A bad 'un. A further comment he made wrt to someone who asked for more cycle lanes. This came via a report to a (very effective) activist group in the area called Walk Ride GM:
“Another outrageous exchange came after a councillor mentions a constituent called 'Nick' who asked for more cycle lanes and comments: 'That Nick is something else.'
Mr Gwynne, who represents the Gorton and Denton constituency, replies: 'I had positive visions of him getting mown down by an Elsa Waste HGV while he's cycling to the Fallowfield Loop [cycle lane]. We couldn't be that lucky!'”
Imagine a similar "joke" about a pedestrian run down on a Zebra crossing, or a 6 year old run down crossing the road to school where the Local Highways Authority has refused to provide such a Zebra crossing.
It's mild compared to a lot of the stuff that comes in eg Facebook groups or Youtube comments for "motorists", or even the racism-hinting dog whistles put out by some of our politicians.
But we need to require elected politicians to engage with the case or issue.
The activist in person is probably a pest. You’re being an absolute snowflake, I’m afraid.
"The activist in person is probably a pest."
You do realise how stupid that makes you sound?
The world is full of do-gooders and green-inkers. Many of them post on PB. They make for ripe comic material.
I expect most of us could name one such person in our local area. I certainly could. Wishing death on them is not only over the line, it's so far past the line that the line is a dot.
A bad 'un. A further comment he made wrt to someone who asked for more cycle lanes. This came via a report to a (very effective) activist group in the area called Walk Ride GM:
“Another outrageous exchange came after a councillor mentions a constituent called 'Nick' who asked for more cycle lanes and comments: 'That Nick is something else.'
Mr Gwynne, who represents the Gorton and Denton constituency, replies: 'I had positive visions of him getting mown down by an Elsa Waste HGV while he's cycling to the Fallowfield Loop [cycle lane]. We couldn't be that lucky!'”
Imagine a similar "joke" about a pedestrian run down on a Zebra crossing, or a 6 year old run down crossing the road to school where the Local Highways Authority has refused to provide such a Zebra crossing.
It's mild compared to a lot of the stuff that comes in eg Facebook groups or Youtube comments for "motorists", or even the racism-hinting dog whistles put out by some of our politicians.
But we need to require elected politicians to engage with the case or issue.
The activist in person is probably a pest. You’re being an absolute snowflake, I’m afraid.
It's the kind of thing that turns cyclists into "militants". You express concern about kids being hit by drivers as they cycle to school and your local councillor responds with a hope that you are ground up under the wheels of a HGV.
When your elected representatives won't take you seriously, or indeed respond with a wish for your agonising death, you either give up or turn to more direct radical action.
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
This is silly. The MP didn’t “respond”, he made a private joke. For all we know, the activist in question is a do-gooding pest.
So police officers who make distasteful jokes on WhatsApp shouldn’t be fired then?
No, they shouldn’t. And nor should this Labour MP. And nor should the DOGE kid with his edgy tweets
We are far too censorious about all this nonsense, they are mere words, whether uttered by left, right or fucking annoying centrist dads
Give people a chance to apologise, learn from mistakes, move on
If they THEN continue to be wankers, then by all means come down much harder
Hmm. I'm kind of minded to agree with that... but this went on for over two years, I understand, which would seem to be plenty of time to learn how to behave,
On the upside at least this might teach lefties to stop being utter prigs and hypocrites. Or so we can hope
Up to a point. This is certainly a scenario where the advice on who should cast the first stone is wise.
I wouldn't want two years of my worst thoughts or private exasperated outbursts on the front page of the paper. That's why I don't put them on WhatsApp.
After all, another natural habitat of the priggish hypocrite is the British press.
Off topic slightly and something that puzzles me somewhat - why is there no party standing up for an English Parliament? Your could do away with the HoL and make Westminster the upper Chamber. If Reform were to suggest it, would that kill one-nation Conservatism.
A bad 'un. A further comment he made wrt to someone who asked for more cycle lanes. This came via a report to a (very effective) activist group in the area called Walk Ride GM:
“Another outrageous exchange came after a councillor mentions a constituent called 'Nick' who asked for more cycle lanes and comments: 'That Nick is something else.'
Mr Gwynne, who represents the Gorton and Denton constituency, replies: 'I had positive visions of him getting mown down by an Elsa Waste HGV while he's cycling to the Fallowfield Loop [cycle lane]. We couldn't be that lucky!'”
Imagine a similar "joke" about a pedestrian run down on a Zebra crossing, or a 6 year old run down crossing the road to school where the Local Highways Authority has refused to provide such a Zebra crossing.
It's mild compared to a lot of the stuff that comes in eg Facebook groups or Youtube comments for "motorists", or even the racism-hinting dog whistles put out by some of our politicians.
But we need to require elected politicians to engage with the case or issue.
The activist in person is probably a pest. You’re being an absolute snowflake, I’m afraid.
"The activist in person is probably a pest."
You do realise how stupid that makes you sound?
Activists are always pests.
Imagine the fun of running a town council in the 1850s, and Cassius Clay turns up to give a speech on his personal hobby horse.
This will nearly inevitably end up in a fight. On a number of previous occasions Clay has stabbed (and killed) people in such fights.
He has written a book, boasting of this.
The venue will be wrecked, maybe even burnt down. And the town will suffer a full riot, quite possibly.
A bad 'un. A further comment he made wrt to someone who asked for more cycle lanes. This came via a report to a (very effective) activist group in the area called Walk Ride GM:
“Another outrageous exchange came after a councillor mentions a constituent called 'Nick' who asked for more cycle lanes and comments: 'That Nick is something else.'
