If nothing else politics is 100+ hours a week for abuse, real personal risk, an unstable job and a lousy salary, with lots of stuff on top you're expected to chip in for as an MP.
Who'd go for that? For any job? (forget the public service bit for a minute)
I'll repeat myself from earlier today, I don't think she's a good candidate and is unlikely to ever be one. She has zero maturity of thought. Suggesting that 5-10% of the civil service should be on prison is just laughable and the kind of stuff I'd expect from an anti-establishment sixth former. I'm not exactly a huge fan of the civil service or the job they (don't) do but to suggest they should be imprisoned for it is just idiotic.
She could easily have made a very valid point that she believes that there's too many civil servants who work against elected ministers and there are loads who see it as their duty to block Tory policies and they should be rooted out and moved on. Suggesting jail time for them just makes her look ridiculous.
I like Kemi and think if she had the ability to think for a bit longer before speaking or forming an opinion on something she might be brilliant, as it stands she's just behaving like someone who wants to get a rise out of the people she opposes which isn't a grown up way to lead a party.
She's 44: she's already been a minister. If not now, then she's unlikely to suddenly discover such ability in the future ?
My point - which I repeated endlessly on here when she was for some unknown reason flavour of the month - was this. She was a hopeless minister, cowardly and ineffectual. She was invisible for much of her time as business secretary. What on Earth qualifies her for the top job?
She is not some mysterious unknown quantity. She is very much a known quantity. Known to be utterly crap.
If nothing else politics is 100+ hours a week for abuse, real personal risk, an unstable job and a lousy salary, with lots of stuff on top you're expected to chip in for as an MP.
Who'd go for that? For any job? (forget the public service bit for a minute)
And you're not even allowed to sleep with your assistant anymore.
Ministers are being asked to draw up billions of pounds in cuts to infrastructure projects over the next 18 months despite Rachel Reeves pledging to invest more to grow the economy, the Guardian has learned.
Members of the cabinet have been asked to model cuts to their investment plans of up to 10% of their annual capital spending as part of this month’s spending review, government sources said.
I've been withholding judgment, but if this proves correct, then they're being imbecilic.
...Treasury officials say delaying or stopping (capital infrastructure) projects that have not yet begun is easier than changing welfare schemes that are already in place, or making large-scale redundancies. ..
People are far less likely to notice or complain unless interested in the particular project as well.
Opting for "easier" in the first year of government ? Why are they even bothering. (Assuming the story is true, of course.)
🚨 NEW: Accusing Kemi of having plotted against Boris while he was PM, Nadine Dorries said on the leadership contender: ‘I think if you are someone who plotted to remove a sitting prime minister, you should automatically be disqualified.’
🚨 NEW: Accusing Kemi of having plotted against Boris while he was PM, Nadine Dorries said on the leadership contender: ‘I think if you are someone who plotted to remove a sitting prime minister, you should automatically be disqualified.’
The most unrealistic thing about Threads is that the survivors didn't clean up the debris even decades after the attack.
Wasn't it filmed in the 70s ? Fairly true to life, then. 😏
Eighties. 1983 or 1984.
Probably assuming a reversion to 70s norms, post apocalypse ? I'll have to get around to watching it.
Been nostalgia rewatching The Prisoner.
The guy who played the mute butler, Angelo Muscat, has the saddest story, dying in poverty, aged 47. Quote on IMDB: I always feel lonely. I feel that people don't want to know me. Girls don't fancy me, I'm tiny and nearly bald but I'm only in my thirties. That's why I'm so grateful to Patrick McGoohan. He has given me responsibility for the first time in my life. I am playing an important part in a big series. I AM something, for the first time ever...
I’m rewatching it too, just finished Hammer into Anvil. The 11th episode on the Blu Ray.
That’s very sad about Angelo Muscat. He also looked a lot older than that. It’s also sad he never lived to see how adored the series was, and still is, and he was.
I remember many years ago a guy wrote three articles about the Butler for the Prisoner fanzine. ‘Bossing the Butler’, ‘Serving the Butler’ and ‘Clocking the Butler’, the last of which detailed the time of every appearance the character made in every episode broken down scene by scene.
I was very disappointed with the 2000's remake of The Prisoner. Felt like it could have said something new for a younger generation. And was just... meh.
Maybe that says more about the current world. But they could have at least made a point of it being 'meh'.
I vaguely remember it but didn’t really watch it. It’s reputation preceded it. Cannot understand why the need to remake stuff, especially to do it so poorly.
Same when the remade Survivors with Julie Graham and Max Beesley.
🚨 NEW: Accusing Kemi of having plotted against Boris while he was PM, Nadine Dorries said on the leadership contender: ‘I think if you are someone who plotted to remove a sitting prime minister, you should automatically be disqualified.’
Let it go Nadine, parties are allowed to remove their leaders!
The most unrealistic thing about Threads is that the survivors didn't clean up the debris even decades after the attack.
Wasn't it filmed in the 70s ? Fairly true to life, then. 😏
Eighties. 1983 or 1984.
Probably assuming a reversion to 70s norms, post apocalypse ? I'll have to get around to watching it.
Been nostalgia rewatching The Prisoner.
The guy who played the mute butler, Angelo Muscat, has the saddest story, dying in poverty, aged 47. Quote on IMDB: I always feel lonely. I feel that people don't want to know me. Girls don't fancy me, I'm tiny and nearly bald but I'm only in my thirties. That's why I'm so grateful to Patrick McGoohan. He has given me responsibility for the first time in my life. I am playing an important part in a big series. I AM something, for the first time ever...
I’m rewatching it too, just finished Hammer into Anvil. The 11th episode on the Blu Ray.
That’s very sad about Angelo Muscat. He also looked a lot older than that. It’s also sad he never lived to see how adored the series was, and still is, and he was.
I remember many years ago a guy wrote three articles about the Butler for the Prisoner fanzine. ‘Bossing the Butler’, ‘Serving the Butler’ and ‘Clocking the Butler’, the last of which detailed the time of every appearance the character made in every episode broken down scene by scene.
I was very disappointed with the 2000's remake of The Prisoner. Felt like it could have said something new for a younger generation. And was just... meh.
Maybe that says more about the current world. But they could have at least made a point of it being 'meh'.
I didn't think it was that bad, tbh. The cast was certainly good. But yes, it was a bit meh. ☹️
🚨 NEW: Accusing Kemi of having plotted against Boris while he was PM, Nadine Dorries said on the leadership contender: ‘I think if you are someone who plotted to remove a sitting prime minister, you should automatically be disqualified.’
Nadine bloody Dorries.
It should be a law that when quoting her, her name should be written as “Nadine (still not a Baroness) Dorries”
If nothing else politics is 100+ hours a week for abuse, real personal risk, an unstable job and a lousy salary, with lots of stuff on top you're expected to chip in for as an MP.
Who'd go for that? For any job? (forget the public service bit for a minute)
Those who want to be minor celebs, ideologues and those who earn less than the £91,346 salary (which is over 95% of the population)
If Badenoch can make two howling unforced errors in one week of a Tory leadership campaign - get rid of maternity pay, lock up 10% of civil servants - then how bad might she be as LOTO?
She is another Liz Truss (as others have said). She'd perhaps be a good minister in the right job - a thinker rather than a doer, maybe with a specific remit to roll back Wokeness? Allowed to say mad things? - but as a leader or PM, no no no no
Jenrick looks a bit nasty and cruel, esp now he has slimmed down. Alan B'Stard but smarter. And now saying properly right wing things
It is extremely possible the public will be crying out for that after 5 years of crashing Labour incompetence plus tons of Wokeness and waste
Cleverly is just "oh let's try and win back 40-60 seats and do better in 2033"
Ministers are being asked to draw up billions of pounds in cuts to infrastructure projects over the next 18 months despite Rachel Reeves pledging to invest more to grow the economy, the Guardian has learned.
Members of the cabinet have been asked to model cuts to their investment plans of up to 10% of their annual capital spending as part of this month’s spending review, government sources said.
I've been withholding judgment, but if this proves correct, then they're being imbecilic.
...Treasury officials say delaying or stopping (capital infrastructure) projects that have not yet begun is easier than changing welfare schemes that are already in place, or making large-scale redundancies. ..
People are far less likely to notice or complain unless interested in the particular project as well.
Opting for "easier" in the first year of government ? Why are they even bothering. (Assuming the story is true, of course.)
Governments are too frit to take difficult decisions, even with massive majorities (see Boris with planning). If they've made even one such decision which was unpopular already, like winter fuel, they'll be reluctant to take more.
No doubt she has been "misrepresented" by the media yet again.
You don't think between 5 and 10 percent of civil servants are very bad?
I think it's more the "should be in prison" that people will take issue with. The bar for incarcerating people is - one would hope - a high one.
I agree, but civil servants are agents of the state. If they do a bad job, and potentially their bad job is motivated by a wish to do down the Government of the day or frustrate their plans, that situation is a sticky one to a far greater degree than a lousy cashier or a decorator who leave the pictures up and paints round them. I am not sure all cases of the sort are worthy of a trip to the gaol, but nor can they be tolerated.
Yeah, but most civil servants - by number - have very little to do with the actions of ministers. They are junior staff in Swansea dealing with driving license administration.
But they could be Home Office staff running the asylum and immigration system, where what appears to be willful dysfunction (see the waaaay higher success levels of UK applications than the rest of Europe) has fuelled the migrant crisis.
Not to defend the civil service but our laws and legal rulings are completely different to France so blaming our high asylum success rate to a lower European one on the civil service seems like a big stretch. It needs legal reform to lower that rate which the Tories had 14 years to push through.
As far as I am aware, we have not been outliers in application success like this in the past. I think you have a partial point - Theresa's stupid modern slavery legislation hasn't helped, but the Home Office is willfully uncooperative - whistleblowers have revealed evidence that supports this fact.
