This subject came up when a relative of mine recently died. Certification in that case only took about three days, thank God, but what I suspect we have here is yet another instance of a health postcode lottery. The coroners have been loaded up with a lot of extra work, it's a reasonable guess that they haven't been given additional resources to match, and some of them are coping much better than others.
I think this is largely a safeguarding measure against a repetition of the Shipman case - blanket monitoring ought to reveal if one GP is signing off an unusually large number of deaths - but it's obviously been done at the cost of causing considerable distress to a lot of families. Just one more example of how almost nothing works properly in Britain.
I wonder how this fits in with religious views, where many want a burial to occur within a day of death?
(Having recently gone through this with Islam, the burial within a day or two of death is too short to process the death, and the forty-day *cultural* mourning period far too long.)
Notable that across the world, people are (pretending) to bend the knee.
Including Sir Keith “Kid Starver” & his government.
We’ve even seen The Mandelbrot saying nice things about Big Orange.
What is this “Mandelbrot” thing? Did I miss some faux pas he made about German bread? I really can’t work out if it’s a “whoosh” and I don’t get the joke.
Peter Mandelson is a politician of slippery loyalty, chiefly to himself.
The Mandlebrot set is a set of complex numbers z, where z=x +iy. It contains all points z which do not go to infinity when z(n+1)=z(n)^2 + c, where c is a constant. The boundary of the set is fractal and looks like a turtle with acne.
By conflating the two into the phrase "Mandelbrot set", @Malmesbury characterises Mandelson as convoluted and self-referential, which is quite fitting.
Next week, on "Viewcode points out the bleeding obvious": how phrases like "EUSSR" and "Remoaner" encapsulate political concepts in a single word.
Good summary, but there's one aspect underplayed imo.
I started calling him Lord Mandelbrot when he became a Lord back in 2008 or so, on my blog.
The Mandelbrot Set was in fashion at the time, as something that looked exactly the same and infinitely complex, however closely you look at it.
Mandelson was known for his complex political manipulations (another nickname: "The Prince of Darkness"), and the aspect I liked was that - just like the Mandelbrot set - also however closely you looked at them they were just a more detailed, identical looking version of the same thing.
As a character I thought of him as a little like The Master, from Dr Who.
Do you think there is a hint of anti-semitism to the nickname?
I can't see an anti-Semitism link to the nickname "Lord Mandlebrot". I think it's fairly funny and slightly apt. A geeky insult.
As for the nickname "The Prince of Darkness": again, I cannot really see an anti-Semitism link - aside from the fact it's obviously very negative. But we can't get to the state where any negative nickname of a Jewish person is automatically anti-Semitic.
"The Prince of Darkness" was actually coined in Labour circles much earlier - going back to the 1990s (I'm not sure when in the 1990s).
I'm unsure why someone who had to resign twice for personal dodginess is still seen as a viable political figure.
(One time for getting an interest-free mortgage loan from someone his department was investigating; a second time for using his position to influence a passport application. Makes a birthday cake seem rather trivial...)
Johnson didn't resign over cake, he resigned over lies to Parliament about Pincher.
My point still stands - and Robinson accused Mandelson of lying to parliament over the loan.
Why are you so keen to defend Mandelson?
I am not defending Mandleson. I think him a very poor choice as Ambassador.
Just pointing out that Johnson resigned over something more significant than a birthday cake, and that a nickname has a whiff of anti-semitic tropes about it.
I really cannot see the anti-Semitism in either of the nicknames.
I could, for instance, in *that* mural that Corbyn enthused about. But either of those nicknames? No.
If Trump successfully cleans up urban America - big IF - then he might be forgiven his insane tariffs
Neither will happen.
We have no idea. Uncharted waters
Look at it this way:
Trump and his billionaire friends want to remove billions out of the American economy and steal give tax cuts to themselves. That money is not spent on nothing: a vast amount of it is spent on American salaries.
This means an awful lot of people will end up with less, or no, income. And given the US's safety net is a thousands-foot drop into a tank of piranhas, an awful lot of people will end up homeless. Perhaps not all the people who lose their jobs directly due to the cuts, but also those displaced or who relied on income from those people.
Worse, the tariffs may weaken the whole economy, making people even poorer.
If you want to 'clean up' the streets: spend more money, not less.
Far too many variables and an unprecedented situation
I’m annoyed because j LOVE a lot of what Trump has done - rolling back the woke, ditching trans madness, sorting out the aliens
However for me it was always these crazy tariffs that were the biggest threat if he became president. And why I wanted him to lose
Unfortunately it seems he was quite serious about those as well. We shall see. I’m not sure anyone can confidently predict what will happen next
If Trump successfully cleans up urban America - big IF - then he might be forgiven his insane tariffs
Neither will happen.
We have no idea. Uncharted waters
Look at it this way:
Trump and his billionaire friends want to remove billions out of the American economy and steal give tax cuts to themselves. That money is not spent on nothing: a vast amount of it is spent on American salaries.
