I'm the first to complain when football starts trampling all over the cricket season, but cricket really ought to have finished by now. If only they hadn't had to break off from this tournament for a pointless sixteen-and-a-bit tournament between some arbitrary made up teams, this would have been pleasantly concluded in August.
Going to watch England Australia week after next at Durham so I wouldn't say that cricket is over. Bit chancy with the weather at that time of year of course but there is a gang of 6 of us going and I expect to have a cracking couple of days cricket or no.
The voters are electing Nazis to deal with mass immigration and Olaf Scholz’s reaction is to import, en masse, a quarter of a million Kenyans
That’s not just pouring fuel on the fire, that’s buying the entire global reserves of Exxon and dropping it in the erupting volcano
This surging crisis could easily lead to the end of the EU. The underlying illogic of the EU, the crucial flaw, is that each country purports to have its own migration policy but, perforce, you must accept the migration policy of your EU neighbour, because Free Movement
Once those Kenyans get residency in Germany they are free to move anywhere in the EU, even though other EU countries might not want them. In the end that cannot be sustained
If this is the response of "The Left" to political challenges with immigration then, yes, we will end up with actual Nazis in power.
Extremely depressing.
… Correction 14 September 2024: An earlier version of this article put a figure on how many Kenyan workers would be allowed into Germany under the deal. The German interior ministry corrected this to state that the deal did not specify a figure...
Does anyone know what happens if in the next round of the Tory leadership contest the two bottom candidates get the same number of votes? Would they both be eliminated at the same time for instance.
I'm sitting in the auditorium at the Lib Dem conference in Brighton waiting for the next item on the agenda which is "Celebrating our election wins". This evening it is the Glee Club followed by Karaoke.
Final of the T20 Blast today. Sadly, it being mid-September now, no-one's really interested. Which is fair enough. I'm the first to complain when football starts trampling all over the cricket season, but cricket really ought to have finished by now. If only they hadn't had to break off from this tournament for a pointless sixteen-and-a-bit tournament between some arbitrary made up teams, this would have been pleasantly concluded in August.
Final of the T20 Blast today. Sadly, it being mid-September now, no-one's really interested. Which is fair enough. I'm the first to complain when football starts trampling all over the cricket season, but cricket really ought to have finished by now. If only they hadn't had to break off from this tournament for a pointless sixteen-and-a-bit tournament between some arbitrary made up teams, this would have been pleasantly concluded in August.
Going to watch England Australia week after next at Durham so I wouldn't say that cricket is over. Bit chancy with the weather at that time of year of course but there is a gang of 6 of us going and I expect to have a cracking couple of days cricket or no.
Well of course I wish you luck, and I'd love to be doing that. But today's pleasant weather notwithstanding, it just doesn't feel like the cricket season any more. The leaves are turning golden, there are mists in the air; I am over my annual brief lament that summer is over and looking forward to a very Autumnal Autumn now. Cricket is far from my mind, and the T20 finals day - which I normally enjoy and look forward to - has come as something of a surprise.
I CANNOT BELIEVE I MISSED THE CASH THREAD YESTERDAY
Working too hard. But yes @TheScreamingEagles is right - cash is absolutely pointless. The arguments of the very few PBers who contested his view were incredibly weak.
A statement that could only be made by someone who has never done any work in poorer communities where families use cash as a means of controlling their budgets.
And that is before you even start on the question of the digital divide.
I have no idea if TSE is right or wrong but the whole of the previous thread was a classically middle class argument with a wonderful lack of awareness.
Nope. That is simply patronising. If there is a digital divide then we should address it through policy, not by patronising people and asking them to use a stupid, obsolete and pointless system of barter. But these arguments have been done to death now, and indeed many PBers made them very well on the earlier thread.
How utterly fucking stupid. How is wanting an existing workable system, relied upon by millions of people, to continue patronising? You are just so far up your own arse with your weird hatred of cash that you are not even willing to accept that for many people it is an important part of their daily lives.
The really stupid thing is that it doesn't actually affect you. You can continue to use digital currency as much as you like. Indeed it is you who are being patronising in demanding everyone accept your particular warped view and labelling anyone who doesn't agree as backward.
You are a fucking snob and an ignorant one at that.
Final of the T20 Blast today. Sadly, it being mid-September now, no-one's really interested. Which is fair enough. I'm the first to complain when football starts trampling all over the cricket season, but cricket really ought to have finished by now. If only they hadn't had to break off from this tournament for a pointless sixteen-and-a-bit tournament between some arbitrary made up teams, this would have been pleasantly concluded in August.
