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Voters don’t care about identity – politicalbetting.com

SystemSystem Posts: 12,183
edited November 20 in General
imageVoters don’t care about identity – politicalbetting.com

Another election, another failure for the Democratic party. Donald Trump is president elect and the whole world is crossing its fingers that we’re not heading for four years of turmoil and upheaval in the international order, particularly Ukraine. However, this is not the time to write about that, we don’t know enough yet about what Trump will do this time around to make an informed judgment, we can only hope that some of the rhetoric during and before the campaign was made for effect and to grab headlines.

Read the full story here

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Comments

  • eekeek Posts: 28,444
    It's the economy, stupid

    Inflation (resulting in people feeling poorer) is why every Western Leader who was in power between 2020-23 has lost or is likely to lose power*

    * Ireland may be an exception here but the Irish Government won the lottery when the EU ruled on a number of corporate tax cases so has a lot of money at the moment to pay voters off with.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 13,068
    edited November 9
    FPT for @ydoethur

    ydoethur said:
    » show previous quotes
    “Really? Lincoln, York, Worcester, Hereford, Gloucester, Canterbury, Winchester, Exeter, Chester, Norwich, Coventry, Carlisle, Rochester, Bristol, Lichfield, Wakefield, Liverpool all spring to mind without any great effort on my part.”


    Big cities. And Liverpool’s don’t count, they’re out of the centre and modern. All the rest are small cities or large towns with the exception of Bristol.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,479
    edited November 9
    TimS said:

    FPT for @ydoethur

    ydoethur said:
    » show previous quotes
    “Really? Lincoln, York, Worcester, Hereford, Gloucester, Canterbury, Winchester, Exeter, Chester, Norwich, Coventry, Carlisle, Rochester, Bristol, Lichfield, Wakefield, Liverpool all spring to mind without any great effort on my part.”


    Big cities. And Liverpool’s don’t count, they’re out of the centre and modern. All the rest are small cities or large towns with the exception of Bristol.

    Neither Wakefield nor Coventry are small cities.

    Nor London, for the matter of that.

    Edit - Manchester Cathedral is also quite an impressive building, as an ex-collegiate church, and is bang in the centre.
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 61,850
    Good morning, everyone.

    Currently watching the latest Good Times Bad Times video on YouTube. Not every incumbent lost an election this year. Maduro famously 'won' his.
  • eekeek Posts: 28,444
    ydoethur said:

    TimS said:

    FPT for @ydoethur

    ydoethur said:
    » show previous quotes
    “Really? Lincoln, York, Worcester, Hereford, Gloucester, Canterbury, Winchester, Exeter, Chester, Norwich, Coventry, Carlisle, Rochester, Bristol, Lichfield, Wakefield, Liverpool all spring to mind without any great effort on my part.”


    Big cities. And Liverpool’s don’t count, they’re out of the centre and modern. All the rest are small cities or large towns with the exception of Bristol.

    Neither Wakefield nor Coventry are small cities.

    Nor London, for the matter of that.

    Edit - Manchester Cathedral is also quite an impressive building, as an ex-collegiate church, and is bang in the centre.
    Manchester also has a decent Cafe and some volunteer cleaners who I swear are there 24/7*.

    * I've randomly wandered in every so often (may be 11am, may be 5pm) when visiting to see the same group of ladies cleaning* / chatting to anyone passing..
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 43,032
    edited November 9
    DavidL said:

    First?

    Personally, I found the anti-incumbency theory more persuasive. Its a tough time to be in government.

    Well, look at the UK. The Tories were going on and on about identity. Just the wrong kind. So Labour won (sort of).

    Actually, you're probably right.
  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 22,949
    DavidL said:

    First?

    Personally, I found the anti-incumbency theory more persuasive. Its a tough time to be in government.

    I'm sure both were factors but the header overplays identity stuff and sometimes goes hyperbolic and barely mentions the economy.

    The Dems needed another 1.5% swing, they overperformed against other incumbants up for election elsewhere this year, and for all his sins, Trump has a connection with large swathes of America that the next Republican leader won't have.

    I would agree they should tone down the identity stuff, but even if they don't they are still going to be competitive, assuming we have future fair elections of course.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 13,068
    ydoethur said:

    TimS said:

    FPT for @ydoethur

    ydoethur said:
    » show previous quotes
    “Really? Lincoln, York, Worcester, Hereford, Gloucester, Canterbury, Winchester, Exeter, Chester, Norwich, Coventry, Carlisle, Rochester, Bristol, Lichfield, Wakefield, Liverpool all spring to mind without any great effort on my part.”


    Big cities. And Liverpool’s don’t count, they’re out of the centre and modern. All the rest are small cities or large towns with the exception of Bristol.

    Neither Wakefield nor Coventry are small cities.

    Nor London, for the matter of that.
    From my perspective Coventry is a small city. My sister lives there - you can walk across the centre in 15 minutes. Wakefield is even smaller.

    We had a good discussion on this in a previous thread which you must have missed. The original point was few of our big cities have a cathedral as a focal point, including London - Westminster abbey is overshadowed by the houses of parliament, St Paul’s is in an empty bit of no man’s land between the city and the west end.

    I’ve been travelling around cities this week. Manchester (no centrepiece cathedrals), Leeds (no cathedral), Birmingham (diddy one, a repurposed parish church - I sang there once when our cathedral choir did a trip).

    Our small cities and towns have grand centrepiece cathedrals, our large ones generally don’t - either because they’re Victorian industrial cities or because the old centre has been subsumed by later growth and new focal points.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 43,032
    TimS said:

    ydoethur said:

    TimS said:

    FPT for @ydoethur

    ydoethur said:
    » show previous quotes
    “Really? Lincoln, York, Worcester, Hereford, Gloucester, Canterbury, Winchester, Exeter, Chester, Norwich, Coventry, Carlisle, Rochester, Bristol, Lichfield, Wakefield, Liverpool all spring to mind without any great effort on my part.”


    Big cities. And Liverpool’s don’t count, they’re out of the centre and modern. All the rest are small cities or large towns with the exception of Bristol.

    Neither Wakefield nor Coventry are small cities.

    Nor London, for the matter of that.
    From my perspective Coventry is a small city. My sister lives there - you can walk across the centre in 15 minutes. Wakefield is even smaller.

    We had a good discussion on this in a previous thread which you must have missed. The original point was few of our big cities have a cathedral as a focal point, including London - Westminster abbey is overshadowed by the houses of parliament, St Paul’s is in an empty bit of no man’s land between the city and the west end.

    I’ve been travelling around cities this week. Manchester (no centrepiece cathedrals), Leeds (no cathedral), Birmingham (diddy one, a repurposed parish church - I sang there once when our cathedral choir did a trip).

    Our small cities and towns have grand centrepiece cathedrals, our large ones generally don’t - either because they’re Victorian industrial cities or because the old centre has been subsumed by later growth and new focal points.
    If you want an admittedly former cathedral which still forms a major centre point in a large city, you have the High Kirk of St Giles in Edinburgh. Glasgow, not so much, for both of your reasons (actually a nice example of later growth and new focal points).
  • eekeek Posts: 28,444
    TimS said:

    ydoethur said:

    TimS said:

    FPT for @ydoethur

    ydoethur said:
    » show previous quotes
    “Really? Lincoln, York, Worcester, Hereford, Gloucester, Canterbury, Winchester, Exeter, Chester, Norwich, Coventry, Carlisle, Rochester, Bristol, Lichfield, Wakefield, Liverpool all spring to mind without any great effort on my part.”


    Big cities. And Liverpool’s don’t count, they’re out of the centre and modern. All the rest are small cities or large towns with the exception of Bristol.

    Neither Wakefield nor Coventry are small cities.

    Nor London, for the matter of that.
    From my perspective Coventry is a small city. My sister lives there - you can walk across the centre in 15 minutes. Wakefield is even smaller.

    We had a good discussion on this in a previous thread which you must have missed. The original point was few of our big cities have a cathedral as a focal point, including London - Westminster abbey is overshadowed by the houses of parliament, St Paul’s is in an empty bit of no man’s land between the city and the west end.

    I’ve been travelling around cities this week. Manchester (no centrepiece cathedrals), Leeds (no cathedral), Birmingham (diddy one, a repurposed parish church - I sang there once when our cathedral choir did a trip).

    Our small cities and towns have grand centrepiece cathedrals, our large ones generally don’t - either because they’re Victorian industrial cities or because the old centre has been subsumed by later growth and new focal points.
    Leeds has Saint Anne's Cathedral (Catholic).

    The Church of England didn't want the argument as to which of Ripon / Bradford or Wakefield lost their cathedral and given the size of the diocese and the fact it was created recently (2013) it made sense to keep things where they were.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,479
    edited November 9
    TimS said:

    ydoethur said:

    TimS said:

    FPT for @ydoethur

    ydoethur said:
    » show previous quotes
    “Really? Lincoln, York, Worcester, Hereford, Gloucester, Canterbury, Winchester, Exeter, Chester, Norwich, Coventry, Carlisle, Rochester, Bristol, Lichfield, Wakefield, Liverpool all spring to mind without any great effort on my part.”


    Big cities. And Liverpool’s don’t count, they’re out of the centre and modern. All the rest are small cities or large towns with the exception of Bristol.

    Neither Wakefield nor Coventry are small cities.

    Nor London, for the matter of that.
    From my perspective Coventry is a small city. My sister lives there - you can walk across the centre in 15 minutes. Wakefield is even smaller.

    We had a good discussion on this in a previous thread which you must have missed. The original point was few of our big cities have a cathedral as a focal point, including London - Westminster abbey is overshadowed by the houses of parliament, St Paul’s is in an empty bit of no man’s land between the city and the west end.

    I’ve been travelling around cities this week. Manchester (no centrepiece cathedrals), Leeds (no cathedral), Birmingham (diddy one, a repurposed parish church - I sang there once when our cathedral choir did a trip).

