I don't think the EU should have ambassadorial status and I don't think it's petty. For good or ill we did Brexit and we marked ourselves out as a nation state. We live with that and by that. The EU should be no exception.
If you believe in Brexit, which I didn't, then it's consistent and right.
I'm not really sure how slapping someone else's tweet engages with my point as a valid reply? Especially as it doesn't answer my point.
We don't recognise the EU as a nation state and we don't believe in superstates, which was half the argument of Brexit when you stop and think about it.
So Johnson & co. are absolutely doing the right thing and should stick to it.
I'm sure this will be very helpful to the negotiations on financial services which still have no certainty about future trading arrangements with the EU. Petty slights like this will help put the EU in its place and force them to give us a good deal. Or perhaps not.
It's quite clear the Democrats have been wholly captured by the Wokeists; this will be the most toe-curlingly Woke and wanky US administration there has ever been.
It will do nothing to solve America's divisions or heal them, except exacerbate them further. The only question is whether the Republicans can capitalise on it in November 2022, or whether their own fratricidal civil war will consume them, giving more space to the nutters in the Dems.
Sad.
I think you've been wholly captured by anti-wokeism. Did you watch yesterday? Lots of humility and decency on show, and a good celebration of modern, diverse USA. Biden will do what he says, and govern for all decent Americans. But yes, he won't pander to the EDL equivalents or neo-fascists of the far right. Because they're not decent.
Like our government, you're obsessed by symbols/statues. But it's not substance. Let me give you an example. While Jenrick puts forward legislation on statues, he does sweet FA to tackle real issues of substance, For example, tens of thousands of people are trapped in buildings with cladding that needs removing; they can't sell, and many face huge bills. Following Grenfell, how much progress has been made in resolving this? Not a lot.
Your priorities are all wrong.
Your comparison is an entirely false one. Opposition to "Wokeism" ≠ support for the EDL or neo-fascists, and it's offensive to say it does. I explored the difference on here last night - you should read what I said.
My priorities are not wrong. I also want a united, less divided society. Symbols matter, and rather than negatively tearing things down and dividing people we should be adding to them with new symbols that say things about us today, and celebrate the best of us.
Your blindness to how both sides are aggravating it at present with their language and action is a huge part of the problem.
You'd be well-advised to be more reflective and balanced in your posts on the matter, in future.
Given the ridiculous post you made about yesterday's woke-ism, as entirely an ill-conceived and misjudged post as I can recall seeing on pb, you are in no position to take the moral high ground or lecture anyone else about what is and what is not appropriate.
A colleague of mine once observed that those who lash out at others are often most offended and surprised when they get it back.
I agree, however, that the speech was okay. That was the point though: he deliberately took the heat out of it and dialled down the rhetoric. That's what is needed. A person who is capable of reaching out across the floor.
I don't think the EU should have ambassadorial status and I don't think it's petty. For good or ill we did Brexit and we marked ourselves out as a nation state. We live with that and by that. The EU should be no exception.
If you believe in Brexit, which I didn't, then it's consistent and right.
I'm not really sure how slapping someone else's tweet engages with my point as a valid reply? Especially as it doesn't answer my point.
We don't recognise the EU as a nation state and we don't believe in superstates, which was half the argument of Brexit when you stop and think about it.
So Johnson & co. are absolutely doing the right thing and should stick to it.
I'm sure this will be very helpful to the negotiations on financial services which still have no certainty about future trading arrangements with the EU. Petty slights like this will help put the EU in its place and force them to give us a good deal. Or perhaps not.
Ambassadorial status and financial services have nothing whatsoever to do with each other.
While I like the idea of poems being read at important occasions (and unimportant ones, come to that), I thought Amanda Gorman's poem yesterday was drivel. Though kudos to her for her self-possession while reciting it.
Biden's speech was also a touch too long - though probably necessary in the circumstances.
Rather than obsessing about busts, it's worth noting that he referenced Magna Carta in it, thus showing that he understands rather more about the origins of US law and democracy than those petty-minded politicians here worrying about busts. Perhaps the next time a Tory politician mentions Churchill's bust a US politician might remind him of Churchill's decision not to go to Roosevelt's funeral. That might shut them up.
It would be nice if British politicians had more regard for the principles of Magna Carta. The current government - and previous ones as well - have embarked on a deliberate policy of neglect and downgrading of our criminal justice system, with the inevitable consequences as reported a couple of days ago, and largely ignored. People are having to wait 3 - 4 years for trials. Instead, we've reached the ludicrous Ruritanian position where court buildings which have been sold off are now being refurbished so that they can be used as courtrooms in legal dramas filmed by Netflix but not as actual real courtrooms for real trial involving real people in the U.K.
Utterly shameful.
I thought that her poem made the points Biden was trying to make more sharply and better than he did but like Biden's effort it was too long.
And btw, if Netfix are making dramas in Arbroath Sheriff Court they are being awfully quiet about it.
People just don't seem to get that courts, like almost everything else, change over time and need far more IT and technical support than you can efficiently provide in grand Victorian buildings. The new, purpose built, Justice Centre (and it hurts just to write that) in Inverness is one of the only Sheriff Courts which can provide the video conferencing we were lamenting earlier today. Of course it looks sad and dreary compared with the old court which was in the Castle overlooking the river Ness but it is far more functional and efficient.
A point is going to come when a lot of relatively trivial crime is going to get dumped on the basis that it is just too old and the evidence is too stale. This is an inevitable consequence of the pandemic.
It's quite clear the Democrats have been wholly captured by the Wokeists; this will be the most toe-curlingly Woke and wanky US administration there has ever been.
It will do nothing to solve America's divisions or heal them, except exacerbate them further. The only question is whether the Republicans can capitalise on it in November 2022, or whether their own fratricidal civil war will consume them, giving more space to the nutters in the Dems.
Sad.
I think you've been wholly captured by anti-wokeism. Did you watch yesterday? Lots of humility and decency on show, and a good celebration of modern, diverse USA. Biden will do what he says, and govern for all decent Americans. But yes, he won't pander to the EDL equivalents or neo-fascists of the far right. Because they're not decent.
Like our government, you're obsessed by symbols/statues. But it's not substance. Let me give you an example. While Jenrick puts forward legislation on statues, he does sweet FA to tackle real issues of substance, For example, tens of thousands of people are trapped in buildings with cladding that needs removing; they can't sell, and many face huge bills. Following Grenfell, how much progress has been made in resolving this? Not a lot.
Your priorities are all wrong.
Yes, I watched yesterday. I thought it was an acceptable speech, but not an especially historically memorable one; it just looks like that right now because everyone is so relieved he's not Trump.
Your comparison is an entirely false one. Opposition to "Wokeism" ≠ support for the EDL or neo-fascists, and it's offensive to say it does. I explored the difference on here last night - you should read what I said.
Governments, can and do, enact hundreds of policies across dozens of policy areas all at once, and are both capable of doing so and expected to do it. As it happens, I think the Government should make the relief of leaseholders trapped in flats by poor cladding a high priority and get it fixed with a Government guarantee. However, I also think he should address politically-motivated cultural desecration as well. What people mean by "he's got his priorities all wrong" is "we'd prefer if he didn't address this issue" There's no reason Robert Paden Powell, Redvers Buller, Oliver Cromwell, or Admiral Nelson, should be removed without due democratic process just so councillors can signal their virtue and appease their fanatical base. This was a gap in the law and urgently needed addressing before many more irrevocably came down.
My priorities are not wrong. I also want a united, less divided society. Symbols matter, and rather than negatively tearing things down and dividing people we should be adding to them with new symbols that say things about us today, and celebrate the best of us.
Your blindness to how both sides are aggravating it at present with their language and action is a huge part of the problem.
You'd be well-advised to be more reflective and balanced in your posts on the matter, in future.
Wow, what a patronising, and ironic, last sentence.
Thanks Scott. Refreshing to agree with you again on something.
This is a real issue but to say that Biden has "unilaterally eviscerated womens sports and placed a new glass ceiling on girls" is indicative of someone not too interested in resolving it.
I don't think the EU should have ambassadorial status and I don't think it's petty. For good or ill we did Brexit and we marked ourselves out as a nation state. We live with that and by that. The EU should be no exception.
If you believe in Brexit, which I didn't, then it's consistent and right.
Actually that tweet is wrong. Britain consistently opposed the status of the EEAS as it is known and blocked it having full diplomatic status on organisations such as the UN and OSCE.
Exactly.
I think it's consistent and right that following Brexit we take this decision. I hope Boris sticks to his guns on it, although I'm doubtful he will.
It's important that we start as we mean to go on. Our dealings as an independent country vaguely attached by land to Europe but with many historic and cultural ties beyond need to be on the correct footing from the outset. We'll deal with nations at an ambassadorial level not self-appointed superstates.
I was a Remainer but the EU's worst trait has been its attempt to shift from economic unity to political unity. Vive la difference!
As @rcs1000 has explained a gazillion times, effective economic unity necessarily requires a degree of political unity. See, for instance, the Singke Market. It simply is not possible to have the sort of trading relationship there was in the Singke Market without some degree of political integration. The amount of such integration is the issue, of course.
That is why the claim that we want only the trade and not the political stuff was nonsense. And why now - because we have decided against the political stuff - we are realising the cost to our trade.
Entirely off-topic, but later this morning I have several back to back video meetings. One is an invite to Teams
*shudder*
Why is it that everything Microsoft is as complex and user-unfriendly as possible? I don't to integrate into your sodding hell, just let me connect to this meeting that someone else is hosting so that I can then go back to using platforms that actually work.
Teams is fine –– when you actually get on to the meeting. But it's ludicrously complicated to set up a meeting on the fly, or even attend the meeting when you are already logged in.
As you rightly say, anything MS produces has a UX rating of 1/10 at best and contains millions of 'features' that you never use.
I have moved (almost) wholesale to the Apple suite of apps – Keynote, Numbers etc are far superior, and infinitely more aesthetically pleasing, than PowerPoint and Excel. The only MS package I use regularly these days is Word.
Mr. kinabalu, been more preoccupied with other matters this morning, but there's a reason why men and women are separated in sport. It sounds like Biden's approach is nuts.
I'm sorry but only a complete idiot believes decorations have to sit in the same place all the time. the choice of busts (Martin Luther King Jr, Robert Kennedy, Rosa Parks, Eleanor Roosevelt and Cesar Chavez) seems very appropriate for an 21st century American president.
Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks and Cesar Chavez all point to the work that is still required to make America an equal place.
All the apologising and the whataboutism doesn't matter. Churchill is a symbol (*THE* symbol) of the transatlantic alliance.
