One imagines the Gulf Strem collapse would leave the UK with a similar continental climate comparable with Petropavlosk with the North Sea doubling as the Sea of Okhotsk:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/01/modeling-what-would-happen-to-the-uk-if-the-gulf-stream-shuts-down/ ...Things are quite a bit different if the AMOC shuts down. Rather than rising, temperatures would actually drop by an average of 3.4°C. That drop would occur on a gradient, with northern Scotland cooling the most and southern England seeing the least impact and therefore seeing conditions similar to what it currently experiences. But, more dramatically, rainfall during the growing season is expected to drop by 123mm. That drop is enough to reduce the UK's percentage of arable land from 32 percent to just seven percent. Obviously, this would cause a big hit to the UK's agricultural productivity. Irrigation could again offset this, but the scale of the changes needed would be far larger; the authors estimate adding this irrigation at ten times the value of the crops that would be produced. But they note that it's not clear if the UK would have enough water to spare to fully reverse the loss of rain....
Though given the huge uncertainties in modelling climate/weather, who knows ? Malcom's turnip season would be significantly truncated, I expect.
Thanks Nigelb, fascinating link!
England would become even more dependent on Welsh and Scottish water.
Bless. The enduring Scottish fantasy of the English dying of thirst after Scottish independence. However there is a flaw in your cunning plan. We don’t rely on Scottish water, nor (for most of the country) Welsh. Eg -
While it’s nice for you lovely eliminationist Anglophobes to believe, England does not import water from Scotland, so your gentle civic nationalism will have to fantasise a new way of offing us all.
And I suspect confusion may have been caused by a certain B. Johnson's scheme to drain water from Scotland so the denizens of Croydon etc could fill their swimming pools without SE Water fixing the mains leaks (I paraphrase, but you get the gist).
It's not just the racial attitudes of the 19thC that the US right are embracing...
Florida woman who's an antimasker "wants to promote health the way her generation’s grandparents experienced it. 'When they got sick, they didn’t need the crutch of pharmaceuticals or antibiotics to get better. They just got sick and they got well.'” https://twitter.com/BGrueskin/status/1422760495631716353
(Though it should be noted that vaccination of sorts was a thing back then, too.)
What's particularly funny about that (apart from the obvious point that when they got sick, a lot of them died) is that the loony Florida woman's lawsuit is about the wearing of masks on planes. I mean, if she wants to be like her grandparents' generation, why the hell is she flying anywhere in the first place?
My grandparents flew to the south of France for their honeymoon…
My grandparents lived in Derby. Just before the war, they bought a small cottage in Twyford, on the Trent, to holiday in. The cottage, which they used for holidays and weekends away, is about five miles from the city centre. AFAIAA, they did not have a car, and that five miles was as far as they could practically get with any regularity, given they had one kid and my dad on the way.
Oddly enough, many of my family still live within a few miles of there, and I was born just a mile away, right by the Trent and Mersey Canal.
Growing up in Devon I knew people for whom a trip to Bristol was a once in a lifetime event, and the furthest they ever went from home.
I'd love to see it again, but back in the early 1990's there was a segment on TV news in London about a woman in her eighties who had never left the Isle of Dogs. All through the roaring twenties, the depression, the war, the swinging sixties; she had remained on the isle. Despite it's wonderful transport links (even in the seventies and eighties), she had never been tempted out.
ISTR she was taken into the city to see shows and meet someone important.
This column in the ever-entertaining 'Guardian Experiences' column is purportedly about a man who eats the same dinner every day but is really about his love of the Welsh valley he lives in: And has left precisely once in his life, 30 years ago, for a trip to a different farm.
I think there's something about farmers. A distant relative of mine was born, raised, and lives on, a farm. For nearly thirty years he has worked in the nearest city, about ten miles away. A few years back another relative got a phone call from him. He was in tears as he had two routes into work, and both were blocked off for roadworks.
There were plenty of diversionary routes (it is in the Midlands), but the thought of using a different route had driven him to tears.
Perhaps it is because farmers are used to a regular rhythm, both through the day and the year.
A friend of mine in Portsmouth took her grandmother to London for a significant birthday (80th, 90th, something like that) ten years ago. As the train went under the A27, grandma said it was the first time she'd ever left Portsea Island. Said the island had everything she needed. London was apparently alright - but she wasn't bothered about going again.
I was doing a locum in Cornwall some years ago, and saw a farmer patient in his eighties. I asked him when he had first noticed symptoms. He said 1948, but had been rather busy.
He had left Cornwall once, to go to an agricultural show in Dorset, but he said that he couldn't enjoy it as he was worried about his cattle.
I envy people with such attachment to place, much as I love my adopted city.
One imagines the Gulf Strem collapse would leave the UK with a similar continental climate comparable with Petropavlosk with the North Sea doubling as the Sea of Okhotsk:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/01/modeling-what-would-happen-to-the-uk-if-the-gulf-stream-shuts-down/ ...Things are quite a bit different if the AMOC shuts down. Rather than rising, temperatures would actually drop by an average of 3.4°C. That drop would occur on a gradient, with northern Scotland cooling the most and southern England seeing the least impact and therefore seeing conditions similar to what it currently experiences. But, more dramatically, rainfall during the growing season is expected to drop by 123mm. That drop is enough to reduce the UK's percentage of arable land from 32 percent to just seven percent. Obviously, this would cause a big hit to the UK's agricultural productivity. Irrigation could again offset this, but the scale of the changes needed would be far larger; the authors estimate adding this irrigation at ten times the value of the crops that would be produced. But they note that it's not clear if the UK would have enough water to spare to fully reverse the loss of rain....
Though given the huge uncertainties in modelling climate/weather, who knows ? Malcom's turnip season would be significantly truncated, I expect.
Thanks Nigelb, fascinating link!
England would become even more dependent on Welsh and Scottish water.
Bless. The enduring Scottish fantasy of the English dying of thirst after Scottish independence. However there is a flaw in your cunning plan. We don’t rely on Scottish water, nor (for most of the country) Welsh. Eg -
While it’s nice for you lovely eliminationist Anglophobes to believe, England does not import water from Scotland, so your gentle civic nationalism will have to fantasise a new way of offing us all.
And I suspect confusion may have been caused by a certain B. Johnson's scheme to drain water from Scotland so the denizens of Croydon etc could fill their swimming pools without SE Water fixing the mains leaks (I paraphrase, but you get the gist).
We all know Stuart wasn't referring to bottled water.
And so another exquisite summer evening, sapphire and cerise, humming with the wings of the linnet, draws to a soft, sweetening close like the coda of a wonderful yet forgotten hymn
Johnson sings the praises of Margaret Thatcher (!?) because… wait for it… she closed all the Scottish coal mines.
And somebody yesterday suggested that the PM was going to be “delicate” (sic) on his foreign trip.
Music to the ears of the anti coal Scottish Greens, Sturgeon's new coalition partner
FUDHY, as ever, has his finger on the pulse of Scottish democracy: he knows that the Scottish Greens hang on Boris Johnson’s every word. He is their hero.
BJ pressing all the right buttons on his visit north. For clarity, the Evening Times is a bog standard local evening paper, pretty apolitical and certainly not nationalist.
Well, that's done for a fair chunk of the supposed Labour tactical voting for Tories in Lothian, Lanarkshire, etc. etc. I mean, they still have MIners' Welfare and Social Clubs all over the place.
Supreme Leader Boris is a dunderheid? Don’t tell FUDHY.
I am not a miner and don't come from a mining family directly (though my great uncle was a driver on a winding engine). I know all about the energy and efficiency and global warming arguments but they don't change the political importance of his comments. Remember that Scotland was then a satrapy and many strikers were prosecuted at the time - many feel unjustly.
I'm interested by the view that entire realms of voters can be both personally alienated and utterly ignored by the Tories just because they don't vote Tory.
Do we not have 'one nation' Tories any more? And what happens when the smaller and smaller core vote crumbles?
It's not just the racial attitudes of the 19thC that the US right are embracing...
Florida woman who's an antimasker "wants to promote health the way her generation’s grandparents experienced it. 'When they got sick, they didn’t need the crutch of pharmaceuticals or antibiotics to get better. They just got sick and they got well.'” https://twitter.com/BGrueskin/status/1422760495631716353
(Though it should be noted that vaccination of sorts was a thing back then, too.)
What's particularly funny about that (apart from the obvious point that when they got sick, a lot of them died) is that the loony Florida woman's lawsuit is about the wearing of masks on planes. I mean, if she wants to be like her grandparents' generation, why the hell is she flying anywhere in the first place?
My grandparents flew to the south of France for their honeymoon…
My grandparents lived in Derby. Just before the war, they bought a small cottage in Twyford, on the Trent, to holiday in. The cottage, which they used for holidays and weekends away, is about five miles from the city centre. AFAIAA, they did not have a car, and that five miles was as far as they could practically get with any regularity, given they had one kid and my dad on the way.
Oddly enough, many of my family still live within a few miles of there, and I was born just a mile away, right by the Trent and Mersey Canal.
Growing up in Devon I knew people for whom a trip to Bristol was a once in a lifetime event, and the furthest they ever went from home.
I'd love to see it again, but back in the early 1990's there was a segment on TV news in London about a woman in her eighties who had never left the Isle of Dogs. All through the roaring twenties, the depression, the war, the swinging sixties; she had remained on the isle. Despite it's wonderful transport links (even in the seventies and eighties), she had never been tempted out.
ISTR she was taken into the city to see shows and meet someone important.
This column in the ever-entertaining 'Guardian Experiences' column is purportedly about a man who eats the same dinner every day but is really about his love of the Welsh valley he lives in: And has left precisely once in his life, 30 years ago, for a trip to a different farm.
I think there's something about farmers. A distant relative of mine was born, raised, and lives on, a farm. For nearly thirty years he has worked in the nearest city, about ten miles away. A few years back another relative got a phone call from him. He was in tears as he had two routes into work, and both were blocked off for roadworks.
There were plenty of diversionary routes (it is in the Midlands), but the thought of using a different route had driven him to tears.
Perhaps it is because farmers are used to a regular rhythm, both through the day and the year.
A friend of mine in Portsmouth took her grandmother to London for a significant birthday (80th, 90th, something like that) ten years ago. As the train went under the A27, grandma said it was the first time she'd ever left Portsea Island. Said the island had everything she needed. London was apparently alright - but she wasn't bothered about going again.
I was doing a locum in Cornwall some years ago, and saw a farmer patient in his eighties. I asked him when he had first noticed symptoms. He said 1948, but had been rather busy.
