More new polls since yesterday with the PP lead reaching 12% in the most recent. However,
1. Still no absolute majority forecast. 2. Only the PP could reach a majority with the support of VOX. 3. PSOE cannot reach absolute majority even if all the other parties apart from VOX back them and tat is not going to happen. 4. A PP simple majority with tacit VOX support is currently the most likely outcome. 5. Despite HYUFD's repeated claims point 4. above does not mean a hard right scenario for Spain, It means a moderate centre right government. 6. It is just about possible that a grand coalition of PP/PSOE could occur depending on how the final numbers pan out, 7. So far the decision of the PSOE to go for early elections does not seem to have been wise.
Of course as ever, we must wait 'la señora gorda canta!'
Here's what might be the crucial poll, though.
The Too Spanish Didn't Read is that if the two Corbynite parties can agree a joint ticket, they get a lot more seats than if they run against each other. (The Spanish system isn't entirely proportional, especially for small parties). PP still ahead, but probably unable to get a majority together. (And when push comes to shove, there would be a price to be paid if they do get into la cama with Vox.)
Why is it that lefties insist on falling out with each other, even when it's clearly not in their electoral interests?
Spain has small multimember STV, which means that below 15-20% you get very few seats, but above there you can get lots.
No, it's closed list d'Hondt, but, yes, a lot of the constituencies are quite small (as HYUFD said).
The Spanish Senate uses ??? some sort of partial block voting, so a bit like SNTV???
More new polls since yesterday with the PP lead reaching 12% in the most recent. However,
1. Still no absolute majority forecast. 2. Only the PP could reach a majority with the support of VOX. 3. PSOE cannot reach absolute majority even if all the other parties apart from VOX back them and tat is not going to happen. 4. A PP simple majority with tacit VOX support is currently the most likely outcome. 5. Despite HYUFD's repeated claims point 4. above does not mean a hard right scenario for Spain, It means a moderate centre right government. 6. It is just about possible that a grand coalition of PP/PSOE could occur depending on how the final numbers pan out, 7. So far the decision of the PSOE to go for early elections does not seem to have been wise.
Of course as ever, we must wait 'la señora gorda canta!'
No it doesn't, a moderate centre right government would be PP led with Citizens support. Not a PP minority government reliant on confidence and supply from the hard right Vox to stay in power,
Based on the above only a PP/PSOE grand coalition could prevent Spain getting a hard right government
More new polls since yesterday with the PP lead reaching 12% in the most recent. However,
1. Still no absolute majority forecast. 2. Only the PP could reach a majority with the support of VOX. 3. PSOE cannot reach absolute majority even if all the other parties apart from VOX back them and tat is not going to happen. 4. A PP simple majority with tacit VOX support is currently the most likely outcome. 5. Despite HYUFD's repeated claims point 4. above does not mean a hard right scenario for Spain, It means a moderate centre right government. 6. It is just about possible that a grand coalition of PP/PSOE could occur depending on how the final numbers pan out, 7. So far the decision of the PSOE to go for early elections does not seem to have been wise.
Of course as ever, we must wait 'la señora gorda canta!'
No it doesn't, a moderate centre right government would be PP led with Citizens support. Not a PP minority government reliant on confidence and supply from the hard right Vox to stay in power,
Based on the above only a PP/PSOE grand coalition could prevent Spain getting a hard right government
You do not understand the mechanics of power in Spain. Vox would have no choice but to support PP or face a more left-wing alternative. As minority players in this scenario their influence would be very limited. You seem to think that their support would force PP to enact their agenda - it simply is not the case. The PP would always have the choice to go elsewhere for support - while Vox would have none. Indeed the most recent polls suggest their support may be flatlining. You would get a lot more sympathy for your many reliable posts if you acknowledged just occasionally that you really do not know everything.
Yes but as I said the PP cannot form a right of centre government without Vox. So either they deal with the PSOE on most things and form a centrist grand coalition or they are reliant on Vox support at every vote which will see Vox dictate a rightwing agenda, especially on immigation
The problem is I imagine all newspapers are trying to repeat the Daily Mail approach. In order to get advertising revenue you need the eyeballs on your site, and you want them to visit multiple times a day.
In order to do that you need to be constantly updating your site with new articles, and if you make clickbaity ones that getting people sharing them on social media, more the better.
The Daily Mailification of the media.
Is that why all the news outlets have all been wall to wall Phil and Holly for the last fortnight?
Bollocks.
It is nothing to do with "The Daily Mailification of the media".
We pay to read or watch this stuff.
The Socialist Worker is widely available if anyone wanted to make it the most popular online media outlet.
The media simply feeds what we want to consume.
That I think is where Harry and Megs need to be careful. Their crusade against "the media" is more correctly a crusade against the people who pay to consume the media.
I like - Wemba Lea. Kind of how football supporters chant it now!
It's fascinating how these names have survived. Even where they have fallen out of use as a general place-name you can still find traces of it. In my own neighbourhood, Hacheham or Hatcham was superceded by New Cross but you can find traces of it in names of schools, roads and buildings in the neighbourhood.
More new polls since yesterday with the PP lead reaching 12% in the most recent. However,
1. Still no absolute majority forecast. 2. Only the PP could reach a majority with the support of VOX. 3. PSOE cannot reach absolute majority even if all the other parties apart from VOX back them and tat is not going to happen. 4. A PP simple majority with tacit VOX support is currently the most likely outcome. 5. Despite HYUFD's repeated claims point 4. above does not mean a hard right scenario for Spain, It means a moderate centre right government. 6. It is just about possible that a grand coalition of PP/PSOE could occur depending on how the final numbers pan out, 7. So far the decision of the PSOE to go for early elections does not seem to have been wise.
Of course as ever, we must wait 'la señora gorda canta!'
No it doesn't, a moderate centre right government would be PP led with Citizens support. Not a PP minority government reliant on confidence and supply from the hard right Vox to stay in power,
Based on the above only a PP/PSOE grand coalition could prevent Spain getting a hard right government
More new polls since yesterday with the PP lead reaching 12% in the most recent. However,
1. Still no absolute majority forecast. 2. Only the PP could reach a majority with the support of VOX. 3. PSOE cannot reach absolute majority even if all the other parties apart from VOX back them and tat is not going to happen. 4. A PP simple majority with tacit VOX support is currently the most likely outcome. 5. Despite HYUFD's repeated claims point 4. above does not mean a hard right scenario for Spain, It means a moderate centre right government. 6. It is just about possible that a grand coalition of PP/PSOE could occur depending on how the final numbers pan out, 7. So far the decision of the PSOE to go for early elections does not seem to have been wise.
Of course as ever, we must wait 'la señora gorda canta!'
No it doesn't, a moderate centre right government would be PP led with Citizens support. Not a PP minority government reliant on confidence and supply from the hard right Vox to stay in power,
Based on the above only a PP/PSOE grand coalition could prevent Spain getting a hard right government
You do not understand the mechanics of power in Spain. Vox would have no choice but to support PP or face a more left-wing alternative. As minority players in this scenario their influence would be very limited. You seem to think that their support would force PP to enact their agenda - it simply is not the case. The PP would always have the choice to go elsewhere
More new polls since yesterday with the PP lead reaching 12% in the most recent. However,
1. Still no absolute majority forecast. 2. Only the PP could reach a majority with the support of VOX. 3. PSOE cannot reach absolute majority even if all the other parties apart from VOX back them and tat is not going to happen. 4. A PP simple majority with tacit VOX support is currently the most likely outcome. 5. Despite HYUFD's repeated claims point 4. above does not mean a hard right scenario for Spain, It means a moderate centre right government. 6. It is just about possible that a grand coalition of PP/PSOE could occur depending on how the final numbers pan out, 7. So far the decision of the PSOE to go for early elections does not seem to have been wise.
Of course as ever, we must wait 'la señora gorda canta!'
Here's what might be the crucial poll, though.
The Too Spanish Didn't Read is that if the two Corbynite parties can agree a joint ticket, they get a lot more seats than if they run against each other. (The Spanish system isn't entirely proportional, especially for small parties). PP still ahead, but probably unable to get a majority together. (And when push comes to shove, there would be a price to be paid if they do get into la cama with Vox.)
Why is it that lefties insist on falling out with each other, even when it's clearly not in their electoral interests?
Spain has small multimember STV, which means that below 15-20% you get very few seats, but above there you can get lots.
Worse than that, I think it's d'Hondt with party lists. After all, STV would allow the far left vote to coaggulate as the rounds progress. Whereas two separate party lists are going to get almost nowhere.
Correct. In Spain you do not get to express a preference you get a piece of paper with one party's list on it. Their is no way to split your choice or indicate a second one. The big parties benefit and more so if they have fewer similar rivals. The current left-wing split is more fragmented than the right wing equivalent.
That's largely a US problem, I think, given their addiction to vehicular behemoths, and lax regulation of old buildings which make us look positively competent.
“It’s only the very old ones, built in the 60s and 70s, which are in a very poor state of repair and have weakened over time which will probably need to have some work done to them.
“It’s not the little city electric cars that are likely to be a problem or the average family saloon, but some of the top-end electric vehicles like executive saloons or SUVs which are about three tonnes or over which could potentially be overloading some of these older multi-storey car parks.”
Sparked off by the carpark collapse in NY a week or so back. It's probably easily dealt with in the UK, as the number of cars they'll need to exclude will be relatively small.
Ford's electric version of their best selling pickup, for example, is enormous. "The Ford F-150 Ford Lightning has a curb weight of up to 6,500 lbs..." - a fraction under 3 tonnes.
(The Tesla Model Y is around 2t.)
I seemed to remember in some states in the US, the F150 is by miles the biggest selling vehicle. Not just the biggest selling truck, the biggest selling vehicle. Its basically the only thing that makes Ford big money, and enables them to stay afloat.
We need to tax that sort of vehicle to the hilt in the UK, it's an electric powered pothole generator.
There's quite a lot of ICE Range Rovers around and they weigh about 2.5 tons.
2.5 -> 3 tonnes is double the wear when you go to 4th power...
My main point is I don't think weight is considered enough in road tax. Obviously we need HGVs and tractors for moving food and goods around but we don't need mahoosize cars and the EV versions are heavier than their ICE equivalents. The CO2 element can be taxed by fuel duties as that'll vary depending on mileage. But fuel (Whether it's petrol, diesel or lithium ions) whilst it will perfectly match CO2 generation will be a very poor match for road wear generation. A road tax based on mileage (Between MOTs say) multiplied by kerb weight would be the best fit to match up with road wear.
Yes, road wear is proportional to the 4th power of axle weight - which means a small difference in weight makes for a big difference in road wear.
Taxing EVs according to the 4th power of weight, might be a good way to go forward. Let a Leaf continue to pay no road tax, but let a BMW iX long range (2,700kg) pay a couple of grand a year in tax.
Driving around on narrow country lanes, as I find myself doing more often these days, a law seeing maximum dimensions for cars is moving rapidly up my priority list for implementation after my dictatorship is established.
Newer cars are simply too big. Though, granted, it would help if drivers could stick to their side of the road.
I came back from Llangrannog yesterday along narrow country lanes to Newcastle Emlyn. Enough width for two cars to pass comfortably so long as the entire width of the road is used. It would appear drivers of M-class Mercs and X-series Beamers can only use the middle of the road. They cannot drive on the verge and their vehicles incapable of reversing into conveniently situated wider spaces.
I like - Wemba Lea. Kind of how football supporters chant it now!
It's fascinating how these names have survived. Even where they have fallen out of use as a general place-name you can still find traces of it. In my own neighbourhood, Hacheham or Hatcham was superceded by New Cross but you can find traces of it in names of schools, roads and buildings in the neighbourhood.
Just watched Nicki Haley on CNN News, Town Hall meeting. If she gets the nomination she will win the White House, very impressive performance. Her stance is not Trump or Santis, she is visionary and could probably bring people together. Having said that I would still vote Democrat.
Does anyone have a clear idea about how much freedom of expression there actually is in Russia? We hear periodic dissenting voices from both extreme nationalists critical of the government (essentially "Stop messing about, kill them all") and more cautious types disagreeing with them, and even statements from people in prison like Navalny. If Putin was a classical dictator, he'd lock Prigozhin and anyone else expressing dissent up. But it's clearly not an open society in any recognisable form.
So is the position that the Government has the ability to lock up anyone on more or less trumped-up charges, but it's unpredictable when they'll think it wise to do so? Thus Prigozhin gets away with it because Putin doesn't want the Wagner gruop mutinying?
You're assuming those dissenting voices (eg the TV pundits) don't have a degree of state sanction. True dissent lands you in prison, or worse.
It's as much a coalition of mafia dons (or the Russian equivalent), with Putin at the top, as it is a coherent polity.
Prigizhin gets away with it because he has a private army, and he's a separate balancing power against Putin's potential rivals. That's not a particularly stable arrangement, clearly.
(Also I am no Russia expert, clearly. 😊 )
I think all the dissent that is permitted is directed at other people in the hierarchy, rather than Putin himself. So all the henchmen are allowed to tear lumps out of each other, but Putin is untouchable.
I'm supremely uninterested and lack details - but why the furore? He's had an affair at work. Is that it?
There is a bit more to it than that. He chatted with teenage boys on social media, of which one he got a job working for him, then had an affair with him. Then when it was going to be exposed, he did his big coming out, lying about why about why he was coming out as gay. The young lad then was thrown under the bus and paid off.
Its as much about the lies and allegedly cover up by ITV (and a lot of score settling among media types who a) were lied to, b) had complaints / legal action taken against them for trying to report the truth and c) people who were badly treated by Schofield / ITV keen to stick the boot into their holier than thou BS).
Also the media loving nothing more than talking about the media, and what twitter says....
The problem is I imagine all newspapers are trying to repeat the Daily Mail approach. In order to get advertising revenue you need the eyeballs on your site, and you want them to visit multiple times a day.
In order to do that you need to be constantly updating your site with new articles, and if you make clickbaity ones that getting people sharing them on social media, more the better.
The Daily Mailification of the media.
Is that why all the news outlets have all been wall to wall Phil and Holly for the last fortnight?
Bollocks.
It is nothing to do with "The Daily Mailification of the media".
We pay to read or watch this stuff.
The Socialist Worker is widely available if anyone wanted to make it the most popular online media outlet.
The media simply feeds what we want to consume.
That I think is where Harry and Megs need to be careful. Their crusade against "the media" is more correctly a crusade against the people who pay to consume the media.
Blimey, who rattled your cage Mr Dacre?
P.S. I learned last week that HYUFD rather impressively reads the Morning Star.
I'm supremely uninterested and lack details - but why the furore? He's had an affair at work. Is that it?
Pretty much; the added wrinkle I guess is the age gap between him and his affair-ee, which is maybe a bit odd. But it has captured the popular imagination, probably because he is (or was) a pretty well-liked sleb, it was a gay affair while he was married to a woman and it is tied up into a separate-but-related classic tabloid story of him falling out with his co-host.
What is maybe a bit weirder is that this has been pretty widely know for a couple of years at least. I don't really know why it's all happened now.
Personally I have basically no interest in it beyond, I suppose, a meta-interest in what it tells about the media and celebrity culture.
More new polls since yesterday with the PP lead reaching 12% in the most recent. However,
1. Still no absolute majority forecast. 2. Only the PP could reach a majority with the support of VOX. 3. PSOE cannot reach absolute majority even if all the other parties apart from VOX back them and tat is not going to happen. 4. A PP simple majority with tacit VOX support is currently the most likely outcome. 5. Despite HYUFD's repeated claims point 4. above does not mean a hard right scenario for Spain, It means a moderate centre right government. 6. It is just about possible that a grand coalition of PP/PSOE could occur depending on how the final numbers pan out, 7. So far the decision of the PSOE to go for early elections does not seem to have been wise.
Of course as ever, we must wait 'la señora gorda canta!'
Here's what might be the crucial poll, though.
The Too Spanish Didn't Read is that if the two Corbynite parties can agree a joint ticket, they get a lot more seats than if they run against each other. (The Spanish system isn't entirely proportional, especially for small parties). PP still ahead, but probably unable to get a majority together. (And when push comes to shove, there would be a price to be paid if they do get into la cama with Vox.)
Why is it that lefties insist on falling out with each other, even when it's clearly not in their electoral interests?
Spain has small multimember STV, which means that below 15-20% you get very few seats, but above there you can get lots.
No, it's closed list d'Hondt, but, yes, a lot of the constituencies are quite small (as HYUFD said).
The Spanish Senate uses ??? some sort of partial block voting, so a bit like SNTV???
The Spanish Senate system is a thing of wonder.
Most provinces elect four senators (bit rough on the larger provinces, see also the US Senate). The genius thing is that each voter has three non transferable votes, and parties can only put up three candidates. So, whatever happens, at least one candidate from the Different Party gets elected.
More new polls since yesterday with the PP lead reaching 12% in the most recent. However,
1. Still no absolute majority forecast. 2. Only the PP could reach a majority with the support of VOX. 3. PSOE cannot reach absolute majority even if all the other parties apart from VOX back them and tat is not going to happen. 4. A PP simple majority with tacit VOX support is currently the most likely outcome. 5. Despite HYUFD's repeated claims point 4. above does not mean a hard right scenario for Spain, It means a moderate centre right government. 6. It is just about possible that a grand coalition of PP/PSOE could occur depending on how the final numbers pan out, 7. So far the decision of the PSOE to go for early elections does not seem to have been wise.
Of course as ever, we must wait 'la señora gorda canta!'
Here's what might be the crucial poll, though.
The Too Spanish Didn't Read is that if the two Corbynite parties can agree a joint ticket, they get a lot more seats than if they run against each other. (The Spanish system isn't entirely proportional, especially for small parties). PP still ahead, but probably unable to get a majority together. (And when push comes to shove, there would be a price to be paid if they do get into la cama with Vox.)
Why is it that lefties insist on falling out with each other, even when it's clearly not in their electoral interests?
Spain has small multimember STV, which means that below 15-20% you get very few seats, but above there you can get lots.
No, it's closed list d'Hondt, but, yes, a lot of the constituencies are quite small (as HYUFD said).
The Spanish Senate uses ??? some sort of partial block voting, so a bit like SNTV???
