Have to say, if Leon's account applies to the country as a whole then the next few weeks will tell us how robust our nascent recovery from the epidemic is. If there's barely a ripple in the downward slalom of data on those graphs we'll be in the clear.
This actually seems like a decent point - I'd be genuinely surprised to see royals ok'd to say anything beyond generic pablum, or general musings of a patriotic nature. https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1381645211579867137
Realtime report from the trenches of north London,
Today felt pivotal in all ways. Like, say, Stalingrad. BUT MORE IMPORTANT
It started off cold, grey and wintry (like almost every day this year), I went to my celebratory pub lunch with a pal in trepidation, and wearing thermals. The pub, in Highgate, had roofed over their beer garden and rigged up patio heaters for all. It was cold.
But the buzz, as soon as you walked in, was obvious. People staring at pints - pints! - in amazement. Waiters and waitresses giggly and excited. The long expected moment, arriving, finally.
Half a dozen fine British oysters, a plate of griddled padron peppers, some good sourdough, a thick Galician fish stew and 1 and a half bottles of Picpoul later, I can report that London is reborn. There is noise everywhere. The sun is properly out. Spring is here. The beer gardens are rocking and someone is playing the bagpipes.
Happy Unlockdownmas, War is Over
Why not just have a lager?
How often does a fucking plague end?
Lager????
A couple then. Or bitter.
Just that your complex, opulent choices seemed at odds with what an English public house is meant to be all about.
To me anyway.
I am an Englishman, an English pub is what I choose it to be. Literally
And for me the best do fine oysters
It's a sense of looseness and entitlement I just don't have.
I'm austere. When I visit a pub I drink pints of beer and that's it. Maybe switch to vodka when I can take no more volume but definitely not oysters or fine wines.
Sad. Really.
Really sad.
Way to be. It's authentic. That's what's most important in life.
But anyway, time for my evening of flesh & blood activities to commence.
That's fair, up to you
I wonder how much of this is a faint but definite gradation by age and class.
I am maybe 10 years younger than you AT MOST. You are northern, I am southern
I grew up and moved to London not long before the gastropub revolution started: the Eagle, in Farringdon.
So it turns out PB is full of antisocial weirdoes who hate pubs, laughter, cafes, wine, native British oysters and a damn good boozy lunch?!
No wonder you all loved lockdown.
SORRY GUYS IT'S OVER. THE EXTROVERTS ARE BACK
That's great. Enjoy. Being cooped up with an extrovert is not an introvert's idea of bliss. So it's like when the children are back at school after the summer holidays.
I've just returned from a beachside bar, cold but heaters on, absolutely buzzing with happiness and joy, long queues to enter. Remarkably, I agree with Leon - down here on the south coast sounds rather like North London, full of optimism. The fish is much fresher, of course.
After lunch I walked from Highgate through Archway then Tufnel Park and Kentish Town to Camden. A fair variety of places, rich and poor. Every pub (that has a beer garden, of any kind) was rammed and joyously noisy, all the way down
Right now in my flat I can hear two or three pub beer gardens, singing away. Whoops and cheers. I do not believe North London is unique. It may be slightly younger than normal. Is East Ham known for being miserable?!
Why should I move? I like it where I am.
East Ham isn't miserable - we don't seem to have the density of public houses that you "enjoy" in your part of town.
Well, if you like it quiet and depressing, stop moaning about it. Celebrate it. Today was another quiet, melancholy day!
Chacun a son gout
I like the vivacity and hedonism of north London.
It has been sadly missing for months, if not a year, today felt like a bigtime revival. GET IN
FOURTH WAVE INCOMING!
As long as that is the last one, I heard the movie The Fifth Wave was not every gone.
"Wave after wave, each mightier than the last, Till last, a ninth one, gathering half the deep And full of voices, slowly rose and plunged Roaring, and all the wave was in a flame"
The BBC’s wall-to-wall coverage of Prince Philip’s death has become the most complained-about moment in British television history.
At least 110,994 people have contacted the BBC to express their displeasure at the decision to turn most of the corporation’s TV channels and radio stations over to rolling tributes to the Queen’s husband.
According to an internal BBC complaints log seen by the Guardian, an unprecedented level of viewer feedback was received over the weekend, meaning the coverage appears to have elicited one of the most negative reactions to BBC programmes ever seen.
The BBC declined to comment on the leaked weekend figures and said a formal announcement would be made as planned on Thursday.
Damned if they do, damned if they don't.
Personally, I am not at all interested in the Royal Family, and was mildly annoyed that viewing and listening on the BBC was messed about with to such an extent. But I do understand why the national broadcaster feels the need to do it, and it's not like there isn't a choice of entertainment options. The 111k people should get a life basically.
If they wanted choice, they could always have watched the Philip coverage on ITV. Or turn over to the Philip coverage on Channel Four.
Gone are the days when there were only four channels.
Are you seriously saying that the BBC carpeting every one of its channels and every one of its radio stations was a reasonable response? I couldn't care much for the telly, but BBC music radio is a big part of lots of people's Friday night wind-down.
And no, Classic FM and Heart don't cut it.
Oh get over it. For one night people might listen to adverts, or an online service instead? Big frigging deal.
It was beyond excessive. Rightly, the object of mass ridicule.
You're right the self-entitlement to expect 24/7 music stations without adverts or subscription, paid for by compulsorily charging tens of millions of people who don't listen to them at threat of a Magistrate's Court if they don't pay - and whinging about one night being dedicated to a state broadcast instead - is beyond mass ridicule.
I must say I have enjoyed your angle on this topic, Philip. A devoted republican, licence-fee opponent, making a daily and passionate case for the licence fee being spent on a rolling monarchist obituary of a royal, to the exclusion of any other content.
Funny old world.
(FWIW I’m agnostic about the BBC’s funding. I would be very open to a subscription model if quality of the music radio stations could be preserved, which I’m slightly sceptical about)
I'm not defending the case for the licence fee being spent on anything, I'm saying the licence fee should be abolished.
I'm saying if you want a music station subscribe or pay for a music station, don't compel others at the threat of a Magistrates Court to pay for a music station for you, in the guise of being a state broadcaster, then suddenly get mortified that the state broadcaster chooses to put what it feels to be state broadcasting responsibilities before music.
It’s been very entertaining hearing your paradoxical ‘defence’ of the licence fee being spent on identical rolling royal obits, most notably on Radio 1X, in place of techno.
I echo @Richard_Tyndall 's warm words on Shirley Williams. Her, Barbara Castle, Margaret Thatcher, Betty Boothroyd and Shirley Williams are all names I think of from that era (across a variety of parties) as strong and pioneering female politicians.
I agree the coverage of HRH's passing has been OTT - I think the BBC overshot, because they had Diana in their minds from 1997. Universal announcements on Friday when it happened, were merited, as was special coverage and tributes for 24 hours, but not days of it on every channel for days on end. And not stopping of channel broadcasting, or duplicating it on every channel, still less the corporate virtue-signalling with black banners. I think that'd only be appropriate for the reigning monarch or direct heir.
The risk is the BBC now overcorrect, and undershoot for HMQ - which would cause a national outrage.
I think there is a more subtle problem for the BBC which is that although the Duke of Edinburgh's passing is important and significant, there is not actually a great deal to be said about it. He had a good war then spent the next 70 years cutting ribbons. That's a news announcement and a documentary taken care of. With Diana, there was far more to fill the airwaves: what caused the crash; the outpouring of grief and flowers (in pre-lockdown times); the future of the princes; the row about the flagpole. For Prince Philip, the BBC had blocked off hours but has nothing to say. Even Prince Harry can only tell us he told jokes and cooked sausages.
For HMQ, the BBC needs an actual plan with a precise schedule of what programmes will be shown when. Not just a decades-old memo that says the newsreaders will wear black for a week with details to be filled in later, as seems to have happened with the Duke.
I think he did a lot actually in our civic life (800 charities even as a honorary president is one hell of a lot of work, and the DoE awards have changed the lives of millions) not to mention propping up the Queen for over 70 years. It may be that he is the reason she's been so good for so long - in ways that most of us will simply never know.
Nevertheless, I agree - there's only so much that can be said about that.
So it turns out PB is full of antisocial weirdoes who hate pubs, laughter, cafes, wine, native British oysters and a damn good boozy lunch?!
No wonder you all loved lockdown.
SORRY GUYS IT'S OVER. THE EXTROVERTS ARE BACK
Don't be an idiot.
Some of us love going to restaurants and hotel bars over pubs with our mates and colleagues.
I'm sorry, but preferring a "hotel bar" to a pub is like preferring elevator music to the Pogues live in Brixton on St Patrick's Day
Jeez Denise
You've never had drinks in The Fumoir in Claridge's.
Hotel bars are much nicer than pubs. FACT.
Who the hell wants to go to a “nice” pub.
Anyone who has ever been to an Australian pub!
When I first went to Victoria, myself and a Scottish doctor who I knew from Med School. We met at the clock's and went into the nearest pub. Grim formica, chairs bolted to the floor, all male and all drunk. We supped up and left fairly sharpish.
NZ pubs weren't much better. The bar in "Once Were Warriors" was fairly accurate social realism.
Have to say, if Leon's account applies to the country as a whole then the next few weeks will tell us how robust our nascent recovery from the epidemic is. If there's barely a ripple in the downward slalom of data on those graphs we'll be in the clear.
Some kind of blip seems likely this week given return of schools and yet more cold weather. After that it warms up a bit. Allegedly. May 17th seems a bigger test, but we've got five weeks' worth of additional vaccinations between now and then, and fingers crossed we'll then get a decent Summer and not a frigid, drenching, miserable washout. If getting the jabs completed and a good four months of warm weather doesn't crush the wretched Plague properly, then nothing will.
Hint - breaking out North Korean comparisons usually has the opposite effect to that which was intended.
It's a rare situation which might justify it, treat with care.
No hyperbole, the summer of 1997 was a hectic time for me, I was about to leave home for university but I just couldn't understand the outpouring of grief for Diana, Princess of Wales.
It was totally weird for me, the media were pilling on the Queen and the Royals for not showing enough public emotions/comments in the day after, the Queen took a huge battering for it.
All I could think about was the Queen was doing a good job shielding the boys from all this, what happened to the good old fashioned stiff upper British lip?
This was only three years after the death of Kim Il-sung, and I thought we were a media pile on from this type of frenzy.
I felt really disconnected from most of the country at the time.
I was 11, and to the extent I was aware of it at all it all seemed over the top - I've told my family if I am ever involved in a tragedy I would prefer it if my friends and family said nothing at all to the public if they could, as private grief should be private. For public figures there is an understandable sense of belonging, of others deserving to be involved somehow - the Queen will be a case in point - but criticising their relations for not showing sufficient emotion? That's a big no no.
Then again, I never really got the Diana obsession, I think because of age, so the continued focus has never really connected with me. I remember the programmes for the top 10 in the '100 greatest britons' programme almost 20 years ago now, and however nice she may have been I feel like whoever presented the Diana one probably had their work cut out.
I think that to appreciate Diana, you had to be a bit older. She was the ultimate Eighties girl, marrying into a rather stuffy family, and changing it with a big bang. She was a true Sloane Ranger, at exactly the right moment in history when glamour and ostentatious wealth was fashionable again. Heady days those late Eighties boom years.
She too made that unforgiveable gaffe, of outshining the genetic royalty. For that, the Palace flunkies and courtiers could not forgive her.
So many myths and clichés in one post that it's hard to know where to start.
Nothing wrong with oysters, and nothing posh about them either. They rarely cost much. They are delicious and go as well with a hoppy ale as with a flinty Chablis.
Eat, drink and be merry!
If they are out of oysters, just work up a good gobbet of phlegm for the same experience.
You could probably play socially distant poker but chess is a bit more difficult. I don't think there will be a return to leagues until the autumn.
Outside yes but not socially distanced - just a max of six players. Do you mean large cash tournament chess? You can round up a few pals and play, but I realise you might be after big cash competitions?
Have to say, if Leon's account applies to the country as a whole then the next few weeks will tell us how robust our nascent recovery from the epidemic is. If there's barely a ripple in the downward slalom of data on those graphs we'll be in the clear.
Perhaps north London is exceptional (well, of course it is) but FWIW the not-that-famous pub I lunched in (which is nonetheless excellent, foodwise) told us they were booked solid for two weeks - as in, they had bookings for lunch/dinner from 12 til closing, every day, every table. Weekends were booked solid, he said, til summer
People were turning up for a full lunch at 4pm, 2 hours maximum per table, on a Monday
There is obviously huge pent-up demand. The question is whether it lasts.
It won't stay like this, of course, it will ebb away, but the surge is real, and big.
This actually seems like a decent point - I'd be genuinely surprised to see royals ok'd to say anything beyond generic pablum, or general musings of a patriotic nature. https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1381645211579867137
In that clip, Philip speaks with the accent and mannerisms of Charles. He really is a chip off the old block, and will be a bit more outspoken.
Whether the country are willing to stand for it is another question. It is quite possible that he will be King before the next General Election.
Nothing wrong with oysters, and nothing posh about them either. They rarely cost much. They are delicious and go as well with a hoppy ale as with a flinty Chablis.
Eat, drink and be merry!
If they are out of oysters, just work up a good gobbet of phlegm for the same experience.
So it turns out PB is full of antisocial weirdoes who hate pubs, laughter, cafes, wine, native British oysters and a damn good boozy lunch?!
No wonder you all loved lockdown.
SORRY GUYS IT'S OVER. THE EXTROVERTS ARE BACK
Don't be an idiot.
Some of us love going to restaurants and hotel bars over pubs with our mates and colleagues.
I'm sorry, but preferring a "hotel bar" to a pub is like preferring elevator music to the Pogues live in Brixton on St Patrick's Day
Jeez Denise
You've never had drinks in The Fumoir in Claridge's.
Hotel bars are much nicer than pubs. FACT.
Who the hell wants to go to a “nice” pub.
Anyone who has ever been to an Australian pub!
When I first went to Victoria, myself and a Scottish doctor who I knew from Med School. We met at the clock's and went into the nearest pub. Grim formica, chairs bolted to the floor, all male and all drunk. We supped up and left fairly sharpish.
NZ pubs weren't much better. The bar in "Once Were Warriors" was fairly accurate social realism.
So it turns out PB is full of antisocial weirdoes who hate pubs, laughter, cafes, wine, native British oysters and a damn good boozy lunch?!
No wonder you all loved lockdown.
SORRY GUYS IT'S OVER. THE EXTROVERTS ARE BACK
Don't be an idiot.
Some of us love going to restaurants and hotel bars over pubs with our mates and colleagues.
I'm sorry, but preferring a "hotel bar" to a pub is like preferring elevator music to the Pogues live in Brixton on St Patrick's Day
Jeez Denise
You've never had drinks in The Fumoir in Claridge's.
Hotel bars are much nicer than pubs. FACT.
Who the hell wants to go to a “nice” pub.
Anyone who has ever been to an Australian pub!
