Just watched the Tom Hanks film "Greyhound" about the Atlantic convoys. Only 90 minutes long, but incredibly gripping. The CGI does make it feel a bit like a video-game, but it still gives a grim insight into the terror of running through that area where there was no air cover and the wolfpacks came out to play.
On Amazon TV, so maybe tricky for some to catch yet.
I didn’t enjoy it, if I’m honest. Probably this was because I know the book well, and could see how at every turn they were trying - and failing - to bring out the extraordinary character of Krause as portrayed by Forester.
Which was brave, but always doomed to failure because the whole point about Krause is that he is totally introverted and nobody around him knows what he’s thinking - except the reader.
Which left a perfectly competent action movie, but not much more. A bit like the average Hornblower adaptation, and for the same reason.
Yay! A hitherto unknown (to me) Forester novel and only £3 on kindle. Thank you, that's my evening made.
I reread The Gun the other day, surely the best historical novel ever.
It's quite simple. I love our history, heritage and culture - the stories of how we became who we are, warts and all - and I don't want to see it desecrated.
The rest of it is a strong detestation for narcissism and self-absorption, the contradictory illogical bullshit one feels obliged to agree with (on pain of being called a bigot) and being preached at by the self-righteous and hypocritical, which I react to.
But @Casino_Royale you appear to get enraged about the removal of *any* statue.
I wouldn't be happy if statues of actual British heroes, people who are actually part of our national myth, were taken down. The likes of Churchill, Boudica, Darwin, Kings and Queens, etc.
But why do you care if a statue of some random slaver is taken down? Nobody cares about them. They have no historical or emotional value. Why?
Or is it simply to fight back at your enemy, the woke?
That's not true. I would object to statues or monuments that are prima face offensive. I disagreed with a plaque in a church in Dorchester that celebrated the suppression of a slave rebellion, and used the n-word too. Nor do I feel comfortable with those that show someone of a certain race in public in a subservient position - and there is one on the frieze of the Royal Exchange, for instance.
But I have a traditional conservative attitude to statues and monuments that have been there for a long time, and I think the test should be higher the longer it has been up there. The change should be minimal and it should be absolutely proportionate to the architecture, history and heritage, which should otherwise be conserved.
When I put up a strong defence it's because I think the "problem" they are argued to cause is non-existent (and therefore it's a strawman) or because I think someone is simply looking for villiany (and advancing tenuous arguments to do so) because they want the notoriety for themselves, which I see as narcissistic and selfish.
This isn't a fantasy either. We've seen buildings named after William Gladstone (one of our greatest prime ministers), David Hume (a pillar of the Scottish enlightenment) and Baden Powell (founder of the scout movement that gives pleasures to millions of children) all come under attack in recent months, as well as generals involved in Victorian Wars, just because offence archeologists have found attitudes or statements they made during their lives that are non-U by modern standards somewhere in their past.
Well, balls to that. They don't get to make unilateral (and irrevocable) decisions like that just to satisfy some inner need they have for achievement and attention off the back of a trendy movement.
Not on my watch.
"Not on my watch" Lol!
Like you can actually do anything about it other than harrumph loudly.
I donate monthly to Save our Statues. I have written to the Rhodes Commission, City of London taskforce and Exeter Council. I have lobbied my MP. I have contacted, privately, a couple of my friends in parliament on the matter. I make the argument to friends and colleagues.
So, yeah, it might be harrumphing loudly. But I bet it's a lot more than you do.
Keep going. And bravo.
I detest the molestation of our heritage at the whim of a mob. And it was a mob that chucked Colston in the river in Bristol.
Was his statue problematic? Yes. Of course.
Is it OK therefore, for a bunch of Covid-dodging students to just casually chuck him in the water?
Absolutely not. Prosecute these vandals.
If you want to bring down a statue, have a democratic vote on it, or elect a council/assembly/parliament that has this policy in its manifesto, explicitly. I am not sure a single council, assembly, parliament in the UK has ever been elected on a platform of official iconoclasm. If they are, then fair enough. Tear the statues down.
All the polls show that the public seriously dislike mob-handed statue-destroying. We have recently seen extra evidence of the dangerous madness of mobs, in Washington DC.
We are a democracy. Do it legally, calmly, democratically. If that doesn't work, then put the statues in context. Put up a plaque to explain why many people are offended by its existence. This stuff isn't hard.
I'm not sure what you are arguing here. I certainly don't support the mob's right to tear down statues and nor do most people on here.
But there's certainly a massive gulf between "Rhodes must fall to the mob" and "donate to Save our Statues" which is the most laughable organisation I've ever heard.
Save our Statues is an organisation who's website has the Cenotaph and Winston Churchill on the front page and yet I am willing to bet only a good 5% of the population, at best, would want to "tear those down". What a load of fear-mongering tosh.
