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Voters don’t care about identity – politicalbetting.com

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  • CookieCookie Posts: 13,765
    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.
    On your latter point - you can slice the electorate up whichever way you want and say *that* lot swung it only by assuming all the other votes would have voted that way anyway. It makes no sense to do so. I've seen Dem analyses which blame women for not voting for them in sufficient numbers.
    The lesson is to try to appeal to the electorate, not to specific subsets of it. (Admittedly you can afford to segment by geography - it is of no relevance if you alienate Californian conservatives, for example.)
  • darkagedarkage Posts: 5,398
    Interesting header.
    I would observe however that identity was a significant part of the Trump campaign, it just came with substance and policies, unlike the Kamala version.
    The other thing is that 'turmoil and upheaval' in the international order may be an opportunity as well as a threat. The reason I think this is because the existing order is clearly failing and this is a chance to rethink things. Europe is complacent, the expectation that NATO will last forever is flawed, because it assumes that the US will accept a never ending defensive obligation which it has little or no strategic interest in, and that this will survive domestic political dynamics of the US.
    As I commented in my own endorsement of Trump, the time to build something else is now. There is a chance that the decline can be stopped - because the carry on as usual option seems to lead to disaster and ruin, first in Ukraine, then elsewhere.



  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 37,336
    MaxPB said:

    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.
    Scott needs an emotional support animal.
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 26,582

    Having 99% of Hollywood millionaire celebs preaching at you to vote Dem must grate a little, if you're not doing too well financially.
    A small easy win for the Dems might be to knock celebrity endorsements on the head.

    https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/nov/01/us-election-avengers-cast-kamala-harris-endorsement

    The private jet users telling the proles to accept higher energy prices is not a good look.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 54,569

    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.
    The Chips Act was the most popular thing I heard conservatives say when asked about good things that Biden achieved. It’s exactly the sort of policy that the Harris campaign should have been shouting about, but I don’t recall it being mentioned at all.

    So those white men in flyover States concluded that she cares nothing for them.
  • carnforthcarnforth Posts: 4,566
    Sean_F 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.

    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.
    And, whisper it quietly, there are acceptable motives in life other than self-interest, and poor people are allowed moral agency too.
  • 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.

    Sure, but it only works if the supposedly progressive politicians have failed miserably. If we get it right and actually deliver decent lives there is less opportunity to divide and conquer in this way.

    Brexit was a rebellion against decades of declining living standards. Wouldn’t have happened had living standards not been declining.
  • kamskikamski Posts: 5,189
    MaxPB said:

    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.
    "beta males crying "???

    Trump's victory seems to have at least led to some pathetically insecure arseholes like you to show your true colours.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 23,098
    edited November 9
    FPT:
    boulay 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.
    Wasn’t Tim referring to the lack of centrepiece cathedrals in major cities, seem to recall he gave a nod to cathedral cities as “large towns” with a cathedral which is true really.
    Portsmouth is a large city with a prominent Cathedral. Arguably that has been 'industrialised' since Drake's time and earlier by being a major base of the navy.

    Nottingham is an important city with no old Cathedral, though the Roman Catholics have a pleasant neo-Gothic one built in the 1840s. Possibly also Newcastle, which is an upgraded parish church. And Sheffield. And Derby. I'm not sure about Leicester. These are all Dioceses created as part of Victorian population growth, and the corollary of the empty monumental wool churches, where the population has left, not arrived.

    Don't underestimate parish church cathedrals - some of them are magnificent. I'd put both Derby and Sheffield on that list.

    Not modern cathedrals I'd put Liverpool and Coventry at the top of that list, with Coventry on a pinnacle that equals almost anything from the medieval period. Lutyens' Liverpool is a last gasp of medievalism.

    For "Cathedrals" in indutrial revolution cities, I'd suggest the place is occupied by those great Victorian town halls - Bradford, Manchester, and others have this phenomenon. In Nottingham they built it on half of the medieval marketplace.
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,481
    Horse racing 🥰
    2.05 Aintree - Hunters Legend
    2.23 Wincanton - Handstands
    2.40 Aintree - Idalko Bihoue
    3.30 Wincanton - The Big Breakaway
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 61,774
    Mr. Pioneers, also worth mentioning had Labour honoured its own referendum commitment that would have been a defeat for pro-EU types but one that was easily recoverable rather than leading to us leaving.

    A desire to avoid the electorate from ever having a say because they might get it wrong did not work out well in the end.
  • EPGEPG Posts: 6,651
    I think there is an important point being missed, that the middle states vote for the Trump/Biden economic policy offer of free money for workers, then throw the bums out after four years because the interventionist economic policy offer fuels inflation but doesn't actually deliver a higher standard of living.
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 61,774
    edited November 9
    F1: don't bet if you're already all green but Ferrari at 6 on Betfair for the title is too long.

    Far from a perfect guide, but if the points totals for the last three race weekends are replicated for the next three then Ferrari would take the title by three points (edited: going by memory).
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 17,207
    Sean_F 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.

    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.
    Thanks. That was the number I had in mind, but couldn't be bothered to check.

    That's about five percent, which is insane if you pause and think about it. In the rest of the seats, you win by appealing to your base to get the nomination. The concertina gets stretched out with nothing to pull it back in.

    No wonder there are hardly any centrists on either side.
  • EPGEPG Posts: 6,651
    kamski said:

    MaxPB said:

    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.
    "beta males crying "???

    Trump's victory seems to have at least led to some pathetically insecure arseholes like you to show your true colours.
    I may have made the mistake of treating the author as a good faith participant in idea based discourse instead of just another Tory right winger sneering at beta lib salty tears.
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 8,362
    MattW said:

    FPT:

    boulay 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.
    Wasn’t Tim referring to the lack of centrepiece cathedrals in major cities, seem to recall he gave a nod to cathedral cities as “large towns” with a cathedral which is true really.
    Portsmouth is a large city with a prominent Cathedral. Arguably that has been 'industrialised' since Drake's time and earlier by being a major base of the navy.

    Nottingham is an important city with no old Cathedral, though the Roman Catholics have a pleasant neo-Gothic one built in the 1840s. Possibly also Newcastle, which is an upgraded parish church. And Sheffield. And Derby. I'm not sure about Leicester. These are all Dioceses created as part of Victorian population growth, and the corollary of the empty monumental wool churches, where the population has left, not arrived.

    Don't underestimate parish church cathedrals - some of them are magnificent. I'd put both Derby and Sheffield on that list.

    Not modern cathedrals I'd put Liverpool and Coventry at the top of that list, with Coventry on a pinnacle that equals almost anything from the medieval period. Lutyens' Liverpool is a last gasp of medievalism.

    For "Cathedrals" in indutrial revolution cities, I'd suggest the place is occupied by those great Victorian town halls - Bradford, Manchester, and others have this phenomenon. In Nottingham they built it on half of the medieval marketplace.
    I was going to make the same point as you do in your last paragraph. In the great industrial cities, civic pride in the form of town halls and other civic buildings outgunned religious pride. Leeds town hall, magnificent, is also worth a mention.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 60,394
    Excellent piece.

    Will parties on both sides of the Atlantic learn from it?

    Probably not.
  • TazTaz Posts: 14,357
    kamski said:

    MaxPB said:

    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.
    "beta males crying "???

    Trump's victory seems to have at least led to some pathetically insecure arseholes like you to show your true colours.
    What, after the endless lectures and pious nature of the Harris fanatics during the election.

    It’s well deserved from Max.

    What the result has brought out is pathetically insecure arseholes. But they are the Harris Stans being laughed at.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 28,409
    algarkirk said:

    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.
    Splendour.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,309

    Horse racing 🥰
    2.05 Aintree - Hunters Legend
    2.23 Wincanton - Handstands
    2.40 Aintree - Idalko Bihoue
    3.30 Wincanton - The Big Breakaway

    Insurrection will beat Handstands
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,015
    edited November 9
    .
    EPG said:

    kamski said:

    MaxPB said:

    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.
    "beta males crying "???

    Trump's victory seems to have at least led to some pathetically insecure arseholes like you to show your true colours.
    I may have made the mistake of treating the author as a good faith participant in idea based discourse instead of just another Tory right winger sneering at beta lib salty tears.
    Max is generally pretty sensible.
    That post did somewhat undermine his above the culture war stance, it's true.

    We all have lapses - just some have an awful lot more than others.

    Anyone who deploys the alpha and beta shit does devalue their argument.
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 8,362
    edited November 9
    It may have passed people by, but Labour's victory in July was based on a successful campaign that really paid no heed to identity politics or culture wars.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 23,098
    edited November 9
    FPT: AI on Felton videos.

    viewcode said: viewcode said: MattW said: viewcode said: MattW said: viewcode said: MattW said:...Many of the Great and the Good in West Germany in the 1950s to 1970s were senior officials in the Nazi era. There's a good Mark Felton video about it somewhere. A large proportion of senior Lawyers and Members of Parliament were former Nazis for many years, which may be linked to why the WG Government went to such lengths to avoid prosecuting any.

    I think it's this one:

    "Hitler's Generals in the West German Army"
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqH6rmN5MsE


    https://www.nytimes.com/1950/05/09/archives/53-exnazis-hold-bundestag-seats-these-were-less-the-choice-of-the.html


    Leafing thru Dr Felton's extensive oeuvre to find it is probably beyond me at this point, I'm sorry... :(

    He needs an index.

    Do you suppose AI would know?

    Good morning ChatGPT. The YouTuber Mark Felton has many videos about World War 2 Germany and the post-war years. Can you please list one or more of his videos that cover Nazis infitrating West German civil society.

    Good morning! Mark Felton has indeed created numerous videos on World War II and its aftermath. While I couldn't find a specific video solely focused on Nazis infiltrating West German civil society, his channel does cover related topics. You might find his video on Nazi fugitives in Argentina interesting, as it touches on post-war Nazi activities.

    If you're interested in more of his content, you can explore his YouTube channel for a variety of historical documentaries.


    Good morning Perplexity.ai. The YouTuber Mark Felton has many videos about World War 2 Germany and the post-war years. Can you please list one or more of his videos that cover Nazis infitrating West German civil society.

    Good morning. Mark Felton has indeed produced several videos covering World War II and post-war Germany. Based on the search results provided, one of his videos that specifically addresses the topic of Nazis infiltrating West German civil society is: "Secret Fourth Reich - The Naumann Circle Plot"

    This video discusses a secret Nazi organization in West Germany that attempted to infiltrate political parties in the early 1950s. The group, known as the Naumann Circle, was led by Dr. Werner Naumann, the last Propaganda Minister of Nazi Germany. Their goal was to establish a "Fourth Reich," essentially a successor to the defeated Third Reich...[snip]


    (Quotes buggered)

    Thanks. So between us - assuming that AI answer is OK - we got very close.

    What it clearly has not done is index all of Felton's videos by content; so it does not have a big enough database.
  • TazTaz Posts: 14,357
    Why does the Trumpdozer look like he’s about to reach a happy ending in the picture ?
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,772

    It may have passed people by, but Labour's victory in July was based on a successful campaign that really paid no heed to identity politics or culture wars.

    Indeed, one thing Starmer made sure to do was steer very clear of identity based campaigning. It infuriated a lot of the Labour left but he won.
  • TazTaz Posts: 14,357

    It may have passed people by, but Labour's victory in July was based on a successful campaign that really paid no heed to identity politics or culture wars.

    Indeed. My take from the campaign was mainly an economy that works for all and an end to Tory incompetence, corruption and ongoing strikes and social disorder.

  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 37,336

    MattW said:

    FPT:

    boulay 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.
    Wasn’t Tim referring to the lack of centrepiece cathedrals in major cities, seem to recall he gave a nod to cathedral cities as “large towns” with a cathedral which is true really.
    Portsmouth is a large city with a prominent Cathedral. Arguably that has been 'industrialised' since Drake's time and earlier by being a major base of the navy.

