"You do not have shared values if you're jailing people for saying we should close down our border. You don't have shared values if you cancel elections because you don't like the result. And that happened in Romania. You do not have shared values if you're so afraid of your own people that you silence them and shut them up."
A perfect illustration.
This is exactly the same problem as Vance had in Munich declaring that we were arresting people for silent prayer or banning prayer in private homes (the ones I fact-checked about the UK), and the other things.
This needs a detailed, long reply (sorry). I should have said "charged" - Vance did not say "arrested" himself.
For the case you raise, the charges were dropped.
This was Vance's account, which is misleading in several respects. It's sexed-up:
A little over two years ago, the British government charged Adam Smith-Connor, a 51-year-old physiotherapist and an army veteran, with the heinous crime of standing 50 meters from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes—not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own.
And after British law enforcement spotted him and demanded to know what he was praying for, Adam replied, simply, it was on behalf of the unborn son he and his former girlfriend had aborted years before.
1 - Vance did not mention that Smith-Connor was arrested after refusing to leave the area for 1 hour 40 minutes; that's NOT for "3 minutes silent prayer". It's a PSPO not a "buffer zone law", so to arrest him they actually have to summon a Warranted Police Officer. The Council Officer who asked him to leave cannot make arrests.
2 - As 1 it's not the "new buffer zones law" (actually safe access zones), which was not in force until October 2024. The incident described was in 2022.
3 - He was convicted of "breaching a safe zone after refusing requests to move on", not "silent prayer". *
4 - He was not sentenced to pay thousands of pounds. Those were court costs. He had been given extensive opportunity to move on, and chosen not to do so - which would have stopped it at that point. He has support from a funding organisation.
If Vance wants to make a case, he should at least not use a garbled account.
Consider Matthew 6:5, where the Lord's Prayer is given: "And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others ... when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. "
But it isn't about prayer - it's about pressure and intimidation, and calling it "prayer" to get some attention and sell a narrative, getting round restrictions which have been put in place to prevent previous actions designed to intimidate women accessing legal medical services.
In the UK we start from the impact on the victim.
That is why 75% of local residents supported bring in the protection zone, after previous activities.
Vance's portrayal of the thing is nonsense of course, and he presents as a dreadful man; but getting the law right is a difficult balance. By their nature the sorts of people who want to make a point about an issue they feel deeply about are often very annoying people. Just the sort of people who use every device to do what they want to the annoyance of others. Just Stop Oil types are just such a group, as are the pro life anti abortion fundamentalists.
But we should be very slow to remove the rights we all have - basically to be in the street in a rather irritating and unwanted way holding up their morality for inspection - because the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
Yes - I thought about making that Just Stop Oil point, where I am very critical of them, but I ran out of characters. I think that a 150m exclusion zone is fairly minimal as a restriction.
I certainly think there are problems with PSPOs, but that is to do with a process designed to be easy to ram through with very few checks and balances or evidence.
And in the Bournemouth protection zone one there was good consultation, judging by the 75% fugure.
The Russian army and its donkeys seem to be having a rough time lately at the front.
Funny if Trump backed the wrong donkey.
Sadly Putin has access to a virtually inexhaustible supply of cannon fodder. Were that not the case, the invasion might very well have failed by now.
The supply of cannon fodder that Russia has is severely overestimated. Including potentially by Moscow.
Why do you think they've resorted to dredging through prisons and getting the Koreans involved?
Russian demographics have been awful for years and while it may have once been true that they had an effectively limitless supply of young people to throw at the enemies bullets, it's not the case anymore.
Russia is an impoverished country teetering on the brink. If Europe steps up to the plate and continues to support Ukraine they very much can still be defeated. Even without American support.
What a turnup that would be.
Admittedly the image of the Russians getting booted out on their filthy rapist arses, followed swiftly by Ukraine starting to sell all those coveted minerals to everyone but Putin and Trump, is quite delicious. But also firmly in the too good to be true column. Ukraine has already lost so many casualties, and the effort to try to force the Russians out of their fortified positions along a huge front would be immense. I fear that some form of partition may be inevitable.
A Russian collapse followed by the soldiers deciding to bugger off home is more likely than you think, or that they will be forced out of their positions.
Armed men with guns tend to turn those guns on their superiors when the superiors run out of cash to pay them.
🚨 NEW: Elon Musk got called out by the Commander of the International Space Station for lying about President Biden supposedly leaving them stranded for political reasons. His response? Calling the commander “retarded.”
This is what passes for leadership and discourse in 2025 in America? Unreal.
Elon likes calling people "Retard", especially "f u retard".
There was another prominent one - I can't remember who it was.
Trump and Vance both went for personal insults when answering Bishop Budde and Rory Stewart, respectively (but not respectfully).
It seems characteristic, a little like the way the "every accusation is a confession" quip when they try and go for officials or political opponents has turned out to be surprisingly reliable.
We need to step up and start filling in the gaps that are going to occur all too soon. I fear we are not moving nearly fast enough, caught out by the reckless speed of Trump's dishonest bullying.
Top 5 Bonds for me, based on what would I stick on most often Goldeneye Tomorrow Never Dies Octopussy The Spy Who Loved Me From Russia with Love
In roughly that order but it does change a lot
First half of Living Daylights would be up there but it falls seriously flat in the third act when it's all up for the villains so it's just going through the motions.
Honorable mention to Goldfinger - a stone cold classic, but just a bit less entertaining than these 5 for me.
Top 5 Bonds for me, based on what would I stick on most often Goldeneye Tomorrow Never Dies Octopussy The Spy Who Loved Me From Russia with Love
In roughly that order but it does change a lot
First half of Living Daylights would be up there but it falls seriously flat in the third act when it's all up for the villains so it's just going through the motions.
Honorable mention to Goldfinger - a stone cold classic, but just a bit less entertaining than these 5 for me.
Guilty pleasure View to a Kill
Love the car park in Tomorrow Never Dies. And a s man born in the early 80s, I first saw Moore on the telly, but Brosnan was Bond at the pictures.
"You do not have shared values if you're jailing people for saying we should close down our border. You don't have shared values if you cancel elections because you don't like the result. And that happened in Romania. You do not have shared values if you're so afraid of your own people that you silence them and shut them up."
A perfect illustration.
This is exactly the same problem as Vance had in Munich declaring that we were arresting people for silent prayer or banning prayer in private homes (the ones I fact-checked about the UK), and the other things.
We aren't and he's lying to himself - just like Trump when he claims the USA put in 6x as much support into Ukraine as Europe.
They are a pair of fantaloons, treating stuff they have made up or falsehoods they have swallowed as fact and acting on that basis.
I think Vance's attitude to Europe is more easily explained. It is that "cultural cringe" that Vance wrote about in his book. When he went to Yale he was a fish out of water, not knowing what to wear, how to eat in formal dining, etc. He has written of spitting out sparkling water when he first tasted it, and of thinking Cracker Barrell was an upmarket place to eat. He is a human chameleon in such places, but like the Julia Roberts character in Pretty Woman knows that he is always tainted by his origins.
America has less social mobility than many European countries, but is rather more open about money equalling class, in a way that old money in Europe finds difficult. He hates the European elite as they seem so arrogant, so condescending and supercilious. In part this is because old money in the USA apes European styles.
Starmer is a more subtle version of the same, coming from a modest background, and never looking completely comfortable in a suit despite it being his uniform. That gives him a connection, though someone like Rayner would probably get on even better.
My mother once defined good manners as being able to make other people comfortable, and that is a very difficult line to follow with someone like Vance who has the unfortunate combination of a thin skin and being socially clumsy, unable to read a room. Starmer has his work cut out.
Perhaps the Blofeld character in SPECTRE was a similar figure, craving an acceptance that was never offered.
America doesn't really have truly old money as it doesn't have any royal families and aristocrats like Europe, Arab nations, India and Japan and Thailand do. American wealthy families are really just different degrees of new money, with the old Mayflower and Founding Father families and the 19th century oil and railroad and banking and finance and tea barons at the top of the tree of their 'old money'
Not really true. Read ‘white trash’ by that NY history professor. The idea that all the Americans arrived and were given an acre each, and the ablest and hardest working emerged at the top is a myth. The US’s leading families were such when they arrived, and quickly established themselves in commanding positions controlling both power and wealth. Whereas the multitudes arrived under indenture or penniless and a poor white underclass was a feature of US society from the very beginning. A key reason why slavery was defended was because it gave the poor white workers a higher spot on the social ladder, and such attitudes endure through to modern US politics.
The idea that the US doesn’t have a class system is for the birds.
The southern unionists in Appalachia resented both the slaves (beneath them) and the slave owners (above them).
I see Trump has called Trudeau the Governor again today.
Trudeau should simply adopt a sarcastic moniker for a Trump, like “Great Panjandrum”, or “Giant Poobah”, or perhaps just “Very Strong and Stable Trump”.
🚨 NEW: Elon Musk got called out by the Commander of the International Space Station for lying about President Biden supposedly leaving them stranded for political reasons. His response? Calling the commander “retarded.”
This is what passes for leadership and discourse in 2025 in America? Unreal.
Elon likes calling people "Retard", especially "f u retard".
There was another prominent one - I can't remember who it was.
Trump and Vance both went for personal insults when answering Bishop Budde and Rory Stewart, respectively (but not respectfully).
It seems characteristic, a little like the way the "every accusation is a confession" quip when they try and go for officials or political opponents has turned out to be surprisingly reliable.
The thing I find most depressing about the Trump-Musk Presidency is the extent to which lying has been normalized.
"You do not have shared values if you're jailing people for saying we should close down our border. You don't have shared values if you cancel elections because you don't like the result. And that happened in Romania. You do not have shared values if you're so afraid of your own people that you silence them and shut them up."
A perfect illustration.
This is exactly the same problem as Vance had in Munich declaring that we were arresting people for silent prayer or banning prayer in private homes (the ones I fact-checked about the UK), and the other things.
We aren't and he's lying to himself - just like Trump when he claims the USA put in 6x as much support into Ukraine as Europe.
They are a pair of fantaloons, treating stuff they have made up or falsehoods they have swallowed as fact and acting on that basis.
I think Vance's attitude to Europe is more easily explained. It is that "cultural cringe" that Vance wrote about in his book. When he went to Yale he was a fish out of water, not knowing what to wear, how to eat in formal dining, etc. He has written of spitting out sparkling water when he first tasted it, and of thinking Cracker Barrell was an upmarket place to eat. He is a human chameleon in such places, but like the Julia Roberts character in Pretty Woman knows that he is always tainted by his origins.
