Points 1 and 4 seem to be at odds with each other. Point 2, “up to” covers a multitude of sins but the EU is already substituting for Russian gas. Point 3 probably means the German car makers will build new plants in America rather than more Cadillacs on autobahns. Point 4, see point 2.
Underyling all this is a fundamental misconception.
Are you suggesting that Donald J Trump, the most successful business man in the history of the universe, a man who fought his way up with nothing more than a small loan of a million dollars, and who famously run casinos as they had never been run before, does not understand how international trade works?
How very dare you sir!
Yes, Donald J Trump. That guy, the guy who... er.... got elected to the most powerful position on earth. Twice
What a thicko
Is there any correlation between electoral success and IQ ?
There's a fair bit of confounding on the relationship between any sort of success and IQ. Desire is probably more important, and many of the smartest people have decided to play a different game. (This isn't always wise, since it lets people like Trump take the crown.)
Or as a really smart guy once said,
Don't like people to get the idea that I have to do this [performing brilliant satirical songs] for a living. I mean, it isn't as though I had to do this, you know, I could be making, oh, 3000 dollars a year just teaching.
It was a significant birthday for Mrs J this weekend, so I got childcare in for our son, and took her down to London (*) . Three decades ago, I would travel from St Pancras to Derby on the train. At that time St Pancras was faded grandeur; the glass of Barlow's trainshed greyed out with ancient smoke; the hotel's exterior refurbished in the 1980s, but the interior decayed, abandoned and inaccessible. The stench of diesel filled the air within the vast trainshed, as if a vast mechanical lung was exhaling within. I used to climb up the steps from King's Cross and stand, awe-struck at Scott's fantastical exterior.
Roll on to this weekend, and I decided to book us in for the night at the refurbished hotel. It was expensive, and I booked a room in the modern Barlow extension, but it was still the St Pancras hotel. We arrived, and we had been upgraded from a room to a suite in the original hotel.
A suite. It was massive. And our windows looked down over the coach ramp and the Euston Road. we danced around the rooms. We failed to find any convenient plugs. We glided up *that* staircase. We dared not sing 'Wannabe'.
We had our meals in the Booking Office; somewhere I used to go to buy tickets back home to my parents'. Now restored, but also perhaps having lost a certain something: purpose and decreptiude?
By nature, I am tight. I don't particularly like spending money. But this weekend was brilliant. We got taxis everywhere, to Fortnum's for afternoon tea (a very rare treat), and then the theatre. Normally, we would either walk or get the tube. But this weekend, I spent.
Even today's chaos on the ECML did not stop us: instead of waiting amongst the thousands at Kings Cross for a train back to Sr Neots, we took a train to Bedford, and got a taxi the rest of the way.
London was also at its best: electric cars were far more common than they are up here, and the air felt remarkably clean. We walked through NW1, seeing terraces of the non-identical Nash buildings that @Leon witters on about. Runners reigned in Regent's Park. The only negative were the homeless; far more prevalent on the Euston Road than litter.
We rarely do this sort of thing, but it's scarcity made it even more special. And staying at the St Pancras Hotel was a dream fulfilled: in Mrs J's case, a dream she did not know she had...
I've promised Mrs J we'll so it again for her next fiftieth birthday...
(*) That is not a euphemism ...
Very nice. I am glad you enjoyed the Nash Terraces. They are sublime
Meh. They're identikit housing. No individuality...
Fascinatingly, that was one of the accusations levelled by Victorians against Georgian housing. "It's all the same". So Victorians wanted more ornamentation - stained glass, weird balconies, ornate cornices, etc
The postwar era remains an abominable stain, however. It is probably the only architectural era, esp in housing, which has not improved over time. We are now many many decades from the housing and townscapes of the 50s and 60s, and they STILL look like shit
They aren't even that cheap, either, if you take into account the higher level of maintenance as the concrete crumbles and the asbestos needs to be replaced and the number that have been torn down as dismal slums.
A terrible blight, not that the architectural profession has shown much sign of learning or apologising.
Evening all. The cricket was embarrassingly awful. The weakest bowling attack I can remember from England ever. They'll get destroyed in Australia if Atkinson and Wood at very least aren't fit. Chunky Littler dismantles the Machine in the arrows to cap off the night
Points 1 and 4 seem to be at odds with each other. Point 2, “up to” covers a multitude of sins but the EU is already substituting for Russian gas. Point 3 probably means the German car makers will build new plants in America rather than more Cadillacs on autobahns. Point 4, see point 2.
Underyling all this is a fundamental misconception.
Are you suggesting that Donald J Trump, the most successful business man in the history of the universe, a man who fought his way up with nothing more than a small loan of a million dollars, and who famously run casinos as they had never been run before, does not understand how international trade works?
How very dare you sir!
Yes, Donald J Trump. That guy, the guy who... er.... got elected to the most powerful position on earth. Twice
What a thicko
Plenty of very intelligent people don't understand international finance.
And plenty of incredibly dumb people get elected to even very high offices. Have you ever read the speeches of Warren G. Harding?
Edit - and the point I was actually making, although I realise a man who doesn't understand how his washing machine works may not have fully grasped it, is that Trump isn't actually much good at business. I don't think that's a controversial point. He's lost several fortunes and it has become very clear he rebuilt himself each time through fraud and graft, later through reality TV and finally through being elected President and milking the office for all it's worth.
Trump is a senile loon.
The president is calling for the prosecution of Beyoncé…for something that did not happen.
It’s not like a dispute of fact. He’s calling for her to be charged with a crime over a nonexistent payment conjured up by supporters on social media. https://x.com/ddale8/status/1949502176759349336
Leon continues to believe that he possesses a high IQ.
IQ is often misunderstood, particularly perhaps by those who claim a high IQ. You can be good at doing something without a high IQ, for example through practice. You can be charismatic without having a high IQ. Trump is good at shameless lying and a certain style of aggressive bullshitting. He used to have a knack for attracting attention. He's been built up into a cult by a client media and social media. He's won two Presidential elections: that's definitely impressive. But he's clearly deeply ignorant, uninterested in leaving a narcissistic bubble and engaging with reality, and showing plenty of signs of cognitive decline. And whatever his IQ, he is a deeply evil man, from his personal conduct and multiple sexual assaults, to the damage he is doing to the US and the rest of the world.
Points 1 and 4 seem to be at odds with each other. Point 2, “up to” covers a multitude of sins but the EU is already substituting for Russian gas. Point 3 probably means the German car makers will build new plants in America rather than more Cadillacs on autobahns. Point 4, see point 2.
Underyling all this is a fundamental misconception.
Are you suggesting that Donald J Trump, the most successful business man in the history of the universe, a man who fought his way up with nothing more than a small loan of a million dollars, and who famously run casinos as they had never been run before, does not understand how international trade works?
How very dare you sir!
Yes, Donald J Trump. That guy, the guy who... er.... got elected to the most powerful position on earth. Twice
What a thicko
Is there any correlation between electoral success and IQ ?
In an advanced mature democracy like the USA, very very much Yes
The inability of PB to grasp this is fucking dreary. And, indeed, sad evidence of PB's intellectual mediocrity
Trump is many bad things: an egotist, a narcissist, a pus*y grabber, a wanker, a blowhard, a tit, possibly a rapist, certainly a toad of the first water. He is probably unfit to be POTUS and he might deserve to be in jail. But he is also notably clever and cunning, and he knows how to game the American electoral system. And he's often very sharp, and quite often rather funny
Sorry
He is as thick as two short planks and incredibly ignorant. How many examples of utterly stupid things he has said do you need. The list of his ignorant utterances is endless.
You are so gullible.
I mean, what does one do with stupidity like this?
I guess, ignore it?
I shall do you a favour and ignore you from now on, whatever you say
Drinking bleach to cure covid, believing a plane was invisible, reducing prices by over 100%, answers to questions when looked at written down are just a random bunch of words. The list is endless. And I know you will find excuses for all of these (and the 1000s I haven't mentioned), but you are just a sycophant member of the cult who will find an excuse no matter what evidence is put in front of you.
He is cunning and malevolent and not senile unlike some claim (I do think he knows what he is doing even if he is both stupid and very ignorant).
Next you will be telling us the MTG is a brain box. After all by your logic she must be if she gets repeatedly elected to Congress.
Points 1 and 4 seem to be at odds with each other. Point 2, “up to” covers a multitude of sins but the EU is already substituting for Russian gas. Point 3 probably means the German car makers will build new plants in America rather than more Cadillacs on autobahns. Point 4, see point 2.
Underyling all this is a fundamental misconception.
Are you suggesting that Donald J Trump, the most successful business man in the history of the universe, a man who fought his way up with nothing more than a small loan of a million dollars, and who famously run casinos as they had never been run before, does not understand how international trade works?
How very dare you sir!
Yes, Donald J Trump. That guy, the guy who... er.... got elected to the most powerful position on earth. Twice
What a thicko
Is there any correlation between electoral success and IQ ?
In an advanced mature democracy like the USA, very very much Yes
The inability of PB to grasp this is fucking dreary. And, indeed, sad evidence of PB's intellectual mediocrity
Trump is many bad things: an egotist, a narcissist, a pus*y grabber, a wanker, a blowhard, a tit, possibly a rapist, certainly a toad of the first water. He is probably unfit to be POTUS and he might deserve to be in jail. But he is also notably clever and cunning, and he knows how to game the American electoral system. And he's often very sharp, and quite often rather funny
Sorry
He is as thick as two short planks and incredibly ignorant. How many examples of utterly stupid things he has said do you need. The list of his ignorant utterances is endless.
You are so gullible.
I mean, what does one do with stupidity like this?
I guess, ignore it?
I shall do you a favour and ignore you from now on, whatever you say
Drinking bleach to cure covid, believing a plane was invisible, reducing prices by over 100%, answers to questions when looked at written down are just a random bunch of words. The list is endless. And I know you will find excuses for all of these (and the 1000s I haven't mentioned), but you are just a sycophant member of the cult who will find an excuse no matter what evidence is put in front of you.
He is cunning and malevolent and not senile unlike some claim (I do think he knows what he is doing even if he is both stupid and very ignorant).
Next you will be telling us the MTG is a brain box. After all by your logic she must be if she gets repeatedly elected to Congress.