Read more Yeats.
"The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."
It only takes 5% of REALLY committed people to make the apathetic 95% remainder of the population, reluctantly, sighingly, oh-God-OK-ishly go along with the nutters, because they can't be arsed to argue, with people so vehement, and the threat, initially, seems trivial.
This pattern has been repeated through history.
German patriotism was captured by about 5% of German patriots, the Nazis.
In parts of the Islamic world, the perfectly peaceable 95% of Muslims have been captured by the violent, aggressive 5% that are Islamists.
Probably the same has happened with Trumpites. Probably the same happened in Washington DC the other day.
That's why you have to face down the 5%, even if they seem tiny and harmless.
Just because something has been there for ages doesn’t mean it should always be there. Ironically if our ancestors hadn’t have thought that we wouldn’t have had half the things we treasure today.
Ripping things up, starting over and trying new things is a key part of our culture that made Britain successful.
I fear we are stuck in nostalgia.
I detect a New Labour vibe there - 1997 was year zero.
New Labour, excellent stuff. But this is a core part of DNA.
Take tea. A core part of what it is to be English. But if it was down to conservative minded folk from days gone by we would never have touched the nasty stuff.
The British are a complex mix of radicals, adventurers and conservatives. The conservatives may hate us radicals, but they need us.
Maybe that works in reverse. Radicals need conservatives, else what could they radicalise against?
A healthy society needs a mix of radical and conservative impulses. And although people may offer a caricatured or extreme version of themselves when debating with others, I am sure most people have competing, even contradictory, impulses within themselves too. The pendulum swings between those competing impulses over time. Right now I suspect the British are due a swing in a more radical direction. It feels like we have become very stale as a country.
Yep. This "anti-woke" business reminds me of the railing against the "loony Left" in the mid 80's. The Tories made hay with it for a while. But fewer than a decade later they were the ones looking desperately out of touch. The vast majority of the loony Left policies are desperately banal and uncontroversial these days.
It's quite simple. I love our history, heritage and culture - the stories of how we became who we are, warts and all - and I don't want to see it desecrated.
The rest of it is a strong detestation for narcissism and self-absorption, the contradictory illogical bullshit one feels obliged to agree with (on pain of being called a bigot) and being preached at by the self-righteous and hypocritical, which I react to.
But @Casino_Royale you appear to get enraged about the removal of *any* statue.
I wouldn't be happy if statues of actual British heroes, people who are actually part of our national myth, were taken down. The likes of Churchill, Boudica, Darwin, Kings and Queens, etc.
But why do you care if a statue of some random slaver is taken down? Nobody cares about them. They have no historical or emotional value. Why?
Or is it simply to fight back at your enemy, the woke?
That's not true. I would object to statues or monuments that are prima face offensive. I disagreed with a plaque in a church in Dorchester that celebrated the suppression of a slave rebellion, and used the n-word too. Nor do I feel comfortable with those that show someone of a certain race in public in a subservient position - and there is one on the frieze of the Royal Exchange, for instance.
But I have a traditional conservative attitude to statues and monuments that have been there for a long time, and I think the test should be higher the longer it has been up there. The change should be minimal and it should be absolutely proportionate to the architecture, history and heritage, which should otherwise be conserved.
When I put up a strong defence it's because I think the "problem" they are argued to cause is non-existent (and therefore it's a strawman) or because I think someone is simply looking for villiany (and advancing tenuous arguments to do so) because they want the notoriety for themselves, which I see as narcissistic and selfish.
This isn't a fantasy either. We've seen buildings named after William Gladstone (one of our greatest prime ministers), David Hume (a pillar of the Scottish enlightenment) and Baden Powell (founder of the scout movement that gives pleasures to millions of children) all come under attack in recent months, as well as generals involved in Victorian Wars, just because offence archeologists have found attitudes or statements they made during their lives that are non-U by modern standards somewhere in their past.
Well, balls to that. They don't get to make unilateral (and irrevocable) decisions like that just to satisfy some inner need they have for achievement and attention off the back of a trendy movement.
Not on my watch.
"Not on my watch" Lol!
Like you can actually do anything about it other than harrumph loudly.
I donate monthly to Save our Statues. I have written to the Rhodes Commission, City of London taskforce and Exeter Council. I have lobbied my MP. I have contacted, privately, a couple of my friends in parliament on the matter. I make the argument to friends and colleagues.
So, yeah, it might be harrumphing loudly. But I bet it's a lot more than you do.
Keep going. And bravo.
I detest the molestation of our heritage at the whim of a mob. And it was a mob that chucked Colston in the river in Bristol.
Was his statue problematic? Yes. Of course.