Mr Gwynne, who represents the Gorton and Denton constituency, replies: 'I had positive visions of him getting mown down by an Elsa Waste HGV while he's cycling to the Fallowfield Loop [cycle lane]. We couldn't be that lucky!'”
Imagine a similar "joke" about a pedestrian run down on a Zebra crossing, or a 6 year old run down crossing the road to school where the Local Highways Authority has refused to provide such a Zebra crossing.
It's mild compared to a lot of the stuff that comes in eg Facebook groups or Youtube comments for "motorists", or even the racism-hinting dog whistles put out by some of our politicians.
But we need to require elected politicians to engage with the case or issue.
The activist in person is probably a pest. You’re being an absolute snowflake, I’m afraid.
"The activist in person is probably a pest."
You do realise how stupid that makes you sound?
Activists are always pests.
Imagine the fun of running a town council in the 1850s, and Cassius Clay turns up to give a speech on his personal hobby horse.
This will nearly inevitably end up in a fight. On a number of previous occasions Clay has stabbed (and killed) people in such fights.
He has written a book, boasting of this.
The venue will be wrecked, maybe even burnt down. And the town will suffer a full riot, quite possibly.
Activists, eh?
... oh, you meant Cassius *Marcellus* Clay. Not the other one. Makes a lot more sense now.
A bad 'un. A further comment he made wrt to someone who asked for more cycle lanes. This came via a report to a (very effective) activist group in the area called Walk Ride GM:
“Another outrageous exchange came after a councillor mentions a constituent called 'Nick' who asked for more cycle lanes and comments: 'That Nick is something else.'
Mr Gwynne, who represents the Gorton and Denton constituency, replies: 'I had positive visions of him getting mown down by an Elsa Waste HGV while he's cycling to the Fallowfield Loop [cycle lane]. We couldn't be that lucky!'”
There’s really nothing in there that’s actually offensive or outrageous.
Albeit, it’s probably simply stupid to post such things as an MP.
Are you serious ?
Starmer has not instantly sacked him and condemned his remarks if he took your view
I never thought you would be an apologist for someone who makes rascist, antisemitic and wishing death on a pensioner remarks
The remarks are really only horrific, racist and antisemitism if you are a professional offense-monger.
I accept, however, that the UK is full of snowflakes and communicating such remarks is no longer compatible with being in the Ministry.
I assume you do not know all the comments Gwynne made not least in regard to his colleagues Dianne Abbott and Angela Rayner [which I am not repeating ] plus his antisemitic remarks about Jews.
The problem is that Gwynne's remarks as I understand it span a two year period and involve at least another Labour mp and Labour councillors no doubt all of whom did not expect them to be leaked to the Daily Mail at which point they become public knowledge, and certainly in Gwynne's case are seen as unacceptable but also the consequences for Labour as demonstrated by Trevor Philips this morning is who is the other Labour mp and why wasn't he/she been sacked as well
It remains to be seen whether sacking Gwynne has ended the story
A shiny sixpence says that worse remarks have been made by someone in the Mail's editorial offices in the last 24 hours. Because that's what high-pressure workplaces are like.
In reality, Gwynne has been sacked for being stupid, and for making his party look bad, not for the inherent awfulness of his thoughts.
Remember kids- if it's on the internet, it's potentially there forever.
The *written* word will follow you to the grave.
Oh, and email is less secure than sending a postcard.
Email is extremely secure. As a record which is extremely difficult to scrub.
A bad 'un. A further comment he made wrt to someone who asked for more cycle lanes. This came via a report to a (very effective) activist group in the area called Walk Ride GM:
“Another outrageous exchange came after a councillor mentions a constituent called 'Nick' who asked for more cycle lanes and comments: 'That Nick is something else.'
Mr Gwynne, who represents the Gorton and Denton constituency, replies: 'I had positive visions of him getting mown down by an Elsa Waste HGV while he's cycling to the Fallowfield Loop [cycle lane]. We couldn't be that lucky!'”
Imagine a similar "joke" about a pedestrian run down on a Zebra crossing, or a 6 year old run down crossing the road to school where the Local Highways Authority has refused to provide such a Zebra crossing.
It's mild compared to a lot of the stuff that comes in eg Facebook groups or Youtube comments for "motorists", or even the racism-hinting dog whistles put out by some of our politicians.
But we need to require elected politicians to engage with the case or issue.
The activist in person is probably a pest. You’re being an absolute snowflake, I’m afraid.
"The activist in person is probably a pest."
You do realise how stupid that makes you sound?
Activists are always pests.
Imagine the fun of running a town council in the 1850s, and Cassius Clay turns up to give a speech on his personal hobby horse.
This will nearly inevitably end up in a fight. On a number of previous occasions Clay has stabbed (and killed) people in such fights.
He has written a book, boasting of this.
The venue will be wrecked, maybe even burnt down. And the town will suffer a full riot, quite possibly.
Activists, eh?
I have no idea what this analogy is supposed to mean, but I’d hope to defend the town councillors right to pass a joke about Cassius Clay.
Cassius Clay was abolitionist who would do lecture tours in the South denouncing slavery. Being a Southerner from a slave owning family made the upset 10x worse. This was at a time when voting Republican, in the South, could get you murdered.
Was a noted exponent of the Bowie knife - there is an urban legend that he wrote a book/pamphlet on effective knife fighting.
Also kept a small cannon on his hallway for those annoying evenings when a mob with torches turns up to murder you and burn your house down.