When I first went to Victoria, myself and a Scottish doctor who I knew from Med School. We met at the clock's and went into the nearest pub. Grim formica, chairs bolted to the floor, all male and all drunk. We supped up and left fairly sharpish.
NZ pubs weren't much better. The bar in "Once Were Warriors" was fairly accurate social realism.
Hint - breaking out North Korean comparisons usually has the opposite effect to that which was intended.
It's a rare situation which might justify it, treat with care.
No hyperbole, the summer of 1997 was a hectic time for me, I was about to leave home for university but I just couldn't understand the outpouring of grief for Diana, Princess of Wales.
It was totally weird for me, the media were pilling on the Queen and the Royals for not showing enough public emotions/comments in the day after, the Queen took a huge battering for it.
All I could think about was the Queen was doing a good job shielding the boys from all this, what happened to the good old fashioned stiff upper British lip?
This was only three years after the death of Kim Il-sung, and I thought we were a media pile on from this type of frenzy.
I felt really disconnected from most of the country at the time.
I was 11, and to the extent I was aware of it at all it all seemed over the top - I've told my family if I am ever involved in a tragedy I would prefer it if my friends and family said nothing at all to the public if they could, as private grief should be private. For public figures there is an understandable sense of belonging, of others deserving to be involved somehow - the Queen will be a case in point - but criticising their relations for not showing sufficient emotion? That's a big no no.
Then again, I never really got the Diana obsession, I think because of age, so the continued focus has never really connected with me. I remember the programmes for the top 10 in the '100 greatest britons' programme almost 20 years ago now, and however nice she may have been I feel like whoever presented the Diana one probably had their work cut out.
I think that to appreciate Diana, you had to be a bit older. She was the ultimate Eighties girl, marrying into a rather stuffy family, and changing it with a big bang. She was a true Sloane Ranger, at exactly the right moment in history when glamour and ostentatious wealth was fashionable again. Heady days those late Eighties boom years.
She too made that unforgiveable gaffe, of outshining the genetic royalty. For that, the Palace flunkies and courtiers could not forgive her.
So many myths and clichés in one post that it's hard to know where to start.
I didn't think you were old enough in the Eighties. I was, lived in London, and that is what it was like, at least from my perspective.
So it turns out PB is full of antisocial weirdoes who hate pubs, laughter, cafes, wine, native British oysters and a damn good boozy lunch?!
No wonder you all loved lockdown.
SORRY GUYS IT'S OVER. THE EXTROVERTS ARE BACK
Don't be an idiot.
Some of us love going to restaurants and hotel bars over pubs with our mates and colleagues.
I'm sorry, but preferring a "hotel bar" to a pub is like preferring elevator music to the Pogues live in Brixton on St Patrick's Day
Jeez Denise
You've never had drinks in The Fumoir in Claridge's.
Hotel bars are much nicer than pubs. FACT.
Who the hell wants to go to a “nice” pub.
Anyone who has ever been to an Australian pub!
When I first went to Victoria, myself and a Scottish doctor who I knew from Med School. We met at the clock's and went into the nearest pub. Grim formica, chairs bolted to the floor, all male and all drunk. We supped up and left fairly sharpish.
NZ pubs weren't much better. The bar in "Once Were Warriors" was fairly accurate social realism.
The pubs in NZ are almost universally shite. It mortally limits the whole country. Great landscapes, pisspoor pubs.
When I was in Auckland in the late 1990’s there was one or two decent drinking pubs in downtown. Plus the bar that stayed open all night, but thankfully I only ended up there once...
Quite. One expects there'll be some residual pent-up demand for physical retail - as evidenced by the lengthy queues outside some locations reported on the news today - that'll probably continue through the weekend. After that? Most of what's left of physical retail is still in serious trouble. Consider:
-Queuing to get into every shop -Horrible masks everywhere -Being ordered about, told where to go and where not to, and the repeated enforced use of sanitiser -No trying on clothes -In many establishments, no touching the merchandise full stop -"Please shop alone" -Many restaurants and coffee shops still shut or only serving takeout; those with seating booked solid or with yet more lengthy queues to get in
I can put up with grocery shopping because it's necessary, utilitarian, they've had months to get their act together so as to make it as painless as possible, and you're in and out quite quickly. But it's a chore, not a leisure activity. A shopping trip used to be a leisure activity. When it's rendered a chore, folk won't bother to go anymore unless they're going to one or two specific locations for stuff they can't easily obtain online, or possibly if they're going bargain hunting to somewhere like Debenhams that's holding a fire sale before shutting down for good.
One has to wonder, beyond food retailers and certain specialist outlets like DIY shops, what the irreducible core of physical retail is - and how much outside of that core will be left by the time the Plague is finally over? After all, who knows how long the queuing, the being directed, the masks, the distancing and the obsessional germophobia is going to last?
One that really stuck in my mind from earlier in the pandemic was Borough Market, which had signs up along the lines of "Come, Shop, Leave". It severely reduced my desire to buy anything from there.
So it turns out PB is full of antisocial weirdoes who hate pubs, laughter, cafes, wine, native British oysters and a damn good boozy lunch?!
No wonder you all loved lockdown.
SORRY GUYS IT'S OVER. THE EXTROVERTS ARE BACK
Don't be an idiot.
Some of us love going to restaurants and hotel bars over pubs with our mates and colleagues.
I'm sorry, but preferring a "hotel bar" to a pub is like preferring elevator music to the Pogues live in Brixton on St Patrick's Day
Jeez Denise
You've never had drinks in The Fumoir in Claridge's.
Hotel bars are much nicer than pubs. FACT.
Who the hell wants to go to a “nice” pub.
Anyone who has ever been to an Australian pub!
When I first went to Victoria, myself and a Scottish doctor who I knew from Med School. We met at the clock's and went into the nearest pub. Grim formica, chairs bolted to the floor, all male and all drunk. We supped up and left fairly sharpish.
NZ pubs weren't much better. The bar in "Once Were Warriors" was fairly accurate social realism.
The pubs in NZ are almost universally shite. It mortally limits the whole country. Great landscapes, pisspoor pubs.
In Christchurch we had a good hospital bar that sold Steinlager and Speights, and played good music, but otherwise took a load of wine to a BYO restaurant and spent the evening with friends there. The Ducks De Lux at the Canterbury Arts Centre was the only decent bar.
Maybe it is better now, it was 3 decades ago that I was there.
"@MichaelMDowling As English pubs open today, we should recognise they achieved this by risking the health of their population by vaccinating too early with vaccines they didn't understand.
The EU approach is testing new medicine is vastly superior to the early chance to pop into Weatherspoons."
You could probably play socially distant poker but chess is a bit more difficult. I don't think there will be a return to leagues until the autumn.
Outside yes but not socially distanced - just a max of six players. Do you mean large cash tournament chess? You can round up a few pals and play, but I realise you might be after big cash competitions?
No, no, nothing that high end, just local or county leagues which are usually played in a pub (or a working men's club).
I don't think I've ever had more than £100 resting on a game.
So it turns out PB is full of antisocial weirdoes who hate pubs, laughter, cafes, wine, native British oysters and a damn good boozy lunch?!
No wonder you all loved lockdown.
SORRY GUYS IT'S OVER. THE EXTROVERTS ARE BACK
Don't be an idiot.
Some of us love going to restaurants and hotel bars over pubs with our mates and colleagues.
I'm sorry, but preferring a "hotel bar" to a pub is like preferring elevator music to the Pogues live in Brixton on St Patrick's Day
Jeez Denise
You've never had drinks in The Fumoir in Claridge's.
Hotel bars are much nicer than pubs. FACT.
Who the hell wants to go to a “nice” pub.
Anyone who has ever been to an Australian pub!
When I first went to Victoria, myself and a Scottish doctor who I knew from Med School. We met at the clock's and went into the nearest pub. Grim formica, chairs bolted to the floor, all male and all drunk. We supped up and left fairly sharpish.
NZ pubs weren't much better. The bar in "Once Were Warriors" was fairly accurate social realism.
The pubs in NZ are almost universally shite. It mortally limits the whole country. Great landscapes, pisspoor pubs.
In Christchurch we had a good hospital bar that sold Steinlager and Speights, and played good music, but otherwise took a load of wine to a BYO restaurant and spent the evening with friends there. The Ducks De Lux at the Canterbury Arts Centre was the only decent bar.
Maybe it is better now, it was 3 decades ago that I was there.
I was there less than a decade ago, it wasn’t any better then!
Hint - breaking out North Korean comparisons usually has the opposite effect to that which was intended.
It's a rare situation which might justify it, treat with care.
No hyperbole, the summer of 1997 was a hectic time for me, I was about to leave home for university but I just couldn't understand the outpouring of grief for Diana, Princess of Wales.
It was totally weird for me, the media were pilling on the Queen and the Royals for not showing enough public emotions/comments in the day after, the Queen took a huge battering for it.
All I could think about was the Queen was doing a good job shielding the boys from all this, what happened to the good old fashioned stiff upper British lip?
This was only three years after the death of Kim Il-sung, and I thought we were a media pile on from this type of frenzy.
I felt really disconnected from most of the country at the time.
I was 11, and to the extent I was aware of it at all it all seemed over the top - I've told my family if I am ever involved in a tragedy I would prefer it if my friends and family said nothing at all to the public if they could, as private grief should be private. For public figures there is an understandable sense of belonging, of others deserving to be involved somehow - the Queen will be a case in point - but criticising their relations for not showing sufficient emotion? That's a big no no.
Then again, I never really got the Diana obsession, I think because of age, so the continued focus has never really connected with me. I remember the programmes for the top 10 in the '100 greatest britons' programme almost 20 years ago now, and however nice she may have been I feel like whoever presented the Diana one probably had their work cut out.
I think that to appreciate Diana, you had to be a bit older. She was the ultimate Eighties girl, marrying into a rather stuffy family, and changing it with a big bang. She was a true Sloane Ranger, at exactly the right moment in history when glamour and ostentatious wealth was fashionable again. Heady days those late Eighties boom years.
She too made that unforgiveable gaffe, of outshining the genetic royalty. For that, the Palace flunkies and courtiers could not forgive her.
Diana was cultured: she enjoyed ballet. She was also proto-woke, working for AIDS and landmine victims. Oh, and beautiful too.
Yes, all of those things, but most of all she could do empathy. That's what made her a star.
FWIW, if you want to do something for HRH or for HMQ then Philip supported over 800 charities at one time. So, for the cost of a decent bunch of flowers (£10-20) you can find one or two that speak to you.
I've gone for the DoE award scheme (which I loved), the Burma Star Association and Book Aid International.
You can find the full list here - there is something for everyone:
I echo @Richard_Tyndall 's warm words on Shirley Williams. Her, Barbara Castle, Margaret Thatcher, Betty Boothroyd and Shirley Williams are all names I think of from that era (across a variety of parties) as strong and pioneering female politicians.
Agree. What I also find interesting is that it is not difficult to think of Mrs T warmly admiring Shirley Williams but hard to imagine it the other way round, despite Shirley Williams' magnificent qualities. And this to me is a central and crucial difference between the philosophy of the centre right and that of the centre left.
Really?
This is Shirley Williams writing on Thatcher in 2013:
Yes, really. Very cleverly done but not a single straight warm word. It needs reading with care because it is so finely crafted.
Did you read Shirley Williams' autobiography? In it she recounts a time in the lady's room at the House of Commons where she'd just been savaged at the Dispatch Box, and Mrs Thatcher was ironing a dress. Mrs Thatcher said something like "don't ever let the buggers get you down".
In fact, she was a lot nicer in her autobiography about Mrs Thatcher than she was about David Owen or David Steel. (Although she did have kind words for Paddy Ashdown.)
"@MichaelMDowling As English pubs open today, we should recognise they achieved this by risking the health of their population by vaccinating too early with vaccines they didn't understand.
The EU approach is testing new medicine is vastly superior to the early chance to pop into Weatherspoons."
People this is noise in the data due to change in the reporting of pcr confirmed lft’s. Yesterday was artificially low - today is artificially high. You don’t really think people went for their first pint then immediately rushed to the nearest COVID testing centre do you?
Hint - breaking out North Korean comparisons usually has the opposite effect to that which was intended.
It's a rare situation which might justify it, treat with care.
No hyperbole, the summer of 1997 was a hectic time for me, I was about to leave home for university but I just couldn't understand the outpouring of grief for Diana, Princess of Wales.
It was totally weird for me, the media were pilling on the Queen and the Royals for not showing enough public emotions/comments in the day after, the Queen took a huge battering for it.
All I could think about was the Queen was doing a good job shielding the boys from all this, what happened to the good old fashioned stiff upper British lip?
This was only three years after the death of Kim Il-sung, and I thought we were a media pile on from this type of frenzy.
I felt really disconnected from most of the country at the time.
I was 11, and to the extent I was aware of it at all it all seemed over the top - I've told my family if I am ever involved in a tragedy I would prefer it if my friends and family said nothing at all to the public if they could, as private grief should be private. For public figures there is an understandable sense of belonging, of others deserving to be involved somehow - the Queen will be a case in point - but criticising their relations for not showing sufficient emotion? That's a big no no.
Then again, I never really got the Diana obsession, I think because of age, so the continued focus has never really connected with me. I remember the programmes for the top 10 in the '100 greatest britons' programme almost 20 years ago now, and however nice she may have been I feel like whoever presented the Diana one probably had their work cut out.
I think that to appreciate Diana, you had to be a bit older. She was the ultimate Eighties girl, marrying into a rather stuffy family, and changing it with a big bang. She was a true Sloane Ranger, at exactly the right moment in history when glamour and ostentatious wealth was fashionable again. Heady days those late Eighties boom years.
She too made that unforgiveable gaffe, of outshining the genetic royalty. For that, the Palace flunkies and courtiers could not forgive her.
So many myths and clichés in one post that it's hard to know where to start.
I didn't think you were old enough in the Eighties. I was, lived in London, and that is what it was like, at least from my perspective.
"@MichaelMDowling As English pubs open today, we should recognise they achieved this by risking the health of their population by vaccinating too early with vaccines they didn't understand.
The EU approach is testing new medicine is vastly superior to the early chance to pop into Weatherspoons."
So it turns out PB is full of antisocial weirdoes who hate pubs, laughter, cafes, wine, native British oysters and a damn good boozy lunch?!
No wonder you all loved lockdown.
SORRY GUYS IT'S OVER. THE EXTROVERTS ARE BACK
Don't be an idiot.
Some of us love going to restaurants and hotel bars over pubs with our mates and colleagues.
I'm sorry, but preferring a "hotel bar" to a pub is like preferring elevator music to the Pogues live in Brixton on St Patrick's Day
Jeez Denise
You've never had drinks in The Fumoir in Claridge's.
Hotel bars are much nicer than pubs. FACT.
Who the hell wants to go to a “nice” pub.
Anyone who has ever been to an Australian pub!
