I think what really pissed off the northern leaders was that the original ‘discussions’ before these restrictions weren’t discussion at all, and that government refused even to listen to any points they wanted to make.
As often the case, local journalists put their London colleagues to shame:
This country is pretty much ungovernable at the moment. Not because of the rebellious north, because of the dickheads in SW1. The cabinet aren't just damaging the future prospects of their own party, they aren't just damaging the viability of the union, now they're damaging the fabric that holds the English union together.
"English Union"? Yes - as I point out to tiresome wankers who bleat on about multiculturalism, England is very multicultural. "The North" is a very different place to "The South". And there are of course very different groups within those lose definitions.
As the Norman empire finally falls apart during the rest of this decade, perhaps HYUFD types will ask themselves not if they will accept the departure of Scotland and Ulster from the Union but if they can accept the departure of Yorkshire and Lancashire from England - how much of your own country do you arrogantly claim you can control by sneering dictat?
What a load of rubbish, for starters rural Lancashire and rural Yorkshire has far more in common with rural Essex than it does with Greater London or Greater Manchester. Indeed rural Scotland has more in common culturally and politically with rural Essex than it does with Glasgow as shown by its strong No vote in 2014 and the number of Tory MPs rural Scotland elected in 2017 and 2019 and the entirety of Antrim is still DUP.
Though of course if London and the South East was an independent nation it would be one of the wealthiest nations per head not only in Europe but the world so it is not as if the Home Counties have anything to lose but we are stronger together.
I am also sick to death of being told by the likes of you when rural Yorkshire is in tier 1 and we in rural Essex are in 2 tier and higher restrictions than you are we are giving a sneering dictat, absolutely outrageous and totally fact free!!!!
Careful now; don't go over the top! I've lived in both suburban and rural Essex, and urban and suburban Lancashire and I've got quite a few friends and relations in the North. My experience suggests you're wrong
You know, I’d never have guessed.
No Essex ancestry, though. Parents met after they'd moved here.
Have you ever noticed how guests on TV programs are never allowed to bring presentations? The presenters can have flashy graphics etc. The interviewee is only allowed words. Its about controlling the situation - allow one graph and they might "take back control"....
They should just print it on a bit of cardboard and bring it along. That's what Japanese politicians do in parliament. They also sometimes get to show graphs on TV discussion programs; Ministers should just start whipping graphs out of their jackets and unfolding them on air, the TV company will feel it's their job to make sure the viewers can read it.
If it was "too large" why the feck are people like Jo Johnson, Claire Fox or Lebedev there?
When people cannot even come up with a plausible excuse, it is a bad sign (like when politicians fall back on the 'I'm stupid' defence for some problem).
The argument seems to be that he deserves an undeserved peerage to compensate for the loss of a former undeserved peerage. Hard to get excited about, and his record over dealing with sex abuse by clergy is iffy.
I'm unconcerned whether he has one or not, but as their reason for not giving him one is a nonsense, it immediately raises questions about what the actual reason is.
Exactly right - and I was shouted down for saying the same.
I am sure it's not due to racism but the excuse they gave means I can totally see how people have got there.
I notice that one major issue in the Sentamu matter hasn't been mentioned - a major chunk of the Church of England despises him, and what he stands for. I could quite easily see that being a factor in this.
If it was "too large" why the feck are people like Jo Johnson, Claire Fox or Lebedev there?
When people cannot even come up with a plausible excuse, it is a bad sign (like when politicians fall back on the 'I'm stupid' defence for some problem).
The argument seems to be that he deserves an undeserved peerage to compensate for the loss of a former undeserved peerage. Hard to get excited about, and his record over dealing with sex abuse by clergy is iffy.
I'm unconcerned whether he has one or not, but as their reason for not giving him one is a nonsense, it immediately raises questions about what the actual reason is.
Exactly right - and I was shouted down for saying the same.
I am sure it's not due to racism but the excuse they gave means I can totally see how people have got there.
He isn't one of theirs. Not because he is black. Because he is sane. So no HoL seat for you.
Have you ever noticed how guests on TV programs are never allowed to bring presentations? The presenters can have flashy graphics etc. The interviewee is only allowed words. Its about controlling the situation - allow one graph and they might "take back control"....
They should just print it on a bit of cardboard and bring it along. That's what Japanese politicians do in parliament. They also sometimes get to show graphs on TV discussion programs; Ministers should just start whipping graphs out of their jackets and unfolding them on air, the TV company will feel it's their job to make sure the viewers can read it.
The gym is keeping me going. The contribution to mental wellbeing is immense.
My gym is disinfected to heck. Staff and users continually spraying the pink stuff. Most people go on their own, there is very little interaction with others. I`m never within 2 metres of anyone.
I doubt they`ll be a single virus particle within the walls of my gym. If there is an odd one, and it sits on a multigym handle, and it`s recent enough to not be denatured, and I grasp that handle, and touch my face, and get infected it will likely be a very small dose. Large droplet transmission: zero chance. Aerosol possible I guess.
My overall impression is that a gym is no riskier than a supermarket. Probably less so, in fact.
Please let`s credit people with some agency and take a risk aware approach to such places rather than a knee-jerk risk-averse approach, which I think has an element of kill-joy in it.
He has more faces than the town clock , it will be announced soon and he will swear blind he never said "no".
Gove is, I understand, a Scot. When you get independence, Malc, will you take him back, please.
imho one of the main reasons Gove has started to be very anti-No Deal Brexit is that he knows a chaotic mess in the New Year will add the final lick of paint to an already almost guaranteed vote Yes for Scottish independence. He has no chance, as a scot, of becoming PM if that happens.
I think Goves chance of becoming PM are not affected by being Scottish, even post Sindy.
They are however adversely affected by him being a fish faced gossipy nincompoop.
True. But I was referring to what goes on in his head rather than the rest of us.
He has more faces than the town clock , it will be announced soon and he will swear blind he never said "no".
Gove is, I understand, a Scot. When you get independence, Malc, will you take him back, please.
imho one of the main reasons Gove has started to be very anti-No Deal Brexit is that he knows a chaotic mess in the New Year will add the final lick of paint to an already almost guaranteed vote Yes for Scottish independence. He has no chance, as a scot, of becoming PM if that happens.
Gove is almost through the ethnicity reassignment process, just some surgery to rectify his annoying, wee, Scotch face and he'll be done.
I suspect there would be quite a queue to offer to re-arrange Gove's face. We could sell tickets for a prize draw. Would put a dent in the deficit.
That one illustrates a point I have been trying to make - we are back to the 2010-2015 era of major party consensus on the days big issue, and while they squabble over minor differences in opinion (exaggerated in order to give their fans something to distinguish themselves from) a significant minority, or maybe even a small minority, of the public are almost totally unrepresented in parliament
Well, apparently the ONS has whole swathes of information about the classification of output areas as urban or rural.
Looks like Epping Forest falls just into the urban camp: "Urban with Significant Rural (rural including hub towns 26-49%)"
I'm not surely exactly how much the urban/rural split is in Epping Forest (all we know is it's 50% > x > 75% urban), but I'm willing to bet cold hard cash it's 52-48%.
If it was "too large" why the feck are people like Jo Johnson, Claire Fox or Lebedev there?
When people cannot even come up with a plausible excuse, it is a bad sign (like when politicians fall back on the 'I'm stupid' defence for some problem).
The argument seems to be that he deserves an undeserved peerage to compensate for the loss of a former undeserved peerage. Hard to get excited about, and his record over dealing with sex abuse by clergy is iffy.
I'm unconcerned whether he has one or not, but as their reason for not giving him one is a nonsense, it immediately raises questions about what the actual reason is.
Exactly right - and I was shouted down for saying the same.
I am sure it's not due to racism but the excuse they gave means I can totally see how people have got there.
He isn't one of theirs. Not because he is black. Because he is sane. So no HoL seat for you.
No one sane dresses up like that and goes about the place asserting the existence of a personal god.
Interesting to see what happens to white Etonian Welby, mind.
An uplifting positive video, only nasty unionists unhappy at losing their last colony could see it negatively. Pity the dog food salesman does not have anything positive to say about his country , bit like "bitter and twisted Guernsey immigrant".
The practical problem is that gyms are a massive covid risk, if anywhere is going to be forced to close - and the British like to do things with rules rather than voluntary action and common sense, since they hate freedom - they're absolutely top of the list. You might just be able to fix it with heroically expensive ventilation systems but in practice they're just going to faff around with sanitization and things.
The government could do more to give gyms money to compensate, but that won't satisfy the people who can't go to the gym. There's no way to satisfy these people consistent with public health, because they want to do something in the middle of a pandemic, and the thing they want to do spreads the pandemic.
I'd think that was true, so I do support closing gyms. But Alastair's wider point is true too. I'm a fairly conventional politician in some ways, and I think schools and unis and major factories are jolly important, but I've never even considered visiting a gym, any more than a boxing match or a German beer hall - they're all outside my cultural reference area, and at some level I (therefore?) instinctively think of them as less important or even, as Hillary Clinton might say, deplorable - why aren't the body-builders reading books or distributing political leaflets, eh? That kind of thinking does contribute to the cultural alienation which feeds issues like Brexit and politicians like Trump, and people like me need to get past ourselves. Thanks for the thought-provoking piece.
You write posts like this and you have the temerity to call me weird. Someone who was also avowed communist at the age of TEN and more concerned about Kennedy's foreign policy than his train set.
You are like an alien from outer space who has been lobotomized by David Icke, had surgery to look more like Trotsky and then converted to Scientology.
I'm looking for the post where he had the temerity to call you weird. I want to give it a 'like'
I've missed you Wodger.
The "like" button is the worst feature of the new version of this site. It looks like there's nothing that can be done about it but I think it's lowered the quality of the discussion on here.
It encourages each side to play to their own galleries to get the most "likes" - in other words, it plays to sentimentality rather than rationality and introduces narcissism into the equation.
The very best posts on this site get just 1-3 likes rather than 5-8 likes.
In the old days you'd get people like @Jonathan and @SouthamObserver sometimes replying to arguments of mine saying "excellent post", which is all the praise I'd ever want or need. I'd do the same for some of theirs, we all learnt something and had a really interesting exchange of views.
An uplifting positive video, only nasty unionists unhappy at losing their last colony could see it negatively. Pity the dog food salesman does not have anything positive to say about his country , bit like "bitter and twisted Guernsey immigrant".
I don't think they are complaining about the contents of the video, just that it was released when Sturgeon had claimed she suspended the campaign.
He has more faces than the town clock , it will be announced soon and he will swear blind he never said "no".
Gove is, I understand, a Scot. When you get independence, Malc, will you take him back, please.
imho one of the main reasons Gove has started to be very anti-No Deal Brexit is that he knows a chaotic mess in the New Year will add the final lick of paint to an already almost guaranteed vote Yes for Scottish independence. He has no chance, as a scot, of becoming PM if that happens.
I think Goves chance of becoming PM are not affected by being Scottish, even post Sindy.
They are however adversely affected by him being a fish faced gossipy nincompoop.
Quite so re PM, as he is resident in England, will have a rUK passport (I assume!), and sits for an English constituency. Unless all Scots-born were disqualified from rUK citizenship.
Does the electorate realise he is Scots-born? Does he have a Scots accent? I can't tell.