This means an awful lot of people will end up with less, or no, income. And given the US's safety net is a thousands-foot drop into a tank of piranhas, an awful lot of people will end up homeless. Perhaps not all the people who lose their jobs directly due to the cuts, but also those displaced or who relied on income from those people.
Worse, the tariffs may weaken the whole economy, making people even poorer.
If you want to 'clean up' the streets: spend more money, not less.
Far too many variables and an unprecedented situation
I’m annoyed because j LOVE a lot of what Trump has done - rolling back the woke, ditching trans madness, sorting out the aliens
However for me it was always these crazy tariffs that were the biggest threat if he became president. And why I wanted him to lose
Unfortunately it seems he was quite serious about those as well. We shall see. I’m not sure anyone can confidently predict what will happen next
Chaos. And that's never good.
We're facing massive threats from Russia and China, and we need the civilised world to pull together to combat them. Instead, Trump is splitting America from its allies. Worse, he is attacking those allies.
“Labour faces losing scores of seats to Reform UK across England and Wales as a widening section of voters lose faith in the mainstream parties, according to a new analysis seen by the Observer.
With senior figures in the Labour party now privately talking about a “change of era” in which more moderate voters are turning to Nigel Farage’s party, new research on Reform’s influence suggests it will take far more seats from Labour than from the Conservatives on current trends.”
Notable that across the world, people are (pretending) to bend the knee.
Including Sir Keith “Kid Starver” & his government.
We’ve even seen The Mandelbrot saying nice things about Big Orange.
What is this “Mandelbrot” thing? Did I miss some faux pas he made about German bread? I really can’t work out if it’s a “whoosh” and I don’t get the joke.
Peter Mandelson is a politician of slippery loyalty, chiefly to himself.
The Mandlebrot set is a set of complex numbers z, where z=x +iy. It contains all points z which do not go to infinity when z(n+1)=z(n)^2 + c, where c is a constant. The boundary of the set is fractal and looks like a turtle with acne.
By conflating the two into the phrase "Mandelbrot set", @Malmesbury characterises Mandelson as convoluted and self-referential, which is quite fitting.
Next week, on "Viewcode points out the bleeding obvious": how phrases like "EUSSR" and "Remoaner" encapsulate political concepts in a single word.
Good summary, but there's one aspect underplayed imo.
I started calling him Lord Mandelbrot when he became a Lord back in 2008 or so, on my blog.
The Mandelbrot Set was in fashion at the time, as something that looked exactly the same and infinitely complex, however closely you look at it.
Mandelson was known for his complex political manipulations (another nickname: "The Prince of Darkness"), and the aspect I liked was that - just like the Mandelbrot set - also however closely you looked at them they were just a more detailed, identical looking version of the same thing.
As a character I thought of him as a little like The Master, from Dr Who.
Do you think there is a hint of anti-semitism to the nickname?
I can't see an anti-Semitism link to the nickname "Lord Mandlebrot". I think it's fairly funny and slightly apt. A geeky insult.
As for the nickname "The Prince of Darkness": again, I cannot really see an anti-Semitism link - aside from the fact it's obviously very negative. But we can't get to the state where any negative nickname of a Jewish person is automatically anti-Semitic.
"The Prince of Darkness" was actually coined in Labour circles much earlier - going back to the 1990s (I'm not sure when in the 1990s).
I'm unsure why someone who had to resign twice for personal dodginess is still seen as a viable political figure.
(One time for getting an interest-free mortgage loan from someone his department was investigating; a second time for using his position to influence a passport application. Makes a birthday cake seem rather trivial...)
Johnson didn't resign over cake, he resigned over lies to Parliament about Pincher.
My point still stands - and Robinson accused Mandelson of lying to parliament over the loan.
Why are you so keen to defend Mandelson?
I am not defending Mandleson. I think him a very poor choice as Ambassador.
Just pointing out that Johnson resigned over something more significant than a birthday cake, and that a nickname has a whiff of anti-semitic tropes about it.
I really cannot see the anti-Semitism in either of the nicknames.
I could, for instance, in *that* mural that Corbyn enthused about. But either of those nicknames? No.
I asked originally because I wondered if there was a weird convoluted trope about his Jewish extraction and some mittel-europa thing about Jews and Some sort of bread but clearly Matt W’s nickname for him is original and comes from fair and rational and completely non anti-Semitic root (also I can’t for a second think MattW would have an anti-Semitic bone in his body).
If Trump successfully cleans up urban America - big IF - then he might be forgiven his insane tariffs
Neither will happen.
We have no idea. Uncharted waters
Look at it this way:
Trump and his billionaire friends want to remove billions out of the American economy and steal give tax cuts to themselves. That money is not spent on nothing: a vast amount of it is spent on American salaries.
This means an awful lot of people will end up with less, or no, income. And given the US's safety net is a thousands-foot drop into a tank of piranhas, an awful lot of people will end up homeless. Perhaps not all the people who lose their jobs directly due to the cuts, but also those displaced or who relied on income from those people.
Worse, the tariffs may weaken the whole economy, making people even poorer.
If you want to 'clean up' the streets: spend more money, not less.