When I first went to Victoria, myself and a Scottish doctor who I knew from Med School. We met at the clock's and went into the nearest pub. Grim formica, chairs bolted to the floor, all male and all drunk. We supped up and left fairly sharpish.
NZ pubs weren't much better. The bar in "Once Were Warriors" was fairly accurate social realism.
The pubs in NZ are almost universally shite. It mortally limits the whole country. Great landscapes, pisspoor pubs.
In Christchurch we had a good hospital bar that sold Steinlager and Speights, and played good music, but otherwise took a load of wine to a BYO restaurant and spent the evening with friends there. The Ducks De Lux at the Canterbury Arts Centre was the only decent bar.
Maybe it is better now, it was 3 decades ago that I was there.
I was there less than a decade ago, it wasn’t any better then!
Two earthquakes in ten years have made a bit of a mess of downtown Christchurch. Plenty of parking, though.
So it turns out PB is full of antisocial weirdoes who hate pubs, laughter, cafes, wine, native British oysters and a damn good boozy lunch?!
No wonder you all loved lockdown.
SORRY GUYS IT'S OVER. THE EXTROVERTS ARE BACK
Don't be an idiot.
Some of us love going to restaurants and hotel bars over pubs with our mates and colleagues.
I'm sorry, but preferring a "hotel bar" to a pub is like preferring elevator music to the Pogues live in Brixton on St Patrick's Day
Jeez Denise
You've never had drinks in The Fumoir in Claridge's.
Hotel bars are much nicer than pubs. FACT.
Who the hell wants to go to a “nice” pub.
Anyone who has ever been to an Australian pub!
When I first went to Victoria, myself and a Scottish doctor who I knew from Med School. We met at the clock's and went into the nearest pub. Grim formica, chairs bolted to the floor, all male and all drunk. We supped up and left fairly sharpish.
NZ pubs weren't much better. The bar in "Once Were Warriors" was fairly accurate social realism.
The pubs in NZ are almost universally shite. It mortally limits the whole country. Great landscapes, pisspoor pubs.
NZ is interesting. Some friends have moved there and never looked back (in fact, to some extent, they drop out of global modern life at the same time) whereas I know others who've come back inside 18 months - bored to tits.
Hint - breaking out North Korean comparisons usually has the opposite effect to that which was intended.
It's a rare situation which might justify it, treat with care.
No hyperbole, the summer of 1997 was a hectic time for me, I was about to leave home for university but I just couldn't understand the outpouring of grief for Diana, Princess of Wales.
It was totally weird for me, the media were pilling on the Queen and the Royals for not showing enough public emotions/comments in the day after, the Queen took a huge battering for it.
All I could think about was the Queen was doing a good job shielding the boys from all this, what happened to the good old fashioned stiff upper British lip?
This was only three years after the death of Kim Il-sung, and I thought we were a media pile on from this type of frenzy.
I felt really disconnected from most of the country at the time.
I was 11, and to the extent I was aware of it at all it all seemed over the top - I've told my family if I am ever involved in a tragedy I would prefer it if my friends and family said nothing at all to the public if they could, as private grief should be private. For public figures there is an understandable sense of belonging, of others deserving to be involved somehow - the Queen will be a case in point - but criticising their relations for not showing sufficient emotion? That's a big no no.
Then again, I never really got the Diana obsession, I think because of age, so the continued focus has never really connected with me. I remember the programmes for the top 10 in the '100 greatest britons' programme almost 20 years ago now, and however nice she may have been I feel like whoever presented the Diana one probably had their work cut out.
I think that to appreciate Diana, you had to be a bit older. She was the ultimate Eighties girl, marrying into a rather stuffy family, and changing it with a big bang. She was a true Sloane Ranger, at exactly the right moment in history when glamour and ostentatious wealth was fashionable again. Heady days those late Eighties boom years.
She too made that unforgiveable gaffe, of outshining the genetic royalty. For that, the Palace flunkies and courtiers could not forgive her.
So many myths and clichés in one post that it's hard to know where to start.
I didn't think you were old enough in the Eighties. I was, lived in London, and that is what it was like, at least from my perspective.
Ah, it was your lived experience.
Unarguable then.
Looking back, being a Medical student in Eighties London was really hitting the Zeitgeist. It was a revolutionary period, musically, politically, culturally, economically. Great fun, and I am glad that I was there.
So it turns out PB is full of antisocial weirdoes who hate pubs, laughter, cafes, wine, native British oysters and a damn good boozy lunch?!
No wonder you all loved lockdown.
SORRY GUYS IT'S OVER. THE EXTROVERTS ARE BACK
Don't be an idiot.
Some of us love going to restaurants and hotel bars over pubs with our mates and colleagues.
I'm sorry, but preferring a "hotel bar" to a pub is like preferring elevator music to the Pogues live in Brixton on St Patrick's Day
Jeez Denise
You've never had drinks in The Fumoir in Claridge's.
Hotel bars are much nicer than pubs. FACT.
Who the hell wants to go to a “nice” pub.
Anyone who has ever been to an Australian pub!
When I first went to Victoria, myself and a Scottish doctor who I knew from Med School. We met at the clock's and went into the nearest pub. Grim formica, chairs bolted to the floor, all male and all drunk. We supped up and left fairly sharpish.
NZ pubs weren't much better. The bar in "Once Were Warriors" was fairly accurate social realism.
The pubs in NZ are almost universally shite. It mortally limits the whole country. Great landscapes, pisspoor pubs.
NZ is interesting. Some friends have moved there and never looked back (in fact, to some extent, they drop out of global modern life at the same time) whereas I know others who've come back inside 18 months - bored to tits.
I know people who rave about how great it is, which I'm sure is very sincere, but that they are not there presently would seem an indication it is missing something they wanted (since it isn't an issue of not being able to for some unavoidable reason). Good for different periods of life perhaps.
The BBC’s wall-to-wall coverage of Prince Philip’s death has become the most complained-about moment in British television history.
At least 110,994 people have contacted the BBC to express their displeasure at the decision to turn most of the corporation’s TV channels and radio stations over to rolling tributes to the Queen’s husband.
According to an internal BBC complaints log seen by the Guardian, an unprecedented level of viewer feedback was received over the weekend, meaning the coverage appears to have elicited one of the most negative reactions to BBC programmes ever seen.
The BBC declined to comment on the leaked weekend figures and said a formal announcement would be made as planned on Thursday.
Damned if they do, damned if they don't.
Personally, I am not at all interested in the Royal Family, and was mildly annoyed that viewing and listening on the BBC was messed about with to such an extent. But I do understand why the national broadcaster feels the need to do it, and it's not like there isn't a choice of entertainment options. The 111k people should get a life basically.
If they wanted choice, they could always have watched the Philip coverage on ITV. Or turn over to the Philip coverage on Channel Four.
Gone are the days when there were only four channels.
Are you seriously saying that the BBC carpeting every one of its channels and every one of its radio stations was a reasonable response? I couldn't care much for the telly, but BBC music radio is a big part of lots of people's Friday night wind-down.
And no, Classic FM and Heart don't cut it.
Oh get over it. For one night people might listen to adverts, or an online service instead? Big frigging deal.
It was beyond excessive. Rightly, the object of mass ridicule.
You're right the self-entitlement to expect 24/7 music stations without adverts or subscription, paid for by compulsorily charging tens of millions of people who don't listen to them at threat of a Magistrate's Court if they don't pay - and whinging about one night being dedicated to a state broadcast instead - is beyond mass ridicule.
I must say I have enjoyed your angle on this topic, Philip. A devoted republican, licence-fee opponent, making a daily and passionate case for the licence fee being spent on a rolling monarchist obituary of a royal, to the exclusion of any other content.
Funny old world.
(FWIW I’m agnostic about the BBC’s funding. I would be very open to a subscription model if quality of the music radio stations could be preserved, which I’m slightly sceptical about)
I'm not defending the case for the licence fee being spent on anything, I'm saying the licence fee should be abolished.
I'm saying if you want a music station subscribe or pay for a music station, don't compel others at the threat of a Magistrates Court to pay for a music station for you, in the guise of being a state broadcaster, then suddenly get mortified that the state broadcaster chooses to put what it feels to be state broadcasting responsibilities before music.
It’s been very entertaining hearing your paradoxical ‘defence’ of the licence fee being spent on identical rolling royal obits, most notably on Radio 1X, in place of techno.
I'm not defending it. I'm saying having these stations paid for by a licence fee is indefensible in the first place and what happens on one random night is inconsequential nonsense.
When licence fee money is taken by threat of imprisonment from people whether they want to pay or not, complaining how for one night only that instead of your music the money was spent on some other bullshit instead . . . is like complaining about someone jaywalking when crossing the road in order to mug someone's phone and wallet at gunpoint.
Its trivial garbage. Worse than trivial garbage since you feel entitled to mug others to pay for your music.
So it turns out PB is full of antisocial weirdoes who hate pubs, laughter, cafes, wine, native British oysters and a damn good boozy lunch?!
No wonder you all loved lockdown.
SORRY GUYS IT'S OVER. THE EXTROVERTS ARE BACK
Don't be an idiot.
Some of us love going to restaurants and hotel bars over pubs with our mates and colleagues.
I'm sorry, but preferring a "hotel bar" to a pub is like preferring elevator music to the Pogues live in Brixton on St Patrick's Day
Jeez Denise
You've never had drinks in The Fumoir in Claridge's.
Hotel bars are much nicer than pubs. FACT.
Who the hell wants to go to a “nice” pub.
Anyone who has ever been to an Australian pub!
When I first went to Victoria, myself and a Scottish doctor who I knew from Med School. We met at the clock's and went into the nearest pub. Grim formica, chairs bolted to the floor, all male and all drunk. We supped up and left fairly sharpish.
NZ pubs weren't much better. The bar in "Once Were Warriors" was fairly accurate social realism.
The pubs in NZ are almost universally shite. It mortally limits the whole country. Great landscapes, pisspoor pubs.
NZ is interesting. Some friends have moved there and never looked back (in fact, to some extent, they drop out of global modern life at the same time) whereas I know others who've come back inside 18 months - bored to tits.
I know people who rave about how great it is, which I'm sure is very sincere, but that they are not there presently would seem an indication it is missing something they wanted (since it isn't an issue of not being able to for some unavoidable reason). Good for different periods of life perhaps.
I had a great time in my year there, and loved the place. After a year though, I felt that I had done it. I would have got bored if I had stayed.
I think I would have drifted over to Australia, after all, many Kiwis do. Indeed my own great grandparents did.
So it turns out PB is full of antisocial weirdoes who hate pubs, laughter, cafes, wine, native British oysters and a damn good boozy lunch?!
No wonder you all loved lockdown.
SORRY GUYS IT'S OVER. THE EXTROVERTS ARE BACK
Don't be an idiot.
Some of us love going to restaurants and hotel bars over pubs with our mates and colleagues.
I'm sorry, but preferring a "hotel bar" to a pub is like preferring elevator music to the Pogues live in Brixton on St Patrick's Day
Jeez Denise
You've never had drinks in The Fumoir in Claridge's.
Hotel bars are much nicer than pubs. FACT.
Who the hell wants to go to a “nice” pub.
Anyone who has ever been to an Australian pub!
When I first went to Victoria, myself and a Scottish doctor who I knew from Med School. We met at the clock's and went into the nearest pub. Grim formica, chairs bolted to the floor, all male and all drunk. We supped up and left fairly sharpish.
NZ pubs weren't much better. The bar in "Once Were Warriors" was fairly accurate social realism.
The pubs in NZ are almost universally shite. It mortally limits the whole country. Great landscapes, pisspoor pubs.
NZ is interesting. Some friends have moved there and never looked back (in fact, to some extent, they drop out of global modern life at the same time) whereas I know others who've come back inside 18 months - bored to tits.
Yes, lots of people do end up coming back fairly quickly. It looks good, but is incredibly frustrating. Many towns have no decent pub or restaurant.
The BBC’s wall-to-wall coverage of Prince Philip’s death has become the most complained-about moment in British television history.
At least 110,994 people have contacted the BBC to express their displeasure at the decision to turn most of the corporation’s TV channels and radio stations over to rolling tributes to the Queen’s husband.
According to an internal BBC complaints log seen by the Guardian, an unprecedented level of viewer feedback was received over the weekend, meaning the coverage appears to have elicited one of the most negative reactions to BBC programmes ever seen.
The BBC declined to comment on the leaked weekend figures and said a formal announcement would be made as planned on Thursday.
Damned if they do, damned if they don't.
Personally, I am not at all interested in the Royal Family, and was mildly annoyed that viewing and listening on the BBC was messed about with to such an extent. But I do understand why the national broadcaster feels the need to do it, and it's not like there isn't a choice of entertainment options. The 111k people should get a life basically.
If they wanted choice, they could always have watched the Philip coverage on ITV. Or turn over to the Philip coverage on Channel Four.
Gone are the days when there were only four channels.
Are you seriously saying that the BBC carpeting every one of its channels and every one of its radio stations was a reasonable response? I couldn't care much for the telly, but BBC music radio is a big part of lots of people's Friday night wind-down.
And no, Classic FM and Heart don't cut it.
Oh get over it. For one night people might listen to adverts, or an online service instead? Big frigging deal.
It was beyond excessive. Rightly, the object of mass ridicule.
You're right the self-entitlement to expect 24/7 music stations without adverts or subscription, paid for by compulsorily charging tens of millions of people who don't listen to them at threat of a Magistrate's Court if they don't pay - and whinging about one night being dedicated to a state broadcast instead - is beyond mass ridicule.
I must say I have enjoyed your angle on this topic, Philip. A devoted republican, licence-fee opponent, making a daily and passionate case for the licence fee being spent on a rolling monarchist obituary of a royal, to the exclusion of any other content.
Funny old world.
(FWIW I’m agnostic about the BBC’s funding. I would be very open to a subscription model if quality of the music radio stations could be preserved, which I’m slightly sceptical about)
I'm not defending the case for the licence fee being spent on anything, I'm saying the licence fee should be abolished.
I'm saying if you want a music station subscribe or pay for a music station, don't compel others at the threat of a Magistrates Court to pay for a music station for you, in the guise of being a state broadcaster, then suddenly get mortified that the state broadcaster chooses to put what it feels to be state broadcasting responsibilities before music.
It’s been very entertaining hearing your paradoxical ‘defence’ of the licence fee being spent on identical rolling royal obits, most notably on Radio 1X, in place of techno.
I'm not defending it. I'm saying having these stations paid for by a licence fee is indefensible in the first place and what happens on one random night is inconsequential nonsense.
When licence fee money is taken by threat of imprisonment from people whether they want to pay or not, complaining how for one night only that instead of your music the money was spent on some other bullshit instead . . . is like complaining about someone jaywalking when crossing the road in order to mug someone's phone and wallet at gunpoint.
Its trivial garbage. Worse than trivial garbage since you feel entitled to mug others to pay for your music.
Eh? Like you, I’m forced to pay the licence fee. I’m not mugging anyone. I was merely whinging that we were all mugged on Friday by the BBC - which put the same stream on every channel!
