The Francophobia on this forum is fucking tiresome. Even in ‘jest’ it’s pathetic. FFS grow up. France, and the French, are lovely.
Give over
I love France: magnificent landscapes, generally friendly people, wonderfully rich culture, quite nice food, even their pop music is better than it was
But mocking the French is a national pastime, and has been for centuries. And I don't just mean on PB - it is everywhere. It's a fierce rivalry between friends (mostly). And it is mutual. The French love it when we trip over and fall in a heap of dung. They've never forgiven us for imposing English over French as the lingua franca
At the end of it, we would probably fight to defend each other. But the jokes would continue
I think what riles them is that we didn't impose English. It just happened. And all their desperate attempts to get French to cling on have not just failed but accelerated the switch.
Which is a bit of a shame, as French is the world’s loveliest language (and I write that as a very proud lover of English).
How many have YOU been to? I think I've done the majority.
But I'd love to go some of the obscure ones I've missed: Manche, Haute Saone, he two Charentes, Vendee, the north Corsican one
My favourite (that I have visited) is the emptiest of all: Lozere. No one lives there, no one goes there. Indeed many people leave: depopulation is a real problem. It is the ultimate in La France Profonde, and the little "capital" Mende, is a gem
The Charentes are well worth a visit. Had a brilliant week there 5 years ago. It was 38c all week other than one hour of a thunderstorm and torrential rain. Beautiful scenery. Aubeterre-sur-Dronne is a gorgeous old town with an ancient church built into the rockface. Spent the week cycling, by the pool and swimming in a local river.
If you are a socially liberal, ex-remain moderate former Conservative voter who wants a competent government, who would you vote for? The current Conservative party is arguably none of these, Labour if anything is less liberal (vaccine passports, anyone?) but under Starmer might at least be competent. I agree with Mr Meeks, Labour and Conservative are currently nearer to each other than the LDs to either. No moderate ex-Conservative will lose much sleep worrying about who Davey ends up putting in Number 10 as either without a majority will be better than either governing alone,
The act of voting is about choosing what's preferable. Reconcile yourself NOW to the fact that whoever you vote for will have something you don't like in their manifesto. That's just how it is. For me competent, serious government is a MUST and that's the Conservatives as they currently are are out of the picture. Doesn't mean my vote is a ringing endorsement of whoever ends up winning it, it's just the best I can do with what's available. I think this is the healthiest attitude.
Yes, but that is a false choice in FPTP. In around 80% of seats there is a substantial majority for one party or another. Very often the strongest rival is not the other major national party.
If I lived in a marginal seat then I would consider carefully where to put my cross, but in a safe one then am free to place it in whichever party whose policies I prefer. It doesn't affect the outcome, but may pressure the other parties to take the issues seriously. There are plenty of examples of this, most recently UKIP/BXP.
How many have YOU been to? I think I've done the majority.
But I'd love to go some of the obscure ones I've missed: Manche, Haute Saone, he two Charentes, Vendee, the north Corsican one
My favourite (that I have visited) is the emptiest of all: Lozere. No one lives there, no one goes there. Indeed many people leave: depopulation is a real problem. It is the ultimate in La France Profonde, and the little "capital" Mende, is a gem
The Vendee is lovely. One of my earliest holiday memories, a sun-soaked September in the days when parents still busted their children out of school to get cheaper holidays. Blissful.
Isn't the Vendee the one with all the canals and waterways? It does sound gorgeous
Also a weirdly royalist area that got absolutely crushed in the Revolution, if my French history is reliable?
It was, and the both the revolt itself and its suppression were brutal even by the standards of the time.
How many have YOU been to? I think I've done the majority.
But I'd love to go some of the obscure ones I've missed: Manche, Haute Saone, he two Charentes, Vendee, the north Corsican one
My favourite (that I have visited) is the emptiest of all: Lozere. No one lives there, no one goes there. Indeed many people leave: depopulation is a real problem. It is the ultimate in La France Profonde, and the little "capital" Mende, is a gem
It is no surprise France is the most visited nation in the world. A global city in Paris, beautiful rural countryside and often quite isolated parts, the glamour and sun and beaches of the South of France, historic chateaux, skiing in winter, excellent food and wine, it has something for everyone
"Everyone's favourite country, after their own" was the famous description
I'm not sure it is true, any more, because it was invented by Englishmen who really hadn't been to many places
If I had to choose a favourite-country-other-than-my own I would say Italy, Japan, perhaps Thailand, and maybe even Australia, before France
But France would definitely and easily be in my top ten. A marvellous destination and we are so lucky to have it just 20 miles away. We forget what good fortune it is to have Europe as our backyard
I haven’t visited any of the APAC nations you cite, so cannot comment.
Italy vs France is a really tough one. I love both and holiday in both frequently.
I lean towards France probably because I can speak a bit of the lingo. Could I speak Italian it would be very close indeed.
How many have YOU been to? I think I've done the majority.
But I'd love to go some of the obscure ones I've missed: Manche, Haute Saone, he two Charentes, Vendee, the north Corsican one
My favourite (that I have visited) is the emptiest of all: Lozere. No one lives there, no one goes there. Indeed many people leave: depopulation is a real problem. It is the ultimate in La France Profonde, and the little "capital" Mende, is a gem
The Vendee is lovely. One of my earliest holiday memories, a sun-soaked September in the days when parents still busted their children out of school to get cheaper holidays. Blissful.
Isn't the Vendee the one with all the canals and waterways? It does sound gorgeous
Also a weirdly royalist area that got absolutely crushed in the Revolution, if my French history is reliable?
Loads of lovely beaches. Religious turmoil. Strong Protestant area. Then the Huguenots were expelled, and faithful Catholics brought in to re-populate the area. Who later revolted against the revolutionary anti-Clericalism. I'm surprised you've missed it. It seems like one of the first few a superbly well travelled person would check off.
I've been to so many places yet - weirdly - there are many overlooked places closer to home. Perhaps BECAUSE I was so keen to see the world as a younger man.
I've never really explored Brittany, or southern Germany (the Black Forest!), or Normandy, or the Vendee. Much of central Italy is a mystery to me. WTF is the Abruzzo?
Even in the UK I have never been to: the Yorkshire Dales, the Yorkshire moors, the Scottish Borders, most of Ulster (I have visited and enjoyed Belfast, and that was during the Troubles, as well - quite something).
How many have YOU been to? I think I've done the majority.
But I'd love to go some of the obscure ones I've missed: Manche, Haute Saone, he two Charentes, Vendee, the north Corsican one
My favourite (that I have visited) is the emptiest of all: Lozere. No one lives there, no one goes there. Indeed many people leave: depopulation is a real problem. It is the ultimate in La France Profonde, and the little "capital" Mende, is a gem
It is no surprise France is the most visited nation in the world. A global city in Paris, beautiful rural countryside and often quite isolated parts, the glamour and sun and beaches of the South of France, historic chateaux, skiing in winter, excellent food and wine, it has something for everyone
"Everyone's favourite country, after their own" was the famous description
I'm not sure it is true, any more, because it was invented by Englishmen who really hadn't been to many places
If I had to choose a favourite-country-other-than-my own I would say Italy, Japan, perhaps Thailand, and maybe even Australia, before France
But France would definitely and easily be in my top ten. A marvellous destination and we are so lucky to have it just 20 miles away. We forget what good fortune it is to have Europe as our backyard
My grandfather didn't like France much on his only visit there. It may be because people kept trying to shoot him and he had to live in a trench dugout.
How many have YOU been to? I think I've done the majority.
But I'd love to go some of the obscure ones I've missed: Manche, Haute Saone, he two Charentes, Vendee, the north Corsican one
My favourite (that I have visited) is the emptiest of all: Lozere. No one lives there, no one goes there. Indeed many people leave: depopulation is a real problem. It is the ultimate in La France Profonde, and the little "capital" Mende, is a gem
The Vendee is lovely. One of my earliest holiday memories, a sun-soaked September in the days when parents still busted their children out of school to get cheaper holidays. Blissful.
Isn't the Vendee the one with all the canals and waterways? It does sound gorgeous
Also a weirdly royalist area that got absolutely crushed in the Revolution, if my French history is reliable?
