If it's got a good bed and bedding, a clean bathroom, comprehensible lighting, unobtrusive air conditioning, unbroken internet access, an iron and ironing board, and a good bar (decent food and drinks), it's a luxury hotel. Throw in a gym, a terrace and a great location and you're in paradise. IMO.
Pillows softer than concrete is a win in my book.
I always take my own. It's too important not to.
Yes, I hate the Premier Inn pillows - and the mattresses don't suit me either. I have always slept terribly when staying there.
The best sleep I ever get is in a standard cabin with a porthole on the Brittany ferry from Plymouth to Santander, and back again.
One of the worst I ever had was a night on the floor of a Korean hanok. On a quilt barely thicker than a blanket.
So Labour avoided putting up petrol prices in the budget because of institutional memory of the 2000 fuel protests, but ended up with a much worse french-style farmer's protest on the way?
They also put up other motoring costs, I just think with all the other noise people haven't realised.
"It will be like the Highland Clearances" says LibDem MP about farming IHT in the Commons just now.
LOL.
Given that the current arrangements weren't set up until 1970, 1990 or 2015 depending who you ask, some people do seem to be having quite a number of performative kittens.
If farmers want to reduce their holdings, I'm sure we can have it as access land, or land alongside country roads for mobility tracks to keep us safe from the rural Hoons.
Please be advised that between 1 and 2pm today I bet the following
LOW RISK: STATE: MINNESOTA: 1/14 Kamela to win: £200 bet LOW RISK: STATE: VIRGINIA: 2/17 Kamela to win: £500 bet MEDIUM RISK: SENATE: ARIZONA: 2/9 Reuben Gallego to win (D): £200 bet MEDIUM RISK: SENATE: MONTANA: 1/5 Tim Sheehy to win (R): £100
Total waged: £1000 (fuuuck) Total returns if all win: 558.82+214.29+244.44+120 = £1,137.55 Potential profit: £137.55 Potential loss: £1000.
Hmm. As you may have noticed I lost track during the betting and bet £500 not £250 on Virginia as intended. Lots of talking and bingy sounds, brain got confused. Doesn't look like a good idea now you say it out loud. Ah well, don't walk into the shop with money if you don't want to spend it: we will see what happens.
#BigBoyPants
Virginia is pretty damn safe, though.
If it were me, I'd just have stuck £100 on Georgia. More potential profit; downside £100.
Yes, I don't really see the point of betting a significant sum (£1,000) to win a pittance that you could burn in the pub in a few hours. That said, I find the betting practices of @Viewcode bizarre at best – this is the guy that insists on putting his own bets on in cash at a betting shop then whines when he can't get a bet on because either a) the shop won't lay the bet and/or b) he lacks the time to actually go to the shop.
Premier Inns are what the good US chain motels USED to be, before they suddenly tripled in price
We should be thankful for them, even if they are pig ugly on the outside
wrt the relative merits of hotels and luxury hotels I'm delighted that you seem to have left behind your previously held absurd view that a £10 bottle of wine is no different to a £500 bottle of wine.
Some restaurants seem to follow this policy! I went to an Italian the other day and thought perhaps a Brunello di Montalcino - the cheapest they had was £350, so when you add service it's not far off. (Admittedly you probably couldn't get it for £10 in Italy)
It's weird that people (ie @Leon) accepts there is a price difference in just about everything and for very good reasons, but not with wine, of all things, where there is arguably the easiest difference in actual product and one that should be trivially simple for a supposed gourmand to understand.
Well I'd not worry too much about Leon's weird views. Wine is though quite an unusual market. At the top end I think you can only really appreciate it if you can drink such wines with some regularity. Firstly there's a degree of unpredictability (I'm mainly thinking red here), and I'm far from certain that food is something you want to pair it with!
I've only ever gone to a couple of really great wine tastings where great wines would be compared to merely good wines, and at both events I think it needed an expert hand to select the wines and guide the event. Wonderful, but I'd certainly not be able to reproduce.
Premier Inns are what the good US chain motels USED to be, before they suddenly tripled in price
We should be thankful for them, even if they are pig ugly on the outside
wrt the relative merits of hotels and luxury hotels I'm delighted that you seem to have left behind your previously held absurd view that a £10 bottle of wine is no different to a £500 bottle of wine.
No, my view was and is that wine stops discernibly improving over £50 a bottle
Above that - unless you have a prodigiously refined palate (and even then I doubt it) - wine does not get “better” - it gets rarer and snobbier and older and more prestigious - but not actually better
Hotels are much more complex. A £2000 a night hotel will be significantly better than a £500 a night hotel
I believe the most expensive hotel room I’ve ever stayed in (I wasn’t paying) was a £10,000 a night Chinese Ming Dynasty moated mini-castle near Shanghai - authentic but transplanted, and surrounded by a transplanted sacred forest. Plus butler
It was fucking incredible and notably better than the £1200 a night exquisite ryokan in gion Kyoto where I stayed last week (and spilt red wine on their tatami mats)
I'm very surprised that you, a noted restaurant critic, should hold such a frankly bizarre view
I mean you may not understand the difference ofc I get that but there is a difference. If you really think that , say, a 1982 Mouton should cost the same as a 2016 Ch. Batailley then you really have no business reviewing restaurants or food & drink.
My conclusion with wine is that it's generally an S curve, if you have price on the x-axis and quality on the y-axis. At the cheap end of the market there's not, in my experience, much difference between the occasional £4 bottle and a £7 or £8 bottle. From then until around £25-30 there is a steep though not entirely linear increase in quality with price. Upwards from there and there's still a quality increment, but the relationship is not so linear and the relative importance of brand and rarity (and the wine's "story") goes up.
lol. This hotel in the Philippines is…. £2,500 a night
However on its website it says “welcome to barefoot luxury, there is no need for a wallet here”
I SHOULD FUCKING WELL HOPE SO, IF I AM PAYING £2,500 A NIGHT
But *you* are not paying, right?
no, obvs not
looks like I am going tho, at least as things stand, so you can stare out at the London grey feeling a tiny bit happier, knowing that I’ll soon be in the 15th best hotel in the world, inshallah
Each to his own, but I've spent far too many nights in "luxury" hotels in foreign cities to be jealous. Personally, despite the often shitty weather and depressing grey skies, I prefer my own bedroom, possessions, home-prepared food, etc.
"Luxury" hotels are such a poor bang for buck. And half the time they're not even relaxing. Watching out for being shafted for £10 for a bottle of water, trying to master room light switches and shower controls that didn't need reinventing, getting a migraine trying to work out what room category to select to get what upgrade based on what pathetically named elite status I have with the chain.
This is a ridiculous debate. Of course a luxury hotel is not gonna be fun if you only barely afford it. And every bill makes you nervous
If you can barely afford it DON’T STAY THERE - it won’t be enjoyable or relaxing. Check in to a nice cheerful 3 star and enjoy your holiday
Only go to a luxury hotel if it is free or you are seriously rich and don’t care about the bar bill. Then they can be immensely fun and they are not “overrated” at all
Pushing a seven figure income this year, my overexcitable recently unbanned friend, but like most people who've actually built wealth I didn't get to that point by feeling perversely validated by someone bending me over and charging me £10 for a bottle of water...
Premier Inns are what the good US chain motels USED to be, before they suddenly tripled in price
We should be thankful for them, even if they are pig ugly on the outside
wrt the relative merits of hotels and luxury hotels I'm delighted that you seem to have left behind your previously held absurd view that a £10 bottle of wine is no different to a £500 bottle of wine.
No, my view was and is that wine stops discernibly improving over £50 a bottle
Above that - unless you have a prodigiously refined palate (and even then I doubt it) - wine does not get “better” - it gets rarer and snobbier and older and more prestigious - but not actually better
Hotels are much more complex. A £2000 a night hotel will be significantly better than a £500 a night hotel
I believe the most expensive hotel room I’ve ever stayed in (I wasn’t paying) was a £10,000 a night Chinese Ming Dynasty moated mini-castle near Shanghai - authentic but transplanted, and surrounded by a transplanted sacred forest. Plus butler
It was fucking incredible and notably better than the £1200 a night exquisite ryokan in gion Kyoto where I stayed last week (and spilt red wine on their tatami mats)
I'm very surprised that you, a noted restaurant critic, should hold such a frankly bizarre view
I mean you may not understand the difference ofc I get that but there is a difference. If you really think that , say, a 1982 Mouton should cost the same as a 2016 Ch. Batailley then you really have no business reviewing restaurants or food & drink.
