Mr. kle4, that seems horrendously unfair on Schleu.
Randomly assigning horses just seems wrong.
But it's part of the whole point of the sport, I'd assume. Maybe giving them the day before hand to acquaint with the horse would be better?
It is based on grabbing hold of a random horse on the battlefield and having to ride it.
Yes indeed. I think given the potential risk to a rider giving them a little more time, still with a random horse, would be a fair compromise without jeopardising the spirit of the event though. I don't know how easy it is to assess a horse's temperament, but they presumably are't just putting in any old mad or stringy nag, so it's already not totally random.
Marshal Ney would have been great at the event, I believe he had four horses killed under him at Waterloo.
There are at least a couple of competitors who'd happily have despatched their mounts...
I thought Schleu was very rough with the horse to be honest. She'd have been thrown out of a proper equestrian event for treating it like that.
She should have given up earlier.
The event is a bit daft though. Replace horses with mountain bikes?
Modern cavalry use either tanks or helicopters: either of those would be much more in the spirit of the original.
Depends what you mean by modern. I was staggered to learn Hitler sent 400,000 horses into Poland in 1939, and that one of the intractable problems with Operation Sealion was the need to get as many or more, across the channel.
Edit though transport of course, rather than cavalry. Presumably.
The British Expeditionary Force in 1940 was the worlds first completely mechanised army - no horses, just trucks etc.
IIRC the Germans never managed to completely mechanise even their Panzer divisions....
When the Germans invaded Russia they took a six figure number of horses with them, few of which returned.
All lived happily ever after on collective farms I believe..
One of my questions in my dim and distant Higher history was could a German invasion of Britain have succeeded, I was very pleased with myself to pop out the Heer’s high dependency on horse flesh as evidence of them being a bit crap. Thinking on it now, horses, particularly in the east, might have been an advantage: mobile in challenging conditions, not as dependent as petrol vehicles on very stretched supply lines, can be eaten in extremis.
Striking for how long many armies had horses on the books. I saw an equine anti radiation suit and mask displayed in the military museum in Valencia.
My grandfather was in a cavalry regiment as late as 1941.
And when the Shropshire Yeomanry were mechanised, he switched to the Warwickshires so he could keep his horse, a lovely black called Peaceful.
Then of course the Warwickshires were mechanised too and Peaceful had to be sold, to somebody there in Syria. He was always very sad about it.
Edit - when I was at uni one of my fellow postgrads wrote a dissertation on horse procurement in WW1. Reading through back copies of Horse and Hound, he came across a letter in about 1925 where a colonel decried mechanisation and declared horses were superior because, ‘at the end of a long day you can get a horse to lie down, roll over and then sit on its belly to have your cigarette.’
Mr. Divvie, no, although you're right to imply that the Western Roman Empire didn't have stirrups (I think they were invented in China either just before or shortly after the West fell).
The Numidians were fantastic for Hannibal, and the Romans had tremendous trouble against cataphracts, especially at Carrhae. For cataphracts think a man, fully clad in armour, on a horse, fully clad in armour. The charges (1st century BC) destroyed what was left of Crassus' forces after the Parthian cavalry archers had substantially weakened the army.
To be fair, the Poles had a lot of horses and so did the Soviets early on.
Small aside: Roman cavalry was notable for being rubbish for most of history compared to an excellent infantry (in the West, at least).
Wasn’t the invention of the stirrup the great step change between horses being a military taxi service and becoming a potent weapon of war?
Yes. Chariots were the business as weapons, mind. One of the quirks of the Iliad is that the author had heard of chariots but hadn't a clue what they were for, so warriors quite literally use them as taxis: drive from Troy to battlefield, dismount, fight on foot, remount and pootle off back to Troy.
To be fair, the Poles had a lot of horses and so did the Soviets early on.
Small aside: Roman cavalry was notable for being rubbish for most of history compared to an excellent infantry (in the West, at least).
Wasn’t the invention of the stirrup the great step change between horses being a military taxi service and becoming a potent weapon of war?
More about making it possible for someone who wasn't living on horseback since they could walk to become useful on a battlefield.
