That's a fascinating poll because people are willing to be hardcore, but note that they are slightly less enthusiastic when they realise they might be caught out.
Ironclad law: people want very severe lockdown restrictions.. for other people.
Nah, under 25s need to party, it's in their nature. This year has been a social development disaster for everyone but particularly those people under the age of 25 who are at no individual risk.
They're wasting away the best years of their life in lockdown, it is to be expected that they will break these rules. The Tatler exists to write about this stuff, I don't have any issue with it.
Everyone under the age of 50 has a lifetime of taxes to pay for this bullshit. If they want to go out and party, that's up to the government to stop with incentives.
How many of these kids live with their parents, and how many of them have contact with their grandparents?
They don’t need to party, they want to party - but sadly for them, here’s an invisible disease being passed around those who party, that is killing a thousand people a day.
The longer these idiots keep partying, the longer the ban on officially parting will be, the more old and vulnerable people will die, and the more screwed the economy will be for these kids in the future.
And that worked for a few months, then everyone saw the border was still open and we were letting in hundreds of thousands of people with no checks on whether they were infected or not so young people, not being complete idiots, realised that the government clearly gives no fucks.
Honestly, the people I speak to from that age group (juniors through work) are all clued up and all say the same thing, if they aren't going to stop people from coming here with the virus then what's the point in stopping people from living their normal lives.
It's been the single biggest error in our response to this, the whole second wave is because of insufficient border protections from July onwards.
What also hasn't helped is headlines of "old people begin to book cruises as they get vaccinated", again young people aren't stupid, they're being asked to make these big sacrifices to their personal, process and social development to save the oldies and yet those same oldies are planning holidays and cruises while everyone under 50 simply has to wait their turn. Well fuck that noise, the government fucked it up and now they are paying the price.
This should have been over after lockdown one, the border should have been secured with hotel based quarantine measures and prior appointment to enter the UK. They let this happen, these are the consequences.
If the government had taken a leaf out of the NZ (or Taiwan) book and closed the borders at the first signs of infection in February last year we could well be looking at only a few hundred deaths and Brexit Britain lauded as the Covid success story of the Western World. As it however, the vaccine rollout notwithstanding, we are going to be one of the worst affected in both human and economic terms. And much of the misery was avoidable.
I don't think it's possible to compare UK to NZ. The latter is far more remote.
Incorrect, the UK is an island nation. We can make ourselves as remote as we choose to.
We parachute a bunch of Brits onto a chunk of far-flung soil and then, surprise, surprise, they democratically express their wish to remain British. They could always move to Surrey.
I suppose those who think it is fine for the Falklanders and Gibraltarians to express their Britishness are fully comfortable with China shipping millions of folk into Tibet so that they can then say that the majority of residents see themselves as Chinese.
I guess the British are no longer a “freedom-loving” people. Perhaps they never were.
We never have been mate, it's a nation of daily mail reading curtain twitching c***s, now the whole country has realised they are the majority.
Look at the idiotic reporting of Boris' 7 mile bike ride. The media couldn't wait to stick the boot in over what, to anyone who cycles, is a pretty short bike ride.
First, it was Boris (or at least the government) who said exercise should be local. Second, it was almost certainly not a seven-mile bike ride but a car journey there, a bike ride, and a car journey back.
I guess the British are no longer a “freedom-loving” people. Perhaps they never were.
We never have been mate, it's a nation of daily mail reading curtain twitching c***s, now the whole country has realised they are the majority.
Look at the idiotic reporting of Boris' 7 mile bike ride. The media couldn't wait to stick the boot in over what, to anyone who cycles, is a pretty short bike ride.
First, it was Boris (or at least the government) who said exercise should be local. Second, it was almost certainly not a seven-mile bike ride but a car journey there, a bike ride, and a car journey back.
Would you have preferred that he do several loops around Parliament Square?
Israel has published details of a deal to trade data with US pharmaceutical company Pfizer in return for a steady supply of its coronavirus vaccine, after concerns were expressed over possible privacy violations.
Under the arrangement, Israel will send weekly updates on the numbers of confirmed cases, hospitalisations, patients in a serious condition and those on a ventilator, as well as the number of vaccinations performed. They will be broken down by age, gender and demographic background, but “no identifiable health information” will be shared.
We parachute a bunch of Brits onto a chunk of far-flung soil and then, surprise, surprise, they democratically express their wish to remain British. They could always move to Surrey.
I suppose those who think it is fine for the Falklanders and Gibraltarians to express their Britishness are fully comfortable with China shipping millions of folk into Tibet so that they can then say that the majority of residents see themselves as Chinese.
"We" haven't parachuted anyone onto the islands. They were born their. Their parents were born their. Their parents parents were born there. 🙄
The UK has given self-governance or independence to every territory that has asked for it - outside those being directly retained as military bases.
Aside from that I don't see what the problem is with those few remaining overseas territories that want to retain a close relationship with the UK, other than self-loathing and embarrassment.
But it's odd. It feels odd. And if it doesn't feel odd, that is odd, and just shows how insidious the effect of colonialism is, not just on those colonized but also on the citizens of the colonial power here in 2021. This is the insight I am offering.
Its not odd at all. People look at what they believe is in their best interests. In the case of the Falklands the islanders clearly believe that presently their security and economic well being is best served by being attached to the UK rather than to Argentina.
Put it this way. If the Falkland Islanders decided at some point they wanted full independence I would suggest they have far more chance of achieving that by detaching themselves from British rule than they would be trying to detach themselves from Argentine rule.
I'm not talking about the Islanders wanting to stay British - nothing odd about that - I'm talking about the notion of British rule over places on the other side of the globe. To me this is odd and I find it odd when others don't share that feeling - and potentially telling of what they feel about Britain and Britishness. And when I say "telling" btw, I don't imply something bad lurking there. Although there might be. Further probing would be required.
Are people who call the Falklands the Malvinas just trying to show that they support Argentina ahead of the UK? It's not the original name; it was first named by the French as Îles Malouines (after St Malo where their ship sailed from), a year before a Brit called them the Falklands. Why use the Spanish corruption instead of the original French?
Incidentally, St Malo was a Welshman from Gwent. Does that strengthen our claim?
That's a fascinating poll because people are willing to be hardcore, but note that they are slightly less enthusiastic when they realise they might be caught out.
Ironclad law: people want very severe lockdown restrictions.. for other people.
Nah, under 25s need to party, it's in their nature. This year has been a social development disaster for everyone but particularly those people under the age of 25 who are at no individual risk.
They're wasting away the best years of their life in lockdown, it is to be expected that they will break these rules. The Tatler exists to write about this stuff, I don't have any issue with it.
Everyone under the age of 50 has a lifetime of taxes to pay for this bullshit. If they want to go out and party, that's up to the government to stop with incentives.
How many of these kids live with their parents, and how many of them have contact with their grandparents?
They don’t need to party, they want to party - but sadly for them, here’s an invisible disease being passed around those who party, that is killing a thousand people a day.
The longer these idiots keep partying, the longer the ban on officially parting will be, the more old and vulnerable people will die, and the more screwed the economy will be for these kids in the future.
And that worked for a few months, then everyone saw the border was still open and we were letting in hundreds of thousands of people with no checks on whether they were infected or not so young people, not being complete idiots, realised that the government clearly gives no fucks.
Honestly, the people I speak to from that age group (juniors through work) are all clued up and all say the same thing, if they aren't going to stop people from coming here with the virus then what's the point in stopping people from living their normal lives.
It's been the single biggest error in our response to this, the whole second wave is because of insufficient border protections from July onwards.
What also hasn't helped is headlines of "old people begin to book cruises as they get vaccinated", again young people aren't stupid, they're being asked to make these big sacrifices to their personal, process and social development to save the oldies and yet those same oldies are planning holidays and cruises while everyone under 50 simply has to wait their turn. Well fuck that noise, the government fucked it up and now they are paying the price.
This should have been over after lockdown one, the border should have been secured with hotel based quarantine measures and prior appointment to enter the UK. They let this happen, these are the consequences.
If the government had taken a leaf out of the NZ (or Taiwan) book and closed the borders at the first signs of infection in February last year we could well be looking at only a few hundred deaths and Brexit Britain lauded as the Covid success story of the Western World. As it however, the vaccine rollout notwithstanding, we are going to be one of the worst affected in both human and economic terms. And much of the misery was avoidable.
I don't think it's possible to compare UK to NZ. The latter is far more remote.
Incorrect, the UK is an island nation. We can make ourselves as remote as we choose to.
The distance between NZ and the rest of the world means that cutting off flying there, cuts off only tourism.
The UK is economy is a lot more tightly integrated with a bunch of foreign types, a long rock throw to right. And the rest of the world. So cutting off flying (and ferries) would be a very considerably bigger undertaking, in terms of the damage it would do.
I seem to recall a discussion about this recently.
I guess the British are no longer a “freedom-loving” people. Perhaps they never were.
We never have been mate, it's a nation of daily mail reading curtain twitching c***s, now the whole country has realised they are the majority.
Look at the idiotic reporting of Boris' 7 mile bike ride. The media couldn't wait to stick the boot in over what, to anyone who cycles, is a pretty short bike ride.
As a young consultant I worked with a bunch of Brits and a few Europeans in an office in Mayfair.
The Polish guy used to say that Britain was a complete nanny state and the Brits used to scoff and tell him he was an idiot.
But he was right.
I loathe curtain-twitching. We are less curtain-twitchy in NZ, perhaps because we are much less densely populated.
It's one of the reasons I love London so much, it's still the most free part of the country. One of my friends from up north said she loves it here because she can be anonymous in London but never could where she's from.
Small towns are interesting - both good and bad. The one where people address you by name, having never previously met you, can startle.
I reckon that if the Germans had invaded, 1/3rd would have taken to the hills to fight them. 1/3rd wouldn't have noticed, unless the football was interrupted. The other 1/3rd would have been queuing round the block to sign up with the Germans, get an armband and be in charge.
Yes, I think thats about right.
My gut feeling is that the Germans would have had a hard time in the extremities of the country - Westcountry, Wales and the Welsh Marches, rural NE/NW and Scotland, where much of the resistance would have had huge advantages over a mechanised army.
Interesting counterfactual is what would have happened to WSC. I expect he would have fled to Ireland and then Canada along with the royals, and formed a Govt in exile from there. And a Vichy style govt (led by Halifax?) would have formerly surrendered to Hitler/
The Covid surge continues in my part of Spain and indeed, elsewhere. We look to be returning to near full lockdown soon - with significant vaccine penetration unlikely before late spring at best. I hate to say it but the EU strategy on this matter has been a disaster so far.
Israel has published details of a deal to trade data with US pharmaceutical company Pfizer in return for a steady supply of its coronavirus vaccine, after concerns were expressed over possible privacy violations.
Under the arrangement, Israel will send weekly updates on the numbers of confirmed cases, hospitalisations, patients in a serious condition and those on a ventilator, as well as the number of vaccinations performed. They will be broken down by age, gender and demographic background, but “no identifiable health information” will be shared.
We should definitely have done something similar. Most of that information is already publicly available, giving Pfizer or AZ the same data from the vaccine cohort isn't a huge deal and it would have helped the whole world.
I guess the British are no longer a “freedom-loving” people. Perhaps they never were.
These contingent polls are not particularly meaningful, though.
A month before the Watergate hearings commenced (and just before the Kent State shootings) Gallup conducted a poll which showed that 76% of respondents supported the suspension of the First Amendment.
I don't think we can therefore conclude that the US did not value freedom of speech.
The Kent State shootings were in May 1970, two years before Nixon won re-election.
I guess the British are no longer a “freedom-loving” people. Perhaps they never were.
We never have been mate, it's a nation of daily mail reading curtain twitching c***s, now the whole country has realised they are the majority.
Look at the idiotic reporting of Boris' 7 mile bike ride. The media couldn't wait to stick the boot in over what, to anyone who cycles, is a pretty short bike ride.
First, it was Boris (or at least the government) who said exercise should be local. Second, it was almost certainly not a seven-mile bike ride but a car journey there, a bike ride, and a car journey back.
And in what possible definition is a car journey within your own city to a park within your own city not local?
That's a fascinating poll because people are willing to be hardcore, but note that they are slightly less enthusiastic when they realise they might be caught out.
Ironclad law: people want very severe lockdown restrictions.. for other people.
Nah, under 25s need to party, it's in their nature. This year has been a social development disaster for everyone but particularly those people under the age of 25 who are at no individual risk.
They're wasting away the best years of their life in lockdown, it is to be expected that they will break these rules. The Tatler exists to write about this stuff, I don't have any issue with it.
Everyone under the age of 50 has a lifetime of taxes to pay for this bullshit. If they want to go out and party, that's up to the government to stop with incentives.
How many of these kids live with their parents, and how many of them have contact with their grandparents?
They don’t need to party, they want to party - but sadly for them, here’s an invisible disease being passed around those who party, that is killing a thousand people a day.
The longer these idiots keep partying, the longer the ban on officially parting will be, the more old and vulnerable people will die, and the more screwed the economy will be for these kids in the future.
And that worked for a few months, then everyone saw the border was still open and we were letting in hundreds of thousands of people with no checks on whether they were infected or not so young people, not being complete idiots, realised that the government clearly gives no fucks.
Honestly, the people I speak to from that age group (juniors through work) are all clued up and all say the same thing, if they aren't going to stop people from coming here with the virus then what's the point in stopping people from living their normal lives.
It's been the single biggest error in our response to this, the whole second wave is because of insufficient border protections from July onwards.
What also hasn't helped is headlines of "old people begin to book cruises as they get vaccinated", again young people aren't stupid, they're being asked to make these big sacrifices to their personal, process and social development to save the oldies and yet those same oldies are planning holidays and cruises while everyone under 50 simply has to wait their turn. Well fuck that noise, the government fucked it up and now they are paying the price.
