You’d be brave to go anywhere out of the UK for a holiday.
I've got Sicily and Naples booked for August and September respectively. It's not that risky if you can WFH indefinitely. My wife and I were thinking about getting a two or three month lease in Sicily and working remotely from there for a while.
And I'm guessing that your wife and you are very non-high risk and as long as you don't come back and hug your grandparents at the airport then surely all is good.
By brave I wasn’t referring to the risk of contacting the virus which I think is low in most of Western Europe. It’s what happens when you get back and find you have no income. As Ian said this morning the plane is the biggest risk.
Eh? What do you mean by no income? For WFHers it's a no change scenario being quarantined or not. Obviously of your job requires in person attendance then it's a different story and yes, I think I wouldn't consider going overseas in that scenario.
Although isn't Sicily a failure of imagination? What about Barbados?
Not in the slightest, Sicily has it all. Amazing beaches, great food, lovely accomodation and incredible wine. It's probably my favourite place to go in the world.
One of my favourites too. I'm seriously considering a sabbatical. No gap year and working for myself for 12 years has left me hankering for a bit of travelling. Meandering to Sicily, via South of France, Ventimeglia, Florence, Rome and Naples is top of the agenda at the moment. Ending in a long stay there.
If you've got a year would have to be Asia for me. 5 years for the cost of 1 year in Europe.
So I've heard - but its just never appealed in the way that Europe has. Suspect I'll be able to spend 3 months before the business really does need my attention again....
You’d be brave to go anywhere out of the UK for a holiday.
I've got Sicily and Naples booked for August and September respectively. It's not that risky if you can WFH indefinitely. My wife and I were thinking about getting a two or three month lease in Sicily and working remotely from there for a while.
And I'm guessing that your wife and you are very non-high risk and as long as you don't come back and hug your grandparents at the airport then surely all is good.
By brave I wasn’t referring to the risk of contacting the virus which I think is low in most of Western Europe. It’s what happens when you get back and find you have no income. As Ian said this morning the plane is the biggest risk.
Eh? What do you mean by no income? For WFHers it's a no change scenario being quarantined or not. Obviously of your job requires in person attendance then it's a different story and yes, I think I wouldn't consider going overseas in that scenario.
Although isn't Sicily a failure of imagination? What about Barbados?
Not in the slightest, Sicily has it all. Amazing beaches, great food, lovely accomodation and incredible wine. It's probably my favourite place to go in the world.
One of my favourites too. I'm seriously considering a sabbatical. No gap year and working for myself for 12 years has left me hankering for a bit of travelling. Meandering to Sicily, via South of France, Ventimeglia, Florence, Rome and Naples is top of the agenda at the moment. Ending in a long stay there.
If you've got a year would have to be Asia for me. 5 years for the cost of 1 year in Europe.
Getting a bit long in the tooth for it now, but I always wanted to travel the Silk Road through Samarkand to China!
Amazon Prime has a rather good docco series "The Silk Road" by a French telejournalist where he traces it all the way from Venice to Xi'an. In dubbed English.
iirc David Baddiel did a similar(-sounding) Silk Road series recently. I did not see it but I recall him being interviewed about it. I think Baddiel started at the Chinese end.
On topic: aren't voters in the 2019 Tory gains more invested in "Boris" than the Tory party? So perhaps it's not surprising: given structural antipathy to the Tories in many of these areas, it was only seats where Johnson himself was particularly popular that the Tory candidate won. In traditional Tory seats, by contrast, "Boris" was likely less important as a selling point. A corollary of this is that replacing Johnson mid-term in an effort to bolster Tory support may have the opposite effect in some of these seats. I have a gut feeling that Sunak may be less popular in these seats than in the traditional Tory home counties, but it'd be interesting to see polling on that. There's also the Brexit factor at work, although I imagine that will fade as an issue over time, especially if it turns out to be a bit shit, as seems likely.
Indeed, according to Redfield 2019 Tory voters prefer Boris to Starmer by more than they prefer Sunak to Starmer, only 2019 LD voters prefer Sunak to Starmer by more than they prefer Boris to Starmer and the latter are very posh London and Home Counties centred
One very likely explanation for this is the similar psychological response to a change in buying behaviour, a kind of confirmation bias that is the opposite to buyers remorse. In other words, I have changed who I buy from, away from my traditional brand, and I need to keep telling myself it was the right decision, because part of me tells me it was not. "I DID make the right decision! I DID" The person will look for those reasons why they should convince themselves it was the correct decision. Clever brands will keep marketing to such folk to keep them on board. In political terms Tony Blair was the most recent to achieve this, and before him Margaret Thatcher.
As I have said many times before, Johnson is no Tony Blair, and he is definitely no Margaret Thatcher. This effect will doubtless melt away long before another GE.
That explanation doesn't explain why they "bought from him" in the first place.
There's no swing in these number. The logical thought surely is that the voters in these seats like him . . . because they like him . . . and that's why they voted for him in the first place. Not that they voted for him then decided they like him, because they voted for him.
You and Nigel are both right. They voted for Johnson because they like him and they say they still like him. The latter could be for one of two reasons. (i) It's too early to have realized the mistake. (ii) They have realized their mistake but are not yet ready to admit it. All the Red Wallers are probably in one or the other camp. We can postulate that a (iii) category - realized the mistake AND saying so - is virtually empty right now. It must be otherwise it would be showing up in the data.
The key question here - which we can't answer - is what is the split between (i) and (ii). Heavily (i) means good news for the Cons. Their strategy is predicated on the Red Wall still being in a (i) state by the time of the next election - because if these voters have not clocked their mistake by then the chances are they will repeat it. But if (as I hope) there are lots in (ii), Labour are set fair. Why? Because from (ii) it's only a matter of time before they take the decisive step to (iii) - which will duly show up in the polls and more importantly at the ballot box.
Odd that you don't have category (iv) they haven't made a mistake.
Anyway Nigel is disagreeing with that, he postulates despite the evidence to the contrary that people voted just because they disliked Corbyn and they never liked Johnson in the first place. Despite the polls saying the opposite.
There's no need for a category (iv) because in terms of impact it's the same as (i). There is no electoral difference between a Red Waller voting Tory not realizing they are being conned and one who does so positively in the knowledge of being conned - i.e. has not really been conned at all.
I happen to disagree with Nigel on the 2nd point. I think Johnson is a genuine asset when it comes to elections and I fear this will continue to be the case.
Overall such voters are probably less educated and quite limited in insight. Over time,though, the reality of Johnson being an utter shyster will percolate through to them - though some will continue to feel affection for him in the way that many Eastenders admired the Kray twins. The London dockers marching to support Enoch Powell in 1968 following his 'rivers of blood' speech also comes to mind.
I like your 1st analogy. Eastenders = Red Wallers, Johnson = Ronnie Kray. People falling for a raffish persona despite the obvious negatives. That kind of works. It shouldn't do but it does. But the 2nd one doesn't. The dockers marched for Powell out of genuine support for his racist worldview. No raffish persona with Powell at all. Quite the opposite. An introverted intellectual. It was about what he said. He said the day would soon come, if immigration continued unchecked, when the black man would hold the whip over the white man in Britain, and furthermore that this would be a bad thing, as indeed it sounds with the reference to "the whip", and the London dockers agreed. How many of their grandsons are Millwall fans today, I wonder?
The whole point of the ‘whip hand’ quote was that someone else said it to Powell
That someone else was (per Powell) a "decent, ordinary fellow Englishman" and it was indicative of what "thousands and hundreds of thousands are saying and thinking" - so I'm not seeing a good reason to assume it was not his view too.
Powell kept being told things by anonymous "man on the street" that fortunately had excellent cadence and phrasing to fit into his speeches.
Such serendipity.
"A lot of people are saying..."
Or Howard's election slogan: "Are you thinking what we're thinking?".
a) Wont have any effect because even if the goods were the same price we would still buy them online because we like to have choice, your high street shop might stock 10 different models from 3 different manufacturers to choose from. Online you get a choice about 100 times wider. You also don't have to put up with pimply faced salestaff who don't know their arse from their elbow misleading you as to the best choice because its what gets them most comission or trying to upsell you. You don't have to carry the goods anywhere but get to choose when it will be delivered on the same day often.
b) It hands starmer the keys to number 10 as it will be hugely unpopular and all he has to do to rack up votes is announce he will abolish it. Who would have thought it Labour the tax cut party.
80% of the country really doesn't care if River island or whatever goes bust. If they valued it they would use it instead even precovid they were voting with their feet and buying online.
This is merely a tory tax hike as we all know it won't achieve its stated aim and unless you think that Rishi Sunak is too thick to realise that then it is all it is
Wow, you really don't like going out shopping, do you? I suspect in your ideal world you would rarely need to leave your house. I'm not sure that your evidence is that strong; many people still like the social aspect of browsing high street shops, especially those that are not part of the large chains. Surprisingly, I'm with HYUFD on this; we need a more level playing field between online and physical shopping. Though unlike him, I wish it would be that easy for Starmer to get the keys to No. 10.
You can go out for other things than shopping. Pre covid footfall was falling in high streets year on year as people opted out of "In person" shopping. I am sure there were many people like you and hyufd also decrying the fall in livery stables and blacksmiths back when more and more were driving cars.
The old style high st with its butcher, baker, chain store is an anachronism and instead of fighting its demise tooth and nail high streets would be better off thinking how best to move forward into the 21st century because nothing is going to reverse the trend.
Specialist shops will survive, a good example of this might be for example games shops which are not merely somewhere to buy a game but also a place to meet people from the local area and sit and play games with them for an afternoon. Personal services style shops, there is a place in a high street for example for a craft shops making bespoke items potentially still. Factory tat though is better sought online
I am not wanting no high street, I want a high street that adds value and debenhams, curries, dixons, john lewis don't add value.
Syracuse was a Greek colony, if memory serves. So was Saguntum (Spain) and Marseilles (Massilia, originally). As was Taras (later Tarentum). And, of course, Asia Minor was riddled with Greek cities.
Hence why another location for super greek-alike looking people is Izmir, and other parts of that coast.
Turkey is cheaper than ever, but it seems to have lost quite a lot of British tourism over the last few years.
The Greeks actually temporarily occupied Izmir (Smyrna as was) for a short while after WW1, but were driven out by Ataturk's Turkish nationalist revival. The Smyrna campaign was part of the Greek irredentist "Megali idea" which would have included Greece taking pretty much the whole western coast line of Turkey, and Constantinople of course.
I should imagine that, the neo-Nazis of the Golden Dawn and their ilk aside, the whole thing has little resonance in modern Greece, a century on. However it does persist in the Greek diaspora: my wife has a Greek-American friend from college who told her that her parish priest insisted on referring to Turkey in sermons as "temporarily-occupied Asia Minor".
Yes, having spent a fair time in Greece, I've heard quite a lot of this. As you say, I I think the chapter is historically closed - the Christian Greeks returned from cities like Smyrna, and many, but not all, of the people living there now look remarkably like descendants of Ionian Greeks who converted to Islam, which I think is what they are.
I've often wondered similarly about Moslem or Christian Palestinians and the Israelis. Who REALLY has the right to the land? To whose ancestors was it actually 'given'?
That's easy. None of them.
Trying to disentangle the ethnic history of Palestine is like trying to hold water in your cupped hands with your fingers open.
However, there have (since the eighth century, at least) always been a mix of Muslims, Jews and Christians there. In the late fourteenth century there was a period of prolonged population decline and by 1500 there were probably only around 200,000 people in the area, the majority (but not an overwhelming majority) Muslim.
It isn't until the nineteenth century that you start to get conscious attempts to impose cultural revolutions on the area, with the growth of Egyptian nationalism under Mehmet Ali (who was, ironically, Albanian) and the corresponding Ottoman countermoves. But even that wasn't deliberate - more an attempt at control and command.
Only a tiny handful of people who live in Israel today have any sort of hereditary 'right' to be there - and far from all of them are Muslim. It is one reason why the question of identity in Israel and the Palestinian Territories (and for the matter of that, the Palestinian and Israeli diasporas) is such a vexed one.
Thanks for that. It's always seemed obvious to me that there have been massive population movements around the area; no self-respecting peasant who could go somewhere else would have hung around while the Crusaders and Saladin were doing their thing, for example. I was surprised, when looking at history of the Gulf States area some years ago, that it was for several centuries a Christian area.
I assume they said the same about the smoking ad ban?
While I don't disagree with these measures, it does seem to me that taking legal measures against junk food consumption contradicts Boris's approach to life and may not go down well with some Tories. He has often railed against the "nanny state", in favour of individual responsibility. Recently he has appealed time and time again to "good old British common sense" to justify guidance rather than legal measures on some virus restrictions. Why doesn't this apply to junk food as well? Surely the British people can use their good old common sense not to eat burgers and chocolate all day?
I assume they said the same about the smoking ad ban?
While I don't disagree with these measures, it does seem to me that taking legal measures against junk food consumption contradicts Boris's approach to life and may not go down well with some Tories. He has often railed against the "nanny state", in favour of individual responsibility. Recently he has appealed time and time again to "good old British common sense" to justify guidance rather than legal measures on some virus restrictions. Why doesn't this apply to junk food as well? Surely the British people can use their good old common sense not to eat burgers and chocolate all day?
a) Wont have any effect because even if the goods were the same price we would still buy them online because we like to have choice, your high street shop might stock 10 different models from 3 different manufacturers to choose from. Online you get a choice about 100 times wider. You also don't have to put up with pimply faced salestaff who don't know their arse from their elbow misleading you as to the best choice because its what gets them most comission or trying to upsell you. You don't have to carry the goods anywhere but get to choose when it will be delivered on the same day often.
b) It hands starmer the keys to number 10 as it will be hugely unpopular and all he has to do to rack up votes is announce he will abolish it. Who would have thought it Labour the tax cut party.
80% of the country really doesn't care if River island or whatever goes bust. If they valued it they would use it instead even precovid they were voting with their feet and buying online.
This is merely a tory tax hike as we all know it won't achieve its stated aim and unless you think that Rishi Sunak is too thick to realise that then it is all it is
This kind of micromanaging of the economy is really stupid. Chancellors always end up being either simplifiers (Howe, Lawson) or complicators (Brown, Lamont). The simplifiers are almost always the better.
I assume they said the same about the smoking ad ban?
While I don't disagree with these measures, it does seem to me that taking legal measures against junk food consumption contradicts Boris's approach to life and may not go down well with some Tories. He has often railed against the "nanny state", in favour of individual responsibility. Recently he has appealed time and time again to "good old British common sense" to justify guidance rather than legal measures on some virus restrictions. Why doesn't this apply to junk food as well? Surely the British people can use their good old common sense not to eat burgers and chocolate all day?
Losing weight is almost the only useful anti-virus measure if you are going to catch it (edit: but this has to be dine in advance, of course).
But that raises the question, why is Mr Johnson going on about this now and not months before? It was pretty clear quite early on in the epidemic that fat was a major factor.
In fact it could be consistent with your observations. There is an obvious common factor with masks - that it is your own faultd if you catch/die/are disabled from the bug: [edit] so the logic might run [not that I can agree with blaming the patient].
a) Wont have any effect because even if the goods were the same price we would still buy them online because we like to have choice, your high street shop might stock 10 different models from 3 different manufacturers to choose from. Online you get a choice about 100 times wider. You also don't have to put up with pimply faced salestaff who don't know their arse from their elbow misleading you as to the best choice because its what gets them most comission or trying to upsell you. You don't have to carry the goods anywhere but get to choose when it will be delivered on the same day often.
b) It hands starmer the keys to number 10 as it will be hugely unpopular and all he has to do to rack up votes is announce he will abolish it. Who would have thought it Labour the tax cut party.
80% of the country really doesn't care if River island or whatever goes bust. If they valued it they would use it instead even precovid they were voting with their feet and buying online.
This is merely a tory tax hike as we all know it won't achieve its stated aim and unless you think that Rishi Sunak is too thick to realise that then it is all it is
This kind of micromanaging of the economy is really stupid. Chancellors always end up being either simplifiers (Howe, Lawson) or complicators (Brown, Lamont). The simplifiers are almost always the better.
On topic: aren't voters in the 2019 Tory gains more invested in "Boris" than the Tory party? So perhaps it's not surprising: given structural antipathy to the Tories in many of these areas, it was only seats where Johnson himself was particularly popular that the Tory candidate won. In traditional Tory seats, by contrast, "Boris" was likely less important as a selling point. A corollary of this is that replacing Johnson mid-term in an effort to bolster Tory support may have the opposite effect in some of these seats. I have a gut feeling that Sunak may be less popular in these seats than in the traditional Tory home counties, but it'd be interesting to see polling on that. There's also the Brexit factor at work, although I imagine that will fade as an issue over time, especially if it turns out to be a bit shit, as seems likely.
Indeed, according to Redfield 2019 Tory voters prefer Boris to Starmer by more than they prefer Sunak to Starmer, only 2019 LD voters prefer Sunak to Starmer by more than they prefer Boris to Starmer and the latter are very posh London and Home Counties centred
One very likely explanation for this is the similar psychological response to a change in buying behaviour, a kind of confirmation bias that is the opposite to buyers remorse. In other words, I have changed who I buy from, away from my traditional brand, and I need to keep telling myself it was the right decision, because part of me tells me it was not. "I DID make the right decision! I DID" The person will look for those reasons why they should convince themselves it was the correct decision. Clever brands will keep marketing to such folk to keep them on board. In political terms Tony Blair was the most recent to achieve this, and before him Margaret Thatcher.
As I have said many times before, Johnson is no Tony Blair, and he is definitely no Margaret Thatcher. This effect will doubtless melt away long before another GE.
That explanation doesn't explain why they "bought from him" in the first place.
There's no swing in these number. The logical thought surely is that the voters in these seats like him . . . because they like him . . . and that's why they voted for him in the first place. Not that they voted for him then decided they like him, because they voted for him.
You and Nigel are both right. They voted for Johnson because they like him and they say they still like him. The latter could be for one of two reasons. (i) It's too early to have realized the mistake. (ii) They have realized their mistake but are not yet ready to admit it. All the Red Wallers are probably in one or the other camp. We can postulate that a (iii) category - realized the mistake AND saying so - is virtually empty right now. It must be otherwise it would be showing up in the data.
The key question here - which we can't answer - is what is the split between (i) and (ii). Heavily (i) means good news for the Cons. Their strategy is predicated on the Red Wall still being in a (i) state by the time of the next election - because if these voters have not clocked their mistake by then the chances are they will repeat it. But if (as I hope) there are lots in (ii), Labour are set fair. Why? Because from (ii) it's only a matter of time before they take the decisive step to (iii) - which will duly show up in the polls and more importantly at the ballot box.
Odd that you don't have category (iv) they haven't made a mistake.
Anyway Nigel is disagreeing with that, he postulates despite the evidence to the contrary that people voted just because they disliked Corbyn and they never liked Johnson in the first place. Despite the polls saying the opposite.
There's no need for a category (iv) because in terms of impact it's the same as (i). There is no electoral difference between a Red Waller voting Tory not realizing they are being conned and one who does so positively in the knowledge of being conned - i.e. has not really been conned at all.
I happen to disagree with Nigel on the 2nd point. I think Johnson is a genuine asset when it comes to elections and I fear this will continue to be the case.
Overall such voters are probably less educated and quite limited in insight. Over time,though, the reality of Johnson being an utter shyster will percolate through to them - though some will continue to feel affection for him in the way that many Eastenders admired the Kray twins. The London dockers marching to support Enoch Powell in 1968 following his 'rivers of blood' speech also comes to mind.
I like your 1st analogy. Eastenders = Red Wallers, Johnson = Ronnie Kray. People falling for a raffish persona despite the obvious negatives. That kind of works. It shouldn't do but it does. But the 2nd one doesn't. The dockers marched for Powell out of genuine support for his racist worldview. No raffish persona with Powell at all. Quite the opposite. An introverted intellectual. It was about what he said. He said the day would soon come, if immigration continued unchecked, when the black man would hold the whip over the white man in Britain, and furthermore that this would be a bad thing, as indeed it sounds with the reference to "the whip", and the London dockers agreed. How many of their grandsons are Millwall fans today, I wonder?
The whole point of the ‘whip hand’ quote was that someone else said it to Powell
That someone else was (per Powell) a "decent, ordinary fellow Englishman" and it was indicative of what "thousands and hundreds of thousands are saying and thinking" - so I'm not seeing a good reason to assume it was not his view too.
Powell kept being told things by anonymous "man on the street" that fortunately had excellent cadence and phrasing to fit into his speeches.
Such serendipity.
There's a viable sketch in there. We see Enoch going about his day and this happens wherever he goes. He pops into the butchers. "Nice leg of lamb, Brian, please." Brian obliges and as he hands it over, he muses, "I have to say, Enoch, that I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see the River Tiber foaming with much blood. That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect." Enoch nods sagely, "I know what you mean, mate, I know exactly what you mean." Exits and we next see him at the newsagents. "Guardian please. Need to know what the enemy are thinking today." He pays and makes to leave but the proprietor stops him. Wants a quick word. "You know, Enoch, all this immigration, I've been thinking. It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre. So insane are we that we actually permit unmarried persons to immigrate for the purpose of founding a family with spouses and fiancées whom they have never seen." Enoch grimaces in sympathy. "Tell me about it," he says. Action switches to the ... etc.
a) Wont have any effect because even if the goods were the same price we would still buy them online because we like to have choice, your high street shop might stock 10 different models from 3 different manufacturers to choose from. Online you get a choice about 100 times wider. You also don't have to put up with pimply faced salestaff who don't know their arse from their elbow misleading you as to the best choice because its what gets them most comission or trying to upsell you. You don't have to carry the goods anywhere but get to choose when it will be delivered on the same day often.
b) It hands starmer the keys to number 10 as it will be hugely unpopular and all he has to do to rack up votes is announce he will abolish it. Who would have thought it Labour the tax cut party.
80% of the country really doesn't care if River island or whatever goes bust. If they valued it they would use it instead even precovid they were voting with their feet and buying online.
This is merely a tory tax hike as we all know it won't achieve its stated aim and unless you think that Rishi Sunak is too thick to realise that then it is all it is
This kind of micromanaging of the economy is really stupid. Chancellors always end up being either simplifiers (Howe, Lawson) or complicators (Brown, Lamont). The simplifiers are almost always the better.
Which is another reason to be against it. All it does is make life a bit more expensive for people without achieving it's goal. If they need more tax be honest about it don't pretend its for some virtuous aim and hope we believe the propaganda
On topic: aren't voters in the 2019 Tory gains more invested in "Boris" than the Tory party? So perhaps it's not surprising: given structural antipathy to the Tories in many of these areas, it was only seats where Johnson himself was particularly popular that the Tory candidate won. In traditional Tory seats, by contrast, "Boris" was likely less important as a selling point. A corollary of this is that replacing Johnson mid-term in an effort to bolster Tory support may have the opposite effect in some of these seats. I have a gut feeling that Sunak may be less popular in these seats than in the traditional Tory home counties, but it'd be interesting to see polling on that. There's also the Brexit factor at work, although I imagine that will fade as an issue over time, especially if it turns out to be a bit shit, as seems likely.
Indeed, according to Redfield 2019 Tory voters prefer Boris to Starmer by more than they prefer Sunak to Starmer, only 2019 LD voters prefer Sunak to Starmer by more than they prefer Boris to Starmer and the latter are very posh London and Home Counties centred
One very likely explanation for this is the similar psychological response to a change in buying behaviour, a kind of confirmation bias that is the opposite to buyers remorse. In other words, I have changed who I buy from, away from my traditional brand, and I need to keep telling myself it was the right decision, because part of me tells me it was not. "I DID make the right decision! I DID" The person will look for those reasons why they should convince themselves it was the correct decision. Clever brands will keep marketing to such folk to keep them on board. In political terms Tony Blair was the most recent to achieve this, and before him Margaret Thatcher.
As I have said many times before, Johnson is no Tony Blair, and he is definitely no Margaret Thatcher. This effect will doubtless melt away long before another GE.
That explanation doesn't explain why they "bought from him" in the first place.
There's no swing in these number. The logical thought surely is that the voters in these seats like him . . . because they like him . . . and that's why they voted for him in the first place. Not that they voted for him then decided they like him, because they voted for him.
You and Nigel are both right. They voted for Johnson because they like him and they say they still like him. The latter could be for one of two reasons. (i) It's too early to have realized the mistake. (ii) They have realized their mistake but are not yet ready to admit it. All the Red Wallers are probably in one or the other camp. We can postulate that a (iii) category - realized the mistake AND saying so - is virtually empty right now. It must be otherwise it would be showing up in the data.