Is it OK therefore, for a bunch of Covid-dodging students to just casually chuck him in the water?
Absolutely not. Prosecute these vandals.
If you want to bring down a statue, have a democratic vote on it, or elect a council/assembly/parliament that has this policy in its manifesto, explicitly. I am not sure a single council, assembly, parliament in the UK has ever been elected on a platform of official iconoclasm. If they are, then fair enough. Tear the statues down.
All the polls show that the public seriously dislike mob-handed statue-destroying. We have recently seen extra evidence of the dangerous madness of mobs, in Washington DC.
We are a democracy. Do it legally, calmly, democratically. If that doesn't work, then put the statues in context. Put up a plaque to explain why many people are offended by its existence. This stuff isn't hard.
I'm not sure what you are arguing here. I certainly don't support the mob's right to tear down statues and nor do most people on here.
But there's certainly a massive gulf between "Rhodes must fall to the mob" and "donate to Save our Statues" which is the most laughable organisation I've ever heard.
Save our Statues is an organisation who's website has the Cenotaph and Winston Churchill on the front page and yet I am willing to bet only a good 5% of the population, at best, would want to "tear those down". What a load of fear-mongering tosh.
Let's erect a statue of Greta Thunberg then they can campaign to save that too. They'd enjoy that, I'm sure.
The 89% figure is great, but Pfizer have, rightly, pointed out that no one knows what happens from day 14-84 and how low that 89% becomes. That's the gamble.
This is precisely where I part company with the Government.
Pfizer have scientifically proved a second booster vaccination 21 days after the first vaccination completes the process of building immunity and the efficacy seven days after the second vaccination is 95%. Obviously, we don't know how long such levels of immunity will persist though that will be determined during this year.
It seems more likely that, for example, 60 days after the initial vaccination, the level of immunity of those who have had one vaccination is likely to be less than those who received a second booster vaccination 21 days after the first vaccination. It's the same logic that applies on a much larger timescale with MMR and with other vaccinations.
I simply don't understand why the Government is going down this route - in perhaps 90 days restrictions will start to be eased and people will start going out and about and mixing in the belief because they've had a vaccination they will be protected. That may be the case - equally it may not and those who have had a single vaccination may no longer have protection and we'll be on the disastrous treadmill of rising case numbers leading to a new lockdown.
It would be so easy to prevent this by ensuring the proper course of two vaccinations is followed.
I really hope I'm wrong and I'm worrying about nothing - the vaccine(s) are tremendous news and I've never had a scintilla of an issue about having a vaccination but I want it done right not as a half-hearted botched attempt to look good.
Transport numbers in Lockdown 3 are stabilising - Tube passenger numbers are 15% of pre-Covid numbers with bus passenger numbers a third of pre-Covid and national rail also 15% of pre-Covid.
I see Matt Hancock continues to state the case a single dose of the Pfizer vaccine produces an efficacy of 89% between Days 15 ad 21. Okay - what I find curious is why we are offering second vaccinations if all that does is increase the efficacy from 89% to 92% - that sounds marginal to me.
Hancock's figures contradict Pfizer's own data but if we have genuinely proved a single dose of the vaccine conveys 89% efficacy after three weeks, so be it.
I'm a bit Victor Meldrew to be honest about it.
Anyway, if we only need to provide one vaccination after all, it does suggest we can vaccinate more people more quickly and ease restrictions more quickly, er, doesn't it?
In England, nearly 4 million have been vaccinated including 430,000 who have had two vaccinations. That's about 1 in 14 of the whole population or 7%. Across the United Kingdom, there are 25 million people over the age of 50.
As others have said, in terms of the very elderly, it seems likely the "quick wins" have been done and it's now a question of getting the vaccine to the mobility impaired or others who cannot travel to a GP or vaccination centre.
In East Ham High Street today, shades of last spring with queues outside Sainsbury's and Lidl - mask wearing still far from universal though being enforced in some shops.
Plenty of over 80s have not yet been vaccinated; my 83 year old mum has still heard nothing.
Make the phonecall, some GPs are very slow and tbh, you shouldn't wait now. The government should now say all remaining 80 year olds xan phone up for appointments if they've yet to be contacted.
Basically the government just needs to get on with it. We need 1m jabs a day now!
Read the news. Read Johnson's comments. Vaccinations mean nothing. Vaccinating the most vulnerable means nothing. It will not end the lockdown. The SAGE committee are putting new fears in his way. Super mutant strains! Long Covid! Fast mutating overseas variants! And so he is shutting down all commercial travel from everywhere.
Look at him. He is completely at sea mentally, he has no plan, or timetable, or vision, to get us out of this. At all.
I like to be optimistic. I am a Watford fan. Hence I have to be optimistic!
