I don't think so. The key thing is he says "used to" - he just needs to say clearly how much respect he has for Her Maj and that it serves the country well etc. etc.
Of course it's going to be a fucking problem. This is the new patriotism. If you don't gush about how the Queen has served the nation for 60 years by being driven to the races in a Bentley and selflessly accepting 40,000 bunches of flowers you are fucked.
He will just have to hope the Queen rolls a two before the next GE as republicanism will be very much in vogue once we have King Gobshite and his nervous wreck heir.
Perhaps it can be fought off with more flags. Which is another reason not to go ape on flags now. You have to leave yourself somewhere to go. Some gears unused.
Thankfully SKS seems to have only a single flag habit at the moment. Keep a beady eye open for any increase, and casually placed models of aircraft carriers.
The model was only yesterday, Keir hasn't had a chance to retaliate yet. It' s coming.
My bet is a miner's helmet in the corner, next to a model of a WW2 tank.
- A super Churchill (tick) - A shout out to ethnic minorities (tick) - A shout out to Royalty (tick) - A finger flick at the French (tick)
Great knowledge, love it!
The history of British tank design in WWII is a wonderful opportunity to study dysfunctional organisations, the lunatics that reform them and the bizarre engineering attracts that get produced.
Britain must have been the only country producing tank designs with non sloping armour in the latter half of the war.
Ironically, the success of our fighter building programme came at the expense of tanks because Lord Beaverbrook as Minister of Aircraft Production (familiar to older PBers as the model for our calls for vaccine and PPE tsars) had grabbed all the material and factories.
Some say that - but we succeeded in making tons of crapulent tanks. We built 1700 Covenanters. A tank that had one small defect. Actually driving it caused massive overheating in the engine.
I am permanently bemused by the "Soviet tractor stats" smear, because the same production technique produced Soviet T34s. They were not false positive T34s, and they were a lot of the reason why we are not having this conversation in german.
It's also a good side note to the patriotism and the left discussion; WWII Soviet factory workers pulled of some stupendous feats of production involving unpaid overtime, 14 hour shifts, contributing their wages towards the cost of an eg T34. Most industrialised countries had some version of this of course and there may have been a certain element of it being done at the end of a PPSh, but there was also a huge amount of genuine patriotism involved.
Hence the "Great Patriotic War"
Casts a long shadow. There was some functionary of the current Russian regime being interviewed the other day on the Navalny case and he stated that one of his crimes/failings was not being sufficiently respectful of the sacrifice of the Great Patriotic War.
Fairly easy trivia question: if WWII was the "Second Great Patriotic War", what was the First Great Patriotic War?
Shit, I was reading something that mentioned this the other day but no fact anchored in my heid! Will have to resort to Google.
As a hint, this is one of the things that helped end it:
kudos for knowing what that is. How anyone could look at those horses and think they constituted a light brigade...
Interesting to note that the balance of the article was that the potential risks in the long term didn't outweigh the short term risks of the virus, but in part because they thought there was no prospect of "classical" vaccines being developed for many years.
Well in AZ we do have a "classical" vaccine...
The concerns about mRNA expressed in the article didn't have much if any scientific basis - as the second commenter quoted made clear.
I am not sure that AZ is a classical vaccine, in that it is a genetically modified adenovirus, rather than either an inactivated virus or an attenuated live virus, which would be my understanding of a classical vaccine.
I think Valneva is inactivated, and one of the Chinese ones is live attenuated. So we do either have, or have on the horizon, classical vaccines.
Oxford University and AstraZeneca plan to have a new Covid vaccine ready by the autumn to tackle new variants of the coronavirus, they confirmed today.
Given all the additional Pfizer manufacturing capacity being built in Europe, I suspect the EU won't be buying any more AZ after the initial order is complete. With Pfizer having much higher efficacy trial results than AZ, they'll probably view it as them buying the Rolls-Royce of vaccines while the UK makes do with a Skoda.
Have you seen the latest results from the AZ trials?
Yes, 82.4% for AZ versus 95% for Pfizer.
Wont matter when we're cruising to the pub in our Skodas whilst they are still waiting in their homes.
Nothing wrong with a Skoda.
My Skoda was about 10k less than the very similar but smaller VW, and 20k less for the similar Audi, which is so small I can't even get 10 house doors in it, flat.
You car 10 house doors on a regular basis
Just keep an open mind on the subject.
How does the vehicle handle?
Very nice drive, my Skoda. Second one I've had. Had the Pfizer vaccine, too! 2½ weeks ago.
Why? Cars don't need vaccines, they're immune.
But some of them are carriers.
Are you suggesting they are Vectras of transmission?
That is bonkers, as over 50 is the age for something like 98-99% of the deaths in the UK from COVID-19. In effect by only using the vaccine on under 55s they will save hardly any lives, and sacrifice thousands of older lives in the process. They would do more good giving the vaccine away to other countries who will make better use of it.
I commented down thread on Polish and German friends being told by their doctors to wait for Pfizer - doing this means that there is a systemic excuse for low/slow vaccination. Especially since, as you say, the priority is supposed to be the elderly. "We are waiting for deliveries of the proper stuff"
Completely irresponsible if true.
Widespread strict lockdowns, rampant case numbers, thousands of deaths - look at what is happening in Portugal - and no end in sight except for the vaccine.
The proper stuff is here. Take it, use it, end this nightmare. Don't be a dingbat.
My guess is that it is an excuse - worried person rings doctor, when can my elderly parents get the vaccine? etc.
Oxford University and AstraZeneca plan to have a new Covid vaccine ready by the autumn to tackle new variants of the coronavirus, they confirmed today.
Given all the additional Pfizer manufacturing capacity being built in Europe, I suspect the EU won't be buying any more AZ after the initial order is complete. With Pfizer having much higher efficacy trial results than AZ, they'll probably view it as them buying the Rolls-Royce of vaccines while the UK makes do with a Skoda.
Have you seen the latest results from the AZ trials?
Yes, 82.4% for AZ versus 95% for Pfizer.
Wont matter when we're cruising to the pub in our Skodas whilst they are still waiting in their homes.
Nothing wrong with a Skoda.
My Skoda was about 10k less than the very similar but smaller VW, and 20k less for the similar Audi, which is so small I can't even get 10 house doors in it, flat.
You car 10 house doors on a regular basis
Just keep an open mind on the subject.
How does the vehicle handle?
Very nice drive, my Skoda. Second one I've had. Had the Pfizer vaccine, too! 2½ weeks ago.
Why? Cars don't need vaccines, they're immune.
But some of them are carriers.
Are you suggesting they are Vectras of transmission?
On Topic AZN still is inferior to Pfizer. The latter 95% efficacy the former pick a number any number
They both stop more or less all deaths and serous infections. By any normal measure, they are both excellent. AZN has the added benefit of being a godsend for the developing world. Anything else anyone says is smoke and mirrors.
I don't think so. The key thing is he says "used to" - he just needs to say clearly how much respect he has for Her Maj and that it serves the country well etc. etc.
Of course it's going to be a fucking problem. This is the new patriotism. If you don't gush about how the Queen has served the nation for 60 years by being driven to the races in a Bentley and selflessly accepting 40,000 bunches of flowers you are fucked.
He will just have to hope the Queen rolls a two before the next GE as republicanism will be very much in vogue once we have King Gobshite and his nervous wreck heir.
Perhaps it can be fought off with more flags. Which is another reason not to go ape on flags now. You have to leave yourself somewhere to go. Some gears unused.
Thankfully SKS seems to have only a single flag habit at the moment. Keep a beady eye open for any increase, and casually placed models of aircraft carriers.
The model was only yesterday, Keir hasn't had a chance to retaliate yet. It' s coming.
My bet is a miner's helmet in the corner, next to a model of a WW2 tank.
- A super Churchill (tick) - A shout out to ethnic minorities (tick) - A shout out to Royalty (tick) - A finger flick at the French (tick)
Great knowledge, love it!
The history of British tank design in WWII is a wonderful opportunity to study dysfunctional organisations, the lunatics that reform them and the bizarre engineering attracts that get produced.
Britain must have been the only country producing tank designs with non sloping armour in the latter half of the war.
Ironically, the success of our fighter building programme came at the expense of tanks because Lord Beaverbrook as Minister of Aircraft Production (familiar to older PBers as the model for our calls for vaccine and PPE tsars) had grabbed all the material and factories.
Some say that - but we succeeded in making tons of crapulent tanks. We built 1700 Covenanters. A tank that had one small defect. Actually driving it caused massive overheating in the engine.
I am permanently bemused by the "Soviet tractor stats" smear, because the same production technique produced Soviet T34s. They were not false positive T34s, and they were a lot of the reason why we are not having this conversation in german.
It's also a good side note to the patriotism and the left discussion; WWII Soviet factory workers pulled of some stupendous feats of production involving unpaid overtime, 14 hour shifts, contributing their wages towards the cost of an eg T34. Most industrialised countries had some version of this of course and there may have been a certain element of it being done at the end of a PPSh, but there was also a huge amount of genuine patriotism involved.
Hence the "Great Patriotic War"
Casts a long shadow. There was some functionary of the current Russian regime being interviewed the other day on the Navalny case and he stated that one of his crimes/failings was not being sufficiently respectful of the sacrifice of the Great Patriotic War.
Fairly easy trivia question: if WWII was the "Second Great Patriotic War", what was the First Great Patriotic War?
Shit, I was reading something that mentioned this the other day but no fact anchored in my heid! Will have to resort to Google.
As a hint, this is one of the things that helped end it:
kudos for knowing what that is. How anyone could look at those horses and think they constituted a light brigade...
I had a moment of panic there that I had mis-remembered when that happened, but no, it was the battle I meant. I thought the picture appropriate for @Theuniondivvie
In all seriousness whilst regulators may come to different conclusions it does seem confusing for an EU wide strategy that they have - how can the EU plot out things if different vaccines will be able to be used in different places?
Are those restricting AZ use going to receive more Pfizer to make up for it, and those using AZ less as they will have alternatives?
Is the Russian banging on about the Great Patriotic (Soviet) War better or worse than British gammons banging on about their heroism (often while still in the womb, or even pre-fertilisation) in WWII?
I don't think so. The key thing is he says "used to" - he just needs to say clearly how much respect he has for Her Maj and that it serves the country well etc. etc.
Of course it's going to be a fucking problem. This is the new patriotism. If you don't gush about how the Queen has served the nation for 60 years by being driven to the races in a Bentley and selflessly accepting 40,000 bunches of flowers you are fucked.
He will just have to hope the Queen rolls a two before the next GE as republicanism will be very much in vogue once we have King Gobshite and his nervous wreck heir.
Perhaps it can be fought off with more flags. Which is another reason not to go ape on flags now. You have to leave yourself somewhere to go. Some gears unused.
Thankfully SKS seems to have only a single flag habit at the moment. Keep a beady eye open for any increase, and casually placed models of aircraft carriers.
The model was only yesterday, Keir hasn't had a chance to retaliate yet. It' s coming.
My bet is a miner's helmet in the corner, next to a model of a WW2 tank.
- A super Churchill (tick) - A shout out to ethnic minorities (tick) - A shout out to Royalty (tick) - A finger flick at the French (tick)
Great knowledge, love it!
The history of British tank design in WWII is a wonderful opportunity to study dysfunctional organisations, the lunatics that reform them and the bizarre engineering attracts that get produced.
Britain must have been the only country producing tank designs with non sloping armour in the latter half of the war.
Ironically, the success of our fighter building programme came at the expense of tanks because Lord Beaverbrook as Minister of Aircraft Production (familiar to older PBers as the model for our calls for vaccine and PPE tsars) had grabbed all the material and factories.
Some say that - but we succeeded in making tons of crapulent tanks. We built 1700 Covenanters. A tank that had one small defect. Actually driving it caused massive overheating in the engine.
I am permanently bemused by the "Soviet tractor stats" smear, because the same production technique produced Soviet T34s. They were not false positive T34s, and they were a lot of the reason why we are not having this conversation in german.
It's also a good side note to the patriotism and the left discussion; WWII Soviet factory workers pulled of some stupendous feats of production involving unpaid overtime, 14 hour shifts, contributing their wages towards the cost of an eg T34. Most industrialised countries had some version of this of course and there may have been a certain element of it being done at the end of a PPSh, but there was also a huge amount of genuine patriotism involved.
Hence the "Great Patriotic War"
Casts a long shadow. There was some functionary of the current Russian regime being interviewed the other day on the Navalny case and he stated that one of his crimes/failings was not being sufficiently respectful of the sacrifice of the Great Patriotic War.
Fairly easy trivia question: if WWII was the "Second Great Patriotic War", what was the First Great Patriotic War?
Shit, I was reading something that mentioned this the other day but no fact anchored in my heid! Will have to resort to Google.
As a hint, this is one of the things that helped end it:
Yep, I checked (I'd probably say the charge of the Scots Greys was part of an event that followed on from that Great Patriotic War rather than ended it).
Wiki says the the term was actually coined 30+ years after the event and came into common usage when everyone got excited about its centenary. Never let it be said that Russians don't look back on their history enough (except for the nasty, evil and hideous stuff of course).
On Topic AZN still is inferior to Pfizer. The latter 95% efficacy the former pick a number any number
They both stop more or less all deaths and serous infections. By any normal measure, they are both excellent. AZN has the added benefit of being a godsend for the developing world. Anything else anyone says is smoke and mirrors.
And if the option is the very best 3 months from now or a very good one now it's a no brainer.
You don't have to look that hard to find Starmer statements / actions at odds with his current inage. I mean he played up how much of a leftie he was during the leadership race, then immediately switched.
Starmer is a "nice guy" but views politics as a real-time tactical challenge of presentation and triangulation.
He risks losing everyone with that approach.
