I've been posting on this site for over 15 years. I have never been accused of being a racist. Nor in my lifetime before. Not even at the most passionate heights of the Brexit debate, or the UKIP surge before it.
In the last few days, I've had at least two posters on here make this accusation directly at me. One subsequently withdrew it but they were both made casually and cheaply - with little thought.
This is a really unpleasant and nasty effect of these current riots. It's making many people meaner and less inclined to dialogue. It's absenting the crowd to those with the loudest and strongest voices to dictate what people are meant to think and say, and worrying others with reservations into silence.
It explains precisely why there is so little challenge and debate around some of the assumptions and motives underlying the actions of the perpetrators, and it's unclear how far those will now advance unchecked and what the consequences will be.
I truly fear for the future of this country, I really do.
To be clear I cant know if you are a racist or not, I said I can see why people think you are from your posting. Using racist memes like guests have to live differently, intentional or not, is going to cause offence.
I won't be engaging with you further on this subject.
If you can find it within you to offer an unreserved apology so we can re-set relations, then I will be happy to do so again.
Not until then.
I think you are being overly sensitive.
When you use an analogy such as "house guest" in the context of this particular debate, I think you need to accept (or at least consider) the feedback from others that it is not appropriate. Crass even. And if you disagree and wish to stick with it be prepared to expand and develop the analogy to demonstrate how it does in fact work and was a good choice.
I am very happy to be your disinterested and empathetic counterparty for such an exchange.
I`ve worked in the Middle East (Bahrain), and visited places such as Gibraltar many times, and witnessed (to my disappointment) British expats living there, setting up little communities within communities, UK themed pubs, Union Jacks displayed, no attempt whatsoever to learn the local language or join in with local customs or even make friends with local people. They are trying to export a chunk of Britain abroad. I find this depressing, unintelligent and downright rude.
I think that "house guest" is an unwise phrase to use. But the British expats I cite above are house guests in the loose sort of way that I think CR means. And they warrant our disapproval. And I wouldn`t call Bahraini or Spanish people racist in pointing this out.
It's not at all how CR meant the analogy, but Gibraltar is 'our house' (For now at least).
It isn’t at all.
Nevertheless if I was a public figure I’d probably be resigning by the end of the day. What would happen is people like @kinabalu@kamski and @noneoftheabove would whip up a twitterstorm about it, selectively quote it, ascribe a motive, demand action and then the BBC/C4 would pick up on it and report it. And then authority figures would be challenged as to why I was still in post. It would matter about the nuance. Most wouldn’t care.
It does explain why so few people in authority want to challenge simple assumptions in complex ways in highly emotional times.
Why take the risk? The upside is minimal and the downside huge.
A Guardian journo asked this question at the press briefing yesterday:
"If Britain is not a racist country, which implies there is no structural racism in the UK, please can you explain why black, Asian and minority ethnic people are disproportionally dying from Covid 19".
I can`t even begin to enter the mindset of someone who asks such a stupid question as this. Hancock should have torn him a new one. He didn`t of course - he came up with meaningless pandering shite.
These 'journalists' are insane. Why on earth should the government even bother taking questions from what are no longer newspapers, but political campaign groups in all but name - and particularly stupid ones at that?
Day 1, perhaps actual lockdown announcement day: at the annoucement press conference, some Lefty "journalist" from some nonsuch Lefty online rag asked BoJo whether if people disobeyed the lockdown guidance the police would enforce it. Boris audibly recoiled as though it was the most ridiculous thing he had heard. "Police??" he said "I don't think we'll be getting the police involved."
The Very Next Day: Boris: "..and if people don't comply with these measures we will ask the police to get involved."
is why.
Ah, of course - without them the government would never have thought of using the police to enforce the law. These lefty rags are so useful after all!
Do you think they're in favour of the police enforcing the law against vandalism now?
They u-turned in <24hrs. Go back and listen to the press conference. Boris was aghast that anyone could suggest the police might be involved. And then less than a day later, policy changed.
Could it have been the Telegraph that asked the question? Of course. But they didn't. It was some lefty online rag.
Do you think that Ancelotti should have gone to Arsenal instead of Everton?</p>
Wait a minute - I watched Boris' address to the nation announcing the lockdown, and it clearly mentioned that the police would have powers to enforce it, so the exchange you're referring to must have happened before it was implemented.
Even if you're correct - which I'm prepared to grant because I honestly don't remember what was said in every press conference - do you really think the government wouldn't have reconsidered the necessary means of enforcement as soon as it arose as a practical problem? I don't quite see that question as an irreplaceable service to the nation - and not one that outweighs their utter shitness ever since.
It was a small but significant example of a diverse (small "d") press being a useful, not to say vital element of a functioning democracy.
That's swings of 8.5% and 6.5% away from Trump in Oklahoma and Kentucky. Senior retired Republicans are queuing up to be negative about Trump or even endorse Biden. But the White House is trailing a big "unity" address to the nation this week. The Donald, he can do anything. From the great polariser to the great unifier? Something "great" anyway. He's the greatest and realest, and nothing like a loser or a fake. He can be the unifiers' unifier if he chooses. Best of luck with that. Not sure I've ever seen a US leader so busted this far out.
Yep. Too late now. Some people are on the pitch. The fat lady is fingering her mike. Coronavirus was a golden opportunity to reinvent himself as a credible president. Indeed I was slightly scared that he would somehow manage to do so - it was his one clear chance to head off the big defeat in November that I have long thought inevitable.
But I needn't have worried. The situation merely exposed his almost comical limitations further. He simply does not have the capability to speak or lead in a 'national interest' manner. When he tries it looks and sounds ridiculous because it is so clearly phony. And on top of this you have the glaring lack of competence which is hard to hide when there is a genuine crisis on.
So, sure, he may have another go at 'presidential' but the result will be the same. It will come over as false. Few will be swayed and of those who are it will as likely be the other way. For his hardcore supporters it might still be a case of "To know him is to love him," but for everybody else the opposite now applies. He appears, he speaks, he net repels.
His best re-election strategy in my view would be one of minimalist blandness from here until polling day. Keep his head down. Stay out of the news. But of course it has no chance of being adopted. Instead it will be double down on Boast, Blame, Bluster. Chances of this securing many votes other than his base and those outside it who would vote Republican regardless? Slim to zero. He's toast.
I kind of agree that it's a bit late for him to start acting presidential now. Part of Trump's appeal is that his supporters think that he "tells it likes it is". That doesn't mean he doesn't lie, but when he lies it is entirely in keeping with his character. That's also partly why things like "grab 'em by the pussy" weren't fatal for him. It was obnoxious, but consistent. He's a consistently obnoxious guy. To suddenly switch now would probably turn off his core vote, without convincing anyone else. His best chance is to try and reduce the numbers voting for the other guy, by whatever means. Like everyone says, it's probably going to get really dirty (unless he gives up and starts his own Trumped Up News Channel: "All fake, all of the time!").
It's like the Presidency has been in the hands of a pub boor. It's beginning to seem though that some of his boorish supporters are starting to notice it isn't a good way to run the show.
I like this analogy a lot. It leads to an image of him (very soon) as the loud drunken boor in the pub, standing alone now, well past closing time, still going on and on and on, as the staff start clearing up and preparing to 'have a word'.
Which is one of the exact ways I picture things.
Not exactly alone. He's perhaps more like the school bully, with his gang following, that the majority have finally got utterly fed up with. And is now due a good kicking.
We agreed on this before in theory. The best single thing to do in order to disincentivize parental opt-out would be to increase the state education budget to a level which brings the funding per pupil up to the same level as the average private school.
But 'in theory' is the operative term here - because in all honesty what do you rate the chances of this ever happening?
That makes the assumption that sending the kids to private school is for their education rather than making sure they are not subjected to mixing with the "wrong type" of kids - or perhaps for making sure they mix with the "right type".
Good point. Because the educational 'gated community' aspect is surely a big part of it. Another pernicious macro effect. But to stress - I totally understand why individuals who can afford it make this choice and I would never criticize somebody's personal decision to do so. I just think the country as a whole would be much better off in several important ways if nobody did.
I went to a bog standard comp. That is why I chose to privately educate my children. If you are well off enough (and for many of us it can be quite tough to afford it), it is a choice that you weigh up in the interests of your own children. I see it no different to choosing a holiday that other parents might not be able to afford. Is choosing that holiday bad? Personally I think choosing a better quality education (and please let us not kid ourselves on this - it is MUCH better) is more important than taking them on an "educational trip" to the Maldives
I cautioned against this. I said that however well-intentioned they are they'd end up being seen to pick a side and it was better for businesses to steer clear of politics. Because having culture wars extend into the corporate world - ending up with the politicisation of absolutely everything - won't end well for businesses or consumers.
Yes, well I am a consultant. And I enjoy being devil's advocate and provoking an argument. I live in hope somebody picks it up and at least thinks about it behind the scenes.
But it was probably a mistake. The choices on Twitter seemed to be you could be branded as a fellow fascist, independent racist or a fellow Left-wing warrior.
Nothing else. So probably best to duck out as there's no room for nuance.
The question is, does it hurt to play to the crowd on Twitter? They've upset you, but how many of their core demographic will see this Twitter storm? Probably not that many. So it probably doesn't harm them to please the vast majority of the Twatterati.
It does seem very relevant to the post earlier by @Fox327 on pols vs scientists.
This may highlight a problem within the government - a lack of scientific expertise. Does the government have to take on trust everything the scientists say because it has no scientific expertise of its own? Does the government have to believe everything that lawyers say because they are lawyers? Sir Keir Starmer is a lawyer. Does the government agree with what he says?
No, the government has its own legal experts, including the Lord Chancellor and the Attorney General. They take primary responsibility for advising the government on legal matters, including Brexit.
There is a culture in the UK that scientists are experts who are not part of the select group from which senior politicians are drawn. Margaret Thatcher was an exception, but she did go to Oxford and later became a lawyer. Therefore, an Oxford Classics graduate would not dream of disagreeing with scientific advisors - it simply would not be done by a gentleman like Boris Johnson.
Consequently, the government has lost control of the government to a group of disparate scientists who have who knows what personal agendas. Perhaps the time has come for the Chief Scientific Advisor to be a member of the government, i.e. a minister, even a cabinet minister. That way the government could get the benefit of scientific advice while remaining in control of the development of policy. The problem is that not many Conservative MPs have a suitable background but there are a few, e.g. Steve Baker.
Just mulling over what you say ...
I'm not sure that Mr Johnson would even recognise that scientists were there to be disagreed with, so much as ignored except when some of the bits they said suited him. 'Scientists on tap not on top' was what hsi hero Mr Churchill said, did he not?
Also, the Conservative Party policy over the last few decades bas been to , erm, downgrade and dispose of in-house scientific expertise - Royal Signals and Radar Establishment, Laboratory of the Government Chemist, Forensic Science Service all come to mind.
But you are right, there is no CSA position comparable with the Lord Chancellor - though I also wonder about what happens when the scientist is advising outwith his or her realm, apart from understanding how science and the scientific method work in general. A biologist might find it hard to judge on say climatology. Does the biologist then act as a politician? But one of Mrs T's greater achievements was reacting strongly to the ozone layer crisis. Would a Balliol classicist have been as quick as a Somerville chemist, I wonder?
You might know better than i how well Solly Zuckermann functioned as an advisor with a research backgroind in primate anatomy and society.
My only comment on this is that not all scientists have more wisdom about science than some non-scientists. For a formal Chief Government Scientist to provide advice at a political level, I think you'd need something of a scientist philosopher.
I tried wading into an argument with PG Tips and Yorkshire Tea on Twitter this morning.
That was a mistake. I basically disagree with everyone.
Twitter is utterly moronic.
You are aware it all started because a Right wing facist tried to go point scoring using Yorkshire Tea as an example.
Yorkshire tea not being idiots didn't want to get involved in something that wasn't their concern but had no choice but to which resulted in their response.
So if you are on the anti- Yorkshire tea / PG Tips side of the argument you've proved Sunil's previous statement about you to be correct.
I don't think you can make that claim without seeing what was said.
I saw both Yorkshire tea and PG Tips initial responses - given the person pushing the point they really did have to respond.
Did they? Why couldn't they have ignored it?
Why are you taking offence at a couple of tea brands wanting to make sure they aren't associated with a fascist?
I am advising companies not to rise to the bait, because it will end up with mischaracterised polarisation (to both sides) that will do them, and us, no good.
That's why I said earlier I ended up disagreeing with basically everyone on Twitter on this issue.
Are you a social media marketing expert? I thought you worked on infrastructure projects.
Social Media Marketing experts actually have a strategy for dealing with this type of issue. Yorkshire tea and PG Tips are both following it.
And the fact that you as a completely unqualified person seem to be happy tell companies how to handle something in direct contradiction to what I suspect very expensive advice has told them to do (looking at the time frame between the initial post and Yorkshire Teas reply) tells me an awful lot..
My only question is why would someone who claims not to be racist gets involved in an argument that was started by racists when it has absolutely nothing to do with him. I mean I know everyone is bored but there are easier places (like here) to have a discussion
You think expensive advice from social media experts, who are possibly subject to confirmation bias, is beyond re-approach?
I have a pig to sell you.
I was trying to see if I could damp down the culture wars. That's all.
Please don't associate with me racism again, either indirectly or otherwise.
I've been posting on this site for over 15 years. I have never been accused of being a racist. Nor in my lifetime before. Not even at the most passionate heights of the Brexit debate, or the UKIP surge before it.
In the last few days, I've had at least two posters on here make this accusation directly at me. One subsequently withdrew it but they were both made casually and cheaply - with little thought.
This is a really unpleasant and nasty effect of these current riots. It's making many people meaner and less inclined to dialogue. It's absenting the crowd to those with the loudest and strongest voices to dictate what people are meant to think and say, and worrying others with reservations into silence.
It explains precisely why there is so little challenge and debate around some of the assumptions and motives underlying the actions of the perpetrators, and it's unclear how far those will now advance unchecked and what the consequences will be.
I truly fear for the future of this country, I really do.
To be clear I cant know if you are a racist or not, I said I can see why people think you are from your posting. Using racist memes like guests have to live differently, intentional or not, is going to cause offence.
I won't be engaging with you further on this subject.
If you can find it within you to offer an unreserved apology so we can re-set relations, then I will be happy to do so again.
Not until then.
I think you are being overly sensitive.
When you use an analogy such as "house guest" in the context of this particular debate, I think you need to accept (or at least consider) the feedback from others that it is not appropriate. Crass even. And if you disagree and wish to stick with it be prepared to expand and develop the analogy to demonstrate how it does in fact work and was a good choice.
I am very happy to be your disinterested and empathetic counterparty for such an exchange.
I`ve worked in the Middle East (Bahrain), and visited places such as Gibraltar many times, and witnessed (to my disappointment) British expats living there, setting up little communities within communities, UK themed pubs, Union Jacks displayed, no attempt whatsoever to learn the local language or join in with local customs or even make friends with local people. They are trying to export a chunk of Britain abroad. I find this depressing, unintelligent and downright rude.
I think that "house guest" is an unwise phrase to use. But the British expats I cite above are house guests in the loose sort of way that I think CR means. And they warrant our disapproval. And I wouldn`t call Bahraini or Spanish people racist in pointing this out.
It's not at all how CR meant the analogy, but Gibraltar is 'our house' (For now at least).
It isn’t at all.
Nevertheless if I was a public figure I’d probably be resigning by the end of the day. What would happen is people like @kinabalu@kamski and @noneoftheabove would whip up a twitterstorm about it, selectively quote it, ascribe a motive, demand action and then the BBC/C4 would pick up on it and report it. And then authority figures would be challenged as to why I was still in post. It would matter about the nuance. Most wouldn’t care.
It does explain why so few people in authority want to challenge simple assumptions in complex ways in highly emotional times.
Why take the risk? The upside is minimal and the downside huge.
OK I am perfectly happy to take your comments as constructively intended. But look you're saying I (or people like me) would whip up a twitterstorm, which is simply untrue. I'm not even on twitter. So I think it cuts both ways.
I say good riddance to the sculpture, if people are prosecuted for vandalising it that's fine. You want to avoid people getting into entrenched positions, but you agree with people who say that taking down a statue of a slave trader (with a frankly obscene plaque) is the equivalent of people destroying buildings they don't like - this doesn't seem to be encouraging a spirit of compromise?
I cautioned against this. I said that however well-intentioned they are they'd end up being seen to pick a side and it was better for businesses to steer clear of politics. Because having culture wars extend into the corporate world - ending up with the politicisation of absolutely everything - won't end well for businesses or consumers.
Yes, well I am a consultant. And I enjoy being devil's advocate and provoking an argument. I live in hope somebody picks it up and at least thinks about it behind the scenes.
But it was probably a mistake. The choices on Twitter seemed to be you could be branded as a fellow fascist, independent racist or a fellow Left-wing warrior.
Nothing else. So probably best to duck out as there's no room for nuance.
Twitter is a set of echo chambers alongside a mainstream marketing / customer support channel.
Because it's actually a good place to post complaints about products it's actually a channel most consumer focused companies can't avoid
That's swings of 8.5% and 6.5% away from Trump in Oklahoma and Kentucky. Senior retired Republicans are queuing up to be negative about Trump or even endorse Biden. But the White House is trailing a big "unity" address to the nation this week. The Donald, he can do anything. From the great polariser to the great unifier? Something "great" anyway. He's the greatest and realest, and nothing like a loser or a fake. He can be the unifiers' unifier if he chooses. Best of luck with that. Not sure I've ever seen a US leader so busted this far out.
Yep. Too late now. Some people are on the pitch. The fat lady is fingering her mike. Coronavirus was a golden opportunity to reinvent himself as a credible president. Indeed I was slightly scared that he would somehow manage to do so - it was his one clear chance to head off the big defeat in November that I have long thought inevitable.
But I needn't have worried. The situation merely exposed his almost comical limitations further. He simply does not have the capability to speak or lead in a 'national interest' manner. When he tries it looks and sounds ridiculous because it is so clearly phony. And on top of this you have the glaring lack of competence which is hard to hide when there is a genuine crisis on.
So, sure, he may have another go at 'presidential' but the result will be the same. It will come over as false. Few will be swayed and of those who are it will as likely be the other way. For his hardcore supporters it might still be a case of "To know him is to love him," but for everybody else the opposite now applies. He appears, he speaks, he net repels.
His best re-election strategy in my view would be one of minimalist blandness from here until polling day. Keep his head down. Stay out of the news. But of course it has no chance of being adopted. Instead it will be double down on Boast, Blame, Bluster. Chances of this securing many votes other than his base and those outside it who would vote Republican regardless? Slim to zero. He's toast.
I kind of agree that it's a bit late for him to start acting presidential now. Part of Trump's appeal is that his supporters think that he "tells it likes it is". That doesn't mean he doesn't lie, but when he lies it is entirely in keeping with his character. That's also partly why things like "grab 'em by the pussy" weren't fatal for him. It was obnoxious, but consistent. He's a consistently obnoxious guy. To suddenly switch now would probably turn off his core vote, without convincing anyone else. His best chance is to try and reduce the numbers voting for the other guy, by whatever means. Like everyone says, it's probably going to get really dirty (unless he gives up and starts his own Trumped Up News Channel: "All fake, all of the time!").
It's like the Presidency has been in the hands of a pub boor. It's beginning to seem though that some of his boorish supporters are starting to notice it isn't a good way to run the show.
I like this analogy a lot. It leads to an image of him (very soon) as the loud drunken boor in the pub, standing alone now, well past closing time, still going on and on and on, as the staff start clearing up and preparing to 'have a word'.
Which is one of the exact ways I picture things.
He'd definitely be one of these tossers who never buys his round and takes 7/8 drunk pints back to the bar saying it was 'off'.
- Mmm. Met them.
Cue here for a particularly literal minded Trumpton to nip in with -
But he's tee total! Brother died from drink so he's never touched a drop. Mark of the man.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Are you me? Hardly a stone would remain standing upon stone if I could have my way with the aesthetic nightmares blighting so many of our cities. Their sheer ugliness causes more psychological harm on a daily basis than an ideologically-incorrect statue ever could. In fact, if you read the justifications modern architects come up with for their vainglorious carbuncles, you often find that their analyses work beautifully on the level of concept and ideology, but fail miserably in the physical, visual, and human sphere ... which is where their buildings actually fucking exist!
High density housing and a thriving commercial space in one. This is how we should regenerate town centres.
Do we need a Bomber Harris before we can do that stuff?
Or Herman Goering? Who did for a fair bit of the area around Teddy Colston's simulacrum?
Not when you have urban planners and modern architects.
Well yes, Clydebank suggests we don't do well with a clean slate. Tbh I was thinking more of friendly bombs falling on what the urban planners and modern architects have produced.
There's a recurring meme in Glasgow that a lot of the tenement housing (eg in the Gorbals) was of such poor quality that it couldn't be upgraded or preserved, so the year zero guys were allowed to run riot in the 50s and 60s on the basis that something had to be be done. That seems quite odd nowadays when expensive extreme measures in terms of new foundations and shoring up are taken to keep tenements literally on the road. Also strange that since the tenement is absolutely THE vernacular style of housing in Glasgow and other Scottish cities hardly anything is done to faithfully reproduce it as in the form of the Dresden developments highlighted by William Glenn, or much of Berlin, a city with which I'm slightly familiar.
