I don’t care if I look like a pathetic PB centrist dad with my stupid Garmin smartwatch
I just want to die later rather than earlier, and it seems that these might help
Genuinely surprised to read this.
Given all the booze and drugs you've done, I always kind of thought you took the "live well, die young" mentality?
I didn’t expect to be enjoying myself quite this much at this later stage. Lots of travel. Good friends. Still a decent income. Fascinating job. Get on with my kids (also worry about them - and they probably need me to hang about). Its a pretty good package
But it doesn’t just need me alive it needs me relatively fit and healthy. Think these watches might help
Well they certainly won't harm.
Re age, it struck me recently how unusual I must be in being 64 with both parents alive, D91 and M88. That's a combined 243 years, the three of us.
Can anybody here beat that or get close?
242 on my Mum's death. If I knew there was going to be a competition and it would be that close I would have asked for a bit more effort. My dad died last year at 96
“Anyone staying in approved accommodation in Geneva is entitled to a free transport card. When you stay in Geneva, you will receive a free digital version of the Geneva Transport Card. This card enables you to use public transport free of charge in Geneva for the duration of your stay.”
If I don’t spend a penny on transport I may be able to have TWO kebabs
Staring moodily at the fountain is free.
I’m gonna go look at CERN
They have a very good canteen. Would recommend.
However if you ate the tachyon pudding yesterday and forget to buy it today, the chef gets really upset. 😃
We have a massive old flat clock on our wall, maybe 4 feet diameter. I like it very much.
I owned, briefly, an English Electric master clock designed for factory or school use.
It's a proper pendulum based clockwork mechanism, but it is would by an electric motor. It also has contacts on the mechanism that open and close every second to feed slave dials round the building. The circuits are completed using mercury tilt switches. Actual glass vials half full of mercury that move so that the mercury connects the contacts, or not...
A spectacular device
I have a Bakelite Chinese clock from the late 60s/early 70s. Lovely 'shellfish pink' colour. Probably cheap tat in some ways - but I'm very fond of it. Remarkably loud tick-tock. Sadly the front got cracked last time I moved house - but it's still a treasure to me.
I don’t care if I look like a pathetic PB centrist dad with my stupid Garmin smartwatch
I just want to die later rather than earlier, and it seems that these might help
Genuinely surprised to read this.
Given all the booze and drugs you've done, I always kind of thought you took the "live well, die young" mentality?
I didn’t expect to be enjoying myself quite this much at this later stage. Lots of travel. Good friends. Still a decent income. Fascinating job. Get on with my kids (also worry about them - and they probably need me to hang about). Its a pretty good package
But it doesn’t just need me alive it needs me relatively fit and healthy. Think these watches might help
Well they certainly won't harm.
Re age, it struck me recently how unusual I must be in being 64 with both parents alive, D91 and M88. That's a combined 243 years, the three of us.
Can anybody here beat that or get close?
242 on my Mum's death. If I knew there was going to be a competition and it would be that close I would have asked for a bit more effort. My dad died last year at 96
If @Big_G_NorthWales stays alive for the next eight years, his children may take the flag.
I have said for a long time that Cleverly is the Tories' best option. It seems very, very obvious to me. So what is the case against him? There must be one.
He's not the brightest.
He'll be a centrist plodder when they need to roll the dice is a case against him I guess.
Although I can tell you for a fact that Labour want Badenoch. But who knows who the best choice is. Whoever gets it could surprise in either direction and the next GE is ages away.
I'm torn between Badenoch and Cleverly. Cleverly is on paper the best candidate (affable, non-alienating) - he will get a hearing, but it might be a hearing which concludes "Thanks, but still no." Badenoch could be awful (is she a capable manager/administrator/people handler? Maybe she is, but I've not seen much to convince me) or could be brilliant (in a reaches-the-parts-other-Tories-don't-reach way). Both seem to me preferable to Jenrick.
Badenoch is as mad as Truss and also seems to be heading down the ultra libertarian line while being obsessively anti woke.
Cleverly is Rishi 2 with less energy and drive, so it is Jenrick for me now, at least he is offering something different and with vigour
“Anyone staying in approved accommodation in Geneva is entitled to a free transport card. When you stay in Geneva, you will receive a free digital version of the Geneva Transport Card. This card enables you to use public transport free of charge in Geneva for the duration of your stay.”
If I don’t spend a penny on transport I may be able to have TWO kebabs
Staring moodily at the fountain is free.
I’m gonna go look at CERN
They have a very good canteen. Would recommend.
However if you ate the tachyon pudding yesterday and forget to buy it today, the chef gets really upset. 😃
“Anyone staying in approved accommodation in Geneva is entitled to a free transport card. When you stay in Geneva, you will receive a free digital version of the Geneva Transport Card. This card enables you to use public transport free of charge in Geneva for the duration of your stay.”
If I don’t spend a penny on transport I may be able to have TWO kebabs
Staring moodily at the fountain is free.
I’m gonna go look at CERN
They have a very good canteen. Would recommend.
However if you ate the tachyon pudding yesterday and forget to buy it today, the chef gets really upset. 😃
I hear the counterwise wine is fantastic...
(Dammit, I had to Google. I am unworthy... )
I'm more impressed you made the joke before getting the reference, tbh!
I don’t care if I look like a pathetic PB centrist dad with my stupid Garmin smartwatch
I just want to die later rather than earlier, and it seems that these might help
Genuinely surprised to read this.
Given all the booze and drugs you've done, I always kind of thought you took the "live well, die young" mentality?
I didn’t expect to be enjoying myself quite this much at this later stage. Lots of travel. Good friends. Still a decent income. Fascinating job. Get on with my kids (also worry about them - and they probably need me to hang about). Its a pretty good package
But it doesn’t just need me alive it needs me relatively fit and healthy. Think these watches might help
Well they certainly won't harm.
Re age, it struck me recently how unusual I must be in being 64 with both parents alive, D91 and M88. That's a combined 243 years, the three of us.
Can anybody here beat that or get close?
242 on my Mum's death. If I knew there was going to be a competition and it would be that close I would have asked for a bit more effort. My dad died last year at 96
If @Big_G_NorthWales stays alive for the next eight years, his children may take the flag.
I don’t care if I look like a pathetic PB centrist dad with my stupid Garmin smartwatch
I just want to die later rather than earlier, and it seems that these might help
Genuinely surprised to read this.
Given all the booze and drugs you've done, I always kind of thought you took the "live well, die young" mentality?
I didn’t expect to be enjoying myself quite this much at this later stage. Lots of travel. Good friends. Still a decent income. Fascinating job. Get on with my kids (also worry about them - and they probably need me to hang about). Its a pretty good package
But it doesn’t just need me alive it needs me relatively fit and healthy. Think these watches might help
Well they certainly won't harm.
Re age, it struck me recently how unusual I must be in being 64 with both parents alive, D91 and M88. That's a combined 243 years, the three of us.
Can anybody here beat that or get close?
111. Much lower than that and someone's an orphan.
That is very sad @kle4. I am hoping you are very young.
"Avuncular" is what Cleverly has been called. But does avuncular make a good leader? Tory MPs need a leader to be definite, not vague. Kemi fits the bill For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle? 1 Corinthians 14:8
Jenrick is also avuncular - wicked Uncle Ernie.
He’s not avuncular - you need a lowish voice for that - but you have landed on the reason why avuncular is such an evocative word. It sounds like uncle. The ideal uncle should be cheery, probably a little on the sporty and/or overweight side (more rugby player than MAMIL), a fan of a beer or two, full of worldly wisdom, probably rather good at pub-quiz trivia, and not averse to telling embarrassing tales about your mum or dad’s childhood.
I don’t care if I look like a pathetic PB centrist dad with my stupid Garmin smartwatch
I just want to die later rather than earlier, and it seems that these might help
Genuinely surprised to read this.
Given all the booze and drugs you've done, I always kind of thought you took the "live well, die young" mentality?
I didn’t expect to be enjoying myself quite this much at this later stage. Lots of travel. Good friends. Still a decent income. Fascinating job. Get on with my kids (also worry about them - and they probably need me to hang about). Its a pretty good package
But it doesn’t just need me alive it needs me relatively fit and healthy. Think these watches might help
Well they certainly won't harm.
Re age, it struck me recently how unusual I must be in being 64 with both parents alive, D91 and M88. That's a combined 243 years, the three of us.
Can anybody here beat that or get close?
242. If I knew there was going to be a competition and it would be that close I would have asked for a bit more effort. My dad died last year at 96
That is close alright. I think we've got the front row of the grid locked down there.
I don’t care if I look like a pathetic PB centrist dad with my stupid Garmin smartwatch
I just want to die later rather than earlier, and it seems that these might help
Genuinely surprised to read this.
Given all the booze and drugs you've done, I always kind of thought you took the "live well, die young" mentality?
I didn’t expect to be enjoying myself quite this much at this later stage. Lots of travel. Good friends. Still a decent income. Fascinating job. Get on with my kids (also worry about them - and they probably need me to hang about). Its a pretty good package
But it doesn’t just need me alive it needs me relatively fit and healthy. Think these watches might help
Well they certainly won't harm.
Re age, it struck me recently how unusual I must be in being 64 with both parents alive, D91 and M88. That's a combined 243 years, the three of us.
Can anybody here beat that or get close?
242 on my Mum's death. If I knew there was going to be a competition and it would be that close I would have asked for a bit more effort. My dad died last year at 96
If @Big_G_NorthWales stays alive for the next eight years, his children may take the flag.
That is so funny - and I will try
We will be willing you on. Having said that if @JackW has children this could be academic.
Milton is back to category 5 and now much much bigger than last night.
There’s going to be serious coastal flooding in Florida even after it weakens before landfall. Enough for there still to be disruption on election day.
I have said for a long time that Cleverly is the Tories' best option. It seems very, very obvious to me. So what is the case against him? There must be one.
He's not the brightest.
He'll be a centrist plodder when they need to roll the dice is a case against him I guess.
Although I can tell you for a fact that Labour want Badenoch. But who knows who the best choice is. Whoever gets it could surprise in either direction and the next GE is ages away.
I'm torn between Badenoch and Cleverly. Cleverly is on paper the best candidate (affable, non-alienating) - he will get a hearing, but it might be a hearing which concludes "Thanks, but still no." Badenoch could be awful (is she a capable manager/administrator/people handler? Maybe she is, but I've not seen much to convince me) or could be brilliant (in a reaches-the-parts-other-Tories-don't-reach way). Both seem to me preferable to Jenrick.
