I went to a very working class comp but Latin was probably my best and favourite subject. Think I only dropped it after O level because it seemed an arty farty hobby type thing rather than a 'proper' A level like Maths or Sciences. Not a great call, looking back, but it joins the queue of those and it's nowhere near the front.
I did Latin for standard grade and higher, and did standard grade Greek too. Looking back I wish I had studied French or German instead.
I did Higher Latin too. It improved my memory and knowledge of English grammar which English had long since given up teaching. Had I done 6th year I was going to do O level Greek too, mainly because I really liked the teachers in the classics department, but I left school instead.
Classics teachers are usually really good I think, because otherwise the classics department probably dies, at least in state schools. Really that was the main reason I did Latin, plus I liked the other people in the class. Agree on the grammar stuff too. But leaving school able to speak to actual living people in a language other than English might have been more useful.
You must be joking (on the first bit). My grammar school Latin teacher used to give extra marks if our Latin homework was handed in done in different coloured pens; “beauty marks”, he used to call them. I dropped that subject as soon as I could, and have yet to find a country where what little I can remember from those classes helps me order a beer.
Try any ancient church or cathedral, medieval charters, most of Rome and you will find plenty of Latin inscriptions
Bet Rishi is wishing he'd handed out 10 of his votes to Penny.
I still don't understand what happened between the 2nd and 3rd Ballot with Mourdaunt.
He'd have lost to Penny I expect too - but it'd have been closer than it will be.
He would have beaten The Hat and Hunt, maybe Zahawi. Lost to the rest, even bonkers Braverman.
Yep - it's a populist right party and so whichever populist right candidate made the run off was probably going to be fav to win. Although Mordaunt doesn't quite fit that. She was more a blank canvas.
I made money on her, having backed her on a hunch a while ago at 66, but I actually read things wrong. I thought being untainted by Johnson association, as she was, would have been a strength.
Well it was amongst MPs but not with the members where it's very much still "Boris" rather than Johnson. And I think this is the main reason why Sunak is losing to Truss. He's seen as the traitor who knifed the Beloved. I think this is a bigger factor than Truss's populism.
The Beloved Boris mentality is worthy of study.
It cannot be based much on either ideology or loyalty has Boris has little of either.
And the laziness, self-indulgence, immaturity and refusal to learn from mistakes of Boris cannot be denied.
Boris isn't even a means to and end anymore as he was in 2019.
It is - a curious mix of celeb worship, anti-intellectualism, class deference, escapism, and short attention spans plus shallow sensibilities in the age of social media and reality tv is my best shot at explaining it.
But I don't want to do the actual study. I'd rather try my level best to forget him.
Boris is a classics scholar, probably was our most intellectual PM since Gordon Brown
classics is basically a step up from art history for public school bluffers
You can't be a true intellectual and have no interest in the classics or the history of art
So the likes of Socrates, who were around before the history of art was invented, ditto most of the classics, weren't intellectual?
And I have no interest in the history of art, but would certainly count as an intellectual by your standards.
There was plenty of art around in Ancient Greece, indeed plenty of the greatest statues on earth and many built well before his time. Classical languages were the languages of the time and the stories if the classics were living history.
What a ridiculous comment. If you have no interest in art history then no, you are not a true intellectual even if intelligent
What an attitude to intellectual endeavour you have - it only counts if it is the traditional upper class style c. 1930:
posh - tick public school - tick history of art - tick Balliol College - double tick Latin and Greek - tick, double tick if it's Greats at Oxford ...
An intellectual is supposed to read widely on a range of subjects, including science, history, art etc. You said you have no interest in history of art so clearly it does not apply to us
I went to a very working class comp but Latin was probably my best and favourite subject. Think I only dropped it after O level because it seemed an arty farty hobby type thing rather than a 'proper' A level like Maths or Sciences. Not a great call, looking back, but it joins the queue of those and it's nowhere near the front.
I did Latin for standard grade and higher, and did standard grade Greek too. Looking back I wish I had studied French or German instead.
I did Higher Latin too. It improved my memory and knowledge of English grammar which English had long since given up teaching. Had I done 6th year I was going to do O level Greek too, mainly because I really liked the teachers in the classics department, but I left school instead.
Classics teachers are usually really good I think, because otherwise the classics department probably dies, at least in state schools. Really that was the main reason I did Latin, plus I liked the other people in the class. Agree on the grammar stuff too. But leaving school able to speak to actual living people in a language other than English might have been more useful.
You must be joking (on the first bit). My grammar school Latin teacher used to give extra marks if our Latin homework was handed in done in different coloured pens; “beauty marks”, he used to call them. I dropped that subject as soon as I could, and have yet to find a country where what little I can remember from those classes helps me order a beer.
Try any ancient church or cathedral, medieval charters, most of Rome and you will find plenty of Latin inscriptions
Bet Rishi is wishing he'd handed out 10 of his votes to Penny.
I still don't understand what happened between the 2nd and 3rd Ballot with Mourdaunt.
He'd have lost to Penny I expect too - but it'd have been closer than it will be.
He would have beaten The Hat and Hunt, maybe Zahawi. Lost to the rest, even bonkers Braverman.
Yep - it's a populist right party and so whichever populist right candidate made the run off was probably going to be fav to win. Although Mordaunt doesn't quite fit that. She was more a blank canvas.
I made money on her, having backed her on a hunch a while ago at 66, but I actually read things wrong. I thought being untainted by Johnson association, as she was, would have been a strength.
Well it was amongst MPs but not with the members where it's very much still "Boris" rather than Johnson. And I think this is the main reason why Sunak is losing to Truss. He's seen as the traitor who knifed the Beloved. I think this is a bigger factor than Truss's populism.
The Beloved Boris mentality is worthy of study.
It cannot be based much on either ideology or loyalty has Boris has little of either.
And the laziness, self-indulgence, immaturity and refusal to learn from mistakes of Boris cannot be denied.
Boris isn't even a means to and end anymore as he was in 2019.
It is - a curious mix of celeb worship, anti-intellectualism, class deference, escapism, and short attention spans plus shallow sensibilities in the age of social media and reality tv is my best shot at explaining it.
But I don't want to do the actual study. I'd rather try my level best to forget him.
Boris is a classics scholar, probably was our most intellectual PM since Gordon Brown
But he presented "non seriousness" as a virtue. The very antithesis of Brown in this respect, indeed in almost every respect come to think of it. Just about the only thing these 2 men have in common is a bulky frame on which considerable weight can be carried without looking too obese.
It could have been a virtue, and could have been deployed brilliantly to get us through covid, had there been someone sensible behind it to do the behind the scenes bits. That person was, sadly, Cummings.
I actually had no problem with how he "fronted" the pandemic response. Thought he was generally ok on that score and on occasion a bit more than ok.
It’s just that the actual substance of what he was selling wasn't good most of the time. He was polishing a turd. If he'd been selling great policies, he'd have been amazing.
Well there's no point pining for what never was in the first place.
He's gone (he's gone) oh my - we'd better learn how to face it ....
Surely the unkindest cut of all. Zahawi and Braverman between them collected more MPs votes than Truss
Al Zahawi’s trajectory has been remarkable, promoted from obscurity to UK government chancellor, then knifes his boss a few days later, puts up for the leadership but is rejected by his colleagues, then slain by an American drone. Has there ever been a political career like it?
I think that contribution is almost as confused as my contributions on ancient Greek. Well done.
I've only just twigged that 2024 might be the year of :
* UK general election * "Indyref2" (in theory - assuming the SNP run their election campaign as an 'indyref' platform) * London mayoral election * US Presidential election
Combined with possible economic bad times, that's going to be quite the news cycle.
Don’t forget the Paris Olympics, Bulgaria joining the Euro, the Russian presidential election, Queen Elizabeth surpassing Louis XIV as the longest-reigning monarch in verified history and Euro 24 in Germany.
I've been thinking a bit about the complaints by Conservatives about the 'left blob' thing. A major contributory factor to the left blob is that people who work in public service are not really motivated by remuneration. The Civil service recruit at low levels of pay, and it is the same across much of the public sector. Also, when you join the civil service, you can't pursue other financial interests and this is normally a condition of your employment. So what you end up is with a certain kind of person that goes in to it, ie: not driven by money, modest expenditure, careful, churchgoer. They are more likely to be sympathetic to left wing ideas than right wing. People who are entrepeneurial don't go in to this type of job. Nor are people who have experienced any significant success in the commercial world. The tories have had 12 years to do something meaningful about this, but actually they have done very little, and freezing the pay of the civil service, which in my view exacerbates the fundamental problem.
I don’t really buy all of this, but it is a fundamental tenet of modern Toryism to not give a fuck about structural issues because they are quite boring, and to blame “the blob”, “left wing lawyers”, “the wokerati”, “remoaners” etc instead.
I went to a very working class comp but Latin was probably my best and favourite subject. Think I only dropped it after O level because it seemed an arty farty hobby type thing rather than a 'proper' A level like Maths or Sciences. Not a great call, looking back, but it joins the queue of those and it's nowhere near the front.
I did Latin for standard grade and higher, and did standard grade Greek too. Looking back I wish I had studied French or German instead.
I did Higher Latin too. It improved my memory and knowledge of English grammar which English had long since given up teaching. Had I done 6th year I was going to do O level Greek too, mainly because I really liked the teachers in the classics department, but I left school instead.
Classics teachers are usually really good I think, because otherwise the classics department probably dies, at least in state schools. Really that was the main reason I did Latin, plus I liked the other people in the class. Agree on the grammar stuff too. But leaving school able to speak to actual living people in a language other than English might have been more useful.