On a serious basis Boris needs to balance the 'let's stay in lockdown forever' with the need to reopen society but it needs to be on a proportionate basis ie when we are reasonably sure we won't need to lockdown again.
Just because something has been there for ages doesn’t mean it should always be there. Ironically if our ancestors hadn’t have thought that we wouldn’t have had half the things we treasure today.
Ripping things up, starting over and trying new things is a key part of our culture that made Britain successful.
I fear we are stuck in nostalgia.
I detect a New Labour vibe there - 1997 was year zero.
New Labour, excellent stuff. But this is a core part of DNA.
Take tea. A core part of what it is to be English. But if it was down to conservative minded folk from days gone by we would never have touched the nasty stuff.
The British are a complex mix of radicals, adventurers and conservatives. The conservatives may hate us radicals, but they need us.
Maybe that works in reverse. Radicals need conservatives, else what could they radicalise against?
A healthy society needs a mix of radical and conservative impulses. And although people may offer a caricatured or extreme version of themselves when debating with others, I am sure most people have competing, even contradictory, impulses within themselves too. The pendulum swings between those competing impulses over time. Right now I suspect the British are due a swing in a more radical direction. It feels like we have become very stale as a country.
It is a perpetual tug of war. Both sides need to pull as hard as they can because they know the other side is doing the same. But at the same time they don't want the other side to give up because (with the exception of a very few nutters) they don't like the extremes of their own side any more than they like the extremes of the other.
He ended slavery in the empire, he's awesome as are all Yorkshire born Cambridge graduates.
I'm not arguing with someone who thinks the father of Kamala Harris isn't a black man.
No, I said Kamala Harris is not "Black", with a capital B, as "Black" is a uniquely pained status within the USA: the direct descendants of American slaves still suffering the after-effects of this vile trade, living in the dangerous hoods of Chicago to St Louis
She is a Harvard student, the daughter of a Jamaican Stanford Professor and an esteemed Indian endocrinologist.
She is also, if you want to get technical, not black by skin tone. She just isn't.
But we've had this argument. I suggest we park it.
Transport numbers in Lockdown 3 are stabilising - Tube passenger numbers are 15% of pre-Covid numbers with bus passenger numbers a third of pre-Covid and national rail also 15% of pre-Covid.
I see Matt Hancock continues to state the case a single dose of the Pfizer vaccine produces an efficacy of 89% between Days 15 ad 21. Okay - what I find curious is why we are offering second vaccinations if all that does is increase the efficacy from 89% to 92% - that sounds marginal to me.
Hancock's figures contradict Pfizer's own data but if we have genuinely proved a single dose of the vaccine conveys 89% efficacy after three weeks, so be it.
I'm a bit Victor Meldrew to be honest about it.
Anyway, if we only need to provide one vaccination after all, it does suggest we can vaccinate more people more quickly and ease restrictions more quickly, er, doesn't it?
In England, nearly 4 million have been vaccinated including 430,000 who have had two vaccinations. That's about 1 in 14 of the whole population or 7%. Across the United Kingdom, there are 25 million people over the age of 50.
As others have said, in terms of the very elderly, it seems likely the "quick wins" have been done and it's now a question of getting the vaccine to the mobility impaired or others who cannot travel to a GP or vaccination centre.
In East Ham High Street today, shades of last spring with queues outside Sainsbury's and Lidl - mask wearing still far from universal though being enforced in some shops.
Plenty of over 80s have not yet been vaccinated; my 83 year old mum has still heard nothing.
Make the phonecall, some GPs are very slow and tbh, you shouldn't wait now. The government should now say all remaining 80 year olds xan phone up for appointments if they've yet to be contacted.
Basically the government just needs to get on with it. We need 1m jabs a day now!
Read the news. Read Johnson's comments. Vaccinations mean nothing. Vaccinating the most vulnerable means nothing. It will not end the lockdown. The SAGE committee are putting new fears in his way. Super mutant strains! Long Covid! Fast mutating overseas variants! And so he is shutting down all commercial travel from everywhere.
Look at him. He is completely at sea mentally, he has no plan, or timetable, or vision, to get us out of this. At all.
Ok, I know I shouldn't but I'll bite:
Why, oh why, would any government of any persuasion plot to keep the restrictions longer than necessary?
This government in particular which has repeatedly erred on the side of applying measures too late is not going to maintain restrictions beyond when they are absolutely necessary.
Remember when everyone used to say Klopp was "a breath of fresh air"? Seems a long time ago now.
He still is.
Haters going to hate when he started to win the big trophies.
Not a Liverpool fan but god do I wish my team had Klopp as manager. Not just supremely good at what he does but, from everything I have read and seen about him, a genuinely good bloke as well.