He had left Cornwall once, to go to an agricultural show in Dorset, but he said that he couldn't enjoy it as he was worried about his cattle.
I envy people with such attachment to place, much as I love my adopted city.
Round here, that’s about how long it takes to get an appointment with your GP.
Johnson sings the praises of Margaret Thatcher (!?) because… wait for it… she closed all the Scottish coal mines.
And somebody yesterday suggested that the PM was going to be “delicate” (sic) on his foreign trip.
Is the average 20 year old supposed to think that closing the coal mines was a bad thing?
Is the average Scot supposed to think that closing the coal mines was to save the environment?
There was a good case for closing the coal mines between the late 1960s and early 1990s on the grounds that most of them were either running out of coal or couldn't be run at a profit.
The problem with the closing of the coal mines is that there was nothing done to replace the industry and large chunks of the country just had nothing to bring in jobs.
One imagines the Gulf Strem collapse would leave the UK with a similar continental climate comparable with Petropavlosk with the North Sea doubling as the Sea of Okhotsk:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/01/modeling-what-would-happen-to-the-uk-if-the-gulf-stream-shuts-down/ ...Things are quite a bit different if the AMOC shuts down. Rather than rising, temperatures would actually drop by an average of 3.4°C. That drop would occur on a gradient, with northern Scotland cooling the most and southern England seeing the least impact and therefore seeing conditions similar to what it currently experiences. But, more dramatically, rainfall during the growing season is expected to drop by 123mm. That drop is enough to reduce the UK's percentage of arable land from 32 percent to just seven percent. Obviously, this would cause a big hit to the UK's agricultural productivity. Irrigation could again offset this, but the scale of the changes needed would be far larger; the authors estimate adding this irrigation at ten times the value of the crops that would be produced. But they note that it's not clear if the UK would have enough water to spare to fully reverse the loss of rain....
Though given the huge uncertainties in modelling climate/weather, who knows ? Malcom's turnip season would be significantly truncated, I expect.
Thanks Nigelb, fascinating link!
England would become even more dependent on Welsh and Scottish water.
Bless. The enduring Scottish fantasy of the English dying of thirst after Scottish independence. However there is a flaw in your cunning plan. We don’t rely on Scottish water, nor (for most of the country) Welsh. Eg -
While it’s nice for you lovely eliminationist Anglophobes to believe, England does not import water from Scotland, so your gentle civic nationalism will have to fantasise a new way of offing us all.
And I suspect confusion may have been caused by a certain B. Johnson's scheme to drain water from Scotland so the denizens of Croydon etc could fill their swimming pools without SE Water fixing the mains leaks (I paraphrase, but you get the gist).
We all know Stuart wasn't referring to bottled water.
One imagines the Gulf Strem collapse would leave the UK with a similar continental climate comparable with Petropavlosk with the North Sea doubling as the Sea of Okhotsk:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/01/modeling-what-would-happen-to-the-uk-if-the-gulf-stream-shuts-down/ ...Things are quite a bit different if the AMOC shuts down. Rather than rising, temperatures would actually drop by an average of 3.4°C. That drop would occur on a gradient, with northern Scotland cooling the most and southern England seeing the least impact and therefore seeing conditions similar to what it currently experiences. But, more dramatically, rainfall during the growing season is expected to drop by 123mm. That drop is enough to reduce the UK's percentage of arable land from 32 percent to just seven percent. Obviously, this would cause a big hit to the UK's agricultural productivity. Irrigation could again offset this, but the scale of the changes needed would be far larger; the authors estimate adding this irrigation at ten times the value of the crops that would be produced. But they note that it's not clear if the UK would have enough water to spare to fully reverse the loss of rain....
Though given the huge uncertainties in modelling climate/weather, who knows ? Malcom's turnip season would be significantly truncated, I expect.
Thanks Nigelb, fascinating link!
England would become even more dependent on Welsh and Scottish water.
Bless. The enduring Scottish fantasy of the English dying of thirst after Scottish independence. However there is a flaw in your cunning plan. We don’t rely on Scottish water, nor (for most of the country) Welsh. Eg -
While it’s nice for you lovely eliminationist Anglophobes to believe, England does not import water from Scotland, so your gentle civic nationalism will have to fantasise a new way of offing us all.
And I suspect confusion may have been caused by a certain B. Johnson's scheme to drain water from Scotland so the denizens of Croydon etc could fill their swimming pools without SE Water fixing the mains leaks (I paraphrase, but you get the gist).
Oh come on, Dickson wasn’t referring to mineral water (heck, everyone knows that even Derbyshire exports that) and the nationalist trope that Scotland supplies us with water predates 2015. I think it is an urban myth arising from an appropriation of the, far more justifiable, north Welsh grievance regarding Liverpool’s drowning of a local valley for its own needs.
BJ pressing all the right buttons on his visit north. For clarity, the Evening Times is a bog standard local evening paper, pretty apolitical and certainly not nationalist.
Well, that's done for a fair chunk of the supposed Labour tactical voting for Tories in Lothian, Lanarkshire, etc. etc. I mean, they still have MIners' Welfare and Social Clubs all over the place.
The Tories don't have any MPs or constituency MSPs in Lothian or Lanarkshire.
I am sure Boris' remarks will have delighted the Scottish Greens however, the SNP's new coalition partner, even if they do not go down as well in the Red Wall
The West Central Belt used to be prime Tory = Unionist battleground. The Tories most certainly have regional MSPs in regions which were, or include, major coal mining areas, and it will also count in the general sentiment about the sensitivity and care with which the Tory Party treats Scotland.
There is not a single Scottish former mining constituency in even the top 20 Tory target seats for the next general election. There is not a single Tory MP or constituency MSP who represents an ex mining seat in Scotland either.
There are plenty of English and Welsh Red Wall Tory held seats and Tory target seats which used to have a mine however, by far the biggest winner from Boris' gaffe therefore will be Starmer, not Sturgeon
Good to see you admitting it was a gaffe. You’re a bigger man than I thought.
One imagines the Gulf Strem collapse would leave the UK with a similar continental climate comparable with Petropavlosk with the North Sea doubling as the Sea of Okhotsk:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/01/modeling-what-would-happen-to-the-uk-if-the-gulf-stream-shuts-down/ ...Things are quite a bit different if the AMOC shuts down. Rather than rising, temperatures would actually drop by an average of 3.4°C. That drop would occur on a gradient, with northern Scotland cooling the most and southern England seeing the least impact and therefore seeing conditions similar to what it currently experiences. But, more dramatically, rainfall during the growing season is expected to drop by 123mm. That drop is enough to reduce the UK's percentage of arable land from 32 percent to just seven percent. Obviously, this would cause a big hit to the UK's agricultural productivity. Irrigation could again offset this, but the scale of the changes needed would be far larger; the authors estimate adding this irrigation at ten times the value of the crops that would be produced. But they note that it's not clear if the UK would have enough water to spare to fully reverse the loss of rain....
Though given the huge uncertainties in modelling climate/weather, who knows ? Malcom's turnip season would be significantly truncated, I expect.
Thanks Nigelb, fascinating link!
England would become even more dependent on Welsh and Scottish water.
Bless. The enduring Scottish fantasy of the English dying of thirst after Scottish independence. However there is a flaw in your cunning plan. We don’t rely on Scottish water, nor (for most of the country) Welsh. Eg -
While it’s nice for you lovely eliminationist Anglophobes to believe, England does not import water from Scotland, so your gentle civic nationalism will have to fantasise a new way of offing us all.
And I suspect confusion may have been caused by a certain B. Johnson's scheme to drain water from Scotland so the denizens of Croydon etc could fill their swimming pools without SE Water fixing the mains leaks (I paraphrase, but you get the gist).
Oh come on, Dickson wasn’t referring to mineral water (heck, everyone knows that even Derbyshire exports that) and the nationalist trope that Scotland supplies us with water predates 2015. I think it is an urban myth arising from an appropriation of the, far more justifiable, north Welsh grievance regarding Liverpool’s drowning of a local valley for its own needs.
Quite so, though Mr Johnson's scheme and the ensuing publicity would have fed the urban myth.
Johnson sings the praises of Margaret Thatcher (!?) because… wait for it… she closed all the Scottish coal mines.
And somebody yesterday suggested that the PM was going to be “delicate” (sic) on his foreign trip.
Music to the ears of the anti coal Scottish Greens, Sturgeon's new coalition partner
FUDHY, as ever, has his finger on the pulse of Scottish democracy: he knows that the Scottish Greens hang on Boris Johnson’s every word. He is their hero.
You're too busy being smug to work out the difference between the LOTO and the PM. Treacherous ground.
One imagines the Gulf Strem collapse would leave the UK with a similar continental climate comparable with Petropavlosk with the North Sea doubling as the Sea of Okhotsk:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/01/modeling-what-would-happen-to-the-uk-if-the-gulf-stream-shuts-down/ ...Things are quite a bit different if the AMOC shuts down. Rather than rising, temperatures would actually drop by an average of 3.4°C. That drop would occur on a gradient, with northern Scotland cooling the most and southern England seeing the least impact and therefore seeing conditions similar to what it currently experiences. But, more dramatically, rainfall during the growing season is expected to drop by 123mm. That drop is enough to reduce the UK's percentage of arable land from 32 percent to just seven percent. Obviously, this would cause a big hit to the UK's agricultural productivity. Irrigation could again offset this, but the scale of the changes needed would be far larger; the authors estimate adding this irrigation at ten times the value of the crops that would be produced. But they note that it's not clear if the UK would have enough water to spare to fully reverse the loss of rain....
Though given the huge uncertainties in modelling climate/weather, who knows ? Malcom's turnip season would be significantly truncated, I expect.
Thanks Nigelb, fascinating link!
England would become even more dependent on Welsh and Scottish water.
Bless. The enduring Scottish fantasy of the English dying of thirst after Scottish independence. However there is a flaw in your cunning plan. We don’t rely on Scottish water, nor (for most of the country) Welsh. Eg -
While it’s nice for you lovely eliminationist Anglophobes to believe, England does not import water from Scotland, so your gentle civic nationalism will have to fantasise a new way of offing us all.
And I suspect confusion may have been caused by a certain B. Johnson's scheme to drain water from Scotland so the denizens of Croydon etc could fill their swimming pools without SE Water fixing the mains leaks (I paraphrase, but you get the gist).
