Rangoon is a bit of a shithole. A shithole full of post imperial noom but a bit of a shithole nonethiess
We built an entire and magnificent Victorian/Edwardian city on the banks of the woogly-waggly here, a mighty grid of banks and churches and city halls and customs houses and ornate Anglo-Burmese train stations - surrounding the golden pagodas - and now it all rots like a collection of Sicilian palazzi and trees grow through the roofs of the Port Authority HQ and Mon women, cheeks daubed with yellow thanaka paste, squat in the mildewed porches of the shuttered Strand Hotel selling tiny lychees and cheap Chinese dolls
There's some value in seeing it, though, as it's a perfect microcosm of much of the post-Imperial third world. At least that's what I thought when I was there a decade ago.
We introduced state of the art Victorian governance and since we left, rather than build on our achievements with the added blessings of self-determination and democracy they have let it fall apart and the rest of the place with it.
A pattern replicated in many places, sadly, from Hong Kong to Freetown to Khartoum to Salisbury to ...
It's 15 years ago that I was there. I quite liked Rangoon, which I found to be very different to a lot of South East Asia, perhaps a view to what Thailand and Vietnam looked like before the impact of the West. Even then though the number of Chinese goods was driving out local goods. I was mostly in Upper Burma though, which is the heartland of Burmese culture.
Burma was run as an outpost of British India, particularly to provide rice to Bengal. In 1942 Rangoon was 50% Bengali, most of whom fled, and often died, in the Empires longest retreat to India. This is a large factor in both the wartime Bengal famine, and the continuing animosity of Burmese to Muslims (seen as an Imperial presence inflicted by Britain on them). State of the art Victorian governance consisted of no say for local people in governance and forced extraction of resources at the point of a gun.
I really liked Burma and might get back there sometime. It has a dreadful and barbaric military government, but magnificent and largely intact cultures and landscapes. There may well be regime change at some point as the military have had a number of recent setbacks in the ongoing civil wars. The rebels vary from pro-democracy students to Narco-oligarchs, via a multiplicity of minority nationalists. To say that Myanmar politics is opaque is one of the great understatement.
Does it have anything to rival that famous Cambodian Temple city ?
The legend of Angkor Wat, I think it's called.
I have not been to Angkor Wat, but Bagan is one of the great sites. It was a city of 1 million people at one time, but all that is left now is the stone pagodas, perhaps a thousand of them in various states of ruin and size, with the civilian buildings all rotted away, leaving a massive plain of stupas.
Shortly before I visited all the local people were cleared off the site, at gunpoint by the SLORC military, without compensation, in order to make it more of a tourist site. Burma is full of that sort of brutal history amongst the beauty.
Angkor Wat is arguably THE single most impressive monument from the pre-modern world. And yes I’m including the pantheon, pyramids, Hagia Sophia, any medieval cathedrals (tho if you take them all together), Luxor; macchu pichu, Teotihuacan, and all
I’ve seen them all and Angkor Wat remains - to my mind - in a dreamy world of its own. Albeit now blighted by billions of tourists
I’ll be interested to compare Bagan. I very much doubt it’s in the same league but it does sound fabulous
I am excluding Gobekli Tepe and the tas Tepeler because you have to. They are more like alien cities from Martian invasions
I was going to say Gobekli Tepe is surely the most amazing example of ancient civilisation. Dated to 10,000 BC and it's just insane. Demolishes the idea that ancient humans were simple hunter gatherers and the African origin theory. It's been, err, interesting watching woke scientists try harder and harder to hold onto the African origin theory to the point of attempting to excommunicate scientists who dare to defy the prevailing theory. It's always amazing how scientific method takes a back seat when establishment approved ideas get disproved.
It's a mistake for Farage to say we should accept the disgusting Begum back in the UK. She can rot in Syrian prison or they can deport her to Bangladesh. Just because Trump wants us to take her back it doesn't mean we should.
There is zero chance that she will face proper justice here for her crimes, a small slap on the wrist and probably a free council flat and benefits for life in Tower Hamlets is the most likely outcome.
I agree on all counts. It's not good and not come at a good time for Reform UK. I'm not sure what I'd have done in Farage's position (under strong pressure from Trump to support taking back Begum). I'm not altogether sure why Trump wants us to take her back so much.
Overall I think Reform will weather the councillors leaving as growing pains.
I get the logic that Begum is our responsibility and we should be responsible for her and I've always said as much. We shouldn't dump someone radicalised in the UK on another country just because her parents weren't born here..
The bit I don't get as you also say is why is Trump concerned about it..
I think Trump is looking to undermine Britain, possibly for supporting Harris instead of himself. He’s a shit stirrer.
It's a mistake for Farage to say we should accept the disgusting Begum back in the UK. She can rot in Syrian prison or they can deport her to Bangladesh. Just because Trump wants us to take her back it doesn't mean we should.
There is zero chance that she will face proper justice here for her crimes, a small slap on the wrist and probably a free council flat and benefits for life in Tower Hamlets is the most likely outcome.
I agree on all counts. It's not good and not come at a good time for Reform UK. I'm not sure what I'd have done in Farage's position (under strong pressure from Trump to support taking back Begum). I'm not altogether sure why Trump wants us to take her back so much.
Overall I think Reform will weather the councillors leaving as growing pains.
I get the logic that Begum is our responsibility and we should be responsible for her and I've always said as much. We shouldn't dump someone radicalised in the UK on another country just because her parents weren't born here..
The bit I don't get as you also say is why is Trump concerned about it..
I think Trump is looking to undermine Britain, possibly for supporting Harris instead of himself. He’s a shit stirrer.
Tbf he hasn't singled out the UK, he's said all European countries with foreign terrorist fighters in limbo should repatriate them. It effects us most because we have the highest number of unrepatriated terrorists in and around Syria.
We should repatriate them and bring charges, Treason if possible (we were fighting against Isis so they were aiding the enemy)
Rangoon is a bit of a shithole. A shithole full of post imperial noom but a bit of a shithole nonethiess
We built an entire and magnificent Victorian/Edwardian city on the banks of the woogly-waggly here, a mighty grid of banks and churches and city halls and customs houses and ornate Anglo-Burmese train stations - surrounding the golden pagodas - and now it all rots like a collection of Sicilian palazzi and trees grow through the roofs of the Port Authority HQ and Mon women, cheeks daubed with yellow thanaka paste, squat in the mildewed porches of the shuttered Strand Hotel selling tiny lychees and cheap Chinese dolls
There's some value in seeing it, though, as it's a perfect microcosm of much of the post-Imperial third world. At least that's what I thought when I was there a decade ago.
We introduced state of the art Victorian governance and since we left, rather than build on our achievements with the added blessings of self-determination and democracy they have let it fall apart and the rest of the place with it.
A pattern replicated in many places, sadly, from Hong Kong to Freetown to Khartoum to Salisbury to ...
It's 15 years ago that I was there. I quite liked Rangoon, which I found to be very different to a lot of South East Asia, perhaps a view to what Thailand and Vietnam looked like before the impact of the West. Even then though the number of Chinese goods was driving out local goods. I was mostly in Upper Burma though, which is the heartland of Burmese culture.
Burma was run as an outpost of British India, particularly to provide rice to Bengal. In 1942 Rangoon was 50% Bengali, most of whom fled, and often died, in the Empires longest retreat to India. This is a large factor in both the wartime Bengal famine, and the continuing animosity of Burmese to Muslims (seen as an Imperial presence inflicted by Britain on them). State of the art Victorian governance consisted of no say for local people in governance and forced extraction of resources at the point of a gun.
I really liked Burma and might get back there sometime. It has a dreadful and barbaric military government, but magnificent and largely intact cultures and landscapes. There may well be regime change at some point as the military have had a number of recent setbacks in the ongoing civil wars. The rebels vary from pro-democracy students to Narco-oligarchs, via a multiplicity of minority nationalists. To say that Myanmar politics is opaque is one of the great understatement.
Does it have anything to rival that famous Cambodian Temple city ?
The legend of Angkor Wat, I think it's called.
I have not been to Angkor Wat, but Bagan is one of the great sites. It was a city of 1 million people at one time, but all that is left now is the stone pagodas, perhaps a thousand of them in various states of ruin and size, with the civilian buildings all rotted away, leaving a massive plain of stupas.
Shortly before I visited all the local people were cleared off the site, at gunpoint by the SLORC military, without compensation, in order to make it more of a tourist site. Burma is full of that sort of brutal history amongst the beauty.
Angkor Wat is arguably THE single most impressive monument from the pre-modern world. And yes I’m including the pantheon, pyramids, Hagia Sophia, any medieval cathedrals (tho if you take them all together), Luxor; macchu pichu, Teotihuacan, and all
I’ve seen them all and Angkor Wat remains - to my mind - in a dreamy world of its own. Albeit now blighted by billions of tourists
I’ll be interested to compare Bagan. I very much doubt it’s in the same league but it does sound fabulous
I am excluding Gobekli Tepe and the tas Tepeler because you have to. They are more like alien cities from Martian invasions
I was going to say Gobekli Tepe is surely the most amazing example of ancient civilisation. Dated to 10,000 BC and it's just insane. Demolishes the idea that ancient humans were simple hunter gatherers and the African origin theory. It's been, err, interesting watching woke scientists try harder and harder to hold onto the African origin theory to the point of attempting to excommunicate scientists who dare to defy the prevailing theory. It's always amazing how scientific method takes a back seat when establishment approved ideas get disproved.
How exactly does it demolish Out of Africa?
The timelines no longer make sense.
Surely mankind left Africa a lot more than 10,000 years ago
Rangoon is a bit of a shithole. A shithole full of post imperial noom but a bit of a shithole nonethiess
We built an entire and magnificent Victorian/Edwardian city on the banks of the woogly-waggly here, a mighty grid of banks and churches and city halls and customs houses and ornate Anglo-Burmese train stations - surrounding the golden pagodas - and now it all rots like a collection of Sicilian palazzi and trees grow through the roofs of the Port Authority HQ and Mon women, cheeks daubed with yellow thanaka paste, squat in the mildewed porches of the shuttered Strand Hotel selling tiny lychees and cheap Chinese dolls
There's some value in seeing it, though, as it's a perfect microcosm of much of the post-Imperial third world. At least that's what I thought when I was there a decade ago.
We introduced state of the art Victorian governance and since we left, rather than build on our achievements with the added blessings of self-determination and democracy they have let it fall apart and the rest of the place with it.
A pattern replicated in many places, sadly, from Hong Kong to Freetown to Khartoum to Salisbury to ...
It's 15 years ago that I was there. I quite liked Rangoon, which I found to be very different to a lot of South East Asia, perhaps a view to what Thailand and Vietnam looked like before the impact of the West. Even then though the number of Chinese goods was driving out local goods. I was mostly in Upper Burma though, which is the heartland of Burmese culture.
Burma was run as an outpost of British India, particularly to provide rice to Bengal. In 1942 Rangoon was 50% Bengali, most of whom fled, and often died, in the Empires longest retreat to India. This is a large factor in both the wartime Bengal famine, and the continuing animosity of Burmese to Muslims (seen as an Imperial presence inflicted by Britain on them). State of the art Victorian governance consisted of no say for local people in governance and forced extraction of resources at the point of a gun.
I really liked Burma and might get back there sometime. It has a dreadful and barbaric military government, but magnificent and largely intact cultures and landscapes. There may well be regime change at some point as the military have had a number of recent setbacks in the ongoing civil wars. The rebels vary from pro-democracy students to Narco-oligarchs, via a multiplicity of minority nationalists. To say that Myanmar politics is opaque is one of the great understatement.
Does it have anything to rival that famous Cambodian Temple city ?
The legend of Angkor Wat, I think it's called.
I have not been to Angkor Wat, but Bagan is one of the great sites. It was a city of 1 million people at one time, but all that is left now is the stone pagodas, perhaps a thousand of them in various states of ruin and size, with the civilian buildings all rotted away, leaving a massive plain of stupas.
Shortly before I visited all the local people were cleared off the site, at gunpoint by the SLORC military, without compensation, in order to make it more of a tourist site. Burma is full of that sort of brutal history amongst the beauty.
Angkor Wat is arguably THE single most impressive monument from the pre-modern world. And yes I’m including the pantheon, pyramids, Hagia Sophia, any medieval cathedrals (tho if you take them all together), Luxor; macchu pichu, Teotihuacan, and all
I’ve seen them all and Angkor Wat remains - to my mind - in a dreamy world of its own. Albeit now blighted by billions of tourists
I’ll be interested to compare Bagan. I very much doubt it’s in the same league but it does sound fabulous
I am excluding Gobekli Tepe and the tas Tepeler because you have to. They are more like alien cities from Martian invasions
I was going to say Gobekli Tepe is surely the most amazing example of ancient civilisation. Dated to 10,000 BC and it's just insane. Demolishes the idea that ancient humans were simple hunter gatherers and the African origin theory. It's been, err, interesting watching woke scientists try harder and harder to hold onto the African origin theory to the point of attempting to excommunicate scientists who dare to defy the prevailing theory. It's always amazing how scientific method takes a back seat when establishment approved ideas get disproved.
Wrong timescale for there to be a clash. OOA is much earlier. Order of magnitude or two earlier, as I understand it.
Rangoon is a bit of a shithole. A shithole full of post imperial noom but a bit of a shithole nonethiess
We built an entire and magnificent Victorian/Edwardian city on the banks of the woogly-waggly here, a mighty grid of banks and churches and city halls and customs houses and ornate Anglo-Burmese train stations - surrounding the golden pagodas - and now it all rots like a collection of Sicilian palazzi and trees grow through the roofs of the Port Authority HQ and Mon women, cheeks daubed with yellow thanaka paste, squat in the mildewed porches of the shuttered Strand Hotel selling tiny lychees and cheap Chinese dolls
There's some value in seeing it, though, as it's a perfect microcosm of much of the post-Imperial third world. At least that's what I thought when I was there a decade ago.
We introduced state of the art Victorian governance and since we left, rather than build on our achievements with the added blessings of self-determination and democracy they have let it fall apart and the rest of the place with it.
A pattern replicated in many places, sadly, from Hong Kong to Freetown to Khartoum to Salisbury to ...
It's 15 years ago that I was there. I quite liked Rangoon, which I found to be very different to a lot of South East Asia, perhaps a view to what Thailand and Vietnam looked like before the impact of the West. Even then though the number of Chinese goods was driving out local goods. I was mostly in Upper Burma though, which is the heartland of Burmese culture.
Burma was run as an outpost of British India, particularly to provide rice to Bengal. In 1942 Rangoon was 50% Bengali, most of whom fled, and often died, in the Empires longest retreat to India. This is a large factor in both the wartime Bengal famine, and the continuing animosity of Burmese to Muslims (seen as an Imperial presence inflicted by Britain on them). State of the art Victorian governance consisted of no say for local people in governance and forced extraction of resources at the point of a gun.
I really liked Burma and might get back there sometime. It has a dreadful and barbaric military government, but magnificent and largely intact cultures and landscapes. There may well be regime change at some point as the military have had a number of recent setbacks in the ongoing civil wars. The rebels vary from pro-democracy students to Narco-oligarchs, via a multiplicity of minority nationalists. To say that Myanmar politics is opaque is one of the great understatement.
Does it have anything to rival that famous Cambodian Temple city ?
The legend of Angkor Wat, I think it's called.
I have not been to Angkor Wat, but Bagan is one of the great sites. It was a city of 1 million people at one time, but all that is left now is the stone pagodas, perhaps a thousand of them in various states of ruin and size, with the civilian buildings all rotted away, leaving a massive plain of stupas.
Shortly before I visited all the local people were cleared off the site, at gunpoint by the SLORC military, without compensation, in order to make it more of a tourist site. Burma is full of that sort of brutal history amongst the beauty.
Angkor Wat is arguably THE single most impressive monument from the pre-modern world. And yes I’m including the pantheon, pyramids, Hagia Sophia, any medieval cathedrals (tho if you take them all together), Luxor; macchu pichu, Teotihuacan, and all
I’ve seen them all and Angkor Wat remains - to my mind - in a dreamy world of its own. Albeit now blighted by billions of tourists
I’ll be interested to compare Bagan. I very much doubt it’s in the same league but it does sound fabulous
I am excluding Gobekli Tepe and the tas Tepeler because you have to. They are more like alien cities from Martian invasions
I was going to say Gobekli Tepe is surely the most amazing example of ancient civilisation. Dated to 10,000 BC and it's just insane. Demolishes the idea that ancient humans were simple hunter gatherers and the African origin theory. It's been, err, interesting watching woke scientists try harder and harder to hold onto the African origin theory to the point of attempting to excommunicate scientists who dare to defy the prevailing theory. It's always amazing how scientific method takes a back seat when establishment approved ideas get disproved.
How exactly does it demolish Out of Africa?
That sounds an odd claim. GT is dated to 10,000 BC, whilst the OOA theory is based around a timespan 100-200,000 years ago. So the two sit very well together.
OOA theory may be wrong - in outline and especially in detail - but I cannot see how the existence of GT disproves it.
Rangoon is a bit of a shithole. A shithole full of post imperial noom but a bit of a shithole nonethiess
We built an entire and magnificent Victorian/Edwardian city on the banks of the woogly-waggly here, a mighty grid of banks and churches and city halls and customs houses and ornate Anglo-Burmese train stations - surrounding the golden pagodas - and now it all rots like a collection of Sicilian palazzi and trees grow through the roofs of the Port Authority HQ and Mon women, cheeks daubed with yellow thanaka paste, squat in the mildewed porches of the shuttered Strand Hotel selling tiny lychees and cheap Chinese dolls
There's some value in seeing it, though, as it's a perfect microcosm of much of the post-Imperial third world. At least that's what I thought when I was there a decade ago.
We introduced state of the art Victorian governance and since we left, rather than build on our achievements with the added blessings of self-determination and democracy they have let it fall apart and the rest of the place with it.
A pattern replicated in many places, sadly, from Hong Kong to Freetown to Khartoum to Salisbury to ...
It's 15 years ago that I was there. I quite liked Rangoon, which I found to be very different to a lot of South East Asia, perhaps a view to what Thailand and Vietnam looked like before the impact of the West. Even then though the number of Chinese goods was driving out local goods. I was mostly in Upper Burma though, which is the heartland of Burmese culture.
Burma was run as an outpost of British India, particularly to provide rice to Bengal. In 1942 Rangoon was 50% Bengali, most of whom fled, and often died, in the Empires longest retreat to India. This is a large factor in both the wartime Bengal famine, and the continuing animosity of Burmese to Muslims (seen as an Imperial presence inflicted by Britain on them). State of the art Victorian governance consisted of no say for local people in governance and forced extraction of resources at the point of a gun.
I really liked Burma and might get back there sometime. It has a dreadful and barbaric military government, but magnificent and largely intact cultures and landscapes. There may well be regime change at some point as the military have had a number of recent setbacks in the ongoing civil wars. The rebels vary from pro-democracy students to Narco-oligarchs, via a multiplicity of minority nationalists. To say that Myanmar politics is opaque is one of the great understatement.
Does it have anything to rival that famous Cambodian Temple city ?
The legend of Angkor Wat, I think it's called.
I have not been to Angkor Wat, but Bagan is one of the great sites. It was a city of 1 million people at one time, but all that is left now is the stone pagodas, perhaps a thousand of them in various states of ruin and size, with the civilian buildings all rotted away, leaving a massive plain of stupas.
Shortly before I visited all the local people were cleared off the site, at gunpoint by the SLORC military, without compensation, in order to make it more of a tourist site. Burma is full of that sort of brutal history amongst the beauty.
Angkor Wat is arguably THE single most impressive monument from the pre-modern world. And yes I’m including the pantheon, pyramids, Hagia Sophia, any medieval cathedrals (tho if you take them all together), Luxor; macchu pichu, Teotihuacan, and all
I’ve seen them all and Angkor Wat remains - to my mind - in a dreamy world of its own. Albeit now blighted by billions of tourists
I’ll be interested to compare Bagan. I very much doubt it’s in the same league but it does sound fabulous
I am excluding Gobekli Tepe and the tas Tepeler because you have to. They are more like alien cities from Martian invasions
I was going to say Gobekli Tepe is surely the most amazing example of ancient civilisation. Dated to 10,000 BC and it's just insane. Demolishes the idea that ancient humans were simple hunter gatherers and the African origin theory. It's been, err, interesting watching woke scientists try harder and harder to hold onto the African origin theory to the point of attempting to excommunicate scientists who dare to defy the prevailing theory. It's always amazing how scientific method takes a back seat when establishment approved ideas get disproved.
