Interesting who this kind of reputational damage sticks to and who it doesnt. Both Tony and Cherie were well renowned 'grabbers'. Neither coming from proper money, solicited and gladly chomped through whatever they could, but it didnt hurt Tony in office. Starmer doesnt seem to have any kind of honeymoon protection at all.
During Blair's time the economic situation was generally favourable and they were able spray money around so people didn't care very much about the Blairs "grabbing"
Lord and Lady Starmer swanning around in the finest clothes someone else's money can buy while pensioners are going to freeze this winter is a rather harder "sell"
Pensioners have been mollycoddled for far too long.
We’re all in this together.
We had a PM in Boris Johnson that dressed like a scruff, it’s good for the UK for a PM to wear the best.
Can anyone looking really tell the difference between someone whose clothes cost £150 and someone whose clothes cost £1500? If they can, that says rather more about the observer than the observed.
I can, but then I have a keen eye for this.
See the second half of my comment above
When I was young, putting a lot of effort (and certainly a lot of time and/or expense) into your appearance was a bit frowned upon. You were expected, if possible, to achieve a certain level of cleanliness and/or personal hygiene, but anything more than that was a bit suspect - a bit 'look at me'. Actually, I say 'when I was young', I suspect most of men of my generation still think that way.
Maybe that is true, but it's hardly something to be proud of, is it?
I kind of think it is. We used to consider vanity a vice rather than a virtue. We used to consider showing off something to be dissuaded. We used to mock peacockery. A certain parsimoniousness whn it comes to one's appearance seems to me to be something to be applauded. By which I don't necessarily mean turning up in a t-shirt riven with holes and ketchup stains. But I rather disdain the mindset which thinks it acceptable to spend £1000 a year or more on one's own appearance. It seems frivolous. Do you remember the book of sports lists? I remember a list in it of sportsmen who cared rather too much for their own appearance - it included, I think, Peter Shilton, who would drive to a city 30 miles away for his particular needs for a haircut, and, possibly, Kevin Keegan, who spent rather more than the then-quite-daring £5 a month on a haircut. And someone who spent a lot on clothes, no doubt. But the fact that ten such people could be picked out showed how comparatively rare that sort of vanity was in those days. If you made a list now of sportsmen who cared too much for their own appearance you'd be here until doomsday.
Do you apply these hairshirt morals to women too, or just men?
I can tell that you don't agree, Anabobz, but I'm guessing you're about my age? Do you not think values on this have shifted somewhat in our lifetimes? It's not a massive issue. I mean, of all the vices that there are, vanity/frivolousness/attention seeking is rather low on the list. But still - it strikes me as an odd change, and odd that it's so uncommented on. It's a reasonable question whether it applies in my mind to both men and women - not least because the instinctive reaction to someone who, for example, spends £30 or more on a haircut is that doing so is a bit unmanly. But on reflection, yes, I'd say I do apply these 'hairshirt morals' to women as well, or at least something similar. There is no need to spend thousands on clothes, and drawing attention to doing so, just looks a bit like conspicuous consumption.
There's a quite low upper ceiling to how good anyone - male or female - can look, and expense and effort which goes beyond that is not only wasted but also looks a bit, well, crass.
As I say above - these aren't strongly held feelings. But I feel kind of sure this is how everyone used to feel, and I don't understand how and why the dial has shifted.
See also - tattoos.
How much did your current shirt cost? I'm guessing around a month's income for around 650m people.
Everything is relative. So what if people pay a lot for this or that? If they can afford it it doesn't make it extravagant or vain.
Yebbut, 40 years ago it would have done. I'm not so much defending my own position as expressing bafflement that values of this have shifted so much in my lifetime without real comment.
And in answer to your rhetorical question, about £25.
I'm not necessarily against spending money. I've previously lamented my decision not to by a painting, which is clearly a frivolous purchase. Though if I spend money on clothing, I have to get a LOT of wear out of the item to justify it to myself. (And I don't think I've ever spent over £70 on a non-footwear clothing item; and the most I have ever spent on footwear was on a standard pair of Dr. Marten boots, which exemplify the sort of sartorial utilitarianism I favour.)
I just instinctively disapprove slightly of excess effort with one's own appearance, and of men who dress to draw attention to themselves. This is just the values of the world I grew up in. It was so ingrained it was hardly worthy of comment. And now it isn't. Do you not find this interesting?
The world you grew up in. As opposed to the world hundreds of years ago where dandyism and foppishness were celebrated.
Indeed - interesting. If only we had some 250 year olds on the board, they could tell us when this changed. My guess: WW1. It may actually be that the late 70s/80s/early 90s were the nadir for male sartorial exuberance. I remember my friend's father - who was of a slightly older generation than my own - recollecting his youth of the early 60s, when the key to attracting girls was dressing to the nines and young men would happily wear expensively tailored suits for a night out. Whereas when I was young: yes, secretly, you wanted to look good to advance your chances of meeting girls. But you very much didn't want to look like you were trying to look good.
Every era has had its code whether it was mods and rockers or burberry raincoats or stone island or adidas spezials. And most people have wanted to appear as more affluent than they are (eg the burberry and gucci keyring crazes). Ofc it is generally the gentry that cut about in moth-eaten sweaters and ancient clothes held together by baler twine.
Interesting who this kind of reputational damage sticks to and who it doesnt. Both Tony and Cherie were well renowned 'grabbers'. Neither coming from proper money, solicited and gladly chomped through whatever they could, but it didnt hurt Tony in office. Starmer doesnt seem to have any kind of honeymoon protection at all.
During Blair's time the economic situation was generally favourable and they were able spray money around so people didn't care very much about the Blairs "grabbing"
Lord and Lady Starmer swanning around in the finest clothes someone else's money can buy while pensioners are going to freeze this winter is a rather harder "sell"
Pensioners have been mollycoddled for far too long.
We’re all in this together.
We had a PM in Boris Johnson that dressed like a scruff, it’s good for the UK for a PM to wear the best.
Can anyone looking really tell the difference between someone whose clothes cost £150 and someone whose clothes cost £1500? If they can, that says rather more about the observer than the observed.
I can, but then I have a keen eye for this.
See the second half of my comment above
When I was young, putting a lot of effort (and certainly a lot of time and/or expense) into your appearance was a bit frowned upon. You were expected, if possible, to achieve a certain level of cleanliness and/or personal hygiene, but anything more than that was a bit suspect - a bit 'look at me'. Actually, I say 'when I was young', I suspect most of men of my generation still think that way.
Maybe that is true, but it's hardly something to be proud of, is it?
I kind of think it is. We used to consider vanity a vice rather than a virtue. We used to consider showing off something to be dissuaded. We used to mock peacockery. A certain parsimoniousness whn it comes to one's appearance seems to me to be something to be applauded. By which I don't necessarily mean turning up in a t-shirt riven with holes and ketchup stains. But I rather disdain the mindset which thinks it acceptable to spend £1000 a year or more on one's own appearance. It seems frivolous. Do you remember the book of sports lists? I remember a list in it of sportsmen who cared rather too much for their own appearance - it included, I think, Peter Shilton, who would drive to a city 30 miles away for his particular needs for a haircut, and, possibly, Kevin Keegan, who spent rather more than the then-quite-daring £5 a month on a haircut. And someone who spent a lot on clothes, no doubt. But the fact that ten such people could be picked out showed how comparatively rare that sort of vanity was in those days. If you made a list now of sportsmen who cared too much for their own appearance you'd be here until doomsday.
Do you apply these hairshirt morals to women too, or just men?
I can tell that you don't agree, Anabobz, but I'm guessing you're about my age? Do you not think values on this have shifted somewhat in our lifetimes? It's not a massive issue. I mean, of all the vices that there are, vanity/frivolousness/attention seeking is rather low on the list. But still - it strikes me as an odd change, and odd that it's so uncommented on. It's a reasonable question whether it applies in my mind to both men and women - not least because the instinctive reaction to someone who, for example, spends £30 or more on a haircut is that doing so is a bit unmanly. But on reflection, yes, I'd say I do apply these 'hairshirt morals' to women as well, or at least something similar. There is no need to spend thousands on clothes, and drawing attention to doing so, just looks a bit like conspicuous consumption.
There's a quite low upper ceiling to how good anyone - male or female - can look, and expense and effort which goes beyond that is not only wasted but also looks a bit, well, crass.
As I say above - these aren't strongly held feelings. But I feel kind of sure this is how everyone used to feel, and I don't understand how and why the dial has shifted.
See also - tattoos.
How much did your current shirt cost? I'm guessing around a month's income for around 650m people.
Everything is relative. So what if people pay a lot for this or that? If they can afford it it doesn't make it extravagant or vain.
Yebbut, 40 years ago it would have done. I'm not so much defending my own position as expressing bafflement that values of this have shifted so much in my lifetime without real comment.
And in answer to your rhetorical question, about £25.
I'm not necessarily against spending money. I've previously lamented my decision not to by a painting, which is clearly a frivolous purchase. Though if I spend money on clothing, I have to get a LOT of wear out of the item to justify it to myself. (And I don't think I've ever spent over £70 on a non-footwear clothing item; and the most I have ever spent on footwear was on a standard pair of Dr. Marten boots, which exemplify the sort of sartorial utilitarianism I favour.)
I just instinctively disapprove slightly of excess effort with one's own appearance, and of men who dress to draw attention to themselves. This is just the values of the world I grew up in. It was so ingrained it was hardly worthy of comment. And now it isn't. Do you not find this interesting?
The world you grew up in. As opposed to the world hundreds of years ago where dandyism and foppishness were celebrated.
Indeed - interesting. If only we had some 250 year olds on the board, they could tell us when this changed. My guess: WW1. It may actually be that the late 70s/80s/early 90s were the nadir for male sartorial exuberance. I remember my friend's father - who was of a slightly older generation than my own - recollecting his youth of the early 60s, when the key to attracting girls was dressing to the nines and young men would happily wear expensively tailored suits for a night out. Whereas when I was young: yes, secretly, you wanted to look good to advance your chances of meeting girls. But you very much didn't want to look like you were trying to look good.
Every era has had its code whether it was mods and rockers or burberry raincoats or stone island or adidas spezials. And most people have wanted to appear as more affluent than they are (eg the burberry and gucci keyring crazes). Ofc it is generally the gentry that cut about in moth-eaten sweaters and ancient clothes held together by baler twine.
But no, that's the point. The male youth of the 70s/80s/90s did not dress to look more affluent than they were. Baggy shirts and doc martens. Or heavy metal chic. Or punk. Or Mark E Smith out of the Fall. Or shell suits. The new romantics of the early 80s were a sort of exception to this, but even they didn't look affluent - they looked like they'd indiscriminately raided a charity shop to try to stage a pantomime.
So he seems to have finally plumped for "Comrade" Kamala. That's huge. Up to now I've been merrily asserting he's tracking to lose but that was when he hadn't settled on a devastating nickname for his opponent. Now that he has, whole different story. He's back in the ballgame. It's on a knife edge!
Crooked Hillary...
And the sequel, Crooked Joe. I think that was his first choice here too. Also tried out Lyin and Cacklin and Laughin and that quite off the wall one, Kamabala, but it looks like Comrade has got the nod.
Harris and Biden should call out Trump for his martyr routine and tell him to stfu . The gall to accuse others of inflammatory rhetoric when he does that on a daily basis . Regardless the bigger news this week will be the Fed cutting rates which will lead to a total Trump meltdown .
So he seems to have finally plumped for "Comrade" Kamala. That's huge. Up to now I've been merrily asserting he's tracking to lose but that was when he hadn't settled on a devastating nickname for his opponent. Now that he has, whole different story. He's back in the ballgame. It's on a knife edge!
Crooked Hillary...
And the sequel, Crooked Joe. I think that was his first choice here too. Also tried out Lyin and Cacklin and Laughin and that quite off the wall one, Kambala, but it looks like Comrade has got the nod.
Which UK politician would you equate to Harris in terms of leftyness?
So he seems to have finally plumped for "Comrade" Kamala. That's huge. Up to now I've been merrily asserting he's tracking to lose but that was when he hadn't settled on a devastating nickname for his opponent. Now that he has, whole different story. He's back in the ballgame. It's on a knife edge!
He's upset that "Kamabala" didn't catch on, apparently. Said that people thought he was just mispronouncing it. Weird, that.
Harris and Biden should call out Trump for his martyr routine and tell him to stfu . The gall to accuse others of inflammatory rhetoric when he does that on a daily basis . Regardless the bigger news this week will be the Fed cutting rates which will lead to a total Trump meltdown .
Is a cut nailed on though?
Nailed on but the size of the cut isn’t certain . It’s a close run thing between 0.25% and 0.50% .
Interesting who this kind of reputational damage sticks to and who it doesnt. Both Tony and Cherie were well renowned 'grabbers'. Neither coming from proper money, solicited and gladly chomped through whatever they could, but it didnt hurt Tony in office. Starmer doesnt seem to have any kind of honeymoon protection at all.
During Blair's time the economic situation was generally favourable and they were able spray money around so people didn't care very much about the Blairs "grabbing"
Lord and Lady Starmer swanning around in the finest clothes someone else's money can buy while pensioners are going to freeze this winter is a rather harder "sell"
Pensioners have been mollycoddled for far too long.
We’re all in this together.
We had a PM in Boris Johnson that dressed like a scruff, it’s good for the UK for a PM to wear the best.
Can anyone looking really tell the difference between someone whose clothes cost £150 and someone whose clothes cost £1500? If they can, that says rather more about the observer than the observed.
I can, but then I have a keen eye for this.
See the second half of my comment above
When I was young, putting a lot of effort (and certainly a lot of time and/or expense) into your appearance was a bit frowned upon. You were expected, if possible, to achieve a certain level of cleanliness and/or personal hygiene, but anything more than that was a bit suspect - a bit 'look at me'. Actually, I say 'when I was young', I suspect most of men of my generation still think that way.
Maybe that is true, but it's hardly something to be proud of, is it?
I kind of think it is. We used to consider vanity a vice rather than a virtue. We used to consider showing off something to be dissuaded. We used to mock peacockery. A certain parsimoniousness whn it comes to one's appearance seems to me to be something to be applauded. By which I don't necessarily mean turning up in a t-shirt riven with holes and ketchup stains. But I rather disdain the mindset which thinks it acceptable to spend £1000 a year or more on one's own appearance. It seems frivolous. Do you remember the book of sports lists? I remember a list in it of sportsmen who cared rather too much for their own appearance - it included, I think, Peter Shilton, who would drive to a city 30 miles away for his particular needs for a haircut, and, possibly, Kevin Keegan, who spent rather more than the then-quite-daring £5 a month on a haircut. And someone who spent a lot on clothes, no doubt. But the fact that ten such people could be picked out showed how comparatively rare that sort of vanity was in those days. If you made a list now of sportsmen who cared too much for their own appearance you'd be here until doomsday.
Do you apply these hairshirt morals to women too, or just men?
I can tell that you don't agree, Anabobz, but I'm guessing you're about my age? Do you not think values on this have shifted somewhat in our lifetimes? It's not a massive issue. I mean, of all the vices that there are, vanity/frivolousness/attention seeking is rather low on the list. But still - it strikes me as an odd change, and odd that it's so uncommented on. It's a reasonable question whether it applies in my mind to both men and women - not least because the instinctive reaction to someone who, for example, spends £30 or more on a haircut is that doing so is a bit unmanly. But on reflection, yes, I'd say I do apply these 'hairshirt morals' to women as well, or at least something similar. There is no need to spend thousands on clothes, and drawing attention to doing so, just looks a bit like conspicuous consumption.
There's a quite low upper ceiling to how good anyone - male or female - can look, and expense and effort which goes beyond that is not only wasted but also looks a bit, well, crass.
As I say above - these aren't strongly held feelings. But I feel kind of sure this is how everyone used to feel, and I don't understand how and why the dial has shifted.
See also - tattoos.
How much did your current shirt cost? I'm guessing around a month's income for around 650m people.
Everything is relative. So what if people pay a lot for this or that? If they can afford it it doesn't make it extravagant or vain.
Yebbut, 40 years ago it would have done. I'm not so much defending my own position as expressing bafflement that values of this have shifted so much in my lifetime without real comment.
And in answer to your rhetorical question, about £25.
I'm not necessarily against spending money. I've previously lamented my decision not to by a painting, which is clearly a frivolous purchase. Though if I spend money on clothing, I have to get a LOT of wear out of the item to justify it to myself. (And I don't think I've ever spent over £70 on a non-footwear clothing item; and the most I have ever spent on footwear was on a standard pair of Dr. Marten boots, which exemplify the sort of sartorial utilitarianism I favour.)
I just instinctively disapprove slightly of excess effort with one's own appearance, and of men who dress to draw attention to themselves. This is just the values of the world I grew up in. It was so ingrained it was hardly worthy of comment. And now it isn't. Do you not find this interesting?
The world you grew up in. As opposed to the world hundreds of years ago where dandyism and foppishness were celebrated.
Indeed - interesting. If only we had some 250 year olds on the board, they could tell us when this changed. My guess: WW1. It may actually be that the late 70s/80s/early 90s were the nadir for male sartorial exuberance. I remember my friend's father - who was of a slightly older generation than my own - recollecting his youth of the early 60s, when the key to attracting girls was dressing to the nines and young men would happily wear expensively tailored suits for a night out. Whereas when I was young: yes, secretly, you wanted to look good to advance your chances of meeting girls. But you very much didn't want to look like you were trying to look good.
Every era has had its code whether it was mods and rockers or burberry raincoats or stone island or adidas spezials. And most people have wanted to appear as more affluent than they are (eg the burberry and gucci keyring crazes). Ofc it is generally the gentry that cut about in moth-eaten sweaters and ancient clothes held together by baler twine.
Interesting who this kind of reputational damage sticks to and who it doesnt. Both Tony and Cherie were well renowned 'grabbers'. Neither coming from proper money, solicited and gladly chomped through whatever they could, but it didnt hurt Tony in office. Starmer doesnt seem to have any kind of honeymoon protection at all.
During Blair's time the economic situation was generally favourable and they were able spray money around so people didn't care very much about the Blairs "grabbing"
Lord and Lady Starmer swanning around in the finest clothes someone else's money can buy while pensioners are going to freeze this winter is a rather harder "sell"
Pensioners have been mollycoddled for far too long.
We’re all in this together.
We had a PM in Boris Johnson that dressed like a scruff, it’s good for the UK for a PM to wear the best.
Can anyone looking really tell the difference between someone whose clothes cost £150 and someone whose clothes cost £1500? If they can, that says rather more about the observer than the observed.
I can, but then I have a keen eye for this.
See the second half of my comment above
When I was young, putting a lot of effort (and certainly a lot of time and/or expense) into your appearance was a bit frowned upon. You were expected, if possible, to achieve a certain level of cleanliness and/or personal hygiene, but anything more than that was a bit suspect - a bit 'look at me'. Actually, I say 'when I was young', I suspect most of men of my generation still think that way.
Maybe that is true, but it's hardly something to be proud of, is it?
I kind of think it is. We used to consider vanity a vice rather than a virtue. We used to consider showing off something to be dissuaded. We used to mock peacockery. A certain parsimoniousness whn it comes to one's appearance seems to me to be something to be applauded. By which I don't necessarily mean turning up in a t-shirt riven with holes and ketchup stains. But I rather disdain the mindset which thinks it acceptable to spend £1000 a year or more on one's own appearance. It seems frivolous. Do you remember the book of sports lists? I remember a list in it of sportsmen who cared rather too much for their own appearance - it included, I think, Peter Shilton, who would drive to a city 30 miles away for his particular needs for a haircut, and, possibly, Kevin Keegan, who spent rather more than the then-quite-daring £5 a month on a haircut. And someone who spent a lot on clothes, no doubt. But the fact that ten such people could be picked out showed how comparatively rare that sort of vanity was in those days. If you made a list now of sportsmen who cared too much for their own appearance you'd be here until doomsday.
Do you apply these hairshirt morals to women too, or just men?
I can tell that you don't agree, Anabobz, but I'm guessing you're about my age? Do you not think values on this have shifted somewhat in our lifetimes? It's not a massive issue. I mean, of all the vices that there are, vanity/frivolousness/attention seeking is rather low on the list. But still - it strikes me as an odd change, and odd that it's so uncommented on. It's a reasonable question whether it applies in my mind to both men and women - not least because the instinctive reaction to someone who, for example, spends £30 or more on a haircut is that doing so is a bit unmanly. But on reflection, yes, I'd say I do apply these 'hairshirt morals' to women as well, or at least something similar. There is no need to spend thousands on clothes, and drawing attention to doing so, just looks a bit like conspicuous consumption.
There's a quite low upper ceiling to how good anyone - male or female - can look, and expense and effort which goes beyond that is not only wasted but also looks a bit, well, crass.
As I say above - these aren't strongly held feelings. But I feel kind of sure this is how everyone used to feel, and I don't understand how and why the dial has shifted.
See also - tattoos.
How much did your current shirt cost? I'm guessing around a month's income for around 650m people.
Everything is relative. So what if people pay a lot for this or that? If they can afford it it doesn't make it extravagant or vain.
Yebbut, 40 years ago it would have done. I'm not so much defending my own position as expressing bafflement that values of this have shifted so much in my lifetime without real comment.
And in answer to your rhetorical question, about £25.
I'm not necessarily against spending money. I've previously lamented my decision not to by a painting, which is clearly a frivolous purchase. Though if I spend money on clothing, I have to get a LOT of wear out of the item to justify it to myself. (And I don't think I've ever spent over £70 on a non-footwear clothing item; and the most I have ever spent on footwear was on a standard pair of Dr. Marten boots, which exemplify the sort of sartorial utilitarianism I favour.)
I just instinctively disapprove slightly of excess effort with one's own appearance, and of men who dress to draw attention to themselves. This is just the values of the world I grew up in. It was so ingrained it was hardly worthy of comment. And now it isn't. Do you not find this interesting?
The world you grew up in. As opposed to the world hundreds of years ago where dandyism and foppishness were celebrated.
Indeed - interesting. If only we had some 250 year olds on the board, they could tell us when this changed. My guess: WW1. It may actually be that the late 70s/80s/early 90s were the nadir for male sartorial exuberance. I remember my friend's father - who was of a slightly older generation than my own - recollecting his youth of the early 60s, when the key to attracting girls was dressing to the nines and young men would happily wear expensively tailored suits for a night out. Whereas when I was young: yes, secretly, you wanted to look good to advance your chances of meeting girls. But you very much didn't want to look like you were trying to look good.
Every era has had its code whether it was mods and rockers or burberry raincoats or stone island or adidas spezials. And most people have wanted to appear as more affluent than they are (eg the burberry and gucci keyring crazes). Ofc it is generally the gentry that cut about in moth-eaten sweaters and ancient clothes held together by baler twine.
But no, that's the point. The male youth of the 70s/80s/90s did not dress to look more affluent than they were. Baggy shirts and doc martens. Or heavy metal chic. Or punk. Or Mark E Smith out of the Fall. Or shell suits. The new romantics of the early 80s were a sort of exception to this, but even they didn't look affluent - they looked like they'd indiscriminately raided a charity shop to try to stage a pantomime.
OTOH ... I remember visiting an old university friend c 2000 and meeting her daughter who was a student. Looked like one of those Australian parakeets - mixed primary colours and simple combinations thereof eg green. Dressed from charity shops, sure, but she took care over the overall effect and the appearance. Indiscriminate she wasn't.
Cookie clearly didn't know the right sort of New Romantics.
No, new romantics had come and gone by the time I got there! In my early teens I was largely surrounded by people who dressed in the heavy metal style - clearly there is some sort of uniform/look there, but smartness and expense and indeed cleanliness isn't really part of it. Then later on I was surrounded by Madchester baggy - again, driven by cheapness - and later by generic indie: plaid shirts and jeans or perhaps combats and doc martens. The 'other' tribe were the townies, who dressed largely in track suits. Expense and style were not apparent there either.