The key question here - which we can't answer - is what is the split between (i) and (ii). Heavily (i) means good news for the Cons. Their strategy is predicated on the Red Wall still being in a (i) state by the time of the next election - because if these voters have not clocked their mistake by then the chances are they will repeat it. But if (as I hope) there are lots in (ii), Labour are set fair. Why? Because from (ii) it's only a matter of time before they take the decisive step to (iii) - which will duly show up in the polls and more importantly at the ballot box.
Odd that you don't have category (iv) they haven't made a mistake.
Anyway Nigel is disagreeing with that, he postulates despite the evidence to the contrary that people voted just because they disliked Corbyn and they never liked Johnson in the first place. Despite the polls saying the opposite.
There's no need for a category (iv) because in terms of impact it's the same as (i). There is no electoral difference between a Red Waller voting Tory not realizing they are being conned and one who does so positively in the knowledge of being conned - i.e. has not really been conned at all.
I happen to disagree with Nigel on the 2nd point. I think Johnson is a genuine asset when it comes to elections and I fear this will continue to be the case.
Overall such voters are probably less educated and quite limited in insight. Over time,though, the reality of Johnson being an utter shyster will percolate through to them - though some will continue to feel affection for him in the way that many Eastenders admired the Kray twins. The London dockers marching to support Enoch Powell in 1968 following his 'rivers of blood' speech also comes to mind.
I like your 1st analogy. Eastenders = Red Wallers, Johnson = Ronnie Kray. People falling for a raffish persona despite the obvious negatives. That kind of works. It shouldn't do but it does. But the 2nd one doesn't. The dockers marched for Powell out of genuine support for his racist worldview. No raffish persona with Powell at all. Quite the opposite. An introverted intellectual. It was about what he said. He said the day would soon come, if immigration continued unchecked, when the black man would hold the whip over the white man in Britain, and furthermore that this would be a bad thing, as indeed it sounds with the reference to "the whip", and the London dockers agreed. How many of their grandsons are Millwall fans today, I wonder?
The whole point of the ‘whip hand’ quote was that someone else said it to Powell
That someone else was (per Powell) a "decent, ordinary fellow Englishman" and it was indicative of what "thousands and hundreds of thousands are saying and thinking" - so I'm not seeing a good reason to assume it was not his view too.
Whether it was or not, the dockers, and contemporary opinion polls, prove him right to think many people agreed with it
On topic: aren't voters in the 2019 Tory gains more invested in "Boris" than the Tory party? So perhaps it's not surprising: given structural antipathy to the Tories in many of these areas, it was only seats where Johnson himself was particularly popular that the Tory candidate won. In traditional Tory seats, by contrast, "Boris" was likely less important as a selling point. A corollary of this is that replacing Johnson mid-term in an effort to bolster Tory support may have the opposite effect in some of these seats. I have a gut feeling that Sunak may be less popular in these seats than in the traditional Tory home counties, but it'd be interesting to see polling on that. There's also the Brexit factor at work, although I imagine that will fade as an issue over time, especially if it turns out to be a bit shit, as seems likely.
Indeed, according to Redfield 2019 Tory voters prefer Boris to Starmer by more than they prefer Sunak to Starmer, only 2019 LD voters prefer Sunak to Starmer by more than they prefer Boris to Starmer and the latter are very posh London and Home Counties centred
One very likely explanation for this is the similar psychological response to a change in buying behaviour, a kind of confirmation bias that is the opposite to buyers remorse. In other words, I have changed who I buy from, away from my traditional brand, and I need to keep telling myself it was the right decision, because part of me tells me it was not. "I DID make the right decision! I DID" The person will look for those reasons why they should convince themselves it was the correct decision. Clever brands will keep marketing to such folk to keep them on board. In political terms Tony Blair was the most recent to achieve this, and before him Margaret Thatcher.
As I have said many times before, Johnson is no Tony Blair, and he is definitely no Margaret Thatcher. This effect will doubtless melt away long before another GE.
That explanation doesn't explain why they "bought from him" in the first place.
There's no swing in these number. The logical thought surely is that the voters in these seats like him . . . because they like him . . . and that's why they voted for him in the first place. Not that they voted for him then decided they like him, because they voted for him.
You and Nigel are both right. They voted for Johnson because they like him and they say they still like him. The latter could be for one of two reasons. (i) It's too early to have realized the mistake. (ii) They have realized their mistake but are not yet ready to admit it. All the Red Wallers are probably in one or the other camp. We can postulate that a (iii) category - realized the mistake AND saying so - is virtually empty right now. It must be otherwise it would be showing up in the data.
The key question here - which we can't answer - is what is the split between (i) and (ii). Heavily (i) means good news for the Cons. Their strategy is predicated on the Red Wall still being in a (i) state by the time of the next election - because if these voters have not clocked their mistake by then the chances are they will repeat it. But if (as I hope) there are lots in (ii), Labour are set fair. Why? Because from (ii) it's only a matter of time before they take the decisive step to (iii) - which will duly show up in the polls and more importantly at the ballot box.
Odd that you don't have category (iv) they haven't made a mistake.
Anyway Nigel is disagreeing with that, he postulates despite the evidence to the contrary that people voted just because they disliked Corbyn and they never liked Johnson in the first place. Despite the polls saying the opposite.
There's no need for a category (iv) because in terms of impact it's the same as (i). There is no electoral difference between a Red Waller voting Tory not realizing they are being conned and one who does so positively in the knowledge of being conned - i.e. has not really been conned at all.
I happen to disagree with Nigel on the 2nd point. I think Johnson is a genuine asset when it comes to elections and I fear this will continue to be the case.
Overall such voters are probably less educated and quite limited in insight. Over time,though, the reality of Johnson being an utter shyster will percolate through to them - though some will continue to feel affection for him in the way that many Eastenders admired the Kray twins. The London dockers marching to support Enoch Powell in 1968 following his 'rivers of blood' speech also comes to mind.
I like your 1st analogy. Eastenders = Red Wallers, Johnson = Ronnie Kray. People falling for a raffish persona despite the obvious negatives. That kind of works. It shouldn't do but it does. But the 2nd one doesn't. The dockers marched for Powell out of genuine support for his racist worldview. No raffish persona with Powell at all. Quite the opposite. An introverted intellectual. It was about what he said. He said the day would soon come, if immigration continued unchecked, when the black man would hold the whip over the white man in Britain, and furthermore that this would be a bad thing, as indeed it sounds with the reference to "the whip", and the London dockers agreed. How many of their grandsons are Millwall fans today, I wonder?
The whole point of the ‘whip hand’ quote was that someone else said it to Powell
That someone else was (per Powell) a "decent, ordinary fellow Englishman" and it was indicative of what "thousands and hundreds of thousands are saying and thinking" - so I'm not seeing a good reason to assume it was not his view too.
I always thought that comment was quite revealing about Powell's worldview - he couldn't imagine that people could exist without one group holding the "whip hand" over another. Probably got beaten a lot as a child, so much fear and repressed rage in that phrase.
A strange character, Powell, but not atypical of his time and education. He was capable of great subtlety and classical erudition, but also crude brutishness and boorishness. That combination would have been typical of the tenor of his public school education at the time , although he was also partly a grammar school boy. It tends to make me feel grateful, to a certain extent, that by the time I attended one of the slightly better-known ones, a lot of this routine brutality seemed to have gone.
Syracuse was a Greek colony, if memory serves. So was Saguntum (Spain) and Marseilles (Massilia, originally). As was Taras (later Tarentum). And, of course, Asia Minor was riddled with Greek cities.
Hence why another location for super greek-alike looking people is Izmir, and other parts of that coast.
Turkey is cheaper than ever, but it seems to have lost quite a lot of British tourism over the last few years.
The Greeks actually temporarily occupied Izmir (Smyrna as was) for a short while after WW1, but were driven out by Ataturk's Turkish nationalist revival. The Smyrna campaign was part of the Greek irredentist "Megali idea" which would have included Greece taking pretty much the whole western coast line of Turkey, and Constantinople of course.
I should imagine that, the neo-Nazis of the Golden Dawn and their ilk aside, the whole thing has little resonance in modern Greece, a century on. However it does persist in the Greek diaspora: my wife has a Greek-American friend from college who told her that her parish priest insisted on referring to Turkey in sermons as "temporarily-occupied Asia Minor".
Yes, having spent a fair time in Greece, I've heard quite a lot of this. As you say, I I think the chapter is historically closed - the Christian Greeks returned from cities like Smyrna, and many, but not all, of the people living there now look remarkably like descendants of Ionian Greeks who converted to Islam, which I think is what they are.
I've often wondered similarly about Moslem or Christian Palestinians and the Israelis. Who REALLY has the right to the land? To whose ancestors was it actually 'given'?
That's easy. None of them.
Trying to disentangle the ethnic history of Palestine is like trying to hold water in your cupped hands with your fingers open.
However, there have (since the eighth century, at least) always been a mix of Muslims, Jews and Christians there. In the late fourteenth century there was a period of prolonged population decline and by 1500 there were probably only around 200,000 people in the area, the majority (but not an overwhelming majority) Muslim.
It isn't until the nineteenth century that you start to get conscious attempts to impose cultural revolutions on the area, with the growth of Egyptian nationalism under Mehmet Ali (who was, ironically, Albanian) and the corresponding Ottoman countermoves. But even that wasn't deliberate - more an attempt at control and command.
Only a tiny handful of people who live in Israel today have any sort of hereditary 'right' to be there - and far from all of them are Muslim. It is one reason why the question of identity in Israel and the Palestinian Territories (and for the matter of that, the Palestinian and Israeli diasporas) is such a vexed one.
"...since the eighth century, at least..."?
Er, I think it was around, zero BC that the Jews were there, weren't they? Wasn't there quite a famous Jew that went on to great things around that time?
On topic: aren't voters in the 2019 Tory gains more invested in "Boris" than the Tory party? So perhaps it's not surprising: given structural antipathy to the Tories in many of these areas, it was only seats where Johnson himself was particularly popular that the Tory candidate won. In traditional Tory seats, by contrast, "Boris" was likely less important as a selling point. A corollary of this is that replacing Johnson mid-term in an effort to bolster Tory support may have the opposite effect in some of these seats. I have a gut feeling that Sunak may be less popular in these seats than in the traditional Tory home counties, but it'd be interesting to see polling on that. There's also the Brexit factor at work, although I imagine that will fade as an issue over time, especially if it turns out to be a bit shit, as seems likely.
Indeed, according to Redfield 2019 Tory voters prefer Boris to Starmer by more than they prefer Sunak to Starmer, only 2019 LD voters prefer Sunak to Starmer by more than they prefer Boris to Starmer and the latter are very posh London and Home Counties centred
One very likely explanation for this is the similar psychological response to a change in buying behaviour, a kind of confirmation bias that is the opposite to buyers remorse. In other words, I have changed who I buy from, away from my traditional brand, and I need to keep telling myself it was the right decision, because part of me tells me it was not. "I DID make the right decision! I DID" The person will look for those reasons why they should convince themselves it was the correct decision. Clever brands will keep marketing to such folk to keep them on board. In political terms Tony Blair was the most recent to achieve this, and before him Margaret Thatcher.
As I have said many times before, Johnson is no Tony Blair, and he is definitely no Margaret Thatcher. This effect will doubtless melt away long before another GE.
That explanation doesn't explain why they "bought from him" in the first place.
There's no swing in these number. The logical thought surely is that the voters in these seats like him . . . because they like him . . . and that's why they voted for him in the first place. Not that they voted for him then decided they like him, because they voted for him.
You and Nigel are both right. They voted for Johnson because they like him and they say they still like him. The latter could be for one of two reasons. (i) It's too early to have realized the mistake. (ii) They have realized their mistake but are not yet ready to admit it. All the Red Wallers are probably in one or the other camp. We can postulate that a (iii) category - realized the mistake AND saying so - is virtually empty right now. It must be otherwise it would be showing up in the data.
The key question here - which we can't answer - is what is the split between (i) and (ii). Heavily (i) means good news for the Cons. Their strategy is predicated on the Red Wall still being in a (i) state by the time of the next election - because if these voters have not clocked their mistake by then the chances are they will repeat it. But if (as I hope) there are lots in (ii), Labour are set fair. Why? Because from (ii) it's only a matter of time before they take the decisive step to (iii) - which will duly show up in the polls and more importantly at the ballot box.
Odd that you don't have category (iv) they haven't made a mistake.
Anyway Nigel is disagreeing with that, he postulates despite the evidence to the contrary that people voted just because they disliked Corbyn and they never liked Johnson in the first place. Despite the polls saying the opposite.
There's no need for a category (iv) because in terms of impact it's the same as (i). There is no electoral difference between a Red Waller voting Tory not realizing they are being conned and one who does so positively in the knowledge of being conned - i.e. has not really been conned at all.
I happen to disagree with Nigel on the 2nd point. I think Johnson is a genuine asset when it comes to elections and I fear this will continue to be the case.
Overall such voters are probably less educated and quite limited in insight. Over time,though, the reality of Johnson being an utter shyster will percolate through to them - though some will continue to feel affection for him in the way that many Eastenders admired the Kray twins. The London dockers marching to support Enoch Powell in 1968 following his 'rivers of blood' speech also comes to mind.
I like your 1st analogy. Eastenders = Red Wallers, Johnson = Ronnie Kray. People falling for a raffish persona despite the obvious negatives. That kind of works. It shouldn't do but it does. But the 2nd one doesn't. The dockers marched for Powell out of genuine support for his racist worldview. No raffish persona with Powell at all. Quite the opposite. An introverted intellectual. It was about what he said. He said the day would soon come, if immigration continued unchecked, when the black man would hold the whip over the white man in Britain, and furthermore that this would be a bad thing, as indeed it sounds with the reference to "the whip", and the London dockers agreed. How many of their grandsons are Millwall fans today, I wonder?
The whole point of the ‘whip hand’ quote was that someone else said it to Powell
That someone else was (per Powell) a "decent, ordinary fellow Englishman" and it was indicative of what "thousands and hundreds of thousands are saying and thinking" - so I'm not seeing a good reason to assume it was not his view too.
Powell kept being told things by anonymous "man on the street" that fortunately had excellent cadence and phrasing to fit into his speeches.
Such serendipity.
There's a viable sketch in there. We see Enoch going about his day and this happens wherever he goes. He pops into the butchers. "Nice leg of lamb, Brian, please." Brian obliges and as he hands it over, he muses, "I have to say, Enoch, that I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see the River Tiber foaming with much blood. That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect." Enoch nods sagely, "I know what you mean, mate, I know exactly what you mean." Exits and we next see him at the newsagents. "Guardian please. Need to know what the enemy are thinking today." He pays and makes to leave but the proprietor stops him. Wants a quick word. "You know, Enoch, all this immigration, I've been thinking. It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre. So insane are we that we actually permit unmarried persons to immigrate for the purpose of founding a family with spouses and fiancées whom they have never seen." Enoch grimaces in sympathy. "Tell me about it," he says. Action switches to the ... etc.
Indeed; if only he'd had the facility for reinterpreting more clearly the inchoate expostulations of the common man, he might have been so much more successful...
Syracuse was a Greek colony, if memory serves. So was Saguntum (Spain) and Marseilles (Massilia, originally). As was Taras (later Tarentum). And, of course, Asia Minor was riddled with Greek cities.
Hence why another location for super greek-alike looking people is Izmir, and other parts of that coast.
Turkey is cheaper than ever, but it seems to have lost quite a lot of British tourism over the last few years.
The Greeks actually temporarily occupied Izmir (Smyrna as was) for a short while after WW1, but were driven out by Ataturk's Turkish nationalist revival. The Smyrna campaign was part of the Greek irredentist "Megali idea" which would have included Greece taking pretty much the whole western coast line of Turkey, and Constantinople of course.
I should imagine that, the neo-Nazis of the Golden Dawn and their ilk aside, the whole thing has little resonance in modern Greece, a century on. However it does persist in the Greek diaspora: my wife has a Greek-American friend from college who told her that her parish priest insisted on referring to Turkey in sermons as "temporarily-occupied Asia Minor".
Yes, having spent a fair time in Greece, I've heard quite a lot of this. As you say, I I think the chapter is historically closed - the Christian Greeks returned from cities like Smyrna, and many, but not all, of the people living there now look remarkably like descendants of Ionian Greeks who converted to Islam, which I think is what they are.
I've often wondered similarly about Moslem or Christian Palestinians and the Israelis. Who REALLY has the right to the land? To whose ancestors was it actually 'given'?
That's easy. None of them.
Trying to disentangle the ethnic history of Palestine is like trying to hold water in your cupped hands with your fingers open.
However, there have (since the eighth century, at least) always been a mix of Muslims, Jews and Christians there. In the late fourteenth century there was a period of prolonged population decline and by 1500 there were probably only around 200,000 people in the area, the majority (but not an overwhelming majority) Muslim.
It isn't until the nineteenth century that you start to get conscious attempts to impose cultural revolutions on the area, with the growth of Egyptian nationalism under Mehmet Ali (who was, ironically, Albanian) and the corresponding Ottoman countermoves. But even that wasn't deliberate - more an attempt at control and command.
Only a tiny handful of people who live in Israel today have any sort of hereditary 'right' to be there - and far from all of them are Muslim. It is one reason why the question of identity in Israel and the Palestinian Territories (and for the matter of that, the Palestinian and Israeli diasporas) is such a vexed one.
"...since the eighth century, at least..."?
Er, I think it was around, zero BC that the Jews were there, weren't they? Wasn't there quite a famous Jew that went on to great things around that time?
On topic: aren't voters in the 2019 Tory gains more invested in "Boris" than the Tory party? So perhaps it's not surprising: given structural antipathy to the Tories in many of these areas, it was only seats where Johnson himself was particularly popular that the Tory candidate won. In traditional Tory seats, by contrast, "Boris" was likely less important as a selling point. A corollary of this is that replacing Johnson mid-term in an effort to bolster Tory support may have the opposite effect in some of these seats. I have a gut feeling that Sunak may be less popular in these seats than in the traditional Tory home counties, but it'd be interesting to see polling on that. There's also the Brexit factor at work, although I imagine that will fade as an issue over time, especially if it turns out to be a bit shit, as seems likely.
Indeed, according to Redfield 2019 Tory voters prefer Boris to Starmer by more than they prefer Sunak to Starmer, only 2019 LD voters prefer Sunak to Starmer by more than they prefer Boris to Starmer and the latter are very posh London and Home Counties centred
One very likely explanation for this is the similar psychological response to a change in buying behaviour, a kind of confirmation bias that is the opposite to buyers remorse. In other words, I have changed who I buy from, away from my traditional brand, and I need to keep telling myself it was the right decision, because part of me tells me it was not. "I DID make the right decision! I DID" The person will look for those reasons why they should convince themselves it was the correct decision. Clever brands will keep marketing to such folk to keep them on board. In political terms Tony Blair was the most recent to achieve this, and before him Margaret Thatcher.
As I have said many times before, Johnson is no Tony Blair, and he is definitely no Margaret Thatcher. This effect will doubtless melt away long before another GE.
That explanation doesn't explain why they "bought from him" in the first place.
There's no swing in these number. The logical thought surely is that the voters in these seats like him . . . because they like him . . . and that's why they voted for him in the first place. Not that they voted for him then decided they like him, because they voted for him.
You and Nigel are both right. They voted for Johnson because they like him and they say they still like him. The latter could be for one of two reasons. (i) It's too early to have realized the mistake. (ii) They have realized their mistake but are not yet ready to admit it. All the Red Wallers are probably in one or the other camp. We can postulate that a (iii) category - realized the mistake AND saying so - is virtually empty right now. It must be otherwise it would be showing up in the data.
The key question here - which we can't answer - is what is the split between (i) and (ii). Heavily (i) means good news for the Cons. Their strategy is predicated on the Red Wall still being in a (i) state by the time of the next election - because if these voters have not clocked their mistake by then the chances are they will repeat it. But if (as I hope) there are lots in (ii), Labour are set fair. Why? Because from (ii) it's only a matter of time before they take the decisive step to (iii) - which will duly show up in the polls and more importantly at the ballot box.
Odd that you don't have category (iv) they haven't made a mistake.
Anyway Nigel is disagreeing with that, he postulates despite the evidence to the contrary that people voted just because they disliked Corbyn and they never liked Johnson in the first place. Despite the polls saying the opposite.
There's no need for a category (iv) because in terms of impact it's the same as (i). There is no electoral difference between a Red Waller voting Tory not realizing they are being conned and one who does so positively in the knowledge of being conned - i.e. has not really been conned at all.
I happen to disagree with Nigel on the 2nd point. I think Johnson is a genuine asset when it comes to elections and I fear this will continue to be the case.
Overall such voters are probably less educated and quite limited in insight. Over time,though, the reality of Johnson being an utter shyster will percolate through to them - though some will continue to feel affection for him in the way that many Eastenders admired the Kray twins. The London dockers marching to support Enoch Powell in 1968 following his 'rivers of blood' speech also comes to mind.
I like your 1st analogy. Eastenders = Red Wallers, Johnson = Ronnie Kray. People falling for a raffish persona despite the obvious negatives. That kind of works. It shouldn't do but it does. But the 2nd one doesn't. The dockers marched for Powell out of genuine support for his racist worldview. No raffish persona with Powell at all. Quite the opposite. An introverted intellectual. It was about what he said. He said the day would soon come, if immigration continued unchecked, when the black man would hold the whip over the white man in Britain, and furthermore that this would be a bad thing, as indeed it sounds with the reference to "the whip", and the London dockers agreed. How many of their grandsons are Millwall fans today, I wonder?
The whole point of the ‘whip hand’ quote was that someone else said it to Powell
That someone else was (per Powell) a "decent, ordinary fellow Englishman" and it was indicative of what "thousands and hundreds of thousands are saying and thinking" - so I'm not seeing a good reason to assume it was not his view too.
Powell kept being told things by anonymous "man on the street" that fortunately had excellent cadence and phrasing to fit into his speeches.
Such serendipity.
"A lot of people are saying..."
Or Howard's election slogan: "Are you thinking what we're thinking?".
That was a low. But thankfully didn't work. Farage is a far more skillful politician than Howard.
Back to sketch, final scene (after several), the barbers, Enoch needs a trim -
"Short back and sides please, Johnny."
"No perm then this time?"
"Ha ha ha. You're a card."
Johnny gets busy with the scissors but keeps breaking off the whole time to rabbit on about you know what -
"For reasons I cannot comprehend, and in pursuance of a decision by default, on which I was never consulted, I find themselves made a stranger in my own country. I find my wife unable to obtain a hospital bed in childbirth, my children unable to obtain school places, my neighbourhood changed beyond recognition, my plans and prospects for the future defeated, and -"
"Johnny, I'm a bit pressed, you know what I mean?"
"- and on top of this, I now learn that a one-way privilege is to be established by Act of Parliament; a law which cannot, AND IS NOT INTENDED TO, operate to protect me or redress my grievances, is to be enacted to give the stranger, the disgruntled and the agent provocateur the power to pillory me and mine for our private actions."
Enoch finally snaps.
"Yeah yeah yeah. I know. Very interesting and I totally get it. But can you please shut the fuck up for a few minutes and finish cutting my hair. I've got a big speech to prepare."
On topic: aren't voters in the 2019 Tory gains more invested in "Boris" than the Tory party? So perhaps it's not surprising: given structural antipathy to the Tories in many of these areas, it was only seats where Johnson himself was particularly popular that the Tory candidate won. In traditional Tory seats, by contrast, "Boris" was likely less important as a selling point. A corollary of this is that replacing Johnson mid-term in an effort to bolster Tory support may have the opposite effect in some of these seats. I have a gut feeling that Sunak may be less popular in these seats than in the traditional Tory home counties, but it'd be interesting to see polling on that. There's also the Brexit factor at work, although I imagine that will fade as an issue over time, especially if it turns out to be a bit shit, as seems likely.
Indeed, according to Redfield 2019 Tory voters prefer Boris to Starmer by more than they prefer Sunak to Starmer, only 2019 LD voters prefer Sunak to Starmer by more than they prefer Boris to Starmer and the latter are very posh London and Home Counties centred
One very likely explanation for this is the similar psychological response to a change in buying behaviour, a kind of confirmation bias that is the opposite to buyers remorse. In other words, I have changed who I buy from, away from my traditional brand, and I need to keep telling myself it was the right decision, because part of me tells me it was not. "I DID make the right decision! I DID" The person will look for those reasons why they should convince themselves it was the correct decision. Clever brands will keep marketing to such folk to keep them on board. In political terms Tony Blair was the most recent to achieve this, and before him Margaret Thatcher.
As I have said many times before, Johnson is no Tony Blair, and he is definitely no Margaret Thatcher. This effect will doubtless melt away long before another GE.