This is something even some historians have trouble with. You can train people to ride a horse down the road easy enough. To train them to actually charge around a battlefield doing stuff is much, much harder. Doing it without stirrups....
Stephen Bush of the Staggers's daily email has been commenting on the contrast re Mrs T and Mr J - an extract:
"If you want to actually tackle the climate crisis, you have to be willing to do big and radical things that upset people, and that do, in the short term at least, create some losers [...]
Our Prime Minister is very far from being willing to level with the public about that (to 'tell the truth', as Extinction Rebellion puts it) and further still from being willing to tell the public that this might involve some difficult or radical changes to how we live. Again, that is very far from how Margaret Thatcher approached any issue, including climate change.
But the biggest problem we face, and the one our politicians should be angriest about, isn't that Boris Johnson makes jokes about British mining. It's that it is frankly impossible to imagine him doing something as big or as significant in the fight to tackle the climate crisis today."
But its not true.
We don't need radical change in how we live. We need radical change in our technologies we use.
We need to switch from petrol cars to electric cars; we do not need to abandon driving. We need to switch from dirty electricity to clean electricity; we do not need to stop using electricity. We need to switch from jet oil to clean jet zero aircraft; we do not need to stop flying.
The hairshirt environmentalists are wrong. Science and technology are the solution, not economic vandalism. Something that both Thatcher and Johnson could both equally grasp.
He precedes that with
"All too often, Johnson's climate change strategy is essentially 'everyone should have their own electric car': a solution that is neither possible (there aren't enough rare earth materials in the world to replace every car currently in use in the UK) nor adequate (cars don't just produce emissions when they are driven, but also when they are constructed)."
What a ridiculous statement: it would be trivial for the UK (if it were only the UK) to replace all vehicles with electric ones by 2030. In a normal year, 2.3-2.4m cars are sold in the UK, compared to a global electric car market of around 3.5 million units (excluding PHEV) this year.
Not only that, but the number of EVs sold is increasing by 40+% per year. Now, sure, that might slow. But the share of the market that is EV/PHEV is going in exactly one direction. And by the early 2030s - irrespective of government action - the majority of cars sold are going to be EV/PHEV.
You are forgetting that two groups don't want this - big oil (and their fan club) and the watermelon Greens
Indeed, they have a massive aversion to the concept of private transport, whether it’s EV or IC powered.
A traffic jam made up of EVs is still a traffic jam.
The free-market fundamentalists who keep telling everyone to keep sticking their heads further in the sand are the worst criminals of all.
Stephen Bush of the Staggers's daily email has been commenting on the contrast re Mrs T and Mr J - an extract:
"If you want to actually tackle the climate crisis, you have to be willing to do big and radical things that upset people, and that do, in the short term at least, create some losers [...]
Our Prime Minister is very far from being willing to level with the public about that (to 'tell the truth', as Extinction Rebellion puts it) and further still from being willing to tell the public that this might involve some difficult or radical changes to how we live. Again, that is very far from how Margaret Thatcher approached any issue, including climate change.
But the biggest problem we face, and the one our politicians should be angriest about, isn't that Boris Johnson makes jokes about British mining. It's that it is frankly impossible to imagine him doing something as big or as significant in the fight to tackle the climate crisis today."
But its not true.
We don't need radical change in how we live. We need radical change in our technologies we use.
We need to switch from petrol cars to electric cars; we do not need to abandon driving. We need to switch from dirty electricity to clean electricity; we do not need to stop using electricity. We need to switch from jet oil to clean jet zero aircraft; we do not need to stop flying.
The hairshirt environmentalists are wrong. Science and technology are the solution, not economic vandalism. Something that both Thatcher and Johnson could both equally grasp.
He precedes that with
"All too often, Johnson's climate change strategy is essentially 'everyone should have their own electric car': a solution that is neither possible (there aren't enough rare earth materials in the world to replace every car currently in use in the UK) nor adequate (cars don't just produce emissions when they are driven, but also when they are constructed)."
What a ridiculous statement: it would be trivial for the UK (if it were only the UK) to replace all vehicles with electric ones by 2030. In a normal year, 2.3-2.4m cars are sold in the UK, compared to a global electric car market of around 3.5 million units (excluding PHEV) this year.
