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Barely a third of voters back the Rwanda immigration plan – politicalbetting.com

SystemSystem Posts: 11,002
edited April 2022 in General
imageBarely a third of voters back the Rwanda immigration plan – politicalbetting.com

I am convinced that the “process illegal immigrants in Rwanda” plan is not a serious policy but Johnson throwing a dead cat onto the table in order to get the subject off his party gate fines.

Read the full story here

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Comments

  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 5,097
    Remarkable poll which tallies with anecdotal comments from people I know who are Conservatives or Conservative-leaners.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,408
    Farooq said:

    Reposting because I took a bloody age typing it:

    kle4 said:

    kamski said:

    Caesar's conquest of Gaul supposedly resulted in a million killed, and a million enslaved, which must have been quite a high proportion of the population at the time. So I guess the Roman empire must go down as one of the most evil in history.

    Worse people to be ruled by, but the process of becoming ruled not a pleasant one.
    Being ruled by Rome was bad. Like all empires, Rome was an extractive system leading to poverty for the subjected peoples.

    "An unpublished survey of 1,867 skeletons from sixty-one sites in Britain likewise documents an increase in body height after the end of Roman rule. These findings reinforce the general impression conveyed by a more eclectic long-term survey of stature in different parts of Europe that identifies troughs during the Roman period and the High Middle Ages and peaks in the post Roman period and in the wake of the Black Death."

    What we can learn from evidence like this is that in times of high inequality, which is what happens when extractive regimes hold hegemonic power, the average citizen suffers. Empires is an extremely bad system of government for normal people, and the continued sense of nostalgia and romance around them is a function of the narrative focus on the elites, who, of course, benefit hugely from such a system of government.
    Repeated :
    I didn't say it was good to be ruled by them. I hate the expression, but you've clearly been triggered for some reason into seeing more there than I wrote. I said there were worse people to be ruled by, that doesn't mean it was good or nice.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,165
    It's a basic fact that Labour voters will oppose Tory policies.
  • SeaShantyIrish2SeaShantyIrish2 Posts: 15,242
    Breaking - Seattle Times ($) - President Biden to visit Seattle next Friday [April 22]

    President Joe Biden will travel to Seattle next Friday in his first visit as president, according to the White House.

    While details have yet to be announced, the visit will center on the administration’s efforts “to continue bringing down costs for American families and building a more resilient economy,” according to the White House.

    The visit comes amid sagging national approval numbers for the president, and growing worries among Democrats that inflation will cost the party control of Congress in the 2022 midterm elections.

    Biden has blamed the inflation spike on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

    Biden last visited Seattle in November 2019 while campaigning in the Democratic presidential primaries. He attended a fundraiser at the home of Amazon executive David Zapolsky.

    Additional details were expected to be released about the visit in the coming days.
  • SeaShantyIrish2SeaShantyIrish2 Posts: 15,242

    @DefenceU
    The Ministry of Defence of Ukraine reminds the russian navy that the Black Sea straits are closed for entry only. The part of your fleet that remains afloat still has a way out.


    https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1514941186397683715

    Battleship Potemkin redux?
  • BigRichBigRich Posts: 3,489

    @DefenceU
    The Ministry of Defence of Ukraine reminds the russian navy that the Black Sea straits are closed for entry only. The part of your fleet that remains afloat still has a way out.


    https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1514941186397683715

    Apparat form being incredibly brave, the Ukrainians also have a good séance of humour.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,712
    59% of Conservative voters and 57% of Leave voters support the Rwanda immigration plan however. So in terms of Boris shoring up his core vote it works
  • mwadamsmwadams Posts: 3,089
    tlg86 said:

    It's a basic fact that Labour voters will oppose Tory policies.

    True. It's also interesting that 20-30% of all 2019 Conservative voters seem to oppose just about everything about Johnson's administration when polled.
  • Just looking out from our balcony on the Gwynt y Môr wind farm the turbines are barely turning tonight

    Gwynt y Môr (Welsh: meaning sea wind) is a 576-megawatt (MW) offshore wind farm located off the coast of Wales and is the fifth largest operating offshore windfarm in the world. The farm has 160 wind turbines of 150 metres (490 ft) tip height above mean sea level.
  • BigRichBigRich Posts: 3,489

    I posted this on the previous thread and it seems to be born out on Rwanda

    Good evening

    I haven't posted since early yesterday as I was at a family funeral all day yesterday and have been out most of today

    However, I have concluded the following:

    Conservative mps need to replace Boris ASAP

    The Rwanda refugee scheme seems very controversial and I am not sure it will work or boost the conservatives as some think

    I expect the lib dems to do spectacularly well in may, labour ok, and conservatives to have a nightmare

    I cannot see past Starmer as next pm especially if the conservatives do not act against Boris and Rishi and even then, the momentum is with Starmer heading a minority government probably with lib dem support

    I genuinely do not know who I will vote for in 24, but my single vote is not going to make any difference as labour should come out on top

    I hope labour recover in Scotland gaining seats and further diminishing the SNP and independence

    If I lived in Scotland, as I once did, I would vote for the union candidate against the SNP, irrespective of party

    This is a tired government out of ideas and it is silly to say Boris must remain in post because of Ukraine, as he could be incapacitated in one way or another that would require a new PM anyway

    I do not see Starmer as an inspiring leader but he may not need to be as the conservative party self destruct

    Anyway I hope everyone enjoys their Good Friday evening

    Happy Easter

    Happy Easter to you too.
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    kle4 said:

    Farooq said:

    Reposting because I took a bloody age typing it:

    kle4 said:

    kamski said:

    Caesar's conquest of Gaul supposedly resulted in a million killed, and a million enslaved, which must have been quite a high proportion of the population at the time. So I guess the Roman empire must go down as one of the most evil in history.

    Worse people to be ruled by, but the process of becoming ruled not a pleasant one.
    Being ruled by Rome was bad. Like all empires, Rome was an extractive system leading to poverty for the subjected peoples.

    "An unpublished survey of 1,867 skeletons from sixty-one sites in Britain likewise documents an increase in body height after the end of Roman rule. These findings reinforce the general impression conveyed by a more eclectic long-term survey of stature in different parts of Europe that identifies troughs during the Roman period and the High Middle Ages and peaks in the post Roman period and in the wake of the Black Death."

    What we can learn from evidence like this is that in times of high inequality, which is what happens when extractive regimes hold hegemonic power, the average citizen suffers. Empires is an extremely bad system of government for normal people, and the continued sense of nostalgia and romance around them is a function of the narrative focus on the elites, who, of course, benefit hugely from such a system of government.
    Repeated :
    I didn't say it was good to be ruled by them. I hate the expression, but you've clearly been triggered for some reason into seeing more there than I wrote. I said there were worse people to be ruled by, that doesn't mean it was good or nice.
    My response was the crystallisation of a few hours' thought about empire in general. Your post was just the proximate cause for something I've wanted to get off my chest about the romanticisation of empire and the physical scientific evidence for what it was like for the people whose voices do not come down through the ages.
    If it felt like an attack on you, I apologise, it wasn't intended that way but I can see how it might have seemed that way.
  • darkagedarkage Posts: 4,746
    This polling is fascinating. I assumed that it would be a popular policy.
    Maybe it is just a case that people would rather the boats were stopped, rather than the government spend billions on flying plane loads of people to Rwanda.
    Or perhaps the government are chasing the voters of 6 years ago - trying to resucitate the Brexit magic. But the fact is that lots of Brexit voters are dying due to old age, and this is only going to gather pace as the years go on.
  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 5,097
    tlg86 said:

    It's a basic fact that Labour voters will oppose Tory policies.

    What should really worry you is the Conservative ones who are.

    Seriously. Look at what Big G has open-heartedly just posted. And as I mentioned this morning, a close friend of mine who is a lifelong tory voter, arch monarchist, proud Briton, thinks it's 'totally appalling.'

    Big G - we may have our differences but I'm sorry to hear about the family funeral. Hope you are okay.
  • HYUFD said:

    59% of Conservative voters and 57% of Leave voters support the Rwanda immigration plan however. So in terms of Boris shoring up his core vote it works

    @HYUFD - he cannot win with his core vote, he needs conservatives like myself who frankly are very disillusioned with Boris and his mps lack of integrity allowing him to stay in office
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 14,912
    HYUFD said:

    59% of Conservative voters and 57% of Leave voters support the Rwanda immigration plan however. So in terms of Boris shoring up his core vote it works

    Doesn't this just illustrate that the Tory vote has shrunk to its core, and "policies" like this are part of the problem?
  • stodgestodge Posts: 12,745
    HYUFD said:

    59% of Conservative voters and 57% of Leave voters support the Rwanda immigration plan however. So in terms of Boris shoring up his core vote it works

    60% of the Conservative vote cast in 2019 means a heavy election defeat next time - roughly 30% of the overall vote, near to 1997 or 2001 levels. The core vote = a landslide against the Conservatives.
  • Heathener said:

    tlg86 said:

    It's a basic fact that Labour voters will oppose Tory policies.

    What should really worry you is the Conservative ones who are.

    Seriously. Look at what Big G has open-heartedly just posted. And as I mentioned this morning, a close friend of mine who is a lifelong tory voter, arch monarchist, proud Briton, thinks it's 'totally appalling.'

    Big G - we may have our differences but I'm sorry to hear about the family funeral. Hope you are okay.
    Thank you and it was an emotional day, especially for my son in law as he delivered an emotion packed eulogy to his late mother
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,712
    edited April 2022

    HYUFD said:

    59% of Conservative voters and 57% of Leave voters support the Rwanda immigration plan however. So in terms of Boris shoring up his core vote it works

    @HYUFD - he cannot win with his core vote, he needs conservatives like myself who frankly are very disillusioned with Boris and his mps lack of integrity allowing him to stay in office
    At the moment Boris needs to focus on shoring up his 35% core vote to keep his position as Tory leader and PM (35% of voters still support the Rwanda plan). If the governing party's voteshare falls to 30% or less a la the dying years of May, Major or Brown then his position is under threat.

    He can leave actually trying to win the next general election until after he has secured his core vote and leadership
  • mwadamsmwadams Posts: 3,089
    darkage said:

    This polling is fascinating. I assumed that it would be a popular policy.
    Maybe it is just a case that people would rather the boats were stopped, rather than the government spend billions on flying plane loads of people to Rwanda.
    Or perhaps the government are chasing the voters of 6 years ago - trying to resucitate the Brexit magic. But the fact is that lots of Brexit voters are dying due to old age, and this is only going to gather pace as the years go on.

    Fundamentally, I think this is because the policy sounds cruel.

    Whether it is or not is irrelevant to this particular point. It sounds cruel, and most people aren't.

    Yes, a (slim) majority don't want "more immigration" and "illegals" but they don't want to feel cruel either. A not inconsiderable number of "don't knows" will be in that boat too.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,969
    edited April 2022
    The SNP are stupid and/or dodgy AF.

    THE SNP has been criticised by opposition politicians over out-of-date information on their website that suggested students could vote twice in next month’s election.

    In a "handy guide" on registering how to vote, Nicola Sturgeon’s party said that "a person who has two homes (like a university student who has a term-time address and lives at home during holidays) can register to vote at both addresses if they’re in two different council areas, and can vote in the local elections for the two different councils."

    While that's true in England, it's not true north of the border. The law changed late last year.

    The Electoral Commission says students now "need to choose one address and vote in only that area" when voting in a council election.

    They warn that voting in more than one location “is a criminal offence.”


    https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/20073042.row-snp-tells-students-can-vote-twice-mays-council-elections/?ref=twtrec
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,765
    edited April 2022
    Farooq said:

    Reposting because I took a bloody age typing it:

    kle4 said:

    kamski said:

    Caesar's conquest of Gaul supposedly resulted in a million killed, and a million enslaved, which must have been quite a high proportion of the population at the time. So I guess the Roman empire must go down as one of the most evil in history.

    Worse people to be ruled by, but the process of becoming ruled not a pleasant one.
    Being ruled by Rome was bad. Like all empires, Rome was an extractive system leading to poverty for the subjected peoples.

    "An unpublished survey of 1,867 skeletons from sixty-one sites in Britain likewise documents an increase in body height after the end of Roman rule. These findings reinforce the general impression conveyed by a more eclectic long-term survey of stature in different parts of Europe that identifies troughs during the Roman period and the High Middle Ages and peaks in the post Roman period and in the wake of the Black Death."

    What we can learn from evidence like this is that in times of high inequality, which is what happens when extractive regimes hold hegemonic power, the average citizen suffers. Empires is an extremely bad system of government for normal people, and the continued sense of nostalgia and romance around them is a function of the narrative focus on the elites, who, of course, benefit hugely from such a system of government.
    The counter-argument is put forward by Brett Devereaux (who actually, does not disagree with you about the exploitative nature of the Roman Empire). I find convincing the argument for quite a sharp decline in Western European living standards after 450.

    https://acoup.blog/2022/02/11/collections-rome-decline-and-fall-part-iii-things/

    Britain may have enjoyed a brief sweet spot, where it was no longer paying taxes to Rome, but things did fall apart after the mid Fifth century. By the mid Sixth century, Britain must have been like the world of Mad Max.
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 60,004
    edited April 2022
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    59% of Conservative voters and 57% of Leave voters support the Rwanda immigration plan however. So in terms of Boris shoring up his core vote it works

    @HYUFD - he cannot win with his core vote, he needs conservatives like myself who frankly are very disillusioned with Boris and his mps lack of integrity allowing him to stay in office
    At the moment Boris needs to focus on shoring up his 35% core vote to keep his position as Tory leader and PM (35% of voters still support the Rwanda plan). If the governing party's voteshare falls to 30% or less a la the dying years of May, Major or Brown then his position is under threat.