Far too many variables and an unprecedented situation
I’m annoyed because j LOVE a lot of what Trump has done - rolling back the woke, ditching trans madness, sorting out the aliens
However for me it was always these crazy tariffs that were the biggest threat if he became president. And why I wanted him to lose
Unfortunately it seems he was quite serious about those as well. We shall see. I’m not sure anyone can confidently predict what will happen next
Chaos. And that's never good.
We're facing massive threats from Russia and China, and we need the civilised world to pull together to combat them. Instead, Trump is splitting America from its allies. Worse, he is attacking those allies.
Putin and Xi cannot imagine their 'luck'.
Since the US election, there has for the first time been a serious attempt to cripple Russian export income, firstly with the shadow fleet sanctions and latterly the more concerted attacks on refining and storage assets. Astute observers of the war have long noted that this is the only realistic path for Ukraine to “win”, the grind of the static battlefield ultimately favouring the country five times bigger.
Meanwhile in just the last fortnight, the world has also woken up to the AI arms race with China and it’s been propelled to the top of the agenda. If I recall, Sunak was roundly mocked by the British left for hosting an AI safety conference.
I suggest you get some fresh air, the sun is shining today. Let’s all calm down and see where we are at the end of the year with a tariff war. I shall be busily doing my best to disappoint you for another week by staying alive.
If Trump successfully cleans up urban America - big IF - then he might be forgiven his insane tariffs
Neither will happen.
We have no idea. Uncharted waters
Look at it this way:
Trump and his billionaire friends want to remove billions out of the American economy and steal give tax cuts to themselves. That money is not spent on nothing: a vast amount of it is spent on American salaries.
This means an awful lot of people will end up with less, or no, income. And given the US's safety net is a thousands-foot drop into a tank of piranhas, an awful lot of people will end up homeless. Perhaps not all the people who lose their jobs directly due to the cuts, but also those displaced or who relied on income from those people.
Worse, the tariffs may weaken the whole economy, making people even poorer.
If you want to 'clean up' the streets: spend more money, not less.
Far too many variables and an unprecedented situation
I’m annoyed because j LOVE a lot of what Trump has done - rolling back the woke, ditching trans madness, sorting out the aliens
However for me it was always these crazy tariffs that were the biggest threat if he became president. And why I wanted him to lose
Unfortunately it seems he was quite serious about those as well. We shall see. I’m not sure anyone can confidently predict what will happen next
Chaos. And that's never good.
We're facing massive threats from Russia and China, and we need the civilised world to pull together to combat them. Instead, Trump is splitting America from its allies. Worse, he is attacking those allies.
Putin and Xi cannot imagine their 'luck'.
There's another thing.
A lot of Trump's rolling back of the woke is words. Some of those words have real consequences, but many of them (like there are only two genders) don't. Because the place where those words have effect is in the States. (What do States-Righters make of all this, I wonder?)
The stuff that will have an effect is the actions, whether that's starting a trade war or letting unsupervised crazies into the government computer systems. That stuff is unambiguously bad.
Politicians should always be treated like magicians. Ignore the patter, watch the hands. And if they tell you to look at their left hand, watch their rght one instead.
“Labour faces losing scores of seats to Reform UK across England and Wales as a widening section of voters lose faith in the mainstream parties, according to a new analysis seen by the Observer.
With senior figures in the Labour party now privately talking about a “change of era” in which more moderate voters are turning to Nigel Farage’s party, new research on Reform’s influence suggests it will take far more seats from Labour than from the Conservatives on current trends.”
“Labour faces losing scores of seats to Reform UK across England and Wales as a widening section of voters lose faith in the mainstream parties, according to a new analysis seen by the Observer.
With senior figures in the Labour party now privately talking about a “change of era” in which more moderate voters are turning to Nigel Farage’s party, new research on Reform’s influence suggests it will take far more seats from Labour than from the Conservatives on current trends.”
In the next few years we could see populist alt.right parties taking power all across the west, from where it’s already happening. - USA, Italy - to France, Germany, Holland and the UK - and many smaller countries (Sweden etc)
“Labour faces losing scores of seats to Reform UK across England and Wales as a widening section of voters lose faith in the mainstream parties, according to a new analysis seen by the Observer.
With senior figures in the Labour party now privately talking about a “change of era” in which more moderate voters are turning to Nigel Farage’s party, new research on Reform’s influence suggests it will take far more seats from Labour than from the Conservatives on current trends.”
Reform needs to be understood differently, even though it is the party of choice for a small group of yobbish extremists. It is not 'Right Wing' in the way it presents itself to the mainstream voter (without whose votes they are doomed).
Reform upholds an old fashioned view of the post WWII social democrat deal. Loads of free stuff for ordinary people + sound defence. Private enterprise regulated but not as much as now. Meritocracy. Add to that a view that the population should not rise 5 million in 10 years.
This is neither Trump nor the 1930s. It is very centrist.
As to competence, that's another matter but in that they are not alone.
If Trump successfully cleans up urban America - big IF - then he might be forgiven his insane tariffs
Neither will happen.