Even Edinburgh hasn't been immune. If you look at Princes Street (still beautiful by the way), it contains various monstrosities, as part of a brave new plan (in the 60's) to demolish all the Victorian and Georgian shop frontages, and replace them with a modern shopping precinct on two levels, with a one storey walkable balcony running the length of it.
It truly boggles the mind.
What slightly bothers me is that now we've woken up a lot more to looking after our heritage, but we've fallen into the trap of thinking that the 60's carbuncles somehow deserve preservation too.
Golly, I hadn't realised that they were thinking quite that far outside the envelope re. Princes St. Actually in Glasgow they seem to have come up with quite a decent cunning plan, to cover over the M8 where it runs through Charing Cross and turn it into an open pedestrian space. Whether that'll come off now in these straitened times, who knows?
I'm not entirely anti brutalism, I quite like the South Bank for its absolute unwillingness to ingratiate for example, and the likes of Poundbury leave me a little queasy.
edit: I see the brave new plan for Princes St is from the 60s, still wouldn't put it past them today though.
Thankfully you'd never get away with it today. It's not stopping some horrors still being built, but they tend not to be demolishing beautiful frontages to do it.
I respectfully diverge from you (and @williamglenn) on the subject of Poundbury, because for all it's air of silliness, people do want to live and work there, because the environment at least tries to be beautiful.
What would be good I think is some objective standard of beauty in buildings based on what is naturally appealing to the human eye. We instinctively prefer lightness and colour to darkness and grey - probably because it evokes cleanliness. We usually prefer ornament to lack of ornament, because it signifies effort and expense. We prefer deeper window recesses, probably because they signify thicker walls and therefore greater safety and security. We prefer stone, brick and other materials that connect a building with its landscape, to concrete.
If we can get this down, we can probably judge objectively that a monstrous pile of dark grey concrete, pebble-dashing, thin metal framed windows, with wind-swept overpasses, never looked good, isn't going to start looking good, isn't going to 'come back into fashion', doesn't deserve preservation.
At the moment, Historic Environment Scotland (I think that's the agency) and English Heritage frown heavily on new buildings done in the style of old buildings. I think that's a mistake. I love the modern extension to the National Museum in Edinburgh - but would we really be sorry if the 1960's crap on Princes Street disappeared behind a plausible Georgian pastiche?
To be an exact replica, which is not of course what you are advocating, you'd have to reopen the quarries at Hailes and Craigleith to get the right stone, which is prtobably impossible now even if the residents were evicted, then the windows would hsve to be different in design, and so on. How close is plausible before it just looks odd? I can see that a modern building using say Clashach stone from the Moray Firth and so on could work better - and indeed an example of that stone is seen in the modern extension to the National Museum.
But I must admit that Poundbury gives me the absolute screaming willies. I came across it unexpectedly one evening when staying in Dorchester and looking for somewhere to eat at dusk. I couldn't understand why I was feeling so uneasy till I realised the buildings were modern - the proportions were wrong, Queen Anne brick houses with tiny modern plastic windows. But what got me were the building stones where those were used. Blue Lias stone on one building and then the next had oolite rubble and the one after that Middle Lias ironstone, and this in Dorset where the stone and location are absolutely linked. Like an Inspector Morse episode where they go into a door from one colleage quadrangle and appear in another a mile away. And (this my partner spotted) no front gardens to the houses either. Going back in daylight didn't improve it, though in fairness it's a nice enough place to live. Though the later phases don't seem so nice (however defined).
I agree about 1960s and 70s Princes Street - mostly (I am sure one or two of the smaller shops might be quite nice but can't remember offhand!).
I've been posting on this site for over 15 years. I have never been accused of being a racist. Nor in my lifetime before. Not even at the most passionate heights of the Brexit debate, or the UKIP surge before it.
In the last few days, I've had at least two posters on here make this accusation directly at me. One subsequently withdrew it but they were both made casually and cheaply - with little thought.
This is a really unpleasant and nasty effect of these current riots. It's making many people meaner and less inclined to dialogue. It's absenting the crowd to those with the loudest and strongest voices to dictate what people are meant to think and say, and worrying others with reservations into silence.
It explains precisely why there is so little challenge and debate around some of the assumptions and motives underlying the actions of the perpetrators, and it's unclear how far those will now advance unchecked and what the consequences will be.
I truly fear for the future of this country, I really do.
To be clear I cant know if you are a racist or not, I said I can see why people think you are from your posting. Using racist memes like guests have to live differently, intentional or not, is going to cause offence.
I won't be engaging with you further on this subject.
If you can find it within you to offer an unreserved apology so we can re-set relations, then I will be happy to do so again.
Not until then.
I think you are being overly sensitive.
When you use an analogy such as "house guest" in the context of this particular debate, I think you need to accept (or at least consider) the feedback from others that it is not appropriate. Crass even. And if you disagree and wish to stick with it be prepared to expand and develop the analogy to demonstrate how it does in fact work and was a good choice.
I am very happy to be your disinterested and empathetic counterparty for such an exchange.
I`ve worked in the Middle East (Bahrain), and visited places such as Gibraltar many times, and witnessed (to my disappointment) British expats living there, setting up little communities within communities, UK themed pubs, Union Jacks displayed, no attempt whatsoever to learn the local language or join in with local customs or even make friends with local people. They are trying to export a chunk of Britain abroad. I find this depressing, unintelligent and downright rude.
I think that "house guest" is an unwise phrase to use. But the British expats I cite above are house guests in the loose sort of way that I think CR means. And they warrant our disapproval. And I wouldn`t call Bahraini or Spanish people racist in pointing this out.
It's not at all how CR meant the analogy, but Gibraltar is 'our house' (For now at least).
It isn’t at all.
Nevertheless if I was a public figure I’d probably be resigning by the end of the day. What would happen is people like @kinabalu@kamski and @noneoftheabove would whip up a twitterstorm about it, selectively quote it, ascribe a motive, demand action and then the BBC/C4 would pick up on it and report it. And then authority figures would be challenged as to why I was still in post. It would matter about the nuance. Most wouldn’t care.
It does explain why so few people in authority want to challenge simple assumptions in complex ways in highly emotional times.
Why take the risk? The upside is minimal and the downside huge.
A Guardian journo asked this question at the press briefing yesterday:
"If Britain is not a racist country, which implies there is no structural racism in the UK, please can you explain why black, Asian and minority ethnic people are disproportionally dying from Covid 19".
I can`t even begin to enter the mindset of someone who asks such a stupid question as this. Hancock should have torn him a new one. He didn`t of course - he came up with meaningless pandering shite.
These 'journalists' are insane. Why on earth should the government even bother taking questions from what are no longer newspapers, but political campaign groups in all but name - and particularly stupid ones at that?
Day 1, perhaps actual lockdown announcement day: at the annoucement press conference, some Lefty "journalist" from some nonsuch Lefty online rag asked BoJo whether if people disobeyed the lockdown guidance the police would enforce it. Boris audibly recoiled as though it was the most ridiculous thing he had heard. "Police??" he said "I don't think we'll be getting the police involved."
The Very Next Day: Boris: "..and if people don't comply with these measures we will ask the police to get involved."
is why.
Ah, of course - without them the government would never have thought of using the police to enforce the law. These lefty rags are so useful after all!
Do you think they're in favour of the police enforcing the law against vandalism now?
They u-turned in <24hrs. Go back and listen to the press conference. Boris was aghast that anyone could suggest the police might be involved. And then less than a day later, policy changed.
Could it have been the Telegraph that asked the question? Of course. But they didn't. It was some lefty online rag.
Do you think that Ancelotti should have gone to Arsenal instead of Everton?</p>
Wait a minute - I watched Boris' address to the nation announcing the lockdown, and it clearly mentioned that the police would have powers to enforce it, so the exchange you're referring to must have happened before it was implemented.
Even if you're correct - which I'm prepared to grant because I honestly don't remember what was said in every press conference - do you really think the government wouldn't have reconsidered the necessary means of enforcement as soon as it arose as a practical problem? I don't quite see that question as an irreplaceable service to the nation - and not one that outweighs their utter shitness ever since.
It was a small but significant example of a diverse (small "d") press being a useful, not to say vital element of a functioning democracy.
I'm not proposing to ban the twats, not least because I'm almost absolutist when it comes to free speech. But I do think they should be treated as what they are - a political campaign group whose entire raison d'être is to change the government. More speech, if you will.
It does seem very relevant to the post earlier by @Fox327 on pols vs scientists.
This may highlight a problem within the government - a lack of scientific expertise. Does the government have to take on trust everything the scientists say because it has no scientific expertise of its own? Does the government have to believe everything that lawyers say because they are lawyers? Sir Keir Starmer is a lawyer. Does the government agree with what he says?
No, the government has its own legal experts, including the Lord Chancellor and the Attorney General. They take primary responsibility for advising the government on legal matters, including Brexit.
There is a culture in the UK that scientists are experts who are not part of the select group from which senior politicians are drawn. Margaret Thatcher was an exception, but she did go to Oxford and later became a lawyer. Therefore, an Oxford Classics graduate would not dream of disagreeing with scientific advisors - it simply would not be done by a gentleman like Boris Johnson.
Consequently, the government has lost control of the government to a group of disparate scientists who have who knows what personal agendas. Perhaps the time has come for the Chief Scientific Advisor to be a member of the government, i.e. a minister, even a cabinet minister. That way the government could get the benefit of scientific advice while remaining in control of the development of policy. The problem is that not many Conservative MPs have a suitable background but there are a few, e.g. Steve Baker.
Just mulling over what you say ...
I'm not sure that Mr Johnson would even recognise that scientists were there to be disagreed with, so much as ignored except when some of the bits they said suited him. 'Scientists on tap not on top' was what hsi hero Mr Churchill said, did he not?
Also, the Conservative Party policy over the last few decades bas been to , erm, downgrade and dispose of in-house scientific expertise - Royal Signals and Radar Establishment, Laboratory of the Government Chemist, Forensic Science Service all come to mind.
But you are right, there is no CSA position comparable with the Lord Chancellor - though I also wonder about what happens when the scientist is advising outwith his or her realm, apart from understanding how science and the scientific method work in general. A biologist might find it hard to judge on say climatology. Does the biologist then act as a politician? But one of Mrs T's greater achievements was reacting strongly to the ozone layer crisis. Would a Balliol classicist have been as quick as a Somerville chemist, I wonder?
You might know better than i how well Solly Zuckermann functioned as an advisor with a research backgroind in primate anatomy and society.
My only comment on this is that not all scientists have more wisdom about science than some non-scientists. For a formal Chief Government Scientist to provide advice at a political level, I think you'd need something of a scientist philosopher.
Absolutely true. But our ministers have neither the science not the common sense. And heaven knows what they learned when studying PPE.
We agreed on this before in theory. The best single thing to do in order to disincentivize parental opt-out would be to increase the state education budget to a level which brings the funding per pupil up to the same level as the average private school.
But 'in theory' is the operative term here - because in all honesty what do you rate the chances of this ever happening?
That makes the assumption that sending the kids to private school is for their education rather than making sure they are not subjected to mixing with the "wrong type" of kids - or perhaps for making sure they mix with the "right type".
Good point. Because the educational 'gated community' aspect is surely a big part of it. Another pernicious macro effect. But to stress - I totally understand why individuals who can afford it make this choice and I would never criticize somebody's personal decision to do so. I just think the country as a whole would be much better off in several important ways if nobody did.
I went to a bog standard comp. That is why I chose to privately educate my children. If you are well off enough (and for many of us it can be quite tough to afford it), it is a choice that you weigh up in the interests of your own children. I see it no different to choosing a holiday that other parents might not be able to afford. Is choosing that holiday bad? Personally I think choosing a better quality education (and please let us not kid ourselves on this - it is MUCH better) is more important than taking them on an "educational trip" to the Maldives
PS. The funding per child has little to do with it. Much of it is to do with ethos. If I compare the school I went to to the one kids went to it is stark; the former had a "can't do" attitude and the latter a "can do" attitude. Some state schools manage this of course, and they tend to be the ones that either equal or outperform the independent ones.
It does seem very relevant to the post earlier by @Fox327 on pols vs scientists.
This may highlight a problem within the government - a lack of scientific expertise. Does the government have to take on trust everything the scientists say because it has no scientific expertise of its own? Does the government have to believe everything that lawyers say because they are lawyers? Sir Keir Starmer is a lawyer. Does the government agree with what he says?
No, the government has its own legal experts, including the Lord Chancellor and the Attorney General. They take primary responsibility for advising the government on legal matters, including Brexit.
There is a culture in the UK that scientists are experts who are not part of the select group from which senior politicians are drawn. Margaret Thatcher was an exception, but she did go to Oxford and later became a lawyer. Therefore, an Oxford Classics graduate would not dream of disagreeing with scientific advisors - it simply would not be done by a gentleman like Boris Johnson.
Consequently, the government has lost control of the government to a group of disparate scientists who have who knows what personal agendas. Perhaps the time has come for the Chief Scientific Advisor to be a member of the government, i.e. a minister, even a cabinet minister. That way the government could get the benefit of scientific advice while remaining in control of the development of policy. The problem is that not many Conservative MPs have a suitable background but there are a few, e.g. Steve Baker.
Just mulling over what you say ...
I'm not sure that Mr Johnson would even recognise that scientists were there to be disagreed with, so much as ignored except when some of the bits they said suited him. 'Scientists on tap not on top' was what hsi hero Mr Churchill said, did he not?
Also, the Conservative Party policy over the last few decades bas been to , erm, downgrade and dispose of in-house scientific expertise - Royal Signals and Radar Establishment, Laboratory of the Government Chemist, Forensic Science Service all come to mind.
But you are right, there is no CSA position comparable with the Lord Chancellor - though I also wonder about what happens when the scientist is advising outwith his or her realm, apart from understanding how science and the scientific method work in general. A biologist might find it hard to judge on say climatology. Does the biologist then act as a politician? But one of Mrs T's greater achievements was reacting strongly to the ozone layer crisis. Would a Balliol classicist have been as quick as a Somerville chemist, I wonder?
You might know better than i how well Solly Zuckermann functioned as an advisor with a research backgroind in primate anatomy and society.
My only comment on this is that not all scientists have more wisdom about science than some non-scientists. For a formal Chief Government Scientist to provide advice at a political level, I think you'd need something of a scientist philosopher.
That's swings of 8.5% and 6.5% away from Trump in Oklahoma and Kentucky. Senior retired Republicans are queuing up to be negative about Trump or even endorse Biden. But the White House is trailing a big "unity" address to the nation this week. The Donald, he can do anything. From the great polariser to the great unifier? Something "great" anyway. He's the greatest and realest, and nothing like a loser or a fake. He can be the unifiers' unifier if he chooses. Best of luck with that. Not sure I've ever seen a US leader so busted this far out.
Yep. Too late now. Some people are on the pitch. The fat lady is fingering her mike. Coronavirus was a golden opportunity to reinvent himself as a credible president. Indeed I was slightly scared that he would somehow manage to do so - it was his one clear chance to head off the big defeat in November that I have long thought inevitable.
But I needn't have worried. The situation merely exposed his almost comical limitations further. He simply does not have the capability to speak or lead in a 'national interest' manner. When he tries it looks and sounds ridiculous because it is so clearly phony. And on top of this you have the glaring lack of competence which is hard to hide when there is a genuine crisis on.
So, sure, he may have another go at 'presidential' but the result will be the same. It will come over as false. Few will be swayed and of those who are it will as likely be the other way. For his hardcore supporters it might still be a case of "To know him is to love him," but for everybody else the opposite now applies. He appears, he speaks, he net repels.
His best re-election strategy in my view would be one of minimalist blandness from here until polling day. Keep his head down. Stay out of the news. But of course it has no chance of being adopted. Instead it will be double down on Boast, Blame, Bluster. Chances of this securing many votes other than his base and those outside it who would vote Republican regardless? Slim to zero. He's toast.
I kind of agree that it's a bit late for him to start acting presidential now. Part of Trump's appeal is that his supporters think that he "tells it likes it is". That doesn't mean he doesn't lie, but when he lies it is entirely in keeping with his character. That's also partly why things like "grab 'em by the pussy" weren't fatal for him. It was obnoxious, but consistent. He's a consistently obnoxious guy. To suddenly switch now would probably turn off his core vote, without convincing anyone else. His best chance is to try and reduce the numbers voting for the other guy, by whatever means. Like everyone says, it's probably going to get really dirty (unless he gives up and starts his own Trumped Up News Channel: "All fake, all of the time!").
It's like the Presidency has been in the hands of a pub boor. It's beginning to seem though that some of his boorish supporters are starting to notice it isn't a good way to run the show.
I like this analogy a lot. It leads to an image of him (very soon) as the loud drunken boor in the pub, standing alone now, well past closing time, still going on and on and on, as the staff start clearing up and preparing to 'have a word'.
Which is one of the exact ways I picture things.
Not exactly alone. He's perhaps more like the school bully, with his gang following, that the majority have finally got utterly fed up with. And is now due a good kicking.
I've been posting on this site for over 15 years. I have never been accused of being a racist. Nor in my lifetime before. Not even at the most passionate heights of the Brexit debate, or the UKIP surge before it.
In the last few days, I've had at least two posters on here make this accusation directly at me. One subsequently withdrew it but they were both made casually and cheaply - with little thought.
This is a really unpleasant and nasty effect of these current riots. It's making many people meaner and less inclined to dialogue. It's absenting the crowd to those with the loudest and strongest voices to dictate what people are meant to think and say, and worrying others with reservations into silence.
It explains precisely why there is so little challenge and debate around some of the assumptions and motives underlying the actions of the perpetrators, and it's unclear how far those will now advance unchecked and what the consequences will be.
I truly fear for the future of this country, I really do.
To be clear I cant know if you are a racist or not, I said I can see why people think you are from your posting. Using racist memes like guests have to live differently, intentional or not, is going to cause offence.
I won't be engaging with you further on this subject.
If you can find it within you to offer an unreserved apology so we can re-set relations, then I will be happy to do so again.
Not until then.
I think you are being overly sensitive.
When you use an analogy such as "house guest" in the context of this particular debate, I think you need to accept (or at least consider) the feedback from others that it is not appropriate. Crass even. And if you disagree and wish to stick with it be prepared to expand and develop the analogy to demonstrate how it does in fact work and was a good choice.
I am very happy to be your disinterested and empathetic counterparty for such an exchange.
I`ve worked in the Middle East (Bahrain), and visited places such as Gibraltar many times, and witnessed (to my disappointment) British expats living there, setting up little communities within communities, UK themed pubs, Union Jacks displayed, no attempt whatsoever to learn the local language or join in with local customs or even make friends with local people. They are trying to export a chunk of Britain abroad. I find this depressing, unintelligent and downright rude.
I think that "house guest" is an unwise phrase to use. But the British expats I cite above are house guests in the loose sort of way that I think CR means. And they warrant our disapproval. And I wouldn`t call Bahraini or Spanish people racist in pointing this out.
It's not at all how CR meant the analogy, but Gibraltar is 'our house' (For now at least).
It isn’t at all.
Nevertheless if I was a public figure I’d probably be resigning by the end of the day. What would happen is people like @kinabalu@kamski and @noneoftheabove would whip up a twitterstorm about it, selectively quote it, ascribe a motive, demand action and then the BBC/C4 would pick up on it and report it. And then authority figures would be challenged as to why I was still in post. It would matter about the nuance. Most wouldn’t care.
It does explain why so few people in authority want to challenge simple assumptions in complex ways in highly emotional times.
Why take the risk? The upside is minimal and the downside huge.
A Guardian journo asked this question at the press briefing yesterday:
"If Britain is not a racist country, which implies there is no structural racism in the UK, please can you explain why black, Asian and minority ethnic people are disproportionally dying from Covid 19".
I can`t even begin to enter the mindset of someone who asks such a stupid question as this. Hancock should have torn him a new one. He didn`t of course - he came up with meaningless pandering shite.
These 'journalists' are insane. Why on earth should the government even bother taking questions from what are no longer newspapers, but political campaign groups in all but name - and particularly stupid ones at that?
Day 1, perhaps actual lockdown announcement day: at the annoucement press conference, some Lefty "journalist" from some nonsuch Lefty online rag asked BoJo whether if people disobeyed the lockdown guidance the police would enforce it. Boris audibly recoiled as though it was the most ridiculous thing he had heard. "Police??" he said "I don't think we'll be getting the police involved."
The Very Next Day: Boris: "..and if people don't comply with these measures we will ask the police to get involved."
is why.
Ah, of course - without them the government would never have thought of using the police to enforce the law. These lefty rags are so useful after all!
Do you think they're in favour of the police enforcing the law against vandalism now?
They u-turned in <24hrs. Go back and listen to the press conference. Boris was aghast that anyone could suggest the police might be involved. And then less than a day later, policy changed.
Could it have been the Telegraph that asked the question? Of course. But they didn't. It was some lefty online rag.
Do you think that Ancelotti should have gone to Arsenal instead of Everton?</p>
Wait a minute - I watched Boris' address to the nation announcing the lockdown, and it clearly mentioned that the police would have powers to enforce it, so the exchange you're referring to must have happened before it was implemented.