If it was "too large" why the feck are people like Jo Johnson, Claire Fox or Lebedev there?
When people cannot even come up with a plausible excuse, it is a bad sign (like when politicians fall back on the 'I'm stupid' defence for some problem).
The argument seems to be that he deserves an undeserved peerage to compensate for the loss of a former undeserved peerage. Hard to get excited about, and his record over dealing with sex abuse by clergy is iffy.
I'm unconcerned whether he has one or not, but as their reason for not giving him one is a nonsense, it immediately raises questions about what the actual reason is.
Exactly right - and I was shouted down for saying the same.
I am sure it's not due to racism but the excuse they gave means I can totally see how people have got there.
I notice that one major issue in the Sentamu matter hasn't been mentioned - a major chunk of the Church of England despises him, and what he stands for. I could quite easily see that being a factor in this.
Why is that ? Living in York he seems well liked by most people.
I think what really pissed off the northern leaders was that the original ‘discussions’ before these restrictions weren’t discussion at all, and that government refused even to listen to any points they wanted to make.
As often the case, local journalists put their London colleagues to shame:
This country is pretty much ungovernable at the moment. Not because of the rebellious north, because of the dickheads in SW1. The cabinet aren't just damaging the future prospects of their own party, they aren't just damaging the viability of the union, now they're damaging the fabric that holds the English union together.
"English Union"? Yes - as I point out to tiresome wankers who bleat on about multiculturalism, England is very multicultural. "The North" is a very different place to "The South". And there are of course very different groups within those lose definitions.
As the Norman empire finally falls apart during the rest of this decade, perhaps HYUFD types will ask themselves not if they will accept the departure of Scotland and Ulster from the Union but if they can accept the departure of Yorkshire and Lancashire from England - how much of your own country do you arrogantly claim you can control by sneering dictat?
What a load of rubbish, for starters rural Lancashire and rural Yorkshire has far more in common with rural Essex than it does with Greater London or Greater Manchester. Indeed rural Scotland has more in common culturally and politically with rural Essex than it does with Glasgow as shown by its strong No vote in 2014 and the number of Tory MPs rural Scotland elected in 2017 and 2019 and the entirety of Antrim is still DUP.
Though of course if London and the South East was an independent nation it would be one of the wealthiest nations per head not only in Europe but the world so it is not as if the Home Counties have anything to lose but we are stronger together.
I am also sick to death of being told by the likes of you when rural Yorkshire is in tier 1 and we in rural Essex are in 2 tier and higher restrictions than you are we are giving a sneering dictat, absolutely outrageous and totally fact free!!!!
Careful now; don't go over the top! I've lived in both suburban and rural Essex, and urban and suburban Lancashire and I've got quite a few friends and relations in the North. My experience suggests you're wrong
You know, I’d never have guessed.
No Essex ancestry, though. Parents met after they'd moved here.
I was referring to your suggestion Hyufd might be in error.
Its not even as if he ever showed any loyalty to Boris.
Zac Goldsmith's was worse. Absolutely waving two fingers at the electorate.
True.
But there's been plenty of similar cases in the past.
Plenty of ex MPs losing seats and ending up in the Lords, sure. But fast-tracked into the Lords so you can continue as a Minister? That, I think, (though I'd love to learn differently) is new.
Already a real possibility for MSPs - it's possible to be a peer and a MSP at the same time. Lord Foulkes, Baroness (to be?) Davidson.
I think what really pissed off the northern leaders was that the original ‘discussions’ before these restrictions weren’t discussion at all, and that government refused even to listen to any points they wanted to make.
As often the case, local journalists put their London colleagues to shame:
This country is pretty much ungovernable at the moment. Not because of the rebellious north, because of the dickheads in SW1. The cabinet aren't just damaging the future prospects of their own party, they aren't just damaging the viability of the union, now they're damaging the fabric that holds the English union together.
"English Union"? Yes - as I point out to tiresome wankers who bleat on about multiculturalism, England is very multicultural. "The North" is a very different place to "The South". And there are of course very different groups within those lose definitions.
As the Norman empire finally falls apart during the rest of this decade, perhaps HYUFD types will ask themselves not if they will accept the departure of Scotland and Ulster from the Union but if they can accept the departure of Yorkshire and Lancashire from England - how much of your own country do you arrogantly claim you can control by sneering dictat?
What a load of rubbish, for starters rural Lancashire and rural Yorkshire has far more in common with rural Essex than it does with Greater London or Greater Manchester. Indeed rural Scotland has more in common culturally and politically with rural Essex than it does with Glasgow as shown by its strong No vote in 2014 and the number of Tory MPs rural Scotland elected in 2017 and 2019 and the entirety of Antrim is still DUP.
Though of course if London and the South East was an independent nation it would be one of the wealthiest nations per head not only in Europe but the world so it is not as if the Home Counties have anything to lose but we are stronger together.
I am also sick to death of being told by the likes of you when rural Yorkshire is in tier 1 and we in rural Essex are in 2 tier and higher restrictions than you are we are giving a sneering dictat, absolutely outrageous and totally fact free!!!!
Careful now; don't go over the top! I've lived in both suburban and rural Essex, and urban and suburban Lancashire and I've got quite a few friends and relations in the North. My experience suggests you're wrong
You know, I’d never have guessed.
No Essex ancestry, though. Parents met after they'd moved here.
I was referring to your suggestion Hyufd might be in error.
I can't see many Essex girls tending the sheeps and neeps round here ...
An uplifting positive video, only nasty unionists unhappy at losing their last colony could see it negatively. Pity the dog food salesman does not have anything positive to say about his country , bit like "bitter and twisted Guernsey immigrant".
I don't think they are complaining about the contents of the video, just that it was released when Sturgeon had claimed she suspended the campaign.
They are not campaigning at all, as this clown knows if he is in Scotland. It is pure nastiness from a whining sad loser. Hopefully he takes his sorry arse out of Scotland when we are independent, we can well do without the likes of that pathetic lickspittle. Nothing but nastiness and negativity to add to the party. Fit him better to try and show absolutely anything positive about the union, but no they cannot.
The supposedly moderate Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has at last revealed himself as the fanatic he really is, with his wild calls for even more mass destruction of the jobs and livelihoods of Labour voters in a so-called ‘circuit-breaker’.
I am not surprised. Most people who report on politics in this country do not understand the subject, lacking the Marxist training which I had in my distant youth. They call Sir Keir ‘moderate’ because he is not Jeremy Corbyn. A fat lot they know.
Jeremy Corbyn is, of course, a wild Leftist, a man of clenched-fist salutes, street protests and red banners who probably dreams of storming Buckingham Palace at the head of a detachment of Red Guards. But he is one of the obvious, old-fashioned sort, steam-powered, coal-fired. You can see him a mile off and defeat him with ease. Sir Keir is much more dangerous. His fanaticism is as smooth as the moisturiser he applies daily to his handsome face. It is designed for the age of the internet.
But you will have to search hard for any major media mention of his stint, in his mid-20s, on the editorial board of a Trotskyist magazine called Socialist Alternatives. Its few issues can still be read on the internet. I have read them, though most of Sir Keir’s articles were written with the blunt end of a bread pudding, and are hard going.
Ah, you may say, this was just youthful folly. People change. He’s even taken a knighthood. Except Sir Keir has not changed much. This is the age he was born for.
In an interview with the New Statesman, he recently said: ‘I don’t think there are big issues on which I’ve changed my mind… The big issue we were grappling with then was how the Labour Party, or the Left generally, bound together the wider movement and its strands of equality – feminist politics, green politics, LGBT – which I thought was incredibly exciting, incredibly important. Broadly speaking, I think the Labour Party has done that very successfully.’
The sect he was mixed up with in the 1980s helped pioneer the New Left – Green mixed with Red, radical sexual politics. ‘Red must be made Green, and Green must be made Red,’ they said. This way of thinking has no time for the clapped-out yelling and posturing of the Corbynites.
It wants a cultural revolution which leaves all the buildings standing but changes everything that goes on inside them. It might find a huge economic and social convulsion, such as Johnson has visited on us, very convenient for that purpose."
Have you ever noticed how guests on TV programs are never allowed to bring presentations? The presenters can have flashy graphics etc. The interviewee is only allowed words. Its about controlling the situation - allow one graph and they might "take back control"....
They should just print it on a bit of cardboard and bring it along. That's what Japanese politicians do in parliament. They also sometimes get to show graphs on TV discussion programs; Ministers should just start whipping graphs out of their jackets and unfolding them on air, the TV company will feel it's their job to make sure the viewers can read it.
Interesting you should say that.
A couple fo years back, I was talking with a BBC journalist (well freelancer who did a lot of work for the Beeb).
I suggested just that - politician bringing in props. She was utterly appalled - said if someone did that, the cameras would be turned away, plug pulled etc. And suggested that the politician in question would be put on the do-not-invite list.
It was quite interesting to see such a vituperative reaction - apparently the idea was an attack on journalism...
The practical problem is that gyms are a massive covid risk, if anywhere is going to be forced to close - and the British like to do things with rules rather than voluntary action and common sense, since they hate freedom - they're absolutely top of the list. You might just be able to fix it with heroically expensive ventilation systems but in practice they're just going to faff around with sanitization and things.
The government could do more to give gyms money to compensate, but that won't satisfy the people who can't go to the gym. There's no way to satisfy these people consistent with public health, because they want to do something in the middle of a pandemic, and the thing they want to do spreads the pandemic.
I'd think that was true, so I do support closing gyms. But Alastair's wider point is true too. I'm a fairly conventional politician in some ways, and I think schools and unis and major factories are jolly important, but I've never even considered visiting a gym, any more than a boxing match or a German beer hall - they're all outside my cultural reference area, and at some level I (therefore?) instinctively think of them as less important or even, as Hillary Clinton might say, deplorable - why aren't the body-builders reading books or distributing political leaflets, eh? That kind of thinking does contribute to the cultural alienation which feeds issues like Brexit and politicians like Trump, and people like me need to get past ourselves. Thanks for the thought-provoking piece.
You write posts like this and you have the temerity to call me weird. Someone who was also avowed communist at the age of TEN and more concerned about Kennedy's foreign policy than his train set.
You are like an alien from outer space who has been lobotomized by David Icke, had surgery to look more like Trotsky and then converted to Scientology.
I'm looking for the post where he had the temerity to call you weird. I want to give it a 'like'
I've missed you Wodger.
The "like" button is the worst feature of the new version of this site. It looks like there's nothing that can be done about it but I think it's lowered the quality of the discussion on here.
It encourages each side to play to their own galleries to get the most "likes" - in other words, it plays to sentimentality rather than rationality and introduces narcissism into the equation.
The very best posts on this site get just 1-3 likes rather than 5-8 likes.
In the old days you'd get people like @Jonathan and @SouthamObserver sometimes replying to arguments of mine saying "excellent post", which is all the praise I'd ever want or need. I'd do the same for some of theirs, we all learnt something and had a really interesting exchange of views.
I really miss that.
Who gives a rats-arse about "likes"?
(Please "like" this post.)
I haven’t given a rat’s arse, but I have given a like.
If it was "too large" why the feck are people like Jo Johnson, Claire Fox or Lebedev there?
When people cannot even come up with a plausible excuse, it is a bad sign (like when politicians fall back on the 'I'm stupid' defence for some problem).