    Our small cities and towns have grand centrepiece cathedrals, our large ones generally don’t - either because they’re Victorian industrial cities or because the old centre has been subsumed by later growth and new focal points.
    I have also sung in Birmingham Cathedral, and I'm not disputing that specific point about it. As you would be right in that point for Derby or Leicester. I'm just saying that I think you're being too sweeping.

    And of course even if there isn't a cathedral often there's a major church that's near as impressive. Holy Trinity Hull, or St Peter's Wolverhampton. Leeds Minster is rather in the middle of nowhere, of course.

    Edit - Coventry is a city of 400,000 people - barely smaller than Bristol. If you're calling that a small city you're really restricting what counts as a 'major' city.
  • boulayboulay Posts: 5,518
    Thanks for the header MaxPB. I think it could be said that voters do care about identity it’s just it’s not the same identities and in the same way a lot of “progressives” do where identity is something divisive and almost a zero sum game.

    People have identities and they feel them and don’t appreciate them being attacked but also don’t “other” others for being something else.

    I liked this article in the Guardian yesterday:

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/08/young-men-donald-trump-kamala-harris

  • eekeek Posts: 28,444
    edited November 9
    ydoethur said:

    TimS said:

    ydoethur said:

    TimS said:

    FPT for @ydoethur

    ydoethur said:
    » show previous quotes
    “Really? Lincoln, York, Worcester, Hereford, Gloucester, Canterbury, Winchester, Exeter, Chester, Norwich, Coventry, Carlisle, Rochester, Bristol, Lichfield, Wakefield, Liverpool all spring to mind without any great effort on my part.”


    Big cities. And Liverpool’s don’t count, they’re out of the centre and modern. All the rest are small cities or large towns with the exception of Bristol.

    Neither Wakefield nor Coventry are small cities.

    Nor London, for the matter of that.
    From my perspective Coventry is a small city. My sister lives there - you can walk across the centre in 15 minutes. Wakefield is even smaller.

    We had a good discussion on this in a previous thread which you must have missed. The original point was few of our big cities have a cathedral as a focal point, including London - Westminster abbey is overshadowed by the houses of parliament, St Paul’s is in an empty bit of no man’s land between the city and the west end.

    I’ve been travelling around cities this week. Manchester (no centrepiece cathedrals), Leeds (no cathedral), Birmingham (diddy one, a repurposed parish church - I sang there once when our cathedral choir did a trip).

    Our small cities and towns have grand centrepiece cathedrals, our large ones generally don’t - either because they’re Victorian industrial cities or because the old centre has been subsumed by later growth and new focal points.
    I have also sung in Birmingham Cathedral, and I'm not disputing that specific point about it. As you would be right in that point for Derby or Leicester. I'm just saying that I think you're being too sweeping.

    And of course even if there isn't a cathedral often there's a major church that's near as impressive. Holy Trinity Hull, or St Peter's Wolverhampton. Leeds Minster is rather in the middle of nowhere, of course.
    Leeds city centre seems to have changed it's focus point about 3 times in the 30 years I've known the place.

    It used to be focussed on Headrow, then Trinity opened shifting things towards the station, then they opened Victoria and refurbished the Arcades leading towards it.

    It's no surprise the Minister ended up in no mans land...
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,522
    edited November 9
    DavidL said:

    First?

    Personally, I found the anti-incumbency theory more persuasive. Its a tough time to be in government.

    Yes.
    It’s a decent argument from Max (and his prescription for future campaigns is sensible), but I think it’s overdetermined as an explanation for the loss.

    On that score, this Guardian article is (surprisingly) good.
    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/09/us-voters-kamala-harris-donald-trump-republican
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,067
    It also turns out that abortion wasn't the slam dunk issue the Dems thought it would be.

    I commented earlier in the week that for 2028 they need a candidate more like Biden - someone to appeal to blue collar workers. As Max says, focus on bread and butter issues that impact folk on a daily basis, with policies to make their lives better.

    That's what people think Trump is offering. When it all goes pear shaped, the Dems need to be able to step up with real solutions.
  • Completely off topic so early in the thread but this is a worthy diversion for a Saturday morning. It will appeal to @Leon https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14060685/german-raccoon-nazi-invasion-sausage.html
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,479
    edited November 9

    ydoethur said:

    TimS said:

    ydoethur said:

    TimS said:

    I’m on my 4th city in 4 days and enjoying comparing them. Today it’s Cardiff, then Swansea.

    I wrote of the lack of centrepiece cathedrals in British cities. Well this one is of course centred on a castle, but the degree to which the principality stadium dominates the very centre of the city is quite unique. Slap bang in the middle.

    I rather like Cardiff. The nightlife was by far the rowdiest and most joyous of the cities I’ve visited this week. Proper Magalluf-on-Taff.

    Really? Lincoln, York, Worcester, Hereford, Gloucester, Canterbury, Winchester, Exeter, Chester, Norwich, Coventry, Carlisle, Rochester, Bristol, Lichfield, Wakefield, Liverpool all spring to mind without any great effort on my part.
    Big cities. And Liverpool’s don’t count, they’re out of the centre and modern. All the rest are small cities or large towns with the exception of Bristol.
    Neither Wakefield nor Coventry are small cities.
    Though neither of them is the most important place in their area. Coventry is overshadowed by Birmingham, and Wakefield by Leeds.

    Leeds is in the odd position of having an Anglican diocese but no Anglican cathedral (in theory, the Minster might get upgraded, but clearly nobody is going to risk that.)

    What's the most "important" place that's on the civil map but not the church map? Southampton?
    Possibly. Perhaps Preston or Maidstone would be other candidates?

    Edit - although perhaps the obvious one, even though it's not that large, would be Cambridge.
  • Alphabet_SoupAlphabet_Soup Posts: 3,283
    Underpinning identity politics is the assumption that everyone from the 'global majority' - Afghans to Zulus - must necessarily see the world from the same perspective due to prior colonial oppression. But the other cant expression is 'diverse', which implies the opposite. These incompatible ideas are united by the notion that they 'all look the same'.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,885
    DavidL said:

    First?

    Personally, I found the anti-incumbency theory more persuasive. Its a tough time to be in government.

    I think that's the easy answer for the Dems and it doesn't explain why they lost in 2016 also. 2024 is a bad year to go to the polls for incumbents but they were also facing off against Trump and Kamala wasn't necessarily the incumbent, she could have separated herself from the previous admin but chose not to.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,576
    Good header.

    The stuff with Trump reading out the prices of staple food goods was straight out of 19th cent. campaigning….

    I keep on being astonished that Harris didn’t make more of the protectionist industrial policy that Biden had poured billions into. Where were the adverts about how chip were invented in the US, and are now coming home?

    Unless she was/is a Global Free Trader - but that is unlikely, given her background. And comments about price controls.
  • theProletheProle Posts: 1,209
    FPT
    Cookie said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    Double UAPs and UFOs hearing in Congress on Wednesday, which is larger than the previous one.

    Who is testifying will make the difference as to whether it's significant, but most of the media hasn't registered it at all, as yet.
    unlike June 2023.
    https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1854386103962177631

    Yawn. Nothing will come out. It’s all grift and rumours of rumours.

    As I have continually said.
    Even if that turns out to be true, it’s notable that the likes of Schumer and Rubio are giving a very different impression. Why? It’s not because they’re morons. They’ve had +40 people testify under oath behind closed doors. Who? Why?

    Why have they and many others pushed the UAP Disclosure Act now three years in a row, legally defining “technology of non human origin”?

    It’s remarkable how few people on this forum see how notable that legislation is, even if you think the motives are different to what its sponsors portray.
    Intelligent people can believe strange things all the time. From my perspective I find belief in deities weird, but I know many very intelligent people who do. It’s the same with UAPs etc. There are very many grifters and liars spinning yarns which suck people in. That’s all.
    For about two years you insisted Covid came from the wet market
    Oh fuck off. We do not know the origins of covid and the wet market is still a valid hypothesis.
    Where did SARS come from? Or MERS? Novel pathogens almost always originate in animals before making the transition to humans, usually through humans in close proximity.
    You haven’t won the debate over covid origins, even if you think you have. A lab leak is entirely plausible, but so is origins from the wet market.
    The wet market is not merely a valid hypothesis: it is the broadly accepted view among virologists. The genomic evidence of early viral diversity strongly supports it. You have to come up with some convoluted story to make the lab leak “theory” fit the evidence.
    It's the broadly accepted view among virologists because the lab leak theory makes virology look distinctly dubious.

    From an occam's razor POV, it looks like lab leak. Wet market needs far more coincidences. Now coincidences do happen, but thay doesn't mean we should write off the most straightforward explanation i.e. that ground zero for a new mutant virus being in a city where viruses were deliberately mutated in a not-very-well-secured lab wasn't a coincidence.
    I heard someone being interviewed on a podcast (possibly Spiked?) a few weeks ago who appeared to know his stuff, and was talking about how the Wuhan was playing with (iirc) adding spike proteins very similar to the one in Covid to SARS like viruses - then suddenly their records stop. I can't remember all the detail, jut presuming they guy knew his onions and wasn't just conspiracy theorising or making stuff up, it sounded quite slam dunk.

    I think it probably came from the wet market too, because probably either an infected animal from the lab ended up there, or there was an early super-spreader event there. But I'm pretty convinced it was "made" in that lab and then leaked by some means or other.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,576
    edited November 9
    Nigelb said:

    DavidL said:

    First?

    Personally, I found the anti-incumbency theory more persuasive. Its a tough time to be in government.

    Yes.
    It’s a decent argument from Max (and his prescription for future campaigns is sensible), but I think it’s overdetermined as an explanation for the loss.