And a sop and get out of jail card to the white man's conscience. Like bigging yourself up for raping and robbing someone and then giving them their bus fare home.
The reason the full fact article was horseshit, and the fact it is horseshit would be obvious if read with a critical eye, was nothing to do with the citations, which are far as I can see, are completely beside the 'fact' that is being checked anyway?
This was their 'verdict'
EU regulations on dredging did not cause recent flooding This is not true. Dredging happens in the UK. Some elements of it are affecting by EU directives, but not prevented.
To prove the assertion, we need supplementary answers to the following questions: -All very well to say 'dredging happens' but to what degree has it been affected by the EU regulations, which the article later acknowledges have made it considerably more difficult? How much was done before, and how much after? -Were the affected rivers dredged lately? What is their particular rate of being dredged compared to the regime before the EU regulation came in? -What are the comparative heights of the riverbeds concerned compared to their average height historically? -Are UK agencies being over-assiduous in their interpretation and implementation of the Water directive?
None of these issues are even addressed, so how can you possibly argue that the 'fact' has been 'checked'?
As far as the less than relevant wider attack on dredging as a concept is concerned, the sources don't really support the argument.
The blog piece (published on the Environment Agency's own blog - they are hardly going to attack their own policy) starts off with an example of a successful dredging scheme, and concludes that it should be used as part of a range of measures.
The 2014 study by CIWEM has this as its headline finding: We conclude that dredging can play an important role in flood risk management in some cases, but is not a stand-alone solution. It should be considered in the context of a range of tools and the origins of different sources of flood water, and comes with significant risks that must be understood at a local and catchment scale.
That doesn't in any way refute the usefulness of dredging, and certainly does not provide evidence for the efficacy of a policy of virtually no dredging vs. the regular dredging of the past.
Like so many of full facts stuff, the article doesn't provide the 'facts' to back its assertions, which for a fact check, seems rather to defeat the object.
Remember when everyone used to say Klopp was "a breath of fresh air"? Seems a long time ago now.
He still is.
Haters going to hate when he started to win the big trophies.
Not a Liverpool fan but god do I wish my team had Klopp as manager. Not just supremely good at what he does but, from everything I have read and seen about him, a genuinely good bloke as well.
It's quite simple. I love our history, heritage and culture - the stories of how we became who we are, warts and all - and I don't want to see it desecrated.
The rest of it is a strong detestation for narcissism and self-absorption, the contradictory illogical bullshit one feels obliged to agree with (on pain of being called a bigot) and being preached at by the self-righteous and hypocritical, which I react to.
But @Casino_Royale you appear to get enraged about the removal of *any* statue.
I wouldn't be happy if statues of actual British heroes, people who are actually part of our national myth, were taken down. The likes of Churchill, Boudica, Darwin, Kings and Queens, etc.
But why do you care if a statue of some random slaver is taken down? Nobody cares about them. They have no historical or emotional value. Why?
Or is it simply to fight back at your enemy, the woke?
That's not true. I would object to statues or monuments that are prima face offensive. I disagreed with a plaque in a church in Dorchester that celebrated the suppression of a slave rebellion, and used the n-word too. Nor do I feel comfortable with those that show someone of a certain race in public in a subservient position - and there is one on the frieze of the Royal Exchange, for instance.
But I have a traditional conservative attitude to statues and monuments that have been there for a long time, and I think the test should be higher the longer it has been up there. The change should be minimal and it should be absolutely proportionate to the architecture, history and heritage, which should otherwise be conserved.
When I put up a strong defence it's because I think the "problem" they are argued to cause is non-existent (and therefore it's a strawman) or because I think someone is simply looking for villiany (and advancing tenuous arguments to do so) because they want the notoriety for themselves, which I see as narcissistic and selfish.
This isn't a fantasy either. We've seen buildings named after William Gladstone (one of our greatest prime ministers), David Hume (a pillar of the Scottish enlightenment) and Baden Powell (founder of the scout movement that gives pleasures to millions of children) all come under attack in recent months, as well as generals involved in Victorian Wars, just because offence archeologists have found attitudes or statements they made during their lives that are non-U by modern standards somewhere in their past.
Well, balls to that. They don't get to make unilateral (and irrevocable) decisions like that just to satisfy some inner need they have for achievement and attention off the back of a trendy movement.
Not on my watch.
"Not on my watch" Lol!
Like you can actually do anything about it other than harrumph loudly.
I donate monthly to Save our Statues. I have written to the Rhodes Commission, City of London taskforce and Exeter Council. I have lobbied my MP. I have contacted, privately, a couple of my friends in parliament on the matter. I make the argument to friends and colleagues.
So, yeah, it might be harrumphing loudly. But I bet it's a lot more than you do.