And the risk isn't all to his right. Too much RW chasing could lose support in the MML (which is bigger than the RW). For example, on PT you told me that in order to win an election these days a Labour Party core value needs to be not just "loving your country" - which makes me squirm a bit but I can totally live with - but something rather more and rather different.
It must be OPENLY loving your country (you said).
I don't like that. I don't like that one bit. If that becomes a core Labour value I won't be voting Labour.
Lol - there goes the majority. Purity, purity and keep the naffs out.
You seem to make the same response regardless of what you're responding to. It's a neat trick. Frees up much time, I imagine.
Just in your case - why would I waste the time?
But it's not just in my case, is it? Anyway, just an observation. And tbf it is only on certain subjects.
On Topic AZN still is inferior to Pfizer. The latter 95% efficacy the former pick a number any number
Lord knows what point you think you are making, as your statement is neither right, funny, or clever.
For anyone else, the thing that matters most is stopping death and serious illness, in that regard all of the approved vaccines appear to be very good. So right now any jab will do.
Interpretation: ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccination programmes aimed at vaccinating a large proportion of the population with a single dose, with a second dose given after a 3 month period is an effective strategy for reducing disease, and may be the optimal for rollout of a pandemic vaccine when supplies are limited in the short term.
In a perfect world if you had sufficient Pfizer and Astra for your population to all be vaccinated tommorow you'd give the more vulnerable Pfizer and the less vulnerable Astra. But it's very close with the latest 12 week Astra spacing/mutants vs Pfizer, and NO nation is in this position. I think our mixed strategy for all ages is correct going age downward.
Brother got his first Pfizer vaccine shot today. Hooray!
In London, though. In group 6.
Meanwhile surgery here is saying that despite having done all their Group 1-4 people, they are waiting for NHS England to tell them when they can get more vaccines so that they can continue. Cumbria had its allocation cut by a 1/3rd. Hence the pause.
(Honestly! Bloody Londoners stealing our vaccines. Just like the Commission. We Red Wall voters get ignored. Grumble grumble.... What's the point of Boris if he won't level us up, etc etc ...... (Am I doing this right @HYUFD?))
Is the Russian banging on about the Great Patriotic (Soviet) War better or worse than British gammons banging on about their heroism (often while still in the womb, or even pre-fertilisation) in WWII?
I think arresting and sending people to prison for suggesting that, just perhaps, not everything Comrade Stalin did in the war was awesome tips the balance.
You don't have to look that hard to find Starmer statements / actions at odds with his current inage. I mean he played up how much of a leftie he was during the leadership race, then immediately switched.
Starmer is a "nice guy" but views politics as a real-time tactical challenge of presentation and triangulation.
He risks losing everyone with that approach.
And the risk isn't all to his right. Too much RW chasing could lose support in the MML (which is bigger than the RW). For example, on PT you told me that in order to win an election these days a Labour Party core value needs to be not just "loving your country" - which makes me squirm a bit but I can totally live with - but something rather more and rather different.
It must be OPENLY loving your country (you said).
I don't like that. I don't like that one bit. If that becomes a core Labour value I won't be voting Labour.
Lol - there goes the majority. Purity, purity and keep the naffs out.
You seem to make the same response regardless of what you're responding to. It's a neat trick. Frees up much time, I imagine.
Just in your case - why would I waste the time?
But it's not just in my case, is it? Anyway, just an observation. And tbf it is only on certain subjects.
Just got be boring, and actually having looked at Wikipedia, what it says about Russian patriotic war is. 'Patriotic War of 1812, Napoleon's invasion of Russia Second Patriotic War, the war between the German Empire and its allies against Russia during World War I Great Patriotic War, the war between Nazi Germany and its allies against the Soviet Union during World War II'
Oxford University and AstraZeneca plan to have a new Covid vaccine ready by the autumn to tackle new variants of the coronavirus, they confirmed today.
Given all the additional Pfizer manufacturing capacity being built in Europe, I suspect the EU won't be buying any more AZ after the initial order is complete. With Pfizer having much higher efficacy trial results than AZ, they'll probably view it as them buying the Rolls-Royce of vaccines while the UK makes do with a Skoda.
Have you seen the latest results from the AZ trials?
Yes, 82.4% for AZ versus 95% for Pfizer.
Wont matter when we're cruising to the pub in our Skodas whilst they are still waiting in their homes.
Nothing wrong with a Skoda.
My Skoda was about 10k less than the very similar but smaller VW, and 20k less for the similar Audi, which is so small I can't even get 10 house doors in it, flat.
You car 10 house doors on a regular basis
Just keep an open mind on the subject.
How does the vehicle handle?
Very nice drive, my Skoda. Second one I've had. Had the Pfizer vaccine, too! 2½ weeks ago.
Why? Cars don't need vaccines, they're immune.
I thought you taught History, not English!
Actually, I teach both. I annoy most of my colleagues in the English department by saying English is history for thick people.
I assume that is a joke. Though I do worry where English may be going at University level.
I don't think so. The key thing is he says "used to" - he just needs to say clearly how much respect he has for Her Maj and that it serves the country well etc. etc.
Of course it's going to be a fucking problem. This is the new patriotism. If you don't gush about how the Queen has served the nation for 60 years by being driven to the races in a Bentley and selflessly accepting 40,000 bunches of flowers you are fucked.
He will just have to hope the Queen rolls a two before the next GE as republicanism will be very much in vogue once we have King Gobshite and his nervous wreck heir.
Perhaps it can be fought off with more flags. Which is another reason not to go ape on flags now. You have to leave yourself somewhere to go. Some gears unused.
Thankfully SKS seems to have only a single flag habit at the moment. Keep a beady eye open for any increase, and casually placed models of aircraft carriers.
The model was only yesterday, Keir hasn't had a chance to retaliate yet. It' s coming.
My bet is a miner's helmet in the corner, next to a model of a WW2 tank.
- A super Churchill (tick) - A shout out to ethnic minorities (tick) - A shout out to Royalty (tick) - A finger flick at the French (tick)
Great knowledge, love it!
The history of British tank design in WWII is a wonderful opportunity to study dysfunctional organisations, the lunatics that reform them and the bizarre engineering attracts that get produced.
Britain must have been the only country producing tank designs with non sloping armour in the latter half of the war.
Ironically, the success of our fighter building programme came at the expense of tanks because Lord Beaverbrook as Minister of Aircraft Production (familiar to older PBers as the model for our calls for vaccine and PPE tsars) had grabbed all the material and factories.
Some say that - but we succeeded in making tons of crapulent tanks. We built 1700 Covenanters. A tank that had one small defect. Actually driving it caused massive overheating in the engine.
I am permanently bemused by the "Soviet tractor stats" smear, because the same production technique produced Soviet T34s. They were not false positive T34s, and they were a lot of the reason why we are not having this conversation in german.
It's also a good side note to the patriotism and the left discussion; WWII Soviet factory workers pulled of some stupendous feats of production involving unpaid overtime, 14 hour shifts, contributing their wages towards the cost of an eg T34. Most industrialised countries had some version of this of course and there may have been a certain element of it being done at the end of a PPSh, but there was also a huge amount of genuine patriotism involved.
Hence the "Great Patriotic War"
Casts a long shadow. There was some functionary of the current Russian regime being interviewed the other day on the Navalny case and he stated that one of his crimes/failings was not being sufficiently respectful of the sacrifice of the Great Patriotic War.
Fairly easy trivia question: if WWII was the "Second Great Patriotic War", what was the First Great Patriotic War?
Shit, I was reading something that mentioned this the other day but no fact anchored in my heid! Will have to resort to Google.
As a hint, this is one of the things that helped end it:
Yep, I checked (I'd probably say the charge of the Scots Greys was part of an event that followed on from that Great Patriotic War rather than ended it).
Wiki says the the term was actually coined 30+ years after the event and came into common usage when everyone got excited about its centenary. Never let it be said that Russians don't look back on their history enough (except for the nasty, evil and hideous stuff of course).
Not a lot of Russians at Waterloo as far as I know, so yes.
I went on a school trip to Leningrad back in '86 where we visited the Hermitage. Our guide was very surprised when one of our history teachers on the trip pointed at a painting of the Duke of Wellington, which was one of the few non-Russian portraits included in the section on the "First Great Patriotic War" and said that he was related to him.
I don't think so. The key thing is he says "used to" - he just needs to say clearly how much respect he has for Her Maj and that it serves the country well etc. etc.
Of course it's going to be a fucking problem. This is the new patriotism. If you don't gush about how the Queen has served the nation for 60 years by being driven to the races in a Bentley and selflessly accepting 40,000 bunches of flowers you are fucked.
He will just have to hope the Queen rolls a two before the next GE as republicanism will be very much in vogue once we have King Gobshite and his nervous wreck heir.
Perhaps it can be fought off with more flags. Which is another reason not to go ape on flags now. You have to leave yourself somewhere to go. Some gears unused.
Thankfully SKS seems to have only a single flag habit at the moment. Keep a beady eye open for any increase, and casually placed models of aircraft carriers.
The model was only yesterday, Keir hasn't had a chance to retaliate yet. It' s coming.
My bet is a miner's helmet in the corner, next to a model of a WW2 tank.
- A super Churchill (tick) - A shout out to ethnic minorities (tick) - A shout out to Royalty (tick) - A finger flick at the French (tick)
Great knowledge, love it!
The history of British tank design in WWII is a wonderful opportunity to study dysfunctional organisations, the lunatics that reform them and the bizarre engineering attracts that get produced.
Britain must have been the only country producing tank designs with non sloping armour in the latter half of the war.
Ironically, the success of our fighter building programme came at the expense of tanks because Lord Beaverbrook as Minister of Aircraft Production (familiar to older PBers as the model for our calls for vaccine and PPE tsars) had grabbed all the material and factories.
Some say that - but we succeeded in making tons of crapulent tanks. We built 1700 Covenanters. A tank that had one small defect. Actually driving it caused massive overheating in the engine.
I am permanently bemused by the "Soviet tractor stats" smear, because the same production technique produced Soviet T34s. They were not false positive T34s, and they were a lot of the reason why we are not having this conversation in german.
It's also a good side note to the patriotism and the left discussion; WWII Soviet factory workers pulled of some stupendous feats of production involving unpaid overtime, 14 hour shifts, contributing their wages towards the cost of an eg T34. Most industrialised countries had some version of this of course and there may have been a certain element of it being done at the end of a PPSh, but there was also a huge amount of genuine patriotism involved.
Hence the "Great Patriotic War"
Casts a long shadow. There was some functionary of the current Russian regime being interviewed the other day on the Navalny case and he stated that one of his crimes/failings was not being sufficiently respectful of the sacrifice of the Great Patriotic War.
Fairly easy trivia question: if WWII was the "Second Great Patriotic War", what was the First Great Patriotic War?
Shit, I was reading something that mentioned this the other day but no fact anchored in my heid! Will have to resort to Google.
As a hint, this is one of the things that helped end it:
kudos for knowing what that is. How anyone could look at those horses and think they constituted a light brigade...
For a war horse, you need a breed that is calm and responds well to distractions. That implies a fair bit of draft blood. It got me thinking about which breeds I'd use. The modern Event Horse - mostly Thoroughbred (for speed) with about ⅛ draft (for intelligence and demeanor) and ⅛ warmblood (for athleticism) - would seem ideal. Indeed, in French, Eventing is called Militaire.
So, it turns out that most cavalries of the time (Napoleonic Wars) did use one breed or another of draft. This is a fascinating article about the evolution of the war horse over the course of history:
Let's put up a statue to Captain Tom: Matt Hancock says war hero has a 'place in history' and should be permanently honoured for £33m NHS fundraising efforts amid calls Trafalgar Square monument
Brother got his first Pfizer vaccine shot today. Hooray!
In London, though. In group 6.
Meanwhile surgery here is saying that despite having done all their Group 1-4 people, they are waiting for NHS England to tell them when they can get more vaccines so that they can continue. Cumbria had its allocation cut by a 1/3rd. Hence the pause.
(Honestly! Bloody Londoners stealing our vaccines. Just like the Commission. We Red Wall voters get ignored. Grumble grumble.... What's the point of Boris if he won't level us up, etc etc ...... (Am I doing this right @HYUFD?))
London (Particularly inner London) has less pensioners than elsewhere, so they are probably getting through the groups a bit quicker.
Just got be boring, and actually having looked at Wikipedia, what it says about Russian patriotic war is. 'Patriotic War of 1812, Napoleon's invasion of Russia Second Patriotic War, the war between the German Empire and its allies against Russia during World War I Great Patriotic War, the war between Nazi Germany and its allies against the Soviet Union during World War II'
Brother got his first Pfizer vaccine shot today. Hooray!
In London, though. In group 6.
Meanwhile surgery here is saying that despite having done all their Group 1-4 people, they are waiting for NHS England to tell them when they can get more vaccines so that they can continue. Cumbria had its allocation cut by a 1/3rd. Hence the pause.
(Honestly! Bloody Londoners stealing our vaccines. Just like the Commission. We Red Wall voters get ignored. Grumble grumble.... What's the point of Boris if he won't level us up, etc etc ...... (Am I doing this right @HYUFD?))
To be fair there is one big difference. The Londoners seem to have been successful in their theft...
Is the Russian banging on about the Great Patriotic (Soviet) War better or worse than British gammons banging on about their heroism (often while still in the womb, or even pre-fertilisation) in WWII?
Do they, though?
I think Stalin's blood/money/time thing was very just. So if we can, they can.
On Topic AZN still is inferior to Pfizer. The latter 95% efficacy the former pick a number any number
For someone as old as I am, British has always been best. Remember the days when we all used to laugh at foolish people driving past in their peculiar air cooled Volkswagens, while we waited for the AA man in the comfort of our Austin Maxis.
I don't think so. The key thing is he says "used to" - he just needs to say clearly how much respect he has for Her Maj and that it serves the country well etc. etc.
