Johnson really is the marmite politician. Lots of negatives but surprising positives too. 43% think he's a capable leader. Capable ?!?
Starmer doesn't have any negatives, except being a bit boring. But he needs more positives to beat Johnsons. Hopefully for him, a chunk of the large Don't Knows may break positive.
Assuming the big gaps for Starmer are DKs, Tories have 4 years to ensure his DKs go to Do not apply.
The thing with marmite, is lots of people really like it. I don't sense the same enthusiasm for the details man....
The problem is that white privilege, as a term, itself is guilty of the lack of nuance you rightly cite. Black people are disproportionately represented in the prison population. Black criminality would rightly be lambasted as castigating a whole race based on a minority. Slapping a privilege label on a whole race, perhaps then used to then try and make them feel a dose of liberal guilt or to diminish their opinion, is simply wrong on both moral and intellectual levels.
As others have already pointed out, poor white boys do the worst in educational terms. The blanket approach of describing whites as privileged whitewashes, ahem, the educational situation.
Judging people based on the colour of their skin is a very unwise path.
Mr. kinabalu, you're aware that most white people didn't own slaves, right? And that many had terrible working conditions? But you want to judge all present day white people based on what a minority of white people did a few centuries ago?
Do you feel that critical about the black slave traders who sold their fellow Africans to the British Empire (prior to the slavery ban, whilst the trade continued to be perpetrated by Africans, Arabs, and others)? Or is it only white people worthy of this condemnation for the sins of a minority of their forefathers?
And how far back does this historical victimhood last? Can I claim it for the Harrowing of the North? The Roman invasion?
Trying to make people who have never had slaves feel guilty towards people who have never been slaves because of things that happened centuries ago and were done by other people that neither the non-slave owners nor the non-slaves have even met is madness.
I don't want you to feel guilty. It's a wholly destructive emotion.
But neither do I want you to be in denial of something so palpably true as that "white privilege" - if the term is understood correctly - is a real and significant thing.
Well said. White people need to end our silence about the extent of racism, and therefore our relative privilege. if we are silent we are complicit, which we no longer do in relation to rape or child abuse.
We just need not to be frightened of acknowledging it, there's no need.
Anyone who lives in modern Britain needs to acknowledge the extent of their privilege. We have free medical care, money given to us when we're out of work, a state pension, a beautiful, temperate country to live in, plentiful food and drink, and we grow up speaking the world's language. We can participate in appointing and dismissing our leaders. We can be entertained or informed in seconds via the internet. We are all *ridiculously* privileged compared to our ancestors, of all colours, who lived in comparative discomfort, risk of violence or illness, and in many cases, poverty and unrelentingly hard work with little to show for it at the end. We are not just privileged compared to our ancestors, but our fellow humans living today in less fortunate countries than ours. Complaining about your lack of privilege against that background is pretty decadent.
Debating relative privilege is the modern version of the Three Yorkshiremen sketch.
If they wanted a treaty to include trade and the way forward after we had left, they should have had one. Political declaration was a fudge - and fudges generally unravel.
If by “they” you mean the British government, you might have a point. Otherwise, the logical conclusion is that Britain is not negotiating in good faith.
Or are you one of these crazed self-radicalised Leavers that infest these haunts who believes that there is no such thing as a trade deal with the EU that is consistent with Brexit?
The problem is that white privilege, as a term, itself is guilty of the lack of nuance you rightly cite. Black people are disproportionately represented in the prison population. Black criminality would rightly be lambasted as castigating a whole race based on a minority. Slapping a privilege label on a whole race, perhaps then used to then try and make them feel a dose of liberal guilt or to diminish their opinion, is simply wrong on both moral and intellectual levels.
As others have already pointed out, poor white boys do the worst in educational terms. The blanket approach of describing whites as privileged whitewashes, ahem, the educational situation.
Judging people based on the colour of their skin is a very unwise path.
Mr. kinabalu, you're aware that most white people didn't own slaves, right? And that many had terrible working conditions? But you want to judge all present day white people based on what a minority of white people did a few centuries ago?