But in all honesty expensive clothing would be wasted on me. I look vaguely scruffy in anything I wear. I am fat and hairy. Looking at pictures of a younger me, very occasionally I looked brilliant in a way in which I never really appreciated and makes me sigh wistfully, but more often I just look in need of a haircut. I was always in need of a haircut, any time outside of six days since I had last had a haircut. I wish I'd discovered self-maintenance of hair earlier - I may have sacrificed the occasional youthfully brilliant hair day fresh out of the barbers, but I'd have had reliably neat hair, and that would have made the difference to the overall look.
I've never been in the least bit tempted by expensive clothes, with one exception: last year, as we had parked there for a walk, we popped in to the wonderful House of Bruar in northern Perthshire: everything the Highland laird needs - and I was instantly struck by a lament that I would never have need or occasion to wear a full high quality tweed suit. It passed, of course - it would also have needed me to be 20 years younger and with an entirely different lifestyle - i.e. heir to some Highland estate. How there is a big enough market for this sort of stuff for this business to stay operational I have no idea.
House of Bruar is for folk who want to look like an heir to a Highland estate without even a tiny chance of being one, that’s how they stay very comfortably operational. Well done for resisting the temptation.
I was agog that such a place existed. Still, it was very, very pleasant. The toilets were splendid, I wanted every food item, and they didn't seem to mind us parking for a walk up to see the waterfalls. In the end my wife and daughters each bought a Christmas decoration and I bought a tin of barley sugars.
They rather grandly insist on calling their lavatories 'cloakrooms' and do not feature the obligatory symbols which leads to no end of confusion and annoyance. I love it - TUD shouldn't be so po-faced.
So he seems to have finally plumped for "Comrade" Kamala. That's huge. Up to now I've been merrily asserting he's tracking to lose but that was when he hadn't settled on a devastating nickname for his opponent. Now that he has, whole different story. He's back in the ballgame. It's on a knife edge!
Crooked Hillary...
And the sequel, Crooked Joe. I think that was his first choice here too. Also tried out Lyin and Cacklin and Laughin and that quite off the wall one, Kambala, but it looks like Comrade has got the nod.
Which UK politician would you equate to Harris in terms of leftyness?
End of Germany as an industrial power within a decade. Becoming an EU funds beneficiary within two. National dissolution within four.
He is spot on about demographics.
That said, his timings are likely wrong. Japan's demographics are about 20 years ahead of Germany's, and they are still a major industrial power.
Or the ageing demographics means economic collapse trope is fallacious.
Collapse is certainly wrong. And of course, it might benefit them in some ways.
If you know there are fewer workers coming on stream, it encourages you to invest more in automation. (Switzerland doesn't have the demographic challenges, but it certainly has extremely expensive labour costs, and it continued to be an industrial powerhouse.)
On the other hand, places with inverted population pyramids (Japan and Italy being the most advanced in that trend), have tended to have slower economic growth.
End of Germany as an industrial power within a decade. Becoming an EU funds beneficiary within two. National dissolution within four.
He is spot on about demographics.
That said, his timings are likely wrong. Japan's demographics are about 20 years ahead of Germany's, and they are still a major industrial power.
The downside for Germany is that this is occurring at a time when one of their biggest industries (cars) is in state of technological change where the newest competitor has a structural advantage.
That isn't to say that the time frames are right (10 years is far too soon) but I suspect Germany is in for a rougher time than Japan..
So he seems to have finally plumped for "Comrade" Kamala. That's huge. Up to now I've been merrily asserting he's tracking to lose but that was when he hadn't settled on a devastating nickname for his opponent. Now that he has, whole different story. He's back in the ballgame. It's on a knife edge!
Crooked Hillary...
And the sequel, Crooked Joe. I think that was his first choice here too. Also tried out Lyin and Cacklin and Laughin and that quite off the wall one, Kambala, but it looks like Comrade has got the nod.
Which UK politician would you equate to Harris in terms of leftyness?
It seems to me she's Tugenhadt territory.
She strikes me as quite Nandy.
Yes, I can see that - she's surely to the right of Nandy though? I considered the 3 Eds - Balls was the closest I felt.
End of Germany as an industrial power within a decade. Becoming an EU funds beneficiary within two. National dissolution within four.
He is spot on about demographics.
That said, his timings are likely wrong. Japan's demographics are about 20 years ahead of Germany's, and they are still a major industrial power.
Or the ageing demographics means economic collapse trope is fallacious.
Collapse is certainly wrong. And of course, it might benefit them in some ways.
If you know there are fewer workers coming on stream, it encourages you to invest more in automation. (Switzerland doesn't have the demographic challenges, but it certainly has extremely expensive labour costs, and it continued to be an industrial powerhouse.)
On the other hand, places with inverted population pyramids (Japan and Italy being the most advanced in that trend), have tended to have slower economic growth.
We have fewer workers coming on stream and all it's done is encourage successive governments to encourage massive low skilled immigration.
So he seems to have finally plumped for "Comrade" Kamala. That's huge. Up to now I've been merrily asserting he's tracking to lose but that was when he hadn't settled on a devastating nickname for his opponent. Now that he has, whole different story. He's back in the ballgame. It's on a knife edge!
Crooked Hillary...
And the sequel, Crooked Joe. I think that was his first choice here too. Also tried out Lyin and Cacklin and Laughin and that quite off the wall one, Kambala, but it looks like Comrade has got the nod.
Which UK politician would you equate to Harris in terms of leftyness?
It seems to me she's Tugenhadt territory.
She strikes me as quite Nandy.
Yes, I can see that - she's surely to the right of Nandy though? I considered the 3 Eds - Balls was the closest I felt.
Probably culturally quite Nandy. Economically perhaps more Balls.
End of Germany as an industrial power within a decade. Becoming an EU funds beneficiary within two. National dissolution within four.
He is spot on about demographics.
That said, his timings are likely wrong. Japan's demographics are about 20 years ahead of Germany's, and they are still a major industrial power.
The downside for Germany is that this is occurring at a time when one of their biggest industries (cars) is in state of technological change where the newest competitor has a structural advantage.
That isn't to say that the time frames are right (10 years is far too soon) but I suspect Germany is in for a rougher time than Japan..
Indeed - interesting. If only we had some 250 year olds on the board, they could tell us when this changed. My guess: WW1. It may actually be that the late 70s/80s/early 90s were the nadir for male sartorial exuberance. I remember my friend's father - who was of a slightly older generation than my own - recollecting his youth of the early 60s, when the key to attracting girls was dressing to the nines and young men would happily wear expensively tailored suits for a night out. Whereas when I was young: yes, secretly, you wanted to look good to advance your chances of meeting girls. But you very much didn't want to look like you were trying to look good.
Every era has had its code whether it was mods and rockers or burberry raincoats or stone island or adidas spezials. And most people have wanted to appear as more affluent than they are (eg the burberry and gucci keyring crazes). Ofc it is generally the gentry that cut about in moth-eaten sweaters and ancient clothes held together by baler twine.
But no, that's the point. The male youth of the 70s/80s/90s did not dress to look more affluent than they were. Baggy shirts and doc martens. Or heavy metal chic. Or punk. Or Mark E Smith out of the Fall. Or shell suits. The new romantics of the early 80s were a sort of exception to this, but even they didn't look affluent - they looked like they'd indiscriminately raided a charity shop to try to stage a pantomime.
The football hooligan look clearly passed you by.
Plus the suits-and-slicked-back hair of the, what, 1981/82? Just look at the cover of Penthouse and Pavement or Tony Hadley in Spandau Ballet after the kilt period, say around Gold or True.
(how the hell did I become this burgh's expert on male fashion? Ho-hum)
For decades, before we started copying the Americans slavishly, male gangs and fashion alternated between dressing down and dressing up: mods v rockers, glam v punk, casuals v miner chic. Consider the difference between Tony Hadley in Spandau Ballet and the brilliant Mark Hollis in Talk Talk . I'll have to throw some old copies of The Face and i-D at PB.
I'd like to say those days were better, but they weren't: it was generally rubbish for the poor and less rubbish for the well off. But I think the dreams of the future were better.
Interesting who this kind of reputational damage sticks to and who it doesnt. Both Tony and Cherie were well renowned 'grabbers'. Neither coming from proper money, solicited and gladly chomped through whatever they could, but it didnt hurt Tony in office. Starmer doesnt seem to have any kind of honeymoon protection at all.
During Blair's time the economic situation was generally favourable and they were able spray money around so people didn't care very much about the Blairs "grabbing"
Lord and Lady Starmer swanning around in the finest clothes someone else's money can buy while pensioners are going to freeze this winter is a rather harder "sell"
Pensioners have been mollycoddled for far too long.
We’re all in this together.
We had a PM in Boris Johnson that dressed like a scruff, it’s good for the UK for a PM to wear the best.
Can anyone looking really tell the difference between someone whose clothes cost £150 and someone whose clothes cost £1500? If they can, that says rather more about the observer than the observed.
I can, but then I have a keen eye for this.
See the second half of my comment above
When I was young, putting a lot of effort (and certainly a lot of time and/or expense) into your appearance was a bit frowned upon. You were expected, if possible, to achieve a certain level of cleanliness and/or personal hygiene, but anything more than that was a bit suspect - a bit 'look at me'. Actually, I say 'when I was young', I suspect most of men of my generation still think that way.
Maybe that is true, but it's hardly something to be proud of, is it?
I kind of think it is. We used to consider vanity a vice rather than a virtue. We used to consider showing off something to be dissuaded. We used to mock peacockery. A certain parsimoniousness whn it comes to one's appearance seems to me to be something to be applauded. By which I don't necessarily mean turning up in a t-shirt riven with holes and ketchup stains. But I rather disdain the mindset which thinks it acceptable to spend £1000 a year or more on one's own appearance. It seems frivolous. Do you remember the book of sports lists? I remember a list in it of sportsmen who cared rather too much for their own appearance - it included, I think, Peter Shilton, who would drive to a city 30 miles away for his particular needs for a haircut, and, possibly, Kevin Keegan, who spent rather more than the then-quite-daring £5 a month on a haircut. And someone who spent a lot on clothes, no doubt. But the fact that ten such people could be picked out showed how comparatively rare that sort of vanity was in those days. If you made a list now of sportsmen who cared too much for their own appearance you'd be here until doomsday.
Do you apply these hairshirt morals to women too, or just men?
I can tell that you don't agree, Anabobz, but I'm guessing you're about my age? Do you not think values on this have shifted somewhat in our lifetimes? It's not a massive issue. I mean, of all the vices that there are, vanity/frivolousness/attention seeking is rather low on the list. But still - it strikes me as an odd change, and odd that it's so uncommented on. It's a reasonable question whether it applies in my mind to both men and women - not least because the instinctive reaction to someone who, for example, spends £30 or more on a haircut is that doing so is a bit unmanly. But on reflection, yes, I'd say I do apply these 'hairshirt morals' to women as well, or at least something similar. There is no need to spend thousands on clothes, and drawing attention to doing so, just looks a bit like conspicuous consumption.
There's a quite low upper ceiling to how good anyone - male or female - can look, and expense and effort which goes beyond that is not only wasted but also looks a bit, well, crass.
As I say above - these aren't strongly held feelings. But I feel kind of sure this is how everyone used to feel, and I don't understand how and why the dial has shifted.
See also - tattoos.
How much did your current shirt cost? I'm guessing around a month's income for around 650m people.
Everything is relative. So what if people pay a lot for this or that? If they can afford it it doesn't make it extravagant or vain.
Yebbut, 40 years ago it would have done. I'm not so much defending my own position as expressing bafflement that values of this have shifted so much in my lifetime without real comment.
And in answer to your rhetorical question, about £25.
I'm not necessarily against spending money. I've previously lamented my decision not to by a painting, which is clearly a frivolous purchase. Though if I spend money on clothing, I have to get a LOT of wear out of the item to justify it to myself. (And I don't think I've ever spent over £70 on a non-footwear clothing item; and the most I have ever spent on footwear was on a standard pair of Dr. Marten boots, which exemplify the sort of sartorial utilitarianism I favour.)
I just instinctively disapprove slightly of excess effort with one's own appearance, and of men who dress to draw attention to themselves. This is just the values of the world I grew up in. It was so ingrained it was hardly worthy of comment. And now it isn't. Do you not find this interesting?
The world you grew up in. As opposed to the world hundreds of years ago where dandyism and foppishness were celebrated.
Indeed - interesting. If only we had some 250 year olds on the board, they could tell us when this changed. My guess: WW1. It may actually be that the late 70s/80s/early 90s were the nadir for male sartorial exuberance. I remember my friend's father - who was of a slightly older generation than my own - recollecting his youth of the early 60s, when the key to attracting girls was dressing to the nines and young men would happily wear expensively tailored suits for a night out. Whereas when I was young: yes, secretly, you wanted to look good to advance your chances of meeting girls. But you very much didn't want to look like you were trying to look good.
Every era has had its code whether it was mods and rockers or burberry raincoats or stone island or adidas spezials. And most people have wanted to appear as more affluent than they are (eg the burberry and gucci keyring crazes). Ofc it is generally the gentry that cut about in moth-eaten sweaters and ancient clothes held together by baler twine.
Interesting who this kind of reputational damage sticks to and who it doesnt. Both Tony and Cherie were well renowned 'grabbers'. Neither coming from proper money, solicited and gladly chomped through whatever they could, but it didnt hurt Tony in office. Starmer doesnt seem to have any kind of honeymoon protection at all.
During Blair's time the economic situation was generally favourable and they were able spray money around so people didn't care very much about the Blairs "grabbing"
Lord and Lady Starmer swanning around in the finest clothes someone else's money can buy while pensioners are going to freeze this winter is a rather harder "sell"
Pensioners have been mollycoddled for far too long.
We’re all in this together.
We had a PM in Boris Johnson that dressed like a scruff, it’s good for the UK for a PM to wear the best.
Can anyone looking really tell the difference between someone whose clothes cost £150 and someone whose clothes cost £1500? If they can, that says rather more about the observer than the observed.
I can, but then I have a keen eye for this.
See the second half of my comment above
When I was young, putting a lot of effort (and certainly a lot of time and/or expense) into your appearance was a bit frowned upon. You were expected, if possible, to achieve a certain level of cleanliness and/or personal hygiene, but anything more than that was a bit suspect - a bit 'look at me'. Actually, I say 'when I was young', I suspect most of men of my generation still think that way.
Maybe that is true, but it's hardly something to be proud of, is it?
I kind of think it is. We used to consider vanity a vice rather than a virtue. We used to consider showing off something to be dissuaded. We used to mock peacockery. A certain parsimoniousness whn it comes to one's appearance seems to me to be something to be applauded. By which I don't necessarily mean turning up in a t-shirt riven with holes and ketchup stains. But I rather disdain the mindset which thinks it acceptable to spend £1000 a year or more on one's own appearance. It seems frivolous. Do you remember the book of sports lists? I remember a list in it of sportsmen who cared rather too much for their own appearance - it included, I think, Peter Shilton, who would drive to a city 30 miles away for his particular needs for a haircut, and, possibly, Kevin Keegan, who spent rather more than the then-quite-daring £5 a month on a haircut. And someone who spent a lot on clothes, no doubt. But the fact that ten such people could be picked out showed how comparatively rare that sort of vanity was in those days. If you made a list now of sportsmen who cared too much for their own appearance you'd be here until doomsday.
Do you apply these hairshirt morals to women too, or just men?
I can tell that you don't agree, Anabobz, but I'm guessing you're about my age? Do you not think values on this have shifted somewhat in our lifetimes? It's not a massive issue. I mean, of all the vices that there are, vanity/frivolousness/attention seeking is rather low on the list. But still - it strikes me as an odd change, and odd that it's so uncommented on. It's a reasonable question whether it applies in my mind to both men and women - not least because the instinctive reaction to someone who, for example, spends £30 or more on a haircut is that doing so is a bit unmanly. But on reflection, yes, I'd say I do apply these 'hairshirt morals' to women as well, or at least something similar. There is no need to spend thousands on clothes, and drawing attention to doing so, just looks a bit like conspicuous consumption.
There's a quite low upper ceiling to how good anyone - male or female - can look, and expense and effort which goes beyond that is not only wasted but also looks a bit, well, crass.
As I say above - these aren't strongly held feelings. But I feel kind of sure this is how everyone used to feel, and I don't understand how and why the dial has shifted.
See also - tattoos.
How much did your current shirt cost? I'm guessing around a month's income for around 650m people.
Everything is relative. So what if people pay a lot for this or that? If they can afford it it doesn't make it extravagant or vain.
Yebbut, 40 years ago it would have done. I'm not so much defending my own position as expressing bafflement that values of this have shifted so much in my lifetime without real comment.
And in answer to your rhetorical question, about £25.
I'm not necessarily against spending money. I've previously lamented my decision not to by a painting, which is clearly a frivolous purchase. Though if I spend money on clothing, I have to get a LOT of wear out of the item to justify it to myself. (And I don't think I've ever spent over £70 on a non-footwear clothing item; and the most I have ever spent on footwear was on a standard pair of Dr. Marten boots, which exemplify the sort of sartorial utilitarianism I favour.)
I just instinctively disapprove slightly of excess effort with one's own appearance, and of men who dress to draw attention to themselves. This is just the values of the world I grew up in. It was so ingrained it was hardly worthy of comment. And now it isn't. Do you not find this interesting?
The world you grew up in. As opposed to the world hundreds of years ago where dandyism and foppishness were celebrated.
Indeed - interesting. If only we had some 250 year olds on the board, they could tell us when this changed. My guess: WW1. It may actually be that the late 70s/80s/early 90s were the nadir for male sartorial exuberance. I remember my friend's father - who was of a slightly older generation than my own - recollecting his youth of the early 60s, when the key to attracting girls was dressing to the nines and young men would happily wear expensively tailored suits for a night out. Whereas when I was young: yes, secretly, you wanted to look good to advance your chances of meeting girls. But you very much didn't want to look like you were trying to look good.
Every era has had its code whether it was mods and rockers or burberry raincoats or stone island or adidas spezials. And most people have wanted to appear as more affluent than they are (eg the burberry and gucci keyring crazes). Ofc it is generally the gentry that cut about in moth-eaten sweaters and ancient clothes held together by baler twine.
But no, that's the point. The male youth of the 70s/80s/90s did not dress to look more affluent than they were. Baggy shirts and doc martens. Or heavy metal chic. Or punk. Or Mark E Smith out of the Fall. Or shell suits. The new romantics of the early 80s were a sort of exception to this, but even they didn't look affluent - they looked like they'd indiscriminately raided a charity shop to try to stage a pantomime.
OTOH ... I remember visiting an old university friend c 2000 and meeting her daughter who was a student. Looked like one of those Australian parakeets - mixed primary colours and simple combinations thereof eg green. Dressed from charity shops, sure, but she took care over the overall effect and the appearance. Indiscriminate she wasn't.
Cookie clearly didn't know the right sort of New Romantics.
No, new romantics had come and gone by the time I got there! In my early teens I was largely surrounded by people who dressed in the heavy metal style - clearly there is some sort of uniform/look there, but smartness and expense and indeed cleanliness isn't really part of it. Then later on I was surrounded by Madchester baggy - again, driven by cheapness - and later by generic indie: plaid shirts and jeans or perhaps combats and doc martens. The 'other' tribe were the townies, who dressed largely in track suits. Expense and style were not apparent there either.
But in all honesty expensive clothing would be wasted on me. I look vaguely scruffy in anything I wear. I am fat and hairy. Looking at pictures of a younger me, very occasionally I looked brilliant in a way in which I never really appreciated and makes me sigh wistfully, but more often I just look in need of a haircut. I was always in need of a haircut, any time outside of six days since I had last had a haircut. I wish I'd discovered self-maintenance of hair earlier - I may have sacrificed the occasional youthfully brilliant hair day fresh out of the barbers, but I'd have had reliably neat hair, and that would have made the difference to the overall look.
I've never been in the least bit tempted by expensive clothes, with one exception: last year, as we had parked there for a walk, we popped in to the wonderful House of Bruar in northern Perthshire: everything the Highland laird needs - and I was instantly struck by a lament that I would never have need or occasion to wear a full high quality tweed suit. It passed, of course - it would also have needed me to be 20 years younger and with an entirely different lifestyle - i.e. heir to some Highland estate. How there is a big enough market for this sort of stuff for this business to stay operational I have no idea.
House of Bruar is for folk who want to look like an heir to a Highland estate without even a tiny chance of being one, that’s how they stay very comfortably operational. Well done for resisting the temptation.
I was agog that such a place existed. Still, it was very, very pleasant. The toilets were splendid, I wanted every food item, and they didn't seem to mind us parking for a walk up to see the waterfalls. In the end my wife and daughters each bought a Christmas decoration and I bought a tin of barley sugars.
They rather grandly insist on calling their lavatories 'cloakrooms' and do not feature the obligatory symbols which leads to no end of confusion and annoyance. I love it - TUD shouldn't be so po-faced.
I think we have a venue for the PB Northern Conference.
End of Germany as an industrial power within a decade. Becoming an EU funds beneficiary within two. National dissolution within four.
He is spot on about demographics.
That said, his timings are likely wrong. Japan's demographics are about 20 years ahead of Germany's, and they are still a major industrial power.
The downside for Germany is that this is occurring at a time when one of their biggest industries (cars) is in state of technological change where the newest competitor has a structural advantage.
That isn't to say that the time frames are right (10 years is far too soon) but I suspect Germany is in for a rougher time than Japan..
European Tesla's are all made in Germany, no?
Might have something to do with Ursula von der Leyen firing Musk's main European antagonist Thierry Breton.
So he seems to have finally plumped for "Comrade" Kamala. That's huge. Up to now I've been merrily asserting he's tracking to lose but that was when he hadn't settled on a devastating nickname for his opponent. Now that he has, whole different story. He's back in the ballgame. It's on a knife edge!
Crooked Hillary...
And the sequel, Crooked Joe. I think that was his first choice here too. Also tried out Lyin and Cacklin and Laughin and that quite off the wall one, Kambala, but it looks like Comrade has got the nod.
Which UK politician would you equate to Harris in terms of leftyness?
Indeed - interesting. If only we had some 250 year olds on the board, they could tell us when this changed. My guess: WW1. It may actually be that the late 70s/80s/early 90s were the nadir for male sartorial exuberance. I remember my friend's father - who was of a slightly older generation than my own - recollecting his youth of the early 60s, when the key to attracting girls was dressing to the nines and young men would happily wear expensively tailored suits for a night out. Whereas when I was young: yes, secretly, you wanted to look good to advance your chances of meeting girls. But you very much didn't want to look like you were trying to look good.
Every era has had its code whether it was mods and rockers or burberry raincoats or stone island or adidas spezials. And most people have wanted to appear as more affluent than they are (eg the burberry and gucci keyring crazes). Ofc it is generally the gentry that cut about in moth-eaten sweaters and ancient clothes held together by baler twine.
But no, that's the point. The male youth of the 70s/80s/90s did not dress to look more affluent than they were. Baggy shirts and doc martens. Or heavy metal chic. Or punk. Or Mark E Smith out of the Fall. Or shell suits. The new romantics of the early 80s were a sort of exception to this, but even they didn't look affluent - they looked like they'd indiscriminately raided a charity shop to try to stage a pantomime.
The football hooligan look clearly passed you by.
Plus the suits-and-slicked-back hair of the, what, 1981/82? Just look at the cover of Penthouse and Pavement or Tony Hadley in Spandau Ballet after the kilt period, say around Gold or True.
(how the hell did I become this burgh's expert on male fashion? Ho-hum)
For decades, before we started copying the Americans slavishly, male gangs and fashion alternated between dressing down and dressing up: mods v rockers, glam v punk, casuals v miner chic. Consider the difference between Tony Hadley in Spandau Ballet and the brilliant Mark Hollis in Talk Talk . I'll have to throw some old copies of The Face and i-D at PB.
I'd like to say those days were better, but they weren't: it was generally rubbish for the poor and less rubbish for the well off. But I think the dreams of the future were better.