Not only that, but the number of EVs sold is increasing by 40+% per year. Now, sure, that might slow. But the share of the market that is EV/PHEV is going in exactly one direction. And by the early 2030s - irrespective of government action - the majority of cars sold are going to be EV/PHEV.
You are forgetting that two groups don't want this - big oil (and their fan club) and the watermelon Greens
Indeed, they have a massive aversion to the concept of private transport, whether it’s EV or IC powered.
A traffic jam made up of EVs is still a traffic jam.
The free-market fundamentalists who keep telling everyone to keep sticking their heads further in the sand are the worst criminals of all.
A traffic jam is not the end of the world. Though certainly building more and better roads can help ameliorate traffic issues.
But personal transport is one of the greatest inventions of the modern world. Zealots aren't going to convince people to give up on private transportation.
Stephen Bush of the Staggers's daily email has been commenting on the contrast re Mrs T and Mr J - an extract:
"If you want to actually tackle the climate crisis, you have to be willing to do big and radical things that upset people, and that do, in the short term at least, create some losers [...]
Our Prime Minister is very far from being willing to level with the public about that (to 'tell the truth', as Extinction Rebellion puts it) and further still from being willing to tell the public that this might involve some difficult or radical changes to how we live. Again, that is very far from how Margaret Thatcher approached any issue, including climate change.
But the biggest problem we face, and the one our politicians should be angriest about, isn't that Boris Johnson makes jokes about British mining. It's that it is frankly impossible to imagine him doing something as big or as significant in the fight to tackle the climate crisis today."
But its not true.
We don't need radical change in how we live. We need radical change in our technologies we use.
We need to switch from petrol cars to electric cars; we do not need to abandon driving. We need to switch from dirty electricity to clean electricity; we do not need to stop using electricity. We need to switch from jet oil to clean jet zero aircraft; we do not need to stop flying.
The hairshirt environmentalists are wrong. Science and technology are the solution, not economic vandalism. Something that both Thatcher and Johnson could both equally grasp.
He precedes that with
"All too often, Johnson's climate change strategy is essentially 'everyone should have their own electric car': a solution that is neither possible (there aren't enough rare earth materials in the world to replace every car currently in use in the UK) nor adequate (cars don't just produce emissions when they are driven, but also when they are constructed)."
What a ridiculous statement: it would be trivial for the UK (if it were only the UK) to replace all vehicles with electric ones by 2030. In a normal year, 2.3-2.4m cars are sold in the UK, compared to a global electric car market of around 3.5 million units (excluding PHEV) this year.
Not only that, but the number of EVs sold is increasing by 40+% per year. Now, sure, that might slow. But the share of the market that is EV/PHEV is going in exactly one direction. And by the early 2030s - irrespective of government action - the majority of cars sold are going to be EV/PHEV.
You are forgetting that two groups don't want this - big oil (and their fan club) and the watermelon Greens
Indeed, they have a massive aversion to the concept of private transport, whether it’s EV or IC powered.
A traffic jam made up of EVs is still a traffic jam.
The free-market fundamentalists who keep telling everyone to keep sticking their heads further in the sand are the worst criminals of all.
A traffic jam is not the end of the world. Though certainly building more and better roads can help ameliorate traffic issues.
But personal transport is one of the greatest inventions of the modern world. Zealots aren't going to convince people to give up on private transportation.
I've not heard anyone mention the miners strike in real life for well over a decade.
And I doubt many people would want the housing estates and country parks to be turned back into slag heaps.
That said, Boris really shouldn't babble about things he knows little about.
Given that he's not going to stop babbling then he needs to do some proper preparation.
It is simply further proof that his feet are bigger than his brain.
But that's Johnson's problem.
He can't help himself.
The core message- even by the standards of fossil fuels, coal is horrible stuff and the UK got it right to transition away from it- is pretty sound. The greeny Thatch line is more true than not true.
The reason this has blown up isn't that, though. It's the chuckle and the "thought that would wind you up". Both of which feel like ad libs, of the sort BoJo has done throughout his career. Many of them work in his favour, contributing to his"not one of them" persona. But some blow up and cause him a world of trouble.