Loads of lovely beaches. Religious turmoil. Strong Protestant area. Then the Huguenots were expelled, and faithful Catholics brought in to re-populate the area. Who later revolted against the revolutionary anti-Clericalism. I'm surprised you've missed it. It seems like one of the first few a superbly well travelled person would check off.
I've been to so many places yet - weirdly - there are many overlooked places closer to home. Perhaps BECAUSE I was so keen to see the world as a younger man.
I've never really explored Brittany, or southern Germany (the Black Forest!), or Normandy, or the Vendee. Much of central Italy is a mystery to me. WTF is the Abruzzo?
Even in the UK I have never been to: the Yorkshire Dales, the Yorkshire moors, the Scottish Borders, most of Ulster (I have visited and enjoyed Belfast, and that was during the Troubles, as well - quite something).
Brittany and the Dales are HUGE misses. Both are exceptionally beautiful, and lots of fun.
How many have YOU been to? I think I've done the majority.
But I'd love to go some of the obscure ones I've missed: Manche, Haute Saone, he two Charentes, Vendee, the north Corsican one
My favourite (that I have visited) is the emptiest of all: Lozere. No one lives there, no one goes there. Indeed many people leave: depopulation is a real problem. It is the ultimate in La France Profonde, and the little "capital" Mende, is a gem
It is no surprise France is the most visited nation in the world. A global city in Paris, beautiful rural countryside and often quite isolated parts, the glamour and sun and beaches of the South of France, historic chateaux, skiing in winter, excellent food and wine, it has something for everyone
"Everyone's favourite country, after their own" was the famous description
I'm not sure it is true, any more, because it was invented by Englishmen who really hadn't been to many places
If I had to choose a favourite-country-other-than-my own I would say Italy, Japan, perhaps Thailand, and maybe even Australia, before France
But France would definitely and easily be in my top ten. A marvellous destination and we are so lucky to have it just 20 miles away. We forget what good fortune it is to have Europe as our backyard
I would agree. But @HYUFD is right too. The thing about France is that there is a holiday there for every taste and personality type. Outdoorsy adventure, bone idle, historic, nightlife, epicurean, sun worshipping, hedonistic. Five star luxury, rough camping. Places safe enough to let small kids off the leash a bit. Places which can get lairy. Walking, cycling, driving or train. You can spend two weeks never walking the same city street, or eating at the same place, or go the same time barely seeing anyone. And if you get fed up with one experience, well another isn't too far away.
How many have YOU been to? I think I've done the majority.
But I'd love to go some of the obscure ones I've missed: Manche, Haute Saone, he two Charentes, Vendee, the north Corsican one
My favourite (that I have visited) is the emptiest of all: Lozere. No one lives there, no one goes there. Indeed many people leave: depopulation is a real problem. It is the ultimate in La France Profonde, and the little "capital" Mende, is a gem
The Vendee is lovely. One of my earliest holiday memories, a sun-soaked September in the days when parents still busted their children out of school to get cheaper holidays. Blissful.
Isn't the Vendee the one with all the canals and waterways? It does sound gorgeous
Also a weirdly royalist area that got absolutely crushed in the Revolution, if my French history is reliable?
Loads of lovely beaches. Religious turmoil. Strong Protestant area. Then the Huguenots were expelled, and faithful Catholics brought in to re-populate the area. Who later revolted against the revolutionary anti-Clericalism. I'm surprised you've missed it. It seems like one of the first few a superbly well travelled person would check off.
I've been to so many places yet - weirdly - there are many overlooked places closer to home. Perhaps BECAUSE I was so keen to see the world as a younger man.
I've never really explored Brittany, or southern Germany (the Black Forest!), or Normandy, or the Vendee. Much of central Italy is a mystery to me. WTF is the Abruzzo?
Even in the UK I have never been to: the Yorkshire Dales, the Yorkshire moors, the Scottish Borders, most of Ulster (I have visited and enjoyed Belfast, and that was during the Troubles, as well - quite something).
As someone who has spent many Summers in Normandy, I would thoroughly recommend it. Lots of history - Normans (Bayeux Tapestry etc.) and D-Day. Quiet country roads through the wheat fields. Stunning old architecture too - I love Bayeux Cathedral and the streets surrounding it. Amazing sea food at the proper restaurants that the locals go to (One brilliant place did fish soup, steak frites, local dessert and coffee for €12). We had a family home there until a few years ago and I miss it every day.
Orne with the occasional foray into Mayenne was the last French department I visited, about a decade ago Paris with my family & brother's family; as a kid frequent holidays to the Dordogne & Loire Valleys in the caravan. It is a wonderful country.
The Francophobia on this forum is fucking tiresome. Even in ‘jest’ it’s pathetic. FFS grow up. France, and the French, are lovely.
Give over
I love France: magnificent landscapes, generally friendly people, wonderfully rich culture, quite nice food, even their pop music is better than it was
But mocking the French is a national pastime, and has been for centuries. And I don't just mean on PB - it is everywhere. It's a fierce rivalry between friends (mostly). And it is mutual. The French love it when we trip over and fall in a heap of dung. They've never forgiven us for imposing English over French as the lingua franca
At the end of it, we would probably fight to defend each other. But the jokes would continue
I think what riles them is that we didn't impose English. It just happened. And all their desperate attempts to get French to cling on have not just failed but accelerated the switch.
Which is a bit of a shame, as French is the world’s loveliest language (and I write that as a very proud lover of English).
It's really not the "loveliest language". It is soft and feminine and lyrical and good for singing yearning love songs, or penning vague wistful modernist poetry. It is rubbish at almost anything else
This is not jingoism. France is superior to the UK in a number of obvious ways: bigger, grander, better climate, better preserved countryside and cities. Exploring obscure rural France is a delight in a way it isn't in the UK, even though I love the UK.
But the UK is superior in other ways.
And the English language is one: it is more virile, flexible, muscular, expressive, poetic, compelling, clever, and emphatic than French. Which is one reason why it conquered.
Interestingly, James Joyce, ne of the greatest multi-linguists in history. entirely agreed. He cordially detested the British Empire and loathed quite a lot of things about England (as you would expect, from a proud Irish nationalist) but he himself said: English is vastly superior, as a tool of human expression, to French
How many have YOU been to? I think I've done the majority.
But I'd love to go some of the obscure ones I've missed: Manche, Haute Saone, he two Charentes, Vendee, the north Corsican one
My favourite (that I have visited) is the emptiest of all: Lozere. No one lives there, no one goes there. Indeed many people leave: depopulation is a real problem. It is the ultimate in La France Profonde, and the little "capital" Mende, is a gem
The Vendee is lovely. One of my earliest holiday memories, a sun-soaked September in the days when parents still busted their children out of school to get cheaper holidays. Blissful.
Isn't the Vendee the one with all the canals and waterways? It does sound gorgeous
Also a weirdly royalist area that got absolutely crushed in the Revolution, if my French history is reliable?
Yes, during the Terror they couldn't work the guillotines fast enough to kill off all the "enemies" of the revolution in that area, and so they loaded people up onto barges and sunk them in the river. The victims were usually hog-tied, sometimes in demeaning poses. For example, stripping a priest and a nun and tying them up in a coital position, and then drowning them.
By the time of the G7 summit in Cornwall in June, the plans were well under way. As the French were occupied with the unfolding so-called “sausage war” over the Brexit divorce deal, Johnson, President Biden and Scott Morrison, the Australian prime minister — referred to as “ScoMo” in No 10 — thrashed out the details of a top-secret pact that would later be known as the “Aukus” defence and security alliance.
“There was a lot of noise at G7 about sausages and the EU and there was a lot of excitement around that, and it seemed odd for us that we were doing serious, serious, business in this meeting,” the government source added.
Toys out the pram from the usual suspects. I don't know how they have any time to ever do any research given the amount of time they do moaning to the media.
The Francophobia on this forum is fucking tiresome. Even in ‘jest’ it’s pathetic. FFS grow up. France, and the French, are lovely.
