I’m eating the Toblerone from my minibar, because the food in Izmir is so bad
Why stay there? Only an hour down the road to Selcuk to see Ephesus. Perfectly good restaurants there.
Or push on to Kusadasi for some wonderful seafront fish restaurants.
But the sea is right here. I can view it from my hotel
I do wonder if the terrible inflation crisis is making yer generally mediocre Turkish food much worse than normal
Turkish food is never great, It has always been overrated by its fans (like Lebanese). I’ve been here too many times and been sorely disappointed.
But this is a new level of dire
I liked Ephesus, but was more impressed at looking down on the River Menderes (Maiandros in Greek) and twigging the origin of the English verb.
Any recommendations of how to do Ephesus? 3 hours enough? Avoid local bars? Take a flask of arak?
These days my culture ceiling runs at about 60-90 minutes, and I was in Ephesus a long while ago. So perhaps not the person to ask.
I think the Library is the main thing, and the museum and amphitheatre. Then the rest is just wandering around to breath in the scale of things. You will probably have seen way better ruins. But it is nice to sit down with a Turkish tea or coffee and take in the surroundings.
I’m not sure what are the “best ruins”!
TBH few really resonate. It’s all about context and timing
One of my peak “ruin” experiences was going to Tintern Abbey during Covid Lockdown 1, and seeing it entirely alone (and surely illegally). In the dazzling late April sun
All the Turkish Tepes have been wow
Angkor Wat, OMFG, esp 20 years ago
Pompeii is quite something
Palenque
The Greek temples of Sicily?
The sullen adobe pyramids of the Moche rape culture of north Peru
All of Athens last year during Covid: brilliant - not the Acropolis but all the other stuff
The castles of Erzabet Bathory in mitteleuropa
Palmyra (sob)
A strange site of human sacrifice on the north side of Hawaii’s biggest island. Haunting and evil, and windswept with hot bitter air. Weird
For me, Font-de-Gaume is the one that truly blew my mind. Not so much ruins, as pre-historic habitation. And Cappadocia.
I wouldn’t class Font de Gaume as a ruin, its cave art, But, I have been there and it spellbinding, I agree
If you liked that try Gargas. The hands! OMG the hands
As for Capppadoccia dammit I could have gone there not here. Fucking Izmir. And life is short. Oh well
Ta for the advice anyway
Butrint, in Albania. There is a city gate that was mentioned in the Iliad.
The food's not bad, either. And cheap. Ate brains, and milk-fed kid, and a half litre of wine, and raki, and coffee, and a complementary sweet, in what they call a posh restaurant, and it cost me £18.
There is a city gate which archaeologists arbitrarily called the Scaean gate, after the Trojan one in the Iliad
You may be correct in your cynicism. Anyway I was pleasantly surprised by the Classical (and earlier) remains. Nice Ottoman castles. Not as many mosques as there should be as the Communists pulled most of them down.
Rishi's star falls further as he donates £100, 000 to Winchester School
He has astonished me and Boris needs to move him on
So out of touch
"The donations fund bursaries for children whose parents would not otherwise be able to send them there."
I would have thought as a Conservative leaning voter you would be board with rich people donating so those fortunate can have access to top level education?
From my side of the political divide, a Chancellor properly funding a state system benefitting all children, rather than a private tax dodging bursary for one or two social climbers would be more appropriate.
Let's all laugh at 12 year old working class children, and call them names. Hurrah!
The chances are they won't be "gifted" children from a sink estate in Scunthorpe anyway, but less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
But I see your point, like Basil Fawlty said, "no riff-raff".
No. you are simply wrong. I was at one of these schools, I had friends who were on these bursaries, and they were not less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
I went to a provincial grammar school (granted, over 40 years ago) and the council house kids were looked down upon, and that was by both teachers and students. Fortunately for me, I was not from a council estate, so I was fine.
I go back to my original point. A well funded, well managed non-selective state school system for all those who want to achieve, would be my preference. Quite how one arrives at that point is for smarter people than me.
Or a 'comprehensive education, to make up for their comprehensive education' as Sir Humphrey and Jim Hacker promised!
I have told you many times before that prior to Ledbury Grammar School I went to an excellent High School. The rounded quality of the teaching, by enthusiastic, generally young teachers, enthused students into achieving excellent grades and several students in my year finished up with Oxford or Cambridge degrees and very impressive careers ( not me!). For example one became a British High Commissioner and another a keyboard player in the biggest band of the 1980s.
So why did it work? It was the early days of comprehensive education so it was properly funded. The teachers were motivated, and in turn motivated the students. All subjects were streamed by subject. So kids who were good at Maths were in set one for Maths, equally if they were poor at English they would have been in set 7 for English (a logistical nightmare, no doubt).
My children also went to an excellent RC Comprehensive School too. It was well funded and the teachers were motivated.
We want more faith schools too like your RC Comprehensive for your children.
Choice not one size fits all, whether academies, free schools, faith schools, some grammar schools, technical schools etc.
Not only bog standard comprehensives you have no alternative but to send your children to if of only average income or less
No comprehensive should be "bog standard". They should all be excellent.
I shouldn't have mentioned that my children went to an RC school (they, nor me are Catholic by the way). I fell into your faith school trap. Damn and blast!
What a ludicrous statement. You may as well say 'no supermarkets should be bog standard. They should all be excellent.'
The only way you get to excellence is consumer choice. Applies to education as much as business. Otherwise if there was no choice of supermarket, every supermarket would look like an Asda or Morrisons on a bad day
I don't know how they got into an RC school without being Catholic. Most faith schools require at least a minimum level of church attendance to get in '
Nope my children went to a C of E school and we are atheists.
Also this consumer choice stuff you talk of; earlier you wanted state controlled energy pricing for oil companies. Make up your mind, do you want competition or state control.
You can just about get into a C of E primary school or an average faith school if you only live in the parish.
The top faith secondary schools however almost all require a high level of church attendance to get into them as they are very oversubscribed.
I was not proposing to nationalise all energy companies was I, which Corbyn would have done. Just requiring them to pass on lower energy prices to UK consumers as energy supply was expanded in the UK
I never said you were. I said you said state control of prices, which is what you are proposing. That is price fixing below the market price. How on earth you think that will work. I have no idea when there will be in parallel market priced fuel. Is the govt going to subsidize all imports? I assume not so the same fuel will have 2 different prices. How does that work? Maybe like Cuba where you get vouchers for some stuff and other stuff is at market rates. I could go on. Trade negotiations and deals for instance would be buggered. Fortunately we have Brexited because that would have been illegal. What about the oil companies. Why would they bother in the UK if the price is below the market price.
You say these things but have no idea.
No it wasn't, I said expand energy production including fracking a day shale to increase supply thus reducing prices. Then force energy companies to pass those price cuts on.
That will have to happen not just here but across the world if governments are not to be thrown out if office over sky high energy prices by angry voters
So:
(1) Do you have any evidence that the shales in the UK would cost less to develop than shales in the US?
(2) In the event that they did, are you planning on mandating that they cannot sell at the world market price (like they would do with oil, or wheat, or nickel, or cars, or phones, or bread), but instead must sell to UK consumers on prices set by... errr... you?
Now, if I were an energy company, and the choice was Invest in the US or Australia or wherever I will be allowed to earn the world market price or Invest in the UK where I only get a fraction of that, I *think* I know what I'd choose.
It has to happen not just here but globally. However the US is already leading the way with its expanded shale production reducing the global oil price by 10% since 2019.
If the UK government and global governments do not drastically increase production and energy companies cut prices then far left and far right governments will emerge across the world that will force them to. Including nationalising most of then too
If you're arguing that increasing the supply of a commodity causes prices to fall, then we are in total agreement. (See: http://theoildrum.com/node/2899)
If you wish to argue that governments should force shale gas companies in the UK to sell at below market rates, well... all you'll do is ensure that shale gas is not developed in the UK.
My original argument was the government drastically needs to expand fracking and shale production here in the UK. As it is showing signs of doing on the former at least.
Rishi's star falls further as he donates £100, 000 to Winchester School
He has astonished me and Boris needs to move him on
So out of touch
"The donations fund bursaries for children whose parents would not otherwise be able to send them there."
I would have thought as a Conservative leaning voter you would be board with rich people donating so those fortunate can have access to top level education?
From my side of the political divide, a Chancellor properly funding a state system benefitting all children, rather than a private tax dodging bursary for one or two social climbers would be more appropriate.
Let's all laugh at 12 year old working class children, and call them names. Hurrah!
The chances are they won't be "gifted" children from a sink estate in Scunthorpe anyway, but less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
But I see your point, like Basil Fawlty said, "no riff-raff".
No. you are simply wrong. I was at one of these schools, I had friends who were on these bursaries, and they were not less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
I went to a provincial grammar school (granted, over 40 years ago) and the council house kids were looked down upon, and that was by both teachers and students. Fortunately for me, I was not from a council estate, so I was fine.
I go back to my original point. A well funded, well managed non-selective state school system for all those who want to achieve, would be my preference. Quite how one arrives at that point is for smarter people than me.
Or a 'comprehensive education, to make up for their comprehensive education' as Sir Humphrey and Jim Hacker promised!
I have told you many times before that prior to Ledbury Grammar School I went to an excellent High School. The rounded quality of the teaching, by enthusiastic, generally young teachers, enthused students into achieving excellent grades and several students in my year finished up with Oxford or Cambridge degrees and very impressive careers ( not me!). For example one became a British High Commissioner and another a keyboard player in the biggest band of the 1980s.
So why did it work? It was the early days of comprehensive education so it was properly funded. The teachers were motivated, and in turn motivated the students. All subjects were streamed by subject. So kids who were good at Maths were in set one for Maths, equally if they were poor at English they would have been in set 7 for English (a logistical nightmare, no doubt).
My children also went to an excellent RC Comprehensive School too. It was well funded and the teachers were motivated.
We want more faith schools too like your RC Comprehensive for your children.
Choice not one size fits all, whether academies, free schools, faith schools, some grammar schools, technical schools etc.
Not only bog standard comprehensives you have no alternative but to send your children to if of only average income or less
Faith schools, my arse. Shut them down. I want children to be taught, not indoctrinated in superstitious mumbo-jumbo.
Tough, you are not in power. We Conservatives are. Even Blair recognised how good most faith schools were, so sent his children to them
Yes, I'm with Sandy and everyone else here. One, on principle. If you want to teach your children that there is a God and all the other tenets of your faith, go ahead, I suppose, but I don't see why I should get to pay for it. Two, in practice. There are faith (primary) schools in Sale, and they are consistently the worst performing - presumably because they are taking up teaching time with teaching religion.
I also find it faintly weird and not a little discomfiting that my kids' nominally secular primary schools still have hymns and prayers in assembly. Surely in the secular sector pretty much no-one believes in any of it: it's just a massive exercise in pointlessly going through the motions. I suppose that's some sort of training for life.
I remember when I was at primary school 30-40 years ago it was a charade back then too. A supply teacher joined us for a bit who was clearly a true believer, and seemed genuinely shocked by the inability of a hall full of junior school children to fully partake in care about the state mandated act of worship. She gave us all a good bollocking, of the extent to rouse the normally indiffernt headteacher from her study to see what was going on. The headteacher was as nonplussed as the rest of us with the supply teacher's explanation of 'they're begrudging God ten minutes of their day'. I'm sure the line 'for pity's sake, woman, can't you see we're just going through the motions here' was earnestly fought back in favour of whatever non-commital platitude actually came out.
I'm not seeking to pick a fight with the genuinely religious. But forcing religion on kids seems wrong. And teachers who don't believe forcing religion on kids who don't believe seems stupid and pointless.
'Everyone else on here' ie you and him.
However that is of course standard practice of the left, close down anything successful. As we saw earlier in the anti private school sentiment, now the sentiment to shit down successful faith schools and of course mainly Labour councils closing of grammar schools.
Taken to its logical extreme if Corbyn had got in power for an extended period of time he and McConnell would of course here nationalised any successful private company they could too. Including most of the FTSE 100.
One size fits all bog standard education and mass nationalised industry and services. That remains the leftist utopia even if it had to compromise to win elections and get into power.
I also pay taxes for your childrens education. If parents of faith wish to send their children to faith schools they are as entitled to do so as parents of no faith are entitled to send their children to non faith schools.
By selecting for faith schools based on church attendance we can also ensure we keep your children out and non Christian teachers out so they don't have to undertake the prayers and hymns we Christians are committed to. We in turn do not have to send our children to secular assemblies we don't want our children to participate in in non faith schools which your children can attend instead.
'Everyone else on here, ie you and him'
As with nearly ever subject it is you and nobody else. That is fair enough. You are entitled to your opinions and express them on anything and it is great that you do, but you are deluded if you think others are agreeing with you here. Of course you could argue that we aren't typical and you would be correct but your assertion 'you and him' was in fact not 2 people but everyone who responded. It is also worth reflecting that we are a cross section of political views although I appreciate you don't think Tories on here are true Tories and you might be correct that they aren't typical of society. They are generally must more intelligent than the average voter.
Of course I am largely a minority on here because most PBers are secular liberals. Including you. Whereas I am a religious conservative.
However millions of other religious conservatives exist, even here in the UK, a country far more liberal and secular than the global average
Aren't all of us minorities of one? Or do you mean "I am in a minority on here"?
Rishi's star falls further as he donates £100, 000 to Winchester School
He has astonished me and Boris needs to move him on
So out of touch
"The donations fund bursaries for children whose parents would not otherwise be able to send them there."
I would have thought as a Conservative leaning voter you would be board with rich people donating so those fortunate can have access to top level education?
From my side of the political divide, a Chancellor properly funding a state system benefitting all children, rather than a private tax dodging bursary for one or two social climbers would be more appropriate.
Let's all laugh at 12 year old working class children, and call them names. Hurrah!
The chances are they won't be "gifted" children from a sink estate in Scunthorpe anyway, but less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
But I see your point, like Basil Fawlty said, "no riff-raff".
No. you are simply wrong. I was at one of these schools, I had friends who were on these bursaries, and they were not less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
I went to a provincial grammar school (granted, over 40 years ago) and the council house kids were looked down upon, and that was by both teachers and students. Fortunately for me, I was not from a council estate, so I was fine.
I go back to my original point. A well funded, well managed non-selective state school system for all those who want to achieve, would be my preference. Quite how one arrives at that point is for smarter people than me.
Or a 'comprehensive education, to make up for their comprehensive education' as Sir Humphrey and Jim Hacker promised!
I have told you many times before that prior to Ledbury Grammar School I went to an excellent High School. The rounded quality of the teaching, by enthusiastic, generally young teachers, enthused students into achieving excellent grades and several students in my year finished up with Oxford or Cambridge degrees and very impressive careers ( not me!). For example one became a British High Commissioner and another a keyboard player in the biggest band of the 1980s.
So why did it work? It was the early days of comprehensive education so it was properly funded. The teachers were motivated, and in turn motivated the students. All subjects were streamed by subject. So kids who were good at Maths were in set one for Maths, equally if they were poor at English they would have been in set 7 for English (a logistical nightmare, no doubt).
My children also went to an excellent RC Comprehensive School too. It was well funded and the teachers were motivated.
We want more faith schools too like your RC Comprehensive for your children.
Choice not one size fits all, whether academies, free schools, faith schools, some grammar schools, technical schools etc.
Not only bog standard comprehensives you have no alternative but to send your children to if of only average income or less
Faith schools, my arse. Shut them down. I want children to be taught, not indoctrinated in superstitious mumbo-jumbo.
Tough, you are not in power. We Conservatives are. Even Blair recognised how good most faith schools were, so sent his children to them
Yes, I'm with Sandy and everyone else here. One, on principle. If you want to teach your children that there is a God and all the other tenets of your faith, go ahead, I suppose, but I don't see why I should get to pay for it. Two, in practice. There are faith (primary) schools in Sale, and they are consistently the worst performing - presumably because they are taking up teaching time with teaching religion.
I also find it faintly weird and not a little discomfiting that my kids' nominally secular primary schools still have hymns and prayers in assembly. Surely in the secular sector pretty much no-one believes in any of it: it's just a massive exercise in pointlessly going through the motions. I suppose that's some sort of training for life.
I remember when I was at primary school 30-40 years ago it was a charade back then too. A supply teacher joined us for a bit who was clearly a true believer, and seemed genuinely shocked by the inability of a hall full of junior school children to fully partake in care about the state mandated act of worship. She gave us all a good bollocking, of the extent to rouse the normally indiffernt headteacher from her study to see what was going on. The headteacher was as nonplussed as the rest of us with the supply teacher's explanation of 'they're begrudging God ten minutes of their day'. I'm sure the line 'for pity's sake, woman, can't you see we're just going through the motions here' was earnestly fought back in favour of whatever non-commital platitude actually came out.
I'm not seeking to pick a fight with the genuinely religious. But forcing religion on kids seems wrong. And teachers who don't believe forcing religion on kids who don't believe seems stupid and pointless.
I can't really see what there is to object to about a rousing chorus of 'We plough the fields and scatter' or 'Morning has broken'. It's nice. Replacing such classics with limp, anodyne dirges about picking up litter (as was happening toward the end of my time at primary) seems a backward step, regardless of belief.
Well that sounds amusingly stupid too.
Remembering further, we had two hymn books, an orange one and a blue one. The orange one had hymns you might recognise, the blue one was probably a bit more right-on - several of the hymns could probably be subtitled 'don't be racist, kids'. The blue one was used increasingly often as I went through the school. We were possibly going down the same route as you. I'd question the need to sing (or indeed pray) at all. I recognise the psychological impact of communal singing, and can probably understand the thinking behind it - if indeed there is any - but the psychological impact only works if it's a song that people want to sing. It works in gigs where people ar really, really, esctatically into the music; it works in football crowds where crowds genuinely believe, at least right then and there, that Stockport County, Stockport County FC are by far the greatest team the world has ever seen; it works in churches where people go voluntarily to express their belief. It works with drunks. It does not work with a bunch of slightly embarassed and resentful ten year olds who do not believe the words they are singing and feel ridiculous doing so. You can overcome this a bit, if the song is really, really good - you can emotionally believe in the melody even if you don't rationally believe in the words - but really, really good most primary school hymns are not.
Again I'll go with the facile, and wonder if anyone else sang "Sing Sultanas" rather than "Sing Hosannas" to the King...
Sinema and Manchin are well known as willing to buck the party line but the fact that they have been joined by Mark Kelly is significant - he's up for re-election in Arizona this year and this might be the start of an attempt to try and position himself as an "independent" in the mould of Sinema. If so, Biden faces having a possible third dissenting Democrat Senator.
I don't think Kelly is as independent as Sisnema or Manchin, but he's more independent minded than most Democratic Senators.
Personally, I think the Senate could do with more Sisnemas, Manchins, Collins, Murkowskis and Romneys. The more that are not in hock to their parties, the better.
Fury at rebels is so strong I'm surprised we get any. It says something when Trump's second impeachment was the most cross partisan attempt ever, and it was only a bare handful.
Wow: I didn't realise that SEVEN Republicans voted Guilty. That's pretty amazing. I thought it was just a couple.
A couple of apparent surprises it seems, possibly as at least 2 had already announced they were not seeking re-election.
It's strange. The war seems to be going worse and worse for Russia but I remain very unsettled. They can try a new offensive in the Donbass though if they have any sense (unclear) they'll take their time to regroup. One thing that makes this less likely is Putin's desire for victory by 9 May. Working to a political timetable might be a fatal error. But if it does go badly, what then? What might a truly desperate Putin be prepared to do?
If defeat is unthinkable then pretty much anything.
This is a definite theme now. Turkish food is terrible. Way worse than, say, Germany or Holland (the worst in western Europe)
It’s down there with a middle income African country or somewhere like Oman
It is shite. In Erdogan’s gleaming Istanbul airport at their flashy Italian restaurant I ordered the Caprese salad. It came as cold sliced tomato with weird tasteless frigid bits of cheese, and chopped lettuce. That was it. No dressing, no nothing, No oil, no pepper, no salt. Zero. No pesto or basil. Disgusting
Not only was it dreadfully bad, the staff had no idea WHY it was bad, when I politely queried
It was like eating in an eerie, hallucinated version of 70s Britain, yet in a huge sparkly airport
In Sanliurfa the Head of Regional Culture and Tourism took me to a celebrated restaurant for their famous liver kebab. It was nice bits of liver, in a kebab, with an OK sauce. That was it. You could eat it in Camden at 3am after a big night and think Hmm, decent fast food. And they were trying to show off???
UGHHHHHHH
I haven't eaten in Turkey, but I was surprised at how bad the food was in Copenhagen (2018). What's the story with putting massive dollops of butter onto everything?
Posh Danish food is now world class. But everything beneath is still catching up (in Denmark)
Germany, Holland and the rest of Scandi are notably behind.
Britain is no longer the laggard, you can now eat better in the UK than most European countries (and certainly most countries around the world)
Spain, Italy and France are still superior to the UK. Tho Britain is edging France because of our better world cuisine, and insane French attachment to the Great Tradition
Nonetheless I’d have those three in the European Superleague, and Britain at the top of the next division, ahead of Greece and Portugal
How do you rate the great State of Louisiana?
Magnificent. The only state in the USA where I have eaten brilliant food, day after day
And it’s not just a New Orleans thing. The food in Louisiana outside NOLA is unusually excellent, even down to the breakfasts
Food culture is a weird thing. But Louisiana has it, and delivers it
I found Atlanta, Georgia, bizarrely good.
Absolute awful city in almost every way - except its food scene, which is weirdly great.
Generally the States can be disappointing for food.
You can eat really really well in most states of the US, but like so much of the US, its a place of two extremes. The "average" is absolutely shocking.
They haven’t had the gastropub Revolution that has happened in the UK and Australia, and which has been crucial
There will be at least one place in any average town with a talented chef who knows what he wants to do, and is having a bash
I saw a documentary on Australian food and they ascribed their food Revolution, almost entirely, to immigration but even more to foodie TV like Masterchef (which was invented in the UK but is wildly popular in its Aussie incarnation).
It makes total sense. Many millions watch Masterchef, pro and amateur. Watching a series is basically like doing a GCSE in cookery. You learn when to baste and how to fillet. You have a go. It’s brilliant. Most people I know, friends and family, can cook well - anyone under 60, that is
One thing that has improved a lot in the US over past 20 years is craft beer....they really gone for that. Its just the same place that will serve you a half decent beer brewed on site or locally, will serve you a meh burger and fries.
Not sure about your tv point. Don't the US have a load of shows just like that, Iron Chef etc, that are equally popular?
Agreed on the beer. American beer selections are now generally better than British. I hear rumours they are improving their cheese as well (it can’t get worse)
But the Masterchef thing is real. Australia has a less atomized culture than the USA, as does Britain
Eg Masterchef gets 5-6m viewers in the UK, thats nearly 10% of the entire country. The us version gets 1m, 0.3%
10% of people tuning in to learn about cooking is enough to change a cooking culture. 0.3% isn’t. And this is repeated over 30 years, beginning in the UK in 1990
American cheese has improved in just the four (almost) five years I've been here. As has their salami.
But it's still not as good as the UK.
Frederick MD, a town of just 70,000 souls, has no less than 2 decent fromageries. And two decent bakeries. 4 excellent chocolate truffle makers/shops. And a nice canal through the old centre which is decorated with miniature ships for most of the winter:
Rishi's star falls further as he donates £100, 000 to Winchester School
He has astonished me and Boris needs to move him on
So out of touch
"The donations fund bursaries for children whose parents would not otherwise be able to send them there."
I would have thought as a Conservative leaning voter you would be board with rich people donating so those fortunate can have access to top level education?
From my side of the political divide, a Chancellor properly funding a state system benefitting all children, rather than a private tax dodging bursary for one or two social climbers would be more appropriate.
Let's all laugh at 12 year old working class children, and call them names. Hurrah!
The chances are they won't be "gifted" children from a sink estate in Scunthorpe anyway, but less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
But I see your point, like Basil Fawlty said, "no riff-raff".
No. you are simply wrong. I was at one of these schools, I had friends who were on these bursaries, and they were not less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
I went to a provincial grammar school (granted, over 40 years ago) and the council house kids were looked down upon, and that was by both teachers and students. Fortunately for me, I was not from a council estate, so I was fine.
I go back to my original point. A well funded, well managed non-selective state school system for all those who want to achieve, would be my preference. Quite how one arrives at that point is for smarter people than me.
Or a 'comprehensive education, to make up for their comprehensive education' as Sir Humphrey and Jim Hacker promised!
I have told you many times before that prior to Ledbury Grammar School I went to an excellent High School. The rounded quality of the teaching, by enthusiastic, generally young teachers, enthused students into achieving excellent grades and several students in my year finished up with Oxford or Cambridge degrees and very impressive careers ( not me!). For example one became a British High Commissioner and another a keyboard player in the biggest band of the 1980s.
So why did it work? It was the early days of comprehensive education so it was properly funded. The teachers were motivated, and in turn motivated the students. All subjects were streamed by subject. So kids who were good at Maths were in set one for Maths, equally if they were poor at English they would have been in set 7 for English (a logistical nightmare, no doubt).
My children also went to an excellent RC Comprehensive School too. It was well funded and the teachers were motivated.
We want more faith schools too like your RC Comprehensive for your children.
Choice not one size fits all, whether academies, free schools, faith schools, some grammar schools, technical schools etc.
Not only bog standard comprehensives you have no alternative but to send your children to if of only average income or less
Faith schools, my arse. Shut them down. I want children to be taught, not indoctrinated in superstitious mumbo-jumbo.
Tough, you are not in power. We Conservatives are. Even Blair recognised how good most faith schools were, so sent his children to them
Yes, I'm with Sandy and everyone else here. One, on principle. If you want to teach your children that there is a God and all the other tenets of your faith, go ahead, I suppose, but I don't see why I should get to pay for it. Two, in practice. There are faith (primary) schools in Sale, and they are consistently the worst performing - presumably because they are taking up teaching time with teaching religion.
I also find it faintly weird and not a little discomfiting that my kids' nominally secular primary schools still have hymns and prayers in assembly. Surely in the secular sector pretty much no-one believes in any of it: it's just a massive exercise in pointlessly going through the motions. I suppose that's some sort of training for life.
I remember when I was at primary school 30-40 years ago it was a charade back then too. A supply teacher joined us for a bit who was clearly a true believer, and seemed genuinely shocked by the inability of a hall full of junior school children to fully partake in care about the state mandated act of worship. She gave us all a good bollocking, of the extent to rouse the normally indiffernt headteacher from her study to see what was going on. The headteacher was as nonplussed as the rest of us with the supply teacher's explanation of 'they're begrudging God ten minutes of their day'. I'm sure the line 'for pity's sake, woman, can't you see we're just going through the motions here' was earnestly fought back in favour of whatever non-commital platitude actually came out.
I'm not seeking to pick a fight with the genuinely religious. But forcing religion on kids seems wrong. And teachers who don't believe forcing religion on kids who don't believe seems stupid and pointless.
'Everyone else on here' ie you and him.
However that is of course standard practice of the left, close down anything successful. As we saw earlier in the anti private school sentiment, now the sentiment to shit down successful faith schools and of course mainly Labour councils closing of grammar schools.
Taken to its logical extreme if Corbyn had got in power for an extended period of time they would of course here nationalised any successful private company they could too. Including most of the FTSE 100.
One size fits all bog standard education and mass nationalised industry and services. That remains the leftist utopia even if it had to compromise to win elections and get into power.
I also pay taxes for your childrens education. If parents of faith wish to send their children to faith schools they are as entitled to do so as parents of no faith are entitled to send their children to non faith schools.
I’m pretty sure Cookie is not a leftie! He and I align on the authoritarian-libertarian axis not on the left-right axis…
Anyway, there’s a brilliant typo in your second para!
Thanks Anabobz - yes, without wanting to pigeon hole myself, I don't think I could be decribed as a lefty. Kinabalu recently declared he had never detected any left-wing impulse at all from me. I do find myself agreeing with you more often than not, however, and on more things which really matter to me. These things are complex...
In 2017 first round vote Mélenchon took 37% of the Muslim vote followed by Macron on 24%.
It was a case of anybody but Le Pen.
In 2022 the second round was a foregone conclusion , this time not so .
This is likely to see the abstention rate fall as we head towards Election Day especially in the Muslim community who make up a crucial 8% of the population .
Pécresses voters currently break 65 to 35 towards Macron . What’s left of her vote is more centre right , the far right parties have already hovered up the more far right voters who jumped ship .
As in the UK older voters are more likely to turnout and Macron is winning this by a huge majority in the second round .
Le Pen can win but the current polling is over inflating her popularity in the second round . And she needs a perfect storm of events to deliver that .
People look at the polling and think Melenchon is out of it because it shows Macron beats him more easily in second round. I would caution against that. If he makes top two he will be looked at again and differently by a lot of voters, not least because he is a better campaigner and debater than Le pen and will slice and dice Macron in debates. And in your post, he retains the ethnic vote, thats harder to transfer to Le pen to keep out the clutches of Macron. I still think this is fluid enough, long enough to go, and so many previous first rounds thrown up surprises for Melenchon to sneak into last two. And once there present Macron a more dangerous opponent, one who brings the left and ethnic votes, in theory could attract the anti establishment anti EU votes of Zemmour and Le pen, and the protestors against Macrons pension and tax policies.
I'm always surprised that Le Pen doesn't get more of the Melenchon vote, because economically, he is very similar to her.
By contrast, Macron and Pecresse have almost identical economic policies, and they both supported pension and labour market reform.
So I find the idea that the Pecresse block is going sharply Le Pen in the second round slightly odd; I could see Melenchon's vote moving much more easily.
You can think of it a bit like the Red Wall seats and Labour. Economic antipathy towards the Tories fell and the more conservative social attitudes combined to help them in 2019.
You are right economically Le Pen is closer to Mélenchon but socially worlds apart and this will act as a block on vote transfers towards her in the second round .
Exactly. The idea that economic policy is all-important is itself a political opinion and is certainly not shared by all.
There is something I think the site (and looking at the header, the punters) are missing. It’s being taken as fact How you voted before is how you vote this time, not how millions of Macron voters can have changed their minds. There’s no way, having given Wilson’s lefty Labour Labour a 80 seat majority the voters can give Heaths very different EU lovers a 60 seat majority just 4 years later - it’s a myth people can on mass endorse one thing and large numbers of those change their minds to a very different opponent in just 5 years?
It’s 100% tribal? The macron tribe is about as big as the Rishi Sunake tribe.
MoonRabbit is a ramper? I 100% would not vote for Melenchon, Le Pen or Zemmour. But then, I’m not French 🤷♀️
Maybe you are letting what you want cloud how poorly Macron has set himself up for re-election. Macron is actually a poor strategic politician at building positive support for himself, necessary to win series of elections. I have given many reasons why he lost (this time) but this is chief among them.
I'm not sure where you get the idea I'm expressing a preference or a prediction about the French election. All I said above is that people vote on things other than the economy. This, to counteract the idea that people will only switch within a narrow economic range. For example, I now I'm not the only who have voted Conservative and Green in my time. Economically they are worlds apart, but that's not always the motivating factor.
I don’t know why you have the idea that I had that idea when my idea was to build upon the “ I'm not the only who have voted Conservative and Green in my time. Economically they are worlds apart, but that's not always the motivating factor” inherent in your post with “ It’s being taken as fact How you voted before is how you vote this time, not how millions of Macron voters can have changed their minds”.
We just have to face up to it and admit it Farooq, it looks like we agree with each other’s posts 🙀
Rishi's star falls further as he donates £100, 000 to Winchester School
He has astonished me and Boris needs to move him on
So out of touch
"The donations fund bursaries for children whose parents would not otherwise be able to send them there."
I would have thought as a Conservative leaning voter you would be board with rich people donating so those fortunate can have access to top level education?
From my side of the political divide, a Chancellor properly funding a state system benefitting all children, rather than a private tax dodging bursary for one or two social climbers would be more appropriate.
Let's all laugh at 12 year old working class children, and call them names. Hurrah!
The chances are they won't be "gifted" children from a sink estate in Scunthorpe anyway, but less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
But I see your point, like Basil Fawlty said, "no riff-raff".
No. you are simply wrong. I was at one of these schools, I had friends who were on these bursaries, and they were not less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
I went to a provincial grammar school (granted, over 40 years ago) and the council house kids were looked down upon, and that was by both teachers and students. Fortunately for me, I was not from a council estate, so I was fine.
I go back to my original point. A well funded, well managed non-selective state school system for all those who want to achieve, would be my preference. Quite how one arrives at that point is for smarter people than me.
Or a 'comprehensive education, to make up for their comprehensive education' as Sir Humphrey and Jim Hacker promised!
I have told you many times before that prior to Ledbury Grammar School I went to an excellent High School. The rounded quality of the teaching, by enthusiastic, generally young teachers, enthused students into achieving excellent grades and several students in my year finished up with Oxford or Cambridge degrees and very impressive careers ( not me!). For example one became a British High Commissioner and another a keyboard player in the biggest band of the 1980s.
So why did it work? It was the early days of comprehensive education so it was properly funded. The teachers were motivated, and in turn motivated the students. All subjects were streamed by subject. So kids who were good at Maths were in set one for Maths, equally if they were poor at English they would have been in set 7 for English (a logistical nightmare, no doubt).
My children also went to an excellent RC Comprehensive School too. It was well funded and the teachers were motivated.
We want more faith schools too like your RC Comprehensive for your children.
Choice not one size fits all, whether academies, free schools, faith schools, some grammar schools, technical schools etc.
Not only bog standard comprehensives you have no alternative but to send your children to if of only average income or less
Faith schools, my arse. Shut them down. I want children to be taught, not indoctrinated in superstitious mumbo-jumbo.
Tough, you are not in power. We Conservatives are. Even Blair recognised how good most faith schools were, so sent his children to them
Yes, I'm with Sandy and everyone else here. One, on principle. If you want to teach your children that there is a God and all the other tenets of your faith, go ahead, I suppose, but I don't see why I should get to pay for it. Two, in practice. There are faith (primary) schools in Sale, and they are consistently the worst performing - presumably because they are taking up teaching time with teaching religion.
I also find it faintly weird and not a little discomfiting that my kids' nominally secular primary schools still have hymns and prayers in assembly. Surely in the secular sector pretty much no-one believes in any of it: it's just a massive exercise in pointlessly going through the motions. I suppose that's some sort of training for life.
I remember when I was at primary school 30-40 years ago it was a charade back then too. A supply teacher joined us for a bit who was clearly a true believer, and seemed genuinely shocked by the inability of a hall full of junior school children to fully partake in care about the state mandated act of worship. She gave us all a good bollocking, of the extent to rouse the normally indiffernt headteacher from her study to see what was going on. The headteacher was as nonplussed as the rest of us with the supply teacher's explanation of 'they're begrudging God ten minutes of their day'. I'm sure the line 'for pity's sake, woman, can't you see we're just going through the motions here' was earnestly fought back in favour of whatever non-commital platitude actually came out.
I'm not seeking to pick a fight with the genuinely religious. But forcing religion on kids seems wrong. And teachers who don't believe forcing religion on kids who don't believe seems stupid and pointless.
'Everyone else on here' ie you and him.
However that is of course standard practice of the left, close down anything successful. As we saw earlier in the anti private school sentiment, now the sentiment to shit down successful faith schools and of course mainly Labour councils closing of grammar schools.
Taken to its logical extreme if Corbyn had got in power for an extended period of time they would of course here nationalised any successful private company they could too. Including most of the FTSE 100.
One size fits all bog standard education and mass nationalised industry and services. That remains the leftist utopia even if it had to compromise to win elections and get into power.
I also pay taxes for your childrens education. If parents of faith wish to send their children to faith schools they are as entitled to do so as parents of no faith are entitled to send their children to non faith schools.
I’m pretty sure Cookie is not a leftie! He and I align on the authoritarian-libertarian axis not on the left-right axis…
Anyway, there’s a brilliant typo in your second para!
Thanks Anabobz - yes, without wanting to pigeon hole myself, I don't think I could be decribed as a lefty. Kinabalu recently declared he had never detected any left-wing impulse at all from me. I do find myself agreeing with you more often than not, however, and on more things which really matter to me. These things are complex...
I thought PB registration required assignment into Left and Right camps, for tracking purposes.
Rishi's star falls further as he donates £100, 000 to Winchester School
He has astonished me and Boris needs to move him on
So out of touch
"The donations fund bursaries for children whose parents would not otherwise be able to send them there."
I would have thought as a Conservative leaning voter you would be board with rich people donating so those fortunate can have access to top level education?
From my side of the political divide, a Chancellor properly funding a state system benefitting all children, rather than a private tax dodging bursary for one or two social climbers would be more appropriate.
Let's all laugh at 12 year old working class children, and call them names. Hurrah!
The chances are they won't be "gifted" children from a sink estate in Scunthorpe anyway, but less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
But I see your point, like Basil Fawlty said, "no riff-raff".
No. you are simply wrong. I was at one of these schools, I had friends who were on these bursaries, and they were not less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
I went to a provincial grammar school (granted, over 40 years ago) and the council house kids were looked down upon, and that was by both teachers and students. Fortunately for me, I was not from a council estate, so I was fine.
I go back to my original point. A well funded, well managed non-selective state school system for all those who want to achieve, would be my preference. Quite how one arrives at that point is for smarter people than me.
Or a 'comprehensive education, to make up for their comprehensive education' as Sir Humphrey and Jim Hacker promised!
I have told you many times before that prior to Ledbury Grammar School I went to an excellent High School. The rounded quality of the teaching, by enthusiastic, generally young teachers, enthused students into achieving excellent grades and several students in my year finished up with Oxford or Cambridge degrees and very impressive careers ( not me!). For example one became a British High Commissioner and another a keyboard player in the biggest band of the 1980s.
So why did it work? It was the early days of comprehensive education so it was properly funded. The teachers were motivated, and in turn motivated the students. All subjects were streamed by subject. So kids who were good at Maths were in set one for Maths, equally if they were poor at English they would have been in set 7 for English (a logistical nightmare, no doubt).
My children also went to an excellent RC Comprehensive School too. It was well funded and the teachers were motivated.
We want more faith schools too like your RC Comprehensive for your children.
Choice not one size fits all, whether academies, free schools, faith schools, some grammar schools, technical schools etc.
Not only bog standard comprehensives you have no alternative but to send your children to if of only average income or less
No comprehensive should be "bog standard". They should all be excellent.
I shouldn't have mentioned that my children went to an RC school (they, nor me are Catholic by the way). I fell into your faith school trap. Damn and blast!
What a ludicrous statement. You may as well say 'no supermarkets should be bog standard. They should all be excellent.'
The only way you get to excellence is consumer choice. Applies to education as much as business. Otherwise if there was no choice of supermarket, every supermarket would look like an Asda or Morrisons on a bad day
I don't know how they got into an RC school without being Catholic. Most faith schools require at least a minimum level of church attendance to get in '
Nope my children went to a C of E school and we are atheists.
Also this consumer choice stuff you talk of; earlier you wanted state controlled energy pricing for oil companies. Make up your mind, do you want competition or state control.
You can just about get into a C of E primary school or an average faith school if you only live in the parish.
The top faith secondary schools however almost all require a high level of church attendance to get into them as they are very oversubscribed.
I was not proposing to nationalise all energy companies was I, which Corbyn would have done. Just requiring them to pass on lower energy prices to UK consumers as energy supply was expanded in the UK
I never said you were. I said you said state control of prices, which is what you are proposing. That is price fixing below the market price. How on earth you think that will work. I have no idea when there will be in parallel market priced fuel. Is the govt going to subsidize all imports? I assume not so the same fuel will have 2 different prices. How does that work? Maybe like Cuba where you get vouchers for some stuff and other stuff is at market rates. I could go on. Trade negotiations and deals for instance would be buggered. Fortunately we have Brexited because that would have been illegal. What about the oil companies. Why would they bother in the UK if the price is below the market price.
You say these things but have no idea.
No it wasn't, I said expand energy production including fracking a day shale to increase supply thus reducing prices. Then force energy companies to pass those price cuts on.
That will have to happen not just here but across the world if governments are not to be thrown out if office over sky high energy prices by angry voters
So:
(1) Do you have any evidence that the shales in the UK would cost less to develop than shales in the US?
(2) In the event that they did, are you planning on mandating that they cannot sell at the world market price (like they would do with oil, or wheat, or nickel, or cars, or phones, or bread), but instead must sell to UK consumers on prices set by... errr... you?
Now, if I were an energy company, and the choice was Invest in the US or Australia or wherever I will be allowed to earn the world market price or Invest in the UK where I only get a fraction of that, I *think* I know what I'd choose.
My first encounter with Winchester was when I was at school. At the age of about 12 or 13 I was reasonably good at chess, but when I got to public school there was no tradition of playing chess, and few of the boys played much. Then one of the masters decided he'd start a chess club, so a few of us met for a few times and played each other. The standard was not very high!
Then it was decided we'd form a team and play other schools. As the least bad of the bunch, I was appointed captain. Unfortunately our first match was against Winchester.
In the event, playing against a group of really smart boys who played regularly and who had quite a culture of chess-playing, it was what I think would technically be known as an absolute rout. I did manage to hold my opponent, the opposing captain, to a draw on one of the games, which saved a bit of face for me at least, but otherwise it was carnage.