America has less social mobility than many European countries, but is rather more open about money equalling class, in a way that old money in Europe finds difficult. He hates the European elite as they seem so arrogant, so condescending and supercilious. In part this is because old money in the USA apes European styles.
Starmer is a more subtle version of the same, coming from a modest background, and never looking completely comfortable in a suit despite it being his uniform. That gives him a connection, though someone like Rayner would probably get on even better.
My mother once defined good manners as being able to make other people comfortable, and that is a very difficult line to follow with someone like Vance who has the unfortunate combination of a thin skin and being socially clumsy, unable to read a room. Starmer has his work cut out.
Perhaps the Blofeld character in SPECTRE was a similar figure, craving an acceptance that was never offered.
America doesn't really have truly old money as it doesn't have any royal families and aristocrats like Europe, Arab nations, India and Japan and Thailand do. American wealthy families are really just different degrees of new money, with the old Mayflower and Founding Father families and the 19th century oil and railroad and banking and finance and tea barons at the top of the tree of their 'old money'
Not really true. Read ‘white trash’ by that NY history professor. The idea that all the Americans arrived and were given an acre each, and the ablest and hardest working emerged at the top is a myth. The US’s leading families were such when they arrived, and quickly established themselves in commanding positions controlling both power and wealth. Whereas the multitudes arrived under indenture or penniless and a poor white underclass was a feature of US society from the very beginning. A key reason why slavery was defended was because it gave the poor white workers a higher spot on the social ladder, and such attitudes endure through to modern US politics.
The idea that the US doesn’t have a class system is for the birds.
Not really either. They may have had a bit of land in England as farmers with a few being lawyers or merchants or army officers or clergy but they weren't monarchs or Dukes and Earls and Lords and Counts and Marquesses and genuine aristocracy, who were the real old money before the industrial revolution created new fortunes, especially in the USA.
The US has always had a monied elite but they aren't really proper blue blood elites
I see Trump has called Trudeau the Governor again today.
Trudeau should simply adopt a sarcastic moniker for a Trump, like “Great Panjandrum”, or “Giant Poobah”, or perhaps just “Very Strong and Stable Trump”.
Something VERY Canadian. Their equivalent of “pillock”.
"Should I run again?" Trump asks the audience in the White House East Room. "There's your controversy, right?" The audience shouted: "Four more years." "You're going to see that tonight, Tim, on television," he told @SenatorTimScott .
"You do not have shared values if you're jailing people for saying we should close down our border. You don't have shared values if you cancel elections because you don't like the result. And that happened in Romania. You do not have shared values if you're so afraid of your own people that you silence them and shut them up."
A perfect illustration.
This is exactly the same problem as Vance had in Munich declaring that we were arresting people for silent prayer or banning prayer in private homes (the ones I fact-checked about the UK), and the other things.
We aren't and he's lying to himself - just like Trump when he claims the USA put in 6x as much support into Ukraine as Europe.
They are a pair of fantaloons, treating stuff they have made up or falsehoods they have swallowed as fact and acting on that basis.
I think Vance's attitude to Europe is more easily explained. It is that "cultural cringe" that Vance wrote about in his book. When he went to Yale he was a fish out of water, not knowing what to wear, how to eat in formal dining, etc. He has written of spitting out sparkling water when he first tasted it, and of thinking Cracker Barrell was an upmarket place to eat. He is a human chameleon in such places, but like the Julia Roberts character in Pretty Woman knows that he is always tainted by his origins.
America has less social mobility than many European countries, but is rather more open about money equalling class, in a way that old money in Europe finds difficult. He hates the European elite as they seem so arrogant, so condescending and supercilious. In part this is because old money in the USA apes European styles.
Starmer is a more subtle version of the same, coming from a modest background, and never looking completely comfortable in a suit despite it being his uniform. That gives him a connection, though someone like Rayner would probably get on even better.
My mother once defined good manners as being able to make other people comfortable, and that is a very difficult line to follow with someone like Vance who has the unfortunate combination of a thin skin and being socially clumsy, unable to read a room. Starmer has his work cut out.
Perhaps the Blofeld character in SPECTRE was a similar figure, craving an acceptance that was never offered.
America doesn't really have truly old money as it doesn't have any royal families and aristocrats like Europe, Arab nations, India and Japan and Thailand do. American wealthy families are really just different degrees of new money, with the old Mayflower and Founding Father families and the 19th century oil and railroad and banking and finance and tea barons at the top of the tree of their 'old money'
Not really true. Read ‘white trash’ by that NY history professor. The idea that all the Americans arrived and were given an acre each, and the ablest and hardest working emerged at the top is a myth. The US’s leading families were such when they arrived, and quickly established themselves in commanding positions controlling both power and wealth. Whereas the multitudes arrived under indenture or penniless and a poor white underclass was a feature of US society from the very beginning. A key reason why slavery was defended was because it gave the poor white workers a higher spot on the social ladder, and such attitudes endure through to modern US politics.
The idea that the US doesn’t have a class system is for the birds.
A former colleague was Boston old money. His fiance was whip smart, gorgeous, held a very senior position in one of the world's top cosmetic empires - and was the daughter of a Greek shipping magnate.
He was taken out by a group of his WASP buddies, who proceeded to tell him he had to call off the marriage - she wasn't good enough for him.
To his eternal credit, he told them to fuck off.
There's certainly class in America.
Enterprising new money intersects effete old money and keeps the plates spinning for another generation. It's the oldest story ever told. Been there, did it, lucky git.
Top 5 Bonds for me, based on what would I stick on most often Goldeneye Tomorrow Never Dies Octopussy The Spy Who Loved Me From Russia with Love
In roughly that order but it does change a lot
First half of Living Daylights would be up there but it falls seriously flat in the third act when it's all up for the villains so it's just going through the motions.
Honorable mention to Goldfinger - a stone cold classic, but just a bit less entertaining than these 5 for me.
Guilty pleasure View to a Kill
Tomorrow Never Dies has a superb Jonathan Pryce as a baddy, and has some great action sequences with Michelle Yeoh. However... I never quite bought the whole Media Guy Starts A War For Headlines premise.
It definitely gets bonus points for the scene with the German/Swiss ballistics expert. "This so embarassing..."
"You do not have shared values if you're jailing people for saying we should close down our border. You don't have shared values if you cancel elections because you don't like the result. And that happened in Romania. You do not have shared values if you're so afraid of your own people that you silence them and shut them up."
A perfect illustration.
This is exactly the same problem as Vance had in Munich declaring that we were arresting people for silent prayer or banning prayer in private homes (the ones I fact-checked about the UK), and the other things.
We aren't and he's lying to himself - just like Trump when he claims the USA put in 6x as much support into Ukraine as Europe.
They are a pair of fantaloons, treating stuff they have made up or falsehoods they have swallowed as fact and acting on that basis.
I think Vance's attitude to Europe is more easily explained. It is that "cultural cringe" that Vance wrote about in his book. When he went to Yale he was a fish out of water, not knowing what to wear, how to eat in formal dining, etc. He has written of spitting out sparkling water when he first tasted it, and of thinking Cracker Barrell was an upmarket place to eat. He is a human chameleon in such places, but like the Julia Roberts character in Pretty Woman knows that he is always tainted by his origins.
America has less social mobility than many European countries, but is rather more open about money equalling class, in a way that old money in Europe finds difficult. He hates the European elite as they seem so arrogant, so condescending and supercilious. In part this is because old money in the USA apes European styles.
Starmer is a more subtle version of the same, coming from a modest background, and never looking completely comfortable in a suit despite it being his uniform. That gives him a connection, though someone like Rayner would probably get on even better.
My mother once defined good manners as being able to make other people comfortable, and that is a very difficult line to follow with someone like Vance who has the unfortunate combination of a thin skin and being socially clumsy, unable to read a room. Starmer has his work cut out.
Perhaps the Blofeld character in SPECTRE was a similar figure, craving an acceptance that was never offered.
America doesn't really have truly old money as it doesn't have any royal families and aristocrats like Europe, Arab nations, India and Japan and Thailand do. American wealthy families are really just different degrees of new money, with the old Mayflower and Founding Father families and the 19th century oil and railroad and banking and finance and tea barons at the top of the tree of their 'old money'
Not really true. Read ‘white trash’ by that NY history professor. The idea that all the Americans arrived and were given an acre each, and the ablest and hardest working emerged at the top is a myth. The US’s leading families were such when they arrived, and quickly established themselves in commanding positions controlling both power and wealth. Whereas the multitudes arrived under indenture or penniless and a poor white underclass was a feature of US society from the very beginning. A key reason why slavery was defended was because it gave the poor white workers a higher spot on the social ladder, and such attitudes endure through to modern US politics.
The idea that the US doesn’t have a class system is for the birds.
Not really either. They may have had a bit of land in England as farmers with a few being lawyers or merchants or army officers or clergy but they weren't monarchs or Dukes and Earls and Lords and Counts and Marquesses and genuine aristocracy, who were the real old money before the industrial revolution created new fortunes, especially in the USA.
The US has always had a monied elite but they aren't really proper blue blood elites
By George I think you've got it.
Yes, that's exactly the sort of pompous condescending attitude that people like Vance experience, and exactly why they don't like us.
She’s wrong about almost everything, and wrong outside of normal parameters.
Problem is, Farage would probably try and send her back!
I think the Tories should persuade Johnson to join Reform. Let's face it, though he won one election against Mr Thicky, he managed to absolutely fuck up the Tory Party for a generation. When he has inadvertently destroyed Reform, his Tory handlers could then instruct him to join the Labour Party, and replace Rachel Reeves as a more honest option.
Reform won't have him because he was too liberal on immigration
Yeah, except on Brexit (and how much he actually believed in that is open to question) Boris is actually on the "one nation" side of the party.
He's probably the most liberal leader the Tories have had since Heath?
He was also pretty poor at being Prime Minister. Given that I'm not arguing that Truss was a good one (her policies had potential but her political instincts were woeful), that means by my reckoning the Tories haven't had a good PM since Thatcher, or a half decent PM since Major. That's pretty awful.
Cameron was a decent LOTO and coalition leader, IMO. But yes, the last really good leader Con had is Thatcher (at least the Thatcher from 75-87)
There's an argument to say that the regicide against her 1990 has ultimately destroyed the party, despite their recent 14 years in office (but not necessarily in power) ?
I suspect that changes to the composition of the Conservative Party might be key, though I've not given this much thought.
Mrs Thatcher brought forward more business people and entrepreneurs to replace the old elites, but not women, oddly enough. The wartime generation retired. David Cameron posed as an egalitarian but seized on the expenses scandal to rid himself of experienced backbenchers and surrounded himself with young MPs who had learned which knife and fork to use at Eton and Oxford – the chumocracy. Later Boris would throw out anyone who'd been on a motoring holiday to France.