Moving it out - without explaining why or where, and acknowledging the sheer importance of the man in Anglo-American relations - is going to have political implications.
Wouldn't have been any busts of civil rights leaders if we hadn't put everything on the line to defeat Hitler. Churchill is the ultimate singular embodiment of that. For that reason alone, his bust deserves his place in that company.
Try pursuing a Woke agenda under Nazism. Might have - briefly - discovered slavery wasn't just an historical stain to be cleansed.
That's a bit of a stretch - without Churchill/UK the US would be under Nazi rule?
Does Downing Street hold a bust/portrait of Roosevelt - or Stalin? Serious question - I don't know but I imagine the former is possible but the latter rather unlikely. Without them we very likely would have been under Nazi rule.
Have you not watched the Man in the High Castle?
If the UK fell in 1940, the question then becomes what would Hitler have done about Russia? Without the distraction of a western front, would Hitler have lost in Russia? And if the Third Reich ultimately stretched from Atlantic to Pacific - what would have been Hitler's ambitions after that? And America's capacity to resist it? If the British Empire had been subsumed into a greater Germany and Japan had been up for it, would America have stood alone?
An invason of the US would have been a stretch. But then the question becomes about intercontinental rockets and nuclear weapons. Could Germany have got them first, if there was essentially no ongoing wars to distract them? A demonstration of the power of an atomic bomb dropped on Washington DC?
Thankfully, never got tested out. Largely thanks to a guy whose bust is no longer on prominent display in the White House, that first domino did not fall...
So, we agree it's a stretch?
I haven't seen the TV adaptation, but have read the book. In the book FDR is absent and it's a much weaker US when WW2 comes.
But we move away from the point - is it an affront to the UK to remove Churchill (who has come and gone before) and have the bust of an American instead? If it is, then why is it not an affront to the US that we don't have a bust/portrait of FDR in Downing Street? Unless we do, of course?
I don't think there are many, if any busts, as busts, in Downing Street. There's a statue of FDR of course, in Grosvenor Sq.
Not long ago I read 'Dominion', by CJ Sansom, a counterfactual account of London in a Britain which, under Halifax, surrendered to the Nazis. The Germans were then left with the Soviet Union as their enemy, and were more or less at a standstill in 1953 when Hitler died and the Nazi Party and 'apparatus' fell into dispute with the Army, who were become war weary of the stalemate. The German regime fell apart and the Soviets swept all before them, rather as actually happened in 1944-5.
Divided societies are often the result of politicians exploiting grievances and spreading division. Look at the US. The black population has lived there for four hundred years, but the reason the US is still racially divided is that for most of that period they were by law locked out of mainstream society (and even now face less obvious barriers and the bitter legacy of that period). Even marrying across the racial divide was illegal in many states until the 1960s, FFS. Without those centuries of systemic institutional racism the US would probably be a happy united country of various shades of brown people by now.
Did you watch Amanda Gorman's performance yesterday?
It was sublime, but I couldn't help thinking what about the Native Americans?
There is no shortage of racial strife, prejudice and hurt in America, but that portion of it is still almost entirely absent.
Yup. The US has a pretty bloody, violent and awful history. The native Americans' suffering has been terrible. Less well documented than that of the African Americans perhaps because they were a nuisance to the white population rather than property. And most of their deaths came from disease. I have read that one of the motivating factors behind the creation of the US was to allow the local white settlers more leeway to steal native land than the Crown was willing to give them.
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is also a fascinating/shocking read (bit older). Very much written from the native American perspective and I know there are some criticisms of it lacking wider context, but I don't think the basic events are in dispute.
It's quite clear the Democrats have been wholly captured by the Wokeists; this will be the most toe-curlingly Woke and wanky US administration there has ever been.
It will do nothing to solve America's divisions or heal them, except exacerbate them further. The only question is whether the Republicans can capitalise on it in November 2022, or whether their own fratricidal civil war will consume them, giving more space to the nutters in the Dems.
Sad.
I think you've been wholly captured by anti-wokeism. Did you watch yesterday? Lots of humility and decency on show, and a good celebration of modern, diverse USA. Biden will do what he says, and govern for all decent Americans. But yes, he won't pander to the EDL equivalents or neo-fascists of the far right. Because they're not decent.
Like our government, you're obsessed by symbols/statues. But it's not substance. Let me give you an example. While Jenrick puts forward legislation on statues, he does sweet FA to tackle real issues of substance, For example, tens of thousands of people are trapped in buildings with cladding that needs removing; they can't sell, and many face huge bills. Following Grenfell, how much progress has been made in resolving this? Not a lot.
Your priorities are all wrong.
Yes, I watched yesterday. I thought it was an acceptable speech, but not an especially historically memorable one; it just looks like that right now because everyone is so relieved he's not Trump.
Your comparison is an entirely false one. Opposition to "Wokeism" ≠ support for the EDL or neo-fascists, and it's offensive to say it does. I explored the difference on here last night - you should read what I said.
Governments, can and do, enact hundreds of policies across dozens of policy areas all at once, and are both capable of doing so and expected to do it. As it happens, I think the Government should make the relief of leaseholders trapped in flats by poor cladding a high priority and get it fixed with a Government guarantee. However, I also think he should address politically-motivated cultural desecration as well. What people mean by "he's got his priorities all wrong" is "we'd prefer if he didn't address this issue" There's no reason Robert Paden Powell, Redvers Buller, Oliver Cromwell, or Admiral Nelson, should be removed without due democratic process just so councillors can signal their virtue and appease their fanatical base. This was a gap in the law and urgently needed addressing before many more irrevocably came down.
My priorities are not wrong. I also want a united, less divided society. Symbols matter, and rather than negatively tearing things down and dividing people we should be adding to them with new symbols that say things about us today, and celebrate the best of us.
Your blindness to how both sides are aggravating it at present with their language and action is a huge part of the problem.
You'd be well-advised to be more reflective and balanced in your posts on the matter, in future.
@Casino_Royale wrote a very good post yesterday on woke-ism: the difference between being awake to and dealing with oppression and its consequences vs a somewhat narcissistic insistence on symbolic gesture and telling people what to think unaccompanied by any effective action to help people.
Thanks Cyclefree.
I do get a bit upset when people intimate (and they do) that I must be a secret bigot because I oppose that.
Can I get overly animated about it? Yes, absolutely. I think that's because I detest a lot of the narcissism, self-absorption, preachiness and hypocrisy that I've seen surround it - and personally experienced - and I've seen how it divides people with my own eyes, both personally and professionally. So I'm rather contemptuous of it. Maybe that exasperation makes me less convincing on the subject, and I need to watch that.
Those who know me personally will know that my actions in my professional and personal life on fairness to people of all backgrounds speak for themselves. I don't see any need to signal it.
That's for others to do if they want to use me as an example.
And it's not just the music industry but all the performing arts - theatre companies are as affected as musicians.
Where can I apply for compensation for having to pay £100 every time I take the dog abroad, for a certificate that will simply be copied from the information already in his pet passport?
It's quite clear the Democrats have been wholly captured by the Wokeists; this will be the most toe-curlingly Woke and wanky US administration there has ever been.
It will do nothing to solve America's divisions or heal them, except exacerbate them further. The only question is whether the Republicans can capitalise on it in November 2022, or whether their own fratricidal civil war will consume them, giving more space to the nutters in the Dems.
Sad.
I think you've been wholly captured by anti-wokeism. Did you watch yesterday? Lots of humility and decency on show, and a good celebration of modern, diverse USA. Biden will do what he says, and govern for all decent Americans. But yes, he won't pander to the EDL equivalents or neo-fascists of the far right. Because they're not decent.
Like our government, you're obsessed by symbols/statues. But it's not substance. Let me give you an example. While Jenrick puts forward legislation on statues, he does sweet FA to tackle real issues of substance, For example, tens of thousands of people are trapped in buildings with cladding that needs removing; they can't sell, and many face huge bills. Following Grenfell, how much progress has been made in resolving this? Not a lot.
Your priorities are all wrong.
Yes, I watched yesterday. I thought it was an acceptable speech, but not an especially historically memorable one; it just looks like that right now because everyone is so relieved he's not Trump.
Your comparison is an entirely false one. Opposition to "Wokeism" ≠ support for the EDL or neo-fascists, and it's offensive to say it does. I explored the difference on here last night - you should read what I said.
Governments, can and do, enact hundreds of policies across dozens of policy areas all at once, and are both capable of doing so and expected to do it. As it happens, I think the Government should make the relief of leaseholders trapped in flats by poor cladding a high priority and get it fixed with a Government guarantee. However, I also think he should address politically-motivated cultural desecration as well. What people mean by "he's got his priorities all wrong" is "we'd prefer if he didn't address this issue" There's no reason Robert Paden Powell, Redvers Buller, Oliver Cromwell, or Admiral Nelson, should be removed without due democratic process just so councillors can signal their virtue and appease their fanatical base. This was a gap in the law and urgently needed addressing before many more irrevocably came down.
My priorities are not wrong. I also want a united, less divided society. Symbols matter, and rather than negatively tearing things down and dividing people we should be adding to them with new symbols that say things about us today, and celebrate the best of us.
Your blindness to how both sides are aggravating it at present with their language and action is a huge part of the problem.
You'd be well-advised to be more reflective and balanced in your posts on the matter, in future.
@Casino_Royale wrote a very good post yesterday on woke-ism: the difference between being awake to and dealing with oppression and its consequences vs a somewhat narcissistic insistence on symbolic gesture and telling people what to think unaccompanied by any effective action to help people.
In the context of which, his comments this morning about the incoming Biden administration are somewhere between unconsidered, and downright silly.
I don't think the EU should have ambassadorial status and I don't think it's petty. For good or ill we did Brexit and we marked ourselves out as a nation state. We live with that and by that. The EU should be no exception.
If you believe in Brexit, which I didn't, then it's consistent and right.
Actually that tweet is wrong. Britain consistently opposed the status of the EEAS as it is known and blocked it having full diplomatic status on organisations such as the UN and OSCE.
Exactly.
I think it's consistent and right that following Brexit we take this decision. I hope Boris sticks to his guns on it, although I'm doubtful he will.
It's important that we start as we mean to go on. Our dealings as an independent country vaguely attached by land to Europe but with many historic and cultural ties beyond need to be on the correct footing from the outset. We'll deal with nations at an ambassadorial level not self-appointed superstates.
I was a Remainer but the EU's worst trait has been its attempt to shift from economic unity to political unity. Vive la difference!
As @rcs1000 has explained a gazillion times, effective economic unity necessarily requires a degree of political unity. See, for instance, the Singke Market. It simply is not possible to have the sort of trading relationship there was in the Singke Market without some degree of political integration. The amount of such integration is the issue, of course.