Even if you're correct - which I'm prepared to grant because I honestly don't remember what was said in every press conference - do you really think the government wouldn't have reconsidered the necessary means of enforcement as soon as it arose as a practical problem? I don't quite see that question as an irreplaceable service to the nation - and not one that outweighs their utter shitness ever since.
It was a small but significant example of a diverse (small "d") press being a useful, not to say vital element of a functioning democracy.
I'm not proposing to ban the twats, not least because I'm almost absolutist when it comes to free speech. But I do think they should be treated as what they are - a political campaign group whose entire raison d'être is to change the government. More speech, if you will.
What papers do you read? Those paragons of impartiality the Daily Brexitograph, or perhaps you prefer the Daily Mail or the Daily Diana/Express?
More sculpture news. Since Leopold was inarguably a bad 'un, slightly amazing that it was still there. Perhaps my own prejudices but royals seem to get more of a free pass than yer plebeian genocidal arsehole.
I've been posting on this site for over 15 years. I have never been accused of being a racist. Nor in my lifetime before. Not even at the most passionate heights of the Brexit debate, or the UKIP surge before it.
In the last few days, I've had at least two posters on here make this accusation directly at me. One subsequently withdrew it but they were both made casually and cheaply - with little thought.
This is a really unpleasant and nasty effect of these current riots. It's making many people meaner and less inclined to dialogue. It's absenting the crowd to those with the loudest and strongest voices to dictate what people are meant to think and say, and worrying others with reservations into silence.
It explains precisely why there is so little challenge and debate around some of the assumptions and motives underlying the actions of the perpetrators, and it's unclear how far those will now advance unchecked and what the consequences will be.
I truly fear for the future of this country, I really do.
To be clear I cant know if you are a racist or not, I said I can see why people think you are from your posting. Using racist memes like guests have to live differently, intentional or not, is going to cause offence.
I won't be engaging with you further on this subject.
If you can find it within you to offer an unreserved apology so we can re-set relations, then I will be happy to do so again.
Not until then.
I think you are being overly sensitive.
When you use an analogy such as "house guest" in the context of this particular debate, I think you need to accept (or at least consider) the feedback from others that it is not appropriate. Crass even. And if you disagree and wish to stick with it be prepared to expand and develop the analogy to demonstrate how it does in fact work and was a good choice.
I am very happy to be your disinterested and empathetic counterparty for such an exchange.
I`ve worked in the Middle East (Bahrain), and visited places such as Gibraltar many times, and witnessed (to my disappointment) British expats living there, setting up little communities within communities, UK themed pubs, Union Jacks displayed, no attempt whatsoever to learn the local language or join in with local customs or even make friends with local people. They are trying to export a chunk of Britain abroad. I find this depressing, unintelligent and downright rude.
I think that "house guest" is an unwise phrase to use. But the British expats I cite above are house guests in the loose sort of way that I think CR means. And they warrant our disapproval. And I wouldn`t call Bahraini or Spanish people racist in pointing this out.
It's not at all how CR meant the analogy, but Gibraltar is 'our house' (For now at least).
It isn’t at all.
Nevertheless if I was a public figure I’d probably be resigning by the end of the day. What would happen is people like @kinabalu@kamski and @noneoftheabove would whip up a twitterstorm about it, selectively quote it, ascribe a motive, demand action and then the BBC/C4 would pick up on it and report it. And then authority figures would be challenged as to why I was still in post. It would matter about the nuance. Most wouldn’t care.
It does explain why so few people in authority want to challenge simple assumptions in complex ways in highly emotional times.
Why take the risk? The upside is minimal and the downside huge.
A Guardian journo asked this question at the press briefing yesterday:
"If Britain is not a racist country, which implies there is no structural racism in the UK, please can you explain why black, Asian and minority ethnic people are disproportionally dying from Covid 19".
I can`t even begin to enter the mindset of someone who asks such a stupid question as this. Hancock should have torn him a new one. He didn`t of course - he came up with meaningless pandering shite.
These 'journalists' are insane. Why on earth should the government even bother taking questions from what are no longer newspapers, but political campaign groups in all but name - and particularly stupid ones at that?
Day 1, perhaps actual lockdown announcement day: at the annoucement press conference, some Lefty "journalist" from some nonsuch Lefty online rag asked BoJo whether if people disobeyed the lockdown guidance the police would enforce it. Boris audibly recoiled as though it was the most ridiculous thing he had heard. "Police??" he said "I don't think we'll be getting the police involved."
The Very Next Day: Boris: "..and if people don't comply with these measures we will ask the police to get involved."
is why.
Ah, of course - without them the government would never have thought of using the police to enforce the law. These lefty rags are so useful after all!
Do you think they're in favour of the police enforcing the law against vandalism now?
They u-turned in <24hrs. Go back and listen to the press conference. Boris was aghast that anyone could suggest the police might be involved. And then less than a day later, policy changed.
Could it have been the Telegraph that asked the question? Of course. But they didn't. It was some lefty online rag.
Do you think that Ancelotti should have gone to Arsenal instead of Everton?</p>
Wait a minute - I watched Boris' address to the nation announcing the lockdown, and it clearly mentioned that the police would have powers to enforce it, so the exchange you're referring to must have happened before it was implemented.
Even if you're correct - which I'm prepared to grant because I honestly don't remember what was said in every press conference - do you really think the government wouldn't have reconsidered the necessary means of enforcement as soon as it arose as a practical problem? I don't quite see that question as an irreplaceable service to the nation - and not one that outweighs their utter shitness ever since.
It was a small but significant example of a diverse (small "d") press being a useful, not to say vital element of a functioning democracy.
I'm not proposing to ban the twats, not least because I'm almost absolutist when it comes to free speech. But I do think they should be treated as what they are - a political campaign group whose entire raison d'être is to change the government. More speech, if you will.
What papers do you read? Those paragons of impartiality the Daily Brexitograph, or perhaps you prefer the Daily Mail or the Daily Diana/Express?
Even the Mail and the Telegraph will from time to time publish pro-Labour / anti-Tory etc stories, and have done so recently.
The Guardian and Mirror on the other hand, will never publish anything that diverges from their political goals. That's the difference.
That's swings of 8.5% and 6.5% away from Trump in Oklahoma and Kentucky. Senior retired Republicans are queuing up to be negative about Trump or even endorse Biden. But the White House is trailing a big "unity" address to the nation this week. The Donald, he can do anything. From the great polariser to the great unifier? Something "great" anyway. He's the greatest and realest, and nothing like a loser or a fake. He can be the unifiers' unifier if he chooses. Best of luck with that. Not sure I've ever seen a US leader so busted this far out.
Yep. Too late now. Some people are on the pitch. The fat lady is fingering her mike. Coronavirus was a golden opportunity to reinvent himself as a credible president. Indeed I was slightly scared that he would somehow manage to do so - it was his one clear chance to head off the big defeat in November that I have long thought inevitable.
But I needn't have worried. The situation merely exposed his almost comical limitations further. He simply does not have the capability to speak or lead in a 'national interest' manner. When he tries it looks and sounds ridiculous because it is so clearly phony. And on top of this you have the glaring lack of competence which is hard to hide when there is a genuine crisis on.
So, sure, he may have another go at 'presidential' but the result will be the same. It will come over as false. Few will be swayed and of those who are it will as likely be the other way. For his hardcore supporters it might still be a case of "To know him is to love him," but for everybody else the opposite now applies. He appears, he speaks, he net repels.
His best re-election strategy in my view would be one of minimalist blandness from here until polling day. Keep his head down. Stay out of the news. But of course it has no chance of being adopted. Instead it will be double down on Boast, Blame, Bluster. Chances of this securing many votes other than his base and those outside it who would vote Republican regardless? Slim to zero. He's toast.
I kind of agree that it's a bit late for him to start acting presidential now. Part of Trump's appeal is that his supporters think that he "tells it likes it is". That doesn't mean he doesn't lie, but when he lies it is entirely in keeping with his character. That's also partly why things like "grab 'em by the pussy" weren't fatal for him. It was obnoxious, but consistent. He's a consistently obnoxious guy. To suddenly switch now would probably turn off his core vote, without convincing anyone else. His best chance is to try and reduce the numbers voting for the other guy, by whatever means. Like everyone says, it's probably going to get really dirty (unless he gives up and starts his own Trumped Up News Channel: "All fake, all of the time!").
It's like the Presidency has been in the hands of a pub boor. It's beginning to seem though that some of his boorish supporters are starting to notice it isn't a good way to run the show.
I like this analogy a lot. It leads to an image of him (very soon) as the loud drunken boor in the pub, standing alone now, well past closing time, still going on and on and on, as the staff start clearing up and preparing to 'have a word'.
Which is one of the exact ways I picture things.
He'd definitely be one of these tossers who never buys his round and takes 7/8 drunk pints back to the bar saying it was 'off'.
- Mmm. Met them.
Cue here for a particularly literal minded Trumpton to nip in with -
But he's tee total! Brother died from drink so he's never touched a drop. Mark of the man.
Yes, I always find that surprising. At least when Yeltsin was inarticulate he had an excuse. Trump does sound like a pub bore who has had far too many - the weird thing is that he actually sober!
I tried wading into an argument with PG Tips and Yorkshire Tea on Twitter this morning.
That was a mistake. I basically disagree with everyone.
Twitter is utterly moronic.
You are aware it all started because a Right wing facist tried to go point scoring using Yorkshire Tea as an example.
Yorkshire tea not being idiots didn't want to get involved in something that wasn't their concern but had no choice but to which resulted in their response.
So if you are on the anti- Yorkshire tea / PG Tips side of the argument you've proved Sunil's previous statement about you to be correct.
I don't think you can make that claim without seeing what was said.
I saw both Yorkshire tea and PG Tips initial responses - given the person pushing the point they really did have to respond.
Did they? Why couldn't they have ignored it?
Why are you taking offence at a couple of tea brands wanting to make sure they aren't associated with a fascist?
I am advising companies not to rise to the bait, because it will end up with mischaracterised polarisation (to both sides) that will do them, and us, no good.
That's why I said earlier I ended up disagreeing with basically everyone on Twitter on this issue.
Are you a social media marketing expert? I thought you worked on infrastructure projects.
Social Media Marketing experts actually have a strategy for dealing with this type of issue. Yorkshire tea and PG Tips are both following it.
And the fact that you as a completely unqualified person seem to be happy tell companies how to handle something in direct contradiction to what I suspect very expensive advice has told them to do (looking at the time frame between the initial post and Yorkshire Teas reply) tells me an awful lot..
My only question is why would someone who claims not to be racist gets involved in an argument that was started by racists when it has absolutely nothing to do with him. I mean I know everyone is bored but there are easier places (like here) to have a discussion
You think expensive advice from social media experts, who are possibly subject to confirmation bias, is beyond re-approach?
I have a pig to sell you.
I was trying to see if I could damp down the culture wars. That's all.
Please don't associate with me racism again, either indirectly or otherwise.
Nope but I suspect the consultants know what they are aiming to do with past examples of what worked and what doesn't and so have justification for the approach they suggest.
Where I am at a loss is understanding why you (or anyone sane) went into an argument that was created by racists. It's like trying to referee a battle between Russia and China over Siberia - no side is going to welcome you interference and the best you can hope for is frost bite.
And the consequences of getting involved is that everyone else looks at you and asks whose side are you actually on.
More sculpture news. Since Leopold was inarguably a bad 'un, slightly amazing that it was still there. Perhaps my own prejudices but royals seem to get more of a free pass than yer plebeian genocidal arsehole.
He was a seriously serious piece of shit (but I think not a slaver; he left them free but cut their hands off). But without him no Heart of Darkness, no Apocalypse Now.
I've been posting on this site for over 15 years. I have never been accused of being a racist. Nor in my lifetime before. Not even at the most passionate heights of the Brexit debate, or the UKIP surge before it.
In the last few days, I've had at least two posters on here make this accusation directly at me. One subsequently withdrew it but they were both made casually and cheaply - with little thought.
This is a really unpleasant and nasty effect of these current riots. It's making many people meaner and less inclined to dialogue. It's absenting the crowd to those with the loudest and strongest voices to dictate what people are meant to think and say, and worrying others with reservations into silence.
It explains precisely why there is so little challenge and debate around some of the assumptions and motives underlying the actions of the perpetrators, and it's unclear how far those will now advance unchecked and what the consequences will be.
I truly fear for the future of this country, I really do.
To be clear I cant know if you are a racist or not, I said I can see why people think you are from your posting. Using racist memes like guests have to live differently, intentional or not, is going to cause offence.
I won't be engaging with you further on this subject.
If you can find it within you to offer an unreserved apology so we can re-set relations, then I will be happy to do so again.
Not until then.
I think you are being overly sensitive.
When you use an analogy such as "house guest" in the context of this particular debate, I think you need to accept (or at least consider) the feedback from others that it is not appropriate. Crass even. And if you disagree and wish to stick with it be prepared to expand and develop the analogy to demonstrate how it does in fact work and was a good choice.
I am very happy to be your disinterested and empathetic counterparty for such an exchange.
I`ve worked in the Middle East (Bahrain), and visited places such as Gibraltar many times, and witnessed (to my disappointment) British expats living there, setting up little communities within communities, UK themed pubs, Union Jacks displayed, no attempt whatsoever to learn the local language or join in with local customs or even make friends with local people. They are trying to export a chunk of Britain abroad. I find this depressing, unintelligent and downright rude.
I think that "house guest" is an unwise phrase to use. But the British expats I cite above are house guests in the loose sort of way that I think CR means. And they warrant our disapproval. And I wouldn`t call Bahraini or Spanish people racist in pointing this out.
It's not at all how CR meant the analogy, but Gibraltar is 'our house' (For now at least).
It isn’t at all.
Nevertheless if I was a public figure I’d probably be resigning by the end of the day. What would happen is people like @kinabalu@kamski and @noneoftheabove would whip up a twitterstorm about it, selectively quote it, ascribe a motive, demand action and then the BBC/C4 would pick up on it and report it. And then authority figures would be challenged as to why I was still in post. It would matter about the nuance. Most wouldn’t care.
It does explain why so few people in authority want to challenge simple assumptions in complex ways in highly emotional times.
Why take the risk? The upside is minimal and the downside huge.
A Guardian journo asked this question at the press briefing yesterday:
"If Britain is not a racist country, which implies there is no structural racism in the UK, please can you explain why black, Asian and minority ethnic people are disproportionally dying from Covid 19".
I can`t even begin to enter the mindset of someone who asks such a stupid question as this. Hancock should have torn him a new one. He didn`t of course - he came up with meaningless pandering shite.
These 'journalists' are insane. Why on earth should the government even bother taking questions from what are no longer newspapers, but political campaign groups in all but name - and particularly stupid ones at that?
Day 1, perhaps actual lockdown announcement day: at the annoucement press conference, some Lefty "journalist" from some nonsuch Lefty online rag asked BoJo whether if people disobeyed the lockdown guidance the police would enforce it. Boris audibly recoiled as though it was the most ridiculous thing he had heard. "Police??" he said "I don't think we'll be getting the police involved."
The Very Next Day: Boris: "..and if people don't comply with these measures we will ask the police to get involved."
is why.
Ah, of course - without them the government would never have thought of using the police to enforce the law. These lefty rags are so useful after all!
Do you think they're in favour of the police enforcing the law against vandalism now?
They u-turned in <24hrs. Go back and listen to the press conference. Boris was aghast that anyone could suggest the police might be involved. And then less than a day later, policy changed.
Could it have been the Telegraph that asked the question? Of course. But they didn't. It was some lefty online rag.
Do you think that Ancelotti should have gone to Arsenal instead of Everton?</p>
Wait a minute - I watched Boris' address to the nation announcing the lockdown, and it clearly mentioned that the police would have powers to enforce it, so the exchange you're referring to must have happened before it was implemented.
Even if you're correct - which I'm prepared to grant because I honestly don't remember what was said in every press conference - do you really think the government wouldn't have reconsidered the necessary means of enforcement as soon as it arose as a practical problem? I don't quite see that question as an irreplaceable service to the nation - and not one that outweighs their utter shitness ever since.
It was a small but significant example of a diverse (small "d") press being a useful, not to say vital element of a functioning democracy.
I'm not proposing to ban the twats, not least because I'm almost absolutist when it comes to free speech. But I do think they should be treated as what they are - a political campaign group whose entire raison d'être is to change the government. More speech, if you will.
What papers do you read? Those paragons of impartiality the Daily Brexitograph, or perhaps you prefer the Daily Mail or the Daily Diana/Express?
Even the Mail and the Telegraph will from time to time publish pro-Labour / anti-Tory etc stories, and have done so recently.
The Guardian and Mirror on the other hand, will never publish anything that diverges from their political goals. That's the difference.
I think your name tells us everything we need to know about your ability to objectively assess such a difference. I suspect you don't often read the Guardian to test you theory, let alone the Mirror. I would imagine your idea of an anti-Tory story would be one that was mildly critical of the Dominic Cummings!!
Earl Grey tea is the scrapings off the tea factory floor, that is why they add flavourings to it. I quite like it, but the fact it is marketed as a luxury product is hilarious.
That is quite the stupidest piece of misinformation I have ever seen anywhere on the internet. Well done.
Really? I learned it at the national tea museum in Sri Lanka, I think. They were very sniffy about putting flavourings in tea and said it was mostly done to disguise poor quality tea.
I've been posting on this site for over 15 years. I have never been accused of being a racist. Nor in my lifetime before. Not even at the most passionate heights of the Brexit debate, or the UKIP surge before it.
In the last few days, I've had at least two posters on here make this accusation directly at me. One subsequently withdrew it but they were both made casually and cheaply - with little thought.
This is a really unpleasant and nasty effect of these current riots. It's making many people meaner and less inclined to dialogue. It's absenting the crowd to those with the loudest and strongest voices to dictate what people are meant to think and say, and worrying others with reservations into silence.
It explains precisely why there is so little challenge and debate around some of the assumptions and motives underlying the actions of the perpetrators, and it's unclear how far those will now advance unchecked and what the consequences will be.
I truly fear for the future of this country, I really do.
To be clear I cant know if you are a racist or not, I said I can see why people think you are from your posting. Using racist memes like guests have to live differently, intentional or not, is going to cause offence.
I won't be engaging with you further on this subject.
If you can find it within you to offer an unreserved apology so we can re-set relations, then I will be happy to do so again.
Not until then.
I think you are being overly sensitive.
When you use an analogy such as "house guest" in the context of this particular debate, I think you need to accept (or at least consider) the feedback from others that it is not appropriate. Crass even. And if you disagree and wish to stick with it be prepared to expand and develop the analogy to demonstrate how it does in fact work and was a good choice.
I am very happy to be your disinterested and empathetic counterparty for such an exchange.
I`ve worked in the Middle East (Bahrain), and visited places such as Gibraltar many times, and witnessed (to my disappointment) British expats living there, setting up little communities within communities, UK themed pubs, Union Jacks displayed, no attempt whatsoever to learn the local language or join in with local customs or even make friends with local people. They are trying to export a chunk of Britain abroad. I find this depressing, unintelligent and downright rude.
I think that "house guest" is an unwise phrase to use. But the British expats I cite above are house guests in the loose sort of way that I think CR means. And they warrant our disapproval. And I wouldn`t call Bahraini or Spanish people racist in pointing this out.
It's not at all how CR meant the analogy, but Gibraltar is 'our house' (For now at least).
It isn’t at all.
Nevertheless if I was a public figure I’d probably be resigning by the end of the day. What would happen is people like @kinabalu@kamski and @noneoftheabove would whip up a twitterstorm about it, selectively quote it, ascribe a motive, demand action and then the BBC/C4 would pick up on it and report it. And then authority figures would be challenged as to why I was still in post. It would matter about the nuance. Most wouldn’t care.
It does explain why so few people in authority want to challenge simple assumptions in complex ways in highly emotional times.
Why take the risk? The upside is minimal and the downside huge.
A Guardian journo asked this question at the press briefing yesterday:
"If Britain is not a racist country, which implies there is no structural racism in the UK, please can you explain why black, Asian and minority ethnic people are disproportionally dying from Covid 19".
I can`t even begin to enter the mindset of someone who asks such a stupid question as this. Hancock should have torn him a new one. He didn`t of course - he came up with meaningless pandering shite.
These 'journalists' are insane. Why on earth should the government even bother taking questions from what are no longer newspapers, but political campaign groups in all but name - and particularly stupid ones at that?
Day 1, perhaps actual lockdown announcement day: at the annoucement press conference, some Lefty "journalist" from some nonsuch Lefty online rag asked BoJo whether if people disobeyed the lockdown guidance the police would enforce it. Boris audibly recoiled as though it was the most ridiculous thing he had heard. "Police??" he said "I don't think we'll be getting the police involved."
The Very Next Day: Boris: "..and if people don't comply with these measures we will ask the police to get involved."
is why.
Ah, of course - without them the government would never have thought of using the police to enforce the law. These lefty rags are so useful after all!
Do you think they're in favour of the police enforcing the law against vandalism now?
They u-turned in <24hrs. Go back and listen to the press conference. Boris was aghast that anyone could suggest the police might be involved. And then less than a day later, policy changed.