Our team disbanded shortly afterwards and the chess club fell into desuetude...
So not a rout so much as moving on to phase 2 of your education by focusing energy on other fronts?
Rishi's star falls further as he donates £100, 000 to Winchester School
He has astonished me and Boris needs to move him on
So out of touch
"The donations fund bursaries for children whose parents would not otherwise be able to send them there."
I would have thought as a Conservative leaning voter you would be board with rich people donating so those fortunate can have access to top level education?
From my side of the political divide, a Chancellor properly funding a state system benefitting all children, rather than a private tax dodging bursary for one or two social climbers would be more appropriate.
Let's all laugh at 12 year old working class children, and call them names. Hurrah!
The chances are they won't be "gifted" children from a sink estate in Scunthorpe anyway, but less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
But I see your point, like Basil Fawlty said, "no riff-raff".
No. you are simply wrong. I was at one of these schools, I had friends who were on these bursaries, and they were not less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
I went to a provincial grammar school (granted, over 40 years ago) and the council house kids were looked down upon, and that was by both teachers and students. Fortunately for me, I was not from a council estate, so I was fine.
I go back to my original point. A well funded, well managed non-selective state school system for all those who want to achieve, would be my preference. Quite how one arrives at that point is for smarter people than me.
Or a 'comprehensive education, to make up for their comprehensive education' as Sir Humphrey and Jim Hacker promised!
I have told you many times before that prior to Ledbury Grammar School I went to an excellent High School. The rounded quality of the teaching, by enthusiastic, generally young teachers, enthused students into achieving excellent grades and several students in my year finished up with Oxford or Cambridge degrees and very impressive careers ( not me!). For example one became a British High Commissioner and another a keyboard player in the biggest band of the 1980s.
So why did it work? It was the early days of comprehensive education so it was properly funded. The teachers were motivated, and in turn motivated the students. All subjects were streamed by subject. So kids who were good at Maths were in set one for Maths, equally if they were poor at English they would have been in set 7 for English (a logistical nightmare, no doubt).
My children also went to an excellent RC Comprehensive School too. It was well funded and the teachers were motivated.
We want more faith schools too like your RC Comprehensive for your children.
Choice not one size fits all, whether academies, free schools, faith schools, some grammar schools, technical schools etc.
Not only bog standard comprehensives you have no alternative but to send your children to if of only average income or less
No comprehensive should be "bog standard". They should all be excellent.
I shouldn't have mentioned that my children went to an RC school (they, nor me are Catholic by the way). I fell into your faith school trap. Damn and blast!
What a ludicrous statement. You may as well say 'no supermarkets should be bog standard. They should all be excellent.'
The only way you get to excellence is consumer choice. Applies to education as much as business. Otherwise if there was no choice of supermarket, every supermarket would look like an Asda or Morrisons on a bad day
I don't know how they got into an RC school without being Catholic. Most faith schools require at least a minimum level of church attendance to get in '
None taken!
Supermarkets are not funded out of the public purse for the future benefit of the nation. If they are poor they wither and die. With publicly funded schools it doesn't quite work like that.
And I didn't furtively pretend to be the Pope to get them in. The school knew I was a godless heathen.
If state schools are inadequate they get rebranded as academies, if private schools are inadequate they go out of business.
Either way, they do not go on as before.
Sounds an unusual faith school anyway. The C of E faith school in Loughton for example awards points based on weekly church attendance. The more you attend, the more points you get regardless of how close you live to the school in the district. That is normally standard for most faith schools, C of E or RC. It gets 81% A* to C GCSE grades or the new points equivalent.
Your first paragraph reminds me of Lennie Henry's suggestion that "Windscale has been renamed as Sellarfield, so nuclear fallout would now be known as magic moonbeams".
That was Not The Nine O’Clock News - Mel Smith, Pam S, et al. not Lenny Henry
From ChemEurope.com
"Not the Nine O'Clock News also had a sketch, with a nod to a popular Ready Brek advert, about glowing children and Sellafield".
And
"Comedian Lenny Henry, impersonating newscaster Trevor McDonald, once reported that "Windscale is to be renamed Sellafield, because it sounds nicer. In future, radiation will be referred to as magic moonbeams".
Yes, the internet’s memory is different to mine. If so, my bad
(The weird thing is I can DISTINCTLY recall SEEING Pamela Stephenson make this joke, in my mind, how odd are the tricks of recall)
Memory is strange. Hence Mandela Effect. Strangely I had that when FW de Klerk died. Which I hope both would have found bleakly amusing. On which. How come I missed Tiger Woods nearly dying in a car crash? I have no memory whatsoever of that happening. And I read this board every day.
Objectively, it's commendable. Yet it is focussed very much on buttressing the private education system.
Subjectively, it's a disaster, as it reminds the rest of the UK just how much money the Chancellor has to spare. (And how much tax relief was involved, too?)
Objectively.. is it? Donating money to a cause depends on the worthiness of that cause. Private schools are engines for concentrating the quality of services and delivering them mostly to those who can pay.
Yes, I know that bursaries exist and the poor but brilliant gold ticket winner can get in, but it's still a system of intentional and intense stratification that benefits the extremely wealthy. It obviously right up HYUFD's street but if you asked me (I know, I know) I could find much better things to do with a spare £100k.
"...the poor but brilliant gold ticket winner can get in..."
This is a modern version of the Distressed Gentlefolk* charity. Sure, in theory it's open to anybody but in reality only a very small subset of society, usually with the right connections, would ever have the wherewithal to apply, let alone be successful. It's a sham.
(*I am probably being unfair to that charity, now sensibly renamed 'Elizabeth Finn Care'.)
Not so. The recipients of these bursaries are not secret poshos down on their luck, they are the real deal. And quite often getting a shit time from everybody else for their failure to be posh, secretly or otherwise, but that's another story.
Just exactly how do Winchester, Eton, etc. publicise these bursaries in your average sink estate?
no idea. Talent scouts?
Let me help you: They don't.
Let me help you: you don’t know what you are talking about. Not only do they have very active outreach programmes helping schools and sharing resources they actively promote bursaries and scholarships around the country because funnily enough they actually do want to recruit very bright and able students as it benefits everyone at the school and, if cynical, the reputation of the school when these bright kids get access to places they wouldn’t otherwise and go on to do great things.
All the major public schools support inner city clubs - Winchester for example supports the Crown and Manor club in London where they arrange exchanges, tutorial help, resources, money and time for kids from some of the shittiest unfortunate backgrounds because funnily enough all public school people aren’t entitled wankers.
The people aren’t, the institutions are selfish greedy fucks. Winchester is worth 400 million. What the fuck, And they want to be charities? UGH
Take their charitable status away
Just one of the many stupidities of what Sunak has done is he has ensured - if this story gains traction (Ukraine might save him) - is that every Tory will now be asked to justify Sunak’s 100k to Winchester. Because he is CoE they will have to defend him, but it will be very awkward, and it will sound like MaxPB’s strangulated nonsense. They won’t thank him for this
That charitable status helps them fund scholarships and bursaries and providing sports and arts facilities to share with the local community too
I think you've put the cart before the horse there. As a retired teacher from the independent sector I was aware that the charitable status had been around for many years before the advent of large numbers of scholarships. The development of scholarships etc appeared as a way championed by ISI to justify and retain the charitable status already in place. The main reason for the charitable status was to be let off paying the rates, which was usually enormous. The school still had to pay VAT on the usual items.
Rate relief has been abolished for private schools in Scotland - came into force this month AIUI. Now treated the same as state schools in that respect.
And the private schools will thus offer fewer scholarships and become even more the preserve of the rich.
Great job Sturgeon!
My kids former school is cutting back on teaching staff and places despite having a waiting list as a result.
We had a child or children at that school for 20 years. The change was remarkable. Originally dominated by old school money and inherited wealth it, over time it became dominated by people paying their fees from income in despair of the collapse of the state system. The ethos changed too. Originally a place you went to make friends of the clique that would see you alright and get a place for you it became focused on results. Those paying the fees from their hard earned want their kids in Russell group unis with a ticket to the professions.
It would be sad if it slipped back.
I fully understand why parents would want to buy their kids 'a ticket to the professions' but surely you must see how intrinsically unfair the opportunity to buy such tickets is and how poorly it serves the professions?
It is unfair yes. But I am not so sure it’s bad for the professions. They need people who have had a useful and thorough education and that is becoming increasingly rare in Scotland.
Also, England. My older daughter just aced her mock GCSEs at her supposedly Outstanding north London comp, but I recently discovered she has no idea what the Battle of Hastings is or was or what it meant or how it worked or anything, and she also has no idea whether Iran is north, south, east or west of Russia (and she is doing Geography and got the equivalent of an A*)
WTF are they actually teaching them
Where did Battle of Hastings take place, exactly? Believe it's still an open question!
"Battle of Hastings took place somewhere near Hastings, Kent. Bunch of obnoxious foreigners invaded, conquered and despoiled Britain. Until Brexit that is."
Ukraine will become a “‘big Israel' with its own face” said Zelenskyy. “Ukraine will definitely not be what we wanted it to be from the beginning. It is impossible. Absolutely liberal, European – it will not be like that. It will definitely come from the strength of every house.”
I don’t understand Labours bounce in polls, it’s been weeks since political ding dong at the budget, where Labour did respond quite well, and was worse received budget in media for more than a decade. It must be like people say, takes a couple of weeks to properly impact in polls.
To quote the great Dominic Cummings, most voters interact with politics as if it were on a TV behind the bar in a sports bar whilst Wrestlemania is on. Some stories impact slowly, many don't impact at all.
The changes in the media landscape haven't helped. The days when newspapers sold 4 or 5 million copies, or when 10 million watched News at Ten, are long gone.
We're not going back to a world where people could be corralled into watching a reasonably thorough review of the day's news because there were only four channels. Indeed, we don't really want to (do we?) But the change has come at a cost.
Rishi's star falls further as he donates £100, 000 to Winchester School
He has astonished me and Boris needs to move him on
So out of touch
"The donations fund bursaries for children whose parents would not otherwise be able to send them there."
I would have thought as a Conservative leaning voter you would be board with rich people donating so those fortunate can have access to top level education?
From my side of the political divide, a Chancellor properly funding a state system benefitting all children, rather than a private tax dodging bursary for one or two social climbers would be more appropriate.
Let's all laugh at 12 year old working class children, and call them names. Hurrah!
The chances are they won't be "gifted" children from a sink estate in Scunthorpe anyway, but less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
But I see your point, like Basil Fawlty said, "no riff-raff".
No. you are simply wrong. I was at one of these schools, I had friends who were on these bursaries, and they were not less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
I went to a provincial grammar school (granted, over 40 years ago) and the council house kids were looked down upon, and that was by both teachers and students. Fortunately for me, I was not from a council estate, so I was fine.
I go back to my original point. A well funded, well managed non-selective state school system for all those who want to achieve, would be my preference. Quite how one arrives at that point is for smarter people than me.
Or a 'comprehensive education, to make up for their comprehensive education' as Sir Humphrey and Jim Hacker promised!
I have told you many times before that prior to Ledbury Grammar School I went to an excellent High School. The rounded quality of the teaching, by enthusiastic, generally young teachers, enthused students into achieving excellent grades and several students in my year finished up with Oxford or Cambridge degrees and very impressive careers ( not me!). For example one became a British High Commissioner and another a keyboard player in the biggest band of the 1980s.
So why did it work? It was the early days of comprehensive education so it was properly funded. The teachers were motivated, and in turn motivated the students. All subjects were streamed by subject. So kids who were good at Maths were in set one for Maths, equally if they were poor at English they would have been in set 7 for English (a logistical nightmare, no doubt).
My children also went to an excellent RC Comprehensive School too. It was well funded and the teachers were motivated.
We want more faith schools too like your RC Comprehensive for your children.
Choice not one size fits all, whether academies, free schools, faith schools, some grammar schools, technical schools etc.
Not only bog standard comprehensives you have no alternative but to send your children to if of only average income or less
Faith schools, my arse. Shut them down. I want children to be taught, not indoctrinated in superstitious mumbo-jumbo.
Tough, you are not in power. We Conservatives are. Even Blair recognised how good most faith schools were, so sent his children to them
Yes, I'm with Sandy and everyone else here. One, on principle. If you want to teach your children that there is a God and all the other tenets of your faith, go ahead, I suppose, but I don't see why I should get to pay for it. Two, in practice. There are faith (primary) schools in Sale, and they are consistently the worst performing - presumably because they are taking up teaching time with teaching religion.
I also find it faintly weird and not a little discomfiting that my kids' nominally secular primary schools still have hymns and prayers in assembly. Surely in the secular sector pretty much no-one believes in any of it: it's just a massive exercise in pointlessly going through the motions. I suppose that's some sort of training for life.
I remember when I was at primary school 30-40 years ago it was a charade back then too. A supply teacher joined us for a bit who was clearly a true believer, and seemed genuinely shocked by the inability of a hall full of junior school children to fully partake in care about the state mandated act of worship. She gave us all a good bollocking, of the extent to rouse the normally indiffernt headteacher from her study to see what was going on. The headteacher was as nonplussed as the rest of us with the supply teacher's explanation of 'they're begrudging God ten minutes of their day'. I'm sure the line 'for pity's sake, woman, can't you see we're just going through the motions here' was earnestly fought back in favour of whatever non-commital platitude actually came out.
I'm not seeking to pick a fight with the genuinely religious. But forcing religion on kids seems wrong. And teachers who don't believe forcing religion on kids who don't believe seems stupid and pointless.
I can't really see what there is to object to about a rousing chorus of 'We plough the fields and scatter' or 'Morning has broken'. It's nice. Replacing such classics with limp, anodyne dirges about picking up litter (as was happening toward the end of my time at primary) seems a backward step, regardless of belief.
Well that sounds amusingly stupid too.
Remembering further, we had two hymn books, an orange one and a blue one. The orange one had hymns you might recognise, the blue one was probably a bit more right-on - several of the hymns could probably be subtitled 'don't be racist, kids'. The blue one was used increasingly often as I went through the school. We were possibly going down the same route as you. I'd question the need to sing (or indeed pray) at all. I recognise the psychological impact of communal singing, and can probably understand the thinking behind it - if indeed there is any - but the psychological impact only works if it's a song that people want to sing. It works in gigs where people ar really, really, esctatically into the music; it works in football crowds where crowds genuinely believe, at least right then and there, that Stockport County, Stockport County FC are by far the greatest team the world has ever seen; it works in churches where people go voluntarily to express their belief. It works with drunks. It does not work with a bunch of slightly embarassed and resentful ten year olds who do not believe the words they are singing and feel ridiculous doing so. You can overcome this a bit, if the song is really, really good - you can emotionally believe in the melody even if you don't rationally believe in the words - but really, really good most primary school hymns are not.
Excellent post. I'm certain that singing in schools spoils singing for many people. It's quite an achievement to turn a natural and pleasurable activity into such a fucking grind but amazingly it happens. And in this case, we can pin the blame squarely on religious types. No 13 year old wants to sing Gloria in Excelsis Deo at 8.30 on a Monday morning. What on earth is wrong with the people that would make them do that?
Bit in bold happens with quite a few things I imagine. Reading for instance.
I enjoyed singing at school, but as I've noted before it might be because we sang a mixture of christian songs and beatles songs, I assume because the teacher who could play the guitar demanded the latter.
We did enjoy Lord of the Dance, that one has a pretty good tune to it.
My first encounter with Winchester was when I was at school. At the age of about 12 or 13 I was reasonably good at chess, but when I got to public school there was no tradition of playing chess, and few of the boys played much. Then one of the masters decided he'd start a chess club, so a few of us met for a few times and played each other. The standard was not very high!
Then it was decided we'd form a team and play other schools. As the least bad of the bunch, I was appointed captain. Unfortunately our first match was against Winchester.
In the event, playing against a group of really smart boys who played regularly and who had quite a culture of chess-playing, it was what I think would technically be known as an absolute rout. I did manage to hold my opponent, the opposing captain, to a draw on one of the games, which saved a bit of face for me at least, but otherwise it was carnage.
Our team disbanded shortly afterwards and the chess club fell into desuetude...
Two of the candidates from the recent Apprentice series:- A: I used to play chess for my county B: I'm good at chess too A: What's your favourite opening? B: Never mind
I used to play chess at a state school (one which did have a chess playing culture) and we got to the semi-finals of the national competition (sponsored by the Times then), losing to one of the public schools (just). The public school had brought in a GM or IM (can't remember which) to do some training...
I also played in the local leagues and there were lots of yoof then, including one team made up pretty much of one chess playing family.
These days, none. Are they all just playing video games, or is there also no time for such things at school any more?
I think there is a chess club at my school. I know there is a bridge club because I was briefly put in charge of it: a massive mistake, but I was able to offload it onto an incoming teacher who can actually play bridge and enjoys it.
Edit: just checked, and yes there is a chess club.
That's good. So it does continue at least in some places, although probably not in every school.
I'm guessing yours is not a bad one...
It does depend on getting a reasonably enthusiastic member of staff to help organise it, and that can be a real problem in many schools.
Chess is one of the cheaper options though, so I suspect there is more than you might think.
One pound per set in Poundland.
I haven't been able to revive chess club since the pandemic, which I'm quite sad about because it was great fun.
I was covering a Y7 registration a few days ago and some of them were playing chess on their iPads, which surprised me.
Pre-covid, there was a thriving Chess club at my daughter's primary. They're trying to get it going again. The dirty secret is that chess is a really good game, at any level of ability.
Sorry to jump back, was out for a bit.
Maybe the change has been to remove the inter-school competitions rather than the in-school games?
It was the inter-school competitions that must have taken up a lot of teacher time (several hours of an evening, often driving to other school premises, which then had to stay open until mid evening).
Looking at the national championships on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Schools_Chess_Championship it seems there were over 900 schools entering in the 70s and I believe there were more than 500 when I played. It is now down to barely over 100, and a lot of the names I see are public schools. Maybe that will change if the qualifying moves online? The regional events were over a weekend, too.
It is the kind of thing that volunteers should be useful for but then again, most of the players I know are odd sorts - even those who were once teachers...
Rishi's star falls further as he donates £100, 000 to Winchester School
He has astonished me and Boris needs to move him on
So out of touch
"The donations fund bursaries for children whose parents would not otherwise be able to send them there."
I would have thought as a Conservative leaning voter you would be board with rich people donating so those fortunate can have access to top level education?
From my side of the political divide, a Chancellor properly funding a state system benefitting all children, rather than a private tax dodging bursary for one or two social climbers would be more appropriate.
Let's all laugh at 12 year old working class children, and call them names. Hurrah!
The chances are they won't be "gifted" children from a sink estate in Scunthorpe anyway, but less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
But I see your point, like Basil Fawlty said, "no riff-raff".
No. you are simply wrong. I was at one of these schools, I had friends who were on these bursaries, and they were not less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
I went to a provincial grammar school (granted, over 40 years ago) and the council house kids were looked down upon, and that was by both teachers and students. Fortunately for me, I was not from a council estate, so I was fine.
I go back to my original point. A well funded, well managed non-selective state school system for all those who want to achieve, would be my preference. Quite how one arrives at that point is for smarter people than me.
Or a 'comprehensive education, to make up for their comprehensive education' as Sir Humphrey and Jim Hacker promised!
I have told you many times before that prior to Ledbury Grammar School I went to an excellent High School. The rounded quality of the teaching, by enthusiastic, generally young teachers, enthused students into achieving excellent grades and several students in my year finished up with Oxford or Cambridge degrees and very impressive careers ( not me!). For example one became a British High Commissioner and another a keyboard player in the biggest band of the 1980s.
So why did it work? It was the early days of comprehensive education so it was properly funded. The teachers were motivated, and in turn motivated the students. All subjects were streamed by subject. So kids who were good at Maths were in set one for Maths, equally if they were poor at English they would have been in set 7 for English (a logistical nightmare, no doubt).
My children also went to an excellent RC Comprehensive School too. It was well funded and the teachers were motivated.
We want more faith schools too like your RC Comprehensive for your children.
Choice not one size fits all, whether academies, free schools, faith schools, some grammar schools, technical schools etc.
Not only bog standard comprehensives you have no alternative but to send your children to if of only average income or less
Faith schools, my arse. Shut them down. I want children to be taught, not indoctrinated in superstitious mumbo-jumbo.
Tough, you are not in power. We Conservatives are. Even Blair recognised how good most faith schools were, so sent his children to them
Yes, I'm with Sandy and everyone else here. One, on principle. If you want to teach your children that there is a God and all the other tenets of your faith, go ahead, I suppose, but I don't see why I should get to pay for it. Two, in practice. There are faith (primary) schools in Sale, and they are consistently the worst performing - presumably because they are taking up teaching time with teaching religion.
I also find it faintly weird and not a little discomfiting that my kids' nominally secular primary schools still have hymns and prayers in assembly. Surely in the secular sector pretty much no-one believes in any of it: it's just a massive exercise in pointlessly going through the motions. I suppose that's some sort of training for life.
I remember when I was at primary school 30-40 years ago it was a charade back then too. A supply teacher joined us for a bit who was clearly a true believer, and seemed genuinely shocked by the inability of a hall full of junior school children to fully partake in care about the state mandated act of worship. She gave us all a good bollocking, of the extent to rouse the normally indiffernt headteacher from her study to see what was going on. The headteacher was as nonplussed as the rest of us with the supply teacher's explanation of 'they're begrudging God ten minutes of their day'. I'm sure the line 'for pity's sake, woman, can't you see we're just going through the motions here' was earnestly fought back in favour of whatever non-commital platitude actually came out.
I'm not seeking to pick a fight with the genuinely religious. But forcing religion on kids seems wrong. And teachers who don't believe forcing religion on kids who don't believe seems stupid and pointless.
'Everyone else on here' ie you and him.
However that is of course standard practice of the left, close down anything successful. As we saw earlier in the anti private school sentiment, now the sentiment to shit down successful faith schools and of course mainly Labour councils closing of grammar schools.
Taken to its logical extreme if Corbyn had got in power for an extended period of time he and McConnell would of course here nationalised any successful private company they could too. Including most of the FTSE 100.
One size fits all bog standard education and mass nationalised industry and services. That remains the leftist utopia even if it had to compromise to win elections and get into power.
I also pay taxes for your childrens education. If parents of faith wish to send their children to faith schools they are as entitled to do so as parents of no faith are entitled to send their children to non faith schools.
By selecting for faith schools based on church attendance we can also ensure we keep your children out and non Christian teachers out so they don't have to undertake the prayers and hymns we Christians are committed to. We in turn do not have to send our children to secular assemblies we don't want our children to participate in in non faith schools which your children can attend instead.
'Everyone else on here, ie you and him'
As with nearly ever subject it is you and nobody else. That is fair enough. You are entitled to your opinions and express them on anything and it is great that you do, but you are deluded if you think others are agreeing with you here. Of course you could argue that we aren't typical and you would be correct but your assertion 'you and him' was in fact not 2 people but everyone who responded. It is also worth reflecting that we are a cross section of political views although I appreciate you don't think Tories on here are true Tories and you might be correct that they aren't typical of society. They are generally must more intelligent than the average voter.
Of course I am largely a minority on here because most PBers are secular liberals. Including you. Whereas I am a religious conservative.
However millions of other religious conservatives exist, even here in the UK, a country far more liberal and secular than the global average
I’m standing with you in that minority too as I am a CoE religion and Conservative in my politics too HY.
But I vote Libdem because the Conservative party are right of centre Populists now, like their media support first drifted that way, digging out the roots of a proper Conservative Party.
Maybe you are in tune with this Populist unConservative nonsense and prefer it, or the penny hadn’t dropped for you yet.
Rishi's star falls further as he donates £100, 000 to Winchester School
He has astonished me and Boris needs to move him on
So out of touch
"The donations fund bursaries for children whose parents would not otherwise be able to send them there."
I would have thought as a Conservative leaning voter you would be board with rich people donating so those fortunate can have access to top level education?
From my side of the political divide, a Chancellor properly funding a state system benefitting all children, rather than a private tax dodging bursary for one or two social climbers would be more appropriate.
Let's all laugh at 12 year old working class children, and call them names. Hurrah!
The chances are they won't be "gifted" children from a sink estate in Scunthorpe anyway, but less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
But I see your point, like Basil Fawlty said, "no riff-raff".
No. you are simply wrong. I was at one of these schools, I had friends who were on these bursaries, and they were not less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
I went to a provincial grammar school (granted, over 40 years ago) and the council house kids were looked down upon, and that was by both teachers and students. Fortunately for me, I was not from a council estate, so I was fine.
I go back to my original point. A well funded, well managed non-selective state school system for all those who want to achieve, would be my preference. Quite how one arrives at that point is for smarter people than me.
Or a 'comprehensive education, to make up for their comprehensive education' as Sir Humphrey and Jim Hacker promised!
I have told you many times before that prior to Ledbury Grammar School I went to an excellent High School. The rounded quality of the teaching, by enthusiastic, generally young teachers, enthused students into achieving excellent grades and several students in my year finished up with Oxford or Cambridge degrees and very impressive careers ( not me!). For example one became a British High Commissioner and another a keyboard player in the biggest band of the 1980s.
So why did it work? It was the early days of comprehensive education so it was properly funded. The teachers were motivated, and in turn motivated the students. All subjects were streamed by subject. So kids who were good at Maths were in set one for Maths, equally if they were poor at English they would have been in set 7 for English (a logistical nightmare, no doubt).
My children also went to an excellent RC Comprehensive School too. It was well funded and the teachers were motivated.
We want more faith schools too like your RC Comprehensive for your children.
Choice not one size fits all, whether academies, free schools, faith schools, some grammar schools, technical schools etc.
Not only bog standard comprehensives you have no alternative but to send your children to if of only average income or less
Faith schools, my arse. Shut them down. I want children to be taught, not indoctrinated in superstitious mumbo-jumbo.
Tough, you are not in power. We Conservatives are. Even Blair recognised how good most faith schools were, so sent his children to them
Yes, I'm with Sandy and everyone else here. One, on principle. If you want to teach your children that there is a God and all the other tenets of your faith, go ahead, I suppose, but I don't see why I should get to pay for it. Two, in practice. There are faith (primary) schools in Sale, and they are consistently the worst performing - presumably because they are taking up teaching time with teaching religion.
I also find it faintly weird and not a little discomfiting that my kids' nominally secular primary schools still have hymns and prayers in assembly. Surely in the secular sector pretty much no-one believes in any of it: it's just a massive exercise in pointlessly going through the motions. I suppose that's some sort of training for life.
I remember when I was at primary school 30-40 years ago it was a charade back then too. A supply teacher joined us for a bit who was clearly a true believer, and seemed genuinely shocked by the inability of a hall full of junior school children to fully partake in care about the state mandated act of worship. She gave us all a good bollocking, of the extent to rouse the normally indiffernt headteacher from her study to see what was going on. The headteacher was as nonplussed as the rest of us with the supply teacher's explanation of 'they're begrudging God ten minutes of their day'. I'm sure the line 'for pity's sake, woman, can't you see we're just going through the motions here' was earnestly fought back in favour of whatever non-commital platitude actually came out.
I'm not seeking to pick a fight with the genuinely religious. But forcing religion on kids seems wrong. And teachers who don't believe forcing religion on kids who don't believe seems stupid and pointless.
'Everyone else on here' ie you and him.
However that is of course standard practice of the left, close down anything successful. As we saw earlier in the anti private school sentiment, now the sentiment to shit down successful faith schools and of course mainly Labour councils closing of grammar schools.
Taken to its logical extreme if Corbyn had got in power for an extended period of time he and McConnell would of course here nationalised any successful private company they could too. Including most of the FTSE 100.
One size fits all bog standard education and mass nationalised industry and services. That remains the leftist utopia even if it had to compromise to win elections and get into power.
I also pay taxes for your childrens education. If parents of faith wish to send their children to faith schools they are as entitled to do so as parents of no faith are entitled to send their children to non faith schools.
By selecting for faith schools based on church attendance we can also ensure we keep your children out and non Christian teachers out so they don't have to undertake the prayers and hymns we Christians are committed to. We in turn do not have to send our children to secular assemblies we don't want our children to participate in in non faith schools which your children can attend instead.
'Everyone else on here, ie you and him'
As with nearly ever subject it is you and nobody else. That is fair enough. You are entitled to your opinions and express them on anything and it is great that you do, but you are deluded if you think others are agreeing with you here. Of course you could argue that we aren't typical and you would be correct but your assertion 'you and him' was in fact not 2 people but everyone who responded. It is also worth reflecting that we are a cross section of political views although I appreciate you don't think Tories on here are true Tories and you might be correct that they aren't typical of society. They are generally must more intelligent than the average voter.
Of course I am largely a minority on here because most PBers are secular liberals. Including you. Whereas I am a religious conservative.
However millions of other religious conservatives exist, even here in the UK, a country far more liberal and secular than the global average
I agree. Being a liberal is usually a minority. But that wasn't the point I was making. You stated 'you and him' when it was in fact 'you and everyone else'. Just correcting the error which you have also confirmed in your post.
This is a definite theme now. Turkish food is terrible. Way worse than, say, Germany or Holland (the worst in western Europe)
It’s down there with a middle income African country or somewhere like Oman
It is shite. In Erdogan’s gleaming Istanbul airport at their flashy Italian restaurant I ordered the Caprese salad. It came as cold sliced tomato with weird tasteless frigid bits of cheese, and chopped lettuce. That was it. No dressing, no nothing, No oil, no pepper, no salt. Zero. No pesto or basil. Disgusting
Not only was it dreadfully bad, the staff had no idea WHY it was bad, when I politely queried
It was like eating in an eerie, hallucinated version of 70s Britain, yet in a huge sparkly airport
In Sanliurfa the Head of Regional Culture and Tourism took me to a celebrated restaurant for their famous liver kebab. It was nice bits of liver, in a kebab, with an OK sauce. That was it. You could eat it in Camden at 3am after a big night and think Hmm, decent fast food. And they were trying to show off???
UGHHHHHHH
I haven't eaten in Turkey, but I was surprised at how bad the food was in Copenhagen (2018). What's the story with putting massive dollops of butter onto everything?
Posh Danish food is now world class. But everything beneath is still catching up (in Denmark)
Germany, Holland and the rest of Scandi are notably behind.
Britain is no longer the laggard, you can now eat better in the UK than most European countries (and certainly most countries around the world)
Spain, Italy and France are still superior to the UK. Tho Britain is edging France because of our better world cuisine, and insane French attachment to the Great Tradition
Nonetheless I’d have those three in the European Superleague, and Britain at the top of the next division, ahead of Greece and Portugal
How do you rate the great State of Louisiana?
Magnificent. The only state in the USA where I have eaten brilliant food, day after day
And it’s not just a New Orleans thing. The food in Louisiana outside NOLA is unusually excellent, even down to the breakfasts
Food culture is a weird thing. But Louisiana has it, and delivers it
I found Atlanta, Georgia, bizarrely good.
Absolute awful city in almost every way - except its food scene, which is weirdly great.
Generally the States can be disappointing for food.
You can eat really really well in most states of the US, but like so much of the US, its a place of two extremes. The "average" is absolutely shocking.
They haven’t had the gastropub Revolution that has happened in the UK and Australia, and which has been crucial
There will be at least one place in any average town with a talented chef who knows what he wants to do, and is having a bash
I saw a documentary on Australian food and they ascribed their food Revolution, almost entirely, to immigration but even more to foodie TV like Masterchef (which was invented in the UK but is wildly popular in its Aussie incarnation).
It makes total sense. Many millions watch Masterchef, pro and amateur. Watching a series is basically like doing a GCSE in cookery. You learn when to baste and how to fillet. You have a go. It’s brilliant. Most people I know, friends and family, can cook well - anyone under 60, that is
One thing that has improved a lot in the US over past 20 years is craft beer....they really gone for that. Its just the same place that will serve you a half decent beer brewed on site or locally, will serve you a meh burger and fries.
Not sure about your tv point. Don't the US have a load of shows just like that, Iron Chef etc, that are equally popular?
Agreed on the beer. American beer selections are now generally better than British. I hear rumours they are improving their cheese as well (it can’t get worse)
But the Masterchef thing is real. Australia has a less atomized culture than the USA, as does Britain
Eg Masterchef gets 5-6m viewers in the UK, thats nearly 10% of the entire country. The us version gets 1m, 0.3%
10% of people tuning in to learn about cooking is enough to change a cooking culture. 0.3% isn’t. And this is repeated over 30 years, beginning in the UK in 1990
American cheese has improved in just the four (almost) five years I've been here. As has their salami.
But it's still not as good as the UK.
France is still le grand fromage.
Corsica and Sardinia have the best cheese in the world. Esp Corsica. Tho Sardinia has the maggot cheese
Corsica is just incredible.You can drive 5km (which takes an hour on their roads) and the next village (which hates the previous village) has an entirely different and vastly superior cheese, and if you demur they all glare at you then turn away like you are a shameful sexual leper
After that they start being rude
Honestly tho the cheese is remarkable. And much of it never leaves the island
However in terms of getting great cheese in your average supermarket I reckon the UK wins, easily. We have all the noble British cheeses plus all the best mainland Europe cheeses, you just don’t get that selection in the EU (they all concentrate on their own cheeses)
The USA might be slowly catching up because they are now winning cheese awards, the same process as happened with their craft beer
However i reckon they are still 20 years behind the curve, so a long way to go, plus they have a culture more resistant to weird foods than better beers
Also, England. My older daughter just aced her mock GCSEs at her supposedly Outstanding north London comp, but I recently discovered she has no idea what the Battle of Hastings is or was or what it meant or how it worked or anything, and she also has no idea whether Iran is north, south, east or west of Russia (and she is doing Geography and got the equivalent of an A*)
WTF are they actually teaching them
My own attitude, is that school is largely about socialisation, and a weird performance for the (normally absent) ofsted Inspectors (more evidence of this earlier in the thread).
I take the responsibility of passing on knowledge about history to my son myself. I am sure that the school will just trot out a load of woke ideology anyway the way things are going, when it comes to history. He can already explain the difference between prehistory and history. We do a different period every other night, last night we were looking at Sargon of Akkad. Some of the books you can buy are brilliant. We've also been learning how to fight, so going through Karate and Wing Chun moves, which he loves. Much of history is about war. Kids are so much fun.
My theory is, that if all this is entrenched at age 5, then he won't forget it when he goes through his teenage rebellion and delinquency.
Fuck “Black History Month” which seems to be Every fucking Month
How about “Basic British History Year” when they spend just one year - just one - giving them the absolute fundamentals of why we are the nation we are
Ice Age Doggerland Beaker People Bronze Age Stonehenge Celts Romans Anglo Saxons Hastings Normans Anglo-Normans Tudors Golden Age of Elizabeth, Gloriana! Civil War Protestants win, but Restoration Enlightenment, Scottish Union Industrial Revolution Empire More Empire Still more empire First World War Depression WW2 yay heroes Decline End of Empire Beatles, the Pill, winter of discontent Thatcher, the Saviour
Seriously, Do each one every week. For a year
That gives you the total basics. The mental map. Then, if you drearily insist, go back to the fucking Woke bollox
Why do you prize Hastings on its own above Brunanburh? Serious question.
(I know the DfE do but that's because they're ignorant shits.)
Because (a) they don’t know where it was; and (b) Athelstan’s triumph was only temporary. Ultimately the northmen won
So, we have Le Pen wishing to lift sanctions to help French motorists, while Macron is heading in the other direction.
Bold from Macron if true. Do people not realise how dangerous Putin is? Or do they think he's some kind of nagging toddler who'll be pacified if he gets a slice of Ukraine.
Rishi's star falls further as he donates £100, 000 to Winchester School
He has astonished me and Boris needs to move him on
So out of touch
"The donations fund bursaries for children whose parents would not otherwise be able to send them there."
I would have thought as a Conservative leaning voter you would be board with rich people donating so those fortunate can have access to top level education?
From my side of the political divide, a Chancellor properly funding a state system benefitting all children, rather than a private tax dodging bursary for one or two social climbers would be more appropriate.
Let's all laugh at 12 year old working class children, and call them names. Hurrah!
The chances are they won't be "gifted" children from a sink estate in Scunthorpe anyway, but less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
But I see your point, like Basil Fawlty said, "no riff-raff".
No. you are simply wrong. I was at one of these schools, I had friends who were on these bursaries, and they were not less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
I went to a provincial grammar school (granted, over 40 years ago) and the council house kids were looked down upon, and that was by both teachers and students. Fortunately for me, I was not from a council estate, so I was fine.
I go back to my original point. A well funded, well managed non-selective state school system for all those who want to achieve, would be my preference. Quite how one arrives at that point is for smarter people than me.
Or a 'comprehensive education, to make up for their comprehensive education' as Sir Humphrey and Jim Hacker promised!
I have told you many times before that prior to Ledbury Grammar School I went to an excellent High School. The rounded quality of the teaching, by enthusiastic, generally young teachers, enthused students into achieving excellent grades and several students in my year finished up with Oxford or Cambridge degrees and very impressive careers ( not me!). For example one became a British High Commissioner and another a keyboard player in the biggest band of the 1980s.
So why did it work? It was the early days of comprehensive education so it was properly funded. The teachers were motivated, and in turn motivated the students. All subjects were streamed by subject. So kids who were good at Maths were in set one for Maths, equally if they were poor at English they would have been in set 7 for English (a logistical nightmare, no doubt).
My children also went to an excellent RC Comprehensive School too. It was well funded and the teachers were motivated.
We want more faith schools too like your RC Comprehensive for your children.
Choice not one size fits all, whether academies, free schools, faith schools, some grammar schools, technical schools etc.
Not only bog standard comprehensives you have no alternative but to send your children to if of only average income or less
Faith schools, my arse. Shut them down. I want children to be taught, not indoctrinated in superstitious mumbo-jumbo.
Tough, you are not in power. We Conservatives are. Even Blair recognised how good most faith schools were, so sent his children to them
Yes, I'm with Sandy and everyone else here. One, on principle. If you want to teach your children that there is a God and all the other tenets of your faith, go ahead, I suppose, but I don't see why I should get to pay for it. Two, in practice. There are faith (primary) schools in Sale, and they are consistently the worst performing - presumably because they are taking up teaching time with teaching religion.
I also find it faintly weird and not a little discomfiting that my kids' nominally secular primary schools still have hymns and prayers in assembly. Surely in the secular sector pretty much no-one believes in any of it: it's just a massive exercise in pointlessly going through the motions. I suppose that's some sort of training for life.
I remember when I was at primary school 30-40 years ago it was a charade back then too. A supply teacher joined us for a bit who was clearly a true believer, and seemed genuinely shocked by the inability of a hall full of junior school children to fully partake in care about the state mandated act of worship. She gave us all a good bollocking, of the extent to rouse the normally indiffernt headteacher from her study to see what was going on. The headteacher was as nonplussed as the rest of us with the supply teacher's explanation of 'they're begrudging God ten minutes of their day'. I'm sure the line 'for pity's sake, woman, can't you see we're just going through the motions here' was earnestly fought back in favour of whatever non-commital platitude actually came out.
I'm not seeking to pick a fight with the genuinely religious. But forcing religion on kids seems wrong. And teachers who don't believe forcing religion on kids who don't believe seems stupid and pointless.
I can't really see what there is to object to about a rousing chorus of 'We plough the fields and scatter' or 'Morning has broken'. It's nice. Replacing such classics with limp, anodyne dirges about picking up litter (as was happening toward the end of my time at primary) seems a backward step, regardless of belief.
Well that sounds amusingly stupid too.
Remembering further, we had two hymn books, an orange one and a blue one. The orange one had hymns you might recognise, the blue one was probably a bit more right-on - several of the hymns could probably be subtitled 'don't be racist, kids'. The blue one was used increasingly often as I went through the school. We were possibly going down the same route as you. I'd question the need to sing (or indeed pray) at all. I recognise the psychological impact of communal singing, and can probably understand the thinking behind it - if indeed there is any - but the psychological impact only works if it's a song that people want to sing. It works in gigs where people ar really, really, esctatically into the music; it works in football crowds where crowds genuinely believe, at least right then and there, that Stockport County, Stockport County FC are by far the greatest team the world has ever seen; it works in churches where people go voluntarily to express their belief. It works with drunks. It does not work with a bunch of slightly embarassed and resentful ten year olds who do not believe the words they are singing and feel ridiculous doing so. You can overcome this a bit, if the song is really, really good - you can emotionally believe in the melody even if you don't rationally believe in the words - but really, really good most primary school hymns are not.
Excellent post. I'm certain that singing in schools spoils singing for many people. It's quite an achievement to turn a natural and pleasurable activity into such a fucking grind but amazingly it happens. And in this case, we can pin the blame squarely on religious types. No 13 year old wants to sing Gloria in Excelsis Deo at 8.30 on a Monday morning. What on earth is wrong with the people that would make them do that?
Ha, yes, and well noted that there is a time and a place for these things. Christmas, a decorated Victorian church, darkness outside and light inside, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, with a choir singing the descant - yes, actually quite a pleasurable experience. The music does its magic; you feel a kniship with your fellow humans. A dirge on whatever aspect of Christianity is considered wholesome and modern for primary school children at 9 oc'clock on a damp grey morning - the only communal feeling is one of sullen resentment to whoever is making you go through this exercise.