Badenoch is as mad as Truss and also seems to be heading down the ultra libertarian line while being obsessively anti woke.
Cleverly is Rishi 2 with less energy and drive, so it is Jenrick for me now, at least he is offering something different and with vigour
It is my ardent prayer that for the sake of the conservative party that Jenrick is nowhere near the leadership
I don’t care if I look like a pathetic PB centrist dad with my stupid Garmin smartwatch
I just want to die later rather than earlier, and it seems that these might help
Genuinely surprised to read this.
Given all the booze and drugs you've done, I always kind of thought you took the "live well, die young" mentality?
I didn’t expect to be enjoying myself quite this much at this later stage. Lots of travel. Good friends. Still a decent income. Fascinating job. Get on with my kids (also worry about them - and they probably need me to hang about). Its a pretty good package
But it doesn’t just need me alive it needs me relatively fit and healthy. Think these watches might help
Well they certainly won't harm.
Re age, it struck me recently how unusual I must be in being 64 with both parents alive, D91 and M88. That's a combined 243 years, the three of us.
Can anybody here beat that or get close?
I am at 235 becoming 237 in less than 2 months time. Both my folks are in good physical health, just a bit of arthritis etc. Also both mentally intact apart from their politics.
I have said for a long time that Cleverly is the Tories' best option. It seems very, very obvious to me. So what is the case against him? There must be one.
He's not the brightest.
He'll be a centrist plodder when they need to roll the dice is a case against him I guess.
Although I can tell you for a fact that Labour want Badenoch. But who knows who the best choice is. Whoever gets it could surprise in either direction and the next GE is ages away.
I'm torn between Badenoch and Cleverly. Cleverly is on paper the best candidate (affable, non-alienating) - he will get a hearing, but it might be a hearing which concludes "Thanks, but still no." Badenoch could be awful (is she a capable manager/administrator/people handler? Maybe she is, but I've not seen much to convince me) or could be brilliant (in a reaches-the-parts-other-Tories-don't-reach way). Both seem to me preferable to Jenrick.
Badenoch is as mad as Truss and also seems to be heading down the ultra libertarian line while being obsessively anti woke.
Cleverly is Rishi 2 with less energy and drive, so it is Jenrick for me now, at least he is offering something different and with vigour
It is my ardent prayer that for the sake of the conservative party that Jenrick is nowhere near the leadership
Including flights and accommodation I might just have crept over my £400 Geneva budget
If you are of a certain mindset, you might find yourself getting a little obsessed with metrics. "I must beat my step count!!!" is a beginners=level one.
Enjoy Geneva.
These things are amazeybollox
It’s like having a little genie tugging at your arm. “Don’t miss your flight!”
Did you miss many flights without it?
I find people who actually enjoy being buzzed by constant notifications very weird - my phone is permanently on silent - and even weirder when people enjoy constant notifications on the wrist.
Sort of like how it suddenly became acceptable to use your phone at the dinner table in the late 2000s. The idea that you're less present and in the moment and more attached to the tech that's telling you what to do or how to behave.
If I live to be 180, I will still never own a "smart" watch. My watch tells the time. Nothing more, nothing less.
And if that works for you, cool.
Alerts are configurable. Just about everything on such watches (Garmin, Apple or whatever...) is configurable. Mrs J has her watch much more tightly tied down (not linked to any other accounts) than I have.
Oh, I get it. Leon absolutely nails it when he says smart watches are for centrist dads. They are for MAMIL types who obsess over their step count, or how much REM sleep they got last night. People who will bore you about their gore-tex clobber they bought for their latest hike across the peaks. They have a catchment, and more power to the people who enjoy them. Nothing wrong with being a MAMIL who's into gore-tex. Many of my friends are. But I prefer a life without being buzzed, or tracked.
I was thinking about the Tory guy who was wearing a rolex in the winter fuel allowance video the other day. Datejusts were de rigeur for men in their 30s/40s in the 80s, which is why they are such an old man watch now. There are photos of datejusts with their early 80s price tags still attached - about £600. But a watch like that will travel through time with you, and be something you can pass along to your children - while during the same number of years, between eight and twenty iterations of the Apple SmartWatch will be thrown on a landfill somewhere. They are, to me, distinctly mid.
I still have my grandfather's watch, and while it's worthless, it tells the time well enough. It will be ticking along long after I am dead. There is something romantic about time and timelessness, which watches provide, while smart watches - dead or obsolete in a few years - do not. I'm in love with the romance of watches, which makes me just as odd as a MAMIL obsessed with his step count. But I find no romance in smart watches, which are disposable bits of kit, as opposed to marvels of mechanical engineering or heirlooms to be passed from father to son.
As I say, nothing wrong with smart watches - they're just not for me.
That's quite an entertaining rant, except for the fact you can use these watches as just watches to tell the time, with no tracking, stepcounts etc. from memory, on Garmin at least, you need to enable much of this stuff. (Apple may be different).
And before you say that you're paying a lot for 'just a watch'; just look at Rolex et al.
You seem personally insulted, despite the fact I go out of my way to point out it's horses for courses all the way through.
I'm a watch collector (a nerd?! on PB? never!) and would never own a smartwatch. As I say, I'm in love with the romance of the history, the mechanical engineering, and so on. A less kind analysis would say that watches are to men what handbags are to women. Though most of my watches are in the £250-1500 bracket, save for a couple of grail pieces.
I gain no pleasure from having my body functions tracked via my wrist or having notifications appear on it while I'm at dinner. I do like the idea that some of the watches I have I will have worn for sixty or more years before I die, and have watches that my forefathers owned. But as I say, it's horses for courses. If your smartwatch gives you pleasure, wear it.
I do not own a Rolex.
I have a fitbit tracker thing in my right wrist and a fancier watch for my left wrist and a pocket watch from my wife for our marriage. I even have a pocket sundial (not so useful in Ireland). I'd love to collect a few more fancy mechanical watches. I might upgrade to a fancier hiking smartwatch at some point.
I don't see any conflict between the two types of devices.
Absolutely - good compromise, that! If I ever felt the need to track my heart rate etc that's what I would do, too.
I totally see why people who value the functionality of a smartwatch rave about them. But I wouldn't wear one to a black tie do (the last black tie do I went to, I wore a £150 Orient Bambino).
To those who don't see the sentimentality in mechanical watches or the history in them, I ask you - would Christopher Walken have stuffed a Garmin up his ass and kept it there for two years to make sure it was passed down to Bruce Willis?
That's the power of watches. They travel with us, through time.
That's the power of jewelry, surely?
Because that's what a nice Omega is. I wore one because it looked good, and it made me look good.
As I've gotten older and more health conscious, and less concerned about what others think about me - or, to put it another way, as I'm no longer looking to attract a mate - then a Garmin suited me better.
But horses for courses.
As my previous comment, "watches are handbags for men" ...though "watches are jewellery for men" would be just as appropriate. They're things us guys can get sentimentally attached to.
My speedy, I'm attached to. (Though the new FOIS has turned my head and made me wonder if it's time to swap). I can't ever imagine getting attached to a Garmin or iWatch with a three year lifespan in the same way.
It's definitely a slow news day on PB when we're into watches for two days running...
Rather shows the Tories diminished position in the scheme of things, doesn't it.
The smart thing for the Tories to do right now is to skip the "lurch to the right, red meat for the 100,000 or so members but voter repellent to the general public" bit they went through last time and skip straight to the Michael Howard caretaker type leader who will allow someone more voter friendly to emerge.
I'm not sure they've got that, even with Cleverley, though he is the best of a rotten bunch.
Jenrick isn't even Hague territory - he's "imagine if Alan B'Stard was real and you elected him" territory.
At least B'stard had a certain charisma.
Jenrick is more Piers Fletcher-Dervish. He wants to be B'Stard, but you need charisma to carry that off, and he doesn't really have it.
Farage, on the other hand... There's even a certain assonance in the names.
I agree. Farage (and Boris to some extent, as well as the likes of Mogg) have a hint of the B’stard. They look like they might be enjoying themselves, and, when they pull it off, the public likes that.
To me Farage genuinely comes across as likeable. That doesn't actually mean I or others will like him depending on what he says and does, but the point that he has charisma is true.
Charisma doesn't map to likeability though. Lots of charismatic people aren't likeable. Eg Robert Maxwell, Jimmy Savile, Eamon Holmes.
Jeffrey Archer is charismatic too. Perhaps you'd have him down as likeable though?
Having been in a room he was working (after the first batch of scandals, before the second)... JA isn't conventionally likeable, but he can electrify a room of ordinaries and you can see the point.
Had he stayed a prep school sports master, every team he coached would have overachieved, and he would have retired with everyone loving him and every boy remembering him thirty years later and the positive effect he had on their lives.
I don’t care if I look like a pathetic PB centrist dad with my stupid Garmin smartwatch
I just want to die later rather than earlier, and it seems that these might help
Genuinely surprised to read this.
Given all the booze and drugs you've done, I always kind of thought you took the "live well, die young" mentality?
I didn’t expect to be enjoying myself quite this much at this later stage. Lots of travel. Good friends. Still a decent income. Fascinating job. Get on with my kids (also worry about them - and they probably need me to hang about). Its a pretty good package
But it doesn’t just need me alive it needs me relatively fit and healthy. Think these watches might help
Well they certainly won't harm.
Re age, it struck me recently how unusual I must be in being 64 with both parents alive, D91 and M88. That's a combined 243 years, the three of us.
Can anybody here beat that or get close?
From the opposite end of the telescope: I was in my early thirties when I had only one parent and no grandparents left. Inbreeding and poor diet and healthcare means that we die young from various genetic problems. We are blessed with high literacy and bibliophilia verging on bibliomania, and oddly look younger than our true age for decades, but when we "go over" we go over fast, aging quickly. It feels like David Bowie in "The Hunger", if anybody remembers that.
I have said for a long time that Cleverly is the Tories' best option. It seems very, very obvious to me. So what is the case against him? There must be one.
He's not the brightest.
He'll be a centrist plodder when they need to roll the dice is a case against him I guess.
Although I can tell you for a fact that Labour want Badenoch. But who knows who the best choice is. Whoever gets it could surprise in either direction and the next GE is ages away.
I'm torn between Badenoch and Cleverly. Cleverly is on paper the best candidate (affable, non-alienating) - he will get a hearing, but it might be a hearing which concludes "Thanks, but still no." Badenoch could be awful (is she a capable manager/administrator/people handler? Maybe she is, but I've not seen much to convince me) or could be brilliant (in a reaches-the-parts-other-Tories-don't-reach way). Both seem to me preferable to Jenrick.