You must be joking (on the first bit). My grammar school Latin teacher used to give extra marks if our Latin homework was handed in done in different coloured pens; “beauty marks”, he used to call them. I dropped that subject as soon as I could, and have yet to find a country where what little I can remember from those classes helps me order a beer.
Try any ancient church or cathedral, medieval charters, most of Rome and you will find plenty of Latin inscriptions
Do they serve beer?
Certainly in Rome and indeed a few cathedral cafes
I've been thinking a bit about the complaints by Conservatives about the 'left blob' thing. A major contributory factor to the left blob is that people who work in public service are not really motivated by remuneration. The Civil service recruit at low levels of pay, and it is the same across much of the public sector. Also, when you join the civil service, you can't pursue other financial interests and this is normally a condition of your employment. So what you end up is with a certain kind of person that goes in to it, ie: not driven by money, modest expenditure, careful, churchgoer. They are more likely to be sympathetic to left wing ideas than right wing. People who are entrepeneurial don't go in to this type of job. Nor are people who have experienced any significant success in the commercial world. The tories have had 12 years to do something meaningful about this, but actually they have done very little, and freezing the pay of the civil service, which in my view exacerbates the fundamental problem.
I don’t really buy all of this, but it is a fundamental tenet of modern Toryism to not give a fuck about structural issues because they are quite boring, and to blame “the blob”, “left wing lawyers”, “the wokerati”, “remoaners” etc instead.
And to be fair, Neil is himself rather a large blob these days.
I've been thinking a bit about the complaints by Conservatives about the 'left blob' thing. A major contributory factor to the left blob is that people who work in public service are not really motivated by remuneration. The Civil service recruit at low levels of pay, and it is the same across much of the public sector. Also, when you join the civil service, you can't pursue other financial interests and this is normally a condition of your employment. So what you end up is with a certain kind of person that goes in to it, ie: not driven by money, modest expenditure, careful, churchgoer. They are more likely to be sympathetic to left wing ideas than right wing. People who are entrepeneurial don't go in to this type of job. Nor are people who have experienced any significant success in the commercial world. The tories have had 12 years to do something meaningful about this, but actually they have done very little, and freezing the pay of the civil service, which in my view exacerbates the fundamental problem.
I guess in days gone by - the entrepreneurial types would have had a role advising the Treasury or the like in a 'Captains of Industry' position. Not sure when that kind of thing disappeared. 60s at a guess? Once in a while we see someone like 'Former head of Tesco' being brought in to do something with a 'taskforce' or whatever, but not really the same thing.
Yeah that still happens. But these ceremonial advisory roles don't change the structure and values of institutions. You have to look at the people on here, ie @Casino_Royale who are quite successful and do well in their career; around the time when government were trying to hire people to deliver Brexit, as I recall they looked at the wage on offer; and just said no thanks.
I went to a very working class comp but Latin was probably my best and favourite subject. Think I only dropped it after O level because it seemed an arty farty hobby type thing rather than a 'proper' A level like Maths or Sciences. Not a great call, looking back, but it joins the queue of those and it's nowhere near the front.
I did Latin for standard grade and higher, and did standard grade Greek too. Looking back I wish I had studied French or German instead.
I did Higher Latin too. It improved my memory and knowledge of English grammar which English had long since given up teaching. Had I done 6th year I was going to do O level Greek too, mainly because I really liked the teachers in the classics department, but I left school instead.
Classics teachers are usually really good I think, because otherwise the classics department probably dies, at least in state schools. Really that was the main reason I did Latin, plus I liked the other people in the class. Agree on the grammar stuff too. But leaving school able to speak to actual living people in a language other than English might have been more useful.
You must be joking (on the first bit). My grammar school Latin teacher used to give extra marks if our Latin homework was handed in done in different coloured pens; “beauty marks”, he used to call them. I dropped that subject as soon as I could, and have yet to find a country where what little I can remember from those classes helps me order a beer.
Try any ancient church or cathedral, medieval charters, most of Rome and you will find plenty of Latin inscriptions
I went to a very working class comp but Latin was probably my best and favourite subject. Think I only dropped it after O level because it seemed an arty farty hobby type thing rather than a 'proper' A level like Maths or Sciences. Not a great call, looking back, but it joins the queue of those and it's nowhere near the front.
I did Latin for standard grade and higher, and did standard grade Greek too. Looking back I wish I had studied French or German instead.
I did Higher Latin too. It improved my memory and knowledge of English grammar which English had long since given up teaching. Had I done 6th year I was going to do O level Greek too, mainly because I really liked the teachers in the classics department, but I left school instead.
O level Latin and Greek for me - the latter much more rudimentary, but (apart from other reasons) giving me a clear sense of scientific terminology. Though I never did become a formal botanist. Botanical Latin still is required in plant classification and description: the last living use of Latin, now the RCs have abandoned it.
I did ancient Greek for a couple of weeks. The only word I really remember was thalappa, which meant sea. Not yet found a concrete use for this sadly, not even in Greece. latin was useful up to a point when studying law, especially in the days before google translate.
Are you saying you’ve never found an opportunity to employ the word thalassocracy?
Bet Rishi is wishing he'd handed out 10 of his votes to Penny.
I still don't understand what happened between the 2nd and 3rd Ballot with Mourdaunt.
He'd have lost to Penny I expect too - but it'd have been closer than it will be.
He would have beaten The Hat and Hunt, maybe Zahawi. Lost to the rest, even bonkers Braverman.
Yep - it's a populist right party and so whichever populist right candidate made the run off was probably going to be fav to win. Although Mordaunt doesn't quite fit that. She was more a blank canvas.
I made money on her, having backed her on a hunch a while ago at 66, but I actually read things wrong. I thought being untainted by Johnson association, as she was, would have been a strength.
Well it was amongst MPs but not with the members where it's very much still "Boris" rather than Johnson. And I think this is the main reason why Sunak is losing to Truss. He's seen as the traitor who knifed the Beloved. I think this is a bigger factor than Truss's populism.
The Beloved Boris mentality is worthy of study.
It cannot be based much on either ideology or loyalty has Boris has little of either.
And the laziness, self-indulgence, immaturity and refusal to learn from mistakes of Boris cannot be denied.
Boris isn't even a means to and end anymore as he was in 2019.
It is - a curious mix of celeb worship, anti-intellectualism, class deference, escapism, and short attention spans plus shallow sensibilities in the age of social media and reality tv is my best shot at explaining it.
But I don't want to do the actual study. I'd rather try my level best to forget him.
Boris is a classics scholar, probably was our most intellectual PM since Gordon Brown
classics is basically a step up from art history for public school bluffers
You can't be a true intellectual and have no interest in the classics or the history of art
So the likes of Socrates, who were around before the history of art was invented, ditto most of the classics, weren't intellectual?
And I have no interest in the history of art, but would certainly count as an intellectual by your standards.
Uncharacteristically iffy point. Here is S doing art history in Hippias Major:
Socrates This reply, my most excellent friend, he not only will certainly not accept, but he will even jeer at me grossly and will say: “You lunatic, do you think Pheidias is a bad craftsman?” And I shall say, “Not in the least.”
Hippias And you will be right, Socrates.
Socrates Yes, to be sure. Consequently when I agree that Pheidias is a good craftsman, [290b] “Well, then,” he will say, “do you imagine that Pheidias did not know this beautiful that you speak of?” “Why do you ask that?” I shall say. “Because,” he will say, “he did not make the eyes of his Athena of gold, nor the rest of her face, nor her hands and feet, if, that is, they were sure to appear most beautiful provided only they were made of gold, but he made them of ivory; evidently he made this mistake through ignorance, not knowing that it is gold which makes everything beautiful to which it is added.” When he says that, what reply shall we make to him, Hippias? [290c]
Hippias That is easy; for we shall say that Pheidias did right; for ivory, I think, is beautiful.
Socrates “Why, then,” he will say, “did he not make the middle parts of the eyes also of ivory, but of stone, procuring stone as similar as possible to the ivory? Or is beautiful stone also beautiful?” Shall we say that it is, Hippias?
And he had stacks more of the classics available to him than we do, because so much has not survived. Homer plus a lot of other epic plus several thousand plays performed during his lifetime. Not much Plato, of course, and no Latin.
PS Did he include only Hellenic art as art? Or was barbarian art, by definition so to speak, beyond the pale?
The Greeks were very, very clear on the worthlessness of everything not Greek....
I've been thinking a bit about the complaints by Conservatives about the 'left blob' thing. A major contributory factor to the left blob is that people who work in public service are not really motivated by remuneration. The Civil service recruit at low levels of pay, and it is the same across much of the public sector. Also, when you join the civil service, you can't pursue other financial interests and this is normally a condition of your employment. So what you end up is with a certain kind of person that goes in to it, ie: not driven by money, modest expenditure, careful, churchgoer. They are more likely to be sympathetic to left wing ideas than right wing. People who are entrepeneurial don't go in to this type of job. Nor are people who have experienced any significant success in the commercial world. The tories have had 12 years to do something meaningful about this, but actually they have done very little, and freezing the pay of the civil service, which in my view exacerbates the fundamental problem.
I guess in days gone by - the entrepreneurial types would have had a role advising the Treasury or the like in a 'Captains of Industry' position. Not sure when that kind of thing disappeared. 60s at a guess? Once in a while we see someone like 'Former head of Tesco' being brought in to do something with a 'taskforce' or whatever, but not really the same thing.
Yeah that still happens. But these ceremonial advisory roles don't change the structure and values of institutions. You have to look at the people on here, ie @Casino_Royale who are quite successful and do well in their career; around the time when government were trying to hire people to deliver Brexit, as I recall they looked at the wage on offer; and just said no thanks.