    On that score, this Guardian article is (surprisingly) good.
    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/09/us-voters-kamala-harris-donald-trump-republican
    Harris seemed to abandon the economic argument. Which is what lots of voters cared about.

    The advice in the header seems, to me, to not abandon economic arguments in your campaign.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,963
    Great article, @MaxPB , thanks!
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,885
    Nigelb said:

    DavidL said:

    First?

    Personally, I found the anti-incumbency theory more persuasive. Its a tough time to be in government.

    Yes.
    It’s a decent argument from Max (and his prescription for future campaigns is sensible), but I think it’s overdetermined as an explanation for the loss.

    On that score, this Guardian article is (surprisingly) good.
    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/09/us-voters-kamala-harris-donald-trump-republican
    That's the point the article makes, though. Maybe not clearly enough?

    Harris didn't campaign on the economy and chose the campaign on her identity while Trump campaigned on the economy. He won. In 2020 the roles were reversed and Biden won.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 59,969
    Thanks for the header, Max.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,067

    On-topic: Mr. Max's article makes me think of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Physiological needs and safety are the base layers, and sky high food inflation affects both.

    You mean being able to afford to feed yourself and your family is more important than who can use which bathroom?

    I don't believe that for a minute!
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,381
    edited November 9
    I don't think the Dems lost due to obsessing about identity at the expense of policy. I think the economy was the decisive factor. They did have policies but Trump had the "things were better under me" vibe and that prevailed.

    Good header though and I do agree with its central point (what people want isn't driven by ethnicity or gender) if we take out the anti-Dem slant. The way American elections are so intensely analysed via demographics strikes me as artificial and counterproductive.
  • Good piece, with much merit in the argument - as was the Incumbency thread piece. But does it matter?

    Whoever won, 50% of the population were going to be very unhappy with the result. The LibTards hate Trump and his crowd, and they hate the Libtards as much. That isn't going to change whoever is in the White House.

    And honestly, are we so different? Are our politics much healthier?
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 17,307
    DavidL said:

    First?

    Personally, I found the anti-incumbency theory more persuasive. Its a tough time to be in government.

    Looking at the list of the fallen here:
    https://bsky.app/profile/robfordmancs.bsky.social/post/3lacced6sw522

    Being right wing hasn't saved incumbent governments.

    Also- there is a tricky dilemma for democracy here. Inflation spikes are electorally toxic- they annoy everyone enough to make them reconsider their vote. Shrewd electoral engineers are probably better advised to let recession take more of the strain- horrible for the ten percent who lose their jobs, but much less painful for the other ninety percent.
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 12,690
    eek said:

    ydoethur said:

    TimS said:

    ydoethur said:

    TimS said:

    FPT for @ydoethur

    ydoethur said:
    » show previous quotes
    “Really? Lincoln, York, Worcester, Hereford, Gloucester, Canterbury, Winchester, Exeter, Chester, Norwich, Coventry, Carlisle, Rochester, Bristol, Lichfield, Wakefield, Liverpool all spring to mind without any great effort on my part.”


    Big cities. And Liverpool’s don’t count, they’re out of the centre and modern. All the rest are small cities or large towns with the exception of Bristol.

    Neither Wakefield nor Coventry are small cities.

    Nor London, for the matter of that.
    From my perspective Coventry is a small city. My sister lives there - you can walk across the centre in 15 minutes. Wakefield is even smaller.

    We had a good discussion on this in a previous thread which you must have missed. The original point was few of our big cities have a cathedral as a focal point, including London - Westminster abbey is overshadowed by the houses of parliament, St Paul’s is in an empty bit of no man’s land between the city and the west end.

    I’ve been travelling around cities this week. Manchester (no centrepiece cathedrals), Leeds (no cathedral), Birmingham (diddy one, a repurposed parish church - I sang there once when our cathedral choir did a trip).

    Our small cities and towns have grand centrepiece cathedrals, our large ones generally don’t - either because they’re Victorian industrial cities or because the old centre has been subsumed by later growth and new focal points.
    I have also sung in Birmingham Cathedral, and I'm not disputing that specific point about it. As you would be right in that point for Derby or Leicester. I'm just saying that I think you're being too sweeping.

    And of course even if there isn't a cathedral often there's a major church that's near as impressive. Holy Trinity Hull, or St Peter's Wolverhampton. Leeds Minster is rather in the middle of nowhere, of course.
    Leeds city centre seems to have changed it's focus point about 3 times in the 30 years I've known the place.

    It used to be focussed on Headrow, then Trinity opened shifting things towards the station, then they opened Victoria and refurbished the Arcades leading towards it.

    It's no surprise the Minister ended up in no mans land...
    The RC cathedral in Leeds is better placed than the slightly forlorn Leeds Parish Church with its new minstery name.

    Also, despite their great size, ancient cathedrals were built to dominate towns when major ones were tiny compared to today. Because of this they still fit best into places that don't have high rise buildings, urban traffic schemes of nightmare quality and so on. Ely, Chichester, Wells, Durham among them. (For RCs, Arundel).

    Final top tip: with York, City of London (just the square mile), and to some extent Norwich, ignore the cathedral and enjoy the parish churches which are tons better in every way including numinosity.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 37,415
    eek said:

    It's the economy, stupid

    Inflation (resulting in people feeling poorer) is why every Western Leader who was in power between 2020-23 has lost or is likely to lose power*

    * Ireland may be an exception here but the Irish Government won the lottery when the EU ruled on a number of corporate tax cases so has a lot of money at the moment to pay voters off with.

    It helps that the opposition in Ireland is unelectable.
  • Trump offers voters the vision of smashing the system, especially this time. When America does so many things in a unique way compared to anyone else and yet suffers such poor outcomes on things like health, eduction, crime and social security, I can understand why smash the system would appeal.

    The problem is that a Bernie Sanders smash the system may have actually tried reforms to improve those outcomes. Will a Trump smash the system improve them, or make them worse?
  • SMukeshSMukesh Posts: 1,759
    Good piece.

    Some voters do care about identity politics. Otherwise, it wouldn`t have arisen in the first place.

    In my view, the Dems lost because of pretty obvious reasons-
    Inflation
    High illegal immigration for 3 years
    Poor candidate who was not able to articulate why things were not as bad as the opponent was making out or that they would get better
    Charismatic opponent.
  • agingjb2agingjb2 Posts: 114
    Politics in the UK is not polarised in the same very binary way that the US is. There are three significant (minority) groupings not Labour or Tory in England, together with nationalists in the rest of the UK.

  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,885
    kinabalu said:

    I don't think the Dems lost due to obsessing about identity at the expense of policy. I think the economy was the decisive factor. They did have policies but Trump had the "things were better under me" vibe and that prevailed.

    Good header though and I do agree with its central point (what people want isn't driven by ethnicity or gender) if we take out the anti-Dem slant. The way American elections are so intensely analysed via demographics strikes me as artificial and counterproductive.

    Thanks, on your first point I follow politics fairly closely and I can't think of a single big policy from Harris. For Trump I can name three or four just on the economy. From my perspective it felt very much as though she jettisoned policy based campaigning in favour of identity based campaigning. Trump did the same in 2020 and he also lost.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 37,415
    Despite winning fairly emphatically, Trump had quite short coat-tails.

    The Republicans will gain four, just possibly five, in the Senate. But, they'll only gain one in the House, and only a relative handful of seats in State legislatures.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,771
    Good header

    I think the Democrat problem is even worse than you say, @MaxPB - because so many of them refuse and will refuse to admit there is a problem

    Eg they didn’t see there was a problem with that insane patronising quasi racist Kamala tweet promising to legalise weed and make it easier for black men to sell it “because that’s what they do”

  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 61,850
    Algakirk, the oldest cathedrals were located outside of major population centres. It was the Normans that changed to a city-based approach.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,885
    Sean_F said:

    Despite winning fairly emphatically, Trump had quite short coat-tails.

    The Republicans will gain four, just possibly five, in the Senate. But, they'll only gain one in the House, and only a relative handful of seats in State legislatures.

    And the result in the House is why I don't buy the anti-incumbency theory fully.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,771
    Btw I now understand why it was so hard to get a drink at Incheon when I came through to Osaka (and had hours to stop over). Korea has no bar culture. Almost none. Basically none

    You can walk for hours and there is nowhere to get a FUCKING GIN AND TONIC
  • TimSTimS Posts: 13,068

    Good piece, with much merit in the argument - as was the Incumbency thread piece. But does it matter?

    Whoever won, 50% of the population were going to be very unhappy with the result. The LibTards hate Trump and his crowd, and they hate the Libtards as much. That isn't going to change whoever is in the White House.

    And honestly, are we so different? Are our politics much healthier?

    I think we are. There’s been much more swinging between parties here, we don’t have the same set in stone blocs. Not even, after a few years, along those identity lines of Brexit and Scottish Indy.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,771
    algarkirk said:

    eek said:

    ydoethur said:

    TimS said:

    ydoethur said:

    TimS said:

    FPT for @ydoethur

    ydoethur said:
    » show previous quotes
    “Really? Lincoln, York, Worcester, Hereford, Gloucester, Canterbury, Winchester, Exeter, Chester, Norwich, Coventry, Carlisle, Rochester, Bristol, Lichfield, Wakefield, Liverpool all spring to mind without any great effort on my part.”


    Big cities. And Liverpool’s don’t count, they’re out of the centre and modern. All the rest are small cities or large towns with the exception of Bristol.

    Neither Wakefield nor Coventry are small cities.

    Nor London, for the matter of that.
    From my perspective Coventry is a small city. My sister lives there - you can walk across the centre in 15 minutes. Wakefield is even smaller.

    We had a good discussion on this in a previous thread which you must have missed. The original point was few of our big cities have a cathedral as a focal point, including London - Westminster abbey is overshadowed by the houses of parliament, St Paul’s is in an empty bit of no man’s land between the city and the west end.

