I see The Guardian has named the royals mentioned in the Dutch translation of the book. Surely the BBC has to at some point as well?
It’s kinda funny this because the only people really obsessed with the whiteness of the skin colour of mixed race kids are Asian people, they really want the skin colour to be really white.
Was also my experience when I sired mixed race kids.
Mine, too; although in my case it was half-Thai grandchildren.
Everyone wants to be white. It’s a human universal dating back thousands of years. “Fairness” in women is prized in Sumerian texts
Er, 'fair' is a highly ambiguous word. I wouldn't trust that translation an inch without consulting a trained expert in Assyrology.
FPT: (Since some of you are still discussing Kissinger's death.) Here are two reactions from the Washington Post. First, from the Editorial Board: "In less than four years during the early 1970s, Mr. Kissinger brokered the opening of relations between the United States and China, the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam, major arms-control agreements with the Soviet Union, and Israeli-Arab accords that made the United States the dominant power in the Middle East." https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/29/henry-kissinger-legacy-debate/
Second, from conservative columnist George Will, this reminder: "A decade after Kissinger left the State Department, communism, whose confidence flowed from Marxism’s economic determinism, absorbed a brutal, indeed fatal, lesson in the importance of economic factors. In 1976, Ronald Reagan challenged Ford for the Republican nomination by running against Kissingerism. And at the 1986 summit in Iceland, Reagan icily told Mikhail Gorbachev that if there were to be an intensified arms race, he, Reagan, could guarantee that America would win it. The statesman’s task, Kissinger believed, is “to rescue an element of choice from the pressure of circumstance.” He helped manage the Cold War until the nation chose a president determined not to manage it but to win it." source$:https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/29/henry-kissinger-legacy-george-will/
(For the record: In 1979, I broke out laughing when I realized that Reagan would probably win the Republican nomination -- and that I would probably be voting for him.)
Kissinger also deliberately weakened the likelihood of peace in Vietnam for narrow political aims. Americans died so that his candidate could win the Presidency.
He was an absolute peace of shit. And I don't say that lightly.
I see The Guardian has named the royals mentioned in the Dutch translation of the book. Surely the BBC has to at some point as well?
It’s kinda funny this because the only people really obsessed with the whiteness of the skin colour of mixed race kids are Asian people, they really want the skin colour to be really white.
Was also my experience when I sired mixed race kids.
Mine, too; although in my case it was half-Thai grandchildren.
Everyone wants to be white. It’s a human universal dating back thousands of years. “Fairness” in women is prized in Sumerian texts
Quite a lot of girls in Glasgow appear to want to be orange, and seem to have achieved it. Oh, and 45 as well of course.
Apparently Wilders having immense problems getting other parties to join him in a coalition. Any bets on him being leader of the opposition against a Left, Centre, Centre Right coalition government..
If only they’d had FPTP, that would have shut the bouffanted populist out.
Oh.
I'm not sure you can just apply the voting percentages to a different voting system. They wouldn't have as many political parties under a FPTP system.
They'd never have developed so many parties with serious support under FPTP, but a switch to FPTP would be fascinating. Would parties really agree mergers/electoral pacts to maximise support or would they all fight for territory and end up losing masses of seats to Wilders or similar? It would only happen once, but it's not impossible to see it happening once.
Sad to say, considering it was 7 years ago, but this thread header and the associated polling simply repeats the thread header I posted on here the day after the Brexit vote.
Immediately before the vote, yougov polling showed that a substantial minority of Leave voters (enough to make it a majority of the overall poll) would favour joining EFTA and the EEA and so retaining freedom of movement. It should have been taken seriously as an option at the time rather than rattling on about the 'purity' of Brexit.
I lay the blame for this almost entirely at the feet of the succession of post Brexit governing parties with a small but significant dollop of blame being thrownvat those Remainer MPs who were only interested in overturning the vote.
I still maintain that this is where we will eventually land but we will have wasted years to get there.
NB. This is my view too.
EFTA as a the obvious stepping stone to whatever the country wanted next, which could have been decided over time.
Unfortunately we got a mix of insane Brexit absolutists & a mix of a Labour party under Corbyn that just saw post-Brexit politics as a tool for short term political gain & Remain MPs that spent more time trying to overturn Brexit than they did putting together a coalition to push for the least damaging outcome possible.
The UK was failed by the entire political establishment, again.
Best movie soundtrack of all time - at least for those of us who were 18 in 1996.
Wasn't bad for those of us who were 21!
Those of us who were 22, on the other hand, found it far too difficult to comprehend.
I was 23. A younger friend was really raving about wanting to watch it, but I just thought: "Why would I want to sit in the cinema watching the sad antics of a load of druggies? I lived in London for five years..."
Wait. You still haven't seen it?
Actually, I haven't. Not particularly interested in it; saw enough of that sort of world in London. And, to think of it, before.
There was a drug problem even in a tiny town like provincial Uttoxeter, in the late 1980s, at least.
I've seen loads of clips, and I daresay it's well-acted and well-written, but it's just not my cup of tea. Or syringe of heroin.
Perhaps I missed out on something. But there are certain types of films I just don't like. Courtroom dramas bore me (sorry, all PB's lawyers). Mafia films ditto. Though to be fair, there are exceptions in each category.
I'd think of PB circa 2000 as being more Layer Cake than Trainspotting.
Trainspotting had too much running.
Or the debate in Reservoir Dogs over tipping - load of people pontificating on some obscure moral point, rather than getting on with the thing they're supposed to be doing
Sad to say, considering it was 7 years ago, but this thread header and the associated polling simply repeats the thread header I posted on here the day after the Brexit vote.
Immediately before the vote, yougov polling showed that a substantial minority of Leave voters (enough to make it a majority of the overall poll) would favour joining EFTA and the EEA and so retaining freedom of movement. It should have been taken seriously as an option at the time rather than rattling on about the 'purity' of Brexit.
I lay the blame for this almost entirely at the feet of the succession of post Brexit governing parties with a small but significant dollop of blame being thrownvat those Remainer MPs who were only interested in overturning the vote.
I still maintain that this is where we will eventually land but we will have wasted years to get there.
Given what's happened with the immigration figures since the referendum, it would be interesting to consider the counter-factual where Theresa May had gone for a soft Brexit but seriously reduced non-EU immigration in response to the vote. She might still be PM.
Don't you think she'd have been axed by the party if she'd tried to do a BINO? The ERG were not inclined to cut her much slack remember. I think what killed her was the election she called. Instead of crushing the saboteurs she crushed herself and any chance of a composed orderly Brexit. The makeup of that parliament was a precision tool for impasse and chaos. The outcome was written. That's clear to me looking back at it.
Sad to say, considering it was 7 years ago, but this thread header and the associated polling simply repeats the thread header I posted on here the day after the Brexit vote.
Immediately before the vote, yougov polling showed that a substantial minority of Leave voters (enough to make it a majority of the overall poll) would favour joining EFTA and the EEA and so retaining freedom of movement. It should have been taken seriously as an option at the time rather than rattling on about the 'purity' of Brexit.
I lay the blame for this almost entirely at the feet of the succession of post Brexit governing parties with a small but significant dollop of blame being thrownvat those Remainer MPs who were only interested in overturning the vote.
I still maintain that this is where we will eventually land but we will have wasted years to get there.
I entirely agree. It is a major political fail that a small Brexit majority + a remain majority among the centrist MPs did not add up to EFTA/EEA membership.
I see The Guardian has named the royals mentioned in the Dutch translation of the book. Surely the BBC has to at some point as well?
It’s kinda funny this because the only people really obsessed with the whiteness of the skin colour of mixed race kids are Asian people, they really want the skin colour to be really white.
Was also my experience when I sired mixed race kids.
Mine, too; although in my case it was half-Thai grandchildren.
Everyone wants to be white. It’s a human universal dating back thousands of years. “Fairness” in women is prized in Sumerian texts
Er, 'fair' is a highly ambiguous word. I wouldn't trust that translation an inch without consulting a trained expert in Assyrology.
Even in English, online sources indicate the meaning of "fair" as light in colouring dates only from around 1200.
I think rejoining the single market, either bilaterally or via the EEA, needs some sort of referendum in support. Maybe just an indicative one, but having voted OUT, the public need the opportunity to vote (to some extent) IN.
But if Keir is looking for measures to deliver growth, this is an obvious one, and looks to have quite widespread support now.
Maybe, but I note that the Leave campaign said we wouldn't be leaving the single market, so they can hardly complain if we re-join it.
They didn't say that during the referendum campaign. Everyone from Michael Gove to David Cameron to Wolfgang Schäuble was clear that a vote to Leave meant leaving the single market.
“Absolutely nobody is talking about threatening our place in the single market.” Daniel Hannan.
"Only a madman would actually leave the market” Owen Paterson.
"EU citizens living in this country will have their rights fully protected, and the same goes for British citizens living in the EU. British people will still be able to go and work in the EU; to live; to travel; to study; to buy homes and to settle down.” Boris Johnson.
It is true that many campaigners on both sides were clear enough that Leave meant leaving the single market. But many were inconsistent and some, such as Michael Gove whom you mention, tried to adopt cake-ist, pie-in-the-sky positions that were utterly unachievable:
"We should be outside the single market. We should have access to the single market, but we should not be governed by the rules that the European Court of Justice imposes on us, which cost business and restrict freedom." Michael Gove
The Hannan interview was from 2015 and the quote is a misrepresentation. He was saying that nobody in Brussels was talking about kicking us out of the single market.
The Paterson quote is from 2014.
The Johnson quote was after the referendum when he triangulating to win the leadership. He lost to Theresa May.
(Small point of order. You make it sound like 2015 and 2014 were in the distant past. They were immediately prior to the referendum.)
They were well before Cameron set the date and presented his deal. It's fair to consider only February to June 2016 as the campaign proper.
I see The Guardian has named the royals mentioned in the Dutch translation of the book. Surely the BBC has to at some point as well?
It’s kinda funny this because the only people really obsessed with the whiteness of the skin colour of mixed race kids are Asian people, they really want the skin colour to be really white.
Was also my experience when I sired mixed race kids.
Mine, too; although in my case it was half-Thai grandchildren.
Everyone wants to be white. It’s a human universal dating back thousands of years. “Fairness” in women is prized in Sumerian texts
Er, 'fair' is a highly ambiguous word. I wouldn't trust that translation an inch without consulting a trained expert in Assyrology.
Preference for white skinned women in east Asia seems to go back 3000 years, or more
Quite hard to blame that on social conditioning by racist Hollywood
The reasons are obvious. eg Darker skin means more sun exposure = lower class rice farmers. Plus much else. I do not believe this is seriously disputed
I see The Guardian has named the royals mentioned in the Dutch translation of the book. Surely the BBC has to at some point as well?
It’s kinda funny this because the only people really obsessed with the whiteness of the skin colour of mixed race kids are Asian people, they really want the skin colour to be really white.
Was also my experience when I sired mixed race kids.
Mine, too; although in my case it was half-Thai grandchildren.
Everyone wants to be white. It’s a human universal dating back thousands of years. “Fairness” in women is prized in Sumerian texts
Quite a lot of girls in Glasgow appear to want to be orange, and seem to have achieved it. Oh, and 45 as well of course.
Excessive Irn Bru consumption, presumably
Though I remember observing the same thing in Chelmsford, back in the day. Excessive J2O consumption, maybe (used to be produced in the town).
I see The Guardian has named the royals mentioned in the Dutch translation of the book. Surely the BBC has to at some point as well?
It’s kinda funny this because the only people really obsessed with the whiteness of the skin colour of mixed race kids are Asian people, they really want the skin colour to be really white.
Was also my experience when I sired mixed race kids.
Mine, too; although in my case it was half-Thai grandchildren.
Everyone wants to be white. It’s a human universal dating back thousands of years. “Fairness” in women is prized in Sumerian texts
Quite a lot of girls in Glasgow appear to want to be orange, and seem to have achieved it. Oh, and 45 as well of course.
Excessive Irn Bru consumption, presumably
Though I remember observing the same thing in Chelmsford, back in the day. Excessive J2O consumption, maybe (used to be produced in the town).
Didn't Sunny Delight back in the day also have a similar issue (or was it an urban myth) ?
Apparently Wilders having immense problems getting other parties to join him in a coalition. Any bets on him being leader of the opposition against a Left, Centre, Centre Right coalition government..
If only they’d had FPTP, that would have shut the bouffanted populist out.
Oh.
I'm not sure you can just apply the voting percentages to a different voting system. They wouldn't have as many political parties under a FPTP system.
They'd never have developed so many parties with serious support under FPTP, but a switch to FPTP would be fascinating. Would parties really agree mergers/electoral pacts to maximise support or would they all fight for territory and end up losing masses of seats to Wilders or similar? It would only happen once, but it's not impossible to see it happening once.
It’s hard to know because switching to FPTP is almost unknown, perhaps because it’s patently a terrible system. I can’t think of any cases of it happening, although Italy has made significant switches from more proportional to less proportional systems.
I think rejoining the single market, either bilaterally or via the EEA, needs some sort of referendum in support. Maybe just an indicative one, but having voted OUT, the public need the opportunity to vote (to some extent) IN.
But if Keir is looking for measures to deliver growth, this is an obvious one, and looks to have quite widespread support now.
Maybe, but I note that the Leave campaign said we wouldn't be leaving the single market, so they can hardly complain if we re-join it.
They didn't say that during the referendum campaign. Everyone from Michael Gove to David Cameron to Wolfgang Schäuble was clear that a vote to Leave meant leaving the single market.
“Absolutely nobody is talking about threatening our place in the single market.” Daniel Hannan.
"Only a madman would actually leave the market” Owen Paterson.
"EU citizens living in this country will have their rights fully protected, and the same goes for British citizens living in the EU. British people will still be able to go and work in the EU; to live; to travel; to study; to buy homes and to settle down.” Boris Johnson.
It is true that many campaigners on both sides were clear enough that Leave meant leaving the single market. But many were inconsistent and some, such as Michael Gove whom you mention, tried to adopt cake-ist, pie-in-the-sky positions that were utterly unachievable:
"We should be outside the single market. We should have access to the single market, but we should not be governed by the rules that the European Court of Justice imposes on us, which cost business and restrict freedom." Michael Gove
The Hannan interview was from 2015 and the quote is a misrepresentation. He was saying that nobody in Brussels was talking about kicking us out of the single market.