Rishi's star falls further as he donates £100, 000 to Winchester School
He has astonished me and Boris needs to move him on
So out of touch
"The donations fund bursaries for children whose parents would not otherwise be able to send them there."
I would have thought as a Conservative leaning voter you would be board with rich people donating so those fortunate can have access to top level education?
From my side of the political divide, a Chancellor properly funding a state system benefitting all children, rather than a private tax dodging bursary for one or two social climbers would be more appropriate.
Let's all laugh at 12 year old working class children, and call them names. Hurrah!
The chances are they won't be "gifted" children from a sink estate in Scunthorpe anyway, but less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
But I see your point, like Basil Fawlty said, "no riff-raff".
No. you are simply wrong. I was at one of these schools, I had friends who were on these bursaries, and they were not less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
I went to a provincial grammar school (granted, over 40 years ago) and the council house kids were looked down upon, and that was by both teachers and students. Fortunately for me, I was not from a council estate, so I was fine.
I go back to my original point. A well funded, well managed non-selective state school system for all those who want to achieve, would be my preference. Quite how one arrives at that point is for smarter people than me.
Or a 'comprehensive education, to make up for their comprehensive education' as Sir Humphrey and Jim Hacker promised!
I have told you many times before that prior to Ledbury Grammar School I went to an excellent High School. The rounded quality of the teaching, by enthusiastic, generally young teachers, enthused students into achieving excellent grades and several students in my year finished up with Oxford or Cambridge degrees and very impressive careers ( not me!). For example one became a British High Commissioner and another a keyboard player in the biggest band of the 1980s.
So why did it work? It was the early days of comprehensive education so it was properly funded. The teachers were motivated, and in turn motivated the students. All subjects were streamed by subject. So kids who were good at Maths were in set one for Maths, equally if they were poor at English they would have been in set 7 for English (a logistical nightmare, no doubt).
My children also went to an excellent RC Comprehensive School too. It was well funded and the teachers were motivated.
We want more faith schools too like your RC Comprehensive for your children.
Choice not one size fits all, whether academies, free schools, faith schools, some grammar schools, technical schools etc.
Not only bog standard comprehensives you have no alternative but to send your children to if of only average income or less
No comprehensive should be "bog standard". They should all be excellent.
I shouldn't have mentioned that my children went to an RC school (they, nor me are Catholic by the way). I fell into your faith school trap. Damn and blast!
What a ludicrous statement. You may as well say 'no supermarkets should be bog standard. They should all be excellent.'
The only way you get to excellence is consumer choice. Applies to education as much as business. Otherwise if there was no choice of supermarket, every supermarket would look like an Asda or Morrisons on a bad day
I don't know how they got into an RC school without being Catholic. Most faith schools require at least a minimum level of church attendance to get in '
None taken!
Supermarkets are not funded out of the public purse for the future benefit of the nation. If they are poor they wither and die. With publicly funded schools it doesn't quite work like that.
And I didn't furtively pretend to be the Pope to get them in. The school knew I was a godless heathen.
If state schools are inadequate they get rebranded as academies, if private schools are inadequate they go out of business.
Either way, they do not go on as before.
Sounds an unusual faith school anyway. The C of E faith school in Loughton for example awards points based on weekly church attendance. The more you attend, the more points you get regardless of how close you live to the school in the district. That is normally standard for most faith schools, C of E or RC. It gets 81% A* to C GCSE grades or the new points equivalent.
Your first paragraph reminds me of Lennie Henry's suggestion that "Windscale has been renamed as Sellarfield, so nuclear fallout would now be known as magic moonbeams".
That was Not The Nine O’Clock News - Mel Smith, Pam S, et al. not Lenny Henry
From ChemEurope.com
"Not the Nine O'Clock News also had a sketch, with a nod to a popular Ready Brek advert, about glowing children and Sellafield".
And
"Comedian Lenny Henry, impersonating newscaster Trevor McDonald, once reported that "Windscale is to be renamed Sellafield, because it sounds nicer. In future, radiation will be referred to as magic moonbeams".
Yes, the internet’s memory is different to mine. If so, my bad
(The weird thing is I can DISTINCTLY recall SEEING Pamela Stephenson make this joke, in my mind, how odd are the tricks of recall)
Memory is strange. Hence Mandela Effect. Strangely I had that when FW de Klerk died. Which I hope both would have found bleakly amusing. On which. How come I missed Tiger Woods nearly dying in a car crash? I have no memory whatsoever of that happening. And I read this board every day.
Exactly the same! Car crash?? Nearly fatal? What????
Was it during Covid? I think we all lost years of memory during Covid. Because we wanted to
This is a definite theme now. Turkish food is terrible. Way worse than, say, Germany or Holland (the worst in western Europe)
It’s down there with a middle income African country or somewhere like Oman
It is shite. In Erdogan’s gleaming Istanbul airport at their flashy Italian restaurant I ordered the Caprese salad. It came as cold sliced tomato with weird tasteless frigid bits of cheese, and chopped lettuce. That was it. No dressing, no nothing, No oil, no pepper, no salt. Zero. No pesto or basil. Disgusting
Not only was it dreadfully bad, the staff had no idea WHY it was bad, when I politely queried
It was like eating in an eerie, hallucinated version of 70s Britain, yet in a huge sparkly airport
In Sanliurfa the Head of Regional Culture and Tourism took me to a celebrated restaurant for their famous liver kebab. It was nice bits of liver, in a kebab, with an OK sauce. That was it. You could eat it in Camden at 3am after a big night and think Hmm, decent fast food. And they were trying to show off???
UGHHHHHHH
I haven't eaten in Turkey, but I was surprised at how bad the food was in Copenhagen (2018). What's the story with putting massive dollops of butter onto everything?
Posh Danish food is now world class. But everything beneath is still catching up (in Denmark)
Germany, Holland and the rest of Scandi are notably behind.
Britain is no longer the laggard, you can now eat better in the UK than most European countries (and certainly most countries around the world)
Spain, Italy and France are still superior to the UK. Tho Britain is edging France because of our better world cuisine, and insane French attachment to the Great Tradition
Nonetheless I’d have those three in the European Superleague, and Britain at the top of the next division, ahead of Greece and Portugal
How do you rate the great State of Louisiana?
Magnificent. The only state in the USA where I have eaten brilliant food, day after day
And it’s not just a New Orleans thing. The food in Louisiana outside NOLA is unusually excellent, even down to the breakfasts
Food culture is a weird thing. But Louisiana has it, and delivers it
I found Atlanta, Georgia, bizarrely good.
Absolute awful city in almost every way - except its food scene, which is weirdly great.
Generally the States can be disappointing for food.
You can eat really really well in most states of the US, but like so much of the US, its a place of two extremes. The "average" is absolutely shocking.
They haven’t had the gastropub Revolution that has happened in the UK and Australia, and which has been crucial
There will be at least one place in any average town with a talented chef who knows what he wants to do, and is having a bash
I saw a documentary on Australian food and they ascribed their food Revolution, almost entirely, to immigration but even more to foodie TV like Masterchef (which was invented in the UK but is wildly popular in its Aussie incarnation).
It makes total sense. Many millions watch Masterchef, pro and amateur. Watching a series is basically like doing a GCSE in cookery. You learn when to baste and how to fillet. You have a go. It’s brilliant. Most people I know, friends and family, can cook well - anyone under 60, that is
One thing that has improved a lot in the US over past 20 years is craft beer....they really gone for that. Its just the same place that will serve you a half decent beer brewed on site or locally, will serve you a meh burger and fries.
Not sure about your tv point. Don't the US have a load of shows just like that, Iron Chef etc, that are equally popular?
Agreed on the beer. American beer selections are now generally better than British. I hear rumours they are improving their cheese as well (it can’t get worse)
But the Masterchef thing is real. Australia has a less atomized culture than the USA, as does Britain
Eg Masterchef gets 5-6m viewers in the UK, thats nearly 10% of the entire country. The us version gets 1m, 0.3%
10% of people tuning in to learn about cooking is enough to change a cooking culture. 0.3% isn’t. And this is repeated over 30 years, beginning in the UK in 1990
American cheese has improved in just the four (almost) five years I've been here. As has their salami.
But it's still not as good as the UK.
It’s all rubbery; they’re not allowed to make proper cheese.
When I was in the Finger Lakes, I went to this place offering a cheese tasting - fifteen different cheeses. Almost all of which turned out to be the same rubbery cheese with different things in it - rubbery cheese with garlic, rubbery cheese with chilli, rubbery cheese with sage….
We once microwaved some rubbery American "good" cheese, and used it to fill an errant drill hole in our rental apartment. It dried hard, we sanded it down and painted over. I expect it is still there today.
Objectively, it's commendable. Yet it is focussed very much on buttressing the private education system.
Subjectively, it's a disaster, as it reminds the rest of the UK just how much money the Chancellor has to spare. (And how much tax relief was involved, too?)
Objectively.. is it? Donating money to a cause depends on the worthiness of that cause. Private schools are engines for concentrating the quality of services and delivering them mostly to those who can pay.
Yes, I know that bursaries exist and the poor but brilliant gold ticket winner can get in, but it's still a system of intentional and intense stratification that benefits the extremely wealthy. It obviously right up HYUFD's street but if you asked me (I know, I know) I could find much better things to do with a spare £100k.
"...the poor but brilliant gold ticket winner can get in..."
This is a modern version of the Distressed Gentlefolk* charity. Sure, in theory it's open to anybody but in reality only a very small subset of society, usually with the right connections, would ever have the wherewithal to apply, let alone be successful. It's a sham.
(*I am probably being unfair to that charity, now sensibly renamed 'Elizabeth Finn Care'.)
Not so. The recipients of these bursaries are not secret poshos down on their luck, they are the real deal. And quite often getting a shit time from everybody else for their failure to be posh, secretly or otherwise, but that's another story.
Just exactly how do Winchester, Eton, etc. publicise these bursaries in your average sink estate?
no idea. Talent scouts?
Let me help you: They don't.
Let me help you: you don’t know what you are talking about. Not only do they have very active outreach programmes helping schools and sharing resources they actively promote bursaries and scholarships around the country because funnily enough they actually do want to recruit very bright and able students as it benefits everyone at the school and, if cynical, the reputation of the school when these bright kids get access to places they wouldn’t otherwise and go on to do great things.
All the major public schools support inner city clubs - Winchester for example supports the Crown and Manor club in London where they arrange exchanges, tutorial help, resources, money and time for kids from some of the shittiest unfortunate backgrounds because funnily enough all public school people aren’t entitled wankers.
The people aren’t, the institutions are selfish greedy fucks. Winchester is worth 400 million. What the fuck, And they want to be charities? UGH
Take their charitable status away
Just one of the many stupidities of what Sunak has done is he has ensured - if this story gains traction (Ukraine might save him) - is that every Tory will now be asked to justify Sunak’s 100k to Winchester. Because he is CoE they will have to defend him, but it will be very awkward, and it will sound like MaxPB’s strangulated nonsense. They won’t thank him for this
That charitable status helps them fund scholarships and bursaries and providing sports and arts facilities to share with the local community too
I think you've put the cart before the horse there. As a retired teacher from the independent sector I was aware that the charitable status had been around for many years before the advent of large numbers of scholarships. The development of scholarships etc appeared as a way championed by ISI to justify and retain the charitable status already in place. The main reason for the charitable status was to be let off paying the rates, which was usually enormous. The school still had to pay VAT on the usual items.
Rate relief has been abolished for private schools in Scotland - came into force this month AIUI. Now treated the same as state schools in that respect.
And the private schools will thus offer fewer scholarships and become even more the preserve of the rich.
Great job Sturgeon!
My kids former school is cutting back on teaching staff and places despite having a waiting list as a result.
We had a child or children at that school for 20 years. The change was remarkable. Originally dominated by old school money and inherited wealth it, over time it became dominated by people paying their fees from income in despair of the collapse of the state system. The ethos changed too. Originally a place you went to make friends of the clique that would see you alright and get a place for you it became focused on results. Those paying the fees from their hard earned want their kids in Russell group unis with a ticket to the professions.
It would be sad if it slipped back.
I fully understand why parents would want to buy their kids 'a ticket to the professions' but surely you must see how intrinsically unfair the opportunity to buy such tickets is and how poorly it serves the professions?
It is unfair yes. But I am not so sure it’s bad for the professions. They need people who have had a useful and thorough education and that is becoming increasingly rare in Scotland.
Also, England. My older daughter just aced her mock GCSEs at her supposedly Outstanding north London comp, but I recently discovered she has no idea what the Battle of Hastings is or was or what it meant or how it worked or anything, and she also has no idea whether Iran is north, south, east or west of Russia (and she is doing Geography and got the equivalent of an A*)
WTF are they actually teaching them
Where did Battle of Hastings take place, exactly? Believe it's still an open question!
"Battle of Hastings took place somewhere near Hastings, Kent. Bunch of obnoxious foreigners invaded, conquered and despoiled Britain. Until Brexit that is."
This is a definite theme now. Turkish food is terrible. Way worse than, say, Germany or Holland (the worst in western Europe)
It’s down there with a middle income African country or somewhere like Oman
It is shite. In Erdogan’s gleaming Istanbul airport at their flashy Italian restaurant I ordered the Caprese salad. It came as cold sliced tomato with weird tasteless frigid bits of cheese, and chopped lettuce. That was it. No dressing, no nothing, No oil, no pepper, no salt. Zero. No pesto or basil. Disgusting
Not only was it dreadfully bad, the staff had no idea WHY it was bad, when I politely queried
It was like eating in an eerie, hallucinated version of 70s Britain, yet in a huge sparkly airport
In Sanliurfa the Head of Regional Culture and Tourism took me to a celebrated restaurant for their famous liver kebab. It was nice bits of liver, in a kebab, with an OK sauce. That was it. You could eat it in Camden at 3am after a big night and think Hmm, decent fast food. And they were trying to show off???
UGHHHHHHH
I haven't eaten in Turkey, but I was surprised at how bad the food was in Copenhagen (2018). What's the story with putting massive dollops of butter onto everything?
Posh Danish food is now world class. But everything beneath is still catching up (in Denmark)
Germany, Holland and the rest of Scandi are notably behind.
Britain is no longer the laggard, you can now eat better in the UK than most European countries (and certainly most countries around the world)
Spain, Italy and France are still superior to the UK. Tho Britain is edging France because of our better world cuisine, and insane French attachment to the Great Tradition
Nonetheless I’d have those three in the European Superleague, and Britain at the top of the next division, ahead of Greece and Portugal
How do you rate the great State of Louisiana?
Magnificent. The only state in the USA where I have eaten brilliant food, day after day
And it’s not just a New Orleans thing. The food in Louisiana outside NOLA is unusually excellent, even down to the breakfasts
Food culture is a weird thing. But Louisiana has it, and delivers it
I found Atlanta, Georgia, bizarrely good.
Absolute awful city in almost every way - except its food scene, which is weirdly great.
Generally the States can be disappointing for food.
You can eat really really well in most states of the US, but like so much of the US, its a place of two extremes. The "average" is absolutely shocking.
They haven’t had the gastropub Revolution that has happened in the UK and Australia, and which has been crucial
There will be at least one place in any average town with a talented chef who knows what he wants to do, and is having a bash
I saw a documentary on Australian food and they ascribed their food Revolution, almost entirely, to immigration but even more to foodie TV like Masterchef (which was invented in the UK but is wildly popular in its Aussie incarnation).
It makes total sense. Many millions watch Masterchef, pro and amateur. Watching a series is basically like doing a GCSE in cookery. You learn when to baste and how to fillet. You have a go. It’s brilliant. Most people I know, friends and family, can cook well - anyone under 60, that is
One thing that has improved a lot in the US over past 20 years is craft beer....they really gone for that. Its just the same place that will serve you a half decent beer brewed on site or locally, will serve you a meh burger and fries.
Not sure about your tv point. Don't the US have a load of shows just like that, Iron Chef etc, that are equally popular?
Agreed on the beer. American beer selections are now generally better than British. I hear rumours they are improving their cheese as well (it can’t get worse)
But the Masterchef thing is real. Australia has a less atomized culture than the USA, as does Britain
Eg Masterchef gets 5-6m viewers in the UK, thats nearly 10% of the entire country. The us version gets 1m, 0.3%
10% of people tuning in to learn about cooking is enough to change a cooking culture. 0.3% isn’t. And this is repeated over 30 years, beginning in the UK in 1990
American cheese has improved in just the four (almost) five years I've been here. As has their salami.
But it's still not as good as the UK.
France is still le grand fromage.
Corsica and Sardinia have the best cheese in the world. Esp Corsica. Tho Sardinia has the maggot cheese
Corsica is just incredible.You can drive 5km (which takes an hour on their roads) and the next village (which hates the previous village) has an entirely different and vastly superior cheese, and if you demur they all glare at you then turn away like you are a shameful sexual leper
After that they start being rude
Honestly tho the cheese is remarkable. And much of it never leaves the island
However in terms of getting great cheese in your average supermarket I reckon the UK wins, easily. We have all the noble British cheeses plus all the best mainland Europe cheeses, you just don’t get that selection in the EU (they all concentrate on their own cheeses)
The USA might be slowly catching up because they are now winning cheese awards, the same process as happened with their craft beer
However i reckon they are still 20 years behind the curve, so a long way to go, plus they have a culture more resistant to weird foods than better beers
British cheese is a revelation. When I was a kid you could get several different sorts of Cheddar, plus Stilton at Christmas.
Ukraine will become a “‘big Israel' with its own face” said Zelenskyy. “Ukraine will definitely not be what we wanted it to be from the beginning. It is impossible. Absolutely liberal, European – it will not be like that. It will definitely come from the strength of every house.”
I presume he means that, with the Damoclean sword ever present, Ukraine cannot afford to be just any liberal democracy, but has to be an ever-ready, armed-to-the-teeth one. I.e. a society living with an ever present existential threat.
Rishi's star falls further as he donates £100, 000 to Winchester School
He has astonished me and Boris needs to move him on
So out of touch
"The donations fund bursaries for children whose parents would not otherwise be able to send them there."
I would have thought as a Conservative leaning voter you would be board with rich people donating so those fortunate can have access to top level education?
From my side of the political divide, a Chancellor properly funding a state system benefitting all children, rather than a private tax dodging bursary for one or two social climbers would be more appropriate.
Let's all laugh at 12 year old working class children, and call them names. Hurrah!
The chances are they won't be "gifted" children from a sink estate in Scunthorpe anyway, but less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
But I see your point, like Basil Fawlty said, "no riff-raff".
No. you are simply wrong. I was at one of these schools, I had friends who were on these bursaries, and they were not less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
I went to a provincial grammar school (granted, over 40 years ago) and the council house kids were looked down upon, and that was by both teachers and students. Fortunately for me, I was not from a council estate, so I was fine.
I go back to my original point. A well funded, well managed non-selective state school system for all those who want to achieve, would be my preference. Quite how one arrives at that point is for smarter people than me.
Or a 'comprehensive education, to make up for their comprehensive education' as Sir Humphrey and Jim Hacker promised!
I have told you many times before that prior to Ledbury Grammar School I went to an excellent High School. The rounded quality of the teaching, by enthusiastic, generally young teachers, enthused students into achieving excellent grades and several students in my year finished up with Oxford or Cambridge degrees and very impressive careers ( not me!). For example one became a British High Commissioner and another a keyboard player in the biggest band of the 1980s.
So why did it work? It was the early days of comprehensive education so it was properly funded. The teachers were motivated, and in turn motivated the students. All subjects were streamed by subject. So kids who were good at Maths were in set one for Maths, equally if they were poor at English they would have been in set 7 for English (a logistical nightmare, no doubt).
My children also went to an excellent RC Comprehensive School too. It was well funded and the teachers were motivated.
We want more faith schools too like your RC Comprehensive for your children.
Choice not one size fits all, whether academies, free schools, faith schools, some grammar schools, technical schools etc.
Not only bog standard comprehensives you have no alternative but to send your children to if of only average income or less
No comprehensive should be "bog standard". They should all be excellent.
I shouldn't have mentioned that my children went to an RC school (they, nor me are Catholic by the way). I fell into your faith school trap. Damn and blast!
What a ludicrous statement. You may as well say 'no supermarkets should be bog standard. They should all be excellent.'
The only way you get to excellence is consumer choice. Applies to education as much as business. Otherwise if there was no choice of supermarket, every supermarket would look like an Asda or Morrisons on a bad day
I don't know how they got into an RC school without being Catholic. Most faith schools require at least a minimum level of church attendance to get in '
None taken!
Supermarkets are not funded out of the public purse for the future benefit of the nation. If they are poor they wither and die. With publicly funded schools it doesn't quite work like that.
And I didn't furtively pretend to be the Pope to get them in. The school knew I was a godless heathen.
If state schools are inadequate they get rebranded as academies, if private schools are inadequate they go out of business.
Either way, they do not go on as before.
Sounds an unusual faith school anyway. The C of E faith school in Loughton for example awards points based on weekly church attendance. The more you attend, the more points you get regardless of how close you live to the school in the district. That is normally standard for most faith schools, C of E or RC. It gets 81% A* to C GCSE grades or the new points equivalent.
Your first paragraph reminds me of Lennie Henry's suggestion that "Windscale has been renamed as Sellarfield, so nuclear fallout would now be known as magic moonbeams".
That was Not The Nine O’Clock News - Mel Smith, Pam S, et al. not Lenny Henry
From ChemEurope.com
"Not the Nine O'Clock News also had a sketch, with a nod to a popular Ready Brek advert, about glowing children and Sellafield".
And
"Comedian Lenny Henry, impersonating newscaster Trevor McDonald, once reported that "Windscale is to be renamed Sellafield, because it sounds nicer. In future, radiation will be referred to as magic moonbeams".
Yes, the internet’s memory is different to mine. If so, my bad
(The weird thing is I can DISTINCTLY recall SEEING Pamela Stephenson make this joke, in my mind, how odd are the tricks of recall)
Memory is strange. Hence Mandela Effect. Strangely I had that when FW de Klerk died. Which I hope both would have found bleakly amusing. On which. How come I missed Tiger Woods nearly dying in a car crash? I have no memory whatsoever of that happening. And I read this board every day.
Exactly the same! Car crash?? Nearly fatal? What????
Was it during Covid? I think we all lost years of memory during Covid. Because we wanted to
Yes, I thought that! And this was relatively recent too. The memory is a strange thing. I too have memories firmly embedded in my brain that cannot possibly have happened. Though I did have the classic 'slide was massive' memory experience, where you return to a slide you remember as huge as a child - in this case in Lyme Park - only to find it strangely normal-sized. And then, five years later, to my utter joy, by chance came across the ACTUAL slide in my memory -at the Heights of Abraham, in Matlock Bath - and it was just as huge as I remembered. I had remembered the slide correctly, just located in wrongly.
Sinema and Manchin are well known as willing to buck the party line but the fact that they have been joined by Mark Kelly is significant - he's up for re-election in Arizona this year and this might be the start of an attempt to try and position himself as an "independent" in the mould of Sinema. If so, Biden faces having a possible third dissenting Democrat Senator.
I don't think Kelly is as independent as Sisnema or Manchin, but he's more independent minded than most Democratic Senators.
Personally, I think the Senate could do with more Sisnemas, Manchins, Collins, Murkowskis and Romneys. The more that are not in hock to their parties, the better.
Agree with both Mr Ed & RCS but only partly.
Sinema has given Kelly quite a lot of political cover esp. with Democrats in & outside of Arizona. Including differing from President Biden from time to time without incurring their wrath.
However, do NOT think that Kelly's posture this mid-term year will be anti-Biden, or even dissenting most or even much of the time. Just when he thinks he needs to, from motives of conscience or politics or both.
So, we have Le Pen wishing to lift sanctions to help French motorists, while Macron is heading in the other direction.
Bold from Macron if true. Do people not realise how dangerous Putin is? Or do they think he's some kind of nagging toddler who'll be pacified if he gets a slice of Ukraine.
They think it is unlikely to be a direct problem for them any time soon. That's probably right, but though we do it all the time, I sure do, turning a blind eye comes at a cost.
This is a definite theme now. Turkish food is terrible. Way worse than, say, Germany or Holland (the worst in western Europe)
It’s down there with a middle income African country or somewhere like Oman
It is shite. In Erdogan’s gleaming Istanbul airport at their flashy Italian restaurant I ordered the Caprese salad. It came as cold sliced tomato with weird tasteless frigid bits of cheese, and chopped lettuce. That was it. No dressing, no nothing, No oil, no pepper, no salt. Zero. No pesto or basil. Disgusting
Not only was it dreadfully bad, the staff had no idea WHY it was bad, when I politely queried
It was like eating in an eerie, hallucinated version of 70s Britain, yet in a huge sparkly airport
In Sanliurfa the Head of Regional Culture and Tourism took me to a celebrated restaurant for their famous liver kebab. It was nice bits of liver, in a kebab, with an OK sauce. That was it. You could eat it in Camden at 3am after a big night and think Hmm, decent fast food. And they were trying to show off???
UGHHHHHHH
I haven't eaten in Turkey, but I was surprised at how bad the food was in Copenhagen (2018). What's the story with putting massive dollops of butter onto everything?
Posh Danish food is now world class. But everything beneath is still catching up (in Denmark)
Germany, Holland and the rest of Scandi are notably behind.
Britain is no longer the laggard, you can now eat better in the UK than most European countries (and certainly most countries around the world)
Spain, Italy and France are still superior to the UK. Tho Britain is edging France because of our better world cuisine, and insane French attachment to the Great Tradition
Nonetheless I’d have those three in the European Superleague, and Britain at the top of the next division, ahead of Greece and Portugal
How do you rate the great State of Louisiana?
Magnificent. The only state in the USA where I have eaten brilliant food, day after day
And it’s not just a New Orleans thing. The food in Louisiana outside NOLA is unusually excellent, even down to the breakfasts
Food culture is a weird thing. But Louisiana has it, and delivers it
I found Atlanta, Georgia, bizarrely good.
Absolute awful city in almost every way - except its food scene, which is weirdly great.
Generally the States can be disappointing for food.
You can eat really really well in most states of the US, but like so much of the US, its a place of two extremes. The "average" is absolutely shocking.
They haven’t had the gastropub Revolution that has happened in the UK and Australia, and which has been crucial
There will be at least one place in any average town with a talented chef who knows what he wants to do, and is having a bash
I saw a documentary on Australian food and they ascribed their food Revolution, almost entirely, to immigration but even more to foodie TV like Masterchef (which was invented in the UK but is wildly popular in its Aussie incarnation).
It makes total sense. Many millions watch Masterchef, pro and amateur. Watching a series is basically like doing a GCSE in cookery. You learn when to baste and how to fillet. You have a go. It’s brilliant. Most people I know, friends and family, can cook well - anyone under 60, that is
One thing that has improved a lot in the US over past 20 years is craft beer....they really gone for that. Its just the same place that will serve you a half decent beer brewed on site or locally, will serve you a meh burger and fries.
Not sure about your tv point. Don't the US have a load of shows just like that, Iron Chef etc, that are equally popular?
Agreed on the beer. American beer selections are now generally better than British. I hear rumours they are improving their cheese as well (it can’t get worse)
But the Masterchef thing is real. Australia has a less atomized culture than the USA, as does Britain
Eg Masterchef gets 5-6m viewers in the UK, thats nearly 10% of the entire country. The us version gets 1m, 0.3%
10% of people tuning in to learn about cooking is enough to change a cooking culture. 0.3% isn’t. And this is repeated over 30 years, beginning in the UK in 1990
American cheese has improved in just the four (almost) five years I've been here. As has their salami.
But it's still not as good as the UK.
France is still le grand fromage.
Corsica and Sardinia have the best cheese in the world. Esp Corsica. Tho Sardinia has the maggot cheese
Corsica is just incredible.You can drive 5km (which takes an hour on their roads) and the next village (which hates the previous village) has an entirely different and vastly superior cheese, and if you demur they all glare at you then turn away like you are a shameful sexual leper
After that they start being rude
Honestly tho the cheese is remarkable. And much of it never leaves the island
However in terms of getting great cheese in your average supermarket I reckon the UK wins, easily. We have all the noble British cheeses plus all the best mainland Europe cheeses, you just don’t get that selection in the EU (they all concentrate on their own cheeses)
The USA might be slowly catching up because they are now winning cheese awards, the same process as happened with their craft beer
However i reckon they are still 20 years behind the curve, so a long way to go, plus they have a culture more resistant to weird foods than better beers
British cheese is a revelation. When I was a kid you could get several different sorts of Cheddar, plus Stilton at Christmas.
Cheddar or Cheshire.
Stilton was only something seen eaten by posh people on tv.
Politico.com - Jackson confirmation battle rejuvenates Doug Jones The former Democratic senator is guiding the first Black woman tapped for the Supreme Court. His one-time colleagues wonder if there's more to come.
Politico.com - Boris Johnson slams FIFA chief Gianni Infantino over stance on Russia Letter from the UK prime minister warns against sport being used ‘as a platform to legitimise Russian aggression.’
Rishi's star falls further as he donates £100, 000 to Winchester School
He has astonished me and Boris needs to move him on
So out of touch
"The donations fund bursaries for children whose parents would not otherwise be able to send them there."
I would have thought as a Conservative leaning voter you would be board with rich people donating so those fortunate can have access to top level education?
From my side of the political divide, a Chancellor properly funding a state system benefitting all children, rather than a private tax dodging bursary for one or two social climbers would be more appropriate.
Let's all laugh at 12 year old working class children, and call them names. Hurrah!
The chances are they won't be "gifted" children from a sink estate in Scunthorpe anyway, but less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
But I see your point, like Basil Fawlty said, "no riff-raff".
No. you are simply wrong. I was at one of these schools, I had friends who were on these bursaries, and they were not less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
I went to a provincial grammar school (granted, over 40 years ago) and the council house kids were looked down upon, and that was by both teachers and students. Fortunately for me, I was not from a council estate, so I was fine.
I go back to my original point. A well funded, well managed non-selective state school system for all those who want to achieve, would be my preference. Quite how one arrives at that point is for smarter people than me.
Or a 'comprehensive education, to make up for their comprehensive education' as Sir Humphrey and Jim Hacker promised!
I have told you many times before that prior to Ledbury Grammar School I went to an excellent High School. The rounded quality of the teaching, by enthusiastic, generally young teachers, enthused students into achieving excellent grades and several students in my year finished up with Oxford or Cambridge degrees and very impressive careers ( not me!). For example one became a British High Commissioner and another a keyboard player in the biggest band of the 1980s.
So why did it work? It was the early days of comprehensive education so it was properly funded. The teachers were motivated, and in turn motivated the students. All subjects were streamed by subject. So kids who were good at Maths were in set one for Maths, equally if they were poor at English they would have been in set 7 for English (a logistical nightmare, no doubt).
My children also went to an excellent RC Comprehensive School too. It was well funded and the teachers were motivated.
We want more faith schools too like your RC Comprehensive for your children.
Choice not one size fits all, whether academies, free schools, faith schools, some grammar schools, technical schools etc.
Not only bog standard comprehensives you have no alternative but to send your children to if of only average income or less
No comprehensive should be "bog standard". They should all be excellent.
I shouldn't have mentioned that my children went to an RC school (they, nor me are Catholic by the way). I fell into your faith school trap. Damn and blast!
What a ludicrous statement. You may as well say 'no supermarkets should be bog standard. They should all be excellent.'
The only way you get to excellence is consumer choice. Applies to education as much as business. Otherwise if there was no choice of supermarket, every supermarket would look like an Asda or Morrisons on a bad day
I don't know how they got into an RC school without being Catholic. Most faith schools require at least a minimum level of church attendance to get in '
None taken!
Supermarkets are not funded out of the public purse for the future benefit of the nation. If they are poor they wither and die. With publicly funded schools it doesn't quite work like that.
And I didn't furtively pretend to be the Pope to get them in. The school knew I was a godless heathen.
If state schools are inadequate they get rebranded as academies, if private schools are inadequate they go out of business.
Either way, they do not go on as before.
Sounds an unusual faith school anyway. The C of E faith school in Loughton for example awards points based on weekly church attendance. The more you attend, the more points you get regardless of how close you live to the school in the district. That is normally standard for most faith schools, C of E or RC. It gets 81% A* to C GCSE grades or the new points equivalent.
Your first paragraph reminds me of Lennie Henry's suggestion that "Windscale has been renamed as Sellarfield, so nuclear fallout would now be known as magic moonbeams".
That was Not The Nine O’Clock News - Mel Smith, Pam S, et al. not Lenny Henry
From ChemEurope.com
"Not the Nine O'Clock News also had a sketch, with a nod to a popular Ready Brek advert, about glowing children and Sellafield".
And
"Comedian Lenny Henry, impersonating newscaster Trevor McDonald, once reported that "Windscale is to be renamed Sellafield, because it sounds nicer. In future, radiation will be referred to as magic moonbeams".
Yes, the internet’s memory is different to mine. If so, my bad
(The weird thing is I can DISTINCTLY recall SEEING Pamela Stephenson make this joke, in my mind, how odd are the tricks of recall)
Memory is strange. Hence Mandela Effect. Strangely I had that when FW de Klerk died. Which I hope both would have found bleakly amusing. On which. How come I missed Tiger Woods nearly dying in a car crash? I have no memory whatsoever of that happening. And I read this board every day.
Exactly the same! Car crash?? Nearly fatal? What????
Was it during Covid? I think we all lost years of memory during Covid. Because we wanted to
Apparently it was 23 Feb 2021. I only know because apparently he is thinking of miraculously playing at the Masters this weekend. I have no memory of this whatsoever. Not an, oh yeah, forgot about that. But none. At all. I'm sure I was following the news. Glad it isn't just me. What else have we edited out?
Objectively, it's commendable. Yet it is focussed very much on buttressing the private education system.
Subjectively, it's a disaster, as it reminds the rest of the UK just how much money the Chancellor has to spare. (And how much tax relief was involved, too?)
Objectively.. is it? Donating money to a cause depends on the worthiness of that cause. Private schools are engines for concentrating the quality of services and delivering them mostly to those who can pay.
Yes, I know that bursaries exist and the poor but brilliant gold ticket winner can get in, but it's still a system of intentional and intense stratification that benefits the extremely wealthy. It obviously right up HYUFD's street but if you asked me (I know, I know) I could find much better things to do with a spare £100k.
"...the poor but brilliant gold ticket winner can get in..."
This is a modern version of the Distressed Gentlefolk* charity. Sure, in theory it's open to anybody but in reality only a very small subset of society, usually with the right connections, would ever have the wherewithal to apply, let alone be successful. It's a sham.
(*I am probably being unfair to that charity, now sensibly renamed 'Elizabeth Finn Care'.)
Not so. The recipients of these bursaries are not secret poshos down on their luck, they are the real deal. And quite often getting a shit time from everybody else for their failure to be posh, secretly or otherwise, but that's another story.
Just exactly how do Winchester, Eton, etc. publicise these bursaries in your average sink estate?
no idea. Talent scouts?
Let me help you: They don't.
Let me help you: you don’t know what you are talking about. Not only do they have very active outreach programmes helping schools and sharing resources they actively promote bursaries and scholarships around the country because funnily enough they actually do want to recruit very bright and able students as it benefits everyone at the school and, if cynical, the reputation of the school when these bright kids get access to places they wouldn’t otherwise and go on to do great things.
All the major public schools support inner city clubs - Winchester for example supports the Crown and Manor club in London where they arrange exchanges, tutorial help, resources, money and time for kids from some of the shittiest unfortunate backgrounds because funnily enough all public school people aren’t entitled wankers.
The people aren’t, the institutions are selfish greedy fucks. Winchester is worth 400 million. What the fuck, And they want to be charities? UGH
Take their charitable status away
Just one of the many stupidities of what Sunak has done is he has ensured - if this story gains traction (Ukraine might save him) - is that every Tory will now be asked to justify Sunak’s 100k to Winchester. Because he is CoE they will have to defend him, but it will be very awkward, and it will sound like MaxPB’s strangulated nonsense. They won’t thank him for this
That charitable status helps them fund scholarships and bursaries and providing sports and arts facilities to share with the local community too
I think you've put the cart before the horse there. As a retired teacher from the independent sector I was aware that the charitable status had been around for many years before the advent of large numbers of scholarships. The development of scholarships etc appeared as a way championed by ISI to justify and retain the charitable status already in place. The main reason for the charitable status was to be let off paying the rates, which was usually enormous. The school still had to pay VAT on the usual items.
Rate relief has been abolished for private schools in Scotland - came into force this month AIUI. Now treated the same as state schools in that respect.
And the private schools will thus offer fewer scholarships and become even more the preserve of the rich.
Great job Sturgeon!
My kids former school is cutting back on teaching staff and places despite having a waiting list as a result.
We had a child or children at that school for 20 years. The change was remarkable. Originally dominated by old school money and inherited wealth it, over time it became dominated by people paying their fees from income in despair of the collapse of the state system. The ethos changed too. Originally a place you went to make friends of the clique that would see you alright and get a place for you it became focused on results. Those paying the fees from their hard earned want their kids in Russell group unis with a ticket to the professions.
It would be sad if it slipped back.
I fully understand why parents would want to buy their kids 'a ticket to the professions' but surely you must see how intrinsically unfair the opportunity to buy such tickets is and how poorly it serves the professions?
It is unfair yes. But I am not so sure it’s bad for the professions. They need people who have had a useful and thorough education and that is becoming increasingly rare in Scotland.
Also, England. My older daughter just aced her mock GCSEs at her supposedly Outstanding north London comp, but I recently discovered she has no idea what the Battle of Hastings is or was or what it meant or how it worked or anything, and she also has no idea whether Iran is north, south, east or west of Russia (and she is doing Geography and got the equivalent of an A*)
WTF are they actually teaching them
Where did Battle of Hastings take place, exactly? Believe it's still an open question!
"Battle of Hastings took place somewhere near Hastings, Kent. Bunch of obnoxious foreigners invaded, conquered and despoiled Britain. Until Brexit that is."
But did it take place at Hastings or at Battle?
Pretty sure it did NOT take place in Kent. In Kent, Washington that is.
This is a definite theme now. Turkish food is terrible. Way worse than, say, Germany or Holland (the worst in western Europe)
It’s down there with a middle income African country or somewhere like Oman
It is shite. In Erdogan’s gleaming Istanbul airport at their flashy Italian restaurant I ordered the Caprese salad. It came as cold sliced tomato with weird tasteless frigid bits of cheese, and chopped lettuce. That was it. No dressing, no nothing, No oil, no pepper, no salt. Zero. No pesto or basil. Disgusting
Not only was it dreadfully bad, the staff had no idea WHY it was bad, when I politely queried
It was like eating in an eerie, hallucinated version of 70s Britain, yet in a huge sparkly airport
In Sanliurfa the Head of Regional Culture and Tourism took me to a celebrated restaurant for their famous liver kebab. It was nice bits of liver, in a kebab, with an OK sauce. That was it. You could eat it in Camden at 3am after a big night and think Hmm, decent fast food. And they were trying to show off???
UGHHHHHHH
I haven't eaten in Turkey, but I was surprised at how bad the food was in Copenhagen (2018). What's the story with putting massive dollops of butter onto everything?
Posh Danish food is now world class. But everything beneath is still catching up (in Denmark)
Germany, Holland and the rest of Scandi are notably behind.
Britain is no longer the laggard, you can now eat better in the UK than most European countries (and certainly most countries around the world)
Spain, Italy and France are still superior to the UK. Tho Britain is edging France because of our better world cuisine, and insane French attachment to the Great Tradition
Nonetheless I’d have those three in the European Superleague, and Britain at the top of the next division, ahead of Greece and Portugal
How do you rate the great State of Louisiana?
Magnificent. The only state in the USA where I have eaten brilliant food, day after day
And it’s not just a New Orleans thing. The food in Louisiana outside NOLA is unusually excellent, even down to the breakfasts
Food culture is a weird thing. But Louisiana has it, and delivers it
I found Atlanta, Georgia, bizarrely good.
Absolute awful city in almost every way - except its food scene, which is weirdly great.
Generally the States can be disappointing for food.
You can eat really really well in most states of the US, but like so much of the US, its a place of two extremes. The "average" is absolutely shocking.
They haven’t had the gastropub Revolution that has happened in the UK and Australia, and which has been crucial
There will be at least one place in any average town with a talented chef who knows what he wants to do, and is having a bash
I saw a documentary on Australian food and they ascribed their food Revolution, almost entirely, to immigration but even more to foodie TV like Masterchef (which was invented in the UK but is wildly popular in its Aussie incarnation).
It makes total sense. Many millions watch Masterchef, pro and amateur. Watching a series is basically like doing a GCSE in cookery. You learn when to baste and how to fillet. You have a go. It’s brilliant. Most people I know, friends and family, can cook well - anyone under 60, that is
One thing that has improved a lot in the US over past 20 years is craft beer....they really gone for that. Its just the same place that will serve you a half decent beer brewed on site or locally, will serve you a meh burger and fries.
Not sure about your tv point. Don't the US have a load of shows just like that, Iron Chef etc, that are equally popular?