Indeed - interesting. If only we had some 250 year olds on the board, they could tell us when this changed. My guess: WW1. It may actually be that the late 70s/80s/early 90s were the nadir for male sartorial exuberance. I remember my friend's father - who was of a slightly older generation than my own - recollecting his youth of the early 60s, when the key to attracting girls was dressing to the nines and young men would happily wear expensively tailored suits for a night out. Whereas when I was young: yes, secretly, you wanted to look good to advance your chances of meeting girls. But you very much didn't want to look like you were trying to look good.
Every era has had its code whether it was mods and rockers or burberry raincoats or stone island or adidas spezials. And most people have wanted to appear as more affluent than they are (eg the burberry and gucci keyring crazes). Ofc it is generally the gentry that cut about in moth-eaten sweaters and ancient clothes held together by baler twine.
But no, that's the point. The male youth of the 70s/80s/90s did not dress to look more affluent than they were. Baggy shirts and doc martens. Or heavy metal chic. Or punk. Or Mark E Smith out of the Fall. Or shell suits. The new romantics of the early 80s were a sort of exception to this, but even they didn't look affluent - they looked like they'd indiscriminately raided a charity shop to try to stage a pantomime.
The football hooligan look clearly passed you by.
Plus the suits-and-slicked-back hair of the, what, 1981/82? Just look at the cover of Penthouse and Pavement or Tony Hadley in Spandau Ballet after the kilt period, say around Gold or True.
(how the hell did I become this burgh's expert on male fashion? Ho-hum)
For decades, before we started copying the Americans slavishly, male gangs and fashion alternated between dressing down and dressing up: mods v rockers, glam v punk, casuals v miner chic. Consider the difference between Tony Hadley in Spandau Ballet and the brilliant Mark Hollis in Talk Talk . I'll have to throw some old copies of The Face and i-D at PB.
I'd like to say those days were better, but they weren't: it was generally rubbish for the poor and less rubbish for the well off. But I think the dreams of the future were better.
Interesting who this kind of reputational damage sticks to and who it doesnt. Both Tony and Cherie were well renowned 'grabbers'. Neither coming from proper money, solicited and gladly chomped through whatever they could, but it didnt hurt Tony in office. Starmer doesnt seem to have any kind of honeymoon protection at all.
During Blair's time the economic situation was generally favourable and they were able spray money around so people didn't care very much about the Blairs "grabbing"
Lord and Lady Starmer swanning around in the finest clothes someone else's money can buy while pensioners are going to freeze this winter is a rather harder "sell"
Pensioners have been mollycoddled for far too long.
We’re all in this together.
We had a PM in Boris Johnson that dressed like a scruff, it’s good for the UK for a PM to wear the best.
Can anyone looking really tell the difference between someone whose clothes cost £150 and someone whose clothes cost £1500? If they can, that says rather more about the observer than the observed.
I can, but then I have a keen eye for this.
See the second half of my comment above
When I was young, putting a lot of effort (and certainly a lot of time and/or expense) into your appearance was a bit frowned upon. You were expected, if possible, to achieve a certain level of cleanliness and/or personal hygiene, but anything more than that was a bit suspect - a bit 'look at me'. Actually, I say 'when I was young', I suspect most of men of my generation still think that way.
Maybe that is true, but it's hardly something to be proud of, is it?
I kind of think it is. We used to consider vanity a vice rather than a virtue. We used to consider showing off something to be dissuaded. We used to mock peacockery. A certain parsimoniousness whn it comes to one's appearance seems to me to be something to be applauded. By which I don't necessarily mean turning up in a t-shirt riven with holes and ketchup stains. But I rather disdain the mindset which thinks it acceptable to spend £1000 a year or more on one's own appearance. It seems frivolous. Do you remember the book of sports lists? I remember a list in it of sportsmen who cared rather too much for their own appearance - it included, I think, Peter Shilton, who would drive to a city 30 miles away for his particular needs for a haircut, and, possibly, Kevin Keegan, who spent rather more than the then-quite-daring £5 a month on a haircut. And someone who spent a lot on clothes, no doubt. But the fact that ten such people could be picked out showed how comparatively rare that sort of vanity was in those days. If you made a list now of sportsmen who cared too much for their own appearance you'd be here until doomsday.
Do you apply these hairshirt morals to women too, or just men?
I can tell that you don't agree, Anabobz, but I'm guessing you're about my age? Do you not think values on this have shifted somewhat in our lifetimes? It's not a massive issue. I mean, of all the vices that there are, vanity/frivolousness/attention seeking is rather low on the list. But still - it strikes me as an odd change, and odd that it's so uncommented on. It's a reasonable question whether it applies in my mind to both men and women - not least because the instinctive reaction to someone who, for example, spends £30 or more on a haircut is that doing so is a bit unmanly. But on reflection, yes, I'd say I do apply these 'hairshirt morals' to women as well, or at least something similar. There is no need to spend thousands on clothes, and drawing attention to doing so, just looks a bit like conspicuous consumption.
There's a quite low upper ceiling to how good anyone - male or female - can look, and expense and effort which goes beyond that is not only wasted but also looks a bit, well, crass.
As I say above - these aren't strongly held feelings. But I feel kind of sure this is how everyone used to feel, and I don't understand how and why the dial has shifted.
See also - tattoos.
How much did your current shirt cost? I'm guessing around a month's income for around 650m people.
Everything is relative. So what if people pay a lot for this or that? If they can afford it it doesn't make it extravagant or vain.
Yebbut, 40 years ago it would have done. I'm not so much defending my own position as expressing bafflement that values of this have shifted so much in my lifetime without real comment.
And in answer to your rhetorical question, about £25.
I'm not necessarily against spending money. I've previously lamented my decision not to by a painting, which is clearly a frivolous purchase. Though if I spend money on clothing, I have to get a LOT of wear out of the item to justify it to myself. (And I don't think I've ever spent over £70 on a non-footwear clothing item; and the most I have ever spent on footwear was on a standard pair of Dr. Marten boots, which exemplify the sort of sartorial utilitarianism I favour.)
I just instinctively disapprove slightly of excess effort with one's own appearance, and of men who dress to draw attention to themselves. This is just the values of the world I grew up in. It was so ingrained it was hardly worthy of comment. And now it isn't. Do you not find this interesting?
The world you grew up in. As opposed to the world hundreds of years ago where dandyism and foppishness were celebrated.
Indeed - interesting. If only we had some 250 year olds on the board, they could tell us when this changed. My guess: WW1. It may actually be that the late 70s/80s/early 90s were the nadir for male sartorial exuberance. I remember my friend's father - who was of a slightly older generation than my own - recollecting his youth of the early 60s, when the key to attracting girls was dressing to the nines and young men would happily wear expensively tailored suits for a night out. Whereas when I was young: yes, secretly, you wanted to look good to advance your chances of meeting girls. But you very much didn't want to look like you were trying to look good.
Every era has had its code whether it was mods and rockers or burberry raincoats or stone island or adidas spezials. And most people have wanted to appear as more affluent than they are (eg the burberry and gucci keyring crazes). Ofc it is generally the gentry that cut about in moth-eaten sweaters and ancient clothes held together by baler twine.
Interesting who this kind of reputational damage sticks to and who it doesnt. Both Tony and Cherie were well renowned 'grabbers'. Neither coming from proper money, solicited and gladly chomped through whatever they could, but it didnt hurt Tony in office. Starmer doesnt seem to have any kind of honeymoon protection at all.
During Blair's time the economic situation was generally favourable and they were able spray money around so people didn't care very much about the Blairs "grabbing"
Lord and Lady Starmer swanning around in the finest clothes someone else's money can buy while pensioners are going to freeze this winter is a rather harder "sell"
Pensioners have been mollycoddled for far too long.
We’re all in this together.
We had a PM in Boris Johnson that dressed like a scruff, it’s good for the UK for a PM to wear the best.
Can anyone looking really tell the difference between someone whose clothes cost £150 and someone whose clothes cost £1500? If they can, that says rather more about the observer than the observed.
I can, but then I have a keen eye for this.
See the second half of my comment above
When I was young, putting a lot of effort (and certainly a lot of time and/or expense) into your appearance was a bit frowned upon. You were expected, if possible, to achieve a certain level of cleanliness and/or personal hygiene, but anything more than that was a bit suspect - a bit 'look at me'. Actually, I say 'when I was young', I suspect most of men of my generation still think that way.
Maybe that is true, but it's hardly something to be proud of, is it?
I kind of think it is. We used to consider vanity a vice rather than a virtue. We used to consider showing off something to be dissuaded. We used to mock peacockery. A certain parsimoniousness whn it comes to one's appearance seems to me to be something to be applauded. By which I don't necessarily mean turning up in a t-shirt riven with holes and ketchup stains. But I rather disdain the mindset which thinks it acceptable to spend £1000 a year or more on one's own appearance. It seems frivolous. Do you remember the book of sports lists? I remember a list in it of sportsmen who cared rather too much for their own appearance - it included, I think, Peter Shilton, who would drive to a city 30 miles away for his particular needs for a haircut, and, possibly, Kevin Keegan, who spent rather more than the then-quite-daring £5 a month on a haircut. And someone who spent a lot on clothes, no doubt. But the fact that ten such people could be picked out showed how comparatively rare that sort of vanity was in those days. If you made a list now of sportsmen who cared too much for their own appearance you'd be here until doomsday.
Do you apply these hairshirt morals to women too, or just men?
I can tell that you don't agree, Anabobz, but I'm guessing you're about my age? Do you not think values on this have shifted somewhat in our lifetimes? It's not a massive issue. I mean, of all the vices that there are, vanity/frivolousness/attention seeking is rather low on the list. But still - it strikes me as an odd change, and odd that it's so uncommented on. It's a reasonable question whether it applies in my mind to both men and women - not least because the instinctive reaction to someone who, for example, spends £30 or more on a haircut is that doing so is a bit unmanly. But on reflection, yes, I'd say I do apply these 'hairshirt morals' to women as well, or at least something similar. There is no need to spend thousands on clothes, and drawing attention to doing so, just looks a bit like conspicuous consumption.
There's a quite low upper ceiling to how good anyone - male or female - can look, and expense and effort which goes beyond that is not only wasted but also looks a bit, well, crass.
As I say above - these aren't strongly held feelings. But I feel kind of sure this is how everyone used to feel, and I don't understand how and why the dial has shifted.
See also - tattoos.
How much did your current shirt cost? I'm guessing around a month's income for around 650m people.
Everything is relative. So what if people pay a lot for this or that? If they can afford it it doesn't make it extravagant or vain.
Yebbut, 40 years ago it would have done. I'm not so much defending my own position as expressing bafflement that values of this have shifted so much in my lifetime without real comment.
And in answer to your rhetorical question, about £25.
I'm not necessarily against spending money. I've previously lamented my decision not to by a painting, which is clearly a frivolous purchase. Though if I spend money on clothing, I have to get a LOT of wear out of the item to justify it to myself. (And I don't think I've ever spent over £70 on a non-footwear clothing item; and the most I have ever spent on footwear was on a standard pair of Dr. Marten boots, which exemplify the sort of sartorial utilitarianism I favour.)
I just instinctively disapprove slightly of excess effort with one's own appearance, and of men who dress to draw attention to themselves. This is just the values of the world I grew up in. It was so ingrained it was hardly worthy of comment. And now it isn't. Do you not find this interesting?
The world you grew up in. As opposed to the world hundreds of years ago where dandyism and foppishness were celebrated.
Indeed - interesting. If only we had some 250 year olds on the board, they could tell us when this changed. My guess: WW1. It may actually be that the late 70s/80s/early 90s were the nadir for male sartorial exuberance. I remember my friend's father - who was of a slightly older generation than my own - recollecting his youth of the early 60s, when the key to attracting girls was dressing to the nines and young men would happily wear expensively tailored suits for a night out. Whereas when I was young: yes, secretly, you wanted to look good to advance your chances of meeting girls. But you very much didn't want to look like you were trying to look good.
Every era has had its code whether it was mods and rockers or burberry raincoats or stone island or adidas spezials. And most people have wanted to appear as more affluent than they are (eg the burberry and gucci keyring crazes). Ofc it is generally the gentry that cut about in moth-eaten sweaters and ancient clothes held together by baler twine.
But no, that's the point. The male youth of the 70s/80s/90s did not dress to look more affluent than they were. Baggy shirts and doc martens. Or heavy metal chic. Or punk. Or Mark E Smith out of the Fall. Or shell suits. The new romantics of the early 80s were a sort of exception to this, but even they didn't look affluent - they looked like they'd indiscriminately raided a charity shop to try to stage a pantomime.
OTOH ... I remember visiting an old university friend c 2000 and meeting her daughter who was a student. Looked like one of those Australian parakeets - mixed primary colours and simple combinations thereof eg green. Dressed from charity shops, sure, but she took care over the overall effect and the appearance. Indiscriminate she wasn't.
Cookie clearly didn't know the right sort of New Romantics.
No, new romantics had come and gone by the time I got there! In my early teens I was largely surrounded by people who dressed in the heavy metal style - clearly there is some sort of uniform/look there, but smartness and expense and indeed cleanliness isn't really part of it. Then later on I was surrounded by Madchester baggy - again, driven by cheapness - and later by generic indie: plaid shirts and jeans or perhaps combats and doc martens. The 'other' tribe were the townies, who dressed largely in track suits. Expense and style were not apparent there either.
But in all honesty expensive clothing would be wasted on me. I look vaguely scruffy in anything I wear. I am fat and hairy. Looking at pictures of a younger me, very occasionally I looked brilliant in a way in which I never really appreciated and makes me sigh wistfully, but more often I just look in need of a haircut. I was always in need of a haircut, any time outside of six days since I had last had a haircut. I wish I'd discovered self-maintenance of hair earlier - I may have sacrificed the occasional youthfully brilliant hair day fresh out of the barbers, but I'd have had reliably neat hair, and that would have made the difference to the overall look.
I've never been in the least bit tempted by expensive clothes, with one exception: last year, as we had parked there for a walk, we popped in to the wonderful House of Bruar in northern Perthshire: everything the Highland laird needs - and I was instantly struck by a lament that I would never have need or occasion to wear a full high quality tweed suit. It passed, of course - it would also have needed me to be 20 years younger and with an entirely different lifestyle - i.e. heir to some Highland estate. How there is a big enough market for this sort of stuff for this business to stay operational I have no idea.
House of Bruar is for folk who want to look like an heir to a Highland estate without even a tiny chance of being one, that’s how they stay very comfortably operational. Well done for resisting the temptation.
I was agog that such a place existed. Still, it was very, very pleasant. The toilets were splendid, I wanted every food item, and they didn't seem to mind us parking for a walk up to see the waterfalls. In the end my wife and daughters each bought a Christmas decoration and I bought a tin of barley sugars.
They rather grandly insist on calling their lavatories 'cloakrooms' and do not feature the obligatory symbols which leads to no end of confusion and annoyance. I love it - TUD shouldn't be so po-faced.
Some decent footwear which I can buy more cheaply elsewhere, otherwise chichi-ed up its hoo ha. I tend to feel a bit raped after a visit, particularly after paying £x for a scone and a cup of tea. Tbf that’s not uncommon in that stretch of the road to the Highlands.
I quite like the sparrows flying about the conservatory style restaurant area.
Gotta compare like with like though. MLK was not a president.
Someone who was, said some stuff about that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. And the footnote to that seems to be, Unless the people choose someone totally unacceptable to a bunch of group thinking elders half the world away who think that if people have our skin colour and speak our language, we obviously know what is best for them better than they do.
Harris and Biden should call out Trump for his martyr routine and tell him to stfu . The gall to accuse others of inflammatory rhetoric when he does that on a daily basis . Regardless the bigger news this week will be the Fed cutting rates which will lead to a total Trump meltdown .
Is a cut nailed on though?
Well it would pretty well amount to political interference if the FED didn't cut this month.
Chances are it might avoid doing so in the month before the election.
Interesting who this kind of reputational damage sticks to and who it doesnt. Both Tony and Cherie were well renowned 'grabbers'. Neither coming from proper money, solicited and gladly chomped through whatever they could, but it didnt hurt Tony in office. Starmer doesnt seem to have any kind of honeymoon protection at all.
During Blair's time the economic situation was generally favourable and they were able spray money around so people didn't care very much about the Blairs "grabbing"
Lord and Lady Starmer swanning around in the finest clothes someone else's money can buy while pensioners are going to freeze this winter is a rather harder "sell"
Pensioners have been mollycoddled for far too long.
We’re all in this together.
We had a PM in Boris Johnson that dressed like a scruff, it’s good for the UK for a PM to wear the best.
Can anyone looking really tell the difference between someone whose clothes cost £150 and someone whose clothes cost £1500? If they can, that says rather more about the observer than the observed.
I can, but then I have a keen eye for this.
See the second half of my comment above
When I was young, putting a lot of effort (and certainly a lot of time and/or expense) into your appearance was a bit frowned upon. You were expected, if possible, to achieve a certain level of cleanliness and/or personal hygiene, but anything more than that was a bit suspect - a bit 'look at me'. Actually, I say 'when I was young', I suspect most of men of my generation still think that way.
Maybe that is true, but it's hardly something to be proud of, is it?
I kind of think it is. We used to consider vanity a vice rather than a virtue. We used to consider showing off something to be dissuaded. We used to mock peacockery. A certain parsimoniousness whn it comes to one's appearance seems to me to be something to be applauded. By which I don't necessarily mean turning up in a t-shirt riven with holes and ketchup stains. But I rather disdain the mindset which thinks it acceptable to spend £1000 a year or more on one's own appearance. It seems frivolous. Do you remember the book of sports lists? I remember a list in it of sportsmen who cared rather too much for their own appearance - it included, I think, Peter Shilton, who would drive to a city 30 miles away for his particular needs for a haircut, and, possibly, Kevin Keegan, who spent rather more than the then-quite-daring £5 a month on a haircut. And someone who spent a lot on clothes, no doubt. But the fact that ten such people could be picked out showed how comparatively rare that sort of vanity was in those days. If you made a list now of sportsmen who cared too much for their own appearance you'd be here until doomsday.
Do you apply these hairshirt morals to women too, or just men?
I can tell that you don't agree, Anabobz, but I'm guessing you're about my age? Do you not think values on this have shifted somewhat in our lifetimes? It's not a massive issue. I mean, of all the vices that there are, vanity/frivolousness/attention seeking is rather low on the list. But still - it strikes me as an odd change, and odd that it's so uncommented on. It's a reasonable question whether it applies in my mind to both men and women - not least because the instinctive reaction to someone who, for example, spends £30 or more on a haircut is that doing so is a bit unmanly. But on reflection, yes, I'd say I do apply these 'hairshirt morals' to women as well, or at least something similar. There is no need to spend thousands on clothes, and drawing attention to doing so, just looks a bit like conspicuous consumption.
There's a quite low upper ceiling to how good anyone - male or female - can look, and expense and effort which goes beyond that is not only wasted but also looks a bit, well, crass.
As I say above - these aren't strongly held feelings. But I feel kind of sure this is how everyone used to feel, and I don't understand how and why the dial has shifted.
See also - tattoos.
How much did your current shirt cost? I'm guessing around a month's income for around 650m people.
Everything is relative. So what if people pay a lot for this or that? If they can afford it it doesn't make it extravagant or vain.
Yebbut, 40 years ago it would have done. I'm not so much defending my own position as expressing bafflement that values of this have shifted so much in my lifetime without real comment.
And in answer to your rhetorical question, about £25.
I'm not necessarily against spending money. I've previously lamented my decision not to by a painting, which is clearly a frivolous purchase. Though if I spend money on clothing, I have to get a LOT of wear out of the item to justify it to myself. (And I don't think I've ever spent over £70 on a non-footwear clothing item; and the most I have ever spent on footwear was on a standard pair of Dr. Marten boots, which exemplify the sort of sartorial utilitarianism I favour.)
I just instinctively disapprove slightly of excess effort with one's own appearance, and of men who dress to draw attention to themselves. This is just the values of the world I grew up in. It was so ingrained it was hardly worthy of comment. And now it isn't. Do you not find this interesting?
The world you grew up in. As opposed to the world hundreds of years ago where dandyism and foppishness were celebrated.
Indeed - interesting. If only we had some 250 year olds on the board, they could tell us when this changed. My guess: WW1. It may actually be that the late 70s/80s/early 90s were the nadir for male sartorial exuberance. I remember my friend's father - who was of a slightly older generation than my own - recollecting his youth of the early 60s, when the key to attracting girls was dressing to the nines and young men would happily wear expensively tailored suits for a night out. Whereas when I was young: yes, secretly, you wanted to look good to advance your chances of meeting girls. But you very much didn't want to look like you were trying to look good.
Every era has had its code whether it was mods and rockers or burberry raincoats or stone island or adidas spezials. And most people have wanted to appear as more affluent than they are (eg the burberry and gucci keyring crazes). Ofc it is generally the gentry that cut about in moth-eaten sweaters and ancient clothes held together by baler twine.
Interesting who this kind of reputational damage sticks to and who it doesnt. Both Tony and Cherie were well renowned 'grabbers'. Neither coming from proper money, solicited and gladly chomped through whatever they could, but it didnt hurt Tony in office. Starmer doesnt seem to have any kind of honeymoon protection at all.
During Blair's time the economic situation was generally favourable and they were able spray money around so people didn't care very much about the Blairs "grabbing"
Lord and Lady Starmer swanning around in the finest clothes someone else's money can buy while pensioners are going to freeze this winter is a rather harder "sell"
Pensioners have been mollycoddled for far too long.
We’re all in this together.
We had a PM in Boris Johnson that dressed like a scruff, it’s good for the UK for a PM to wear the best.
Can anyone looking really tell the difference between someone whose clothes cost £150 and someone whose clothes cost £1500? If they can, that says rather more about the observer than the observed.
I can, but then I have a keen eye for this.
See the second half of my comment above
When I was young, putting a lot of effort (and certainly a lot of time and/or expense) into your appearance was a bit frowned upon. You were expected, if possible, to achieve a certain level of cleanliness and/or personal hygiene, but anything more than that was a bit suspect - a bit 'look at me'. Actually, I say 'when I was young', I suspect most of men of my generation still think that way.
Maybe that is true, but it's hardly something to be proud of, is it?
I kind of think it is. We used to consider vanity a vice rather than a virtue. We used to consider showing off something to be dissuaded. We used to mock peacockery. A certain parsimoniousness whn it comes to one's appearance seems to me to be something to be applauded. By which I don't necessarily mean turning up in a t-shirt riven with holes and ketchup stains. But I rather disdain the mindset which thinks it acceptable to spend £1000 a year or more on one's own appearance. It seems frivolous. Do you remember the book of sports lists? I remember a list in it of sportsmen who cared rather too much for their own appearance - it included, I think, Peter Shilton, who would drive to a city 30 miles away for his particular needs for a haircut, and, possibly, Kevin Keegan, who spent rather more than the then-quite-daring £5 a month on a haircut. And someone who spent a lot on clothes, no doubt. But the fact that ten such people could be picked out showed how comparatively rare that sort of vanity was in those days. If you made a list now of sportsmen who cared too much for their own appearance you'd be here until doomsday.
Do you apply these hairshirt morals to women too, or just men?
I can tell that you don't agree, Anabobz, but I'm guessing you're about my age? Do you not think values on this have shifted somewhat in our lifetimes? It's not a massive issue. I mean, of all the vices that there are, vanity/frivolousness/attention seeking is rather low on the list. But still - it strikes me as an odd change, and odd that it's so uncommented on. It's a reasonable question whether it applies in my mind to both men and women - not least because the instinctive reaction to someone who, for example, spends £30 or more on a haircut is that doing so is a bit unmanly. But on reflection, yes, I'd say I do apply these 'hairshirt morals' to women as well, or at least something similar. There is no need to spend thousands on clothes, and drawing attention to doing so, just looks a bit like conspicuous consumption.
There's a quite low upper ceiling to how good anyone - male or female - can look, and expense and effort which goes beyond that is not only wasted but also looks a bit, well, crass.
As I say above - these aren't strongly held feelings. But I feel kind of sure this is how everyone used to feel, and I don't understand how and why the dial has shifted.
See also - tattoos.
How much did your current shirt cost? I'm guessing around a month's income for around 650m people.
Everything is relative. So what if people pay a lot for this or that? If they can afford it it doesn't make it extravagant or vain.