Could it have been the Telegraph that asked the question? Of course. But they didn't. It was some lefty online rag.
Do you think that Ancelotti should have gone to Arsenal instead of Everton?</p>
Wait a minute - I watched Boris' address to the nation announcing the lockdown, and it clearly mentioned that the police would have powers to enforce it, so the exchange you're referring to must have happened before it was implemented.
Even if you're correct - which I'm prepared to grant because I honestly don't remember what was said in every press conference - do you really think the government wouldn't have reconsidered the necessary means of enforcement as soon as it arose as a practical problem? I don't quite see that question as an irreplaceable service to the nation - and not one that outweighs their utter shitness ever since.
It was a small but significant example of a diverse (small "d") press being a useful, not to say vital element of a functioning democracy.
I'm not proposing to ban the twats, not least because I'm almost absolutist when it comes to free speech. But I do think they should be treated as what they are - a political campaign group whose entire raison d'être is to change the government. More speech, if you will.
Well on this occasion they did indeed change the government. And it's fine to have a press which is politically motivated. I think the Telegraph comfortably outsells An Phoblacht so we as punters will make our choices.
More sculpture news. Since Leopold was inarguably a bad 'un, slightly amazing that it was still there. Perhaps my own prejudices but royals seem to get more of a free pass than yer plebeian genocidal arsehole.
He was a seriously serious piece of shit (but I think not a slaver; he left them free but cut their hands off). But without him no Heart of Darkness, no Apocalypse Now.
This is all getting close to the taliban when they got rid of any monuments deemed non islamic. Really society should act a little more grown up and less emotional at this time
I cautioned against this. I said that however well-intentioned they are they'd end up being seen to pick a side and it was better for businesses to steer clear of politics. Because having culture wars extend into the corporate world - ending up with the politicisation of absolutely everything - won't end well for businesses or consumers.
Yes, well I am a consultant. And I enjoy being devil's advocate and provoking an argument. I live in hope somebody picks it up and at least thinks about it behind the scenes.
But it was probably a mistake. The choices on Twitter seemed to be you could be branded as a fellow fascist, independent racist or a fellow Left-wing warrior.
Nothing else. So probably best to duck out as there's no room for nuance.
The question is, does it hurt to play to the crowd on Twitter? They've upset you, but how many of their core demographic will see this Twitter storm? Probably not that many. So it probably doesn't harm them to please the vast majority of the Twatterati.
Yes, I suppose Twitter is a kind of potential market and has to be treated accordingly. If someone launched a 'Waterloo' brand in France it would rightly be regarded as the business strategy of the madhouse. Equally you don't go on Twitter and give your brand reactionary undertones. Simply not good for sales.
Earl Grey tea is the scrapings off the tea factory floor, that is why they add flavourings to it. I quite like it, but the fact it is marketed as a luxury product is hilarious.
That is quite the stupidest piece of misinformation I have ever seen anywhere on the internet. Well done.
Really? I learned it at the national tea museum in Sri Lanka, I think. They were very sniffy about putting flavourings in tea and said it was mostly done to disguise poor quality tea.
It is any tea which has bergamot orange flavouring added to it. Almost all varieties are based on broken leaf tea, which floor sweepings can't be passed off as (unlike CTC tea). Personally I think tea should taste of tea rather than oranges, but the problem with almost all Earl Grey is the flavouring more than the tea itself.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Are you me? Hardly a stone would remain standing upon stone if I could have my way with the aesthetic nightmares blighting so many of our cities. Their sheer ugliness causes more psychological harm on a daily basis than an ideologically-incorrect statue ever could. In fact, if you read the justifications modern architects come up with for their vainglorious carbuncles, you often find that their analyses work beautifully on the level of concept and ideology, but fail miserably in the physical, visual, and human sphere ... which is where their buildings actually fucking exist!
High density housing and a thriving commercial space in one. This is how we should regenerate town centres.
Do we need a Bomber Harris before we can do that stuff?
Or Herman Goering? Who did for a fair bit of the area around Teddy Colston's simulacrum?
Not when you have urban planners and modern architects.
Well yes, Clydebank suggests we don't do well with a clean slate. Tbh I was thinking more of friendly bombs falling on what the urban planners and modern architects have produced.
There's a recurring meme in Glasgow that a lot of the tenement housing (eg in the Gorbals) was of such poor quality that it couldn't be upgraded or preserved, so the year zero guys were allowed to run riot in the 50s and 60s on the basis that something had to be be done. That seems quite odd nowadays when expensive extreme measures in terms of new foundations and shoring up are taken to keep tenements literally on the road. Also strange that since the tenement is absolutely THE vernacular style of housing in Glasgow and other Scottish cities hardly anything is done to faithfully reproduce it as in the form of the Dresden developments highlighted by William Glenn, or much of Berlin, a city with which I'm slightly familiar.
Even Edinburgh hasn't been immune. If you look at Princes Street (still beautiful by the way), it contains various monstrosities, as part of a brave new plan (in the 60's) to demolish all the Victorian and Georgian shop frontages, and replace them with a modern shopping precinct on two levels, with a one storey walkable balcony running the length of it.
It truly boggles the mind.
What slightly bothers me is that now we've woken up a lot more to looking after our heritage, but we've fallen into the trap of thinking that the 60's carbuncles somehow deserve preservation too.
Golly, I hadn't realised that they were thinking quite that far outside the envelope re. Princes St. Actually in Glasgow they seem to have come up with quite a decent cunning plan, to cover over the M8 where it runs through Charing Cross and turn it into an open pedestrian space. Whether that'll come off now in these straitened times, who knows?
I'm not entirely anti brutalism, I quite like the South Bank for its absolute unwillingness to ingratiate for example, and the likes of Poundbury leave me a little queasy.
edit: I see the brave new plan for Princes St is from the 60s, still wouldn't put it past them today though.
Thankfully you'd never get away with it today. It's not stopping some horrors still being built, but they tend not to be demolishing beautiful frontages to do it.
I respectfully diverge from you (and @williamglenn) on the subject of Poundbury, because for all it's air of silliness, people do want to live and work there, because the environment at least tries to be beautiful.
What would be good I think is some objective standard of beauty in buildings based on what is naturally appealing to the human eye. We instinctively prefer lightness and colour to darkness and grey - probably because it evokes cleanliness. We usually prefer ornament to lack of ornament, because it signifies effort and expense. We prefer deeper window recesses, probably because they signify thicker walls and therefore greater safety and security. We prefer stone, brick and other materials that connect a building with its landscape, to concrete.
If we can get this down, we can probably judge objectively that a monstrous pile of dark grey concrete, pebble-dashing, thin metal framed windows, with wind-swept overpasses, never looked good, isn't going to start looking good, isn't going to 'come back into fashion', doesn't deserve preservation.
At the moment, Historic Environment Scotland (I think that's the agency) and English Heritage frown heavily on new buildings done in the style of old buildings. I think that's a mistake. I love the modern extension to the National Museum in Edinburgh - but would we really be sorry if the 1960's crap on Princes Street disappeared behind a plausible Georgian pastiche?
To be an exact replica, which is not of course what you are advocating, you'd have to reopen the quarries at Hailes and Craigleith to get the right stone, which is prtobably impossible now even if the residents were evicted, then the windows would hsve to be different in design, and so on. How close is plausible before it just looks odd? I can see that a modern building using say Clashach stone from the Moray Firth and so on could work better - and indeed an example of that stone is seen in the modern extension to the National Museum.
But I must admit that Poundbury gives me the absolute screaming willies. I came across it unexpectedly one evening when staying in Dorchester and looking for somewhere to eat at dusk. I couldn't understand why I was feeling so uneasy till I realised the buildings were modern - the proportions were wrong, Queen Anne brick houses with tiny modern plastic windows. But what got me were the building stones where those were used. Blue Lias stone on one building and then the next had oolite rubble and the one after that Middle Lias ironstone, and this in Dorset where the stone and location are absolutely linked. Like an Inspector Morse episode where they go into a door from one colleage quadrangle and appear in another a mile away. And (this my partner spotted) no front gardens to the houses either. Going back in daylight didn't improve it, though in fairness it's a nice enough place to live. Though the later phases don't seem so nice (however defined).
I agree about 1960s and 70s Princes Street - mostly (I am sure one or two of the smaller shops might be quite nice but can't remember offhand!).
Interesting what you say about the stone. However, most modern developments in the centre of Edinburgh (like Primark on Princes Street) seem to have a source of similar looking stone for cladding. Perhaps it's just reconstituted or reclaimed stuff they use.
And I can't argue with you about Poundbury because I've never been. Photographs look relatively plausible, though I agree about the windows, they're always a dead giveaway. Either way, people would prefer to live there approximately a million times more than living in Milton Keynes. So that's 1- nil for HRH and his pillars and porticos.
More sculpture news. Since Leopold was inarguably a bad 'un, slightly amazing that it was still there. Perhaps my own prejudices but royals seem to get more of a free pass than yer plebeian genocidal arsehole.
But they are caving in to mob rule. It's a slippery slope. Now they will have to ask someone to nuke Antwerp because some of the buildings were built with colonial money.
I cautioned against this. I said that however well-intentioned they are they'd end up being seen to pick a side and it was better for businesses to steer clear of politics. Because having culture wars extend into the corporate world - ending up with the politicisation of absolutely everything - won't end well for businesses or consumers.
Yes, well I am a consultant. And I enjoy being devil's advocate and provoking an argument. I live in hope somebody picks it up and at least thinks about it behind the scenes.
But it was probably a mistake. The choices on Twitter seemed to be you could be branded as a fellow fascist, independent racist or a fellow Left-wing warrior.
Nothing else. So probably best to duck out as there's no room for nuance.
The question is, does it hurt to play to the crowd on Twitter? They've upset you, but how many of their core demographic will see this Twitter storm? Probably not that many. So it probably doesn't harm them to please the vast majority of the Twatterati.
Yes, I suppose Twitter is a kind of potential market and has to be treated accordingly. If someone launched a 'Waterloo' brand in France it would rightly be regarded as the business strategy of the madhouse. Equally you don't go on Twitter and give your brand reactionary undertones. Simply not good for sales.
In this case it wasn't playing to a crowd - Yorkshire Tea was pushed into a right wing (racist /fascist) corner and left with no choice but to extract themselves from it as both sides waited for a response.
Mr. Divvie, any plans to tear down statues of a man who killed the king of Scotland in a supposedly peaceful meeting at a church?
Comyn was actually ex Guardian of Scotland rather than king, though I daresay he fancied the job as much as Bruce.
My surname is a variation of the name Comyn and my dad half seriously said we were his descendants. That gives me first dibs on retribution, so I magnanimously say no plans.
I've been posting on this site for over 15 years. I have never been accused of being a racist. Nor in my lifetime before. Not even at the most passionate heights of the Brexit debate, or the UKIP surge before it.
In the last few days, I've had at least two posters on here make this accusation directly at me. One subsequently withdrew it but they were both made casually and cheaply - with little thought.
This is a really unpleasant and nasty effect of these current riots. It's making many people meaner and less inclined to dialogue. It's absenting the crowd to those with the loudest and strongest voices to dictate what people are meant to think and say, and worrying others with reservations into silence.
It explains precisely why there is so little challenge and debate around some of the assumptions and motives underlying the actions of the perpetrators, and it's unclear how far those will now advance unchecked and what the consequences will be.
I truly fear for the future of this country, I really do.
To be clear I cant know if you are a racist or not, I said I can see why people think you are from your posting. Using racist memes like guests have to live differently, intentional or not, is going to cause offence.
I won't be engaging with you further on this subject.
If you can find it within you to offer an unreserved apology so we can re-set relations, then I will be happy to do so again.
Not until then.
I think you are being overly sensitive.
When you use an analogy such as "house guest" in the context of this particular debate, I think you need to accept (or at least consider) the feedback from others that it is not appropriate. Crass even. And if you disagree and wish to stick with it be prepared to expand and develop the analogy to demonstrate how it does in fact work and was a good choice.
I am very happy to be your disinterested and empathetic counterparty for such an exchange.
I`ve worked in the Middle East (Bahrain), and visited places such as Gibraltar many times, and witnessed (to my disappointment) British expats living there, setting up little communities within communities, UK themed pubs, Union Jacks displayed, no attempt whatsoever to learn the local language or join in with local customs or even make friends with local people. They are trying to export a chunk of Britain abroad. I find this depressing, unintelligent and downright rude.
I think that "house guest" is an unwise phrase to use. But the British expats I cite above are house guests in the loose sort of way that I think CR means. And they warrant our disapproval. And I wouldn`t call Bahraini or Spanish people racist in pointing this out.
It's not at all how CR meant the analogy, but Gibraltar is 'our house' (For now at least).
It isn’t at all.
Nevertheless if I was a public figure I’d probably be resigning by the end of the day. What would happen is people like @kinabalu@kamski and @noneoftheabove would whip up a twitterstorm about it, selectively quote it, ascribe a motive, demand action and then the BBC/C4 would pick up on it and report it. And then authority figures would be challenged as to why I was still in post. It would matter about the nuance. Most wouldn’t care.
It does explain why so few people in authority want to challenge simple assumptions in complex ways in highly emotional times.
Why take the risk? The upside is minimal and the downside huge.
A Guardian journo asked this question at the press briefing yesterday:
"If Britain is not a racist country, which implies there is no structural racism in the UK, please can you explain why black, Asian and minority ethnic people are disproportionally dying from Covid 19".
I can`t even begin to enter the mindset of someone who asks such a stupid question as this. Hancock should have torn him a new one. He didn`t of course - he came up with meaningless pandering shite.
These 'journalists' are insane. Why on earth should the government even bother taking questions from what are no longer newspapers, but political campaign groups in all but name - and particularly stupid ones at that?
Day 1, perhaps actual lockdown announcement day: at the annoucement press conference, some Lefty "journalist" from some nonsuch Lefty online rag asked BoJo whether if people disobeyed the lockdown guidance the police would enforce it. Boris audibly recoiled as though it was the most ridiculous thing he had heard. "Police??" he said "I don't think we'll be getting the police involved."
The Very Next Day: Boris: "..and if people don't comply with these measures we will ask the police to get involved."
is why.
Ah, of course - without them the government would never have thought of using the police to enforce the law. These lefty rags are so useful after all!
Do you think they're in favour of the police enforcing the law against vandalism now?
They u-turned in <24hrs. Go back and listen to the press conference. Boris was aghast that anyone could suggest the police might be involved. And then less than a day later, policy changed.
Could it have been the Telegraph that asked the question? Of course. But they didn't. It was some lefty online rag.
Do you think that Ancelotti should have gone to Arsenal instead of Everton?</p>
Wait a minute - I watched Boris' address to the nation announcing the lockdown, and it clearly mentioned that the police would have powers to enforce it, so the exchange you're referring to must have happened before it was implemented.
Even if you're correct - which I'm prepared to grant because I honestly don't remember what was said in every press conference - do you really think the government wouldn't have reconsidered the necessary means of enforcement as soon as it arose as a practical problem? I don't quite see that question as an irreplaceable service to the nation - and not one that outweighs their utter shitness ever since.
It was a small but significant example of a diverse (small "d") press being a useful, not to say vital element of a functioning democracy.
I'm not proposing to ban the twats, not least because I'm almost absolutist when it comes to free speech. But I do think they should be treated as what they are - a political campaign group whose entire raison d'être is to change the government. More speech, if you will.
What papers do you read? Those paragons of impartiality the Daily Brexitograph, or perhaps you prefer the Daily Mail or the Daily Diana/Express?
Even the Mail and the Telegraph will from time to time publish pro-Labour / anti-Tory etc stories, and have done so recently.
The Guardian and Mirror on the other hand, will never publish anything that diverges from their political goals. That's the difference.
I think your name tells us everything we need to know about your ability to objectively assess such a difference. I suspect you don't often read the Guardian to test you theory, let alone the Mirror. I would imagine your idea of an anti-Tory story would be one that was mildly critical of the Dominic Cummings!!
You dont need to read either of them. . Fe if anyone ..not even lefties post links to the Daily Mirror.. at least i cannot recall seeing one for eons... as for the Guardian.. well you see the shite they write pretty much every day on here. Why inflict more of their shite on oneself??. The isn't Opus Dei ...
I've been posting on this site for over 15 years. I have never been accused of being a racist. Nor in my lifetime before. Not even at the most passionate heights of the Brexit debate, or the UKIP surge before it.
In the last few days, I've had at least two posters on here make this accusation directly at me. One subsequently withdrew it but they were both made casually and cheaply - with little thought.
This is a really unpleasant and nasty effect of these current riots. It's making many people meaner and less inclined to dialogue. It's absenting the crowd to those with the loudest and strongest voices to dictate what people are meant to think and say, and worrying others with reservations into silence.
It explains precisely why there is so little challenge and debate around some of the assumptions and motives underlying the actions of the perpetrators, and it's unclear how far those will now advance unchecked and what the consequences will be.
I truly fear for the future of this country, I really do.
To be clear I cant know if you are a racist or not, I said I can see why people think you are from your posting. Using racist memes like guests have to live differently, intentional or not, is going to cause offence.
I won't be engaging with you further on this subject.
If you can find it within you to offer an unreserved apology so we can re-set relations, then I will be happy to do so again.
Not until then.
I think you are being overly sensitive.
When you use an analogy such as "house guest" in the context of this particular debate, I think you need to accept (or at least consider) the feedback from others that it is not appropriate. Crass even. And if you disagree and wish to stick with it be prepared to expand and develop the analogy to demonstrate how it does in fact work and was a good choice.
I am very happy to be your disinterested and empathetic counterparty for such an exchange.
I`ve worked in the Middle East (Bahrain), and visited places such as Gibraltar many times, and witnessed (to my disappointment) British expats living there, setting up little communities within communities, UK themed pubs, Union Jacks displayed, no attempt whatsoever to learn the local language or join in with local customs or even make friends with local people. They are trying to export a chunk of Britain abroad. I find this depressing, unintelligent and downright rude.
I think that "house guest" is an unwise phrase to use. But the British expats I cite above are house guests in the loose sort of way that I think CR means. And they warrant our disapproval. And I wouldn`t call Bahraini or Spanish people racist in pointing this out.
It's not at all how CR meant the analogy, but Gibraltar is 'our house' (For now at least).
It isn’t at all.
Nevertheless if I was a public figure I’d probably be resigning by the end of the day. What would happen is people like @kinabalu@kamski and @noneoftheabove would whip up a twitterstorm about it, selectively quote it, ascribe a motive, demand action and then the BBC/C4 would pick up on it and report it. And then authority figures would be challenged as to why I was still in post. It would matter about the nuance. Most wouldn’t care.
It does explain why so few people in authority want to challenge simple assumptions in complex ways in highly emotional times.
Why take the risk? The upside is minimal and the downside huge.
A Guardian journo asked this question at the press briefing yesterday:
"If Britain is not a racist country, which implies there is no structural racism in the UK, please can you explain why black, Asian and minority ethnic people are disproportionally dying from Covid 19".
I can`t even begin to enter the mindset of someone who asks such a stupid question as this. Hancock should have torn him a new one. He didn`t of course - he came up with meaningless pandering shite.
These 'journalists' are insane. Why on earth should the government even bother taking questions from what are no longer newspapers, but political campaign groups in all but name - and particularly stupid ones at that?
Day 1, perhaps actual lockdown announcement day: at the annoucement press conference, some Lefty "journalist" from some nonsuch Lefty online rag asked BoJo whether if people disobeyed the lockdown guidance the police would enforce it. Boris audibly recoiled as though it was the most ridiculous thing he had heard. "Police??" he said "I don't think we'll be getting the police involved."
The Very Next Day: Boris: "..and if people don't comply with these measures we will ask the police to get involved."
is why.
Ah, of course - without them the government would never have thought of using the police to enforce the law. These lefty rags are so useful after all!
Do you think they're in favour of the police enforcing the law against vandalism now?
They u-turned in <24hrs. Go back and listen to the press conference. Boris was aghast that anyone could suggest the police might be involved. And then less than a day later, policy changed.
Could it have been the Telegraph that asked the question? Of course. But they didn't. It was some lefty online rag.
Do you think that Ancelotti should have gone to Arsenal instead of Everton?</p>
Wait a minute - I watched Boris' address to the nation announcing the lockdown, and it clearly mentioned that the police would have powers to enforce it, so the exchange you're referring to must have happened before it was implemented.
Even if you're correct - which I'm prepared to grant because I honestly don't remember what was said in every press conference - do you really think the government wouldn't have reconsidered the necessary means of enforcement as soon as it arose as a practical problem? I don't quite see that question as an irreplaceable service to the nation - and not one that outweighs their utter shitness ever since.
It was a small but significant example of a diverse (small "d") press being a useful, not to say vital element of a functioning democracy.
I'm not proposing to ban the twats, not least because I'm almost absolutist when it comes to free speech. But I do think they should be treated as what they are - a political campaign group whose entire raison d'être is to change the government. More speech, if you will.
Well on this occasion they did indeed change the government. And it's fine to have a press which is politically motivated. I think the Telegraph comfortably outsells An Phoblacht so we as punters will make our choices.
Government increasing losing the plot totally on unlocking. Looks like a dog's breakfast of personal ministerial whims rather than a plan.