That explanation doesn't explain why they "bought from him" in the first place.
There's no swing in these number. The logical thought surely is that the voters in these seats like him . . . because they like him . . . and that's why they voted for him in the first place. Not that they voted for him then decided they like him, because they voted for him.
You and Nigel are both right. They voted for Johnson because they like him and they say they still like him. The latter could be for one of two reasons. (i) It's too early to have realized the mistake. (ii) They have realized their mistake but are not yet ready to admit it. All the Red Wallers are probably in one or the other camp. We can postulate that a (iii) category - realized the mistake AND saying so - is virtually empty right now. It must be otherwise it would be showing up in the data.
The key question here - which we can't answer - is what is the split between (i) and (ii). Heavily (i) means good news for the Cons. Their strategy is predicated on the Red Wall still being in a (i) state by the time of the next election - because if these voters have not clocked their mistake by then the chances are they will repeat it. But if (as I hope) there are lots in (ii), Labour are set fair. Why? Because from (ii) it's only a matter of time before they take the decisive step to (iii) - which will duly show up in the polls and more importantly at the ballot box.
Odd that you don't have category (iv) they haven't made a mistake.
Anyway Nigel is disagreeing with that, he postulates despite the evidence to the contrary that people voted just because they disliked Corbyn and they never liked Johnson in the first place. Despite the polls saying the opposite.
There's no need for a category (iv) because in terms of impact it's the same as (i). There is no electoral difference between a Red Waller voting Tory not realizing they are being conned and one who does so positively in the knowledge of being conned - i.e. has not really been conned at all.
I happen to disagree with Nigel on the 2nd point. I think Johnson is a genuine asset when it comes to elections and I fear this will continue to be the case.
Overall such voters are probably less educated and quite limited in insight. Over time,though, the reality of Johnson being an utter shyster will percolate through to them - though some will continue to feel affection for him in the way that many Eastenders admired the Kray twins. The London dockers marching to support Enoch Powell in 1968 following his 'rivers of blood' speech also comes to mind.
I like your 1st analogy. Eastenders = Red Wallers, Johnson = Ronnie Kray. People falling for a raffish persona despite the obvious negatives. That kind of works. It shouldn't do but it does. But the 2nd one doesn't. The dockers marched for Powell out of genuine support for his racist worldview. No raffish persona with Powell at all. Quite the opposite. An introverted intellectual. It was about what he said. He said the day would soon come, if immigration continued unchecked, when the black man would hold the whip over the white man in Britain, and furthermore that this would be a bad thing, as indeed it sounds with the reference to "the whip", and the London dockers agreed. How many of their grandsons are Millwall fans today, I wonder?
The whole point of the ‘whip hand’ quote was that someone else said it to Powell
That someone else was (per Powell) a "decent, ordinary fellow Englishman" and it was indicative of what "thousands and hundreds of thousands are saying and thinking" - so I'm not seeing a good reason to assume it was not his view too.
Powell kept being told things by anonymous "man on the street" that fortunately had excellent cadence and phrasing to fit into his speeches.
Such serendipity.
"A lot of people are saying..."
Or Howard's election slogan: "Are you thinking what we're thinking?".
That was a low. But thankfully didn't work. Farage is a far more skillful politician than Howard.
Back to sketch, final scene (after several), the barbers, Enoch needs a trim -
"Short back and sides please, Johnny."
"No perm then this time?"
"Ha ha ha. You're a card."
Johnny gets busy with the scissors but keeps breaking off the whole time to rabbit on about you know what -
"For reasons I cannot comprehend, and in pursuance of a decision by default, on which I was never consulted, I find themselves made a stranger in my own country. I find my wife unable to obtain a hospital bed in childbirth, my children unable to obtain school places, my neighbourhood changed beyond recognition, my plans and prospects for the future defeated, and -"
"Johnny, I'm a bit pressed, you know what I mean?"
"- and on top of this, I now learn that a one-way privilege is to be established by Act of Parliament; a law which cannot, AND IS NOT INTENDED TO, operate to protect me or redress my grievances, is to be enacted to give the stranger, the disgruntled and the agent provocateur the power to pillory me and mine for our private actions."
Enoch finally snaps.
"Yeah yeah yeah. I know. Very interesting and I totally get it. But can you please shut the fuck up for a few minutes and finish cutting my hair. I've got a big speech to prepare."
Syracuse was a Greek colony, if memory serves. So was Saguntum (Spain) and Marseilles (Massilia, originally). As was Taras (later Tarentum). And, of course, Asia Minor was riddled with Greek cities.
Hence why another location for super greek-alike looking people is Izmir, and other parts of that coast.
Turkey is cheaper than ever, but it seems to have lost quite a lot of British tourism over the last few years.
The Greeks actually temporarily occupied Izmir (Smyrna as was) for a short while after WW1, but were driven out by Ataturk's Turkish nationalist revival. The Smyrna campaign was part of the Greek irredentist "Megali idea" which would have included Greece taking pretty much the whole western coast line of Turkey, and Constantinople of course.
I should imagine that, the neo-Nazis of the Golden Dawn and their ilk aside, the whole thing has little resonance in modern Greece, a century on. However it does persist in the Greek diaspora: my wife has a Greek-American friend from college who told her that her parish priest insisted on referring to Turkey in sermons as "temporarily-occupied Asia Minor".
Yes, having spent a fair time in Greece, I've heard quite a lot of this. As you say, I I think the chapter is historically closed - the Christian Greeks returned from cities like Smyrna, and many, but not all, of the people living there now look remarkably like descendants of Ionian Greeks who converted to Islam, which I think is what they are.
I've often wondered similarly about Moslem or Christian Palestinians and the Israelis. Who REALLY has the right to the land? To whose ancestors was it actually 'given'?
That's easy. None of them.
Trying to disentangle the ethnic history of Palestine is like trying to hold water in your cupped hands with your fingers open.
However, there have (since the eighth century, at least) always been a mix of Muslims, Jews and Christians there. In the late fourteenth century there was a period of prolonged population decline and by 1500 there were probably only around 200,000 people in the area, the majority (but not an overwhelming majority) Muslim.
It isn't until the nineteenth century that you start to get conscious attempts to impose cultural revolutions on the area, with the growth of Egyptian nationalism under Mehmet Ali (who was, ironically, Albanian) and the corresponding Ottoman countermoves. But even that wasn't deliberate - more an attempt at control and command.
Only a tiny handful of people who live in Israel today have any sort of hereditary 'right' to be there - and far from all of them are Muslim. It is one reason why the question of identity in Israel and the Palestinian Territories (and for the matter of that, the Palestinian and Israeli diasporas) is such a vexed one.
"...since the eighth century, at least..."?
Er, I think it was around, zero BC that the Jews were there, weren't they? Wasn't there quite a famous Jew that went on to great things around that time?
Comparing Johnson and Powell is ridiculous.Powell was a professor at 24,an Army Major who loved India and despite what his fans may have wanted he would have nothing to do with either the NF or the UDA (unlike Paisley). Powell would have appalled by Johnson & Cummings altitude to democracy or their refusal to do interviews with tough journalists like Morgan and Neill. Simon Heffer was a fan of Powell but is scathing about Johnson . How many current politicians could one describe as either visionaries or people who had moral or intellectual courage as opposed to being virtue signalling careerists.I write as someone who would never have voted for Powells politics but believe he had far more courage and intregrity than his detractors
Multiculturalism has failed, believe substantial minority of Britons Survey 50 years after ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech finds widespread fears over integration
"A Gallup poll conducted weeks after the 1968 speech found 74% of the British population agreed with the “Rivers of Blood” speech, in which Powell strongly criticised levels of immigration to Britain, particularly from the Commonwealth."
Syracuse was a Greek colony, if memory serves. So was Saguntum (Spain) and Marseilles (Massilia, originally). As was Taras (later Tarentum). And, of course, Asia Minor was riddled with Greek cities.
Hence why another location for super greek-alike looking people is Izmir, and other parts of that coast.
Turkey is cheaper than ever, but it seems to have lost quite a lot of British tourism over the last few years.
The Greeks actually temporarily occupied Izmir (Smyrna as was) for a short while after WW1, but were driven out by Ataturk's Turkish nationalist revival. The Smyrna campaign was part of the Greek irredentist "Megali idea" which would have included Greece taking pretty much the whole western coast line of Turkey, and Constantinople of course.
I should imagine that, the neo-Nazis of the Golden Dawn and their ilk aside, the whole thing has little resonance in modern Greece, a century on. However it does persist in the Greek diaspora: my wife has a Greek-American friend from college who told her that her parish priest insisted on referring to Turkey in sermons as "temporarily-occupied Asia Minor".
Yes, having spent a fair time in Greece, I've heard quite a lot of this. As you say, I I think the chapter is historically closed - the Christian Greeks returned from cities like Smyrna, and many, but not all, of the people living there now look remarkably like descendants of Ionian Greeks who converted to Islam, which I think is what they are.
I've often wondered similarly about Moslem or Christian Palestinians and the Israelis. Who REALLY has the right to the land? To whose ancestors was it actually 'given'?
That's easy. None of them.
Trying to disentangle the ethnic history of Palestine is like trying to hold water in your cupped hands with your fingers open.
However, there have (since the eighth century, at least) always been a mix of Muslims, Jews and Christians there. In the late fourteenth century there was a period of prolonged population decline and by 1500 there were probably only around 200,000 people in the area, the majority (but not an overwhelming majority) Muslim.
It isn't until the nineteenth century that you start to get conscious attempts to impose cultural revolutions on the area, with the growth of Egyptian nationalism under Mehmet Ali (who was, ironically, Albanian) and the corresponding Ottoman countermoves. But even that wasn't deliberate - more an attempt at control and command.
Only a tiny handful of people who live in Israel today have any sort of hereditary 'right' to be there - and far from all of them are Muslim. It is one reason why the question of identity in Israel and the Palestinian Territories (and for the matter of that, the Palestinian and Israeli diasporas) is such a vexed one.
"...since the eighth century, at least..."?
Er, I think it was around, zero BC that the Jews were there, weren't they? Wasn't there quite a famous Jew that went on to great things around that time?
'The Doctor' wrote that by the 8th Century there was a mixture of Muslims, Jews and Christian in what we now call Palestine. Certainly wouldn't have been any Muslims 150 years earlier. I'm inclined to believe from what I've read that at the time there would have been a largely Semitic population in Palestine, some of whom retained their original Jewish religion, in. one form or another. Some have converted to Christianity and probably have been so for many generations, and some, formerly Jews and formerly Christians, have converted to Islam.
Syracuse was a Greek colony, if memory serves. So was Saguntum (Spain) and Marseilles (Massilia, originally). As was Taras (later Tarentum). And, of course, Asia Minor was riddled with Greek cities.
Hence why another location for super greek-alike looking people is Izmir, and other parts of that coast.
Turkey is cheaper than ever, but it seems to have lost quite a lot of British tourism over the last few years.
The Greeks actually temporarily occupied Izmir (Smyrna as was) for a short while after WW1, but were driven out by Ataturk's Turkish nationalist revival. The Smyrna campaign was part of the Greek irredentist "Megali idea" which would have included Greece taking pretty much the whole western coast line of Turkey, and Constantinople of course.
I should imagine that, the neo-Nazis of the Golden Dawn and their ilk aside, the whole thing has little resonance in modern Greece, a century on. However it does persist in the Greek diaspora: my wife has a Greek-American friend from college who told her that her parish priest insisted on referring to Turkey in sermons as "temporarily-occupied Asia Minor".
Yes, having spent a fair time in Greece, I've heard quite a lot of this. As you say, I I think the chapter is historically closed - the Christian Greeks returned from cities like Smyrna, and many, but not all, of the people living there now look remarkably like descendants of Ionian Greeks who converted to Islam, which I think is what they are.
I've often wondered similarly about Moslem or Christian Palestinians and the Israelis. Who REALLY has the right to the land? To whose ancestors was it actually 'given'?
That's easy. None of them.
Trying to disentangle the ethnic history of Palestine is like trying to hold water in your cupped hands with your fingers open.
However, there have (since the eighth century, at least) always been a mix of Muslims, Jews and Christians there. In the late fourteenth century there was a period of prolonged population decline and by 1500 there were probably only around 200,000 people in the area, the majority (but not an overwhelming majority) Muslim.
It isn't until the nineteenth century that you start to get conscious attempts to impose cultural revolutions on the area, with the growth of Egyptian nationalism under Mehmet Ali (who was, ironically, Albanian) and the corresponding Ottoman countermoves. But even that wasn't deliberate - more an attempt at control and command.
Only a tiny handful of people who live in Israel today have any sort of hereditary 'right' to be there - and far from all of them are Muslim. It is one reason why the question of identity in Israel and the Palestinian Territories (and for the matter of that, the Palestinian and Israeli diasporas) is such a vexed one.
"...since the eighth century, at least..."?
Er, I think it was around, zero BC that the Jews were there, weren't they? Wasn't there quite a famous Jew that went on to great things around that time?
Syracuse was a Greek colony, if memory serves. So was Saguntum (Spain) and Marseilles (Massilia, originally). As was Taras (later Tarentum). And, of course, Asia Minor was riddled with Greek cities.
And the Black Sea, and North Africa. The standard work is Boardman
Comparing Johnson and Powell is ridiculous.Powell was a professor at 24,an Army Major who loved India and despite what his fans may have wanted he would have nothing to do with either the NF or the UDA (unlike Paisley). Powell would have appalled by Johnson & Cummings altitude to democracy or their refusal to do interviews with tough journalists like Morgan and Neill. Simon Heffer was a fan of Powell but is scathing about Johnson . How many current politicians could one describe as either visionaries or people who had moral or intellectual courage as opposed to being virtue signalling careerists.I write as someone who would never have voted for Powells politics but believe he had far more courage and intregrity than his detractors
Powell was an accomplished classicist and speaker, and would have relished a tough fight with interviewers, but this a fairly rosy view of his personality. Alongside his polished and proud persona, he also exhibited an odd savage streak throughout his life, probably linked to the childhood or school traumas as discussed by OnlyLivingBoy and I.
The oddly self-detached rhetoric, which a psychiatrist might describe as schizoid, and which he used to encourage Thatcher into action on the Falklands, gives a good flavour of this.
"The Falklands have brought to the surface of the British mind our latent perception of ourselves as a sea animal."
Comparing Johnson and Powell is ridiculous.Powell was a professor at 24,an Army Major who loved India and despite what his fans may have wanted he would have nothing to do with either the NF or the UDA (unlike Paisley). Powell would have appalled by Johnson & Cummings altitude to democracy or their refusal to do interviews with tough journalists like Morgan and Neill. Simon Heffer was a fan of Powell but is scathing about Johnson . How many current politicians could one describe as either visionaries or people who had moral or intellectual courage as opposed to being virtue signalling careerists.I write as someone who would never have voted for Powells politics but believe he had far more courage and intregrity than his detractors
Powell was an accomplished classicist and speaker, and would have relished a tough fight with interviewers, but this a fairly rosy view of his personality. Alongside his polished and proud persona, he also exhibited a fairly savage streak throughout his life, probably linked to the childhood or school traumas OnlyLivingBoy and I discussed.
Syracuse was a Greek colony, if memory serves. So was Saguntum (Spain) and Marseilles (Massilia, originally). As was Taras (later Tarentum). And, of course, Asia Minor was riddled with Greek cities.
Hence why another location for super greek-alike looking people is Izmir, and other parts of that coast.
Turkey is cheaper than ever, but it seems to have lost quite a lot of British tourism over the last few years.
The Greeks actually temporarily occupied Izmir (Smyrna as was) for a short while after WW1, but were driven out by Ataturk's Turkish nationalist revival. The Smyrna campaign was part of the Greek irredentist "Megali idea" which would have included Greece taking pretty much the whole western coast line of Turkey, and Constantinople of course.
I should imagine that, the neo-Nazis of the Golden Dawn and their ilk aside, the whole thing has little resonance in modern Greece, a century on. However it does persist in the Greek diaspora: my wife has a Greek-American friend from college who told her that her parish priest insisted on referring to Turkey in sermons as "temporarily-occupied Asia Minor".
Yes, having spent a fair time in Greece, I've heard quite a lot of this. As you say, I I think the chapter is historically closed - the Christian Greeks returned from cities like Smyrna, and many, but not all, of the people living there now look remarkably like descendants of Ionian Greeks who converted to Islam, which I think is what they are.
I've often wondered similarly about Moslem or Christian Palestinians and the Israelis. Who REALLY has the right to the land? To whose ancestors was it actually 'given'?
That's easy. None of them.
Trying to disentangle the ethnic history of Palestine is like trying to hold water in your cupped hands with your fingers open.
However, there have (since the eighth century, at least) always been a mix of Muslims, Jews and Christians there. In the late fourteenth century there was a period of prolonged population decline and by 1500 there were probably only around 200,000 people in the area, the majority (but not an overwhelming majority) Muslim.
It isn't until the nineteenth century that you start to get conscious attempts to impose cultural revolutions on the area, with the growth of Egyptian nationalism under Mehmet Ali (who was, ironically, Albanian) and the corresponding Ottoman countermoves. But even that wasn't deliberate - more an attempt at control and command.
Only a tiny handful of people who live in Israel today have any sort of hereditary 'right' to be there - and far from all of them are Muslim. It is one reason why the question of identity in Israel and the Palestinian Territories (and for the matter of that, the Palestinian and Israeli diasporas) is such a vexed one.
"...since the eighth century, at least..."?
Er, I think it was around, zero BC that the Jews were there, weren't they? Wasn't there quite a famous Jew that went on to great things around that time?
'The Doctor' wrote that by the 8th Century there was a mixture of Muslims, Jews and Christian in what we now call Palestine. Certainly wouldn't have been any Muslims 150 years earlier. I'm inclined to believe from what I've read that at the time there would have been a largely Semitic population in Palestine, some of whom retained their original Jewish religion, in. one form or another. Some have converted to Christianity and probably have been so for many generations, and some, formerly Jews and formerly Christians, have converted to Islam.
The question I believe was who really has the right to the land. Well that of course is still being discussed but in terms of when they were there, the Jews appear to have 800+ years precedence over the muslims and some kind of precedence over the Christians given that JC was a jew.
Comparing Johnson and Powell is ridiculous.Powell was a professor at 24,an Army Major who loved India and despite what his fans may have wanted he would have nothing to do with either the NF or the UDA (unlike Paisley). Powell would have appalled by Johnson & Cummings altitude to democracy or their refusal to do interviews with tough journalists like Morgan and Neill. Simon Heffer was a fan of Powell but is scathing about Johnson . How many current politicians could one describe as either visionaries or people who had moral or intellectual courage as opposed to being virtue signalling careerists.I write as someone who would never have voted for Powells politics but believe he had far more courage and intregrity than his detractors
...I have never agreed with Jefferson once (oh!) We have fought on like seventy-five different fronts (oh!) But when all is said and all is done Jefferson has beliefs, Burr has none (ooh!)...
Health records 855 new infections by coronavirus in the last 24 hours. In the last seven days, 12,829 cases of COVID-19 have been diagnosed, 2,303 of them with onset of symptoms in that period, of which 12 have required hospital admission. In addition, Health has added six new deaths from the disease, bringing the total number of deaths to 28,434. The total of confirmed positives stands at 278,782.
Syracuse was a Greek colony, if memory serves. So was Saguntum (Spain) and Marseilles (Massilia, originally). As was Taras (later Tarentum). And, of course, Asia Minor was riddled with Greek cities.
Hence why another location for super greek-alike looking people is Izmir, and other parts of that coast.
Turkey is cheaper than ever, but it seems to have lost quite a lot of British tourism over the last few years.
The Greeks actually temporarily occupied Izmir (Smyrna as was) for a short while after WW1, but were driven out by Ataturk's Turkish nationalist revival. The Smyrna campaign was part of the Greek irredentist "Megali idea" which would have included Greece taking pretty much the whole western coast line of Turkey, and Constantinople of course.
I should imagine that, the neo-Nazis of the Golden Dawn and their ilk aside, the whole thing has little resonance in modern Greece, a century on. However it does persist in the Greek diaspora: my wife has a Greek-American friend from college who told her that her parish priest insisted on referring to Turkey in sermons as "temporarily-occupied Asia Minor".
Yes, having spent a fair time in Greece, I've heard quite a lot of this. As you say, I I think the chapter is historically closed - the Christian Greeks returned from cities like Smyrna, and many, but not all, of the people living there now look remarkably like descendants of Ionian Greeks who converted to Islam, which I think is what they are.
I've often wondered similarly about Moslem or Christian Palestinians and the Israelis. Who REALLY has the right to the land? To whose ancestors was it actually 'given'?
That's easy. None of them.
Trying to disentangle the ethnic history of Palestine is like trying to hold water in your cupped hands with your fingers open.
However, there have (since the eighth century, at least) always been a mix of Muslims, Jews and Christians there. In the late fourteenth century there was a period of prolonged population decline and by 1500 there were probably only around 200,000 people in the area, the majority (but not an overwhelming majority) Muslim.
It isn't until the nineteenth century that you start to get conscious attempts to impose cultural revolutions on the area, with the growth of Egyptian nationalism under Mehmet Ali (who was, ironically, Albanian) and the corresponding Ottoman countermoves. But even that wasn't deliberate - more an attempt at control and command.
Only a tiny handful of people who live in Israel today have any sort of hereditary 'right' to be there - and far from all of them are Muslim. It is one reason why the question of identity in Israel and the Palestinian Territories (and for the matter of that, the Palestinian and Israeli diasporas) is such a vexed one.
"...since the eighth century, at least..."?
Er, I think it was around, zero BC that the Jews were there, weren't they? Wasn't there quite a famous Jew that went on to great things around that time?
The question I believe was who really has the right to the land. Well that of course is still being discussed but in terms of when they were there, the Jews appear to have 800+ years precedence over the muslims and some kind of precedence over the Christians given that JC was a jew.
We should have never given up our mandate for Palestine.
Shameful treason from Attlee, the man who gave up India.
On topic: aren't voters in the 2019 Tory gains more invested in "Boris" than the Tory party? So perhaps it's not surprising: given structural antipathy to the Tories in many of these areas, it was only seats where Johnson himself was particularly popular that the Tory candidate won. In traditional Tory seats, by contrast, "Boris" was likely less important as a selling point. A corollary of this is that replacing Johnson mid-term in an effort to bolster Tory support may have the opposite effect in some of these seats. I have a gut feeling that Sunak may be less popular in these seats than in the traditional Tory home counties, but it'd be interesting to see polling on that. There's also the Brexit factor at work, although I imagine that will fade as an issue over time, especially if it turns out to be a bit shit, as seems likely.
Indeed, according to Redfield 2019 Tory voters prefer Boris to Starmer by more than they prefer Sunak to Starmer, only 2019 LD voters prefer Sunak to Starmer by more than they prefer Boris to Starmer and the latter are very posh London and Home Counties centred
One very likely explanation for this is the similar psychological response to a change in buying behaviour, a kind of confirmation bias that is the opposite to buyers remorse. In other words, I have changed who I buy from, away from my traditional brand, and I need to keep telling myself it was the right decision, because part of me tells me it was not. "I DID make the right decision! I DID" The person will look for those reasons why they should convince themselves it was the correct decision. Clever brands will keep marketing to such folk to keep them on board. In political terms Tony Blair was the most recent to achieve this, and before him Margaret Thatcher.
As I have said many times before, Johnson is no Tony Blair, and he is definitely no Margaret Thatcher. This effect will doubtless melt away long before another GE.
That explanation doesn't explain why they "bought from him" in the first place.
There's no swing in these number. The logical thought surely is that the voters in these seats like him . . . because they like him . . . and that's why they voted for him in the first place. Not that they voted for him then decided they like him, because they voted for him.
You and Nigel are both right. They voted for Johnson because they like him and they say they still like him. The latter could be for one of two reasons. (i) It's too early to have realized the mistake. (ii) They have realized their mistake but are not yet ready to admit it. All the Red Wallers are probably in one or the other camp. We can postulate that a (iii) category - realized the mistake AND saying so - is virtually empty right now. It must be otherwise it would be showing up in the data.
The key question here - which we can't answer - is what is the split between (i) and (ii). Heavily (i) means good news for the Cons. Their strategy is predicated on the Red Wall still being in a (i) state by the time of the next election - because if these voters have not clocked their mistake by then the chances are they will repeat it. But if (as I hope) there are lots in (ii), Labour are set fair. Why? Because from (ii) it's only a matter of time before they take the decisive step to (iii) - which will duly show up in the polls and more importantly at the ballot box.
Odd that you don't have category (iv) they haven't made a mistake.