And because the current Prime Minister has the judgement and self-control of a Jack Russell puppy, he can't filter the bad ad libs from the good ones.
As one who was interested and indeed involved in politics in the 70's and, although less so, in the 80's it was the lack of alternative work that was the problem. It was 'just close the pits. On yer bike'.
We had, I thought, moved on from that. Some at least fishermen on the East Coast are now servicing wind farms and oil platforms.
IMV the problem with the 1980s mine closures was that they were the latest in a long string of closures, dating back decades. Before then, when a pit closed, there was often one or more remaining in the immediate area. People would lose their jobs, but those who really wanted to mine could still do so. There were also more heavy industries that miners could move into.
But by the early 1980s, closures and amalgamations of mines meant that there might be only a handful left in any area. A pit closed, and the nearest was ten miles away. With the closure of that last pit in an area, the area lost massively, directly and indirectly to support industries. This was accompanied by the death of many heavy industries.
I love the way some people ignore all the mine closures that occurred before and after Thatcher. Simplistic people looking for simplistic, one-word answers to the problems in the world. 'Thatcha!'
Other way round too. It is this factor that you describe, that often it was the last pit in an area, that left desolated pit villages and one-industry towns, that does make what happened in the 1980s qualitatively different, and not mitigated by pointing to closures under other governments. iirc even Sir Geoffrey Howe acknowledged this.
Yes, but the alternative was to leave those pits open, filling them with useless money as the coal left. And IMV it is mitigated by closures under other governments - especially later ones. It was a long-term trend.
It was the view of the NUM that - irrespective of whether there was actual coal left to mine - that pits should never be closed.
Ian McGregor basically gave into all the NUM's demands, much to Thatcher's displeasure, but was saved by Scargill being completely unhinged.
Mr. Divvie, no, although you're right to imply that the Western Roman Empire didn't have stirrups (I think they were invented in China either just before or shortly after the West fell).
The Numidians were fantastic for Hannibal, and the Romans had tremendous trouble against cataphracts, especially at Carrhae. For cataphracts think a man, fully clad in armour, on a horse, fully clad in armour. The charges (1st century BC) destroyed what was left of Crassus' forces after the Parthian cavalry archers had substantially weakened the army.
Ah ok. I imagine the effect of the cataphracts would be based mainly on the weight of the charge with the armour helping survival rates? I believe stirrups help greatly in striking down on foot soldiers and taking the impact of charging with a lance.
Of course there were incredible mounted warriors who dispensed with stirrups, native Americans.
Mr. Divvie, aye, the Roman cavalry was worse than the Gallic cavalry. And the Numidian cavalry. And the Parthian cavalry.
Essentially, the Roman cavalry was pretty much the worst in Europe. Maybe the world. It was oddly bad. Not 100% useless but in stark contrast to the all-conquering infantry.
They used a four-horned saddle that helped to grip the rider and keep him in place.
Edited extra bit: also worth noting that Roman legions were paired with auxiliaries who furnished a larger number of significantly higher quality horse, which helped offset this weakness.
Stephen Bush of the Staggers's daily email has been commenting on the contrast re Mrs T and Mr J - an extract:
"If you want to actually tackle the climate crisis, you have to be willing to do big and radical things that upset people, and that do, in the short term at least, create some losers [...]
Our Prime Minister is very far from being willing to level with the public about that (to 'tell the truth', as Extinction Rebellion puts it) and further still from being willing to tell the public that this might involve some difficult or radical changes to how we live. Again, that is very far from how Margaret Thatcher approached any issue, including climate change.
But the biggest problem we face, and the one our politicians should be angriest about, isn't that Boris Johnson makes jokes about British mining. It's that it is frankly impossible to imagine him doing something as big or as significant in the fight to tackle the climate crisis today."
But its not true.
We don't need radical change in how we live. We need radical change in our technologies we use.
We need to switch from petrol cars to electric cars; we do not need to abandon driving. We need to switch from dirty electricity to clean electricity; we do not need to stop using electricity. We need to switch from jet oil to clean jet zero aircraft; we do not need to stop flying.