There is literally nothing you guys won't blame on woke. Fires in California, academics being arseholes, incitement to to violence leading to convictions.
All of these things have been going on for centuries.
Rangoon is a bit of a shithole. A shithole full of post imperial noom but a bit of a shithole nonethiess
We built an entire and magnificent Victorian/Edwardian city on the banks of the woogly-waggly here, a mighty grid of banks and churches and city halls and customs houses and ornate Anglo-Burmese train stations - surrounding the golden pagodas - and now it all rots like a collection of Sicilian palazzi and trees grow through the roofs of the Port Authority HQ and Mon women, cheeks daubed with yellow thanaka paste, squat in the mildewed porches of the shuttered Strand Hotel selling tiny lychees and cheap Chinese dolls
There's some value in seeing it, though, as it's a perfect microcosm of much of the post-Imperial third world. At least that's what I thought when I was there a decade ago.
We introduced state of the art Victorian governance and since we left, rather than build on our achievements with the added blessings of self-determination and democracy they have let it fall apart and the rest of the place with it.
A pattern replicated in many places, sadly, from Hong Kong to Freetown to Khartoum to Salisbury to ...
It's 15 years ago that I was there. I quite liked Rangoon, which I found to be very different to a lot of South East Asia, perhaps a view to what Thailand and Vietnam looked like before the impact of the West. Even then though the number of Chinese goods was driving out local goods. I was mostly in Upper Burma though, which is the heartland of Burmese culture.
Burma was run as an outpost of British India, particularly to provide rice to Bengal. In 1942 Rangoon was 50% Bengali, most of whom fled, and often died, in the Empires longest retreat to India. This is a large factor in both the wartime Bengal famine, and the continuing animosity of Burmese to Muslims (seen as an Imperial presence inflicted by Britain on them). State of the art Victorian governance consisted of no say for local people in governance and forced extraction of resources at the point of a gun.
I really liked Burma and might get back there sometime. It has a dreadful and barbaric military government, but magnificent and largely intact cultures and landscapes. There may well be regime change at some point as the military have had a number of recent setbacks in the ongoing civil wars. The rebels vary from pro-democracy students to Narco-oligarchs, via a multiplicity of minority nationalists. To say that Myanmar politics is opaque is one of the great understatement.
Does it have anything to rival that famous Cambodian Temple city ?
The legend of Angkor Wat, I think it's called.
I have not been to Angkor Wat, but Bagan is one of the great sites. It was a city of 1 million people at one time, but all that is left now is the stone pagodas, perhaps a thousand of them in various states of ruin and size, with the civilian buildings all rotted away, leaving a massive plain of stupas.
Shortly before I visited all the local people were cleared off the site, at gunpoint by the SLORC military, without compensation, in order to make it more of a tourist site. Burma is full of that sort of brutal history amongst the beauty.
Angkor Wat is arguably THE single most impressive monument from the pre-modern world. And yes I’m including the pantheon, pyramids, Hagia Sophia, any medieval cathedrals (tho if you take them all together), Luxor; macchu pichu, Teotihuacan, and all
I’ve seen them all and Angkor Wat remains - to my mind - in a dreamy world of its own. Albeit now blighted by billions of tourists
I’ll be interested to compare Bagan. I very much doubt it’s in the same league but it does sound fabulous
I am excluding Gobekli Tepe and the tas Tepeler because you have to. They are more like alien cities from Martian invasions
I was going to say Gobekli Tepe is surely the most amazing example of ancient civilisation. Dated to 10,000 BC and it's just insane. Demolishes the idea that ancient humans were simple hunter gatherers and the African origin theory. It's been, err, interesting watching woke scientists try harder and harder to hold onto the African origin theory to the point of attempting to excommunicate scientists who dare to defy the prevailing theory. It's always amazing how scientific method takes a back seat when establishment approved ideas get disproved.
There is literally nothing you guys won't blame on woke. Fires in California, academics being arseholes, incitement to to violence leading to convictions.
All of these things have been going on for centuries.
Are you saying woke has been going on for centuries?
Rangoon is a bit of a shithole. A shithole full of post imperial noom but a bit of a shithole nonethiess
We built an entire and magnificent Victorian/Edwardian city on the banks of the woogly-waggly here, a mighty grid of banks and churches and city halls and customs houses and ornate Anglo-Burmese train stations - surrounding the golden pagodas - and now it all rots like a collection of Sicilian palazzi and trees grow through the roofs of the Port Authority HQ and Mon women, cheeks daubed with yellow thanaka paste, squat in the mildewed porches of the shuttered Strand Hotel selling tiny lychees and cheap Chinese dolls
There's some value in seeing it, though, as it's a perfect microcosm of much of the post-Imperial third world. At least that's what I thought when I was there a decade ago.
We introduced state of the art Victorian governance and since we left, rather than build on our achievements with the added blessings of self-determination and democracy they have let it fall apart and the rest of the place with it.
A pattern replicated in many places, sadly, from Hong Kong to Freetown to Khartoum to Salisbury to ...
It's 15 years ago that I was there. I quite liked Rangoon, which I found to be very different to a lot of South East Asia, perhaps a view to what Thailand and Vietnam looked like before the impact of the West. Even then though the number of Chinese goods was driving out local goods. I was mostly in Upper Burma though, which is the heartland of Burmese culture.
Burma was run as an outpost of British India, particularly to provide rice to Bengal. In 1942 Rangoon was 50% Bengali, most of whom fled, and often died, in the Empires longest retreat to India. This is a large factor in both the wartime Bengal famine, and the continuing animosity of Burmese to Muslims (seen as an Imperial presence inflicted by Britain on them). State of the art Victorian governance consisted of no say for local people in governance and forced extraction of resources at the point of a gun.
I really liked Burma and might get back there sometime. It has a dreadful and barbaric military government, but magnificent and largely intact cultures and landscapes. There may well be regime change at some point as the military have had a number of recent setbacks in the ongoing civil wars. The rebels vary from pro-democracy students to Narco-oligarchs, via a multiplicity of minority nationalists. To say that Myanmar politics is opaque is one of the great understatement.
Does it have anything to rival that famous Cambodian Temple city ?
The legend of Angkor Wat, I think it's called.
I have not been to Angkor Wat, but Bagan is one of the great sites. It was a city of 1 million people at one time, but all that is left now is the stone pagodas, perhaps a thousand of them in various states of ruin and size, with the civilian buildings all rotted away, leaving a massive plain of stupas.
Shortly before I visited all the local people were cleared off the site, at gunpoint by the SLORC military, without compensation, in order to make it more of a tourist site. Burma is full of that sort of brutal history amongst the beauty.
Angkor Wat is arguably THE single most impressive monument from the pre-modern world. And yes I’m including the pantheon, pyramids, Hagia Sophia, any medieval cathedrals (tho if you take them all together), Luxor; macchu pichu, Teotihuacan, and all
I’ve seen them all and Angkor Wat remains - to my mind - in a dreamy world of its own. Albeit now blighted by billions of tourists
I’ll be interested to compare Bagan. I very much doubt it’s in the same league but it does sound fabulous
I am excluding Gobekli Tepe and the tas Tepeler because you have to. They are more like alien cities from Martian invasions
I was going to say Gobekli Tepe is surely the most amazing example of ancient civilisation. Dated to 10,000 BC and it's just insane. Demolishes the idea that ancient humans were simple hunter gatherers and the African origin theory. It's been, err, interesting watching woke scientists try harder and harder to hold onto the African origin theory to the point of attempting to excommunicate scientists who dare to defy the prevailing theory. It's always amazing how scientific method takes a back seat when establishment approved ideas get disproved.
There is literally nothing you guys won't blame on woke. Fires in California, academics being arseholes, incitement to to violence leading to convictions.
All of these things have been going on for centuries.
" Speaking as part of a video that aired during a commercial break for the FOX show 9-1-1 about firefighter capabilities, Larson said, "Am I able to carry your husband out of a fire? He got himself in the wrong place if I have to carry him out." "
Rangoon is a bit of a shithole. A shithole full of post imperial noom but a bit of a shithole nonethiess
We built an entire and magnificent Victorian/Edwardian city on the banks of the woogly-waggly here, a mighty grid of banks and churches and city halls and customs houses and ornate Anglo-Burmese train stations - surrounding the golden pagodas - and now it all rots like a collection of Sicilian palazzi and trees grow through the roofs of the Port Authority HQ and Mon women, cheeks daubed with yellow thanaka paste, squat in the mildewed porches of the shuttered Strand Hotel selling tiny lychees and cheap Chinese dolls
There's some value in seeing it, though, as it's a perfect microcosm of much of the post-Imperial third world. At least that's what I thought when I was there a decade ago.
We introduced state of the art Victorian governance and since we left, rather than build on our achievements with the added blessings of self-determination and democracy they have let it fall apart and the rest of the place with it.
A pattern replicated in many places, sadly, from Hong Kong to Freetown to Khartoum to Salisbury to ...
It's 15 years ago that I was there. I quite liked Rangoon, which I found to be very different to a lot of South East Asia, perhaps a view to what Thailand and Vietnam looked like before the impact of the West. Even then though the number of Chinese goods was driving out local goods. I was mostly in Upper Burma though, which is the heartland of Burmese culture.
Burma was run as an outpost of British India, particularly to provide rice to Bengal. In 1942 Rangoon was 50% Bengali, most of whom fled, and often died, in the Empires longest retreat to India. This is a large factor in both the wartime Bengal famine, and the continuing animosity of Burmese to Muslims (seen as an Imperial presence inflicted by Britain on them). State of the art Victorian governance consisted of no say for local people in governance and forced extraction of resources at the point of a gun.
I really liked Burma and might get back there sometime. It has a dreadful and barbaric military government, but magnificent and largely intact cultures and landscapes. There may well be regime change at some point as the military have had a number of recent setbacks in the ongoing civil wars. The rebels vary from pro-democracy students to Narco-oligarchs, via a multiplicity of minority nationalists. To say that Myanmar politics is opaque is one of the great understatement.
Does it have anything to rival that famous Cambodian Temple city ?
The legend of Angkor Wat, I think it's called.
I have not been to Angkor Wat, but Bagan is one of the great sites. It was a city of 1 million people at one time, but all that is left now is the stone pagodas, perhaps a thousand of them in various states of ruin and size, with the civilian buildings all rotted away, leaving a massive plain of stupas.
Shortly before I visited all the local people were cleared off the site, at gunpoint by the SLORC military, without compensation, in order to make it more of a tourist site. Burma is full of that sort of brutal history amongst the beauty.
Angkor Wat is arguably THE single most impressive monument from the pre-modern world. And yes I’m including the pantheon, pyramids, Hagia Sophia, any medieval cathedrals (tho if you take them all together), Luxor; macchu pichu, Teotihuacan, and all
I’ve seen them all and Angkor Wat remains - to my mind - in a dreamy world of its own. Albeit now blighted by billions of tourists
I’ll be interested to compare Bagan. I very much doubt it’s in the same league but it does sound fabulous
I am excluding Gobekli Tepe and the tas Tepeler because you have to. They are more like alien cities from Martian invasions
I was going to say Gobekli Tepe is surely the most amazing example of ancient civilisation. Dated to 10,000 BC and it's just insane. Demolishes the idea that ancient humans were simple hunter gatherers and the African origin theory. It's been, err, interesting watching woke scientists try harder and harder to hold onto the African origin theory to the point of attempting to excommunicate scientists who dare to defy the prevailing theory. It's always amazing how scientific method takes a back seat when establishment approved ideas get disproved.
There is literally nothing you guys won't blame on woke. Fires in California, academics being arseholes, incitement to to violence leading to convictions.
All of these things have been going on for centuries.
Are you saying woke has been going on for centuries?
Alabama 1860s: "All those woke evolutionists proving that humans are a single race!"
It's a mistake for Farage to say we should accept the disgusting Begum back in the UK. She can rot in Syrian prison or they can deport her to Bangladesh. Just because Trump wants us to take her back it doesn't mean we should.
There is zero chance that she will face proper justice here for her crimes, a small slap on the wrist and probably a free council flat and benefits for life in Tower Hamlets is the most likely outcome.
A great number of people seem to be far more concerned for her, than they are for her victims and the victims of the group she willingly joined.
The middle position gets overlooked - she has behaved appallingly, and even at 15 should have known much better and deserves little from the UK, though if there were a general international repatriation programme from the area she currently lives she should be part of it. She should face justice in the UK. But what we should never do is land the problem on a not very wealthy third country (Bangladesh) who have nothing to do with it, nor should we render UK citizens stateless.
In this instance, rarely, Trump and Farage are more grown up than either Conservative or Labour, or the Supreme Court who should have told the government where to go.
We cannot render UK citizens stateless. The law prevents us from doing so. The Home Secretary's decision to exclude her was upheld by the Supreme Court because, at the time it was made, it did not render her stateless. According to the evidence presented, she is now stateless due to her failure to do what was needed to retain her Bangladeshi citizenship.
She never held Bangladeshi citizenship, though was potentially eligible for it, so could not "retain" something she never had.
To be able to remove citizenship because someone is potentially eligible for anther citizenship is quite an authoritarian power. Potentially not just second generation migrants, but also those born in Northern Ireland and all Jews. Such power could easily be abused by an ethno-nationalist government, as for example India has done.
The courts clearly stated in their judgements that she held Bangladeshi citizenship by descent until her 21st birthday. She wasn't "potentially eligible" for Bangladeshi citizenship. She actually held it. Or do you know something the courts don't?
The decision that she held citizenship was based on Bangladesh's Citizenship Act 1951 Section 5 which states "Subject to the provisions of section 3 a person born after the commencement of this Act, shall be a citizen of Bangladesh by descent if his father or mother is a citizen of Bangladesh at the time of his birth:"
"The state minister of foreign affairs of Bangladesh, Shahriar Alam, asserted in a statement to the British media just days after Javid’s announcement that Begum was not a citizen of Bangladesh and would be denied entry to the country."
She has never held a Bangladeshi passport and never been to the country. Bangladesh says she has never been a citizen.
Politician makes statement contrary to the law shocker.
No, she has never held a Bangladeshi passport and, as far as I can see, has never been there. I am not an expert in Bangladeshi law, but the experts who gave evidence in the UK courts were clear that she was a citizen until she was 21, regardless of any statements to the contrary by Bangladeshi politicians.
Rangoon is a bit of a shithole. A shithole full of post imperial noom but a bit of a shithole nonethiess
We built an entire and magnificent Victorian/Edwardian city on the banks of the woogly-waggly here, a mighty grid of banks and churches and city halls and customs houses and ornate Anglo-Burmese train stations - surrounding the golden pagodas - and now it all rots like a collection of Sicilian palazzi and trees grow through the roofs of the Port Authority HQ and Mon women, cheeks daubed with yellow thanaka paste, squat in the mildewed porches of the shuttered Strand Hotel selling tiny lychees and cheap Chinese dolls
There's some value in seeing it, though, as it's a perfect microcosm of much of the post-Imperial third world. At least that's what I thought when I was there a decade ago.
We introduced state of the art Victorian governance and since we left, rather than build on our achievements with the added blessings of self-determination and democracy they have let it fall apart and the rest of the place with it.
A pattern replicated in many places, sadly, from Hong Kong to Freetown to Khartoum to Salisbury to ...
It's 15 years ago that I was there. I quite liked Rangoon, which I found to be very different to a lot of South East Asia, perhaps a view to what Thailand and Vietnam looked like before the impact of the West. Even then though the number of Chinese goods was driving out local goods. I was mostly in Upper Burma though, which is the heartland of Burmese culture.
Burma was run as an outpost of British India, particularly to provide rice to Bengal. In 1942 Rangoon was 50% Bengali, most of whom fled, and often died, in the Empires longest retreat to India. This is a large factor in both the wartime Bengal famine, and the continuing animosity of Burmese to Muslims (seen as an Imperial presence inflicted by Britain on them). State of the art Victorian governance consisted of no say for local people in governance and forced extraction of resources at the point of a gun.
I really liked Burma and might get back there sometime. It has a dreadful and barbaric military government, but magnificent and largely intact cultures and landscapes. There may well be regime change at some point as the military have had a number of recent setbacks in the ongoing civil wars. The rebels vary from pro-democracy students to Narco-oligarchs, via a multiplicity of minority nationalists. To say that Myanmar politics is opaque is one of the great understatement.
Does it have anything to rival that famous Cambodian Temple city ?
The legend of Angkor Wat, I think it's called.
I have not been to Angkor Wat, but Bagan is one of the great sites. It was a city of 1 million people at one time, but all that is left now is the stone pagodas, perhaps a thousand of them in various states of ruin and size, with the civilian buildings all rotted away, leaving a massive plain of stupas.
Shortly before I visited all the local people were cleared off the site, at gunpoint by the SLORC military, without compensation, in order to make it more of a tourist site. Burma is full of that sort of brutal history amongst the beauty.
Angkor Wat is arguably THE single most impressive monument from the pre-modern world. And yes I’m including the pantheon, pyramids, Hagia Sophia, any medieval cathedrals (tho if you take them all together), Luxor; macchu pichu, Teotihuacan, and all
I’ve seen them all and Angkor Wat remains - to my mind - in a dreamy world of its own. Albeit now blighted by billions of tourists
I’ll be interested to compare Bagan. I very much doubt it’s in the same league but it does sound fabulous
I am excluding Gobekli Tepe and the tas Tepeler because you have to. They are more like alien cities from Martian invasions
I was going to say Gobekli Tepe is surely the most amazing example of ancient civilisation. Dated to 10,000 BC and it's just insane. Demolishes the idea that ancient humans were simple hunter gatherers and the African origin theory. It's been, err, interesting watching woke scientists try harder and harder to hold onto the African origin theory to the point of attempting to excommunicate scientists who dare to defy the prevailing theory. It's always amazing how scientific method takes a back seat when establishment approved ideas get disproved.
There is literally nothing you guys won't blame on woke. Fires in California, academics being arseholes, incitement to to violence leading to convictions.
All of these things have been going on for centuries.
In any case, I don't think that for a long time anyone has regarded hunter-gatherers as 'simple'. Anthropologists have a very healthy respect for them - their accumulated knowledge, skills, and culture. Vide for instance the peoples of Australia, the Polar North, etc. They might not carry around enough junk to leave [edit] much clutter for the future archaeologists, but that's a different matter.
Rangoon is a bit of a shithole. A shithole full of post imperial noom but a bit of a shithole nonethiess
We built an entire and magnificent Victorian/Edwardian city on the banks of the woogly-waggly here, a mighty grid of banks and churches and city halls and customs houses and ornate Anglo-Burmese train stations - surrounding the golden pagodas - and now it all rots like a collection of Sicilian palazzi and trees grow through the roofs of the Port Authority HQ and Mon women, cheeks daubed with yellow thanaka paste, squat in the mildewed porches of the shuttered Strand Hotel selling tiny lychees and cheap Chinese dolls
There's some value in seeing it, though, as it's a perfect microcosm of much of the post-Imperial third world. At least that's what I thought when I was there a decade ago.
We introduced state of the art Victorian governance and since we left, rather than build on our achievements with the added blessings of self-determination and democracy they have let it fall apart and the rest of the place with it.
A pattern replicated in many places, sadly, from Hong Kong to Freetown to Khartoum to Salisbury to ...
It's 15 years ago that I was there. I quite liked Rangoon, which I found to be very different to a lot of South East Asia, perhaps a view to what Thailand and Vietnam looked like before the impact of the West. Even then though the number of Chinese goods was driving out local goods. I was mostly in Upper Burma though, which is the heartland of Burmese culture.