New Labour did something similar on the left. No more the ordinary working man who'd left school at 15 and worked his way up through the union movement. If the blue team had the major public schools; the red team had minor public schools. John Prescott was an anachronism, as now is Angela Rayner.
Labour now has more Oxbridge and university educated MPs than it used to 50-100 years ago but it still doesn't have many public school educated MPs, certainly compared to the Tories and LDs. Even Reform has 3/5 of its MPs educated at public schools (though no Reform MP went to Oxbridge and Farage didn't even go to university)
Somebody puts a gun to your head and says "Which Bond Film are you going to watch in the next ten mins". Not "Which one is the best", but "Which one would you rewatch". I'd be honestly stuck.
I would watch the one where Bond escapes from someone holding a gun to his head. You know, just for a few tips.
That would be Skyfall, although he did need the Royal Marines (or someone like them) hanging around just out of shot.
I see Trump has called Trudeau the Governor again today.
Trudeau should simply adopt a sarcastic moniker for a Trump, like “Great Panjandrum”, or “Giant Poobah”, or perhaps just “Very Strong and Stable Trump”.
He could declare the US illegitimate and threaten Trump with execution for treachery against the British Crown.
I see Trump has called Trudeau the Governor again today.
Trudeau should simply adopt a sarcastic moniker for a Trump, like “Great Panjandrum”, or “Giant Poobah”, or perhaps just “Very Strong and Stable Trump”.
"Should I run again?" Trump asks the audience in the White House East Room. "There's your controversy, right?" The audience shouted: "Four more years." "You're going to see that tonight, Tim, on television," he told @SenatorTimScott .
One of the consolations in this most bizarre time is the growing evidence of hubris, and overreach.
That’s what gets them in the end. It nearly got Putin until his white knight arrived. But Trump doesn’t have a Trump to save him.
"You do not have shared values if you're jailing people for saying we should close down our border. You don't have shared values if you cancel elections because you don't like the result. And that happened in Romania. You do not have shared values if you're so afraid of your own people that you silence them and shut them up."
A perfect illustration.
This is exactly the same problem as Vance had in Munich declaring that we were arresting people for silent prayer or banning prayer in private homes (the ones I fact-checked about the UK), and the other things.
We aren't and he's lying to himself - just like Trump when he claims the USA put in 6x as much support into Ukraine as Europe.
They are a pair of fantaloons, treating stuff they have made up or falsehoods they have swallowed as fact and acting on that basis.
I think Vance's attitude to Europe is more easily explained. It is that "cultural cringe" that Vance wrote about in his book. When he went to Yale he was a fish out of water, not knowing what to wear, how to eat in formal dining, etc. He has written of spitting out sparkling water when he first tasted it, and of thinking Cracker Barrell was an upmarket place to eat. He is a human chameleon in such places, but like the Julia Roberts character in Pretty Woman knows that he is always tainted by his origins.
America has less social mobility than many European countries, but is rather more open about money equalling class, in a way that old money in Europe finds difficult. He hates the European elite as they seem so arrogant, so condescending and supercilious. In part this is because old money in the USA apes European styles.
Starmer is a more subtle version of the same, coming from a modest background, and never looking completely comfortable in a suit despite it being his uniform. That gives him a connection, though someone like Rayner would probably get on even better.
My mother once defined good manners as being able to make other people comfortable, and that is a very difficult line to follow with someone like Vance who has the unfortunate combination of a thin skin and being socially clumsy, unable to read a room. Starmer has his work cut out.
Perhaps the Blofeld character in SPECTRE was a similar figure, craving an acceptance that was never offered.
America doesn't really have truly old money as it doesn't have any royal families and aristocrats like Europe, Arab nations, India and Japan and Thailand do. American wealthy families are really just different degrees of new money, with the old Mayflower and Founding Father families and the 19th century oil and railroad and banking and finance and tea barons at the top of the tree of their 'old money'
Not really true. Read ‘white trash’ by that NY history professor. The idea that all the Americans arrived and were given an acre each, and the ablest and hardest working emerged at the top is a myth. The US’s leading families were such when they arrived, and quickly established themselves in commanding positions controlling both power and wealth. Whereas the multitudes arrived under indenture or penniless and a poor white underclass was a feature of US society from the very beginning. A key reason why slavery was defended was because it gave the poor white workers a higher spot on the social ladder, and such attitudes endure through to modern US politics.
The idea that the US doesn’t have a class system is for the birds.
The southern unionists in Appalachia resented both the slaves (beneath them) and the slave owners (above them).
Vance certainly has an aspect of that.
Indeed. East Tennessee would have become a separate state, like West Virginia, had Lincoln not been afeard of upsetting Kentucky by marching troops through to aid the local unionists.
I see Trump has called Trudeau the Governor again today.
Trudeau should simply adopt a sarcastic moniker for a Trump, like “Great Panjandrum”, or “Giant Poobah”, or perhaps just “Very Strong and Stable Trump”.
I quite like Boss Hogg, but it's a bit obscure.
Though I think JDV would fit into Hazzard County beautifully, as a returning local made good, to own the local brothel.
Top 5 Bonds for me, based on what would I stick on most often Goldeneye Tomorrow Never Dies Octopussy The Spy Who Loved Me From Russia with Love
In roughly that order but it does change a lot
First half of Living Daylights would be up there but it falls seriously flat in the third act when it's all up for the villains so it's just going through the motions.
Honorable mention to Goldfinger - a stone cold classic, but just a bit less entertaining than these 5 for me.
Guilty pleasure View to a Kill
Tomorrow Never Dies has a superb Jonathan Pryce as a baddy, and has some great action sequences with Michelle Yeoh. However... I never quite bought the whole Media Guy Starts A War For Headlines premise.
It definitely gets bonus points for the scene with the German/Swiss ballistics expert. "This so embarassing..."
The Russian army and its donkeys seem to be having a rough time lately at the front.
Funny if Trump backed the wrong donkey.
Sadly Putin has access to a virtually inexhaustible supply of cannon fodder. Were that not the case, the invasion might very well have failed by now.
The supply of cannon fodder that Russia has is severely overestimated. Including potentially by Moscow.
Why do you think they've resorted to dredging through prisons and getting the Koreans involved?
Russian demographics have been awful for years and while it may have once been true that they had an effectively limitless supply of young people to throw at the enemies bullets, it's not the case anymore.
Russia is an impoverished country teetering on the brink. If Europe steps up to the plate and continues to support Ukraine they very much can still be defeated. Even without American support.
What a turnup that would be.
Admittedly the image of the Russians getting booted out on their filthy rapist arses, followed swiftly by Ukraine starting to sell all those coveted minerals to everyone but Putin and Trump, is quite delicious. But also firmly in the too good to be true column. Ukraine has already lost so many casualties, and the effort to try to force the Russians out of their fortified positions along a huge front would be immense. I fear that some form of partition may be inevitable.
A Russian collapse followed by the soldiers deciding to bugger off home is more likely than you think, or that they will be forced out of their positions.
Armed men with guns tend to turn those guns on their superiors when the superiors run out of cash to pay them.
🚨 NEW: Elon Musk got called out by the Commander of the International Space Station for lying about President Biden supposedly leaving them stranded for political reasons. His response? Calling the commander “retarded.”
This is what passes for leadership and discourse in 2025 in America? Unreal.
Elon likes calling people "Retard", especially "f u retard".
There was another prominent one - I can't remember who it was.
Trump and Vance both went for personal insults when answering Bishop Budde and Rory Stewart, respectively (but not respectfully).
It seems characteristic, a little like the way the "every accusation is a confession" quip when they try and go for officials or political opponents has turned out to be surprisingly reliable.
The thing I find most depressing about the Trump-Musk Presidency is the extent to which lying has been normalized.
Very 21st Century Russian in a way. What's that book title... Nothing is true and everything is possible?
It's also a very lazy sort of lying. Not even an attempt at elegant pretence, just here's today's lump of lies. There will be another one tomorrow.
Elon Musk just had the Community Note removed from the clip of his interview with Trump that went viral on X. The note pointed out that Musk lied about having to rescue astronauts because Biden supposedly abandoned them.
"You do not have shared values if you're jailing people for saying we should close down our border. You don't have shared values if you cancel elections because you don't like the result. And that happened in Romania. You do not have shared values if you're so afraid of your own people that you silence them and shut them up."
A perfect illustration.
This is exactly the same problem as Vance had in Munich declaring that we were arresting people for silent prayer or banning prayer in private homes (the ones I fact-checked about the UK), and the other things.
We aren't and he's lying to himself - just like Trump when he claims the USA put in 6x as much support into Ukraine as Europe.
They are a pair of fantaloons, treating stuff they have made up or falsehoods they have swallowed as fact and acting on that basis.
I think Vance's attitude to Europe is more easily explained. It is that "cultural cringe" that Vance wrote about in his book. When he went to Yale he was a fish out of water, not knowing what to wear, how to eat in formal dining, etc. He has written of spitting out sparkling water when he first tasted it, and of thinking Cracker Barrell was an upmarket place to eat. He is a human chameleon in such places, but like the Julia Roberts character in Pretty Woman knows that he is always tainted by his origins.
America has less social mobility than many European countries, but is rather more open about money equalling class, in a way that old money in Europe finds difficult. He hates the European elite as they seem so arrogant, so condescending and supercilious. In part this is because old money in the USA apes European styles.
Starmer is a more subtle version of the same, coming from a modest background, and never looking completely comfortable in a suit despite it being his uniform. That gives him a connection, though someone like Rayner would probably get on even better.
My mother once defined good manners as being able to make other people comfortable, and that is a very difficult line to follow with someone like Vance who has the unfortunate combination of a thin skin and being socially clumsy, unable to read a room. Starmer has his work cut out.
Perhaps the Blofeld character in SPECTRE was a similar figure, craving an acceptance that was never offered.
America doesn't really have truly old money as it doesn't have any royal families and aristocrats like Europe, Arab nations, India and Japan and Thailand do. American wealthy families are really just different degrees of new money, with the old Mayflower and Founding Father families and the 19th century oil and railroad and banking and finance and tea barons at the top of the tree of their 'old money'
Not really true. Read ‘white trash’ by that NY history professor. The idea that all the Americans arrived and were given an acre each, and the ablest and hardest working emerged at the top is a myth. The US’s leading families were such when they arrived, and quickly established themselves in commanding positions controlling both power and wealth. Whereas the multitudes arrived under indenture or penniless and a poor white underclass was a feature of US society from the very beginning. A key reason why slavery was defended was because it gave the poor white workers a higher spot on the social ladder, and such attitudes endure through to modern US politics.