Points 1 and 4 seem to be at odds with each other. Point 2, “up to” covers a multitude of sins but the EU is already substituting for Russian gas. Point 3 probably means the German car makers will build new plants in America rather than more Cadillacs on autobahns. Point 4, see point 2.
Underyling all this is a fundamental misconception.
Are you suggesting that Donald J Trump, the most successful business man in the history of the universe, a man who fought his way up with nothing more than a small loan of a million dollars, and who famously run casinos as they had never been run before, does not understand how international trade works?
How very dare you sir!
Yes, Donald J Trump. That guy, the guy who... er.... got elected to the most powerful position on earth. Twice
What a thicko
Is there any correlation between electoral success and IQ ?
In an advanced mature democracy like the USA, very very much Yes
The inability of PB to grasp this is fucking dreary. And, indeed, sad evidence of PB's intellectual mediocrity
Trump is many bad things: an egotist, a narcissist, a pus*y grabber, a wanker, a blowhard, a tit, possibly a rapist, certainly a toad of the first water. He is probably unfit to be POTUS and he might deserve to be in jail. But he is also notably clever and cunning, and he knows how to game the American electoral system. And he's often very sharp, and quite often rather funny
Sorry
He is as thick as two short planks and incredibly ignorant. How many examples of utterly stupid things he has said do you need. The list of his ignorant utterances is endless.
You are so gullible.
I mean, what does one do with stupidity like this?
I guess, ignore it?
I shall do you a favour and ignore you from now on, whatever you say
Drinking bleach to cure covid, believing a plane was invisible, reducing prices by over 100%, answers to questions when looked at written down are just a random bunch of words. The list is endless. And I know you will find excuses for all of these (and the 1000s I haven't mentioned), but you are just a sycophant member of the cult who will find an excuse no matter what evidence is put in front of you.
He is cunning and malevolent and not senile unlike some claim (I do think he knows what he is doing even if he is both stupid and very ignorant).
Next you will be telling us the MTG is a brain box. After all by your logic she must be if she gets repeatedly elected to Congress.
Jeremy Corbyn has won election 14 times, I think. Unquestionably a genius.
Points 1 and 4 seem to be at odds with each other. Point 2, “up to” covers a multitude of sins but the EU is already substituting for Russian gas. Point 3 probably means the German car makers will build new plants in America rather than more Cadillacs on autobahns. Point 4, see point 2.
Underyling all this is a fundamental misconception.
Are you suggesting that Donald J Trump, the most successful business man in the history of the universe, a man who fought his way up with nothing more than a small loan of a million dollars, and who famously run casinos as they had never been run before, does not understand how international trade works?
How very dare you sir!
Yes, Donald J Trump. That guy, the guy who... er.... got elected to the most powerful position on earth. Twice
What a thicko
Plenty of very intelligent people don't understand international finance.
And plenty of incredibly dumb people get elected to even very high offices. Have you ever read the speeches of Warren G. Harding?
Edit - and the point I was actually making, although I realise a man who doesn't understand how his washing machine works may not have fully grasped it, is that Trump isn't actually much good at business. I don't think that's a controversial point. He's lost several fortunes and it has become very clear he rebuilt himself each time through fraud and graft, later through reality TV and finally through being elected President and milking the office for all it's worth.
Trump is a senile loon.
The president is calling for the prosecution of Beyoncé…for something that did not happen.
It’s not like a dispute of fact. He’s calling for her to be charged with a crime over a nonexistent payment conjured up by supporters on social media. https://x.com/ddale8/status/1949502176759349336
Leon continues to believe that he possesses a high IQ.
IQ is often misunderstood, particularly perhaps by those who claim a high IQ. You can be good at doing something without a high IQ, for example through practice. You can be charismatic without having a high IQ. Trump is good at shameless lying and a certain style of aggressive bullshitting. He used to have a knack for attracting attention. He's been built up into a cult by a client media and social media. He's won two Presidential elections: that's definitely impressive. But he's clearly deeply ignorant, uninterested in leaving a narcissistic bubble and engaging with reality, and showing plenty of signs of cognitive decline. And whatever his IQ, he is a deeply evil man, from his personal conduct and multiple sexual assaults, to the damage he is doing to the US and the rest of the world.
Yet some in UK politics see him as a role model.
There's a difference between lizard brain animal cunning and IQ.
Points 1 and 4 seem to be at odds with each other. Point 2, “up to” covers a multitude of sins but the EU is already substituting for Russian gas. Point 3 probably means the German car makers will build new plants in America rather than more Cadillacs on autobahns. Point 4, see point 2.
Underyling all this is a fundamental misconception.
Are you suggesting that Donald J Trump, the most successful business man in the history of the universe, a man who fought his way up with nothing more than a small loan of a million dollars, and who famously run casinos as they had never been run before, does not understand how international trade works?
How very dare you sir!
Yes, Donald J Trump. That guy, the guy who... er.... got elected to the most powerful position on earth. Twice
What a thicko
Plenty of very intelligent people don't understand international finance.
And plenty of incredibly dumb people get elected to even very high offices. Have you ever read the speeches of Warren G. Harding?
Edit - and the point I was actually making, although I realise a man who doesn't understand how his washing machine works may not have fully grasped it, is that Trump isn't actually much good at business. I don't think that's a controversial point. He's lost several fortunes and it has become very clear he rebuilt himself each time through fraud and graft, later through reality TV and finally through being elected President and milking the office for all it's worth.
Trump is a senile loon.
The president is calling for the prosecution of Beyoncé…for something that did not happen.
It’s not like a dispute of fact. He’s calling for her to be charged with a crime over a nonexistent payment conjured up by supporters on social media. https://x.com/ddale8/status/1949502176759349336
Leon continues to believe that he possesses a high IQ.
IQ is often misunderstood, particularly perhaps by those who claim a high IQ. You can be good at doing something without a high IQ, for example through practice. You can be charismatic without having a high IQ. Trump is good at shameless lying and a certain style of aggressive bullshitting. He used to have a knack for attracting attention. He's been built up into a cult by a client media and social media. He's won two Presidential elections: that's definitely impressive. But he's clearly deeply ignorant, uninterested in leaving a narcissistic bubble and engaging with reality, and showing plenty of signs of cognitive decline. And whatever his IQ, he is a deeply evil man, from his personal conduct and multiple sexual assaults, to the damage he is doing to the US and the rest of the world.
Yet some in UK politics see him as a role model.
That is a very good post. I worked with someone (a salesman) once who was a sociopath. It took a while before it became apparent to those around him and he was eventually fired because of it. He was very skilled at what he did, but eventually events outside of his control made it all fall apart. The collapse of all the lies was impressive. If he worked as hard doing his job properly as he did in his manipulation (which was very impressive) he could have been successful. That did not make him clever. It was certainly a skill, but so is being a handyman. A skill I wish I had. That also doesn't make them clever.
@Leon fails to understand what being clever is. Consequently he thinks he has a high IQ when he doesn't.
Points 1 and 4 seem to be at odds with each other. Point 2, “up to” covers a multitude of sins but the EU is already substituting for Russian gas. Point 3 probably means the German car makers will build new plants in America rather than more Cadillacs on autobahns. Point 4, see point 2.
Underyling all this is a fundamental misconception.
Are you suggesting that Donald J Trump, the most successful business man in the history of the universe, a man who fought his way up with nothing more than a small loan of a million dollars, and who famously run casinos as they had never been run before, does not understand how international trade works?
How very dare you sir!
Yes, Donald J Trump. That guy, the guy who... er.... got elected to the most powerful position on earth. Twice
What a thicko
Is there any correlation between electoral success and IQ ?
In an advanced mature democracy like the USA, very very much Yes
The inability of PB to grasp this is fucking dreary. And, indeed, sad evidence of PB's intellectual mediocrity
Trump is many bad things: an egotist, a narcissist, a pus*y grabber, a wanker, a blowhard, a tit, possibly a rapist, certainly a toad of the first water. He is probably unfit to be POTUS and he might deserve to be in jail. But he is also notably clever and cunning, and he knows how to game the American electoral system. And he's often very sharp, and quite often rather funny
Sorry
Errr:
They elected the senile old todger that was Joe Biden.
He is cunning and malevolent and not senile unlike some claim (I do think he knows what he is doing even if he is both stupid and very ignorant).
No, he's senile
He was ranting last week about the guy that appointed Powell
Wanna guess who it was?
It is, of course, also possible to have a high IQ and to have dementia (not that I think this applies to Trump). Indeed, individuals with high IQs are better at masking memory loss, which can be a problem when you want to pick up signs of dementia early.
That's enormously advantageous to EU carmakers, given that US car makers are struggling with massive tariffs on steel and aluminum, and auto parts. It will almost certainly be cheaper to build cars in the EU and export them to the US, than to build them in the US
Spencer Hakimian @SpencerHakimian *TRUMP: EU AGREES TO PURCHASE $750B OF AMERICAN ENERGY ANNUALLY
The European Union doesn’t even consume $600B of energy per year.
So the EU has agreed to overpay by $150 billion?
No wonder Trump is happy.
The first report we had of it did not say "annually".
I see that the Tories are continuing to demand that Labour should do things that they didn't do themselves.
Fresh on the heals of saying that doctors shouldn't be able to strike (something they didn't legislate for), they now want the Epping asylum hotel emptied out.
That's enormously advantageous to EU carmakers, given that US car makers are struggling with massive tariffs on steel and aluminum, and auto parts. It will almost certainly be cheaper to build cars in the EU and export them to the US, than to build them in the US
Spencer Hakimian @SpencerHakimian *TRUMP: EU AGREES TO PURCHASE $750B OF AMERICAN ENERGY ANNUALLY
The European Union doesn’t even consume $600B of energy per year.
So the EU has agreed to overpay by $150 billion?
No wonder Trump is happy.
The first report we had of it did not say "annually".
Calm down PB, Trump is bullshitting.
Save your blood pressure for tomorrow.
It is also reported as UP TO $750B of energy. It could be anything. It is Trumpian BS.
It was a significant birthday for Mrs J this weekend, so I got childcare in for our son, and took her down to London (*) . Three decades ago, I would travel from St Pancras to Derby on the train. At that time St Pancras was faded grandeur; the glass of Barlow's trainshed greyed out with ancient smoke; the hotel's exterior refurbished in the 1980s, but the interior decayed, abandoned and inaccessible. The stench of diesel filled the air within the vast trainshed, as if a vast mechanical lung was exhaling within. I used to climb up the steps from King's Cross and stand, awe-struck at Scott's fantastical exterior.