See @ydoethur's long posts near the start of this thread and the end of the previous one.
Final of the T20 Blast today. Sadly, it being mid-September now, no-one's really interested. Which is fair enough. I'm the first to complain when football starts trampling all over the cricket season, but cricket really ought to have finished by now. If only they hadn't had to break off from this tournament for a pointless sixteen-and-a-bit tournament between some arbitrary made up teams, this would have been pleasantly concluded in August.
Going to watch England Australia week after next at Durham so I wouldn't say that cricket is over. Bit chancy with the weather at that time of year of course but there is a gang of 6 of us going and I expect to have a cracking couple of days cricket or no.
Well of course I wish you luck, and I'd love to be doing that. But today's pleasant weather notwithstanding, it just doesn't feel like the cricket season any more. The leaves are turning golden, there are mists in the air; I am over my annual brief lament that summer is over and looking forward to a very Autumnal Autumn now. Cricket is far from my mind, and the T20 finals day - which I normally enjoy and look forward to - has come as something of a surprise.
We stayed at Dunkeld House hotel last night and walked a few miles along the Tay this morning. The colours of Autumn were absolutely everywhere with some evocative banks of mist and moisture in the air too fine to call rain.
So I know what you mean but I haven't seen England play in person for a couple of years thanks to Covid and other things and I am really looking forward to it. And it keeps my mind off how badly United are playing (again).
Absolutely stunning early autumn day in Devon. Mists first off, now bright blue skies.
Why would anyone want to go anywhere else? (Remind me of this when I'm in the UAE in a fortnight...)
Canada isn’t ALL bad
Yebbut...I get this from the house every day....
That is lovely. Indeed lovelier
I continue to have mixed feelings about the Okanagan. Sometimes it can look strikingly beautiful, but my god the tourist tat, the kitsch resort architecture, the strip malls and the overdevelopment
Yuk. North Americans really know how to fuck up a place, unless it is protected by National Park status
The wine is excellent. I was talking to a winemaker today and I told her I presumed it was global warming that made wine growing ever easier in this northerly latitude. She scoffed and said the first wine was made in 1860 - a Catholic priest needing communion wine for his settler congregation
They just needed to apply science. The terroir is amazingly fertile with all kinds of slopes and elevations and soils (volcanic, sandy, old lakebed)
They can make almost any wine they want
But is it beautiful? Not really. Not for a European. Especially a European who has just come from ravishingly pretty Montenegro. Or indeed south Devon
With the possible exception of some bits of coastal California or New England, I’d say North America is beautiful only when it’s empty. The deserts, the more national parky mountains, the Canadian lakes and forests. They just don’t do pretty villages, that’s the problem.
Quite so. Some of the ribbon development around here seems WILFULLY ugly. Not just accidentally tatty, but consciously striving to make the view worse. Garish colours and cheap materials and a total refusal to consider context
The comparison with the sublime empty beauty of Manning Park that I visited en route - just pine forests and whispering lakes - is stark
Weirdly, they can do beautiful cities that are entirely American. New York. Chicago
There are beautiful small towns in the US. But most were developed before the automobile.
The car, of course, is why the majority of development there is so hideous. It's not a mystery.
Yep. The car
Today I watched some people having a croissant in a European style pavement cafe in Osoyoos
Only problem, it was right next to a four lane urban motorway. Like pretending you’re in cobbled Covent Garden right by the M4
It was poignant and a little sad, from my Eurocentric perspective
There’s something of a new urbanist thing going on in the US. Here and there. They know how to build beautiful towns and cities; it’s just that a lot of stuff militates against that.
At least the Australians/Americans have an excuse - their square grids and car dependency came first in many places, so they are having to retrofit human living conditions. They have 60 years of "one more lane bro" to contend with.
It was us who destroyed our alleys(closes), trams, squares. An inheritance discarded.
I don't think that's right. The American city of 100 years ago was dense and gloriously walkable, often with plentiful public transport. Car dependency, when it came, had to be crowbarred in, often by knocking down huge swathes of perfectly good urban form.
Yes, read Caro’s The Power Broker, or anything Jane Jacobs wrote.
But much of urban America was built more recently. And the US population is nearly 2.5 times what it was post WWII, when the automobile age got going with a vengeance.