The idea that the US doesn’t have a class system is for the birds.
Not really either. They may have had a bit of land in England as farmers with a few being lawyers or merchants or army officers or clergy but they weren't monarchs or Dukes and Earls and Lords and Counts and Marquesses and genuine aristocracy, who were the real old money before the industrial revolution created new fortunes, especially in the USA.
The US has always had a monied elite but they aren't really proper blue blood elites
Somebody puts a gun to your head and says "Which Bond Film are you going to watch in the next ten mins". Not "Which one is the best", but "Which one would you rewatch". I'd be honestly stuck.
I would watch the one where Bond escapes from someone holding a gun to his head. You know, just for a few tips.
That would be Skyfall, although he did need the Royal Marines (or someone like them) hanging around just out of shot.
"You do not have shared values if you're jailing people for saying we should close down our border. You don't have shared values if you cancel elections because you don't like the result. And that happened in Romania. You do not have shared values if you're so afraid of your own people that you silence them and shut them up."
A perfect illustration.
This is exactly the same problem as Vance had in Munich declaring that we were arresting people for silent prayer or banning prayer in private homes (the ones I fact-checked about the UK), and the other things.
We aren't and he's lying to himself - just like Trump when he claims the USA put in 6x as much support into Ukraine as Europe.
They are a pair of fantaloons, treating stuff they have made up or falsehoods they have swallowed as fact and acting on that basis.
I think Vance's attitude to Europe is more easily explained. It is that "cultural cringe" that Vance wrote about in his book. When he went to Yale he was a fish out of water, not knowing what to wear, how to eat in formal dining, etc. He has written of spitting out sparkling water when he first tasted it, and of thinking Cracker Barrell was an upmarket place to eat. He is a human chameleon in such places, but like the Julia Roberts character in Pretty Woman knows that he is always tainted by his origins.
America has less social mobility than many European countries, but is rather more open about money equalling class, in a way that old money in Europe finds difficult. He hates the European elite as they seem so arrogant, so condescending and supercilious. In part this is because old money in the USA apes European styles.
Starmer is a more subtle version of the same, coming from a modest background, and never looking completely comfortable in a suit despite it being his uniform. That gives him a connection, though someone like Rayner would probably get on even better.
My mother once defined good manners as being able to make other people comfortable, and that is a very difficult line to follow with someone like Vance who has the unfortunate combination of a thin skin and being socially clumsy, unable to read a room. Starmer has his work cut out.
Perhaps the Blofeld character in SPECTRE was a similar figure, craving an acceptance that was never offered.
America doesn't really have truly old money as it doesn't have any royal families and aristocrats like Europe, Arab nations, India and Japan and Thailand do. American wealthy families are really just different degrees of new money, with the old Mayflower and Founding Father families and the 19th century oil and railroad and banking and finance and tea barons at the top of the tree of their 'old money'
Not really true. Read ‘white trash’ by that NY history professor. The idea that all the Americans arrived and were given an acre each, and the ablest and hardest working emerged at the top is a myth. The US’s leading families were such when they arrived, and quickly established themselves in commanding positions controlling both power and wealth. Whereas the multitudes arrived under indenture or penniless and a poor white underclass was a feature of US society from the very beginning. A key reason why slavery was defended was because it gave the poor white workers a higher spot on the social ladder, and such attitudes endure through to modern US politics.
The idea that the US doesn’t have a class system is for the birds.
Not really either. They may have had a bit of land in England as farmers with a few being lawyers or merchants or army officers or clergy but they weren't monarchs or Dukes and Earls and Lords and Counts and Marquesses and genuine aristocracy, who were the real old money before the industrial revolution created new fortunes, especially in the USA.
The US has always had a monied elite but they aren't really proper blue blood elites
By George I think you've got it.
Yes, that's exactly the sort of pompous condescending attitude that people like Vance experience, and exactly why they don't like us.
To an extent, otherwise they wouldn't have fought a War of Independence and Trump and Vance wouldn't be an issue, they would still just be colonists in a realm of the King
Elon Musk just had the Community Note removed from the clip of his interview with Trump that went viral on X. The note pointed out that Musk lied about having to rescue astronauts because Biden supposedly abandoned them.
Elon Musk just had the Community Note removed from the clip of his interview with Trump that went viral on X. The note pointed out that Musk lied about having to rescue astronauts because Biden supposedly abandoned them.
"Should I run again?" Trump asks the audience in the White House East Room. "There's your controversy, right?" The audience shouted: "Four more years." "You're going to see that tonight, Tim, on television," he told @SenatorTimScott .
He pretty much has to stay in office now, as if he ceases to be President there will almost certainly be some retribution no matter what the Supreme Court says, or what pardons are dispensed. The idea that the 2028 election will be free and fair seems quite absurd now.
"You do not have shared values if you're jailing people for saying we should close down our border. You don't have shared values if you cancel elections because you don't like the result. And that happened in Romania. You do not have shared values if you're so afraid of your own people that you silence them and shut them up."
A perfect illustration.
This is exactly the same problem as Vance had in Munich declaring that we were arresting people for silent prayer or banning prayer in private homes (the ones I fact-checked about the UK), and the other things.
We aren't and he's lying to himself - just like Trump when he claims the USA put in 6x as much support into Ukraine as Europe.
They are a pair of fantaloons, treating stuff they have made up or falsehoods they have swallowed as fact and acting on that basis.
I think Vance's attitude to Europe is more easily explained. It is that "cultural cringe" that Vance wrote about in his book. When he went to Yale he was a fish out of water, not knowing what to wear, how to eat in formal dining, etc. He has written of spitting out sparkling water when he first tasted it, and of thinking Cracker Barrell was an upmarket place to eat. He is a human chameleon in such places, but like the Julia Roberts character in Pretty Woman knows that he is always tainted by his origins.
America has less social mobility than many European countries, but is rather more open about money equalling class, in a way that old money in Europe finds difficult. He hates the European elite as they seem so arrogant, so condescending and supercilious. In part this is because old money in the USA apes European styles.
Starmer is a more subtle version of the same, coming from a modest background, and never looking completely comfortable in a suit despite it being his uniform. That gives him a connection, though someone like Rayner would probably get on even better.
My mother once defined good manners as being able to make other people comfortable, and that is a very difficult line to follow with someone like Vance who has the unfortunate combination of a thin skin and being socially clumsy, unable to read a room. Starmer has his work cut out.
Perhaps the Blofeld character in SPECTRE was a similar figure, craving an acceptance that was never offered.
America doesn't really have truly old money as it doesn't have any royal families and aristocrats like Europe, Arab nations, India and Japan and Thailand do. American wealthy families are really just different degrees of new money, with the old Mayflower and Founding Father families and the 19th century oil and railroad and banking and finance and tea barons at the top of the tree of their 'old money'
Not really true. Read ‘white trash’ by that NY history professor. The idea that all the Americans arrived and were given an acre each, and the ablest and hardest working emerged at the top is a myth. The US’s leading families were such when they arrived, and quickly established themselves in commanding positions controlling both power and wealth. Whereas the multitudes arrived under indenture or penniless and a poor white underclass was a feature of US society from the very beginning. A key reason why slavery was defended was because it gave the poor white workers a higher spot on the social ladder, and such attitudes endure through to modern US politics.
The idea that the US doesn’t have a class system is for the birds.
Not really either. They may have had a bit of land in England as farmers with a few being lawyers or merchants or army officers or clergy but they weren't monarchs or Dukes and Earls and Lords and Counts and Marquesses and genuine aristocracy, who were the real old money before the industrial revolution created new fortunes, especially in the USA.
The US has always had a monied elite but they aren't really proper blue blood elites
I see Trump has called Trudeau the Governor again today.
Trudeau should simply adopt a sarcastic moniker for a Trump, like “Great Panjandrum”, or “Giant Poobah”, or perhaps just “Very Strong and Stable Trump”.
I prefer The Orange Golgothan.
King Donald. After all, it's what Mr Trump wants to be called.
And since he's a long way away, I suggest prefacing that with Far.
Elon Musk just had the Community Note removed from the clip of his interview with Trump that went viral on X. The note pointed out that Musk lied about having to rescue astronauts because Biden supposedly abandoned them.
Radical free speech guys don’t appreciate being fact checked.
Elon Musk just had the Community Note removed from the clip of his interview with Trump that went viral on X. The note pointed out that Musk lied about having to rescue astronauts because Biden supposedly abandoned them.
It's why the new Bond plot is being rewritten, the new version is:
Tomorrow Never Dies rapidly rewritten to be about a meddling civil servant's unjust persecution of a put-upon global media tycoon
Elon Musk just had the Community Note removed from the clip of his interview with Trump that went viral on X. The note pointed out that Musk lied about having to rescue astronauts because Biden supposedly abandoned them.
Radical free speech guys don’t appreciate being fact checked.
"Should I run again?" Trump asks the audience in the White House East Room. "There's your controversy, right?" The audience shouted: "Four more years." "You're going to see that tonight, Tim, on television," he told @SenatorTimScott .
That just shows that Trump has a perfect instinct for politics.
Teasing a third term gets headlines and provides insulation against him becoming a lame duck. He wouldn't make Cameron's "shredded wheat" mistake.
"You do not have shared values if you're jailing people for saying we should close down our border. You don't have shared values if you cancel elections because you don't like the result. And that happened in Romania. You do not have shared values if you're so afraid of your own people that you silence them and shut them up."
A perfect illustration.
This is exactly the same problem as Vance had in Munich declaring that we were arresting people for silent prayer or banning prayer in private homes (the ones I fact-checked about the UK), and the other things.
We aren't and he's lying to himself - just like Trump when he claims the USA put in 6x as much support into Ukraine as Europe.
They are a pair of fantaloons, treating stuff they have made up or falsehoods they have swallowed as fact and acting on that basis.
I think Vance's attitude to Europe is more easily explained. It is that "cultural cringe" that Vance wrote about in his book. When he went to Yale he was a fish out of water, not knowing what to wear, how to eat in formal dining, etc. He has written of spitting out sparkling water when he first tasted it, and of thinking Cracker Barrell was an upmarket place to eat. He is a human chameleon in such places, but like the Julia Roberts character in Pretty Woman knows that he is always tainted by his origins.
America has less social mobility than many European countries, but is rather more open about money equalling class, in a way that old money in Europe finds difficult. He hates the European elite as they seem so arrogant, so condescending and supercilious. In part this is because old money in the USA apes European styles.
Starmer is a more subtle version of the same, coming from a modest background, and never looking completely comfortable in a suit despite it being his uniform. That gives him a connection, though someone like Rayner would probably get on even better.