Of course it's going to be a fucking problem. This is the new patriotism. If you don't gush about how the Queen has served the nation for 60 years by being driven to the races in a Bentley and selflessly accepting 40,000 bunches of flowers you are fucked.
He will just have to hope the Queen rolls a two before the next GE as republicanism will be very much in vogue once we have King Gobshite and his nervous wreck heir.
Perhaps it can be fought off with more flags. Which is another reason not to go ape on flags now. You have to leave yourself somewhere to go. Some gears unused.
Thankfully SKS seems to have only a single flag habit at the moment. Keep a beady eye open for any increase, and casually placed models of aircraft carriers.
The model was only yesterday, Keir hasn't had a chance to retaliate yet. It' s coming.
My bet is a miner's helmet in the corner, next to a model of a WW2 tank.
- A super Churchill (tick) - A shout out to ethnic minorities (tick) - A shout out to Royalty (tick) - A finger flick at the French (tick)
Great knowledge, love it!
The history of British tank design in WWII is a wonderful opportunity to study dysfunctional organisations, the lunatics that reform them and the bizarre engineering attracts that get produced.
Britain must have been the only country producing tank designs with non sloping armour in the latter half of the war.
Ironically, the success of our fighter building programme came at the expense of tanks because Lord Beaverbrook as Minister of Aircraft Production (familiar to older PBers as the model for our calls for vaccine and PPE tsars) had grabbed all the material and factories.
Some say that - but we succeeded in making tons of crapulent tanks. We built 1700 Covenanters. A tank that had one small defect. Actually driving it caused massive overheating in the engine.
I am permanently bemused by the "Soviet tractor stats" smear, because the same production technique produced Soviet T34s. They were not false positive T34s, and they were a lot of the reason why we are not having this conversation in german.
It's also a good side note to the patriotism and the left discussion; WWII Soviet factory workers pulled of some stupendous feats of production involving unpaid overtime, 14 hour shifts, contributing their wages towards the cost of an eg T34. Most industrialised countries had some version of this of course and there may have been a certain element of it being done at the end of a PPSh, but there was also a huge amount of genuine patriotism involved.
Hence the "Great Patriotic War"
Casts a long shadow. There was some functionary of the current Russian regime being interviewed the other day on the Navalny case and he stated that one of his crimes/failings was not being sufficiently respectful of the sacrifice of the Great Patriotic War.
Fairly easy trivia question: if WWII was the "Second Great Patriotic War", what was the First Great Patriotic War?
Shit, I was reading something that mentioned this the other day but no fact anchored in my heid! Will have to resort to Google.
As a hint, this is one of the things that helped end it:
kudos for knowing what that is. How anyone could look at those horses and think they constituted a light brigade...
For a war horse, you need a breed that is calm and responds well to distractions. That implies a fair bit of draft blood. It got me thinking about which breeds I'd use. The modern Event Horse - mostly Thoroughbred (for speed) with about ⅛ draft (for intelligence and demeanor) and ⅛ warmblood (for athleticism) - would seem ideal. Indeed, in French, Eventing is called Militaire.
So, it turns out that most cavalries of the time (Napoleonic Wars) did use one breed or another of draft. This is a fascinating article about the evolution of the war horse over the course of history:
I don't think so. The key thing is he says "used to" - he just needs to say clearly how much respect he has for Her Maj and that it serves the country well etc. etc.
Of course it's going to be a fucking problem. This is the new patriotism. If you don't gush about how the Queen has served the nation for 60 years by being driven to the races in a Bentley and selflessly accepting 40,000 bunches of flowers you are fucked.
He will just have to hope the Queen rolls a two before the next GE as republicanism will be very much in vogue once we have King Gobshite and his nervous wreck heir.
Perhaps it can be fought off with more flags. Which is another reason not to go ape on flags now. You have to leave yourself somewhere to go. Some gears unused.
Thankfully SKS seems to have only a single flag habit at the moment. Keep a beady eye open for any increase, and casually placed models of aircraft carriers.
The model was only yesterday, Keir hasn't had a chance to retaliate yet. It' s coming.
My bet is a miner's helmet in the corner, next to a model of a WW2 tank.
- A super Churchill (tick) - A shout out to ethnic minorities (tick) - A shout out to Royalty (tick) - A finger flick at the French (tick)
Great knowledge, love it!
The history of British tank design in WWII is a wonderful opportunity to study dysfunctional organisations, the lunatics that reform them and the bizarre engineering attracts that get produced.
Britain must have been the only country producing tank designs with non sloping armour in the latter half of the war.
Ironically, the success of our fighter building programme came at the expense of tanks because Lord Beaverbrook as Minister of Aircraft Production (familiar to older PBers as the model for our calls for vaccine and PPE tsars) had grabbed all the material and factories.
Some say that - but we succeeded in making tons of crapulent tanks. We built 1700 Covenanters. A tank that had one small defect. Actually driving it caused massive overheating in the engine.
I am permanently bemused by the "Soviet tractor stats" smear, because the same production technique produced Soviet T34s. They were not false positive T34s, and they were a lot of the reason why we are not having this conversation in german.
It's also a good side note to the patriotism and the left discussion; WWII Soviet factory workers pulled of some stupendous feats of production involving unpaid overtime, 14 hour shifts, contributing their wages towards the cost of an eg T34. Most industrialised countries had some version of this of course and there may have been a certain element of it being done at the end of a PPSh, but there was also a huge amount of genuine patriotism involved.
Hence the "Great Patriotic War"
Casts a long shadow. There was some functionary of the current Russian regime being interviewed the other day on the Navalny case and he stated that one of his crimes/failings was not being sufficiently respectful of the sacrifice of the Great Patriotic War.
Fairly easy trivia question: if WWII was the "Second Great Patriotic War", what was the First Great Patriotic War?
Shit, I was reading something that mentioned this the other day but no fact anchored in my heid! Will have to resort to Google.
As a hint, this is one of the things that helped end it:
kudos for knowing what that is. How anyone could look at those horses and think they constituted a light brigade...
It is interesting that the two greatest cavalry charges in British military history were both, to a greater or lesser extent, fuckups which ended in the cavalry getting destroyed as a viable unit in each case.
Oxford University and AstraZeneca plan to have a new Covid vaccine ready by the autumn to tackle new variants of the coronavirus, they confirmed today.
Given all the additional Pfizer manufacturing capacity being built in Europe, I suspect the EU won't be buying any more AZ after the initial order is complete. With Pfizer having much higher efficacy trial results than AZ, they'll probably view it as them buying the Rolls-Royce of vaccines while the UK makes do with a Skoda.
Have you seen the latest results from the AZ trials?
Yes, 82.4% for AZ versus 95% for Pfizer.
Wont matter when we're cruising to the pub in our Skodas whilst they are still waiting in their homes.
Nothing wrong with a Skoda.
My Skoda was about 10k less than the very similar but smaller VW, and 20k less for the similar Audi, which is so small I can't even get 10 house doors in it, flat.
You car 10 house doors on a regular basis
Just keep an open mind on the subject.
How does the vehicle handle?
It all hinges on how you load it.
No - self adjusting suspension, which has about 10 acronyms in it.
4wd would have been nice, but that would knock the MPG below 55.
Handles beautifully. When I get to drive it this year.
I don't think so. The key thing is he says "used to" - he just needs to say clearly how much respect he has for Her Maj and that it serves the country well etc. etc.
Of course it's going to be a fucking problem. This is the new patriotism. If you don't gush about how the Queen has served the nation for 60 years by being driven to the races in a Bentley and selflessly accepting 40,000 bunches of flowers you are fucked.
He will just have to hope the Queen rolls a two before the next GE as republicanism will be very much in vogue once we have King Gobshite and his nervous wreck heir.
Perhaps it can be fought off with more flags. Which is another reason not to go ape on flags now. You have to leave yourself somewhere to go. Some gears unused.
Thankfully SKS seems to have only a single flag habit at the moment. Keep a beady eye open for any increase, and casually placed models of aircraft carriers.
The model was only yesterday, Keir hasn't had a chance to retaliate yet. It' s coming.
My bet is a miner's helmet in the corner, next to a model of a WW2 tank.
- A super Churchill (tick) - A shout out to ethnic minorities (tick) - A shout out to Royalty (tick) - A finger flick at the French (tick)
Great knowledge, love it!
The history of British tank design in WWII is a wonderful opportunity to study dysfunctional organisations, the lunatics that reform them and the bizarre engineering attracts that get produced.
Britain must have been the only country producing tank designs with non sloping armour in the latter half of the war.
Ironically, the success of our fighter building programme came at the expense of tanks because Lord Beaverbrook as Minister of Aircraft Production (familiar to older PBers as the model for our calls for vaccine and PPE tsars) had grabbed all the material and factories.
Some say that - but we succeeded in making tons of crapulent tanks. We built 1700 Covenanters. A tank that had one small defect. Actually driving it caused massive overheating in the engine.
I am permanently bemused by the "Soviet tractor stats" smear, because the same production technique produced Soviet T34s. They were not false positive T34s, and they were a lot of the reason why we are not having this conversation in german.
It's also a good side note to the patriotism and the left discussion; WWII Soviet factory workers pulled of some stupendous feats of production involving unpaid overtime, 14 hour shifts, contributing their wages towards the cost of an eg T34. Most industrialised countries had some version of this of course and there may have been a certain element of it being done at the end of a PPSh, but there was also a huge amount of genuine patriotism involved.
Hence the "Great Patriotic War"
Casts a long shadow. There was some functionary of the current Russian regime being interviewed the other day on the Navalny case and he stated that one of his crimes/failings was not being sufficiently respectful of the sacrifice of the Great Patriotic War.
Fairly easy trivia question: if WWII was the "Second Great Patriotic War", what was the First Great Patriotic War?
Shit, I was reading something that mentioned this the other day but no fact anchored in my heid! Will have to resort to Google.
As a hint, this is one of the things that helped end it:
Yep, I checked (I'd probably say the charge of the Scots Greys was part of an event that followed on from that Great Patriotic War rather than ended it).
Wiki says the the term was actually coined 30+ years after the event and came into common usage when everyone got excited about its centenary. Never let it be said that Russians don't look back on their history enough (except for the nasty, evil and hideous stuff of course).
Not a lot of Russians at Waterloo as far as I know, so yes.
I went on a school trip to Leningrad back in '86 where we visited the Hermitage. Our guide was very surprised when one of our history teachers on the trip pointed at a painting of the Duke of Wellington, which was one of the few non-Russian portraits included in the section on the "First Great Patriotic War" and said that he was related to him.
No, just a certain kind of lunatic, looking for attention.
Trying to make the most absurdly shocking statement possible.
Totally out of order. Jesus. Some people.
Mind you, I watched the TV coverage yesterday of Captain Tom's passing and I was struck by the complete absence of balance. Quite right to give prominence to the side of the argument that maintains he was a great great guy and the source not only of serious funds for the NHS but of inspiration to the whole country at a very dark time - which is how I happen to feel - but where were the Captain Tom skeptics? Not a single one was granted a platform on any of the channels, as far as I could see. Felt a bit uncomfortable about that aspect.
I absolutely hate the now-common practice of tarring all members of a group with the brush of the most abhorrent. It's always possible, does no-one any good, and just results in more and more division. One of the worst examples of bubbles talking to themselves and failing to engage with what the mainstream voices amongst their opponents are actually saying.
Although I'm really tempted to disregard that principle here. But I will resist.
On Topic AZN still is inferior to Pfizer. The latter 95% efficacy the former pick a number any number
For someone as old as I am, British has always been best. Remember the days when we all used to laugh at foolish people driving past in their peculiar air cooled Volkswagens, while we waited for the AA man in the comfort of our Austin Maxis.
Telling sexist jokes about one woman VW driver in tears because someone had stolen their engine, and another saying That's OK dear, I have a spare one in the boot.
I don't think so. The key thing is he says "used to" - he just needs to say clearly how much respect he has for Her Maj and that it serves the country well etc. etc.
Of course it's going to be a fucking problem. This is the new patriotism. If you don't gush about how the Queen has served the nation for 60 years by being driven to the races in a Bentley and selflessly accepting 40,000 bunches of flowers you are fucked.
He will just have to hope the Queen rolls a two before the next GE as republicanism will be very much in vogue once we have King Gobshite and his nervous wreck heir.
Perhaps it can be fought off with more flags. Which is another reason not to go ape on flags now. You have to leave yourself somewhere to go. Some gears unused.
Thankfully SKS seems to have only a single flag habit at the moment. Keep a beady eye open for any increase, and casually placed models of aircraft carriers.
The model was only yesterday, Keir hasn't had a chance to retaliate yet. It' s coming.
My bet is a miner's helmet in the corner, next to a model of a WW2 tank.
- A super Churchill (tick) - A shout out to ethnic minorities (tick) - A shout out to Royalty (tick) - A finger flick at the French (tick)
Great knowledge, love it!
The history of British tank design in WWII is a wonderful opportunity to study dysfunctional organisations, the lunatics that reform them and the bizarre engineering attracts that get produced.
Britain must have been the only country producing tank designs with non sloping armour in the latter half of the war.
Ironically, the success of our fighter building programme came at the expense of tanks because Lord Beaverbrook as Minister of Aircraft Production (familiar to older PBers as the model for our calls for vaccine and PPE tsars) had grabbed all the material and factories.
Some say that - but we succeeded in making tons of crapulent tanks. We built 1700 Covenanters. A tank that had one small defect. Actually driving it caused massive overheating in the engine.
I am permanently bemused by the "Soviet tractor stats" smear, because the same production technique produced Soviet T34s. They were not false positive T34s, and they were a lot of the reason why we are not having this conversation in german.
It's also a good side note to the patriotism and the left discussion; WWII Soviet factory workers pulled of some stupendous feats of production involving unpaid overtime, 14 hour shifts, contributing their wages towards the cost of an eg T34. Most industrialised countries had some version of this of course and there may have been a certain element of it being done at the end of a PPSh, but there was also a huge amount of genuine patriotism involved.