Agreed on the beer. American beer selections are now generally better than British. I hear rumours they are improving their cheese as well (it can’t get worse)
But the Masterchef thing is real. Australia has a less atomized culture than the USA, as does Britain
Eg Masterchef gets 5-6m viewers in the UK, thats nearly 10% of the entire country. The us version gets 1m, 0.3%
10% of people tuning in to learn about cooking is enough to change a cooking culture. 0.3% isn’t. And this is repeated over 30 years, beginning in the UK in 1990
American cheese has improved in just the four (almost) five years I've been here. As has their salami.
But it's still not as good as the UK.
France is still le grand fromage.
Corsica and Sardinia have the best cheese in the world. Esp Corsica. Tho Sardinia has the maggot cheese
Corsica is just incredible.You can drive 5km (which takes an hour on their roads) and the next village (which hates the previous village) has an entirely different and vastly superior cheese, and if you demur they all glare at you then turn away like you are a shameful sexual leper
After that they start being rude
Honestly tho the cheese is remarkable. And much of it never leaves the island
However in terms of getting great cheese in your average supermarket I reckon the UK wins, easily. We have all the noble British cheeses plus all the best mainland Europe cheeses, you just don’t get that selection in the EU (they all concentrate on their own cheeses)
The USA might be slowly catching up because they are now winning cheese awards, the same process as happened with their craft beer
However i reckon they are still 20 years behind the curve, so a long way to go, plus they have a culture more resistant to weird foods than better beers
British cheese is a revelation. When I was a kid you could get several different sorts of Cheddar, plus Stilton at Christmas.
Confession: after trying all the cheeses of the world, sometimes given to me by the world cheese award winning cheese makers themselves, I have come to the conclusion that Colston Basset Stiltion, as served by my local Whole Foods in Camden, really is the best cheese in the world. The King of Cheeses
Unctuous, creamy, rich, intense, memorable, full of umami, just amazing
And i have had Holy Goat served to me by nuns in Victoria, Australia
So, we have Le Pen wishing to lift sanctions to help French motorists, while Macron is heading in the other direction.
Macron has got upset about the Polish PM Morawiecki criticising him for talking to Putin all the time and his campaign responded by accusing the Polish PM of being an ally of Marine Le Pen. It doesn't seem like a very joined-up strategy to accuse her of being an ally of one of the most firm anti-Putin EU leaders.
Rishi's star falls further as he donates £100, 000 to Winchester School
He has astonished me and Boris needs to move him on
So out of touch
"The donations fund bursaries for children whose parents would not otherwise be able to send them there."
I would have thought as a Conservative leaning voter you would be board with rich people donating so those fortunate can have access to top level education?
From my side of the political divide, a Chancellor properly funding a state system benefitting all children, rather than a private tax dodging bursary for one or two social climbers would be more appropriate.
Let's all laugh at 12 year old working class children, and call them names. Hurrah!
The chances are they won't be "gifted" children from a sink estate in Scunthorpe anyway, but less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
But I see your point, like Basil Fawlty said, "no riff-raff".
No. you are simply wrong. I was at one of these schools, I had friends who were on these bursaries, and they were not less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
I went to a provincial grammar school (granted, over 40 years ago) and the council house kids were looked down upon, and that was by both teachers and students. Fortunately for me, I was not from a council estate, so I was fine.
I go back to my original point. A well funded, well managed non-selective state school system for all those who want to achieve, would be my preference. Quite how one arrives at that point is for smarter people than me.
Or a 'comprehensive education, to make up for their comprehensive education' as Sir Humphrey and Jim Hacker promised!
I have told you many times before that prior to Ledbury Grammar School I went to an excellent High School. The rounded quality of the teaching, by enthusiastic, generally young teachers, enthused students into achieving excellent grades and several students in my year finished up with Oxford or Cambridge degrees and very impressive careers ( not me!). For example one became a British High Commissioner and another a keyboard player in the biggest band of the 1980s.
So why did it work? It was the early days of comprehensive education so it was properly funded. The teachers were motivated, and in turn motivated the students. All subjects were streamed by subject. So kids who were good at Maths were in set one for Maths, equally if they were poor at English they would have been in set 7 for English (a logistical nightmare, no doubt).
My children also went to an excellent RC Comprehensive School too. It was well funded and the teachers were motivated.
We want more faith schools too like your RC Comprehensive for your children.
Choice not one size fits all, whether academies, free schools, faith schools, some grammar schools, technical schools etc.
Not only bog standard comprehensives you have no alternative but to send your children to if of only average income or less
No comprehensive should be "bog standard". They should all be excellent.
I shouldn't have mentioned that my children went to an RC school (they, nor me are Catholic by the way). I fell into your faith school trap. Damn and blast!
What a ludicrous statement. You may as well say 'no supermarkets should be bog standard. They should all be excellent.'
The only way you get to excellence is consumer choice. Applies to education as much as business. Otherwise if there was no choice of supermarket, every supermarket would look like an Asda or Morrisons on a bad day
I don't know how they got into an RC school without being Catholic. Most faith schools require at least a minimum level of church attendance to get in '
Nope my children went to a C of E school and we are atheists.
Also this consumer choice stuff you talk of; earlier you wanted state controlled energy pricing for oil companies. Make up your mind, do you want competition or state control.
You can just about get into a C of E primary school or an average faith school if you only live in the parish.
The top faith secondary schools however almost all require a high level of church attendance to get into them as they are very oversubscribed.
I was not proposing to nationalise all energy companies was I, which Corbyn would have done. Just requiring them to pass on lower energy prices to UK consumers as energy supply was expanded in the UK
I never said you were. I said you said state control of prices, which is what you are proposing. That is price fixing below the market price. How on earth you think that will work. I have no idea when there will be in parallel market priced fuel. Is the govt going to subsidize all imports? I assume not so the same fuel will have 2 different prices. How does that work? Maybe like Cuba where you get vouchers for some stuff and other stuff is at market rates. I could go on. Trade negotiations and deals for instance would be buggered. Fortunately we have Brexited because that would have been illegal. What about the oil companies. Why would they bother in the UK if the price is below the market price.
You say these things but have no idea.
No it wasn't, I said expand energy production including fracking and shale to increase supply thus reducing prices. Then force energy companies to pass those price cuts on.
That will have to happen not just here but across the world if governments are not to be thrown out of office over sky high energy prices by angry voters
You are just making stuff up now. You specifically said increasing production in the UK to reduce prices. When it was pointed out that it is a global commodity so you wouldn't get lower prices in the UK you said you would force the UK companies to sell their oil at a lower price than the global price. That can't be done for the reasons already stated.
True it would work if global production increased but that is not what you said originally. You specifically said to achieve this you just referred to just UK activity and specific UK price fixing.
Rishi's star falls further as he donates £100, 000 to Winchester School
He has astonished me and Boris needs to move him on
So out of touch
"The donations fund bursaries for children whose parents would not otherwise be able to send them there."
I would have thought as a Conservative leaning voter you would be board with rich people donating so those fortunate can have access to top level education?
From my side of the political divide, a Chancellor properly funding a state system benefitting all children, rather than a private tax dodging bursary for one or two social climbers would be more appropriate.
Let's all laugh at 12 year old working class children, and call them names. Hurrah!
The chances are they won't be "gifted" children from a sink estate in Scunthorpe anyway, but less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
But I see your point, like Basil Fawlty said, "no riff-raff".
No. you are simply wrong. I was at one of these schools, I had friends who were on these bursaries, and they were not less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
I went to a provincial grammar school (granted, over 40 years ago) and the council house kids were looked down upon, and that was by both teachers and students. Fortunately for me, I was not from a council estate, so I was fine.
I go back to my original point. A well funded, well managed non-selective state school system for all those who want to achieve, would be my preference. Quite how one arrives at that point is for smarter people than me.
Or a 'comprehensive education, to make up for their comprehensive education' as Sir Humphrey and Jim Hacker promised!
I have told you many times before that prior to Ledbury Grammar School I went to an excellent High School. The rounded quality of the teaching, by enthusiastic, generally young teachers, enthused students into achieving excellent grades and several students in my year finished up with Oxford or Cambridge degrees and very impressive careers ( not me!). For example one became a British High Commissioner and another a keyboard player in the biggest band of the 1980s.
So why did it work? It was the early days of comprehensive education so it was properly funded. The teachers were motivated, and in turn motivated the students. All subjects were streamed by subject. So kids who were good at Maths were in set one for Maths, equally if they were poor at English they would have been in set 7 for English (a logistical nightmare, no doubt).
My children also went to an excellent RC Comprehensive School too. It was well funded and the teachers were motivated.
We want more faith schools too like your RC Comprehensive for your children.
Choice not one size fits all, whether academies, free schools, faith schools, some grammar schools, technical schools etc.
Not only bog standard comprehensives you have no alternative but to send your children to if of only average income or less
Faith schools, my arse. Shut them down. I want children to be taught, not indoctrinated in superstitious mumbo-jumbo.
Tough, you are not in power. We Conservatives are. Even Blair recognised how good most faith schools were, so sent his children to them
Yes, I'm with Sandy and everyone else here. One, on principle. If you want to teach your children that there is a God and all the other tenets of your faith, go ahead, I suppose, but I don't see why I should get to pay for it. Two, in practice. There are faith (primary) schools in Sale, and they are consistently the worst performing - presumably because they are taking up teaching time with teaching religion.
I also find it faintly weird and not a little discomfiting that my kids' nominally secular primary schools still have hymns and prayers in assembly. Surely in the secular sector pretty much no-one believes in any of it: it's just a massive exercise in pointlessly going through the motions. I suppose that's some sort of training for life.
I remember when I was at primary school 30-40 years ago it was a charade back then too. A supply teacher joined us for a bit who was clearly a true believer, and seemed genuinely shocked by the inability of a hall full of junior school children to fully partake in care about the state mandated act of worship. She gave us all a good bollocking, of the extent to rouse the normally indiffernt headteacher from her study to see what was going on. The headteacher was as nonplussed as the rest of us with the supply teacher's explanation of 'they're begrudging God ten minutes of their day'. I'm sure the line 'for pity's sake, woman, can't you see we're just going through the motions here' was earnestly fought back in favour of whatever non-commital platitude actually came out.
I'm not seeking to pick a fight with the genuinely religious. But forcing religion on kids seems wrong. And teachers who don't believe forcing religion on kids who don't believe seems stupid and pointless.
I can't really see what there is to object to about a rousing chorus of 'We plough the fields and scatter' or 'Morning has broken'. It's nice. Replacing such classics with limp, anodyne dirges about picking up litter (as was happening toward the end of my time at primary) seems a backward step, regardless of belief.
Well that sounds amusingly stupid too.
Remembering further, we had two hymn books, an orange one and a blue one. The orange one had hymns you might recognise, the blue one was probably a bit more right-on - several of the hymns could probably be subtitled 'don't be racist, kids'. The blue one was used increasingly often as I went through the school. We were possibly going down the same route as you. I'd question the need to sing (or indeed pray) at all. I recognise the psychological impact of communal singing, and can probably understand the thinking behind it - if indeed there is any - but the psychological impact only works if it's a song that people want to sing. It works in gigs where people ar really, really, esctatically into the music; it works in football crowds where crowds genuinely believe, at least right then and there, that Stockport County, Stockport County FC are by far the greatest team the world has ever seen; it works in churches where people go voluntarily to express their belief. It works with drunks. It does not work with a bunch of slightly embarassed and resentful ten year olds who do not believe the words they are singing and feel ridiculous doing so. You can overcome this a bit, if the song is really, really good - you can emotionally believe in the melody even if you don't rationally believe in the words - but really, really good most primary school hymns are not.
Excellent post. I'm certain that singing in schools spoils singing for many people. It's quite an achievement to turn a natural and pleasurable activity into such a fucking grind but amazingly it happens. And in this case, we can pin the blame squarely on religious types. No 13 year old wants to sing Gloria in Excelsis Deo at 8.30 on a Monday morning. What on earth is wrong with the people that would make them do that?
Some of the greatest music ever written is hymns, what a ridiculous post
Rishi's star falls further as he donates £100, 000 to Winchester School
He has astonished me and Boris needs to move him on
So out of touch
"The donations fund bursaries for children whose parents would not otherwise be able to send them there."
I would have thought as a Conservative leaning voter you would be board with rich people donating so those fortunate can have access to top level education?
From my side of the political divide, a Chancellor properly funding a state system benefitting all children, rather than a private tax dodging bursary for one or two social climbers would be more appropriate.
Let's all laugh at 12 year old working class children, and call them names. Hurrah!
The chances are they won't be "gifted" children from a sink estate in Scunthorpe anyway, but less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
But I see your point, like Basil Fawlty said, "no riff-raff".
No. you are simply wrong. I was at one of these schools, I had friends who were on these bursaries, and they were not less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
I went to a provincial grammar school (granted, over 40 years ago) and the council house kids were looked down upon, and that was by both teachers and students. Fortunately for me, I was not from a council estate, so I was fine.
I go back to my original point. A well funded, well managed non-selective state school system for all those who want to achieve, would be my preference. Quite how one arrives at that point is for smarter people than me.
Or a 'comprehensive education, to make up for their comprehensive education' as Sir Humphrey and Jim Hacker promised!
I have told you many times before that prior to Ledbury Grammar School I went to an excellent High School. The rounded quality of the teaching, by enthusiastic, generally young teachers, enthused students into achieving excellent grades and several students in my year finished up with Oxford or Cambridge degrees and very impressive careers ( not me!). For example one became a British High Commissioner and another a keyboard player in the biggest band of the 1980s.
So why did it work? It was the early days of comprehensive education so it was properly funded. The teachers were motivated, and in turn motivated the students. All subjects were streamed by subject. So kids who were good at Maths were in set one for Maths, equally if they were poor at English they would have been in set 7 for English (a logistical nightmare, no doubt).
My children also went to an excellent RC Comprehensive School too. It was well funded and the teachers were motivated.
We want more faith schools too like your RC Comprehensive for your children.
Choice not one size fits all, whether academies, free schools, faith schools, some grammar schools, technical schools etc.
Not only bog standard comprehensives you have no alternative but to send your children to if of only average income or less
No comprehensive should be "bog standard". They should all be excellent.
I shouldn't have mentioned that my children went to an RC school (they, nor me are Catholic by the way). I fell into your faith school trap. Damn and blast!
What a ludicrous statement. You may as well say 'no supermarkets should be bog standard. They should all be excellent.'
The only way you get to excellence is consumer choice. Applies to education as much as business. Otherwise if there was no choice of supermarket, every supermarket would look like an Asda or Morrisons on a bad day
I don't know how they got into an RC school without being Catholic. Most faith schools require at least a minimum level of church attendance to get in '
None taken!
Supermarkets are not funded out of the public purse for the future benefit of the nation. If they are poor they wither and die. With publicly funded schools it doesn't quite work like that.
And I didn't furtively pretend to be the Pope to get them in. The school knew I was a godless heathen.
If state schools are inadequate they get rebranded as academies, if private schools are inadequate they go out of business.
Either way, they do not go on as before.
Sounds an unusual faith school anyway. The C of E faith school in Loughton for example awards points based on weekly church attendance. The more you attend, the more points you get regardless of how close you live to the school in the district. That is normally standard for most faith schools, C of E or RC. It gets 81% A* to C GCSE grades or the new points equivalent.
Your first paragraph reminds me of Lennie Henry's suggestion that "Windscale has been renamed as Sellarfield, so nuclear fallout would now be known as magic moonbeams".
That was Not The Nine O’Clock News - Mel Smith, Pam S, et al. not Lenny Henry
From ChemEurope.com
"Not the Nine O'Clock News also had a sketch, with a nod to a popular Ready Brek advert, about glowing children and Sellafield".
And
"Comedian Lenny Henry, impersonating newscaster Trevor McDonald, once reported that "Windscale is to be renamed Sellafield, because it sounds nicer. In future, radiation will be referred to as magic moonbeams".
Yes, the internet’s memory is different to mine. If so, my bad
(The weird thing is I can DISTINCTLY recall SEEING Pamela Stephenson make this joke, in my mind, how odd are the tricks of recall)
Memory is strange. Hence Mandela Effect. Strangely I had that when FW de Klerk died. Which I hope both would have found bleakly amusing. On which. How come I missed Tiger Woods nearly dying in a car crash? I have no memory whatsoever of that happening. And I read this board every day.
Exactly the same! Car crash?? Nearly fatal? What????
Was it during Covid? I think we all lost years of memory during Covid. Because we wanted to
Yes, I thought that! And this was relatively recent too. The memory is a strange thing. I too have memories firmly embedded in my brain that cannot possibly have happened. Though I did have the classic 'slide was massive' memory experience, where you return to a slide you remember as huge as a child - in this case in Lyme Park - only to find it strangely normal-sized. And then, five years later, to my utter joy, by chance came across the ACTUAL slide in my memory -at the Heights of Abraham, in Matlock Bath - and it was just as huge as I remembered. I had remembered the slide correctly, just located in wrongly.
The wrong data got relinked after you suffered a bad disk sector.
If not that, then a bit too much lossy compression.
This is a definite theme now. Turkish food is terrible. Way worse than, say, Germany or Holland (the worst in western Europe)
It’s down there with a middle income African country or somewhere like Oman
It is shite. In Erdogan’s gleaming Istanbul airport at their flashy Italian restaurant I ordered the Caprese salad. It came as cold sliced tomato with weird tasteless frigid bits of cheese, and chopped lettuce. That was it. No dressing, no nothing, No oil, no pepper, no salt. Zero. No pesto or basil. Disgusting
Not only was it dreadfully bad, the staff had no idea WHY it was bad, when I politely queried
It was like eating in an eerie, hallucinated version of 70s Britain, yet in a huge sparkly airport
In Sanliurfa the Head of Regional Culture and Tourism took me to a celebrated restaurant for their famous liver kebab. It was nice bits of liver, in a kebab, with an OK sauce. That was it. You could eat it in Camden at 3am after a big night and think Hmm, decent fast food. And they were trying to show off???
UGHHHHHHH
I haven't eaten in Turkey, but I was surprised at how bad the food was in Copenhagen (2018). What's the story with putting massive dollops of butter onto everything?
Posh Danish food is now world class. But everything beneath is still catching up (in Denmark)
Germany, Holland and the rest of Scandi are notably behind.
Britain is no longer the laggard, you can now eat better in the UK than most European countries (and certainly most countries around the world)
Spain, Italy and France are still superior to the UK. Tho Britain is edging France because of our better world cuisine, and insane French attachment to the Great Tradition
Nonetheless I’d have those three in the European Superleague, and Britain at the top of the next division, ahead of Greece and Portugal
How do you rate the great State of Louisiana?
Magnificent. The only state in the USA where I have eaten brilliant food, day after day
And it’s not just a New Orleans thing. The food in Louisiana outside NOLA is unusually excellent, even down to the breakfasts
Food culture is a weird thing. But Louisiana has it, and delivers it
I found Atlanta, Georgia, bizarrely good.
Absolute awful city in almost every way - except its food scene, which is weirdly great.
Generally the States can be disappointing for food.
You can eat really really well in most states of the US, but like so much of the US, its a place of two extremes. The "average" is absolutely shocking.
They haven’t had the gastropub Revolution that has happened in the UK and Australia, and which has been crucial
There will be at least one place in any average town with a talented chef who knows what he wants to do, and is having a bash
I saw a documentary on Australian food and they ascribed their food Revolution, almost entirely, to immigration but even more to foodie TV like Masterchef (which was invented in the UK but is wildly popular in its Aussie incarnation).
It makes total sense. Many millions watch Masterchef, pro and amateur. Watching a series is basically like doing a GCSE in cookery. You learn when to baste and how to fillet. You have a go. It’s brilliant. Most people I know, friends and family, can cook well - anyone under 60, that is
One thing that has improved a lot in the US over past 20 years is craft beer....they really gone for that. Its just the same place that will serve you a half decent beer brewed on site or locally, will serve you a meh burger and fries.
Not sure about your tv point. Don't the US have a load of shows just like that, Iron Chef etc, that are equally popular?
Agreed on the beer. American beer selections are now generally better than British. I hear rumours they are improving their cheese as well (it can’t get worse)
But the Masterchef thing is real. Australia has a less atomized culture than the USA, as does Britain
Eg Masterchef gets 5-6m viewers in the UK, thats nearly 10% of the entire country. The us version gets 1m, 0.3%
10% of people tuning in to learn about cooking is enough to change a cooking culture. 0.3% isn’t. And this is repeated over 30 years, beginning in the UK in 1990
American cheese has improved in just the four (almost) five years I've been here. As has their salami.
But it's still not as good as the UK.
France is still le grand fromage.
Corsica and Sardinia have the best cheese in the world. Esp Corsica. Tho Sardinia has the maggot cheese
Corsica is just incredible.You can drive 5km (which takes an hour on their roads) and the next village (which hates the previous village) has an entirely different and vastly superior cheese, and if you demur they all glare at you then turn away like you are a shameful sexual leper
After that they start being rude
Honestly tho the cheese is remarkable. And much of it never leaves the island
However in terms of getting great cheese in your average supermarket I reckon the UK wins, easily. We have all the noble British cheeses plus all the best mainland Europe cheeses, you just don’t get that selection in the EU (they all concentrate on their own cheeses)
The USA might be slowly catching up because they are now winning cheese awards, the same process as happened with their craft beer
However i reckon they are still 20 years behind the curve, so a long way to go, plus they have a culture more resistant to weird foods than better beers
British cheese is a revelation. When I was a kid you could get several different sorts of Cheddar, plus Stilton at Christmas.
Confession: after trying all the cheeses of the world, sometimes given to me by the world cheese award winning cheese makers themselves, I have come to the conclusion that Colston Basset Stiltion, as served by my local Whole Foods in Camden, really is the best cheese in the world. The King of Cheeses
Unctuous, creamy, rich, intense, memorable, full of umami, just amazing
And i have had Holy Goat served to me by nuns in Victoria, Australia
The village of Colston Bassett is also a very lovely slice of England. Worth a trip, if you haven't been. Not necessarily somewhere I'd travel three hours to for its own sake - though I know you have made longer journeys on flimsier pretexts than really good cheese - but for your next trip to the East Midlands one to add to your itinerary.
Rishi's star falls further as he donates £100, 000 to Winchester School
He has astonished me and Boris needs to move him on
So out of touch
"The donations fund bursaries for children whose parents would not otherwise be able to send them there."
I would have thought as a Conservative leaning voter you would be board with rich people donating so those fortunate can have access to top level education?
From my side of the political divide, a Chancellor properly funding a state system benefitting all children, rather than a private tax dodging bursary for one or two social climbers would be more appropriate.
Let's all laugh at 12 year old working class children, and call them names. Hurrah!
The chances are they won't be "gifted" children from a sink estate in Scunthorpe anyway, but less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
But I see your point, like Basil Fawlty said, "no riff-raff".
No. you are simply wrong. I was at one of these schools, I had friends who were on these bursaries, and they were not less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
I went to a provincial grammar school (granted, over 40 years ago) and the council house kids were looked down upon, and that was by both teachers and students. Fortunately for me, I was not from a council estate, so I was fine.
I go back to my original point. A well funded, well managed non-selective state school system for all those who want to achieve, would be my preference. Quite how one arrives at that point is for smarter people than me.
Or a 'comprehensive education, to make up for their comprehensive education' as Sir Humphrey and Jim Hacker promised!
I have told you many times before that prior to Ledbury Grammar School I went to an excellent High School. The rounded quality of the teaching, by enthusiastic, generally young teachers, enthused students into achieving excellent grades and several students in my year finished up with Oxford or Cambridge degrees and very impressive careers ( not me!). For example one became a British High Commissioner and another a keyboard player in the biggest band of the 1980s.
So why did it work? It was the early days of comprehensive education so it was properly funded. The teachers were motivated, and in turn motivated the students. All subjects were streamed by subject. So kids who were good at Maths were in set one for Maths, equally if they were poor at English they would have been in set 7 for English (a logistical nightmare, no doubt).
My children also went to an excellent RC Comprehensive School too. It was well funded and the teachers were motivated.
We want more faith schools too like your RC Comprehensive for your children.
Choice not one size fits all, whether academies, free schools, faith schools, some grammar schools, technical schools etc.
Not only bog standard comprehensives you have no alternative but to send your children to if of only average income or less
Faith schools, my arse. Shut them down. I want children to be taught, not indoctrinated in superstitious mumbo-jumbo.
Tough, you are not in power. We Conservatives are. Even Blair recognised how good most faith schools were, so sent his children to them
Yes, I'm with Sandy and everyone else here. One, on principle. If you want to teach your children that there is a God and all the other tenets of your faith, go ahead, I suppose, but I don't see why I should get to pay for it. Two, in practice. There are faith (primary) schools in Sale, and they are consistently the worst performing - presumably because they are taking up teaching time with teaching religion.
I also find it faintly weird and not a little discomfiting that my kids' nominally secular primary schools still have hymns and prayers in assembly. Surely in the secular sector pretty much no-one believes in any of it: it's just a massive exercise in pointlessly going through the motions. I suppose that's some sort of training for life.
I remember when I was at primary school 30-40 years ago it was a charade back then too. A supply teacher joined us for a bit who was clearly a true believer, and seemed genuinely shocked by the inability of a hall full of junior school children to fully partake in care about the state mandated act of worship. She gave us all a good bollocking, of the extent to rouse the normally indiffernt headteacher from her study to see what was going on. The headteacher was as nonplussed as the rest of us with the supply teacher's explanation of 'they're begrudging God ten minutes of their day'. I'm sure the line 'for pity's sake, woman, can't you see we're just going through the motions here' was earnestly fought back in favour of whatever non-commital platitude actually came out.
I'm not seeking to pick a fight with the genuinely religious. But forcing religion on kids seems wrong. And teachers who don't believe forcing religion on kids who don't believe seems stupid and pointless.
'Everyone else on here' ie you and him.
However that is of course standard practice of the left, close down anything successful. As we saw earlier in the anti private school sentiment, now the sentiment to shit down successful faith schools and of course mainly Labour councils closing of grammar schools.
Taken to its logical extreme if Corbyn had got in power for an extended period of time he and McConnell would of course here nationalised any successful private company they could too. Including most of the FTSE 100.
One size fits all bog standard education and mass nationalised industry and services. That remains the leftist utopia even if it had to compromise to win elections and get into power.
I also pay taxes for your childrens education. If parents of faith wish to send their children to faith schools they are as entitled to do so as parents of no faith are entitled to send their children to non faith schools.
By selecting for faith schools based on church attendance we can also ensure we keep your children out and non Christian teachers out so they don't have to undertake the prayers and hymns we Christians are committed to. We in turn do not have to send our children to secular assemblies we don't want our children to participate in in non faith schools which your children can attend instead.
'Everyone else on here, ie you and him'
As with nearly ever subject it is you and nobody else. That is fair enough. You are entitled to your opinions and express them on anything and it is great that you do, but you are deluded if you think others are agreeing with you here. Of course you could argue that we aren't typical and you would be correct but your assertion 'you and him' was in fact not 2 people but everyone who responded. It is also worth reflecting that we are a cross section of political views although I appreciate you don't think Tories on here are true Tories and you might be correct that they aren't typical of society. They are generally must more intelligent than the average voter.
Of course I am largely a minority on here because most PBers are secular liberals. Including you. Whereas I am a religious conservative.
However millions of other religious conservatives exist, even here in the UK, a country far more liberal and secular than the global average
I’m standing with you in that minority too as I am a CoE religion and Conservative in my politics too HY.
But I vote Libdem because the Conservative party are right of centre Populists now, like their media support first drifted that way, digging out the roots of a proper Conservative Party.
Maybe you are in tune with this Populist unConservative nonsense and prefer it, or the penny hadn’t dropped for you yet.
On faith schools LDs are at least rather more tolerant of schools for people of faith than the left of Labour certainly
This is a definite theme now. Turkish food is terrible. Way worse than, say, Germany or Holland (the worst in western Europe)
It’s down there with a middle income African country or somewhere like Oman
It is shite. In Erdogan’s gleaming Istanbul airport at their flashy Italian restaurant I ordered the Caprese salad. It came as cold sliced tomato with weird tasteless frigid bits of cheese, and chopped lettuce. That was it. No dressing, no nothing, No oil, no pepper, no salt. Zero. No pesto or basil. Disgusting
Not only was it dreadfully bad, the staff had no idea WHY it was bad, when I politely queried
It was like eating in an eerie, hallucinated version of 70s Britain, yet in a huge sparkly airport
In Sanliurfa the Head of Regional Culture and Tourism took me to a celebrated restaurant for their famous liver kebab. It was nice bits of liver, in a kebab, with an OK sauce. That was it. You could eat it in Camden at 3am after a big night and think Hmm, decent fast food. And they were trying to show off???
UGHHHHHHH
I haven't eaten in Turkey, but I was surprised at how bad the food was in Copenhagen (2018). What's the story with putting massive dollops of butter onto everything?
Posh Danish food is now world class. But everything beneath is still catching up (in Denmark)
Germany, Holland and the rest of Scandi are notably behind.
Britain is no longer the laggard, you can now eat better in the UK than most European countries (and certainly most countries around the world)
Spain, Italy and France are still superior to the UK. Tho Britain is edging France because of our better world cuisine, and insane French attachment to the Great Tradition
Nonetheless I’d have those three in the European Superleague, and Britain at the top of the next division, ahead of Greece and Portugal
How do you rate the great State of Louisiana?
Magnificent. The only state in the USA where I have eaten brilliant food, day after day
And it’s not just a New Orleans thing. The food in Louisiana outside NOLA is unusually excellent, even down to the breakfasts
Food culture is a weird thing. But Louisiana has it, and delivers it
I found Atlanta, Georgia, bizarrely good.
Absolute awful city in almost every way - except its food scene, which is weirdly great.
Generally the States can be disappointing for food.
You can eat really really well in most states of the US, but like so much of the US, its a place of two extremes. The "average" is absolutely shocking.
They haven’t had the gastropub Revolution that has happened in the UK and Australia, and which has been crucial
There will be at least one place in any average town with a talented chef who knows what he wants to do, and is having a bash
I saw a documentary on Australian food and they ascribed their food Revolution, almost entirely, to immigration but even more to foodie TV like Masterchef (which was invented in the UK but is wildly popular in its Aussie incarnation).
It makes total sense. Many millions watch Masterchef, pro and amateur. Watching a series is basically like doing a GCSE in cookery. You learn when to baste and how to fillet. You have a go. It’s brilliant. Most people I know, friends and family, can cook well - anyone under 60, that is
One thing that has improved a lot in the US over past 20 years is craft beer....they really gone for that. Its just the same place that will serve you a half decent beer brewed on site or locally, will serve you a meh burger and fries.
Not sure about your tv point. Don't the US have a load of shows just like that, Iron Chef etc, that are equally popular?
Agreed on the beer. American beer selections are now generally better than British. I hear rumours they are improving their cheese as well (it can’t get worse)
But the Masterchef thing is real. Australia has a less atomized culture than the USA, as does Britain
Eg Masterchef gets 5-6m viewers in the UK, thats nearly 10% of the entire country. The us version gets 1m, 0.3%
10% of people tuning in to learn about cooking is enough to change a cooking culture. 0.3% isn’t. And this is repeated over 30 years, beginning in the UK in 1990
American cheese has improved in just the four (almost) five years I've been here. As has their salami.
But it's still not as good as the UK.
It’s all rubbery; they’re not allowed to make proper cheese.
When I was in the Finger Lakes, I went to this place offering a cheese tasting - fifteen different cheeses. Almost all of which turned out to be the same rubbery cheese with different things in it - rubbery cheese with garlic, rubbery cheese with chilli, rubbery cheese with sage….
We once microwaved some rubbery American "good" cheese, and used it to fill an errant drill hole in our rental apartment. It dried hard, we sanded it down and painted over. I expect it is still there today.
Oil painters have used all kinds of strange food based mixtures over the centuries. You're standing on the shoulders of the greats.
Ha, yes, and well noted that there is a time and a place for these things. Christmas, a decorated Victorian church, darkness outside and light inside, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, with a choir singing the descant - yes, actually quite a pleasurable experience. The music does its magic; you feel a kniship with your fellow humans. A dirge on whatever aspect of Christianity is considered wholesome and modern for primary school children at 9 oc'clock on a damp grey morning - the only communal feeling is one of sullen resentment to whoever is making you go through this exercise.
Yes, my dad (who went to Winchester like Sunak) grew up seriously Christian, but said the compulsory school hymns almost put him off. The mandatory exercise seemed to contradict the whole spiritual idea.
Idle anecdote - later on he joined Moral Re-Armament, a very serious movement (Mary Whitehouse was a member) dedicated to postwar evangelism (and anti-communism). Then he met my mum, who liked dancing and parties. An MRA colleague took her to tea at Lyons' corner House and urged her to give him up, as her frivolous nature would imperil his immortal soul. She laughed and said they'd better ask him. So they said to him that he had to choose - her or MRA. He instantly said that a religious movement that tried to mandate whom he married wasn't for him.
He stayed a Christian all his life, but rejected any kind of straightjacket. He felt it was, well, un-Christian.
Rishi's star falls further as he donates £100, 000 to Winchester School
He has astonished me and Boris needs to move him on
So out of touch
"The donations fund bursaries for children whose parents would not otherwise be able to send them there."
I would have thought as a Conservative leaning voter you would be board with rich people donating so those fortunate can have access to top level education?
From my side of the political divide, a Chancellor properly funding a state system benefitting all children, rather than a private tax dodging bursary for one or two social climbers would be more appropriate.
Let's all laugh at 12 year old working class children, and call them names. Hurrah!
The chances are they won't be "gifted" children from a sink estate in Scunthorpe anyway, but less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
But I see your point, like Basil Fawlty said, "no riff-raff".
No. you are simply wrong. I was at one of these schools, I had friends who were on these bursaries, and they were not less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
I went to a provincial grammar school (granted, over 40 years ago) and the council house kids were looked down upon, and that was by both teachers and students. Fortunately for me, I was not from a council estate, so I was fine.
I go back to my original point. A well funded, well managed non-selective state school system for all those who want to achieve, would be my preference. Quite how one arrives at that point is for smarter people than me.
Or a 'comprehensive education, to make up for their comprehensive education' as Sir Humphrey and Jim Hacker promised!
I have told you many times before that prior to Ledbury Grammar School I went to an excellent High School. The rounded quality of the teaching, by enthusiastic, generally young teachers, enthused students into achieving excellent grades and several students in my year finished up with Oxford or Cambridge degrees and very impressive careers ( not me!). For example one became a British High Commissioner and another a keyboard player in the biggest band of the 1980s.
So why did it work? It was the early days of comprehensive education so it was properly funded. The teachers were motivated, and in turn motivated the students. All subjects were streamed by subject. So kids who were good at Maths were in set one for Maths, equally if they were poor at English they would have been in set 7 for English (a logistical nightmare, no doubt).
My children also went to an excellent RC Comprehensive School too. It was well funded and the teachers were motivated.
We want more faith schools too like your RC Comprehensive for your children.
Choice not one size fits all, whether academies, free schools, faith schools, some grammar schools, technical schools etc.
Not only bog standard comprehensives you have no alternative but to send your children to if of only average income or less
No comprehensive should be "bog standard". They should all be excellent.
I shouldn't have mentioned that my children went to an RC school (they, nor me are Catholic by the way). I fell into your faith school trap. Damn and blast!
What a ludicrous statement. You may as well say 'no supermarkets should be bog standard. They should all be excellent.'
The only way you get to excellence is consumer choice. Applies to education as much as business. Otherwise if there was no choice of supermarket, every supermarket would look like an Asda or Morrisons on a bad day
I don't know how they got into an RC school without being Catholic. Most faith schools require at least a minimum level of church attendance to get in '
None taken!
Supermarkets are not funded out of the public purse for the future benefit of the nation. If they are poor they wither and die. With publicly funded schools it doesn't quite work like that.
And I didn't furtively pretend to be the Pope to get them in. The school knew I was a godless heathen.
If state schools are inadequate they get rebranded as academies, if private schools are inadequate they go out of business.
Either way, they do not go on as before.
Sounds an unusual faith school anyway. The C of E faith school in Loughton for example awards points based on weekly church attendance. The more you attend, the more points you get regardless of how close you live to the school in the district. That is normally standard for most faith schools, C of E or RC. It gets 81% A* to C GCSE grades or the new points equivalent.
Your first paragraph reminds me of Lennie Henry's suggestion that "Windscale has been renamed as Sellarfield, so nuclear fallout would now be known as magic moonbeams".
That was Not The Nine O’Clock News - Mel Smith, Pam S, et al. not Lenny Henry
From ChemEurope.com
"Not the Nine O'Clock News also had a sketch, with a nod to a popular Ready Brek advert, about glowing children and Sellafield".
And
"Comedian Lenny Henry, impersonating newscaster Trevor McDonald, once reported that "Windscale is to be renamed Sellafield, because it sounds nicer. In future, radiation will be referred to as magic moonbeams".
Yes, the internet’s memory is different to mine. If so, my bad
(The weird thing is I can DISTINCTLY recall SEEING Pamela Stephenson make this joke, in my mind, how odd are the tricks of recall)
Memory is strange. Hence Mandela Effect. Strangely I had that when FW de Klerk died. Which I hope both would have found bleakly amusing. On which. How come I missed Tiger Woods nearly dying in a car crash? I have no memory whatsoever of that happening. And I read this board every day.
Exactly the same! Car crash?? Nearly fatal? What????
Was it during Covid? I think we all lost years of memory during Covid. Because we wanted to
Apparently it was 23 Feb 2021. I only know because apparently he is thinking of miraculously playing at the Masters this weekend. I have no memory of this whatsoever. Not an, oh yeah, forgot about that. But none. At all. I'm sure I was following the news. Glad it isn't just me. What else have we edited out?
We are all experiencing this. The brain is editing out this horrific collective memory, because it is so sad and repellent, but in doing this we are also erasing coincidental events, non-plague-related
I believe @SeanT once of this parish, anticipated this phenomenon.
This is a definite theme now. Turkish food is terrible. Way worse than, say, Germany or Holland (the worst in western Europe)
It’s down there with a middle income African country or somewhere like Oman
It is shite. In Erdogan’s gleaming Istanbul airport at their flashy Italian restaurant I ordered the Caprese salad. It came as cold sliced tomato with weird tasteless frigid bits of cheese, and chopped lettuce. That was it. No dressing, no nothing, No oil, no pepper, no salt. Zero. No pesto or basil. Disgusting
Not only was it dreadfully bad, the staff had no idea WHY it was bad, when I politely queried
It was like eating in an eerie, hallucinated version of 70s Britain, yet in a huge sparkly airport
In Sanliurfa the Head of Regional Culture and Tourism took me to a celebrated restaurant for their famous liver kebab. It was nice bits of liver, in a kebab, with an OK sauce. That was it. You could eat it in Camden at 3am after a big night and think Hmm, decent fast food. And they were trying to show off???
UGHHHHHHH
I haven't eaten in Turkey, but I was surprised at how bad the food was in Copenhagen (2018). What's the story with putting massive dollops of butter onto everything?
Posh Danish food is now world class. But everything beneath is still catching up (in Denmark)
Germany, Holland and the rest of Scandi are notably behind.
Britain is no longer the laggard, you can now eat better in the UK than most European countries (and certainly most countries around the world)
Spain, Italy and France are still superior to the UK. Tho Britain is edging France because of our better world cuisine, and insane French attachment to the Great Tradition
Nonetheless I’d have those three in the European Superleague, and Britain at the top of the next division, ahead of Greece and Portugal
How do you rate the great State of Louisiana?
Magnificent. The only state in the USA where I have eaten brilliant food, day after day
And it’s not just a New Orleans thing. The food in Louisiana outside NOLA is unusually excellent, even down to the breakfasts
Food culture is a weird thing. But Louisiana has it, and delivers it
I found Atlanta, Georgia, bizarrely good.
Absolute awful city in almost every way - except its food scene, which is weirdly great.
Generally the States can be disappointing for food.
You can eat really really well in most states of the US, but like so much of the US, its a place of two extremes. The "average" is absolutely shocking.
They haven’t had the gastropub Revolution that has happened in the UK and Australia, and which has been crucial
There will be at least one place in any average town with a talented chef who knows what he wants to do, and is having a bash
I saw a documentary on Australian food and they ascribed their food Revolution, almost entirely, to immigration but even more to foodie TV like Masterchef (which was invented in the UK but is wildly popular in its Aussie incarnation).
It makes total sense. Many millions watch Masterchef, pro and amateur. Watching a series is basically like doing a GCSE in cookery. You learn when to baste and how to fillet. You have a go. It’s brilliant. Most people I know, friends and family, can cook well - anyone under 60, that is
One thing that has improved a lot in the US over past 20 years is craft beer....they really gone for that. Its just the same place that will serve you a half decent beer brewed on site or locally, will serve you a meh burger and fries.
Not sure about your tv point. Don't the US have a load of shows just like that, Iron Chef etc, that are equally popular?
Agreed on the beer. American beer selections are now generally better than British. I hear rumours they are improving their cheese as well (it can’t get worse)
But the Masterchef thing is real. Australia has a less atomized culture than the USA, as does Britain
Eg Masterchef gets 5-6m viewers in the UK, thats nearly 10% of the entire country. The us version gets 1m, 0.3%
10% of people tuning in to learn about cooking is enough to change a cooking culture. 0.3% isn’t. And this is repeated over 30 years, beginning in the UK in 1990
American cheese has improved in just the four (almost) five years I've been here. As has their salami.