Oh come on, Dickson wasn’t referring to mineral water (heck, everyone knows that even Derbyshire exports that) and the nationalist trope that Scotland supplies us with water predates 2015. I think it is an urban myth arising from an appropriation of the, far more justifiable, north Welsh grievance regarding Liverpool’s drowning of a local valley for its own needs.
PS Never, ever, heard that trope about actual supply with water cvome to think of it - what it was was actually criticism of Mr Johnson's breezy comments on the matter, I think.
Johnson sings the praises of Margaret Thatcher (!?) because… wait for it… she closed all the Scottish coal mines.
And somebody yesterday suggested that the PM was going to be “delicate” (sic) on his foreign trip.
Music to the ears of the anti coal Scottish Greens, Sturgeon's new coalition partner
FUDHY, as ever, has his finger on the pulse of Scottish democracy: he knows that the Scottish Greens hang on Boris Johnson’s every word. He is their hero.
Some quotes from Sturgeon's new best friend, the Scottish Greens leader on this issue: 'We have achieved a massive shift from coal to renewable power while some of the world’s most polluting countries are pursuing economic nationalism and outright climate denial.'
We will challenge all of those committed to maximum extraction of oil and gas from the North Sea because we know that avoiding dangerous climate change means that the majority of fossil fuels must remain in the ground... Only the Greens are standing up for our common future, against the vested interests and dirty money of the fossil fuel industry.' https://www.heraldscotland.com/opinion/17279886.patrick-harvie-greens-go-fight-greenhouse-gases/
Johnson sings the praises of Margaret Thatcher (!?) because… wait for it… she closed all the Scottish coal mines.
And somebody yesterday suggested that the PM was going to be “delicate” (sic) on his foreign trip.
Music to the ears of the anti coal Scottish Greens, Sturgeon's new coalition partner
FUDHY, as ever, has his finger on the pulse of Scottish democracy: he knows that the Scottish Greens hang on Boris Johnson’s every word. He is their hero.
Some quotes from the Scottish Greens leader on this issue: 'We have achieved a massive shift from coal to renewable power while some of the world’s most polluting countries are pursuing economic nationalism and outright climate denial.'
We will challenge all of those committed to maximum extraction of oil and gas from the North Sea because we know that avoiding dangerous climate change means that the majority of fossil fuels must remain in the ground... Only the Greens are standing up for our common future, against the vested interests and dirty money of the fossil fuel industry.' https://www.heraldscotland.com/opinion/17279886.patrick-harvie-greens-go-fight-greenhouse-gases/
Oil is not a devolved matter. You do understand what that means?
Lolz, hardened, world weary realpolitickers of the Speccie actually big, fat suckers, who'd have thunk?
Gerry Hassan @GerryHassan 26m This is a brilliant article on the @Spectator's plans to trash @MarcusRashford. Looks like @FraserNelson & his pals have been well & truly had. This is the problem when you view the world thru hatred, bile & bigotry. Thank you @deccamitford
Yes, the digital takeover is definitely a part of it. I read lots of 'stuff' online but it doesn't work for me for books, fiction or non.
Re time running out, yes, that's a factor too. You don't want to burn it.
And there's something with me about this which is (I know) rather stupid and negative. Not so much about not picking up new books but more about not trying to learn new skills. Eg piano. Always fancied that and now have the time. But let's say I took it up and it turns out I have some talent for it. Unlikely but possible. That would be great in one sense. But in another it would be very galling because I'd be kicking myself for not doing it when young and able to put in the fabled 10,000 hours and be properly good.
So you kind of just cruise in neutral to the grave. Can't find suitably precise emoticon for this 'sad but not really' sentiment.
Interesting philosophical point, that. In my view, the purpose of life is having a number of peaks that you always remember plus a generally OK everyday, like Switzerland. Learning to play the piano pretty well counts as a decent peak, and not doing it 40 years ago and being a professional, meh, that's just a possible earlier peak and you've had others instead. But cruising in neureal is just pointless - there are years of my life that I can't recall doing anything at all, and that's a total waste.
What life definitely isn't is a steady climb ending in Mount Everest as the crowning achievement. You need to factor in a gradual fade, and have things that really stand out in your memory.
Lolz, hardened, world weary realpolitickers of the Speccie actually big, fat suckers, who'd have thunk?
Gerry Hassan @GerryHassan 26m This is a brilliant article on the @Spectator's plans to trash @MarcusRashford. Looks like @FraserNelson & his pals have been well & truly had. This is the problem when you view the world thru hatred, bile & bigotry. Thank you @deccamitford
The War on Woke situation has developed, not necessarily to the Spectator's advantage.
What it shows is that the Speccy is about as critical as the US Navy concerning explosions in its gun turrets. I mean,. not even checking the bona fides of a journalist leading with an overtly mahooosive story?
Johnson sings the praises of Margaret Thatcher (!?) because… wait for it… she closed all the Scottish coal mines.
And somebody yesterday suggested that the PM was going to be “delicate” (sic) on his foreign trip.
Music to the ears of the anti coal Scottish Greens, Sturgeon's new coalition partner
FUDHY, as ever, has his finger on the pulse of Scottish democracy: he knows that the Scottish Greens hang on Boris Johnson’s every word. He is their hero.
You're too busy being smug to work out the difference between the LOTO and the PM. Treacherous ground.
In fairness Mr Starmer is obviously desperate to gain some of the SGP voters.
Johnson sings the praises of Margaret Thatcher (!?) because… wait for it… she closed all the Scottish coal mines.
And somebody yesterday suggested that the PM was going to be “delicate” (sic) on his foreign trip.
Music to the ears of the anti coal Scottish Greens, Sturgeon's new coalition partner
FUDHY, as ever, has his finger on the pulse of Scottish democracy: he knows that the Scottish Greens hang on Boris Johnson’s every word. He is their hero.
Some quotes from the Scottish Greens leader on this issue: 'We have achieved a massive shift from coal to renewable power while some of the world’s most polluting countries are pursuing economic nationalism and outright climate denial.'
We will challenge all of those committed to maximum extraction of oil and gas from the North Sea because we know that avoiding dangerous climate change means that the majority of fossil fuels must remain in the ground... Only the Greens are standing up for our common future, against the vested interests and dirty money of the fossil fuel industry.' https://www.heraldscotland.com/opinion/17279886.patrick-harvie-greens-go-fight-greenhouse-gases/
Oil is not a devolved matter. You do understand what that means?
Only the UK government can protect Scotland's oil industry from the SNP-Green Scottish government
Lolz, hardened, world weary realpolitickers of the Speccie actually big, fat suckers, who'd have thunk?
Gerry Hassan @GerryHassan 26m This is a brilliant article on the @Spectator's plans to trash @MarcusRashford. Looks like @FraserNelson & his pals have been well & truly had. This is the problem when you view the world thru hatred, bile & bigotry. Thank you @deccamitford
The War on Woke situation has developed, not necessarily to the Spectator's advantage.
That laboured, humourless, seventy thousand word article describes an attempt to spoof an illustrious magazine into running an article, but the spoof failed, because the magazine checked the sources. Have I got that right?
Johnson sings the praises of Margaret Thatcher (!?) because… wait for it… she closed all the Scottish coal mines.
And somebody yesterday suggested that the PM was going to be “delicate” (sic) on his foreign trip.
Music to the ears of the anti coal Scottish Greens, Sturgeon's new coalition partner
FUDHY, as ever, has his finger on the pulse of Scottish democracy: he knows that the Scottish Greens hang on Boris Johnson’s every word. He is their hero.
Some quotes from the Scottish Greens leader on this issue: 'We have achieved a massive shift from coal to renewable power while some of the world’s most polluting countries are pursuing economic nationalism and outright climate denial.'
We will challenge all of those committed to maximum extraction of oil and gas from the North Sea because we know that avoiding dangerous climate change means that the majority of fossil fuels must remain in the ground... Only the Greens are standing up for our common future, against the vested interests and dirty money of the fossil fuel industry.' https://www.heraldscotland.com/opinion/17279886.patrick-harvie-greens-go-fight-greenhouse-gases/
Oil is not a devolved matter. You do understand what that means?
Scottish politicians have less with which to grease their palms?
Lolz, hardened, world weary realpolitickers of the Speccie actually big, fat suckers, who'd have thunk?
Gerry Hassan @GerryHassan 26m This is a brilliant article on the @Spectator's plans to trash @MarcusRashford. Looks like @FraserNelson & his pals have been well & truly had. This is the problem when you view the world thru hatred, bile & bigotry. Thank you @deccamitford
The War on Woke situation has developed, not necessarily to the Spectator's advantage.
What it shows is that the Speccy is about as critical as the US Navy concerning explosions in its gun turrets. I mean,. not even checking the bona fides of a journalist leading with an overtly mahooosive story?
Johnson sings the praises of Margaret Thatcher (!?) because… wait for it… she closed all the Scottish coal mines.
And somebody yesterday suggested that the PM was going to be “delicate” (sic) on his foreign trip.
Music to the ears of the anti coal Scottish Greens, Sturgeon's new coalition partner
FUDHY, as ever, has his finger on the pulse of Scottish democracy: he knows that the Scottish Greens hang on Boris Johnson’s every word. He is their hero.
Some quotes from the Scottish Greens leader on this issue: 'We have achieved a massive shift from coal to renewable power while some of the world’s most polluting countries are pursuing economic nationalism and outright climate denial.'
We will challenge all of those committed to maximum extraction of oil and gas from the North Sea because we know that avoiding dangerous climate change means that the majority of fossil fuels must remain in the ground... Only the Greens are standing up for our common future, against the vested interests and dirty money of the fossil fuel industry.' https://www.heraldscotland.com/opinion/17279886.patrick-harvie-greens-go-fight-greenhouse-gases/
Oil is not a devolved matter. You do understand what that means?
Only the UK government can protect Scotland's oil industry from the SNP-Green Scottish government
Johnson sings the praises of Margaret Thatcher (!?) because… wait for it… she closed all the Scottish coal mines.
And somebody yesterday suggested that the PM was going to be “delicate” (sic) on his foreign trip.
Is the average 20 year old supposed to think that closing the coal mines was a bad thing?
Anyhow Labour closed more pits and the Tories closed more grammar schools, contrary to wot most people think.
I still find it astonishing that it was the Conservative Party that abolished counties, an institution dating back to the Middle Ages. Pure vandalism really.
Lolz, hardened, world weary realpolitickers of the Speccie actually big, fat suckers, who'd have thunk?