I'm supremely uninterested and lack details - but why the furore? He's had an affair at work. Is that it?
(1) He had an affair at work, (2) with someone much younger than him, (3) who's career he had helped beforehand, and (4) he lied about it when confronted. I think the difficult questions are particularly around (3): did he happen to help the person's career and then they found themselves together, or was he helping the person's career in order to facilitate a future liaison? I can't see any actual evidence to support the latter, as I've not been following this at all closely, but I understand that's the gist of it!
Essentially, ahead by a modest amount, green in three leagues, red in two. Things would look mostly better if I had the pre-crash figures, but I don't.
Pleased, given my total lack of knowledge in the area.
Re the Anglo-Saxons, if we can’t call them “Anglo-Saxons” then what do we call the Germanic invaders who took over the country in the 4th-6th century, displacing Romano-Brits and Celts?
Coz that definitely happened. We can see from place-name evidence. Everywhere
Crikey, yes. Yet again some guy posting on a discussion site completely outwits the academic establishment by spotting something all the eggheads had missed. There'll be some red faces in our universities today. Thank heaven for the Internet.
I’m actually not disputing the Woke academics here on the term (I’ve always felt “Anglo-Saxon” is slightly clumsy). I’m saying the ARGUMENT is a Woke irrelevance. In the 4th-6th century a bunch of Germanic types with a new culture and language came over to Britain and altered our gene pool and changed all the place names. That indisputably happened (you can call it an invasion or not, that’s not my point)
These people need a name. If it can’t be Anglo-Saxon then what will that name be?
As I say, only “early English” is short and pithy enough to work but that will just get the lefties even angrier
The crux of the issue, when not misrepresented by ignorant commentators, is whether the label refers to a distinct ethnic group. It does not, despite the beliefs of some who would rather it did. The reason why they would rather it did fits into the reason for it being a relevant question. Those who would seek to build their politics on a pillar of racial purity or superiority have a fatal flaw in the foundations of their ideology.
Sadly these people still exist and their reaction is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.
I think that a group of people that one can call Anglo-Saxons, or English, had become a distinct ethnic group, by the middle of the 10th century, and I see nothing in the Reddit article that conflicts with that.
That's very different from saying that these people formed the basis of some kind of pure or superior race.
The same way I'd say that Germans existed at this time. They just weren't the kind of people that 19th Century German nationalists thought they were.
And do you have any evidence for this distinct ethnicity? It doesn't seem very likely to me, given the continued cultural and linguistic diversity even within England, and what we know of extant genetic differences today. There were and still are many Englands within the borders of England. The wider you cast your net to catch of England, the more readily you will scoop up that which is not and never has been England. Do you think Cumbrians were closer to Sussex folk or to people from Strathclyde? How much did the people of Whitby have in common with Oksbøl versus Oxford?
I have serious doubts about whether you could ever draw a genetic line around England and only England at any point in all of England's history.
And if given the above is true, what use could there be for persisting with the myth if not to make political mischief today? In whose interest is it to link a nation to a fictional genetic stock, other than those whose ideology is filtration and exclusion?
A Royal House whose kings called themselves Kings of England. England would be conquered in the future, but England never ceased to exist as an entity, after 960. They had a common language, a common literature, a common religion, and a common enemy.
These are what create an ethnic group. Claiming that the Anglo-Saxons did not exist as an ethnic group is like claiming that Poles, Germans, Ukrainians etc. did not.
Much of what you claim here can be disputed, though. Caxton's dilemma when choosing how to translate works he intended to print in "English" illustrates the linguistic point:
And he asked specifically for eggs, and the good woman said that she spoke no French, and the merchant got angry for he could not speak French either, but he wanted eggs and she could not understand him. And then at last another person said that he wanted ‘eyren’. Then the good woman said that she understood him well.
That is, people from the opposite ends of England often literally could not understand one another, to the extent that one of them thought the other was speaking an entirely different language! And this is from the year 1490. 1490!
The heterogeneity of England in pre-modern times is consistently underestimated, and by the time it really settles down into something that one can really start to sensibly call one ethnic group, you're already way beyond the point where England was its own thing. What of Wales, by the time Caxton was writing?
As for the common enemy... whom? When? Even when the Normans invaded, there wasn't unity, even between midlands and the south. If there had have been, the invasion might have been repelled.
We weren't even operating on the same clocks till Brunel.
More new polls since yesterday with the PP lead reaching 12% in the most recent. However,
1. Still no absolute majority forecast. 2. Only the PP could reach a majority with the support of VOX. 3. PSOE cannot reach absolute majority even if all the other parties apart from VOX back them and tat is not going to happen. 4. A PP simple majority with tacit VOX support is currently the most likely outcome. 5. Despite HYUFD's repeated claims point 4. above does not mean a hard right scenario for Spain, It means a moderate centre right government. 6. It is just about possible that a grand coalition of PP/PSOE could occur depending on how the final numbers pan out, 7. So far the decision of the PSOE to go for early elections does not seem to have been wise.
Of course as ever, we must wait 'la señora gorda canta!'
Here's what might be the crucial poll, though.
The Too Spanish Didn't Read is that if the two Corbynite parties can agree a joint ticket, they get a lot more seats than if they run against each other. (The Spanish system isn't entirely proportional, especially for small parties). PP still ahead, but probably unable to get a majority together. (And when push comes to shove, there would be a price to be paid if they do get into la cama with Vox.)
Why is it that lefties insist on falling out with each other, even when it's clearly not in their electoral interests?
Spain has small multimember STV, which means that below 15-20% you get very few seats, but above there you can get lots.
No, it's closed list d'Hondt, but, yes, a lot of the constituencies are quite small (as HYUFD said).
The Spanish Senate uses ??? some sort of partial block voting, so a bit like SNTV???
I bel;ieve the Senate split relates to the Autonomous Communities and may also favour rural more than urban, butnI'm not entirely sure. as their is no separate popular vote for these seats.
Correction: This is how the Senators are chosen in Spain:
Composition of the Senate
Last revision 30/05/2023
The Senate of the 14th legislature has been composed of a total of 265 Senators, chosen in a dual procedure: Senators elected in constituencies
Section 69 of the Constitution and sections 161, 165 and 166 of the Organic Local Government Act .
The majority of Senators are elected in provincial constituencies: each province elects four Senators. However, in the insular provinces, each island or group of islands is classed as an electoral constituency, with each of the larger islands (Gran Canaria, Mallorca and Tenerife) electing three Senators and the remaining islands (Ibiza-Formentera, Menorca, Fuerteventura, Gomera, Hierro, Lanzarote and La Palma) electing one Senator. The populations of Ceuta and Melilla each choose two Senators.
Senators elected by constituency are done so via universal, free, equal and direct suffrage and by secret ballot, with voters consisting of Spanish nationals aged 18 and above who have not been deprived of their right to vote. The requirements for standing as a candidate and being elected Senator are the same as those of voters, with the additional condition that there not be grounds for being ruled ineligible.
Each voter may cast three votes in the provincial constituencies, two votes on the larger islands and in Ceuta and Melilla, and one vote on the remaining islands.
Although on the ballot paper candidates are grouped together by political party, when it comes to voting and counting, candidacies are individual, in such a way that voters may vote for candidates from different political groups. The system is therefore different to that of the closed party lists for the Congress of Deputies.
Re the Anglo-Saxons, if we can’t call them “Anglo-Saxons” then what do we call the Germanic invaders who took over the country in the 4th-6th century, displacing Romano-Brits and Celts?
Coz that definitely happened. We can see from place-name evidence. Everywhere
Crikey, yes. Yet again some guy posting on a discussion site completely outwits the academic establishment by spotting something all the eggheads had missed. There'll be some red faces in our universities today. Thank heaven for the Internet.
I’m actually not disputing the Woke academics here on the term (I’ve always felt “Anglo-Saxon” is slightly clumsy). I’m saying the ARGUMENT is a Woke irrelevance. In the 4th-6th century a bunch of Germanic types with a new culture and language came over to Britain and altered our gene pool and changed all the place names. That indisputably happened (you can call it an invasion or not, that’s not my point)
These people need a name. If it can’t be Anglo-Saxon then what will that name be?
As I say, only “early English” is short and pithy enough to work but that will just get the lefties even angrier
The crux of the issue, when not misrepresented by ignorant commentators, is whether the label refers to a distinct ethnic group. It does not, despite the beliefs of some who would rather it did. The reason why they would rather it did fits into the reason for it being a relevant question. Those who would seek to build their politics on a pillar of racial purity or superiority have a fatal flaw in the foundations of their ideology.
Sadly these people still exist and their reaction is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.
I think that a group of people that one can call Anglo-Saxons, or English, had become a distinct ethnic group, by the middle of the 10th century, and I see nothing in the Reddit article that conflicts with that.
That's very different from saying that these people formed the basis of some kind of pure or superior race.
The same way I'd say that Germans existed at this time. They just weren't the kind of people that 19th Century German nationalists thought they were.
And do you have any evidence for this distinct ethnicity? It doesn't seem very likely to me, given the continued cultural and linguistic diversity even within England, and what we know of extant genetic differences today. There were and still are many Englands within the borders of England. The wider you cast your net to catch of England, the more readily you will scoop up that which is not and never has been England. Do you think Cumbrians were closer to Sussex folk or to people from Strathclyde? How much did the people of Whitby have in common with Oksbøl versus Oxford?
I have serious doubts about whether you could ever draw a genetic line around England and only England at any point in all of England's history.
And if given the above is true, what use could there be for persisting with the myth if not to make political mischief today? In whose interest is it to link a nation to a fictional genetic stock, other than those whose ideology is filtration and exclusion?
A Royal House whose kings called themselves Kings of England. England would be conquered in the future, but England never ceased to exist as an entity, after 960. They had a common language, a common literature, a common religion, and a common enemy.
These are what create an ethnic group. Claiming that the Anglo-Saxons did not exist as an ethnic group is like claiming that Poles, Germans, Ukrainians etc. did not.
Much of what you claim here can be disputed, though. Caxton's dilemma when choosing how to translate works he intended to print in "English" illustrates the linguistic point:
And he asked specifically for eggs, and the good woman said that she spoke no French, and the merchant got angry for he could not speak French either, but he wanted eggs and she could not understand him. And then at last another person said that he wanted ‘eyren’. Then the good woman said that she understood him well.
That is, people from the opposite ends of England often literally could not understand one another, to the extent that one of them thought the other was speaking an entirely different language! And this is from the year 1490. 1490!
The heterogeneity of England in pre-modern times is consistently underestimated, and by the time it really settles down into something that one can really start to sensibly call one ethnic group, you're already way beyond the point where England was its own thing. What of Wales, by the time Caxton was writing?
As for the common enemy... whom? When? Even when the Normans invaded, there wasn't unity, even between midlands and the south. If there had have been, the invasion might have been repelled.
The common enemy were the Danes and the Norse. The House of Wessex/England spent 150 years fighting them. As we're seeing in Ukraine, nothing does more to create a shared sense of identity than military service against an enemy attacking one's homeland.
More new polls since yesterday with the PP lead reaching 12% in the most recent. However,
1. Still no absolute majority forecast. 2. Only the PP could reach a majority with the support of VOX. 3. PSOE cannot reach absolute majority even if all the other parties apart from VOX back them and tat is not going to happen. 4. A PP simple majority with tacit VOX support is currently the most likely outcome. 5. Despite HYUFD's repeated claims point 4. above does not mean a hard right scenario for Spain, It means a moderate centre right government. 6. It is just about possible that a grand coalition of PP/PSOE could occur depending on how the final numbers pan out, 7. So far the decision of the PSOE to go for early elections does not seem to have been wise.
Of course as ever, we must wait 'la señora gorda canta!'
Here's what might be the crucial poll, though.
The Too Spanish Didn't Read is that if the two Corbynite parties can agree a joint ticket, they get a lot more seats than if they run against each other. (The Spanish system isn't entirely proportional, especially for small parties). PP still ahead, but probably unable to get a majority together. (And when push comes to shove, there would be a price to be paid if they do get into la cama with Vox.)
Why is it that lefties insist on falling out with each other, even when it's clearly not in their electoral interests?
Spain has small multimember STV, which means that below 15-20% you get very few seats, but above there you can get lots.
No, it's closed list d'Hondt, but, yes, a lot of the constituencies are quite small (as HYUFD said).
The Spanish Senate uses ??? some sort of partial block voting, so a bit like SNTV???
The Spanish Senate system is a thing of wonder.
Most provinces elect four senators (bit rough on the larger provinces, see also the US Senate). The genius thing is that each voter has three non transferable votes, and parties can only put up three candidates. So, whatever happens, at least one candidate from the Different Party gets elected.
Ah, so, yes, a bit like Single Non-Transferable Vote. A system with X seats to be elected where you get X-1 (or X-n) votes produces more proportional results than FPTP or FPTP in a multimember seat (X seats, X votes).
But only allowing the parties to put up X-1 candidates, I've not heard of that before!
I'm supremely uninterested and lack details - but why the furore? He's had an affair at work. Is that it?
I think it says a lot about the shifting sands of our culture. Would anyone have even regarded what he did as “an affair” 20 years ago?
It's bullshit though - the sands haven't really shifted. Jeez, I'd have been sacked loads of times. How many people have found their spouse's via work, often while with a former partner? The puritanism of some astonishes me.
More new polls since yesterday with the PP lead reaching 12% in the most recent. However,
1. Still no absolute majority forecast. 2. Only the PP could reach a majority with the support of VOX. 3. PSOE cannot reach absolute majority even if all the other parties apart from VOX back them and tat is not going to happen. 4. A PP simple majority with tacit VOX support is currently the most likely outcome. 5. Despite HYUFD's repeated claims point 4. above does not mean a hard right scenario for Spain, It means a moderate centre right government. 6. It is just about possible that a grand coalition of PP/PSOE could occur depending on how the final numbers pan out, 7. So far the decision of the PSOE to go for early elections does not seem to have been wise.
Of course as ever, we must wait 'la señora gorda canta!'
No it doesn't, a moderate centre right government would be PP led with Citizens support. Not a PP minority government reliant on confidence and supply from the hard right Vox to stay in power
Aren't Citizens very likely to get wiped out at this election? Although I haven't looked at the figures in detail yet. Just about to do so.
They are not even contesting it as their poll rating was so bad
Maybe the Conservatives should consider doing that at the next GE?
Even on the Tories current poll rating they would actually be ahead in Spain of the PSOE even if a few points worse than the PP are doing
I'm supremely uninterested and lack details - but why the furore? He's had an affair at work. Is that it?
I think it says a lot about the shifting sands of our culture. Would anyone have even regarded what he did as “an affair” 20 years ago?
20 years ago, people would have been less bothered about the age gap, but more bothered about the same-sex element. But, given he was married to someone else at the time, yes, it would still have been seen as an affair!
The problem is I imagine all newspapers are trying to repeat the Daily Mail approach. In order to get advertising revenue you need the eyeballs on your site, and you want them to visit multiple times a day.
In order to do that you need to be constantly updating your site with new articles, and if you make clickbaity ones that getting people sharing them on social media, more the better.
The Daily Mailification of the media.
Is that why all the news outlets have all been wall to wall Phil and Holly for the last fortnight?
Bollocks.
It is nothing to do with "The Daily Mailification of the media".
We pay to read or watch this stuff.
The Socialist Worker is widely available if anyone wanted to make it the most popular online media outlet.
The media simply feeds what we want to consume.
That I think is where Harry and Megs need to be careful. Their crusade against "the media" is more correctly a crusade against the people who pay to consume the media.
Blimey, who rattled your cage Mr Dacre?
P.S. I learned last week that HYUFD rather impressively reads the Morning Star.
Not Wales Online as I thought that was where his sympathies lie?
More new polls since yesterday with the PP lead reaching 12% in the most recent. However,
1. Still no absolute majority forecast. 2. Only the PP could reach a majority with the support of VOX. 3. PSOE cannot reach absolute majority even if all the other parties apart from VOX back them and tat is not going to happen. 4. A PP simple majority with tacit VOX support is currently the most likely outcome. 5. Despite HYUFD's repeated claims point 4. above does not mean a hard right scenario for Spain, It means a moderate centre right government. 6. It is just about possible that a grand coalition of PP/PSOE could occur depending on how the final numbers pan out, 7. So far the decision of the PSOE to go for early elections does not seem to have been wise.
Of course as ever, we must wait 'la señora gorda canta!'
Here's what might be the crucial poll, though.
The Too Spanish Didn't Read is that if the two Corbynite parties can agree a joint ticket, they get a lot more seats than if they run against each other. (The Spanish system isn't entirely proportional, especially for small parties). PP still ahead, but probably unable to get a majority together. (And when push comes to shove, there would be a price to be paid if they do get into la cama with Vox.)
Why is it that lefties insist on falling out with each other, even when it's clearly not in their electoral interests?
Spain has small multimember STV, which means that below 15-20% you get very few seats, but above there you can get lots.
No, it's closed list d'Hondt, but, yes, a lot of the constituencies are quite small (as HYUFD said).
The Spanish Senate uses ??? some sort of partial block voting, so a bit like SNTV???
I bel;ieve the Senate split relates to the Autonomous Communities and may also favour rural more than urban, butnI'm not entirely sure. as their is no separate popular vote for these seats.
Correction: This is how the Senators are chosen in Spain:
More new polls since yesterday with the PP lead reaching 12% in the most recent. However,
1. Still no absolute majority forecast. 2. Only the PP could reach a majority with the support of VOX. 3. PSOE cannot reach absolute majority even if all the other parties apart from VOX back them and tat is not going to happen. 4. A PP simple majority with tacit VOX support is currently the most likely outcome. 5. Despite HYUFD's repeated claims point 4. above does not mean a hard right scenario for Spain, It means a moderate centre right government. 6. It is just about possible that a grand coalition of PP/PSOE could occur depending on how the final numbers pan out, 7. So far the decision of the PSOE to go for early elections does not seem to have been wise.
Of course as ever, we must wait 'la señora gorda canta!'