Badenoch is as mad as Truss and also seems to be heading down the ultra libertarian line while being obsessively anti woke.
Cleverly is Rishi 2 with less energy and drive, so it is Jenrick for me now, at least he is offering something different and with vigour
It is my ardent prayer that for the sake of the conservative party that Jenrick is nowhere near the leadership
Maybe but at the moment I have a vote as a party member and you don't, if Jenrick gets through tomorrow
Ah hang on, sorry, I wasn't meaning to focus on when people's parents died. It just struck me how unusual it was to be 64 and with both of them still alive. 243 and counting as it were. Wondered if anyone else was in that same (fortunate) boat but with an even bigger number.
I have said for a long time that Cleverly is the Tories' best option. It seems very, very obvious to me. So what is the case against him? There must be one.
He's not the brightest.
He'll be a centrist plodder when they need to roll the dice is a case against him I guess.
Although I can tell you for a fact that Labour want Badenoch. But who knows who the best choice is. Whoever gets it could surprise in either direction and the next GE is ages away.
I'm torn between Badenoch and Cleverly. Cleverly is on paper the best candidate (affable, non-alienating) - he will get a hearing, but it might be a hearing which concludes "Thanks, but still no." Badenoch could be awful (is she a capable manager/administrator/people handler? Maybe she is, but I've not seen much to convince me) or could be brilliant (in a reaches-the-parts-other-Tories-don't-reach way). Both seem to me preferable to Jenrick.
Badenoch is as mad as Truss and also seems to be heading down the ultra libertarian line while being obsessively anti woke.
Cleverly is Rishi 2 with less energy and drive, so it is Jenrick for me now, at least he is offering something different and with vigour
It is my ardent prayer that for the sake of the conservative party that Jenrick is nowhere near the leadership
Maybe but at the moment I have a vote as a party member and you don't, if Jenrick gets through tomorrow
At least, probably unlike many of your geriatric economically inactive counterparts, you are thinking about the wider optics of the choice.
We have a massive old flat clock on our wall, maybe 4 feet diameter. I like it very much.
I owned, briefly, an English Electric master clock designed for factory or school use.
It's a proper pendulum based clockwork mechanism, but it is would by an electric motor. It also has contacts on the mechanism that open and close every second to feed slave dials round the building. The circuits are completed using mercury tilt switches. Actual glass vials half full of mercury that move so that the mercury connects the contacts, or not...
A spectacular device
I have a Bakelite Chinese clock from the late 60s/early 70s. Lovely 'shellfish pink' colour. Probably cheap tat in some ways - but I'm very fond of it. Remarkably loud tick-tock. Sadly the front got cracked last time I moved house - but it's still a treasure to me.
Our mantel clock is a fairly small square early plastic Ukrainian thing. Roman numerals, Cyrillic inscription. We'd spent some time looking, online and in antique shops when we saw it on a table at a garage sale walking down our street. Had belonged to a retired lady's father in law, who was from Ukraine and had brought it with him. £5, but somehow just right for the space.
Our other 'interesting' clock, value unknown, is a handmade piece from Iran, gifted by my wife's good friend and former flatmate, brought back from one of her visits back to Iran to see her family. Persian style with lots of marquetry and hand painting of the dial, cheap quartz movement on the rear.
Both are special possessions to us now, but I'd not be surprised if the combined cost was under £50, almost certainly under £100.
Including flights and accommodation I might just have crept over my £400 Geneva budget
If you are of a certain mindset, you might find yourself getting a little obsessed with metrics. "I must beat my step count!!!" is a beginners=level one.
Enjoy Geneva.
These things are amazeybollox
It’s like having a little genie tugging at your arm. “Don’t miss your flight!”
Did you miss many flights without it?
I find people who actually enjoy being buzzed by constant notifications very weird - my phone is permanently on silent - and even weirder when people enjoy constant notifications on the wrist.
Sort of like how it suddenly became acceptable to use your phone at the dinner table in the late 2000s. The idea that you're less present and in the moment and more attached to the tech that's telling you what to do or how to behave.
If I live to be 180, I will still never own a "smart" watch. My watch tells the time. Nothing more, nothing less.
And if that works for you, cool.
Alerts are configurable. Just about everything on such watches (Garmin, Apple or whatever...) is configurable. Mrs J has her watch much more tightly tied down (not linked to any other accounts) than I have.
Oh, I get it. Leon absolutely nails it when he says smart watches are for centrist dads. They are for MAMIL types who obsess over their step count, or how much REM sleep they got last night. People who will bore you about their gore-tex clobber they bought for their latest hike across the peaks. They have a catchment, and more power to the people who enjoy them. Nothing wrong with being a MAMIL who's into gore-tex. Many of my friends are. But I prefer a life without being buzzed, or tracked.
I was thinking about the Tory guy who was wearing a rolex in the winter fuel allowance video the other day. Datejusts were de rigeur for men in their 30s/40s in the 80s, which is why they are such an old man watch now. There are photos of datejusts with their early 80s price tags still attached - about £600. But a watch like that will travel through time with you, and be something you can pass along to your children - while during the same number of years, between eight and twenty iterations of the Apple SmartWatch will be thrown on a landfill somewhere. They are, to me, distinctly mid.
I still have my grandfather's watch, and while it's worthless, it tells the time well enough. It will be ticking along long after I am dead. There is something romantic about time and timelessness, which watches provide, while smart watches - dead or obsolete in a few years - do not. I'm in love with the romance of watches, which makes me just as odd as a MAMIL obsessed with his step count. But I find no romance in smart watches, which are disposable bits of kit, as opposed to marvels of mechanical engineering or heirlooms to be passed from father to son.
As I say, nothing wrong with smart watches - they're just not for me.
The ridicule that MAMILs (and now smartwatch wearers) receive is, I suspect, a distinctly British phenomenon and comes from a inferiority complex when it comes to exercise and looking after your body.
If the NHS is to survive, we need many more people like Leon to get smartwatches and don the padded shorts, to buy the fancy storm jacket and head into the Peak District. Nothing better than seeing a bunch of overweight boomers desperately trying to make it over the Bealach na Ba.
The ridicule is not the exercise but the obsession with kit. I get just as much exercise on my £700 touring bike and my shorts and t-shirts as my mate on his £10000 bike and £1000+ of kit and accessories gets. And we don't have to stop when my tech goes wrong because I don't have any.
BUT do you have issuses with chaffing? Perhaps high-tech solution for THAT might do you some good!
As for your last point above, there's a Dutch woman with YouTube channel who motorcycles to the back of beyond . . . and then beyond that . . . who is having a bike designed for her, that eliminates most of the high-tech electronics in favor of low-tech reliability AND repair . . . especially in boondock/outback situations.
Bike tech Disc brakes - broadly +ve as long as you don't boil them or lose pressure E-shifting - why? Tubeless - total disaster
A bike with disc brakes, double or triple chainset on a Shimano sealed bottom bracket and 8 speed cassette will give you the best braking and a long lived drivetrain..
I don’t care if I look like a pathetic PB centrist dad with my stupid Garmin smartwatch
I just want to die later rather than earlier, and it seems that these might help
Genuinely surprised to read this.
Given all the booze and drugs you've done, I always kind of thought you took the "live well, die young" mentality?
I didn’t expect to be enjoying myself quite this much at this later stage. Lots of travel. Good friends. Still a decent income. Fascinating job. Get on with my kids (also worry about them - and they probably need me to hang about). Its a pretty good package
But it doesn’t just need me alive it needs me relatively fit and healthy. Think these watches might help
Well they certainly won't harm.
Re age, it struck me recently how unusual I must be in being 64 with both parents alive, D91 and M88. That's a combined 243 years, the three of us.
Can anybody here beat that or get close?
I am at 235 becoming 237 in less than 2 months time. Both my folks are in good physical health, just a bit of arthritis etc. Also both mentally intact apart from their politics.
I have said for a long time that Cleverly is the Tories' best option. It seems very, very obvious to me. So what is the case against him? There must be one.
He's not the brightest.
He'll be a centrist plodder when they need to roll the dice is a case against him I guess.
Although I can tell you for a fact that Labour want Badenoch. But who knows who the best choice is. Whoever gets it could surprise in either direction and the next GE is ages away.
I'm torn between Badenoch and Cleverly. Cleverly is on paper the best candidate (affable, non-alienating) - he will get a hearing, but it might be a hearing which concludes "Thanks, but still no." Badenoch could be awful (is she a capable manager/administrator/people handler? Maybe she is, but I've not seen much to convince me) or could be brilliant (in a reaches-the-parts-other-Tories-don't-reach way). Both seem to me preferable to Jenrick.
Badenoch is as mad as Truss and also seems to be heading down the ultra libertarian line while being obsessively anti woke.
Cleverly is Rishi 2 with less energy and drive, so it is Jenrick for me now, at least he is offering something different and with vigour
It is my ardent prayer that for the sake of the conservative party that Jenrick is nowhere near the leadership
Maybe but at the moment I have a vote as a party member and you don't, if Jenrick gets through tomorrow
Yes but I want a conservative party that can win power, not an imitation of Reform
I don’t care if I look like a pathetic PB centrist dad with my stupid Garmin smartwatch
I just want to die later rather than earlier, and it seems that these might help
Genuinely surprised to read this.
Given all the booze and drugs you've done, I always kind of thought you took the "live well, die young" mentality?
I didn’t expect to be enjoying myself quite this much at this later stage. Lots of travel. Good friends. Still a decent income. Fascinating job. Get on with my kids (also worry about them - and they probably need me to hang about). Its a pretty good package
But it doesn’t just need me alive it needs me relatively fit and healthy. Think these watches might help
Well they certainly won't harm.
Re age, it struck me recently how unusual I must be in being 64 with both parents alive, D91 and M88. That's a combined 243 years, the three of us.
Can anybody here beat that or get close?
I am at 235 becoming 237 in less than 2 months time. Both my folks are in good physical health, just a bit of arthritis etc. Also both mentally intact apart from their politics.
I don’t care if I look like a pathetic PB centrist dad with my stupid Garmin smartwatch
I just want to die later rather than earlier, and it seems that these might help
Genuinely surprised to read this.
Given all the booze and drugs you've done, I always kind of thought you took the "live well, die young" mentality?