Hence the "Great Patriotic War"
Casts a long shadow. There was some functionary of the current Russian regime being interviewed the other day on the Navalny case and he stated that one of his crimes/failings was not being sufficiently respectful of the sacrifice of the Great Patriotic War.
Fairly easy trivia question: if WWII was the "Second Great Patriotic War", what was the First Great Patriotic War?
Shit, I was reading something that mentioned this the other day but no fact anchored in my heid! Will have to resort to Google.
As a hint, this is one of the things that helped end it:
kudos for knowing what that is. How anyone could look at those horses and think they constituted a light brigade...
For a war horse, you need a breed that is calm and responds well to distractions. That implies a fair bit of draft blood. It got me thinking about which breeds I'd use. The modern Event Horse - mostly Thoroughbred (for speed) with about ⅛ draft (for intelligence and demeanor) and ⅛ warmblood (for athleticism) - would seem ideal. Indeed, in French, Eventing is called Militaire.
So, it turns out that most cavalries of the time (Napoleonic Wars) did use one breed or another of draft. This is a fascinating article about the evolution of the war horse over the course of history:
Let's put up a statue to Captain Tom: Matt Hancock says war hero has a 'place in history' and should be permanently honoured for £33m NHS fundraising efforts amid calls Trafalgar Square monument
I don't think so. The key thing is he says "used to" - he just needs to say clearly how much respect he has for Her Maj and that it serves the country well etc. etc.
Of course it's going to be a fucking problem. This is the new patriotism. If you don't gush about how the Queen has served the nation for 60 years by being driven to the races in a Bentley and selflessly accepting 40,000 bunches of flowers you are fucked.
He will just have to hope the Queen rolls a two before the next GE as republicanism will be very much in vogue once we have King Gobshite and his nervous wreck heir.
Perhaps it can be fought off with more flags. Which is another reason not to go ape on flags now. You have to leave yourself somewhere to go. Some gears unused.
Thankfully SKS seems to have only a single flag habit at the moment. Keep a beady eye open for any increase, and casually placed models of aircraft carriers.
The model was only yesterday, Keir hasn't had a chance to retaliate yet. It' s coming.
My bet is a miner's helmet in the corner, next to a model of a WW2 tank.
- A super Churchill (tick) - A shout out to ethnic minorities (tick) - A shout out to Royalty (tick) - A finger flick at the French (tick)
Great knowledge, love it!
The history of British tank design in WWII is a wonderful opportunity to study dysfunctional organisations, the lunatics that reform them and the bizarre engineering attracts that get produced.
Britain must have been the only country producing tank designs with non sloping armour in the latter half of the war.
Ironically, the success of our fighter building programme came at the expense of tanks because Lord Beaverbrook as Minister of Aircraft Production (familiar to older PBers as the model for our calls for vaccine and PPE tsars) had grabbed all the material and factories.
Some say that - but we succeeded in making tons of crapulent tanks. We built 1700 Covenanters. A tank that had one small defect. Actually driving it caused massive overheating in the engine.
I am permanently bemused by the "Soviet tractor stats" smear, because the same production technique produced Soviet T34s. They were not false positive T34s, and they were a lot of the reason why we are not having this conversation in german.
It's also a good side note to the patriotism and the left discussion; WWII Soviet factory workers pulled of some stupendous feats of production involving unpaid overtime, 14 hour shifts, contributing their wages towards the cost of an eg T34. Most industrialised countries had some version of this of course and there may have been a certain element of it being done at the end of a PPSh, but there was also a huge amount of genuine patriotism involved.
Hence the "Great Patriotic War"
Casts a long shadow. There was some functionary of the current Russian regime being interviewed the other day on the Navalny case and he stated that one of his crimes/failings was not being sufficiently respectful of the sacrifice of the Great Patriotic War.
Fairly easy trivia question: if WWII was the "Second Great Patriotic War", what was the First Great Patriotic War?
Shit, I was reading something that mentioned this the other day but no fact anchored in my heid! Will have to resort to Google.
As a hint, this is one of the things that helped end it:
kudos for knowing what that is. How anyone could look at those horses and think they constituted a light brigade...
It is interesting that the two greatest cavalry charges in British military history were both, to a greater or lesser extent, fuckups which ended in the cavalry getting destroyed as a viable unit in each case.
In the case of the Waterloo one it bought the only thing that mattered: time.
He's forgotten that the whole car crash last week was started watched painfully on the news and finished with a humiliating climbdown in Brussels. It's pretty depressing when you have journalists with so much partiality they resemble something out of Fahrenheit 451!
Arguably those are three of the ones who can best afford to wait slightly.
If Europe does not gets its Rs in gear, they risk having a larger version of what happened here before Christmas as the new variant permeates.
I don't think so. The key thing is he says "used to" - he just needs to say clearly how much respect he has for Her Maj and that it serves the country well etc. etc.
Of course it's going to be a fucking problem. This is the new patriotism. If you don't gush about how the Queen has served the nation for 60 years by being driven to the races in a Bentley and selflessly accepting 40,000 bunches of flowers you are fucked.
He will just have to hope the Queen rolls a two before the next GE as republicanism will be very much in vogue once we have King Gobshite and his nervous wreck heir.
Perhaps it can be fought off with more flags. Which is another reason not to go ape on flags now. You have to leave yourself somewhere to go. Some gears unused.
Thankfully SKS seems to have only a single flag habit at the moment. Keep a beady eye open for any increase, and casually placed models of aircraft carriers.
The model was only yesterday, Keir hasn't had a chance to retaliate yet. It' s coming.
My bet is a miner's helmet in the corner, next to a model of a WW2 tank.
- A super Churchill (tick) - A shout out to ethnic minorities (tick) - A shout out to Royalty (tick) - A finger flick at the French (tick)
Great knowledge, love it!
The history of British tank design in WWII is a wonderful opportunity to study dysfunctional organisations, the lunatics that reform them and the bizarre engineering attracts that get produced.
Britain must have been the only country producing tank designs with non sloping armour in the latter half of the war.
Ironically, the success of our fighter building programme came at the expense of tanks because Lord Beaverbrook as Minister of Aircraft Production (familiar to older PBers as the model for our calls for vaccine and PPE tsars) had grabbed all the material and factories.
Some say that - but we succeeded in making tons of crapulent tanks. We built 1700 Covenanters. A tank that had one small defect. Actually driving it caused massive overheating in the engine.
I am permanently bemused by the "Soviet tractor stats" smear, because the same production technique produced Soviet T34s. They were not false positive T34s, and they were a lot of the reason why we are not having this conversation in german.
It's also a good side note to the patriotism and the left discussion; WWII Soviet factory workers pulled of some stupendous feats of production involving unpaid overtime, 14 hour shifts, contributing their wages towards the cost of an eg T34. Most industrialised countries had some version of this of course and there may have been a certain element of it being done at the end of a PPSh, but there was also a huge amount of genuine patriotism involved.
Hence the "Great Patriotic War"
Casts a long shadow. There was some functionary of the current Russian regime being interviewed the other day on the Navalny case and he stated that one of his crimes/failings was not being sufficiently respectful of the sacrifice of the Great Patriotic War.
Fairly easy trivia question: if WWII was the "Second Great Patriotic War", what was the First Great Patriotic War?
Shit, I was reading something that mentioned this the other day but no fact anchored in my heid! Will have to resort to Google.
As a hint, this is one of the things that helped end it:
kudos for knowing what that is. How anyone could look at those horses and think they constituted a light brigade...
It is interesting that the two greatest cavalry charges in British military history were both, to a greater or lesser extent, fuckups which ended in the cavalry getting destroyed as a viable unit in each case.
In the case of the Waterloo one it bought the only thing that mattered: time.
Oh I'm not saying it wasn't important. Just that it was a bit of a fuck up. Not so much the canter but the milling around afterwards with the other brigades waiting to get slaughtered. Cavalry is never good when it is just standing around.
Let's put up a statue to Captain Tom: Matt Hancock says war hero has a 'place in history' and should be permanently honoured for £33m NHS fundraising efforts amid calls Trafalgar Square monument
There are a few empty plinths hanging around these days.
At risk of missing the point, Captain Sir Major Tom was not a war hero, unless we have gone to the American position of calling everyone who did their bit a hero. (Though I would accept Covid fundraising hero.)
I don't think so. The key thing is he says "used to" - he just needs to say clearly how much respect he has for Her Maj and that it serves the country well etc. etc.
Of course it's going to be a fucking problem. This is the new patriotism. If you don't gush about how the Queen has served the nation for 60 years by being driven to the races in a Bentley and selflessly accepting 40,000 bunches of flowers you are fucked.
He will just have to hope the Queen rolls a two before the next GE as republicanism will be very much in vogue once we have King Gobshite and his nervous wreck heir.
Perhaps it can be fought off with more flags. Which is another reason not to go ape on flags now. You have to leave yourself somewhere to go. Some gears unused.
Thankfully SKS seems to have only a single flag habit at the moment. Keep a beady eye open for any increase, and casually placed models of aircraft carriers.
The model was only yesterday, Keir hasn't had a chance to retaliate yet. It' s coming.
My bet is a miner's helmet in the corner, next to a model of a WW2 tank.
- A super Churchill (tick) - A shout out to ethnic minorities (tick) - A shout out to Royalty (tick) - A finger flick at the French (tick)
Great knowledge, love it!
The history of British tank design in WWII is a wonderful opportunity to study dysfunctional organisations, the lunatics that reform them and the bizarre engineering attracts that get produced.
Britain must have been the only country producing tank designs with non sloping armour in the latter half of the war.
Ironically, the success of our fighter building programme came at the expense of tanks because Lord Beaverbrook as Minister of Aircraft Production (familiar to older PBers as the model for our calls for vaccine and PPE tsars) had grabbed all the material and factories.
Some say that - but we succeeded in making tons of crapulent tanks. We built 1700 Covenanters. A tank that had one small defect. Actually driving it caused massive overheating in the engine.
I am permanently bemused by the "Soviet tractor stats" smear, because the same production technique produced Soviet T34s. They were not false positive T34s, and they were a lot of the reason why we are not having this conversation in german.
It's also a good side note to the patriotism and the left discussion; WWII Soviet factory workers pulled of some stupendous feats of production involving unpaid overtime, 14 hour shifts, contributing their wages towards the cost of an eg T34. Most industrialised countries had some version of this of course and there may have been a certain element of it being done at the end of a PPSh, but there was also a huge amount of genuine patriotism involved.
Hence the "Great Patriotic War"
Casts a long shadow. There was some functionary of the current Russian regime being interviewed the other day on the Navalny case and he stated that one of his crimes/failings was not being sufficiently respectful of the sacrifice of the Great Patriotic War.
Fairly easy trivia question: if WWII was the "Second Great Patriotic War", what was the First Great Patriotic War?
Shit, I was reading something that mentioned this the other day but no fact anchored in my heid! Will have to resort to Google.
As a hint, this is one of the things that helped end it:
kudos for knowing what that is. How anyone could look at those horses and think they constituted a light brigade...
It is interesting that the two greatest cavalry charges in British military history were both, to a greater or lesser extent, fuckups which ended in the cavalry getting destroyed as a viable unit in each case.
Though the Charge of the Heavy Brigade (including Scots Greys) just before that of the Light was a great success, in fact if the Light Brigade standing by had joined in it could've turned into a rout of the Russians and a good many more of them would have been alive at the end of the day.
It always tends to be glorious failure that enters mythology I guess.
Disclaimer: most of my knowledge of the period comes from Flashman books.
I don't think so. The key thing is he says "used to" - he just needs to say clearly how much respect he has for Her Maj and that it serves the country well etc. etc.
Of course it's going to be a fucking problem. This is the new patriotism. If you don't gush about how the Queen has served the nation for 60 years by being driven to the races in a Bentley and selflessly accepting 40,000 bunches of flowers you are fucked.
He will just have to hope the Queen rolls a two before the next GE as republicanism will be very much in vogue once we have King Gobshite and his nervous wreck heir.
Perhaps it can be fought off with more flags. Which is another reason not to go ape on flags now. You have to leave yourself somewhere to go. Some gears unused.
Thankfully SKS seems to have only a single flag habit at the moment. Keep a beady eye open for any increase, and casually placed models of aircraft carriers.
The model was only yesterday, Keir hasn't had a chance to retaliate yet. It' s coming.
My bet is a miner's helmet in the corner, next to a model of a WW2 tank.
- A super Churchill (tick) - A shout out to ethnic minorities (tick) - A shout out to Royalty (tick) - A finger flick at the French (tick)
Great knowledge, love it!
The history of British tank design in WWII is a wonderful opportunity to study dysfunctional organisations, the lunatics that reform them and the bizarre engineering attracts that get produced.
Britain must have been the only country producing tank designs with non sloping armour in the latter half of the war.
Ironically, the success of our fighter building programme came at the expense of tanks because Lord Beaverbrook as Minister of Aircraft Production (familiar to older PBers as the model for our calls for vaccine and PPE tsars) had grabbed all the material and factories.
Some say that - but we succeeded in making tons of crapulent tanks. We built 1700 Covenanters. A tank that had one small defect. Actually driving it caused massive overheating in the engine.
I am permanently bemused by the "Soviet tractor stats" smear, because the same production technique produced Soviet T34s. They were not false positive T34s, and they were a lot of the reason why we are not having this conversation in german.
It's also a good side note to the patriotism and the left discussion; WWII Soviet factory workers pulled of some stupendous feats of production involving unpaid overtime, 14 hour shifts, contributing their wages towards the cost of an eg T34. Most industrialised countries had some version of this of course and there may have been a certain element of it being done at the end of a PPSh, but there was also a huge amount of genuine patriotism involved.
Hence the "Great Patriotic War"
Casts a long shadow. There was some functionary of the current Russian regime being interviewed the other day on the Navalny case and he stated that one of his crimes/failings was not being sufficiently respectful of the sacrifice of the Great Patriotic War.