The Paterson quote is from 2014.
The Johnson quote was after the referendum when he triangulating to win the leadership. He lost to Theresa May.
No, Hannan's pretty consistent position was that he wasn't in favour of leaving the single market and Brexit didn't entail doing to. Until, of course, it did. Johnson, as you say, was a charlatan who simply said whatever was most convenient at the moment he said it.
I don't quite go so far as others in claiming this was all a conspiracy against the public. But there were lots of types of Brexit depending on which Brexiteer was talking and to whom. Some were realistic, some were wishful thinking, and only one actually happened (of course). But, back in 2016, you could imagine, if you desired, a kind of ideal Brexit for you where you could have any good things about the EU and ditch the bad things. Whereas Remain was pretty much stuck with the what we had (with minor tweaks negotiated by Cameron) - which had plenty of strengths but some real flaws too. So people couldn't project their fantasies on it in the same way.
I see The Guardian has named the royals mentioned in the Dutch translation of the book. Surely the BBC has to at some point as well?
It’s kinda funny this because the only people really obsessed with the whiteness of the skin colour of mixed race kids are Asian people, they really want the skin colour to be really white.
Was also my experience when I sired mixed race kids.
Mine, too; although in my case it was half-Thai grandchildren.
Everyone wants to be white. It’s a human universal dating back thousands of years. “Fairness” in women is prized in Sumerian texts
Quite a lot of girls in Glasgow appear to want to be orange, and seem to have achieved it. Oh, and 45 as well of course.
Not just the ladies. One thinks of a certain left-wing politician.
I see The Guardian has named the royals mentioned in the Dutch translation of the book. Surely the BBC has to at some point as well?
It’s kinda funny this because the only people really obsessed with the whiteness of the skin colour of mixed race kids are Asian people, they really want the skin colour to be really white.
Was also my experience when I sired mixed race kids.
Mine, too; although in my case it was half-Thai grandchildren.
Everyone wants to be white. It’s a human universal dating back thousands of years. “Fairness” in women is prized in Sumerian texts
Quite a lot of girls in Glasgow appear to want to be orange, and seem to have achieved it. Oh, and 45 as well of course.
Excessive Irn Bru consumption, presumably
Though I remember observing the same thing in Chelmsford, back in the day. Excessive J2O consumption, maybe (used to be produced in the town).
Didn't Sunny Delight back in the day also have a similar issue (or was it an urban myth) ?
FPT: (Since some of you are still discussing Kissinger's death.) Here are two reactions from the Washington Post. First, from the Editorial Board: "In less than four years during the early 1970s, Mr. Kissinger brokered the opening of relations between the United States and China, the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam, major arms-control agreements with the Soviet Union, and Israeli-Arab accords that made the United States the dominant power in the Middle East." https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/29/henry-kissinger-legacy-debate/
Second, from conservative columnist George Will, this reminder: "A decade after Kissinger left the State Department, communism, whose confidence flowed from Marxism’s economic determinism, absorbed a brutal, indeed fatal, lesson in the importance of economic factors. In 1976, Ronald Reagan challenged Ford for the Republican nomination by running against Kissingerism. And at the 1986 summit in Iceland, Reagan icily told Mikhail Gorbachev that if there were to be an intensified arms race, he, Reagan, could guarantee that America would win it. The statesman’s task, Kissinger believed, is “to rescue an element of choice from the pressure of circumstance.” He helped manage the Cold War until the nation chose a president determined not to manage it but to win it." source$:https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/29/henry-kissinger-legacy-george-will/
(For the record: In 1979, I broke out laughing when I realized that Reagan would probably win the Republican nomination -- and that I would probably be voting for him.)
Kissinger also deliberately weakened the likelihood of peace in Vietnam for narrow political aims. Americans died so that his candidate could win the Presidency.
He was an absolute peace of shit. And I don't say that lightly.
Sad to say, considering it was 7 years ago, but this thread header and the associated polling simply repeats the thread header I posted on here the day after the Brexit vote.
Immediately before the vote, yougov polling showed that a substantial minority of Leave voters (enough to make it a majority of the overall poll) would favour joining EFTA and the EEA and so retaining freedom of movement. It should have been taken seriously as an option at the time rather than rattling on about the 'purity' of Brexit.
I lay the blame for this almost entirely at the feet of the succession of post Brexit governing parties with a small but significant dollop of blame being thrownvat those Remainer MPs who were only interested in overturning the vote.
I still maintain that this is where we will eventually land but we will have wasted years to get there.
Given what's happened with the immigration figures since the referendum, it would be interesting to consider the counter-factual where Theresa May had gone for a soft Brexit but seriously reduced non-EU immigration in response to the vote. She might still be PM.
Don't you think she'd have been axed by the party if she'd tried to do a BINO? The ERG were not inclined to cut her much slack remember. I think what killed her was the election she called. Instead of crushing the saboteurs she crushed herself and any chance of a composed orderly Brexit. The makeup of that parliament was a precision tool for impasse and chaos. The outcome was written. That's clear to me looking back at it.
She just needed to find a way to present it as an act of belligerence against Brussels.
"They think we can't Brexit without leaving the single market. We'll show them."
A rare early finish and despite the cold public transport mainly behaving itself.
It's been a big day for Death though it does well most days in truth. Kissinger embodied realpolitik - foreign policy isn't about "good guys" versus "bad guys" or moral crusades and the like. It's much more shades of grey - particularly so during the Cold War where we propped up any number of unpleasant regimes because, to be blunt, they were our "bastard". His blundering round in south east Asia unfortunately left the poor Cambodian people at the mercy of the brutal Khmer Rouge for all it got American soldiers home.
Did he "prevent" World War 3 during the Yom Kippur conflict? Certainly, he and Alexander Haig, more than Nixon, were at the centre of US actions during late October 1973.
As for Alastair Darling, there's a realisation how close we came to complete financial catastrophe in the autumn of 2008 and the work Darling (and others) did to stabilise the financial systems shouldn't go unnoticed. What he couldn't prevent or mitigate was the political and psychological impact of the GFC, the consequences of which we live with. One might argue it was a free-spending Republican legislature that did much to bring on the crisis, the problem was traditional centre-left responses (more spending or more tax) just weren't on the table. Even the centre-right only had the thin gruel of austerity and that, as many on here would argue, wasn't applied evenly or logically.
Could we, should we, have meaningfully reduced the State after 2010? Was there an electoral appetite for it, more relevant, was there any political appetite in the Coalition for doing more than tinkering at the edges? We see the legacy of that in the problems local authorities are having currently.
Off topic, but possibly of betting importance: Yesterday, I saw the first mention of Nikki Haley on a local news program. Our "mainstream" news organizations have been reluctant to even mention alternatives to the Loser, except for a brief spell when DeSantis got some coverage.
That's partly because they want viewers and clicks, and partly because most "mainstream" journalists like the damage he's doing to the Republican Party.)
I see The Guardian has named the royals mentioned in the Dutch translation of the book. Surely the BBC has to at some point as well?
It’s kinda funny this because the only people really obsessed with the whiteness of the skin colour of mixed race kids are Asian people, they really want the skin colour to be really white.
Was also my experience when I sired mixed race kids.
Mine, too; although in my case it was half-Thai grandchildren.
Everyone wants to be white. It’s a human universal dating back thousands of years. “Fairness” in women is prized in Sumerian texts
Er, 'fair' is a highly ambiguous word. I wouldn't trust that translation an inch without consulting a trained expert in Assyrology.
Preference for white skinned women in east Asia seems to go back 3000 years, or more
I notice that the Irish media outlet that wrote the background of the knifeman has been contacted by the police a day after the day to say the individual you were talking about (no names were given) isn't the suspect. Yes same age, yes same original nationality, correct story of their asylum process, no wrong person. No more to be said.
The authorities reaction is really weird. Yes fair legal process etc, but normally details by now there is context and back story been made available to the media.
Having a vacuum just leads to speculation and incorrect information being spread.
I see The Guardian has named the royals mentioned in the Dutch translation of the book. Surely the BBC has to at some point as well?
It’s kinda funny this because the only people really obsessed with the whiteness of the skin colour of mixed race kids are Asian people, they really want the skin colour to be really white.
Was also my experience when I sired mixed race kids.
Mine, too; although in my case it was half-Thai grandchildren.
Everyone wants to be white. It’s a human universal dating back thousands of years. “Fairness” in women is prized in Sumerian texts
Er, 'fair' is a highly ambiguous word. I wouldn't trust that translation an inch without consulting a trained expert in Assyrology.
Even in English, online sources indicate the meaning of "fair" as light in colouring dates only from around 1200.
Got me thinking.
"Faint heart never wins fair maiden"
Is this a fairly harmless albeit hackneyed and unpleasantly patriarchal phrase or is it also dripping with assumptions of white supremacy racism?
Off topic, but possibly of betting importance: Yesterday, I saw the first mention of Nikki Haley on a local news program. Our "mainstream" news organizations have been reluctant to even mention alternatives to the Loser, except for a brief spell when DeSantis got some coverage.
That's partly because they want viewers and clicks, and partly because most "mainstream" journalists like the damage he's doing to the Republican Party.)
I do think Haley is worth a small-ish flutter at odds of around 15-1 for Iowa. Trump will probably be okay, but it isn't temperamentally the best red state for him, he's stubbornly shy of a majority in primary polls there, and he underperformed there in 2016 (losing to Cruz and almost slipping to third behind Rubio when polls had him as likely winner).
For Haley, there is a reasonable chance Republicans there who aren't sold on Trump will rally around her with the De Santis campaign apparently having a slow puncture which has led to it deflating over many months, and Ramaswamy also basically on the slide.
Caucuses are also decided by those that turn up (well, all votes are but caucuses take more of an effort). I just wonder if Trump dominating the process may lead to lazy assumptions of invincibility by supporters on the day.
I'd not say it's likely, but Trump hasn't fully sewn it up. .
Apparently Wilders having immense problems getting other parties to join him in a coalition. Any bets on him being leader of the opposition against a Left, Centre, Centre Right coalition government..
If only they’d had FPTP, that would have shut the bouffanted populist out.
Oh.
I'm not sure you can just apply the voting percentages to a different voting system. They wouldn't have as many political parties under a FPTP system.
I think rejoining the single market, either bilaterally or via the EEA, needs some sort of referendum in support. Maybe just an indicative one, but having voted OUT, the public need the opportunity to vote (to some extent) IN.
But if Keir is looking for measures to deliver growth, this is an obvious one, and looks to have quite widespread support now.
Maybe, but I note that the Leave campaign said we wouldn't be leaving the single market, so they can hardly complain if we re-join it.
They didn't say that during the referendum campaign. Everyone from Michael Gove to David Cameron to Wolfgang Schäuble was clear that a vote to Leave meant leaving the single market.
“Absolutely nobody is talking about threatening our place in the single market.” Daniel Hannan.
"Only a madman would actually leave the market” Owen Paterson.
"EU citizens living in this country will have their rights fully protected, and the same goes for British citizens living in the EU. British people will still be able to go and work in the EU; to live; to travel; to study; to buy homes and to settle down.” Boris Johnson.
It is true that many campaigners on both sides were clear enough that Leave meant leaving the single market. But many were inconsistent and some, such as Michael Gove whom you mention, tried to adopt cake-ist, pie-in-the-sky positions that were utterly unachievable:
"We should be outside the single market. We should have access to the single market, but we should not be governed by the rules that the European Court of Justice imposes on us, which cost business and restrict freedom." Michael Gove
The Hannan interview was from 2015 and the quote is a misrepresentation. He was saying that nobody in Brussels was talking about kicking us out of the single market.
The Paterson quote is from 2014.
The Johnson quote was after the referendum when he triangulating to win the leadership. He lost to Theresa May.
No, Hannan's pretty consistent position was that he wasn't in favour of leaving the single market and Brexit didn't entail doing to. Until, of course, it did. Johnson, as you say, was a charlatan who simply said whatever was most convenient at the moment he said it.
I don't quite go so far as others in claiming this was all a conspiracy against the public. But there were lots of types of Brexit depending on which Brexiteer was talking and to whom. Some were realistic, some were wishful thinking, and only one actually happened (of course). But, back in 2016, you could imagine, if you desired, a kind of ideal Brexit for you where you could have any good things about the EU and ditch the bad things. Whereas Remain was pretty much stuck with the what we had (with minor tweaks negotiated by Cameron) - which had plenty of strengths but some real flaws too. So people couldn't project their fantasies on it in the same way.
It cuts both ways. Where we've ended up is wrongly portrayed as some kind of crazy diamond-hard Brexit but back in 2016, the idea that we could leave and maintain zero tariffs and quotas was often treated as unrealistic and would have been considered a fairly soft Brexit.
I see The Guardian has named the royals mentioned in the Dutch translation of the book. Surely the BBC has to at some point as well?
It’s kinda funny this because the only people really obsessed with the whiteness of the skin colour of mixed race kids are Asian people, they really want the skin colour to be really white.
Was also my experience when I sired mixed race kids.
Well there’s this strange contradiction in white skinned people of wanting to look healthy and tanned, despite decades of medical warnings about skin cancer and premature ageing.
It’s still a source of shame, when really it oughtn’t to be, realising the pallid pastiness of oneself and one’s children on holiday next to the healthy poreless skin, athletic physique and golden blond hair of the Swedish and Dutch kids.
It is by no means certain that the dangers of sun exposure are more acute than the dangers of vitamin D deficiency.
There's a happy medium, I think (which will vary according to skin type). You're certainly correct that a vitamin D deficiency is potentially quite harmful to health.
I take vitamin D tablets from time to time but am generally a bit cavalier with sun exposure, which is not a good idea given I’m generously dotted with moles. The worst thing about melanoma risk is the fact you could have got burnt as a child and that’s enough, it’s too late.
There's very mixed evidence on Vit D supplementation (you're probably better off eating mackerel or sardines) - whereas sun exposure (skin damage aside) is undoubtedly beneficial.
You can only create the precursors for Vitamin D with supplements, but you're not ingesting the actual vitamin. I like the idea of the Vitamin D enriched mushrooms you can get in supermarkets these days (you can get the same effect by putting your mushrooms on a sunny windowsill), but some studies have shown they increase Vitamin D2 not D3.