Yebbut, 40 years ago it would have done. I'm not so much defending my own position as expressing bafflement that values of this have shifted so much in my lifetime without real comment.
And in answer to your rhetorical question, about £25.
I'm not necessarily against spending money. I've previously lamented my decision not to by a painting, which is clearly a frivolous purchase. Though if I spend money on clothing, I have to get a LOT of wear out of the item to justify it to myself. (And I don't think I've ever spent over £70 on a non-footwear clothing item; and the most I have ever spent on footwear was on a standard pair of Dr. Marten boots, which exemplify the sort of sartorial utilitarianism I favour.)
I just instinctively disapprove slightly of excess effort with one's own appearance, and of men who dress to draw attention to themselves. This is just the values of the world I grew up in. It was so ingrained it was hardly worthy of comment. And now it isn't. Do you not find this interesting?
The world you grew up in. As opposed to the world hundreds of years ago where dandyism and foppishness were celebrated.
Indeed - interesting. If only we had some 250 year olds on the board, they could tell us when this changed. My guess: WW1. It may actually be that the late 70s/80s/early 90s were the nadir for male sartorial exuberance. I remember my friend's father - who was of a slightly older generation than my own - recollecting his youth of the early 60s, when the key to attracting girls was dressing to the nines and young men would happily wear expensively tailored suits for a night out. Whereas when I was young: yes, secretly, you wanted to look good to advance your chances of meeting girls. But you very much didn't want to look like you were trying to look good.
Every era has had its code whether it was mods and rockers or burberry raincoats or stone island or adidas spezials. And most people have wanted to appear as more affluent than they are (eg the burberry and gucci keyring crazes). Ofc it is generally the gentry that cut about in moth-eaten sweaters and ancient clothes held together by baler twine.
But no, that's the point. The male youth of the 70s/80s/90s did not dress to look more affluent than they were. Baggy shirts and doc martens. Or heavy metal chic. Or punk. Or Mark E Smith out of the Fall. Or shell suits. The new romantics of the early 80s were a sort of exception to this, but even they didn't look affluent - they looked like they'd indiscriminately raided a charity shop to try to stage a pantomime.
OTOH ... I remember visiting an old university friend c 2000 and meeting her daughter who was a student. Looked like one of those Australian parakeets - mixed primary colours and simple combinations thereof eg green. Dressed from charity shops, sure, but she took care over the overall effect and the appearance. Indiscriminate she wasn't.
Cookie clearly didn't know the right sort of New Romantics.
No, new romantics had come and gone by the time I got there! In my early teens I was largely surrounded by people who dressed in the heavy metal style - clearly there is some sort of uniform/look there, but smartness and expense and indeed cleanliness isn't really part of it. Then later on I was surrounded by Madchester baggy - again, driven by cheapness - and later by generic indie: plaid shirts and jeans or perhaps combats and doc martens. The 'other' tribe were the townies, who dressed largely in track suits. Expense and style were not apparent there either.
But in all honesty expensive clothing would be wasted on me. I look vaguely scruffy in anything I wear. I am fat and hairy. Looking at pictures of a younger me, very occasionally I looked brilliant in a way in which I never really appreciated and makes me sigh wistfully, but more often I just look in need of a haircut. I was always in need of a haircut, any time outside of six days since I had last had a haircut. I wish I'd discovered self-maintenance of hair earlier - I may have sacrificed the occasional youthfully brilliant hair day fresh out of the barbers, but I'd have had reliably neat hair, and that would have made the difference to the overall look.
I've never been in the least bit tempted by expensive clothes, with one exception: last year, as we had parked there for a walk, we popped in to the wonderful House of Bruar in northern Perthshire: everything the Highland laird needs - and I was instantly struck by a lament that I would never have need or occasion to wear a full high quality tweed suit. It passed, of course - it would also have needed me to be 20 years younger and with an entirely different lifestyle - i.e. heir to some Highland estate. How there is a big enough market for this sort of stuff for this business to stay operational I have no idea.
House of Bruar is for folk who want to look like an heir to a Highland estate without even a tiny chance of being one, that’s how they stay very comfortably operational. Well done for resisting the temptation.
I was agog that such a place existed. Still, it was very, very pleasant. The toilets were splendid, I wanted every food item, and they didn't seem to mind us parking for a walk up to see the waterfalls. In the end my wife and daughters each bought a Christmas decoration and I bought a tin of barley sugars.
They rather grandly insist on calling their lavatories 'cloakrooms' and do not feature the obligatory symbols which leads to no end of confusion and annoyance. I love it - TUD shouldn't be so po-faced.
Some decent footwear which I can buy more cheaply elsewhere, otherwise chichi-ed up its hoo ha. I tend to feel a bit raped after a visit, particularly after paying £x for a scone and a cup of tea. Tbf that’s not uncommon in that stretch of the road to the Highlands.
I quite like the sparrows flying about the conservatory style restaurant area.
Good story from about 20 years ago
The owner of HoB got so pissed off with staff spilling coffee on his lovely carpets, walking about with a coffee was made an instant sacking offence. Day after the rule is introduced he finds someone breaking it. So he says You're fired. Then he says, you look the sort of bastard that hires lawyers for unfair dismissal claims. Here's 500 in cash and you won't be seeing a penny more.
Then he says What do you do here anyway so I can hire a replacement. And the guy pockets the money and says I don't, I'm from BT and just here for the day to sort a phone problem.
The UK election was dull from a 'who will be the PM' perspective, because even if we had a larger-than-usual polling error, Starmer was going to have a majority and be in Number 10.
The US election night will be exciting because - even if the polling is exactly right - either candidate can win. And that's before you factor in possible polling errors in either direction, in national or state polls. The result might not be close in practice.
And the betting odds are fluctuating so close to 50:50, a 'back the favourite' trading strategy is probably best. I've laid off some of my long Harris position from much longer odds.
Off topic: - There goes my 1,000th post - Ran my first half marathon yesterday - why do people do double that distance?!
End of Germany as an industrial power within a decade. Becoming an EU funds beneficiary within two. National dissolution within four.
He is spot on about demographics.
That said, his timings are likely wrong. Japan's demographics are about 20 years ahead of Germany's, and they are still a major industrial power.
Or the ageing demographics means economic collapse trope is fallacious.
The they provided their biggest market with the manufacturing technology with which to outcompete them one is pretty well spot on, though.
Ironically, one of Elon Musk’s rules of business is that “your product will be replaced by a better one. Either you will own it, or someone else will”.
Indeed - interesting. If only we had some 250 year olds on the board, they could tell us when this changed. My guess: WW1. It may actually be that the late 70s/80s/early 90s were the nadir for male sartorial exuberance. I remember my friend's father - who was of a slightly older generation than my own - recollecting his youth of the early 60s, when the key to attracting girls was dressing to the nines and young men would happily wear expensively tailored suits for a night out. Whereas when I was young: yes, secretly, you wanted to look good to advance your chances of meeting girls. But you very much didn't want to look like you were trying to look good.
Every era has had its code whether it was mods and rockers or burberry raincoats or stone island or adidas spezials. And most people have wanted to appear as more affluent than they are (eg the burberry and gucci keyring crazes). Ofc it is generally the gentry that cut about in moth-eaten sweaters and ancient clothes held together by baler twine.
But no, that's the point. The male youth of the 70s/80s/90s did not dress to look more affluent than they were. Baggy shirts and doc martens. Or heavy metal chic. Or punk. Or Mark E Smith out of the Fall. Or shell suits. The new romantics of the early 80s were a sort of exception to this, but even they didn't look affluent - they looked like they'd indiscriminately raided a charity shop to try to stage a pantomime.
The football hooligan look clearly passed you by.
Plus the suits-and-slicked-back hair of the, what, 1981/82? Just look at the cover of Penthouse and Pavement or Tony Hadley in Spandau Ballet after the kilt period, say around Gold or True.
(how the hell did I become this burgh's expert on male fashion? Ho-hum)
For decades, before we started copying the Americans slavishly, male gangs and fashion alternated between dressing down and dressing up: mods v rockers, glam v punk, casuals v miner chic. Consider the difference between Tony Hadley in Spandau Ballet and the brilliant Mark Hollis in Talk Talk . I'll have to throw some old copies of The Face and i-D at PB.
I'd like to say those days were better, but they weren't: it was generally rubbish for the poor and less rubbish for the well off. But I think the dreams of the future were better.
First season was fantastic. Went a bit downhill in S2... Perhaps it's too lost in the mists of time now to sum up a decade, but absolutely everything about Clive Owen's character, the slimy Piers, the very lovely Susannah Harker, the cod-Caterham cars setup with Mr Bennett from Pride and Prejudice as the country gent... you can practically hear the Pet Shop Boys singing 'let's make lots of money' in the background.
More than Mad Men, it's the show that makes you sad people don't wear suits any more.
End of Germany as an industrial power within a decade. Becoming an EU funds beneficiary within two. National dissolution within four.
He is spot on about demographics.
That said, his timings are likely wrong. Japan's demographics are about 20 years ahead of Germany's, and they are still a major industrial power.
Or the ageing demographics means economic collapse trope is fallacious.
The they provided their biggest market with the manufacturing technology with which to outcompete them one is pretty well spot on, though.
While “AI” is largely bollocks, the combination of approximate learning and improved robotics does allow for better automation of menial jobs.
Fruit picking, warehouse shelf work will go quite quickly. Limited range and terrain automated driving - such as trucks at opencast mines - is well under way.
In old age care, various Japanese (no surprise there) prototypes for assistance are in the test phase.
Interesting who this kind of reputational damage sticks to and who it doesnt. Both Tony and Cherie were well renowned 'grabbers'. Neither coming from proper money, solicited and gladly chomped through whatever they could, but it didnt hurt Tony in office. Starmer doesnt seem to have any kind of honeymoon protection at all.
During Blair's time the economic situation was generally favourable and they were able spray money around so people didn't care very much about the Blairs "grabbing"
Lord and Lady Starmer swanning around in the finest clothes someone else's money can buy while pensioners are going to freeze this winter is a rather harder "sell"
Pensioners have been mollycoddled for far too long.
We’re all in this together.
We had a PM in Boris Johnson that dressed like a scruff, it’s good for the UK for a PM to wear the best.
Can anyone looking really tell the difference between someone whose clothes cost £150 and someone whose clothes cost £1500? If they can, that says rather more about the observer than the observed.
I can, but then I have a keen eye for this.
See the second half of my comment above
When I was young, putting a lot of effort (and certainly a lot of time and/or expense) into your appearance was a bit frowned upon. You were expected, if possible, to achieve a certain level of cleanliness and/or personal hygiene, but anything more than that was a bit suspect - a bit 'look at me'. Actually, I say 'when I was young', I suspect most of men of my generation still think that way.
Maybe that is true, but it's hardly something to be proud of, is it?
I kind of think it is. We used to consider vanity a vice rather than a virtue. We used to consider showing off something to be dissuaded. We used to mock peacockery. A certain parsimoniousness whn it comes to one's appearance seems to me to be something to be applauded. By which I don't necessarily mean turning up in a t-shirt riven with holes and ketchup stains. But I rather disdain the mindset which thinks it acceptable to spend £1000 a year or more on one's own appearance. It seems frivolous. Do you remember the book of sports lists? I remember a list in it of sportsmen who cared rather too much for their own appearance - it included, I think, Peter Shilton, who would drive to a city 30 miles away for his particular needs for a haircut, and, possibly, Kevin Keegan, who spent rather more than the then-quite-daring £5 a month on a haircut. And someone who spent a lot on clothes, no doubt. But the fact that ten such people could be picked out showed how comparatively rare that sort of vanity was in those days. If you made a list now of sportsmen who cared too much for their own appearance you'd be here until doomsday.
Do you apply these hairshirt morals to women too, or just men?
I can tell that you don't agree, Anabobz, but I'm guessing you're about my age? Do you not think values on this have shifted somewhat in our lifetimes? It's not a massive issue. I mean, of all the vices that there are, vanity/frivolousness/attention seeking is rather low on the list. But still - it strikes me as an odd change, and odd that it's so uncommented on. It's a reasonable question whether it applies in my mind to both men and women - not least because the instinctive reaction to someone who, for example, spends £30 or more on a haircut is that doing so is a bit unmanly. But on reflection, yes, I'd say I do apply these 'hairshirt morals' to women as well, or at least something similar. There is no need to spend thousands on clothes, and drawing attention to doing so, just looks a bit like conspicuous consumption.
There's a quite low upper ceiling to how good anyone - male or female - can look, and expense and effort which goes beyond that is not only wasted but also looks a bit, well, crass.
As I say above - these aren't strongly held feelings. But I feel kind of sure this is how everyone used to feel, and I don't understand how and why the dial has shifted.
See also - tattoos.
How much did your current shirt cost? I'm guessing around a month's income for around 650m people.
Everything is relative. So what if people pay a lot for this or that? If they can afford it it doesn't make it extravagant or vain.
Yebbut, 40 years ago it would have done. I'm not so much defending my own position as expressing bafflement that values of this have shifted so much in my lifetime without real comment.
And in answer to your rhetorical question, about £25.
I'm not necessarily against spending money. I've previously lamented my decision not to by a painting, which is clearly a frivolous purchase. Though if I spend money on clothing, I have to get a LOT of wear out of the item to justify it to myself. (And I don't think I've ever spent over £70 on a non-footwear clothing item; and the most I have ever spent on footwear was on a standard pair of Dr. Marten boots, which exemplify the sort of sartorial utilitarianism I favour.)
I just instinctively disapprove slightly of excess effort with one's own appearance, and of men who dress to draw attention to themselves. This is just the values of the world I grew up in. It was so ingrained it was hardly worthy of comment. And now it isn't. Do you not find this interesting?
The world you grew up in. As opposed to the world hundreds of years ago where dandyism and foppishness were celebrated.
Indeed - interesting. If only we had some 250 year olds on the board, they could tell us when this changed. My guess: WW1. It may actually be that the late 70s/80s/early 90s were the nadir for male sartorial exuberance. I remember my friend's father - who was of a slightly older generation than my own - recollecting his youth of the early 60s, when the key to attracting girls was dressing to the nines and young men would happily wear expensively tailored suits for a night out. Whereas when I was young: yes, secretly, you wanted to look good to advance your chances of meeting girls. But you very much didn't want to look like you were trying to look good.
Every era has had its code whether it was mods and rockers or burberry raincoats or stone island or adidas spezials. And most people have wanted to appear as more affluent than they are (eg the burberry and gucci keyring crazes). Ofc it is generally the gentry that cut about in moth-eaten sweaters and ancient clothes held together by baler twine.
Interesting who this kind of reputational damage sticks to and who it doesnt. Both Tony and Cherie were well renowned 'grabbers'. Neither coming from proper money, solicited and gladly chomped through whatever they could, but it didnt hurt Tony in office. Starmer doesnt seem to have any kind of honeymoon protection at all.
During Blair's time the economic situation was generally favourable and they were able spray money around so people didn't care very much about the Blairs "grabbing"
Lord and Lady Starmer swanning around in the finest clothes someone else's money can buy while pensioners are going to freeze this winter is a rather harder "sell"
Pensioners have been mollycoddled for far too long.
We’re all in this together.
We had a PM in Boris Johnson that dressed like a scruff, it’s good for the UK for a PM to wear the best.
Can anyone looking really tell the difference between someone whose clothes cost £150 and someone whose clothes cost £1500? If they can, that says rather more about the observer than the observed.
I can, but then I have a keen eye for this.
See the second half of my comment above
When I was young, putting a lot of effort (and certainly a lot of time and/or expense) into your appearance was a bit frowned upon. You were expected, if possible, to achieve a certain level of cleanliness and/or personal hygiene, but anything more than that was a bit suspect - a bit 'look at me'. Actually, I say 'when I was young', I suspect most of men of my generation still think that way.
Maybe that is true, but it's hardly something to be proud of, is it?
I kind of think it is. We used to consider vanity a vice rather than a virtue. We used to consider showing off something to be dissuaded. We used to mock peacockery. A certain parsimoniousness whn it comes to one's appearance seems to me to be something to be applauded. By which I don't necessarily mean turning up in a t-shirt riven with holes and ketchup stains. But I rather disdain the mindset which thinks it acceptable to spend £1000 a year or more on one's own appearance. It seems frivolous. Do you remember the book of sports lists? I remember a list in it of sportsmen who cared rather too much for their own appearance - it included, I think, Peter Shilton, who would drive to a city 30 miles away for his particular needs for a haircut, and, possibly, Kevin Keegan, who spent rather more than the then-quite-daring £5 a month on a haircut. And someone who spent a lot on clothes, no doubt. But the fact that ten such people could be picked out showed how comparatively rare that sort of vanity was in those days. If you made a list now of sportsmen who cared too much for their own appearance you'd be here until doomsday.
Do you apply these hairshirt morals to women too, or just men?
I can tell that you don't agree, Anabobz, but I'm guessing you're about my age? Do you not think values on this have shifted somewhat in our lifetimes? It's not a massive issue. I mean, of all the vices that there are, vanity/frivolousness/attention seeking is rather low on the list. But still - it strikes me as an odd change, and odd that it's so uncommented on. It's a reasonable question whether it applies in my mind to both men and women - not least because the instinctive reaction to someone who, for example, spends £30 or more on a haircut is that doing so is a bit unmanly. But on reflection, yes, I'd say I do apply these 'hairshirt morals' to women as well, or at least something similar. There is no need to spend thousands on clothes, and drawing attention to doing so, just looks a bit like conspicuous consumption.
There's a quite low upper ceiling to how good anyone - male or female - can look, and expense and effort which goes beyond that is not only wasted but also looks a bit, well, crass.
As I say above - these aren't strongly held feelings. But I feel kind of sure this is how everyone used to feel, and I don't understand how and why the dial has shifted.
See also - tattoos.
How much did your current shirt cost? I'm guessing around a month's income for around 650m people.
Everything is relative. So what if people pay a lot for this or that? If they can afford it it doesn't make it extravagant or vain.
Yebbut, 40 years ago it would have done. I'm not so much defending my own position as expressing bafflement that values of this have shifted so much in my lifetime without real comment.
And in answer to your rhetorical question, about £25.
I'm not necessarily against spending money. I've previously lamented my decision not to by a painting, which is clearly a frivolous purchase. Though if I spend money on clothing, I have to get a LOT of wear out of the item to justify it to myself. (And I don't think I've ever spent over £70 on a non-footwear clothing item; and the most I have ever spent on footwear was on a standard pair of Dr. Marten boots, which exemplify the sort of sartorial utilitarianism I favour.)
I just instinctively disapprove slightly of excess effort with one's own appearance, and of men who dress to draw attention to themselves. This is just the values of the world I grew up in. It was so ingrained it was hardly worthy of comment. And now it isn't. Do you not find this interesting?
The world you grew up in. As opposed to the world hundreds of years ago where dandyism and foppishness were celebrated.
Indeed - interesting. If only we had some 250 year olds on the board, they could tell us when this changed. My guess: WW1. It may actually be that the late 70s/80s/early 90s were the nadir for male sartorial exuberance. I remember my friend's father - who was of a slightly older generation than my own - recollecting his youth of the early 60s, when the key to attracting girls was dressing to the nines and young men would happily wear expensively tailored suits for a night out. Whereas when I was young: yes, secretly, you wanted to look good to advance your chances of meeting girls. But you very much didn't want to look like you were trying to look good.
Every era has had its code whether it was mods and rockers or burberry raincoats or stone island or adidas spezials. And most people have wanted to appear as more affluent than they are (eg the burberry and gucci keyring crazes). Ofc it is generally the gentry that cut about in moth-eaten sweaters and ancient clothes held together by baler twine.
But no, that's the point. The male youth of the 70s/80s/90s did not dress to look more affluent than they were. Baggy shirts and doc martens. Or heavy metal chic. Or punk. Or Mark E Smith out of the Fall. Or shell suits. The new romantics of the early 80s were a sort of exception to this, but even they didn't look affluent - they looked like they'd indiscriminately raided a charity shop to try to stage a pantomime.
OTOH ... I remember visiting an old university friend c 2000 and meeting her daughter who was a student. Looked like one of those Australian parakeets - mixed primary colours and simple combinations thereof eg green. Dressed from charity shops, sure, but she took care over the overall effect and the appearance. Indiscriminate she wasn't.
Cookie clearly didn't know the right sort of New Romantics.
No, new romantics had come and gone by the time I got there! In my early teens I was largely surrounded by people who dressed in the heavy metal style - clearly there is some sort of uniform/look there, but smartness and expense and indeed cleanliness isn't really part of it. Then later on I was surrounded by Madchester baggy - again, driven by cheapness - and later by generic indie: plaid shirts and jeans or perhaps combats and doc martens. The 'other' tribe were the townies, who dressed largely in track suits. Expense and style were not apparent there either.
But in all honesty expensive clothing would be wasted on me. I look vaguely scruffy in anything I wear. I am fat and hairy. Looking at pictures of a younger me, very occasionally I looked brilliant in a way in which I never really appreciated and makes me sigh wistfully, but more often I just look in need of a haircut. I was always in need of a haircut, any time outside of six days since I had last had a haircut. I wish I'd discovered self-maintenance of hair earlier - I may have sacrificed the occasional youthfully brilliant hair day fresh out of the barbers, but I'd have had reliably neat hair, and that would have made the difference to the overall look.
I've never been in the least bit tempted by expensive clothes, with one exception: last year, as we had parked there for a walk, we popped in to the wonderful House of Bruar in northern Perthshire: everything the Highland laird needs - and I was instantly struck by a lament that I would never have need or occasion to wear a full high quality tweed suit. It passed, of course - it would also have needed me to be 20 years younger and with an entirely different lifestyle - i.e. heir to some Highland estate. How there is a big enough market for this sort of stuff for this business to stay operational I have no idea.
House of Bruar is for folk who want to look like an heir to a Highland estate without even a tiny chance of being one, that’s how they stay very comfortably operational. Well done for resisting the temptation.
I was agog that such a place existed. Still, it was very, very pleasant. The toilets were splendid, I wanted every food item, and they didn't seem to mind us parking for a walk up to see the waterfalls. In the end my wife and daughters each bought a Christmas decoration and I bought a tin of barley sugars.
They rather grandly insist on calling their lavatories 'cloakrooms' and do not feature the obligatory symbols which leads to no end of confusion and annoyance. I love it - TUD shouldn't be so po-faced.
Some decent footwear which I can buy more cheaply elsewhere, otherwise chichi-ed up its hoo ha. I tend to feel a bit raped after a visit, particularly after paying £x for a scone and a cup of tea. Tbf that’s not uncommon in that stretch of the road to the Highlands.
I quite like the sparrows flying about the conservatory style restaurant area.
Good story from about 20 years ago
The owner of HoB got so pissed off with staff spilling coffee on his lovely carpets, walking about with a coffee was made an instant sacking offence. Day after the rule is introduced he finds someone breaking it. So he says You're fired. Then he says, you look the sort of bastard that hires lawyers for unfair dismissal claims. Here's 500 in cash and you won't be seeing a penny more.
Then he says What do you do here anyway so I can hire a replacement. And the guy pockets the money and says I don't, I'm from BT and just here for the day to sort a phone problem.
When I was a student, I helped run the union.
One day, a security guard defended a student from an attack by another student. The university was (for interesting reasons) horrified. They demanded we fire the security guard. And sent a drone (walking dead lawyer type) to see it done.
So I fired someone in front of him. After the drone had left, the person I’d “fired” (student who worked in the bar, who was leaving the uni soon) shared the bonus I’d handed him with the actual security guard.
I got the idea from a PG Wodehouse story, where he claimed that a posh New York department store did similar for serious customer complaints.
Indeed - interesting. If only we had some 250 year olds on the board, they could tell us when this changed. My guess: WW1. It may actually be that the late 70s/80s/early 90s were the nadir for male sartorial exuberance. I remember my friend's father - who was of a slightly older generation than my own - recollecting his youth of the early 60s, when the key to attracting girls was dressing to the nines and young men would happily wear expensively tailored suits for a night out. Whereas when I was young: yes, secretly, you wanted to look good to advance your chances of meeting girls. But you very much didn't want to look like you were trying to look good.