A striking map I saw from some Facebook feed called something like ‘striking maps’ was of the US railway network, I’m not sure when, probably early 20th century. They actually had a pretty dense network of railways that they then went and mostly pulled up once everyone started going by car.
I'm sitting in the auditorium at the Lib Dem conference in Brighton waiting for the next item on the agenda which is "Celebrating our election wins". This evening it is the Glee Club followed by Karaoke.
I'm sitting in the auditorium at the Lib Dem conference in Brighton waiting for the next item on the agenda which is "Celebrating our election wins". This evening it is the Glee Club followed by Karaoke.
I'm sitting in the auditorium at the Lib Dem conference in Brighton waiting for the next item on the agenda which is "Celebrating our election wins". This evening it is the Glee Club followed by Karaoke.
Karaoke is tomorrow night, Glee Club Monday night
Is there any shagging or drinking at the Lib Dems conference?
I'm sitting in the auditorium at the Lib Dem conference in Brighton waiting for the next item on the agenda which is "Celebrating our election wins". This evening it is the Glee Club followed by Karaoke.
Karaoke is tomorrow night, Glee Club Monday night
Typical Liberals. Can't even agree on the timetable.
He spent a long time reading everything he could on Hitler as he had been commissioned to do a TV series on him. It never got made. Boyd concluded there was no other rational explanation.
There's been academic papers on this over the years iirc.
Today's big issue - Asda workers up in arms at the shitness of the music they are forced to listen to while they work.
I'm with them here. I like music as much as the next man - but I like the music which is to my taste. I'd rather have no music than music I don't like. I wouldn't expect other shoppers to be gleeful about having my playlists full of The Fall and Half Man Half Biscuit, and I don't understand the arrogance of people who think we all want to listen to their taste in terrible MOR in supermarkets.
Other way round. Asda used to play proper songs but changed to unlicensed rubbish (similar to what we used to call muzak) and that is what has upset the workforce.
Yes, but the point is no music at all is bettet than music not to your taste. And any music will be not to the taste of at least 70% of people. Granted unlicensed music is not to thr taste of slightly more people.
The large shops don't like to be quiet, because if they're empty it gives off an air of being a deserted wasteland. People start to whisper to avoid breaking the silence, they feel silly and uncomfortable and they leave.
OK, weirdly, I had a bet two years ago on Harris winning the 2024 Presidential election. Thanks to whoever persuaded me to do that, definitely nothing I would've done off my own bat.
Edited extra bit: 15.5, which I've just hedged at 1.93.
Does anyone know what happens if in the next round of the Tory leadership contest the two bottom candidates get the same number of votes? Would they both be eliminated at the same time for instance.
Today's big issue - Asda workers up in arms at the shitness of the music they are forced to listen to while they work.
I'm with them here. I like music as much as the next man - but I like the music which is to my taste. I'd rather have no music than music I don't like. I wouldn't expect other shoppers to be gleeful about having my playlists full of The Fall and Half Man Half Biscuit, and I don't understand the arrogance of people who think we all want to listen to their taste in terrible MOR in supermarkets.
Other way round. Asda used to play proper songs but changed to unlicensed rubbish (similar to what we used to call muzak) and that is what has upset the workforce.
Yes, but the point is no music at all is bettet than music not to your taste. And any music will be not to the taste of at least 70% of people. Granted unlicensed music is not to thr taste of slightly more people.
The large shops don't like to be quiet, because if they're empty it gives off an air of being a deserted wasteland. People start to whisper to avoid breaking the silence, they feel silly and uncomfortable and they leave.
Sainsbury's rounf here is still admirably quiet. Tesco went for music back in 2020 in order to have some sort of backdrop to hectoring you to disinfect surfaces/wear a mask/keep 2 metres apart/be appropriately frightened, and never did away with it. Sometimes they'll play a tune I like, admittedly. Mostly they force me to use an ipod.
Today's big issue - Asda workers up in arms at the shitness of the music they are forced to listen to while they work.
I'm with them here. I like music as much as the next man - but I like the music which is to my taste. I'd rather have no music than music I don't like. I wouldn't expect other shoppers to be gleeful about having my playlists full of The Fall and Half Man Half Biscuit, and I don't understand the arrogance of people who think we all want to listen to their taste in terrible MOR in supermarkets.
Other way round. Asda used to play proper songs but changed to unlicensed rubbish (similar to what we used to call muzak) and that is what has upset the workforce.