Keep going. And bravo.
I detest the molestation of our heritage at the whim of a mob. And it was a mob that chucked Colston in the river in Bristol.
Was his statue problematic? Yes. Of course.
Is it OK therefore, for a bunch of Covid-dodging students to just casually chuck him in the water?
Absolutely not. Prosecute these vandals.
If you want to bring down a statue, have a democratic vote on it, or elect a council/assembly/parliament that has this policy in its manifesto, explicitly. I am not sure a single council, assembly, parliament in the UK has ever been elected on a platform of official iconoclasm. If they are, then fair enough. Tear the statues down.
All the polls show that the public seriously dislike mob-handed statue-destroying. We have recently seen extra evidence of the dangerous madness of mobs, in Washington DC.
We are a democracy. Do it legally, calmly, democratically. If that doesn't work, then put the statues in context. Put up a plaque to explain why many people are offended by its existence. This stuff isn't hard.
I'm not sure what you are arguing here. I certainly don't support the mob's right to tear down statues and nor do most people on here.
But there's certainly a massive gulf between "Rhodes must fall to the mob" and "donate to Save our Statues" which is the most laughable organisation I've ever heard.
Save our Statues is an organisation who's website has the Cenotaph and Winston Churchill on the front page and yet I am willing to bet only a good 5% of the population, at best, would want to "tear those down". What a load of fear-mongering tosh.
Let's erect a statue of Greta Thunberg then they can campaign to save that too. They'd enjoy that, I'm sure.
Put it on a beach, and then we can all watch it be slowly submerged over the decades to come. Both sides should enjoy that.
And a sop and get out of jail card to the white man's conscience. Like bigging yourself up for raping and robbing someone and then giving them their bus fare home.
Actually, I am an admirer of Wilberforce. He was a brave man who did great things, but, was he flawed? OF course he fucking was. But so is everyone. Martin Luther King is implicated in gang rape. Gandhi as an old man slept with his teenage nieces. Churchill was a bigoted old drunk, Lincoln was a classical racist.
If you want to tear down every statue of every man or woman with a flaw we now find unacceptable, I genuinely think you would have no statues of anyone born before about 1990. And in ten years we will tearing down them, as well. In 2030 we will be attacking statues of Barack Obama and David Attenborough. It is insane.
Iconoclasm is a classic symptom of a society in crisis.
If an organisation wants to rename their building, who cares?
If an organisation wants to move certain statues to a museum, who cares?
You are always clamouring on about the "woke" imposing their views on others and yet here you are imposing your views on others.
You are very institutionalist. The environment belongs to us collectively; the likes of the City of London are delegated to look after bits of it for us, they aren't absolute beneficial owners who can do what the hell they like and it's none of our business.
Why would I care what someone's random building was called? Why would our society care what someone's random building was called?
If someone replaced a statue on the facade of their building, why would I care? Why would our society care?
I'm sorry to say that if your biggest gripe in life is such things, you must live an incredibly privileged life.
It's middle class problems to the extreme.
Drunk driver's fallacy there. I can think about more than one thing at a time.
Calling things "random" is a curious way of trivialising them. The slave trade was just some random white men shipping some random Africans across the Atlantic, so is it ok not to mind about it?
But on the whole they aren't important to either our national myth or to civic pride.
If you took 100 teenagers to the City and asked them how many of the people who have statues they recognised, how many do you think they would recognise?
And then ask yourself, does it matter how many they recognise?
I'm all for statues. I love public art and feel it should be encouraged. But statues of random men with no real artistic merit? Who cares? Maybe we could do better with those plinths and facades?
OK, up to a point, if you have a strict no removal without firm replacement plan policy. Your 100 teenagers might be better off being taught about the people they don't recognise, though; if you disagree you are going to have to commit to replacing all your statues once every Scottish generation to keep au courant.
Once again, they aren't random. The only one I can recall offhand from my City days is the Duke of Wellington.
The Duke of Wellington is the kind of statue we should have. A bloke most people are familiar with and who has a significant impact on British culture. Same with Baden Powell.
Perhaps an appropriate quotation from Wellington on the plinth would be "When my journal appears, many statues must come down".
It's almost as if removing statues has a long pedigree...
Nothing wrong with houses being built there - it's the refusal to dredge the rivers based on EU regulations and enforced by the environment agency that is the issue. Now we've left the EU, a this is something that can be re-assessed.
Dredging rivers won't make up for the propensity to develop willy nilly on flood plains and increased flooding from increased climate energy.
Dredging rivers is mostly waste of time.
There were people jumping up and down saying that the flooding in Fishlake last year was caused by lack of dredging.
Except...the river is tidal. Dredging below sea level doesn't do much.