Schools not to reopen for all primary as planned. Hancock now talking about "September at earliest" for secondary.
If we get an autumn wave then we could see many pupils not being in school until next spring. That would be an entire year at home.
Yet we plan to reopen shops, beer gardens, theme parks etc etc. Even talk of holidays in EU from July.
I don't think those things are necessarily contradictory. I suspect the chances of the virus spreading outside is very small. Unfortunately schools have to work indoors. I don't see why businesses and consumers should suffer just because we think they are less important than kids going to school.
For schools, I wonder if something like alternating weeks will be needed for some time whereby half the kids go one week and half the kids go the next? It won't be ideal, but we mustn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Where is the evidence that kids pass this virus on? Or even get it themselves in all but a minuscule minority?
Or have I missed something?
None whatsoever. Schools should never have been closed.
I understand closing them was only put in at the last minute.
Of course there is evidence that children can both get the virus - the ONS survey has found no statistically significant differences between the percentages infected in different age groups - and pass it on.
I agree, they can get the virus, but they very rarely suffer from it. They are about as likely to get struck by lightning as to die from COVID, if they have no comorbities.
Whether they pass it on to any significant extent is not clear. A study of one 9-year old boy in the French Alps had the boy visiting three schools whilst symptomatic, but the researchers found no evidence of transmission of the virus to other pupils in follow-up interviews and testing. There are lots of similar studies ongoing.
But until there is overwhelming evidence that children are transmitting the virus and causing a significant number of deaths overall, schools should be open, just as they are in most other European countries.
Though I know, as you say, facts don't get in the way of your opinions.
The facts are equivocal.
What isn't equivocal is the massive damage this is doing to kids' education, especially poorer kids, and to parents' jobs if they can't afford child care.
Also to abused children, who need school to get away from their difficult family situations for a few hours a day. Oh, and hungry ones, who rely on free school meals to feed them.
Closing schools was a disaster. If this virus affected children the way it does old people, there would be a case for it. But there's no case for keeping them closed when other European countries are reopening them without problems.
Much of it comes down to attitude. We've piled kids high and taught them cheap in this country. It amused me to hear a Danish primary school teacher on R5L some weeks ago explaining how they had re-opened. After detailing additional measures, she was asked how many kids in her class now. 15. Oh wow! How many before? (Obviously confused)...15.
Abolish private schools and you will be amazed how quickly class sizes come down in the state sector.
Or alternatively, cut class sizes in the state sector and watch as private schools close for lack of pupils?
Honestly, some people are really dumb.
Your solution would increase class sizes, at least in the short term, not reduce them.
I am not dumb. I think the dumb people are those who think that there will be money to cut class sizes in the state sector as long as the rich and powerful can opt out of it.
I am not convinced you are the best judge of your own ability in light of some of your more bizarre recent posts. Do you seriously think that causing a train wreck in education would help poor students? All that would happen under your proposals in the short term is an explosion in class sizes and the implosion of the teetering state sector, coupled with a sharp rise in the amount of tuition, or even 'home schooling,' paid for by wealthier parents. Who's going to suffer in that scenario? Hint - it isn't the rich.
Of course, Covid-19 coupled with pension changes is going to close a lot of private schools anyway, so in some regions (e.g. round here) it's very possible we will see what happens when they go. But if you want to get rid of private schools, you don't do it by dropping ban hammers to satisfy the personal prejudices of a lot of hardcore near-fascists like the Corbynista Labour party. You do it by making the state sector so good almost nobody will bother to pay large sums of money for an alternative. And the key to that is cutting class sizes.
Blair understood that, but never worked out how to actually achieve it (the solution was to raise taxes, but he couldn't bring himself to order Brown to do it). Gove and Cummings unfortunately did not, and their misguided reforms actually made matters worse by increasing teacher attrition rates.
I already said that I wasn't suggesting a ban, I don't think it would be feasible or consistent with human rights legislation, and it would most likely be too disruptive. I am simply saying that there is a reason the state sector is teetering, and that reason is that people of wealth and power don't care about it. If you have an alternative suggestion for getting state schools better resourced I'd love to hear it. Would love to know which of my posts you consider to be bizarre, I think I'm a pretty reasonable kind of person, certainly by PB standards.
This subject touches a nerve and I am glad you are having a bash at it. There is a great attachment to private schools from many PB posters who will at the same time maintain that equality of opportunity in education and life is one of their top priorities. For me, this does not scan at all, but there you go.
What you will find - I predict - is that in order to convince you will need to roll out a complete white paper which describes in close and compelling detail exactly how you will phase out private schools by disincentivization rather than compulsion over (say) 10 years and realize tremendous tangible benefits to all without a single negative impact, however transitory, on anything or anybody.
And even that didn't work when I did it.
Not that I'm frustrated or anything you understand.
I think a good place to start would be a royal commission on the whole education system to figure out where we are succeeding, where we are failing, what works internationally, how much money we want to spend on it and how it interacts with broader goals to increase social mobility and reduce social exclusion. Efforts should be made to have maximum political buy in and there should be a ten year programme of transformation that transcends party political divides. If the commission finds that private schools are a barrier to creating the kind of system we need then there should be a long term programme to deal with that. Nothing needs to be done hastily.
That's a Go. There can be absolutely no intention on behalf of anybody sane to propose the overnight compulsory abolition of all our private schools. Much harm would come of that. Gradual, thought through, properly sold reform is the name of the game here. It's the Starmer way after all. I wonder if he's interested in this? I suspect not overly - but I hope I'm wrong. He certainly ought to be imo.
Government increasing losing the plot totally on unlocking. Looks like a dog's breakfast of personal ministerial whims rather than a plan.
Schools not to reopen for all primary as planned. Hancock now talking about "September at earliest" for secondary.
If we get an autumn wave then we could see many pupils not being in school until next spring. That would be an entire year at home.
Yet we plan to reopen shops, beer gardens, theme parks etc etc. Even talk of holidays in EU from July.
I don't think those things are necessarily contradictory. I suspect the chances of the virus spreading outside is very small. Unfortunately schools have to work indoors. I don't see why businesses and consumers should suffer just because we think they are less important than kids going to school.
For schools, I wonder if something like alternating weeks will be needed for some time whereby half the kids go one week and half the kids go the next? It won't be ideal, but we mustn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Where is the evidence that kids pass this virus on? Or even get it themselves in all but a minuscule minority?
Or have I missed something?
None whatsoever. Schools should never have been closed.
I understand closing them was only put in at the last minute.
Of course there is evidence that children can both get the virus - the ONS survey has found no statistically significant differences between the percentages infected in different age groups - and pass it on.
I agree, they can get the virus, but they very rarely suffer from it. They are about as likely to get struck by lightning as to die from COVID, if they have no comorbities.
Whether they pass it on to any significant extent is not clear. A study of one 9-year old boy in the French Alps had the boy visiting three schools whilst symptomatic, but the researchers found no evidence of transmission of the virus to other pupils in follow-up interviews and testing. There are lots of similar studies ongoing.
But until there is overwhelming evidence that children are transmitting the virus and causing a significant number of deaths overall, schools should be open, just as they are in most other European countries.
Though I know, as you say, facts don't get in the way of your opinions.
The facts are equivocal.
What isn't equivocal is the massive damage this is doing to kids' education, especially poorer kids, and to parents' jobs if they can't afford child care.
Also to abused children, who need school to get away from their difficult family situations for a few hours a day. Oh, and hungry ones, who rely on free school meals to feed them.
Closing schools was a disaster. If this virus affected children the way it does old people, there would be a case for it. But there's no case for keeping them closed when other European countries are reopening them without problems.
Much of it comes down to attitude. We've piled kids high and taught them cheap in this country. It amused me to hear a Danish primary school teacher on R5L some weeks ago explaining how they had re-opened. After detailing additional measures, she was asked how many kids in her class now. 15. Oh wow! How many before? (Obviously confused)...15.
Abolish private schools and you will be amazed how quickly class sizes come down in the state sector.
Or alternatively, cut class sizes in the state sector and watch as private schools close for lack of pupils?
Honestly, some people are really dumb.
Your solution would increase class sizes, at least in the short term, not reduce them.
I am not dumb. I think the dumb people are those who think that there will be money to cut class sizes in the state sector as long as the rich and powerful can opt out of it.
I am not convinced you are the best judge of your own ability in light of some of your more bizarre recent posts. Do you seriously think that causing a train wreck in education would help poor students? All that would happen under your proposals in the short term is an explosion in class sizes and the implosion of the teetering state sector, coupled with a sharp rise in the amount of tuition, or even 'home schooling,' paid for by wealthier parents. Who's going to suffer in that scenario? Hint - it isn't the rich.
Of course, Covid-19 coupled with pension changes is going to close a lot of private schools anyway, so in some regions (e.g. round here) it's very possible we will see what happens when they go. But if you want to get rid of private schools, you don't do it by dropping ban hammers to satisfy the personal prejudices of a lot of hardcore near-fascists like the Corbynista Labour party. You do it by making the state sector so good almost nobody will bother to pay large sums of money for an alternative. And the key to that is cutting class sizes.
Blair understood that, but never worked out how to actually achieve it (the solution was to raise taxes, but he couldn't bring himself to order Brown to do it). Gove and Cummings unfortunately did not, and their misguided reforms actually made matters worse by increasing teacher attrition rates.
I already said that I wasn't suggesting a ban, I don't think it would be feasible or consistent with human rights legislation, and it would most likely be too disruptive. I am simply saying that there is a reason the state sector is teetering, and that reason is that people of wealth and power don't care about it. If you have an alternative suggestion for getting state schools better resourced I'd love to hear it. Would love to know which of my posts you consider to be bizarre, I think I'm a pretty reasonable kind of person, certainly by PB standards.
This subject touches a nerve and I am glad you are having a bash at it. There is a great attachment to private schools from many PB posters who will at the same time maintain that equality of opportunity in education and life is one of their top priorities. For me, this does not scan at all, but there you go.
What you will find - I predict - is that in order to convince you will need to roll out a complete white paper which describes in close and compelling detail exactly how you will phase out private schools by disincentivization rather than compulsion over (say) 10 years and realize tremendous tangible benefits to all without a single negative impact, however transitory, on anything or anybody.
And even that didn't work when I did it.
Not that I'm frustrated or anything you understand.
I think a good place to start would be a royal commission on the whole education system to figure out where we are succeeding, where we are failing, what works internationally, how much money we want to spend on it and how it interacts with broader goals to increase social mobility and reduce social exclusion. Efforts should be made to have maximum political buy in and there should be a ten year programme of transformation that transcends party political divides. If the commission finds that private schools are a barrier to creating the kind of system we need then there should be a long term programme to deal with that. Nothing needs to be done hastily.
The problem is not outstanding private schools it is inadequate or requires improvement state schools.
Again the left put expanding mediocrity above expanding excellence.
The middle class who send their children to private schools would not send their kids to anything other than a grammar school or outstanding state comprehensive or academy anyway
More sculpture news. Since Leopold was inarguably a bad 'un, slightly amazing that it was still there. Perhaps my own prejudices but royals seem to get more of a free pass than yer plebeian genocidal arsehole.
But they are caving in to mob rule. It's a slippery slope. Now they will have to ask someone to nuke Antwerp because some of the buildings were built with colonial money.
Am I doing this right?
leopold is interesting in that his venture in the Congo was non-royal private enterprise, like Prince Andrew's very entrepreneurial and by no means shifty Inverness Investments (Grand Cayman) Inc. or whatever it is.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Are you me? Hardly a stone would remain standing upon stone if I could have my way with the aesthetic nightmares blighting so many of our cities. Their sheer ugliness causes more psychological harm on a daily basis than an ideologically-incorrect statue ever could. In fact, if you read the justifications modern architects come up with for their vainglorious carbuncles, you often find that their analyses work beautifully on the level of concept and ideology, but fail miserably in the physical, visual, and human sphere ... which is where their buildings actually fucking exist!
High density housing and a thriving commercial space in one. This is how we should regenerate town centres.
Do we need a Bomber Harris before we can do that stuff?
Or Herman Goering? Who did for a fair bit of the area around Teddy Colston's simulacrum?
Not when you have urban planners and modern architects.
Well yes, Clydebank suggests we don't do well with a clean slate. Tbh I was thinking more of friendly bombs falling on what the urban planners and modern architects have produced.
There's a recurring meme in Glasgow that a lot of the tenement housing (eg in the Gorbals) was of such poor quality that it couldn't be upgraded or preserved, so the year zero guys were allowed to run riot in the 50s and 60s on the basis that something had to be be done. That seems quite odd nowadays when expensive extreme measures in terms of new foundations and shoring up are taken to keep tenements literally on the road. Also strange that since the tenement is absolutely THE vernacular style of housing in Glasgow and other Scottish cities hardly anything is done to faithfully reproduce it as in the form of the Dresden developments highlighted by William Glenn, or much of Berlin, a city with which I'm slightly familiar.
Even Edinburgh hasn't been immune. If you look at Princes Street (still beautiful by the way), it contains various monstrosities, as part of a brave new plan (in the 60's) to demolish all the Victorian and Georgian shop frontages, and replace them with a modern shopping precinct on two levels, with a one storey walkable balcony running the length of it.
It truly boggles the mind.
What slightly bothers me is that now we've woken up a lot more to looking after our heritage, but we've fallen into the trap of thinking that the 60's carbuncles somehow deserve preservation too.
Golly, I hadn't realised that they were thinking quite that far outside the envelope re. Princes St. Actually in Glasgow they seem to have come up with quite a decent cunning plan, to cover over the M8 where it runs through Charing Cross and turn it into an open pedestrian space. Whether that'll come off now in these straitened times, who knows?
I'm not entirely anti brutalism, I quite like the South Bank for its absolute unwillingness to ingratiate for example, and the likes of Poundbury leave me a little queasy.
edit: I see the brave new plan for Princes St is from the 60s, still wouldn't put it past them today though.
Thankfully you'd never get away with it today. It's not stopping some horrors still being built, but they tend not to be demolishing beautiful frontages to do it.
I respectfully diverge from you (and @williamglenn) on the subject of Poundbury, because for all it's air of silliness, people do want to live and work there, because the environment at least tries to be beautiful.
What would be good I think is some objective standard of beauty in buildings based on what is naturally appealing to the human eye. We instinctively prefer lightness and colour to darkness and grey - probably because it evokes cleanliness. We usually prefer ornament to lack of ornament, because it signifies effort and expense. We prefer deeper window recesses, probably because they signify thicker walls and therefore greater safety and security. We prefer stone, brick and other materials that connect a building with its landscape, to concrete.
If we can get this down, we can probably judge objectively that a monstrous pile of dark grey concrete, pebble-dashing, thin metal framed windows, with wind-swept overpasses, never looked good, isn't going to start looking good, isn't going to 'come back into fashion', doesn't deserve preservation.
At the moment, Historic Environment Scotland (I think that's the agency) and English Heritage frown heavily on new buildings done in the style of old buildings. I think that's a mistake. I love the modern extension to the National Museum in Edinburgh - but would we really be sorry if the 1960's crap on Princes Street disappeared behind a plausible Georgian pastiche?
To be an exact replica, which is not of course what you are advocating, you'd have to reopen the quarries at Hailes and Craigleith to get the right stone, which is prtobably impossible now even if the residents were evicted, then the windows would hsve to be different in design, and so on. How close is plausible before it just looks odd? I can see that a modern building using say Clashach stone from the Moray Firth and so on could work better - and indeed an example of that stone is seen in the modern extension to the National Museum.
But I must admit that Poundbury gives me the absolute screaming willies. I came across it unexpectedly one evening when staying in Dorchester and looking for somewhere to eat at dusk. I couldn't understand why I was feeling so uneasy till I realised the buildings were modern - the proportions were wrong, Queen Anne brick houses with tiny modern plastic windows. But what got me were the building stones where those were used. Blue Lias stone on one building and then the next had oolite rubble and the one after that Middle Lias ironstone, and this in Dorset where the stone and location are absolutely linked. Like an Inspector Morse episode where they go into a door from one colleage quadrangle and appear in another a mile away. And (this my partner spotted) no front gardens to the houses either. Going back in daylight didn't improve it, though in fairness it's a nice enough place to live. Though the later phases don't seem so nice (however defined).
I agree about 1960s and 70s Princes Street - mostly (I am sure one or two of the smaller shops might be quite nice but can't remember offhand!).
Interesting what you say about the stone. However, most modern developments in the centre of Edinburgh (like Primark on Princes Street) seem to have a source of similar looking stone for cladding. Perhaps it's just reconstituted or reclaimed stuff they use.
And I can't argue with you about Poundbury because I've never been. Photographs look relatively plausible, though I agree about the windows, they're always a dead giveaway. Either way, people would prefer to live there approximately a million times more than living in Milton Keynes. So that's 1- nil for HRH and his pillars and porticos.
What do you both think of the (under construction) walnut whip hotel? I'm not entirely convinced...
I've been posting on this site for over 15 years. I have never been accused of being a racist. Nor in my lifetime before. Not even at the most passionate heights of the Brexit debate, or the UKIP surge before it.
In the last few days, I've had at least two posters on here make this accusation directly at me. One subsequently withdrew it but they were both made casually and cheaply - with little thought.
This is a really unpleasant and nasty effect of these current riots. It's making many people meaner and less inclined to dialogue. It's absenting the crowd to those with the loudest and strongest voices to dictate what people are meant to think and say, and worrying others with reservations into silence.
It explains precisely why there is so little challenge and debate around some of the assumptions and motives underlying the actions of the perpetrators, and it's unclear how far those will now advance unchecked and what the consequences will be.
I truly fear for the future of this country, I really do.
To be clear I cant know if you are a racist or not, I said I can see why people think you are from your posting. Using racist memes like guests have to live differently, intentional or not, is going to cause offence.
I won't be engaging with you further on this subject.
If you can find it within you to offer an unreserved apology so we can re-set relations, then I will be happy to do so again.
Not until then.
I think you are being overly sensitive.
When you use an analogy such as "house guest" in the context of this particular debate, I think you need to accept (or at least consider) the feedback from others that it is not appropriate. Crass even. And if you disagree and wish to stick with it be prepared to expand and develop the analogy to demonstrate how it does in fact work and was a good choice.
I am very happy to be your disinterested and empathetic counterparty for such an exchange.
I`ve worked in the Middle East (Bahrain), and visited places such as Gibraltar many times, and witnessed (to my disappointment) British expats living there, setting up little communities within communities, UK themed pubs, Union Jacks displayed, no attempt whatsoever to learn the local language or join in with local customs or even make friends with local people. They are trying to export a chunk of Britain abroad. I find this depressing, unintelligent and downright rude.
I think that "house guest" is an unwise phrase to use. But the British expats I cite above are house guests in the loose sort of way that I think CR means. And they warrant our disapproval. And I wouldn`t call Bahraini or Spanish people racist in pointing this out.
It's not at all how CR meant the analogy, but Gibraltar is 'our house' (For now at least).
It isn’t at all.
Nevertheless if I was a public figure I’d probably be resigning by the end of the day. What would happen is people like @kinabalu@kamski and @noneoftheabove would whip up a twitterstorm about it, selectively quote it, ascribe a motive, demand action and then the BBC/C4 would pick up on it and report it. And then authority figures would be challenged as to why I was still in post. It would matter about the nuance. Most wouldn’t care.
It does explain why so few people in authority want to challenge simple assumptions in complex ways in highly emotional times.
Why take the risk? The upside is minimal and the downside huge.
A Guardian journo asked this question at the press briefing yesterday:
"If Britain is not a racist country, which implies there is no structural racism in the UK, please can you explain why black, Asian and minority ethnic people are disproportionally dying from Covid 19".
I can`t even begin to enter the mindset of someone who asks such a stupid question as this. Hancock should have torn him a new one. He didn`t of course - he came up with meaningless pandering shite.
These 'journalists' are insane. Why on earth should the government even bother taking questions from what are no longer newspapers, but political campaign groups in all but name - and particularly stupid ones at that?
Day 1, perhaps actual lockdown announcement day: at the annoucement press conference, some Lefty "journalist" from some nonsuch Lefty online rag asked BoJo whether if people disobeyed the lockdown guidance the police would enforce it. Boris audibly recoiled as though it was the most ridiculous thing he had heard. "Police??" he said "I don't think we'll be getting the police involved."
The Very Next Day: Boris: "..and if people don't comply with these measures we will ask the police to get involved."
is why.
Ah, of course - without them the government would never have thought of using the police to enforce the law. These lefty rags are so useful after all!
Do you think they're in favour of the police enforcing the law against vandalism now?
They u-turned in <24hrs. Go back and listen to the press conference. Boris was aghast that anyone could suggest the police might be involved. And then less than a day later, policy changed.
Could it have been the Telegraph that asked the question? Of course. But they didn't. It was some lefty online rag.
Do you think that Ancelotti should have gone to Arsenal instead of Everton?</p>
Wait a minute - I watched Boris' address to the nation announcing the lockdown, and it clearly mentioned that the police would have powers to enforce it, so the exchange you're referring to must have happened before it was implemented.
Even if you're correct - which I'm prepared to grant because I honestly don't remember what was said in every press conference - do you really think the government wouldn't have reconsidered the necessary means of enforcement as soon as it arose as a practical problem? I don't quite see that question as an irreplaceable service to the nation - and not one that outweighs their utter shitness ever since.