Do you feel that critical about the black slave traders who sold their fellow Africans to the British Empire (prior to the slavery ban, whilst the trade continued to be perpetrated by Africans, Arabs, and others)? Or is it only white people worthy of this condemnation for the sins of a minority of their forefathers?
And how far back does this historical victimhood last? Can I claim it for the Harrowing of the North? The Roman invasion?
Trying to make people who have never had slaves feel guilty towards people who have never been slaves because of things that happened centuries ago and were done by other people that neither the non-slave owners nor the non-slaves have even met is madness.
I don't want you to feel guilty. It's a wholly destructive emotion.
But neither do I want you to be in denial of something so palpably true as that "white privilege" - if the term is understood correctly - is a real and significant thing.
Well said. White people need to end our silence about the extent of racism, and therefore our relative privilege. if we are silent we are complicit, which we no longer do in relation to rape or child abuse.
We just need not to be frightened of acknowledging it, there's no need.
Anyone who lives in modern Britain needs to acknowledge the extent of their privilege. We have free medical care, money given to us when we're out of work, a state pension, a beautiful, temperate country to live in, plentiful food and drink, and we grow up speaking the world's language. We can participate in appointing and dismissing our leaders. We can be entertained or informed in seconds via the internet. We are all *ridiculously* privileged compared to our ancestors, of all colours, who lived in comparative discomfort, risk of violence or illness, and in many cases, poverty and unrelentingly hard work with little to show for it at the end. We are not just privileged compared to our ancestors, but our fellow humans living today in less fortunate countries than ours. Complaining about your lack of privilege against that background is pretty decadent.
Debating relative privilege is the modern version of the Three Yorkshiremen sketch.
In 2020, thousands died in care homes unnecessarily because their voices went unheard while the government prioritised the lives of others. Their privilege is not immediately self-evident.
The problem is that white privilege, as a term, itself is guilty of the lack of nuance you rightly cite. Black people are disproportionately represented in the prison population. Black criminality would rightly be lambasted as castigating a whole race based on a minority. Slapping a privilege label on a whole race, perhaps then used to then try and make them feel a dose of liberal guilt or to diminish their opinion, is simply wrong on both moral and intellectual levels.
As others have already pointed out, poor white boys do the worst in educational terms. The blanket approach of describing whites as privileged whitewashes, ahem, the educational situation.
Judging people based on the colour of their skin is a very unwise path.
Mr. kinabalu, you're aware that most white people didn't own slaves, right? And that many had terrible working conditions? But you want to judge all present day white people based on what a minority of white people did a few centuries ago?
Do you feel that critical about the black slave traders who sold their fellow Africans to the British Empire (prior to the slavery ban, whilst the trade continued to be perpetrated by Africans, Arabs, and others)? Or is it only white people worthy of this condemnation for the sins of a minority of their forefathers?
And how far back does this historical victimhood last? Can I claim it for the Harrowing of the North? The Roman invasion?
Trying to make people who have never had slaves feel guilty towards people who have never been slaves because of things that happened centuries ago and were done by other people that neither the non-slave owners nor the non-slaves have even met is madness.
I don't want you to feel guilty. It's a wholly destructive emotion.
But neither do I want you to be in denial of something so palpably true as that "white privilege" - if the term is understood correctly - is a real and significant thing.
Well said. White people need to end our silence about the extent of racism, and therefore our relative privilege. if we are silent we are complicit, which we no longer do in relation to rape or child abuse.
We just need not to be frightened of acknowledging it, there's no need.
There's something almost Kafkaesque about you guys.
A court out of nowhere. A case to answer, the details of which are never mentioned. In the end, violence.
So all these statistics about disproportionate policing and experiences of violence by black people is made up? Perhaps you'd like to tell us that women don't get raped and abused in the film industry?
As a matter of interest, has any PBer ever seen or heard of a cyclist being nicked for speeding?
