Speaking about the film’s 40th anniversary to Edith Bowman on Yahoo Movies, the actor said that whenever he goes, people demand he recite his character’s catchphrase.
“Everywhere I go, they all want me to say ‘Gordon’s alive!’,” said Blessed. “The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, horses and queens, and prime ministers, they all want me to say ‘Gordon’s alive!’, it’s their favourite film.”
He continued: “The Queen, it’s her favourite film, she watches it with her grandchildren every Christmas.”
The actor then assumed the Queen’s accent, quoting her as saying: “You know, we watch Flash Gordon all the time, me and the grandchildren. And if you don’t mind, I’ve got the grandchildren here, would you mind saying ‘Gordon’s alive’?”...
A family favourite perhaps, but HMQ is so far beyond such primitive nonsense that anyone that says otherwise is off to the Tower. (So maybe it's her 'official' second favourite)
I'd guess that perhaps the 'King's speech' would find its way to being the official favourite. It's a great film too.
I see that Butler was in a BMW. That’s why it was checked. My sister was always getting grief from the police when she owned an M3.
So perhaps there were two strands of institutional police prejudice resonating here. Against black people AND against BMWs.
Viewed thus, what happened was inevitable and Butler can count herself lucky to remain a free woman.
I don't think so; she wasn't even driving. And the police explained their mistake and apologised.
Personally I'm surprised that Mr Starmer is allowing her to pursue this agenda, given her embarrassing habits when it comes to recognising antisemitism as an important question.
For example, Butler provided the voice over in Nov 2019 for a party advert which said "you are worthy" to 25 groups in society ... leaving out Jewish people, but including "if you wear a hijab, turban, cross". All they had to add was "yamulke" - but they didn't and Butler clearly did not insist.
As has been said below, an embarrassing clown. Presumably defenstration beckons in due course.
FWIW I think Mr Starmer has superior clown-defenestration skills to Bor is at this point.
A black man was driving. That's why the police did the stop. It was racist. It happens a lot. It should not. No need to dance around and deflect to other matters.
Are we sure a black man was driving? This is a genuine question. I've seen videos where the "driver" looks very pale, albeit pixilated.
I see that Butler was in a BMW. That’s why it was checked. My sister was always getting grief from the police when she owned an M3.
Or perhaps she looks and is a little dodgy?
Who can possibly say.
Any 'normal' person getting stopped by the police would think of it as a bit of a pain. She sees it as an opportunity. I'm not black, and I do see that simply because you were and thus felt somehow second class would be the worst thing in the world.
I wonder how far Dawn Butler had to drive before she got stopped?
Is that you, Constable Savage?
It is an undeniable fact that driving around in an expensive car in this country while being black means you get stopped. A lot. I have witnessed this on a personal level.
Driving an expensive car in a built up area is not yet a crime. Even if you are an offensive politician.
It's an undeniable fact too that if you drive long enough you will get stopped.
I may be wrong but with the whole BLM thing in the centre stage I'd bet that Dawn Butler was just driving around. BLM, and Dawn Butler really matters!
Just a hunch. I might bet on such a hunch though.
It got to the stage with my ex, that we jokingly included StoppedByThePolice time in journey estimates. It happened about once very 2 weeks and often ended up with a full vehicle inspection and license check.
A mint condition ML-320, brand new, since you were wondering.
I completely see that black people get stopped by police far more than they might expect. I don't like that at all, but I don't like the crime figures that suggest that black people are more likely to commit crimes than whites. (Worse still the US imprisonment rates).
Nice car - don't care.
Stopping people on what grounds? Because they feel like it?
Pay attention. Just read it properly and you'll understand.
Perhaps you should pay attention - black people are stopped for driving expensive cars. This is the universal experience of black people in the top professions.
Do you think that investment bankers, lawyers, NHS consultants etc all have a kilo of "gear" in the boot?
Strangely, non-black drivers in the same cars don't.
Seems you understand.
Perhaps you would enjoy being stooped every fortnight because the police think you look like a wrong un?
Bet you wear a loud shirt in built up areas.
Any other bets?
Well, the police will need to stop you regularly to make sure if you are, or not.....
Meanwhile journalists and democracy activists are being rounded up in HK with scarcely a peep from anyone.
I will never now go to China or to HK again or use a Cathay Pacific flight and intend being as rude as possible about the vile Chinese regime. It is no more than it deserves.
The death of HK is one of the saddest things. It was a truly magical city. All the wonders of Chinese culture (and many other cultures), superb cuisine, magnificent architecture, and, crucially, that underpinning of English Common law and Anglo-Saxon freedom.
Without the law and freedom it is ruined.
Not death.
Deliberate murder by one of the nastiest viciously oppressive totalitarian regimes around, up there with Stalin’s Russia or Nazi Germany in its disgusting revoltingness.
Anyway off to watch the lightning and hear the thunder over the Duddon estuary and Irish Sea.
Meanwhile journalists and democracy activists are being rounded up in HK with scarcely a peep from anyone.
I will never now go to China or to HK again or use a Cathay Pacific flight and intend being as rude as possible about the vile Chinese regime. It is no more than it deserves.
The death of HK is one of the saddest things. It was a truly magical city. All the wonders of Chinese culture (and many other cultures), superb cuisine, magnificent architecture, and, crucially, that underpinning of English Common law and Anglo-Saxon freedom.
Without the law and freedom it is ruined.
Not death.
Deliberate murder by one of the nastiest viciously oppressive totalitarian regimes around, up there with Stalin’s Russia or Nazi Germany in its disgusting revoltingness.
Anyway off to watch the lightning and hear the thunder over the Duddon estuary and Irish Sea.
I hope you feel better?
Your comment the other day was quite concerning. I too have had moments of Dark Covid Despair, so I truly empathise. But we fight on! We are needed!
And maybe take my advice: don't think too much about the future. Don't look ahead, the same way you don't look down on a tightrope. There is nothing but fearful danger to be seen. So live in the moment.
I see Toby has entered the dating game. It brings to mind my mother's expression for when she met a couple who were equally obnoxious. "They make a lovely couple -they don't spoil another one"
For someone so apparently stupid, obnoxious, cancellable, idiotic, Toby Young sure gets a lot of publicity, especially in lefty fanzines like the Guardian, and he annoyance he generates could probaby power a small town. Or a decent career as a provocateur.
He has known that a long time! his book "How to lose friends and alienate people" is mostly quite amusing. He discovered there is good money to be made from being a complete dickhead. Particularly in his role as an ideas man for the current government. By being arms length he can float ideas that they cannot.
Sure. And I know him, and I also like that book.
What amuses me is the fact his detractors don't seem to understand his shtick. Every time he does something outrageously naff or silly or rightwingy like this, they all go mad, and he gets more attention, and the BBC book him for another lucrative commentary position.
The delicate trick is to go as far as you can without going full Kate Hopkins or Milo, where your social media is cancelled and your career is over.
My main objection is he is exceptionally dreary and perpetually whines about how much he is being oppressed from his national newspaper column and regular TV appearances.
Whine whine whine, my secret attendance of the secret eugenics conference was exposed, whine whine whine woe is me.
Edit: and the oxygen he is currently giving to the Covid bullshiters is straight up the with anti-vaxxers. He will have deaths on his hands.
Take those in boats who reach our shores and send them to some of our overseas territories (the Falklands, St Helena etc). Allow them to live and work and be paid for it. Process their asylum claims there. If they don’t succeed they can return home or, if they’ve been good boys and girls and there is a need for them, stay in the territory. No locking up in camps. The opportunity to work and earn in a safe English-speaking British-owned territory. No abuse by those trafficking them or quasi-slave labour or worse in the black economy.
What are the downsides? Over to you.
That's not where they want to be.
But if they are refugees, it isn´t a matter of where they want to be, it is a matter of where they want NOT to be.
I see Toby has entered the dating game. It brings to mind my mother's expression for when she met a couple who were equally obnoxious. "They make a lovely couple -they don't spoil another one"
For someone so apparently stupid, obnoxious, cancellable, idiotic, Toby Young sure gets a lot of publicity, especially in lefty fanzines like the Guardian, and he annoyance he generates could probaby power a small town. Or a decent career as a provocateur.
He has known that a long time! his book "How to lose friends and alienate people" is mostly quite amusing. He discovered there is good money to be made from being a complete dickhead. Particularly in his role as an ideas man for the current government. By being arms length he can float ideas that they cannot.
Sure. And I know him, and I also like that book.
What amuses me is the fact his detractors don't seem to understand his shtick. Every time he does something outrageously naff or silly or rightwingy like this, they all go mad, and he gets more attention, and the BBC book him for another lucrative commentary position.
The delicate trick is to go as far as you can without going full Kate Hopkins or Milo, where your social media is cancelled and your career is over.
My main objection is he is exceptionally dreary and perpetually whines about how much he is being oppressed from his national newspaper column and regular TV appearances.
Whine whine whine, my secret attendance of the secret eugenics conference was exposed, whine whine whine woe is me.
He can be an excellent writer. That book is, quite often, laugh out loud funny.
He can also be a total dick, to a degree which is so severe it verges on self harm.
The total compares with 165,615 asylum applications in Germany, 151,070 in France, 117,800 in Spain and 77,275 in Greece in the same period, according to Eurostat."
Above is the best post re the migrant "crisis" made here today.
The vast majority of asylum seekers thru the EU dont come to the UK, proportionally we are getting about a quarter compared to our big peers Germany, France and Spain. So questions of why they all come here are moot.
The vast majority of those that do come from northern France travel thru the tunnel, not boat. The road and rail journeys kill far more of the migrants than the boat journeys.
I see that Butler was in a BMW. That’s why it was checked. My sister was always getting grief from the police when she owned an M3.
Or perhaps she looks and is a little dodgy?
Who can possibly say.
Any 'normal' person getting stopped by the police would think of it as a bit of a pain. She sees it as an opportunity. I'm not black, and I do see that simply because you were and thus felt somehow second class would be the worst thing in the world.
I wonder how far Dawn Butler had to drive before she got stopped?
Is that you, Constable Savage?
It is an undeniable fact that driving around in an expensive car in this country while being black means you get stopped. A lot. I have witnessed this on a personal level.
Driving an expensive car in a built up area is not yet a crime. Even if you are an offensive politician.
It's an undeniable fact too that if you drive long enough you will get stopped.
I may be wrong but with the whole BLM thing in the centre stage I'd bet that Dawn Butler was just driving around. BLM, and Dawn Butler really matters!
Just a hunch. I might bet on such a hunch though.
It got to the stage with my ex, that we jokingly included StoppedByThePolice time in journey estimates. It happened about once very 2 weeks and often ended up with a full vehicle inspection and license check.
A mint condition ML-320, brand new, since you were wondering.
I completely see that black people get stopped by police far more than they might expect. I don't like that at all, but I don't like the crime figures that suggest that black people are more likely to commit crimes than whites. (Worse still the US imprisonment rates).
Nice car - don't care.
Stopping people on what grounds? Because they feel like it?
Pay attention. Just read it properly and you'll understand.
Perhaps you should pay attention - black people are stopped for driving expensive cars. This is the universal experience of black people in the top professions.
Do you think that investment bankers, lawyers, NHS consultants etc all have a kilo of "gear" in the boot?
Strangely, non-black drivers in the same cars don't.
Seems you understand.
Perhaps you would enjoy being stooped every fortnight because the police think you look like a wrong un?
Bet you wear a loud shirt in built up areas.
Any other bets?
Well, the police will need to stop you regularly to make sure if you are, or not.....
I've not been stopped by the police recently or otherwise for the wearing of a loud shirt. I'd guess this has something to do with me not actually wearing loud shirts. Damned trickery I hear you say!
The total compares with 165,615 asylum applications in Germany, 151,070 in France, 117,800 in Spain and 77,275 in Greece in the same period, according to Eurostat."
Above is the best post re the migrant "crisis" made here today.
The vast majority of asylum seekers thru the EU dont come to the UK, proportionally we are getting about a quarter compared to our big peers Germany, France and Spain. So questions of why they all come here are moot.
The vast majority of those that do come from northern France travel thru the tunnel, not boat. The road and rail journeys kill far more of the migrants than the boat journeys.
I see that Butler was in a BMW. That’s why it was checked. My sister was always getting grief from the police when she owned an M3.
Or perhaps she looks and is a little dodgy?
Who can possibly say.
Any 'normal' person getting stopped by the police would think of it as a bit of a pain. She sees it as an opportunity. I'm not black, and I do see that simply because you were and thus felt somehow second class would be the worst thing in the world.
I wonder how far Dawn Butler had to drive before she got stopped?
Is that you, Constable Savage?
It is an undeniable fact that driving around in an expensive car in this country while being black means you get stopped. A lot. I have witnessed this on a personal level.
Driving an expensive car in a built up area is not yet a crime. Even if you are an offensive politician.
It's an undeniable fact too that if you drive long enough you will get stopped.
I may be wrong but with the whole BLM thing in the centre stage I'd bet that Dawn Butler was just driving around. BLM, and Dawn Butler really matters!
Just a hunch. I might bet on such a hunch though.
It got to the stage with my ex, that we jokingly included StoppedByThePolice time in journey estimates. It happened about once very 2 weeks and often ended up with a full vehicle inspection and license check.
A mint condition ML-320, brand new, since you were wondering.
I completely see that black people get stopped by police far more than they might expect. I don't like that at all, but I don't like the crime figures that suggest that black people are more likely to commit crimes than whites. (Worse still the US imprisonment rates).
Nice car - don't care.
Stopping people on what grounds? Because they feel like it?
Pay attention. Just read it properly and you'll understand.
Perhaps you should pay attention - black people are stopped for driving expensive cars. This is the universal experience of black people in the top professions.
Do you think that investment bankers, lawyers, NHS consultants etc all have a kilo of "gear" in the boot?
Strangely, non-black drivers in the same cars don't.
Seems you understand.
Perhaps you would enjoy being stooped every fortnight because the police think you look like a wrong un?
Bet you wear a loud shirt in built up areas.
Any other bets?
Well, the police will need to stop you regularly to make sure if you are, or not.....
I've not been stopped by the police recently or otherwise for the wearing of a loud shirt. I'd guess this has something to do with me not actually wearing loud shirts. Damned trickery I hear you say!
So here's another way of looking at it.
London street crimes - e.g. muggings - are committed by young black men out of all proportion to their presence in the community as a whole. This is a fact known anecdotally by any Londoner.
I've lived in London for 35 years and I've had maybe a dozen friends mugged in that time. Every single occasion the perps were young black men, acting alone, as a couple, or in groups. Of course other ethnicities also do this - white junkies to Albanian beggars - but young black men are, sadly, heavily over-represented.
So let's say you're a policeman tasked with bringing down levels of streetcrime in London. Who do you target? Do you make sure you stop and search all races equally, in proportion to their salience in the population, do you make sure you stop and search Chinese youths who have basically zero chance of being guilty, or do you concentrate on the racial group where you are most likely to find villains?