Making a joke about him, to his face, would brave, I think.
The usual way to do this is to have a blind trust. It’s not reasonable to expect a public servant not to invest. Alternatively he recused himself from anything that touches Shein
Off topic slightly and something that puzzles me somewhat - why is there no party standing up for an English Parliament? Your could do away with the HoL and make Westminster the upper Chamber. If Reform were to suggest it, would that kill one-nation Conservatism.
HYUFD wants one, but then he wouldn't be a Proper Tory *by his own criteria*. Which is a nice modern version of the Cretan Liar paradox albeit not requiring any fibbing per se.
A bad 'un. A further comment he made wrt to someone who asked for more cycle lanes. This came via a report to a (very effective) activist group in the area called Walk Ride GM:
“Another outrageous exchange came after a councillor mentions a constituent called 'Nick' who asked for more cycle lanes and comments: 'That Nick is something else.'
Mr Gwynne, who represents the Gorton and Denton constituency, replies: 'I had positive visions of him getting mown down by an Elsa Waste HGV while he's cycling to the Fallowfield Loop [cycle lane]. We couldn't be that lucky!'”
Imagine a similar "joke" about a pedestrian run down on a Zebra crossing, or a 6 year old run down crossing the road to school where the Local Highways Authority has refused to provide such a Zebra crossing.
It's mild compared to a lot of the stuff that comes in eg Facebook groups or Youtube comments for "motorists", or even the racism-hinting dog whistles put out by some of our politicians.
But we need to require elected politicians to engage with the case or issue.
The activist in person is probably a pest. You’re being an absolute snowflake, I’m afraid.
"The activist in person is probably a pest."
You do realise how stupid that makes you sound?
Activists are always pests.
Imagine the fun of running a town council in the 1850s, and Cassius Clay turns up to give a speech on his personal hobby horse.
This will nearly inevitably end up in a fight. On a number of previous occasions Clay has stabbed (and killed) people in such fights.
He has written a book, boasting of this.
The venue will be wrecked, maybe even burnt down. And the town will suffer a full riot, quite possibly.
A bad 'un. A further comment he made wrt to someone who asked for more cycle lanes. This came via a report to a (very effective) activist group in the area called Walk Ride GM:
“Another outrageous exchange came after a councillor mentions a constituent called 'Nick' who asked for more cycle lanes and comments: 'That Nick is something else.'
Mr Gwynne, who represents the Gorton and Denton constituency, replies: 'I had positive visions of him getting mown down by an Elsa Waste HGV while he's cycling to the Fallowfield Loop [cycle lane]. We couldn't be that lucky!'”
Imagine a similar "joke" about a pedestrian run down on a Zebra crossing, or a 6 year old run down crossing the road to school where the Local Highways Authority has refused to provide such a Zebra crossing.
It's mild compared to a lot of the stuff that comes in eg Facebook groups or Youtube comments for "motorists", or even the racism-hinting dog whistles put out by some of our politicians.
But we need to require elected politicians to engage with the case or issue.
The activist in person is probably a pest. You’re being an absolute snowflake, I’m afraid.
"The activist in person is probably a pest."
You do realise how stupid that makes you sound?
Activists are always pests.
Imagine the fun of running a town council in the 1850s, and Cassius Clay turns up to give a speech on his personal hobby horse.
This will nearly inevitably end up in a fight. On a number of previous occasions Clay has stabbed (and killed) people in such fights.
He has written a book, boasting of this.
The venue will be wrecked, maybe even burnt down. And the town will suffer a full riot, quite possibly.
Activists, eh?
... oh, you meant Cassius *Marcellus* Clay. Not the other one. Makes a lot more sense now.
Off topic slightly and something that puzzles me somewhat - why is there no party standing up for an English Parliament? Your could do away with the HoL and make Westminster the upper Chamber. If Reform were to suggest it, would that kill one-nation Conservatism.
I should also have added that this topic comes up on PB every other year or three, so perhaps before your time on PB (no sarcasm intended). Generally ends in angry pearl-clutching by the Southron at the notion of having to break up England into a modern Heptarchy in order to be able to represent it in the upper chamber/UK Government in a manner commensurate witht he other nations.
A bad 'un. A further comment he made wrt to someone who asked for more cycle lanes. This came via a report to a (very effective) activist group in the area called Walk Ride GM:
“Another outrageous exchange came after a councillor mentions a constituent called 'Nick' who asked for more cycle lanes and comments: 'That Nick is something else.'
Mr Gwynne, who represents the Gorton and Denton constituency, replies: 'I had positive visions of him getting mown down by an Elsa Waste HGV while he's cycling to the Fallowfield Loop [cycle lane]. We couldn't be that lucky!'”
Imagine a similar "joke" about a pedestrian run down on a Zebra crossing, or a 6 year old run down crossing the road to school where the Local Highways Authority has refused to provide such a Zebra crossing.
It's mild compared to a lot of the stuff that comes in eg Facebook groups or Youtube comments for "motorists", or even the racism-hinting dog whistles put out by some of our politicians.
But we need to require elected politicians to engage with the case or issue.
The activist in person is probably a pest. You’re being an absolute snowflake, I’m afraid.
"The activist in person is probably a pest."
You do realise how stupid that makes you sound?
Activists are always pests.
Imagine the fun of running a town council in the 1850s, and Cassius Clay turns up to give a speech on his personal hobby horse.
This will nearly inevitably end up in a fight. On a number of previous occasions Clay has stabbed (and killed) people in such fights.
He has written a book, boasting of this.