Fairly easy trivia question: if WWII was the "Second Great Patriotic War", what was the First Great Patriotic War?
Shit, I was reading something that mentioned this the other day but no fact anchored in my heid! Will have to resort to Google.
As a hint, this is one of the things that helped end it:
kudos for knowing what that is. How anyone could look at those horses and think they constituted a light brigade...
It is interesting that the two greatest cavalry charges in British military history were both, to a greater or lesser extent, fuckups which ended in the cavalry getting destroyed as a viable unit in each case.
In the case of the Waterloo one it bought the only thing that mattered: time.
Oh I'm not saying it wasn't important. Just that it was a bit of a fuck up. Not so much the canter but the milling around afterwards with the other brigades waiting to get slaughtered. Cavalry is never good when it is just standing around.
Of course if they had actually taken the spikes for the guns with them then they might have been a bit more use.
On Topic AZN still is inferior to Pfizer. The latter 95% efficacy the former pick a number any number
For someone as old as I am, British has always been best. Remember the days when we all used to laugh at foolish people driving past in their peculiar air cooled Volkswagens, while we waited for the AA man in the comfort of our Austin Maxis.
Telling sexist jokes about one woman VW driver in tears because someone had stolen their engine, and another saying That's OK dear, I have a spare one in the boot.
Yeah, Mind your Language and Love thy Neighbour on the TV too. Nostalgia? Those were the days .
Brother got his first Pfizer vaccine shot today. Hooray!
In London, though. In group 6.
Meanwhile surgery here is saying that despite having done all their Group 1-4 people, they are waiting for NHS England to tell them when they can get more vaccines so that they can continue. Cumbria had its allocation cut by a 1/3rd. Hence the pause.
(Honestly! Bloody Londoners stealing our vaccines. Just like the Commission. We Red Wall voters get ignored. Grumble grumble.... What's the point of Boris if he won't level us up, etc etc ...... (Am I doing this right @HYUFD?))
London (Particularly inner London) has less pensioners than elsewhere, so they are probably getting through the groups a bit quicker.
It's not just that though. Two weeks ago the doctor said at the surgery that if they had been given the vaccine they would have been doing groups 5 & 6 last week and this. The delay is down to a deliberate decision to reallocate vaccines away from the North West. If is is to do 70 and 80 year olds that's one thing. But to do people who are in a lower priority group and younger, well, you can see why people here are miffed.
I am genuinely pleased for my brother though. He has been on his own, was made redundant halfway through last year so it's good for something to go right for him at last.
I don't think so. The key thing is he says "used to" - he just needs to say clearly how much respect he has for Her Maj and that it serves the country well etc. etc.
Of course it's going to be a fucking problem. This is the new patriotism. If you don't gush about how the Queen has served the nation for 60 years by being driven to the races in a Bentley and selflessly accepting 40,000 bunches of flowers you are fucked.
He will just have to hope the Queen rolls a two before the next GE as republicanism will be very much in vogue once we have King Gobshite and his nervous wreck heir.
Perhaps it can be fought off with more flags. Which is another reason not to go ape on flags now. You have to leave yourself somewhere to go. Some gears unused.
Thankfully SKS seems to have only a single flag habit at the moment. Keep a beady eye open for any increase, and casually placed models of aircraft carriers.
The model was only yesterday, Keir hasn't had a chance to retaliate yet. It' s coming.
My bet is a miner's helmet in the corner, next to a model of a WW2 tank.
- A super Churchill (tick) - A shout out to ethnic minorities (tick) - A shout out to Royalty (tick) - A finger flick at the French (tick)
Great knowledge, love it!
The history of British tank design in WWII is a wonderful opportunity to study dysfunctional organisations, the lunatics that reform them and the bizarre engineering attracts that get produced.
Britain must have been the only country producing tank designs with non sloping armour in the latter half of the war.
Ironically, the success of our fighter building programme came at the expense of tanks because Lord Beaverbrook as Minister of Aircraft Production (familiar to older PBers as the model for our calls for vaccine and PPE tsars) had grabbed all the material and factories.
Some say that - but we succeeded in making tons of crapulent tanks. We built 1700 Covenanters. A tank that had one small defect. Actually driving it caused massive overheating in the engine.
I am permanently bemused by the "Soviet tractor stats" smear, because the same production technique produced Soviet T34s. They were not false positive T34s, and they were a lot of the reason why we are not having this conversation in german.
It's also a good side note to the patriotism and the left discussion; WWII Soviet factory workers pulled of some stupendous feats of production involving unpaid overtime, 14 hour shifts, contributing their wages towards the cost of an eg T34. Most industrialised countries had some version of this of course and there may have been a certain element of it being done at the end of a PPSh, but there was also a huge amount of genuine patriotism involved.
Hence the "Great Patriotic War"
Casts a long shadow. There was some functionary of the current Russian regime being interviewed the other day on the Navalny case and he stated that one of his crimes/failings was not being sufficiently respectful of the sacrifice of the Great Patriotic War.
Fairly easy trivia question: if WWII was the "Second Great Patriotic War", what was the First Great Patriotic War?
Shit, I was reading something that mentioned this the other day but no fact anchored in my heid! Will have to resort to Google.
As a hint, this is one of the things that helped end it:
kudos for knowing what that is. How anyone could look at those horses and think they constituted a light brigade...
It is interesting that the two greatest cavalry charges in British military history were both, to a greater or lesser extent, fuckups which ended in the cavalry getting destroyed as a viable unit in each case.
Though the Charge of the Heavy Brigade (including Scots Greys) just before that of the Light was a great success, in fact if the Light Brigade standing by had joined in it could've turned into a route of the Russians and a good many more of them would have been alive at the end of the day.
It always tends to be glorious failure that enters mythology I guess.
Disclaimer: most of my knowledge of the period comes from Flashman books.
My knowledge of the Napoleonic Wars is from a combination of the Sharpe novels and the Patrick O'Brian ones.
No, just a certain kind of lunatic, looking for attention.
Trying to make the most absurdly shocking statement possible.
Totally out of order. Jesus. Some people.
Mind you, I watched the TV coverage yesterday of Captain Tom's passing and I was struck by the complete absence of balance. Quite right to give prominence to the side of the argument that maintains he was a great great guy and the source not only of serious funds for the NHS but of inspiration to the whole country at a very dark time - which is how I happen to feel - but where were the Captain Tom skeptics? Not a single one was granted a platform on any of the channels, as far as I could see. Felt a bit uncomfortable about that aspect.
I don't think so. The key thing is he says "used to" - he just needs to say clearly how much respect he has for Her Maj and that it serves the country well etc. etc.
Of course it's going to be a fucking problem. This is the new patriotism. If you don't gush about how the Queen has served the nation for 60 years by being driven to the races in a Bentley and selflessly accepting 40,000 bunches of flowers you are fucked.
He will just have to hope the Queen rolls a two before the next GE as republicanism will be very much in vogue once we have King Gobshite and his nervous wreck heir.
Perhaps it can be fought off with more flags. Which is another reason not to go ape on flags now. You have to leave yourself somewhere to go. Some gears unused.
Thankfully SKS seems to have only a single flag habit at the moment. Keep a beady eye open for any increase, and casually placed models of aircraft carriers.
The model was only yesterday, Keir hasn't had a chance to retaliate yet. It' s coming.
My bet is a miner's helmet in the corner, next to a model of a WW2 tank.
- A super Churchill (tick) - A shout out to ethnic minorities (tick) - A shout out to Royalty (tick) - A finger flick at the French (tick)
Great knowledge, love it!
The history of British tank design in WWII is a wonderful opportunity to study dysfunctional organisations, the lunatics that reform them and the bizarre engineering attracts that get produced.
Britain must have been the only country producing tank designs with non sloping armour in the latter half of the war.
Ironically, the success of our fighter building programme came at the expense of tanks because Lord Beaverbrook as Minister of Aircraft Production (familiar to older PBers as the model for our calls for vaccine and PPE tsars) had grabbed all the material and factories.
Some say that - but we succeeded in making tons of crapulent tanks. We built 1700 Covenanters. A tank that had one small defect. Actually driving it caused massive overheating in the engine.
I am permanently bemused by the "Soviet tractor stats" smear, because the same production technique produced Soviet T34s. They were not false positive T34s, and they were a lot of the reason why we are not having this conversation in german.
It's also a good side note to the patriotism and the left discussion; WWII Soviet factory workers pulled of some stupendous feats of production involving unpaid overtime, 14 hour shifts, contributing their wages towards the cost of an eg T34. Most industrialised countries had some version of this of course and there may have been a certain element of it being done at the end of a PPSh, but there was also a huge amount of genuine patriotism involved.
Hence the "Great Patriotic War"
Casts a long shadow. There was some functionary of the current Russian regime being interviewed the other day on the Navalny case and he stated that one of his crimes/failings was not being sufficiently respectful of the sacrifice of the Great Patriotic War.
Fairly easy trivia question: if WWII was the "Second Great Patriotic War", what was the First Great Patriotic War?
Shit, I was reading something that mentioned this the other day but no fact anchored in my heid! Will have to resort to Google.
As a hint, this is one of the things that helped end it:
kudos for knowing what that is. How anyone could look at those horses and think they constituted a light brigade...
It is interesting that the two greatest cavalry charges in British military history were both, to a greater or lesser extent, fuckups which ended in the cavalry getting destroyed as a viable unit in each case.
Though the Charge of the Heavy Brigade (including Scots Greys) just before that of the Light was a great success, in fact if the Light Brigade standing by had joined in it could've turned into a route of the Russians and a good many more of them would have been alive at the end of the day.
It always tends to be glorious failure that enters mythology I guess.
Disclaimer: most of my knowledge of the period comes from Flashman books.
My knowledge of the Napoleonic Wars is from a combination of the Sharpe novels and the Patrick O'Brian ones.
I don't think so. The key thing is he says "used to" - he just needs to say clearly how much respect he has for Her Maj and that it serves the country well etc. etc.
Of course it's going to be a fucking problem. This is the new patriotism. If you don't gush about how the Queen has served the nation for 60 years by being driven to the races in a Bentley and selflessly accepting 40,000 bunches of flowers you are fucked.
He will just have to hope the Queen rolls a two before the next GE as republicanism will be very much in vogue once we have King Gobshite and his nervous wreck heir.
Perhaps it can be fought off with more flags. Which is another reason not to go ape on flags now. You have to leave yourself somewhere to go. Some gears unused.
Thankfully SKS seems to have only a single flag habit at the moment. Keep a beady eye open for any increase, and casually placed models of aircraft carriers.
The model was only yesterday, Keir hasn't had a chance to retaliate yet. It' s coming.
My bet is a miner's helmet in the corner, next to a model of a WW2 tank.
- A super Churchill (tick) - A shout out to ethnic minorities (tick) - A shout out to Royalty (tick) - A finger flick at the French (tick)
Great knowledge, love it!
The history of British tank design in WWII is a wonderful opportunity to study dysfunctional organisations, the lunatics that reform them and the bizarre engineering attracts that get produced.
Britain must have been the only country producing tank designs with non sloping armour in the latter half of the war.
Ironically, the success of our fighter building programme came at the expense of tanks because Lord Beaverbrook as Minister of Aircraft Production (familiar to older PBers as the model for our calls for vaccine and PPE tsars) had grabbed all the material and factories.
Some say that - but we succeeded in making tons of crapulent tanks. We built 1700 Covenanters. A tank that had one small defect. Actually driving it caused massive overheating in the engine.
I am permanently bemused by the "Soviet tractor stats" smear, because the same production technique produced Soviet T34s. They were not false positive T34s, and they were a lot of the reason why we are not having this conversation in german.
It's also a good side note to the patriotism and the left discussion; WWII Soviet factory workers pulled of some stupendous feats of production involving unpaid overtime, 14 hour shifts, contributing their wages towards the cost of an eg T34. Most industrialised countries had some version of this of course and there may have been a certain element of it being done at the end of a PPSh, but there was also a huge amount of genuine patriotism involved.
Hence the "Great Patriotic War"
Casts a long shadow. There was some functionary of the current Russian regime being interviewed the other day on the Navalny case and he stated that one of his crimes/failings was not being sufficiently respectful of the sacrifice of the Great Patriotic War.
Fairly easy trivia question: if WWII was the "Second Great Patriotic War", what was the First Great Patriotic War?
Shit, I was reading something that mentioned this the other day but no fact anchored in my heid! Will have to resort to Google.
As a hint, this is one of the things that helped end it:
kudos for knowing what that is. How anyone could look at those horses and think they constituted a light brigade...
It is interesting that the two greatest cavalry charges in British military history were both, to a greater or lesser extent, fuckups which ended in the cavalry getting destroyed as a viable unit in each case.
Though the Charge of the Heavy Brigade (including Scots Greys) just before that of the Light was a great success, in fact if the Light Brigade standing by had joined in it could've turned into a route of the Russians and a good many more of them would have been alive at the end of the day.
It always tends to be glorious failure that enters mythology I guess.
Disclaimer: most of my knowledge of the period comes from Flashman books.
My knowledge of the Napoleonic Wars is from a combination of the Sharpe novels and the Patrick O'Brian ones.
Is the Russian banging on about the Great Patriotic (Soviet) War better or worse than British gammons banging on about their heroism (often while still in the womb, or even pre-fertilisation) in WWII?
Didn't expect to see you banging on about 'gammons' OKC. Are you now self-identifying as Young, Gifted And Black? That's where it's at.
I don't think so. The key thing is he says "used to" - he just needs to say clearly how much respect he has for Her Maj and that it serves the country well etc. etc.
Of course it's going to be a fucking problem. This is the new patriotism. If you don't gush about how the Queen has served the nation for 60 years by being driven to the races in a Bentley and selflessly accepting 40,000 bunches of flowers you are fucked.