    He can leave actually trying to win the next general election until after he has secured his core vote and leadership
    I really think you are in denial of what is about to happen to the conservative party while Boris remains

    Read Lord Wolfson's resignation letter and understand that many of us share his sentiments and words

    https://twitter.com/DXWQC/status/1514280176636633090?ref_src=twsrc^tfw|twcamp^tweetembed|twterm^1514280176636633090|twgr^|twcon^s1_c10&ref_url=https://d-35573752523818653632.ampproject.net/2203172113000/frame.html
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 14,089
    HYUFD said:

    59% of Conservative voters and 57% of Leave voters support the Rwanda immigration plan however. So in terms of Boris shoring up his core vote it works

    Yes and no.

    10% of Conservative voters strongly oppose it. That's about 3% of voters overall. Now, if they oppose it enough to change their vote (and my impression is that this has cut through among those who've heard it in a really visceral way... those who dislike it really think it's evil), that's more votes than the Conservatives can afford to lose. After all, 43% is a triumphant landslide and 33% is a one-way ticket to Oppositionsville.

    Politically, it might work, in the short term at least. But it's not Brexit redux. The thing about Brexit was that Leave won because they had heart arguments, and very very few people had passionate feels about Remain. (Ironically, by going bull-in-a-china-shop about it, the government may have created people who do.) For the assylum changes, the heart arguments are mostly on the anti-government side.

    Besides, until yesterday, Priti Patel was about the least popular member of the government. Half the population hated what she said, and the other half despised her inablilty to convert her horrible words into action. If this mad plan dies on its bum, and there are many ways it can do that, that same toxic combination will spread to the rest of the government.
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775

    The SNP are stupid and/or dodgy AF.

    THE SNP has been criticised by opposition politicians over out-of-date information on their website that suggested students could vote twice in next month’s election.

    In a "handy guide" on registering how to vote, Nicola Sturgeon’s party said that "a person who has two homes (like a university student who has a term-time address and lives at home during holidays) can register to vote at both addresses if they’re in two different council areas, and can vote in the local elections for the two different councils."

    While that's true in England, it's not true north of the border. The law changed late last year.

    The Electoral Commission says students now "need to choose one address and vote in only that area" when voting in a council election.

    They warn that voting in more than one location “is a criminal offence.”


    https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/20073042.row-snp-tells-students-can-vote-twice-mays-council-elections/?ref=twtrec

    Sounds like from the article the electoral commission only just changed their advice:

    The SNP told the Herald they had simply replicated the Electoral Commission advice that was in place at the time.

    Until April 14, the Electoral Commission's website told students that if their home and university addresses were in two different council areas, they could vote in council elections in both areas.

    “This is because they are separate elections.”

    The SNP says that when the Electoral Commission updated its website, they subsequently asked the party to do the same.
  • stodgestodge Posts: 12,745
    Sean_F said:


    The counter-argument is put forward by Brett Devereaux (who actually, does not disagree with you about the exploitative nature of the Roman Empire). I find convincing the argument for quite a sharp decline in Western European living standards after 450.

    https://acoup.blog/2022/02/11/collections-rome-decline-and-fall-part-iii-things/

    Britain may have enjoyed a brief sweet spot, where it was no longer paying taxes to Rome, but things did fall apart after the mid Fifth century. By the mid Sixth century, Britain must have been like the world of Mad Max.

    I thought there was considerable evidence the Romano-British rural estates were being abandoned by the beginning of the fourth rather than the fifth century. The economic, social and cultural decline of Roman Britain pre-dated the military and political collapse.

    There was a retreat into the towns and cities while the country was increasingly abandoned to bandits and others and this obviously accelerated with the collapse of the security apparatus after 410.

    The Romano-British successors lacked, it seems, the will rather than the means to organise the defence of Britain once Honorius had withdrawn the final troops and used paid mercenaries to try to hold the line which didn't end well as we know. To what extent Vortigern, if he existed, held any kind of real political power is uncertain.

    I can only imagine the psychological shock for the Romano-British to find themselves without Imperial protection for the first time in nearly five centuries, to see Hadrian's Wall abandoned to the Picts and Scots who could presumably roam at will far to the south forcing the populace into fortified and isolated towns.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,758
    edited April 2022
    BigRich said:

    @DefenceU
    The Ministry of Defence of Ukraine reminds the russian navy that the Black Sea straits are closed for entry only. The part of your fleet that remains afloat still has a way out.


    https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1514941186397683715

    Apparat form being incredibly brave, the Ukrainians also have a good séance of humour.
    The séance part would be handy for the Russians trying to get hold of their generals...
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,851
    edited April 2022
    If it's the third they need for another FPTP majority - ie containing most of those who swung the red wall and the midlands last time - Rwanda could still be a winner.

    I think not, personally, since I've regained my faith in the British people, but my point is it could be. That only a minority like it doesn't mean that it isn't.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,765
    stodge said:

    Sean_F said:


    The counter-argument is put forward by Brett Devereaux (who actually, does not disagree with you about the exploitative nature of the Roman Empire). I find convincing the argument for quite a sharp decline in Western European living standards after 450.

    https://acoup.blog/2022/02/11/collections-rome-decline-and-fall-part-iii-things/

    Britain may have enjoyed a brief sweet spot, where it was no longer paying taxes to Rome, but things did fall apart after the mid Fifth century. By the mid Sixth century, Britain must have been like the world of Mad Max.

    I thought there was considerable evidence the Romano-British rural estates were being abandoned by the beginning of the fourth rather than the fifth century. The economic, social and cultural decline of Roman Britain pre-dated the military and political collapse.

    There was a retreat into the towns and cities while the country was increasingly abandoned to bandits and others and this obviously accelerated with the collapse of the security apparatus after 410.

    The Romano-British successors lacked, it seems, the will rather than the means to organise the defence of Britain once Honorius had withdrawn the final troops and used paid mercenaries to try to hold the line which didn't end well as we know. To what extent Vortigern, if he existed, held any kind of real political power is uncertain.

    I can only imagine the psychological shock for the Romano-British to find themselves without Imperial protection for the first time in nearly five centuries, to see Hadrian's Wall abandoned to the Picts and Scots who could presumably roam at will far to the south forcing the populace into fortified and isolated towns.
    Devereaux' view is that decline set in about the middle of the Fourth century, and the cities were more or less gone, in Britain, by 420.

    At that point, I don't think anyone in Rome thought that the retreat from Britain was permanent, and I expect there were probably people in Britain who expected imperial control to be reasserted. The Notitia Dignitatum, of 423, still lists Britain as a part of the empire.

    Britain is a most unusual case because of the totality of collapse. Throughout most of Western Europe, one can point to institutions or noble families that long outlived the fall of the Western Empire, but in Britain, everything vanished, pretty much. My guess is that Southern Germany and Austria was similar to Britain at the time, judging by the Life of St. Severinus
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,069
    stodge said:

    Sean_F said:


    The counter-argument is put forward by Brett Devereaux (who actually, does not disagree with you about the exploitative nature of the Roman Empire). I find convincing the argument for quite a sharp decline in Western European living standards after 450.

    https://acoup.blog/2022/02/11/collections-rome-decline-and-fall-part-iii-things/

    Britain may have enjoyed a brief sweet spot, where it was no longer paying taxes to Rome, but things did fall apart after the mid Fifth century. By the mid Sixth century, Britain must have been like the world of Mad Max.

    I thought there was considerable evidence the Romano-British rural estates were being abandoned by the beginning of the fourth rather than the fifth century. The economic, social and cultural decline of Roman Britain pre-dated the military and political collapse.

    There was a retreat into the towns and cities while the country was increasingly abandoned to bandits and others and this obviously accelerated with the collapse of the security apparatus after 410.

    The Romano-British successors lacked, it seems, the will rather than the means to organise the defence of Britain once Honorius had withdrawn the final troops and used paid mercenaries to try to hold the line which didn't end well as we know. To what extent Vortigern, if he existed, held any kind of real political power is uncertain.

    I can only imagine the psychological shock for the Romano-British to find themselves without Imperial protection for the first time in nearly five centuries, to see Hadrian's Wall abandoned to the Picts and Scots who could presumably roam at will far to the south forcing the populace into fortified and isolated towns.
    Wasn't it the opposite though? People abandoned the towns to live as subsistance farmers in the post Roman period.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517
    ydoethur said:

    BigRich said:

    @DefenceU
    The Ministry of Defence of Ukraine reminds the russian navy that the Black Sea straits are closed for entry only. The part of your fleet that remains afloat still has a way out.


    https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1514941186397683715

    Apparat form being incredibly brave, the Ukrainians also have a good séance of humour.
    The séance part would be handy for the Russians trying to get hold of their generals...
    There's an old adage that goes something like: "a peacetime general makes a poor wartime general. A wartime general makes a poor peacetime general."

    The concept being that plans and concepts fail at first contact with the enemy, and the failed senior officers get replaced (by either forced retirement or death) with fresher, bloodied officers.

    The question is whether Russia is going through this process: the replacements for the dead senior officers (let alone the injured and forcibly retired ones) are better because their ideas and plans have been forged in this war.

    Somehow I doubt it; at least in the timescales this war has allowed. I do wonder if the rather (ahem) inaccurate story being given out by Russian media is the same one being given to, and believed by, the senior officers. In which case they are screwed.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575
    In the village of Poliske, Kyiv Oblast, Russian troops tortured a man to death and mined his body

    For three days, several booby traps left behind by Russians didn't allow to recover the mutilated body of Vadim Postolyuk, 27, found in Poliske on April 5.

    https://mobile.twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1515017420083187719
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,149

    Just looking out from our balcony on the Gwynt y Môr wind farm the turbines are barely turning tonight

    Gwynt y Môr (Welsh: meaning sea wind) is a 576-megawatt (MW) offshore wind farm located off the coast of Wales and is the fifth largest operating offshore windfarm in the world. The farm has 160 wind turbines of 150 metres (490 ft) tip height above mean sea level.

    Indeed. And yet the tides are still running.
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    Sean_F said:

    Farooq said:

    Reposting because I took a bloody age typing it:

    kle4 said:

    kamski said:

    Caesar's conquest of Gaul supposedly resulted in a million killed, and a million enslaved, which must have been quite a high proportion of the population at the time. So I guess the Roman empire must go down as one of the most evil in history.

    Worse people to be ruled by, but the process of becoming ruled not a pleasant one.
    Being ruled by Rome was bad. Like all empires, Rome was an extractive system leading to poverty for the subjected peoples.

    "An unpublished survey of 1,867 skeletons from sixty-one sites in Britain likewise documents an increase in body height after the end of Roman rule. These findings reinforce the general impression conveyed by a more eclectic long-term survey of stature in different parts of Europe that identifies troughs during the Roman period and the High Middle Ages and peaks in the post Roman period and in the wake of the Black Death."

    What we can learn from evidence like this is that in times of high inequality, which is what happens when extractive regimes hold hegemonic power, the average citizen suffers. Empires is an extremely bad system of government for normal people, and the continued sense of nostalgia and romance around them is a function of the narrative focus on the elites, who, of course, benefit hugely from such a system of government.
    The counter-argument is put forward by Brett Devereaux (who actually, does not disagree with you about the exploitative nature of the Roman Empire). I find convincing the argument for quite a sharp decline in Western European living standards after 450.

    https://acoup.blog/2022/02/11/collections-rome-decline-and-fall-part-iii-things/

    Britain may have enjoyed a brief sweet spot, where it was no longer paying taxes to Rome, but things did fall apart after the mid Fifth century. By the mid Sixth century, Britain must have been like the world of Mad Max.
    I'm about half way through this and I need to break for dinner, but I just wanted to say thanks for the link, it's interesting. Early thoughts are that it hasn't (yet) covered the fact that those areas inside the Byzantine Empire also experienced a decline and a long rebound. So it's not quite as simple as to say the lack of Rome was the cause of the lowered standards.
    I like to think of this in terms of the ice age. The weight of the glaciers across northern Europe is still being expressed today, with isostatic rebound causing tremors and changes in sea level. You could say that the frozen dead weight of the ice was a stabilising factor, and the sudden (geologically) removal of that caused all kinds of problems. And in a sense, that is correct. But when weighing up whether you'd like to live in say Aberdeenshire today versus when it was covered in an icesheet a mile thick, it's no comparison.
    Evidence of transition difficulties can be set alongside evidence of transition benefits, but I do still think that the overall effect of living under an empire is worse than not.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,851

    ydoethur said:

    BigRich said:

    @DefenceU
    The Ministry of Defence of Ukraine reminds the russian navy that the Black Sea straits are closed for entry only. The part of your fleet that remains afloat still has a way out.


    https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1514941186397683715

    Apparat form being incredibly brave, the Ukrainians also have a good séance of humour.
    The séance part would be handy for the Russians trying to get hold of their generals...
    There's an old adage that goes something like: "a peacetime general makes a poor wartime general. A wartime general makes a poor peacetime general."

    The concept being that plans and concepts fail at first contact with the enemy, and the failed senior officers get replaced (by either forced retirement or death) with fresher, bloodied officers.

    The question is whether Russia is going through this process: the replacements for the dead senior officers (let alone the injured and forcibly retired ones) are better because their ideas and plans have been forged in this war.

    Somehow I doubt it; at least in the timescales this war has allowed. I do wonder if the rather (ahem) inaccurate story being given out by Russian media is the same one being given to, and believed by, the senior officers. In which case they are screwed.
    As seen in The Godfather. Tom Hagen was fine as the Don's counsellor until violent conflict broke out with the Tattaglias. Then he wasn't quite right for the job and the Don had to tell him.

    "Tom, you are not a wartime consigliere."

    Harsh, esp on an adopted son, but it was necessary.
  • RogerRoger Posts: 18,891
    Heathener said:

    Remarkable poll which tallies with anecdotal comments from people I know who are Conservatives or Conservative-leaners.

    Shameful poll. What a disgraceful country the UK has become.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,149
    edited April 2022
    Farooq said:

    Sean_F said:

    Farooq said:

    Reposting because I took a bloody age typing it:

    kle4 said:

    kamski said:

    Caesar's conquest of Gaul supposedly resulted in a million killed, and a million enslaved, which must have been quite a high proportion of the population at the time. So I guess the Roman empire must go down as one of the most evil in history.