My conclusion with wine is that it's generally an S curve, if you have price on the x-axis and quality on the y-axis. At the cheap end of the market there's not, in my experience, much difference between the occasional £4 bottle and a £7 or £8 bottle. From then until around £25-30 there is a steep though not entirely linear increase in quality with price. Upwards from there and there's still a quality increment, but the relationship is not so linear and the relative importance of brand and rarity (and the wine's "story") goes up.
A mate of mine always argued that you can’t appreciate wine more than two price points above your standard drink. So essentially if you are normally drinking £12 wine then beyond £40 you’ll probably not notice further improvements.
It has proven a good motto when buying wine as a gift so you don’t get carried away buying something furiously expensive for someone whose daily drop is a Yellow Tail abomination.
Premier Inns are what the good US chain motels USED to be, before they suddenly tripled in price
We should be thankful for them, even if they are pig ugly on the outside
wrt the relative merits of hotels and luxury hotels I'm delighted that you seem to have left behind your previously held absurd view that a £10 bottle of wine is no different to a £500 bottle of wine.
Some restaurants seem to follow this policy! I went to an Italian the other day and thought perhaps a Brunello di Montalcino - the cheapest they had was £350, so when you add service it's not far off. (Admittedly you probably couldn't get it for £10 in Italy)
It's weird that people (ie @Leon) accepts there is a price difference in just about everything and for very good reasons, but not with wine, of all things, where there is arguably the easiest difference in actual product and one that should be trivially simple for a supposed gourmand to understand.
Well I'd not worry too much about Leon's weird views. Wine is though quite an unusual market. At the top end I think you can only really appreciate it if you can drink such wines with some regularity. Firstly there's a degree of unpredictability (I'm mainly thinking red here), and I'm far from certain that food is something you want to pair it with!
I've only ever gone to a couple of really great wine tastings where great wines would be compared to merely good wines, and at both events I think it needed an expert hand to select the wines and guide the event. Wonderful, but I'd certainly not be able to reproduce.
Well I could say the same about Bugattis. Don't often get to drive in them but that's the nature of cars and wine and hotels. Something for everyone.
Those programmes with Monica and Giles, well it used to be Giles but now I think it's Rob, where they go and work in the world's poshest hotels, and fawn over how beautifully integrated they are into the local culture and how sustainable everything is and blah blah blah. And how discerning the guests are and how special and how no request is too much. God, they make me want to vomit.
Two biggest jobs given by Kemi Badenoch to former leadership rivals and — having been elected in 2010 — two of the most experienced Conservative MPs
First two eliminated?
What prime jobs does that leave for Tom T and Robert J?
Tom T defence?
Jenrick - North Ireland.
Decent idea for Tom, and Defence is a Big Job in the Conservative mindset.
For Jenrick... If you offer him something too insulting, does he stomp off immediately, and is this desirable or not? The ballsy option would be shadow Home Secretary, but I'm not sure that would be wise.
Premier Inns are what the good US chain motels USED to be, before they suddenly tripled in price
We should be thankful for them, even if they are pig ugly on the outside
wrt the relative merits of hotels and luxury hotels I'm delighted that you seem to have left behind your previously held absurd view that a £10 bottle of wine is no different to a £500 bottle of wine.
No, my view was and is that wine stops discernibly improving over £50 a bottle
Above that - unless you have a prodigiously refined palate (and even then I doubt it) - wine does not get “better” - it gets rarer and snobbier and older and more prestigious - but not actually better
Hotels are much more complex. A £2000 a night hotel will be significantly better than a £500 a night hotel
I believe the most expensive hotel room I’ve ever stayed in (I wasn’t paying) was a £10,000 a night Chinese Ming Dynasty moated mini-castle near Shanghai - authentic but transplanted, and surrounded by a transplanted sacred forest. Plus butler
It was fucking incredible and notably better than the £1200 a night exquisite ryokan in gion Kyoto where I stayed last week (and spilt red wine on their tatami mats)
I'm very surprised that you, a noted restaurant critic, should hold such a frankly bizarre view
I mean you may not understand the difference ofc I get that but there is a difference. If you really think that , say, a 1982 Mouton should cost the same as a 2016 Ch. Batailley then you really have no business reviewing restaurants or food & drink.
My conclusion with wine is that it's generally an S curve, if you have price on the x-axis and quality on the y-axis. At the cheap end of the market there's not, in my experience, much difference between the occasional £4 bottle and a £7 or £8 bottle. From then until around £25-30 there is a steep though not entirely linear increase in quality with price. Upwards from there and there's still a quality increment, but the relationship is not so linear and the relative importance of brand and rarity (and the wine's "story") goes up.
You're in the wine trade and think that things get tricky after £30? Are you serious? Wowser. What a stupendously strange comment from someone who actually makes the stuff. What's the "story" of a DRC or a Mouton. Good wine is what.
Premier Inns are what the good US chain motels USED to be, before they suddenly tripled in price
We should be thankful for them, even if they are pig ugly on the outside
wrt the relative merits of hotels and luxury hotels I'm delighted that you seem to have left behind your previously held absurd view that a £10 bottle of wine is no different to a £500 bottle of wine.
Some restaurants seem to follow this policy! I went to an Italian the other day and thought perhaps a Brunello di Montalcino - the cheapest they had was £350, so when you add service it's not far off. (Admittedly you probably couldn't get it for £10 in Italy)
It's weird that people (ie @Leon) accepts there is a price difference in just about everything and for very good reasons, but not with wine, of all things, where there is arguably the easiest difference in actual product and one that should be trivially simple for a supposed gourmand to understand.
Well I'd not worry too much about Leon's weird views. Wine is though quite an unusual market. At the top end I think you can only really appreciate it if you can drink such wines with some regularity..
That also requires a palate which is actually able to discern subtle differences - something that can't be trained. You either have it or you don't. That's just genes, not experience.
On the same basis, for a third of the population (me included) coriander tastes like soap.
So for 90%+ of the population (I'm not sure what the figure for 'super-tasters' is, but it's not big), anything better than decent wine is pretty pointless.
Premier Inns are what the good US chain motels USED to be, before they suddenly tripled in price
We should be thankful for them, even if they are pig ugly on the outside
wrt the relative merits of hotels and luxury hotels I'm delighted that you seem to have left behind your previously held absurd view that a £10 bottle of wine is no different to a £500 bottle of wine.
Some restaurants seem to follow this policy! I went to an Italian the other day and thought perhaps a Brunello di Montalcino - the cheapest they had was £350, so when you add service it's not far off. (Admittedly you probably couldn't get it for £10 in Italy)
It's weird that people (ie @Leon) accepts there is a price difference in just about everything and for very good reasons, but not with wine, of all things, where there is arguably the easiest difference in actual product and one that should be trivially simple for a supposed gourmand to understand.
Because I have quite a few friends who work deeply in the wine industry, and they quietly admit a load of it is bollocks. One is a Master of Wine, another owns the chain Vinoteca, etc
Above £50 you’re paying to exhibit status, or your nerves about your status, if that matters to you, good luck and enjoy
Fascinating fact, in some blind tastings supposed wine experts can’t even distinguish between red and white, absent visual clues
Please be advised that between 1 and 2pm today I bet the following
LOW RISK: STATE: MINNESOTA: 1/14 Kamela to win: £200 bet LOW RISK: STATE: VIRGINIA: 2/17 Kamela to win: £500 bet MEDIUM RISK: SENATE: ARIZONA: 2/9 Reuben Gallego to win (D): £200 bet MEDIUM RISK: SENATE: MONTANA: 1/5 Tim Sheehy to win (R): £100
Total waged: £1000 (fuuuck) Total returns if all win: 558.82+214.29+244.44+120 = £1,137.55 Potential profit: £137.55 Potential loss: £1000.
Hmm. As you may have noticed I lost track during the betting and bet £500 not £250 on Virginia as intended. Lots of talking and bingy sounds, brain got confused. Doesn't look like a good idea now you say it out loud. Ah well, don't walk into the shop with money if you don't want to spend it: we will see what happens.