Roll on to this weekend, and I decided to book us in for the night at the refurbished hotel. It was expensive, and I booked a room in the modern Barlow extension, but it was still the St Pancras hotel. We arrived, and we had been upgraded from a room to a suite in the original hotel.
A suite. It was massive. And our windows looked down over the coach ramp and the Euston Road. we danced around the rooms. We failed to find any convenient plugs. We glided up *that* staircase. We dared not sing 'Wannabe'.
We had our meals in the Booking Office; somewhere I used to go to buy tickets back home to my parents'. Now restored, but also perhaps having lost a certain something: purpose and decreptiude?
By nature, I am tight. I don't particularly like spending money. But this weekend was brilliant. We got taxis everywhere, to Fortnum's for afternoon tea (a very rare treat), and then the theatre. Normally, we would either walk or get the tube. But this weekend, I spent.
Even today's chaos on the ECML did not stop us: instead of waiting amongst the thousands at Kings Cross for a train back to Sr Neots, we took a train to Bedford, and got a taxi the rest of the way.
London was also at its best: electric cars were far more common than they are up here, and the air felt remarkably clean. We walked through NW1, seeing terraces of the non-identical Nash buildings that @Leon witters on about. Runners reigned in Regent's Park. The only negative were the homeless; far more prevalent on the Euston Road than litter.
We rarely do this sort of thing, but it's scarcity made it even more special. And staying at the St Pancras Hotel was a dream fulfilled: in Mrs J's case, a dream she did not know she had...
I've promised Mrs J we'll so it again for her next fiftieth birthday...
(*) That is not a euphemism ...
That's so nice, and especially resonant for me - I spent too much of the night of the Great Storm of 1987 in a train in the train shed. though I have to echo your feelings about the diversion of the Booking Hall to other usage. The stone (or terracotta) locomotives on the frieze inside deserve to be overlooking the ticket offices as of old.
I have to ask: what frieze?
Quite right - not a continuous carved frieze, sorry, brain fart. Memory is one of the carved capitals from which the arches of the blind arcading, or the ceiling timbers, spring, but I can't lay my paws on Jack Simmons's classic study of the station to confirm this.
One (weird) question I had from the Booking Office: the foils (lights) at the top of the windows were three, four or five petalled, seemingly at random (tresfoil, quatrefoil, cinquefoil). The pattern was different from one side of the Booking Office to the other. I wondered why. Mrs J smiled and sipped her drink...
Dunno. Maybe they just liked variety. Here's another memorable Venetian Gothicky Victorian building, the University Museum at Oxford. They're not anal about the numerical basis of their little window things.
Edit: the Museum is famous for the varied ways in which the window surrounds/rebates/whatever they are called, the door surrounds, and column capitals are carved -often individual works of art.
That's enormously advantageous to EU carmakers, given that US car makers are struggling with massive tariffs on steel and aluminum, and auto parts. It will almost certainly be cheaper to build cars in the EU and export them to the US, than to build them in the US
Spencer Hakimian @SpencerHakimian *TRUMP: EU AGREES TO PURCHASE $750B OF AMERICAN ENERGY ANNUALLY
The European Union doesn’t even consume $600B of energy per year.
So the EU has agreed to overpay by $150 billion?
No wonder Trump is happy.
The first report we had of it did not say "annually".
Calm down PB, Trump is bullshitting.
Save your blood pressure for tomorrow.
It is also reported as UP TO $750B of energy. It could be anything. It is Trumpian BS.
So, they're not allowed to buy more than $750bn of US energy?
It's also absurd, given that energy is basically fungible.
There is nothing to celebrate. Moving from average tariffs of less than 2% on trade between the USA and Europe to 15% under today’s deal will inevitably lead to inflation. Almost everything will become more expensive in both Europe and the USA, and we will all be worse off. The economic illiteracy in the White House is doing serious damage to the West.
That's enormously advantageous to EU carmakers, given that US car makers are struggling with massive tariffs on steel and aluminum, and auto parts. It will almost certainly be cheaper to build cars in the EU and export them to the US, than to build them in the US
Spencer Hakimian @SpencerHakimian *TRUMP: EU AGREES TO PURCHASE $750B OF AMERICAN ENERGY ANNUALLY
The European Union doesn’t even consume $600B of energy per year.
So the EU has agreed to overpay by $150 billion?
No wonder Trump is happy.
The first report we had of it did not say "annually".
Calm down PB, Trump is bullshitting.
Save your blood pressure for tomorrow.
It is also reported as UP TO $750B of energy. It could be anything. It is Trumpian BS.
So, they're not allowed to buy more than $750bn of US energy?
It's also absurd, given that energy is basically fungible.
Do you think Trump will notice if the EU sneaks an extra couple of billion $ of US energy in?
To be honest it is all bollocks. US energy presumably means liquid gas. Technology and the world is moving on. He's an old man who cannot accept the changed world around him just like all the other old men in the care homes.
He is cunning and malevolent and not senile unlike some claim (I do think he knows what he is doing even if he is both stupid and very ignorant).
No, he's senile
He was ranting last week about the guy that appointed Powell
Wanna guess who it was?
It is, of course, also possible to have a high IQ and to have dementia (not that I think this applies to Trump). Indeed, individuals with high IQs are better at masking memory loss, which can be a problem when you want to pick up signs of dementia early.
Having been drilled in IQ tests since the age of nine (they were an essential part of the eleven-plus) I was diagnosed with a nasty dose of it half a century before neurodiversity was invented. Back in the day it was identified through trivial puzzles like 'what's the next item in the following sequence' .....
(1) ch, d, dd, e, f, ......
(2) pp, p, mp, mf, f, ......
The answer is the same in both cases and, of course, PBers with a high IQ will get it without sweating.
derek guy @dieworkwear · 13m I don't think most Americans realize how hard tariffs are about to hit them. The combination of 1) escalating tariffs, 2) companies slowly passing this to consumers, and 3) repeal of the de minimis exemption in the Big Beautiful Bill, a lot stuff will be more expensive in 2027.
derek guy @dieworkwear · 13m I don't think most Americans realize how hard tariffs are about to hit them. The combination of 1) escalating tariffs, 2) companies slowly passing this to consumers, and 3) repeal of the de minimis exemption in the Big Beautiful Bill, a lot stuff will be more expensive in 2027.
Actually the de minimis exemption is one thing that people who I know who run legit e-commerce businesses in the US (and no fans of Trump and his tariffs) absolutely wanted rid of. It is far too easy for unethical Chinese companies to flood the US market with goods without having any presence in the US and do not have to follow the same rules / liabilities. It is totally unfair competition. It used to be double whammy that Chinese companies could also abuse the discounted postage scheme that gives "developing" nations cheaper international mailing, such that it was cheaper to send a package from China to an American address than for an American based company to do so, and the US subsidized this.
It was a significant birthday for Mrs J this weekend, so I got childcare in for our son, and took her down to London (*) . Three decades ago, I would travel from St Pancras to Derby on the train. At that time St Pancras was faded grandeur; the glass of Barlow's trainshed greyed out with ancient smoke; the hotel's exterior refurbished in the 1980s, but the interior decayed, abandoned and inaccessible. The stench of diesel filled the air within the vast trainshed, as if a vast mechanical lung was exhaling within. I used to climb up the steps from King's Cross and stand, awe-struck at Scott's fantastical exterior.
Roll on to this weekend, and I decided to book us in for the night at the refurbished hotel. It was expensive, and I booked a room in the modern Barlow extension, but it was still the St Pancras hotel. We arrived, and we had been upgraded from a room to a suite in the original hotel.
A suite. It was massive. And our windows looked down over the coach ramp and the Euston Road. we danced around the rooms. We failed to find any convenient plugs. We glided up *that* staircase. We dared not sing 'Wannabe'.
We had our meals in the Booking Office; somewhere I used to go to buy tickets back home to my parents'. Now restored, but also perhaps having lost a certain something: purpose and decreptiude?
By nature, I am tight. I don't particularly like spending money. But this weekend was brilliant. We got taxis everywhere, to Fortnum's for afternoon tea (a very rare treat), and then the theatre. Normally, we would either walk or get the tube. But this weekend, I spent.
Even today's chaos on the ECML did not stop us: instead of waiting amongst the thousands at Kings Cross for a train back to Sr Neots, we took a train to Bedford, and got a taxi the rest of the way.
London was also at its best: electric cars were far more common than they are up here, and the air felt remarkably clean. We walked through NW1, seeing terraces of the non-identical Nash buildings that @Leon witters on about. Runners reigned in Regent's Park. The only negative were the homeless; far more prevalent on the Euston Road than litter.
We rarely do this sort of thing, but it's scarcity made it even more special. And staying at the St Pancras Hotel was a dream fulfilled: in Mrs J's case, a dream she did not know she had...
I've promised Mrs J we'll so it again for her next fiftieth birthday...
(*) That is not a euphemism ...
Very nice. I am glad you enjoyed the Nash Terraces. They are sublime
Meh. They're identikit housing. No individuality...
Fascinatingly, that was one of the accusations levelled by Victorians against Georgian housing. "It's all the same". So Victorians wanted more ornamentation - stained glass, weird balconies, ornate cornices, etc
The postwar era remains an abominable stain, however. It is probably the only architectural era, esp in housing, which has not improved over time. We are now many many decades from the housing and townscapes of the 50s and 60s, and they STILL look like shit
They aren't even that cheap, either, if you take into account the higher level of maintenance as the concrete crumbles and the asbestos needs to be replaced and the number that have been torn down as dismal slums.
A terrible blight, not that the architectural profession has shown much sign of learning or apologising.
I think you are being too generous to the Georgian and Victorian periods there.
They built plenty of shit - eg back to back slums - but the worst stuff has gone, either abandoned or demolished or collapsed.
It was a significant birthday for Mrs J this weekend, so I got childcare in for our son, and took her down to London (*) . Three decades ago, I would travel from St Pancras to Derby on the train. At that time St Pancras was faded grandeur; the glass of Barlow's trainshed greyed out with ancient smoke; the hotel's exterior refurbished in the 1980s, but the interior decayed, abandoned and inaccessible. The stench of diesel filled the air within the vast trainshed, as if a vast mechanical lung was exhaling within. I used to climb up the steps from King's Cross and stand, awe-struck at Scott's fantastical exterior.