The hairshirt environmentalists are wrong. Science and technology are the solution, not economic vandalism. Something that both Thatcher and Johnson could both equally grasp.
He precedes that with
"All too often, Johnson's climate change strategy is essentially 'everyone should have their own electric car': a solution that is neither possible (there aren't enough rare earth materials in the world to replace every car currently in use in the UK) nor adequate (cars don't just produce emissions when they are driven, but also when they are constructed)."
What a ridiculous statement: it would be trivial for the UK (if it were only the UK) to replace all vehicles with electric ones by 2030. In a normal year, 2.3-2.4m cars are sold in the UK, compared to a global electric car market of around 3.5 million units (excluding PHEV) this year.
Not only that, but the number of EVs sold is increasing by 40+% per year. Now, sure, that might slow. But the share of the market that is EV/PHEV is going in exactly one direction. And by the early 2030s - irrespective of government action - the majority of cars sold are going to be EV/PHEV.
You are forgetting that two groups don't want this - big oil (and their fan club) and the watermelon Greens
Indeed, they have a massive aversion to the concept of private transport, whether it’s EV or IC powered.
A traffic jam made up of EVs is still a traffic jam.
The free-market fundamentalists who keep telling everyone to keep sticking their heads further in the sand are the worst criminals of all.
A traffic jam is not the end of the world. Though certainly building more and better roads can help ameliorate traffic issues.
But personal transport is one of the greatest inventions of the modern world. Zealots aren't going to convince people to give up on private transportation.
It isn't an invention of the modern world.
You really aren't going to be happy until every square inch of the world's surface is under concrete or tarmac, are you?
"Zealots" is interesting. Same mindset as we see with Covid, that nature is essentially benign, all problems are self-limiting, and everybody suggesting they might not be is a zealot, fanatic, zerocovidian or whatever. You don't seem to appreciate that we have turned all the controls up to 11 on a scale of 1 to 10, and the consequence of that is that everything is going to blow at some stage. Climate just got there first; if we reduced global temperatures by 3 degrees C tomorrow and kept them there we are still contending with resource depletion, soil depletion, pollution, overpopulation, a fresh water crisis and just running out of room.
What do you get when you cross Nigel Farage w Peter Hitchens?
Box Office Gold!
“Not content with merely beating his taxpayer-funded rival, last night Farage’s GB News show saw his highest ratings yet – averaging 145.1 thousand viewers. How does this compare?
Farage: 145.1k BBC News: 113.1k Sky News: 29.1k Nigel beat the BBC and Sky combined last night by three thousand viers and peaked at 157,000. Boom.”
To be fair, the Poles had a lot of horses and so did the Soviets early on.
Small aside: Roman cavalry was notable for being rubbish for most of history compared to an excellent infantry (in the West, at least).
Wasn’t the invention of the stirrup the great step change between horses being a military taxi service and becoming a potent weapon of war?
Yes. Chariots were the business as weapons, mind. One of the quirks of the Iliad is that the author had heard of chariots but hadn't a clue what they were for, so warriors quite literally use them as taxis: drive from Troy to battlefield, dismount, fight on foot, remount and pootle off back to Troy.
‘Had a chariot driver from the area now known as Albania* the other day..’
Mr. Divvie, aye, the Roman cavalry was worse than the Gallic cavalry. And the Numidian cavalry. And the Parthian cavalry.
Essentially, the Roman cavalry was pretty much the worst in Europe. Maybe the world. It was oddly bad. Not 100% useless but in stark contrast to the all-conquering infantry.
They used a four-horned saddle that helped to grip the rider and keep him in place.
Edited extra bit: also worth noting that Roman legions were paired with auxiliaries who furnished a larger number of significantly higher quality horse, which helped offset this weakness.
Interesting thought experiment:
If you were sent back in time to an arbitrary date, what invention would you personally be able to invent ahead of its time and procure wealth, status and world domination for yourself? In my case, it's embarrassing how few answers there are. I certainly couldn't teach the bronze age how to smelt iron or make glass. I think the stirrup would be the best I could do. I know in theory how to make gunpowder, but if you can't make guns that doesn't help much.