You can try on clothes in shops, apparently. That’s changed since lockdown 1.
Some you can, some you can't.
Fortunately not that relevant to yours truly, I replaced my entire wardrobe in late 2019 after losing a great deal of weight. Much of the contents have barely been worn since - it's been mainly work gear, running gear and loungewear for most of the period since, for obvious reasons.
Might make a couple of additions for the sake of novelty after I am able to go shopping again. I'm observing a self-denying ordnance for non-essential indoor trips until I've had my jab.
The BBC’s wall-to-wall coverage of Prince Philip’s death has become the most complained-about moment in British television history.
At least 110,994 people have contacted the BBC to express their displeasure at the decision to turn most of the corporation’s TV channels and radio stations over to rolling tributes to the Queen’s husband.
According to an internal BBC complaints log seen by the Guardian, an unprecedented level of viewer feedback was received over the weekend, meaning the coverage appears to have elicited one of the most negative reactions to BBC programmes ever seen.
The BBC declined to comment on the leaked weekend figures and said a formal announcement would be made as planned on Thursday.
Damned if they do, damned if they don't.
Personally, I am not at all interested in the Royal Family, and was mildly annoyed that viewing and listening on the BBC was messed about with to such an extent. But I do understand why the national broadcaster feels the need to do it, and it's not like there isn't a choice of entertainment options. The 111k people should get a life basically.
If they wanted choice, they could always have watched the Philip coverage on ITV. Or turn over to the Philip coverage on Channel Four.
Gone are the days when there were only four channels.
Are you seriously saying that the BBC carpeting every one of its channels and every one of its radio stations was a reasonable response? I couldn't care much for the telly, but BBC music radio is a big part of lots of people's Friday night wind-down.
And no, Classic FM and Heart don't cut it.
Oh get over it. For one night people might listen to adverts, or an online service instead? Big frigging deal.
It was beyond excessive. Rightly, the object of mass ridicule.
You're right the self-entitlement to expect 24/7 music stations without adverts or subscription, paid for by compulsorily charging tens of millions of people who don't listen to them at threat of a Magistrate's Court if they don't pay - and whinging about one night being dedicated to a state broadcast instead - is beyond mass ridicule.
I must say I have enjoyed your angle on this topic, Philip. A devoted republican, licence-fee opponent, making a daily and passionate case for the licence fee being spent on a rolling monarchist obituary of a royal, to the exclusion of any other content.
Funny old world.
(FWIW I’m agnostic about the BBC’s funding. I would be very open to a subscription model if quality of the music radio stations could be preserved, which I’m slightly sceptical about)
I'm not defending the case for the licence fee being spent on anything, I'm saying the licence fee should be abolished.
I'm saying if you want a music station subscribe or pay for a music station, don't compel others at the threat of a Magistrates Court to pay for a music station for you, in the guise of being a state broadcaster, then suddenly get mortified that the state broadcaster chooses to put what it feels to be state broadcasting responsibilities before music.
It’s been very entertaining hearing your paradoxical ‘defence’ of the licence fee being spent on identical rolling royal obits, most notably on Radio 1X, in place of techno.
I'm not defending it. I'm saying having these stations paid for by a licence fee is indefensible in the first place and what happens on one random night is inconsequential nonsense.
When licence fee money is taken by threat of imprisonment from people whether they want to pay or not, complaining how for one night only that instead of your music the money was spent on some other bullshit instead . . . is like complaining about someone jaywalking when crossing the road in order to mug someone's phone and wallet at gunpoint.
Its trivial garbage. Worse than trivial garbage since you feel entitled to mug others to pay for your music.
Eh? Like you, I’m forced to pay the licence fee. I’m not mugging anyone. I was merely whinging that we were all mugged on Friday by the BBC - which put the same stream on every channel!
You’ve got this the wrong way around!
The point is, many of us feel mugged 365 days a year.
So it turns out PB is full of antisocial weirdoes who hate pubs, laughter, cafes, wine, native British oysters and a damn good boozy lunch?!
No wonder you all loved lockdown.
SORRY GUYS IT'S OVER. THE EXTROVERTS ARE BACK
Don't be an idiot.
Some of us love going to restaurants and hotel bars over pubs with our mates and colleagues.
I'm sorry, but preferring a "hotel bar" to a pub is like preferring elevator music to the Pogues live in Brixton on St Patrick's Day
Jeez Denise
You've never had drinks in The Fumoir in Claridge's.
Hotel bars are much nicer than pubs. FACT.
Who the hell wants to go to a “nice” pub.
Anyone who has ever been to an Australian pub!
When I first went to Victoria, myself and a Scottish doctor who I knew from Med School. We met at the clock's and went into the nearest pub. Grim formica, chairs bolted to the floor, all male and all drunk. We supped up and left fairly sharpish.
NZ pubs weren't much better. The bar in "Once Were Warriors" was fairly accurate social realism.
The pubs in NZ are almost universally shite. It mortally limits the whole country. Great landscapes, pisspoor pubs.
NZ is interesting. Some friends have moved there and never looked back (in fact, to some extent, they drop out of global modern life at the same time) whereas I know others who've come back inside 18 months - bored to tits.
Yes, lots of people do end up coming back fairly quickly. It looks good, but is incredibly frustrating. Many towns have no decent pub or restaurant.
The secret of successful emigration is psychological. Live as locals do. Forget restaurants and pubs, and history. If you want that, stay in Europe.
Embrace the new country, and live as the locals do, tramping, drinking Speights out of the bottle, staying in huts on the track, even go hunt pigs from horseback. I did all those things, but only on a one year visa, so had to come home.
So it turns out PB is full of antisocial weirdoes who hate pubs, laughter, cafes, wine, native British oysters and a damn good boozy lunch?!
No wonder you all loved lockdown.
SORRY GUYS IT'S OVER. THE EXTROVERTS ARE BACK
Don't be an idiot.
Some of us love going to restaurants and hotel bars over pubs with our mates and colleagues.
I'm sorry, but preferring a "hotel bar" to a pub is like preferring elevator music to the Pogues live in Brixton on St Patrick's Day
Jeez Denise
You've never had drinks in The Fumoir in Claridge's.
Hotel bars are much nicer than pubs. FACT.
Who the hell wants to go to a “nice” pub.
Anyone who has ever been to an Australian pub!
When I first went to Victoria, myself and a Scottish doctor who I knew from Med School. We met at the clock's and went into the nearest pub. Grim formica, chairs bolted to the floor, all male and all drunk. We supped up and left fairly sharpish.
NZ pubs weren't much better. The bar in "Once Were Warriors" was fairly accurate social realism.
The pubs in NZ are almost universally shite. It mortally limits the whole country. Great landscapes, pisspoor pubs.
NZ is interesting. Some friends have moved there and never looked back (in fact, to some extent, they drop out of global modern life at the same time) whereas I know others who've come back inside 18 months - bored to tits.
I know people who rave about how great it is, which I'm sure is very sincere, but that they are not there presently would seem an indication it is missing something they wanted (since it isn't an issue of not being able to for some unavoidable reason). Good for different periods of life perhaps.
Touring the place is SOOO frustrating. You arrive in a new town and there is NOWHERE you want to eat or drink. I’m talking sizeable towns too, not villages. The social infrastructure is very sparse and spartan. It feels like the whole country is a massive wasted opportunity.
I've noticed the optimism and hints of hedonism here in South East London too, but the big dampener for me is precisely the fact everywhere is booked up for weeks. Planning your fun in advance is all very well but one of these days it would be nice simply to think "I fancy popping out for a drink" and do just that.
So it turns out PB is full of antisocial weirdoes who hate pubs, laughter, cafes, wine, native British oysters and a damn good boozy lunch?!
No wonder you all loved lockdown.
SORRY GUYS IT'S OVER. THE EXTROVERTS ARE BACK
Don't be an idiot.
Some of us love going to restaurants and hotel bars over pubs with our mates and colleagues.
I'm sorry, but preferring a "hotel bar" to a pub is like preferring elevator music to the Pogues live in Brixton on St Patrick's Day
Jeez Denise
Only saw them at the Brixton Academy at Christmas, 1988.
Also saw them in Birmingham same time in 1987. The place had a Christmas tree just off the to the left of the stage. Mosh-pit side. I vividly remember the entire audience moving as one, and at some point, the whole body of people changed direction like a typewriter going ping and the entire carriage resetting. The momentum of hundreds of people hit me with sufficient force, I was hurled into that Christmas tree.
Fucking brilliant gigs, And me, sober, the only person who can remember anything about them!
So it turns out PB is full of antisocial weirdoes who hate pubs, laughter, cafes, wine, native British oysters and a damn good boozy lunch?!
No wonder you all loved lockdown.
SORRY GUYS IT'S OVER. THE EXTROVERTS ARE BACK
Don't be an idiot.
Some of us love going to restaurants and hotel bars over pubs with our mates and colleagues.
I'm sorry, but preferring a "hotel bar" to a pub is like preferring elevator music to the Pogues live in Brixton on St Patrick's Day
Jeez Denise
You've never had drinks in The Fumoir in Claridge's.
Hotel bars are much nicer than pubs. FACT.
Who the hell wants to go to a “nice” pub.
Anyone who has ever been to an Australian pub!
When I first went to Victoria, myself and a Scottish doctor who I knew from Med School. We met at the clock's and went into the nearest pub. Grim formica, chairs bolted to the floor, all male and all drunk. We supped up and left fairly sharpish.
NZ pubs weren't much better. The bar in "Once Were Warriors" was fairly accurate social realism.
The pubs in NZ are almost universally shite. It mortally limits the whole country. Great landscapes, pisspoor pubs.
In Christchurch we had a good hospital bar that sold Steinlager and Speights, and played good music, but otherwise took a load of wine to a BYO restaurant and spent the evening with friends there. The Ducks De Lux at the Canterbury Arts Centre was the only decent bar.
Maybe it is better now, it was 3 decades ago that I was there.
I was there less than a decade ago, it wasn’t any better then!
Two earthquakes in ten years have made a bit of a mess of downtown Christchurch. Plenty of parking, though.
On the 22nd February 2011 my eldest was driving to work in downtown Christchurch when the quake hit
It threw him all over his suv and he witnessed the devastation taking in place in front of him
He volunteered for ground zero and saw horrific sights in the building where 185 lost their lives
There were thousands of aftershocks and ultimately he lost his relationship, his work moved to Australia, and both his dogs died
In 2015 he married a Canadian and moved to Vancouver
He returned to Christchurch on a visit just after the 2019 Mosque massacre and as he was placing his tribute at the Mosque he was overwhelmed with memories of ground zero and collapsed, waking up in Christchurch A & E
When he returned to Vancouver he was seriously disturbed and diagnosed with PTSD and extreme anxiety
He has just completed 16 electroconvulsive treatments in Vancouver and spoke to us last night, where we detected a glimmer of hope that he may slowly be recovering but his experience totally changed his life and his mental health
He emigrated with his partner from London in 2003 and was happy in NZ throughout until this life changing event happened in 2011
The BBC’s wall-to-wall coverage of Prince Philip’s death has become the most complained-about moment in British television history.
At least 110,994 people have contacted the BBC to express their displeasure at the decision to turn most of the corporation’s TV channels and radio stations over to rolling tributes to the Queen’s husband.
According to an internal BBC complaints log seen by the Guardian, an unprecedented level of viewer feedback was received over the weekend, meaning the coverage appears to have elicited one of the most negative reactions to BBC programmes ever seen.
The BBC declined to comment on the leaked weekend figures and said a formal announcement would be made as planned on Thursday.
Damned if they do, damned if they don't.
Personally, I am not at all interested in the Royal Family, and was mildly annoyed that viewing and listening on the BBC was messed about with to such an extent. But I do understand why the national broadcaster feels the need to do it, and it's not like there isn't a choice of entertainment options. The 111k people should get a life basically.
If they wanted choice, they could always have watched the Philip coverage on ITV. Or turn over to the Philip coverage on Channel Four.
Gone are the days when there were only four channels.
Are you seriously saying that the BBC carpeting every one of its channels and every one of its radio stations was a reasonable response? I couldn't care much for the telly, but BBC music radio is a big part of lots of people's Friday night wind-down.
And no, Classic FM and Heart don't cut it.
Oh get over it. For one night people might listen to adverts, or an online service instead? Big frigging deal.
It was beyond excessive. Rightly, the object of mass ridicule.
You're right the self-entitlement to expect 24/7 music stations without adverts or subscription, paid for by compulsorily charging tens of millions of people who don't listen to them at threat of a Magistrate's Court if they don't pay - and whinging about one night being dedicated to a state broadcast instead - is beyond mass ridicule.
I must say I have enjoyed your angle on this topic, Philip. A devoted republican, licence-fee opponent, making a daily and passionate case for the licence fee being spent on a rolling monarchist obituary of a royal, to the exclusion of any other content.
Funny old world.
(FWIW I’m agnostic about the BBC’s funding. I would be very open to a subscription model if quality of the music radio stations could be preserved, which I’m slightly sceptical about)
I'm not defending the case for the licence fee being spent on anything, I'm saying the licence fee should be abolished.
I'm saying if you want a music station subscribe or pay for a music station, don't compel others at the threat of a Magistrates Court to pay for a music station for you, in the guise of being a state broadcaster, then suddenly get mortified that the state broadcaster chooses to put what it feels to be state broadcasting responsibilities before music.
It’s been very entertaining hearing your paradoxical ‘defence’ of the licence fee being spent on identical rolling royal obits, most notably on Radio 1X, in place of techno.
I'm not defending it. I'm saying having these stations paid for by a licence fee is indefensible in the first place and what happens on one random night is inconsequential nonsense.
When licence fee money is taken by threat of imprisonment from people whether they want to pay or not, complaining how for one night only that instead of your music the money was spent on some other bullshit instead . . . is like complaining about someone jaywalking when crossing the road in order to mug someone's phone and wallet at gunpoint.
Its trivial garbage. Worse than trivial garbage since you feel entitled to mug others to pay for your music.
Eh? Like you, I’m forced to pay the licence fee. I’m not mugging anyone. I was merely whinging that we were all mugged on Friday by the BBC - which put the same stream on every channel!
You’ve got this the wrong way around!
The point is, many of us feel mugged 365 days a year.
Sure, I’m getting that. And that’s a reasonable point of view. But it wasn’t really my point. I’m open to a subscription model. Yet it has still been entertaining hear Philip, an anti-licence fee republican, defend the state broadcaster for broadcasting an identical monarchist stream across all its channels!
So it turns out PB is full of antisocial weirdoes who hate pubs, laughter, cafes, wine, native British oysters and a damn good boozy lunch?!
No wonder you all loved lockdown.
SORRY GUYS IT'S OVER. THE EXTROVERTS ARE BACK
Don't be an idiot.
Some of us love going to restaurants and hotel bars over pubs with our mates and colleagues.