Being uncooperative would make no difference if the laws were properly tightened (including the ridiculously broad modern slavery definition that allowed Albanians to win asylum claims on the basis that they were being enslaved by other Albanians) then the judgements would follow. That's on the politicians not the blob.
The "Blob" is usually just an excuse for incompetence and laziness on the part of politicians.
The Thatcher Government faced both civil service intransigence and EEC legislation. Yet it managed enormous changes.
I think the real difference is that in the 1980s, there will still politicians of substance. The Thatcher cabinets from 1979 to 1986 were extraordinarily talented. And even the opposition benches contained many people who - even if I disagree with them - were clearly moral, hard working and dedicated.
Today, who would go into politics?
Why dont you try rcs. You seem very knowleagable and anyone who can parlay a degree in philosophy into a career in goldman sachs has a unique talent.
I wonder how many PB personalities are listed on the official documentation for Russian trolls? One can only aspire...
Even very obscure Discord servers have russian-line spouting trolls these days. But I think PB was ahead of the charge. I've sometimes wondered if there's a 'get out of death-in-a-Ukrainian-ditch' card for people who can work a computer well enough to post their talking points, given how many of them there seem to be.
The most unrealistic thing about Threads is that the survivors didn't clean up the debris even decades after the attack.
Wasn't it filmed in the 70s ? Fairly true to life, then. 😏
Eighties. 1983 or 1984.
Probably assuming a reversion to 70s norms, post apocalypse ? I'll have to get around to watching it.
Been nostalgia rewatching The Prisoner.
The guy who played the mute butler, Angelo Muscat, has the saddest story, dying in poverty, aged 47. Quote on IMDB: I always feel lonely. I feel that people don't want to know me. Girls don't fancy me, I'm tiny and nearly bald but I'm only in my thirties. That's why I'm so grateful to Patrick McGoohan. He has given me responsibility for the first time in my life. I am playing an important part in a big series. I AM something, for the first time ever...
I’m rewatching it too, just finished Hammer into Anvil. The 11th episode on the Blu Ray.
That’s very sad about Angelo Muscat. He also looked a lot older than that. It’s also sad he never lived to see how adored the series was, and still is, and he was.
I remember many years ago a guy wrote three articles about the Butler for the Prisoner fanzine. ‘Bossing the Butler’, ‘Serving the Butler’ and ‘Clocking the Butler’, the last of which detailed the time of every appearance the character made in every episode broken down scene by scene.
I was very disappointed with the 2000's remake of The Prisoner. Felt like it could have said something new for a younger generation. And was just... meh.
Maybe that says more about the current world. But they could have at least made a point of it being 'meh'.
I vaguely remember it but didn’t really watch it. It’s reputation preceded it. Cannot understand why the need to remake stuff, especially to do it so poorly.
Same when the remade Survivors with Julie Graham and Max Beesley.
I liked the Survivors remake. They had to cancel it, not because of the ratings, but cutbacks meant they had to lose a show.
Michael Ancram, Marquess of Lothian, Conservative MP for Berwick & East Lothian 1974, Edinburgh South 1979-87, Devizes 1992-2010, and Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party 2001-05, has died age 79
Michael Ancram, Marquess of Lothian, Conservative MP for Berwick & East Lothian 1974, Edinburgh South 1979-87, Devizes 1992-2010, and Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party 2001-05, has died age 79
I remember him coming in joint last with David Davis in, I think, the 2001 leadership election which meant no-one was eliminated. In the next round he polled just one fewer than Davis and was then eliminated - at which point DD dropped out anyway. Leaving IDS to battle it out with Clarke and the favourite, Portillo. And the rest is history...
If nothing else politics is 100+ hours a week for abuse, real personal risk, an unstable job and a lousy salary, with lots of stuff on top you're expected to chip in for as an MP.
Who'd go for that? For any job? (forget the public service bit for a minute)
And you will, necessarily, have to do things like skirt truth and defend poor things on your own side as part of playing the game, which eats away at you.
Last time around that might not have meant much because Trump was trying to persuade his supporters not to vote early but this time around he has been putting a fair bit of money into early voting campaigns. 400K votes is a lot, even in a state the size of PA
I'm willing to believe that half a dozen MPs might, theoretically, belong in jail. Perhaps even a handful of individuals in the civil service, if only by the law of averages.
50k civil servants ? That's the idle dream of a would be authoritarian.
If she had said 50,000 should be sacked, it would be extreme but one could make an argument based on the classic big four model of chopping the bottom 10%. But for her mind to go straight to imprisonment? Bonkers.
To be fair she doesn't think 50,000 of them should be in jail. She thinks todays politicians can say what they want, without it being accurate, or even true, as long as they indicate whose side they are on. She might be right.
"Upsetting the right people", sadly, works rather well a lot of the time, and many politicians think that's all you need.
I don't think everything she says is bonkers though.
I think there's a problem with politicians who say as little as 4-5% that is bonkers. Preferably we should be going for 0% bonkers. Is that too much to ask for?
Sensible. Well, if the bunker's air ducts are better than those in Beirut.
lol
They will be glaring with suspicious intent at the guard's 1980s Seiko watch, as it loudly ticks
Then wondering about the Toshiba fan in the corner of the room
I for one SALUTE the fact that Israel has terrorised the fuck out of all and any of its enemies who ever use an electronic device, at any time. So, all of them
I'm waiting for them to start on some of the Islamist-friendly suspects in the UK
"Today, in a terrible incident, Jeremy Corbyn was bizarrely castrasted by his Argos Breville sandwich toaster"
No doubt she has been "misrepresented" by the media yet again.
You don't think between 5 and 10 percent of civil servants are very bad?
I think it's more the "should be in prison" that people will take issue with. The bar for incarcerating people is - one would hope - a high one.
I agree, but civil servants are agents of the state. If they do a bad job, and potentially their bad job is motivated by a wish to do down the Government of the day or frustrate their plans, that situation is a sticky one to a far greater degree than a lousy cashier or a decorator who leave the pictures up and paints round them. I am not sure all cases of the sort are worthy of a trip to the gaol, but nor can they be tolerated.
Yeah, but most civil servants - by number - have very little to do with the actions of ministers. They are junior staff in Swansea dealing with driving license administration.
But they could be Home Office staff running the asylum and immigration system, where what appears to be willful dysfunction (see the waaaay higher success levels of UK applications than the rest of Europe) has fuelled the migrant crisis.
Not to defend the civil service but our laws and legal rulings are completely different to France so blaming our high asylum success rate to a lower European one on the civil service seems like a big stretch. It needs legal reform to lower that rate which the Tories had 14 years to push through.
As far as I am aware, we have not been outliers in application success like this in the past. I think you have a partial point - Theresa's stupid modern slavery legislation hasn't helped, but the Home Office is willfully uncooperative - whistleblowers have revealed evidence that supports this fact.
Being uncooperative would make no difference if the laws were properly tightened (including the ridiculously broad modern slavery definition that allowed Albanians to win asylum claims on the basis that they were being enslaved by other Albanians) then the judgements would follow. That's on the politicians not the blob.
The "Blob" is usually just an excuse for incompetence and laziness on the part of politicians.
The Thatcher Government faced both civil service intransigence and EEC legislation. Yet it managed enormous changes.
I think the real difference is that in the 1980s, there will still politicians of substance. The Thatcher cabinets from 1979 to 1986 were extraordinarily talented. And even the opposition benches contained many people who - even if I disagree with them - were clearly moral, hard working and dedicated.
Today, who would go into politics?
Indeed, I honestly don't think I could afford the pay cut to be an MP while my answer to TSE was glib it has a big element of truth in it, the last time I looked into it running to be an MP would work out to a pay cut bigger than 50% for me and at that point who pays the mortgage?
I'm willing to believe that half a dozen MPs might, theoretically, belong in jail. Perhaps even a handful of individuals in the civil service, if only by the law of averages.
50k civil servants ? That's the idle dream of a would be authoritarian.
If she had said 50,000 should be sacked, it would be extreme but one could make an argument based on the classic big four model of chopping the bottom 10%. But for her mind to go straight to imprisonment? Bonkers.
To be fair she doesn't think 50,000 of them should be in jail. She thinks todays politicians can say what they want, without it being accurate, or even true, as long as they indicate whose side they are on. She might be right.
"Upsetting the right people", sadly, works rather well a lot of the time, and many politicians think that's all you need.
I don't think everything she says is bonkers though.
I think there's a problem with politicians who say as little as 4-5% that is bonkers. Preferably we should be going for 0% bonkers. Is that too much to ask for?
They are only human, so yes, but a low percentage would be preferable, though to be noticed they often need to go for more. They can't all bore their way into the job like Starmer.
The most unrealistic thing about Threads is that the survivors didn't clean up the debris even decades after the attack.
Wasn't it filmed in the 70s ? Fairly true to life, then. 😏
Eighties. 1983 or 1984.
Probably assuming a reversion to 70s norms, post apocalypse ? I'll have to get around to watching it.
Been nostalgia rewatching The Prisoner.
The guy who played the mute butler, Angelo Muscat, has the saddest story, dying in poverty, aged 47. Quote on IMDB: I always feel lonely. I feel that people don't want to know me. Girls don't fancy me, I'm tiny and nearly bald but I'm only in my thirties. That's why I'm so grateful to Patrick McGoohan. He has given me responsibility for the first time in my life. I am playing an important part in a big series. I AM something, for the first time ever...
I’m rewatching it too, just finished Hammer into Anvil. The 11th episode on the Blu Ray.
That’s very sad about Angelo Muscat. He also looked a lot older than that. It’s also sad he never lived to see how adored the series was, and still is, and he was.