No it doesn't, a moderate centre right government would be PP led with Citizens support. Not a PP minority government reliant on confidence and supply from the hard right Vox to stay in power,
Based on the above only a PP/PSOE grand coalition could prevent Spain getting a hard right government
More new polls since yesterday with the PP lead reaching 12% in the most recent. However,
1. Still no absolute majority forecast. 2. Only the PP could reach a majority with the support of VOX. 3. PSOE cannot reach absolute majority even if all the other parties apart from VOX back them and tat is not going to happen. 4. A PP simple majority with tacit VOX support is currently the most likely outcome. 5. Despite HYUFD's repeated claims point 4. above does not mean a hard right scenario for Spain, It means a moderate centre right government. 6. It is just about possible that a grand coalition of PP/PSOE could occur depending on how the final numbers pan out, 7. So far the decision of the PSOE to go for early elections does not seem to have been wise.
Of course as ever, we must wait 'la señora gorda canta!'
No it doesn't, a moderate centre right government would be PP led with Citizens support. Not a PP minority government reliant on confidence and supply from the hard right Vox to stay in power,
Based on the above only a PP/PSOE grand coalition could prevent Spain getting a hard right government
You do not understand the mechanics of power in Spain. Vox would have no choice but to support PP or face a more left-wing alternative. As minority players in this scenario their influence would be very limited. You seem to think that their support would force PP to enact their agenda - it simply is not the case. The PP would always have the choice to go elsewhere for support - while Vox would have none. Indeed the most recent polls suggest their support may be flatlining. You would get a lot more sympathy for your many reliable posts if you acknowledged just occasionally that you really do not know everything.
Yes but as I said the PP cannot form a right of centre government without Vox. So either they deal with the PSOE on most things and form a centrist grand coalition or they are reliant on Vox support at every vote which will see Vox dictate a rightwing agenda, especially on immigation
No it will not. If Vox do not back the PP agenda they get nothing and they have nowhere to go. The same does not apply to the PP. You continually make the assumption that the Vox tail will automatically wag the PP dog. That is plain and simple wrong.
More new polls since yesterday with the PP lead reaching 12% in the most recent. However,
1. Still no absolute majority forecast. 2. Only the PP could reach a majority with the support of VOX. 3. PSOE cannot reach absolute majority even if all the other parties apart from VOX back them and tat is not going to happen. 4. A PP simple majority with tacit VOX support is currently the most likely outcome. 5. Despite HYUFD's repeated claims point 4. above does not mean a hard right scenario for Spain, It means a moderate centre right government. 6. It is just about possible that a grand coalition of PP/PSOE could occur depending on how the final numbers pan out, 7. So far the decision of the PSOE to go for early elections does not seem to have been wise.
Of course as ever, we must wait 'la señora gorda canta!'
No it doesn't, a moderate centre right government would be PP led with Citizens support. Not a PP minority government reliant on confidence and supply from the hard right Vox to stay in power
Aren't Citizens very likely to get wiped out at this election? Although I haven't looked at the figures in detail yet. Just about to do so.
They are not even contesting it as their poll rating was so bad
Maybe the Conservatives should consider doing that at the next GE?
Even on the Tories current poll rating they would actually be ahead in Spain of the PSOE even if a few points worse than the PP are doing
The problem is I imagine all newspapers are trying to repeat the Daily Mail approach. In order to get advertising revenue you need the eyeballs on your site, and you want them to visit multiple times a day.
In order to do that you need to be constantly updating your site with new articles, and if you make clickbaity ones that getting people sharing them on social media, more the better.
The Daily Mailification of the media.
Is that why all the news outlets have all been wall to wall Phil and Holly for the last fortnight?
Bollocks.
It is nothing to do with "The Daily Mailification of the media".
We pay to read or watch this stuff.
The Socialist Worker is widely available if anyone wanted to make it the most popular online media outlet.
The media simply feeds what we want to consume.
That I think is where Harry and Megs need to be careful. Their crusade against "the media" is more correctly a crusade against the people who pay to consume the media.
Blimey, who rattled your cage Mr Dacre?
P.S. I learned last week that HYUFD rather impressively reads the Morning Star.
Not Wales Online as I thought that was where his sympathies lie?
Re the Anglo-Saxons, if we can’t call them “Anglo-Saxons” then what do we call the Germanic invaders who took over the country in the 4th-6th century, displacing Romano-Brits and Celts?
Coz that definitely happened. We can see from place-name evidence. Everywhere
Crikey, yes. Yet again some guy posting on a discussion site completely outwits the academic establishment by spotting something all the eggheads had missed. There'll be some red faces in our universities today. Thank heaven for the Internet.
I’m actually not disputing the Woke academics here on the term (I’ve always felt “Anglo-Saxon” is slightly clumsy). I’m saying the ARGUMENT is a Woke irrelevance. In the 4th-6th century a bunch of Germanic types with a new culture and language came over to Britain and altered our gene pool and changed all the place names. That indisputably happened (you can call it an invasion or not, that’s not my point)
These people need a name. If it can’t be Anglo-Saxon then what will that name be?
As I say, only “early English” is short and pithy enough to work but that will just get the lefties even angrier
The crux of the issue, when not misrepresented by ignorant commentators, is whether the label refers to a distinct ethnic group. It does not, despite the beliefs of some who would rather it did. The reason why they would rather it did fits into the reason for it being a relevant question. Those who would seek to build their politics on a pillar of racial purity or superiority have a fatal flaw in the foundations of their ideology.
Sadly these people still exist and their reaction is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.
I think that a group of people that one can call Anglo-Saxons, or English, had become a distinct ethnic group, by the middle of the 10th century, and I see nothing in the Reddit article that conflicts with that.
That's very different from saying that these people formed the basis of some kind of pure or superior race.
The same way I'd say that Germans existed at this time. They just weren't the kind of people that 19th Century German nationalists thought they were.
And do you have any evidence for this distinct ethnicity? It doesn't seem very likely to me, given the continued cultural and linguistic diversity even within England, and what we know of extant genetic differences today. There were and still are many Englands within the borders of England. The wider you cast your net to catch of England, the more readily you will scoop up that which is not and never has been England. Do you think Cumbrians were closer to Sussex folk or to people from Strathclyde? How much did the people of Whitby have in common with Oksbøl versus Oxford?
I have serious doubts about whether you could ever draw a genetic line around England and only England at any point in all of England's history.
And if given the above is true, what use could there be for persisting with the myth if not to make political mischief today? In whose interest is it to link a nation to a fictional genetic stock, other than those whose ideology is filtration and exclusion?
A Royal House whose kings called themselves Kings of England. England would be conquered in the future, but England never ceased to exist as an entity, after 960. They had a common language, a common literature, a common religion, and a common enemy.
These are what create an ethnic group. Claiming that the Anglo-Saxons did not exist as an ethnic group is like claiming that Poles, Germans, Ukrainians etc. did not.
Much of what you claim here can be disputed, though. Caxton's dilemma when choosing how to translate works he intended to print in "English" illustrates the linguistic point:
And he asked specifically for eggs, and the good woman said that she spoke no French, and the merchant got angry for he could not speak French either, but he wanted eggs and she could not understand him. And then at last another person said that he wanted ‘eyren’. Then the good woman said that she understood him well.
That is, people from the opposite ends of England often literally could not understand one another, to the extent that one of them thought the other was speaking an entirely different language! And this is from the year 1490. 1490!
The heterogeneity of England in pre-modern times is consistently underestimated, and by the time it really settles down into something that one can really start to sensibly call one ethnic group, you're already way beyond the point where England was its own thing. What of Wales, by the time Caxton was writing?
As for the common enemy... whom? When? Even when the Normans invaded, there wasn't unity, even between midlands and the south. If there had have been, the invasion might have been repelled.
The common enemy were the Danes and the Norse. The House of Wessex/England spent 150 years fighting them.
I refer you to the Cnut podcast I posted on the previous thread, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001kpty It's a bit more complicated than that, with English, Norman, Danish and Norse identities intermingling and overlapping.
This is translated from Russian channels so not breaking any Ukrainian silence. Leopards are in action in Ukraine.
Khodakovsky says the situation in the Novodonetske and Velika Novosilka area is difficult and says Ukraine found weak points. He says Leopard tanks were seen for the first time in that area. https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1665714813257875457
I'm supremely uninterested and lack details - but why the furore? He's had an affair at work. Is that it?
I think it says a lot about the shifting sands of our culture. Would anyone have even regarded what he did as “an affair” 20 years ago?
It's bullshit though - the sands haven't really shifted. Jeez, I'd have been sacked loads of times. How many people have found their spouse's via work, often while with a former partner? The puritanism of some astonishes me.
I think a lot more questions at any workplace would be asked one of the big bosses at the company, had been chatting online with a teenager for a number of years, so much so, they got them a job at your company, then worked as their PA, shortly after which they started having an affair with them.
For similar reasons, teachers can't have relationships with students (even if legal age), same at universities, an academic is in big trouble if you say hire a PhD, then start having an affair with them.
I'm supremely uninterested and lack details - but why the furore? He's had an affair at work. Is that it?
(1) He had an affair at work, (2) with someone much younger than him, (3) who's career he had helped beforehand, and (4) he lied about it when confronted. I think the difficult questions are particularly around (3): did he happen to help the person's career and then they found themselves together, or was he helping the person's career in order to facilitate a future liaison? I can't see any actual evidence to support the latter, as I've not been following this at all closely, but I understand that's the gist of it!
wafer thin.
My facebook page (yes, I'm that old) is full of people asking what he did wrong and what the fuss is about.
This is a pretty red cords sample so vaguely surprised to see such sympathy for him.
The Viking invasions were probably the moment the English began to feel REALLY English. A people
There’s nothing like being attacked to make you the victims band together, and bond into a team
Indeed. I'd say most nations begin this way.
Look at what is happening in Ukraine right now. Before Putin's Special Clusterfuck, the Ukes were a bit nebulous, half Russian, half Polish, half hmmm (Putin actually had a historical point, tho it does not begin to justify his hideous war)
Now, the Ukrainians are ABSOLUTELY a nation. They are the people who got attacked by Russia. They will be the people that endured that horrible war (inshallah). "Ukrainian-ness" will be off the dial by the end of all this
Putin will achieve the complete opposite of what he intended
I agree with the general point, but roots of their cultural identity go back much longer than you suggest. The 'half Russian, half Polish" bit describes only the ruling elites over the course of the last few centuries.
Ukrainian history and culture is multi faceted but it is pretty long established. You can trace a distinct Ukrainian identity for a good 1000 years. So this idea that Ukrainians are a rather nebulous group is a bit of a false narrative- it depends who you talked to. Both Russians in the north and Ukrainians in the south looked to Kievan Rus as their proto-state, but from the Mongol invasion onward, the Southern identity became and remained separate from the North and after Moscow took control in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century there was a distinct linguistic and cultural divide.
What has happened is the total rejection of anything Russian, even things- like Pushkin- that were previously respected. With Ukraine, Russia is an Empire, without it, it has "yet to find a role" and is derided as a bunch of loathsome barbarians who couldn´t even do pillaging right.
You're correct about the much longer history.
Leon was not wrong, though, to point out what's now Ukraine was variously partitioned between the Russian, Polish Lithuanian, and Austria Hungarian empires over the course of several centuries. And the idea of the modern nation state has its roots only in the nineteenth century.
The first real attempt at building a Ukrainian nation state in the modern sense - quickly crushed - was in the aftermath of WWI. And then Stalin, and Holodomor, and Hitler. And Stalin again.
Ukraine was a fairly cohesive nation after the Maidan revolution. All Putin has done is guarantee it will never go back.
The idea of any modern nation state is almost always a nineteenth century invention. However, whereas the Czechs or the Estonians were able to achieve a nation state in 1918, as you say the charnel house of the USSR delayed the creation of a genuinely independent Ukrainian nation state until 1991. I´d say they were catching up on nation building astonishingly rapidly.
Re the Anglo-Saxons, if we can’t call them “Anglo-Saxons” then what do we call the Germanic invaders who took over the country in the 4th-6th century, displacing Romano-Brits and Celts?
Coz that definitely happened. We can see from place-name evidence. Everywhere
Crikey, yes. Yet again some guy posting on a discussion site completely outwits the academic establishment by spotting something all the eggheads had missed. There'll be some red faces in our universities today. Thank heaven for the Internet.
I’m actually not disputing the Woke academics here on the term (I’ve always felt “Anglo-Saxon” is slightly clumsy). I’m saying the ARGUMENT is a Woke irrelevance. In the 4th-6th century a bunch of Germanic types with a new culture and language came over to Britain and altered our gene pool and changed all the place names. That indisputably happened (you can call it an invasion or not, that’s not my point)
These people need a name. If it can’t be Anglo-Saxon then what will that name be?
As I say, only “early English” is short and pithy enough to work but that will just get the lefties even angrier
The crux of the issue, when not misrepresented by ignorant commentators, is whether the label refers to a distinct ethnic group. It does not, despite the beliefs of some who would rather it did. The reason why they would rather it did fits into the reason for it being a relevant question. Those who would seek to build their politics on a pillar of racial purity or superiority have a fatal flaw in the foundations of their ideology.
Sadly these people still exist and their reaction is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.
I think that a group of people that one can call Anglo-Saxons, or English, had become a distinct ethnic group, by the middle of the 10th century, and I see nothing in the Reddit article that conflicts with that.
That's very different from saying that these people formed the basis of some kind of pure or superior race.
The same way I'd say that Germans existed at this time. They just weren't the kind of people that 19th Century German nationalists thought they were.
And do you have any evidence for this distinct ethnicity? It doesn't seem very likely to me, given the continued cultural and linguistic diversity even within England, and what we know of extant genetic differences today. There were and still are many Englands within the borders of England. The wider you cast your net to catch of England, the more readily you will scoop up that which is not and never has been England. Do you think Cumbrians were closer to Sussex folk or to people from Strathclyde? How much did the people of Whitby have in common with Oksbøl versus Oxford?
I have serious doubts about whether you could ever draw a genetic line around England and only England at any point in all of England's history.
And if given the above is true, what use could there be for persisting with the myth if not to make political mischief today? In whose interest is it to link a nation to a fictional genetic stock, other than those whose ideology is filtration and exclusion?
A Royal House whose kings called themselves Kings of England. England would be conquered in the future, but England never ceased to exist as an entity, after 960. They had a common language, a common literature, a common religion, and a common enemy.
These are what create an ethnic group. Claiming that the Anglo-Saxons did not exist as an ethnic group is like claiming that Poles, Germans, Ukrainians etc. did not.
Much of what you claim here can be disputed, though. Caxton's dilemma when choosing how to translate works he intended to print in "English" illustrates the linguistic point:
And he asked specifically for eggs, and the good woman said that she spoke no French, and the merchant got angry for he could not speak French either, but he wanted eggs and she could not understand him. And then at last another person said that he wanted ‘eyren’. Then the good woman said that she understood him well.
That is, people from the opposite ends of England often literally could not understand one another, to the extent that one of them thought the other was speaking an entirely different language! And this is from the year 1490. 1490!
The heterogeneity of England in pre-modern times is consistently underestimated, and by the time it really settles down into something that one can really start to sensibly call one ethnic group, you're already way beyond the point where England was its own thing. What of Wales, by the time Caxton was writing?
As for the common enemy... whom? When? Even when the Normans invaded, there wasn't unity, even between midlands and the south. If there had have been, the invasion might have been repelled.
The common enemy were the Danes and the Norse. The House of Wessex/England spent 150 years fighting them.
I refer you to the Cnut podcast I posted on the previous thread, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001kpty It's a bit more complicated than that, with English, Norman, Danish and Norse identities intermingling and overlapping.
All fair enough.
But, I see nothing sinister about using the term "Anglo-Saxon" do describe the large majority of the inhabitants of England in the mid-10th century. The descendants of the Roman-British were still mainly there, but culturally, they'd now been assimilated.
I'm supremely uninterested and lack details - but why the furore? He's had an affair at work. Is that it?
I think it says a lot about the shifting sands of our culture. Would anyone have even regarded what he did as “an affair” 20 years ago?
20 years ago, people would have been less bothered about the age gap, but more bothered about the same-sex element. But, given he was married to someone else at the time, yes, it would still have been seen as an affair!
My point is - civil partnerships (2004) and, later, gay marriage (2014) fundamentally changed the way many people view relationships.
Society is still debating the ethics.
I’m not wrong, am I?
I wonder if there’s any opinion polls, or academic research based around the question;
If a married person secretly has sex with someone else of the same sex/gender, is it an affair?
I recon 50 years ago, perhaps 10% of ppl would say yes.
This is translated from Russian channels so not breaking any Ukrainian silence. Leopards are in action in Ukraine.
Khodakovsky says the situation in the Novodonetske and Velika Novosilka area is difficult and says Ukraine found weak points. He says Leopard tanks were seen for the first time in that area. https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1665714813257875457
You really think Reddit is a source of top historians?
Anglo Saxons certainly were an accepted group, from the Saxon coast in Germany and Anglia in southern Denmark
That first reddit post seems rather disjointed to me. Perhaps a better question may be:
Did the Angles and Saxons see *themselves* as a distinct ethnic group / groups?
Compared to the Romano British and Celts and later the Normans, absolutely
Not sure we’re any more likely to get the nuanced discussion this debate requires on pb.com any more than on Reddit or in the Telegraph (though it is nice to see the latter featuring a story which isn’t on trans, though who knows: ‘what is an Anglo-Saxon woman?’ may be the next brainwave)
The idea that people in dark ages Europe (especially at the fringes of Rome and beyond) considered themselves as belonging to ethnic groups in the way we define them today really is debatable. That it remained a defined and coherent identity till more or less the present day, is quite a stretch, especially given the pot-pourri of genetic and cultural admixture over the centuries since. ‘English’ is a much more helpful term than ‘Anglo-Saxon’. I am unquestionably the former, but it would be a huge stretch to define me as the latter.
England didn't emerge as anything approaching a nation until Athelstan in the 10th century.
The Anglo Saxons arrived in the 8th century, so for historians Anglo Saxon and the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex and Kent, Essex, Sussex and East Anglia remain very useful terms for describing that period
I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. My point is really that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is a useless term applied in a modern context. I agree that it’s reasonably sensible to use it it in the context of 8th century history etc.
It's complete nonsense as applied to the modern world.
We are talking historians studying the 8th century
If I recall correctly you were originally talking about an Anglo Saxon identity in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Yes which is also correct as I pointed out earlier as those nations also have English Anglo Saxon heritage and the US English and German Anglo Saxon heritage
There's definitely no such thing as 'German Anglo Saxon heritage' in any universe.