    Worse people to be ruled by, but the process of becoming ruled not a pleasant one.
    Being ruled by Rome was bad. Like all empires, Rome was an extractive system leading to poverty for the subjected peoples.

    "An unpublished survey of 1,867 skeletons from sixty-one sites in Britain likewise documents an increase in body height after the end of Roman rule. These findings reinforce the general impression conveyed by a more eclectic long-term survey of stature in different parts of Europe that identifies troughs during the Roman period and the High Middle Ages and peaks in the post Roman period and in the wake of the Black Death."

    What we can learn from evidence like this is that in times of high inequality, which is what happens when extractive regimes hold hegemonic power, the average citizen suffers. Empires is an extremely bad system of government for normal people, and the continued sense of nostalgia and romance around them is a function of the narrative focus on the elites, who, of course, benefit hugely from such a system of government.
    The counter-argument is put forward by Brett Devereaux (who actually, does not disagree with you about the exploitative nature of the Roman Empire). I find convincing the argument for quite a sharp decline in Western European living standards after 450.

    https://acoup.blog/2022/02/11/collections-rome-decline-and-fall-part-iii-things/

    Britain may have enjoyed a brief sweet spot, where it was no longer paying taxes to Rome, but things did fall apart after the mid Fifth century. By the mid Sixth century, Britain must have been like the world of Mad Max.
    I'm about half way through this and I need to break for dinner, but I just wanted to say thanks for the link, it's interesting. Early thoughts are that it hasn't (yet) covered the fact that those areas inside the Byzantine Empire also experienced a decline and a long rebound. So it's not quite as simple as to say the lack of Rome was the cause of the lowered standards.
    I like to think of this in terms of the ice age. The weight of the glaciers across northern Europe is still being expressed today, with isostatic rebound causing tremors and changes in sea level. You could say that the frozen dead weight of the ice was a stabilising factor, and the sudden (geologically) removal of that caused all kinds of problems. And in a sense, that is correct. But when weighing up whether you'd like to live in say Aberdeenshire today versus when it was covered in an icesheet a mile thick, it's no comparison.
    Evidence of transition difficulties can be set alongside evidence of transition benefits, but I do still think that the overall effect of living under an empire is worse than not.
    Of course, as far as written history goes, we only have the Roman side, pretty much (the later writing down of oral British story cycles such as Manau Gododdin and the Arthurian legends aside). It's a bit like a history of Brexit in 2000 years written from a few tattered fragments of the DT and some UKIP and Tory manifestos.

    Edit: perhaps I exaggerate. Add the odd Times leader, and ahalf a paperback written by a C4 journalist.
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 60,004
    edited April 2022
    Carnyx said:

    Just looking out from our balcony on the Gwynt y Môr wind farm the turbines are barely turning tonight

    Gwynt y Môr (Welsh: meaning sea wind) is a 576-megawatt (MW) offshore wind farm located off the coast of Wales and is the fifth largest operating offshore windfarm in the world. The farm has 160 wind turbines of 150 metres (490 ft) tip height above mean sea level.

    Indeed. And yet the tides are still running.
    I am very in favour of tidal and indeed there is a scheme being proposed locally

    * The windfarm is currently be-calmed

    https://www.northwalestidalenergy.com/news/tidal-lagoon-report-delivers-major-boost-for-7-billion-north-wales-scheme
  • PensfoldPensfold Posts: 191
    Too early to judge the impact of the new immigration process from a poll. A high number of don't knows and those that think they know will have the opportunity to change their minds (either way) as things develop.
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    stodge said:

    Sean_F said:


    The counter-argument is put forward by Brett Devereaux (who actually, does not disagree with you about the exploitative nature of the Roman Empire). I find convincing the argument for quite a sharp decline in Western European living standards after 450.

    https://acoup.blog/2022/02/11/collections-rome-decline-and-fall-part-iii-things/

    Britain may have enjoyed a brief sweet spot, where it was no longer paying taxes to Rome, but things did fall apart after the mid Fifth century. By the mid Sixth century, Britain must have been like the world of Mad Max.

    I thought there was considerable evidence the Romano-British rural estates were being abandoned by the beginning of the fourth rather than the fifth century. The economic, social and cultural decline of Roman Britain pre-dated the military and political collapse.

    There was a retreat into the towns and cities while the country was increasingly abandoned to bandits and others and this obviously accelerated with the collapse of the security apparatus after 410.

    The Romano-British successors lacked, it seems, the will rather than the means to organise the defence of Britain once Honorius had withdrawn the final troops and used paid mercenaries to try to hold the line which didn't end well as we know. To what extent Vortigern, if he existed, held any kind of real political power is uncertain.

    I can only imagine the psychological shock for the Romano-British to find themselves without Imperial protection for the first time in nearly five centuries, to see Hadrian's Wall abandoned to the Picts and Scots who could presumably roam at will far to the south forcing the populace into fortified and isolated towns.
    Heh, one man's imperial protection is another's exploitative occupation.
  • JohnLilburneJohnLilburne Posts: 5,997
    Nigelb said:

    In the village of Poliske, Kyiv Oblast, Russian troops tortured a man to death and mined his body

    For three days, several booby traps left behind by Russians didn't allow to recover the mutilated body of Vadim Postolyuk, 27, found in Poliske on April 5.

    https://mobile.twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1515017420083187719

    The Russians seem to be trying to corroborate every racist meme that the Ukrainians might have had about them. Katsapy/moskali/Mongols. No wonder they are being referred to as orcs. The Ukrainians have thought of them as Asiatic hordes and... well, Chingis had nothing on Uncle Vova. Смерть кацапам.
  • mwadamsmwadams Posts: 3,089
    Sean_F said:

    stodge said:

    Sean_F said:


    The counter-argument is put forward by Brett Devereaux (who actually, does not disagree with you about the exploitative nature of the Roman Empire). I find convincing the argument for quite a sharp decline in Western European living standards after 450.

    https://acoup.blog/2022/02/11/collections-rome-decline-and-fall-part-iii-things/

    Britain may have enjoyed a brief sweet spot, where it was no longer paying taxes to Rome, but things did fall apart after the mid Fifth century. By the mid Sixth century, Britain must have been like the world of Mad Max.

    I thought there was considerable evidence the Romano-British rural estates were being abandoned by the beginning of the fourth rather than the fifth century. The economic, social and cultural decline of Roman Britain pre-dated the military and political collapse.

    There was a retreat into the towns and cities while the country was increasingly abandoned to bandits and others and this obviously accelerated with the collapse of the security apparatus after 410.

    The Romano-British successors lacked, it seems, the will rather than the means to organise the defence of Britain once Honorius had withdrawn the final troops and used paid mercenaries to try to hold the line which didn't end well as we know. To what extent Vortigern, if he existed, held any kind of real political power is uncertain.

    I can only imagine the psychological shock for the Romano-British to find themselves without Imperial protection for the first time in nearly five centuries, to see Hadrian's Wall abandoned to the Picts and Scots who could presumably roam at will far to the south forcing the populace into fortified and isolated towns.
    Devereaux' view is that decline set in about the middle of the Fourth century, and the cities were more or less gone, in Britain, by 420.

    At that point, I don't think anyone in Rome thought that the retreat from Britain was permanent, and I expect there were probably people in Britain who expected imperial control to be reasserted. The Notitia Dignitatum, of 423, still lists Britain as a part of the empire.

    Britain is a most unusual case because of the totality of collapse. Throughout most of Western Europe, one can point to institutions or noble families that long outlived the fall of the Western Empire, but in Britain, everything vanished, pretty much. My guess is that Southern Germany and Austria was similar to Britain at the time, judging by the Life of St. Severinus
    I think there is plenty of evidence that that isn't true. And at least enough to dispute that. The material culture changes dramatically (just as it did in the decades preceding and after 43AD!), but DNA evidence suggests that the people are still mostly the same.

    The fact that in the countryside, it is spectacular how many Anglo Saxon sites are built next to the old Villa sites (and ever more so as modern tech helps us find more of both) and how many Anglo Saxon churches are built from villa walls, on Roman sites...

    I don't buy the "rapid, wholesale collapse, and population replacement" story, even among elites.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517

    Nigelb said:

    In the village of Poliske, Kyiv Oblast, Russian troops tortured a man to death and mined his body

    For three days, several booby traps left behind by Russians didn't allow to recover the mutilated body of Vadim Postolyuk, 27, found in Poliske on April 5.

    https://mobile.twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1515017420083187719

    The Russians seem to be trying to corroborate every racist meme that the Ukrainians might have had about them. Katsapy/moskali/Mongols. No wonder they are being referred to as orcs. The Ukrainians have thought of them as Asiatic hordes and... well, Chingis had nothing on Uncle Vova. Смерть кацапам.
    According to at least one person on here, they are all Slavs, so are the same.

    It is noteworthy how many of the faces of dead and captured Russians are very 'eastern' in appearance. It's almost as though Russia is depleting its regions of its young men rather than its western cities.

    (I'm aware this might be seen as racist, but the pictures do give that impression - as does the info on where the men are coming from ...)
  • SeaShantyIrish2SeaShantyIrish2 Posts: 15,242

    Nigelb said:

    In the village of Poliske, Kyiv Oblast, Russian troops tortured a man to death and mined his body

    For three days, several booby traps left behind by Russians didn't allow to recover the mutilated body of Vadim Postolyuk, 27, found in Poliske on April 5.

    https://mobile.twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1515017420083187719

    The Russians seem to be trying to corroborate every racist meme that the Ukrainians might have had about them. Katsapy/moskali/Mongols. No wonder they are being referred to as orcs. The Ukrainians have thought of them as Asiatic hordes and... well, Chingis had nothing on Uncle Vova. Смерть кацапам.
    Secret of Ukrainian success on global public relations front, has been their near-total eschewing of traditional Ukrainian nationalistic themes, including racisim and other hate think. Underscored by fact they are being led - and led brilliantly - by a Jewish president.

    How woke is that? In contrast to Putin's Putinism. Esp. Vladimir the Terrible's war on Woke.

    Putin & fellow war criminals can keep their racism and bigotry. Makes great contrast to Zelensky's & Ukrainian's humanity and decency.
  • darkage said:

    This polling is fascinating. I assumed that it would be a popular policy.
    Maybe it is just a case that people would rather the boats were stopped, rather than the government spend billions on flying plane loads of people to Rwanda.
    Or perhaps the government are chasing the voters of 6 years ago - trying to resucitate the Brexit magic. But the fact is that lots of Brexit voters are dying due to old age, and this is only going to gather pace as the years go on.

    People aren't unfeeling cynical bastards the way the Tories have tried to condition them to be. At least not in large numbers.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,149
    mwadams said:

    Sean_F said:

    stodge said:

    Sean_F said:


    The counter-argument is put forward by Brett Devereaux (who actually, does not disagree with you about the exploitative nature of the Roman Empire). I find convincing the argument for quite a sharp decline in Western European living standards after 450.

    https://acoup.blog/2022/02/11/collections-rome-decline-and-fall-part-iii-things/

    Britain may have enjoyed a brief sweet spot, where it was no longer paying taxes to Rome, but things did fall apart after the mid Fifth century. By the mid Sixth century, Britain must have been like the world of Mad Max.

    I thought there was considerable evidence the Romano-British rural estates were being abandoned by the beginning of the fourth rather than the fifth century. The economic, social and cultural decline of Roman Britain pre-dated the military and political collapse.

    There was a retreat into the towns and cities while the country was increasingly abandoned to bandits and others and this obviously accelerated with the collapse of the security apparatus after 410.

    The Romano-British successors lacked, it seems, the will rather than the means to organise the defence of Britain once Honorius had withdrawn the final troops and used paid mercenaries to try to hold the line which didn't end well as we know. To what extent Vortigern, if he existed, held any kind of real political power is uncertain.

    I can only imagine the psychological shock for the Romano-British to find themselves without Imperial protection for the first time in nearly five centuries, to see Hadrian's Wall abandoned to the Picts and Scots who could presumably roam at will far to the south forcing the populace into fortified and isolated towns.
    Devereaux' view is that decline set in about the middle of the Fourth century, and the cities were more or less gone, in Britain, by 420.

    At that point, I don't think anyone in Rome thought that the retreat from Britain was permanent, and I expect there were probably people in Britain who expected imperial control to be reasserted. The Notitia Dignitatum, of 423, still lists Britain as a part of the empire.

    Britain is a most unusual case because of the totality of collapse. Throughout most of Western Europe, one can point to institutions or noble families that long outlived the fall of the Western Empire, but in Britain, everything vanished, pretty much. My guess is that Southern Germany and Austria was similar to Britain at the time, judging by the Life of St. Severinus
    I think there is plenty of evidence that that isn't true. And at least enough to dispute that. The material culture changes dramatically (just as it did in the decades preceding and after 43AD!), but DNA evidence suggests that the people are still mostly the same.

    The fact that in the countryside, it is spectacular how many Anglo Saxon sites are built next to the old Villa sites (and ever more so as modern tech helps us find more of both) and how many Anglo Saxon churches are built from villa walls, on Roman sites...

    I don't buy the "rapid, wholesale collapse, and population replacement" story, even among elites.
    There's a small church in a river valley NW of Oxford - there are bits of a Roman mosaic visible in the floor.

    https://www.oxfordshirecotswolds.org/things-to-do/attractions/widford-st-oswalds-church-p457601
  • HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    59% of Conservative voters and 57% of Leave voters support the Rwanda immigration plan however. So in terms of Boris shoring up his core vote it works

    @HYUFD - he cannot win with his core vote, he needs conservatives like myself who frankly are very disillusioned with Boris and his mps lack of integrity allowing him to stay in office
    At the moment Boris needs to focus on shoring up his 35% core vote to keep his position as Tory leader and PM (35% of voters still support the Rwanda plan). If the governing party's voteshare falls to 30% or less a la the dying years of May, Major or Brown then his position is under threat.