I didn’t expect to be enjoying myself quite this much at this later stage. Lots of travel. Good friends. Still a decent income. Fascinating job. Get on with my kids (also worry about them - and they probably need me to hang about). Its a pretty good package
But it doesn’t just need me alive it needs me relatively fit and healthy. Think these watches might help
Well they certainly won't harm.
Re age, it struck me recently how unusual I must be in being 64 with both parents alive, D91 and M88. That's a combined 243 years, the three of us.
Can anybody here beat that or get close?
111. Much lower than that and someone's an orphan.
An 18 year old with parents that had a child at 14… that makes 46 the lowest number of an adult I think
Ah hang on, sorry, I wasn't meaning to focus on when people's parents died. It just struck me how unusual it was to be 64 and with both of them still alive. 243 and counting as it were. Wondered if anyone else was in that same (fortunate) boat but with an even bigger number.
My dad lost both parents at 64, in fairly quick succession. I was 38 when I lost that pair of grandparents.
“Anyone staying in approved accommodation in Geneva is entitled to a free transport card. When you stay in Geneva, you will receive a free digital version of the Geneva Transport Card. This card enables you to use public transport free of charge in Geneva for the duration of your stay.”
If I don’t spend a penny on transport I may be able to have TWO kebabs
Not so much fun when not a team game, but we used to have fun trying to find the most expensive watch on offer in Geneva... Cheap though.
Following on from yesterday, I am in a suburban mall in Tennessee (don’t ask!) and, wedged between a Regal Cinema and a Cheesecake Factory there is a Rolex store…
“Anyone staying in approved accommodation in Geneva is entitled to a free transport card. When you stay in Geneva, you will receive a free digital version of the Geneva Transport Card. This card enables you to use public transport free of charge in Geneva for the duration of your stay.”
If I don’t spend a penny on transport I may be able to have TWO kebabs
Including flights and accommodation I might just have crept over my £400 Geneva budget
If you are of a certain mindset, you might find yourself getting a little obsessed with metrics. "I must beat my step count!!!" is a beginners=level one.
Enjoy Geneva.
These things are amazeybollox
It’s like having a little genie tugging at your arm. “Don’t miss your flight!”
Did you miss many flights without it?
I find people who actually enjoy being buzzed by constant notifications very weird - my phone is permanently on silent - and even weirder when people enjoy constant notifications on the wrist.
Sort of like how it suddenly became acceptable to use your phone at the dinner table in the late 2000s. The idea that you're less present and in the moment and more attached to the tech that's telling you what to do or how to behave.
If I live to be 180, I will still never own a "smart" watch. My watch tells the time. Nothing more, nothing less.
And if that works for you, cool.
Alerts are configurable. Just about everything on such watches (Garmin, Apple or whatever...) is configurable. Mrs J has her watch much more tightly tied down (not linked to any other accounts) than I have.
Oh, I get it. Leon absolutely nails it when he says smart watches are for centrist dads. They are for MAMIL types who obsess over their step count, or how much REM sleep they got last night. People who will bore you about their gore-tex clobber they bought for their latest hike across the peaks. They have a catchment, and more power to the people who enjoy them. Nothing wrong with being a MAMIL who's into gore-tex. Many of my friends are. But I prefer a life without being buzzed, or tracked.
I was thinking about the Tory guy who was wearing a rolex in the winter fuel allowance video the other day. Datejusts were de rigeur for men in their 30s/40s in the 80s, which is why they are such an old man watch now. There are photos of datejusts with their early 80s price tags still attached - about £600. But a watch like that will travel through time with you, and be something you can pass along to your children - while during the same number of years, between eight and twenty iterations of the Apple SmartWatch will be thrown on a landfill somewhere. They are, to me, distinctly mid.
I still have my grandfather's watch, and while it's worthless, it tells the time well enough. It will be ticking along long after I am dead. There is something romantic about time and timelessness, which watches provide, while smart watches - dead or obsolete in a few years - do not. I'm in love with the romance of watches, which makes me just as odd as a MAMIL obsessed with his step count. But I find no romance in smart watches, which are disposable bits of kit, as opposed to marvels of mechanical engineering or heirlooms to be passed from father to son.
As I say, nothing wrong with smart watches - they're just not for me.
That's quite an entertaining rant, except for the fact you can use these watches as just watches to tell the time, with no tracking, stepcounts etc. from memory, on Garmin at least, you need to enable much of this stuff. (Apple may be different).
And before you say that you're paying a lot for 'just a watch'; just look at Rolex et al.
You seem personally insulted, despite the fact I go out of my way to point out it's horses for courses all the way through.
I'm a watch collector (a nerd?! on PB? never!) and would never own a smartwatch. As I say, I'm in love with the romance of the history, the mechanical engineering, and so on. A less kind analysis would say that watches are to men what handbags are to women. Though most of my watches are in the £250-1500 bracket, save for a couple of grail pieces.
I gain no pleasure from having my body functions tracked via my wrist or having notifications appear on it while I'm at dinner. I do like the idea that some of the watches I have I will have worn for sixty or more years before I die, and have watches that my forefathers owned. But as I say, it's horses for courses. If your smartwatch gives you pleasure, wear it.
I do not own a Rolex.
I have a fitbit tracker thing in my right wrist and a fancier watch for my left wrist and a pocket watch from my wife for our marriage. I even have a pocket sundial (not so useful in Ireland). I'd love to collect a few more fancy mechanical watches. I might upgrade to a fancier hiking smartwatch at some point.
I don't see any conflict between the two types of devices.
Absolutely - good compromise, that! If I ever felt the need to track my heart rate etc that's what I would do, too.
I totally see why people who value the functionality of a smartwatch rave about them. But I wouldn't wear one to a black tie do (the last black tie do I went to, I wore a £150 Orient Bambino).
To those who don't see the sentimentality in mechanical watches or the history in them, I ask you - would Christopher Walken have stuffed a Garmin up his ass and kept it there for two years to make sure it was passed down to Bruce Willis?
That's the power of watches. They travel with us, through time.
That's the power of jewelry, surely?
Because that's what a nice Omega is. I wore one because it looked good, and it made me look good.
As I've gotten older and more health conscious, and less concerned about what others think about me - or, to put it another way, as I'm no longer looking to attract a mate - then a Garmin suited me better.
But horses for courses.
As my previous comment, "watches are handbags for men" ...though "watches are jewellery for men" would be just as appropriate. They're things us guys can get sentimentally attached to.
My speedy, I'm attached to. (Though the new FOIS has turned my head and made me wonder if it's time to swap). I can't ever imagine getting attached to a Garmin or iWatch with a three year lifespan in the same way.
It's definitely a slow news day on PB when we're into watches for two days running...
Rather shows the Tories diminished position in the scheme of things, doesn't it.
The smart thing for the Tories to do right now is to skip the "lurch to the right, red meat for the 100,000 or so members but voter repellent to the general public" bit they went through last time and skip straight to the Michael Howard caretaker type leader who will allow someone more voter friendly to emerge.
I'm not sure they've got that, even with Cleverley, though he is the best of a rotten bunch.
Jenrick isn't even Hague territory - he's "imagine if Alan B'Stard was real and you elected him" territory.
At least B'stard had a certain charisma.
Jenrick is more Piers Fletcher-Dervish. He wants to be B'Stard, but you need charisma to carry that off, and he doesn't really have it.
Farage, on the other hand... There's even a certain assonance in the names.
I agree. Farage (and Boris to some extent, as well as the likes of Mogg) have a hint of the B’stard. They look like they might be enjoying themselves, and, when they pull it off, the public likes that.
To me Farage genuinely comes across as likeable. That doesn't actually mean I or others will like him depending on what he says and does, but the point that he has charisma is true.
Charisma doesn't map to likeability though. Lots of charismatic people aren't likeable. Eg Robert Maxwell, Jimmy Savile, Eamon Holmes.
Jeffrey Archer is charismatic too. Perhaps you'd have him down as likeable though?
I wouldn't. So, yes, another good example.
Many years ago I read the biography by Michael Crick. It was very out of date then so even worse now. I read it wanting to hate Archer, but I couldn't. I ended up sympathising with him and had some admiration for him when I finished it. The book didn't reach the point of his complete fall from grace and although there were many things that should have brought him down, it shouldn't have been that. I know he committed perjury and that shouldn't be excused, but again circumstances.
@NJ_Timothy I supported Tom Tugendhat for the Tory leadership until he was knocked out today. I will vote for Rob Jenrick tomorrow.
My party needs to be unsparing in its analysis of why we lost and what we must do next. Rob has shown his willingness to do that, so he has my full support. https://x.com/NJ_Timothy/status/1843714939896377856
@NJ_Timothy I supported Tom Tugendhat for the Tory leadership until he was knocked out today. I will vote for Rob Jenrick tomorrow.
My party needs to be unsparing in its analysis of why we lost and what we must do next. Rob has shown his willingness to do that, so he has my full support. https://x.com/NJ_Timothy/status/1843714939896377856
Basically looking for someone who will do worse than May to obscure his own glorious role in that debacle
@NJ_Timothy I supported Tom Tugendhat for the Tory leadership until he was knocked out today. I will vote for Rob Jenrick tomorrow.
My party needs to be unsparing in its analysis of why we lost and what we must do next. Rob has shown his willingness to do that, so he has my full support. https://x.com/NJ_Timothy/status/1843714939896377856
Basically looking for someone who will do worse than May to obscure his own glorious role in that debacle
May got 42% of the vote, Rishi would have killed for that, as indeed would Starmer
Under-analysed up to now. I wonder if it's significant, for this election ?
The Overlooked Demographic That Is a Huge Opportunity for Democrats
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/10/08/state-college-voters-democrats-demographic-00182520 .. Walz is trying to flip that well-thumbed script by framing his Republican opponent as the patronizing sophisticate and himself as the regular guy who went to colleges no one’s heard of and made his career in the region where he was born. It’s a clever rhetorical tactic. But more than that, it has the makings of a larger political strategy.
Walz’s populist rhetoric can be read as an appeal to a certain long-overlooked demographic, which he himself represents: the “state college voter.” These are Americans who, while college educated, didn’t leave home to attend fancy colleges like Harvard or Yale. Instead, they mostly studied at what are called “regional public universities”: not the flagship state universities but unassuming institutions whose names have the word “State” in them (California State University-Fullerton) or refer to their location (Northern Illinois University). Instead of pursing lucrative jobs in distant coastal metropolises, they generally built their careers near where they grew up, earning more modest incomes but contributing their tax dollars and civic energies to their home regions. They comprise a far bigger share of the electorate than those who went to elite colleges. But as a group they have been almost completely ignored politically, until Walz came on the national scene. Understanding who these voters are, what makes them tick and how to reach out to them could make a difference in this razor-close election...