There is, most of them voted for Boris and Trump (Trump has German ancestry)! Indeed Trump was originally Drumpf from the German Palatinate
Yes I was wrong - WASP is sometimes used in the US to include other 'white protestant' background people. The Telegraph should get upset about this as it is clearly a perversion of the use of the term 'Anglo-Saxon'!
Your link about Trump doesn't seem to mention 'anglo-saxon' at all, so not sure what the relevance is? I'm pretty sure his German ancestors would never have thought of themselves as 'Anglo-Saxon'. Also not sure which people of 'German Anglo Saxon heritage' voted for Johnson, the term doesn't seem to have any meaning in the British context.
So far as Mr Trump has UK ancestry, I believe it is primarily Gaelic - i.e. very much not Angles or Saxons or Danes or Normans.
Actually someone in the Hebrides could have more than a dash of Norse/Viking.
I can’t find the link now, but that big genetic study of the UK a few years back found that the big genetic variation is between Orkney/Shetland and everywhere else. England, Wales, Northern Ireland and most of Scotland are all mixed up, but the Orkney and Shetland Islands retain distinct Scandinavian genetic markers.
Just spent about 10 minutes on the Oval website trying to find out whether they have any tickets left for the Australia v India match this week. Failed to find out the answer to the question, despite an enormous amount of information being available on their website about everything else.
I'm supremely uninterested and lack details - but why the furore? He's had an affair at work. Is that it?
I think it says a lot about the shifting sands of our culture. Would anyone have even regarded what he did as “an affair” 20 years ago?
It's bullshit though - the sands haven't really shifted. Jeez, I'd have been sacked loads of times. How many people have found their spouse's via work, often while with a former partner? The puritanism of some astonishes me.
Yup. I'm married to my former manageress, with whom I had a fling at work!
As far as I can see, Schofield has done nothing illegal, so all the rest is mere value judgements based on a media circus generated by organisations that love talking about nothing but themselves.
He is one of millions of people who have met a partner at work and while the extreme junior-senior element was perhaps distasteful to some I don't see why this story is commanding so much attention.
More new polls since yesterday with the PP lead reaching 12% in the most recent. However,
1. Still no absolute majority forecast. 2. Only the PP could reach a majority with the support of VOX. 3. PSOE cannot reach absolute majority even if all the other parties apart from VOX back them and tat is not going to happen. 4. A PP simple majority with tacit VOX support is currently the most likely outcome. 5. Despite HYUFD's repeated claims point 4. above does not mean a hard right scenario for Spain, It means a moderate centre right government. 6. It is just about possible that a grand coalition of PP/PSOE could occur depending on how the final numbers pan out, 7. So far the decision of the PSOE to go for early elections does not seem to have been wise.
Of course as ever, we must wait 'la señora gorda canta!'
Here's what might be the crucial poll, though.
The Too Spanish Didn't Read is that if the two Corbynite parties can agree a joint ticket, they get a lot more seats than if they run against each other. (The Spanish system isn't entirely proportional, especially for small parties). PP still ahead, but probably unable to get a majority together. (And when push comes to shove, there would be a price to be paid if they do get into la cama with Vox.)
Why is it that lefties insist on falling out with each other, even when it's clearly not in their electoral interests?
Spain has small multimember STV, which means that below 15-20% you get very few seats, but above there you can get lots.
No, it's closed list d'Hondt, but, yes, a lot of the constituencies are quite small (as HYUFD said).
The Spanish Senate uses ??? some sort of partial block voting, so a bit like SNTV???
I bel;ieve the Senate split relates to the Autonomous Communities and may also favour rural more than urban, butnI'm not entirely sure. as their is no separate popular vote for these seats.
Correction: This is how the Senators are chosen in Spain:
More new polls since yesterday with the PP lead reaching 12% in the most recent. However,
1. Still no absolute majority forecast. 2. Only the PP could reach a majority with the support of VOX. 3. PSOE cannot reach absolute majority even if all the other parties apart from VOX back them and tat is not going to happen. 4. A PP simple majority with tacit VOX support is currently the most likely outcome. 5. Despite HYUFD's repeated claims point 4. above does not mean a hard right scenario for Spain, It means a moderate centre right government. 6. It is just about possible that a grand coalition of PP/PSOE could occur depending on how the final numbers pan out, 7. So far the decision of the PSOE to go for early elections does not seem to have been wise.
Of course as ever, we must wait 'la señora gorda canta!'
No it doesn't, a moderate centre right government would be PP led with Citizens support. Not a PP minority government reliant on confidence and supply from the hard right Vox to stay in power,
Based on the above only a PP/PSOE grand coalition could prevent Spain getting a hard right government
More new polls since yesterday with the PP lead reaching 12% in the most recent. However,
1. Still no absolute majority forecast. 2. Only the PP could reach a majority with the support of VOX. 3. PSOE cannot reach absolute majority even if all the other parties apart from VOX back them and tat is not going to happen. 4. A PP simple majority with tacit VOX support is currently the most likely outcome. 5. Despite HYUFD's repeated claims point 4. above does not mean a hard right scenario for Spain, It means a moderate centre right government. 6. It is just about possible that a grand coalition of PP/PSOE could occur depending on how the final numbers pan out, 7. So far the decision of the PSOE to go for early elections does not seem to have been wise.
Of course as ever, we must wait 'la señora gorda canta!'
No it doesn't, a moderate centre right government would be PP led with Citizens support. Not a PP minority government reliant on confidence and supply from the hard right Vox to stay in power,
Based on the above only a PP/PSOE grand coalition could prevent Spain getting a hard right government
You do not understand the mechanics of power in Spain. Vox would have no choice but to support PP or face a more left-wing alternative. As minority players in this scenario their influence would be very limited. You seem to think that their support would force PP to enact their agenda - it simply is not the case. The PP would always have the choice to go elsewhere for support - while Vox would have none. Indeed the most recent polls suggest their support may be flatlining. You would get a lot more sympathy for your many reliable posts if you acknowledged just occasionally that you really do not know everything.
Yes but as I said the PP cannot form a right of centre government without Vox. So either they deal with the PSOE on most things and form a centrist grand coalition or they are reliant on Vox support at every vote which will see Vox dictate a rightwing agenda, especially on immigation
No it will not. If Vox do not back the PP agenda they get nothing and they have nowhere to go. The same does not apply to the PP. You continually make the assumption that the Vox tail will automatically wag the PP dog. That is plain and simple wrong.
And if the PP ignore Vox they cannot get anything through the Spanish Parliament without shifting left to get PSOE support either, which in turn will see much of their core support shift to Vox
Re the Anglo-Saxons, if we can’t call them “Anglo-Saxons” then what do we call the Germanic invaders who took over the country in the 4th-6th century, displacing Romano-Brits and Celts?
Coz that definitely happened. We can see from place-name evidence. Everywhere
Crikey, yes. Yet again some guy posting on a discussion site completely outwits the academic establishment by spotting something all the eggheads had missed. There'll be some red faces in our universities today. Thank heaven for the Internet.
I’m actually not disputing the Woke academics here on the term (I’ve always felt “Anglo-Saxon” is slightly clumsy). I’m saying the ARGUMENT is a Woke irrelevance. In the 4th-6th century a bunch of Germanic types with a new culture and language came over to Britain and altered our gene pool and changed all the place names. That indisputably happened (you can call it an invasion or not, that’s not my point)
These people need a name. If it can’t be Anglo-Saxon then what will that name be?
As I say, only “early English” is short and pithy enough to work but that will just get the lefties even angrier
The crux of the issue, when not misrepresented by ignorant commentators, is whether the label refers to a distinct ethnic group. It does not, despite the beliefs of some who would rather it did. The reason why they would rather it did fits into the reason for it being a relevant question. Those who would seek to build their politics on a pillar of racial purity or superiority have a fatal flaw in the foundations of their ideology.
Sadly these people still exist and their reaction is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.
I think that a group of people that one can call Anglo-Saxons, or English, had become a distinct ethnic group, by the middle of the 10th century, and I see nothing in the Reddit article that conflicts with that.
That's very different from saying that these people formed the basis of some kind of pure or superior race.
The same way I'd say that Germans existed at this time. They just weren't the kind of people that 19th Century German nationalists thought they were.
And do you have any evidence for this distinct ethnicity? It doesn't seem very likely to me, given the continued cultural and linguistic diversity even within England, and what we know of extant genetic differences today. There were and still are many Englands within the borders of England. The wider you cast your net to catch of England, the more readily you will scoop up that which is not and never has been England. Do you think Cumbrians were closer to Sussex folk or to people from Strathclyde? How much did the people of Whitby have in common with Oksbøl versus Oxford?
I have serious doubts about whether you could ever draw a genetic line around England and only England at any point in all of England's history.
And if given the above is true, what use could there be for persisting with the myth if not to make political mischief today? In whose interest is it to link a nation to a fictional genetic stock, other than those whose ideology is filtration and exclusion?
A Royal House whose kings called themselves Kings of England. England would be conquered in the future, but England never ceased to exist as an entity, after 960. They had a common language, a common literature, a common religion, and a common enemy.
These are what create an ethnic group. Claiming that the Anglo-Saxons did not exist as an ethnic group is like claiming that Poles, Germans, Ukrainians etc. did not.
Much of what you claim here can be disputed, though. Caxton's dilemma when choosing how to translate works he intended to print in "English" illustrates the linguistic point:
And he asked specifically for eggs, and the good woman said that she spoke no French, and the merchant got angry for he could not speak French either, but he wanted eggs and she could not understand him. And then at last another person said that he wanted ‘eyren’. Then the good woman said that she understood him well.
That is, people from the opposite ends of England often literally could not understand one another, to the extent that one of them thought the other was speaking an entirely different language! And this is from the year 1490. 1490!
The heterogeneity of England in pre-modern times is consistently underestimated, and by the time it really settles down into something that one can really start to sensibly call one ethnic group, you're already way beyond the point where England was its own thing. What of Wales, by the time Caxton was writing?
As for the common enemy... whom? When? Even when the Normans invaded, there wasn't unity, even between midlands and the south. If there had have been, the invasion might have been repelled.
The common enemy were the Danes and the Norse. The House of Wessex/England spent 150 years fighting them.
I refer you to the Cnut podcast I posted on the previous thread, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001kpty It's a bit more complicated than that, with English, Norman, Danish and Norse identities intermingling and overlapping.
All fair enough.
But, I see nothing sinister about using the term "Anglo-Saxon" do describe the large majority of the inhabitants of England in the mid-10th century. The descendants of the Roman-British were still mainly there, but culturally, they'd now been assimilated.
Then you just don’t get it.
Amercian woke academics now think that the term “Anglo-Saxon” is interchangeable for “White Supremacist” in 2023 USA, so the phrase is now verboten, even for discussions relating to societies that existed a millennium ago.
Anyone who disagrees doesn’t have the right to a job after next week, following their declaration of last week.
Re the Anglo-Saxons, if we can’t call them “Anglo-Saxons” then what do we call the Germanic invaders who took over the country in the 4th-6th century, displacing Romano-Brits and Celts?
Coz that definitely happened. We can see from place-name evidence. Everywhere
Crikey, yes. Yet again some guy posting on a discussion site completely outwits the academic establishment by spotting something all the eggheads had missed. There'll be some red faces in our universities today. Thank heaven for the Internet.
I’m actually not disputing the Woke academics here on the term (I’ve always felt “Anglo-Saxon” is slightly clumsy). I’m saying the ARGUMENT is a Woke irrelevance. In the 4th-6th century a bunch of Germanic types with a new culture and language came over to Britain and altered our gene pool and changed all the place names. That indisputably happened (you can call it an invasion or not, that’s not my point)
These people need a name. If it can’t be Anglo-Saxon then what will that name be?
As I say, only “early English” is short and pithy enough to work but that will just get the lefties even angrier
The crux of the issue, when not misrepresented by ignorant commentators, is whether the label refers to a distinct ethnic group. It does not, despite the beliefs of some who would rather it did. The reason why they would rather it did fits into the reason for it being a relevant question. Those who would seek to build their politics on a pillar of racial purity or superiority have a fatal flaw in the foundations of their ideology.
Sadly these people still exist and their reaction is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.
I think that a group of people that one can call Anglo-Saxons, or English, had become a distinct ethnic group, by the middle of the 10th century, and I see nothing in the Reddit article that conflicts with that.
That's very different from saying that these people formed the basis of some kind of pure or superior race.
The same way I'd say that Germans existed at this time. They just weren't the kind of people that 19th Century German nationalists thought they were.
And do you have any evidence for this distinct ethnicity? It doesn't seem very likely to me, given the continued cultural and linguistic diversity even within England, and what we know of extant genetic differences today. There were and still are many Englands within the borders of England. The wider you cast your net to catch of England, the more readily you will scoop up that which is not and never has been England. Do you think Cumbrians were closer to Sussex folk or to people from Strathclyde? How much did the people of Whitby have in common with Oksbøl versus Oxford?
I have serious doubts about whether you could ever draw a genetic line around England and only England at any point in all of England's history.
And if given the above is true, what use could there be for persisting with the myth if not to make political mischief today? In whose interest is it to link a nation to a fictional genetic stock, other than those whose ideology is filtration and exclusion?
A Royal House whose kings called themselves Kings of England. England would be conquered in the future, but England never ceased to exist as an entity, after 960. They had a common language, a common literature, a common religion, and a common enemy.
These are what create an ethnic group. Claiming that the Anglo-Saxons did not exist as an ethnic group is like claiming that Poles, Germans, Ukrainians etc. did not.
Much of what you claim here can be disputed, though. Caxton's dilemma when choosing how to translate works he intended to print in "English" illustrates the linguistic point:
And he asked specifically for eggs, and the good woman said that she spoke no French, and the merchant got angry for he could not speak French either, but he wanted eggs and she could not understand him. And then at last another person said that he wanted ‘eyren’. Then the good woman said that she understood him well.
That is, people from the opposite ends of England often literally could not understand one another, to the extent that one of them thought the other was speaking an entirely different language! And this is from the year 1490. 1490!
The heterogeneity of England in pre-modern times is consistently underestimated, and by the time it really settles down into something that one can really start to sensibly call one ethnic group, you're already way beyond the point where England was its own thing. What of Wales, by the time Caxton was writing?
As for the common enemy... whom? When? Even when the Normans invaded, there wasn't unity, even between midlands and the south. If there had have been, the invasion might have been repelled.
We weren't even operating on the same clocks till Brunel.
On a point of PB pedantry: the UK was, only the clock varied as to longitude: the solar clock. I suppose it says something that one Oxford college has never adjusted its college clock to Greenwich time ...
I'm supremely uninterested and lack details - but why the furore? He's had an affair at work. Is that it?
I think it says a lot about the shifting sands of our culture. Would anyone have even regarded what he did as “an affair” 20 years ago?
20 years ago, people would have been less bothered about the age gap, but more bothered about the same-sex element. But, given he was married to someone else at the time, yes, it would still have been seen as an affair!
My point is - civil partnerships (2004) and, later, gay marriage (2014) fundamentally changed the way many people view relationships.
Society is still debating the ethics.
I’m not wrong, am I?
I think society's (societies') views on relationships changes all the time. That, yes, was one change. There have been other changes. Case in point...
For similar reasons, teachers can't have relationships with students (even if legal age), same at universities, an academic is in big trouble if you say hire a PhD, then start having an affair with them.
A few years ago, I was single and at a dinner with my (long divorced) parents, one a professor. Why are you single, they challenged me, don't you have PhD students?
Just spent about 10 minutes on the Oval website trying to find out whether they have any tickets left for the Australia v India match this week. Failed to find out the answer to the question, despite an enormous amount of information being available on their website about everything else.
Just spent about 10 minutes on the Oval website trying to find out whether they have any tickets left for the Australia v India match this week. Failed to find out the answer to the question, despite an enormous amount of information being available on their website about everything else.
I'm supremely uninterested and lack details - but why the furore? He's had an affair at work. Is that it?
I think it says a lot about the shifting sands of our culture. Would anyone have even regarded what he did as “an affair” 20 years ago?
It's bullshit though - the sands haven't really shifted. Jeez, I'd have been sacked loads of times. How many people have found their spouse's via work, often while with a former partner? The puritanism of some astonishes me.
Yup. I'm married to my former manageress, with whom I had a fling at work!
As far as I can see, Schofield has done nothing illegal, so all the rest is mere value judgements based on a media circus generated by organisations that love talking about nothing but themselves.
He is one of millions of people who have met a partner at work and while the extreme junior-senior element was perhaps distasteful to some I don't see why this story is commanding so much attention.
He's left. He's gone. So presumably that's it?
It does seem like, unless there was illegality afoot, Schofield should now be left alone.
Or are the febrile media looking for a Caroline Flack redux?
The Viking invasions were probably the moment the English began to feel REALLY English. A people
There’s nothing like being attacked to make you the victims band together, and bond into a team
Indeed. I'd say most nations begin this way.
Look at what is happening in Ukraine right now. Before Putin's Special Clusterfuck, the Ukes were a bit nebulous, half Russian, half Polish, half hmmm (Putin actually had a historical point, tho it does not begin to justify his hideous war)
Now, the Ukrainians are ABSOLUTELY a nation. They are the people who got attacked by Russia. They will be the people that endured that horrible war (inshallah). "Ukrainian-ness" will be off the dial by the end of all this
Putin will achieve the complete opposite of what he intended
I agree with the general point, but roots of their cultural identity go back much longer than you suggest. The 'half Russian, half Polish" bit describes only the ruling elites over the course of the last few centuries.
Ukrainian history and culture is multi faceted but it is pretty long established. You can trace a distinct Ukrainian identity for a good 1000 years. So this idea that Ukrainians are a rather nebulous group is a bit of a false narrative- it depends who you talked to. Both Russians in the north and Ukrainians in the south looked to Kievan Rus as their proto-state, but from the Mongol invasion onward, the Southern identity became and remained separate from the North and after Moscow took control in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century there was a distinct linguistic and cultural divide.
What has happened is the total rejection of anything Russian, even things- like Pushkin- that were previously respected. With Ukraine, Russia is an Empire, without it, it has "yet to find a role" and is derided as a bunch of loathsome barbarians who couldn´t even do pillaging right.