It's going to become much more common as battery-assisted bikes become widespread - these are very rapidly improving in weight and performance, so will become quite common in future. They have software limits to the speed assist, but often are quite easy to hack to 40mph+ boost in some cases.
That’s going to be a serious problem when people start coming off bikes at 40mph - especially if they’re not wearing speed-appropriate protective gear.
I think the problem with the whole “X privilege” debate is that it is easy to examine these things when you are comfortable. It is easy to “acknowledge your privilege” when you are comfortable.
If you are personally struggling either financially, physically, or socially, it is not exactly a rational response to declare “I AM IN A PRIVILEGED POSITION”, regardless whether your “race” or “gender” is on the whole privileged.
AIUI it is not saying every white person is privileged (although admittedly there is a fringe who think so), the mainstream interpretation and the one I would agree with is on average white people are more privileged.
And yes, it should be discussed and prioritised in conjunction with other factors such as education, class, gender, etc with might make it a top 5 issue in the US but only a top 20 issue in the Uk.
My understanding is different. Privilege in this system is defined relatively. We're not trying to measure an absolute scale of priviliege out of 100, with say Jeff Bezos or the Duke of Westminster in the high 90s, and Rohyngia refugees somewhere below 10. Instead, the point is that if you have two people in the UK or US who are otherwise identical but one is white and the other black, the white person will have a better experience because they will not encounter racism. They may both have problems, maybe even serious problems, but the white person is relatively privileged because they have one less problem than the black person.
This is precisely why it's a tricky conversation, because if you're using an absolute scale and I'm talking in relative terms, pretty soon one of us will say something that sounds insane to the other, and we'll end up assuming that the other is incorrigibly racist/woke (delete as applicable).
I understand the concept, but privilege is the wrong word to use for it, because of the existing understanding of the word.
I think if you were to talk of a "bonus" to being white that would immediately convey the discrete and additive nature of the concept in a better way than privilege. There may even be better words to use. Advantage, bias, benefit ..?
"Bonus" works, perhaps with "penalty" going in the opposite direction.
Sadly, I suspect that "privilege" caught on because it's easy to misunderstand, rather like "black lives matter" or "believe women". One does not sell many newspapers nor recruit many political supporters by saying things that are simple, direct, and morally unimpeachable.
There is no path through this stranglehold Barnier wants to put on UK
He’s still starting from the status quo position and working backwards, when he needs to be starting from the “Canada” position he said would be the end point months ago, and working out the differences from there.
That’s going to be a serious problem when people start coming off bikes at 40mph - especially if they’re not wearing speed-appropriate protective gear.
Indeed, yes. Especially in cities, where if you're speedmatched with cars doing 40mph and come off ...... goodnight. Zero chance of anyone behind you stopping in time.
Five days before official lockdown was already into unofficial lockdown. I think people are starting to forget that Johnson's decree didn't come as much of a surprise...
the myth that we were doing nothing until March 23 has already taken hold.
I don't think slavery created racism, quite the opposite. Blaming racism on slavery is like blaming a puddle for the rain. Racism predated slavery and outlasted it too.
Pre-existing racism allowed slavery to flourish, not the other way around. Racism is an evil in its own right and doesn't require slavery to happen or to be tackled.
And yet, as you point out, it was technological dominance that enabled the slave trade - and did not the racial 'science' of the nineteenth century, which was and is part and parcel of the racism of the modern era, emerge from the societal mindset necessary to maintaining the institutions of plantation slavery in the midst of civilised societies ?
Surely slavery is a result of racism, seeing Blacks and Asians as lesser than European whites allowed the thinking to justify slavery in a moral sense - "it's not wrong because Blacks/Asians aren't people".
It's the same kind of thinking that allows slavery to pervade the Middle East and why slave markets operate across North Africa selling black Africans into slavery into the Middle East.
I'm struggling a bit with the idea that us Brits invented the slave trade.
As I understand it, the term Slav is a corruption of the word 'slave' and reflects the trading enterprise of the Scandinavians who took prisoners for the specific purpose of selling them. Because they were valuable, they tended to look after the product, at least until the had been sold, or otherwise disposed of.