But if you do the latter, aren't you "racist"?
How are the poor cops meant to square this circle?
I see Toby has entered the dating game. It brings to mind my mother's expression for when she met a couple who were equally obnoxious. "They make a lovely couple -they don't spoil another one"
For someone so apparently stupid, obnoxious, cancellable, idiotic, Toby Young sure gets a lot of publicity, especially in lefty fanzines like the Guardian, and he annoyance he generates could probaby power a small town. Or a decent career as a provocateur.
He has known that a long time! his book "How to lose friends and alienate people" is mostly quite amusing. He discovered there is good money to be made from being a complete dickhead. Particularly in his role as an ideas man for the current government. By being arms length he can float ideas that they cannot.
Sure. And I know him, and I also like that book.
What amuses me is the fact his detractors don't seem to understand his shtick. Every time he does something outrageously naff or silly or rightwingy like this, they all go mad, and he gets more attention, and the BBC book him for another lucrative commentary position.
The delicate trick is to go as far as you can without going full Kate Hopkins or Milo, where your social media is cancelled and your career is over.
My main objection is he is exceptionally dreary and perpetually whines about how much he is being oppressed from his national newspaper column and regular TV appearances.
Whine whine whine, my secret attendance of the secret eugenics conference was exposed, whine whine whine woe is me.
Edit: and the oxygen he is currently giving to the Covid bullshiters is straight up the with anti-vaxxers. He will have deaths on his hands.
I see that Butler was in a BMW. That’s why it was checked. My sister was always getting grief from the police when she owned an M3.
Or perhaps she looks and is a little dodgy?
Who can possibly say.
Any 'normal' person getting stopped by the police would think of it as a bit of a pain. She sees it as an opportunity. I'm not black, and I do see that simply because you were and thus felt somehow second class would be the worst thing in the world.
I wonder how far Dawn Butler had to drive before she got stopped?
Is that you, Constable Savage?
It is an undeniable fact that driving around in an expensive car in this country while being black means you get stopped. A lot. I have witnessed this on a personal level.
Driving an expensive car in a built up area is not yet a crime. Even if you are an offensive politician.
It's an undeniable fact too that if you drive long enough you will get stopped.
I may be wrong but with the whole BLM thing in the centre stage I'd bet that Dawn Butler was just driving around. BLM, and Dawn Butler really matters!
Just a hunch. I might bet on such a hunch though.
It got to the stage with my ex, that we jokingly included StoppedByThePolice time in journey estimates. It happened about once very 2 weeks and often ended up with a full vehicle inspection and license check.
A mint condition ML-320, brand new, since you were wondering.
I completely see that black people get stopped by police far more than they might expect. I don't like that at all, but I don't like the crime figures that suggest that black people are more likely to commit crimes than whites. (Worse still the US imprisonment rates).
Nice car - don't care.
Stopping people on what grounds? Because they feel like it?
Pay attention. Just read it properly and you'll understand.
Perhaps you should pay attention - black people are stopped for driving expensive cars. This is the universal experience of black people in the top professions.
Do you think that investment bankers, lawyers, NHS consultants etc all have a kilo of "gear" in the boot?
Strangely, non-black drivers in the same cars don't.
Seems you understand.
Perhaps you would enjoy being stooped every fortnight because the police think you look like a wrong un?
Bet you wear a loud shirt in built up areas.
Any other bets?
Well, the police will need to stop you regularly to make sure if you are, or not.....
I've not been stopped by the police recently or otherwise for the wearing of a loud shirt. I'd guess this has something to do with me not actually wearing loud shirts. Damned trickery I hear you say!
So here's another way of looking at it.
London street crimes - e.g. muggings - are committed by young black men out of all proportion to their presence in the community as a whole. This is a fact known anecdotally by any Londoner.
I've lived in London for 35 years and I've had maybe a dozen friends mugged in that time. Every single occasion the perps were young black men, acting alone, as a couple, or in groups. Of course other ethnicities also do this - white junkies to Albanian beggars - but young black men are, sadly, heavily over-represented.
So let's say you're a policeman tasked with bringing down levels of streetcrime in London. Who do you target? Do you make sure you stop and search all races equally, in proportion to their salience in the population, do you make sure you stop and search Chinese youths who have basically zero chance of being guilty, or do you concentrate on the racial group where you are most likely to find villains?
But if you do the latter, aren't you "racist"?
How are the poor cops meant to square this circle?
What has that do do with pulling over a BMW driver ?
I see that Butler was in a BMW. That’s why it was checked. My sister was always getting grief from the police when she owned an M3.
Or perhaps she looks and is a little dodgy?
Who can possibly say.
Any 'normal' person getting stopped by the police would think of it as a bit of a pain. She sees it as an opportunity. I'm not black, and I do see that simply because you were and thus felt somehow second class would be the worst thing in the world.
I wonder how far Dawn Butler had to drive before she got stopped?
Is that you, Constable Savage?
It is an undeniable fact that driving around in an expensive car in this country while being black means you get stopped. A lot. I have witnessed this on a personal level.
Driving an expensive car in a built up area is not yet a crime. Even if you are an offensive politician.
It's an undeniable fact too that if you drive long enough you will get stopped.
I may be wrong but with the whole BLM thing in the centre stage I'd bet that Dawn Butler was just driving around. BLM, and Dawn Butler really matters!
Just a hunch. I might bet on such a hunch though.
It got to the stage with my ex, that we jokingly included StoppedByThePolice time in journey estimates. It happened about once very 2 weeks and often ended up with a full vehicle inspection and license check.
A mint condition ML-320, brand new, since you were wondering.
I completely see that black people get stopped by police far more than they might expect. I don't like that at all, but I don't like the crime figures that suggest that black people are more likely to commit crimes than whites. (Worse still the US imprisonment rates).
Nice car - don't care.
Stopping people on what grounds? Because they feel like it?
Pay attention. Just read it properly and you'll understand.
Perhaps you should pay attention - black people are stopped for driving expensive cars. This is the universal experience of black people in the top professions.
Do you think that investment bankers, lawyers, NHS consultants etc all have a kilo of "gear" in the boot?
Strangely, non-black drivers in the same cars don't.
Seems you understand.
Perhaps you would enjoy being stooped every fortnight because the police think you look like a wrong un?
Bet you wear a loud shirt in built up areas.
Any other bets?
Well, the police will need to stop you regularly to make sure if you are, or not.....
I've not been stopped by the police recently or otherwise for the wearing of a loud shirt. I'd guess this has something to do with me not actually wearing loud shirts. Damned trickery I hear you say!
So here's another way of looking at it.
London street crimes - e.g. muggings - are committed by young black men out of all proportion to their presence in the community as a whole. This is a fact known anecdotally by any Londoner.
I've lived in London for 35 years and I've had maybe a dozen friends mugged in that time. Every single occasion the perps were young black men, acting alone, as a couple, or in groups. Of course other ethnicities also do this - white junkies to Albanian beggars - but young black men are, sadly, heavily over-represented.
So let's say you're a policeman tasked with bringing down levels of streetcrime in London. Who do you target? Do you make sure you stop and search all races equally, in proportion to their salience in the population, do you make sure you stop and search Chinese youths who have basically zero chance of being guilty, or do you concentrate on the racial group where you are most likely to find villains?
But if you do the latter, aren't you "racist"?
How are the poor cops meant to square this circle?
What has that do do with pulling over a BMW driver ?
Because there is a general questioning of the concept of "racial profiling", and I am showing how difficult it is for police to get this right, without them offending either side of the argument.
Take those in boats who reach our shores and send them to some of our overseas territories (the Falklands, St Helena etc). Allow them to live and work and be paid for it. Process their asylum claims there. If they don’t succeed they can return home or, if they’ve been good boys and girls and there is a need for them, stay in the territory. No locking up in camps. The opportunity to work and earn in a safe English-speaking British-owned territory. No abuse by those trafficking them or quasi-slave labour or worse in the black economy.
What are the downsides? Over to you.
That's not where they want to be.
But if they are refugees, it isn´t a matter of where they want to be, it is a matter of where they want NOT to be.
The reality is that many are not really refugees at all. Or perhaps that these days the word “refugee” has come to mean anyone living in a not very nice place who wants to move to a nice place (understandably). And since there are more of the former than the latter and a lot of the latter countries don’t really want to have all these people from the not very nice places (because there are far too many of them) we have the problem we have.
I see that Butler was in a BMW. That’s why it was checked. My sister was always getting grief from the police when she owned an M3.
Or perhaps she looks and is a little dodgy?
Who can possibly say.
Any 'normal' person getting stopped by the police would think of it as a bit of a pain. She sees it as an opportunity. I'm not black, and I do see that simply because you were and thus felt somehow second class would be the worst thing in the world.
I wonder how far Dawn Butler had to drive before she got stopped?
Is that you, Constable Savage?
It is an undeniable fact that driving around in an expensive car in this country while being black means you get stopped. A lot. I have witnessed this on a personal level.
Driving an expensive car in a built up area is not yet a crime. Even if you are an offensive politician.
It's an undeniable fact too that if you drive long enough you will get stopped.
I may be wrong but with the whole BLM thing in the centre stage I'd bet that Dawn Butler was just driving around. BLM, and Dawn Butler really matters!
Just a hunch. I might bet on such a hunch though.
It got to the stage with my ex, that we jokingly included StoppedByThePolice time in journey estimates. It happened about once very 2 weeks and often ended up with a full vehicle inspection and license check.
A mint condition ML-320, brand new, since you were wondering.
I completely see that black people get stopped by police far more than they might expect. I don't like that at all, but I don't like the crime figures that suggest that black people are more likely to commit crimes than whites. (Worse still the US imprisonment rates).
Nice car - don't care.
Stopping people on what grounds? Because they feel like it?
Pay attention. Just read it properly and you'll understand.
Perhaps you should pay attention - black people are stopped for driving expensive cars. This is the universal experience of black people in the top professions.
Do you think that investment bankers, lawyers, NHS consultants etc all have a kilo of "gear" in the boot?
Strangely, non-black drivers in the same cars don't.
Seems you understand.
Perhaps you would enjoy being stooped every fortnight because the police think you look like a wrong un?
Bet you wear a loud shirt in built up areas.
Any other bets?
Well, the police will need to stop you regularly to make sure if you are, or not.....
I've not been stopped by the police recently or otherwise for the wearing of a loud shirt. I'd guess this has something to do with me not actually wearing loud shirts. Damned trickery I hear you say!
So here's another way of looking at it.
London street crimes - e.g. muggings - are committed by young black men out of all proportion to their presence in the community as a whole. This is a fact known anecdotally by any Londoner.
I've lived in London for 35 years and I've had maybe a dozen friends mugged in that time. Every single occasion the perps were young black men, acting alone, as a couple, or in groups. Of course other ethnicities also do this - white junkies to Albanian beggars - but young black men are, sadly, heavily over-represented.
So let's say you're a policeman tasked with bringing down levels of streetcrime in London. Who do you target? Do you make sure you stop and search all races equally, in proportion to their salience in the population, do you make sure you stop and search Chinese youths who have basically zero chance of being guilty, or do you concentrate on the racial group where you are most likely to find villains?
But if you do the latter, aren't you "racist"?
How are the poor cops meant to square this circle?
What has that do do with pulling over a BMW driver ?
Because there is a general questioning of the concept of "racial profiling", and I am showing how difficult it is for police to get this right, without them offending either side of the argument.
I see that Butler was in a BMW. That’s why it was checked. My sister was always getting grief from the police when she owned an M3.
Or perhaps she looks and is a little dodgy?
Who can possibly say.
Any 'normal' person getting stopped by the police would think of it as a bit of a pain. She sees it as an opportunity. I'm not black, and I do see that simply because you were and thus felt somehow second class would be the worst thing in the world.
I wonder how far Dawn Butler had to drive before she got stopped?
Is that you, Constable Savage?
It is an undeniable fact that driving around in an expensive car in this country while being black means you get stopped. A lot. I have witnessed this on a personal level.
Driving an expensive car in a built up area is not yet a crime. Even if you are an offensive politician.
It's an undeniable fact too that if you drive long enough you will get stopped.
I may be wrong but with the whole BLM thing in the centre stage I'd bet that Dawn Butler was just driving around. BLM, and Dawn Butler really matters!
Just a hunch. I might bet on such a hunch though.
It got to the stage with my ex, that we jokingly included StoppedByThePolice time in journey estimates. It happened about once very 2 weeks and often ended up with a full vehicle inspection and license check.
A mint condition ML-320, brand new, since you were wondering.
I completely see that black people get stopped by police far more than they might expect. I don't like that at all, but I don't like the crime figures that suggest that black people are more likely to commit crimes than whites. (Worse still the US imprisonment rates).
Nice car - don't care.
Stopping people on what grounds? Because they feel like it?
Pay attention. Just read it properly and you'll understand.
Perhaps you should pay attention - black people are stopped for driving expensive cars. This is the universal experience of black people in the top professions.
Do you think that investment bankers, lawyers, NHS consultants etc all have a kilo of "gear" in the boot?
Strangely, non-black drivers in the same cars don't.
Seems you understand.
Perhaps you would enjoy being stooped every fortnight because the police think you look like a wrong un?
Bet you wear a loud shirt in built up areas.
Any other bets?
Well, the police will need to stop you regularly to make sure if you are, or not.....
I've not been stopped by the police recently or otherwise for the wearing of a loud shirt. I'd guess this has something to do with me not actually wearing loud shirts. Damned trickery I hear you say!
So here's another way of looking at it.
London street crimes - e.g. muggings - are committed by young black men out of all proportion to their presence in the community as a whole. This is a fact known anecdotally by any Londoner.
I've lived in London for 35 years and I've had maybe a dozen friends mugged in that time. Every single occasion the perps were young black men, acting alone, as a couple, or in groups. Of course other ethnicities also do this - white junkies to Albanian beggars - but young black men are, sadly, heavily over-represented.
So let's say you're a policeman tasked with bringing down levels of streetcrime in London. Who do you target? Do you make sure you stop and search all races equally, in proportion to their salience in the population, do you make sure you stop and search Chinese youths who have basically zero chance of being guilty, or do you concentrate on the racial group where you are most likely to find villains?
But if you do the latter, aren't you "racist"?
How are the poor cops meant to square this circle?
What has that do do with pulling over a BMW driver ?
Because there is a general questioning of the concept of "racial profiling", and I am showing how difficult it is for police to get this right, without them offending either side of the argument.
I see that Butler was in a BMW. That’s why it was checked. My sister was always getting grief from the police when she owned an M3.
Or perhaps she looks and is a little dodgy?
Who can possibly say.
Any 'normal' person getting stopped by the police would think of it as a bit of a pain. She sees it as an opportunity. I'm not black, and I do see that simply because you were and thus felt somehow second class would be the worst thing in the world.