Give over
I love France: magnificent landscapes, generally friendly people, wonderfully rich culture, quite nice food, even their pop music is better than it was
But mocking the French is a national pastime, and has been for centuries. And I don't just mean on PB - it is everywhere. It's a fierce rivalry between friends (mostly). And it is mutual. The French love it when we trip over and fall in a heap of dung. They've never forgiven us for imposing English over French as the lingua franca
At the end of it, we would probably fight to defend each other. But the jokes would continue
I think what riles them is that we didn't impose English. It just happened. And all their desperate attempts to get French to cling on have not just failed but accelerated the switch.
Which is a bit of a shame, as French is the world’s loveliest language (and I write that as a very proud lover of English).
It's really not the "loveliest language". It is soft and feminine and lyrical and good for singing yearning love songs, or penning vague wistful modernist poetry. It is rubbish at almost anything else
This is not jingoism. France is superior to the UK in a number of obvious ways: bigger, grander, better climate, better preserved countryside and cities. Exploring obscure rural France is a delight in a way it isn't in the UK, even though I love the UK.
But the UK is superior in other ways.
And the English language is one: it is more virile, flexible, muscular, expressive, poetic, compelling, clever, and emphatic than French. Which is one reason why it conquered.
Interestingly, James Joyce, ne of the greatest multi-linguists in history. entirely agreed. He cordially detested the British Empire and loathed quite a lot of things about England (as you would expect, from a proud Irish nationalist) but he himself said: English is vastly superior, as a tool of human expression, to French
Though refused Irish nationality, and lived in France for most of his adult life.
By the time of the G7 summit in Cornwall in June, the plans were well under way. As the French were occupied with the unfolding so-called “sausage war” over the Brexit divorce deal, Johnson, President Biden and Scott Morrison, the Australian prime minister — referred to as “ScoMo” in No 10 — thrashed out the details of a top-secret pact that would later be known as the “Aukus” defence and security alliance.
“There was a lot of noise at G7 about sausages and the EU and there was a lot of excitement around that, and it seemed odd for us that we were doing serious, serious, business in this meeting,” the government source added.
This is a good example of why America is disliked by so many people around the world.
"The US has admitted that a drone strike in Kabul days before its military pullout killed 10 innocent people. A US Central Command investigation found that an aid worker and nine members of his family, including seven children, died in the 29 August strike. The youngest child, Sumaya, was just two years old. The deadly strike happened days after a terror attack at Kabul airport, amid a frenzied evacuation effort following the Taliban's sudden return to power. It was one of the US military's final acts in Afghanistan, before ending its 20-year operation in the country."
How many have YOU been to? I think I've done the majority.
But I'd love to go some of the obscure ones I've missed: Manche, Haute Saone, he two Charentes, Vendee, the north Corsican one
My favourite (that I have visited) is the emptiest of all: Lozere. No one lives there, no one goes there. Indeed many people leave: depopulation is a real problem. It is the ultimate in La France Profonde, and the little "capital" Mende, is a gem
The Vendee is lovely. One of my earliest holiday memories, a sun-soaked September in the days when parents still busted their children out of school to get cheaper holidays. Blissful.
Isn't the Vendee the one with all the canals and waterways? It does sound gorgeous
Also a weirdly royalist area that got absolutely crushed in the Revolution, if my French history is reliable?
Yes, during the Terror they couldn't work the guillotines fast enough to kill off all the "enemies" of the revolution in that area, and so they loaded people up onto barges and sunk them in the river. The victims were usually hog-tied, sometimes in demeaning poses. For example, stripping a priest and a nun and tying them up in a coital position, and then drowning them.
Christ. Interesting, but: Christ. Horrible
The French revolution was in some ways even worse than the Russian revolution.
A monarchy and aristocracy living in spectacular luxury at Versailles and grand country estates while also being completely out of touch with the life of the average peasant and the working class and a Church who owned most land in France all ripe for exploitation by the radicals.
Here in Britain the Reformation and our rather dull by comparison monarchy saved us from a similar fate and Cromwell in our own milder form of Revolution against absolutism in the 17th century was nowhere near as bloodthirsty as Robespierre, outside of Ireland anyway
We have a hit...awesome....when we making a second season...erhhh...hmmm...I will get back to you.....3 years pass....I think we will make one now, perhaps another year or so.
6 episodes in the first season, let say the do the same again for second season. 4 years, 12 episodes. Most people will binge that in a weekend.
Netflix will have 50 episodes of The Crown released well before a second season of this show. Amazon Prime's Bosch, 68 episodes (it will be more because the spin off comes out next year). HBO Tits and Dragons got through 73 episodes in 8 years.
This is a good example of why America is disliked by so many people around the world.
"The US has admitted that a drone strike in Kabul days before its military pullout killed 10 innocent people. A US Central Command investigation found that an aid worker and nine members of his family, including seven children, died in the 29 August strike. The youngest child, Sumaya, was just two years old. The deadly strike happened days after a terror attack at Kabul airport, amid a frenzied evacuation effort following the Taliban's sudden return to power. It was one of the US military's final acts in Afghanistan, before ending its 20-year operation in the country."
It is unavoidable that some in Paris raise tonight the question of the French participation to the NATO military structure. Personally, I have always been quite neutral on this issue. I don’t think it really matters both ways.
The Francophobia on this forum is fucking tiresome. Even in ‘jest’ it’s pathetic. FFS grow up. France, and the French, are lovely.
Give over
I love France: magnificent landscapes, generally friendly people, wonderfully rich culture, quite nice food, even their pop music is better than it was
But mocking the French is a national pastime, and has been for centuries. And I don't just mean on PB - it is everywhere. It's a fierce rivalry between friends (mostly). And it is mutual. The French love it when we trip over and fall in a heap of dung. They've never forgiven us for imposing English over French as the lingua franca
At the end of it, we would probably fight to defend each other. But the jokes would continue
I think what riles them is that we didn't impose English. It just happened. And all their desperate attempts to get French to cling on have not just failed but accelerated the switch.
Which is a bit of a shame, as French is the world’s loveliest language (and I write that as a very proud lover of English).
The Francophobia on this forum is fucking tiresome. Even in ‘jest’ it’s pathetic. FFS grow up. France, and the French, are lovely.
Give over
I love France: magnificent landscapes, generally friendly people, wonderfully rich culture, quite nice food, even their pop music is better than it was
But mocking the French is a national pastime, and has been for centuries. And I don't just mean on PB - it is everywhere. It's a fierce rivalry between friends (mostly). And it is mutual. The French love it when we trip over and fall in a heap of dung. They've never forgiven us for imposing English over French as the lingua franca
At the end of it, we would probably fight to defend each other. But the jokes would continue
I think what riles them is that we didn't impose English. It just happened. And all their desperate attempts to get French to cling on have not just failed but accelerated the switch.
Which is a bit of a shame, as French is the world’s loveliest language (and I write that as a very proud lover of English).
It's really not the "loveliest language". It is soft and feminine and lyrical and good for singing yearning love songs, or penning vague wistful modernist poetry. It is rubbish at almost anything else
This is not jingoism. France is superior to the UK in a number of obvious ways: bigger, grander, better climate, better preserved countryside and cities. Exploring obscure rural France is a delight in a way it isn't in the UK, even though I love the UK.
But the UK is superior in other ways.
And the English language is one: it is more virile, flexible, muscular, expressive, poetic, compelling, clever, and emphatic than French. Which is one reason why it conquered.
Interestingly, James Joyce, ne of the greatest multi-linguists in history. entirely agreed. He cordially detested the British Empire and loathed quite a lot of things about England (as you would expect, from a proud Irish nationalist) but he himself said: English is vastly superior, as a tool of human expression, to French
But Olivier Giroud reading ‘Le Pages Jaune’ would make more women melt than Harry Kane reading one of Shakespeare’s Sonnets
How many have YOU been to? I think I've done the majority.
But I'd love to go some of the obscure ones I've missed: Manche, Haute Saone, he two Charentes, Vendee, the north Corsican one
My favourite (that I have visited) is the emptiest of all: Lozere. No one lives there, no one goes there. Indeed many people leave: depopulation is a real problem. It is the ultimate in La France Profonde, and the little "capital" Mende, is a gem
The Vendee is lovely. One of my earliest holiday memories, a sun-soaked September in the days when parents still busted their children out of school to get cheaper holidays. Blissful.