    He can leave actually trying to win the next general election until after he has secured his core vote and leadership
    You don't care about right and wrong of course. What's right. Morality. The standards that have driven your great party through Churchill and Thatcher. Only about what you think you can sell.

    Its shameful.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,088
    @Malmesbury

    Any idea what happened with today's COVID stats?

    Deaths have jumped the last day or two.



    Being furiously by remoaner twitter :smile:

  • At some point the Tories have no way to come back, with every passing day that gets closer.

    They are running out of ideas. It is evident.
  • JohnLilburneJohnLilburne Posts: 5,997

    Nigelb said:

    In the village of Poliske, Kyiv Oblast, Russian troops tortured a man to death and mined his body

    For three days, several booby traps left behind by Russians didn't allow to recover the mutilated body of Vadim Postolyuk, 27, found in Poliske on April 5.

    https://mobile.twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1515017420083187719

    The Russians seem to be trying to corroborate every racist meme that the Ukrainians might have had about them. Katsapy/moskali/Mongols. No wonder they are being referred to as orcs. The Ukrainians have thought of them as Asiatic hordes and... well, Chingis had nothing on Uncle Vova. Смерть кацапам.
    According to at least one person on here, they are all Slavs, so are the same.

    It is noteworthy how many of the faces of dead and captured Russians are very 'eastern' in appearance. It's almost as though Russia is depleting its regions of its young men rather than its western cities.

    (I'm aware this might be seen as racist, but the pictures do give that impression - as does the info on where the men are coming from ...)
    A lot of Russians look Eastern. Even Putin. The theory is that there is a lot of Tatar in them... DNA evidence shows otherwise, however.

    Russia is throwing her minorities into the the meat grinder, see kamilkazani on twitter who is himself Tatar.

    My old Russian teacher is Russian-Tartar, I haven't dared get in touch.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,043

    LOL


    Those seas look pretty calm to me! LOL
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,184
    FPT:

    Cookie said:

    Wife and I have just come back from our first night away without kids since my 7-year old was born. A night away in the Peak District, for no particular reason. Lovely. Actually, arguably it was for our tenth wedding anniversary, three years late, having been postponed by first the need to disimpact my youngest daughter's colon and then by covid. Anyway, a super little break. The hotel was just setting up for a wedding as we were preparing to leave, and we briefly met the groom. Delightful that even among the tumult of the early 2020s here are young people with reason to look to the future with excitement.
    A morning in Bakewell mooching amiably about before returning home, joining apparently the entire population of the East Midlands in a delirious quest to spend money on unnecessary things.

    Arrived back at the grandparents where the kids were staying; 7-year-old enthusiastically greets her mother thus: "Are you pregnant?". Sadly the list of reasons that the answer to that question is "no" is long and lamentable but can largely be summed up by being 47 and knackered.

    :)

    May I ask where you stayed?

    I find Bakewell a bit 'meh'. If you go to the Peak District, you want countryside, not a town. I feel the same way about Buxton and Matlock (although both of those are just outside). Then again, I spent far too long in all those places in my youth, so am probably a little jaded.
    We were staying in the Edale Valley.
    I share your view on Bakewell, and the other towns which surround the Peak District, a bit. But my knee is awaiting an op and my wife's back was sore and frankly for the sheer joy of being at large unencumbered by children we could have been anywhere and it would have been wonderful.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,959

    Just looking out from our balcony on the Gwynt y Môr wind farm the turbines are barely turning tonight

    Gwynt y Môr (Welsh: meaning sea wind) is a 576-megawatt (MW) offshore wind farm located off the coast of Wales and is the fifth largest operating offshore windfarm in the world. The farm has 160 wind turbines of 150 metres (490 ft) tip height above mean sea level.

    Has the tide stopped coming in too? Oh, no....
  • SeaShantyIrish2SeaShantyIrish2 Posts: 15,242
    Cookie said:

    FPT:

    Cookie said:

    Wife and I have just come back from our first night away without kids since my 7-year old was born. A night away in the Peak District, for no particular reason. Lovely. Actually, arguably it was for our tenth wedding anniversary, three years late, having been postponed by first the need to disimpact my youngest daughter's colon and then by covid. Anyway, a super little break. The hotel was just setting up for a wedding as we were preparing to leave, and we briefly met the groom. Delightful that even among the tumult of the early 2020s here are young people with reason to look to the future with excitement.
    A morning in Bakewell mooching amiably about before returning home, joining apparently the entire population of the East Midlands in a delirious quest to spend money on unnecessary things.

    Arrived back at the grandparents where the kids were staying; 7-year-old enthusiastically greets her mother thus: "Are you pregnant?". Sadly the list of reasons that the answer to that question is "no" is long and lamentable but can largely be summed up by being 47 and knackered.

    :)

    May I ask where you stayed?

    I find Bakewell a bit 'meh'. If you go to the Peak District, you want countryside, not a town. I feel the same way about Buxton and Matlock (although both of those are just outside). Then again, I spent far too long in all those places in my youth, so am probably a little jaded.
    We were staying in the Edale Valley.
    I share your view on Bakewell, and the other towns which surround the Peak District, a bit. But my knee is awaiting an op and my wife's back was sore and frankly for the sheer joy of being at large unencumbered by children we could have been anywhere and it would have been wonderful.
    Re: Peak Dist. stayed on two occasions at youth hostel at Hartington, with private room, excellent cafeteria (which doubled as pub) and miles of pleasant hiking, including fishing spots where Izaak Walton used to try his luck.
  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 11,059

    Cookie said:

    FPT:

    Cookie said:

    Wife and I have just come back from our first night away without kids since my 7-year old was born. A night away in the Peak District, for no particular reason. Lovely. Actually, arguably it was for our tenth wedding anniversary, three years late, having been postponed by first the need to disimpact my youngest daughter's colon and then by covid. Anyway, a super little break. The hotel was just setting up for a wedding as we were preparing to leave, and we briefly met the groom. Delightful that even among the tumult of the early 2020s here are young people with reason to look to the future with excitement.
    A morning in Bakewell mooching amiably about before returning home, joining apparently the entire population of the East Midlands in a delirious quest to spend money on unnecessary things.

    Arrived back at the grandparents where the kids were staying; 7-year-old enthusiastically greets her mother thus: "Are you pregnant?". Sadly the list of reasons that the answer to that question is "no" is long and lamentable but can largely be summed up by being 47 and knackered.

    :)

    May I ask where you stayed?

    I find Bakewell a bit 'meh'. If you go to the Peak District, you want countryside, not a town. I feel the same way about Buxton and Matlock (although both of those are just outside). Then again, I spent far too long in all those places in my youth, so am probably a little jaded.
    We were staying in the Edale Valley.
    I share your view on Bakewell, and the other towns which surround the Peak District, a bit. But my knee is awaiting an op and my wife's back was sore and frankly for the sheer joy of being at large unencumbered by children we could have been anywhere and it would have been wonderful.
    Re: Peak Dist. stayed on two occasions at youth hostel at Hartington, with private room, excellent cafeteria (which doubled as pub) and miles of pleasant hiking, including fishing spots where Izaak Walton used to try his luck.
    Shamefully I’ve never been. I think I’m more conversant with my Wife’s native New England than I am with my own home version - which is a bit sad TBH.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575

    Nigelb said:

    In the village of Poliske, Kyiv Oblast, Russian troops tortured a man to death and mined his body

    For three days, several booby traps left behind by Russians didn't allow to recover the mutilated body of Vadim Postolyuk, 27, found in Poliske on April 5.

    https://mobile.twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1515017420083187719

    The Russians seem to be trying to corroborate every racist meme that the Ukrainians might have had about them. Katsapy/moskali/Mongols. No wonder they are being referred to as orcs. The Ukrainians have thought of them as Asiatic hordes and... well, Chingis had nothing on Uncle Vova. Смерть кацапам.
    Of course this is little different to American behaviour in Vietnam - but it took them years of conflict to reach such degradation. The Russian army seems programmed for it.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,765
    Farooq said:

    Sean_F said:

    Farooq said:

    Reposting because I took a bloody age typing it:

    kle4 said:

    kamski said:

    Caesar's conquest of Gaul supposedly resulted in a million killed, and a million enslaved, which must have been quite a high proportion of the population at the time. So I guess the Roman empire must go down as one of the most evil in history.

    Worse people to be ruled by, but the process of becoming ruled not a pleasant one.
    Being ruled by Rome was bad. Like all empires, Rome was an extractive system leading to poverty for the subjected peoples.

    "An unpublished survey of 1,867 skeletons from sixty-one sites in Britain likewise documents an increase in body height after the end of Roman rule. These findings reinforce the general impression conveyed by a more eclectic long-term survey of stature in different parts of Europe that identifies troughs during the Roman period and the High Middle Ages and peaks in the post Roman period and in the wake of the Black Death."

    What we can learn from evidence like this is that in times of high inequality, which is what happens when extractive regimes hold hegemonic power, the average citizen suffers. Empires is an extremely bad system of government for normal people, and the continued sense of nostalgia and romance around them is a function of the narrative focus on the elites, who, of course, benefit hugely from such a system of government.
    The counter-argument is put forward by Brett Devereaux (who actually, does not disagree with you about the exploitative nature of the Roman Empire). I find convincing the argument for quite a sharp decline in Western European living standards after 450.

    https://acoup.blog/2022/02/11/collections-rome-decline-and-fall-part-iii-things/

    Britain may have enjoyed a brief sweet spot, where it was no longer paying taxes to Rome, but things did fall apart after the mid Fifth century. By the mid Sixth century, Britain must have been like the world of Mad Max.
    I'm about half way through this and I need to break for dinner, but I just wanted to say thanks for the link, it's interesting. Early thoughts are that it hasn't (yet) covered the fact that those areas inside the Byzantine Empire also experienced a decline and a long rebound. So it's not quite as simple as to say the lack of Rome was the cause of the lowered standards.
    I like to think of this in terms of the ice age. The weight of the glaciers across northern Europe is still being expressed today, with isostatic rebound causing tremors and changes in sea level. You could say that the frozen dead weight of the ice was a stabilising factor, and the sudden (geologically) removal of that caused all kinds of problems. And in a sense, that is correct. But when weighing up whether you'd like to live in say Aberdeenshire today versus when it was covered in an icesheet a mile thick, it's no comparison.
    Evidence of transition difficulties can be set alongside evidence of transition benefits, but I do still think that the overall effect of living under an empire is worse than not.
    There is much less of a "Dark Age" in the East, thanks to the flourishing of orthodox monasticism. We can be clearer about what was happening. Basically, urban life continued at about its fourth century level up till the Persian invasion, following the overthrow of Maurice. The subsequent Arab invasions pretty much killed off urban life, in the remaining imperial territories. By the mid 8th century, there were reckoned to be five cities left in the Eastern empire, and that has to be seen in context. The largest, Constantinople, was mostly uninhabited, and had fewer than 50,000 people.

    We know that the emperors also instituted radical land and military reforms, in response to the Arabs, in a way that just didn't happen in the West. Land was taken from the magnates, in many cases, and redistributed to Anatolian peasants, in return for military service. One can say with some confidence that life for a the average Eastern peasant in 800 was rather better than in 400.
  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 11,059
    mwadams said:

    Sean_F said:

    stodge said:

    Sean_F said:


    The counter-argument is put forward by Brett Devereaux (who actually, does not disagree with you about the exploitative nature of the Roman Empire). I find convincing the argument for quite a sharp decline in Western European living standards after 450.

    https://acoup.blog/2022/02/11/collections-rome-decline-and-fall-part-iii-things/

    Britain may have enjoyed a brief sweet spot, where it was no longer paying taxes to Rome, but things did fall apart after the mid Fifth century. By the mid Sixth century, Britain must have been like the world of Mad Max.

    I thought there was considerable evidence the Romano-British rural estates were being abandoned by the beginning of the fourth rather than the fifth century. The economic, social and cultural decline of Roman Britain pre-dated the military and political collapse.

    There was a retreat into the towns and cities while the country was increasingly abandoned to bandits and others and this obviously accelerated with the collapse of the security apparatus after 410.

    The Romano-British successors lacked, it seems, the will rather than the means to organise the defence of Britain once Honorius had withdrawn the final troops and used paid mercenaries to try to hold the line which didn't end well as we know. To what extent Vortigern, if he existed, held any kind of real political power is uncertain.

    I can only imagine the psychological shock for the Romano-British to find themselves without Imperial protection for the first time in nearly five centuries, to see Hadrian's Wall abandoned to the Picts and Scots who could presumably roam at will far to the south forcing the populace into fortified and isolated towns.
    Devereaux' view is that decline set in about the middle of the Fourth century, and the cities were more or less gone, in Britain, by 420.

    At that point, I don't think anyone in Rome thought that the retreat from Britain was permanent, and I expect there were probably people in Britain who expected imperial control to be reasserted. The Notitia Dignitatum, of 423, still lists Britain as a part of the empire.

    Britain is a most unusual case because of the totality of collapse. Throughout most of Western Europe, one can point to institutions or noble families that long outlived the fall of the Western Empire, but in Britain, everything vanished, pretty much. My guess is that Southern Germany and Austria was similar to Britain at the time, judging by the Life of St. Severinus
    I think there is plenty of evidence that that isn't true. And at least enough to dispute that. The material culture changes dramatically (just as it did in the decades preceding and after 43AD!), but DNA evidence suggests that the people are still mostly the same.

    The fact that in the countryside, it is spectacular how many Anglo Saxon sites are built next to the old Villa sites (and ever more so as modern tech helps us find more of both) and how many Anglo Saxon churches are built from villa walls, on Roman sites...