#BigBoyPants
Virginia is pretty damn safe, though.
If it were me, I'd just have stuck £100 on Georgia. More potential profit; downside £100.
Yes, I don't really see the point of betting a significant sum (£1,000) to win a pittance that you could burn in the pub in a few hours. That said, I find the betting practices of @Viewcode bizarre at best – this is the guy that insists on putting his own bets on in cash at a betting shop then whines when he can't get a bet on because either a) the shop won't lay the bet and/or b) he lacks the time to actually go to the shop.
Why do you think I need or want your approval?
I appreciate you disapprove of the way I gamble, but I do not come here to ask for your approval and I do not need it. I record my betting here to lay down an audit trail so I can prove to others that I bet X at time T on event Y. What you do is up to you.
Trump's is better, Id' say. Partly because it hasn't got all that much Trump in it! Harris's, by contrast, has a lot of her voiceover and some - to my eyes - cringeworthy moments with the voters.
Premier Inns are what the good US chain motels USED to be, before they suddenly tripled in price
We should be thankful for them, even if they are pig ugly on the outside
wrt the relative merits of hotels and luxury hotels I'm delighted that you seem to have left behind your previously held absurd view that a £10 bottle of wine is no different to a £500 bottle of wine.
Some restaurants seem to follow this policy! I went to an Italian the other day and thought perhaps a Brunello di Montalcino - the cheapest they had was £350, so when you add service it's not far off. (Admittedly you probably couldn't get it for £10 in Italy)
It's weird that people (ie @Leon) accepts there is a price difference in just about everything and for very good reasons, but not with wine, of all things, where there is arguably the easiest difference in actual product and one that should be trivially simple for a supposed gourmand to understand.
Because I have quite a few friends who work deeply in the wine industry, and they quietly admit a load of it is bollocks. One is a Master of Wine, another owns the chain Vinoteca, etc
Above £50 you’re paying to exhibit status, or your nerves about your status, if that matters to you, good luck and enjoy
Fascinating fact, in some blind tastings supposed wine experts can’t even distinguish between red and white, absent visual clues
lol. This hotel in the Philippines is…. £2,500 a night
However on its website it says “welcome to barefoot luxury, there is no need for a wallet here”
I SHOULD FUCKING WELL HOPE SO, IF I AM PAYING £2,500 A NIGHT
But *you* are not paying, right?
no, obvs not
looks like I am going tho, at least as things stand, so you can stare out at the London grey feeling a tiny bit happier, knowing that I’ll soon be in the 15th best hotel in the world, inshallah
Each to his own, but I've spent far too many nights in "luxury" hotels in foreign cities to be jealous. Personally, despite the often shitty weather and depressing grey skies, I prefer my own bedroom, possessions, home-prepared food, etc.
Luxury hotels are overrated. But then luxury is overrated, in my opinion, at the cost charged. It's like first class air: it's not remotely worth the value for the flight unless you take as sufficiently important not mixing with common people.
That's probably the luxury that you're paying for. And then Leon shows up...
I find that hotel room prices bear little relation to the standard of the hotel. This year:
The Lynch, is a wonderful country house hotel in Somerton. I can get a vast double bedroom for £140 a night.
Sofitel Gatwick, and Harbour Hotel Salcombe, are both soulless, bog standard hotels, at £200-£235 per night.
San Francisco al Monte is a stunningly good luxury hotel in Naples, where a junior suite with views over the Bay will cost you £240 a night.
Premier Inn is usually good enough, although the dining areas/bars can be icky.
Premier Inn always seems to me a bit like a prison.
Have you stayed in either?
Whitbread are selling their Premier Inn adjacent restaurants, so breakfasts are no longer available as before in all locations. With their supply and demand fluctuating prices they are not good value for money. Although not as bad as Travelodge they are still pretty dreary. Through booking.com there are better, cheaper alternatives
Trump's is better, Id' say. Partly because it hasn't got all that much Trump in it! Harris's, by contrast, has a lot of her voiceover and some - to my eyes - cringeworthy moments with the voters.
Remember the Americans love a bit of Schmalz though.
Premier Inns are what the good US chain motels USED to be, before they suddenly tripled in price
We should be thankful for them, even if they are pig ugly on the outside
wrt the relative merits of hotels and luxury hotels I'm delighted that you seem to have left behind your previously held absurd view that a £10 bottle of wine is no different to a £500 bottle of wine.
Some restaurants seem to follow this policy! I went to an Italian the other day and thought perhaps a Brunello di Montalcino - the cheapest they had was £350, so when you add service it's not far off. (Admittedly you probably couldn't get it for £10 in Italy)
It's weird that people (ie @Leon) accepts there is a price difference in just about everything and for very good reasons, but not with wine, of all things, where there is arguably the easiest difference in actual product and one that should be trivially simple for a supposed gourmand to understand.
Because I have quite a few friends who work deeply in the wine industry, and they quietly admit a load of it is bollocks. One is a Master of Wine, another owns the chain Vinoteca, etc
Above £50 you’re paying to exhibit status, or your nerves about your status, if that matters to you, good luck and enjoy
Fascinating fact, in some blind tastings supposed wine experts can’t even distinguish between red and white, absent visual clues
Premier Inns are what the good US chain motels USED to be, before they suddenly tripled in price
We should be thankful for them, even if they are pig ugly on the outside
wrt the relative merits of hotels and luxury hotels I'm delighted that you seem to have left behind your previously held absurd view that a £10 bottle of wine is no different to a £500 bottle of wine.
Some restaurants seem to follow this policy! I went to an Italian the other day and thought perhaps a Brunello di Montalcino - the cheapest they had was £350, so when you add service it's not far off. (Admittedly you probably couldn't get it for £10 in Italy)
It's weird that people (ie @Leon) accepts there is a price difference in just about everything and for very good reasons, but not with wine, of all things, where there is arguably the easiest difference in actual product and one that should be trivially simple for a supposed gourmand to understand.
Because I have quite a few friends who work deeply in the wine industry, and they quietly admit a load of it is bollocks. One is a Master of Wine, another owns the chain Vinoteca, etc
Above £50 you’re paying to exhibit status, or your nerves about your status, if that matters to you, good luck and enjoy
Fascinating fact, in some blind tastings supposed wine experts can’t even distinguish between red and white, absent visual clues
Completely agree. When I have been in France and South Africa plus Spain I buy directly from the vineyard and never pay more than £20.00 ish. Speaking to people locally they tell me to order table wine in the restaurants and would not pay a fortune for a bottle of wine. One you reach a price point for good quality wine there is little point in going over it for the sake of snobbery value and bragging rights.
lol. This hotel in the Philippines is…. £2,500 a night
However on its website it says “welcome to barefoot luxury, there is no need for a wallet here”
I SHOULD FUCKING WELL HOPE SO, IF I AM PAYING £2,500 A NIGHT
But *you* are not paying, right?
no, obvs not
looks like I am going tho, at least as things stand, so you can stare out at the London grey feeling a tiny bit happier, knowing that I’ll soon be in the 15th best hotel in the world, inshallah
Each to his own, but I've spent far too many nights in "luxury" hotels in foreign cities to be jealous. Personally, despite the often shitty weather and depressing grey skies, I prefer my own bedroom, possessions, home-prepared food, etc.
"Luxury" hotels are such a poor bang for buck. And half the time they're not even relaxing. Watching out for being shafted for £10 for a bottle of water, trying to master room light switches and shower controls that didn't need reinventing, getting a migraine trying to work out what room category to select to get what upgrade based on what pathetically named elite status I have with the chain.
This is a ridiculous debate. Of course a luxury hotel is not gonna be fun if you only barely afford it. And every bill makes you nervous
If you can barely afford it DON’T STAY THERE - it won’t be enjoyable or relaxing. Check in to a nice cheerful 3 star and enjoy your holiday
Only go to a luxury hotel if it is free or you are seriously rich and don’t care about the bar bill. Then they can be immensely fun and they are not “overrated” at all
Pushing a seven figure income this year, my overexcitable recently unbanned friend, but like most people who've actually built wealth I didn't get to that point by feeling perversely validated by someone bending me over and charging me £10 for a bottle of water...