I don't think it is necessarily left-wing to be "not driven by money, modest expenditure, careful, churchgoer". I think the more plausible explanation is that Neil's conspiracy theory about elders of woke is false, and that the Andrew Baileys and Dido Hardings of this world are just typical of their background.
I also think the "blob" theory is just a rewriting of the Cathedral conspiracy theory of American "neo-reactionary" writer Curtis Yarvin, which probably reached Dom via the so-called intellectual dark web of Silicon Valley right-wingers. If this all sounds daft, welcome to the Internet era!
In America you can rent a 12 ton truck with a regular licence.
Absolutely insane
Not to mention some pretty heavy-duty construction or farm equipment. But at about $365 per day for a 65 horse tractor (our big one is in the shop in pieces while the hay is rotting in the field), I am not sure many would want to.
It seems the Rwanda plan might have made the Channel People Smugglers drop their prices
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/aug/06/channel-smugglers-drop-prices-and-cram-more-people-on-to-boats " One Syrian asylum seeker told the Guardian that the smugglers had dropped their prices dramatically. “Before it was £3,000 or £4,000 to cross. Now the top price is £1,200 and some asylum seekers are negotiating a price of as little as £500 to cross. Everyone can afford to cross these days. Some asylum seekers are saying to smugglers, ‘Why should I pay you £4,000 to go to the UK when I might end up in Rwanda? I will pay you £500’. Then a deal is struck.”"
Which, presumably, means more people crossing, depending on how many of the smugglers remain in the trade?
Yes. Which is obviously bad. However, it does show an effect at work. If some Rwanda became 'all claims processed in Rwanda (or similar)' those getting on boats at all would basically be nil.
Alternatively, the price is dropping to fill seats.
I find these stories utterly ridiculous. Where do people think the water can go? If it goes up, it must come down.
Mad greens (in line with EU policy) have been trying to stop new reservoirs being built for years precisely to stoke such ludicrous alarmism. If it's not drought, it's floods, with rivers that haven't been dredged for years (again, green blob) mysteriously bursting their banks.
I'd just have the 7.5 tonne restricted to people who obtained a license > 5 years ago You probably don't want green 17 year olds charging round in those. But the situation at the moment bns those of us born in the early 80s, some of us are the wrong side of 40
Surely if Conservative governments can't get anything done after 12 years because of some Left blob they've only just noticed, then they ought to be turfed out for gross incompetence?
Bet Rishi is wishing he'd handed out 10 of his votes to Penny.
I still don't understand what happened between the 2nd and 3rd Ballot with Mourdaunt.
He'd have lost to Penny I expect too - but it'd have been closer than it will be.
He would have beaten The Hat and Hunt, maybe Zahawi. Lost to the rest, even bonkers Braverman.
Yep - it's a populist right party and so whichever populist right candidate made the run off was probably going to be fav to win. Although Mordaunt doesn't quite fit that. She was more a blank canvas.
I made money on her, having backed her on a hunch a while ago at 66, but I actually read things wrong. I thought being untainted by Johnson association, as she was, would have been a strength.
Well it was amongst MPs but not with the members where it's very much still "Boris" rather than Johnson. And I think this is the main reason why Sunak is losing to Truss. He's seen as the traitor who knifed the Beloved. I think this is a bigger factor than Truss's populism.
The Beloved Boris mentality is worthy of study.
It cannot be based much on either ideology or loyalty has Boris has little of either.
And the laziness, self-indulgence, immaturity and refusal to learn from mistakes of Boris cannot be denied.
Boris isn't even a means to and end anymore as he was in 2019.
It is - a curious mix of celeb worship, anti-intellectualism, class deference, escapism, and short attention spans plus shallow sensibilities in the age of social media and reality tv is my best shot at explaining it.
But I don't want to do the actual study. I'd rather try my level best to forget him.
Boris is a classics scholar, probably was our most intellectual PM since Gordon Brown
classics is basically a step up from art history for public school bluffers
You can't be a true intellectual and have no interest in the classics or the history of art
So the likes of Socrates, who were around before the history of art was invented, ditto most of the classics, weren't intellectual?
And I have no interest in the history of art, but would certainly count as an intellectual by your standards.
There was plenty of art around in Ancient Greece, indeed plenty of the greatest statues on earth and many built well before his time. Classical languages were the languages of the time and the stories if the classics were living history.
What a ridiculous comment. If you have no interest in art history then no, you are not a true intellectual even if intelligent
What an attitude to intellectual endeavour you have - it only counts if it is the traditional upper class style c. 1930:
posh - tick public school - tick history of art - tick Balliol College - double tick Latin and Greek - tick, double tick if it's Greats at Oxford ...
An intellectual is supposed to read widely on a range of subjects, including science, history, art etc. You said you have no interest in history of art so clearly it does not apply to us
I can identify paintings roughly to era and sometimes to artist. And discuss Uccello's use of perspective in his works.
I just don't have the time to be interested in everything.
I also think the "blob" theory is just a rewriting of the Cathedral conspiracy theory of American "neo-reactionary" writer Curtis Yarvin, which probably reached Dom via the so-called intellectual dark web of Silicon Valley right-wingers. If this all sounds daft, welcome to the Internet era!
It's just conventional 'othering' from a political party that has absolutely run out of ideas and so has nothing to offer to the country except fear and divisiveness.
I went to a very working class comp but Latin was probably my best and favourite subject. Think I only dropped it after O level because it seemed an arty farty hobby type thing rather than a 'proper' A level like Maths or Sciences. Not a great call, looking back, but it joins the queue of those and it's nowhere near the front.
I did Latin for standard grade and higher, and did standard grade Greek too. Looking back I wish I had studied French or German instead.
I did Higher Latin too. It improved my memory and knowledge of English grammar which English had long since given up teaching. Had I done 6th year I was going to do O level Greek too, mainly because I really liked the teachers in the classics department, but I left school instead.
O level Latin and Greek for me - the latter much more rudimentary, but (apart from other reasons) giving me a clear sense of scientific terminology. Though I never did become a formal botanist. Botanical Latin still is required in plant classification and description: the last living use of Latin, now the RCs have abandoned it.
I did ancient Greek for a couple of weeks. The only word I really remember was thalappa, which meant sea. Not yet found a concrete use for this sadly, not even in Greece. latin was useful up to a point when studying law, especially in the days before google translate.
thalatta or thalassa, not thalappa.
θάλασσα which I think is actually double rho isn't it?
Those are sigmas. It's θάλαττα in some dialects including Attic (which is kinda mainstream cos it is what Athens spoke)
I am starting to see that I didn't get as much out of those 4 or 5 classes in 1978 as I thought. Oh well. If ignorance is bliss I am a happy boy.
You missed some subtleties - like the middle* tense, between active and passive. The dual, between singuilar and plural. And the doubling of the initial syllable for a particular past tense of a verb, perfect I think, with an added initial e for the pluperfect IIRC. All adding to the memorisation task.
* I teach my son. I have Socrates teach my son. I am taught by Socrates. would IIRC cover the three..
Getting to grips with this stuff is the kind of deeply tedious effort that we haven’t seen for quite a while now.
There will be a whole host of reasons for this, and there will be no 'easy' solution.
A few years ago, I gave an example of how much it cost to add one signal onto an existing railway - and it was in the order of hundreds of thousands of pounds. And from what I could ascertain, much of that was *not* spent on the ground, but in offices.
But wrt electrification, we do have issues that do not plague Europe as much. We tend to be denser-populated, which means we have more overbridges (just look at the Midland Main Line in Belper for an extreme example). Our loading gauge is smaller, meaning there is less room (though that difference can be overplayed).
I'd argue that a major issue is that the projects are not cash-strapped. If they run out of money, they're bailed out. People joke about the ECML having 'weak' catenary that blows down in a small breeze, but it was built relatively cheaply and *works*. The GWML electrification appears to be gold-plated. Ingenious solutions to reduce costs are often not tried. Or if they are, they're massively expensive innovations that do not work (as happened with the GWML job).
But this is also not new. ISTR that Gerry Fiennes mentions the electrification of the lines towards ?Southend?, which seemed to have suffered similar problems to the ones faced by the GWML team today...
I've been thinking a bit about the complaints by Conservatives about the 'left blob' thing. A major contributory factor to the left blob is that people who work in public service are not really motivated by remuneration. The Civil service recruit at low levels of pay, and it is the same across much of the public sector. Also, when you join the civil service, you can't pursue other financial interests and this is normally a condition of your employment. So what you end up is with a certain kind of person that goes in to it, ie: not driven by money, modest expenditure, careful, churchgoer. They are more likely to be sympathetic to left wing ideas than right wing. People who are entrepeneurial don't go in to this type of job. Nor are people who have experienced any significant success in the commercial world. The tories have had 12 years to do something meaningful about this, but actually they have done very little, and freezing the pay of the civil service, which in my view exacerbates the fundamental problem.
I don’t really buy all of this, but it is a fundamental tenet of modern Toryism to not give a fuck about structural issues because they are quite boring, and to blame “the blob”, “left wing lawyers”, “the wokerati”, “remoaners” etc instead.
That's on the home front. Meanwhile in Foreignistan there was Britain's place in Churchill's three "concentric cirles" (North Atlantic, Europe, Commonwealth - sic), now undergoing replacement by forcefully taking the Crimea away from Mr Putin just as Mr Khrushchev (who said he'd vote Tory if he were British) would have wanted, and by committing British forces to get involved in the Chinese civil war if it hots up again: British power on both land and sea! Guns before winter heating!
Truss - wannabe liberator of the Crimea. Sunak - if his illustrious backer William Hague is anything to go by, a wannabe China whacker?