One really interesting finding, among many, in this new report: ethnic minority graduates are more likely to vote Tory than non-graduates, the opposite education effect as we now see among white voters. https://x.com/DrAlanWager/status/1843570008103977175
I don’t care if I look like a pathetic PB centrist dad with my stupid Garmin smartwatch
I just want to die later rather than earlier, and it seems that these might help
Genuinely surprised to read this.
Given all the booze and drugs you've done, I always kind of thought you took the "live well, die young" mentality?
I didn’t expect to be enjoying myself quite this much at this later stage. Lots of travel. Good friends. Still a decent income. Fascinating job. Get on with my kids (also worry about them - and they probably need me to hang about). Its a pretty good package
But it doesn’t just need me alive it needs me relatively fit and healthy. Think these watches might help
It is amazing what we can do these days at an older age if healthy. I am 70 in a few weeks. Admittedly I gave up squash when I was 40, catamarans in my 50s and skiing in my 60s, but I can still cycle 500 km in just over a week on holiday with little preparation and enjoy the good things in life and do physically challenging jobs daily eg I chop all the logs for our 3 stoves which is a hell of a lot of logs.
Compare this to the 1960s when I was a teenager. Philosan for the over 40s, many dead from cancer, heart attack or stroke in their 50s, knackered by your 60s.
We are so much luckier these days when we reach 60 if we are still fit.
I have said for a long time that Cleverly is the Tories' best option. It seems very, very obvious to me. So what is the case against him? There must be one.
He's not the brightest.
He'll be a centrist plodder when they need to roll the dice is a case against him I guess.
Although I can tell you for a fact that Labour want Badenoch. But who knows who the best choice is. Whoever gets it could surprise in either direction and the next GE is ages away.
I'm torn between Badenoch and Cleverly. Cleverly is on paper the best candidate (affable, non-alienating) - he will get a hearing, but it might be a hearing which concludes "Thanks, but still no." Badenoch could be awful (is she a capable manager/administrator/people handler? Maybe she is, but I've not seen much to convince me) or could be brilliant (in a reaches-the-parts-other-Tories-don't-reach way). Both seem to me preferable to Jenrick.
Badenoch is as mad as Truss and also seems to be heading down the ultra libertarian line while being obsessively anti woke.
Cleverly is Rishi 2 with less energy and drive, so it is Jenrick for me now, at least he is offering something different and with vigour
It is my ardent prayer that for the sake of the conservative party that Jenrick is nowhere near the leadership
Maybe but at the moment I have a vote as a party member and you don't, if Jenrick gets through tomorrow
Yes but I want a conservative party that can win power, not an imitation of Reform
Jenrick would be the worst possible choice
Badenoch would be the worst choice actually, polling worst of the final 3 v Starmer with More in Common amongst 2019 Conservative voters
One really interesting finding, among many, in this new report: ethnic minority graduates are more likely to vote Tory than non-graduates, the opposite education effect as we now see among white voters. https://x.com/DrAlanWager/status/1843570008103977175
/pedantmode/ I think Dr Alan Wager means to say "than" instead of "as"
Milton is back to category 5 and now much much bigger than last night.
There’s going to be serious coastal flooding in Florida even after it weakens before landfall. Enough for there still to be disruption on election day.
Milton is back to category 5 and now much much bigger than last night.
There’s going to be serious coastal flooding in Florida even after it weakens before landfall. Enough for there still to be disruption on election day.
David C Bannerman @DCBMEP Calling all 121 Conservative MPs!? Please be very careful tomorrow in your choice. All my contacts across all Conservative groups. are warning that the wrong choice means they will be off to Reform with the wrong leader. In my view only @RobertJenrick can hold them back and reassure them. The new Leader could find the party further diminished from 100k membership now (down from 160k for Sunak v Truss) with Reform on 80k.
@AlisonPearson7 is saying the same thing if Continuity Cleverly wins - she’ll be off too: ‘If the new Conservative leader ends up being James Cleverly, that’s it’
There is a good case each of the three candidates can make to be put through & be elected. But I’m not convinced approach of “pick who I want or I’ll defect to another party” will impress Conservative MPs & members nor does it demonstrate much party loyalty. Could well backfire
I don’t care if I look like a pathetic PB centrist dad with my stupid Garmin smartwatch
I just want to die later rather than earlier, and it seems that these might help
Genuinely surprised to read this.
Given all the booze and drugs you've done, I always kind of thought you took the "live well, die young" mentality?
I didn’t expect to be enjoying myself quite this much at this later stage. Lots of travel. Good friends. Still a decent income. Fascinating job. Get on with my kids (also worry about them - and they probably need me to hang about). Its a pretty good package
But it doesn’t just need me alive it needs me relatively fit and healthy. Think these watches might help
It is amazing what we can do these days at an older age if healthy. I am 70 in a few weeks. Admittedly I gave up squash when I was 40, catamarans in my 50s and skiing in my 60s, but I can still cycle 500 km in just over a week on holiday with little preparation and enjoy the good things in life and do physically challenging jobs daily eg I chop all the logs for our 3 stoves which is a hell of a lot of logs.
Compare this to the 1960s when I was a teenager. Philosan for the over 40s, many dead from cancer, heart attack or stroke in their 50s, knackered by your 60s.
We are so much luckier these days when we reach 60 if we are still fit.
My old man died just short of 55. His job entailed the installation of milling equipment. Flour mills, built with wooden frames, had a nasty habit of catching fire unless the timber was lined with asbestos. Pre-cut asbestos sheets wouldn't always fit so he'd have to climb in with a hand saw to trim the corners and edges. Ironically he went to his early grave believing it was due to his smoking habit because mesothelioma hadn't yet been invented.
BoZo made a big play of claiming that nobody else paid for his suits (just his food, accommodation, wedding, holidays...)
Quite right too.
If I was a donor and paid however much this cost I would be horrified it still looks like a sack of shit
Can he not afford a belt?
Or decent shoes.
Those probably are v expensive shoes. Church’s or whatever
He’s one of those guys that looks scruffy in anything. To be fair, he’s realised this and turned it to his advantage - made it his shtick
They are possibly good shoes poorly fitted / badly looked after.
But look at where the man's cuffs hang relative to his hands. That would be unforgivable if he had wandered into Next and bought the first thing he found off the peg, let alone if he had walked into a half decent shop and had someone help him into a suit the right size for him.
David C Bannerman @DCBMEP Calling all 121 Conservative MPs!? Please be very careful tomorrow in your choice. All my contacts across all Conservative groups. are warning that the wrong choice means they will be off to Reform with the wrong leader. In my view only @RobertJenrick can hold them back and reassure them. The new Leader could find the party further diminished from 100k membership now (down from 160k for Sunak v Truss) with Reform on 80k.
@AlisonPearson7 is saying the same thing if Continuity Cleverly wins - she’ll be off too: ‘If the new Conservative leader ends up being James Cleverly, that’s it’
There is a good case each of the three candidates can make to be put through & be elected. But I’m not convinced approach of “pick who I want or I’ll defect to another party” will impress Conservative MPs & members nor does it demonstrate much party loyalty. Could well backfire
It is a bit difficult - they do need to prevent further defection to Reform and also probably to win over people who voted Reform last time (regardless of whether those people were previous Tory voters), but it suggests just bluntly stating people will jump ship if the wrong candidate wins gives the impression that the party is already irrevocably broken if their factions are so distinct.
Including flights and accommodation I might just have crept over my £400 Geneva budget
If you are of a certain mindset, you might find yourself getting a little obsessed with metrics. "I must beat my step count!!!" is a beginners=level one.
Enjoy Geneva.
These things are amazeybollox
It’s like having a little genie tugging at your arm. “Don’t miss your flight!”
Did you miss many flights without it?
I find people who actually enjoy being buzzed by constant notifications very weird - my phone is permanently on silent - and even weirder when people enjoy constant notifications on the wrist.
Sort of like how it suddenly became acceptable to use your phone at the dinner table in the late 2000s. The idea that you're less present and in the moment and more attached to the tech that's telling you what to do or how to behave.
If I live to be 180, I will still never own a "smart" watch. My watch tells the time. Nothing more, nothing less.
And if that works for you, cool.
Alerts are configurable. Just about everything on such watches (Garmin, Apple or whatever...) is configurable. Mrs J has her watch much more tightly tied down (not linked to any other accounts) than I have.
Oh, I get it. Leon absolutely nails it when he says smart watches are for centrist dads. They are for MAMIL types who obsess over their step count, or how much REM sleep they got last night. People who will bore you about their gore-tex clobber they bought for their latest hike across the peaks. They have a catchment, and more power to the people who enjoy them. Nothing wrong with being a MAMIL who's into gore-tex. Many of my friends are. But I prefer a life without being buzzed, or tracked.
I was thinking about the Tory guy who was wearing a rolex in the winter fuel allowance video the other day. Datejusts were de rigeur for men in their 30s/40s in the 80s, which is why they are such an old man watch now. There are photos of datejusts with their early 80s price tags still attached - about £600. But a watch like that will travel through time with you, and be something you can pass along to your children - while during the same number of years, between eight and twenty iterations of the Apple SmartWatch will be thrown on a landfill somewhere. They are, to me, distinctly mid.
I still have my grandfather's watch, and while it's worthless, it tells the time well enough. It will be ticking along long after I am dead. There is something romantic about time and timelessness, which watches provide, while smart watches - dead or obsolete in a few years - do not. I'm in love with the romance of watches, which makes me just as odd as a MAMIL obsessed with his step count. But I find no romance in smart watches, which are disposable bits of kit, as opposed to marvels of mechanical engineering or heirlooms to be passed from father to son.
As I say, nothing wrong with smart watches - they're just not for me.
That's quite an entertaining rant, except for the fact you can use these watches as just watches to tell the time, with no tracking, stepcounts etc. from memory, on Garmin at least, you need to enable much of this stuff. (Apple may be different).
And before you say that you're paying a lot for 'just a watch'; just look at Rolex et al.
You seem personally insulted, despite the fact I go out of my way to point out it's horses for courses all the way through.
I'm a watch collector (a nerd?! on PB? never!) and would never own a smartwatch. As I say, I'm in love with the romance of the history, the mechanical engineering, and so on. A less kind analysis would say that watches are to men what handbags are to women. Though most of my watches are in the £250-1500 bracket, save for a couple of grail pieces.