This should have been over after lockdown one, the border should have been secured with hotel based quarantine measures and prior appointment to enter the UK. They let this happen, these are the consequences.
If the government had taken a leaf out of the NZ (or Taiwan) book and closed the borders at the first signs of infection in February last year we could well be looking at only a few hundred deaths and Brexit Britain lauded as the Covid success story of the Western World. As it however, the vaccine rollout notwithstanding, we are going to be one of the worst affected in both human and economic terms. And much of the misery was avoidable.
I don't think it's possible to compare UK to NZ. The latter is far more remote.
Incorrect, the UK is an island nation. We can make ourselves as remote as we choose to.
The distance between NZ and the rest of the world means that cutting off flying there, cuts off only tourism.
The UK is economy is a lot more tightly integrated with a bunch of foreign types, a long rock throw to right. And the rest of the world. So cutting off flying (and ferries) would be a very considerably bigger undertaking, in terms of the damage it would do.
I seem to recall a discussion about this recently.
Yeah, they idea they would shut the borders at the very first sign of trouble is for the birds. Mind you, not shutting down after the first wave was totally idiotic.
We parachute a bunch of Brits onto a chunk of far-flung soil and then, surprise, surprise, they democratically express their wish to remain British. They could always move to Surrey.
I suppose those who think it is fine for the Falklanders and Gibraltarians to express their Britishness are fully comfortable with China shipping millions of folk into Tibet so that they can then say that the majority of residents see themselves as Chinese.
Just like we shipped millions of folk to Gibraltar and the Falklands?
Australia’s borders are likely remain closed until next year, the country’s top health chief has warned.
Brendan Murphy, the secretary of the health department, dashed hopes of a return to normality because of continuing uncertainty over whether vaccinations would stop people catching Covid-19.
“I think that we’ll go most of this year with still substantial border restrictions — even if we have a lot of the population vaccinated, we don’t know whether that will prevent transmission of the virus,” he said.
Australians have been effectively banned from leaving the country since last March, unless granted special exemption by the government on compassionate or business grounds. In 2019, by contrast, Australians made more than 11 million international trips.
That's a fascinating poll because people are willing to be hardcore, but note that they are slightly less enthusiastic when they realise they might be caught out.
Ironclad law: people want very severe lockdown restrictions.. for other people.
Nah, under 25s need to party, it's in their nature. This year has been a social development disaster for everyone but particularly those people under the age of 25 who are at no individual risk.
They're wasting away the best years of their life in lockdown, it is to be expected that they will break these rules. The Tatler exists to write about this stuff, I don't have any issue with it.
Everyone under the age of 50 has a lifetime of taxes to pay for this bullshit. If they want to go out and party, that's up to the government to stop with incentives.
How many of these kids live with their parents, and how many of them have contact with their grandparents?
They don’t need to party, they want to party - but sadly for them, here’s an invisible disease being passed around those who party, that is killing a thousand people a day.
The longer these idiots keep partying, the longer the ban on officially parting will be, the more old and vulnerable people will die, and the more screwed the economy will be for these kids in the future.
And that worked for a few months, then everyone saw the border was still open and we were letting in hundreds of thousands of people with no checks on whether they were infected or not so young people, not being complete idiots, realised that the government clearly gives no fucks.
Honestly, the people I speak to from that age group (juniors through work) are all clued up and all say the same thing, if they aren't going to stop people from coming here with the virus then what's the point in stopping people from living their normal lives.
It's been the single biggest error in our response to this, the whole second wave is because of insufficient border protections from July onwards.
What also hasn't helped is headlines of "old people begin to book cruises as they get vaccinated", again young people aren't stupid, they're being asked to make these big sacrifices to their personal, process and social development to save the oldies and yet those same oldies are planning holidays and cruises while everyone under 50 simply has to wait their turn. Well fuck that noise, the government fucked it up and now they are paying the price.
This should have been over after lockdown one, the border should have been secured with hotel based quarantine measures and prior appointment to enter the UK. They let this happen, these are the consequences.
If the government had taken a leaf out of the NZ (or Taiwan) book and closed the borders at the first signs of infection in February last year we could well be looking at only a few hundred deaths and Brexit Britain lauded as the Covid success story of the Western World. As it however, the vaccine rollout notwithstanding, we are going to be one of the worst affected in both human and economic terms. And much of the misery was avoidable.
I don't think it's possible to compare UK to NZ. The latter is far more remote.
Incorrect, the UK is an island nation. We can make ourselves as remote as we choose to.
The distance between NZ and the rest of the world means that cutting off flying there, cuts off only tourism.
The UK is economy is a lot more tightly integrated with a bunch of foreign types, a long rock throw to right. And the rest of the world. So cutting off flying (and ferries) would be a very considerably bigger undertaking, in terms of the damage it would do.
I seem to recall a discussion about this recently.
Yeah, they idea they would shut the borders at the very first sign of trouble is for the birds. Mind you, not shutting down after the first wave was totally idiotic.
I still would like too see the alternate timeline in which P. Patel announces that all entry into the country is shutdown.
5 second pause.
Then they realise that immigration has just been stopped.
I would hazard a guess that the Guardian would not have approved.
I guess the British are no longer a “freedom-loving” people. Perhaps they never were.
We never have been mate, it's a nation of daily mail reading curtain twitching c***s, now the whole country has realised they are the majority.
Look at the idiotic reporting of Boris' 7 mile bike ride. The media couldn't wait to stick the boot in over what, to anyone who cycles, is a pretty short bike ride.
First, it was Boris (or at least the government) who said exercise should be local. Second, it was almost certainly not a seven-mile bike ride but a car journey there, a bike ride, and a car journey back.
How do you know this? Is it just speculation?
8 or 14 miles is not very far on a bike, and a park is the last place you want to exercise - full of pedestrians and dogs on cycle-killer stretchy leads.
I guess the British are no longer a “freedom-loving” people. Perhaps they never were.
We never have been mate, it's a nation of daily mail reading curtain twitching c***s, now the whole country has realised they are the majority.
Look at the idiotic reporting of Boris' 7 mile bike ride. The media couldn't wait to stick the boot in over what, to anyone who cycles, is a pretty short bike ride.
First, it was Boris (or at least the government) who said exercise should be local. Second, it was almost certainly not a seven-mile bike ride but a car journey there, a bike ride, and a car journey back.
Would you have preferred that he do several loops around Parliament Square?
I'd prefer government ministers to follow the same rules they impose on the rest of us. Look up Downing Street on a map and look at the big green areas with "Park" in their names that are within spitting distance.
That's a fascinating poll because people are willing to be hardcore, but note that they are slightly less enthusiastic when they realise they might be caught out.
Ironclad law: people want very severe lockdown restrictions.. for other people.
Nah, under 25s need to party, it's in their nature. This year has been a social development disaster for everyone but particularly those people under the age of 25 who are at no individual risk.
They're wasting away the best years of their life in lockdown, it is to be expected that they will break these rules. The Tatler exists to write about this stuff, I don't have any issue with it.
Everyone under the age of 50 has a lifetime of taxes to pay for this bullshit. If they want to go out and party, that's up to the government to stop with incentives.
How many of these kids live with their parents, and how many of them have contact with their grandparents?
They don’t need to party, they want to party - but sadly for them, here’s an invisible disease being passed around those who party, that is killing a thousand people a day.
The longer these idiots keep partying, the longer the ban on officially parting will be, the more old and vulnerable people will die, and the more screwed the economy will be for these kids in the future.
And that worked for a few months, then everyone saw the border was still open and we were letting in hundreds of thousands of people with no checks on whether they were infected or not so young people, not being complete idiots, realised that the government clearly gives no fucks.
Honestly, the people I speak to from that age group (juniors through work) are all clued up and all say the same thing, if they aren't going to stop people from coming here with the virus then what's the point in stopping people from living their normal lives.
It's been the single biggest error in our response to this, the whole second wave is because of insufficient border protections from July onwards.
What also hasn't helped is headlines of "old people begin to book cruises as they get vaccinated", again young people aren't stupid, they're being asked to make these big sacrifices to their personal, process and social development to save the oldies and yet those same oldies are planning holidays and cruises while everyone under 50 simply has to wait their turn. Well fuck that noise, the government fucked it up and now they are paying the price.
This should have been over after lockdown one, the border should have been secured with hotel based quarantine measures and prior appointment to enter the UK. They let this happen, these are the consequences.
If the government had taken a leaf out of the NZ (or Taiwan) book and closed the borders at the first signs of infection in February last year we could well be looking at only a few hundred deaths and Brexit Britain lauded as the Covid success story of the Western World. As it however, the vaccine rollout notwithstanding, we are going to be one of the worst affected in both human and economic terms. And much of the misery was avoidable.
I don't think it's possible to compare UK to NZ. The latter is far more remote.
Incorrect, the UK is an island nation. We can make ourselves as remote as we choose to.
The distance between NZ and the rest of the world means that cutting off flying there, cuts off only tourism.
The UK is economy is a lot more tightly integrated with a bunch of foreign types, a long rock throw to right. And the rest of the world. So cutting off flying (and ferries) would be a very considerably bigger undertaking, in terms of the damage it would do.
I seem to recall a discussion about this recently.
Not more damaging than a second wave though. I don't think we could have done it in February of last year, but we definitely could have done it in June. By then companies had already dealt with the majority of logistics issues relating to no available flights.
This second wave and the 60-70k deaths, 6-7% GDP loss was completely avoidable. A proper border control system would have prevented it and would already be in place to prevent this Brazilian mutation which could evade the vaccine response.
The border was and still is the key to all of this.
The UK has given self-governance or independence to every territory that has asked for it - outside those being directly retained as military bases.
Aside from that I don't see what the problem is with those few remaining overseas territories that want to retain a close relationship with the UK, other than self-loathing and embarrassment.
But it's odd. It feels odd. And if it doesn't feel odd, that is odd, and just shows how insidious the effect of colonialism is, not just on those colonized but also on the citizens of the colonial power here in 2021. This is the insight I am offering.
Its not odd at all. People look at what they believe is in their best interests. In the case of the Falklands the islanders clearly believe that presently their security and economic well being is best served by being attached to the UK rather than to Argentina.
Put it this way. If the Falkland Islanders decided at some point they wanted full independence I would suggest they have far more chance of achieving that by detaching themselves from British rule than they would be trying to detach themselves from Argentine rule.
I'm not talking about the Islanders wanting to stay British - nothing odd about that - I'm talking about the notion of British rule over places on the other side of the globe. To me this is odd and I find it odd when others don't share that feeling - and potentially telling of what they feel about Britain and Britishness. And when I say "telling" btw, I don't imply something bad lurking there. Although there might be. Further probing would be required.
You keep saying Britain rules the Falklands. How does Britain "rule" the Falkland Islands?
The Falkland Islanders rule themselves. They have their own elected government, their own governor, their own elected Parliament, their own courts, their own finance, their own taxes, their own leader.
That's a fascinating poll because people are willing to be hardcore, but note that they are slightly less enthusiastic when they realise they might be caught out.
Ironclad law: people want very severe lockdown restrictions.. for other people.
Nah, under 25s need to party, it's in their nature. This year has been a social development disaster for everyone but particularly those people under the age of 25 who are at no individual risk.
They're wasting away the best years of their life in lockdown, it is to be expected that they will break these rules. The Tatler exists to write about this stuff, I don't have any issue with it.
Everyone under the age of 50 has a lifetime of taxes to pay for this bullshit. If they want to go out and party, that's up to the government to stop with incentives.
How many of these kids live with their parents, and how many of them have contact with their grandparents?
They don’t need to party, they want to party - but sadly for them, here’s an invisible disease being passed around those who party, that is killing a thousand people a day.
The longer these idiots keep partying, the longer the ban on officially parting will be, the more old and vulnerable people will die, and the more screwed the economy will be for these kids in the future.
And that worked for a few months, then everyone saw the border was still open and we were letting in hundreds of thousands of people with no checks on whether they were infected or not so young people, not being complete idiots, realised that the government clearly gives no fucks.
Honestly, the people I speak to from that age group (juniors through work) are all clued up and all say the same thing, if they aren't going to stop people from coming here with the virus then what's the point in stopping people from living their normal lives.
It's been the single biggest error in our response to this, the whole second wave is because of insufficient border protections from July onwards.
What also hasn't helped is headlines of "old people begin to book cruises as they get vaccinated", again young people aren't stupid, they're being asked to make these big sacrifices to their personal, process and social development to save the oldies and yet those same oldies are planning holidays and cruises while everyone under 50 simply has to wait their turn. Well fuck that noise, the government fucked it up and now they are paying the price.
This should have been over after lockdown one, the border should have been secured with hotel based quarantine measures and prior appointment to enter the UK. They let this happen, these are the consequences.
If the government had taken a leaf out of the NZ (or Taiwan) book and closed the borders at the first signs of infection in February last year we could well be looking at only a few hundred deaths and Brexit Britain lauded as the Covid success story of the Western World. As it however, the vaccine rollout notwithstanding, we are going to be one of the worst affected in both human and economic terms. And much of the misery was avoidable.
I don't think it's possible to compare UK to NZ. The latter is far more remote.
Incorrect, the UK is an island nation. We can make ourselves as remote as we choose to.
The distance between NZ and the rest of the world means that cutting off flying there, cuts off only tourism.
The UK is economy is a lot more tightly integrated with a bunch of foreign types, a long rock throw to right. And the rest of the world. So cutting off flying (and ferries) would be a very considerably bigger undertaking, in terms of the damage it would do.
I seem to recall a discussion about this recently.
Yeah, they idea they would shut the borders at the very first sign of trouble is for the birds. Mind you, not shutting down after the first wave was totally idiotic.