It was a small but significant example of a diverse (small "d") press being a useful, not to say vital element of a functioning democracy.
I'm not proposing to ban the twats, not least because I'm almost absolutist when it comes to free speech. But I do think they should be treated as what they are - a political campaign group whose entire raison d'être is to change the government. More speech, if you will.
Well on this occasion they did indeed change the government. And it's fine to have a press which is politically motivated. I think the Telegraph comfortably outsells An Phoblacht so we as punters will make our choices.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Are you me? Hardly a stone would remain standing upon stone if I could have my way with the aesthetic nightmares blighting so many of our cities. Their sheer ugliness causes more psychological harm on a daily basis than an ideologically-incorrect statue ever could. In fact, if you read the justifications modern architects come up with for their vainglorious carbuncles, you often find that their analyses work beautifully on the level of concept and ideology, but fail miserably in the physical, visual, and human sphere ... which is where their buildings actually fucking exist!
High density housing and a thriving commercial space in one. This is how we should regenerate town centres.
Do we need a Bomber Harris before we can do that stuff?
Or Herman Goering? Who did for a fair bit of the area around Teddy Colston's simulacrum?
Not when you have urban planners and modern architects.
Well yes, Clydebank suggests we don't do well with a clean slate. Tbh I was thinking more of friendly bombs falling on what the urban planners and modern architects have produced.
There's a recurring meme in Glasgow that a lot of the tenement housing (eg in the Gorbals) was of such poor quality that it couldn't be upgraded or preserved, so the year zero guys were allowed to run riot in the 50s and 60s on the basis that something had to be be done. That seems quite odd nowadays when expensive extreme measures in terms of new foundations and shoring up are taken to keep tenements literally on the road. Also strange that since the tenement is absolutely THE vernacular style of housing in Glasgow and other Scottish cities hardly anything is done to faithfully reproduce it as in the form of the Dresden developments highlighted by William Glenn, or much of Berlin, a city with which I'm slightly familiar.
Even Edinburgh hasn't been immune. If you look at Princes Street (still beautiful by the way), it contains various monstrosities, as part of a brave new plan (in the 60's) to demolish all the Victorian and Georgian shop frontages, and replace them with a modern shopping precinct on two levels, with a one storey walkable balcony running the length of it.
It truly boggles the mind.
What slightly bothers me is that now we've woken up a lot more to looking after our heritage, but we've fallen into the trap of thinking that the 60's carbuncles somehow deserve preservation too.
Golly, I hadn't realised that they were thinking quite that far outside the envelope re. Princes St. Actually in Glasgow they seem to have come up with quite a decent cunning plan, to cover over the M8 where it runs through Charing Cross and turn it into an open pedestrian space. Whether that'll come off now in these straitened times, who knows?
I'm not entirely anti brutalism, I quite like the South Bank for its absolute unwillingness to ingratiate for example, and the likes of Poundbury leave me a little queasy.
edit: I see the brave new plan for Princes St is from the 60s, still wouldn't put it past them today though.
Thankfully you'd never get away with it today. It's not stopping some horrors still being built, but they tend not to be demolishing beautiful frontages to do it.
I respectfully diverge from you (and @williamglenn) on the subject of Poundbury, because for all it's air of silliness, people do want to live and work there, because the environment at least tries to be beautiful.
What would be good I think is some objective standard of beauty in buildings based on what is naturally appealing to the human eye. We instinctively prefer lightness and colour to darkness and grey - probably because it evokes cleanliness. We usually prefer ornament to lack of ornament, because it signifies effort and expense. We prefer deeper window recesses, probably because they signify thicker walls and therefore greater safety and security. We prefer stone, brick and other materials that connect a building with its landscape, to concrete.
If we can get this down, we can probably judge objectively that a monstrous pile of dark grey concrete, pebble-dashing, thin metal framed windows, with wind-swept overpasses, never looked good, isn't going to start looking good, isn't going to 'come back into fashion', doesn't deserve preservation.
At the moment, Historic Environment Scotland (I think that's the agency) and English Heritage frown heavily on new buildings done in the style of old buildings. I think that's a mistake. I love the modern extension to the National Museum in Edinburgh - but would we really be sorry if the 1960's crap on Princes Street disappeared behind a plausible Georgian pastiche?
To be an exact replica, which is not of course what you are advocating, you'd have to reopen the quarries at Hailes and Craigleith to get the right stone, which is prtobably impossible now even if the residents were evicted, then the windows would hsve to be different in design, and so on. How close is plausible before it just looks odd? I can see that a modern building using say Clashach stone from the Moray Firth and so on could work better - and indeed an example of that stone is seen in the modern extension to the National Museum.
But I must admit that Poundbury gives me the absolute screaming willies. I came across it unexpectedly one evening when staying in Dorchester and looking for somewhere to eat at dusk. I couldn't understand why I was feeling so uneasy till I realised the buildings were modern - the proportions were wrong, Queen Anne brick houses with tiny modern plastic windows. But what got me were the building stones where those were used. Blue Lias stone on one building and then the next had oolite rubble and the one after that Middle Lias ironstone, and this in Dorset where the stone and location are absolutely linked. Like an Inspector Morse episode where they go into a door from one colleage quadrangle and appear in another a mile away. And (this my partner spotted) no front gardens to the houses either. Going back in daylight didn't improve it, though in fairness it's a nice enough place to live. Though the later phases don't seem so nice (however defined).
I agree about 1960s and 70s Princes Street - mostly (I am sure one or two of the smaller shops might be quite nice but can't remember offhand!).
Interesting what you say about the stone. However, most modern developments in the centre of Edinburgh (like Primark on Princes Street) seem to have a source of similar looking stone for cladding. Perhaps it's just reconstituted or reclaimed stuff they use.
And I can't argue with you about Poundbury because I've never been. Photographs look relatively plausible, though I agree about the windows, they're always a dead giveaway. Either way, people would prefer to live there approximately a million times more than living in Milton Keynes. So that's 1- nil for HRH and his pillars and porticos.
What do you both think of the (under construction) walnut whip hotel? I'm not entirely convinced...
Me neither, is the polite wording. I'm actually reminded of TUD's Shyte Chocolate, and not in a nice way, but that reflects the other local nickname. We might be pleasantly surprised, but ...
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Are you me? Hardly a stone would remain standing upon stone if I could have my way with the aesthetic nightmares blighting so many of our cities. Their sheer ugliness causes more psychological harm on a daily basis than an ideologically-incorrect statue ever could. In fact, if you read the justifications modern architects come up with for their vainglorious carbuncles, you often find that their analyses work beautifully on the level of concept and ideology, but fail miserably in the physical, visual, and human sphere ... which is where their buildings actually fucking exist!
High density housing and a thriving commercial space in one. This is how we should regenerate town centres.
Do we need a Bomber Harris before we can do that stuff?
Or Herman Goering? Who did for a fair bit of the area around Teddy Colston's simulacrum?
Not when you have urban planners and modern architects.
Well yes, Clydebank suggests we don't do well with a clean slate. Tbh I was thinking more of friendly bombs falling on what the urban planners and modern architects have produced.
There's a recurring meme in Glasgow that a lot of the tenement housing (eg in the Gorbals) was of such poor quality that it couldn't be upgraded or preserved, so the year zero guys were allowed to run riot in the 50s and 60s on the basis that something had to be be done. That seems quite odd nowadays when expensive extreme measures in terms of new foundations and shoring up are taken to keep tenements literally on the road. Also strange that since the tenement is absolutely THE vernacular style of housing in Glasgow and other Scottish cities hardly anything is done to faithfully reproduce it as in the form of the Dresden developments highlighted by William Glenn, or much of Berlin, a city with which I'm slightly familiar.
Even Edinburgh hasn't been immune. If you look at Princes Street (still beautiful by the way), it contains various monstrosities, as part of a brave new plan (in the 60's) to demolish all the Victorian and Georgian shop frontages, and replace them with a modern shopping precinct on two levels, with a one storey walkable balcony running the length of it.
It truly boggles the mind.
What slightly bothers me is that now we've woken up a lot more to looking after our heritage, but we've fallen into the trap of thinking that the 60's carbuncles somehow deserve preservation too.
Golly, I hadn't realised that they were thinking quite that far outside the envelope re. Princes St. Actually in Glasgow they seem to have come up with quite a decent cunning plan, to cover over the M8 where it runs through Charing Cross and turn it into an open pedestrian space. Whether that'll come off now in these straitened times, who knows?
I'm not entirely anti brutalism, I quite like the South Bank for its absolute unwillingness to ingratiate for example, and the likes of Poundbury leave me a little queasy.
edit: I see the brave new plan for Princes St is from the 60s, still wouldn't put it past them today though.
Thankfully you'd never get away with it today. It's not stopping some horrors still being built, but they tend not to be demolishing beautiful frontages to do it.
I respectfully diverge from you (and @williamglenn) on the subject of Poundbury, because for all it's air of silliness, people do want to live and work there, because the environment at least tries to be beautiful.
What would be good I think is some objective standard of beauty in buildings based on what is naturally appealing to the human eye. We instinctively prefer lightness and colour to darkness and grey - probably because it evokes cleanliness. We usually prefer ornament to lack of ornament, because it signifies effort and expense. We prefer deeper window recesses, probably because they signify thicker walls and therefore greater safety and security. We prefer stone, brick and other materials that connect a building with its landscape, to concrete.
If we can get this down, we can probably judge objectively that a monstrous pile of dark grey concrete, pebble-dashing, thin metal framed windows, with wind-swept overpasses, never looked good, isn't going to start looking good, isn't going to 'come back into fashion', doesn't deserve preservation.
At the moment, Historic Environment Scotland (I think that's the agency) and English Heritage frown heavily on new buildings done in the style of old buildings. I think that's a mistake. I love the modern extension to the National Museum in Edinburgh - but would we really be sorry if the 1960's crap on Princes Street disappeared behind a plausible Georgian pastiche?
To be an exact replica, which is not of course what you are advocating, you'd have to reopen the quarries at Hailes and Craigleith to get the right stone, which is prtobably impossible now even if the residents were evicted, then the windows would hsve to be different in design, and so on. How close is plausible before it just looks odd? I can see that a modern building using say Clashach stone from the Moray Firth and so on could work better - and indeed an example of that stone is seen in the modern extension to the National Museum.
But I must admit that Poundbury gives me the absolute screaming willies. I came across it unexpectedly one evening when staying in Dorchester and looking for somewhere to eat at dusk. I couldn't understand why I was feeling so uneasy till I realised the buildings were modern - the proportions were wrong, Queen Anne brick houses with tiny modern plastic windows. But what got me were the building stones where those were used. Blue Lias stone on one building and then the next had oolite rubble and the one after that Middle Lias ironstone, and this in Dorset where the stone and location are absolutely linked. Like an Inspector Morse episode where they go into a door from one colleage quadrangle and appear in another a mile away. And (this my partner spotted) no front gardens to the houses either. Going back in daylight didn't improve it, though in fairness it's a nice enough place to live. Though the later phases don't seem so nice (however defined).
I agree about 1960s and 70s Princes Street - mostly (I am sure one or two of the smaller shops might be quite nice but can't remember offhand!).
Interesting what you say about the stone. However, most modern developments in the centre of Edinburgh (like Primark on Princes Street) seem to have a source of similar looking stone for cladding. Perhaps it's just reconstituted or reclaimed stuff they use.
And I can't argue with you about Poundbury because I've never been. Photographs look relatively plausible, though I agree about the windows, they're always a dead giveaway. Either way, people would prefer to live there approximately a million times more than living in Milton Keynes. So that's 1- nil for HRH and his pillars and porticos.
What do you both think of the (under construction) walnut whip hotel? I'm not entirely convinced...
I've stopped looking at Edinburgh developments in recent years as moved away. Is it the thumb shaped building that's sort of reminiscent of an orange being peeled that's replacing (replaced?) St James shopping centre?
If so, I was in equal measure delighted that the existing building is going and disappointed that a rather stupid looking building is replacing it. On balance I see the change as just about positive but a missed opportunity.
More sculpture news. Since Leopold was inarguably a bad 'un, slightly amazing that it was still there. Perhaps my own prejudices but royals seem to get more of a free pass than yer plebeian genocidal arsehole.
He was a seriously serious piece of shit (but I think not a slaver; he left them free but cut their hands off). But without him no Heart of Darkness, no Apocalypse Now.
Earl Grey tea is the scrapings off the tea factory floor, that is why they add flavourings to it. I quite like it, but the fact it is marketed as a luxury product is hilarious.
That is quite the stupidest piece of misinformation I have ever seen anywhere on the internet. Well done.
Really? I learned it at the national tea museum in Sri Lanka, I think. They were very sniffy about putting flavourings in tea and said it was mostly done to disguise poor quality tea.
It seems they tell different stories to different people. I was told Breakfast Tea was the floor scrapings - the size of leaf that fell through all the filters. On that basis, Earl Grey with large leaves could not be the floor scrapings.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Are you me? Hardly a stone would remain standing upon stone if I could have my way with the aesthetic nightmares blighting so many of our cities. Their sheer ugliness causes more psychological harm on a daily basis than an ideologically-incorrect statue ever could. In fact, if you read the justifications modern architects come up with for their vainglorious carbuncles, you often find that their analyses work beautifully on the level of concept and ideology, but fail miserably in the physical, visual, and human sphere ... which is where their buildings actually fucking exist!
High density housing and a thriving commercial space in one. This is how we should regenerate town centres.
Do we need a Bomber Harris before we can do that stuff?
Or Herman Goering? Who did for a fair bit of the area around Teddy Colston's simulacrum?
Not when you have urban planners and modern architects.
Well yes, Clydebank suggests we don't do well with a clean slate. Tbh I was thinking more of friendly bombs falling on what the urban planners and modern architects have produced.
There's a recurring meme in Glasgow that a lot of the tenement housing (eg in the Gorbals) was of such poor quality that it couldn't be upgraded or preserved, so the year zero guys were allowed to run riot in the 50s and 60s on the basis that something had to be be done. That seems quite odd nowadays when expensive extreme measures in terms of new foundations and shoring up are taken to keep tenements literally on the road. Also strange that since the tenement is absolutely THE vernacular style of housing in Glasgow and other Scottish cities hardly anything is done to faithfully reproduce it as in the form of the Dresden developments highlighted by William Glenn, or much of Berlin, a city with which I'm slightly familiar.
Even Edinburgh hasn't been immune. If you look at Princes Street (still beautiful by the way), it contains various monstrosities, as part of a brave new plan (in the 60's) to demolish all the Victorian and Georgian shop frontages, and replace them with a modern shopping precinct on two levels, with a one storey walkable balcony running the length of it.
It truly boggles the mind.
What slightly bothers me is that now we've woken up a lot more to looking after our heritage, but we've fallen into the trap of thinking that the 60's carbuncles somehow deserve preservation too.
Golly, I hadn't realised that they were thinking quite that far outside the envelope re. Princes St. Actually in Glasgow they seem to have come up with quite a decent cunning plan, to cover over the M8 where it runs through Charing Cross and turn it into an open pedestrian space. Whether that'll come off now in these straitened times, who knows?
I'm not entirely anti brutalism, I quite like the South Bank for its absolute unwillingness to ingratiate for example, and the likes of Poundbury leave me a little queasy.
edit: I see the brave new plan for Princes St is from the 60s, still wouldn't put it past them today though.
Thankfully you'd never get away with it today. It's not stopping some horrors still being built, but they tend not to be demolishing beautiful frontages to do it.
I respectfully diverge from you (and @williamglenn) on the subject of Poundbury, because for all it's air of silliness, people do want to live and work there, because the environment at least tries to be beautiful.
What would be good I think is some objective standard of beauty in buildings based on what is naturally appealing to the human eye. We instinctively prefer lightness and colour to darkness and grey - probably because it evokes cleanliness. We usually prefer ornament to lack of ornament, because it signifies effort and expense. We prefer deeper window recesses, probably because they signify thicker walls and therefore greater safety and security. We prefer stone, brick and other materials that connect a building with its landscape, to concrete.
If we can get this down, we can probably judge objectively that a monstrous pile of dark grey concrete, pebble-dashing, thin metal framed windows, with wind-swept overpasses, never looked good, isn't going to start looking good, isn't going to 'come back into fashion', doesn't deserve preservation.
At the moment, Historic Environment Scotland (I think that's the agency) and English Heritage frown heavily on new buildings done in the style of old buildings. I think that's a mistake. I love the modern extension to the National Museum in Edinburgh - but would we really be sorry if the 1960's crap on Princes Street disappeared behind a plausible Georgian pastiche?
To be an exact replica, which is not of course what you are advocating, you'd have to reopen the quarries at Hailes and Craigleith to get the right stone, which is prtobably impossible now even if the residents were evicted, then the windows would hsve to be different in design, and so on. How close is plausible before it just looks odd? I can see that a modern building using say Clashach stone from the Moray Firth and so on could work better - and indeed an example of that stone is seen in the modern extension to the National Museum.
But I must admit that Poundbury gives me the absolute screaming willies. I came across it unexpectedly one evening when staying in Dorchester and looking for somewhere to eat at dusk. I couldn't understand why I was feeling so uneasy till I realised the buildings were modern - the proportions were wrong, Queen Anne brick houses with tiny modern plastic windows. But what got me were the building stones where those were used. Blue Lias stone on one building and then the next had oolite rubble and the one after that Middle Lias ironstone, and this in Dorset where the stone and location are absolutely linked. Like an Inspector Morse episode where they go into a door from one colleage quadrangle and appear in another a mile away. And (this my partner spotted) no front gardens to the houses either. Going back in daylight didn't improve it, though in fairness it's a nice enough place to live. Though the later phases don't seem so nice (however defined).
I agree about 1960s and 70s Princes Street - mostly (I am sure one or two of the smaller shops might be quite nice but can't remember offhand!).
Interesting what you say about the stone. However, most modern developments in the centre of Edinburgh (like Primark on Princes Street) seem to have a source of similar looking stone for cladding. Perhaps it's just reconstituted or reclaimed stuff they use.
And I can't argue with you about Poundbury because I've never been. Photographs look relatively plausible, though I agree about the windows, they're always a dead giveaway. Either way, people would prefer to live there approximately a million times more than living in Milton Keynes. So that's 1- nil for HRH and his pillars and porticos.
What do you both think of the (under construction) walnut whip hotel? I'm not entirely convinced...
I've stopped looking at Edinburgh developments in recent years as moved away. Is it the thumb shaped building that's sort of reminiscent of an orange being peeled that's replacing (replaced?) St James shopping centre?
If so, I was in equal measure delighted that the existing building is going and disappointed that a rather stupid looking building is replacing it. On balance I see the change as just about positive but a missed opportunity.
Yip - that's the one. The St James Centre was certainly not beautiful but the scale of the replacement... Hmm...
I've been posting on this site for over 15 years. I have never been accused of being a racist. Nor in my lifetime before. Not even at the most passionate heights of the Brexit debate, or the UKIP surge before it.
In the last few days, I've had at least two posters on here make this accusation directly at me. One subsequently withdrew it but they were both made casually and cheaply - with little thought.
This is a really unpleasant and nasty effect of these current riots. It's making many people meaner and less inclined to dialogue. It's absenting the crowd to those with the loudest and strongest voices to dictate what people are meant to think and say, and worrying others with reservations into silence.
It explains precisely why there is so little challenge and debate around some of the assumptions and motives underlying the actions of the perpetrators, and it's unclear how far those will now advance unchecked and what the consequences will be.
I truly fear for the future of this country, I really do.
To be clear I cant know if you are a racist or not, I said I can see why people think you are from your posting. Using racist memes like guests have to live differently, intentional or not, is going to cause offence.
I won't be engaging with you further on this subject.
If you can find it within you to offer an unreserved apology so we can re-set relations, then I will be happy to do so again.
Not until then.
I think you are being overly sensitive.
When you use an analogy such as "house guest" in the context of this particular debate, I think you need to accept (or at least consider) the feedback from others that it is not appropriate. Crass even. And if you disagree and wish to stick with it be prepared to expand and develop the analogy to demonstrate how it does in fact work and was a good choice.
I am very happy to be your disinterested and empathetic counterparty for such an exchange.
I`ve worked in the Middle East (Bahrain), and visited places such as Gibraltar many times, and witnessed (to my disappointment) British expats living there, setting up little communities within communities, UK themed pubs, Union Jacks displayed, no attempt whatsoever to learn the local language or join in with local customs or even make friends with local people. They are trying to export a chunk of Britain abroad. I find this depressing, unintelligent and downright rude.
I think that "house guest" is an unwise phrase to use. But the British expats I cite above are house guests in the loose sort of way that I think CR means. And they warrant our disapproval. And I wouldn`t call Bahraini or Spanish people racist in pointing this out.
It's not at all how CR meant the analogy, but Gibraltar is 'our house' (For now at least).
It isn’t at all.
Nevertheless if I was a public figure I’d probably be resigning by the end of the day. What would happen is people like @kinabalu@kamski and @noneoftheabove would whip up a twitterstorm about it, selectively quote it, ascribe a motive, demand action and then the BBC/C4 would pick up on it and report it. And then authority figures would be challenged as to why I was still in post. It would matter about the nuance. Most wouldn’t care.