I wonder how far Dawn Butler had to drive before she got stopped?
Is that you, Constable Savage?
It is an undeniable fact that driving around in an expensive car in this country while being black means you get stopped. A lot. I have witnessed this on a personal level.
Driving an expensive car in a built up area is not yet a crime. Even if you are an offensive politician.
It's an undeniable fact too that if you drive long enough you will get stopped.
I may be wrong but with the whole BLM thing in the centre stage I'd bet that Dawn Butler was just driving around. BLM, and Dawn Butler really matters!
Just a hunch. I might bet on such a hunch though.
It got to the stage with my ex, that we jokingly included StoppedByThePolice time in journey estimates. It happened about once very 2 weeks and often ended up with a full vehicle inspection and license check.
A mint condition ML-320, brand new, since you were wondering.
I completely see that black people get stopped by police far more than they might expect. I don't like that at all, but I don't like the crime figures that suggest that black people are more likely to commit crimes than whites. (Worse still the US imprisonment rates).
Nice car - don't care.
Stopping people on what grounds? Because they feel like it?
Pay attention. Just read it properly and you'll understand.
Perhaps you should pay attention - black people are stopped for driving expensive cars. This is the universal experience of black people in the top professions.
Do you think that investment bankers, lawyers, NHS consultants etc all have a kilo of "gear" in the boot?
Strangely, non-black drivers in the same cars don't.
Seems you understand.
Perhaps you would enjoy being stooped every fortnight because the police think you look like a wrong un?
Bet you wear a loud shirt in built up areas.
Any other bets?
Well, the police will need to stop you regularly to make sure if you are, or not.....
I've not been stopped by the police recently or otherwise for the wearing of a loud shirt. I'd guess this has something to do with me not actually wearing loud shirts. Damned trickery I hear you say!
So here's another way of looking at it.
London street crimes - e.g. muggings - are committed by young black men out of all proportion to their presence in the community as a whole. This is a fact known anecdotally by any Londoner.
I've lived in London for 35 years and I've had maybe a dozen friends mugged in that time. Every single occasion the perps were young black men, acting alone, as a couple, or in groups. Of course other ethnicities also do this - white junkies to Albanian beggars - but young black men are, sadly, heavily over-represented.
So let's say you're a policeman tasked with bringing down levels of streetcrime in London. Who do you target? Do you make sure you stop and search all races equally, in proportion to their salience in the population, do you make sure you stop and search Chinese youths who have basically zero chance of being guilty, or do you concentrate on the racial group where you are most likely to find villains?
But if you do the latter, aren't you "racist"?
How are the poor cops meant to square this circle?
How about they investigate actual instances of crime rather than stop and searching a lot of people based on racial profiling in the hope that they eventually come across a wrong 'un with sufficient incriminating evidence to prosecute?
Surely you must see that the approach you have outlined constitutes institutional racism?
I see Toby has entered the dating game. It brings to mind my mother's expression for when she met a couple who were equally obnoxious. "They make a lovely couple -they don't spoil another one"
For someone so apparently stupid, obnoxious, cancellable, idiotic, Toby Young sure gets a lot of publicity, especially in lefty fanzines like the Guardian, and he annoyance he generates could probaby power a small town. Or a decent career as a provocateur.
He has known that a long time! his book "How to lose friends and alienate people" is mostly quite amusing. He discovered there is good money to be made from being a complete dickhead. Particularly in his role as an ideas man for the current government. By being arms length he can float ideas that they cannot.
Sure. And I know him, and I also like that book.
What amuses me is the fact his detractors don't seem to understand his shtick. Every time he does something outrageously naff or silly or rightwingy like this, they all go mad, and he gets more attention, and the BBC book him for another lucrative commentary position.
The delicate trick is to go as far as you can without going full Kate Hopkins or Milo, where your social media is cancelled and your career is over.
OK, being a professional annoyance is a way of making a living, and the world genuinely needs contrarians. Even if they're wrong 95 % of the time, the challenge keeps the mainstream on the straight and narrow.
Trouble is that, from time to time, Tobes actually stumbles upon a good point. His thinking that led to West London Free School- that the curriculum in English schools, even outstanding ones, was often a bit meh- was important and right. The school itself had a few avoidable false starts, but there was and is a valid point there. Trouble is that the Toby-shtick gets in the way of the message. Sometimes, he genuinely wants to be seen as a serious thinker in the public sphere, but the clown costume he wears to get attention stops people listening.
Meanwhile journalists and democracy activists are being rounded up in HK with scarcely a peep from anyone.
I will never now go to China or to HK again or use a Cathay Pacific flight and intend being as rude as possible about the vile Chinese regime. It is no more than it deserves.
The death of HK is one of the saddest things. It was a truly magical city. All the wonders of Chinese culture (and many other cultures), superb cuisine, magnificent architecture, and, crucially, that underpinning of English Common law and Anglo-Saxon freedom.
Without the law and freedom it is ruined.
Not death.
Deliberate murder by one of the nastiest viciously oppressive totalitarian regimes around, up there with Stalin’s Russia or Nazi Germany in its disgusting revoltingness.
Anyway off to watch the lightning and hear the thunder over the Duddon estuary and Irish Sea.
I hope you feel better?
Your comment the other day was quite concerning. I too have had moments of Dark Covid Despair, so I truly empathise. But we fight on! We are needed!
And maybe take my advice: don't think too much about the future. Don't look ahead, the same way you don't look down on a tightrope. There is nothing but fearful danger to be seen. So live in the moment.
Thank you. Not really. Living in the moment involves staring at the sea and sheep. I feel and am utterly useless and pointless. I write posts on here, which lovely as it is, is hardly setting the world on fire. I cannot even do the washing up for my daughter because I have to hide.
I have spent decades sorting out other peoples’ problems, quite successfully too. And I loved it. Give me a problem and I can do something to help. Now I can’t even wash up to help my daughter. I am the bloody problem.
Take those in boats who reach our shores and send them to some of our overseas territories (the Falklands, St Helena etc). Allow them to live and work and be paid for it. Process their asylum claims there. If they don’t succeed they can return home or, if they’ve been good boys and girls and there is a need for them, stay in the territory. No locking up in camps. The opportunity to work and earn in a safe English-speaking British-owned territory. No abuse by those trafficking them or quasi-slave labour or worse in the black economy.
What are the downsides? Over to you.
That's not where they want to be.
But if they are refugees, it isn´t a matter of where they want to be, it is a matter of where they want NOT to be.
The reality is that many are not really refugees at all. Or perhaps that these days the word “refugee” has come to mean anyone living in a not very nice place who wants to move to a nice place (understandably). And since there are more of the former than the latter and a lot of the latter countries don’t really want to have all these people from the not very nice places (because there are far too many of them) we have the problem we have.
Yes. Sometimes people get very touchy about use of the words refugee or migrant for example, but there is a legitimate reason to distinguish between them. And sometimes people imply through opposition to any restrictive or harsh policies that, in essence, countries should not be able to decide who enters their country. There are some people who believe in totally open borders, but many more who, I believe, accidentally imply it through criticism of the principle of such measuresa as well as their practical application in some instances.
Meanwhile journalists and democracy activists are being rounded up in HK with scarcely a peep from anyone.
I will never now go to China or to HK again or use a Cathay Pacific flight and intend being as rude as possible about the vile Chinese regime. It is no more than it deserves.
The death of HK is one of the saddest things. It was a truly magical city. All the wonders of Chinese culture (and many other cultures), superb cuisine, magnificent architecture, and, crucially, that underpinning of English Common law and Anglo-Saxon freedom.
Without the law and freedom it is ruined.
Not death.
Deliberate murder by one of the nastiest viciously oppressive totalitarian regimes around, up there with Stalin’s Russia or Nazi Germany in its disgusting revoltingness.
Anyway off to watch the lightning and hear the thunder over the Duddon estuary and Irish Sea.
I hope you feel better?
Your comment the other day was quite concerning. I too have had moments of Dark Covid Despair, so I truly empathise. But we fight on! We are needed!
And maybe take my advice: don't think too much about the future. Don't look ahead, the same way you don't look down on a tightrope. There is nothing but fearful danger to be seen. So live in the moment.
Thank you. Not really. Living in the moment involves staring at the sea and sheep. I feel and am utterly useless and pointless. I write posts on here, which lovely as it is, is hardly setting the world on fire. I cannot even do the washing up for my daughter because I have to hide.
I have spent decades sorting out other peoples’ problems, quite successfully too. And I loved it. Give me a problem and I can do something to help. Now I can’t even wash up to help my daughter. I am the bloody problem.
Bollocks to it all.
Hang on in there @Cyclefree - there is every prospect of a vaccine within the next six months. A vaccine will transform the situation.
I see that Butler was in a BMW. That’s why it was checked. My sister was always getting grief from the police when she owned an M3.
Or perhaps she looks and is a little dodgy?
Who can possibly say.
Any 'normal' person getting stopped by the police would think of it as a bit of a pain. She sees it as an opportunity. I'm not black, and I do see that simply because you were and thus felt somehow second class would be the worst thing in the world.
I wonder how far Dawn Butler had to drive before she got stopped?
Is that you, Constable Savage?
It is an undeniable fact that driving around in an expensive car in this country while being black means you get stopped. A lot. I have witnessed this on a personal level.
Driving an expensive car in a built up area is not yet a crime. Even if you are an offensive politician.
It's an undeniable fact too that if you drive long enough you will get stopped.
I may be wrong but with the whole BLM thing in the centre stage I'd bet that Dawn Butler was just driving around. BLM, and Dawn Butler really matters!
Just a hunch. I might bet on such a hunch though.
It got to the stage with my ex, that we jokingly included StoppedByThePolice time in journey estimates. It happened about once very 2 weeks and often ended up with a full vehicle inspection and license check.
A mint condition ML-320, brand new, since you were wondering.
I completely see that black people get stopped by police far more than they might expect. I don't like that at all, but I don't like the crime figures that suggest that black people are more likely to commit crimes than whites. (Worse still the US imprisonment rates).
Nice car - don't care.
Stopping people on what grounds? Because they feel like it?
Pay attention. Just read it properly and you'll understand.
Perhaps you should pay attention - black people are stopped for driving expensive cars. This is the universal experience of black people in the top professions.
Do you think that investment bankers, lawyers, NHS consultants etc all have a kilo of "gear" in the boot?
Strangely, non-black drivers in the same cars don't.
Seems you understand.
Perhaps you would enjoy being stooped every fortnight because the police think you look like a wrong un?
Bet you wear a loud shirt in built up areas.
Any other bets?
Well, the police will need to stop you regularly to make sure if you are, or not.....
I've not been stopped by the police recently or otherwise for the wearing of a loud shirt. I'd guess this has something to do with me not actually wearing loud shirts. Damned trickery I hear you say!
So here's another way of looking at it.
London street crimes - e.g. muggings - are committed by young black men out of all proportion to their presence in the community as a whole. This is a fact known anecdotally by any Londoner.
I've lived in London for 35 years and I've had maybe a dozen friends mugged in that time. Every single occasion the perps were young black men, acting alone, as a couple, or in groups. Of course other ethnicities also do this - white junkies to Albanian beggars - but young black men are, sadly, heavily over-represented.
So let's say you're a policeman tasked with bringing down levels of streetcrime in London. Who do you target? Do you make sure you stop and search all races equally, in proportion to their salience in the population, do you make sure you stop and search Chinese youths who have basically zero chance of being guilty, or do you concentrate on the racial group where you are most likely to find villains?
But if you do the latter, aren't you "racist"?
How are the poor cops meant to square this circle?
How about they investigate actual instances of crime rather than stop and searching a lot of people based on racial profiling in the hope that they eventually come across a wrong 'un with sufficient incriminating evidence to prosecute?
Surely you must see that the approach you have outlined constitutes institutional racism?
Well that's my point. It *can* be seen as institutional racism, if you are so inclined, and yet there is evidence that stop and search, which is basically what I describe, actually works.
I know something: I am glad I am not a London copper trying to please powerful lefty-liberals on the one hand, and yet serve ordinary, angry, peace-abiding Londoners on the other. It's lose lose.
Meanwhile journalists and democracy activists are being rounded up in HK with scarcely a peep from anyone.
I will never now go to China or to HK again or use a Cathay Pacific flight and intend being as rude as possible about the vile Chinese regime. It is no more than it deserves.
The death of HK is one of the saddest things. It was a truly magical city. All the wonders of Chinese culture (and many other cultures), superb cuisine, magnificent architecture, and, crucially, that underpinning of English Common law and Anglo-Saxon freedom.
Without the law and freedom it is ruined.
Not death.
Deliberate murder by one of the nastiest viciously oppressive totalitarian regimes around, up there with Stalin’s Russia or Nazi Germany in its disgusting revoltingness.
Anyway off to watch the lightning and hear the thunder over the Duddon estuary and Irish Sea.
I hope you feel better?
Your comment the other day was quite concerning. I too have had moments of Dark Covid Despair, so I truly empathise. But we fight on! We are needed!
And maybe take my advice: don't think too much about the future. Don't look ahead, the same way you don't look down on a tightrope. There is nothing but fearful danger to be seen. So live in the moment.
Thank you. Not really. Living in the moment involves staring at the sea and sheep. I feel and am utterly useless and pointless. I write posts on here, which lovely as it is, is hardly setting the world on fire. I cannot even do the washing up for my daughter because I have to hide.
I have spent decades sorting out other peoples’ problems, quite successfully too. And I loved it. Give me a problem and I can do something to help. Now I can’t even wash up to help my daughter. I am the bloody problem.
Bollocks to it all.
I wish you all best wishes.
Wanting to send refugees to a remote island when they are seeking sanctuary and a better life for themselves and yes I get that not all are genuine and anywhere would be better than where they started, I can only put down to a troubled state of mind.
Meanwhile journalists and democracy activists are being rounded up in HK with scarcely a peep from anyone.
I will never now go to China or to HK again or use a Cathay Pacific flight and intend being as rude as possible about the vile Chinese regime. It is no more than it deserves.
The death of HK is one of the saddest things. It was a truly magical city. All the wonders of Chinese culture (and many other cultures), superb cuisine, magnificent architecture, and, crucially, that underpinning of English Common law and Anglo-Saxon freedom.
Without the law and freedom it is ruined.
Not death.
Deliberate murder by one of the nastiest viciously oppressive totalitarian regimes around, up there with Stalin’s Russia or Nazi Germany in its disgusting revoltingness.
Anyway off to watch the lightning and hear the thunder over the Duddon estuary and Irish Sea.
I hope you feel better?
Your comment the other day was quite concerning. I too have had moments of Dark Covid Despair, so I truly empathise. But we fight on! We are needed!
And maybe take my advice: don't think too much about the future. Don't look ahead, the same way you don't look down on a tightrope. There is nothing but fearful danger to be seen. So live in the moment.