I still would like too see the alternate timeline in which P. Patel announces that all entry into the country is shutdown.
5 second pause.
Then they realise that immigration has just been stopped.
I would hazard a guess that the Guardian would not have approved.
A Tory government shouldn't fear bad headlines in the Guardian, it should relish them. It's a sign that they are doing something right.
That's a fascinating poll because people are willing to be hardcore, but note that they are slightly less enthusiastic when they realise they might be caught out.
Ironclad law: people want very severe lockdown restrictions.. for other people.
Nah, under 25s need to party, it's in their nature. This year has been a social development disaster for everyone but particularly those people under the age of 25 who are at no individual risk.
They're wasting away the best years of their life in lockdown, it is to be expected that they will break these rules. The Tatler exists to write about this stuff, I don't have any issue with it.
Everyone under the age of 50 has a lifetime of taxes to pay for this bullshit. If they want to go out and party, that's up to the government to stop with incentives.
How many of these kids live with their parents, and how many of them have contact with their grandparents?
They don’t need to party, they want to party - but sadly for them, here’s an invisible disease being passed around those who party, that is killing a thousand people a day.
The longer these idiots keep partying, the longer the ban on officially parting will be, the more old and vulnerable people will die, and the more screwed the economy will be for these kids in the future.
And that worked for a few months, then everyone saw the border was still open and we were letting in hundreds of thousands of people with no checks on whether they were infected or not so young people, not being complete idiots, realised that the government clearly gives no fucks.
Honestly, the people I speak to from that age group (juniors through work) are all clued up and all say the same thing, if they aren't going to stop people from coming here with the virus then what's the point in stopping people from living their normal lives.
It's been the single biggest error in our response to this, the whole second wave is because of insufficient border protections from July onwards.
What also hasn't helped is headlines of "old people begin to book cruises as they get vaccinated", again young people aren't stupid, they're being asked to make these big sacrifices to their personal, process and social development to save the oldies and yet those same oldies are planning holidays and cruises while everyone under 50 simply has to wait their turn. Well fuck that noise, the government fucked it up and now they are paying the price.
This should have been over after lockdown one, the border should have been secured with hotel based quarantine measures and prior appointment to enter the UK. They let this happen, these are the consequences.
If the government had taken a leaf out of the NZ (or Taiwan) book and closed the borders at the first signs of infection in February last year we could well be looking at only a few hundred deaths and Brexit Britain lauded as the Covid success story of the Western World. As it however, the vaccine rollout notwithstanding, we are going to be one of the worst affected in both human and economic terms. And much of the misery was avoidable.
I don't think it's possible to compare UK to NZ. The latter is far more remote.
Incorrect, the UK is an island nation. We can make ourselves as remote as we choose to.
The distance between NZ and the rest of the world means that cutting off flying there, cuts off only tourism.
The UK is economy is a lot more tightly integrated with a bunch of foreign types, a long rock throw to right. And the rest of the world. So cutting off flying (and ferries) would be a very considerably bigger undertaking, in terms of the damage it would do.
I seem to recall a discussion about this recently.
Not more damaging than a second wave though. I don't think we could have done it in February of last year, but we definitely could have done it in June. By then companies had already dealt with the majority of logistics issues relating to no available flights.
This second wave and the 60-70k deaths, 6-7% GDP loss was completely avoidable. A proper border control system would have prevented it and would already be in place to prevent this Brazilian mutation which could evade the vaccine response.
The border was and still is the key to all of this.
I guess the British are no longer a “freedom-loving” people. Perhaps they never were.
We never have been mate, it's a nation of daily mail reading curtain twitching c***s, now the whole country has realised they are the majority.
Look at the idiotic reporting of Boris' 7 mile bike ride. The media couldn't wait to stick the boot in over what, to anyone who cycles, is a pretty short bike ride.
First, it was Boris (or at least the government) who said exercise should be local. Second, it was almost certainly not a seven-mile bike ride but a car journey there, a bike ride, and a car journey back.
Would you have preferred that he do several loops around Parliament Square?
I'd prefer government ministers to follow the same rules they impose on the rest of us. Look up Downing Street on a map and look at the big green areas with "Park" in their names that are within spitting distance.
They are following the rules, he went to a local park in his own city.
Does it say you have to go to the closest park? Don't be a dickhead.
Imagine making that claim if your parents lived in a £3m house
There is an equally obnoxious type, who claims to have gone to public school x, adopts the accent etc. And very often behaves like the worst possible stereotyped Public School Scumbag imaginable.
That's a fascinating poll because people are willing to be hardcore, but note that they are slightly less enthusiastic when they realise they might be caught out.
Ironclad law: people want very severe lockdown restrictions.. for other people.
Nah, under 25s need to party, it's in their nature. This year has been a social development disaster for everyone but particularly those people under the age of 25 who are at no individual risk.
They're wasting away the best years of their life in lockdown, it is to be expected that they will break these rules. The Tatler exists to write about this stuff, I don't have any issue with it.
Everyone under the age of 50 has a lifetime of taxes to pay for this bullshit. If they want to go out and party, that's up to the government to stop with incentives.
How many of these kids live with their parents, and how many of them have contact with their grandparents?
They don’t need to party, they want to party - but sadly for them, here’s an invisible disease being passed around those who party, that is killing a thousand people a day.
The longer these idiots keep partying, the longer the ban on officially parting will be, the more old and vulnerable people will die, and the more screwed the economy will be for these kids in the future.
And that worked for a few months, then everyone saw the border was still open and we were letting in hundreds of thousands of people with no checks on whether they were infected or not so young people, not being complete idiots, realised that the government clearly gives no fucks.
Honestly, the people I speak to from that age group (juniors through work) are all clued up and all say the same thing, if they aren't going to stop people from coming here with the virus then what's the point in stopping people from living their normal lives.
It's been the single biggest error in our response to this, the whole second wave is because of insufficient border protections from July onwards.
What also hasn't helped is headlines of "old people begin to book cruises as they get vaccinated", again young people aren't stupid, they're being asked to make these big sacrifices to their personal, process and social development to save the oldies and yet those same oldies are planning holidays and cruises while everyone under 50 simply has to wait their turn. Well fuck that noise, the government fucked it up and now they are paying the price.
This should have been over after lockdown one, the border should have been secured with hotel based quarantine measures and prior appointment to enter the UK. They let this happen, these are the consequences.
If the government had taken a leaf out of the NZ (or Taiwan) book and closed the borders at the first signs of infection in February last year we could well be looking at only a few hundred deaths and Brexit Britain lauded as the Covid success story of the Western World. As it however, the vaccine rollout notwithstanding, we are going to be one of the worst affected in both human and economic terms. And much of the misery was avoidable.
I don't think it's possible to compare UK to NZ. The latter is far more remote.
Incorrect, the UK is an island nation. We can make ourselves as remote as we choose to.
The distance between NZ and the rest of the world means that cutting off flying there, cuts off only tourism.
The UK is economy is a lot more tightly integrated with a bunch of foreign types, a long rock throw to right. And the rest of the world. So cutting off flying (and ferries) would be a very considerably bigger undertaking, in terms of the damage it would do.
I seem to recall a discussion about this recently.
Not more damaging than a second wave though. I don't think we could have done it in February of last year, but we definitely could have done it in June. By then companies had already dealt with the majority of logistics issues relating to no available flights.
This second wave and the 60-70k deaths, 6-7% GDP loss was completely avoidable. A proper border control system would have prevented it and would already be in place to prevent this Brazilian mutation which could evade the vaccine response.
The border was and still is the key to all of this.
How would it have stopped the Kentish mutation?
That person in whom it mutated wouldn't have got it on the first instance. No infections means no mutations. The reason we're seeing so many mutations right now is that the virus is present in 20m hosts worldwide so it has got 20m opportunities to mutate.
Mr. kinabalu, the Falkland Islands are more than 900 miles away from Argentina.
Not to mention the idea that proximity equates to possession is utterly backward.
There are large chunks of France that are
- less than 900 miles from my desk - were historically ruled by this country.
If we are saying "screw the views of the inhabitants".....
Who's saying that? Pas moi.
You're saying the Argentinians have a right to dispute the Falkland Islanders self-determination because of proximity. Nothing else, just proximity. When they aren't even that close.
No. I'm agnostic. I know they have a claim but I'm not opining on how strong it is. My points are only -
If there hadn't been the invasion I think a settlement would likely have been found by this point. Probably will not happen for ages now.
Our sovereignty over a small island with a handful of inhabitants over there in the South Pacific feels odd in 2021. If it doesn't feel odd to you it's because British colonialism lives on in your mind as nothing unusual. Brit rule over a far-flung island just off the coast of Argentina? Well of course!
Please stop saying "just off the coast", it's hundreds of miles.
And why does being part or Britain = colonialism (evil obvs) whereas being part of Argentina = perfectly fine.
Because kinabalu thinks it looks weird because...because, actually I'm still not sure. It's been pointed out the problems with the 'It's close by' argument (welcome back to the UK Ireland, goodbye independent Malta), and take away having an issue looking at a map and going 'Huh, that's a long way from Britain' and what arguments remain to think it looks odd?
How did Russia ever get to be a state? It sure looks odd to be that big, most nations are nowhere near that big, and since most states are around size X, no one should be able to be bigger than that.
Russia got to be the size it is by very aggressive colonialism.
Would have been even bigger if they hadn't sold off Alaska on the cheap.
We parachute a bunch of Brits onto a chunk of far-flung soil and then, surprise, surprise, they democratically express their wish to remain British. They could always move to Surrey.
I suppose those who think it is fine for the Falklanders and Gibraltarians to express their Britishness are fully comfortable with China shipping millions of folk into Tibet so that they can then say that the majority of residents see themselves as Chinese.
"We" haven't parachuted anyone onto the islands. They were born their. Their parents were born their. Their parents parents were born there. 🙄
We parachute a bunch of Brits onto a chunk of far-flung soil and then, surprise, surprise, they democratically express their wish to remain British. They could always move to Surrey.
I suppose those who think it is fine for the Falklanders and Gibraltarians to express their Britishness are fully comfortable with China shipping millions of folk into Tibet so that they can then say that the majority of residents see themselves as Chinese.
"We" haven't parachuted anyone onto the islands. They were born their. Their parents were born their. Their parents parents were born there. 🙄
Mr. kinabalu, the Falkland Islands are more than 900 miles away from Argentina.
Not to mention the idea that proximity equates to possession is utterly backward.
There are large chunks of France that are
- less than 900 miles from my desk - were historically ruled by this country.
If we are saying "screw the views of the inhabitants".....
So what happens in North Korea drops 1,000 settlers on Rockall and has a snap referendum on sovereignty?
We'd have to rescue them pretty quickly. There would be more than one person per metre squared, on rather rough terrain.
Didn't Scotland and Ireland have a squabble over this one only a couple of weeks ago?
I have a feeling the squabble was about St Kilda, not Rockall. Uninhabitable islands don't get you territorial claims under UNCLOS. I guess the issue is whether St Kilda is inhabitable. I understand Iceland and Denmark (via the Faroe Islands) also have claims on this bit of the Atlantic.
I guess the British are no longer a “freedom-loving” people. Perhaps they never were.
These contingent polls are not particularly meaningful, though.
A month before the Watergate hearings commenced (and just before the Kent State shootings) Gallup conducted a poll which showed that 76% of respondents supported the suspension of the First Amendment.
I don't think we can therefore conclude that the US did not value freedom of speech.
The Kent State shootings were in May 1970, two years before Nixon won re-election.
The UK has given self-governance or independence to every territory that has asked for it - outside those being directly retained as military bases.
Aside from that I don't see what the problem is with those few remaining overseas territories that want to retain a close relationship with the UK, other than self-loathing and embarrassment.
But it's odd. It feels odd. And if it doesn't feel odd, that is odd, and just shows how insidious the effect of colonialism is, not just on those colonized but also on the citizens of the colonial power here in 2021. This is the insight I am offering.
I think, ironically, that the feeling you describe is part of the colonial problem. The way to deal with the legacy of colonialism is to let the people living in a place decide what to next.
After all, telling them what to do, with the threat of force (behind all government actions) from X thousand miles away - what is that, but more colonialism?
Here's chance for me to use an old chestnut and although I hate old chestnuts I think just this once I will - it's more complicated than that.
If you've colonized a place and filled it with people from the Mothership, or you've so dominated that it has become a grand scale example of Stockholm Syndrome, then I don't think you can just say, "Ok, there's only one thing that counts here and that is what flag the majority want to be under." Although this has to be high in the mix obviously.
The UK has given self-governance or independence to every territory that has asked for it - outside those being directly retained as military bases.
Aside from that I don't see what the problem is with those few remaining overseas territories that want to retain a close relationship with the UK, other than self-loathing and embarrassment.
But it's odd. It feels odd. And if it doesn't feel odd, that is odd, and just shows how insidious the effect of colonialism is, not just on those colonized but also on the citizens of the colonial power here in 2021. This is the insight I am offering.
Is odd bad?
I'd always thought it was a positive British trait to be comfortable with things that were a bit odd, but were not worth the bother of rationalizing. I looked forward to making the world better by creating more odd anomalies that somehow worked for people better than the alternative.
Being upset with things that are a bit odd is a one-way route to lots of unnecessary aggro. And it diverts attention from things that are wrong and need to change.
Who benefits from the Falklands becoming part of Argentina? Who suffers?
Better to let the odd times continue.
No, odd does not mean bad. Course not. Tons of examples of benign oddities. Greta Green? Say no more. But it doesn't mean good either and here we're talking about a long running dispute over the sovereignty of a territory in the South Pacific. A war over it too. So it's not like some endearingly eccentric state of affairs. I'm not overly agitated about it, not at all, but I would not set my face against a compromise being found to resolve the matter.
South Atlantic.