The argument seems to be that he deserves an undeserved peerage to compensate for the loss of a former undeserved peerage. Hard to get excited about, and his record over dealing with sex abuse by clergy is iffy.
I'm unconcerned whether he has one or not, but as their reason for not giving him one is a nonsense, it immediately raises questions about what the actual reason is.
Exactly right - and I was shouted down for saying the same.
I am sure it's not due to racism but the excuse they gave means I can totally see how people have got there.
I notice that one major issue in the Sentamu matter hasn't been mentioned - a major chunk of the Church of England despises him, and what he stands for. I could quite easily see that being a factor in this.
An uplifting positive video, only nasty unionists unhappy at losing their last colony could see it negatively. Pity the dog food salesman does not have anything positive to say about his country , bit like "bitter and twisted Guernsey immigrant".
I don't think they are complaining about the contents of the video, just that it was released when Sturgeon had claimed she suspended the campaign.
They are not campaigning at all, as this clown knows if he is in Scotland. It is pure nastiness from a whining sad loser. Hopefully he takes his sorry arse out of Scotland when we are independent, we can well do without the likes of that pathetic lickspittle. Nothing but nastiness and negativity to add to the party. Fit him better to try and show absolutely anything positive about the union, but no they cannot.
The supposedly moderate Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has at last revealed himself as the fanatic he really is, with his wild calls for even more mass destruction of the jobs and livelihoods of Labour voters in a so-called ‘circuit-breaker’.
I am not surprised. Most people who report on politics in this country do not understand the subject, lacking the Marxist training which I had in my distant youth. They call Sir Keir ‘moderate’ because he is not Jeremy Corbyn. A fat lot they know.
Jeremy Corbyn is, of course, a wild Leftist, a man of clenched-fist salutes, street protests and red banners who probably dreams of storming Buckingham Palace at the head of a detachment of Red Guards. But he is one of the obvious, old-fashioned sort, steam-powered, coal-fired. You can see him a mile off and defeat him with ease. Sir Keir is much more dangerous. His fanaticism is as smooth as the moisturiser he applies daily to his handsome face. It is designed for the age of the internet.
But you will have to search hard for any major media mention of his stint, in his mid-20s, on the editorial board of a Trotskyist magazine called Socialist Alternatives. Its few issues can still be read on the internet. I have read them, though most of Sir Keir’s articles were written with the blunt end of a bread pudding, and are hard going.
Ah, you may say, this was just youthful folly. People change. He’s even taken a knighthood. Except Sir Keir has not changed much. This is the age he was born for.
In an interview with the New Statesman, he recently said: ‘I don’t think there are big issues on which I’ve changed my mind… The big issue we were grappling with then was how the Labour Party, or the Left generally, bound together the wider movement and its strands of equality – feminist politics, green politics, LGBT – which I thought was incredibly exciting, incredibly important. Broadly speaking, I think the Labour Party has done that very successfully.’
The sect he was mixed up with in the 1980s helped pioneer the New Left – Green mixed with Red, radical sexual politics. ‘Red must be made Green, and Green must be made Red,’ they said. This way of thinking has no time for the clapped-out yelling and posturing of the Corbynites.
It wants a cultural revolution which leaves all the buildings standing but changes everything that goes on inside them. It might find a huge economic and social convulsion, such as Johnson has visited on us, very convenient for that purpose."
He has more faces than the town clock , it will be announced soon and he will swear blind he never said "no".
Gove is, I understand, a Scot. When you get independence, Malc, will you take him back, please.
imho one of the main reasons Gove has started to be very anti-No Deal Brexit is that he knows a chaotic mess in the New Year will add the final lick of paint to an already almost guaranteed vote Yes for Scottish independence. He has no chance, as a scot, of becoming PM if that happens.
I think Goves chance of becoming PM are not affected by being Scottish, even post Sindy.
They are however adversely affected by him being a fish faced gossipy nincompoop.
Quite so re PM, as he is resident in England, will have a rUK passport (I assume!), and sits for an English constituency. Unless all Scots-born were disqualified from rUK citizenship.
Does the electorate realise he is Scots-born? Does he have a Scots accent? I can't tell.
Certainly no Scottish accent I have ever heard. If he ever had one he has managed to erase it completely.
An uplifting positive video, only nasty unionists unhappy at losing their last colony could see it negatively. Pity the dog food salesman does not have anything positive to say about his country , bit like "bitter and twisted Guernsey immigrant".
I don't think they are complaining about the contents of the video, just that it was released when Sturgeon had claimed she suspended the campaign.
They are not campaigning at all, as this clown knows if he is in Scotland. It is pure nastiness from a whining sad loser. Hopefully he takes his sorry arse out of Scotland when we are independent, we can well do without the likes of that pathetic lickspittle. Nothing but nastiness and negativity to add to the party. Fit him better to try and show absolutely anything positive about the union, but no they cannot.
Hague previously said he'd be leaving Scotland and taking his business's jobs with him if Scotland had voted Yes in 2014. He seems measurably more deranged and petulantly vindictive since then so I daresay he'll be off; he can enjoy the Brexit rUK that he'd like to impose on Scotland to his heart's content.
The supposedly moderate Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has at last revealed himself as the fanatic he really is, with his wild calls for even more mass destruction of the jobs and livelihoods of Labour voters in a so-called ‘circuit-breaker’.
I am not surprised. Most people who report on politics in this country do not understand the subject, lacking the Marxist training which I had in my distant youth. They call Sir Keir ‘moderate’ because he is not Jeremy Corbyn. A fat lot they know.
Jeremy Corbyn is, of course, a wild Leftist, a man of clenched-fist salutes, street protests and red banners who probably dreams of storming Buckingham Palace at the head of a detachment of Red Guards. But he is one of the obvious, old-fashioned sort, steam-powered, coal-fired. You can see him a mile off and defeat him with ease. Sir Keir is much more dangerous. His fanaticism is as smooth as the moisturiser he applies daily to his handsome face. It is designed for the age of the internet.
But you will have to search hard for any major media mention of his stint, in his mid-20s, on the editorial board of a Trotskyist magazine called Socialist Alternatives. Its few issues can still be read on the internet. I have read them, though most of Sir Keir’s articles were written with the blunt end of a bread pudding, and are hard going.
Ah, you may say, this was just youthful folly. People change. He’s even taken a knighthood. Except Sir Keir has not changed much. This is the age he was born for.
In an interview with the New Statesman, he recently said: ‘I don’t think there are big issues on which I’ve changed my mind… The big issue we were grappling with then was how the Labour Party, or the Left generally, bound together the wider movement and its strands of equality – feminist politics, green politics, LGBT – which I thought was incredibly exciting, incredibly important. Broadly speaking, I think the Labour Party has done that very successfully.’
The sect he was mixed up with in the 1980s helped pioneer the New Left – Green mixed with Red, radical sexual politics. ‘Red must be made Green, and Green must be made Red,’ they said. This way of thinking has no time for the clapped-out yelling and posturing of the Corbynites.
It wants a cultural revolution which leaves all the buildings standing but changes everything that goes on inside them. It might find a huge economic and social convulsion, such as Johnson has visited on us, very convenient for that purpose."
Funnily enough the people who never shut up about Boris's membership of an Oxford drinking club never mention the far more dangerous background of many lefty moderates.
If it was "too large" why the feck are people like Jo Johnson, Claire Fox or Lebedev there?
When people cannot even come up with a plausible excuse, it is a bad sign (like when politicians fall back on the 'I'm stupid' defence for some problem).
The argument seems to be that he deserves an undeserved peerage to compensate for the loss of a former undeserved peerage. Hard to get excited about, and his record over dealing with sex abuse by clergy is iffy.
I'm unconcerned whether he has one or not, but as their reason for not giving him one is a nonsense, it immediately raises questions about what the actual reason is.
Exactly right - and I was shouted down for saying the same.
I am sure it's not due to racism but the excuse they gave means I can totally see how people have got there.
I notice that one major issue in the Sentamu matter hasn't been mentioned - a major chunk of the Church of England despises him, and what he stands for. I could quite easily see that being a factor in this.
I was told that back when there was a tiny, tiny chance of him becoming Archbishop of Canterbury (ice cube in hell) that the PM in question was told that a large chunk of the Synod would stage a revolt. If he got on the short list....
As you say - too much belief in God.... The ecumenical lot who think that the way to popularity in the modern world is for the CoE to stop with all that religion stuff.
I could easily see Welby vetoing a peerage - he would see it as shutting him up.
I seem to recall that there was a Yes Prime Minister one on this - a candidate for Canterbury ruled out for his belief in God. Versus something nice and safe - like believing in steam trains.
He has more faces than the town clock , it will be announced soon and he will swear blind he never said "no".
Gove is, I understand, a Scot. When you get independence, Malc, will you take him back, please.
imho one of the main reasons Gove has started to be very anti-No Deal Brexit is that he knows a chaotic mess in the New Year will add the final lick of paint to an already almost guaranteed vote Yes for Scottish independence. He has no chance, as a scot, of becoming PM if that happens.
I think Goves chance of becoming PM are not affected by being Scottish, even post Sindy.
They are however adversely affected by him being a fish faced gossipy nincompoop.
Quite so re PM, as he is resident in England, will have a rUK passport (I assume!), and sits for an English constituency. Unless all Scots-born were disqualified from rUK citizenship.
Does the electorate realise he is Scots-born? Does he have a Scots accent? I can't tell.
Certainly no Scottish accent I have ever heard. If he ever had one he has managed to erase it completely.
Thanks. So not even Edinburgh/Aberdeen professional then.
I've got a completely useless ear for accents so find it impossible to judge that aspect of a pol's public image. I wonder how many of his constituents realise he's Doric by birth?
An uplifting positive video, only nasty unionists unhappy at losing their last colony could see it negatively. Pity the dog food salesman does not have anything positive to say about his country , bit like "bitter and twisted Guernsey immigrant".
I don't think they are complaining about the contents of the video, just that it was released when Sturgeon had claimed she suspended the campaign.
They are not campaigning at all, as this clown knows if he is in Scotland. It is pure nastiness from a whining sad loser. Hopefully he takes his sorry arse out of Scotland when we are independent, we can well do without the likes of that pathetic lickspittle. Nothing but nastiness and negativity to add to the party. Fit him better to try and show absolutely anything positive about the union, but no they cannot.
If it was "too large" why the feck are people like Jo Johnson, Claire Fox or Lebedev there?
When people cannot even come up with a plausible excuse, it is a bad sign (like when politicians fall back on the 'I'm stupid' defence for some problem).
The argument seems to be that he deserves an undeserved peerage to compensate for the loss of a former undeserved peerage. Hard to get excited about, and his record over dealing with sex abuse by clergy is iffy.
I'm unconcerned whether he has one or not, but as their reason for not giving him one is a nonsense, it immediately raises questions about what the actual reason is.
Exactly right - and I was shouted down for saying the same.
I am sure it's not due to racism but the excuse they gave means I can totally see how people have got there.
I notice that one major issue in the Sentamu matter hasn't been mentioned - a major chunk of the Church of England despises him, and what he stands for. I could quite easily see that being a factor in this.
I was told that back when there was a tiny, tiny chance of him becoming Archbishop of Canterbury (ice cube in hell) that the PM in question was told that a large chunk of the Synod would stage a revolt. If he got on the short list....