You're correct about the much longer history.
Leon was not wrong, though, to point out what's now Ukraine was variously partitioned between the Russian, Polish Lithuanian, and Austria Hungarian empires over the course of several centuries. And the idea of the modern nation state has its roots only in the nineteenth century.
The first real attempt at building a Ukrainian nation state in the modern sense - quickly crushed - was in the aftermath of WWI. And then Stalin, and Holodomor, and Hitler. And Stalin again.
Ukraine was a fairly cohesive nation after the Maidan revolution. All Putin has done is guarantee it will never go back.
The idea of any modern nation state is almost always a nineteenth century invention. However, whereas the Czechs or the Estonians were able to achieve a nation state in 1918, as you say the charnel house of the USSR delayed the creation of a genuinely independent Ukrainian nation state until 1991. I´d say they were catching up on nation building astonishingly rapidly.
It also poses the question of whether the 19thC nation state is one we should never rethink. Contrary to the PB truism of there being no democracy without a demos, the very genesis of Ukraine's current nation state is democracy itself. What sort of demos can states really claim without democracy ?
I'm supremely uninterested and lack details - but why the furore? He's had an affair at work. Is that it?
I think it says a lot about the shifting sands of our culture. Would anyone have even regarded what he did as “an affair” 20 years ago?
It's bullshit though - the sands haven't really shifted. Jeez, I'd have been sacked loads of times. How many people have found their spouse's via work, often while with a former partner? The puritanism of some astonishes me.
Yup. I'm married to my former manageress, with whom I had a fling at work!
As far as I can see, Schofield has done nothing illegal, so all the rest is mere value judgements based on a media circus generated by organisations that love talking about nothing but themselves.
He is one of millions of people who have met a partner at work and while the extreme junior-senior element was perhaps distasteful to some I don't see why this story is commanding so much attention.
He's left. He's gone. So presumably that's it?
It does seem like, unless there was illegality afoot, Schofield should now be left alone.
Or are the febrile media looking for a Caroline Flack redux?
Why the politicians are getting involved by demanding ITV bosses come and talk to them is beyond me. That seems like absolute grandstanding.
I'm supremely uninterested and lack details - but why the furore? He's had an affair at work. Is that it?
I think it says a lot about the shifting sands of our culture. Would anyone have even regarded what he did as “an affair” 20 years ago?
It's bullshit though - the sands haven't really shifted. Jeez, I'd have been sacked loads of times. How many people have found their spouse's via work, often while with a former partner? The puritanism of some astonishes me.
I think a lot more questions at any workplace would be asked one of the big bosses at the company, had been chatting online with a teenager for a number of years, so much so, they got them a job at your company, then worked as their PA, shortly after which they started having an affair with them.
For similar reasons, teachers can't have relationships with students (even if legal age), same at universities, an academic is in big trouble if you say hire a PhD, then start having an affair with them.
The PhD thing is not entirely verboten. Happened with a friend when I was doing mine and her supervisor. Supervisor sought advice as soon as it happened and a meeting was set up to discuss implications. He stayed as supervisor for the rest of her studies (which was only about 6 months). To be clear, this was no an extramarital affair. The supervisor was a widower and single.
Here (where I am the supervisor) it is not forbidden, either, but line manager must be informed immediately - as with any actual or potential conflict of interest - and it is the expectation that supervision would change. Same for relationship between line manager and staff. And to be clear on this, I haven't personally tested this out!
Once you get to university, I think the common policy is that it's consenting adults but that any conflict of interest/favouritism concerns etc must be addressed and the staff member must be open.
The problem is I imagine all newspapers are trying to repeat the Daily Mail approach. In order to get advertising revenue you need the eyeballs on your site, and you want them to visit multiple times a day.
In order to do that you need to be constantly updating your site with new articles, and if you make clickbaity ones that getting people sharing them on social media, more the better.
The Daily Mailification of the media.
Is that why all the news outlets have all been wall to wall Phil and Holly for the last fortnight?
Bollocks.
It is nothing to do with "The Daily Mailification of the media".
We pay to read or watch this stuff.
The Socialist Worker is widely available if anyone wanted to make it the most popular online media outlet.
The media simply feeds what we want to consume.
That I think is where Harry and Megs need to be careful. Their crusade against "the media" is more correctly a crusade against the people who pay to consume the media.
Blimey, who rattled your cage Mr Dacre?
P.S. I learned last week that HYUFD rather impressively reads the Morning Star.
Not Wales Online as I thought that was where his sympathies lie?
I'm supremely uninterested and lack details - but why the furore? He's had an affair at work. Is that it?
I think it says a lot about the shifting sands of our culture. Would anyone have even regarded what he did as “an affair” 20 years ago?
It's bullshit though - the sands haven't really shifted. Jeez, I'd have been sacked loads of times. How many people have found their spouse's via work, often while with a former partner? The puritanism of some astonishes me.
Yup. I'm married to my former manageress, with whom I had a fling at work!
As far as I can see, Schofield has done nothing illegal, so all the rest is mere value judgements based on a media circus generated by organisations that love talking about nothing but themselves.
He is one of millions of people who have met a partner at work and while the extreme junior-senior element was perhaps distasteful to some I don't see why this story is commanding so much attention.
He's left. He's gone. So presumably that's it?
It does seem like, unless there was illegality afoot, Schofield should now be left alone.
Or are the febrile media looking for a Caroline Flack redux?
Because it’s been decided that the star ‘talent’, in his 50s, f…ing the 18-year-old intern, is no longer acceptable.
I'm supremely uninterested and lack details - but why the furore? He's had an affair at work. Is that it?
I think it says a lot about the shifting sands of our culture. Would anyone have even regarded what he did as “an affair” 20 years ago?
It's bullshit though - the sands haven't really shifted. Jeez, I'd have been sacked loads of times. How many people have found their spouse's via work, often while with a former partner? The puritanism of some astonishes me.
I think a lot more questions at any workplace would be asked one of the big bosses at the company, had been chatting online with a teenager for a number of years, so much so, they got them a job at your company, then worked as their PA, shortly after which they started having an affair with them.
For similar reasons, teachers can't have relationships with students (even if legal age), same at universities, an academic is in big trouble if you say hire a PhD, then start having an affair with them.
The PhD thing is not entirely verboten. Happened with a friend when I was doing mine and her supervisor. Supervisor sought advice as soon as it happened and a meeting was set up to discuss implications. He stayed as supervisor for the rest of her studies (which was only about 6 months). To be clear, this was no an extramarital affair. The supervisor was a widower and single.
Here (where I am the supervisor) it is not forbidden, either, but line manager must be informed immediately - as with any actual or potential conflict of interest - and it is the expectation that supervision would change. Same for relationship between line manager and staff. And to be clear on this, I haven't personally tested this out!
Once you get to university, I think the common policy is that it's consenting adults but that any conflict of interest/favouritism concerns etc must be addressed and the staff member must be open.
Where I am, the same as you, I think. It would be frowned upon, but if those steps were taken, I don't think it would be a sackable offence.
A PhD student of mine offered to introduce me to an age-appropriate friend of hers. I declined!
I'm supremely uninterested and lack details - but why the furore? He's had an affair at work. Is that it?
I think it says a lot about the shifting sands of our culture. Would anyone have even regarded what he did as “an affair” 20 years ago?
It's bullshit though - the sands haven't really shifted. Jeez, I'd have been sacked loads of times. How many people have found their spouse's via work, often while with a former partner? The puritanism of some astonishes me.
I think a lot more questions at any workplace would be asked one of the big bosses at the company, had been chatting online with a teenager for a number of years, so much so, they got them a job at your company, then worked as their PA, shortly after which they started having an affair with them.
For similar reasons, teachers can't have relationships with students (even if legal age), same at universities, an academic is in big trouble if you say hire a PhD, then start having an affair with them.
The PhD thing is not entirely verboten. Happened with a friend when I was doing mine and her supervisor. Supervisor sought advice as soon as it happened and a meeting was set up to discuss implications. He stayed as supervisor for the rest of her studies (which was only about 6 months). To be clear, this was no an extramarital affair. The supervisor was a widower and single.
Here (where I am the supervisor) it is not forbidden, either, but line manager must be informed immediately - as with any actual or potential conflict of interest - and it is the expectation that supervision would change. Same for relationship between line manager and staff. And to be clear on this, I haven't personally tested this out!
Once you get to university, I think the common policy is that it's consenting adults but that any conflict of interest/favouritism concerns etc must be addressed and the staff member must be open.
I am pretty sure when I was in academia, it was a no no.
But also key is, as long as informed immediately / open about it....imagine the academic totally denied it, but was going on. Also imagine if it was then revealed they had got to know each other when the student was a young teenager and they have pulled strings to get them that position, and swiftly after they started, an affair began.
Anyway seems far more important stories about, like yet another massive hack of personal / finance data. And of course while this story has been going, no media outlet wants to talk about Guardian me-to scandal or (more worryingly) the FT cover-up of it plus continued radio silence of it (other than one article in the Telegraph).
I'm supremely uninterested and lack details - but why the furore? He's had an affair at work. Is that it?
I think it says a lot about the shifting sands of our culture. Would anyone have even regarded what he did as “an affair” 20 years ago?
It's bullshit though - the sands haven't really shifted. Jeez, I'd have been sacked loads of times. How many people have found their spouse's via work, often while with a former partner? The puritanism of some astonishes me.
Yup. I'm married to my former manageress, with whom I had a fling at work!
As far as I can see, Schofield has done nothing illegal, so all the rest is mere value judgements based on a media circus generated by organisations that love talking about nothing but themselves.
He is one of millions of people who have met a partner at work and while the extreme junior-senior element was perhaps distasteful to some I don't see why this story is commanding so much attention.
He's left. He's gone. So presumably that's it?
It does seem like, unless there was illegality afoot, Schofield should now be left alone.
Or are the febrile media looking for a Caroline Flack redux?
Because it’s been decided that the star ‘talent’, in his 50s, f…ing the 18-year-old intern, is no longer acceptable.
Both men were over the age of consent weren’t they? What’s the point of having that law otherwise?
UK natural Gas prices up 20% today, European Gas prices up 18% today.
Short term spike due to Opec meeting yesterday or something more longer term ?
Worth noting that European natural gas prices are still a third lower than they were a month ago (€27 vs €38).
European natural gas prices are now comfortably below where they were pre-Russian invasion of Ukraine. (On a price per mmcf/mmbtu basis, this is equivalent to around €9.)
HYUFD said: And if the PP ignore Vox they cannot get anything through the Spanish Parliament without shifting left to get PSOE support either, which in turn will see much of their core support shift to Vox
FELIX reply: Politics does not work like that in Spain. Faced with that scenario a deal would be done either with PSOE abstention, minor party abstention, or at worst fresh elections. Hostility to Vox means thier 'real' power is very limited. The idea that the bulk of PP support would suddenly shift to Vox has emerged from your mind wothout any basis in the reality of Spanish politics. I see now why so many posters on here get utterly frustrated by your rigid approach to realpolitics. I think you can regard this discussion as finished.
The Viking invasions were probably the moment the English began to feel REALLY English. A people
There’s nothing like being attacked to make you the victims band together, and bond into a team
Indeed. I'd say most nations begin this way.
Look at what is happening in Ukraine right now. Before Putin's Special Clusterfuck, the Ukes were a bit nebulous, half Russian, half Polish, half hmmm (Putin actually had a historical point, tho it does not begin to justify his hideous war)
Now, the Ukrainians are ABSOLUTELY a nation. They are the people who got attacked by Russia. They will be the people that endured that horrible war (inshallah). "Ukrainian-ness" will be off the dial by the end of all this
Putin will achieve the complete opposite of what he intended
I agree with the general point, but roots of their cultural identity go back much longer than you suggest. The 'half Russian, half Polish" bit describes only the ruling elites over the course of the last few centuries.
Ukrainian history and culture is multi faceted but it is pretty long established. You can trace a distinct Ukrainian identity for a good 1000 years. So this idea that Ukrainians are a rather nebulous group is a bit of a false narrative- it depends who you talked to. Both Russians in the north and Ukrainians in the south looked to Kievan Rus as their proto-state, but from the Mongol invasion onward, the Southern identity became and remained separate from the North and after Moscow took control in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century there was a distinct linguistic and cultural divide.
What has happened is the total rejection of anything Russian, even things- like Pushkin- that were previously respected. With Ukraine, Russia is an Empire, without it, it has "yet to find a role" and is derided as a bunch of loathsome barbarians who couldn´t even do pillaging right.
You're correct about the much longer history.
Leon was not wrong, though, to point out what's now Ukraine was variously partitioned between the Russian, Polish Lithuanian, and Austria Hungarian empires over the course of several centuries. And the idea of the modern nation state has its roots only in the nineteenth century.
The first real attempt at building a Ukrainian nation state in the modern sense - quickly crushed - was in the aftermath of WWI. And then Stalin, and Holodomor, and Hitler. And Stalin again.
Ukraine was a fairly cohesive nation after the Maidan revolution. All Putin has done is guarantee it will never go back.
The idea of any modern nation state is almost always a nineteenth century invention. However, whereas the Czechs or the Estonians were able to achieve a nation state in 1918, as you say the charnel house of the USSR delayed the creation of a genuinely independent Ukrainian nation state until 1991. I´d say they were catching up on nation building astonishingly rapidly.
It also poses the question of whether the 19thC nation state is one we should never rethink. Contrary to the PB truism of there being no democracy without a demos, the very genesis of Ukraine's current nation state is democracy itself. What sort of demos can states really claim without democracy ?
Nationalism, and movement towards democracy, if not full democracy, go hand in hand I think. I'd say that the French Revolution gave rise to nationalism as we would understand it today.
I'm supremely uninterested and lack details - but why the furore? He's had an affair at work. Is that it?
I think it says a lot about the shifting sands of our culture. Would anyone have even regarded what he did as “an affair” 20 years ago?
It's bullshit though - the sands haven't really shifted. Jeez, I'd have been sacked loads of times. How many people have found their spouse's via work, often while with a former partner? The puritanism of some astonishes me.
I think a lot more questions at any workplace would be asked one of the big bosses at the company, had been chatting online with a teenager for a number of years, so much so, they got them a job at your company, then worked as their PA, shortly after which they started having an affair with them.
For similar reasons, teachers can't have relationships with students (even if legal age), same at universities, an academic is in big trouble if you say hire a PhD, then start having an affair with them.
The PhD thing is not entirely verboten. Happened with a friend when I was doing mine and her supervisor. Supervisor sought advice as soon as it happened and a meeting was set up to discuss implications. He stayed as supervisor for the rest of her studies (which was only about 6 months). To be clear, this was no an extramarital affair. The supervisor was a widower and single.
Here (where I am the supervisor) it is not forbidden, either, but line manager must be informed immediately - as with any actual or potential conflict of interest - and it is the expectation that supervision would change. Same for relationship between line manager and staff. And to be clear on this, I haven't personally tested this out!
Once you get to university, I think the common policy is that it's consenting adults but that any conflict of interest/favouritism concerns etc must be addressed and the staff member must be open.
I am pretty sure when I was in academia, it was a no no.
But also key is, as long as informed immediately / open about it....imagine the academic totally denied it, but was going on. Also I imagine if it was then revealed they had got to know each other when the student was a young teenager and they have pulled strings to get them that position, and swiftly after they started, an affair began.
Anyway seems far more important stories about, like yet another massive hack of personal / finance data.
For Schofield, there's the possible conflict of interest/favouritism and definite lack of openness to avoid those issues.
But, as far as I can see, it's been adequately dealt with by his sacking/resignation. It's a bit like when my son or daughter try to tell me about some naughty thing the other did that my wife has already dealt with: "Has mummy dealt with it? Then I don't need to hear any more." I feel the same about this. It's been dealt with. Barring something illegal having taken place, I/everyone else doesn't need to hear any more about it.
Re the Anglo-Saxons, if we can’t call them “Anglo-Saxons” then what do we call the Germanic invaders who took over the country in the 4th-6th century, displacing Romano-Brits and Celts?
Coz that definitely happened. We can see from place-name evidence. Everywhere
Crikey, yes. Yet again some guy posting on a discussion site completely outwits the academic establishment by spotting something all the eggheads had missed. There'll be some red faces in our universities today. Thank heaven for the Internet.
I’m actually not disputing the Woke academics here on the term (I’ve always felt “Anglo-Saxon” is slightly clumsy). I’m saying the ARGUMENT is a Woke irrelevance. In the 4th-6th century a bunch of Germanic types with a new culture and language came over to Britain and altered our gene pool and changed all the place names. That indisputably happened (you can call it an invasion or not, that’s not my point)
These people need a name. If it can’t be Anglo-Saxon then what will that name be?
As I say, only “early English” is short and pithy enough to work but that will just get the lefties even angrier
The crux of the issue, when not misrepresented by ignorant commentators, is whether the label refers to a distinct ethnic group. It does not, despite the beliefs of some who would rather it did. The reason why they would rather it did fits into the reason for it being a relevant question. Those who would seek to build their politics on a pillar of racial purity or superiority have a fatal flaw in the foundations of their ideology.
Sadly these people still exist and their reaction is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.
I think that a group of people that one can call Anglo-Saxons, or English, had become a distinct ethnic group, by the middle of the 10th century, and I see nothing in the Reddit article that conflicts with that.
That's very different from saying that these people formed the basis of some kind of pure or superior race.
The same way I'd say that Germans existed at this time. They just weren't the kind of people that 19th Century German nationalists thought they were.
And do you have any evidence for this distinct ethnicity? It doesn't seem very likely to me, given the continued cultural and linguistic diversity even within England, and what we know of extant genetic differences today. There were and still are many Englands within the borders of England. The wider you cast your net to catch of England, the more readily you will scoop up that which is not and never has been England. Do you think Cumbrians were closer to Sussex folk or to people from Strathclyde? How much did the people of Whitby have in common with Oksbøl versus Oxford?
I have serious doubts about whether you could ever draw a genetic line around England and only England at any point in all of England's history.
And if given the above is true, what use could there be for persisting with the myth if not to make political mischief today? In whose interest is it to link a nation to a fictional genetic stock, other than those whose ideology is filtration and exclusion?