Thank you. Not really. Living in the moment involves staring at the sea and sheep. I feel and am utterly useless and pointless. I write posts on here, which lovely as it is, is hardly setting the world on fire. I cannot even do the washing up for my daughter because I have to hide.
I have spent decades sorting out other peoples’ problems, quite successfully too. And I loved it. Give me a problem and I can do something to help. Now I can’t even wash up to help my daughter. I am the bloody problem.
Bollocks to it all.
You have a wealth of stories to tell. Would you consider starting to write? Nothing formal like a book or articles necessarily, just getting thoughts and ideas, your impressions of the world and your life to date down on paper (or on random electronic vibrations these days I suppose). It would give you purpose and might in the end produce something you feel is of value.
Meanwhile journalists and democracy activists are being rounded up in HK with scarcely a peep from anyone.
I will never now go to China or to HK again or use a Cathay Pacific flight and intend being as rude as possible about the vile Chinese regime. It is no more than it deserves.
The death of HK is one of the saddest things. It was a truly magical city. All the wonders of Chinese culture (and many other cultures), superb cuisine, magnificent architecture, and, crucially, that underpinning of English Common law and Anglo-Saxon freedom.
Without the law and freedom it is ruined.
Not death.
Deliberate murder by one of the nastiest viciously oppressive totalitarian regimes around, up there with Stalin’s Russia or Nazi Germany in its disgusting revoltingness.
Anyway off to watch the lightning and hear the thunder over the Duddon estuary and Irish Sea.
I hope you feel better?
Your comment the other day was quite concerning. I too have had moments of Dark Covid Despair, so I truly empathise. But we fight on! We are needed!
And maybe take my advice: don't think too much about the future. Don't look ahead, the same way you don't look down on a tightrope. There is nothing but fearful danger to be seen. So live in the moment.
Thank you. Not really. Living in the moment involves staring at the sea and sheep. I feel and am utterly useless and pointless. I write posts on here, which lovely as it is, is hardly setting the world on fire. I cannot even do the washing up for my daughter because I have to hide.
I have spent decades sorting out other peoples’ problems, quite successfully too. And I loved it. Give me a problem and I can do something to help. Now I can’t even wash up to help my daughter. I am the bloody problem.
Bollocks to it all.
Heyyyy. Come on. Darkest before the dawn.
Remember that this land, this country, this world, has been through far far worse.
The other day I went to the beautiful, tiny, medieval town of Lavenham, with its utterly exquisite Perpendicular church - world famous - built on the wealth of the wool trade.
The strange thing is, all this beauty was built just a few decades AFTER the Black Death, which wiped out maybe a third of the entire population.
Meanwhile journalists and democracy activists are being rounded up in HK with scarcely a peep from anyone.
I will never now go to China or to HK again or use a Cathay Pacific flight and intend being as rude as possible about the vile Chinese regime. It is no more than it deserves.
The death of HK is one of the saddest things. It was a truly magical city. All the wonders of Chinese culture (and many other cultures), superb cuisine, magnificent architecture, and, crucially, that underpinning of English Common law and Anglo-Saxon freedom.
Without the law and freedom it is ruined.
Not death.
Deliberate murder by one of the nastiest viciously oppressive totalitarian regimes around, up there with Stalin’s Russia or Nazi Germany in its disgusting revoltingness.
Anyway off to watch the lightning and hear the thunder over the Duddon estuary and Irish Sea.
I hope you feel better?
Your comment the other day was quite concerning. I too have had moments of Dark Covid Despair, so I truly empathise. But we fight on! We are needed!
And maybe take my advice: don't think too much about the future. Don't look ahead, the same way you don't look down on a tightrope. There is nothing but fearful danger to be seen. So live in the moment.
Thank you. Not really. Living in the moment involves staring at the sea and sheep. I feel and am utterly useless and pointless. I write posts on here, which lovely as it is, is hardly setting the world on fire. I cannot even do the washing up for my daughter because I have to hide.
I have spent decades sorting out other peoples’ problems, quite successfully too. And I loved it. Give me a problem and I can do something to help. Now I can’t even wash up to help my daughter. I am the bloody problem.
Bollocks to it all.
While time for quiet reflection is rare most of the time, it now is overflowing in abundance.
I have had enough time to rethink priorities, to daydream about my RTW trip without flying, to have time in garden and doing DIY and to play with my dog. To cook with Mrs Foxy. I have enough stimulus at work so that the hours do not drag.
I can see though the strains on others, on the rather more gregarious Mrs Foxy and Fox jr, as well on some patients who are positively agoraphobic now.
I try to be philosophic about it. It cannot be fought so must be endured.
Meanwhile journalists and democracy activists are being rounded up in HK with scarcely a peep from anyone.
I will never now go to China or to HK again or use a Cathay Pacific flight and intend being as rude as possible about the vile Chinese regime. It is no more than it deserves.
The death of HK is one of the saddest things. It was a truly magical city. All the wonders of Chinese culture (and many other cultures), superb cuisine, magnificent architecture, and, crucially, that underpinning of English Common law and Anglo-Saxon freedom.
Without the law and freedom it is ruined.
Not death.
Deliberate murder by one of the nastiest viciously oppressive totalitarian regimes around, up there with Stalin’s Russia or Nazi Germany in its disgusting revoltingness.
Anyway off to watch the lightning and hear the thunder over the Duddon estuary and Irish Sea.
I hope you feel better?
Your comment the other day was quite concerning. I too have had moments of Dark Covid Despair, so I truly empathise. But we fight on! We are needed!
And maybe take my advice: don't think too much about the future. Don't look ahead, the same way you don't look down on a tightrope. There is nothing but fearful danger to be seen. So live in the moment.
Thank you. Not really. Living in the moment involves staring at the sea and sheep. I feel and am utterly useless and pointless. I write posts on here, which lovely as it is, is hardly setting the world on fire. I cannot even do the washing up for my daughter because I have to hide.
I have spent decades sorting out other peoples’ problems, quite successfully too. And I loved it. Give me a problem and I can do something to help. Now I can’t even wash up to help my daughter. I am the bloody problem.
Bollocks to it all.
You have a wealth of stories to tell. Would you consider starting to write? Nothing formal like a book or articles necessarily, just getting thoughts and ideas, your impressions of the world and your life to date down on paper (or on random electronic vibrations these days I suppose). It would give you purpose and might in the end produce something you feel is of value.
@Cyclefree, I second Richard's suggestion. Your thread headers are always thought-provoking and worth reading.
Meanwhile journalists and democracy activists are being rounded up in HK with scarcely a peep from anyone.
I will never now go to China or to HK again or use a Cathay Pacific flight and intend being as rude as possible about the vile Chinese regime. It is no more than it deserves.
The death of HK is one of the saddest things. It was a truly magical city. All the wonders of Chinese culture (and many other cultures), superb cuisine, magnificent architecture, and, crucially, that underpinning of English Common law and Anglo-Saxon freedom.
Without the law and freedom it is ruined.
Not death.
Deliberate murder by one of the nastiest viciously oppressive totalitarian regimes around, up there with Stalin’s Russia or Nazi Germany in its disgusting revoltingness.
Anyway off to watch the lightning and hear the thunder over the Duddon estuary and Irish Sea.
I hope you feel better?
Your comment the other day was quite concerning. I too have had moments of Dark Covid Despair, so I truly empathise. But we fight on! We are needed!
And maybe take my advice: don't think too much about the future. Don't look ahead, the same way you don't look down on a tightrope. There is nothing but fearful danger to be seen. So live in the moment.
Thank you. Not really. Living in the moment involves staring at the sea and sheep. I feel and am utterly useless and pointless. I write posts on here, which lovely as it is, is hardly setting the world on fire. I cannot even do the washing up for my daughter because I have to hide.
I have spent decades sorting out other peoples’ problems, quite successfully too. And I loved it. Give me a problem and I can do something to help. Now I can’t even wash up to help my daughter. I am the bloody problem.
Bollocks to it all.
Heyyyy. Come on. Darkest before the dawn.
Remember that this land, this country, this world, has been through far far worse.
The other day I went to the beautiful, tiny, medieval town of Lavenham, with its utterly exquisite Perpendicular church - world famous - built on the wealth of the wool trade.
The strange thing is, all this beauty was built just a few decades AFTER the Black Death, which wiped out maybe a third of the entire population.
It won’t be long before we look back at what an odd and isolating experience the year of covid was and be thankful it’s behind us. There’s every reason to think it will prove to largely be a 2020 phenomenon only, the nights will be drawing in soon and the medical cavalry arriving with them. Hold tight everyone, it won’t last forever.
I see Toby has entered the dating game. It brings to mind my mother's expression for when she met a couple who were equally obnoxious. "They make a lovely couple -they don't spoil another one"
For someone so apparently stupid, obnoxious, cancellable, idiotic, Toby Young sure gets a lot of publicity, especially in lefty fanzines like the Guardian, and he annoyance he generates could probaby power a small town. Or a decent career as a provocateur.
He has known that a long time! his book "How to lose friends and alienate people" is mostly quite amusing. He discovered there is good money to be made from being a complete dickhead. Particularly in his role as an ideas man for the current government. By being arms length he can float ideas that they cannot.
Sure. And I know him, and I also like that book.
What amuses me is the fact his detractors don't seem to understand his shtick. Every time he does something outrageously naff or silly or rightwingy like this, they all go mad, and he gets more attention, and the BBC book him for another lucrative commentary position.
The delicate trick is to go as far as you can without going full Kate Hopkins or Milo, where your social media is cancelled and your career is over.
OK, being a professional annoyance is a way of making a living, and the world genuinely needs contrarians. Even if they're wrong 95 % of the time, the challenge keeps the mainstream on the straight and narrow.
Trouble is that, from time to time, Tobes actually stumbles upon a good point. His thinking that led to West London Free School- that the curriculum in English schools, even outstanding ones, was often a bit meh- was important and right. The school itself had a few avoidable false starts, but there was and is a valid point there. Trouble is that the Toby-shtick gets in the way of the message. Sometimes, he genuinely wants to be seen as a serious thinker in the public sphere, but the clown costume he wears to get attention stops people listening.
He set up his "Free School" so that the precious little Jemimas and Tarquins didn't have to mix with the chav kids from the South Acton estate.
Meanwhile journalists and democracy activists are being rounded up in HK with scarcely a peep from anyone.
I will never now go to China or to HK again or use a Cathay Pacific flight and intend being as rude as possible about the vile Chinese regime. It is no more than it deserves.
The death of HK is one of the saddest things. It was a truly magical city. All the wonders of Chinese culture (and many other cultures), superb cuisine, magnificent architecture, and, crucially, that underpinning of English Common law and Anglo-Saxon freedom.
Without the law and freedom it is ruined.
Not death.
Deliberate murder by one of the nastiest viciously oppressive totalitarian regimes around, up there with Stalin’s Russia or Nazi Germany in its disgusting revoltingness.
Anyway off to watch the lightning and hear the thunder over the Duddon estuary and Irish Sea.
I hope you feel better?
Your comment the other day was quite concerning. I too have had moments of Dark Covid Despair, so I truly empathise. But we fight on! We are needed!
And maybe take my advice: don't think too much about the future. Don't look ahead, the same way you don't look down on a tightrope. There is nothing but fearful danger to be seen. So live in the moment.
Thank you. Not really. Living in the moment involves staring at the sea and sheep. I feel and am utterly useless and pointless. I write posts on here, which lovely as it is, is hardly setting the world on fire. I cannot even do the washing up for my daughter because I have to hide.
I have spent decades sorting out other peoples’ problems, quite successfully too. And I loved it. Give me a problem and I can do something to help. Now I can’t even wash up to help my daughter. I am the bloody problem.
Bollocks to it all.
I wish you all best wishes.
Wanting to send refugees to a remote island when they are seeking sanctuary and a better life for themselves and yes I get that not all are genuine and anywhere would be better than where they started, I can only put down to a troubled state of mind.
It was not entirely serious as a suggestion.
It is a subject which requires hard clear thinking and speaking not oceans of sentimentality, the inevitable Holocaust comparisons and pointless grandstanding about Doing Something.
I see Toby has entered the dating game. It brings to mind my mother's expression for when she met a couple who were equally obnoxious. "They make a lovely couple -they don't spoil another one"
For someone so apparently stupid, obnoxious, cancellable, idiotic, Toby Young sure gets a lot of publicity, especially in lefty fanzines like the Guardian, and he annoyance he generates could probaby power a small town. Or a decent career as a provocateur.
He has known that a long time! his book "How to lose friends and alienate people" is mostly quite amusing. He discovered there is good money to be made from being a complete dickhead. Particularly in his role as an ideas man for the current government. By being arms length he can float ideas that they cannot.
Sure. And I know him, and I also like that book.
What amuses me is the fact his detractors don't seem to understand his shtick. Every time he does something outrageously naff or silly or rightwingy like this, they all go mad, and he gets more attention, and the BBC book him for another lucrative commentary position.
The delicate trick is to go as far as you can without going full Kate Hopkins or Milo, where your social media is cancelled and your career is over.
OK, being a professional annoyance is a way of making a living, and the world genuinely needs contrarians. Even if they're wrong 95 % of the time, the challenge keeps the mainstream on the straight and narrow.
Trouble is that, from time to time, Tobes actually stumbles upon a good point. His thinking that led to West London Free School- that the curriculum in English schools, even outstanding ones, was often a bit meh- was important and right. The school itself had a few avoidable false starts, but there was and is a valid point there. Trouble is that the Toby-shtick gets in the way of the message. Sometimes, he genuinely wants to be seen as a serious thinker in the public sphere, but the clown costume he wears to get attention stops people listening.
He set up his "Free School" so that the precious little Jemimas and Tarquins didn't have to mix with the chav kids from the South Acton estate.
I see Toby has entered the dating game. It brings to mind my mother's expression for when she met a couple who were equally obnoxious. "They make a lovely couple -they don't spoil another one"
For someone so apparently stupid, obnoxious, cancellable, idiotic, Toby Young sure gets a lot of publicity, especially in lefty fanzines like the Guardian, and he annoyance he generates could probaby power a small town. Or a decent career as a provocateur.
He has known that a long time! his book "How to lose friends and alienate people" is mostly quite amusing. He discovered there is good money to be made from being a complete dickhead. Particularly in his role as an ideas man for the current government. By being arms length he can float ideas that they cannot.
Sure. And I know him, and I also like that book.
What amuses me is the fact his detractors don't seem to understand his shtick. Every time he does something outrageously naff or silly or rightwingy like this, they all go mad, and he gets more attention, and the BBC book him for another lucrative commentary position.
The delicate trick is to go as far as you can without going full Kate Hopkins or Milo, where your social media is cancelled and your career is over.
OK, being a professional annoyance is a way of making a living, and the world genuinely needs contrarians. Even if they're wrong 95 % of the time, the challenge keeps the mainstream on the straight and narrow.