Stephen Bush of the Staggers's daily email has been commenting on the contrast re Mrs T and Mr J - an extract:
"If you want to actually tackle the climate crisis, you have to be willing to do big and radical things that upset people, and that do, in the short term at least, create some losers [...]
Our Prime Minister is very far from being willing to level with the public about that (to 'tell the truth', as Extinction Rebellion puts it) and further still from being willing to tell the public that this might involve some difficult or radical changes to how we live. Again, that is very far from how Margaret Thatcher approached any issue, including climate change.
But the biggest problem we face, and the one our politicians should be angriest about, isn't that Boris Johnson makes jokes about British mining. It's that it is frankly impossible to imagine him doing something as big or as significant in the fight to tackle the climate crisis today."
But its not true.
We don't need radical change in how we live. We need radical change in our technologies we use.
We need to switch from petrol cars to electric cars; we do not need to abandon driving. We need to switch from dirty electricity to clean electricity; we do not need to stop using electricity. We need to switch from jet oil to clean jet zero aircraft; we do not need to stop flying.
The hairshirt environmentalists are wrong. Science and technology are the solution, not economic vandalism. Something that both Thatcher and Johnson could both equally grasp.
He precedes that with
"All too often, Johnson's climate change strategy is essentially 'everyone should have their own electric car': a solution that is neither possible (there aren't enough rare earth materials in the world to replace every car currently in use in the UK) nor adequate (cars don't just produce emissions when they are driven, but also when they are constructed)."
What a ridiculous statement: it would be trivial for the UK (if it were only the UK) to replace all vehicles with electric ones by 2030. In a normal year, 2.3-2.4m cars are sold in the UK, compared to a global electric car market of around 3.5 million units (excluding PHEV) this year.
Not only that, but the number of EVs sold is increasing by 40+% per year. Now, sure, that might slow. But the share of the market that is EV/PHEV is going in exactly one direction. And by the early 2030s - irrespective of government action - the majority of cars sold are going to be EV/PHEV.
You are forgetting that two groups don't want this - big oil (and their fan club) and the watermelon Greens
Indeed, they have a massive aversion to the concept of private transport, whether it’s EV or IC powered.
A traffic jam made up of EVs is still a traffic jam.
The free-market fundamentalists who keep telling everyone to keep sticking their heads further in the sand are the worst criminals of all.
A traffic jam is not the end of the world. Though certainly building more and better roads can help ameliorate traffic issues.
But personal transport is one of the greatest inventions of the modern world. Zealots aren't going to convince people to give up on private transportation.
It isn't an invention of the modern world.
You really aren't going to be happy until every square inch of the world's surface is under concrete or tarmac, are you?
"Zealots" is interesting. Same mindset as we see with Covid, that nature is essentially benign, all problems are self-limiting, and everybody suggesting they might not be is a zealot, fanatic, zerocovidian or whatever. You don't seem to appreciate that we have turned all the controls up to 11 on a scale of 1 to 10, and the consequence of that is that everything is going to blow at some stage. Climate just got there first; if we reduced global temperatures by 3 degrees C tomorrow and kept them there we are still contending with resource depletion, soil depletion, pollution, overpopulation, a fresh water crisis and just running out of room.
Why I want every inch of the world's surface under tarmac? Do you have any clue what percentage of the world's surface is under tarmac as it stands? Its miniscule. Just as the proportion of the UK under tarmac as it stands is miniscule. We're talking fractions of a percentage point difference in outlook.
Everything is not going to "blow". Problems arise, we solve them. Human ingenuity works. Resource depletion leads to us finding ways to be more efficient or use alternative resources, or find more resources. We have plenty of room, we've barely scratched the surface of the planet.
As for so-called overpopulation - people have been making completely discredited Malthusian projections of doom since the 18th century.
You're entirely right to link hairshirt zealots with zerocovidian fanatics. They may have zeal and a superficial semblence of intelligence but scratch the surface and its braindead religious fantasies twisting the world to meet their objectives.
Stephen Bush of the Staggers's daily email has been commenting on the contrast re Mrs T and Mr J - an extract:
"If you want to actually tackle the climate crisis, you have to be willing to do big and radical things that upset people, and that do, in the short term at least, create some losers [...]