He will just have to hope the Queen rolls a two before the next GE as republicanism will be very much in vogue once we have King Gobshite and his nervous wreck heir.
Perhaps it can be fought off with more flags. Which is another reason not to go ape on flags now. You have to leave yourself somewhere to go. Some gears unused.
Thankfully SKS seems to have only a single flag habit at the moment. Keep a beady eye open for any increase, and casually placed models of aircraft carriers.
The model was only yesterday, Keir hasn't had a chance to retaliate yet. It' s coming.
My bet is a miner's helmet in the corner, next to a model of a WW2 tank.
- A super Churchill (tick) - A shout out to ethnic minorities (tick) - A shout out to Royalty (tick) - A finger flick at the French (tick)
Great knowledge, love it!
The history of British tank design in WWII is a wonderful opportunity to study dysfunctional organisations, the lunatics that reform them and the bizarre engineering attracts that get produced.
Britain must have been the only country producing tank designs with non sloping armour in the latter half of the war.
Ironically, the success of our fighter building programme came at the expense of tanks because Lord Beaverbrook as Minister of Aircraft Production (familiar to older PBers as the model for our calls for vaccine and PPE tsars) had grabbed all the material and factories.
Some say that - but we succeeded in making tons of crapulent tanks. We built 1700 Covenanters. A tank that had one small defect. Actually driving it caused massive overheating in the engine.
I am permanently bemused by the "Soviet tractor stats" smear, because the same production technique produced Soviet T34s. They were not false positive T34s, and they were a lot of the reason why we are not having this conversation in german.
It's also a good side note to the patriotism and the left discussion; WWII Soviet factory workers pulled of some stupendous feats of production involving unpaid overtime, 14 hour shifts, contributing their wages towards the cost of an eg T34. Most industrialised countries had some version of this of course and there may have been a certain element of it being done at the end of a PPSh, but there was also a huge amount of genuine patriotism involved.
Hence the "Great Patriotic War"
Casts a long shadow. There was some functionary of the current Russian regime being interviewed the other day on the Navalny case and he stated that one of his crimes/failings was not being sufficiently respectful of the sacrifice of the Great Patriotic War.
Fairly easy trivia question: if WWII was the "Second Great Patriotic War", what was the First Great Patriotic War?
Shit, I was reading something that mentioned this the other day but no fact anchored in my heid! Will have to resort to Google.
As a hint, this is one of the things that helped end it:
kudos for knowing what that is. How anyone could look at those horses and think they constituted a light brigade...
It is interesting that the two greatest cavalry charges in British military history were both, to a greater or lesser extent, fuckups which ended in the cavalry getting destroyed as a viable unit in each case.
Though the Charge of the Heavy Brigade (including Scots Greys) just before that of the Light was a great success, in fact if the Light Brigade standing by had joined in it could've turned into a route of the Russians and a good many more of them would have been alive at the end of the day.
It always tends to be glorious failure that enters mythology I guess.
Disclaimer: most of my knowledge of the period comes from Flashman books.
My knowledge of the Napoleonic Wars is from a combination of the Sharpe novels and the Patrick O'Brian ones.
Just to add a point about the Sharpe books: one of the things I particularly like about them is the bit at the end where he tells you which bits actually happened (at least as far as history recorded at the time they were written) and which bits he made up to make it a good story.
On Topic AZN still is inferior to Pfizer. The latter 95% efficacy the former pick a number any number
For someone as old as I am, British has always been best. Remember the days when we all used to laugh at foolish people driving past in their peculiar air cooled Volkswagens, while we waited for the AA man in the comfort of our Austin Maxis.
Telling sexist jokes about one woman VW driver in tears because someone had stolen their engine, and another saying That's OK dear, I have a spare one in the boot.
Yeah, Mind your Language and Love thy Neighbour on the TV too. Nostalgia? Those were the days .
Most of those shows were making fun of the racist or sexist attitudes of the time. Therefore there shouldnt be a problem with showing them today IMO.
I don't think so. The key thing is he says "used to" - he just needs to say clearly how much respect he has for Her Maj and that it serves the country well etc. etc.
Of course it's going to be a fucking problem. This is the new patriotism. If you don't gush about how the Queen has served the nation for 60 years by being driven to the races in a Bentley and selflessly accepting 40,000 bunches of flowers you are fucked.
He will just have to hope the Queen rolls a two before the next GE as republicanism will be very much in vogue once we have King Gobshite and his nervous wreck heir.
Perhaps it can be fought off with more flags. Which is another reason not to go ape on flags now. You have to leave yourself somewhere to go. Some gears unused.
Thankfully SKS seems to have only a single flag habit at the moment. Keep a beady eye open for any increase, and casually placed models of aircraft carriers.
The model was only yesterday, Keir hasn't had a chance to retaliate yet. It' s coming.
My bet is a miner's helmet in the corner, next to a model of a WW2 tank.
- A super Churchill (tick) - A shout out to ethnic minorities (tick) - A shout out to Royalty (tick) - A finger flick at the French (tick)
Great knowledge, love it!
The history of British tank design in WWII is a wonderful opportunity to study dysfunctional organisations, the lunatics that reform them and the bizarre engineering attracts that get produced.
Britain must have been the only country producing tank designs with non sloping armour in the latter half of the war.
Ironically, the success of our fighter building programme came at the expense of tanks because Lord Beaverbrook as Minister of Aircraft Production (familiar to older PBers as the model for our calls for vaccine and PPE tsars) had grabbed all the material and factories.
Some say that - but we succeeded in making tons of crapulent tanks. We built 1700 Covenanters. A tank that had one small defect. Actually driving it caused massive overheating in the engine.
I am permanently bemused by the "Soviet tractor stats" smear, because the same production technique produced Soviet T34s. They were not false positive T34s, and they were a lot of the reason why we are not having this conversation in german.
It's also a good side note to the patriotism and the left discussion; WWII Soviet factory workers pulled of some stupendous feats of production involving unpaid overtime, 14 hour shifts, contributing their wages towards the cost of an eg T34. Most industrialised countries had some version of this of course and there may have been a certain element of it being done at the end of a PPSh, but there was also a huge amount of genuine patriotism involved.
Hence the "Great Patriotic War"
Casts a long shadow. There was some functionary of the current Russian regime being interviewed the other day on the Navalny case and he stated that one of his crimes/failings was not being sufficiently respectful of the sacrifice of the Great Patriotic War.
Fairly easy trivia question: if WWII was the "Second Great Patriotic War", what was the First Great Patriotic War?
Shit, I was reading something that mentioned this the other day but no fact anchored in my heid! Will have to resort to Google.
As a hint, this is one of the things that helped end it:
kudos for knowing what that is. How anyone could look at those horses and think they constituted a light brigade...
It is interesting that the two greatest cavalry charges in British military history were both, to a greater or lesser extent, fuckups which ended in the cavalry getting destroyed as a viable unit in each case.
Though the Charge of the Heavy Brigade (including Scots Greys) just before that of the Light was a great success, in fact if the Light Brigade standing by had joined in it could've turned into a route of the Russians and a good many more of them would have been alive at the end of the day.
It always tends to be glorious failure that enters mythology I guess.
Disclaimer: most of my knowledge of the period comes from Flashman books.
My knowledge of the Napoleonic Wars is from a combination of the Sharpe novels and the Patrick O'Brian ones.
That's how I learned we bombarded Copenhagen in 1807. Good times.
Gove was floundering on GMS this morning , could not answer the question re vaccines , usual Tory lies where they count the fact that they have it on a spreadsheet as it has been done. They don't have the bollox to admit they just wanted to get all the low hanging fruit vaccinated to divert from their appalling record and the massive daily death rate. Union Jack had same issue on Sunday re availability of vaccine.
NS: "That's a deliberate choice the Government has made. It is a legitimate choice to have first of all focused on overall numbers, but if that is at the expense of the uptake in the groups most clinically vulnerable, it's not a choice I would've wanted to make." NS: "I heard Michael Gove on the radio this morning not able or willing to give a figure for how many residents in care homes in England have actually been vaccinated as opposed to being offered the vaccine." NS: "Scotgov has followed an approach that very deliberately concentrated on getting the most clinically vulnerable groups vaccinated first, and achieving as high an uptake in these groups as possible."
It has been confirmed that 'offered' means a GP going in to the actual home with actual vaccines and offering. One assumes that the situation in Scotland was the same - unless the jabbers in Scotland were under order to forcibly vaccinate the biddies whether they wanted it or not.
If Care home uptake has been higher in Scotland, that reflects well on the good sense of the elderly here, not badly on the English vaccine roll out.
The elderly in Scotland being more likely to vote against separatism, so their good sense already demonstrated.
The rest of the UK appear to have vaccinated both deep and wide whereas the SNP have messed around and then reached for the first excuse they could.
Has anyone asked Sturgeon to compare her vaccination rollout with NI or Wales who both have been faster than hers?
98% of older care home residents have been vaccinated in Scotland.
Numbers from other countries may be different definitions.
Of course, the whole comparison is a bit limited - it's not population size that is going to be a factor, but population density (even then, how lumpy in addition to how dense overall), proximity/links to other countries and - of course - testing, if you use the within 28 days of test definition.
Gove was floundering on GMS this morning , could not answer the question re vaccines , usual Tory lies where they count the fact that they have it on a spreadsheet as it has been done. They don't have the bollox to admit they just wanted to get all the low hanging fruit vaccinated to divert from their appalling record and the massive daily death rate. Union Jack had same issue on Sunday re availability of vaccine.
NS: "That's a deliberate choice the Government has made. It is a legitimate choice to have first of all focused on overall numbers, but if that is at the expense of the uptake in the groups most clinically vulnerable, it's not a choice I would've wanted to make." NS: "I heard Michael Gove on the radio this morning not able or willing to give a figure for how many residents in care homes in England have actually been vaccinated as opposed to being offered the vaccine." NS: "Scotgov has followed an approach that very deliberately concentrated on getting the most clinically vulnerable groups vaccinated first, and achieving as high an uptake in these groups as possible."
It has been confirmed that 'offered' means a GP going in to the actual home with actual vaccines and offering. One assumes that the situation in Scotland was the same - unless the jabbers in Scotland were under order to forcibly vaccinate the biddies whether they wanted it or not.
If Care home uptake has been higher in Scotland, that reflects well on the good sense of the elderly here, not badly on the English vaccine roll out.
The elderly in Scotland being more likely to vote against separatism, so their good sense already demonstrated.
The rest of the UK appear to have vaccinated both deep and wide whereas the SNP have messed around and then reached for the first excuse they could.
Has anyone asked Sturgeon to compare her vaccination rollout with NI or Wales who both have been faster than hers?
98% of older care home residents have been vaccinated in Scotland.
Oxford University and AstraZeneca plan to have a new Covid vaccine ready by the autumn to tackle new variants of the coronavirus, they confirmed today.
Given all the additional Pfizer manufacturing capacity being built in Europe, I suspect the EU won't be buying any more AZ after the initial order is complete. With Pfizer having much higher efficacy trial results than AZ, they'll probably view it as them buying the Rolls-Royce of vaccines while the UK makes do with a Skoda.
Have you seen the latest results from the AZ trials?
Yes, 82.4% for AZ versus 95% for Pfizer.
Wont matter when we're cruising to the pub in our Skodas whilst they are still waiting in their homes.
Nothing wrong with a Skoda.
My Skoda was about 10k less than the very similar but smaller VW, and 20k less for the similar Audi, which is so small I can't even get 10 house doors in it, flat.
You car 10 house doors on a regular basis
Just keep an open mind on the subject.
How does the vehicle handle?
Very nice drive, my Skoda. Second one I've had. Had the Pfizer vaccine, too! 2½ weeks ago.
Why? Cars don't need vaccines, they're immune.
But some of them are carriers.
Are you suggesting they are Vectras of transmission?
Maybe, but my Vauxhall Astra-Zeneca never had any problems...
I don't think so. The key thing is he says "used to" - he just needs to say clearly how much respect he has for Her Maj and that it serves the country well etc. etc.
Of course it's going to be a fucking problem. This is the new patriotism. If you don't gush about how the Queen has served the nation for 60 years by being driven to the races in a Bentley and selflessly accepting 40,000 bunches of flowers you are fucked.
He will just have to hope the Queen rolls a two before the next GE as republicanism will be very much in vogue once we have King Gobshite and his nervous wreck heir.
Perhaps it can be fought off with more flags. Which is another reason not to go ape on flags now. You have to leave yourself somewhere to go. Some gears unused.
Thankfully SKS seems to have only a single flag habit at the moment. Keep a beady eye open for any increase, and casually placed models of aircraft carriers.
The model was only yesterday, Keir hasn't had a chance to retaliate yet. It' s coming.
My bet is a miner's helmet in the corner, next to a model of a WW2 tank.
- A super Churchill (tick) - A shout out to ethnic minorities (tick) - A shout out to Royalty (tick) - A finger flick at the French (tick)
Great knowledge, love it!
The history of British tank design in WWII is a wonderful opportunity to study dysfunctional organisations, the lunatics that reform them and the bizarre engineering attracts that get produced.
Britain must have been the only country producing tank designs with non sloping armour in the latter half of the war.
Ironically, the success of our fighter building programme came at the expense of tanks because Lord Beaverbrook as Minister of Aircraft Production (familiar to older PBers as the model for our calls for vaccine and PPE tsars) had grabbed all the material and factories.
Some say that - but we succeeded in making tons of crapulent tanks. We built 1700 Covenanters. A tank that had one small defect. Actually driving it caused massive overheating in the engine.
I am permanently bemused by the "Soviet tractor stats" smear, because the same production technique produced Soviet T34s. They were not false positive T34s, and they were a lot of the reason why we are not having this conversation in german.