Anyway Nigel is disagreeing with that, he postulates despite the evidence to the contrary that people voted just because they disliked Corbyn and they never liked Johnson in the first place. Despite the polls saying the opposite.
There's no need for a category (iv) because in terms of impact it's the same as (i). There is no electoral difference between a Red Waller voting Tory not realizing they are being conned and one who does so positively in the knowledge of being conned - i.e. has not really been conned at all.
I happen to disagree with Nigel on the 2nd point. I think Johnson is a genuine asset when it comes to elections and I fear this will continue to be the case.
Overall such voters are probably less educated and quite limited in insight. Over time,though, the reality of Johnson being an utter shyster will percolate through to them - though some will continue to feel affection for him in the way that many Eastenders admired the Kray twins. The London dockers marching to support Enoch Powell in 1968 following his 'rivers of blood' speech also comes to mind.
I like your 1st analogy. Eastenders = Red Wallers, Johnson = Ronnie Kray. People falling for a raffish persona despite the obvious negatives. That kind of works. It shouldn't do but it does. But the 2nd one doesn't. The dockers marched for Powell out of genuine support for his racist worldview. No raffish persona with Powell at all. Quite the opposite. An introverted intellectual. It was about what he said. He said the day would soon come, if immigration continued unchecked, when the black man would hold the whip over the white man in Britain, and furthermore that this would be a bad thing, as indeed it sounds with the reference to "the whip", and the London dockers agreed. How many of their grandsons are Millwall fans today, I wonder?
The whole point of the ‘whip hand’ quote was that someone else said it to Powell
That someone else was (per Powell) a "decent, ordinary fellow Englishman" and it was indicative of what "thousands and hundreds of thousands are saying and thinking" - so I'm not seeing a good reason to assume it was not his view too.
Whether it was or not, the dockers, and contemporary opinion polls, prove him right to think many people agreed with it
Yep. And that is where @justin124 was getting his analogy with the Red Wallers and Johnson. His point being (I think) that many of them are a touch racist and have come to believe the Johnson/Brexit combo is in sympathy with that. But I'm rejecting the analogy because imo Powell was the genuine article - a racist - whereas Johnson is not. Poles apart in fact. Johnson is a conman, Powell was authentic to a fault.
On topic: aren't voters in the 2019 Tory gains more invested in "Boris" than the Tory party? So perhaps it's not surprising: given structural antipathy to the Tories in many of these areas, it was only seats where Johnson himself was particularly popular that the Tory candidate won. In traditional Tory seats, by contrast, "Boris" was likely less important as a selling point. A corollary of this is that replacing Johnson mid-term in an effort to bolster Tory support may have the opposite effect in some of these seats. I have a gut feeling that Sunak may be less popular in these seats than in the traditional Tory home counties, but it'd be interesting to see polling on that. There's also the Brexit factor at work, although I imagine that will fade as an issue over time, especially if it turns out to be a bit shit, as seems likely.
Indeed, according to Redfield 2019 Tory voters prefer Boris to Starmer by more than they prefer Sunak to Starmer, only 2019 LD voters prefer Sunak to Starmer by more than they prefer Boris to Starmer and the latter are very posh London and Home Counties centred
One very likely explanation for this is the similar psychological response to a change in buying behaviour, a kind of confirmation bias that is the opposite to buyers remorse. In other words, I have changed who I buy from, away from my traditional brand, and I need to keep telling myself it was the right decision, because part of me tells me it was not. "I DID make the right decision! I DID" The person will look for those reasons why they should convince themselves it was the correct decision. Clever brands will keep marketing to such folk to keep them on board. In political terms Tony Blair was the most recent to achieve this, and before him Margaret Thatcher.
As I have said many times before, Johnson is no Tony Blair, and he is definitely no Margaret Thatcher. This effect will doubtless melt away long before another GE.
That explanation doesn't explain why they "bought from him" in the first place.
There's no swing in these number. The logical thought surely is that the voters in these seats like him . . . because they like him . . . and that's why they voted for him in the first place. Not that they voted for him then decided they like him, because they voted for him.
You and Nigel are both right. They voted for Johnson because they like him and they say they still like him. The latter could be for one of two reasons. (i) It's too early to have realized the mistake. (ii) They have realized their mistake but are not yet ready to admit it. All the Red Wallers are probably in one or the other camp. We can postulate that a (iii) category - realized the mistake AND saying so - is virtually empty right now. It must be otherwise it would be showing up in the data.
The key question here - which we can't answer - is what is the split between (i) and (ii). Heavily (i) means good news for the Cons. Their strategy is predicated on the Red Wall still being in a (i) state by the time of the next election - because if these voters have not clocked their mistake by then the chances are they will repeat it. But if (as I hope) there are lots in (ii), Labour are set fair. Why? Because from (ii) it's only a matter of time before they take the decisive step to (iii) - which will duly show up in the polls and more importantly at the ballot box.
Odd that you don't have category (iv) they haven't made a mistake.
Anyway Nigel is disagreeing with that, he postulates despite the evidence to the contrary that people voted just because they disliked Corbyn and they never liked Johnson in the first place. Despite the polls saying the opposite.
There's no need for a category (iv) because in terms of impact it's the same as (i). There is no electoral difference between a Red Waller voting Tory not realizing they are being conned and one who does so positively in the knowledge of being conned - i.e. has not really been conned at all.
I happen to disagree with Nigel on the 2nd point. I think Johnson is a genuine asset when it comes to elections and I fear this will continue to be the case.
Overall such voters are probably less educated and quite limited in insight. Over time,though, the reality of Johnson being an utter shyster will percolate through to them - though some will continue to feel affection for him in the way that many Eastenders admired the Kray twins. The London dockers marching to support Enoch Powell in 1968 following his 'rivers of blood' speech also comes to mind.
I like your 1st analogy. Eastenders = Red Wallers, Johnson = Ronnie Kray. People falling for a raffish persona despite the obvious negatives. That kind of works. It shouldn't do but it does. But the 2nd one doesn't. The dockers marched for Powell out of genuine support for his racist worldview. No raffish persona with Powell at all. Quite the opposite. An introverted intellectual. It was about what he said. He said the day would soon come, if immigration continued unchecked, when the black man would hold the whip over the white man in Britain, and furthermore that this would be a bad thing, as indeed it sounds with the reference to "the whip", and the London dockers agreed. How many of their grandsons are Millwall fans today, I wonder?
The whole point of the ‘whip hand’ quote was that someone else said it to Powell
That someone else was (per Powell) a "decent, ordinary fellow Englishman" and it was indicative of what "thousands and hundreds of thousands are saying and thinking" - so I'm not seeing a good reason to assume it was not his view too.
Powell kept being told things by anonymous "man on the street" that fortunately had excellent cadence and phrasing to fit into his speeches.
Such serendipity.
"A lot of people are saying..."
Or Howard's election slogan: "Are you thinking what we're thinking?".
That was a low. But thankfully didn't work. Farage is a far more skillful politician than Howard.
Back to sketch, final scene (after several), the barbers, Enoch needs a trim -
"Short back and sides please, Johnny."
"No perm then this time?"
"Ha ha ha. You're a card."
Johnny gets busy with the scissors but keeps breaking off the whole time to rabbit on about you know what -
"For reasons I cannot comprehend, and in pursuance of a decision by default, on which I was never consulted, I find themselves made a stranger in my own country. I find my wife unable to obtain a hospital bed in childbirth, my children unable to obtain school places, my neighbourhood changed beyond recognition, my plans and prospects for the future defeated, and -"
"Johnny, I'm a bit pressed, you know what I mean?"
"- and on top of this, I now learn that a one-way privilege is to be established by Act of Parliament; a law which cannot, AND IS NOT INTENDED TO, operate to protect me or redress my grievances, is to be enacted to give the stranger, the disgruntled and the agent provocateur the power to pillory me and mine for our private actions."
Enoch finally snaps.
"Yeah yeah yeah. I know. Very interesting and I totally get it. But can you please shut the fuck up for a few minutes and finish cutting my hair. I've got a big speech to prepare."
Stick to the mug punts!
I know you laughed. Even though I'm mocking your hero you laughed. That's how good I am.
Syracuse was a Greek colony, if memory serves. So was Saguntum (Spain) and Marseilles (Massilia, originally). As was Taras (later Tarentum). And, of course, Asia Minor was riddled with Greek cities.
Hence why another location for super greek-alike looking people is Izmir, and other parts of that coast.
Turkey is cheaper than ever, but it seems to have lost quite a lot of British tourism over the last few years.
The Greeks actually temporarily occupied Izmir (Smyrna as was) for a short while after WW1, but were driven out by Ataturk's Turkish nationalist revival. The Smyrna campaign was part of the Greek irredentist "Megali idea" which would have included Greece taking pretty much the whole western coast line of Turkey, and Constantinople of course.
I should imagine that, the neo-Nazis of the Golden Dawn and their ilk aside, the whole thing has little resonance in modern Greece, a century on. However it does persist in the Greek diaspora: my wife has a Greek-American friend from college who told her that her parish priest insisted on referring to Turkey in sermons as "temporarily-occupied Asia Minor".
Yes, having spent a fair time in Greece, I've heard quite a lot of this. As you say, I I think the chapter is historically closed - the Christian Greeks returned from cities like Smyrna, and many, but not all, of the people living there now look remarkably like descendants of Ionian Greeks who converted to Islam, which I think is what they are.
I've often wondered similarly about Moslem or Christian Palestinians and the Israelis. Who REALLY has the right to the land? To whose ancestors was it actually 'given'?
That's easy. None of them.
Trying to disentangle the ethnic history of Palestine is like trying to hold water in your cupped hands with your fingers open.
However, there have (since the eighth century, at least) always been a mix of Muslims, Jews and Christians there. In the late fourteenth century there was a period of prolonged population decline and by 1500 there were probably only around 200,000 people in the area, the majority (but not an overwhelming majority) Muslim.
It isn't until the nineteenth century that you start to get conscious attempts to impose cultural revolutions on the area, with the growth of Egyptian nationalism under Mehmet Ali (who was, ironically, Albanian) and the corresponding Ottoman countermoves. But even that wasn't deliberate - more an attempt at control and command.
Only a tiny handful of people who live in Israel today have any sort of hereditary 'right' to be there - and far from all of them are Muslim. It is one reason why the question of identity in Israel and the Palestinian Territories (and for the matter of that, the Palestinian and Israeli diasporas) is such a vexed one.
"...since the eighth century, at least..."?
Er, I think it was around, zero BC that the Jews were there, weren't they? Wasn't there quite a famous Jew that went on to great things around that time?
Not many Muslims or Christians at that time though.
Syracuse was a Greek colony, if memory serves. So was Saguntum (Spain) and Marseilles (Massilia, originally). As was Taras (later Tarentum). And, of course, Asia Minor was riddled with Greek cities.
Hence why another location for super greek-alike looking people is Izmir, and other parts of that coast.
Turkey is cheaper than ever, but it seems to have lost quite a lot of British tourism over the last few years.
The Greeks actually temporarily occupied Izmir (Smyrna as was) for a short while after WW1, but were driven out by Ataturk's Turkish nationalist revival. The Smyrna campaign was part of the Greek irredentist "Megali idea" which would have included Greece taking pretty much the whole western coast line of Turkey, and Constantinople of course.
I should imagine that, the neo-Nazis of the Golden Dawn and their ilk aside, the whole thing has little resonance in modern Greece, a century on. However it does persist in the Greek diaspora: my wife has a Greek-American friend from college who told her that her parish priest insisted on referring to Turkey in sermons as "temporarily-occupied Asia Minor".
Yes, having spent a fair time in Greece, I've heard quite a lot of this. As you say, I I think the chapter is historically closed - the Christian Greeks returned from cities like Smyrna, and many, but not all, of the people living there now look remarkably like descendants of Ionian Greeks who converted to Islam, which I think is what they are.
I've often wondered similarly about Moslem or Christian Palestinians and the Israelis. Who REALLY has the right to the land? To whose ancestors was it actually 'given'?
That's easy. None of them.
Trying to disentangle the ethnic history of Palestine is like trying to hold water in your cupped hands with your fingers open.
However, there have (since the eighth century, at least) always been a mix of Muslims, Jews and Christians there. In the late fourteenth century there was a period of prolonged population decline and by 1500 there were probably only around 200,000 people in the area, the majority (but not an overwhelming majority) Muslim.
It isn't until the nineteenth century that you start to get conscious attempts to impose cultural revolutions on the area, with the growth of Egyptian nationalism under Mehmet Ali (who was, ironically, Albanian) and the corresponding Ottoman countermoves. But even that wasn't deliberate - more an attempt at control and command.
Only a tiny handful of people who live in Israel today have any sort of hereditary 'right' to be there - and far from all of them are Muslim. It is one reason why the question of identity in Israel and the Palestinian Territories (and for the matter of that, the Palestinian and Israeli diasporas) is such a vexed one.
"...since the eighth century, at least..."?
Er, I think it was around, zero BC that the Jews were there, weren't they? Wasn't there quite a famous Jew that went on to great things around that time?
Not many Muslims or Christians at that time though.
On topic: aren't voters in the 2019 Tory gains more invested in "Boris" than the Tory party? So perhaps it's not surprising: given structural antipathy to the Tories in many of these areas, it was only seats where Johnson himself was particularly popular that the Tory candidate won. In traditional Tory seats, by contrast, "Boris" was likely less important as a selling point. A corollary of this is that replacing Johnson mid-term in an effort to bolster Tory support may have the opposite effect in some of these seats. I have a gut feeling that Sunak may be less popular in these seats than in the traditional Tory home counties, but it'd be interesting to see polling on that. There's also the Brexit factor at work, although I imagine that will fade as an issue over time, especially if it turns out to be a bit shit, as seems likely.
Indeed, according to Redfield 2019 Tory voters prefer Boris to Starmer by more than they prefer Sunak to Starmer, only 2019 LD voters prefer Sunak to Starmer by more than they prefer Boris to Starmer and the latter are very posh London and Home Counties centred
One very likely explanation for this is the similar psychological response to a change in buying behaviour, a kind of confirmation bias that is the opposite to buyers remorse. In other words, I have changed who I buy from, away from my traditional brand, and I need to keep telling myself it was the right decision, because part of me tells me it was not. "I DID make the right decision! I DID" The person will look for those reasons why they should convince themselves it was the correct decision. Clever brands will keep marketing to such folk to keep them on board. In political terms Tony Blair was the most recent to achieve this, and before him Margaret Thatcher.
As I have said many times before, Johnson is no Tony Blair, and he is definitely no Margaret Thatcher. This effect will doubtless melt away long before another GE.
That explanation doesn't explain why they "bought from him" in the first place.
There's no swing in these number. The logical thought surely is that the voters in these seats like him . . . because they like him . . . and that's why they voted for him in the first place. Not that they voted for him then decided they like him, because they voted for him.
You and Nigel are both right. They voted for Johnson because they like him and they say they still like him. The latter could be for one of two reasons. (i) It's too early to have realized the mistake. (ii) They have realized their mistake but are not yet ready to admit it. All the Red Wallers are probably in one or the other camp. We can postulate that a (iii) category - realized the mistake AND saying so - is virtually empty right now. It must be otherwise it would be showing up in the data.
The key question here - which we can't answer - is what is the split between (i) and (ii). Heavily (i) means good news for the Cons. Their strategy is predicated on the Red Wall still being in a (i) state by the time of the next election - because if these voters have not clocked their mistake by then the chances are they will repeat it. But if (as I hope) there are lots in (ii), Labour are set fair. Why? Because from (ii) it's only a matter of time before they take the decisive step to (iii) - which will duly show up in the polls and more importantly at the ballot box.
Odd that you don't have category (iv) they haven't made a mistake.
Anyway Nigel is disagreeing with that, he postulates despite the evidence to the contrary that people voted just because they disliked Corbyn and they never liked Johnson in the first place. Despite the polls saying the opposite.
There's no need for a category (iv) because in terms of impact it's the same as (i). There is no electoral difference between a Red Waller voting Tory not realizing they are being conned and one who does so positively in the knowledge of being conned - i.e. has not really been conned at all.
I happen to disagree with Nigel on the 2nd point. I think Johnson is a genuine asset when it comes to elections and I fear this will continue to be the case.
Overall such voters are probably less educated and quite limited in insight. Over time,though, the reality of Johnson being an utter shyster will percolate through to them - though some will continue to feel affection for him in the way that many Eastenders admired the Kray twins. The London dockers marching to support Enoch Powell in 1968 following his 'rivers of blood' speech also comes to mind.
I like your 1st analogy. Eastenders = Red Wallers, Johnson = Ronnie Kray. People falling for a raffish persona despite the obvious negatives. That kind of works. It shouldn't do but it does. But the 2nd one doesn't. The dockers marched for Powell out of genuine support for his racist worldview. No raffish persona with Powell at all. Quite the opposite. An introverted intellectual. It was about what he said. He said the day would soon come, if immigration continued unchecked, when the black man would hold the whip over the white man in Britain, and furthermore that this would be a bad thing, as indeed it sounds with the reference to "the whip", and the London dockers agreed. How many of their grandsons are Millwall fans today, I wonder?
The whole point of the ‘whip hand’ quote was that someone else said it to Powell
That someone else was (per Powell) a "decent, ordinary fellow Englishman" and it was indicative of what "thousands and hundreds of thousands are saying and thinking" - so I'm not seeing a good reason to assume it was not his view too.
Whether it was or not, the dockers, and contemporary opinion polls, prove him right to think many people agreed with it
Yep. And that is where @justin124 was getting his analogy with the Red Wallers and Johnson. His point being (I think) that many of them are a touch racist and have come to believe the Johnson/Brexit combo is in sympathy with that. But I'm rejecting the analogy because imo Powell was the genuine article - a racist - whereas Johnson is not. Poles apart in fact. Johnson is a conman, Powell was authentic to a fault.
Red wallers are not racists and neither is Johnson.
If you're too ignorant of what other people are saying and just want to dismiss it as "racists" then you're never going to learn.
Comparing Johnson and Powell is ridiculous.Powell was a professor at 24,an Army Major who loved India and despite what his fans may have wanted he would have nothing to do with either the NF or the UDA (unlike Paisley). Powell would have appalled by Johnson & Cummings altitude to democracy or their refusal to do interviews with tough journalists like Morgan and Neill. Simon Heffer was a fan of Powell but is scathing about Johnson . How many current politicians could one describe as either visionaries or people who had moral or intellectual courage as opposed to being virtue signalling careerists.I write as someone who would never have voted for Powells politics but believe he had far more courage and intregrity than his detractors
Powell was an accomplished classicist and speaker, and would have relished a tough fight with interviewers, but this a fairly rosy view of his personality. Alongside his polished and proud persona, he also exhibited an odd savage streak throughout his life, probably linked to the childhood or school traumas as discussed by OnlyLivingBoy and I.
The oddly self-detached rhetoric, which a psychiatrist might describe as schizoid, and which he used to encourage Thatcher into action on the Falklands, gives a good flavour of this.
"The Falklands have brought to the surface of the British mind our latent perception of ourselves as a sea animal."
On topic: aren't voters in the 2019 Tory gains more invested in "Boris" than the Tory party? So perhaps it's not surprising: given structural antipathy to the Tories in many of these areas, it was only seats where Johnson himself was particularly popular that the Tory candidate won. In traditional Tory seats, by contrast, "Boris" was likely less important as a selling point. A corollary of this is that replacing Johnson mid-term in an effort to bolster Tory support may have the opposite effect in some of these seats. I have a gut feeling that Sunak may be less popular in these seats than in the traditional Tory home counties, but it'd be interesting to see polling on that. There's also the Brexit factor at work, although I imagine that will fade as an issue over time, especially if it turns out to be a bit shit, as seems likely.
Indeed, according to Redfield 2019 Tory voters prefer Boris to Starmer by more than they prefer Sunak to Starmer, only 2019 LD voters prefer Sunak to Starmer by more than they prefer Boris to Starmer and the latter are very posh London and Home Counties centred
One very likely explanation for this is the similar psychological response to a change in buying behaviour, a kind of confirmation bias that is the opposite to buyers remorse. In other words, I have changed who I buy from, away from my traditional brand, and I need to keep telling myself it was the right decision, because part of me tells me it was not. "I DID make the right decision! I DID" The person will look for those reasons why they should convince themselves it was the correct decision. Clever brands will keep marketing to such folk to keep them on board. In political terms Tony Blair was the most recent to achieve this, and before him Margaret Thatcher.
As I have said many times before, Johnson is no Tony Blair, and he is definitely no Margaret Thatcher. This effect will doubtless melt away long before another GE.
That explanation doesn't explain why they "bought from him" in the first place.
There's no swing in these number. The logical thought surely is that the voters in these seats like him . . . because they like him . . . and that's why they voted for him in the first place. Not that they voted for him then decided they like him, because they voted for him.
You and Nigel are both right. They voted for Johnson because they like him and they say they still like him. The latter could be for one of two reasons. (i) It's too early to have realized the mistake. (ii) They have realized their mistake but are not yet ready to admit it. All the Red Wallers are probably in one or the other camp. We can postulate that a (iii) category - realized the mistake AND saying so - is virtually empty right now. It must be otherwise it would be showing up in the data.
The key question here - which we can't answer - is what is the split between (i) and (ii). Heavily (i) means good news for the Cons. Their strategy is predicated on the Red Wall still being in a (i) state by the time of the next election - because if these voters have not clocked their mistake by then the chances are they will repeat it. But if (as I hope) there are lots in (ii), Labour are set fair. Why? Because from (ii) it's only a matter of time before they take the decisive step to (iii) - which will duly show up in the polls and more importantly at the ballot box.
Odd that you don't have category (iv) they haven't made a mistake.
Anyway Nigel is disagreeing with that, he postulates despite the evidence to the contrary that people voted just because they disliked Corbyn and they never liked Johnson in the first place. Despite the polls saying the opposite.
There's no need for a category (iv) because in terms of impact it's the same as (i). There is no electoral difference between a Red Waller voting Tory not realizing they are being conned and one who does so positively in the knowledge of being conned - i.e. has not really been conned at all.
I happen to disagree with Nigel on the 2nd point. I think Johnson is a genuine asset when it comes to elections and I fear this will continue to be the case.
Overall such voters are probably less educated and quite limited in insight. Over time,though, the reality of Johnson being an utter shyster will percolate through to them - though some will continue to feel affection for him in the way that many Eastenders admired the Kray twins. The London dockers marching to support Enoch Powell in 1968 following his 'rivers of blood' speech also comes to mind.
I like your 1st analogy. Eastenders = Red Wallers, Johnson = Ronnie Kray. People falling for a raffish persona despite the obvious negatives. That kind of works. It shouldn't do but it does. But the 2nd one doesn't. The dockers marched for Powell out of genuine support for his racist worldview. No raffish persona with Powell at all. Quite the opposite. An introverted intellectual. It was about what he said. He said the day would soon come, if immigration continued unchecked, when the black man would hold the whip over the white man in Britain, and furthermore that this would be a bad thing, as indeed it sounds with the reference to "the whip", and the London dockers agreed. How many of their grandsons are Millwall fans today, I wonder?
The whole point of the ‘whip hand’ quote was that someone else said it to Powell
That someone else was (per Powell) a "decent, ordinary fellow Englishman" and it was indicative of what "thousands and hundreds of thousands are saying and thinking" - so I'm not seeing a good reason to assume it was not his view too.
Powell kept being told things by anonymous "man on the street" that fortunately had excellent cadence and phrasing to fit into his speeches.
Such serendipity.
"A lot of people are saying..."
Or Howard's election slogan: "Are you thinking what we're thinking?".
That was a low. But thankfully didn't work. Farage is a far more skillful politician than Howard.
Back to sketch, final scene (after several), the barbers, Enoch needs a trim -
"Short back and sides please, Johnny."
"No perm then this time?"
"Ha ha ha. You're a card."
Johnny gets busy with the scissors but keeps breaking off the whole time to rabbit on about you know what -
"For reasons I cannot comprehend, and in pursuance of a decision by default, on which I was never consulted, I find themselves made a stranger in my own country. I find my wife unable to obtain a hospital bed in childbirth, my children unable to obtain school places, my neighbourhood changed beyond recognition, my plans and prospects for the future defeated, and -"
"Johnny, I'm a bit pressed, you know what I mean?"
"- and on top of this, I now learn that a one-way privilege is to be established by Act of Parliament; a law which cannot, AND IS NOT INTENDED TO, operate to protect me or redress my grievances, is to be enacted to give the stranger, the disgruntled and the agent provocateur the power to pillory me and mine for our private actions."
Enoch finally snaps.
"Yeah yeah yeah. I know. Very interesting and I totally get it. But can you please shut the fuck up for a few minutes and finish cutting my hair. I've got a big speech to prepare."