Isn't the Vendee the one with all the canals and waterways? It does sound gorgeous
Also a weirdly royalist area that got absolutely crushed in the Revolution, if my French history is reliable?
Yes, during the Terror they couldn't work the guillotines fast enough to kill off all the "enemies" of the revolution in that area, and so they loaded people up onto barges and sunk them in the river. The victims were usually hog-tied, sometimes in demeaning poses. For example, stripping a priest and a nun and tying them up in a coital position, and then drowning them.
Christ. Interesting, but: Christ. Horrible
The French revolution was in some ways even worse than the Russian revolution.
A monarchy and aristocracy living in spectacular luxury at Versailles while being completely out of touch with the life of the average peasant and the working class and a Church who owned most land in France all ripe for exploitation by the radicals.
Here in Britain the Reformation and our rather dull by comparison monarchy saved us from a similar fate and Cromwell in our own milder form of Revolution against absolutism in the 17th century was nowhere near as bloodthirsty as Robespierre, outside of Ireland anyway
The Francophobia on this forum is fucking tiresome. Even in ‘jest’ it’s pathetic. FFS grow up. France, and the French, are lovely.
Give over
I love France: magnificent landscapes, generally friendly people, wonderfully rich culture, quite nice food, even their pop music is better than it was
But mocking the French is a national pastime, and has been for centuries. And I don't just mean on PB - it is everywhere. It's a fierce rivalry between friends (mostly). And it is mutual. The French love it when we trip over and fall in a heap of dung. They've never forgiven us for imposing English over French as the lingua franca
At the end of it, we would probably fight to defend each other. But the jokes would continue
I think what riles them is that we didn't impose English. It just happened. And all their desperate attempts to get French to cling on have not just failed but accelerated the switch.
Which is a bit of a shame, as French is the world’s loveliest language (and I write that as a very proud lover of English).
The Francophobia on this forum is fucking tiresome. Even in ‘jest’ it’s pathetic. FFS grow up. France, and the French, are lovely.
Give over
I love France: magnificent landscapes, generally friendly people, wonderfully rich culture, quite nice food, even their pop music is better than it was
But mocking the French is a national pastime, and has been for centuries. And I don't just mean on PB - it is everywhere. It's a fierce rivalry between friends (mostly). And it is mutual. The French love it when we trip over and fall in a heap of dung. They've never forgiven us for imposing English over French as the lingua franca
At the end of it, we would probably fight to defend each other. But the jokes would continue
I think what riles them is that we didn't impose English. It just happened. And all their desperate attempts to get French to cling on have not just failed but accelerated the switch.
Which is a bit of a shame, as French is the world’s loveliest language (and I write that as a very proud lover of English).
It's really not the "loveliest language". It is soft and feminine and lyrical and good for singing yearning love songs, or penning vague wistful modernist poetry. It is rubbish at almost anything else
This is not jingoism. France is superior to the UK in a number of obvious ways: bigger, grander, better climate, better preserved countryside and cities. Exploring obscure rural France is a delight in a way it isn't in the UK, even though I love the UK.
But the UK is superior in other ways.
And the English language is one: it is more virile, flexible, muscular, expressive, poetic, compelling, clever, and emphatic than French. Which is one reason why it conquered.
Interestingly, James Joyce, ne of the greatest multi-linguists in history. entirely agreed. He cordially detested the British Empire and loathed quite a lot of things about England (as you would expect, from a proud Irish nationalist) but he himself said: English is vastly superior, as a tool of human expression, to French
But Olivier Giroud reading ‘Le Pages Jaune’ would make more women melt than Harry Kane reading one of Shakespeare’s Sonnets
This is a good example of why America is disliked by so many people around the world.
"The US has admitted that a drone strike in Kabul days before its military pullout killed 10 innocent people. A US Central Command investigation found that an aid worker and nine members of his family, including seven children, died in the 29 August strike. The youngest child, Sumaya, was just two years old. The deadly strike happened days after a terror attack at Kabul airport, amid a frenzied evacuation effort following the Taliban's sudden return to power. It was one of the US military's final acts in Afghanistan, before ending its 20-year operation in the country."
How many have YOU been to? I think I've done the majority.
But I'd love to go some of the obscure ones I've missed: Manche, Haute Saone, he two Charentes, Vendee, the north Corsican one
My favourite (that I have visited) is the emptiest of all: Lozere. No one lives there, no one goes there. Indeed many people leave: depopulation is a real problem. It is the ultimate in La France Profonde, and the little "capital" Mende, is a gem
The Vendee is lovely. One of my earliest holiday memories, a sun-soaked September in the days when parents still busted their children out of school to get cheaper holidays. Blissful.
Isn't the Vendee the one with all the canals and waterways? It does sound gorgeous
Also a weirdly royalist area that got absolutely crushed in the Revolution, if my French history is reliable?
Yes, during the Terror they couldn't work the guillotines fast enough to kill off all the "enemies" of the revolution in that area, and so they loaded people up onto barges and sunk them in the river. The victims were usually hog-tied, sometimes in demeaning poses. For example, stripping a priest and a nun and tying them up in a coital position, and then drowning them.
Christ. Interesting, but: Christ. Horrible
Yeah, honestly, bits of the FR are not for the faint-hearted. Robespierre's last hours were remarkable, but I'm not going to share the details here.
He blew a large part of his jaw off when arrested didn't he? Did it go downhill after that?
This is a good example of why America is disliked by so many people around the world.
"The US has admitted that a drone strike in Kabul days before its military pullout killed 10 innocent people. A US Central Command investigation found that an aid worker and nine members of his family, including seven children, died in the 29 August strike. The youngest child, Sumaya, was just two years old. The deadly strike happened days after a terror attack at Kabul airport, amid a frenzied evacuation effort following the Taliban's sudden return to power. It was one of the US military's final acts in Afghanistan, before ending its 20-year operation in the country."
If The Times story is correct then the French line that “the British were bit-players” is wrong - the UK lifted an Australian request for submarines into a strategic alliance of which submarines are but one part.
The Francophobia on this forum is fucking tiresome. Even in ‘jest’ it’s pathetic. FFS grow up. France, and the French, are lovely.
Give over
I love France: magnificent landscapes, generally friendly people, wonderfully rich culture, quite nice food, even their pop music is better than it was
But mocking the French is a national pastime, and has been for centuries. And I don't just mean on PB - it is everywhere. It's a fierce rivalry between friends (mostly). And it is mutual. The French love it when we trip over and fall in a heap of dung. They've never forgiven us for imposing English over French as the lingua franca
At the end of it, we would probably fight to defend each other. But the jokes would continue
I think what riles them is that we didn't impose English. It just happened. And all their desperate attempts to get French to cling on have not just failed but accelerated the switch.
Which is a bit of a shame, as French is the world’s loveliest language (and I write that as a very proud lover of English).
The Francophobia on this forum is fucking tiresome. Even in ‘jest’ it’s pathetic. FFS grow up. France, and the French, are lovely.
Give over
I love France: magnificent landscapes, generally friendly people, wonderfully rich culture, quite nice food, even their pop music is better than it was
But mocking the French is a national pastime, and has been for centuries. And I don't just mean on PB - it is everywhere. It's a fierce rivalry between friends (mostly). And it is mutual. The French love it when we trip over and fall in a heap of dung. They've never forgiven us for imposing English over French as the lingua franca
At the end of it, we would probably fight to defend each other. But the jokes would continue
I think what riles them is that we didn't impose English. It just happened. And all their desperate attempts to get French to cling on have not just failed but accelerated the switch.
Which is a bit of a shame, as French is the world’s loveliest language (and I write that as a very proud lover of English).
It's really not the "loveliest language". It is soft and feminine and lyrical and good for singing yearning love songs, or penning vague wistful modernist poetry. It is rubbish at almost anything else
This is not jingoism. France is superior to the UK in a number of obvious ways: bigger, grander, better climate, better preserved countryside and cities. Exploring obscure rural France is a delight in a way it isn't in the UK, even though I love the UK.
But the UK is superior in other ways.