As you say - too much belief in God.... The ecumenical lot who think that the way to popularity in the modern world is for the CoE to stop with all that religion stuff.
I could easily see Welby vetoing a peerage - he would see it as shutting him up.
I seem to recall that there was a Yes Prime Minister one on this - a candidate for Canterbury ruled out for his belief in God. Versus something nice and safe - like believing in steam trains.
Bury St. Edmunds, not Canterbury.
Most unusually, that episode made an error by saying St Edmundsbury (to give it its formal name) carried an automatic seat in the Lords, when it doesn’t- only Canterbury, York, London, Winchester and Durham do. The other 19 bishops are those with longest service, with an acceleration programme for female bishops.
An uplifting positive video, only nasty unionists unhappy at losing their last colony could see it negatively. Pity the dog food salesman does not have anything positive to say about his country , bit like "bitter and twisted Guernsey immigrant".
I don't think they are complaining about the contents of the video, just that it was released when Sturgeon had claimed she suspended the campaign.
They are not campaigning at all, as this clown knows if he is in Scotland. It is pure nastiness from a whining sad loser. Hopefully he takes his sorry arse out of Scotland when we are independent, we can well do without the likes of that pathetic lickspittle. Nothing but nastiness and negativity to add to the party. Fit him better to try and show absolutely anything positive about the union, but no they cannot.
Releasing an advert like this isn't campaigning?
nope
I just can't see how it isn't campaigning. When the Brexit campaign was suspended after the death of Cox, can you imagine the outrage there would have been if either the official remain or leave twitter account continued posting videos when the campaign had been suspended?
Well, apparently the ONS has whole swathes of information about the classification of output areas as urban or rural.
Looks like Epping Forest falls just into the urban camp: "Urban with Significant Rural (rural including hub towns 26-49%)"
I'm not surely exactly how much the urban/rural split is in Epping Forest (all we know is it's 50% > x > 75% urban), but I'm willing to bet cold hard cash it's 52-48%.
Epping Forest is either the forest itself or the district not just Epping where I live and it stretches from Loughton, which used to be part of the GLC, is effectively suburban London and has a population of 31,106 through market towns like Epping, Theydon Bois, Waltham Abbey and Buckhurst Hill and Chigwell (of which Epping and Theydon Bois are the most rural of the 3) through to rural villages like North Weald, Roydon, Epping Upland, Nazeing etc.
I don't live in Loughton, I live in Epping and in fact where I live is closer to Epping Upland than it is to Loughton
The supposedly moderate Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has at last revealed himself as the fanatic he really is, with his wild calls for even more mass destruction of the jobs and livelihoods of Labour voters in a so-called ‘circuit-breaker’.
I am not surprised. Most people who report on politics in this country do not understand the subject, lacking the Marxist training which I had in my distant youth. They call Sir Keir ‘moderate’ because he is not Jeremy Corbyn. A fat lot they know.
Jeremy Corbyn is, of course, a wild Leftist, a man of clenched-fist salutes, street protests and red banners who probably dreams of storming Buckingham Palace at the head of a detachment of Red Guards. But he is one of the obvious, old-fashioned sort, steam-powered, coal-fired. You can see him a mile off and defeat him with ease. Sir Keir is much more dangerous. His fanaticism is as smooth as the moisturiser he applies daily to his handsome face. It is designed for the age of the internet.
But you will have to search hard for any major media mention of his stint, in his mid-20s, on the editorial board of a Trotskyist magazine called Socialist Alternatives. Its few issues can still be read on the internet. I have read them, though most of Sir Keir’s articles were written with the blunt end of a bread pudding, and are hard going.
Ah, you may say, this was just youthful folly. People change. He’s even taken a knighthood. Except Sir Keir has not changed much. This is the age he was born for.
In an interview with the New Statesman, he recently said: ‘I don’t think there are big issues on which I’ve changed my mind… The big issue we were grappling with then was how the Labour Party, or the Left generally, bound together the wider movement and its strands of equality – feminist politics, green politics, LGBT – which I thought was incredibly exciting, incredibly important. Broadly speaking, I think the Labour Party has done that very successfully.’
The sect he was mixed up with in the 1980s helped pioneer the New Left – Green mixed with Red, radical sexual politics. ‘Red must be made Green, and Green must be made Red,’ they said. This way of thinking has no time for the clapped-out yelling and posturing of the Corbynites.
It wants a cultural revolution which leaves all the buildings standing but changes everything that goes on inside them. It might find a huge economic and social convulsion, such as Johnson has visited on us, very convenient for that purpose."
Funnily enough the people who never shut up about Boris's membership of an Oxford drinking club never mention the far more dangerous background of many lefty moderates.
Dangerous for who, ex-members of Oxford's drinking clubs?
He has more faces than the town clock , it will be announced soon and he will swear blind he never said "no".
Gove is, I understand, a Scot. When you get independence, Malc, will you take him back, please.
imho one of the main reasons Gove has started to be very anti-No Deal Brexit is that he knows a chaotic mess in the New Year will add the final lick of paint to an already almost guaranteed vote Yes for Scottish independence. He has no chance, as a scot, of becoming PM if that happens.
I think Goves chance of becoming PM are not affected by being Scottish, even post Sindy.
They are however adversely affected by him being a fish faced gossipy nincompoop.
Quite so re PM, as he is resident in England, will have a rUK passport (I assume!), and sits for an English constituency. Unless all Scots-born were disqualified from rUK citizenship.
Does the electorate realise he is Scots-born? Does he have a Scots accent? I can't tell.
Certainly no Scottish accent I have ever heard. If he ever had one he has managed to erase it completely.
Thanks. So not even Edinburgh/Aberdeen professional then.
I've got a completely useless ear for accents so find it impossible to judge that aspect of a pol's public image. I wonder how many of his constituents realise he's Doric by birth?
yep, no sign of the fake home counties accent used by the privately educated nabbery to show he is Scottish, bit like Broon he would if really forced claim to be North British..
If it was "too large" why the feck are people like Jo Johnson, Claire Fox or Lebedev there?
When people cannot even come up with a plausible excuse, it is a bad sign (like when politicians fall back on the 'I'm stupid' defence for some problem).
The argument seems to be that he deserves an undeserved peerage to compensate for the loss of a former undeserved peerage. Hard to get excited about, and his record over dealing with sex abuse by clergy is iffy.
I'm unconcerned whether he has one or not, but as their reason for not giving him one is a nonsense, it immediately raises questions about what the actual reason is.
Exactly right - and I was shouted down for saying the same.
I am sure it's not due to racism but the excuse they gave means I can totally see how people have got there.
I notice that one major issue in the Sentamu matter hasn't been mentioned - a major chunk of the Church of England despises him, and what he stands for. I could quite easily see that being a factor in this.
Why is that ? Living in York he seems well liked by most people.
Basically you have the progressive wing of the CoE - all about getting rid of all those bothersome decisive things. Like doctrine.
Sentamu from the traditionalist wing. As is much of the CoE - outside the UK.
It's a culture war, essentially. Conductive with academic* levels of loathing and backstabbing.
His popularity with the general public is seen as a count against him, by the way - "self aggrandising", "populist" etc. By those who are totally ignored by the population at large....
*academic politics has to be seen to be believed. I believe the nastiness and ferocity is only matched by the culture in charities. The average politician would be barbecue in minutes in such an environment.
An uplifting positive video, only nasty unionists unhappy at losing their last colony could see it negatively. Pity the dog food salesman does not have anything positive to say about his country , bit like "bitter and twisted Guernsey immigrant".
I don't think they are complaining about the contents of the video, just that it was released when Sturgeon had claimed she suspended the campaign.
They are not campaigning at all, as this clown knows if he is in Scotland. It is pure nastiness from a whining sad loser. Hopefully he takes his sorry arse out of Scotland when we are independent, we can well do without the likes of that pathetic lickspittle. Nothing but nastiness and negativity to add to the party. Fit him better to try and show absolutely anything positive about the union, but no they cannot.
Hague previously said he'd be leaving Scotland and taking his business's jobs with him if Scotland had voted Yes in 2014. He seems measurably more deranged and petulantly vindictive since then so I daresay he'll be off; he can enjoy the Brexit rUK that he'd like to impose on Scotland to his heart's content.
The supposedly moderate Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has at last revealed himself as the fanatic he really is, with his wild calls for even more mass destruction of the jobs and livelihoods of Labour voters in a so-called ‘circuit-breaker’.
I am not surprised. Most people who report on politics in this country do not understand the subject, lacking the Marxist training which I had in my distant youth. They call Sir Keir ‘moderate’ because he is not Jeremy Corbyn. A fat lot they know.
Jeremy Corbyn is, of course, a wild Leftist, a man of clenched-fist salutes, street protests and red banners who probably dreams of storming Buckingham Palace at the head of a detachment of Red Guards. But he is one of the obvious, old-fashioned sort, steam-powered, coal-fired. You can see him a mile off and defeat him with ease. Sir Keir is much more dangerous. His fanaticism is as smooth as the moisturiser he applies daily to his handsome face. It is designed for the age of the internet.
But you will have to search hard for any major media mention of his stint, in his mid-20s, on the editorial board of a Trotskyist magazine called Socialist Alternatives. Its few issues can still be read on the internet. I have read them, though most of Sir Keir’s articles were written with the blunt end of a bread pudding, and are hard going.
Ah, you may say, this was just youthful folly. People change. He’s even taken a knighthood. Except Sir Keir has not changed much. This is the age he was born for.
In an interview with the New Statesman, he recently said: ‘I don’t think there are big issues on which I’ve changed my mind… The big issue we were grappling with then was how the Labour Party, or the Left generally, bound together the wider movement and its strands of equality – feminist politics, green politics, LGBT – which I thought was incredibly exciting, incredibly important. Broadly speaking, I think the Labour Party has done that very successfully.’
The sect he was mixed up with in the 1980s helped pioneer the New Left – Green mixed with Red, radical sexual politics. ‘Red must be made Green, and Green must be made Red,’ they said. This way of thinking has no time for the clapped-out yelling and posturing of the Corbynites.
It wants a cultural revolution which leaves all the buildings standing but changes everything that goes on inside them. It might find a huge economic and social convulsion, such as Johnson has visited on us, very convenient for that purpose."
Funnily enough the people who never shut up about Boris's membership of an Oxford drinking club never mention the far more dangerous background of many lefty moderates.
Can't remember the last time anyone (other than righties saying lefties never shut up about it) mentioned the Bullingdon on here. Righties going on about anyone left of David Cameron being slavering apostles of a new Marxist paradise otoh...
Well, apparently the ONS has whole swathes of information about the classification of output areas as urban or rural.
Looks like Epping Forest falls just into the urban camp: "Urban with Significant Rural (rural including hub towns 26-49%)"
I'm not surely exactly how much the urban/rural split is in Epping Forest (all we know is it's 50% > x > 75% urban), but I'm willing to bet cold hard cash it's 52-48%.
Epping Forest is either the forest itself or the district not just Epping where I live and it stretches from Loughton, which used to be part of the GLC, is effectively suburban London and has a population of 31,106 through market towns like Epping, Theydon Bois, Waltham Abbey and Buckhurst Hill and Chigwell (of which Epping and Theydon Bois are the most rural of the 3) through to rural villages like North Weald, Roydon, Epping Upland, Nazeing etc.