I gain no pleasure from having my body functions tracked via my wrist or having notifications appear on it while I'm at dinner. I do like the idea that some of the watches I have I will have worn for sixty or more years before I die, and have watches that my forefathers owned. But as I say, it's horses for courses. If your smartwatch gives you pleasure, wear it.
I do not own a Rolex.
I have a fitbit tracker thing in my right wrist and a fancier watch for my left wrist and a pocket watch from my wife for our marriage. I even have a pocket sundial (not so useful in Ireland). I'd love to collect a few more fancy mechanical watches. I might upgrade to a fancier hiking smartwatch at some point.
I don't see any conflict between the two types of devices.
Absolutely - good compromise, that! If I ever felt the need to track my heart rate etc that's what I would do, too.
I totally see why people who value the functionality of a smartwatch rave about them. But I wouldn't wear one to a black tie do (the last black tie do I went to, I wore a £150 Orient Bambino).
To those who don't see the sentimentality in mechanical watches or the history in them, I ask you - would Christopher Walken have stuffed a Garmin up his ass and kept it there for two years to make sure it was passed down to Bruce Willis?
That's the power of watches. They travel with us, through time.
That's the power of jewelry, surely?
Because that's what a nice Omega is. I wore one because it looked good, and it made me look good.
As I've gotten older and more health conscious, and less concerned about what others think about me - or, to put it another way, as I'm no longer looking to attract a mate - then a Garmin suited me better.
But horses for courses.
As my previous comment, "watches are handbags for men" ...though "watches are jewellery for men" would be just as appropriate. They're things us guys can get sentimentally attached to.
My speedy, I'm attached to. (Though the new FOIS has turned my head and made me wonder if it's time to swap). I can't ever imagine getting attached to a Garmin or iWatch with a three year lifespan in the same way.
It's definitely a slow news day on PB when we're into watches for two days running...
Rather shows the Tories diminished position in the scheme of things, doesn't it.
The smart thing for the Tories to do right now is to skip the "lurch to the right, red meat for the 100,000 or so members but voter repellent to the general public" bit they went through last time and skip straight to the Michael Howard caretaker type leader who will allow someone more voter friendly to emerge.
I'm not sure they've got that, even with Cleverley, though he is the best of a rotten bunch.
Jenrick isn't even Hague territory - he's "imagine if Alan B'Stard was real and you elected him" territory.
At least B'stard had a certain charisma.
Jenrick is more Piers Fletcher-Dervish. He wants to be B'Stard, but you need charisma to carry that off, and he doesn't really have it.
Farage, on the other hand... There's even a certain assonance in the names.
I agree. Farage (and Boris to some extent, as well as the likes of Mogg) have a hint of the B’stard. They look like they might be enjoying themselves, and, when they pull it off, the public likes that.
To me Farage genuinely comes across as likeable. That doesn't actually mean I or others will like him depending on what he says and does, but the point that he has charisma is true.
Charisma doesn't map to likeability though. Lots of charismatic people aren't likeable. Eg Robert Maxwell, Jimmy Savile, Eamon Holmes.
Jeffrey Archer is charismatic too. Perhaps you'd have him down as likeable though?
Having been in a room he was working (after the first batch of scandals, before the second)... JA isn't conventionally likeable, but he can electrify a room of ordinaries and you can see the point.
Had he stayed a prep school sports master, every team he coached would have overachieved, and he would have retired with everyone loving him and every boy remembering him thirty years later and the positive effect he had on their lives.
But, of course, he couldn't have done that.
I worked at a venue where his wife was hosting a charity event. I was wearing a suit so she came up to talk to me obviously mistaking me for a guest. The look of disgust and the speed that she left when she found out I worked there gave me a very low opinion of her.
David C Bannerman @DCBMEP Calling all 121 Conservative MPs!? Please be very careful tomorrow in your choice. All my contacts across all Conservative groups. are warning that the wrong choice means they will be off to Reform with the wrong leader. In my view only @RobertJenrick can hold them back and reassure them. The new Leader could find the party further diminished from 100k membership now (down from 160k for Sunak v Truss) with Reform on 80k.
@AlisonPearson7 is saying the same thing if Continuity Cleverly wins - she’ll be off too: ‘If the new Conservative leader ends up being James Cleverly, that’s it’
There is a good case each of the three candidates can make to be put through & be elected. But I’m not convinced approach of “pick who I want or I’ll defect to another party” will impress Conservative MPs & members nor does it demonstrate much party loyalty. Could well backfire
David C Bannerman @DCBMEP Calling all 121 Conservative MPs!? Please be very careful tomorrow in your choice. All my contacts across all Conservative groups. are warning that the wrong choice means they will be off to Reform with the wrong leader. In my view only @RobertJenrick can hold them back and reassure them. The new Leader could find the party further diminished from 100k membership now (down from 160k for Sunak v Truss) with Reform on 80k.
@AlisonPearson7 is saying the same thing if Continuity Cleverly wins - she’ll be off too: ‘If the new Conservative leader ends up being James Cleverly, that’s it’
There is a good case each of the three candidates can make to be put through & be elected. But I’m not convinced approach of “pick who I want or I’ll defect to another party” will impress Conservative MPs & members nor does it demonstrate much party loyalty. Could well backfire
As far as I am concerned stop threatening to go and just do it and join Reform
I don’t care if I look like a pathetic PB centrist dad with my stupid Garmin smartwatch
I just want to die later rather than earlier, and it seems that these might help
Genuinely surprised to read this.
Given all the booze and drugs you've done, I always kind of thought you took the "live well, die young" mentality?
I didn’t expect to be enjoying myself quite this much at this later stage. Lots of travel. Good friends. Still a decent income. Fascinating job. Get on with my kids (also worry about them - and they probably need me to hang about). Its a pretty good package
But it doesn’t just need me alive it needs me relatively fit and healthy. Think these watches might help
It is amazing what we can do these days at an older age if healthy. I am 70 in a few weeks. Admittedly I gave up squash when I was 40, catamarans in my 50s and skiing in my 60s, but I can still cycle 500 km in just over a week on holiday with little preparation and enjoy the good things in life and do physically challenging jobs daily eg I chop all the logs for our 3 stoves which is a hell of a lot of logs.
Compare this to the 1960s when I was a teenager. Philosan for the over 40s, many dead from cancer, heart attack or stroke in their 50s, knackered by your 60s.
We are so much luckier these days when we reach 60 if we are still fit.
A relative of mine is almost 70 and exercises for at least an hour every morning, weights and various cardio, and frequently go for 20 mile bike rides and the like.
It's not as though they are in perfect shape, they have periodic back troubles from 50 years of working in factories and buiding sites etc, so they have lighter exercise videos and chair exercises and such when that's all they can do.
I'd say it was inspirational, as it is fitter than I am, but it hasn't actually inspired me to action just yet. But put the work in earlier and it clearly pays off.
And people can just look really good thesedays too. Must have been a moisteriser revolution or something.
@NJ_Timothy I supported Tom Tugendhat for the Tory leadership until he was knocked out today. I will vote for Rob Jenrick tomorrow.
My party needs to be unsparing in its analysis of why we lost and what we must do next. Rob has shown his willingness to do that, so he has my full support. https://x.com/NJ_Timothy/status/1843714939896377856
Basically looking for someone who will do worse than May to obscure his own glorious role in that debacle
May got 42% of the vote, Rishi would have killed for that, as indeed would Starmer
Conservative activist accuses PM and LoTO of being aspiring murderers, in shock story.
David C Bannerman @DCBMEP Calling all 121 Conservative MPs!? Please be very careful tomorrow in your choice. All my contacts across all Conservative groups. are warning that the wrong choice means they will be off to Reform with the wrong leader. In my view only @RobertJenrick can hold them back and reassure them. The new Leader could find the party further diminished from 100k membership now (down from 160k for Sunak v Truss) with Reform on 80k.
@AlisonPearson7 is saying the same thing if Continuity Cleverly wins - she’ll be off too: ‘If the new Conservative leader ends up being James Cleverly, that’s it’
There is a good case each of the three candidates can make to be put through & be elected. But I’m not convinced approach of “pick who I want or I’ll defect to another party” will impress Conservative MPs & members nor does it demonstrate much party loyalty. Could well backfire
It is a bit difficult - they do need to prevent further defection to Reform and also probably to win over people who voted Reform last time (regardless of whether those people were previous Tory voters), but it suggests just bluntly stating people will jump ship if the wrong candidate wins gives the impression that the party is already irrevocably broken if their factions are so distinct.
There is the other side of the equation. Some who left because of Truss may come back. It slightly surprised me that they didn’t use the gap before the election to drum up some cash from new member.
Milton is back to category 5 and now much much bigger than last night.
There’s going to be serious coastal flooding in Florida even after it weakens before landfall. Enough for there still to be disruption on election day.
Paradise Lost.
It’s going a bit bonkers again now it’s clear of Yucatan. Pressure back down to 902hpa, peak winds 160kt which is 184mph. Breezy.
I have said for a long time that Cleverly is the Tories' best option. It seems very, very obvious to me. So what is the case against him? There must be one.
He's not the brightest.
He'll be a centrist plodder when they need to roll the dice is a case against him I guess.
Although I can tell you for a fact that Labour want Badenoch. But who knows who the best choice is. Whoever gets it could surprise in either direction and the next GE is ages away.
I'm torn between Badenoch and Cleverly. Cleverly is on paper the best candidate (affable, non-alienating) - he will get a hearing, but it might be a hearing which concludes "Thanks, but still no." Badenoch could be awful (is she a capable manager/administrator/people handler? Maybe she is, but I've not seen much to convince me) or could be brilliant (in a reaches-the-parts-other-Tories-don't-reach way). Both seem to me preferable to Jenrick.
Badenoch is as mad as Truss and also seems to be heading down the ultra libertarian line while being obsessively anti woke.
Cleverly is Rishi 2 with less energy and drive, so it is Jenrick for me now, at least he is offering something different and with vigour
It is my ardent prayer that for the sake of the conservative party that Jenrick is nowhere near the leadership
Maybe but at the moment I have a vote as a party member and you don't, if Jenrick gets through tomorrow
Yes but I want a conservative party that can win power, not an imitation of Reform
Jenrick would be the worst possible choice
Badenoch would be the worst choice actually, polling worst of the final 3 v Starmer with More in Common amongst 2019 Conservative voters
As always HYUFD, you're good with the polling evidence. But I'd suggest there's a massive don't know factor with this one. None of these four are well known with 2019 voters, and there's massive scope to change minds, for better or worse.