"China must be told that an invasion would risk world war" - Hague.
I keep reading in the British media that the dispute between the PRC and the ROC is about the PRC's view of a rebellious province versus the ROC's view of an island that wants independence. Strange that neither of the actual sides in the dispute see it that way. They both think there's one China. Clearly British wisdom is required.
Once they've reversed Ukraine's territorial losses and forced the People's Republic of China to wind its neck in on the high seas, the Tories will build a British Apple or Google apparently. And all while cutting taxes. Nurse!
I've been thinking a bit about the complaints by Conservatives about the 'left blob' thing. A major contributory factor to the left blob is that people who work in public service are not really motivated by remuneration. The Civil service recruit at low levels of pay, and it is the same across much of the public sector. Also, when you join the civil service, you can't pursue other financial interests and this is normally a condition of your employment. So what you end up is with a certain kind of person that goes in to it, ie: not driven by money, modest expenditure, careful, churchgoer. They are more likely to be sympathetic to left wing ideas than right wing. People who are entrepeneurial don't go in to this type of job. Nor are people who have experienced any significant success in the commercial world. The tories have had 12 years to do something meaningful about this, but actually they have done very little, and freezing the pay of the civil service, which in my view exacerbates the fundamental problem.
I guess in days gone by - the entrepreneurial types would have had a role advising the Treasury or the like in a 'Captains of Industry' position. Not sure when that kind of thing disappeared. 60s at a guess? Once in a while we see someone like 'Former head of Tesco' being brought in to do something with a 'taskforce' or whatever, but not really the same thing.
Yeah that still happens. But these ceremonial advisory roles don't change the structure and values of institutions. You have to look at the people on here, ie @Casino_Royale who are quite successful and do well in their career; around the time when government were trying to hire people to deliver Brexit, as I recall they looked at the wage on offer; and just said no thanks.
I don't think it is necessarily left-wing to be "not driven by money, modest expenditure, careful, churchgoer". I think the more plausible explanation is that Neil's conspiracy theory about elders of woke is false, and that the Andrew Baileys and Dido Hardings of this world are just typical of their background.
The alternative assessment of this is that the "woke" have now captured the institutions of capitalism, so you can be woke and earn millions.
A quick shout out to the people behind the .gov portal. All things considered, it works really rather well.
Simple, very clear and quick.
Well done.
That's the thing about both national and local governments - when the services fail, we notice and complain. When the services work well - as they all so often do - we barely think about it.
Bet Rishi is wishing he'd handed out 10 of his votes to Penny.
I still don't understand what happened between the 2nd and 3rd Ballot with Mourdaunt.
He'd have lost to Penny I expect too - but it'd have been closer than it will be.
He would have beaten The Hat and Hunt, maybe Zahawi. Lost to the rest, even bonkers Braverman.
Yep - it's a populist right party and so whichever populist right candidate made the run off was probably going to be fav to win. Although Mordaunt doesn't quite fit that. She was more a blank canvas.
I made money on her, having backed her on a hunch a while ago at 66, but I actually read things wrong. I thought being untainted by Johnson association, as she was, would have been a strength.
Well it was amongst MPs but not with the members where it's very much still "Boris" rather than Johnson. And I think this is the main reason why Sunak is losing to Truss. He's seen as the traitor who knifed the Beloved. I think this is a bigger factor than Truss's populism.
The Beloved Boris mentality is worthy of study.
It cannot be based much on either ideology or loyalty has Boris has little of either.
And the laziness, self-indulgence, immaturity and refusal to learn from mistakes of Boris cannot be denied.
Boris isn't even a means to and end anymore as he was in 2019.
It is - a curious mix of celeb worship, anti-intellectualism, class deference, escapism, and short attention spans plus shallow sensibilities in the age of social media and reality tv is my best shot at explaining it.
But I don't want to do the actual study. I'd rather try my level best to forget him.
Boris is a classics scholar, probably was our most intellectual PM since Gordon Brown
classics is basically a step up from art history for public school bluffers
You can't be a true intellectual and have no interest in the classics or the history of art
So the likes of Socrates, who were around before the history of art was invented, ditto most of the classics, weren't intellectual?
And I have no interest in the history of art, but would certainly count as an intellectual by your standards.
There was plenty of art around in Ancient Greece, indeed plenty of the greatest statues on earth and many built well before his time. Classical languages were the languages of the time and the stories if the classics were living history.
What a ridiculous comment. If you have no interest in art history then no, you are not a true intellectual even if intelligent
What an attitude to intellectual endeavour you have - it only counts if it is the traditional upper class style c. 1930:
posh - tick public school - tick history of art - tick Balliol College - double tick Latin and Greek - tick, double tick if it's Greats at Oxford ...
An intellectual is supposed to read widely on a range of subjects, including science, history, art etc. You said you have no interest in history of art so clearly it does not apply to us
I can identify paintings roughly to era and sometimes to artist. And discuss Uccello's use of perspective in his works.
I just don't have the time to be interested in everything.
If you can do this, you can do much more than most.
A little goes a long way, I reckon. Same with wine appreciation.
I've been thinking a bit about the complaints by Conservatives about the 'left blob' thing. A major contributory factor to the left blob is that people who work in public service are not really motivated by remuneration. The Civil service recruit at low levels of pay, and it is the same across much of the public sector. Also, when you join the civil service, you can't pursue other financial interests and this is normally a condition of your employment. So what you end up is with a certain kind of person that goes in to it, ie: not driven by money, modest expenditure, careful, churchgoer. They are more likely to be sympathetic to left wing ideas than right wing. People who are entrepeneurial don't go in to this type of job. Nor are people who have experienced any significant success in the commercial world. The tories have had 12 years to do something meaningful about this, but actually they have done very little, and freezing the pay of the civil service, which in my view exacerbates the fundamental problem.
I guess in days gone by - the entrepreneurial types would have had a role advising the Treasury or the like in a 'Captains of Industry' position. Not sure when that kind of thing disappeared. 60s at a guess? Once in a while we see someone like 'Former head of Tesco' being brought in to do something with a 'taskforce' or whatever, but not really the same thing.
Yeah that still happens. But these ceremonial advisory roles don't change the structure and values of institutions. You have to look at the people on here, ie @Casino_Royale who are quite successful and do well in their career; around the time when government were trying to hire people to deliver Brexit, as I recall they looked at the wage on offer; and just said no thanks.
I don't think it is necessarily left-wing to be "not driven by money, modest expenditure, careful, churchgoer". I think the more plausible explanation is that Neil's conspiracy theory about elders of woke is false, and that the Andrew Baileys and Dido Hardings of this world are just typical of their background.
The alternative assessment of this is that the "woke" have now captured the institutions of capitalism, so you can be woke and earn millions.
Utter bollocks, except in rarefied parts of US academe-cum-consulting.
I went to a very working class comp but Latin was probably my best and favourite subject. Think I only dropped it after O level because it seemed an arty farty hobby type thing rather than a 'proper' A level like Maths or Sciences. Not a great call, looking back, but it joins the queue of those and it's nowhere near the front.
I did Latin for standard grade and higher, and did standard grade Greek too. Looking back I wish I had studied French or German instead.
I did Higher Latin too. It improved my memory and knowledge of English grammar which English had long since given up teaching. Had I done 6th year I was going to do O level Greek too, mainly because I really liked the teachers in the classics department, but I left school instead.
O level Latin and Greek for me - the latter much more rudimentary, but (apart from other reasons) giving me a clear sense of scientific terminology. Though I never did become a formal botanist. Botanical Latin still is required in plant classification and description: the last living use of Latin, now the RCs have abandoned it.
I did ancient Greek for a couple of weeks. The only word I really remember was thalappa, which meant sea. Not yet found a concrete use for this sadly, not even in Greece. latin was useful up to a point when studying law, especially in the days before google translate.
thalatta or thalassa, not thalappa.
θάλασσα which I think is actually double rho isn't it?
Those are sigmas. It's θάλαττα in some dialects including Attic (which is kinda mainstream cos it is what Athens spoke)
I am starting to see that I didn't get as much out of those 4 or 5 classes in 1978 as I thought. Oh well. If ignorance is bliss I am a happy boy.
You missed some subtleties - like the middle* tense, between active and passive. The dual, between singuilar and plural. And the doubling of the initial syllable for a particular past tense of a verb, perfect I think, with an added initial e for the pluperfect IIRC. All adding to the memorisation task.
* I teach my son. I have Socrates teach my son. I am taught by Socrates. would IIRC cover the three..
I missed out. A couple of days ago I quoted from 1984 and the concept of newspeak brilliantly articulated by Orwell. It was a way of limiting the ability to think by the limitations imposed on language. Some thoughts just become impossible. Given those sorts of options it is not quite so surprising that Greeks are still the starting point for any serious philosophy 3000 years on.
It seems the Rwanda plan might have made the Channel People Smugglers drop their prices
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/aug/06/channel-smugglers-drop-prices-and-cram-more-people-on-to-boats " One Syrian asylum seeker told the Guardian that the smugglers had dropped their prices dramatically. “Before it was £3,000 or £4,000 to cross. Now the top price is £1,200 and some asylum seekers are negotiating a price of as little as £500 to cross. Everyone can afford to cross these days. Some asylum seekers are saying to smugglers, ‘Why should I pay you £4,000 to go to the UK when I might end up in Rwanda? I will pay you £500’. Then a deal is struck.”"
Which, presumably, means more people crossing, depending on how many of the smugglers remain in the trade?
Yes. Which is obviously bad. However, it does show an effect at work. If some Rwanda became 'all claims processed in Rwanda (or similar)' those getting on boats at all would basically be nil.