    I’ve been travelling around cities this week. Manchester (no centrepiece cathedrals), Leeds (no cathedral), Birmingham (diddy one, a repurposed parish church - I sang there once when our cathedral choir did a trip).

    Our small cities and towns have grand centrepiece cathedrals, our large ones generally don’t - either because they’re Victorian industrial cities or because the old centre has been subsumed by later growth and new focal points.
    I have also sung in Birmingham Cathedral, and I'm not disputing that specific point about it. As you would be right in that point for Derby or Leicester. I'm just saying that I think you're being too sweeping.

    And of course even if there isn't a cathedral often there's a major church that's near as impressive. Holy Trinity Hull, or St Peter's Wolverhampton. Leeds Minster is rather in the middle of nowhere, of course.
    Leeds city centre seems to have changed it's focus point about 3 times in the 30 years I've known the place.

    It used to be focussed on Headrow, then Trinity opened shifting things towards the station, then they opened Victoria and refurbished the Arcades leading towards it.

    It's no surprise the Minister ended up in no mans land...
    The RC cathedral in Leeds is better placed than the slightly forlorn Leeds Parish Church with its new minstery name.

    Also, despite their great size, ancient cathedrals were built to dominate towns when major ones were tiny compared to today. Because of this they still fit best into places that don't have high rise buildings, urban traffic schemes of nightmare quality and so on. Ely, Chichester, Wells, Durham among them. (For RCs, Arundel).

    Final top tip: with York, City of London (just the square mile), and to some extent Norwich, ignore the cathedral and enjoy the parish churches which are tons better in every way including numinosity.
    NOOM. The word is NOOM

    I know it’s annoying that I invented it, nonetheless that is the word
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,885
    Leon said:

    Good header

    I think the Democrat problem is even worse than you say, @MaxPB - because so many of them refuse and will refuse to admit there is a problem

    Eg they didn’t see there was a problem with that insane patronising quasi racist Kamala tweet promising to legalise weed and make it easier for black men to sell it “because that’s what they do”

    Yes and that the worry, if they can't see that identity, positively or negatively campaigned on, isn't a motivator for voters then they're done in 2028 too.

    I find it so strange because in 2008, 2012 and 2020 they ran brilliant policy based campaigns and won at a canter all three times. Hilary and Kamala both spoke too much about breaking the glass ceiling and not enough about making ends meet.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 28,556
    Good header.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,545
    kinabalu said:

    I don't think the Dems lost due to obsessing about identity at the expense of policy. I think the economy was the decisive factor. They did have policies but Trump had the "things were better under me" vibe and that prevailed.

    Good header though and I do agree with its central point (what people want isn't driven by ethnicity or gender) if we take out the anti-Dem slant. The way American elections are so intensely analysed via demographics strikes me as artificial and counterproductive.

    Morning All!
    I and others have made the point that slowing inflation still means that the pound (or dollar) in your pocket doesn't go as fas as it did a relatively few years ago. If eggs (where did I get the idea for that as an example!) were £1 (or whatever) three or four years ago and are now £2, the fact that they 'only' went up to £2 from £1.95 over the last three months doesn't mean much when in reasonably recent memory .... say two years ago ..... they were £1.50 and not long before that, the voter remembers, they were £1.
    It takes a while for the 'new normal' be become so.
    And for wages to catch up.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,771
    I just asked my phone why is it so fucking hard ri get a basic drink in Seoul and it got all huffy and woke and said “it’s entirely wrong to say that Seoul lacks a bar culture for instance there’s a good cocktail bar in gangnam”

    For context, that’s like saying “london is great for food for instance you can get a pizza in Brixton”
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 17,307
    Sean_F said:

    Despite winning fairly emphatically, Trump had quite short coat-tails.

    The Republicans will gain four, just possibly five, in the Senate. But, they'll only gain one in the House, and only a relative handful of seats in State legislatures.

    Gerrymandering will do that. I can't remember how many genuinely competitive House seats there are, but it's terrifyingly small.

    America has a lot of "two nations"ness about it. Electronic media allow that to operate on a fractal scale.
  • not_on_firenot_on_fire Posts: 4,449
    Can someone please explain so many on here think that the Democrats need to radically change their policies after losing the three blue wall states by tiny margins, but the same remedy was not felt necessary for the GOP in 2020?
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 43,032
    edited November 9
    O/T but interesting pieces on hospital food, one by a m other seriously upset at the problems of keeping her small daughter properly fed at a time when she really needed good nutrition during chemotherapy and a transplant:

    https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/nov/09/bland-soggy-slop-or-scratch-cooked-chilli-and-pancakes-the-best-and-worst-hospital-food-around-the-world-in-pictures

    https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/nov/09/why-cant-british-hospitals-serve-better-food
  • RobDRobD Posts: 59,969

    Can someone please explain so many on here think that the Democrats need to radically change their policies after losing the three blue wall states by tiny margins, but the same remedy was not felt necessary for the GOP in 2020?

    Because they lost to Trump.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,885
    Leon said:

    I just asked my phone why is it so fucking hard ri get a basic drink in Seoul and it got all huffy and woke and said “it’s entirely wrong to say that Seoul lacks a bar culture for instance there’s a good cocktail bar in gangnam”

    For context, that’s like saying “london is great for food for instance you can get a pizza in Brixton”

    My experience of Korean drinking culture is that it all happend very late in karaoke booths. You have to be in a big group of Koreans to experience it though, we got adopted by a group of them from Busan we met at the hostel we were staying at.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 43,032
    Leon said:

    I just asked my phone why is it so fucking hard ri get a basic drink in Seoul and it got all huffy and woke and said “it’s entirely wrong to say that Seoul lacks a bar culture for instance there’s a good cocktail bar in gangnam”

    For context, that’s like saying “london is great for food for instance you can get a pizza in Brixton”

    That's AI for you.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,545
    algarkirk said:

    eek said:

    ydoethur said:

    TimS said:

    ydoethur said:

    TimS said:

    FPT for @ydoethur

    ydoethur said:
    » show previous quotes
    “Really? Lincoln, York, Worcester, Hereford, Gloucester, Canterbury, Winchester, Exeter, Chester, Norwich, Coventry, Carlisle, Rochester, Bristol, Lichfield, Wakefield, Liverpool all spring to mind without any great effort on my part.”


    Big cities. And Liverpool’s don’t count, they’re out of the centre and modern. All the rest are small cities or large towns with the exception of Bristol.

    Neither Wakefield nor Coventry are small cities.

    Nor London, for the matter of that.
    From my perspective Coventry is a small city. My sister lives there - you can walk across the centre in 15 minutes. Wakefield is even smaller.

    We had a good discussion on this in a previous thread which you must have missed. The original point was few of our big cities have a cathedral as a focal point, including London - Westminster abbey is overshadowed by the houses of parliament, St Paul’s is in an empty bit of no man’s land between the city and the west end.

    I’ve been travelling around cities this week. Manchester (no centrepiece cathedrals), Leeds (no cathedral), Birmingham (diddy one, a repurposed parish church - I sang there once when our cathedral choir did a trip).

    Our small cities and towns have grand centrepiece cathedrals, our large ones generally don’t - either because they’re Victorian industrial cities or because the old centre has been subsumed by later growth and new focal points.
    I have also sung in Birmingham Cathedral, and I'm not disputing that specific point about it. As you would be right in that point for Derby or Leicester. I'm just saying that I think you're being too sweeping.

    And of course even if there isn't a cathedral often there's a major church that's near as impressive. Holy Trinity Hull, or St Peter's Wolverhampton. Leeds Minster is rather in the middle of nowhere, of course.
    Leeds city centre seems to have changed it's focus point about 3 times in the 30 years I've known the place.

    It used to be focussed on Headrow, then Trinity opened shifting things towards the station, then they opened Victoria and refurbished the Arcades leading towards it.

    It's no surprise the Minister ended up in no mans land...
    The RC cathedral in Leeds is better placed than the slightly forlorn Leeds Parish Church with its new minstery name.

    Also, despite their great size, ancient cathedrals were built to dominate towns when major ones were tiny compared to today. Because of this they still fit best into places that don't have high rise buildings, urban traffic schemes of nightmare quality and so on. Ely, Chichester, Wells, Durham among them. (For RCs, Arundel).

    Final top tip: with York, City of London (just the square mile), and to some extent Norwich, ignore the cathedral and enjoy the parish churches which are tons better in every way including numinosity.
    Were the ancient great cathedrals but in places which had, even then, folk memories of importance?
    After all, the major Christian festivals 'coincide' with previous pre-Christian ones; Christmas/Yule/Hogmanay for example.
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 12,690
    Leon said:

    algarkirk said:

    eek said:

    ydoethur said:

    TimS said:

    ydoethur said:

    TimS said:

    FPT for @ydoethur

    ydoethur said:
    » show previous quotes
    “Really? Lincoln, York, Worcester, Hereford, Gloucester, Canterbury, Winchester, Exeter, Chester, Norwich, Coventry, Carlisle, Rochester, Bristol, Lichfield, Wakefield, Liverpool all spring to mind without any great effort on my part.”


    Big cities. And Liverpool’s don’t count, they’re out of the centre and modern. All the rest are small cities or large towns with the exception of Bristol.

    Neither Wakefield nor Coventry are small cities.

    Nor London, for the matter of that.
    From my perspective Coventry is a small city. My sister lives there - you can walk across the centre in 15 minutes. Wakefield is even smaller.

    We had a good discussion on this in a previous thread which you must have missed. The original point was few of our big cities have a cathedral as a focal point, including London - Westminster abbey is overshadowed by the houses of parliament, St Paul’s is in an empty bit of no man’s land between the city and the west end.

    I’ve been travelling around cities this week. Manchester (no centrepiece cathedrals), Leeds (no cathedral), Birmingham (diddy one, a repurposed parish church - I sang there once when our cathedral choir did a trip).