I also understand that the ancient Egyptians were a bit tough on the Nubians. No doubt PBers can offer other examples.
Why do we Brits get the credit for inventing the idea?
Are you not being a little mischievous here?
Walk down Whiteladies Road or Blackboy Hill in Bristol and it may remind you that parts of our country were indeed at the vanguard of African slave trading.
Earlier in the year I was touring the Caribbean on a cruise ship, most of the passengers being American. In Antigua I asked the guide why the notion of slavery was skirted around in her presentation. She explained that her American customers quite often didn't want to hear about the history of Caribbean/American slavery. Several American Tourists over the years had called her out, suggesting slavery was a myth and these people were merely indentured servants.
My own issue, is not with the history, I would prefer it to be recalled accurately rather than conveniently rewritten, I do object to countrymen today wrapping themselves in the flag of empire and claiming those days to be the nadir of British achievement, generally without knowing what they are talking about. We should nonetheless not be expected to apologise on behalf of our forefathers
To be pedantic those Bristol names were from pubs IIRC - not slavery. But that doesn't change the basic fact of Bristolian history.
Nonetheless it is a nod to the history of the city.
The problem is that white privilege, as a term, itself is guilty of the lack of nuance you rightly cite. Black people are disproportionately represented in the prison population. Black criminality would rightly be lambasted as castigating a whole race based on a minority. Slapping a privilege label on a whole race, perhaps then used to then try and make them feel a dose of liberal guilt or to diminish their opinion, is simply wrong on both moral and intellectual levels.
As others have already pointed out, poor white boys do the worst in educational terms. The blanket approach of describing whites as privileged whitewashes, ahem, the educational situation.
Judging people based on the colour of their skin is a very unwise path.
Mr. kinabalu, you're aware that most white people didn't own slaves, right? And that many had terrible working conditions? But you want to judge all present day white people based on what a minority of white people did a few centuries ago?
Do you feel that critical about the black slave traders who sold their fellow Africans to the British Empire (prior to the slavery ban, whilst the trade continued to be perpetrated by Africans, Arabs, and others)? Or is it only white people worthy of this condemnation for the sins of a minority of their forefathers?
And how far back does this historical victimhood last? Can I claim it for the Harrowing of the North? The Roman invasion?
Trying to make people who have never had slaves feel guilty towards people who have never been slaves because of things that happened centuries ago and were done by other people that neither the non-slave owners nor the non-slaves have even met is madness.
I don't want you to feel guilty. It's a wholly destructive emotion.
But neither do I want you to be in denial of something so palpably true as that "white privilege" - if the term is understood correctly - is a real and significant thing.
Well said. White people need to end our silence about the extent of racism, and therefore our relative privilege. if we are silent we are complicit, which we no longer do in relation to rape or child abuse.
We just need not to be frightened of acknowledging it, there's no need.
Anyone who lives in modern Britain needs to acknowledge the extent of their privilege. We have free medical care, money given to us when we're out of work, a state pension, a beautiful, temperate country to live in, plentiful food and drink, and we grow up speaking the world's language. We can participate in appointing and dismissing our leaders. We can be entertained or informed in seconds via the internet. We are all *ridiculously* privileged compared to our ancestors, of all colours, who lived in comparative discomfort, risk of violence or illness, and in many cases, poverty and unrelentingly hard work with little to show for it at the end. We are not just privileged compared to our ancestors, but our fellow humans living today in less fortunate countries than ours. Complaining about your lack of privilege against that background is pretty decadent.
Debating relative privilege is the modern version of the Three Yorkshiremen sketch.
In 2020, thousands died in care homes unnecessarily because their voices went unheard while the government prioritised the lives of others. Their privilege is not immediately self-evident.
What I don't understand: if such elderly people had been largely of BAME background it would definitely have been called racist, whereas they are largely white and it was just gross negligence.
Five days before official lockdown was already into unofficial lockdown. I think people are starting to forget that Johnson's decree didn't come as much of a surprise...
the myth that we were doing nothing until March 23 has already taken hold.