My mother once defined good manners as being able to make other people comfortable, and that is a very difficult line to follow with someone like Vance who has the unfortunate combination of a thin skin and being socially clumsy, unable to read a room. Starmer has his work cut out.
Perhaps the Blofeld character in SPECTRE was a similar figure, craving an acceptance that was never offered.
America doesn't really have truly old money as it doesn't have any royal families and aristocrats like Europe, Arab nations, India and Japan and Thailand do. American wealthy families are really just different degrees of new money, with the old Mayflower and Founding Father families and the 19th century oil and railroad and banking and finance and tea barons at the top of the tree of their 'old money'
Not really true. Read ‘white trash’ by that NY history professor. The idea that all the Americans arrived and were given an acre each, and the ablest and hardest working emerged at the top is a myth. The US’s leading families were such when they arrived, and quickly established themselves in commanding positions controlling both power and wealth. Whereas the multitudes arrived under indenture or penniless and a poor white underclass was a feature of US society from the very beginning. A key reason why slavery was defended was because it gave the poor white workers a higher spot on the social ladder, and such attitudes endure through to modern US politics.
The idea that the US doesn’t have a class system is for the birds.
Not really either. They may have had a bit of land in England as farmers with a few being lawyers or merchants or army officers or clergy but they weren't monarchs or Dukes and Earls and Lords and Counts and Marquesses and genuine aristocracy, who were the real old money before the industrial revolution created new fortunes, especially in the USA.
The US has always had a monied elite but they aren't really proper blue blood elites
Look at their bios, even most of the First Virginia Families ie the Lees, Washingtons, Carters, Byrds and Harrisons were sons of merchants and clergy and clerks not Dukes, Lords and Earls even if a few were distantly related
I see Trump has called Trudeau the Governor again today.
Trudeau should simply adopt a sarcastic moniker for a Trump, like “Great Panjandrum”, or “Giant Poobah”, or perhaps just “Very Strong and Stable Trump”.
I prefer The Orange Golgothan.
King Donald. After all, it's what Mr Trump wants to be called.
And since he's a long way away, I suggest prefacing that with Far.
"You do not have shared values if you're jailing people for saying we should close down our border. You don't have shared values if you cancel elections because you don't like the result. And that happened in Romania. You do not have shared values if you're so afraid of your own people that you silence them and shut them up."
A perfect illustration.
This is exactly the same problem as Vance had in Munich declaring that we were arresting people for silent prayer or banning prayer in private homes (the ones I fact-checked about the UK), and the other things.
We aren't and he's lying to himself - just like Trump when he claims the USA put in 6x as much support into Ukraine as Europe.
They are a pair of fantaloons, treating stuff they have made up or falsehoods they have swallowed as fact and acting on that basis.
I think Vance's attitude to Europe is more easily explained. It is that "cultural cringe" that Vance wrote about in his book. When he went to Yale he was a fish out of water, not knowing what to wear, how to eat in formal dining, etc. He has written of spitting out sparkling water when he first tasted it, and of thinking Cracker Barrell was an upmarket place to eat. He is a human chameleon in such places, but like the Julia Roberts character in Pretty Woman knows that he is always tainted by his origins.
America has less social mobility than many European countries, but is rather more open about money equalling class, in a way that old money in Europe finds difficult. He hates the European elite as they seem so arrogant, so condescending and supercilious. In part this is because old money in the USA apes European styles.
Starmer is a more subtle version of the same, coming from a modest background, and never looking completely comfortable in a suit despite it being his uniform. That gives him a connection, though someone like Rayner would probably get on even better.
My mother once defined good manners as being able to make other people comfortable, and that is a very difficult line to follow with someone like Vance who has the unfortunate combination of a thin skin and being socially clumsy, unable to read a room. Starmer has his work cut out.
Perhaps the Blofeld character in SPECTRE was a similar figure, craving an acceptance that was never offered.
America doesn't really have truly old money as it doesn't have any royal families and aristocrats like Europe, Arab nations, India and Japan and Thailand do. American wealthy families are really just different degrees of new money, with the old Mayflower and Founding Father families and the 19th century oil and railroad and banking and finance and tea barons at the top of the tree of their 'old money'
Not really true. Read ‘white trash’ by that NY history professor. The idea that all the Americans arrived and were given an acre each, and the ablest and hardest working emerged at the top is a myth. The US’s leading families were such when they arrived, and quickly established themselves in commanding positions controlling both power and wealth. Whereas the multitudes arrived under indenture or penniless and a poor white underclass was a feature of US society from the very beginning. A key reason why slavery was defended was because it gave the poor white workers a higher spot on the social ladder, and such attitudes endure through to modern US politics.
The idea that the US doesn’t have a class system is for the birds.
Not really either. They may have had a bit of land in England as farmers with a few being lawyers or merchants or army officers or clergy but they weren't monarchs or Dukes and Earls and Lords and Counts and Marquesses and genuine aristocracy, who were the real old money before the industrial revolution created new fortunes, especially in the USA.
The US has always had a monied elite but they aren't really proper blue blood elites
Look at their bios, even most of the First Virginia Families ie the Lees, Washingtons, Carters, Byrds and Harrisons were sons of merchants and clergy and clerks not Dukes, Lords and Earls even if a few were distantly related
But what is a Duke, Lord or Earl other than the progeny of a Norman robber or the bastard of a sexually incontinent Royal?
"You do not have shared values if you're jailing people for saying we should close down our border. You don't have shared values if you cancel elections because you don't like the result. And that happened in Romania. You do not have shared values if you're so afraid of your own people that you silence them and shut them up."
A perfect illustration.
This is exactly the same problem as Vance had in Munich declaring that we were arresting people for silent prayer or banning prayer in private homes (the ones I fact-checked about the UK), and the other things.
We aren't and he's lying to himself - just like Trump when he claims the USA put in 6x as much support into Ukraine as Europe.
They are a pair of fantaloons, treating stuff they have made up or falsehoods they have swallowed as fact and acting on that basis.
I think Vance's attitude to Europe is more easily explained. It is that "cultural cringe" that Vance wrote about in his book. When he went to Yale he was a fish out of water, not knowing what to wear, how to eat in formal dining, etc. He has written of spitting out sparkling water when he first tasted it, and of thinking Cracker Barrell was an upmarket place to eat. He is a human chameleon in such places, but like the Julia Roberts character in Pretty Woman knows that he is always tainted by his origins.
America has less social mobility than many European countries, but is rather more open about money equalling class, in a way that old money in Europe finds difficult. He hates the European elite as they seem so arrogant, so condescending and supercilious. In part this is because old money in the USA apes European styles.
Starmer is a more subtle version of the same, coming from a modest background, and never looking completely comfortable in a suit despite it being his uniform. That gives him a connection, though someone like Rayner would probably get on even better.
My mother once defined good manners as being able to make other people comfortable, and that is a very difficult line to follow with someone like Vance who has the unfortunate combination of a thin skin and being socially clumsy, unable to read a room. Starmer has his work cut out.
Perhaps the Blofeld character in SPECTRE was a similar figure, craving an acceptance that was never offered.
America doesn't really have truly old money as it doesn't have any royal families and aristocrats like Europe, Arab nations, India and Japan and Thailand do. American wealthy families are really just different degrees of new money, with the old Mayflower and Founding Father families and the 19th century oil and railroad and banking and finance and tea barons at the top of the tree of their 'old money'
Not really true. Read ‘white trash’ by that NY history professor. The idea that all the Americans arrived and were given an acre each, and the ablest and hardest working emerged at the top is a myth. The US’s leading families were such when they arrived, and quickly established themselves in commanding positions controlling both power and wealth. Whereas the multitudes arrived under indenture or penniless and a poor white underclass was a feature of US society from the very beginning. A key reason why slavery was defended was because it gave the poor white workers a higher spot on the social ladder, and such attitudes endure through to modern US politics.
The idea that the US doesn’t have a class system is for the birds.
Not really either. They may have had a bit of land in England as farmers with a few being lawyers or merchants or army officers or clergy but they weren't monarchs or Dukes and Earls and Lords and Counts and Marquesses and genuine aristocracy, who were the real old money before the industrial revolution created new fortunes, especially in the USA.
The US has always had a monied elite but they aren't really proper blue blood elites
Look at their bios, even most of the First Virginia Families ie the Lees, Washingtons, Carters, Byrds and Harrisons were sons of merchants and clergy and clerks not Dukes, Lords and Earls even if a few were distantly related
But what is a Duke, Lord or Earl other than the progeny of a Norman robber or the bastard of a sexually incontinent Royal?
Still largely with some royal blood or senior knights of a Norman King.
To be truly posh and upper class you have to be born into it, not made. Something even US billionaires like Trump have always resented, he may have more money and power than the King now but in class terms it is still the King who is genuine old money not him
I see Trump has called Trudeau the Governor again today.
Trudeau should simply adopt a sarcastic moniker for a Trump, like “Great Panjandrum”, or “Giant Poobah”, or perhaps just “Very Strong and Stable Trump”.
I prefer The Orange Golgothan.
King Donald. After all, it's what Mr Trump wants to be called.
And since he's a long way away, I suggest prefacing that with Far.
"You do not have shared values if you're jailing people for saying we should close down our border. You don't have shared values if you cancel elections because you don't like the result. And that happened in Romania. You do not have shared values if you're so afraid of your own people that you silence them and shut them up."
A perfect illustration.
This is exactly the same problem as Vance had in Munich declaring that we were arresting people for silent prayer or banning prayer in private homes (the ones I fact-checked about the UK), and the other things.
We aren't and he's lying to himself - just like Trump when he claims the USA put in 6x as much support into Ukraine as Europe.
They are a pair of fantaloons, treating stuff they have made up or falsehoods they have swallowed as fact and acting on that basis.
I think Vance's attitude to Europe is more easily explained. It is that "cultural cringe" that Vance wrote about in his book. When he went to Yale he was a fish out of water, not knowing what to wear, how to eat in formal dining, etc. He has written of spitting out sparkling water when he first tasted it, and of thinking Cracker Barrell was an upmarket place to eat. He is a human chameleon in such places, but like the Julia Roberts character in Pretty Woman knows that he is always tainted by his origins.
America has less social mobility than many European countries, but is rather more open about money equalling class, in a way that old money in Europe finds difficult. He hates the European elite as they seem so arrogant, so condescending and supercilious. In part this is because old money in the USA apes European styles.
Starmer is a more subtle version of the same, coming from a modest background, and never looking completely comfortable in a suit despite it being his uniform. That gives him a connection, though someone like Rayner would probably get on even better.