Alternatively, the price is dropping to fill seats.
{O’Leary has entered the chat}
“Cut prices, hellish conditions?”
Isn't this just capitalism doing what it does?
Start with a premium product for the elite.
Then use the profits and development from that to attack the lower-cost mass market, because that's where the real money is.
I find these stories utterly ridiculous. Where do people think the water can go? If it goes up, it must come down.
Mad greens (in line with EU policy) have been trying to stop new reservoirs being built for years precisely to stoke such ludicrous alarmism. If it's not drought, it's floods, with rivers that haven't been dredged for years (again, green blob) mysteriously bursting their banks.
It could end up in the sea, salty and useless. The amount of fresh water in the world is collapsing with the ice sheets of Greenland and Antartica but much of the world that could rely on a steady flow from mountain tops is going to become more arid too. And of course there are far too many people.
I also think the "blob" theory is just a rewriting of the Cathedral conspiracy theory of American "neo-reactionary" writer Curtis Yarvin, which probably reached Dom via the so-called intellectual dark web of Silicon Valley right-wingers. If this all sounds daft, welcome to the Internet era!
It's just conventional 'othering' from a political party that has absolutely run out of ideas and so has nothing to offer to the country except fear and divisiveness.
"the blob" and "woke" are just terms the Right uses to denigrate people or ideas that they disagree with but are too lazy to argue against coherently. And Andrew Neil can rant as much as he likes about the Left but it seems to be politicians on the right who are trying to deprive him of a living by refusing to be interviewed by him!
I've been thinking a bit about the complaints by Conservatives about the 'left blob' thing. A major contributory factor to the left blob is that people who work in public service are not really motivated by remuneration. The Civil service recruit at low levels of pay, and it is the same across much of the public sector. Also, when you join the civil service, you can't pursue other financial interests and this is normally a condition of your employment. So what you end up is with a certain kind of person that goes in to it, ie: not driven by money, modest expenditure, careful, churchgoer. They are more likely to be sympathetic to left wing ideas than right wing. People who are entrepeneurial don't go in to this type of job. Nor are people who have experienced any significant success in the commercial world. The tories have had 12 years to do something meaningful about this, but actually they have done very little, and freezing the pay of the civil service, which in my view exacerbates the fundamental problem.
I don’t really buy all of this, but it is a fundamental tenet of modern Toryism to not give a fuck about structural issues because they are quite boring, and to blame “the blob”, “left wing lawyers”, “the wokerati”, “remoaners” etc instead.
That's on the home front. Meanwhile in Foreignistan there was Britain's place in Churchill's three "concentric cirles" (North Atlantic, Europe, Commonwealth - sic), now undergoing replacement by forcefully taking the Crimea away from Mr Putin just as Mr Khrushchev (who said he'd vote Tory if he were British) would have wanted, and by committing British forces to get involved in the Chinese civil war if it hots up again: British power on both land and sea! Guns before winter heating!
Truss - wannabe liberator of the Crimea.
Why stop at Crimea? Should Ukraine not take as much Russian territory as necessary for its security? It's what Khrushchev would have wanted.
I also think the "blob" theory is just a rewriting of the Cathedral conspiracy theory of American "neo-reactionary" writer Curtis Yarvin, which probably reached Dom via the so-called intellectual dark web of Silicon Valley right-wingers. If this all sounds daft, welcome to the Internet era!
It's just conventional 'othering' from a political party that has absolutely run out of ideas and so has nothing to offer to the country except fear and divisiveness.
"the blob" and "woke" are just terms the Right uses to denigrate people or ideas that they disagree with but are too lazy to argue against coherently. And Andrew Neil can rant as much as he likes about the Left but it seems to be politicians on the right who are trying to deprive him of a living by refusing to be interviewed by him!
Andrew Neil has become a pathetic caricature of himself. It’s long time he disappeared into the Riviera, or some other sunny place for shady people.
I'd just have the 7.5 tonne restricted to people who obtained a license > 5 years ago You probably don't want green 17 year olds charging round in those. But the situation at the moment bns those of us born in the early 80s, some of us are the wrong side of 40
I am pretty sure that I was able to hire a 7.5 tonne removal van back in the days we had flats and moved around a bit more. It must have been legal then.
I'd just have the 7.5 tonne restricted to people who obtained a license > 5 years ago You probably don't want green 17 year olds charging round in those. But the situation at the moment bns those of us born in the early 80s, some of us are the wrong side of 40
I am pretty sure that I was able to hire a 7.5 tonne removal van back in the days we had flats and moved around a bit more. It must have been legal then.
It's a grandfather clause thing. you can still do it if you passed a car test pre 2000 ish.
I'd just have the 7.5 tonne restricted to people who obtained a license > 5 years ago You probably don't want green 17 year olds charging round in those. But the situation at the moment bns those of us born in the early 80s, some of us are the wrong side of 40
I am pretty sure that I was able to hire a 7.5 tonne removal van back in the days we had flats and moved around a bit more. It must have been legal then.
Yes but you passed your test before 1997 didn't you. Its just a de facto exclusion on anyone under 42 now
I'd just have the 7.5 tonne restricted to people who obtained a license > 5 years ago You probably don't want green 17 year olds charging round in those. But the situation at the moment bns those of us born in the early 80s, some of us are the wrong side of 40
I am pretty sure that I was able to hire a 7.5 tonne removal van back in the days we had flats and moved around a bit more. It must have been legal then.
It's a grandfather clause thing. you can still do it if you passed a car test pre 2000 ish.
Ah right, yes it would have been before that. I don't think I would do it now to be honest.
I'd just have the 7.5 tonne restricted to people who obtained a license > 5 years ago You probably don't want green 17 year olds charging round in those. But the situation at the moment bns those of us born in the early 80s, some of us are the wrong side of 40
I am pretty sure that I was able to hire a 7.5 tonne removal van back in the days we had flats and moved around a bit more. It must have been legal then.
It's a grandfather clause thing. you can still do it if you passed a car test pre 2000 ish.
"Why Labour should fear Liz Truss Her popularity among the grassroots is no accident BY JOHN MCTERNAN John McTernan is a British political strategist and former advisor to Tony Blair"
It seems the Rwanda plan might have made the Channel People Smugglers drop their prices
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/aug/06/channel-smugglers-drop-prices-and-cram-more-people-on-to-boats " One Syrian asylum seeker told the Guardian that the smugglers had dropped their prices dramatically. “Before it was £3,000 or £4,000 to cross. Now the top price is £1,200 and some asylum seekers are negotiating a price of as little as £500 to cross. Everyone can afford to cross these days. Some asylum seekers are saying to smugglers, ‘Why should I pay you £4,000 to go to the UK when I might end up in Rwanda? I will pay you £500’. Then a deal is struck.”"
Which, presumably, means more people crossing, depending on how many of the smugglers remain in the trade?
Yes. Which is obviously bad. However, it does show an effect at work. If some Rwanda became 'all claims processed in Rwanda (or similar)' those getting on boats at all would basically be nil.
Alternatively, the price is dropping to fill seats.
{O’Leary has entered the chat}
“Cut prices, hellish conditions?”
Isn't this just capitalism doing what it does?
Start with a premium product for the elite.
Then use the profits and development from that to attack the lower-cost mass market, because that's where the real money is.
We need more data - to start with why were the prices high? Because that was what the limited capacity would clear at? Was the number of boats limited?
I also think the "blob" theory is just a rewriting of the Cathedral conspiracy theory of American "neo-reactionary" writer Curtis Yarvin, which probably reached Dom via the so-called intellectual dark web of Silicon Valley right-wingers. If this all sounds daft, welcome to the Internet era!
It's just conventional 'othering' from a political party that has absolutely run out of ideas and so has nothing to offer to the country except fear and divisiveness.
"the blob" and "woke" are just terms the Right uses to denigrate people or ideas that they disagree with but are too lazy to argue against coherently. And Andrew Neil can rant as much as he likes about the Left but it seems to be politicians on the right who are trying to deprive him of a living by refusing to be interviewed by him!
Andrew Neil has become a pathetic caricature of himself. It’s long time he disappeared into the Riviera, or some other sunny place for shady people.
It's a shame because he is a serious political journalist and probably our best interviewer of politicians. He didn't do himself any favours getting involved with the farcical GB News. People who are attracted to public service careers probably do skew left wing, but equally people in sectors like finance skew right wing. As a left winger in finance I just shrug my shoulders and get on with it - it's not a conspiracy. If we want more right wing civil servants we should probably pay them more.
"Why Labour should fear Liz Truss Her popularity among the grassroots is no accident BY JOHN MCTERNAN John McTernan is a British political strategist and former advisor to Tony Blair"
I find these stories utterly ridiculous. Where do people think the water can go? If it goes up, it must come down.
Mad greens (in line with EU policy) have been trying to stop new reservoirs being built for years precisely to stoke such ludicrous alarmism. If it's not drought, it's floods, with rivers that haven't been dredged for years (again, green blob) mysteriously bursting their banks.
It could end up in the sea, salty and useless. The amount of fresh water in the world is collapsing with the ice sheets of Greenland and Antartica but much of the world that could rely on a steady flow from mountain tops is going to become more arid too. And of course there are far too many people.
I don't agree that there are too many people - that is a deeply spurious shibboleth in my opinion. No other living thing shares that view of its own species. When we approach capacity in this planet (if that is possible) we will colonise space.
The water in the sea still evaporates and falls again as rain. As for the ice sheets melting, that would add more water to the cycle, not take it away. We will perhaps revisit this conversation when facing the usual winter flooding alarm.