We have no idea. Uncharted waters
Look at it this way:
Trump and his billionaire friends want to remove billions out of the American economy and steal give tax cuts to themselves. That money is not spent on nothing: a vast amount of it is spent on American salaries.
This means an awful lot of people will end up with less, or no, income. And given the US's safety net is a thousands-foot drop into a tank of piranhas, an awful lot of people will end up homeless. Perhaps not all the people who lose their jobs directly due to the cuts, but also those displaced or who relied on income from those people.
Worse, the tariffs may weaken the whole economy, making people even poorer.
If you want to 'clean up' the streets: spend more money, not less.
Far too many variables and an unprecedented situation
I’m annoyed because j LOVE a lot of what Trump has done - rolling back the woke, ditching trans madness, sorting out the aliens
However for me it was always these crazy tariffs that were the biggest threat if he became president. And why I wanted him to lose
Unfortunately it seems he was quite serious about those as well. We shall see. I’m not sure anyone can confidently predict what will happen next
Chaos. And that's never good.
We're facing massive threats from Russia and China, and we need the civilised world to pull together to combat them. Instead, Trump is splitting America from its allies. Worse, he is attacking those allies.
Putin and Xi cannot imagine their 'luck'.
Since the US election, there has for the first time been a serious attempt to cripple Russian export income, firstly with the shadow fleet sanctions and latterly the more concerted attacks on refining and storage assets. Astute observers of the war have long noted that this is the only realistic path for Ukraine to “win”, the grind of the static battlefield ultimately favouring the country five times bigger.
Meanwhile in just the last fortnight, the world has also woken up to the AI arms race with China and it’s been propelled to the top of the agenda. If I recall, Sunak was roundly mocked by the British left for hosting an AI safety conference.
I suggest you get some fresh air, the sun is shining today. Let’s all calm down and see where we are at the end of the year with a tariff war. I shall be busily doing my best to disappoint you for another week by staying alive.
I am calm, thanks. Will probably do a run later and another Zwift session.
"the more concerted attacks on refining and storage assets." is being performed by Ukraine, not the USA. Just a minor point, I know, but an odd thing for you to claim as an 'advantage' of Trump.
And as I keep on saying to those infested by the Trump mind-virus: if you think Trump and the GOP are pro-Ukraine, just look at the way they stopped support for Ukraine for months in the middle of last year. That cost loads of Ukrainian lives, for f-all reason.
If Trump successfully cleans up urban America - big IF - then he might be forgiven his insane tariffs
Neither will happen.
We have no idea. Uncharted waters
Look at it this way:
Trump and his billionaire friends want to remove billions out of the American economy and steal give tax cuts to themselves. That money is not spent on nothing: a vast amount of it is spent on American salaries.
This means an awful lot of people will end up with less, or no, income. And given the US's safety net is a thousands-foot drop into a tank of piranhas, an awful lot of people will end up homeless. Perhaps not all the people who lose their jobs directly due to the cuts, but also those displaced or who relied on income from those people.
Worse, the tariffs may weaken the whole economy, making people even poorer.
If you want to 'clean up' the streets: spend more money, not less.
Far too many variables and an unprecedented situation
I’m annoyed because j LOVE a lot of what Trump has done - rolling back the woke, ditching trans madness, sorting out the aliens
However for me it was always these crazy tariffs that were the biggest threat if he became president. And why I wanted him to lose
Unfortunately it seems he was quite serious about those as well. We shall see. I’m not sure anyone can confidently predict what will happen next
Chaos. And that's never good.
We're facing massive threats from Russia and China, and we need the civilised world to pull together to combat them. Instead, Trump is splitting America from its allies. Worse, he is attacking those allies.
Putin and Xi cannot imagine their 'luck'.
There's another thing.
A lot of Trump's rolling back of the woke is words. Some of those words have real consequences, but many of them (like there are only two genders) don't. Because the place where those words have effect is in the States. (What do States-Righters make of all this, I wonder?)
The stuff that will have an effect is the actions, whether that's starting a trade war or letting unsupervised crazies into the government computer systems. That stuff is unambiguously bad.
Politicians should always be treated like magicians. Ignore the patter, watch the hands. And if they tell you to look at their left hand, watch their rght one instead.
Especially their far right hand as it involuntarily leaps upward.
“Labour faces losing scores of seats to Reform UK across England and Wales as a widening section of voters lose faith in the mainstream parties, according to a new analysis seen by the Observer.
With senior figures in the Labour party now privately talking about a “change of era” in which more moderate voters are turning to Nigel Farage’s party, new research on Reform’s influence suggests it will take far more seats from Labour than from the Conservatives on current trends.”
Reform needs to be understood differently, even though it is the party of choice for a small group of yobbish extremists. It is not 'Right Wing' in the way it presents itself to the mainstream voter (without whose votes they are doomed).
Reform upholds an old fashioned view of the post WWII social democrat deal. Loads of free stuff for ordinary people + sound defence. Private enterprise regulated but not as much as now. Meritocracy. Add to that a view that the population should not rise 5 million in 10 years.
This is neither Trump nor the 1930s. It is very centrist.