Maybe he's confused with the Pitcairns, which were actually discovered by Spain (well, a Portuguese explorer working for Spain) 160 years before a Brit found them
The Falklands were French before they were British, and passed on by the French to the Spanish. Our claim arises from an invasion in 1833.
The islands are a boring edge case. The most interesting thing about the whole thing is the ad hoc promotion of self-determination to an Immutable Tory Truth, when it started life with Marx and then got adopted by the USA as a way of trolling the British out of their empire.
They then did a reverse takeover of England and, once the Normans had been "normalised", the proto-French state then booted us in turn out of Normandy. Not without a couple of sequels, I hasten to add - Henry V getting closest to laying the smack down.
They couldn't, or didn't care enough, with the Channel Islands. So it's simply a fascinating historical legacy stretching back nearly 1,000 years.
The links between Normandy and England were considerable in the early 11th Century. The Saxon royal family and nobility had fled to Normandy and Hungary after the Battle of Assandun and the death of Edmund Ironside which left Cnut (or Canute) in control of England.
The key player here is Emma of Normandy who had first married the Saxon King Aethelred II (the "Unready") - Edward the Confessor was their older son. After Aethelred's death, Emma married Cnut - they had a son, Harthacnut, who was briefly English King from 1040 to 1042.
Edward the Confessor fled with Emma to Normandy in 1016 and Robert I (the Conqueror's father) had planned an invasion in 1034 to restore Edward the Confessor but it got blown off course.
The problem after 1042 was the rise of the Godwin family who opposed the Norman influence of Edward the Confessor. 1066 was essentially the resolution of the internal English civil war between the pro-Norman faction and the pro-Viking faction. Not all the Saxon nobility were dispossessed by the victorious Normand - many were.
Again, you have to remember England in 1066 was the most prosperous state of northern and western Europe. There was a thriving wool industry and export trade and English silver was the basic currency for much of Europe (a bit like the Euro only different).
The UK has given self-governance or independence to every territory that has asked for it - outside those being directly retained as military bases.
Aside from that I don't see what the problem is with those few remaining overseas territories that want to retain a close relationship with the UK, other than self-loathing and embarrassment.
But it's odd. It feels odd. And if it doesn't feel odd, that is odd, and just shows how insidious the effect of colonialism is, not just on those colonized but also on the citizens of the colonial power here in 2021. This is the insight I am offering.
Its not odd at all. People look at what they believe is in their best interests. In the case of the Falklands the islanders clearly believe that presently their security and economic well being is best served by being attached to the UK rather than to Argentina.
Put it this way. If the Falkland Islanders decided at some point they wanted full independence I would suggest they have far more chance of achieving that by detaching themselves from British rule than they would be trying to detach themselves from Argentine rule.
I'm not talking about the Islanders wanting to stay British - nothing odd about that - I'm talking about the notion of British rule over places on the other side of the globe. To me this is odd and I find it odd when others don't share that feeling - and potentially telling of what they feel about Britain and Britishness. And when I say "telling" btw, I don't imply something bad lurking there. Although there might be. Further probing would be required.
There are many and varied reasons - almost none of them associated with any old feelings about Empire - why countries might think it good to retain control of far flung places. One of the most obvious for me comes in the form of environmental management. Britain is now responsible for the largest marine protected zone in the world in the Indian Ocean and is responsible for a total of 6.8 million Km2 of marine protected zones around the world.
Incidentally on the last thread discussion of intellectual Prime Ministers the only real intellectual among them was missed - Arthur James Balfour, who wrote books of academic philosophy in his spare time and was compared by contemporaries to Mill and later, Russell.
Mind, he was a pretty shite Prime Minister and is probably better remembered today for his time as Foreign Secretary in the later years of World War I, which encompassed the Balfour Declaration and the Treaty of Versailles.
Not much to be proud of there, as things turned out.
He was also, incidentally, the brother-in-law of Lord Rayleigh, Nobel Prize winner for physics 1904.
And had an interest in psychic research.
A strange man, in many ways, but there is no doubt he was very bright indeed.
My personal favourite story was when in 1923 the King asked for his advice when choosing between two candidates for PM. The choice lay between the bourgeois, boring, inexperienced Baldwin and the temperamental, able, very experienced but slightly crazy George, Lord Curzon, who married a rich American, Grace Duggan, to get her hands on her -assets. Balfour, who hated Curzon, advised the King it was necessary the PM should be in the Commons and therefore Curzon should not be chosen.
That evening he visited a friend of his who immediately asked, ‘Will dear George be chosen?’ ‘No, replied Balfour with what was described as ‘feline satisfaction,’ ‘dear George will not.’ ‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,’ said his hostess. ‘He will be so disappointed.’ ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ replied Balfour. ‘He may have lost the hope of glory but he still possesses the means of Grace.’
Rayleigh was interested in psychic matters too. Not unusual a century ago, of course.
Incidentally on the last thread discussion of intellectual Prime Ministers the only real intellectual among them was missed - Arthur James Balfour, who wrote books of academic philosophy in his spare time and was compared by contemporaries to Mill and later, Russell.
Mind, he was a pretty shite Prime Minister and is probably better remembered today for his time as Foreign Secretary in the later years of World War I, which encompassed the Balfour Declaration and the Treaty of Versailles.
Not much to be proud of there, as things turned out.
He was also, incidentally, the brother-in-law of Lord Rayleigh, Nobel Prize winner for physics 1904.
And had an interest in psychic research.
A strange man, in many ways, but there is no doubt he was very bright indeed.
My personal favourite story was when in 1923 the King asked for his advice when choosing between two candidates for PM. The choice lay between the bourgeois, boring, inexperienced Baldwin and the temperamental, able, very experienced but slightly crazy George, Lord Curzon, who married a rich American, Grace Duggan, to get her hands on her -assets. Balfour, who hated Curzon, advised the King it was necessary the PM should be in the Commons and therefore Curzon should not be chosen.
That evening he visited a friend of his who immediately asked, ‘Will dear George be chosen?’ ‘No, replied Balfour with what was described as ‘feline satisfaction,’ ‘dear George will not.’ ‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,’ said his hostess. ‘He will be so disappointed.’ ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ replied Balfour. ‘He may have lost the hope of glory but he still possesses the means of Grace.’
Rayleigh was interested in psychic matters too. Not unusual a century ago, of course.
Incidentally on the last thread discussion of intellectual Prime Ministers the only real intellectual among them was missed - Arthur James Balfour, who wrote books of academic philosophy in his spare time and was compared by contemporaries to Mill and later, Russell.
Mind, he was a pretty shite Prime Minister and is probably better remembered today for his time as Foreign Secretary in the later years of World War I, which encompassed the Balfour Declaration and the Treaty of Versailles.
Not much to be proud of there, as things turned out.
He was also, incidentally, the brother-in-law of Lord Rayleigh, Nobel Prize winner for physics 1904.
And had an interest in psychic research.
A strange man, in many ways, but there is no doubt he was very bright indeed.
My personal favourite story was when in 1923 the King asked for his advice when choosing between two candidates for PM. The choice lay between the bourgeois, boring, inexperienced Baldwin and the temperamental, able, very experienced but slightly crazy George, Lord Curzon, who married a rich American, Grace Duggan, to get her hands on her -assets. Balfour, who hated Curzon, advised the King it was necessary the PM should be in the Commons and therefore Curzon should not be chosen.
That evening he visited a friend of his who immediately asked, ‘Will dear George be chosen?’ ‘No, replied Balfour with what was described as ‘feline satisfaction,’ ‘dear George will not.’ ‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,’ said his hostess. ‘He will be so disappointed.’ ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ replied Balfour. ‘He may have lost the hope of glory but he still possesses the means of Grace.’
Rayleigh was interested in psychic matters too. Not unusual a century ago, of course.
The UK has given self-governance or independence to every territory that has asked for it - outside those being directly retained as military bases.
Aside from that I don't see what the problem is with those few remaining overseas territories that want to retain a close relationship with the UK, other than self-loathing and embarrassment.
But it's odd. It feels odd. And if it doesn't feel odd, that is odd, and just shows how insidious the effect of colonialism is, not just on those colonized but also on the citizens of the colonial power here in 2021. This is the insight I am offering.
I think, ironically, that the feeling you describe is part of the colonial problem. The way to deal with the legacy of colonialism is to let the people living in a place decide what to next.
After all, telling them what to do, with the threat of force (behind all government actions) from X thousand miles away - what is that, but more colonialism?
Here's chance for me to use an old chestnut and although I hate old chestnuts I think just this once I will - it's more complicated than that.
If you've colonized a place and filled it with people from the Mothership, or you've so dominated that it has become a grand scale example of Stockholm Syndrome, then I don't think you can just say, "Ok, there's only one thing that counts here and that is what flag the majority want to be under." Although this has to be high in the mix obviously.
No it is not. It is history.
The only thing that matters is self-determination. Nothing else matters.
Should the Argentinians be repatriated back to Spain? Should descendents of slaves be repatriated back to Africa?
Either you believe in self-determination or you do not. Do you?
Maybe he's confused with the Pitcairns, which were actually discovered by Spain (well, a Portuguese explorer working for Spain) 160 years before a Brit found them
The Falklands were French before they were British, and passed on by the French to the Spanish. Our claim arises from an invasion in 1833.
The islands are a boring edge case. The most interesting thing about the whole thing is the ad hoc promotion of self-determination to an Immutable Tory Truth, when it started life with Marx and then got adopted by the USA as a way of trolling the British out of their empire.
You best edit Wiki then, if you know better
"The Falklands remained uninhabited until the 1764 establishment of Port Louis on East Falkland by French captain Louis Antoine de Bougainville and the 1766 foundation of Port Egmont on Saunders Island by British captain John MacBride. Whether or not the settlements were aware of each other's existence is debated by historians. In 1766, France surrendered its claim on the Falklands to Spain, which renamed the French colony Puerto Soledad the following year. Problems began when Spain discovered and captured Port Egmont in 1770. War was narrowly avoided by its restitution to Britain in 1771."
I guess the British are no longer a “freedom-loving” people. Perhaps they never were.
We never have been mate, it's a nation of daily mail reading curtain twitching c***s, now the whole country has realised they are the majority.
Look at the idiotic reporting of Boris' 7 mile bike ride. The media couldn't wait to stick the boot in over what, to anyone who cycles, is a pretty short bike ride.
First, it was Boris (or at least the government) who said exercise should be local. Second, it was almost certainly not a seven-mile bike ride but a car journey there, a bike ride, and a car journey back.
How do you know this? Is it just speculation?
8 or 14 miles is not very far on a bike, and a park is the last place you want to exercise - full of pedestrians and dogs on cycle-killer stretchy leads.
If Johnson had not taken the car it would have been confirmed by Downing Street.
As someone of a similar age, height, sedentary lifestyle, and probably fitness level to Johnson (although considerably slimmer, even after his weight loss) believe me 14 miles is very far on a bike.
The UK has given self-governance or independence to every territory that has asked for it - outside those being directly retained as military bases.
Aside from that I don't see what the problem is with those few remaining overseas territories that want to retain a close relationship with the UK, other than self-loathing and embarrassment.
But it's odd. It feels odd. And if it doesn't feel odd, that is odd, and just shows how insidious the effect of colonialism is, not just on those colonized but also on the citizens of the colonial power here in 2021. This is the insight I am offering.
Is odd bad?
I'd always thought it was a positive British trait to be comfortable with things that were a bit odd, but were not worth the bother of rationalizing. I looked forward to making the world better by creating more odd anomalies that somehow worked for people better than the alternative.
Being upset with things that are a bit odd is a one-way route to lots of unnecessary aggro. And it diverts attention from things that are wrong and need to change.
Who benefits from the Falklands becoming part of Argentina? Who suffers?
Better to let the odd times continue.
No, odd does not mean bad. Course not. Tons of examples of benign oddities. Greta Green? Say no more. But it doesn't mean good either and here we're talking about a long running dispute over the sovereignty of a territory in the South Pacific. A war over it too. So it's not like some endearingly eccentric state of affairs. I'm not overly agitated about it, not at all, but I would not set my face against a compromise being found to resolve the matter.
South Atlantic.
Maybe he's confused with the Pitcairns, which were actually discovered by Spain (well, a Portuguese explorer working for Spain) 160 years before a Brit found them
The Falklands were French before they were British, and passed on by the French to the Spanish. Our claim arises from an invasion in 1833.
The islands are a boring edge case. The most interesting thing about the whole thing is the ad hoc promotion of self-determination to an Immutable Tory Truth, when it started life with Marx and then got adopted by the USA as a way of trolling the British out of their empire.
I bet the US regret that one given their experiences in SE Asia. Nice when things turn out that way.
The youngest person convicted of terrorism in Britain - who plotted to murder police officers in Australia on Anzac Day aged 14 - can be freed from jail, the Parole Board has ruled.
The 20-year-old, who can only be identified as RXG, sent encrypted messages instructing an Australian jihadist to launch attacks in 2015.
He was jailed for life that year after admitting inciting terrorism overseas.
I guess the British are no longer a “freedom-loving” people. Perhaps they never were.
We never have been mate, it's a nation of daily mail reading curtain twitching c***s, now the whole country has realised they are the majority.
Look at the idiotic reporting of Boris' 7 mile bike ride. The media couldn't wait to stick the boot in over what, to anyone who cycles, is a pretty short bike ride.
First, it was Boris (or at least the government) who said exercise should be local. Second, it was almost certainly not a seven-mile bike ride but a car journey there, a bike ride, and a car journey back.
How do you know this? Is it just speculation?
8 or 14 miles is not very far on a bike, and a park is the last place you want to exercise - full of pedestrians and dogs on cycle-killer stretchy leads.
If Johnson had not taken the car it would have been confirmed by Downing Street.