And the English language is one: it is more virile, flexible, muscular, expressive, poetic, compelling, clever, and emphatic than French. Which is one reason why it conquered.
Interestingly, James Joyce, ne of the greatest multi-linguists in history. entirely agreed. He cordially detested the British Empire and loathed quite a lot of things about England (as you would expect, from a proud Irish nationalist) but he himself said: English is vastly superior, as a tool of human expression, to French
But Olivier Giroud reading ‘Le Pages Jaune’ would make more women melt than Harry Kane reading one of Shakespeare’s Sonnets
Josephine Karlsson reading a Renault Kangoo owner's manual would do for me.
We have a hit...awesome....when we making a second season...erhhh...hmmm...I will get back to you.....3 years pass....I think we will make one now, perhaps another year or so.
6 episodes in the first season, let say the do the same again for second season. 4 years, 12 episodes. Most people will binge that in a weekend.
Netflix will have 50 episodes of The Crown released well before a second season of this show. Amazon Prime's Bosch, 68 episodes (it will be more because the spin off comes out next year). HBO Tits and Dragons got through 73 episodes in 8 years.
By the time the BBC make 50 episodes of the Bodyguard, Emma Raducanu will have made $1bn, and retired as Britiain's most successful tennis player.
How many have YOU been to? I think I've done the majority.
But I'd love to go some of the obscure ones I've missed: Manche, Haute Saone, he two Charentes, Vendee, the north Corsican one
My favourite (that I have visited) is the emptiest of all: Lozere. No one lives there, no one goes there. Indeed many people leave: depopulation is a real problem. It is the ultimate in La France Profonde, and the little "capital" Mende, is a gem
The Vendee is lovely. One of my earliest holiday memories, a sun-soaked September in the days when parents still busted their children out of school to get cheaper holidays. Blissful.
Isn't the Vendee the one with all the canals and waterways? It does sound gorgeous
Also a weirdly royalist area that got absolutely crushed in the Revolution, if my French history is reliable?
Yes, during the Terror they couldn't work the guillotines fast enough to kill off all the "enemies" of the revolution in that area, and so they loaded people up onto barges and sunk them in the river. The victims were usually hog-tied, sometimes in demeaning poses. For example, stripping a priest and a nun and tying them up in a coital position, and then drowning them.
Christ. Interesting, but: Christ. Horrible
The French revolution was in some ways even worse than the Russian revolution.
A monarchy and aristocracy living in spectacular luxury at Versailles while being completely out of touch with the life of the average peasant and the working class and a Church who owned most land in France all ripe for exploitation by the radicals.
Here in Britain the Reformation and our rather dull by comparison monarchy saved us from a similar fate and Cromwell in our own milder form of Revolution against absolutism in the 17th century was nowhere near as bloodthirsty as Robespierre, outside of Ireland anyway
You don't think the Civil Wars were bloodthirsty?
Only as far as most wars of the period were.
They did not wipe out the key figures in the royal family, other than Charles 1st and much of the aristocracy as the French revolution did nor did we have mass beheadings on the scale of the guillotines in France for anyone seen as an opponent of the increasingly radical revolutionaries
People are criticising the French reaction to the deal, but if we'd been excluded by a secret deal between the USA, Australia and France we'd probably be pretty annoyed about it, tbh.
The Francophobia on this forum is fucking tiresome. Even in ‘jest’ it’s pathetic. FFS grow up. France, and the French, are lovely.
Give over
I love France: magnificent landscapes, generally friendly people, wonderfully rich culture, quite nice food, even their pop music is better than it was
But mocking the French is a national pastime, and has been for centuries. And I don't just mean on PB - it is everywhere. It's a fierce rivalry between friends (mostly). And it is mutual. The French love it when we trip over and fall in a heap of dung. They've never forgiven us for imposing English over French as the lingua franca
At the end of it, we would probably fight to defend each other. But the jokes would continue
I think what riles them is that we didn't impose English. It just happened. And all their desperate attempts to get French to cling on have not just failed but accelerated the switch.
Which is a bit of a shame, as French is the world’s loveliest language (and I write that as a very proud lover of English).
The Francophobia on this forum is fucking tiresome. Even in ‘jest’ it’s pathetic. FFS grow up. France, and the French, are lovely.
Give over
I love France: magnificent landscapes, generally friendly people, wonderfully rich culture, quite nice food, even their pop music is better than it was
But mocking the French is a national pastime, and has been for centuries. And I don't just mean on PB - it is everywhere. It's a fierce rivalry between friends (mostly). And it is mutual. The French love it when we trip over and fall in a heap of dung. They've never forgiven us for imposing English over French as the lingua franca
At the end of it, we would probably fight to defend each other. But the jokes would continue
I think what riles them is that we didn't impose English. It just happened. And all their desperate attempts to get French to cling on have not just failed but accelerated the switch.
Which is a bit of a shame, as French is the world’s loveliest language (and I write that as a very proud lover of English).
It's really not the "loveliest language". It is soft and feminine and lyrical and good for singing yearning love songs, or penning vague wistful modernist poetry. It is rubbish at almost anything else
This is not jingoism. France is superior to the UK in a number of obvious ways: bigger, grander, better climate, better preserved countryside and cities. Exploring obscure rural France is a delight in a way it isn't in the UK, even though I love the UK.
But the UK is superior in other ways.
And the English language is one: it is more virile, flexible, muscular, expressive, poetic, compelling, clever, and emphatic than French. Which is one reason why it conquered.
Interestingly, James Joyce, ne of the greatest multi-linguists in history. entirely agreed. He cordially detested the British Empire and loathed quite a lot of things about England (as you would expect, from a proud Irish nationalist) but he himself said: English is vastly superior, as a tool of human expression, to French
But Olivier Giroud reading ‘Le Pages Jaune’ would make more women melt than Harry Kane reading one of Shakespeare’s Sonnets
The accents that melt women tend to be different accents of their own language
American women, flatteringly, love an English accent
I suspect this is true for most languages - exotic versions of your OWN language are the most seductive
I love the English spoken in far north Scotland/Orkneys. Sing song and poetic
AUKUS without Brexit? Technically, yes, but as an EU member the UK would have been involved in so many overlapping negotiations with France and with so many French ways to screw them back in Brussels, no Prime Minister would have taken a $90bn swipe at their defence industry.
Social Democrats: 27% (+6) Union CDU/CSU: 21% (-12) Greens: 18% (+9) Alternative for Germany: 11% (-2) Free Democrats: 10% (-1) Linke: 7% (-2)
Another very good poll for the SPD - a solid 9% swing from 2017 with the Greens holding up well suggesting the Union could be caught between a Social Democratic rock and a Green hard place.
There are regional elections being held alongside the federal election. In Mecklenburg, the SPD are polling at 40% with the Union and AfD on 15%. It looks as though the SPD will gain five of the six constituencies from the Union who will be left with their Greifswald stronghold.
In Berlin, the SPD-Green-Linke regional Government looks set for re-election. The 12 constituencies in the city split Union 4 Linke 4 SPD 3 Green 1 in 2017. Entirely possible the SPD will pick up another two or three seats.
Does that mean the seat currently held by Angela Merkel will go to the SPD, or is that the Greifswald one.
Yes, it's the Greifswald one. Stodge is right about the likely Berlin outcome, but curiously, the CDU-SPD swing in Berlin is tiny - just 2%. The FDP have eaten the Pirates (though no doubt it's more complicated than that) but otherwise very little change
The national poll is the first for a while showing SPD/Green/Linke with a solid majority. But the FDP partnership still looks both even more solid and more likely. That said, if I was in the Linke leadership I'd prefer that - being the only party to the left of a government with business-driven FDP Ministers sounds pretty good for the medium term. Being a very junior partner to the SPD would be an existential gamble - might make or break them.
Is there any possibility of a SPD/Green coalition, unofficially supported by the FDP, without them being a formal part of the government?
The Francophobia on this forum is fucking tiresome. Even in ‘jest’ it’s pathetic. FFS grow up. France, and the French, are lovely.