It does explain why so few people in authority want to challenge simple assumptions in complex ways in highly emotional times.
Why take the risk? The upside is minimal and the downside huge.
A Guardian journo asked this question at the press briefing yesterday:
"If Britain is not a racist country, which implies there is no structural racism in the UK, please can you explain why black, Asian and minority ethnic people are disproportionally dying from Covid 19".
I can`t even begin to enter the mindset of someone who asks such a stupid question as this. Hancock should have torn him a new one. He didn`t of course - he came up with meaningless pandering shite.
These 'journalists' are insane. Why on earth should the government even bother taking questions from what are no longer newspapers, but political campaign groups in all but name - and particularly stupid ones at that?
Day 1, perhaps actual lockdown announcement day: at the annoucement press conference, some Lefty "journalist" from some nonsuch Lefty online rag asked BoJo whether if people disobeyed the lockdown guidance the police would enforce it. Boris audibly recoiled as though it was the most ridiculous thing he had heard. "Police??" he said "I don't think we'll be getting the police involved."
The Very Next Day: Boris: "..and if people don't comply with these measures we will ask the police to get involved."
is why.
Ah, of course - without them the government would never have thought of using the police to enforce the law. These lefty rags are so useful after all!
Do you think they're in favour of the police enforcing the law against vandalism now?
They u-turned in <24hrs. Go back and listen to the press conference. Boris was aghast that anyone could suggest the police might be involved. And then less than a day later, policy changed.
Could it have been the Telegraph that asked the question? Of course. But they didn't. It was some lefty online rag.
Do you think that Ancelotti should have gone to Arsenal instead of Everton?</p>
Wait a minute - I watched Boris' address to the nation announcing the lockdown, and it clearly mentioned that the police would have powers to enforce it, so the exchange you're referring to must have happened before it was implemented.
Even if you're correct - which I'm prepared to grant because I honestly don't remember what was said in every press conference - do you really think the government wouldn't have reconsidered the necessary means of enforcement as soon as it arose as a practical problem? I don't quite see that question as an irreplaceable service to the nation - and not one that outweighs their utter shitness ever since.
It was a small but significant example of a diverse (small "d") press being a useful, not to say vital element of a functioning democracy.
I'm not proposing to ban the twats, not least because I'm almost absolutist when it comes to free speech. But I do think they should be treated as what they are - a political campaign group whose entire raison d'être is to change the government. More speech, if you will.
What papers do you read? Those paragons of impartiality the Daily Brexitograph, or perhaps you prefer the Daily Mail or the Daily Diana/Express?
Even the Mail and the Telegraph will from time to time publish pro-Labour / anti-Tory etc stories, and have done so recently.
The Guardian and Mirror on the other hand, will never publish anything that diverges from their political goals. That's the difference.
I think your name tells us everything we need to know about your ability to objectively assess such a difference. I suspect you don't often read the Guardian to test you theory, let alone the Mirror. I would imagine your idea of an anti-Tory story would be one that was mildly critical of the Dominic Cummings!!
You dont need to read either of them. . Fe if anyone ..not even lefties post links to the Daily Mirror.. at least i cannot recall seeing one for eons... as for the Guardian.. well you see the shite they write pretty much every day on here. Why inflict more of their shite on oneself??. The isn't Opus Dei ...
Even though I have voted Conservative most of my adult life, I would trust the reporting of the Guardian way before the Telegraph. The Telegraph is so partial it would make RT blush.
The Donald does indeed have apoint over the polling. I hadn't realised that most polls were Registered voter rather than Likely Voter.
For instance I have mentioned on multiple occasions Quinnipiac's brutal Likely Voter screen (Did you vote in the last Presidential Election?). But i see from actually checking their polls that they are currently doing Registered voter not Likely voter polls at the moment.
Mr. Foremain, Trump is a narcissist, not a psychopaths*.
Psychopaths are glibly charming and highly intelligent. They tend to make excellent leaders. I once read a fascinating article suggesting that it was a species-wide evolutionary advantage to have developed psychopathology.
*Edited extra bit: he also isn't a singular psychopath.
I still don't *get* people's assumed right not to have to walk past buildings or art that they don't like and feel some disapprobation. I dislike virtually everything built in the 1960's and 70's. More than that, it boils my blood that an elite of sneering architects and taste leaders inflicted brutalist architecture on the lower classes and pulled down beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings with such zeal. However, I don't feel it's my right to stir up a mob and tear them down. Just deal with it. Get on with life.
Are you me? Hardly a stone would remain standing upon stone if I could have my way with the aesthetic nightmares blighting so many of our cities. Their sheer ugliness causes more psychological harm on a daily basis than an ideologically-incorrect statue ever could. In fact, if you read the justifications modern architects come up with for their vainglorious carbuncles, you often find that their analyses work beautifully on the level of concept and ideology, but fail miserably in the physical, visual, and human sphere ... which is where their buildings actually fucking exist!
High density housing and a thriving commercial space in one. This is how we should regenerate town centres.
Do we need a Bomber Harris before we can do that stuff?
Or Herman Goering? Who did for a fair bit of the area around Teddy Colston's simulacrum?
Not when you have urban planners and modern architects.
Well yes, Clydebank suggests we don't do well with a clean slate. Tbh I was thinking more of friendly bombs falling on what the urban planners and modern architects have produced.
There's a recurring meme in Glasgow that a lot of the tenement housing (eg in the Gorbals) was of such poor quality that it couldn't be upgraded or preserved, so the year zero guys were allowed to run riot in the 50s and 60s on the basis that something had to be be done. That seems quite odd nowadays when expensive extreme measures in terms of new foundations and shoring up are taken to keep tenements literally on the road. Also strange that since the tenement is absolutely THE vernacular style of housing in Glasgow and other Scottish cities hardly anything is done to faithfully reproduce it as in the form of the Dresden developments highlighted by William Glenn, or much of Berlin, a city with which I'm slightly familiar.
Even Edinburgh hasn't been immune. If you look at Princes Street (still beautiful by the way), it contains various monstrosities, as part of a brave new plan (in the 60's) to demolish all the Victorian and Georgian shop frontages, and replace them with a modern shopping precinct on two levels, with a one storey walkable balcony running the length of it.
It truly boggles the mind.
What slightly bothers me is that now we've woken up a lot more to looking after our heritage, but we've fallen into the trap of thinking that the 60's carbuncles somehow deserve preservation too.
Golly, I hadn't realised that they were thinking quite that far outside the envelope re. Princes St. Actually in Glasgow they seem to have come up with quite a decent cunning plan, to cover over the M8 where it runs through Charing Cross and turn it into an open pedestrian space. Whether that'll come off now in these straitened times, who knows?
I'm not entirely anti brutalism, I quite like the South Bank for its absolute unwillingness to ingratiate for example, and the likes of Poundbury leave me a little queasy.
edit: I see the brave new plan for Princes St is from the 60s, still wouldn't put it past them today though.
Thankfully you'd never get away with it today. It's not stopping some horrors still being built, but they tend not to be demolishing beautiful frontages to do it.
I respectfully diverge from you (and @williamglenn) on the subject of Poundbury, because for all it's air of silliness, people do want to live and work there, because the environment at least tries to be beautiful.
What would be good I think is some objective standard of beauty in buildings based on what is naturally appealing to the human eye. We instinctively prefer lightness and colour to darkness and grey - probably because it evokes cleanliness. We usually prefer ornament to lack of ornament, because it signifies effort and expense. We prefer deeper window recesses, probably because they signify thicker walls and therefore greater safety and security. We prefer stone, brick and other materials that connect a building with its landscape, to concrete.
If we can get this down, we can probably judge objectively that a monstrous pile of dark grey concrete, pebble-dashing, thin metal framed windows, with wind-swept overpasses, never looked good, isn't going to start looking good, isn't going to 'come back into fashion', doesn't deserve preservation.
At the moment, Historic Environment Scotland (I think that's the agency) and English Heritage frown heavily on new buildings done in the style of old buildings. I think that's a mistake. I love the modern extension to the National Museum in Edinburgh - but would we really be sorry if the 1960's crap on Princes Street disappeared behind a plausible Georgian pastiche?
To be an exact replica, which is not of course what you are advocating, you'd have to reopen the quarries at Hailes and Craigleith to get the right stone, which is prtobably impossible now even if the residents were evicted, then the windows would hsve to be different in design, and so on. How close is plausible before it just looks odd? I can see that a modern building using say Clashach stone from the Moray Firth and so on could work better - and indeed an example of that stone is seen in the modern extension to the National Museum.
But I must admit that Poundbury gives me the absolute screaming willies. I came across it unexpectedly one evening when staying in Dorchester and looking for somewhere to eat at dusk. I couldn't understand why I was feeling so uneasy till I realised the buildings were modern - the proportions were wrong, Queen Anne brick houses with tiny modern plastic windows. But what got me were the building stones where those were used. Blue Lias stone on one building and then the next had oolite rubble and the one after that Middle Lias ironstone, and this in Dorset where the stone and location are absolutely linked. Like an Inspector Morse episode where they go into a door from one colleage quadrangle and appear in another a mile away. And (this my partner spotted) no front gardens to the houses either. Going back in daylight didn't improve it, though in fairness it's a nice enough place to live. Though the later phases don't seem so nice (however defined).
I agree about 1960s and 70s Princes Street - mostly (I am sure one or two of the smaller shops might be quite nice but can't remember offhand!).
Interesting what you say about the stone. However, most modern developments in the centre of Edinburgh (like Primark on Princes Street) seem to have a source of similar looking stone for cladding. Perhaps it's just reconstituted or reclaimed stuff they use.
And I can't argue with you about Poundbury because I've never been. Photographs look relatively plausible, though I agree about the windows, they're always a dead giveaway. Either way, people would prefer to live there approximately a million times more than living in Milton Keynes. So that's 1- nil for HRH and his pillars and porticos.
What do you both think of the (under construction) walnut whip hotel? I'm not entirely convinced...
I've stopped looking at Edinburgh developments in recent years as moved away. Is it the thumb shaped building that's sort of reminiscent of an orange being peeled that's replacing (replaced?) St James shopping centre?
If so, I was in equal measure delighted that the existing building is going and disappointed that a rather stupid looking building is replacing it. On balance I see the change as just about positive but a missed opportunity.
Yip - that's the one. The St James Centre was certainly not beautiful but the scale of the replacement... Hmm...
Yes, I just Googled.
Again, I go back to having some recourse to an objective notion of beauty. As it is, we've just got enthusiastic developers with lovely computer aided simulations, telling credulous city councillors that this is going to be the next Guggenheim. The councillors probably know in their gut it looks a bit crap, but are afraid of appearing provincial and ill-educated, so profess enthusiasm instead.
It's also a state that Obama won twice, and which has been badly affected by Trump's tariffs. The Republican Senator, Joni Ernst is also deeply unpopular and trails her Democratic rival in the polls.
To be fair, there really was a leftie twitter mob that went bananas over Sunak picture and were trying to get a campaign going to boycott them, until they pointed out Jezza is a fan.
To be fair, there really was a leftie twitter mob that went bananas over Sunak picture and were trying to get a campaign going to boycott them, until they pointed out Jezza is a fan.
Of course the left were going to get upset. Proper tea is theft.
Mr. Foremain, Trump is a narcissist, not a psychopaths*.
Psychopaths are glibly charming and highly intelligent. They tend to make excellent leaders. I once read a fascinating article suggesting that it was a species-wide evolutionary advantage to have developed psychopathology.
*Edited extra bit: he also isn't a singular psychopath.
A total absence of empathy is the single most defining characteristic. The glib charm and/or high intelligence is typically present in those who are 'high functioning' but there are thick, obnoxious psychos. Or let me put it this way, if you meet a thick, obnoxious individual do not go assuming they are not a psychopath. It could save your life.
I genuinely think the best answer to the statue farrago is for more public scultures, statues and art, and build upwards rather than drag downwards.
Still, easier to pretend to be offended by things. RAGE! RAGE HARD!
People don't seem to realise that societies can move to the 'right' as well as 'left' - this happened in the Victorian era, and I have a shrewd hunch was what lead to the Colston statue being built (with its glowing testimonial) in late 19th century in the first place.
If (perhaps when) society changes again in this way, do we want those people simply to sneer at our PC mob rule phase, reinstate Colston (only gold), or would we prefer them to have to take down the statue of child slaves that has stood alongside him since our era, reminding people of some of the consequences of his business life. The latter is much harder to do. The symbolism would be much more enduring.
Mr. kinabalu, could be wrong, it's some time since I studied it, but I think high intelligence is actually a defining characteristic of psychopaths, or at least very commonplace.
On empathy, the best description I think I heard was that it's like Data's emotion chip. They understand emotions. And they can feel them, but they can disregard them too, unlike other people.
Christ, I think even Plato (rip) might have recoiled from that level of conspiracy theorising.
Not like it's new - remember the GOP primaries where he happily speculated that Ted Cruz's father was in on the Kennedy assassination?
Yep - the signs were all there.
From the vantage point of just a short period from now I predict that the fact USA elected such a person as their president will be a source of shame and bemusement.
There will be much attempted rewriting of personal histories by those who enabled it.
I've been posting on this site for over 15 years. I have never been accused of being a racist. Nor in my lifetime before. Not even at the most passionate heights of the Brexit debate, or the UKIP surge before it.
In the last few days, I've had at least two posters on here make this accusation directly at me. One subsequently withdrew it but they were both made casually and cheaply - with little thought.
This is a really unpleasant and nasty effect of these current riots. It's making many people meaner and less inclined to dialogue. It's absenting the crowd to those with the loudest and strongest voices to dictate what people are meant to think and say, and worrying others with reservations into silence.
It explains precisely why there is so little challenge and debate around some of the assumptions and motives underlying the actions of the perpetrators, and it's unclear how far those will now advance unchecked and what the consequences will be.
I truly fear for the future of this country, I really do.
To be clear I cant know if you are a racist or not, I said I can see why people think you are from your posting. Using racist memes like guests have to live differently, intentional or not, is going to cause offence.
I won't be engaging with you further on this subject.
If you can find it within you to offer an unreserved apology so we can re-set relations, then I will be happy to do so again.
Not until then.
I think you are being overly sensitive.
When you use an analogy such as "house guest" in the context of this particular debate, I think you need to accept (or at least consider) the feedback from others that it is not appropriate. Crass even. And if you disagree and wish to stick with it be prepared to expand and develop the analogy to demonstrate how it does in fact work and was a good choice.
I am very happy to be your disinterested and empathetic counterparty for such an exchange.
I`ve worked in the Middle East (Bahrain), and visited places such as Gibraltar many times, and witnessed (to my disappointment) British expats living there, setting up little communities within communities, UK themed pubs, Union Jacks displayed, no attempt whatsoever to learn the local language or join in with local customs or even make friends with local people. They are trying to export a chunk of Britain abroad. I find this depressing, unintelligent and downright rude.
I think that "house guest" is an unwise phrase to use. But the British expats I cite above are house guests in the loose sort of way that I think CR means. And they warrant our disapproval. And I wouldn`t call Bahraini or Spanish people racist in pointing this out.
It's not at all how CR meant the analogy, but Gibraltar is 'our house' (For now at least).
It isn’t at all.
Nevertheless if I was a public figure I’d probably be resigning by the end of the day. What would happen is people like @kinabalu@kamski and @noneoftheabove would whip up a twitterstorm about it, selectively quote it, ascribe a motive, demand action and then the BBC/C4 would pick up on it and report it. And then authority figures would be challenged as to why I was still in post. It would matter about the nuance. Most wouldn’t care.
It does explain why so few people in authority want to challenge simple assumptions in complex ways in highly emotional times.
Why take the risk? The upside is minimal and the downside huge.
A Guardian journo asked this question at the press briefing yesterday:
"If Britain is not a racist country, which implies there is no structural racism in the UK, please can you explain why black, Asian and minority ethnic people are disproportionally dying from Covid 19".
I can`t even begin to enter the mindset of someone who asks such a stupid question as this. Hancock should have torn him a new one. He didn`t of course - he came up with meaningless pandering shite.
These 'journalists' are insane. Why on earth should the government even bother taking questions from what are no longer newspapers, but political campaign groups in all but name - and particularly stupid ones at that?
Day 1, perhaps actual lockdown announcement day: at the annoucement press conference, some Lefty "journalist" from some nonsuch Lefty online rag asked BoJo whether if people disobeyed the lockdown guidance the police would enforce it. Boris audibly recoiled as though it was the most ridiculous thing he had heard. "Police??" he said "I don't think we'll be getting the police involved."
The Very Next Day: Boris: "..and if people don't comply with these measures we will ask the police to get involved."
is why.
Ah, of course - without them the government would never have thought of using the police to enforce the law. These lefty rags are so useful after all!
Do you think they're in favour of the police enforcing the law against vandalism now?
They u-turned in <24hrs. Go back and listen to the press conference. Boris was aghast that anyone could suggest the police might be involved. And then less than a day later, policy changed.
Could it have been the Telegraph that asked the question? Of course. But they didn't. It was some lefty online rag.
Do you think that Ancelotti should have gone to Arsenal instead of Everton?</p>
Wait a minute - I watched Boris' address to the nation announcing the lockdown, and it clearly mentioned that the police would have powers to enforce it, so the exchange you're referring to must have happened before it was implemented.
Even if you're correct - which I'm prepared to grant because I honestly don't remember what was said in every press conference - do you really think the government wouldn't have reconsidered the necessary means of enforcement as soon as it arose as a practical problem? I don't quite see that question as an irreplaceable service to the nation - and not one that outweighs their utter shitness ever since.
It was a small but significant example of a diverse (small "d") press being a useful, not to say vital element of a functioning democracy.
I'm not proposing to ban the twats, not least because I'm almost absolutist when it comes to free speech. But I do think they should be treated as what they are - a political campaign group whose entire raison d'être is to change the government. More speech, if you will.
What papers do you read? Those paragons of impartiality the Daily Brexitograph, or perhaps you prefer the Daily Mail or the Daily Diana/Express?
Even the Mail and the Telegraph will from time to time publish pro-Labour / anti-Tory etc stories, and have done so recently.
The Guardian and Mirror on the other hand, will never publish anything that diverges from their political goals. That's the difference.
I think your name tells us everything we need to know about your ability to objectively assess such a difference. I suspect you don't often read the Guardian to test you theory, let alone the Mirror. I would imagine your idea of an anti-Tory story would be one that was mildly critical of the Dominic Cummings!!
You dont need to read either of them. . Fe if anyone ..not even lefties post links to the Daily Mirror.. at least i cannot recall seeing one for eons... as for the Guardian.. well you see the shite they write pretty much every day on here. Why inflict more of their shite on oneself??. The isn't Opus Dei ...
Even though I have voted Conservative most of my adult life, I would trust the reporting of the Guardian way before the Telegraph. The Telegraph is so partial it would make RT blush.
The Times is the only one I read. I have it delivered daily.. a present to myself on to retirement..its pretty even hanfmded imho.
Government increasing losing the plot totally on unlocking. Looks like a dog's breakfast of personal ministerial whims rather than a plan.
Schools not to reopen for all primary as planned. Hancock now talking about "September at earliest" for secondary.
If we get an autumn wave then we could see many pupils not being in school until next spring. That would be an entire year at home.
Yet we plan to reopen shops, beer gardens, theme parks etc etc. Even talk of holidays in EU from July.
I don't think those things are necessarily contradictory. I suspect the chances of the virus spreading outside is very small. Unfortunately schools have to work indoors. I don't see why businesses and consumers should suffer just because we think they are less important than kids going to school.
For schools, I wonder if something like alternating weeks will be needed for some time whereby half the kids go one week and half the kids go the next? It won't be ideal, but we mustn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Where is the evidence that kids pass this virus on? Or even get it themselves in all but a minuscule minority?
Or have I missed something?
None whatsoever. Schools should never have been closed.
I understand closing them was only put in at the last minute.
Of course there is evidence that children can both get the virus - the ONS survey has found no statistically significant differences between the percentages infected in different age groups - and pass it on.
I agree, they can get the virus, but they very rarely suffer from it. They are about as likely to get struck by lightning as to die from COVID, if they have no comorbities.
Whether they pass it on to any significant extent is not clear. A study of one 9-year old boy in the French Alps had the boy visiting three schools whilst symptomatic, but the researchers found no evidence of transmission of the virus to other pupils in follow-up interviews and testing. There are lots of similar studies ongoing.
But until there is overwhelming evidence that children are transmitting the virus and causing a significant number of deaths overall, schools should be open, just as they are in most other European countries.
Though I know, as you say, facts don't get in the way of your opinions.
The facts are equivocal.
What isn't equivocal is the massive damage this is doing to kids' education, especially poorer kids, and to parents' jobs if they can't afford child care.
Also to abused children, who need school to get away from their difficult family situations for a few hours a day. Oh, and hungry ones, who rely on free school meals to feed them.
Closing schools was a disaster. If this virus affected children the way it does old people, there would be a case for it. But there's no case for keeping them closed when other European countries are reopening them without problems.