As someone of a similar age, height, sedentary lifestyle, and probably fitness level to Johnson (although considerably slimmer, even after his weight loss) believe me 14 miles is very far on a bike.
Would it have? Are the PM's transport arrangements generally commented on?
Maybe he's confused with the Pitcairns, which were actually discovered by Spain (well, a Portuguese explorer working for Spain) 160 years before a Brit found them
The Falklands were French before they were British, and passed on by the French to the Spanish. Our claim arises from an invasion in 1833.
The islands are a boring edge case. The most interesting thing about the whole thing is the ad hoc promotion of self-determination to an Immutable Tory Truth, when it started life with Marx and then got adopted by the USA as a way of trolling the British out of their empire.
You best edit Wiki then, if you know better
"The Falklands remained uninhabited until the 1764 establishment of Port Louis on East Falkland by French captain Louis Antoine de Bougainville and the 1766 foundation of Port Egmont on Saunders Island by British captain John MacBride. Whether or not the settlements were aware of each other's existence is debated by historians. In 1766, France surrendered its claim on the Falklands to Spain, which renamed the French colony Puerto Soledad the following year. Problems began when Spain discovered and captured Port Egmont in 1770. War was narrowly avoided by its restitution to Britain in 1771."
Bold italics is very good, but did all this happen BC, or does 1764 come before 1766? Our claim to rank above Spain (see?) rests de facto on the invasion (that thing Galtieri did) of 1833.
The UK has given self-governance or independence to every territory that has asked for it - outside those being directly retained as military bases.
Aside from that I don't see what the problem is with those few remaining overseas territories that want to retain a close relationship with the UK, other than self-loathing and embarrassment.
But it's odd. It feels odd. And if it doesn't feel odd, that is odd, and just shows how insidious the effect of colonialism is, not just on those colonized but also on the citizens of the colonial power here in 2021. This is the insight I am offering.
Is odd bad?
I'd always thought it was a positive British trait to be comfortable with things that were a bit odd, but were not worth the bother of rationalizing. I looked forward to making the world better by creating more odd anomalies that somehow worked for people better than the alternative.
Being upset with things that are a bit odd is a one-way route to lots of unnecessary aggro. And it diverts attention from things that are wrong and need to change.
Who benefits from the Falklands becoming part of Argentina? Who suffers?
Better to let the odd times continue.
No, odd does not mean bad. Course not. Tons of examples of benign oddities. Greta Green? Say no more. But it doesn't mean good either and here we're talking about a long running dispute over the sovereignty of a territory in the South Pacific. A war over it too. So it's not like some endearingly eccentric state of affairs. I'm not overly agitated about it, not at all, but I would not set my face against a compromise being found to resolve the matter.
South Atlantic.
Maybe he's confused with the Pitcairns, which were actually discovered by Spain (well, a Portuguese explorer working for Spain) 160 years before a Brit found them
The Falklands were French before they were British, and passed on by the French to the Spanish. Our claim arises from an invasion in 1833.
The islands are a boring edge case. The most interesting thing about the whole thing is the ad hoc promotion of self-determination to an Immutable Tory Truth, when it started life with Marx and then got adopted by the USA as a way of trolling the British out of their empire.
There's nothing ad hoc about it, self-determination has been a guiding principle since World War Two.
It is the decent and civilised thing to believe in and shame on anyone who tries to deny self-determination to anyone - whether it be jackboots sending tanks into Scotland, or Galtieri sending ships into the Falklands.
More pointless grandstanding from Keir Starmer this morning.
And I voted for him.
In fairness, when something is going well, pointless grandstanding is what LOTOs do.
And I would never vote for him.
Yep but this is a very perilous time for Labour. I've seen it all-too-often. It happened with the Falklands War, a war I hasten to add with which I profoundly disagreed and still do. The mood in the country went all 'whoopee.' A LOTO who then comes across as a miserable fart will be annihilated in the following election.
I can see this coming. In 6 months we will have all-but-eliminated the virus from these shores and British citizens, carrying their world leading vaccine stamp, will be able to travel the world. We are in the early stages of a STUNNING success story. I've been very critical of Johnson. In many ways I loathe him but I cannot begrudge him the fact that he has achieved a quite sensational success with the vaccines. And Brexit is not the disaster so far that some thought it would be. Indeed, our vaccine rollout is undoubtedly helped by being out of the EU.
The press, especially, the tabloids are going to be gung-ho. Today's fronts are but a mere foretaste of the salivation with which the leader writers are going to get behind Boris.
That's a fascinating poll because people are willing to be hardcore, but note that they are slightly less enthusiastic when they realise they might be caught out.
Ironclad law: people want very severe lockdown restrictions.. for other people.
Nah, under 25s need to party, it's in their nature. This year has been a social development disaster for everyone but particularly those people under the age of 25 who are at no individual risk.
They're wasting away the best years of their life in lockdown, it is to be expected that they will break these rules. The Tatler exists to write about this stuff, I don't have any issue with it.
Everyone under the age of 50 has a lifetime of taxes to pay for this bullshit. If they want to go out and party, that's up to the government to stop with incentives.
How many of these kids live with their parents, and how many of them have contact with their grandparents?
They don’t need to party, they want to party - but sadly for them, here’s an invisible disease being passed around those who party, that is killing a thousand people a day.
The longer these idiots keep partying, the longer the ban on officially parting will be, the more old and vulnerable people will die, and the more screwed the economy will be for these kids in the future.
And that worked for a few months, then everyone saw the border was still open and we were letting in hundreds of thousands of people with no checks on whether they were infected or not so young people, not being complete idiots, realised that the government clearly gives no fucks.
Honestly, the people I speak to from that age group (juniors through work) are all clued up and all say the same thing, if they aren't going to stop people from coming here with the virus then what's the point in stopping people from living their normal lives.
It's been the single biggest error in our response to this, the whole second wave is because of insufficient border protections from July onwards.
What also hasn't helped is headlines of "old people begin to book cruises as they get vaccinated", again young people aren't stupid, they're being asked to make these big sacrifices to their personal, process and social development to save the oldies and yet those same oldies are planning holidays and cruises while everyone under 50 simply has to wait their turn. Well fuck that noise, the government fucked it up and now they are paying the price.
This should have been over after lockdown one, the border should have been secured with hotel based quarantine measures and prior appointment to enter the UK. They let this happen, these are the consequences.
If the government had taken a leaf out of the NZ (or Taiwan) book and closed the borders at the first signs of infection in February last year we could well be looking at only a few hundred deaths and Brexit Britain lauded as the Covid success story of the Western World. As it however, the vaccine rollout notwithstanding, we are going to be one of the worst affected in both human and economic terms. And much of the misery was avoidable.
I don't think it's possible to compare UK to NZ. The latter is far more remote.
Incorrect, the UK is an island nation. We can make ourselves as remote as we choose to.
The distance between NZ and the rest of the world means that cutting off flying there, cuts off only tourism.
The UK is economy is a lot more tightly integrated with a bunch of foreign types, a long rock throw to right. And the rest of the world. So cutting off flying (and ferries) would be a very considerably bigger undertaking, in terms of the damage it would do.
I seem to recall a discussion about this recently.
Yeah, they idea they would shut the borders at the very first sign of trouble is for the birds. Mind you, not shutting down after the first wave was totally idiotic.
I still would like too see the alternate timeline in which P. Patel announces that all entry into the country is shutdown.
5 second pause.
Then they realise that immigration has just been stopped.
I would hazard a guess that the Guardian would not have approved.
A Tory government shouldn't fear bad headlines in the Guardian, it should relish them. It's a sign that they are doing something right.
It would have been quite a bit more than that - chunks of the Conservative party included.
Maybe he's confused with the Pitcairns, which were actually discovered by Spain (well, a Portuguese explorer working for Spain) 160 years before a Brit found them
The Falklands were French before they were British, and passed on by the French to the Spanish. Our claim arises from an invasion in 1833.
The islands are a boring edge case. The most interesting thing about the whole thing is the ad hoc promotion of self-determination to an Immutable Tory Truth, when it started life with Marx and then got adopted by the USA as a way of trolling the British out of their empire.
You best edit Wiki then, if you know better
"The Falklands remained uninhabited until the 1764 establishment of Port Louis on East Falkland by French captain Louis Antoine de Bougainville and the 1766 foundation of Port Egmont on Saunders Island by British captain John MacBride. Whether or not the settlements were aware of each other's existence is debated by historians. In 1766, France surrendered its claim on the Falklands to Spain, which renamed the French colony Puerto Soledad the following year. Problems began when Spain discovered and captured Port Egmont in 1770. War was narrowly avoided by its restitution to Britain in 1771."
Bold italics is very good, but did all this happen BC, or does 1764 come before 1766? Our claim to rank above Spain (see?) rests de facto on the invasion (that thing Galtieri did) of 1833.
It is irrelevant. Countries invaded each other in 1833 that was OK then.
The civilised world agreed to stop invading each other in the twenty century not the nineteenth. Galtieri was after that. Since World War Two we have relied upon self-determination to govern the world order not invasions.
Stuff happened in the past, you can't change history. All you can or should do now is campaign through the ballot box. The past is locked in.
< Our sovereignty over a small island with a handful of inhabitants over there in the South Pacific feels odd in 2021. If it doesn't feel odd to you it's because British colonialism lives on in your mind as nothing unusual. Brit rule over a far-flung island just off the coast of Argentina? Well of course!
There's nothing particularly unusual about states having ownership of land some way from main territory. You might as well ask if it is unusual that any state is the shape it is, since they have certainly not always been fixed and as we know many modern states have rather peculiar borders that have caused much difficulty over the years. Turkey is predominantly Asia Minor, should the land over the Bosphorous be removed from it? What, don't you think it odd that 95% of the country is on one continent and 5% on another?
You seem fixated on it being 'odd' to have some islands a long way away under the aegis of the British state, but it really isn't that odd to have far flung territories.
What does how it looks or feels matter? What matters in the modern age is what people think, especially settled, historical populations.
Everything about political geography is odd so nothing is? I suppose you could view things this way. But for me this not a binary matter of "odd" versus "not at all odd". So, your example, I don't find the shape of Turkey to be as odd as a British island in the South Pacific. This could be because I'm British not Turkish but I don't think so. As I said, I think it works the other way. You're more likely to be blinded to strange aspects of your own country.
I see last week's scenes of overcrowding on the London Underground have reached Government with Grant Shapps trying to get the construction industry to change its working practices.
As East London is the cheapest part of capital to find rental property, it's no surprise a lot of construction workers travel to sites in other parts of the capital and beyond from stations like East Ham, Canning Town and the like.
When I used to travel, you would like scores of construction workers (with their equipment) on the platform at East Ham before 7am and a lot of them would move to the Jubilee at West Ham.
Last Thursday's problem was caused, I believe, by staff sickness meaning two or three Services were taken out leaving a huge gap between trains and ensuring the first one in was rammed.
TFL is obliged, as part of its cash bailout from the Government, to run normal services all day so empty tubes go up and down the lines in mid-morning and early afternoon. The problem is one of driver resources and capacity. The Jubilee Line is a heavily over-crowded line - the signalling is old and can't accommodate the frequency of service (one a minute) you would need. Any gaps in drivers or trains leads to big problems in the morning and evening peak periods.
< Our sovereignty over a small island with a handful of inhabitants over there in the South Pacific feels odd in 2021. If it doesn't feel odd to you it's because British colonialism lives on in your mind as nothing unusual. Brit rule over a far-flung island just off the coast of Argentina? Well of course!
There's nothing particularly unusual about states having ownership of land some way from main territory. You might as well ask if it is unusual that any state is the shape it is, since they have certainly not always been fixed and as we know many modern states have rather peculiar borders that have caused much difficulty over the years. Turkey is predominantly Asia Minor, should the land over the Bosphorous be removed from it? What, don't you think it odd that 95% of the country is on one continent and 5% on another?
You seem fixated on it being 'odd' to have some islands a long way away under the aegis of the British state, but it really isn't that odd to have far flung territories.
What does how it looks or feels matter? What matters in the modern age is what people think, especially settled, historical populations.
Everything about political geography is odd so nothing is? I suppose you could view things this way. But for me this not a binary matter of "odd" versus "not at all odd". So, for example, your example, I don't find the shape of Turkey to be as odd as a British island in the South Pacific. This could be that I'm British not Turkish but I don't think so. As I said, I think it works the other way. You're more likely to be blinded to strange aspects of your own country.
Why do you keep calling it "a British island" or "British rule" rather than a self-governing, self-ruling island that happens to pool some sovereignty because it wants to do so with Britain?
They have their own Parliament and their own democracy. They rule themselves. When will you stop ignoring that and accept that?
The UK has given self-governance or independence to every territory that has asked for it - outside those being directly retained as military bases.
Aside from that I don't see what the problem is with those few remaining overseas territories that want to retain a close relationship with the UK, other than self-loathing and embarrassment.
But it's odd. It feels odd. And if it doesn't feel odd, that is odd, and just shows how insidious the effect of colonialism is, not just on those colonized but also on the citizens of the colonial power here in 2021. This is the insight I am offering.
Is odd bad?
I'd always thought it was a positive British trait to be comfortable with things that were a bit odd, but were not worth the bother of rationalizing. I looked forward to making the world better by creating more odd anomalies that somehow worked for people better than the alternative.
Being upset with things that are a bit odd is a one-way route to lots of unnecessary aggro. And it diverts attention from things that are wrong and need to change.
Who benefits from the Falklands becoming part of Argentina? Who suffers?
Better to let the odd times continue.
No, odd does not mean bad. Course not. Tons of examples of benign oddities. Greta Green? Say no more. But it doesn't mean good either and here we're talking about a long running dispute over the sovereignty of a territory in the South Pacific. A war over it too. So it's not like some endearingly eccentric state of affairs. I'm not overly agitated about it, not at all, but I would not set my face against a compromise being found to resolve the matter.