Gerry Hassan @GerryHassan 26m This is a brilliant article on the @Spectator's plans to trash @MarcusRashford. Looks like @FraserNelson & his pals have been well & truly had. This is the problem when you view the world thru hatred, bile & bigotry. Thank you @deccamitford
The War on Woke situation has developed, not necessarily to the Spectator's advantage.
What it shows is that the Speccy is about as critical as the US Navy concerning explosions in its gun turrets. I mean,. not even checking the bona fides of a journalist leading with an overtly mahooosive story?
They didn't run the story
All credit for bouncing back from the 'no one has heard of burner phones' fiasco.
Lolz, hardened, world weary realpolitickers of the Speccie actually big, fat suckers, who'd have thunk?
Gerry Hassan @GerryHassan 26m This is a brilliant article on the @Spectator's plans to trash @MarcusRashford. Looks like @FraserNelson & his pals have been well & truly had. This is the problem when you view the world thru hatred, bile & bigotry. Thank you @deccamitford
The War on Woke situation has developed, not necessarily to the Spectator's advantage.
That laboured, humourless, seventy thousand word article describes an attempt to spoof an illustrious magazine into running an article, but the spoof failed, because the magazine checked the sources. Have I got that right?
WOW
Humourless? I thought it was hilarious. Maybe you got confused because they mentioned burner phones?
Johnson sings the praises of Margaret Thatcher (!?) because… wait for it… she closed all the Scottish coal mines.
And somebody yesterday suggested that the PM was going to be “delicate” (sic) on his foreign trip.
Is the average 20 year old supposed to think that closing the coal mines was a bad thing?
Anyhow Labour closed more pits and the Tories closed more grammar schools, contrary to wot most people think.
Don't forget that under Beeching, Labour closed about the same mileage of railways as the Conservatives did. Despite having been elected on a platform of reversing the cuts ...
It's not just the racial attitudes of the 19thC that the US right are embracing...
Florida woman who's an antimasker "wants to promote health the way her generation’s grandparents experienced it. 'When they got sick, they didn’t need the crutch of pharmaceuticals or antibiotics to get better. They just got sick and they got well.'” https://twitter.com/BGrueskin/status/1422760495631716353
(Though it should be noted that vaccination of sorts was a thing back then, too.)
What's particularly funny about that (apart from the obvious point that when they got sick, a lot of them died) is that the loony Florida woman's lawsuit is about the wearing of masks on planes. I mean, if she wants to be like her grandparents' generation, why the hell is she flying anywhere in the first place?
My grandparents flew to the south of France for their honeymoon…
My grandparents lived in Derby. Just before the war, they bought a small cottage in Twyford, on the Trent, to holiday in. The cottage, which they used for holidays and weekends away, is about five miles from the city centre. AFAIAA, they did not have a car, and that five miles was as far as they could practically get with any regularity, given they had one kid and my dad on the way.
Oddly enough, many of my family still live within a few miles of there, and I was born just a mile away, right by the Trent and Mersey Canal.
Growing up in Devon I knew people for whom a trip to Bristol was a once in a lifetime event, and the furthest they ever went from home.
I'd love to see it again, but back in the early 1990's there was a segment on TV news in London about a woman in her eighties who had never left the Isle of Dogs. All through the roaring twenties, the depression, the war, the swinging sixties; she had remained on the isle. Despite it's wonderful transport links (even in the seventies and eighties), she had never been tempted out.
ISTR she was taken into the city to see shows and meet someone important.
This column in the ever-entertaining 'Guardian Experiences' column is purportedly about a man who eats the same dinner every day but is really about his love of the Welsh valley he lives in: And has left precisely once in his life, 30 years ago, for a trip to a different farm.
I think there's something about farmers. A distant relative of mine was born, raised, and lives on, a farm. For nearly thirty years he has worked in the nearest city, about ten miles away. A few years back another relative got a phone call from him. He was in tears as he had two routes into work, and both were blocked off for roadworks.
There were plenty of diversionary routes (it is in the Midlands), but the thought of using a different route had driven him to tears.
Perhaps it is because farmers are used to a regular rhythm, both through the day and the year.
A friend of mine in Portsmouth took her grandmother to London for a significant birthday (80th, 90th, something like that) ten years ago. As the train went under the A27, grandma said it was the first time she'd ever left Portsea Island. Said the island had everything she needed. London was apparently alright - but she wasn't bothered about going again.
I was doing a locum in Cornwall some years ago, and saw a farmer patient in his eighties. I asked him when he had first noticed symptoms. He said 1948, but had been rather busy.
He had left Cornwall once, to go to an agricultural show in Dorset, but he said that he couldn't enjoy it as he was worried about his cattle.
I envy people with such attachment to place, much as I love my adopted city.
Round here, that’s about how long it takes to get an appointment with your GP.
(This is not meant entirely seriously.)
I once went to Britain's remotest inhabited island, Foula. About a trillion miles from Shetland (or so it feels, apparently, if you go by boat: I flew)
I stayed a few days with a lovely woman who kept worrying that "the bonxies are eating the placenta". She kept sheep
I met basically everyone on the island (it's not hard), amongst them was a wonderfully sweet old lady, with pics of the Queen on her sideboard and a plate full of shortbread, she was about 90 and she revealed that she had been off Foula just once in her life
Lolz, hardened, world weary realpolitickers of the Speccie actually big, fat suckers, who'd have thunk?
Gerry Hassan @GerryHassan 26m This is a brilliant article on the @Spectator's plans to trash @MarcusRashford. Looks like @FraserNelson & his pals have been well & truly had. This is the problem when you view the world thru hatred, bile & bigotry. Thank you @deccamitford
The War on Woke situation has developed, not necessarily to the Spectator's advantage.
That laboured, humourless, seventy thousand word article describes an attempt to spoof an illustrious magazine into running an article, but the spoof failed, because the magazine checked the sources. Have I got that right?
WOW
Humourless? I thought it was hilarious. Maybe you got confused because they mentioned burner phones?
I thought it very funny. Likely bollocks, but very funny.
Johnson sings the praises of Margaret Thatcher (!?) because… wait for it… she closed all the Scottish coal mines.
And somebody yesterday suggested that the PM was going to be “delicate” (sic) on his foreign trip.
Is the average 20 year old supposed to think that closing the coal mines was a bad thing?
Anyhow Labour closed more pits and the Tories closed more grammar schools, contrary to wot most people think.
Labour began the process of both however, almost all the few remaining grammar schools are in Tory controlled local authorities
It doesn't matter. Labour wanted to keep open businesses that were long gone, and wanted to remove schools that have proved the test of time. Complete idiocy, but they have to be judged on their ideas today.
Lolz, hardened, world weary realpolitickers of the Speccie actually big, fat suckers, who'd have thunk?
Gerry Hassan @GerryHassan 26m This is a brilliant article on the @Spectator's plans to trash @MarcusRashford. Looks like @FraserNelson & his pals have been well & truly had. This is the problem when you view the world thru hatred, bile & bigotry. Thank you @deccamitford
The War on Woke situation has developed, not necessarily to the Spectator's advantage.
That laboured, humourless, seventy thousand word article describes an attempt to spoof an illustrious magazine into running an article, but the spoof failed, because the magazine checked the sources. Have I got that right?
WOW
Forget that story, the Spectator is a joke, only bellends who have no grasp on reality write for that magazine these days.
I mean, Covid-19 deniers and spouse beaters like Rod Liddle and Toby Young for starters.
Can anyone think of a third journalist who writes for The Spectator to make it the devil's trifecta?
Lolz, hardened, world weary realpolitickers of the Speccie actually big, fat suckers, who'd have thunk?
Gerry Hassan @GerryHassan 26m This is a brilliant article on the @Spectator's plans to trash @MarcusRashford. Looks like @FraserNelson & his pals have been well & truly had. This is the problem when you view the world thru hatred, bile & bigotry. Thank you @deccamitford
The War on Woke situation has developed, not necessarily to the Spectator's advantage.
That laboured, humourless, seventy thousand word article describes an attempt to spoof an illustrious magazine into running an article, but the spoof failed, because the magazine checked the sources. Have I got that right?
WOW
Humourless? I thought it was hilarious. Maybe you got confused because they mentioned burner phones?
Please point me to the hilarious bits. I'm genuinely curious
By the end I was wondering if the Wokeyleaks character was actually winding up the author. Something doesn't quite fit
Lolz, hardened, world weary realpolitickers of the Speccie actually big, fat suckers, who'd have thunk?
Gerry Hassan @GerryHassan 26m This is a brilliant article on the @Spectator's plans to trash @MarcusRashford. Looks like @FraserNelson & his pals have been well & truly had. This is the problem when you view the world thru hatred, bile & bigotry. Thank you @deccamitford
Lolz, hardened, world weary realpolitickers of the Speccie actually big, fat suckers, who'd have thunk?
Gerry Hassan @GerryHassan 26m This is a brilliant article on the @Spectator's plans to trash @MarcusRashford. Looks like @FraserNelson & his pals have been well & truly had. This is the problem when you view the world thru hatred, bile & bigotry. Thank you @deccamitford
The War on Woke situation has developed, not necessarily to the Spectator's advantage.
That laboured, humourless, seventy thousand word article describes an attempt to spoof an illustrious magazine into running an article, but the spoof failed, because the magazine checked the sources. Have I got that right?
WOW
Forget that story, the Spectator is a joke, only bellends who have no grasp on reality write for that magazine these days.
I mean, Covid-19 deniers and spouse beaters like Rod Liddle and Toby Young for starters.
Can anyone think of a third journalist who writes for The Spectator to make it the devil's trifecta?
Spectator TV this week has a segment on cybersecurity and ransomware that might be interesting (not watched!). Whether that reflects what is in the magazine...?
Lolz, hardened, world weary realpolitickers of the Speccie actually big, fat suckers, who'd have thunk?
Gerry Hassan @GerryHassan 26m This is a brilliant article on the @Spectator's plans to trash @MarcusRashford. Looks like @FraserNelson & his pals have been well & truly had. This is the problem when you view the world thru hatred, bile & bigotry. Thank you @deccamitford
The War on Woke situation has developed, not necessarily to the Spectator's advantage.
That laboured, humourless, seventy thousand word article describes an attempt to spoof an illustrious magazine into running an article, but the spoof failed, because the magazine checked the sources. Have I got that right?
WOW
Forget that story, the Spectator is a joke, only bellends who have no grasp on reality write for that magazine these days.
I mean, Covid-19 deniers and spouse beaters like Rod Liddle and Toby Young for starters.
Can anyone think of a third journalist who writes for The Spectator to make it the devil's trifecta?