Trouble is that, from time to time, Tobes actually stumbles upon a good point. His thinking that led to West London Free School- that the curriculum in English schools, even outstanding ones, was often a bit meh- was important and right. The school itself had a few avoidable false starts, but there was and is a valid point there. Trouble is that the Toby-shtick gets in the way of the message. Sometimes, he genuinely wants to be seen as a serious thinker in the public sphere, but the clown costume he wears to get attention stops people listening.
He set up his "Free School" so that the precious little Jemimas and Tarquins didn't have to mix with the chav kids from the South Acton estate.
I see Toby has entered the dating game. It brings to mind my mother's expression for when she met a couple who were equally obnoxious. "They make a lovely couple -they don't spoil another one"
For someone so apparently stupid, obnoxious, cancellable, idiotic, Toby Young sure gets a lot of publicity, especially in lefty fanzines like the Guardian, and he annoyance he generates could probaby power a small town. Or a decent career as a provocateur.
He has known that a long time! his book "How to lose friends and alienate people" is mostly quite amusing. He discovered there is good money to be made from being a complete dickhead. Particularly in his role as an ideas man for the current government. By being arms length he can float ideas that they cannot.
Sure. And I know him, and I also like that book.
What amuses me is the fact his detractors don't seem to understand his shtick. Every time he does something outrageously naff or silly or rightwingy like this, they all go mad, and he gets more attention, and the BBC book him for another lucrative commentary position.
The delicate trick is to go as far as you can without going full Kate Hopkins or Milo, where your social media is cancelled and your career is over.
OK, being a professional annoyance is a way of making a living, and the world genuinely needs contrarians. Even if they're wrong 95 % of the time, the challenge keeps the mainstream on the straight and narrow.
Trouble is that, from time to time, Tobes actually stumbles upon a good point. His thinking that led to West London Free School- that the curriculum in English schools, even outstanding ones, was often a bit meh- was important and right. The school itself had a few avoidable false starts, but there was and is a valid point there. Trouble is that the Toby-shtick gets in the way of the message. Sometimes, he genuinely wants to be seen as a serious thinker in the public sphere, but the clown costume he wears to get attention stops people listening.
He set up his "Free School" so that the precious little Jemimas and Tarquins didn't have to mix with the chav kids from the South Acton estate.
Doesn't his school take majority FSM kids?
I believe so. Certainly it is very inclusive, and it is definitely not a way for local posh kids to avoid schooling with poorer neighbours.
Toby Young gets a lot of stick, some of it highly justified, but he has definitely *tried* to do a good thing with his Free School.
Meanwhile journalists and democracy activists are being rounded up in HK with scarcely a peep from anyone.
I will never now go to China or to HK again or use a Cathay Pacific flight and intend being as rude as possible about the vile Chinese regime. It is no more than it deserves.
The death of HK is one of the saddest things. It was a truly magical city. All the wonders of Chinese culture (and many other cultures), superb cuisine, magnificent architecture, and, crucially, that underpinning of English Common law and Anglo-Saxon freedom.
Without the law and freedom it is ruined.
Not death.
Deliberate murder by one of the nastiest viciously oppressive totalitarian regimes around, up there with Stalin’s Russia or Nazi Germany in its disgusting revoltingness.
Anyway off to watch the lightning and hear the thunder over the Duddon estuary and Irish Sea.
I hope you feel better?
Your comment the other day was quite concerning. I too have had moments of Dark Covid Despair, so I truly empathise. But we fight on! We are needed!
And maybe take my advice: don't think too much about the future. Don't look ahead, the same way you don't look down on a tightrope. There is nothing but fearful danger to be seen. So live in the moment.
Thank you. Not really. Living in the moment involves staring at the sea and sheep. I feel and am utterly useless and pointless. I write posts on here, which lovely as it is, is hardly setting the world on fire. I cannot even do the washing up for my daughter because I have to hide.
I have spent decades sorting out other peoples’ problems, quite successfully too. And I loved it. Give me a problem and I can do something to help. Now I can’t even wash up to help my daughter. I am the bloody problem.
Bollocks to it all.
I wish you all best wishes.
Wanting to send refugees to a remote island when they are seeking sanctuary and a better life for themselves and yes I get that not all are genuine and anywhere would be better than where they started, I can only put down to a troubled state of mind.
It was not entirely serious as a suggestion.
It is a subject which requires hard clear thinking and speaking not oceans of sentimentality, the inevitable Holocaust comparisons and pointless grandstanding about Doing Something.
Their lives must be fucking awful to risk a trip where it's likely they die. Has nobody considered that yet
For much of the world that is the case.
People born in this country are fortunate.
But that doesn't stop the 'I want, I want, I want' self-entitlement so many of us have.
It also doesn;t answer the question of why the migrants are so desperate when they are in the welcoming bosom of the European Union.
How did that happen??
It's to do with the Lingua Franca of the world being English.
You have a point, but I still think there is strong evidence that a number of migrants are simply not treated well in the European Union, something that is highlighted by precisely nobody.
The only point of argument, it seems to me, is whether this is simply neglect on the part of Europe's governments, or whether it is deliberate policy.
Either way it is clearly happening, or those boats would not be coming and is totally ignored by a commentariat anxious to show us what a terrible mistake we have made.
I;ve sailed across the channel at night, I was in a boat piloted by an experienced skipper. In one of those rubber dinghies it would be completely terrifying.
..
Clearly you failed to note the graph I posted this morning showing the UK as a poor fifth behind other EU countries that took multiples more asylum seekers than the UK so your hypothesis does not hold up,
"Taking asylum seekers" is not a good measure.
During (for example) the Syria crisis, the UK had a policy of supporting initiatives in the Middle East - and we supported it massively.
Compare that to Merkel's policy of 'hand hundreds of thousands over to the Mediterranean people traffickers' policy and the moral difference is clear.
Germany ended up budgeting pretty much 100 billion Euros for integration. Just consider what that could have achieved in region.
The channel-crossers are not bona fide asylum seekers because they were entitled and required to seek asylum in the first safe haven they reached according to the Dublin convention. They are simply illegal immigrants.
An agreement that expires December 2020. So on the first of January they will magically transform into legitimate asylum seekers.
Personally, I’m not convinced that one day makes much difference either way to the moral status of people desperate enough to come to the UK that they will ride an inflatable across the channel in order to do so.
The channel-crossers are not bona fide asylum seekers because they were entitled and required to seek asylum in the first safe haven they reached according to the Dublin convention. They are simply illegal immigrants.
An agreement that expires December 2020. So on the first of January they will magically transform into legitimate asylum seekers.
Personally, I’m not convinced that one day makes much difference either way to the moral status of people desperate enough to come to the UK that they will ride an inflatable across the channel in order to do so.
Meanwhile journalists and democracy activists are being rounded up in HK with scarcely a peep from anyone.
I will never now go to China or to HK again or use a Cathay Pacific flight and intend being as rude as possible about the vile Chinese regime. It is no more than it deserves.
The death of HK is one of the saddest things. It was a truly magical city. All the wonders of Chinese culture (and many other cultures), superb cuisine, magnificent architecture, and, crucially, that underpinning of English Common law and Anglo-Saxon freedom.
Without the law and freedom it is ruined.
Not death.
Deliberate murder by one of the nastiest viciously oppressive totalitarian regimes around, up there with Stalin’s Russia or Nazi Germany in its disgusting revoltingness.
Anyway off to watch the lightning and hear the thunder over the Duddon estuary and Irish Sea.
I hope you feel better?
Your comment the other day was quite concerning. I too have had moments of Dark Covid Despair, so I truly empathise. But we fight on! We are needed!
And maybe take my advice: don't think too much about the future. Don't look ahead, the same way you don't look down on a tightrope. There is nothing but fearful danger to be seen. So live in the moment.
Thank you. Not really. Living in the moment involves staring at the sea and sheep. I feel and am utterly useless and pointless. I write posts on here, which lovely as it is, is hardly setting the world on fire. I cannot even do the washing up for my daughter because I have to hide.
I have spent decades sorting out other peoples’ problems, quite successfully too. And I loved it. Give me a problem and I can do something to help. Now I can’t even wash up to help my daughter. I am the bloody problem.
Bollocks to it all.
I wish you all best wishes.
Wanting to send refugees to a remote island when they are seeking sanctuary and a better life for themselves and yes I get that not all are genuine and anywhere would be better than where they started, I can only put down to a troubled state of mind.
Take those in boats who reach our shores and send them to some of our overseas territories (the Falklands, St Helena etc). Allow them to live and work and be paid for it. Process their asylum claims there. If they don’t succeed they can return home or, if they’ve been good boys and girls and there is a need for them, stay in the territory. No locking up in camps. The opportunity to work and earn in a safe English-speaking British-owned territory. No abuse by those trafficking them or quasi-slave labour or worse in the black economy.
What are the downsides?
Over to you.
St Helena would break under the strain, is a downside. There's very little work there. A builder on our Devon home came from St. Helena, for work. He was very made up when I said I had been there. He hadn't met anyone else in Britain who had.
Tragically, his sister was the victim of the only known murder on the island. (And no, Napoleon was not poisoned there by his wallpaper...)
As a matter of historical fact, it was the White Poppy people who were keen on appeasing Hitler.
What on earth are you flappin' about auld yin? Poppy fascism is a recognised term for those who obsess about poppies, who is and isn't wearing them and what colour they are. From your immediate lurch into white poppy appeasement patter I'm getting a bit of a vibe of that from you.
As a matter of historical fact, it was the White Poppy people who were keen on appeasing Hitler.
Appeasing Hitler was actually quite mainstream, indeed it was a policy led by the Tory PM and government.
I guess poppies have to be made all year so that there is a stockpile for November. Not for me though anymore. 100 years and I was done.
Oh I see.
I was reacting to the "Poppy Fash" thing, which is a typically colourful bit of language.
On my comment, the Peace Pledge Union - who run the White Poppy thing to raise funds for themselves / their initiatives - were protagonists in the appeasement debate in the 1930s.
PPU took positions far beyond eg Chamberlain. Reading their publications from the 1930s is an education.
Meanwhile journalists and democracy activists are being rounded up in HK with scarcely a peep from anyone.
I will never now go to China or to HK again or use a Cathay Pacific flight and intend being as rude as possible about the vile Chinese regime. It is no more than it deserves.
The death of HK is one of the saddest things. It was a truly magical city. All the wonders of Chinese culture (and many other cultures), superb cuisine, magnificent architecture, and, crucially, that underpinning of English Common law and Anglo-Saxon freedom.
Without the law and freedom it is ruined.
Not death.
Deliberate murder by one of the nastiest viciously oppressive totalitarian regimes around, up there with Stalin’s Russia or Nazi Germany in its disgusting revoltingness.
Anyway off to watch the lightning and hear the thunder over the Duddon estuary and Irish Sea.
I hope you feel better?
Your comment the other day was quite concerning. I too have had moments of Dark Covid Despair, so I truly empathise. But we fight on! We are needed!
And maybe take my advice: don't think too much about the future. Don't look ahead, the same way you don't look down on a tightrope. There is nothing but fearful danger to be seen. So live in the moment.
Thank you. Not really. Living in the moment involves staring at the sea and sheep. I feel and am utterly useless and pointless. I write posts on here, which lovely as it is, is hardly setting the world on fire. I cannot even do the washing up for my daughter because I have to hide.
I have spent decades sorting out other peoples’ problems, quite successfully too. And I loved it. Give me a problem and I can do something to help. Now I can’t even wash up to help my daughter. I am the bloody problem.
Bollocks to it all.
I wish you all best wishes.
Wanting to send refugees to a remote island when they are seeking sanctuary and a better life for themselves and yes I get that not all are genuine and anywhere would be better than where they started, I can only put down to a troubled state of mind.
Meanwhile journalists and democracy activists are being rounded up in HK with scarcely a peep from anyone.
I will never now go to China or to HK again or use a Cathay Pacific flight and intend being as rude as possible about the vile Chinese regime. It is no more than it deserves.
The death of HK is one of the saddest things. It was a truly magical city. All the wonders of Chinese culture (and many other cultures), superb cuisine, magnificent architecture, and, crucially, that underpinning of English Common law and Anglo-Saxon freedom.
Without the law and freedom it is ruined.
Not death.
Deliberate murder by one of the nastiest viciously oppressive totalitarian regimes around, up there with Stalin’s Russia or Nazi Germany in its disgusting revoltingness.
Anyway off to watch the lightning and hear the thunder over the Duddon estuary and Irish Sea.
I hope you feel better?
Your comment the other day was quite concerning. I too have had moments of Dark Covid Despair, so I truly empathise. But we fight on! We are needed!
And maybe take my advice: don't think too much about the future. Don't look ahead, the same way you don't look down on a tightrope. There is nothing but fearful danger to be seen. So live in the moment.
Thank you. Not really. Living in the moment involves staring at the sea and sheep. I feel and am utterly useless and pointless. I write posts on here, which lovely as it is, is hardly setting the world on fire. I cannot even do the washing up for my daughter because I have to hide.
I have spent decades sorting out other peoples’ problems, quite successfully too. And I loved it. Give me a problem and I can do something to help. Now I can’t even wash up to help my daughter. I am the bloody problem.
Bollocks to it all.
I wish you all best wishes.
Wanting to send refugees to a remote island when they are seeking sanctuary and a better life for themselves and yes I get that not all are genuine and anywhere would be better than where they started, I can only put down to a troubled state of mind.
Wasn't I saying just last week that centralised T and T should be wound down in favour of local public health teams? I look forward to the reverse ferret on this vital service.
Meanwhile journalists and democracy activists are being rounded up in HK with scarcely a peep from anyone.
I will never now go to China or to HK again or use a Cathay Pacific flight and intend being as rude as possible about the vile Chinese regime. It is no more than it deserves.
The death of HK is one of the saddest things. It was a truly magical city. All the wonders of Chinese culture (and many other cultures), superb cuisine, magnificent architecture, and, crucially, that underpinning of English Common law and Anglo-Saxon freedom.
Without the law and freedom it is ruined.
Not death.
Deliberate murder by one of the nastiest viciously oppressive totalitarian regimes around, up there with Stalin’s Russia or Nazi Germany in its disgusting revoltingness.
Anyway off to watch the lightning and hear the thunder over the Duddon estuary and Irish Sea.
I hope you feel better?
Your comment the other day was quite concerning. I too have had moments of Dark Covid Despair, so I truly empathise. But we fight on! We are needed!
And maybe take my advice: don't think too much about the future. Don't look ahead, the same way you don't look down on a tightrope. There is nothing but fearful danger to be seen. So live in the moment.
Thank you. Not really. Living in the moment involves staring at the sea and sheep. I feel and am utterly useless and pointless. I write posts on here, which lovely as it is, is hardly setting the world on fire. I cannot even do the washing up for my daughter because I have to hide.
I have spent decades sorting out other peoples’ problems, quite successfully too. And I loved it. Give me a problem and I can do something to help. Now I can’t even wash up to help my daughter. I am the bloody problem.