As to competence, that's another matter but in that they are not alone.
Reform cutting into Labour voting working class areas is precisely what one would expect from the example of Le Front National/Rassemblement in France.
Labour have yet to react; Reform have got away with a free run. What criticism of Reform there has been misses entirely their vulnerabilities.
It's ridiculous to attack the party as being "far-right", when its economics veer from Thatcherite to Butskellite. And it's most clamant demand -reduced immigration - is agreed with by a majority of the population.
Where it is vulnerable is its lack of policy coherence, lack of ideas for reducing immigration, Farage's dubious remarks about Russia.
Obviously, the fact that it does attract a fringe of nutters and psycopaths is a negative too.
“Labour faces losing scores of seats to Reform UK across England and Wales as a widening section of voters lose faith in the mainstream parties, according to a new analysis seen by the Observer.
With senior figures in the Labour party now privately talking about a “change of era” in which more moderate voters are turning to Nigel Farage’s party, new research on Reform’s influence suggests it will take far more seats from Labour than from the Conservatives on current trends.”
Reform needs to be understood differently, even though it is the party of choice for a small group of yobbish extremists. It is not 'Right Wing' in the way it presents itself to the mainstream voter (without whose votes they are doomed).
Reform upholds an old fashioned view of the post WWII social democrat deal. Loads of free stuff for ordinary people + sound defence. Private enterprise regulated but not as much as now. Meritocracy. Add to that a view that the population should not rise 5 million in 10 years.
This is neither Trump nor the 1930s. It is very centrist.
As to competence, that's another matter but in that they are not alone.
Reform cutting into Labour voting working class areas is precisely what one would expect from the example of Le Front National/Rassemblement in France.
Labour have yet to react; Reform have got away with a free run. What criticism of Reform there has been misses entirely their vulnerabilities.
It's ridiculous to attack the party as being "far-right", when its economics veer from Thatcherite to Butskellite. And it's most clamant demand -reduced immigration - is agreed with by a majority of the population.
Where it is vulnerable is its lack of policy coherence, lack of ideas for reducing immigration, Farage's dubious remarks about Russia.
Obviously, the fact that it does attract a fringe of nutters and psycopaths is a negative too.
And yet we’ve had esteemed PBers reassuring us that Reform are no threat to Labour. Because “anyone who wants to vote Reform is already voting Reform” blah blah
It was specious nonsense then and now we can see it is specious nonsense
“Labour faces losing scores of seats to Reform UK across England and Wales as a widening section of voters lose faith in the mainstream parties, according to a new analysis seen by the Observer.
With senior figures in the Labour party now privately talking about a “change of era” in which more moderate voters are turning to Nigel Farage’s party, new research on Reform’s influence suggests it will take far more seats from Labour than from the Conservatives on current trends.”
Contrary to the header, one can easily imagine a 2033/4 election being fought between Reform and the Lib Dems the way things are going.
A lot of Red Wall seats, plus a couple in South Wales, were won by Labour on low vote shares. What the poll is probably picking up is Conservative voters switching heavily to Reform in such seats, to oust Labour.
I’ve always thought it fanciful that voters on the right can’t work out tactical voting,
My brother-in-law has been in a similar situation. In his case, an interim death certificate made a funeral possible after 4 weeks, but he cannot proceed with administrating the estate because the solicitors will not release the Will until a full certificate has been issued.
I rather think the solicitor is fibbing about releasing the will - though your b-i-l can't do much, there's no reason not to let him see the will as such. If he is an executor he has every right, not least because of the likelihood of funeral and burial wishes. Of course banks won't release money etc till the death cert is out, but he can at least see what's what.
I have never understood this secrecy on solicitors' part - one English solicitor refused to let me see the will even after the death cert and grant of probate so I could make arrangements for the sorting of a relative's goods as she wished, and the disposal of her ashes as she wanted (I was not an executor, but I was a beneficiary and was tasked with disposing of her chattels, plus I lived in the relevant place and was asked to arrange the event). (His claim was that people misunderstand what they are due in wills, so he keeps quiet till he knows how much money there really is.) He still did this even when the bloody will was already on public deposit in the probate registry, and took years to sell the house and settle up the sums. I had to buy my own copy to organize things and put the ashes in the right place!!
Notable that across the world, people are (pretending) to bend the knee.
Including Sir Keith “Kid Starver” & his government.
We’ve even seen The Mandelbrot saying nice things about Big Orange.
What is this “Mandelbrot” thing? Did I miss some faux pas he made about German bread? I really can’t work out if it’s a “whoosh” and I don’t get the joke.
Peter Mandelson is a politician of slippery loyalty, chiefly to himself.
The Mandlebrot set is a set of complex numbers z, where z=x +iy. It contains all points z which do not go to infinity when z(n+1)=z(n)^2 + c, where c is a constant. The boundary of the set is fractal and looks like a turtle with acne.
By conflating the two into the phrase "Mandelbrot set", @Malmesbury characterises Mandelson as convoluted and self-referential, which is quite fitting.