    Nottingham is an important city with no old Cathedral, though the Roman Catholics have a pleasant neo-Gothic one built in the 1840s. Possibly also Newcastle, which is an upgraded parish church. And Sheffield. And Derby. I'm not sure about Leicester. These are all Dioceses created as part of Victorian population growth, and the corollary of the empty monumental wool churches, where the population has left, not arrived.

    Don't underestimate parish church cathedrals - some of them are magnificent. I'd put both Derby and Sheffield on that list.

    Not modern cathedrals I'd put Liverpool and Coventry at the top of that list, with Coventry on a pinnacle that equals almost anything from the medieval period. Lutyens' Liverpool is a last gasp of medievalism.

    For "Cathedrals" in indutrial revolution cities, I'd suggest the place is occupied by those great Victorian town halls - Bradford, Manchester, and others have this phenomenon. In Nottingham they built it on half of the medieval marketplace.
    I was going to make the same point as you do in your last paragraph. In the great industrial cities, civic pride in the form of town halls and other civic buildings outgunned religious pride. Leeds town hall, magnificent, is also worth a mention.
    Manchester City Hall is a thing of beauty, as is the John Rylands Library.
  • agingjb2agingjb2 Posts: 114
    "Noom"? "Noomth" would have been better, to go with Horace Walpole's "Gloomth".
  • MattWMattW Posts: 23,098
    At present my experiments with AI have been getting chat GPT to write polished letters to complain about illegal anti-wheelchair barriers, at which is is quite good with the appropriate knowledge sources plugged in. It saves we having to sweat on the "polish".

    For example, this is quite good. I need the framing to be on behalf of a wheelchair user, but it's straightforward, accurate and succinct. You can slightly feel it overacting (eg clearly in violation).

    Dear [Recipient's Name],
    I am writing to express my concern about an unlawful physical barrier on a public footpath that is preventing me, a wheelchair user, from accessing a public right of way.

    The barrier, located at [specific location], is in direct violation of the Equality Act 2010. This Act clearly states that it is unlawful to discriminate against individuals based on their disability, which includes hindering access to public services and facilities. The barrier is a clear breach of this law as it is obstructing my access as a disabled individual.

    It is worth noting that such barriers do not deter unlawful access by motorbikes. Motorbikes have the ability to bypass these barriers, unlike wheelchairs. Therefore, the barrier is not fulfilling its intended purpose of preventing unlawful access, but is instead causing unnecessary hardship to disabled individuals like myself. I urge you to take immediate action to address this issue. The removal of the barrier or the provision of an alternative, accessible route would be an appropriate solution.

    Thank you for your attention to this matter. I look forward to your prompt response.

    Yours faithfully,


  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,543
    MattW said:

    FPT:

    boulay 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.
    Wasn’t Tim referring to the lack of centrepiece cathedrals in major cities, seem to recall he gave a nod to cathedral cities as “large towns” with a cathedral which is true really.
    Portsmouth is a large city with a prominent Cathedral. Arguably that has been 'industrialised' since Drake's time and earlier by being a major base of the navy.

    Nottingham is an important city with no old Cathedral, though the Roman Catholics have a pleasant neo-Gothic one built in the 1840s. Possibly also Newcastle, which is an upgraded parish church. And Sheffield. And Derby. I'm not sure about Leicester. These are all Dioceses created as part of Victorian population growth, and the corollary of the empty monumental wool churches, where the population has left, not arrived.

    Don't underestimate parish church cathedrals - some of them are magnificent. I'd put both Derby and Sheffield on that list.

    Not modern cathedrals I'd put Liverpool and Coventry at the top of that list, with Coventry on a pinnacle that equals almost anything from the medieval period. Lutyens' Liverpool is a last gasp of medievalism.

    For "Cathedrals" in indutrial revolution cities, I'd suggest the place is occupied by those great Victorian town halls - Bradford, Manchester, and others have this phenomenon. In Nottingham they built it on half of the medieval marketplace.
    Derby 'cathedral' s quite pleasant, albeit it really is only a large church that was 'promoted'.

    Although given Derby and the Derwent Valley's history as the cradle of the industrial revolution, I'd argue that Derby's 'cathedral' should be the Silk Mill a short stroll away. This was the world's first successful silk mill, and the first fully mechanised factory in the world. The place the world changed.

    But another point about Derby is how the 'center' of the city has changed. When I was a nipper, the center was around the marketplace and Irongate, near the cathedral. Now, I'd argue it's the shopping centre nearer the station, with the old market square area much less visited.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,409
    ydoethur 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.
    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.
    With regard to the blogspot, a great pity the ancient Celts, Norse and Germans never developed writing.
  • TazTaz Posts: 14,357

    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.

    Sure, but it only works if the supposedly progressive politicians have failed miserably. If we get it right and actually deliver decent lives there is less opportunity to divide and conquer in this way.

    Brexit was a rebellion against decades of declining living standards. Wouldn’t have happened had living standards not been declining.
    I suspect before the financial crash in 2008 a brexit vote would have been won as areas, like where I live, were doing okay. Post crash we just have hardly recovered. Take house prices. My house finally returned to what it was worth in 2008 in 2020. Stuff like this makes people feel poorer while we were seeing asset values in the south and London racing ahead.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,772
    Nigelb said:

    .

    EPG said:

    kamski said:

    MaxPB said:

    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.
    "beta males crying "???

    Trump's victory seems to have at least led to some pathetically insecure arseholes like you to show your true colours.
    I may have made the mistake of treating the author as a good faith participant in idea based discourse instead of just another Tory right winger sneering at beta lib salty tears.
    Max is generally pretty sensible.
    That post did somewhat undermine his above the culture war stance, it's true.

    We all have lapses - just some have an awful lot more than others.

    Anyone who deploys the alpha and beta shit does devalue their argument.
    I'm not running for office, Nigel and fundamentally anyone who's crying over this result needs to get their head examined. They're just soft.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,409

    MattW said:

    FPT:

    boulay 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.
    Wasn’t Tim referring to the lack of centrepiece cathedrals in major cities, seem to recall he gave a nod to cathedral cities as “large towns” with a cathedral which is true really.
    Portsmouth is a large city with a prominent Cathedral. Arguably that has been 'industrialised' since Drake's time and earlier by being a major base of the navy.

    Nottingham is an important city with no old Cathedral, though the Roman Catholics have a pleasant neo-Gothic one built in the 1840s. Possibly also Newcastle, which is an upgraded parish church. And Sheffield. And Derby. I'm not sure about Leicester. These are all Dioceses created as part of Victorian population growth, and the corollary of the empty monumental wool churches, where the population has left, not arrived.

    Don't underestimate parish church cathedrals - some of them are magnificent. I'd put both Derby and Sheffield on that list.

    Not modern cathedrals I'd put Liverpool and Coventry at the top of that list, with Coventry on a pinnacle that equals almost anything from the medieval period. Lutyens' Liverpool is a last gasp of medievalism.

    For "Cathedrals" in indutrial revolution cities, I'd suggest the place is occupied by those great Victorian town halls - Bradford, Manchester, and others have this phenomenon. In Nottingham they built it on half of the medieval marketplace.
    I was going to make the same point as you do in your last paragraph. In the great industrial cities, civic pride in the form of town halls and other civic buildings outgunned religious pride. Leeds town hall, magnificent, is also worth a mention.
    Rochdale's Town Hall, while smaller, is worth a mention.
  • EPGEPG Posts: 6,651

    A few other examples of how insidious this has become:

    (1) YouTube music: for the whole of last month a "Celebrate Black History Month" selection was at the top of my feed, ahead of my playlists, recommended for me and my albums. I had no interest in this, and yet I could not do anything to get rid of it, and I pay £10.99 a month for the service
    (2) Hampshire County Council library service: yesterday, I received a November email: "It's time to get cosy and cuddle up with a book!". Top of that email was Transgender Awareness Week with a recommended book on 'Gender Euphoria' right at the top of the list. Books for kids, new parents, autumn and newly released bestsellers available for loans were right down the email.
    (3) The National Trust: two properties I've visited in the last two weeks have had special exhibitions advertised where, on further investigation, they are both about "artists" being commissioned to explore 'difficult' issues around the properties past associations with colonialism and empire. Hillary McGrady (why on earth is she still in post?) has also said she leads an organisation where 70% of the staff and volunteers are progressive activists (almost certainly bollocks) so what can she do but respond to their concerns.

    Identity politics has increasingly permeated nearly every aspect of modern life, from the products we buy, to the services we use to the media we consume, creating an environment where identity markers overshadow broader, shared interests and are always promoted to the top of any agenda in neon lights. Companies and public figures now regularly spotlight their "progressive" credentials, striving to stay at the forefront of social issues to demonstrate their inclusivity and avoid criticism. This constant signalling is performative and pushes identity narratives to the top of agendas in ways that overshadow practical priorities and either cause a mass switch-off of the general public, or widespread irritation for those who use their services. As a result, public discourse can become polarised, with identity taking precedence over genuine dialogue.

    Will anyone volunteer to stop doing it first?

    Probably not, unless their bottom line is very badly hit; they fear the risk of being an outlier is too great for their brand, and could end up with their leadership positions being cancelled, so they are too scared to act.

    The solution will need to be political. In that sense, Trump being elected might be a mild positive if he starts to quash some of this, and Kemi follows up here shortly after.

    We recently had an election where your party offered to banish academics and others interested in such topics. Your party lost the vote, spectacularly.
  • FrankBoothFrankBooth Posts: 9,826
    Good piece. In an era of free trade and widespread migration do the Democrats have an offer for general blue collar workers?

    The Iranian assassination plan on Trump is pretty eye opening. It does at least give us a clear plan for dealing with Trump. We need to focus on just how much co-operation there has been between Russia and Iran. The countries have grown increasingly close. Is it plausible that Russia knew nothing of the assassination attempt? Why didn't they lean on Iran to leave Trump alone? J D Vance has been among the staunchest anti Ukraine people in the Republican party, closely associating with the likes of David Sachs and the Heritage Foundation. The chaos a Trump assassination would have caused and the possibility of a President Vance would have been a dream for an increasingly desperate Putin.

    I'm not saying any of this is true but we ought to be gently pushing it. Trump is like the head of the Corleone family. We're a trusted friend of the family.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,772
    EPG said:

    A few other examples of how insidious this has become:

    (1) YouTube music: for the whole of last month a "Celebrate Black History Month" selection was at the top of my feed, ahead of my playlists, recommended for me and my albums. I had no interest in this, and yet I could not do anything to get rid of it, and I pay £10.99 a month for the service
    (2) Hampshire County Council library service: yesterday, I received a November email: "It's time to get cosy and cuddle up with a book!". Top of that email was Transgender Awareness Week with a recommended book on 'Gender Euphoria' right at the top of the list. Books for kids, new parents, autumn and newly released bestsellers available for loans were right down the email.
    (3) The National Trust: two properties I've visited in the last two weeks have had special exhibitions advertised where, on further investigation, they are both about "artists" being commissioned to explore 'difficult' issues around the properties past associations with colonialism and empire. Hillary McGrady (why on earth is she still in post?) has also said she leads an organisation where 70% of the staff and volunteers are progressive activists (almost certainly bollocks) so what can she do but respond to their concerns.

    Identity politics has increasingly permeated nearly every aspect of modern life, from the products we buy, to the services we use to the media we consume, creating an environment where identity markers overshadow broader, shared interests and are always promoted to the top of any agenda in neon lights. Companies and public figures now regularly spotlight their "progressive" credentials, striving to stay at the forefront of social issues to demonstrate their inclusivity and avoid criticism. This constant signalling is performative and pushes identity narratives to the top of agendas in ways that overshadow practical priorities and either cause a mass switch-off of the general public, or widespread irritation for those who use their services. As a result, public discourse can become polarised, with identity taking precedence over genuine dialogue.

    Will anyone volunteer to stop doing it first?

    Probably not, unless their bottom line is very badly hit; they fear the risk of being an outlier is too great for their brand, and could end up with their leadership positions being cancelled, so they are too scared to act.