Every era has had its code whether it was mods and rockers or burberry raincoats or stone island or adidas spezials. And most people have wanted to appear as more affluent than they are (eg the burberry and gucci keyring crazes). Ofc it is generally the gentry that cut about in moth-eaten sweaters and ancient clothes held together by baler twine.
But no, that's the point. The male youth of the 70s/80s/90s did not dress to look more affluent than they were. Baggy shirts and doc martens. Or heavy metal chic. Or punk. Or Mark E Smith out of the Fall. Or shell suits. The new romantics of the early 80s were a sort of exception to this, but even they didn't look affluent - they looked like they'd indiscriminately raided a charity shop to try to stage a pantomime.
The football hooligan look clearly passed you by.
Plus the suits-and-slicked-back hair of the, what, 1981/82? Just look at the cover of Penthouse and Pavement or Tony Hadley in Spandau Ballet after the kilt period, say around Gold or True.
(how the hell did I become this burgh's expert on male fashion? Ho-hum)
For decades, before we started copying the Americans slavishly, male gangs and fashion alternated between dressing down and dressing up: mods v rockers, glam v punk, casuals v miner chic. Consider the difference between Tony Hadley in Spandau Ballet and the brilliant Mark Hollis in Talk Talk . I'll have to throw some old copies of The Face and i-D at PB.
I'd like to say those days were better, but they weren't: it was generally rubbish for the poor and less rubbish for the well off. But I think the dreams of the future were better.
End of Germany as an industrial power within a decade. Becoming an EU funds beneficiary within two. National dissolution within four.
He is spot on about demographics.
That said, his timings are likely wrong. Japan's demographics are about 20 years ahead of Germany's, and they are still a major industrial power.
Or the ageing demographics means economic collapse trope is fallacious.
Collapse is certainly wrong. And of course, it might benefit them in some ways.
If you know there are fewer workers coming on stream, it encourages you to invest more in automation. (Switzerland doesn't have the demographic challenges, but it certainly has extremely expensive labour costs, and it continued to be an industrial powerhouse.)
On the other hand, places with inverted population pyramids (Japan and Italy being the most advanced in that trend), have tended to have slower economic growth.
We have fewer workers coming on stream and all it's done is encourage successive governments to encourage massive low skilled immigration.
If Trump got others to write all his tweets from now until 5 November, and they made them all seem very reasonable. And he promised big tax cuts. I reckon he’d probably win handsomely. He could still do some of the crazy stuff in his rallies.
End of Germany as an industrial power within a decade. Becoming an EU funds beneficiary within two. National dissolution within four.
He is spot on about demographics.
That said, his timings are likely wrong. Japan's demographics are about 20 years ahead of Germany's, and they are still a major industrial power.
Or the ageing demographics means economic collapse trope is fallacious.
The they provided their biggest market with the manufacturing technology with which to outcompete them one is pretty well spot on, though.
Germany's biggest industry has always been capital goods (i.e. the machines that make machines). And Germany's boom over the last twenty years has been on the back of selling capital goods to China.
If Germany the exporter is struggling now, the biggest reason is that the Chinese economy is not purchasing as many machines that make things, because it has slowed down itself.
The question is - and I don't know the answer to this - whether the reindustrializing of the US creates demand for Siemens, Kuka and Bosch and co.
Indeed - interesting. If only we had some 250 year olds on the board, they could tell us when this changed. My guess: WW1. It may actually be that the late 70s/80s/early 90s were the nadir for male sartorial exuberance. I remember my friend's father - who was of a slightly older generation than my own - recollecting his youth of the early 60s, when the key to attracting girls was dressing to the nines and young men would happily wear expensively tailored suits for a night out. Whereas when I was young: yes, secretly, you wanted to look good to advance your chances of meeting girls. But you very much didn't want to look like you were trying to look good.
Every era has had its code whether it was mods and rockers or burberry raincoats or stone island or adidas spezials. And most people have wanted to appear as more affluent than they are (eg the burberry and gucci keyring crazes). Ofc it is generally the gentry that cut about in moth-eaten sweaters and ancient clothes held together by baler twine.
But no, that's the point. The male youth of the 70s/80s/90s did not dress to look more affluent than they were. Baggy shirts and doc martens. Or heavy metal chic. Or punk. Or Mark E Smith out of the Fall. Or shell suits. The new romantics of the early 80s were a sort of exception to this, but even they didn't look affluent - they looked like they'd indiscriminately raided a charity shop to try to stage a pantomime.
The football hooligan look clearly passed you by.
Plus the suits-and-slicked-back hair of the, what, 1981/82? Just look at the cover of Penthouse and Pavement or Tony Hadley in Spandau Ballet after the kilt period, say around Gold or True.
(how the hell did I become this burgh's expert on male fashion? Ho-hum)
For decades, before we started copying the Americans slavishly, male gangs and fashion alternated between dressing down and dressing up: mods v rockers, glam v punk, casuals v miner chic. Consider the difference between Tony Hadley in Spandau Ballet and the brilliant Mark Hollis in Talk Talk . I'll have to throw some old copies of The Face and i-D at PB.
I'd like to say those days were better, but they weren't: it was generally rubbish for the poor and less rubbish for the well off. But I think the dreams of the future were better.
First season was fantastic. Went a bit downhill in S2... Perhaps it's too lost in the mists of time now to sum up a decade, but absolutely everything about Clive Owen's character, the slimy Piers, the very lovely Susannah Harker, the cod-Caterham cars setup with Mr Bennett from Pride and Prejudice as the country gent... you can practically hear the Pet Shop Boys singing 'let's make lots of money' in the background.
More than Mad Men, it's the show that makes you sad people don't wear suits any more.
Leslie Phillips in a straight role too and very good he was as well. I watched the Network release a few years back and enjoyed it.
Also at the time there was Capital City with, IIRC, Douglas Hodge. A two series tribute and testament to yuppiedom.
End of Germany as an industrial power within a decade. Becoming an EU funds beneficiary within two. National dissolution within four.
He is spot on about demographics.
That said, his timings are likely wrong. Japan's demographics are about 20 years ahead of Germany's, and they are still a major industrial power.
Or the ageing demographics means economic collapse trope is fallacious.
The they provided their biggest market with the manufacturing technology with which to outcompete them one is pretty well spot on, though.
Ironically, one of Elon Musk’s rules of business is that “your product will be replaced by a better one. Either you will own it, or someone else will”.
Yep, if you don't cannabalize yourself, someone will do it for you. (A lesson Intel didn't learn.)
End of Germany as an industrial power within a decade. Becoming an EU funds beneficiary within two. National dissolution within four.
He is spot on about demographics.
That said, his timings are likely wrong. Japan's demographics are about 20 years ahead of Germany's, and they are still a major industrial power.
Or the ageing demographics means economic collapse trope is fallacious.
Collapse is certainly wrong. And of course, it might benefit them in some ways.
If you know there are fewer workers coming on stream, it encourages you to invest more in automation. (Switzerland doesn't have the demographic challenges, but it certainly has extremely expensive labour costs, and it continued to be an industrial powerhouse.)
On the other hand, places with inverted population pyramids (Japan and Italy being the most advanced in that trend), have tended to have slower economic growth.
We have fewer workers coming on stream and all it's done is encourage successive governments to encourage massive low skilled immigration.
Well, nobody's perfect.
That was the reason the once great, now rapidly declining, Aussie Rugby Union team nicknamed John Eales, in his heyday, ‘nobody’
Close US elections are always decided by GOTV. The Republicans have 'privatised' their direct GOTV effort and the people they hired have either admitted defeat (Turning Point) or have a recent history of promising much and delivering little and late (Elon Musk).
That does not mean that Trump will lose but it means that assuming he will perform way above the polls may not be the shoe-in many assume
I am enjoying an experience akin to “BBC journalist visits red wall to gauge sentiment” this evening. A night in Darlington, in the mistakenly booked premier inn on the trading estate (where I’m tucking into a beefeater - this is like a British version of staying in the Kyriad St Quentin next to the autoroute des Anglais and popping into the Courtepaille for dinner).
My taxi driver on the brief but fascinating drive from the station managed to confide that he’d lost his son due to a 2 hour ambulance wait earlier this year, that he’s run a boxing gym for decades catering to kids down on their luck from all backgrounds (“Asians, gypsies, blacks”), and that - and this was prefaced by a declaration that he’s not racist, and I believe him, the refugees are out of control and are why nobody can afford houses or get seen by a doctor.
It’s interesting that the real focus in immigration discourse is on the very visible refugee / asylum seeker cohort rather than the far bigger legal immigrant group. Visibility is everything - if Cooper can clear the backlog and empty some of those hotels commandeered by the home office I think it’ll go a long way.
Indeed - interesting. If only we had some 250 year olds on the board, they could tell us when this changed. My guess: WW1. It may actually be that the late 70s/80s/early 90s were the nadir for male sartorial exuberance. I remember my friend's father - who was of a slightly older generation than my own - recollecting his youth of the early 60s, when the key to attracting girls was dressing to the nines and young men would happily wear expensively tailored suits for a night out. Whereas when I was young: yes, secretly, you wanted to look good to advance your chances of meeting girls. But you very much didn't want to look like you were trying to look good.
Every era has had its code whether it was mods and rockers or burberry raincoats or stone island or adidas spezials. And most people have wanted to appear as more affluent than they are (eg the burberry and gucci keyring crazes). Ofc it is generally the gentry that cut about in moth-eaten sweaters and ancient clothes held together by baler twine.
But no, that's the point. The male youth of the 70s/80s/90s did not dress to look more affluent than they were. Baggy shirts and doc martens. Or heavy metal chic. Or punk. Or Mark E Smith out of the Fall. Or shell suits. The new romantics of the early 80s were a sort of exception to this, but even they didn't look affluent - they looked like they'd indiscriminately raided a charity shop to try to stage a pantomime.
The football hooligan look clearly passed you by.
Plus the suits-and-slicked-back hair of the, what, 1981/82? Just look at the cover of Penthouse and Pavement or Tony Hadley in Spandau Ballet after the kilt period, say around Gold or True.
(how the hell did I become this burgh's expert on male fashion? Ho-hum)
For decades, before we started copying the Americans slavishly, male gangs and fashion alternated between dressing down and dressing up: mods v rockers, glam v punk, casuals v miner chic. Consider the difference between Tony Hadley in Spandau Ballet and the brilliant Mark Hollis in Talk Talk . I'll have to throw some old copies of The Face and i-D at PB.
I'd like to say those days were better, but they weren't: it was generally rubbish for the poor and less rubbish for the well off. But I think the dreams of the future were better.
First season was fantastic. Went a bit downhill in S2... Perhaps it's too lost in the mists of time now to sum up a decade, but absolutely everything about Clive Owen's character, the slimy Piers, the very lovely Susannah Harker, the cod-Caterham cars setup with Mr Bennett from Pride and Prejudice as the country gent... you can practically hear the Pet Shop Boys singing 'let's make lots of money' in the background.
More than Mad Men, it's the show that makes you sad people don't wear suits any more.
Leslie Phillips in a straight role too and very good he was as well. I watched the Network release a few years back and enjoyed it.
Also at the time there was Capital City with, IIRC, Douglas Hodge. A two series tribute and testament to yuppiedom.
Ah yes, he was Piers's boss, wasn't he?
One of the old 80s XJ's parked up outside my place the other week and I was astonished at how *tiny* it was compared to modern cars.
Looking at the map in Beefeater Darlington, I notice that we are pretty much exactly half way up the country here. And half way across England from East to West despite being near the East coast.
I feel this deserves a @Leon style travel posting while I wait for my 8oz Sirloin, cooked “just the way you like it”.
Interesting who this kind of reputational damage sticks to and who it doesnt. Both Tony and Cherie were well renowned 'grabbers'. Neither coming from proper money, solicited and gladly chomped through whatever they could, but it didnt hurt Tony in office. Starmer doesnt seem to have any kind of honeymoon protection at all.
During Blair's time the economic situation was generally favourable and they were able spray money around so people didn't care very much about the Blairs "grabbing"
Lord and Lady Starmer swanning around in the finest clothes someone else's money can buy while pensioners are going to freeze this winter is a rather harder "sell"
Pensioners have been mollycoddled for far too long.
We’re all in this together.
We had a PM in Boris Johnson that dressed like a scruff, it’s good for the UK for a PM to wear the best.
Can anyone looking really tell the difference between someone whose clothes cost £150 and someone whose clothes cost £1500? If they can, that says rather more about the observer than the observed.
I can, but then I have a keen eye for this.
See the second half of my comment above
When I was young, putting a lot of effort (and certainly a lot of time and/or expense) into your appearance was a bit frowned upon. You were expected, if possible, to achieve a certain level of cleanliness and/or personal hygiene, but anything more than that was a bit suspect - a bit 'look at me'. Actually, I say 'when I was young', I suspect most of men of my generation still think that way.
Maybe that is true, but it's hardly something to be proud of, is it?
I kind of think it is. We used to consider vanity a vice rather than a virtue. We used to consider showing off something to be dissuaded. We used to mock peacockery. A certain parsimoniousness whn it comes to one's appearance seems to me to be something to be applauded. By which I don't necessarily mean turning up in a t-shirt riven with holes and ketchup stains. But I rather disdain the mindset which thinks it acceptable to spend £1000 a year or more on one's own appearance. It seems frivolous. Do you remember the book of sports lists? I remember a list in it of sportsmen who cared rather too much for their own appearance - it included, I think, Peter Shilton, who would drive to a city 30 miles away for his particular needs for a haircut, and, possibly, Kevin Keegan, who spent rather more than the then-quite-daring £5 a month on a haircut. And someone who spent a lot on clothes, no doubt. But the fact that ten such people could be picked out showed how comparatively rare that sort of vanity was in those days. If you made a list now of sportsmen who cared too much for their own appearance you'd be here until doomsday.
Do you apply these hairshirt morals to women too, or just men?
I can tell that you don't agree, Anabobz, but I'm guessing you're about my age? Do you not think values on this have shifted somewhat in our lifetimes? It's not a massive issue. I mean, of all the vices that there are, vanity/frivolousness/attention seeking is rather low on the list. But still - it strikes me as an odd change, and odd that it's so uncommented on. It's a reasonable question whether it applies in my mind to both men and women - not least because the instinctive reaction to someone who, for example, spends £30 or more on a haircut is that doing so is a bit unmanly. But on reflection, yes, I'd say I do apply these 'hairshirt morals' to women as well, or at least something similar. There is no need to spend thousands on clothes, and drawing attention to doing so, just looks a bit like conspicuous consumption.
There's a quite low upper ceiling to how good anyone - male or female - can look, and expense and effort which goes beyond that is not only wasted but also looks a bit, well, crass.
As I say above - these aren't strongly held feelings. But I feel kind of sure this is how everyone used to feel, and I don't understand how and why the dial has shifted.
See also - tattoos.
How much did your current shirt cost? I'm guessing around a month's income for around 650m people.
Everything is relative. So what if people pay a lot for this or that? If they can afford it it doesn't make it extravagant or vain.
Yebbut, 40 years ago it would have done. I'm not so much defending my own position as expressing bafflement that values of this have shifted so much in my lifetime without real comment.
And in answer to your rhetorical question, about £25.
I'm not necessarily against spending money. I've previously lamented my decision not to by a painting, which is clearly a frivolous purchase. Though if I spend money on clothing, I have to get a LOT of wear out of the item to justify it to myself. (And I don't think I've ever spent over £70 on a non-footwear clothing item; and the most I have ever spent on footwear was on a standard pair of Dr. Marten boots, which exemplify the sort of sartorial utilitarianism I favour.)
I just instinctively disapprove slightly of excess effort with one's own appearance, and of men who dress to draw attention to themselves. This is just the values of the world I grew up in. It was so ingrained it was hardly worthy of comment. And now it isn't. Do you not find this interesting?
The world you grew up in. As opposed to the world hundreds of years ago where dandyism and foppishness were celebrated.
Indeed - interesting. If only we had some 250 year olds on the board, they could tell us when this changed. My guess: WW1. It may actually be that the late 70s/80s/early 90s were the nadir for male sartorial exuberance. I remember my friend's father - who was of a slightly older generation than my own - recollecting his youth of the early 60s, when the key to attracting girls was dressing to the nines and young men would happily wear expensively tailored suits for a night out. Whereas when I was young: yes, secretly, you wanted to look good to advance your chances of meeting girls. But you very much didn't want to look like you were trying to look good.
Every era has had its code whether it was mods and rockers or burberry raincoats or stone island or adidas spezials. And most people have wanted to appear as more affluent than they are (eg the burberry and gucci keyring crazes). Ofc it is generally the gentry that cut about in moth-eaten sweaters and ancient clothes held together by baler twine.
Interesting who this kind of reputational damage sticks to and who it doesnt. Both Tony and Cherie were well renowned 'grabbers'. Neither coming from proper money, solicited and gladly chomped through whatever they could, but it didnt hurt Tony in office. Starmer doesnt seem to have any kind of honeymoon protection at all.
During Blair's time the economic situation was generally favourable and they were able spray money around so people didn't care very much about the Blairs "grabbing"
Lord and Lady Starmer swanning around in the finest clothes someone else's money can buy while pensioners are going to freeze this winter is a rather harder "sell"
Pensioners have been mollycoddled for far too long.
We’re all in this together.
We had a PM in Boris Johnson that dressed like a scruff, it’s good for the UK for a PM to wear the best.
Can anyone looking really tell the difference between someone whose clothes cost £150 and someone whose clothes cost £1500? If they can, that says rather more about the observer than the observed.
I can, but then I have a keen eye for this.
See the second half of my comment above
When I was young, putting a lot of effort (and certainly a lot of time and/or expense) into your appearance was a bit frowned upon. You were expected, if possible, to achieve a certain level of cleanliness and/or personal hygiene, but anything more than that was a bit suspect - a bit 'look at me'. Actually, I say 'when I was young', I suspect most of men of my generation still think that way.
Maybe that is true, but it's hardly something to be proud of, is it?
I kind of think it is. We used to consider vanity a vice rather than a virtue. We used to consider showing off something to be dissuaded. We used to mock peacockery. A certain parsimoniousness whn it comes to one's appearance seems to me to be something to be applauded. By which I don't necessarily mean turning up in a t-shirt riven with holes and ketchup stains. But I rather disdain the mindset which thinks it acceptable to spend £1000 a year or more on one's own appearance. It seems frivolous. Do you remember the book of sports lists? I remember a list in it of sportsmen who cared rather too much for their own appearance - it included, I think, Peter Shilton, who would drive to a city 30 miles away for his particular needs for a haircut, and, possibly, Kevin Keegan, who spent rather more than the then-quite-daring £5 a month on a haircut. And someone who spent a lot on clothes, no doubt. But the fact that ten such people could be picked out showed how comparatively rare that sort of vanity was in those days. If you made a list now of sportsmen who cared too much for their own appearance you'd be here until doomsday.
Do you apply these hairshirt morals to women too, or just men?
I can tell that you don't agree, Anabobz, but I'm guessing you're about my age? Do you not think values on this have shifted somewhat in our lifetimes? It's not a massive issue. I mean, of all the vices that there are, vanity/frivolousness/attention seeking is rather low on the list. But still - it strikes me as an odd change, and odd that it's so uncommented on. It's a reasonable question whether it applies in my mind to both men and women - not least because the instinctive reaction to someone who, for example, spends £30 or more on a haircut is that doing so is a bit unmanly. But on reflection, yes, I'd say I do apply these 'hairshirt morals' to women as well, or at least something similar. There is no need to spend thousands on clothes, and drawing attention to doing so, just looks a bit like conspicuous consumption.
There's a quite low upper ceiling to how good anyone - male or female - can look, and expense and effort which goes beyond that is not only wasted but also looks a bit, well, crass.
As I say above - these aren't strongly held feelings. But I feel kind of sure this is how everyone used to feel, and I don't understand how and why the dial has shifted.
See also - tattoos.
How much did your current shirt cost? I'm guessing around a month's income for around 650m people.
Everything is relative. So what if people pay a lot for this or that? If they can afford it it doesn't make it extravagant or vain.
Yebbut, 40 years ago it would have done. I'm not so much defending my own position as expressing bafflement that values of this have shifted so much in my lifetime without real comment.
And in answer to your rhetorical question, about £25.
I'm not necessarily against spending money. I've previously lamented my decision not to by a painting, which is clearly a frivolous purchase. Though if I spend money on clothing, I have to get a LOT of wear out of the item to justify it to myself. (And I don't think I've ever spent over £70 on a non-footwear clothing item; and the most I have ever spent on footwear was on a standard pair of Dr. Marten boots, which exemplify the sort of sartorial utilitarianism I favour.)
I just instinctively disapprove slightly of excess effort with one's own appearance, and of men who dress to draw attention to themselves. This is just the values of the world I grew up in. It was so ingrained it was hardly worthy of comment. And now it isn't. Do you not find this interesting?
The world you grew up in. As opposed to the world hundreds of years ago where dandyism and foppishness were celebrated.
Indeed - interesting. If only we had some 250 year olds on the board, they could tell us when this changed. My guess: WW1. It may actually be that the late 70s/80s/early 90s were the nadir for male sartorial exuberance. I remember my friend's father - who was of a slightly older generation than my own - recollecting his youth of the early 60s, when the key to attracting girls was dressing to the nines and young men would happily wear expensively tailored suits for a night out. Whereas when I was young: yes, secretly, you wanted to look good to advance your chances of meeting girls. But you very much didn't want to look like you were trying to look good.
Every era has had its code whether it was mods and rockers or burberry raincoats or stone island or adidas spezials. And most people have wanted to appear as more affluent than they are (eg the burberry and gucci keyring crazes). Ofc it is generally the gentry that cut about in moth-eaten sweaters and ancient clothes held together by baler twine.
But no, that's the point. The male youth of the 70s/80s/90s did not dress to look more affluent than they were. Baggy shirts and doc martens. Or heavy metal chic. Or punk. Or Mark E Smith out of the Fall. Or shell suits. The new romantics of the early 80s were a sort of exception to this, but even they didn't look affluent - they looked like they'd indiscriminately raided a charity shop to try to stage a pantomime.
OTOH ... I remember visiting an old university friend c 2000 and meeting her daughter who was a student. Looked like one of those Australian parakeets - mixed primary colours and simple combinations thereof eg green. Dressed from charity shops, sure, but she took care over the overall effect and the appearance. Indiscriminate she wasn't.
Cookie clearly didn't know the right sort of New Romantics.
No, new romantics had come and gone by the time I got there! In my early teens I was largely surrounded by people who dressed in the heavy metal style - clearly there is some sort of uniform/look there, but smartness and expense and indeed cleanliness isn't really part of it. Then later on I was surrounded by Madchester baggy - again, driven by cheapness - and later by generic indie: plaid shirts and jeans or perhaps combats and doc martens. The 'other' tribe were the townies, who dressed largely in track suits. Expense and style were not apparent there either.
But in all honesty expensive clothing would be wasted on me. I look vaguely scruffy in anything I wear. I am fat and hairy. Looking at pictures of a younger me, very occasionally I looked brilliant in a way in which I never really appreciated and makes me sigh wistfully, but more often I just look in need of a haircut. I was always in need of a haircut, any time outside of six days since I had last had a haircut. I wish I'd discovered self-maintenance of hair earlier - I may have sacrificed the occasional youthfully brilliant hair day fresh out of the barbers, but I'd have had reliably neat hair, and that would have made the difference to the overall look.
I've never been in the least bit tempted by expensive clothes, with one exception: last year, as we had parked there for a walk, we popped in to the wonderful House of Bruar in northern Perthshire: everything the Highland laird needs - and I was instantly struck by a lament that I would never have need or occasion to wear a full high quality tweed suit. It passed, of course - it would also have needed me to be 20 years younger and with an entirely different lifestyle - i.e. heir to some Highland estate. How there is a big enough market for this sort of stuff for this business to stay operational I have no idea.
House of Bruar is for folk who want to look like an heir to a Highland estate without even a tiny chance of being one, that’s how they stay very comfortably operational. Well done for resisting the temptation.