The venue will be wrecked, maybe even burnt down. And the town will suffer a full riot, quite possibly.
A bad 'un. A further comment he made wrt to someone who asked for more cycle lanes. This came via a report to a (very effective) activist group in the area called Walk Ride GM:
“Another outrageous exchange came after a councillor mentions a constituent called 'Nick' who asked for more cycle lanes and comments: 'That Nick is something else.'
Mr Gwynne, who represents the Gorton and Denton constituency, replies: 'I had positive visions of him getting mown down by an Elsa Waste HGV while he's cycling to the Fallowfield Loop [cycle lane]. We couldn't be that lucky!'”
Imagine a similar "joke" about a pedestrian run down on a Zebra crossing, or a 6 year old run down crossing the road to school where the Local Highways Authority has refused to provide such a Zebra crossing.
It's mild compared to a lot of the stuff that comes in eg Facebook groups or Youtube comments for "motorists", or even the racism-hinting dog whistles put out by some of our politicians.
But we need to require elected politicians to engage with the case or issue.
The activist in person is probably a pest. You’re being an absolute snowflake, I’m afraid.
"The activist in person is probably a pest."
You do realise how stupid that makes you sound?
Activists are always pests.
Imagine the fun of running a town council in the 1850s, and Cassius Clay turns up to give a speech on his personal hobby horse.
This will nearly inevitably end up in a fight. On a number of previous occasions Clay has stabbed (and killed) people in such fights.
He has written a book, boasting of this.
The venue will be wrecked, maybe even burnt down. And the town will suffer a full riot, quite possibly.
Activists, eh?
... oh, you meant Cassius *Marcellus* Clay. Not the other one. Makes a lot more sense now.
A bad 'un. A further comment he made wrt to someone who asked for more cycle lanes. This came via a report to a (very effective) activist group in the area called Walk Ride GM:
“Another outrageous exchange came after a councillor mentions a constituent called 'Nick' who asked for more cycle lanes and comments: 'That Nick is something else.'
Mr Gwynne, who represents the Gorton and Denton constituency, replies: 'I had positive visions of him getting mown down by an Elsa Waste HGV while he's cycling to the Fallowfield Loop [cycle lane]. We couldn't be that lucky!'”
Imagine a similar "joke" about a pedestrian run down on a Zebra crossing, or a 6 year old run down crossing the road to school where the Local Highways Authority has refused to provide such a Zebra crossing.
It's mild compared to a lot of the stuff that comes in eg Facebook groups or Youtube comments for "motorists", or even the racism-hinting dog whistles put out by some of our politicians.
But we need to require elected politicians to engage with the case or issue.
The activist in person is probably a pest. You’re being an absolute snowflake, I’m afraid.
It's the kind of thing that turns cyclists into "militants". You express concern about kids being hit by drivers as they cycle to school and your local councillor responds with a hope that you are ground up under the wheels of a HGV.
When your elected representatives won't take you seriously, or indeed respond with a wish for your agonising death, you either give up or turn to more direct radical action.
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
This is silly. The MP didn’t “respond”, he made a private joke. For all we know, the activist in question is a do-gooding pest.
So police officers who make distasteful jokes on WhatsApp shouldn’t be fired then?
No, they shouldn’t. And nor should this Labour MP. And nor should the DOGE kid with his edgy tweets
We are far too censorious about all this nonsense, they are mere words, whether uttered by left, right or fucking annoying centrist dads
Give people a chance to apologise, learn from mistakes, move on
If they THEN continue to be wankers, then by all means come down much harder
For the DOGE kid, I'm more concerned about his being granted access to classified information (UK equivalent would perhaps be the entire HMRC or DVLA database), and the Trump/Musk regime's belief that it is OK to do this with no security clearance in basic violation of the law.
But those are simply the values of the regime.
Was 'Big Balls' the racist, or the one who was previously sacked for leaking confidential information ?
As in eg Uganda under Amin, the independent judiciary, and independent institutions such as churches, will be the last bulwarks of a free society that can continue to exist.
You haven't seen the Whitehouse Faith Advisor then
"Any offence against Trump is an offence against God..."
I saw the full Trump address at the National Prayer Breakfast.
I can't source that quote, but I'm assuming it comes from his "Faith Adviser" Paula White, who is a Megachurch Minister with a private jet, who is associated with the "Word of Faith" movement aka Prosperity Gospel. It flourishes in wealthy circles in the USA because it gives a theology justifying being rich, and staying rich. It has it's origins in characters such as Kenneth Hagin, and Kenneth Hopeland - and arguably before that Oral Roberts, and more recently Benny Hinn. PBers may be more familiar with the latter two.
Bluntly, I'd call it a perversion of Christian doctrine. It tends not to do well in the UK because UK Evangelical circles have a far more integrated social concern tradition going back to at least Wesley, and our society is less Balkanised by wealth than the USA.
Trump's support afaics comes from some Evangelicals who I term Trumpvangelicals, who tend to be concentrated in charismatic megachurches, places such as "Reformed" churches which embrace dogmas making women second class humans ("Male Headship"), and conservative / charismatic denominations - anti-abortion movement heartlands, and parts of the Roman Catholic Right (where JD Vance comes from, and where eg Opus Dei are influential in the Federalist Society).
Trump also has some sort of "faith task group" in the White House; I am not sure who they are yet. He's embracing caricatured "protect white people" policies already - as eg in his assault on the new (quite reasonable - I posted an analysis from RC Bishops) Compulsory Purchase law in South Africa. I assume the latter is motivated by Musk.