At my earning peak I made £500k in a year. Fuck knows where it went. Apart from all the women. And the wine and the caviar and the women and the ok that’s where it went
But £1m?! That’s impressive!
If you’re making that much but getting annoyed by overpriced water you’re maybe not enjoying the money. Remember you can’t take it with you..,
Two biggest jobs given by Kemi Badenoch to former leadership rivals and — having been elected in 2010 — two of the most experienced Conservative MPs
First two eliminated?
What prime jobs does that leave for Tom T and Robert J?
Tom T defence?
Jenrick - North Ireland.
Decent idea for Tom, and Defence is a Big Job in the Conservative mindset.
For Jenrick... If you offer him something too insulting, does he stomp off immediately, and is this desirable or not? The ballsy option would be shadow Home Secretary, but I'm not sure that would be wise.
Two biggest jobs given by Kemi Badenoch to former leadership rivals and — having been elected in 2010 — two of the most experienced Conservative MPs
First two eliminated?
What prime jobs does that leave for Tom T and Robert J?
Tom T defence?
Jenrick - North Ireland.
Decent idea for Tom, and Defence is a Big Job in the Conservative mindset.
For Jenrick... If you offer him something too insulting, does he stomp off immediately, and is this desirable or not? The ballsy option would be shadow Home Secretary, but I'm not sure that would be wise.
Premier Inns are what the good US chain motels USED to be, before they suddenly tripled in price
We should be thankful for them, even if they are pig ugly on the outside
wrt the relative merits of hotels and luxury hotels I'm delighted that you seem to have left behind your previously held absurd view that a £10 bottle of wine is no different to a £500 bottle of wine.
No, my view was and is that wine stops discernibly improving over £50 a bottle
Above that - unless you have a prodigiously refined palate (and even then I doubt it) - wine does not get “better” - it gets rarer and snobbier and older and more prestigious - but not actually better
Hotels are much more complex. A £2000 a night hotel will be significantly better than a £500 a night hotel
I believe the most expensive hotel room I’ve ever stayed in (I wasn’t paying) was a £10,000 a night Chinese Ming Dynasty moated mini-castle near Shanghai - authentic but transplanted, and surrounded by a transplanted sacred forest. Plus butler
It was fucking incredible and notably better than the £1200 a night exquisite ryokan in gion Kyoto where I stayed last week (and spilt red wine on their tatami mats)
I'm very surprised that you, a noted restaurant critic, should hold such a frankly bizarre view
I mean you may not understand the difference ofc I get that but there is a difference. If you really think that , say, a 1982 Mouton should cost the same as a 2016 Ch. Batailley then you really have no business reviewing restaurants or food & drink.
My conclusion with wine is that it's generally an S curve, if you have price on the x-axis and quality on the y-axis. At the cheap end of the market there's not, in my experience, much difference between the occasional £4 bottle and a £7 or £8 bottle. From then until around £25-30 there is a steep though not entirely linear increase in quality with price. Upwards from there and there's still a quality increment, but the relationship is not so linear and the relative importance of brand and rarity (and the wine's "story") goes up.
You're in the wine trade and think that things get tricky after £30? Are you serious? Wowser. What a stupendously strange comment from someone who actually makes the stuff. What's the "story" of a DRC or a Mouton. Good wine is what.
I was once given DRC at a Berry Brother's lunch. It was fine, maybe even good, but it was not a style of wine I particularly appreciate.
Two biggest jobs given by Kemi Badenoch to former leadership rivals and — having been elected in 2010 — two of the most experienced Conservative MPs
First two eliminated?
What prime jobs does that leave for Tom T and Robert J?
Tom T defence?
Jenrick - North Ireland.
Decent idea for Tom, and Defence is a Big Job in the Conservative mindset.
For Jenrick... If you offer him something too insulting, does he stomp off immediately, and is this desirable or not? The ballsy option would be shadow Home Secretary, but I'm not sure that would be wise.
Painter and decorator?
I would offer Jenrick Defence or Trade. Both biggish jobs but hard to cause trouble.
Looks like Kemi is going for a big tent approach, which is sensible given her weakish mandate
I have been following American election and have come to the conclusion that it is going to be ridiculously close - with Harris just scraping over the 270 seat winning line - but possibly losing the popular vote. In which case we can expect two months of insurrection, legal fights and spoilt daipers.
Trump asks rally whether he should hit Michelle Obama.
If Trump is planning on being a Dictator and executing his rivals only on day one, isn't there a possibility that say Hillary Clinton will be living in University accomodation at Swansea where she has an honorary teaching role by then. Surely he needs to round them all up before they have the opportunity to make their escape.
I have been following American election and have come to the conclusion that it is going to be ridiculously close - with Harris just scraping over the 270 seat winning line - but possibly losing the popular vote. In which case we can expect two months of insurrection, legal fights and spoilt daipers.
Premier Inns are what the good US chain motels USED to be, before they suddenly tripled in price
We should be thankful for them, even if they are pig ugly on the outside
wrt the relative merits of hotels and luxury hotels I'm delighted that you seem to have left behind your previously held absurd view that a £10 bottle of wine is no different to a £500 bottle of wine.
No, my view was and is that wine stops discernibly improving over £50 a bottle
Above that - unless you have a prodigiously refined palate (and even then I doubt it) - wine does not get “better” - it gets rarer and snobbier and older and more prestigious - but not actually better
Hotels are much more complex. A £2000 a night hotel will be significantly better than a £500 a night hotel
I believe the most expensive hotel room I’ve ever stayed in (I wasn’t paying) was a £10,000 a night Chinese Ming Dynasty moated mini-castle near Shanghai - authentic but transplanted, and surrounded by a transplanted sacred forest. Plus butler
It was fucking incredible and notably better than the £1200 a night exquisite ryokan in gion Kyoto where I stayed last week (and spilt red wine on their tatami mats)
I'm very surprised that you, a noted restaurant critic, should hold such a frankly bizarre view
I mean you may not understand the difference ofc I get that but there is a difference. If you really think that , say, a 1982 Mouton should cost the same as a 2016 Ch. Batailley then you really have no business reviewing restaurants or food & drink.
My conclusion with wine is that it's generally an S curve, if you have price on the x-axis and quality on the y-axis. At the cheap end of the market there's not, in my experience, much difference between the occasional £4 bottle and a £7 or £8 bottle. From then until around £25-30 there is a steep though not entirely linear increase in quality with price. Upwards from there and there's still a quality increment, but the relationship is not so linear and the relative importance of brand and rarity (and the wine's "story") goes up.
You're in the wine trade and think that things get tricky after £30? Are you serious? Wowser. What a stupendously strange comment from someone who actually makes the stuff. What's the "story" of a DRC or a Mouton. Good wine is what.
You don't half get worked up about the fine details of people's opinions on things. It's an S curve, as is the case with almost all consumer goods. There is a bigger difference in quality between the average £5 and £15 bottle than there is between a £50 and £60 bottle.
Because I have some involvement in the wine world I know what drives price point and a significant chunk of that is cost. Cost is partly to do with the amount of care and attention lavished on a wine - which is reflected in quality of the product - but it's also partly to do with rarity, which in turn is down to yields and economies of scale. Put simply, it's a hell of a lot more expensive to make a bottle of decent wine in South East England, or on the sheer slopes of the Northern Rhone, than it is in the Marne Valley or the Napa Valley.
And brand is absolutely important. One only has to look at the pricing of the trendy "natural wine" category to see this. Decidedly bog standard wines a lot of them, but no sulphur and no filtration and you're suddenly opening up a different market. And the opposite is true: see the gross under-valuation of say Beaujolais or Vouvray.
lol. This hotel in the Philippines is…. £2,500 a night
However on its website it says “welcome to barefoot luxury, there is no need for a wallet here”
I SHOULD FUCKING WELL HOPE SO, IF I AM PAYING £2,500 A NIGHT
But *you* are not paying, right?
no, obvs not
looks like I am going tho, at least as things stand, so you can stare out at the London grey feeling a tiny bit happier, knowing that I’ll soon be in the 15th best hotel in the world, inshallah
Each to his own, but I've spent far too many nights in "luxury" hotels in foreign cities to be jealous. Personally, despite the often shitty weather and depressing grey skies, I prefer my own bedroom, possessions, home-prepared food, etc.