I was agog that such a place existed. Still, it was very, very pleasant. The toilets were splendid, I wanted every food item, and they didn't seem to mind us parking for a walk up to see the waterfalls. In the end my wife and daughters each bought a Christmas decoration and I bought a tin of barley sugars.
They rather grandly insist on calling their lavatories 'cloakrooms' and do not feature the obligatory symbols which leads to no end of confusion and annoyance. I love it - TUD shouldn't be so po-faced.
Some decent footwear which I can buy more cheaply elsewhere, otherwise chichi-ed up its hoo ha. I tend to feel a bit raped after a visit, particularly after paying £x for a scone and a cup of tea. Tbf that’s not uncommon in that stretch of the road to the Highlands.
I quite like the sparrows flying about the conservatory style restaurant area.
Good story from about 20 years ago
The owner of HoB got so pissed off with staff spilling coffee on his lovely carpets, walking about with a coffee was made an instant sacking offence. Day after the rule is introduced he finds someone breaking it. So he says You're fired. Then he says, you look the sort of bastard that hires lawyers for unfair dismissal claims. Here's 500 in cash and you won't be seeing a penny more.
Then he says What do you do here anyway so I can hire a replacement. And the guy pockets the money and says I don't, I'm from BT and just here for the day to sort a phone problem.
When I was a student, I helped run the union.
One day, a security guard defended a student from an attack by another student. The university was (for interesting reasons) horrified. They demanded we fire the security guard. And sent a drone (walking dead lawyer type) to see it done.
So I fired someone in front of him. After the drone had left, the person I’d “fired” (student who worked in the bar, who was leaving the uni soon) shared the bonus I’d handed him with the actual security guard.
I got the idea from a PG Wodehouse story, where he claimed that a posh New York department store did similar for serious customer complaints.
Interesting who this kind of reputational damage sticks to and who it doesnt. Both Tony and Cherie were well renowned 'grabbers'. Neither coming from proper money, solicited and gladly chomped through whatever they could, but it didnt hurt Tony in office. Starmer doesnt seem to have any kind of honeymoon protection at all.
During Blair's time the economic situation was generally favourable and they were able spray money around so people didn't care very much about the Blairs "grabbing"
Lord and Lady Starmer swanning around in the finest clothes someone else's money can buy while pensioners are going to freeze this winter is a rather harder "sell"
Pensioners have been mollycoddled for far too long.
We’re all in this together.
We had a PM in Boris Johnson that dressed like a scruff, it’s good for the UK for a PM to wear the best.
Can anyone looking really tell the difference between someone whose clothes cost £150 and someone whose clothes cost £1500? If they can, that says rather more about the observer than the observed.
I can, but then I have a keen eye for this.
See the second half of my comment above
When I was young, putting a lot of effort (and certainly a lot of time and/or expense) into your appearance was a bit frowned upon. You were expected, if possible, to achieve a certain level of cleanliness and/or personal hygiene, but anything more than that was a bit suspect - a bit 'look at me'. Actually, I say 'when I was young', I suspect most of men of my generation still think that way.
Maybe that is true, but it's hardly something to be proud of, is it?
I kind of think it is. We used to consider vanity a vice rather than a virtue. We used to consider showing off something to be dissuaded. We used to mock peacockery. A certain parsimoniousness whn it comes to one's appearance seems to me to be something to be applauded. By which I don't necessarily mean turning up in a t-shirt riven with holes and ketchup stains. But I rather disdain the mindset which thinks it acceptable to spend £1000 a year or more on one's own appearance. It seems frivolous. Do you remember the book of sports lists? I remember a list in it of sportsmen who cared rather too much for their own appearance - it included, I think, Peter Shilton, who would drive to a city 30 miles away for his particular needs for a haircut, and, possibly, Kevin Keegan, who spent rather more than the then-quite-daring £5 a month on a haircut. And someone who spent a lot on clothes, no doubt. But the fact that ten such people could be picked out showed how comparatively rare that sort of vanity was in those days. If you made a list now of sportsmen who cared too much for their own appearance you'd be here until doomsday.
Do you apply these hairshirt morals to women too, or just men?
I can tell that you don't agree, Anabobz, but I'm guessing you're about my age? Do you not think values on this have shifted somewhat in our lifetimes? It's not a massive issue. I mean, of all the vices that there are, vanity/frivolousness/attention seeking is rather low on the list. But still - it strikes me as an odd change, and odd that it's so uncommented on. It's a reasonable question whether it applies in my mind to both men and women - not least because the instinctive reaction to someone who, for example, spends £30 or more on a haircut is that doing so is a bit unmanly. But on reflection, yes, I'd say I do apply these 'hairshirt morals' to women as well, or at least something similar. There is no need to spend thousands on clothes, and drawing attention to doing so, just looks a bit like conspicuous consumption.
There's a quite low upper ceiling to how good anyone - male or female - can look, and expense and effort which goes beyond that is not only wasted but also looks a bit, well, crass.
As I say above - these aren't strongly held feelings. But I feel kind of sure this is how everyone used to feel, and I don't understand how and why the dial has shifted.
See also - tattoos.
How much did your current shirt cost? I'm guessing around a month's income for around 650m people.
Everything is relative. So what if people pay a lot for this or that? If they can afford it it doesn't make it extravagant or vain.
Yebbut, 40 years ago it would have done. I'm not so much defending my own position as expressing bafflement that values of this have shifted so much in my lifetime without real comment.
And in answer to your rhetorical question, about £25.
I'm not necessarily against spending money. I've previously lamented my decision not to by a painting, which is clearly a frivolous purchase. Though if I spend money on clothing, I have to get a LOT of wear out of the item to justify it to myself. (And I don't think I've ever spent over £70 on a non-footwear clothing item; and the most I have ever spent on footwear was on a standard pair of Dr. Marten boots, which exemplify the sort of sartorial utilitarianism I favour.)
I just instinctively disapprove slightly of excess effort with one's own appearance, and of men who dress to draw attention to themselves. This is just the values of the world I grew up in. It was so ingrained it was hardly worthy of comment. And now it isn't. Do you not find this interesting?
The world you grew up in. As opposed to the world hundreds of years ago where dandyism and foppishness were celebrated.
Indeed - interesting. If only we had some 250 year olds on the board, they could tell us when this changed. My guess: WW1. It may actually be that the late 70s/80s/early 90s were the nadir for male sartorial exuberance. I remember my friend's father - who was of a slightly older generation than my own - recollecting his youth of the early 60s, when the key to attracting girls was dressing to the nines and young men would happily wear expensively tailored suits for a night out. Whereas when I was young: yes, secretly, you wanted to look good to advance your chances of meeting girls. But you very much didn't want to look like you were trying to look good.
Every era has had its code whether it was mods and rockers or burberry raincoats or stone island or adidas spezials. And most people have wanted to appear as more affluent than they are (eg the burberry and gucci keyring crazes). Ofc it is generally the gentry that cut about in moth-eaten sweaters and ancient clothes held together by baler twine.
Interesting who this kind of reputational damage sticks to and who it doesnt. Both Tony and Cherie were well renowned 'grabbers'. Neither coming from proper money, solicited and gladly chomped through whatever they could, but it didnt hurt Tony in office. Starmer doesnt seem to have any kind of honeymoon protection at all.
During Blair's time the economic situation was generally favourable and they were able spray money around so people didn't care very much about the Blairs "grabbing"
Lord and Lady Starmer swanning around in the finest clothes someone else's money can buy while pensioners are going to freeze this winter is a rather harder "sell"
Pensioners have been mollycoddled for far too long.
We’re all in this together.
We had a PM in Boris Johnson that dressed like a scruff, it’s good for the UK for a PM to wear the best.
Can anyone looking really tell the difference between someone whose clothes cost £150 and someone whose clothes cost £1500? If they can, that says rather more about the observer than the observed.
I can, but then I have a keen eye for this.
See the second half of my comment above
When I was young, putting a lot of effort (and certainly a lot of time and/or expense) into your appearance was a bit frowned upon. You were expected, if possible, to achieve a certain level of cleanliness and/or personal hygiene, but anything more than that was a bit suspect - a bit 'look at me'. Actually, I say 'when I was young', I suspect most of men of my generation still think that way.
Maybe that is true, but it's hardly something to be proud of, is it?
I kind of think it is. We used to consider vanity a vice rather than a virtue. We used to consider showing off something to be dissuaded. We used to mock peacockery. A certain parsimoniousness whn it comes to one's appearance seems to me to be something to be applauded. By which I don't necessarily mean turning up in a t-shirt riven with holes and ketchup stains. But I rather disdain the mindset which thinks it acceptable to spend £1000 a year or more on one's own appearance. It seems frivolous. Do you remember the book of sports lists? I remember a list in it of sportsmen who cared rather too much for their own appearance - it included, I think, Peter Shilton, who would drive to a city 30 miles away for his particular needs for a haircut, and, possibly, Kevin Keegan, who spent rather more than the then-quite-daring £5 a month on a haircut. And someone who spent a lot on clothes, no doubt. But the fact that ten such people could be picked out showed how comparatively rare that sort of vanity was in those days. If you made a list now of sportsmen who cared too much for their own appearance you'd be here until doomsday.
Do you apply these hairshirt morals to women too, or just men?
I can tell that you don't agree, Anabobz, but I'm guessing you're about my age? Do you not think values on this have shifted somewhat in our lifetimes? It's not a massive issue. I mean, of all the vices that there are, vanity/frivolousness/attention seeking is rather low on the list. But still - it strikes me as an odd change, and odd that it's so uncommented on. It's a reasonable question whether it applies in my mind to both men and women - not least because the instinctive reaction to someone who, for example, spends £30 or more on a haircut is that doing so is a bit unmanly. But on reflection, yes, I'd say I do apply these 'hairshirt morals' to women as well, or at least something similar. There is no need to spend thousands on clothes, and drawing attention to doing so, just looks a bit like conspicuous consumption.
There's a quite low upper ceiling to how good anyone - male or female - can look, and expense and effort which goes beyond that is not only wasted but also looks a bit, well, crass.
As I say above - these aren't strongly held feelings. But I feel kind of sure this is how everyone used to feel, and I don't understand how and why the dial has shifted.
See also - tattoos.
How much did your current shirt cost? I'm guessing around a month's income for around 650m people.
Everything is relative. So what if people pay a lot for this or that? If they can afford it it doesn't make it extravagant or vain.
Yebbut, 40 years ago it would have done. I'm not so much defending my own position as expressing bafflement that values of this have shifted so much in my lifetime without real comment.
And in answer to your rhetorical question, about £25.
I'm not necessarily against spending money. I've previously lamented my decision not to by a painting, which is clearly a frivolous purchase. Though if I spend money on clothing, I have to get a LOT of wear out of the item to justify it to myself. (And I don't think I've ever spent over £70 on a non-footwear clothing item; and the most I have ever spent on footwear was on a standard pair of Dr. Marten boots, which exemplify the sort of sartorial utilitarianism I favour.)
I just instinctively disapprove slightly of excess effort with one's own appearance, and of men who dress to draw attention to themselves. This is just the values of the world I grew up in. It was so ingrained it was hardly worthy of comment. And now it isn't. Do you not find this interesting?
The world you grew up in. As opposed to the world hundreds of years ago where dandyism and foppishness were celebrated.
Indeed - interesting. If only we had some 250 year olds on the board, they could tell us when this changed. My guess: WW1. It may actually be that the late 70s/80s/early 90s were the nadir for male sartorial exuberance. I remember my friend's father - who was of a slightly older generation than my own - recollecting his youth of the early 60s, when the key to attracting girls was dressing to the nines and young men would happily wear expensively tailored suits for a night out. Whereas when I was young: yes, secretly, you wanted to look good to advance your chances of meeting girls. But you very much didn't want to look like you were trying to look good.
Every era has had its code whether it was mods and rockers or burberry raincoats or stone island or adidas spezials. And most people have wanted to appear as more affluent than they are (eg the burberry and gucci keyring crazes). Ofc it is generally the gentry that cut about in moth-eaten sweaters and ancient clothes held together by baler twine.
But no, that's the point. The male youth of the 70s/80s/90s did not dress to look more affluent than they were. Baggy shirts and doc martens. Or heavy metal chic. Or punk. Or Mark E Smith out of the Fall. Or shell suits. The new romantics of the early 80s were a sort of exception to this, but even they didn't look affluent - they looked like they'd indiscriminately raided a charity shop to try to stage a pantomime.
OTOH ... I remember visiting an old university friend c 2000 and meeting her daughter who was a student. Looked like one of those Australian parakeets - mixed primary colours and simple combinations thereof eg green. Dressed from charity shops, sure, but she took care over the overall effect and the appearance. Indiscriminate she wasn't.
Cookie clearly didn't know the right sort of New Romantics.
No, new romantics had come and gone by the time I got there! In my early teens I was largely surrounded by people who dressed in the heavy metal style - clearly there is some sort of uniform/look there, but smartness and expense and indeed cleanliness isn't really part of it. Then later on I was surrounded by Madchester baggy - again, driven by cheapness - and later by generic indie: plaid shirts and jeans or perhaps combats and doc martens. The 'other' tribe were the townies, who dressed largely in track suits. Expense and style were not apparent there either.
But in all honesty expensive clothing would be wasted on me. I look vaguely scruffy in anything I wear. I am fat and hairy. Looking at pictures of a younger me, very occasionally I looked brilliant in a way in which I never really appreciated and makes me sigh wistfully, but more often I just look in need of a haircut. I was always in need of a haircut, any time outside of six days since I had last had a haircut. I wish I'd discovered self-maintenance of hair earlier - I may have sacrificed the occasional youthfully brilliant hair day fresh out of the barbers, but I'd have had reliably neat hair, and that would have made the difference to the overall look.
I've never been in the least bit tempted by expensive clothes, with one exception: last year, as we had parked there for a walk, we popped in to the wonderful House of Bruar in northern Perthshire: everything the Highland laird needs - and I was instantly struck by a lament that I would never have need or occasion to wear a full high quality tweed suit. It passed, of course - it would also have needed me to be 20 years younger and with an entirely different lifestyle - i.e. heir to some Highland estate. How there is a big enough market for this sort of stuff for this business to stay operational I have no idea.
House of Bruar is for folk who want to look like an heir to a Highland estate without even a tiny chance of being one, that’s how they stay very comfortably operational. Well done for resisting the temptation.
I was agog that such a place existed. Still, it was very, very pleasant. The toilets were splendid, I wanted every food item, and they didn't seem to mind us parking for a walk up to see the waterfalls. In the end my wife and daughters each bought a Christmas decoration and I bought a tin of barley sugars.
They rather grandly insist on calling their lavatories 'cloakrooms' and do not feature the obligatory symbols which leads to no end of confusion and annoyance. I love it - TUD shouldn't be so po-faced.
Some decent footwear which I can buy more cheaply elsewhere, otherwise chichi-ed up its hoo ha. I tend to feel a bit raped after a visit, particularly after paying £x for a scone and a cup of tea. Tbf that’s not uncommon in that stretch of the road to the Highlands.
I quite like the sparrows flying about the conservatory style restaurant area.
Good story from about 20 years ago
The owner of HoB got so pissed off with staff spilling coffee on his lovely carpets, walking about with a coffee was made an instant sacking offence. Day after the rule is introduced he finds someone breaking it. So he says You're fired. Then he says, you look the sort of bastard that hires lawyers for unfair dismissal claims. Here's 500 in cash and you won't be seeing a penny more.
Then he says What do you do here anyway so I can hire a replacement. And the guy pockets the money and says I don't, I'm from BT and just here for the day to sort a phone problem.
Also part of an episode from 1980s comedy Slinger's Day:
End of Germany as an industrial power within a decade. Becoming an EU funds beneficiary within two. National dissolution within four.
He is spot on about demographics.
That said, his timings are likely wrong. Japan's demographics are about 20 years ahead of Germany's, and they are still a major industrial power.
Or the ageing demographics means economic collapse trope is fallacious.
The they provided their biggest market with the manufacturing technology with which to outcompete them one is pretty well spot on, though.
Ironically, one of Elon Musk’s rules of business is that “your product will be replaced by a better one. Either you will own it, or someone else will”.
Tesla is only profitable with continuing Federal subsidies. BYD is now very profitable.
And Tesla is the only western manufacturer anywhere near profitable in EV manufacturing.
Indeed - interesting. If only we had some 250 year olds on the board, they could tell us when this changed. My guess: WW1. It may actually be that the late 70s/80s/early 90s were the nadir for male sartorial exuberance. I remember my friend's father - who was of a slightly older generation than my own - recollecting his youth of the early 60s, when the key to attracting girls was dressing to the nines and young men would happily wear expensively tailored suits for a night out. Whereas when I was young: yes, secretly, you wanted to look good to advance your chances of meeting girls. But you very much didn't want to look like you were trying to look good.
Every era has had its code whether it was mods and rockers or burberry raincoats or stone island or adidas spezials. And most people have wanted to appear as more affluent than they are (eg the burberry and gucci keyring crazes). Ofc it is generally the gentry that cut about in moth-eaten sweaters and ancient clothes held together by baler twine.
But no, that's the point. The male youth of the 70s/80s/90s did not dress to look more affluent than they were. Baggy shirts and doc martens. Or heavy metal chic. Or punk. Or Mark E Smith out of the Fall. Or shell suits. The new romantics of the early 80s were a sort of exception to this, but even they didn't look affluent - they looked like they'd indiscriminately raided a charity shop to try to stage a pantomime.
The football hooligan look clearly passed you by.
Plus the suits-and-slicked-back hair of the, what, 1981/82? Just look at the cover of Penthouse and Pavement or Tony Hadley in Spandau Ballet after the kilt period, say around Gold or True.
(how the hell did I become this burgh's expert on male fashion? Ho-hum)
For decades, before we started copying the Americans slavishly, male gangs and fashion alternated between dressing down and dressing up: mods v rockers, glam v punk, casuals v miner chic. Consider the difference between Tony Hadley in Spandau Ballet and the brilliant Mark Hollis in Talk Talk . I'll have to throw some old copies of The Face and i-D at PB.
I'd like to say those days were better, but they weren't: it was generally rubbish for the poor and less rubbish for the well off. But I think the dreams of the future were better.
First season was fantastic. Went a bit downhill in S2... Perhaps it's too lost in the mists of time now to sum up a decade, but absolutely everything about Clive Owen's character, the slimy Piers, the very lovely Susannah Harker, the cod-Caterham cars setup with Mr Bennett from Pride and Prejudice as the country gent... you can practically hear the Pet Shop Boys singing 'let's make lots of money' in the background.
More than Mad Men, it's the show that makes you sad people don't wear suits any more.
Leslie Phillips in a straight role too and very good he was as well. I watched the Network release a few years back and enjoyed it.
Also at the time there was Capital City with, IIRC, Douglas Hodge. A two series tribute and testament to yuppiedom.
I'd forgotten Joanna Kanska from a Very Peculiar Practice was in it..
I used to know somebody who really wanted to be Max Lubin (from Capital City). Being a six-foot fat Brummie with a good hairline he couldn't pull it off, although he did have the ponytail. A manic-depressive drunk, he met a nice girl who looked like Lena Olin and migrated to Australia. True fact.
Interesting who this kind of reputational damage sticks to and who it doesnt. Both Tony and Cherie were well renowned 'grabbers'. Neither coming from proper money, solicited and gladly chomped through whatever they could, but it didnt hurt Tony in office. Starmer doesnt seem to have any kind of honeymoon protection at all.
During Blair's time the economic situation was generally favourable and they were able spray money around so people didn't care very much about the Blairs "grabbing"
Lord and Lady Starmer swanning around in the finest clothes someone else's money can buy while pensioners are going to freeze this winter is a rather harder "sell"
Pensioners have been mollycoddled for far too long.
We’re all in this together.
We had a PM in Boris Johnson that dressed like a scruff, it’s good for the UK for a PM to wear the best.
Can anyone looking really tell the difference between someone whose clothes cost £150 and someone whose clothes cost £1500? If they can, that says rather more about the observer than the observed.
I can, but then I have a keen eye for this.
See the second half of my comment above
When I was young, putting a lot of effort (and certainly a lot of time and/or expense) into your appearance was a bit frowned upon. You were expected, if possible, to achieve a certain level of cleanliness and/or personal hygiene, but anything more than that was a bit suspect - a bit 'look at me'. Actually, I say 'when I was young', I suspect most of men of my generation still think that way.
Maybe that is true, but it's hardly something to be proud of, is it?
I kind of think it is. We used to consider vanity a vice rather than a virtue. We used to consider showing off something to be dissuaded. We used to mock peacockery. A certain parsimoniousness whn it comes to one's appearance seems to me to be something to be applauded. By which I don't necessarily mean turning up in a t-shirt riven with holes and ketchup stains. But I rather disdain the mindset which thinks it acceptable to spend £1000 a year or more on one's own appearance. It seems frivolous. Do you remember the book of sports lists? I remember a list in it of sportsmen who cared rather too much for their own appearance - it included, I think, Peter Shilton, who would drive to a city 30 miles away for his particular needs for a haircut, and, possibly, Kevin Keegan, who spent rather more than the then-quite-daring £5 a month on a haircut. And someone who spent a lot on clothes, no doubt. But the fact that ten such people could be picked out showed how comparatively rare that sort of vanity was in those days. If you made a list now of sportsmen who cared too much for their own appearance you'd be here until doomsday.
Do you apply these hairshirt morals to women too, or just men?
I can tell that you don't agree, Anabobz, but I'm guessing you're about my age? Do you not think values on this have shifted somewhat in our lifetimes? It's not a massive issue. I mean, of all the vices that there are, vanity/frivolousness/attention seeking is rather low on the list. But still - it strikes me as an odd change, and odd that it's so uncommented on. It's a reasonable question whether it applies in my mind to both men and women - not least because the instinctive reaction to someone who, for example, spends £30 or more on a haircut is that doing so is a bit unmanly. But on reflection, yes, I'd say I do apply these 'hairshirt morals' to women as well, or at least something similar. There is no need to spend thousands on clothes, and drawing attention to doing so, just looks a bit like conspicuous consumption.
There's a quite low upper ceiling to how good anyone - male or female - can look, and expense and effort which goes beyond that is not only wasted but also looks a bit, well, crass.
As I say above - these aren't strongly held feelings. But I feel kind of sure this is how everyone used to feel, and I don't understand how and why the dial has shifted.
See also - tattoos.
How much did your current shirt cost? I'm guessing around a month's income for around 650m people.
Everything is relative. So what if people pay a lot for this or that? If they can afford it it doesn't make it extravagant or vain.
Yebbut, 40 years ago it would have done. I'm not so much defending my own position as expressing bafflement that values of this have shifted so much in my lifetime without real comment.
And in answer to your rhetorical question, about £25.
I'm not necessarily against spending money. I've previously lamented my decision not to by a painting, which is clearly a frivolous purchase. Though if I spend money on clothing, I have to get a LOT of wear out of the item to justify it to myself. (And I don't think I've ever spent over £70 on a non-footwear clothing item; and the most I have ever spent on footwear was on a standard pair of Dr. Marten boots, which exemplify the sort of sartorial utilitarianism I favour.)
I just instinctively disapprove slightly of excess effort with one's own appearance, and of men who dress to draw attention to themselves. This is just the values of the world I grew up in. It was so ingrained it was hardly worthy of comment. And now it isn't. Do you not find this interesting?
The world you grew up in. As opposed to the world hundreds of years ago where dandyism and foppishness were celebrated.
Indeed - interesting. If only we had some 250 year olds on the board, they could tell us when this changed. My guess: WW1. It may actually be that the late 70s/80s/early 90s were the nadir for male sartorial exuberance. I remember my friend's father - who was of a slightly older generation than my own - recollecting his youth of the early 60s, when the key to attracting girls was dressing to the nines and young men would happily wear expensively tailored suits for a night out. Whereas when I was young: yes, secretly, you wanted to look good to advance your chances of meeting girls. But you very much didn't want to look like you were trying to look good.