    The solution will need to be political. In that sense, Trump being elected might be a mild positive if he starts to quash some of this, and Kemi follows up here shortly after.

    We recently had an election where your party offered to banish academics and others interested in such topics. Your party lost the vote, spectacularly.
    And how did Labour win? They completely ignored identity politics and made lots of moves to neutralise those attacks from the Tories. Labour ran basically the same identity platform as the Tories because they realised how much of a drag it would be for them.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 41,948
    edited November 9

    MattW said:

    FPT:

    boulay 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.
    Wasn’t Tim referring to the lack of centrepiece cathedrals in major cities, seem to recall he gave a nod to cathedral cities as “large towns” with a cathedral which is true really.
    Portsmouth is a large city with a prominent Cathedral. Arguably that has been 'industrialised' since Drake's time and earlier by being a major base of the navy.

    Nottingham is an important city with no old Cathedral, though the Roman Catholics have a pleasant neo-Gothic one built in the 1840s. Possibly also Newcastle, which is an upgraded parish church. And Sheffield. And Derby. I'm not sure about Leicester. These are all Dioceses created as part of Victorian population growth, and the corollary of the empty monumental wool churches, where the population has left, not arrived.

    Don't underestimate parish church cathedrals - some of them are magnificent. I'd put both Derby and Sheffield on that list.

    Not modern cathedrals I'd put Liverpool and Coventry at the top of that list, with Coventry on a pinnacle that equals almost anything from the medieval period. Lutyens' Liverpool is a last gasp of medievalism.

    For "Cathedrals" in indutrial revolution cities, I'd suggest the place is occupied by those great Victorian town halls - Bradford, Manchester, and others have this phenomenon. In Nottingham they built it on half of the medieval marketplace.
    I was going to make the same point as you do in your last paragraph. In the great industrial cities, civic pride in the form of town halls and other civic buildings outgunned religious pride. Leeds town hall, magnificent, is also worth a mention.
    See also Glasgow City Chambers, the interior having more marble than the Vatican being the boast (and more Catholics the sour response).


  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 26,171
    @Casino_Royale - I stopped buying the Arsenal programme years ago mainly because I was running out of space and there's only so much they can write about.

    At our last home game, I had to buy a few for a friend of a friend who sadly lost his Arsenal supporting son and there was a tribute in the programme. I had a flick through it and every other article was to do with Black History Month.

    Now, Arsenal's history re black players is something that the club can be proud of and it's absolutely right to talk about it. But when every other article is framed in that way, it does get a bit much.
  • EPGEPG Posts: 6,651
    MaxPB said:

    EPG said:

    A few other examples of how insidious this has become:

    (1) YouTube music: for the whole of last month a "Celebrate Black History Month" selection was at the top of my feed, ahead of my playlists, recommended for me and my albums. I had no interest in this, and yet I could not do anything to get rid of it, and I pay £10.99 a month for the service
    (2) Hampshire County Council library service: yesterday, I received a November email: "It's time to get cosy and cuddle up with a book!". Top of that email was Transgender Awareness Week with a recommended book on 'Gender Euphoria' right at the top of the list. Books for kids, new parents, autumn and newly released bestsellers available for loans were right down the email.
    (3) The National Trust: two properties I've visited in the last two weeks have had special exhibitions advertised where, on further investigation, they are both about "artists" being commissioned to explore 'difficult' issues around the properties past associations with colonialism and empire. Hillary McGrady (why on earth is she still in post?) has also said she leads an organisation where 70% of the staff and volunteers are progressive activists (almost certainly bollocks) so what can she do but respond to their concerns.

    Identity politics has increasingly permeated nearly every aspect of modern life, from the products we buy, to the services we use to the media we consume, creating an environment where identity markers overshadow broader, shared interests and are always promoted to the top of any agenda in neon lights. Companies and public figures now regularly spotlight their "progressive" credentials, striving to stay at the forefront of social issues to demonstrate their inclusivity and avoid criticism. This constant signalling is performative and pushes identity narratives to the top of agendas in ways that overshadow practical priorities and either cause a mass switch-off of the general public, or widespread irritation for those who use their services. As a result, public discourse can become polarised, with identity taking precedence over genuine dialogue.

    Will anyone volunteer to stop doing it first?

    Probably not, unless their bottom line is very badly hit; they fear the risk of being an outlier is too great for their brand, and could end up with their leadership positions being cancelled, so they are too scared to act.

    The solution will need to be political. In that sense, Trump being elected might be a mild positive if he starts to quash some of this, and Kemi follows up here shortly after.

    We recently had an election where your party offered to banish academics and others interested in such topics. Your party lost the vote, spectacularly.
    And how did Labour win? They completely ignored identity politics and made lots of moves to neutralise those attacks from the Tories. Labour ran basically the same identity platform as the Tories because they realised how much of a drag it would be for them.
    I think the dichotomy is too strong. Trump had a bunch of identity politics in the tank this time, it was slightly different to the politics he offered in 2016, more about gender / abortion and less about Islam. Biden also. So did Boris and Obama. Starmer is an exception and I'd respectfully submit that it showed up in his much lower popular vote than any of the foregoing.

    Meanwhile the key policy offer of better economics for midscale workers is something they all try and all fail because nobody deep down wants to pay 65% more for the same stuff with a flag.
  • kamskikamski Posts: 5,189
    Taz said:

    kamski said:

    MaxPB said:

    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.
    "beta males crying "???

    Trump's victory seems to have at least led to some pathetically insecure arseholes like you to show your true colours.
    What, after the endless lectures and pious nature of the Harris fanatics during the election.

    It’s well deserved from Max.

    What the result has brought out is pathetically insecure arseholes. But they are the Harris Stans being laughed at.
    "beta males crying" is a phrase exclusively used by pathetic arseholes.

    But no matter I'm out of here.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 41,948

    Having 99% of Hollywood millionaire celebs preaching at you to vote Dem must grate a little, if you're not doing too well financially.
    A small easy win for the Dems might be to knock celebrity endorsements on the head.

    https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/nov/01/us-election-avengers-cast-kamala-harris-endorsement

    The private jet users telling the proles to accept higher energy prices is not a good look.
    Thank goodness PB, that realm of beta male boasting about the best airline seats and pre flight lounges, hasn’t impinged much on the general consciousness of the voter.
  • kjhkjh Posts: 11,782
    edited November 9
    An excellent thread header @MaxPB.

    I tend to let the identity stuff flow over me. It doesn't annoy me. Some of it is of course relevant and important and then sometimes/often it can and does go too far and when it does I must admit I shrug my shoulders. I only tend to get annoyed when the public sector wastes money on stuff and that can be identity stuff or just general stupidity eg 1 metre long cycle lanes or 1 metre long double yellow lines.

    As far as the private sector is concerned it is a business decision. It is up to them. if they go too far they will lose customers.

    I read @Casino_Royale's post. As this does annoy him I can see why he would be annoyed by the 3 examples he gave. For me it would not, but I can really sympathise with his point of view in these cases.

    If it was the cause of Trump winning both times (and @MaxPB puts up a good argument) then it is rather important.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,350

    MattW said:

    FPT:

    boulay 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.
    Wasn’t Tim referring to the lack of centrepiece cathedrals in major cities, seem to recall he gave a nod to cathedral cities as “large towns” with a cathedral which is true really.
    Portsmouth is a large city with a prominent Cathedral. Arguably that has been 'industrialised' since Drake's time and earlier by being a major base of the navy.

    Nottingham is an important city with no old Cathedral, though the Roman Catholics have a pleasant neo-Gothic one built in the 1840s. Possibly also Newcastle, which is an upgraded parish church. And Sheffield. And Derby. I'm not sure about Leicester. These are all Dioceses created as part of Victorian population growth, and the corollary of the empty monumental wool churches, where the population has left, not arrived.

    Don't underestimate parish church cathedrals - some of them are magnificent. I'd put both Derby and Sheffield on that list.

    Not modern cathedrals I'd put Liverpool and Coventry at the top of that list, with Coventry on a pinnacle that equals almost anything from the medieval period. Lutyens' Liverpool is a last gasp of medievalism.

    For "Cathedrals" in indutrial revolution cities, I'd suggest the place is occupied by those great Victorian town halls - Bradford, Manchester, and others have this phenomenon. In Nottingham they built it on half of the medieval marketplace.
    I was going to make the same point as you do in your last paragraph. In the great industrial cities, civic pride in the form of town halls and other civic buildings outgunned religious pride. Leeds town hall, magnificent, is also worth a mention.
    We should also remember most industrialists and politicians derived from them were Nonconformists - not Anglicans. Many of their chapels were impressive, but not styled or managed in the way cathedrals are.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,350

    Good piece. In an era of free trade and widespread migration do the Democrats have an offer for general blue collar workers?

    The Iranian assassination plan on Trump is pretty eye opening. It does at least give us a clear plan for dealing with Trump. We need to focus on just how much co-operation there has been between Russia and Iran. The countries have grown increasingly close. Is it plausible that Russia knew nothing of the assassination attempt? Why didn't they lean on Iran to leave Trump alone? J D Vance has been among the staunchest anti Ukraine people in the Republican party, closely associating with the likes of David Sachs and the Heritage Foundation. The chaos a Trump assassination would have caused and the possibility of a President Vance would have been a dream for an increasingly desperate Putin.

    I'm not saying any of this is true but we ought to be gently pushing it. Trump is like the head of the Corleone family. We're a trusted friend of the family.

    As I recall, his motto was ‘keep your friends close and your enemies closer.’

    In the context of Putin that’s hardly reassuring.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 60,394
    tlg86 said:

    @Casino_Royale - I stopped buying the Arsenal programme years ago mainly because I was running out of space and there's only so much they can write about.

    At our last home game, I had to buy a few for a friend of a friend who sadly lost his Arsenal supporting son and there was a tribute in the programme. I had a flick through it and every other article was to do with Black History Month.

    Now, Arsenal's history re black players is something that the club can be proud of and it's absolutely right to talk about it. But when every other article is framed in that way, it does get a bit much.

    Well, quite. I have loads of albums in my collection by black artists - some of them not particularly surprising like Michael Jackson, Gabrielle and Imagination- but it's not about whether you are open to enjoying music by such artists (we already are) it's about whether you're sufficiently supportive of being politically Black, and this is what people detest being foisted on them.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,537

    MattW said:

    FPT:

    boulay 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.
    Wasn’t Tim referring to the lack of centrepiece cathedrals in major cities, seem to recall he gave a nod to cathedral cities as “large towns” with a cathedral which is true really.
    Portsmouth is a large city with a prominent Cathedral. Arguably that has been 'industrialised' since Drake's time and earlier by being a major base of the navy.

    Nottingham is an important city with no old Cathedral, though the Roman Catholics have a pleasant neo-Gothic one built in the 1840s. Possibly also Newcastle, which is an upgraded parish church. And Sheffield. And Derby. I'm not sure about Leicester. These are all Dioceses created as part of Victorian population growth, and the corollary of the empty monumental wool churches, where the population has left, not arrived.

    Don't underestimate parish church cathedrals - some of them are magnificent. I'd put both Derby and Sheffield on that list.

    Not modern cathedrals I'd put Liverpool and Coventry at the top of that list, with Coventry on a pinnacle that equals almost anything from the medieval period. Lutyens' Liverpool is a last gasp of medievalism.

    For "Cathedrals" in indutrial revolution cities, I'd suggest the place is occupied by those great Victorian town halls - Bradford, Manchester, and others have this phenomenon. In Nottingham they built it on half of the medieval marketplace.
    I was going to make the same point as you do in your last paragraph. In the great industrial cities, civic pride in the form of town halls and other civic buildings outgunned religious pride. Leeds town hall, magnificent, is also worth a mention.
    Rochdale's Town Hall, while smaller, is worth a mention.
    One of the finest:

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/gallery/2024/jan/30/the-20m-renovation-of-rochdale-town-hall-in-pictures
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,537

    .

    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.
    Terminator: Commencement
  • EPGEPG Posts: 6,651

    tlg86 said:

    @Casino_Royale - I stopped buying the Arsenal programme years ago mainly because I was running out of space and there's only so much they can write about.