Stick to the mug punts!
I know you laughed. Even though I'm mocking your hero you laughed. That's how good I am.
Syracuse was a Greek colony, if memory serves. So was Saguntum (Spain) and Marseilles (Massilia, originally). As was Taras (later Tarentum). And, of course, Asia Minor was riddled with Greek cities.
Hence why another location for super greek-alike looking people is Izmir, and other parts of that coast.
Turkey is cheaper than ever, but it seems to have lost quite a lot of British tourism over the last few years.
The Greeks actually temporarily occupied Izmir (Smyrna as was) for a short while after WW1, but were driven out by Ataturk's Turkish nationalist revival. The Smyrna campaign was part of the Greek irredentist "Megali idea" which would have included Greece taking pretty much the whole western coast line of Turkey, and Constantinople of course.
I should imagine that, the neo-Nazis of the Golden Dawn and their ilk aside, the whole thing has little resonance in modern Greece, a century on. However it does persist in the Greek diaspora: my wife has a Greek-American friend from college who told her that her parish priest insisted on referring to Turkey in sermons as "temporarily-occupied Asia Minor".
Yes, having spent a fair time in Greece, I've heard quite a lot of this. As you say, I I think the chapter is historically closed - the Christian Greeks returned from cities like Smyrna, and many, but not all, of the people living there now look remarkably like descendants of Ionian Greeks who converted to Islam, which I think is what they are.
I've often wondered similarly about Moslem or Christian Palestinians and the Israelis. Who REALLY has the right to the land? To whose ancestors was it actually 'given'?
That's easy. None of them.
Trying to disentangle the ethnic history of Palestine is like trying to hold water in your cupped hands with your fingers open.
However, there have (since the eighth century, at least) always been a mix of Muslims, Jews and Christians there. In the late fourteenth century there was a period of prolonged population decline and by 1500 there were probably only around 200,000 people in the area, the majority (but not an overwhelming majority) Muslim.
It isn't until the nineteenth century that you start to get conscious attempts to impose cultural revolutions on the area, with the growth of Egyptian nationalism under Mehmet Ali (who was, ironically, Albanian) and the corresponding Ottoman countermoves. But even that wasn't deliberate - more an attempt at control and command.
Only a tiny handful of people who live in Israel today have any sort of hereditary 'right' to be there - and far from all of them are Muslim. It is one reason why the question of identity in Israel and the Palestinian Territories (and for the matter of that, the Palestinian and Israeli diasporas) is such a vexed one.
"...since the eighth century, at least..."?
Er, I think it was around, zero BC that the Jews were there, weren't they? Wasn't there quite a famous Jew that went on to great things around that time?
'The Doctor' wrote that by the 8th Century there was a mixture of Muslims, Jews and Christian in what we now call Palestine. Certainly wouldn't have been any Muslims 150 years earlier. I'm inclined to believe from what I've read that at the time there would have been a largely Semitic population in Palestine, some of whom retained their original Jewish religion, in. one form or another. Some have converted to Christianity and probably have been so for many generations, and some, formerly Jews and formerly Christians, have converted to Islam.
The question I believe was who really has the right to the land. Well that of course is still being discussed but in terms of when they were there, the Jews appear to have 800+ years precedence over the muslims and some kind of precedence over the Christians given that JC was a jew.
Are not a human's genes........ which cannot be changed (well, very much, during any individuals life) more important than said human's religion? People change their religion for several reasons; may be voluntary, may be compelled.
Syracuse was a Greek colony, if memory serves. So was Saguntum (Spain) and Marseilles (Massilia, originally). As was Taras (later Tarentum). And, of course, Asia Minor was riddled with Greek cities.
Hence why another location for super greek-alike looking people is Izmir, and other parts of that coast.
Turkey is cheaper than ever, but it seems to have lost quite a lot of British tourism over the last few years.
The Greeks actually temporarily occupied Izmir (Smyrna as was) for a short while after WW1, but were driven out by Ataturk's Turkish nationalist revival. The Smyrna campaign was part of the Greek irredentist "Megali idea" which would have included Greece taking pretty much the whole western coast line of Turkey, and Constantinople of course.
I should imagine that, the neo-Nazis of the Golden Dawn and their ilk aside, the whole thing has little resonance in modern Greece, a century on. However it does persist in the Greek diaspora: my wife has a Greek-American friend from college who told her that her parish priest insisted on referring to Turkey in sermons as "temporarily-occupied Asia Minor".
Yes, having spent a fair time in Greece, I've heard quite a lot of this. As you say, I I think the chapter is historically closed - the Christian Greeks returned from cities like Smyrna, and many, but not all, of the people living there now look remarkably like descendants of Ionian Greeks who converted to Islam, which I think is what they are.
I've often wondered similarly about Moslem or Christian Palestinians and the Israelis. Who REALLY has the right to the land? To whose ancestors was it actually 'given'?
That's easy. None of them.
Trying to disentangle the ethnic history of Palestine is like trying to hold water in your cupped hands with your fingers open.
However, there have (since the eighth century, at least) always been a mix of Muslims, Jews and Christians there. In the late fourteenth century there was a period of prolonged population decline and by 1500 there were probably only around 200,000 people in the area, the majority (but not an overwhelming majority) Muslim.
It isn't until the nineteenth century that you start to get conscious attempts to impose cultural revolutions on the area, with the growth of Egyptian nationalism under Mehmet Ali (who was, ironically, Albanian) and the corresponding Ottoman countermoves. But even that wasn't deliberate - more an attempt at control and command.
Only a tiny handful of people who live in Israel today have any sort of hereditary 'right' to be there - and far from all of them are Muslim. It is one reason why the question of identity in Israel and the Palestinian Territories (and for the matter of that, the Palestinian and Israeli diasporas) is such a vexed one.
"...since the eighth century, at least..."?
Er, I think it was around, zero BC that the Jews were there, weren't they? Wasn't there quite a famous Jew that went on to great things around that time?
Yes but of the three teams now in the finals, I think the Jews edge it "here first"-wise over the Christians and the Muslims.
I am neither qualified to, nor interested in pronouncing on the issue, but it is claimed that the Canaanites predated all three, and in one form or another have been there all this time.
NYT - Melania Trump Will Revamp White House Rose Garden
The first lady’s renovation of the garden, a signature showcase of power used by presidents for decades, is taking place as her husband enters a crucial stretch of his re-election effort.
Talk about yer Rose Garden Strategy! Actually, details sound like this could be the ONE decent thing the Trumpsky Administration may accomplish. Not much, but something.
On topic: aren't voters in the 2019 Tory gains more invested in "Boris" than the Tory party? So perhaps it's not surprising: given structural antipathy to the Tories in many of these areas, it was only seats where Johnson himself was particularly popular that the Tory candidate won. In traditional Tory seats, by contrast, "Boris" was likely less important as a selling point. A corollary of this is that replacing Johnson mid-term in an effort to bolster Tory support may have the opposite effect in some of these seats. I have a gut feeling that Sunak may be less popular in these seats than in the traditional Tory home counties, but it'd be interesting to see polling on that. There's also the Brexit factor at work, although I imagine that will fade as an issue over time, especially if it turns out to be a bit shit, as seems likely.
Indeed, according to Redfield 2019 Tory voters prefer Boris to Starmer by more than they prefer Sunak to Starmer, only 2019 LD voters prefer Sunak to Starmer by more than they prefer Boris to Starmer and the latter are very posh London and Home Counties centred
One very likely explanation for this is the similar psychological response to a change in buying behaviour, a kind of confirmation bias that is the opposite to buyers remorse. In other words, I have changed who I buy from, away from my traditional brand, and I need to keep telling myself it was the right decision, because part of me tells me it was not. "I DID make the right decision! I DID" The person will look for those reasons why they should convince themselves it was the correct decision. Clever brands will keep marketing to such folk to keep them on board. In political terms Tony Blair was the most recent to achieve this, and before him Margaret Thatcher.
As I have said many times before, Johnson is no Tony Blair, and he is definitely no Margaret Thatcher. This effect will doubtless melt away long before another GE.
That explanation doesn't explain why they "bought from him" in the first place.
There's no swing in these number. The logical thought surely is that the voters in these seats like him . . . because they like him . . . and that's why they voted for him in the first place. Not that they voted for him then decided they like him, because they voted for him.
You and Nigel are both right. They voted for Johnson because they like him and they say they still like him. The latter could be for one of two reasons. (i) It's too early to have realized the mistake. (ii) They have realized their mistake but are not yet ready to admit it. All the Red Wallers are probably in one or the other camp. We can postulate that a (iii) category - realized the mistake AND saying so - is virtually empty right now. It must be otherwise it would be showing up in the data.
The key question here - which we can't answer - is what is the split between (i) and (ii). Heavily (i) means good news for the Cons. Their strategy is predicated on the Red Wall still being in a (i) state by the time of the next election - because if these voters have not clocked their mistake by then the chances are they will repeat it. But if (as I hope) there are lots in (ii), Labour are set fair. Why? Because from (ii) it's only a matter of time before they take the decisive step to (iii) - which will duly show up in the polls and more importantly at the ballot box.
Odd that you don't have category (iv) they haven't made a mistake.
Anyway Nigel is disagreeing with that, he postulates despite the evidence to the contrary that people voted just because they disliked Corbyn and they never liked Johnson in the first place. Despite the polls saying the opposite.
There's no need for a category (iv) because in terms of impact it's the same as (i). There is no electoral difference between a Red Waller voting Tory not realizing they are being conned and one who does so positively in the knowledge of being conned - i.e. has not really been conned at all.
I happen to disagree with Nigel on the 2nd point. I think Johnson is a genuine asset when it comes to elections and I fear this will continue to be the case.
Overall such voters are probably less educated and quite limited in insight. Over time,though, the reality of Johnson being an utter shyster will percolate through to them - though some will continue to feel affection for him in the way that many Eastenders admired the Kray twins. The London dockers marching to support Enoch Powell in 1968 following his 'rivers of blood' speech also comes to mind.
I like your 1st analogy. Eastenders = Red Wallers, Johnson = Ronnie Kray. People falling for a raffish persona despite the obvious negatives. That kind of works. It shouldn't do but it does. But the 2nd one doesn't. The dockers marched for Powell out of genuine support for his racist worldview. No raffish persona with Powell at all. Quite the opposite. An introverted intellectual. It was about what he said. He said the day would soon come, if immigration continued unchecked, when the black man would hold the whip over the white man in Britain, and furthermore that this would be a bad thing, as indeed it sounds with the reference to "the whip", and the London dockers agreed. How many of their grandsons are Millwall fans today, I wonder?
The whole point of the ‘whip hand’ quote was that someone else said it to Powell
That someone else was (per Powell) a "decent, ordinary fellow Englishman" and it was indicative of what "thousands and hundreds of thousands are saying and thinking" - so I'm not seeing a good reason to assume it was not his view too.
Powell kept being told things by anonymous "man on the street" that fortunately had excellent cadence and phrasing to fit into his speeches.
Such serendipity.
"A lot of people are saying..."
Or Howard's election slogan: "Are you thinking what we're thinking?".
That was a low. But thankfully didn't work. Farage is a far more skillful politician than Howard.
Back to sketch, final scene (after several), the barbers, Enoch needs a trim -
"Short back and sides please, Johnny."
"No perm then this time?"
"Ha ha ha. You're a card."
Johnny gets busy with the scissors but keeps breaking off the whole time to rabbit on about you know what -
"For reasons I cannot comprehend, and in pursuance of a decision by default, on which I was never consulted, I find themselves made a stranger in my own country. I find my wife unable to obtain a hospital bed in childbirth, my children unable to obtain school places, my neighbourhood changed beyond recognition, my plans and prospects for the future defeated, and -"
"Johnny, I'm a bit pressed, you know what I mean?"
"- and on top of this, I now learn that a one-way privilege is to be established by Act of Parliament; a law which cannot, AND IS NOT INTENDED TO, operate to protect me or redress my grievances, is to be enacted to give the stranger, the disgruntled and the agent provocateur the power to pillory me and mine for our private actions."
Enoch finally snaps.
"Yeah yeah yeah. I know. Very interesting and I totally get it. But can you please shut the fuck up for a few minutes and finish cutting my hair. I've got a big speech to prepare."
Stick to the mug punts!
I know you laughed. Even though I'm mocking your hero you laughed. That's how good I am.
On my sons life, I didn't laugh
Ok, I believe you. But how did your amusement manifest then? An attack of the burps?
NYT - Melania Trump Will Revamp White House Rose Garden
The first lady’s renovation of the garden, a signature showcase of power used by presidents for decades, is taking place as her husband enters a crucial stretch of his re-election effort.
Talk about yer Rose Garden Strategy! Actually, details sound like this could be the ONE decent thing the Trumpsky Administration may accomplish. Not much, but something.
Syracuse was a Greek colony, if memory serves. So was Saguntum (Spain) and Marseilles (Massilia, originally). As was Taras (later Tarentum). And, of course, Asia Minor was riddled with Greek cities.
Hence why another location for super greek-alike looking people is Izmir, and other parts of that coast.
Turkey is cheaper than ever, but it seems to have lost quite a lot of British tourism over the last few years.
The Greeks actually temporarily occupied Izmir (Smyrna as was) for a short while after WW1, but were driven out by Ataturk's Turkish nationalist revival. The Smyrna campaign was part of the Greek irredentist "Megali idea" which would have included Greece taking pretty much the whole western coast line of Turkey, and Constantinople of course.
I should imagine that, the neo-Nazis of the Golden Dawn and their ilk aside, the whole thing has little resonance in modern Greece, a century on. However it does persist in the Greek diaspora: my wife has a Greek-American friend from college who told her that her parish priest insisted on referring to Turkey in sermons as "temporarily-occupied Asia Minor".
Yes, having spent a fair time in Greece, I've heard quite a lot of this. As you say, I I think the chapter is historically closed - the Christian Greeks returned from cities like Smyrna, and many, but not all, of the people living there now look remarkably like descendants of Ionian Greeks who converted to Islam, which I think is what they are.
I've often wondered similarly about Moslem or Christian Palestinians and the Israelis. Who REALLY has the right to the land? To whose ancestors was it actually 'given'?
That's easy. None of them.
Trying to disentangle the ethnic history of Palestine is like trying to hold water in your cupped hands with your fingers open.
However, there have (since the eighth century, at least) always been a mix of Muslims, Jews and Christians there. In the late fourteenth century there was a period of prolonged population decline and by 1500 there were probably only around 200,000 people in the area, the majority (but not an overwhelming majority) Muslim.
It isn't until the nineteenth century that you start to get conscious attempts to impose cultural revolutions on the area, with the growth of Egyptian nationalism under Mehmet Ali (who was, ironically, Albanian) and the corresponding Ottoman countermoves. But even that wasn't deliberate - more an attempt at control and command.
Only a tiny handful of people who live in Israel today have any sort of hereditary 'right' to be there - and far from all of them are Muslim. It is one reason why the question of identity in Israel and the Palestinian Territories (and for the matter of that, the Palestinian and Israeli diasporas) is such a vexed one.
"...since the eighth century, at least..."?
Er, I think it was around, zero BC that the Jews were there, weren't they? Wasn't there quite a famous Jew that went on to great things around that time?
'The Doctor' wrote that by the 8th Century there was a mixture of Muslims, Jews and Christian in what we now call Palestine. Certainly wouldn't have been any Muslims 150 years earlier. I'm inclined to believe from what I've read that at the time there would have been a largely Semitic population in Palestine, some of whom retained their original Jewish religion, in. one form or another. Some have converted to Christianity and probably have been so for many generations, and some, formerly Jews and formerly Christians, have converted to Islam.
The question I believe was who really has the right to the land. Well that of course is still being discussed but in terms of when they were there, the Jews appear to have 800+ years precedence over the muslims and some kind of precedence over the Christians given that JC was a jew.
The point is that it wasn’t the Muslims who initially expelled the Jews from Palestine. It was the Romans. Some Jews later came back from those areas they had been expelled from, but by then the ancestors of the modern Palestinian population had moved in, who later converted to Islam. So there was a religious melting pot from the at the latest the eighth century onwards, which culminated in an increasingly aggressive Islamisation as part of nineteenth century nationalism, balanced by a similar Zionist movement.
Comparing Johnson and Powell is ridiculous.Powell was a professor at 24,an Army Major who loved India and despite what his fans may have wanted he would have nothing to do with either the NF or the UDA (unlike Paisley). Powell would have appalled by Johnson & Cummings altitude to democracy or their refusal to do interviews with tough journalists like Morgan and Neill. Simon Heffer was a fan of Powell but is scathing about Johnson . How many current politicians could one describe as either visionaries or people who had moral or intellectual courage as opposed to being virtue signalling careerists.I write as someone who would never have voted for Powells politics but believe he had far more courage and intregrity than his detractors
Powell was an accomplished classicist and speaker, and would have relished a tough fight with interviewers, but this a fairly rosy view of his personality. Alongside his polished and proud persona, he also exhibited an odd savage streak throughout his life, probably linked to the childhood or school traumas as discussed by OnlyLivingBoy and I.
The oddly self-detached rhetoric, which a psychiatrist might describe as schizoid, and which he used to encourage Thatcher into action on the Falklands, gives a good flavour of this.
"The Falklands have brought to the surface of the British mind our latent perception of ourselves as a sea animal."
Syracuse was a Greek colony, if memory serves. So was Saguntum (Spain) and Marseilles (Massilia, originally). As was Taras (later Tarentum). And, of course, Asia Minor was riddled with Greek cities.
Hence why another location for super greek-alike looking people is Izmir, and other parts of that coast.
Turkey is cheaper than ever, but it seems to have lost quite a lot of British tourism over the last few years.
The Greeks actually temporarily occupied Izmir (Smyrna as was) for a short while after WW1, but were driven out by Ataturk's Turkish nationalist revival. The Smyrna campaign was part of the Greek irredentist "Megali idea" which would have included Greece taking pretty much the whole western coast line of Turkey, and Constantinople of course.
I should imagine that, the neo-Nazis of the Golden Dawn and their ilk aside, the whole thing has little resonance in modern Greece, a century on. However it does persist in the Greek diaspora: my wife has a Greek-American friend from college who told her that her parish priest insisted on referring to Turkey in sermons as "temporarily-occupied Asia Minor".
Yes, having spent a fair time in Greece, I've heard quite a lot of this. As you say, I I think the chapter is historically closed - the Christian Greeks returned from cities like Smyrna, and many, but not all, of the people living there now look remarkably like descendants of Ionian Greeks who converted to Islam, which I think is what they are.
I've often wondered similarly about Moslem or Christian Palestinians and the Israelis. Who REALLY has the right to the land? To whose ancestors was it actually 'given'?
That's easy. None of them.
Trying to disentangle the ethnic history of Palestine is like trying to hold water in your cupped hands with your fingers open.
However, there have (since the eighth century, at least) always been a mix of Muslims, Jews and Christians there. In the late fourteenth century there was a period of prolonged population decline and by 1500 there were probably only around 200,000 people in the area, the majority (but not an overwhelming majority) Muslim.
It isn't until the nineteenth century that you start to get conscious attempts to impose cultural revolutions on the area, with the growth of Egyptian nationalism under Mehmet Ali (who was, ironically, Albanian) and the corresponding Ottoman countermoves. But even that wasn't deliberate - more an attempt at control and command.
Only a tiny handful of people who live in Israel today have any sort of hereditary 'right' to be there - and far from all of them are Muslim. It is one reason why the question of identity in Israel and the Palestinian Territories (and for the matter of that, the Palestinian and Israeli diasporas) is such a vexed one.
"...since the eighth century, at least..."?
Er, I think it was around, zero BC that the Jews were there, weren't they? Wasn't there quite a famous Jew that went on to great things around that time?
'The Doctor' wrote that by the 8th Century there was a mixture of Muslims, Jews and Christian in what we now call Palestine. Certainly wouldn't have been any Muslims 150 years earlier. I'm inclined to believe from what I've read that at the time there would have been a largely Semitic population in Palestine, some of whom retained their original Jewish religion, in. one form or another. Some have converted to Christianity and probably have been so for many generations, and some, formerly Jews and formerly Christians, have converted to Islam.
The question I believe was who really has the right to the land. Well that of course is still being discussed but in terms of when they were there, the Jews appear to have 800+ years precedence over the muslims and some kind of precedence over the Christians given that JC was a jew.
The point is that it wasn’t the Muslims who initially expelled the Jews from Palestine. It was the Romans. Some Jews later came back from those areas they had been expelled from, but by then the ancestors of the modern Palestinian population had moved in, who later converted to Islam. So there was a religious melting pot from the at the latest the eighth century onwards, which culminated in an increasingly aggressive Islamisation as part of nineteenth century nationalism, balanced by a similar Zionist movement.
Am I right in remembering that Mohammed was supposed to have encountered both Greek Christians and Jews in Jerusalem, apparently influencing the Koran ?
The Greeks pop up again, in the Palestinian Christian population - my former colleague says she has traced her arab palestinian name to a greek one.
Syracuse was a Greek colony, if memory serves. So was Saguntum (Spain) and Marseilles (Massilia, originally). As was Taras (later Tarentum). And, of course, Asia Minor was riddled with Greek cities.
Hence why another location for super greek-alike looking people is Izmir, and other parts of that coast.
Turkey is cheaper than ever, but it seems to have lost quite a lot of British tourism over the last few years.
The Greeks actually temporarily occupied Izmir (Smyrna as was) for a short while after WW1, but were driven out by Ataturk's Turkish nationalist revival. The Smyrna campaign was part of the Greek irredentist "Megali idea" which would have included Greece taking pretty much the whole western coast line of Turkey, and Constantinople of course.
I should imagine that, the neo-Nazis of the Golden Dawn and their ilk aside, the whole thing has little resonance in modern Greece, a century on. However it does persist in the Greek diaspora: my wife has a Greek-American friend from college who told her that her parish priest insisted on referring to Turkey in sermons as "temporarily-occupied Asia Minor".
Yes, having spent a fair time in Greece, I've heard quite a lot of this. As you say, I I think the chapter is historically closed - the Christian Greeks returned from cities like Smyrna, and many, but not all, of the people living there now look remarkably like descendants of Ionian Greeks who converted to Islam, which I think is what they are.
I've often wondered similarly about Moslem or Christian Palestinians and the Israelis. Who REALLY has the right to the land? To whose ancestors was it actually 'given'?
That's easy. None of them.
Trying to disentangle the ethnic history of Palestine is like trying to hold water in your cupped hands with your fingers open.
However, there have (since the eighth century, at least) always been a mix of Muslims, Jews and Christians there. In the late fourteenth century there was a period of prolonged population decline and by 1500 there were probably only around 200,000 people in the area, the majority (but not an overwhelming majority) Muslim.
It isn't until the nineteenth century that you start to get conscious attempts to impose cultural revolutions on the area, with the growth of Egyptian nationalism under Mehmet Ali (who was, ironically, Albanian) and the corresponding Ottoman countermoves. But even that wasn't deliberate - more an attempt at control and command.
Only a tiny handful of people who live in Israel today have any sort of hereditary 'right' to be there - and far from all of them are Muslim. It is one reason why the question of identity in Israel and the Palestinian Territories (and for the matter of that, the Palestinian and Israeli diasporas) is such a vexed one.
"...since the eighth century, at least..."?
Er, I think it was around, zero BC that the Jews were there, weren't they? Wasn't there quite a famous Jew that went on to great things around that time?
Yes but of the three teams now in the finals, I think the Jews edge it "here first"-wise over the Christians and the Muslims.
I am neither qualified to, nor interested in pronouncing on the issue, but it is claimed that the Canaanites predated all three, and in one form or another have been there all this time.
The real problem of course is not so much, ‘who was there first,’ as, ‘who is there now and who are they trying to get rid of so they can stay there?’
Comparing Johnson and Powell is ridiculous.Powell was a professor at 24,an Army Major who loved India and despite what his fans may have wanted he would have nothing to do with either the NF or the UDA (unlike Paisley). Powell would have appalled by Johnson & Cummings altitude to democracy or their refusal to do interviews with tough journalists like Morgan and Neill. Simon Heffer was a fan of Powell but is scathing about Johnson . How many current politicians could one describe as either visionaries or people who had moral or intellectual courage as opposed to being virtue signalling careerists.I write as someone who would never have voted for Powells politics but believe he had far more courage and intregrity than his detractors
Powell was an accomplished classicist and speaker, and would have relished a tough fight with interviewers, but this a fairly rosy view of his personality. Alongside his polished and proud persona, he also exhibited an odd savage streak throughout his life, probably linked to the childhood or school traumas as discussed by OnlyLivingBoy and I.