A Royal House whose kings called themselves Kings of England. England would be conquered in the future, but England never ceased to exist as an entity, after 960. They had a common language, a common literature, a common religion, and a common enemy.
These are what create an ethnic group. Claiming that the Anglo-Saxons did not exist as an ethnic group is like claiming that Poles, Germans, Ukrainians etc. did not.
Much of what you claim here can be disputed, though. Caxton's dilemma when choosing how to translate works he intended to print in "English" illustrates the linguistic point:
And he asked specifically for eggs, and the good woman said that she spoke no French, and the merchant got angry for he could not speak French either, but he wanted eggs and she could not understand him. And then at last another person said that he wanted ‘eyren’. Then the good woman said that she understood him well.
That is, people from the opposite ends of England often literally could not understand one another, to the extent that one of them thought the other was speaking an entirely different language! And this is from the year 1490. 1490!
The heterogeneity of England in pre-modern times is consistently underestimated, and by the time it really settles down into something that one can really start to sensibly call one ethnic group, you're already way beyond the point where England was its own thing. What of Wales, by the time Caxton was writing?
As for the common enemy... whom? When? Even when the Normans invaded, there wasn't unity, even between midlands and the south. If there had have been, the invasion might have been repelled.
The common enemy were the Danes and the Norse. The House of Wessex/England spent 150 years fighting them. As we're seeing in Ukraine, nothing does more to create a shared sense of identity than military service against an enemy attacking one's homeland.
What's the evidence for this English unity against the Norse? The Norse occupied much of England at the time of Alfred, and when Alfred stemmed the invasion of Wessex the settlement left the likes of Guthrum in power in other parts of England. Alfred was comfortable accommodating Norse rule in other parts of England as long as the Norse leadership converted to Christianity. Was there a popular clamour against this, anywhere? Did the Norse settlers in the north and east of England want a unified England? Did anybody outside the court of Wessex really care about that kind of nation building?
Farooq c. 2100: "What's the evidence for this Ukrainian unity against the Russians? The Russians occupied much of Ukraine at the time of Zelensky, who was himself a native Russian speaker. Was there a popular clamour against this, anywhere? Did the Russian settlers in the south and east of Ukraine want a unified state? Did anybody outside the US-sponsored Kiev regime really care about that kind of nation building?"
The Viking invasions were probably the moment the English began to feel REALLY English. A people
There’s nothing like being attacked to make you the victims band together, and bond into a team
Indeed. I'd say most nations begin this way.
Look at what is happening in Ukraine right now. Before Putin's Special Clusterfuck, the Ukes were a bit nebulous, half Russian, half Polish, half hmmm (Putin actually had a historical point, tho it does not begin to justify his hideous war)
Now, the Ukrainians are ABSOLUTELY a nation. They are the people who got attacked by Russia. They will be the people that endured that horrible war (inshallah). "Ukrainian-ness" will be off the dial by the end of all this
Putin will achieve the complete opposite of what he intended
I agree with the general point, but roots of their cultural identity go back much longer than you suggest. The 'half Russian, half Polish" bit describes only the ruling elites over the course of the last few centuries.
Ukrainian history and culture is multi faceted but it is pretty long established. You can trace a distinct Ukrainian identity for a good 1000 years. So this idea that Ukrainians are a rather nebulous group is a bit of a false narrative- it depends who you talked to. Both Russians in the north and Ukrainians in the south looked to Kievan Rus as their proto-state, but from the Mongol invasion onward, the Southern identity became and remained separate from the North and after Moscow took control in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century there was a distinct linguistic and cultural divide.
What has happened is the total rejection of anything Russian, even things- like Pushkin- that were previously respected. With Ukraine, Russia is an Empire, without it, it has "yet to find a role" and is derided as a bunch of loathsome barbarians who couldn´t even do pillaging right.
You're correct about the much longer history.
Leon was not wrong, though, to point out what's now Ukraine was variously partitioned between the Russian, Polish Lithuanian, and Austria Hungarian empires over the course of several centuries. And the idea of the modern nation state has its roots only in the nineteenth century.
The first real attempt at building a Ukrainian nation state in the modern sense - quickly crushed - was in the aftermath of WWI. And then Stalin, and Holodomor, and Hitler. And Stalin again.
Ukraine was a fairly cohesive nation after the Maidan revolution. All Putin has done is guarantee it will never go back.
The idea of any modern nation state is almost always a nineteenth century invention. However, whereas the Czechs or the Estonians were able to achieve a nation state in 1918, as you say the charnel house of the USSR delayed the creation of a genuinely independent Ukrainian nation state until 1991. I´d say they were catching up on nation building astonishingly rapidly.
The first Ukrainian state set up in 1918 was essentially a German protectorate. Of course it collapsed soon after the Armistice 9 months later.
Re the Anglo-Saxons, if we can’t call them “Anglo-Saxons” then what do we call the Germanic invaders who took over the country in the 4th-6th century, displacing Romano-Brits and Celts?
Coz that definitely happened. We can see from place-name evidence. Everywhere
Crikey, yes. Yet again some guy posting on a discussion site completely outwits the academic establishment by spotting something all the eggheads had missed. There'll be some red faces in our universities today. Thank heaven for the Internet.
I’m actually not disputing the Woke academics here on the term (I’ve always felt “Anglo-Saxon” is slightly clumsy). I’m saying the ARGUMENT is a Woke irrelevance. In the 4th-6th century a bunch of Germanic types with a new culture and language came over to Britain and altered our gene pool and changed all the place names. That indisputably happened (you can call it an invasion or not, that’s not my point)
These people need a name. If it can’t be Anglo-Saxon then what will that name be?
As I say, only “early English” is short and pithy enough to work but that will just get the lefties even angrier
The crux of the issue, when not misrepresented by ignorant commentators, is whether the label refers to a distinct ethnic group. It does not, despite the beliefs of some who would rather it did. The reason why they would rather it did fits into the reason for it being a relevant question. Those who would seek to build their politics on a pillar of racial purity or superiority have a fatal flaw in the foundations of their ideology.
Sadly these people still exist and their reaction is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.
I think that a group of people that one can call Anglo-Saxons, or English, had become a distinct ethnic group, by the middle of the 10th century, and I see nothing in the Reddit article that conflicts with that.
That's very different from saying that these people formed the basis of some kind of pure or superior race.
The same way I'd say that Germans existed at this time. They just weren't the kind of people that 19th Century German nationalists thought they were.
And do you have any evidence for this distinct ethnicity? It doesn't seem very likely to me, given the continued cultural and linguistic diversity even within England, and what we know of extant genetic differences today. There were and still are many Englands within the borders of England. The wider you cast your net to catch of England, the more readily you will scoop up that which is not and never has been England. Do you think Cumbrians were closer to Sussex folk or to people from Strathclyde? How much did the people of Whitby have in common with Oksbøl versus Oxford?
I have serious doubts about whether you could ever draw a genetic line around England and only England at any point in all of England's history.
And if given the above is true, what use could there be for persisting with the myth if not to make political mischief today? In whose interest is it to link a nation to a fictional genetic stock, other than those whose ideology is filtration and exclusion?
A Royal House whose kings called themselves Kings of England. England would be conquered in the future, but England never ceased to exist as an entity, after 960. They had a common language, a common literature, a common religion, and a common enemy.
These are what create an ethnic group. Claiming that the Anglo-Saxons did not exist as an ethnic group is like claiming that Poles, Germans, Ukrainians etc. did not.
Much of what you claim here can be disputed, though. Caxton's dilemma when choosing how to translate works he intended to print in "English" illustrates the linguistic point:
And he asked specifically for eggs, and the good woman said that she spoke no French, and the merchant got angry for he could not speak French either, but he wanted eggs and she could not understand him. And then at last another person said that he wanted ‘eyren’. Then the good woman said that she understood him well.
That is, people from the opposite ends of England often literally could not understand one another, to the extent that one of them thought the other was speaking an entirely different language! And this is from the year 1490. 1490!
The heterogeneity of England in pre-modern times is consistently underestimated, and by the time it really settles down into something that one can really start to sensibly call one ethnic group, you're already way beyond the point where England was its own thing. What of Wales, by the time Caxton was writing?
As for the common enemy... whom? When? Even when the Normans invaded, there wasn't unity, even between midlands and the south. If there had have been, the invasion might have been repelled.
The common enemy were the Danes and the Norse. The House of Wessex/England spent 150 years fighting them. As we're seeing in Ukraine, nothing does more to create a shared sense of identity than military service against an enemy attacking one's homeland.
What's the evidence for this English unity against the Norse? The Norse occupied much of England at the time of Alfred, and when Alfred stemmed the invasion of Wessex the settlement left the likes of Guthrum in power in other parts of England. Alfred was comfortable accommodating Norse rule in other parts of England as long as the Norse leadership converted to Christianity. Was there a popular clamour against this, anywhere? Did the Norse settlers in the north and east of England want a unified England? Did anybody outside the court of Wessex really care about that kind of nation building?
The Court of Wessex and the clergy who served them loyally were the people who mattered. Within 50 years after Alfred's death, they'd unified it all (other than a brief attempt by Eric Bloodaxe to regain York). The Heptarchy was gone for ever. Nobody was interested in reviving Northumbria, East Anglia, Kent, Mercia as separate kingdoms.
As ever, the headline doesn't reflect the reality of the story:
He added: “I’m not trying to create any scaremongering, and I want to emphasise that not all 6,000 multi-storey car parks across the UK have to be closed.
“It’s only the very old ones, built in the 60s and 70s, which are in a very poor state of repair and have weakened over time which will probably need to have some work done to them.
Basically the title should be "Heavy cars too heavy for old multi-story car parks".
The Viking invasions were probably the moment the English began to feel REALLY English. A people
There’s nothing like being attacked to make you the victims band together, and bond into a team
Indeed. I'd say most nations begin this way.
Look at what is happening in Ukraine right now. Before Putin's Special Clusterfuck, the Ukes were a bit nebulous, half Russian, half Polish, half hmmm (Putin actually had a historical point, tho it does not begin to justify his hideous war)
Now, the Ukrainians are ABSOLUTELY a nation. They are the people who got attacked by Russia. They will be the people that endured that horrible war (inshallah). "Ukrainian-ness" will be off the dial by the end of all this
Putin will achieve the complete opposite of what he intended
I agree with the general point, but roots of their cultural identity go back much longer than you suggest. The 'half Russian, half Polish" bit describes only the ruling elites over the course of the last few centuries.
Ukrainian history and culture is multi faceted but it is pretty long established. You can trace a distinct Ukrainian identity for a good 1000 years. So this idea that Ukrainians are a rather nebulous group is a bit of a false narrative- it depends who you talked to. Both Russians in the north and Ukrainians in the south looked to Kievan Rus as their proto-state, but from the Mongol invasion onward, the Southern identity became and remained separate from the North and after Moscow took control in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century there was a distinct linguistic and cultural divide.
What has happened is the total rejection of anything Russian, even things- like Pushkin- that were previously respected. With Ukraine, Russia is an Empire, without it, it has "yet to find a role" and is derided as a bunch of loathsome barbarians who couldn´t even do pillaging right.
You're correct about the much longer history.
Leon was not wrong, though, to point out what's now Ukraine was variously partitioned between the Russian, Polish Lithuanian, and Austria Hungarian empires over the course of several centuries. And the idea of the modern nation state has its roots only in the nineteenth century.
The first real attempt at building a Ukrainian nation state in the modern sense - quickly crushed - was in the aftermath of WWI. And then Stalin, and Holodomor, and Hitler. And Stalin again.
Ukraine was a fairly cohesive nation after the Maidan revolution. All Putin has done is guarantee it will never go back.
The idea of any modern nation state is almost always a nineteenth century invention. However, whereas the Czechs or the Estonians were able to achieve a nation state in 1918, as you say the charnel house of the USSR delayed the creation of a genuinely independent Ukrainian nation state until 1991. I´d say they were catching up on nation building astonishingly rapidly.
It also poses the question of whether the 19thC nation state is one we should never rethink. Contrary to the PB truism of there being no democracy without a demos, the very genesis of Ukraine's current nation state is democracy itself. What sort of demos can states really claim without democracy ?
Nationalism, and movement towards democracy, if not full democracy, go hand in hand I think. I'd say that the French Revolution gave rise to nationalism as we would understand it today.
Mary Beard in a recent episode of the podcast Empire argued that the rise of democracy was often associated with a iniquitous division of society into those that matter and those that don't. I'm not certain exactly how this fits with your claim, but the details are left to the reader.
I'm supremely uninterested and lack details - but why the furore? He's had an affair at work. Is that it?
I think it says a lot about the shifting sands of our culture. Would anyone have even regarded what he did as “an affair” 20 years ago?
It's bullshit though - the sands haven't really shifted. Jeez, I'd have been sacked loads of times. How many people have found their spouse's via work, often while with a former partner? The puritanism of some astonishes me.
Yup. I'm married to my former manageress, with whom I had a fling at work!
As far as I can see, Schofield has done nothing illegal, so all the rest is mere value judgements based on a media circus generated by organisations that love talking about nothing but themselves.
He is one of millions of people who have met a partner at work and while the extreme junior-senior element was perhaps distasteful to some I don't see why this story is commanding so much attention.
He's left. He's gone. So presumably that's it?
It does seem like, unless there was illegality afoot, Schofield should now be left alone.
Or are the febrile media looking for a Caroline Flack redux?
Because it’s been decided that the star ‘talent’, in his 50s, f…ing the 18-year-old intern, is no longer acceptable.
Both men were over the age of consent weren’t they? What’s the point of having that law otherwise?
A sixth form girl inflagrante with her teacher would also be a case of two people being over the age of consent, but it wouldn't stop the teacher getting banged up.
I just don't believe hounding Schofield is the way forward. If he has broken the law, that is for law enforcement to determine, if he hasn't leave him alone.
As ever, the headline doesn't reflect the reality of the story:
He added: “I’m not trying to create any scaremongering, and I want to emphasise that not all 6,000 multi-storey car parks across the UK have to be closed.
“It’s only the very old ones, built in the 60s and 70s, which are in a very poor state of repair and have we
The much more interesting question is why is there this sudden splurge of hate for electric cars?
As ever, the headline doesn't reflect the reality of the story:
He added: “I’m not trying to create any scaremongering, and I want to emphasise that not all 6,000 multi-storey car parks across the UK have to be closed.
“It’s only the very old ones, built in the 60s and 70s, which are in a very poor state of repair and have we
The much more interesting question is why is there this sudden splurge of hate for electric cars?
And why is it so pessimistic? Sure, there may be some problems in the transition from internal combustion engines, but they aren't beyond the wit of humanity to solve.
As ever, the headline doesn't reflect the reality of the story:
He added: “I’m not trying to create any scaremongering, and I want to emphasise that not all 6,000 multi-storey car parks across the UK have to be closed.
“It’s only the very old ones, built in the 60s and 70s, which are in a very poor state of repair and have weakened over time which will probably need to have some work done to them.
Basically the title should be "Heavy cars too heavy for old multi-story car parks".
In the ‘60s and ‘70s, the average car weighed about 800kg In the 2010s, the average car weighed about 1600kg The average 2030s car might be over 2000kg.
Which could be a massive issue for the engineering calculations on those 1960s car parks, and a reminder both to the operators and regulators, that there’s a potential issue here.
The Viking invasions were probably the moment the English began to feel REALLY English. A people
There’s nothing like being attacked to make you the victims band together, and bond into a team
Indeed. I'd say most nations begin this way.
Look at what is happening in Ukraine right now. Before Putin's Special Clusterfuck, the Ukes were a bit nebulous, half Russian, half Polish, half hmmm (Putin actually had a historical point, tho it does not begin to justify his hideous war)
Now, the Ukrainians are ABSOLUTELY a nation. They are the people who got attacked by Russia. They will be the people that endured that horrible war (inshallah). "Ukrainian-ness" will be off the dial by the end of all this
Putin will achieve the complete opposite of what he intended
I agree with the general point, but roots of their cultural identity go back much longer than you suggest. The 'half Russian, half Polish" bit describes only the ruling elites over the course of the last few centuries.
Ukrainian history and culture is multi faceted but it is pretty long established. You can trace a distinct Ukrainian identity for a good 1000 years. So this idea that Ukrainians are a rather nebulous group is a bit of a false narrative- it depends who you talked to. Both Russians in the north and Ukrainians in the south looked to Kievan Rus as their proto-state, but from the Mongol invasion onward, the Southern identity became and remained separate from the North and after Moscow took control in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century there was a distinct linguistic and cultural divide.
What has happened is the total rejection of anything Russian, even things- like Pushkin- that were previously respected. With Ukraine, Russia is an Empire, without it, it has "yet to find a role" and is derided as a bunch of loathsome barbarians who couldn´t even do pillaging right.
You're correct about the much longer history.
Leon was not wrong, though, to point out what's now Ukraine was variously partitioned between the Russian, Polish Lithuanian, and Austria Hungarian empires over the course of several centuries. And the idea of the modern nation state has its roots only in the nineteenth century.
The first real attempt at building a Ukrainian nation state in the modern sense - quickly crushed - was in the aftermath of WWI. And then Stalin, and Holodomor, and Hitler. And Stalin again.
Ukraine was a fairly cohesive nation after the Maidan revolution. All Putin has done is guarantee it will never go back.
The idea of any modern nation state is almost always a nineteenth century invention. However, whereas the Czechs or the Estonians were able to achieve a nation state in 1918, as you say the charnel house of the USSR delayed the creation of a genuinely independent Ukrainian nation state until 1991. I´d say they were catching up on nation building astonishingly rapidly.
It also poses the question of whether the 19thC nation state is one we should never rethink. Contrary to the PB truism of there being no democracy without a demos, the very genesis of Ukraine's current nation state is democracy itself. What sort of demos can states really claim without democracy ?
Nationalism, and movement towards democracy, if not full democracy, go hand in hand I think. I'd say that the French Revolution gave rise to nationalism as we would understand it today.
Mary Beard in a recent episode of the podcast Empire argued that the rise of democracy was often associated with a iniquitous division of society into those that matter and those that don't. I'm not certain exactly how this fits with your claim, but the details are left to the reader.