Burma was run as an outpost of British India, particularly to provide rice to Bengal. In 1942 Rangoon was 50% Bengali, most of whom fled, and often died, in the Empires longest retreat to India. This is a large factor in both the wartime Bengal famine, and the continuing animosity of Burmese to Muslims (seen as an Imperial presence inflicted by Britain on them). State of the art Victorian governance consisted of no say for local people in governance and forced extraction of resources at the point of a gun.
I really liked Burma and might get back there sometime. It has a dreadful and barbaric military government, but magnificent and largely intact cultures and landscapes. There may well be regime change at some point as the military have had a number of recent setbacks in the ongoing civil wars. The rebels vary from pro-democracy students to Narco-oligarchs, via a multiplicity of minority nationalists. To say that Myanmar politics is opaque is one of the great understatement.
Does it have anything to rival that famous Cambodian Temple city ?
The legend of Angkor Wat, I think it's called.
I have not been to Angkor Wat, but Bagan is one of the great sites. It was a city of 1 million people at one time, but all that is left now is the stone pagodas, perhaps a thousand of them in various states of ruin and size, with the civilian buildings all rotted away, leaving a massive plain of stupas.
Shortly before I visited all the local people were cleared off the site, at gunpoint by the SLORC military, without compensation, in order to make it more of a tourist site. Burma is full of that sort of brutal history amongst the beauty.
Angkor Wat is arguably THE single most impressive monument from the pre-modern world. And yes I’m including the pantheon, pyramids, Hagia Sophia, any medieval cathedrals (tho if you take them all together), Luxor; macchu pichu, Teotihuacan, and all
I’ve seen them all and Angkor Wat remains - to my mind - in a dreamy world of its own. Albeit now blighted by billions of tourists
I’ll be interested to compare Bagan. I very much doubt it’s in the same league but it does sound fabulous
I am excluding Gobekli Tepe and the tas Tepeler because you have to. They are more like alien cities from Martian invasions
I was going to say Gobekli Tepe is surely the most amazing example of ancient civilisation. Dated to 10,000 BC and it's just insane. Demolishes the idea that ancient humans were simple hunter gatherers and the African origin theory. It's been, err, interesting watching woke scientists try harder and harder to hold onto the African origin theory to the point of attempting to excommunicate scientists who dare to defy the prevailing theory. It's always amazing how scientific method takes a back seat when establishment approved ideas get disproved.
How exactly does it demolish Out of Africa?
That sounds an odd claim. GT is dated to 10,000 BC, whilst the OOA theory is based around a timespan 100-200,000 years ago. So the two sit very well together.
OOA theory may be wrong - in outline and especially in detail - but I cannot see how the existence of GT disproves it.
I'd be surprised if it were wrong for Homo sapiens in particular. Just too much genetic diversity in Africa, and clear sequences of migration traceable in DNA. But certainly complicated by interbreeding with other humans such as Neanderthals, Denisovans, not sure about hobbits.
Rangoon is a bit of a shithole. A shithole full of post imperial noom but a bit of a shithole nonethiess
We built an entire and magnificent Victorian/Edwardian city on the banks of the woogly-waggly here, a mighty grid of banks and churches and city halls and customs houses and ornate Anglo-Burmese train stations - surrounding the golden pagodas - and now it all rots like a collection of Sicilian palazzi and trees grow through the roofs of the Port Authority HQ and Mon women, cheeks daubed with yellow thanaka paste, squat in the mildewed porches of the shuttered Strand Hotel selling tiny lychees and cheap Chinese dolls
There's some value in seeing it, though, as it's a perfect microcosm of much of the post-Imperial third world. At least that's what I thought when I was there a decade ago.
We introduced state of the art Victorian governance and since we left, rather than build on our achievements with the added blessings of self-determination and democracy they have let it fall apart and the rest of the place with it.
A pattern replicated in many places, sadly, from Hong Kong to Freetown to Khartoum to Salisbury to ...
It's 15 years ago that I was there. I quite liked Rangoon, which I found to be very different to a lot of South East Asia, perhaps a view to what Thailand and Vietnam looked like before the impact of the West. Even then though the number of Chinese goods was driving out local goods. I was mostly in Upper Burma though, which is the heartland of Burmese culture.
Burma was run as an outpost of British India, particularly to provide rice to Bengal. In 1942 Rangoon was 50% Bengali, most of whom fled, and often died, in the Empires longest retreat to India. This is a large factor in both the wartime Bengal famine, and the continuing animosity of Burmese to Muslims (seen as an Imperial presence inflicted by Britain on them). State of the art Victorian governance consisted of no say for local people in governance and forced extraction of resources at the point of a gun.
I really liked Burma and might get back there sometime. It has a dreadful and barbaric military government, but magnificent and largely intact cultures and landscapes. There may well be regime change at some point as the military have had a number of recent setbacks in the ongoing civil wars. The rebels vary from pro-democracy students to Narco-oligarchs, via a multiplicity of minority nationalists. To say that Myanmar politics is opaque is one of the great understatement.
Does it have anything to rival that famous Cambodian Temple city ?
The legend of Angkor Wat, I think it's called.
I have not been to Angkor Wat, but Bagan is one of the great sites. It was a city of 1 million people at one time, but all that is left now is the stone pagodas, perhaps a thousand of them in various states of ruin and size, with the civilian buildings all rotted away, leaving a massive plain of stupas.
Shortly before I visited all the local people were cleared off the site, at gunpoint by the SLORC military, without compensation, in order to make it more of a tourist site. Burma is full of that sort of brutal history amongst the beauty.
Angkor Wat is arguably THE single most impressive monument from the pre-modern world. And yes I’m including the pantheon, pyramids, Hagia Sophia, any medieval cathedrals (tho if you take them all together), Luxor; macchu pichu, Teotihuacan, and all
I’ve seen them all and Angkor Wat remains - to my mind - in a dreamy world of its own. Albeit now blighted by billions of tourists
I’ll be interested to compare Bagan. I very much doubt it’s in the same league but it does sound fabulous
I am excluding Gobekli Tepe and the tas Tepeler because you have to. They are more like alien cities from Martian invasions
I was going to say Gobekli Tepe is surely the most amazing example of ancient civilisation. Dated to 10,000 BC and it's just insane. Demolishes the idea that ancient humans were simple hunter gatherers and the African origin theory. It's been, err, interesting watching woke scientists try harder and harder to hold onto the African origin theory to the point of attempting to excommunicate scientists who dare to defy the prevailing theory. It's always amazing how scientific method takes a back seat when establishment approved ideas get disproved.
There is literally nothing you guys won't blame on woke. Fires in California, academics being arseholes, incitement to to violence leading to convictions.
All of these things have been going on for centuries.
" Speaking as part of a video that aired during a commercial break for the FOX show 9-1-1 about firefighter capabilities, Larson said, "Am I able to carry your husband out of a fire? He got himself in the wrong place if I have to carry him out." "
Speaking of which...
How does the existence of Gobekli Tepe 'demolish' the out-of-Africa theory?
It's a mistake for Farage to say we should accept the disgusting Begum back in the UK. She can rot in Syrian prison or they can deport her to Bangladesh. Just because Trump wants us to take her back it doesn't mean we should.
There is zero chance that she will face proper justice here for her crimes, a small slap on the wrist and probably a free council flat and benefits for life in Tower Hamlets is the most likely outcome.
A great number of people seem to be far more concerned for her, than they are for her victims and the victims of the group she willingly joined.
The middle position gets overlooked - she has behaved appallingly, and even at 15 should have known much better and deserves little from the UK, though if there were a general international repatriation programme from the area she currently lives she should be part of it. She should face justice in the UK. But what we should never do is land the problem on a not very wealthy third country (Bangladesh) who have nothing to do with it, nor should we render UK citizens stateless.
In this instance, rarely, Trump and Farage are more grown up than either Conservative or Labour, or the Supreme Court who should have told the government where to go.
We cannot render UK citizens stateless. The law prevents us from doing so. The Home Secretary's decision to exclude her was upheld by the Supreme Court because, at the time it was made, it did not render her stateless. According to the evidence presented, she is now stateless due to her failure to do what was needed to retain her Bangladeshi citizenship.
She never held Bangladeshi citizenship, though was potentially eligible for it, so could not "retain" something she never had.
To be able to remove citizenship because someone is potentially eligible for anther citizenship is quite an authoritarian power. Potentially not just second generation migrants, but also those born in Northern Ireland and all Jews. Such power could easily be abused by an ethno-nationalist government, as for example India has done.
The courts clearly stated in their judgements that she held Bangladeshi citizenship by descent until her 21st birthday. She wasn't "potentially eligible" for Bangladeshi citizenship. She actually held it. Or do you know something the courts don't?
The decision that she held citizenship was based on Bangladesh's Citizenship Act 1951 Section 5 which states "Subject to the provisions of section 3 a person born after the commencement of this Act, shall be a citizen of Bangladesh by descent if his father or mother is a citizen of Bangladesh at the time of his birth:"
"The state minister of foreign affairs of Bangladesh, Shahriar Alam, asserted in a statement to the British media just days after Javid’s announcement that Begum was not a citizen of Bangladesh and would be denied entry to the country."
She has never held a Bangladeshi passport and never been to the country. Bangladesh says she has never been a citizen.
Politician makes statement contrary to the law shocker.
No, she has never held a Bangladeshi passport and, as far as I can see, has never been there. I am not an expert in Bangladeshi law, but the experts who gave evidence in the UK courts were clear that she was a citizen until she was 21, regardless of any statements to the contrary by Bangladeshi politicians.
Just to correct myself slightly, it wasn't experts on Bangladeshi law that gave evidence in the UK courts. It was the Bangladeshi government that contradicted pronouncements by politicians and stated that she was a Bangladeshi citizen.
Note that her UK citizenship could not have been removed if she was only eligible for citizenship elsewhere. The law is that an individual can only have their UK citizenship removed if they actually hold citizenship of another country.
Rangoon is a bit of a shithole. A shithole full of post imperial noom but a bit of a shithole nonethiess
We built an entire and magnificent Victorian/Edwardian city on the banks of the woogly-waggly here, a mighty grid of banks and churches and city halls and customs houses and ornate Anglo-Burmese train stations - surrounding the golden pagodas - and now it all rots like a collection of Sicilian palazzi and trees grow through the roofs of the Port Authority HQ and Mon women, cheeks daubed with yellow thanaka paste, squat in the mildewed porches of the shuttered Strand Hotel selling tiny lychees and cheap Chinese dolls
There's some value in seeing it, though, as it's a perfect microcosm of much of the post-Imperial third world. At least that's what I thought when I was there a decade ago.
We introduced state of the art Victorian governance and since we left, rather than build on our achievements with the added blessings of self-determination and democracy they have let it fall apart and the rest of the place with it.
A pattern replicated in many places, sadly, from Hong Kong to Freetown to Khartoum to Salisbury to ...
It's 15 years ago that I was there. I quite liked Rangoon, which I found to be very different to a lot of South East Asia, perhaps a view to what Thailand and Vietnam looked like before the impact of the West. Even then though the number of Chinese goods was driving out local goods. I was mostly in Upper Burma though, which is the heartland of Burmese culture.
Burma was run as an outpost of British India, particularly to provide rice to Bengal. In 1942 Rangoon was 50% Bengali, most of whom fled, and often died, in the Empires longest retreat to India. This is a large factor in both the wartime Bengal famine, and the continuing animosity of Burmese to Muslims (seen as an Imperial presence inflicted by Britain on them). State of the art Victorian governance consisted of no say for local people in governance and forced extraction of resources at the point of a gun.
I really liked Burma and might get back there sometime. It has a dreadful and barbaric military government, but magnificent and largely intact cultures and landscapes. There may well be regime change at some point as the military have had a number of recent setbacks in the ongoing civil wars. The rebels vary from pro-democracy students to Narco-oligarchs, via a multiplicity of minority nationalists. To say that Myanmar politics is opaque is one of the great understatement.
Does it have anything to rival that famous Cambodian Temple city ?
The legend of Angkor Wat, I think it's called.
I have not been to Angkor Wat, but Bagan is one of the great sites. It was a city of 1 million people at one time, but all that is left now is the stone pagodas, perhaps a thousand of them in various states of ruin and size, with the civilian buildings all rotted away, leaving a massive plain of stupas.
Shortly before I visited all the local people were cleared off the site, at gunpoint by the SLORC military, without compensation, in order to make it more of a tourist site. Burma is full of that sort of brutal history amongst the beauty.
Angkor Wat is arguably THE single most impressive monument from the pre-modern world. And yes I’m including the pantheon, pyramids, Hagia Sophia, any medieval cathedrals (tho if you take them all together), Luxor; macchu pichu, Teotihuacan, and all
I’ve seen them all and Angkor Wat remains - to my mind - in a dreamy world of its own. Albeit now blighted by billions of tourists
I’ll be interested to compare Bagan. I very much doubt it’s in the same league but it does sound fabulous
I am excluding Gobekli Tepe and the tas Tepeler because you have to. They are more like alien cities from Martian invasions
I was going to say Gobekli Tepe is surely the most amazing example of ancient civilisation. Dated to 10,000 BC and it's just insane. Demolishes the idea that ancient humans were simple hunter gatherers and the African origin theory. It's been, err, interesting watching woke scientists try harder and harder to hold onto the African origin theory to the point of attempting to excommunicate scientists who dare to defy the prevailing theory. It's always amazing how scientific method takes a back seat when establishment approved ideas get disproved.
How exactly does it demolish Out of Africa?
That sounds an odd claim. GT is dated to 10,000 BC, whilst the OOA theory is based around a timespan 100-200,000 years ago. So the two sit very well together.
OOA theory may be wrong - in outline and especially in detail - but I cannot see how the existence of GT disproves it.
I'd be surprised if it were wrong for Homo sapiens in particular. Just too much genetic diversity in Africa, and clear sequences of migration traceable in DNA. But certainly complicated by interbreeding with other humans such as Neanderthals, Denisovans, not sure about hobbits.
Agreed. but that's why I said 'especially in detail'. AIUI most of the evidence points towards an African origin, but the way the spread occurred, and consequent intermingling and evolution - are vaguely known at best. As with any theory, further evidence and improved scientific techniques may fettle the theory, or even upend it.
An interesting question is *why* some people seem to be so keen to disprove the Out of Africa theory? Why does it matter where 'we' originated?
Rangoon is a bit of a shithole. A shithole full of post imperial noom but a bit of a shithole nonethiess
We built an entire and magnificent Victorian/Edwardian city on the banks of the woogly-waggly here, a mighty grid of banks and churches and city halls and customs houses and ornate Anglo-Burmese train stations - surrounding the golden pagodas - and now it all rots like a collection of Sicilian palazzi and trees grow through the roofs of the Port Authority HQ and Mon women, cheeks daubed with yellow thanaka paste, squat in the mildewed porches of the shuttered Strand Hotel selling tiny lychees and cheap Chinese dolls
There's some value in seeing it, though, as it's a perfect microcosm of much of the post-Imperial third world. At least that's what I thought when I was there a decade ago.
We introduced state of the art Victorian governance and since we left, rather than build on our achievements with the added blessings of self-determination and democracy they have let it fall apart and the rest of the place with it.
A pattern replicated in many places, sadly, from Hong Kong to Freetown to Khartoum to Salisbury to ...
It's 15 years ago that I was there. I quite liked Rangoon, which I found to be very different to a lot of South East Asia, perhaps a view to what Thailand and Vietnam looked like before the impact of the West. Even then though the number of Chinese goods was driving out local goods. I was mostly in Upper Burma though, which is the heartland of Burmese culture.
Burma was run as an outpost of British India, particularly to provide rice to Bengal. In 1942 Rangoon was 50% Bengali, most of whom fled, and often died, in the Empires longest retreat to India. This is a large factor in both the wartime Bengal famine, and the continuing animosity of Burmese to Muslims (seen as an Imperial presence inflicted by Britain on them). State of the art Victorian governance consisted of no say for local people in governance and forced extraction of resources at the point of a gun.
I really liked Burma and might get back there sometime. It has a dreadful and barbaric military government, but magnificent and largely intact cultures and landscapes. There may well be regime change at some point as the military have had a number of recent setbacks in the ongoing civil wars. The rebels vary from pro-democracy students to Narco-oligarchs, via a multiplicity of minority nationalists. To say that Myanmar politics is opaque is one of the great understatement.
Does it have anything to rival that famous Cambodian Temple city ?
The legend of Angkor Wat, I think it's called.
I have not been to Angkor Wat, but Bagan is one of the great sites. It was a city of 1 million people at one time, but all that is left now is the stone pagodas, perhaps a thousand of them in various states of ruin and size, with the civilian buildings all rotted away, leaving a massive plain of stupas.
Shortly before I visited all the local people were cleared off the site, at gunpoint by the SLORC military, without compensation, in order to make it more of a tourist site. Burma is full of that sort of brutal history amongst the beauty.
Angkor Wat is arguably THE single most impressive monument from the pre-modern world. And yes I’m including the pantheon, pyramids, Hagia Sophia, any medieval cathedrals (tho if you take them all together), Luxor; macchu pichu, Teotihuacan, and all
I’ve seen them all and Angkor Wat remains - to my mind - in a dreamy world of its own. Albeit now blighted by billions of tourists
I’ll be interested to compare Bagan. I very much doubt it’s in the same league but it does sound fabulous
I am excluding Gobekli Tepe and the tas Tepeler because you have to. They are more like alien cities from Martian invasions
I was going to say Gobekli Tepe is surely the most amazing example of ancient civilisation. Dated to 10,000 BC and it's just insane. Demolishes the idea that ancient humans were simple hunter gatherers and the African origin theory. It's been, err, interesting watching woke scientists try harder and harder to hold onto the African origin theory to the point of attempting to excommunicate scientists who dare to defy the prevailing theory. It's always amazing how scientific method takes a back seat when establishment approved ideas get disproved.
There is literally nothing you guys won't blame on woke. Fires in California, academics being arseholes, incitement to to violence leading to convictions.
All of these things have been going on for centuries.
Are you saying woke has been going on for centuries?
Alabama 1860s: "All those woke evolutionists proving that humans are a single race!"
On Woke I see Amazon and Meta have now cancelled their EDI and diversity schemes after Trump and GOP's election win in the USA
It's a mistake for Farage to say we should accept the disgusting Begum back in the UK. She can rot in Syrian prison or they can deport her to Bangladesh. Just because Trump wants us to take her back it doesn't mean we should.
There is zero chance that she will face proper justice here for her crimes, a small slap on the wrist and probably a free council flat and benefits for life in Tower Hamlets is the most likely outcome.
A great number of people seem to be far more concerned for her, than they are for her victims and the victims of the group she willingly joined.
It's perfectly possible to be concerned with both.
She was clearly groomed when underage to go to Syria.
The ability to remove citizenship at the whim of the Home Secretary is also a dangerously authoritarian power, albeit one that many like Jenrick might like to use.
I am very concerned about leaving someone stateless. But I also don't believe she had zero idea what she was doing when she went to Syria.
IMV she was not a victim. Bur she created many victims.
That's a very good case for trying her case in a British court and punishing her under British Law.
Rather than pretending that she has nothing to do with us.
She committed no crimes in the UK.
And even if she could legally be tried here for crimes committed abroad, how on earth would Britain be able to get the evidence or witnesses? No - if she is allowed to return, she would be free. She has had her day in court here. The courts have ruled and that's it. It is - frankly - none of the US's business.
Perhaps she should, after all, be tried where the crimes were committed and where the witnesses are?
It's a mistake for Farage to say we should accept the disgusting Begum back in the UK. She can rot in Syrian prison or they can deport her to Bangladesh. Just because Trump wants us to take her back it doesn't mean we should.
There is zero chance that she will face proper justice here for her crimes, a small slap on the wrist and probably a free council flat and benefits for life in Tower Hamlets is the most likely outcome.
A great number of people seem to be far more concerned for her, than they are for her victims and the victims of the group she willingly joined.
The middle position gets overlooked - she has behaved appallingly, and even at 15 should have known much better and deserves little from the UK, though if there were a general international repatriation programme from the area she currently lives she should be part of it. She should face justice in the UK. But what we should never do is land the problem on a not very wealthy third country (Bangladesh) who have nothing to do with it, nor should we render UK citizens stateless.