I'm sorry, but preferring a "hotel bar" to a pub is like preferring elevator music to the Pogues live in Brixton on St Patrick's Day
Jeez Denise
Only saw them at the Brixton Academy at Christmas, 1988.
Also saw them in Birmingham same time in 1987. The place had a Christmas tree just off the to the left of the stage. Mosh-pit side. I vividly remember the entire audience moving as one, and at some point, the whole body of people changed direction like a typewriter going ping and the entire carriage resetting. The momentum of hundreds of people hit me with sufficient force, I was hurled into that Christmas tree.
Fucking brilliant gigs, And me, sober, the only person who can remember anything about them!
So, it turns out there are things about cities you like...
While I'm pleased for Leon, I won't be going to the pub until things are back to normal, and that's proper normal; no social distancing, no masks, no mandatory sitting outside and no ID cards. I refuse to feel grateful to government ministers for drip-feeding us back our right to go about our lives unhindered well past the point where covid restrictions should have been be lifted. I still can't legally visit my own house, with my own family in my own car FFS!
A very dangerous, authoritarian precedent has been set through all this and I worry that our compliance and willingness to take part in state-sponsored demonstrations of appreciation has changed our culture for the worse.
Maybe it's just me being weird ... but remain very pissed off about how this has been and is being handled.
So it turns out PB is full of antisocial weirdoes who hate pubs, laughter, cafes, wine, native British oysters and a damn good boozy lunch?!
No wonder you all loved lockdown.
SORRY GUYS IT'S OVER. THE EXTROVERTS ARE BACK
Don't be an idiot.
Some of us love going to restaurants and hotel bars over pubs with our mates and colleagues.
I'm sorry, but preferring a "hotel bar" to a pub is like preferring elevator music to the Pogues live in Brixton on St Patrick's Day
Jeez Denise
Only saw them at the Brixton Academy at Christmas, 1988.
Also saw them in Birmingham same time in 1987. The place had a Christmas tree just off the to the left of the stage. Mosh-pit side. I vividly remember the entire audience moving as one, and at some point, the whole body of people changed direction like a typewriter going ping and the entire carriage resetting. The momentum of hundreds of people hit me with sufficient force, I was hurled into that Christmas tree.
Fucking brilliant gigs, And me, sober, the only person who can remember anything about them!
So, it turns out there are things about cities you like...
Just skimmend the whole thread and if anyone does ahve any insider gen on Hartlepool they are keeping stum about it. My view therefore remains as a Labour hold on a low turnout.
Re: Hartlepool, cannot claim any expertise beyond actually having spent maybe 15 minutes there over 20 years ago.
However, that will NOT stop me from sharing my learned commentary!
On the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where Democrats have dominated the legislature since the Eisenhower Administration, but where voters regularly elect Republicans as Governor, for example Mitt Romney and current incumbent Charlie Baker (reportedly poised to launch a bid for US Senate).
Somewhat similar to how Harlepool has a Conservative mayor?
Another possible comparison in another quarter, is fact that (based on a map I saw days ago) the Social Democrats in Germany currently control quite a few local city & district councils, including in wide swaths of the country where they have done (and apparently still are doing) far less well in state AND federal elections.
So whither the Harlepool by-election? So far still in lap o' the gods territory.
Realtime report from the trenches of north London,
Today felt pivotal in all ways. Like, say, Stalingrad. BUT MORE IMPORTANT
It started off cold, grey and wintry (like almost every day this year), I went to my celebratory pub lunch with a pal in trepidation, and wearing thermals. The pub, in Highgate, had roofed over their beer garden and rigged up patio heaters for all. It was cold.
But the buzz, as soon as you walked in, was obvious. People staring at pints - pints! - in amazement. Waiters and waitresses giggly and excited. The long expected moment, arriving, finally.
Half a dozen fine British oysters, a plate of griddled padron peppers, some good sourdough, a thick Galician fish stew and 1 and a half bottles of Picpoul later, I can report that London is reborn. There is noise everywhere. The sun is properly out. Spring is here. The beer gardens are rocking and someone is playing the bagpipes.
Happy Unlockdownmas, War is Over
Why not just have a lager?
How often does a fucking plague end?
Lager????
A couple then. Or bitter.
Just that your complex, opulent choices seemed at odds with what an English public house is meant to be all about.
To me anyway.
I am an Englishman, an English pub is what I choose it to be. Literally
And for me the best do fine oysters
It's a sense of looseness and entitlement I just don't have.
I'm austere. When I visit a pub I drink pints of beer and that's it. Maybe switch to vodka when I can take no more volume but definitely not oysters or fine wines.
Sad. Really.
Really sad.
Way to be. It's authentic. That's what's most important in life.
But anyway, time for my evening of flesh & blood activities to commence.
That's fair, up to you
I wonder how much of this is a faint but definite gradation by age and class.
I am maybe 10 years younger than you AT MOST. You are northern, I am southern
I grew up and moved to London not long before the gastropub revolution started: the Eagle, in Farringdon.
It was supposedly the first but a few had been round before then (they just didn't nail the formula, bare chairs, handwritten menu, open kitchen)
So I spent my formative years expecting cool new pubs to have decent food, because in London, in my 20s and 30s, they did
Et voila
Leon is younger than kinbalu? I'd have placed them at 55 and 35 respectively.
FWIW, I'm northern and 45 but with Leon on this one. A day such as this calls for all the stops to be pulled out. It does not call for a lager. If you are going down that road, it calls for the realest of real ales. Or beer so Belgian it comes with its own internal language barrier.
So it turns out PB is full of antisocial weirdoes who hate pubs, laughter, cafes, wine, native British oysters and a damn good boozy lunch?!
No wonder you all loved lockdown.
SORRY GUYS IT'S OVER. THE EXTROVERTS ARE BACK
Don't be an idiot.
Some of us love going to restaurants and hotel bars over pubs with our mates and colleagues.
I'm sorry, but preferring a "hotel bar" to a pub is like preferring elevator music to the Pogues live in Brixton on St Patrick's Day
Jeez Denise
You've never had drinks in The Fumoir in Claridge's.
Hotel bars are much nicer than pubs. FACT.
Who the hell wants to go to a “nice” pub.
Anyone who has ever been to an Australian pub!
When I first went to Victoria, myself and a Scottish doctor who I knew from Med School. We met at the clock's and went into the nearest pub. Grim formica, chairs bolted to the floor, all male and all drunk. We supped up and left fairly sharpish.
NZ pubs weren't much better. The bar in "Once Were Warriors" was fairly accurate social realism.
The pubs in NZ are almost universally shite. It mortally limits the whole country. Great landscapes, pisspoor pubs.
NZ is interesting. Some friends have moved there and never looked back (in fact, to some extent, they drop out of global modern life at the same time) whereas I know others who've come back inside 18 months - bored to tits.
Yes, lots of people do end up coming back fairly quickly. It looks good, but is incredibly frustrating. Many towns have no decent pub or restaurant.
The secret of successful emigration is psychological. Live as locals do. Forget restaurants and pubs, and history. If you want that, stay in Europe.
Embrace the new country, and live as the locals do, tramping, drinking Speights out of the bottle, staying in huts on the track, even go hunt pigs from horseback. I did all those things, but only on a one year visa, so had to come home.
A friend who has moved there says that’s the whole thing: they don’t do that stuff much. Mostly it’s identikit barbecues in people’s yards, which he has to drive to. Not much horseback pig-hunting, or hut-tramping going down, by all accounts.
So Bozo went for a professional haircut and came back looking like that?
It has long been my view that all the adulation for Johnson is a case of the fanbois seeing the emperor's new clothes, whereas the rest of us see nothing of the sort. Perhaps this was a case of the emperor's new haircut and the fanbois love it.
While I'm pleased for Leon, I won't be going to the pub until things are back to normal, and that's proper normal; no social distancing, no masks, no mandatory sitting outside and no ID cards. I refuse to feel grateful to government ministers for drip-feeding us back our right to go about our lives unhindered well past the point where covid restrictions should have been be lifted. I still can't legally visit my own house, with my own family in my own car FFS!
A very dangerous, authoritarian precedent has been set through all this and I worry that our compliance and willingness to take part in state-sponsored demonstrations of appreciation has changed our culture for the worse.
Maybe it's just me being weird ... but remain very pissed off about how this has been and is being handled.
It would be nice to think that we'd be rid of all this crap come June 21st, but I fear that you may be waiting a very long time.
So it turns out PB is full of antisocial weirdoes who hate pubs, laughter, cafes, wine, native British oysters and a damn good boozy lunch?!
No wonder you all loved lockdown.
SORRY GUYS IT'S OVER. THE EXTROVERTS ARE BACK
Don't be an idiot.
Some of us love going to restaurants and hotel bars over pubs with our mates and colleagues.
I'm sorry, but preferring a "hotel bar" to a pub is like preferring elevator music to the Pogues live in Brixton on St Patrick's Day
Jeez Denise
You've never had drinks in The Fumoir in Claridge's.
Hotel bars are much nicer than pubs. FACT.
Who the hell wants to go to a “nice” pub.
Anyone who has ever been to an Australian pub!
When I first went to Victoria, myself and a Scottish doctor who I knew from Med School. We met at the clock's and went into the nearest pub. Grim formica, chairs bolted to the floor, all male and all drunk. We supped up and left fairly sharpish.
NZ pubs weren't much better. The bar in "Once Were Warriors" was fairly accurate social realism.
The pubs in NZ are almost universally shite. It mortally limits the whole country. Great landscapes, pisspoor pubs.
In Christchurch we had a good hospital bar that sold Steinlager and Speights, and played good music, but otherwise took a load of wine to a BYO restaurant and spent the evening with friends there. The Ducks De Lux at the Canterbury Arts Centre was the only decent bar.
Maybe it is better now, it was 3 decades ago that I was there.
I was there less than a decade ago, it wasn’t any better then!
Two earthquakes in ten years have made a bit of a mess of downtown Christchurch. Plenty of parking, though.
On the 22nd February 2011 my eldest was driving to work in downtown Christchurch when the quake hit
It threw him all over his suv and he witnessed the devastation taking in place in front of him
He volunteered for ground zero and saw horrific sights in the building where 185 lost their lives
There were thousands of aftershocks and ultimately he lost his relationship, his work moved to Australia, and both his dogs died
In 2015 he married a Canadian and moved to Vancouver
He returned to Christchurch on a visit just after the 2019 Mosque massacre and as he was placing his tribute at the Mosque he was overwhelmed with memories of ground zero and collapsed, waking up in Christchurch A & E
When he returned to Vancouver he was seriously disturbed and diagnosed with PTSD and extreme anxiety
He has just completed 16 electroconvulsive treatments in Vancouver and spoke to us last night, where we detected a glimmer of hope that he may slowly be recovering but his experiencing totally changed his life and his mental health
Yes, I have not been back since 1990, and I don't think Christchurch is the same place. The house I lived in near the Bridge of Remembrance was badly damaged in the first quake, and I think the Canterbury arts centre and Dux deluxe structurally damaged and still closed.
I think that we are going to see a lot of PTSD here too, after the last year. It often takes a while to hit. It's often the return to normality that is unbearable. While in the thick of it, it is possible to live off the adrenaline.
While I'm pleased for Leon, I won't be going to the pub until things are back to normal, and that's proper normal; no social distancing, no masks, no mandatory sitting outside and no ID cards. I refuse to feel grateful to government ministers for drip-feeding us back our right to go about our lives unhindered well past the point where covid restrictions should have been be lifted. I still can't legally visit my own house, with my own family in my own car FFS!
A very dangerous, authoritarian precedent has been set through all this and I worry that our compliance and willingness to take part in state-sponsored demonstrations of appreciation has changed our culture for the worse.
Maybe it's just me being weird ... but remain very pissed off about how this has been and is being handled.
While I'm pleased for Leon, I won't be going to the pub until things are back to normal, and that's proper normal; no social distancing, no masks, no mandatory sitting outside and no ID cards. I refuse to feel grateful to government ministers for drip-feeding us back our right to go about our lives unhindered well past the point where covid restrictions should have been be lifted. I still can't legally visit my own house, with my own family in my own car FFS!
A very dangerous, authoritarian precedent has been set through all this and I worry that our compliance and willingness to take part in state-sponsored demonstrations of appreciation has changed our culture for the worse.
Maybe it's just me being weird ... but remain very pissed off about how this has been and is being handled.
It would be nice to think that we'd be rid of all this crap come June 21st, but I fear that you may be waiting a very long time.
All restrictions will be lifted on 21 June - you disagree?
So it turns out PB is full of antisocial weirdoes who hate pubs, laughter, cafes, wine, native British oysters and a damn good boozy lunch?!
No wonder you all loved lockdown.
SORRY GUYS IT'S OVER. THE EXTROVERTS ARE BACK
Don't be an idiot.
Some of us love going to restaurants and hotel bars over pubs with our mates and colleagues.
I'm sorry, but preferring a "hotel bar" to a pub is like preferring elevator music to the Pogues live in Brixton on St Patrick's Day
Jeez Denise
You've never had drinks in The Fumoir in Claridge's.
Hotel bars are much nicer than pubs. FACT.
Who the hell wants to go to a “nice” pub.
Anyone who has ever been to an Australian pub!
When I first went to Victoria, myself and a Scottish doctor who I knew from Med School. We met at the clock's and went into the nearest pub. Grim formica, chairs bolted to the floor, all male and all drunk. We supped up and left fairly sharpish.
NZ pubs weren't much better. The bar in "Once Were Warriors" was fairly accurate social realism.
The pubs in NZ are almost universally shite. It mortally limits the whole country. Great landscapes, pisspoor pubs.
NZ is interesting. Some friends have moved there and never looked back (in fact, to some extent, they drop out of global modern life at the same time) whereas I know others who've come back inside 18 months - bored to tits.
Yes, lots of people do end up coming back fairly quickly. It looks good, but is incredibly frustrating. Many towns have no decent pub or restaurant.
The secret of successful emigration is psychological. Live as locals do. Forget restaurants and pubs, and history. If you want that, stay in Europe.
Embrace the new country, and live as the locals do, tramping, drinking Speights out of the bottle, staying in huts on the track, even go hunt pigs from horseback. I did all those things, but only on a one year visa, so had to come home.
A friend who has moved there says that’s the whole thing: they don’t do that stuff much. Mostly it’s identikit barbecues in people’s yards, which he has to drive to. Not much horseback pig-hunting, or hut-tramping going down, by all accounts.
So immediately there’s a drink driving issue. Or someone has to miss out.
So it turns out PB is full of antisocial weirdoes who hate pubs, laughter, cafes, wine, native British oysters and a damn good boozy lunch?!
No wonder you all loved lockdown.
SORRY GUYS IT'S OVER. THE EXTROVERTS ARE BACK
Don't be an idiot.
Some of us love going to restaurants and hotel bars over pubs with our mates and colleagues.
I'm sorry, but preferring a "hotel bar" to a pub is like preferring elevator music to the Pogues live in Brixton on St Patrick's Day
Jeez Denise
You've never had drinks in The Fumoir in Claridge's.