The fate of minorities may indeed be more precarious under a democracy, as compared to an imperial system of government.
Re the Anglo-Saxons, if we can’t call them “Anglo-Saxons” then what do we call the Germanic invaders who took over the country in the 4th-6th century, displacing Romano-Brits and Celts?
Coz that definitely happened. We can see from place-name evidence. Everywhere
Crikey, yes. Yet again some guy posting on a discussion site completely outwits the academic establishment by spotting something all the eggheads had missed. There'll be some red faces in our universities today. Thank heaven for the Internet.
I’m actually not disputing the Woke academics here on the term (I’ve always felt “Anglo-Saxon” is slightly clumsy). I’m saying the ARGUMENT is a Woke irrelevance. In the 4th-6th century a bunch of Germanic types with a new culture and language came over to Britain and altered our gene pool and changed all the place names. That indisputably happened (you can call it an invasion or not, that’s not my point)
These people need a name. If it can’t be Anglo-Saxon then what will that name be?
As I say, only “early English” is short and pithy enough to work but that will just get the lefties even angrier
The crux of the issue, when not misrepresented by ignorant commentators, is whether the label refers to a distinct ethnic group. It does not, despite the beliefs of some who would rather it did. The reason why they would rather it did fits into the reason for it being a relevant question. Those who would seek to build their politics on a pillar of racial purity or superiority have a fatal flaw in the foundations of their ideology.
Sadly these people still exist and their reaction is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.
I think that a group of people that one can call Anglo-Saxons, or English, had become a distinct ethnic group, by the middle of the 10th century, and I see nothing in the Reddit article that conflicts with that.
That's very different from saying that these people formed the basis of some kind of pure or superior race.
The same way I'd say that Germans existed at this time. They just weren't the kind of people that 19th Century German nationalists thought they were.
And do you have any evidence for this distinct ethnicity? It doesn't seem very likely to me, given the continued cultural and linguistic diversity even within England, and what we know of extant genetic differences today. There were and still are many Englands within the borders of England. The wider you cast your net to catch of England, the more readily you will scoop up that which is not and never has been England. Do you think Cumbrians were closer to Sussex folk or to people from Strathclyde? How much did the people of Whitby have in common with Oksbøl versus Oxford?
I have serious doubts about whether you could ever draw a genetic line around England and only England at any point in all of England's history.
And if given the above is true, what use could there be for persisting with the myth if not to make political mischief today? In whose interest is it to link a nation to a fictional genetic stock, other than those whose ideology is filtration and exclusion?
A Royal House whose kings called themselves Kings of England. England would be conquered in the future, but England never ceased to exist as an entity, after 960. They had a common language, a common literature, a common religion, and a common enemy.
These are what create an ethnic group. Claiming that the Anglo-Saxons did not exist as an ethnic group is like claiming that Poles, Germans, Ukrainians etc. did not.
Much of what you claim here can be disputed, though. Caxton's dilemma when choosing how to translate works he intended to print in "English" illustrates the linguistic point:
And he asked specifically for eggs, and the good woman said that she spoke no French, and the merchant got angry for he could not speak French either, but he wanted eggs and she could not understand him. And then at last another person said that he wanted ‘eyren’. Then the good woman said that she understood him well.
That is, people from the opposite ends of England often literally could not understand one another, to the extent that one of them thought the other was speaking an entirely different language! And this is from the year 1490. 1490!
The heterogeneity of England in pre-modern times is consistently underestimated, and by the time it really settles down into something that one can really start to sensibly call one ethnic group, you're already way beyond the point where England was its own thing. What of Wales, by the time Caxton was writing?
As for the common enemy... whom? When? Even when the Normans invaded, there wasn't unity, even between midlands and the south. If there had have been, the invasion might have been repelled.
The common enemy were the Danes and the Norse. The House of Wessex/England spent 150 years fighting them. As we're seeing in Ukraine, nothing does more to create a shared sense of identity than military service against an enemy attacking one's homeland.
What's the evidence for this English unity against the Norse? The Norse occupied much of England at the time of Alfred, and when Alfred stemmed the invasion of Wessex the settlement left the likes of Guthrum in power in other parts of England. Alfred was comfortable accommodating Norse rule in other parts of England as long as the Norse leadership converted to Christianity. Was there a popular clamour against this, anywhere? Did the Norse settlers in the north and east of England want a unified England? Did anybody outside the court of Wessex really care about that kind of nation building?
AIUi, Edmund, then King of East Anglia paid off the Great Heathen Army to go and spoil some other petty rulers land. It was only when he wouldn't pay them any more that they turned on him, made a martyr of him and he became Saint Edmund, of Bury Saint Edmunds fame! That was 866 or so.
Cars have generally - even before EVs - been getting larger and heavier.
The old Mini weighted less than 600kg; the new one is twice that (or maybe even a little more).
However, this is a problem that is easily solved. If a car park is deemed unable to deal with the weight of modern cars, you just mandate max capacity of 80% or whatever.
I'm supremely uninterested and lack details - but why the furore? He's had an affair at work. Is that it?
I think it says a lot about the shifting sands of our culture. Would anyone have even regarded what he did as “an affair” 20 years ago?
It's bullshit though - the sands haven't really shifted. Jeez, I'd have been sacked loads of times. How many people have found their spouse's via work, often while with a former partner? The puritanism of some astonishes me.
Yup. I'm married to my former manageress, with whom I had a fling at work!
As far as I can see, Schofield has done nothing illegal, so all the rest is mere value judgements based on a media circus generated by organisations that love talking about nothing but themselves.
He is one of millions of people who have met a partner at work and while the extreme junior-senior element was perhaps distasteful to some I don't see why this story is commanding so much attention.
He's left. He's gone. So presumably that's it?
It does seem like, unless there was illegality afoot, Schofield should now be left alone.
Or are the febrile media looking for a Caroline Flack redux?
Because it’s been decided that the star ‘talent’, in his 50s, f…ing the 18-year-old intern, is no longer acceptable.
Both men were over the age of consent weren’t they? What’s the point of having that law otherwise?
A sixth form girl inflagrante with her teacher would also be a case of two people being over the age of consent, but it wouldn't stop the teacher getting banged up.
I just don't believe hounding Schofield is the way forward. If he has broken the law, that is for law enforcement to determine, if he hasn't leave him alone.
The problem here appears to be that the fellow teacher, head of department, deputy head, head teacher, school board, and local education authority, all knew about the relationship, realised it was bad, and conspired to cover it up.
Re the Anglo-Saxons, if we can’t call them “Anglo-Saxons” then what do we call the Germanic invaders who took over the country in the 4th-6th century, displacing Romano-Brits and Celts?
Coz that definitely happened. We can see from place-name evidence. Everywhere
Crikey, yes. Yet again some guy posting on a discussion site completely outwits the academic establishment by spotting something all the eggheads had missed. There'll be some red faces in our universities today. Thank heaven for the Internet.
I’m actually not disputing the Woke academics here on the term (I’ve always felt “Anglo-Saxon” is slightly clumsy). I’m saying the ARGUMENT is a Woke irrelevance. In the 4th-6th century a bunch of Germanic types with a new culture and language came over to Britain and altered our gene pool and changed all the place names. That indisputably happened (you can call it an invasion or not, that’s not my point)
These people need a name. If it can’t be Anglo-Saxon then what will that name be?
As I say, only “early English” is short and pithy enough to work but that will just get the lefties even angrier
The crux of the issue, when not misrepresented by ignorant commentators, is whether the label refers to a distinct ethnic group. It does not, despite the beliefs of some who would rather it did. The reason why they would rather it did fits into the reason for it being a relevant question. Those who would seek to build their politics on a pillar of racial purity or superiority have a fatal flaw in the foundations of their ideology.
Sadly these people still exist and their reaction is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.
I think that a group of people that one can call Anglo-Saxons, or English, had become a distinct ethnic group, by the middle of the 10th century, and I see nothing in the Reddit article that conflicts with that.
That's very different from saying that these people formed the basis of some kind of pure or superior race.
The same way I'd say that Germans existed at this time. They just weren't the kind of people that 19th Century German nationalists thought they were.
And do you have any evidence for this distinct ethnicity? It doesn't seem very likely to me, given the continued cultural and linguistic diversity even within England, and what we know of extant genetic differences today. There were and still are many Englands within the borders of England. The wider you cast your net to catch of England, the more readily you will scoop up that which is not and never has been England. Do you think Cumbrians were closer to Sussex folk or to people from Strathclyde? How much did the people of Whitby have in common with Oksbøl versus Oxford?
I have serious doubts about whether you could ever draw a genetic line around England and only England at any point in all of England's history.
And if given the above is true, what use could there be for persisting with the myth if not to make political mischief today? In whose interest is it to link a nation to a fictional genetic stock, other than those whose ideology is filtration and exclusion?
A Royal House whose kings called themselves Kings of England. England would be conquered in the future, but England never ceased to exist as an entity, after 960. They had a common language, a common literature, a common religion, and a common enemy.
These are what create an ethnic group. Claiming that the Anglo-Saxons did not exist as an ethnic group is like claiming that Poles, Germans, Ukrainians etc. did not.
Much of what you claim here can be disputed, though. Caxton's dilemma when choosing how to translate works he intended to print in "English" illustrates the linguistic point:
And he asked specifically for eggs, and the good woman said that she spoke no French, and the merchant got angry for he could not speak French either, but he wanted eggs and she could not understand him. And then at last another person said that he wanted ‘eyren’. Then the good woman said that she understood him well.
That is, people from the opposite ends of England often literally could not understand one another, to the extent that one of them thought the other was speaking an entirely different language! And this is from the year 1490. 1490!
The heterogeneity of England in pre-modern times is consistently underestimated, and by the time it really settles down into something that one can really start to sensibly call one ethnic group, you're already way beyond the point where England was its own thing. What of Wales, by the time Caxton was writing?
As for the common enemy... whom? When? Even when the Normans invaded, there wasn't unity, even between midlands and the south. If there had have been, the invasion might have been repelled.
The common enemy were the Danes and the Norse. The House of Wessex/England spent 150 years fighting them. As we're seeing in Ukraine, nothing does more to create a shared sense of identity than military service against an enemy attacking one's homeland.
What's the evidence for this English unity against the Norse? The Norse occupied much of England at the time of Alfred, and when Alfred stemmed the invasion of Wessex the settlement left the likes of Guthrum in power in other parts of England. Alfred was comfortable accommodating Norse rule in other parts of England as long as the Norse leadership converted to Christianity. Was there a popular clamour against this, anywhere? Did the Norse settlers in the north and east of England want a unified England? Did anybody outside the court of Wessex really care about that kind of nation building?
Farooq c. 2100: "What's the evidence for this Ukrainian unity against the Russians? The Russians occupied much of Ukraine at the time of Zelensky, who was himself a native Russian speaker. Was there a popular clamour against this, anywhere? Did the Russian settlers in the south and east of Ukraine want a unified state? Did anybody outside the US-sponsored Kiev regime really care about that kind of nation building?"
Well no, because the written evidence of what ordinary Ukrainians think about Russia's fascist imperialism is a matter of record. If you think we have that kind of documentary evidence of what a peasant farmer outside St Edmundsbury or a miller in Jorvik thought about Norse or Wessex rule you're kidding yourself. We have scant and partial evidence from that time. It's hard to elevate the records kept in Winchester to a story of a nation united to throw off the Viking yoke. You need much better evidence than you have for that kind of claim.
That's not what I was getting at but rather than you seem overly keen to dismiss any foundation for English national identity.
For an IT person, I'm someone who has been supremely unfused by a lot of elements of IT as an end user - here's another Windows laptop, here's Chrome, here's IE - OK, no bother, I can generally do my job 99% of the day with mind to keyboard as the limiting performance factor. Some websites do better on Chrome, some prefer Edge, Bing increasingly gives similar results as Google, which wasn't what happened on a few years ago. Firefox or a.n.other, why pose, just go with what is in front of you.
But Edge my word - nicey, nicey Corporate home pages are increasingly gone, the configurability has reduced and the force feeding of MSN aggregated horse shit is barely tolerable. I mean, you can get the same, marginally better quality, stuff from Chrome but it is more buried.
It's crept up on me, but I need to get away from it now.
I wonder how many are passively getting their worldview Mailified.
Re the Anglo-Saxons, if we can’t call them “Anglo-Saxons” then what do we call the Germanic invaders who took over the country in the 4th-6th century, displacing Romano-Brits and Celts?
Coz that definitely happened. We can see from place-name evidence. Everywhere
Crikey, yes. Yet again some guy posting on a discussion site completely outwits the academic establishment by spotting something all the eggheads had missed. There'll be some red faces in our universities today. Thank heaven for the Internet.
I’m actually not disputing the Woke academics here on the term (I’ve always felt “Anglo-Saxon” is slightly clumsy). I’m saying the ARGUMENT is a Woke irrelevance. In the 4th-6th century a bunch of Germanic types with a new culture and language came over to Britain and altered our gene pool and changed all the place names. That indisputably happened (you can call it an invasion or not, that’s not my point)
These people need a name. If it can’t be Anglo-Saxon then what will that name be?
As I say, only “early English” is short and pithy enough to work but that will just get the lefties even angrier
The crux of the issue, when not misrepresented by ignorant commentators, is whether the label refers to a distinct ethnic group. It does not, despite the beliefs of some who would rather it did. The reason why they would rather it did fits into the reason for it being a relevant question. Those who would seek to build their politics on a pillar of racial purity or superiority have a fatal flaw in the foundations of their ideology.
Sadly these people still exist and their reaction is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.
I think that a group of people that one can call Anglo-Saxons, or English, had become a distinct ethnic group, by the middle of the 10th century, and I see nothing in the Reddit article that conflicts with that.
That's very different from saying that these people formed the basis of some kind of pure or superior race.
The same way I'd say that Germans existed at this time. They just weren't the kind of people that 19th Century German nationalists thought they were.
And do you have any evidence for this distinct ethnicity? It doesn't seem very likely to me, given the continued cultural and linguistic diversity even within England, and what we know of extant genetic differences today. There were and still are many Englands within the borders of England. The wider you cast your net to catch of England, the more readily you will scoop up that which is not and never has been England. Do you think Cumbrians were closer to Sussex folk or to people from Strathclyde? How much did the people of Whitby have in common with Oksbøl versus Oxford?
I have serious doubts about whether you could ever draw a genetic line around England and only England at any point in all of England's history.
And if given the above is true, what use could there be for persisting with the myth if not to make political mischief today? In whose interest is it to link a nation to a fictional genetic stock, other than those whose ideology is filtration and exclusion?
A Royal House whose kings called themselves Kings of England. England would be conquered in the future, but England never ceased to exist as an entity, after 960. They had a common language, a common literature, a common religion, and a common enemy.
These are what create an ethnic group. Claiming that the Anglo-Saxons did not exist as an ethnic group is like claiming that Poles, Germans, Ukrainians etc. did not.
Much of what you claim here can be disputed, though. Caxton's dilemma when choosing how to translate works he intended to print in "English" illustrates the linguistic point:
And he asked specifically for eggs, and the good woman said that she spoke no French, and the merchant got angry for he could not speak French either, but he wanted eggs and she could not understand him. And then at last another person said that he wanted ‘eyren’. Then the good woman said that she understood him well.
That is, people from the opposite ends of England often literally could not understand one another, to the extent that one of them thought the other was speaking an entirely different language! And this is from the year 1490. 1490!
The heterogeneity of England in pre-modern times is consistently underestimated, and by the time it really settles down into something that one can really start to sensibly call one ethnic group, you're already way beyond the point where England was its own thing. What of Wales, by the time Caxton was writing?
As for the common enemy... whom? When? Even when the Normans invaded, there wasn't unity, even between midlands and the south. If there had have been, the invasion might have been repelled.
The common enemy were the Danes and the Norse. The House of Wessex/England spent 150 years fighting them. As we're seeing in Ukraine, nothing does more to create a shared sense of identity than military service against an enemy attacking one's homeland.
What's the evidence for this English unity against the Norse? The Norse occupied much of England at the time of Alfred, and when Alfred stemmed the invasion of Wessex the settlement left the likes of Guthrum in power in other parts of England. Alfred was comfortable accommodating Norse rule in other parts of England as long as the Norse leadership converted to Christianity. Was there a popular clamour against this, anywhere? Did the Norse settlers in the north and east of England want a unified England? Did anybody outside the court of Wessex really care about that kind of nation building?
Farooq c. 2100: "What's the evidence for this Ukrainian unity against the Russians? The Russians occupied much of Ukraine at the time of Zelensky, who was himself a native Russian speaker. Was there a popular clamour against this, anywhere? Did the Russian settlers in the south and east of Ukraine want a unified state? Did anybody outside the US-sponsored Kiev regime really care about that kind of nation building?"
Well no, because the written evidence of what ordinary Ukrainians think about Russia's fascist imperialism is a matter of record. If you think we have that kind of documentary evidence of what a peasant farmer outside St Edmundsbury or a miller in Jorvik thought about Norse or Wessex rule you're kidding yourself. We have scant and partial evidence from that time. It's hard to elevate the records kept in Winchester to a story of a nation united to throw off the Viking yoke. You need much better evidence than you have for that kind of claim.
That's not what I was getting at but rather than you seem overly keen to dismiss any foundation for English national identity.
Oddly I think you'll find that it was William the Bastard who really established what we know as England today. Although by the time he'd finished the north of it was pretty well deserted!
As ever, the headline doesn't reflect the reality of the story:
He added: “I’m not trying to create any scaremongering, and I want to emphasise that not all 6,000 multi-storey car parks across the UK have to be closed.
“It’s only the very old ones, built in the 60s and 70s, which are in a very poor state of repair and have weakened over time which will probably need to have some work done to them.
Basically the title should be "Heavy cars too heavy for old multi-story car parks".
In the ‘60s and ‘70s, the average car weighed about 800kg In the 2010s, the average car weighed about 1600kg The average 2030s car might be over 2000kg.
Exceedingly unlikely. Even a relatively high end model like the Tesla Y is under 2 tonnes. And batteries will be a lot lighter by 2030.
As ever, the headline doesn't reflect the reality of the story:
He added: “I’m not trying to create any scaremongering, and I want to emphasise that not all 6,000 multi-storey car parks across the UK have to be closed.