    I don't buy the "rapid, wholesale collapse, and population replacement" story, even among elites.
    A cultural collapse rather than a population replacement. So linguistically the Germanic language completely came to dominate the eastern coast, while the DNA of the English differs very little from that of the Welsh.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517
    Cookie said:

    FPT:

    Cookie said:

    Wife and I have just come back from our first night away without kids since my 7-year old was born. A night away in the Peak District, for no particular reason. Lovely. Actually, arguably it was for our tenth wedding anniversary, three years late, having been postponed by first the need to disimpact my youngest daughter's colon and then by covid. Anyway, a super little break. The hotel was just setting up for a wedding as we were preparing to leave, and we briefly met the groom. Delightful that even among the tumult of the early 2020s here are young people with reason to look to the future with excitement.
    A morning in Bakewell mooching amiably about before returning home, joining apparently the entire population of the East Midlands in a delirious quest to spend money on unnecessary things.

    Arrived back at the grandparents where the kids were staying; 7-year-old enthusiastically greets her mother thus: "Are you pregnant?". Sadly the list of reasons that the answer to that question is "no" is long and lamentable but can largely be summed up by being 47 and knackered.

    :)

    May I ask where you stayed?

    I find Bakewell a bit 'meh'. If you go to the Peak District, you want countryside, not a town. I feel the same way about Buxton and Matlock (although both of those are just outside). Then again, I spent far too long in all those places in my youth, so am probably a little jaded.
    We were staying in the Edale Valley.
    I share your view on Bakewell, and the other towns which surround the Peak District, a bit. But my knee is awaiting an op and my wife's back was sore and frankly for the sheer joy of being at large unencumbered by children we could have been anywhere and it would have been wonderful.
    The Castleton ridge walk is perhaps my favourite walk in the entire UK. Having said that, I haven't done it for over ten years.

    I love that area. The Limestone Way descending down through the gully into Castleton is sublime for a number of reasons,
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 20,401
    Word association....

    Rwanda: Genocide

    I think that explains the polling.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,765
    mwadams said:

    Sean_F said:

    stodge said:

    Sean_F said:


    The counter-argument is put forward by Brett Devereaux (who actually, does not disagree with you about the exploitative nature of the Roman Empire). I find convincing the argument for quite a sharp decline in Western European living standards after 450.

    https://acoup.blog/2022/02/11/collections-rome-decline-and-fall-part-iii-things/

    Britain may have enjoyed a brief sweet spot, where it was no longer paying taxes to Rome, but things did fall apart after the mid Fifth century. By the mid Sixth century, Britain must have been like the world of Mad Max.

    I thought there was considerable evidence the Romano-British rural estates were being abandoned by the beginning of the fourth rather than the fifth century. The economic, social and cultural decline of Roman Britain pre-dated the military and political collapse.

    There was a retreat into the towns and cities while the country was increasingly abandoned to bandits and others and this obviously accelerated with the collapse of the security apparatus after 410.

    The Romano-British successors lacked, it seems, the will rather than the means to organise the defence of Britain once Honorius had withdrawn the final troops and used paid mercenaries to try to hold the line which didn't end well as we know. To what extent Vortigern, if he existed, held any kind of real political power is uncertain.

    I can only imagine the psychological shock for the Romano-British to find themselves without Imperial protection for the first time in nearly five centuries, to see Hadrian's Wall abandoned to the Picts and Scots who could presumably roam at will far to the south forcing the populace into fortified and isolated towns.
    Devereaux' view is that decline set in about the middle of the Fourth century, and the cities were more or less gone, in Britain, by 420.

    At that point, I don't think anyone in Rome thought that the retreat from Britain was permanent, and I expect there were probably people in Britain who expected imperial control to be reasserted. The Notitia Dignitatum, of 423, still lists Britain as a part of the empire.

    Britain is a most unusual case because of the totality of collapse. Throughout most of Western Europe, one can point to institutions or noble families that long outlived the fall of the Western Empire, but in Britain, everything vanished, pretty much. My guess is that Southern Germany and Austria was similar to Britain at the time, judging by the Life of St. Severinus
    I think there is plenty of evidence that that isn't true. And at least enough to dispute that. The material culture changes dramatically (just as it did in the decades preceding and after 43AD!), but DNA evidence suggests that the people are still mostly the same.

    The fact that in the countryside, it is spectacular how many Anglo Saxon sites are built next to the old Villa sites (and ever more so as modern tech helps us find more of both) and how many Anglo Saxon churches are built from villa walls, on Roman sites...

    I don't buy the "rapid, wholesale collapse, and population replacement" story, even among elites.
    Collapse of institutions, and replacement of populations, are separate issues.

    By, total collapse, I mean the total collapse of all Roman institutions (including the Church) in a way that did not happen, in say, France, Spain, or Italy.

    I agree that the British population was not replaced, but I think the evidence does point to a big decline in numbers.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,069
    DougSeal said:

    mwadams said:

    Sean_F said:

    stodge said:

    Sean_F said:


    The counter-argument is put forward by Brett Devereaux (who actually, does not disagree with you about the exploitative nature of the Roman Empire). I find convincing the argument for quite a sharp decline in Western European living standards after 450.

    https://acoup.blog/2022/02/11/collections-rome-decline-and-fall-part-iii-things/

    Britain may have enjoyed a brief sweet spot, where it was no longer paying taxes to Rome, but things did fall apart after the mid Fifth century. By the mid Sixth century, Britain must have been like the world of Mad Max.

    I thought there was considerable evidence the Romano-British rural estates were being abandoned by the beginning of the fourth rather than the fifth century. The economic, social and cultural decline of Roman Britain pre-dated the military and political collapse.

    There was a retreat into the towns and cities while the country was increasingly abandoned to bandits and others and this obviously accelerated with the collapse of the security apparatus after 410.

    The Romano-British successors lacked, it seems, the will rather than the means to organise the defence of Britain once Honorius had withdrawn the final troops and used paid mercenaries to try to hold the line which didn't end well as we know. To what extent Vortigern, if he existed, held any kind of real political power is uncertain.

    I can only imagine the psychological shock for the Romano-British to find themselves without Imperial protection for the first time in nearly five centuries, to see Hadrian's Wall abandoned to the Picts and Scots who could presumably roam at will far to the south forcing the populace into fortified and isolated towns.
    Devereaux' view is that decline set in about the middle of the Fourth century, and the cities were more or less gone, in Britain, by 420.

    At that point, I don't think anyone in Rome thought that the retreat from Britain was permanent, and I expect there were probably people in Britain who expected imperial control to be reasserted. The Notitia Dignitatum, of 423, still lists Britain as a part of the empire.

    Britain is a most unusual case because of the totality of collapse. Throughout most of Western Europe, one can point to institutions or noble families that long outlived the fall of the Western Empire, but in Britain, everything vanished, pretty much. My guess is that Southern Germany and Austria was similar to Britain at the time, judging by the Life of St. Severinus
    I think there is plenty of evidence that that isn't true. And at least enough to dispute that. The material culture changes dramatically (just as it did in the decades preceding and after 43AD!), but DNA evidence suggests that the people are still mostly the same.

    The fact that in the countryside, it is spectacular how many Anglo Saxon sites are built next to the old Villa sites (and ever more so as modern tech helps us find more of both) and how many Anglo Saxon churches are built from villa walls, on Roman sites...

    I don't buy the "rapid, wholesale collapse, and population replacement" story, even among elites.
    A cultural collapse rather than a population replacement. So linguistically the Germanic language completely came to dominate the eastern coast, while the DNA of the English differs very little from that of the Welsh.
    "Cultural collapse" is a rather pejorative way of describing the Anglo-Saxon period. In many ways it was a cultural progression, with the rise of Christianity as a moderating factor on rulers, and a move to monasticism for learning. Being a more oral than written culture, and one that contains elements of collective rather than imposed political decision making does not make for an inferior culture, just a different one to late Romano-Britain.
  • Great history tutorial on here tonite. Thanks guys.

    It sure beats the living daylights out of discussing the Rwanda nonsense.
  • NickPalmerNickPalmer Posts: 21,263

    HYUFD said:

    59% of Conservative voters and 57% of Leave voters support the Rwanda immigration plan however. So in terms of Boris shoring up his core vote it works

    Yes and no.

    10% of Conservative voters strongly oppose it. That's about 3% of voters overall. Now, if they oppose it enough to change their vote (and my impression is that this has cut through among those who've heard it in a really visceral way... those who dislike it really think it's evil), that's more votes than the Conservatives can afford to lose. After all, 43% is a triumphant landslide and 33% is a one-way ticket to Oppositionsville.

    Politically, it might work, in the short term at least. But it's not Brexit redux. The thing about Brexit was that Leave won because they had heart arguments, and very very few people had passionate feels about Remain. (Ironically, by going bull-in-a-china-shop about it, the government may have created people who do.) For the assylum changes, the heart arguments are mostly on the anti-government side.

    Besides, until yesterday, Priti Patel was about the least popular member of the government. Half the population hated what she said, and the other half despised her inablilty to convert her horrible words into action. If this mad plan dies on its bum, and there are many ways it can do that, that same toxic combination will spread to the rest of the government.
    HYUFD's point is that the policy isn't designed to win a majority in the country. It's designed to get most Conservative Party members and voters telling Conservative MPs that they should support Boris Johnson. Quite possibly that will work - after all, Conservatives voters prefer Le Pen to Macron (insofar as they have a view).

    If successful, that gets BJ another 2 years in Downing Street. The General Election? That's for another day.
  • CiceroCicero Posts: 2,181

    Nigelb said:

    In the village of Poliske, Kyiv Oblast, Russian troops tortured a man to death and mined his body

    For three days, several booby traps left behind by Russians didn't allow to recover the mutilated body of Vadim Postolyuk, 27, found in Poliske on April 5.

    https://mobile.twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1515017420083187719

    The Russians seem to be trying to corroborate every racist meme that the Ukrainians might have had about them. Katsapy/moskali/Mongols. No wonder they are being referred to as orcs. The Ukrainians have thought of them as Asiatic hordes and... well, Chingis had nothing on Uncle Vova. Смерть кацапам.
    According to at least one person on here, they are all Slavs, so are the same.

    It is noteworthy how many of the faces of dead and captured Russians are very 'eastern' in appearance. It's almost as though Russia is depleting its regions of its young men rather than its western cities.

    (I'm aware this might be seen as racist, but the pictures do give that impression - as does the info on where the men are coming from ...)
    A lot of Russians look Eastern. Even Putin. The theory is that there is a lot of Tatar in them... DNA evidence shows otherwise, however.

    Russia is throwing her minorities into the the meat grinder, see kamilkazani on twitter who is himself Tatar.

    My old Russian teacher is Russian-Tartar, I haven't dared get in touch.
    The number of dead soldiers is indeed reported much higher in Buryatia and Dagestan and very low in St Petersburg and Moscow. Make of that what you will, but a general conscription that covers European Russia could lead to a severe backlash.
  • BigRich said:

    I posted this on the previous thread and it seems to be born out on Rwanda

    Good evening

    I haven't posted since early yesterday as I was at a family funeral all day yesterday and have been out most of today

    However, I have concluded the following:

    Conservative mps need to replace Boris ASAP

    The Rwanda refugee scheme seems very controversial and I am not sure it will work or boost the conservatives as some think

    I expect the lib dems to do spectacularly well in may, labour ok, and conservatives to have a nightmare

    I cannot see past Starmer as next pm especially if the conservatives do not act against Boris and Rishi and even then, the momentum is with Starmer heading a minority government probably with lib dem support

    I genuinely do not know who I will vote for in 24, but my single vote is not going to make any difference as labour should come out on top

    I hope labour recover in Scotland gaining seats and further diminishing the SNP and independence

    If I lived in Scotland, as I once did, I would vote for the union candidate against the SNP, irrespective of party

    This is a tired government out of ideas and it is silly to say Boris must remain in post because of Ukraine, as he could be incapacitated in one way or another that would require a new PM anyway

    I do not see Starmer as an inspiring leader but he may not need to be as the conservative party self destruct

    Anyway I hope everyone enjoys their Good Friday evening

    Happy Easter

    Happy Easter to you too.
    Happy Easter to you. I agree with you completely, you are a wise man. Though I would definitely vote Conservative in a GE as my MP is a decent type and a potential leadership rival to Boris.
  • Just looking out from our balcony on the Gwynt y Môr wind farm the turbines are barely turning tonight

    Gwynt y Môr (Welsh: meaning sea wind) is a 576-megawatt (MW) offshore wind farm located off the coast of Wales and is the fifth largest operating offshore windfarm in the world. The farm has 160 wind turbines of 150 metres (490 ft) tip height above mean sea level.

    Has the tide stopped coming in too? Oh, no....
    I posted my approval for tidal earlier and the 7 billion North Wales tidal scheme

    It is quite something to see that huge windfarm at a standstill with not a breath of wind at present
  • Richard_TyndallRichard_Tyndall Posts: 30,846
    Sean_F said:

    mwadams said:

    Sean_F said:

    stodge said:

    Sean_F said:


    The counter-argument is put forward by Brett Devereaux (who actually, does not disagree with you about the exploitative nature of the Roman Empire). I find convincing the argument for quite a sharp decline in Western European living standards after 450.

    https://acoup.blog/2022/02/11/collections-rome-decline-and-fall-part-iii-things/

    Britain may have enjoyed a brief sweet spot, where it was no longer paying taxes to Rome, but things did fall apart after the mid Fifth century. By the mid Sixth century, Britain must have been like the world of Mad Max.

    I thought there was considerable evidence the Romano-British rural estates were being abandoned by the beginning of the fourth rather than the fifth century. The economic, social and cultural decline of Roman Britain pre-dated the military and political collapse.

    There was a retreat into the towns and cities while the country was increasingly abandoned to bandits and others and this obviously accelerated with the collapse of the security apparatus after 410.

    The Romano-British successors lacked, it seems, the will rather than the means to organise the defence of Britain once Honorius had withdrawn the final troops and used paid mercenaries to try to hold the line which didn't end well as we know. To what extent Vortigern, if he existed, held any kind of real political power is uncertain.