The Speccie is the oldest weekly magazine in the world, and the most prestigious political magazine in the English speaking world
It does provoke an awful lot of jealousy, as a consequence - usually from people who would saw off their testicles to get an article published within its pages. Such as yourself
Trouble is, the Spectator knows this, so it can be a little smug
Lolz, hardened, world weary realpolitickers of the Speccie actually big, fat suckers, who'd have thunk?
Gerry Hassan @GerryHassan 26m This is a brilliant article on the @Spectator's plans to trash @MarcusRashford. Looks like @FraserNelson & his pals have been well & truly had. This is the problem when you view the world thru hatred, bile & bigotry. Thank you @deccamitford
The War on Woke situation has developed, not necessarily to the Spectator's advantage.
That laboured, humourless, seventy thousand word article describes an attempt to spoof an illustrious magazine into running an article, but the spoof failed, because the magazine checked the sources. Have I got that right?
WOW
Forget that story, the Spectator is a joke, only bellends who have no grasp on reality write for that magazine these days.
I mean, Covid-19 deniers and spouse beaters like Rod Liddle and Toby Young for starters.
Can anyone think of a third journalist who writes for The Spectator to make it the devil's trifecta?
The Speccie is the oldest weekly magazine in the world, and the most prestigious political magazine in the English speaking world
It does provoke an awful lot of jealousy, as a consequence - usually from people who would saw off their testicles to get an article published within its pages. Such as yourself
Trouble is, the Spectator knows this, so it can be a little smug
I've been published in more august publications than that.
I'd rather saw off my testicle than have an article published by that AIDS/HIV fake news merchant Andrew Neil.
Lolz, hardened, world weary realpolitickers of the Speccie actually big, fat suckers, who'd have thunk?
Gerry Hassan @GerryHassan 26m This is a brilliant article on the @Spectator's plans to trash @MarcusRashford. Looks like @FraserNelson & his pals have been well & truly had. This is the problem when you view the world thru hatred, bile & bigotry. Thank you @deccamitford
The War on Woke situation has developed, not necessarily to the Spectator's advantage.
That laboured, humourless, seventy thousand word article describes an attempt to spoof an illustrious magazine into running an article, but the spoof failed, because the magazine checked the sources. Have I got that right?
WOW
Forget that story, the Spectator is a joke, only bellends who have no grasp on reality write for that magazine these days.
I mean, Covid-19 deniers and spouse beaters like Rod Liddle and Toby Young for starters.
Can anyone think of a third journalist who writes for The Spectator to make it the devil's trifecta?
The Speccie is the oldest weekly magazine in the world, and the most prestigious political magazine in the English speaking world
It does provoke an awful lot of jealousy, as a consequence - usually from people who would saw off their testicles to get an article published within its pages. Such as yourself
Trouble is, the Spectator knows this, so it can be a little smug
You are the writer of Wokeyleaks and I claim my five pounds!
Lolz, hardened, world weary realpolitickers of the Speccie actually big, fat suckers, who'd have thunk?
Gerry Hassan @GerryHassan 26m This is a brilliant article on the @Spectator's plans to trash @MarcusRashford. Looks like @FraserNelson & his pals have been well & truly had. This is the problem when you view the world thru hatred, bile & bigotry. Thank you @deccamitford
The War on Woke situation has developed, not necessarily to the Spectator's advantage.
What it shows is that the Speccy is about as critical as the US Navy concerning explosions in its gun turrets. I mean,. not even checking the bona fides of a journalist leading with an overtly mahooosive story?
They didn't run the story
All credit for bouncing back from the 'no one has heard of burner phones' fiasco.
But we were also left with a new meme: "The Culture" which I shall treasure. Presumably not to be confused with Culture Club.
Anyway, no one in The Culture had heard of burners, or burner phones to use the tautology.
Johnson sings the praises of Margaret Thatcher (!?) because… wait for it… she closed all the Scottish coal mines.
And somebody yesterday suggested that the PM was going to be “delicate” (sic) on his foreign trip.
Is the average 20 year old supposed to think that closing the coal mines was a bad thing?
Anyhow Labour closed more pits and the Tories closed more grammar schools, contrary to wot most people think.
Labour began the process of closing both however, almost all the few remaining grammar schools are in Tory controlled local authorities
I was going to say that there are several in Birmingham, but I note you have changed your post.
Are there? I thought Camp Hill and King Edward's were independent grammar schools now. Although I may be wrong
Warwickshire however retains grammar schools. The sight of Alcester Grammar School students waiting for their bus at Beckett's Island , Wyrhall (in comprehensive Worcestershire) when back in the day we had a first class comprehensive, which is now a money spinning academy, is depressing.
I loved comprehensive school, I hated Ledbury Grammar School, not just because of the selection at 11 outrage, but because the standard of interest in anyone but the top 20 students in each year group was minimal.
Lolz, hardened, world weary realpolitickers of the Speccie actually big, fat suckers, who'd have thunk?
Gerry Hassan @GerryHassan 26m This is a brilliant article on the @Spectator's plans to trash @MarcusRashford. Looks like @FraserNelson & his pals have been well & truly had. This is the problem when you view the world thru hatred, bile & bigotry. Thank you @deccamitford
Looking at the three photos in the header has suddenly made me feel very depressed. I'll leave PB for today and watch something escapist on UKTV or similar.
If the Daily Mail has to put a phrase in inverted commas because it will strike readers as odd and not immediately understandable, then it is safe to say it has not entered the common lexicon. So yeah, you aren't plugged into The Culture or you would sense this
It will be understood by anyone who watches American crime dramas.
As to effective messaging - who knows. It does have a hint of preaching to the fan club, though.
I'm not even sure that is true. And this is partly because, if you google the phrase, there is dispute as to what it means, even for those who use the term
For some it means a non-smart phone that is simply cheap and can be thrown away if it "gets traced"
For others it is a phone that can be easily bought and used with a false identity
For others it is a cheap phone that must have prepaid minutes
And so on.
Therefore Charles is right, even if you have a decent grasp of what a burner phone is (one of these or similar definitions) then it is not clear what charge Labour is making against the government
"Government by burner phone". It reckon it is a line which sounded cool and hip to middle aged people in an ideas meeting, but now withers in embarrassment when it encounters the real world, like one of those deep-water fish in Lake Baikal which explode when they hit the surface
It was used by Joanna Cherry QC in a Select Committee when she was questioning Michael Gove.
A better line, if they want to make the point that the government pays no regard to any rules, would be -
"For this government, friendship, connections, family ties, money are what count. Nothing else."
But people know this and don't care enough about it. So the government will continue behaving in this way until (if) the wind changes.
Johnson sings the praises of Margaret Thatcher (!?) because… wait for it… she closed all the Scottish coal mines.
And somebody yesterday suggested that the PM was going to be “delicate” (sic) on his foreign trip.
Is the average 20 year old supposed to think that closing the coal mines was a bad thing?
Anyhow Labour closed more pits and the Tories closed more grammar schools, contrary to wot most people think.
Don't forget that under Beeching, Labour closed about the same mileage of railways as the Conservatives did. Despite having been elected on a platform of reversing the cuts ...
Lolz, hardened, world weary realpolitickers of the Speccie actually big, fat suckers, who'd have thunk?
Gerry Hassan @GerryHassan 26m This is a brilliant article on the @Spectator's plans to trash @MarcusRashford. Looks like @FraserNelson & his pals have been well & truly had. This is the problem when you view the world thru hatred, bile & bigotry. Thank you @deccamitford
The War on Woke situation has developed, not necessarily to the Spectator's advantage.
That laboured, humourless, seventy thousand word article describes an attempt to spoof an illustrious magazine into running an article, but the spoof failed, because the magazine checked the sources. Have I got that right?
WOW
Forget that story, the Spectator is a joke, only bellends who have no grasp on reality write for that magazine these days.
I mean, Covid-19 deniers and spouse beaters like Rod Liddle and Toby Young for starters.
Can anyone think of a third journalist who writes for The Spectator to make it the devil's trifecta?
The Speccie is the oldest weekly magazine in the world, and the most prestigious political magazine in the English speaking world
It does provoke an awful lot of jealousy, as a consequence - usually from people who would saw off their testicles to get an article published within its pages. Such as yourself
Trouble is, the Spectator knows this, so it can be a little smug
Alas it will now be best known among soccer fans as the employer of smug gullible racists.
Lolz, hardened, world weary realpolitickers of the Speccie actually big, fat suckers, who'd have thunk?
Gerry Hassan @GerryHassan 26m This is a brilliant article on the @Spectator's plans to trash @MarcusRashford. Looks like @FraserNelson & his pals have been well & truly had. This is the problem when you view the world thru hatred, bile & bigotry. Thank you @deccamitford
The War on Woke situation has developed, not necessarily to the Spectator's advantage.
That laboured, humourless, seventy thousand word article describes an attempt to spoof an illustrious magazine into running an article, but the spoof failed, because the magazine checked the sources. Have I got that right?
WOW
Forget that story, the Spectator is a joke, only bellends who have no grasp on reality write for that magazine these days.
I mean, Covid-19 deniers and spouse beaters like Rod Liddle and Toby Young for starters.
Can anyone think of a third journalist who writes for The Spectator to make it the devil's trifecta?
The Speccie is the oldest weekly magazine in the world, and the most prestigious political magazine in the English speaking world
It does provoke an awful lot of jealousy, as a consequence - usually from people who would saw off their testicles to get an article published within its pages. Such as yourself
Trouble is, the Spectator knows this, so it can be a little smug
One of our PB alumni, SeanT., you won't remember him, it was before your time, I believe writes for the Spectator.
Victoria has gone into its sixth lockdown a week after leaving its fifth. What’s the definition of insanity? They are not going to be able to maintain this surely?
- “What’s the definition of insanity?”
Gordon Brown banging on about federalism for the 52,167th time.
I've got a good feeling about the 52,237th time, I think he'll convert you with that one.
More to the point Cummings really is a shit.. dishing his version of dirt and trying to diss their marriage.. nasty, really nasty.
I cannot figure out what his game is. He is apparently making money now, and he'll find stuff to do I am sure, but his chaotic manner of making 'revelations' interspersed with meaningless or personal trivia which just looks strange or petty distracts from any serious points he might be making, which he surely knows, so what's the point?
My understanding of a burner phone is one you buy off the shelf with a new SIM and pay-as-you-go credit already loaded onto it, and bin as soon as you've used it.
Lolz, hardened, world weary realpolitickers of the Speccie actually big, fat suckers, who'd have thunk?