Hotel bars are much nicer than pubs. FACT.
Who the hell wants to go to a “nice” pub.
Anyone who has ever been to an Australian pub!
When I first went to Victoria, myself and a Scottish doctor who I knew from Med School. We met at the clock's and went into the nearest pub. Grim formica, chairs bolted to the floor, all male and all drunk. We supped up and left fairly sharpish.
NZ pubs weren't much better. The bar in "Once Were Warriors" was fairly accurate social realism.
The pubs in NZ are almost universally shite. It mortally limits the whole country. Great landscapes, pisspoor pubs.
NZ is interesting. Some friends have moved there and never looked back (in fact, to some extent, they drop out of global modern life at the same time) whereas I know others who've come back inside 18 months - bored to tits.
Yes, lots of people do end up coming back fairly quickly. It looks good, but is incredibly frustrating. Many towns have no decent pub or restaurant.
The secret of successful emigration is psychological. Live as locals do. Forget restaurants and pubs, and history. If you want that, stay in Europe.
Embrace the new country, and live as the locals do, tramping, drinking Speights out of the bottle, staying in huts on the track, even go hunt pigs from horseback. I did all those things, but only on a one year visa, so had to come home.
A friend who has moved there says that’s the whole thing: they don’t do that stuff much. Mostly it’s identikit barbecues in people’s yards, which he has to drive to. Not much horseback pig-hunting, or hut-tramping going down, by all accounts.
So immediately there’s a drink driving issue. Or someone has to miss out.
Politico.com - ‘Felt like a setup’: WhatsApp chat shows Gaetz ally scrambling to contain fallout The Florida congressman’s "wingman" said he was paying legal fees for the former teen at the center of the case.
MIAMI — The feds were closing in. And Rep. Matt Gaetz’s friend, Joel Greenberg, was in a panic.
The Florida county tax collector was five days away from a federal indictment for sex trafficking involving a 17-year-old — the same one Gaetz is now being investigated over — so Greenberg reached out to mutual friends on Aug. 14 last year and tried to enlist them in his defense, according to a WhatsApp chat shared with federal investigators and obtained by POLITICO.
He fumed that the prosecutor should be fired. He suspected that a political consultant “was the rat here.” He fretted that investigators had combed through his Venmo cash app history, fearing it led them to the former teen at the center of the case.
Greenberg also said he was paying the legal fees for the woman, who is now 20 years old.
The WhatsApp messages shed light on key aspects of the scandal consuming the Florida Republican congressman and close ally of President Donald Trump — and on the state of mind of the man Gaetz once called his “wingman” as he sought to manage the fallout.
Greenberg went so far as to push Gaetz to use his influence with Trump for a pardon, according to two sources familiar with the discussions, including one who heard Greenberg say it repeatedly.
Asked about the request from Greenberg, Gaetz previously declined to confirm or deny that it occurred. But the congressman said he did not ask Trump to pardon Greenberg. Gaetz couldn’t be reached this weekend to discuss the WhatsApp messages that are the subject of this story. . . .
I've noticed the optimism and hints of hedonism here in South East London too, but the big dampener for me is precisely the fact everywhere is booked up for weeks. Planning your fun in advance is all very well but one of these days it would be nice simply to think "I fancy popping out for a drink" and do just that.
Agreed. But if it's any help the guy at the pub today reckoned that within a fortnight weekdays would open up, and after that you can just walk in.
PLUS Soho has fenced off 17 streets for all day al fresco drinking and dining, that will soak up a lot of custom (I presume other pleasure centres are doing similar)
By early May you will be able to drink anywhere outdoors, apart from weekends, and two weeks after that almost everything opens up indoors too. We are nearly there. I find it hard to believe, but it is true
So it turns out PB is full of antisocial weirdoes who hate pubs, laughter, cafes, wine, native British oysters and a damn good boozy lunch?!
No wonder you all loved lockdown.
SORRY GUYS IT'S OVER. THE EXTROVERTS ARE BACK
Don't be an idiot.
Some of us love going to restaurants and hotel bars over pubs with our mates and colleagues.
I'm sorry, but preferring a "hotel bar" to a pub is like preferring elevator music to the Pogues live in Brixton on St Patrick's Day
Jeez Denise
You've never had drinks in The Fumoir in Claridge's.
Hotel bars are much nicer than pubs. FACT.
Who the hell wants to go to a “nice” pub.
Anyone who has ever been to an Australian pub!
When I first went to Victoria, myself and a Scottish doctor who I knew from Med School. We met at the clock's and went into the nearest pub. Grim formica, chairs bolted to the floor, all male and all drunk. We supped up and left fairly sharpish.
NZ pubs weren't much better. The bar in "Once Were Warriors" was fairly accurate social realism.
The pubs in NZ are almost universally shite. It mortally limits the whole country. Great landscapes, pisspoor pubs.
In Christchurch we had a good hospital bar that sold Steinlager and Speights, and played good music, but otherwise took a load of wine to a BYO restaurant and spent the evening with friends there. The Ducks De Lux at the Canterbury Arts Centre was the only decent bar.
Maybe it is better now, it was 3 decades ago that I was there.
I was there less than a decade ago, it wasn’t any better then!
Two earthquakes in ten years have made a bit of a mess of downtown Christchurch. Plenty of parking, though.
On the 22nd February 2011 my eldest was driving to work in downtown Christchurch when the quake hit
It threw him all over his suv and he witnessed the devastation taking in place in front of him
He volunteered for ground zero and saw horrific sights in the building where 185 lost their lives
There were thousands of aftershocks and ultimately he lost his relationship, his work moved to Australia, and both his dogs died
In 2015 he married a Canadian and moved to Vancouver
He returned to Christchurch on a visit just after the 2019 Mosque massacre and as he was placing his tribute at the Mosque he was overwhelmed with memories of ground zero and collapsed, waking up in Christchurch A & E
When he returned to Vancouver he was seriously disturbed and diagnosed with PTSD and extreme anxiety
He has just completed 16 electroconvulsive treatments in Vancouver and spoke to us last night, where we detected a glimmer of hope that he may slowly be recovering but his experiencing totally changed his life and his mental health
Yes, I have not been back since 1990, and I don't think Christchurch is the same place. The house I lived in near the Bridge of Remembrance was badly damaged in the first quake, and I think the Canterbury arts centre and Dux deluxe structurally damaged and still closed.
I think that we are going to see a lot of PTSD here too, after the last year. It often takes a while to hit. It's often the return to normality that is unbearable. While in the thick of it, it is possible to live off the adrenaline.
We visited them 4 times in Christchurch and were having lunch with them in the Cathedral Cafe just 3 days before it all came crashing down and then having left to go on a 17 day visit to South Africa
We loved NZ and were heartbroken over what happened to Christchurch, and could simply not return again as we want to retain our happy memories of a lovely City
So it turns out PB is full of antisocial weirdoes who hate pubs, laughter, cafes, wine, native British oysters and a damn good boozy lunch?!
No wonder you all loved lockdown.
SORRY GUYS IT'S OVER. THE EXTROVERTS ARE BACK
Don't be an idiot.
Some of us love going to restaurants and hotel bars over pubs with our mates and colleagues.
I'm sorry, but preferring a "hotel bar" to a pub is like preferring elevator music to the Pogues live in Brixton on St Patrick's Day
Jeez Denise
You've never had drinks in The Fumoir in Claridge's.
Hotel bars are much nicer than pubs. FACT.
Who the hell wants to go to a “nice” pub.
Anyone who has ever been to an Australian pub!
When I first went to Victoria, myself and a Scottish doctor who I knew from Med School. We met at the clock's and went into the nearest pub. Grim formica, chairs bolted to the floor, all male and all drunk. We supped up and left fairly sharpish.
NZ pubs weren't much better. The bar in "Once Were Warriors" was fairly accurate social realism.
The pubs in NZ are almost universally shite. It mortally limits the whole country. Great landscapes, pisspoor pubs.
NZ is interesting. Some friends have moved there and never looked back (in fact, to some extent, they drop out of global modern life at the same time) whereas I know others who've come back inside 18 months - bored to tits.
Yes, lots of people do end up coming back fairly quickly. It looks good, but is incredibly frustrating. Many towns have no decent pub or restaurant.
The secret of successful emigration is psychological. Live as locals do. Forget restaurants and pubs, and history. If you want that, stay in Europe.
Embrace the new country, and live as the locals do, tramping, drinking Speights out of the bottle, staying in huts on the track, even go hunt pigs from horseback. I did all those things, but only on a one year visa, so had to come home.
A friend who has moved there says that’s the whole thing: they don’t do that stuff much. Mostly it’s identikit barbecues in people’s yards, which he has to drive to. Not much horseback pig-hunting, or hut-tramping going down, by all accounts.
So immediately there’s a drink driving issue. Or someone has to miss out.
That'll be me then..... Life's Designated Driver. Ferrying around pissed people. What joy.....
So it turns out PB is full of antisocial weirdoes who hate pubs, laughter, cafes, wine, native British oysters and a damn good boozy lunch?!
No wonder you all loved lockdown.
SORRY GUYS IT'S OVER. THE EXTROVERTS ARE BACK
Don't be an idiot.
Some of us love going to restaurants and hotel bars over pubs with our mates and colleagues.
I'm sorry, but preferring a "hotel bar" to a pub is like preferring elevator music to the Pogues live in Brixton on St Patrick's Day
Jeez Denise
You've never had drinks in The Fumoir in Claridge's.
Hotel bars are much nicer than pubs. FACT.
Who the hell wants to go to a “nice” pub.
Anyone who has ever been to an Australian pub!
When I first went to Victoria, myself and a Scottish doctor who I knew from Med School. We met at the clock's and went into the nearest pub. Grim formica, chairs bolted to the floor, all male and all drunk. We supped up and left fairly sharpish.
NZ pubs weren't much better. The bar in "Once Were Warriors" was fairly accurate social realism.
The pubs in NZ are almost universally shite. It mortally limits the whole country. Great landscapes, pisspoor pubs.
NZ is interesting. Some friends have moved there and never looked back (in fact, to some extent, they drop out of global modern life at the same time) whereas I know others who've come back inside 18 months - bored to tits.
Yes, lots of people do end up coming back fairly quickly. It looks good, but is incredibly frustrating. Many towns have no decent pub or restaurant.
The secret of successful emigration is psychological. Live as locals do. Forget restaurants and pubs, and history. If you want that, stay in Europe.
Embrace the new country, and live as the locals do, tramping, drinking Speights out of the bottle, staying in huts on the track, even go hunt pigs from horseback. I did all those things, but only on a one year visa, so had to come home.
A friend who has moved there says that’s the whole thing: they don’t do that stuff much. Mostly it’s identikit barbecues in people’s yards, which he has to drive to. Not much horseback pig-hunting, or hut-tramping going down, by all accounts.
So immediately there’s a drink driving issue. Or someone has to miss out.
Exactly.
The last NZ’ers I met were a couple on a train in Italy. It turned out they were both NZ police officers and had met on the job, and still worked at the same police station in some place I’d not heard of but it didn’t sound very big.
So I made a joke about how their town is coping with such a high proportion of their police force away on an extended european holiday, and they assured me there were dozens of police there and they made their home town sound as if it was more crime-ridden than downtown Baltimore. Whether this is true or not, i have no idea.
While I'm pleased for Leon, I won't be going to the pub until things are back to normal, and that's proper normal; no social distancing, no masks, no mandatory sitting outside and no ID cards. I refuse to feel grateful to government ministers for drip-feeding us back our right to go about our lives unhindered well past the point where covid restrictions should have been be lifted. I still can't legally visit my own house, with my own family in my own car FFS!
A very dangerous, authoritarian precedent has been set through all this and I worry that our compliance and willingness to take part in state-sponsored demonstrations of appreciation has changed our culture for the worse.
Maybe it's just me being weird ... but remain very pissed off about how this has been and is being handled.
It would be nice to think that we'd be rid of all this crap come June 21st, but I fear that you may be waiting a very long time.
All restrictions will be lifted on 21 June - you disagree?
I'm with Black Rook on this one ... I'll believe it when I see it. And it's still 2 months too late.
While I'm pleased for Leon, I won't be going to the pub until things are back to normal, and that's proper normal; no social distancing, no masks, no mandatory sitting outside and no ID cards. I refuse to feel grateful to government ministers for drip-feeding us back our right to go about our lives unhindered well past the point where covid restrictions should have been be lifted. I still can't legally visit my own house, with my own family in my own car FFS!
A very dangerous, authoritarian precedent has been set through all this and I worry that our compliance and willingness to take part in state-sponsored demonstrations of appreciation has changed our culture for the worse.
Maybe it's just me being weird ... but remain very pissed off about how this has been and is being handled.
It would be nice to think that we'd be rid of all this crap come June 21st, but I fear that you may be waiting a very long time.
All restrictions will be lifted on 21 June - you disagree?
I'm with Black Rook on this one ... I'll believe it when I see it. And it's still 2 months too late.
I think you might have a point about it being too late. It was certainly cruel not to open the pubs for Easter.
So it turns out PB is full of antisocial weirdoes who hate pubs, laughter, cafes, wine, native British oysters and a damn good boozy lunch?!
No wonder you all loved lockdown.
SORRY GUYS IT'S OVER. THE EXTROVERTS ARE BACK
Don't be an idiot.
Some of us love going to restaurants and hotel bars over pubs with our mates and colleagues.
I'm sorry, but preferring a "hotel bar" to a pub is like preferring elevator music to the Pogues live in Brixton on St Patrick's Day
Jeez Denise
You've never had drinks in The Fumoir in Claridge's.
Hotel bars are much nicer than pubs. FACT.
Who the hell wants to go to a “nice” pub.
Anyone who has ever been to an Australian pub!
When I first went to Victoria, myself and a Scottish doctor who I knew from Med School. We met at the clock's and went into the nearest pub. Grim formica, chairs bolted to the floor, all male and all drunk. We supped up and left fairly sharpish.
NZ pubs weren't much better. The bar in "Once Were Warriors" was fairly accurate social realism.
The pubs in NZ are almost universally shite. It mortally limits the whole country. Great landscapes, pisspoor pubs.
NZ is interesting. Some friends have moved there and never looked back (in fact, to some extent, they drop out of global modern life at the same time) whereas I know others who've come back inside 18 months - bored to tits.
Yes, lots of people do end up coming back fairly quickly. It looks good, but is incredibly frustrating. Many towns have no decent pub or restaurant.
The secret of successful emigration is psychological. Live as locals do. Forget restaurants and pubs, and history. If you want that, stay in Europe.
Embrace the new country, and live as the locals do, tramping, drinking Speights out of the bottle, staying in huts on the track, even go hunt pigs from horseback. I did all those things, but only on a one year visa, so had to come home.
A friend who has moved there says that’s the whole thing: they don’t do that stuff much. Mostly it’s identikit barbecues in people’s yards, which he has to drive to. Not much horseback pig-hunting, or hut-tramping going down, by all accounts.