“It’s only the very old ones, built in the 60s and 70s, which are in a very poor state of repair and have weakened over time which will probably need to have some work done to them.
Basically the title should be "Heavy cars too heavy for old multi-story car parks".
In the ‘60s and ‘70s, the average car weighed about 800kg In the 2010s, the average car weighed about 1600kg The average 2030s car might be over 2000kg.
Exceedingly unlikely. Even a relatively high end model like the Tesla Y is under 2 tonnes. And batteries will be a lot lighter by 2030.
The Tesla is still heavier that the cars it replaces, even though it does a pretty good job itself of keeping the weight to a minimum.
Cars have generally - even before EVs - been getting larger and heavier.
The old Mini weighted less than 600kg; the new one is twice that (or maybe even a little more).
However, this is a problem that is easily solved. If a car park is deemed unable to deal with the weight of modern cars, you just mandate max capacity of 80% or whatever.
They are talking about making the spaces bigger anyway because the cars are bigger so that probably sorts the problem. I guess the annoying bit is where pillars are involved say between 3 spaces that now becomes 2 huge spaces meaning you have over compensated, but that is life.
Seems like the problem is solved with a heat gun to get rid of the old paint and a new paint brush, although you now probably have a big shortage of parking spaces.
I'm supremely uninterested and lack details - but why the furore? He's had an affair at work. Is that it?
I think it says a lot about the shifting sands of our culture. Would anyone have even regarded what he did as “an affair” 20 years ago?
It's bullshit though - the sands haven't really shifted. Jeez, I'd have been sacked loads of times. How many people have found their spouse's via work, often while with a former partner? The puritanism of some astonishes me.
Yup. I'm married to my former manageress, with whom I had a fling at work!
As far as I can see, Schofield has done nothing illegal, so all the rest is mere value judgements based on a media circus generated by organisations that love talking about nothing but themselves.
He is one of millions of people who have met a partner at work and while the extreme junior-senior element was perhaps distasteful to some I don't see why this story is commanding so much attention.
He's left. He's gone. So presumably that's it?
It does seem like, unless there was illegality afoot, Schofield should now be left alone.
Or are the febrile media looking for a Caroline Flack redux?
Because it’s been decided that the star ‘talent’, in his 50s, f…ing the 18-year-old intern, is no longer acceptable.
Both men were over the age of consent weren’t they? What’s the point of having that law otherwise?
A sixth form girl inflagrante with her teacher would also be a case of two people being over the age of consent, but it wouldn't stop the teacher getting banged up.
I just don't believe hounding Schofield is the way forward. If he has broken the law, that is for law enforcement to determine, if he hasn't leave him alone.
The problem here appears to be that the fellow teacher, head of department, deputy head, head teacher, school board, and local education authority, all knew about the relationship, realised it was bad, and conspired to cover it up.
Once again, assuming no law was broken I don't see the problem. Covering up a non-illegal act isn't really a cover up.
Now if the allusion here is there was illegality and that illegality was covered up that is a more serious story.
Re the Anglo-Saxons, if we can’t call them “Anglo-Saxons” then what do we call the Germanic invaders who took over the country in the 4th-6th century, displacing Romano-Brits and Celts?
Coz that definitely happened. We can see from place-name evidence. Everywhere
Crikey, yes. Yet again some guy posting on a discussion site completely outwits the academic establishment by spotting something all the eggheads had missed. There'll be some red faces in our universities today. Thank heaven for the Internet.
I’m actually not disputing the Woke academics here on the term (I’ve always felt “Anglo-Saxon” is slightly clumsy). I’m saying the ARGUMENT is a Woke irrelevance. In the 4th-6th century a bunch of Germanic types with a new culture and language came over to Britain and altered our gene pool and changed all the place names. That indisputably happened (you can call it an invasion or not, that’s not my point)
These people need a name. If it can’t be Anglo-Saxon then what will that name be?
As I say, only “early English” is short and pithy enough to work but that will just get the lefties even angrier
The crux of the issue, when not misrepresented by ignorant commentators, is whether the label refers to a distinct ethnic group. It does not, despite the beliefs of some who would rather it did. The reason why they would rather it did fits into the reason for it being a relevant question. Those who would seek to build their politics on a pillar of racial purity or superiority have a fatal flaw in the foundations of their ideology.
Sadly these people still exist and their reaction is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.
I think that a group of people that one can call Anglo-Saxons, or English, had become a distinct ethnic group, by the middle of the 10th century, and I see nothing in the Reddit article that conflicts with that.
That's very different from saying that these people formed the basis of some kind of pure or superior race.
The same way I'd say that Germans existed at this time. They just weren't the kind of people that 19th Century German nationalists thought they were.
And do you have any evidence for this distinct ethnicity? It doesn't seem very likely to me, given the continued cultural and linguistic diversity even within England, and what we know of extant genetic differences today. There were and still are many Englands within the borders of England. The wider you cast your net to catch of England, the more readily you will scoop up that which is not and never has been England. Do you think Cumbrians were closer to Sussex folk or to people from Strathclyde? How much did the people of Whitby have in common with Oksbøl versus Oxford?
I have serious doubts about whether you could ever draw a genetic line around England and only England at any point in all of England's history.
And if given the above is true, what use could there be for persisting with the myth if not to make political mischief today? In whose interest is it to link a nation to a fictional genetic stock, other than those whose ideology is filtration and exclusion?
A Royal House whose kings called themselves Kings of England. England would be conquered in the future, but England never ceased to exist as an entity, after 960. They had a common language, a common literature, a common religion, and a common enemy.
These are what create an ethnic group. Claiming that the Anglo-Saxons did not exist as an ethnic group is like claiming that Poles, Germans, Ukrainians etc. did not.
Much of what you claim here can be disputed, though. Caxton's dilemma when choosing how to translate works he intended to print in "English" illustrates the linguistic point:
And he asked specifically for eggs, and the good woman said that she spoke no French, and the merchant got angry for he could not speak French either, but he wanted eggs and she could not understand him. And then at last another person said that he wanted ‘eyren’. Then the good woman said that she understood him well.
That is, people from the opposite ends of England often literally could not understand one another, to the extent that one of them thought the other was speaking an entirely different language! And this is from the year 1490. 1490!
The heterogeneity of England in pre-modern times is consistently underestimated, and by the time it really settles down into something that one can really start to sensibly call one ethnic group, you're already way beyond the point where England was its own thing. What of Wales, by the time Caxton was writing?
As for the common enemy... whom? When? Even when the Normans invaded, there wasn't unity, even between midlands and the south. If there had have been, the invasion might have been repelled.
The common enemy were the Danes and the Norse. The House of Wessex/England spent 150 years fighting them. As we're seeing in Ukraine, nothing does more to create a shared sense of identity than military service against an enemy attacking one's homeland.
What's the evidence for this English unity against the Norse? The Norse occupied much of England at the time of Alfred, and when Alfred stemmed the invasion of Wessex the settlement left the likes of Guthrum in power in other parts of England. Alfred was comfortable accommodating Norse rule in other parts of England as long as the Norse leadership converted to Christianity. Was there a popular clamour against this, anywhere? Did the Norse settlers in the north and east of England want a unified England? Did anybody outside the court of Wessex really care about that kind of nation building?
Farooq c. 2100: "What's the evidence for this Ukrainian unity against the Russians? The Russians occupied much of Ukraine at the time of Zelensky, who was himself a native Russian speaker. Was there a popular clamour against this, anywhere? Did the Russian settlers in the south and east of Ukraine want a unified state? Did anybody outside the US-sponsored Kiev regime really care about that kind of nation building?"
Well no, because the written evidence of what ordinary Ukrainians think about Russia's fascist imperialism is a matter of record. If you think we have that kind of documentary evidence of what a peasant farmer outside St Edmundsbury or a miller in Jorvik thought about Norse or Wessex rule you're kidding yourself. We have scant and partial evidence from that time. It's hard to elevate the records kept in Winchester to a story of a nation united to throw off the Viking yoke. You need much better evidence than you have for that kind of claim.
That's not what I was getting at but rather than you seem overly keen to dismiss any foundation for English national identity.
Comments
The Spanish Senate uses ??? some sort of partial block voting, so a bit like SNTV???
It is nothing to do with "The Daily Mailification of the media".
We pay to read or watch this stuff.
The Socialist Worker is widely available if anyone wanted to make it the most popular online media outlet.
The media simply feeds what we want to consume.
That I think is where Harry and Megs need to be careful. Their crusade against "the media" is more correctly a crusade against the people who pay to consume the media.
(And no one make the sloane ranger joke pls.)
If she gets the nomination she will win the White House, very impressive performance. Her stance is not Trump or Santis, she is visionary and could probably bring people together. Having said that I would still vote Democrat.
Its as much about the lies and allegedly cover up by ITV (and a lot of score settling among media types who a) were lied to, b) had complaints / legal action taken against them for trying to report the truth and c) people who were badly treated by Schofield / ITV keen to stick the boot into their holier than thou BS).
Also the media loving nothing more than talking about the media, and what twitter says....
P.S. I learned last week that HYUFD rather impressively reads the Morning Star.
What is maybe a bit weirder is that this has been pretty widely know for a couple of years at least. I don't really know why it's all happened now.
Personally I have basically no interest in it beyond, I suppose, a meta-interest in what it tells about the media and celebrity culture.
Most provinces elect four senators (bit rough on the larger provinces, see also the US Senate). The genius thing is that each voter has three non transferable votes, and parties can only put up three candidates. So, whatever happens, at least one candidate from the Different Party gets elected.
https://enormo-haddock.blogspot.com/2023/06/football-2022-23-season-review.html
Essentially, ahead by a modest amount, green in three leagues, red in two. Things would look mostly better if I had the pre-crash figures, but I don't.
Pleased, given my total lack of knowledge in the area.
Composition of the Senate
Last revision 30/05/2023
The Senate of the 14th legislature has been composed of a total of 265 Senators, chosen in a dual procedure:
Senators elected in constituencies
Section 69 of the Constitution and sections 161, 165 and 166 of the Organic Local Government Act .
The majority of Senators are elected in provincial constituencies: each province elects four Senators. However, in the insular provinces, each island or group of islands is classed as an electoral constituency, with each of the larger islands (Gran Canaria, Mallorca and Tenerife) electing three Senators and the remaining islands (Ibiza-Formentera, Menorca, Fuerteventura, Gomera, Hierro, Lanzarote and La Palma) electing one Senator. The populations of Ceuta and Melilla each choose two Senators.
Senators elected by constituency are done so via universal, free, equal and direct suffrage and by secret ballot, with voters consisting of Spanish nationals aged 18 and above who have not been deprived of their right to vote. The requirements for standing as a candidate and being elected Senator are the same as those of voters, with the additional condition that there not be grounds for being ruled ineligible.
Each voter may cast three votes in the provincial constituencies, two votes on the larger islands and in Ceuta and Melilla, and one vote on the remaining islands.
Although on the ballot paper candidates are grouped together by political party, when it comes to voting and counting, candidacies are individual, in such a way that voters may vote for candidates from different political groups. The system is therefore different to that of the closed party lists for the Congress of Deputies.
Short term spike due to Opec meeting yesterday or something more longer term ?
But only allowing the parties to put up X-1 candidates, I've not heard of that before!
Khodakovsky says the situation in the Novodonetske and Velika Novosilka area is difficult and says Ukraine found weak points. He says Leopard tanks were seen for the first time in that area.
https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1665714813257875457
Homeowners who secured rock-bottom mortgage deals during the pandemic now face paying an extra £5,000 a year as rates surge again.
The average two-year fixed mortgage rate has now jumped to 5.72pc – the highest level since January, according to the analyst Moneyfacts.
Rates have risen from 5.33pc – an increase of 0.39 percentage points – after worse-than expected inflation data was released nearly two weeks ago.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/personal-banking/mortgages/borrowers-cheap-deals-5000-mortgage-shock/
For similar reasons, teachers can't have relationships with students (even if legal age), same at universities, an academic is in big trouble if you say hire a PhD, then start having an affair with them.
My facebook page (yes, I'm that old) is full of people asking what he did wrong and what the fuss is about.
This is a pretty red cords sample so vaguely surprised to see such sympathy for him.
But, I see nothing sinister about using the term "Anglo-Saxon" do describe the large majority of the inhabitants of England in the mid-10th century. The descendants of the Roman-British were still mainly there, but culturally, they'd now been assimilated.
Society is still debating the ethics.
I’m not wrong, am I?
I wonder if there’s any opinion polls, or academic research based around the question;
If a married person secretly has sex with someone else of the same sex/gender, is it an affair?
I recon 50 years ago, perhaps 10% of ppl would say yes.
20 years ago, 40%.
Now. 90%
Sundaland would have been a pretty warm place during the Ice Age!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundaland
As far as I can see, Schofield has done nothing illegal, so all the rest is mere value judgements based on a media circus generated by organisations that love talking about nothing but themselves.
He is one of millions of people who have met a partner at work and while the extreme junior-senior element was perhaps distasteful to some I don't see why this story is commanding so much attention.
He's left. He's gone. So presumably that's it?
Amercian woke academics now think that the term “Anglo-Saxon” is interchangeable for “White Supremacist” in 2023 USA, so the phrase is now verboten, even for discussions relating to societies that existed a millennium ago.
Anyone who disagrees doesn’t have the right to a job after next week, following their declaration of last week.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/06/05/the-snps-sinister-paranoia-now-rules-in-scotland/
"The SNP's sinister paranoia now rules in Scotland
The NHS paying a firm to monitor the social media of a bereaved woman is just the tip of the iceberg in an increasingly Orwellian state"
https://tickets.worldtestchampionship.com/content
Or are the febrile media looking for a Caroline Flack redux?
Contrary to the PB truism of there being no democracy without a demos, the very genesis of Ukraine's current nation state is democracy itself.
What sort of demos can states really claim without democracy ?
Here (where I am the supervisor) it is not forbidden, either, but line manager must be informed immediately - as with any actual or potential conflict of interest - and it is the expectation that supervision would change. Same for relationship between line manager and staff. And to be clear on this, I haven't personally tested this out!
Once you get to university, I think the common policy is that it's consenting adults but that any conflict of interest/favouritism concerns etc must be addressed and the staff member must be open.
A PhD student of mine offered to introduce me to an age-appropriate friend of hers. I declined!
But also key is, as long as informed immediately / open about it....imagine the academic totally denied it, but was going on. Also imagine if it was then revealed they had got to know each other when the student was a young teenager and they have pulled strings to get them that position, and swiftly after they started, an affair began.
Anyway seems far more important stories about, like yet another massive hack of personal / finance data. And of course while this story has been going, no media outlet wants to talk about Guardian me-to scandal or (more worryingly) the FT cover-up of it plus continued radio silence of it (other than one article in the Telegraph).
Worth noting that European natural gas prices are still a third lower than they were a month ago (€27 vs €38).
European natural gas prices are now comfortably below where they were pre-Russian invasion of Ukraine. (On a price per mmcf/mmbtu basis, this is equivalent to around €9.)
And if the PP ignore Vox they cannot get anything through the Spanish Parliament without shifting left to get PSOE support either, which in turn will see much of their core support shift to Vox
FELIX reply:
Politics does not work like that in Spain. Faced with that scenario a deal would be done either with PSOE abstention, minor party abstention, or at worst fresh elections. Hostility to Vox means thier 'real' power is very limited. The idea that the bulk of PP support would suddenly shift to Vox has emerged from your mind wothout any basis in the reality of Spanish politics. I see now why so many posters on here get utterly frustrated by your rigid approach to realpolitics. I think you can regard this discussion as finished.
But, as far as I can see, it's been adequately dealt with by his sacking/resignation. It's a bit like when my son or daughter try to tell me about some naughty thing the other did that my wife has already dealt with: "Has mummy dealt with it? Then I don't need to hear any more." I feel the same about this. It's been dealt with. Barring something illegal having taken place, I/everyone else doesn't need to hear any more about it.
"Electric cars too heavy for old multi-storey car parks, engineers warn"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/06/05/electric-cars-too-heavy-old-multi-storey-car-parks
He added: “I’m not trying to create any scaremongering, and I want to emphasise that not all 6,000 multi-storey car parks across the UK have to be closed.
“It’s only the very old ones, built in the 60s and 70s, which are in a very poor state of repair and have weakened over time which will probably need to have some work done to them.
Basically the title should be "Heavy cars too heavy for old multi-story car parks".
I just don't believe hounding Schofield is the way forward. If he has broken the law, that is for law enforcement to determine, if he hasn't leave him alone.
In the 2010s, the average car weighed about 1600kg
The average 2030s car might be over 2000kg.
Which could be a massive issue for the engineering calculations on those 1960s car parks, and a reminder both to the operators and regulators, that there’s a potential issue here.
The old Mini weighted less than 600kg; the new one is twice that (or maybe even a little more).
However, this is a problem that is easily solved. If a car park is deemed unable to deal with the weight of modern cars, you just mandate max capacity of 80% or whatever.
For an IT person, I'm someone who has been supremely unfused by a lot of elements of IT as an end user - here's another Windows laptop, here's Chrome, here's IE - OK, no bother, I can generally do my job 99% of the day with mind to keyboard as the limiting performance factor. Some websites do better on Chrome, some prefer Edge, Bing increasingly gives similar results as Google, which wasn't what happened on a few years ago. Firefox or a.n.other, why pose, just go with what is in front of you.
But Edge my word - nicey, nicey Corporate home pages are increasingly gone, the configurability has reduced and the force feeding of MSN aggregated horse shit is barely tolerable. I mean, you can get the same, marginally better quality, stuff from Chrome but it is more buried.
It's crept up on me, but I need to get away from it now.
I wonder how many are passively getting their worldview Mailified.
Although by the time he'd finished the north of it was pretty well deserted!
Even a relatively high end model like the Tesla Y is under 2 tonnes. And batteries will be a lot lighter by 2030.
The current Governor of the great State of Florida spells his surname - DeSantis.
Two capital letters. Zero space between "De" and "Santis". Do NOT leave off the "De".
Seems like the problem is solved with a heat gun to get rid of the old paint and a new paint brush, although you now probably have a big shortage of parking spaces.
Now if the allusion here is there was illegality and that illegality was covered up that is a more serious story.