That is why the claim that we want only the trade and not the political stuff was nonsense. And why now - because we have decided against the political stuff - we are realising the cost to our trade.
I would be interested to know how much political unity - by which we mean actual political attachment via legally binding institutions - you think there is between the EU and the EFTA members?
It's quite clear the Democrats have been wholly captured by the Wokeists; this will be the most toe-curlingly Woke and wanky US administration there has ever been.
It will do nothing to solve America's divisions or heal them, except exacerbate them further. The only question is whether the Republicans can capitalise on it in November 2022, or whether their own fratricidal civil war will consume them, giving more space to the nutters in the Dems.
Sad.
I think you've been wholly captured by anti-wokeism. Did you watch yesterday? Lots of humility and decency on show, and a good celebration of modern, diverse USA. Biden will do what he says, and govern for all decent Americans. But yes, he won't pander to the EDL equivalents or neo-fascists of the far right. Because they're not decent.
Like our government, you're obsessed by symbols/statues. But it's not substance. Let me give you an example. While Jenrick puts forward legislation on statues, he does sweet FA to tackle real issues of substance, For example, tens of thousands of people are trapped in buildings with cladding that needs removing; they can't sell, and many face huge bills. Following Grenfell, how much progress has been made in resolving this? Not a lot.
Your priorities are all wrong.
Yes, I watched yesterday. I thought it was an acceptable speech, but not an especially historically memorable one; it just looks like that right now because everyone is so relieved he's not Trump.
Your comparison is an entirely false one. Opposition to "Wokeism" ≠ support for the EDL or neo-fascists, and it's offensive to say it does. I explored the difference on here last night - you should read what I said.
Governments, can and do, enact hundreds of policies across dozens of policy areas all at once, and are both capable of doing so and expected to do it. As it happens, I think the Government should make the relief of leaseholders trapped in flats by poor cladding a high priority and get it fixed with a Government guarantee. However, I also think he should address politically-motivated cultural desecration as well. What people mean by "he's got his priorities all wrong" is "we'd prefer if he didn't address this issue" There's no reason Robert Paden Powell, Redvers Buller, Oliver Cromwell, or Admiral Nelson, should be removed without due democratic process just so councillors can signal their virtue and appease their fanatical base. This was a gap in the law and urgently needed addressing before many more irrevocably came down.
My priorities are not wrong. I also want a united, less divided society. Symbols matter, and rather than negatively tearing things down and dividing people we should be adding to them with new symbols that say things about us today, and celebrate the best of us.
Your blindness to how both sides are aggravating it at present with their language and action is a huge part of the problem.
You'd be well-advised to be more reflective and balanced in your posts on the matter, in future.
Wow, what a patronising, and ironic, last sentence.
With respect, I won't take any lectures on being patronising from someone who tells me my priorities are all wrong because I'm addressing a difficult issue and intimates my sympathies must lie with the EDL or neo-fascists as a result.
I don't think the EU should have ambassadorial status and I don't think it's petty. For good or ill we did Brexit and we marked ourselves out as a nation state. We live with that and by that. The EU should be no exception.
If you believe in Brexit, which I didn't, then it's consistent and right.
I'm not really sure how slapping someone else's tweet engages with my point as a valid reply? Especially as it doesn't answer my point.
We don't recognise the EU as a nation state and we don't believe in superstates, which was half the argument of Brexit when you stop and think about it.
So Johnson & co. are absolutely doing the right thing and should stick to it.
I'm sure this will be very helpful to the negotiations on financial services which still have no certainty about future trading arrangements with the EU. Petty slights like this will help put the EU in its place and force them to give us a good deal. Or perhaps not.
Ambassadorial status and financial services have nothing whatsoever to do with each other.
Of course there is no formal link. But there is mood music, atmosphere, personal attitudes of the negotiators, all of which influence outcomes.
I don't think the EU should have ambassadorial status and I don't think it's petty. For good or ill we did Brexit and we marked ourselves out as a nation state. We live with that and by that. The EU should be no exception.
If you believe in Brexit, which I didn't, then it's consistent and right.
I'm not really sure how slapping someone else's tweet engages with my point as a valid reply? Especially as it doesn't answer my point.
We don't recognise the EU as a nation state and we don't believe in superstates, which was half the argument of Brexit when you stop and think about it.
So Johnson & co. are absolutely doing the right thing and should stick to it.
I'm sure this will be very helpful to the negotiations on financial services which still have no certainty about future trading arrangements with the EU. Petty slights like this will help put the EU in its place and force them to give us a good deal. Or perhaps not.
Brexiters always seem more interested in symbols rather than concrete achievements. We risk winning a batch of merely symbolic victories while losing on everything that makes a difference to people's lives and livelihoods.
Divided societies are often the result of politicians exploiting grievances and spreading division. Look at the US. The black population has lived there for four hundred years, but the reason the US is still racially divided is that for most of that period they were by law locked out of mainstream society (and even now face less obvious barriers and the bitter legacy of that period). Even marrying across the racial divide was illegal in many states until the 1960s, FFS. Without those centuries of systemic institutional racism the US would probably be a happy united country of various shades of brown people by now.
Did you watch Amanda Gorman's performance yesterday?
It was sublime, but I couldn't help thinking what about the Native Americans?
There is no shortage of racial strife, prejudice and hurt in America, but that portion of it is still almost entirely absent.
Yup. The US has a pretty bloody, violent and awful history. The native Americans' suffering has been terrible. Less well documented than that of the African Americans perhaps because they were a nuisance to the white population rather than property. And most of their deaths came from disease. I have read that one of the motivating factors behind the creation of the US was to allow the local white settlers more leeway to steal native land than the Crown was willing to give them.
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is also a fascinating/shocking read (bit older). Very much written from the native American perspective and I know there are some criticisms of it lacking wider context, but I don't think the basic events are in dispute.
Mr. kinabalu, been more preoccupied with other matters this morning, but there's a reason why men and women are separated in sport. It sounds like Biden's approach is nuts.
You really shouldn't be believing the word of a well known homophobe and transphobe, having read the White House link it doesn't come close to what the the author of 'The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters' says it does.
Perhaps you should check out the science denying and bigoted language she uses.
Biden's action is to reverse things like this.
Trump administration reverses health protections for transgender people
Friday’s announcement came on the fourth anniversary of the Pulse shooting that killed 49 people at a gay nightclub.
It's quite clear the Democrats have been wholly captured by the Wokeists; this will be the most toe-curlingly Woke and wanky US administration there has ever been.
It will do nothing to solve America's divisions or heal them, except exacerbate them further. The only question is whether the Republicans can capitalise on it in November 2022, or whether their own fratricidal civil war will consume them, giving more space to the nutters in the Dems.
Sad.
I think you've been wholly captured by anti-wokeism. Did you watch yesterday? Lots of humility and decency on show, and a good celebration of modern, diverse USA. Biden will do what he says, and govern for all decent Americans. But yes, he won't pander to the EDL equivalents or neo-fascists of the far right. Because they're not decent.
Like our government, you're obsessed by symbols/statues. But it's not substance. Let me give you an example. While Jenrick puts forward legislation on statues, he does sweet FA to tackle real issues of substance, For example, tens of thousands of people are trapped in buildings with cladding that needs removing; they can't sell, and many face huge bills. Following Grenfell, how much progress has been made in resolving this? Not a lot.
Your priorities are all wrong.
Yes, I watched yesterday. I thought it was an acceptable speech, but not an especially historically memorable one; it just looks like that right now because everyone is so relieved he's not Trump.
Your comparison is an entirely false one. Opposition to "Wokeism" ≠ support for the EDL or neo-fascists, and it's offensive to say it does. I explored the difference on here last night - you should read what I said.
Governments, can and do, enact hundreds of policies across dozens of policy areas all at once, and are both capable of doing so and expected to do it. As it happens, I think the Government should make the relief of leaseholders trapped in flats by poor cladding a high priority and get it fixed with a Government guarantee. However, I also think he should address politically-motivated cultural desecration as well. What people mean by "he's got his priorities all wrong" is "we'd prefer if he didn't address this issue" There's no reason Robert Paden Powell, Redvers Buller, Oliver Cromwell, or Admiral Nelson, should be removed without due democratic process just so councillors can signal their virtue and appease their fanatical base. This was a gap in the law and urgently needed addressing before many more irrevocably came down.
My priorities are not wrong. I also want a united, less divided society. Symbols matter, and rather than negatively tearing things down and dividing people we should be adding to them with new symbols that say things about us today, and celebrate the best of us.
Your blindness to how both sides are aggravating it at present with their language and action is a huge part of the problem.
You'd be well-advised to be more reflective and balanced in your posts on the matter, in future.
Wow, what a patronising, and ironic, last sentence.
Oh and by the way, I never said, or implied, that opposition to wokeism = support for EDL/neo-fascism. That's a complete misrepresentation of what I wrote. You make lots of good points, but it's a shame when you descend into rudeness.
It's quite clear the Democrats have been wholly captured by the Wokeists; this will be the most toe-curlingly Woke and wanky US administration there has ever been.
It will do nothing to solve America's divisions or heal them, except exacerbate them further. The only question is whether the Republicans can capitalise on it in November 2022, or whether their own fratricidal civil war will consume them, giving more space to the nutters in the Dems.
Sad.
What are you basing that on so far?
All the evidence from the campaign, the speeches, the rhetoric, the videos, the ads, what Biden and Kamala have said and how they've said it. Dems in the House and Senate.. everything.
Look, I'm pleased Trump is good too. He was an ogre, bigot, and demagogue, and needed to be evicted, but let's not deify this new administration - please.
There is a lot I think they will get badly wrong, and I am absolutely going to call them out on it.
The desire for healing and unity needs to be reflected by both the right language, actions and humility.
Listen pal, your lot (the right) voted to put a bigotted ogre in the White House.
I appreciate it must be a disappointment for you that the candidate of the left is a thoughtful decent person but that's the way it is (indeed, that's the way it usually is).
If all you are going to be doing for the next four years is ranting about perceieved slurs from the selection of busts etc. you are going to get very boring.
"Your lot".
Jesus.
You're claiming Jesus was on the right? I always thought of him as a bit of a lefty
It's quite clear the Democrats have been wholly captured by the Wokeists; this will be the most toe-curlingly Woke and wanky US administration there has ever been.
It will do nothing to solve America's divisions or heal them, except exacerbate them further. The only question is whether the Republicans can capitalise on it in November 2022, or whether their own fratricidal civil war will consume them, giving more space to the nutters in the Dems.