    At our last home game, I had to buy a few for a friend of a friend who sadly lost his Arsenal supporting son and there was a tribute in the programme. I had a flick through it and every other article was to do with Black History Month.

    Now, Arsenal's history re black players is something that the club can be proud of and it's absolutely right to talk about it. But when every other article is framed in that way, it does get a bit much.

    Well, quite. I have loads of albums in my collection by black artists - some of them not particularly surprising like Michael Jackson, Gabrielle and Imagination- but it's not about whether you are open to enjoying music by such artists (we already are) it's about whether you're sufficiently supportive of being politically Black, and this is what people detest being foisted on them.
    Culture does change; many or most people in the sixties were disgusted by the rise of a youth culture that we would now consider pretty tame or even at times backward looking. Taking the long scale view, we might just be back in that time of rapid cultural change that we sort of sidestepped for a couple of decades.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 27,834

    Having 99% of Hollywood millionaire celebs preaching at you to vote Dem must grate a little, if you're not doing too well financially.
    A small easy win for the Dems might be to knock celebrity endorsements on the head.

    https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/nov/01/us-election-avengers-cast-kamala-harris-endorsement

    The billionaire Donald Trump was endorsed by Elon Musk, who hopes one day to be the richest man on Mars.
  • FrankBoothFrankBooth Posts: 9,826
    ydoethur said:

    Good piece. In an era of free trade and widespread migration do the Democrats have an offer for general blue collar workers?

    The Iranian assassination plan on Trump is pretty eye opening. It does at least give us a clear plan for dealing with Trump. We need to focus on just how much co-operation there has been between Russia and Iran. The countries have grown increasingly close. Is it plausible that Russia knew nothing of the assassination attempt? Why didn't they lean on Iran to leave Trump alone? J D Vance has been among the staunchest anti Ukraine people in the Republican party, closely associating with the likes of David Sachs and the Heritage Foundation. The chaos a Trump assassination would have caused and the possibility of a President Vance would have been a dream for an increasingly desperate Putin.

    I'm not saying any of this is true but we ought to be gently pushing it. Trump is like the head of the Corleone family. We're a trusted friend of the family.

    As I recall, his motto was ‘keep your friends close and your enemies closer.’

    In the context of Putin that’s hardly reassuring.
    Putin's dream scenario is President Vance. Sollozzo tried to take out the Don because he knew the Don's heir Sonny was keen on his deal.
  • EPGEPG Posts: 6,651
    edited November 9

    Having 99% of Hollywood millionaire celebs preaching at you to vote Dem must grate a little, if you're not doing too well financially.
    A small easy win for the Dems might be to knock celebrity endorsements on the head.

    https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/nov/01/us-election-avengers-cast-kamala-harris-endorsement

    The billionaire Donald Trump was endorsed by Elon Musk, who hopes one day to be the richest man on Mars.
    It's too simplistic, but very handy, to throw out any explanation for failure that could also work to explain the other side's success. It is one of my favourite heuristics in everyday life before beating myself up too hard about something.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,177

    tlg86 said:

    @Casino_Royale - I stopped buying the Arsenal programme years ago mainly because I was running out of space and there's only so much they can write about.

    At our last home game, I had to buy a few for a friend of a friend who sadly lost his Arsenal supporting son and there was a tribute in the programme. I had a flick through it and every other article was to do with Black History Month.

    Now, Arsenal's history re black players is something that the club can be proud of and it's absolutely right to talk about it. But when every other article is framed in that way, it does get a bit much.

    Well, quite. I have loads of albums in my collection by black artists - some of them not particularly surprising like Michael Jackson, Gabrielle and Imagination- but it's not about whether you are open to enjoying music by such artists (we already are) it's about whether you're sufficiently supportive of being politically Black, and this is what people detest being foisted on them.
    My eldest daughter was confused by my music collection. The other day she started googling the artists - apparently liking music created by people ranging from Maoists to Trump supporters isn’t right or something.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,350

    Having 99% of Hollywood millionaire celebs preaching at you to vote Dem must grate a little, if you're not doing too well financially.
    A small easy win for the Dems might be to knock celebrity endorsements on the head.

    https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/nov/01/us-election-avengers-cast-kamala-harris-endorsement

    The billionaire Donald Trump was endorsed by Elon Musk, who hopes one day to be the richest man on Mars.
    So he wants to be an illegal alien - again?
  • TazTaz Posts: 14,357

    A few other examples of how insidious this has become:

    (1) YouTube music: for the whole of last month a "Celebrate Black History Month" selection was at the top of my feed, ahead of my playlists, recommended for me and my albums. I had no interest in this, and yet I could not do anything to get rid of it, and I pay £10.99 a month for the service
    (2) Hampshire County Council library service: yesterday, I received a November email: "It's time to get cosy and cuddle up with a book!". Top of that email was Transgender Awareness Week with a recommended book on 'Gender Euphoria' right at the top of the list. Books for kids, new parents, autumn and newly released bestsellers available for loans were right down the email.
    (3) The National Trust: two properties I've visited in the last two weeks have had special exhibitions advertised where, on further investigation, they are both about "artists" being commissioned to explore 'difficult' issues around the properties past associations with colonialism and empire. Hillary McGrady (why on earth is she still in post?) has also said she leads an organisation where 70% of the staff and volunteers are progressive activists (almost certainly bollocks) so what can she do but respond to their concerns.

    Identity politics has increasingly permeated nearly every aspect of modern life, from the products we buy, to the services we use to the media we consume, creating an environment where identity markers overshadow broader, shared interests and are always promoted to the top of any agenda in neon lights. Companies and public figures now regularly spotlight their "progressive" credentials, striving to stay at the forefront of social issues to demonstrate their inclusivity and avoid criticism. This constant signalling is performative and pushes identity narratives to the top of agendas in ways that overshadow practical priorities and either cause a mass switch-off of the general public, or widespread irritation for those who use their services. As a result, public discourse can become polarised, with identity taking precedence over genuine dialogue.

    Will anyone volunteer to stop doing it first?

    Probably not, unless their bottom line is very badly hit; they fear the risk of being an outlier is too great for their brand, and could end up with their leadership positions being cancelled, so they are too scared to act.

    The solution will need to be political. In that sense, Trump being elected might be a mild positive if he starts to quash some of this, and Kemi follows up here shortly after.

    The Boots Xmas ad is causing a bit of a furore too.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 51,574

    tlg86 said:

    @Casino_Royale - I stopped buying the Arsenal programme years ago mainly because I was running out of space and there's only so much they can write about.

    At our last home game, I had to buy a few for a friend of a friend who sadly lost his Arsenal supporting son and there was a tribute in the programme. I had a flick through it and every other article was to do with Black History Month.

    Now, Arsenal's history re black players is something that the club can be proud of and it's absolutely right to talk about it. But when every other article is framed in that way, it does get a bit much.

    Well, quite. I have loads of albums in my collection by black artists - some of them not particularly surprising like Michael Jackson, Gabrielle and Imagination- but it's not about whether you are open to enjoying music by such artists (we already are) it's about whether you're sufficiently supportive of being politically Black, and this is what people detest being foisted on them.
    My eldest daughter was confused by my music collection. The other day she started googling the artists - apparently liking music created by people ranging from Maoists to Trump supporters isn’t right or something.
    The cultural reaction to Trump winning this time is shaping up to be very different from 2016. It would be interesting to hear from @MarqueeMark on how his circle are taking the news.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 23,098
    edited November 9

    algarkirk said:

    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.
    Splendour.
    Hmmm.

    1 - Perhaps we need a thread about favourite City of London churches.

    2 - NOOM. It's ours now, @Leon .

    3 - Holy Trinity Hull etc. Yes - these are what Simon Jenkins calls iirc "The great Town Churches", and he's about right on that point. The finest example is perhaps St Wulfram, Grantham - though there may be 250 more that people here could nominate. Beverly Minister is another fabulous example.

    4 - "Ancient cathedrals were built to dominate towns". Did Salisbury really exist to any great extent before Salisbury cathedral? Which came first - the Cathedral or the Town?

    If I recall my medieval history, the town was Old Sarum and the cathedral was built 2 miles away - and the town migrated to Salisbury so the hill of Old Sarum had its own 2 MPs for centuries.
  • FrankBoothFrankBooth Posts: 9,826
    edited November 9
    Starmer isn't doing himself any favours if it really is the case that he's got three candidates for next Washington Ambassador - David Miliband, Cathy Ashton and Peter Mandelson. Firstly it looks like him prioritising the 'Labour family' at a time when the US relationship could be more difficult than it has been for two generations. And why does he think a Labour politician is going to be the best person to deal with Trump? Someone who is probably on record with lots of non-Trumpian views. We have a career civil servant doing the job now who everyone seems to respect so why rule out another one?

    And why did Starmer overrule the national security advsier which was going to be a senior General and instead he went with Jonathan Powell. As ever Tories complain about the civil service but Labour doesn't trust the civil service.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,772
    Taz said:

    A few other examples of how insidious this has become:

    (1) YouTube music: for the whole of last month a "Celebrate Black History Month" selection was at the top of my feed, ahead of my playlists, recommended for me and my albums. I had no interest in this, and yet I could not do anything to get rid of it, and I pay £10.99 a month for the service
    (2) Hampshire County Council library service: yesterday, I received a November email: "It's time to get cosy and cuddle up with a book!". Top of that email was Transgender Awareness Week with a recommended book on 'Gender Euphoria' right at the top of the list. Books for kids, new parents, autumn and newly released bestsellers available for loans were right down the email.
    (3) The National Trust: two properties I've visited in the last two weeks have had special exhibitions advertised where, on further investigation, they are both about "artists" being commissioned to explore 'difficult' issues around the properties past associations with colonialism and empire. Hillary McGrady (why on earth is she still in post?) has also said she leads an organisation where 70% of the staff and volunteers are progressive activists (almost certainly bollocks) so what can she do but respond to their concerns.

    Identity politics has increasingly permeated nearly every aspect of modern life, from the products we buy, to the services we use to the media we consume, creating an environment where identity markers overshadow broader, shared interests and are always promoted to the top of any agenda in neon lights. Companies and public figures now regularly spotlight their "progressive" credentials, striving to stay at the forefront of social issues to demonstrate their inclusivity and avoid criticism. This constant signalling is performative and pushes identity narratives to the top of agendas in ways that overshadow practical priorities and either cause a mass switch-off of the general public, or widespread irritation for those who use their services. As a result, public discourse can become polarised, with identity taking precedence over genuine dialogue.

    Will anyone volunteer to stop doing it first?

    Probably not, unless their bottom line is very badly hit; they fear the risk of being an outlier is too great for their brand, and could end up with their leadership positions being cancelled, so they are too scared to act.

    The solution will need to be political. In that sense, Trump being elected might be a mild positive if he starts to quash some of this, and Kemi follows up here shortly after.

    The Boots Xmas ad is causing a bit of a furore too.
    It can't be as bad as the M&S one last year which basically told people to be selfish at Christmas time.
  • carnforthcarnforth Posts: 4,566

    MattW said:

    FPT:

    boulay 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.
    Wasn’t Tim referring to the lack of centrepiece cathedrals in major cities, seem to recall he gave a nod to cathedral cities as “large towns” with a cathedral which is true really.
    Portsmouth is a large city with a prominent Cathedral. Arguably that has been 'industrialised' since Drake's time and earlier by being a major base of the navy.

    Nottingham is an important city with no old Cathedral, though the Roman Catholics have a pleasant neo-Gothic one built in the 1840s. Possibly also Newcastle, which is an upgraded parish church. And Sheffield. And Derby. I'm not sure about Leicester. These are all Dioceses created as part of Victorian population growth, and the corollary of the empty monumental wool churches, where the population has left, not arrived.

    Don't underestimate parish church cathedrals - some of them are magnificent. I'd put both Derby and Sheffield on that list.