Give over
I love France: magnificent landscapes, generally friendly people, wonderfully rich culture, quite nice food, even their pop music is better than it was
But mocking the French is a national pastime, and has been for centuries. And I don't just mean on PB - it is everywhere. It's a fierce rivalry between friends (mostly). And it is mutual. The French love it when we trip over and fall in a heap of dung. They've never forgiven us for imposing English over French as the lingua franca
At the end of it, we would probably fight to defend each other. But the jokes would continue
I think what riles them is that we didn't impose English. It just happened. And all their desperate attempts to get French to cling on have not just failed but accelerated the switch.
Which is a bit of a shame, as French is the world’s loveliest language (and I write that as a very proud lover of English).
The Francophobia on this forum is fucking tiresome. Even in ‘jest’ it’s pathetic. FFS grow up. France, and the French, are lovely.
Give over
I love France: magnificent landscapes, generally friendly people, wonderfully rich culture, quite nice food, even their pop music is better than it was
But mocking the French is a national pastime, and has been for centuries. And I don't just mean on PB - it is everywhere. It's a fierce rivalry between friends (mostly). And it is mutual. The French love it when we trip over and fall in a heap of dung. They've never forgiven us for imposing English over French as the lingua franca
At the end of it, we would probably fight to defend each other. But the jokes would continue
I think what riles them is that we didn't impose English. It just happened. And all their desperate attempts to get French to cling on have not just failed but accelerated the switch.
Which is a bit of a shame, as French is the world’s loveliest language (and I write that as a very proud lover of English).
It's really not the "loveliest language". It is soft and feminine and lyrical and good for singing yearning love songs, or penning vague wistful modernist poetry. It is rubbish at almost anything else
This is not jingoism. France is superior to the UK in a number of obvious ways: bigger, grander, better climate, better preserved countryside and cities. Exploring obscure rural France is a delight in a way it isn't in the UK, even though I love the UK.
But the UK is superior in other ways.
And the English language is one: it is more virile, flexible, muscular, expressive, poetic, compelling, clever, and emphatic than French. Which is one reason why it conquered.
Interestingly, James Joyce, ne of the greatest multi-linguists in history. entirely agreed. He cordially detested the British Empire and loathed quite a lot of things about England (as you would expect, from a proud Irish nationalist) but he himself said: English is vastly superior, as a tool of human expression, to French
But Olivier Giroud reading ‘Le Pages Jaune’ would make more women melt than Harry Kane reading one of Shakespeare’s Sonnets
The accents that melt women tend to be different accents of their own language
American women, flatteringly, love an English accent
I suspect this is true for most languages - exotic versions of your OWN language are the most seductive
I love the English spoken in far north Scotland/Orkneys. Sing song and poetic
I just remember Giroud giving a post match interview basically saying no more than he was glad to win the match and progress to the next round, but making it sound like the most beautiful thing by going round the houses in that kind of French version of English
How many have YOU been to? I think I've done the majority.
But I'd love to go some of the obscure ones I've missed: Manche, Haute Saone, he two Charentes, Vendee, the north Corsican one
My favourite (that I have visited) is the emptiest of all: Lozere. No one lives there, no one goes there. Indeed many people leave: depopulation is a real problem. It is the ultimate in La France Profonde, and the little "capital" Mende, is a gem
The Vendee is lovely. One of my earliest holiday memories, a sun-soaked September in the days when parents still busted their children out of school to get cheaper holidays. Blissful.
Isn't the Vendee the one with all the canals and waterways? It does sound gorgeous
Also a weirdly royalist area that got absolutely crushed in the Revolution, if my French history is reliable?
Yes, during the Terror they couldn't work the guillotines fast enough to kill off all the "enemies" of the revolution in that area, and so they loaded people up onto barges and sunk them in the river. The victims were usually hog-tied, sometimes in demeaning poses. For example, stripping a priest and a nun and tying them up in a coital position, and then drowning them.
Christ. Interesting, but: Christ. Horrible
The French revolution was in some ways even worse than the Russian revolution.
A monarchy and aristocracy living in spectacular luxury at Versailles while being completely out of touch with the life of the average peasant and the working class and a Church who owned most land in France all ripe for exploitation by the radicals.
Here in Britain the Reformation and our rather dull by comparison monarchy saved us from a similar fate and Cromwell in our own milder form of Revolution against absolutism in the 17th century was nowhere near as bloodthirsty as Robespierre, outside of Ireland anyway
You don't think the Civil Wars were bloodthirsty?
Only as far as most wars of the period were.
They did not wipe out the key figures in the royal family, other than Charles 1st and much of the aristocracy as the French revolution did nor did we have mass beheadings on the scale of the guillotines in France for anyone seen as an opponent of the increasingly radical revolutionaries
Maybe. I often think we underplay (deliberately) the significance of those years though. 4 % of the population of England died. The entire period was so complex, and so lacking in fundamentally good and bad "sides", that we sort of have a national pact not to discuss it. It was a festival of cross-cutting cleavages. And left us a tolerant nation, but with irreconcilable differences, because we never openly speak about it. Which side would the current PM have been on? And the previous one? And wasn't that just a transfer of power between the two "sides"? See also Blair/Brown/Cameron. We replace a Roundhead with a Cavalier as an unspoken collective agreement. Thatcher to Major didn't fit. Which led to catastrophic defeat.
If you are a socially liberal, ex-remain moderate former Conservative voter who wants a competent government, who would you vote for? The current Conservative party is arguably none of these, Labour if anything is less liberal (vaccine passports, anyone?) but under Starmer might at least be competent. I agree with Mr Meeks, Labour and Conservative are currently nearer to each other than the LDs to either. No moderate ex-Conservative will lose much sleep worrying about who Davey ends up putting in Number 10 as either without a majority will be better than either governing alone,
The act of voting is about choosing what's preferable. Reconcile yourself NOW to the fact that whoever you vote for will have something you don't like in their manifesto. That's just how it is. For me competent, serious government is a MUST and that's the Conservatives as they currently are are out of the picture. Doesn't mean my vote is a ringing endorsement of whoever ends up winning it, it's just the best I can do with what's available. I think this is the healthiest attitude.
Yes, but that is a false choice in FPTP. In around 80% of seats there is a substantial majority for one party or another. Very often the strongest rival is not the other major national party.
If I lived in a marginal seat then I would consider carefully where to put my cross, but in a safe one then am free to place it in whichever party whose policies I prefer. It doesn't affect the outcome, but may pressure the other parties to take the issues seriously. There are plenty of examples of this, most recently UKIP/BXP.
I broadly agree. But it does irritate me when a seat is really safe for party X and distant runner-up Y asks supporters of even more distant Z to back them "because only we can beat X". I live in a seat which is Tory unless there's a cataclysm. In a normal year, people should therefore simply vote for their preferred party to show their preference, but quite a lot of Labour people (including some party members) vote LibDem because they buy into the idea that only the LibDems can win. I'm sure the opposite example exists too.
It is hard to overstate the importance of the so-called Aukus alliance between the US, the UK and Australia — and the implicit geopolitical disaster for the EU. The alliance is the culmination of multiple European failures: naivety at the highest level of the EU about US foreign policy; Brussels’s political misjudgements of Joe Biden and his China strategy; compulsive obsession with Donald Trump; and the attempt to corner Theresa May during the Brexit talks. If you treat the UK as a strategic adversary, don’t be surprised when the UK exploits the areas where it enjoys a competitive advantage.
France is pointedly ignoring London's role in this and in communiqués not to give credence to any Global Britain narratives. However, given US law, it's actually likely the UK will be the one doing most of the technology transfer. Reminds me of Condi Rice's 2003 "ignore Germany."
In 2019, Merkel warned UK could be an "economic competitor" on EU's doorstep. In 2020, the EU lent into by denying City of London equivalence and politics of Protocol. However, easy to imagine a different route on both where London decided not to deal France a blow in gratitude.