Best movie soundtrack of all time - at least for those of us who were 18 in 1996.
Wasn't bad for those of us who were 21!
Those of us who were 22, on the other hand, found it far too difficult to comprehend.
I was 23. A younger friend was really raving about wanting to watch it, but I just thought: "Why would I want to sit in the cinema watching the sad antics of a load of druggies? I lived in London for five years..."
Wait. You still haven't seen it?
Actually, I haven't. Not particularly interested in it; saw enough of that sort of world in London. And, to think of it, before.
There was a drug problem even in a tiny town like provincial Uttoxeter, in the late 1980s, at least.
I've seen loads of clips, and I daresay it's well-acted and well-written, but it's just not my cup of tea. Or syringe of heroin.
Perhaps I missed out on something. But there are certain types of films I just don't like. Courtroom dramas bore me (sorry, all PB's lawyers). Mafia films ditto. Though to be fair, there are exceptions in each category.
I'd think of PB circa 2000 as being more Layer Cake than Trainspotting.
Trainspotting had too much running.
Trainspotting was the film that convinced me to never try drugs.
Midnight Express was the film that convinced me never to try Turkish prisons.
In the US, when I was growing up, blondes were said to have "more fun". But an attractive man was often described as "tall, dark, and handsome".
(As far as I have seen, red heads here are just considered "different", not especially attractive or unattractive. Is that true in the UK, too? Or is there a bit of discrimination against "gingers".)
Best movie soundtrack of all time - at least for those of us who were 18 in 1996.
Wasn't bad for those of us who were 21!
Those of us who were 22, on the other hand, found it far too difficult to comprehend.
I was 23. A younger friend was really raving about wanting to watch it, but I just thought: "Why would I want to sit in the cinema watching the sad antics of a load of druggies? I lived in London for five years..."
Wait. You still haven't seen it?
Actually, I haven't. Not particularly interested in it; saw enough of that sort of world in London. And, to think of it, before.
There was a drug problem even in a tiny town like provincial Uttoxeter, in the late 1980s, at least.
I've seen loads of clips, and I daresay it's well-acted and well-written, but it's just not my cup of tea. Or syringe of heroin.
Perhaps I missed out on something. But there are certain types of films I just don't like. Courtroom dramas bore me (sorry, all PB's lawyers). Mafia films ditto. Though to be fair, there are exceptions in each category.
I'd think of PB circa 2000 as being more Layer Cake than Trainspotting.
Trainspotting had too much running.
Trainspotting was the film that convinced me to never try drugs.
TSE's was the post that convinced me never to try split infinitives.
I think rejoining the single market, either bilaterally or via the EEA, needs some sort of referendum in support. Maybe just an indicative one, but having voted OUT, the public need the opportunity to vote (to some extent) IN.
But if Keir is looking for measures to deliver growth, this is an obvious one, and looks to have quite widespread support now.
Maybe, but I note that the Leave campaign said we wouldn't be leaving the single market, so they can hardly complain if we re-join it.
They didn't say that during the referendum campaign. Everyone from Michael Gove to David Cameron to Wolfgang Schäuble was clear that a vote to Leave meant leaving the single market.
“Absolutely nobody is talking about threatening our place in the single market.” Daniel Hannan.
"Only a madman would actually leave the market” Owen Paterson.
"EU citizens living in this country will have their rights fully protected, and the same goes for British citizens living in the EU. British people will still be able to go and work in the EU; to live; to travel; to study; to buy homes and to settle down.” Boris Johnson.
It is true that many campaigners on both sides were clear enough that Leave meant leaving the single market. But many were inconsistent and some, such as Michael Gove whom you mention, tried to adopt cake-ist, pie-in-the-sky positions that were utterly unachievable:
"We should be outside the single market. We should have access to the single market, but we should not be governed by the rules that the European Court of Justice imposes on us, which cost business and restrict freedom." Michael Gove
The Hannan interview was from 2015 and the quote is a misrepresentation. He was saying that nobody in Brussels was talking about kicking us out of the single market.
The Paterson quote is from 2014.
The Johnson quote was after the referendum when he triangulating to win the leadership. He lost to Theresa May.
No, Hannan's pretty consistent position was that he wasn't in favour of leaving the single market and Brexit didn't entail doing to. Until, of course, it did. Johnson, as you say, was a charlatan who simply said whatever was most convenient at the moment he said it.
I don't quite go so far as others in claiming this was all a conspiracy against the public. But there were lots of types of Brexit depending on which Brexiteer was talking and to whom. Some were realistic, some were wishful thinking, and only one actually happened (of course). But, back in 2016, you could imagine, if you desired, a kind of ideal Brexit for you where you could have any good things about the EU and ditch the bad things. Whereas Remain was pretty much stuck with the what we had (with minor tweaks negotiated by Cameron) - which had plenty of strengths but some real flaws too. So people couldn't project their fantasies on it in the same way.
It cuts both ways. Where we've ended up is wrongly portrayed as some kind of crazy diamond-hard Brexit but back in 2016, the idea that we could leave and maintain zero tariffs and quotas was often treated as unrealistic and would have been considered a fairly soft Brexit.
I agree to the extent that there was an element of Project Fear being real - as well as fantasising about an imaginary ideal Brexit, you could fantasise about an apocalyptic one.
But - and I think it's hard to get away from this with the polls on the matter - more people think the reality has been worse rather than better than they guessed at the time.
I see The Guardian has named the royals mentioned in the Dutch translation of the book. Surely the BBC has to at some point as well?
It’s kinda funny this because the only people really obsessed with the whiteness of the skin colour of mixed race kids are Asian people, they really want the skin colour to be really white.
Was also my experience when I sired mixed race kids.
Mine, too; although in my case it was half-Thai grandchildren.
Everyone wants to be white. It’s a human universal dating back thousands of years. “Fairness” in women is prized in Sumerian texts
I remember on our wedding day the make up people tried to give my wife some kind of skin bleach, which was ridiculous as (a) she is a stunningly beautiful dark skinned Sri Lankan woman whose skin tone could not be improved upon and (b) presumably if I'd wanted to marry a fair skinned woman I wouldn't have been marrying her. They tried to achieve something similar by overexposing the wedding picture, the result of which is that I look like a ghost. The whole thing is very odd to me as Sri Lankans are quite a good looking bunch and it's odd that they'd want to look more like white people. Our children are a Farrow and Ball colour chart of skin tones. Our eldest is so fair that when we lived in the US (where people seem to be a bit more focused on skin colour than here) some people refused to believe my wife was her mother.
Apparently Wilders having immense problems getting other parties to join him in a coalition. Any bets on him being leader of the opposition against a Left, Centre, Centre Right coalition government..
If only they’d had FPTP, that would have shut the bouffanted populist out.
Oh.
I'm not sure you can just apply the voting percentages to a different voting system. They wouldn't have as many political parties under a FPTP system.
And people wouldn't have voted the same way.
My personal view is you can get hard right, populist f***nuts with awful hair under PR or FPTP. And I have the case studies to back that up.
I think rejoining the single market, either bilaterally or via the EEA, needs some sort of referendum in support. Maybe just an indicative one, but having voted OUT, the public need the opportunity to vote (to some extent) IN.
But if Keir is looking for measures to deliver growth, this is an obvious one, and looks to have quite widespread support now.
Maybe, but I note that the Leave campaign said we wouldn't be leaving the single market, so they can hardly complain if we re-join it.
They didn't say that during the referendum campaign. Everyone from Michael Gove to David Cameron to Wolfgang Schäuble was clear that a vote to Leave meant leaving the single market.
“Absolutely nobody is talking about threatening our place in the single market.” Daniel Hannan.
"Only a madman would actually leave the market” Owen Paterson.
"EU citizens living in this country will have their rights fully protected, and the same goes for British citizens living in the EU. British people will still be able to go and work in the EU; to live; to travel; to study; to buy homes and to settle down.” Boris Johnson.
It is true that many campaigners on both sides were clear enough that Leave meant leaving the single market. But many were inconsistent and some, such as Michael Gove whom you mention, tried to adopt cake-ist, pie-in-the-sky positions that were utterly unachievable:
"We should be outside the single market. We should have access to the single market, but we should not be governed by the rules that the European Court of Justice imposes on us, which cost business and restrict freedom." Michael Gove
The Hannan interview was from 2015 and the quote is a misrepresentation. He was saying that nobody in Brussels was talking about kicking us out of the single market.
The Paterson quote is from 2014.
The Johnson quote was after the referendum when he triangulating to win the leadership. He lost to Theresa May.
No, Hannan's pretty consistent position was that he wasn't in favour of leaving the single market and Brexit didn't entail doing to. Until, of course, it did. Johnson, as you say, was a charlatan who simply said whatever was most convenient at the moment he said it.
I don't quite go so far as others in claiming this was all a conspiracy against the public. But there were lots of types of Brexit depending on which Brexiteer was talking and to whom. Some were realistic, some were wishful thinking, and only one actually happened (of course). But, back in 2016, you could imagine, if you desired, a kind of ideal Brexit for you where you could have any good things about the EU and ditch the bad things. Whereas Remain was pretty much stuck with the what we had (with minor tweaks negotiated by Cameron) - which had plenty of strengths but some real flaws too. So people couldn't project their fantasies on it in the same way.
It cuts both ways. Where we've ended up is wrongly portrayed as some kind of crazy diamond-hard Brexit but back in 2016, the idea that we could leave and maintain zero tariffs and quotas was often treated as unrealistic and would have been considered a fairly soft Brexit.
Only among 19th century mercantilists for whom tariffs and quotas were the key thing. The EU already had multiple zero tariff FTAs and quotas were never a particularly controversial issue with Britain.
Most Brexit industrial losses have come from the low-level red tape involved in not being in the single market and customs union. The impact is greatest at the small scale because large multinationals can afford to deal with the paperwork.
Some losses (I’ve seen several myself despite best efforts) arise from a misconception of what you can and can’t do outside the EU. Ie we’ve lost the PR battle, especially with Japanese and US groups.
Rejoining the single market in particular would bring about a true bonfire of red tape.
Apparently Wilders having immense problems getting other parties to join him in a coalition. Any bets on him being leader of the opposition against a Left, Centre, Centre Right coalition government..
If only they’d had FPTP, that would have shut the bouffanted populist out.
Oh.
I'm not sure you can just apply the voting percentages to a different voting system. They wouldn't have as many political parties under a FPTP system.
They'd never have developed so many parties with serious support under FPTP, but a switch to FPTP would be fascinating. Would parties really agree mergers/electoral pacts to maximise support or would they all fight for territory and end up losing masses of seats to Wilders or similar? It would only happen once, but it's not impossible to see it happening once.
It’s hard to know because switching to FPTP is almost unknown, perhaps because it’s patently a terrible system. I can’t think of any cases of it happening, although Italy has made significant switches from more proportional to less proportional systems.
One of the merits of FPTP is that a party that gets 37 seats out of 150 is unlikely to be a kingmaker in such a way as to subvert a basically centrist polity.
But that ought also to be a feature of a more proportional system. Are they as bad as we are at realising that the centre left and the centre right are basically a similar animal and when under threat from extremes can make common cause?
I see The Guardian has named the royals mentioned in the Dutch translation of the book. Surely the BBC has to at some point as well?
It’s kinda funny this because the only people really obsessed with the whiteness of the skin colour of mixed race kids are Asian people, they really want the skin colour to be really white.
Was also my experience when I sired mixed race kids.
It does seem to me that most families with a looming birth discuss what/who the baby might look like, and if the parents are a mixed race couple both sides would wonder what the Royal family are alleged to have wondered
I see The Guardian has named the royals mentioned in the Dutch translation of the book. Surely the BBC has to at some point as well?
It’s kinda funny this because the only people really obsessed with the whiteness of the skin colour of mixed race kids are Asian people, they really want the skin colour to be really white.
Was also my experience when I sired mixed race kids.
Mine, too; although in my case it was half-Thai grandchildren.
Everyone wants to be white. It’s a human universal dating back thousands of years. “Fairness” in women is prized in Sumerian texts
I remember on our wedding day the make up people tried to give my wife some kind of skin bleach, which was ridiculous as (a) she is a stunningly beautiful dark skinned Sri Lankan woman whose skin tone could not be improved upon and (b) presumably if I'd wanted to marry a fair skinned woman I wouldn't have been marrying her. They tried to achieve something similar by overexposing the wedding picture, the result of which is that I look like a ghost. The whole thing is very odd to me as Sri Lankans are quite a good looking bunch and it's odd that they'd want to look more like white people. Our children are a Farrow and Ball colour chart of skin tones. Our eldest is so fair that when we lived in the US (where people seem to be a bit more focused on skin colour than here) some people refused to believe my wife was her mother.
There have been some awkward cases of people criticising mixed race politicians on the assumption they are white of course - skin colour has quite the range outside our very broad classifications.
I see The Guardian has named the royals mentioned in the Dutch translation of the book. Surely the BBC has to at some point as well?
It’s kinda funny this because the only people really obsessed with the whiteness of the skin colour of mixed race kids are Asian people, they really want the skin colour to be really white.
Was also my experience when I sired mixed race kids.
Mine, too; although in my case it was half-Thai grandchildren.
Everyone wants to be white. It’s a human universal dating back thousands of years. “Fairness” in women is prized in Sumerian texts
Er, 'fair' is a highly ambiguous word. I wouldn't trust that translation an inch without consulting a trained expert in Assyrology.
Preference for white skinned women in east Asia seems to go back 3000 years, or more
Can you see what the authors' source for that claim is about what happened 3000 years ago? Or do you just believe everything you read online?
Not exactly linguistic experts on cuneiform, are they? No departments or anything given, so I might just be unfair, but how do I know?
And a paper without any acknowledgements or funding sources cited makes me twitch all over. It would seem odd even in 2008 (albeit today the regime is much more severe than it was).
In the US, when I was growing up, blondes were said to have "more fun". But an attractive man was often described as "tall, dark, and handsome".
(As far as I have seen, red heads here are just considered "different", not especially attractive or unattractive. Is that true in the UK, too? Or is there a bit of discrimination against "gingers".)
Best movie soundtrack of all time - at least for those of us who were 18 in 1996.
Wasn't bad for those of us who were 21!