I remember many years ago a guy wrote three articles about the Butler for the Prisoner fanzine. ‘Bossing the Butler’, ‘Serving the Butler’ and ‘Clocking the Butler’, the last of which detailed the time of every appearance the character made in every episode broken down scene by scene.
I was very disappointed with the 2000's remake of The Prisoner. Felt like it could have said something new for a younger generation. And was just... meh.
Maybe that says more about the current world. But they could have at least made a point of it being 'meh'.
I vaguely remember it but didn’t really watch it. It’s reputation preceded it. Cannot understand why the need to remake stuff, especially to do it so poorly.
Same when the remade Survivors with Julie Graham and Max Beesley.
I really had high hopes when I watched the pilot for the remake. Then the actual series was just... bad. The original series was great (if you are a little generous to the filler episodes). Much more 'on the nose' about what such events would entail for the ... urr... survivors.
No doubt she has been "misrepresented" by the media yet again.
You don't think between 5 and 10 percent of civil servants are very bad?
I think it's more the "should be in prison" that people will take issue with. The bar for incarcerating people is - one would hope - a high one.
I agree, but civil servants are agents of the state. If they do a bad job, and potentially their bad job is motivated by a wish to do down the Government of the day or frustrate their plans, that situation is a sticky one to a far greater degree than a lousy cashier or a decorator who leave the pictures up and paints round them. I am not sure all cases of the sort are worthy of a trip to the gaol, but nor can they be tolerated.
Yeah, but most civil servants - by number - have very little to do with the actions of ministers. They are junior staff in Swansea dealing with driving license administration.
But they could be Home Office staff running the asylum and immigration system, where what appears to be willful dysfunction (see the waaaay higher success levels of UK applications than the rest of Europe) has fuelled the migrant crisis.
Not to defend the civil service but our laws and legal rulings are completely different to France so blaming our high asylum success rate to a lower European one on the civil service seems like a big stretch. It needs legal reform to lower that rate which the Tories had 14 years to push through.
As far as I am aware, we have not been outliers in application success like this in the past. I think you have a partial point - Theresa's stupid modern slavery legislation hasn't helped, but the Home Office is willfully uncooperative - whistleblowers have revealed evidence that supports this fact.
Being uncooperative would make no difference if the laws were properly tightened (including the ridiculously broad modern slavery definition that allowed Albanians to win asylum claims on the basis that they were being enslaved by other Albanians) then the judgements would follow. That's on the politicians not the blob.
The "Blob" is usually just an excuse for incompetence and laziness on the part of politicians.
The Thatcher Government faced both civil service intransigence and EEC legislation. Yet it managed enormous changes.
I think the real difference is that in the 1980s, there will still politicians of substance. The Thatcher cabinets from 1979 to 1986 were extraordinarily talented. And even the opposition benches contained many people who - even if I disagree with them - were clearly moral, hard working and dedicated.
Today, who would go into politics?
Why dont you try rcs. You seem very knowleagable and anyone who can parlay a degree in philosophy into a career in goldman sachs has a unique talent.
And now I run the most profitable auto insurance company in the world.
Hey ho.
Why would I go into politics?
Who better than somebody used to cleaning up the mess after a series of car crashes?
No doubt she has been "misrepresented" by the media yet again.
You don't think between 5 and 10 percent of civil servants are very bad?
I think it's more the "should be in prison" that people will take issue with. The bar for incarcerating people is - one would hope - a high one.
I agree, but civil servants are agents of the state. If they do a bad job, and potentially their bad job is motivated by a wish to do down the Government of the day or frustrate their plans, that situation is a sticky one to a far greater degree than a lousy cashier or a decorator who leave the pictures up and paints round them. I am not sure all cases of the sort are worthy of a trip to the gaol, but nor can they be tolerated.
Yeah, but most civil servants - by number - have very little to do with the actions of ministers. They are junior staff in Swansea dealing with driving license administration.
But they could be Home Office staff running the asylum and immigration system, where what appears to be willful dysfunction (see the waaaay higher success levels of UK applications than the rest of Europe) has fuelled the migrant crisis.
Not to defend the civil service but our laws and legal rulings are completely different to France so blaming our high asylum success rate to a lower European one on the civil service seems like a big stretch. It needs legal reform to lower that rate which the Tories had 14 years to push through.
As far as I am aware, we have not been outliers in application success like this in the past. I think you have a partial point - Theresa's stupid modern slavery legislation hasn't helped, but the Home Office is willfully uncooperative - whistleblowers have revealed evidence that supports this fact.
Being uncooperative would make no difference if the laws were properly tightened (including the ridiculously broad modern slavery definition that allowed Albanians to win asylum claims on the basis that they were being enslaved by other Albanians) then the judgements would follow. That's on the politicians not the blob.
The "Blob" is usually just an excuse for incompetence and laziness on the part of politicians.
The Thatcher Government faced both civil service intransigence and EEC legislation. Yet it managed enormous changes.
I think the real difference is that in the 1980s, there will still politicians of substance. The Thatcher cabinets from 1979 to 1986 were extraordinarily talented. And even the opposition benches contained many people who - even if I disagree with them - were clearly moral, hard working and dedicated.
Today, who would go into politics?
Indeed, I honestly don't think I could afford the pay cut to be an MP while my answer to TSE was glib it has a big element of truth in it, the last time I looked into it running to be an MP would work out to a pay cut bigger than 50% for me and at that point who pays the mortgage?
I think the money part of it is only one element. Now with social media etc, your every single move, every public utterance can be captured and used against you. Who wants to live like that?
I remember the Mail clearly knew Hancock was having an affair, so for several weekends they ran pictures people had taken of him out playing with his kids. Now, he rightly went for his actions, all that is fine, but an afternoon off with his kids still makes the papers. You can never be off the clock.
There was a twitter account at one point that encouraged people to spend in pics of MPs that the public spotted out and about. Not you caught them doing something scandalous, just on a train, having a drink / smoke, etc.
I'm willing to believe that half a dozen MPs might, theoretically, belong in jail. Perhaps even a handful of individuals in the civil service, if only by the law of averages.
50k civil servants ? That's the idle dream of a would be authoritarian.
If she had said 50,000 should be sacked, it would be extreme but one could make an argument based on the classic big four model of chopping the bottom 10%. But for her mind to go straight to imprisonment? Bonkers.
To be fair she doesn't think 50,000 of them should be in jail. She thinks todays politicians can say what they want, without it being accurate, or even true, as long as they indicate whose side they are on. She might be right.
"Upsetting the right people", sadly, works rather well a lot of the time, and many politicians think that's all you need.
I don't think everything she says is bonkers though.
I think there's a problem with politicians who say as little as 4-5% that is bonkers. Preferably we should be going for 0% bonkers. Is that too much to ask for?
It's not as if Jenrick slams the door in Mr Bonkers's face. But somehow, he manages to not sound as bonkers.
I agree, but why would he be able to help with the campaign?
A Machiavellian campaigner would organise a mass write in in support of Trump from foreign voters, saying we're all frightened Biden standing up to Russia is making us less safe and begging America to vote Trump so he will make Ukraine surrender.
The last time the Guardian tried that on behalf on John Kerry remains the only time since the Cold War the Republicans won the popular vote.
Last time around that might not have meant much because Trump was trying to persuade his supporters not to vote early but this time around he has been putting a fair bit of money into early voting campaigns. 400K votes is a lot, even in a state the size of PA
Yes, they're not Trafalgar, but they're pretty crap.
The most unrealistic thing about Threads is that the survivors didn't clean up the debris even decades after the attack.
Wasn't it filmed in the 70s ? Fairly true to life, then. 😏
Eighties. 1983 or 1984.
Probably assuming a reversion to 70s norms, post apocalypse ? I'll have to get around to watching it.
Been nostalgia rewatching The Prisoner.
The guy who played the mute butler, Angelo Muscat, has the saddest story, dying in poverty, aged 47. Quote on IMDB: I always feel lonely. I feel that people don't want to know me. Girls don't fancy me, I'm tiny and nearly bald but I'm only in my thirties. That's why I'm so grateful to Patrick McGoohan. He has given me responsibility for the first time in my life. I am playing an important part in a big series. I AM something, for the first time ever...
I’m rewatching it too, just finished Hammer into Anvil. The 11th episode on the Blu Ray.
That’s very sad about Angelo Muscat. He also looked a lot older than that. It’s also sad he never lived to see how adored the series was, and still is, and he was.
I remember many years ago a guy wrote three articles about the Butler for the Prisoner fanzine. ‘Bossing the Butler’, ‘Serving the Butler’ and ‘Clocking the Butler’, the last of which detailed the time of every appearance the character made in every episode broken down scene by scene.
I was very disappointed with the 2000's remake of The Prisoner. Felt like it could have said something new for a younger generation. And was just... meh.
Maybe that says more about the current world. But they could have at least made a point of it being 'meh'.
I vaguely remember it but didn’t really watch it. It’s reputation preceded it. Cannot understand why the need to remake stuff, especially to do it so poorly.
Same when the remade Survivors with Julie Graham and Max Beesley.
On the topic of the original - am I right in thinking that the Panopticon thingy was inspired by kinetheodolites in patriotic newsreels of plucky British boffins in the Aussie outback?
eg 26:36 on here (With a sly leer at young ladies' bottoms at the same time, I see).
Last time around that might not have meant much because Trump was trying to persuade his supporters not to vote early but this time around he has been putting a fair bit of money into early voting campaigns. 400K votes is a lot, even in a state the size of PA
Interesting. In Potus elections past (2020 excepted because of Trump’s opposition) early voting patterns have been a pretty reliable indicator of outcomes. We’ll see.
New series of Slow Horses is shaping up well. Jackson Lamb one liners are worth watching it for alone.
I'm REALLY enjoying Baby Reindeer. Unexpectedly good. Short, but powerful - and funny. The new Fleabag
I am saving Shogun for an ucoming trip to Asia
Any others? PBers?