My mother once defined good manners as being able to make other people comfortable, and that is a very difficult line to follow with someone like Vance who has the unfortunate combination of a thin skin and being socially clumsy, unable to read a room. Starmer has his work cut out.
Perhaps the Blofeld character in SPECTRE was a similar figure, craving an acceptance that was never offered.
America doesn't really have truly old money as it doesn't have any royal families and aristocrats like Europe, Arab nations, India and Japan and Thailand do. American wealthy families are really just different degrees of new money, with the old Mayflower and Founding Father families and the 19th century oil and railroad and banking and finance and tea barons at the top of the tree of their 'old money'
Not really true. Read ‘white trash’ by that NY history professor. The idea that all the Americans arrived and were given an acre each, and the ablest and hardest working emerged at the top is a myth. The US’s leading families were such when they arrived, and quickly established themselves in commanding positions controlling both power and wealth. Whereas the multitudes arrived under indenture or penniless and a poor white underclass was a feature of US society from the very beginning. A key reason why slavery was defended was because it gave the poor white workers a higher spot on the social ladder, and such attitudes endure through to modern US politics.
The idea that the US doesn’t have a class system is for the birds.
Not really either. They may have had a bit of land in England as farmers with a few being lawyers or merchants or army officers or clergy but they weren't monarchs or Dukes and Earls and Lords and Counts and Marquesses and genuine aristocracy, who were the real old money before the industrial revolution created new fortunes, especially in the USA.
The US has always had a monied elite but they aren't really proper blue blood elites
Look at their bios, even most of the First Virginia Families ie the Lees, Washingtons, Carters, Byrds and Harrisons were sons of merchants and clergy and clerks not Dukes, Lords and Earls even if a few were distantly related
But what is a Duke, Lord or Earl other than the progeny of a Norman robber or the bastard of a sexually incontinent Royal?
Still largely with some royal blood or senior knights of a Norman King.
To be truly posh you have to be born into it, not made. Something even US billionaires like Trump have always resented, he may have more money and power than the King now but in class terms it is still the King who is genuine old money not him
I don't think Trump resents the Royal family - I think he's a big admirer.
I see Trump has called Trudeau the Governor again today.
Trudeau should simply adopt a sarcastic moniker for a Trump, like “Great Panjandrum”, or “Giant Poobah”, or perhaps just “Very Strong and Stable Trump”.
I prefer The Orange Golgothan.
King Donald. After all, it's what Mr Trump wants to be called.
And since he's a long way away, I suggest prefacing that with Far.
When wearing his ermine robes: Fur King Donald
Or when playing golf, Fore King Donald.
We can say from long distance that he's Far King Donald.
"You do not have shared values if you're jailing people for saying we should close down our border. You don't have shared values if you cancel elections because you don't like the result. And that happened in Romania. You do not have shared values if you're so afraid of your own people that you silence them and shut them up."
A perfect illustration.
This is exactly the same problem as Vance had in Munich declaring that we were arresting people for silent prayer or banning prayer in private homes (the ones I fact-checked about the UK), and the other things.
We aren't and he's lying to himself - just like Trump when he claims the USA put in 6x as much support into Ukraine as Europe.
They are a pair of fantaloons, treating stuff they have made up or falsehoods they have swallowed as fact and acting on that basis.
I think Vance's attitude to Europe is more easily explained. It is that "cultural cringe" that Vance wrote about in his book. When he went to Yale he was a fish out of water, not knowing what to wear, how to eat in formal dining, etc. He has written of spitting out sparkling water when he first tasted it, and of thinking Cracker Barrell was an upmarket place to eat. He is a human chameleon in such places, but like the Julia Roberts character in Pretty Woman knows that he is always tainted by his origins.
America has less social mobility than many European countries, but is rather more open about money equalling class, in a way that old money in Europe finds difficult. He hates the European elite as they seem so arrogant, so condescending and supercilious. In part this is because old money in the USA apes European styles.
Starmer is a more subtle version of the same, coming from a modest background, and never looking completely comfortable in a suit despite it being his uniform. That gives him a connection, though someone like Rayner would probably get on even better.
My mother once defined good manners as being able to make other people comfortable, and that is a very difficult line to follow with someone like Vance who has the unfortunate combination of a thin skin and being socially clumsy, unable to read a room. Starmer has his work cut out.
Perhaps the Blofeld character in SPECTRE was a similar figure, craving an acceptance that was never offered.
America doesn't really have truly old money as it doesn't have any royal families and aristocrats like Europe, Arab nations, India and Japan and Thailand do. American wealthy families are really just different degrees of new money, with the old Mayflower and Founding Father families and the 19th century oil and railroad and banking and finance and tea barons at the top of the tree of their 'old money'
Not really true. Read ‘white trash’ by that NY history professor. The idea that all the Americans arrived and were given an acre each, and the ablest and hardest working emerged at the top is a myth. The US’s leading families were such when they arrived, and quickly established themselves in commanding positions controlling both power and wealth. Whereas the multitudes arrived under indenture or penniless and a poor white underclass was a feature of US society from the very beginning. A key reason why slavery was defended was because it gave the poor white workers a higher spot on the social ladder, and such attitudes endure through to modern US politics.
The idea that the US doesn’t have a class system is for the birds.
Not really either. They may have had a bit of land in England as farmers with a few being lawyers or merchants or army officers or clergy but they weren't monarchs or Dukes and Earls and Lords and Counts and Marquesses and genuine aristocracy, who were the real old money before the industrial revolution created new fortunes, especially in the USA.
The US has always had a monied elite but they aren't really proper blue blood elites
Look at their bios, even most of the First Virginia Families ie the Lees, Washingtons, Carters, Byrds and Harrisons were sons of merchants and clergy and clerks not Dukes, Lords and Earls even if a few were distantly related
All aristo families were nouveau riche once. You just have a weird hang up about inheritance, noble blood, and all that nonsense. As did the the southern planters.
"You do not have shared values if you're jailing people for saying we should close down our border. You don't have shared values if you cancel elections because you don't like the result. And that happened in Romania. You do not have shared values if you're so afraid of your own people that you silence them and shut them up."
A perfect illustration.
This is exactly the same problem as Vance had in Munich declaring that we were arresting people for silent prayer or banning prayer in private homes (the ones I fact-checked about the UK), and the other things.
We aren't and he's lying to himself - just like Trump when he claims the USA put in 6x as much support into Ukraine as Europe.
They are a pair of fantaloons, treating stuff they have made up or falsehoods they have swallowed as fact and acting on that basis.
I think Vance's attitude to Europe is more easily explained. It is that "cultural cringe" that Vance wrote about in his book. When he went to Yale he was a fish out of water, not knowing what to wear, how to eat in formal dining, etc. He has written of spitting out sparkling water when he first tasted it, and of thinking Cracker Barrell was an upmarket place to eat. He is a human chameleon in such places, but like the Julia Roberts character in Pretty Woman knows that he is always tainted by his origins.
America has less social mobility than many European countries, but is rather more open about money equalling class, in a way that old money in Europe finds difficult. He hates the European elite as they seem so arrogant, so condescending and supercilious. In part this is because old money in the USA apes European styles.
Starmer is a more subtle version of the same, coming from a modest background, and never looking completely comfortable in a suit despite it being his uniform. That gives him a connection, though someone like Rayner would probably get on even better.
My mother once defined good manners as being able to make other people comfortable, and that is a very difficult line to follow with someone like Vance who has the unfortunate combination of a thin skin and being socially clumsy, unable to read a room. Starmer has his work cut out.
Perhaps the Blofeld character in SPECTRE was a similar figure, craving an acceptance that was never offered.
America doesn't really have truly old money as it doesn't have any royal families and aristocrats like Europe, Arab nations, India and Japan and Thailand do. American wealthy families are really just different degrees of new money, with the old Mayflower and Founding Father families and the 19th century oil and railroad and banking and finance and tea barons at the top of the tree of their 'old money'
Not really true. Read ‘white trash’ by that NY history professor. The idea that all the Americans arrived and were given an acre each, and the ablest and hardest working emerged at the top is a myth. The US’s leading families were such when they arrived, and quickly established themselves in commanding positions controlling both power and wealth. Whereas the multitudes arrived under indenture or penniless and a poor white underclass was a feature of US society from the very beginning. A key reason why slavery was defended was because it gave the poor white workers a higher spot on the social ladder, and such attitudes endure through to modern US politics.
The idea that the US doesn’t have a class system is for the birds.
Not really either. They may have had a bit of land in England as farmers with a few being lawyers or merchants or army officers or clergy but they weren't monarchs or Dukes and Earls and Lords and Counts and Marquesses and genuine aristocracy, who were the real old money before the industrial revolution created new fortunes, especially in the USA.
The US has always had a monied elite but they aren't really proper blue blood elites
Look at their bios, even most of the First Virginia Families ie the Lees, Washingtons, Carters, Byrds and Harrisons were sons of merchants and clergy and clerks not Dukes, Lords and Earls even if a few were distantly related
But what is a Duke, Lord or Earl other than the progeny of a Norman robber or the bastard of a sexually incontinent Royal?
Still largely with some royal blood or senior knights of a Norman King.
To be truly posh you have to be born into it, not made. Something even US billionaires like Trump have always resented, he may have more money and power than the King now but in class terms it is still the King who is genuine old money not him
Ever actually looked at mathematics? Multiplied 1/2 by 1/2 by ... for 40 generations?
And then considered what DNA studies show about the incidence of illegitimacy in the UK?
You're actually making a huge, huge case for the primacy of environment over genetics.
I see Trump has called Trudeau the Governor again today.
Trudeau should simply adopt a sarcastic moniker for a Trump, like “Great Panjandrum”, or “Giant Poobah”, or perhaps just “Very Strong and Stable Trump”.
I prefer The Orange Golgothan.
King Donald. After all, it's what Mr Trump wants to be called.
And since he's a long way away, I suggest prefacing that with Far.
"You do not have shared values if you're jailing people for saying we should close down our border. You don't have shared values if you cancel elections because you don't like the result. And that happened in Romania. You do not have shared values if you're so afraid of your own people that you silence them and shut them up."
A perfect illustration.
This is exactly the same problem as Vance had in Munich declaring that we were arresting people for silent prayer or banning prayer in private homes (the ones I fact-checked about the UK), and the other things.
We aren't and he's lying to himself - just like Trump when he claims the USA put in 6x as much support into Ukraine as Europe.
They are a pair of fantaloons, treating stuff they have made up or falsehoods they have swallowed as fact and acting on that basis.