Those of us who were 22, on the other hand, found it far too difficult to comprehend.
I was 23. A younger friend was really raving about wanting to watch it, but I just thought: "Why would I want to sit in the cinema watching the sad antics of a load of druggies? I lived in London for five years..."
Wait. You still haven't seen it?
Actually, I haven't. Not particularly interested in it; saw enough of that sort of world in London. And, to think of it, before.
There was a drug problem even in a tiny town like provincial Uttoxeter, in the late 1980s, at least.
I've seen loads of clips, and I daresay it's well-acted and well-written, but it's just not my cup of tea. Or syringe of heroin.
Perhaps I missed out on something. But there are certain types of films I just don't like. Courtroom dramas bore me (sorry, all PB's lawyers). Mafia films ditto. Though to be fair, there are exceptions in each category.
I'd think of PB circa 2000 as being more Layer Cake than Trainspotting.
Trainspotting had too much running.
Trainspotting was the film that convinced me to never try drugs.
Midnight Express was the film that convinced me never to try Turkish prisons.
Play Misty for Me was the film that convinced me never to pick up girls in bars.
I see The Guardian has named the royals mentioned in the Dutch translation of the book. Surely the BBC has to at some point as well?
It’s kinda funny this because the only people really obsessed with the whiteness of the skin colour of mixed race kids are Asian people, they really want the skin colour to be really white.
Was also my experience when I sired mixed race kids.
Mine, too; although in my case it was half-Thai grandchildren.
Everyone wants to be white. It’s a human universal dating back thousands of years. “Fairness” in women is prized in Sumerian texts
I remember on our wedding day the make up people tried to give my wife some kind of skin bleach, which was ridiculous as (a) she is a stunningly beautiful dark skinned Sri Lankan woman whose skin tone could not be improved upon and (b) presumably if I'd wanted to marry a fair skinned woman I wouldn't have been marrying her. They tried to achieve something similar by overexposing the wedding picture, the result of which is that I look like a ghost. The whole thing is very odd to me as Sri Lankans are quite a good looking bunch and it's odd that they'd want to look more like white people. Our children are a Farrow and Ball colour chart of skin tones. Our eldest is so fair that when we lived in the US (where people seem to be a bit more focused on skin colour than here) some people refused to believe my wife was her mother.
I spent this morning placing Farrow and Ball swatches against various walls in our barn and choosing green smoke, lime white and something else I don’t remember. I suggested to the architect that we could buy the F&B in the UK as it’s about a third cheaper than in France and she borderline snorted. “Well you could buy actual Farrow (the French don’t bother with the “and ball”) but we were going to colour match otherwise you will have no budget left.
Paint is horrendously expensive here. F&B is affordable only to oligarchs.
Off topic, but possibly of betting importance: Yesterday, I saw the first mention of Nikki Haley on a local news program. Our "mainstream" news organizations have been reluctant to even mention alternatives to the Loser, except for a brief spell when DeSantis got some coverage.
That's partly because they want viewers and clicks, and partly because most "mainstream" journalists like the damage he's doing to the Republican Party.)
[Off topic]
Do you know about the moonlight towers of Austin, Texas? Tom Scott's latest video is on this subject.
What was her aim? To be able to check the signature of every postal or early voter? Could their votes be identified from that?
And to what end was Lake pursuing this?
Official aim or actual aim? The latter seems purely be to challenge via every avenue no matter how ludicrous, so she can use it for fundraising purposes.
Best movie soundtrack of all time - at least for those of us who were 18 in 1996.
Wasn't bad for those of us who were 21!
Those of us who were 22, on the other hand, found it far too difficult to comprehend.
I was 23. A younger friend was really raving about wanting to watch it, but I just thought: "Why would I want to sit in the cinema watching the sad antics of a load of druggies? I lived in London for five years..."
Wait. You still haven't seen it?
Actually, I haven't. Not particularly interested in it; saw enough of that sort of world in London. And, to think of it, before.
There was a drug problem even in a tiny town like provincial Uttoxeter, in the late 1980s, at least.
I've seen loads of clips, and I daresay it's well-acted and well-written, but it's just not my cup of tea. Or syringe of heroin.
Perhaps I missed out on something. But there are certain types of films I just don't like. Courtroom dramas bore me (sorry, all PB's lawyers). Mafia films ditto. Though to be fair, there are exceptions in each category.
I'd think of PB circa 2000 as being more Layer Cake than Trainspotting.
Trainspotting had too much running.
Trainspotting was the film that convinced me to never try drugs.
You do know that not all drugs are like heroin, right?
In the US, when I was growing up, blondes were said to have "more fun". But an attractive man was often described as "tall, dark, and handsome".
(As far as I have seen, red heads here are just considered "different", not especially attractive or unattractive. Is that true in the UK, too? Or is there a bit of discrimination against "gingers".)
Gingers are a bit discriminated against. I think their colouring and invisible eyebrows and lashes is not universally considered attractive (though a minority are passionately in favour as throughout history - Titian etc.).
Gingers have a layer less skin to help them thrive at higher latitudes.
Sad to say, considering it was 7 years ago, but this thread header and the associated polling simply repeats the thread header I posted on here the day after the Brexit vote.
Immediately before the vote, yougov polling showed that a substantial minority of Leave voters (enough to make it a majority of the overall poll) would favour joining EFTA and the EEA and so retaining freedom of movement. It should have been taken seriously as an option at the time rather than rattling on about the 'purity' of Brexit.
I lay the blame for this almost entirely at the feet of the succession of post Brexit governing parties with a small but significant dollop of blame being thrownvat those Remainer MPs who were only interested in overturning the vote.
I still maintain that this is where we will eventually land but we will have wasted years to get there.
Given what's happened with the immigration figures since the referendum, it would be interesting to consider the counter-factual where Theresa May had gone for a soft Brexit but seriously reduced non-EU immigration in response to the vote. She might still be PM.
Don't you think she'd have been axed by the party if she'd tried to do a BINO? The ERG were not inclined to cut her much slack remember. I think what killed her was the election she called. Instead of crushing the saboteurs she crushed herself and any chance of a composed orderly Brexit. The makeup of that parliament was a precision tool for impasse and chaos. The outcome was written. That's clear to me looking back at it.
She had her legs chopped off and we then spent 2 years trying to see if she could run a marathon.
Edit: Without prosthetics or other assistance I should add.
In the US, when I was growing up, blondes were said to have "more fun". But an attractive man was often described as "tall, dark, and handsome".
(As far as I have seen, red heads here are just considered "different", not especially attractive or unattractive. Is that true in the UK, too? Or is there a bit of discrimination against "gingers".)
Best movie soundtrack of all time - at least for those of us who were 18 in 1996.
Wasn't bad for those of us who were 21!
Those of us who were 22, on the other hand, found it far too difficult to comprehend.
I was 23. A younger friend was really raving about wanting to watch it, but I just thought: "Why would I want to sit in the cinema watching the sad antics of a load of druggies? I lived in London for five years..."
Wait. You still haven't seen it?
Actually, I haven't. Not particularly interested in it; saw enough of that sort of world in London. And, to think of it, before.
There was a drug problem even in a tiny town like provincial Uttoxeter, in the late 1980s, at least.
I've seen loads of clips, and I daresay it's well-acted and well-written, but it's just not my cup of tea. Or syringe of heroin.
Perhaps I missed out on something. But there are certain types of films I just don't like. Courtroom dramas bore me (sorry, all PB's lawyers). Mafia films ditto. Though to be fair, there are exceptions in each category.
I'd think of PB circa 2000 as being more Layer Cake than Trainspotting.
Trainspotting had too much running.
Trainspotting was the film that convinced me to never try drugs.
You do know that not all drugs are like heroin, right?
I see The Guardian has named the royals mentioned in the Dutch translation of the book. Surely the BBC has to at some point as well?
It’s kinda funny this because the only people really obsessed with the whiteness of the skin colour of mixed race kids are Asian people, they really want the skin colour to be really white.
Was also my experience when I sired mixed race kids.
Mine, too; although in my case it was half-Thai grandchildren.
Everyone wants to be white. It’s a human universal dating back thousands of years. “Fairness” in women is prized in Sumerian texts
I remember on our wedding day the make up people tried to give my wife some kind of skin bleach, which was ridiculous as (a) she is a stunningly beautiful dark skinned Sri Lankan woman whose skin tone could not be improved upon and (b) presumably if I'd wanted to marry a fair skinned woman I wouldn't have been marrying her. They tried to achieve something similar by overexposing the wedding picture, the result of which is that I look like a ghost. The whole thing is very odd to me as Sri Lankans are quite a good looking bunch and it's odd that they'd want to look more like white people. Our children are a Farrow and Ball colour chart of skin tones. Our eldest is so fair that when we lived in the US (where people seem to be a bit more focused on skin colour than here) some people refused to believe my wife was her mother.
I spent this morning placing Farrow and Ball swatches against various walls in our barn and choosing green smoke, lime white and something else I don’t remember. I suggested to the architect that we could buy the F&B in the UK as it’s about a third cheaper than in France and she borderline snorted. “Well you could buy actual Farrow (the French don’t bother with the “and ball”) but we were going to colour match otherwise you will have no budget left.
Paint is horrendously expensive here. F&B is affordable only to oligarchs.
Surely everyone just colour matches the F&B colours? Brewers on Queens Road will do it with Johnstones trade paints. They go on easier than F&B anyway. F&B colours are great though, they've really tapped into some primal anxiety in the British middle class brain and monetised it.
I see The Guardian has named the royals mentioned in the Dutch translation of the book. Surely the BBC has to at some point as well?
It’s kinda funny this because the only people really obsessed with the whiteness of the skin colour of mixed race kids are Asian people, they really want the skin colour to be really white.
Was also my experience when I sired mixed race kids.
Mine, too; although in my case it was half-Thai grandchildren.
Everyone wants to be white. It’s a human universal dating back thousands of years. “Fairness” in women is prized in Sumerian texts
I remember on our wedding day the make up people tried to give my wife some kind of skin bleach, which was ridiculous as (a) she is a stunningly beautiful dark skinned Sri Lankan woman whose skin tone could not be improved upon and (b) presumably if I'd wanted to marry a fair skinned woman I wouldn't have been marrying her. They tried to achieve something similar by overexposing the wedding picture, the result of which is that I look like a ghost. The whole thing is very odd to me as Sri Lankans are quite a good looking bunch and it's odd that they'd want to look more like white people. Our children are a Farrow and Ball colour chart of skin tones. Our eldest is so fair that when we lived in the US (where people seem to be a bit more focused on skin colour than here) some people refused to believe my wife was her mother.
There have been some awkward cases of people criticising mixed race politicians on the assumption they are white of course - skin colour has quite the range outside our very broad classifications.
In a few generations most of the world will hopefully have Brazilianised, with the majority of people having a mixture of genes and there being no need to talk of mixed race anymore because everyone already is.
“Mixed race” is an awful expression, implying as it does that Humans are made up of canine-style breeds. Nobody talks about “mixed hair colour”.
There’s a bit of a battle of ideas between the 90s concept of a future where we’re all colourblind, and the 2010s+ era where we must pay close attention to race so that we can understand prejudice and privilege. I preferred the colourblindness, even if that marks me out as a naive centrist dad. I saw in both my children that they had no conception of racial difference at school until people told them about it.
I think rejoining the single market, either bilaterally or via the EEA, needs some sort of referendum in support. Maybe just an indicative one, but having voted OUT, the public need the opportunity to vote (to some extent) IN.
But if Keir is looking for measures to deliver growth, this is an obvious one, and looks to have quite widespread support now.
Maybe, but I note that the Leave campaign said we wouldn't be leaving the single market, so they can hardly complain if we re-join it.
They didn't say that during the referendum campaign. Everyone from Michael Gove to David Cameron to Wolfgang Schäuble was clear that a vote to Leave meant leaving the single market.
“Absolutely nobody is talking about threatening our place in the single market.” Daniel Hannan.
"Only a madman would actually leave the market” Owen Paterson.
"EU citizens living in this country will have their rights fully protected, and the same goes for British citizens living in the EU. British people will still be able to go and work in the EU; to live; to travel; to study; to buy homes and to settle down.” Boris Johnson.
It is true that many campaigners on both sides were clear enough that Leave meant leaving the single market. But many were inconsistent and some, such as Michael Gove whom you mention, tried to adopt cake-ist, pie-in-the-sky positions that were utterly unachievable:
"We should be outside the single market. We should have access to the single market, but we should not be governed by the rules that the European Court of Justice imposes on us, which cost business and restrict freedom." Michael Gove
The Hannan interview was from 2015 and the quote is a misrepresentation. He was saying that nobody in Brussels was talking about kicking us out of the single market.
The Paterson quote is from 2014.
The Johnson quote was after the referendum when he triangulating to win the leadership. He lost to Theresa May.
(Small point of order. You make it sound like 2015 and 2014 were in the distant past. They were immediately prior to the referendum.)
They were well before Cameron set the date and presented his deal. It's fair to consider only February to June 2016 as the campaign proper.
That doesn't alter the fact that they were much, much closer in time to the referendum than the referendum is to now.
I see The Guardian has named the royals mentioned in the Dutch translation of the book. Surely the BBC has to at some point as well?
It’s kinda funny this because the only people really obsessed with the whiteness of the skin colour of mixed race kids are Asian people, they really want the skin colour to be really white.
Was also my experience when I sired mixed race kids.
Mine, too; although in my case it was half-Thai grandchildren.
Everyone wants to be white. It’s a human universal dating back thousands of years. “Fairness” in women is prized in Sumerian texts
I remember on our wedding day the make up people tried to give my wife some kind of skin bleach, which was ridiculous as (a) she is a stunningly beautiful dark skinned Sri Lankan woman whose skin tone could not be improved upon and (b) presumably if I'd wanted to marry a fair skinned woman I wouldn't have been marrying her. They tried to achieve something similar by overexposing the wedding picture, the result of which is that I look like a ghost. The whole thing is very odd to me as Sri Lankans are quite a good looking bunch and it's odd that they'd want to look more like white people. Our children are a Farrow and Ball colour chart of skin tones. Our eldest is so fair that when we lived in the US (where people seem to be a bit more focused on skin colour than here) some people refused to believe my wife was her mother.