Our Prime Minister is very far from being willing to level with the public about that (to 'tell the truth', as Extinction Rebellion puts it) and further still from being willing to tell the public that this might involve some difficult or radical changes to how we live. Again, that is very far from how Margaret Thatcher approached any issue, including climate change.
But the biggest problem we face, and the one our politicians should be angriest about, isn't that Boris Johnson makes jokes about British mining. It's that it is frankly impossible to imagine him doing something as big or as significant in the fight to tackle the climate crisis today."
But its not true.
We don't need radical change in how we live. We need radical change in our technologies we use.
We need to switch from petrol cars to electric cars; we do not need to abandon driving. We need to switch from dirty electricity to clean electricity; we do not need to stop using electricity. We need to switch from jet oil to clean jet zero aircraft; we do not need to stop flying.
The hairshirt environmentalists are wrong. Science and technology are the solution, not economic vandalism. Something that both Thatcher and Johnson could both equally grasp.
He precedes that with
"All too often, Johnson's climate change strategy is essentially 'everyone should have their own electric car': a solution that is neither possible (there aren't enough rare earth materials in the world to replace every car currently in use in the UK..."
That assumes the requirement for rare earth materials can't massively be reduced, which it can.
The first thing to know about rare earths is that they aren't rare The second thing to know about rare earths is that they aren't earths The third thing to know about rare earths is that lithium isn't a rare earth. And it isn't rare either.
The "there aren't enough rare earths in the world to do X" is a bullshit argument, 999 out of 1000.
I was told by a mining analyst (and I have no idea if this is true), that the phrase "Rare Earth Elements" was coined by a mining company who was desperate to push the price of his stock up.
Boris Johnson accused by Tory MPs of 'spitting in the face' of red wall communities after claiming Thatcher's coal mine closures boosted climate change ambitions
They suggest it's the prime minister's 'Ratner moment'
It was certainly naive at best, across the western world coal mining areas from West Virginia to Queensland to the Red Wall to the Pas-de-Calais have been moving right.
While Boris may have been right about the fact that coal is no longer environmentally sustainable he should have recognised that the green brigade are not going to vote for him anyway and also tend to be anti nuclear, shale gas etc.
Trump by contrast for all his faults would never have made this mistake of insulting the heritage of an increasingly conservative voting block.
Boris Johnson accused by Tory MPs of 'spitting in the face' of red wall communities after claiming Thatcher's coal mine closures boosted climate change ambitions
They suggest it's the prime minister's 'Ratner moment'
It was certainly naive at best, across the western world coal mining areas from West Virginia to Queensland to the Red Wall to the Pas-de-Calais have been moving right.
While Boris may have been right about the fact that coal is no longer environmentally sustainable he should have recognised that the green brigade are not going to vote for him anyway and also tend to be anti nuclear, shale gas etc.
Trump by contrast for all his faults would never have made this mistake of insulting the heritage of an increasingly conservative voting block.
Comments
And when the Shropshire Yeomanry were mechanised, he switched to the Warwickshires so he could keep his horse, a lovely black called Peaceful.
Then of course the Warwickshires were mechanised too and Peaceful had to be sold, to somebody there in Syria. He was always very sad about it.
Edit - when I was at uni one of my fellow postgrads wrote a dissertation on horse procurement in WW1. Reading through back copies of Horse and Hound, he came across a letter in about 1925 where a colonel decried mechanisation and declared horses were superior because, ‘at the end of a long day you can get a horse to lie down, roll over and then sit on its belly to have your cigarette.’
The only question is how many intermediary steps are needed between the nuclear reaction (mostly fusion) and the actual work being done.
Small aside: Roman cavalry was notable for being rubbish for most of history compared to an excellent infantry (in the West, at least).
Joe Root, if he survives, will do so for want of alternatives.