If you are a socially liberal, ex-remain moderate former Conservative voter who wants a competent government, who would you vote for? The current Conservative party is arguably none of these, Labour if anything is less liberal (vaccine passports, anyone?) but under Starmer might at least be competent. I agree with Mr Meeks, Labour and Conservative are currently nearer to each other than the LDs to either. No moderate ex-Conservative will lose much sleep worrying about who Davey ends up putting in Number 10 as either without a majority will be better than either governing alone,
The act of voting is about choosing what's preferable. Reconcile yourself NOW to the fact that whoever you vote for will have something you don't like in their manifesto. That's just how it is. For me competent, serious government is a MUST and that's the Conservatives as they currently are are out of the picture. Doesn't mean my vote is a ringing endorsement of whoever ends up winning it, it's just the best I can do with what's available. I think this is the healthiest attitude.
Yes, but that is a false choice in FPTP. In around 80% of seats there is a substantial majority for one party or another. Very often the strongest rival is not the other major national party.
If I lived in a marginal seat then I would consider carefully where to put my cross, but in a safe one then am free to place it in whichever party whose policies I prefer. It doesn't affect the outcome, but may pressure the other parties to take the issues seriously. There are plenty of examples of this, most recently UKIP/BXP.
I broadly agree. But it does irritate me when a seat is really safe for party X and distant runner-up Y asks supporters of even more distant Z to back them "because only we can beat X". I live in a seat which is Tory unless there's a cataclysm. In a normal year, people should therefore simply vote for their preferred party to show their preference, but quite a lot of Labour people (including some party members) vote LibDem because they buy into the idea that only the LibDems can win. I'm sure the opposite example exists too.
It does here. We have a negligible LD vote. Way below what the demographics would imply. A rural very safe Tory seat, which historically had scattered mining villages voting strongly Labour.We've been Tory since 1885. Apart from one year (1922) when we flirted with Bolshevism by electing a Liberal.
How many have YOU been to? I think I've done the majority.
But I'd love to go some of the obscure ones I've missed: Manche, Haute Saone, he two Charentes, Vendee, the north Corsican one
My favourite (that I have visited) is the emptiest of all: Lozere. No one lives there, no one goes there. Indeed many people leave: depopulation is a real problem. It is the ultimate in La France Profonde, and the little "capital" Mende, is a gem
The Vendee is lovely. One of my earliest holiday memories, a sun-soaked September in the days when parents still busted their children out of school to get cheaper holidays. Blissful.
Isn't the Vendee the one with all the canals and waterways? It does sound gorgeous
Also a weirdly royalist area that got absolutely crushed in the Revolution, if my French history is reliable?
Yes, during the Terror they couldn't work the guillotines fast enough to kill off all the "enemies" of the revolution in that area, and so they loaded people up onto barges and sunk them in the river. The victims were usually hog-tied, sometimes in demeaning poses. For example, stripping a priest and a nun and tying them up in a coital position, and then drowning them.
Christ. Interesting, but: Christ. Horrible
The French revolution was in some ways even worse than the Russian revolution.
A monarchy and aristocracy living in spectacular luxury at Versailles while being completely out of touch with the life of the average peasant and the working class and a Church who owned most land in France all ripe for exploitation by the radicals.
Here in Britain the Reformation and our rather dull by comparison monarchy saved us from a similar fate and Cromwell in our own milder form of Revolution against absolutism in the 17th century was nowhere near as bloodthirsty as Robespierre, outside of Ireland anyway
You don't think the Civil Wars were bloodthirsty?
Only as far as most wars of the period were.
They did not wipe out the key figures in the royal family, other than Charles 1st and much of the aristocracy as the French revolution did nor did we have mass beheadings on the scale of the guillotines in France for anyone seen as an opponent of the increasingly radical revolutionaries
Maybe. I often think we underplay (deliberately) the significance of those years though. 4 % of the population of England died. The entire period was so complex, and so lacking in fundamentally good and bad "sides", that we sort of have a national pact not to discuss it. It was a festival of cross-cutting cleavages. And left us a tolerant nation, but with irreconcilable differences, because we never openly speak about it. Which side would the current PM have been on? And the previous one? And wasn't that just a transfer of power between the two "sides"? See also Blair/Brown/Cameron. We replace a Roundhead with a Cavalier as an unspoken collective agreement. Thatcher to Major didn't fit. Which led to catastrophic defeat.
To continue my ramble. 18 years of Roundhead rule, led to Merrie England. Cool Brittania, Britpop, swearing on TV, general air of loucheness. All the more cos it had been so long. We have been Cavalier heavy since 1997. Betting on next PM? Bet on a Roundhead.
@John_Hudson France didn’t pull its ambassador to London despite the UK’s role in the sub deal, but they're not off the hook: “[Britain] is hiding in the American bosom,” said France’s minister for European affairs. “This is a return to the American fold and a form of accepted vassalization.”
It is unavoidable that some in Paris raise tonight the question of the French participation to the NATO military structure. Personally, I have always been quite neutral on this issue. I don’t think it really matters both ways.
On topic. Rentoul's point, that Davey's ruling out formal or informal coalition with the Tories undermines his future negotiating position, should be strengthened by observing that voters will be less likely to switch Con -> LD. It is a foolish move imho.
Davey's is a trading position in betting terms. He has plenty of time to change his mind and will decide his real position before election time. At the moment all he is saying is 'If you don't want Boris and you live in about 100 posh Tory seats mostly in the south where we will build a million houses everywhere except your constituency vote LD.'
Worked in C & A. It'll do for now. It will change.
I have voted Lib Dem. Never again if his party's policy is to abolish sex-based rights, which it now seems to be following his interview this morning.
Just so I understand, would you ever allow transgender people into spaces of their identified gender?
It is self-ID I have a problem with. Not transition or gender dysphoria - after medical diagnosis. So the answer to your question is yes. I would have no issue with a Jan Morris using a woman's loo. A convicted male rapist and murderer who decides after conviction - without any diagnosis - that he is a "woman": absolutely not.
But Davey is going further: he is effectively saying that sex-based rights and exemptions, which are lawful under the Equality Act, should no longer exist. That and self-ID are absolute red lines for me.
@John_Hudson France didn’t pull its ambassador to London despite the UK’s role in the sub deal, but they're not off the hook: “[Britain] is hiding in the American bosom,” said France’s minister for European affairs. “This is a return to the American fold and a form of accepted vassalization.”
On topic. Rentoul's point, that Davey's ruling out formal or informal coalition with the Tories undermines his future negotiating position, should be strengthened by observing that voters will be less likely to switch Con -> LD. It is a foolish move imho.
Davey's is a trading position in betting terms. He has plenty of time to change his mind and will decide his real position before election time. At the moment all he is saying is 'If you don't want Boris and you live in about 100 posh Tory seats mostly in the south where we will build a million houses everywhere except your constituency vote LD.'
Worked in C & A. It'll do for now. It will change.
I have voted Lib Dem. Never again if his party's policy is to abolish sex-based rights, which it now seems to be following his interview this morning.
Just so I understand, would you ever allow transgender people into spaces of their identified gender?
It is self-ID I have a problem with. Not transition or gender dysphoria - after medical diagnosis. So the answer to your question is yes. I would have no issue with a Jan Morris using a woman's loo. A convicted male rapist and murderer who decides after conviction - without any diagnosis - that he is a "woman": absolutely not.
But Davey is going further: he is effectively saying that sex-based rights and exemptions, which are lawful under the Equality Act, should no longer exist. That and self-ID are absolute red lines for me.
On topic. Rentoul's point, that Davey's ruling out formal or informal coalition with the Tories undermines his future negotiating position, should be strengthened by observing that voters will be less likely to switch Con -> LD. It is a foolish move imho.
Indeed, it makes a LD hold in Chesham and Amersham less likely, for instance.
One very clear lesson from this AUKUS business: if a nation seeks help in confronting China, like Australia does, it can go to the US and the UK. Not to France, Germany or the EU. It's as simple as that. Brexit has eroded trade, but not strategic sovereignty
Social Democrats: 27% (+6) Union CDU/CSU: 21% (-12) Greens: 18% (+9) Alternative for Germany: 11% (-2) Free Democrats: 10% (-1) Linke: 7% (-2)
Another very good poll for the SPD - a solid 9% swing from 2017 with the Greens holding up well suggesting the Union could be caught between a Social Democratic rock and a Green hard place.