I do find it quite amusing how Shogun has received lots of praise from both West and East for capturing the period, albeit the story is a fictionalised one, loosely based upon a real person (whose actual life is more mental than the fictional story).
Where as Ubisoft are absolutely getting in the neck for cultural vandalism of their historical Japanese game, due to tailoring it for "modern" western audiences.
New series of Slow Horses is shaping up well. Jackson Lamb one liners are worth watching it for alone.
I'm REALLY enjoying Baby Reindeer. Unexpectedly good. Short, but powerful - and funny. The new Fleabag
I am saving Shogun for an ucoming trip to Asia
Any others? PBers?
If you haven't already watched it Inspector George Gently got added to Netflix. It's absolutely brilliant, a bit depressing but a thoroughly realistic take on the 1960s and Martin Shaw puts in a top performance, probably the best of his career.
New series of Slow Horses is shaping up well. Jackson Lamb one liners are worth watching it for alone.
I'm REALLY enjoying Baby Reindeer. Unexpectedly good. Short, but powerful - and funny. The new Fleabag
I am saving Shogun for an ucoming trip to Asia
Any others? PBers?
I do find it quite amusing how Shogun has received lots of praise from both West and East for capturing the period, albeit the story is a fictionalised one, loosely based upon a real person (whose actual life is more mental than the fictional story).
Where as Ubisoft are absolutely getting in the neck for cultural vandalism of their historical Japanese game, due to tailoring it for "modern" western audiences.
Might be in part the different audiences, but also possibly because with Ubisoft it's just yet another bloody boilerplate Assassin's Creed game, so it presumably lacks the more unique charms of a new TV show, in terms of production, writing, performances etc? And the hamfisted tailoring grates more as a result perhaps.
The most unrealistic thing about Threads is that the survivors didn't clean up the debris even decades after the attack.
Wasn't it filmed in the 70s ? Fairly true to life, then. 😏
Eighties. 1983 or 1984.
Probably assuming a reversion to 70s norms, post apocalypse ? I'll have to get around to watching it.
Been nostalgia rewatching The Prisoner.
The guy who played the mute butler, Angelo Muscat, has the saddest story, dying in poverty, aged 47. Quote on IMDB: I always feel lonely. I feel that people don't want to know me. Girls don't fancy me, I'm tiny and nearly bald but I'm only in my thirties. That's why I'm so grateful to Patrick McGoohan. He has given me responsibility for the first time in my life. I am playing an important part in a big series. I AM something, for the first time ever...
I’m rewatching it too, just finished Hammer into Anvil. The 11th episode on the Blu Ray.
That’s very sad about Angelo Muscat. He also looked a lot older than that. It’s also sad he never lived to see how adored the series was, and still is, and he was.
I remember many years ago a guy wrote three articles about the Butler for the Prisoner fanzine. ‘Bossing the Butler’, ‘Serving the Butler’ and ‘Clocking the Butler’, the last of which detailed the time of every appearance the character made in every episode broken down scene by scene.
I was very disappointed with the 2000's remake of The Prisoner. Felt like it could have said something new for a younger generation. And was just... meh.
Maybe that says more about the current world. But they could have at least made a point of it being 'meh'.
I vaguely remember it but didn’t really watch it. It’s reputation preceded it. Cannot understand why the need to remake stuff, especially to do it so poorly.
Same when the remade Survivors with Julie Graham and Max Beesley.
On the topic of the original - am I right in thinking that the Panopticon thingy was inspired by kinetheodolites in patriotic newsreels of plucky British boffins in the Aussie outback?
eg 26:36 on here (With a sly leer at young ladies' bottoms at the same time, I see).
New series of Slow Horses is shaping up well. Jackson Lamb one liners are worth watching it for alone.
I'm REALLY enjoying Baby Reindeer. Unexpectedly good. Short, but powerful - and funny. The new Fleabag
I am saving Shogun for an ucoming trip to Asia
Any others? PBers?
I do find it quite amusing how Shogun has received lots of praise from both West and East for capturing the period, albeit the story is a fictionalised one, loosely based upon a real person (whose actual life is more mental than the fictional story).
Where as Ubisoft are absolutely getting in the neck for cultural vandalism of their historical Japanese game, due to tailoring it for "modern" western audiences.
The Star Wars game where you play an "outlaw" that can't kill NPCs other than police or shoot animals or so any of the things an outlaw might do has absolutely tanked. A friend of mine still in the gaming industry has said Ubisoft will never make a profit from it because the royalty fee to Disney is so high for the first 5m unit sales.
Last time around that might not have meant much because Trump was trying to persuade his supporters not to vote early but this time around he has been putting a fair bit of money into early voting campaigns. 400K votes is a lot, even in a state the size of PA
Maybe but they are hardly heavily Trump biased either otherwise they wouldn't have Harris tied in Georgia with him
New series of Slow Horses is shaping up well. Jackson Lamb one liners are worth watching it for alone.
I'm REALLY enjoying Baby Reindeer. Unexpectedly good. Short, but powerful - and funny. The new Fleabag
I am saving Shogun for an ucoming trip to Asia
Any others? PBers?
I do find it quite amusing how Shogun has received lots of praise from both West and East for capturing the period, albeit the story is a fictionalised one, loosely based upon a real person (whose actual life is more mental than the fictional story).
Where as Ubisoft are absolutely getting in the neck for cultural vandalism of their historical Japanese game, due to tailoring it for "modern" western audiences.
Might be in part the different audiences, but also possibly because with Ubisoft it's just yet another bloody boilerplate Assassin's Creed game, so it presumably lacks the more unique charms of a new TV show, in terms of production, writing, performances etc? And the hamfisted tailoring grates more as a result perhaps.
It seems worse than that. They really dropped a bollock this time, rather than people going oh look more of the same sludge with a different skin. Then they tried damage limitation and spun a load of BS and particularly the Japanese market went mental....questions in Japanese parliament about it. They have had to run away from releasing it.
New series of Slow Horses is shaping up well. Jackson Lamb one liners are worth watching it for alone.
I'm REALLY enjoying Baby Reindeer. Unexpectedly good. Short, but powerful - and funny. The new Fleabag
I am saving Shogun for an ucoming trip to Asia
Any others? PBers?
If you haven't already watched it Inspector George Gently got added to Netflix. It's absolutely brilliant, a bit depressing but a thoroughly realistic take on the 1960s and Martin Shaw puts in a top performance, probably the best of his career.
Ooh, thanks. On the list
It's a shame all the really big series have been so disappointing, the awful LOTR version, the Foundation or whatever it was, nearly all the Star Wars spins-offs. I like House of Dragons 1, but HoD2 is so slooooow
But there are lots of much smaller shows that are still high quality. The Golden Age of TV is not over, just more diversified maybe
Last time around that might not have meant much because Trump was trying to persuade his supporters not to vote early but this time around he has been putting a fair bit of money into early voting campaigns. 400K votes is a lot, even in a state the size of PA
Interesting. In Potus elections past (2020 excepted because of Trump’s opposition) early voting patterns have been a pretty reliable indicator of outcomes. We’ll see.
Yes, given the polling we are seeing daily for PA these numbers are remarkable. Some of it will be a consequence of the huge GOTV operation the Dems have built there. Some from Trump being inconsistent and not always on message. But the gap is huge for a state where the winner is expected to be by tens of thousands at the most.
Michael Ancram, Marquess of Lothian, Conservative MP for Berwick & East Lothian 1974, Edinburgh South 1979-87, Devizes 1992-2010, and Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party 2001-05, has died age 79
I remember him coming in joint last with David Davis in, I think, the 2001 leadership election which meant no-one was eliminated. In the next round he polled just one fewer than Davis and was then eliminated - at which point DD dropped out anyway. Leaving IDS to battle it out with Clarke and the favourite, Portillo. And the rest is history...
Ancram was a decent man and patrician Tory of the old school and a good party chairman RIP
New series of Slow Horses is shaping up well. Jackson Lamb one liners are worth watching it for alone.
I'm REALLY enjoying Baby Reindeer. Unexpectedly good. Short, but powerful - and funny. The new Fleabag
I am saving Shogun for an ucoming trip to Asia
Any others? PBers?
If you haven't already watched it Inspector George Gently got added to Netflix. It's absolutely brilliant, a bit depressing but a thoroughly realistic take on the 1960s and Martin Shaw puts in a top performance, probably the best of his career.
Ooh, thanks. On the list
It's a shame all the really big series have been so disappointing, the awful LOTR version, the Foundation or whatever it was, nearly all the Star Wars spins-offs. I like House of Dragons 1, but HoD2 is so slooooow
But there are lots of much smaller shows that are still high quality. The Golden Age of TV is not over, just more diversified maybe
No doubt she has been "misrepresented" by the media yet again.
You don't think between 5 and 10 percent of civil servants are very bad?
I think it's more the "should be in prison" that people will take issue with. The bar for incarcerating people is - one would hope - a high one.
I agree, but civil servants are agents of the state. If they do a bad job, and potentially their bad job is motivated by a wish to do down the Government of the day or frustrate their plans, that situation is a sticky one to a far greater degree than a lousy cashier or a decorator who leave the pictures up and paints round them. I am not sure all cases of the sort are worthy of a trip to the gaol, but nor can they be tolerated.
Yeah, but most civil servants - by number - have very little to do with the actions of ministers. They are junior staff in Swansea dealing with driving license administration.
But they could be Home Office staff running the asylum and immigration system, where what appears to be willful dysfunction (see the waaaay higher success levels of UK applications than the rest of Europe) has fuelled the migrant crisis.
Not to defend the civil service but our laws and legal rulings are completely different to France so blaming our high asylum success rate to a lower European one on the civil service seems like a big stretch. It needs legal reform to lower that rate which the Tories had 14 years to push through.