Roll on to this weekend, and I decided to book us in for the night at the refurbished hotel. It was expensive, and I booked a room in the modern Barlow extension, but it was still the St Pancras hotel. We arrived, and we had been upgraded from a room to a suite in the original hotel.
A suite. It was massive. And our windows looked down over the coach ramp and the Euston Road. we danced around the rooms. We failed to find any convenient plugs. We glided up *that* staircase. We dared not sing 'Wannabe'.
We had our meals in the Booking Office; somewhere I used to go to buy tickets back home to my parents'. Now restored, but also perhaps having lost a certain something: purpose and decreptiude?
By nature, I am tight. I don't particularly like spending money. But this weekend was brilliant. We got taxis everywhere, to Fortnum's for afternoon tea (a very rare treat), and then the theatre. Normally, we would either walk or get the tube. But this weekend, I spent.
Even today's chaos on the ECML did not stop us: instead of waiting amongst the thousands at Kings Cross for a train back to Sr Neots, we took a train to Bedford, and got a taxi the rest of the way.
London was also at its best: electric cars were far more common than they are up here, and the air felt remarkably clean. We walked through NW1, seeing terraces of the non-identical Nash buildings that @Leon witters on about. Runners reigned in Regent's Park. The only negative were the homeless; far more prevalent on the Euston Road than litter.
We rarely do this sort of thing, but it's scarcity made it even more special. And staying at the St Pancras Hotel was a dream fulfilled: in Mrs J's case, a dream she did not know she had...
I've promised Mrs J we'll so it again for her next fiftieth birthday...
(*) That is not a euphemism ...
That's so nice, and especially resonant for me - I spent too much of the night of the Great Storm of 1987 in a train in the train shed. though I have to echo your feelings about the diversion of the Booking Hall to other usage. The stone (or terracotta) locomotives on the frieze inside deserve to be overlooking the ticket offices as of old.
I have to ask: what frieze?
Quite right - not a continuous carved frieze, sorry, brain fart. Memory is one of the carved capitals from which the arches of the blind arcading, or the ceiling timbers, spring, but I can't lay my paws on Jack Simmons's classic study of the station to confirm this.
One (weird) question I had from the Booking Office: the foils (lights) at the top of the windows were three, four or five petalled, seemingly at random (tresfoil, quatrefoil, cinquefoil). The pattern was different from one side of the Booking Office to the other. I wondered why. Mrs J smiled and sipped her drink...
Dunno. Maybe they just liked variety. Here's another memorable Venetian Gothicky Victorian building, the University Museum at Oxford. They're not anal about the numerical basis of their little window things.
Edit: the Museum is famous for the varied ways in which the window surrounds/rebates/whatever they are called, the door surrounds, and column capitals are carved -often individual works of art.
An old Oxford prank is telling tourists it’s a cathedral.
A neat feature is that the pillars of the colonnades inside the museum are geological specimens. Each one a different rock.
He is cunning and malevolent and not senile unlike some claim (I do think he knows what he is doing even if he is both stupid and very ignorant).
No, he's senile
He was ranting last week about the guy that appointed Powell
Wanna guess who it was?
It is, of course, also possible to have a high IQ and to have dementia (not that I think this applies to Trump). Indeed, individuals with high IQs are better at masking memory loss, which can be a problem when you want to pick up signs of dementia early.
Having been drilled in IQ tests since the age of nine (they were an essential part of the eleven-plus) I was diagnosed with a nasty dose of it half a century before neurodiversity was invented. Back in the day it was identified through trivial puzzles like 'what's the next item in the following sequence' .....
(1) ch, d, dd, e, f, ......
(2) pp, p, mp, mf, f, ......
The answer is the same in both cases and, of course, PBers with a high IQ will get it without sweating.
Not really testing IQ though, are they? Welsh language and musical notation? IQ is logic and reasoning, not knowledge based.
It was a significant birthday for Mrs J this weekend, so I got childcare in for our son, and took her down to London (*) . Three decades ago, I would travel from St Pancras to Derby on the train. At that time St Pancras was faded grandeur; the glass of Barlow's trainshed greyed out with ancient smoke; the hotel's exterior refurbished in the 1980s, but the interior decayed, abandoned and inaccessible. The stench of diesel filled the air within the vast trainshed, as if a vast mechanical lung was exhaling within. I used to climb up the steps from King's Cross and stand, awe-struck at Scott's fantastical exterior.
Roll on to this weekend, and I decided to book us in for the night at the refurbished hotel. It was expensive, and I booked a room in the modern Barlow extension, but it was still the St Pancras hotel. We arrived, and we had been upgraded from a room to a suite in the original hotel.
A suite. It was massive. And our windows looked down over the coach ramp and the Euston Road. we danced around the rooms. We failed to find any convenient plugs. We glided up *that* staircase. We dared not sing 'Wannabe'.
We had our meals in the Booking Office; somewhere I used to go to buy tickets back home to my parents'. Now restored, but also perhaps having lost a certain something: purpose and decreptiude?
By nature, I am tight. I don't particularly like spending money. But this weekend was brilliant. We got taxis everywhere, to Fortnum's for afternoon tea (a very rare treat), and then the theatre. Normally, we would either walk or get the tube. But this weekend, I spent.
Even today's chaos on the ECML did not stop us: instead of waiting amongst the thousands at Kings Cross for a train back to Sr Neots, we took a train to Bedford, and got a taxi the rest of the way.
London was also at its best: electric cars were far more common than they are up here, and the air felt remarkably clean. We walked through NW1, seeing terraces of the non-identical Nash buildings that @Leon witters on about. Runners reigned in Regent's Park. The only negative were the homeless; far more prevalent on the Euston Road than litter.
We rarely do this sort of thing, but it's scarcity made it even more special. And staying at the St Pancras Hotel was a dream fulfilled: in Mrs J's case, a dream she did not know she had...
I've promised Mrs J we'll so it again for her next fiftieth birthday...
(*) That is not a euphemism ...
That's so nice, and especially resonant for me - I spent too much of the night of the Great Storm of 1987 in a train in the train shed. though I have to echo your feelings about the diversion of the Booking Hall to other usage. The stone (or terracotta) locomotives on the frieze inside deserve to be overlooking the ticket offices as of old.
I have to ask: what frieze?
Quite right - not a continuous carved frieze, sorry, brain fart. Memory is one of the carved capitals from which the arches of the blind arcading, or the ceiling timbers, spring, but I can't lay my paws on Jack Simmons's classic study of the station to confirm this.
One (weird) question I had from the Booking Office: the foils (lights) at the top of the windows were three, four or five petalled, seemingly at random (tresfoil, quatrefoil, cinquefoil). The pattern was different from one side of the Booking Office to the other. I wondered why. Mrs J smiled and sipped her drink...
Dunno. Maybe they just liked variety. Here's another memorable Venetian Gothicky Victorian building, the University Museum at Oxford. They're not anal about the numerical basis of their little window things.
Edit: the Museum is famous for the varied ways in which the window surrounds/rebates/whatever they are called, the door surrounds, and column capitals are carved -often individual works of art.
An old Oxford prank is telling tourists it’s a cathedral.
A neat feature is that the pillars of the colonnades inside the museum are geological specimens. Each one a different rock.
It was a significant birthday for Mrs J this weekend, so I got childcare in for our son, and took her down to London (*) . Three decades ago, I would travel from St Pancras to Derby on the train. At that time St Pancras was faded grandeur; the glass of Barlow's trainshed greyed out with ancient smoke; the hotel's exterior refurbished in the 1980s, but the interior decayed, abandoned and inaccessible. The stench of diesel filled the air within the vast trainshed, as if a vast mechanical lung was exhaling within. I used to climb up the steps from King's Cross and stand, awe-struck at Scott's fantastical exterior.
Roll on to this weekend, and I decided to book us in for the night at the refurbished hotel. It was expensive, and I booked a room in the modern Barlow extension, but it was still the St Pancras hotel. We arrived, and we had been upgraded from a room to a suite in the original hotel.
A suite. It was massive. And our windows looked down over the coach ramp and the Euston Road. we danced around the rooms. We failed to find any convenient plugs. We glided up *that* staircase. We dared not sing 'Wannabe'.
We had our meals in the Booking Office; somewhere I used to go to buy tickets back home to my parents'. Now restored, but also perhaps having lost a certain something: purpose and decreptiude?
By nature, I am tight. I don't particularly like spending money. But this weekend was brilliant. We got taxis everywhere, to Fortnum's for afternoon tea (a very rare treat), and then the theatre. Normally, we would either walk or get the tube. But this weekend, I spent.
Even today's chaos on the ECML did not stop us: instead of waiting amongst the thousands at Kings Cross for a train back to Sr Neots, we took a train to Bedford, and got a taxi the rest of the way.
London was also at its best: electric cars were far more common than they are up here, and the air felt remarkably clean. We walked through NW1, seeing terraces of the non-identical Nash buildings that @Leon witters on about. Runners reigned in Regent's Park. The only negative were the homeless; far more prevalent on the Euston Road than litter.
We rarely do this sort of thing, but it's scarcity made it even more special. And staying at the St Pancras Hotel was a dream fulfilled: in Mrs J's case, a dream she did not know she had...
I've promised Mrs J we'll so it again for her next fiftieth birthday...
(*) That is not a euphemism ...
Very nice. I am glad you enjoyed the Nash Terraces. They are sublime
Meh. They're identikit housing. No individuality...
Fascinatingly, that was one of the accusations levelled by Victorians against Georgian housing. "It's all the same". So Victorians wanted more ornamentation - stained glass, weird balconies, ornate cornices, etc
The postwar era remains an abominable stain, however. It is probably the only architectural era, esp in housing, which has not improved over time. We are now many many decades from the housing and townscapes of the 50s and 60s, and they STILL look like shit
They aren't even that cheap, either, if you take into account the higher level of maintenance as the concrete crumbles and the asbestos needs to be replaced and the number that have been torn down as dismal slums.
A terrible blight, not that the architectural profession has shown much sign of learning or apologising.