I don't live in Loughton, I live in Epping and in fact where I live is closer to Epping Upland than it is to Loughton
He has more faces than the town clock , it will be announced soon and he will swear blind he never said "no".
Gove is, I understand, a Scot. When you get independence, Malc, will you take him back, please.
imho one of the main reasons Gove has started to be very anti-No Deal Brexit is that he knows a chaotic mess in the New Year will add the final lick of paint to an already almost guaranteed vote Yes for Scottish independence. He has no chance, as a scot, of becoming PM if that happens.
I think Goves chance of becoming PM are not affected by being Scottish, even post Sindy.
They are however adversely affected by him being a fish faced gossipy nincompoop.
"The Prime Minister might carry public opinion with him in a face-off with Andy Burnham this weekend, but he has left himself open to people saying in a few weeks’ time: Burnham was right."
He has more faces than the town clock , it will be announced soon and he will swear blind he never said "no".
Gove is, I understand, a Scot. When you get independence, Malc, will you take him back, please.
imho one of the main reasons Gove has started to be very anti-No Deal Brexit is that he knows a chaotic mess in the New Year will add the final lick of paint to an already almost guaranteed vote Yes for Scottish independence. He has no chance, as a scot, of becoming PM if that happens.
I think Goves chance of becoming PM are not affected by being Scottish, even post Sindy.
They are however adversely affected by him being a fish faced gossipy nincompoop.
The supposedly moderate Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has at last revealed himself as the fanatic he really is, with his wild calls for even more mass destruction of the jobs and livelihoods of Labour voters in a so-called ‘circuit-breaker’.
I am not surprised. Most people who report on politics in this country do not understand the subject, lacking the Marxist training which I had in my distant youth. They call Sir Keir ‘moderate’ because he is not Jeremy Corbyn. A fat lot they know.
Jeremy Corbyn is, of course, a wild Leftist, a man of clenched-fist salutes, street protests and red banners who probably dreams of storming Buckingham Palace at the head of a detachment of Red Guards. But he is one of the obvious, old-fashioned sort, steam-powered, coal-fired. You can see him a mile off and defeat him with ease. Sir Keir is much more dangerous. His fanaticism is as smooth as the moisturiser he applies daily to his handsome face. It is designed for the age of the internet.
But you will have to search hard for any major media mention of his stint, in his mid-20s, on the editorial board of a Trotskyist magazine called Socialist Alternatives. Its few issues can still be read on the internet. I have read them, though most of Sir Keir’s articles were written with the blunt end of a bread pudding, and are hard going.
Ah, you may say, this was just youthful folly. People change. He’s even taken a knighthood. Except Sir Keir has not changed much. This is the age he was born for.
In an interview with the New Statesman, he recently said: ‘I don’t think there are big issues on which I’ve changed my mind… The big issue we were grappling with then was how the Labour Party, or the Left generally, bound together the wider movement and its strands of equality – feminist politics, green politics, LGBT – which I thought was incredibly exciting, incredibly important. Broadly speaking, I think the Labour Party has done that very successfully.’
The sect he was mixed up with in the 1980s helped pioneer the New Left – Green mixed with Red, radical sexual politics. ‘Red must be made Green, and Green must be made Red,’ they said. This way of thinking has no time for the clapped-out yelling and posturing of the Corbynites.
It wants a cultural revolution which leaves all the buildings standing but changes everything that goes on inside them. It might find a huge economic and social convulsion, such as Johnson has visited on us, very convenient for that purpose."
Well, apparently the ONS has whole swathes of information about the classification of output areas as urban or rural.
Looks like Epping Forest falls just into the urban camp: "Urban with Significant Rural (rural including hub towns 26-49%)"
I'm not surely exactly how much the urban/rural split is in Epping Forest (all we know is it's 50% > x > 75% urban), but I'm willing to bet cold hard cash it's 52-48%.
Epping Forest is either the forest itself or the district not just Epping where I live and it stretches from Loughton, which used to be part of the GLC, is effectively suburban London and has a population of 31,106 through market towns like Epping, Theydon Bois, Waltham Abbey and Buckhurst Hill and Chigwell (of which Epping and Theydon Bois are the most rural of the 3) through to rural villages like North Weald, Roydon, Epping Upland, Nazeing etc.
I don't live in Loughton, I live in Epping and in fact where I live is closer to Epping Upland than it is to Loughton
According to Wiki, Loughton has never been in the GLC.
I wonder how many more examples of "us" and "them" the Tories can get away with before their new coalition falls apart and is unrecoverable for another 40 years
UK politics in the last few years has had a distinctly French Revolution feel, with fissiparous ideologues purging one another. By my estimation the referendum was the storming of the Bastille, leaving the EU was the execution of Louis XVI. I expect Robespierre to fall before the end of summer 2021.
Sounds interesting and raises the question who's been cast for the Bonaparte role? Gove, Priti, Nigel, Tommy, Toby Young?
Well, apparently the ONS has whole swathes of information about the classification of output areas as urban or rural.
Looks like Epping Forest falls just into the urban camp: "Urban with Significant Rural (rural including hub towns 26-49%)"
I'm not surely exactly how much the urban/rural split is in Epping Forest (all we know is it's 50% > x > 75% urban), but I'm willing to bet cold hard cash it's 52-48%.
Epping Forest is either the forest itself or the district not just Epping where I live and it stretches from Loughton, which used to be part of the GLC, is effectively suburban London and has a population of 31,106 through market towns like Epping, Theydon Bois, Waltham Abbey and Buckhurst Hill and Chigwell (of which Epping and Theydon Bois are the most rural of the 3) through to rural villages like North Weald, Roydon, Epping Upland, Nazeing etc.
I don't live in Loughton, I live in Epping and in fact where I live is closer to Epping Upland than it is to Loughton
According to Wiki, Loughton has never been in the GLC.
Loughton is part of the Greater London urban area unlike Epping and Debden was indeed created by the old London County Council
Well, apparently the ONS has whole swathes of information about the classification of output areas as urban or rural.
Looks like Epping Forest falls just into the urban camp: "Urban with Significant Rural (rural including hub towns 26-49%)"
I'm not surely exactly how much the urban/rural split is in Epping Forest (all we know is it's 50% > x > 75% urban), but I'm willing to bet cold hard cash it's 52-48%.
Epping Forest is either the forest itself or the district not just Epping where I live and it stretches from Loughton, which used to be part of the GLC, is effectively suburban London and has a population of 31,106 through market towns like Epping, Theydon Bois, Waltham Abbey and Buckhurst Hill and Chigwell (of which Epping and Theydon Bois are the most rural of the 3) through to rural villages like North Weald, Roydon, Epping Upland, Nazeing etc.
I don't live in Loughton, I live in Epping and in fact where I live is closer to Epping Upland than it is to Loughton
According to Wiki, Loughton has never been in the GLC.
Loughton is part of the Greater London urban area unlike Epping and Debden was indeed created by the old London County Council
That may be right, but it wasn't in the GLC. Urban areas and metroploitan areas are less specific than county areas.
There's your problem, it's probably why there are so many clusters in gyms, and none of the measures you mention will fix it.
Any shared space with heavy breathing indoors is dangerous. In theory you can fix it with ventilation, but in a lot of buildings that won't be practical, and in any case British people still seem to be mainly ignoring that aspect of the thing for reasons I'm not clear about.
If it was "too large" why the feck are people like Jo Johnson, Claire Fox or Lebedev there?
When people cannot even come up with a plausible excuse, it is a bad sign (like when politicians fall back on the 'I'm stupid' defence for some problem).
The argument seems to be that he deserves an undeserved peerage to compensate for the loss of a former undeserved peerage. Hard to get excited about, and his record over dealing with sex abuse by clergy is iffy.
I'm unconcerned whether he has one or not, but as their reason for not giving him one is a nonsense, it immediately raises questions about what the actual reason is.
Exactly right - and I was shouted down for saying the same.
I am sure it's not due to racism but the excuse they gave means I can totally see how people have got there.
I notice that one major issue in the Sentamu matter hasn't been mentioned - a major chunk of the Church of England despises him, and what he stands for. I could quite easily see that being a factor in this.
Why is that ? Living in York he seems well liked by most people.
Basically you have the progressive wing of the CoE - all about getting rid of all those bothersome decisive things. Like doctrine.
Sentamu from the traditionalist wing. As is much of the CoE - outside the UK.
It's a culture war, essentially. Conductive with academic* levels of loathing and backstabbing.
His popularity with the general public is seen as a count against him, by the way - "self aggrandising", "populist" etc. By those who are totally ignored by the population at large....
*academic politics has to be seen to be believed. I believe the nastiness and ferocity is only matched by the culture in charities. The average politician would be barbecue in minutes in such an environment.
I must admit I was somewhat taken aback by the Oxford college as exemplified by Christ Church and its war with its bishop/head of college.
An uplifting positive video, only nasty unionists unhappy at losing their last colony could see it negatively. Pity the dog food salesman does not have anything positive to say about his country , bit like "bitter and twisted Guernsey immigrant".
I don't think they are complaining about the contents of the video, just that it was released when Sturgeon had claimed she suspended the campaign.
They are not campaigning at all, as this clown knows if he is in Scotland. It is pure nastiness from a whining sad loser. Hopefully he takes his sorry arse out of Scotland when we are independent, we can well do without the likes of that pathetic lickspittle. Nothing but nastiness and negativity to add to the party. Fit him better to try and show absolutely anything positive about the union, but no they cannot.
Releasing an advert like this isn't campaigning?
nope
I just can't see how it isn't campaigning. When the Brexit campaign was suspended after the death of Cox, can you imagine the outrage there would have been if either the official remain or leave twitter account continued posting videos when the campaign had been suspended?
They certainly ain't trying for independence any time soon.
If it was "too large" why the feck are people like Jo Johnson, Claire Fox or Lebedev there?
When people cannot even come up with a plausible excuse, it is a bad sign (like when politicians fall back on the 'I'm stupid' defence for some problem).
The argument seems to be that he deserves an undeserved peerage to compensate for the loss of a former undeserved peerage. Hard to get excited about, and his record over dealing with sex abuse by clergy is iffy.
I'm unconcerned whether he has one or not, but as their reason for not giving him one is a nonsense, it immediately raises questions about what the actual reason is.
Exactly right - and I was shouted down for saying the same.
I am sure it's not due to racism but the excuse they gave means I can totally see how people have got there.
I notice that one major issue in the Sentamu matter hasn't been mentioned - a major chunk of the Church of England despises him, and what he stands for. I could quite easily see that being a factor in this.
Why is that ? Living in York he seems well liked by most people.
Basically you have the progressive wing of the CoE - all about getting rid of all those bothersome decisive things. Like doctrine.
Sentamu from the traditionalist wing. As is much of the CoE - outside the UK.
It's a culture war, essentially. Conductive with academic* levels of loathing and backstabbing.
His popularity with the general public is seen as a count against him, by the way - "self aggrandising", "populist" etc. By those who are totally ignored by the population at large....
*academic politics has to be seen to be believed. I believe the nastiness and ferocity is only matched by the culture in charities. The average politician would be barbecue in minutes in such an environment.
I must admit I was somewhat taken aback by the Oxford college as exemplified by Christ Church and its war with its bishop/head of college.
I remember the startled reception that my suggestion for an improvement in academic behaviour got.