As far as I am aware, we have not been outliers in application success like this in the past. I think you have a partial point - Theresa's stupid modern slavery legislation hasn't helped, but the Home Office is willfully uncooperative - whistleblowers have revealed evidence that supports this fact.
Being uncooperative would make no difference if the laws were properly tightened (including the ridiculously broad modern slavery definition that allowed Albanians to win asylum claims on the basis that they were being enslaved by other Albanians) then the judgements would follow. That's on the politicians not the blob.
The "Blob" is usually just an excuse for incompetence and laziness on the part of politicians.
The Thatcher Government faced both civil service intransigence and EEC legislation. Yet it managed enormous changes.
I think the real difference is that in the 1980s, there will still politicians of substance. The Thatcher cabinets from 1979 to 1986 were extraordinarily talented. And even the opposition benches contained many people who - even if I disagree with them - were clearly moral, hard working and dedicated.
Today, who would go into politics?
Why dont you try rcs. You seem very knowleagable and anyone who can parlay a degree in philosophy into a career in goldman sachs has a unique talent.
New series of Slow Horses is shaping up well. Jackson Lamb one liners are worth watching it for alone.
I'm REALLY enjoying Baby Reindeer. Unexpectedly good. Short, but powerful - and funny. The new Fleabag
I am saving Shogun for an ucoming trip to Asia
Any others? PBers?
I do find it quite amusing how Shogun has received lots of praise from both West and East for capturing the period, albeit the story is a fictionalised one, loosely based upon a real person (whose actual life is more mental than the fictional story).
Where as Ubisoft are absolutely getting in the neck for cultural vandalism of their historical Japanese game, due to tailoring it for "modern" western audiences.
Might be in part the different audiences, but also possibly because with Ubisoft it's just yet another bloody boilerplate Assassin's Creed game, so it presumably lacks the more unique charms of a new TV show, in terms of production, writing, performances etc? And the hamfisted tailoring grates more as a result perhaps.
It seems worse than that. They really dropped a bollock this time, rather than people going oh look more of the same sludge with a different skin. Then they tried damage limitation and spun a load of BS and particularly the Japanese market went mental....questions in Japanese parliament about it. They have had to run away from releasing it.
Strange, it's not as though the Japanese are known for intense national pride and large subcultures obsessed around geeky minutiae.
New series of Slow Horses is shaping up well. Jackson Lamb one liners are worth watching it for alone.
I'm REALLY enjoying Baby Reindeer. Unexpectedly good. Short, but powerful - and funny. The new Fleabag
I am saving Shogun for an ucoming trip to Asia
Any others? PBers?
I do find it quite amusing how Shogun has received lots of praise from both West and East for capturing the period, albeit the story is a fictionalised one, loosely based upon a real person (whose actual life is more mental than the fictional story).
Where as Ubisoft are absolutely getting in the neck for cultural vandalism of their historical Japanese game, due to tailoring it for "modern" western audiences.
The Star Wars game where you play an "outlaw" that can't kill NPCs other than police or shoot animals or so any of the things an outlaw might do has absolutely tanked. A friend of mine still in the gaming industry has said Ubisoft will never make a profit from it because the royalty fee to Disney is so high for the first 5m unit sales.
I thought the fundamental problem was that it was the same old identical Ubi Soft game mechanics that haven't changed in 15 years.
New series of Slow Horses is shaping up well. Jackson Lamb one liners are worth watching it for alone.
I'm REALLY enjoying Baby Reindeer. Unexpectedly good. Short, but powerful - and funny. The new Fleabag
I am saving Shogun for an ucoming trip to Asia
Any others? PBers?
I do find it quite amusing how Shogun has received lots of praise from both West and East for capturing the period, albeit the story is a fictionalised one, loosely based upon a real person (whose actual life is more mental than the fictional story).
Where as Ubisoft are absolutely getting in the neck for cultural vandalism of their historical Japanese game, due to tailoring it for "modern" western audiences.
Might be in part the different audiences, but also possibly because with Ubisoft it's just yet another bloody boilerplate Assassin's Creed game, so it presumably lacks the more unique charms of a new TV show, in terms of production, writing, performances etc? And the hamfisted tailoring grates more as a result perhaps.
It seems worse than that. They really dropped a bollock this time, rather than people going oh look more of the same sludge with a different skin. Then they tried damage limitation and spun a load of BS and particularly the Japanese market went mental....questions in Japanese parliament about it. They have had to run away from releasing it.
Strange, it's not as though the Japanese are known for intense national pride and large subcultures obsessed around geeky minutiae.
Last time around that might not have meant much because Trump was trying to persuade his supporters not to vote early but this time around he has been putting a fair bit of money into early voting campaigns. 400K votes is a lot, even in a state the size of PA
Maybe but they are hardly heavily Trump biased either otherwise they wouldn't have Harris tied in Georgia with him
Unless she's a great deal farther ahead than we realise. Which does not seem impossible, given that Georgia would be a fairly reliably Dem leaning state if it were not for the constant ballot rigging by its Republican Party machine.
New series of Slow Horses is shaping up well. Jackson Lamb one liners are worth watching it for alone.
I'm REALLY enjoying Baby Reindeer. Unexpectedly good. Short, but powerful - and funny. The new Fleabag
I am saving Shogun for an ucoming trip to Asia
Any others? PBers?
I do find it quite amusing how Shogun has received lots of praise from both West and East for capturing the period, albeit the story is a fictionalised one, loosely based upon a real person (whose actual life is more mental than the fictional story).
Where as Ubisoft are absolutely getting in the neck for cultural vandalism of their historical Japanese game, due to tailoring it for "modern" western audiences.
The Star Wars game where you play an "outlaw" that can't kill NPCs other than police or shoot animals or so any of the things an outlaw might do has absolutely tanked. A friend of mine still in the gaming industry has said Ubisoft will never make a profit from it because the royalty fee to Disney is so high for the first 5m unit sales.
There's been too much Star Wars stuff period in recent years, and much of it not good. Fun games should be much easier, but here we are.
The David Mitchell show, Ludwig, got loads of good write-ups....I personally found it rather low budget looking slop. One reviewer said it was like what happened to Mark from Peep Show later in life. For me, none of what made Peep Show good was on display.
Sensible. Well, if the bunker's air ducts are better than those in Beirut.
lol
They will be glaring with suspicious intent at the guard's 1980s Seiko watch, as it loudly ticks
Then wondering about the Toshiba fan in the corner of the room
I for one SALUTE the fact that Israel has terrorised the fuck out of all and any of its enemies who ever use an electronic device, at any time. So, all of them
I'm waiting for them to start on some of the Islamist-friendly suspects in the UK
"Today, in a terrible incident, Jeremy Corbyn was bizarrely castrasted by his Argos Breville sandwich toaster"
The Iron Dome has, once again, proven to be a technological miracle. I suspect that a lot of the tech was the successor to the Reaganite idea of a nuclear shield for the US. The Russians really should be nervous about how much of a threat their nuclear armoury really is.
It makes our defences look like a completely unfunny joke.
New series of Slow Horses is shaping up well. Jackson Lamb one liners are worth watching it for alone.
I'm REALLY enjoying Baby Reindeer. Unexpectedly good. Short, but powerful - and funny. The new Fleabag
I am saving Shogun for an ucoming trip to Asia
Any others? PBers?
Baby Reindeer is excellent.
Shogun is slow but fun.
Slow Horses, I'm sorry but the first few episodes of the first season were painfully awful. Everyone tells me to keep watching, and the cast is amazing. But I simply can't.
Kaos is genuinely fantastic: a really smart retelling of Greek mythology. My only regret is that we didn't get to see it with the originally cast Hugh Grant as Zeus.
Nobody Wants This on Netflix is mildly amusing. Or at least, my wife really likes it.
No doubt she has been "misrepresented" by the media yet again.
You don't think between 5 and 10 percent of civil servants are very bad?
I think it's more the "should be in prison" that people will take issue with. The bar for incarcerating people is - one would hope - a high one.
I agree, but civil servants are agents of the state. If they do a bad job, and potentially their bad job is motivated by a wish to do down the Government of the day or frustrate their plans, that situation is a sticky one to a far greater degree than a lousy cashier or a decorator who leave the pictures up and paints round them. I am not sure all cases of the sort are worthy of a trip to the gaol, but nor can they be tolerated.
Yeah, but most civil servants - by number - have very little to do with the actions of ministers. They are junior staff in Swansea dealing with driving license administration.
But they could be Home Office staff running the asylum and immigration system, where what appears to be willful dysfunction (see the waaaay higher success levels of UK applications than the rest of Europe) has fuelled the migrant crisis.
Not to defend the civil service but our laws and legal rulings are completely different to France so blaming our high asylum success rate to a lower European one on the civil service seems like a big stretch. It needs legal reform to lower that rate which the Tories had 14 years to push through.
As far as I am aware, we have not been outliers in application success like this in the past. I think you have a partial point - Theresa's stupid modern slavery legislation hasn't helped, but the Home Office is willfully uncooperative - whistleblowers have revealed evidence that supports this fact.
Being uncooperative would make no difference if the laws were properly tightened (including the ridiculously broad modern slavery definition that allowed Albanians to win asylum claims on the basis that they were being enslaved by other Albanians) then the judgements would follow. That's on the politicians not the blob.
The "Blob" is usually just an excuse for incompetence and laziness on the part of politicians.
The Thatcher Government faced both civil service intransigence and EEC legislation. Yet it managed enormous changes.
I think the real difference is that in the 1980s, there will still politicians of substance. The Thatcher cabinets from 1979 to 1986 were extraordinarily talented. And even the opposition benches contained many people who - even if I disagree with them - were clearly moral, hard working and dedicated.
Today, who would go into politics?