    I can only imagine the psychological shock for the Romano-British to find themselves without Imperial protection for the first time in nearly five centuries, to see Hadrian's Wall abandoned to the Picts and Scots who could presumably roam at will far to the south forcing the populace into fortified and isolated towns.
    Devereaux' view is that decline set in about the middle of the Fourth century, and the cities were more or less gone, in Britain, by 420.

    At that point, I don't think anyone in Rome thought that the retreat from Britain was permanent, and I expect there were probably people in Britain who expected imperial control to be reasserted. The Notitia Dignitatum, of 423, still lists Britain as a part of the empire.

    Britain is a most unusual case because of the totality of collapse. Throughout most of Western Europe, one can point to institutions or noble families that long outlived the fall of the Western Empire, but in Britain, everything vanished, pretty much. My guess is that Southern Germany and Austria was similar to Britain at the time, judging by the Life of St. Severinus
    I think there is plenty of evidence that that isn't true. And at least enough to dispute that. The material culture changes dramatically (just as it did in the decades preceding and after 43AD!), but DNA evidence suggests that the people are still mostly the same.

    The fact that in the countryside, it is spectacular how many Anglo Saxon sites are built next to the old Villa sites (and ever more so as modern tech helps us find more of both) and how many Anglo Saxon churches are built from villa walls, on Roman sites...

    I don't buy the "rapid, wholesale collapse, and population replacement" story, even among elites.
    Collapse of institutions, and replacement of populations, are separate issues.

    By, total collapse, I mean the total collapse of all Roman institutions (including the Church) in a way that did not happen, in say, France, Spain, or Italy.

    I agree that the British population was not replaced, but I think the evidence does point to a big decline in numbers.
    It is a popular view amongst archaeologists. and one to which I subscribe, that much of the Anglo-Saxon 'invasions' were peoples coming into an effectively empty country. People underestimate the extent to which the Romano-British landscape was effectively a factory farming villa landscape and pretty much every square foot of lowland agricultural land was under the Villa system.

    Once that system collapsed due to the loss of markets in both the British cities and the export market (Britain was the second largest wheat producer in the Empire after Egypt) the countryside effectively emptied. This of course was also linked to the succession of plagues that swept across the Empire in the 4th century but basically there was no 'British' part of the Romano-British rural landscape to carry on - it had been wiped away by 3 centuries of Roman occupation and exploitation.

    The Anglo-Saxon sites next to Roman villa sites is a bit misleading. The same geographic features which made sites suitable for a Roman villa (position, access to water and good farming land) also made them ideal for Saxon settlers. Indeed there is a lot of evidence for the Saxons avoiding the villa remains themselves until they had 'decontaminated' them - usually by burying their dead into them in the form of cremation urns. These are remarkably common and I excavated the earliest known example in Lincolnshire on my own site at Ancaster a couple of years ago.
  • HYUFD said:

    59% of Conservative voters and 57% of Leave voters support the Rwanda immigration plan however. So in terms of Boris shoring up his core vote it works

    Yes and no.

    10% of Conservative voters strongly oppose it. That's about 3% of voters overall. Now, if they oppose it enough to change their vote (and my impression is that this has cut through among those who've heard it in a really visceral way... those who dislike it really think it's evil), that's more votes than the Conservatives can afford to lose. After all, 43% is a triumphant landslide and 33% is a one-way ticket to Oppositionsville.

    Politically, it might work, in the short term at least. But it's not Brexit redux. The thing about Brexit was that Leave won because they had heart arguments, and very very few people had passionate feels about Remain. (Ironically, by going bull-in-a-china-shop about it, the government may have created people who do.) For the assylum changes, the heart arguments are mostly on the anti-government side.

    Besides, until yesterday, Priti Patel was about the least popular member of the government. Half the population hated what she said, and the other half despised her inablilty to convert her horrible words into action. If this mad plan dies on its bum, and there are many ways it can do that, that same toxic combination will spread to the rest of the government.
    HYUFD's point is that the policy isn't designed to win a majority in the country. It's designed to get most Conservative Party members and voters telling Conservative MPs that they should support Boris Johnson. Quite possibly that will work - after all, Conservatives voters prefer Le Pen to Macron (insofar as they have a view).

    If successful, that gets BJ another 2 years in Downing Street. The General Election? That's for another day.
    I don't support Le Pen one little bit Nick
  • BigRichBigRich Posts: 3,489
    Cicero said:

    Nigelb said:

    In the village of Poliske, Kyiv Oblast, Russian troops tortured a man to death and mined his body

    For three days, several booby traps left behind by Russians didn't allow to recover the mutilated body of Vadim Postolyuk, 27, found in Poliske on April 5.

    https://mobile.twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1515017420083187719

    The Russians seem to be trying to corroborate every racist meme that the Ukrainians might have had about them. Katsapy/moskali/Mongols. No wonder they are being referred to as orcs. The Ukrainians have thought of them as Asiatic hordes and... well, Chingis had nothing on Uncle Vova. Смерть кацапам.
    According to at least one person on here, they are all Slavs, so are the same.

    It is noteworthy how many of the faces of dead and captured Russians are very 'eastern' in appearance. It's almost as though Russia is depleting its regions of its young men rather than its western cities.

    (I'm aware this might be seen as racist, but the pictures do give that impression - as does the info on where the men are coming from ...)
    A lot of Russians look Eastern. Even Putin. The theory is that there is a lot of Tatar in them... DNA evidence shows otherwise, however.

    Russia is throwing her minorities into the the meat grinder, see kamilkazani on twitter who is himself Tatar.

    My old Russian teacher is Russian-Tartar, I haven't dared get in touch.
    The number of dead soldiers is indeed reported much higher in Buryatia and Dagestan and very low in St Petersburg and Moscow. Make of that what you will, but a general conscription that covers European Russia could lead to a severe backlash.
    The conscription Modal the Russians use, is explicitly designed with a lot of loop-hols and get outs, so that any powerful or rich family can ensure their suns do not have to go though it. that way any mother that matters is not going to be part of the 'stop the war' protests just to save there sun. I think just under half of men avowed it one way or the other, in Moscow and St Pietersburg a very few do conscription, in other areas its much higher.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,765

    Sean_F said:

    mwadams said:

    Sean_F said:

    stodge said:

    Sean_F said:


    The counter-argument is put forward by Brett Devereaux (who actually, does not disagree with you about the exploitative nature of the Roman Empire). I find convincing the argument for quite a sharp decline in Western European living standards after 450.

    https://acoup.blog/2022/02/11/collections-rome-decline-and-fall-part-iii-things/

    Britain may have enjoyed a brief sweet spot, where it was no longer paying taxes to Rome, but things did fall apart after the mid Fifth century. By the mid Sixth century, Britain must have been like the world of Mad Max.

    I thought there was considerable evidence the Romano-British rural estates were being abandoned by the beginning of the fourth rather than the fifth century. The economic, social and cultural decline of Roman Britain pre-dated the military and political collapse.

    There was a retreat into the towns and cities while the country was increasingly abandoned to bandits and others and this obviously accelerated with the collapse of the security apparatus after 410.

    The Romano-British successors lacked, it seems, the will rather than the means to organise the defence of Britain once Honorius had withdrawn the final troops and used paid mercenaries to try to hold the line which didn't end well as we know. To what extent Vortigern, if he existed, held any kind of real political power is uncertain.

    I can only imagine the psychological shock for the Romano-British to find themselves without Imperial protection for the first time in nearly five centuries, to see Hadrian's Wall abandoned to the Picts and Scots who could presumably roam at will far to the south forcing the populace into fortified and isolated towns.
    Devereaux' view is that decline set in about the middle of the Fourth century, and the cities were more or less gone, in Britain, by 420.

    At that point, I don't think anyone in Rome thought that the retreat from Britain was permanent, and I expect there were probably people in Britain who expected imperial control to be reasserted. The Notitia Dignitatum, of 423, still lists Britain as a part of the empire.

    Britain is a most unusual case because of the totality of collapse. Throughout most of Western Europe, one can point to institutions or noble families that long outlived the fall of the Western Empire, but in Britain, everything vanished, pretty much. My guess is that Southern Germany and Austria was similar to Britain at the time, judging by the Life of St. Severinus
    I think there is plenty of evidence that that isn't true. And at least enough to dispute that. The material culture changes dramatically (just as it did in the decades preceding and after 43AD!), but DNA evidence suggests that the people are still mostly the same.

    The fact that in the countryside, it is spectacular how many Anglo Saxon sites are built next to the old Villa sites (and ever more so as modern tech helps us find more of both) and how many Anglo Saxon churches are built from villa walls, on Roman sites...

    I don't buy the "rapid, wholesale collapse, and population replacement" story, even among elites.
    Collapse of institutions, and replacement of populations, are separate issues.

    By, total collapse, I mean the total collapse of all Roman institutions (including the Church) in a way that did not happen, in say, France, Spain, or Italy.

    I agree that the British population was not replaced, but I think the evidence does point to a big decline in numbers.
    It is a popular view amongst archaeologists. and one to which I subscribe, that much of the Anglo-Saxon 'invasions' were peoples coming into an effectively empty country. People underestimate the extent to which the Romano-British landscape was effectively a factory farming villa landscape and pretty much every square foot of lowland agricultural land was under the Villa system.

    Once that system collapsed due to the loss of markets in both the British cities and the export market (Britain was the second largest wheat producer in the Empire after Egypt) the countryside effectively emptied. This of course was also linked to the succession of plagues that swept across the Empire in the 4th century but basically there was no 'British' part of the Romano-British rural landscape to carry on - it had been wiped away by 3 centuries of Roman occupation and exploitation.

    The Anglo-Saxon sites next to Roman villa sites is a bit misleading. The same geographic features which made sites suitable for a Roman villa (position, access to water and good farming land) also made them ideal for Saxon settlers. Indeed there is a lot of evidence for the Saxons avoiding the villa remains themselves until they had 'decontaminated' them - usually by burying their dead into them in the form of cremation urns. These are remarkably common and I excavated the earliest known example in Lincolnshire on my own site at Ancaster a couple of years ago.
    That all seems plausible. One of the arguments for a decline in living standards after 400 is the end of specialisation. With widespread trade networks across the empire, an area that was suited for vines could concentrate on producing wine; an area that was suited for growing corn could conentrate on corn. And so on. Once trade shrank to just luxury goods, farmers had to go back to producing almost everything in their own locality, however ill-suited.
  • pingping Posts: 3,724
    edited April 2022
    This is a great podcast/discussion between Andrew Sullivan and Jonathan Haidt on how/why the world went crazy over the last ten years;

    https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/jonathan-haidt-on-social-medias-havoc?s=r

    Or

    https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-dishcast-with-andrew-sullivan/id1536984072
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,184

    Cookie said:

    FPT:

    Cookie said:

    Wife and I have just come back from our first night away without kids since my 7-year old was born. A night away in the Peak District, for no particular reason. Lovely. Actually, arguably it was for our tenth wedding anniversary, three years late, having been postponed by first the need to disimpact my youngest daughter's colon and then by covid. Anyway, a super little break. The hotel was just setting up for a wedding as we were preparing to leave, and we briefly met the groom. Delightful that even among the tumult of the early 2020s here are young people with reason to look to the future with excitement.
    A morning in Bakewell mooching amiably about before returning home, joining apparently the entire population of the East Midlands in a delirious quest to spend money on unnecessary things.

    Arrived back at the grandparents where the kids were staying; 7-year-old enthusiastically greets her mother thus: "Are you pregnant?". Sadly the list of reasons that the answer to that question is "no" is long and lamentable but can largely be summed up by being 47 and knackered.

    :)

    May I ask where you stayed?

    I find Bakewell a bit 'meh'. If you go to the Peak District, you want countryside, not a town. I feel the same way about Buxton and Matlock (although both of those are just outside). Then again, I spent far too long in all those places in my youth, so am probably a little jaded.
    We were staying in the Edale Valley.
    I share your view on Bakewell, and the other towns which surround the Peak District, a bit. But my knee is awaiting an op and my wife's back was sore and frankly for the sheer joy of being at large unencumbered by children we could have been anywhere and it would have been wonderful.
    The Castleton ridge walk is perhaps my favourite walk in the entire UK. Having said that, I haven't done it for over ten years.

    I love that area. The Limestone Way descending down through the gully into Castleton is sublime for a number of reasons,
    I did the Castleton ridge walk back in December when my legs were working better. Shortly after dawn on a bright, clear, frosty morning. Absolutely glorious.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,088

    Cookie said:

    FPT:

    Cookie said:

    Wife and I have just come back from our first night away without kids since my 7-year old was born. A night away in the Peak District, for no particular reason. Lovely. Actually, arguably it was for our tenth wedding anniversary, three years late, having been postponed by first the need to disimpact my youngest daughter's colon and then by covid. Anyway, a super little break. The hotel was just setting up for a wedding as we were preparing to leave, and we briefly met the groom. Delightful that even among the tumult of the early 2020s here are young people with reason to look to the future with excitement.
    A morning in Bakewell mooching amiably about before returning home, joining apparently the entire population of the East Midlands in a delirious quest to spend money on unnecessary things.

    Arrived back at the grandparents where the kids were staying; 7-year-old enthusiastically greets her mother thus: "Are you pregnant?". Sadly the list of reasons that the answer to that question is "no" is long and lamentable but can largely be summed up by being 47 and knackered.

    :)

    May I ask where you stayed?

    I find Bakewell a bit 'meh'. If you go to the Peak District, you want countryside, not a town. I feel the same way about Buxton and Matlock (although both of those are just outside). Then again, I spent far too long in all those places in my youth, so am probably a little jaded.
    We were staying in the Edale Valley.
    I share your view on Bakewell, and the other towns which surround the Peak District, a bit. But my knee is awaiting an op and my wife's back was sore and frankly for the sheer joy of being at large unencumbered by children we could have been anywhere and it would have been wonderful.
    Re: Peak Dist. stayed on two occasions at youth hostel at Hartington, with private room, excellent cafeteria (which doubled as pub) and miles of pleasant hiking, including fishing spots where Izaak Walton used to try his luck.
    I've been nearly everywhere in the Peaks, although usually in the day.