    Our small cities and towns have grand centrepiece cathedrals, our large ones generally don’t - either because they’re Victorian industrial cities or because the old centre has been subsumed by later growth and new focal points.
    I have also sung in Birmingham Cathedral, and I'm not disputing that specific point about it. As you would be right in that point for Derby or Leicester. I'm just saying that I think you're being too sweeping.

    And of course even if there isn't a cathedral often there's a major church that's near as impressive. Holy Trinity Hull, or St Peter's Wolverhampton. Leeds Minster is rather in the middle of nowhere, of course.
    Leeds city centre seems to have changed it's focus point about 3 times in the 30 years I've known the place.

    It used to be focussed on Headrow, then Trinity opened shifting things towards the station, then they opened Victoria and refurbished the Arcades leading towards it.

    It's no surprise the Minister ended up in no mans land...
    The RC cathedral in Leeds is better placed than the slightly forlorn Leeds Parish Church with its new minstery name.

    Also, despite their great size, ancient cathedrals were built to dominate towns when major ones were tiny compared to today. Because of this they still fit best into places that don't have high rise buildings, urban traffic schemes of nightmare quality and so on. Ely, Chichester, Wells, Durham among them. (For RCs, Arundel).

    Final top tip: with York, City of London (just the square mile), and to some extent Norwich, ignore the cathedral and enjoy the parish churches which are tons better in every way including numinosity.
    NOOM. The word is NOOM

    I know it’s annoying that I invented it, nonetheless that is the word
    where the walls
    Of Magnus Martyr hold
    Inexplicable splendor of Ionian white and gold.


    And it is still there by London Bridge, as in T S Eliot's day. I dropped by earlier this year, open, welcoming and free. Worth 10 St Paulses. You could not believe it until you see it. Noom. Or of course numinosity.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,771
    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    I just asked my phone why is it so fucking hard ri get a basic drink in Seoul and it got all huffy and woke and said “it’s entirely wrong to say that Seoul lacks a bar culture for instance there’s a good cocktail bar in gangnam”

    For context, that’s like saying “london is great for food for instance you can get a pizza in Brixton”

    My experience of Korean drinking culture is that it all happend very late in karaoke booths. You have to be in a big group of Koreans to experience it though, we got adopted by a group of them from Busan we met at the hostel we were staying at.
    But I love my martinis and G&Ts at sundown. Especially after a hard hard day. Like today

    The DMZ is amazing but emotionally gruelling

    Example: . I was feeling uncomfortable about the inappropriate existence of a funfair - proper funfair - near the barbed wire and the sad graves and the battlefields and the eerie tunnels, then the guide said “the funfair is to keep kids happy and distracted while the old people are crying”
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 37,415

    Sean_F said:

    Despite winning fairly emphatically, Trump had quite short coat-tails.

    The Republicans will gain four, just possibly five, in the Senate. But, they'll only gain one in the House, and only a relative handful of seats in State legislatures.

    Gerrymandering will do that. I can't remember how many genuinely competitive House seats there are, but it's terrifyingly small.

    America has a lot of "two nations"ness about it. Electronic media allow that to operate on a fractal scale.
    Just 32 were competitive, IIRC.

    Sometimes, gerrymandering is targeted at the other party. More often, it’s more bi-partisan, as both parties seek to maximise the number of safe seats.
  • FishingFishing Posts: 5,083
    edited November 9

    Can someone please explain so many on here think that the Democrats need to radically change their policies after losing the three blue wall states by tiny margins, but the same remedy was not felt necessary for the GOP in 2020?

    It's obviously personality not policy they need to change.

    US elections are personality rather than policy driven and Democrats generally win when they run charismatic and inspirational vacuous bullshitters who raise hopes for radical change and then disappoint them by governing as centrists once reality bites - see Obama, Clinton, Kennedy (like Tony Blair here).

    Of course they can win with mediocrities, like Carter (after Watergate) or Biden (during the pandemic and after four years of Trump) but it much more to run in their favour. And Harris was the latter type, not the former. So they lost by a couple of points. But had Trump been running against Clinton or Obama in their primes I imagine the result would have been very different.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,885

    Can someone please explain so many on here think that the Democrats need to radically change their policies after losing the three blue wall states by tiny margins, but the same remedy was not felt necessary for the GOP in 2020?

    But the GOP did change from 2020. Trump came with a bunch of retail offers this time he didn't have in 2020. I don't agree with them and think they won't be successful but he's a very good salesman and more than that he had something to talk about beyond his white identity which formed the basis of the 2020 campaign. This race felt very similar to 2016 and all of the lessons from that campaign then Dems learned they threw away.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,067
    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    I just asked my phone why is it so fucking hard ri get a basic drink in Seoul and it got all huffy and woke and said “it’s entirely wrong to say that Seoul lacks a bar culture for instance there’s a good cocktail bar in gangnam”

    For context, that’s like saying “london is great for food for instance you can get a pizza in Brixton”

    My experience of Korean drinking culture is that it all happend very late in karaoke booths. You have to be in a big group of Koreans to experience it though, we got adopted by a group of them from Busan we met at the hostel we were staying at.
    The hotel I stayed at in Seoul had a lounge bar on the top floor. A bit like the Doubletree in Leeds, but at a much greater height above street level.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 36,035
    Bernie Sanders 20 years ago explaining what happened this week

    https://x.com/BaileyCarlin/status/1854340417761775741

    In essence, the left argument is that people are better collectively if they act (and vote) collectively. Womens' right are human rights. Minority rights are human rights. Everybody is better off with these things.

    So how do the right persuade people to vote against their own interests?

    By claiming that their problems are caused by other people.

    It's the fucking Brexit campaign all over again.

    You can quibble about the details, but you can't argue with the results.

    "I am voting for this guy because he hates all the same people I do, and he told me THEY ARE THE CAUSE OF ALL MY PROBLEMS"

    It's bullshit, but it works.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,576
    a
    RobD said:

    Can someone please explain so many on here think that the Democrats need to radically change their policies after losing the three blue wall states by tiny margins, but the same remedy was not felt necessary for the GOP in 2020?

    Because they lost to Trump.
    It’s not even radically changing policies.

    Biden did lots to revive manufacturing in the US. Harris didn’t campaign on what had *already been done*.

    Is it possible that she and her advisors found economic protectionism in global trade an embarrassment? That they thought Biden was an old fool, going back to the 1950s?
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,771

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    I just asked my phone why is it so fucking hard ri get a basic drink in Seoul and it got all huffy and woke and said “it’s entirely wrong to say that Seoul lacks a bar culture for instance there’s a good cocktail bar in gangnam”

    For context, that’s like saying “london is great for food for instance you can get a pizza in Brixton”

    My experience of Korean drinking culture is that it all happend very late in karaoke booths. You have to be in a big group of Koreans to experience it though, we got adopted by a group of them from Busan we met at the hostel we were staying at.
    The hotel I stayed at in Seoul had a lounge bar on the top floor. A bit like the Doubletree in Leeds, but at a much greater height above street level.
    That’s where I’ve ended up. In a hotel bar. They are the only places that generally have bars and where you can drink without having to order food

    No wonder they don’t have babies
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,479
    edited November 9

    algarkirk said:

    eek said:

    ydoethur said:

    TimS said:

    ydoethur said:

    TimS said:

    FPT for @ydoethur

    ydoethur said:
    » show previous quotes
    “Really? Lincoln, York, Worcester, Hereford, Gloucester, Canterbury, Winchester, Exeter, Chester, Norwich, Coventry, Carlisle, Rochester, Bristol, Lichfield, Wakefield, Liverpool all spring to mind without any great effort on my part.”


    Big cities. And Liverpool’s don’t count, they’re out of the centre and modern. All the rest are small cities or large towns with the exception of Bristol.

    Neither Wakefield nor Coventry are small cities.

    Nor London, for the matter of that.
    From my perspective Coventry is a small city. My sister lives there - you can walk across the centre in 15 minutes. Wakefield is even smaller.

    We had a good discussion on this in a previous thread which you must have missed. The original point was few of our big cities have a cathedral as a focal point, including London - Westminster abbey is overshadowed by the houses of parliament, St Paul’s is in an empty bit of no man’s land between the city and the west end.

    I’ve been travelling around cities this week. Manchester (no centrepiece cathedrals), Leeds (no cathedral), Birmingham (diddy one, a repurposed parish church - I sang there once when our cathedral choir did a trip).

    Our small cities and towns have grand centrepiece cathedrals, our large ones generally don’t - either because they’re Victorian industrial cities or because the old centre has been subsumed by later growth and new focal points.
    I have also sung in Birmingham Cathedral, and I'm not disputing that specific point about it. As you would be right in that point for Derby or Leicester. I'm just saying that I think you're being too sweeping.

    And of course even if there isn't a cathedral often there's a major church that's near as impressive. Holy Trinity Hull, or St Peter's Wolverhampton. Leeds Minster is rather in the middle of nowhere, of course.
    Leeds city centre seems to have changed it's focus point about 3 times in the 30 years I've known the place.

    It used to be focussed on Headrow, then Trinity opened shifting things towards the station, then they opened Victoria and refurbished the Arcades leading towards it.

    It's no surprise the Minister ended up in no mans land...
    The RC cathedral in Leeds is better placed than the slightly forlorn Leeds Parish Church with its new minstery name.

    Also, despite their great size, ancient cathedrals were built to dominate towns when major ones were tiny compared to today. Because of this they still fit best into places that don't have high rise buildings, urban traffic schemes of nightmare quality and so on. Ely, Chichester, Wells, Durham among them. (For RCs, Arundel).