Why dont you try rcs. You seem very knowleagable and anyone who can parlay a degree in philosophy into a career in goldman sachs has a unique talent.
Crikey, he lasted a matter of minutes.
Easily taken down by the Iron Dome.
Cummings missed a trick not getting himself nicknamed Iron Dom.
New series of Slow Horses is shaping up well. Jackson Lamb one liners are worth watching it for alone.
I'm REALLY enjoying Baby Reindeer. Unexpectedly good. Short, but powerful - and funny. The new Fleabag
I am saving Shogun for an ucoming trip to Asia
Any others? PBers?
If you haven't already watched it Inspector George Gently got added to Netflix. It's absolutely brilliant, a bit depressing but a thoroughly realistic take on the 1960s and Martin Shaw puts in a top performance, probably the best of his career.
Ooh, thanks. On the list
It's a shame all the really big series have been so disappointing, the awful LOTR version, the Foundation or whatever it was, nearly all the Star Wars spins-offs. I like House of Dragons 1, but HoD2 is so slooooow
But there are lots of much smaller shows that are still high quality. The Golden Age of TV is not over, just more diversified maybe
I think The Golden Age of TV is over, sadly. Too much money is being spent on too many poorly received shows.
Rings of Power is costing Amazon ~$400m per season and they've contractually committed to 5 seasons at that level of spend with basically a break fee to the Tolkien family of whatever they don't spend from the $2bn. You'd think that Amazon would have brought in the world's foremost Tolkien lore experts and stuck to the storylines he wrote, instead they made a show for "modern audiences" but the "modern audience" is tiny, just as Sony found out with their bombed out game last month.
Companies are sadly making shows with huge creative compromises in them in order to appeal to a vanishingly small audience group and at the same time alienating viewers who want something authentic. Instead we get generic girlboss #17 who knows everything and is an all action star who always ends up being right and is the complete article with no room for growth surrounded by moron men who overrule hero bossgirl only to get proven wrong by her or soyboy men who sycophantically follow everything the hero girlboss wants to do and eventually dies for her.
I think I've basically described modern TV coming out of the US.
New series of Slow Horses is shaping up well. Jackson Lamb one liners are worth watching it for alone.
I'm REALLY enjoying Baby Reindeer. Unexpectedly good. Short, but powerful - and funny. The new Fleabag
I am saving Shogun for an ucoming trip to Asia
Any others? PBers?
I do find it quite amusing how Shogun has received lots of praise from both West and East for capturing the period, albeit the story is a fictionalised one, loosely based upon a real person (whose actual life is more mental than the fictional story).
Where as Ubisoft are absolutely getting in the neck for cultural vandalism of their historical Japanese game, due to tailoring it for "modern" western audiences.
The Star Wars game where you play an "outlaw" that can't kill NPCs other than police or shoot animals or so any of the things an outlaw might do has absolutely tanked. A friend of mine still in the gaming industry has said Ubisoft will never make a profit from it because the royalty fee to Disney is so high for the first 5m unit sales.
Sounds thrilling. Its like making a GTA without the crime, sex and violence...where you drive around at the speed limit and help little old ladies get the lost cats back.
New series of Slow Horses is shaping up well. Jackson Lamb one liners are worth watching it for alone.
I'm REALLY enjoying Baby Reindeer. Unexpectedly good. Short, but powerful - and funny. The new Fleabag
I am saving Shogun for an ucoming trip to Asia
Any others? PBers?
Baby Reindeer is excellent.
Shogun is slow but fun.
Slow Horses, I'm sorry but the first few episodes of the first season were painfully awful. Everyone tells me to keep watching, and the cast is amazing. But I simply can't.
Kaos is genuinely fantastic: a really smart retelling of Greek mythology. My only regret is that we didn't get to see it with the originally cast Hugh Grant as Zeus.
Nobody Wants This on Netflix is mildly amusing. Or at least, my wife really likes it.
There was a funny Australian crime drama I saw recently called Deadloch.
New series of Slow Horses is shaping up well. Jackson Lamb one liners are worth watching it for alone.
I'm REALLY enjoying Baby Reindeer. Unexpectedly good. Short, but powerful - and funny. The new Fleabag
I am saving Shogun for an ucoming trip to Asia
Any others? PBers?
Baby Reindeer is excellent.
Shogun is slow but fun.
Slow Horses, I'm sorry but the first few episodes of the first season were painfully awful. Everyone tells me to keep watching, and the cast is amazing. But I simply can't.
Kaos is genuinely fantastic: a really smart retelling of Greek mythology. My only regret is that we didn't get to see it with the originally cast Hugh Grant as Zeus.
Nobody Wants This on Netflix is mildly amusing. Or at least, my wife really likes it.
Slow Horses - Season One I think was the weakest. Watch the season with the Russians (you don't need to watch the previous ones to understand it).
New series of Slow Horses is shaping up well. Jackson Lamb one liners are worth watching it for alone.
I'm REALLY enjoying Baby Reindeer. Unexpectedly good. Short, but powerful - and funny. The new Fleabag
I am saving Shogun for an ucoming trip to Asia
Any others? PBers?
I do find it quite amusing how Shogun has received lots of praise from both West and East for capturing the period, albeit the story is a fictionalised one, loosely based upon a real person (whose actual life is more mental than the fictional story).
Where as Ubisoft are absolutely getting in the neck for cultural vandalism of their historical Japanese game, due to tailoring it for "modern" western audiences.
The Star Wars game where you play an "outlaw" that can't kill NPCs other than police or shoot animals or so any of the things an outlaw might do has absolutely tanked. A friend of mine still in the gaming industry has said Ubisoft will never make a profit from it because the royalty fee to Disney is so high for the first 5m unit sales.
Sounds thrilling. Its like making a GTA without the crime, sex and violence...where you drive around at the speed limit and help little old ladies get the lost cats back.
Such a game would probably do quite well, there are many wholesome 'mundane' job type games. But if that is not what you are pitching for it will certainly disappoint the audience.
New series of Slow Horses is shaping up well. Jackson Lamb one liners are worth watching it for alone.
I'm REALLY enjoying Baby Reindeer. Unexpectedly good. Short, but powerful - and funny. The new Fleabag
I am saving Shogun for an ucoming trip to Asia
Any others? PBers?
If you haven't already watched it Inspector George Gently got added to Netflix. It's absolutely brilliant, a bit depressing but a thoroughly realistic take on the 1960s and Martin Shaw puts in a top performance, probably the best of his career.
Ooh, thanks. On the list
It's a shame all the really big series have been so disappointing, the awful LOTR version, the Foundation or whatever it was, nearly all the Star Wars spins-offs. I like House of Dragons 1, but HoD2 is so slooooow
But there are lots of much smaller shows that are still high quality. The Golden Age of TV is not over, just more diversified maybe
Last time around that might not have meant much because Trump was trying to persuade his supporters not to vote early but this time around he has been putting a fair bit of money into early voting campaigns. 400K votes is a lot, even in a state the size of PA
Maybe but they are hardly heavily Trump biased either otherwise they wouldn't have Harris tied in Georgia with him
Unless she's a great deal farther ahead than we realise. Which does not seem impossible, given that Georgia would be a fairly reliably Dem leaning state if it were not for the constant ballot rigging by its Republican Party machine.
Would it? The last Democrat to win it before Biden at presidential level was Bill Clinton in 1992.
It is a conservative Deep South state just with a big African American population that gives the Democrats a chance
New series of Slow Horses is shaping up well. Jackson Lamb one liners are worth watching it for alone.
I'm REALLY enjoying Baby Reindeer. Unexpectedly good. Short, but powerful - and funny. The new Fleabag
I am saving Shogun for an ucoming trip to Asia
Any others? PBers?
I do find it quite amusing how Shogun has received lots of praise from both West and East for capturing the period, albeit the story is a fictionalised one, loosely based upon a real person (whose actual life is more mental than the fictional story).
Where as Ubisoft are absolutely getting in the neck for cultural vandalism of their historical Japanese game, due to tailoring it for "modern" western audiences.
The Star Wars game where you play an "outlaw" that can't kill NPCs other than police or shoot animals or so any of the things an outlaw might do has absolutely tanked. A friend of mine still in the gaming industry has said Ubisoft will never make a profit from it because the royalty fee to Disney is so high for the first 5m unit sales.
Sounds thrilling. Its like making a GTA without the crime, sex and violence...where you drive around at the speed limit and help little old ladies get the lost cats back.
You've basically described half of the side quests.
Last time around that might not have meant much because Trump was trying to persuade his supporters not to vote early but this time around he has been putting a fair bit of money into early voting campaigns. 400K votes is a lot, even in a state the size of PA
Interesting. In Potus elections past (2020 excepted because of Trump’s opposition) early voting patterns have been a pretty reliable indicator of outcomes. We’ll see.
Yes, given the polling we are seeing daily for PA these numbers are remarkable. Some of it will be a consequence of the huge GOTV operation the Dems have built there. Some from Trump being inconsistent and not always on message. But the gap is huge for a state where the winner is expected to be by tens of thousands at the most.
Indeed. Maybe @TheScreamingEagles or @rcs1000 could dig out the early voting threads for Obama-McCain and Obama-Romney* - they might make a useful reference here?
(*a different time, when both candidates were undeniably sane. What happened to the world?)
No doubt she has been "misrepresented" by the media yet again.
You don't think between 5 and 10 percent of civil servants are very bad?
I think it's more the "should be in prison" that people will take issue with. The bar for incarcerating people is - one would hope - a high one.
I agree, but civil servants are agents of the state. If they do a bad job, and potentially their bad job is motivated by a wish to do down the Government of the day or frustrate their plans, that situation is a sticky one to a far greater degree than a lousy cashier or a decorator who leave the pictures up and paints round them. I am not sure all cases of the sort are worthy of a trip to the gaol, but nor can they be tolerated.