Gerry Hassan @GerryHassan 26m This is a brilliant article on the @Spectator's plans to trash @MarcusRashford. Looks like @FraserNelson & his pals have been well & truly had. This is the problem when you view the world thru hatred, bile & bigotry. Thank you @deccamitford
The War on Woke situation has developed, not necessarily to the Spectator's advantage.
What it shows is that the Speccy is about as critical as the US Navy concerning explosions in its gun turrets. I mean,. not even checking the bona fides of a journalist leading with an overtly mahooosive story?
They didn't run the story
All credit for bouncing back from the 'no one has heard of burner phones' fiasco.
But we were also left with a new meme: "The Culture" which I shall treasure. Presumably not to be confused with Culture Club.
Anyway, no one in The Culture had heard of burners, or burner phones to use the tautology.
It's been awhile since I read a Culture novel, but perhaps they don't use phones in them.
Johnson sings the praises of Margaret Thatcher (!?) because… wait for it… she closed all the Scottish coal mines.
And somebody yesterday suggested that the PM was going to be “delicate” (sic) on his foreign trip.
Is the average 20 year old supposed to think that closing the coal mines was a bad thing?
Anyhow Labour closed more pits and the Tories closed more grammar schools, contrary to wot most people think.
Don't forget that under Beeching, Labour closed about the same mileage of railways as the Conservatives did. Despite having been elected on a platform of reversing the cuts ...
And 'burner' has also appeared in every single Michael Connelly novel for the past decade.
Of course everyone knows what they are.
Who is Michael Connolly?
A best selling trashy novelist, and I mean proper best selling, creator of Harry Bosch. Ok for passing the time on a sun lounger though the series is a bit exhausted now. I prefer Robert Crais in that particular line.
Ah yes, Bosch. I used to devour them on holiday. Ages ago now but I think I recall he was standard 'tough guy with a heart' material but with the quirk that he knocked up a good pasta (and quite often did).
I am now astounded that I used to hang on Patricia Cornwell's every book. The past is indeed a foreign country.
Yep - read those too. Kay Scarpetta. Solid work. And I'm confident of low-browing you off the court with Robert Walker's "Jessica Coran" potboilers. There's no way you would have spent hours with them, but I did.
The Sue Grafton books are my favourite trash. She started writing them in the 80's, and kept on going for decades, still setting them in the 80s. Quite the nostalgia trip.
Ah, heard off but never read any. One of the 1st with a female (private) dick apparently per a quick wiki. And she didn't do a "Z is for ..." for some reason. Stopped at Y.
My son has started reading them, which feels strange.
Wish mine would read ANY books. It's a dying habit, I fear. And I'm just as bad. I get through maybe 5 a year now cf 20 in the past. And that's with being retired cf working, so it ought to have gone the other way. I should be tearing through the oeuvres and genres!
I get through 3-6 per night (depending on whether I'm doing bed time for the three year old with 'big boy' books or the 1 year old with 'baby' books).
And also 10-15 proper grown up books (without pictures) per year. We do the Netflix etc series, but every now and again we get into a reading phase, the telly doesn't go on and we snuggle up with books. Probably why we still haven't finished Game of Thrones or Line of Duty. Compromises have to be made.
Sounds a good balance. Yes unless you're a total powerhouse you cannot stay abreast of all the quality TV drama that there is these days AND read lots of books.
Quite. I stopped bothering with TV at all years ago though I do have some decent DVDs, some still to watch.
Good call for you, I'm sure. One plus for TV drama over books, though, is it can be a shared experience with others in the household, eg wife in my case. It's a thing we do together, watch and process a drama series soup to nuts, talk about it, speculate on plot, opine on characters etc. If we instead had our respective noses in our own respective books, that wouldn't be quite the same.
"Soup to nuts". Very investment banking.
Needs to be put on the same list as p*n**ppl* on p*zz* imo.
Yes sorry it's not a great expression. You won't see it again on here from me.
A vile Americanism ? No doubt the classicists prefer ab ovo usque ad mala.
BJ pressing all the right buttons on his visit north. For clarity, the Evening Times is a bog standard local evening paper, pretty apolitical and certainly not nationalist.
BJ pressing all the right buttons on his visit north. For clarity, the Evening Times is a bog standard local evening paper, pretty apolitical and certainly not nationalist.
Lolz, hardened, world weary realpolitickers of the Speccie actually big, fat suckers, who'd have thunk?
Gerry Hassan @GerryHassan 26m This is a brilliant article on the @Spectator's plans to trash @MarcusRashford. Looks like @FraserNelson & his pals have been well & truly had. This is the problem when you view the world thru hatred, bile & bigotry. Thank you @deccamitford
The War on Woke situation has developed, not necessarily to the Spectator's advantage.
What it shows is that the Speccy is about as critical as the US Navy concerning explosions in its gun turrets. I mean,. not even checking the bona fides of a journalist leading with an overtly mahooosive story?
They didn't run the story
All credit for bouncing back from the 'no one has heard of burner phones' fiasco.
But we were also left with a new meme: "The Culture" which I shall treasure. Presumably not to be confused with Culture Club.
Anyway, no one in The Culture had heard of burners, or burner phones to use the tautology.
I'm quite happy that things are moving sufficiently fast that all the crap which went under the banner of Culture with a big c in recent years is basically flushed away. I'm less happy about the noddy crap that seems likely to replace it.
BJ pressing all the right buttons on his visit north. For clarity, the Evening Times is a bog standard local evening paper, pretty apolitical and certainly not nationalist.
Well, that's done for a fair chunk of the supposed Labour tactical voting for Tories in Lothian, Lanarkshire, etc. etc. I mean, they still have MIners' Welfare and Social Clubs all over the place.
Supreme Leader Boris is a dunderheid? Don’t tell FUDHY.
I am not a miner and don't come from a mining family directly (though my great uncle was a driver on a winding engine). I know all about the energy and efficiency and global warming arguments but they don't change the political importance of his comments. Remember that Scotland was then a satrapy and many strikers were prosecuted at the time - many feel unjustly.
I'm interested by the view that entire realms of voters can be both personally alienated and utterly ignored by the Tories just because they don't vote Tory.
Do we not have 'one nation' Tories any more? And what happens when the smaller and smaller core vote crumbles?
It's not just the racial attitudes of the 19thC that the US right are embracing...
Florida woman who's an antimasker "wants to promote health the way her generation’s grandparents experienced it. 'When they got sick, they didn’t need the crutch of pharmaceuticals or antibiotics to get better. They just got sick and they got well.'” https://twitter.com/BGrueskin/status/1422760495631716353
(Though it should be noted that vaccination of sorts was a thing back then, too.)
What's particularly funny about that (apart from the obvious point that when they got sick, a lot of them died) is that the loony Florida woman's lawsuit is about the wearing of masks on planes. I mean, if she wants to be like her grandparents' generation, why the hell is she flying anywhere in the first place?
My grandparents flew to the south of France for their honeymoon…
My grandparents lived in Derby. Just before the war, they bought a small cottage in Twyford, on the Trent, to holiday in. The cottage, which they used for holidays and weekends away, is about five miles from the city centre. AFAIAA, they did not have a car, and that five miles was as far as they could practically get with any regularity, given they had one kid and my dad on the way.
Oddly enough, many of my family still live within a few miles of there, and I was born just a mile away, right by the Trent and Mersey Canal.
Growing up in Devon I knew people for whom a trip to Bristol was a once in a lifetime event, and the furthest they ever went from home.
I'd love to see it again, but back in the early 1990's there was a segment on TV news in London about a woman in her eighties who had never left the Isle of Dogs. All through the roaring twenties, the depression, the war, the swinging sixties; she had remained on the isle. Despite it's wonderful transport links (even in the seventies and eighties), she had never been tempted out.
ISTR she was taken into the city to see shows and meet someone important.
This column in the ever-entertaining 'Guardian Experiences' column is purportedly about a man who eats the same dinner every day but is really about his love of the Welsh valley he lives in: And has left precisely once in his life, 30 years ago, for a trip to a different farm.
I think there's something about farmers. A distant relative of mine was born, raised, and lives on, a farm. For nearly thirty years he has worked in the nearest city, about ten miles away. A few years back another relative got a phone call from him. He was in tears as he had two routes into work, and both were blocked off for roadworks.
There were plenty of diversionary routes (it is in the Midlands), but the thought of using a different route had driven him to tears.
Perhaps it is because farmers are used to a regular rhythm, both through the day and the year.
A friend of mine in Portsmouth took her grandmother to London for a significant birthday (80th, 90th, something like that) ten years ago. As the train went under the A27, grandma said it was the first time she'd ever left Portsea Island. Said the island had everything she needed. London was apparently alright - but she wasn't bothered about going again.
I was doing a locum in Cornwall some years ago, and saw a farmer patient in his eighties. I asked him when he had first noticed symptoms. He said 1948, but had been rather busy.
He had left Cornwall once, to go to an agricultural show in Dorset, but he said that he couldn't enjoy it as he was worried about his cattle.
I envy people with such attachment to place, much as I love my adopted city.
Overheard in the local post office by my parents on the Llyn Perninsula in North Wales, circa 1998...the topic of conversation, the Euro. Little old lady (in Welsh) "Well, even if they have it in London, I don't think it will ever make it down here".
Lolz, hardened, world weary realpolitickers of the Speccie actually big, fat suckers, who'd have thunk?
Gerry Hassan @GerryHassan 26m This is a brilliant article on the @Spectator's plans to trash @MarcusRashford. Looks like @FraserNelson & his pals have been well & truly had. This is the problem when you view the world thru hatred, bile & bigotry. Thank you @deccamitford
The War on Woke situation has developed, not necessarily to the Spectator's advantage.
That is truly hilarious. What fools these Spectator writers are!
I have no dog in this fight, but that magazine has boasted some amazing writers in its 2 centuries of publication.
Douglas Murray went through ALL 200 years of them and chose the four best articles ever. And, when you read them, it is hard not to sit back with a certain awed, dumbstruck admiration. Just pure journalistic genius. The kind of stuff you cannot fake.
Occasionally, one simply has to stand, and applaud.
Lolz, hardened, world weary realpolitickers of the Speccie actually big, fat suckers, who'd have thunk?
Gerry Hassan @GerryHassan 26m This is a brilliant article on the @Spectator's plans to trash @MarcusRashford. Looks like @FraserNelson & his pals have been well & truly had. This is the problem when you view the world thru hatred, bile & bigotry. Thank you @deccamitford
The War on Woke situation has developed, not necessarily to the Spectator's advantage.