Sad.
I think you've been wholly captured by anti-wokeism. Did you watch yesterday? Lots of humility and decency on show, and a good celebration of modern, diverse USA. Biden will do what he says, and govern for all decent Americans. But yes, he won't pander to the EDL equivalents or neo-fascists of the far right. Because they're not decent.
Like our government, you're obsessed by symbols/statues. But it's not substance. Let me give you an example. While Jenrick puts forward legislation on statues, he does sweet FA to tackle real issues of substance, For example, tens of thousands of people are trapped in buildings with cladding that needs removing; they can't sell, and many face huge bills. Following Grenfell, how much progress has been made in resolving this? Not a lot.
Your priorities are all wrong.
Your comparison is an entirely false one. Opposition to "Wokeism" ≠ support for the EDL or neo-fascists, and it's offensive to say it does. I explored the difference on here last night - you should read what I said.
My priorities are not wrong. I also want a united, less divided society. Symbols matter, and rather than negatively tearing things down and dividing people we should be adding to them with new symbols that say things about us today, and celebrate the best of us.
Your blindness to how both sides are aggravating it at present with their language and action is a huge part of the problem.
You'd be well-advised to be more reflective and balanced in your posts on the matter, in future.
Given the ridiculous post you made about yesterday's woke-ism, as entirely an ill-conceived and misjudged post as I can recall seeing on pb, you are in no position to take the moral high ground or lecture anyone else about what is and what is not appropriate.
What was ridiculous about it? What made it the most ill-conceived and misjudged post you can recall seeing on pb?
Because, you see, without specifics I read that as an emotional reaction to it because you recognised something of yourself in the behaviours I was criticising.
In its monthly snapshot of the market – based on sales registered last November – the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed that the average price of a home in London was up by 9.7%, to a record of £514,000.
The temporary break on stamp duty, which covers homes costing up to £500,000 in England, has led to a boom in sales and pushed up prices in properties that benefit from the largest saving.
Within the capital, prices had risen most strongly in the upmarket borough of Kensington and Chelsea, which recorded annual growth of 28.6% and an average price of £1.5m.
So much for COVID dampening the London housing market.
As someone who has been looking to buy in London but is essentially priced out by a bit so waiting for a drop I have been tracking prices pretty regularly for the last year and prices are down not up. This may be anecdotal but I am very sure it is correct in the 400-600k range at least. I would say they are down about 10-15% and dropping 1% each month still. For what is selling 2015-19 prices are a good guide, some stuff is at 2013 prices which would have been exceedingly rare pre covid.
Why is the ONS up?
Stamp duty holiday pushes the mix of homes that are sold upwards, the mix of homes more than the prices. Covid pushes the mix of homes that are sold towards those with outdoor space, ie upwards, not the prices but the mix of homes. Leasehold cladding issues push the mix of homes that are sold away from poorly run tower blocks towards other properties, i.e upwards.
So the ONS is comparing a completely different set of homes sold recently to the long term trends, it is fairly meaningless as a comparison, the old example of comparing apples and oranges applies here.
As an aside, with the proposed leasehold reforms, does anyone think it is worth speculatively considering a very short lease (sub 30 years) if it is suitably priced to the current leasehold rules with a potential upside of new marriage value calculations working out favourably, either under this govt or a future Labour one?
Of all the TV comedians who talk politics on their shows, Bill Maher is the only one who even tries to understand what’s actually going on in the USA, to see that every story has two sides and that challenges his audience to think outside the coastal bubble in which they live.
What is the point of Jabra desk phones and the like? The iPhone connects seamlessly to one's laptop so you can make a receive calls over the air through the computer's speaker, either via a normal phone connection or wifi, or FaceTime.
Of all the TV comedians who talk politics on their shows, Bill Maher is the only one who even tries to understand what’s actually going on in the USA, to see that every story has two sides and that challenges his audience to think outside the coastal bubble in which they live.
I think he is the only one that didn't spend the last 4 year repeating exactly the same Orange man bad joke every minute of their show. Jon Oliver became totally unwatchable for that reason.
Thanks Scott. Refreshing to agree with you again on something.
This is a real issue but to say that Biden has "unilaterally eviscerated womens sports and placed a new glass ceiling on girls" is indicative of someone not too interested in resolving it.
Good that you acknowledge it's a real issue.
Tempers and emotions are high on both sides. That was someone retweeting it who feels very strongly about it.
Of course, language matters. We react to how things are said as well as what is said.
We need to get beyond the spin into the real substance beneath it - and there there is undoubtedly a problem in dogmatically insisting that black is white, in all instances, out of a genuine (but, at times, misguided) desire to respect everyone's preferred social identity.
In its monthly snapshot of the market – based on sales registered last November – the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed that the average price of a home in London was up by 9.7%, to a record of £514,000.
The temporary break on stamp duty, which covers homes costing up to £500,000 in England, has led to a boom in sales and pushed up prices in properties that benefit from the largest saving.
Within the capital, prices had risen most strongly in the upmarket borough of Kensington and Chelsea, which recorded annual growth of 28.6% and an average price of £1.5m.
So much for COVID dampening the London housing market.
As someone who has been looking to buy in London but is essentially priced out by a bit so waiting for a drop I have been tracking prices pretty regularly for the last year and prices are down not up. This may be anecdotal but I am very sure it is correct in the 400-600k range at least. I would say they are down about 10-15% and dropping 1% each month still. For what is selling 2015-19 prices are a good guide, some stuff is at 2013 prices which would have been exceedingly rare pre covid.
Why is the ONS up?
Stamp duty holiday pushes the mix of homes that are sold upwards, the mix of homes more than the prices. Covid pushes the mix of homes that are sold towards those with outdoor space, ie upwards, not the prices but the mix of homes. Leasehold cladding issues push the mix of homes that are sold away from poorly run tower blocks towards other properties, i.e upwards.
So the ONS is comparing a completely different set of homes sold recently to the long term trends, it is fairly meaningless as a comparison, the old example of comparing apples and oranges applies here.
As an aside, with the proposed leasehold reforms, does anyone think it is worth speculatively considering a very short lease (sub 30 years) if it is suitably priced to the current leasehold rules with a potential upside of new marriage value calculations working out favourably, either under this govt or a future Labour one?
They are definitely rising in suburban London, in areas like mine that have large houses but are not on the Tube. People are willing to trade more space for a longer commute when they know that employers will offer 3-5 days/fortnight WFH in the near future.
It would be interesting to see what other busts, paintings etc Biden has removed - just as his predecessors did when they entered the White House for the first time. Making a stink out of this or drawing any conclusions about policy from it seems pretty daft to me.
The world runs on realpolitik. Whether or not there is a particular bust sat in a particular office is not going to affect whatever relationship exists between the US and UK.
Replaced by Truman apparently. Fair enough, I'd say. He's one of the iconic Democratic presidents. In fact you like him, I seem to recall. Also allays any fears of super wokeness. Nothing woke about Truman. He dropped the A bomb.
While I like the idea of poems being read at important occasions (and unimportant ones, come to that), I thought Amanda Gorman's poem yesterday was drivel. Though kudos to her for her self-possession while reciting it.
Biden's speech was also a touch too long - though probably necessary in the circumstances.
Rather than obsessing about busts, it's worth noting that he referenced Magna Carta in it, thus showing that he understands rather more about the origins of US law and democracy than those petty-minded politicians here worrying about busts. Perhaps the next time a Tory politician mentions Churchill's bust a US politician might remind him of Churchill's decision not to go to Roosevelt's funeral. That might shut them up.
It would be nice if British politicians had more regard for the principles of Magna Carta. The current government - and previous ones as well - have embarked on a deliberate policy of neglect and downgrading of our criminal justice system, with the inevitable consequences as reported a couple of days ago, and largely ignored. People are having to wait 3 - 4 years for trials. Instead, we've reached the ludicrous Ruritanian position where court buildings which have been sold off are now being refurbished so that they can be used as courtrooms in legal dramas filmed by Netflix but not as actual real courtrooms for real trial involving real people in the U.K.
Utterly shameful.
I thought that her poem made the points Biden was trying to make more sharply and better than he did but like Biden's effort it was too long.
And btw, if Netfix are making dramas in Arbroath Sheriff Court they are being awfully quiet about it.
People just don't seem to get that courts, like almost everything else, change over time and need far more IT and technical support than you can efficiently provide in grand Victorian buildings. The new, purpose built, Justice Centre (and it hurts just to write that) in Inverness is one of the only Sheriff Courts which can provide the video conferencing we were lamenting earlier today. Of course it looks sad and dreary compared with the old court which was in the Castle overlooking the river Ness but it is far more functional and efficient.
A point is going to come when a lot of relatively trivial crime is going to get dumped on the basis that it is just too old and the evidence is too stale. This is an inevitable consequence of the pandemic.
I'm all in favour of new modern up-to-date courtrooms. But that is not what is happening. Courtrooms are being shut. They are not being replaced. Trials are not happening or being repeatedly postponed. And all this was happening long before the pandemic. Justice is delayed and is being denied. Defendants' and witnesses' lives are being put on hold.
Ludicrously and dangerously, lawyers and judges and civilians are being expected to attend court even for hearings which can be done remotely and even when the courts are not in any sense Covid-safe.
The wilful damage being done to the justice system over the last 10 years, if not longer, is a stain on government for which they ought not to be forgiven.
While I like the idea of poems being read at important occasions (and unimportant ones, come to that), I thought Amanda Gorman's poem yesterday was drivel. Though kudos to her for her self-possession while reciting it. ...
Interesting. Despite the fact that I'm a fully signed-up old fogey, I thought it was rather good, with some parts very good. It was a bit too long, but there were some truly striking phrases, such as 'a nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished'.
Stylistically, it was clearly based on rap, with soft, falling rhymes and pseudo-rhymes:
It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit. It’s the past we step into and how we repair it. We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it. Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.
OK, it was perhaps a bit on the mawkish side, but no more than so than many celebratory poems written for ceremonial occasions, including the vast bulk of the official output of our own Poet Laureates since time immemorial.
Thanks Scott. Refreshing to agree with you again on something.
This is a real issue but to say that Biden has "unilaterally eviscerated womens sports and placed a new glass ceiling on girls" is indicative of someone not too interested in resolving it.
How do you propose to resolve the sport issue?
How does a biological woman compete with a biological man on a "level playing field"?
And if its so easy to do, why do we have women's sport and men's sport, why don't we just merge them and call it sport and have all women and men competing equally?
Lockdown. Definitely not the vaccine as deaths are still going up.