    Word association....

    Rwanda: Genocide

    I think that explains the polling.

    There's been a lot of Rwanda-dissing happening today on debates I have seen.

    I still haven't seen any comments that have not been predictable, or serious alternative suggestions - except essentially "open the borders" or "throw money at the Home Office".
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 14,089

    HYUFD said:

    59% of Conservative voters and 57% of Leave voters support the Rwanda immigration plan however. So in terms of Boris shoring up his core vote it works

    Yes and no.

    10% of Conservative voters strongly oppose it. That's about 3% of voters overall. Now, if they oppose it enough to change their vote (and my impression is that this has cut through among those who've heard it in a really visceral way... those who dislike it really think it's evil), that's more votes than the Conservatives can afford to lose. After all, 43% is a triumphant landslide and 33% is a one-way ticket to Oppositionsville.

    Politically, it might work, in the short term at least. But it's not Brexit redux. The thing about Brexit was that Leave won because they had heart arguments, and very very few people had passionate feels about Remain. (Ironically, by going bull-in-a-china-shop about it, the government may have created people who do.) For the assylum changes, the heart arguments are mostly on the anti-government side.

    Besides, until yesterday, Priti Patel was about the least popular member of the government. Half the population hated what she said, and the other half despised her inablilty to convert her horrible words into action. If this mad plan dies on its bum, and there are many ways it can do that, that same toxic combination will spread to the rest of the government.
    HYUFD's point is that the policy isn't designed to win a majority in the country. It's designed to get most Conservative Party members and voters telling Conservative MPs that they should support Boris Johnson. Quite possibly that will work - after all, Conservatives voters prefer Le Pen to Macron (insofar as they have a view).

    If successful, that gets BJ another 2 years in Downing Street. The General Election? That's for another day.
    I don't support Le Pen one little bit Nick
    However, lots of the current Conservative Party do, Big G- either because that's where they are politically, or the see an ally in destablising Centrist-Dad-ism, or something else.

    Let's face it, the party isn't what it used to be. And people who saw themselves as Conservatives in the beforetimes have to decide how to respond to that.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,765

    HYUFD said:

    59% of Conservative voters and 57% of Leave voters support the Rwanda immigration plan however. So in terms of Boris shoring up his core vote it works

    Yes and no.

    10% of Conservative voters strongly oppose it. That's about 3% of voters overall. Now, if they oppose it enough to change their vote (and my impression is that this has cut through among those who've heard it in a really visceral way... those who dislike it really think it's evil), that's more votes than the Conservatives can afford to lose. After all, 43% is a triumphant landslide and 33% is a one-way ticket to Oppositionsville.

    Politically, it might work, in the short term at least. But it's not Brexit redux. The thing about Brexit was that Leave won because they had heart arguments, and very very few people had passionate feels about Remain. (Ironically, by going bull-in-a-china-shop about it, the government may have created people who do.) For the assylum changes, the heart arguments are mostly on the anti-government side.

    Besides, until yesterday, Priti Patel was about the least popular member of the government. Half the population hated what she said, and the other half despised her inablilty to convert her horrible words into action. If this mad plan dies on its bum, and there are many ways it can do that, that same toxic combination will spread to the rest of the government.
    HYUFD's point is that the policy isn't designed to win a majority in the country. It's designed to get most Conservative Party members and voters telling Conservative MPs that they should support Boris Johnson. Quite possibly that will work - after all, Conservatives voters prefer Le Pen to Macron (insofar as they have a view).

    If successful, that gets BJ another 2 years in Downing Street. The General Election? That's for another day.
    I don't support Le Pen one little bit Nick
    However, lots of the current Conservative Party do, Big G- either because that's where they are politically, or the see an ally in destablising Centrist-Dad-ism, or something else.

    Let's face it, the party isn't what it used to be. And people who saw themselves as Conservatives in the beforetimes have to decide how to respond to that.
    I've bet on Le Pen, but that's one bet I really hope to lose, because it would be very bad for Ukraine if she were elected.
  • Richard_TyndallRichard_Tyndall Posts: 30,846
    Carnyx said:

    mwadams said:

    Sean_F said:

    stodge said:

    Sean_F said:


    The counter-argument is put forward by Brett Devereaux (who actually, does not disagree with you about the exploitative nature of the Roman Empire). I find convincing the argument for quite a sharp decline in Western European living standards after 450.

    https://acoup.blog/2022/02/11/collections-rome-decline-and-fall-part-iii-things/

    Britain may have enjoyed a brief sweet spot, where it was no longer paying taxes to Rome, but things did fall apart after the mid Fifth century. By the mid Sixth century, Britain must have been like the world of Mad Max.

    I thought there was considerable evidence the Romano-British rural estates were being abandoned by the beginning of the fourth rather than the fifth century. The economic, social and cultural decline of Roman Britain pre-dated the military and political collapse.

    There was a retreat into the towns and cities while the country was increasingly abandoned to bandits and others and this obviously accelerated with the collapse of the security apparatus after 410.

    The Romano-British successors lacked, it seems, the will rather than the means to organise the defence of Britain once Honorius had withdrawn the final troops and used paid mercenaries to try to hold the line which didn't end well as we know. To what extent Vortigern, if he existed, held any kind of real political power is uncertain.

    I can only imagine the psychological shock for the Romano-British to find themselves without Imperial protection for the first time in nearly five centuries, to see Hadrian's Wall abandoned to the Picts and Scots who could presumably roam at will far to the south forcing the populace into fortified and isolated towns.
    Devereaux' view is that decline set in about the middle of the Fourth century, and the cities were more or less gone, in Britain, by 420.

    At that point, I don't think anyone in Rome thought that the retreat from Britain was permanent, and I expect there were probably people in Britain who expected imperial control to be reasserted. The Notitia Dignitatum, of 423, still lists Britain as a part of the empire.

    Britain is a most unusual case because of the totality of collapse. Throughout most of Western Europe, one can point to institutions or noble families that long outlived the fall of the Western Empire, but in Britain, everything vanished, pretty much. My guess is that Southern Germany and Austria was similar to Britain at the time, judging by the Life of St. Severinus
    I think there is plenty of evidence that that isn't true. And at least enough to dispute that. The material culture changes dramatically (just as it did in the decades preceding and after 43AD!), but DNA evidence suggests that the people are still mostly the same.

    The fact that in the countryside, it is spectacular how many Anglo Saxon sites are built next to the old Villa sites (and ever more so as modern tech helps us find more of both) and how many Anglo Saxon churches are built from villa walls, on Roman sites...

    I don't buy the "rapid, wholesale collapse, and population replacement" story, even among elites.
    There's a small church in a river valley NW of Oxford - there are bits of a Roman mosaic visible in the floor.

    https://www.oxfordshirecotswolds.org/things-to-do/attractions/widford-st-oswalds-church-p457601
    That doesn't really prove that much. There were still standing Roman remains visible right across England into the 18th century - many of them were drawn by William Stukely. It is entirely possible that the Anglo-Saxons didn't go near Roman remains for several centuries after they arrived and it was only after the folk memory of the evil in such places had faded that they began to regard them as a useful source of building materials. Indeed the first churches were not built in AS England until after the arrival of St Augustine in 597AD which is almost 2 centuries after the supposed end of Roman rule.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,184

    DavidL said:

    @SouthamObserver

    Can I just say that I have had the theme tune of World at war and the somber voice of Laurence Olivier in my head the entire day after your contribution this morning.

    Nearly 50 years on and I don’t think anything I have seen on TV came close to matching it. Surely the greatest documentary series of all time.

    I would agree with that. The opening lines of the first episode are haunting.

    ‘Down this road on a summer day in 1944, the soldiers came. Nobody lives here now. They stayed only a few hours. When they had gone, the community, which had lived for a thousand years, was dead. This is Oradour-sur-Glane, in France. The day the soldiers came, the people were gathered together. The men were taken to garages and barns, the women and children were led down this road, and they were driven into this church. Here, they heard the firing as their men were shot. Then they were killed too. A few weeks later, many of those who had done the killing were themselves dead, in battle. They never rebuilt Oradour. Its ruins are a memorial. Its martyrdom stands for thousands upon thousands of other martyrdoms in Poland, in Russia, in Burma, China, in a world at war.’
    I remember being absolutely blown away the first time I saw that series. That they had first hand voices of people who were actually there, on both sides... it made almost everything produced thereafter - which for reasons of age I had seen beforehand - seem utterly superfluous.
    Hell in the Pacific was a good series too, though.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,837
    DavidL said:

    @SouthamObserver

    Can I just say that I have had the theme tune of World at war and the somber voice of Laurence Olivier in my head the entire day after your contribution this morning.

    Nearly 50 years on and I don’t think anything I have seen on TV came close to matching it. Surely the greatest documentary series of all time.

    Indeed. Though I think it could do with an updating with what we now know from Soviet and East German archives, as well as our de-classified stuff.
    The talking heads of those who were there would be much less numerous, mind.
  • bigglesbiggles Posts: 4,339
    The more interesting polling would be to see whether the Tories are returning to the position c. 2004 where saying a policy was a Tory policy made it unpopular when it would otherwise be supported. That’s the killer for them.
  • Gary_BurtonGary_Burton Posts: 737
    MattW said:

    Cookie said:

    FPT:

    Cookie said:

    Wife and I have just come back from our first night away without kids since my 7-year old was born. A night away in the Peak District, for no particular reason. Lovely. Actually, arguably it was for our tenth wedding anniversary, three years late, having been postponed by first the need to disimpact my youngest daughter's colon and then by covid. Anyway, a super little break. The hotel was just setting up for a wedding as we were preparing to leave, and we briefly met the groom. Delightful that even among the tumult of the early 2020s here are young people with reason to look to the future with excitement.
    A morning in Bakewell mooching amiably about before returning home, joining apparently the entire population of the East Midlands in a delirious quest to spend money on unnecessary things.

    Arrived back at the grandparents where the kids were staying; 7-year-old enthusiastically greets her mother thus: "Are you pregnant?". Sadly the list of reasons that the answer to that question is "no" is long and lamentable but can largely be summed up by being 47 and knackered.

    :)

    May I ask where you stayed?

    I find Bakewell a bit 'meh'. If you go to the Peak District, you want countryside, not a town. I feel the same way about Buxton and Matlock (although both of those are just outside). Then again, I spent far too long in all those places in my youth, so am probably a little jaded.
    We were staying in the Edale Valley.
    I share your view on Bakewell, and the other towns which surround the Peak District, a bit. But my knee is awaiting an op and my wife's back was sore and frankly for the sheer joy of being at large unencumbered by children we could have been anywhere and it would have been wonderful.
    Re: Peak Dist. stayed on two occasions at youth hostel at Hartington, with private room, excellent cafeteria (which doubled as pub) and miles of pleasant hiking, including fishing spots where Izaak Walton used to try his luck.
    I've been nearly everywhere in the Peaks, although usually in the day.

    Word association....

    Rwanda: Genocide

    I think that explains the polling.

    There's been a lot of Rwanda-dissing happening today on debates I have seen.

    I still haven't seen any comments that have not been predictable, or serious alternative suggestions - except essentially "open the borders" or "throw money at the Home Office".
    It's scary how many Tory MPs seem to think the fascist state of Rwanda is democratic.

    There are very few boats coming across the Channel, there is no 'problem' at all. This is purely being whipped up by the right wing media.
  • mwadamsmwadams Posts: 3,089

    Carnyx said:

    mwadams said:

    Sean_F said:

    stodge said:

    Sean_F said:


    The counter-argument is put forward by Brett Devereaux (who actually, does not disagree with you about the exploitative nature of the Roman Empire). I find convincing the argument for quite a sharp decline in Western European living standards after 450.

    https://acoup.blog/2022/02/11/collections-rome-decline-and-fall-part-iii-things/

    Britain may have enjoyed a brief sweet spot, where it was no longer paying taxes to Rome, but things did fall apart after the mid Fifth century. By the mid Sixth century, Britain must have been like the world of Mad Max.

    I thought there was considerable evidence the Romano-British rural estates were being abandoned by the beginning of the fourth rather than the fifth century. The economic, social and cultural decline of Roman Britain pre-dated the military and political collapse.

    There was a retreat into the towns and cities while the country was increasingly abandoned to bandits and others and this obviously accelerated with the collapse of the security apparatus after 410.

    The Romano-British successors lacked, it seems, the will rather than the means to organise the defence of Britain once Honorius had withdrawn the final troops and used paid mercenaries to try to hold the line which didn't end well as we know. To what extent Vortigern, if he existed, held any kind of real political power is uncertain.

    I can only imagine the psychological shock for the Romano-British to find themselves without Imperial protection for the first time in nearly five centuries, to see Hadrian's Wall abandoned to the Picts and Scots who could presumably roam at will far to the south forcing the populace into fortified and isolated towns.
    Devereaux' view is that decline set in about the middle of the Fourth century, and the cities were more or less gone, in Britain, by 420.

    At that point, I don't think anyone in Rome thought that the retreat from Britain was permanent, and I expect there were probably people in Britain who expected imperial control to be reasserted. The Notitia Dignitatum, of 423, still lists Britain as a part of the empire.

    Britain is a most unusual case because of the totality of collapse. Throughout most of Western Europe, one can point to institutions or noble families that long outlived the fall of the Western Empire, but in Britain, everything vanished, pretty much. My guess is that Southern Germany and Austria was similar to Britain at the time, judging by the Life of St. Severinus
    I think there is plenty of evidence that that isn't true. And at least enough to dispute that. The material culture changes dramatically (just as it did in the decades preceding and after 43AD!), but DNA evidence suggests that the people are still mostly the same.