In this instance, rarely, Trump and Farage are more grown up than either Conservative or Labour, or the Supreme Court who should have told the government where to go.
We cannot render UK citizens stateless. The law prevents us from doing so. The Home Secretary's decision to exclude her was upheld by the Supreme Court because, at the time it was made, it did not render her stateless. According to the evidence presented, she is now stateless due to her failure to do what was needed to retain her Bangladeshi citizenship.
She never held Bangladeshi citizenship, though was potentially eligible for it, so could not "retain" something she never had.
To be able to remove citizenship because someone is potentially eligible for anther citizenship is quite an authoritarian power. Potentially not just second generation migrants, but also those born in Northern Ireland and all Jews. Such power could easily be abused by an ethno-nationalist government, as for example India has done.
The courts clearly stated in their judgements that she held Bangladeshi citizenship by descent until her 21st birthday. She wasn't "potentially eligible" for Bangladeshi citizenship. She actually held it. Or do you know something the courts don't?
The decision that she held citizenship was based on Bangladesh's Citizenship Act 1951 Section 5 which states "Subject to the provisions of section 3 a person born after the commencement of this Act, shall be a citizen of Bangladesh by descent if his father or mother is a citizen of Bangladesh at the time of his birth:"
"The state minister of foreign affairs of Bangladesh, Shahriar Alam, asserted in a statement to the British media just days after Javid’s announcement that Begum was not a citizen of Bangladesh and would be denied entry to the country."
She has never held a Bangladeshi passport and never been to the country. Bangladesh says she has never been a citizen.
Politician makes statement contrary to the law shocker.
No, she has never held a Bangladeshi passport and, as far as I can see, has never been there. I am not an expert in Bangladeshi law, but the experts who gave evidence in the UK courts were clear that she was a citizen until she was 21, regardless of any statements to the contrary by Bangladeshi politicians.
Just to correct myself slightly, it wasn't experts on Bangladeshi law that gave evidence in the UK courts. It was the Bangladeshi government that contradicted pronouncements by politicians and stated that she was a Bangladeshi citizen.
Note that her UK citizenship could not have been removed if she was only eligible for citizenship elsewhere. The law is that an individual can only have their UK citizenship removed if they actually hold citizenship of another country.
Link please to prove that statement because as no point have I seen that "fact" and believe me I would remember it...
But actually that's irrelevant because she wasn't a Bangladeshi citizen on her 21st birthday so at that point her only citizenship was the UK - and the last court case was after her 21st birthday.
It's a mistake for Farage to say we should accept the disgusting Begum back in the UK. She can rot in Syrian prison or they can deport her to Bangladesh. Just because Trump wants us to take her back it doesn't mean we should.
There is zero chance that she will face proper justice here for her crimes, a small slap on the wrist and probably a free council flat and benefits for life in Tower Hamlets is the most likely outcome.
A great number of people seem to be far more concerned for her, than they are for her victims and the victims of the group she willingly joined.
It's perfectly possible to be concerned with both.
She was clearly groomed when underage to go to Syria.
The ability to remove citizenship at the whim of the Home Secretary is also a dangerously authoritarian power, albeit one that many like Jenrick might like to use.
I am very concerned about leaving someone stateless. But I also don't believe she had zero idea what she was doing when she went to Syria.
IMV she was not a victim. Bur she created many victims.
Some quite obvious cognitive dissonance on teenagers autonomy and consent when you compare her case to others in the news.
Really? I can believe that, but care to give examples?
But I'd point out that there are unlikely to be cases quite as (ahem) extreme as what she did.
I cannot give examples because of the site's policy* on discussing other cases.
*which I support.
I think the site policy doesn’t cover teenagers engaging in genocide.
Which is what she did.
I have serious issues with the powers the government has to remove citizenship, but all the appeals to seem to have upheld that the power was exercised lawfully, so there should be a focus on restraining that governmental power rather than any particular focus on Begum herself and what she did.
But I doubt that will happen, I cannot imagine any government being particularly keen to limit its options once it has the power to do something.
Rangoon is a bit of a shithole. A shithole full of post imperial noom but a bit of a shithole nonethiess
We built an entire and magnificent Victorian/Edwardian city on the banks of the woogly-waggly here, a mighty grid of banks and churches and city halls and customs houses and ornate Anglo-Burmese train stations - surrounding the golden pagodas - and now it all rots like a collection of Sicilian palazzi and trees grow through the roofs of the Port Authority HQ and Mon women, cheeks daubed with yellow thanaka paste, squat in the mildewed porches of the shuttered Strand Hotel selling tiny lychees and cheap Chinese dolls
There's some value in seeing it, though, as it's a perfect microcosm of much of the post-Imperial third world. At least that's what I thought when I was there a decade ago.
We introduced state of the art Victorian governance and since we left, rather than build on our achievements with the added blessings of self-determination and democracy they have let it fall apart and the rest of the place with it.
A pattern replicated in many places, sadly, from Hong Kong to Freetown to Khartoum to Salisbury to ...
It's 15 years ago that I was there. I quite liked Rangoon, which I found to be very different to a lot of South East Asia, perhaps a view to what Thailand and Vietnam looked like before the impact of the West. Even then though the number of Chinese goods was driving out local goods. I was mostly in Upper Burma though, which is the heartland of Burmese culture.
Burma was run as an outpost of British India, particularly to provide rice to Bengal. In 1942 Rangoon was 50% Bengali, most of whom fled, and often died, in the Empires longest retreat to India. This is a large factor in both the wartime Bengal famine, and the continuing animosity of Burmese to Muslims (seen as an Imperial presence inflicted by Britain on them). State of the art Victorian governance consisted of no say for local people in governance and forced extraction of resources at the point of a gun.
I really liked Burma and might get back there sometime. It has a dreadful and barbaric military government, but magnificent and largely intact cultures and landscapes. There may well be regime change at some point as the military have had a number of recent setbacks in the ongoing civil wars. The rebels vary from pro-democracy students to Narco-oligarchs, via a multiplicity of minority nationalists. To say that Myanmar politics is opaque is one of the great understatement.
Does it have anything to rival that famous Cambodian Temple city ?
The legend of Angkor Wat, I think it's called.
I have not been to Angkor Wat, but Bagan is one of the great sites. It was a city of 1 million people at one time, but all that is left now is the stone pagodas, perhaps a thousand of them in various states of ruin and size, with the civilian buildings all rotted away, leaving a massive plain of stupas.
Shortly before I visited all the local people were cleared off the site, at gunpoint by the SLORC military, without compensation, in order to make it more of a tourist site. Burma is full of that sort of brutal history amongst the beauty.
Angkor Wat is arguably THE single most impressive monument from the pre-modern world. And yes I’m including the pantheon, pyramids, Hagia Sophia, any medieval cathedrals (tho if you take them all together), Luxor; macchu pichu, Teotihuacan, and all
I’ve seen them all and Angkor Wat remains - to my mind - in a dreamy world of its own. Albeit now blighted by billions of tourists
I’ll be interested to compare Bagan. I very much doubt it’s in the same league but it does sound fabulous
I am excluding Gobekli Tepe and the tas Tepeler because you have to. They are more like alien cities from Martian invasions
I was going to say Gobekli Tepe is surely the most amazing example of ancient civilisation. Dated to 10,000 BC and it's just insane. Demolishes the idea that ancient humans were simple hunter gatherers and the African origin theory. It's been, err, interesting watching woke scientists try harder and harder to hold onto the African origin theory to the point of attempting to excommunicate scientists who dare to defy the prevailing theory. It's always amazing how scientific method takes a back seat when establishment approved ideas get disproved.
There is literally nothing you guys won't blame on woke. Fires in California, academics being arseholes, incitement to to violence leading to convictions.
All of these things have been going on for centuries.
" Speaking as part of a video that aired during a commercial break for the FOX show 9-1-1 about firefighter capabilities, Larson said, "Am I able to carry your husband out of a fire? He got himself in the wrong place if I have to carry him out." "
Speaking of which...
Well, firefighters typically drag people out, not carry them. In Scotland, for example, the test is whether you can drag a 55kg person in full BA a set distance, so a very large proportion of the population would require 2x FOs to drag you out, at least.
When I've helped out with mountain rescues, you quickly work out that anyone who isn't a Royal Marine isn't carrying anyone any sort of distance at all. Took six of us just to move a casualty 5m behind a rock for shelter.
I'd also guess this clip also references the peculiar behaviour where lots of people refuse to evacuate an area even as a big fire approaches, and has been taken out of context somewhat.
Reform collapsing would be a gift to the Conservatives. They will struggle if it doesn't, in fact
What's the longest Farage and a party has gone without serious ructions? I know he was in UKIP for ages but it was still occasionally bumpy even before he departed for good.
I don't think Reform are imminently about to collapse, but it does feel like all or nothing with them sometimes - there are still people desperately hoping they will replace the Conservatives, but they could also just disappear if things go wrong.
Rangoon is a bit of a shithole. A shithole full of post imperial noom but a bit of a shithole nonethiess
We built an entire and magnificent Victorian/Edwardian city on the banks of the woogly-waggly here, a mighty grid of banks and churches and city halls and customs houses and ornate Anglo-Burmese train stations - surrounding the golden pagodas - and now it all rots like a collection of Sicilian palazzi and trees grow through the roofs of the Port Authority HQ and Mon women, cheeks daubed with yellow thanaka paste, squat in the mildewed porches of the shuttered Strand Hotel selling tiny lychees and cheap Chinese dolls
There's some value in seeing it, though, as it's a perfect microcosm of much of the post-Imperial third world. At least that's what I thought when I was there a decade ago.
We introduced state of the art Victorian governance and since we left, rather than build on our achievements with the added blessings of self-determination and democracy they have let it fall apart and the rest of the place with it.
A pattern replicated in many places, sadly, from Hong Kong to Freetown to Khartoum to Salisbury to ...
It's 15 years ago that I was there. I quite liked Rangoon, which I found to be very different to a lot of South East Asia, perhaps a view to what Thailand and Vietnam looked like before the impact of the West. Even then though the number of Chinese goods was driving out local goods. I was mostly in Upper Burma though, which is the heartland of Burmese culture.
Burma was run as an outpost of British India, particularly to provide rice to Bengal. In 1942 Rangoon was 50% Bengali, most of whom fled, and often died, in the Empires longest retreat to India. This is a large factor in both the wartime Bengal famine, and the continuing animosity of Burmese to Muslims (seen as an Imperial presence inflicted by Britain on them). State of the art Victorian governance consisted of no say for local people in governance and forced extraction of resources at the point of a gun.
I really liked Burma and might get back there sometime. It has a dreadful and barbaric military government, but magnificent and largely intact cultures and landscapes. There may well be regime change at some point as the military have had a number of recent setbacks in the ongoing civil wars. The rebels vary from pro-democracy students to Narco-oligarchs, via a multiplicity of minority nationalists. To say that Myanmar politics is opaque is one of the great understatement.
Does it have anything to rival that famous Cambodian Temple city ?
The legend of Angkor Wat, I think it's called.
I have not been to Angkor Wat, but Bagan is one of the great sites. It was a city of 1 million people at one time, but all that is left now is the stone pagodas, perhaps a thousand of them in various states of ruin and size, with the civilian buildings all rotted away, leaving a massive plain of stupas.
Shortly before I visited all the local people were cleared off the site, at gunpoint by the SLORC military, without compensation, in order to make it more of a tourist site. Burma is full of that sort of brutal history amongst the beauty.
Angkor Wat is arguably THE single most impressive monument from the pre-modern world. And yes I’m including the pantheon, pyramids, Hagia Sophia, any medieval cathedrals (tho if you take them all together), Luxor; macchu pichu, Teotihuacan, and all
I’ve seen them all and Angkor Wat remains - to my mind - in a dreamy world of its own. Albeit now blighted by billions of tourists
I’ll be interested to compare Bagan. I very much doubt it’s in the same league but it does sound fabulous
I am excluding Gobekli Tepe and the tas Tepeler because you have to. They are more like alien cities from Martian invasions
I was going to say Gobekli Tepe is surely the most amazing example of ancient civilisation. Dated to 10,000 BC and it's just insane. Demolishes the idea that ancient humans were simple hunter gatherers and the African origin theory. It's been, err, interesting watching woke scientists try harder and harder to hold onto the African origin theory to the point of attempting to excommunicate scientists who dare to defy the prevailing theory. It's always amazing how scientific method takes a back seat when establishment approved ideas get disproved.
How exactly does it demolish Out of Africa?
That sounds an odd claim. GT is dated to 10,000 BC, whilst the OOA theory is based around a timespan 100-200,000 years ago. So the two sit very well together.
OOA theory may be wrong - in outline and especially in detail - but I cannot see how the existence of GT disproves it.
I'd be surprised if it were wrong for Homo sapiens in particular. Just too much genetic diversity in Africa, and clear sequences of migration traceable in DNA. But certainly complicated by interbreeding with other humans such as Neanderthals, Denisovans, not sure about hobbits.
Agreed. but that's why I said 'especially in detail'. AIUI most of the evidence points towards an African origin, but the way the spread occurred, and consequent intermingling and evolution - are vaguely known at best. As with any theory, further evidence and improved scientific techniques may fettle the theory, or even upend it.
An interesting question is *why* some people seem to be so keen to disprove the Out of Africa theory? Why does it matter where 'we' originated?
All peoples emerged independently from the soil of their homelands, on remarkably 21st century boundaries, it's quite fascinating.
Rangoon is a bit of a shithole. A shithole full of post imperial noom but a bit of a shithole nonethiess
We built an entire and magnificent Victorian/Edwardian city on the banks of the woogly-waggly here, a mighty grid of banks and churches and city halls and customs houses and ornate Anglo-Burmese train stations - surrounding the golden pagodas - and now it all rots like a collection of Sicilian palazzi and trees grow through the roofs of the Port Authority HQ and Mon women, cheeks daubed with yellow thanaka paste, squat in the mildewed porches of the shuttered Strand Hotel selling tiny lychees and cheap Chinese dolls
There's some value in seeing it, though, as it's a perfect microcosm of much of the post-Imperial third world. At least that's what I thought when I was there a decade ago.
We introduced state of the art Victorian governance and since we left, rather than build on our achievements with the added blessings of self-determination and democracy they have let it fall apart and the rest of the place with it.
A pattern replicated in many places, sadly, from Hong Kong to Freetown to Khartoum to Salisbury to ...
It's 15 years ago that I was there. I quite liked Rangoon, which I found to be very different to a lot of South East Asia, perhaps a view to what Thailand and Vietnam looked like before the impact of the West. Even then though the number of Chinese goods was driving out local goods. I was mostly in Upper Burma though, which is the heartland of Burmese culture.
Burma was run as an outpost of British India, particularly to provide rice to Bengal. In 1942 Rangoon was 50% Bengali, most of whom fled, and often died, in the Empires longest retreat to India. This is a large factor in both the wartime Bengal famine, and the continuing animosity of Burmese to Muslims (seen as an Imperial presence inflicted by Britain on them). State of the art Victorian governance consisted of no say for local people in governance and forced extraction of resources at the point of a gun.
I really liked Burma and might get back there sometime. It has a dreadful and barbaric military government, but magnificent and largely intact cultures and landscapes. There may well be regime change at some point as the military have had a number of recent setbacks in the ongoing civil wars. The rebels vary from pro-democracy students to Narco-oligarchs, via a multiplicity of minority nationalists. To say that Myanmar politics is opaque is one of the great understatement.
Does it have anything to rival that famous Cambodian Temple city ?
The legend of Angkor Wat, I think it's called.
I have not been to Angkor Wat, but Bagan is one of the great sites. It was a city of 1 million people at one time, but all that is left now is the stone pagodas, perhaps a thousand of them in various states of ruin and size, with the civilian buildings all rotted away, leaving a massive plain of stupas.
Shortly before I visited all the local people were cleared off the site, at gunpoint by the SLORC military, without compensation, in order to make it more of a tourist site. Burma is full of that sort of brutal history amongst the beauty.
Angkor Wat is arguably THE single most impressive monument from the pre-modern world. And yes I’m including the pantheon, pyramids, Hagia Sophia, any medieval cathedrals (tho if you take them all together), Luxor; macchu pichu, Teotihuacan, and all
I’ve seen them all and Angkor Wat remains - to my mind - in a dreamy world of its own. Albeit now blighted by billions of tourists
I’ll be interested to compare Bagan. I very much doubt it’s in the same league but it does sound fabulous
I am excluding Gobekli Tepe and the tas Tepeler because you have to. They are more like alien cities from Martian invasions
I was going to say Gobekli Tepe is surely the most amazing example of ancient civilisation. Dated to 10,000 BC and it's just insane. Demolishes the idea that ancient humans were simple hunter gatherers and the African origin theory. It's been, err, interesting watching woke scientists try harder and harder to hold onto the African origin theory to the point of attempting to excommunicate scientists who dare to defy the prevailing theory. It's always amazing how scientific method takes a back seat when establishment approved ideas get disproved.
How exactly does it demolish Out of Africa?
That sounds an odd claim. GT is dated to 10,000 BC, whilst the OOA theory is based around a timespan 100-200,000 years ago. So the two sit very well together.
OOA theory may be wrong - in outline and especially in detail - but I cannot see how the existence of GT disproves it.
Yes, I thought the startling thing about GT was more around the emergence of complex societies needed (or what was presumed to be needed) to construct remarkable, er, constructions, so early on, not where it was. It's not like it's a million miles from other cradles of civilization (or Africa for that matter).
It's a mistake for Farage to say we should accept the disgusting Begum back in the UK. She can rot in Syrian prison or they can deport her to Bangladesh. Just because Trump wants us to take her back it doesn't mean we should.
There is zero chance that she will face proper justice here for her crimes, a small slap on the wrist and probably a free council flat and benefits for life in Tower Hamlets is the most likely outcome.
I agree on all counts. It's not good and not come at a good time for Reform UK. I'm not sure what I'd have done in Farage's position (under strong pressure from Trump to support taking back Begum). I'm not altogether sure why Trump wants us to take her back so much.
Overall I think Reform will weather the councillors leaving as growing pains.
I get the logic that Begum is our responsibility and we should be responsible for her and I've always said as much. We shouldn't dump someone radicalised in the UK on another country just because her parents weren't born here..
The bit I don't get as you also say is why is Trump concerned about it..
I think Trump is looking to undermine Britain, possibly for supporting Harris instead of himself. He’s a shit stirrer.
It's a mistake for Farage to say we should accept the disgusting Begum back in the UK. She can rot in Syrian prison or they can deport her to Bangladesh. Just because Trump wants us to take her back it doesn't mean we should.
There is zero chance that she will face proper justice here for her crimes, a small slap on the wrist and probably a free council flat and benefits for life in Tower Hamlets is the most likely outcome.
I agree on all counts. It's not good and not come at a good time for Reform UK. I'm not sure what I'd have done in Farage's position (under strong pressure from Trump to support taking back Begum). I'm not altogether sure why Trump wants us to take her back so much.
Overall I think Reform will weather the councillors leaving as growing pains.
I get the logic that Begum is our responsibility and we should be responsible for her and I've always said as much. We shouldn't dump someone radicalised in the UK on another country just because her parents weren't born here..
The bit I don't get as you also say is why is Trump concerned about it..
I think Trump is looking to undermine Britain, possibly for supporting Harris instead of himself. He’s a shit stirrer.
Tbf he hasn't singled out the UK, he's said all European countries with foreign terrorist fighters in limbo should repatriate them. It effects us most because we have the highest number of unrepatriated terrorists in and around Syria.
We should repatriate them and bring charges, Treason if possible (we were fighting against Isis so they were aiding the enemy)
Well, they did quite recently convict a guy of treason for the first time in 40+ years, so maybe it is back in fashion.
It's a mistake for Farage to say we should accept the disgusting Begum back in the UK. She can rot in Syrian prison or they can deport her to Bangladesh. Just because Trump wants us to take her back it doesn't mean we should.
There is zero chance that she will face proper justice here for her crimes, a small slap on the wrist and probably a free council flat and benefits for life in Tower Hamlets is the most likely outcome.
A great number of people seem to be far more concerned for her, than they are for her victims and the victims of the group she willingly joined.