    Final top tip: with York, City of London (just the square mile), and to some extent Norwich, ignore the cathedral and enjoy the parish churches which are tons better in every way including numinosity.
    Were the ancient great cathedrals but in places which had, even then, folk memories of importance?
    After all, the major Christian festivals 'coincide' with previous pre-Christian ones; Christmas/Yule/Hogmanay for example.
    Yes, but that is a coincidence. There were actual theological reasons for placing it on the 25th December and that originated long before Christianity spread to Northern Europe. Here's one scholar's explanation.

    http://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2018/12/concerning-yule.html

    As for your other point, yes, many cathedrals and churches would have been built on sites of pagan temples. Because that is where the building materials and cleared sites would have been. It also helpfully made a statement that paganism had been stamped out. But others were built on the site of major government buildings. York springs to mind.

    Just as, today, a new office block might be built on the site of an old office block.
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 26,658
    edited November 9

    On-topic: Mr. Max's article makes me think of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Physiological needs and safety are the base layers, and sky high food inflation affects both.

    Has nobody had a pay rise in the USA since 2020 ?

    If it was all about food prices then why did the Dems do better in the 2022 midterm elections when price rises were most visible ?
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,576
    Carnyx said:

    O/T but interesting pieces on hospital food, one by a m other seriously upset at the problems of keeping her small daughter properly fed at a time when she really needed good nutrition during chemotherapy and a transplant:

    https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/nov/09/bland-soggy-slop-or-scratch-cooked-chilli-and-pancakes-the-best-and-worst-hospital-food-around-the-world-in-pictures

    https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/nov/09/why-cant-british-hospitals-serve-better-food

    Mandate that senior managers and consultants eat the same food that is given to the patients. Write in their contracts that it is part of their duties.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 37,415
    MaxPB said:

    Sean_F said:

    Despite winning fairly emphatically, Trump had quite short coat-tails.

    The Republicans will gain four, just possibly five, in the Senate. But, they'll only gain one in the House, and only a relative handful of seats in State legislatures.

    And the result in the House is why I don't buy the anti-incumbency theory fully.
    There was a healthy aspect to Trump’s win, in that the bias to Republicans in the EC has vanished. Trump performed best in areas of previous Republican weakness. His votes in New York State and New Jersey were the best in ages for a Republican.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,706
    Dead British satellite thousands of miles from where it should be:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpwrr58801yo

    Word of the day: "graveyarding"
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,963

    Can someone please explain so many on here think that the Democrats need to radically change their policies after losing the three blue wall states by tiny margins, but the same remedy was not felt necessary for the GOP in 2020?

    HIllary 2016 = 232 EVs
    Harris 2024 = 226 EVs

    :innocent:
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,885

    a

    RobD said:

    Can someone please explain so many on here think that the Democrats need to radically change their policies after losing the three blue wall states by tiny margins, but the same remedy was not felt necessary for the GOP in 2020?

    Because they lost to Trump.
    It’s not even radically changing policies.

    Biden did lots to revive manufacturing in the US. Harris didn’t campaign on what had *already been done*.

    Is it possible that she and her advisors found economic protectionism in global trade an embarrassment? That they thought Biden was an old fool, going back to the 1950s?
    I think this is probably true. Similar to how George Osborne might blush about putting up tariffs against China or having a preference to buying British etc...
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,771
    Scott_xP said:

    Bernie Sanders 20 years ago explaining what happened this week

    https://x.com/BaileyCarlin/status/1854340417761775741

    In essence, the left argument is that people are better collectively if they act (and vote) collectively. Womens' right are human rights. Minority rights are human rights. Everybody is better off with these things.

    So how do the right persuade people to vote against their own interests?

    By claiming that their problems are caused by other people.

    It's the fucking Brexit campaign all over again.

    You can quibble about the details, but you can't argue with the results.

    "I am voting for this guy because he hates all the same people I do, and he told me THEY ARE THE CAUSE OF ALL MY PROBLEMS"

    It's bullshit, but it works.

    Ah. We were all waiting for you to find the crucial Brexit Connection and you’ve done it. Bravo
  • MonksfieldMonksfield Posts: 2,808
    edited November 9
    It’s a bit of both. The Democrats need to start seeing the electorate as a whole as voters rather than breaking them down by race and gender.

    But there was a national swing, against which the Dems outperformed in the contested states. That suggests a big picture driver was a factor and that has to be economy/cost of living.

    And probably the lag behind Biden’s investment agenda was too great.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,067

    Can someone please explain so many on here think that the Democrats need to radically change their policies after losing the three blue wall states by tiny margins, but the same remedy was not felt necessary for the GOP in 2020?

    HIllary 2016 = 232 EVs
    Harris 2024 = 226 EVs

    :innocent:
    That's a lot of electric cars. Teslas?
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 12,690

    algarkirk said:

    eek said:

    ydoethur said:

    TimS said:

    ydoethur said:

    TimS said:

    FPT for @ydoethur

    ydoethur said:
    » show previous quotes
    “Really? Lincoln, York, Worcester, Hereford, Gloucester, Canterbury, Winchester, Exeter, Chester, Norwich, Coventry, Carlisle, Rochester, Bristol, Lichfield, Wakefield, Liverpool all spring to mind without any great effort on my part.”


    Big cities. And Liverpool’s don’t count, they’re out of the centre and modern. All the rest are small cities or large towns with the exception of Bristol.

    Neither Wakefield nor Coventry are small cities.

    Nor London, for the matter of that.
    From my perspective Coventry is a small city. My sister lives there - you can walk across the centre in 15 minutes. Wakefield is even smaller.

    We had a good discussion on this in a previous thread which you must have missed. The original point was few of our big cities have a cathedral as a focal point, including London - Westminster abbey is overshadowed by the houses of parliament, St Paul’s is in an empty bit of no man’s land between the city and the west end.

    I’ve been travelling around cities this week. Manchester (no centrepiece cathedrals), Leeds (no cathedral), Birmingham (diddy one, a repurposed parish church - I sang there once when our cathedral choir did a trip).

    Our small cities and towns have grand centrepiece cathedrals, our large ones generally don’t - either because they’re Victorian industrial cities or because the old centre has been subsumed by later growth and new focal points.
    I have also sung in Birmingham Cathedral, and I'm not disputing that specific point about it. As you would be right in that point for Derby or Leicester. I'm just saying that I think you're being too sweeping.

    And of course even if there isn't a cathedral often there's a major church that's near as impressive. Holy Trinity Hull, or St Peter's Wolverhampton. Leeds Minster is rather in the middle of nowhere, of course.
    Leeds city centre seems to have changed it's focus point about 3 times in the 30 years I've known the place.

    It used to be focussed on Headrow, then Trinity opened shifting things towards the station, then they opened Victoria and refurbished the Arcades leading towards it.

    It's no surprise the Minister ended up in no mans land...
    The RC cathedral in Leeds is better placed than the slightly forlorn Leeds Parish Church with its new minstery name.

    Also, despite their great size, ancient cathedrals were built to dominate towns when major ones were tiny compared to today. Because of this they still fit best into places that don't have high rise buildings, urban traffic schemes of nightmare quality and so on. Ely, Chichester, Wells, Durham among them. (For RCs, Arundel).

    Final top tip: with York, City of London (just the square mile), and to some extent Norwich, ignore the cathedral and enjoy the parish churches which are tons better in every way including numinosity.
    Were the ancient great cathedrals but in places which had, even then, folk memories of importance?
    After all, the major Christian festivals 'coincide' with previous pre-Christian ones; Christmas/Yule/Hogmanay for example.
    Go to Chichester and time stands still. Stand in the cathedral at the place where under your feet you can see the Roman mosaic of a building of the Roman Empire, predating the cathedral by 800 years, and a few feet away an outstanding anglo saxon sculpture, 11th century - the raising of Lazarus.

    And when in York recall there was a Bishop of York three centuries before there was an Archbishop of Canterbury.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 13,910
    Good article.

    Dems also appear to have a remarkable blindness that not everyone is of the identity that they're favouring. If you're making the argument that 'we will do x, y and z for black men' then white people tend to think 'well what about us?' If you're saying 'vote for us because our candidate is a woman' then a lot of men will be somewhat discouraged.
    And meanwhile it's not terribly successful because outside of some niche circles the identity group that you're patronising feels patronised.
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 26,658
    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    I just asked my phone why is it so fucking hard ri get a basic drink in Seoul and it got all huffy and woke and said “it’s entirely wrong to say that Seoul lacks a bar culture for instance there’s a good cocktail bar in gangnam”

    For context, that’s like saying “london is great for food for instance you can get a pizza in Brixton”

    My experience of Korean drinking culture is that it all happend very late in karaoke booths. You have to be in a big group of Koreans to experience it though, we got adopted by a group of them from Busan we met at the hostel we were staying at.
    The hotel I stayed at in Seoul had a lounge bar on the top floor. A bit like the Doubletree in Leeds, but at a much greater height above street level.
    That’s where I’ve ended up. In a hotel bar. They are the only places that generally have bars and where you can drink without having to order food

    No wonder they don’t have babies
    I'm surprised you've got nothing to say about the actual Iranian attempt to kill Trump.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,706
    Scott_xP said:

    Bernie Sanders 20 years ago explaining what happened this week

    https://x.com/BaileyCarlin/status/1854340417761775741

    In essence, the left argument is that people are better collectively if they act (and vote) collectively. Womens' right are human rights. Minority rights are human rights. Everybody is better off with these things.

    So how do the right persuade people to vote against their own interests?

    By claiming that their problems are caused by other people.

    It's the fucking Brexit campaign all over again.

    You can quibble about the details, but you can't argue with the results.

    "I am voting for this guy because he hates all the same people I do, and he told me THEY ARE THE CAUSE OF ALL MY PROBLEMS"

    It's bullshit, but it works.