South Atlantic.
Maybe he's confused with the Pitcairns, which were actually discovered by Spain (well, a Portuguese explorer working for Spain) 160 years before a Brit found them
The Falklands were French before they were British, and passed on by the French to the Spanish. Our claim arises from an invasion in 1833.
The islands are a boring edge case. The most interesting thing about the whole thing is the ad hoc promotion of self-determination to an Immutable Tory Truth, when it started life with Marx and then got adopted by the USA as a way of trolling the British out of their empire.
There's nothing ad hoc about it, self-determination has been a guiding principle since World War Two.
It is the decent and civilised thing to believe in and shame on anyone who tries to deny self-determination to anyone - whether it be jackboots sending tanks into Scotland, or Galtieri sending ships into the Falklands.
Yes, as I said. The USA sponsored it as a way of trolling the British. It is a principle with some limited utility in some circumstances.
Mr. kinabalu, the Falkland Islands are more than 900 miles away from Argentina.
Not to mention the idea that proximity equates to possession is utterly backward.
There are large chunks of France that are
- less than 900 miles from my desk - were historically ruled by this country.
If we are saying "screw the views of the inhabitants".....
No black and white on these issues in my view.
No doubt there are bits of Scotland that would dearly love to be allowed out of the UK, but the general consensus is that it should be all of Scotland or not at all. On the other hand, I wonder what the SNPs view would be if southern Scotland decided it wanted to remain as part of the UK? (Has that ever been postulated?)
I think it is generally right that the wishes of the Falkland Islanders are paramount - a really remote Island, but I don't see you can make a general argument in any of this.
It is postulated frequently by PB Scotch experts who don't have a clue about the Scottish Borders and what their high No vote means.
Every Scottish Borders seat is currently Tory held and the Borders had the biggest No vote in 2014. Culturally it is closer to Cumbria than it is to Glasgow.
They'll be really f****d if the Shetlands decide to secede in order to reclaim their Viking cultural heritage by rejoining Normay rather than the EU.
On the assumption that the ‘they’ that will be really fucked is Scotland, please try to avoid the suggestion of tumescence at the prospect, it’s most unseemly.
Anyway after the grotesquerie that is the UK, who wouldn’t want to rejoin a normy country.
I guess the British are no longer a “freedom-loving” people. Perhaps they never were.
We never have been mate, it's a nation of daily mail reading curtain twitching c***s, now the whole country has realised they are the majority.
Look at the idiotic reporting of Boris' 7 mile bike ride. The media couldn't wait to stick the boot in over what, to anyone who cycles, is a pretty short bike ride.
First, it was Boris (or at least the government) who said exercise should be local. Second, it was almost certainly not a seven-mile bike ride but a car journey there, a bike ride, and a car journey back.
How do you know this? Is it just speculation?
8 or 14 miles is not very far on a bike, and a park is the last place you want to exercise - full of pedestrians and dogs on cycle-killer stretchy leads.
If Johnson had not taken the car it would have been confirmed by Downing Street.
As someone of a similar age, height, sedentary lifestyle, and probably fitness level to Johnson (although considerably slimmer, even after his weight loss) believe me 14 miles is very far on a bike.
Would it have? Are the PM's transport arrangements generally commented on?
Hell no. They never comment on movement of VIPs, nor the precise security arrangements.
He even takes several different routes from Downing St to Parliament, and leaves at random times, never to a repeating schedule.
The ‘zig-zag route’ out of London towards Northolt or Chequers is something worth watching, as they control dozens of sets of traffic lights in sequence, to get the PM’s car through without stopping even in heavy traffic, with only four outriding bikes.
More pointless grandstanding from Keir Starmer this morning.
And I voted for him.
I’ve decided you’re a paid Tory plant.
Given your constant posting about how good Boris is and how shit Labour are.
I agree he makes it to obvious.
She
No I'm not as anyone would know if they'd seen my posts last election. I am just very 'meh' about Keir Starmer and I'm extremely impressed by the vaccine success of this Gov't.
That's the trouble with some on here, and the gravest mistake some make when betting: tribal loyalty.
Even Mike Smithson, whose views are similar to my own, has acknowledged the Johnson success on the vaccines. It would be absurdly churlish to pretend otherwise.
And it's perilous for Labour to be seen carping.
Long long way from success, only yesterday they were talking about September for all to have first jab so plan will not complete this year?????
Maybe he's confused with the Pitcairns, which were actually discovered by Spain (well, a Portuguese explorer working for Spain) 160 years before a Brit found them
The Falklands were French before they were British, and passed on by the French to the Spanish. Our claim arises from an invasion in 1833.
The islands are a boring edge case. The most interesting thing about the whole thing is the ad hoc promotion of self-determination to an Immutable Tory Truth, when it started life with Marx and then got adopted by the USA as a way of trolling the British out of their empire.
You best edit Wiki then, if you know better
"The Falklands remained uninhabited until the 1764 establishment of Port Louis on East Falkland by French captain Louis Antoine de Bougainville and the 1766 foundation of Port Egmont on Saunders Island by British captain John MacBride. Whether or not the settlements were aware of each other's existence is debated by historians. In 1766, France surrendered its claim on the Falklands to Spain, which renamed the French colony Puerto Soledad the following year. Problems began when Spain discovered and captured Port Egmont in 1770. War was narrowly avoided by its restitution to Britain in 1771."
Bold italics is very good, but did all this happen BC, or does 1764 come before 1766? Our claim to rank above Spain (see?) rests de facto on the invasion (that thing Galtieri did) of 1833.
It is irrelevant. Countries invaded each other in 1833 that was OK then.
The civilised world agreed to stop invading each other in the twenty century not the nineteenth. Galtieri was after that. Since World War Two we have relied upon self-determination to govern the world order not invasions.
Stuff happened in the past, you can't change history. All you can or should do now is campaign through the ballot box. The past is locked in.
Maybe he's confused with the Pitcairns, which were actually discovered by Spain (well, a Portuguese explorer working for Spain) 160 years before a Brit found them
The Falklands were French before they were British, and passed on by the French to the Spanish. Our claim arises from an invasion in 1833.
The islands are a boring edge case. The most interesting thing about the whole thing is the ad hoc promotion of self-determination to an Immutable Tory Truth, when it started life with Marx and then got adopted by the USA as a way of trolling the British out of their empire.
You best edit Wiki then, if you know better
"The Falklands remained uninhabited until the 1764 establishment of Port Louis on East Falkland by French captain Louis Antoine de Bougainville and the 1766 foundation of Port Egmont on Saunders Island by British captain John MacBride. Whether or not the settlements were aware of each other's existence is debated by historians. In 1766, France surrendered its claim on the Falklands to Spain, which renamed the French colony Puerto Soledad the following year. Problems began when Spain discovered and captured Port Egmont in 1770. War was narrowly avoided by its restitution to Britain in 1771."
Bold italics is very good, but did all this happen BC, or does 1764 come before 1766? Our claim to rank above Spain (see?) rests de facto on the invasion (that thing Galtieri did) of 1833.
It is irrelevant. Countries invaded each other in 1833 that was OK then.
The civilised world agreed to stop invading each other in the twenty century not the nineteenth. Galtieri was after that. Since World War Two we have relied upon self-determination to govern the world order not invasions.
Stuff happened in the past, you can't change history. All you can or should do now is campaign through the ballot box. The past is locked in.
Not so true now in either Hong Kong or Catalonia
Decent people stand against what is happening in Hong Kong and Catalonia.
Only you look at the Chinese Communists and think "that looks good to me, we should do that here". And you have the gall to call yourself a Conservative.
< Our sovereignty over a small island with a handful of inhabitants over there in the South Pacific feels odd in 2021. If it doesn't feel odd to you it's because British colonialism lives on in your mind as nothing unusual. Brit rule over a far-flung island just off the coast of Argentina? Well of course!
There's nothing particularly unusual about states having ownership of land some way from main territory. You might as well ask if it is unusual that any state is the shape it is, since they have certainly not always been fixed and as we know many modern states have rather peculiar borders that have caused much difficulty over the years. Turkey is predominantly Asia Minor, should the land over the Bosphorous be removed from it? What, don't you think it odd that 95% of the country is on one continent and 5% on another?
You seem fixated on it being 'odd' to have some islands a long way away under the aegis of the British state, but it really isn't that odd to have far flung territories.
What does how it looks or feels matter? What matters in the modern age is what people think, especially settled, historical populations.
Everything about political geography is odd so nothing is? I suppose you could view things this way. But for me this not a binary matter of "odd" versus "not at all odd". So, for example, your example, I don't find the shape of Turkey to be as odd as a British island in the South Pacific. This could be that I'm British not Turkish but I don't think so. As I said, I think it works the other way. You're more likely to be blinded to strange aspects of your own country.
Why do you keep calling it "a British island" or "British rule" rather than a self-governing, self-ruling island that happens to pool some sovereignty because it wants to do so with Britain?
They have their own Parliament and their own democracy. They rule themselves. When will you stop ignoring that and accept that?
The UK has given self-governance or independence to every territory that has asked for it - outside those being directly retained as military bases.
Aside from that I don't see what the problem is with those few remaining overseas territories that want to retain a close relationship with the UK, other than self-loathing and embarrassment.
But it's odd. It feels odd. And if it doesn't feel odd, that is odd, and just shows how insidious the effect of colonialism is, not just on those colonized but also on the citizens of the colonial power here in 2021. This is the insight I am offering.
Is odd bad?
I'd always thought it was a positive British trait to be comfortable with things that were a bit odd, but were not worth the bother of rationalizing. I looked forward to making the world better by creating more odd anomalies that somehow worked for people better than the alternative.
Being upset with things that are a bit odd is a one-way route to lots of unnecessary aggro. And it diverts attention from things that are wrong and need to change.
Who benefits from the Falklands becoming part of Argentina? Who suffers?
Better to let the odd times continue.
No, odd does not mean bad. Course not. Tons of examples of benign oddities. Greta Green? Say no more. But it doesn't mean good either and here we're talking about a long running dispute over the sovereignty of a territory in the South Pacific. A war over it too. So it's not like some endearingly eccentric state of affairs. I'm not overly agitated about it, not at all, but I would not set my face against a compromise being found to resolve the matter.
South Atlantic.
Maybe he's confused with the Pitcairns, which were actually discovered by Spain (well, a Portuguese explorer working for Spain) 160 years before a Brit found them
The Falklands were French before they were British, and passed on by the French to the Spanish. Our claim arises from an invasion in 1833.
The islands are a boring edge case. The most interesting thing about the whole thing is the ad hoc promotion of self-determination to an Immutable Tory Truth, when it started life with Marx and then got adopted by the USA as a way of trolling the British out of their empire.
There was a prior claim from a sighting in 1765, accompanied by a settlement which was abandoned in 1771.
Indeed, the Argentine colonists present in 1832 (not 1833, although as the British expedition reached the Falklands only at the end of December and negotiations continued until the 2nd January I can see why you would think that) had made a point of informing the British consul in Buenos Aires that they were going to set up a colony, precisely because they were aware of Britain’s claim.
A final irony arises from the fact that most of the settlers when the Royal Navy arrived were in fact British by nationality anyway, including Vernet’s deputy Matthew Brisbane.
< Our sovereignty over a small island with a handful of inhabitants over there in the South Pacific feels odd in 2021. If it doesn't feel odd to you it's because British colonialism lives on in your mind as nothing unusual. Brit rule over a far-flung island just off the coast of Argentina? Well of course!
There's nothing particularly unusual about states having ownership of land some way from main territory. You might as well ask if it is unusual that any state is the shape it is, since they have certainly not always been fixed and as we know many modern states have rather peculiar borders that have caused much difficulty over the years. Turkey is predominantly Asia Minor, should the land over the Bosphorous be removed from it? What, don't you think it odd that 95% of the country is on one continent and 5% on another?
You seem fixated on it being 'odd' to have some islands a long way away under the aegis of the British state, but it really isn't that odd to have far flung territories.
What does how it looks or feels matter? What matters in the modern age is what people think, especially settled, historical populations.
Everything about political geography is odd so nothing is? I suppose you could view things this way. But for me this not a binary matter of "odd" versus "not at all odd". So, your example, I don't find the shape of Turkey to be as odd as a British island in the South Pacific. This could be because I'm British not Turkish but I don't think so. As I said, I think it works the other way. You're more likely to be blinded to strange aspects of your own country.
As I have already pointed out you really do need to get your geography right if you are going to indulge in these discussions. The islands are in the South Atlantic, not the South Pacific.
Mr. kinabalu, the Falkland Islands are more than 900 miles away from Argentina.
Not to mention the idea that proximity equates to possession is utterly backward.
There are large chunks of France that are
- less than 900 miles from my desk - were historically ruled by this country.
If we are saying "screw the views of the inhabitants".....
No black and white on these issues in my view.
No doubt there are bits of Scotland that would dearly love to be allowed out of the UK, but the general consensus is that it should be all of Scotland or not at all. On the other hand, I wonder what the SNPs view would be if southern Scotland decided it wanted to remain as part of the UK? (Has that ever been postulated?)
I think it is generally right that the wishes of the Falkland Islanders are paramount - a really remote Island, but I don't see you can make a general argument in any of this.
It is postulated frequently by PB Scotch experts who don't have a clue about the Scottish Borders and what their high No vote means.
Every Scottish Borders seat is currently Tory held and the Borders had the biggest No vote in 2014. Culturally it is closer to Cumbria than it is to Glasgow.
They'll be really f****d if the Shetlands decide to secede in order to reclaim their Viking cultural heritage by rejoining Normay rather than the EU.
On the assumption that the ‘they’ that will be really fucked is Scotland, please try to avoid the suggestion of tumescence at the prospect, it’s most unseemly.