It's perfectly possible to be concerned with both.
She was clearly groomed when underage to go to Syria.
The ability to remove citizenship at the whim of the Home Secretary is also a dangerously authoritarian power, albeit one that many like Jenrick might like to use.
I am very concerned about leaving someone stateless. But I also don't believe she had zero idea what she was doing when she went to Syria.
IMV she was not a victim. Bur she created many victims.
That's a very good case for trying her case in a British court and punishing her under British Law.
Rather than pretending that she has nothing to do with us.
There’s an inarguable case for letting her be tried by the Syrians the Kurds the Yazidi or the Iraqis: her victims If we want to be generous we could pay to help them set up local courts (cheaper than hosting her and her chums in a council house for 300 years)
There’s a decent chance she would get the death penalty. Oh dear never mind etc
I agree, but sadly the new Syrian regime would be likelier to give her a ticker tape parade.
Rangoon is a bit of a shithole. A shithole full of post imperial noom but a bit of a shithole nonethiess
We built an entire and magnificent Victorian/Edwardian city on the banks of the woogly-waggly here, a mighty grid of banks and churches and city halls and customs houses and ornate Anglo-Burmese train stations - surrounding the golden pagodas - and now it all rots like a collection of Sicilian palazzi and trees grow through the roofs of the Port Authority HQ and Mon women, cheeks daubed with yellow thanaka paste, squat in the mildewed porches of the shuttered Strand Hotel selling tiny lychees and cheap Chinese dolls
There's some value in seeing it, though, as it's a perfect microcosm of much of the post-Imperial third world. At least that's what I thought when I was there a decade ago.
We introduced state of the art Victorian governance and since we left, rather than build on our achievements with the added blessings of self-determination and democracy they have let it fall apart and the rest of the place with it.
A pattern replicated in many places, sadly, from Hong Kong to Freetown to Khartoum to Salisbury to ...
It's 15 years ago that I was there. I quite liked Rangoon, which I found to be very different to a lot of South East Asia, perhaps a view to what Thailand and Vietnam looked like before the impact of the West. Even then though the number of Chinese goods was driving out local goods. I was mostly in Upper Burma though, which is the heartland of Burmese culture.
Burma was run as an outpost of British India, particularly to provide rice to Bengal. In 1942 Rangoon was 50% Bengali, most of whom fled, and often died, in the Empires longest retreat to India. This is a large factor in both the wartime Bengal famine, and the continuing animosity of Burmese to Muslims (seen as an Imperial presence inflicted by Britain on them). State of the art Victorian governance consisted of no say for local people in governance and forced extraction of resources at the point of a gun.
I really liked Burma and might get back there sometime. It has a dreadful and barbaric military government, but magnificent and largely intact cultures and landscapes. There may well be regime change at some point as the military have had a number of recent setbacks in the ongoing civil wars. The rebels vary from pro-democracy students to Narco-oligarchs, via a multiplicity of minority nationalists. To say that Myanmar politics is opaque is one of the great understatement.
Does it have anything to rival that famous Cambodian Temple city ?
The legend of Angkor Wat, I think it's called.
I have not been to Angkor Wat, but Bagan is one of the great sites. It was a city of 1 million people at one time, but all that is left now is the stone pagodas, perhaps a thousand of them in various states of ruin and size, with the civilian buildings all rotted away, leaving a massive plain of stupas.
Shortly before I visited all the local people were cleared off the site, at gunpoint by the SLORC military, without compensation, in order to make it more of a tourist site. Burma is full of that sort of brutal history amongst the beauty.
Angkor Wat is arguably THE single most impressive monument from the pre-modern world. And yes I’m including the pantheon, pyramids, Hagia Sophia, any medieval cathedrals (tho if you take them all together), Luxor; macchu pichu, Teotihuacan, and all
I’ve seen them all and Angkor Wat remains - to my mind - in a dreamy world of its own. Albeit now blighted by billions of tourists
I’ll be interested to compare Bagan. I very much doubt it’s in the same league but it does sound fabulous
I am excluding Gobekli Tepe and the tas Tepeler because you have to. They are more like alien cities from Martian invasions
I was going to say Gobekli Tepe is surely the most amazing example of ancient civilisation. Dated to 10,000 BC and it's just insane. Demolishes the idea that ancient humans were simple hunter gatherers and the African origin theory. It's been, err, interesting watching woke scientists try harder and harder to hold onto the African origin theory to the point of attempting to excommunicate scientists who dare to defy the prevailing theory. It's always amazing how scientific method takes a back seat when establishment approved ideas get disproved.
There is literally nothing you guys won't blame on woke. Fires in California, academics being arseholes, incitement to to violence leading to convictions.
All of these things have been going on for centuries.
" Speaking as part of a video that aired during a commercial break for the FOX show 9-1-1 about firefighter capabilities, Larson said, "Am I able to carry your husband out of a fire? He got himself in the wrong place if I have to carry him out." "
Speaking of which...
Well, firefighters typically drag people out, not carry them. In Scotland, for example, the test is whether you can drag a 55kg person in full BA a set distance, so a very large proportion of the population would require 2x FOs to drag you out, at least.
When I've helped out with mountain rescues, you quickly work out that anyone who isn't a Royal Marine isn't carrying anyone any sort of distance at all. Took six of us just to move a casualty 5m behind a rock for shelter.
I'd also guess this clip also references the peculiar behaviour where lots of people refuse to evacuate an area even as a big fire approaches, and has been taken out of context somewhat.
Do you not think that being able to do a "fireman's lift" of potential victims is a basic requirement of a fireman/woman? And this attitude that the victim is to blame is pretty off.
Rangoon is a bit of a shithole. A shithole full of post imperial noom but a bit of a shithole nonethiess
We built an entire and magnificent Victorian/Edwardian city on the banks of the woogly-waggly here, a mighty grid of banks and churches and city halls and customs houses and ornate Anglo-Burmese train stations - surrounding the golden pagodas - and now it all rots like a collection of Sicilian palazzi and trees grow through the roofs of the Port Authority HQ and Mon women, cheeks daubed with yellow thanaka paste, squat in the mildewed porches of the shuttered Strand Hotel selling tiny lychees and cheap Chinese dolls
There's some value in seeing it, though, as it's a perfect microcosm of much of the post-Imperial third world. At least that's what I thought when I was there a decade ago.
We introduced state of the art Victorian governance and since we left, rather than build on our achievements with the added blessings of self-determination and democracy they have let it fall apart and the rest of the place with it.
A pattern replicated in many places, sadly, from Hong Kong to Freetown to Khartoum to Salisbury to ...
It's 15 years ago that I was there. I quite liked Rangoon, which I found to be very different to a lot of South East Asia, perhaps a view to what Thailand and Vietnam looked like before the impact of the West. Even then though the number of Chinese goods was driving out local goods. I was mostly in Upper Burma though, which is the heartland of Burmese culture.
Burma was run as an outpost of British India, particularly to provide rice to Bengal. In 1942 Rangoon was 50% Bengali, most of whom fled, and often died, in the Empires longest retreat to India. This is a large factor in both the wartime Bengal famine, and the continuing animosity of Burmese to Muslims (seen as an Imperial presence inflicted by Britain on them). State of the art Victorian governance consisted of no say for local people in governance and forced extraction of resources at the point of a gun.
I really liked Burma and might get back there sometime. It has a dreadful and barbaric military government, but magnificent and largely intact cultures and landscapes. There may well be regime change at some point as the military have had a number of recent setbacks in the ongoing civil wars. The rebels vary from pro-democracy students to Narco-oligarchs, via a multiplicity of minority nationalists. To say that Myanmar politics is opaque is one of the great understatement.
Does it have anything to rival that famous Cambodian Temple city ?
The legend of Angkor Wat, I think it's called.
I have not been to Angkor Wat, but Bagan is one of the great sites. It was a city of 1 million people at one time, but all that is left now is the stone pagodas, perhaps a thousand of them in various states of ruin and size, with the civilian buildings all rotted away, leaving a massive plain of stupas.
Shortly before I visited all the local people were cleared off the site, at gunpoint by the SLORC military, without compensation, in order to make it more of a tourist site. Burma is full of that sort of brutal history amongst the beauty.
Angkor Wat is arguably THE single most impressive monument from the pre-modern world. And yes I’m including the pantheon, pyramids, Hagia Sophia, any medieval cathedrals (tho if you take them all together), Luxor; macchu pichu, Teotihuacan, and all
I’ve seen them all and Angkor Wat remains - to my mind - in a dreamy world of its own. Albeit now blighted by billions of tourists
I’ll be interested to compare Bagan. I very much doubt it’s in the same league but it does sound fabulous
I am excluding Gobekli Tepe and the tas Tepeler because you have to. They are more like alien cities from Martian invasions
I was going to say Gobekli Tepe is surely the most amazing example of ancient civilisation. Dated to 10,000 BC and it's just insane. Demolishes the idea that ancient humans were simple hunter gatherers and the African origin theory. It's been, err, interesting watching woke scientists try harder and harder to hold onto the African origin theory to the point of attempting to excommunicate scientists who dare to defy the prevailing theory. It's always amazing how scientific method takes a back seat when establishment approved ideas get disproved.
The holding company I work for had a DEI lead. Never heard anything from her save for a badly worded email about Israel and Palestine after 7 October.
Finally canned just before Christmas.
Having said that, hope we are not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. A feeling of inclusion for employees is highly desirable.
I sent a message to my employees about the LA fires on Wednesday. I have a few people in LA, though none directly impacted. Was that woke?
It would be woke if you only selected to send it to people who are "oppressed", I think. Oppressors deserve the burning down of their property and belongings, of course.
It's a mistake for Farage to say we should accept the disgusting Begum back in the UK. She can rot in Syrian prison or they can deport her to Bangladesh. Just because Trump wants us to take her back it doesn't mean we should.
There is zero chance that she will face proper justice here for her crimes, a small slap on the wrist and probably a free council flat and benefits for life in Tower Hamlets is the most likely outcome.
A great number of people seem to be far more concerned for her, than they are for her victims and the victims of the group she willingly joined.
It's perfectly possible to be concerned with both.
She was clearly groomed when underage to go to Syria.
The ability to remove citizenship at the whim of the Home Secretary is also a dangerously authoritarian power, albeit one that many like Jenrick might like to use.
I am very concerned about leaving someone stateless. But I also don't believe she had zero idea what she was doing when she went to Syria.
IMV she was not a victim. Bur she created many victims.
That's a very good case for trying her case in a British court and punishing her under British Law.
Rather than pretending that she has nothing to do with us.
There’s an inarguable case for letting her be tried by the Syrians the Kurds the Yazidi or the Iraqis: her victims If we want to be generous we could pay to help them set up local courts (cheaper than hosting her and her chums in a council house for 300 years)
There’s a decent chance she would get the death penalty. Oh dear never mind etc
I agree, but sadly the new Syrian regime would be likelier to give her a ticker tape parade.
Not if we pay them to keep her locked up and throw away the key.
It's a mistake for Farage to say we should accept the disgusting Begum back in the UK. She can rot in Syrian prison or they can deport her to Bangladesh. Just because Trump wants us to take her back it doesn't mean we should.
There is zero chance that she will face proper justice here for her crimes, a small slap on the wrist and probably a free council flat and benefits for life in Tower Hamlets is the most likely outcome.
A great number of people seem to be far more concerned for her, than they are for her victims and the victims of the group she willingly joined.
The middle position gets overlooked - she has behaved appallingly, and even at 15 should have known much better and deserves little from the UK, though if there were a general international repatriation programme from the area she currently lives she should be part of it. She should face justice in the UK. But what we should never do is land the problem on a not very wealthy third country (Bangladesh) who have nothing to do with it, nor should we render UK citizens stateless.
In this instance, rarely, Trump and Farage are more grown up than either Conservative or Labour, or the Supreme Court who should have told the government where to go.
We cannot render UK citizens stateless. The law prevents us from doing so. The Home Secretary's decision to exclude her was upheld by the Supreme Court because, at the time it was made, it did not render her stateless. According to the evidence presented, she is now stateless due to her failure to do what was needed to retain her Bangladeshi citizenship.
She never held Bangladeshi citizenship, though was potentially eligible for it, so could not "retain" something she never had.
To be able to remove citizenship because someone is potentially eligible for anther citizenship is quite an authoritarian power. Potentially not just second generation migrants, but also those born in Northern Ireland and all Jews. Such power could easily be abused by an ethno-nationalist government, as for example India has done.
The courts clearly stated in their judgements that she held Bangladeshi citizenship by descent until her 21st birthday. She wasn't "potentially eligible" for Bangladeshi citizenship. She actually held it. Or do you know something the courts don't?
The decision that she held citizenship was based on Bangladesh's Citizenship Act 1951 Section 5 which states "Subject to the provisions of section 3 a person born after the commencement of this Act, shall be a citizen of Bangladesh by descent if his father or mother is a citizen of Bangladesh at the time of his birth:"
"The state minister of foreign affairs of Bangladesh, Shahriar Alam, asserted in a statement to the British media just days after Javid’s announcement that Begum was not a citizen of Bangladesh and would be denied entry to the country."
She has never held a Bangladeshi passport and never been to the country. Bangladesh says she has never been a citizen.
I do think it was a dodgy form of reasoning to suggest she was not technically stateless, but I also don't accept assertions from Bangladeshi ministers on the subject on faith, because ministerial assertions are not law. So it would be more useful to have Bangladeshi legal experts opine on the subject, since the government of Bangladesh might reasonable belief that to be the case but a course case might determine otherwise - People can, after all, even hold citizenships in some jurisdictions without even realising it, a whole bunch of Australian politicians became suddenly ineligible in such circumstances and had to renounce citizenships they didn't consider they had even had.
Not saying it was not a weasel move and reasoning, but I don't think it's the slam dunk people think it is to bring up a government's rejection of the argument - government's can be wrong about the law.
Rangoon is a bit of a shithole. A shithole full of post imperial noom but a bit of a shithole nonethiess
We built an entire and magnificent Victorian/Edwardian city on the banks of the woogly-waggly here, a mighty grid of banks and churches and city halls and customs houses and ornate Anglo-Burmese train stations - surrounding the golden pagodas - and now it all rots like a collection of Sicilian palazzi and trees grow through the roofs of the Port Authority HQ and Mon women, cheeks daubed with yellow thanaka paste, squat in the mildewed porches of the shuttered Strand Hotel selling tiny lychees and cheap Chinese dolls
There's some value in seeing it, though, as it's a perfect microcosm of much of the post-Imperial third world. At least that's what I thought when I was there a decade ago.
We introduced state of the art Victorian governance and since we left, rather than build on our achievements with the added blessings of self-determination and democracy they have let it fall apart and the rest of the place with it.
A pattern replicated in many places, sadly, from Hong Kong to Freetown to Khartoum to Salisbury to ...
It's 15 years ago that I was there. I quite liked Rangoon, which I found to be very different to a lot of South East Asia, perhaps a view to what Thailand and Vietnam looked like before the impact of the West. Even then though the number of Chinese goods was driving out local goods. I was mostly in Upper Burma though, which is the heartland of Burmese culture.
Burma was run as an outpost of British India, particularly to provide rice to Bengal. In 1942 Rangoon was 50% Bengali, most of whom fled, and often died, in the Empires longest retreat to India. This is a large factor in both the wartime Bengal famine, and the continuing animosity of Burmese to Muslims (seen as an Imperial presence inflicted by Britain on them). State of the art Victorian governance consisted of no say for local people in governance and forced extraction of resources at the point of a gun.
I really liked Burma and might get back there sometime. It has a dreadful and barbaric military government, but magnificent and largely intact cultures and landscapes. There may well be regime change at some point as the military have had a number of recent setbacks in the ongoing civil wars. The rebels vary from pro-democracy students to Narco-oligarchs, via a multiplicity of minority nationalists. To say that Myanmar politics is opaque is one of the great understatement.
Does it have anything to rival that famous Cambodian Temple city ?
The legend of Angkor Wat, I think it's called.
I have not been to Angkor Wat, but Bagan is one of the great sites. It was a city of 1 million people at one time, but all that is left now is the stone pagodas, perhaps a thousand of them in various states of ruin and size, with the civilian buildings all rotted away, leaving a massive plain of stupas.
Shortly before I visited all the local people were cleared off the site, at gunpoint by the SLORC military, without compensation, in order to make it more of a tourist site. Burma is full of that sort of brutal history amongst the beauty.
Angkor Wat is arguably THE single most impressive monument from the pre-modern world. And yes I’m including the pantheon, pyramids, Hagia Sophia, any medieval cathedrals (tho if you take them all together), Luxor; macchu pichu, Teotihuacan, and all
I’ve seen them all and Angkor Wat remains - to my mind - in a dreamy world of its own. Albeit now blighted by billions of tourists
I’ll be interested to compare Bagan. I very much doubt it’s in the same league but it does sound fabulous
I am excluding Gobekli Tepe and the tas Tepeler because you have to. They are more like alien cities from Martian invasions
I was going to say Gobekli Tepe is surely the most amazing example of ancient civilisation. Dated to 10,000 BC and it's just insane. Demolishes the idea that ancient humans were simple hunter gatherers and the African origin theory. It's been, err, interesting watching woke scientists try harder and harder to hold onto the African origin theory to the point of attempting to excommunicate scientists who dare to defy the prevailing theory. It's always amazing how scientific method takes a back seat when establishment approved ideas get disproved.
There is literally nothing you guys won't blame on woke. Fires in California, academics being arseholes, incitement to to violence leading to convictions.
All of these things have been going on for centuries.
" Speaking as part of a video that aired during a commercial break for the FOX show 9-1-1 about firefighter capabilities, Larson said, "Am I able to carry your husband out of a fire? He got himself in the wrong place if I have to carry him out." "
Speaking of which...
Well, firefighters typically drag people out, not carry them. In Scotland, for example, the test is whether you can drag a 55kg person in full BA a set distance, so a very large proportion of the population would require 2x FOs to drag you out, at least.
When I've helped out with mountain rescues, you quickly work out that anyone who isn't a Royal Marine isn't carrying anyone any sort of distance at all. Took six of us just to move a casualty 5m behind a rock for shelter.
I'd also guess this clip also references the peculiar behaviour where lots of people refuse to evacuate an area even as a big fire approaches, and has been taken out of context somewhat.
Which is why firemen should look pretty much like civilian Royal Marines.
It's a mistake for Farage to say we should accept the disgusting Begum back in the UK. She can rot in Syrian prison or they can deport her to Bangladesh. Just because Trump wants us to take her back it doesn't mean we should.
There is zero chance that she will face proper justice here for her crimes, a small slap on the wrist and probably a free council flat and benefits for life in Tower Hamlets is the most likely outcome.
A great number of people seem to be far more concerned for her, than they are for her victims and the victims of the group she willingly joined.
It's perfectly possible to be concerned with both.
She was clearly groomed when underage to go to Syria.
The ability to remove citizenship at the whim of the Home Secretary is also a dangerously authoritarian power, albeit one that many like Jenrick might like to use.
I am very concerned about leaving someone stateless. But I also don't believe she had zero idea what she was doing when she went to Syria.
IMV she was not a victim. Bur she created many victims.
That's a very good case for trying her case in a British court and punishing her under British Law.
Rather than pretending that she has nothing to do with us.
There’s an inarguable case for letting her be tried by the Syrians the Kurds the Yazidi or the Iraqis: her victims If we want to be generous we could pay to help them set up local courts (cheaper than hosting her and her chums in a council house for 300 years)
There’s a decent chance she would get the death penalty. Oh dear never mind etc
I agree, but sadly the new Syrian regime would be likelier to give her a ticker tape parade.
They're playing it smart at the moment, all nicey nicey yessir, if there was ever a time they would play ball it is probably now.
Rangoon is a bit of a shithole. A shithole full of post imperial noom but a bit of a shithole nonethiess
We built an entire and magnificent Victorian/Edwardian city on the banks of the woogly-waggly here, a mighty grid of banks and churches and city halls and customs houses and ornate Anglo-Burmese train stations - surrounding the golden pagodas - and now it all rots like a collection of Sicilian palazzi and trees grow through the roofs of the Port Authority HQ and Mon women, cheeks daubed with yellow thanaka paste, squat in the mildewed porches of the shuttered Strand Hotel selling tiny lychees and cheap Chinese dolls
There's some value in seeing it, though, as it's a perfect microcosm of much of the post-Imperial third world. At least that's what I thought when I was there a decade ago.