Slowing down the floods is what is needed. Better management of uplands, and less run off from tarmac.
Building houses in a place that floods does two things - it adds another asset that has to be defended (inevitably not against every conceivable flood) and adds risk to everyone downstream.
Stupid idea.
Building houses on a flood plain isn't a great idea, that much is true of course. But that doesn't mean that rivers shouldn't be dredged regularly to prevent the river bed rising over time. Even with tidal rivers, it still increases the capacity of the river to accommodate rainfall - the people objecting to a lack of dredging still had a valid argument.
I had already read that 'fact check' - it's sad how the term has become so debased.
Dredging does two main things - firstly it increases the capacity of rivers to hold water (this of course doesn't 'make it worse', it makes it better all round). The second is to increase flow through the dredged area. If that increases the risk of flooding downstream, the answer is fairly simple - dredge there too. You are trying to facilitate the flow of water into the sea. If downstream, flooding doesn't matter so much, don't dredge there.
Out of interest, where do you think all this silt comes from? And what effect do you think faster flows will have on that process? Can you think of any unintended consequences of trying to engineer rivers into devices for moving water away from here as fast as possible? Are you aware of any obstacles to increased river flow that might interact badly with higher flow peaks? I'll give you a clue on the last one: BR*DGES.
You speak as if dredging is some risky new Brexiteer wheeze that I've just invented. Dredging is THE NORM. It has been done for decades as part of responsible river management. It is leaving the rivers to clutter up that is the new experiment, and the lack of dredging cannot be absolved from responsibility for the current flooding, no matter how many irrelevant arguments attacking its use get brought up.
Again, the knee-jerk response to criticism of the EU from you guys is hilarious. Is anti-dredging the new PC? Is dredging racist?
Actually, I asked a series of questions. They were not rhetorical. I have a vision of fast-flowing water piling up as more and more surface runoff and tributaries meet, and causing catastrophic acute erosion events, and creating dangerous pileups of water where a river crosses under a road or a railway that could, in some cases overwhelm the infrastructure or even destroy it.
There's a simple idea to bring to the table that needs thinking about. It'll sound obvious to start with but I'll explain why it's relevant: a flood happens when you have too much water in one place at a time. Now the reason I even deigned to mention this idea is because you need to think about WHY the water all arrives at once. Rain falls across a wide area; it doesn't all go into the river at once. But surface runoff is accelerated in urban areas. A paved street throws all that water downhill rapidly. A vegetated hill soaks it up and releases it gradually. Dredged rivers are like paved streets. The water just chutes along downstream. But when a fast-flowing stream hits a meander, it doesn't just steer itself nicely around the corner. It gouges into the bank. It washes mud out, and pulls rocks and trees up. Urbanisation, deforestation, and dredging all cause narrower, higher peak flows. And when the same rain event has already swollen the river downstream, that water has nowhere to go but on top of the water that's already there. When you have a heavy rainstorm, you want the water to be getting into and through the river system in days, not hours.
And you'll note that I'm not talking about Brexit, I'm not talking about the EU. I wasn't even having a go at you. I just had a suspicion that you hadn't thought this through, and wanted to approach that possibility by asking some questions. I suspect if you had good answers to the questions you would have given them, but I'll wait and see if something floats downstream eventually.
Comments
I reread The Gun the other day, surely the best historical novel ever.
"The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."
It only takes 5% of REALLY committed people to make the apathetic 95% remainder of the population, reluctantly, sighingly, oh-God-OK-ishly go along with the nutters, because they can't be arsed to argue, with people so vehement, and the threat, initially, seems trivial.
This pattern has been repeated through history.
German patriotism was captured by about 5% of German patriots, the Nazis.
In parts of the Islamic world, the perfectly peaceable 95% of Muslims have been captured by the violent, aggressive 5% that are Islamists.
Probably the same has happened with Trumpites. Probably the same happened in Washington DC the other day.
That's why you have to face down the 5%, even if they seem tiny and harmless.
But fewer than a decade later they were the ones looking desperately out of touch.
The vast majority of the loony Left policies are desperately banal and uncontroversial these days.
Pfizer have scientifically proved a second booster vaccination 21 days after the first vaccination completes the process of building immunity and the efficacy seven days after the second vaccination is 95%. Obviously, we don't know how long such levels of immunity will persist though that will be determined during this year.
It seems more likely that, for example, 60 days after the initial vaccination, the level of immunity of those who have had one vaccination is likely to be less than those who received a second booster vaccination 21 days after the first vaccination. It's the same logic that applies on a much larger timescale with MMR and with other vaccinations.