@NJ_Timothy I supported Tom Tugendhat for the Tory leadership until he was knocked out today. I will vote for Rob Jenrick tomorrow.
My party needs to be unsparing in its analysis of why we lost and what we must do next. Rob has shown his willingness to do that, so he has my full support. https://x.com/NJ_Timothy/status/1843714939896377856
Basically looking for someone who will do worse than May to obscure his own glorious role in that debacle
May got 42% of the vote, Rishi would have killed for that, as indeed would Starmer
May 317 seats Starmer 411 seats (now 403 of course)
Under-analysed up to now. I wonder if it's significant, for this election ?
The Overlooked Demographic That Is a Huge Opportunity for Democrats
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/10/08/state-college-voters-democrats-demographic-00182520 .. Walz is trying to flip that well-thumbed script by framing his Republican opponent as the patronizing sophisticate and himself as the regular guy who went to colleges no one’s heard of and made his career in the region where he was born. It’s a clever rhetorical tactic. But more than that, it has the makings of a larger political strategy.
Walz’s populist rhetoric can be read as an appeal to a certain long-overlooked demographic, which he himself represents: the “state college voter.” These are Americans who, while college educated, didn’t leave home to attend fancy colleges like Harvard or Yale. Instead, they mostly studied at what are called “regional public universities”: not the flagship state universities but unassuming institutions whose names have the word “State” in them (California State University-Fullerton) or refer to their location (Northern Illinois University). Instead of pursing lucrative jobs in distant coastal metropolises, they generally built their careers near where they grew up, earning more modest incomes but contributing their tax dollars and civic energies to their home regions. They comprise a far bigger share of the electorate than those who went to elite colleges. But as a group they have been almost completely ignored politically, until Walz came on the national scene. Understanding who these voters are, what makes them tick and how to reach out to them could make a difference in this razor-close election...
Interesting. Note that Mark Kelly, also on the list to be VP, graduated from US Merchant Marine Academy, as opposed to Annapolis. Which must have made his career in the Navy a lot harder.
Given the American class system, that background difference has a big effect on probable earnings, careers etc. makes the Oxbridge thing look almost casual..,
I don’t care if I look like a pathetic PB centrist dad with my stupid Garmin smartwatch
I just want to die later rather than earlier, and it seems that these might help
Genuinely surprised to read this.
Given all the booze and drugs you've done, I always kind of thought you took the "live well, die young" mentality?
I didn’t expect to be enjoying myself quite this much at this later stage. Lots of travel. Good friends. Still a decent income. Fascinating job. Get on with my kids (also worry about them - and they probably need me to hang about). Its a pretty good package
But it doesn’t just need me alive it needs me relatively fit and healthy. Think these watches might help
Well they certainly won't harm.
Re age, it struck me recently how unusual I must be in being 64 with both parents alive, D91 and M88. That's a combined 243 years, the three of us.
Can anybody here beat that or get close?
I am at 235 becoming 237 in less than 2 months time. Both my folks are in good physical health, just a bit of arthritis etc. Also both mentally intact apart from their politics.
Ah ha! I'm pleased to yield.
You still have 6 years on me!
Oh yes, sorry! I read as 245. That would have made your parents very old given you're only in your 50s, come to think of it.
BoZo made a big play of claiming that nobody else paid for his suits (just his food, accommodation, wedding, holidays...)
Quite right too.
If I was a donor and paid however much this cost I would be horrified it still looks like a sack of shit
Can he not afford a belt?
Or decent shoes.
Those probably are v expensive shoes. Church’s or whatever
He’s one of those guys that looks scruffy in anything. To be fair, he’s realised this and turned it to his advantage - made it his shtick
Yes he has. I suffer from a similar problem (we have discussed before). I have short arms and legs and a long/broad body. If my legs were the right length for my body I would be very tall. If my body was the length that matched my legs I would be one of Snow White's dwarfs. Clothes are not attractive on me. Clothes suit long legs and not broad bodies.
I also struggle in a racing car. I can't get in a single seater. My head is higher than the rollbar even though I am within the height limit. I can't reach the pedals. I can't get the steering wheel on because of my thighs and my arms are outside of the cockpit. Otherwise I am a perfect fit.
Kemi’s biggest problem when it comes to the membership outside the south east, Is that she’s seen as DougieSmith’s protege and that is likely fatal for her chances in the members ballot!
I don’t care if I look like a pathetic PB centrist dad with my stupid Garmin smartwatch
I just want to die later rather than earlier, and it seems that these might help
Genuinely surprised to read this.
Given all the booze and drugs you've done, I always kind of thought you took the "live well, die young" mentality?
I didn’t expect to be enjoying myself quite this much at this later stage. Lots of travel. Good friends. Still a decent income. Fascinating job. Get on with my kids (also worry about them - and they probably need me to hang about). Its a pretty good package
But it doesn’t just need me alive it needs me relatively fit and healthy. Think these watches might help
Well they certainly won't harm.
Re age, it struck me recently how unusual I must be in being 64 with both parents alive, D91 and M88. That's a combined 243 years, the three of us.
Can anybody here beat that or get close?
I am at 235 becoming 237 in less than 2 months time. Both my folks are in good physical health, just a bit of arthritis etc. Also both mentally intact apart from their politics.
Ah ha! I'm pleased to yield.
You still have 6 years on me!
Oh yes, sorry! I read as 245. That would have made your parents very old given you're only in your 50s, come to think of it.
Back on pole.
Looks like (and hopefully) I will be losing my front row spot to Foxy in the next few years though.
"Avuncular" is what Cleverly has been called. But does avuncular make a good leader? Tory MPs need a leader to be definite, not vague. Kemi fits the bill For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle? 1 Corinthians 14:8
Jenrick is also avuncular - wicked Uncle Ernie.
He’s not avuncular - you need a lowish voice for that - but you have landed on the reason why avuncular is such an evocative word. It sounds like uncle. The ideal uncle should be cheery, probably a little on the sporty and/or overweight side (more rugby player than MAMIL), a fan of a beer or two, full of worldly wisdom, probably rather good at pub-quiz trivia, and not averse to telling embarrassing tales about your mum or dad’s childhood.
That's what avuncular means (I think?!) - of or pertaining to an uncle. But it has to be a certain sort of uncle. I had two uncles but only one was avuncular. What was the other? Urbane, I guess. But all my wife's uncles are extremely avuncular. And my great uncles were all avuncular. What is it about achieving the status of uncle that so often bestows avuncularity, I wonder? I am not avuncular. But I didn't achieve uncle status until my late 40s. Perhaps it was too late by then. It's a shame there isn't an equivalent word for 'aunt'.
"Avuncular" is what Cleverly has been called. But does avuncular make a good leader? Tory MPs need a leader to be definite, not vague. Kemi fits the bill For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle? 1 Corinthians 14:8
Jenrick is also avuncular - wicked Uncle Ernie.
He’s not avuncular - you need a lowish voice for that - but you have landed on the reason why avuncular is such an evocative word. It sounds like uncle. The ideal uncle should be cheery, probably a little on the sporty and/or overweight side (more rugby player than MAMIL), a fan of a beer or two, full of worldly wisdom, probably rather good at pub-quiz trivia, and not averse to telling embarrassing tales about your mum or dad’s childhood.
That's what avuncular means (I think?!) - of or pertaining to an uncle. But it has to be a certain sort of uncle. I had two uncles but only one was avuncular. What was the other? Urbane, I guess. But all my wife's uncles are extremely avuncular. And my great uncles were all avuncular. What is it about achieving the status of uncle that so often bestows avuncularity, I wonder? I am not avuncular. But I didn't achieve uncle status until my late 40s. Perhaps it was too late by then. It's a shame there isn't an equivalent word for 'aunt'.
I don’t care if I look like a pathetic PB centrist dad with my stupid Garmin smartwatch
I just want to die later rather than earlier, and it seems that these might help
Genuinely surprised to read this.
Given all the booze and drugs you've done, I always kind of thought you took the "live well, die young" mentality?
I didn’t expect to be enjoying myself quite this much at this later stage. Lots of travel. Good friends. Still a decent income. Fascinating job. Get on with my kids (also worry about them - and they probably need me to hang about). Its a pretty good package
But it doesn’t just need me alive it needs me relatively fit and healthy. Think these watches might help
It is amazing what we can do these days at an older age if healthy. I am 70 in a few weeks. Admittedly I gave up squash when I was 40, catamarans in my 50s and skiing in my 60s, but I can still cycle 500 km in just over a week on holiday with little preparation and enjoy the good things in life and do physically challenging jobs daily eg I chop all the logs for our 3 stoves which is a hell of a lot of logs.
Compare this to the 1960s when I was a teenager. Philosan for the over 40s, many dead from cancer, heart attack or stroke in their 50s, knackered by your 60s.
We are so much luckier these days when we reach 60 if we are still fit.
The language here possibly a bit OTT for a politics prof, but he has a point, I reckon.
The truth is that everyday day life in Britain is utterly horrible for most people. You can't see a doctor, find a dentist, take a train or even get on a bus. Until that changes, we will just see rotation after rotation in our politics as voters search for an answer.
It feels broken because a lot of it is broken, or at best extremely tatty. It's the logical endpoint of things we've voted for (with our wallets as well as our ballots) for decades, but we're not going to acknowledge that. But until we do, we will collectively keep looking for that One Weird Trick that They Don't Want Us To Know.
Whatever the answer is, it ain't going to be easy or quick.
BoZo made a big play of claiming that nobody else paid for his suits (just his food, accommodation, wedding, holidays...)
Quite right too.
If I was a donor and paid however much this cost I would be horrified it still looks like a sack of shit
Can he not afford a belt?
Or decent shoes.
Those probably are v expensive shoes. Church’s or whatever
He’s one of those guys that looks scruffy in anything. To be fair, he’s realised this and turned it to his advantage - made it his shtick
Yes he has. I suffer from a similar problem (we have discussed before). I have short arms and legs and a long/broad body. If my legs were the right length for my body I would be very tall. If my body was the length that matched my legs I would be one of Snow White's dwarfs. Clothes are not attractive on me. Clothes suit long legs and not broad bodies.
I also struggle in a racing car. I can't get in a single seater. My head is higher than the rollbar even though I am within the height limit. I can't reach the pedals. I can't get the steering wheel on because of my thighs and my arms are outside of the cockpit. Otherwise I am a perfect fit.