    Worryingly, it wil work all the better when the artifical facts are run through one guy's artificial intelligence algorithms.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,963
    Leon said:

    algarkirk said:

    eek said:

    ydoethur said:

    TimS said:

    ydoethur said:

    TimS said:

    FPT for @ydoethur

    ydoethur said:
    » show previous quotes
    “Really? Lincoln, York, Worcester, Hereford, Gloucester, Canterbury, Winchester, Exeter, Chester, Norwich, Coventry, Carlisle, Rochester, Bristol, Lichfield, Wakefield, Liverpool all spring to mind without any great effort on my part.”


    Big cities. And Liverpool’s don’t count, they’re out of the centre and modern. All the rest are small cities or large towns with the exception of Bristol.

    Neither Wakefield nor Coventry are small cities.

    Nor London, for the matter of that.
    From my perspective Coventry is a small city. My sister lives there - you can walk across the centre in 15 minutes. Wakefield is even smaller.

    We had a good discussion on this in a previous thread which you must have missed. The original point was few of our big cities have a cathedral as a focal point, including London - Westminster abbey is overshadowed by the houses of parliament, St Paul’s is in an empty bit of no man’s land between the city and the west end.

    I’ve been travelling around cities this week. Manchester (no centrepiece cathedrals), Leeds (no cathedral), Birmingham (diddy one, a repurposed parish church - I sang there once when our cathedral choir did a trip).

    Our small cities and towns have grand centrepiece cathedrals, our large ones generally don’t - either because they’re Victorian industrial cities or because the old centre has been subsumed by later growth and new focal points.
    I have also sung in Birmingham Cathedral, and I'm not disputing that specific point about it. As you would be right in that point for Derby or Leicester. I'm just saying that I think you're being too sweeping.

    And of course even if there isn't a cathedral often there's a major church that's near as impressive. Holy Trinity Hull, or St Peter's Wolverhampton. Leeds Minster is rather in the middle of nowhere, of course.
    Leeds city centre seems to have changed it's focus point about 3 times in the 30 years I've known the place.

    It used to be focussed on Headrow, then Trinity opened shifting things towards the station, then they opened Victoria and refurbished the Arcades leading towards it.

    It's no surprise the Minister ended up in no mans land...
    The RC cathedral in Leeds is better placed than the slightly forlorn Leeds Parish Church with its new minstery name.

    Also, despite their great size, ancient cathedrals were built to dominate towns when major ones were tiny compared to today. Because of this they still fit best into places that don't have high rise buildings, urban traffic schemes of nightmare quality and so on. Ely, Chichester, Wells, Durham among them. (For RCs, Arundel).

    Final top tip: with York, City of London (just the square mile), and to some extent Norwich, ignore the cathedral and enjoy the parish churches which are tons better in every way including numinosity.
    NOOM. The word is NOOM

    I know it’s annoying that I invented it, nonetheless that is the word
    I thought Noom.com invented it?

    https://www.noom.com/
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noom
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,885
    Leon said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Bernie Sanders 20 years ago explaining what happened this week

    https://x.com/BaileyCarlin/status/1854340417761775741

    In essence, the left argument is that people are better collectively if they act (and vote) collectively. Womens' right are human rights. Minority rights are human rights. Everybody is better off with these things.

    So how do the right persuade people to vote against their own interests?

    By claiming that their problems are caused by other people.

    It's the fucking Brexit campaign all over again.

    You can quibble about the details, but you can't argue with the results.

    "I am voting for this guy because he hates all the same people I do, and he told me THEY ARE THE CAUSE OF ALL MY PROBLEMS"

    It's bullshit, but it works.

    Ah. We were all waiting for you to find the crucial Brexit Connection and you’ve done it. Bravo
    You can hear the tears and how he's been literally shaking since the result. Some of the videos of the beta males crying about the Trump victory almost make it worth the 4 years of shit we've got coming. Almost.
  • kamskikamski Posts: 5,194
    algarkirk said:

    Good piece, with much merit in the argument - as was the Incumbency thread piece. But does it matter?

    Whoever won, 50% of the population were going to be very unhappy with the result. The LibTards hate Trump and his crowd, and they hate the Libtards as much. That isn't going to change whoever is in the White House.

    And honestly, are we so different? Are our politics much healthier?

    Yes. At the moment we have high levels of losers' consent. The USA doesn't. We have a system which can provide for coalition, which a two party only system can't. We don't elect a single leader, a system which gives openings to individuals with particular personality disorders much admired by Nietzsche. We try much less often to shoot them. Most people are not too strongly attached to 'My Party Right or Wrong'. The sins of our politicians are mostly quite trivial compared to others. We are capable of putting startlingly dull people into high office. They go when we tell them to. Our extremists are mostly comic figures. We don't invade parliament wearing fancy dress and horns.
    Also vast sums of money aren't needed in UK politics. The 2024 campaigns spent over a billion dollars each - Trump's was mostly superpacs funded by rich donors, Harris mostly the official campaign.
  • mwadamsmwadams Posts: 3,624
    RobD said:

    Can someone please explain so many on here think that the Democrats need to radically change their policies after losing the three blue wall states by tiny margins, but the same remedy was not felt necessary for the GOP in 2020?

    Because they lost to Trump.
    But they didn't lose on policy. We are told that noone cares about policy. Hilary had too much policy. She didn't shout at her opponents enough.

    But then on the other hand, Kamala lost on policy. People do care about policy. She didn't have enough policy. And it wasn't different enough from
    Biden.

    On the other other hand (hello Zaphod) Kamala lost because a smaller percentage of middle aged white men in a few states voted for her than for Biden.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,771

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    I just asked my phone why is it so fucking hard ri get a basic drink in Seoul and it got all huffy and woke and said “it’s entirely wrong to say that Seoul lacks a bar culture for instance there’s a good cocktail bar in gangnam”

    For context, that’s like saying “london is great for food for instance you can get a pizza in Brixton”

    My experience of Korean drinking culture is that it all happend very late in karaoke booths. You have to be in a big group of Koreans to experience it though, we got adopted by a group of them from Busan we met at the hostel we were staying at.
    The hotel I stayed at in Seoul had a lounge bar on the top floor. A bit like the Doubletree in Leeds, but at a much greater height above street level.
    That’s where I’ve ended up. In a hotel bar. They are the only places that generally have bars and where you can drink without having to order food

    No wonder they don’t have babies
    I'm surprised you've got nothing to say about the actual Iranian attempt to kill Trump.
    There was? When?!

    Seriously. I missed it. In my defence I have been *quite busy* travelling
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,963

    Can someone please explain so many on here think that the Democrats need to radically change their policies after losing the three blue wall states by tiny margins, but the same remedy was not felt necessary for the GOP in 2020?

    HIllary 2016 = 232 EVs
    Harris 2024 = 226 EVs

    :innocent:
    That's a lot of electric cars. Teslas?
    Electoral votes!
  • .

    Dead British satellite thousands of miles from where it should be:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpwrr58801yo

    Word of the day: "graveyarding"

    Skynet. Probably built by Weyland-Yutani, Tyrell Corp or Omni Consumer Products.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 37,415
    edited November 9
    Scott_xP said:

    Bernie Sanders 20 years ago explaining what happened this week

    https://x.com/BaileyCarlin/status/1854340417761775741

    In essence, the left argument is that people are better collectively if they act (and vote) collectively. Womens' right are human rights. Minority rights are human rights. Everybody is better off with these things.

    So how do the right persuade people to vote against their own interests?

    By claiming that their problems are caused by other people.

    It's the fucking Brexit campaign all over again.

    You can quibble about the details, but you can't argue with the results.

    "I am voting for this guy because he hates all the same people I do, and he told me THEY ARE THE CAUSE OF ALL MY PROBLEMS"

    It's bullshit, but it works.

    Is there any world problem that can’t be explained in terms of Brexit?

    Perhaps a lot of people have quite rationally concluded that the Left is not on their side, and pursues policies that are contrary to their interests.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,885
    mwadams said:

    RobD said:

    Can someone please explain so many on here think that the Democrats need to radically change their policies after losing the three blue wall states by tiny margins, but the same remedy was not felt necessary for the GOP in 2020?

    Because they lost to Trump.
    But they didn't lose on policy. We are told that noone cares about policy. Hilary had too much policy. She didn't shout at her opponents enough.

    But then on the other hand, Kamala lost on policy. People do care about policy. She didn't have enough policy. And it wasn't different enough from
    Biden.

    On the other other hand (hello Zaphod) Kamala lost because a smaller percentage of middle aged white men in a few states voted for her than for Biden.
    I'm sorry but Hilary had no policies in 2016. I watched that election very closely as I had £3-4k riding on it and almost the entirety of the campaign was focussed on the gender of the candidate and how amazing it would be to be the first female president and all of rn glass ceilings America would break etc...
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,576

    Dead British satellite thousands of miles from where it should be:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpwrr58801yo

    Word of the day: "graveyarding"

    Very British that no one can remember who moved it.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,963
    MaxPB said:

    mwadams said:

    RobD said:

    Can someone please explain so many on here think that the Democrats need to radically change their policies after losing the three blue wall states by tiny margins, but the same remedy was not felt necessary for the GOP in 2020?

    Because they lost to Trump.
    But they didn't lose on policy. We are told that noone cares about policy. Hilary had too much policy. She didn't shout at her opponents enough.

    But then on the other hand, Kamala lost on policy. People do care about policy. She didn't have enough policy. And it wasn't different enough from
    Biden.

    On the other other hand (hello Zaphod) Kamala lost because a smaller percentage of middle aged white men in a few states voted for her than for Biden.
    I'm sorry but Hilary had no policies in 2016. I watched that election very closely as I had £3-4k riding on it and almost the entirety of the campaign was focussed on the gender of the candidate and how amazing it would be to be the first female president and all of rn glass ceilings America would break etc...
    Even Hillary won 6 more electoral votes than Kamala!
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 36,035
    Leon said:

    Ah. We were all waiting for you to find the crucial Brexit Connection and you’ve done it. Bravo

    MaxPB said:

    You can hear the tears and how he's been literally shaking since the result. Some of the videos of the beta males crying about the Trump victory almost make it worth the 4 years of shit we've got coming. Almost.