Every era has had its code whether it was mods and rockers or burberry raincoats or stone island or adidas spezials. And most people have wanted to appear as more affluent than they are (eg the burberry and gucci keyring crazes). Ofc it is generally the gentry that cut about in moth-eaten sweaters and ancient clothes held together by baler twine.
Interesting who this kind of reputational damage sticks to and who it doesnt. Both Tony and Cherie were well renowned 'grabbers'. Neither coming from proper money, solicited and gladly chomped through whatever they could, but it didnt hurt Tony in office. Starmer doesnt seem to have any kind of honeymoon protection at all.
During Blair's time the economic situation was generally favourable and they were able spray money around so people didn't care very much about the Blairs "grabbing"
Lord and Lady Starmer swanning around in the finest clothes someone else's money can buy while pensioners are going to freeze this winter is a rather harder "sell"
Pensioners have been mollycoddled for far too long.
We’re all in this together.
We had a PM in Boris Johnson that dressed like a scruff, it’s good for the UK for a PM to wear the best.
Can anyone looking really tell the difference between someone whose clothes cost £150 and someone whose clothes cost £1500? If they can, that says rather more about the observer than the observed.
I can, but then I have a keen eye for this.
See the second half of my comment above
When I was young, putting a lot of effort (and certainly a lot of time and/or expense) into your appearance was a bit frowned upon. You were expected, if possible, to achieve a certain level of cleanliness and/or personal hygiene, but anything more than that was a bit suspect - a bit 'look at me'. Actually, I say 'when I was young', I suspect most of men of my generation still think that way.
Maybe that is true, but it's hardly something to be proud of, is it?
I kind of think it is. We used to consider vanity a vice rather than a virtue. We used to consider showing off something to be dissuaded. We used to mock peacockery. A certain parsimoniousness whn it comes to one's appearance seems to me to be something to be applauded. By which I don't necessarily mean turning up in a t-shirt riven with holes and ketchup stains. But I rather disdain the mindset which thinks it acceptable to spend £1000 a year or more on one's own appearance. It seems frivolous. Do you remember the book of sports lists? I remember a list in it of sportsmen who cared rather too much for their own appearance - it included, I think, Peter Shilton, who would drive to a city 30 miles away for his particular needs for a haircut, and, possibly, Kevin Keegan, who spent rather more than the then-quite-daring £5 a month on a haircut. And someone who spent a lot on clothes, no doubt. But the fact that ten such people could be picked out showed how comparatively rare that sort of vanity was in those days. If you made a list now of sportsmen who cared too much for their own appearance you'd be here until doomsday.
Do you apply these hairshirt morals to women too, or just men?
I can tell that you don't agree, Anabobz, but I'm guessing you're about my age? Do you not think values on this have shifted somewhat in our lifetimes? It's not a massive issue. I mean, of all the vices that there are, vanity/frivolousness/attention seeking is rather low on the list. But still - it strikes me as an odd change, and odd that it's so uncommented on. It's a reasonable question whether it applies in my mind to both men and women - not least because the instinctive reaction to someone who, for example, spends £30 or more on a haircut is that doing so is a bit unmanly. But on reflection, yes, I'd say I do apply these 'hairshirt morals' to women as well, or at least something similar. There is no need to spend thousands on clothes, and drawing attention to doing so, just looks a bit like conspicuous consumption.
There's a quite low upper ceiling to how good anyone - male or female - can look, and expense and effort which goes beyond that is not only wasted but also looks a bit, well, crass.
As I say above - these aren't strongly held feelings. But I feel kind of sure this is how everyone used to feel, and I don't understand how and why the dial has shifted.
See also - tattoos.
How much did your current shirt cost? I'm guessing around a month's income for around 650m people.
Everything is relative. So what if people pay a lot for this or that? If they can afford it it doesn't make it extravagant or vain.
Yebbut, 40 years ago it would have done. I'm not so much defending my own position as expressing bafflement that values of this have shifted so much in my lifetime without real comment.
And in answer to your rhetorical question, about £25.
I'm not necessarily against spending money. I've previously lamented my decision not to by a painting, which is clearly a frivolous purchase. Though if I spend money on clothing, I have to get a LOT of wear out of the item to justify it to myself. (And I don't think I've ever spent over £70 on a non-footwear clothing item; and the most I have ever spent on footwear was on a standard pair of Dr. Marten boots, which exemplify the sort of sartorial utilitarianism I favour.)
I just instinctively disapprove slightly of excess effort with one's own appearance, and of men who dress to draw attention to themselves. This is just the values of the world I grew up in. It was so ingrained it was hardly worthy of comment. And now it isn't. Do you not find this interesting?
The world you grew up in. As opposed to the world hundreds of years ago where dandyism and foppishness were celebrated.
Indeed - interesting. If only we had some 250 year olds on the board, they could tell us when this changed. My guess: WW1. It may actually be that the late 70s/80s/early 90s were the nadir for male sartorial exuberance. I remember my friend's father - who was of a slightly older generation than my own - recollecting his youth of the early 60s, when the key to attracting girls was dressing to the nines and young men would happily wear expensively tailored suits for a night out. Whereas when I was young: yes, secretly, you wanted to look good to advance your chances of meeting girls. But you very much didn't want to look like you were trying to look good.
Every era has had its code whether it was mods and rockers or burberry raincoats or stone island or adidas spezials. And most people have wanted to appear as more affluent than they are (eg the burberry and gucci keyring crazes). Ofc it is generally the gentry that cut about in moth-eaten sweaters and ancient clothes held together by baler twine.
But no, that's the point. The male youth of the 70s/80s/90s did not dress to look more affluent than they were. Baggy shirts and doc martens. Or heavy metal chic. Or punk. Or Mark E Smith out of the Fall. Or shell suits. The new romantics of the early 80s were a sort of exception to this, but even they didn't look affluent - they looked like they'd indiscriminately raided a charity shop to try to stage a pantomime.
OTOH ... I remember visiting an old university friend c 2000 and meeting her daughter who was a student. Looked like one of those Australian parakeets - mixed primary colours and simple combinations thereof eg green. Dressed from charity shops, sure, but she took care over the overall effect and the appearance. Indiscriminate she wasn't.
Cookie clearly didn't know the right sort of New Romantics.
No, new romantics had come and gone by the time I got there! In my early teens I was largely surrounded by people who dressed in the heavy metal style - clearly there is some sort of uniform/look there, but smartness and expense and indeed cleanliness isn't really part of it. Then later on I was surrounded by Madchester baggy - again, driven by cheapness - and later by generic indie: plaid shirts and jeans or perhaps combats and doc martens. The 'other' tribe were the townies, who dressed largely in track suits. Expense and style were not apparent there either.
But in all honesty expensive clothing would be wasted on me. I look vaguely scruffy in anything I wear. I am fat and hairy. Looking at pictures of a younger me, very occasionally I looked brilliant in a way in which I never really appreciated and makes me sigh wistfully, but more often I just look in need of a haircut. I was always in need of a haircut, any time outside of six days since I had last had a haircut. I wish I'd discovered self-maintenance of hair earlier - I may have sacrificed the occasional youthfully brilliant hair day fresh out of the barbers, but I'd have had reliably neat hair, and that would have made the difference to the overall look.
I've never been in the least bit tempted by expensive clothes, with one exception: last year, as we had parked there for a walk, we popped in to the wonderful House of Bruar in northern Perthshire: everything the Highland laird needs - and I was instantly struck by a lament that I would never have need or occasion to wear a full high quality tweed suit. It passed, of course - it would also have needed me to be 20 years younger and with an entirely different lifestyle - i.e. heir to some Highland estate. How there is a big enough market for this sort of stuff for this business to stay operational I have no idea.
House of Bruar is for folk who want to look like an heir to a Highland estate without even a tiny chance of being one, that’s how they stay very comfortably operational. Well done for resisting the temptation.
I was agog that such a place existed. Still, it was very, very pleasant. The toilets were splendid, I wanted every food item, and they didn't seem to mind us parking for a walk up to see the waterfalls. In the end my wife and daughters each bought a Christmas decoration and I bought a tin of barley sugars.
They rather grandly insist on calling their lavatories 'cloakrooms' and do not feature the obligatory symbols which leads to no end of confusion and annoyance. I love it - TUD shouldn't be so po-faced.
Some decent footwear which I can buy more cheaply elsewhere, otherwise chichi-ed up its hoo ha. I tend to feel a bit raped after a visit, particularly after paying £x for a scone and a cup of tea. Tbf that’s not uncommon in that stretch of the road to the Highlands.
I quite like the sparrows flying about the conservatory style restaurant area.
Good story from about 20 years ago
The owner of HoB got so pissed off with staff spilling coffee on his lovely carpets, walking about with a coffee was made an instant sacking offence. Day after the rule is introduced he finds someone breaking it. So he says You're fired. Then he says, you look the sort of bastard that hires lawyers for unfair dismissal claims. Here's 500 in cash and you won't be seeing a penny more.
Then he says What do you do here anyway so I can hire a replacement. And the guy pockets the money and says I don't, I'm from BT and just here for the day to sort a phone problem.
When I was a student, I helped run the union.
One day, a security guard defended a student from an attack by another student. The university was (for interesting reasons) horrified. They demanded we fire the security guard. And sent a drone (walking dead lawyer type) to see it done.
So I fired someone in front of him. After the drone had left, the person I’d “fired” (student who worked in the bar, who was leaving the uni soon) shared the bonus I’d handed him with the actual security guard.
I got the idea from a PG Wodehouse story, where he claimed that a posh New York department store did similar for serious customer complaints.
What were the interesting reasons?
The student who did the assault was in the er... orbit of Mr Hook Hand and chums. Which may have been related to why he was out gay bashing with friends.
End of Germany as an industrial power within a decade. Becoming an EU funds beneficiary within two. National dissolution within four.
He is spot on about demographics.
That said, his timings are likely wrong. Japan's demographics are about 20 years ahead of Germany's, and they are still a major industrial power.
Or the ageing demographics means economic collapse trope is fallacious.
The they provided their biggest market with the manufacturing technology with which to outcompete them one is pretty well spot on, though.
Germany's biggest industry has always been capital goods (i.e. the machines that make machines). And Germany's boom over the last twenty years has been on the back of selling capital goods to China.
If Germany the exporter is struggling now, the biggest reason is that the Chinese economy is not purchasing as many machines that make things, because it has slowed down itself.
The question is - and I don't know the answer to this - whether the reindustrializing of the US creates demand for Siemens, Kuka and Bosch and co.
Have the chinese started making the machines that make machines? And are they any good at it?
Looking at the map in Beefeater Darlington, I notice that we are pretty much exactly half way up the country here. And half way across England from East to West despite being near the East coast.
I feel this deserves a @Leon style travel posting while I wait for my 8oz Sirloin, cooked “just the way you like it”.
The sheer glamour.
Kendall is pretty much halfway between lands end and John o groats. Darlo is about the same north south, if it's just England you're considering I think Sheffield is the halfway point. Darlo is definitely in the east however you are defining things in either the UK or England.
Gotta compare like with like though. MLK was not a president.
Someone who was, said some stuff about that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. And the footnote to that seems to be, Unless the people choose someone totally unacceptable to a bunch of group thinking elders half the world away who think that if people have our skin colour and speak our language, we obviously know what is best for them better than they do.
End of Germany as an industrial power within a decade. Becoming an EU funds beneficiary within two. National dissolution within four.
He is spot on about demographics.
That said, his timings are likely wrong. Japan's demographics are about 20 years ahead of Germany's, and they are still a major industrial power.
Or the ageing demographics means economic collapse trope is fallacious.
The they provided their biggest market with the manufacturing technology with which to outcompete them one is pretty well spot on, though.
Germany's biggest industry has always been capital goods (i.e. the machines that make machines). And Germany's boom over the last twenty years has been on the back of selling capital goods to China.
If Germany the exporter is struggling now, the biggest reason is that the Chinese economy is not purchasing as many machines that make things, because it has slowed down itself.
The question is - and I don't know the answer to this - whether the reindustrializing of the US creates demand for Siemens, Kuka and Bosch and co.
Have the chinese started making the machines that make machines? And are they any good at it?
Machine tools? Yes, they've been making the lower grades for years. Steadily working their way up.
The US has had a long standing government policy of considering high end machine tools as strategic. So breaking into their market would be very difficult at the high end.
Looking at the map in Beefeater Darlington, I notice that we are pretty much exactly half way up the country here. And half way across England from East to West despite being near the East coast.
I feel this deserves a @Leon style travel posting while I wait for my 8oz Sirloin, cooked “just the way you like it”.
The sheer glamour.
Kendall is pretty much halfway between lands end and John o groats. Darlo is about the same north south, if it's just England you're considering I think Sheffield is the halfway point. Darlo is definitely in the east however you are defining things in either the UK or England.
Looking at the map in Beefeater Darlington, I notice that we are pretty much exactly half way up the country here. And half way across England from East to West despite being near the East coast.
I feel this deserves a @Leon style travel posting while I wait for my 8oz Sirloin, cooked “just the way you like it”.
The sheer glamour.
Keep going, you have the good half to go, and there's a Premier Inn at Thurso.
Looking at the map in Beefeater Darlington, I notice that we are pretty much exactly half way up the country here. And half way across England from East to West despite being near the East coast.
I feel this deserves a @Leon style travel posting while I wait for my 8oz Sirloin, cooked “just the way you like it”.
The sheer glamour.
Kendall is pretty much halfway between lands end and John o groats. Darlo is about the same north south, if it's just England you're considering I think Sheffield is the halfway point. Darlo is definitely in the east however you are defining things in either the UK or England.
Darlo halfway up UK. Halfway East-West England.
Interesting (to me) that the accent here is very definitely north east, but the accent in nearbyish Northallerton is very definitely Yorkshire. 19 miles and no national border but a completely clear cut accent boundary. In the Midlands (especially the North Midlands into South Yorks and Cheshire) it’s much more of a gradual transition.
Personally, and I’m sure I’m in the minority, I think a new prime minister should get the following:
- immediate wardrobe transformation guided by a government employee fashion consultant, with both the PM and spouse strongly encouraged / coerced to wear an expensively tailored wardrobe by exclusively British designers - Prime ministerial car that’s the top of the range of whichever British (or foreign owned but UK owns the IP) automotive outfit wins the competition to provide the car free of charge. - Private chef cooking multi-star Michelin quality cuisine, chosen from among the country’s top restaurateurs - holidays for the family in the poshest and most desirable British destinations money can buy
We’ve forgotten how to market UK design and hospitality. Every pound spent on pampering the PM and cabinet is money seriously well spent.
Looking at the map in Beefeater Darlington, I notice that we are pretty much exactly half way up the country here. And half way across England from East to West despite being near the East coast.
I feel this deserves a @Leon style travel posting while I wait for my 8oz Sirloin, cooked “just the way you like it”.
The sheer glamour.
Kendall is pretty much halfway between lands end and John o groats. Darlo is about the same north south, if it's just England you're considering I think Sheffield is the halfway point. Darlo is definitely in the east however you are defining things in either the UK or England.
Darlo halfway up UK. Halfway East-West England.
Interesting (to me) that the accent here is very definitely north east, but the accent in nearbyish Northallerton is very definitely Yorkshire. 19 miles and no national border but a completely clear cut accent boundary. In the Midlands (especially the North Midlands into South Yorks and Cheshire) it’s much more of a gradual transition.
There is an even more sudden accent boundary between Carlisle and Gretna (10 miles) or Berwick and Eyemouth (9 miles).
End of Germany as an industrial power within a decade. Becoming an EU funds beneficiary within two. National dissolution within four.
He is spot on about demographics.
That said, his timings are likely wrong. Japan's demographics are about 20 years ahead of Germany's, and they are still a major industrial power.
Or the ageing demographics means economic collapse trope is fallacious.
The they provided their biggest market with the manufacturing technology with which to outcompete them one is pretty well spot on, though.
Germany's biggest industry has always been capital goods (i.e. the machines that make machines). And Germany's boom over the last twenty years has been on the back of selling capital goods to China.
If Germany the exporter is struggling now, the biggest reason is that the Chinese economy is not purchasing as many machines that make things, because it has slowed down itself.
The question is - and I don't know the answer to this - whether the reindustrializing of the US creates demand for Siemens, Kuka and Bosch and co.
Have the chinese started making the machines that make machines? And are they any good at it?
They are, though German machine tools are still in another level. The big money in German exports, though, was cars. And they're getting crushed now in the Chinese market.
On Harris's ideology: I have started calling her a "shape shifter", since I suspect she fits her views to match her political environment. Which implies that, if elected, she will pursue policies that will enhance her chances of re-election.
There are worse ways for an elected official to behave -- though it might not get them into the next version of "Profiles in Courage".
Looking at the map in Beefeater Darlington, I notice that we are pretty much exactly half way up the country here. And half way across England from East to West despite being near the East coast.
I feel this deserves a @Leon style travel posting while I wait for my 8oz Sirloin, cooked “just the way you like it”.
The sheer glamour.
Kendall is pretty much halfway between lands end and John o groats. Darlo is about the same north south, if it's just England you're considering I think Sheffield is the halfway point. Darlo is definitely in the east however you are defining things in either the UK or England.
Darlo halfway up UK. Halfway East-West England.
Interesting (to me) that the accent here is very definitely north east, but the accent in nearbyish Northallerton is very definitely Yorkshire. 19 miles and no national border but a completely clear cut accent boundary. In the Midlands (especially the North Midlands into South Yorks and Cheshire) it’s much more of a gradual transition.
There is an even more sudden accent boundary between Carlisle and Gretna (10 miles) or Berwick and Eyemouth (9 miles).
But that’s understandable. There’s a national border. Same between Pontrilas and Abergavenny. No national border here.
On Harris's ideology: I have started calling her a "shape shifter", since I suspect she fits her views to match her political environment. Which implies that, if elected, she will pursue policies that will enhance her chances of re-election.
There are worse ways for an elected official to behave -- though it might not get them into the next version of "Profiles in Courage".
It’s interesting though what policies are considered politically acceptable to swing voters in America compared with here. If Labour going into the last election had a policy of increasing corporation tax to 28% they’d have got crucified.
(Personally I hope the Dems do this. It’ll be good news for European FDI by US multinationals, which has rather dried up in recent years).
Indeed - interesting. If only we had some 250 year olds on the board, they could tell us when this changed. My guess: WW1. It may actually be that the late 70s/80s/early 90s were the nadir for male sartorial exuberance. I remember my friend's father - who was of a slightly older generation than my own - recollecting his youth of the early 60s, when the key to attracting girls was dressing to the nines and young men would happily wear expensively tailored suits for a night out. Whereas when I was young: yes, secretly, you wanted to look good to advance your chances of meeting girls. But you very much didn't want to look like you were trying to look good.
Every era has had its code whether it was mods and rockers or burberry raincoats or stone island or adidas spezials. And most people have wanted to appear as more affluent than they are (eg the burberry and gucci keyring crazes). Ofc it is generally the gentry that cut about in moth-eaten sweaters and ancient clothes held together by baler twine.
But no, that's the point. The male youth of the 70s/80s/90s did not dress to look more affluent than they were. Baggy shirts and doc martens. Or heavy metal chic. Or punk. Or Mark E Smith out of the Fall. Or shell suits. The new romantics of the early 80s were a sort of exception to this, but even they didn't look affluent - they looked like they'd indiscriminately raided a charity shop to try to stage a pantomime.
The football hooligan look clearly passed you by.
Plus the suits-and-slicked-back hair of the, what, 1981/82? Just look at the cover of Penthouse and Pavement or Tony Hadley in Spandau Ballet after the kilt period, say around Gold or True.
(how the hell did I become this burgh's expert on male fashion? Ho-hum)
For decades, before we started copying the Americans slavishly, male gangs and fashion alternated between dressing down and dressing up: mods v rockers, glam v punk, casuals v miner chic. Consider the difference between Tony Hadley in Spandau Ballet and the brilliant Mark Hollis in Talk Talk . I'll have to throw some old copies of The Face and i-D at PB.
I'd like to say those days were better, but they weren't: it was generally rubbish for the poor and less rubbish for the well off. But I think the dreams of the future were better.
First season was fantastic. Went a bit downhill in S2... Perhaps it's too lost in the mists of time now to sum up a decade, but absolutely everything about Clive Owen's character, the slimy Piers, the very lovely Susannah Harker, the cod-Caterham cars setup with Mr Bennett from Pride and Prejudice as the country gent... you can practically hear the Pet Shop Boys singing 'let's make lots of money' in the background.
More than Mad Men, it's the show that makes you sad people don't wear suits any more.
Leslie Phillips in a straight role too and very good he was as well. I watched the Network release a few years back and enjoyed it.
Also at the time there was Capital City with, IIRC, Douglas Hodge. A two series tribute and testament to yuppiedom.
There is a rather forgotten UK TV show called 'Mr. Palfrey of Westminster' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Palfrey_of_Westminster) (and I very much recommend watching the pilot, even if the following series was a little hit'n'miss).
There is a wonderful episode in the 2nd series called "Return to Sender" with Leslie Phillips playing a Kim Philby-esque character. He does it marvellously. Highly recommend it if you can find it.
Beefeater. Not a fan. Friendly staff and all that but.
I honestly think I’d have been better off at McDonalds round the corner. When you visit Maccie Ds you’re getting a precise, largely faultless rendition of a particular cuisine and style. One of the great underrated cuisines of the world: McDonalds. They don’t serve booze though.
Indeed - interesting. If only we had some 250 year olds on the board, they could tell us when this changed. My guess: WW1. It may actually be that the late 70s/80s/early 90s were the nadir for male sartorial exuberance. I remember my friend's father - who was of a slightly older generation than my own - recollecting his youth of the early 60s, when the key to attracting girls was dressing to the nines and young men would happily wear expensively tailored suits for a night out. Whereas when I was young: yes, secretly, you wanted to look good to advance your chances of meeting girls. But you very much didn't want to look like you were trying to look good.
Every era has had its code whether it was mods and rockers or burberry raincoats or stone island or adidas spezials. And most people have wanted to appear as more affluent than they are (eg the burberry and gucci keyring crazes). Ofc it is generally the gentry that cut about in moth-eaten sweaters and ancient clothes held together by baler twine.
But no, that's the point. The male youth of the 70s/80s/90s did not dress to look more affluent than they were. Baggy shirts and doc martens. Or heavy metal chic. Or punk. Or Mark E Smith out of the Fall. Or shell suits. The new romantics of the early 80s were a sort of exception to this, but even they didn't look affluent - they looked like they'd indiscriminately raided a charity shop to try to stage a pantomime.
The football hooligan look clearly passed you by.
Plus the suits-and-slicked-back hair of the, what, 1981/82? Just look at the cover of Penthouse and Pavement or Tony Hadley in Spandau Ballet after the kilt period, say around Gold or True.
(how the hell did I become this burgh's expert on male fashion? Ho-hum)
For decades, before we started copying the Americans slavishly, male gangs and fashion alternated between dressing down and dressing up: mods v rockers, glam v punk, casuals v miner chic. Consider the difference between Tony Hadley in Spandau Ballet and the brilliant Mark Hollis in Talk Talk . I'll have to throw some old copies of The Face and i-D at PB.
I'd like to say those days were better, but they weren't: it was generally rubbish for the poor and less rubbish for the well off. But I think the dreams of the future were better.
First season was fantastic. Went a bit downhill in S2... Perhaps it's too lost in the mists of time now to sum up a decade, but absolutely everything about Clive Owen's character, the slimy Piers, the very lovely Susannah Harker, the cod-Caterham cars setup with Mr Bennett from Pride and Prejudice as the country gent... you can practically hear the Pet Shop Boys singing 'let's make lots of money' in the background.
More than Mad Men, it's the show that makes you sad people don't wear suits any more.
Leslie Phillips in a straight role too and very good he was as well. I watched the Network release a few years back and enjoyed it.
Also at the time there was Capital City with, IIRC, Douglas Hodge. A two series tribute and testament to yuppiedom.
There is a rather forgotten UK TV show called 'Mr. Palfrey of Westminster' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Palfrey_of_Westminster) (and I very much recommend watching the pilot, even if the following series was a little hit'n'miss).