I spent this morning placing Farrow and Ball swatches against various walls in our barn and choosing green smoke, lime white and something else I don’t remember. I suggested to the architect that we could buy the F&B in the UK as it’s about a third cheaper than in France and she borderline snorted. “Well you could buy actual Farrow (the French don’t bother with the “and ball”) but we were going to colour match otherwise you will have no budget left.
Paint is horrendously expensive here. F&B is affordable only to oligarchs.
Surely everyone just colour matches the F&B colours? Brewers on Queens Road will do it with Johnstones trade paints. They go on easier than F&B anyway. F&B colours are great though, they've really tapped into some primal anxiety in the British middle class brain and monetised it.
I somehow just don't like to think of Tim's beautiful barn conversion being daubed with knock-off paint.
Off topic, but possibly of betting importance: Yesterday, I saw the first mention of Nikki Haley on a local news program. Our "mainstream" news organizations have been reluctant to even mention alternatives to the Loser, except for a brief spell when DeSantis got some coverage.
That's partly because they want viewers and clicks, and partly because most "mainstream" journalists like the damage he's doing to the Republican Party.)
I do think Haley is worth a small-ish flutter at odds of around 15-1 for Iowa. Trump will probably be okay, but it isn't temperamentally the best red state for him, he's stubbornly shy of a majority in primary polls there, and he underperformed there in 2016 (losing to Cruz and almost slipping to third behind Rubio when polls had him as likely winner).
For Haley, there is a reasonable chance Republicans there who aren't sold on Trump will rally around her with the De Santis campaign apparently having a slow puncture which has led to it deflating over many months, and Ramaswamy also basically on the slide.
Caucuses are also decided by those that turn up (well, all votes are but caucuses take more of an effort). I just wonder if Trump dominating the process may lead to lazy assumptions of invincibility by supporters on the day.
I'd not say it's likely, but Trump hasn't fully sewn it up.
If the race can resolve to Trump v Haley quite quickly (fuck off Ron) and Trump's national poll numbers start to slide a bit in response to legal developments and further revelations and stupid shit that he says, then it could get interesting. Things might look very different in say 3 months to how they look today.
I think there's a big chance of this. The Trump situation is inherently unstable and primed to blow up. I really do feel that. I'm just waiting to see precisely what triggers it, and when, and how the dust settles. His 2.6 price for the WH reflects none of this. It's crazy short imo. All trees and no wood.
Best movie soundtrack of all time - at least for those of us who were 18 in 1996.
Wasn't bad for those of us who were 21!
Those of us who were 22, on the other hand, found it far too difficult to comprehend.
I was 23. A younger friend was really raving about wanting to watch it, but I just thought: "Why would I want to sit in the cinema watching the sad antics of a load of druggies? I lived in London for five years..."
Wait. You still haven't seen it?
Actually, I haven't. Not particularly interested in it; saw enough of that sort of world in London. And, to think of it, before.
There was a drug problem even in a tiny town like provincial Uttoxeter, in the late 1980s, at least.
I've seen loads of clips, and I daresay it's well-acted and well-written, but it's just not my cup of tea. Or syringe of heroin.
Perhaps I missed out on something. But there are certain types of films I just don't like. Courtroom dramas bore me (sorry, all PB's lawyers). Mafia films ditto. Though to be fair, there are exceptions in each category.
I'd think of PB circa 2000 as being more Layer Cake than Trainspotting.
Trainspotting had too much running.
Trainspotting was the film that convinced me to never try drugs.
You do know that not all drugs are like heroin, right?
Yes, but I worry about gateway drugs.
Never done alcohol either.
I only have two real vices.
Diet coke and excessive modesty?
Personally I think alcohol is a lot more harmful than plenty of the things that we have banned. It is also the ultimate gateway drug. Most addiction is probably a result of self medicating underlying mental health or other problems. People who just want to have a good time once in a while don't really run into any problems, and the problems that do arise (drugs being cut with another more harmful substance, street violence around supply chains) are a result of failed prohibition policies. Having said all that, taking heroin is obviously nuts.
I think he's proven to be quite likable and normal.
It's not as though I'm a fan of Farage's, but I don't think on a personal level he has historically come across as that objectionable. Political views people will disagree about, some despise him for that, but he's personable and his success in building and maintaining his profile suggests he engages well with people who are open to his messaging.
I think rejoining the single market, either bilaterally or via the EEA, needs some sort of referendum in support. Maybe just an indicative one, but having voted OUT, the public need the opportunity to vote (to some extent) IN.
But if Keir is looking for measures to deliver growth, this is an obvious one, and looks to have quite widespread support now.
Maybe, but I note that the Leave campaign said we wouldn't be leaving the single market, so they can hardly complain if we re-join it.
They didn't say that during the referendum campaign. Everyone from Michael Gove to David Cameron to Wolfgang Schäuble was clear that a vote to Leave meant leaving the single market.
“Absolutely nobody is talking about threatening our place in the single market.” Daniel Hannan.
"Only a madman would actually leave the market” Owen Paterson.
"EU citizens living in this country will have their rights fully protected, and the same goes for British citizens living in the EU. British people will still be able to go and work in the EU; to live; to travel; to study; to buy homes and to settle down.” Boris Johnson.
It is true that many campaigners on both sides were clear enough that Leave meant leaving the single market. But many were inconsistent and some, such as Michael Gove whom you mention, tried to adopt cake-ist, pie-in-the-sky positions that were utterly unachievable:
"We should be outside the single market. We should have access to the single market, but we should not be governed by the rules that the European Court of Justice imposes on us, which cost business and restrict freedom." Michael Gove
The Hannan interview was from 2015 and the quote is a misrepresentation. He was saying that nobody in Brussels was talking about kicking us out of the single market.
The Paterson quote is from 2014.
The Johnson quote was after the referendum when he triangulating to win the leadership. He lost to Theresa May.
No, Hannan's pretty consistent position was that he wasn't in favour of leaving the single market and Brexit didn't entail doing to. Until, of course, it did. Johnson, as you say, was a charlatan who simply said whatever was most convenient at the moment he said it.
I don't quite go so far as others in claiming this was all a conspiracy against the public. But there were lots of types of Brexit depending on which Brexiteer was talking and to whom. Some were realistic, some were wishful thinking, and only one actually happened (of course). But, back in 2016, you could imagine, if you desired, a kind of ideal Brexit for you where you could have any good things about the EU and ditch the bad things. Whereas Remain was pretty much stuck with the what we had (with minor tweaks negotiated by Cameron) - which had plenty of strengths but some real flaws too. So people couldn't project their fantasies on it in the same way.
It cuts both ways. Where we've ended up is wrongly portrayed as some kind of crazy diamond-hard Brexit but back in 2016, the idea that we could leave and maintain zero tariffs and quotas was often treated as unrealistic and would have been considered a fairly soft Brexit.
Only among 19th century mercantilists for whom tariffs and quotas were the key thing. The EU already had multiple zero tariff FTAs and quotas were never a particularly controversial issue with Britain.
Most Brexit industrial losses have come from the low-level red tape involved in not being in the single market and customs union. The impact is greatest at the small scale because large multinationals can afford to deal with the paperwork.
Some losses (I’ve seen several myself despite best efforts) arise from a misconception of what you can and can’t do outside the EU. Ie we’ve lost the PR battle, especially with Japanese and US groups.
Rejoining the single market in particular would bring about a true bonfire of red tape.
On the other hand, small businesses selling services to the EU (like my own PythonAnwhere - which has sadly been sold) benefited from no longer needing to go through the ridiculous VAT palava.
In the US, when I was growing up, blondes were said to have "more fun". But an attractive man was often described as "tall, dark, and handsome".
(As far as I have seen, red heads here are just considered "different", not especially attractive or unattractive. Is that true in the UK, too? Or is there a bit of discrimination against "gingers".)
Gingers are a bit discriminated against. I think their colouring and invisible eyebrows and lashes is not universally considered attractive (though a minority are passionately in favour as throughout history - Titian etc.).
Gingers have a layer less skin to help them thrive at higher latitudes.
My youngest son has the brightest ginger hair I think I’ve ever seen. He’s bound to get teased about it at some point although for now he gets a lot of comments on how wonderful and beautiful the colour is, funnily enough mainly from other redheads
I see The Guardian has named the royals mentioned in the Dutch translation of the book. Surely the BBC has to at some point as well?
It’s kinda funny this because the only people really obsessed with the whiteness of the skin colour of mixed race kids are Asian people, they really want the skin colour to be really white.
Was also my experience when I sired mixed race kids.
Mine, too; although in my case it was half-Thai grandchildren.
Everyone wants to be white. It’s a human universal dating back thousands of years. “Fairness” in women is prized in Sumerian texts
I remember on our wedding day the make up people tried to give my wife some kind of skin bleach, which was ridiculous as (a) she is a stunningly beautiful dark skinned Sri Lankan woman whose skin tone could not be improved upon and (b) presumably if I'd wanted to marry a fair skinned woman I wouldn't have been marrying her. They tried to achieve something similar by overexposing the wedding picture, the result of which is that I look like a ghost. The whole thing is very odd to me as Sri Lankans are quite a good looking bunch and it's odd that they'd want to look more like white people. Our children are a Farrow and Ball colour chart of skin tones. Our eldest is so fair that when we lived in the US (where people seem to be a bit more focused on skin colour than here) some people refused to believe my wife was her mother.
I spent this morning placing Farrow and Ball swatches against various walls in our barn and choosing green smoke, lime white and something else I don’t remember. I suggested to the architect that we could buy the F&B in the UK as it’s about a third cheaper than in France and she borderline snorted. “Well you could buy actual Farrow (the French don’t bother with the “and ball”) but we were going to colour match otherwise you will have no budget left.
Paint is horrendously expensive here. F&B is affordable only to oligarchs.
Surely everyone just colour matches the F&B colours? Brewers on Queens Road will do it with Johnstones trade paints. They go on easier than F&B anyway. F&B colours are great though, they've really tapped into some primal anxiety in the British middle class brain and monetised it.
I somehow just don't like to think of Tim's beautiful barn conversion being daubed with knock-off paint.
You can't tell the difference, except in your wallet.
What was her aim? To be able to check the signature of every postal or early voter? Could their votes be identified from that?
And to what end was Lake pursuing this?
Her aim was and is to cast shade, and I think that is what the judgment recognises.
If you endlessly make claims, bring spurious legal actions and so on, ultimately judges say, "Oh f*** off - you lost and this is a ridiculous waste of time and money". At which point you respond, "Ah, that proves they have something to hide".
That's essentially the judge's (slightly strained) golden goose analogy. You just try to dismantle the whole thing and when people quite rightly don't let you, that's precisely the "evidence" you need to tell supporters that the system is rotten.
Clearly, it isn't how the process is meant to work. You do need to identify what you have genuine reason to believe has gone wrong and then, fine, surgically look at that. You can't be raising endless "what about" matters a full year after losing - it's not how the law works or should work.
I see The Guardian has named the royals mentioned in the Dutch translation of the book. Surely the BBC has to at some point as well?
It’s kinda funny this because the only people really obsessed with the whiteness of the skin colour of mixed race kids are Asian people, they really want the skin colour to be really white.
Was also my experience when I sired mixed race kids.
Mine, too; although in my case it was half-Thai grandchildren.
Everyone wants to be white. It’s a human universal dating back thousands of years. “Fairness” in women is prized in Sumerian texts
I remember on our wedding day the make up people tried to give my wife some kind of skin bleach, which was ridiculous as (a) she is a stunningly beautiful dark skinned Sri Lankan woman whose skin tone could not be improved upon and (b) presumably if I'd wanted to marry a fair skinned woman I wouldn't have been marrying her. They tried to achieve something similar by overexposing the wedding picture, the result of which is that I look like a ghost. The whole thing is very odd to me as Sri Lankans are quite a good looking bunch and it's odd that they'd want to look more like white people. Our children are a Farrow and Ball colour chart of skin tones. Our eldest is so fair that when we lived in the US (where people seem to be a bit more focused on skin colour than here) some people refused to believe my wife was her mother.
I spent this morning placing Farrow and Ball swatches against various walls in our barn and choosing green smoke, lime white and something else I don’t remember. I suggested to the architect that we could buy the F&B in the UK as it’s about a third cheaper than in France and she borderline snorted. “Well you could buy actual Farrow (the French don’t bother with the “and ball”) but we were going to colour match otherwise you will have no budget left.
Paint is horrendously expensive here. F&B is affordable only to oligarchs.
Surely everyone just colour matches the F&B colours? Brewers on Queens Road will do it with Johnstones trade paints. They go on easier than F&B anyway. F&B colours are great though, they've really tapped into some primal anxiety in the British middle class brain and monetised it.
Our local Johnstones matched a F&B shade for me back in 2013, so if Mansfield could do it back then, one hopes it has reached everywhere else by now .
Surely people who use 'real' F&B are chavs with an upgrade, like Virgin Premium Economy?
I see The Guardian has named the royals mentioned in the Dutch translation of the book. Surely the BBC has to at some point as well?
It’s kinda funny this because the only people really obsessed with the whiteness of the skin colour of mixed race kids are Asian people, they really want the skin colour to be really white.
Was also my experience when I sired mixed race kids.
Mine, too; although in my case it was half-Thai grandchildren.
Everyone wants to be white. It’s a human universal dating back thousands of years. “Fairness” in women is prized in Sumerian texts
I remember on our wedding day the make up people tried to give my wife some kind of skin bleach, which was ridiculous as (a) she is a stunningly beautiful dark skinned Sri Lankan woman whose skin tone could not be improved upon and (b) presumably if I'd wanted to marry a fair skinned woman I wouldn't have been marrying her. They tried to achieve something similar by overexposing the wedding picture, the result of which is that I look like a ghost. The whole thing is very odd to me as Sri Lankans are quite a good looking bunch and it's odd that they'd want to look more like white people. Our children are a Farrow and Ball colour chart of skin tones. Our eldest is so fair that when we lived in the US (where people seem to be a bit more focused on skin colour than here) some people refused to believe my wife was her mother.
There have been some awkward cases of people criticising mixed race politicians on the assumption they are white of course - skin colour has quite the range outside our very broad classifications.
In a few generations most of the world will hopefully have Brazilianised, with the majority of people having a mixture of genes and there being no need to talk of mixed race anymore because everyone already is.