I think you are being too generous to the Georgian and Victorian periods there.
They built plenty of shit - eg back to back slums - but the worst stuff has gone, either abandoned or demolished or collapsed.
I am so old I also remember the old St Pancras. Going back 30 years now.
There was a station pub - I forget the name (probably the wheelwrights or something) - but never has there been a more sodden, stained and squelching carpet or overflowing ashtrays and broken toilets. Pickled eggs sat in jars on the counter. There was red or there was white. Or a fizzy lager or two. Pork scratchings were twice the price of the outside world.
If you went outside there was all the faded, broken grandeur of the old hotel and the steps down to the streets and across the road an irish themed pub.
Larkin had it right in the magisterial 'Friday Night At The Royal Station Hotel'
He is cunning and malevolent and not senile unlike some claim (I do think he knows what he is doing even if he is both stupid and very ignorant).
No, he's senile
He was ranting last week about the guy that appointed Powell
Wanna guess who it was?
It is, of course, also possible to have a high IQ and to have dementia (not that I think this applies to Trump). Indeed, individuals with high IQs are better at masking memory loss, which can be a problem when you want to pick up signs of dementia early.
Having been drilled in IQ tests since the age of nine (they were an essential part of the eleven-plus) I was diagnosed with a nasty dose of it half a century before neurodiversity was invented. Back in the day it was identified through trivial puzzles like 'what's the next item in the following sequence' .....
(1) ch, d, dd, e, f, ......
(2) pp, p, mp, mf, f, ......
The answer is the same in both cases and, of course, PBers with a high IQ will get it without sweating.
The second one took about 5 seconds but the reasoning for the first was a bit trickier (for me).
I suspect one of our number will find it very easy.
Another brilliant article by Matthew Syed in today's Sunday Times about the way the UK is going to the dogs because there isn't the same type of social solidarity as there was in the post-war period.
In news that will surprise no one VPNs have seen a huge increase in demand over the weekend . And of course it’s of no interest to sites to try and combat this . The Online Safety Bill detached from reality and a piece of legislation that clueless politicians enacted to show they were doing something .
Another brilliant article by Matthew Syed in today's Sunday Times about the way the UK is going to the dogs because there isn't the same type of social solidarity as there was in the post-war period.
"I have a small business that diagnoses company culture and you know what’s the surest sign of an impending death spiral? Let’s call it “creative evasion”. Everyone knows the company is in a hole but they blame everyone else (or every other department) except themselves. This is the UK today. We all know we are in decline. Newspaper columnists compete to present ever more apocalyptic characterisations. But all too often we flatter the prejudices of our readers, colluding in the pretence that the root cause of decline is other people, other demographics, perhaps even readers of other newspapers. It is toxic and, in its way, deeply unpatriotic.
And it has to change. Sir Keir Starmer’s tragedy as PM is that he is weak and visionless (severe defects in this crucial age). He is taking on the vested interests one by one — and failing for reasons I glimpse with each mailbag. These groups are prepared, determined and typically have ex-ministers on the payroll."
It was a significant birthday for Mrs J this weekend, so I got childcare in for our son, and took her down to London (*) . Three decades ago, I would travel from St Pancras to Derby on the train. At that time St Pancras was faded grandeur; the glass of Barlow's trainshed greyed out with ancient smoke; the hotel's exterior refurbished in the 1980s, but the interior decayed, abandoned and inaccessible. The stench of diesel filled the air within the vast trainshed, as if a vast mechanical lung was exhaling within. I used to climb up the steps from King's Cross and stand, awe-struck at Scott's fantastical exterior.
Roll on to this weekend, and I decided to book us in for the night at the refurbished hotel. It was expensive, and I booked a room in the modern Barlow extension, but it was still the St Pancras hotel. We arrived, and we had been upgraded from a room to a suite in the original hotel.
A suite. It was massive. And our windows looked down over the coach ramp and the Euston Road. we danced around the rooms. We failed to find any convenient plugs. We glided up *that* staircase. We dared not sing 'Wannabe'.
We had our meals in the Booking Office; somewhere I used to go to buy tickets back home to my parents'. Now restored, but also perhaps having lost a certain something: purpose and decreptiude?
By nature, I am tight. I don't particularly like spending money. But this weekend was brilliant. We got taxis everywhere, to Fortnum's for afternoon tea (a very rare treat), and then the theatre. Normally, we would either walk or get the tube. But this weekend, I spent.
Even today's chaos on the ECML did not stop us: instead of waiting amongst the thousands at Kings Cross for a train back to Sr Neots, we took a train to Bedford, and got a taxi the rest of the way.
London was also at its best: electric cars were far more common than they are up here, and the air felt remarkably clean. We walked through NW1, seeing terraces of the non-identical Nash buildings that @Leon witters on about. Runners reigned in Regent's Park. The only negative were the homeless; far more prevalent on the Euston Road than litter.
We rarely do this sort of thing, but it's scarcity made it even more special. And staying at the St Pancras Hotel was a dream fulfilled: in Mrs J's case, a dream she did not know she had...
I've promised Mrs J we'll so it again for her next fiftieth birthday...
(*) That is not a euphemism ...
I remember OGH posting about 7 years ago that he'd stayed at this hotel for a special occasion and how fantastic it was.
In news that will surprise no one VPNs have seen a huge increase in demand over the weekend . And of course it’s of no interest to sites to try and combat this . The Online Safety Bill detached from reality and a piece of legislation that clueless politicians enacted to show they were doing something .
The Online Safety Bill appears to be an issue that is unifying left and right.
Another brilliant article by Matthew Syed in today's Sunday Times about the way the UK is going to the dogs because there isn't the same type of social solidarity as there was in the post-war period.
Thanks to the boomers - most selfish generation in history.
Downing Street has no plans for a bank holiday to mark the Lionesses' Euro 2025 win, the BBC understands.
There is always a tweet....
It’s almost 60 years since England won the World Cup. I’m never complacent about anything…but there should be a celebratory bank holiday if the Lionesses bring it home. https://x.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1691866129629671619
It was a significant birthday for Mrs J this weekend, so I got childcare in for our son, and took her down to London (*) . Three decades ago, I would travel from St Pancras to Derby on the train. At that time St Pancras was faded grandeur; the glass of Barlow's trainshed greyed out with ancient smoke; the hotel's exterior refurbished in the 1980s, but the interior decayed, abandoned and inaccessible. The stench of diesel filled the air within the vast trainshed, as if a vast mechanical lung was exhaling within. I used to climb up the steps from King's Cross and stand, awe-struck at Scott's fantastical exterior.
Roll on to this weekend, and I decided to book us in for the night at the refurbished hotel. It was expensive, and I booked a room in the modern Barlow extension, but it was still the St Pancras hotel. We arrived, and we had been upgraded from a room to a suite in the original hotel.
A suite. It was massive. And our windows looked down over the coach ramp and the Euston Road. we danced around the rooms. We failed to find any convenient plugs. We glided up *that* staircase. We dared not sing 'Wannabe'.
We had our meals in the Booking Office; somewhere I used to go to buy tickets back home to my parents'. Now restored, but also perhaps having lost a certain something: purpose and decreptiude?
By nature, I am tight. I don't particularly like spending money. But this weekend was brilliant. We got taxis everywhere, to Fortnum's for afternoon tea (a very rare treat), and then the theatre. Normally, we would either walk or get the tube. But this weekend, I spent.
Even today's chaos on the ECML did not stop us: instead of waiting amongst the thousands at Kings Cross for a train back to Sr Neots, we took a train to Bedford, and got a taxi the rest of the way.
London was also at its best: electric cars were far more common than they are up here, and the air felt remarkably clean. We walked through NW1, seeing terraces of the non-identical Nash buildings that @Leon witters on about. Runners reigned in Regent's Park. The only negative were the homeless; far more prevalent on the Euston Road than litter.
We rarely do this sort of thing, but it's scarcity made it even more special. And staying at the St Pancras Hotel was a dream fulfilled: in Mrs J's case, a dream she did not know she had...
I've promised Mrs J we'll so it again for her next fiftieth birthday...
(*) That is not a euphemism ...
That's so nice, and especially resonant for me - I spent too much of the night of the Great Storm of 1987 in a train in the train shed. though I have to echo your feelings about the diversion of the Booking Hall to other usage. The stone (or terracotta) locomotives on the frieze inside deserve to be overlooking the ticket offices as of old.
I have to ask: what frieze?
Quite right - not a continuous carved frieze, sorry, brain fart. Memory is one of the carved capitals from which the arches of the blind arcading, or the ceiling timbers, spring, but I can't lay my paws on Jack Simmons's classic study of the station to confirm this.
One (weird) question I had from the Booking Office: the foils (lights) at the top of the windows were three, four or five petalled, seemingly at random (tresfoil, quatrefoil, cinquefoil). The pattern was different from one side of the Booking Office to the other. I wondered why. Mrs J smiled and sipped her drink...
Dunno. Maybe they just liked variety. Here's another memorable Venetian Gothicky Victorian building, the University Museum at Oxford. They're not anal about the numerical basis of their little window things.
Edit: the Museum is famous for the varied ways in which the window surrounds/rebates/whatever they are called, the door surrounds, and column capitals are carved -often individual works of art.
It is Giles Gilbert Scott. He regularly used mixtures of trefoil, quatrefoil and sexfoil.
If you look up some of his churches or church (often over-) restorations, you could take SWMBO to see one or two as a follow up.
You are vaguely St Ives / Huntingdon way, I think?
Pershore Abbey in Worcs has both Trefoil and Quatrefoil tracery in it, and was worked on by GGS, but I'm not sure if the tracery is his or Medieval.
You get a good closeup view of at least Quatrefoils from the Ringing Chamber, which is his, if you can get to it (and can stomach getting to it).
Points 1 and 4 seem to be at odds with each other. Point 2, “up to” covers a multitude of sins but the EU is already substituting for Russian gas. Point 3 probably means the German car makers will build new plants in America rather than more Cadillacs on autobahns. Point 4, see point 2.
Underyling all this is a fundamental misconception.
Are you suggesting that Donald J Trump, the most successful business man in the history of the universe, a man who fought his way up with nothing more than a small loan of a million dollars, and who famously run casinos as they had never been run before, does not understand how international trade works?
How very dare you sir!