But it's still not as good as the UK.
France is still le grand fromage.
Corsica and Sardinia have the best cheese in the world. Esp Corsica. Tho Sardinia has the maggot cheese
Corsica is just incredible.You can drive 5km (which takes an hour on their roads) and the next village (which hates the previous village) has an entirely different and vastly superior cheese, and if you demur they all glare at you then turn away like you are a shameful sexual leper
After that they start being rude
Honestly tho the cheese is remarkable. And much of it never leaves the island
However in terms of getting great cheese in your average supermarket I reckon the UK wins, easily. We have all the noble British cheeses plus all the best mainland Europe cheeses, you just don’t get that selection in the EU (they all concentrate on their own cheeses)
The USA might be slowly catching up because they are now winning cheese awards, the same process as happened with their craft beer
However i reckon they are still 20 years behind the curve, so a long way to go, plus they have a culture more resistant to weird foods than better beers
British cheese is a revelation. When I was a kid you could get several different sorts of Cheddar, plus Stilton at Christmas.
Confession: after trying all the cheeses of the world, sometimes given to me by the world cheese award winning cheese makers themselves, I have come to the conclusion that Colston Basset Stiltion, as served by my local Whole Foods in Camden, really is the best cheese in the world. The King of Cheeses
Unctuous, creamy, rich, intense, memorable, full of umami, just amazing
And i have had Holy Goat served to me by nuns in Victoria, Australia
I have just done three months without dairy of any kind. One unexpected bonus of the missus kicking me out.
Rishi's star falls further as he donates £100, 000 to Winchester School
He has astonished me and Boris needs to move him on
So out of touch
"The donations fund bursaries for children whose parents would not otherwise be able to send them there."
I would have thought as a Conservative leaning voter you would be board with rich people donating so those fortunate can have access to top level education?
From my side of the political divide, a Chancellor properly funding a state system benefitting all children, rather than a private tax dodging bursary for one or two social climbers would be more appropriate.
Let's all laugh at 12 year old working class children, and call them names. Hurrah!
The chances are they won't be "gifted" children from a sink estate in Scunthorpe anyway, but less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
But I see your point, like Basil Fawlty said, "no riff-raff".
No. you are simply wrong. I was at one of these schools, I had friends who were on these bursaries, and they were not less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
I went to a provincial grammar school (granted, over 40 years ago) and the council house kids were looked down upon, and that was by both teachers and students. Fortunately for me, I was not from a council estate, so I was fine.
I go back to my original point. A well funded, well managed non-selective state school system for all those who want to achieve, would be my preference. Quite how one arrives at that point is for smarter people than me.
Or a 'comprehensive education, to make up for their comprehensive education' as Sir Humphrey and Jim Hacker promised!
I have told you many times before that prior to Ledbury Grammar School I went to an excellent High School. The rounded quality of the teaching, by enthusiastic, generally young teachers, enthused students into achieving excellent grades and several students in my year finished up with Oxford or Cambridge degrees and very impressive careers ( not me!). For example one became a British High Commissioner and another a keyboard player in the biggest band of the 1980s.
So why did it work? It was the early days of comprehensive education so it was properly funded. The teachers were motivated, and in turn motivated the students. All subjects were streamed by subject. So kids who were good at Maths were in set one for Maths, equally if they were poor at English they would have been in set 7 for English (a logistical nightmare, no doubt).
My children also went to an excellent RC Comprehensive School too. It was well funded and the teachers were motivated.
We want more faith schools too like your RC Comprehensive for your children.
Choice not one size fits all, whether academies, free schools, faith schools, some grammar schools, technical schools etc.
Not only bog standard comprehensives you have no alternative but to send your children to if of only average income or less
No comprehensive should be "bog standard". They should all be excellent.
I shouldn't have mentioned that my children went to an RC school (they, nor me are Catholic by the way). I fell into your faith school trap. Damn and blast!
What a ludicrous statement. You may as well say 'no supermarkets should be bog standard. They should all be excellent.'
The only way you get to excellence is consumer choice. Applies to education as much as business. Otherwise if there was no choice of supermarket, every supermarket would look like an Asda or Morrisons on a bad day
I don't know how they got into an RC school without being Catholic. Most faith schools require at least a minimum level of church attendance to get in '
Nope my children went to a C of E school and we are atheists.
Also this consumer choice stuff you talk of; earlier you wanted state controlled energy pricing for oil companies. Make up your mind, do you want competition or state control.
You can just about get into a C of E primary school or an average faith school if you only live in the parish.
The top faith secondary schools however almost all require a high level of church attendance to get into them as they are very oversubscribed.
I was not proposing to nationalise all energy companies was I, which Corbyn would have done. Just requiring them to pass on lower energy prices to UK consumers as energy supply was expanded in the UK
I never said you were. I said you said state control of prices, which is what you are proposing. That is price fixing below the market price. How on earth you think that will work. I have no idea when there will be in parallel market priced fuel. Is the govt going to subsidize all imports? I assume not so the same fuel will have 2 different prices. How does that work? Maybe like Cuba where you get vouchers for some stuff and other stuff is at market rates. I could go on. Trade negotiations and deals for instance would be buggered. Fortunately we have Brexited because that would have been illegal. What about the oil companies. Why would they bother in the UK if the price is below the market price.
You say these things but have no idea.
No it wasn't, I said expand energy production including fracking and shale to increase supply thus reducing prices. Then force energy companies to pass those price cuts on.
That will have to happen not just here but across the world if governments are not to be thrown out of office over sky high energy prices by angry voters
You are just making stuff up now. You specifically said increasing production in the UK to reduce prices. When it was pointed out that it is a global commodity so you wouldn't get lower prices in the UK you said you would force the UK companies to sell their oil at a lower price than the global price. That can't be done for the reasons already stated.
True it would work if global production increased but that is not what you said originally. You specifically said to achieve this you just referred to just UK activity and specific UK price fixing.
Yes, increasing production here and globally will reduce energy prices. Indeed a government which expands fracking and shale production in the UK would expect energy prices to come down as a result and could tax the profits of the companies which do not pass on lower prices. Starmer has already made clear a Labour government will indeed impose a windfall tax on any excess profits being made by oil and gas companies in the UK when energy prices are rising
This is a definite theme now. Turkish food is terrible. Way worse than, say, Germany or Holland (the worst in western Europe)
It’s down there with a middle income African country or somewhere like Oman
It is shite. In Erdogan’s gleaming Istanbul airport at their flashy Italian restaurant I ordered the Caprese salad. It came as cold sliced tomato with weird tasteless frigid bits of cheese, and chopped lettuce. That was it. No dressing, no nothing, No oil, no pepper, no salt. Zero. No pesto or basil. Disgusting
Not only was it dreadfully bad, the staff had no idea WHY it was bad, when I politely queried
It was like eating in an eerie, hallucinated version of 70s Britain, yet in a huge sparkly airport
In Sanliurfa the Head of Regional Culture and Tourism took me to a celebrated restaurant for their famous liver kebab. It was nice bits of liver, in a kebab, with an OK sauce. That was it. You could eat it in Camden at 3am after a big night and think Hmm, decent fast food. And they were trying to show off???
UGHHHHHHH
I haven't eaten in Turkey, but I was surprised at how bad the food was in Copenhagen (2018). What's the story with putting massive dollops of butter onto everything?
Posh Danish food is now world class. But everything beneath is still catching up (in Denmark)
Germany, Holland and the rest of Scandi are notably behind.
Britain is no longer the laggard, you can now eat better in the UK than most European countries (and certainly most countries around the world)
Spain, Italy and France are still superior to the UK. Tho Britain is edging France because of our better world cuisine, and insane French attachment to the Great Tradition
Nonetheless I’d have those three in the European Superleague, and Britain at the top of the next division, ahead of Greece and Portugal
How do you rate the great State of Louisiana?
Magnificent. The only state in the USA where I have eaten brilliant food, day after day
And it’s not just a New Orleans thing. The food in Louisiana outside NOLA is unusually excellent, even down to the breakfasts
Food culture is a weird thing. But Louisiana has it, and delivers it
I found Atlanta, Georgia, bizarrely good.
Absolute awful city in almost every way - except its food scene, which is weirdly great.
Generally the States can be disappointing for food.
You can eat really really well in most states of the US, but like so much of the US, its a place of two extremes. The "average" is absolutely shocking.
They haven’t had the gastropub Revolution that has happened in the UK and Australia, and which has been crucial
There will be at least one place in any average town with a talented chef who knows what he wants to do, and is having a bash
I saw a documentary on Australian food and they ascribed their food Revolution, almost entirely, to immigration but even more to foodie TV like Masterchef (which was invented in the UK but is wildly popular in its Aussie incarnation).
It makes total sense. Many millions watch Masterchef, pro and amateur. Watching a series is basically like doing a GCSE in cookery. You learn when to baste and how to fillet. You have a go. It’s brilliant. Most people I know, friends and family, can cook well - anyone under 60, that is
One thing that has improved a lot in the US over past 20 years is craft beer....they really gone for that. Its just the same place that will serve you a half decent beer brewed on site or locally, will serve you a meh burger and fries.
Not sure about your tv point. Don't the US have a load of shows just like that, Iron Chef etc, that are equally popular?
Agreed on the beer. American beer selections are now generally better than British. I hear rumours they are improving their cheese as well (it can’t get worse)
But the Masterchef thing is real. Australia has a less atomized culture than the USA, as does Britain
Eg Masterchef gets 5-6m viewers in the UK, thats nearly 10% of the entire country. The us version gets 1m, 0.3%
10% of people tuning in to learn about cooking is enough to change a cooking culture. 0.3% isn’t. And this is repeated over 30 years, beginning in the UK in 1990
American cheese has improved in just the four (almost) five years I've been here. As has their salami.
But it's still not as good as the UK.
France is still le grand fromage.
Corsica and Sardinia have the best cheese in the world. Esp Corsica. Tho Sardinia has the maggot cheese
Corsica is just incredible.You can drive 5km (which takes an hour on their roads) and the next village (which hates the previous village) has an entirely different and vastly superior cheese, and if you demur they all glare at you then turn away like you are a shameful sexual leper
After that they start being rude
Honestly tho the cheese is remarkable. And much of it never leaves the island
However in terms of getting great cheese in your average supermarket I reckon the UK wins, easily. We have all the noble British cheeses plus all the best mainland Europe cheeses, you just don’t get that selection in the EU (they all concentrate on their own cheeses)
The USA might be slowly catching up because they are now winning cheese awards, the same process as happened with their craft beer
However i reckon they are still 20 years behind the curve, so a long way to go, plus they have a culture more resistant to weird foods than better beers
British cheese is a revelation. When I was a kid you could get several different sorts of Cheddar, plus Stilton at Christmas.
Confession: after trying all the cheeses of the world, sometimes given to me by the world cheese award winning cheese makers themselves, I have come to the conclusion that Colston Basset Stiltion, as served by my local Whole Foods in Camden, really is the best cheese in the world. The King of Cheeses
Unctuous, creamy, rich, intense, memorable, full of umami, just amazing
And i have had Holy Goat served to me by nuns in Victoria, Australia
I think this is a mistaken view. Cheese is about the moment, the context. Sometimes you want a vintage gouda, with its salt crystals bursting on your tongue. Other days are right for a ripe camambert bubbling in its wooded case ready for the baguette to be dipped. And still other times you just need a thick smear of Dairylea on some cold white bread toast.
I believe in being faithful in marriage, but when it comes to cheeses I'm anyone's slut.
Very true.
For example IMO goat's cheese is pretty good for a work lunchtime and stilton to nibble on after a heavy meal.
I don’t understand Labours bounce in polls, it’s been weeks since political ding dong at the budget, where Labour did respond quite well, and was worse received budget in media for more than a decade. It must be like people say, takes a couple of weeks to properly impact in polls.
To quote the great Dominic Cummings, most voters interact with politics as if it were on a TV behind the bar in a sports bar whilst Wrestlemania is on. Some stories impact slowly, many don't impact at all.
The changes in the media landscape haven't helped. The days when newspapers sold 4 or 5 million copies, or when 10 million watched News at Ten, are long gone.
We're not going back to a world where people could be corralled into watching a reasonably thorough review of the day's news because there were only four channels. Indeed, we don't really want to (do we?) But the change has come at a cost.
I agree with you Stu. I posted a defence of my calling it lamestream media the other day. I won’t call it that again because people associate the phrase and it’s user with Trump, not the argument of change you have just made. It’s a change for the worse if people get it from Twitter, not watch News at Ten. Or if they don’t discuss News and issues. I love News at Ten it’s brilliant. You replied to my post, I replied to the same post with something I was given by News at Ten just now.
This is a definite theme now. Turkish food is terrible. Way worse than, say, Germany or Holland (the worst in western Europe)
It’s down there with a middle income African country or somewhere like Oman
It is shite. In Erdogan’s gleaming Istanbul airport at their flashy Italian restaurant I ordered the Caprese salad. It came as cold sliced tomato with weird tasteless frigid bits of cheese, and chopped lettuce. That was it. No dressing, no nothing, No oil, no pepper, no salt. Zero. No pesto or basil. Disgusting
Not only was it dreadfully bad, the staff had no idea WHY it was bad, when I politely queried
It was like eating in an eerie, hallucinated version of 70s Britain, yet in a huge sparkly airport
In Sanliurfa the Head of Regional Culture and Tourism took me to a celebrated restaurant for their famous liver kebab. It was nice bits of liver, in a kebab, with an OK sauce. That was it. You could eat it in Camden at 3am after a big night and think Hmm, decent fast food. And they were trying to show off???
UGHHHHHHH
I haven't eaten in Turkey, but I was surprised at how bad the food was in Copenhagen (2018). What's the story with putting massive dollops of butter onto everything?
Posh Danish food is now world class. But everything beneath is still catching up (in Denmark)
Germany, Holland and the rest of Scandi are notably behind.
Britain is no longer the laggard, you can now eat better in the UK than most European countries (and certainly most countries around the world)
Spain, Italy and France are still superior to the UK. Tho Britain is edging France because of our better world cuisine, and insane French attachment to the Great Tradition
Nonetheless I’d have those three in the European Superleague, and Britain at the top of the next division, ahead of Greece and Portugal
How do you rate the great State of Louisiana?
Magnificent. The only state in the USA where I have eaten brilliant food, day after day
And it’s not just a New Orleans thing. The food in Louisiana outside NOLA is unusually excellent, even down to the breakfasts
Food culture is a weird thing. But Louisiana has it, and delivers it
I found Atlanta, Georgia, bizarrely good.
Absolute awful city in almost every way - except its food scene, which is weirdly great.
Generally the States can be disappointing for food.
You can eat really really well in most states of the US, but like so much of the US, its a place of two extremes. The "average" is absolutely shocking.
They haven’t had the gastropub Revolution that has happened in the UK and Australia, and which has been crucial
There will be at least one place in any average town with a talented chef who knows what he wants to do, and is having a bash
I saw a documentary on Australian food and they ascribed their food Revolution, almost entirely, to immigration but even more to foodie TV like Masterchef (which was invented in the UK but is wildly popular in its Aussie incarnation).
It makes total sense. Many millions watch Masterchef, pro and amateur. Watching a series is basically like doing a GCSE in cookery. You learn when to baste and how to fillet. You have a go. It’s brilliant. Most people I know, friends and family, can cook well - anyone under 60, that is
One thing that has improved a lot in the US over past 20 years is craft beer....they really gone for that. Its just the same place that will serve you a half decent beer brewed on site or locally, will serve you a meh burger and fries.
Not sure about your tv point. Don't the US have a load of shows just like that, Iron Chef etc, that are equally popular?
Agreed on the beer. American beer selections are now generally better than British. I hear rumours they are improving their cheese as well (it can’t get worse)
But the Masterchef thing is real. Australia has a less atomized culture than the USA, as does Britain
Eg Masterchef gets 5-6m viewers in the UK, thats nearly 10% of the entire country. The us version gets 1m, 0.3%
10% of people tuning in to learn about cooking is enough to change a cooking culture. 0.3% isn’t. And this is repeated over 30 years, beginning in the UK in 1990
American cheese has improved in just the four (almost) five years I've been here. As has their salami.
But it's still not as good as the UK.
Frederick MD, a town of just 70,000 souls, has no less than 2 decent fromageries. And two decent bakeries. 4 excellent chocolate truffle makers/shops. And a nice canal through the old centre which is decorated with miniature ships for most of the winter:
For what it's worth, there's an excellent, very old-school (US style) candy maker & store in Grantsville MD on US40.
This is a definite theme now. Turkish food is terrible. Way worse than, say, Germany or Holland (the worst in western Europe)
It’s down there with a middle income African country or somewhere like Oman
It is shite. In Erdogan’s gleaming Istanbul airport at their flashy Italian restaurant I ordered the Caprese salad. It came as cold sliced tomato with weird tasteless frigid bits of cheese, and chopped lettuce. That was it. No dressing, no nothing, No oil, no pepper, no salt. Zero. No pesto or basil. Disgusting
Not only was it dreadfully bad, the staff had no idea WHY it was bad, when I politely queried
It was like eating in an eerie, hallucinated version of 70s Britain, yet in a huge sparkly airport
In Sanliurfa the Head of Regional Culture and Tourism took me to a celebrated restaurant for their famous liver kebab. It was nice bits of liver, in a kebab, with an OK sauce. That was it. You could eat it in Camden at 3am after a big night and think Hmm, decent fast food. And they were trying to show off???
UGHHHHHHH
I haven't eaten in Turkey, but I was surprised at how bad the food was in Copenhagen (2018). What's the story with putting massive dollops of butter onto everything?
Posh Danish food is now world class. But everything beneath is still catching up (in Denmark)
Germany, Holland and the rest of Scandi are notably behind.
Britain is no longer the laggard, you can now eat better in the UK than most European countries (and certainly most countries around the world)
Spain, Italy and France are still superior to the UK. Tho Britain is edging France because of our better world cuisine, and insane French attachment to the Great Tradition
Nonetheless I’d have those three in the European Superleague, and Britain at the top of the next division, ahead of Greece and Portugal
How do you rate the great State of Louisiana?
Magnificent. The only state in the USA where I have eaten brilliant food, day after day
And it’s not just a New Orleans thing. The food in Louisiana outside NOLA is unusually excellent, even down to the breakfasts
Food culture is a weird thing. But Louisiana has it, and delivers it
I found Atlanta, Georgia, bizarrely good.
Absolute awful city in almost every way - except its food scene, which is weirdly great.
Generally the States can be disappointing for food.
You can eat really really well in most states of the US, but like so much of the US, its a place of two extremes. The "average" is absolutely shocking.
They haven’t had the gastropub Revolution that has happened in the UK and Australia, and which has been crucial
There will be at least one place in any average town with a talented chef who knows what he wants to do, and is having a bash
I saw a documentary on Australian food and they ascribed their food Revolution, almost entirely, to immigration but even more to foodie TV like Masterchef (which was invented in the UK but is wildly popular in its Aussie incarnation).
It makes total sense. Many millions watch Masterchef, pro and amateur. Watching a series is basically like doing a GCSE in cookery. You learn when to baste and how to fillet. You have a go. It’s brilliant. Most people I know, friends and family, can cook well - anyone under 60, that is
One thing that has improved a lot in the US over past 20 years is craft beer....they really gone for that. Its just the same place that will serve you a half decent beer brewed on site or locally, will serve you a meh burger and fries.
Not sure about your tv point. Don't the US have a load of shows just like that, Iron Chef etc, that are equally popular?
Agreed on the beer. American beer selections are now generally better than British. I hear rumours they are improving their cheese as well (it can’t get worse)
But the Masterchef thing is real. Australia has a less atomized culture than the USA, as does Britain
Eg Masterchef gets 5-6m viewers in the UK, thats nearly 10% of the entire country. The us version gets 1m, 0.3%
10% of people tuning in to learn about cooking is enough to change a cooking culture. 0.3% isn’t. And this is repeated over 30 years, beginning in the UK in 1990
American cheese has improved in just the four (almost) five years I've been here. As has their salami.
But it's still not as good as the UK.
France is still le grand fromage.
Corsica and Sardinia have the best cheese in the world. Esp Corsica. Tho Sardinia has the maggot cheese
Corsica is just incredible.You can drive 5km (which takes an hour on their roads) and the next village (which hates the previous village) has an entirely different and vastly superior cheese, and if you demur they all glare at you then turn away like you are a shameful sexual leper
After that they start being rude
Honestly tho the cheese is remarkable. And much of it never leaves the island
However in terms of getting great cheese in your average supermarket I reckon the UK wins, easily. We have all the noble British cheeses plus all the best mainland Europe cheeses, you just don’t get that selection in the EU (they all concentrate on their own cheeses)
The USA might be slowly catching up because they are now winning cheese awards, the same process as happened with their craft beer
However i reckon they are still 20 years behind the curve, so a long way to go, plus they have a culture more resistant to weird foods than better beers
British cheese is a revelation. When I was a kid you could get several different sorts of Cheddar, plus Stilton at Christmas.
Cheddar or Cheshire.
Stilton was only something seen eaten by posh people on tv.
🧵Pleased to see the truth about the outcome of the WM SNP leadership election in print “..a contest developed between Ian Blackford, Joanna Cherry & Drew Hendry. Blackford eventually defeated Cherry by a single vote of SNP MPs.”
At the time a man called Nathan Sparling briefed the press that I had come last. As I was bound by confidentiality I could not put this widely reported untruth right. It turned out to be just a foretaste of the misogyny that was to come after the close result
Rishi's star falls further as he donates £100, 000 to Winchester School
He has astonished me and Boris needs to move him on
So out of touch
"The donations fund bursaries for children whose parents would not otherwise be able to send them there."
I would have thought as a Conservative leaning voter you would be board with rich people donating so those fortunate can have access to top level education?
From my side of the political divide, a Chancellor properly funding a state system benefitting all children, rather than a private tax dodging bursary for one or two social climbers would be more appropriate.
Let's all laugh at 12 year old working class children, and call them names. Hurrah!
The chances are they won't be "gifted" children from a sink estate in Scunthorpe anyway, but less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
But I see your point, like Basil Fawlty said, "no riff-raff".
No. you are simply wrong. I was at one of these schools, I had friends who were on these bursaries, and they were not less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
I went to a provincial grammar school (granted, over 40 years ago) and the council house kids were looked down upon, and that was by both teachers and students. Fortunately for me, I was not from a council estate, so I was fine.
I go back to my original point. A well funded, well managed non-selective state school system for all those who want to achieve, would be my preference. Quite how one arrives at that point is for smarter people than me.
Or a 'comprehensive education, to make up for their comprehensive education' as Sir Humphrey and Jim Hacker promised!
I have told you many times before that prior to Ledbury Grammar School I went to an excellent High School. The rounded quality of the teaching, by enthusiastic, generally young teachers, enthused students into achieving excellent grades and several students in my year finished up with Oxford or Cambridge degrees and very impressive careers ( not me!). For example one became a British High Commissioner and another a keyboard player in the biggest band of the 1980s.
So why did it work? It was the early days of comprehensive education so it was properly funded. The teachers were motivated, and in turn motivated the students. All subjects were streamed by subject. So kids who were good at Maths were in set one for Maths, equally if they were poor at English they would have been in set 7 for English (a logistical nightmare, no doubt).
My children also went to an excellent RC Comprehensive School too. It was well funded and the teachers were motivated.
We want more faith schools too like your RC Comprehensive for your children.
Choice not one size fits all, whether academies, free schools, faith schools, some grammar schools, technical schools etc.
Not only bog standard comprehensives you have no alternative but to send your children to if of only average income or less
Faith schools, my arse. Shut them down. I want children to be taught, not indoctrinated in superstitious mumbo-jumbo.
Tough, you are not in power. We Conservatives are. Even Blair recognised how good most faith schools were, so sent his children to them
Yes, I'm with Sandy and everyone else here. One, on principle. If you want to teach your children that there is a God and all the other tenets of your faith, go ahead, I suppose, but I don't see why I should get to pay for it. Two, in practice. There are faith (primary) schools in Sale, and they are consistently the worst performing - presumably because they are taking up teaching time with teaching religion.
I also find it faintly weird and not a little discomfiting that my kids' nominally secular primary schools still have hymns and prayers in assembly. Surely in the secular sector pretty much no-one believes in any of it: it's just a massive exercise in pointlessly going through the motions. I suppose that's some sort of training for life.
I remember when I was at primary school 30-40 years ago it was a charade back then too. A supply teacher joined us for a bit who was clearly a true believer, and seemed genuinely shocked by the inability of a hall full of junior school children to fully partake in care about the state mandated act of worship. She gave us all a good bollocking, of the extent to rouse the normally indiffernt headteacher from her study to see what was going on. The headteacher was as nonplussed as the rest of us with the supply teacher's explanation of 'they're begrudging God ten minutes of their day'. I'm sure the line 'for pity's sake, woman, can't you see we're just going through the motions here' was earnestly fought back in favour of whatever non-commital platitude actually came out.
I'm not seeking to pick a fight with the genuinely religious. But forcing religion on kids seems wrong. And teachers who don't believe forcing religion on kids who don't believe seems stupid and pointless.
I can't really see what there is to object to about a rousing chorus of 'We plough the fields and scatter' or 'Morning has broken'. It's nice. Replacing such classics with limp, anodyne dirges about picking up litter (as was happening toward the end of my time at primary) seems a backward step, regardless of belief.
Well that sounds amusingly stupid too.
Remembering further, we had two hymn books, an orange one and a blue one. The orange one had hymns you might recognise, the blue one was probably a bit more right-on - several of the hymns could probably be subtitled 'don't be racist, kids'. The blue one was used increasingly often as I went through the school. We were possibly going down the same route as you. I'd question the need to sing (or indeed pray) at all. I recognise the psychological impact of communal singing, and can probably understand the thinking behind it - if indeed there is any - but the psychological impact only works if it's a song that people want to sing. It works in gigs where people ar really, really, esctatically into the music; it works in football crowds where crowds genuinely believe, at least right then and there, that Stockport County, Stockport County FC are by far the greatest team the world has ever seen; it works in churches where people go voluntarily to express their belief. It works with drunks. It does not work with a bunch of slightly embarassed and resentful ten year olds who do not believe the words they are singing and feel ridiculous doing so. You can overcome this a bit, if the song is really, really good - you can emotionally believe in the melody even if you don't rationally believe in the words - but really, really good most primary school hymns are not.
Excellent post. I'm certain that singing in schools spoils singing for many people. It's quite an achievement to turn a natural and pleasurable activity into such a fucking grind but amazingly it happens. And in this case, we can pin the blame squarely on religious types. No 13 year old wants to sing Gloria in Excelsis Deo at 8.30 on a Monday morning. What on earth is wrong with the people that would make them do that?
Some of the greatest music ever written is hymns, what a ridiculous post
I happen to like The Proclaimers, but I wouldn't make you sing it joylessly every morning. Making people sing hymns every day is like FGM for the soul.
Hence as I said all faith schools should be mainly restricted to those who regularly attend church services or Mosques or Synagogue and actually have an interest in religion.
Everyone else can attend secular state or private schools without morning worship or hymns.
Rishi's star falls further as he donates £100, 000 to Winchester School
He has astonished me and Boris needs to move him on
So out of touch
"The donations fund bursaries for children whose parents would not otherwise be able to send them there."
I would have thought as a Conservative leaning voter you would be board with rich people donating so those fortunate can have access to top level education?
From my side of the political divide, a Chancellor properly funding a state system benefitting all children, rather than a private tax dodging bursary for one or two social climbers would be more appropriate.
Let's all laugh at 12 year old working class children, and call them names. Hurrah!
The chances are they won't be "gifted" children from a sink estate in Scunthorpe anyway, but less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
But I see your point, like Basil Fawlty said, "no riff-raff".
No. you are simply wrong. I was at one of these schools, I had friends who were on these bursaries, and they were not less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
I went to a provincial grammar school (granted, over 40 years ago) and the council house kids were looked down upon, and that was by both teachers and students. Fortunately for me, I was not from a council estate, so I was fine.
I go back to my original point. A well funded, well managed non-selective state school system for all those who want to achieve, would be my preference. Quite how one arrives at that point is for smarter people than me.
Or a 'comprehensive education, to make up for their comprehensive education' as Sir Humphrey and Jim Hacker promised!
I have told you many times before that prior to Ledbury Grammar School I went to an excellent High School. The rounded quality of the teaching, by enthusiastic, generally young teachers, enthused students into achieving excellent grades and several students in my year finished up with Oxford or Cambridge degrees and very impressive careers ( not me!). For example one became a British High Commissioner and another a keyboard player in the biggest band of the 1980s.
So why did it work? It was the early days of comprehensive education so it was properly funded. The teachers were motivated, and in turn motivated the students. All subjects were streamed by subject. So kids who were good at Maths were in set one for Maths, equally if they were poor at English they would have been in set 7 for English (a logistical nightmare, no doubt).
My children also went to an excellent RC Comprehensive School too. It was well funded and the teachers were motivated.
We want more faith schools too like your RC Comprehensive for your children.
Choice not one size fits all, whether academies, free schools, faith schools, some grammar schools, technical schools etc.
Not only bog standard comprehensives you have no alternative but to send your children to if of only average income or less
No comprehensive should be "bog standard". They should all be excellent.
I shouldn't have mentioned that my children went to an RC school (they, nor me are Catholic by the way). I fell into your faith school trap. Damn and blast!
What a ludicrous statement. You may as well say 'no supermarkets should be bog standard. They should all be excellent.'
The only way you get to excellence is consumer choice. Applies to education as much as business. Otherwise if there was no choice of supermarket, every supermarket would look like an Asda or Morrisons on a bad day
I don't know how they got into an RC school without being Catholic. Most faith schools require at least a minimum level of church attendance to get in '
None taken!
Supermarkets are not funded out of the public purse for the future benefit of the nation. If they are poor they wither and die. With publicly funded schools it doesn't quite work like that.
And I didn't furtively pretend to be the Pope to get them in. The school knew I was a godless heathen.
If state schools are inadequate they get rebranded as academies, if private schools are inadequate they go out of business.
Either way, they do not go on as before.
Sounds an unusual faith school anyway. The C of E faith school in Loughton for example awards points based on weekly church attendance. The more you attend, the more points you get regardless of how close you live to the school in the district. That is normally standard for most faith schools, C of E or RC. It gets 81% A* to C GCSE grades or the new points equivalent.
Your first paragraph reminds me of Lennie Henry's suggestion that "Windscale has been renamed as Sellarfield, so nuclear fallout would now be known as magic moonbeams".
That was Not The Nine O’Clock News - Mel Smith, Pam S, et al. not Lenny Henry
From ChemEurope.com
"Not the Nine O'Clock News also had a sketch, with a nod to a popular Ready Brek advert, about glowing children and Sellafield".
And
"Comedian Lenny Henry, impersonating newscaster Trevor McDonald, once reported that "Windscale is to be renamed Sellafield, because it sounds nicer. In future, radiation will be referred to as magic moonbeams".
Yes, the internet’s memory is different to mine. If so, my bad
(The weird thing is I can DISTINCTLY recall SEEING Pamela Stephenson make this joke, in my mind, how odd are the tricks of recall)
Memory is strange. Hence Mandela Effect. Strangely I had that when FW de Klerk died. Which I hope both would have found bleakly amusing. On which. How come I missed Tiger Woods nearly dying in a car crash? I have no memory whatsoever of that happening. And I read this board every day.
Exactly the same! Car crash?? Nearly fatal? What????
Was it during Covid? I think we all lost years of memory during Covid. Because we wanted to
Apparently it was 23 Feb 2021. I only know because apparently he is thinking of miraculously playing at the Masters this weekend. I have no memory of this whatsoever. Not an, oh yeah, forgot about that. But none. At all. I'm sure I was following the news. Glad it isn't just me. What else have we edited out?
We are all experiencing this. The brain is editing out this horrific collective memory, because it is so sad and repellent, but in doing this we are also erasing coincidental events, non-plague-related
I believe @SeanT once of this parish, anticipated this phenomenon.
I don’t understand Labours bounce in polls, it’s been weeks since political ding dong at the budget, where Labour did respond quite well, and was worse received budget in media for more than a decade. It must be like people say, takes a couple of weeks to properly impact in polls.
To quote the great Dominic Cummings, most voters interact with politics as if it were on a TV behind the bar in a sports bar whilst Wrestlemania is on. Some stories impact slowly, many don't impact at all.
The changes in the media landscape haven't helped. The days when newspapers sold 4 or 5 million copies, or when 10 million watched News at Ten, are long gone.
We're not going back to a world where people could be corralled into watching a reasonably thorough review of the day's news because there were only four channels. Indeed, we don't really want to (do we?) But the change has come at a cost.
We were talking about TV viewing yesterday, so I looked the figures up. News at Six still gets 4-5 million a day, only outpaced by the soaps:
But as you'd expect, it's very much an age thing. Oldies watch around 6 hours a day of broadcast TV (though I suspect a lot of that is just having it on the background), whereas the 16-24 group only watch about an hour a day (which is more than people here were saying yesterday). The national average is still 3 hours a day:
Rishi's star falls further as he donates £100, 000 to Winchester School
He has astonished me and Boris needs to move him on
So out of touch
"The donations fund bursaries for children whose parents would not otherwise be able to send them there."
I would have thought as a Conservative leaning voter you would be board with rich people donating so those fortunate can have access to top level education?
From my side of the political divide, a Chancellor properly funding a state system benefitting all children, rather than a private tax dodging bursary for one or two social climbers would be more appropriate.
Let's all laugh at 12 year old working class children, and call them names. Hurrah!
The chances are they won't be "gifted" children from a sink estate in Scunthorpe anyway, but less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
But I see your point, like Basil Fawlty said, "no riff-raff".
No. you are simply wrong. I was at one of these schools, I had friends who were on these bursaries, and they were not less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
I went to a provincial grammar school (granted, over 40 years ago) and the council house kids were looked down upon, and that was by both teachers and students. Fortunately for me, I was not from a council estate, so I was fine.
I go back to my original point. A well funded, well managed non-selective state school system for all those who want to achieve, would be my preference. Quite how one arrives at that point is for smarter people than me.
Or a 'comprehensive education, to make up for their comprehensive education' as Sir Humphrey and Jim Hacker promised!
I have told you many times before that prior to Ledbury Grammar School I went to an excellent High School. The rounded quality of the teaching, by enthusiastic, generally young teachers, enthused students into achieving excellent grades and several students in my year finished up with Oxford or Cambridge degrees and very impressive careers ( not me!). For example one became a British High Commissioner and another a keyboard player in the biggest band of the 1980s.
So why did it work? It was the early days of comprehensive education so it was properly funded. The teachers were motivated, and in turn motivated the students. All subjects were streamed by subject. So kids who were good at Maths were in set one for Maths, equally if they were poor at English they would have been in set 7 for English (a logistical nightmare, no doubt).
My children also went to an excellent RC Comprehensive School too. It was well funded and the teachers were motivated.
We want more faith schools too like your RC Comprehensive for your children.
Choice not one size fits all, whether academies, free schools, faith schools, some grammar schools, technical schools etc.
Not only bog standard comprehensives you have no alternative but to send your children to if of only average income or less
Faith schools, my arse. Shut them down. I want children to be taught, not indoctrinated in superstitious mumbo-jumbo.
Tough, you are not in power. We Conservatives are. Even Blair recognised how good most faith schools were, so sent his children to them
Yes, I'm with Sandy and everyone else here. One, on principle. If you want to teach your children that there is a God and all the other tenets of your faith, go ahead, I suppose, but I don't see why I should get to pay for it. Two, in practice. There are faith (primary) schools in Sale, and they are consistently the worst performing - presumably because they are taking up teaching time with teaching religion.
I also find it faintly weird and not a little discomfiting that my kids' nominally secular primary schools still have hymns and prayers in assembly. Surely in the secular sector pretty much no-one believes in any of it: it's just a massive exercise in pointlessly going through the motions. I suppose that's some sort of training for life.
I remember when I was at primary school 30-40 years ago it was a charade back then too. A supply teacher joined us for a bit who was clearly a true believer, and seemed genuinely shocked by the inability of a hall full of junior school children to fully partake in care about the state mandated act of worship. She gave us all a good bollocking, of the extent to rouse the normally indiffernt headteacher from her study to see what was going on. The headteacher was as nonplussed as the rest of us with the supply teacher's explanation of 'they're begrudging God ten minutes of their day'. I'm sure the line 'for pity's sake, woman, can't you see we're just going through the motions here' was earnestly fought back in favour of whatever non-commital platitude actually came out.
I'm not seeking to pick a fight with the genuinely religious. But forcing religion on kids seems wrong. And teachers who don't believe forcing religion on kids who don't believe seems stupid and pointless.
I can't really see what there is to object to about a rousing chorus of 'We plough the fields and scatter' or 'Morning has broken'. It's nice. Replacing such classics with limp, anodyne dirges about picking up litter (as was happening toward the end of my time at primary) seems a backward step, regardless of belief.
Well that sounds amusingly stupid too.
Remembering further, we had two hymn books, an orange one and a blue one. The orange one had hymns you might recognise, the blue one was probably a bit more right-on - several of the hymns could probably be subtitled 'don't be racist, kids'. The blue one was used increasingly often as I went through the school. We were possibly going down the same route as you. I'd question the need to sing (or indeed pray) at all. I recognise the psychological impact of communal singing, and can probably understand the thinking behind it - if indeed there is any - but the psychological impact only works if it's a song that people want to sing. It works in gigs where people ar really, really, esctatically into the music; it works in football crowds where crowds genuinely believe, at least right then and there, that Stockport County, Stockport County FC are by far the greatest team the world has ever seen; it works in churches where people go voluntarily to express their belief. It works with drunks. It does not work with a bunch of slightly embarassed and resentful ten year olds who do not believe the words they are singing and feel ridiculous doing so. You can overcome this a bit, if the song is really, really good - you can emotionally believe in the melody even if you don't rationally believe in the words - but really, really good most primary school hymns are not.
Excellent post. I'm certain that singing in schools spoils singing for many people. It's quite an achievement to turn a natural and pleasurable activity into such a fucking grind but amazingly it happens. And in this case, we can pin the blame squarely on religious types. No 13 year old wants to sing Gloria in Excelsis Deo at 8.30 on a Monday morning. What on earth is wrong with the people that would make them do that?
Some of the greatest music ever written is hymns, what a ridiculous post
I happen to like The Proclaimers, but I wouldn't make you sing it joylessly every morning. Making people sing hymns every day is like FGM for the soul.
Also, England. My older daughter just aced her mock GCSEs at her supposedly Outstanding north London comp, but I recently discovered she has no idea what the Battle of Hastings is or was or what it meant or how it worked or anything, and she also has no idea whether Iran is north, south, east or west of Russia (and she is doing Geography and got the equivalent of an A*)
WTF are they actually teaching them
My own attitude, is that school is largely about socialisation, and a weird performance for the (normally absent) ofsted Inspectors (more evidence of this earlier in the thread).
I take the responsibility of passing on knowledge about history to my son myself. I am sure that the school will just trot out a load of woke ideology anyway the way things are going, when it comes to history. He can already explain the difference between prehistory and history. We do a different period every other night, last night we were looking at Sargon of Akkad. Some of the books you can buy are brilliant. We've also been learning how to fight, so going through Karate and Wing Chun moves, which he loves. Much of history is about war. Kids are so much fun.
My theory is, that if all this is entrenched at age 5, then he won't forget it when he goes through his teenage rebellion and delinquency.
Fuck “Black History Month” which seems to be Every fucking Month
How about “Basic British History Year” when they spend just one year - just one - giving them the absolute fundamentals of why we are the nation we are
Ice Age Doggerland Beaker People Bronze Age Stonehenge Celts Romans Anglo Saxons Hastings Normans Anglo-Normans Tudors Golden Age of Elizabeth, Gloriana! Civil War Protestants win, but Restoration Enlightenment, Scottish Union Industrial Revolution Empire More Empire Still more empire First World War Depression WW2 yay heroes Decline End of Empire Beatles, the Pill, winter of discontent Thatcher, the Saviour
Seriously, Do each one every week. For a year
That gives you the total basics. The mental map. Then, if you drearily insist, go back to the fucking Woke bollox
Ha, yes, and well noted that there is a time and a place for these things. Christmas, a decorated Victorian church, darkness outside and light inside, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, with a choir singing the descant - yes, actually quite a pleasurable experience. The music does its magic; you feel a kniship with your fellow humans. A dirge on whatever aspect of Christianity is considered wholesome and modern for primary school children at 9 oc'clock on a damp grey morning - the only communal feeling is one of sullen resentment to whoever is making you go through this exercise.
Yes, my dad (who went to Winchester like Sunak) grew up seriously Christian, but said the compulsory school hymns almost put him off. The mandatory exercise seemed to contradict the whole spiritual idea.
Idle anecdote - later on he joined Moral Re-Armament, a very serious movement (Mary Whitehouse was a member) dedicated to postwar evangelism (and anti-communism). Then he met my mum, who liked dancing and parties. An MRA colleague took her to tea at Lyons' corner House and urged her to give him up, as her frivolous nature would imperil his immortal soul. She laughed and said they'd better ask him. So they said to him that he had to choose - her or MRA. He instantly said that a religious movement that tried to mandate whom he married wasn't for him.