The oddly self-detached rhetoric, which a psychiatrist might describe as schizoid, and which he used to encourage Thatcher into action on the Falklands, gives a good flavour of this.
"The Falklands have brought to the surface of the British mind our latent perception of ourselves as a sea animal."
He self-identified as a halibut ?
Well, he was always something of a cold fish.
Well it is a trait amongst Cambridge educated historians who have a thing about race and religion. See also Nick Griffin.
Though Nick Griffin really shouldn't count as he went to a JCL college.
Syracuse was a Greek colony, if memory serves. So was Saguntum (Spain) and Marseilles (Massilia, originally). As was Taras (later Tarentum). And, of course, Asia Minor was riddled with Greek cities.
Hence why another location for super greek-alike looking people is Izmir, and other parts of that coast.
Turkey is cheaper than ever, but it seems to have lost quite a lot of British tourism over the last few years.
The Greeks actually temporarily occupied Izmir (Smyrna as was) for a short while after WW1, but were driven out by Ataturk's Turkish nationalist revival. The Smyrna campaign was part of the Greek irredentist "Megali idea" which would have included Greece taking pretty much the whole western coast line of Turkey, and Constantinople of course.
I should imagine that, the neo-Nazis of the Golden Dawn and their ilk aside, the whole thing has little resonance in modern Greece, a century on. However it does persist in the Greek diaspora: my wife has a Greek-American friend from college who told her that her parish priest insisted on referring to Turkey in sermons as "temporarily-occupied Asia Minor".
Yes, having spent a fair time in Greece, I've heard quite a lot of this. As you say, I I think the chapter is historically closed - the Christian Greeks returned from cities like Smyrna, and many, but not all, of the people living there now look remarkably like descendants of Ionian Greeks who converted to Islam, which I think is what they are.
I've often wondered similarly about Moslem or Christian Palestinians and the Israelis. Who REALLY has the right to the land? To whose ancestors was it actually 'given'?
That's easy. None of them.
Trying to disentangle the ethnic history of Palestine is like trying to hold water in your cupped hands with your fingers open.
However, there have (since the eighth century, at least) always been a mix of Muslims, Jews and Christians there. In the late fourteenth century there was a period of prolonged population decline and by 1500 there were probably only around 200,000 people in the area, the majority (but not an overwhelming majority) Muslim.
It isn't until the nineteenth century that you start to get conscious attempts to impose cultural revolutions on the area, with the growth of Egyptian nationalism under Mehmet Ali (who was, ironically, Albanian) and the corresponding Ottoman countermoves. But even that wasn't deliberate - more an attempt at control and command.
Only a tiny handful of people who live in Israel today have any sort of hereditary 'right' to be there - and far from all of them are Muslim. It is one reason why the question of identity in Israel and the Palestinian Territories (and for the matter of that, the Palestinian and Israeli diasporas) is such a vexed one.
"...since the eighth century, at least..."?
Er, I think it was around, zero BC that the Jews were there, weren't they? Wasn't there quite a famous Jew that went on to great things around that time?
'The Doctor' wrote that by the 8th Century there was a mixture of Muslims, Jews and Christian in what we now call Palestine. Certainly wouldn't have been any Muslims 150 years earlier. I'm inclined to believe from what I've read that at the time there would have been a largely Semitic population in Palestine, some of whom retained their original Jewish religion, in. one form or another. Some have converted to Christianity and probably have been so for many generations, and some, formerly Jews and formerly Christians, have converted to Islam.
The question I believe was who really has the right to the land. Well that of course is still being discussed but in terms of when they were there, the Jews appear to have 800+ years precedence over the muslims and some kind of precedence over the Christians given that JC was a jew.
The point is that it wasn’t the Muslims who initially expelled the Jews from Palestine. It was the Romans. Some Jews later came back from those areas they had been expelled from, but by then the ancestors of the modern Palestinian population had moved in, who later converted to Islam. So there was a religious melting pot from the at the latest the eighth century onwards, which culminated in an increasingly aggressive Islamisation as part of nineteenth century nationalism, balanced by a similar Zionist movement.
Am I right in remembering that Mohammed was supposed to have met both Greek Christians and Jews in Jerusalem, influencing the Koran ?
I think this fills in the gaps for you better than I could:
Certainly there were Christians (and not just Greek ones) and Jews in Jerusalem during his lifetime and he would presumably have met them in his travels.
Syracuse was a Greek colony, if memory serves. So was Saguntum (Spain) and Marseilles (Massilia, originally). As was Taras (later Tarentum). And, of course, Asia Minor was riddled with Greek cities.
Hence why another location for super greek-alike looking people is Izmir, and other parts of that coast.
Turkey is cheaper than ever, but it seems to have lost quite a lot of British tourism over the last few years.
The Greeks actually temporarily occupied Izmir (Smyrna as was) for a short while after WW1, but were driven out by Ataturk's Turkish nationalist revival. The Smyrna campaign was part of the Greek irredentist "Megali idea" which would have included Greece taking pretty much the whole western coast line of Turkey, and Constantinople of course.
I should imagine that, the neo-Nazis of the Golden Dawn and their ilk aside, the whole thing has little resonance in modern Greece, a century on. However it does persist in the Greek diaspora: my wife has a Greek-American friend from college who told her that her parish priest insisted on referring to Turkey in sermons as "temporarily-occupied Asia Minor".
Yes, having spent a fair time in Greece, I've heard quite a lot of this. As you say, I I think the chapter is historically closed - the Christian Greeks returned from cities like Smyrna, and many, but not all, of the people living there now look remarkably like descendants of Ionian Greeks who converted to Islam, which I think is what they are.
I've often wondered similarly about Moslem or Christian Palestinians and the Israelis. Who REALLY has the right to the land? To whose ancestors was it actually 'given'?
That's easy. None of them.
Trying to disentangle the ethnic history of Palestine is like trying to hold water in your cupped hands with your fingers open.
However, there have (since the eighth century, at least) always been a mix of Muslims, Jews and Christians there. In the late fourteenth century there was a period of prolonged population decline and by 1500 there were probably only around 200,000 people in the area, the majority (but not an overwhelming majority) Muslim.
It isn't until the nineteenth century that you start to get conscious attempts to impose cultural revolutions on the area, with the growth of Egyptian nationalism under Mehmet Ali (who was, ironically, Albanian) and the corresponding Ottoman countermoves. But even that wasn't deliberate - more an attempt at control and command.
Only a tiny handful of people who live in Israel today have any sort of hereditary 'right' to be there - and far from all of them are Muslim. It is one reason why the question of identity in Israel and the Palestinian Territories (and for the matter of that, the Palestinian and Israeli diasporas) is such a vexed one.
"...since the eighth century, at least..."?
Er, I think it was around, zero BC that the Jews were there, weren't they? Wasn't there quite a famous Jew that went on to great things around that time?
Yes but of the three teams now in the finals, I think the Jews edge it "here first"-wise over the Christians and the Muslims.
I am neither qualified to, nor interested in pronouncing on the issue, but it is claimed that the Canaanites predated all three, and in one form or another have been there all this time.
IIRC when they sequenced the remains of Cheddar Man from the mesolithic, he had some DNA markers in common with samples from the modern local population. Languages and cultures may come and go with the movements of peoples, but the underlying population usually remains. Thankfully true population replacement is pretty hard to pull off, at least before the modern era.
On topic: aren't voters in the 2019 Tory gains more invested in "Boris" than the Tory party? So perhaps it's not surprising: given structural antipathy to the Tories in many of these areas, it was only seats where Johnson himself was particularly popular that the Tory candidate won. In traditional Tory seats, by contrast, "Boris" was likely less important as a selling point. A corollary of this is that replacing Johnson mid-term in an effort to bolster Tory support may have the opposite effect in some of these seats. I have a gut feeling that Sunak may be less popular in these seats than in the traditional Tory home counties, but it'd be interesting to see polling on that. There's also the Brexit factor at work, although I imagine that will fade as an issue over time, especially if it turns out to be a bit shit, as seems likely.
Indeed, according to Redfield 2019 Tory voters prefer Boris to Starmer by more than they prefer Sunak to Starmer, only 2019 LD voters prefer Sunak to Starmer by more than they prefer Boris to Starmer and the latter are very posh London and Home Counties centred
One very likely explanation for this is the similar psychological response to a change in buying behaviour, a kind of confirmation bias that is the opposite to buyers remorse. In other words, I have changed who I buy from, away from my traditional brand, and I need to keep telling myself it was the right decision, because part of me tells me it was not. "I DID make the right decision! I DID" The person will look for those reasons why they should convince themselves it was the correct decision. Clever brands will keep marketing to such folk to keep them on board. In political terms Tony Blair was the most recent to achieve this, and before him Margaret Thatcher.
As I have said many times before, Johnson is no Tony Blair, and he is definitely no Margaret Thatcher. This effect will doubtless melt away long before another GE.
That explanation doesn't explain why they "bought from him" in the first place.
There's no swing in these number. The logical thought surely is that the voters in these seats like him . . . because they like him . . . and that's why they voted for him in the first place. Not that they voted for him then decided they like him, because they voted for him.
You and Nigel are both right. They voted for Johnson because they like him and they say they still like him. The latter could be for one of two reasons. (i) It's too early to have realized the mistake. (ii) They have realized their mistake but are not yet ready to admit it. All the Red Wallers are probably in one or the other camp. We can postulate that a (iii) category - realized the mistake AND saying so - is virtually empty right now. It must be otherwise it would be showing up in the data.
The key question here - which we can't answer - is what is the split between (i) and (ii). Heavily (i) means good news for the Cons. Their strategy is predicated on the Red Wall still being in a (i) state by the time of the next election - because if these voters have not clocked their mistake by then the chances are they will repeat it. But if (as I hope) there are lots in (ii), Labour are set fair. Why? Because from (ii) it's only a matter of time before they take the decisive step to (iii) - which will duly show up in the polls and more importantly at the ballot box.
Odd that you don't have category (iv) they haven't made a mistake.
Anyway Nigel is disagreeing with that, he postulates despite the evidence to the contrary that people voted just because they disliked Corbyn and they never liked Johnson in the first place. Despite the polls saying the opposite.
There's no need for a category (iv) because in terms of impact it's the same as (i). There is no electoral difference between a Red Waller voting Tory not realizing they are being conned and one who does so positively in the knowledge of being conned - i.e. has not really been conned at all.
I happen to disagree with Nigel on the 2nd point. I think Johnson is a genuine asset when it comes to elections and I fear this will continue to be the case.
Overall such voters are probably less educated and quite limited in insight. Over time,though, the reality of Johnson being an utter shyster will percolate through to them - though some will continue to feel affection for him in the way that many Eastenders admired the Kray twins. The London dockers marching to support Enoch Powell in 1968 following his 'rivers of blood' speech also comes to mind.
I like your 1st analogy. Eastenders = Red Wallers, Johnson = Ronnie Kray. People falling for a raffish persona despite the obvious negatives. That kind of works. It shouldn't do but it does. But the 2nd one doesn't. The dockers marched for Powell out of genuine support for his racist worldview. No raffish persona with Powell at all. Quite the opposite. An introverted intellectual. It was about what he said. He said the day would soon come, if immigration continued unchecked, when the black man would hold the whip over the white man in Britain, and furthermore that this would be a bad thing, as indeed it sounds with the reference to "the whip", and the London dockers agreed. How many of their grandsons are Millwall fans today, I wonder?
The whole point of the ‘whip hand’ quote was that someone else said it to Powell
That someone else was (per Powell) a "decent, ordinary fellow Englishman" and it was indicative of what "thousands and hundreds of thousands are saying and thinking" - so I'm not seeing a good reason to assume it was not his view too.
Whether it was or not, the dockers, and contemporary opinion polls, prove him right to think many people agreed with it
Yep. And that is where @justin124 was getting his analogy with the Red Wallers and Johnson. His point being (I think) that many of them are a touch racist and have come to believe the Johnson/Brexit combo is in sympathy with that. But I'm rejecting the analogy because imo Powell was the genuine article - a racist - whereas Johnson is not. Poles apart in fact. Johnson is a conman, Powell was authentic to a fault.
Red wallers are not racists and neither is Johnson.
If you're too ignorant of what other people are saying and just want to dismiss it as "racists" then you're never going to learn.
The assertion that there is negligible racism in this large group of people is free of logic and evidence and is thus summarily rejected.
POLITICO.com - Biden's VP shortlist comes up short
. . .
Plenty of the contenders are fine or even good. But all of them come with a “but” attached. “There is no one ideal home run choice,” one adviser says.
As Biden conducts a series of interviews with a final list of potential running mates ahead of his August decision, his biggest concern is that there is nobody on his list with whom he has any previous deep relationship.
. . .
The elusive hunt for Biden’s Biden has recently pushed Susan Rice into the top tier of candidates. As Obama’s national security adviser for his entire second term, Rice and Biden worked closely together on an almost daily basis, making her the only potential running mate whom Biden knows so intimately.
But very few of the other candidates come close to meeting that test, which means that the one-on-one candidate interviews could be unusually important. A dark horse candidate who aces her oral exam with the nominee could end up as the finalist — and considering Biden’s commanding status in the race, as well as his age — the most likely person in America to be the 47th president.here are other considerations aside from Biden’s gut that Democrats are whispering about. One adviser to the campaign who has been asked for his assessments about several vice presidential candidates said the political considerations were less important than previous cycles.
“The first rule here is do no harm,” he said.
Personally (as SSI) think most of the above is typical BS you'd expect from highly-placed sources who either a) are NOT part of Biden's inner circle so there opinion is as good as yours, mine or OGH; or b) are in the know (at least partially) but are NOT going to reveal the Real Deal but instead are going to blow smoke up everyone's you-know-what.
Syracuse was a Greek colony, if memory serves. So was Saguntum (Spain) and Marseilles (Massilia, originally). As was Taras (later Tarentum). And, of course, Asia Minor was riddled with Greek cities.
Hence why another location for super greek-alike looking people is Izmir, and other parts of that coast.
Turkey is cheaper than ever, but it seems to have lost quite a lot of British tourism over the last few years.
The Greeks actually temporarily occupied Izmir (Smyrna as was) for a short while after WW1, but were driven out by Ataturk's Turkish nationalist revival. The Smyrna campaign was part of the Greek irredentist "Megali idea" which would have included Greece taking pretty much the whole western coast line of Turkey, and Constantinople of course.
I should imagine that, the neo-Nazis of the Golden Dawn and their ilk aside, the whole thing has little resonance in modern Greece, a century on. However it does persist in the Greek diaspora: my wife has a Greek-American friend from college who told her that her parish priest insisted on referring to Turkey in sermons as "temporarily-occupied Asia Minor".
Yes, having spent a fair time in Greece, I've heard quite a lot of this. As you say, I I think the chapter is historically closed - the Christian Greeks returned from cities like Smyrna, and many, but not all, of the people living there now look remarkably like descendants of Ionian Greeks who converted to Islam, which I think is what they are.
I've often wondered similarly about Moslem or Christian Palestinians and the Israelis. Who REALLY has the right to the land? To whose ancestors was it actually 'given'?
That's easy. None of them.
Trying to disentangle the ethnic history of Palestine is like trying to hold water in your cupped hands with your fingers open.
However, there have (since the eighth century, at least) always been a mix of Muslims, Jews and Christians there. In the late fourteenth century there was a period of prolonged population decline and by 1500 there were probably only around 200,000 people in the area, the majority (but not an overwhelming majority) Muslim.
It isn't until the nineteenth century that you start to get conscious attempts to impose cultural revolutions on the area, with the growth of Egyptian nationalism under Mehmet Ali (who was, ironically, Albanian) and the corresponding Ottoman countermoves. But even that wasn't deliberate - more an attempt at control and command.
Only a tiny handful of people who live in Israel today have any sort of hereditary 'right' to be there - and far from all of them are Muslim. It is one reason why the question of identity in Israel and the Palestinian Territories (and for the matter of that, the Palestinian and Israeli diasporas) is such a vexed one.
"...since the eighth century, at least..."?
Er, I think it was around, zero BC that the Jews were there, weren't they? Wasn't there quite a famous Jew that went on to great things around that time?
'The Doctor' wrote that by the 8th Century there was a mixture of Muslims, Jews and Christian in what we now call Palestine. Certainly wouldn't have been any Muslims 150 years earlier. I'm inclined to believe from what I've read that at the time there would have been a largely Semitic population in Palestine, some of whom retained their original Jewish religion, in. one form or another. Some have converted to Christianity and probably have been so for many generations, and some, formerly Jews and formerly Christians, have converted to Islam.
The question I believe was who really has the right to the land. Well that of course is still being discussed but in terms of when they were there, the Jews appear to have 800+ years precedence over the muslims and some kind of precedence over the Christians given that JC was a jew.
Start with easy ones like : Who has the best claim to Iceland, Britain, USA, Australia, France, Brazil, Turkey before starting on the PhD level questions.
Syracuse was a Greek colony, if memory serves. So was Saguntum (Spain) and Marseilles (Massilia, originally). As was Taras (later Tarentum). And, of course, Asia Minor was riddled with Greek cities.
Hence why another location for super greek-alike looking people is Izmir, and other parts of that coast.
Turkey is cheaper than ever, but it seems to have lost quite a lot of British tourism over the last few years.
The Greeks actually temporarily occupied Izmir (Smyrna as was) for a short while after WW1, but were driven out by Ataturk's Turkish nationalist revival. The Smyrna campaign was part of the Greek irredentist "Megali idea" which would have included Greece taking pretty much the whole western coast line of Turkey, and Constantinople of course.
I should imagine that, the neo-Nazis of the Golden Dawn and their ilk aside, the whole thing has little resonance in modern Greece, a century on. However it does persist in the Greek diaspora: my wife has a Greek-American friend from college who told her that her parish priest insisted on referring to Turkey in sermons as "temporarily-occupied Asia Minor".
Yes, having spent a fair time in Greece, I've heard quite a lot of this. As you say, I I think the chapter is historically closed - the Christian Greeks returned from cities like Smyrna, and many, but not all, of the people living there now look remarkably like descendants of Ionian Greeks who converted to Islam, which I think is what they are.
I've often wondered similarly about Moslem or Christian Palestinians and the Israelis. Who REALLY has the right to the land? To whose ancestors was it actually 'given'?
That's easy. None of them.
Trying to disentangle the ethnic history of Palestine is like trying to hold water in your cupped hands with your fingers open.
However, there have (since the eighth century, at least) always been a mix of Muslims, Jews and Christians there. In the late fourteenth century there was a period of prolonged population decline and by 1500 there were probably only around 200,000 people in the area, the majority (but not an overwhelming majority) Muslim.
It isn't until the nineteenth century that you start to get conscious attempts to impose cultural revolutions on the area, with the growth of Egyptian nationalism under Mehmet Ali (who was, ironically, Albanian) and the corresponding Ottoman countermoves. But even that wasn't deliberate - more an attempt at control and command.
Only a tiny handful of people who live in Israel today have any sort of hereditary 'right' to be there - and far from all of them are Muslim. It is one reason why the question of identity in Israel and the Palestinian Territories (and for the matter of that, the Palestinian and Israeli diasporas) is such a vexed one.
"...since the eighth century, at least..."?
Er, I think it was around, zero BC that the Jews were there, weren't they? Wasn't there quite a famous Jew that went on to great things around that time?
Yes but of the three teams now in the finals, I think the Jews edge it "here first"-wise over the Christians and the Muslims.
I am neither qualified to, nor interested in pronouncing on the issue, but it is claimed that the Canaanites predated all three, and in one form or another have been there all this time.
The real problem of course is not so much, ‘who was there first,’ as, ‘who is there now and who are they trying to get rid of so they can stay there?’
There appear to be descendants of Canaanites on 'both sides'. And plenty who aren't too.
Syracuse was a Greek colony, if memory serves. So was Saguntum (Spain) and Marseilles (Massilia, originally). As was Taras (later Tarentum). And, of course, Asia Minor was riddled with Greek cities.
Hence why another location for super greek-alike looking people is Izmir, and other parts of that coast.
Turkey is cheaper than ever, but it seems to have lost quite a lot of British tourism over the last few years.
The Greeks actually temporarily occupied Izmir (Smyrna as was) for a short while after WW1, but were driven out by Ataturk's Turkish nationalist revival. The Smyrna campaign was part of the Greek irredentist "Megali idea" which would have included Greece taking pretty much the whole western coast line of Turkey, and Constantinople of course.
I should imagine that, the neo-Nazis of the Golden Dawn and their ilk aside, the whole thing has little resonance in modern Greece, a century on. However it does persist in the Greek diaspora: my wife has a Greek-American friend from college who told her that her parish priest insisted on referring to Turkey in sermons as "temporarily-occupied Asia Minor".
Yes, having spent a fair time in Greece, I've heard quite a lot of this. As you say, I I think the chapter is historically closed - the Christian Greeks returned from cities like Smyrna, and many, but not all, of the people living there now look remarkably like descendants of Ionian Greeks who converted to Islam, which I think is what they are.
I've often wondered similarly about Moslem or Christian Palestinians and the Israelis. Who REALLY has the right to the land? To whose ancestors was it actually 'given'?
That's easy. None of them.
Trying to disentangle the ethnic history of Palestine is like trying to hold water in your cupped hands with your fingers open.
However, there have (since the eighth century, at least) always been a mix of Muslims, Jews and Christians there. In the late fourteenth century there was a period of prolonged population decline and by 1500 there were probably only around 200,000 people in the area, the majority (but not an overwhelming majority) Muslim.
It isn't until the nineteenth century that you start to get conscious attempts to impose cultural revolutions on the area, with the growth of Egyptian nationalism under Mehmet Ali (who was, ironically, Albanian) and the corresponding Ottoman countermoves. But even that wasn't deliberate - more an attempt at control and command.
Only a tiny handful of people who live in Israel today have any sort of hereditary 'right' to be there - and far from all of them are Muslim. It is one reason why the question of identity in Israel and the Palestinian Territories (and for the matter of that, the Palestinian and Israeli diasporas) is such a vexed one.
"...since the eighth century, at least..."?
Er, I think it was around, zero BC that the Jews were there, weren't they? Wasn't there quite a famous Jew that went on to great things around that time?
'The Doctor' wrote that by the 8th Century there was a mixture of Muslims, Jews and Christian in what we now call Palestine. Certainly wouldn't have been any Muslims 150 years earlier. I'm inclined to believe from what I've read that at the time there would have been a largely Semitic population in Palestine, some of whom retained their original Jewish religion, in. one form or another. Some have converted to Christianity and probably have been so for many generations, and some, formerly Jews and formerly Christians, have converted to Islam.
The question I believe was who really has the right to the land. Well that of course is still being discussed but in terms of when they were there, the Jews appear to have 800+ years precedence over the muslims and some kind of precedence over the Christians given that JC was a jew.
Start with easy ones like : Who has the best claim to Iceland, Britain, USA, Australia, France, Brazil, Turkey before starting on the PhD level questions.
Icfeland is the easiest. The Scandis were only preceded by Irish monks - by definition an unsustainable population.
Also clear records of the Settlement and families since.
The question is what status one gives to the Irish, etc. thralls in the [edit] primary Icelandic community.
NYT - Melania Trump Will Revamp White House Rose Garden
The first lady’s renovation of the garden, a signature showcase of power used by presidents for decades, is taking place as her husband enters a crucial stretch of his re-election effort.
Talk about yer Rose Garden Strategy! Actually, details sound like this could be the ONE decent thing the Trumpsky Administration may accomplish. Not much, but something.
I hope she's checking with Joe's wife what her favourite plants are.
Mr. Teacher, I do sympathise with teachers given the tendency for the political class to just hurl problems into the curriculum as things to be taught. That sort of government by headline is often not well-considered, and budgets are going to be constrained with the economic impact of the plague.
Teaching basic cookery skills is very useful, but with all these things the question that needs to be asked is: instead of what?
Do it as part of maths instead of boring shit like algebra and calculus.
There is quite a bit of maths involved in cooking of course; cutting a pizza into seven equal pieces while ensuring that everyone gets their fair share of pineapple chunks is a non trivial task...
x = number of slices that end up in the bin. x = 7.
Then, having done algebra, arithmetic and distribution, what is the value of pie?
The calorific value deals with physics and biochemistry, too.
Who knows what one calorie is defined as without looking it up?
The amount of energy required to heat one millilitre of water by 1 degree.
Syracuse was a Greek colony, if memory serves. So was Saguntum (Spain) and Marseilles (Massilia, originally). As was Taras (later Tarentum). And, of course, Asia Minor was riddled with Greek cities.
Hence why another location for super greek-alike looking people is Izmir, and other parts of that coast.
Turkey is cheaper than ever, but it seems to have lost quite a lot of British tourism over the last few years.