We introduced state of the art Victorian governance and since we left, rather than build on our achievements with the added blessings of self-determination and democracy they have let it fall apart and the rest of the place with it.
A pattern replicated in many places, sadly, from Hong Kong to Freetown to Khartoum to Salisbury to ...
It's 15 years ago that I was there. I quite liked Rangoon, which I found to be very different to a lot of South East Asia, perhaps a view to what Thailand and Vietnam looked like before the impact of the West. Even then though the number of Chinese goods was driving out local goods. I was mostly in Upper Burma though, which is the heartland of Burmese culture.
Burma was run as an outpost of British India, particularly to provide rice to Bengal. In 1942 Rangoon was 50% Bengali, most of whom fled, and often died, in the Empires longest retreat to India. This is a large factor in both the wartime Bengal famine, and the continuing animosity of Burmese to Muslims (seen as an Imperial presence inflicted by Britain on them). State of the art Victorian governance consisted of no say for local people in governance and forced extraction of resources at the point of a gun.
I really liked Burma and might get back there sometime. It has a dreadful and barbaric military government, but magnificent and largely intact cultures and landscapes. There may well be regime change at some point as the military have had a number of recent setbacks in the ongoing civil wars. The rebels vary from pro-democracy students to Narco-oligarchs, via a multiplicity of minority nationalists. To say that Myanmar politics is opaque is one of the great understatement.
Does it have anything to rival that famous Cambodian Temple city ?
The legend of Angkor Wat, I think it's called.
I have not been to Angkor Wat, but Bagan is one of the great sites. It was a city of 1 million people at one time, but all that is left now is the stone pagodas, perhaps a thousand of them in various states of ruin and size, with the civilian buildings all rotted away, leaving a massive plain of stupas.
Shortly before I visited all the local people were cleared off the site, at gunpoint by the SLORC military, without compensation, in order to make it more of a tourist site. Burma is full of that sort of brutal history amongst the beauty.
Angkor Wat is arguably THE single most impressive monument from the pre-modern world. And yes I’m including the pantheon, pyramids, Hagia Sophia, any medieval cathedrals (tho if you take them all together), Luxor; macchu pichu, Teotihuacan, and all
I’ve seen them all and Angkor Wat remains - to my mind - in a dreamy world of its own. Albeit now blighted by billions of tourists
I’ll be interested to compare Bagan. I very much doubt it’s in the same league but it does sound fabulous
I am excluding Gobekli Tepe and the tas Tepeler because you have to. They are more like alien cities from Martian invasions
I was going to say Gobekli Tepe is surely the most amazing example of ancient civilisation. Dated to 10,000 BC and it's just insane. Demolishes the idea that ancient humans were simple hunter gatherers and the African origin theory. It's been, err, interesting watching woke scientists try harder and harder to hold onto the African origin theory to the point of attempting to excommunicate scientists who dare to defy the prevailing theory. It's always amazing how scientific method takes a back seat when establishment approved ideas get disproved.
There is literally nothing you guys won't blame on woke. Fires in California, academics being arseholes, incitement to to violence leading to convictions.
All of these things have been going on for centuries.
" Speaking as part of a video that aired during a commercial break for the FOX show 9-1-1 about firefighter capabilities, Larson said, "Am I able to carry your husband out of a fire? He got himself in the wrong place if I have to carry him out." "
Speaking of which...
Well, firefighters typically drag people out, not carry them. In Scotland, for example, the test is whether you can drag a 55kg person in full BA a set distance, so a very large proportion of the population would require 2x FOs to drag you out, at least.
When I've helped out with mountain rescues, you quickly work out that anyone who isn't a Royal Marine isn't carrying anyone any sort of distance at all. Took six of us just to move a casualty 5m behind a rock for shelter.
I'd also guess this clip also references the peculiar behaviour where lots of people refuse to evacuate an area even as a big fire approaches, and has been taken out of context somewhat.
Which is why firemen should look pretty much like civilian Royal Marines.
I've seen many calendars which would suggest that is the case.
It's a mistake for Farage to say we should accept the disgusting Begum back in the UK. She can rot in Syrian prison or they can deport her to Bangladesh. Just because Trump wants us to take her back it doesn't mean we should.
There is zero chance that she will face proper justice here for her crimes, a small slap on the wrist and probably a free council flat and benefits for life in Tower Hamlets is the most likely outcome.
A great number of people seem to be far more concerned for her, than they are for her victims and the victims of the group she willingly joined.
It's perfectly possible to be concerned with both.
She was clearly groomed when underage to go to Syria.
The ability to remove citizenship at the whim of the Home Secretary is also a dangerously authoritarian power, albeit one that many like Jenrick might like to use.
I am very concerned about leaving someone stateless. But I also don't believe she had zero idea what she was doing when she went to Syria.
IMV she was not a victim. Bur she created many victims.
Some quite obvious cognitive dissonance on teenagers autonomy and consent when you compare her case to others in the news.
Really? I can believe that, but care to give examples?
But I'd point out that there are unlikely to be cases quite as (ahem) extreme as what she did.
I cannot give examples because of the site's policy* on discussing other cases.
*which I support.
I think the site policy doesn’t cover teenagers engaging in genocide.
Which is what she did.
I have serious issues with the powers the government has to remove citizenship, but all the appeals to seem to have upheld that the power was exercised lawfully, so there should be a focus on restraining that governmental power rather than any particular focus on Begum herself and what she did.
But I doubt that will happen, I cannot imagine any government being particularly keen to limit its options once it has the power to do something.
The quitting councillors feels like growing pains to me. It's entirely plausible that another party does emerge to the right of Reform, and it's not ultimately undesirable for Reform for that to evolve. Though of course they would hope it wouldn't be significant enough to affect their vote by the next election.
The Begum thing and the difficulty of riding the Trump tiger is looks far trickier to me. I actually want Trump to be inaugurated and in power - I feel that will focus his mind on other things. Not saying he's not massively busy, but the challenges of being in office will be different.
The holding company I work for had a DEI lead. Never heard anything from her save for a badly worded email about Israel and Palestine after 7 October.
Finally canned just before Christmas.
Having said that, hope we are not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. A feeling of inclusion for employees is highly desirable.
I sent a message to my employees about the LA fires on Wednesday. I have a few people in LA, though none directly impacted. Was that woke?
The work woke is very overused, but that doesn't mean there is necessarily nothing to complain about a certain mode of behaviour and tone policing, though obviously opinions will vary.
Personally I think the balance could swing back a bit on some of the DEI stuff (I don't recall such an emphasis on it being called that until last year), without that meaning everyone reverts to being some obnoxious troglodyte.
Just follow the moral of A Christmas Carol - Don't be a dick.
It's a mistake for Farage to say we should accept the disgusting Begum back in the UK. She can rot in Syrian prison or they can deport her to Bangladesh. Just because Trump wants us to take her back it doesn't mean we should.
There is zero chance that she will face proper justice here for her crimes, a small slap on the wrist and probably a free council flat and benefits for life in Tower Hamlets is the most likely outcome.
A great number of people seem to be far more concerned for her, than they are for her victims and the victims of the group she willingly joined.
It's perfectly possible to be concerned with both.
She was clearly groomed when underage to go to Syria.
The ability to remove citizenship at the whim of the Home Secretary is also a dangerously authoritarian power, albeit one that many like Jenrick might like to use.
I am very concerned about leaving someone stateless. But I also don't believe she had zero idea what she was doing when she went to Syria.
IMV she was not a victim. Bur she created many victims.
That's a very good case for trying her case in a British court and punishing her under British Law.
Rather than pretending that she has nothing to do with us.
There’s an inarguable case for letting her be tried by the Syrians the Kurds the Yazidi or the Iraqis: her victims If we want to be generous we could pay to help them set up local courts (cheaper than hosting her and her chums in a council house for 300 years)
There’s a decent chance she would get the death penalty. Oh dear never mind etc
I agree, but sadly the new Syrian regime would be likelier to give her a ticker tape parade.
They're playing it smart at the moment, all nicey nicey yessir, if there was ever a time they would play ball it is probably now.
They are absolutely not going to convict and bump off someone who went to Syria to fight for global jihad. Not a chance.
The holding company I work for had a DEI lead. Never heard anything from her save for a badly worded email about Israel and Palestine after 7 October.
Finally canned just before Christmas.
Having said that, hope we are not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. A feeling of inclusion for employees is highly desirable.
I sent a message to my employees about the LA fires on Wednesday. I have a few people in LA, though none directly impacted. Was that woke?
It would be woke if you only selected to send it to people who are "oppressed", I think. Oppressors deserve the burning down of their property and belongings, of course.
There’s plenty of online comments to the effect that the LA fires only made rich people homeless, so that’s all good news, as if being wealthy somehow makes it okay to lose your home.
Sure, having money makes it easier to book an hotel suite for a month to try and work out what to do next, but it’s still a devastating event for anyone.
Yes a few of the top 0.01% will go to another of their nice homes, but that’s not the case for the vast majority.
It's a mistake for Farage to say we should accept the disgusting Begum back in the UK. She can rot in Syrian prison or they can deport her to Bangladesh. Just because Trump wants us to take her back it doesn't mean we should.
There is zero chance that she will face proper justice here for her crimes, a small slap on the wrist and probably a free council flat and benefits for life in Tower Hamlets is the most likely outcome.
A great number of people seem to be far more concerned for her, than they are for her victims and the victims of the group she willingly joined.
It's perfectly possible to be concerned with both.
She was clearly groomed when underage to go to Syria.
The ability to remove citizenship at the whim of the Home Secretary is also a dangerously authoritarian power, albeit one that many like Jenrick might like to use.
I am very concerned about leaving someone stateless. But I also don't believe she had zero idea what she was doing when she went to Syria.
IMV she was not a victim. Bur she created many victims.
That's a very good case for trying her case in a British court and punishing her under British Law.
Rather than pretending that she has nothing to do with us.
There’s an inarguable case for letting her be tried by the Syrians the Kurds the Yazidi or the Iraqis: her victims If we want to be generous we could pay to help them set up local courts (cheaper than hosting her and her chums in a council house for 300 years)
There’s a decent chance she would get the death penalty. Oh dear never mind etc
I agree, but sadly the new Syrian regime would be likelier to give her a ticker tape parade.
Not if we pay them to keep her locked up and throw away the key.
Perhaps.
Perhaps we should just invest in our own prisons overseas for very violent criminals as a group. It might be cheaper in the long run. Bung them all in there.
anyone who wants to be added to the PB list on Twitter, let me know (I'm MorrisF1) either here or there. Hopefully won't ever be needed but if the Act of Puritanical Censorship causes PB problems it could be used to more rapidly reconstitute a new site.
And, on a more self-absorbed note, my F1: 2025 Driver Lineup Predictions podcast (Undercutters ep4) is up here:
Slight problem with that is I’m not going near X regardless of any UK laws. It’s a swamp
If anybody really hates Twitter but wants to leave a means of contact, that's ok too. I appreciate people might not want to share their e-mail (although if I am an evil nefarious chap then waiting 16 years to gather e-mails is a pretty long con).
Edited extra bit: 18 years. I joined the site in 2007.
There are a lot of us on Bluesky. Possibly more than Twitter now.
It's a mistake for Farage to say we should accept the disgusting Begum back in the UK. She can rot in Syrian prison or they can deport her to Bangladesh. Just because Trump wants us to take her back it doesn't mean we should.
There is zero chance that she will face proper justice here for her crimes, a small slap on the wrist and probably a free council flat and benefits for life in Tower Hamlets is the most likely outcome.
A great number of people seem to be far more concerned for her, than they are for her victims and the victims of the group she willingly joined.
It's perfectly possible to be concerned with both.
She was clearly groomed when underage to go to Syria.
The ability to remove citizenship at the whim of the Home Secretary is also a dangerously authoritarian power, albeit one that many like Jenrick might like to use.
I am very concerned about leaving someone stateless. But I also don't believe she had zero idea what she was doing when she went to Syria.
IMV she was not a victim. Bur she created many victims.
That's a very good case for trying her case in a British court and punishing her under British Law.
Rather than pretending that she has nothing to do with us.
There’s an inarguable case for letting her be tried by the Syrians the Kurds the Yazidi or the Iraqis: her victims If we want to be generous we could pay to help them set up local courts (cheaper than hosting her and her chums in a council house for 300 years)
There’s a decent chance she would get the death penalty. Oh dear never mind etc
I agree, but sadly the new Syrian regime would be likelier to give her a ticker tape parade.
Not if we pay them to keep her locked up and throw away the key.
Perhaps.
Perhaps we should just invest in our own prisons overseas for very violent criminals as a group. It might be cheaper in the long run. Bung them all in there.
Rangoon is a bit of a shithole. A shithole full of post imperial noom but a bit of a shithole nonethiess
We built an entire and magnificent Victorian/Edwardian city on the banks of the woogly-waggly here, a mighty grid of banks and churches and city halls and customs houses and ornate Anglo-Burmese train stations - surrounding the golden pagodas - and now it all rots like a collection of Sicilian palazzi and trees grow through the roofs of the Port Authority HQ and Mon women, cheeks daubed with yellow thanaka paste, squat in the mildewed porches of the shuttered Strand Hotel selling tiny lychees and cheap Chinese dolls
There's some value in seeing it, though, as it's a perfect microcosm of much of the post-Imperial third world. At least that's what I thought when I was there a decade ago.
We introduced state of the art Victorian governance and since we left, rather than build on our achievements with the added blessings of self-determination and democracy they have let it fall apart and the rest of the place with it.
A pattern replicated in many places, sadly, from Hong Kong to Freetown to Khartoum to Salisbury to ...
It's 15 years ago that I was there. I quite liked Rangoon, which I found to be very different to a lot of South East Asia, perhaps a view to what Thailand and Vietnam looked like before the impact of the West. Even then though the number of Chinese goods was driving out local goods. I was mostly in Upper Burma though, which is the heartland of Burmese culture.
Burma was run as an outpost of British India, particularly to provide rice to Bengal. In 1942 Rangoon was 50% Bengali, most of whom fled, and often died, in the Empires longest retreat to India. This is a large factor in both the wartime Bengal famine, and the continuing animosity of Burmese to Muslims (seen as an Imperial presence inflicted by Britain on them). State of the art Victorian governance consisted of no say for local people in governance and forced extraction of resources at the point of a gun.
I really liked Burma and might get back there sometime. It has a dreadful and barbaric military government, but magnificent and largely intact cultures and landscapes. There may well be regime change at some point as the military have had a number of recent setbacks in the ongoing civil wars. The rebels vary from pro-democracy students to Narco-oligarchs, via a multiplicity of minority nationalists. To say that Myanmar politics is opaque is one of the great understatement.
Does it have anything to rival that famous Cambodian Temple city ?
The legend of Angkor Wat, I think it's called.
I have not been to Angkor Wat, but Bagan is one of the great sites. It was a city of 1 million people at one time, but all that is left now is the stone pagodas, perhaps a thousand of them in various states of ruin and size, with the civilian buildings all rotted away, leaving a massive plain of stupas.
Shortly before I visited all the local people were cleared off the site, at gunpoint by the SLORC military, without compensation, in order to make it more of a tourist site. Burma is full of that sort of brutal history amongst the beauty.
Angkor Wat is arguably THE single most impressive monument from the pre-modern world. And yes I’m including the pantheon, pyramids, Hagia Sophia, any medieval cathedrals (tho if you take them all together), Luxor; macchu pichu, Teotihuacan, and all
I’ve seen them all and Angkor Wat remains - to my mind - in a dreamy world of its own. Albeit now blighted by billions of tourists
I’ll be interested to compare Bagan. I very much doubt it’s in the same league but it does sound fabulous
I am excluding Gobekli Tepe and the tas Tepeler because you have to. They are more like alien cities from Martian invasions
I was going to say Gobekli Tepe is surely the most amazing example of ancient civilisation. Dated to 10,000 BC and it's just insane. Demolishes the idea that ancient humans were simple hunter gatherers and the African origin theory. It's been, err, interesting watching woke scientists try harder and harder to hold onto the African origin theory to the point of attempting to excommunicate scientists who dare to defy the prevailing theory. It's always amazing how scientific method takes a back seat when establishment approved ideas get disproved.
How exactly does it demolish Out of Africa?
That sounds an odd claim. GT is dated to 10,000 BC, whilst the OOA theory is based around a timespan 100-200,000 years ago. So the two sit very well together.
OOA theory may be wrong - in outline and especially in detail - but I cannot see how the existence of GT disproves it.
Yes, I thought the startling thing about GT was more around the emergence of complex societies needed (or what was presumed to be needed) to construct remarkable, er, constructions, so early on, not where it was. It's not like it's a million miles from other cradles of civilization (or Africa for that matter).
What were ancient coastlines like during the Ice Age? How much archaeology has been done on these lost lands? (eg. Dogger, Persian Gulf, Sunda Shelf, Sahul Shelf)
It's a mistake for Farage to say we should accept the disgusting Begum back in the UK. She can rot in Syrian prison or they can deport her to Bangladesh. Just because Trump wants us to take her back it doesn't mean we should.
There is zero chance that she will face proper justice here for her crimes, a small slap on the wrist and probably a free council flat and benefits for life in Tower Hamlets is the most likely outcome.
A great number of people seem to be far more concerned for her, than they are for her victims and the victims of the group she willingly joined.
It's perfectly possible to be concerned with both.
She was clearly groomed when underage to go to Syria.
The ability to remove citizenship at the whim of the Home Secretary is also a dangerously authoritarian power, albeit one that many like Jenrick might like to use.
I am very concerned about leaving someone stateless. But I also don't believe she had zero idea what she was doing when she went to Syria.
IMV she was not a victim. Bur she created many victims.
That's a very good case for trying her case in a British court and punishing her under British Law.
Rather than pretending that she has nothing to do with us.
There’s an inarguable case for letting her be tried by the Syrians the Kurds the Yazidi or the Iraqis: her victims If we want to be generous we could pay to help them set up local courts (cheaper than hosting her and her chums in a council house for 300 years)
There’s a decent chance she would get the death penalty. Oh dear never mind etc
I agree, but sadly the new Syrian regime would be likelier to give her a ticker tape parade.
Not if we pay them to keep her locked up and throw away the key.
Perhaps.
Perhaps we should just invest in our own prisons overseas for very violent criminals as a group. It might be cheaper in the long run. Bung them all in there.
Not even NIMBY's could object to that one.
Well exactly. It might actually get some prisons built in the UK if people knew the real hardened nasties were all off to Siera Leone.
Rangoon is a bit of a shithole. A shithole full of post imperial noom but a bit of a shithole nonethiess
We built an entire and magnificent Victorian/Edwardian city on the banks of the woogly-waggly here, a mighty grid of banks and churches and city halls and customs houses and ornate Anglo-Burmese train stations - surrounding the golden pagodas - and now it all rots like a collection of Sicilian palazzi and trees grow through the roofs of the Port Authority HQ and Mon women, cheeks daubed with yellow thanaka paste, squat in the mildewed porches of the shuttered Strand Hotel selling tiny lychees and cheap Chinese dolls
There's some value in seeing it, though, as it's a perfect microcosm of much of the post-Imperial third world. At least that's what I thought when I was there a decade ago.
We introduced state of the art Victorian governance and since we left, rather than build on our achievements with the added blessings of self-determination and democracy they have let it fall apart and the rest of the place with it.
A pattern replicated in many places, sadly, from Hong Kong to Freetown to Khartoum to Salisbury to ...
It's 15 years ago that I was there. I quite liked Rangoon, which I found to be very different to a lot of South East Asia, perhaps a view to what Thailand and Vietnam looked like before the impact of the West. Even then though the number of Chinese goods was driving out local goods. I was mostly in Upper Burma though, which is the heartland of Burmese culture.