I simply don't understand why the Government is going down this route - in perhaps 90 days restrictions will start to be eased and people will start going out and about and mixing in the belief because they've had a vaccination they will be protected. That may be the case - equally it may not and those who have had a single vaccination may no longer have protection and we'll be on the disastrous treadmill of rising case numbers leading to a new lockdown.
It would be so easy to prevent this by ensuring the proper course of two vaccinations is followed.
I really hope I'm wrong and I'm worrying about nothing - the vaccine(s) are tremendous news and I've never had a scintilla of an issue about having a vaccination but I want it done right not as a half-hearted botched attempt to look good.
On a serious basis Boris needs to balance the 'let's stay in lockdown forever' with the need to reopen society but it needs to be on a proportionate basis ie when we are reasonably sure we won't need to lockdown again.
https://satellitemap.space
it's a live map of the coverage of the Starlink satellite internet provision system that Elon Musk is building.
It's an active map - you can spin the globe (click and drag) , zoom in or out etc...
She is a Harvard student, the daughter of a Jamaican Stanford Professor and an esteemed Indian endocrinologist.
She is also, if you want to get technical, not black by skin tone. She just isn't.
But we've had this argument. I suggest we park it.
Why, oh why, would any government of any persuasion plot to keep the restrictions longer than necessary?
This government in particular which has repeatedly erred on the side of applying measures too late is not going to maintain restrictions beyond when they are absolutely necessary.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/apr/23/brexit-makes-no-sense-and-britain-should-vote-again-says-jurgen-klopp
https://www.balls.ie/football/watch-jurgen-klopp-brexit-405227
This was their 'verdict'
EU regulations on dredging did not cause recent flooding
This is not true. Dredging happens in the UK. Some elements of it are affecting by EU directives, but not prevented.
To prove the assertion, we need supplementary answers to the following questions:
-All very well to say 'dredging happens' but to what degree has it been affected by the EU regulations, which the article later acknowledges have made it considerably more difficult? How much was done before, and how much after?
-Were the affected rivers dredged lately? What is their particular rate of being dredged compared to the regime before the EU regulation came in?
-What are the comparative heights of the riverbeds concerned compared to their average height historically?
-Are UK agencies being over-assiduous in their interpretation and implementation of the Water directive?
None of these issues are even addressed, so how can you possibly argue that the 'fact' has been 'checked'?
As far as the less than relevant wider attack on dredging as a concept is concerned, the sources don't really support the argument.
The blog piece (published on the Environment Agency's own blog - they are hardly going to attack their own policy) starts off with an example of a successful dredging scheme, and concludes that it should be used as part of a range of measures.
The 2014 study by CIWEM has this as its headline finding:
We conclude that dredging can play an important role in flood risk management in some cases, but is not a stand-alone solution. It should be considered in the context of a range of tools and the origins of different sources of flood water, and comes with significant risks that must be understood at a local and catchment scale.
That doesn't in any way refute the usefulness of dredging, and certainly does not provide evidence for the efficacy of a policy of virtually no dredging vs. the regular dredging of the past.
Like so many of full facts stuff, the article doesn't provide the 'facts' to back its assertions, which for a fact check, seems rather to defeat the object.
NEW THREAD
If you want to tear down every statue of every man or woman with a flaw we now find unacceptable, I genuinely think you would have no statues of anyone born before about 1990. And in ten years we will tearing down them, as well. In 2030 we will be attacking statues of Barack Obama and David Attenborough. It is insane.
Iconoclasm is a classic symptom of a society in crisis.
It's almost as if removing statues has a long pedigree...
Perhaps LFC need a new striker.
There's a simple idea to bring to the table that needs thinking about. It'll sound obvious to start with but I'll explain why it's relevant: a flood happens when you have too much water in one place at a time.
Now the reason I even deigned to mention this idea is because you need to think about WHY the water all arrives at once. Rain falls across a wide area; it doesn't all go into the river at once. But surface runoff is accelerated in urban areas. A paved street throws all that water downhill rapidly. A vegetated hill soaks it up and releases it gradually.
Dredged rivers are like paved streets. The water just chutes along downstream. But when a fast-flowing stream hits a meander, it doesn't just steer itself nicely around the corner. It gouges into the bank. It washes mud out, and pulls rocks and trees up.
Urbanisation, deforestation, and dredging all cause narrower, higher peak flows. And when the same rain event has already swollen the river downstream, that water has nowhere to go but on top of the water that's already there. When you have a heavy rainstorm, you want the water to be getting into and through the river system in days, not hours.
And you'll note that I'm not talking about Brexit, I'm not talking about the EU. I wasn't even having a go at you. I just had a suspicion that you hadn't thought this through, and wanted to approach that possibility by asking some questions. I suspect if you had good answers to the questions you would have given them, but I'll wait and see if something floats downstream eventually.