“Mixed race” is an awful expression, implying as it does that Humans are made up of canine-style breeds. Nobody talks about “mixed hair colour”.
There’s a bit of a battle of ideas between the 90s concept of a future where we’re all colourblind, and the 2010s+ era where we must pay close attention to race so that we can understand prejudice and privilege. I preferred the colourblindness, even if that marks me out as a naive centrist dad. I saw in both my children that they had no conception of racial difference at school until people told them about it.
That's not a great idea, given that nature gifted us racial differences to make us particularly suited to our environments. A dark-skinned person is at higher risk of vitamin d deficiency related conditions when living in a less sunny climate, and a ginger person (as an extreme example) needs to be very careful of their skin when living in Australia.
Best movie soundtrack of all time - at least for those of us who were 18 in 1996.
Wasn't bad for those of us who were 21!
Those of us who were 22, on the other hand, found it far too difficult to comprehend.
I was 23. A younger friend was really raving about wanting to watch it, but I just thought: "Why would I want to sit in the cinema watching the sad antics of a load of druggies? I lived in London for five years..."
Wait. You still haven't seen it?
Actually, I haven't. Not particularly interested in it; saw enough of that sort of world in London. And, to think of it, before.
There was a drug problem even in a tiny town like provincial Uttoxeter, in the late 1980s, at least.
I've seen loads of clips, and I daresay it's well-acted and well-written, but it's just not my cup of tea. Or syringe of heroin.
Perhaps I missed out on something. But there are certain types of films I just don't like. Courtroom dramas bore me (sorry, all PB's lawyers). Mafia films ditto. Though to be fair, there are exceptions in each category.
I'd think of PB circa 2000 as being more Layer Cake than Trainspotting.
Trainspotting had too much running.
Trainspotting was the film that convinced me to never try drugs.
You do know that not all drugs are like heroin, right?
Yes, but I worry about gateway drugs.
Never done alcohol either.
I only have two real vices.
Diet coke and excessive modesty?
Personally I think alcohol is a lot more harmful than plenty of the things that we have banned. It is also the ultimate gateway drug. Most addiction is probably a result of self medicating underlying mental health or other problems. People who just want to have a good time once in a while don't really run into any problems, and the problems that do arise (drugs being cut with another more harmful substance, street violence around supply chains) are a result of failed prohibition policies. Having said all that, taking heroin is obviously nuts.
Excessive modesty isn't a vice, it is a character flaw.
My vices are constant whoring, gambling, and redheads.
My avoidance of alcohol started off because I was a good Muslim but when I fell of that wagon alcohol never appealed to me, I didn't want anything to impact my grades and career (a former colleague was done for drink driving.)
Then I was in a relationship with someone who couldn't drive and the round trip to see her was a 270 mile round trip.
Note the most popular option with voters on that Yougov poll on our relationship with the EU is to increase our trading relationship with the EU but without joining the single market. 49% support that option, keeping our relationship with the EU as now or reducing ties with the EU.
Only 42% support rejoining the EU or rejoining the single market
I see The Guardian has named the royals mentioned in the Dutch translation of the book. Surely the BBC has to at some point as well?
It’s kinda funny this because the only people really obsessed with the whiteness of the skin colour of mixed race kids are Asian people, they really want the skin colour to be really white.
Was also my experience when I sired mixed race kids.
Mine, too; although in my case it was half-Thai grandchildren.
Everyone wants to be white. It’s a human universal dating back thousands of years. “Fairness” in women is prized in Sumerian texts
I remember on our wedding day the make up people tried to give my wife some kind of skin bleach, which was ridiculous as (a) she is a stunningly beautiful dark skinned Sri Lankan woman whose skin tone could not be improved upon and (b) presumably if I'd wanted to marry a fair skinned woman I wouldn't have been marrying her. They tried to achieve something similar by overexposing the wedding picture, the result of which is that I look like a ghost. The whole thing is very odd to me as Sri Lankans are quite a good looking bunch and it's odd that they'd want to look more like white people. Our children are a Farrow and Ball colour chart of skin tones. Our eldest is so fair that when we lived in the US (where people seem to be a bit more focused on skin colour than here) some people refused to believe my wife was her mother.
I spent this morning placing Farrow and Ball swatches against various walls in our barn and choosing green smoke, lime white and something else I don’t remember. I suggested to the architect that we could buy the F&B in the UK as it’s about a third cheaper than in France and she borderline snorted. “Well you could buy actual Farrow (the French don’t bother with the “and ball”) but we were going to colour match otherwise you will have no budget left.
Paint is horrendously expensive here. F&B is affordable only to oligarchs.
Surely everyone just colour matches the F&B colours? Brewers on Queens Road will do it with Johnstones trade paints. They go on easier than F&B anyway. F&B colours are great though, they've really tapped into some primal anxiety in the British middle class brain and monetised it.
French colour matched paints seem to be thin and oily. We used one in the bathroom here and after 4 coats it’s still streaky. Most of ours at home are from Whites in Forest Hill, which does a decent job with Dulux and Crown.
F&B does indeed seem to have mastered the oeuvre. It’s very much seen as the apex of domestic paint in France, the country of LVMH and L’Oreal. So it’s not just British middle class anxieties it’s tapping into.
France is just different. There is no great tradition of DIY. It happens (hence Leroy Merlin and Castorama) but it’s looked down on. Petit bricoleur is an insult. It’s seen as a hobby (like barbecuing) of the Anglo-Saxonised lumpen proletariat, the sort of people who name their sons Kevin and vote Le Pen.
I see The Guardian has named the royals mentioned in the Dutch translation of the book. Surely the BBC has to at some point as well?
It’s kinda funny this because the only people really obsessed with the whiteness of the skin colour of mixed race kids are Asian people, they really want the skin colour to be really white.
Was also my experience when I sired mixed race kids.
Mine, too; although in my case it was half-Thai grandchildren.
Everyone wants to be white. It’s a human universal dating back thousands of years. “Fairness” in women is prized in Sumerian texts
I remember on our wedding day the make up people tried to give my wife some kind of skin bleach, which was ridiculous as (a) she is a stunningly beautiful dark skinned Sri Lankan woman whose skin tone could not be improved upon and (b) presumably if I'd wanted to marry a fair skinned woman I wouldn't have been marrying her. They tried to achieve something similar by overexposing the wedding picture, the result of which is that I look like a ghost. The whole thing is very odd to me as Sri Lankans are quite a good looking bunch and it's odd that they'd want to look more like white people. Our children are a Farrow and Ball colour chart of skin tones. Our eldest is so fair that when we lived in the US (where people seem to be a bit more focused on skin colour than here) some people refused to believe my wife was her mother.
There have been some awkward cases of people criticising mixed race politicians on the assumption they are white of course - skin colour has quite the range outside our very broad classifications.
In a few generations most of the world will hopefully have Brazilianised, with the majority of people having a mixture of genes and there being no need to talk of mixed race anymore because everyone already is.
“Mixed race” is an awful expression, implying as it does that Humans are made up of canine-style breeds. Nobody talks about “mixed hair colour”.
There’s a bit of a battle of ideas between the 90s concept of a future where we’re all colourblind, and the 2010s+ era where we must pay close attention to race so that we can understand prejudice and privilege. I preferred the colourblindness, even if that marks me out as a naive centrist dad. I saw in both my children that they had no conception of racial difference at school until people told them about it.
Yes, I find the modern trend to be both depressing and bizarre in some ways. Yes, we may not have reached a place where there is total colour blindness in action or in the more tricky sense of ingrained attitudes/institutional disparities, but isn't it a good goal at least?
Whereas a hyperfocus on how we apparently differentiate from one another on race, gender, whatever, and who owes the other this or that, should feel guilt or a sense of oppression regardless of the actions and views they personally hold, seems like a bad goal to me. One which is not as helpful at redressing inequalities as what we were doing before.
Isn't there a place where we don't dismiss there may be work to do, without making race in particular the main distinguising factor in our lives? If nothing else it often presupposes people of one 'race' (such as that is even a thing, given as you point out the difficulties there) are supposed to think the same things, since the arguments are always framed in absolutist terms, speaking for everyone of a particular type, or against a type.
I see The Guardian has named the royals mentioned in the Dutch translation of the book. Surely the BBC has to at some point as well?
It’s kinda funny this because the only people really obsessed with the whiteness of the skin colour of mixed race kids are Asian people, they really want the skin colour to be really white.
Was also my experience when I sired mixed race kids.
Mine, too; although in my case it was half-Thai grandchildren.
Everyone wants to be white. It’s a human universal dating back thousands of years. “Fairness” in women is prized in Sumerian texts
Er, 'fair' is a highly ambiguous word. I wouldn't trust that translation an inch without consulting a trained expert in Assyrology.
Preference for white skinned women in east Asia seems to go back 3000 years, or more
I see The Guardian has named the royals mentioned in the Dutch translation of the book. Surely the BBC has to at some point as well?
It’s kinda funny this because the only people really obsessed with the whiteness of the skin colour of mixed race kids are Asian people, they really want the skin colour to be really white.
Was also my experience when I sired mixed race kids.
Mine, too; although in my case it was half-Thai grandchildren.
Everyone wants to be white. It’s a human universal dating back thousands of years. “Fairness” in women is prized in Sumerian texts
I remember on our wedding day the make up people tried to give my wife some kind of skin bleach, which was ridiculous as (a) she is a stunningly beautiful dark skinned Sri Lankan woman whose skin tone could not be improved upon and (b) presumably if I'd wanted to marry a fair skinned woman I wouldn't have been marrying her. They tried to achieve something similar by overexposing the wedding picture, the result of which is that I look like a ghost. The whole thing is very odd to me as Sri Lankans are quite a good looking bunch and it's odd that they'd want to look more like white people. Our children are a Farrow and Ball colour chart of skin tones. Our eldest is so fair that when we lived in the US (where people seem to be a bit more focused on skin colour than here) some people refused to believe my wife was her mother.
I spent this morning placing Farrow and Ball swatches against various walls in our barn and choosing green smoke, lime white and something else I don’t remember. I suggested to the architect that we could buy the F&B in the UK as it’s about a third cheaper than in France and she borderline snorted. “Well you could buy actual Farrow (the French don’t bother with the “and ball”) but we were going to colour match otherwise you will have no budget left.
Paint is horrendously expensive here. F&B is affordable only to oligarchs.
Surely everyone just colour matches the F&B colours? Brewers on Queens Road will do it with Johnstones trade paints. They go on easier than F&B anyway. F&B colours are great though, they've really tapped into some primal anxiety in the British middle class brain and monetised it.
I somehow just don't like to think of Tim's beautiful barn conversion being daubed with knock-off paint.
If it was up to me it would all be knock off. But you must know decisions like this are never up to the husband.
Someone's been reading PB. Glad to see the mainstream media pick up on the regulatory destruction of risk taking in the UK. It will take a lot more articles and a lot more pressure to unwind 20 years of damaging attitudes thay have turned is into a low risk, low tiles economy.
I think he's proven to be quite likable and normal.
It's not as though I'm a fan of Farage's, but I don't think on a personal level he has historically come across as that objectionable. Political views people will disagree about, some despise him for that, but he's personable and his success in building and maintaining his profile suggests he engages well with people who are open to his messaging.
He's always benefitted from exposure (such as the debates with Nick Clegg). People who seek to stitch him up (as there is a little evidence that ITV have tried to do) need to remember that. I did 'warn' them (as if they read me on PB) that it would be very difficult to do that as Farage is a very wily operator. And ITV, with the best will in the world, aren't.
What was her aim? To be able to check the signature of every postal or early voter? Could their votes be identified from that?
And to what end was Lake pursuing this?
Her aim was and is to cast shade, and I think that is what the judgment recognises.
If you endlessly make claims, bring spurious legal actions and so on, ultimately judges say, "Oh f*** off - you lost and this is a ridiculous waste of time and money". At which point you respond, "Ah, that proves they have something to hide".
That's essentially the judge's (slightly strained) golden goose analogy. You just try to dismantle the whole thing and when people quite rightly don't let you, that's precisely the "evidence" you need to tell supporters that the system is rotten.
Clearly, it isn't how the process is meant to work. You do need to identify what you have genuine reason to believe has gone wrong and then, fine, surgically look at that. You can't be raising endless "what about" matters a full year after losing - it's not how the law works or should work.
Indeed. You can see the same kind of ploy, naturally, in Trump's various cases, where he attacks the judges and processes (except where he has a judge he thinks will be accomodating), and whether or not the judges react the fact he attacks them will be used by his people as evidence the judges must hate him and be biased against him, since of course they would to someone so odious, right? Therefore anyone he criticises should not be able to judge him, as that is unfair to him.
Best movie soundtrack of all time - at least for those of us who were 18 in 1996.
Wasn't bad for those of us who were 21!
Those of us who were 22, on the other hand, found it far too difficult to comprehend.
I was 23. A younger friend was really raving about wanting to watch it, but I just thought: "Why would I want to sit in the cinema watching the sad antics of a load of druggies? I lived in London for five years..."
Wait. You still haven't seen it?
Actually, I haven't. Not particularly interested in it; saw enough of that sort of world in London. And, to think of it, before.
There was a drug problem even in a tiny town like provincial Uttoxeter, in the late 1980s, at least.
I've seen loads of clips, and I daresay it's well-acted and well-written, but it's just not my cup of tea. Or syringe of heroin.
Perhaps I missed out on something. But there are certain types of films I just don't like. Courtroom dramas bore me (sorry, all PB's lawyers). Mafia films ditto. Though to be fair, there are exceptions in each category.
It's not really a gritty-realism film. More a slightly surreal dark comedy.
For gritty realism of heroin addiction it is hard to beat "Christiane F", it is on BFI player, and a brilliant film. Slightly controversial now because of the age of the main star. Great Bowie soundtrack too.
I would argue that the best movie soundtrack is "Easy Rider", yet another druggie film.
I see The Guardian has named the royals mentioned in the Dutch translation of the book. Surely the BBC has to at some point as well?
It’s kinda funny this because the only people really obsessed with the whiteness of the skin colour of mixed race kids are Asian people, they really want the skin colour to be really white.
Was also my experience when I sired mixed race kids.
Mine, too; although in my case it was half-Thai grandchildren.