Bollocks to it all.
I wish you all best wishes.
Wanting to send refugees to a remote island when they are seeking sanctuary and a better life for themselves and yes I get that not all are genuine and anywhere would be better than where they started, I can only put down to a troubled state of mind.
Read Normally then one line at a time bottom to top
Oh god, what dreadful, cringing, bleeding-heart shite. Lefties hoover up this dreck the same way the Daily Mail suckles on horror stories about Muslim dole-scroungers.
Meanwhile journalists and democracy activists are being rounded up in HK with scarcely a peep from anyone.
I will never now go to China or to HK again or use a Cathay Pacific flight and intend being as rude as possible about the vile Chinese regime. It is no more than it deserves.
The death of HK is one of the saddest things. It was a truly magical city. All the wonders of Chinese culture (and many other cultures), superb cuisine, magnificent architecture, and, crucially, that underpinning of English Common law and Anglo-Saxon freedom.
Without the law and freedom it is ruined.
Not death.
Deliberate murder by one of the nastiest viciously oppressive totalitarian regimes around, up there with Stalin’s Russia or Nazi Germany in its disgusting revoltingness.
Anyway off to watch the lightning and hear the thunder over the Duddon estuary and Irish Sea.
I hope you feel better?
Your comment the other day was quite concerning. I too have had moments of Dark Covid Despair, so I truly empathise. But we fight on! We are needed!
And maybe take my advice: don't think too much about the future. Don't look ahead, the same way you don't look down on a tightrope. There is nothing but fearful danger to be seen. So live in the moment.
Thank you. Not really. Living in the moment involves staring at the sea and sheep. I feel and am utterly useless and pointless. I write posts on here, which lovely as it is, is hardly setting the world on fire. I cannot even do the washing up for my daughter because I have to hide.
I have spent decades sorting out other peoples’ problems, quite successfully too. And I loved it. Give me a problem and I can do something to help. Now I can’t even wash up to help my daughter. I am the bloody problem.
Bollocks to it all.
While time for quiet reflection is rare most of the time, it now is overflowing in abundance.
I have had enough time to rethink priorities, to daydream about my RTW trip without flying, to have time in garden and doing DIY and to play with my dog. To cook with Mrs Foxy. I have enough stimulus at work so that the hours do not drag.
I can see though the strains on others, on the rather more gregarious Mrs Foxy and Fox jr, as well on some patients who are positively agoraphobic now.
I try to be philosophic about it. It cannot be fought so must be endured.
I am trying to endure it too. But I am not even in my home. I am living out of a suitcase in a rented barn and I am split from most of my family. I cannot even hug anyone. I don’t even have the comfort - and it is a comfort to me - of sitting in my church where many of the important events in my life have happened and singing / being with friendly strangers reflecting. I have no garden. I went mad last week and bought some succulents - aloe polyphilla - which I hope the bastard lambs won’t eat and on Saturday spent a few hours repotting them and realised that for the first time in ages I felt happy. I am without the people and things which root me and give me sustenance.
Bearable for a while - but it’s been bloody months now with no end in site.
“And at my back I always hear Time’s winged chariot hurrying near”
I know I have much to be grateful for. But this is a half-life at best.
Meanwhile journalists and democracy activists are being rounded up in HK with scarcely a peep from anyone.
I will never now go to China or to HK again or use a Cathay Pacific flight and intend being as rude as possible about the vile Chinese regime. It is no more than it deserves.
The death of HK is one of the saddest things. It was a truly magical city. All the wonders of Chinese culture (and many other cultures), superb cuisine, magnificent architecture, and, crucially, that underpinning of English Common law and Anglo-Saxon freedom.
Without the law and freedom it is ruined.
Not death.
Deliberate murder by one of the nastiest viciously oppressive totalitarian regimes around, up there with Stalin’s Russia or Nazi Germany in its disgusting revoltingness.
Anyway off to watch the lightning and hear the thunder over the Duddon estuary and Irish Sea.
I hope you feel better?
Your comment the other day was quite concerning. I too have had moments of Dark Covid Despair, so I truly empathise. But we fight on! We are needed!
And maybe take my advice: don't think too much about the future. Don't look ahead, the same way you don't look down on a tightrope. There is nothing but fearful danger to be seen. So live in the moment.
Thank you. Not really. Living in the moment involves staring at the sea and sheep. I feel and am utterly useless and pointless. I write posts on here, which lovely as it is, is hardly setting the world on fire. I cannot even do the washing up for my daughter because I have to hide.
I have spent decades sorting out other peoples’ problems, quite successfully too. And I loved it. Give me a problem and I can do something to help. Now I can’t even wash up to help my daughter. I am the bloody problem.
Bollocks to it all.
I wish you all best wishes.
Wanting to send refugees to a remote island when they are seeking sanctuary and a better life for themselves and yes I get that not all are genuine and anywhere would be better than where they started, I can only put down to a troubled state of mind.
It was not entirely serious as a suggestion.
It is a subject which requires hard clear thinking and speaking not oceans of sentimentality, the inevitable Holocaust comparisons and pointless grandstanding about Doing Something.
Stick up for yourself! It was a serious and very sensible suggestion and he's being a total patronising fuckwad by accusing you of being somehow mentally impaired by your personal feelings at the present time. If I used the twattish term I'd call it gaslighting.
Meanwhile journalists and democracy activists are being rounded up in HK with scarcely a peep from anyone.
I will never now go to China or to HK again or use a Cathay Pacific flight and intend being as rude as possible about the vile Chinese regime. It is no more than it deserves.
The death of HK is one of the saddest things. It was a truly magical city. All the wonders of Chinese culture (and many other cultures), superb cuisine, magnificent architecture, and, crucially, that underpinning of English Common law and Anglo-Saxon freedom.
Without the law and freedom it is ruined.
Not death.
Deliberate murder by one of the nastiest viciously oppressive totalitarian regimes around, up there with Stalin’s Russia or Nazi Germany in its disgusting revoltingness.
Anyway off to watch the lightning and hear the thunder over the Duddon estuary and Irish Sea.
I hope you feel better?
Your comment the other day was quite concerning. I too have had moments of Dark Covid Despair, so I truly empathise. But we fight on! We are needed!
And maybe take my advice: don't think too much about the future. Don't look ahead, the same way you don't look down on a tightrope. There is nothing but fearful danger to be seen. So live in the moment.
Thank you. Not really. Living in the moment involves staring at the sea and sheep. I feel and am utterly useless and pointless. I write posts on here, which lovely as it is, is hardly setting the world on fire. I cannot even do the washing up for my daughter because I have to hide.
I have spent decades sorting out other peoples’ problems, quite successfully too. And I loved it. Give me a problem and I can do something to help. Now I can’t even wash up to help my daughter. I am the bloody problem.
Bollocks to it all.
While time for quiet reflection is rare most of the time, it now is overflowing in abundance.
I have had enough time to rethink priorities, to daydream about my RTW trip without flying, to have time in garden and doing DIY and to play with my dog. To cook with Mrs Foxy. I have enough stimulus at work so that the hours do not drag.
I can see though the strains on others, on the rather more gregarious Mrs Foxy and Fox jr, as well on some patients who are positively agoraphobic now.
I try to be philosophic about it. It cannot be fought so must be endured.
I am trying to endure it too. But I am not even in my home. I am living out of a suitcase in a rented barn and I am split from most of my family. I cannot even hug anyone. I don’t even have the comfort - and it is a comfort to me - of sitting in my church where many of the important events in my life have happened and singing / being with friendly strangers reflecting. I have no garden. I went mad last week and bought some succulents - aloe polyphilla - which I hope the bastard lambs won’t eat and on Saturday spent a few hours repotting them and realised that for the first time in ages I felt happy. I am without the people and things which root me and give me sustenance.
Bearable for a while - but it’s been bloody months now with no end in site.
“And at my back I always hear Time’s winged chariot hurrying near”
I know I have much to be grateful for. But this is a half-life at best.
Yes, I miss my church too. Zoom is a very poor substitute. When it restarts in September, I have been asked to stay away. As a Health Care Worker, I am deemed a risk to the congregation.
Meanwhile journalists and democracy activists are being rounded up in HK with scarcely a peep from anyone.
I will never now go to China or to HK again or use a Cathay Pacific flight and intend being as rude as possible about the vile Chinese regime. It is no more than it deserves.
The death of HK is one of the saddest things. It was a truly magical city. All the wonders of Chinese culture (and many other cultures), superb cuisine, magnificent architecture, and, crucially, that underpinning of English Common law and Anglo-Saxon freedom.
Without the law and freedom it is ruined.
Not death.
Deliberate murder by one of the nastiest viciously oppressive totalitarian regimes around, up there with Stalin’s Russia or Nazi Germany in its disgusting revoltingness.
Anyway off to watch the lightning and hear the thunder over the Duddon estuary and Irish Sea.
I hope you feel better?
Your comment the other day was quite concerning. I too have had moments of Dark Covid Despair, so I truly empathise. But we fight on! We are needed!
And maybe take my advice: don't think too much about the future. Don't look ahead, the same way you don't look down on a tightrope. There is nothing but fearful danger to be seen. So live in the moment.
Thank you. Not really. Living in the moment involves staring at the sea and sheep. I feel and am utterly useless and pointless. I write posts on here, which lovely as it is, is hardly setting the world on fire. I cannot even do the washing up for my daughter because I have to hide.
I have spent decades sorting out other peoples’ problems, quite successfully too. And I loved it. Give me a problem and I can do something to help. Now I can’t even wash up to help my daughter. I am the bloody problem.
Bollocks to it all.
I wish you all best wishes.
Wanting to send refugees to a remote island when they are seeking sanctuary and a better life for themselves and yes I get that not all are genuine and anywhere would be better than where they started, I can only put down to a troubled state of mind.
Read Normally then one line at a time bottom to top
Oh god, what dreadful, cringing, bleeding-heart shite. Lefties hoover up this dreck the same way the Daily Mail suckles on horror stories about Muslim dole-scroungers.
Meanwhile journalists and democracy activists are being rounded up in HK with scarcely a peep from anyone.
I will never now go to China or to HK again or use a Cathay Pacific flight and intend being as rude as possible about the vile Chinese regime. It is no more than it deserves.
The death of HK is one of the saddest things. It was a truly magical city. All the wonders of Chinese culture (and many other cultures), superb cuisine, magnificent architecture, and, crucially, that underpinning of English Common law and Anglo-Saxon freedom.
Without the law and freedom it is ruined.
Not death.
Deliberate murder by one of the nastiest viciously oppressive totalitarian regimes around, up there with Stalin’s Russia or Nazi Germany in its disgusting revoltingness.
Anyway off to watch the lightning and hear the thunder over the Duddon estuary and Irish Sea.
I hope you feel better?
Your comment the other day was quite concerning. I too have had moments of Dark Covid Despair, so I truly empathise. But we fight on! We are needed!
And maybe take my advice: don't think too much about the future. Don't look ahead, the same way you don't look down on a tightrope. There is nothing but fearful danger to be seen. So live in the moment.
Thank you. Not really. Living in the moment involves staring at the sea and sheep. I feel and am utterly useless and pointless. I write posts on here, which lovely as it is, is hardly setting the world on fire. I cannot even do the washing up for my daughter because I have to hide.
I have spent decades sorting out other peoples’ problems, quite successfully too. And I loved it. Give me a problem and I can do something to help. Now I can’t even wash up to help my daughter. I am the bloody problem.
Bollocks to it all.
While time for quiet reflection is rare most of the time, it now is overflowing in abundance.
I have had enough time to rethink priorities, to daydream about my RTW trip without flying, to have time in garden and doing DIY and to play with my dog. To cook with Mrs Foxy. I have enough stimulus at work so that the hours do not drag.
I can see though the strains on others, on the rather more gregarious Mrs Foxy and Fox jr, as well on some patients who are positively agoraphobic now.
I try to be philosophic about it. It cannot be fought so must be endured.
I am trying to endure it too. But I am not even in my home. I am living out of a suitcase in a rented barn and I am split from most of my family. I cannot even hug anyone. I don’t even have the comfort - and it is a comfort to me - of sitting in my church where many of the important events in my life have happened and singing / being with friendly strangers reflecting. I have no garden. I went mad last week and bought some succulents - aloe polyphilla - which I hope the bastard lambs won’t eat and on Saturday spent a few hours repotting them and realised that for the first time in ages I felt happy. I am without the people and things which root me and give me sustenance.
Bearable for a while - but it’s been bloody months now with no end in site.
“And at my back I always hear Time’s winged chariot hurrying near”
I know I have much to be grateful for. But this is a half-life at best.
Feeling for you.
One remarkable person from the Lakes you may not have found yet was an early Victorian architect called Sarah Losh, who designed and built the church at Wreay in abut 1840. Well worth looking up and planning to visit later.
It's in Simon Jenkins if you have him handy.
Identify with the lack of hugs. My last was before last Christmas, or maybe March.
Meanwhile journalists and democracy activists are being rounded up in HK with scarcely a peep from anyone.
I will never now go to China or to HK again or use a Cathay Pacific flight and intend being as rude as possible about the vile Chinese regime. It is no more than it deserves.
The death of HK is one of the saddest things. It was a truly magical city. All the wonders of Chinese culture (and many other cultures), superb cuisine, magnificent architecture, and, crucially, that underpinning of English Common law and Anglo-Saxon freedom.
Without the law and freedom it is ruined.
Not death.
Deliberate murder by one of the nastiest viciously oppressive totalitarian regimes around, up there with Stalin’s Russia or Nazi Germany in its disgusting revoltingness.
Anyway off to watch the lightning and hear the thunder over the Duddon estuary and Irish Sea.
I hope you feel better?
Your comment the other day was quite concerning. I too have had moments of Dark Covid Despair, so I truly empathise. But we fight on! We are needed!
And maybe take my advice: don't think too much about the future. Don't look ahead, the same way you don't look down on a tightrope. There is nothing but fearful danger to be seen. So live in the moment.
Thank you. Not really. Living in the moment involves staring at the sea and sheep. I feel and am utterly useless and pointless. I write posts on here, which lovely as it is, is hardly setting the world on fire. I cannot even do the washing up for my daughter because I have to hide.
I have spent decades sorting out other peoples’ problems, quite successfully too. And I loved it. Give me a problem and I can do something to help. Now I can’t even wash up to help my daughter. I am the bloody problem.
Bollocks to it all.
I wish you all best wishes.
Wanting to send refugees to a remote island when they are seeking sanctuary and a better life for themselves and yes I get that not all are genuine and anywhere would be better than where they started, I can only put down to a troubled state of mind.
Read Normally then one line at a time bottom to top
Oh god, what dreadful, cringing, bleeding-heart shite. Lefties hoover up this dreck the same way the Daily Mail suckles on horror stories about Muslim dole-scroungers.