Yeah, but most civil servants - by number - have very little to do with the actions of ministers. They are junior staff in Swansea dealing with driving license administration.
But they could be Home Office staff running the asylum and immigration system, where what appears to be willful dysfunction (see the waaaay higher success levels of UK applications than the rest of Europe) has fuelled the migrant crisis.
Not to defend the civil service but our laws and legal rulings are completely different to France so blaming our high asylum success rate to a lower European one on the civil service seems like a big stretch. It needs legal reform to lower that rate which the Tories had 14 years to push through.
As far as I am aware, we have not been outliers in application success like this in the past. I think you have a partial point - Theresa's stupid modern slavery legislation hasn't helped, but the Home Office is willfully uncooperative - whistleblowers have revealed evidence that supports this fact.
Being uncooperative would make no difference if the laws were properly tightened (including the ridiculously broad modern slavery definition that allowed Albanians to win asylum claims on the basis that they were being enslaved by other Albanians) then the judgements would follow. That's on the politicians not the blob.
You can of course be enslaved by a fellow countryman, quite prevalent in some countries even in Europe. Albania is bad by % but numbers in Russia, Turkey and Ukraine are frightening. Also asylum is seeking sanctuary from persecution in your home country, a significant number of genuine asylum seekers will be fleeing persecution by their fellow nationals. For example who's persecuting Afghan nationals?
New series of Slow Horses is shaping up well. Jackson Lamb one liners are worth watching it for alone.
I'm REALLY enjoying Baby Reindeer. Unexpectedly good. Short, but powerful - and funny. The new Fleabag
I am saving Shogun for an ucoming trip to Asia
Any others? PBers?
If you haven't already watched it Inspector George Gently got added to Netflix. It's absolutely brilliant, a bit depressing but a thoroughly realistic take on the 1960s and Martin Shaw puts in a top performance, probably the best of his career.
Ooh, thanks. On the list
It's a shame all the really big series have been so disappointing, the awful LOTR version, the Foundation or whatever it was, nearly all the Star Wars spins-offs. I like House of Dragons 1, but HoD2 is so slooooow
But there are lots of much smaller shows that are still high quality. The Golden Age of TV is not over, just more diversified maybe
I think The Golden Age of TV is over, sadly. Too much money is being spent on too many poorly received shows.
Rings of Power is costing Amazon ~$400m per season and they've contractually committed to 5 seasons at that level of spend with basically a break fee to the Tolkien family of whatever they don't spend from the $2bn. You'd think that Amazon would have brought in the world's foremost Tolkien lore experts and stuck to the storylines he wrote, instead they made a show for "modern audiences" but the "modern audience" is tiny, just as Sony found out with their bombed out game last month.
Companies are sadly making shows with huge creative compromises in them in order to appeal to a vanishingly small audience group and at the same time alienating viewers who want something authentic. Instead we get generic girlboss #17 who knows everything and is an all action star who always ends up being right and is the complete article with no room for growth surrounded by moron men who overrule hero bossgirl only to get proven wrong by her or soyboy men who sycophantically follow everything the hero girlboss wants to do and eventually dies for her.
I think I've basically described modern TV coming out of the US.
I don't mind not following lore religiously, so long as things are done well in other ways.
The problem with chasing new audiences is a) doing it at the expense of the old one rather than alongside it (a lot of creators seem to think they will never alienate the old audience and reacts angrily when they do) and b) if the new audience is small.
Poor writers also think characters with flaws are weak, so only have fake flaws (or don't recognise the flaws their characters do have).
New series of Slow Horses is shaping up well. Jackson Lamb one liners are worth watching it for alone.
I'm REALLY enjoying Baby Reindeer. Unexpectedly good. Short, but powerful - and funny. The new Fleabag
I am saving Shogun for an ucoming trip to Asia
Any others? PBers?
I do find it quite amusing how Shogun has received lots of praise from both West and East for capturing the period, albeit the story is a fictionalised one, loosely based upon a real person (whose actual life is more mental than the fictional story).
Where as Ubisoft are absolutely getting in the neck for cultural vandalism of their historical Japanese game, due to tailoring it for "modern" western audiences.
The Star Wars game where you play an "outlaw" that can't kill NPCs other than police or shoot animals or so any of the things an outlaw might do has absolutely tanked. A friend of mine still in the gaming industry has said Ubisoft will never make a profit from it because the royalty fee to Disney is so high for the first 5m unit sales.
Sounds thrilling. Its like making a GTA without the crime, sex and violence...where you drive around at the speed limit and help little old ladies get the lost cats back.
Such a game would probably do quite well, there are many wholesome 'mundane' job type games. But if that is not what you are pitching for it will certainly disappoint the audience.
I know stuff like Euro Truck Simulator are very popular niches, but it isn't marketed as be a outlaw, do crime, do drugs, do prozzies....only to find you get a 100 euro fine for driving 33 in a 30.
New series of Slow Horses is shaping up well. Jackson Lamb one liners are worth watching it for alone.
I'm REALLY enjoying Baby Reindeer. Unexpectedly good. Short, but powerful - and funny. The new Fleabag
I am saving Shogun for an ucoming trip to Asia
Any others? PBers?
I do find it quite amusing how Shogun has received lots of praise from both West and East for capturing the period, albeit the story is a fictionalised one, loosely based upon a real person (whose actual life is more mental than the fictional story).
Where as Ubisoft are absolutely getting in the neck for cultural vandalism of their historical Japanese game, due to tailoring it for "modern" western audiences.
The Star Wars game where you play an "outlaw" that can't kill NPCs other than police or shoot animals or so any of the things an outlaw might do has absolutely tanked. A friend of mine still in the gaming industry has said Ubisoft will never make a profit from it because the royalty fee to Disney is so high for the first 5m unit sales.
Sounds thrilling. Its like making a GTA without the crime, sex and violence...where you drive around at the speed limit and help little old ladies get the lost cats back.
'The Simpsons: Hit & Run' was effectively GTA without the crime, sex and violence - though the speed limits did remain optional. I seem to recall it was pretty good.
New series of Slow Horses is shaping up well. Jackson Lamb one liners are worth watching it for alone.
I'm REALLY enjoying Baby Reindeer. Unexpectedly good. Short, but powerful - and funny. The new Fleabag
I am saving Shogun for an ucoming trip to Asia
Any others? PBers?
If you haven't already watched it Inspector George Gently got added to Netflix. It's absolutely brilliant, a bit depressing but a thoroughly realistic take on the 1960s and Martin Shaw puts in a top performance, probably the best of his career.
Ooh, thanks. On the list
It's a shame all the really big series have been so disappointing, the awful LOTR version, the Foundation or whatever it was, nearly all the Star Wars spins-offs. I like House of Dragons 1, but HoD2 is so slooooow
But there are lots of much smaller shows that are still high quality. The Golden Age of TV is not over, just more diversified maybe
Fallout ?
Mr & Mrs Smith ?
Fallout was quite good up to the ending. I hated the ending. But Walton Goggins is a great in most things and makes them watchable.
The David Mitchell show, Ludwig, got loads of good write-ups....I personally found it rather low budget looking slop. One reviewer said it was like what happened to Mark from Peep Show later in life. For me, none of what made Peep Show good was on display.
It came across to me as essentially a remake of Jonathan Creek. Pleasant enough.
The David Mitchell show, Ludwig, got loads of good write-ups....I personally found it rather low budget looking slop. One reviewer said it was like what happened to Mark from Peep Show later in life. For me, none of what made Peep Show good was on display.
It came across to me as essentially a remake of Jonathan Creek. Pleasant enough.
But worse than early Jonathan Creek. I didn't find the how's of the crimes very interesting.
I'm willing to believe that half a dozen MPs might, theoretically, belong in jail. Perhaps even a handful of individuals in the civil service, if only by the law of averages.
50k civil servants ? That's the idle dream of a would be authoritarian.
If she had said 50,000 should be sacked, it would be extreme but one could make an argument based on the classic big four model of chopping the bottom 10%. But for her mind to go straight to imprisonment? Bonkers.
To be fair she doesn't think 50,000 of them should be in jail. She thinks todays politicians can say what they want, without it being accurate, or even true, as long as they indicate whose side they are on. She might be right.
"Upsetting the right people", sadly, works rather well a lot of the time, and many politicians think that's all you need.
I don't think everything she says is bonkers though.
I think there's a problem with politicians who say as little as 4-5% that is bonkers. Preferably we should be going for 0% bonkers. Is that too much to ask for?
It's not as if Jenrick slams the door in Mr Bonkers's face. But somehow, he manages to not sound as bonkers.
He named his kid "Thatcher". That's not exactly not bonkers, is it.
No doubt she has been "misrepresented" by the media yet again.
You don't think between 5 and 10 percent of civil servants are very bad?
I think it's more the "should be in prison" that people will take issue with. The bar for incarcerating people is - one would hope - a high one.
I agree, but civil servants are agents of the state. If they do a bad job, and potentially their bad job is motivated by a wish to do down the Government of the day or frustrate their plans, that situation is a sticky one to a far greater degree than a lousy cashier or a decorator who leave the pictures up and paints round them. I am not sure all cases of the sort are worthy of a trip to the gaol, but nor can they be tolerated.
Yeah, but most civil servants - by number - have very little to do with the actions of ministers. They are junior staff in Swansea dealing with driving license administration.
But they could be Home Office staff running the asylum and immigration system, where what appears to be willful dysfunction (see the waaaay higher success levels of UK applications than the rest of Europe) has fuelled the migrant crisis.
Not to defend the civil service but our laws and legal rulings are completely different to France so blaming our high asylum success rate to a lower European one on the civil service seems like a big stretch. It needs legal reform to lower that rate which the Tories had 14 years to push through.