Much of it comes down to attitude. We've piled kids high and taught them cheap in this country. It amused me to hear a Danish primary school teacher on R5L some weeks ago explaining how they had re-opened. After detailing additional measures, she was asked how many kids in her class now. 15. Oh wow! How many before? (Obviously confused)...15.
Abolish private schools and you will be amazed how quickly class sizes come down in the state sector.
Or alternatively, cut class sizes in the state sector and watch as private schools close for lack of pupils?
Honestly, some people are really dumb.
Your solution would increase class sizes, at least in the short term, not reduce them.
I am not dumb. I think the dumb people are those who think that there will be money to cut class sizes in the state sector as long as the rich and powerful can opt out of it.
I am not convinced you are the best judge of your own ability in light of some of your more bizarre recent posts. Do you seriously think that causing a train wreck in education would help poor students? All that would happen under your proposals in the short term is an explosion in class sizes and the implosion of the teetering state sector, coupled with a sharp rise in the amount of tuition, or even 'home schooling,' paid for by wealthier parents. Who's going to suffer in that scenario? Hint - it isn't the rich.
Of course, Covid-19 coupled with pension changes is going to close a lot of private schools anyway, so in some regions (e.g. round here) it's very possible we will see what happens when they go. But if you want to get rid of private schools, you don't do it by dropping ban hammers to satisfy the personal prejudices of a lot of hardcore near-fascists like the Corbynista Labour party. You do it by making the state sector so good almost nobody will bother to pay large sums of money for an alternative. And the key to that is cutting class sizes.
Blair understood that, but never worked out how to actually achieve it (the solution was to raise taxes, but he couldn't bring himself to order Brown to do it). Gove and Cummings unfortunately did not, and their misguided reforms actually made matters worse by increasing teacher attrition rates.
I already said that I wasn't suggesting a ban, I don't think it would be feasible or consistent with human rights legislation, and it would most likely be too disruptive. I am simply saying that there is a reason the state sector is teetering, and that reason is that people of wealth and power don't care about it. If you have an alternative suggestion for getting state schools better resourced I'd love to hear it. Would love to know which of my posts you consider to be bizarre, I think I'm a pretty reasonable kind of person, certainly by PB standards.
This subject touches a nerve and I am glad you are having a bash at it. There is a great attachment to private schools from many PB posters who will at the same time maintain that equality of opportunity in education and life is one of their top priorities. For me, this does not scan at all, but there you go.
What you will find - I predict - is that in order to convince you will need to roll out a complete white paper which describes in close and compelling detail exactly how you will phase out private schools by disincentivization rather than compulsion over (say) 10 years and realize tremendous tangible benefits to all without a single negative impact, however transitory, on anything or anybody.
And even that didn't work when I did it.
Not that I'm frustrated or anything you understand.
I think a good place to start would be a royal commission on the whole education system to figure out where we are succeeding, where we are failing, what works internationally, how much money we want to spend on it and how it interacts with broader goals to increase social mobility and reduce social exclusion. Efforts should be made to have maximum political buy in and there should be a ten year programme of transformation that transcends party political divides. If the commission finds that private schools are a barrier to creating the kind of system we need then there should be a long term programme to deal with that. Nothing needs to be done hastily.
The problem is not outstanding private schools it is inadequate or requires improvement state schools.
Again the left put expanding mediocrity above expanding excellence.
The middle class who send their children to private schools would not send their kids to anything other than a grammar school or outstanding state comprehensive or academy anyway
Did you even read what I suggested or consider engaging with my ideas rather than creating a straw man that suited your talking points? I have no interest in expanding mediocrity, believe me (I have three kids, and I want them to have a great education). I am just doubtful that we will improve that quality while many of the most influential people in society have no direct interest in that happening.
To be fair, there really was a leftie twitter mob that went bananas over Sunak picture and were trying to get a campaign going to boycott them, until they pointed out Jezza is a fan.
"so, once we're done with the statues and the hot drinks, what next, comrades??"
To be fair, there really was a leftie twitter mob that went bananas over Sunak picture and were trying to get a campaign going to boycott them, until they pointed out Jezza is a fan.
"so, once we're done with the statues and the hot drinks, what next, comrades??"
I've been posting on this site for over 15 years. I have never been accused of being a racist. Nor in my lifetime before. Not even at the most passionate heights of the Brexit debate, or the UKIP surge before it.
In the last few days, I've had at least two posters on here make this accusation directly at me. One subsequently withdrew it but they were both made casually and cheaply - with little thought.
This is a really unpleasant and nasty effect of these current riots. It's making many people meaner and less inclined to dialogue. It's absenting the crowd to those with the loudest and strongest voices to dictate what people are meant to think and say, and worrying others with reservations into silence.
It explains precisely why there is so little challenge and debate around some of the assumptions and motives underlying the actions of the perpetrators, and it's unclear how far those will now advance unchecked and what the consequences will be.
I truly fear for the future of this country, I really do.
To be clear I cant know if you are a racist or not, I said I can see why people think you are from your posting. Using racist memes like guests have to live differently, intentional or not, is going to cause offence.
I won't be engaging with you further on this subject.
If you can find it within you to offer an unreserved apology so we can re-set relations, then I will be happy to do so again.
Not until then.
I think you are being overly sensitive.
When you use an analogy such as "house guest" in the context of this particular debate, I think you need to accept (or at least consider) the feedback from others that it is not appropriate. Crass even. And if you disagree and wish to stick with it be prepared to expand and develop the analogy to demonstrate how it does in fact work and was a good choice.
I am very happy to be your disinterested and empathetic counterparty for such an exchange.
I`ve worked in the Middle East (Bahrain), and visited places such as Gibraltar many times, and witnessed (to my disappointment) British expats living there, setting up little communities within communities, UK themed pubs, Union Jacks displayed, no attempt whatsoever to learn the local language or join in with local customs or even make friends with local people. They are trying to export a chunk of Britain abroad. I find this depressing, unintelligent and downright rude.
I think that "house guest" is an unwise phrase to use. But the British expats I cite above are house guests in the loose sort of way that I think CR means. And they warrant our disapproval. And I wouldn`t call Bahraini or Spanish people racist in pointing this out.
It's not at all how CR meant the analogy, but Gibraltar is 'our house' (For now at least).
It isn’t at all.
Nevertheless if I was a public figure I’d probably be resigning by the end of the day. What would happen is people like @kinabalu@kamski and @noneoftheabove would whip up a twitterstorm about it, selectively quote it, ascribe a motive, demand action and then the BBC/C4 would pick up on it and report it. And then authority figures would be challenged as to why I was still in post. It would matter about the nuance. Most wouldn’t care.
It does explain why so few people in authority want to challenge simple assumptions in complex ways in highly emotional times.
Why take the risk? The upside is minimal and the downside huge.
A Guardian journo asked this question at the press briefing yesterday:
"If Britain is not a racist country, which implies there is no structural racism in the UK, please can you explain why black, Asian and minority ethnic people are disproportionally dying from Covid 19".
I can`t even begin to enter the mindset of someone who asks such a stupid question as this. Hancock should have torn him a new one. He didn`t of course - he came up with meaningless pandering shite.
These 'journalists' are insane. Why on earth should the government even bother taking questions from what are no longer newspapers, but political campaign groups in all but name - and particularly stupid ones at that?
Day 1, perhaps actual lockdown announcement day: at the annoucement press conference, some Lefty "journalist" from some nonsuch Lefty online rag asked BoJo whether if people disobeyed the lockdown guidance the police would enforce it. Boris audibly recoiled as though it was the most ridiculous thing he had heard. "Police??" he said "I don't think we'll be getting the police involved."
The Very Next Day: Boris: "..and if people don't comply with these measures we will ask the police to get involved."
is why.
Ah, of course - without them the government would never have thought of using the police to enforce the law. These lefty rags are so useful after all!
Do you think they're in favour of the police enforcing the law against vandalism now?
They u-turned in <24hrs. Go back and listen to the press conference. Boris was aghast that anyone could suggest the police might be involved. And then less than a day later, policy changed.
Could it have been the Telegraph that asked the question? Of course. But they didn't. It was some lefty online rag.
Do you think that Ancelotti should have gone to Arsenal instead of Everton?</p>
Wait a minute - I watched Boris' address to the nation announcing the lockdown, and it clearly mentioned that the police would have powers to enforce it, so the exchange you're referring to must have happened before it was implemented.
Even if you're correct - which I'm prepared to grant because I honestly don't remember what was said in every press conference - do you really think the government wouldn't have reconsidered the necessary means of enforcement as soon as it arose as a practical problem? I don't quite see that question as an irreplaceable service to the nation - and not one that outweighs their utter shitness ever since.
It was a small but significant example of a diverse (small "d") press being a useful, not to say vital element of a functioning democracy.
I'm not proposing to ban the twats, not least because I'm almost absolutist when it comes to free speech. But I do think they should be treated as what they are - a political campaign group whose entire raison d'être is to change the government. More speech, if you will.
What papers do you read? Those paragons of impartiality the Daily Brexitograph, or perhaps you prefer the Daily Mail or the Daily Diana/Express?
Even the Mail and the Telegraph will from time to time publish pro-Labour / anti-Tory etc stories, and have done so recently.
The Guardian and Mirror on the other hand, will never publish anything that diverges from their political goals. That's the difference.
Wrong. For example, Larry Elliott, The Guardian's economics editor, has always been pro-Brexit.
It's astonishing that you don't recognise that the bulk of the press is right wing; look back at any history of daily press voting recommendations at general elections. The Times, the Telegraph, the Sun, the Mail, the Express - all pro-Tory, except for the odd exception with Blair.
The Donald does indeed have apoint over the polling. I hadn't realised that most polls were Registered voter rather than Likely Voter.
For instance I have mentioned on multiple occasions Quinnipiac's brutal Likely Voter screen (Did you vote in the last Presidential Election?). But i see from actually checking their polls that they are currently doing Registered voter not Likely voter polls at the moment.
If the government is not seen to apply the rule of law to everybody equally, then people like this will crawl out of the woodwork and doubtless find some support.
I've been posting on this site for over 15 years. I have never been accused of being a racist. Nor in my lifetime before. Not even at the most passionate heights of the Brexit debate, or the UKIP surge before it.
In the last few days, I've had at least two posters on here make this accusation directly at me. One subsequently withdrew it but they were both made casually and cheaply - with little thought.
This is a really unpleasant and nasty effect of these current riots. It's making many people meaner and less inclined to dialogue. It's absenting the crowd to those with the loudest and strongest voices to dictate what people are meant to think and say, and worrying others with reservations into silence.
It explains precisely why there is so little challenge and debate around some of the assumptions and motives underlying the actions of the perpetrators, and it's unclear how far those will now advance unchecked and what the consequences will be.
I truly fear for the future of this country, I really do.
To be clear I cant know if you are a racist or not, I said I can see why people think you are from your posting. Using racist memes like guests have to live differently, intentional or not, is going to cause offence.
I won't be engaging with you further on this subject.
If you can find it within you to offer an unreserved apology so we can re-set relations, then I will be happy to do so again.
Not until then.
I think you are being overly sensitive.
When you use an analogy such as "house guest" in the context of this particular debate, I think you need to accept (or at least consider) the feedback from others that it is not appropriate. Crass even. And if you disagree and wish to stick with it be prepared to expand and develop the analogy to demonstrate how it does in fact work and was a good choice.
I am very happy to be your disinterested and empathetic counterparty for such an exchange.
I`ve worked in the Middle East (Bahrain), and visited places such as Gibraltar many times, and witnessed (to my disappointment) British expats living there, setting up little communities within communities, UK themed pubs, Union Jacks displayed, no attempt whatsoever to learn the local language or join in with local customs or even make friends with local people. They are trying to export a chunk of Britain abroad. I find this depressing, unintelligent and downright rude.
I think that "house guest" is an unwise phrase to use. But the British expats I cite above are house guests in the loose sort of way that I think CR means. And they warrant our disapproval. And I wouldn`t call Bahraini or Spanish people racist in pointing this out.
It's not at all how CR meant the analogy, but Gibraltar is 'our house' (For now at least).
It isn’t at all.
Nevertheless if I was a public figure I’d probably be resigning by the end of the day. What would happen is people like @kinabalu@kamski and @noneoftheabove would whip up a twitterstorm about it, selectively quote it, ascribe a motive, demand action and then the BBC/C4 would pick up on it and report it. And then authority figures would be challenged as to why I was still in post. It would matter about the nuance. Most wouldn’t care.
It does explain why so few people in authority want to challenge simple assumptions in complex ways in highly emotional times.
Why take the risk? The upside is minimal and the downside huge.
A Guardian journo asked this question at the press briefing yesterday:
"If Britain is not a racist country, which implies there is no structural racism in the UK, please can you explain why black, Asian and minority ethnic people are disproportionally dying from Covid 19".
I can`t even begin to enter the mindset of someone who asks such a stupid question as this. Hancock should have torn him a new one. He didn`t of course - he came up with meaningless pandering shite.
These 'journalists' are insane. Why on earth should the government even bother taking questions from what are no longer newspapers, but political campaign groups in all but name - and particularly stupid ones at that?
Day 1, perhaps actual lockdown announcement day: at the annoucement press conference, some Lefty "journalist" from some nonsuch Lefty online rag asked BoJo whether if people disobeyed the lockdown guidance the police would enforce it. Boris audibly recoiled as though it was the most ridiculous thing he had heard. "Police??" he said "I don't think we'll be getting the police involved."
The Very Next Day: Boris: "..and if people don't comply with these measures we will ask the police to get involved."
is why.
Ah, of course - without them the government would never have thought of using the police to enforce the law. These lefty rags are so useful after all!
Do you think they're in favour of the police enforcing the law against vandalism now?
They u-turned in <24hrs. Go back and listen to the press conference. Boris was aghast that anyone could suggest the police might be involved. And then less than a day later, policy changed.
Could it have been the Telegraph that asked the question? Of course. But they didn't. It was some lefty online rag.
Do you think that Ancelotti should have gone to Arsenal instead of Everton?</p>
Wait a minute - I watched Boris' address to the nation announcing the lockdown, and it clearly mentioned that the police would have powers to enforce it, so the exchange you're referring to must have happened before it was implemented.
Even if you're correct - which I'm prepared to grant because I honestly don't remember what was said in every press conference - do you really think the government wouldn't have reconsidered the necessary means of enforcement as soon as it arose as a practical problem? I don't quite see that question as an irreplaceable service to the nation - and not one that outweighs their utter shitness ever since.
It was a small but significant example of a diverse (small "d") press being a useful, not to say vital element of a functioning democracy.
I'm not proposing to ban the twats, not least because I'm almost absolutist when it comes to free speech. But I do think they should be treated as what they are - a political campaign group whose entire raison d'être is to change the government. More speech, if you will.
What papers do you read? Those paragons of impartiality the Daily Brexitograph, or perhaps you prefer the Daily Mail or the Daily Diana/Express?
Even the Mail and the Telegraph will from time to time publish pro-Labour / anti-Tory etc stories, and have done so recently.
The Guardian and Mirror on the other hand, will never publish anything that diverges from their political goals. That's the difference.
Wrong. For example, Larry Elliott, The Guardian's economics editor, has always been pro-Brexit.
It's astonishing that you don't recognise that the bulk of the press is right wing; look back at any history of daily press voting recommendations at general elections. The Times, the Telegraph, the Sun, the Mail, the Express - all pro-Tory, except for the odd exception with Blair.
Tranmere relegated due to COVID19. Not impressed with that, relegation should have been cancelled, especially for clubs so close to survival - we'd have quite probably not finished in the relegation zone had the season played to conclusion.
Comments
I have a pig to sell you.
I was trying to see if I could damp down the culture wars. That's all.
Please don't associate with me racism again, either indirectly or otherwise.
But look you're saying I (or people like me) would whip up a twitterstorm, which is simply untrue. I'm not even on twitter. So I think it cuts both ways.
I say good riddance to the sculpture, if people are prosecuted for vandalising it that's fine. You want to avoid people getting into entrenched positions, but you agree with people who say that taking down a statue of a slave trader (with a frankly obscene plaque) is the equivalent of people destroying buildings they don't like - this doesn't seem to be encouraging a spirit of compromise?
Because it's actually a good place to post complaints about products it's actually a channel most consumer focused companies can't avoid
Cue here for a particularly literal minded Trumpton to nip in with -
But he's tee total! Brother died from drink so he's never touched a drop. Mark of the man.
But I must admit that Poundbury gives me the absolute screaming willies. I came across it unexpectedly one evening when staying in Dorchester and looking for somewhere to eat at dusk. I couldn't understand why I was feeling so uneasy till I realised the buildings were modern - the proportions were wrong, Queen Anne brick houses with tiny modern plastic windows. But what got me were the building stones where those were used. Blue Lias stone on one building and then the next had oolite rubble and the one after that Middle Lias ironstone, and this in Dorset where the stone and location are absolutely linked. Like an Inspector Morse episode where they go into a door from one colleage quadrangle and appear in another a mile away. And (this my partner spotted) no front gardens to the houses either. Going back in daylight didn't improve it, though in fairness it's a nice enough place to live. Though the later phases don't seem so nice (however defined).
I agree about 1960s and 70s Princes Street - mostly (I am sure one or two of the smaller shops might be quite nice but can't remember offhand!).
But our ministers have neither the science not the common sense. And heaven knows what they learned when studying PPE.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/09/trump-biden-radical-progressive-2020-307920
Since Leopold was inarguably a bad 'un, slightly amazing that it was still there. Perhaps my own prejudices but royals seem to get more of a free pass than yer plebeian genocidal arsehole.
https://twitter.com/jackeparrock/status/1270313880800149504?s=20
The Guardian and Mirror on the other hand, will never publish anything that diverges from their political goals. That's the difference.
Where I am at a loss is understanding why you (or anyone sane) went into an argument that was created by racists. It's like trying to referee a battle between Russia and China over Siberia - no side is going to welcome you interference and the best you can hope for is frost bite.
And the consequences of getting involved is that everyone else looks at you and asks whose side are you actually on.
And I can't argue with you about Poundbury because I've never been. Photographs look relatively plausible, though I agree about the windows, they're always a dead giveaway. Either way, people would prefer to live there approximately a million times more than living in Milton Keynes. So that's 1- nil for HRH and his pillars and porticos.
Am I doing this right?
My surname is a variation of the name Comyn and my dad half seriously said we were his descendants. That gives me first dibs on retribution, so I magnanimously say no plans.
. Fe if anyone ..not even lefties post links to the Daily Mirror.. at least i cannot recall seeing one for eons... as for the Guardian.. well you see the shite they write pretty much every day on here. Why inflict more of their shite on oneself??. The isn't Opus Dei ...
https://twitter.com/StephenMcDonell/status/1270328978771832832
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1270333484528214018
Again the left put expanding mediocrity above expanding excellence.
The middle class who send their children to private schools would not send their kids to anything other than a grammar school or outstanding state comprehensive or academy anyway
https://twitter.com/ASlavitt/status/1270348830958063618
Apparently asymptomatic people are very rare. Or 16%. Or 40%.
Thanks, WHO.
If so, I was in equal measure delighted that the existing building is going and disappointed that a rather stupid looking building is replacing it. On balance I see the change as just about positive but a missed opportunity.
Maybe Trump should be a VAR judge when the Prem resumes.
Very true PJ, very true.
https://twitter.com/jamesdoleman/status/1270357918832001029?s=20
For instance I have mentioned on multiple occasions Quinnipiac's brutal Likely Voter screen (Did you vote in the last Presidential Election?). But i see from actually checking their polls that they are currently doing Registered voter not Likely voter polls at the moment.
Big re-evaluation by me coming up.
Psychopaths are glibly charming and highly intelligent. They tend to make excellent leaders. I once read a fascinating article suggesting that it was a species-wide evolutionary advantage to have developed psychopathology.
*Edited extra bit: he also isn't a singular psychopath.
Again, I go back to having some recourse to an objective notion of beauty. As it is, we've just got enthusiastic developers with lovely computer aided simulations, telling credulous city councillors that this is going to be the next Guggenheim. The councillors probably know in their gut it looks a bit crap, but are afraid of appearing provincial and ill-educated, so profess enthusiasm instead.
Still, easier to pretend to be offended by things. RAGE! RAGE HARD!
"A statue toppling weekend?"
"Just a straightforward, a straightforward statue toppling weekend."
https://www.carnivalcorp.com/news-releases/news-release-details/cunard-extends-pause-operations
If (perhaps when) society changes again in this way, do we want those people simply to sneer at our PC mob rule phase, reinstate Colston (only gold), or would we prefer them to have to take down the statue of child slaves that has stood alongside him since our era, reminding people of some of the consequences of his business life. The latter is much harder to do. The symbolism would be much more enduring.
On empathy, the best description I think I heard was that it's like Data's emotion chip. They understand emotions. And they can feel them, but they can disregard them too, unlike other people.
From the vantage point of just a short period from now I predict that the fact USA elected such a person as their president will be a source of shame and bemusement.
There will be much attempted rewriting of personal histories by those who enabled it.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/let-confederate-monuments-go-seed/612817/
It's astonishing that you don't recognise that the bulk of the press is right wing; look back at any history of daily press voting recommendations at general elections. The Times, the Telegraph, the Sun, the Mail, the Express - all pro-Tory, except for the odd exception with Blair.