    Not modern cathedrals I'd put Liverpool and Coventry at the top of that list, with Coventry on a pinnacle that equals almost anything from the medieval period. Lutyens' Liverpool is a last gasp of medievalism.

    For "Cathedrals" in indutrial revolution cities, I'd suggest the place is occupied by those great Victorian town halls - Bradford, Manchester, and others have this phenomenon. In Nottingham they built it on half of the medieval marketplace.
    I was going to make the same point as you do in your last paragraph. In the great industrial cities, civic pride in the form of town halls and other civic buildings outgunned religious pride. Leeds town hall, magnificent, is also worth a mention.
    Rochdale's Town Hall, while smaller, is worth a mention.
    One of the finest:

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/gallery/2024/jan/30/the-20m-renovation-of-rochdale-town-hall-in-pictures
    £20m? You could build 1/5 of a bat shed for that.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,772
    Lots of noises this morning that the Trump team is going to specifically target the EU for tariffs and non EU countries within Europe will escape as they see it as a way to cleave the UK from the EU entirely. Plus our tariffable exports to the US is a pretty small number I read ~ £20bn somewhere and sound half of that figure is going to be in industries where Trump won't be able to pass tariffs without Congress.

    We may be end up in a very odd position where our exports to the US suddenly become much more competitive while maintaining tariff free exports to Europe. If it transpires then Starmer is a very, very lucky general.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,804
    edited November 9
    MattW said:

    algarkirk said:

    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.
    Splendour.
    Hmmm.

    1 - Perhaps we need a thread about favourite City of London churches.

    2 - NOOM. It's ours now, @Leon .

    3 - Holy Trinity Hull etc. Yes - these are what Simon Jenkins calls iirc "The great Town Churches", and he's about right on that point. The finest example is perhaps St Wulfram, Grantham - though there may be 250 more that people here could nominate. Beverly Minister is another fabulous example.

    4 - "Ancient cathedrals were built to dominate towns". Did Salisbury really exist to any great extent before Salisbury cathedral? Which came first - the Cathedral or the Town?

    If I recall my medieval history, the town was Old Sarum and the cathedral was built 2 miles away - and the town migrated to Salisbury so the hill of Old Sarum had its own 2 MPs for centuries.
    The cathedral *was* at Old Sarum, in the old hillfort, and came after the town [edit!], insofar as one could call a new Norman military garrison and admin centre a town; the replacement cathedral was built in its present location and indeed the new city grew up there.

    https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/old-sarum/history/
  • AlanbrookeAlanbrooke Posts: 25,392
    MaxPB said:

    Lots of noises this morning that the Trump team is going to specifically target the EU for tariffs and non EU countries within Europe will escape as they see it as a way to cleave the UK from the EU entirely. Plus our tariffable exports to the US is a pretty small number I read ~ £20bn somewhere and sound half of that figure is going to be in industries where Trump won't be able to pass tariffs without Congress.

    We may be end up in a very odd position where our exports to the US suddenly become much more competitive while maintaining tariff free exports to Europe. If it transpires then Starmer is a very, very lucky general.

    Luck cant make up for the talentless front bench he has chosen, Reeves, Lammy, Cooper, Miliband Philipson, there's not one of them you would actually employ in your own business.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 27,834

    Starmer isn't doing himself any favours if it really is the case that he's got three candidates for next Washington Ambassador - David Miliband, Cathy Ashton and Peter Mandelson. Firstly it looks like him prioritising the 'Labour family' at a time when the US relationship could be more difficult than it has been for two generations. And why does he think a Labour politician is going to be the best person to deal with Trump? Someone who is probably on record with lots of non-Trumpian views. We have a career civil servant doing the job now who everyone seems to respect so why rule out another one?

    And why did Starmer overrule the national security advsier which was going to be a senior General and instead he went with Jonathan Powell. As ever Tories complain about the civil service but Labour doesn't trust the civil service.

    Yes, Minister was seen as a documentary and every government since, both red and blue, has ratcheted up the SpAd state.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 60,394
    EPG said:

    tlg86 said:

    @Casino_Royale - I stopped buying the Arsenal programme years ago mainly because I was running out of space and there's only so much they can write about.

    At our last home game, I had to buy a few for a friend of a friend who sadly lost his Arsenal supporting son and there was a tribute in the programme. I had a flick through it and every other article was to do with Black History Month.

    Now, Arsenal's history re black players is something that the club can be proud of and it's absolutely right to talk about it. But when every other article is framed in that way, it does get a bit much.

    Well, quite. I have loads of albums in my collection by black artists - some of them not particularly surprising like Michael Jackson, Gabrielle and Imagination- but it's not about whether you are open to enjoying music by such artists (we already are) it's about whether you're sufficiently supportive of being politically Black, and this is what people detest being foisted on them.
    Culture does change; many or most people in the sixties were disgusted by the rise of a youth culture that we would now consider pretty tame or even at times backward looking. Taking the long scale view, we might just be back in that time of rapid cultural change that we sort of sidestepped for a couple of decades.
    Except, unfortunately for you and your ilk, this one isn't sticking and is starting to go into reverse - just look at the stats for younger voters.

    Because you've overreached with downright weird obsessions and ideology.
  • eekeek Posts: 28,362

    MaxPB said:

    Lots of noises this morning that the Trump team is going to specifically target the EU for tariffs and non EU countries within Europe will escape as they see it as a way to cleave the UK from the EU entirely. Plus our tariffable exports to the US is a pretty small number I read ~ £20bn somewhere and sound half of that figure is going to be in industries where Trump won't be able to pass tariffs without Congress.

    We may be end up in a very odd position where our exports to the US suddenly become much more competitive while maintaining tariff free exports to Europe. If it transpires then Starmer is a very, very lucky general.

    Luck cant make up for the talentless front bench he has chosen, Reeves, Lammy, Cooper, Miliband Philipson, there's not one of them you would actually employ in your own business.
    That’s equally true of the Tory front bench - reality is no-one sane goes into politics nowadays. There are easier ways to make a difference without the stress
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 60,394
    Taz said:

    A few other examples of how insidious this has become:

    (1) YouTube music: for the whole of last month a "Celebrate Black History Month" selection was at the top of my feed, ahead of my playlists, recommended for me and my albums. I had no interest in this, and yet I could not do anything to get rid of it, and I pay £10.99 a month for the service
    (2) Hampshire County Council library service: yesterday, I received a November email: "It's time to get cosy and cuddle up with a book!". Top of that email was Transgender Awareness Week with a recommended book on 'Gender Euphoria' right at the top of the list. Books for kids, new parents, autumn and newly released bestsellers available for loans were right down the email.
    (3) The National Trust: two properties I've visited in the last two weeks have had special exhibitions advertised where, on further investigation, they are both about "artists" being commissioned to explore 'difficult' issues around the properties past associations with colonialism and empire. Hillary McGrady (why on earth is she still in post?) has also said she leads an organisation where 70% of the staff and volunteers are progressive activists (almost certainly bollocks) so what can she do but respond to their concerns.

    Identity politics has increasingly permeated nearly every aspect of modern life, from the products we buy, to the services we use to the media we consume, creating an environment where identity markers overshadow broader, shared interests and are always promoted to the top of any agenda in neon lights. Companies and public figures now regularly spotlight their "progressive" credentials, striving to stay at the forefront of social issues to demonstrate their inclusivity and avoid criticism. This constant signalling is performative and pushes identity narratives to the top of agendas in ways that overshadow practical priorities and either cause a mass switch-off of the general public, or widespread irritation for those who use their services. As a result, public discourse can become polarised, with identity taking precedence over genuine dialogue.

    Will anyone volunteer to stop doing it first?

    Probably not, unless their bottom line is very badly hit; they fear the risk of being an outlier is too great for their brand, and could end up with their leadership positions being cancelled, so they are too scared to act.

    The solution will need to be political. In that sense, Trump being elected might be a mild positive if he starts to quash some of this, and Kemi follows up here shortly after.

    The Boots Xmas ad is causing a bit of a furore too.
    Haven't seen that. But I'm not sure I need to as I think your sentence just told me everything I need to know.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,772
    eek said:

    MaxPB said:

    Lots of noises this morning that the Trump team is going to specifically target the EU for tariffs and non EU countries within Europe will escape as they see it as a way to cleave the UK from the EU entirely. Plus our tariffable exports to the US is a pretty small number I read ~ £20bn somewhere and sound half of that figure is going to be in industries where Trump won't be able to pass tariffs without Congress.

    We may be end up in a very odd position where our exports to the US suddenly become much more competitive while maintaining tariff free exports to Europe. If it transpires then Starmer is a very, very lucky general.

    Luck cant make up for the talentless front bench he has chosen, Reeves, Lammy, Cooper, Miliband Philipson, there's not one of them you would actually employ in your own business.
    That’s equally true of the Tory front bench - reality is no-one sane goes into politics nowadays. There are easier ways to make a difference without the stress
    I'd have Rishi as a director level person in a business. No one from the Labour front bench.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 23,098
    edited November 9
    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

    IMO that piece suffers from ingrowing, kneejerk disregard for the UK, and massive extrapolation of a small sample of anecdata. I'm not convinced of an argument that includes statements such as 'my portion did not look nutricious'. IMO the article should be on Mumsnet, not the Guardian.

    It's the same mistake that Danny Boyle made when he glorified the NHS in the 1950s at the 2012 Olympic Opening. He ignored that that was also the era of iron lungs and tens of thousands of people locked up in mental asylums for decades, with no hope of escape.

    The author demands more meals to her personal specification, then complains about the quantities of food thrown away. If they are to have her ideal set of ingredients to hand, then that will increase food waste, They can't have it both ways, I think she is mainly an activist for cooking from scratch - but how would that work effectively, and would we all be willing to pay for it?

    It also ignores that there is much very good food and food choices in the NHS, and it is very variable by hospital trust. Mine is quite impressive, and has an extensive selection of choices. But then we mainly have single rooms, as well.

    Here is the current menu at my local hospital:
    https://www.sfh-tr.nhs.uk/media/3617/steamplicity-1.pdf
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 27,834

    Taz said:

    A few other examples of how insidious this has become:

    (1) YouTube music: for the whole of last month a "Celebrate Black History Month" selection was at the top of my feed, ahead of my playlists, recommended for me and my albums. I had no interest in this, and yet I could not do anything to get rid of it, and I pay £10.99 a month for the service
    (2) Hampshire County Council library service: yesterday, I received a November email: "It's time to get cosy and cuddle up with a book!". Top of that email was Transgender Awareness Week with a recommended book on 'Gender Euphoria' right at the top of the list. Books for kids, new parents, autumn and newly released bestsellers available for loans were right down the email.
    (3) The National Trust: two properties I've visited in the last two weeks have had special exhibitions advertised where, on further investigation, they are both about "artists" being commissioned to explore 'difficult' issues around the properties past associations with colonialism and empire. Hillary McGrady (why on earth is she still in post?) has also said she leads an organisation where 70% of the staff and volunteers are progressive activists (almost certainly bollocks) so what can she do but respond to their concerns.

    Identity politics has increasingly permeated nearly every aspect of modern life, from the products we buy, to the services we use to the media we consume, creating an environment where identity markers overshadow broader, shared interests and are always promoted to the top of any agenda in neon lights. Companies and public figures now regularly spotlight their "progressive" credentials, striving to stay at the forefront of social issues to demonstrate their inclusivity and avoid criticism. This constant signalling is performative and pushes identity narratives to the top of agendas in ways that overshadow practical priorities and either cause a mass switch-off of the general public, or widespread irritation for those who use their services. As a result, public discourse can become polarised, with identity taking precedence over genuine dialogue.

    Will anyone volunteer to stop doing it first?

    Probably not, unless their bottom line is very badly hit; they fear the risk of being an outlier is too great for their brand, and could end up with their leadership positions being cancelled, so they are too scared to act.

    The solution will need to be political. In that sense, Trump being elected might be a mild positive if he starts to quash some of this, and Kemi follows up here shortly after.