That laboured, humourless, seventy thousand word article describes an attempt to spoof an illustrious magazine into running an article, but the spoof failed, because the magazine checked the sources. Have I got that right?
WOW
Forget that story, the Spectator is a joke, only bellends who have no grasp on reality write for that magazine these days.
I mean, Covid-19 deniers and spouse beaters like Rod Liddle and Toby Young for starters.
Can anyone think of a third journalist who writes for The Spectator to make it the devil's trifecta?
The Speccie is the oldest weekly magazine in the world, and the most prestigious political magazine in the English speaking world
It does provoke an awful lot of jealousy, as a consequence - usually from people who would saw off their testicles to get an article published within its pages. Such as yourself
Trouble is, the Spectator knows this, so it can be a little smug
I've been published in more august publications than that.
I'd rather saw off my testicle than have an article published by that AIDS/HIV fake news merchant Andrew Neil.
Maybe you only get published in August publications because that's when all the proper writers are on holiday?
Lolz, hardened, world weary realpolitickers of the Speccie actually big, fat suckers, who'd have thunk?
Gerry Hassan @GerryHassan 26m This is a brilliant article on the @Spectator's plans to trash @MarcusRashford. Looks like @FraserNelson & his pals have been well & truly had. This is the problem when you view the world thru hatred, bile & bigotry. Thank you @deccamitford
The War on Woke situation has developed, not necessarily to the Spectator's advantage.
That is truly hilarious. What fools these Spectator writers are!
I have no dog in this fight, but that magazine has boasted some amazing writers in its 2 centuries of publication.
Douglas Murray went through ALL 200 years of them and chose the four best articles ever. And, when you read them, it is hard not to sit back with a certain awed, dumbstruck admiration. Just pure journalistic genius. The kind of stuff you cannot fake.
Occasionally, one simply has to stand, and applaud.
The wanking addiction story I remember from when it was first published. I did wonder even then about the morality of the magazine publishing something from someone so obviously troubled. I hope the author found some help.
Lolz, hardened, world weary realpolitickers of the Speccie actually big, fat suckers, who'd have thunk?
Gerry Hassan @GerryHassan 26m This is a brilliant article on the @Spectator's plans to trash @MarcusRashford. Looks like @FraserNelson & his pals have been well & truly had. This is the problem when you view the world thru hatred, bile & bigotry. Thank you @deccamitford
The War on Woke situation has developed, not necessarily to the Spectator's advantage.
That laboured, humourless, seventy thousand word article describes an attempt to spoof an illustrious magazine into running an article, but the spoof failed, because the magazine checked the sources. Have I got that right?
WOW
Forget that story, the Spectator is a joke, only bellends who have no grasp on reality write for that magazine these days.
I mean, Covid-19 deniers and spouse beaters like Rod Liddle and Toby Young for starters.
Can anyone think of a third journalist who writes for The Spectator to make it the devil's trifecta?
The Speccie is the oldest weekly magazine in the world, and the most prestigious political magazine in the English speaking world
It does provoke an awful lot of jealousy, as a consequence - usually from people who would saw off their testicles to get an article published within its pages. Such as yourself
Trouble is, the Spectator knows this, so it can be a little smug
I've been published in more august publications than that.
I'd rather saw off my testicle than have an article published by that AIDS/HIV fake news merchant Andrew Neil.
Maybe you only get published in August publications because that's when all the proper writers are on holiday?
Lolz, hardened, world weary realpolitickers of the Speccie actually big, fat suckers, who'd have thunk?
Gerry Hassan @GerryHassan 26m This is a brilliant article on the @Spectator's plans to trash @MarcusRashford. Looks like @FraserNelson & his pals have been well & truly had. This is the problem when you view the world thru hatred, bile & bigotry. Thank you @deccamitford
The War on Woke situation has developed, not necessarily to the Spectator's advantage.
That is truly hilarious. What fools these Spectator writers are!
I have no dog in this fight, but that magazine has boasted some amazing writers in its 2 centuries of publication.
Douglas Murray went through ALL 200 years of them and chose the four best articles ever. And, when you read them, it is hard not to sit back with a certain awed, dumbstruck admiration. Just pure journalistic genius. The kind of stuff you cannot fake.
Occasionally, one simply has to stand, and applaud.
The wanking addiction story I remember from when it was first published. I did wonder even then about the morality of the magazine publishing something from someone so obviously troubled. I hope the author found some help.
I don't know if he found "help", but I have heard he found an agent
Johnson sings the praises of Margaret Thatcher (!?) because… wait for it… she closed all the Scottish coal mines.
And somebody yesterday suggested that the PM was going to be “delicate” (sic) on his foreign trip.
Is the average 20 year old supposed to think that closing the coal mines was a bad thing?
Anyhow Labour closed more pits and the Tories closed more grammar schools, contrary to wot most people think.
Labour began the process of closing both however, almost all the few remaining grammar schools are in Tory controlled local authorities
I was going to say that there are several in Birmingham, but I note you have changed your post.
Are there? I thought Camp Hill and King Edward's were independent grammar schools now. Although I may be wrong
Warwickshire however retains grammar schools. The sight of Alcester Grammar School students waiting for their bus at Beckett's Island , Wyrhall (in comprehensive Worcestershire) when back in the day we had a first class comprehensive, which is now a money spinning academy, is depressing.
I loved comprehensive school, I hated Ledbury Grammar School, not just because of the selection at 11 outrage, but because the standard of interest in anyone but the top 20 students in each year group was minimal.
Lolz, hardened, world weary realpolitickers of the Speccie actually big, fat suckers, who'd have thunk?
Gerry Hassan @GerryHassan 26m This is a brilliant article on the @Spectator's plans to trash @MarcusRashford. Looks like @FraserNelson & his pals have been well & truly had. This is the problem when you view the world thru hatred, bile & bigotry. Thank you @deccamitford
The War on Woke situation has developed, not necessarily to the Spectator's advantage.
That laboured, humourless, seventy thousand word article describes an attempt to spoof an illustrious magazine into running an article, but the spoof failed, because the magazine checked the sources. Have I got that right?
WOW
Forget that story, the Spectator is a joke, only bellends who have no grasp on reality write for that magazine these days.
I mean, Covid-19 deniers and spouse beaters like Rod Liddle and Toby Young for starters.
Can anyone think of a third journalist who writes for The Spectator to make it the devil's trifecta?
The Speccie is the oldest weekly magazine in the world, and the most prestigious political magazine in the English speaking world
It does provoke an awful lot of jealousy, as a consequence - usually from people who would saw off their testicles to get an article published within its pages. Such as yourself
Trouble is, the Spectator knows this, so it can be a little smug
And so another exquisite summer evening, sapphire and cerise, humming with the wings of the linnet, draws to a soft, sweetening close like the coda of a wonderful yet forgotten hymn
NOT
Don’t know how it was in the smoke but in the sticks it was a delight all day until about 5.
And 'burner' has also appeared in every single Michael Connelly novel for the past decade.
Of course everyone knows what they are.
Who is Michael Connolly?
A best selling trashy novelist, and I mean proper best selling, creator of Harry Bosch. Ok for passing the time on a sun lounger though the series is a bit exhausted now. I prefer Robert Crais in that particular line.
Ah yes, Bosch. I used to devour them on holiday. Ages ago now but I think I recall he was standard 'tough guy with a heart' material but with the quirk that he knocked up a good pasta (and quite often did).
I am now astounded that I used to hang on Patricia Cornwell's every book. The past is indeed a foreign country.
Yep - read those too. Kay Scarpetta. Solid work. And I'm confident of low-browing you off the court with Robert Walker's "Jessica Coran" potboilers. There's no way you would have spent hours with them, but I did.
The Sue Grafton books are my favourite trash. She started writing them in the 80's, and kept on going for decades, still setting them in the 80s. Quite the nostalgia trip.
Och, I'd put them a level above trash, I've reread a few of them which is my personal seal of approval. There's a strand of quality thriller/tec writing (mainly US) which goes back probably to the 50s, Ross McDonald, Tony Hillerman, Laurence Block, Sarah Paretsky, that I'd put in the 'decent' folder. Chandler and Hammett had a very good influence I think.
Arthur Hailey books are fantastic but he’s largely forgot these days.
Make a novel out of a snowstorm at an airport or the election of a new chairman of the board at a drug company…
Lolz, hardened, world weary realpolitickers of the Speccie actually big, fat suckers, who'd have thunk?
Gerry Hassan @GerryHassan 26m This is a brilliant article on the @Spectator's plans to trash @MarcusRashford. Looks like @FraserNelson & his pals have been well & truly had. This is the problem when you view the world thru hatred, bile & bigotry. Thank you @deccamitford
The War on Woke situation has developed, not necessarily to the Spectator's advantage.
What it shows is that the Speccy is about as critical as the US Navy concerning explosions in its gun turrets. I mean,. not even checking the bona fides of a journalist leading with an overtly mahooosive story?
They didn't run the story
All credit for bouncing back from the 'no one has heard of burner phones' fiasco.
But we were also left with a new meme: "The Culture" which I shall treasure. Presumably not to be confused with Culture Club.
Anyway, no one in The Culture had heard of burners, or burner phones to use the tautology.
It's been awhile since I read a Culture novel, but perhaps they don't use phones in them.
Pretty sure the heroine of Use of Weapons buys and uses one at some stage.
Johnson sings the praises of Margaret Thatcher (!?) because… wait for it… she closed all the Scottish coal mines.
And somebody yesterday suggested that the PM was going to be “delicate” (sic) on his foreign trip.
Is the average 20 year old supposed to think that closing the coal mines was a bad thing?
Anyhow Labour closed more pits and the Tories closed more grammar schools, contrary to wot most people think.
Labour began the process of closing both however, almost all the few remaining grammar schools are in Tory controlled local authorities
I was going to say that there are several in Birmingham, but I note you have changed your post.
Are there? I thought Camp Hill and King Edward's were independent grammar schools now. Although I may be wrong
Warwickshire however retains grammar schools. The sight of Alcester Grammar School students waiting for their bus at Beckett's Island , Wyrhall (in comprehensive Worcestershire) when back in the day we had a first class comprehensive, which is now a money spinning academy, is depressing.
I loved comprehensive school, I hated Ledbury Grammar School, not just because of the selection at 11 outrage, but because the standard of interest in anyone but the top 20 students in each year group was minimal.