There is a wonderful episode in the 2nd series called "Return to Sender" with Leslie Phillips playing a Kim Philby-esque character. He does it marvellously. Highly recommend it if you can find it.
Two episodes of A Very British Coup are on YouTube
Personally, and I’m sure I’m in the minority, I think a new prime minister should get the following:
- immediate wardrobe transformation guided by a government employee fashion consultant, with both the PM and spouse strongly encouraged / coerced to wear an expensively tailored wardrobe by exclusively British designers - Prime ministerial car that’s the top of the range of whichever British (or foreign owned but UK owns the IP) automotive outfit wins the competition to provide the car free of charge. - Private chef cooking multi-star Michelin quality cuisine, chosen from among the country’s top restaurateurs - holidays for the family in the poshest and most desirable British destinations money can buy
We’ve forgotten how to market UK design and hospitality. Every pound spent on pampering the PM and cabinet is money seriously well spent.
Somewhere there is a TV exec furiously penning a series called something like 'Cooking for Ten' (big close of up 10 Downing Street, for the thicks). Celebrity chef in a cramped kitchen, shouting at some amateur home cooks who are competing against each other to make supper, OH NO Jill has spilled the Edamame foam on the floor! Will we still manage 'Oriental beans on a sourdough sliver with organic sea-salt and samphire infused crust' in time for the PM's team?!?!?!?!
Personally, and I’m sure I’m in the minority, I think a new prime minister should get the following:
- immediate wardrobe transformation guided by a government employee fashion consultant, with both the PM and spouse strongly encouraged / coerced to wear an expensively tailored wardrobe by exclusively British designers - Prime ministerial car that’s the top of the range of whichever British (or foreign owned but UK owns the IP) automotive outfit wins the competition to provide the car free of charge. - Private chef cooking multi-star Michelin quality cuisine, chosen from among the country’s top restaurateurs - holidays for the family in the poshest and most desirable British destinations money can buy
We’ve forgotten how to market UK design and hospitality. Every pound spent on pampering the PM and cabinet is money seriously well spent.
Somewhere there is a TV exec furiously penning a series called something like 'Cooking for Ten' (big close of up 10 Downing Street, for the thicks). Celebrity chef in a cramped kitchen, shouting at some amateur home cooks who are competing against each other to make supper, OH NO Jill has spilled the Edamame foam on the floor! Will we still manage 'Oriental beans on a sourdough sliver with organic sea-salt and samphire infused crust' in time for the PM's team?!?!?!?!
Beefeater. Not a fan. Friendly staff and all that but.
I honestly think I’d have been better off at McDonalds round the corner. When you visit Maccie Ds you’re getting a precise, largely faultless rendition of a particular cuisine and style. One of the great underrated cuisines of the world: McDonalds. They don’t serve booze though.
You can get beer in Maccy Ds in Germany. It's not great, but it is beer.
Indeed - interesting. If only we had some 250 year olds on the board, they could tell us when this changed. My guess: WW1. It may actually be that the late 70s/80s/early 90s were the nadir for male sartorial exuberance. I remember my friend's father - who was of a slightly older generation than my own - recollecting his youth of the early 60s, when the key to attracting girls was dressing to the nines and young men would happily wear expensively tailored suits for a night out. Whereas when I was young: yes, secretly, you wanted to look good to advance your chances of meeting girls. But you very much didn't want to look like you were trying to look good.
Every era has had its code whether it was mods and rockers or burberry raincoats or stone island or adidas spezials. And most people have wanted to appear as more affluent than they are (eg the burberry and gucci keyring crazes). Ofc it is generally the gentry that cut about in moth-eaten sweaters and ancient clothes held together by baler twine.
But no, that's the point. The male youth of the 70s/80s/90s did not dress to look more affluent than they were. Baggy shirts and doc martens. Or heavy metal chic. Or punk. Or Mark E Smith out of the Fall. Or shell suits. The new romantics of the early 80s were a sort of exception to this, but even they didn't look affluent - they looked like they'd indiscriminately raided a charity shop to try to stage a pantomime.
The football hooligan look clearly passed you by.
Plus the suits-and-slicked-back hair of the, what, 1981/82? Just look at the cover of Penthouse and Pavement or Tony Hadley in Spandau Ballet after the kilt period, say around Gold or True.
(how the hell did I become this burgh's expert on male fashion? Ho-hum)
For decades, before we started copying the Americans slavishly, male gangs and fashion alternated between dressing down and dressing up: mods v rockers, glam v punk, casuals v miner chic. Consider the difference between Tony Hadley in Spandau Ballet and the brilliant Mark Hollis in Talk Talk . I'll have to throw some old copies of The Face and i-D at PB.
I'd like to say those days were better, but they weren't: it was generally rubbish for the poor and less rubbish for the well off. But I think the dreams of the future were better.
First season was fantastic. Went a bit downhill in S2... Perhaps it's too lost in the mists of time now to sum up a decade, but absolutely everything about Clive Owen's character, the slimy Piers, the very lovely Susannah Harker, the cod-Caterham cars setup with Mr Bennett from Pride and Prejudice as the country gent... you can practically hear the Pet Shop Boys singing 'let's make lots of money' in the background.
More than Mad Men, it's the show that makes you sad people don't wear suits any more.
Leslie Phillips in a straight role too and very good he was as well. I watched the Network release a few years back and enjoyed it.
Also at the time there was Capital City with, IIRC, Douglas Hodge. A two series tribute and testament to yuppiedom.
There is a rather forgotten UK TV show called 'Mr. Palfrey of Westminster' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Palfrey_of_Westminster) (and I very much recommend watching the pilot, even if the following series was a little hit'n'miss).
There is a wonderful episode in the 2nd series called "Return to Sender" with Leslie Phillips playing a Kim Philby-esque character. He does it marvellously. Highly recommend it if you can find it.
Two episodes of A Very British Coup are on YouTube
Beefeater. Not a fan. Friendly staff and all that but.
I honestly think I’d have been better off at McDonalds round the corner. When you visit Maccie Ds you’re getting a precise, largely faultless rendition of a particular cuisine and style. One of the great underrated cuisines of the world: McDonalds. They don’t serve booze though.
End of Germany as an industrial power within a decade. Becoming an EU funds beneficiary within two. National dissolution within four.
He is spot on about demographics.
That said, his timings are likely wrong. Japan's demographics are about 20 years ahead of Germany's, and they are still a major industrial power.
Or the ageing demographics means economic collapse trope is fallacious.
The they provided their biggest market with the manufacturing technology with which to outcompete them one is pretty well spot on, though.
Germany's biggest industry has always been capital goods (i.e. the machines that make machines). And Germany's boom over the last twenty years has been on the back of selling capital goods to China.
If Germany the exporter is struggling now, the biggest reason is that the Chinese economy is not purchasing as many machines that make things, because it has slowed down itself.
The question is - and I don't know the answer to this - whether the reindustrializing of the US creates demand for Siemens, Kuka and Bosch and co.
Have the chinese started making the machines that make machines? And are they any good at it?
They are, though German machine tools are still in another level. The big money in German exports, though, was cars. And they're getting crushed now in the Chinese market.
China doesn't import that many German cars, or indeed cars generally. Of the $550bn market, only around $50bn is imported vehicles. And of those that are imported, it is mostly the really high end marques: Aston Martin, Ferrari, Lamourghini.
Most cars sold in China, irrespective of the badge, were made there. So, while German car companies might be getting crushed in China, it doesn't have that much impact on factories in Wolfsberg.
(Stat for you: German exports of cars to China in 2023 were EUR15.2bn, which is less than 1% of their total exports of EUR1,590bn.)
And elegant in parts: I like "Joe's, then Kamala's, Political Opponent, ME."
But will it win over the UK centrist dad sector at which it is obviously aimed and which is so crucial to Trump's hopes? Not looking good.
The effort to punctuate gets a thumbs up from me.
Spoilt by the swerve into complaining about immigrants - is the shooter any more of an immigrant than Trump himself?
It still looks like Trump is confused between offering a refugee asylum and mental asylums.
Trump’s mum was an immigrant. Trump’s paternal grandparents were both immigrants. Two of Trump’s 3 wives have been immigrants, and his parents-in-law have also immigrated to the US, following their daughter. JD Vance’s parents-in-law are immigrants. Trump’s backers include Elon Musk (immigrant) and Peter Thiel (immigrant). Ted Cruz is an immigrant. All of Ron DeSantis’s great-grandparents were immigrants, and his wife is the granddaughter of an immigrant. Donald Trump Jr.’s fiancée is the daughter of two immigrants, while his ex-wife is the granddaughter of an immigrant. Ivanka’s husband, Jared Kushner, his paternal grandparents were immigrants (refugees). Nikki Haley’s parents are immigrants. Vivek Ramaswamy’s are immigrants. Marco Rubio’s parents are immigrants.
Beefeater. Not a fan. Friendly staff and all that but.
I honestly think I’d have been better off at McDonalds round the corner. When you visit Maccie Ds you’re getting a precise, largely faultless rendition of a particular cuisine and style. One of the great underrated cuisines of the world: McDonalds. They don’t serve booze though.
They do in Europe.
Heineken, generally. Yes, limited but still alcohol. Never tried ordering a top up though.
Personally, and I’m sure I’m in the minority, I think a new prime minister should get the following:
- immediate wardrobe transformation guided by a government employee fashion consultant, with both the PM and spouse strongly encouraged / coerced to wear an expensively tailored wardrobe by exclusively British designers - Prime ministerial car that’s the top of the range of whichever British (or foreign owned but UK owns the IP) automotive outfit wins the competition to provide the car free of charge. - Private chef cooking multi-star Michelin quality cuisine, chosen from among the country’s top restaurateurs - holidays for the family in the poshest and most desirable British destinations money can buy
We’ve forgotten how to market UK design and hospitality. Every pound spent on pampering the PM and cabinet is money seriously well spent.
Somewhere there is a TV exec furiously penning a series called something like 'Cooking for Ten' (big close of up 10 Downing Street, for the thicks). Celebrity chef in a cramped kitchen, shouting at some amateur home cooks who are competing against each other to make supper, OH NO Jill has spilled the Edamame foam on the floor! Will we still manage 'Oriental beans on a sourdough sliver with organic sea-salt and samphire infused crust' in time for the PM's team?!?!?!?!
Beefeater. Not a fan. Friendly staff and all that but.
I honestly think I’d have been better off at McDonalds round the corner. When you visit Maccie Ds you’re getting a precise, largely faultless rendition of a particular cuisine and style. One of the great underrated cuisines of the world: McDonalds. They don’t serve booze though.
You can get beer in Maccy Ds in Germany. It's not great, but it is beer.
You can get beer at Taco Bell in the UK. Never tried it myself though.
Beefeater. Not a fan. Friendly staff and all that but.
I honestly think I’d have been better off at McDonalds round the corner. When you visit Maccie Ds you’re getting a precise, largely faultless rendition of a particular cuisine and style. One of the great underrated cuisines of the world: McDonalds. They don’t serve booze though.
Ordering a steak was a bit ambitious of you. The Lasagna would probably have been tolerable.
This is all bollocks. PB has determined that anyone who supports Trump is a crank and a lunatic. It can't be that close so someone has blundered.
Either that or PB is talking through its heart not its head.
We saw similar with Brexit. At the Uni all my colleagues expressed surprise at the result - no-one they knew voted for Brexit. They failed to see the self-selected bubble that they lived in.
Trump is the same. Almost all on PB see him as an extremely dangerous threat to democracy and potentially the free world. No-one can understand the mentality of someone in the US would is a supporter.
More or less true but two qualifications. With Brexit, lots of London professional types would say at first that everyone they knew was for Remain, but when examining carefully they knew perfectly well that the secretaries, cleaners, tea ladies, footmen, window cleaners and taxi drivers included a lot of Leavers. But actually (and this was truly significant to the result and why it happened) they didn't think they really counted.
With Trump, he is dangerous and deranged. It is not at all difficult to see why people vote for him, and also that the same people are not all that good at giving a rational account of why.
My rule of thumb is that, given the past polling has tended to underestimate Trump's vote rather than overestimate Clinton / Biden's, any state where Harris is polling
Betting on pollsters to not to change their models is a losing strategy: I would point you to Nate Silver, who currently rates Trump as slight favourite, for the best evidence of this.
That is a very fair point but, in 2020 we have adjustments that were supposed to rectify for 2016's errors and they didn't. The question is not so much will the models be changed - they will - but whether the changes are the right ones.
They did. And in fact, they were actually worse in 2020 than in 2016, overstating Biden's lead - on average - by 3.6%. If there is a similar overstatement this time, then it will be President Trump again.
On the other hand, if the polling error is the other way around, then it will be a comfortable Biden victory.
The one thing I am 100% sure of is that there will be no Biden victory.
End of Germany as an industrial power within a decade. Becoming an EU funds beneficiary within two. National dissolution within four.
He is spot on about demographics.
That said, his timings are likely wrong. Japan's demographics are about 20 years ahead of Germany's, and they are still a major industrial power.
Or the ageing demographics means economic collapse trope is fallacious.
The they provided their biggest market with the manufacturing technology with which to outcompete them one is pretty well spot on, though.
Germany's biggest industry has always been capital goods (i.e. the machines that make machines). And Germany's boom over the last twenty years has been on the back of selling capital goods to China.
If Germany the exporter is struggling now, the biggest reason is that the Chinese economy is not purchasing as many machines that make things, because it has slowed down itself.
The question is - and I don't know the answer to this - whether the reindustrializing of the US creates demand for Siemens, Kuka and Bosch and co.
Have the chinese started making the machines that make machines? And are they any good at it?
They are, though German machine tools are still in another level. The big money in German exports, though, was cars. And they're getting crushed now in the Chinese market.
China doesn't import that many German cars, or indeed cars generally. Of the $550bn market, only around $50bn is imported vehicles. And of those that are imported, it is mostly the really high end marques: Aston Martin, Ferrari, Lamourghini.
Most cars sold in China, irrespective of the badge, were made there. So, while German car companies might be getting crushed in China, it doesn't have that much impact on factories in Wolfsberg.
(Stat for you: German exports of cars to China in 2023 were EUR15.2bn, which is less than 1% of their total exports of EUR1,590bn.)
Machine tool sales were just over a tenth of that.
End of Germany as an industrial power within a decade. Becoming an EU funds beneficiary within two. National dissolution within four.
He is spot on about demographics.
That said, his timings are likely wrong. Japan's demographics are about 20 years ahead of Germany's, and they are still a major industrial power.
Or the ageing demographics means economic collapse trope is fallacious.
The they provided their biggest market with the manufacturing technology with which to outcompete them one is pretty well spot on, though.
Germany's biggest industry has always been capital goods (i.e. the machines that make machines). And Germany's boom over the last twenty years has been on the back of selling capital goods to China.
If Germany the exporter is struggling now, the biggest reason is that the Chinese economy is not purchasing as many machines that make things, because it has slowed down itself.
The question is - and I don't know the answer to this - whether the reindustrializing of the US creates demand for Siemens, Kuka and Bosch and co.
Have the chinese started making the machines that make machines? And are they any good at it?
They are, though German machine tools are still in another level. The big money in German exports, though, was cars. And they're getting crushed now in the Chinese market.
China doesn't import that many German cars, or indeed cars generally. Of the $550bn market, only around $50bn is imported vehicles. And of those that are imported, it is mostly the really high end marques: Aston Martin, Ferrari, Lamourghini.
Most cars sold in China, irrespective of the badge, were made there. So, while German car companies might be getting crushed in China, it doesn't have that much impact on factories in Wolfsberg.
(Stat for you: German exports of cars to China in 2023 were EUR15.2bn, which is less than 1% of their total exports of EUR1,590bn.)
Machine tool sales were just over a tenth of that.
You think machine tools/capital equipment was just EUR1.5bn in 2023? Given total German exports China were about EUR100bn, and cars were EUR15bn, I find that very surprising.
Comments
It seems to me she's Tugenhadt territory.
(Good things that are fat and hairy - couldn't find the original post.)
https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1835717567907787035
I don't like the capitals at the end, and it needs a good edit, but the sentiment is fine.
If you know there are fewer workers coming on stream, it encourages you to invest more in automation. (Switzerland doesn't have the demographic challenges, but it certainly has extremely expensive labour costs, and it continued to be an industrial powerhouse.)
On the other hand, places with inverted population pyramids (Japan and Italy being the most advanced in that trend), have tended to have slower economic growth.
"I have a dream that one day in America a man will be judged not by the colour of his skin but by the content of his character"
to ...
"They're eating our cats, they're eating our dawgs"
... this is a slightly disappointing arc.
btw, what's with the apostrophe?
(how the hell did I become this burgh's expert on male fashion? Ho-hum)
For decades, before we started copying the Americans slavishly, male gangs and fashion alternated between dressing down and dressing up: mods v rockers, glam v punk, casuals v miner chic. Consider the difference between Tony Hadley in Spandau Ballet and the brilliant Mark Hollis in Talk Talk . I'll have to throw some old copies of The Face and i-D at PB.
I'd like to say those days were better, but they weren't: it was generally rubbish for the poor and less rubbish for the well off. But I think the dreams of the future were better.
Clive Owen in Chancer (1990): https://static01.nyt.com/images/2007/10/07/arts/07stew.large1.jpg
I used to see him in the bookies.
I quite like the sparrows flying about the conservatory style restaurant area.
Someone who was, said some stuff about that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. And the footnote to that seems to be, Unless the people choose someone totally unacceptable to a bunch of group thinking elders half the world away who think that if people have our skin colour and speak our language, we obviously know what is best for them better than they do.
Democracy is democracy.
Chances are it might avoid doing so in the month before the election.
The owner of HoB got so pissed off with staff spilling coffee on his lovely carpets, walking about with a coffee was made an instant sacking offence. Day after the rule is introduced he finds someone breaking it. So he says You're fired. Then he says, you look the sort of bastard that hires lawyers for unfair dismissal claims. Here's 500 in cash and you won't be seeing a penny more.
Then he says What do you do here anyway so I can hire a replacement. And the guy pockets the money and says I don't, I'm from BT and just here for the day to sort a phone problem.
The US election night will be exciting because - even if the polling is exactly right - either candidate can win. And that's before you factor in possible polling errors in either direction, in national or state polls. The result might not be close in practice.
And the betting odds are fluctuating so close to 50:50, a 'back the favourite' trading strategy is probably best. I've laid off some of my long Harris position from much longer odds.
Off topic:
- There goes my 1,000th post
- Ran my first half marathon yesterday - why do people do double that distance?!
More than Mad Men, it's the show that makes you sad people don't wear suits any more.
Fruit picking, warehouse shelf work will go quite quickly. Limited range and terrain automated driving - such as trucks at opencast mines - is well under way.
In old age care, various Japanese (no surprise there) prototypes for assistance are in the test phase.
One day, a security guard defended a student from an attack by another student. The university was (for interesting reasons) horrified. They demanded we fire the security guard. And sent a drone (walking dead lawyer type) to see it done.
So I fired someone in front of him. After the drone had left, the person I’d “fired” (student who worked in the bar, who was leaving the uni soon) shared the bonus I’d handed him with the actual security guard.
I got the idea from a PG Wodehouse story, where he claimed that a posh New York department store did similar for serious customer complaints.
I used to wear a suit like this to work. A small trade moulder at that.
https://images.app.goo.gl/DawFAREarfybVSmFA
If Trump got others to write all his tweets from now until 5 November, and they made them all seem very reasonable. And he promised big tax cuts. I reckon he’d probably win handsomely. He could still do some of the crazy stuff in his rallies.
If Germany the exporter is struggling now, the biggest reason is that the Chinese economy is not purchasing as many machines that make things, because it has slowed down itself.
The question is - and I don't know the answer to this - whether the reindustrializing of the US creates demand for Siemens, Kuka and Bosch and co.
Also at the time there was Capital City with, IIRC, Douglas Hodge. A two series tribute and testament to yuppiedom.
Awesome!!! Congrats OGH and @rcs1000 🎉🍾
That does not mean that Trump will lose but it means that assuming he will perform way above the polls may not be the shoe-in many assume
My taxi driver on the brief but fascinating drive from the station managed to confide that he’d lost his son due to a 2 hour ambulance wait earlier this year, that he’s run a boxing gym for decades catering to kids down on their luck from all backgrounds (“Asians, gypsies, blacks”), and that - and this was prefaced by a declaration that he’s not racist, and I believe him, the refugees are out of control and are why nobody can afford houses or get seen by a doctor.
It’s interesting that the real focus in immigration discourse is on the very visible refugee / asylum seeker cohort rather than the far bigger legal immigrant group. Visibility is everything - if Cooper can clear the backlog and empty some of those hotels commandeered by the home office I think it’ll go a long way.
One of the old 80s XJ's parked up outside my place the other week and I was astonished at how *tiny* it was compared to modern cars.
It seemed bigger in my memory.
I feel this deserves a @Leon style travel posting while I wait for my 8oz Sirloin, cooked “just the way you like it”.
The sheer glamour.
https://youtu.be/HZbxGq_TsCY?t=1286
BYD is now very profitable.
And Tesla is the only western manufacturer anywhere near profitable in EV manufacturing.
I used to know somebody who really wanted to be Max Lubin (from Capital City). Being a six-foot fat Brummie with a good hairline he couldn't pull it off, although he did have the ponytail. A manic-depressive drunk, he met a nice girl who looked like Lena Olin and migrated to Australia. True fact.
The US has had a long standing government policy of considering high end machine tools as strategic. So breaking into their market would be very difficult at the high end.
(I suppose a few might not know that five counties (which are called boroughs) make up New York City: Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boroughs_of_New_York_City )
https://x.com/YouGov/status/1835721558507258058?t=RBhJDde4pKuZxkrszAspig&s=19
- immediate wardrobe transformation guided by a government employee fashion consultant, with both the PM and spouse strongly encouraged / coerced to wear an expensively tailored wardrobe by exclusively British designers
- Prime ministerial car that’s the top of the range of whichever British (or foreign owned but UK owns the IP) automotive outfit wins the competition to provide the car free of charge.
- Private chef cooking multi-star Michelin quality cuisine, chosen from among the country’s top restaurateurs
- holidays for the family in the poshest and most desirable British destinations money can buy
We’ve forgotten how to market UK design and hospitality. Every pound spent on pampering the PM and cabinet is money seriously well spent.
The big money in German exports, though, was cars. And they're getting crushed now in the Chinese market.
There are worse ways for an elected official to behave -- though it might not get them into the next version of "Profiles in Courage".
Especially since gifts to family are in the training....
(Personally I hope the Dems do this. It’ll be good news for European FDI by US multinationals, which has rather dried up in recent years).
There is a wonderful episode in the 2nd series called "Return to Sender" with Leslie Phillips playing a Kim Philby-esque character. He does it marvellously. Highly recommend it if you can find it.
I honestly think I’d have been better off at McDonalds round the corner. When you visit Maccie Ds you’re getting a precise, largely faultless rendition of a particular cuisine and style. One of the great underrated cuisines of the world: McDonalds. They don’t serve booze though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACg6IuFfMJE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oANMGT0IK-A
Most cars sold in China, irrespective of the badge, were made there. So, while German car companies might be getting crushed in China, it doesn't have that much impact on factories in Wolfsberg.
(Stat for you: German exports of cars to China in 2023 were EUR15.2bn, which is less than 1% of their total exports of EUR1,590bn.)
Trump’s mum was an immigrant. Trump’s paternal grandparents were both immigrants. Two of Trump’s 3 wives have been immigrants, and his parents-in-law have also immigrated to the US, following their daughter. JD Vance’s parents-in-law are immigrants. Trump’s backers include Elon Musk (immigrant) and Peter Thiel (immigrant). Ted Cruz is an immigrant. All of Ron DeSantis’s great-grandparents were immigrants, and his wife is the granddaughter of an immigrant. Donald Trump Jr.’s fiancée is the daughter of two immigrants, while his ex-wife is the granddaughter of an immigrant. Ivanka’s husband, Jared Kushner, his paternal grandparents were immigrants (refugees). Nikki Haley’s parents are immigrants. Vivek Ramaswamy’s are immigrants. Marco Rubio’s parents are immigrants.