I think Vance's attitude to Europe is more easily explained. It is that "cultural cringe" that Vance wrote about in his book. When he went to Yale he was a fish out of water, not knowing what to wear, how to eat in formal dining, etc. He has written of spitting out sparkling water when he first tasted it, and of thinking Cracker Barrell was an upmarket place to eat. He is a human chameleon in such places, but like the Julia Roberts character in Pretty Woman knows that he is always tainted by his origins.
America has less social mobility than many European countries, but is rather more open about money equalling class, in a way that old money in Europe finds difficult. He hates the European elite as they seem so arrogant, so condescending and supercilious. In part this is because old money in the USA apes European styles.
Starmer is a more subtle version of the same, coming from a modest background, and never looking completely comfortable in a suit despite it being his uniform. That gives him a connection, though someone like Rayner would probably get on even better.
My mother once defined good manners as being able to make other people comfortable, and that is a very difficult line to follow with someone like Vance who has the unfortunate combination of a thin skin and being socially clumsy, unable to read a room. Starmer has his work cut out.
Perhaps the Blofeld character in SPECTRE was a similar figure, craving an acceptance that was never offered.
America doesn't really have truly old money as it doesn't have any royal families and aristocrats like Europe, Arab nations, India and Japan and Thailand do. American wealthy families are really just different degrees of new money, with the old Mayflower and Founding Father families and the 19th century oil and railroad and banking and finance and tea barons at the top of the tree of their 'old money'
Not really true. Read ‘white trash’ by that NY history professor. The idea that all the Americans arrived and were given an acre each, and the ablest and hardest working emerged at the top is a myth. The US’s leading families were such when they arrived, and quickly established themselves in commanding positions controlling both power and wealth. Whereas the multitudes arrived under indenture or penniless and a poor white underclass was a feature of US society from the very beginning. A key reason why slavery was defended was because it gave the poor white workers a higher spot on the social ladder, and such attitudes endure through to modern US politics.
The idea that the US doesn’t have a class system is for the birds.
Not really either. They may have had a bit of land in England as farmers with a few being lawyers or merchants or army officers or clergy but they weren't monarchs or Dukes and Earls and Lords and Counts and Marquesses and genuine aristocracy, who were the real old money before the industrial revolution created new fortunes, especially in the USA.
The US has always had a monied elite but they aren't really proper blue blood elites
Look at their bios, even most of the First Virginia Families ie the Lees, Washingtons, Carters, Byrds and Harrisons were sons of merchants and clergy and clerks not Dukes, Lords and Earls even if a few were distantly related
All aristo families were nouveau riche once. You just have a weird hang up about inheritance, noble blood, and all that nonsense. As did the the southern planters.
HYUFD does like to have a good cringe every morning and evening. Probably works better than a bowl of prunes.
"You do not have shared values if you're jailing people for saying we should close down our border. You don't have shared values if you cancel elections because you don't like the result. And that happened in Romania. You do not have shared values if you're so afraid of your own people that you silence them and shut them up."
A perfect illustration.
This is exactly the same problem as Vance had in Munich declaring that we were arresting people for silent prayer or banning prayer in private homes (the ones I fact-checked about the UK), and the other things.
We aren't and he's lying to himself - just like Trump when he claims the USA put in 6x as much support into Ukraine as Europe.
They are a pair of fantaloons, treating stuff they have made up or falsehoods they have swallowed as fact and acting on that basis.
I think Vance's attitude to Europe is more easily explained. It is that "cultural cringe" that Vance wrote about in his book. When he went to Yale he was a fish out of water, not knowing what to wear, how to eat in formal dining, etc. He has written of spitting out sparkling water when he first tasted it, and of thinking Cracker Barrell was an upmarket place to eat. He is a human chameleon in such places, but like the Julia Roberts character in Pretty Woman knows that he is always tainted by his origins.
America has less social mobility than many European countries, but is rather more open about money equalling class, in a way that old money in Europe finds difficult. He hates the European elite as they seem so arrogant, so condescending and supercilious. In part this is because old money in the USA apes European styles.
Starmer is a more subtle version of the same, coming from a modest background, and never looking completely comfortable in a suit despite it being his uniform. That gives him a connection, though someone like Rayner would probably get on even better.
My mother once defined good manners as being able to make other people comfortable, and that is a very difficult line to follow with someone like Vance who has the unfortunate combination of a thin skin and being socially clumsy, unable to read a room. Starmer has his work cut out.
Perhaps the Blofeld character in SPECTRE was a similar figure, craving an acceptance that was never offered.
America doesn't really have truly old money as it doesn't have any royal families and aristocrats like Europe, Arab nations, India and Japan and Thailand do. American wealthy families are really just different degrees of new money, with the old Mayflower and Founding Father families and the 19th century oil and railroad and banking and finance and tea barons at the top of the tree of their 'old money'
Not really true. Read ‘white trash’ by that NY history professor. The idea that all the Americans arrived and were given an acre each, and the ablest and hardest working emerged at the top is a myth. The US’s leading families were such when they arrived, and quickly established themselves in commanding positions controlling both power and wealth. Whereas the multitudes arrived under indenture or penniless and a poor white underclass was a feature of US society from the very beginning. A key reason why slavery was defended was because it gave the poor white workers a higher spot on the social ladder, and such attitudes endure through to modern US politics.
The idea that the US doesn’t have a class system is for the birds.
Not really either. They may have had a bit of land in England as farmers with a few being lawyers or merchants or army officers or clergy but they weren't monarchs or Dukes and Earls and Lords and Counts and Marquesses and genuine aristocracy, who were the real old money before the industrial revolution created new fortunes, especially in the USA.
The US has always had a monied elite but they aren't really proper blue blood elites
Look at their bios, even most of the First Virginia Families ie the Lees, Washingtons, Carters, Byrds and Harrisons were sons of merchants and clergy and clerks not Dukes, Lords and Earls even if a few were distantly related
But what is a Duke, Lord or Earl other than the progeny of a Norman robber or the bastard of a sexually incontinent Royal?
Still largely with some royal blood or senior knights of a Norman King.
To be truly posh you have to be born into it, not made. Something even US billionaires like Trump have always resented, he may have more money and power than the King now but in class terms it is still the King who is genuine old money not him
I don't think Trump resents the Royal family - I think he's a big admirer.
He knows his place, reluctantly, one of the few people in the world who could put Trump in his place and get him sucking up to them was her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II
"You do not have shared values if you're jailing people for saying we should close down our border. You don't have shared values if you cancel elections because you don't like the result. And that happened in Romania. You do not have shared values if you're so afraid of your own people that you silence them and shut them up."
A perfect illustration.
This is exactly the same problem as Vance had in Munich declaring that we were arresting people for silent prayer or banning prayer in private homes (the ones I fact-checked about the UK), and the other things.
We aren't and he's lying to himself - just like Trump when he claims the USA put in 6x as much support into Ukraine as Europe.
They are a pair of fantaloons, treating stuff they have made up or falsehoods they have swallowed as fact and acting on that basis.
I think Vance's attitude to Europe is more easily explained. It is that "cultural cringe" that Vance wrote about in his book. When he went to Yale he was a fish out of water, not knowing what to wear, how to eat in formal dining, etc. He has written of spitting out sparkling water when he first tasted it, and of thinking Cracker Barrell was an upmarket place to eat. He is a human chameleon in such places, but like the Julia Roberts character in Pretty Woman knows that he is always tainted by his origins.
America has less social mobility than many European countries, but is rather more open about money equalling class, in a way that old money in Europe finds difficult. He hates the European elite as they seem so arrogant, so condescending and supercilious. In part this is because old money in the USA apes European styles.
Starmer is a more subtle version of the same, coming from a modest background, and never looking completely comfortable in a suit despite it being his uniform. That gives him a connection, though someone like Rayner would probably get on even better.
My mother once defined good manners as being able to make other people comfortable, and that is a very difficult line to follow with someone like Vance who has the unfortunate combination of a thin skin and being socially clumsy, unable to read a room. Starmer has his work cut out.
Perhaps the Blofeld character in SPECTRE was a similar figure, craving an acceptance that was never offered.
America doesn't really have truly old money as it doesn't have any royal families and aristocrats like Europe, Arab nations, India and Japan and Thailand do. American wealthy families are really just different degrees of new money, with the old Mayflower and Founding Father families and the 19th century oil and railroad and banking and finance and tea barons at the top of the tree of their 'old money'
Not really true. Read ‘white trash’ by that NY history professor. The idea that all the Americans arrived and were given an acre each, and the ablest and hardest working emerged at the top is a myth. The US’s leading families were such when they arrived, and quickly established themselves in commanding positions controlling both power and wealth. Whereas the multitudes arrived under indenture or penniless and a poor white underclass was a feature of US society from the very beginning. A key reason why slavery was defended was because it gave the poor white workers a higher spot on the social ladder, and such attitudes endure through to modern US politics.
The idea that the US doesn’t have a class system is for the birds.
Not really either. They may have had a bit of land in England as farmers with a few being lawyers or merchants or army officers or clergy but they weren't monarchs or Dukes and Earls and Lords and Counts and Marquesses and genuine aristocracy, who were the real old money before the industrial revolution created new fortunes, especially in the USA.
The US has always had a monied elite but they aren't really proper blue blood elites
Look at their bios, even most of the First Virginia Families ie the Lees, Washingtons, Carters, Byrds and Harrisons were sons of merchants and clergy and clerks not Dukes, Lords and Earls even if a few were distantly related
But what is a Duke, Lord or Earl other than the progeny of a Norman robber or the bastard of a sexually incontinent Royal?
Still largely with some royal blood or senior knights of a Norman King.
To be truly posh you have to be born into it, not made. Something even US billionaires like Trump have always resented, he may have more money and power than the King now but in class terms it is still the King who is genuine old money not him
I don't think Trump resents the Royal family - I think he's a big admirer.
He knows his place, reluctantly, one of the few people in the world who could put Trump in his place and get him sucking up to them was her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II
TBH he might now that he is officially a King.
Though King Stupid is a bit more suitable.
(He can't claim victory yet on banning the NY congestion charge, as there was a lawsuit in within seven minutes, reportedly.)
I see Trump has called Trudeau the Governor again today.
Trudeau should simply adopt a sarcastic moniker for a Trump, like “Great Panjandrum”, or “Giant Poobah”, or perhaps just “Very Strong and Stable Trump”.
I prefer The Orange Golgothan.
King Donald. After all, it's what Mr Trump wants to be called.
And since he's a long way away, I suggest prefacing that with Far.
When wearing his ermine robes: Fur King Donald
Or when playing golf, Fore King Donald.
Surely just Burger King Donald?
As long as he can have a plastic straw with his drink....