Luxury hotels are overrated. But then luxury is overrated, in my opinion, at the cost charged. It's like first class air: it's not remotely worth the value for the flight unless you take as sufficiently important not mixing with common people.
What an absurd statement
“Luxury hotels are overrated”
It’s like saying “small countries should be bigger” or “several colours are similar to green” or “I dislike fabrics”
It's not remotely absurd. I would not want to stay in many / most luxury hotels. If I had the money to spend, I'd spend it differently.
Especially if you had to share your expensive luxury with some random uncouth loud-mouthed racist.
Any PBer who is actually interested in actual election activities (a dwindling minority?) is welcome to check out real-time web-cams posted by King County Elections in the great Evergreen State of Washington:
Premier Inns are what the good US chain motels USED to be, before they suddenly tripled in price
We should be thankful for them, even if they are pig ugly on the outside
wrt the relative merits of hotels and luxury hotels I'm delighted that you seem to have left behind your previously held absurd view that a £10 bottle of wine is no different to a £500 bottle of wine.
No, my view was and is that wine stops discernibly improving over £50 a bottle
Above that - unless you have a prodigiously refined palate (and even then I doubt it) - wine does not get “better” - it gets rarer and snobbier and older and more prestigious - but not actually better
Hotels are much more complex. A £2000 a night hotel will be significantly better than a £500 a night hotel
I believe the most expensive hotel room I’ve ever stayed in (I wasn’t paying) was a £10,000 a night Chinese Ming Dynasty moated mini-castle near Shanghai - authentic but transplanted, and surrounded by a transplanted sacred forest. Plus butler
It was fucking incredible and notably better than the £1200 a night exquisite ryokan in gion Kyoto where I stayed last week (and spilt red wine on their tatami mats)
I'm very surprised that you, a noted restaurant critic, should hold such a frankly bizarre view
I mean you may not understand the difference ofc I get that but there is a difference. If you really think that , say, a 1982 Mouton should cost the same as a 2016 Ch. Batailley then you really have no business reviewing restaurants or food & drink.
My conclusion with wine is that it's generally an S curve, if you have price on the x-axis and quality on the y-axis. At the cheap end of the market there's not, in my experience, much difference between the occasional £4 bottle and a £7 or £8 bottle. From then until around £25-30 there is a steep though not entirely linear increase in quality with price. Upwards from there and there's still a quality increment, but the relationship is not so linear and the relative importance of brand and rarity (and the wine's "story") goes up.
You're in the wine trade and think that things get tricky after £30? Are you serious? Wowser. What a stupendously strange comment from someone who actually makes the stuff. What's the "story" of a DRC or a Mouton. Good wine is what.
I was once given DRC at a Berry Brother's lunch. It was fine, maybe even good, but it was not a style of wine I particularly appreciate.
(Red) Burgundies are some of the most "difficult" or complex of wines imo, and DRC are at the top of the tree. They can be quite demanding. We Brits are much more at home with a claret prob 55% Merlot (sad to say) is where people are happy. Try finding a supermarket cab sauv-based claret. It's a challenge.
I spent quite some time tasting burgundies for the new vintage at one point in my life and by 5pm you needed nothing so much as a beer and some crisps.
Any PBer who is actually interested in actual election activities (a dwindling minority?) is welcome to check out real-time web-cams posted by King County Elections in the great Evergreen State of Washington:
Chancellor - man who wants to abolish the pensions triple lock Education - woman who doesn't understand percentages Foreign - woman fired for freelancing policy on Israel
Premier Inns are what the good US chain motels USED to be, before they suddenly tripled in price
We should be thankful for them, even if they are pig ugly on the outside
wrt the relative merits of hotels and luxury hotels I'm delighted that you seem to have left behind your previously held absurd view that a £10 bottle of wine is no different to a £500 bottle of wine.
No, my view was and is that wine stops discernibly improving over £50 a bottle
Above that - unless you have a prodigiously refined palate (and even then I doubt it) - wine does not get “better” - it gets rarer and snobbier and older and more prestigious - but not actually better
Hotels are much more complex. A £2000 a night hotel will be significantly better than a £500 a night hotel
I believe the most expensive hotel room I’ve ever stayed in (I wasn’t paying) was a £10,000 a night Chinese Ming Dynasty moated mini-castle near Shanghai - authentic but transplanted, and surrounded by a transplanted sacred forest. Plus butler
It was fucking incredible and notably better than the £1200 a night exquisite ryokan in gion Kyoto where I stayed last week (and spilt red wine on their tatami mats)
I'm very surprised that you, a noted restaurant critic, should hold such a frankly bizarre view
I mean you may not understand the difference ofc I get that but there is a difference. If you really think that , say, a 1982 Mouton should cost the same as a 2016 Ch. Batailley then you really have no business reviewing restaurants or food & drink.
My conclusion with wine is that it's generally an S curve, if you have price on the x-axis and quality on the y-axis. At the cheap end of the market there's not, in my experience, much difference between the occasional £4 bottle and a £7 or £8 bottle. From then until around £25-30 there is a steep though not entirely linear increase in quality with price. Upwards from there and there's still a quality increment, but the relationship is not so linear and the relative importance of brand and rarity (and the wine's "story") goes up.
You're in the wine trade and think that things get tricky after £30? Are you serious? Wowser. What a stupendously strange comment from someone who actually makes the stuff. What's the "story" of a DRC or a Mouton. Good wine is what.
I was once given DRC at a Berry Brother's lunch. It was fine, maybe even good, but it was not a style of wine I particularly appreciate.
I would definitely drink DRC if I were, well, the president of DRC. Imagine, it would be part of the image. Kicking back in my Kinshasa palace (or the Geneva lake house, or the Cote D'Azur villa), drinking my own-brand wine.
Trump asks rally whether he should hit Michelle Obama.
If Trump is planning on being a Dictator and executing his rivals only on day one, isn't there a possibility that say Hillary Clinton will be living in University accomodation at Swansea where she has an honorary teaching role by then. Surely he needs to round them all up before they have the opportunity to make their escape.
I'll tell my son to look her up if he ends up going there.
Premier Inns are what the good US chain motels USED to be, before they suddenly tripled in price
We should be thankful for them, even if they are pig ugly on the outside
wrt the relative merits of hotels and luxury hotels I'm delighted that you seem to have left behind your previously held absurd view that a £10 bottle of wine is no different to a £500 bottle of wine.
No, my view was and is that wine stops discernibly improving over £50 a bottle
Above that - unless you have a prodigiously refined palate (and even then I doubt it) - wine does not get “better” - it gets rarer and snobbier and older and more prestigious - but not actually better
Hotels are much more complex. A £2000 a night hotel will be significantly better than a £500 a night hotel
I believe the most expensive hotel room I’ve ever stayed in (I wasn’t paying) was a £10,000 a night Chinese Ming Dynasty moated mini-castle near Shanghai - authentic but transplanted, and surrounded by a transplanted sacred forest. Plus butler
It was fucking incredible and notably better than the £1200 a night exquisite ryokan in gion Kyoto where I stayed last week (and spilt red wine on their tatami mats)
I'm very surprised that you, a noted restaurant critic, should hold such a frankly bizarre view
I mean you may not understand the difference ofc I get that but there is a difference. If you really think that , say, a 1982 Mouton should cost the same as a 2016 Ch. Batailley then you really have no business reviewing restaurants or food & drink.
My conclusion with wine is that it's generally an S curve, if you have price on the x-axis and quality on the y-axis. At the cheap end of the market there's not, in my experience, much difference between the occasional £4 bottle and a £7 or £8 bottle. From then until around £25-30 there is a steep though not entirely linear increase in quality with price. Upwards from there and there's still a quality increment, but the relationship is not so linear and the relative importance of brand and rarity (and the wine's "story") goes up.
You're in the wine trade and think that things get tricky after £30? Are you serious? Wowser. What a stupendously strange comment from someone who actually makes the stuff. What's the "story" of a DRC or a Mouton. Good wine is what.
You don't half get worked up about the fine details of people's opinions on things. It's an S curve, as is the case with almost all consumer goods. There is a bigger difference in quality between the average £5 and £15 bottle than there is between a £50 and £60 bottle.