Next week, on "Viewcode points out the bleeding obvious": how phrases like "EUSSR" and "Remoaner" encapsulate political concepts in a single word.
Good summary, but there's one aspect underplayed imo.
I started calling him Lord Mandelbrot when he became a Lord back in 2008 or so, on my blog.
The Mandelbrot Set was in fashion at the time, as something that looked exactly the same and infinitely complex, however closely you look at it.
Mandelson was known for his complex political manipulations (another nickname: "The Prince of Darkness"), and the aspect I liked was that - just like the Mandelbrot set - also however closely you looked at them they were just a more detailed, identical looking version of the same thing.
As a character I thought of him as a little like The Master, from Dr Who.
Do you think there is a hint of anti-semitism to the nickname?
I can't see an anti-Semitism link to the nickname "Lord Mandlebrot". I think it's fairly funny and slightly apt. A geeky insult.
As for the nickname "The Prince of Darkness": again, I cannot really see an anti-Semitism link - aside from the fact it's obviously very negative. But we can't get to the state where any negative nickname of a Jewish person is automatically anti-Semitic.
"The Prince of Darkness" was actually coined in Labour circles much earlier - going back to the 1990s (I'm not sure when in the 1990s).
I'm unsure why someone who had to resign twice for personal dodginess is still seen as a viable political figure.
(One time for getting an interest-free mortgage loan from someone his department was investigating; a second time for using his position to influence a passport application. Makes a birthday cake seem rather trivial...)
Johnson didn't resign over cake, he resigned over lies to Parliament about Pincher.
My point still stands - and Robinson accused Mandelson of lying to parliament over the loan.
Why are you so keen to defend Mandelson?
I am not defending Mandleson. I think him a very poor choice as Ambassador.
Just pointing out that Johnson resigned over something more significant than a birthday cake, and that a nickname has a whiff of anti-semitic tropes about it.
I really cannot see the anti-Semitism in either of the nicknames.
I could, for instance, in *that* mural that Corbyn enthused about. But either of those nicknames? No.
I asked originally because I wondered if there was a weird convoluted trope about his Jewish extraction and some mittel-europa thing about Jews and Some sort of bread but clearly Matt W’s nickname for him is original and comes from fair and rational and completely non anti-Semitic root (also I can’t for a second think MattW would have an anti-Semitic bone in his body).
It's a lesson though that different interpretations are possible, and that terms can potentially be twisted. It had never even occurred to me to consider that either Peter Mandelson or Benoit Mandelbrot might be Jewish (until today) - that's assimilation in my head for you. That's perhaps a version of the "colour blind " ideal beloved of some, which I've generally believed in but in recent years thought it is an area where we need to be more deliberate given how prejudices are moving around and being relabelled to become acceptable.
I've always viewed Jewish people as successful in business, partly because of the long term, cautious nature of the community, and the values of the religion taken (typically) into business. But when I started tracking surveys of antisemitism in political movements 15 or so years ago done by bodies such as the CST it came to my attention that some would view that as an antisemitic trope. To me it's actually a huge compliment, and a statement of admiration.
A similar one might be how the Labour adverts against Michael Howard * (swinging a stopwatch, and as the head no a flying pig) were characterised as anti-semitic by the Conservatives at the time. Even if there is no basis (I'm not calling it, even now) it is possible to land in "if you're having to explain, you're losing" elephant traps before you realise. My photo quota is the "Fagin" one:
A further two-interpretations one was around Corbyn. I think that he tipped over into antisemitic language in his over-enthusiasm to attack Israel and rather desperare defences of himself (eg around the cemetery visit), and some of his allies were off the wall imo. But OTOH Jewish groups attacking him were putting around phrases such as "self-hating Jew" for his supporters. Anti-Corbyns were the Jewish Labour Movement; pros were the Jewish Voice for Labour.
If Trump successfully cleans up urban America - big IF - then he might be forgiven his insane tariffs
Neither will happen.
We have no idea. Uncharted waters
Look at it this way:
Trump and his billionaire friends want to remove billions out of the American economy and steal give tax cuts to themselves. That money is not spent on nothing: a vast amount of it is spent on American salaries.
This means an awful lot of people will end up with less, or no, income. And given the US's safety net is a thousands-foot drop into a tank of piranhas, an awful lot of people will end up homeless. Perhaps not all the people who lose their jobs directly due to the cuts, but also those displaced or who relied on income from those people.
Worse, the tariffs may weaken the whole economy, making people even poorer.
If you want to 'clean up' the streets: spend more money, not less.
Far too many variables and an unprecedented situation
I’m annoyed because j LOVE a lot of what Trump has done - rolling back the woke, ditching trans madness, sorting out the aliens
However for me it was always these crazy tariffs that were the biggest threat if he became president. And why I wanted him to lose
Unfortunately it seems he was quite serious about those as well. We shall see. I’m not sure anyone can confidently predict what will happen next
Chaos. And that's never good.
We're facing massive threats from Russia and China, and we need the civilised world to pull together to combat them. Instead, Trump is splitting America from its allies. Worse, he is attacking those allies.