Yes, Donald J Trump. That guy, the guy who... er.... got elected to the most powerful position on earth. Twice
What a thicko
Is there any correlation between electoral success and IQ ?
In an advanced mature democracy like the USA, very very much Yes
The inability of PB to grasp this is fucking dreary. And, indeed, sad evidence of PB's intellectual mediocrity
Trump is many bad things: an egotist, a narcissist, a pus*y grabber, a wanker, a blowhard, a tit, possibly a rapist, certainly a toad of the first water. He is probably unfit to be POTUS and he might deserve to be in jail. But he is also notably clever and cunning, and he knows how to game the American electoral system. And he's often very sharp, and quite often rather funny
Sorry
Charisma determines leaders who win general and national elections more than IQ in most nations. I doubt anyone would dispute Hillary had a higher IQ than Trump but Trump beat her anyway as he is more charismatic.
Trump probably has a higher IQ than Biden though but Biden beat him in 2020 as he is more charismatic than Hillary. Harris probably has a higher IQ than Biden (though less than Hillary) but again lost to Trump as he is more charismatic than she is.
Obama was more charismatic than McCain and Romney, though Romney may have had a higher IQ than him and thus beat them both. Same as Bush beat Gore and Kerry on charisma even though Gore certainly had a higher IQ than him.
Same applies here. Hague and maybe Howard too had higher IQs than Blair but he was more charismatic and beat them both, Major probably had a higher IQ than Kinnock maybe even Blair but Blair beat him on charisma. Brown likely had a higher IQ than Cameron maybe Ed Miliband too but Cameron had more charisma.
Boris had more charisma and a higher IQ than Corbyn but Corbyn nearly beat May despite her higher IQ because he was more charismatic.
Starmer and Sunak likely close on IQ and neither very charismatic so time for change won it for Starmer but Farage now leads as he is more charismatic than Sir Keir and Badenoch even if Sir Keir likely has the highest IQ of the 3
It was a significant birthday for Mrs J this weekend, so I got childcare in for our son, and took her down to London (*) . Three decades ago, I would travel from St Pancras to Derby on the train. At that time St Pancras was faded grandeur; the glass of Barlow's trainshed greyed out with ancient smoke; the hotel's exterior refurbished in the 1980s, but the interior decayed, abandoned and inaccessible. The stench of diesel filled the air within the vast trainshed, as if a vast mechanical lung was exhaling within. I used to climb up the steps from King's Cross and stand, awe-struck at Scott's fantastical exterior.
Roll on to this weekend, and I decided to book us in for the night at the refurbished hotel. It was expensive, and I booked a room in the modern Barlow extension, but it was still the St Pancras hotel. We arrived, and we had been upgraded from a room to a suite in the original hotel.
A suite. It was massive. And our windows looked down over the coach ramp and the Euston Road. we danced around the rooms. We failed to find any convenient plugs. We glided up *that* staircase. We dared not sing 'Wannabe'.
We had our meals in the Booking Office; somewhere I used to go to buy tickets back home to my parents'. Now restored, but also perhaps having lost a certain something: purpose and decreptiude?
By nature, I am tight. I don't particularly like spending money. But this weekend was brilliant. We got taxis everywhere, to Fortnum's for afternoon tea (a very rare treat), and then the theatre. Normally, we would either walk or get the tube. But this weekend, I spent.
Even today's chaos on the ECML did not stop us: instead of waiting amongst the thousands at Kings Cross for a train back to Sr Neots, we took a train to Bedford, and got a taxi the rest of the way.
London was also at its best: electric cars were far more common than they are up here, and the air felt remarkably clean. We walked through NW1, seeing terraces of the non-identical Nash buildings that @Leon witters on about. Runners reigned in Regent's Park. The only negative were the homeless; far more prevalent on the Euston Road than litter.
We rarely do this sort of thing, but it's scarcity made it even more special. And staying at the St Pancras Hotel was a dream fulfilled: in Mrs J's case, a dream she did not know she had...
I've promised Mrs J we'll so it again for her next fiftieth birthday...
(*) That is not a euphemism ...
That's so nice, and especially resonant for me - I spent too much of the night of the Great Storm of 1987 in a train in the train shed. though I have to echo your feelings about the diversion of the Booking Hall to other usage. The stone (or terracotta) locomotives on the frieze inside deserve to be overlooking the ticket offices as of old.
I have to ask: what frieze?
Quite right - not a continuous carved frieze, sorry, brain fart. Memory is one of the carved capitals from which the arches of the blind arcading, or the ceiling timbers, spring, but I can't lay my paws on Jack Simmons's classic study of the station to confirm this.
One (weird) question I had from the Booking Office: the foils (lights) at the top of the windows were three, four or five petalled, seemingly at random (tresfoil, quatrefoil, cinquefoil). The pattern was different from one side of the Booking Office to the other. I wondered why. Mrs J smiled and sipped her drink...
Dunno. Maybe they just liked variety. Here's another memorable Venetian Gothicky Victorian building, the University Museum at Oxford. They're not anal about the numerical basis of their little window things.
Edit: the Museum is famous for the varied ways in which the window surrounds/rebates/whatever they are called, the door surrounds, and column capitals are carved -often individual works of art.
An old Oxford prank is telling tourists it’s a cathedral.
A neat feature is that the pillars of the colonnades inside the museum are geological specimens. Each one a different rock.
It was a significant birthday for Mrs J this weekend, so I got childcare in for our son, and took her down to London (*) . Three decades ago, I would travel from St Pancras to Derby on the train. At that time St Pancras was faded grandeur; the glass of Barlow's trainshed greyed out with ancient smoke; the hotel's exterior refurbished in the 1980s, but the interior decayed, abandoned and inaccessible. The stench of diesel filled the air within the vast trainshed, as if a vast mechanical lung was exhaling within. I used to climb up the steps from King's Cross and stand, awe-struck at Scott's fantastical exterior.
Roll on to this weekend, and I decided to book us in for the night at the refurbished hotel. It was expensive, and I booked a room in the modern Barlow extension, but it was still the St Pancras hotel. We arrived, and we had been upgraded from a room to a suite in the original hotel.
A suite. It was massive. And our windows looked down over the coach ramp and the Euston Road. we danced around the rooms. We failed to find any convenient plugs. We glided up *that* staircase. We dared not sing 'Wannabe'.
We had our meals in the Booking Office; somewhere I used to go to buy tickets back home to my parents'. Now restored, but also perhaps having lost a certain something: purpose and decreptiude?
By nature, I am tight. I don't particularly like spending money. But this weekend was brilliant. We got taxis everywhere, to Fortnum's for afternoon tea (a very rare treat), and then the theatre. Normally, we would either walk or get the tube. But this weekend, I spent.
Even today's chaos on the ECML did not stop us: instead of waiting amongst the thousands at Kings Cross for a train back to Sr Neots, we took a train to Bedford, and got a taxi the rest of the way.
London was also at its best: electric cars were far more common than they are up here, and the air felt remarkably clean. We walked through NW1, seeing terraces of the non-identical Nash buildings that @Leon witters on about. Runners reigned in Regent's Park. The only negative were the homeless; far more prevalent on the Euston Road than litter.
We rarely do this sort of thing, but it's scarcity made it even more special. And staying at the St Pancras Hotel was a dream fulfilled: in Mrs J's case, a dream she did not know she had...
I've promised Mrs J we'll so it again for her next fiftieth birthday...
(*) That is not a euphemism ...
That's so nice, and especially resonant for me - I spent too much of the night of the Great Storm of 1987 in a train in the train shed. though I have to echo your feelings about the diversion of the Booking Hall to other usage. The stone (or terracotta) locomotives on the frieze inside deserve to be overlooking the ticket offices as of old.
I have to ask: what frieze?
Quite right - not a continuous carved frieze, sorry, brain fart. Memory is one of the carved capitals from which the arches of the blind arcading, or the ceiling timbers, spring, but I can't lay my paws on Jack Simmons's classic study of the station to confirm this.
One (weird) question I had from the Booking Office: the foils (lights) at the top of the windows were three, four or five petalled, seemingly at random (tresfoil, quatrefoil, cinquefoil). The pattern was different from one side of the Booking Office to the other. I wondered why. Mrs J smiled and sipped her drink...
Dunno. Maybe they just liked variety. Here's another memorable Venetian Gothicky Victorian building, the University Museum at Oxford. They're not anal about the numerical basis of their little window things.
Edit: the Museum is famous for the varied ways in which the window surrounds/rebates/whatever they are called, the door surrounds, and column capitals are carved -often individual works of art.
It is Giles Gilbert Scott. He regularly used mixtures of trefoil, quatrefoil and sexfoil.
If you look up some of his churches or church (often over-) restorations, you could take SWMBO to see one or two as a follow up.
You are vaguely St Ives / Huntingdon way, I think?
Pershore Abbey in Worcs has both Trefoil and Quatrefoil tracery in it, and was worked on by GGS, but I'm not sure if the tracery is his or Medieval.
You get a good closeup view of at least Quatrefoils from the Ringing Chamber, which is his, if you can get to it (and can stomach getting to it).
I doubt the US would support Taiwan with troops but would send them arms and funds etc as NATO have done with Ukraine.
Only if Japan or S Korea or the Philippinnes were invaded would the US actually go to war with China
If China blockades Taiwan even sending them arms would require breaking the blockade. China would not allow the US to simply start shipping weapons into Taiwan.
The most likely intervention - and the US has wargamed this multiple times - is long range air strikes against a Chinese blockade or invasion fleet.
Downing Street has no plans for a bank holiday to mark the Lionesses' Euro 2025 win, the BBC understands.
There is always a tweet....
It’s almost 60 years since England won the World Cup. I’m never complacent about anything…but there should be a celebratory bank holiday if the Lionesses bring it home. https://x.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1691866129629671619
Oh FFS. The country can't afford a fucking bank holiday.
The bond markets smell blood in the water and every misstep will make them sniff harder.
Maybe Starmer should say we would have had a bank holiday to celebrate but we spent hundreds of billions on covid lockdowns so we are skint and need to work?
Another brilliant article by Matthew Syed in today's Sunday Times about the way the UK is going to the dogs because there isn't the same type of social solidarity as there was in the post-war period.
Thanks to the boomers - most selfish generation in history.