Because I have some involvement in the wine world I know what drives price point and a significant chunk of that is cost. Cost is partly to do with the amount of care and attention lavished on a wine - which is reflected in quality of the product - but it's also partly to do with rarity, which in turn is down to yields and economies of scale. Put simply, it's a hell of a lot more expensive to make a bottle of decent wine in South East England, or on the sheer slopes of the Northern Rhone, than it is in the Marne Valley or the Napa Valley.
And brand is absolutely important. One only has to look at the pricing of the trendy "natural wine" category to see this. Decidedly bog standard wines a lot of them, but no sulphur and no filtration and you're suddenly opening up a different market. And the opposite is true: see the gross under-valuation of say Beaujolais or Vouvray.
The good thing is that it's almost impossible to buy truly bad wine now. The whites that left you feeling jittery, but able to stroll around naked in the snow, and the reds that hopelessly ruined any wine glass.
My first night in India was spent on Delhi station waiting room floor in the absence of the 16 hour delayed Jhelum "Express". Speaking of which. Has anyone stayed in a Wetherspoon's hotel?
Those programmes with Monica and Giles, well it used to be Giles but now I think it's Rob, where they go and work in the world's poshest hotels, and fawn over how beautifully integrated they are into the local culture and how sustainable everything is and blah blah blah. And how discerning the guests are and how special and how no request is too much. God, they make me want to vomit.
Different things for different people I guess. I prefer a nice pub or nice b&b to stay in than a posh hotel. Similarly I know nothing about wine, even though I like it and never pay much. Although I have had expensive bottles I rarely appreciate it, but I do enjoy a Michelin star meal and have one regularly. Similarly I think I know my beer, although cost does not tend to be an issue here as the good stuff isn't much more, if at all, more expensive.
I don't wear jewellery of any sort, not even a wedding ring or watch and when I did have a watch I liked a nice looking one but wouldn't spend more than a £100 or so. I wear cheap clothes.
I fly economy as I can't see that it is worth paying more. I do enjoy both our houses and a large garden and large patio. For day to day driving I can't see the point in an expensive car, but would buy a classic car, although I wouldn't spend a fortune on it. I am happy to pay for experiences.
So like most people I can't see the point on spending money on some things and do on other stuff.
Chancellor - man who wants to abolish the pensions triple lock Education - woman who doesn't understand percentages Foreign - woman fired for freelancing policy on Israel
Two biggest jobs given by Kemi Badenoch to former leadership rivals and — having been elected in 2010 — two of the most experienced Conservative MPs
First two eliminated?
What prime jobs does that leave for Tom T and Robert J?
Tom T defence?
Jenrick - North Ireland.
Decent idea for Tom, and Defence is a Big Job in the Conservative mindset.
For Jenrick... If you offer him something too insulting, does he stomp off immediately, and is this desirable or not? The ballsy option would be shadow Home Secretary, but I'm not sure that would be wise.
Painter and decorator?
I would offer Jenrick Defence or Trade. Both biggish jobs but hard to cause trouble.
Looks like Kemi is going for a big tent approach, which is sensible given her weakish mandate
She's also only got 120 MPs to play with, so she can't afford to be that picky.
It makes quite a bit of a difference being in opposition, but Chancellor and Foreign are your go-tos for heirs apparent. Whatever their virtues (and they both have them), I'm not sure that Stride and Patel are the tallest available bluebells.
Any PBer who is actually interested in actual election activities (a dwindling minority?) is welcome to check out real-time web-cams posted by King County Elections in the great Evergreen State of Washington:
Two biggest jobs given by Kemi Badenoch to former leadership rivals and — having been elected in 2010 — two of the most experienced Conservative MPs
First two eliminated?
What prime jobs does that leave for Tom T and Robert J?
Tom T defence?
Jenrick - North Ireland.
Decent idea for Tom, and Defence is a Big Job in the Conservative mindset.
For Jenrick... If you offer him something too insulting, does he stomp off immediately, and is this desirable or not? The ballsy option would be shadow Home Secretary, but I'm not sure that would be wise.
Painter and decorator?
I would offer Jenrick Defence or Trade. Both biggish jobs but hard to cause trouble.
Looks like Kemi is going for a big tent approach, which is sensible given her weakish mandate
I would offer him something like Secretary of State for Scotland. Either he takes it and he's out of my way, or more likely he flounces about it and makes himself hated by all right thinking unionists who inexplicably don't already hate him.
Re: hotel discussion - one of the disadvantages of having a Vispring at home is that pretty much any hotel you miss your own bed, nothing comes close. Still, it's one of the best purchases I ever made.
Two biggest jobs given by Kemi Badenoch to former leadership rivals and — having been elected in 2010 — two of the most experienced Conservative MPs
First two eliminated?
What prime jobs does that leave for Tom T and Robert J?
Tom T defence?
Jenrick - North Ireland.
Decent idea for Tom, and Defence is a Big Job in the Conservative mindset.
For Jenrick... If you offer him something too insulting, does he stomp off immediately, and is this desirable or not? The ballsy option would be shadow Home Secretary, but I'm not sure that would be wise.
Painter and decorator?
I would offer Jenrick Defence or Trade. Both biggish jobs but hard to cause trouble.
Looks like Kemi is going for a big tent approach, which is sensible given her weakish mandate
She's also only got 120 MPs to play with, so she can't afford to be that picky.
It makes quite a bit of a difference being in opposition, but Chancellor and Foreign are your go-tos for heirs apparent. Whatever their virtues (and they both have them), I'm not sure that Stride and Patel are the tallest available bluebells.
Doesn’t matter in opposition as you say. The idea is that there won’t be a vacancy for some time (yes, I know that’s far from clear as far as Badenoch is concerned). At the moment I suspect the calculation is it’s more important to show party unity than really worry about who your successor is.
Two biggest jobs given by Kemi Badenoch to former leadership rivals and — having been elected in 2010 — two of the most experienced Conservative MPs
First two eliminated?
What prime jobs does that leave for Tom T and Robert J?
Tom T defence?
Jenrick - North Ireland.
Decent idea for Tom, and Defence is a Big Job in the Conservative mindset.
For Jenrick... If you offer him something too insulting, does he stomp off immediately, and is this desirable or not? The ballsy option would be shadow Home Secretary, but I'm not sure that would be wise.
Painter and decorator?
I would offer Jenrick Defence or Trade. Both biggish jobs but hard to cause trouble.
Looks like Kemi is going for a big tent approach, which is sensible given her weakish mandate
I suspect Tugendhat will get a job but not Jenrick.
The Stride and Patel appointments make absolutely no sense to me except as statements of lack of Tory talent. Neither of them would have been trouble on the back benches. Both are the past. What do they bring to the front bench?
The Stride and Patel appointments make absolutely no sense to me except as statements of lack of Tory talent. Neither of them would have been trouble on the back benches. Both are the past. What do they bring to the front bench?
Premier Inns are what the good US chain motels USED to be, before they suddenly tripled in price
We should be thankful for them, even if they are pig ugly on the outside
wrt the relative merits of hotels and luxury hotels I'm delighted that you seem to have left behind your previously held absurd view that a £10 bottle of wine is no different to a £500 bottle of wine.
No, my view was and is that wine stops discernibly improving over £50 a bottle
Above that - unless you have a prodigiously refined palate (and even then I doubt it) - wine does not get “better” - it gets rarer and snobbier and older and more prestigious - but not actually better
Hotels are much more complex. A £2000 a night hotel will be significantly better than a £500 a night hotel
I believe the most expensive hotel room I’ve ever stayed in (I wasn’t paying) was a £10,000 a night Chinese Ming Dynasty moated mini-castle near Shanghai - authentic but transplanted, and surrounded by a transplanted sacred forest. Plus butler
It was fucking incredible and notably better than the £1200 a night exquisite ryokan in gion Kyoto where I stayed last week (and spilt red wine on their tatami mats)
I'm very surprised that you, a noted restaurant critic, should hold such a frankly bizarre view
I mean you may not understand the difference ofc I get that but there is a difference. If you really think that , say, a 1982 Mouton should cost the same as a 2016 Ch. Batailley then you really have no business reviewing restaurants or food & drink.