He stayed a Christian all his life, but rejected any kind of straightjacket. He felt it was, well, un-Christian.
Most notable American manifestation of latter Moral Re-Armament circa 1968
This is a definite theme now. Turkish food is terrible. Way worse than, say, Germany or Holland (the worst in western Europe)
It’s down there with a middle income African country or somewhere like Oman
It is shite. In Erdogan’s gleaming Istanbul airport at their flashy Italian restaurant I ordered the Caprese salad. It came as cold sliced tomato with weird tasteless frigid bits of cheese, and chopped lettuce. That was it. No dressing, no nothing, No oil, no pepper, no salt. Zero. No pesto or basil. Disgusting
Not only was it dreadfully bad, the staff had no idea WHY it was bad, when I politely queried
It was like eating in an eerie, hallucinated version of 70s Britain, yet in a huge sparkly airport
In Sanliurfa the Head of Regional Culture and Tourism took me to a celebrated restaurant for their famous liver kebab. It was nice bits of liver, in a kebab, with an OK sauce. That was it. You could eat it in Camden at 3am after a big night and think Hmm, decent fast food. And they were trying to show off???
UGHHHHHHH
I haven't eaten in Turkey, but I was surprised at how bad the food was in Copenhagen (2018). What's the story with putting massive dollops of butter onto everything?
Posh Danish food is now world class. But everything beneath is still catching up (in Denmark)
Germany, Holland and the rest of Scandi are notably behind.
Britain is no longer the laggard, you can now eat better in the UK than most European countries (and certainly most countries around the world)
Spain, Italy and France are still superior to the UK. Tho Britain is edging France because of our better world cuisine, and insane French attachment to the Great Tradition
Nonetheless I’d have those three in the European Superleague, and Britain at the top of the next division, ahead of Greece and Portugal
How do you rate the great State of Louisiana?
Magnificent. The only state in the USA where I have eaten brilliant food, day after day
And it’s not just a New Orleans thing. The food in Louisiana outside NOLA is unusually excellent, even down to the breakfasts
Food culture is a weird thing. But Louisiana has it, and delivers it
I found Atlanta, Georgia, bizarrely good.
Absolute awful city in almost every way - except its food scene, which is weirdly great.
Generally the States can be disappointing for food.
You can eat really really well in most states of the US, but like so much of the US, its a place of two extremes. The "average" is absolutely shocking.
They haven’t had the gastropub Revolution that has happened in the UK and Australia, and which has been crucial
There will be at least one place in any average town with a talented chef who knows what he wants to do, and is having a bash
I saw a documentary on Australian food and they ascribed their food Revolution, almost entirely, to immigration but even more to foodie TV like Masterchef (which was invented in the UK but is wildly popular in its Aussie incarnation).
It makes total sense. Many millions watch Masterchef, pro and amateur. Watching a series is basically like doing a GCSE in cookery. You learn when to baste and how to fillet. You have a go. It’s brilliant. Most people I know, friends and family, can cook well - anyone under 60, that is
One thing that has improved a lot in the US over past 20 years is craft beer....they really gone for that. Its just the same place that will serve you a half decent beer brewed on site or locally, will serve you a meh burger and fries.
Not sure about your tv point. Don't the US have a load of shows just like that, Iron Chef etc, that are equally popular?
Agreed on the beer. American beer selections are now generally better than British. I hear rumours they are improving their cheese as well (it can’t get worse)
But the Masterchef thing is real. Australia has a less atomized culture than the USA, as does Britain
Eg Masterchef gets 5-6m viewers in the UK, thats nearly 10% of the entire country. The us version gets 1m, 0.3%
10% of people tuning in to learn about cooking is enough to change a cooking culture. 0.3% isn’t. And this is repeated over 30 years, beginning in the UK in 1990
American cheese has improved in just the four (almost) five years I've been here. As has their salami.
But it's still not as good as the UK.
France is still le grand fromage.
Corsica and Sardinia have the best cheese in the world. Esp Corsica. Tho Sardinia has the maggot cheese
Corsica is just incredible.You can drive 5km (which takes an hour on their roads) and the next village (which hates the previous village) has an entirely different and vastly superior cheese, and if you demur they all glare at you then turn away like you are a shameful sexual leper
After that they start being rude
Honestly tho the cheese is remarkable. And much of it never leaves the island
However in terms of getting great cheese in your average supermarket I reckon the UK wins, easily. We have all the noble British cheeses plus all the best mainland Europe cheeses, you just don’t get that selection in the EU (they all concentrate on their own cheeses)
The USA might be slowly catching up because they are now winning cheese awards, the same process as happened with their craft beer
However i reckon they are still 20 years behind the curve, so a long way to go, plus they have a culture more resistant to weird foods than better beers
British cheese is a revelation. When I was a kid you could get several different sorts of Cheddar, plus Stilton at Christmas.
Confession: after trying all the cheeses of the world, sometimes given to me by the world cheese award winning cheese makers themselves, I have come to the conclusion that Colston Basset Stiltion, as served by my local Whole Foods in Camden, really is the best cheese in the world. The King of Cheeses
Unctuous, creamy, rich, intense, memorable, full of umami, just amazing
And i have had Holy Goat served to me by nuns in Victoria, Australia
I think this is a mistaken view. Cheese is about the moment, the context. Sometimes you want a vintage gouda, with its salt crystals bursting on your tongue. Other days are right for a ripe camambert bubbling in its wooded case ready for the baguette to be dipped. And still other times you just need a thick smear of Dairylea on some cold white bread toast.
I believe in being faithful in marriage, but when it comes to cheeses I'm anyone's slut.
But of course. My favourite food is probably native British oysters, little sweet Helfords or Lindisfarnes maybe, but I would not want them for brekkie or every day for lunch
BUT if I was condemned to death, my final meal would start with Helfords and probably end with Colston Bassett Stilton
This is a definite theme now. Turkish food is terrible. Way worse than, say, Germany or Holland (the worst in western Europe)
It’s down there with a middle income African country or somewhere like Oman
It is shite. In Erdogan’s gleaming Istanbul airport at their flashy Italian restaurant I ordered the Caprese salad. It came as cold sliced tomato with weird tasteless frigid bits of cheese, and chopped lettuce. That was it. No dressing, no nothing, No oil, no pepper, no salt. Zero. No pesto or basil. Disgusting
Not only was it dreadfully bad, the staff had no idea WHY it was bad, when I politely queried
It was like eating in an eerie, hallucinated version of 70s Britain, yet in a huge sparkly airport
In Sanliurfa the Head of Regional Culture and Tourism took me to a celebrated restaurant for their famous liver kebab. It was nice bits of liver, in a kebab, with an OK sauce. That was it. You could eat it in Camden at 3am after a big night and think Hmm, decent fast food. And they were trying to show off???
UGHHHHHHH
I haven't eaten in Turkey, but I was surprised at how bad the food was in Copenhagen (2018). What's the story with putting massive dollops of butter onto everything?
Posh Danish food is now world class. But everything beneath is still catching up (in Denmark)
Germany, Holland and the rest of Scandi are notably behind.
Britain is no longer the laggard, you can now eat better in the UK than most European countries (and certainly most countries around the world)
Spain, Italy and France are still superior to the UK. Tho Britain is edging France because of our better world cuisine, and insane French attachment to the Great Tradition
Nonetheless I’d have those three in the European Superleague, and Britain at the top of the next division, ahead of Greece and Portugal
How do you rate the great State of Louisiana?
Magnificent. The only state in the USA where I have eaten brilliant food, day after day
And it’s not just a New Orleans thing. The food in Louisiana outside NOLA is unusually excellent, even down to the breakfasts
Food culture is a weird thing. But Louisiana has it, and delivers it
I found Atlanta, Georgia, bizarrely good.
Absolute awful city in almost every way - except its food scene, which is weirdly great.
Generally the States can be disappointing for food.
You can eat really really well in most states of the US, but like so much of the US, its a place of two extremes. The "average" is absolutely shocking.
They haven’t had the gastropub Revolution that has happened in the UK and Australia, and which has been crucial
There will be at least one place in any average town with a talented chef who knows what he wants to do, and is having a bash
I saw a documentary on Australian food and they ascribed their food Revolution, almost entirely, to immigration but even more to foodie TV like Masterchef (which was invented in the UK but is wildly popular in its Aussie incarnation).
It makes total sense. Many millions watch Masterchef, pro and amateur. Watching a series is basically like doing a GCSE in cookery. You learn when to baste and how to fillet. You have a go. It’s brilliant. Most people I know, friends and family, can cook well - anyone under 60, that is
One thing that has improved a lot in the US over past 20 years is craft beer....they really gone for that. Its just the same place that will serve you a half decent beer brewed on site or locally, will serve you a meh burger and fries.
Not sure about your tv point. Don't the US have a load of shows just like that, Iron Chef etc, that are equally popular?
Agreed on the beer. American beer selections are now generally better than British. I hear rumours they are improving their cheese as well (it can’t get worse)
But the Masterchef thing is real. Australia has a less atomized culture than the USA, as does Britain
Eg Masterchef gets 5-6m viewers in the UK, thats nearly 10% of the entire country. The us version gets 1m, 0.3%
10% of people tuning in to learn about cooking is enough to change a cooking culture. 0.3% isn’t. And this is repeated over 30 years, beginning in the UK in 1990
American cheese has improved in just the four (almost) five years I've been here. As has their salami.
But it's still not as good as the UK.
France is still le grand fromage.
Corsica and Sardinia have the best cheese in the world. Esp Corsica. Tho Sardinia has the maggot cheese
Corsica is just incredible.You can drive 5km (which takes an hour on their roads) and the next village (which hates the previous village) has an entirely different and vastly superior cheese, and if you demur they all glare at you then turn away like you are a shameful sexual leper
After that they start being rude
Honestly tho the cheese is remarkable. And much of it never leaves the island
However in terms of getting great cheese in your average supermarket I reckon the UK wins, easily. We have all the noble British cheeses plus all the best mainland Europe cheeses, you just don’t get that selection in the EU (they all concentrate on their own cheeses)
The USA might be slowly catching up because they are now winning cheese awards, the same process as happened with their craft beer
However i reckon they are still 20 years behind the curve, so a long way to go, plus they have a culture more resistant to weird foods than better beers
British cheese is a revelation. When I was a kid you could get several different sorts of Cheddar, plus Stilton at Christmas.
Confession: after trying all the cheeses of the world, sometimes given to me by the world cheese award winning cheese makers themselves, I have come to the conclusion that Colston Basset Stiltion, as served by my local Whole Foods in Camden, really is the best cheese in the world. The King of Cheeses
Unctuous, creamy, rich, intense, memorable, full of umami, just amazing
And i have had Holy Goat served to me by nuns in Victoria, Australia
It’s certainly the best blue cheese in the world. Only rivalled by Stichelton (which is perhaps cheating).
I do find the general Francophobia wearying though. You can go to remote Alpine passes in France and find a cheese shop that serves two dozen or more cheeses.
Good quality is generally excellent in both France and Japan, even if Paris is not what what it was.
The same is certainly not true of Britain. Although I rate British food much higher than the average world citizen, it’s just very hard to get very good food much outside London without some decent planning, with the possible exception of the West Country.
The USA is, food speaking, a fucking nuclear wasteland.
This is a definite theme now. Turkish food is terrible. Way worse than, say, Germany or Holland (the worst in western Europe)
It’s down there with a middle income African country or somewhere like Oman
It is shite. In Erdogan’s gleaming Istanbul airport at their flashy Italian restaurant I ordered the Caprese salad. It came as cold sliced tomato with weird tasteless frigid bits of cheese, and chopped lettuce. That was it. No dressing, no nothing, No oil, no pepper, no salt. Zero. No pesto or basil. Disgusting
Not only was it dreadfully bad, the staff had no idea WHY it was bad, when I politely queried
It was like eating in an eerie, hallucinated version of 70s Britain, yet in a huge sparkly airport
In Sanliurfa the Head of Regional Culture and Tourism took me to a celebrated restaurant for their famous liver kebab. It was nice bits of liver, in a kebab, with an OK sauce. That was it. You could eat it in Camden at 3am after a big night and think Hmm, decent fast food. And they were trying to show off???
UGHHHHHHH
I haven't eaten in Turkey, but I was surprised at how bad the food was in Copenhagen (2018). What's the story with putting massive dollops of butter onto everything?
Posh Danish food is now world class. But everything beneath is still catching up (in Denmark)
Germany, Holland and the rest of Scandi are notably behind.
Britain is no longer the laggard, you can now eat better in the UK than most European countries (and certainly most countries around the world)
Spain, Italy and France are still superior to the UK. Tho Britain is edging France because of our better world cuisine, and insane French attachment to the Great Tradition
Nonetheless I’d have those three in the European Superleague, and Britain at the top of the next division, ahead of Greece and Portugal
How do you rate the great State of Louisiana?
Magnificent. The only state in the USA where I have eaten brilliant food, day after day
And it’s not just a New Orleans thing. The food in Louisiana outside NOLA is unusually excellent, even down to the breakfasts
Food culture is a weird thing. But Louisiana has it, and delivers it
I found Atlanta, Georgia, bizarrely good.
Absolute awful city in almost every way - except its food scene, which is weirdly great.
Generally the States can be disappointing for food.
You can eat really really well in most states of the US, but like so much of the US, its a place of two extremes. The "average" is absolutely shocking.
They haven’t had the gastropub Revolution that has happened in the UK and Australia, and which has been crucial
There will be at least one place in any average town with a talented chef who knows what he wants to do, and is having a bash
I saw a documentary on Australian food and they ascribed their food Revolution, almost entirely, to immigration but even more to foodie TV like Masterchef (which was invented in the UK but is wildly popular in its Aussie incarnation).
It makes total sense. Many millions watch Masterchef, pro and amateur. Watching a series is basically like doing a GCSE in cookery. You learn when to baste and how to fillet. You have a go. It’s brilliant. Most people I know, friends and family, can cook well - anyone under 60, that is
One thing that has improved a lot in the US over past 20 years is craft beer....they really gone for that. Its just the same place that will serve you a half decent beer brewed on site or locally, will serve you a meh burger and fries.
Not sure about your tv point. Don't the US have a load of shows just like that, Iron Chef etc, that are equally popular?
Agreed on the beer. American beer selections are now generally better than British. I hear rumours they are improving their cheese as well (it can’t get worse)
But the Masterchef thing is real. Australia has a less atomized culture than the USA, as does Britain
Eg Masterchef gets 5-6m viewers in the UK, thats nearly 10% of the entire country. The us version gets 1m, 0.3%
10% of people tuning in to learn about cooking is enough to change a cooking culture. 0.3% isn’t. And this is repeated over 30 years, beginning in the UK in 1990
American cheese has improved in just the four (almost) five years I've been here. As has their salami.
But it's still not as good as the UK.
France is still le grand fromage.
Corsica and Sardinia have the best cheese in the world. Esp Corsica. Tho Sardinia has the maggot cheese
Corsica is just incredible.You can drive 5km (which takes an hour on their roads) and the next village (which hates the previous village) has an entirely different and vastly superior cheese, and if you demur they all glare at you then turn away like you are a shameful sexual leper
After that they start being rude
Honestly tho the cheese is remarkable. And much of it never leaves the island
However in terms of getting great cheese in your average supermarket I reckon the UK wins, easily. We have all the noble British cheeses plus all the best mainland Europe cheeses, you just don’t get that selection in the EU (they all concentrate on their own cheeses)
The USA might be slowly catching up because they are now winning cheese awards, the same process as happened with their craft beer
However i reckon they are still 20 years behind the curve, so a long way to go, plus they have a culture more resistant to weird foods than better beers
I wonder if they had other reasons, not cheese related, for doing this?
Are there, truly, non-cheese-related reasons for doing things?
Happy memory: on my first venture into pb.com back in May 2005 the board was talking about cheese.
I don’t understand Labours bounce in polls, it’s been weeks since political ding dong at the budget, where Labour did respond quite well, and was worse received budget in media for more than a decade. It must be like people say, takes a couple of weeks to properly impact in polls.
To quote the great Dominic Cummings, most voters interact with politics as if it were on a TV behind the bar in a sports bar whilst Wrestlemania is on. Some stories impact slowly, many don't impact at all.
The changes in the media landscape haven't helped. The days when newspapers sold 4 or 5 million copies, or when 10 million watched News at Ten, are long gone.
We're not going back to a world where people could be corralled into watching a reasonably thorough review of the day's news because there were only four channels. Indeed, we don't really want to (do we?) But the change has come at a cost.
We were talking about TV viewing yesterday, so I looked the figures up. News at Six still gets 4-5 million a day, only outpaced by the soaps:
But as you'd expect, it's very much an age thing. Oldies watch around 6 hours a day of broadcast TV (though I suspect a lot of that is just having it on the background), whereas the 16-24 group only watch about an hour a day (which is more than people here were saying yesterday). The national average is still 3 hours a day:
Personally, I think Comte is the very best hard cheese, but I would point out too that Cheddar is internationally ubiquitous, and the very best Cheddar comes from England, too.
This is a definite theme now. Turkish food is terrible. Way worse than, say, Germany or Holland (the worst in western Europe)
It’s down there with a middle income African country or somewhere like Oman
It is shite. In Erdogan’s gleaming Istanbul airport at their flashy Italian restaurant I ordered the Caprese salad. It came as cold sliced tomato with weird tasteless frigid bits of cheese, and chopped lettuce. That was it. No dressing, no nothing, No oil, no pepper, no salt. Zero. No pesto or basil. Disgusting
Not only was it dreadfully bad, the staff had no idea WHY it was bad, when I politely queried
It was like eating in an eerie, hallucinated version of 70s Britain, yet in a huge sparkly airport
In Sanliurfa the Head of Regional Culture and Tourism took me to a celebrated restaurant for their famous liver kebab. It was nice bits of liver, in a kebab, with an OK sauce. That was it. You could eat it in Camden at 3am after a big night and think Hmm, decent fast food. And they were trying to show off???
UGHHHHHHH
I haven't eaten in Turkey, but I was surprised at how bad the food was in Copenhagen (2018). What's the story with putting massive dollops of butter onto everything?
Posh Danish food is now world class. But everything beneath is still catching up (in Denmark)
Germany, Holland and the rest of Scandi are notably behind.
Britain is no longer the laggard, you can now eat better in the UK than most European countries (and certainly most countries around the world)
Spain, Italy and France are still superior to the UK. Tho Britain is edging France because of our better world cuisine, and insane French attachment to the Great Tradition
Nonetheless I’d have those three in the European Superleague, and Britain at the top of the next division, ahead of Greece and Portugal
How do you rate the great State of Louisiana?
Magnificent. The only state in the USA where I have eaten brilliant food, day after day
And it’s not just a New Orleans thing. The food in Louisiana outside NOLA is unusually excellent, even down to the breakfasts
Food culture is a weird thing. But Louisiana has it, and delivers it
I found Atlanta, Georgia, bizarrely good.
Absolute awful city in almost every way - except its food scene, which is weirdly great.
Generally the States can be disappointing for food.
You can eat really really well in most states of the US, but like so much of the US, its a place of two extremes. The "average" is absolutely shocking.
They haven’t had the gastropub Revolution that has happened in the UK and Australia, and which has been crucial
There will be at least one place in any average town with a talented chef who knows what he wants to do, and is having a bash
I saw a documentary on Australian food and they ascribed their food Revolution, almost entirely, to immigration but even more to foodie TV like Masterchef (which was invented in the UK but is wildly popular in its Aussie incarnation).
It makes total sense. Many millions watch Masterchef, pro and amateur. Watching a series is basically like doing a GCSE in cookery. You learn when to baste and how to fillet. You have a go. It’s brilliant. Most people I know, friends and family, can cook well - anyone under 60, that is
One thing that has improved a lot in the US over past 20 years is craft beer....they really gone for that. Its just the same place that will serve you a half decent beer brewed on site or locally, will serve you a meh burger and fries.
Not sure about your tv point. Don't the US have a load of shows just like that, Iron Chef etc, that are equally popular?
Agreed on the beer. American beer selections are now generally better than British. I hear rumours they are improving their cheese as well (it can’t get worse)
But the Masterchef thing is real. Australia has a less atomized culture than the USA, as does Britain
Eg Masterchef gets 5-6m viewers in the UK, thats nearly 10% of the entire country. The us version gets 1m, 0.3%
10% of people tuning in to learn about cooking is enough to change a cooking culture. 0.3% isn’t. And this is repeated over 30 years, beginning in the UK in 1990
American cheese has improved in just the four (almost) five years I've been here. As has their salami.
But it's still not as good as the UK.
France is still le grand fromage.
Corsica and Sardinia have the best cheese in the world. Esp Corsica. Tho Sardinia has the maggot cheese
Corsica is just incredible.You can drive 5km (which takes an hour on their roads) and the next village (which hates the previous village) has an entirely different and vastly superior cheese, and if you demur they all glare at you then turn away like you are a shameful sexual leper
After that they start being rude
Honestly tho the cheese is remarkable. And much of it never leaves the island
However in terms of getting great cheese in your average supermarket I reckon the UK wins, easily. We have all the noble British cheeses plus all the best mainland Europe cheeses, you just don’t get that selection in the EU (they all concentrate on their own cheeses)
The USA might be slowly catching up because they are now winning cheese awards, the same process as happened with their craft beer
However i reckon they are still 20 years behind the curve, so a long way to go, plus they have a culture more resistant to weird foods than better beers
British cheese is a revelation. When I was a kid you could get several different sorts of Cheddar, plus Stilton at Christmas.
Cheddar or Cheshire.
Stilton was only something seen eaten by posh people on tv.
When I went to Newcastle as a student I found local supermarkets sold Red Leicester and Wensley Dale.
Rishi's star falls further as he donates £100, 000 to Winchester School
He has astonished me and Boris needs to move him on
So out of touch
"The donations fund bursaries for children whose parents would not otherwise be able to send them there."
I would have thought as a Conservative leaning voter you would be board with rich people donating so those fortunate can have access to top level education?
From my side of the political divide, a Chancellor properly funding a state system benefitting all children, rather than a private tax dodging bursary for one or two social climbers would be more appropriate.
Let's all laugh at 12 year old working class children, and call them names. Hurrah!
The chances are they won't be "gifted" children from a sink estate in Scunthorpe anyway, but less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
But I see your point, like Basil Fawlty said, "no riff-raff".
No. you are simply wrong. I was at one of these schools, I had friends who were on these bursaries, and they were not less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
I went to a provincial grammar school (granted, over 40 years ago) and the council house kids were looked down upon, and that was by both teachers and students. Fortunately for me, I was not from a council estate, so I was fine.
I go back to my original point. A well funded, well managed non-selective state school system for all those who want to achieve, would be my preference. Quite how one arrives at that point is for smarter people than me.
Or a 'comprehensive education, to make up for their comprehensive education' as Sir Humphrey and Jim Hacker promised!
I have told you many times before that prior to Ledbury Grammar School I went to an excellent High School. The rounded quality of the teaching, by enthusiastic, generally young teachers, enthused students into achieving excellent grades and several students in my year finished up with Oxford or Cambridge degrees and very impressive careers ( not me!). For example one became a British High Commissioner and another a keyboard player in the biggest band of the 1980s.
So why did it work? It was the early days of comprehensive education so it was properly funded. The teachers were motivated, and in turn motivated the students. All subjects were streamed by subject. So kids who were good at Maths were in set one for Maths, equally if they were poor at English they would have been in set 7 for English (a logistical nightmare, no doubt).
My children also went to an excellent RC Comprehensive School too. It was well funded and the teachers were motivated.
We want more faith schools too like your RC Comprehensive for your children.
Choice not one size fits all, whether academies, free schools, faith schools, some grammar schools, technical schools etc.
Not only bog standard comprehensives you have no alternative but to send your children to if of only average income or less
No comprehensive should be "bog standard". They should all be excellent.
I shouldn't have mentioned that my children went to an RC school (they, nor me are Catholic by the way). I fell into your faith school trap. Damn and blast!
What a ludicrous statement. You may as well say 'no supermarkets should be bog standard. They should all be excellent.'
The only way you get to excellence is consumer choice. Applies to education as much as business. Otherwise if there was no choice of supermarket, every supermarket would look like an Asda or Morrisons on a bad day
I don't know how they got into an RC school without being Catholic. Most faith schools require at least a minimum level of church attendance to get in '
None taken!
Supermarkets are not funded out of the public purse for the future benefit of the nation. If they are poor they wither and die. With publicly funded schools it doesn't quite work like that.
And I didn't furtively pretend to be the Pope to get them in. The school knew I was a godless heathen.
If state schools are inadequate they get rebranded as academies, if private schools are inadequate they go out of business.
Either way, they do not go on as before.
Sounds an unusual faith school anyway. The C of E faith school in Loughton for example awards points based on weekly church attendance. The more you attend, the more points you get regardless of how close you live to the school in the district. That is normally standard for most faith schools, C of E or RC. It gets 81% A* to C GCSE grades or the new points equivalent.
Your first paragraph reminds me of Lennie Henry's suggestion that "Windscale has been renamed as Sellarfield, so nuclear fallout would now be known as magic moonbeams".
That was Not The Nine O’Clock News - Mel Smith, Pam S, et al. not Lenny Henry
From ChemEurope.com
"Not the Nine O'Clock News also had a sketch, with a nod to a popular Ready Brek advert, about glowing children and Sellafield".
And
"Comedian Lenny Henry, impersonating newscaster Trevor McDonald, once reported that "Windscale is to be renamed Sellafield, because it sounds nicer. In future, radiation will be referred to as magic moonbeams".
Yes, the internet’s memory is different to mine. If so, my bad
(The weird thing is I can DISTINCTLY recall SEEING Pamela Stephenson make this joke, in my mind, how odd are the tricks of recall)
Memory is strange. Hence Mandela Effect. Strangely I had that when FW de Klerk died. Which I hope both would have found bleakly amusing. On which. How come I missed Tiger Woods nearly dying in a car crash? I have no memory whatsoever of that happening. And I read this board every day.
Exactly the same! Car crash?? Nearly fatal? What????
Was it during Covid? I think we all lost years of memory during Covid. Because we wanted to
Apparently it was 23 Feb 2021. I only know because apparently he is thinking of miraculously playing at the Masters this weekend. I have no memory of this whatsoever. Not an, oh yeah, forgot about that. But none. At all. I'm sure I was following the news. Glad it isn't just me. What else have we edited out?
We are all experiencing this. The brain is editing out this horrific collective memory, because it is so sad and repellent, but in doing this we are also erasing coincidental events, non-plague-related
I believe @SeanT once of this parish, anticipated this phenomenon.
Rishi's star falls further as he donates £100, 000 to Winchester School
He has astonished me and Boris needs to move him on
So out of touch
"The donations fund bursaries for children whose parents would not otherwise be able to send them there."
I would have thought as a Conservative leaning voter you would be board with rich people donating so those fortunate can have access to top level education?
From my side of the political divide, a Chancellor properly funding a state system benefitting all children, rather than a private tax dodging bursary for one or two social climbers would be more appropriate.
Let's all laugh at 12 year old working class children, and call them names. Hurrah!
The chances are they won't be "gifted" children from a sink estate in Scunthorpe anyway, but less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
But I see your point, like Basil Fawlty said, "no riff-raff".
No. you are simply wrong. I was at one of these schools, I had friends who were on these bursaries, and they were not less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
I went to a provincial grammar school (granted, over 40 years ago) and the council house kids were looked down upon, and that was by both teachers and students. Fortunately for me, I was not from a council estate, so I was fine.
I go back to my original point. A well funded, well managed non-selective state school system for all those who want to achieve, would be my preference. Quite how one arrives at that point is for smarter people than me.
Or a 'comprehensive education, to make up for their comprehensive education' as Sir Humphrey and Jim Hacker promised!
I have told you many times before that prior to Ledbury Grammar School I went to an excellent High School. The rounded quality of the teaching, by enthusiastic, generally young teachers, enthused students into achieving excellent grades and several students in my year finished up with Oxford or Cambridge degrees and very impressive careers ( not me!). For example one became a British High Commissioner and another a keyboard player in the biggest band of the 1980s.
So why did it work? It was the early days of comprehensive education so it was properly funded. The teachers were motivated, and in turn motivated the students. All subjects were streamed by subject. So kids who were good at Maths were in set one for Maths, equally if they were poor at English they would have been in set 7 for English (a logistical nightmare, no doubt).
My children also went to an excellent RC Comprehensive School too. It was well funded and the teachers were motivated.
We want more faith schools too like your RC Comprehensive for your children.
Choice not one size fits all, whether academies, free schools, faith schools, some grammar schools, technical schools etc.
Not only bog standard comprehensives you have no alternative but to send your children to if of only average income or less
Faith schools, my arse. Shut them down. I want children to be taught, not indoctrinated in superstitious mumbo-jumbo.
Tough, you are not in power. We Conservatives are. Even Blair recognised how good most faith schools were, so sent his children to them
Yes, I'm with Sandy and everyone else here. One, on principle. If you want to teach your children that there is a God and all the other tenets of your faith, go ahead, I suppose, but I don't see why I should get to pay for it. Two, in practice. There are faith (primary) schools in Sale, and they are consistently the worst performing - presumably because they are taking up teaching time with teaching religion.
I also find it faintly weird and not a little discomfiting that my kids' nominally secular primary schools still have hymns and prayers in assembly. Surely in the secular sector pretty much no-one believes in any of it: it's just a massive exercise in pointlessly going through the motions. I suppose that's some sort of training for life.
I remember when I was at primary school 30-40 years ago it was a charade back then too. A supply teacher joined us for a bit who was clearly a true believer, and seemed genuinely shocked by the inability of a hall full of junior school children to fully partake in care about the state mandated act of worship. She gave us all a good bollocking, of the extent to rouse the normally indiffernt headteacher from her study to see what was going on. The headteacher was as nonplussed as the rest of us with the supply teacher's explanation of 'they're begrudging God ten minutes of their day'. I'm sure the line 'for pity's sake, woman, can't you see we're just going through the motions here' was earnestly fought back in favour of whatever non-commital platitude actually came out.
I'm not seeking to pick a fight with the genuinely religious. But forcing religion on kids seems wrong. And teachers who don't believe forcing religion on kids who don't believe seems stupid and pointless.
I can't really see what there is to object to about a rousing chorus of 'We plough the fields and scatter' or 'Morning has broken'. It's nice. Replacing such classics with limp, anodyne dirges about picking up litter (as was happening toward the end of my time at primary) seems a backward step, regardless of belief.
Well that sounds amusingly stupid too.
Remembering further, we had two hymn books, an orange one and a blue one. The orange one had hymns you might recognise, the blue one was probably a bit more right-on - several of the hymns could probably be subtitled 'don't be racist, kids'. The blue one was used increasingly often as I went through the school. We were possibly going down the same route as you. I'd question the need to sing (or indeed pray) at all. I recognise the psychological impact of communal singing, and can probably understand the thinking behind it - if indeed there is any - but the psychological impact only works if it's a song that people want to sing. It works in gigs where people ar really, really, esctatically into the music; it works in football crowds where crowds genuinely believe, at least right then and there, that Stockport County, Stockport County FC are by far the greatest team the world has ever seen; it works in churches where people go voluntarily to express their belief. It works with drunks. It does not work with a bunch of slightly embarassed and resentful ten year olds who do not believe the words they are singing and feel ridiculous doing so. You can overcome this a bit, if the song is really, really good - you can emotionally believe in the melody even if you don't rationally believe in the words - but really, really good most primary school hymns are not.
Excellent post. I'm certain that singing in schools spoils singing for many people. It's quite an achievement to turn a natural and pleasurable activity into such a fucking grind but amazingly it happens. And in this case, we can pin the blame squarely on religious types. No 13 year old wants to sing Gloria in Excelsis Deo at 8.30 on a Monday morning. What on earth is wrong with the people that would make them do that?
Some of the greatest music ever written is hymns, what a ridiculous post
I happen to like The Proclaimers, but I wouldn't make you sing it joylessly every morning. Making people sing hymns every day is like FGM for the soul.
Hence as I said all faith schools should be mainly restricted to those who regularly attend church services or Mosques or Synagogue and actually have an interest in religion.
Everyone else can attend secular state or private schools without morning worship or hymns.
Except, I think, nominally secular schools still have a mandated act of worship. At least, my kids' schools do, and they are certainly not CofE schools.
Nobody has mentioned Film 4 much, yet it seems to underpin the entire British film industry and indeed has an reputation for investing in young talent.
It would pure vandalism to see it privatised and thereby destroyed. Indeed, it should be further invested in.
This is a definite theme now. Turkish food is terrible. Way worse than, say, Germany or Holland (the worst in western Europe)
It’s down there with a middle income African country or somewhere like Oman
It is shite. In Erdogan’s gleaming Istanbul airport at their flashy Italian restaurant I ordered the Caprese salad. It came as cold sliced tomato with weird tasteless frigid bits of cheese, and chopped lettuce. That was it. No dressing, no nothing, No oil, no pepper, no salt. Zero. No pesto or basil. Disgusting
Not only was it dreadfully bad, the staff had no idea WHY it was bad, when I politely queried
It was like eating in an eerie, hallucinated version of 70s Britain, yet in a huge sparkly airport
In Sanliurfa the Head of Regional Culture and Tourism took me to a celebrated restaurant for their famous liver kebab. It was nice bits of liver, in a kebab, with an OK sauce. That was it. You could eat it in Camden at 3am after a big night and think Hmm, decent fast food. And they were trying to show off???
UGHHHHHHH
I haven't eaten in Turkey, but I was surprised at how bad the food was in Copenhagen (2018). What's the story with putting massive dollops of butter onto everything?
Posh Danish food is now world class. But everything beneath is still catching up (in Denmark)
Germany, Holland and the rest of Scandi are notably behind.
Britain is no longer the laggard, you can now eat better in the UK than most European countries (and certainly most countries around the world)
Spain, Italy and France are still superior to the UK. Tho Britain is edging France because of our better world cuisine, and insane French attachment to the Great Tradition
Nonetheless I’d have those three in the European Superleague, and Britain at the top of the next division, ahead of Greece and Portugal
How do you rate the great State of Louisiana?
Magnificent. The only state in the USA where I have eaten brilliant food, day after day
And it’s not just a New Orleans thing. The food in Louisiana outside NOLA is unusually excellent, even down to the breakfasts
Food culture is a weird thing. But Louisiana has it, and delivers it
I found Atlanta, Georgia, bizarrely good.
Absolute awful city in almost every way - except its food scene, which is weirdly great.
Generally the States can be disappointing for food.
You can eat really really well in most states of the US, but like so much of the US, its a place of two extremes. The "average" is absolutely shocking.
They haven’t had the gastropub Revolution that has happened in the UK and Australia, and which has been crucial
There will be at least one place in any average town with a talented chef who knows what he wants to do, and is having a bash
I saw a documentary on Australian food and they ascribed their food Revolution, almost entirely, to immigration but even more to foodie TV like Masterchef (which was invented in the UK but is wildly popular in its Aussie incarnation).
It makes total sense. Many millions watch Masterchef, pro and amateur. Watching a series is basically like doing a GCSE in cookery. You learn when to baste and how to fillet. You have a go. It’s brilliant. Most people I know, friends and family, can cook well - anyone under 60, that is
One thing that has improved a lot in the US over past 20 years is craft beer....they really gone for that. Its just the same place that will serve you a half decent beer brewed on site or locally, will serve you a meh burger and fries.
Not sure about your tv point. Don't the US have a load of shows just like that, Iron Chef etc, that are equally popular?
Agreed on the beer. American beer selections are now generally better than British. I hear rumours they are improving their cheese as well (it can’t get worse)
But the Masterchef thing is real. Australia has a less atomized culture than the USA, as does Britain
Eg Masterchef gets 5-6m viewers in the UK, thats nearly 10% of the entire country. The us version gets 1m, 0.3%
10% of people tuning in to learn about cooking is enough to change a cooking culture. 0.3% isn’t. And this is repeated over 30 years, beginning in the UK in 1990
American cheese has improved in just the four (almost) five years I've been here. As has their salami.
But it's still not as good as the UK.
France is still le grand fromage.
Corsica and Sardinia have the best cheese in the world. Esp Corsica. Tho Sardinia has the maggot cheese
Corsica is just incredible.You can drive 5km (which takes an hour on their roads) and the next village (which hates the previous village) has an entirely different and vastly superior cheese, and if you demur they all glare at you then turn away like you are a shameful sexual leper
After that they start being rude
Honestly tho the cheese is remarkable. And much of it never leaves the island
However in terms of getting great cheese in your average supermarket I reckon the UK wins, easily. We have all the noble British cheeses plus all the best mainland Europe cheeses, you just don’t get that selection in the EU (they all concentrate on their own cheeses)
The USA might be slowly catching up because they are now winning cheese awards, the same process as happened with their craft beer
However i reckon they are still 20 years behind the curve, so a long way to go, plus they have a culture more resistant to weird foods than better beers
British cheese is a revelation. When I was a kid you could get several different sorts of Cheddar, plus Stilton at Christmas.
Confession: after trying all the cheeses of the world, sometimes given to me by the world cheese award winning cheese makers themselves, I have come to the conclusion that Colston Basset Stiltion, as served by my local Whole Foods in Camden, really is the best cheese in the world. The King of Cheeses
Unctuous, creamy, rich, intense, memorable, full of umami, just amazing
And i have had Holy Goat served to me by nuns in Victoria, Australia
It’s certainly the best blue cheese in the world. Only rivalled by Stichelton (which is perhaps cheating).
I do find the general Francophobia wearying though. You can go to remote Alpine passes in France and find a cheese shop that serves two dozen or more cheeses.
Good quality is generally excellent in both France and Japan, even if Paris is not what what it was.
The same is certainly not true of Britain. Although I rate British food much higher than the average world citizen, it’s just very hard to get very good food much outside London without some decent planning, with the possible exception of the West Country.
The USA is, food speaking, a fucking nuclear wasteland.
When I have expressed Francophobia?
I have put France in the top 3 food countries in Europe, tho behind Italy and Spain and in a bit of trouble - which seems fair (they admit this themselves)
I have said my ideal holiday would be a roadtrip around French cave art, meanwhile taking in their superb food and wine
That’s it
France is just suffering because of it self perceived - and globally projected - image as the best destination for food wine and much else. That is taking a knock as people discover other places, and their own countries. Is all.
So calm down
also “nuclear wasteland” is a bit harsh on American food. Try Izmir Turkey. OMFGGGGGGG
This is a definite theme now. Turkish food is terrible. Way worse than, say, Germany or Holland (the worst in western Europe)
It’s down there with a middle income African country or somewhere like Oman
It is shite. In Erdogan’s gleaming Istanbul airport at their flashy Italian restaurant I ordered the Caprese salad. It came as cold sliced tomato with weird tasteless frigid bits of cheese, and chopped lettuce. That was it. No dressing, no nothing, No oil, no pepper, no salt. Zero. No pesto or basil. Disgusting
Not only was it dreadfully bad, the staff had no idea WHY it was bad, when I politely queried
It was like eating in an eerie, hallucinated version of 70s Britain, yet in a huge sparkly airport
In Sanliurfa the Head of Regional Culture and Tourism took me to a celebrated restaurant for their famous liver kebab. It was nice bits of liver, in a kebab, with an OK sauce. That was it. You could eat it in Camden at 3am after a big night and think Hmm, decent fast food. And they were trying to show off???
UGHHHHHHH
I haven't eaten in Turkey, but I was surprised at how bad the food was in Copenhagen (2018). What's the story with putting massive dollops of butter onto everything?
Posh Danish food is now world class. But everything beneath is still catching up (in Denmark)
Germany, Holland and the rest of Scandi are notably behind.
Britain is no longer the laggard, you can now eat better in the UK than most European countries (and certainly most countries around the world)
Spain, Italy and France are still superior to the UK. Tho Britain is edging France because of our better world cuisine, and insane French attachment to the Great Tradition
Nonetheless I’d have those three in the European Superleague, and Britain at the top of the next division, ahead of Greece and Portugal
How do you rate the great State of Louisiana?
Magnificent. The only state in the USA where I have eaten brilliant food, day after day
And it’s not just a New Orleans thing. The food in Louisiana outside NOLA is unusually excellent, even down to the breakfasts
Food culture is a weird thing. But Louisiana has it, and delivers it
I found Atlanta, Georgia, bizarrely good.
Absolute awful city in almost every way - except its food scene, which is weirdly great.
Generally the States can be disappointing for food.
You can eat really really well in most states of the US, but like so much of the US, its a place of two extremes. The "average" is absolutely shocking.
They haven’t had the gastropub Revolution that has happened in the UK and Australia, and which has been crucial
There will be at least one place in any average town with a talented chef who knows what he wants to do, and is having a bash
I saw a documentary on Australian food and they ascribed their food Revolution, almost entirely, to immigration but even more to foodie TV like Masterchef (which was invented in the UK but is wildly popular in its Aussie incarnation).