“Labour faces losing scores of seats to Reform UK across England and Wales as a widening section of voters lose faith in the mainstream parties, according to a new analysis seen by the Observer.
With senior figures in the Labour party now privately talking about a “change of era” in which more moderate voters are turning to Nigel Farage’s party, new research on Reform’s influence suggests it will take far more seats from Labour than from the Conservatives on current trends.”
Reform needs to be understood differently, even though it is the party of choice for a small group of yobbish extremists. It is not 'Right Wing' in the way it presents itself to the mainstream voter (without whose votes they are doomed).
Reform upholds an old fashioned view of the post WWII social democrat deal. Loads of free stuff for ordinary people + sound defence. Private enterprise regulated but not as much as now. Meritocracy. Add to that a view that the population should not rise 5 million in 10 years.
This is neither Trump nor the 1930s. It is very centrist.
As to competence, that's another matter but in that they are not alone.
Reform cutting into Labour voting working class areas is precisely what one would expect from the example of Le Front National/Rassemblement in France.
Labour have yet to react; Reform have got away with a free run. What criticism of Reform there has been misses entirely their vulnerabilities.
It's ridiculous to attack the party as being "far-right", when its economics veer from Thatcherite to Butskellite. And it's most clamant demand -reduced immigration - is agreed with by a majority of the population.
Where it is vulnerable is its lack of policy coherence, lack of ideas for reducing immigration, Farage's dubious remarks about Russia.
Obviously, the fact that it does attract a fringe of nutters and psycopaths is a negative too.
This is far too intelligent a comment on Reform for PB.
If Trump successfully cleans up urban America - big IF - then he might be forgiven his insane tariffs
Neither will happen.
We have no idea. Uncharted waters
Look at it this way:
Trump and his billionaire friends want to remove billions out of the American economy and steal give tax cuts to themselves. That money is not spent on nothing: a vast amount of it is spent on American salaries.
This means an awful lot of people will end up with less, or no, income. And given the US's safety net is a thousands-foot drop into a tank of piranhas, an awful lot of people will end up homeless. Perhaps not all the people who lose their jobs directly due to the cuts, but also those displaced or who relied on income from those people.
Worse, the tariffs may weaken the whole economy, making people even poorer.
If you want to 'clean up' the streets: spend more money, not less.
Far too many variables and an unprecedented situation
I’m annoyed because j LOVE a lot of what Trump has done - rolling back the woke, ditching trans madness, sorting out the aliens
However for me it was always these crazy tariffs that were the biggest threat if he became president. And why I wanted him to lose
Unfortunately it seems he was quite serious about those as well. We shall see. I’m not sure anyone can confidently predict what will happen next
Chaos. And that's never good.
We're facing massive threats from Russia and China, and we need the civilised world to pull together to combat them. Instead, Trump is splitting America from its allies. Worse, he is attacking those allies.
Putin and Xi cannot imagine their 'luck'.
Trump has just hammered Xi with tariffs
And Reagan hit Japan with tariffs during the 1980s. If @JosiasJessop were commenting then, he'd no doubt say it was a gift to the Soviets.
If Trump successfully cleans up urban America - big IF - then he might be forgiven his insane tariffs
Neither will happen.
We have no idea. Uncharted waters
Look at it this way:
Trump and his billionaire friends want to remove billions out of the American economy and steal give tax cuts to themselves. That money is not spent on nothing: a vast amount of it is spent on American salaries.
This means an awful lot of people will end up with less, or no, income. And given the US's safety net is a thousands-foot drop into a tank of piranhas, an awful lot of people will end up homeless. Perhaps not all the people who lose their jobs directly due to the cuts, but also those displaced or who relied on income from those people.
Worse, the tariffs may weaken the whole economy, making people even poorer.
If you want to 'clean up' the streets: spend more money, not less.
Far too many variables and an unprecedented situation
I’m annoyed because j LOVE a lot of what Trump has done - rolling back the woke, ditching trans madness, sorting out the aliens
However for me it was always these crazy tariffs that were the biggest threat if he became president. And why I wanted him to lose
Unfortunately it seems he was quite serious about those as well. We shall see. I’m not sure anyone can confidently predict what will happen next
Chaos. And that's never good.
We're facing massive threats from Russia and China, and we need the civilised world to pull together to combat them. Instead, Trump is splitting America from its allies. Worse, he is attacking those allies.
Putin and Xi cannot imagine their 'luck'.
Except Trump has just increased tariffs on Xi’s China
Comments
(Having recently gone through this with Islam, the burial within a day or two of death is too short to process the death, and the forty-day *cultural* mourning period far too long.)
I could, for instance, in *that* mural that Corbyn enthused about. But either of those nicknames? No.
I’m annoyed because j LOVE a lot of what Trump has done - rolling back the woke, ditching trans madness, sorting out the aliens
However for me it was always these crazy tariffs that were the biggest threat if he became president. And why I wanted him to lose
Unfortunately it seems he was quite serious about those as well. We shall see. I’m not sure anyone can confidently predict what will happen next
We're facing massive threats from Russia and China, and we need the civilised world to pull together to combat them. Instead, Trump is splitting America from its allies. Worse, he is attacking those allies.