The Greeks actually temporarily occupied Izmir (Smyrna as was) for a short while after WW1, but were driven out by Ataturk's Turkish nationalist revival. The Smyrna campaign was part of the Greek irredentist "Megali idea" which would have included Greece taking pretty much the whole western coast line of Turkey, and Constantinople of course.
I should imagine that, the neo-Nazis of the Golden Dawn and their ilk aside, the whole thing has little resonance in modern Greece, a century on. However it does persist in the Greek diaspora: my wife has a Greek-American friend from college who told her that her parish priest insisted on referring to Turkey in sermons as "temporarily-occupied Asia Minor".
Yes, having spent a fair time in Greece, I've heard quite a lot of this. As you say, I I think the chapter is historically closed - the Christian Greeks returned from cities like Smyrna, and many, but not all, of the people living there now look remarkably like descendants of Ionian Greeks who converted to Islam, which I think is what they are.
I've often wondered similarly about Moslem or Christian Palestinians and the Israelis. Who REALLY has the right to the land? To whose ancestors was it actually 'given'?
That's easy. None of them.
Trying to disentangle the ethnic history of Palestine is like trying to hold water in your cupped hands with your fingers open.
However, there have (since the eighth century, at least) always been a mix of Muslims, Jews and Christians there. In the late fourteenth century there was a period of prolonged population decline and by 1500 there were probably only around 200,000 people in the area, the majority (but not an overwhelming majority) Muslim.
It isn't until the nineteenth century that you start to get conscious attempts to impose cultural revolutions on the area, with the growth of Egyptian nationalism under Mehmet Ali (who was, ironically, Albanian) and the corresponding Ottoman countermoves. But even that wasn't deliberate - more an attempt at control and command.
Only a tiny handful of people who live in Israel today have any sort of hereditary 'right' to be there - and far from all of them are Muslim. It is one reason why the question of identity in Israel and the Palestinian Territories (and for the matter of that, the Palestinian and Israeli diasporas) is such a vexed one.
"...since the eighth century, at least..."?
Er, I think it was around, zero BC that the Jews were there, weren't they? Wasn't there quite a famous Jew that went on to great things around that time?
'The Doctor' wrote that by the 8th Century there was a mixture of Muslims, Jews and Christian in what we now call Palestine. Certainly wouldn't have been any Muslims 150 years earlier. I'm inclined to believe from what I've read that at the time there would have been a largely Semitic population in Palestine, some of whom retained their original Jewish religion, in. one form or another. Some have converted to Christianity and probably have been so for many generations, and some, formerly Jews and formerly Christians, have converted to Islam.
The question I believe was who really has the right to the land. Well that of course is still being discussed but in terms of when they were there, the Jews appear to have 800+ years precedence over the muslims and some kind of precedence over the Christians given that JC was a jew.
Start with easy ones like : Who has the best claim to Iceland, Britain, USA, Australia, France, Brazil, Turkey before starting on the PhD level questions.
Icfeland is the easiest. The Scandis were only preceded by Irish monks - by definition an unsustainable population.
Why would Irish monks have been an unsustainable population?
POLITICO.com - Biden's VP shortlist comes up short
. . .
Plenty of the contenders are fine or even good. But all of them come with a “but” attached. “There is no one ideal home run choice,” one adviser says.
As Biden conducts a series of interviews with a final list of potential running mates ahead of his August decision, his biggest concern is that there is nobody on his list with whom he has any previous deep relationship.
. . .
The elusive hunt for Biden’s Biden has recently pushed Susan Rice into the top tier of candidates. As Obama’s national security adviser for his entire second term, Rice and Biden worked closely together on an almost daily basis, making her the only potential running mate whom Biden knows so intimately.
But very few of the other candidates come close to meeting that test, which means that the one-on-one candidate interviews could be unusually important. A dark horse candidate who aces her oral exam with the nominee could end up as the finalist — and considering Biden’s commanding status in the race, as well as his age — the most likely person in America to be the 47th president.here are other considerations aside from Biden’s gut that Democrats are whispering about. One adviser to the campaign who has been asked for his assessments about several vice presidential candidates said the political considerations were less important than previous cycles.
“The first rule here is do no harm,” he said.
Personally (as SSI) think most of the above is typical BS you'd expect from highly-placed sources who either a) are NOT part of Biden's inner circle so there opinion is as good as yours, mine or OGH; or b) are in the know (at least partially) but are NOT going to reveal the Real Deal but instead are going to blow smoke up everyone's you-know-what.
My mother has announced I don't have to visit a mosque until there's a vaccine for Covid-19.
I hope the vaccine trials take a very long time. A VERY LONG TIME.
Please excuse the rest of us if we hope they don’t.
I know, I know, I too hope for a quick result on the vaccine front.
I want to go back to normality.
So from your point of view, the ideal vaccine is one that mysteriously stops working the instant you cross the threshold of a mosque, thereby forcing them to remain closed?
If I were to draw a Venn diagram of the people who complained we locked down too late and the people who are complaining about the swift lockdown from Spain, it would look like one circle wouldn't it?
Syracuse was a Greek colony, if memory serves. So was Saguntum (Spain) and Marseilles (Massilia, originally). As was Taras (later Tarentum). And, of course, Asia Minor was riddled with Greek cities.
Hence why another location for super greek-alike looking people is Izmir, and other parts of that coast.
Turkey is cheaper than ever, but it seems to have lost quite a lot of British tourism over the last few years.
The Greeks actually temporarily occupied Izmir (Smyrna as was) for a short while after WW1, but were driven out by Ataturk's Turkish nationalist revival. The Smyrna campaign was part of the Greek irredentist "Megali idea" which would have included Greece taking pretty much the whole western coast line of Turkey, and Constantinople of course.
I should imagine that, the neo-Nazis of the Golden Dawn and their ilk aside, the whole thing has little resonance in modern Greece, a century on. However it does persist in the Greek diaspora: my wife has a Greek-American friend from college who told her that her parish priest insisted on referring to Turkey in sermons as "temporarily-occupied Asia Minor".
Yes, having spent a fair time in Greece, I've heard quite a lot of this. As you say, I I think the chapter is historically closed - the Christian Greeks returned from cities like Smyrna, and many, but not all, of the people living there now look remarkably like descendants of Ionian Greeks who converted to Islam, which I think is what they are.
I've often wondered similarly about Moslem or Christian Palestinians and the Israelis. Who REALLY has the right to the land? To whose ancestors was it actually 'given'?
That's easy. None of them.
Trying to disentangle the ethnic history of Palestine is like trying to hold water in your cupped hands with your fingers open.
However, there have (since the eighth century, at least) always been a mix of Muslims, Jews and Christians there. In the late fourteenth century there was a period of prolonged population decline and by 1500 there were probably only around 200,000 people in the area, the majority (but not an overwhelming majority) Muslim.
It isn't until the nineteenth century that you start to get conscious attempts to impose cultural revolutions on the area, with the growth of Egyptian nationalism under Mehmet Ali (who was, ironically, Albanian) and the corresponding Ottoman countermoves. But even that wasn't deliberate - more an attempt at control and command.
Only a tiny handful of people who live in Israel today have any sort of hereditary 'right' to be there - and far from all of them are Muslim. It is one reason why the question of identity in Israel and the Palestinian Territories (and for the matter of that, the Palestinian and Israeli diasporas) is such a vexed one.
"...since the eighth century, at least..."?
Er, I think it was around, zero BC that the Jews were there, weren't they? Wasn't there quite a famous Jew that went on to great things around that time?
'The Doctor' wrote that by the 8th Century there was a mixture of Muslims, Jews and Christian in what we now call Palestine. Certainly wouldn't have been any Muslims 150 years earlier. I'm inclined to believe from what I've read that at the time there would have been a largely Semitic population in Palestine, some of whom retained their original Jewish religion, in. one form or another. Some have converted to Christianity and probably have been so for many generations, and some, formerly Jews and formerly Christians, have converted to Islam.
The question I believe was who really has the right to the land. Well that of course is still being discussed but in terms of when they were there, the Jews appear to have 800+ years precedence over the muslims and some kind of precedence over the Christians given that JC was a jew.
Start with easy ones like : Who has the best claim to Iceland, Britain, USA, Australia, France, Brazil, Turkey before starting on the PhD level questions.
Icfeland is the easiest. The Scandis were only preceded by Irish monks - by definition an unsustainable population.
Why would Irish monks have been an unsustainable population?
Hermits, weren't they? So not a Mount Athis type permaiment community.
Sustainable by replacement from outside on their coracles, though, I suppose. And not very sustainable when there are a lot oif land-hungry Danes with axes. [edit: might be wrong on that last - I haven'td read the sagas for decades, let alone the Landnamabok.)
On topic: aren't voters in the 2019 Tory gains more invested in "Boris" than the Tory party? So perhaps it's not surprising: given structural antipathy to the Tories in many of these areas, it was only seats where Johnson himself was particularly popular that the Tory candidate won. In traditional Tory seats, by contrast, "Boris" was likely less important as a selling point. A corollary of this is that replacing Johnson mid-term in an effort to bolster Tory support may have the opposite effect in some of these seats. I have a gut feeling that Sunak may be less popular in these seats than in the traditional Tory home counties, but it'd be interesting to see polling on that. There's also the Brexit factor at work, although I imagine that will fade as an issue over time, especially if it turns out to be a bit shit, as seems likely.
Indeed, according to Redfield 2019 Tory voters prefer Boris to Starmer by more than they prefer Sunak to Starmer, only 2019 LD voters prefer Sunak to Starmer by more than they prefer Boris to Starmer and the latter are very posh London and Home Counties centred
One very likely explanation for this is the similar psychological response to a change in buying behaviour, a kind of confirmation bias that is the opposite to buyers remorse. In other words, I have changed who I buy from, away from my traditional brand, and I need to keep telling myself it was the right decision, because part of me tells me it was not. "I DID make the right decision! I DID" The person will look for those reasons why they should convince themselves it was the correct decision. Clever brands will keep marketing to such folk to keep them on board. In political terms Tony Blair was the most recent to achieve this, and before him Margaret Thatcher.
As I have said many times before, Johnson is no Tony Blair, and he is definitely no Margaret Thatcher. This effect will doubtless melt away long before another GE.
That explanation doesn't explain why they "bought from him" in the first place.
There's no swing in these number. The logical thought surely is that the voters in these seats like him . . . because they like him . . . and that's why they voted for him in the first place. Not that they voted for him then decided they like him, because they voted for him.
You and Nigel are both right. They voted for Johnson because they like him and they say they still like him. The latter could be for one of two reasons. (i) It's too early to have realized the mistake. (ii) They have realized their mistake but are not yet ready to admit it. All the Red Wallers are probably in one or the other camp. We can postulate that a (iii) category - realized the mistake AND saying so - is virtually empty right now. It must be otherwise it would be showing up in the data.
The key question here - which we can't answer - is what is the split between (i) and (ii). Heavily (i) means good news for the Cons. Their strategy is predicated on the Red Wall still being in a (i) state by the time of the next election - because if these voters have not clocked their mistake by then the chances are they will repeat it. But if (as I hope) there are lots in (ii), Labour are set fair. Why? Because from (ii) it's only a matter of time before they take the decisive step to (iii) - which will duly show up in the polls and more importantly at the ballot box.
Odd that you don't have category (iv) they haven't made a mistake.
Anyway Nigel is disagreeing with that, he postulates despite the evidence to the contrary that people voted just because they disliked Corbyn and they never liked Johnson in the first place. Despite the polls saying the opposite.
There's no need for a category (iv) because in terms of impact it's the same as (i). There is no electoral difference between a Red Waller voting Tory not realizing they are being conned and one who does so positively in the knowledge of being conned - i.e. has not really been conned at all.
I happen to disagree with Nigel on the 2nd point. I think Johnson is a genuine asset when it comes to elections and I fear this will continue to be the case.
Overall such voters are probably less educated and quite limited in insight. Over time,though, the reality of Johnson being an utter shyster will percolate through to them - though some will continue to feel affection for him in the way that many Eastenders admired the Kray twins. The London dockers marching to support Enoch Powell in 1968 following his 'rivers of blood' speech also comes to mind.
I like your 1st analogy. Eastenders = Red Wallers, Johnson = Ronnie Kray. People falling for a raffish persona despite the obvious negatives. That kind of works. It shouldn't do but it does. But the 2nd one doesn't. The dockers marched for Powell out of genuine support for his racist worldview. No raffish persona with Powell at all. Quite the opposite. An introverted intellectual. It was about what he said. He said the day would soon come, if immigration continued unchecked, when the black man would hold the whip over the white man in Britain, and furthermore that this would be a bad thing, as indeed it sounds with the reference to "the whip", and the London dockers agreed. How many of their grandsons are Millwall fans today, I wonder?
The whole point of the ‘whip hand’ quote was that someone else said it to Powell
That someone else was (per Powell) a "decent, ordinary fellow Englishman" and it was indicative of what "thousands and hundreds of thousands are saying and thinking" - so I'm not seeing a good reason to assume it was not his view too.
Powell kept being told things by anonymous "man on the street" that fortunately had excellent cadence and phrasing to fit into his speeches.
My mother has announced I don't have to visit a mosque until there's a vaccine for Covid-19.
I hope the vaccine trials take a very long time. A VERY LONG TIME.
Please excuse the rest of us if we hope they don’t.
I know, I know, I too hope for a quick result on the vaccine front.
I want to go back to normality.
So from your point of view, the ideal vaccine is one that mysteriously stops working the instant you cross the threshold of a mosque, thereby forcing them to remain closed?
Something like that, would also rather prefer that the vaccine didn't emanate from the dump.
Syracuse was a Greek colony, if memory serves. So was Saguntum (Spain) and Marseilles (Massilia, originally). As was Taras (later Tarentum). And, of course, Asia Minor was riddled with Greek cities.
Hence why another location for super greek-alike looking people is Izmir, and other parts of that coast.
Turkey is cheaper than ever, but it seems to have lost quite a lot of British tourism over the last few years.
The Greeks actually temporarily occupied Izmir (Smyrna as was) for a short while after WW1, but were driven out by Ataturk's Turkish nationalist revival. The Smyrna campaign was part of the Greek irredentist "Megali idea" which would have included Greece taking pretty much the whole western coast line of Turkey, and Constantinople of course.
I should imagine that, the neo-Nazis of the Golden Dawn and their ilk aside, the whole thing has little resonance in modern Greece, a century on. However it does persist in the Greek diaspora: my wife has a Greek-American friend from college who told her that her parish priest insisted on referring to Turkey in sermons as "temporarily-occupied Asia Minor".
Yes, having spent a fair time in Greece, I've heard quite a lot of this. As you say, I I think the chapter is historically closed - the Christian Greeks returned from cities like Smyrna, and many, but not all, of the people living there now look remarkably like descendants of Ionian Greeks who converted to Islam, which I think is what they are.
I've often wondered similarly about Moslem or Christian Palestinians and the Israelis. Who REALLY has the right to the land? To whose ancestors was it actually 'given'?
That's easy. None of them.
Trying to disentangle the ethnic history of Palestine is like trying to hold water in your cupped hands with your fingers open.
However, there have (since the eighth century, at least) always been a mix of Muslims, Jews and Christians there. In the late fourteenth century there was a period of prolonged population decline and by 1500 there were probably only around 200,000 people in the area, the majority (but not an overwhelming majority) Muslim.
It isn't until the nineteenth century that you start to get conscious attempts to impose cultural revolutions on the area, with the growth of Egyptian nationalism under Mehmet Ali (who was, ironically, Albanian) and the corresponding Ottoman countermoves. But even that wasn't deliberate - more an attempt at control and command.
Only a tiny handful of people who live in Israel today have any sort of hereditary 'right' to be there - and far from all of them are Muslim. It is one reason why the question of identity in Israel and the Palestinian Territories (and for the matter of that, the Palestinian and Israeli diasporas) is such a vexed one.
"...since the eighth century, at least..."?
Er, I think it was around, zero BC that the Jews were there, weren't they? Wasn't there quite a famous Jew that went on to great things around that time?
'The Doctor' wrote that by the 8th Century there was a mixture of Muslims, Jews and Christian in what we now call Palestine. Certainly wouldn't have been any Muslims 150 years earlier. I'm inclined to believe from what I've read that at the time there would have been a largely Semitic population in Palestine, some of whom retained their original Jewish religion, in. one form or another. Some have converted to Christianity and probably have been so for many generations, and some, formerly Jews and formerly Christians, have converted to Islam.
The question I believe was who really has the right to the land. Well that of course is still being discussed but in terms of when they were there, the Jews appear to have 800+ years precedence over the muslims and some kind of precedence over the Christians given that JC was a jew.
Start with easy ones like : Who has the best claim to Iceland, Britain, USA, Australia, France, Brazil, Turkey before starting on the PhD level questions.
Icfeland is the easiest. The Scandis were only preceded by Irish monks - by definition an unsustainable population.
Why would Irish monks have been an unsustainable population?
OT - Think this poll shows something similar to US post-2016, namely that voters who were once part of the Democratic working class base but who defected to Trumpsky are NOT likely to desert him anytime soon. Or at least NOT among the mostly likely.
Think this is part of tipping-point psychology. When voters change their basic voting intention away from a traditional allegiance, in a way that evidence (polling, demographics, electoral trends) shows has been building for some time - well, they simply are NOT going to switch back due to some bumps, or even humongous potholes - down the road they've recently chosen.
If I were to draw a Venn diagram of the people who complained we locked down too late and the people who are complaining about the swift lockdown from Spain, it would look like one circle wouldn't it?
Syracuse was a Greek colony, if memory serves. So was Saguntum (Spain) and Marseilles (Massilia, originally). As was Taras (later Tarentum). And, of course, Asia Minor was riddled with Greek cities.
Hence why another location for super greek-alike looking people is Izmir, and other parts of that coast.
Turkey is cheaper than ever, but it seems to have lost quite a lot of British tourism over the last few years.
The Greeks actually temporarily occupied Izmir (Smyrna as was) for a short while after WW1, but were driven out by Ataturk's Turkish nationalist revival. The Smyrna campaign was part of the Greek irredentist "Megali idea" which would have included Greece taking pretty much the whole western coast line of Turkey, and Constantinople of course.
I should imagine that, the neo-Nazis of the Golden Dawn and their ilk aside, the whole thing has little resonance in modern Greece, a century on. However it does persist in the Greek diaspora: my wife has a Greek-American friend from college who told her that her parish priest insisted on referring to Turkey in sermons as "temporarily-occupied Asia Minor".
Yes, having spent a fair time in Greece, I've heard quite a lot of this. As you say, I I think the chapter is historically closed - the Christian Greeks returned from cities like Smyrna, and many, but not all, of the people living there now look remarkably like descendants of Ionian Greeks who converted to Islam, which I think is what they are.
I've often wondered similarly about Moslem or Christian Palestinians and the Israelis. Who REALLY has the right to the land? To whose ancestors was it actually 'given'?
That's easy. None of them.
Trying to disentangle the ethnic history of Palestine is like trying to hold water in your cupped hands with your fingers open.
However, there have (since the eighth century, at least) always been a mix of Muslims, Jews and Christians there. In the late fourteenth century there was a period of prolonged population decline and by 1500 there were probably only around 200,000 people in the area, the majority (but not an overwhelming majority) Muslim.
It isn't until the nineteenth century that you start to get conscious attempts to impose cultural revolutions on the area, with the growth of Egyptian nationalism under Mehmet Ali (who was, ironically, Albanian) and the corresponding Ottoman countermoves. But even that wasn't deliberate - more an attempt at control and command.
Only a tiny handful of people who live in Israel today have any sort of hereditary 'right' to be there - and far from all of them are Muslim. It is one reason why the question of identity in Israel and the Palestinian Territories (and for the matter of that, the Palestinian and Israeli diasporas) is such a vexed one.
"...since the eighth century, at least..."?
Er, I think it was around, zero BC that the Jews were there, weren't they? Wasn't there quite a famous Jew that went on to great things around that time?
'The Doctor' wrote that by the 8th Century there was a mixture of Muslims, Jews and Christian in what we now call Palestine. Certainly wouldn't have been any Muslims 150 years earlier. I'm inclined to believe from what I've read that at the time there would have been a largely Semitic population in Palestine, some of whom retained their original Jewish religion, in. one form or another. Some have converted to Christianity and probably have been so for many generations, and some, formerly Jews and formerly Christians, have converted to Islam.
The question I believe was who really has the right to the land. Well that of course is still being discussed but in terms of when they were there, the Jews appear to have 800+ years precedence over the muslims and some kind of precedence over the Christians given that JC was a jew.
Start with easy ones like : Who has the best claim to Iceland, Britain, USA, Australia, France, Brazil, Turkey before starting on the PhD level questions.
Icfeland is the easiest. The Scandis were only preceded by Irish monks - by definition an unsustainable population.
Why would Irish monks have been an unsustainable population?
Hermits, weren't they? So not a Mount Athis type permaiment community.
No. You’re confusing them with Welsh anchorites.
Irish monks of that period generally lived in large, self supporting and mixed sex communities. The nearest equivalent today would be something like an Israeli kibbutz.
In fact they were probably the sort of community best suited to survive and thrive in Icelandic conditions, although they ultimately didn’t.
Syracuse was a Greek colony, if memory serves. So was Saguntum (Spain) and Marseilles (Massilia, originally). As was Taras (later Tarentum). And, of course, Asia Minor was riddled with Greek cities.
Hence why another location for super greek-alike looking people is Izmir, and other parts of that coast.
Turkey is cheaper than ever, but it seems to have lost quite a lot of British tourism over the last few years.
The Greeks actually temporarily occupied Izmir (Smyrna as was) for a short while after WW1, but were driven out by Ataturk's Turkish nationalist revival. The Smyrna campaign was part of the Greek irredentist "Megali idea" which would have included Greece taking pretty much the whole western coast line of Turkey, and Constantinople of course.
I should imagine that, the neo-Nazis of the Golden Dawn and their ilk aside, the whole thing has little resonance in modern Greece, a century on. However it does persist in the Greek diaspora: my wife has a Greek-American friend from college who told her that her parish priest insisted on referring to Turkey in sermons as "temporarily-occupied Asia Minor".
Yes, having spent a fair time in Greece, I've heard quite a lot of this. As you say, I I think the chapter is historically closed - the Christian Greeks returned from cities like Smyrna, and many, but not all, of the people living there now look remarkably like descendants of Ionian Greeks who converted to Islam, which I think is what they are.
I've often wondered similarly about Moslem or Christian Palestinians and the Israelis. Who REALLY has the right to the land? To whose ancestors was it actually 'given'?
That's easy. None of them.
Trying to disentangle the ethnic history of Palestine is like trying to hold water in your cupped hands with your fingers open.
However, there have (since the eighth century, at least) always been a mix of Muslims, Jews and Christians there. In the late fourteenth century there was a period of prolonged population decline and by 1500 there were probably only around 200,000 people in the area, the majority (but not an overwhelming majority) Muslim.
It isn't until the nineteenth century that you start to get conscious attempts to impose cultural revolutions on the area, with the growth of Egyptian nationalism under Mehmet Ali (who was, ironically, Albanian) and the corresponding Ottoman countermoves. But even that wasn't deliberate - more an attempt at control and command.
Only a tiny handful of people who live in Israel today have any sort of hereditary 'right' to be there - and far from all of them are Muslim. It is one reason why the question of identity in Israel and the Palestinian Territories (and for the matter of that, the Palestinian and Israeli diasporas) is such a vexed one.
"...since the eighth century, at least..."?
Er, I think it was around, zero BC that the Jews were there, weren't they? Wasn't there quite a famous Jew that went on to great things around that time?
'The Doctor' wrote that by the 8th Century there was a mixture of Muslims, Jews and Christian in what we now call Palestine. Certainly wouldn't have been any Muslims 150 years earlier. I'm inclined to believe from what I've read that at the time there would have been a largely Semitic population in Palestine, some of whom retained their original Jewish religion, in. one form or another. Some have converted to Christianity and probably have been so for many generations, and some, formerly Jews and formerly Christians, have converted to Islam.
The question I believe was who really has the right to the land. Well that of course is still being discussed but in terms of when they were there, the Jews appear to have 800+ years precedence over the muslims and some kind of precedence over the Christians given that JC was a jew.
Start with easy ones like : Who has the best claim to Iceland, Britain, USA, Australia, France, Brazil, Turkey before starting on the PhD level questions.
Icfeland is the easiest. The Scandis were only preceded by Irish monks - by definition an unsustainable population.
Why would Irish monks have been an unsustainable population?
Hermits, weren't they? So not a Mount Athis type permaiment community.
No. You’re confusing them with Welsh anchorites.