Indeed.
My employer started letting people work from home nearly two weeks prior to the official lockdown.
My last day in the office was the 16th of March and at the time I posted on here that I had decided not to go to the Liverpool v Atletico Madrid match on March 11th.
Looks like Boris has played a blinder over Brexit. Despite his best efforts, Barnier is stuffed: there's nothing he can work with here. This means that Boris can a) Walk away with nothing without it, quite, looking as if he unilaterally pulled the plug. b) Not have any messy compromises with the EU that would spoil his broad-brush rhetoric. The base will be ecstatic.
The problem is that white privilege, as a term, itself is guilty of the lack of nuance you rightly cite. Black people are disproportionately represented in the prison population. Black criminality would rightly be lambasted as castigating a whole race based on a minority. Slapping a privilege label on a whole race, perhaps then used to then try and make them feel a dose of liberal guilt or to diminish their opinion, is simply wrong on both moral and intellectual levels.
As others have already pointed out, poor white boys do the worst in educational terms. The blanket approach of describing whites as privileged whitewashes, ahem, the educational situation.
Judging people based on the colour of their skin is a very unwise path.
Mr. kinabalu, you're aware that most white people didn't own slaves, right? And that many had terrible working conditions? But you want to judge all present day white people based on what a minority of white people did a few centuries ago?
Do you feel that critical about the black slave traders who sold their fellow Africans to the British Empire (prior to the slavery ban, whilst the trade continued to be perpetrated by Africans, Arabs, and others)? Or is it only white people worthy of this condemnation for the sins of a minority of their forefathers?
And how far back does this historical victimhood last? Can I claim it for the Harrowing of the North? The Roman invasion?
Trying to make people who have never had slaves feel guilty towards people who have never been slaves because of things that happened centuries ago and were done by other people that neither the non-slave owners nor the non-slaves have even met is madness.
I don't want you to feel guilty. It's a wholly destructive emotion.
But neither do I want you to be in denial of something so palpably true as that "white privilege" - if the term is understood correctly - is a real and significant thing.
Well said. White people need to end our silence about the extent of racism, and therefore our relative privilege. if we are silent we are complicit, which we no longer do in relation to rape or child abuse.
We just need not to be frightened of acknowledging it, there's no need.
Anyone who lives in modern Britain needs to acknowledge the extent of their privilege. We have free medical care, money given to us when we're out of work, a state pension, a beautiful, temperate country to live in, plentiful food and drink, and we grow up speaking the world's language. We can participate in appointing and dismissing our leaders. We can be entertained or informed in seconds via the internet. We are all *ridiculously* privileged compared to our ancestors, of all colours, who lived in comparative discomfort, risk of violence or illness, and in many cases, poverty and unrelentingly hard work with little to show for it at the end. We are not just privileged compared to our ancestors, but our fellow humans living today in less fortunate countries than ours. Complaining about your lack of privilege against that background is pretty decadent.
Some people are never happy and need to make up grievances to whinge about.
I don't think slavery created racism, quite the opposite. Blaming racism on slavery is like blaming a puddle for the rain. Racism predated slavery and outlasted it too.
Pre-existing racism allowed slavery to flourish, not the other way around. Racism is an evil in its own right and doesn't require slavery to happen or to be tackled.
And yet, as you point out, it was technological dominance that enabled the slave trade - and did not the racial 'science' of the nineteenth century, which was and is part and parcel of the racism of the modern era, emerge from the societal mindset necessary to maintaining the institutions of plantation slavery in the midst of civilised societies ?
Surely slavery is a result of racism, seeing Blacks and Asians as lesser than European whites allowed the thinking to justify slavery in a moral sense - "it's not wrong because Blacks/Asians aren't people".
It's the same kind of thinking that allows slavery to pervade the Middle East and why slave markets operate across North Africa selling black Africans into slavery into the Middle East.
I'm struggling a bit with the idea that us Brits invented the slave trade.