Yes, but the point is no music at all is bettet than music not to your taste. And any music will be not to the taste of at least 70% of people. Granted unlicensed music is not to thr taste of slightly more people.
The large shops don't like to be quiet, because if they're empty it gives off an air of being a deserted wasteland. People start to whisper to avoid breaking the silence, they feel silly and uncomfortable and they leave.
Sainsbury's rounf here is still admirably quiet. Tesco went for music back in 2020 in order to have some sort of backdrop to hectoring you to disinfect surfaces/wear a mask/keep 2 metres apart/be appropriately frightened, and never did away with it. Sometimes they'll play a tune I like, admittedly. Mostly they force me to use an ipod.
There must be a sales opportunity for a supermarket chain that advertises that they won’t play music.
We have not allowed phones out in school for years now: if I see a phone being used I confiscate it, they get it back at the end of the day and they get an automatic detention. On the other hand they are expected to have iPads, Chromebooks, or laptops (mostly in the sixth-form) and use them in most lessons, so I'm not sure how much it achieves.
I'm sitting in the auditorium at the Lib Dem conference in Brighton waiting for the next item on the agenda which is "Celebrating our election wins". This evening it is the Glee Club followed by Karaoke.
Karaoke is tomorrow night, Glee Club Monday night
Is there any shagging or drinking at the Lib Dems conference?
He spent a long time reading everything he could on Hitler as he had been commissioned to do a TV series on him. It never got made. Boyd concluded there was no other rational explanation.
There's been academic papers on this over the years iirc.
It’s an interesting question - mad vs evil.
Some years ago, a very good friend was an NHS head shrinker. She was sometimes sent various characters, arrested for some brutal crimes. She found that she was expected to find them needing clinical care rather than prison - the upper middle class ones. Civil servants of rank, senior policemen, high paid quangocrats.
She was, in fact, getting in trouble. Because, nearly always, they didn't meet the definitions of medical problems. Their criminal acts were, in her judgement, generally their character.
She began to find systemic push back against this - “why are you causing problem? They would be better off in the Priory”. She was expected, it seemed to shuffle them out of the legal system into the luxury end of the medical.
Her diagnoses were upheld when challenged - she was one of those almost stereotypically honest people, who challenged her own judgements for bias.
I recall she was quite surprised by some colleagues who took the view that horrible crimes committed by superficially “nice” people *had* to be a medical pathology. As opposed to just being arseholes, liberated by cocaine and alcohol.
Final of the T20 Blast today. Sadly, it being mid-September now, no-one's really interested. Which is fair enough. I'm the first to complain when football starts trampling all over the cricket season, but cricket really ought to have finished by now. If only they hadn't had to break off from this tournament for a pointless sixteen-and-a-bit tournament between some arbitrary made up teams, this would have been pleasantly concluded in August.
See @ydoethur's long posts near the start of this thread and the end of the previous one.
I hope that @Northern_Al remortgaged his house and laid Surrey like crazy after I said they were justifiably favourites.
He spent a long time reading everything he could on Hitler as he had been commissioned to do a TV series on him. It never got made. Boyd concluded there was no other rational explanation.
There's been academic papers on this over the years iirc.
It’s an interesting question - mad vs evil.
Some years ago, a very good friend was an NHS head shrinker. She was sometimes sent various characters, arrested for some brutal crimes. She found that she was expected to find them needing clinical care rather than prison - the upper middle class ones. Civil servants of rank, senior policemen, high paid quangocrats.
She was, in fact, getting in trouble. Because, nearly always, they didn't meet the definitions of medical problems. Their criminal acts were, in her judgement, generally their character.
She began to find systemic push back against this - “why are you causing problem? They would be better off in the Priory”. She was expected, it seemed to shuffle them out of the legal system into the luxury end of the medical.
Her diagnoses were upheld when challenged - she was one of those almost stereotypically honest people, who challenged her own judgements for bias.
I recall she was quite surprised by some colleagues who took the view that horrible crimes committed by superficially “nice” people *had* to be a medical pathology. As opposed to just being arseholes, liberated by cocaine and alcohol.
He spent a long time reading everything he could on Hitler as he had been commissioned to do a TV series on him. It never got made. Boyd concluded there was no other rational explanation.
There's been academic papers on this over the years iirc.
It’s an interesting question - mad vs evil.