Burma was run as an outpost of British India, particularly to provide rice to Bengal. In 1942 Rangoon was 50% Bengali, most of whom fled, and often died, in the Empires longest retreat to India. This is a large factor in both the wartime Bengal famine, and the continuing animosity of Burmese to Muslims (seen as an Imperial presence inflicted by Britain on them). State of the art Victorian governance consisted of no say for local people in governance and forced extraction of resources at the point of a gun.
I really liked Burma and might get back there sometime. It has a dreadful and barbaric military government, but magnificent and largely intact cultures and landscapes. There may well be regime change at some point as the military have had a number of recent setbacks in the ongoing civil wars. The rebels vary from pro-democracy students to Narco-oligarchs, via a multiplicity of minority nationalists. To say that Myanmar politics is opaque is one of the great understatement.
Does it have anything to rival that famous Cambodian Temple city ?
The legend of Angkor Wat, I think it's called.
I have not been to Angkor Wat, but Bagan is one of the great sites. It was a city of 1 million people at one time, but all that is left now is the stone pagodas, perhaps a thousand of them in various states of ruin and size, with the civilian buildings all rotted away, leaving a massive plain of stupas.
Shortly before I visited all the local people were cleared off the site, at gunpoint by the SLORC military, without compensation, in order to make it more of a tourist site. Burma is full of that sort of brutal history amongst the beauty.
Angkor Wat is arguably THE single most impressive monument from the pre-modern world. And yes I’m including the pantheon, pyramids, Hagia Sophia, any medieval cathedrals (tho if you take them all together), Luxor; macchu pichu, Teotihuacan, and all
I’ve seen them all and Angkor Wat remains - to my mind - in a dreamy world of its own. Albeit now blighted by billions of tourists
I’ll be interested to compare Bagan. I very much doubt it’s in the same league but it does sound fabulous
I am excluding Gobekli Tepe and the tas Tepeler because you have to. They are more like alien cities from Martian invasions
I was going to say Gobekli Tepe is surely the most amazing example of ancient civilisation. Dated to 10,000 BC and it's just insane. Demolishes the idea that ancient humans were simple hunter gatherers and the African origin theory. It's been, err, interesting watching woke scientists try harder and harder to hold onto the African origin theory to the point of attempting to excommunicate scientists who dare to defy the prevailing theory. It's always amazing how scientific method takes a back seat when establishment approved ideas get disproved.
How exactly does it demolish Out of Africa?
That sounds an odd claim. GT is dated to 10,000 BC, whilst the OOA theory is based around a timespan 100-200,000 years ago. So the two sit very well together.
OOA theory may be wrong - in outline and especially in detail - but I cannot see how the existence of GT disproves it.
Yes, I thought the startling thing about GT was more around the emergence of complex societies needed (or what was presumed to be needed) to construct remarkable, er, constructions, so early on, not where it was. It's not like it's a million miles from other cradles of civilization (or Africa for that matter).
What were ancient coastlines like during the Ice Age? How much archaeology has been done on these lost lands? (eg. Dogger, Persian Gulf, Sunda Shelf, Sahul Shelf)
And who knows what might have been going in during the last African humid period?
The government’s pledge to deliver the highest rate of removals since 2018 has been surpassed, with a surge in returns activity since the election leading to 16,400 people with no right to be in the UK being removed.
I have no idea what the 'right' number should be, but it doesn't sound like very many.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves has defended her decision to travel to China to improve economic ties at a time when soaring government borrowing costs threaten to squeeze UK public finances.
She says she wants a long-term relationship with China that is "squarely in our national interest" and on Saturday said agreements reached in Beijing would be worth £600m to the UK over the next five years.
These numbers are normally load of nonsense padded BS (The investment summit claimed £100bn or something stupid), but £100m a year, she got the Temu version of an agreement...
Just enough to pay for the surrender of British territory.
It's a mistake for Farage to say we should accept the disgusting Begum back in the UK. She can rot in Syrian prison or they can deport her to Bangladesh. Just because Trump wants us to take her back it doesn't mean we should.
There is zero chance that she will face proper justice here for her crimes, a small slap on the wrist and probably a free council flat and benefits for life in Tower Hamlets is the most likely outcome.
A great number of people seem to be far more concerned for her, than they are for her victims and the victims of the group she willingly joined.
It's perfectly possible to be concerned with both.
She was clearly groomed when underage to go to Syria.
The ability to remove citizenship at the whim of the Home Secretary is also a dangerously authoritarian power, albeit one that many like Jenrick might like to use.
I am very concerned about leaving someone stateless. But I also don't believe she had zero idea what she was doing when she went to Syria.
IMV she was not a victim. Bur she created many victims.
That's a very good case for trying her case in a British court and punishing her under British Law.
Rather than pretending that she has nothing to do with us.
She committed no crimes in the UK.
And even if she could legally be tried here for crimes committed abroad, how on earth would Britain be able to get the evidence or witnesses? No - if she is allowed to return, she would be free. She has had her day in court here. The courts have ruled and that's it. It is - frankly - none of the US's business.
For once I disagree with you. She is clearly guilty of entering and remaining in a designated area, which is an offence under the Terrorism Act 2000 and carries a maximum sentence of 10 years. It may also be possible to convict her of supporting a proscribed organisation (maximum sentence 14 years), attendance at a place used for terrorist training (14 years) and possibly other terrorist offences. For all of these, she can be convicted in the UK notwithstanding the fact that the offence was committed elsewhere. For some it may be difficult to get the evidence required, but there is no difficulty at all with the designated area offence. If she is allowed to return, she is likely to face a substantial prison sentence.
You are right re these domestic offences. I was referring to - and should have made clear - that I was referring to offences she committed in Syria, where the evidence (reliable enough for a criminal trial here) will be hard to collect.
The government’s pledge to deliver the highest rate of removals since 2018 has been surpassed, with a surge in returns activity since the election leading to 16,400 people with no right to be in the UK being removed.
I have no idea what the 'right' number should be, but it doesn't sound like very many.
I don't either, though it is about the same as the number of small boat people in the last six months.
What I suspect it does highlight is how bad Team 2019-24 were at the basics. And that Rwanda was a Macguffin in the migration debate, when less controversial things weren't being tried.
The government’s pledge to deliver the highest rate of removals since 2018 has been surpassed, with a surge in returns activity since the election leading to 16,400 people with no right to be in the UK being removed.
I have no idea what the 'right' number should be, but it doesn't sound like very many.
It’s much less than total irregular arrivals, but assuming a majority of those arrivals end up legal, I think it probably counts towards fair chunk of illegal migrants. Possibly even making a cut into the backlog.
There are some easy pickings for government in a few areas of policy. Clearing asylum and immigration backlogs and emptying those hotels is surely one of them. Reducing legal migration numbers is another given the pipeline. Cutting NHS waiting lists post Covid too, and - though maybe harder than some others - upping the rate of housebuilding.
Other things are much harder, notably the economy and fiscal balance. And “stopping the boats”, because that’s an international challenge.
Reform collapsing would be a gift to the Conservatives. They will struggle if it doesn't, in fact
What's the longest Farage and a party has gone without serious ructions? I know he was in UKIP for ages but it was still occasionally bumpy even before he departed for good.
I don't think Reform are imminently about to collapse, but it does feel like all or nothing with them sometimes - there are still people desperately hoping they will replace the Conservatives, but they could also just disappear if things go wrong.
They are amateurs compared to the Tory Party. You don’t resign and leave the party, you stick around and undermine the leader.
It's a mistake for Farage to say we should accept the disgusting Begum back in the UK. She can rot in Syrian prison or they can deport her to Bangladesh. Just because Trump wants us to take her back it doesn't mean we should.
There is zero chance that she will face proper justice here for her crimes, a small slap on the wrist and probably a free council flat and benefits for life in Tower Hamlets is the most likely outcome.
A great number of people seem to be far more concerned for her, than they are for her victims and the victims of the group she willingly joined.
The middle position gets overlooked - she has behaved appallingly, and even at 15 should have known much better and deserves little from the UK, though if there were a general international repatriation programme from the area she currently lives she should be part of it. She should face justice in the UK. But what we should never do is land the problem on a not very wealthy third country (Bangladesh) who have nothing to do with it, nor should we render UK citizens stateless.
In this instance, rarely, Trump and Farage are more grown up than either Conservative or Labour, or the Supreme Court who should have told the government where to go.
We cannot render UK citizens stateless. The law prevents us from doing so. The Home Secretary's decision to exclude her was upheld by the Supreme Court because, at the time it was made, it did not render her stateless. According to the evidence presented, she is now stateless due to her failure to do what was needed to retain her Bangladeshi citizenship.
She never held Bangladeshi citizenship, though was potentially eligible for it, so could not "retain" something she never had.
To be able to remove citizenship because someone is potentially eligible for anther citizenship is quite an authoritarian power. Potentially not just second generation migrants, but also those born in Northern Ireland and all Jews. Such power could easily be abused by an ethno-nationalist government, as for example India has done.
The courts clearly stated in their judgements that she held Bangladeshi citizenship by descent until her 21st birthday. She wasn't "potentially eligible" for Bangladeshi citizenship. She actually held it. Or do you know something the courts don't?
The decision that she held citizenship was based on Bangladesh's Citizenship Act 1951 Section 5 which states "Subject to the provisions of section 3 a person born after the commencement of this Act, shall be a citizen of Bangladesh by descent if his father or mother is a citizen of Bangladesh at the time of his birth:"
"The state minister of foreign affairs of Bangladesh, Shahriar Alam, asserted in a statement to the British media just days after Javid’s announcement that Begum was not a citizen of Bangladesh and would be denied entry to the country."
She has never held a Bangladeshi passport and never been to the country. Bangladesh says she has never been a citizen.
Politician makes statement contrary to the law shocker.
No, she has never held a Bangladeshi passport and, as far as I can see, has never been there. I am not an expert in Bangladeshi law, but the experts who gave evidence in the UK courts were clear that she was a citizen until she was 21, regardless of any statements to the contrary by Bangladeshi politicians.
Just to correct myself slightly, it wasn't experts on Bangladeshi law that gave evidence in the UK courts. It was the Bangladeshi government that contradicted pronouncements by politicians and stated that she was a Bangladeshi citizen.
Note that her UK citizenship could not have been removed if she was only eligible for citizenship elsewhere. The law is that an individual can only have their UK citizenship removed if they actually hold citizenship of another country.
Link please to prove that statement because as no point have I seen that "fact" and believe me I would remember it...
But actually that's irrelevant because she wasn't a Bangladeshi citizen on her 21st birthday so at that point her only citizenship was the UK - and the last court case was after her 21st birthday.
Where the evidence came from was mentioned in one of the judgements, but I can't remember which one. Note, however, that her lawyers consistently argued that the decision rendered her de facto stateless, not that it actually made her stateless. It was accepted by them that she was a citizen of Bangladesh until she was 21.
And it is relevant. The court cases after her 21st birthday were an attempt to challenge the legality of a decision that was taken when she was 19. The fact she is now stateless is irrelevant to that. What matters is that the decision did not make her stateless at the point when it was made. The courts decided that the decision could not be made today but, at the time it was made, it was lawful. They also looked at the evidence, including evidence we are not allowed to see, and decided that there was more than enough evidence to support the decision.
It appears that Russian mainstream media is in denial that the NorKs are there at all.
Wouldn’t that be a breach of the Geneva Convention? Insofar as anyone gives a fcuk for conventions, treaties and protocols any more.
You can’t display them like they are in a zoo, to amuse the public. I suppose one could try and argue that this is proving they exist so it’s different. But it’s a weak line.
It appears that Russian mainstream media is in denial that the NorKs are there at all.
Wouldn’t that be a breach of the Geneva Convention? Insofar as anyone gives a fcuk for conventions, treaties and protocols any more.
You can’t display them like they are in a zoo, to amuse the public. I suppose one could try and argue that this is proving they exist so it’s different. But it’s a weak line.
I think Jeremy Bowen a couple of years ago was saying something like that of course war crimes do happen from all sides during a war, the difference with the Russians is how many and how integral it is to their strategies, not even a pretence of rooting it out which others usually attempt a little, even if no one is 100% 'clean'.
The government’s pledge to deliver the highest rate of removals since 2018 has been surpassed, with a surge in returns activity since the election leading to 16,400 people with no right to be in the UK being removed.
I have no idea what the 'right' number should be, but it doesn't sound like very many.
I don't either, though it is about the same as the number of small boat people in the last six months.
What I suspect it does highlight is how bad Team 2019-24 were at the basics. And that Rwanda was a Macguffin in the migration debate, when less controversial things weren't being tried.
More likely, it highlights the useful idiots who were attempting to stop deportations through legal action have lost the incentive to annoy a government they don't like.
It appears that Russian mainstream media is in denial that the NorKs are there at all.
Wouldn’t that be a breach of the Geneva Convention? Insofar as anyone gives a fcuk for conventions, treaties and protocols any more.
You can’t display them like they are in a zoo, to amuse the public. I suppose one could try and argue that this is proving they exist so it’s different. But it’s a weak line.
I guess if they have the permission of the POWs that might work. Don’t imagine N.Korea would be happy with them or their families if there were any signs of cooperation though.
David Steel favoured a genuinely independent nuclear deterrent forty years
So many of the Thatcher era's - and New Labour's - myopic decisions are coming home to roost.
To be fair to Thatcher (not something I often say) Reagan ( Grenada aside) was no Trump. I don't believe many predicted Trump, in the meantime we could have had PM Corbyn.
It appears that Russian mainstream media is in denial that the NorKs are there at all.
Wouldn’t that be a breach of the Geneva Convention? Insofar as anyone gives a fcuk for conventions, treaties and protocols any more.
You can’t display them like they are in a zoo, to amuse the public. I suppose one could try and argue that this is proving they exist so it’s different. But it’s a weak line.
I guess if they have the permission of the POWs that might work. Don’t imagine N.Korea would be happy with them or their families if there were any signs of cooperation though.
Not really in much of a position to freely give permission, POWs. Depending on the regime, obviously.
It appears that Russian mainstream media is in denial that the NorKs are there at all.
Wouldn’t that be a breach of the Geneva Convention? Insofar as anyone gives a fcuk for conventions, treaties and protocols any more.
You can’t display them like they are in a zoo, to amuse the public. I suppose one could try and argue that this is proving they exist so it’s different. But it’s a weak line.
North Koreans unlikely to use the pretend Russian excuse of them being random people on vacation I suppose. But I doubt things will go well for anyone who knows them, for being captured.
anyone who wants to be added to the PB list on Twitter, let me know (I'm MorrisF1) either here or there. Hopefully won't ever be needed but if the Act of Puritanical Censorship causes PB problems it could be used to more rapidly reconstitute a new site.
And, on a more self-absorbed note, my F1: 2025 Driver Lineup Predictions podcast (Undercutters ep4) is up here:
Slight problem with that is I’m not going near X regardless of any UK laws. It’s a swamp
If anybody really hates Twitter but wants to leave a means of contact, that's ok too. I appreciate people might not want to share their e-mail (although if I am an evil nefarious chap then waiting 16 years to gather e-mails is a pretty long con).
Edited extra bit: 18 years. I joined the site in 2007.
There are a lot of us on Bluesky. Possibly more than Twitter now.
Oh bugger, got a speeding fine for 24 in a 20 zone.
I'll see you on the speed awareness course. First offence in circa 1.5 million miles since 1979. 35 in a 30 on Christmas Day.
An elderly friend of mine was fined for 35 in a 30 zone. She was highly indignant and said 'But I go that way every day!' Not sure what difference she thought that made.
I may have misunderstood this, but anyone who thinks the British Isles have, on average, in the last 2000 years been a single unity with a single name is labouring under serious misapprehension.
Reform collapsing would be a gift to the Conservatives. They will struggle if it doesn't, in fact
What's the longest Farage and a party has gone without serious ructions? I know he was in UKIP for ages but it was still occasionally bumpy even before he departed for good.
I don't think Reform are imminently about to collapse, but it does feel like all or nothing with them sometimes - there are still people desperately hoping they will replace the Conservatives, but they could also just disappear if things go wrong.
The real problems start if they get a shedload of councillors elected in May. Assuming there are any elections in May. The UKIP experience was that where they did well, such as in Lincolnshire, things fell apart very rapidly. As I recall one council there ended with the UKIP councillors splitting into three different groups with infighting all round
Oh bugger, got a speeding fine for 24 in a 20 zone.
I'll see you on the speed awareness course. First offence in circa 1.5 million miles since 1979. 35 in a 30 on Christmas Day.
An elderly friend of mine was fined for 35 in a 30 zone. She was highly indignant and said 'But I go that way every day!' Not sure what difference she thought that made.
"Flight data and cockpit voice recorders from the South Korean passenger plane that crashed last month stopped recording four minutes before the disaster, the country's transport ministry has said.
The crash of the Jeju Air flight killed 179 people, making it the deadliest air accident on Korean soil. Two cabin crew members were the only survivors.
Investigators had hoped that data on the recorders would provide insights about the crucial moments before the tragedy.
The ministry said it would analyse what caused the "black boxes" to stop recording."
It appears that Russian mainstream media is in denial that the NorKs are there at all.
Wouldn’t that be a breach of the Geneva Convention? Insofar as anyone gives a fcuk for conventions, treaties and protocols any more.
You can’t display them like they are in a zoo, to amuse the public. I suppose one could try and argue that this is proving they exist so it’s different. But it’s a weak line.
I think Jeremy Bowen a couple of years ago was saying something like that of course war crimes do happen from all sides during a war, the difference with the Russians is how many and how integral it is to their strategies, not even a pretence of rooting it out which others usually attempt a little, even if no one is 100% 'clean'.
It’s an important distinction.
All parties to a major war commit war crimes.
But, not all parties do so as a matter of policy. That’s what the Russian military does.
I may have misunderstood this, but anyone who thinks the British Isles have, on average, in the last 2000 years been a single unity with a single name is labouring under serious misapprehension.
When Diodorus came and named the whole island Pretannia, sometime around then Classicak era, weren't most people Brythonic-speaking?
"Flight data and cockpit voice recorders from the South Korean passenger plane that crashed last month stopped recording four minutes before the disaster, the country's transport ministry has said.
The crash of the Jeju Air flight killed 179 people, making it the deadliest air accident on Korean soil. Two cabin crew members were the only survivors.
Investigators had hoped that data on the recorders would provide insights about the crucial moments before the tragedy.
The ministry said it would analyse what caused the "black boxes" to stop recording."
The recorders are very much set up to keep recording no matter what happens with power to the rest of the plane, even if the engines fail, but if the NTSB lab in the US can’t get the data then it’s unlikely anyone can.
More questions, from a situation that was supposed to be giving more answers.
I may have misunderstood this, but anyone who thinks the British Isles have, on average, in the last 2000 years been a single unity with a single name is labouring under serious misapprehension.
It’s interesting to see Brittany coded green here.
Britain could do more with its Celtic heritage. There ought to be a nationally funded Museum of the Celtic World in Cardiff, and stronger support of cultural links with Brittany and Galicia in Spain.
I may have misunderstood this, but anyone who thinks the British Isles have, on average, in the last 2000 years been a single unity with a single name is labouring under serious misapprehension.
When Diodorus came and named the whole island Pretannia, sometime around then Classicak era, weren't most people Brythonic-speaking?
Actually I can see that Diodorus was a Hellenistic Greek in the Roman period.
The holding company I work for had a DEI lead. Never heard anything from her save for a badly worded email about Israel and Palestine after 7 October.
Finally canned just before Christmas.
Having said that, hope we are not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. A feeling of inclusion for employees is highly desirable.
I sent a message to my employees about the LA fires on Wednesday. I have a few people in LA, though none directly impacted. Was that woke?
The work woke is very overused, but that doesn't mean there is necessarily nothing to complain about a certain mode of behaviour and tone policing, though obviously opinions will vary.
Personally I think the balance could swing back a bit on some of the DEI stuff (I don't recall such an emphasis on it being called that until last year), without that meaning everyone reverts to being some obnoxious troglodyte.
Just follow the moral of A Christmas Carol - Don't be a dick.
Given the way social movements work, that's actually quite likely.