Deaths are a lagging indicator and not a good measure for vaccine effectiveness for a while because there are loads of cases in or entering the funnel right now.
It would be interesting to see what other busts, paintings etc Biden has removed - just as his predecessors did when they entered the White House for the first time. Making a stink out of this or drawing any conclusions about policy from it seems pretty daft to me.
The world runs on realpolitik. Whether or not there is a particular bust sat in a particular office is not going to affect whatever relationship exists between the US and UK.
In its monthly snapshot of the market – based on sales registered last November – the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed that the average price of a home in London was up by 9.7%, to a record of £514,000.
The temporary break on stamp duty, which covers homes costing up to £500,000 in England, has led to a boom in sales and pushed up prices in properties that benefit from the largest saving.
Within the capital, prices had risen most strongly in the upmarket borough of Kensington and Chelsea, which recorded annual growth of 28.6% and an average price of £1.5m.
So much for COVID dampening the London housing market.
As someone who has been looking to buy in London but is essentially priced out by a bit so waiting for a drop I have been tracking prices pretty regularly for the last year and prices are down not up. This may be anecdotal but I am very sure it is correct in the 400-600k range at least. I would say they are down about 10-15% and dropping 1% each month still. For what is selling 2015-19 prices are a good guide, some stuff is at 2013 prices which would have been exceedingly rare pre covid.
Why is the ONS up?
Stamp duty holiday pushes the mix of homes that are sold upwards, the mix of homes more than the prices. Covid pushes the mix of homes that are sold towards those with outdoor space, ie upwards, not the prices but the mix of homes. Leasehold cladding issues push the mix of homes that are sold away from poorly run tower blocks towards other properties, i.e upwards.
So the ONS is comparing a completely different set of homes sold recently to the long term trends, it is fairly meaningless as a comparison, the old example of comparing apples and oranges applies here.
As an aside, with the proposed leasehold reforms, does anyone think it is worth speculatively considering a very short lease (sub 30 years) if it is suitably priced to the current leasehold rules with a potential upside of new marriage value calculations working out favourably, either under this govt or a future Labour one?
That is a very interesting point. I've just had a look at the ONS page and it doesn't make any reference to the composition of the market, which as you say is very important. It's a bit like the productivity stats flat-lining as we added more workers in lower value jobs.
Mr. kinabalu, been more preoccupied with other matters this morning, but there's a reason why men and women are separated in sport. It sounds like Biden's approach is nuts.
Well if that's the view of what is surely the doughtiest fighter for women's rights on here, perhaps he is on the wrong track. Let me have another think about it.
It's important that we start as we mean to go on. Our dealings as an independent country vaguely attached by land to Europe but with many historic and cultural ties beyond need to be on the correct footing from the outset. We'll deal with nations at an ambassadorial level not self-appointed superstates.
We are the only Country to do this.
Start as we mean to go on, as an International outlier, a denier of reality, obstinate and untrustworthy.
Brexit in a nutshell.
What I don't understand is if we have ambassadors to the UN and NATO as well as their member states, they wny not EU? The conclusion is that not to have one for the EU is merely petty spite and wrecks relationships further in the interests of making Brexiters feel less awful about themselves.
It would be interesting to see what other busts, paintings etc Biden has removed - just as his predecessors did when they entered the White House for the first time. Making a stink out of this or drawing any conclusions about policy from it seems pretty daft to me.
The world runs on realpolitik. Whether or not there is a particular bust sat in a particular office is not going to affect whatever relationship exists between the US and UK.
Replaced by Truman apparently. Fair enough, I'd say. He's one of the iconic Democratic presidents. In fact you like him, I seem to recall. Also allays any fears of super wokeness. Nothing woke about Truman. He dropped the A bomb.
Indeed - Truman is currently on the cancellation list for that very reason.
That moment 12 days after the death of Truman's predecessor when General Groves came in to have a chat with him about this little thing called the Manhattan Project was one of the greatest baptisms of fire for any leader in modern history.
It's important that we start as we mean to go on. Our dealings as an independent country vaguely attached by land to Europe but with many historic and cultural ties beyond need to be on the correct footing from the outset. We'll deal with nations at an ambassadorial level not self-appointed superstates.
We are the only Country to do this.
Start as we mean to go on, as an International outlier, a denier of reality, obstinate and untrustworthy.
Brexit in a nutshell.
What I don't understand is if we have ambassadors to the UN and NATO as well as their member states, they wny not EU? The conclusion is that not to have one for the EU is merely petty spite and wrecks relationships further in the interests of making Brexiters feel less awful about themselves.
But the UK does have an ambassador to the EU, Tim Barrow.
Lockdown. Definitely not the vaccine as deaths are still going up.
Deaths are a lagging indicator and not a good measure for vaccine effectiveness for a while because there are loads of cases in or entering the funnel right now.
And cases are an even less useful measure of vaccine effectiveness.
EDIT: Though I guess it's partly a case of who's catching it.
I wonder if Trump has half inched anything from the White House on his way out the door?
I would be very disappointed if he hasn't.
Will most likely be gold and although looks expensive is actually not worth that much..
I have to say watching that expose on Putin Palace....1000 euro bog brushes was a particular stand out of the sort of crap new money thinke make look classy and definitely the sort of thing Trump would have.
It's quite clear the Democrats have been wholly captured by the Wokeists; this will be the most toe-curlingly Woke and wanky US administration there has ever been.
It will do nothing to solve America's divisions or heal them, except exacerbate them further. The only question is whether the Republicans can capitalise on it in November 2022, or whether their own fratricidal civil war will consume them, giving more space to the nutters in the Dems.
Sad.
I think you've been wholly captured by anti-wokeism. Did you watch yesterday? Lots of humility and decency on show, and a good celebration of modern, diverse USA. Biden will do what he says, and govern for all decent Americans. But yes, he won't pander to the EDL equivalents or neo-fascists of the far right. Because they're not decent.
Like our government, you're obsessed by symbols/statues. But it's not substance. Let me give you an example. While Jenrick puts forward legislation on statues, he does sweet FA to tackle real issues of substance, For example, tens of thousands of people are trapped in buildings with cladding that needs removing; they can't sell, and many face huge bills. Following Grenfell, how much progress has been made in resolving this? Not a lot.
Your priorities are all wrong.
Yes, I watched yesterday. I thought it was an acceptable speech, but not an especially historically memorable one; it just looks like that right now because everyone is so relieved he's not Trump.
Your comparison is an entirely false one. Opposition to "Wokeism" ≠ support for the EDL or neo-fascists, and it's offensive to say it does. I explored the difference on here last night - you should read what I said.
Governments, can and do, enact hundreds of policies across dozens of policy areas all at once, and are both capable of doing so and expected to do it. As it happens, I think the Government should make the relief of leaseholders trapped in flats by poor cladding a high priority and get it fixed with a Government guarantee. However, I also think he should address politically-motivated cultural desecration as well. What people mean by "he's got his priorities all wrong" is "we'd prefer if he didn't address this issue" There's no reason Robert Paden Powell, Redvers Buller, Oliver Cromwell, or Admiral Nelson, should be removed without due democratic process just so councillors can signal their virtue and appease their fanatical base. This was a gap in the law and urgently needed addressing before many more irrevocably came down.
My priorities are not wrong. I also want a united, less divided society. Symbols matter, and rather than negatively tearing things down and dividing people we should be adding to them with new symbols that say things about us today, and celebrate the best of us.
Your blindness to how both sides are aggravating it at present with their language and action is a huge part of the problem.
You'd be well-advised to be more reflective and balanced in your posts on the matter, in future.
@Casino_Royale wrote a very good post yesterday on woke-ism: the difference between being awake to and dealing with oppression and its consequences vs a somewhat narcissistic insistence on symbolic gesture and telling people what to think unaccompanied by any effective action to help people.
Thanks Cyclefree.
I do get a bit upset when people intimate (and they do) that I must be a secret bigot because I oppose that.
Can I get overly animated about it? Yes, absolutely. I think that's because I detest a lot of the narcissism, self-absorption, preachiness and hypocrisy that I've seen surround it - and personally experienced - and I've seen how it divides people with my own eyes, both personally and professionally. So I'm rather contemptuous of it. Maybe that exasperation makes me less convincing on the subject, and I need to watch that.
Those who know me personally will know that my actions in my professional and personal life on fairness to people of all backgrounds speak for themselves. I don't see any need to signal it.
That's for others to do if they want to use me as an example.
As long as Biden doesn't take the bust of you down from the White House democracy, tolerance and civil society is safe.
I don't think the EU should have ambassadorial status and I don't think it's petty. For good or ill we did Brexit and we marked ourselves out as a nation state. We live with that and by that. The EU should be no exception.
If you believe in Brexit, which I didn't, then it's consistent and right.
Actually that tweet is wrong. Britain consistently opposed the status of the EEAS as it is known and blocked it having full diplomatic status on organisations such as the UN and OSCE.
Exactly.
I think it's consistent and right that following Brexit we take this decision. I hope Boris sticks to his guns on it, although I'm doubtful he will.
It's important that we start as we mean to go on. Our dealings as an independent country vaguely attached by land to Europe but with many historic and cultural ties beyond need to be on the correct footing from the outset. We'll deal with nations at an ambassadorial level not self-appointed superstates.
I was a Remainer but the EU's worst trait has been its attempt to shift from economic unity to political unity. Vive la difference!
As @rcs1000 has explained a gazillion times, effective economic unity necessarily requires a degree of political unity. See, for instance, the Singke Market. It simply is not possible to have the sort of trading relationship there was in the Singke Market without some degree of political integration. The amount of such integration is the issue, of course.
That is why the claim that we want only the trade and not the political stuff was nonsense. And why now - because we have decided against the political stuff - we are realising the cost to our trade.
I would be interested to know how much political unity - by which we mean actual political attachment via legally binding institutions - you think there is between the EU and the EFTA members?
There is a trade off between the two. Ie you can integrate to a certain extent on the economic level but the more economic integration you want and a say in how the rules are determined, the more involvement you will need in the bodies making those rules - either by being a member of those bodies or on those bodies in some other capacity.
This then raises the question of the democratic oversight of the bodies making those rules. Many of the rules in the financial sector, for instance, are made by expert bodies with little or no direct democratic oversight at all.
We can have quite a lot of economic/trade integration with the EU but at the cost of relatively little say in the decision-making over the rules and/or relatively little democratic oversight. Or not, as the case may be.
But my - perhaps simplistic - point is that trade, especially the more integrated it becomes necessarily involves political decisions and a degree of surrendering a certain freedom of manoeuvre in order to get other desirable things. Britain - with its history - should surely understand that.