It makes total sense. Many millions watch Masterchef, pro and amateur. Watching a series is basically like doing a GCSE in cookery. You learn when to baste and how to fillet. You have a go. It’s brilliant. Most people I know, friends and family, can cook well - anyone under 60, that is
One thing that has improved a lot in the US over past 20 years is craft beer....they really gone for that. Its just the same place that will serve you a half decent beer brewed on site or locally, will serve you a meh burger and fries.
Not sure about your tv point. Don't the US have a load of shows just like that, Iron Chef etc, that are equally popular?
Agreed on the beer. American beer selections are now generally better than British. I hear rumours they are improving their cheese as well (it can’t get worse)
But the Masterchef thing is real. Australia has a less atomized culture than the USA, as does Britain
Eg Masterchef gets 5-6m viewers in the UK, thats nearly 10% of the entire country. The us version gets 1m, 0.3%
10% of people tuning in to learn about cooking is enough to change a cooking culture. 0.3% isn’t. And this is repeated over 30 years, beginning in the UK in 1990
American cheese has improved in just the four (almost) five years I've been here. As has their salami.
But it's still not as good as the UK.
France is still le grand fromage.
Corsica and Sardinia have the best cheese in the world. Esp Corsica. Tho Sardinia has the maggot cheese
Corsica is just incredible.You can drive 5km (which takes an hour on their roads) and the next village (which hates the previous village) has an entirely different and vastly superior cheese, and if you demur they all glare at you then turn away like you are a shameful sexual leper
After that they start being rude
Honestly tho the cheese is remarkable. And much of it never leaves the island
However in terms of getting great cheese in your average supermarket I reckon the UK wins, easily. We have all the noble British cheeses plus all the best mainland Europe cheeses, you just don’t get that selection in the EU (they all concentrate on their own cheeses)
The USA might be slowly catching up because they are now winning cheese awards, the same process as happened with their craft beer
However i reckon they are still 20 years behind the curve, so a long way to go, plus they have a culture more resistant to weird foods than better beers
British cheese is a revelation. When I was a kid you could get several different sorts of Cheddar, plus Stilton at Christmas.
Confession: after trying all the cheeses of the world, sometimes given to me by the world cheese award winning cheese makers themselves, I have come to the conclusion that Colston Basset Stiltion, as served by my local Whole Foods in Camden, really is the best cheese in the world. The King of Cheeses
Unctuous, creamy, rich, intense, memorable, full of umami, just amazing
And i have had Holy Goat served to me by nuns in Victoria, Australia
It’s certainly the best blue cheese in the world. Only rivalled by Stichelton (which is perhaps cheating).
I do find the general Francophobia wearying though. You can go to remote Alpine passes in France and find a cheese shop that serves two dozen or more cheeses.
Good quality is generally excellent in both France and Japan, even if Paris is not what what it was.
The same is certainly not true of Britain. Although I rate British food much higher than the average world citizen, it’s just very hard to get very good food much outside London without some decent planning, with the possible exception of the West Country.
The USA is, food speaking, a fucking nuclear wasteland.
When I have expressed Francophobia?
I have put France in the top 3 food countries in Europe, tho behind Italy and Spain and in a bit of trouble - which seems fair (they admit this themselves)
I have said my ideal holiday would be a roadtrip around French cave art, meanwhile taking in their superb food and wine
That’s it
France is just suffering because of it self perceived - and globally projected - image as the best destination for food wine and much else. That is taking a knock as people discover other places, and their own countries. Is all.
So calm down
also “nuclear wasteland” is a bit harsh on American food. Try Izmir Turkey. OMFGGGGGGG
We have all been spoiled in Western Europe
My brother, who is a civil servant and not burdened with children, and thereby has the liberty to travel much more than me, warned me off Turkish food ten years ago.
He knows me well.
As a result, I have never yet deigned to visit the Sublime Porte.
This is a definite theme now. Turkish food is terrible. Way worse than, say, Germany or Holland (the worst in western Europe)
It’s down there with a middle income African country or somewhere like Oman
It is shite. In Erdogan’s gleaming Istanbul airport at their flashy Italian restaurant I ordered the Caprese salad. It came as cold sliced tomato with weird tasteless frigid bits of cheese, and chopped lettuce. That was it. No dressing, no nothing, No oil, no pepper, no salt. Zero. No pesto or basil. Disgusting
Not only was it dreadfully bad, the staff had no idea WHY it was bad, when I politely queried
It was like eating in an eerie, hallucinated version of 70s Britain, yet in a huge sparkly airport
In Sanliurfa the Head of Regional Culture and Tourism took me to a celebrated restaurant for their famous liver kebab. It was nice bits of liver, in a kebab, with an OK sauce. That was it. You could eat it in Camden at 3am after a big night and think Hmm, decent fast food. And they were trying to show off???
UGHHHHHHH
I haven't eaten in Turkey, but I was surprised at how bad the food was in Copenhagen (2018). What's the story with putting massive dollops of butter onto everything?
Posh Danish food is now world class. But everything beneath is still catching up (in Denmark)
Germany, Holland and the rest of Scandi are notably behind.
Britain is no longer the laggard, you can now eat better in the UK than most European countries (and certainly most countries around the world)
Spain, Italy and France are still superior to the UK. Tho Britain is edging France because of our better world cuisine, and insane French attachment to the Great Tradition
Nonetheless I’d have those three in the European Superleague, and Britain at the top of the next division, ahead of Greece and Portugal
How do you rate the great State of Louisiana?
Magnificent. The only state in the USA where I have eaten brilliant food, day after day
And it’s not just a New Orleans thing. The food in Louisiana outside NOLA is unusually excellent, even down to the breakfasts
Food culture is a weird thing. But Louisiana has it, and delivers it
I found Atlanta, Georgia, bizarrely good.
Absolute awful city in almost every way - except its food scene, which is weirdly great.
Generally the States can be disappointing for food.
You can eat really really well in most states of the US, but like so much of the US, its a place of two extremes. The "average" is absolutely shocking.
They haven’t had the gastropub Revolution that has happened in the UK and Australia, and which has been crucial
There will be at least one place in any average town with a talented chef who knows what he wants to do, and is having a bash
I saw a documentary on Australian food and they ascribed their food Revolution, almost entirely, to immigration but even more to foodie TV like Masterchef (which was invented in the UK but is wildly popular in its Aussie incarnation).
It makes total sense. Many millions watch Masterchef, pro and amateur. Watching a series is basically like doing a GCSE in cookery. You learn when to baste and how to fillet. You have a go. It’s brilliant. Most people I know, friends and family, can cook well - anyone under 60, that is
One thing that has improved a lot in the US over past 20 years is craft beer....they really gone for that. Its just the same place that will serve you a half decent beer brewed on site or locally, will serve you a meh burger and fries.
Not sure about your tv point. Don't the US have a load of shows just like that, Iron Chef etc, that are equally popular?
Agreed on the beer. American beer selections are now generally better than British. I hear rumours they are improving their cheese as well (it can’t get worse)
But the Masterchef thing is real. Australia has a less atomized culture than the USA, as does Britain
Eg Masterchef gets 5-6m viewers in the UK, thats nearly 10% of the entire country. The us version gets 1m, 0.3%
10% of people tuning in to learn about cooking is enough to change a cooking culture. 0.3% isn’t. And this is repeated over 30 years, beginning in the UK in 1990
American cheese has improved in just the four (almost) five years I've been here. As has their salami.
But it's still not as good as the UK.
France is still le grand fromage.
Corsica and Sardinia have the best cheese in the world. Esp Corsica. Tho Sardinia has the maggot cheese
Corsica is just incredible.You can drive 5km (which takes an hour on their roads) and the next village (which hates the previous village) has an entirely different and vastly superior cheese, and if you demur they all glare at you then turn away like you are a shameful sexual leper
After that they start being rude
Honestly tho the cheese is remarkable. And much of it never leaves the island
However in terms of getting great cheese in your average supermarket I reckon the UK wins, easily. We have all the noble British cheeses plus all the best mainland Europe cheeses, you just don’t get that selection in the EU (they all concentrate on their own cheeses)
The USA might be slowly catching up because they are now winning cheese awards, the same process as happened with their craft beer
However i reckon they are still 20 years behind the curve, so a long way to go, plus they have a culture more resistant to weird foods than better beers
British cheese is a revelation. When I was a kid you could get several different sorts of Cheddar, plus Stilton at Christmas.
Confession: after trying all the cheeses of the world, sometimes given to me by the world cheese award winning cheese makers themselves, I have come to the conclusion that Colston Basset Stiltion, as served by my local Whole Foods in Camden, really is the best cheese in the world. The King of Cheeses
Unctuous, creamy, rich, intense, memorable, full of umami, just amazing
And i have had Holy Goat served to me by nuns in Victoria, Australia
It’s certainly the best blue cheese in the world. Only rivalled by Stichelton (which is perhaps cheating).
I do find the general Francophobia wearying though. You can go to remote Alpine passes in France and find a cheese shop that serves two dozen or more cheeses.
Good quality is generally excellent in both France and Japan, even if Paris is not what what it was.
The same is certainly not true of Britain. Although I rate British food much higher than the average world citizen, it’s just very hard to get very good food much outside London without some decent planning, with the possible exception of the West Country.
The USA is, food speaking, a fucking nuclear wasteland.
Have you never visited New Orleans? Start of the morning with cafe au lait & beignets at Cafe du Monde (the one down the street from Lafayette Sq) then graze on from there . . .
Rishi's star falls further as he donates £100, 000 to Winchester School
He has astonished me and Boris needs to move him on
So out of touch
"The donations fund bursaries for children whose parents would not otherwise be able to send them there."
I would have thought as a Conservative leaning voter you would be board with rich people donating so those fortunate can have access to top level education?
From my side of the political divide, a Chancellor properly funding a state system benefitting all children, rather than a private tax dodging bursary for one or two social climbers would be more appropriate.
Let's all laugh at 12 year old working class children, and call them names. Hurrah!
The chances are they won't be "gifted" children from a sink estate in Scunthorpe anyway, but less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
But I see your point, like Basil Fawlty said, "no riff-raff".
No. you are simply wrong. I was at one of these schools, I had friends who were on these bursaries, and they were not less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
I went to a provincial grammar school (granted, over 40 years ago) and the council house kids were looked down upon, and that was by both teachers and students. Fortunately for me, I was not from a council estate, so I was fine.
I go back to my original point. A well funded, well managed non-selective state school system for all those who want to achieve, would be my preference. Quite how one arrives at that point is for smarter people than me.
Or a 'comprehensive education, to make up for their comprehensive education' as Sir Humphrey and Jim Hacker promised!
I have told you many times before that prior to Ledbury Grammar School I went to an excellent High School. The rounded quality of the teaching, by enthusiastic, generally young teachers, enthused students into achieving excellent grades and several students in my year finished up with Oxford or Cambridge degrees and very impressive careers ( not me!). For example one became a British High Commissioner and another a keyboard player in the biggest band of the 1980s.
So why did it work? It was the early days of comprehensive education so it was properly funded. The teachers were motivated, and in turn motivated the students. All subjects were streamed by subject. So kids who were good at Maths were in set one for Maths, equally if they were poor at English they would have been in set 7 for English (a logistical nightmare, no doubt).
My children also went to an excellent RC Comprehensive School too. It was well funded and the teachers were motivated.
We want more faith schools too like your RC Comprehensive for your children.
Choice not one size fits all, whether academies, free schools, faith schools, some grammar schools, technical schools etc.
Not only bog standard comprehensives you have no alternative but to send your children to if of only average income or less
No comprehensive should be "bog standard". They should all be excellent.
I shouldn't have mentioned that my children went to an RC school (they, nor me are Catholic by the way). I fell into your faith school trap. Damn and blast!
What a ludicrous statement. You may as well say 'no supermarkets should be bog standard. They should all be excellent.'
The only way you get to excellence is consumer choice. Applies to education as much as business. Otherwise if there was no choice of supermarket, every supermarket would look like an Asda or Morrisons on a bad day
I don't know how they got into an RC school without being Catholic. Most faith schools require at least a minimum level of church attendance to get in '
Nope my children went to a C of E school and we are atheists.
Also this consumer choice stuff you talk of; earlier you wanted state controlled energy pricing for oil companies. Make up your mind, do you want competition or state control.
You can just about get into a C of E primary school or an average faith school if you only live in the parish.
The top faith secondary schools however almost all require a high level of church attendance to get into them as they are very oversubscribed.
I was not proposing to nationalise all energy companies was I, which Corbyn would have done. Just requiring them to pass on lower energy prices to UK consumers as energy supply was expanded in the UK
I never said you were. I said you said state control of prices, which is what you are proposing. That is price fixing below the market price. How on earth you think that will work. I have no idea when there will be in parallel market priced fuel. Is the govt going to subsidize all imports? I assume not so the same fuel will have 2 different prices. How does that work? Maybe like Cuba where you get vouchers for some stuff and other stuff is at market rates. I could go on. Trade negotiations and deals for instance would be buggered. Fortunately we have Brexited because that would have been illegal. What about the oil companies. Why would they bother in the UK if the price is below the market price.
You say these things but have no idea.
No it wasn't, I said expand energy production including fracking and shale to increase supply thus reducing prices. Then force energy companies to pass those price cuts on.
That will have to happen not just here but across the world if governments are not to be thrown out of office over sky high energy prices by angry voters
You are just making stuff up now. You specifically said increasing production in the UK to reduce prices. When it was pointed out that it is a global commodity so you wouldn't get lower prices in the UK you said you would force the UK companies to sell their oil at a lower price than the global price. That can't be done for the reasons already stated.
True it would work if global production increased but that is not what you said originally. You specifically said to achieve this you just referred to just UK activity and specific UK price fixing.
Yes, increasing production here and globally will reduce energy prices. Indeed a government which expands fracking and shale production in the UK would expect energy prices to come down as a result and could tax the profits of the companies which do not pass on lower prices. Starmer has already made clear a Labour government will indeed impose a windfall tax on any excess profits being made by oil and gas companies in the UK when energy prices are rising
You still don't get commodity pricing do you:
a) The oil companies do not set the price, the market does. It is not a case of not passing it on. It sells at the market price, so this nonsense of taxing companies extra who don't pass it on is just that, nonsense as it is not within their control.
b) Increasing fracking in the UK has practically no impact on global prices so prices won't come down. Of course it will if global production increased BUT you didn't say that. You were specifically talking about the UK only initially. You said 'we', you referred to UK fracking, you referred to UK coal mines, you referred to Starmer. This is all UK.
c) You then referred to the UK companies having to pass on a price reduction, whatever that means. As pointed out by myself and others that is impossible in a global market place. It is only possible in authoritarian states typically communist where pricing can be state controlled internally ignoring the true market.
Rishi's star falls further as he donates £100, 000 to Winchester School
He has astonished me and Boris needs to move him on
So out of touch
"The donations fund bursaries for children whose parents would not otherwise be able to send them there."
I would have thought as a Conservative leaning voter you would be board with rich people donating so those fortunate can have access to top level education?
From my side of the political divide, a Chancellor properly funding a state system benefitting all children, rather than a private tax dodging bursary for one or two social climbers would be more appropriate.
Let's all laugh at 12 year old working class children, and call them names. Hurrah!
The chances are they won't be "gifted" children from a sink estate in Scunthorpe anyway, but less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
But I see your point, like Basil Fawlty said, "no riff-raff".
No. you are simply wrong. I was at one of these schools, I had friends who were on these bursaries, and they were not less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
I went to a provincial grammar school (granted, over 40 years ago) and the council house kids were looked down upon, and that was by both teachers and students. Fortunately for me, I was not from a council estate, so I was fine.
I go back to my original point. A well funded, well managed non-selective state school system for all those who want to achieve, would be my preference. Quite how one arrives at that point is for smarter people than me.
Or a 'comprehensive education, to make up for their comprehensive education' as Sir Humphrey and Jim Hacker promised!
I have told you many times before that prior to Ledbury Grammar School I went to an excellent High School. The rounded quality of the teaching, by enthusiastic, generally young teachers, enthused students into achieving excellent grades and several students in my year finished up with Oxford or Cambridge degrees and very impressive careers ( not me!). For example one became a British High Commissioner and another a keyboard player in the biggest band of the 1980s.
So why did it work? It was the early days of comprehensive education so it was properly funded. The teachers were motivated, and in turn motivated the students. All subjects were streamed by subject. So kids who were good at Maths were in set one for Maths, equally if they were poor at English they would have been in set 7 for English (a logistical nightmare, no doubt).
My children also went to an excellent RC Comprehensive School too. It was well funded and the teachers were motivated.
We want more faith schools too like your RC Comprehensive for your children.
Choice not one size fits all, whether academies, free schools, faith schools, some grammar schools, technical schools etc.
Not only bog standard comprehensives you have no alternative but to send your children to if of only average income or less
Faith schools, my arse. Shut them down. I want children to be taught, not indoctrinated in superstitious mumbo-jumbo.
Tough, you are not in power. We Conservatives are. Even Blair recognised how good most faith schools were, so sent his children to them
Yes, I'm with Sandy and everyone else here. One, on principle. If you want to teach your children that there is a God and all the other tenets of your faith, go ahead, I suppose, but I don't see why I should get to pay for it. Two, in practice. There are faith (primary) schools in Sale, and they are consistently the worst performing - presumably because they are taking up teaching time with teaching religion.
I also find it faintly weird and not a little discomfiting that my kids' nominally secular primary schools still have hymns and prayers in assembly. Surely in the secular sector pretty much no-one believes in any of it: it's just a massive exercise in pointlessly going through the motions. I suppose that's some sort of training for life.
I remember when I was at primary school 30-40 years ago it was a charade back then too. A supply teacher joined us for a bit who was clearly a true believer, and seemed genuinely shocked by the inability of a hall full of junior school children to fully partake in care about the state mandated act of worship. She gave us all a good bollocking, of the extent to rouse the normally indiffernt headteacher from her study to see what was going on. The headteacher was as nonplussed as the rest of us with the supply teacher's explanation of 'they're begrudging God ten minutes of their day'. I'm sure the line 'for pity's sake, woman, can't you see we're just going through the motions here' was earnestly fought back in favour of whatever non-commital platitude actually came out.
I'm not seeking to pick a fight with the genuinely religious. But forcing religion on kids seems wrong. And teachers who don't believe forcing religion on kids who don't believe seems stupid and pointless.
I can't really see what there is to object to about a rousing chorus of 'We plough the fields and scatter' or 'Morning has broken'. It's nice. Replacing such classics with limp, anodyne dirges about picking up litter (as was happening toward the end of my time at primary) seems a backward step, regardless of belief.
Well that sounds amusingly stupid too.
Remembering further, we had two hymn books, an orange one and a blue one. The orange one had hymns you might recognise, the blue one was probably a bit more right-on - several of the hymns could probably be subtitled 'don't be racist, kids'. The blue one was used increasingly often as I went through the school. We were possibly going down the same route as you. I'd question the need to sing (or indeed pray) at all. I recognise the psychological impact of communal singing, and can probably understand the thinking behind it - if indeed there is any - but the psychological impact only works if it's a song that people want to sing. It works in gigs where people ar really, really, esctatically into the music; it works in football crowds where crowds genuinely believe, at least right then and there, that Stockport County, Stockport County FC are by far the greatest team the world has ever seen; it works in churches where people go voluntarily to express their belief. It works with drunks. It does not work with a bunch of slightly embarassed and resentful ten year olds who do not believe the words they are singing and feel ridiculous doing so. You can overcome this a bit, if the song is really, really good - you can emotionally believe in the melody even if you don't rationally believe in the words - but really, really good most primary school hymns are not.
Excellent post. I'm certain that singing in schools spoils singing for many people. It's quite an achievement to turn a natural and pleasurable activity into such a fucking grind but amazingly it happens. And in this case, we can pin the blame squarely on religious types. No 13 year old wants to sing Gloria in Excelsis Deo at 8.30 on a Monday morning. What on earth is wrong with the people that would make them do that?
Some of the greatest music ever written is hymns, what a ridiculous post
I happen to like The Proclaimers, but I wouldn't make you sing it joylessly every morning. Making people sing hymns every day is like FGM for the soul.
Hence as I said all faith schools should be mainly restricted to those who regularly attend church services or Mosques or Synagogue and actually have an interest in religion.
Everyone else can attend secular state or private schools without morning worship or hymns.
Except, I think, nominally secular schools still have a mandated act of worship. At least, my kids' schools do, and they are certainly not CofE schools.
In nominal terms but parents can withdraw their children from it and OFSTED do not monitor it
This is a definite theme now. Turkish food is terrible. Way worse than, say, Germany or Holland (the worst in western Europe)
It’s down there with a middle income African country or somewhere like Oman
It is shite. In Erdogan’s gleaming Istanbul airport at their flashy Italian restaurant I ordered the Caprese salad. It came as cold sliced tomato with weird tasteless frigid bits of cheese, and chopped lettuce. That was it. No dressing, no nothing, No oil, no pepper, no salt. Zero. No pesto or basil. Disgusting
Not only was it dreadfully bad, the staff had no idea WHY it was bad, when I politely queried
It was like eating in an eerie, hallucinated version of 70s Britain, yet in a huge sparkly airport
In Sanliurfa the Head of Regional Culture and Tourism took me to a celebrated restaurant for their famous liver kebab. It was nice bits of liver, in a kebab, with an OK sauce. That was it. You could eat it in Camden at 3am after a big night and think Hmm, decent fast food. And they were trying to show off???
UGHHHHHHH
I haven't eaten in Turkey, but I was surprised at how bad the food was in Copenhagen (2018). What's the story with putting massive dollops of butter onto everything?
Posh Danish food is now world class. But everything beneath is still catching up (in Denmark)
Germany, Holland and the rest of Scandi are notably behind.
Britain is no longer the laggard, you can now eat better in the UK than most European countries (and certainly most countries around the world)
Spain, Italy and France are still superior to the UK. Tho Britain is edging France because of our better world cuisine, and insane French attachment to the Great Tradition
Nonetheless I’d have those three in the European Superleague, and Britain at the top of the next division, ahead of Greece and Portugal
How do you rate the great State of Louisiana?
Magnificent. The only state in the USA where I have eaten brilliant food, day after day
And it’s not just a New Orleans thing. The food in Louisiana outside NOLA is unusually excellent, even down to the breakfasts
Food culture is a weird thing. But Louisiana has it, and delivers it
I found Atlanta, Georgia, bizarrely good.
Absolute awful city in almost every way - except its food scene, which is weirdly great.
Generally the States can be disappointing for food.
You can eat really really well in most states of the US, but like so much of the US, its a place of two extremes. The "average" is absolutely shocking.
They haven’t had the gastropub Revolution that has happened in the UK and Australia, and which has been crucial
There will be at least one place in any average town with a talented chef who knows what he wants to do, and is having a bash
I saw a documentary on Australian food and they ascribed their food Revolution, almost entirely, to immigration but even more to foodie TV like Masterchef (which was invented in the UK but is wildly popular in its Aussie incarnation).
It makes total sense. Many millions watch Masterchef, pro and amateur. Watching a series is basically like doing a GCSE in cookery. You learn when to baste and how to fillet. You have a go. It’s brilliant. Most people I know, friends and family, can cook well - anyone under 60, that is
One thing that has improved a lot in the US over past 20 years is craft beer....they really gone for that. Its just the same place that will serve you a half decent beer brewed on site or locally, will serve you a meh burger and fries.
Not sure about your tv point. Don't the US have a load of shows just like that, Iron Chef etc, that are equally popular?
Agreed on the beer. American beer selections are now generally better than British. I hear rumours they are improving their cheese as well (it can’t get worse)
But the Masterchef thing is real. Australia has a less atomized culture than the USA, as does Britain
Eg Masterchef gets 5-6m viewers in the UK, thats nearly 10% of the entire country. The us version gets 1m, 0.3%
10% of people tuning in to learn about cooking is enough to change a cooking culture. 0.3% isn’t. And this is repeated over 30 years, beginning in the UK in 1990
American cheese has improved in just the four (almost) five years I've been here. As has their salami.
But it's still not as good as the UK.
France is still le grand fromage.
Corsica and Sardinia have the best cheese in the world. Esp Corsica. Tho Sardinia has the maggot cheese
Corsica is just incredible.You can drive 5km (which takes an hour on their roads) and the next village (which hates the previous village) has an entirely different and vastly superior cheese, and if you demur they all glare at you then turn away like you are a shameful sexual leper
After that they start being rude
Honestly tho the cheese is remarkable. And much of it never leaves the island
However in terms of getting great cheese in your average supermarket I reckon the UK wins, easily. We have all the noble British cheeses plus all the best mainland Europe cheeses, you just don’t get that selection in the EU (they all concentrate on their own cheeses)
The USA might be slowly catching up because they are now winning cheese awards, the same process as happened with their craft beer
However i reckon they are still 20 years behind the curve, so a long way to go, plus they have a culture more resistant to weird foods than better beers
British cheese is a revelation. When I was a kid you could get several different sorts of Cheddar, plus Stilton at Christmas.
Confession: after trying all the cheeses of the world, sometimes given to me by the world cheese award winning cheese makers themselves, I have come to the conclusion that Colston Basset Stiltion, as served by my local Whole Foods in Camden, really is the best cheese in the world. The King of Cheeses
Unctuous, creamy, rich, intense, memorable, full of umami, just amazing
And i have had Holy Goat served to me by nuns in Victoria, Australia
It’s certainly the best blue cheese in the world. Only rivalled by Stichelton (which is perhaps cheating).
I do find the general Francophobia wearying though. You can go to remote Alpine passes in France and find a cheese shop that serves two dozen or more cheeses.
Good quality is generally excellent in both France and Japan, even if Paris is not what what it was.
The same is certainly not true of Britain. Although I rate British food much higher than the average world citizen, it’s just very hard to get very good food much outside London without some decent planning, with the possible exception of the West Country.
The USA is, food speaking, a fucking nuclear wasteland.
Have you never visited New Orleans? Start of the morning with cafe au lait & beignets at Cafe du Monde (the one down the street from Lafayette Sq) then graze on from there . . .
I’m have, I have. New Orleans and Louisiana are exceptional. I agree with the general sentiments on this thread.
Nobody has mentioned Film 4 much, yet it seems to underpin the entire British film industry and indeed has an reputation for investing in young talent.
It would pure vandalism to see it privatised and thereby destroyed. Indeed, it should be further invested in.
Film4 budget is absolutely tiny, its like £30 million a year. Netflix are spending a £1bn a year in the UK, Sky Studios have invested in a massive production facility at Elstree and are spending £1.5bn over 5 years.
That isn't to say they don't fund some interesting films, but its just totally dwarfed by what the big boys are now investing in UK tv and film production.
Personally, I think Comte is the very best hard cheese, but I would point out too that Cheddar is internationally ubiquitous, and the very best Cheddar comes from England, too.
i agree on the hard cheese of the Alpine foothills. Magical
Tho for melting purposes, a very extreme Cheddar is heard to beat. Cornish Cove, say
Nobody has mentioned Film 4 much, yet it seems to underpin the entire British film industry and indeed has an reputation for investing in young talent.
It would pure vandalism to see it privatised and thereby destroyed. Indeed, it should be further invested in.
Film4 budget is absolutely tiny, its like £30 million a year. Netflix are spending a £1bn a year, Sky have invested in a massive production facility at Elstree and are spending £1.5bn over 5 years.
Nobody has mentioned Film 4 much, yet it seems to underpin the entire British film industry and indeed has an reputation for investing in young talent.
It would pure vandalism to see it privatised and thereby destroyed. Indeed, it should be further invested in.
Film4 budget is absolutely tiny, its like £30 million a year. Netflix are spending a £1bn a year in the UK, Sky Studios have invested in a massive production facility at Elstree and are spending £1.5bn over 5 years.
That isn't to say they don't fund some interesting films, but its just totally dwarfed by what the big boys are now investing in UK tv and film production.
Netflix and the rest have a smell of never mind the quality, feel the width.
Nobody has mentioned Film 4 much, yet it seems to underpin the entire British film industry and indeed has an reputation for investing in young talent.
It would pure vandalism to see it privatised and thereby destroyed. Indeed, it should be further invested in.
Film4 budget is absolutely tiny, its like £30 million a year. Netflix are spending a £1bn a year, Sky have invested in a massive production facility at Elstree and are spending £1.5bn over 5 years.
Yeah, and look at what it achieves nonetheless.
But to say it underpins the entire British film industry is demonstrably untrue. Its funds some interesting niche movies, which is fine. But what is underpinning the UK tv and film industry is the likes of the massive investment by Sky Studios. £30 million quid is the what Netflix spends of a handful episodes of the Crown.
I’m eating the Toblerone from my minibar, because the food in Izmir is so bad
Why stay there? Only an hour down the road to Selcuk to see Ephesus. Perfectly good restaurants there.
Or push on to Kusadasi for some wonderful seafront fish restaurants.
But the sea is right here. I can view it from my hotel
I do wonder if the terrible inflation crisis is making yer generally mediocre Turkish food much worse than normal
Turkish food is never great, It has always been overrated by its fans (like Lebanese). I’ve been here too many times and been sorely disappointed.
But this is a new level of dire
I liked Ephesus, but was more impressed at looking down on the River Menderes (Maiandros in Greek) and twigging the origin of the English verb.
Any recommendations of how to do Ephesus? 3 hours enough? Avoid local bars? Take a flask of arak?
These days my culture ceiling runs at about 60-90 minutes, and I was in Ephesus a long while ago. So perhaps not the person to ask.
I think the Library is the main thing, and the museum and amphitheatre. Then the rest is just wandering around to breath in the scale of things. You will probably have seen way better ruins. But it is nice to sit down with a Turkish tea or coffee and take in the surroundings.
I don’t understand Labours bounce in polls, it’s been weeks since political ding dong at the budget, where Labour did respond quite well, and was worse received budget in media for more than a decade. It must be like people say, takes a couple of weeks to properly impact in polls.
To quote the great Dominic Cummings, most voters interact with politics as if it were on a TV behind the bar in a sports bar whilst Wrestlemania is on. Some stories impact slowly, many don't impact at all.
The changes in the media landscape haven't helped. The days when newspapers sold 4 or 5 million copies, or when 10 million watched News at Ten, are long gone.
We're not going back to a world where people could be corralled into watching a reasonably thorough review of the day's news because there were only four channels. Indeed, we don't really want to (do we?) But the change has come at a cost.
We were talking about TV viewing yesterday, so I looked the figures up. News at Six still gets 4-5 million a day, only outpaced by the soaps:
But as you'd expect, it's very much an age thing. Oldies watch around 6 hours a day of broadcast TV (though I suspect a lot of that is just having it on the background), whereas the 16-24 group only watch about an hour a day (which is more than people here were saying yesterday). The national average is still 3 hours a day:
What is the methodology they use to ascertain these break down for age / watching time figures?
It seems to be a mixture of an Ipsos-Mori poll and actual installation of a meter. Participants are not paid but are"thanked" (how British) and get gift vouchers. I wonder if the elaborate process introduces a bias to people who can be bothered with it (but you could say the same about YouGov and other panels and they seem to work).
Rishi's star falls further as he donates £100, 000 to Winchester School
He has astonished me and Boris needs to move him on
So out of touch
"The donations fund bursaries for children whose parents would not otherwise be able to send them there."
I would have thought as a Conservative leaning voter you would be board with rich people donating so those fortunate can have access to top level education?
From my side of the political divide, a Chancellor properly funding a state system benefitting all children, rather than a private tax dodging bursary for one or two social climbers would be more appropriate.
Let's all laugh at 12 year old working class children, and call them names. Hurrah!
The chances are they won't be "gifted" children from a sink estate in Scunthorpe anyway, but less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
But I see your point, like Basil Fawlty said, "no riff-raff".
No. you are simply wrong. I was at one of these schools, I had friends who were on these bursaries, and they were not less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
I went to a provincial grammar school (granted, over 40 years ago) and the council house kids were looked down upon, and that was by both teachers and students. Fortunately for me, I was not from a council estate, so I was fine.
I go back to my original point. A well funded, well managed non-selective state school system for all those who want to achieve, would be my preference. Quite how one arrives at that point is for smarter people than me.
Or a 'comprehensive education, to make up for their comprehensive education' as Sir Humphrey and Jim Hacker promised!
I have told you many times before that prior to Ledbury Grammar School I went to an excellent High School. The rounded quality of the teaching, by enthusiastic, generally young teachers, enthused students into achieving excellent grades and several students in my year finished up with Oxford or Cambridge degrees and very impressive careers ( not me!). For example one became a British High Commissioner and another a keyboard player in the biggest band of the 1980s.
So why did it work? It was the early days of comprehensive education so it was properly funded. The teachers were motivated, and in turn motivated the students. All subjects were streamed by subject. So kids who were good at Maths were in set one for Maths, equally if they were poor at English they would have been in set 7 for English (a logistical nightmare, no doubt).
My children also went to an excellent RC Comprehensive School too. It was well funded and the teachers were motivated.
We want more faith schools too like your RC Comprehensive for your children.
Choice not one size fits all, whether academies, free schools, faith schools, some grammar schools, technical schools etc.
Not only bog standard comprehensives you have no alternative but to send your children to if of only average income or less
Faith schools, my arse. Shut them down. I want children to be taught, not indoctrinated in superstitious mumbo-jumbo.
Tough, you are not in power. We Conservatives are. Even Blair recognised how good most faith schools were, so sent his children to them
Yes, I'm with Sandy and everyone else here. One, on principle. If you want to teach your children that there is a God and all the other tenets of your faith, go ahead, I suppose, but I don't see why I should get to pay for it. Two, in practice. There are faith (primary) schools in Sale, and they are consistently the worst performing - presumably because they are taking up teaching time with teaching religion.
I also find it faintly weird and not a little discomfiting that my kids' nominally secular primary schools still have hymns and prayers in assembly. Surely in the secular sector pretty much no-one believes in any of it: it's just a massive exercise in pointlessly going through the motions. I suppose that's some sort of training for life.
I remember when I was at primary school 30-40 years ago it was a charade back then too. A supply teacher joined us for a bit who was clearly a true believer, and seemed genuinely shocked by the inability of a hall full of junior school children to fully partake in care about the state mandated act of worship. She gave us all a good bollocking, of the extent to rouse the normally indiffernt headteacher from her study to see what was going on. The headteacher was as nonplussed as the rest of us with the supply teacher's explanation of 'they're begrudging God ten minutes of their day'. I'm sure the line 'for pity's sake, woman, can't you see we're just going through the motions here' was earnestly fought back in favour of whatever non-commital platitude actually came out.
I'm not seeking to pick a fight with the genuinely religious. But forcing religion on kids seems wrong. And teachers who don't believe forcing religion on kids who don't believe seems stupid and pointless.
'Everyone else on here' ie you and him.
However that is of course standard practice of the left, close down anything successful. As we saw earlier in the anti private school sentiment, now the sentiment to shit down successful faith schools and of course mainly Labour councils closing of grammar schools.
Taken to its logical extreme if Corbyn had got in power for an extended period of time he and McConnell would of course here nationalised any successful private company they could too. Including most of the FTSE 100.
One size fits all bog standard education and mass nationalised industry and services. That remains the leftist utopia even if it had to compromise to win elections and get into power.
I also pay taxes for your childrens education. If parents of faith wish to send their children to faith schools they are as entitled to do so as parents of no faith are entitled to send their children to non faith schools.
By selecting for faith schools based on church attendance we can also ensure we keep your children out and non Christian teachers out so they don't have to undertake the prayers and hymns we Christians are committed to. We in turn do not have to send our children to secular assemblies we don't want our children to participate in in non faith schools which your children can attend instead.
'Everyone else on here, ie you and him'
As with nearly ever subject it is you and nobody else. That is fair enough. You are entitled to your opinions and express them on anything and it is great that you do, but you are deluded if you think others are agreeing with you here. Of course you could argue that we aren't typical and you would be correct but your assertion 'you and him' was in fact not 2 people but everyone who responded. It is also worth reflecting that we are a cross section of political views although I appreciate you don't think Tories on here are true Tories and you might be correct that they aren't typical of society. They are generally must more intelligent than the average voter.
Of course I am largely a minority on here because most PBers are secular liberals. Including you. Whereas I am a religious conservative.
However millions of other religious conservatives exist, even here in the UK, a country far more liberal and secular than the global average
I’m standing with you in that minority too as I am a CoE religion and Conservative in my politics too HY.
But I vote Libdem because the Conservative party are right of centre Populists now, like their media support first drifted that way, digging out the roots of a proper Conservative Party.
Maybe you are in tune with this Populist unConservative nonsense and prefer it, or the penny hadn’t dropped for you yet.
On faith schools LDs are at least rather more tolerant of schools for people of faith than the left of Labour certainly
This Libdem is certainly on message with Libdem policy and HY on Faith schools. Religion plays an important role in socialisation, instilling the difference between right and wrong imo, but so much more, it helps to build aware and resilient people, and through charity work in your teens you can be born into a tribe in a way that is overlooked how important it is to have a social consciousness.
Having been in this room for about six months now, it strikes my how many posters who I first knew from very anti government posts are actually Conservative voters, even members and canvassers in past, but lapsed (apart from holding their nose to rightly keep Corbyn out). That could so easily have been me.
I realise now I also stand with them HY. There is a difference between us in your not calling out this government for what it is. Wether you like what it is or not, there should be the acknowledgement it is not conservatism.
As a proper Conservative I reject all forms of populism. Populism pushes the idea of popular sovereignty above the independence of democratic institutions, and the professionalism of the representatives of those institutions. Where populism doesn’t like government, politics or politicians, as true Conservatives we will oppose that populism. There are always divisions of interest and opinion, but itis duty of all democratic politicians to take account of them. This means there is a legitimacy to all opposition, and your opponents and their opinions, in politics, or in the press, deserve respect. But we have a government and leadership who operate with such disregard for the checks and balances of democratic structure, ignoring or circumventing wherever they can.
I believe, if Tugendhat or anyone wants to run from the back benches against Boris and his cronies, building their bid on the paragraph I just gave them, Big Dog goes the way of the Dodo.
Nobody has mentioned Film 4 much, yet it seems to underpin the entire British film industry and indeed has an reputation for investing in young talent.
It would pure vandalism to see it privatised and thereby destroyed. Indeed, it should be further invested in.
Film4 budget is absolutely tiny, its like £30 million a year. Netflix are spending a £1bn a year, Sky have invested in a massive production facility at Elstree and are spending £1.5bn over 5 years.
Yeah, and look at what it achieves nonetheless.
But to say it underpins the entire British film industry is demonstrably untrue. Its funds some interesting niche movies, which is fine. But what is underpinning the UK tv and film industry is the likes of the massive investment by Sky Studios.
My understanding, which is based on talking to industry contacts, but may be false, is that Four specifically targets young talent.
Rishi's star falls further as he donates £100, 000 to Winchester School
He has astonished me and Boris needs to move him on
So out of touch
"The donations fund bursaries for children whose parents would not otherwise be able to send them there."
I would have thought as a Conservative leaning voter you would be board with rich people donating so those fortunate can have access to top level education?
From my side of the political divide, a Chancellor properly funding a state system benefitting all children, rather than a private tax dodging bursary for one or two social climbers would be more appropriate.
Let's all laugh at 12 year old working class children, and call them names. Hurrah!
The chances are they won't be "gifted" children from a sink estate in Scunthorpe anyway, but less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
But I see your point, like Basil Fawlty said, "no riff-raff".
No. you are simply wrong. I was at one of these schools, I had friends who were on these bursaries, and they were not less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
I went to a provincial grammar school (granted, over 40 years ago) and the council house kids were looked down upon, and that was by both teachers and students. Fortunately for me, I was not from a council estate, so I was fine.
I go back to my original point. A well funded, well managed non-selective state school system for all those who want to achieve, would be my preference. Quite how one arrives at that point is for smarter people than me.
Or a 'comprehensive education, to make up for their comprehensive education' as Sir Humphrey and Jim Hacker promised!
I have told you many times before that prior to Ledbury Grammar School I went to an excellent High School. The rounded quality of the teaching, by enthusiastic, generally young teachers, enthused students into achieving excellent grades and several students in my year finished up with Oxford or Cambridge degrees and very impressive careers ( not me!). For example one became a British High Commissioner and another a keyboard player in the biggest band of the 1980s.
So why did it work? It was the early days of comprehensive education so it was properly funded. The teachers were motivated, and in turn motivated the students. All subjects were streamed by subject. So kids who were good at Maths were in set one for Maths, equally if they were poor at English they would have been in set 7 for English (a logistical nightmare, no doubt).
My children also went to an excellent RC Comprehensive School too. It was well funded and the teachers were motivated.
We want more faith schools too like your RC Comprehensive for your children.
Choice not one size fits all, whether academies, free schools, faith schools, some grammar schools, technical schools etc.
Not only bog standard comprehensives you have no alternative but to send your children to if of only average income or less
No comprehensive should be "bog standard". They should all be excellent.
I shouldn't have mentioned that my children went to an RC school (they, nor me are Catholic by the way). I fell into your faith school trap. Damn and blast!
What a ludicrous statement. You may as well say 'no supermarkets should be bog standard. They should all be excellent.'
The only way you get to excellence is consumer choice. Applies to education as much as business. Otherwise if there was no choice of supermarket, every supermarket would look like an Asda or Morrisons on a bad day
I don't know how they got into an RC school without being Catholic. Most faith schools require at least a minimum level of church attendance to get in '
None taken!