It's a mistake for Farage to say we should accept the disgusting Begum back in the UK. She can rot in Syrian prison or they can deport her to Bangladesh. Just because Trump wants us to take her back it doesn't mean we should.
There is zero chance that she will face proper justice here for her crimes, a small slap on the wrist and probably a free council flat and benefits for life in Tower Hamlets is the most likely outcome.
A great number of people seem to be far more concerned for her, than they are for her victims and the victims of the group she willingly joined.
It's perfectly possible to be concerned with both.
She was clearly groomed when underage to go to Syria.
The ability to remove citizenship at the whim of the Home Secretary is also a dangerously authoritarian power, albeit one that many like Jenrick might like to use.
I am very concerned about leaving someone stateless. But I also don't believe she had zero idea what she was doing when she went to Syria.
IMV she was not a victim. Bur she created many victims.
Some quite obvious cognitive dissonance on teenagers autonomy and consent when you compare her case to others in the news.
Really? I can believe that, but care to give examples?
But I'd point out that there are unlikely to be cases quite as (ahem) extreme as what she did.
The age of consent and the age of criminal responsibility differ.
The slight problem with that argument is that she personally committed war crimes after she was over 16.
I still think she ought to come here to be tried properly.
It's a mistake for Farage to say we should accept the disgusting Begum back in the UK. She can rot in Syrian prison or they can deport her to Bangladesh. Just because Trump wants us to take her back it doesn't mean we should.
There is zero chance that she will face proper justice here for her crimes, a small slap on the wrist and probably a free council flat and benefits for life in Tower Hamlets is the most likely outcome.
A great number of people seem to be far more concerned for her, than they are for her victims and the victims of the group she willingly joined.
It's perfectly possible to be concerned with both.
She was clearly groomed when underage to go to Syria.
The ability to remove citizenship at the whim of the Home Secretary is also a dangerously authoritarian power, albeit one that many like Jenrick might like to use.
I am very concerned about leaving someone stateless. But I also don't believe she had zero idea what she was doing when she went to Syria.
IMV she was not a victim. Bur she created many victims.
Some quite obvious cognitive dissonance on teenagers autonomy and consent when you compare her case to others in the news.
Really? I can believe that, but care to give examples?
But I'd point out that there are unlikely to be cases quite as (ahem) extreme as what she did.
The age of consent and the age of criminal responsibility differ.
The slight problem with that argument is that she personally committed war crimes after she was over 16.
I still think she ought to come here to be tried properly.
And Good Morning one and all.
On what charges should she be tried?
War crimes, according to one of our colleagues.
That's going to be an impossible conviction because we only have hearsay on the alleged crimes and untrustworthy sources from the old Assad regime. It's nonsense, no let her be tried by the Syrians and she can rot in one of their jails for the rest of her life, we should pay the Syrians to do this.
TBH, I think she was unfairly denied British citizenship; she appears to have been groomed when in her very early teens (if not before) and it's all gone downhill from there. I'm relying here on the word of Mr M, who says we have reliable evidence, and cross-questionable witnesses in UK.If we haven't, that's different. What I don't think is right, though, is leaving her to rot, without someone listening to her case.
We have witnesses. It’s fairly clear from the witterings of some, that they think that witnesses from that part of the world are somehow automatically second class evidence.
Then again, said witnesses weren’t wearing pith helmets and called Caruthers. Bit suntanned, some them, as well.
I find it interesting how “other cultures are better than the West” turns into “they are savages” when it’s convenient.
Reform collapsing would be a gift to the Conservatives. They will struggle if it doesn't, in fact
What's the longest Farage and a party has gone without serious ructions? I know he was in UKIP for ages but it was still occasionally bumpy even before he departed for good.
I don't think Reform are imminently about to collapse, but it does feel like all or nothing with them sometimes - there are still people desperately hoping they will replace the Conservatives, but they could also just disappear if things go wrong.
The real problems start if they get a shedload of councillors elected in May. Assuming there are any elections in May. The UKIP experience was that where they did well, such as in Lincolnshire, things fell apart very rapidly. As I recall one council there ended with the UKIP councillors splitting into three different groups with infighting all round
They did no vetting on most of the councillor candidates, many of whom were supposed to be no more than paper candidates and didn’t expect to be elected, only to discover that a number of them had been BNP members or friends of “Tommy”.
For all that we can criticise Farage, the one thing he’s always been really good at is dealing quickly with any unsavoury types who have infiltrated his party.
Are there any overriding reasons why Trump wouldn't see Putin as an ally, and much of Europe as enemies?
And if Trump tells Putin he's welcome to the Baltics (scarily this doesn't seem impossible), which way would Britain go?
The question for Britain now is whether we can treat the US as a reliable ally. I am not at all sure we can. And that has serious implications for our defence and intelligence services, on top of the economic consequences of tariffs and so on.
It may make sense for Britain to stay close to the US even at the cost of abandoning its European allies, and its principles, and wait for MAGA to be replaced with something more palatable. People don't like me calling this Finlandisation, but I think it would be in a way.
Rangoon is a bit of a shithole. A shithole full of post imperial noom but a bit of a shithole nonethiess
We built an entire and magnificent Victorian/Edwardian city on the banks of the woogly-waggly here, a mighty grid of banks and churches and city halls and customs houses and ornate Anglo-Burmese train stations - surrounding the golden pagodas - and now it all rots like a collection of Sicilian palazzi and trees grow through the roofs of the Port Authority HQ and Mon women, cheeks daubed with yellow thanaka paste, squat in the mildewed porches of the shuttered Strand Hotel selling tiny lychees and cheap Chinese dolls
There's some value in seeing it, though, as it's a perfect microcosm of much of the post-Imperial third world. At least that's what I thought when I was there a decade ago.
We introduced state of the art Victorian governance and since we left, rather than build on our achievements with the added blessings of self-determination and democracy they have let it fall apart and the rest of the place with it.
A pattern replicated in many places, sadly, from Hong Kong to Freetown to Khartoum to Salisbury to ...
It's 15 years ago that I was there. I quite liked Rangoon, which I found to be very different to a lot of South East Asia, perhaps a view to what Thailand and Vietnam looked like before the impact of the West. Even then though the number of Chinese goods was driving out local goods. I was mostly in Upper Burma though, which is the heartland of Burmese culture.
Burma was run as an outpost of British India, particularly to provide rice to Bengal. In 1942 Rangoon was 50% Bengali, most of whom fled, and often died, in the Empires longest retreat to India. This is a large factor in both the wartime Bengal famine, and the continuing animosity of Burmese to Muslims (seen as an Imperial presence inflicted by Britain on them). State of the art Victorian governance consisted of no say for local people in governance and forced extraction of resources at the point of a gun.
I really liked Burma and might get back there sometime. It has a dreadful and barbaric military government, but magnificent and largely intact cultures and landscapes. There may well be regime change at some point as the military have had a number of recent setbacks in the ongoing civil wars. The rebels vary from pro-democracy students to Narco-oligarchs, via a multiplicity of minority nationalists. To say that Myanmar politics is opaque is one of the great understatement.
Does it have anything to rival that famous Cambodian Temple city ?
The legend of Angkor Wat, I think it's called.
I have not been to Angkor Wat, but Bagan is one of the great sites. It was a city of 1 million people at one time, but all that is left now is the stone pagodas, perhaps a thousand of them in various states of ruin and size, with the civilian buildings all rotted away, leaving a massive plain of stupas.
Shortly before I visited all the local people were cleared off the site, at gunpoint by the SLORC military, without compensation, in order to make it more of a tourist site. Burma is full of that sort of brutal history amongst the beauty.
Angkor Wat is arguably THE single most impressive monument from the pre-modern world. And yes I’m including the pantheon, pyramids, Hagia Sophia, any medieval cathedrals (tho if you take them all together), Luxor; macchu pichu, Teotihuacan, and all
I’ve seen them all and Angkor Wat remains - to my mind - in a dreamy world of its own. Albeit now blighted by billions of tourists
I’ll be interested to compare Bagan. I very much doubt it’s in the same league but it does sound fabulous
I am excluding Gobekli Tepe and the tas Tepeler because you have to. They are more like alien cities from Martian invasions
I was going to say Gobekli Tepe is surely the most amazing example of ancient civilisation. Dated to 10,000 BC and it's just insane. Demolishes the idea that ancient humans were simple hunter gatherers and the African origin theory. It's been, err, interesting watching woke scientists try harder and harder to hold onto the African origin theory to the point of attempting to excommunicate scientists who dare to defy the prevailing theory. It's always amazing how scientific method takes a back seat when establishment approved ideas get disproved.
There is literally nothing you guys won't blame on woke. Fires in California, academics being arseholes, incitement to to violence leading to convictions.
All of these things have been going on for centuries.
Are you saying woke has been going on for centuries?
Alabama 1860s: "All those woke evolutionists proving that humans are a single race!"
Reform collapsing would be a gift to the Conservatives. They will struggle if it doesn't, in fact
What's the longest Farage and a party has gone without serious ructions? I know he was in UKIP for ages but it was still occasionally bumpy even before he departed for good.
I don't think Reform are imminently about to collapse, but it does feel like all or nothing with them sometimes - there are still people desperately hoping they will replace the Conservatives, but they could also just disappear if things go wrong.
The real problems start if they get a shedload of councillors elected in May. Assuming there are any elections in May. The UKIP experience was that where they did well, such as in Lincolnshire, things fell apart very rapidly. As I recall one council there ended with the UKIP councillors splitting into three different groups with infighting all round
They did no vetting on most of the councillor candidates, many of whom were supposed to be no more than paper candidates and didn’t expect to be elected, only to discover that a number of them had been BNP members or friends of “Tommy”.
For all that we can criticise Farage, the one thing he’s always been really good at is dealing quickly with any unsavoury types who have infiltrated his party.
Yet it’s probably harder to get in if you are a sensible person, as they seem exceptionally good at keeping those sorts out.
It appears that Russian mainstream media is in denial that the NorKs are there at all.
Wouldn’t that be a breach of the Geneva Convention? Insofar as anyone gives a fcuk for conventions, treaties and protocols any more.
You can’t display them like they are in a zoo, to amuse the public. I suppose one could try and argue that this is proving they exist so it’s different. But it’s a weak line.
I think Jeremy Bowen a couple of years ago was saying something like that of course war crimes do happen from all sides during a war, the difference with the Russians is how many and how integral it is to their strategies, not even a pretence of rooting it out which others usually attempt a little, even if no one is 100% 'clean'.
It’s an important distinction.
All parties to a major war commit war crimes.
But, not all parties do so as a matter of policy. That’s what the Russian military does.
Are there any overriding reasons why Trump wouldn't see Putin as an ally, and much of Europe as enemies?
And if Trump tells Putin he's welcome to the Baltics (scarily this doesn't seem impossible), which way would Britain go?
The question for Britain now is whether we can treat the US as a reliable ally. I am not at all sure we can. And that has serious implications for our defence and intelligence services, on top of the economic consequences of tariffs and so on.
It may make sense for Britain to stay close to the US even at the cost of abandoning its European allies, and its principles, and wait for MAGA to be replaced with something more palatable. People don't like me calling this Finlandisation, but I think it would be in a way.
I don't really see how we can lut our fingers in our ears, whistle loudly, and, wait till the gruffalo has gone.
Musk is working on reposing government now, and via Trump he potentially has access to Anerica's entire intelligence and military infrastructure.
Are there any overriding reasons why Trump wouldn't see Putin as an ally, and much of Europe as enemies?
And if Trump tells Putin he's welcome to the Baltics (scarily this doesn't seem impossible), which way would Britain go?
The question for Britain now is whether we can treat the US as a reliable ally. I am not at all sure we can. And that has serious implications for our defence and intelligence services, on top of the economic consequences of tariffs and so on.
It may make sense for Britain to stay close to the US even at the cost of abandoning its European allies, and its principles, and wait for MAGA to be replaced with something more palatable. People don't like me calling this Finlandisation, but I think it would be in a way.
I may have misunderstood this, but anyone who thinks the British Isles have, on average, in the last 2000 years been a single unity with a single name is labouring under serious misapprehension.
It’s interesting to see Brittany coded green here.
Britain could do more with its Celtic heritage. There ought to be a nationally funded Museum of the Celtic World in Cardiff, and stronger support of cultural links with Brittany and Galicia in Spain.
It appears that Russian mainstream media is in denial that the NorKs are there at all.
Wouldn’t that be a breach of the Geneva Convention? Insofar as anyone gives a fcuk for conventions, treaties and protocols any more.
You can’t display them like they are in a zoo, to amuse the public. I suppose one could try and argue that this is proving they exist so it’s different. But it’s a weak line.
I think Jeremy Bowen a couple of years ago was saying something like that of course war crimes do happen from all sides during a war, the difference with the Russians is how many and how integral it is to their strategies, not even a pretence of rooting it out which others usually attempt a little, even if no one is 100% 'clean'.
It’s an important distinction.
All parties to a major war commit war crimes.
But, not all parties do so as a matter of policy. That’s what the Russian military does.
Displaying POWs isn’t a breach.
Displaying them to humiliate and demean them is.
Yes, working that one out….
Displaying them to show that they exist, as NorKs involved in the war - which Russia is officially still denying - isn’t humiliating the soldiers themselves.
There’s going to be a careful dance that avoids the PoWs looking like they’re actually quite happy and the Ukranians are treating them well, which is the most likely situation on the ground.
Ukraine has been quite amazing when it comes to the conduct of this war, making sure they do the right thing in sharp contrast to what the other side have been up to. This will become clear afterwards. Does anyone here think the Ukranians are killing civilians, raping women, and kidnapping children, in Kursk where they are the aggressors?
Comments
OOA theory may be wrong - in outline and especially in detail - but I cannot see how the existence of GT disproves it.
All of these things have been going on for centuries.
"
Speaking as part of a video that aired during a commercial break for the FOX show 9-1-1 about firefighter capabilities, Larson said, "Am I able to carry your husband out of a fire? He got himself in the wrong place if I have to carry him out."
"
Speaking of which...
No, she has never held a Bangladeshi passport and, as far as I can see, has never been there. I am not an expert in Bangladeshi law, but the experts who gave evidence in the UK courts were clear that she was a citizen until she was 21, regardless of any statements to the contrary by Bangladeshi politicians.
IMV the same applies to the Mesolithic peoples.
Note that her UK citizenship could not have been removed if she was only eligible for citizenship elsewhere. The law is that an individual can only have their UK citizenship removed if they actually hold citizenship of another country.
An interesting question is *why* some people seem to be so keen to disprove the Out of Africa theory? Why does it matter where 'we' originated?
"Meta and Amazon axe DEI programmes joining corporate rollback - BBC News" https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgmy7xpw3pyo
But actually that's irrelevant because she wasn't a Bangladeshi citizen on her 21st birthday so at that point her only citizenship was the UK - and the last court case was after her 21st birthday.
But I doubt that will happen, I cannot imagine any government being particularly keen to limit its options once it has the power to do something.
When I've helped out with mountain rescues, you quickly work out that anyone who isn't a Royal Marine isn't carrying anyone any sort of distance at all. Took six of us just to move a casualty 5m behind a rock for shelter.
I'd also guess this clip also references the peculiar behaviour where lots of people refuse to evacuate an area even as a big fire approaches, and has been taken out of context somewhat.
I don't think Reform are imminently about to collapse, but it does feel like all or nothing with them sometimes - there are still people desperately hoping they will replace the Conservatives, but they could also just disappear if things go wrong.
Never heard anything from her save for a badly worded email about Israel and Palestine after 7 October.
Finally canned just before Christmas.
Having said that, hope we are not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. A feeling of inclusion for employees is highly desirable.
I sent a message to my employees about the LA fires on Wednesday. I have a few people in LA, though none directly impacted. Was that woke?
Not saying it was not a weasel move and reasoning, but I don't think it's the slam dunk people think it is to bring up a government's rejection of the argument - government's can be wrong about the law.
The Begum thing and the difficulty of riding the Trump tiger is looks far trickier to me. I actually want Trump to be inaugurated and in power - I feel that will focus his mind on other things. Not saying he's not massively busy, but the challenges of being in office will be different.
Personally I think the balance could swing back a bit on some of the DEI stuff (I don't recall such an emphasis on it being called that until last year), without that meaning everyone reverts to being some obnoxious troglodyte.
Just follow the moral of A Christmas Carol - Don't be a dick.
Sure, having money makes it easier to book an hotel suite for a month to try and work out what to do next, but it’s still a devastating event for anyone.
Yes a few of the top 0.01% will go to another of their nice homes, but that’s not the case for the vast majority.
Perhaps we should just invest in our own prisons overseas for very violent criminals as a group. It might be cheaper in the long run. Bung them all in there.
@xotgd.bsky.social
What does the "average" map of Europe look like over the last 2000 years
A French historian (@herodotenet) took a shot and came up with this map
Roman Croatia, Swedish Finland, Polish Empire and independent Brittany... Here's a 🧵 on how he came up with this brilliant map
https://nitter.poast.org/Valen10Francois/status/1878041415130742887#m
How much archaeology has been done on these lost lands? (eg. Dogger, Persian Gulf, Sunda Shelf, Sahul Shelf)
I have no idea what the 'right' number should be, but it doesn't sound like very many.
Ukraine has captured two injured NorKs as PoWs, and intends to show them to the media.
https://x.com/zelenskyyua/status/1878046090018042169
It appears that Russian mainstream media is in denial that the NorKs are there at all.
What I suspect it does highlight is how bad Team 2019-24 were at the basics. And that Rwanda was a Macguffin in the migration debate, when less controversial things weren't being tried.
There are some easy pickings for government in a few areas of policy. Clearing asylum and immigration backlogs and emptying those hotels is surely one of them. Reducing legal migration numbers is another given the pipeline. Cutting NHS waiting lists post Covid too, and - though maybe harder than some others - upping the rate of housebuilding.
Other things are much harder, notably the economy and fiscal balance. And “stopping the boats”, because that’s an international challenge.
Insofar as anyone gives a fcuk for conventions, treaties and protocols any more.
And it is relevant. The court cases after her 21st birthday were an attempt to challenge the legality of a decision that was taken when she was 19. The fact she is now stateless is irrelevant to that. What matters is that the decision did not make her stateless at the point when it was made. The courts decided that the decision could not be made today but, at the time it was made, it was lawful. They also looked at the evidence, including evidence we are not allowed to see, and decided that there was more than enough evidence to support the decision.
The crash of the Jeju Air flight killed 179 people, making it the deadliest air accident on Korean soil. Two cabin crew members were the only survivors.
Investigators had hoped that data on the recorders would provide insights about the crucial moments before the tragedy.
The ministry said it would analyse what caused the "black boxes" to stop recording."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjr8dwd1rdno
All parties to a major war commit war crimes.
But, not all parties do so as a matter of policy. That’s what the Russian military does.
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1878038752120959277
The recorders are very much set up to keep recording no matter what happens with power to the rest of the plane, even if the engines fail, but if the NTSB lab in the US can’t get the data then it’s unlikely anyone can.
More questions, from a situation that was supposed to be giving more answers.
Britain could do more with its Celtic heritage. There ought to be a nationally funded Museum of the Celtic World in Cardiff, and stronger support of cultural links with Brittany and Galicia in Spain.
Then again, said witnesses weren’t wearing pith helmets and called Caruthers. Bit suntanned, some them, as well.
I find it interesting how “other cultures are better than the West” turns into “they are savages” when it’s convenient.
For all that we can criticise Farage, the one thing he’s always been really good at is dealing quickly with any unsavoury types who have infiltrated his party.
Displaying them to humiliate and demean them is.
Yes, working that one out….
Musk is working on reposing government now, and via Trump he potentially has access to Anerica's entire intelligence and military infrastructure.
Hope there’s a plan to protect the Rembrandts and Manets.
There’s going to be a careful dance that avoids the PoWs looking like they’re actually quite happy and the Ukranians are treating them well, which is the most likely situation on the ground.
Ukraine has been quite amazing when it comes to the conduct of this war, making sure they do the right thing in sharp contrast to what the other side have been up to. This will become clear afterwards. Does anyone here think the Ukranians are killing civilians, raping women, and kidnapping children, in Kursk where they are the aggressors?