As far as I am aware, we have not been outliers in application success like this in the past. I think you have a partial point - Theresa's stupid modern slavery legislation hasn't helped, but the Home Office is willfully uncooperative - whistleblowers have revealed evidence that supports this fact.
Being uncooperative would make no difference if the laws were properly tightened (including the ridiculously broad modern slavery definition that allowed Albanians to win asylum claims on the basis that they were being enslaved by other Albanians) then the judgements would follow. That's on the politicians not the blob.
The "Blob" is usually just an excuse for incompetence and laziness on the part of politicians.
The Thatcher Government faced both civil service intransigence and EEC legislation. Yet it managed enormous changes.
I think the real difference is that in the 1980s, there will still politicians of substance. The Thatcher cabinets from 1979 to 1986 were extraordinarily talented. And even the opposition benches contained many people who - even if I disagree with them - were clearly moral, hard working and dedicated.
Today, who would go into politics?
Indeed, I honestly don't think I could afford the pay cut to be an MP while my answer to TSE was glib it has a big element of truth in it, the last time I looked into it running to be an MP would work out to a pay cut bigger than 50% for me and at that point who pays the mortgage?
And on the flip side I'm not sure that someone who doesn't know how to live on £90k is going to be much use solving the challenges this country faces.
(Glib, sorry, not directed at you personally, more that once wealthy you get yourself into a different world - big mortgages, private school fees etc that completely detach you from the lived experience of 99% of Britons)
Last time around that might not have meant much because Trump was trying to persuade his supporters not to vote early but this time around he has been putting a fair bit of money into early voting campaigns. 400K votes is a lot, even in a state the size of PA
Maybe but they are hardly heavily Trump biased either otherwise they wouldn't have Harris tied in Georgia with him
Unless she's a great deal farther ahead than we realise. Which does not seem impossible, given that Georgia would be a fairly reliably Dem leaning state if it were not for the constant ballot rigging by its Republican Party machine.
Would it? The last Democrat to win it before Biden at presidential level was Bill Clinton in 1992
Yes. But Georgia is changing rapidly. The white population has declined markedly in percentage terms (six points, around 10%) in just ten years and the Hispanic and African American populations are expanding rapidly. The number of graduates has tripled since 1992 as well.
All of these groups are fertile territory for the Dems.
Texas is undergoing a similar transformation but as a somewhat larger state starting from a different base it's taking longer to work through.
New series of Slow Horses is shaping up well. Jackson Lamb one liners are worth watching it for alone.
I'm REALLY enjoying Baby Reindeer. Unexpectedly good. Short, but powerful - and funny. The new Fleabag
I am saving Shogun for an ucoming trip to Asia
Any others? PBers?
Baby Reindeer is excellent.
Shogun is slow but fun.
Slow Horses, I'm sorry but the first few episodes of the first season were painfully awful. Everyone tells me to keep watching, and the cast is amazing. But I simply can't.
Kaos is genuinely fantastic: a really smart retelling of Greek mythology. My only regret is that we didn't get to see it with the originally cast Hugh Grant as Zeus.
Nobody Wants This on Netflix is mildly amusing. Or at least, my wife really likes it.
Slow Horses - Season One I think was the weakest. Watch the season with the Russians (you don't need to watch the previous ones to understand it).
Comments
Who'd go for that? For any job? (forget the public service bit for a minute)
She is not some mysterious unknown quantity. She is very much a known quantity. Known to be utterly crap.
I cannot understand why the Russians are targeting alumni of the University of Cambridge.
WE ARE PATRIOTS.
Why are they even bothering. (Assuming the story is true, of course.)
🚨 NEW: Accusing Kemi of having plotted against Boris while he was PM, Nadine Dorries said on the leadership contender: ‘I think if you are someone who plotted to remove a sitting prime minister, you should automatically be disqualified.’
Georgia Harris 48% Trump 48%
NC Trump 50% Harris 49%
Nevada Harris 48% Trump 49%
Arizona Harris 48% Trump 49%
https://insideradvantage.com/insideradvantage-sunbelt-battleground-surveys-trump-enjoys-slim-lead-in-arizona-nevada-and-north-carolina-georgia-tied/
Same when the remade Survivors with Julie Graham and Max Beesley.
She is another Liz Truss (as others have said). She'd perhaps be a good minister in the right job - a thinker rather than a doer, maybe with a specific remit to roll back Wokeness? Allowed to say mad things? - but as a leader or PM, no no no no
Jenrick looks a bit nasty and cruel, esp now he has slimmed down. Alan B'Stard but smarter. And now saying properly right wing things
It is extremely possible the public will be crying out for that after 5 years of crashing Labour incompetence plus tons of Wokeness and waste
Cleverly is just "oh let's try and win back 40-60 seats and do better in 2033"
ETA: The ambiguity makes them doubly protective against nuclear war, as we're unlikely to have the confidence to use them
He was a good bloke
Sensible. Well, if the bunker's air ducts are better than those in Beirut.
In other news early polling in PA seems to be weighted to the Dems by about 2:1 https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/10/1/2274043/-Trump-s-messaging-backfires-as-GOP-ballot-requests-slump-in-Pennsylvania?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=top_news_slot_1&pm_medium=web
Last time around that might not have meant much because Trump was trying to persuade his supporters not to vote early but this time around he has been putting a fair bit of money into early voting campaigns. 400K votes is a lot, even in a state the size of PA
They will be glaring with suspicious intent at the guard's 1980s Seiko watch, as it loudly ticks
Then wondering about the Toshiba fan in the corner of the room
I for one SALUTE the fact that Israel has terrorised the fuck out of all and any of its enemies who ever use an electronic device, at any time. So, all of them
I'm waiting for them to start on some of the Islamist-friendly suspects in the UK
"Today, in a terrible incident, Jeremy Corbyn was bizarrely castrasted by his Argos Breville sandwich toaster"
He says Trump "flies in the face" of the conservative values of Eisenhower & Reagan
A Harris win means "a stable and reliable ally... when it is needed desperately"
https://x.com/adampayne26/status/1841105137630073332
I remember the Mail clearly knew Hancock was having an affair, so for several weekends they ran pictures people had taken of him out playing with his kids. Now, he rightly went for his actions, all that is fine, but an afternoon off with his kids still makes the papers. You can never be off the clock.
There was a twitter account at one point that encouraged people to spend in pics of MPs that the public spotted out and about. Not you caught them doing something scandalous, just on a train, having a drink / smoke, etc.
New series of Slow Horses is shaping up well. Jackson Lamb one liners are worth watching it for alone.
The last time the Guardian tried that on behalf on John Kerry remains the only time since the Cold War the Republicans won the popular vote.
Just heard she has replaced her though - with an absolute icon...
Will share with the class when I can.
eg 26:36 on here (With a sly leer at young ladies' bottoms at the same time, I see).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESi4ncoGk2Y
I am saving Shogun for an ucoming trip to Asia
Any others? PBers?
Where as Ubisoft are absolutely getting in the neck for cultural vandalism of their historical Japanese game, due to tailoring it for "modern" western audiences.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg56em38g2vo
Squeaky bum time for a lot of people....
The Panopticon I’m more familiar with is from Dr Who.
It's a shame all the really big series have been so disappointing, the awful LOTR version, the Foundation or whatever it was, nearly all the Star Wars spins-offs. I like House of Dragons 1, but HoD2 is so slooooow
But there are lots of much smaller shows that are still high quality. The Golden Age of TV is not over, just more diversified maybe
https://x.com/visegrad24/status/1841059514172280867?s=61
It makes our defences look like a completely unfunny joke.
Shogun is slow but fun.
Slow Horses, I'm sorry but the first few episodes of the first season were painfully awful. Everyone tells me to keep watching, and the cast is amazing. But I simply can't.
Kaos is genuinely fantastic: a really smart retelling of Greek mythology. My only regret is that we didn't get to see it with the originally cast Hugh Grant as Zeus.
Nobody Wants This on Netflix is mildly amusing. Or at least, my wife really likes it.
Rings of Power is costing Amazon ~$400m per season and they've contractually committed to 5 seasons at that level of spend with basically a break fee to the Tolkien family of whatever they don't spend from the $2bn. You'd think that Amazon would have brought in the world's foremost Tolkien lore experts and stuck to the storylines he wrote, instead they made a show for "modern audiences" but the "modern audience" is tiny, just as Sony found out with their bombed out game last month.
Companies are sadly making shows with huge creative compromises in them in order to appeal to a vanishingly small audience group and at the same time alienating viewers who want something authentic. Instead we get generic girlboss #17 who knows everything and is an all action star who always ends up being right and is the complete article with no room for growth surrounded by moron men who overrule hero bossgirl only to get proven wrong by her or soyboy men who sycophantically follow everything the hero girlboss wants to do and eventually dies for her.
I think I've basically described modern TV coming out of the US.
Mr & Mrs Smith ?
It is a conservative Deep South state just with a big African American population that gives the Democrats a chance
(*a different time, when both candidates were undeniably sane. What happened to the world?)
Also asylum is seeking sanctuary from persecution in your home country, a significant number of genuine asylum seekers will be fleeing persecution by their fellow nationals. For example who's persecuting Afghan nationals?
The problem with chasing new audiences is a) doing it at the expense of the old one rather than alongside it (a lot of creators seem to think they will never alienate the old audience and reacts angrily when they do) and b) if the new audience is small.
Poor writers also think characters with flaws are weak, so only have fake flaws (or don't recognise the flaws their characters do have).
(Glib, sorry, not directed at you personally, more that once wealthy you get yourself into a different world - big mortgages, private school fees etc that completely detach you from the lived experience of 99% of Britons)
All of these groups are fertile territory for the Dems.
Texas is undergoing a similar transformation but as a somewhat larger state starting from a different base it's taking longer to work through.