Some years ago, a very good friend was an NHS head shrinker. She was sometimes sent various characters, arrested for some brutal crimes. She found that she was expected to find them needing clinical care rather than prison - the upper middle class ones. Civil servants of rank, senior policemen, high paid quangocrats.
She was, in fact, getting in trouble. Because, nearly always, they didn't meet the definitions of medical problems. Their criminal acts were, in her judgement, generally their character.
She began to find systemic push back against this - “why are you causing problem? They would be better off in the Priory”. She was expected, it seemed to shuffle them out of the legal system into the luxury end of the medical.
Her diagnoses were upheld when challenged - she was one of those almost stereotypically honest people, who challenged her own judgements for bias.
I recall she was quite surprised by some colleagues who took the view that horrible crimes committed by superficially “nice” people *had* to be a medical pathology. As opposed to just being arseholes, liberated by cocaine and alcohol.
Can I just say that I have been in Barlinnie and the State Hospital at Carstairs, both in a professional capacity. Neither are remotely pleasant but if I had to spend any time in either one it would be the Bar L every time.
He spent a long time reading everything he could on Hitler as he had been commissioned to do a TV series on him. It never got made. Boyd concluded there was no other rational explanation.
There's been academic papers on this over the years iirc.
It’s an interesting question - mad vs evil.
Some years ago, a very good friend was an NHS head shrinker. She was sometimes sent various characters, arrested for some brutal crimes. She found that she was expected to find them needing clinical care rather than prison - the upper middle class ones. Civil servants of rank, senior policemen, high paid quangocrats.
She was, in fact, getting in trouble. Because, nearly always, they didn't meet the definitions of medical problems. Their criminal acts were, in her judgement, generally their character.
She began to find systemic push back against this - “why are you causing problem? They would be better off in the Priory”. She was expected, it seemed to shuffle them out of the legal system into the luxury end of the medical.
Her diagnoses were upheld when challenged - she was one of those almost stereotypically honest people, who challenged her own judgements for bias.
I recall she was quite surprised by some colleagues who took the view that horrible crimes committed by superficially “nice” people *had* to be a medical pathology. As opposed to just being arseholes, liberated by cocaine and alcohol.
Can I just say that I have been in Barlinnie and the State Hospital at Carstairs, both in a professional capacity. Neither are remotely pleasant but if I had to spend any time in either one it would be the Bar L every time.
I can understand why you felt the need to add that but I'm pretty confident nobody on here would assume you were an inmate.
Same old story. National Trust hates the British people. -----------------------
Me:
It sounds as though it needs to be claimed as a Public Right of Way by prescriptive use.
NT are touchy on this subject as landowner, and have sometimes had their fingers burned. Here's one that MTBers went to the trouble of claiming as the NT told them to go away when usage was already established:
He spent a long time reading everything he could on Hitler as he had been commissioned to do a TV series on him. It never got made. Boyd concluded there was no other rational explanation.
There's been academic papers on this over the years iirc.
It’s an interesting question - mad vs evil.
Some years ago, a very good friend was an NHS head shrinker. She was sometimes sent various characters, arrested for some brutal crimes. She found that she was expected to find them needing clinical care rather than prison - the upper middle class ones. Civil servants of rank, senior policemen, high paid quangocrats.
She was, in fact, getting in trouble. Because, nearly always, they didn't meet the definitions of medical problems. Their criminal acts were, in her judgement, generally their character.
She began to find systemic push back against this - “why are you causing problem? They would be better off in the Priory”. She was expected, it seemed to shuffle them out of the legal system into the luxury end of the medical.
Her diagnoses were upheld when challenged - she was one of those almost stereotypically honest people, who challenged her own judgements for bias.
I recall she was quite surprised by some colleagues who took the view that horrible crimes committed by superficially “nice” people *had* to be a medical pathology. As opposed to just being arseholes, liberated by cocaine and alcohol.
Today's big issue - Asda workers up in arms at the shitness of the music they are forced to listen to while they work.
I'm with them here. I like music as much as the next man - but I like the music which is to my taste. I'd rather have no music than music I don't like. I wouldn't expect other shoppers to be gleeful about having my playlists full of The Fall and Half Man Half Biscuit, and I don't understand the arrogance of people who think we all want to listen to their taste in terrible MOR in supermarkets.
Other way round. Asda used to play proper songs but changed to unlicensed rubbish (similar to what we used to call muzak) and that is what has upset the workforce.