I habe short legs and a long broad body too! So that's why. Also, shirts never stay tucked in. Because they are not long enough for my long broad body.
I don’t care if I look like a pathetic PB centrist dad with my stupid Garmin smartwatch
I just want to die later rather than earlier, and it seems that these might help
Genuinely surprised to read this.
Given all the booze and drugs you've done, I always kind of thought you took the "live well, die young" mentality?
I didn’t expect to be enjoying myself quite this much at this later stage. Lots of travel. Good friends. Still a decent income. Fascinating job. Get on with my kids (also worry about them - and they probably need me to hang about). Its a pretty good package
But it doesn’t just need me alive it needs me relatively fit and healthy. Think these watches might help
It is amazing what we can do these days at an older age if healthy. I am 70 in a few weeks. Admittedly I gave up squash when I was 40, catamarans in my 50s and skiing in my 60s, but I can still cycle 500 km in just over a week on holiday with little preparation and enjoy the good things in life and do physically challenging jobs daily eg I chop all the logs for our 3 stoves which is a hell of a lot of logs.
Compare this to the 1960s when I was a teenager. Philosan for the over 40s, many dead from cancer, heart attack or stroke in their 50s, knackered by your 60s.
We are so much luckier these days when we reach 60 if we are still fit.
I don’t care if I look like a pathetic PB centrist dad with my stupid Garmin smartwatch
I just want to die later rather than earlier, and it seems that these might help
Genuinely surprised to read this.
Given all the booze and drugs you've done, I always kind of thought you took the "live well, die young" mentality?
I didn’t expect to be enjoying myself quite this much at this later stage. Lots of travel. Good friends. Still a decent income. Fascinating job. Get on with my kids (also worry about them - and they probably need me to hang about). Its a pretty good package
But it doesn’t just need me alive it needs me relatively fit and healthy. Think these watches might help
It is amazing what we can do these days at an older age if healthy. I am 70 in a few weeks. Admittedly I gave up squash when I was 40, catamarans in my 50s and skiing in my 60s, but I can still cycle 500 km in just over a week on holiday with little preparation and enjoy the good things in life and do physically challenging jobs daily eg I chop all the logs for our 3 stoves which is a hell of a lot of logs.
Compare this to the 1960s when I was a teenager. Philosan for the over 40s, many dead from cancer, heart attack or stroke in their 50s, knackered by your 60s.
We are so much luckier these days when we reach 60 if we are still fit.
A relative of mine is almost 70 and exercises for at least an hour every morning, weights and various cardio, and frequently go for 20 mile bike rides and the like.
It's not as though they are in perfect shape, they have periodic back troubles from 50 years of working in factories and buiding sites etc, so they have lighter exercise videos and chair exercises and such when that's all they can do.
I'd say it was inspirational, as it is fitter than I am, but it hasn't actually inspired me to action just yet. But put the work in earlier and it clearly pays off.
And people can just look really good thesedays too. Must have been a moisteriser revolution or something.
To be honest, I've been fairly inspired by this conversation today. Maybe I'll get some sort of smartwatch device after all. (Not an apple, though...)
Comments
That’s ace.
Cleverly is Rishi 2 with less energy and drive, so it is Jenrick for me now, at least he is offering something different and with vigour
Who's there?
Knock knock.
There’s going to be serious coastal flooding in Florida even after it weakens before landfall. Enough for there still to be disruption on election day.
Had he stayed a prep school sports master, every team he coached would have overachieved, and he would have retired with everyone loving him and every boy remembering him thirty years later and the positive effect he had on their lives.
But, of course, he couldn't have done that.
Hunger - stylish movie.
Our other 'interesting' clock, value unknown, is a handmade piece from Iran, gifted by my wife's good friend and former flatmate, brought back from one of her visits back to Iran to see her family. Persian style with lots of marquetry and hand painting of the dial, cheap quartz movement on the rear.
Both are special possessions to us now, but I'd not be surprised if the combined cost was under £50, almost certainly under £100.
Jenrick would be the worst possible choice
I still have some reservations about Cleverly's religious views (or lack thereof) but from an anyone-but-Jenrick perspective it ain't bad.
Quite right too.
If I was a donor and paid however much this cost I would be horrified it still looks like a sack of shit
https://x.com/LukeTryl/status/1843536642445062622
I supported Tom Tugendhat for the Tory leadership until he was knocked out today. I will vote for Rob Jenrick tomorrow.
My party needs to be unsparing in its analysis of why we lost and what we must do next. Rob has shown his willingness to do that, so he has my full support.
https://x.com/NJ_Timothy/status/1843714939896377856
I wonder if it's significant, for this election ?
The Overlooked Demographic That Is a Huge Opportunity for Democrats
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/10/08/state-college-voters-democrats-demographic-00182520
.. Walz is trying to flip that well-thumbed script by framing his Republican opponent as the patronizing sophisticate and himself as the regular guy who went to colleges no one’s heard of and made his career in the region where he was born. It’s a clever rhetorical tactic. But more than that, it has the makings of a larger political strategy.
Walz’s populist rhetoric can be read as an appeal to a certain long-overlooked demographic, which he himself represents: the “state college voter.” These are Americans who, while college educated, didn’t leave home to attend fancy colleges like Harvard or Yale. Instead, they mostly studied at what are called “regional public universities”: not the flagship state universities but unassuming institutions whose names have the word “State” in them (California State University-Fullerton) or refer to their location (Northern Illinois University). Instead of pursing lucrative jobs in distant coastal metropolises, they generally built their careers near where they grew up, earning more modest incomes but contributing their tax dollars and civic energies to their home regions. They comprise a far bigger share of the electorate than those who went to elite colleges. But as a group they have been almost completely ignored politically, until Walz came on the national scene. Understanding who these voters are, what makes them tick and how to reach out to them could make a difference in this razor-close election...
He’s one of those guys that looks scruffy in anything. To be fair, he’s realised this and turned it to his advantage - made it his shtick
https://x.com/DrAlanWager/status/1843570008103977175
Compare this to the 1960s when I was a teenager. Philosan for the over 40s, many dead from cancer, heart attack or stroke in their 50s, knackered by your 60s.
We are so much luckier these days when we reach 60 if we are still fit.
https://x.com/LukeTryl/status/1843367107482022390
Net favourability scores
Nigel Farage: -35
Keir Starmer: -36
Rishi Sunak: -42
Select cabinet ministers
Angela Rayner: -25
Rachel Reeves: -29
Yvette Cooper: -16
David Lammy: -19
Tory leadership candidates
James Cleverly -19
Robert Jenrick -19
Kemi Badenoch -27
https://x.com/YouGov/status/1843622229977846072
@DCBMEP
Calling all 121 Conservative MPs!? Please be very careful tomorrow in your choice. All my contacts across all Conservative groups. are warning that the wrong choice means they will be off to Reform with the wrong leader. In my view only
@RobertJenrick can hold them back and reassure them. The new Leader could find the party further diminished from 100k membership now (down from 160k for Sunak v Truss) with Reform on 80k.
@AlisonPearson7 is saying the same thing if Continuity Cleverly wins - she’ll be off too: ‘If the new Conservative leader ends up being James Cleverly, that’s it’
@LukeTryl
There is a good case each of the three candidates can make to be put through & be elected. But I’m not convinced approach of “pick who I want or I’ll defect to another party” will impress Conservative MPs & members nor does it demonstrate much party loyalty. Could well backfire
Interesting that Tommy Tugs was so far behind. Surely it'll end up Cleverly versus Kemi OR Booby J.
But look at where the man's cuffs hang relative to his hands. That would be unforgivable if he had wandered into Next and bought the first thing he found off the peg, let alone if he had walked into a half decent shop and had someone help him into a suit the right size for him.
It's not as though they are in perfect shape, they have periodic back troubles from 50 years of working in factories and buiding sites etc, so they have lighter exercise videos and chair exercises and such when that's all they can do.
I'd say it was inspirational, as it is fitter than I am, but it hasn't actually inspired me to action just yet. But put the work in earlier and it clearly pays off.
And people can just look really good thesedays too. Must have been a moisteriser revolution or something.
I am ignoring Jenrick as I simply do not think he is the right choice
Starmer 411 seats (now 403 of course)
Given the American class system, that background difference has a big effect on probable earnings, careers etc. makes the Oxbridge thing look almost casual..,
Starmer is actually the second most positive. Lots of DKs for the rest, including the remaining Tory leadership candidates.
Back on pole.
I also struggle in a racing car. I can't get in a single seater. My head is higher than the rollbar even though I am within the height limit. I can't reach the pedals. I can't get the steering wheel on because of my thighs and my arms are outside of the cockpit. Otherwise I am a perfect fit.
James Powers 🇬🇧
@ItsJamesPowers
Kemi’s biggest problem when it comes to the membership outside the south east, Is that she’s seen as DougieSmith’s protege and that is likely fatal for her chances in the members ballot!
https://x.com/ItsJamesPowers/status/1843757694446129507
But it has to be a certain sort of uncle. I had two uncles but only one was avuncular. What was the other? Urbane, I guess.
But all my wife's uncles are extremely avuncular. And my great uncles were all avuncular. What is it about achieving the status of uncle that so often bestows avuncularity, I wonder?
I am not avuncular. But I didn't achieve uncle status until my late 40s. Perhaps it was too late by then.
It's a shame there isn't an equivalent word for 'aunt'.
The truth is that everyday day life in Britain is utterly horrible for most people. You can't see a doctor, find a dentist, take a train or even get on a bus. Until that changes, we will just see rotation after rotation in our politics as voters search for an answer.
https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3l5yduaiwcm2p
This pretty much sums up the mood in many of our focus groups, despair and anger that so much of the country feels broken.
https://bsky.app/profile/luketryl.bsky.social/post/3l5ydvfy7yh2r
It feels broken because a lot of it is broken, or at best extremely tatty. It's the logical endpoint of things we've voted for (with our wallets as well as our ballots) for decades, but we're not going to acknowledge that. But until we do, we will collectively keep looking for that One Weird Trick that They Don't Want Us To Know.
Whatever the answer is, it ain't going to be easy or quick.
Also, shirts never stay tucked in. Because they are not long enough for my long broad body.
Wisconsin Harris 50% Trump 48%
Pennsylvania Harris 50% Trump 49%
Michigan Harris 51% Trump 48%
https://researchco.ca/2024/10/08/battlegrounds-us-2024/
Socal
Arizona Harris 49% Trump 48%
https://substack.com/home/post/p-149951862