He argues the welfare dependent with no wish to work and the super rich tax trying to tax dodge are as to blame as pensioners and also that we need to cut immigration
Downing Street has no plans for a bank holiday to mark the Lionesses' Euro 2025 win, the BBC understands.
There is always a tweet....
It’s almost 60 years since England won the World Cup. I’m never complacent about anything…but there should be a celebratory bank holiday if the Lionesses bring it home. https://x.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1691866129629671619
Oh FFS. The country can't afford a fucking bank holiday.
The bond markets smell blood in the water and every misstep will make them sniff harder.
Maybe Starmer should say we would have had a bank holiday to celebrate but we spent hundreds of billions on covid lockdowns so we are skint and need to work?
Do bank holidays make a large difference to economic activity overall ?
In news that will surprise no one VPNs have seen a huge increase in demand over the weekend . And of course it’s of no interest to sites to try and combat this . The Online Safety Bill detached from reality and a piece of legislation that clueless politicians enacted to show they were doing something .
VPN or no VPN you still need to enter your age and verify via credit card for pornography sites etc now, which makes it more difficult for under 18s to view them
This Soviet Russia / N Korea style nonsense is so deeply un-American, it's remarkable there hasn't been greater pushback. A collective national psychosis.
In news that will surprise no one VPNs have seen a huge increase in demand over the weekend . And of course it’s of no interest to sites to try and combat this . The Online Safety Bill detached from reality and a piece of legislation that clueless politicians enacted to show they were doing something .
VPN or no VPN you still need to enter your age and verify via credit card for pornography sites etc now, which makes it more difficult for under 18s to view them
🤦♂️
No, you don't, if you use a VPN. That's the entire point.
Any under 18 that wants to view porn can extremely easily download a VPN, far more easily than putting in card details.
In news that will surprise no one VPNs have seen a huge increase in demand over the weekend . And of course it’s of no interest to sites to try and combat this . The Online Safety Bill detached from reality and a piece of legislation that clueless politicians enacted to show they were doing something .
VPN or no VPN you still need to enter your age and verify via credit card for pornography sites etc now, which makes it more difficult for under 18s to view them
🤦♂️
No, you don't, if you use a VPN. That's the entire point.
Any under 18 that wants to view porn can extremely easily download a VPN, far more easily than putting in card details.
Yes you do, you cannot even enter most of those sites now without entering your age and a credit card to confirm it.
All a VPN does is mean your IP address can't be tracked easily, though GCHQ can still likely eventually do so if they really want to find it out if you are a serious criminal. If you try and use a VPN to suggest you are not from the UK, parents can also see you have used a VPN and ask questions
In news that will surprise no one VPNs have seen a huge increase in demand over the weekend . And of course it’s of no interest to sites to try and combat this . The Online Safety Bill detached from reality and a piece of legislation that clueless politicians enacted to show they were doing something .
VPN or no VPN you still need to enter your age and verify via credit card for pornography sites etc now, which makes it more difficult for under 18s to view them
🤦♂️
No, you don't, if you use a VPN. That's the entire point.
Any under 18 that wants to view porn can extremely easily download a VPN, far more easily than putting in card details.
Yes you do, you cannot even enter most of those sites now without entering your age and a credit card to confirm it.
All a VPN does is mean your IP address can't be tracked easily, though GCHQ can still likely eventually do so if they really want to find it out if you are a serious criminal
You obviously never heard of mindgeek and their business model of freemium tube sites….it is literally the reason given for the need for the online safety bill, except politicians are dense / clueless about tech.
Downing Street has no plans for a bank holiday to mark the Lionesses' Euro 2025 win, the BBC understands.
There is always a tweet....
It’s almost 60 years since England won the World Cup. I’m never complacent about anything…but there should be a celebratory bank holiday if the Lionesses bring it home. https://x.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1691866129629671619
Oh FFS. The country can't afford a fucking bank holiday.
The bond markets smell blood in the water and every misstep will make them sniff harder.
Maybe Starmer should say we would have had a bank holiday to celebrate but we spent hundreds of billions on covid lockdowns so we are skint and need to work?
Do bank holidays make a large difference to economic activity overall ?
Justin Wolfers @JustinWolfers These trade deals are all underwhelming for one simple reason: While trade barriers were a big deal in Trump's youth, they've been tiny for decades. When tariffs are 1-2%, there's not much to gain from a trade war.
But you can do a lot of harm by charging Americans a 15% (or higher) import tax.
Colin Sutton, who led the hunt for serial killer Levi Bellfield and 'Night Stalker' rapist Delroy Grant, has been appointed Reform UK's first police and crime adviser. The former detective chief inspector will develop the party's pledge to halve crime in five years by hiring 30,000 extra police and investigating every reported offence.
So again proving the point, Gore was not only brighter than Bush Jr but Bill Clinton too yet it was Bill Clinton who won twice and Gore and Kerry who lost as Bill Clinton had more charisma despite their higher SATs.
Hillary was brighter than her husband as you suggest, yet Bill had more charisma than her and won twice while she lost
I doubt the US would support Taiwan with troops but would send them arms and funds etc as NATO have done with Ukraine.
Only if Japan or S Korea or the Philippinnes were invaded would the US actually go to war with China
If China blockades Taiwan even sending them arms would require breaking the blockade. China would not allow the US to simply start shipping weapons into Taiwan.
The most likely intervention - and the US has wargamed this multiple times - is long range air strikes against a Chinese blockade or invasion fleet.
Plus air drops of arms and supplies
I don't think you're fully grasping what 'blockade' means. The PLAN would have ships ringing Taiwan and most of those would have anti-air capability. The only aircraft getting near Taiwan would be Chinese - even US B-2s or B-21s would not be able to overfly the island, and the kind of transport aircraft you'd need to drop meaningful quantities of supplies would be shot down a couple of hundred miles out.
HYUFD - You may have missed this qualifying sentence, so I will repeat what I wrote earlier, with the key word in bold: (If you were to compare only their academic achievements, you would conclude that Bush was smarter than his 2000 opponent, Al Gore. )
In news that will surprise no one VPNs have seen a huge increase in demand over the weekend . And of course it’s of no interest to sites to try and combat this . The Online Safety Bill detached from reality and a piece of legislation that clueless politicians enacted to show they were doing something .
VPN or no VPN you still need to enter your age and verify via credit card for pornography sites etc now, which makes it more difficult for under 18s to view them
🤦♂️
No, you don't, if you use a VPN. That's the entire point.
Any under 18 that wants to view porn can extremely easily download a VPN, far more easily than putting in card details.
Yes you do, you cannot even enter most of those sites now without entering your age and a credit card to confirm it.
All a VPN does is mean your IP address can't be tracked easily, though GCHQ can still likely eventually do so if they really want to find it out if you are a serious criminal. If you try and use a VPN to suggest you are not from the UK, parents can also see you have used a VPN and ask questions
It is extremely easy to use a VPN to say you're not from the UK, then you don't need a card. So no, you don't need a card, just a VPN.
And if you use a VPN it doesn't notify your parents that you have, any more than they'd get notifications of what website you've browsed.
Proton VPN overtook ChatGPT to become the top free app in the UK. The Swiss-based company said it had seen a more than 1800 per cent increase in daily sign-ups from UK-based users since Friday. Nord, another VPN provider, said there had been a 1000 per cent increase in UK purchases of VPN subscriptions since the new rules kicked in.
One way of stimulating growth…in overseas companies.
I doubt the US would support Taiwan with troops but would send them arms and funds etc as NATO have done with Ukraine.
Only if Japan or S Korea or the Philippinnes were invaded would the US actually go to war with China
If China blockades Taiwan even sending them arms would require breaking the blockade. China would not allow the US to simply start shipping weapons into Taiwan.
The most likely intervention - and the US has wargamed this multiple times - is long range air strikes against a Chinese blockade or invasion fleet.
Plus air drops of arms and supplies
I don't think you're fully grasping what 'blockade' means. The PLAN would have ships ringing Taiwan and most of those would have anti-air capability. The only aircraft getting near Taiwan would be Chinese - even US B-2s or B-21s would not be able to overfly the island, and the kind of transport aircraft you'd need to drop meaningful quantities of supplies would be shot down a couple of hundred miles out.
Assuming those ships had not been sunk by Taiwanese and US subs first before the transport aircraft arrived which would of course be accompanied by large numbers of US fighter jets.
Plus of course supplies could have been sent in beforehand if a Chinese invasion force looked like being built up
HYUFD - You may have missed this qualifying sentence, so I will repeat what I wrote earlier, with the key word in bold: (If you were to compare only their academic achievements, you would conclude that Bush was smarter than his 2000 opponent, Al Gore. )
No I wouldn't, as Gore had the higher SAT score which is the US academic achievement most linked to IQ and the WHOLE argument was solely about IQ
In news that will surprise no one VPNs have seen a huge increase in demand over the weekend . And of course it’s of no interest to sites to try and combat this . The Online Safety Bill detached from reality and a piece of legislation that clueless politicians enacted to show they were doing something .
VPN or no VPN you still need to enter your age and verify via credit card for pornography sites etc now, which makes it more difficult for under 18s to view them
🤦♂️
No, you don't, if you use a VPN. That's the entire point.
Any under 18 that wants to view porn can extremely easily download a VPN, far more easily than putting in card details.
Yes you do, you cannot even enter most of those sites now without entering your age and a credit card to confirm it.
All a VPN does is mean your IP address can't be tracked easily, though GCHQ can still likely eventually do so if they really want to find it out if you are a serious criminal. If you try and use a VPN to suggest you are not from the UK, parents can also see you have used a VPN and ask questions
It is extremely easy to use a VPN to say you're not from the UK, then you don't need a card. So no, you don't need a card, just a VPN.
And if you use a VPN it doesn't notify your parents that you have, any more than they'd get notifications of what website you've browsed.
And how many say 7 to 13 year olds who could easily access say Youporn or Pornhub online before these extra checks of age and credit card would know how to download a VPN?
Parents can also see Tor for example downloaded on the desktop of an older teenage child
In news that will surprise no one VPNs have seen a huge increase in demand over the weekend . And of course it’s of no interest to sites to try and combat this . The Online Safety Bill detached from reality and a piece of legislation that clueless politicians enacted to show they were doing something .