I'd expect some figures to emerge to speak against Trump who will be the equivalent of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, as they will be in time be some of the few who will have platforms he cannot destroy from which to make criticisms - even though false narratives are already being propagated about for example the Lutheran Church.
I'd be interested in comment from @HYUFD or others, who may have knowledge in this area.
Does anyone else watch/listen to the “podcast” Uncanny?
The case of Hollymount Farm is one of the clearest examples of a haunting I’ve encountered. Still might be total bull, of course
You mean, like Borley Rectory was, and was?
Borley Rectory was obvs hysterical and fabulated nonsense. Was there even a kernel of truth? As in “someone genuinely seeing something”?
But I am not close minded. Only an idiot would be close minded in the 2020s when we are daily surrounded by absolutely extraordinary things. Eg it is likely in the next 2-4 years we will invent the first advanced non human intelligence. The only one we know of in the entire universe
Are “ghosts” any more outrageous than that? The idea that intense human emotions can somehow persist in space-time in ways we don’t understand? We don’t even understand consciousness itself (as we are discovering)
Anyway go and watch Uncanny season 2 episode 1 (tv version). Hollymount Farm. On BBC iplayer
Even if you think it is eyewash it is undeniably a good ghost story
A bad 'un. A further comment he made wrt to someone who asked for more cycle lanes. This came via a report to a (very effective) activist group in the area called Walk Ride GM:
“Another outrageous exchange came after a councillor mentions a constituent called 'Nick' who asked for more cycle lanes and comments: 'That Nick is something else.'
Mr Gwynne, who represents the Gorton and Denton constituency, replies: 'I had positive visions of him getting mown down by an Elsa Waste HGV while he's cycling to the Fallowfield Loop [cycle lane]. We couldn't be that lucky!'”
Imagine a similar "joke" about a pedestrian run down on a Zebra crossing, or a 6 year old run down crossing the road to school where the Local Highways Authority has refused to provide such a Zebra crossing.
It's mild compared to a lot of the stuff that comes in eg Facebook groups or Youtube comments for "motorists", or even the racism-hinting dog whistles put out by some of our politicians.
But we need to require elected politicians to engage with the case or issue.
The activist in person is probably a pest. You’re being an absolute snowflake, I’m afraid.
It's the kind of thing that turns cyclists into "militants". You express concern about kids being hit by drivers as they cycle to school and your local councillor responds with a hope that you are ground up under the wheels of a HGV.
When your elected representatives won't take you seriously, or indeed respond with a wish for your agonising death, you either give up or turn to more direct radical action.
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
This is silly. The MP didn’t “respond”, he made a private joke. For all we know, the activist in question is a do-gooding pest.
So police officers who make distasteful jokes on WhatsApp shouldn’t be fired then?
No, they shouldn’t. And nor should this Labour MP. And nor should the DOGE kid with his edgy tweets
We are far too censorious about all this nonsense, they are mere words, whether uttered by left, right or fucking annoying centrist dads
Give people a chance to apologise, learn from mistakes, move on
If they THEN continue to be wankers, then by all means come down much harder
Hmm. I'm kind of minded to agree with that... but this went on for over two years, I understand, which would seem to be plenty of time to learn how to behave,
A question is whether the other people on the group told him he was out of order and complained, or whether some of them encouraged him. If it was a place where nasty/ribald/out of order comments were made by many people and mostly ignored (*), then it is *slightly* more excusable than if it was a forum where people were trying to organise or achieve things and he just repeatedly went off one one.
(*) As happens on here on occasion, including from me...
Actually, you’ve repeatedly been told that “Musky Baby” is totally unacceptable.
Ah, do you defend Musky Baby as well as anything Labour? A weird combination, if so...
A bad 'un. A further comment he made wrt to someone who asked for more cycle lanes. This came via a report to a (very effective) activist group in the area called Walk Ride GM:
“Another outrageous exchange came after a councillor mentions a constituent called 'Nick' who asked for more cycle lanes and comments: 'That Nick is something else.'
Mr Gwynne, who represents the Gorton and Denton constituency, replies: 'I had positive visions of him getting mown down by an Elsa Waste HGV while he's cycling to the Fallowfield Loop [cycle lane]. We couldn't be that lucky!'”
There’s really nothing in there that’s actually offensive or outrageous.
Albeit, it’s probably simply stupid to post such things as an MP.
Are you serious ?
Starmer has not instantly sacked him and condemned his remarks if he took your view
I never thought you would be an apologist for someone who makes rascist, antisemitic and wishing death on a pensioner remarks
The remarks are really only horrific, racist and antisemitism if you are a professional offense-monger.
I accept, however, that the UK is full of snowflakes and communicating such remarks is no longer compatible with being in the Ministry.
I assume you do not know all the comments Gwynne made not least in regard to his colleagues Dianne Abbott and Angela Rayner [which I am not repeating ] plus his antisemitic remarks about Jews.
The problem is that Gwynne's remarks as I understand it span a two year period and involve at least another Labour mp and Labour councillors no doubt all of whom did not expect them to be leaked to the Daily Mail at which point they become public knowledge, and certainly in Gwynne's case are seen as unacceptable but also the consequences for Labour as demonstrated by Trevor Philips this morning is who is the other Labour mp and why wasn't he/she been sacked as well
It remains to be seen whether sacking Gwynne has ended the story
A shiny sixpence says that worse remarks have been made by someone in the Mail's editorial offices in the last 24 hours. Because that's what high-pressure workplaces are like.