    The Boots Xmas ad is causing a bit of a furore too.
    Haven't seen that. But I'm not sure I need to as I think your sentence just told me everything I need to know.
    Here you go. Boots Christmas advert:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncTd0Wfk6QE

  • Taz said:

    A few other examples of how insidious this has become:

    (1) YouTube music: for the whole of last month a "Celebrate Black History Month" selection was at the top of my feed, ahead of my playlists, recommended for me and my albums. I had no interest in this, and yet I could not do anything to get rid of it, and I pay £10.99 a month for the service
    (2) Hampshire County Council library service: yesterday, I received a November email: "It's time to get cosy and cuddle up with a book!". Top of that email was Transgender Awareness Week with a recommended book on 'Gender Euphoria' right at the top of the list. Books for kids, new parents, autumn and newly released bestsellers available for loans were right down the email.
    (3) The National Trust: two properties I've visited in the last two weeks have had special exhibitions advertised where, on further investigation, they are both about "artists" being commissioned to explore 'difficult' issues around the properties past associations with colonialism and empire. Hillary McGrady (why on earth is she still in post?) has also said she leads an organisation where 70% of the staff and volunteers are progressive activists (almost certainly bollocks) so what can she do but respond to their concerns.

    Identity politics has increasingly permeated nearly every aspect of modern life, from the products we buy, to the services we use to the media we consume, creating an environment where identity markers overshadow broader, shared interests and are always promoted to the top of any agenda in neon lights. Companies and public figures now regularly spotlight their "progressive" credentials, striving to stay at the forefront of social issues to demonstrate their inclusivity and avoid criticism. This constant signalling is performative and pushes identity narratives to the top of agendas in ways that overshadow practical priorities and either cause a mass switch-off of the general public, or widespread irritation for those who use their services. As a result, public discourse can become polarised, with identity taking precedence over genuine dialogue.

    Will anyone volunteer to stop doing it first?

    Probably not, unless their bottom line is very badly hit; they fear the risk of being an outlier is too great for their brand, and could end up with their leadership positions being cancelled, so they are too scared to act.

    The solution will need to be political. In that sense, Trump being elected might be a mild positive if he starts to quash some of this, and Kemi follows up here shortly after.

    The Boots Xmas ad is causing a bit of a furore too.
    Haven't seen that. But I'm not sure I need to as I think your sentence just told me everything I need to know.
    I don't have much of a problem with YouTube recommendations BUT I ALWAYS upvote what I like and DOWNVOTE what I don't like. I pay nothing, I don't like the ads but I zap the ones I dislike most as soon as skip comes up while I leave the more bearable ones to run their course.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,772

    EPG said:

    tlg86 said:

    @Casino_Royale - I stopped buying the Arsenal programme years ago mainly because I was running out of space and there's only so much they can write about.

    At our last home game, I had to buy a few for a friend of a friend who sadly lost his Arsenal supporting son and there was a tribute in the programme. I had a flick through it and every other article was to do with Black History Month.

    Now, Arsenal's history re black players is something that the club can be proud of and it's absolutely right to talk about it. But when every other article is framed in that way, it does get a bit much.

    Well, quite. I have loads of albums in my collection by black artists - some of them not particularly surprising like Michael Jackson, Gabrielle and Imagination- but it's not about whether you are open to enjoying music by such artists (we already are) it's about whether you're sufficiently supportive of being politically Black, and this is what people detest being foisted on them.
    Culture does change; many or most people in the sixties were disgusted by the rise of a youth culture that we would now consider pretty tame or even at times backward looking. Taking the long scale view, we might just be back in that time of rapid cultural change that we sort of sidestepped for a couple of decades.
    Except, unfortunately for you and your ilk, this one isn't sticking and is starting to go into reverse - just look at the stats for younger voters.

    Because you've overreached with downright weird obsessions and ideology.
    There's a state of denial among left activists around identity politics at the moment. They're so far down the rabbit hole, everything I've seen from them is anger at Latinos and black men for having the temerity to vote for Trump. The most stupid accusations are that they're "acting white" or "giving in to slave owners" etc... and it all goes unchallenged, there's no one on the left telling these people to stfu with their lecturing and hectoring.

    I don't think it will ever be as bad as that here, when the leftists accused Kemi of "racism in blackface" or whatever the phrase was there was wide condemnation even among leftists. Voices that try to stop black people celebrating the first elected leader of a major party being black are being drowned out.

    We also saw in July that Labour ran away from identity politics, they completely repudiated it all in the run up to the election because Starmer and his advisers realised how big of a drag it would be for them to go into the election attached to it and the people that push it.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,409
    MattW said:

    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

    IMO that piece suffers from ingrowing, kneejerk disregard for the UK, and massive extrapolation of a small sample of anecdata. I'm not convinced of an argument that includes statements such as 'my portion did not look nutricious'. IMO the article should be on Mumsnet, not the Guardian.

    It's the same mistake that Danny Boyle made when he glorified the NHS in the 1950s at the 2012 Olympic Opening. He ignored that that was also the era of iron lungs and tens of thousands of people locked up in mental asylums for decades, with no hope of escape.

    The author demands more meals to her personal specification, then complains about the quantities of food thrown away. If they are to have her ideal set of ingredients to hand, then that will increase food waste, They can't have it both ways, I think she is mainly an activist for cooking from scratch - but how would that work effectively, and would we all be willing to pay for it?

    It also ignores that there is much very good food and food choices in the NHS, and it is very variable by hospital trust. Mine is quite impressive, and has an extensive selection of choices. But then we mainly have single rooms, as well.

    Here is the current menu at my local hospital:
    https://www.sfh-tr.nhs.uk/media/3617/steamplicity-1.pdf
    It's a couple of years since I had to spend two months in hospital ..... two of them, in fact, ..... but my recollection is that the food was OK. It's industrial scale catering after all. I didn't 'enjoy' every meal, particularly the breakfasts, but I've slightly odd tastes when it comes to breakfasts, so that's me not them.

    And so far as I recall the canteens at the last two hospitals where I worked, it was the same. And that's over twenty years ago.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 23,098
    MattW said:

    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

    IMO that piece suffers from ingrowing, kneejerk disregard for the UK, and massive extrapolation of a small sample of anecdata. I'm not convinced of an argument that includes statements such as 'my portion did not look nutricious'. IMO the article should be on Mumsnet, not the Guardian.

    It's the same mistake that Danny Boyle made when he glorified the NHS in the 1950s at the 2012 Olympic Opening. He ignored that that was also the era of iron lungs and tens of thousands of people locked up in mental asylums for decades, with no hope of escape.

    The author demands more meals to her personal specification, then complains about the quantities of food thrown away. If they are to have her ideal set of ingredients to hand, then that will increase food waste, They can't have it both ways, I think she is mainly an activist for cooking from scratch - but how would that work effectively, and would we all be willing to pay for it?

    It also ignores that there is much very good food and food choices in the NHS, and it is very variable by hospital trust. Mine is quite impressive, and has an extensive selection of choices. But then we mainly have single rooms, as well.

    Here is the current menu at my local hospital:
    https://www.sfh-tr.nhs.uk/media/3617/steamplicity-1.pdf
    Your bonus:

    A particular patient may have particular needs (believe me, I know - being a T1D in various types of hospitals on 3 or 4 occasions over 20+ years requires assertiveness), but that should be a criticism of the practice of particular units and specialisms, not a cause for a general condemnation.

    (nutricious / nutritious)

  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 18,339

    (1) YouTube music: for the whole of last month a "Celebrate Black History Month" selection was at the top of my feed, ahead of my playlists, recommended for me and my albums. I had no interest in this, and yet I could not do anything to get rid of it, and I pay £10.99 a month for the service

    On YouTube music. Bearing in mind how closely the metrics on engagement on things like this are looked at, I find it hard to believe that there isn't a substantial market for it.

    Now maybe this is because YouTube are reading their metrics wrong, and they've already driven away most of the users who are annoyed by it, so they're left mainly with those who like it. But my impression with digital services is that they can tell very quickly when something isn't working, and if it wasn't working they wouldn't do it.

    A number of YouTube content creators talk about this sort of thing and how it has shaped the subjects they talk about in their videos, the style of title they use, the thumbnail, etc. We're not in the days of old media where they might try something and would need a bunch of focus groups to tell them why it wasn't working.

    Whether this is a positive change for society as a whole is a different question. One possible outcome is two separate mass medias, because there's definitely a considerable audience for an alternative too. One serving the woke and one serving the backlash to it.
  • AlanbrookeAlanbrooke Posts: 25,392
    MaxPB said:

    eek said:

    MaxPB said:

    Lots of noises this morning that the Trump team is going to specifically target the EU for tariffs and non EU countries within Europe will escape as they see it as a way to cleave the UK from the EU entirely. Plus our tariffable exports to the US is a pretty small number I read ~ £20bn somewhere and sound half of that figure is going to be in industries where Trump won't be able to pass tariffs without Congress.

    We may be end up in a very odd position where our exports to the US suddenly become much more competitive while maintaining tariff free exports to Europe. If it transpires then Starmer is a very, very lucky general.

    Luck cant make up for the talentless front bench he has chosen, Reeves, Lammy, Cooper, Miliband Philipson, there's not one of them you would actually employ in your own business.
    That’s equally true of the Tory front bench - reality is no-one sane goes into politics nowadays. There are easier ways to make a difference without the stress
    I'd have Rishi as a director level person in a business. No one from the Labour front bench.
    jeremy Hunt, Mel stride have both set up and run their own businesses.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,772
    edited November 9

    Taz said:

    A few other examples of how insidious this has become:

    (1) YouTube music: for the whole of last month a "Celebrate Black History Month" selection was at the top of my feed, ahead of my playlists, recommended for me and my albums. I had no interest in this, and yet I could not do anything to get rid of it, and I pay £10.99 a month for the service
    (2) Hampshire County Council library service: yesterday, I received a November email: "It's time to get cosy and cuddle up with a book!". Top of that email was Transgender Awareness Week with a recommended book on 'Gender Euphoria' right at the top of the list. Books for kids, new parents, autumn and newly released bestsellers available for loans were right down the email.
    (3) The National Trust: two properties I've visited in the last two weeks have had special exhibitions advertised where, on further investigation, they are both about "artists" being commissioned to explore 'difficult' issues around the properties past associations with colonialism and empire. Hillary McGrady (why on earth is she still in post?) has also said she leads an organisation where 70% of the staff and volunteers are progressive activists (almost certainly bollocks) so what can she do but respond to their concerns.

    Identity politics has increasingly permeated nearly every aspect of modern life, from the products we buy, to the services we use to the media we consume, creating an environment where identity markers overshadow broader, shared interests and are always promoted to the top of any agenda in neon lights. Companies and public figures now regularly spotlight their "progressive" credentials, striving to stay at the forefront of social issues to demonstrate their inclusivity and avoid criticism. This constant signalling is performative and pushes identity narratives to the top of agendas in ways that overshadow practical priorities and either cause a mass switch-off of the general public, or widespread irritation for those who use their services. As a result, public discourse can become polarised, with identity taking precedence over genuine dialogue.

    Will anyone volunteer to stop doing it first?

    Probably not, unless their bottom line is very badly hit; they fear the risk of being an outlier is too great for their brand, and could end up with their leadership positions being cancelled, so they are too scared to act.

    The solution will need to be political. In that sense, Trump being elected might be a mild positive if he starts to quash some of this, and Kemi follows up here shortly after.

    The Boots Xmas ad is causing a bit of a furore too.
    Haven't seen that. But I'm not sure I need to as I think your sentence just told me everything I need to know.
    It's not a great advert but it probably works for their target market.