So immediately there’s a drink driving issue. Or someone has to miss out.
Exactly.
The last NZ’ers I met were a couple on a train in Italy. It turned out they were both NZ police officers and had met on the job, and still worked at the same police station in some place I’d not heard of but it didn’t sound very big.
So I made a joke about how their town is coping with such a high proportion of their police force away on an extended european holiday, and they assured me there were dozens of police there and they made their home town sound as if it was more crime-ridden than downtown Baltimore. Whether this is true or not, i have no idea.
While I was there, there were a number of country towns dominated by Bikie gangs, dealing drugs and fighting each other. In part it was the welfare system. You could rent a house cheaply on the dole, or even buy outright, as there was no work in the small towns, and nothing to do but feud.
So it turns out PB is full of antisocial weirdoes who hate pubs, laughter, cafes, wine, native British oysters and a damn good boozy lunch?!
No wonder you all loved lockdown.
SORRY GUYS IT'S OVER. THE EXTROVERTS ARE BACK
Don't be an idiot.
Some of us love going to restaurants and hotel bars over pubs with our mates and colleagues.
I'm sorry, but preferring a "hotel bar" to a pub is like preferring elevator music to the Pogues live in Brixton on St Patrick's Day
Jeez Denise
You've never had drinks in The Fumoir in Claridge's.
Hotel bars are much nicer than pubs. FACT.
Who the hell wants to go to a “nice” pub.
Anyone who has ever been to an Australian pub!
When I first went to Victoria, myself and a Scottish doctor who I knew from Med School. We met at the clock's and went into the nearest pub. Grim formica, chairs bolted to the floor, all male and all drunk. We supped up and left fairly sharpish.
NZ pubs weren't much better. The bar in "Once Were Warriors" was fairly accurate social realism.
The pubs in NZ are almost universally shite. It mortally limits the whole country. Great landscapes, pisspoor pubs.
NZ is interesting. Some friends have moved there and never looked back (in fact, to some extent, they drop out of global modern life at the same time) whereas I know others who've come back inside 18 months - bored to tits.
Yes, lots of people do end up coming back fairly quickly. It looks good, but is incredibly frustrating. Many towns have no decent pub or restaurant.
The secret of successful emigration is psychological. Live as locals do. Forget restaurants and pubs, and history. If you want that, stay in Europe.
Embrace the new country, and live as the locals do, tramping, drinking Speights out of the bottle, staying in huts on the track, even go hunt pigs from horseback. I did all those things, but only on a one year visa, so had to come home.
A friend who has moved there says that’s the whole thing: they don’t do that stuff much. Mostly it’s identikit barbecues in people’s yards, which he has to drive to. Not much horseback pig-hunting, or hut-tramping going down, by all accounts.
So immediately there’s a drink driving issue. Or someone has to miss out.
Exactly.
The last NZ’ers I met were a couple on a train in Italy. It turned out they were both NZ police officers and had met on the job, and still worked at the same police station in some place I’d not heard of but it didn’t sound very big.
So I made a joke about how their town is coping with such a high proportion of their police force away on an extended european holiday, and they assured me there were dozens of police there and they made their home town sound as if it was more crime-ridden than downtown Baltimore. Whether this is true or not, i have no idea.
While I was there, there were a number of country towns dominated by Bikie gangs, dealing drugs and fighting each other. In part it was the welfare system. You could rent a house cheaply on the dole, or even buy outright, as there was no work in the small towns, and nothing to do but feud.
That sounds pretty much what they said. I was imagining hobbits and stunning scenery and quiet country folk and they were recounting their lives that were straight from Miami vice.
It was funny because I was travelling with the dog, and they had a young daughter who as soon as she saw it said “oh no, not a dog”, not expecting that I’d turn out to be English. I just smiled and replied straight back in English that he isn’t any trouble. Which he wasn’t, just going to sleep under the seat; their kid was far more annoying to have in the train. But it did mean that the NZ cops spent the rest of the journey being super friendly to make up for their embarassment.
While I'm pleased for Leon, I won't be going to the pub until things are back to normal, and that's proper normal; no social distancing, no masks, no mandatory sitting outside and no ID cards. I refuse to feel grateful to government ministers for drip-feeding us back our right to go about our lives unhindered well past the point where covid restrictions should have been be lifted. I still can't legally visit my own house, with my own family in my own car FFS!
A very dangerous, authoritarian precedent has been set through all this and I worry that our compliance and willingness to take part in state-sponsored demonstrations of appreciation has changed our culture for the worse.
Maybe it's just me being weird ... but remain very pissed off about how this has been and is being handled.
Yes, I think it will be a while before normality is permitted. June 21st won't be the end of masks and social distancing, one way systems, perspex screens at bars etc etc.
It will all fizzle out much more slowly than that.
While I'm pleased for Leon, I won't be going to the pub until things are back to normal, and that's proper normal; no social distancing, no masks, no mandatory sitting outside and no ID cards. I refuse to feel grateful to government ministers for drip-feeding us back our right to go about our lives unhindered well past the point where covid restrictions should have been be lifted. I still can't legally visit my own house, with my own family in my own car FFS!
A very dangerous, authoritarian precedent has been set through all this and I worry that our compliance and willingness to take part in state-sponsored demonstrations of appreciation has changed our culture for the worse.
Maybe it's just me being weird ... but remain very pissed off about how this has been and is being handled.
It would be nice to think that we'd be rid of all this crap come June 21st, but I fear that you may be waiting a very long time.
All restrictions will be lifted on 21 June - you disagree?
Would you trust the Government's word on this, or anything else?
Here is what gov.uk has to say about Step 4:
Step 4 - not before 21 June
Social contact
By Step 4 which will take place no earlier than 21 June, the government hopes to be in a position to remove all legal limits on social contact.
Business, activities and events
We hope to reopen remaining premises, including nightclubs, and ease the restrictions on large events and performances that apply in Step 3. This will be subject to the results of a scientific Events Research Programme to test the outcome of certain pilot events through the spring and summer, where we will trial the use of testing and other techniques to cut the risk of infection. The same Events Research Programme will guide decisions on whether all limits can be removed on weddings and other life events.
As we move through each of these phases in the roadmap, we must all remember that COVID-19 remains a part of our lives. We are going to have to keep living our lives differently to keep ourselves and others safe. We must carry on with ‘hands, face, space’. Comply with the COVID-Secure measures that remain in place. Meet outdoors when we can and keep letting fresh air in. Get tested when needed. Get vaccinated when offered. If we all continue to play our part, we will be that bit closer to a future that is more familiar.
1. We "hope" to be in a position to do this, that and the other - well, I suppose you could give them the benefit of the doubt and say they're just leaving themselves some wriggle room on the timings, in case things don't go as well, as quickly as we would all like them to
2. "We hope to... ease the restrictions on large events and performances. Not remove, you will note.
3. Events Research Programme: here things get more interesting - testing before you can do what, exactly? "...other techniques to cut the risk of infection": On the one hand, will we really be rid of masks and social distancing? On the other, hello ID cards. "...whether all limits can be removed" - so, the implications of hoping to be able to remove limits on social contact become clearer. We may very well not get rid of all this nonsense, or anywhere close to it. Rather depends on how frightened the scientists are, and how much (or how little) control the Government is willing to give up
4. "If we all continue to play our part, we will be that bit closer to a future that is more familiar." As a closing statement, that is hardly reassuring. Nothing about getting back to normal at the end of this. More like exchanging open prison for an electronic tag. Not so much freedom as a life of restrictions that's just marginally less shit than what went just before
If the burden of rules about everything is lifted come midsummer than I shall be delighted, but I'll believe it's happening when it actually happens and not before.
London is definitely alive tonight. The noisiest it has been since last summer. Possibly since the Plague began
So, I guess a modeller will be turning up all over the media in a day or two to say the additional activity above what they were expecting means there will be a massive enormous case surge in early July and so we had better lockdown again now just be careful.
So it turns out PB is full of antisocial weirdoes who hate pubs, laughter, cafes, wine, native British oysters and a damn good boozy lunch?!
No wonder you all loved lockdown.
SORRY GUYS IT'S OVER. THE EXTROVERTS ARE BACK
Don't be an idiot.
Some of us love going to restaurants and hotel bars over pubs with our mates and colleagues.
I'm sorry, but preferring a "hotel bar" to a pub is like preferring elevator music to the Pogues live in Brixton on St Patrick's Day
Jeez Denise
You've never had drinks in The Fumoir in Claridge's.
Hotel bars are much nicer than pubs. FACT.
Who the hell wants to go to a “nice” pub.
Anyone who has ever been to an Australian pub!
When I first went to Victoria, myself and a Scottish doctor who I knew from Med School. We met at the clock's and went into the nearest pub. Grim formica, chairs bolted to the floor, all male and all drunk. We supped up and left fairly sharpish.
NZ pubs weren't much better. The bar in "Once Were Warriors" was fairly accurate social realism.
The pubs in NZ are almost universally shite. It mortally limits the whole country. Great landscapes, pisspoor pubs.
NZ is interesting. Some friends have moved there and never looked back (in fact, to some extent, they drop out of global modern life at the same time) whereas I know others who've come back inside 18 months - bored to tits.
I know people who rave about how great it is, which I'm sure is very sincere, but that they are not there presently would seem an indication it is missing something they wanted (since it isn't an issue of not being able to for some unavoidable reason). Good for different periods of life perhaps.
I had a sliding doors moment. I went for a year on a fellowship, was offered fundin* by the prof I worked for if I wanted to stay but decided I wanted to see what the U.K. was like again. Then I started dating a hot kiwi... in the end I came back, but it could have gone differently. I also reckon if we had had the connectivity we have now it would have been easier (eg video calls to your family). It’s a tremendous country, and very similar to the U.K. in a lor of ways, but it’s definitely not the U.K. if you like footy you are in for a shock. Rugby all the way, including the little old lady in the shop, who will give you chapter and verse on the all blacks.
The BBC’s wall-to-wall coverage of Prince Philip’s death has become the most complained-about moment in British television history.
At least 110,994 people have contacted the BBC to express their displeasure at the decision to turn most of the corporation’s TV channels and radio stations over to rolling tributes to the Queen’s husband.
According to an internal BBC complaints log seen by the Guardian, an unprecedented level of viewer feedback was received over the weekend, meaning the coverage appears to have elicited one of the most negative reactions to BBC programmes ever seen.
The BBC declined to comment on the leaked weekend figures and said a formal announcement would be made as planned on Thursday.
Damned if they do, damned if they don't.
Personally, I am not at all interested in the Royal Family, and was mildly annoyed that viewing and listening on the BBC was messed about with to such an extent. But I do understand why the national broadcaster feels the need to do it, and it's not like there isn't a choice of entertainment options. The 111k people should get a life basically.
If they wanted choice, they could always have watched the Philip coverage on ITV. Or turn over to the Philip coverage on Channel Four.
Gone are the days when there were only four channels.
Are you seriously saying that the BBC carpeting every one of its channels and every one of its radio stations was a reasonable response? I couldn't care much for the telly, but BBC music radio is a big part of lots of people's Friday night wind-down.
And no, Classic FM and Heart don't cut it.
Oh get over it. For one night people might listen to adverts, or an online service instead? Big frigging deal.
It was beyond excessive. Rightly, the object of mass ridicule.
You're right the self-entitlement to expect 24/7 music stations without adverts or subscription, paid for by compulsorily charging tens of millions of people who don't listen to them at threat of a Magistrate's Court if they don't pay - and whinging about one night being dedicated to a state broadcast instead - is beyond mass ridicule.
I must say I have enjoyed your angle on this topic, Philip. A devoted republican, licence-fee opponent, making a daily and passionate case for the licence fee being spent on a rolling monarchist obituary of a royal, to the exclusion of any other content.
Funny old world.
(FWIW I’m agnostic about the BBC’s funding. I would be very open to a subscription model if quality of the music radio stations could be preserved, which I’m slightly sceptical about)
I'm not defending the case for the licence fee being spent on anything, I'm saying the licence fee should be abolished.
I'm saying if you want a music station subscribe or pay for a music station, don't compel others at the threat of a Magistrates Court to pay for a music station for you, in the guise of being a state broadcaster, then suddenly get mortified that the state broadcaster chooses to put what it feels to be state broadcasting responsibilities before music.
It’s been very entertaining hearing your paradoxical ‘defence’ of the licence fee being spent on identical rolling royal obits, most notably on Radio 1X, in place of techno.
I'm not defending it. I'm saying having these stations paid for by a licence fee is indefensible in the first place and what happens on one random night is inconsequential nonsense.
When licence fee money is taken by threat of imprisonment from people whether they want to pay or not, complaining how for one night only that instead of your music the money was spent on some other bullshit instead . . . is like complaining about someone jaywalking when crossing the road in order to mug someone's phone and wallet at gunpoint.
Its trivial garbage. Worse than trivial garbage since you feel entitled to mug others to pay for your music.
Eh? Like you, I’m forced to pay the licence fee. I’m not mugging anyone. I was merely whinging that we were all mugged on Friday by the BBC - which put the same stream on every channel!
You’ve got this the wrong way around!
We're all mugged 365 days of the year.
If you're mugged for six hours every couple of decades, get some perspective.
While I'm pleased for Leon, I won't be going to the pub until things are back to normal, and that's proper normal; no social distancing, no masks, no mandatory sitting outside and no ID cards. I refuse to feel grateful to government ministers for drip-feeding us back our right to go about our lives unhindered well past the point where covid restrictions should have been be lifted. I still can't legally visit my own house, with my own family in my own car FFS!
A very dangerous, authoritarian precedent has been set through all this and I worry that our compliance and willingness to take part in state-sponsored demonstrations of appreciation has changed our culture for the worse.
Maybe it's just me being weird ... but remain very pissed off about how this has been and is being handled.
Yes, I think it will be a while before normality is permitted. June 21st won't be the end of masks and social distancing, one way systems, perspex screens at bars etc etc.
It will all fizzle out much more slowly than that.
Which is why we all have to go out and enjoy life as normally as we can NOW. Yes it is annoying we still sometimes have to wear masks, yes it is annoying we have to open windows to cold air, yes it is annoying we might - Ye Gods - have to check in with QR codes (or vaxports!) but they allow us - me - to have nice amusing pub lunches, and a semblance of normality, which will get better.
We must be vigilant in making sure these strictures do not linger. But refusing to do anything until they are all gone is dim. And economically ruinous
Opening up will be an annoyingly slow process, but at least it is process in the right direction, and irreversible (we hope) after the worst global health crisis in a century.
Baby steps, but good steps. And drunken steps. We can do this
So it turns out PB is full of antisocial weirdoes who hate pubs, laughter, cafes, wine, native British oysters and a damn good boozy lunch?!
No wonder you all loved lockdown.
SORRY GUYS IT'S OVER. THE EXTROVERTS ARE BACK
Don't be an idiot.