Putin and Xi cannot imagine their 'luck'.
Labour suffering more from Reform than the Tories
“Labour faces losing scores of seats to Reform UK across England and Wales as a widening section of voters lose faith in the mainstream parties, according to a new analysis seen by the Observer.
With senior figures in the Labour party now privately talking about a “change of era” in which more moderate voters are turning to Nigel Farage’s party, new research on Reform’s influence suggests it will take far more seats from Labour than from the Conservatives on current trends.”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/feb/02/reform-uk-can-win-scores-of-labour-seats-in-england-and-wales-says-study
Meanwhile in just the last fortnight, the world has also woken up to the AI arms race with China and it’s been propelled to the top of the agenda. If I recall, Sunak was roundly mocked by the British left for hosting an AI safety conference.
I suggest you get some fresh air, the sun is shining today. Let’s all calm down and see where we are at the end of the year with a tariff war. I shall be busily doing my best to disappoint you for another week by staying alive.
A lot of Trump's rolling back of the woke is words. Some of those words have real consequences, but many of them (like there are only two genders) don't. Because the place where those words have effect is in the States. (What do States-Righters make of all this, I wonder?)
The stuff that will have an effect is the actions, whether that's starting a trade war or letting unsupervised crazies into the government computer systems. That stuff is unambiguously bad.
Politicians should always be treated like magicians. Ignore the patter, watch the hands. And if they tell you to look at their left hand, watch their rght one instead.
This is a massive poll. It’s quite significant - it exposes the real and serious threat to all historic parties, but especially Labour, from Reform
from where it’s already happening. - USA, Italy - to France, Germany, Holland and the UK - and many smaller countries (Sweden etc)
Reform upholds an old fashioned view of the post WWII social democrat deal. Loads of free stuff for ordinary people + sound defence. Private enterprise regulated but not as much as now. Meritocracy. Add to that a view that the population should not rise 5 million in 10 years.
This is neither Trump nor the 1930s. It is very centrist.
As to competence, that's another matter but in that they are not alone.
"the more concerted attacks on refining and storage assets." is being performed by Ukraine, not the USA. Just a minor point, I know, but an odd thing for you to claim as an 'advantage' of Trump.
And as I keep on saying to those infested by the Trump mind-virus: if you think Trump and the GOP are pro-Ukraine, just look at the way they stopped support for Ukraine for months in the middle of last year. That cost loads of Ukrainian lives, for f-all reason.
These people really quite dim even by the standards of politicians, aren't they?
Labour have yet to react; Reform have got away with a free run. What criticism of Reform there has been misses entirely their vulnerabilities.
It's ridiculous to attack the party as being "far-right", when its economics veer from Thatcherite to Butskellite. And it's most clamant demand -reduced immigration - is agreed with by a majority of the population.
Where it is vulnerable is its lack of policy coherence, lack of ideas for reducing immigration, Farage's dubious remarks about Russia.
Obviously, the fact that it does attract a fringe of nutters and psycopaths is a negative too.
NEW THREAD
It was specious nonsense then and now we can see it is specious nonsense
I’ve always thought it fanciful that voters on the right can’t work out tactical voting,
USDA inspector general escorted out of office after defying Trump order
I have never understood this secrecy on solicitors' part - one English solicitor refused to let me see the will even after the death cert and grant of probate so I could make arrangements for the sorting of a relative's goods as she wished, and the disposal of her ashes as she wanted (I was not an executor, but I was a beneficiary and was tasked with disposing of her chattels, plus I lived in the relevant place and was asked to arrange the event). (His claim was that people misunderstand what they are due in wills, so he keeps quiet till he knows how much money there really is.) He still did this even when the bloody will was already on public deposit in the probate registry, and took years to sell the house and settle up the sums. I had to buy my own copy to organize things and put the ashes in the right place!!
I've always viewed Jewish people as successful in business, partly because of the long term, cautious nature of the community, and the values of the religion taken (typically) into business. But when I started tracking surveys of antisemitism in political movements 15 or so years ago done by bodies such as the CST it came to my attention that some would view that as an antisemitic trope. To me it's actually a huge compliment, and a statement of admiration.
A similar one might be how the Labour adverts against Michael Howard * (swinging a stopwatch, and as the head no a flying pig) were characterised as anti-semitic by the Conservatives at the time. Even if there is no basis (I'm not calling it, even now) it is possible to land in "if you're having to explain, you're losing" elephant traps before you realise. My photo quota is the "Fagin" one:
A further two-interpretations one was around Corbyn. I think that he tipped over into antisemitic language in his over-enthusiasm to attack Israel and rather desperare defences of himself (eg around the cemetery visit), and some of his allies were off the wall imo. But OTOH Jewish groups attacking him were putting around phrases such as "self-hating Jew" for his supporters. Anti-Corbyns were the Jewish Labour Movement; pros were the Jewish Voice for Labour.
It's all complex.
* https://www.theguardian.com/media/2005/feb/01/politics.advertising