Anyway after the grotesquerie that is the UK, who wouldn’t want to rejoin a normy country.
So you'd take Scotland joining Norway, over remaining in the UK?
The UK has given self-governance or independence to every territory that has asked for it - outside those being directly retained as military bases.
Aside from that I don't see what the problem is with those few remaining overseas territories that want to retain a close relationship with the UK, other than self-loathing and embarrassment.
But it's odd. It feels odd. And if it doesn't feel odd, that is odd, and just shows how insidious the effect of colonialism is, not just on those colonized but also on the citizens of the colonial power here in 2021. This is the insight I am offering.
I think, ironically, that the feeling you describe is part of the colonial problem. The way to deal with the legacy of colonialism is to let the people living in a place decide what to next.
After all, telling them what to do, with the threat of force (behind all government actions) from X thousand miles away - what is that, but more colonialism?
Here's chance for me to use an old chestnut and although I hate old chestnuts I think just this once I will - it's more complicated than that.
If you've colonized a place and filled it with people from the Mothership, or you've so dominated that it has become a grand scale example of Stockholm Syndrome, then I don't think you can just say, "Ok, there's only one thing that counts here and that is what flag the majority want to be under." Although this has to be high in the mix obviously.
No it is not. It is history.
The only thing that matters is self-determination. Nothing else matters.
Should the Argentinians be repatriated back to Spain? Should descendents of slaves be repatriated back to Africa?
Either you believe in self-determination or you do not. Do you?
I look favourably on it but I don't think I believe in anything to the extent that "nothing else matters". That sounds slightly deranged to my ear.
The UK has given self-governance or independence to every territory that has asked for it - outside those being directly retained as military bases.
Aside from that I don't see what the problem is with those few remaining overseas territories that want to retain a close relationship with the UK, other than self-loathing and embarrassment.
But it's odd. It feels odd. And if it doesn't feel odd, that is odd, and just shows how insidious the effect of colonialism is, not just on those colonized but also on the citizens of the colonial power here in 2021. This is the insight I am offering.
Is odd bad?
I'd always thought it was a positive British trait to be comfortable with things that were a bit odd, but were not worth the bother of rationalizing. I looked forward to making the world better by creating more odd anomalies that somehow worked for people better than the alternative.
Being upset with things that are a bit odd is a one-way route to lots of unnecessary aggro. And it diverts attention from things that are wrong and need to change.
Who benefits from the Falklands becoming part of Argentina? Who suffers?
Better to let the odd times continue.
No, odd does not mean bad. Course not. Tons of examples of benign oddities. Greta Green? Say no more. But it doesn't mean good either and here we're talking about a long running dispute over the sovereignty of a territory in the South Pacific. A war over it too. So it's not like some endearingly eccentric state of affairs. I'm not overly agitated about it, not at all, but I would not set my face against a compromise being found to resolve the matter.
South Atlantic.
Maybe he's confused with the Pitcairns, which were actually discovered by Spain (well, a Portuguese explorer working for Spain) 160 years before a Brit found them
The Falklands were French before they were British, and passed on by the French to the Spanish. Our claim arises from an invasion in 1833.
The islands are a boring edge case. The most interesting thing about the whole thing is the ad hoc promotion of self-determination to an Immutable Tory Truth, when it started life with Marx and then got adopted by the USA as a way of trolling the British out of their empire.
There was a prior claim from a sighting in 1765, accompanied by a settlement which was abandoned in 1771.
Indeed, the Argentine colonists present in 1832 (not 1833, although as the British expedition reached the Falklands only at the end of December and negotiations continued until the 2nd January I can see why you would think that) had made a point of informing the British consul in Buenos Aires that they were going to set up a colony, precisely because they were aware of Britain’s claim.
A final irony arises from the fact that most of the settlers when the Royal Navy arrived were in fact British by nationality anyway, including Vernet’s deputy Matthew Brisbane.
Well written but Spanish colonists surely in 1832? There was no Argentina then.
The Argentinians may be descendents of Spanish colonists just like the Falkland Islanders are descendents of British colonists, but I don't see why one form of colonialism should trump another, just because the Spanish sent more over to a bigger land. The Falkland Islanders have every bit as much legitimacy to be where they were born as the Argentinians do to be where they were born.
The UK has given self-governance or independence to every territory that has asked for it - outside those being directly retained as military bases.
Aside from that I don't see what the problem is with those few remaining overseas territories that want to retain a close relationship with the UK, other than self-loathing and embarrassment.
But it's odd. It feels odd. And if it doesn't feel odd, that is odd, and just shows how insidious the effect of colonialism is, not just on those colonized but also on the citizens of the colonial power here in 2021. This is the insight I am offering.
I think, ironically, that the feeling you describe is part of the colonial problem. The way to deal with the legacy of colonialism is to let the people living in a place decide what to next.
After all, telling them what to do, with the threat of force (behind all government actions) from X thousand miles away - what is that, but more colonialism?
Here's chance for me to use an old chestnut and although I hate old chestnuts I think just this once I will - it's more complicated than that.
If you've colonized a place and filled it with people from the Mothership, or you've so dominated that it has become a grand scale example of Stockholm Syndrome, then I don't think you can just say, "Ok, there's only one thing that counts here and that is what flag the majority want to be under." Although this has to be high in the mix obviously.
No it is not. It is history.
The only thing that matters is self-determination. Nothing else matters.
Should the Argentinians be repatriated back to Spain? Should descendents of slaves be repatriated back to Africa?
Either you believe in self-determination or you do not. Do you?
I look favourably on it but I don't think I believe in anything to the extent that "nothing else matters". That sounds slightly deranged to my ear.
How is self-determination ever deranged?
Either you are free or you are not. It is the only thing that matters. What trumps self-determination?
Everything else in life flows from people's choices under self-determination, take that away and you are heading into the realms of slavery.
My experience of genuinely working class people (ie, my parents) was that they were very keen to get on, and become "middle class" as soon as possible.
< Our sovereignty over a small island with a handful of inhabitants over there in the South Pacific feels odd in 2021. If it doesn't feel odd to you it's because British colonialism lives on in your mind as nothing unusual. Brit rule over a far-flung island just off the coast of Argentina? Well of course!
There's nothing particularly unusual about states having ownership of land some way from main territory. You might as well ask if it is unusual that any state is the shape it is, since they have certainly not always been fixed and as we know many modern states have rather peculiar borders that have caused much difficulty over the years. Turkey is predominantly Asia Minor, should the land over the Bosphorous be removed from it? What, don't you think it odd that 95% of the country is on one continent and 5% on another?
You seem fixated on it being 'odd' to have some islands a long way away under the aegis of the British state, but it really isn't that odd to have far flung territories.
What does how it looks or feels matter? What matters in the modern age is what people think, especially settled, historical populations.
Everything about political geography is odd so nothing is? I suppose you could view things this way. But for me this not a binary matter of "odd" versus "not at all odd". So, for example, your example, I don't find the shape of Turkey to be as odd as a British island in the South Pacific. This could be that I'm British not Turkish but I don't think so. As I said, I think it works the other way. You're more likely to be blinded to strange aspects of your own country.
Why do you keep calling it "a British island" or "British rule" rather than a self-governing, self-ruling island that happens to pool some sovereignty because it wants to do so with Britain?
They have their own Parliament and their own democracy. They rule themselves. When will you stop ignoring that and accept that?
Do you think Britain still rules Australia?
To be fair there is a big difference between an independent country and an Overseas territory. Under International law the islands belong to Britain although of course that is disputed by Argentina. The Foreign Office still has to approve any new laws and still has a great deal of responsibility and power when it comes to the islands. The comparison with Australia which is an independent country which shares a head of state is not really accurate.
Mr. kinabalu, the Falkland Islands are more than 900 miles away from Argentina.
Not to mention the idea that proximity equates to possession is utterly backward.
There are large chunks of France that are
- less than 900 miles from my desk - were historically ruled by this country.
If we are saying "screw the views of the inhabitants".....
No black and white on these issues in my view.
No doubt there are bits of Scotland that would dearly love to be allowed out of the UK, but the general consensus is that it should be all of Scotland or not at all. On the other hand, I wonder what the SNPs view would be if southern Scotland decided it wanted to remain as part of the UK? (Has that ever been postulated?)
I think it is generally right that the wishes of the Falkland Islanders are paramount - a really remote Island, but I don't see you can make a general argument in any of this.
It is postulated frequently by PB Scotch experts who don't have a clue about the Scottish Borders and what their high No vote means.
Every Scottish Borders seat is currently Tory held and the Borders had the biggest No vote in 2014. Culturally it is closer to Cumbria than it is to Glasgow.
They'll be really f****d if the Shetlands decide to secede in order to reclaim their Viking cultural heritage by rejoining Normay rather than the EU.
On the assumption that the ‘they’ that will be really fucked is Scotland, please try to avoid the suggestion of tumescence at the prospect, it’s most unseemly.
Anyway after the grotesquerie that is the UK, who wouldn’t want to rejoin a normy country.
So you'd take Scotland joining Norway, over remaining in the UK?
Interesting.
The proposal is O & S rejoin Norway. They have a fairly solid historical case (you don't have to be a neo Thatcherite self-determinationist to see that giving away countries as dowries is not really on) and there's a lot of sense in becoming part of Norway from the territorial waters POV - gets you round being an exclave.
The UK has given self-governance or independence to every territory that has asked for it - outside those being directly retained as military bases.
Aside from that I don't see what the problem is with those few remaining overseas territories that want to retain a close relationship with the UK, other than self-loathing and embarrassment.
But it's odd. It feels odd. And if it doesn't feel odd, that is odd, and just shows how insidious the effect of colonialism is, not just on those colonized but also on the citizens of the colonial power here in 2021. This is the insight I am offering.
I think, ironically, that the feeling you describe is part of the colonial problem. The way to deal with the legacy of colonialism is to let the people living in a place decide what to next.
After all, telling them what to do, with the threat of force (behind all government actions) from X thousand miles away - what is that, but more colonialism?
Here's chance for me to use an old chestnut and although I hate old chestnuts I think just this once I will - it's more complicated than that.
If you've colonized a place and filled it with people from the Mothership, or you've so dominated that it has become a grand scale example of Stockholm Syndrome, then I don't think you can just say, "Ok, there's only one thing that counts here and that is what flag the majority want to be under." Although this has to be high in the mix obviously.
No it is not. It is history.
The only thing that matters is self-determination. Nothing else matters.
Should the Argentinians be repatriated back to Spain? Should descendents of slaves be repatriated back to Africa?
Either you believe in self-determination or you do not. Do you?
I look favourably on it but I don't think I believe in anything to the extent that "nothing else matters". That sounds slightly deranged to my ear.
If self determination sounds deranged then I would suggest you are the one who needs to examine their value system.
Mr. kinabalu, the Falkland Islands are more than 900 miles away from Argentina.
Not to mention the idea that proximity equates to possession is utterly backward.
There are large chunks of France that are
- less than 900 miles from my desk - were historically ruled by this country.
If we are saying "screw the views of the inhabitants".....
So what happens in North Korea drops 1,000 settlers on Rockall and has a snap referendum on sovereignty?
We'd have to rescue them pretty quickly. There would be more than one person per metre squared, on rather rough terrain.
Didn't Scotland and Ireland have a squabble over this one only a couple of weeks ago?
Don't know what happened a couple of weeks ago, but generally I'm on Ireland's side here. They're saying that UK/Scotland shouldn't get any claim over territorial waters around Rockall because it's empty, we/Scots think we should get the 12nm because we say it's ours/Scottish.
I'm surprised that no-one has bought up this utterly bonkers picture
"Sentries report haddock to the north-west, Sir. Thousands of 'em."
Very, very good.
Is it just me, or does everyone look at that picture and think "Monty Python"?
Maybe he's confused with the Pitcairns, which were actually discovered by Spain (well, a Portuguese explorer working for Spain) 160 years before a Brit found them
The Falklands were French before they were British, and passed on by the French to the Spanish. Our claim arises from an invasion in 1833.
The islands are a boring edge case. The most interesting thing about the whole thing is the ad hoc promotion of self-determination to an Immutable Tory Truth, when it started life with Marx and then got adopted by the USA as a way of trolling the British out of their empire.
You best edit Wiki then, if you know better
"The Falklands remained uninhabited until the 1764 establishment of Port Louis on East Falkland by French captain Louis Antoine de Bougainville and the 1766 foundation of Port Egmont on Saunders Island by British captain John MacBride. Whether or not the settlements were aware of each other's existence is debated by historians. In 1766, France surrendered its claim on the Falklands to Spain, which renamed the French colony Puerto Soledad the following year. Problems began when Spain discovered and captured Port Egmont in 1770. War was narrowly avoided by its restitution to Britain in 1771."
Bold italics is very good, but did all this happen BC, or does 1764 come before 1766? Our claim to rank above Spain (see?) rests de facto on the invasion (that thing Galtieri did) of 1833.
It is irrelevant. Countries invaded each other in 1833 that was OK then.
The civilised world agreed to stop invading each other in the twenty century not the nineteenth. Galtieri was after that. Since World War Two we have relied upon self-determination to govern the world order not invasions.
Stuff happened in the past, you can't change history. All you can or should do now is campaign through the ballot box. The past is locked in.
Not so true now in either Hong Kong or Catalonia
Decent people stand against what is happening in Hong Kong and Catalonia.
Only you look at the Chinese Communists and think "that looks good to me, we should do that here". And you have the gall to call yourself a Conservative.
Unlike the Chinese Communist government or the Spanish government the UK government granted Scotland an independence referendum in 2014 and they decided to stay in the UK in a once in a generation vote.
The UK government has also not removed legislators from Holyrood as the Chinese government has removed legislators from the Hong Kong legislature
The UK has given self-governance or independence to every territory that has asked for it - outside those being directly retained as military bases.