"Almost 35,000 Britons in limbo as Portugal fails to issue post-Brexit ID cards British nationals living in country are unable to access healthcare, change jobs or travel in and out
British nationals living in Portugal are unable to access healthcare, change jobs, or travel in and out of the country as its ministers have not issued them with post-Brexit residency cards, it has emerged. The UK government has raised the issue at ministerial level and urged Portugal to implement fully the withdrawal agreement and protect the rights of the 34,500 Britons who made the country their home before Brexit. People have been left detained at airports, paying to have broken bones treated or risked losing their jobs due to the delays in getting a biometric card that is vital to everyday life and proves their legal status. Under the UK-EU withdrawal agreement, British citizens in Portugal were guaranteed their social and employment rights would be protected. However, the Portuguese government has yet to provide the biometric residency cards.Instead, a temporary document and QR code has been issued, which Britons say is not recognised locally or at international borders."
From a purely pragmatic point of view the White (Haired) Walkers have to vote for Jizzy Lizzy now. They can't go into a GE with a PM who most of the MPs thought was a wanker and not up to it.
You put this in me So now what, so now what? Wanting, needing, waiting For you to Trusstify my love (my love) Hoping, praying For you to Trusstify my love
That remains one of the filthiest pop songs ever. The video too.
Thirty years on, still sublime.
(Especially the William Orbit remix.)
She had a pretty brilliant run. Tuned out of her now - seen a few shots in online tabloids and it looks like she's slipped into self parody and facial injection addiction nowadays.
Many years ago I read a story alleging that there was a make-up artist employed specifically to 'pin' her hair back so tightly that it made her face look smooth so she could claim 'no plastic surgery'.
Didn't sound like a lot of fun, I must say.
She was (and is fundamentally) a stunning woman. But so many celebrities these days have got 'Putinface' - gone for fillers to puff out the face, eliminate wrinkles, and exaggerate desired characteristics like cheekbones. It looks terrible, especially in motion.
Trivia: I heard Madonna was originally in line to sing Massive Attack's Teardrop. Which would have made it a very different song. 'Love, love, is a verb. Love is a doing word.'
Elizabeth Fraser absolutely killed on that track. All-time classic.
"Almost 35,000 Britons in limbo as Portugal fails to issue post-Brexit ID cards British nationals living in country are unable to access healthcare, change jobs or travel in and out
British nationals living in Portugal are unable to access healthcare, change jobs, or travel in and out of the country as its ministers have not issued them with post-Brexit residency cards, it has emerged. The UK government has raised the issue at ministerial level and urged Portugal to implement fully the withdrawal agreement and protect the rights of the 34,500 Britons who made the country their home before Brexit. People have been left detained at airports, paying to have broken bones treated or risked losing their jobs due to the delays in getting a biometric card that is vital to everyday life and proves their legal status. Under the UK-EU withdrawal agreement, British citizens in Portugal were guaranteed their social and employment rights would be protected. However, the Portuguese government has yet to provide the biometric residency cards.Instead, a temporary document and QR code has been issued, which Britons say is not recognised locally or at international borders."
The Portuguese government is busy trying to attract British talent to Portugal right now, so I'm going with typical government shitness rather than conspiracy.
I don't agree that there are too many people - that is a deeply spurious shibboleth in my opinion. No other living thing shares that view of its own species. When we approach capacity in this planet (if that is possible) we will colonise space.
The water in the sea still evaporates and falls again as rain. As for the ice sheets melting, that would add more water to the cycle, not take it away. We will perhaps revisit this conversation when facing the usual winter flooding alarm.
The earth could easily support 50 or 100 bn people, and quite possibly a lot more, albeit there would need to be some fairly substantial lifestyle changes to achieve this.
With that said, given reproduction is now in the easy control of humans (almost anywhere), birth rates have absolutely collapsed.
So the likelihood of the world population exploding (or even growing particularly quickly), seems pretty remote.
Why not, gen x and boomers can drive 7.5 tonnes - at the moment it's just a ban for millenials
Yes, 7.5t was the standard weight for a car driving licence up until 1997, when an EU directive standardised it at the smaller 3.5t weight - but with grandfather rights for existing licence-holders.
It does actually give a lot of issues at the moment, for example using a large car to tow a caravan is often overweight for those with the newer licence. Reverting to the status quo ante is actually a decent Brexit benefit.
Note that using a 7.5t truck for commercial use, has always required a separate licence and medical.
I find these stories utterly ridiculous. Where do people think the water can go? If it goes up, it must come down.
Mad greens (in line with EU policy) have been trying to stop new reservoirs being built for years precisely to stoke such ludicrous alarmism. If it's not drought, it's floods, with rivers that haven't been dredged for years (again, green blob) mysteriously bursting their banks.
It could end up in the sea, salty and useless. The amount of fresh water in the world is collapsing with the ice sheets of Greenland and Antartica but much of the world that could rely on a steady flow from mountain tops is going to become more arid too. And of course there are far too many people.
I don't agree that there are too many people - that is a deeply spurious shibboleth in my opinion. No other living thing shares that view of its own species. When we approach capacity in this planet (if that is possible) we will colonise space.
The water in the sea still evaporates and falls again as rain. As for the ice sheets melting, that would add more water to the cycle, not take it away. We will perhaps revisit this conversation when facing the usual winter flooding alarm.
Quality gibberish. No other living thing has a concept of its own species, let alone the ability to make value judgments about it. and aren't you usually on about how inorganic and empty modern food is? Because you would halve numbers automatically if you abolished non-rockdust fertilisers.
The ridiculous stories aren't about what might in theory happen, they are about what is actually happening. Do you have any idea how dry the SW USA has been for how long?
"Why Labour should fear Liz Truss Her popularity among the grassroots is no accident BY JOHN MCTERNAN John McTernan is a British political strategist and former advisor to Tony Blair"
One of the main reasons Labour should fear Liz Truss - or Rishi Sunak - or my Aunt Gladys - is that SKS is not very good at retail politics.
The piece contains this warning:
"But [Sunak's] floundering campaign should be a lesson for Labour if they want to confront Liz Truss."
I confess that I thought Truss would be an utter disaster and they may even ditch her after just one year. I am beginning to wonder whether, like it seems most people, I have seriously underestimated her.
"Why Labour should fear Liz Truss Her popularity among the grassroots is no accident BY JOHN MCTERNAN John McTernan is a British political strategist and former advisor to Tony Blair"
One of the main reasons Labour should fear Liz Truss - or Rishi Sunak - or my Aunt Gladys - is that SKS is not very good at retail politics.
The piece contains this warning:
"But [Sunak's] floundering campaign should be a lesson for Labour if they want to confront Liz Truss."
I confess that I thought Truss would be an utter disaster and they may even ditch her after just one year. I am beginning to wonder whether, like it seems most people, I have seriously underestimated her.
I think there is a non zero chance Starmer will find it quite easy to skewer her repeatedly in HoC, and a 65% likelihood she will fuck up spectacularly over running the country. Being able to see off Sunak in front of a con memb audience doesn't prove very much.
I find these stories utterly ridiculous. Where do people think the water can go? If it goes up, it must come down.
Mad greens (in line with EU policy) have been trying to stop new reservoirs being built for years precisely to stoke such ludicrous alarmism. If it's not drought, it's floods, with rivers that haven't been dredged for years (again, green blob) mysteriously bursting their banks.
It could end up in the sea, salty and useless. The amount of fresh water in the world is collapsing with the ice sheets of Greenland and Antartica but much of the world that could rely on a steady flow from mountain tops is going to become more arid too. And of course there are far too many people.
I don't agree that there are too many people - that is a deeply spurious shibboleth in my opinion. No other living thing shares that view of its own species. When we approach capacity in this planet (if that is possible) we will colonise space.
The water in the sea still evaporates and falls again as rain. As for the ice sheets melting, that would add more water to the cycle, not take it away. We will perhaps revisit this conversation when facing the usual winter flooding alarm.
Quality gibberish. No other living thing has a concept of its own species, let alone the ability to make value judgments about it. and aren't you usually on about how inorganic and empty modern food is? Because you would halve numbers automatically if you abolished non-rockdust fertilisers.
The ridiculous stories aren't about what might in theory happen, they are about what is actually happening. Do you have any idea how dry the SW USA has been for how long?
Any yet its population has continued to expand, dramatically.
Fresh water availability - ultimately - is just an engineering challenge. If we, like the ancient Romans, want lots of people in places without lots of water, then we need to bring it in.
And if that requires desalination, that requires desalination.
"Almost 35,000 Britons in limbo as Portugal fails to issue post-Brexit ID cards British nationals living in country are unable to access healthcare, change jobs or travel in and out
British nationals living in Portugal are unable to access healthcare, change jobs, or travel in and out of the country as its ministers have not issued them with post-Brexit residency cards, it has emerged. The UK government has raised the issue at ministerial level and urged Portugal to implement fully the withdrawal agreement and protect the rights of the 34,500 Britons who made the country their home before Brexit. People have been left detained at airports, paying to have broken bones treated or risked losing their jobs due to the delays in getting a biometric card that is vital to everyday life and proves their legal status. Under the UK-EU withdrawal agreement, British citizens in Portugal were guaranteed their social and employment rights would be protected. However, the Portuguese government has yet to provide the biometric residency cards.Instead, a temporary document and QR code has been issued, which Britons say is not recognised locally or at international borders."
The Portuguese government is busy trying to attract British talent to Portugal right now, so I'm going with typical government shitness rather than conspiracy.
I find these stories utterly ridiculous. Where do people think the water can go? If it goes up, it must come down.