Of all the TV comedians who talk politics on their shows, Bill Maher is the only one who even tries to understand what’s actually going on in the USA, to see that every story has two sides and that challenges his audience to think outside the coastal bubble in which they live.
Mr. kinabalu, been more preoccupied with other matters this morning, but there's a reason why men and women are separated in sport. It sounds like Biden's approach is nuts.
It's important that we start as we mean to go on. Our dealings as an independent country vaguely attached by land to Europe but with many historic and cultural ties beyond need to be on the correct footing from the outset. We'll deal with nations at an ambassadorial level not self-appointed superstates.
We are the only Country to do this.
Start as we mean to go on, as an International outlier, a denier of reality, obstinate and untrustworthy.
Brexit in a nutshell.
What I don't understand is if we have ambassadors to the UN and NATO as well as their member states, they wny not EU? The conclusion is that not to have one for the EU is merely petty spite and wrecks relationships further in the interests of making Brexiters feel less awful about themselves.
But the UK does have an ambassador to the EU, Tim Barrow.
Sorry - should have typed one from the EU. But the logic stands.
It's important that we start as we mean to go on. Our dealings as an independent country vaguely attached by land to Europe but with many historic and cultural ties beyond need to be on the correct footing from the outset. We'll deal with nations at an ambassadorial level not self-appointed superstates.
We are the only Country to do this.
Start as we mean to go on, as an International outlier, a denier of reality, obstinate and untrustworthy.
Brexit in a nutshell.
What I don't understand is if we have ambassadors to the UN and NATO as well as their member states, they wny not EU? The conclusion is that not to have one for the EU is merely petty spite and wrecks relationships further in the interests of making Brexiters feel less awful about themselves.
Its not to do with having ambassadors per se. It is the status of those ambassadors.
The easiest way to deal with this would be to change the law.
Entirely off-topic, but later this morning I have several back to back video meetings. One is an invite to Teams
*shudder*
Why is it that everything Microsoft is as complex and user-unfriendly as possible? I don't to integrate into your sodding hell, just let me connect to this meeting that someone else is hosting so that I can then go back to using platforms that actually work.
Teams is fine –– when you actually get on to the meeting. But it's ludicrously complicated to set up a meeting on the fly, or even attend the meeting when you are already logged in.
As you rightly say, anything MS produces has a UX rating of 1/10 at best and contains millions of 'features' that you never use.
I have moved (almost) wholesale to the Apple suite of apps – Keynote, Numbers etc are far superior, and infinitely more aesthetically pleasing, than PowerPoint and Excel. The only MS package I use regularly these days is Word.
Microsoft software is just ugly, inside and out.
I've gone Google rather than Apple, but yeah I agree with you. Docs / Sheets / Slides work just as well as the MS equivalents, with less faff and everything you do is continuously backed up onto the cloud. I have never had these applications crash or lose my work. Unlike Word / Excel / Powerpoint.
I'm sorry but only a complete idiot believes decorations have to sit in the same place all the time. the choice of busts (Martin Luther King Jr, Robert Kennedy, Rosa Parks, Eleanor Roosevelt and Cesar Chavez) seems very appropriate for an 21st century American president.
Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks and Cesar Chavez all point to the work that is still required to make America an equal place.
All the apologising and the whataboutism doesn't matter. Churchill is a symbol (*THE* symbol) of the transatlantic alliance.
Moving it out - without explaining why or where, and acknowledging the sheer importance of the man in Anglo-American relations - is going to have political implications.
Wouldn't have been any busts of civil rights leaders if we hadn't put everything on the line to defeat Hitler. Churchill is the ultimate singular embodiment of that. For that reason alone, his bust deserves his place in that company.
Try pursuing a Woke agenda under Nazism. Might have - briefly - discovered slavery wasn't just an historical stain to be cleansed.
80 year old battles.
Well, let's give up on fighting fascism, eh? 80 year old battles.....
No lessons for us today there.
Yes, it's a statue of some foreign guy, long dead. But given the symbolism Americans place on their flag, you'd think they might just make a space for the ultimate political symbol of standing up to The Bad Guys.
On that score Stalin is more deserving of a place on the sideboard than WLSC.
The other side of his Ledger is, er, difficult. You know, when he became The Bad Guy. What is it - 6 million deaths? Nine million?
At least a bust of Churchill doesn't leave behind a blood-stain on the mahogony....
Except that Churchill was cheerfully complicit in all that. "If Hitler invaded hell..."
And if there was one person in the UK who would be absolutely au courant with the Holomodor, the show trials, the executions, the Gulags, Katyn etc, it would be Churchill. Needs must, but he could probably have done with toning down the fawning over the wise and brave generalissimo.
Lockdown. Definitely not the vaccine as deaths are still going up.
Deaths are a lagging indicator and not a good measure for vaccine effectiveness for a while because there are loads of cases in or entering the funnel right now.
And cases are an even less useful measure of vaccine effectiveness.
EDIT: Though I guess it's partly a case of who's catching it.
Yes, for a while anyway. The real measure for vaccine effectiveness in the very near term is the number of people entering the hospitalisation funnel falling from the age groups that are being vaccinated.
It's important that we start as we mean to go on. Our dealings as an independent country vaguely attached by land to Europe but with many historic and cultural ties beyond need to be on the correct footing from the outset. We'll deal with nations at an ambassadorial level not self-appointed superstates.
We are the only Country to do this.
Start as we mean to go on, as an International outlier, a denier of reality, obstinate and untrustworthy.
Brexit in a nutshell.
What I don't understand is if we have ambassadors to the UN and NATO as well as their member states, they wny not EU? The conclusion is that not to have one for the EU is merely petty spite and wrecks relationships further in the interests of making Brexiters feel less awful about themselves.
But the UK does have an ambassador to the EU, Tim Barrow.
Sorry - should have typed one from the EU. But the logic stands.
The EU does have an ambassador to the UK, João Vale de Almeida.
Lockdown. Definitely not the vaccine as deaths are still going up.
Deaths are a lagging indicator and not a good measure for vaccine effectiveness for a while because there are loads of cases in or entering the funnel right now.
There is some quite encouraging data buried in the headline Israel figures:
According to preliminary results published last week from a study of 600,000 recipients of the Pfizer vaccine, of 4,500 Israelis who tested positive after receiving their first vaccine dose, 244 were admitted to hospital because of the coronavirus in the first week following the jab,.. In the second week after the jab, 124 people were taken to hospital, but after that only seven more people fell ill enough to stay in hospital.
That suggests to me a very high real-world efficacy in terms of serious cases, which are after all the most important from a personal protection point of view.
Mr. kinabalu, been more preoccupied with other matters this morning, but there's a reason why men and women are separated in sport. It sounds like Biden's approach is nuts.
"Nicola Sturgeon is the UK's best respected party leader, according to the latest polling.
Work by Opinium for the Observer shows 40% of people in Scotland "strongly approve" of the way she's doing her job.
That compares with a rating of 11% for Tory PM Boris Johnson, 4% for Labour head Keir Starmer and 3% for Ed Davey of the LibDems. [...] Sturgeon also leads the pack for voters in the UK as a whole — with 42% approval to Johnson's 34%.
Even in England, 41% of people approve of the way she's doing her job, compared with 38% for Starmer, 34% for Johnson and 14% for Davey.
And when the disapproval ratings are brought in, that leaves Sturgeon as the only one of the four in positive numbers in Scotland, with Johnson plummeting to -25% while the SNP head is at +28%.
In fact, Johnson is on negative numbers everywhere, while Sturgeon is on +13% for the UK as a whole and +12% for England."
It would be interesting to see what other busts, paintings etc Biden has removed - just as his predecessors did when they entered the White House for the first time. Making a stink out of this or drawing any conclusions about policy from it seems pretty daft to me.
The world runs on realpolitik. Whether or not there is a particular bust sat in a particular office is not going to affect whatever relationship exists between the US and UK.
Replaced by Truman apparently. Fair enough, I'd say. He's one of the iconic Democratic presidents. In fact you like him, I seem to recall. Also allays any fears of super wokeness. Nothing woke about Truman. He dropped the A bomb.
Well even if I did have an issue with moving Churchill (or any other bust) - which of course I don't - I certainly couldn't complain about replacing him with Truman. An excellent choice.
I don't think the EU should have ambassadorial status and I don't think it's petty. For good or ill we did Brexit and we marked ourselves out as a nation state. We live with that and by that. The EU should be no exception.
If you believe in Brexit, which I didn't, then it's consistent and right.
I'm not really sure how slapping someone else's tweet engages with my point as a valid reply? Especially as it doesn't answer my point.
We don't recognise the EU as a nation state and we don't believe in superstates, which was half the argument of Brexit when you stop and think about it.
So Johnson & co. are absolutely doing the right thing and should stick to it.
I'm sure this will be very helpful to the negotiations on financial services which still have no certainty about future trading arrangements with the EU. Petty slights like this will help put the EU in its place and force them to give us a good deal. Or perhaps not.
Brexiters always seem more interested in symbols rather than concrete achievements. We risk winning a batch of merely symbolic victories while losing on everything that makes a difference to people's lives and livelihoods.
Quite the opposite, the vaccine and ending lockdown are the thing that will make the biggest difference to people's lives. This is an unexpected but huge benefit of Brexit and would be a real concrete achievement.
"Nicola Sturgeon is the UK's best respected party leader, according to the latest polling.
Work by Opinium for the Observer shows 40% of people in Scotland "strongly approve" of the way she's doing her job.
That compares with a rating of 11% for Tory PM Boris Johnson, 4% for Labour head Keir Starmer and 3% for Ed Davey of the LibDems. [...] Sturgeon also leads the pack for voters in the UK as a whole — with 42% approval to Johnson's 34%.
Even in England, 41% of people approve of the way she's doing her job, compared with 38% for Starmer, 34% for Johnson and 14% for Davey.
And when the disapproval ratings are brought in, that leaves Sturgeon as the only one of the four in positive numbers in Scotland, with Johnson plummeting to -25% while the SNP head is at +28%.
In fact, Johnson is on negative numbers everywhere, while Sturgeon is on +13% for the UK as a whole and +12% for England."
It's important that we start as we mean to go on. Our dealings as an independent country vaguely attached by land to Europe but with many historic and cultural ties beyond need to be on the correct footing from the outset. We'll deal with nations at an ambassadorial level not self-appointed superstates.
We are the only Country to do this.
Start as we mean to go on, as an International outlier, a denier of reality, obstinate and untrustworthy.
Brexit in a nutshell.
What I don't understand is if we have ambassadors to the UN and NATO as well as their member states, they wny not EU? The conclusion is that not to have one for the EU is merely petty spite and wrecks relationships further in the interests of making Brexiters feel less awful about themselves.