Aside from that I don't see what the problem is with those few remaining overseas territories that want to retain a close relationship with the UK, other than self-loathing and embarrassment.
But it's odd. It feels odd. And if it doesn't feel odd, that is odd, and just shows how insidious the effect of colonialism is, not just on those colonized but also on the citizens of the colonial power here in 2021. This is the insight I am offering.
Its not odd at all. People look at what they believe is in their best interests. In the case of the Falklands the islanders clearly believe that presently their security and economic well being is best served by being attached to the UK rather than to Argentina.
Put it this way. If the Falkland Islanders decided at some point they wanted full independence I would suggest they have far more chance of achieving that by detaching themselves from British rule than they would be trying to detach themselves from Argentine rule.
I'm not talking about the Islanders wanting to stay British - nothing odd about that - I'm talking about the notion of British rule over places on the other side of the globe. To me this is odd and I find it odd when others don't share that feeling - and potentially telling of what they feel about Britain and Britishness. And when I say "telling" btw, I don't imply something bad lurking there. Although there might be. Further probing would be required.
There are many and varied reasons - almost none of them associated with any old feelings about Empire - why countries might think it good to retain control of far flung places. One of the most obvious for me comes in the form of environmental management. Britain is now responsible for the largest marine protected zone in the world in the Indian Ocean and is responsible for a total of 6.8 million Km2 of marine protected zones around the world.
No doubt. But I'm not talking about the macro geopolitics. I'm talking about how a British person, a normal British person, feels when they consider the notion of British rule over far flung places. Do they feel it is (i) a hangover from the colonial past that feels odd and a bit wrong in 2021, or (ii) just the normal way of things, Britain being Britain, and woe betide anybody who suggests otherwise?
I was elected to Congress in 2014, and am serving my 4th term. While a majority of voters in my Central New York district supported Secretary Hillary Clinton and Vice President Biden over President Trump, my district is home to some of President Trump’s strongest supporters. Just two months ago, I voted for President Trump myself. For years I have truly heard from all sides. I respect and understand their views.
The decision to impeach a sitting President that millions of Americans, including many of my constituents, voted for is one that I do not take lightly or enjoy. The Founders correctly established a very high bar for impeachment. I voted against the articles of impeachment previously brought against President Trump in 2019, because I found those charges politically motivated, and well beneath the high threshold established for impeachment. I have been vocal over the last four years when I disagreed with the president, but am not a “Never Trumper” nor am I part of “The Resistance.” I have simply tried to do my job in what we can all agree has been a tumultuous four years....
...I am a former federal prosecutor. That was my life’s work before I ran for Congress. I dedicated my career to upholding the law, bringing lawbreakers to justice, and keeping people safe. We were presented with a vote on whether or not we think there is sufficient evidence to indict the president. As I always do, I looked only at the facts, not the politics. In the same politically unclouded process I used as a federal prosecutor, I came to the conclusion that the president’s role in the insurrection was undeniable. Both on social media ahead of Jan. 6, and in his speech that day, he deliberately promoted baseless theories that created a combustible environment of misinformation and division. Our nation simply cannot function without the peaceful transfer of power and the recognition of carefully reviewed election results. To allow the president of the United States to incite this attack without consequence is a direct threat to the future of our democracy and to our security.
No one wishes to see our country heal and unite more than I do. Even after one of our darkest days, America remains the greatest nation on earth. I'm not only optimistic, but fully committed to the unity and healing we need. But, first we need to do our jobs. As members of Congress, we take oaths to defend the Constitution regardless of political party — because at times, it needs defending.
Comments
https://twitter.com/mattsmithetc/status/1351146352676372480
I suppose those who think it is fine for the Falklanders and Gibraltarians to express their Britishness are fully comfortable with China shipping millions of folk into Tibet so that they can then say that the majority of residents see themselves as Chinese.
Under the arrangement, Israel will send weekly updates on the numbers of confirmed cases, hospitalisations, patients in a serious condition and those on a ventilator, as well as the number of vaccinations performed. They will be broken down by age, gender and demographic background, but “no identifiable health information” will be shared.
It's barely four miles from there to the Olympic Park. If that's not local, what is?
The UK is economy is a lot more tightly integrated with a bunch of foreign types, a long rock throw to right. And the rest of the world. So cutting off flying (and ferries) would be a very considerably bigger undertaking, in terms of the damage it would do.
I seem to recall a discussion about this recently.
My gut feeling is that the Germans would have had a hard time in the extremities of the country - Westcountry, Wales and the Welsh Marches, rural NE/NW and Scotland, where much of the resistance would have had huge advantages over a mechanised army.
Interesting counterfactual is what would have happened to WSC. I expect he would have fled to Ireland and then Canada along with the royals, and formed a Govt in exile from there. And a Vichy style govt (led by Halifax?) would have formerly surrendered to Hitler/
Brendan Murphy, the secretary of the health department, dashed hopes of a return to normality because of continuing uncertainty over whether vaccinations would stop people catching Covid-19.
“I think that we’ll go most of this year with still substantial border restrictions — even if we have a lot of the population vaccinated, we don’t know whether that will prevent transmission of the virus,” he said.
Australians have been effectively banned from leaving the country since last March, unless granted special exemption by the government on compassionate or business grounds. In 2019, by contrast, Australians made more than 11 million international trips.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/australias-borders-to-remain-shut-until-2022-despite-vaccines-wbnxkq79d
5 second pause.
Then they realise that immigration has just been stopped.
I would hazard a guess that the Guardian would not have approved.
8 or 14 miles is not very far on a bike, and a park is the last place you want to exercise - full of pedestrians and dogs on cycle-killer stretchy leads.
This second wave and the 60-70k deaths, 6-7% GDP loss was completely avoidable. A proper border control system would have prevented it and would already be in place to prevent this Brazilian mutation which could evade the vaccine response.
The border was and still is the key to all of this.
The Falkland Islanders rule themselves. They have their own elected government, their own governor, their own elected Parliament, their own courts, their own finance, their own taxes, their own leader.
Does Britain rule Australia in your eyes?
I'm not sure there is any evidence that they might have any effect.
Does it say you have to go to the closest park? Don't be a dickhead.
The point stands, though.
July is the 40th anniversary of them moving in here.
PS - It's not a £3 million house, I got my sums wrong last night, it's half that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcxs-CH4kG0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dPzFUiY-tg
If you've colonized a place and filled it with people from the Mothership, or you've so dominated that it has become a grand scale example of Stockholm Syndrome, then I don't think you can just say, "Ok, there's only one thing that counts here and that is what flag the majority want to be under." Although this has to be high in the mix obviously.
The islands are a boring edge case. The most interesting thing about the whole thing is the ad hoc promotion of self-determination to an Immutable Tory Truth, when it started life with Marx and then got adopted by the USA as a way of trolling the British out of their empire.
The key player here is Emma of Normandy who had first married the Saxon King Aethelred II (the "Unready") - Edward the Confessor was their older son. After Aethelred's death, Emma married Cnut - they had a son, Harthacnut, who was briefly English King from 1040 to 1042.
Edward the Confessor fled with Emma to Normandy in 1016 and Robert I (the Conqueror's father) had planned an invasion in 1034 to restore Edward the Confessor but it got blown off course.
The problem after 1042 was the rise of the Godwin family who opposed the Norman influence of Edward the Confessor. 1066 was essentially the resolution of the internal English civil war between the pro-Norman faction and the pro-Viking faction. Not all the Saxon nobility were dispossessed by the victorious Normand - many were.
Again, you have to remember England in 1066 was the most prosperous state of northern and western Europe. There was a thriving wool industry and export trade and English silver was the basic currency for much of Europe (a bit like the Euro only different).
I believe home is now Downing Street / Chequers / Nutnut’s apartment in Peckham.
Not that I go into supermarkets any longer.
The only thing that matters is self-determination. Nothing else matters.
Should the Argentinians be repatriated back to Spain? Should descendents of slaves be repatriated back to Africa?
Either you believe in self-determination or you do not. Do you?
"The Falklands remained uninhabited until the 1764 establishment of Port Louis on East Falkland by French captain Louis Antoine de Bougainville and the 1766 foundation of Port Egmont on Saunders Island by British captain John MacBride. Whether or not the settlements were aware of each other's existence is debated by historians. In 1766, France surrendered its claim on the Falklands to Spain, which renamed the French colony Puerto Soledad the following year. Problems began when Spain discovered and captured Port Egmont in 1770. War was narrowly avoided by its restitution to Britain in 1771."
As someone of a similar age, height, sedentary lifestyle, and probably fitness level to Johnson (although considerably slimmer, even after his weight loss) believe me 14 miles is very far on a bike.
It is the decent and civilised thing to believe in and shame on anyone who tries to deny self-determination to anyone - whether it be jackboots sending tanks into Scotland, or Galtieri sending ships into the Falklands.
The civilised world agreed to stop invading each other in the twenty century not the nineteenth. Galtieri was after that. Since World War Two we have relied upon self-determination to govern the world order not invasions.
Stuff happened in the past, you can't change history. All you can or should do now is campaign through the ballot box. The past is locked in.
I see last week's scenes of overcrowding on the London Underground have reached Government with Grant Shapps trying to get the construction industry to change its working practices.
As East London is the cheapest part of capital to find rental property, it's no surprise a lot of construction workers travel to sites in other parts of the capital and beyond from stations like East Ham, Canning Town and the like.
When I used to travel, you would like scores of construction workers (with their equipment) on the platform at East Ham before 7am and a lot of them would move to the Jubilee at West Ham.
Last Thursday's problem was caused, I believe, by staff sickness meaning two or three Services were taken out leaving a huge gap between trains and ensuring the first one in was rammed.
TFL is obliged, as part of its cash bailout from the Government, to run normal services all day so empty tubes go up and down the lines in mid-morning and early afternoon. The problem is one of driver resources and capacity. The Jubilee Line is a heavily over-crowded line - the signalling is old and can't accommodate the frequency of service (one a minute) you would need. Any gaps in drivers or trains leads to big problems in the morning and evening peak periods.
They have their own Parliament and their own democracy. They rule themselves. When will you stop ignoring that and accept that?
Do you think Britain still rules Australia?
Anyway after the grotesquerie that is the UK, who wouldn’t want to rejoin a normy country.
He even takes several different routes from Downing St to Parliament, and leaves at random times, never to a repeating schedule.
The ‘zig-zag route’ out of London towards Northolt or Chequers is something worth watching, as they control dozens of sets of traffic lights in sequence, to get the PM’s car through without stopping even in heavy traffic, with only four outriding bikes.
Only you look at the Chinese Communists and think "that looks good to me, we should do that here". And you have the gall to call yourself a Conservative.
Indeed, the Argentine colonists present in 1832 (not 1833, although as the British expedition reached the Falklands only at the end of December and negotiations continued until the 2nd January I can see why you would think that) had made a point of informing the British consul in Buenos Aires that they were going to set up a colony, precisely because they were aware of Britain’s claim.
A final irony arises from the fact that most of the settlers when the Royal Navy arrived were in fact British by nationality anyway, including Vernet’s deputy Matthew Brisbane.
Interesting.
The Argentinians may be descendents of Spanish colonists just like the Falkland Islanders are descendents of British colonists, but I don't see why one form of colonialism should trump another, just because the Spanish sent more over to a bigger land. The Falkland Islanders have every bit as much legitimacy to be where they were born as the Argentinians do to be where they were born.
Either you are free or you are not. It is the only thing that matters. What trumps self-determination?
Everything else in life flows from people's choices under self-determination, take that away and you are heading into the realms of slavery.
I've heard of the Thin Red Line, but that's ridiculous!
The UK government has also not removed legislators from Holyrood as the Chinese government has removed legislators from the Hong Kong legislature
https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/534654-rep-john-katko-why-i-became-the-first-republican-lawmaker-to
On Jan. 12, I announced my support for the article of impeachment against President Trump before the House of Representatives. At that moment, I was the only Republican member of Congress to do so.
I was elected to Congress in 2014, and am serving my 4th term. While a majority of voters in my Central New York district supported Secretary Hillary Clinton and Vice President Biden over President Trump, my district is home to some of President Trump’s strongest supporters. Just two months ago, I voted for President Trump myself. For years I have truly heard from all sides. I respect and understand their views.
The decision to impeach a sitting President that millions of Americans, including many of my constituents, voted for is one that I do not take lightly or enjoy. The Founders correctly established a very high bar for impeachment. I voted against the articles of impeachment previously brought against President Trump in 2019, because I found those charges politically motivated, and well beneath the high threshold established for impeachment. I have been vocal over the last four years when I disagreed with the president, but am not a “Never Trumper” nor am I part of “The Resistance.” I have simply tried to do my job in what we can all agree has been a tumultuous four years....
...I am a former federal prosecutor. That was my life’s work before I ran for Congress. I dedicated my career to upholding the law, bringing lawbreakers to justice, and keeping people safe. We were presented with a vote on whether or not we think there is sufficient evidence to indict the president. As I always do, I looked only at the facts, not the politics. In the same politically unclouded process I used as a federal prosecutor, I came to the conclusion that the president’s role in the insurrection was undeniable. Both on social media ahead of Jan. 6, and in his speech that day, he deliberately promoted baseless theories that created a combustible environment of misinformation and division. Our nation simply cannot function without the peaceful transfer of power and the recognition of carefully reviewed election results. To allow the president of the United States to incite this attack without consequence is a direct threat to the future of our democracy and to our security.
No one wishes to see our country heal and unite more than I do. Even after one of our darkest days, America remains the greatest nation on earth. I'm not only optimistic, but fully committed to the unity and healing we need. But, first we need to do our jobs. As members of Congress, we take oaths to defend the Constitution regardless of political party — because at times, it needs defending.
That ratio I mentioned yesterday is going to look bad today.