In reality, Gwynne has been sacked for being stupid, and for making his party look bad, not for the inherent awfulness of his thoughts.
Remember kids- if it's on the internet, it's potentially there forever.
The *written* word will follow you to the grave.
Oh, and email is less secure than sending a postcard.
Email is extremely secure. As a record which is extremely difficult to scrub.
Not when Mt Chump demands that a list of CIA staff recruited in the last 2 years be sent to the White House unencrypted ! ;-)
Off topic slightly and something that puzzles me somewhat - why is there no party standing up for an English Parliament? Your could do away with the HoL and make Westminster the upper Chamber. If Reform were to suggest it, would that kill one-nation Conservatism.
I should also have added that this topic comes up on PB every other year or three, so perhaps before your time on PB (no sarcasm intended). Generally ends in angry pearl-clutching by the Southron at the notion of having to break up England into a modern Heptarchy in order to be able to represent it in the upper chamber/UK Government in a manner commensurate witht he other nations.
I'll park the idea and await the eventual shift of the Overton window/sliding doors.
A bad 'un. A further comment he made wrt to someone who asked for more cycle lanes. This came via a report to a (very effective) activist group in the area called Walk Ride GM:
“Another outrageous exchange came after a councillor mentions a constituent called 'Nick' who asked for more cycle lanes and comments: 'That Nick is something else.'
Mr Gwynne, who represents the Gorton and Denton constituency, replies: 'I had positive visions of him getting mown down by an Elsa Waste HGV while he's cycling to the Fallowfield Loop [cycle lane]. We couldn't be that lucky!'”
Imagine a similar "joke" about a pedestrian run down on a Zebra crossing, or a 6 year old run down crossing the road to school where the Local Highways Authority has refused to provide such a Zebra crossing.
It's mild compared to a lot of the stuff that comes in eg Facebook groups or Youtube comments for "motorists", or even the racism-hinting dog whistles put out by some of our politicians.
But we need to require elected politicians to engage with the case or issue.
I fwiiw, believe Gwynne's commentary is unacceptable and unprofessional and he should have gone. In an earlier, less febrile time I am sure he could have passed it off as "satire".
Far from condemning Gwynne, his transparency should be applauded. Politicians should be obliged to tweet at least 100 times a day so we'd know what really lies behind the 360° smirk. QEI complained she couldn't see into men's souls. We've solved that problem.
I don’t think QEI was complaining. She had no desire to look into men’s souls.
An early version of Clinton’s “don’t ask, don’t tell”?
I do suspect she might have been stating it as a fact that it's not possible, rather than a desire. The attributed quote suggests the latter, but it's oral tradition, rather than direct quote.
Elizabeth was at times notoriously paranoid. Had the facility to read thoughts, without resorting to torture, been real, I'm not entirely convinced she'd have avoided using it.
A bad 'un. A further comment he made wrt to someone who asked for more cycle lanes. This came via a report to a (very effective) activist group in the area called Walk Ride GM:
“Another outrageous exchange came after a councillor mentions a constituent called 'Nick' who asked for more cycle lanes and comments: 'That Nick is something else.'
Mr Gwynne, who represents the Gorton and Denton constituency, replies: 'I had positive visions of him getting mown down by an Elsa Waste HGV while he's cycling to the Fallowfield Loop [cycle lane]. We couldn't be that lucky!'”
Imagine a similar "joke" about a pedestrian run down on a Zebra crossing, or a 6 year old run down crossing the road to school where the Local Highways Authority has refused to provide such a Zebra crossing.
It's mild compared to a lot of the stuff that comes in eg Facebook groups or Youtube comments for "motorists", or even the racism-hinting dog whistles put out by some of our politicians.
But we need to require elected politicians to engage with the case or issue.
The activist in person is probably a pest. You’re being an absolute snowflake, I’m afraid.
"The activist in person is probably a pest."
You do realise how stupid that makes you sound?
Activists are always pests.
Imagine the fun of running a town council in the 1850s, and Cassius Clay turns up to give a speech on his personal hobby horse.
This will nearly inevitably end up in a fight. On a number of previous occasions Clay has stabbed (and killed) people in such fights.
He has written a book, boasting of this.
The venue will be wrecked, maybe even burnt down. And the town will suffer a full riot, quite possibly.
A bad 'un. A further comment he made wrt to someone who asked for more cycle lanes. This came via a report to a (very effective) activist group in the area called Walk Ride GM:
“Another outrageous exchange came after a councillor mentions a constituent called 'Nick' who asked for more cycle lanes and comments: 'That Nick is something else.'
Mr Gwynne, who represents the Gorton and Denton constituency, replies: 'I had positive visions of him getting mown down by an Elsa Waste HGV while he's cycling to the Fallowfield Loop [cycle lane]. We couldn't be that lucky!'”
Imagine a similar "joke" about a pedestrian run down on a Zebra crossing, or a 6 year old run down crossing the road to school where the Local Highways Authority has refused to provide such a Zebra crossing.
It's mild compared to a lot of the stuff that comes in eg Facebook groups or Youtube comments for "motorists", or even the racism-hinting dog whistles put out by some of our politicians.
But we need to require elected politicians to engage with the case or issue.
The activist in person is probably a pest. You’re being an absolute snowflake, I’m afraid.
"The activist in person is probably a pest."
You do realise how stupid that makes you sound?
Activists are always pests.
Imagine the fun of running a town council in the 1850s, and Cassius Clay turns up to give a speech on his personal hobby horse.
This will nearly inevitably end up in a fight. On a number of previous occasions Clay has stabbed (and killed) people in such fights.