Truss: We want a Trump revolution in Britain. We want to flood the zone. We want Elon and his nerd army of muskrats examining the British deep state.
Nice example. There you go LuckyGuy. Truss being wrong about something (three things, in fact).
I don't know what flooding the zone means.
I don't specifically want Elon Musk going through British Government departments line by line but I do want someone to do it.
Liz Truss's new thing is that she wants a popular grassroots movement like the tea party/MAGA to hold Government's feet to the fire on the legislative changes she thinks are necessary. I think she's a million miles from achieving or even helping to achieve that, but I wish her well. The nearest thing we have is the recent grassroots success of Reform. Cross party/Tory efforts like PopCon are great but don't have a big grassroots footprint.
It seems like she hasn't phrased things at all well in the above, but she's playing to her (sadly small it would appear) audience.
It's time for the UK and Europe to stand on their own two feet.
The only thing Trump respects is strength. And we need to get strong, fast.
We, and other European countries, should never have allowed ourselves to become so dependent on a foreign power.
The transatlantic relationship has served us very well (and served the US well too, despite what the current administration thinks). There are strong historical reasons why Europe has behaved like it has over the past 2-3 decades. Yes there has been some complacency in that, but it’s very difficult to move away from a geopolitical system when it’s working.
I put less blame at the feet of European governments for what has happened in the past than the blame I will put on them if they do not rise to the challenge now. We know we need to do it. So we need to get on with it.
We also need to remember that, for most of the years since the end of WW2, many European, including British, bases, were home to US troops. I don’t know what would have happened if the host nations had told them to go home.
May be we should recut the Chagos deal.
We don’t need a base in the Indian Ocean. Give it to Mauritius and let the US negotiate a de novo lease
Truly disturbing report in the WSJ: Lawyers at Twitter are threatening advertisers to spend more money on X "or else" X owner Elon Musk will leverage his close relationship with Trump to torpedo mergers. This goes beyond a conflict of interest. It's straight up extortion https://x.com/bungarsargon/status/1892659483806924994
All joking aside (ish) there is a modernised remake of the novel of Moonraker to be done, which could even remove the anomaly of Bond acting within the U.K. Fleming would approve.
I see Trump has called Trudeau the Governor again today.
Trudeau should simply adopt a sarcastic moniker for a Trump, like “Great Panjandrum”, or “Giant Poobah”, or perhaps just “Very Strong and Stable Trump”.
Something VERY Canadian. Their equivalent of “pillock”.
'Gen Z will fight' - conscription divides Europe | Ukraine: The Latest | Podcast"
Today, as Donald Trump calls President Zelensky a ‘dictator’, we look at the conundrum facing Europe: to speak out and risk fraying American support, or to stay quiet, and not articulate their sense of betrayal. And, later, we talk about the strategic options available, and dive deeper into the British plans of putting boots on the ground.
I see Trump has called Trudeau the Governor again today.
Trudeau should simply adopt a sarcastic moniker for a Trump, like “Great Panjandrum”, or “Giant Poobah”, or perhaps just “Very Strong and Stable Trump”.
Something VERY Canadian. Their equivalent of “pillock”.
The truly appalling Matt Frei..speaking in hushed reverential tones about Zelensky...like he's a cross between Gandhi, Mandela and Martin Luther King.
When most people are beginning to recognize he is about to be consigned to the back street coke dens of Kiev.
You've lost it bigtime, Comrade.
The personal level insults of Zelensky, which have nothing whatsoever to do with the merits of arguments about the war or the disputed approach that should be taken towards it, are the sign of a genuine, unapologetic Putinista.
No amount of 'Oh, but I'm not a fan of Putin' explains it away, not when others can support the Trumpist approach without sinking to those depths.
It's almost refreshing to get someone who is not a bot who is a fan of Putin. They do exist, and you think you won't come across them, but here we are.
Reminds me of the time I was approached by someone I knew vaguely, who told me all about how Andrew Bridgen and RFK Jr are very interesting guys with a lot of insight.
Comments
2. Live and Let Die
3. Goldeneye
4. Goldfinger
5. OHMSS
For me anyway. I think the top three are changeable though depending on my mood.
I certainly think there are problems with PSPOs, but that is to do with a process designed to be easy to ram through with very few checks and balances or evidence.
And in the Bournemouth protection zone one there was good consultation, judging by the 75% fugure.
I'm quite amazed by that, given how much they were part of my childhood (and school culture) growing up.
As a great man once said: “stop getting Bond wrong!”
whenever Elon butts heads with people that actually do the work he falls the fuck apart every single time
https://x.com/TheWapplehouse/status/1892667889292882356
Or two villains.
Enough for another half dozen films.
"My name is Skum. Leon Skum."
"This gentleman visible in the freezer is known as The President."
Goldeneye
Tomorrow Never Dies
Octopussy
The Spy Who Loved Me
From Russia with Love
In roughly that order but it does change a lot
First half of Living Daylights would be up there but it falls seriously flat in the third act when it's all up for the villains so it's just going through the motions.
Honorable mention to Goldfinger - a stone cold classic, but just a bit less entertaining than these 5 for me.
Guilty pleasure View to a Kill
Vance certainly has an aspect of that.
2. OHMSS
3. From Russia with Love
4. Goldfinger
5. ... tough ... but probably Goldeneye
You need to rewatch From Russia With Love
Trudeau should simply adopt a sarcastic moniker for a Trump, like “Great Panjandrum”, or “Giant Poobah”, or perhaps just “Very Strong and Stable Trump”.
The US has always had a monied elite but they aren't really proper blue blood elites
And does ChatGPT give any response to my second question:
How many viewers had any idea of what was happening apart from that Bond wins ?
"Should I run again?" Trump asks the audience in the White House East Room. "There's your controversy, right?"
The audience shouted: "Four more years."
"You're going to see that tonight, Tim, on television," he told
@SenatorTimScott
.
It definitely gets bonus points for the scene with the German/Swiss ballistics expert. "This so embarassing..."
7/10.
Yes, that's exactly the sort of pompous condescending attitude that people like Vance experience, and exactly why they don't like us.
That’s what gets them in the end. It nearly got Putin until his white knight arrived. But Trump doesn’t have a Trump to save him.
Though I think JDV would fit into Hazzard County beautifully, as a returning local made good, to own the local brothel.
I was more thinking about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4kQvkvGi9M
It's also a very lazy sort of lying. Not even an attempt at elegant pretence, just here's today's lump of lies. There will be another one tomorrow.
Elon Musk just had the Community Note removed from the clip of his interview with Trump that went viral on X. The note pointed out that Musk lied about having to rescue astronauts because Biden supposedly abandoned them.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/White-Trash-400-Year-History-America/dp/1786493004/
They might have been largely second sons of the English aristocracy, but that’s what many were, nonetheless.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Families_of_Virginia
And since he's a long way away, I suggest prefacing that with Far.
Tomorrow Never Dies rapidly rewritten to be about a meddling civil servant's unjust persecution of a put-upon global media tycoon
https://bsky.app/profile/hughrbrechin.bsky.social/post/3limjlhvboc2q
Teasing a third term gets headlines and provides insulation against him becoming a lame duck. He wouldn't make Cameron's "shredded wheat" mistake.
There isn't a single James Bond film as entertaining as Raiders of the Lost Ark though.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyz6e9edy3o
By Grok...
https://x.com/jeffreymlevy/status/1892670933275443641
To be truly posh and upper class you have to be born into it, not made. Something even US billionaires like Trump have always resented, he may have more money and power than the King now but in class terms it is still the King who is genuine old money not him
Job done.
You just have a weird hang up about inheritance, noble blood, and all that nonsense. As did the the southern planters.
And then considered what DNA studies show about the incidence of illegitimacy in the UK?
You're actually making a huge, huge case for the primacy of environment over genetics.
Though King Stupid is a bit more suitable.
(He can't claim victory yet on banning the NY congestion charge, as there was a lawsuit in within seven minutes, reportedly.)
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-long-live-the-king-twitter-b2701329.html
Veterans who lost entire units to Russian forces express outrage at being excluded from peace talks while Trump suggests Ukraine provoked its own invasion.
https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/02/20/now-hes-going-to-help-the-russians-bucha-residents-react-to-trumps-pro-russian-rhetoric/
“They destroyed everything here, and now we’re supposed to give up? How does that work?"
I don't specifically want Elon Musk going through British Government departments line by line but I do want someone to do it.
Liz Truss's new thing is that she wants a popular grassroots movement like the tea party/MAGA to hold Government's feet to the fire on the legislative changes she thinks are necessary. I think she's a million miles from achieving or even helping to achieve that, but I wish her well. The nearest thing we have is the recent grassroots success of Reform. Cross party/Tory efforts like PopCon are great but don't have a big grassroots footprint.
It seems like she hasn't phrased things at all well in the above, but she's playing to her (sadly small it would appear) audience.
We don’t need a base in the Indian Ocean. Give it to Mauritius and let the US negotiate a de novo lease
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c0q1z88gvv7t
Sometime towards late December, Ukraine were saying the Biden last minute surge had given them enough to last until mid-2025.
The truly appalling Matt Frei..speaking in hushed reverential tones about Zelensky...like he's a cross between Gandhi, Mandela and Martin Luther King.
When most people are beginning to recognize he is about to be consigned to the back street coke dens of Kiev.
Truly disturbing report in the WSJ: Lawyers at Twitter are threatening advertisers to spend more money on X "or else" X owner Elon Musk will leverage his close relationship with Trump to torpedo mergers. This goes beyond a conflict of interest. It's straight up extortion
https://x.com/bungarsargon/status/1892659483806924994
'Gen Z will fight' - conscription divides Europe | Ukraine: The Latest | Podcast"
Today, as Donald Trump calls President Zelensky a ‘dictator’, we look at the conundrum facing Europe: to speak out and risk fraying American support, or to stay quiet, and not articulate their sense of betrayal. And, later, we talk about the strategic options available, and dive deeper into the British plans of putting boots on the ground.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Km1CZFPe5JE
And today's The Daily T, who have been prominent Trump enthusiasts, Camilla Tominey in the lead:
Trump flirts with Putin on Ukraine - and it's splitting the Right | The Daily T
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kZfQC-IHzs
And Bond was in shorts.
No amount of 'Oh, but I'm not a fan of Putin' explains it away, not when others can support the Trumpist approach without sinking to those depths.
It's almost refreshing to get someone who is not a bot who is a fan of Putin. They do exist, and you think you won't come across them, but here we are.
Reminds me of the time I was approached by someone I knew vaguely, who told me all about how Andrew Bridgen and RFK Jr are very interesting guys with a lot of insight.