As I understand it, the term Slav is a corruption of the word 'slave' and reflects the trading enterprise of the Scandinavians who took prisoners for the specific purpose of selling them. Because they were valuable, they tended to look after the product, at least until the had been sold, or otherwise disposed of.
I also understand that the ancient Egyptians were a bit tough on the Nubians. No doubt PBers can offer other examples.
Why do we Brits get the credit for inventing the idea?
Are you not being a little mischievous here?
Walk down Whiteladies Road or Blackboy Hill in Bristol and it may remind you that parts of our country were indeed at the vanguard of African slave trading.
Earlier in the year I was touring the Caribbean on a cruise ship, most of the passengers being American. In Antigua I asked the guide why the notion of slavery was skirted around in her presentation. She explained that her American customers quite often didn't want to hear about the history of Caribbean/American slavery. Several American Tourists over the years had called her out, suggesting slavery was a myth and these people were merely indentured servants.
My own issue, is not with the history, I would prefer it to be recalled accurately rather than conveniently rewritten, I do object to countrymen today wrapping themselves in the flag of empire and claiming those days to be the nadir of British achievement, generally without knowing what they are talking about. We should nonetheless not be expected to apologise on behalf of our forefathers
To be pedantic those Bristol names were from pubs IIRC - not slavery. But that doesn't change the basic fact of Bristolian history.
Nonetheless it is a nod to the history of the city.
Yes, nbut not slavery - Black Boy was the young Charles II it would seem.
The Colston Hall is a much better example - as well as being more recent.
It may look mathematically elegant, but its also wrong, or at least missing, in that it is not factoring in any form of heard immunity, and not the disproportionately magnifying effect first wave of people whose jobs make them most likely to get the virus early and spread it.
It also is dismissive of the effect of season to the virus, in the US the CDC best guess is that there is a 25% drop in inventions from the peak in winter to summer. This is a best guess and may or may not be accurate, it could be more or less.
its also inaccurate about Sweden, where the R number is below 1, all be it only slightly at the national level, but significantly below in Stockholm and other areas that where it effected early, where more heard immunity was build up while still spreading (R above 1) in areas not particularly affected yet.
(2) British policy was to protect its trading interests, balance itself against other great powers, and ensure peace and stability. Yes, in its broader political and economic interests, but there was a moral imperative as well. It wasn't driven by ideological zeal to conquer and, in almost all instances, the policy was to ultimately move colonies and protectorates to self-rule - the only question being one of "readiness". Yes, there were serious social and political issues in the Empire - although I note most of these were present on the home islands as well - and they were addressed through progressive reforms throughout in the 19th and 20th Century. Was race the fault-line? In many places it was a fault-line, but not the overriding one - class was a bigger issue, which is why Gandhi and the Maharajahs could all be educated in Britain. The Brits weren't ideological about race nor proto-Nazis and it's insulting to suggest we were. And there was a healthy debate about the ethics, values, and issues of Empire throughout.
So, forgive me if I'm a little sceptical of claims we invented racism and are responsible for all the world's ills today. The world would be a darker place had it not been for the British, and it's time to stop beating ourselves up about it.
It depends who you mean by 'we'. My ancestors were busy chipping away at underground coal seams for next to nothing. In later generations my Welsh miner ancesters were in lockstep with Paul Robeson. I daresay they had no idea how their cigarettes, sugar and cotton clothing arrived in their possession.
If 'we' means those with an ancestry of Bristol slave traders, by all means don't beat yourselves up over the misdeeds of your forefathers, but neither do you have cause to celebrate their dubious "achievements".
Back on topic. If cycling were to be the most memorable legacy of the Johnson Premiership then the nation will be in a much happier state than it is in now. I am not holding my breath.
Yes, one of my points was that life wasn't all that rosy in the UK too as you describe. It's this central white privilege and black repression point that grates with me. It's far more complicated than that.
What's the bit I do celebrate? Spreading liberal democratic institutions around the world.
Countries like the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, modern India, Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong wouldn't exist without the British empire, and it is for that I am grateful for.