Not sure blubbing over ye olde country church that prevented Lloyd Weber from topping himself puts you in the strongest position.
I see that Butler was in a BMW. That’s why it was checked. My sister was always getting grief from the police when she owned an M3.
Or perhaps she looks and is a little dodgy?
Who can possibly say.
Any 'normal' person getting stopped by the police would think of it as a bit of a pain. She sees it as an opportunity. I'm not black, and I do see that simply because you were and thus felt somehow second class would be the worst thing in the world.
I wonder how far Dawn Butler had to drive before she got stopped?
Is that you, Constable Savage?
It is an undeniable fact that driving around in an expensive car in this country while being black means you get stopped. A lot. I have witnessed this on a personal level.
Driving an expensive car in a built up area is not yet a crime. Even if you are an offensive politician.
It's an undeniable fact too that if you drive long enough you will get stopped.
I may be wrong but with the whole BLM thing in the centre stage I'd bet that Dawn Butler was just driving around. BLM, and Dawn Butler really matters!
Just a hunch. I might bet on such a hunch though.
It got to the stage with my ex, that we jokingly included StoppedByThePolice time in journey estimates. It happened about once very 2 weeks and often ended up with a full vehicle inspection and license check.
A mint condition ML-320, brand new, since you were wondering.
I completely see that black people get stopped by police far more than they might expect. I don't like that at all, but I don't like the crime figures that suggest that black people are more likely to commit crimes than whites. (Worse still the US imprisonment rates).
Nice car - don't care.
Stopping people on what grounds? Because they feel like it?
Pay attention. Just read it properly and you'll understand.
Perhaps you should pay attention - black people are stopped for driving expensive cars. This is the universal experience of black people in the top professions.
Do you think that investment bankers, lawyers, NHS consultants etc all have a kilo of "gear" in the boot?
Strangely, non-black drivers in the same cars don't.
Seems you understand.
Perhaps you would enjoy being stooped every fortnight because the police think you look like a wrong un?
Bet you wear a loud shirt in built up areas.
Any other bets?
Well, the police will need to stop you regularly to make sure if you are, or not.....
I've not been stopped by the police recently or otherwise for the wearing of a loud shirt. I'd guess this has something to do with me not actually wearing loud shirts. Damned trickery I hear you say!
So here's another way of looking at it.
London street crimes - e.g. muggings - are committed by young black men out of all proportion to their presence in the community as a whole. This is a fact known anecdotally by any Londoner.
I've lived in London for 35 years and I've had maybe a dozen friends mugged in that time. Every single occasion the perps were young black men, acting alone, as a couple, or in groups. Of course other ethnicities also do this - white junkies to Albanian beggars - but young black men are, sadly, heavily over-represented.
So let's say you're a policeman tasked with bringing down levels of streetcrime in London. Who do you target? Do you make sure you stop and search all races equally, in proportion to their salience in the population, do you make sure you stop and search Chinese youths who have basically zero chance of being guilty, or do you concentrate on the racial group where you are most likely to find villains?
But if you do the latter, aren't you "racist"?
How are the poor cops meant to square this circle?
They either quit their job or quit bothering to try to stop those crimes
I see Toby has entered the dating game. It brings to mind my mother's expression for when she met a couple who were equally obnoxious. "They make a lovely couple -they don't spoil another one"
For someone so apparently stupid, obnoxious, cancellable, idiotic, Toby Young sure gets a lot of publicity, especially in lefty fanzines like the Guardian, and he annoyance he generates could probaby power a small town. Or a decent career as a provocateur.
He has known that a long time! his book "How to lose friends and alienate people" is mostly quite amusing. He discovered there is good money to be made from being a complete dickhead. Particularly in his role as an ideas man for the current government. By being arms length he can float ideas that they cannot.
Sure. And I know him, and I also like that book.
What amuses me is the fact his detractors don't seem to understand his shtick. Every time he does something outrageously naff or silly or rightwingy like this, they all go mad, and he gets more attention, and the BBC book him for another lucrative commentary position.
The delicate trick is to go as far as you can without going full Kate Hopkins or Milo, where your social media is cancelled and your career is over.
OK, being a professional annoyance is a way of making a living, and the world genuinely needs contrarians. Even if they're wrong 95 % of the time, the challenge keeps the mainstream on the straight and narrow.
Trouble is that, from time to time, Tobes actually stumbles upon a good point. His thinking that led to West London Free School- that the curriculum in English schools, even outstanding ones, was often a bit meh- was important and right. The school itself had a few avoidable false starts, but there was and is a valid point there. Trouble is that the Toby-shtick gets in the way of the message. Sometimes, he genuinely wants to be seen as a serious thinker in the public sphere, but the clown costume he wears to get attention stops people listening.
He set up his "Free School" so that the precious little Jemimas and Tarquins didn't have to mix with the chav kids from the South Acton estate.
Doesn't his school take majority FSM kids?
I believe so. Certainly it is very inclusive, and it is definitely not a way for local posh kids to avoid schooling with poorer neighbours.
Toby Young gets a lot of stick, some of it highly justified, but he has definitely *tried* to do a good thing with his Free School.
One of my daughters went to the Primary. Which is excellent.
Both the Primary and Secondary have caused a considerable number of people to go back to the state system. Which was rather the point....
And despite the efforts of some in the local portion of the educational establishment, it has a very broad intake. Yes, they were trying to get people to not send their children to the "posh" school.
One story from the parents at the secondary, I rather liked.
A boy had a birthday party at his dads flat (parents separated). Since this was on a local estate, many of his friends parents were a bit nervous. So it ended up as a rather bunched up train of cars that delivered children for the party.
Apparently, his rep (the birthday boy) on the estate, now, is that he knows some "serious" people - a convoy of Overfinches, Teslas etc arriving at his birthday....
His mother told me that when he got stopped & searched by the police (as usual), he got asked about which crew he was getting into.
Meanwhile journalists and democracy activists are being rounded up in HK with scarcely a peep from anyone.
I will never now go to China or to HK again or use a Cathay Pacific flight and intend being as rude as possible about the vile Chinese regime. It is no more than it deserves.
The death of HK is one of the saddest things. It was a truly magical city. All the wonders of Chinese culture (and many other cultures), superb cuisine, magnificent architecture, and, crucially, that underpinning of English Common law and Anglo-Saxon freedom.
Without the law and freedom it is ruined.
Not death.
Deliberate murder by one of the nastiest viciously oppressive totalitarian regimes around, up there with Stalin’s Russia or Nazi Germany in its disgusting revoltingness.
Anyway off to watch the lightning and hear the thunder over the Duddon estuary and Irish Sea.
I hope you feel better?
Your comment the other day was quite concerning. I too have had moments of Dark Covid Despair, so I truly empathise. But we fight on! We are needed!
And maybe take my advice: don't think too much about the future. Don't look ahead, the same way you don't look down on a tightrope. There is nothing but fearful danger to be seen. So live in the moment.
Thank you. Not really. Living in the moment involves staring at the sea and sheep. I feel and am utterly useless and pointless. I write posts on here, which lovely as it is, is hardly setting the world on fire. I cannot even do the washing up for my daughter because I have to hide.
I have spent decades sorting out other peoples’ problems, quite successfully too. And I loved it. Give me a problem and I can do something to help. Now I can’t even wash up to help my daughter. I am the bloody problem.
Bollocks to it all.
While time for quiet reflection is rare most of the time, it now is overflowing in abundance.
I have had enough time to rethink priorities, to daydream about my RTW trip without flying, to have time in garden and doing DIY and to play with my dog. To cook with Mrs Foxy. I have enough stimulus at work so that the hours do not drag.
I can see though the strains on others, on the rather more gregarious Mrs Foxy and Fox jr, as well on some patients who are positively agoraphobic now.
I try to be philosophic about it. It cannot be fought so must be endured.
I am trying to endure it too. But I am not even in my home. I am living out of a suitcase in a rented barn and I am split from most of my family. I cannot even hug anyone. I don’t even have the comfort - and it is a comfort to me - of sitting in my church where many of the important events in my life have happened and singing / being with friendly strangers reflecting. I have no garden. I went mad last week and bought some succulents - aloe polyphilla - which I hope the bastard lambs won’t eat and on Saturday spent a few hours repotting them and realised that for the first time in ages I felt happy. I am without the people and things which root me and give me sustenance.
Bearable for a while - but it’s been bloody months now with no end in site.
“And at my back I always hear Time’s winged chariot hurrying near”
I know I have much to be grateful for. But this is a half-life at best.
Cyclefree, as you are being personal (and I think that is good - I know from experience that being honest can save people - eg me) - then can I ask:
You say you are shielding. Fair enough. But what stops you from moving somewhere with, say, a bit of garden. Or meeting people at a distance, like three metres?
I have several family members who are at grave risk but they manage to meet in gardens, across yards, etc. They drink their gin three metres away in visors, but they drink and laugh and life goes on (however diminished).
Forgive me if I am presuming. Maybe money prevents. But you don't sound totally impoverished. Maybe rent somewhere with some outside space? Esp a tiny garden which you could tend?
Also, maybe try cooking baking and giving to foodbanks/friends/relatives?
I learned at my lowest point (v near suicide) that the best days were when I thought of other people, not myself. You seem to be in a similar situatiion maybe. You need to hug, at least metaphorically, if you cannot, physically. You need to give. That's normal.
I hate this virus as much as you. It has destroyed so many things that I love. It had rendered much of my life pointless. But we have wisdom in our age: and that will be needed.
Courage is grace under fire. We need to show it. x
I suspect the US sanctions on Chinese officials will be a lot more onerous (nobody who has any business in the US can do business with them - so that's most international banks) than Chinese sanctions on US Senators:
Meanwhile journalists and democracy activists are being rounded up in HK with scarcely a peep from anyone.
I will never now go to China or to HK again or use a Cathay Pacific flight and intend being as rude as possible about the vile Chinese regime. It is no more than it deserves.
The death of HK is one of the saddest things. It was a truly magical city. All the wonders of Chinese culture (and many other cultures), superb cuisine, magnificent architecture, and, crucially, that underpinning of English Common law and Anglo-Saxon freedom.
Without the law and freedom it is ruined.
Not death.
Deliberate murder by one of the nastiest viciously oppressive totalitarian regimes around, up there with Stalin’s Russia or Nazi Germany in its disgusting revoltingness.
Anyway off to watch the lightning and hear the thunder over the Duddon estuary and Irish Sea.
I hope you feel better?
Your comment the other day was quite concerning. I too have had moments of Dark Covid Despair, so I truly empathise. But we fight on! We are needed!
And maybe take my advice: don't think too much about the future. Don't look ahead, the same way you don't look down on a tightrope. There is nothing but fearful danger to be seen. So live in the moment.
Thank you. Not really. Living in the moment involves staring at the sea and sheep. I feel and am utterly useless and pointless. I write posts on here, which lovely as it is, is hardly setting the world on fire. I cannot even do the washing up for my daughter because I have to hide.
I have spent decades sorting out other peoples’ problems, quite successfully too. And I loved it. Give me a problem and I can do something to help. Now I can’t even wash up to help my daughter. I am the bloody problem.
Bollocks to it all.
You have a wealth of stories to tell. Would you consider starting to write? Nothing formal like a book or articles necessarily, just getting thoughts and ideas, your impressions of the world and your life to date down on paper (or on random electronic vibrations these days I suppose). It would give you purpose and might in the end produce something you feel is of value.
Yes - I have and do. The irony is that my talks are largely the stories I tell to make the points in a way which people remember. Because stories are how people learn.
Writing is what I do most of these days. It’s easier if you have a reader in mind. I have a sort of collective PB reader in mind for the headers and another reader for my work blog and another for more personal stuff, gardening etc. And I have one rather more creative idea which may come off or turn out to be pants.
I rather like the story about Peter Cook who was at some party. Someone came up to him and in conversation said: “I’m writing a book”. To which Peter replied: “Neither am I” and wandered off.
As a matter of historical fact, it was the White Poppy people who were keen on appeasing Hitler.
Appeasing Hitler was actually quite mainstream, indeed it was a policy led by the Tory PM and government.
I guess poppies have to be made all year so that there is a stockpile for November. Not for me though anymore. 100 years and I was done.
Oh I see.
I was reacting to the "Poppy Fash" thing, which is a typically colourful bit of language.
On my comment, the Peace Pledge Union - who run the White Poppy thing to raise funds for themselves / their initiatives - were protagonists in the appeasement debate in the 1930s.
PPU took positions far beyond eg Chamberlain. Reading their publications from the 1930s is an education.
I always find it interesting that people don't realise that seasonal stuff is made the year round, to reduce costs and provide stable employment, stock purchases etc.
Given that the Poppy Factory preferentially employees sick and wounded military veterans, it is not surprising that they haven't shut up shop.
The channel-crossers are not bona fide asylum seekers because they were entitled and required to seek asylum in the first safe haven they reached according to the Dublin convention. They are simply illegal immigrants.
An agreement that expires December 2020. So on the first of January they will magically transform into legitimate asylum seekers.
Personally, I’m not convinced that one day makes much difference either way to the moral status of people desperate enough to come to the UK that they will ride an inflatable across the channel in order to do so.
France must be a complete shit-hole...
Failed state, with weapons of mass destruction.
The banlieue are genuinely ghastly, on a serious note. Any time people say we have a shit social housing policy in this country.... thank {insert deity here} that we don't have that.
Meanwhile journalists and democracy activists are being rounded up in HK with scarcely a peep from anyone.
I will never now go to China or to HK again or use a Cathay Pacific flight and intend being as rude as possible about the vile Chinese regime. It is no more than it deserves.
The death of HK is one of the saddest things. It was a truly magical city. All the wonders of Chinese culture (and many other cultures), superb cuisine, magnificent architecture, and, crucially, that underpinning of English Common law and Anglo-Saxon freedom.
Without the law and freedom it is ruined.
Not death.
Deliberate murder by one of the nastiest viciously oppressive totalitarian regimes around, up there with Stalin’s Russia or Nazi Germany in its disgusting revoltingness.
Anyway off to watch the lightning and hear the thunder over the Duddon estuary and Irish Sea.
I hope you feel better?
Your comment the other day was quite concerning. I too have had moments of Dark Covid Despair, so I truly empathise. But we fight on! We are needed!
And maybe take my advice: don't think too much about the future. Don't look ahead, the same way you don't look down on a tightrope. There is nothing but fearful danger to be seen. So live in the moment.
Thank you. Not really. Living in the moment involves staring at the sea and sheep. I feel and am utterly useless and pointless. I write posts on here, which lovely as it is, is hardly setting the world on fire. I cannot even do the washing up for my daughter because I have to hide.
I have spent decades sorting out other peoples’ problems, quite successfully too. And I loved it. Give me a problem and I can do something to help. Now I can’t even wash up to help my daughter. I am the bloody problem.
Bollocks to it all.