My conclusion with wine is that it's generally an S curve, if you have price on the x-axis and quality on the y-axis. At the cheap end of the market there's not, in my experience, much difference between the occasional £4 bottle and a £7 or £8 bottle. From then until around £25-30 there is a steep though not entirely linear increase in quality with price. Upwards from there and there's still a quality increment, but the relationship is not so linear and the relative importance of brand and rarity (and the wine's "story") goes up.
You're in the wine trade and think that things get tricky after £30? Are you serious? Wowser. What a stupendously strange comment from someone who actually makes the stuff. What's the "story" of a DRC or a Mouton. Good wine is what.
You don't half get worked up about the fine details of people's opinions on things. It's an S curve, as is the case with almost all consumer goods. There is a bigger difference in quality between the average £5 and £15 bottle than there is between a £50 and £60 bottle.
Because I have some involvement in the wine world I know what drives price point and a significant chunk of that is cost. Cost is partly to do with the amount of care and attention lavished on a wine - which is reflected in quality of the product - but it's also partly to do with rarity, which in turn is down to yields and economies of scale. Put simply, it's a hell of a lot more expensive to make a bottle of decent wine in South East England, or on the sheer slopes of the Northern Rhone, than it is in the Marne Valley or the Napa Valley.
And brand is absolutely important. One only has to look at the pricing of the trendy "natural wine" category to see this. Decidedly bog standard wines a lot of them, but no sulphur and no filtration and you're suddenly opening up a different market. And the opposite is true: see the gross under-valuation of say Beaujolais or Vouvray.
I'm not getting worked up, I'm discussing. I simply don't believe that Leon's MW said, or meant, it's all bollocks over £50.
And I'm not disagreeing with anything you say. Scarcity is of course important as there are more Blue Nun hectares than Le Montrachet and even there the selection process, as I have no doubt you are aware, is rigorous for the grand vin.
But I think you and I are talking about brand in a different way. Brand is important for eg British customers (think Jacob's Creek or all those ghastly-named aussie wines like "The Guv'nor"). That is different from an eg Comte Lafon or Drouhin or some other well-known negoce wine or indeed the various chateaux or houses where the brand success follows the quality, rather than being designed to catch peoples' attention on the shelves at Waitrose.
And as for English wine yes you absolutely are operating at a disadvantage vs other climates and hence I think that's why it has struggled. There's a reason why there are more wine-producing regions that aren't in or near the UK so the care and attention you provide to make your wines can often not be worth the premium vs wines from a more benign (for wine) climate. Them's just the breaks.
All of which comes down to my central proposition that more expensive wines aren't just some marketing gimmick to fool the wine-drinking public.
Premier Inns are what the good US chain motels USED to be, before they suddenly tripled in price
We should be thankful for them, even if they are pig ugly on the outside
wrt the relative merits of hotels and luxury hotels I'm delighted that you seem to have left behind your previously held absurd view that a £10 bottle of wine is no different to a £500 bottle of wine.
No, my view was and is that wine stops discernibly improving over £50 a bottle
Above that - unless you have a prodigiously refined palate (and even then I doubt it) - wine does not get “better” - it gets rarer and snobbier and older and more prestigious - but not actually better
Hotels are much more complex. A £2000 a night hotel will be significantly better than a £500 a night hotel
I believe the most expensive hotel room I’ve ever stayed in (I wasn’t paying) was a £10,000 a night Chinese Ming Dynasty moated mini-castle near Shanghai - authentic but transplanted, and surrounded by a transplanted sacred forest. Plus butler
It was fucking incredible and notably better than the £1200 a night exquisite ryokan in gion Kyoto where I stayed last week (and spilt red wine on their tatami mats)
I'm very surprised that you, a noted restaurant critic, should hold such a frankly bizarre view
I mean you may not understand the difference ofc I get that but there is a difference. If you really think that , say, a 1982 Mouton should cost the same as a 2016 Ch. Batailley then you really have no business reviewing restaurants or food & drink.
My conclusion with wine is that it's generally an S curve, if you have price on the x-axis and quality on the y-axis. At the cheap end of the market there's not, in my experience, much difference between the occasional £4 bottle and a £7 or £8 bottle. From then until around £25-30 there is a steep though not entirely linear increase in quality with price. Upwards from there and there's still a quality increment, but the relationship is not so linear and the relative importance of brand and rarity (and the wine's "story") goes up.
You're in the wine trade and think that things get tricky after £30? Are you serious? Wowser. What a stupendously strange comment from someone who actually makes the stuff. What's the "story" of a DRC or a Mouton. Good wine is what.
I was once given DRC at a Berry Brother's lunch. It was fine, maybe even good, but it was not a style of wine I particularly appreciate.
The Stride and Patel appointments make absolutely no sense to me except as statements of lack of Tory talent. Neither of them would have been trouble on the back benches. Both are the past. What do they bring to the front bench?
Unity.
Together they bring 30 MPs who were willing to back them. Believe it or not that’s almost a quarter of the parliamentary party.
I think appointing fellow leadership contenders isn’t a terrible move at this time. If Badenoch tried to make a power play purely with her allies, it doesn’t shore up her position in parliament.
There’s much I will be criticising Badenoch and the Tories for I’m sure, but actually I think this is quite a good bit of tactical realpolitik.
Two biggest jobs given by Kemi Badenoch to former leadership rivals and — having been elected in 2010 — two of the most experienced Conservative MPs
First two eliminated?
What prime jobs does that leave for Tom T and Robert J?
Tom T defence?
Jenrick - North Ireland.
Decent idea for Tom, and Defence is a Big Job in the Conservative mindset.
For Jenrick... If you offer him something too insulting, does he stomp off immediately, and is this desirable or not? The ballsy option would be shadow Home Secretary, but I'm not sure that would be wise.
Painter and decorator?
I would offer Jenrick Defence or Trade. Both biggish jobs but hard to cause trouble.
Looks like Kemi is going for a big tent approach, which is sensible given her weakish mandate
I would offer him something like Secretary of State for Scotland. Either he takes it and he's out of my way, or more likely he flounces about it and makes himself hated by all right thinking unionists who inexplicably don't already hate him.
Re: hotel discussion - one of the disadvantages of having a Vispring at home is that pretty much any hotel you miss your own bed, nothing comes close. Still, it's one of the best purchases I ever made.
@Kemi if you're reading: offer him shadow Scotland. Or Wales, like Redwood got back in the day. Get him to sing the national anthem.
The Stride and Patel appointments make absolutely no sense to me except as statements of lack of Tory talent. Neither of them would have been trouble on the back benches. Both are the past. What do they bring to the front bench?
Unity.
Together they bring 30 MPs who were willing to back them. Believe it or not that’s almost a quarter of the parliamentary party.
I think appointing fellow leadership contenders isn’t a terrible move at this time. If Badenoch tried to make a power play purely with her allies, it doesn’t shore up her position in parliament.
There’s much I will be criticising Badenoch and the Tories for I’m sure, but actually I think this is quite a good bit of tactical realpolitik.
But would unity have been affected if Patel and Stride had not been given those jobs? I don't know much about either but they don't strike me as trouble. Stride as Shadow Chancellor is particularly peculiar to my eyes.
Trump asks rally whether he should hit Michelle Obama.
If Trump is planning on being a Dictator and executing his rivals only on day one, isn't there a possibility that say Hillary Clinton will be living in University accomodation at Swansea where she has an honorary teaching role by then. Surely he needs to round them all up before they have the opportunity to make their escape.
I'll tell my son to look her up if he ends up going there.
Premier Inns are what the good US chain motels USED to be, before they suddenly tripled in price
We should be thankful for them, even if they are pig ugly on the outside
wrt the relative merits of hotels and luxury hotels I'm delighted that you seem to have left behind your previously held absurd view that a £10 bottle of wine is no different to a £500 bottle of wine.