But the UK does have an ambassador to the EU, Tim Barrow.
Sorry - should have typed one from the EU. But the logic stands.
The EU does have an ambassador to the UK, João Vale de Almeida.
While I like the idea of poems being read at important occasions (and unimportant ones, come to that), I thought Amanda Gorman's poem yesterday was drivel. Though kudos to her for her self-possession while reciting it. ...
Interesting. Despite the fact that I'm a fully signed-up old fogey, I thought it was rather good, with some parts very good. It was a bit too long, but there were some truly striking phrases, such as 'a nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished'.
Stylistically, it was clearly based on rap, with soft, falling rhymes and pseudo-rhymes:
It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit. It’s the past we step into and how we repair it. We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it. Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.
OK, it was perhaps a bit on the mawkish side, but no more than so than many celebratory poems written for ceremonial occasions, including the vast bulk of the official output of our own Poet Laureates since time immemorial.
I listen to and recite poetry to myself quite a lot. It is something I've done since childhood. I listened to it and found it really hard to listen to. It just became words washing over me. It felt like a speech rather than a poem.
Poems - to me - especially when well spoken force you to really listen, really focus. Whereas this quickly became background noise to me.
A housebound 84-year-old woman says she has been told she may have to wait up to two months to have her coronavirus vaccine if she cannot get to her GP surgery.
Stuart Wilson says his mother Julia, from Sketty in Swansea, is immobile and needs two people with a hoist to get her up.
He says her surgery called on Tuesday offering a jab but they were told it would take time to arrange a house visit.
Lockdown. Definitely not the vaccine as deaths are still going up.
Deaths are a lagging indicator and not a good measure for vaccine effectiveness for a while because there are loads of cases in or entering the funnel right now.
There is some quite encouraging data buried in the headline Israel figures:
According to preliminary results published last week from a study of 600,000 recipients of the Pfizer vaccine, of 4,500 Israelis who tested positive after receiving their first vaccine dose, 244 were admitted to hospital because of the coronavirus in the first week following the jab,.. In the second week after the jab, 124 people were taken to hospital, but after that only seven more people fell ill enough to stay in hospital.
That suggests to me a very high real-world efficacy in terms of serious cases, which are after all the most important from a personal protection point of view.
Yes, for our single jab strategy it makes a lot of sense too because it's not about preventing people from catching it right now, it's about ensuring that if you do get it you don't end up in hospital taking up a bed that might be needed for a cancer patient.
It's important that we start as we mean to go on. Our dealings as an independent country vaguely attached by land to Europe but with many historic and cultural ties beyond need to be on the correct footing from the outset. We'll deal with nations at an ambassadorial level not self-appointed superstates.
We are the only Country to do this.
Start as we mean to go on, as an International outlier, a denier of reality, obstinate and untrustworthy.
Brexit in a nutshell.
What I don't understand is if we have ambassadors to the UN and NATO as well as their member states, they wny not EU? The conclusion is that not to have one for the EU is merely petty spite and wrecks relationships further in the interests of making Brexiters feel less awful about themselves.
But the UK does have an ambassador to the EU, Tim Barrow.
Sorry - should have typed one from the EU. But the logic stands.
The EU does have an ambassador to the UK, João Vale de Almeida.
At the risk of giving away my own position I am not a fan of independence, the SNP government or Nicola Sturgeon (I do acknowledge her skills as a politician). And yet that article is bordering on crap.
His statement: "It is worth adding that he was not acquitted because his actions were ‘dodgy’ yet failed to meet the threshold of criminality but because the jury believed his defence that none of them happened" is completely inconsistent with the brilliant jury speech by Gordon Jackson QC who acted for him and plainly has no basis in fact as the jury were not polled.
The claims that the Lord Advocate and Crown Office were involved in some nebulous but vast conspiracy are ridiculous. I have known, slightly, Alex Prentice QC who prosecuted for the Crown for more than 25 years. He is careful, measured and scrupulous. Pretending that there was not a case for Salmond to answer (which seems the starting point of this conspiracy) is delusional.
The central charge, so far as I can make it out, is that Sturgeon met the former leader of the SNP at her Official residence without civil servants being present. That this was a crime so heinous that it had "parallels with Watergate" goes beyond hyperbole into hysteria.
I am extremely uncomfortable with the way that our Civil Service no longer seems to see any distinction between the SNP as a party and the government. I really don't like how independence supporting placemen have filled the offices of Scotland's quangocracy and use their positions to promote their cause. We do have major problems with the functionality of our democracy. But I do not find it surprising that any organisation would have reservations about anyone so delusional representing that organisation's interests.
Of all the TV comedians who talk politics on their shows, Bill Maher is the only one who even tries to understand what’s actually going on in the USA, to see that every story has two sides and that challenges his audience to think outside the coastal bubble in which they live.
I think he is the only one that didn't spend the last 4 year repeating exactly the same Orange man bad joke every minute of their show. Jon Oliver became totally unwatchable for that reason.
I used to watch Oliver, Colbert, Fallon and occasionally others. Now the only one I’ll watch through is Maher.
The others’ monologues were tiring three years ago, and they really got stuck when they had to work from home with no audience of happy clappers.
Maher is prepared to interview everyone, and although he has a personal point of view, is actually a good interviewer. His writers and researchers are the best on TV, as demonstrated by the piece above.
"Nicola Sturgeon is the UK's best respected party leader, according to the latest polling.
Work by Opinium for the Observer shows 40% of people in Scotland "strongly approve" of the way she's doing her job.
That compares with a rating of 11% for Tory PM Boris Johnson, 4% for Labour head Keir Starmer and 3% for Ed Davey of the LibDems. [...] Sturgeon also leads the pack for voters in the UK as a whole — with 42% approval to Johnson's 34%.
Even in England, 41% of people approve of the way she's doing her job, compared with 38% for Starmer, 34% for Johnson and 14% for Davey.
And when the disapproval ratings are brought in, that leaves Sturgeon as the only one of the four in positive numbers in Scotland, with Johnson plummeting to -25% while the SNP head is at +28%.
In fact, Johnson is on negative numbers everywhere, while Sturgeon is on +13% for the UK as a whole and +12% for England."
Subsample!
Hmm, so it is, but only in part. Th einteresting thing is the low salience of SKS in Scotland, even on those crude figures for Scotland.
I listen to and recite poetry to myself quite a lot. It is something I've done since childhood. I listened to it and found it really hard to listen to. It just became words washing over me. It felt like a speech rather than a poem.
Poems - to me - especially when well spoken force you to really listen, really focus. Whereas this quickly became background noise to me.
But it's very personal I accept.
Yes, it was rather a hybrid of a speech and a poem, but that's OK.
FIREFIGHTERS are battling to save a factory producing the Oxford Covid vaccine in North Wales from flooding caused by Storm Christoph. Emergency services raced to Wrexham Industrial Estate last night to protect the jab - as 2,000 homes across England were evacuated following torrential rainfall overnight.
The UK is giving 200 vaccinations every minute, Health Secretary Matt Hancock says
He says the UK has now given more than five million doses of the vaccine to 4.6 million people.
It comes as 65 new vaccination centres are due to open in England today, including a mosque in Birmingham and a cinema in Aylesbury.
And as noted yesterday - they are also rolling out in-home vaccinations.
Yes, having vaccination teams door knocking is going to really get those last 30% of over 80s done quickly. It's also something that doesn't need to rely on local infrastructure.
Mr. kinabalu, been more preoccupied with other matters this morning, but there's a reason why men and women are separated in sport. It sounds like Biden's approach is nuts.
Well if that's the view of what is surely the doughtiest fighter for women's rights on here, perhaps he is on the wrong track. Let me have another think about it.
You should. It does not matter what anyone calls themselves or thinks of themselves as. Words do not change biological reality. If people who are biologically male compete with women, then they will have a physical advantage which no amount of skill or training by women can overcome.
I wonder if Trump has half inched anything from the White House on his way out the door?
I would be very disappointed if he hasn't.
Will most likely be gold and although looks expensive is actually not worth that much..
I have to say watching that expose on Putin Palace....1000 euro bog brushes was a particular stand out of the sort of crap new money thinke make look classy and definitely the sort of thing Trump would have.
I think it is quite easy to make a judgement on the filthy rich by what they do with their money:
It's important that we start as we mean to go on. Our dealings as an independent country vaguely attached by land to Europe but with many historic and cultural ties beyond need to be on the correct footing from the outset. We'll deal with nations at an ambassadorial level not self-appointed superstates.
We are the only Country to do this.
Start as we mean to go on, as an International outlier, a denier of reality, obstinate and untrustworthy.
Brexit in a nutshell.
What I don't understand is if we have ambassadors to the UN and NATO as well as their member states, they wny not EU? The conclusion is that not to have one for the EU is merely petty spite and wrecks relationships further in the interests of making Brexiters feel less awful about themselves.
But the UK does have an ambassador to the EU, Tim Barrow.
While I like the idea of poems being read at important occasions (and unimportant ones, come to that), I thought Amanda Gorman's poem yesterday was drivel. Though kudos to her for her self-possession while reciting it. ...
Interesting. Despite the fact that I'm a fully signed-up old fogey, I thought it was rather good, with some parts very good. It was a bit too long, but there were some truly striking phrases, such as 'a nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished'.
Stylistically, it was clearly based on rap, with soft, falling rhymes and pseudo-rhymes:
It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit. It’s the past we step into and how we repair it. We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it. Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.
OK, it was perhaps a bit on the mawkish side, but no more than so than many celebratory poems written for ceremonial occasions, including the vast bulk of the official output of our own Poet Laureates since time immemorial.
I listen to and recite poetry to myself quite a lot. It is something I've done since childhood. I listened to it and found it really hard to listen to. It just became words washing over me. It felt like a speech rather than a poem.
Poems - to me - especially when well spoken force you to really listen, really focus. Whereas this quickly became background noise to me.
But it's very personal I accept.
I know you think I'm a philistine on this but I really struggle with most poetry. I usually need to have it explained to me to appreciate it, with some rare exceptions, and even then I'm sometimes a bit meh. Maybe that's because I'm an engineer and deal in logical statements!
John Betjeman I enjoyed, chiefly because I could relate to the subject matter, and found his poems rather amusing.
Some of the WW1 poetry has stayed with me too. But it's too dark and disturbing for me to want to re-read regularly.
Comments
A colleague of mine once observed that those who lash out at others are often most offended and surprised when they get it back.
I agree, however, that the speech was okay. That was the point though: he deliberately took the heat out of it and dialled down the rhetoric. That's what is needed. A person who is capable of reaching out across the floor.