It's also a good side note to the patriotism and the left discussion; WWII Soviet factory workers pulled of some stupendous feats of production involving unpaid overtime, 14 hour shifts, contributing their wages towards the cost of an eg T34. Most industrialised countries had some version of this of course and there may have been a certain element of it being done at the end of a PPSh, but there was also a huge amount of genuine patriotism involved.
Hence the "Great Patriotic War"
Casts a long shadow. There was some functionary of the current Russian regime being interviewed the other day on the Navalny case and he stated that one of his crimes/failings was not being sufficiently respectful of the sacrifice of the Great Patriotic War.
Fairly easy trivia question: if WWII was the "Second Great Patriotic War", what was the First Great Patriotic War?
Shit, I was reading something that mentioned this the other day but no fact anchored in my heid! Will have to resort to Google.
As a hint, this is one of the things that helped end it:
kudos for knowing what that is. How anyone could look at those horses and think they constituted a light brigade...
For a war horse, you need a breed that is calm and responds well to distractions. That implies a fair bit of draft blood. It got me thinking about which breeds I'd use. The modern Event Horse - mostly Thoroughbred (for speed) with about ⅛ draft (for intelligence and demeanor) and ⅛ warmblood (for athleticism) - would seem ideal. Indeed, in French, Eventing is called Militaire.
So, it turns out that most cavalries of the time (Napoleonic Wars) did use one breed or another of draft. This is a fascinating article about the evolution of the war horse over the course of history:
I don't think so. The key thing is he says "used to" - he just needs to say clearly how much respect he has for Her Maj and that it serves the country well etc. etc.
Of course it's going to be a fucking problem. This is the new patriotism. If you don't gush about how the Queen has served the nation for 60 years by being driven to the races in a Bentley and selflessly accepting 40,000 bunches of flowers you are fucked.
He will just have to hope the Queen rolls a two before the next GE as republicanism will be very much in vogue once we have King Gobshite and his nervous wreck heir.
Perhaps it can be fought off with more flags. Which is another reason not to go ape on flags now. You have to leave yourself somewhere to go. Some gears unused.
Thankfully SKS seems to have only a single flag habit at the moment. Keep a beady eye open for any increase, and casually placed models of aircraft carriers.
The model was only yesterday, Keir hasn't had a chance to retaliate yet. It' s coming.
My bet is a miner's helmet in the corner, next to a model of a WW2 tank.
- A super Churchill (tick) - A shout out to ethnic minorities (tick) - A shout out to Royalty (tick) - A finger flick at the French (tick)
Great knowledge, love it!
The history of British tank design in WWII is a wonderful opportunity to study dysfunctional organisations, the lunatics that reform them and the bizarre engineering attracts that get produced.
Britain must have been the only country producing tank designs with non sloping armour in the latter half of the war.
Ironically, the success of our fighter building programme came at the expense of tanks because Lord Beaverbrook as Minister of Aircraft Production (familiar to older PBers as the model for our calls for vaccine and PPE tsars) had grabbed all the material and factories.
Some say that - but we succeeded in making tons of crapulent tanks. We built 1700 Covenanters. A tank that had one small defect. Actually driving it caused massive overheating in the engine.
I am permanently bemused by the "Soviet tractor stats" smear, because the same production technique produced Soviet T34s. They were not false positive T34s, and they were a lot of the reason why we are not having this conversation in german.
It's also a good side note to the patriotism and the left discussion; WWII Soviet factory workers pulled of some stupendous feats of production involving unpaid overtime, 14 hour shifts, contributing their wages towards the cost of an eg T34. Most industrialised countries had some version of this of course and there may have been a certain element of it being done at the end of a PPSh, but there was also a huge amount of genuine patriotism involved.
Hence the "Great Patriotic War"
Casts a long shadow. There was some functionary of the current Russian regime being interviewed the other day on the Navalny case and he stated that one of his crimes/failings was not being sufficiently respectful of the sacrifice of the Great Patriotic War.
Fairly easy trivia question: if WWII was the "Second Great Patriotic War", what was the First Great Patriotic War?
Shit, I was reading something that mentioned this the other day but no fact anchored in my heid! Will have to resort to Google.
As a hint, this is one of the things that helped end it:
kudos for knowing what that is. How anyone could look at those horses and think they constituted a light brigade...
It is interesting that the two greatest cavalry charges in British military history were both, to a greater or lesser extent, fuckups which ended in the cavalry getting destroyed as a viable unit in each case.
Though the Charge of the Heavy Brigade (including Scots Greys) just before that of the Light was a great success, in fact if the Light Brigade standing by had joined in it could've turned into a route of the Russians and a good many more of them would have been alive at the end of the day.
It always tends to be glorious failure that enters mythology I guess.
Disclaimer: most of my knowledge of the period comes from Flashman books.
My knowledge of the Napoleonic Wars is from a combination of the Sharpe novels and the Patrick O'Brian ones.
Just to add a point about the Sharpe books: one of the things I particularly like about them is the bit at the end where he tells you which bits actually happened (at least as far as history recorded at the time they were written) and which bits he made up to make it a good story.
Completely minor point, but I heard Cornwell on the radio a few months ago and he seemed an entirely decent cove, shouldn't make a difference but it does. I've read a bit about O'Brien and he seemed a very complicated not to say tricky character.
I don't think so. The key thing is he says "used to" - he just needs to say clearly how much respect he has for Her Maj and that it serves the country well etc. etc.
Of course it's going to be a fucking problem. This is the new patriotism. If you don't gush about how the Queen has served the nation for 60 years by being driven to the races in a Bentley and selflessly accepting 40,000 bunches of flowers you are fucked.
He will just have to hope the Queen rolls a two before the next GE as republicanism will be very much in vogue once we have King Gobshite and his nervous wreck heir.
Perhaps it can be fought off with more flags. Which is another reason not to go ape on flags now. You have to leave yourself somewhere to go. Some gears unused.
Thankfully SKS seems to have only a single flag habit at the moment. Keep a beady eye open for any increase, and casually placed models of aircraft carriers.
The model was only yesterday, Keir hasn't had a chance to retaliate yet. It' s coming.
My bet is a miner's helmet in the corner, next to a model of a WW2 tank.
- A super Churchill (tick) - A shout out to ethnic minorities (tick) - A shout out to Royalty (tick) - A finger flick at the French (tick)
Great knowledge, love it!
The history of British tank design in WWII is a wonderful opportunity to study dysfunctional organisations, the lunatics that reform them and the bizarre engineering attracts that get produced.
Britain must have been the only country producing tank designs with non sloping armour in the latter half of the war.
Ironically, the success of our fighter building programme came at the expense of tanks because Lord Beaverbrook as Minister of Aircraft Production (familiar to older PBers as the model for our calls for vaccine and PPE tsars) had grabbed all the material and factories.
Some say that - but we succeeded in making tons of crapulent tanks. We built 1700 Covenanters. A tank that had one small defect. Actually driving it caused massive overheating in the engine.
I am permanently bemused by the "Soviet tractor stats" smear, because the same production technique produced Soviet T34s. They were not false positive T34s, and they were a lot of the reason why we are not having this conversation in german.
It's also a good side note to the patriotism and the left discussion; WWII Soviet factory workers pulled of some stupendous feats of production involving unpaid overtime, 14 hour shifts, contributing their wages towards the cost of an eg T34. Most industrialised countries had some version of this of course and there may have been a certain element of it being done at the end of a PPSh, but there was also a huge amount of genuine patriotism involved.
Hence the "Great Patriotic War"
Casts a long shadow. There was some functionary of the current Russian regime being interviewed the other day on the Navalny case and he stated that one of his crimes/failings was not being sufficiently respectful of the sacrifice of the Great Patriotic War.
Fairly easy trivia question: if WWII was the "Second Great Patriotic War", what was the First Great Patriotic War?
Shit, I was reading something that mentioned this the other day but no fact anchored in my heid! Will have to resort to Google.
As a hint, this is one of the things that helped end it:
kudos for knowing what that is. How anyone could look at those horses and think they constituted a light brigade...
It is interesting that the two greatest cavalry charges in British military history were both, to a greater or lesser extent, fuckups which ended in the cavalry getting destroyed as a viable unit in each case.
Though the Charge of the Heavy Brigade (including Scots Greys) just before that of the Light was a great success, in fact if the Light Brigade standing by had joined in it could've turned into a route of the Russians and a good many more of them would have been alive at the end of the day.
It always tends to be glorious failure that enters mythology I guess.
Disclaimer: most of my knowledge of the period comes from Flashman books.
My knowledge of the Napoleonic Wars is from a combination of the Sharpe novels and the Patrick O'Brian ones.
Just to add a point about the Sharpe books: one of the things I particularly like about them is the bit at the end where he tells you which bits actually happened (at least as far as history recorded at the time they were written) and which bits he made up to make it a good story.
I did like his note on Sharpes Waterloo, describing the battle site today, or at least at time of writing, as a monument to Napoleon to the point an ignorant visitor might think it the site of a French Triumph.
Amazon tells me a new Sharpe book is coming. Perhaps itll be of his first battles in Belgium as a 16 year old. Timely.
Gove was floundering on GMS this morning , could not answer the question re vaccines , usual Tory lies where they count the fact that they have it on a spreadsheet as it has been done. They don't have the bollox to admit they just wanted to get all the low hanging fruit vaccinated to divert from their appalling record and the massive daily death rate. Union Jack had same issue on Sunday re availability of vaccine.
NS: "That's a deliberate choice the Government has made. It is a legitimate choice to have first of all focused on overall numbers, but if that is at the expense of the uptake in the groups most clinically vulnerable, it's not a choice I would've wanted to make." NS: "I heard Michael Gove on the radio this morning not able or willing to give a figure for how many residents in care homes in England have actually been vaccinated as opposed to being offered the vaccine." NS: "Scotgov has followed an approach that very deliberately concentrated on getting the most clinically vulnerable groups vaccinated first, and achieving as high an uptake in these groups as possible."
It has been confirmed that 'offered' means a GP going in to the actual home with actual vaccines and offering. One assumes that the situation in Scotland was the same - unless the jabbers in Scotland were under order to forcibly vaccinate the biddies whether they wanted it or not.
If Care home uptake has been higher in Scotland, that reflects well on the good sense of the elderly here, not badly on the English vaccine roll out.
If Gove was unable to confirm this morning, what magic trick managed to change it.
Is the Russian banging on about the Great Patriotic (Soviet) War better or worse than British gammons banging on about their heroism (often while still in the womb, or even pre-fertilisation) in WWII?
Didn't expect to see you banging on about 'gammons' OKC. Are you now self-identifying as Young, Gifted And Black? That's where it's at.
Gifted. 33.3% Although, having a fairly dark complexion, especially when sun-tanned, I occasionally get picked out at airports for detailed baggage examination.
I don't think so. The key thing is he says "used to" - he just needs to say clearly how much respect he has for Her Maj and that it serves the country well etc. etc.
Of course it's going to be a fucking problem. This is the new patriotism. If you don't gush about how the Queen has served the nation for 60 years by being driven to the races in a Bentley and selflessly accepting 40,000 bunches of flowers you are fucked.
He will just have to hope the Queen rolls a two before the next GE as republicanism will be very much in vogue once we have King Gobshite and his nervous wreck heir.
Perhaps it can be fought off with more flags. Which is another reason not to go ape on flags now. You have to leave yourself somewhere to go. Some gears unused.
Thankfully SKS seems to have only a single flag habit at the moment. Keep a beady eye open for any increase, and casually placed models of aircraft carriers.
The model was only yesterday, Keir hasn't had a chance to retaliate yet. It' s coming.
My bet is a miner's helmet in the corner, next to a model of a WW2 tank.
- A super Churchill (tick) - A shout out to ethnic minorities (tick) - A shout out to Royalty (tick) - A finger flick at the French (tick)
Great knowledge, love it!
The history of British tank design in WWII is a wonderful opportunity to study dysfunctional organisations, the lunatics that reform them and the bizarre engineering attracts that get produced.
Britain must have been the only country producing tank designs with non sloping armour in the latter half of the war.
Ironically, the success of our fighter building programme came at the expense of tanks because Lord Beaverbrook as Minister of Aircraft Production (familiar to older PBers as the model for our calls for vaccine and PPE tsars) had grabbed all the material and factories.
Some say that - but we succeeded in making tons of crapulent tanks. We built 1700 Covenanters. A tank that had one small defect. Actually driving it caused massive overheating in the engine.
I am permanently bemused by the "Soviet tractor stats" smear, because the same production technique produced Soviet T34s. They were not false positive T34s, and they were a lot of the reason why we are not having this conversation in german.
It's also a good side note to the patriotism and the left discussion; WWII Soviet factory workers pulled of some stupendous feats of production involving unpaid overtime, 14 hour shifts, contributing their wages towards the cost of an eg T34. Most industrialised countries had some version of this of course and there may have been a certain element of it being done at the end of a PPSh, but there was also a huge amount of genuine patriotism involved.
Hence the "Great Patriotic War"
Casts a long shadow. There was some functionary of the current Russian regime being interviewed the other day on the Navalny case and he stated that one of his crimes/failings was not being sufficiently respectful of the sacrifice of the Great Patriotic War.
Fairly easy trivia question: if WWII was the "Second Great Patriotic War", what was the First Great Patriotic War?
Shit, I was reading something that mentioned this the other day but no fact anchored in my heid! Will have to resort to Google.
As a hint, this is one of the things that helped end it:
kudos for knowing what that is. How anyone could look at those horses and think they constituted a light brigade...
It is interesting that the two greatest cavalry charges in British military history were both, to a greater or lesser extent, fuckups which ended in the cavalry getting destroyed as a viable unit in each case.
Though the Charge of the Heavy Brigade (including Scots Greys) just before that of the Light was a great success, in fact if the Light Brigade standing by had joined in it could've turned into a route of the Russians and a good many more of them would have been alive at the end of the day.
It always tends to be glorious failure that enters mythology I guess.
Disclaimer: most of my knowledge of the period comes from Flashman books.