I guess there was a key window during which an authority had to avoid a Labour administration, the cross party line seems to have long been to maintain the status quo on whatever grammar schools there are - even before academisation took its out of their hands. Thus grammars in Lancashire, Kirklees, Calderdale and, erm, Liverpool.
Johnson sings the praises of Margaret Thatcher (!?) because… wait for it… she closed all the Scottish coal mines.
And somebody yesterday suggested that the PM was going to be “delicate” (sic) on his foreign trip.
Is the average 20 year old supposed to think that closing the coal mines was a bad thing?
Anyhow Labour closed more pits and the Tories closed more grammar schools, contrary to wot most people think.
Labour began the process of closing both however, almost all the few remaining grammar schools are in Tory controlled local authorities
I was going to say that there are several in Birmingham, but I note you have changed your post.
Are there? I thought Camp Hill and King Edward's were independent grammar schools now. Although I may be wrong
Warwickshire however retains grammar schools. The sight of Alcester Grammar School students waiting for their bus at Beckett's Island , Wyrhall (in comprehensive Worcestershire) when back in the day we had a first class comprehensive, which is now a money spinning academy, is depressing.
I loved comprehensive school, I hated Ledbury Grammar School, not just because of the selection at 11 outrage, but because the standard of interest in anyone but the top 20 students in each year group was minimal.
After Hereford and Worcester went comprehensive (I was the second non-11 plus taking year in the Redditch area) all the super clever kids in Hollywood and Wythall, where I lived would take the entrance exams for King Edwards or Camp Hill, some tried in conjunction with the 11 plus in earlier years...very, very few got in.
The fact King Edwards's is now an academy doesn't cheer me up.
Johnson sings the praises of Margaret Thatcher (!?) because… wait for it… she closed all the Scottish coal mines.
And somebody yesterday suggested that the PM was going to be “delicate” (sic) on his foreign trip.
Is the average 20 year old supposed to think that closing the coal mines was a bad thing?
Anyhow Labour closed more pits and the Tories closed more grammar schools, contrary to wot most people think.
Labour began the process of closing both however, almost all the few remaining grammar schools are in Tory controlled local authorities
I was going to say that there are several in Birmingham, but I note you have changed your post.
Are there? I thought Camp Hill and King Edward's were independent grammar schools now. Although I may be wrong
Warwickshire however retains grammar schools. The sight of Alcester Grammar School students waiting for their bus at Beckett's Island , Wyrhall (in comprehensive Worcestershire) when back in the day we had a first class comprehensive, which is now a money spinning academy, is depressing.
I loved comprehensive school, I hated Ledbury Grammar School, not just because of the selection at 11 outrage, but because the standard of interest in anyone but the top 20 students in each year group was minimal.
I guess there was a key window during which an authority had to avoid a Labour administration, the cross party line seems to have long been to maintain the status quo on whatever grammar schools there are - even before academisation took its out of their hands. Thus grammars in Lancashire, Kirklees, Calderdale and, erm, Liverpool.
Derek Hatton tried to close Liverpool Bluecoat in the 1980s ("too middle class") but it was somehow saved by the government. It was single sex at the time (and had a few boarders, mostly forces children) but I believe it has dropped the boarding now and has gone co-educational. Still getting decent results though...
Johnson sings the praises of Margaret Thatcher (!?) because… wait for it… she closed all the Scottish coal mines.
And somebody yesterday suggested that the PM was going to be “delicate” (sic) on his foreign trip.
Is the average 20 year old supposed to think that closing the coal mines was a bad thing?
Anyhow Labour closed more pits and the Tories closed more grammar schools, contrary to wot most people think.
Labour began the process of closing both however, almost all the few remaining grammar schools are in Tory controlled local authorities
I was going to say that there are several in Birmingham, but I note you have changed your post.
Are there? I thought Camp Hill and King Edward's were independent grammar schools now. Although I may be wrong
Warwickshire however retains grammar schools. The sight of Alcester Grammar School students waiting for their bus at Beckett's Island , Wyrhall (in comprehensive Worcestershire) when back in the day we had a first class comprehensive, which is now a money spinning academy, is depressing.
I loved comprehensive school, I hated Ledbury Grammar School, not just because of the selection at 11 outrage, but because the standard of interest in anyone but the top 20 students in each year group was minimal.
After Hereford and Worcester went comprehensive (I was the second non-11 plus taking year in the Redditch area) all the super clever kids in Hollywood and Wythall, where I lived would take the entrance exams for King Edwards or Camp Hill, some tried in conjunction with the 11 plus in earlier years...very, very few got in.
The fact King Edwards's is now an academy doesn't cheer me up.
Truthfully, I wasn’t expecting it to. I was just confirming they were still state schools. I think you may have been getting confused with King Edward’s in Edgbaston, which does consist of two independent schools.
Johnson sings the praises of Margaret Thatcher (!?) because… wait for it… she closed all the Scottish coal mines.
And somebody yesterday suggested that the PM was going to be “delicate” (sic) on his foreign trip.
Is the average 20 year old supposed to think that closing the coal mines was a bad thing?
Anyhow Labour closed more pits and the Tories closed more grammar schools, contrary to wot most people think.
Labour began the process of closing both however, almost all the few remaining grammar schools are in Tory controlled local authorities
I was going to say that there are several in Birmingham, but I note you have changed your post.
Are there? I thought Camp Hill and King Edward's were independent grammar schools now. Although I may be wrong
Warwickshire however retains grammar schools. The sight of Alcester Grammar School students waiting for their bus at Beckett's Island , Wyrhall (in comprehensive Worcestershire) when back in the day we had a first class comprehensive, which is now a money spinning academy, is depressing.
I loved comprehensive school, I hated Ledbury Grammar School, not just because of the selection at 11 outrage, but because the standard of interest in anyone but the top 20 students in each year group was minimal.
After Hereford and Worcester went comprehensive (I was the second non-11 plus taking year in the Redditch area) all the super clever kids in Hollywood and Wythall, where I lived would take the entrance exams for King Edwards or Camp Hill, some tried in conjunction with the 11 plus in earlier years...very, very few got in.
The fact King Edwards's is now an academy doesn't cheer me up.
Truthfully, I wasn’t expecting it to. I was just confirming they were still state schools. I think you may have been getting confused with King Edward’s in Edgbaston, which does consist of two independent schools.
Yes, I was differentiating King Edward's from King Edward's Camp Hill. Both were prestigious back in the late sixties and early seventies. I left Wythall for Ledbury in 1976, which is a very, very, very long time ago. Much may have changed in almost half a century.
Comments
https://highlandspring.com/
And I suspect confusion may have been caused by a certain B. Johnson's scheme to drain water from Scotland so the denizens of Croydon etc could fill their swimming pools without SE Water fixing the mains leaks (I paraphrase, but you get the gist).
I'm now sounding like @Leon - God help me !!
Buy up in Totegan - you'll make a fortune.
He had left Cornwall once, to go to an agricultural show in Dorset, but he said that he couldn't enjoy it as he was worried about his cattle.
I envy people with such attachment to place, much as I love my adopted city.
NOT
https://www.gov.scot/news/consultation-on-miners-strike-pardon/
I'm interested by the view that entire realms of voters can be both personally alienated and utterly ignored by the Tories just because they don't vote Tory.
Do we not have 'one nation' Tories any more? And what happens when the smaller and smaller core vote crumbles?
(This is not meant entirely seriously.)
The problem with the closing of the coal mines is that there was nothing done to replace the industry and large chunks of the country just had nothing to bring in jobs.
We will challenge all of those committed to maximum extraction of oil and gas from the North Sea because we know that avoiding dangerous climate change means that the majority of fossil fuels must remain in the ground... Only the Greens are standing up for our common future, against the vested interests and dirty money of the fossil fuel industry.'
https://www.heraldscotland.com/opinion/17279886.patrick-harvie-greens-go-fight-greenhouse-gases/
WOW
I stayed a few days with a lovely woman who kept worrying that "the bonxies are eating the placenta". She kept sheep
I met basically everyone on the island (it's not hard), amongst them was a wonderfully sweet old lady, with pics of the Queen on her sideboard and a plate full of shortbread, she was about 90 and she revealed that she had been off Foula just once in her life
I mean, Covid-19 deniers and spouse beaters like Rod Liddle and Toby Young for starters.
Can anyone think of a third journalist who writes for The Spectator to make it the devil's trifecta?
By the end I was wondering if the Wokeyleaks character was actually winding up the author. Something doesn't quite fit
It does provoke an awful lot of jealousy, as a consequence - usually from people who would saw off their testicles to get an article published within its pages. Such as yourself
Trouble is, the Spectator knows this, so it can be a little smug
I'd rather saw off my testicle than have an article published by that AIDS/HIV fake news merchant Andrew Neil.
But we were also left with a new meme: "The Culture" which I shall treasure. Presumably not to be confused with Culture Club.
Anyway, no one in The Culture had heard of burners, or burner phones to use the tautology.
Warwickshire however retains grammar schools. The sight of Alcester Grammar School students waiting for their bus at Beckett's Island , Wyrhall (in comprehensive Worcestershire) when back in the day we had a first class comprehensive, which is now a money spinning academy, is depressing.
I loved comprehensive school, I hated Ledbury Grammar School, not just because of the selection at 11 outrage, but because the standard of interest in anyone but the top 20 students in each year group was minimal.
A better line, if they want to make the point that the government pays no regard to any rules, would be -
"For this government, friendship, connections, family ties, money are what count. Nothing else."
But people know this and don't care enough about it. So the government will continue behaving in this way until (if) the wind changes.
No doubt the classicists prefer ab ovo usque ad mala.
Douglas Murray went through ALL 200 years of them and chose the four best articles ever. And, when you read them, it is hard not to sit back with a certain awed, dumbstruck admiration. Just pure journalistic genius. The kind of stuff you cannot fake.
Occasionally, one simply has to stand, and applaud.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/four-of-the-best-spectator-pieces-i-ve-ever-read
@Omnium over to you presumably.
New Thread
https://www.schoolsofkingedwardvi.co.uk/academy-trust/
Make a novel out of a snowstorm at an airport or the election of a new chairman of the board at a drug company…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_grammar_schools_in_England?wprov=sfla1
After Hereford and Worcester went comprehensive (I was the second non-11 plus taking year in the Redditch area) all the super clever kids in Hollywood and Wythall, where I lived would take the entrance exams for King Edwards or Camp Hill, some tried in conjunction with the 11 plus in earlier years...very, very few got in.
The fact King Edwards's is now an academy doesn't cheer me up.