    The fact that in the countryside, it is spectacular how many Anglo Saxon sites are built next to the old Villa sites (and ever more so as modern tech helps us find more of both) and how many Anglo Saxon churches are built from villa walls, on Roman sites...

    I don't buy the "rapid, wholesale collapse, and population replacement" story, even among elites.
    There's a small church in a river valley NW of Oxford - there are bits of a Roman mosaic visible in the floor.

    https://www.oxfordshirecotswolds.org/things-to-do/attractions/widford-st-oswalds-church-p457601
    That doesn't really prove that much. There were still standing Roman remains visible right across England into the 18th century - many of them were drawn by William Stukely. It is entirely possible that the Anglo-Saxons didn't go near Roman remains for several centuries after they arrived and it was only after the folk memory of the evil in such places had faded that they began to regard them as a useful source of building materials. Indeed the first churches were not built in AS England until after the arrival of St Augustine in 597AD which is almost 2 centuries after the supposed end of Roman rule.
    There's plenty of evidence that people were living in these buildings, effecting running repairs etc for 100 years. They were lived in by people who were born and lived and died in these islands - Romano British poeple. Not "Romans".
  • Richard_TyndallRichard_Tyndall Posts: 30,846
    The last sentence of the thread header

    "That a quarter of CON voters are opposed should be a concern."

    Someone may already have said this in which case my apologies, but personally I find it of far greater concern that three quarters of Conservative voters are apparently not opposed.

    If that is the case then the Tory party is morally bankrupt and has no right to survive (though of course, as is the nature of these things, it will).
  • BigRichBigRich Posts: 3,489

    HYUFD said:

    59% of Conservative voters and 57% of Leave voters support the Rwanda immigration plan however. So in terms of Boris shoring up his core vote it works

    Yes and no.

    10% of Conservative voters strongly oppose it. That's about 3% of voters overall. Now, if they oppose it enough to change their vote (and my impression is that this has cut through among those who've heard it in a really visceral way... those who dislike it really think it's evil), that's more votes than the Conservatives can afford to lose. After all, 43% is a triumphant landslide and 33% is a one-way ticket to Oppositionsville.

    Politically, it might work, in the short term at least. But it's not Brexit redux. The thing about Brexit was that Leave won because they had heart arguments, and very very few people had passionate feels about Remain. (Ironically, by going bull-in-a-china-shop about it, the government may have created people who do.) For the assylum changes, the heart arguments are mostly on the anti-government side.

    Besides, until yesterday, Priti Patel was about the least popular member of the government. Half the population hated what she said, and the other half despised her inablilty to convert her horrible words into action. If this mad plan dies on its bum, and there are many ways it can do that, that same toxic combination will spread to the rest of the government.
    HYUFD's point is that the policy isn't designed to win a majority in the country. It's designed to get most Conservative Party members and voters telling Conservative MPs that they should support Boris Johnson. Quite possibly that will work - after all, Conservatives voters prefer Le Pen to Macron (insofar as they have a view).

    If successful, that gets BJ another 2 years in Downing Street. The General Election? That's for another day.
    I don't support Le Pen one little bit Nick
    However, lots of the current Conservative Party do, Big G- either because that's where they are politically, or the see an ally in destablising Centrist-Dad-ism, or something else.

    Let's face it, the party isn't what it used to be. And people who saw themselves as Conservatives in the beforetimes have to decide how to respond to that.
    I don't think so really, I don't support Le Pen and hope she losses miserably, and I think it conservative/supporters/members know what she really stood for they would for the most part oppose her just as much, however coverage of the French elections is not that extensive in the UK if you do not go out and look for it. and for a lot of conservatives Macrons role in the Brexit drama, and the vaccine issues makes them intrinsically hostile/cautions of him.

    some people in the UK obviously would be attracted to Le Pen, and some of those are conservative supporters, but nowhere near the 48% or whatever she is poling at in France.
  • NickPalmerNickPalmer Posts: 21,263

    HYUFD said:

    59% of Conservative voters and 57% of Leave voters support the Rwanda immigration plan however. So in terms of Boris shoring up his core vote it works

    Yes and no.

    10% of Conservative voters strongly oppose it. That's about 3% of voters overall. Now, if they oppose it enough to change their vote (and my impression is that this has cut through among those who've heard it in a really visceral way... those who dislike it really think it's evil), that's more votes than the Conservatives can afford to lose. After all, 43% is a triumphant landslide and 33% is a one-way ticket to Oppositionsville.

    Politically, it might work, in the short term at least. But it's not Brexit redux. The thing about Brexit was that Leave won because they had heart arguments, and very very few people had passionate feels about Remain. (Ironically, by going bull-in-a-china-shop about it, the government may have created people who do.) For the assylum changes, the heart arguments are mostly on the anti-government side.

    Besides, until yesterday, Priti Patel was about the least popular member of the government. Half the population hated what she said, and the other half despised her inablilty to convert her horrible words into action. If this mad plan dies on its bum, and there are many ways it can do that, that same toxic combination will spread to the rest of the government.
    HYUFD's point is that the policy isn't designed to win a majority in the country. It's designed to get most Conservative Party members and voters telling Conservative MPs that they should support Boris Johnson. Quite possibly that will work - after all, Conservatives voters prefer Le Pen to Macron (insofar as they have a view).

    If successful, that gets BJ another 2 years in Downing Street. The General Election? That's for another day.
    I don't support Le Pen one little bit Nick
    I wouldn't have expected it, BigG. But there was a poll linked from PB a couple of days ago on who British voters would like to see win in France. Labour voters were so,mething like 53-8 for Macron. Conservatives were IIRC 37-22 for Le Pen. Obviously lots of don't knows, but still, it does suggest that the party is different from what it was, doesn't it?
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,969
    edited April 2022
    A pair of traitors to the West and humanity.

    Russian TV running a translated Tucker Carlson segment with Nigel Farage and lauding both for their stance on Russia.....



    https://twitter.com/RespectIsVital/status/1514496802220818437
  • Richard_TyndallRichard_Tyndall Posts: 30,846
    mwadams said:

    Carnyx said:

    mwadams said:

    Sean_F said:

    stodge said:

    Sean_F said:


    The counter-argument is put forward by Brett Devereaux (who actually, does not disagree with you about the exploitative nature of the Roman Empire). I find convincing the argument for quite a sharp decline in Western European living standards after 450.

    https://acoup.blog/2022/02/11/collections-rome-decline-and-fall-part-iii-things/

    Britain may have enjoyed a brief sweet spot, where it was no longer paying taxes to Rome, but things did fall apart after the mid Fifth century. By the mid Sixth century, Britain must have been like the world of Mad Max.

    I thought there was considerable evidence the Romano-British rural estates were being abandoned by the beginning of the fourth rather than the fifth century. The economic, social and cultural decline of Roman Britain pre-dated the military and political collapse.

    There was a retreat into the towns and cities while the country was increasingly abandoned to bandits and others and this obviously accelerated with the collapse of the security apparatus after 410.

    The Romano-British successors lacked, it seems, the will rather than the means to organise the defence of Britain once Honorius had withdrawn the final troops and used paid mercenaries to try to hold the line which didn't end well as we know. To what extent Vortigern, if he existed, held any kind of real political power is uncertain.

    I can only imagine the psychological shock for the Romano-British to find themselves without Imperial protection for the first time in nearly five centuries, to see Hadrian's Wall abandoned to the Picts and Scots who could presumably roam at will far to the south forcing the populace into fortified and isolated towns.
    Devereaux' view is that decline set in about the middle of the Fourth century, and the cities were more or less gone, in Britain, by 420.

    At that point, I don't think anyone in Rome thought that the retreat from Britain was permanent, and I expect there were probably people in Britain who expected imperial control to be reasserted. The Notitia Dignitatum, of 423, still lists Britain as a part of the empire.

    Britain is a most unusual case because of the totality of collapse. Throughout most of Western Europe, one can point to institutions or noble families that long outlived the fall of the Western Empire, but in Britain, everything vanished, pretty much. My guess is that Southern Germany and Austria was similar to Britain at the time, judging by the Life of St. Severinus
    I think there is plenty of evidence that that isn't true. And at least enough to dispute that. The material culture changes dramatically (just as it did in the decades preceding and after 43AD!), but DNA evidence suggests that the people are still mostly the same.

    The fact that in the countryside, it is spectacular how many Anglo Saxon sites are built next to the old Villa sites (and ever more so as modern tech helps us find more of both) and how many Anglo Saxon churches are built from villa walls, on Roman sites...

    I don't buy the "rapid, wholesale collapse, and population replacement" story, even among elites.
    There's a small church in a river valley NW of Oxford - there are bits of a Roman mosaic visible in the floor.

    https://www.oxfordshirecotswolds.org/things-to-do/attractions/widford-st-oswalds-church-p457601
    That doesn't really prove that much. There were still standing Roman remains visible right across England into the 18th century - many of them were drawn by William Stukely. It is entirely possible that the Anglo-Saxons didn't go near Roman remains for several centuries after they arrived and it was only after the folk memory of the evil in such places had faded that they began to regard them as a useful source of building materials. Indeed the first churches were not built in AS England until after the arrival of St Augustine in 597AD which is almost 2 centuries after the supposed end of Roman rule.
    There's plenty of evidence that people were living in these buildings, effecting running repairs etc for 100 years. They were lived in by people who were born and lived and died in these islands - Romano British poeple. Not "Romans".
    There is evidence from very specific places mostly along the Thames Valley and as far West as Cirencester. These are urban centres where they managed to maintain some semblance of centralised control over the local area and may have survived into the late 5th century. But these are very much the exception rather than the rule.

    On e reasons that is posited for this is that the occupants were primarily foederati and their families who had arrived in the 4th century from the northern German lands that were later the source of the main AS migrations.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,088

    Cookie said:

    FPT:

    Cookie said:

    Wife and I have just come back from our first night away without kids since my 7-year old was born. A night away in the Peak District, for no particular reason. Lovely. Actually, arguably it was for our tenth wedding anniversary, three years late, having been postponed by first the need to disimpact my youngest daughter's colon and then by covid. Anyway, a super little break. The hotel was just setting up for a wedding as we were preparing to leave, and we briefly met the groom. Delightful that even among the tumult of the early 2020s here are young people with reason to look to the future with excitement.
    A morning in Bakewell mooching amiably about before returning home, joining apparently the entire population of the East Midlands in a delirious quest to spend money on unnecessary things.

    Arrived back at the grandparents where the kids were staying; 7-year-old enthusiastically greets her mother thus: "Are you pregnant?". Sadly the list of reasons that the answer to that question is "no" is long and lamentable but can largely be summed up by being 47 and knackered.

    :)

    May I ask where you stayed?

    I find Bakewell a bit 'meh'. If you go to the Peak District, you want countryside, not a town. I feel the same way about Buxton and Matlock (although both of those are just outside). Then again, I spent far too long in all those places in my youth, so am probably a little jaded.
    We were staying in the Edale Valley.
    I share your view on Bakewell, and the other towns which surround the Peak District, a bit. But my knee is awaiting an op and my wife's back was sore and frankly for the sheer joy of being at large unencumbered by children we could have been anywhere and it would have been wonderful.
    Re: Peak Dist. stayed on two occasions at youth hostel at Hartington, with private room, excellent cafeteria (which doubled as pub) and miles of pleasant hiking, including fishing spots where Izaak Walton used to try his luck.
    I've been nearly everywhere in the Peaks, although usually in the day.

    To me the interesting places are (as said) Youth Hostels - though my favourite is Beverley, where they let me hijack the lounge for a day to study once, B&Bs in characterful places run by characters, places with a real local pub nearby, and I expect that one or two of the small country house hotels are outstanding.

    If you want a little town to wander round, perhaps Tideswell? Great carvings in the church:


  • Just looking out from our balcony on the Gwynt y Môr wind farm the turbines are barely turning tonight

    Gwynt y Môr (Welsh: meaning sea wind) is a 576-megawatt (MW) offshore wind farm located off the coast of Wales and is the fifth largest operating offshore windfarm in the world. The farm has 160 wind turbines of 150 metres (490 ft) tip height above mean sea level.

    The wind is still blowing somewhere though. Currently providing about 20% of UK electricity.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,261
    Farooq said:

    Reposting because I took a bloody age typing it:

    kle4 said:

    kamski said:

    Caesar's conquest of Gaul supposedly resulted in a million killed, and a million enslaved, which must have been quite a high proportion of the population at the time. So I guess the Roman empire must go down as one of the most evil in history.

    Worse people to be ruled by, but the process of becoming ruled not a pleasant one.
    Being ruled by Rome was bad. Like all empires, Rome was an extractive system leading to poverty for the subjected peoples.

    "An unpublished survey of 1,867 skeletons from sixty-one sites in Britain likewise documents an increase in body height after the end of Roman rule. These findings reinforce the general impression conveyed by a more eclectic long-term survey of stature in different parts of Europe that identifies troughs during the Roman period and the High Middle Ages and peaks in the post Roman period and in the wake of the Black Death."

    What we can learn from evidence like this is that in times of high inequality, which is what happens when extractive regimes hold hegemonic power, the average citizen suffers. Empires is an extremely bad system of government for normal people, and the continued sense of nostalgia and romance around them is a function of the narrative focus on the elites, who, of course, benefit hugely from such a system of government.
    Hmmm


    That's interesting (and I suspect slavery is the key here, reducing the median height) but remember that human height diminished greatly when we moved from hunter-gathering to agriculture. Because domesticated animals gave us zoonotic plagues and diseases (!!) and the general life was probably tougher - Adam forced to hew and toil with the sweat of his brow

    But who would seriously want to stop human evolution at the hunter-gathering stage?
  • darkagedarkage Posts: 4,746
    MattW said:


    There's been a lot of Rwanda-dissing happening today on debates I have seen.

    I still haven't seen any comments that have not been predictable, or serious alternative suggestions - except essentially "open the borders" or "throw money at the Home Office".

    Open borders is like a religion to a lot of people, they don't like to have their faith questioned.
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