I think our record in Ireland, the Middle East and North Africa is less exemplary. And we lost the plot a bit in South Africa, which could have gone much better and didn't need to go over to an Afrikaner reverse takeover.
So, like most things in history, complex and mixed. You have to judge it in the round and based upon what the alternatives were at the time, as well as critiquing wrongdoings and what could have been better.
Our history is what it is, for better or worse. What frustrates me are those who have no reading or understanding of the British Empire but are happy to wrap themselves in the flag and proclaim it's greatness..
The only time we were a superpower was as a result of the British Empire.
As I said last night there is no point saying it was purely a cause of morality, its aim was to boost Britain economically and militarily which it did.
It did a few good things as well and a lot of bad things but its purpose ultimately was about expanding power as it was for most nations which created an Empire
But we had no inherent or moral right to be a superpower - anymore than the USA does today or Nazi Germany did 80 years ago.Military force allowed us to impose our ideas of Civilisation on other weaker countries who lacked the means to effectively defend themselves.Did we - and other European powers - have any more right to do that than the Red Indians, Maoris, Aboriginies and various African tribes had to invade us whilst imposing their favoured lifestyles?.Western countries arrogantly assumed themselves to be more developed than such 'primitive' races, but whilst that might have appeared to be true in pure materialist terms it is far from obvious in other - eg spiritual - ways. There was much that we bear responsibility for having destroyed.
Two years ago now my daughter had an Erasmus year in Groningen where she caught the cycling bug. I had the experience of driving in Groningen having taken a car load of stuff over with her. It brought home to me how radically different their attitude to cycling is from anything I have seen in the UK. Most of the minor roads were adapted in a way that made me, as a car driver, feel extremely unwelcome. Indeed I was constantly anxious that I should not be where I was. The road surface, furniture, narrowing, obstacles etc all made it feel as if the road was more of a path. I drove extremely slowly and gave way to everything, as I believe you were supposed to. The consequence was that unless you were using the vehicle to transport anything heavy it really added nothing to the pace of the journey. Bikes were clearly quicker but it was also noteworthy that the cyclists were quite traditional upright bikes, not the sort of boy racers that plague our cities. Because they too were slower they worked in with the pedestrians more safely. On the larger roads there were cycle lanes which had their own filters and turns on traffic lights etc. It was well beyond what I have seen in the UK where the "cycle path" is all too often a 1m wide strip that cars intrude into all too casually. If we have anything like this in the UK I have not seen it. It is a psychological change. The benefits for the local population were evident. Obesity was very rare and the air quality was remarkably different. I find bikes on our current roads a nuisance to be frank. I get irritated when they weave through lines of traffic, ignore traffic lights and constantly swing from lane to lane. But things can be different. Very different.
Having an elephant on the road ( as happened to me in India) also tends to slow traffic down(!)
Comments
The thing with marmite, is lots of people really like it. I don't sense the same enthusiasm for the details man....
Or are you one of these crazed self-radicalised Leavers that infest these haunts who believes that there is no such thing as a trade deal with the EU that is consistent with Brexit?
Sadly, I suspect that "privilege" caught on because it's easy to misunderstand, rather like "black lives matter" or "believe women". One does not sell many newspapers nor recruit many political supporters by saying things that are simple, direct, and morally unimpeachable.
My employer started letting people work from home nearly two weeks prior to the official lockdown.
My last day in the office was the 16th of March and at the time I posted on here that I had decided not to go to the Liverpool v Atletico Madrid match on March 11th.
The Colston Hall is a much better example - as well as being more recent.
It also is dismissive of the effect of season to the virus, in the US the CDC best guess is that there is a 25% drop in inventions from the peak in winter to summer. This is a best guess and may or may not be accurate, it could be more or less.
its also inaccurate about Sweden, where the R number is below 1, all be it only slightly at the national level, but significantly below in Stockholm and other areas that where it effected early, where more heard immunity was build up while still spreading (R above 1) in areas not particularly affected yet.