My knowledge of the Napoleonic Wars is from a combination of the Sharpe novels and the Patrick O'Brian ones.
That's how I learned we bombarded Copenhagen in 1807. Good times.
I think Hornblower was there too, in The Commodore?
Another very encouraging update from Israel. Of course, their rollout is much quicker than ours, and comprises Pfizer with 2 doses, but the clear downturn in the prioritised over-60s relative to the under-60s is very marked. It's hard to tell from these charts how much of the downturn occurred before most of the over-60s had their 2nd jabs. Edit: Here's the update!
Is the Russian banging on about the Great Patriotic (Soviet) War better or worse than British gammons banging on about their heroism (often while still in the womb, or even pre-fertilisation) in WWII?
Didn't expect to see you banging on about 'gammons' OKC. Are you now self-identifying as Young, Gifted And Black? That's where it's at.
Of course you can be left-wing and patriotic. Jim Callaghan, Harold Wilson, Clement Atlee, George Orwell, etc.
Telling that one has to reach for figures from 40, 50, and 80 years ago...
Yep. Before we became an oligarchy.
Now anybody who threatens the ruling class's grip on assets is attacked on "patriotic" grounds (I suppose they always were, but now there's really no right or power of reply).
It works, of course. Look at the dumbass flag-waving even on here, among people who are quite erudite and measured on many matters.
Unfortunately for your thesis, the Corbyn period demonstrated quite clearly that the types who want to steal our assets are very often also anti-patriots. Tell the British that you want to take their cash and their country, and those supposed 'few' will crush you at the ballot box in their millions.
Well that's a bit of revolving bow-tie nonsense. In 17 it was close and 19 was a quasi rerun of the Brexit referendum in a climate where the only question was how big the Con majority would be.
It's just as valid to say that 19 was not close and that 17 was a quasi rerun of the Brexit referendum in a climate where half the electorate wanted to give the Tories a good kicking by any means necessary, and the usual non-voters who swung the referendum for Leave went back to their usual patterns of Not Turning Up.
A very fair comment. Brexit flattered Labour in 17 and killed them in 19. Their "par score" (if you will) was between the two - but nearer 17 since Brexit was a stronger factor in 19 than it was then. So about 250 seats. A Left Labour offering with a wildly unsuitable leader scores 250 seats. This means if you replace the leader with an upgrade (done) but stay to the Left (although not with exactly the same policies) you can win. You might not, but you most certainly can. That's my analysis and it's bulletproof. No amount of waffle or facetious one-liners from Tory Story propaganda merchants changes a damn thing about it or detracts from its essential truth.
I don't think so. The key thing is he says "used to" - he just needs to say clearly how much respect he has for Her Maj and that it serves the country well etc. etc.
Of course it's going to be a fucking problem. This is the new patriotism. If you don't gush about how the Queen has served the nation for 60 years by being driven to the races in a Bentley and selflessly accepting 40,000 bunches of flowers you are fucked.
He will just have to hope the Queen rolls a two before the next GE as republicanism will be very much in vogue once we have King Gobshite and his nervous wreck heir.
Perhaps it can be fought off with more flags. Which is another reason not to go ape on flags now. You have to leave yourself somewhere to go. Some gears unused.
Thankfully SKS seems to have only a single flag habit at the moment. Keep a beady eye open for any increase, and casually placed models of aircraft carriers.
The model was only yesterday, Keir hasn't had a chance to retaliate yet. It' s coming.
My bet is a miner's helmet in the corner, next to a model of a WW2 tank.
- A super Churchill (tick) - A shout out to ethnic minorities (tick) - A shout out to Royalty (tick) - A finger flick at the French (tick)
Great knowledge, love it!
The history of British tank design in WWII is a wonderful opportunity to study dysfunctional organisations, the lunatics that reform them and the bizarre engineering attracts that get produced.
Britain must have been the only country producing tank designs with non sloping armour in the latter half of the war.
Ironically, the success of our fighter building programme came at the expense of tanks because Lord Beaverbrook as Minister of Aircraft Production (familiar to older PBers as the model for our calls for vaccine and PPE tsars) had grabbed all the material and factories.
Some say that - but we succeeded in making tons of crapulent tanks. We built 1700 Covenanters. A tank that had one small defect. Actually driving it caused massive overheating in the engine.
I am permanently bemused by the "Soviet tractor stats" smear, because the same production technique produced Soviet T34s. They were not false positive T34s, and they were a lot of the reason why we are not having this conversation in german.
It's also a good side note to the patriotism and the left discussion; WWII Soviet factory workers pulled of some stupendous feats of production involving unpaid overtime, 14 hour shifts, contributing their wages towards the cost of an eg T34. Most industrialised countries had some version of this of course and there may have been a certain element of it being done at the end of a PPSh, but there was also a huge amount of genuine patriotism involved.
Hence the "Great Patriotic War"
Casts a long shadow. There was some functionary of the current Russian regime being interviewed the other day on the Navalny case and he stated that one of his crimes/failings was not being sufficiently respectful of the sacrifice of the Great Patriotic War.
Fairly easy trivia question: if WWII was the "Second Great Patriotic War", what was the First Great Patriotic War?
Shit, I was reading something that mentioned this the other day but no fact anchored in my heid! Will have to resort to Google.
As a hint, this is one of the things that helped end it:
kudos for knowing what that is. How anyone could look at those horses and think they constituted a light brigade...
It is interesting that the two greatest cavalry charges in British military history were both, to a greater or lesser extent, fuckups which ended in the cavalry getting destroyed as a viable unit in each case.
Though the Charge of the Heavy Brigade (including Scots Greys) just before that of the Light was a great success, in fact if the Light Brigade standing by had joined in it could've turned into a route of the Russians and a good many more of them would have been alive at the end of the day.
It always tends to be glorious failure that enters mythology I guess.
Disclaimer: most of my knowledge of the period comes from Flashman books.
My knowledge of the Napoleonic Wars is from a combination of the Sharpe novels and the Patrick O'Brian ones.
Just to add a point about the Sharpe books: one of the things I particularly like about them is the bit at the end where he tells you which bits actually happened (at least as far as history recorded at the time they were written) and which bits he made up to make it a good story.
Completely minor point, but I heard Cornwell on the radio a few months ago and he seemed an entirely decent cove, shouldn't make a difference but it does. I've read a bit about O'Brien and he seems a very complicated not to say tricky character.
I expect most writers have, as you put it, complex lives. Lovecraft, for instance, was someone that early 20th century white Americans thought was a bit on the racist side.
Oxford University and AstraZeneca plan to have a new Covid vaccine ready by the autumn to tackle new variants of the coronavirus, they confirmed today.
Given all the additional Pfizer manufacturing capacity being built in Europe, I suspect the EU won't be buying any more AZ after the initial order is complete. With Pfizer having much higher efficacy trial results than AZ, they'll probably view it as them buying the Rolls-Royce of vaccines while the UK makes do with a Skoda.
Have you seen the latest results from the AZ trials?
Yes, 82.4% for AZ versus 95% for Pfizer.
Wont matter when we're cruising to the pub in our Skodas whilst they are still waiting in their homes.
Nothing wrong with a Skoda.
My Skoda was about 10k less than the very similar but smaller VW, and 20k less for the similar Audi, which is so small I can't even get 10 house doors in it, flat.
You car 10 house doors on a regular basis
Just keep an open mind on the subject.
How does the vehicle handle?
Very nice drive, my Skoda. Second one I've had. Had the Pfizer vaccine, too! 2½ weeks ago.
PB seems to have quite a few Skoda owners. I have had my Superb for nearly 10 years, still going strong, and has had hardly any faults in that time, Might soon be looking at replacing it with the hybrid version.
Gove was floundering on GMS this morning , could not answer the question re vaccines , usual Tory lies where they count the fact that they have it on a spreadsheet as it has been done. They don't have the bollox to admit they just wanted to get all the low hanging fruit vaccinated to divert from their appalling record and the massive daily death rate. Union Jack had same issue on Sunday re availability of vaccine.
NS: "That's a deliberate choice the Government has made. It is a legitimate choice to have first of all focused on overall numbers, but if that is at the expense of the uptake in the groups most clinically vulnerable, it's not a choice I would've wanted to make." NS: "I heard Michael Gove on the radio this morning not able or willing to give a figure for how many residents in care homes in England have actually been vaccinated as opposed to being offered the vaccine." NS: "Scotgov has followed an approach that very deliberately concentrated on getting the most clinically vulnerable groups vaccinated first, and achieving as high an uptake in these groups as possible."
It has been confirmed that 'offered' means a GP going in to the actual home with actual vaccines and offering. One assumes that the situation in Scotland was the same - unless the jabbers in Scotland were under order to forcibly vaccinate the biddies whether they wanted it or not.
If Care home uptake has been higher in Scotland, that reflects well on the good sense of the elderly here, not badly on the English vaccine roll out.
If Gove was unable to confirm this morning, what magic trick managed to change it.
Is the Russian banging on about the Great Patriotic (Soviet) War better or worse than British gammons banging on about their heroism (often while still in the womb, or even pre-fertilisation) in WWII?
Didn't expect to see you banging on about 'gammons' OKC. Are you now self-identifying as Young, Gifted And Black? That's where it's at.
Comments
I think Valneva is inactivated, and one of the Chinese ones is live attenuated. So we do either have, or have on the horizon, classical vaccines.
Are those restricting AZ use going to receive more Pfizer to make up for it, and those using AZ less as they will have alternatives?
Wiki says the the term was actually coined 30+ years after the event and came into common usage when everyone got excited about its centenary. Never let it be said that Russians don't look back on their history enough (except for the nasty, evil and hideous stuff of course).
For anyone else, the thing that matters most is stopping death and serious illness, in that regard all of the approved vaccines appear to be very good. So right now any jab will do.
But it's very close with the latest 12 week Astra spacing/mutants vs Pfizer, and NO nation is in this position. I think our mixed strategy for all ages is correct going age downward.
Brother got his first Pfizer vaccine shot today. Hooray!
In London, though. In group 6.
Meanwhile surgery here is saying that despite having done all their Group 1-4 people, they are waiting for NHS England to tell them when they can get more vaccines so that they can continue. Cumbria had its allocation cut by a 1/3rd. Hence the pause.
(Honestly! Bloody Londoners stealing our vaccines. Just like the Commission. We Red Wall voters get ignored. Grumble grumble.... What's the point of Boris if he won't level us up, etc etc ...... (Am I doing this right @HYUFD?))
'Patriotic War of 1812, Napoleon's invasion of Russia
Second Patriotic War, the war between the German Empire and its allies against Russia during World War I
Great Patriotic War, the war between Nazi Germany and its allies against the Soviet Union during World War II'
Crimean isn't mentioned.
I went on a school trip to Leningrad back in '86 where we visited the Hermitage. Our guide was very surprised when one of our history teachers on the trip pointed at a painting of the Duke of Wellington, which was one of the few non-Russian portraits included in the section on the "First Great Patriotic War" and said that he was related to him.
Still, unlikely to change the big picture.
So, it turns out that most cavalries of the time (Napoleonic Wars) did use one breed or another of draft. This is a fascinating article about the evolution of the war horse over the course of history:
https://horseracingsense.com/horse-breeds-used-warfare/
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9218261/Memorial-Captain-Tom-Matt-Hancock-says-war-hero-place-history-honoured.html
There are a few empty plinths hanging around these days.
The answer surprised me...
I think Stalin's blood/money/time thing was very just. So if we can, they can.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/19061453.alex-salmond-says-shady-behaviour-nicola-sturgeons-government-a-disgrace/
4wd would have been nice, but that would knock the MPG below 55.
Handles beautifully. When I get to drive it this year.
But its a very big Estate Car not a Hoon-mobile.
Mind you, I watched the TV coverage yesterday of Captain Tom's passing and I was struck by the complete absence of balance. Quite right to give prominence to the side of the argument that maintains he was a great great guy and the source not only of serious funds for the NHS but of inspiration to the whole country at a very dark time - which is how I happen to feel - but where were the Captain Tom skeptics? Not a single one was granted a platform on any of the channels, as far as I could see. Felt a bit uncomfortable about that aspect.
At 5ft 9 inches each, who is taller? The statuesque Boris Johnson or the diminutive Starmer.
If Europe does not gets its Rs in gear, they risk having a larger version of what happened here before Christmas as the new variant permeates.
https://twitter.com/MrHarryCole/status/1356982933849051137
It always tends to be glorious failure that enters mythology I guess.
Disclaimer: most of my knowledge of the period comes from Flashman books.
I am genuinely pleased for my brother though. He has been on his own, was made redundant halfway through last year so it's good for something to go right for him at last.
https://twitter.com/DarrenEuronews/status/1356984352886972416?s=20
Listen to Gove refuse to even answer how many have been vaccinated in England.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1356983116603260928
Numbers from other countries may be different definitions.
Of course, the whole comparison is a bit limited - it's not population size that is going to be a factor, but population density (even then, how lumpy in addition to how dense overall), proximity/links to other countries and - of course - testing, if you use the within 28 days of test definition.
One of the joys of Brexit here is that Irish imports suddenly cost 20% more in VAT plus vet certificates and a week in a queue at the Irish ports.
Amazon tells me a new Sharpe book is coming. Perhaps itll be of his first battles in Belgium as a 16 year old. Timely.
I note Carlotta is using a stooge to post Agent Pish tweets, unionists getting ever more desperate and devious.
Why doesn't the sun set on the British Empire? Because God doesn't trust them in the dark!
The Arabs preferred:
It is better to be an enemy of the British than their friend. They buy their enemies - and sell their friends
Although, having a fairly dark complexion, especially when sun-tanned, I occasionally get picked out at airports for detailed baggage examination.
https://twitter.com/segal_eran/status/1356985003142479873
https://twitter.com/GuidoFawkes/status/1356971400272166914?s=19