Yes, but the point is no music at all is bettet than music not to your taste. And any music will be not to the taste of at least 70% of people. Granted unlicensed music is not to thr taste of slightly more people.
The large shops don't like to be quiet, because if they're empty it gives off an air of being a deserted wasteland. People start to whisper to avoid breaking the silence, they feel silly and uncomfortable and they leave.
Sainsbury's rounf here is still admirably quiet. Tesco went for music back in 2020 in order to have some sort of backdrop to hectoring you to disinfect surfaces/wear a mask/keep 2 metres apart/be appropriately frightened, and never did away with it. Sometimes they'll play a tune I like, admittedly. Mostly they force me to use an ipod.
There must be a sales opportunity for a supermarket chain that advertises that they won’t play music.
Can't remember hearing music in Lidl.
But then, it has all the retail delight of it being run by Dementors, so maybe I haven't paid attention to that particular horror.
Ronald Reagan would have despised Trump. He had his faults but he was totally devoted to the Constitution, in a fashion that Biden could quote without it sounding out of place.
There were two things Reagan and Trump have in common:
1) Both were former Democrats turned populist Republicans;
2) Both were far too old to be President and were clearly past it by the age of 78.
He spent a long time reading everything he could on Hitler as he had been commissioned to do a TV series on him. It never got made. Boyd concluded there was no other rational explanation.
There's been academic papers on this over the years iirc.
It’s an interesting question - mad vs evil.
Some years ago, a very good friend was an NHS head shrinker. She was sometimes sent various characters, arrested for some brutal crimes. She found that she was expected to find them needing clinical care rather than prison - the upper middle class ones. Civil servants of rank, senior policemen, high paid quangocrats.
She was, in fact, getting in trouble. Because, nearly always, they didn't meet the definitions of medical problems. Their criminal acts were, in her judgement, generally their character.
She began to find systemic push back against this - “why are you causing problem? They would be better off in the Priory”. She was expected, it seemed to shuffle them out of the legal system into the luxury end of the medical.
Her diagnoses were upheld when challenged - she was one of those almost stereotypically honest people, who challenged her own judgements for bias.
I recall she was quite surprised by some colleagues who took the view that horrible crimes committed by superficially “nice” people *had* to be a medical pathology. As opposed to just being arseholes, liberated by cocaine and alcohol.
Can I just say that I have been in Barlinnie and the State Hospital at Carstairs, both in a professional capacity. Neither are remotely pleasant but if I had to spend any time in either one it would be the Bar L every time.
The people in question were looking at being sent to nice version of the Priory, which is quite a bit nicer than either state mental hospitals or prisons.
We have not allowed phones out in school for years now: if I see a phone being used I confiscate it, they get it back at the end of the day and they get an automatic detention. On the other hand they are expected to have iPads, Chromebooks, or laptops (mostly in the sixth-form) and use them in most lessons, so I'm not sure how much it achieves.
A good friend of mine has a friend who is a physics teacher. He asked his 3rd year class what units speed was measured in. "Grammes, sir" came the reply.
We have not allowed phones out in school for years now: if I see a phone being used I confiscate it, they get it back at the end of the day and they get an automatic detention. On the other hand they are expected to have iPads, Chromebooks, or laptops (mostly in the sixth-form) and use them in most lessons, so I'm not sure how much it achieves.
A good friend of mine has a friend who is a physics teacher. He asked his 3rd year class what units speed was measured in. "Grammes, sir" came the reply.
We have not allowed phones out in school for years now: if I see a phone being used I confiscate it, they get it back at the end of the day and they get an automatic detention. On the other hand they are expected to have iPads, Chromebooks, or laptops (mostly in the sixth-form) and use them in most lessons, so I'm not sure how much it achieves.
A good friend of mine has a friend who is a physics teacher. He asked his 3rd year class what units speed was measured in. "Grammes, sir" came the reply.
...and the various jokes about parents being intrigued by the fact their offspring had learned all about Imperial Measures for weight.
Ronald Reagan would have despised Trump. He had his faults but he was totally devoted to the Constitution, in a fashion that Biden could quote without it sounding out of place.
There were two things Reagan and Trump have in common:
1) Both were former Democrats turned populist Republicans;
2) Both were far too old to be President and were clearly past it by the age of 78.
See your curse was not restricted to Sussex but got Hammond too.
Comments
The LD plan undoubtedly should be to become the second party, and the way to it is open.