Some of us love going to restaurants and hotel bars over pubs with our mates and colleagues.
I'm sorry, but preferring a "hotel bar" to a pub is like preferring elevator music to the Pogues live in Brixton on St Patrick's Day
Jeez Denise
You've never had drinks in The Fumoir in Claridge's.
Hotel bars are much nicer than pubs. FACT.
Who the hell wants to go to a “nice” pub.
Anyone who has ever been to an Australian pub!
When I first went to Victoria, myself and a Scottish doctor who I knew from Med School. We met at the clock's and went into the nearest pub. Grim formica, chairs bolted to the floor, all male and all drunk. We supped up and left fairly sharpish.
NZ pubs weren't much better. The bar in "Once Were Warriors" was fairly accurate social realism.
The pubs in NZ are almost universally shite. It mortally limits the whole country. Great landscapes, pisspoor pubs.
NZ is interesting. Some friends have moved there and never looked back (in fact, to some extent, they drop out of global modern life at the same time) whereas I know others who've come back inside 18 months - bored to tits.
Yes, lots of people do end up coming back fairly quickly. It looks good, but is incredibly frustrating. Many towns have no decent pub or restaurant.
The secret of successful emigration is psychological. Live as locals do. Forget restaurants and pubs, and history. If you want that, stay in Europe.
Embrace the new country, and live as the locals do, tramping, drinking Speights out of the bottle, staying in huts on the track, even go hunt pigs from horseback. I did all those things, but only on a one year visa, so had to come home.
A friend who has moved there says that’s the whole thing: they don’t do that stuff much. Mostly it’s identikit barbecues in people’s yards, which he has to drive to. Not much horseback pig-hunting, or hut-tramping going down, by all accounts.
So immediately there’s a drink driving issue. Or someone has to miss out.
Exactly.
The last NZ’ers I met were a couple on a train in Italy. It turned out they were both NZ police officers and had met on the job, and still worked at the same police station in some place I’d not heard of but it didn’t sound very big.
So I made a joke about how their town is coping with such a high proportion of their police force away on an extended european holiday, and they assured me there were dozens of police there and they made their home town sound as if it was more crime-ridden than downtown Baltimore. Whether this is true or not, i have no idea.
While I was there, there were a number of country towns dominated by Bikie gangs, dealing drugs and fighting each other. In part it was the welfare system. You could rent a house cheaply on the dole, or even buy outright, as there was no work in the small towns, and nothing to do but feud.
That sounds pretty much what they said. I was imagining hobbits and stunning scenery and quiet country folk and they were recounting their lives that were straight from Miami vice.
It was funny because I was travelling with the dog, and they had a young daughter who as soon as she saw it said “oh no, not a dog”, not expecting that I’d turn out to be English. I just smiled and replied straight back in English that he isn’t any trouble. Which he wasn’t, just going to sleep under the seat; their kid was far more annoying to have in the train. But it did mean that the NZ cops spent the rest of the journey being super friendly to make up for their embarassment.
Both are true simultaneously. I could watch the sun set over the Southern Alps under an azure sky, while gangs were knocking lumps off each other making a busy night of suturing.
I think the British equivalent to rural crime is our down at heel coastal resorts. There are similar drug, delinquency, poverty and unemployment issues in some.
London is definitely alive tonight. The noisiest it has been since last summer. Possibly since the Plague began
So, I guess a modeller will be turning up all over the media in a day or two to say the additional activity above what they were expecting means there will be a massive enormous case surge in early July and so we had better lockdown again now just be careful.
We may only be one Excel spreadsheet away from the remainder of the plan being delayed - and you can well imagine outright panic if and when cases begin to climb significantly.
Comments
https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1381645211579867137
I wonder how much of this is a faint but definite gradation by age and class.
I am maybe 10 years younger than you AT MOST. You are northern, I am southern
I grew up and moved to London not long before the gastropub revolution started: the Eagle, in Farringdon.
https://www.theguardian.com/food/2020/apr/19/enduring-love-30-years-of-the-great-british-gastropub
It was supposedly the first but a few had been round before then (they just didn't nail the formula, bare chairs, handwritten menu, open kitchen)
So I spent my formative years expecting cool new pubs to have decent food, because in London, in my 20s and 30s, they did
Et voila
Till last, a ninth one, gathering half the deep
And full of voices, slowly rose and plunged
Roaring, and all the wave was in a flame"
Nevertheless, I agree - there's only so much that can be said about that.
When I first went to Victoria, myself and a Scottish doctor who I knew from Med School. We met at the clock's and went into the nearest pub. Grim formica, chairs bolted to the floor, all male and all drunk. We supped up and left fairly sharpish.
NZ pubs weren't much better. The bar in "Once Were Warriors" was fairly accurate social realism.
https://youtu.be/nPp8l4yYsPQ
Anyway:
https://www.englishchess.org.uk/covid-spring-response-pathway/
You could probably play socially distant poker but chess is a bit more difficult. I don't think there will be a return to leagues until the autumn.
People were turning up for a full lunch at 4pm, 2 hours maximum per table, on a Monday
There is obviously huge pent-up demand. The question is whether it lasts.
It won't stay like this, of course, it will ebb away, but the surge is real, and big.
We've all been in prison for a YEAR
Whether the country are willing to stand for it is another question. It is quite possible that he will be King before the next General Election.
Gross.
Only problem now is there aren't enough of them. Huge country, tiny population. Too many villages and settlements with no pub at all
I used to very very slightly resent it, sometimes. Probably I will resent it, again, in time
NOT NOW THO
Sing away, you drunken idiots, sing your bloody hearts out
Maybe it is better now, it was 3 decades ago that I was there.
I don't think I've ever had more than £100 resting on a game.
I've gone for the DoE award scheme (which I loved), the Burma Star Association and Book Aid International.
You can find the full list here - there is something for everyone:
https://www.royal.uk/dukes-charities-and-patronages
In fact, she was a lot nicer in her autobiography about Mrs Thatcher than she was about David Owen or David Steel. (Although she did have kind words for Paddy Ashdown.)
You can try on clothes in shops, apparently. That’s changed since lockdown 1.
Mail: Are cases starting to rise after England's lockdown easing on March 29? UK's daily Covid cases go UP by nearly a third in a week to 3,568
Unarguable then.
Well knock me down with a feather!
When licence fee money is taken by threat of imprisonment from people whether they want to pay or not, complaining how for one night only that instead of your music the money was spent on some other bullshit instead . . . is like complaining about someone jaywalking when crossing the road in order to mug someone's phone and wallet at gunpoint.
Its trivial garbage. Worse than trivial garbage since you feel entitled to mug others to pay for your music.
I think I would have drifted over to Australia, after all, many Kiwis do. Indeed my own great grandparents did.
You’ve got this the wrong way around!
Fortunately not that relevant to yours truly, I replaced my entire wardrobe in late 2019 after losing a great deal of weight. Much of the contents have barely been worn since - it's been mainly work gear, running gear and loungewear for most of the period since, for obvious reasons.
Might make a couple of additions for the sake of novelty after I am able to go shopping again. I'm observing a self-denying ordnance for non-essential indoor trips until I've had my jab.
Embrace the new country, and live as the locals do, tramping, drinking Speights out of the bottle, staying in huts on the track, even go hunt pigs from horseback. I did all those things, but only on a one year visa, so had to come home.
Also saw them in Birmingham same time in 1987. The place had a Christmas tree just off the to the left of the stage. Mosh-pit side. I vividly remember the entire audience moving as one, and at some point, the whole body of people changed direction like a typewriter going ping and the entire carriage resetting. The momentum of hundreds of people hit me with sufficient force, I was hurled into that Christmas tree.
Fucking brilliant gigs, And me, sober, the only person who can remember anything about them!
It threw him all over his suv and he witnessed the devastation taking in place in front of him
He volunteered for ground zero and saw horrific sights in the building where 185 lost their lives
There were thousands of aftershocks and ultimately he lost his relationship, his work moved to Australia, and both his dogs died
In 2015 he married a Canadian and moved to Vancouver
He returned to Christchurch on a visit just after the 2019 Mosque massacre and as he was placing his tribute at the Mosque he was overwhelmed with memories of ground zero and collapsed, waking up in Christchurch A & E
When he returned to Vancouver he was seriously disturbed and diagnosed with PTSD and extreme anxiety
He has just completed 16 electroconvulsive treatments in Vancouver and spoke to us last night, where we detected a glimmer of hope that he may slowly be recovering but his experience totally changed his life and his mental health
He emigrated with his partner from London in 2003 and was happy in NZ throughout until this life changing event happened in 2011
A very dangerous, authoritarian precedent has been set through all this and I worry that our compliance and willingness to take part in state-sponsored demonstrations of appreciation has changed our culture for the worse.
Maybe it's just me being weird ... but remain very pissed off about how this has been and is being handled.
I grew up.
However, that will NOT stop me from sharing my learned commentary!
On the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where Democrats have dominated the legislature since the Eisenhower Administration, but where voters regularly elect Republicans as Governor, for example Mitt Romney and current incumbent Charlie Baker (reportedly poised to launch a bid for US Senate).
Somewhat similar to how Harlepool has a Conservative mayor?
Another possible comparison in another quarter, is fact that (based on a map I saw days ago) the Social Democrats in Germany currently control quite a few local city & district councils, including in wide swaths of the country where they have done (and apparently still are doing) far less well in state AND federal elections.
So whither the Harlepool by-election? So far still in lap o' the gods territory.
FWIW, I'm northern and 45 but with Leon on this one. A day such as this calls for all the stops to be pulled out.
It does not call for a lager. If you are going down that road, it calls for the realest of real ales. Or beer so Belgian it comes with its own internal language barrier.
I think that we are going to see a lot of PTSD here too, after the last year. It often takes a while to hit. It's often the return to normality that is unbearable. While in the thick of it, it is possible to live off the adrenaline.
The Florida congressman’s "wingman" said he was paying legal fees for the former teen at the center of the case.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/12/whatsapp-chat-matt-gaetz-joel-greenberg-480962
MIAMI — The feds were closing in. And Rep. Matt Gaetz’s friend, Joel Greenberg, was in a panic.
The Florida county tax collector was five days away from a federal indictment for sex trafficking involving a 17-year-old — the same one Gaetz is now being investigated over — so Greenberg reached out to mutual friends on Aug. 14 last year and tried to enlist them in his defense, according to a WhatsApp chat shared with federal investigators and obtained by POLITICO.
He fumed that the prosecutor should be fired. He suspected that a political consultant “was the rat here.” He fretted that investigators had combed through his Venmo cash app history, fearing it led them to the former teen at the center of the case.
Greenberg also said he was paying the legal fees for the woman, who is now 20 years old.
The WhatsApp messages shed light on key aspects of the scandal consuming the Florida Republican congressman and close ally of President Donald Trump — and on the state of mind of the man Gaetz once called his “wingman” as he sought to manage the fallout.
Greenberg went so far as to push Gaetz to use his influence with Trump for a pardon, according to two sources familiar with the discussions, including one who heard Greenberg say it repeatedly.
Asked about the request from Greenberg, Gaetz previously declined to confirm or deny that it occurred. But the congressman said he did not ask Trump to pardon Greenberg. Gaetz couldn’t be reached this weekend to discuss the WhatsApp messages that are the subject of this story. . . .
PLUS Soho has fenced off 17 streets for all day al fresco drinking and dining, that will soak up a lot of custom (I presume other pleasure centres are doing similar)
By early May you will be able to drink anywhere outdoors, apart from weekends, and two weeks after that almost everything opens up indoors too. We are nearly there. I find it hard to believe, but it is true
We loved NZ and were heartbroken over what happened to Christchurch, and could simply not return again as we want to retain our happy memories of a lovely City
So I made a joke about how their town is coping with such a high proportion of their police force away on an extended european holiday, and they assured me there were dozens of police there and they made their home town sound as if it was more crime-ridden than downtown Baltimore. Whether this is true or not, i have no idea.
It was funny because I was travelling with the dog, and they had a young daughter who as soon as she saw it said “oh no, not a dog”, not expecting that I’d turn out to be English. I just smiled and replied straight back in English that he isn’t any trouble. Which he wasn’t, just going to sleep under the seat; their kid was far more annoying to have in the train. But it did mean that the NZ cops spent the rest of the journey being super friendly to make up for their embarassment.
It will all fizzle out much more slowly than that.
Here is what gov.uk has to say about Step 4:
Step 4 - not before 21 June
Social contact
By Step 4 which will take place no earlier than 21 June, the government hopes to be in a position to remove all legal limits on social contact.
Business, activities and events
We hope to reopen remaining premises, including nightclubs, and ease the restrictions on large events and performances that apply in Step 3. This will be subject to the results of a scientific Events Research Programme to test the outcome of certain pilot events through the spring and summer, where we will trial the use of testing and other techniques to cut the risk of infection. The same Events Research Programme will guide decisions on whether all limits can be removed on weddings and other life events.
As we move through each of these phases in the roadmap, we must all remember that COVID-19 remains a part of our lives. We are going to have to keep living our lives differently to keep ourselves and others safe. We must carry on with ‘hands, face, space’. Comply with the COVID-Secure measures that remain in place. Meet outdoors when we can and keep letting fresh air in. Get tested when needed. Get vaccinated when offered. If we all continue to play our part, we will be that bit closer to a future that is more familiar.
1. We "hope" to be in a position to do this, that and the other - well, I suppose you could give them the benefit of the doubt and say they're just leaving themselves some wriggle room on the timings, in case things don't go as well, as quickly as we would all like them to
2. "We hope to... ease the restrictions on large events and performances. Not remove, you will note.
3. Events Research Programme: here things get more interesting - testing before you can do what, exactly? "...other techniques to cut the risk of infection": On the one hand, will we really be rid of masks and social distancing? On the other, hello ID cards. "...whether all limits can be removed" - so, the implications of hoping to be able to remove limits on social contact become clearer. We may very well not get rid of all this nonsense, or anywhere close to it. Rather depends on how frightened the scientists are, and how much (or how little) control the Government is willing to give up
4. "If we all continue to play our part, we will be that bit closer to a future that is more familiar." As a closing statement, that is hardly reassuring. Nothing about getting back to normal at the end of this. More like exchanging open prison for an electronic tag. Not so much freedom as a life of restrictions that's just marginally less shit than what went just before
If the burden of rules about everything is lifted come midsummer than I shall be delighted, but I'll believe it's happening when it actually happens and not before.
If you're mugged for six hours every couple of decades, get some perspective.
We must be vigilant in making sure these strictures do not linger. But refusing to do anything until they are all gone is dim. And economically ruinous
Opening up will be an annoyingly slow process, but at least it is process in the right direction, and irreversible (we hope) after the worst global health crisis in a century.
Baby steps, but good steps. And drunken steps. We can do this
I think the British equivalent to rural crime is our down at heel coastal resorts. There are similar drug, delinquency, poverty and unemployment issues in some.
It was all about the right to arm bears but someone misheard.