You have a wealth of stories to tell. Would you consider starting to write? Nothing formal like a book or articles necessarily, just getting thoughts and ideas, your impressions of the world and your life to date down on paper (or on random electronic vibrations these days I suppose). It would give you purpose and might in the end produce something you feel is of value.
Yes - I have and do. The irony is that my talks are largely the stories I tell to make the points in a way which people remember. Because stories are how people learn.
Writing is what I do most of these days. It’s easier if you have a reader in mind. I have a sort of collective PB reader in mind for the headers and another reader for my work blog and another for more personal stuff, gardening etc. And I have one rather more creative idea which may come off or turn out to be pants.
I rather like the story about Peter Cook who was at some party. Someone came up to him and in conversation said: “I’m writing a book”. To which Peter replied: “Neither am I” and wandered off.
Soon, due to climate change, there will only be two seasons.
Poppy Season, and Black Lives Matter season.
Not sure those two will coexist peacefully.
Oh, I'm sure a few BAME people fought for Britain in either World War...
Who said otherwise? You draw very strange conclusions sometimes.
Wasn't your conclusion strange? "Not sure those two will coexist peacefully."
It was a tongue in cheek comment on wokeness among BLM and snowflakery among poppy idealists (eg getting mad at people not wearing them etc), apparently not clear enough, but it was still one hell of a leap to conclude extreme racism was at hand.
Soon, due to climate change, there will only be two seasons.
Poppy Season, and Black Lives Matter season.
Not sure those two will coexist peacefully.
Oh, I'm sure a few BAME people fought for Britain in either World War...
Who said otherwise? You draw very strange conclusions sometimes.
Wasn't your conclusion strange? "Not sure those two will coexist peacefully."
It was a tongue in cheek comment on wokeness among BLM and snowflakery among poppy idealists (eg getting mad at people not wearing them etc), apparently not clear enough, but it was still one hell of a leap to conclude extreme racism was at hand.
October is Black History Month, so does overlap with the Poppy Appeal.
I rather like the story about Peter Cook who was at some party. Someone came up to him and in conversation said: “I’m writing a book”. To which Peter replied: “Neither am I” and wandered off.
Or James Joyce - someone marched up to him and said
Meanwhile journalists and democracy activists are being rounded up in HK with scarcely a peep from anyone.
I will never now go to China or to HK again or use a Cathay Pacific flight and intend being as rude as possible about the vile Chinese regime. It is no more than it deserves.
The death of HK is one of the saddest things. It was a truly magical city. All the wonders of Chinese culture (and many other cultures), superb cuisine, magnificent architecture, and, crucially, that underpinning of English Common law and Anglo-Saxon freedom.
Without the law and freedom it is ruined.
Not death.
Deliberate murder by one of the nastiest viciously oppressive totalitarian regimes around, up there with Stalin’s Russia or Nazi Germany in its disgusting revoltingness.
Anyway off to watch the lightning and hear the thunder over the Duddon estuary and Irish Sea.
I hope you feel better?
Your comment the other day was quite concerning. I too have had moments of Dark Covid Despair, so I truly empathise. But we fight on! We are needed!
And maybe take my advice: don't think too much about the future. Don't look ahead, the same way you don't look down on a tightrope. There is nothing but fearful danger to be seen. So live in the moment.
Thank you. Not really. Living in the moment involves staring at the sea and sheep. I feel and am utterly useless and pointless. I write posts on here, which lovely as it is, is hardly setting the world on fire. I cannot even do the washing up for my daughter because I have to hide.
I have spent decades sorting out other peoples’ problems, quite successfully too. And I loved it. Give me a problem and I can do something to help. Now I can’t even wash up to help my daughter. I am the bloody problem.
Bollocks to it all.
I wish you all best wishes.
Wanting to send refugees to a remote island when they are seeking sanctuary and a better life for themselves and yes I get that not all are genuine and anywhere would be better than where they started, I can only put down to a troubled state of mind.
It was not entirely serious as a suggestion.
It is a subject which requires hard clear thinking and speaking not oceans of sentimentality, the inevitable Holocaust comparisons and pointless grandstanding about Doing Something.
Stick up for yourself! It was a serious and very sensible suggestion and he's being a total patronising fuckwad by accusing you of being somehow mentally impaired by your personal feelings at the present time. If I used the twattish term I'd call it gaslighting.
You are a twat so go for it on the twattish terms.
Soon, due to climate change, there will only be two seasons.
Poppy Season, and Black Lives Matter season.
Not sure those two will coexist peacefully.
Oh, I'm sure a few BAME people fought for Britain in either World War...
Who said otherwise? You draw very strange conclusions sometimes.
Wasn't your conclusion strange? "Not sure those two will coexist peacefully."
It was a tongue in cheek comment on wokeness among BLM and snowflakery among poppy idealists (eg getting mad at people not wearing them etc), apparently not clear enough, but it was still one hell of a leap to conclude extreme racism was at hand.
October is Black History Month, so does overlap with the Poppy Appeal.
A lot of the hysteria over BLM in the UK is driven by posh people who went to public school who do not realise how much state schools already teach kids about colonialism/slavery etc.
For example, I had drinks with a posho female friend the other day - very pro BLM - and she said "well it's a total scandal that British children aren't taught about slavery".
Of course she was ex public school. And it seems her ex public school, years ago, likely taught zero about all this. She was quite disconcerted to hear of the concept of "black history month" and even more destabilised to learn that 90% of British kids get this Black History very much shown to them, every single year, for several weeks at a time.
Today in 1996, Oasis started the first of 2 nights at Knebworth. Over the 2 days they played to 250,000 fans but incredibly could have sold out another 18 nights. Over 2,500,000 people applied for tickets.
Comments
Deliberate murder by one of the nastiest viciously oppressive totalitarian regimes around, up there with Stalin’s Russia or Nazi Germany in its disgusting revoltingness.
Anyway off to watch the lightning and hear the thunder over the Duddon estuary and Irish Sea.
Your comment the other day was quite concerning. I too have had moments of Dark Covid Despair, so I truly empathise. But we fight on! We are needed!
And maybe take my advice: don't think too much about the future. Don't look ahead, the same way you don't look down on a tightrope. There is nothing but fearful danger to be seen. So live in the moment.
Whine whine whine, my secret attendance of the secret eugenics conference was exposed, whine whine whine woe is me.
Edit: and the oxygen he is currently giving to the Covid bullshiters is straight up the with anti-vaxxers. He will have deaths on his hands.
He can also be a total dick, to a degree which is so severe it verges on self harm.
Damned trickery I hear you say!
London street crimes - e.g. muggings - are committed by young black men out of all proportion to their presence in the community as a whole. This is a fact known anecdotally by any Londoner.
I've lived in London for 35 years and I've had maybe a dozen friends mugged in that time. Every single occasion the perps were young black men, acting alone, as a couple, or in groups. Of course other ethnicities also do this - white junkies to Albanian beggars - but young black men are, sadly, heavily over-represented.
So let's say you're a policeman tasked with bringing down levels of streetcrime in London. Who do you target? Do you make sure you stop and search all races equally, in proportion to their salience in the population, do you make sure you stop and search Chinese youths who have basically zero chance of being guilty, or do you concentrate on the racial group where you are most likely to find villains?
But if you do the latter, aren't you "racist"?
How are the poor cops meant to square this circle?
Jones, zzzz.
Surely you must see that the approach you have outlined constitutes institutional racism?
Trouble is that, from time to time, Tobes actually stumbles upon a good point. His thinking that led to West London Free School- that the curriculum in English schools, even outstanding ones, was often a bit meh- was important and right. The school itself had a few avoidable false starts, but there was and is a valid point there. Trouble is that the Toby-shtick gets in the way of the message. Sometimes, he genuinely wants to be seen as a serious thinker in the public sphere, but the clown costume he wears to get attention stops people listening.
I have spent decades sorting out other peoples’ problems, quite successfully too. And I loved it. Give me a problem and I can do something to help. Now I can’t even wash up to help my daughter. I am the bloody problem.
Bollocks to it all.
I know something: I am glad I am not a London copper trying to please powerful lefty-liberals on the one hand, and yet serve ordinary, angry, peace-abiding Londoners on the other. It's lose lose.
Wanting to send refugees to a remote island when they are seeking sanctuary and a better life for themselves and yes I get that not all are genuine and anywhere would be better than where they started, I can only put down to a troubled state of mind.
Remember that this land, this country, this world, has been through far far worse.
The other day I went to the beautiful, tiny, medieval town of Lavenham, with its utterly exquisite Perpendicular church - world famous - built on the wealth of the wool trade.
The strange thing is, all this beauty was built just a few decades AFTER the Black Death, which wiped out maybe a third of the entire population.
https://twitter.com/GlasgowAlbum/status/970410651112955904?s=20
I have had enough time to rethink priorities, to daydream about my RTW trip without flying, to have time in garden and doing DIY and to play with my dog. To cook with Mrs Foxy. I have enough stimulus at work so that the hours do not drag.
I can see though the strains on others, on the rather more gregarious Mrs Foxy and Fox jr, as well on some patients who are positively agoraphobic now.
I try to be philosophic about it. It cannot be fought so must be endured.
And only two minutes!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lc5ohLuUTc
It is a subject which requires hard clear thinking and speaking not oceans of sentimentality, the inevitable Holocaust comparisons and pointless grandstanding about Doing Something.
https://twitter.com/AndyNetherwood/status/1292769269181288453?s=20
Toby Young gets a lot of stick, some of it highly justified, but he has definitely *tried* to do a good thing with his Free School.
https://twitter.com/daveylittle/status/1292921785990750211?s=20
https://twitter.com/MrMcEnaney/status/1292479164965150726?s=20
Poppy Season, and Black Lives Matter season.
During (for example) the Syria crisis, the UK had a policy of supporting initiatives in the Middle East - and we supported it massively.
Compare that to Merkel's policy of 'hand hundreds of thousands over to the Mediterranean people traffickers' policy and the moral difference is clear.
Germany ended up budgeting pretty much 100 billion Euros for integration. Just consider what that could have achieved in region.
What on earth are you flapping about?
As a matter of historical fact, it was the White Poppy people who were keen on appeasing Hitler.
Personally, I’m not convinced that one day makes much difference either way to the moral status of people desperate enough to come to the UK that they will ride an inflatable across the channel in order to do so.
I guess poppies have to be made all year so that there is a stockpile for November. Not for me though anymore. 100 years and I was done.
https://twitter.com/Independent/status/713275596906823680/photo/1
Read Normally then one line at a time bottom to top
Tragically, his sister was the victim of the only known murder on the island. (And no, Napoleon was not poisoned there by his wallpaper...)
I was reacting to the "Poppy Fash" thing, which is a typically colourful bit of language.
On my comment, the Peace Pledge Union - who run the White Poppy thing to raise funds for themselves / their initiatives - were protagonists in the appeasement debate in the 1930s.
PPU took positions far beyond eg Chamberlain. Reading their publications from the 1930s is an education.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_Pledge_Union#Attitudes_towards_Nazi_Germany
https://twitter.com/Aiannucci/status/1292875297503805444
As ever, PB leads the debate.
Bearable for a while - but it’s been bloody months now with no end in site.
“And at my back I always hear
Time’s winged chariot hurrying near”
I know I have much to be grateful for. But this is a half-life at best.
Absolutely rammed at 5,30 sitting far too close
Took over an hour to get starters which i sent back as were hardly warm but just felt so wrong tables so close I couldnt even make a run for it.
One remarkable person from the Lakes you may not have found yet was an early Victorian architect called Sarah Losh, who designed and built the church at Wreay in abut 1840. Well worth looking up and planning to visit later.
It's in Simon Jenkins if you have him handy.
Identify with the lack of hugs. My last was before last Christmas, or maybe March.
Both the Primary and Secondary have caused a considerable number of people to go back to the state system. Which was rather the point....
And despite the efforts of some in the local portion of the educational establishment, it has a very broad intake. Yes, they were trying to get people to not send their children to the "posh" school.
One story from the parents at the secondary, I rather liked.
A boy had a birthday party at his dads flat (parents separated). Since this was on a local estate, many of his friends parents were a bit nervous. So it ended up as a rather bunched up train of cars that delivered children for the party.
Apparently, his rep (the birthday boy) on the estate, now, is that he knows some "serious" people - a convoy of Overfinches, Teslas etc arriving at his birthday....
His mother told me that when he got stopped & searched by the police (as usual), he got asked about which crew he was getting into.
You say you are shielding. Fair enough. But what stops you from moving somewhere with, say, a bit of garden. Or meeting people at a distance, like three metres?
I have several family members who are at grave risk but they manage to meet in gardens, across yards, etc. They drink their gin three metres away in visors, but they drink and laugh and life goes on (however diminished).
Forgive me if I am presuming. Maybe money prevents. But you don't sound totally impoverished. Maybe rent somewhere with some outside space? Esp a tiny garden which you could tend?
Also, maybe try cooking baking and giving to foodbanks/friends/relatives?
I learned at my lowest point (v near suicide) that the best days were when I thought of other people, not myself. You seem to be in a similar situatiion maybe. You need to hug, at least metaphorically, if you cannot, physically. You need to give. That's normal.
I hate this virus as much as you. It has destroyed so many things that I love. It had rendered much of my life pointless. But we have wisdom in our age: and that will be needed.
Courage is grace under fire. We need to show it. x
https://twitter.com/hendopolis/status/1292929007206502400?s=20
Who wants to go to a Police State with a judicial system with a 99%+ conviction rate.
Only an idiot would use Cathay Pacific and transit Hong Kong....
Writing is what I do most of these days. It’s easier if you have a reader in mind. I have a sort of collective PB reader in mind for the headers and another reader for my work blog and another for more personal stuff, gardening etc. And I have one rather more creative idea which may come off or turn out to be pants.
I rather like the story about Peter Cook who was at some party. Someone came up to him and in conversation said: “I’m writing a book”. To which Peter replied: “Neither am I” and wandered off.
Given that the Poppy Factory preferentially employees sick and wounded military veterans, it is not surprising that they haven't shut up shop.
The banlieue are genuinely ghastly, on a serious note. Any time people say we have a shit social housing policy in this country.... thank {insert deity here} that we don't have that.
https://twitter.com/hendopolis/status/1292937162657333250?s=20
And it doesn't matter how the grades are because the big, bad world will not care.
"May I shake the hand that wrote Ulysses?"
"No. It did a lot of other things as well".
For example, I had drinks with a posho female friend the other day - very pro BLM - and she said "well it's a total scandal that British children aren't taught about slavery".
Of course she was ex public school. And it seems her ex public school, years ago, likely taught zero about all this. She was quite disconcerted to hear of the concept of "black history month" and even more destabilised to learn that 90% of British kids get this Black History very much shown to them, every single year, for several weeks at a time.
Class underlies much of this, in an odd way.
https://twitter.com/EuanDuncanGSY/status/1292878376936419330?s=20