    The best Christmas advert is still the Sainsbury's 2014 one which depicted the first world war football match on.

    https://youtu.be/NWF2JBb1bvM?si=6P9p6NShyIUDkFF8
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,015
    EPG said:

    Having 99% of Hollywood millionaire celebs preaching at you to vote Dem must grate a little, if you're not doing too well financially.
    A small easy win for the Dems might be to knock celebrity endorsements on the head.

    https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/nov/01/us-election-avengers-cast-kamala-harris-endorsement

    The billionaire Donald Trump was endorsed by Elon Musk, who hopes one day to be the richest man on Mars.
    It's too simplistic, but very handy, to throw out any explanation for failure that could also work to explain the other side's success. It is one of my favourite heuristics in everyday life before beating myself up too hard about something.
    The other point I'll throw in before retiring from this argument, is that correlation (which the header rather leans on) is not causation.

    You might equally validly observe that the two times the Democrats picked women, they lost.

    The economy argument is far more parsimonious, and accounts for the economic based prediction I posted yesterday, which exactly forecast the state outcome - 100 days out from the election, almost before any campaign at all.
    (I'll be watching out for that, next time round.)
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,015
    I hope no PBer entrusted their DNA to the Russians ?

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz7wl7rpndjo
    ...The apparent disappearance of Atlas Biomed is a mystery - but it appears to have links with Russia.
    It is still listed as an active company with Companies House, where all UK-based businesses must register. However, it has not filed any accounts since December 2022.
    It lists eight official positions - though four of its officers have resigned.
    Two of the apparently remaining officers are listed at the same address in Moscow - as is a Russian billionaire, who is described as a now resigned director...
  • eekeek Posts: 28,362
    MattW said:

    MattW said:

    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

    IMO that piece suffers from ingrowing, kneejerk disregard for the UK, and massive extrapolation of a small sample of anecdata. I'm not convinced of an argument that includes statements such as 'my portion did not look nutricious'. IMO the article should be on Mumsnet, not the Guardian.

    It's the same mistake that Danny Boyle made when he glorified the NHS in the 1950s at the 2012 Olympic Opening. He ignored that that was also the era of iron lungs and tens of thousands of people locked up in mental asylums for decades, with no hope of escape.

    The author demands more meals to her personal specification, then complains about the quantities of food thrown away. If they are to have her ideal set of ingredients to hand, then that will increase food waste, They can't have it both ways, I think she is mainly an activist for cooking from scratch - but how would that work effectively, and would we all be willing to pay for it?

    It also ignores that there is much very good food and food choices in the NHS, and it is very variable by hospital trust. Mine is quite impressive, and has an extensive selection of choices. But then we mainly have single rooms, as well.

    Here is the current menu at my local hospital:
    https://www.sfh-tr.nhs.uk/media/3617/steamplicity-1.pdf
    Your bonus:

    A particular patient may have particular needs (believe me, I know - being a T1D in various types of hospitals on 3 or 4 occasions over 20+ years requires assertiveness), but that should be a criticism of the practice of particular units and specialisms, not a cause for a general condemnation.

    (nutricious / nutritious)

    Interesting to note that the food is all from Compass Group and probably arrives semi-finished nowadays..
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,177
    ydoethur said:

    Having 99% of Hollywood millionaire celebs preaching at you to vote Dem must grate a little, if you're not doing too well financially.
    A small easy win for the Dems might be to knock celebrity endorsements on the head.

    https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/nov/01/us-election-avengers-cast-kamala-harris-endorsement

    The billionaire Donald Trump was endorsed by Elon Musk, who hopes one day to be the richest man on Mars.
    So he wants to be an illegal alien - again?
    One thing that will come up in Trumps presidency is this.

    Using the rules on Planetary Protection, there is a strong group who want to try and ban any landing on Mars that isn’t “decontaminated” to a very exacting standard.

    The standard is largely bullshit, but that’s another conversation.

    It involves autoclaving the entire vehicle (why using renetry heat doesn’t count for this is a question that is refused to be answered). And you can’t autoclave Starship - too big.

    Interestingly, the Mars Sample return is hitting similar problem.

    So a decision that will be made is whether the Planetary Protection types get their vision of nothing much on Mars - forever. Or whether the first Starship landings occur before the end of the decade
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,409
    MattW said:

    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

    IMO that piece suffers from ingrowing, kneejerk disregard for the UK, and massive extrapolation of a small sample of anecdata. I'm not convinced of an argument that includes statements such as 'my portion did not look nutricious'. IMO the article should be on Mumsnet, not the Guardian.

    It's the same mistake that Danny Boyle made when he glorified the NHS in the 1950s at the 2012 Olympic Opening. He ignored that that was also the era of iron lungs and tens of thousands of people locked up in mental asylums for decades, with no hope of escape.

    The author demands more meals to her personal specification, then complains about the quantities of food thrown away. If they are to have her ideal set of ingredients to hand, then that will increase food waste, They can't have it both ways, I think she is mainly an activist for cooking from scratch - but how would that work effectively, and would we all be willing to pay for it?

    It also ignores that there is much very good food and food choices in the NHS, and it is very variable by hospital trust. Mine is quite impressive, and has an extensive selection of choices. But then we mainly have single rooms, as well.

    Here is the current menu at my local hospital:
    https://www.sfh-tr.nhs.uk/media/3617/steamplicity-1.pdf
    Looks OK, doesn't it. One problem is that it has to be brought to the ward, often from some way away, but that's the nature of the beast.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 60,394
    MaxPB said:

    EPG said:

    tlg86 said:

    @Casino_Royale - I stopped buying the Arsenal programme years ago mainly because I was running out of space and there's only so much they can write about.

    At our last home game, I had to buy a few for a friend of a friend who sadly lost his Arsenal supporting son and there was a tribute in the programme. I had a flick through it and every other article was to do with Black History Month.

    Now, Arsenal's history re black players is something that the club can be proud of and it's absolutely right to talk about it. But when every other article is framed in that way, it does get a bit much.

    Well, quite. I have loads of albums in my collection by black artists - some of them not particularly surprising like Michael Jackson, Gabrielle and Imagination- but it's not about whether you are open to enjoying music by such artists (we already are) it's about whether you're sufficiently supportive of being politically Black, and this is what people detest being foisted on them.
    Culture does change; many or most people in the sixties were disgusted by the rise of a youth culture that we would now consider pretty tame or even at times backward looking. Taking the long scale view, we might just be back in that time of rapid cultural change that we sort of sidestepped for a couple of decades.
    Except, unfortunately for you and your ilk, this one isn't sticking and is starting to go into reverse - just look at the stats for younger voters.

    Because you've overreached with downright weird obsessions and ideology.
    There's a state of denial among left activists around identity politics at the moment. They're so far down the rabbit hole, everything I've seen from them is anger at Latinos and black men for having the temerity to vote for Trump. The most stupid accusations are that they're "acting white" or "giving in to slave owners" etc... and it all goes unchallenged, there's no one on the left telling these people to stfu with their lecturing and hectoring.

    I don't think it will ever be as bad as that here, when the leftists accused Kemi of "racism in blackface" or whatever the phrase was there was wide condemnation even among leftists. Voices that try to stop black people celebrating the first elected leader of a major party being black are being drowned out.

    We also saw in July that Labour ran away from identity politics, they completely repudiated it all in the run up to the election because Starmer and his advisers realised how big of a drag it would be for them to go into the election attached to it and the people that push it.
    Yeah, agree with that.

    Sadly, it is creeping into their policy in office though, noting their acts on BIOT and Reparations.
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 12,496
    Sean_F said:

    MattW said:

    FPT:

    boulay 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.
    Wasn’t Tim referring to the lack of centrepiece cathedrals in major cities, seem to recall he gave a nod to cathedral cities as “large towns” with a cathedral which is true really.
    Portsmouth is a large city with a prominent Cathedral. Arguably that has been 'industrialised' since Drake's time and earlier by being a major base of the navy.

    Nottingham is an important city with no old Cathedral, though the Roman Catholics have a pleasant neo-Gothic one built in the 1840s. Possibly also Newcastle, which is an upgraded parish church. And Sheffield. And Derby. I'm not sure about Leicester. These are all Dioceses created as part of Victorian population growth, and the corollary of the empty monumental wool churches, where the population has left, not arrived.

    Don't underestimate parish church cathedrals - some of them are magnificent. I'd put both Derby and Sheffield on that list.

    Not modern cathedrals I'd put Liverpool and Coventry at the top of that list, with Coventry on a pinnacle that equals almost anything from the medieval period. Lutyens' Liverpool is a last gasp of medievalism.

    For "Cathedrals" in indutrial revolution cities, I'd suggest the place is occupied by those great Victorian town halls - Bradford, Manchester, and others have this phenomenon. In Nottingham they built it on half of the medieval marketplace.
    I was going to make the same point as you do in your last paragraph. In the great industrial cities, civic pride in the form of town halls and other civic buildings outgunned religious pride. Leeds town hall, magnificent, is also worth a mention.
    Manchester City Hall is a thing of beauty, as is the John Rylands Library.
    Impossible to believe but Rochdale too.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,177
    eek said:

    MattW said:

    MattW said:

    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

    IMO that piece suffers from ingrowing, kneejerk disregard for the UK, and massive extrapolation of a small sample of anecdata. I'm not convinced of an argument that includes statements such as 'my portion did not look nutricious'. IMO the article should be on Mumsnet, not the Guardian.

    It's the same mistake that Danny Boyle made when he glorified the NHS in the 1950s at the 2012 Olympic Opening. He ignored that that was also the era of iron lungs and tens of thousands of people locked up in mental asylums for decades, with no hope of escape.

    The author demands more meals to her personal specification, then complains about the quantities of food thrown away. If they are to have her ideal set of ingredients to hand, then that will increase food waste, They can't have it both ways, I think she is mainly an activist for cooking from scratch - but how would that work effectively, and would we all be willing to pay for it?

    It also ignores that there is much very good food and food choices in the NHS, and it is very variable by hospital trust. Mine is quite impressive, and has an extensive selection of choices. But then we mainly have single rooms, as well.

    Here is the current menu at my local hospital:
    https://www.sfh-tr.nhs.uk/media/3617/steamplicity-1.pdf
    Your bonus:

    A particular patient may have particular needs (believe me, I know - being a T1D in various types of hospitals on 3 or 4 occasions over 20+ years requires assertiveness), but that should be a criticism of the practice of particular units and specialisms, not a cause for a general condemnation.

    (nutricious / nutritious)

    Interesting to note that the food is all from Compass Group and probably arrives semi-finished nowadays..
    Much of mid range resteraunt food is semi-finished.
  • FrankBoothFrankBooth Posts: 9,826
    Apparently US defence contractors can now service F-16s and Patriots in Ukraine. The only question is why they weren't allowed to do this before.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,409
    algarkirk said:

    Sean_F said:

    MattW said:

    FPT:

    boulay 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.
    Wasn’t Tim referring to the lack of centrepiece cathedrals in major cities, seem to recall he gave a nod to cathedral cities as “large towns” with a cathedral which is true really.
    Portsmouth is a large city with a prominent Cathedral. Arguably that has been 'industrialised' since Drake's time and earlier by being a major base of the navy.

    Nottingham is an important city with no old Cathedral, though the Roman Catholics have a pleasant neo-Gothic one built in the 1840s. Possibly also Newcastle, which is an upgraded parish church. And Sheffield. And Derby. I'm not sure about Leicester. These are all Dioceses created as part of Victorian population growth, and the corollary of the empty monumental wool churches, where the population has left, not arrived.

    Don't underestimate parish church cathedrals - some of them are magnificent. I'd put both Derby and Sheffield on that list.

    Not modern cathedrals I'd put Liverpool and Coventry at the top of that list, with Coventry on a pinnacle that equals almost anything from the medieval period. Lutyens' Liverpool is a last gasp of medievalism.

    For "Cathedrals" in indutrial revolution cities, I'd suggest the place is occupied by those great Victorian town halls - Bradford, Manchester, and others have this phenomenon. In Nottingham they built it on half of the medieval marketplace.
    I was going to make the same point as you do in your last paragraph. In the great industrial cities, civic pride in the form of town halls and other civic buildings outgunned religious pride. Leeds town hall, magnificent, is also worth a mention.
    Manchester City Hall is a thing of beauty, as is the John Rylands Library.
    Impossible to believe but Rochdale too.
    It's better now it's been cleaned up.
  • MattW said:

    FPT:

    boulay 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.
    Wasn’t Tim referring to the lack of centrepiece cathedrals in major cities, seem to recall he gave a nod to cathedral cities as “large towns” with a cathedral which is true really.
    Portsmouth is a large city with a prominent Cathedral. Arguably that has been 'industrialised' since Drake's time and earlier by being a major base of the navy.