Mad greens (in line with EU policy) have been trying to stop new reservoirs being built for years precisely to stoke such ludicrous alarmism. If it's not drought, it's floods, with rivers that haven't been dredged for years (again, green blob) mysteriously bursting their banks.
It could end up in the sea, salty and useless. The amount of fresh water in the world is collapsing with the ice sheets of Greenland and Antartica but much of the world that could rely on a steady flow from mountain tops is going to become more arid too. And of course there are far too many people.
I don't agree that there are too many people - that is a deeply spurious shibboleth in my opinion. No other living thing shares that view of its own species. When we approach capacity in this planet (if that is possible) we will colonise space.
The water in the sea still evaporates and falls again as rain. As for the ice sheets melting, that would add more water to the cycle, not take it away. We will perhaps revisit this conversation when facing the usual winter flooding alarm.
Quality gibberish. No other living thing has a concept of its own species, let alone the ability to make value judgments about it. and aren't you usually on about how inorganic and empty modern food is? Because you would halve numbers automatically if you abolished non-rockdust fertilisers.
The ridiculous stories aren't about what might in theory happen, they are about what is actually happening. Do you have any idea how dry the SW USA has been for how long?
Any yet its population has continued to expand, dramatically.
Fresh water availability - ultimately - is just an engineering challenge. If we, like the ancient Romans, want lots of people in places without lots of water, then we need to bring it in.
And if that requires desalination, that requires desalination.
Riyadh, a city of 8 million people in the middle of the desert, is supplied almost entirely from desalination plants on the coast.
"Why Labour should fear Liz Truss Her popularity among the grassroots is no accident BY JOHN MCTERNAN John McTernan is a British political strategist and former advisor to Tony Blair"
One of the main reasons Labour should fear Liz Truss - or Rishi Sunak - or my Aunt Gladys - is that SKS is not very good at retail politics.
The piece contains this warning:
"But [Sunak's] floundering campaign should be a lesson for Labour if they want to confront Liz Truss."
I confess that I thought Truss would be an utter disaster and they may even ditch her after just one year. I am beginning to wonder whether, like it seems most people, I have seriously underestimated her.
She really is the moron you thought she was. That is not to say the voting public won't be satisfied buyers.
I don't agree that there are too many people - that is a deeply spurious shibboleth in my opinion. No other living thing shares that view of its own species. When we approach capacity in this planet (if that is possible) we will colonise space.
The water in the sea still evaporates and falls again as rain. As for the ice sheets melting, that would add more water to the cycle, not take it away. We will perhaps revisit this conversation when facing the usual winter flooding alarm.
The earth could easily support 50 or 100 bn people, and quite possibly a lot more, albeit there would need to be some fairly substantial lifestyle changes to achieve this.
With that said, given reproduction is now in the easy control of humans (almost anywhere), birth rates have absolutely collapsed.
So the likelihood of the world population exploding (or even growing particularly quickly), seems pretty remote.
ISTR something posted a few years back (possibly by you) showing the world has already reached peak child. There will never be more children in the world than there are now. There will be more people, as that peak moves up the age ranges, but it will stabilise at around 11bn, before gently declining. Now 11bn is not without its challenges; and nor is a population decline. But I am moderately optimistic about our ability to meet those challenges.
"Why Labour should fear Liz Truss Her popularity among the grassroots is no accident BY JOHN MCTERNAN John McTernan is a British political strategist and former advisor to Tony Blair"
One of the main reasons Labour should fear Liz Truss - or Rishi Sunak - or my Aunt Gladys - is that SKS is not very good at retail politics.
The piece contains this warning:
"But [Sunak's] floundering campaign should be a lesson for Labour if they want to confront Liz Truss."
I confess that I thought Truss would be an utter disaster and they may even ditch her after just one year. I am beginning to wonder whether, like it seems most people, I have seriously underestimated her.
Elements of the Left are spooked by the Boris phenomenon. For them he was just the type of Tory who shouldn't be popular but, for whatever inexplicable reasons, was. But Truss doesn't possess that sort of magic. She's got the kind of face that would make you jump if you turned around at saw it beaming at you, and politically comes across as Boris's annoying younger sister.
"Why Labour should fear Liz Truss Her popularity among the grassroots is no accident BY JOHN MCTERNAN John McTernan is a British political strategist and former advisor to Tony Blair"
One of the main reasons Labour should fear Liz Truss - or Rishi Sunak - or my Aunt Gladys - is that SKS is not very good at retail politics.
Neither will Truss be, certainly compared to Boris. Whatever else you think about Corbyn he was also a better campaigner and better at retail politics than Starmer even if you would not want him running the country
I find these stories utterly ridiculous. Where do people think the water can go? If it goes up, it must come down.
Mad greens (in line with EU policy) have been trying to stop new reservoirs being built for years precisely to stoke such ludicrous alarmism. If it's not drought, it's floods, with rivers that haven't been dredged for years (again, green blob) mysteriously bursting their banks.
It could end up in the sea, salty and useless. The amount of fresh water in the world is collapsing with the ice sheets of Greenland and Antartica but much of the world that could rely on a steady flow from mountain tops is going to become more arid too. And of course there are far too many people.
I don't agree that there are too many people - that is a deeply spurious shibboleth in my opinion. No other living thing shares that view of its own species. When we approach capacity in this planet (if that is possible) we will colonise space.
The water in the sea still evaporates and falls again as rain. As for the ice sheets melting, that would add more water to the cycle, not take it away. We will perhaps revisit this conversation when facing the usual winter flooding alarm.
Quality gibberish. No other living thing has a concept of its own species, let alone the ability to make value judgments about it. and aren't you usually on about how inorganic and empty modern food is? Because you would halve numbers automatically if you abolished non-rockdust fertilisers.
The ridiculous stories aren't about what might in theory happen, they are about what is actually happening. Do you have any idea how dry the SW USA has been for how long?
Any yet its population has continued to expand, dramatically.
Fresh water availability - ultimately - is just an engineering challenge. If we, like the ancient Romans, want lots of people in places without lots of water, then we need to bring it in.
And if that requires desalination, that requires desalination.
Yeah last time I was out your way there were notices on all the restaurant tables saying Fuck off if you were hoping for a glass of water with your meal. How's that going now?
Everything is just an engineering challenge. The thing is, look how long and how much money it takes to engineer a solution to one specific local problem like the Elizabeth Line or the M25, scale that up to a solution to a global problem, and think of the other global engineering solutions you need like decarbonising and a proper car charging network, and you realise it gets to costing 100x world GDP.
"Why Labour should fear Liz Truss Her popularity among the grassroots is no accident BY JOHN MCTERNAN John McTernan is a British political strategist and former advisor to Tony Blair"
One of the main reasons Labour should fear Liz Truss - or Rishi Sunak - or my Aunt Gladys - is that SKS is not very good at retail politics.
The piece contains this warning:
"But [Sunak's] floundering campaign should be a lesson for Labour if they want to confront Liz Truss."
I confess that I thought Truss would be an utter disaster and they may even ditch her after just one year. I am beginning to wonder whether, like it seems most people, I have seriously underestimated her.
She really is the moron you thought she was. That is not to say the voting public won't be satisfied buyers.
I was highly skeptical of Truss in the beginning. Especially after her floundering appearance in that first debate
But I’ve not seen any evidence she is stupid, let alone “a moron”
Where is it? What makes her “a moron”? Apart from the fact you disagree with her?
I've been thinking a bit about the complaints by Conservatives about the 'left blob' thing. A major contributory factor to the left blob is that people who work in public service are not really motivated by remuneration. The Civil service recruit at low levels of pay, and it is the same across much of the public sector. Also, when you join the civil service, you can't pursue other financial interests and this is normally a condition of your employment. So what you end up is with a certain kind of person that goes in to it, ie: not driven by money, modest expenditure, careful, churchgoer. They are more likely to be sympathetic to left wing ideas than right wing. People who are entrepeneurial don't go in to this type of job. Nor are people who have experienced any significant success in the commercial world. The tories have had 12 years to do something meaningful about this, but actually they have done very little, and freezing the pay of the civil service, which in my view exacerbates the fundamental problem.
I don’t really buy all of this, but it is a fundamental tenet of modern Toryism to not give a fuck about structural issues because they are quite boring, and to blame “the blob”, “left wing lawyers”, “the wokerati”, “remoaners” etc instead.
That's on the home front. Meanwhile in Foreignistan there was Britain's place in Churchill's three "concentric cirles" (North Atlantic, Europe, Commonwealth - sic), now undergoing replacement by forcefully taking the Crimea away from Mr Putin just as Mr Khrushchev (who said he'd vote Tory if he were British) would have wanted, and by committing British forces to get involved in the Chinese civil war if it hots up again: British power on both land and sea! Guns before winter heating!
Truss - wannabe liberator of the Crimea. Sunak - if his illustrious backer William Hague is anything to go by, a wannabe China whacker?
"China must be told that an invasion would risk world war" - Hague.
I keep reading in the British media that the dispute between the PRC and the ROC is about the PRC's view of a rebellious province versus the ROC's view of an island that wants independence. Strange that neither of the actual sides in the dispute see it that way. They both think there's one China. Clearly British wisdom is required.
Once they've reversed Ukraine's territorial losses and forced the People's Republic of China to wind its neck in on the high seas, the Tories will build a British Apple or Google apparently. And all while cutting taxes. Nurse!