Irish monks of that period generally lived in large, self supporting and mixed sex communities. The nearest equivalent today would be something like an Israeli kibbutz.
In fact they were probably the sort of community best suited to survive and thrive in Icelandic conditions, although they ultimately didn’t.
Ah - that's interesting. I am indeed thinking of the Culdees in the Western Isles as well. But were the Irish communalists, erm, allowed to breed?
OT - Think this poll shows something similar to US post-2016, namely that voters who were once part of the Democratic working class base but who defected to Trumpsky are NOT likely to desert him anytime soon. Or at least NOT among the mostly likely.
Think this is part of tipping-point psychology. When voters change their basic voting intention away from a traditional allegiance, in a way that evidence (polling, demographics, electoral trends) shows has been building for some time - well, they simply are NOT going to switch back due to some bumps, or even humongous potholes - down the road they've recently chosen.
Syracuse was a Greek colony, if memory serves. So was Saguntum (Spain) and Marseilles (Massilia, originally). As was Taras (later Tarentum). And, of course, Asia Minor was riddled with Greek cities.
Hence why another location for super greek-alike looking people is Izmir, and other parts of that coast.
Turkey is cheaper than ever, but it seems to have lost quite a lot of British tourism over the last few years.
The Greeks actually temporarily occupied Izmir (Smyrna as was) for a short while after WW1, but were driven out by Ataturk's Turkish nationalist revival. The Smyrna campaign was part of the Greek irredentist "Megali idea" which would have included Greece taking pretty much the whole western coast line of Turkey, and Constantinople of course.
I should imagine that, the neo-Nazis of the Golden Dawn and their ilk aside, the whole thing has little resonance in modern Greece, a century on. However it does persist in the Greek diaspora: my wife has a Greek-American friend from college who told her that her parish priest insisted on referring to Turkey in sermons as "temporarily-occupied Asia Minor".
Yes, having spent a fair time in Greece, I've heard quite a lot of this. As you say, I I think the chapter is historically closed - the Christian Greeks returned from cities like Smyrna, and many, but not all, of the people living there now look remarkably like descendants of Ionian Greeks who converted to Islam, which I think is what they are.
I've often wondered similarly about Moslem or Christian Palestinians and the Israelis. Who REALLY has the right to the land? To whose ancestors was it actually 'given'?
That's easy. None of them.
Trying to disentangle the ethnic history of Palestine is like trying to hold water in your cupped hands with your fingers open.
However, there have (since the eighth century, at least) always been a mix of Muslims, Jews and Christians there. In the late fourteenth century there was a period of prolonged population decline and by 1500 there were probably only around 200,000 people in the area, the majority (but not an overwhelming majority) Muslim.
It isn't until the nineteenth century that you start to get conscious attempts to impose cultural revolutions on the area, with the growth of Egyptian nationalism under Mehmet Ali (who was, ironically, Albanian) and the corresponding Ottoman countermoves. But even that wasn't deliberate - more an attempt at control and command.
Only a tiny handful of people who live in Israel today have any sort of hereditary 'right' to be there - and far from all of them are Muslim. It is one reason why the question of identity in Israel and the Palestinian Territories (and for the matter of that, the Palestinian and Israeli diasporas) is such a vexed one.
"...since the eighth century, at least..."?
Er, I think it was around, zero BC that the Jews were there, weren't they? Wasn't there quite a famous Jew that went on to great things around that time?
'The Doctor' wrote that by the 8th Century there was a mixture of Muslims, Jews and Christian in what we now call Palestine. Certainly wouldn't have been any Muslims 150 years earlier. I'm inclined to believe from what I've read that at the time there would have been a largely Semitic population in Palestine, some of whom retained their original Jewish religion, in. one form or another. Some have converted to Christianity and probably have been so for many generations, and some, formerly Jews and formerly Christians, have converted to Islam.
The question I believe was who really has the right to the land. Well that of course is still being discussed but in terms of when they were there, the Jews appear to have 800+ years precedence over the muslims and some kind of precedence over the Christians given that JC was a jew.
Start with easy ones like : Who has the best claim to Iceland, Britain, USA, Australia, France, Brazil, Turkey before starting on the PhD level questions.
Icfeland is the easiest. The Scandis were only preceded by Irish monks - by definition an unsustainable population.
Why would Irish monks have been an unsustainable population?
Hermits, weren't they? So not a Mount Athis type permaiment community.
No. You’re confusing them with Welsh anchorites.
Irish monks of that period generally lived in large, self supporting and mixed sex communities. The nearest equivalent today would be something like an Israeli kibbutz.
In fact they were probably the sort of community best suited to survive and thrive in Icelandic conditions, although they ultimately didn’t.
Ah - that's interesting. I am indeed thinking of the Culdees in the Western Isles as well. But were the Irish communalists, erm, allowed to breed?
Yes, although it did vary a bit depending on the abbot or abbess of the community they lived in.
On topic: aren't voters in the 2019 Tory gains more invested in "Boris" than the Tory party? So perhaps it's not surprising: given structural antipathy to the Tories in many of these areas, it was only seats where Johnson himself was particularly popular that the Tory candidate won. In traditional Tory seats, by contrast, "Boris" was likely less important as a selling point. A corollary of this is that replacing Johnson mid-term in an effort to bolster Tory support may have the opposite effect in some of these seats. I have a gut feeling that Sunak may be less popular in these seats than in the traditional Tory home counties, but it'd be interesting to see polling on that. There's also the Brexit factor at work, although I imagine that will fade as an issue over time, especially if it turns out to be a bit shit, as seems likely.
Indeed, according to Redfield 2019 Tory voters prefer Boris to Starmer by more than they prefer Sunak to Starmer, only 2019 LD voters prefer Sunak to Starmer by more than they prefer Boris to Starmer and the latter are very posh London and Home Counties centred
One very likely explanation for this is the similar psychological response to a change in buying behaviour, a kind of confirmation bias that is the opposite to buyers remorse. In other words, I have changed who I buy from, away from my traditional brand, and I need to keep telling myself it was the right decision, because part of me tells me it was not. "I DID make the right decision! I DID" The person will look for those reasons why they should convince themselves it was the correct decision. Clever brands will keep marketing to such folk to keep them on board. In political terms Tony Blair was the most recent to achieve this, and before him Margaret Thatcher.
As I have said many times before, Johnson is no Tony Blair, and he is definitely no Margaret Thatcher. This effect will doubtless melt away long before another GE.
That explanation doesn't explain why they "bought from him" in the first place.
There's no swing in these number. The logical thought surely is that the voters in these seats like him . . . because they like him . . . and that's why they voted for him in the first place. Not that they voted for him then decided they like him, because they voted for him.
You and Nigel are both right. They voted for Johnson because they like him and they say they still like him. The latter could be for one of two reasons. (i) It's too early to have realized the mistake. (ii) They have realized their mistake but are not yet ready to admit it. All the Red Wallers are probably in one or the other camp. We can postulate that a (iii) category - realized the mistake AND saying so - is virtually empty right now. It must be otherwise it would be showing up in the data.
The key question here - which we can't answer - is what is the split between (i) and (ii). Heavily (i) means good news for the Cons. Their strategy is predicated on the Red Wall still being in a (i) state by the time of the next election - because if these voters have not clocked their mistake by then the chances are they will repeat it. But if (as I hope) there are lots in (ii), Labour are set fair. Why? Because from (ii) it's only a matter of time before they take the decisive step to (iii) - which will duly show up in the polls and more importantly at the ballot box.
Odd that you don't have category (iv) they haven't made a mistake.
Anyway Nigel is disagreeing with that, he postulates despite the evidence to the contrary that people voted just because they disliked Corbyn and they never liked Johnson in the first place. Despite the polls saying the opposite.
There's no need for a category (iv) because in terms of impact it's the same as (i). There is no electoral difference between a Red Waller voting Tory not realizing they are being conned and one who does so positively in the knowledge of being conned - i.e. has not really been conned at all.
I happen to disagree with Nigel on the 2nd point. I think Johnson is a genuine asset when it comes to elections and I fear this will continue to be the case.
Overall such voters are probably less educated and quite limited in insight. Over time,though, the reality of Johnson being an utter shyster will percolate through to them - though some will continue to feel affection for him in the way that many Eastenders admired the Kray twins. The London dockers marching to support Enoch Powell in 1968 following his 'rivers of blood' speech also comes to mind.
I like your 1st analogy. Eastenders = Red Wallers, Johnson = Ronnie Kray. People falling for a raffish persona despite the obvious negatives. That kind of works. It shouldn't do but it does. But the 2nd one doesn't. The dockers marched for Powell out of genuine support for his racist worldview. No raffish persona with Powell at all. Quite the opposite. An introverted intellectual. It was about what he said. He said the day would soon come, if immigration continued unchecked, when the black man would hold the whip over the white man in Britain, and furthermore that this would be a bad thing, as indeed it sounds with the reference to "the whip", and the London dockers agreed. How many of their grandsons are Millwall fans today, I wonder?
The whole point of the ‘whip hand’ quote was that someone else said it to Powell
That someone else was (per Powell) a "decent, ordinary fellow Englishman" and it was indicative of what "thousands and hundreds of thousands are saying and thinking" - so I'm not seeing a good reason to assume it was not his view too.
Powell kept being told things by anonymous "man on the street" that fortunately had excellent cadence and phrasing to fit into his speeches.
POLITICO.com - Biden's VP shortlist comes up short
. . .
Plenty of the contenders are fine or even good. But all of them come with a “but” attached. “There is no one ideal home run choice,” one adviser says.
As Biden conducts a series of interviews with a final list of potential running mates ahead of his August decision, his biggest concern is that there is nobody on his list with whom he has any previous deep relationship.
. . .
The elusive hunt for Biden’s Biden has recently pushed Susan Rice into the top tier of candidates. As Obama’s national security adviser for his entire second term, Rice and Biden worked closely together on an almost daily basis, making her the only potential running mate whom Biden knows so intimately.
But very few of the other candidates come close to meeting that test, which means that the one-on-one candidate interviews could be unusually important. A dark horse candidate who aces her oral exam with the nominee could end up as the finalist — and considering Biden’s commanding status in the race, as well as his age — the most likely person in America to be the 47th president.here are other considerations aside from Biden’s gut that Democrats are whispering about. One adviser to the campaign who has been asked for his assessments about several vice presidential candidates said the political considerations were less important than previous cycles.
“The first rule here is do no harm,” he said.
Personally (as SSI) think most of the above is typical BS you'd expect from highly-placed sources who either a) are NOT part of Biden's inner circle so there opinion is as good as yours, mine or OGH; or b) are in the know (at least partially) but are NOT going to reveal the Real Deal but instead are going to blow smoke up everyone's you-know-what.
The Republicans' narrative is Biden is a trojan horse candidate, a weak moderate front for a radical leftist agenda
I would have thought the last thing Biden will want is to confirm that.
Not only does Uncle Joe NOT want a "radical leftist" (as defined by Putinists of course) but he does not NEED to propitiate the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party, leastways not very much.
That (& her age) is big argument against Elizabeth Warren. However, don't think any of the other women on the (alleged) VP short-list really fix the lefty mold, unless of course you are Trumpsky, Bannon, Fucker Carlson, etc. etc.
Syracuse was a Greek colony, if memory serves. So was Saguntum (Spain) and Marseilles (Massilia, originally). As was Taras (later Tarentum). And, of course, Asia Minor was riddled with Greek cities.
Hence why another location for super greek-alike looking people is Izmir, and other parts of that coast.
Turkey is cheaper than ever, but it seems to have lost quite a lot of British tourism over the last few years.
The Greeks actually temporarily occupied Izmir (Smyrna as was) for a short while after WW1, but were driven out by Ataturk's Turkish nationalist revival. The Smyrna campaign was part of the Greek irredentist "Megali idea" which would have included Greece taking pretty much the whole western coast line of Turkey, and Constantinople of course.
I should imagine that, the neo-Nazis of the Golden Dawn and their ilk aside, the whole thing has little resonance in modern Greece, a century on. However it does persist in the Greek diaspora: my wife has a Greek-American friend from college who told her that her parish priest insisted on referring to Turkey in sermons as "temporarily-occupied Asia Minor".
Yes, having spent a fair time in Greece, I've heard quite a lot of this. As you say, I I think the chapter is historically closed - the Christian Greeks returned from cities like Smyrna, and many, but not all, of the people living there now look remarkably like descendants of Ionian Greeks who converted to Islam, which I think is what they are.
I've often wondered similarly about Moslem or Christian Palestinians and the Israelis. Who REALLY has the right to the land? To whose ancestors was it actually 'given'?
That's easy. None of them.
Trying to disentangle the ethnic history of Palestine is like trying to hold water in your cupped hands with your fingers open.
However, there have (since the eighth century, at least) always been a mix of Muslims, Jews and Christians there. In the late fourteenth century there was a period of prolonged population decline and by 1500 there were probably only around 200,000 people in the area, the majority (but not an overwhelming majority) Muslim.
It isn't until the nineteenth century that you start to get conscious attempts to impose cultural revolutions on the area, with the growth of Egyptian nationalism under Mehmet Ali (who was, ironically, Albanian) and the corresponding Ottoman countermoves. But even that wasn't deliberate - more an attempt at control and command.
Only a tiny handful of people who live in Israel today have any sort of hereditary 'right' to be there - and far from all of them are Muslim. It is one reason why the question of identity in Israel and the Palestinian Territories (and for the matter of that, the Palestinian and Israeli diasporas) is such a vexed one.
"...since the eighth century, at least..."?
Er, I think it was around, zero BC that the Jews were there, weren't they? Wasn't there quite a famous Jew that went on to great things around that time?
'The Doctor' wrote that by the 8th Century there was a mixture of Muslims, Jews and Christian in what we now call Palestine. Certainly wouldn't have been any Muslims 150 years earlier. I'm inclined to believe from what I've read that at the time there would have been a largely Semitic population in Palestine, some of whom retained their original Jewish religion, in. one form or another. Some have converted to Christianity and probably have been so for many generations, and some, formerly Jews and formerly Christians, have converted to Islam.
The question I believe was who really has the right to the land. Well that of course is still being discussed but in terms of when they were there, the Jews appear to have 800+ years precedence over the muslims and some kind of precedence over the Christians given that JC was a jew.
Are not a human's genes........ which cannot be changed (well, very much, during any individuals life) more important than said human's religion? People change their religion for several reasons; may be voluntary, may be compelled.
I fail to see what genetics or religion has anything to do with one's "right" to a certain piece of land, I'm sure none of the people arguing about this would extend the argument to, say, the "native" populations of European countries.
It's irrelevant for another reason anyway, before the Arabs tried to exterminate them the Jews were buying land from the Arabs. If you don't want to lose land don't try and fail to kill them.
POLITICO.com - Biden's VP shortlist comes up short
. . .
Plenty of the contenders are fine or even good. But all of them come with a “but” attached. “There is no one ideal home run choice,” one adviser says.
As Biden conducts a series of interviews with a final list of potential running mates ahead of his August decision, his biggest concern is that there is nobody on his list with whom he has any previous deep relationship.
. . .
The elusive hunt for Biden’s Biden has recently pushed Susan Rice into the top tier of candidates. As Obama’s national security adviser for his entire second term, Rice and Biden worked closely together on an almost daily basis, making her the only potential running mate whom Biden knows so intimately.
But very few of the other candidates come close to meeting that test, which means that the one-on-one candidate interviews could be unusually important. A dark horse candidate who aces her oral exam with the nominee could end up as the finalist — and considering Biden’s commanding status in the race, as well as his age — the most likely person in America to be the 47th president.here are other considerations aside from Biden’s gut that Democrats are whispering about. One adviser to the campaign who has been asked for his assessments about several vice presidential candidates said the political considerations were less important than previous cycles.
“The first rule here is do no harm,” he said.
Personally (as SSI) think most of the above is typical BS you'd expect from highly-placed sources who either a) are NOT part of Biden's inner circle so there opinion is as good as yours, mine or OGH; or b) are in the know (at least partially) but are NOT going to reveal the Real Deal but instead are going to blow smoke up everyone's you-know-what.
The Republicans' narrative is Biden is a trojan horse candidate, a weak moderate front for a radical leftist agenda
I would have thought the last thing Biden will want is to confirm that.
I don't think he has to worry. History suggests VP choices are not important, and he has a big lead over Trump which is unlikely to be impacted by that choice.
He can probably just go with whoever he feels most comfortable with and it should work out just fine.
OT - Think this poll shows something similar to US post-2016, namely that voters who were once part of the Democratic working class base but who defected to Trumpsky are NOT likely to desert him anytime soon. Or at least NOT among the mostly likely.
Think this is part of tipping-point psychology. When voters change their basic voting intention away from a traditional allegiance, in a way that evidence (polling, demographics, electoral trends) shows has been building for some time - well, they simply are NOT going to switch back due to some bumps, or even humongous potholes - down the road they've recently chosen.
Yes. The passion of the convert.
Partly. Also typical of folks who, at least when it comes to politics, tend to be LESS flighty & temporary in their views & inclinations that coffee house intellectuals & the like.
Comments
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/01/opinions/snl-trump-a-lot-of-people-are-saying-obeidallah/index.html
The old style high st with its butcher, baker, chain store is an anachronism and instead of fighting its demise tooth and nail high streets would be better off thinking how best to move forward into the 21st century because nothing is going to reverse the trend.
Specialist shops will survive, a good example of this might be for example games shops which are not merely somewhere to buy a game but also a place to meet people from the local area and sit and play games with them for an afternoon. Personal services style shops, there is a place in a high street for example for a craft shops making bespoke items potentially still. Factory tat though is better sought online
I am not wanting no high street, I want a high street that adds value and debenhams, curries, dixons, john lewis don't add value.
I was surprised, when looking at history of the Gulf States area some years ago, that it was for several centuries a Christian area.
But that raises the question, why is Mr Johnson going on about this now and not months before? It was pretty clear quite early on in the epidemic that fat was a major factor.
In fact it could be consistent with your observations. There is an obvious common factor with masks - that it is your own faultd if you catch/die/are disabled from the bug: [edit] so the logic might run [not that I can agree with blaming the patient].
As expected, the baseball bat wielding, kimono wearing lawyer is still on weekend break.
Er, I think it was around, zero BC that the Jews were there, weren't they? Wasn't there quite a famous Jew that went on to great things around that time?
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/health/survey-results/daily/2020/07/27/17a70/2?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=daily_questions&utm_campaign=daily_question_3
Back to sketch, final scene (after several), the barbers, Enoch needs a trim -
"Short back and sides please, Johnny."
"No perm then this time?"
"Ha ha ha. You're a card."
Johnny gets busy with the scissors but keeps breaking off the whole time to rabbit on about you know what -
"For reasons I cannot comprehend, and in pursuance of a decision by default, on which I was never consulted, I find themselves made a stranger in my own country. I find my wife unable to obtain a hospital bed in childbirth, my children unable to obtain school places, my neighbourhood changed beyond recognition, my plans and prospects for the future defeated, and -"
"Johnny, I'm a bit pressed, you know what I mean?"
"- and on top of this, I now learn that a one-way privilege is to be established by Act of Parliament; a law which cannot, AND IS NOT INTENDED TO, operate to protect me or redress my grievances, is to be enacted to give the stranger, the disgruntled and the agent provocateur the power to pillory me and mine for our private actions."
Enoch finally snaps.
"Yeah yeah yeah. I know. Very interesting and I totally get it. But can you please shut the fuck up for a few minutes and finish cutting my hair. I've got a big speech to prepare."
Powell would have appalled by Johnson & Cummings altitude to democracy or their refusal to do interviews with tough journalists like Morgan and Neill.
Simon Heffer was a fan of Powell but is scathing about Johnson .
How many current politicians could one describe as either visionaries or people who had moral or intellectual courage as opposed to being virtue signalling careerists.I write as someone who would never have voted for Powells politics but believe he had far more courage and intregrity than his detractors
Survey 50 years after ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech finds widespread fears over integration
"A Gallup poll conducted weeks after the 1968 speech found 74% of the British population agreed with the “Rivers of Blood” speech, in which Powell strongly criticised levels of immigration to Britain, particularly from the Commonwealth."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/14/multiculturalism-failed-substantial-minority-britons-integration-rivers-blood-enoch-powell
I don't think it's possible conclusively to say much more than that 'who was there first' is... disputed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Palestine#Iron_Age:_Canaanites,_Israelites_and_Philistines
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Greeks-Overseas-Their-Early-Colonies/dp/0500281092
The oddly self-detached rhetoric, which a psychiatrist might describe as schizoid, and which he used to encourage Thatcher into action on the Falklands, gives a good flavour of this.
"The Falklands have brought to the surface of the British mind our latent perception of ourselves as a sea animal."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdr96F5PfMg
We have fought on like seventy-five different fronts (oh!)
But when all is said and all is done
Jefferson has beliefs, Burr has none (ooh!)...
Shameful treason from Attlee, the man who gave up India.
If you're too ignorant of what other people are saying and just want to dismiss it as "racists" then you're never going to learn.
People change their religion for several reasons; may be voluntary, may be compelled.
The first lady’s renovation of the garden, a signature showcase of power used by presidents for decades, is taking place as her husband enters a crucial stretch of his re-election effort.
Talk about yer Rose Garden Strategy! Actually, details sound like this could be the ONE decent thing the Trumpsky Administration may accomplish. Not much, but something.
The Greeks pop up again, in the Palestinian Christian population - my former colleague says she has traced her arab palestinian name to a greek one.
Though Nick Griffin really shouldn't count as he went to a JCL college.
https://www.learnreligions.com/the-city-of-jerusalem-in-islam-2004409
Certainly there were Christians (and not just Greek ones) and Jews in Jerusalem during his lifetime and he would presumably have met them in his travels.
. . .
Plenty of the contenders are fine or even good. But all of them come with a “but” attached. “There is no one ideal home run choice,” one adviser says.
As Biden conducts a series of interviews with a final list of potential running mates ahead of his August decision, his biggest concern is that there is nobody on his list with whom he has any previous deep relationship.
. . .
The elusive hunt for Biden’s Biden has recently pushed Susan Rice into the top tier of candidates. As Obama’s national security adviser for his entire second term, Rice and Biden worked closely together on an almost daily basis, making her the only potential running mate whom Biden knows so intimately.
But very few of the other candidates come close to meeting that test, which means that the one-on-one candidate interviews could be unusually important. A dark horse candidate who aces her oral exam with the nominee could end up as the finalist — and considering Biden’s commanding status in the race, as well as his age — the most likely person in America to be the 47th president.here are other considerations aside from Biden’s gut that Democrats are whispering about. One adviser to the campaign who has been asked for his assessments about several vice presidential candidates said the political considerations were less important than previous cycles.
“The first rule here is do no harm,” he said.
Personally (as SSI) think most of the above is typical BS you'd expect from highly-placed sources who either a) are NOT part of Biden's inner circle so there opinion is as good as yours, mine or OGH; or b) are in the know (at least partially) but are NOT going to reveal the Real Deal but instead are going to blow smoke up everyone's you-know-what.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/27/biden-vice-president-contenders-382115
My mother has announced I don't have to visit a mosque until there's a vaccine for Covid-19.
I hope the vaccine trials take a very long time. A VERY LONG TIME.
https://twitter.com/rosskempsell/status/1287790445188329472
And plenty who aren't too.
Also clear records of the Settlement and families since.
The question is what status one gives to the Irish, etc. thralls in the [edit] primary Icelandic community.
I want to go back to normality.
I would have thought the last thing Biden will want is to confirm that.
Sustainable by replacement from outside on their coracles, though, I suppose. And not very sustainable when there are a lot oif land-hungry Danes with axes. [edit: might be wrong on that last - I haven'td read the sagas for decades, let alone the Landnamabok.)
Think this is part of tipping-point psychology. When voters change their basic voting intention away from a traditional allegiance, in a way that evidence (polling, demographics, electoral trends) shows has been building for some time - well, they simply are NOT going to switch back due to some bumps, or even humongous potholes - down the road they've recently chosen.
Irish monks of that period generally lived in large, self supporting and mixed sex communities. The nearest equivalent today would be something like an Israeli kibbutz.
In fact they were probably the sort of community best suited to survive and thrive in Icelandic conditions, although they ultimately didn’t.
That (& her age) is big argument against Elizabeth Warren. However, don't think any of the other women on the (alleged) VP short-list really fix the lefty mold, unless of course you are Trumpsky, Bannon, Fucker Carlson, etc. etc.
To which I am unable to post until someone else does so first.
It's irrelevant for another reason anyway, before the Arabs tried to exterminate them the Jews were buying land from the Arabs. If you don't want to lose land don't try and fail to kill them.
He can probably just go with whoever he feels most comfortable with and it should work out just fine.
NEW THREAD