Everyone wants to be white. It’s a human universal dating back thousands of years. “Fairness” in women is prized in Sumerian texts
I remember on our wedding day the make up people tried to give my wife some kind of skin bleach, which was ridiculous as (a) she is a stunningly beautiful dark skinned Sri Lankan woman whose skin tone could not be improved upon and (b) presumably if I'd wanted to marry a fair skinned woman I wouldn't have been marrying her. They tried to achieve something similar by overexposing the wedding picture, the result of which is that I look like a ghost. The whole thing is very odd to me as Sri Lankans are quite a good looking bunch and it's odd that they'd want to look more like white people. Our children are a Farrow and Ball colour chart of skin tones. Our eldest is so fair that when we lived in the US (where people seem to be a bit more focused on skin colour than here) some people refused to believe my wife was her mother.
I spent this morning placing Farrow and Ball swatches against various walls in our barn and choosing green smoke, lime white and something else I don’t remember. I suggested to the architect that we could buy the F&B in the UK as it’s about a third cheaper than in France and she borderline snorted. “Well you could buy actual Farrow (the French don’t bother with the “and ball”) but we were going to colour match otherwise you will have no budget left.
Paint is horrendously expensive here. F&B is affordable only to oligarchs.
FPT: (Since some of you are still discussing Kissinger's death.) Here are two reactions from the Washington Post. First, from the Editorial Board: "In less than four years during the early 1970s, Mr. Kissinger brokered the opening of relations between the United States and China, the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam, major arms-control agreements with the Soviet Union, and Israeli-Arab accords that made the United States the dominant power in the Middle East." https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/29/henry-kissinger-legacy-debate/
Second, from conservative columnist George Will, this reminder: "A decade after Kissinger left the State Department, communism, whose confidence flowed from Marxism’s economic determinism, absorbed a brutal, indeed fatal, lesson in the importance of economic factors. In 1976, Ronald Reagan challenged Ford for the Republican nomination by running against Kissingerism. And at the 1986 summit in Iceland, Reagan icily told Mikhail Gorbachev that if there were to be an intensified arms race, he, Reagan, could guarantee that America would win it. The statesman’s task, Kissinger believed, is “to rescue an element of choice from the pressure of circumstance.” He helped manage the Cold War until the nation chose a president determined not to manage it but to win it." source$:https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/29/henry-kissinger-legacy-george-will/
(For the record: In 1979, I broke out laughing when I realized that Reagan would probably win the Republican nomination -- and that I would probably be voting for him.)
Kissinger also deliberately weakened the likelihood of peace in Vietnam for narrow political aims. Americans died so that his candidate could win the Presidency.
He was an absolute peace of shit. And I don't say that lightly.
Usually Specsavers offers require Excel and Pivot Tables to comprehend. But this morning they gave me a simple "half price next pair of glasses" piece of paper. Which is quite useful as I bought the cheaper of this year's 2 pairs this morning (for obscure reasons). The 2nd pair have just been upgraded .
I see The Guardian has named the royals mentioned in the Dutch translation of the book. Surely the BBC has to at some point as well?
It’s kinda funny this because the only people really obsessed with the whiteness of the skin colour of mixed race kids are Asian people, they really want the skin colour to be really white.
Was also my experience when I sired mixed race kids.
Mine, too; although in my case it was half-Thai grandchildren.
Everyone wants to be white. It’s a human universal dating back thousands of years. “Fairness” in women is prized in Sumerian texts
I remember on our wedding day the make up people tried to give my wife some kind of skin bleach, which was ridiculous as (a) she is a stunningly beautiful dark skinned Sri Lankan woman whose skin tone could not be improved upon and (b) presumably if I'd wanted to marry a fair skinned woman I wouldn't have been marrying her. They tried to achieve something similar by overexposing the wedding picture, the result of which is that I look like a ghost. The whole thing is very odd to me as Sri Lankans are quite a good looking bunch and it's odd that they'd want to look more like white people. Our children are a Farrow and Ball colour chart of skin tones. Our eldest is so fair that when we lived in the US (where people seem to be a bit more focused on skin colour than here) some people refused to believe my wife was her mother.
There have been some awkward cases of people criticising mixed race politicians on the assumption they are white of course - skin colour has quite the range outside our very broad classifications.
In a few generations most of the world will hopefully have Brazilianised, with the majority of people having a mixture of genes and there being no need to talk of mixed race anymore because everyone already is.
“Mixed race” is an awful expression, implying as it does that Humans are made up of canine-style breeds. Nobody talks about “mixed hair colour”.
There’s a bit of a battle of ideas between the 90s concept of a future where we’re all colourblind, and the 2010s+ era where we must pay close attention to race so that we can understand prejudice and privilege. I preferred the colourblindness, even if that marks me out as a naive centrist dad. I saw in both my children that they had no conception of racial difference at school until people told them about it.
Yes, I find the modern trend to be both depressing and bizarre in some ways. Yes, we may not have reached a place where there is total colour blindness in action or in the more tricky sense of ingrained attitudes/institutional disparities, but isn't it a good goal at least?
Whereas a hyperfocus on how we apparently differentiate from one another on race, gender, whatever, and who owes the other this or that, should feel guilt or a sense of oppression regardless of the actions and views they personally hold, seems like a bad goal to me. One which is not as helpful at redressing inequalities as what we were doing before.
Isn't there a place where we don't dismiss there may be work to do, without making race in particular the main distinguising factor in our lives? If nothing else it often presupposes people of one 'race' (such as that is even a thing, given as you point out the difficulties there) are supposed to think the same things, since the arguments are always framed in absolutist terms, speaking for everyone of a particular type, or against a type.
I feel l ike we are going backwards on this topic.
The lady who wrote “Why I’m no longer talking to white people about race” specifically says that claiming to be ‘colourblind’ is just a way to deny the existence of structural racism
I see The Guardian has named the royals mentioned in the Dutch translation of the book. Surely the BBC has to at some point as well?
It’s kinda funny this because the only people really obsessed with the whiteness of the skin colour of mixed race kids are Asian people, they really want the skin colour to be really white.
Was also my experience when I sired mixed race kids.
Mine, too; although in my case it was half-Thai grandchildren.
Everyone wants to be white. It’s a human universal dating back thousands of years. “Fairness” in women is prized in Sumerian texts
I remember on our wedding day the make up people tried to give my wife some kind of skin bleach, which was ridiculous as (a) she is a stunningly beautiful dark skinned Sri Lankan woman whose skin tone could not be improved upon and (b) presumably if I'd wanted to marry a fair skinned woman I wouldn't have been marrying her. They tried to achieve something similar by overexposing the wedding picture, the result of which is that I look like a ghost. The whole thing is very odd to me as Sri Lankans are quite a good looking bunch and it's odd that they'd want to look more like white people. Our children are a Farrow and Ball colour chart of skin tones. Our eldest is so fair that when we lived in the US (where people seem to be a bit more focused on skin colour than here) some people refused to believe my wife was her mother.
There have been some awkward cases of people criticising mixed race politicians on the assumption they are white of course - skin colour has quite the range outside our very broad classifications.
In a few generations most of the world will hopefully have Brazilianised, with the majority of people having a mixture of genes and there being no need to talk of mixed race anymore because everyone already is.
“Mixed race” is an awful expression, implying as it does that Humans are made up of canine-style breeds. Nobody talks about “mixed hair colour”.
There’s a bit of a battle of ideas between the 90s concept of a future where we’re all colourblind, and the 2010s+ era where we must pay close attention to race so that we can understand prejudice and privilege. I preferred the colourblindness, even if that marks me out as a naive centrist dad. I saw in both my children that they had no conception of racial difference at school until people told them about it.
Yes, I find the modern trend to be both depressing and bizarre in some ways. Yes, we may not have reached a place where there is total colour blindness in action or in the more tricky sense of ingrained attitudes/institutional disparities, but isn't it a good goal at least?
Whereas a hyperfocus on how we apparently differentiate from one another on race, gender, whatever, and who owes the other this or that, should feel guilt or a sense of oppression regardless of the actions and views they personally hold, seems like a bad goal to me. One which is not as helpful at redressing inequalities as what we were doing before.
Isn't there a place where we don't dismiss there may be work to do, without making race in particular the main distinguising factor in our lives? If nothing else it often presupposes people of one 'race' (such as that is even a thing, given as you point out the difficulties there) are supposed to think the same things, since the arguments are always framed in absolutist terms, speaking for everyone of a particular type, or against a type.
I feel like we are going backwards on this topic.
Sorry to reply to my own post, but as a coda I remember a John Oliver piece (someone who I criticise quite a bit, because I genuinely like him and find him hilarious, so its frustrating when I think he goes too far), where people were of course quoting MLK a lot to dispute race theory efforts, and mocking that by saying something like 'But we haven't reached that dream [of not judging people by race] yet', the argument seemingly being that we still have a lot of inequality and prejudice to confront.
Which may be the case, though I don't think it is as much as others believe, but the use of the argument still stands, since the goal of the famous quote about judging by content of character is still a great thing to aim for, whereas assessments of privilege, especially historical privilege, seem to reject that as a target, and to maintain judging by race because of historical sins.
I see The Guardian has named the royals mentioned in the Dutch translation of the book. Surely the BBC has to at some point as well?
It’s kinda funny this because the only people really obsessed with the whiteness of the skin colour of mixed race kids are Asian people, they really want the skin colour to be really white.
Was also my experience when I sired mixed race kids.
Mine, too; although in my case it was half-Thai grandchildren.
Everyone wants to be white. It’s a human universal dating back thousands of years. “Fairness” in women is prized in Sumerian texts
I remember on our wedding day the make up people tried to give my wife some kind of skin bleach, which was ridiculous as (a) she is a stunningly beautiful dark skinned Sri Lankan woman whose skin tone could not be improved upon and (b) presumably if I'd wanted to marry a fair skinned woman I wouldn't have been marrying her. They tried to achieve something similar by overexposing the wedding picture, the result of which is that I look like a ghost. The whole thing is very odd to me as Sri Lankans are quite a good looking bunch and it's odd that they'd want to look more like white people. Our children are a Farrow and Ball colour chart of skin tones. Our eldest is so fair that when we lived in the US (where people seem to be a bit more focused on skin colour than here) some people refused to believe my wife was her mother.
There have been some awkward cases of people criticising mixed race politicians on the assumption they are white of course - skin colour has quite the range outside our very broad classifications.
In a few generations most of the world will hopefully have Brazilianised, with the majority of people having a mixture of genes and there being no need to talk of mixed race anymore because everyone already is.
“Mixed race” is an awful expression, implying as it does that Humans are made up of canine-style breeds. Nobody talks about “mixed hair colour”.
There’s a bit of a battle of ideas between the 90s concept of a future where we’re all colourblind, and the 2010s+ era where we must pay close attention to race so that we can understand prejudice and privilege. I preferred the colourblindness, even if that marks me out as a naive centrist dad. I saw in both my children that they had no conception of racial difference at school until people told them about it.
Yes, I find the modern trend to be both depressing and bizarre in some ways. Yes, we may not have reached a place where there is total colour blindness in action or in the more tricky sense of ingrained attitudes/institutional disparities, but isn't it a good goal at least?
Whereas a hyperfocus on how we apparently differentiate from one another on race, gender, whatever, and who owes the other this or that, should feel guilt or a sense of oppression regardless of the actions and views they personally hold, seems like a bad goal to me. One which is not as helpful at redressing inequalities as what we were doing before.
Isn't there a place where we don't dismiss there may be work to do, without making race in particular the main distinguising factor in our lives? If nothing else it often presupposes people of one 'race' (such as that is even a thing, given as you point out the difficulties there) are supposed to think the same things, since the arguments are always framed in absolutist terms, speaking for everyone of a particular type, or against a type.
I feel l ike we are going backwards on this topic.
The lady who wrote “Why I’m no longer talking to white people about race” specifically says that claiming to be ‘colourblind’ is just a way to deny the existence of structural racism
I see The Guardian has named the royals mentioned in the Dutch translation of the book. Surely the BBC has to at some point as well?
It’s kinda funny this because the only people really obsessed with the whiteness of the skin colour of mixed race kids are Asian people, they really want the skin colour to be really white.
Was also my experience when I sired mixed race kids.
Mine, too; although in my case it was half-Thai grandchildren.
Everyone wants to be white. It’s a human universal dating back thousands of years. “Fairness” in women is prized in Sumerian texts
I remember on our wedding day the make up people tried to give my wife some kind of skin bleach, which was ridiculous as (a) she is a stunningly beautiful dark skinned Sri Lankan woman whose skin tone could not be improved upon and (b) presumably if I'd wanted to marry a fair skinned woman I wouldn't have been marrying her. They tried to achieve something similar by overexposing the wedding picture, the result of which is that I look like a ghost. The whole thing is very odd to me as Sri Lankans are quite a good looking bunch and it's odd that they'd want to look more like white people. Our children are a Farrow and Ball colour chart of skin tones. Our eldest is so fair that when we lived in the US (where people seem to be a bit more focused on skin colour than here) some people refused to believe my wife was her mother.
There have been some awkward cases of people criticising mixed race politicians on the assumption they are white of course - skin colour has quite the range outside our very broad classifications.
In a few generations most of the world will hopefully have Brazilianised, with the majority of people having a mixture of genes and there being no need to talk of mixed race anymore because everyone already is.
“Mixed race” is an awful expression, implying as it does that Humans are made up of canine-style breeds. Nobody talks about “mixed hair colour”.
There’s a bit of a battle of ideas between the 90s concept of a future where we’re all colourblind, and the 2010s+ era where we must pay close attention to race so that we can understand prejudice and privilege. I preferred the colourblindness, even if that marks me out as a naive centrist dad. I saw in both my children that they had no conception of racial difference at school until people told them about it.
Yes, I find the modern trend to be both depressing and bizarre in some ways. Yes, we may not have reached a place where there is total colour blindness in action or in the more tricky sense of ingrained attitudes/institutional disparities, but isn't it a good goal at least?
Whereas a hyperfocus on how we apparently differentiate from one another on race, gender, whatever, and who owes the other this or that, should feel guilt or a sense of oppression regardless of the actions and views they personally hold, seems like a bad goal to me. One which is not as helpful at redressing inequalities as what we were doing before.