VPN or no VPN you still need to enter your age and verify via credit card for pornography sites etc now, which makes it more difficult for under 18s to view them
🤦♂️
No, you don't, if you use a VPN. That's the entire point.
Any under 18 that wants to view porn can extremely easily download a VPN, far more easily than putting in card details.
Yes you do, you cannot even enter most of those sites now without entering your age and a credit card to confirm it.
All a VPN does is mean your IP address can't be tracked easily, though GCHQ can still likely eventually do so if they really want to find it out if you are a serious criminal. If you try and use a VPN to suggest you are not from the UK, parents can also see you have used a VPN and ask questions
It is extremely easy to use a VPN to say you're not from the UK, then you don't need a card. So no, you don't need a card, just a VPN.
And if you use a VPN it doesn't notify your parents that you have, any more than they'd get notifications of what website you've browsed.
And how many say 7 to 12 year olds who can now easily access say Youporn or Pornhub would know how to download a VPN?
Parents can also see Tor for example downloaded on the desktop of an older teenage child
It one click app install for most VPNs just like every other app on IOS and Android, and desktop not much harder. All modern VPN services have taken the difficulty out of it.
Comments
Retrofitting Trump's 747-8 luxury jet bribe from Qatar might cost taxpayers $934 million
https://x.com/TVietor08/status/1949477840086499818
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2025/07/27/tom-lehrer-musical-satirist-poisoning-pigeons-nuclear-war/ (£££)
A terrible blight, not that the architectural profession has shown much sign of learning or apologising.
Chunky Littler dismantles the Machine in the arrows to cap off the night
Yet some in UK politics see him as a role model.
That former MP is Caroline Lucas. As a friend said, thank god the government at the time didn't treat the Suffragettes like terrorists...
He is cunning and malevolent and not senile unlike some claim (I do think he knows what he is doing even if he is both stupid and very ignorant).
Next you will be telling us the MTG is a brain box. After all by your logic she must be if she gets repeatedly elected to Congress.
@Leon fails to understand what being clever is. Consequently he thinks he has a high IQ when he doesn't.
They elected the senile old todger that was Joe Biden.
He was ranting last week about the guy that appointed Powell
Wanna guess who it was?
Calm down PB, Trump is bullshitting.
Save your blood pressure for tomorrow.
Fresh on the heals of saying that doctors shouldn't be able to strike (something they didn't legislate for), they now want the Epping asylum hotel emptied out.
Thank god I am an englishman.
https://oumnh.ox.ac.uk/about [header pic]
Edit: the Museum is famous for the varied ways in which the window surrounds/rebates/whatever they are called, the door surrounds, and column capitals are carved -often individual works of art.
It's also absurd, given that energy is basically fungible.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/27/eu-delegation-poised-for-trump-trade-talks-in-scotland
One interesting aspect are the differences between EU and UK, in tariff levels, and in 0% exceptions.
The EU Energy buy is over 3 years, so Brussels wants the opportunity to reset at the theoretical end of the Presidential term.
Rasmus Jarlov
@RasmusJarlov
There is nothing to celebrate. Moving from average tariffs of less than 2% on trade between the USA and Europe to 15% under today’s deal will inevitably lead to inflation. Almost everything will become more expensive in both Europe and the USA, and we will all be worse off. The economic illiteracy in the White House is doing serious damage to the West.
https://x.com/RasmusJarlov/status/1949560382084767813
To be honest it is all bollocks. US energy presumably means liquid gas. Technology and the world is moving on. He's an old man who cannot accept the changed world around him just like all the other old men in the care homes.
(1) ch, d, dd, e, f, ......
(2) pp, p, mp, mf, f, ......
The answer is the same in both cases and, of course, PBers with a high IQ will get it without sweating.
@dieworkwear
·
13m
I don't think most Americans realize how hard tariffs are about to hit them. The combination of 1) escalating tariffs, 2) companies slowly passing this to consumers, and 3) repeal of the de minimis exemption in the Big Beautiful Bill, a lot stuff will be more expensive in 2027.
https://x.com/dieworkwear/status/1949587904382296198
Sack Powell!!!
They built plenty of shit - eg back to back slums - but the worst stuff has gone, either abandoned or demolished or collapsed.
A neat feature is that the pillars of the colonnades inside the museum are geological specimens. Each one a different rock.
Let's remind ourselves again what happened to McKinley
The tourists are told that this is the spire of a long buried cathedral.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martyrs'_Memorial,_Oxford
What you're talking about is just a pleasant lobby for the Pitt Rivers.
There was a station pub - I forget the name (probably the wheelwrights or something) - but never has there been a more sodden, stained and squelching carpet or overflowing ashtrays and broken toilets. Pickled eggs sat in jars on the counter. There was red or there was white. Or a fizzy lager or two. Pork scratchings were twice the price of the outside world.
If you went outside there was all the faded, broken grandeur of the old hotel and the steps down to the streets and across the road an irish themed pub.
Larkin had it right in the magisterial 'Friday Night At The Royal Station Hotel'
I suspect one of our number will find it very easy.
And it has to change. Sir Keir Starmer’s tragedy as PM is that he is weak and visionless (severe defects in this crucial age). He is taking on the vested interests one by one — and failing for reasons I glimpse with each mailbag. These groups are prepared, determined and typically have ex-ministers on the payroll."
There is always a tweet....
It’s almost 60 years since England won the World Cup. I’m never complacent about anything…but there should be a celebratory bank holiday if the Lionesses bring it home.
https://x.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1691866129629671619
He previously backed calls for an extra bank holiday if England won the Women's Euro 2022, which they did.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd197zdxv52o
If you look up some of his churches or church (often over-) restorations, you could take SWMBO to see one or two as a follow up.
You are vaguely St Ives / Huntingdon way, I think?
Pershore Abbey in Worcs has both Trefoil and Quatrefoil tracery in it, and was worked on by GGS, but I'm not sure if the tracery is his or Medieval.
You get a good closeup view of at least Quatrefoils from the Ringing Chamber, which is his, if you can get to it (and can stomach getting to it).
Listed entry:
https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1387027?section=official-list-entry
Ringing chamber view (it's up in the air above the crossing - description of the route is in the description of the vid
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhvzfyKNK-g
Why Britain’s police hardly solve any crimes
Crime has become more complex. The police have not kept up" (£)
https://www.economist.com/britain/2025/07/24/why-britains-police-hardly-solve-any-crimes
Trump probably has a higher IQ than Biden though but Biden beat him in 2020 as he is more charismatic than Hillary. Harris probably has a higher IQ than Biden (though less than Hillary) but again lost to Trump as he is more charismatic than she is.
Obama was more charismatic than McCain and Romney, though Romney may have had a higher IQ than him and thus beat them both. Same as Bush beat Gore and Kerry on charisma even though Gore certainly had a higher IQ than him.
Same applies here. Hague and maybe Howard too had higher IQs than Blair but he was more charismatic and beat them both, Major probably had a higher IQ than Kinnock maybe even Blair but Blair beat him on charisma. Brown likely had a higher IQ than Cameron maybe Ed Miliband too but Cameron had more charisma.
Boris had more charisma and a higher IQ than Corbyn but Corbyn nearly beat May despite her higher IQ because he was more charismatic.
Starmer and Sunak likely close on IQ and neither very charismatic so time for change won it for Starmer but Farage now leads as he is more charismatic than Sir Keir and Badenoch even if Sir Keir likely has the highest IQ of the 3
The pranks about Martyrs Memorial are a whole other genre.
Vid of the route to the bells:
https://youtu.be/JN0AyqSl9gI?t=158
The bond markets smell blood in the water and every misstep will make them sniff harder.
Maybe Starmer should say we would have had a bank holiday to celebrate but we spent hundreds of billions on covid lockdowns so we are skint and need to work?
https://x.com/schrankartoons/status/1948506478706307200
There is this very rough guesstimate from 2022 of £2.4bn.
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN05775/SN05775.pdf
So probably fair enough to just say no.
A collective national psychosis.
Also, it should read multi-billion.
INSIDE THE BILLION-DOLLAR EFFORT TO MAKE TRUMP FEEL GOOD ABOUT HIMSELF
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/donald-trump-dear-leader-bondi-noem-republican-propaganda-1235356187/
No, you don't, if you use a VPN. That's the entire point.
Any under 18 that wants to view porn can extremely easily download a VPN, far more easily than putting in card details.
All a VPN does is mean your IP address can't be tracked easily, though GCHQ can still likely eventually do so if they really want to find it out if you are a serious criminal. If you try and use a VPN to suggest you are not from the UK, parents can also see you have used a VPN and ask questions
Justin Wolfers
@JustinWolfers
These trade deals are all underwhelming for one simple reason: While trade barriers were a big deal in Trump's youth, they've been tiny for decades. When tariffs are 1-2%, there's not much to gain from a trade war.
But you can do a lot of harm by charging Americans a 15% (or higher) import tax.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Merit_Scholarship_Program
George W. Bush earned an MBA from Harvard. So, yes, he was, and is, smart.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush#Early_life_and_career
(If you were to compare only their academic achievements, you would conclude that Bush was smarter than his 2000 opponent, Al Gore. )
Fun fact: Bush was on the rugby team at Yale.
https://blog.prepscholar.com/celebrity-sat-scores-kesha-bill-gates-and-more
So again proving the point, Gore was not only brighter than Bush Jr but Bill Clinton too yet it was Bill Clinton who won twice and Gore and Kerry who lost as Bill Clinton had more charisma despite their higher SATs.
Hillary was brighter than her husband as you suggest, yet Bill had more charisma than her and won twice while she lost
Name of Katie Johnson - a video interview and Court Document.
Or is that over the line?
Gore got As and Bs in his senior year at Harvard and an A on his thesis, Bush got an average 77 GPA at Yale
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush
A Corbyn-Sultana party, perhaps in alliance with the Greens, will shatter this government.
By Andrew Murray" (£)
https://www.newstatesman.com/the-weekend-essay/2025/07/the-revenge-of-the-left
And if you use a VPN it doesn't notify your parents that you have, any more than they'd get notifications of what website you've browsed.
One way of stimulating growth…in overseas companies.
So not enough there to meet the standard as judged to take it further.
Thanks for the reply.
Plus of course supplies could have been sent in beforehand if a Chinese invasion force looked like being built up
Parents can also see Tor for example downloaded on the desktop of an older teenage child