It was quite simple - in the event of someone getting someone else's research grant reduced, there would be no possibility of the first academic getting the money had to his/her work. Instead they would have *their* grant reduced by an equal amount.
So back stabbing would become suicide.
This suggestion was met with what might politely be described as contempt.....
I wonder how many more examples of "us" and "them" the Tories can get away with before their new coalition falls apart and is unrecoverable for another 40 years
UK politics in the last few years has had a distinctly French Revolution feel, with fissiparous ideologues purging one another. By my estimation the referendum was the storming of the Bastille, leaving the EU was the execution of Louis XVI. I expect Robespierre to fall before the end of summer 2021.
Sounds interesting and raises the question who's been cast for the Bonaparte role? Gove, Priti, Nigel, Tommy, Toby Young?
I hesitate to ask who is going to be skewered in their bath.
There's your problem, it's probably why there are so many clusters in gyms, and none of the measures you mention will fix it.
Any shared space with heavy breathing indoors is dangerous. In theory you can fix it with ventilation, but in a lot of buildings that won't be practical, and in any case British people still seem to be mainly ignoring that aspect of the thing for reasons I'm not clear about.
Because the government has duped a whole load of people into thinking that as long as they are 2m from anyone then they are safe.
The message should be to avoid indoor environments whenever possible. But it isn't.
There's your problem, it's probably why there are so many clusters in gyms, and none of the measures you mention will fix it.
Any shared space with heavy breathing indoors is dangerous. In theory you can fix it with ventilation, but in a lot of buildings that won't be practical, and in any case British people still seem to be mainly ignoring that aspect of the thing for reasons I'm not clear about.
The simple unspeakable truth has always been that the UK approach to this crisis has throughout had more in common with Sweden than either extreme side of the debate likes to admit.
The supposedly moderate Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has at last revealed himself as the fanatic he really is, with his wild calls for even more mass destruction of the jobs and livelihoods of Labour voters in a so-called ‘circuit-breaker’.
I am not surprised. Most people who report on politics in this country do not understand the subject, lacking the Marxist training which I had in my distant youth. They call Sir Keir ‘moderate’ because he is not Jeremy Corbyn. A fat lot they know.
Jeremy Corbyn is, of course, a wild Leftist, a man of clenched-fist salutes, street protests and red banners who probably dreams of storming Buckingham Palace at the head of a detachment of Red Guards. But he is one of the obvious, old-fashioned sort, steam-powered, coal-fired. You can see him a mile off and defeat him with ease. Sir Keir is much more dangerous. His fanaticism is as smooth as the moisturiser he applies daily to his handsome face. It is designed for the age of the internet.
But you will have to search hard for any major media mention of his stint, in his mid-20s, on the editorial board of a Trotskyist magazine called Socialist Alternatives. Its few issues can still be read on the internet. I have read them, though most of Sir Keir’s articles were written with the blunt end of a bread pudding, and are hard going.
Ah, you may say, this was just youthful folly. People change. He’s even taken a knighthood. Except Sir Keir has not changed much. This is the age he was born for.
In an interview with the New Statesman, he recently said: ‘I don’t think there are big issues on which I’ve changed my mind… The big issue we were grappling with then was how the Labour Party, or the Left generally, bound together the wider movement and its strands of equality – feminist politics, green politics, LGBT – which I thought was incredibly exciting, incredibly important. Broadly speaking, I think the Labour Party has done that very successfully.’
The sect he was mixed up with in the 1980s helped pioneer the New Left – Green mixed with Red, radical sexual politics. ‘Red must be made Green, and Green must be made Red,’ they said. This way of thinking has no time for the clapped-out yelling and posturing of the Corbynites.
It wants a cultural revolution which leaves all the buildings standing but changes everything that goes on inside them. It might find a huge economic and social convulsion, such as Johnson has visited on us, very convenient for that purpose."
He has more faces than the town clock , it will be announced soon and he will swear blind he never said "no".
Gove is, I understand, a Scot. When you get independence, Malc, will you take him back, please.
imho one of the main reasons Gove has started to be very anti-No Deal Brexit is that he knows a chaotic mess in the New Year will add the final lick of paint to an already almost guaranteed vote Yes for Scottish independence. He has no chance, as a scot, of becoming PM if that happens.
I think Goves chance of becoming PM are not affected by being Scottish, even post Sindy.
They are however adversely affected by him being a fish faced gossipy nincompoop.
Quite so re PM, as he is resident in England, will have a rUK passport (I assume!), and sits for an English constituency. Unless all Scots-born were disqualified from rUK citizenship.
Does the electorate realise he is Scots-born? Does he have a Scots accent? I can't tell.
Certainly no Scottish accent I have ever heard. If he ever had one he has managed to erase it completely.
Thanks. So not even Edinburgh/Aberdeen professional then.
I've got a completely useless ear for accents so find it impossible to judge that aspect of a pol's public image. I wonder how many of his constituents realise he's Doric by birth?
yep, no sign of the fake home counties accent used by the privately educated nabbery to show he is Scottish, bit like Broon he would if really forced claim to be North British..
All that having been taken into account, I should say I feel it would be utterly shabby for his opponents both outside and especially within the Party to make any mention of his personal origins (rather like the abuse Mr Brown got from the Tory backbenchers) . There are, pari passu, plenty of English born and (until recently) the odd French MSP in the SNP and other partries in Holyrood, and so there should be.
Even so I rather suspect Mr G's opponents - especially those aiming to succeed Mr J as PM - would make very sure his origins were gratuitously highlighted and try and ensure that he was in for an extra dollop of sharn if Brexit led to indyref 2 being lost and the midden exploded as a result. So he's got a special incentive there re indyref.
The supposedly moderate Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has at last revealed himself as the fanatic he really is, with his wild calls for even more mass destruction of the jobs and livelihoods of Labour voters in a so-called ‘circuit-breaker’.
I am not surprised. Most people who report on politics in this country do not understand the subject, lacking the Marxist training which I had in my distant youth. They call Sir Keir ‘moderate’ because he is not Jeremy Corbyn. A fat lot they know.
Jeremy Corbyn is, of course, a wild Leftist, a man of clenched-fist salutes, street protests and red banners who probably dreams of storming Buckingham Palace at the head of a detachment of Red Guards. But he is one of the obvious, old-fashioned sort, steam-powered, coal-fired. You can see him a mile off and defeat him with ease. Sir Keir is much more dangerous. His fanaticism is as smooth as the moisturiser he applies daily to his handsome face. It is designed for the age of the internet.
But you will have to search hard for any major media mention of his stint, in his mid-20s, on the editorial board of a Trotskyist magazine called Socialist Alternatives. Its few issues can still be read on the internet. I have read them, though most of Sir Keir’s articles were written with the blunt end of a bread pudding, and are hard going.
Ah, you may say, this was just youthful folly. People change. He’s even taken a knighthood. Except Sir Keir has not changed much. This is the age he was born for.
In an interview with the New Statesman, he recently said: ‘I don’t think there are big issues on which I’ve changed my mind… The big issue we were grappling with then was how the Labour Party, or the Left generally, bound together the wider movement and its strands of equality – feminist politics, green politics, LGBT – which I thought was incredibly exciting, incredibly important. Broadly speaking, I think the Labour Party has done that very successfully.’
The sect he was mixed up with in the 1980s helped pioneer the New Left – Green mixed with Red, radical sexual politics. ‘Red must be made Green, and Green must be made Red,’ they said. This way of thinking has no time for the clapped-out yelling and posturing of the Corbynites.
It wants a cultural revolution which leaves all the buildings standing but changes everything that goes on inside them. It might find a huge economic and social convulsion, such as Johnson has visited on us, very convenient for that purpose."
There's your problem, it's probably why there are so many clusters in gyms, and none of the measures you mention will fix it.
Any shared space with heavy breathing indoors is dangerous. In theory you can fix it with ventilation, but in a lot of buildings that won't be practical, and in any case British people still seem to be mainly ignoring that aspect of the thing for reasons I'm not clear about.
Think stupidity and pig headedness.
More like - "I will absolutely follow the rules and condemn anyone who breaks them. Until it touches upon my personal convenience."
There's your problem, it's probably why there are so many clusters in gyms, and none of the measures you mention will fix it.
Any shared space with heavy breathing indoors is dangerous. In theory you can fix it with ventilation, but in a lot of buildings that won't be practical, and in any case British people still seem to be mainly ignoring that aspect of the thing for reasons I'm not clear about.
Because the government has duped a whole load of people into thinking that as long as they are 2m from anyone then they are safe.
The message should be to avoid indoor environments whenever possible. But it isn't.
I think this is the reason for the growth in cases across Europe as people start to socialize indoors as it gets colder and darker.
I wonder how many more examples of "us" and "them" the Tories can get away with before their new coalition falls apart and is unrecoverable for another 40 years
UK politics in the last few years has had a distinctly French Revolution feel, with fissiparous ideologues purging one another. By my estimation the referendum was the storming of the Bastille, leaving the EU was the execution of Louis XVI. I expect Robespierre to fall before the end of summer 2021.
Sounds interesting and raises the question who's been cast for the Bonaparte role? Gove, Priti, Nigel, Tommy, Toby Young?
I hesitate to ask who is going to be skewered in their bath.
I saw that waxwork at Madame Tussaud's when I was 8. The horror of it ...
I wonder how many more examples of "us" and "them" the Tories can get away with before their new coalition falls apart and is unrecoverable for another 40 years
UK politics in the last few years has had a distinctly French Revolution feel, with fissiparous ideologues purging one another. By my estimation the referendum was the storming of the Bastille, leaving the EU was the execution of Louis XVI. I expect Robespierre to fall before the end of summer 2021.
Sounds interesting and raises the question who's been cast for the Bonaparte role? Gove, Priti, Nigel, Tommy, Toby Young?
First off, they have to be highly competent to fit the Napoleon role. That ought to narrow it down somewhat.
The story in the Mirror where the PM is so impoverished that he thinks he needs to quit and earn some money to pay for his various children.
If he didn't shag anything that walked he wouldn't have that problem...
Funny how the people who most affect to disapprove of the PM's love life can't help, er, banging on about it every five minutes...
Never fails to remind me of those US Republicans who drone on endlessly about sinners and fornication while secretly either enthusiastically participating in the same or desperately wishing they were.
The supposedly moderate Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has at last revealed himself as the fanatic he really is, with his wild calls for even more mass destruction of the jobs and livelihoods of Labour voters in a so-called ‘circuit-breaker’.
I am not surprised. Most people who report on politics in this country do not understand the subject, lacking the Marxist training which I had in my distant youth. They call Sir Keir ‘moderate’ because he is not Jeremy Corbyn. A fat lot they know.
Jeremy Corbyn is, of course, a wild Leftist, a man of clenched-fist salutes, street protests and red banners who probably dreams of storming Buckingham Palace at the head of a detachment of Red Guards. But he is one of the obvious, old-fashioned sort, steam-powered, coal-fired. You can see him a mile off and defeat him with ease. Sir Keir is much more dangerous. His fanaticism is as smooth as the moisturiser he applies daily to his handsome face. It is designed for the age of the internet.
But you will have to search hard for any major media mention of his stint, in his mid-20s, on the editorial board of a Trotskyist magazine called Socialist Alternatives. Its few issues can still be read on the internet. I have read them, though most of Sir Keir’s articles were written with the blunt end of a bread pudding, and are hard going.