    Sean_F said:

    Is there any world problem that can’t be explained in terms of Brexit?

    Perhaps a lot of people have quite rationally concluded that the Left is not on their side, and pursues policies that are contrary to their interests.

    The loud whooshing sound you can all hear is the point as it flies over your heads
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 26,658

    a

    RobD said:

    Can someone please explain so many on here think that the Democrats need to radically change their policies after losing the three blue wall states by tiny margins, but the same remedy was not felt necessary for the GOP in 2020?

    Because they lost to Trump.
    It’s not even radically changing policies.

    Biden did lots to revive manufacturing in the US. Harris didn’t campaign on what had *already been done*.

    Is it possible that she and her advisors found economic protectionism in global trade an embarrassment? That they thought Biden was an old fool, going back to the 1950s?
    Possibly so or possibly from a lack of interest.

    The people gaining from the new factories would be predominantly white men in flyover states.

    Biden might have an interest in and empathy towards them.

    Whereas Harris is a coastal liberal.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 37,415

    On-topic: Mr. Max's article makes me think of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Physiological needs and safety are the base layers, and sky high food inflation affects both.

    Has nobody had a pay rise in the USA since 2020 ?

    If it was all about food prices then why did the Dems do better in the 2022 midterm elections when price rises were most visible ?
    When the dust has settled, I think we’ll find that Trump’s and Harris’ vote shares almost exactly match 2022.
  • BurgessianBurgessian Posts: 2,772
    Leon said:

    Btw I now understand why it was so hard to get a drink at Incheon when I came through to Osaka (and had hours to stop over). Korea has no bar culture. Almost none. Basically none

    You can walk for hours and there is nowhere to get a FUCKING GIN AND TONIC

    Bit like trying to find a nice cafe offering coffee and cake in much of NYC. We walked miles and found nothing round and about Central Park. Lots of dubious looking street food available tho.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 43,032
    edited November 9
    algarkirk said:

    algarkirk said:

    eek said:

    ydoethur said:

    TimS said:

    ydoethur said:

    TimS said:

    FPT for @ydoethur

    ydoethur said:
    » show previous quotes
    “Really? Lincoln, York, Worcester, Hereford, Gloucester, Canterbury, Winchester, Exeter, Chester, Norwich, Coventry, Carlisle, Rochester, Bristol, Lichfield, Wakefield, Liverpool all spring to mind without any great effort on my part.”


    Big cities. And Liverpool’s don’t count, they’re out of the centre and modern. All the rest are small cities or large towns with the exception of Bristol.

    Neither Wakefield nor Coventry are small cities.

    Nor London, for the matter of that.
    From my perspective Coventry is a small city. My sister lives there - you can walk across the centre in 15 minutes. Wakefield is even smaller.

    We had a good discussion on this in a previous thread which you must have missed. The original point was few of our big cities have a cathedral as a focal point, including London - Westminster abbey is overshadowed by the houses of parliament, St Paul’s is in an empty bit of no man’s land between the city and the west end.

    I’ve been travelling around cities this week. Manchester (no centrepiece cathedrals), Leeds (no cathedral), Birmingham (diddy one, a repurposed parish church - I sang there once when our cathedral choir did a trip).

    Our small cities and towns have grand centrepiece cathedrals, our large ones generally don’t - either because they’re Victorian industrial cities or because the old centre has been subsumed by later growth and new focal points.
    I have also sung in Birmingham Cathedral, and I'm not disputing that specific point about it. As you would be right in that point for Derby or Leicester. I'm just saying that I think you're being too sweeping.

    And of course even if there isn't a cathedral often there's a major church that's near as impressive. Holy Trinity Hull, or St Peter's Wolverhampton. Leeds Minster is rather in the middle of nowhere, of course.
    Leeds city centre seems to have changed it's focus point about 3 times in the 30 years I've known the place.

    It used to be focussed on Headrow, then Trinity opened shifting things towards the station, then they opened Victoria and refurbished the Arcades leading towards it.

    It's no surprise the Minister ended up in no mans land...
    The RC cathedral in Leeds is better placed than the slightly forlorn Leeds Parish Church with its new minstery name.

    Also, despite their great size, ancient cathedrals were built to dominate towns when major ones were tiny compared to today. Because of this they still fit best into places that don't have high rise buildings, urban traffic schemes of nightmare quality and so on. Ely, Chichester, Wells, Durham among them. (For RCs, Arundel).

    Final top tip: with York, City of London (just the square mile), and to some extent Norwich, ignore the cathedral and enjoy the parish churches which are tons better in every way including numinosity.
    Were the ancient great cathedrals but in places which had, even then, folk memories of importance?
    After all, the major Christian festivals 'coincide' with previous pre-Christian ones; Christmas/Yule/Hogmanay for example.
    Go to Chichester and time stands still. Stand in the cathedral at the place where under your feet you can see the Roman mosaic of a building of the Roman Empire, predating the cathedral by 800 years, and a few feet away an outstanding anglo saxon sculpture, 11th century - the raising of Lazarus.

    And when in York recall there was a Bishop of York three centuries before there was an Archbishop of Canterbury.
    Notd forgetting (at York) the CAthedral which was built on top of the Roman legionary HQ where Constantine became Emperor, IIRC. And where one can go into the cathedral basement and see the HQ.

    Presumably the main hall of the HQ was adopted as the cathedral church for some time - hence the continuity of the kind you rightly describe at Chichester.

    There's also a church in a Cotswold dell which is built atop a Roman villa with bits of mosaic visible in the church floor - but I cannot remember where it is except that it's northwest of Oxford.
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 26,658
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    I just asked my phone why is it so fucking hard ri get a basic drink in Seoul and it got all huffy and woke and said “it’s entirely wrong to say that Seoul lacks a bar culture for instance there’s a good cocktail bar in gangnam”

    For context, that’s like saying “london is great for food for instance you can get a pizza in Brixton”

    My experience of Korean drinking culture is that it all happend very late in karaoke booths. You have to be in a big group of Koreans to experience it though, we got adopted by a group of them from Busan we met at the hostel we were staying at.
    The hotel I stayed at in Seoul had a lounge bar on the top floor. A bit like the Doubletree in Leeds, but at a much greater height above street level.
    That’s where I’ve ended up. In a hotel bar. They are the only places that generally have bars and where you can drink without having to order food

    No wonder they don’t have babies
    I'm surprised you've got nothing to say about the actual Iranian attempt to kill Trump.
    There was? When?!

    Seriously. I missed it. In my defence I have been *quite busy* travelling
    The US government has brought charges against an Afghan national in connection with an alleged Iranian plot to assassinate Donald Trump before he was elected as the next president.

    The Department of Justice on Friday unsealed an indictment against Farhad Shakeri, 51, alleging he was tasked with “providing a plan” to kill Trump.

    The US government said Mr Shakeri has not been arrested and is believed to be in Iran - which described the claims as "completely baseless".

    In a criminal complaint filed in Manhattan court, prosecutors allege that an official in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard directed Mr Shakeri in September to devise a plan to surveil and kill Trump.

    “The Justice Department has charged an asset of the Iranian regime who was tasked by the regime to direct a network of criminal associates to further Iran’s assassination plots against its targets, including President-elect Donald Trump,” US Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.

    The justice department also charged two others allegedly recruited to kill an American journalist who was an outspoken critic of Iran.

    The other individuals were identified by the justice department as Carlisle Rivera, also known as "Pop", 49, from Brooklyn, and Jonathon Loadholt, 36, from Staten Island.

    The two appeared in court in the Southern District of New York on Thursday and are being detained pending a trial.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx28x187rmko
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 62,900
    On topic. From Andrew Sullivan's latest newsletter:

    "How could an entire left-liberal worldview be more comprehensibly dismantled by reality? And yet, the primary response among my own liberal friends was rage at the electorate."

    "one of Trump’s most effective ads — “it shifted the race 2.7 percentage points in Mr. Trump’s favor,” according to the NYT — was on Harris’ support for public funding for sex reassignments for illegal aliens and prison inmates. It packed a real punch among black and Latino men and suburban women."

    "The Democrats’ insistence that women have penises and men give birth is perhaps the most insane position any major political party has ever taken in US history."

    He very much doubts the Dems can dig themselves out of this post-modern hole.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 59,969

    .

    Dead British satellite thousands of miles from where it should be:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpwrr58801yo

    Word of the day: "graveyarding"

    Skynet. Probably built by Weyland-Yutani, Tyrell Corp or Omni Consumer Products.
    It’s not one of ours. ;)
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 51,888
    Scott_xP said:

    Leon said:

    Ah. We were all waiting for you to find the crucial Brexit Connection and you’ve done it. Bravo

    MaxPB said:

    You can hear the tears and how he's been literally shaking since the result. Some of the videos of the beta males crying about the Trump victory almost make it worth the 4 years of shit we've got coming. Almost.

    Sean_F said:

    Is there any world problem that can’t be explained in terms of Brexit?

    Perhaps a lot of people have quite rationally concluded that the Left is not on their side, and pursues policies that are contrary to their interests.

    The loud whooshing sound you can all hear is the point as it flies over your heads
    What is the point? Sanders is arguing that the right's policies only ever benefit the rich so they need to trick people into voting for them by inflaming division, but you used to support Cameron very enthusiastically during the 'austerity' years when he was telling people that the SNP wanted to steal their cash. Having seen the light, do you regret supporting Cameron?
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 62,900
    Thanks for the piece @MaxPB

    If only Dems would listen.

    Some - like Mark Lilla - have been warning for years they were headed to disaster by ignoring the working class who want pocketbook stuff solved not theories of social construction.
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