He has written a book, boasting of this.
The venue will be wrecked, maybe even burnt down. And the town will suffer a full riot, quite possibly.
Activists, eh?
... oh, you meant Cassius *Marcellus* Clay. Not the other one. Makes a lot more sense now.
Off topic slightly and something that puzzles me somewhat - why is there no party standing up for an English Parliament? Your could do away with the HoL and make Westminster the upper Chamber. If Reform were to suggest it, would that kill one-nation Conservatism.
Because it wouldn't work in that England really is too large an entity to have as one part of a federal style system. Plus, why would those places which feel disconnected to Westminster because it's remote from their interests want to replace it with one whose centre of gravity was tilted even more to London and the South East than the UK one?
It's a bad idea put forward every so often by those who think it would give their kind of English nationalism a whip hand in the UK, without thinking about regional differences and that federal type structures can only work with some balance between their composite parts.
"The White House is Holy Ground because I am there."
Yep. It's Word of Faith, with some charismatic god-is-my-personal-friend type habits inserted and taken to a ludicrous level of assertion. She sounds like one of those who is convinced God always keeps her a parking space specially.
As in eg Uganda under Amin, the independent judiciary, and independent institutions such as churches, will be the last bulwarks of a free society that can continue to exist.
You haven't seen the Whitehouse Faith Advisor then
"Any offence against Trump is an offence against God..."
I saw the full Trump address at the National Prayer Breakfast.
I can't source that quote, but I'm assuming it comes from his "Faith Adviser" Paula White, who is a Megachurch Minister with a private jet, who is associated with the "Word of Faith" movement aka Prosperity Gospel. It flourishes in wealthy circles in the USA because it gives a theology justifying being rich, and staying rich. It has it's origins in characters such as Kenneth Hagin, and Kenneth Hopeland - and arguably before that Oral Roberts, and more recently Benny Hinn. PBers may be more familiar with the latter two.
Bluntly, I'd call it a perversion of Christian doctrine. It tends not to do well in the UK because UK Evangelical circles have a far more integrated social concern tradition going back to at least Wesley, and our society is less Balkanised by wealth than the USA.
Trump's support afaics comes from some Evangelicals who I term Trumpvangelicals, who tend to be concentrated in charismatic megachurches, places such as "Reformed" churches which embrace dogmas making women second class humans ("Male Headship"), and conservative / charismatic denominations - anti-abortion movement heartlands, and parts of the Roman Catholic Right (where JD Vance comes from, and where eg Opus Dei are influential in the Federalist Society).
Trump also has some sort of "faith task group" in the White House; I am not sure who they are yet. He's embracing caricatured "protect white people" policies already - as eg in his assault on the new (quite reasonable - I posted an analysis from RC Bishops) Compulsory Purchase law in South Africa. I assume the latter is motivated by Musk.
I'd expect some figures to emerge to speak against Trump who will be the equivalent of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, as they will be in time be some of the few who will have platforms he cannot destroy from which to make criticisms - even though false narratives are already being propagated about for example the Lutheran Church.
I'd be interested in comment from @HYUFD or others, who may have knowledge in this area.
A bad 'un. A further comment he made wrt to someone who asked for more cycle lanes. This came via a report to a (very effective) activist group in the area called Walk Ride GM:
“Another outrageous exchange came after a councillor mentions a constituent called 'Nick' who asked for more cycle lanes and comments: 'That Nick is something else.'
Mr Gwynne, who represents the Gorton and Denton constituency, replies: 'I had positive visions of him getting mown down by an Elsa Waste HGV while he's cycling to the Fallowfield Loop [cycle lane]. We couldn't be that lucky!'”
There’s really nothing in there that’s actually offensive or outrageous.
Albeit, it’s probably simply stupid to post such things as an MP.
Are you serious ?
Starmer has not instantly sacked him and condemned his remarks if he took your view
I never thought you would be an apologist for someone who makes rascist, antisemitic and wishing death on a pensioner remarks
The remarks are really only horrific, racist and antisemitism if you are a professional offense-monger.
I accept, however, that the UK is full of snowflakes and communicating such remarks is no longer compatible with being in the Ministry.
I assume you do not know all the comments Gwynne made not least in regard to his colleagues Dianne Abbott and Angela Rayner [which I am not repeating ] plus his antisemitic remarks about Jews.
The problem is that Gwynne's remarks as I understand it span a two year period and involve at least another Labour mp and Labour councillors no doubt all of whom did not expect them to be leaked to the Daily Mail at which point they become public knowledge, and certainly in Gwynne's case are seen as unacceptable but also the consequences for Labour as demonstrated by Trevor Philips this morning is who is the other Labour mp and why wasn't he/she been sacked as well
It remains to be seen whether sacking Gwynne has ended the story
A shiny sixpence says that worse remarks have been made by someone in the Mail's editorial offices in the last 24 hours. Because that's what high-pressure workplaces are like.
In reality, Gwynne has been sacked for being stupid, and for making his party look bad, not for the inherent awfulness of his thoughts.
Remember kids- if it's on the internet, it's potentially there forever.
The *written* word will follow you to the grave.
Oh, and email is less secure than sending a postcard.
Email is extremely secure. As a record which is extremely difficult to scrub.
Not when Mt Chump demands that a list of CIA staff recruited in the last 2 years be sent to the White House unencrypted ! ;-)
Oh, it's not at all secure if you don't want other people to read it.
Just awful: One of the inspector generals that Trump fired was examining Elon Musk's failures to meet reporting protocol designed to safeguard national security as a major recipient of Pentagon contracts.