    Nottingham is an important city with no old Cathedral, though the Roman Catholics have a pleasant neo-Gothic one built in the 1840s. Possibly also Newcastle, which is an upgraded parish church. And Sheffield. And Derby. I'm not sure about Leicester. These are all Dioceses created as part of Victorian population growth, and the corollary of the empty monumental wool churches, where the population has left, not arrived.

    Don't underestimate parish church cathedrals - some of them are magnificent. I'd put both Derby and Sheffield on that list.

    Not modern cathedrals I'd put Liverpool and Coventry at the top of that list, with Coventry on a pinnacle that equals almost anything from the medieval period. Lutyens' Liverpool is a last gasp of medievalism.

    For "Cathedrals" in indutrial revolution cities, I'd suggest the place is occupied by those great Victorian town halls - Bradford, Manchester, and others have this phenomenon. In Nottingham they built it on half of the medieval marketplace.
    I was going to make the same point as you do in your last paragraph. In the great industrial cities, civic pride in the form of town halls and other civic buildings outgunned religious pride. Leeds town hall, magnificent, is also worth a mention.
    Rochdale's Town Hall, while smaller, is worth a mention.
    One of the finest:

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/gallery/2024/jan/30/the-20m-renovation-of-rochdale-town-hall-in-pictures
    It is truly glorious.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,409
    MaxPB said:

    Taz said:

    A few other examples of how insidious this has become:

    (1) YouTube music: for the whole of last month a "Celebrate Black History Month" selection was at the top of my feed, ahead of my playlists, recommended for me and my albums. I had no interest in this, and yet I could not do anything to get rid of it, and I pay £10.99 a month for the service
    (2) Hampshire County Council library service: yesterday, I received a November email: "It's time to get cosy and cuddle up with a book!". Top of that email was Transgender Awareness Week with a recommended book on 'Gender Euphoria' right at the top of the list. Books for kids, new parents, autumn and newly released bestsellers available for loans were right down the email.
    (3) The National Trust: two properties I've visited in the last two weeks have had special exhibitions advertised where, on further investigation, they are both about "artists" being commissioned to explore 'difficult' issues around the properties past associations with colonialism and empire. Hillary McGrady (why on earth is she still in post?) has also said she leads an organisation where 70% of the staff and volunteers are progressive activists (almost certainly bollocks) so what can she do but respond to their concerns.

    Identity politics has increasingly permeated nearly every aspect of modern life, from the products we buy, to the services we use to the media we consume, creating an environment where identity markers overshadow broader, shared interests and are always promoted to the top of any agenda in neon lights. Companies and public figures now regularly spotlight their "progressive" credentials, striving to stay at the forefront of social issues to demonstrate their inclusivity and avoid criticism. This constant signalling is performative and pushes identity narratives to the top of agendas in ways that overshadow practical priorities and either cause a mass switch-off of the general public, or widespread irritation for those who use their services. As a result, public discourse can become polarised, with identity taking precedence over genuine dialogue.

    Will anyone volunteer to stop doing it first?

    Probably not, unless their bottom line is very badly hit; they fear the risk of being an outlier is too great for their brand, and could end up with their leadership positions being cancelled, so they are too scared to act.

    The solution will need to be political. In that sense, Trump being elected might be a mild positive if he starts to quash some of this, and Kemi follows up here shortly after.

    The Boots Xmas ad is causing a bit of a furore too.
    Haven't seen that. But I'm not sure I need to as I think your sentence just told me everything I need to know.
    It's not a great advert but it probably works for their target market.

    The best Christmas advert is still the Sainsbury's 2014 one which depicted the first world war football match on.

    https://youtu.be/NWF2JBb1bvM?si=6P9p6NShyIUDkFF8
    Very emotional, the Sainsbury's ad. IIRC the Allied top brass, particularly the British, were very keen to prevent a recurrence in 1915.
  • AlanbrookeAlanbrooke Posts: 25,392

    It’s the economy, stupid.

    Labour in 2024 neutralised culture and ran on the Tories having failed on the economy.

    Sunak tried culture and failed as people simply said “I can’t afford to eat, why is this stuff relevant”.

    Labour would be wise to avoid culture going forward. And so far they don’t seem to my eye at least, to have done much in the way of identity politics.

    However Labour re making such a monumental hash of the economy their doing Badenoch's job for her. Election now !
  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 22,807

    (1) YouTube music: for the whole of last month a "Celebrate Black History Month" selection was at the top of my feed, ahead of my playlists, recommended for me and my albums. I had no interest in this, and yet I could not do anything to get rid of it, and I pay £10.99 a month for the service

    On YouTube music. Bearing in mind how closely the metrics on engagement on things like this are looked at, I find it hard to believe that there isn't a substantial market for it.

    Now maybe this is because YouTube are reading their metrics wrong, and they've already driven away most of the users who are annoyed by it, so they're left mainly with those who like it. But my impression with digital services is that they can tell very quickly when something isn't working, and if it wasn't working they wouldn't do it.

    A number of YouTube content creators talk about this sort of thing and how it has shaped the subjects they talk about in their videos, the style of title they use, the thumbnail, etc. We're not in the days of old media where they might try something and would need a bunch of focus groups to tell them why it wasn't working.

    Whether this is a positive change for society as a whole is a different question. One possible outcome is two separate mass medias, because there's definitely a considerable audience for an alternative too. One serving the woke and one serving the backlash to it.
    Youtube and Metube?
    Youtube and NoIDontTubeThankYouVeryMuch?
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,543

    ydoethur said:

    Having 99% of Hollywood millionaire celebs preaching at you to vote Dem must grate a little, if you're not doing too well financially.
    A small easy win for the Dems might be to knock celebrity endorsements on the head.

    https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/nov/01/us-election-avengers-cast-kamala-harris-endorsement

    The billionaire Donald Trump was endorsed by Elon Musk, who hopes one day to be the richest man on Mars.
    So he wants to be an illegal alien - again?
    One thing that will come up in Trumps presidency is this.

    Using the rules on Planetary Protection, there is a strong group who want to try and ban any landing on Mars that isn’t “decontaminated” to a very exacting standard.

    The standard is largely bullshit, but that’s another conversation.

    It involves autoclaving the entire vehicle (why using renetry heat doesn’t count for this is a question that is refused to be answered). And you can’t autoclave Starship - too big.

    Interestingly, the Mars Sample return is hitting similar problem.

    So a decision that will be made is whether the Planetary Protection types get their vision of nothing much on Mars - forever. Or whether the first Starship landings occur before the end of the decade
    Planetary Protection rules can be seen as very sensible, *if* you think there might be life extant on another planetary body. The risk is that any extant signs of life might get masked, or even destroyed, by careless or stupid acts. And that would be a tragedy for science. Then there is the lesser risk of contamination back to Earth.

    This is slightly offset by the suspicion that NASA have been studiously ignoring the search for life on Mars as being too politically difficult. They play lip service to it, but are actually doing the least possible science on the topic.

    Muskites are against PP because it gets in the way of his dream. Perhaps the rules need loosening, or perhaps not, but the last person who should be setting the rules is Musk. PP *does* make sense; the question is how much it should get in the way. But it should never be totally ignored.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,409

    ydoethur said:

    Having 99% of Hollywood millionaire celebs preaching at you to vote Dem must grate a little, if you're not doing too well financially.
    A small easy win for the Dems might be to knock celebrity endorsements on the head.

    https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/nov/01/us-election-avengers-cast-kamala-harris-endorsement

    The billionaire Donald Trump was endorsed by Elon Musk, who hopes one day to be the richest man on Mars.
    So he wants to be an illegal alien - again?
    One thing that will come up in Trumps presidency is this.

    Using the rules on Planetary Protection, there is a strong group who want to try and ban any landing on Mars that isn’t “decontaminated” to a very exacting standard.

    The standard is largely bullshit, but that’s another conversation.

    It involves autoclaving the entire vehicle (why using renetry heat doesn’t count for this is a question that is refused to be answered). And you can’t autoclave Starship - too big.

    Interestingly, the Mars Sample return is hitting similar problem.

    So a decision that will be made is whether the Planetary Protection types get their vision of nothing much on Mars - forever. Or whether the first Starship landings occur before the end of the decade
    Planetary Protection rules can be seen as very sensible, *if* you think there might be life extant on another planetary body. The risk is that any extant signs of life might get masked, or even destroyed, by careless or stupid acts. And that would be a tragedy for science. Then there is the lesser risk of contamination back to Earth.

    This is slightly offset by the suspicion that NASA have been studiously ignoring the search for life on Mars as being too politically difficult. They play lip service to it, but are actually doing the least possible science on the topic.

    Muskites are against PP because it gets in the way of his dream. Perhaps the rules need loosening, or perhaps not, but the last person who should be setting the rules is Musk. PP *does* make sense; the question is how much it should get in the way. But it should never be totally ignored.
    Look what happened when people with smallpox landed in Mexico.
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 12,496
    EPG said:

    tlg86 said:

    @Casino_Royale - I stopped buying the Arsenal programme years ago mainly because I was running out of space and there's only so much they can write about.

    At our last home game, I had to buy a few for a friend of a friend who sadly lost his Arsenal supporting son and there was a tribute in the programme. I had a flick through it and every other article was to do with Black History Month.

    Now, Arsenal's history re black players is something that the club can be proud of and it's absolutely right to talk about it. But when every other article is framed in that way, it does get a bit much.

    Well, quite. I have loads of albums in my collection by black artists - some of them not particularly surprising like Michael Jackson, Gabrielle and Imagination- but it's not about whether you are open to enjoying music by such artists (we already are) it's about whether you're sufficiently supportive of being politically Black, and this is what people detest being foisted on them.
    Culture does change; many or most people in the sixties were disgusted by the rise of a youth culture that we would now consider pretty tame or even at times backward looking. Taking the long scale view, we might just be back in that time of rapid cultural change that we sort of sidestepped for a couple of decades.
    This could well be true. But what rough beast, its hour comes round at last slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

    The big ticket items are under immense pressure: peace, global cooperation, liberalism, democracy, free trade, consensualism, growth, NATO, self determination and so on.

    Reading the New Statesman (someone has to) this week, the tone is extraordinary. It is utterly humbled. The tone is that "liberals have been mugged by reality; progressives have it all to learn; MAGA is here to stay; liberal elites have ignored the ordinary people; defeat was inevitable".

    Fascinating times.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 18,339
    edited November 9
    The other thing that I think is important is that we have to separate whether particular identity politics issues are popular, from whether they are determinant of a vote in a particular issue.

    So we might have a situation where identity politics is popular, and dominates the cultural space, but this very victory of identity politics means that it's supporters feel able to vote on other issues, such as the economy, perceived competence, etc.

    The Democrats made abortion a central post of the Presidential campaign and they lost. This isn't because a majority are opposed to abortion. It's because they feel able to secure reproductive rights by voting for them in other votes at the state level.

    I think there are people who are mixing up whether an idea is popular from whether it will determine votes in an election. And vice versa.
  • It’s the economy, stupid.

    Labour in 2024 neutralised culture and ran on the Tories having failed on the economy.

    Sunak tried culture and failed as people simply said “I can’t afford to eat, why is this stuff relevant”.

    Labour would be wise to avoid culture going forward. And so far they don’t seem to my eye at least, to have done much in the way of identity politics.

    Add the SNP to that list. Their 2024 manifesto tried to weaponise Scottish identity. The SNP are “for Scotland” they said. People on the doorstep told me they felt marginalised by this. They wanted to know why their services were so poor, and the governing party were telling to suck it up or not be patriotic.
This discussion has been closed.