There are regional elections being held alongside the federal election. In Mecklenburg, the SPD are polling at 40% with the Union and AfD on 15%. It looks as though the SPD will gain five of the six constituencies from the Union who will be left with their Greifswald stronghold.
In Berlin, the SPD-Green-Linke regional Government looks set for re-election. The 12 constituencies in the city split Union 4 Linke 4 SPD 3 Green 1 in 2017. Entirely possible the SPD will pick up another two or three seats.
Does that mean the seat currently held by Angela Merkel will go to the SPD, or is that the Greifswald one.
Yes, it's the Greifswald one. Stodge is right about the likely Berlin outcome, but curiously, the CDU-SPD swing in Berlin is tiny - just 2%. The FDP have eaten the Pirates (though no doubt it's more complicated than that) but otherwise very little change
The national poll is the first for a while showing SPD/Green/Linke with a solid majority. But the FDP partnership still looks both even more solid and more likely. That said, if I was in the Linke leadership I'd prefer that - being the only party to the left of a government with business-driven FDP Ministers sounds pretty good for the medium term. Being a very junior partner to the SPD would be an existential gamble - might make or break them.
Is there any possibility of a SPD/Green coalition, unofficially supported by the FDP, without them being a formal part of the government?
No. The FDP are very far from the Greens especially, in policy terms, so will want to extract as much as possible in coalition negotiations. Plus they want the finance ministry.
And just to correct a couple of points above: Nearly all recent polls have shown a majority for SPD+Greens+Left.
And nobody (at least in Germany) shortens Mecklenburg-Vorpommern to Mecklenburg. It's strictly Meck-Pomm.
Comments
If I lived in a marginal seat then I would consider carefully where to put my cross, but in a safe one then am free to place it in whichever party whose policies I prefer. It doesn't affect the outcome, but may pressure the other parties to take the issues seriously. There are plenty of examples of this, most recently UKIP/BXP.
I think Boris's little black book of scores to settle surpasses Gavin Williamson's.
Now, where were we on the NI Protocol?
https://twitter.com/DefenceHQPress/status/1438910959788204037?s=20
Italy vs France is a really tough one. I love both and holiday in both frequently.
I lean towards France probably because I can speak a bit of the lingo. Could I speak Italian it would be very close indeed.
I've never really explored Brittany, or southern Germany (the Black Forest!), or Normandy, or the Vendee. Much of central Italy is a mystery to me. WTF is the Abruzzo?
Even in the UK I have never been to: the Yorkshire Dales, the Yorkshire moors, the Scottish Borders, most of Ulster (I have visited and enjoyed Belfast, and that was during the Troubles, as well - quite something).
Outdoorsy adventure, bone idle, historic, nightlife, epicurean, sun worshipping, hedonistic. Five star luxury, rough camping. Places safe enough to let small kids off the leash a bit. Places which can get lairy. Walking, cycling, driving or train.
You can spend two weeks never walking the same city street, or eating at the same place, or go the same time barely seeing anyone.
And if you get fed up with one experience, well another isn't too far away.
It is a wonderful country.
This is not jingoism. France is superior to the UK in a number of obvious ways: bigger, grander, better climate, better preserved countryside and cities. Exploring obscure rural France is a delight in a way it isn't in the UK, even though I love the UK.
But the UK is superior in other ways.
And the English language is one: it is more virile, flexible, muscular, expressive, poetic, compelling, clever, and emphatic than French. Which is one reason why it conquered.
Interestingly, James Joyce, ne of the greatest multi-linguists in history. entirely agreed. He cordially detested the British Empire and loathed quite a lot of things about England (as you would expect, from a proud Irish nationalist) but he himself said: English is vastly superior, as a tool of human expression, to French
“There was a lot of noise at G7 about sausages and the EU and there was a lot of excitement around that, and it seemed odd for us that we were doing serious, serious, business in this meeting,” the government source added.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/f8481ac4-17c1-11ec-8982-e4706e2eecb0?shareToken=1b335c267f88cba1427010ce70bbe6ba
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/sep/17/no-10-accused-of-sidelining-behaviour-experts-on-latest-covid-measures
Toys out the pram from the usual suspects. I don't know how they have any time to ever do any research given the amount of time they do moaning to the media.
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/9/17/china-pumps-14bn-in-cash-into-market-amid-evergrande-crisis
If they go down, its going to be shit hit fan stuff. This potentially China's (and given how interconnected the world is, all of us) 2008.
"The US has admitted that a drone strike in Kabul days before its military pullout killed 10 innocent people. A US Central Command investigation found that an aid worker and nine members of his family, including seven children, died in the 29 August strike. The youngest child, Sumaya, was just two years old. The deadly strike happened days after a terror attack at Kabul airport, amid a frenzied evacuation effort following the Taliban's sudden return to power. It was one of the US military's final acts in Afghanistan, before ending its 20-year operation in the country."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-58604655
A monarchy and aristocracy living in spectacular luxury at Versailles and grand country estates while also being completely out of touch with the life of the average peasant and the working class and a Church who owned most land in France all ripe for exploitation by the radicals.
Here in Britain the Reformation and our rather dull by comparison monarchy saved us from a similar fate and Cromwell in our own milder form of Revolution against absolutism in the 17th century was nowhere near as bloodthirsty as Robespierre, outside of Ireland anyway
https://www.thesun.co.uk/tv/16171648/bodyguard-starring-richard-madden-confirmed-second-series-bbc/
We have a hit...awesome....when we making a second season...erhhh...hmmm...I will get back to you.....3 years pass....I think we will make one now, perhaps another year or so.
6 episodes in the first season, let say the do the same again for second season. 4 years, 12 episodes. Most people will binge that in a weekend.
Netflix will have 50 episodes of The Crown released well before a second season of this show. Amazon Prime's Bosch, 68 episodes (it will be more because the spin off comes out next year). HBO Tits and Dragons got through 73 episodes in 8 years.
Something must be done. This is something.
https://twitter.com/gerardaraud/status/1438999739580788738?s=21
They did not wipe out the key figures in the royal family, other than Charles 1st and much of the aristocracy as the French revolution did nor did we have mass beheadings on the scale of the guillotines in France for anyone seen as an opponent of the increasingly radical revolutionaries
The accents that melt women tend to be different accents of their own language
American women, flatteringly, love an English accent
I suspect this is true for most languages - exotic versions of your OWN language are the most seductive
I love the English spoken in far north Scotland/Orkneys. Sing song and poetic
https://twitter.com/b_judah/status/1438934732402724866?s=21
BBC News - Infection known as mad cow disease found on Somerset farm
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-58602051
Which side would the current PM have been on?
And the previous one?
And wasn't that just a transfer of power between the two "sides"? See also Blair/Brown/Cameron.
We replace a Roundhead with a Cavalier as an unspoken collective agreement. Thatcher to Major didn't fit. Which led to catastrophic defeat.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-58604677
https://twitter.com/spectator/status/1438811798203940869?s=21
In 2019, Merkel warned UK could be an "economic competitor" on EU's doorstep. In 2020, the EU lent into by denying City of London equivalence and politics of Protocol. However, easy to imagine a different route on both where London decided not to deal France a blow in gratitude.
https://twitter.com/b_judah/status/1438957310240509955?s=21
"France has ignited an unprecedented diplomatic crisis by recalling its Ambassador.."
We have been Cavalier heavy since 1997.
Betting on next PM?
Bet on a Roundhead.
France didn’t pull its ambassador to London despite the UK’s role in the sub deal, but they're not off the hook: “[Britain] is hiding in the American bosom,” said France’s minister for European affairs. “This is a return to the American fold and a form of accepted vassalization.”
https://twitter.com/John_Hudson/status/1438966850910629893
Not untrustworthy as such, but capricious and unpredictable.
But Davey is going further: he is effectively saying that sex-based rights and exemptions, which are lawful under the Equality Act, should no longer exist. That and self-ID are absolute red lines for me.
https://twitter.com/bopanc/status/1438968321530114052?s=21
And just to correct a couple of points above:
Nearly all recent polls have shown a majority for SPD+Greens+Left.
And nobody (at least in Germany) shortens Mecklenburg-Vorpommern to Mecklenburg. It's strictly Meck-Pomm.