That is Hague urging the US to contain China, as Biden and Pelosi are already doing. Realistically we are not going to take action v China unless behind the US. Even our actions v Russia on Ukraine are mainly within NATO
The weather in Polzeath for the next week is perfect. Cloudless skies, highs of 25. Annoyingly, I have done something painful to my back and almost any movement is tiring and painful. Had hoped to go stand up paddleboarding on Wednesday and will be very disappointed if I can't, not least for my daughters who have been looking forward to it for some time. Fingers crossed for some sort of recovery. Anyway, the beach at Polzeath: those who know it will know that it's perfection includes a stream which courses down the beach presenting opportunities for digging and damming. It is just too wide to leap; you have to take your socks and shoes off and ford it. We have been here every August since 2016 and done this. This year, the stream is a bare trickle six inches wife rather than six feet wide.
I don't agree that there are too many people - that is a deeply spurious shibboleth in my opinion. No other living thing shares that view of its own species. When we approach capacity in this planet (if that is possible) we will colonise space.
The water in the sea still evaporates and falls again as rain. As for the ice sheets melting, that would add more water to the cycle, not take it away. We will perhaps revisit this conversation when facing the usual winter flooding alarm.
The earth could easily support 50 or 100 bn people, and quite possibly a lot more, albeit there would need to be some fairly substantial lifestyle changes to achieve this.
With that said, given reproduction is now in the easy control of humans (almost anywhere), birth rates have absolutely collapsed.
So the likelihood of the world population exploding (or even growing particularly quickly), seems pretty remote.
ISTR something posted a few years back (possibly by you) showing the world has already reached peak child. There will never be more children in the world than there are now. There will be more people, as that peak moves up the age ranges, but it will stabilise at around 11bn, before gently declining. Now 11bn is not without its challenges; and nor is a population decline. But I am moderately optimistic about our ability to meet those challenges.
Median world household income is about $10,000. your optimism has to include optimism that the poor are going to be happy staying poor, because in terms of resource consumtion bringing them all up to the living standards of very very poor westerners is equivalent to doubling (at a guess) the population.
It's blowing a gale here atm. It was raining earlier and the clouds indicate that that is likely to happen again but these people moaning about another week of unbroken sunshine should try living up here. It has been a very ordinary summer and things like BBQs are extremely difficult to plan because we get 2 or 3 different weathers in a day.
Comments
He's gone (he's gone) oh my - we'd better learn how to face it ....
Just crazy
https://twitter.com/garethdennis/status/1555520222106378240?s=21&t=aQQi4z2sSzK7BnF1bmyNNw
Getting to grips with this stuff is the kind of deeply tedious effort that we haven’t seen for quite a while now.
You have to look at the people on here, ie @Casino_Royale who are quite successful and do well in their career; around the time when government were trying to hire people to deliver Brexit, as I recall they looked at the wage on offer; and just said no thanks.
A quick shout out to the people behind the .gov portal. All things considered, it works really rather well.
Simple, very clear and quick.
Well done.
Bloody autocorrect. Thalassaemia
And why illustrate a story about 7.5 tonners with a pic of a row of 12.5t minimum lorries?
Very sad situation.
Beautiful
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-62436468
USA: Half the country is in drought, and no region has been spared
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/08/04/weather/drought-map-northeast-texas-climate/index.html
More than 75% of the world could face drought by 2050, UN report warns
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/05/drought-2050-un-report-climate-change/
End Times. Seriously.
{O’Leary has entered the chat}
“Cut prices, hellish conditions?”
Mad greens (in line with EU policy) have been trying to stop new reservoirs being built for years precisely to stoke such ludicrous alarmism. If it's not drought, it's floods, with rivers that haven't been dredged for years (again, green blob) mysteriously bursting their banks.
You probably don't want green 17 year olds charging round in those.
But the situation at the moment bns those of us born in the early 80s, some of us are the wrong side of 40
Another two weeks of this…
I just don't have the time to be interested in everything.
Time to buy shares in solar powered desalination plant makers.
* I teach my son. I have Socrates teach my son. I am taught by Socrates. would IIRC cover the three..
A few years ago, I gave an example of how much it cost to add one signal onto an existing railway - and it was in the order of hundreds of thousands of pounds. And from what I could ascertain, much of that was *not* spent on the ground, but in offices.
But wrt electrification, we do have issues that do not plague Europe as much. We tend to be denser-populated, which means we have more overbridges (just look at the Midland Main Line in Belper for an extreme example). Our loading gauge is smaller, meaning there is less room (though that difference can be overplayed).
I'd argue that a major issue is that the projects are not cash-strapped. If they run out of money, they're bailed out. People joke about the ECML having 'weak' catenary that blows down in a small breeze, but it was built relatively cheaply and *works*. The GWML electrification appears to be gold-plated. Ingenious solutions to reduce costs are often not tried. Or if they are, they're massively expensive innovations that do not work (as happened with the GWML job).
But this is also not new. ISTR that Gerry Fiennes mentions the electrification of the lines towards ?Southend?, which seemed to have suffered similar problems to the ones faced by the GWML team today...
Truss - wannabe liberator of the Crimea.
Sunak - if his illustrious backer William Hague is anything to go by, a wannabe China whacker?
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/us-must-make-clear-it-would-fight-for-taiwan-wd3pft3mv
"China must be told that an invasion would risk world war" - Hague.
I keep reading in the British media that the dispute between the PRC and the ROC is about the PRC's view of a rebellious province versus the ROC's view of an island that wants independence. Strange that neither of the actual sides in the dispute see it that way. They both think there's one China. Clearly British wisdom is required.
Once they've reversed Ukraine's territorial losses and forced the People's Republic of China to wind its neck in on the high seas, the Tories will build a British Apple or Google apparently. And all while cutting taxes. Nurse!
A little goes a long way, I reckon. Same with wine appreciation.
https://www.water-technology.net/projects/water-desalination/
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/04/emergency-water-plant-london-unusable-despite-drought-risk
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/05/thames-water-shut-emergency-drought-plant-save-money/
It’s called resistance to change, and exists in every institution ever.
No doubt Ug the caveman had to face down all sorts of naysayers and jobsworths when he first discovered fire.
Being anti-blob doesn’t amount to anything approaching a political philosophy or strategy though.
ISTR it was *very* controversial.
Edit: I've seen Carnyx's response. Perhaps it *was* a typical Johnson project after all...
Start with a premium product for the elite.
Then use the profits and development from that to attack the lower-cost mass market, because that's where the real money is.
Smith is much harder to get up to (I would think, having never tried it myself...). Getting one on Wellington - that's seriously impressive.
Easy sort of detail to overlook.
Henry Dundas would presumably be the ultimate challenge.
Her popularity among the grassroots is no accident
BY JOHN MCTERNAN
John McTernan is a British political strategist and former advisor to Tony Blair"
https://unherd.com/2022/08/why-labour-should-fear-liz-truss/
People who are attracted to public service careers probably do skew left wing, but equally people in sectors like finance skew right wing. As a left winger in finance I just shrug my shoulders and get on with it - it's not a conspiracy. If we want more right wing civil servants we should probably pay them more.
The water in the sea still evaporates and falls again as rain. As for the ice sheets melting, that would add more water to the cycle, not take it away. We will perhaps revisit this conversation when facing the usual winter flooding alarm.
British nationals living in country are unable to access healthcare, change jobs or travel in and out
British nationals living in Portugal are unable to access healthcare, change jobs, or travel in and out of the country as its ministers have not issued them with post-Brexit residency cards, it has emerged. The UK government has raised the issue at ministerial level and urged Portugal to implement fully the withdrawal agreement and protect the rights of the 34,500 Britons who made the country their home before Brexit. People have been left detained at airports, paying to have broken bones treated or risked losing their jobs due to the delays in getting a biometric card that is vital to everyday life and proves their legal status. Under the UK-EU withdrawal agreement, British citizens in Portugal were guaranteed their social and employment rights would be protected. However, the Portuguese government has yet to provide the biometric residency cards.Instead, a temporary document and QR code has been issued, which Britons say is not recognised locally or at international borders."
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/06/britons-portugal-post-brexit-id-cards
With that said, given reproduction is now in the easy control of humans (almost anywhere), birth rates have absolutely collapsed.
So the likelihood of the world population exploding (or even growing particularly quickly), seems pretty remote.
It does actually give a lot of issues at the moment, for example using a large car to tow a caravan is often overweight for those with the newer licence. Reverting to the status quo ante is actually a decent Brexit benefit.
Note that using a 7.5t truck for commercial use, has always required a separate licence and medical.
The ridiculous stories aren't about what might in theory happen, they are about what is actually happening. Do you have any idea how dry the SW USA has been for how long?
"But [Sunak's] floundering campaign should be a lesson for Labour if they want to confront Liz Truss."
I confess that I thought Truss would be an utter disaster and they may even ditch her after just one year. I am beginning to wonder whether, like it seems most people, I have seriously underestimated her.
Fresh water availability - ultimately - is just an engineering challenge. If we, like the ancient Romans, want lots of people in places without lots of water, then we need to bring it in.
And if that requires desalination, that requires desalination.
Now 11bn is not without its challenges; and nor is a population decline. But I am moderately optimistic about our ability to meet those challenges.
Everything is just an engineering challenge. The thing is, look how long and how much money it takes to engineer a solution to one specific local problem like the Elizabeth Line or the M25, scale that up to a solution to a global problem, and think of the other global engineering solutions you need like decarbonising and a proper car charging network, and you realise it gets to costing 100x world GDP.
But I’ve not seen any evidence she is stupid, let alone “a moron”
Where is it? What makes her “a moron”? Apart from the fact you disagree with her?
Anyway, the beach at Polzeath: those who know it will know that it's perfection includes a stream which courses down the beach presenting opportunities for digging and damming. It is just too wide to leap; you have to take your socks and shoes off and ford it. We have been here every August since 2016 and done this. This year, the stream is a bare trickle six inches wife rather than six feet wide.