(Speaking of English seats - the rest are too complicated) They are not in a direct contest with Labour, so crucially they need Labour to continue to do well. Have they worked this out? In Lab/Con contests the LDs are unengaged, but it is essential not to have the Tories taking seats off Labour - if they do the Tories continue to come second. So LD need Labour and Reform to continue to eat the Tory vote.
As long as, and only as long as, the Tories are doing relatively badly WRT everyone else, the LD plan works itself. Astonishingly the LDs only need:
Labour to hold on in relation to the Tories
and
LDs to take further 25 Tory seats
to become the official opposition.
This of course would suit Labour, as the LDs can come second, but can't come first, now or probably ever.
Simple.
"Migration agreements are a central pillar in the German government's efforts to curb immigration."
There's no explanation of what that means as far as I can see.
Ban cash now, cash is triggering for republicans.
I cannot recall having this attitude to the leadership of either of the 2 main parties in my adult lifetime. The Conservatives have a hell of a long road back and their adventures down the road less travelled look likely to lose me altogether.
Right now I feel party less.
No, actually what TSE said.
It was us who destroyed our alleys(closes), trams, squares. An inheritance discarded.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/14/opinion/trump-harris-undecided-voter.html
Larry the Downing St cat is a little s***, says Scottish secretary
Ian Murray took a swipe at the chief mouser to the Cabinet Office after revealing it had shunned a photo-op with new Labour MPs
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/article/larry-the-downing-st-cat-is-a-little-st-says-scottish-secretary-t5k7nfrz0
But, you know, you get the occasional "China is full of Chinese people" and "my rallies are like nothing else in politics" and all of that does add up.
But whatever the truth or otherwise about that, it’s crazy that a presidential candidate currently has her as his closest adviser.
Laura Loomer and her allies are now accusing Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of participating in a conspiracy against her in partnership with top Democratic attorney Marc Elias and Fulton County DA Fani Willis.
https://x.com/yashar/status/1834761544946921620
The paradox of cars. In a place that doesn't have space for cars, people want to live there and it's fairly easy to live in a fairly car-light way. Once you incorporate space for cars, they quickly become essential and the place is less of a place.
If this is the response of "The Left" to political challenges with immigration then, yes, we will end up with actual Nazis in power.
Extremely depressing.
She appears to have gone quite mad in recent years.
One is that another bad defeat in 2028 pushes the next Conservative government back to 2037 or so.
The other is how the Conservatives respond to a hypothetical (but plausible) defeat under Jenrick. Will it be taken as a sign for the party to move closer to the voters, or will he also be seen as Not Sufficiently Tory? God knows what they try in the second case.
But much of urban America was built more recently.
And the US population is nearly 2.5 times what it was post WWII, when the automobile age got going with a vengeance.
Or are we supposed to object purely because they are Africans?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheonggyecheon
Which is a fantastic urban space - and walk.
Exclusive: Ormiston academies trust says impact of phones on learning and mental health has been ‘catastrophic’"
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/sep/13/academy-chain-with-35000-pupils-to-be-first-in-england-to-go-phone-free
https://unherd.com/2024/09/inside-starmers-feuding-no-10/
https://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheonggyecheon#/media/File:Chonggye_Expressway_1972-05-20.png
The para is a reference to @Sandpit, who is pro-Ukraine (see his sigil) and pro-Trump (see his comments) and who works in one of the Gulf states, presumably Dubai or UAE (the "Sandpit") in the Horn of Africa.
@Dura_Ace's description of those states as "Ballardesque nightmare of the Trucial States" is a reference to JG Ballard (a writer of middle-class English torment in dystopias, urban ones in this case) and to the former confederation in the region ("the Trucial States").
It wasn't a bad analogy and a lesser writer would have gone for cyberpunk instead of the better Ballard reference, although the pedant in me insists he should have used "Ballardian" instead.
FWIW, an excellent man I know - my father in law - is both miserly and generous. He will not spend money on himself - but thinks nothing of giving time and money to others. Which he can do easily because he never spends money on himself. Miserliness need not be a negative.
And his footprints are not found in any file of Scotland Yard's
And when the larder's looted, or the jewel-case is rifled,
Or when the milk is missing, or another Peke's been stifled,
Or the greenhouse glass is broken, and the trellis past repair
Ay, there's the wonder of the thing! Larry's not there!
It seems Germany has learnt litttle from past mistakes. Are thre really not enough migrants they could bus in from a Romanian backwater or unemployed Spanish youth? They have to get them from Kenya? It makes no sense.