Ah, you may say, this was just youthful folly. People change. He’s even taken a knighthood. Except Sir Keir has not changed much. This is the age he was born for.
In an interview with the New Statesman, he recently said: ‘I don’t think there are big issues on which I’ve changed my mind… The big issue we were grappling with then was how the Labour Party, or the Left generally, bound together the wider movement and its strands of equality – feminist politics, green politics, LGBT – which I thought was incredibly exciting, incredibly important. Broadly speaking, I think the Labour Party has done that very successfully.’
The sect he was mixed up with in the 1980s helped pioneer the New Left – Green mixed with Red, radical sexual politics. ‘Red must be made Green, and Green must be made Red,’ they said. This way of thinking has no time for the clapped-out yelling and posturing of the Corbynites.
It wants a cultural revolution which leaves all the buildings standing but changes everything that goes on inside them. It might find a huge economic and social convulsion, such as Johnson has visited on us, very convenient for that purpose."
The practical problem is that gyms are a massive covid risk, if anywhere is going to be forced to close - and the British like to do things with rules rather than voluntary action and common sense, since they hate freedom - they're absolutely top of the list. You might just be able to fix it with heroically expensive ventilation systems but in practice they're just going to faff around with sanitization and things.
The government could do more to give gyms money to compensate, but that won't satisfy the people who can't go to the gym. There's no way to satisfy these people consistent with public health, because they want to do something in the middle of a pandemic, and the thing they want to do spreads the pandemic.
I'd think that was true, so I do support closing gyms. But Alastair's wider point is true too. I'm a fairly conventional politician in some ways, and I think schools and unis and major factories are jolly important, but I've never even considered visiting a gym, any more than a boxing match or a German beer hall - they're all outside my cultural reference area, and at some level I (therefore?) instinctively think of them as less important or even, as Hillary Clinton might say, deplorable - why aren't the body-builders reading books or distributing political leaflets, eh? That kind of thinking does contribute to the cultural alienation which feeds issues like Brexit and politicians like Trump, and people like me need to get past ourselves. Thanks for the thought-provoking piece.
You write posts like this and you have the temerity to call me weird. Someone who was also avowed communist at the age of TEN and more concerned about Kennedy's foreign policy than his train set.
You are like an alien from outer space who has been lobotomized by David Icke, had surgery to look more like Trotsky and then converted to Scientology.
I'm looking for the post where he had the temerity to call you weird. I want to give it a 'like'
I've missed you Wodger.
The "like" button is the worst feature of the new version of this site. It looks like there's nothing that can be done about it but I think it's lowered the quality of the discussion on here.
It encourages each side to play to their own galleries to get the most "likes" - in other words, it plays to sentimentality rather than rationality and introduces narcissism into the equation.
The very best posts on this site get just 1-3 likes rather than 5-8 likes.
In the old days you'd get people like @Jonathan and @SouthamObserver sometimes replying to arguments of mine saying "excellent post", which is all the praise I'd ever want or need. I'd do the same for some of theirs, we all learnt something and had a really interesting exchange of views.
I really miss that.
There are people who actually post on this site monitoring the amount of "likes" you get? How do you even do that?
Oh, almost everyone does it. It's just hardly anyone admits to it.
The supposedly moderate Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has at last revealed himself as the fanatic he really is, with his wild calls for even more mass destruction of the jobs and livelihoods of Labour voters in a so-called ‘circuit-breaker’.
I am not surprised. Most people who report on politics in this country do not understand the subject, lacking the Marxist training which I had in my distant youth. They call Sir Keir ‘moderate’ because he is not Jeremy Corbyn. A fat lot they know.
Jeremy Corbyn is, of course, a wild Leftist, a man of clenched-fist salutes, street protests and red banners who probably dreams of storming Buckingham Palace at the head of a detachment of Red Guards. But he is one of the obvious, old-fashioned sort, steam-powered, coal-fired. You can see him a mile off and defeat him with ease. Sir Keir is much more dangerous. His fanaticism is as smooth as the moisturiser he applies daily to his handsome face. It is designed for the age of the internet.
But you will have to search hard for any major media mention of his stint, in his mid-20s, on the editorial board of a Trotskyist magazine called Socialist Alternatives. Its few issues can still be read on the internet. I have read them, though most of Sir Keir’s articles were written with the blunt end of a bread pudding, and are hard going.
Ah, you may say, this was just youthful folly. People change. He’s even taken a knighthood. Except Sir Keir has not changed much. This is the age he was born for.
In an interview with the New Statesman, he recently said: ‘I don’t think there are big issues on which I’ve changed my mind… The big issue we were grappling with then was how the Labour Party, or the Left generally, bound together the wider movement and its strands of equality – feminist politics, green politics, LGBT – which I thought was incredibly exciting, incredibly important. Broadly speaking, I think the Labour Party has done that very successfully.’
The sect he was mixed up with in the 1980s helped pioneer the New Left – Green mixed with Red, radical sexual politics. ‘Red must be made Green, and Green must be made Red,’ they said. This way of thinking has no time for the clapped-out yelling and posturing of the Corbynites.
It wants a cultural revolution which leaves all the buildings standing but changes everything that goes on inside them. It might find a huge economic and social convulsion, such as Johnson has visited on us, very convenient for that purpose."
I wonder how many more examples of "us" and "them" the Tories can get away with before their new coalition falls apart and is unrecoverable for another 40 years
UK politics in the last few years has had a distinctly French Revolution feel, with fissiparous ideologues purging one another. By my estimation the referendum was the storming of the Bastille, leaving the EU was the execution of Louis XVI. I expect Robespierre to fall before the end of summer 2021.
Sounds interesting and raises the question who's been cast for the Bonaparte role? Gove, Priti, Nigel, Tommy, Toby Young?
I hesitate to ask who is going to be skewered in their bath.
I saw that waxwork at Madame Tussaud's when I was 8. The horror of it ...
The more I read about Biden's policy, the less I like him. Pro-trade union, anti-school choice, let rip on immigration and removing some controls.
I know what I'd do if I were British. In America, I'd abstain and go 3rd party - I couldn't vote to endorse that.
As I was saying a while ago, it is one of the most left wing platforms American politics has seen for a long while. The idea that Biden has embraced the centre ground to defeat Trump is a fallacy.
An uplifting positive video, only nasty unionists unhappy at losing their last colony could see it negatively. Pity the dog food salesman does not have anything positive to say about his country , bit like "bitter and twisted Guernsey immigrant".
I don't think they are complaining about the contents of the video, just that it was released when Sturgeon had claimed she suspended the campaign.
They are not campaigning at all, as this clown knows if he is in Scotland. It is pure nastiness from a whining sad loser. Hopefully he takes his sorry arse out of Scotland when we are independent, we can well do without the likes of that pathetic lickspittle. Nothing but nastiness and negativity to add to the party. Fit him better to try and show absolutely anything positive about the union, but no they cannot.
Releasing an advert like this isn't campaigning?
nope
I just can't see how it isn't campaigning. When the Brexit campaign was suspended after the death of Cox, can you imagine the outrage there would have been if either the official remain or leave twitter account continued posting videos when the campaign had been suspended?
They certainly ain't trying for independence any time soon.
It's also difficult to describe Mr Johnson, Mr Sunak and Mr Ross (in the latter's time off from footy) doing anything other than campaigning, certainly in Scotland - and in the former's case in England for much of the time (hard hats, yellow sarks, etc.)
The practical problem is that gyms are a massive covid risk, if anywhere is going to be forced to close - and the British like to do things with rules rather than voluntary action and common sense, since they hate freedom - they're absolutely top of the list. You might just be able to fix it with heroically expensive ventilation systems but in practice they're just going to faff around with sanitization and things.
The government could do more to give gyms money to compensate, but that won't satisfy the people who can't go to the gym. There's no way to satisfy these people consistent with public health, because they want to do something in the middle of a pandemic, and the thing they want to do spreads the pandemic.
I'd think that was true, so I do support closing gyms. But Alastair's wider point is true too. I'm a fairly conventional politician in some ways, and I think schools and unis and major factories are jolly important, but I've never even considered visiting a gym, any more than a boxing match or a German beer hall - they're all outside my cultural reference area, and at some level I (therefore?) instinctively think of them as less important or even, as Hillary Clinton might say, deplorable - why aren't the body-builders reading books or distributing political leaflets, eh? That kind of thinking does contribute to the cultural alienation which feeds issues like Brexit and politicians like Trump, and people like me need to get past ourselves. Thanks for the thought-provoking piece.
You write posts like this and you have the temerity to call me weird. Someone who was also avowed communist at the age of TEN and more concerned about Kennedy's foreign policy than his train set.
You are like an alien from outer space who has been lobotomized by David Icke, had surgery to look more like Trotsky and then converted to Scientology.
I'm looking for the post where he had the temerity to call you weird. I want to give it a 'like'
I've missed you Wodger.
The "like" button is the worst feature of the new version of this site. It looks like there's nothing that can be done about it but I think it's lowered the quality of the discussion on here.
It encourages each side to play to their own galleries to get the most "likes" - in other words, it plays to sentimentality rather than rationality and introduces narcissism into the equation.
The very best posts on this site get just 1-3 likes rather than 5-8 likes.
In the old days you'd get people like @Jonathan and @SouthamObserver sometimes replying to arguments of mine saying "excellent post", which is all the praise I'd ever want or need. I'd do the same for some of theirs, we all learnt something and had a really interesting exchange of views.
I really miss that.
There are people who actually post on this site monitoring the amount of "likes" you get? How do you even do that?
Oh, almost everyone does it. It's just hardly anyone admits to it.
The more I read about Biden's policy, the less I like him. Pro-trade union, anti-school choice, let rip on immigration and removing some controls.
I know what I'd do if I were British. In America, I'd abstain and go 3rd party - I couldn't vote to endorse that.
And remember most of the other candidates, including Harris, where even further to the left...so how much further will he be dragged by the likes of his VP and the loud voices in his own party.
Personally, I can't see him putting up much resistance, given half the time he can't even remember if he is running for senate or POTUS...
The practical problem is that gyms are a massive covid risk, if anywhere is going to be forced to close - and the British like to do things with rules rather than voluntary action and common sense, since they hate freedom - they're absolutely top of the list. You might just be able to fix it with heroically expensive ventilation systems but in practice they're just going to faff around with sanitization and things.
The government could do more to give gyms money to compensate, but that won't satisfy the people who can't go to the gym. There's no way to satisfy these people consistent with public health, because they want to do something in the middle of a pandemic, and the thing they want to do spreads the pandemic.
I'd think that was true, so I do support closing gyms. But Alastair's wider point is true too. I'm a fairly conventional politician in some ways, and I think schools and unis and major factories are jolly important, but I've never even considered visiting a gym, any more than a boxing match or a German beer hall - they're all outside my cultural reference area, and at some level I (therefore?) instinctively think of them as less important or even, as Hillary Clinton might say, deplorable - why aren't the body-builders reading books or distributing political leaflets, eh? That kind of thinking does contribute to the cultural alienation which feeds issues like Brexit and politicians like Trump, and people like me need to get past ourselves. Thanks for the thought-provoking piece.
You write posts like this and you have the temerity to call me weird. Someone who was also avowed communist at the age of TEN and more concerned about Kennedy's foreign policy than his train set.