Not someone like you.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55668457
And btw, if Netfix are making dramas in Arbroath Sheriff Court they are being awfully quiet about it.
People just don't seem to get that courts, like almost everything else, change over time and need far more IT and technical support than you can efficiently provide in grand Victorian buildings. The new, purpose built, Justice Centre (and it hurts just to write that) in Inverness is one of the only Sheriff Courts which can provide the video conferencing we were lamenting earlier today. Of course it looks sad and dreary compared with the old court which was in the Castle overlooking the river Ness but it is far more functional and efficient.
A point is going to come when a lot of relatively trivial crime is going to get dumped on the basis that it is just too old and the evidence is too stale. This is an inevitable consequence of the pandemic.
Have a g'day everyone.
That is why the claim that we want only the trade and not the political stuff was nonsense. And why now - because we have decided against the political stuff - we are realising the cost to our trade.
As you rightly say, anything MS produces has a UX rating of 1/10 at best and contains millions of 'features' that you never use.
I have moved (almost) wholesale to the Apple suite of apps – Keynote, Numbers etc are far superior, and infinitely more aesthetically pleasing, than PowerPoint and Excel. The only MS package I use regularly these days is Word.
Microsoft software is just ugly, inside and out.
https://twitter.com/AbigailShrier/status/1352121732723666946
Not long ago I read 'Dominion', by CJ Sansom, a counterfactual account of London in a Britain which, under Halifax, surrendered to the Nazis. The Germans were then left with the Soviet Union as their enemy, and were more or less at a standstill in 1953 when Hitler died and the Nazi Party and 'apparatus' fell into dispute with the Army, who were become war weary of the stalemate. The German regime fell apart and the Soviets swept all before them, rather as actually happened in 1944-5.
I do get a bit upset when people intimate (and they do) that I must be a secret bigot because I oppose that.
Can I get overly animated about it? Yes, absolutely. I think that's because I detest a lot of the narcissism, self-absorption, preachiness and hypocrisy that I've seen surround it - and personally experienced - and I've seen how it divides people with my own eyes, both personally and professionally. So I'm rather contemptuous of it. Maybe that exasperation makes me less convincing on the subject, and I need to watch that.
Those who know me personally will know that my actions in my professional and personal life on fairness to people of all backgrounds speak for themselves. I don't see any need to signal it.
That's for others to do if they want to use me as an example.
Perhaps you should check out the science denying and bigoted language she uses.
Biden's action is to reverse things like this.
Trump administration reverses health protections for transgender people
Friday’s announcement came on the fourth anniversary of the Pulse shooting that killed 49 people at a gay nightclub.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/12/trump-transgender-lgbt-healthcare-protections
https://twitter.com/themajorityscot/status/1351922983154176008?s=20
Because, you see, without specifics I read that as an emotional reaction to it because you recognised something of yourself in the behaviours I was criticising.
Why is the ONS up?
Stamp duty holiday pushes the mix of homes that are sold upwards, the mix of homes more than the prices.
Covid pushes the mix of homes that are sold towards those with outdoor space, ie upwards, not the prices but the mix of homes.
Leasehold cladding issues push the mix of homes that are sold away from poorly run tower blocks towards other properties, i.e upwards.
So the ONS is comparing a completely different set of homes sold recently to the long term trends, it is fairly meaningless as a comparison, the old example of comparing apples and oranges applies here.
As an aside, with the proposed leasehold reforms, does anyone think it is worth speculatively considering a very short lease (sub 30 years) if it is suitably priced to the current leasehold rules with a potential upside of new marriage value calculations working out favourably, either under this govt or a future Labour one?
BBC News - Biden sets to work on reversing Trump policies with executive orders
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-55738746
Uncle Joe signs 15 in a day.
Tempers and emotions are high on both sides. That was someone retweeting it who feels very strongly about it.
Of course, language matters. We react to how things are said as well as what is said.
We need to get beyond the spin into the real substance beneath it - and there there is undoubtedly a problem in dogmatically insisting that black is white, in all instances, out of a genuine (but, at times, misguided) desire to respect everyone's preferred social identity.
Ludicrously and dangerously, lawyers and judges and civilians are being expected to attend court even for hearings which can be done remotely and even when the courts are not in any sense Covid-safe.
The wilful damage being done to the justice system over the last 10 years, if not longer, is a stain on government for which they ought not to be forgiven.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/keep-courts-open-online-or-in-person-flrfvq55w
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/coronavirus-trials-facing-delays-of-up-to-five-years-5j60fg70c
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/covid-strikes-down-69-judges-amid-chaos-in-courts-and-jails-2vx5c9qrq
Stylistically, it was clearly based on rap, with soft, falling rhymes and pseudo-rhymes:
It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit.
It’s the past we step into and how we repair it.
We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it.
Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.
OK, it was perhaps a bit on the mawkish side, but no more than so than many celebratory poems written for ceremonial occasions, including the vast bulk of the official output of our own Poet Laureates since time immemorial.
How does a biological woman compete with a biological man on a "level playing field"?
And if its so easy to do, why do we have women's sport and men's sport, why don't we just merge them and call it sport and have all women and men competing equally?
https://twitter.com/BBCPhilipSim/status/1352190055952093184?s=20
That moment 12 days after the death of Truman's predecessor when General Groves came in to have a chat with him about this little thing called the Manhattan Project was one of the greatest baptisms of fire for any leader in modern history.
EDIT: Though I guess it's partly a case of who's catching it.
I have to say watching that expose on Putin Palace....1000 euro bog brushes was a particular stand out of the sort of crap new money thinke make look classy and definitely the sort of thing Trump would have.
This then raises the question of the democratic oversight of the bodies making those rules. Many of the rules in the financial sector, for instance, are made by expert bodies with little or no direct democratic oversight at all.
We can have quite a lot of economic/trade integration with the EU but at the cost of relatively little say in the decision-making over the rules and/or relatively little democratic oversight. Or not, as the case may be.
But my - perhaps simplistic - point is that trade, especially the more integrated it becomes necessarily involves political decisions and a degree of surrendering a certain freedom of manoeuvre in order to get other desirable things. Britain - with its history - should surely understand that.
This sounds perfectly fine. What could possibly go wrong?
The easiest way to deal with this would be to change the law.
According to preliminary results published last week from a study of 600,000 recipients of the Pfizer vaccine, of 4,500 Israelis who tested positive after receiving their first vaccine dose, 244 were admitted to hospital because of the coronavirus in the first week following the jab,.. In the second week after the jab, 124 people were taken to hospital, but after that only seven more people fell ill enough to stay in hospital.
https://inews.co.uk/news/world/covid-vaccine-israel-vaccination-roll-out-transmissibility-programme-palestine-834999?ITO=msn
That suggests to me a very high real-world efficacy in terms of serious cases, which are after all the most important from a personal protection point of view.
"Nicola Sturgeon is the UK's best respected party leader, according to the latest polling.
Work by Opinium for the Observer shows 40% of people in Scotland "strongly approve" of the way she's doing her job.
That compares with a rating of 11% for Tory PM Boris Johnson, 4% for Labour head Keir Starmer and 3% for Ed Davey of the LibDems. [...]
Sturgeon also leads the pack for voters in the UK as a whole — with 42% approval to Johnson's 34%.
Even in England, 41% of people approve of the way she's doing her job, compared with 38% for Starmer, 34% for Johnson and 14% for Davey.
And when the disapproval ratings are brought in, that leaves Sturgeon as the only one of the four in positive numbers in Scotland, with Johnson plummeting to -25% while the SNP head is at +28%.
In fact, Johnson is on negative numbers everywhere, while Sturgeon is on +13% for the UK as a whole and +12% for England."
He says the UK has now given more than five million doses of the vaccine to 4.6 million people.
It comes as 65 new vaccination centres are due to open in England today, including a mosque in Birmingham and a cinema in Aylesbury.
https://twitter.com/patrickwintour/status/1352156166466498560
Poems - to me - especially when well spoken force you to really listen, really focus. Whereas this quickly became background noise to me.
But it's very personal I accept.
Stuart Wilson says his mother Julia, from Sketty in Swansea, is immobile and needs two people with a hoist to get her up.
He says her surgery called on Tuesday offering a jab but they were told it would take time to arrange a house visit.
At the risk of giving away my own position I am not a fan of independence, the SNP government or Nicola Sturgeon (I do acknowledge her skills as a politician). And yet that article is bordering on crap.
His statement: "It is worth adding that he was not acquitted because his actions were ‘dodgy’ yet failed to meet the threshold of criminality but because the jury believed his defence that none of them happened" is completely inconsistent with the brilliant jury speech by Gordon Jackson QC who acted for him and plainly has no basis in fact as the jury were not polled.
The claims that the Lord Advocate and Crown Office were involved in some nebulous but vast conspiracy are ridiculous. I have known, slightly, Alex Prentice QC who prosecuted for the Crown for more than 25 years. He is careful, measured and scrupulous. Pretending that there was not a case for Salmond to answer (which seems the starting point of this conspiracy) is delusional.
The central charge, so far as I can make it out, is that Sturgeon met the former leader of the SNP at her Official residence without civil servants being present. That this was a crime so heinous that it had "parallels with Watergate" goes beyond hyperbole into hysteria.
I am extremely uncomfortable with the way that our Civil Service no longer seems to see any distinction between the SNP as a party and the government. I really don't like how independence supporting placemen have filled the offices of Scotland's quangocracy and use their positions to promote their cause. We do have major problems with the functionality of our democracy. But I do not find it surprising that any organisation would have reservations about anyone so delusional representing that organisation's interests.
But more than one person is dying from Covid every minute and many more are becoming seriously ill.
The government needs to show a little more humility.
The others’ monologues were tiring three years ago, and they really got stuck when they had to work from home with no audience of happy clappers.
Maher is prepared to interview everyone, and although he has a personal point of view, is actually a good interviewer. His writers and researchers are the best on TV, as demonstrated by the piece above.
FIREFIGHTERS are battling to save a factory producing the Oxford Covid vaccine in North Wales from flooding caused by Storm Christoph. Emergency services raced to Wrexham Industrial Estate last night to protect the jab - as 2,000 homes across England were evacuated following torrential rainfall overnight.
https://twitter.com/fact_covid/status/1352211164239949825?s=20
Women's sporting competitions will be no more.
Diamond studded hub caps vs Helping Society
John Betjeman I enjoyed, chiefly because I could relate to the subject matter, and found his poems rather amusing.
Some of the WW1 poetry has stayed with me too. But it's too dark and disturbing for me to want to re-read regularly.