Which is fair enough. I'm the first to complain when football starts trampling all over the cricket season, but cricket really ought to have finished by now.
If only they hadn't had to break off from this tournament for a pointless sixteen-and-a-bit tournament between some arbitrary made up teams, this would have been pleasantly concluded in August.
"While most of the great reforming governments, such as Blair’s and Thatcher’s, took years before they found their stride, they had a clear strategy right from the beginning. For Thatcher it was to make Britain great again by ending the economic post war economic consensus; for Blair it was and to drag the country into modernity through constitutional reforms and European levels of public sector investment. Starmer’s government has no equivalent purpose. Any of his five “missions” could be adopted by the Conservative Party without any controversy: “Kickstarting economic growth,” “Making Britain a clean energy superpower; “Halving serious violent crime; “Breaking down barriers to opportunity”; and “building an NHS fit for the future.” Is anyone opposed to these ambitions? Are they even political?"
https://x.com/Acyn/status/1834808089411043758
election wins".
This evening it is the Glee Club followed by Karaoke.
Whereas Trump either gives train-of-thought gibberish or standard politician boasting and promising, as in that clip.
Trump is much closer to Kinnock's Sheffield rally:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E6ykM_Q4F8
The really stupid thing is that it doesn't actually affect you. You can continue to use digital currency as much as you like. Indeed it is you who are being patronising in demanding everyone accept your particular warped view and labelling anyone who doesn't agree as backward.
You are a fucking snob and an ignorant one at that.
https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGeEJ9hPw/
So I know what you mean but I haven't seen England play in person for a couple of years thanks to Covid and other things and I am really looking forward to it. And it keeps my mind off how badly United are playing (again).
Please tell me you have some life in you.
I can see what the speechwriter was trying to do, but Trump completely mangled the cadence
https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1834689445238612141
https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2024/08/inside-court-adolf-hitler-people-review-richard-evans
He spent a long time reading everything he could on Hitler as he had been commissioned to do a TV series on him. It never got made. Boyd concluded there was no other rational explanation.
There's been academic papers on this over the years iirc.
Edited extra bit: 15.5, which I've just hedged at 1.93.
Tesco went for music back in 2020 in order to have some sort of backdrop to hectoring you to disinfect surfaces/wear a mask/keep 2 metres apart/be appropriately frightened, and never did away with it.
Sometimes they'll play a tune I like, admittedly. Mostly they force me to use an ipod.
On the other hand they are expected to have iPads, Chromebooks, or laptops (mostly in the sixth-form) and use them in most lessons, so I'm not sure how much it achieves.
Some years ago, a very good friend was an NHS head shrinker. She was sometimes sent various characters, arrested for some brutal crimes. She found that she was expected to find them needing clinical care rather than prison - the upper middle class ones. Civil servants of rank, senior policemen, high paid quangocrats.
She was, in fact, getting in trouble. Because, nearly always, they didn't meet the definitions of medical problems. Their criminal acts were, in her judgement, generally their character.
She began to find systemic push back against this - “why are you causing problem? They would be better off in the Priory”. She was expected, it seemed to shuffle them out of the legal system into the luxury end of the medical.
Her diagnoses were upheld when challenged - she was one of those almost stereotypically honest people, who challenged her own judgements for bias.
I recall she was quite surprised by some colleagues who took the view that horrible crimes committed by superficially “nice” people *had* to be a medical pathology. As opposed to just being arseholes, liberated by cocaine and alcohol.
@davidfrum
·
8m
"Immigrants are abducting and eating cats" = Trump/Vance playing on their own 30 yard line
"We admire Ronald Reagan for standing against dictators" = Harris/Walz playing on the other team's 30 yard line
https://x.com/davidfrum
-----------------------
Me:
It sounds as though it needs to be claimed as a Public Right of Way by prescriptive use.
NT are touchy on this subject as landowner, and have sometimes had their fingers burned. Here's one that MTBers went to the trouble of claiming as the NT told them to go away when usage was already established:
https://www.cyclinguk.org/blog/success-lake-district-mountain-bikers-new-bridleway-walla-crag
Nonetheless progress is possible.
But then, it has all the retail delight of it being run by Dementors, so maybe I haven't paid attention to that particular horror.
There were two things Reagan and Trump have in common:
1) Both were former Democrats turned populist Republicans;
2) Both were far too old to be President and were clearly past it by the age of 78.