Isn't there a place where we don't dismiss there may be work to do, without making race in particular the main distinguising factor in our lives? If nothing else it often presupposes people of one 'race' (such as that is even a thing, given as you point out the difficulties there) are supposed to think the same things, since the arguments are always framed in absolutist terms, speaking for everyone of a particular type, or against a type.
I feel l ike we are going backwards on this topic.
The lady who wrote “Why I’m no longer talking to white people about race” specifically says that claiming to be ‘colourblind’ is just a way to deny the existence of structural racism
I actually can believe that. But I don't think it requires acceptance of every claim of structural racism, which seems to be all encompassing on pretty much every issue, or that the focus placed on racial minutaie and blame casting of people down the generations, is a good way to combat that structural effect even if people accept it is there.
Sad to say, considering it was 7 years ago, but this thread header and the associated polling simply repeats the thread header I posted on here the day after the Brexit vote.
Immediately before the vote, yougov polling showed that a substantial minority of Leave voters (enough to make it a majority of the overall poll) would favour joining EFTA and the EEA and so retaining freedom of movement. It should have been taken seriously as an option at the time rather than rattling on about the 'purity' of Brexit.
I lay the blame for this almost entirely at the feet of the succession of post Brexit governing parties with a small but significant dollop of blame being thrownvat those Remainer MPs who were only interested in overturning the vote.
I still maintain that this is where we will eventually land but we will have wasted years to get there.
NB. This is my view too.
EFTA as a the obvious stepping stone to whatever the country wanted next, which could have been decided over time.
Unfortunately we got a mix of insane Brexit absolutists & a mix of a Labour party under Corbyn that just saw post-Brexit politics as a tool for short term political gain & Remain MPs that spent more time trying to overturn Brexit than they did putting together a coalition to push for the least damaging outcome possible.
The UK was failed by the entire political establishment, again.
Nah, mostly referendums are used to kick the government up the arse.
Remainer government leads to Brexit vote. Leaver government leads to support for Rejoin.
LDs in government want voting reform, AV rejected.
Scottish government wants independence, referendum won by unionists.
Voters are just bloody minded and contrary in referendums, it really is that simple, and why referendums don't work in our political system.
I think he's proven to be quite likable and normal.
It's not as though I'm a fan of Farage's, but I don't think on a personal level he has historically come across as that objectionable. Political views people will disagree about, some despise him for that, but he's personable and his success in building and maintaining his profile suggests he engages well with people who are open to his messaging.
He's always benefitted from exposure (such as the debates with Nick Clegg). People who seek to stitch him up (as there is a little evidence that ITV have tried to do) need to remember that. I did 'warn' them (as if they read me on PB) that it would be very difficult to do that as Farage is a very wily operator. And ITV, with the best will in the world, aren't.
Best example of that are indeed the debates with Clegg; most politico’s declared them a defeat for Farage I seem to remember. Would be interesting to re-read the PB threads
Note the most popular option with voters on that Yougov poll on our relationship with the EU is to increase our trading relationship with the EU but without joining the single market. 49% support that option, keeping our relationship with the EU as now or reducing ties with the EU.
Only 42% support rejoining the EU or rejoining the single market
Comments
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_D_deficiency#Epidemiology
(It probably works better with whole milk, since Vitamin D is a fat soluble vitamin.)
https://youtu.be/hRKOenxiRaY?si=3hc8Sb2xvN3OpgMH
EFTA as a the obvious stepping stone to whatever the country wanted next, which could have been decided over time.
Unfortunately we got a mix of insane Brexit absolutists & a mix of a Labour party under Corbyn that just saw post-Brexit politics as a tool for short term political gain & Remain MPs that spent more time trying to overturn Brexit than they did putting together a coalition to push for the least damaging outcome possible.
The UK was failed by the entire political establishment, again.
https://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/v35/naacr_vol35_273.pdf
Quite hard to blame that on social conditioning by racist Hollywood
The reasons are obvious. eg Darker skin means more sun exposure = lower class rice farmers. Plus much else. I do not believe this is seriously disputed
Though I remember observing the same thing in Chelmsford, back in the day. Excessive J2O consumption, maybe (used to be produced in the town).
I don't quite go so far as others in claiming this was all a conspiracy against the public. But there were lots of types of Brexit depending on which Brexiteer was talking and to whom. Some were realistic, some were wishful thinking, and only one actually happened (of course). But, back in 2016, you could imagine, if you desired, a kind of ideal Brexit for you where you could have any good things about the EU and ditch the bad things. Whereas Remain was pretty much stuck with the what we had (with minor tweaks negotiated by Cameron) - which had plenty of strengths but some real flaws too. So people couldn't project their fantasies on it in the same way.
Solidarity for victims of sexual assault should trump other politics.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/11/israeli-women-victims-sexual-assault-need-support.html
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/too-much-sunny-delight-turns-girl-s-skin-yellow-1134703.html
"They think we can't Brexit without leaving the single market. We'll show them."
A rare early finish and despite the cold public transport mainly behaving itself.
It's been a big day for Death though it does well most days in truth. Kissinger embodied realpolitik - foreign policy isn't about "good guys" versus "bad guys" or moral crusades and the like. It's much more shades of grey - particularly so during the Cold War where we propped up any number of unpleasant regimes because, to be blunt, they were our "bastard". His blundering round in south east Asia unfortunately left the poor Cambodian people at the mercy of the brutal Khmer Rouge for all it got American soldiers home.
Did he "prevent" World War 3 during the Yom Kippur conflict? Certainly, he and Alexander Haig, more than Nixon, were at the centre of US actions during late October 1973.
As for Alastair Darling, there's a realisation how close we came to complete financial catastrophe in the autumn of 2008 and the work Darling (and others) did to stabilise the financial systems shouldn't go unnoticed. What he couldn't prevent or mitigate was the political and psychological impact of the GFC, the consequences of which we live with. One might argue it was a free-spending Republican legislature that did much to bring on the crisis, the problem was traditional centre-left responses (more spending or more tax) just weren't on the table. Even the centre-right only had the thin gruel of austerity and that, as many on here would argue, wasn't applied evenly or logically.
Could we, should we, have meaningfully reduced the State after 2010? Was there an electoral appetite for it, more relevant, was there any political appetite in the Coalition for doing more than tinkering at the edges? We see the legacy of that in the problems local authorities are having currently.
That's partly because they want viewers and clicks, and partly because most "mainstream" journalists like the damage he's doing to the Republican Party.)
‘Absolutely.’
‘He’s a marvel.’
‘A wonder.’
‘A wizard.’
‘A stout fellow,’ I agreed. ‘Full of fat-soluble vitamins.’
The authorities reaction is really weird. Yes fair legal process etc, but normally details by now there is context and back story been made available to the media.
Having a vacuum just leads to speculation and incorrect information being spread.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/shock-poll-results-sees-nigel-31565775
"Faint heart never wins fair maiden"
Is this a fairly harmless albeit hackneyed and unpleasantly patriarchal phrase or is it also dripping with assumptions of white supremacy racism?
For Haley, there is a reasonable chance Republicans there who aren't sold on Trump will rally around her with the De Santis campaign apparently having a slow puncture which has led to it deflating over many months, and Ramaswamy also basically on the slide.
Caucuses are also decided by those that turn up (well, all votes are but caucuses take more of an effort). I just wonder if Trump dominating the process may lead to lazy assumptions of invincibility by supporters on the day.
I'd not say it's likely, but Trump hasn't fully sewn it up.
.
https://arizonaslaw.blogspot.com/2023/11/breaking-kari-lakes-lawsuit-to-get.html
(As far as I have seen, red heads here are just considered "different", not especially attractive or unattractive. Is that true in the UK, too? Or is there a bit of discrimination against "gingers".)
But - and I think it's hard to get away from this with the polls on the matter - more people think the reality has been worse rather than better than they guessed at the time.
The whole thing is very odd to me as Sri Lankans are quite a good looking bunch and it's odd that they'd want to look more like white people. Our children are a Farrow and Ball colour chart of skin tones. Our eldest is so fair that when we lived in the US (where people seem to be a bit more focused on skin colour than here) some people refused to believe my wife was her mother.
Most Brexit industrial losses have come from the low-level red tape involved in not being in the single market and customs union. The impact is greatest at the small scale because large multinationals can afford to deal with the paperwork.
Some losses (I’ve seen several myself despite best efforts) arise from a misconception of what you can and can’t do outside the EU. Ie we’ve lost the PR battle, especially with Japanese and US groups.
Rejoining the single market in particular would bring about a true bonfire of red tape.
But that ought also to be a feature of a more proportional system. Are they as bad as we are at realising that the centre left and the centre right are basically a similar animal and when under threat from extremes can make common cause?
For example: ". . . to boldly go where no man has gone before!" (Strunk and White taught me that some infinitives are improved by being split.)
And to what end was Lake pursuing this?
And a paper without any acknowledgements or funding sources cited makes me twitch all over. It would seem odd even in 2008 (albeit today the regime is much more severe than it was).
Paint is horrendously expensive here. F&B is affordable only to oligarchs.
Do you know about the moonlight towers of Austin, Texas? Tom Scott's latest video is on this subject.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDiXNsWQzD0
Gingers have a layer less skin to help them thrive at higher latitudes.
Edit: Without prosthetics or other assistance I should add.
Never done alcohol either.
I only have two real vices.
Edit three in fact.
F&B colours are great though, they've really tapped into some primal anxiety in the British middle class brain and monetised it.
https://twitter.com/stuzi_pants/status/1730272251713364314/photo/1
“Mixed race” is an awful expression, implying as it does that Humans are made up of canine-style breeds. Nobody talks about “mixed hair colour”.
There’s a bit of a battle of ideas between the 90s concept of a future where we’re all colourblind, and the 2010s+ era where we must pay close attention to race so that we can understand prejudice and privilege. I preferred the colourblindness, even if that marks me out as a naive centrist dad. I saw in both my children that they had no conception of racial difference at school until people told them about it.
The Patterson quote, for example, comes from a November 2014 speech, where he said (and the Spectator has text in full): "we should grasp the opportunity to leave the current political arrangements and negotiate a new settlement, while keeping our vital position in the single market." - https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/is-owen-paterson-hoping-to-become-leader-of-the-out-camp-in-the-2017-referendum-/
I think there's a big chance of this. The Trump situation is inherently unstable and primed to blow up. I really do feel that. I'm just waiting to see precisely what triggers it, and when, and how the dust settles. His 2.6 price for the WH reflects none of this. It's crazy short imo. All trees and no wood.
Personally I think alcohol is a lot more harmful than plenty of the things that we have banned. It is also the ultimate gateway drug. Most addiction is probably a result of self medicating underlying mental health or other problems. People who just want to have a good time once in a while don't really run into any problems, and the problems that do arise (drugs being cut with another more harmful substance, street violence around supply chains) are a result of failed prohibition policies. Having said all that, taking heroin is obviously nuts.
If you endlessly make claims, bring spurious legal actions and so on, ultimately judges say, "Oh f*** off - you lost and this is a ridiculous waste of time and money". At which point you respond, "Ah, that proves they have something to hide".
That's essentially the judge's (slightly strained) golden goose analogy. You just try to dismantle the whole thing and when people quite rightly don't let you, that's precisely the "evidence" you need to tell supporters that the system is rotten.
Clearly, it isn't how the process is meant to work. You do need to identify what you have genuine reason to believe has gone wrong and then, fine, surgically look at that. You can't be raising endless "what about" matters a full year after losing - it's not how the law works or should work.
Surely people who use 'real' F&B are chavs with an upgrade, like Virgin Premium Economy?
My vices are constant whoring, gambling, and redheads.
My avoidance of alcohol started off because I was a good Muslim but when I fell of that wagon alcohol never appealed to me, I didn't want anything to impact my grades and career (a former colleague was done for drink driving.)
Then I was in a relationship with someone who couldn't drive and the round trip to see her was a 270 mile round trip.
Only 42% support rejoining the EU or rejoining the single market
F&B does indeed seem to have mastered the oeuvre. It’s very much seen as the apex of domestic paint in France, the country of LVMH and L’Oreal. So it’s not just British middle class anxieties it’s tapping into.
France is just different. There is no great tradition of DIY. It happens (hence Leroy Merlin and Castorama) but it’s looked down on. Petit bricoleur is an insult. It’s seen as a hobby (like barbecuing) of the Anglo-Saxonised lumpen proletariat, the sort of people who name their sons Kevin and vote Le Pen.
Whereas a hyperfocus on how we apparently differentiate from one another on race, gender, whatever, and who owes the other this or that, should feel guilt or a sense of oppression regardless of the actions and views they personally hold, seems like a bad goal to me. One which is not as helpful at redressing inequalities as what we were doing before.
Isn't there a place where we don't dismiss there may be work to do, without making race in particular the main distinguising factor in our lives? If nothing else it often presupposes people of one 'race' (such as that is even a thing, given as you point out the difficulties there) are supposed to think the same things, since the arguments are always framed in absolutist terms, speaking for everyone of a particular type, or against a type.
I feel like we are going backwards on this topic.
Someone's been reading PB. Glad to see the mainstream media pick up on the regulatory destruction of risk taking in the UK. It will take a lot more articles and a lot more pressure to unwind 20 years of damaging attitudes thay have turned is into a low risk, low tiles economy.
I would argue that the best movie soundtrack is "Easy Rider", yet another druggie film.
Usually Specsavers offers require Excel and Pivot Tables to comprehend. But this morning they gave me a simple "half price next pair of glasses" piece of paper. Which is quite useful as I bought the cheaper of this year's 2 pairs this morning (for obscure reasons). The 2nd pair have just been upgraded
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/30/why-im-no-longer-talking-to-white-people-about-race
Which may be the case, though I don't think it is as much as others believe, but the use of the argument still stands, since the goal of the famous quote about judging by content of character is still a great thing to aim for, whereas assessments of privilege, especially historical privilege, seem to reject that as a target, and to maintain judging by race because of historical sins.
Remainer government leads to Brexit vote.
Leaver government leads to support for Rejoin.
LDs in government want voting reform, AV rejected.
Scottish government wants independence, referendum won by unionists.
Voters are just bloody minded and contrary in referendums, it really is that simple, and why referendums don't work in our political system.
"I'd like to report a crime against statistics"