(And if they caught Covid, we’d have to abandon the Test and next week’s Test as well, so that’s doubly bad news.)
https://twitter.com/jonathanliew/status/1423634837827735556
The Numidians were fantastic for Hannibal, and the Romans had tremendous trouble against cataphracts, especially at Carrhae. For cataphracts think a man, fully clad in armour, on a horse, fully clad in armour. The charges (1st century BC) destroyed what was left of Crassus' forces after the Parthian cavalry archers had substantially weakened the army.
Anyhoo Adam Lyth for England captain.
This is something even some historians have trouble with. You can train people to ride a horse down the road easy enough. To train them to actually charge around a battlefield doing stuff is much, much harder. Doing it without stirrups....
Its just something that the Romans were technologically behind on and they didn't know about it.
But personal transport is one of the greatest inventions of the modern world. Zealots aren't going to convince people to give up on private transportation.
Italian youth soccer team scales back plans to play in blackface after criticism
https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/06/football/italy-youth-team-blackface-racism-intl-scli-spt/index.html
Ian McGregor basically gave into all the NUM's demands, much to Thatcher's displeasure, but was saved by Scargill being completely unhinged.
Of course there were incredible mounted warriors who dispensed with stirrups, native Americans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirrup#China_and_Korea
Mr. Divvie, aye, the Roman cavalry was worse than the Gallic cavalry. And the Numidian cavalry. And the Parthian cavalry.
Essentially, the Roman cavalry was pretty much the worst in Europe. Maybe the world. It was oddly bad. Not 100% useless but in stark contrast to the all-conquering infantry.
They used a four-horned saddle that helped to grip the rider and keep him in place.
Edited extra bit: also worth noting that Roman legions were paired with auxiliaries who furnished a larger number of significantly higher quality horse, which helped offset this weakness.
You really aren't going to be happy until every square inch of the world's surface is under concrete or tarmac, are you?
"Zealots" is interesting. Same mindset as we see with Covid, that nature is essentially benign, all problems are self-limiting, and everybody suggesting they might not be is a zealot, fanatic, zerocovidian or whatever. You don't seem to appreciate that we have turned all the controls up to 11 on a scale of 1 to 10, and the consequence of that is that everything is going to blow at some stage. Climate just got there first; if we reduced global temperatures by 3 degrees C tomorrow and kept them there we are still contending with resource depletion, soil depletion, pollution, overpopulation, a fresh water crisis and just running out of room.
I think Jimmy Anderson will be playing into his mid 50s.
Box Office Gold!
“Not content with merely beating his taxpayer-funded rival, last night Farage’s GB News show saw his highest ratings yet – averaging 145.1 thousand viewers. How does this compare?
Farage: 145.1k
BBC News: 113.1k
Sky News: 29.1k
Nigel beat the BBC and Sky combined last night by three thousand viers and peaked at 157,000. Boom.”
https://order-order.com/2021/08/06/exclusive-farage-beat-sky-and-bbcs-views-combined-last-night/
*Illyria?
If you were sent back in time to an arbitrary date, what invention would you personally be able to invent ahead of its time and procure wealth, status and world domination for yourself? In my case, it's embarrassing how few answers there are. I certainly couldn't teach the bronze age how to smelt iron or make glass. I think the stirrup would be the best I could do. I know in theory how to make gunpowder, but if you can't make guns that doesn't help much.
" Yesterday’s by-election saw the SNP win at stage five after receiving 42.5% of first-preference votes, up 1.7 points on the 2017 poll.
The Tories came second with 1085 votes, 24.4% of the overall total – with their support also up 2.4 points.
Meanwhile Labour received 969 votes, 21.8% of the overall share and a decrease of 9.1 points on the 2017 local council election.
The Scottish Greens were up 4 points with 7.6% of the vote, and the LibDems received 2.7% of the vote, no change on the previous election. "
Everything is not going to "blow". Problems arise, we solve them. Human ingenuity works. Resource depletion leads to us finding ways to be more efficient or use alternative resources, or find more resources. We have plenty of room, we've barely scratched the surface of the planet.
As for so-called overpopulation - people have been making completely discredited Malthusian projections of doom since the 18th century.
You're entirely right to link hairshirt zealots with zerocovidian fanatics. They may have zeal and a superficial semblence of intelligence but scratch the surface and its braindead religious fantasies twisting the world to meet their objectives.