Supermarkets are not funded out of the public purse for the future benefit of the nation. If they are poor they wither and die. With publicly funded schools it doesn't quite work like that.
And I didn't furtively pretend to be the Pope to get them in. The school knew I was a godless heathen.
If state schools are inadequate they get rebranded as academies, if private schools are inadequate they go out of business.
Either way, they do not go on as before.
Sounds an unusual faith school anyway. The C of E faith school in Loughton for example awards points based on weekly church attendance. The more you attend, the more points you get regardless of how close you live to the school in the district. That is normally standard for most faith schools, C of E or RC. It gets 81% A* to C GCSE grades or the new points equivalent.
Your first paragraph reminds me of Lennie Henry's suggestion that "Windscale has been renamed as Sellarfield, so nuclear fallout would now be known as magic moonbeams".
That was Not The Nine O’Clock News - Mel Smith, Pam S, et al. not Lenny Henry
From ChemEurope.com
"Not the Nine O'Clock News also had a sketch, with a nod to a popular Ready Brek advert, about glowing children and Sellafield".
And
"Comedian Lenny Henry, impersonating newscaster Trevor McDonald, once reported that "Windscale is to be renamed Sellafield, because it sounds nicer. In future, radiation will be referred to as magic moonbeams".
Yes, the internet’s memory is different to mine. If so, my bad
(The weird thing is I can DISTINCTLY recall SEEING Pamela Stephenson make this joke, in my mind, how odd are the tricks of recall)
Memory is strange. Hence Mandela Effect. Strangely I had that when FW de Klerk died. Which I hope both would have found bleakly amusing. On which. How come I missed Tiger Woods nearly dying in a car crash? I have no memory whatsoever of that happening. And I read this board every day.
Exactly the same! Car crash?? Nearly fatal? What????
Was it during Covid? I think we all lost years of memory during Covid. Because we wanted to
Apparently it was 23 Feb 2021. I only know because apparently he is thinking of miraculously playing at the Masters this weekend. I have no memory of this whatsoever. Not an, oh yeah, forgot about that. But none. At all. I'm sure I was following the news. Glad it isn't just me. What else have we edited out?
We are all experiencing this. The brain is editing out this horrific collective memory, because it is so sad and repellent, but in doing this we are also erasing coincidental events, non-plague-related
I believe @SeanT once of this parish, anticipated this phenomenon.
A very prescient article, in retrospect, from May 2020. His extraordinary wisdom is much missed, or, indeed, just forgotten. What was his other name?
People who no longer, according to yesterday's thread, watch the news but instead rely on Twitter or other social media, miss stories. Colour me unsurprised.
Nobody has mentioned Film 4 much, yet it seems to underpin the entire British film industry and indeed has an reputation for investing in young talent.
It would pure vandalism to see it privatised and thereby destroyed. Indeed, it should be further invested in.
Film4 budget is absolutely tiny, its like £30 million a year. Netflix are spending a £1bn a year in the UK, Sky Studios have invested in a massive production facility at Elstree and are spending £1.5bn over 5 years.
That isn't to say they don't fund some interesting films, but its just totally dwarfed by what the big boys are now investing in UK tv and film production.
Netflix and the rest have a smell of never mind the quality, feel the width.
Yes and no. Yes there has definitely been a rush to create lots of content to paid their catalogue, but the likes of Crown is absolutely they mind the quality. Same with Slow Horses on Apple+, that is after two episodes, is 100% clear they very very picky about the quality, top actors, great script, high production values.
All these companies need the high quality blue chip stuff to get people to sign-up and continue their subscriptions. Then yes they have some filler to try and make sure people default to using it when they come in the house.
This is a definite theme now. Turkish food is terrible. Way worse than, say, Germany or Holland (the worst in western Europe)
It’s down there with a middle income African country or somewhere like Oman
It is shite. In Erdogan’s gleaming Istanbul airport at their flashy Italian restaurant I ordered the Caprese salad. It came as cold sliced tomato with weird tasteless frigid bits of cheese, and chopped lettuce. That was it. No dressing, no nothing, No oil, no pepper, no salt. Zero. No pesto or basil. Disgusting
Not only was it dreadfully bad, the staff had no idea WHY it was bad, when I politely queried
It was like eating in an eerie, hallucinated version of 70s Britain, yet in a huge sparkly airport
In Sanliurfa the Head of Regional Culture and Tourism took me to a celebrated restaurant for their famous liver kebab. It was nice bits of liver, in a kebab, with an OK sauce. That was it. You could eat it in Camden at 3am after a big night and think Hmm, decent fast food. And they were trying to show off???
UGHHHHHHH
I haven't eaten in Turkey, but I was surprised at how bad the food was in Copenhagen (2018). What's the story with putting massive dollops of butter onto everything?
Posh Danish food is now world class. But everything beneath is still catching up (in Denmark)
Germany, Holland and the rest of Scandi are notably behind.
Britain is no longer the laggard, you can now eat better in the UK than most European countries (and certainly most countries around the world)
Spain, Italy and France are still superior to the UK. Tho Britain is edging France because of our better world cuisine, and insane French attachment to the Great Tradition
Nonetheless I’d have those three in the European Superleague, and Britain at the top of the next division, ahead of Greece and Portugal
How do you rate the great State of Louisiana?
Magnificent. The only state in the USA where I have eaten brilliant food, day after day
And it’s not just a New Orleans thing. The food in Louisiana outside NOLA is unusually excellent, even down to the breakfasts
Food culture is a weird thing. But Louisiana has it, and delivers it
I found Atlanta, Georgia, bizarrely good.
Absolute awful city in almost every way - except its food scene, which is weirdly great.
Generally the States can be disappointing for food.
You can eat really really well in most states of the US, but like so much of the US, its a place of two extremes. The "average" is absolutely shocking.
They haven’t had the gastropub Revolution that has happened in the UK and Australia, and which has been crucial
There will be at least one place in any average town with a talented chef who knows what he wants to do, and is having a bash
I saw a documentary on Australian food and they ascribed their food Revolution, almost entirely, to immigration but even more to foodie TV like Masterchef (which was invented in the UK but is wildly popular in its Aussie incarnation).
It makes total sense. Many millions watch Masterchef, pro and amateur. Watching a series is basically like doing a GCSE in cookery. You learn when to baste and how to fillet. You have a go. It’s brilliant. Most people I know, friends and family, can cook well - anyone under 60, that is
One thing that has improved a lot in the US over past 20 years is craft beer....they really gone for that. Its just the same place that will serve you a half decent beer brewed on site or locally, will serve you a meh burger and fries.
Not sure about your tv point. Don't the US have a load of shows just like that, Iron Chef etc, that are equally popular?
Agreed on the beer. American beer selections are now generally better than British. I hear rumours they are improving their cheese as well (it can’t get worse)
But the Masterchef thing is real. Australia has a less atomized culture than the USA, as does Britain
Eg Masterchef gets 5-6m viewers in the UK, thats nearly 10% of the entire country. The us version gets 1m, 0.3%
10% of people tuning in to learn about cooking is enough to change a cooking culture. 0.3% isn’t. And this is repeated over 30 years, beginning in the UK in 1990
American cheese has improved in just the four (almost) five years I've been here. As has their salami.
But it's still not as good as the UK.
France is still le grand fromage.
Corsica and Sardinia have the best cheese in the world. Esp Corsica. Tho Sardinia has the maggot cheese
Corsica is just incredible.You can drive 5km (which takes an hour on their roads) and the next village (which hates the previous village) has an entirely different and vastly superior cheese, and if you demur they all glare at you then turn away like you are a shameful sexual leper
After that they start being rude
Honestly tho the cheese is remarkable. And much of it never leaves the island
However in terms of getting great cheese in your average supermarket I reckon the UK wins, easily. We have all the noble British cheeses plus all the best mainland Europe cheeses, you just don’t get that selection in the EU (they all concentrate on their own cheeses)
The USA might be slowly catching up because they are now winning cheese awards, the same process as happened with their craft beer
However i reckon they are still 20 years behind the curve, so a long way to go, plus they have a culture more resistant to weird foods than better beers
British cheese is a revelation. When I was a kid you could get several different sorts of Cheddar, plus Stilton at Christmas.
Confession: after trying all the cheeses of the world, sometimes given to me by the world cheese award winning cheese makers themselves, I have come to the conclusion that Colston Basset Stiltion, as served by my local Whole Foods in Camden, really is the best cheese in the world. The King of Cheeses
Unctuous, creamy, rich, intense, memorable, full of umami, just amazing
And i have had Holy Goat served to me by nuns in Victoria, Australia
It’s certainly the best blue cheese in the world. Only rivalled by Stichelton (which is perhaps cheating).
I do find the general Francophobia wearying though. You can go to remote Alpine passes in France and find a cheese shop that serves two dozen or more cheeses.
Good quality is generally excellent in both France and Japan, even if Paris is not what what it was.
The same is certainly not true of Britain. Although I rate British food much higher than the average world citizen, it’s just very hard to get very good food much outside London without some decent planning, with the possible exception of the West Country.
The USA is, food speaking, a fucking nuclear wasteland.
Have you never visited New Orleans? Start of the morning with cafe au lait & beignets at Cafe du Monde (the one down the street from Lafayette Sq) then graze on from there . . .
I’m have, I have. New Orleans and Louisiana are exceptional. I agree with the general sentiments on this thread.
I’m talking about the USA en masse.
You have a point. Though possible to find good eats in every state, esp. IF you're lucky.
Among strange examples, the best Italian sandwich (hoggie/grinder) I've ever enjoyed, was in a small local chain Italian restaurant in Ironton, Ohio. A place barely noted - and certainly NOT for fine dining!
Must be some gems tucked away in odd corners of Gotham, certainly to compete with Appalachia?
Rishi's star falls further as he donates £100, 000 to Winchester School
He has astonished me and Boris needs to move him on
So out of touch
"The donations fund bursaries for children whose parents would not otherwise be able to send them there."
I would have thought as a Conservative leaning voter you would be board with rich people donating so those fortunate can have access to top level education?
From my side of the political divide, a Chancellor properly funding a state system benefitting all children, rather than a private tax dodging bursary for one or two social climbers would be more appropriate.
Let's all laugh at 12 year old working class children, and call them names. Hurrah!
The chances are they won't be "gifted" children from a sink estate in Scunthorpe anyway, but less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
But I see your point, like Basil Fawlty said, "no riff-raff".
No. you are simply wrong. I was at one of these schools, I had friends who were on these bursaries, and they were not less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
I went to a provincial grammar school (granted, over 40 years ago) and the council house kids were looked down upon, and that was by both teachers and students. Fortunately for me, I was not from a council estate, so I was fine.
I go back to my original point. A well funded, well managed non-selective state school system for all those who want to achieve, would be my preference. Quite how one arrives at that point is for smarter people than me.
Or a 'comprehensive education, to make up for their comprehensive education' as Sir Humphrey and Jim Hacker promised!
I have told you many times before that prior to Ledbury Grammar School I went to an excellent High School. The rounded quality of the teaching, by enthusiastic, generally young teachers, enthused students into achieving excellent grades and several students in my year finished up with Oxford or Cambridge degrees and very impressive careers ( not me!). For example one became a British High Commissioner and another a keyboard player in the biggest band of the 1980s.
So why did it work? It was the early days of comprehensive education so it was properly funded. The teachers were motivated, and in turn motivated the students. All subjects were streamed by subject. So kids who were good at Maths were in set one for Maths, equally if they were poor at English they would have been in set 7 for English (a logistical nightmare, no doubt).
My children also went to an excellent RC Comprehensive School too. It was well funded and the teachers were motivated.
We want more faith schools too like your RC Comprehensive for your children.
Choice not one size fits all, whether academies, free schools, faith schools, some grammar schools, technical schools etc.
Not only bog standard comprehensives you have no alternative but to send your children to if of only average income or less
No comprehensive should be "bog standard". They should all be excellent.
I shouldn't have mentioned that my children went to an RC school (they, nor me are Catholic by the way). I fell into your faith school trap. Damn and blast!
What a ludicrous statement. You may as well say 'no supermarkets should be bog standard. They should all be excellent.'
The only way you get to excellence is consumer choice. Applies to education as much as business. Otherwise if there was no choice of supermarket, every supermarket would look like an Asda or Morrisons on a bad day
I don't know how they got into an RC school without being Catholic. Most faith schools require at least a minimum level of church attendance to get in '
Nope my children went to a C of E school and we are atheists.
Also this consumer choice stuff you talk of; earlier you wanted state controlled energy pricing for oil companies. Make up your mind, do you want competition or state control.
You can just about get into a C of E primary school or an average faith school if you only live in the parish.
The top faith secondary schools however almost all require a high level of church attendance to get into them as they are very oversubscribed.
I was not proposing to nationalise all energy companies was I, which Corbyn would have done. Just requiring them to pass on lower energy prices to UK consumers as energy supply was expanded in the UK
I never said you were. I said you said state control of prices, which is what you are proposing. That is price fixing below the market price. How on earth you think that will work. I have no idea when there will be in parallel market priced fuel. Is the govt going to subsidize all imports? I assume not so the same fuel will have 2 different prices. How does that work? Maybe like Cuba where you get vouchers for some stuff and other stuff is at market rates. I could go on. Trade negotiations and deals for instance would be buggered. Fortunately we have Brexited because that would have been illegal. What about the oil companies. Why would they bother in the UK if the price is below the market price.
You say these things but have no idea.
No it wasn't, I said expand energy production including fracking and shale to increase supply thus reducing prices. Then force energy companies to pass those price cuts on.
That will have to happen not just here but across the world if governments are not to be thrown out of office over sky high energy prices by angry voters
You are just making stuff up now. You specifically said increasing production in the UK to reduce prices. When it was pointed out that it is a global commodity so you wouldn't get lower prices in the UK you said you would force the UK companies to sell their oil at a lower price than the global price. That can't be done for the reasons already stated.
True it would work if global production increased but that is not what you said originally. You specifically said to achieve this you just referred to just UK activity and specific UK price fixing.
Yes, increasing production here and globally will reduce energy prices. Indeed a government which expands fracking and shale production in the UK would expect energy prices to come down as a result and could tax the profits of the companies which do not pass on lower prices. Starmer has already made clear a Labour government will indeed impose a windfall tax on any excess profits being made by oil and gas companies in the UK when energy prices are rising
You still don't get commodity pricing do you:
a) The oil companies do not set the price, the market does. It is not a case of not passing it on. It sells at the market price, so this nonsense of taxing companies extra who don't pass it on is just that, nonsense as it is not within their control.
b) Increasing fracking in the UK has practically no impact on global prices so prices won't come down. Of course it will if global production increased BUT you didn't say that. You were specifically talking about the UK only initially. You said 'we', you referred to UK fracking, you referred to UK coal mines, you referred to Starmer. This is all UK.
c) You then referred to the UK companies having to pass on a price reduction, whatever that means. As pointed out by myself and others that is impossible in a global market place. It is only possible in authoritarian states typically communist where pricing can be state controlled internally ignoring the true market.
a) Well that is EXACTLY what a Starmer government has said it will do if elected ie impose a windfall tax on the profits of all oil and gas companies in the UK which do not cut energy prices. So tough, if you get a Labour government that is what it will do.
b) Increased fracking in the UK obviously increases supply in the UK and that will in turn have some impact on cutting prices in the UK. Though yes we need more fracking and shale extraction globally for a major difference.
I’m eating the Toblerone from my minibar, because the food in Izmir is so bad
Why stay there? Only an hour down the road to Selcuk to see Ephesus. Perfectly good restaurants there.
Or push on to Kusadasi for some wonderful seafront fish restaurants.
But the sea is right here. I can view it from my hotel
I do wonder if the terrible inflation crisis is making yer generally mediocre Turkish food much worse than normal
Turkish food is never great, It has always been overrated by its fans (like Lebanese). I’ve been here too many times and been sorely disappointed.
But this is a new level of dire
I liked Ephesus, but was more impressed at looking down on the River Menderes (Maiandros in Greek) and twigging the origin of the English verb.
Any recommendations of how to do Ephesus? 3 hours enough? Avoid local bars? Take a flask of arak?
These days my culture ceiling runs at about 60-90 minutes, and I was in Ephesus a long while ago. So perhaps not the person to ask.
I think the Library is the main thing, and the museum and amphitheatre. Then the rest is just wandering around to breath in the scale of things. You will probably have seen way better ruins. But it is nice to sit down with a Turkish tea or coffee and take in the surroundings.
This is a definite theme now. Turkish food is terrible. Way worse than, say, Germany or Holland (the worst in western Europe)
It’s down there with a middle income African country or somewhere like Oman
It is shite. In Erdogan’s gleaming Istanbul airport at their flashy Italian restaurant I ordered the Caprese salad. It came as cold sliced tomato with weird tasteless frigid bits of cheese, and chopped lettuce. That was it. No dressing, no nothing, No oil, no pepper, no salt. Zero. No pesto or basil. Disgusting
Not only was it dreadfully bad, the staff had no idea WHY it was bad, when I politely queried
It was like eating in an eerie, hallucinated version of 70s Britain, yet in a huge sparkly airport
In Sanliurfa the Head of Regional Culture and Tourism took me to a celebrated restaurant for their famous liver kebab. It was nice bits of liver, in a kebab, with an OK sauce. That was it. You could eat it in Camden at 3am after a big night and think Hmm, decent fast food. And they were trying to show off???
UGHHHHHHH
I haven't eaten in Turkey, but I was surprised at how bad the food was in Copenhagen (2018). What's the story with putting massive dollops of butter onto everything?
Posh Danish food is now world class. But everything beneath is still catching up (in Denmark)
Germany, Holland and the rest of Scandi are notably behind.
Britain is no longer the laggard, you can now eat better in the UK than most European countries (and certainly most countries around the world)
Spain, Italy and France are still superior to the UK. Tho Britain is edging France because of our better world cuisine, and insane French attachment to the Great Tradition
Nonetheless I’d have those three in the European Superleague, and Britain at the top of the next division, ahead of Greece and Portugal
How do you rate the great State of Louisiana?
Magnificent. The only state in the USA where I have eaten brilliant food, day after day
And it’s not just a New Orleans thing. The food in Louisiana outside NOLA is unusually excellent, even down to the breakfasts
Food culture is a weird thing. But Louisiana has it, and delivers it
I found Atlanta, Georgia, bizarrely good.
Absolute awful city in almost every way - except its food scene, which is weirdly great.
Generally the States can be disappointing for food.
You can eat really really well in most states of the US, but like so much of the US, its a place of two extremes. The "average" is absolutely shocking.
They haven’t had the gastropub Revolution that has happened in the UK and Australia, and which has been crucial
There will be at least one place in any average town with a talented chef who knows what he wants to do, and is having a bash
I saw a documentary on Australian food and they ascribed their food Revolution, almost entirely, to immigration but even more to foodie TV like Masterchef (which was invented in the UK but is wildly popular in its Aussie incarnation).
It makes total sense. Many millions watch Masterchef, pro and amateur. Watching a series is basically like doing a GCSE in cookery. You learn when to baste and how to fillet. You have a go. It’s brilliant. Most people I know, friends and family, can cook well - anyone under 60, that is
One thing that has improved a lot in the US over past 20 years is craft beer....they really gone for that. Its just the same place that will serve you a half decent beer brewed on site or locally, will serve you a meh burger and fries.
Not sure about your tv point. Don't the US have a load of shows just like that, Iron Chef etc, that are equally popular?
Agreed on the beer. American beer selections are now generally better than British. I hear rumours they are improving their cheese as well (it can’t get worse)
But the Masterchef thing is real. Australia has a less atomized culture than the USA, as does Britain
Eg Masterchef gets 5-6m viewers in the UK, thats nearly 10% of the entire country. The us version gets 1m, 0.3%
10% of people tuning in to learn about cooking is enough to change a cooking culture. 0.3% isn’t. And this is repeated over 30 years, beginning in the UK in 1990
American cheese has improved in just the four (almost) five years I've been here. As has their salami.
But it's still not as good as the UK.
France is still le grand fromage.
Corsica and Sardinia have the best cheese in the world. Esp Corsica. Tho Sardinia has the maggot cheese
Corsica is just incredible.You can drive 5km (which takes an hour on their roads) and the next village (which hates the previous village) has an entirely different and vastly superior cheese, and if you demur they all glare at you then turn away like you are a shameful sexual leper
After that they start being rude
Honestly tho the cheese is remarkable. And much of it never leaves the island
However in terms of getting great cheese in your average supermarket I reckon the UK wins, easily. We have all the noble British cheeses plus all the best mainland Europe cheeses, you just don’t get that selection in the EU (they all concentrate on their own cheeses)
The USA might be slowly catching up because they are now winning cheese awards, the same process as happened with their craft beer
However i reckon they are still 20 years behind the curve, so a long way to go, plus they have a culture more resistant to weird foods than better beers
British cheese is a revelation. When I was a kid you could get several different sorts of Cheddar, plus Stilton at Christmas.
Confession: after trying all the cheeses of the world, sometimes given to me by the world cheese award winning cheese makers themselves, I have come to the conclusion that Colston Basset Stiltion, as served by my local Whole Foods in Camden, really is the best cheese in the world. The King of Cheeses
Unctuous, creamy, rich, intense, memorable, full of umami, just amazing
And i have had Holy Goat served to me by nuns in Victoria, Australia
It’s certainly the best blue cheese in the world. Only rivalled by Stichelton (which is perhaps cheating).
I do find the general Francophobia wearying though. You can go to remote Alpine passes in France and find a cheese shop that serves two dozen or more cheeses.
Good quality is generally excellent in both France and Japan, even if Paris is not what what it was.
The same is certainly not true of Britain. Although I rate British food much higher than the average world citizen, it’s just very hard to get very good food much outside London without some decent planning, with the possible exception of the West Country.
The USA is, food speaking, a fucking nuclear wasteland.
Have you never visited New Orleans? Start of the morning with cafe au lait & beignets at Cafe du Monde (the one down the street from Lafayette Sq) then graze on from there . . .
I’m have, I have. New Orleans and Louisiana are exceptional. I agree with the general sentiments on this thread.
I’m talking about the USA en masse.
You have a point. Though possible to find good eats in every state, esp. IF you're lucky.
Among strange examples, the best Italian sandwich (hoggie/grinder) I've ever enjoyed, was in a small local chain Italian restaurant in Ironton, Ohio. A place barely noted - and certainly NOT for fine dining!
Must be some gems tucked away in odd corners of Gotham, certainly to compete with Appalachia?
If you are in Gotham do drop me a note and we can try to find some!
I’m a bit peeved because I’m on the UWS and it’s not Midtown or Brooklyn which is where most of the good restaurants are these days.
(I used to stay Midtown when I came to NY for work).
Plus I usually have my family with me and the kids wants burger, chicken strips, or something similarly beige.
Rishi's star falls further as he donates £100, 000 to Winchester School
He has astonished me and Boris needs to move him on
So out of touch
"The donations fund bursaries for children whose parents would not otherwise be able to send them there."
I would have thought as a Conservative leaning voter you would be board with rich people donating so those fortunate can have access to top level education?
From my side of the political divide, a Chancellor properly funding a state system benefitting all children, rather than a private tax dodging bursary for one or two social climbers would be more appropriate.
Let's all laugh at 12 year old working class children, and call them names. Hurrah!
The chances are they won't be "gifted" children from a sink estate in Scunthorpe anyway, but less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
But I see your point, like Basil Fawlty said, "no riff-raff".
No. you are simply wrong. I was at one of these schools, I had friends who were on these bursaries, and they were not less well off middle class wannabe high rollers from the Home Counties.
I went to a provincial grammar school (granted, over 40 years ago) and the council house kids were looked down upon, and that was by both teachers and students. Fortunately for me, I was not from a council estate, so I was fine.
I go back to my original point. A well funded, well managed non-selective state school system for all those who want to achieve, would be my preference. Quite how one arrives at that point is for smarter people than me.
Or a 'comprehensive education, to make up for their comprehensive education' as Sir Humphrey and Jim Hacker promised!
I have told you many times before that prior to Ledbury Grammar School I went to an excellent High School. The rounded quality of the teaching, by enthusiastic, generally young teachers, enthused students into achieving excellent grades and several students in my year finished up with Oxford or Cambridge degrees and very impressive careers ( not me!). For example one became a British High Commissioner and another a keyboard player in the biggest band of the 1980s.
So why did it work? It was the early days of comprehensive education so it was properly funded. The teachers were motivated, and in turn motivated the students. All subjects were streamed by subject. So kids who were good at Maths were in set one for Maths, equally if they were poor at English they would have been in set 7 for English (a logistical nightmare, no doubt).
My children also went to an excellent RC Comprehensive School too. It was well funded and the teachers were motivated.
We want more faith schools too like your RC Comprehensive for your children.
Choice not one size fits all, whether academies, free schools, faith schools, some grammar schools, technical schools etc.
Not only bog standard comprehensives you have no alternative but to send your children to if of only average income or less
Faith schools, my arse. Shut them down. I want children to be taught, not indoctrinated in superstitious mumbo-jumbo.
Tough, you are not in power. We Conservatives are. Even Blair recognised how good most faith schools were, so sent his children to them
Yes, I'm with Sandy and everyone else here. One, on principle. If you want to teach your children that there is a God and all the other tenets of your faith, go ahead, I suppose, but I don't see why I should get to pay for it. Two, in practice. There are faith (primary) schools in Sale, and they are consistently the worst performing - presumably because they are taking up teaching time with teaching religion.
I also find it faintly weird and not a little discomfiting that my kids' nominally secular primary schools still have hymns and prayers in assembly. Surely in the secular sector pretty much no-one believes in any of it: it's just a massive exercise in pointlessly going through the motions. I suppose that's some sort of training for life.
I remember when I was at primary school 30-40 years ago it was a charade back then too. A supply teacher joined us for a bit who was clearly a true believer, and seemed genuinely shocked by the inability of a hall full of junior school children to fully partake in care about the state mandated act of worship. She gave us all a good bollocking, of the extent to rouse the normally indiffernt headteacher from her study to see what was going on. The headteacher was as nonplussed as the rest of us with the supply teacher's explanation of 'they're begrudging God ten minutes of their day'. I'm sure the line 'for pity's sake, woman, can't you see we're just going through the motions here' was earnestly fought back in favour of whatever non-commital platitude actually came out.
I'm not seeking to pick a fight with the genuinely religious. But forcing religion on kids seems wrong. And teachers who don't believe forcing religion on kids who don't believe seems stupid and pointless.
I can't really see what there is to object to about a rousing chorus of 'We plough the fields and scatter' or 'Morning has broken'. It's nice. Replacing such classics with limp, anodyne dirges about picking up litter (as was happening toward the end of my time at primary) seems a backward step, regardless of belief.
Well that sounds amusingly stupid too.
Remembering further, we had two hymn books, an orange one and a blue one. The orange one had hymns you might recognise, the blue one was probably a bit more right-on - several of the hymns could probably be subtitled 'don't be racist, kids'. The blue one was used increasingly often as I went through the school. We were possibly going down the same route as you. I'd question the need to sing (or indeed pray) at all. I recognise the psychological impact of communal singing, and can probably understand the thinking behind it - if indeed there is any - but the psychological impact only works if it's a song that people want to sing. It works in gigs where people ar really, really, esctatically into the music; it works in football crowds where crowds genuinely believe, at least right then and there, that Stockport County, Stockport County FC are by far the greatest team the world has ever seen; it works in churches where people go voluntarily to express their belief. It works with drunks. It does not work with a bunch of slightly embarassed and resentful ten year olds who do not believe the words they are singing and feel ridiculous doing so. You can overcome this a bit, if the song is really, really good - you can emotionally believe in the melody even if you don't rationally believe in the words - but really, really good most primary school hymns are not.
Again I'll go with the facile, and wonder if anyone else sang "Sing Sultanas" rather than "Sing Hosannas" to the King...
We had 'The Earth is yours Oh Lord, you nouri-SHIT with rain' (emphasis ours).
Nobody has mentioned Film 4 much, yet it seems to underpin the entire British film industry and indeed has an reputation for investing in young talent.
It would pure vandalism to see it privatised and thereby destroyed. Indeed, it should be further invested in.
It is a concern. However, having been exposed to a lot of Film4's back catalogue (because I subscribe to Britbox), there's a lot of dross amongst the winners - some of the older stuff nearly unwatchable.
Nobody has mentioned Film 4 much, yet it seems to underpin the entire British film industry and indeed has an reputation for investing in young talent.
It would pure vandalism to see it privatised and thereby destroyed. Indeed, it should be further invested in.
Film4 budget is absolutely tiny, its like £30 million a year. Netflix are spending a £1bn a year, Sky have invested in a massive production facility at Elstree and are spending £1.5bn over 5 years.
Yeah, and look at what it achieves nonetheless.
But to say it underpins the entire British film industry is demonstrably untrue. Its funds some interesting niche movies, which is fine. But what is underpinning the UK tv and film industry is the likes of the massive investment by Sky Studios.
My understanding, which is based on talking to industry contacts, but may be false, is that Four specifically targets young talent.
10,000 people are working on Netflix original productions in the UK and they made 60 shows last year. If that isn't developing young talent, I would be shocked.
Comments
That in turn will lead to lower prices
I do find myself agreeing with you more often than not, however, and on more things which really matter to me. These things are complex...
We just have to face up to it and admit it Farooq, it looks like we agree with each other’s posts 🙀
So, we have Le Pen wishing to lift sanctions to help French motorists, while Macron is heading in the other direction.
On which. How come I missed Tiger Woods nearly dying in a car crash?
I have no memory whatsoever of that happening. And I read this board every day.
Ukraine will become a “‘big Israel' with its own face” said Zelenskyy. “Ukraine will definitely not be what we wanted it to be from the beginning. It is impossible. Absolutely liberal, European – it will not be like that. It will definitely come from the strength of every house.”
https://twitter.com/b_judah/status/1511343074307411981
The changes in the media landscape haven't helped. The days when newspapers sold 4 or 5 million copies, or when 10 million watched News at Ten, are long gone.
We're not going back to a world where people could be corralled into watching a reasonably thorough review of the day's news because there were only four channels. Indeed, we don't really want to (do we?) But the change has come at a cost.
I enjoyed singing at school, but as I've noted before it might be because we sang a mixture of christian songs and beatles songs, I assume because the teacher who could play the guitar demanded the latter.
We did enjoy Lord of the Dance, that one has a pretty good tune to it.
Maybe the change has been to remove the inter-school competitions rather than the in-school games?
It was the inter-school competitions that must have taken up a lot of teacher time (several hours of an evening, often driving to other school premises, which then had to stay open until mid evening).
Looking at the national championships on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Schools_Chess_Championship it seems there were over 900 schools entering in the 70s and I believe there were more than 500 when I played. It is now down to barely over 100, and a lot of the names I see are public schools. Maybe that will change if the qualifying moves online? The regional events were over a weekend, too.
It is the kind of thing that volunteers should be useful for but then again, most of the players I know are odd sorts - even those who were once teachers...
But I vote Libdem because the Conservative party are right of centre Populists now, like their media support first drifted that way, digging out the roots of a proper Conservative Party.
Maybe you are in tune with this Populist unConservative nonsense and prefer it, or the penny hadn’t dropped for you yet.
Corsica is just incredible.You can drive 5km (which takes an hour on their roads) and the next village (which hates the previous village) has an entirely different and vastly superior cheese, and if you demur they all glare at you then turn away like you are a shameful sexual leper
After that they start being rude
Honestly tho the cheese is remarkable. And much of it never leaves the island
However in terms of getting great cheese in your average supermarket I reckon the UK wins, easily. We have all the noble British cheeses plus all the best mainland Europe cheeses, you just don’t get that selection in the EU (they all concentrate on their own cheeses)
The USA might be slowly catching up because they are now winning cheese awards, the same process as happened with their craft beer
https://www.theguardian.com/food/2022/mar/04/swiss-gruyere-wins-world-championship-cheese-contest-for-second-time-in-a-row
However i reckon they are still 20 years behind the curve, so a long way to go, plus they have a culture more resistant to weird foods than better beers
A dirge on whatever aspect of Christianity is considered wholesome and modern for primary school children at 9 oc'clock on a damp grey morning - the only communal feeling is one of sullen resentment to whoever is making you go through this exercise.
Was it during Covid? I think we all lost years of memory during Covid. Because we wanted to
I presume he means that, with the Damoclean sword ever present, Ukraine cannot afford to be just any liberal democracy, but has to be an ever-ready, armed-to-the-teeth one. I.e. a society living with an ever present existential threat.
The memory is a strange thing. I too have memories firmly embedded in my brain that cannot possibly have happened.
Though I did have the classic 'slide was massive' memory experience, where you return to a slide you remember as huge as a child - in this case in Lyme Park - only to find it strangely normal-sized. And then, five years later, to my utter joy, by chance came across the ACTUAL slide in my memory -at the Heights of Abraham, in Matlock Bath - and it was just as huge as I remembered. I had remembered the slide correctly, just located in wrongly.
Sinema has given Kelly quite a lot of political cover esp. with Democrats in & outside of Arizona. Including differing from President Biden from time to time without incurring their wrath.
However, do NOT think that Kelly's posture this mid-term year will be anti-Biden, or even dissenting most or even much of the time. Just when he thinks he needs to, from motives of conscience or politics or both.
Stilton was only something seen eaten by posh people on tv.
The former Democratic senator is guiding the first Black woman tapped for the Supreme Court. His one-time colleagues wonder if there's more to come.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/04/05/doug-jones-ketanji-brown-jackson-scotus-00022891
Letter from the UK prime minister warns against sport being used ‘as a platform to legitimise Russian aggression.’
https://www.politico.eu/article/boris-johnson-fifa-football-gianni-infantino-russia/
I'm sure I was following the news. Glad it isn't just me.
What else have we edited out?
Confession: after trying all the cheeses of the world, sometimes given to me by the world cheese award winning cheese makers themselves, I have come to the conclusion that Colston Basset Stiltion, as served by my local Whole Foods in Camden, really is the best cheese in the world. The King of Cheeses
Unctuous, creamy, rich, intense, memorable, full of umami, just amazing
And i have had Holy Goat served to me by nuns in Victoria, Australia
True it would work if global production increased but that is not what you said originally. You specifically said to achieve this you just referred to just UK activity and specific UK price fixing.
If not that, then a bit too much lossy compression.
Idle anecdote - later on he joined Moral Re-Armament, a very serious movement (Mary Whitehouse was a member) dedicated to postwar evangelism (and anti-communism). Then he met my mum, who liked dancing and parties. An MRA colleague took her to tea at Lyons' corner House and urged her to give him up, as her frivolous nature would imperil his immortal soul. She laughed and said they'd better ask him. So they said to him that he had to choose - her or MRA. He instantly said that a religious movement that tried to mandate whom he married wasn't for him.
He stayed a Christian all his life, but rejected any kind of straightjacket. He felt it was, well, un-Christian.
I believe @SeanT once of this parish, anticipated this phenomenon.
Why we remember wars, but forget plagues
https://unherd.com/2020/05/why-we-remember-wars-but-forget-plagues/
A very prescient article, in retrospect, from May 2020. His extraordinary wisdom is much missed, or, indeed, just forgotten. What was his other name?
For example IMO goat's cheese is pretty good for a work lunchtime and stilton to nibble on after a heavy meal.
But not the other way around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmkFHalVchw
At the time a man called Nathan Sparling briefed the press that I had come last. As I was bound by confidentiality I could not put this widely reported untruth right. It turned out to be just a foretaste of the misogyny that was to come after the close result
https://twitter.com/joannaccherry/status/1511460550856871945
Everyone else can attend secular state or private schools without morning worship or hymns.
https://www.barb.co.uk/viewing-data/most-viewed-programmes/?msclkid=a19cc88ab52f11ec826599ab85bc0f83
But as you'd expect, it's very much an age thing. Oldies watch around 6 hours a day of broadcast TV (though I suspect a lot of that is just having it on the background), whereas the 16-24 group only watch about an hour a day (which is more than people here were saying yesterday). The national average is still 3 hours a day:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/269918/daily-tv-viewing-time-in-the-uk-by-age/?msclkid=00c90e75b53011eca1b9eab3ddd151a3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skK1CKKlc0M
Still find myself singing the chorus in the shower.
BUT if I was condemned to death, my final meal would start with Helfords and probably end with Colston Bassett Stilton
Only rivalled by Stichelton (which is perhaps cheating).
I do find the general Francophobia wearying though. You can go to remote Alpine passes in France and find a cheese shop that serves two dozen or more cheeses.
Good quality is generally excellent in both France and Japan, even if Paris is not what what it was.
The same is certainly not true of Britain.
Although I rate British food much higher than the average world citizen, it’s just very hard to get very good food much outside London without some decent planning, with the possible exception of the West Country.
The USA is, food speaking, a fucking nuclear wasteland.
Happy memory: on my first venture into pb.com back in May 2005 the board was talking about cheese.
It would pure vandalism to see it privatised and thereby destroyed. Indeed, it should be further invested in.
I have put France in the top 3 food countries in Europe, tho behind Italy and Spain and in a bit of trouble - which seems fair (they admit this themselves)
I have said my ideal holiday would be a roadtrip around French cave art, meanwhile taking in their superb food and wine
That’s it
France is just suffering because of it self perceived - and globally projected - image as the best destination for food wine and much else. That is taking a knock as people discover other places, and their own countries. Is all.
So calm down
also “nuclear wasteland” is a bit harsh on American food. Try Izmir Turkey. OMFGGGGGGG
We have all been spoiled in Western Europe
He knows me well.
As a result, I have never yet deigned to visit the Sublime Porte.
a) The oil companies do not set the price, the market does. It is not a case of not passing it on. It sells at the market price, so this nonsense of taxing companies extra who don't pass it on is just that, nonsense as it is not within their control.
b) Increasing fracking in the UK has practically no impact on global prices so prices won't come down. Of course it will if global production increased BUT you didn't say that. You were specifically talking about the UK only initially. You said 'we', you referred to UK fracking, you referred to UK coal mines, you referred to Starmer. This is all UK.
c) You then referred to the UK companies having to pass on a price reduction, whatever that means. As pointed out by myself and others that is impossible in a global market place. It is only possible in authoritarian states typically communist where pricing can be state controlled internally ignoring the true market.
When I was growing up in NZ in the 80s, cheese came in 1kg blocks.
The choice was Mild, Medium, or “Tasty” cheddar.
There was one other cheese available called “Colby”.
Some years later I was curious about this colby and looked it up on Wikipedia. Lo and behold it’s another form of bloody cheddar.
Things have moved on a bit to be fair.
New Orleans and Louisiana are exceptional.
I agree with the general sentiments on this thread.
I’m talking about the USA en masse.
That isn't to say they don't fund some interesting films, but its just totally dwarfed by what the big boys are now investing in UK tv and film production.
Tho for melting purposes, a very extreme Cheddar is heard to beat. Cornish Cove, say
https://www.barb.co.uk/the-barb-panel-2/?msclkid=ef572495b53211ec9ce54f29c80f32e2
Having been in this room for about six months now, it strikes my how many posters who I first knew from very anti government posts are actually Conservative voters, even members and canvassers in past, but lapsed (apart from holding their nose to rightly keep Corbyn out). That could so easily have been me.
I realise now I also stand with them HY. There is a difference between us in your not calling out this government for what it is. Wether you like what it is or not, there should be the acknowledgement it is not conservatism.
As a proper Conservative I reject all forms of populism. Populism pushes the idea of popular sovereignty above the independence of democratic institutions, and the professionalism of the representatives of those institutions. Where populism doesn’t like government, politics or politicians, as true Conservatives we will oppose that populism. There are always divisions of interest and opinion, but itis duty of all democratic politicians to take account of them. This means there is a legitimacy to all opposition, and your opponents and their opinions, in politics, or in the press, deserve respect. But we have a government and leadership who operate with such disregard for the checks and balances of democratic structure, ignoring or circumventing wherever they can.
I believe, if Tugendhat or anyone wants to run from the back benches against Boris and his cronies, building their bid on the paragraph I just gave them, Big Dog goes the way of the Dodo.
All these companies need the high quality blue chip stuff to get people to sign-up and continue their subscriptions. Then yes they have some filler to try and make sure people default to using it when they come in the house.
Among strange examples, the best Italian sandwich (hoggie/grinder) I've ever enjoyed, was in a small local chain Italian restaurant in Ironton, Ohio. A place barely noted - and certainly NOT for fine dining!
Must be some gems tucked away in odd corners of Gotham, certainly to compete with Appalachia?
b) Increased fracking in the UK obviously increases supply in the UK and that will in turn have some impact on cutting prices in the UK. Though yes we need more fracking and shale extraction globally for a major difference.
I’m a bit peeved because I’m on the UWS and it’s not Midtown or Brooklyn which is where most of the good restaurants are these days.
(I used to stay Midtown when I came to NY for work).
Plus I usually have my family with me and the kids wants burger, chicken strips, or something similarly beige.
Partygate: ministers refuse to disclose pictures taken by No 10 photographers
Cabinet Office won’t confirm or deny existence of taxpayer-funded pictures of illegal gatherings after freedom of information request
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/apr/05/partygate-ministers-refuse-to-disclose-pictures-taken-by-no-10-photographers