You are like an alien from outer space who has been lobotomized by David Icke, had surgery to look more like Trotsky and then converted to Scientology.
I'm looking for the post where he had the temerity to call you weird. I want to give it a 'like'
I've missed you Wodger.
The "like" button is the worst feature of the new version of this site. It looks like there's nothing that can be done about it but I think it's lowered the quality of the discussion on here.
It encourages each side to play to their own galleries to get the most "likes" - in other words, it plays to sentimentality rather than rationality and introduces narcissism into the equation.
The very best posts on this site get just 1-3 likes rather than 5-8 likes.
In the old days you'd get people like @Jonathan and @SouthamObserver sometimes replying to arguments of mine saying "excellent post", which is all the praise I'd ever want or need. I'd do the same for some of theirs, we all learnt something and had a really interesting exchange of views.
I really miss that.
I find your premise to be a bit short on evidence and a little strange. The most 'liked' posts are almost certainly going to be ones which are jokes, and most people don't use the feature at all so the idea it has enouraged a deterioration of debate quality I think is perception more than reality.
Yes, many jokes are an exception. Usually because they're apolitical and unrelated to a position.
I'm afraid I have to disagree with you on the quality of the debate. Many of the best posters on here now post far less frequently, including Southam Observer, Charles, Sean Fear, David Herdson, Alastair Meeks, Tissue Price, and others. Others like Richard Nabavi and Jonathan post much less frequently.
Meanwhile, the trolling is high. I think that's pretty obvious to those with their eyes open.
Meanwhile, with respect to HYUFD's rural places for rural people in Tier 1 vs urban scummers in Tier 2, a nice story of a village divided. Most of the tourist hotspot village is allegedly NYCC rural enough to be Tier 1, the few dozen houses across the beck are pox-ridden Redcar & Cleveland:
If it was "too large" why the feck are people like Jo Johnson, Claire Fox or Lebedev there?
When people cannot even come up with a plausible excuse, it is a bad sign (like when politicians fall back on the 'I'm stupid' defence for some problem).
The argument seems to be that he deserves an undeserved peerage to compensate for the loss of a former undeserved peerage. Hard to get excited about, and his record over dealing with sex abuse by clergy is iffy.
I'm unconcerned whether he has one or not, but as their reason for not giving him one is a nonsense, it immediately raises questions about what the actual reason is.
Exactly right - and I was shouted down for saying the same.
I am sure it's not due to racism but the excuse they gave means I can totally see how people have got there.
I notice that one major issue in the Sentamu matter hasn't been mentioned - a major chunk of the Church of England despises him, and what he stands for. I could quite easily see that being a factor in this.
I was told that back when there was a tiny, tiny chance of him becoming Archbishop of Canterbury (ice cube in hell) that the PM in question was told that a large chunk of the Synod would stage a revolt. If he got on the short list....
As you say - too much belief in God.... The ecumenical lot who think that the way to popularity in the modern world is for the CoE to stop with all that religion stuff.
I could easily see Welby vetoing a peerage - he would see it as shutting him up.
I seem to recall that there was a Yes Prime Minister one on this - a candidate for Canterbury ruled out for his belief in God. Versus something nice and safe - like believing in steam trains.
Nah, it's because (at the time) Sentamu was seen to be a bit too popular (populist?) and playing to the public gallery, which was resented by others in the Synod.
The most likely reason he's been deferred in this batch has nothing to do with his race and is because he went quite Remainy in the last couple of years.
Comments
The gym is keeping me going. The contribution to mental wellbeing is immense.
My gym is disinfected to heck. Staff and users continually spraying the pink stuff. Most people go on their own, there is very little interaction with others. I`m never within 2 metres of anyone.
I doubt they`ll be a single virus particle within the walls of my gym. If there is an odd one, and it sits on a multigym handle, and it`s recent enough to not be denatured, and I grasp that handle, and touch my face, and get infected it will likely be a very small dose. Large droplet transmission: zero chance. Aerosol possible I guess.
My overall impression is that a gym is no riskier than a supermarket. Probably less so, in fact.
Please let`s credit people with some agency and take a risk aware approach to such places rather than a knee-jerk risk-averse approach, which I think has an element of kill-joy in it.
We could sell tickets for a prize draw. Would put a dent in the deficit.
Looks like Epping Forest falls just into the urban camp:
"Urban with Significant Rural (rural including hub towns 26-49%)"
I'm not surely exactly how much the urban/rural split is in Epping Forest (all we know is it's 50% > x > 75% urban), but I'm willing to bet cold hard cash it's 52-48%.
Interesting to see what happens to white Etonian Welby, mind.
(Please "like" this post.)
Does the electorate realise he is Scots-born? Does he have a Scots accent? I can't tell.
Living in York he seems well liked by most people.
*Gazes out of window at the treeless expanse of the Forest of Dartmoor.*
Hopefully he takes his sorry arse out of Scotland when we are independent, we can well do without the likes of that pathetic lickspittle.
Nothing but nastiness and negativity to add to the party. Fit him better to try and show absolutely anything positive about the union, but no they cannot.
The supposedly moderate Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has at last revealed himself as the fanatic he really is, with his wild calls for even more mass destruction of the jobs and livelihoods of Labour voters in a so-called ‘circuit-breaker’.
I am not surprised. Most people who report on politics in this country do not understand the subject, lacking the Marxist training which I had in my distant youth. They call Sir Keir ‘moderate’ because he is not Jeremy Corbyn. A fat lot they know.
Jeremy Corbyn is, of course, a wild Leftist, a man of clenched-fist salutes, street protests and red banners who probably dreams of storming Buckingham Palace at the head of a detachment of Red Guards. But he is one of the obvious, old-fashioned sort, steam-powered, coal-fired. You can see him a mile off and defeat him with ease. Sir Keir is much more dangerous. His fanaticism is as smooth as the moisturiser he applies daily to his handsome face. It is designed for the age of the internet.
But you will have to search hard for any major media mention of his stint, in his mid-20s, on the editorial board of a Trotskyist magazine called Socialist Alternatives. Its few issues can still be read on the internet. I have read them, though most of Sir Keir’s articles were written with the blunt end of a bread pudding, and are hard going.
Ah, you may say, this was just youthful folly. People change. He’s even taken a knighthood. Except Sir Keir has not changed much. This is the age he was born for.
In an interview with the New Statesman, he recently said: ‘I don’t think there are big issues on which I’ve changed my mind… The big issue we were grappling with then was how the Labour Party, or the Left generally, bound together the wider movement and its strands of equality – feminist politics, green politics, LGBT – which I thought was incredibly exciting, incredibly important. Broadly speaking, I think the Labour Party has done that very successfully.’
The sect he was mixed up with in the 1980s helped pioneer the New Left – Green mixed with Red, radical sexual politics. ‘Red must be made Green, and Green must be made Red,’ they said. This way of thinking has no time for the clapped-out yelling and posturing of the Corbynites.
It wants a cultural revolution which leaves all the buildings standing but changes everything that goes on inside them. It might find a huge economic and social convulsion, such as Johnson has visited on us, very convenient for that purpose."
https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/
A couple fo years back, I was talking with a BBC journalist (well freelancer who did a lot of work for the Beeb).
I suggested just that - politician bringing in props. She was utterly appalled - said if someone did that, the cameras would be turned away, plug pulled etc. And suggested that the politician in question would be put on the do-not-invite list.
It was quite interesting to see such a vituperative reaction - apparently the idea was an attack on journalism...
https://youtu.be/bOjP1qFMv4I
As you say - too much belief in God.... The ecumenical lot who think that the way to popularity in the modern world is for the CoE to stop with all that religion stuff.
I could easily see Welby vetoing a peerage - he would see it as shutting him up.
I seem to recall that there was a Yes Prime Minister one on this - a candidate for Canterbury ruled out for his belief in God. Versus something nice and safe - like believing in steam trains.
I've got a completely useless ear for accents so find it impossible to judge that aspect of a pol's public image. I wonder how many of his constituents realise he's Doric by birth?
Most unusually, that episode made an error by saying St Edmundsbury (to give it its formal name) carried an automatic seat in the Lords, when it doesn’t- only Canterbury, York, London, Winchester and Durham do. The other 19 bishops are those with longest service, with an acceleration programme for female bishops.
I don't live in Loughton, I live in Epping and in fact where I live is closer to Epping Upland than it is to Loughton
Sentamu from the traditionalist wing. As is much of the CoE - outside the UK.
It's a culture war, essentially. Conductive with academic* levels of loathing and backstabbing.
His popularity with the general public is seen as a count against him, by the way - "self aggrandising", "populist" etc. By those who are totally ignored by the population at large....
*academic politics has to be seen to be believed. I believe the nastiness and ferocity is only matched by the culture in charities. The average politician would be barbecue in minutes in such an environment.
"Unquestionably, scepticism is only prevalent amongst a minority, but my guess is not for long."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/10/18/no-10-must-forget-polls-grasp-shift-public-opinion/
"The Prime Minister might carry public opinion with him in a face-off with Andy Burnham this weekend, but he has left himself open to people saying in a few weeks’ time: Burnham was right."
Any shared space with heavy breathing indoors is dangerous. In theory you can fix it with ventilation, but in a lot of buildings that won't be practical, and in any case British people still seem to be mainly ignoring that aspect of the thing for reasons I'm not clear about.
https://www.euroweeklynews.com/2020/10/18/sweden-to-introduce-local-lockdowns-as-coronavirus-cases-rise/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook
It was quite simple - in the event of someone getting someone else's research grant reduced, there would be no possibility of the first academic getting the money had to his/her work. Instead they would have *their* grant reduced by an equal amount.
So back stabbing would become suicide.
This suggestion was met with what might politely be described as contempt.....
The message should be to avoid indoor environments whenever possible. But it isn't.
Trademark pomposity.
I'm not in a Westminster bubble, ta very much.
Even so I rather suspect Mr G's opponents - especially those aiming to succeed Mr J as PM - would make very sure his origins were gratuitously highlighted and try and ensure that he was in for an extra dollop of sharn if Brexit led to indyref 2 being lost and the midden exploded as a result. So he's got a special incentive there re indyref.
If he didn't shag anything that walked he wouldn't have that problem...
I know what I'd do if I were British. In America, I'd abstain and go 3rd party - I couldn't vote to endorse that.
Never fails to remind me of those US Republicans who drone on endlessly about sinners and fornication while secretly either enthusiastically participating in the same or desperately wishing they were.
This market is more bonkers than the Obama-Romney free money fest.
It's like masturbation.
(Let's see who plays the smartarse response)
Personally, I can't see him putting up much resistance, given half the time he can't even remember if he is running for senate or POTUS...
I'm afraid I have to disagree with you on the quality of the debate. Many of the best posters on here now post far less frequently, including Southam Observer, Charles, Sean Fear, David Herdson, Alastair Meeks, Tissue Price, and others. Others like Richard Nabavi and Jonathan post much less frequently.
Meanwhile, the trolling is high. I think that's pretty obvious to those with their eyes open.
https://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/teesside-news/village-divided-picturesque-seaside-hamlet-19117938?fbclid=IwAR33zXQg-5zXmRPPT0P1UuywILQovyqdGBheTRvwiAeIFsXBw8VQHTrX2xw
The most likely reason he's been deferred in this batch has nothing to do with his race and is because he went quite Remainy in the last couple of years.