No, my view was and is that wine stops discernibly improving over £50 a bottle
Above that - unless you have a prodigiously refined palate (and even then I doubt it) - wine does not get “better” - it gets rarer and snobbier and older and more prestigious - but not actually better
Hotels are much more complex. A £2000 a night hotel will be significantly better than a £500 a night hotel
I believe the most expensive hotel room I’ve ever stayed in (I wasn’t paying) was a £10,000 a night Chinese Ming Dynasty moated mini-castle near Shanghai - authentic but transplanted, and surrounded by a transplanted sacred forest. Plus butler
It was fucking incredible and notably better than the £1200 a night exquisite ryokan in gion Kyoto where I stayed last week (and spilt red wine on their tatami mats)
I'm very surprised that you, a noted restaurant critic, should hold such a frankly bizarre view
I mean you may not understand the difference ofc I get that but there is a difference. If you really think that , say, a 1982 Mouton should cost the same as a 2016 Ch. Batailley then you really have no business reviewing restaurants or food & drink.
My conclusion with wine is that it's generally an S curve, if you have price on the x-axis and quality on the y-axis. At the cheap end of the market there's not, in my experience, much difference between the occasional £4 bottle and a £7 or £8 bottle. From then until around £25-30 there is a steep though not entirely linear increase in quality with price. Upwards from there and there's still a quality increment, but the relationship is not so linear and the relative importance of brand and rarity (and the wine's "story") goes up.
You're in the wine trade and think that things get tricky after £30? Are you serious? Wowser. What a stupendously strange comment from someone who actually makes the stuff. What's the "story" of a DRC or a Mouton. Good wine is what.
I was once given DRC at a Berry Brother's lunch. It was fine, maybe even good, but it was not a style of wine I particularly appreciate.
(Red) Burgundies are some of the most "difficult" or complex of wines imo, and DRC are at the top of the tree. They can be quite demanding. We Brits are much more at home with a claret prob 55% Merlot (sad to say) is where people are happy. Try finding a supermarket cab sauv-based claret. It's a challenge.
I spent quite some time tasting burgundies for the new vintage at one point in my life and by 5pm you needed nothing so much as a beer and some crisps.
I'm very confident that I couldn't tell the difference between a £10 bottle of wine and a £50 bottle.
I'm very confident that most others couldn't either in a blind taste test.
I accept that genuinely talented wine lovers do exist - but for others it's mainly a snobbery thing IMO.
Spending more than £50 on one bottle strikes me as obscene but I'm tight as well as wine-skeptic so maybe that's it.
Comments
On a quilt barely thicker than a blanket.
The Airbnb I stayed in Seoul was fantastic.
What prime jobs does that leave for Tom T and Robert J?
If farmers want to reduce their holdings, I'm sure we can have it as access land, or land alongside country roads for mobility tracks to keep us safe from the rural Hoons.
I've only ever gone to a couple of really great wine tastings where great wines would be compared to merely good wines, and at both events I think it needed an expert hand to select the wines and guide the event. Wonderful, but I'd certainly not be able to reproduce.
https://x.com/frankluntz/status/1853448203762602264
Jenrick - North Ireland.
It has proven a good motto when buying wine as a gift so you don’t get carried away buying something furiously expensive for someone whose daily drop is a Yellow Tail abomination.
For Jenrick... If you offer him something too insulting, does he stomp off immediately, and is this desirable or not? The ballsy option would be shadow Home Secretary, but I'm not sure that would be wise.
On the same basis, for a third of the population (me included) coriander tastes like soap.
So for 90%+ of the population (I'm not sure what the figure for 'super-tasters' is, but it's not big), anything better than decent wine is pretty pointless.
Above £50 you’re paying to exhibit status, or your nerves about your status, if that matters to you, good luck and enjoy
Fascinating fact, in some blind tastings supposed wine experts can’t even distinguish between red and white, absent visual clues
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/08/19/the-red-and-the-white
Nighty night from Korea
I appreciate you disapprove of the way I gamble, but I do not come here to ask for your approval and I do not need it. I record my betting here to lay down an audit trail so I can prove to others that I bet X at time T on event Y. What you do is up to you.
But £1m?! That’s impressive!
If you’re making that much but getting annoyed by overpriced water you’re maybe not enjoying the money. Remember you can’t take it with you..,
This morning's update: Welp.
https://x.com/NateSilver538/status/1853479623385874603
Looks like Kemi is going for a big tent approach, which is sensible given her weakish mandate
Because I have some involvement in the wine world I know what drives price point and a significant chunk of that is cost. Cost is partly to do with the amount of care and attention lavished on a wine - which is reflected in quality of the product - but it's also partly to do with rarity, which in turn is down to yields and economies of scale. Put simply, it's a hell of a lot more expensive to make a bottle of decent wine in South East England, or on the sheer slopes of the Northern Rhone, than it is in the Marne Valley or the Napa Valley.
And brand is absolutely important. One only has to look at the pricing of the trendy "natural wine" category to see this. Decidedly bog standard wines a lot of them, but no sulphur and no filtration and you're suddenly opening up a different market. And the opposite is true: see the gross under-valuation of say Beaujolais or Vouvray.
https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/elections/about-us/security-and-accountability/watch-us-in-action
I spent quite some time tasting burgundies for the new vintage at one point in my life and by 5pm you needed nothing so much as a beer and some crisps.
I approve of these choices
No Cruella role yet?
Kemi's shadow cabinet so far:
Chancellor - man who wants to abolish the pensions triple lock
Education - woman who doesn't understand percentages
Foreign - woman fired for freelancing policy on Israel
It's all going really well so far.
https://x.com/fleetstreetfox/status/1853483280412135538
NEW:
George Galloway has announced he will not stand in the next general election.
@LadPolitics
Will George Galloway stand at the next General Election?
Yes - 1/2
No - 6/4
Speaking of which. Has anyone stayed in a Wetherspoon's hotel?
I don't wear jewellery of any sort, not even a wedding ring or watch and when I did have a watch I liked a nice looking one but wouldn't spend more than a £100 or so. I wear cheap clothes.
I fly economy as I can't see that it is worth paying more. I do enjoy both our houses and a large garden and large patio. For day to day driving I can't see the point in an expensive car, but would buy a classic car, although I wouldn't spend a fortune on it. I am happy to pay for experiences.
So like most people I can't see the point on spending money on some things and do on other stuff.
Is Dawn Butler still a Labour mp ?
It makes quite a bit of a difference being in opposition, but Chancellor and Foreign are your go-tos for heirs apparent. Whatever their virtues (and they both have them), I'm not sure that Stride and Patel are the tallest available bluebells.
Re: hotel discussion - one of the disadvantages of having a Vispring at home is that pretty much any hotel you miss your own bed, nothing comes close. Still, it's one of the best purchases I ever made.
General election poll
🔵 Harris 51% (+4)
🔴 Trump 47%
Marist #A - LV - 11/2
And I'm not disagreeing with anything you say. Scarcity is of course important as there are more Blue Nun hectares than Le Montrachet and even there the selection process, as I have no doubt you are aware, is rigorous for the grand vin.
But I think you and I are talking about brand in a different way. Brand is important for eg British customers (think Jacob's Creek or all those ghastly-named aussie wines like "The Guv'nor"). That is different from an eg Comte Lafon or Drouhin or some other well-known negoce wine or indeed the various chateaux or houses where the brand success follows the quality, rather than being designed to catch peoples' attention on the shelves at Waitrose.
And as for English wine yes you absolutely are operating at a disadvantage vs other climates and hence I think that's why it has struggled. There's a reason why there are more wine-producing regions that aren't in or near the UK so the care and attention you provide to make your wines can often not be worth the premium vs wines from a more benign (for wine) climate. Them's just the breaks.
All of which comes down to my central proposition that more expensive wines aren't just some marketing gimmick to fool the wine-drinking public.
https://hedonism.co.uk/product/marc-de-bourgogne-drc-1991
Doubt I will ever taste their wine.
Lol
Together they bring 30 MPs who were willing to back them. Believe it or not that’s almost a quarter of the parliamentary party.
I think appointing fellow leadership contenders isn’t a terrible move at this time. If Badenoch tried to make a power play purely with her allies, it doesn’t shore up her position in parliament.
There’s much I will be criticising Badenoch and the Tories for I’m sure, but actually I think this is quite a good bit of tactical realpolitik.
I'm very confident that most others couldn't either in a blind taste test.
I accept that genuinely talented wine lovers do exist - but for others it's mainly a snobbery thing IMO.
Spending more than £50 on one bottle strikes me as obscene but I'm tight as well as wine-skeptic so maybe that's it.