Does anyone else watch/listen to the “podcast” Uncanny?
The case of Hollymount Farm is one of the clearest examples of a haunting I’ve encountered. Still might be total bull, of course
Uncanny is one of my unexpected best TV programmes at the moment, loved the first series. Kids (well, more my son) mocked it when I explained about it and that they might enjoy. They were quickly engrossed. We'll probably watch next episode today.
No idea if bull or not, but I think the people involved believe it, even if they can't explain it.
A bad 'un. A further comment he made wrt to someone who asked for more cycle lanes. This came via a report to a (very effective) activist group in the area called Walk Ride GM:
“Another outrageous exchange came after a councillor mentions a constituent called 'Nick' who asked for more cycle lanes and comments: 'That Nick is something else.'
Mr Gwynne, who represents the Gorton and Denton constituency, replies: 'I had positive visions of him getting mown down by an Elsa Waste HGV while he's cycling to the Fallowfield Loop [cycle lane]. We couldn't be that lucky!'”
Imagine a similar "joke" about a pedestrian run down on a Zebra crossing, or a 6 year old run down crossing the road to school where the Local Highways Authority has refused to provide such a Zebra crossing.
It's mild compared to a lot of the stuff that comes in eg Facebook groups or Youtube comments for "motorists", or even the racism-hinting dog whistles put out by some of our politicians.
But we need to require elected politicians to engage with the case or issue.
The activist in person is probably a pest. You’re being an absolute snowflake, I’m afraid.
It's the kind of thing that turns cyclists into "militants". You express concern about kids being hit by drivers as they cycle to school and your local councillor responds with a hope that you are ground up under the wheels of a HGV.
When your elected representatives won't take you seriously, or indeed respond with a wish for your agonising death, you either give up or turn to more direct radical action.
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
This is silly. The MP didn’t “respond”, he made a private joke. For all we know, the activist in question is a do-gooding pest.
So police officers who make distasteful jokes on WhatsApp shouldn’t be fired then?
No, they shouldn’t. And nor should this Labour MP. And nor should the DOGE kid with his edgy tweets
We are far too censorious about all this nonsense, they are mere words, whether uttered by left, right or fucking annoying centrist dads
Give people a chance to apologise, learn from mistakes, move on
If they THEN continue to be wankers, then by all means come down much harder
"mere words" for goodness sake. What about the teenagers who have killed themselves after being bullied on social media.?
Jesus Christ. No doubt you’ll soon be comparing the poor Gwynne to Adolf Hitler, who wrote “mere words” in his best-selling joke book, Mein Kampf.
Say what you like about him, but no one could paint the inside of your house as fast as he could.
As in eg Uganda under Amin, the independent judiciary, and independent institutions such as churches, will be the last bulwarks of a free society that can continue to exist.
You haven't seen the Whitehouse Faith Advisor then
"Any offence against Trump is an offence against God..."
I saw the full Trump address at the National Prayer Breakfast.
I can't source that quote, but I'm assuming it comes from his "Faith Adviser" Paula White, who is a Megachurch Minister with a private jet, who is associated with the "Word of Faith" movement aka Prosperity Gospel. It flourishes in wealthy circles in the USA because it gives a theology justifying being rich, and staying rich. It has it's origins in characters such as Kenneth Hagin, and Kenneth Hopeland - and arguably before that Oral Roberts, and more recently Benny Hinn. PBers may be more familiar with the latter two.
Bluntly, I'd call it a perversion of Christian doctrine. It tends not to do well in the UK because UK Evangelical circles have a far more integrated social concern tradition going back to at least Wesley, and our society is less Balkanised by wealth than the USA.
Trump's support afaics comes from some Evangelicals who I term Trumpvangelicals, who tend to be concentrated in charismatic megachurches, places such as "Reformed" churches which embrace dogmas making women second class humans ("Male Headship"), and conservative / charismatic denominations - anti-abortion movement heartlands, and parts of the Roman Catholic Right (where JD Vance comes from, and where eg Opus Dei are influential in the Federalist Society).
Trump also has some sort of "faith task group" in the White House; I am not sure who they are yet. He's embracing caricatured "protect white people" policies already - as eg in his assault on the new (quite reasonable - I posted an analysis from RC Bishops) Compulsory Purchase law in South Africa. I assume the latter is motivated by Musk.
I'd expect some figures to emerge to speak against Trump who will be the equivalent of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, as they will be in time be some of the few who will have platforms he cannot destroy from which to make criticisms - even though false narratives are already being propagated about for example the Lutheran Church.
I'd be interested in comment from @HYUFD or others, who may have knowledge in this area.
The prosperity Gospel is a lie, because Christ was plain that misfortune befalls righteous and unrighteous alike; and that His followers would often face terrible times.
Does anyone else watch/listen to the “podcast” Uncanny?
The case of Hollymount Farm is one of the clearest examples of a haunting I’ve encountered. Still might be total bull, of course
Uncanny is one of my unexpected best TV programmes at the moment, loved the first series. Kids (well, more my son) mocked it when I explained about it and that they might enjoy. They were quickly engrossed. We'll probably watch next episode today.
No idea if bull or not, but I think the people involved believe it, even if they can't explain it.
Hollymount Farm (if you’ve not seen it) is PROPERLY creepy. Even scary
As with all the best ones, and as you say - it’s the plain spoken rationality of the witnesses which most unnerves. These are ordinary but intelligent people with no interest in the paranormal - who have seen something truly frightening that they can’t explain, and which appears - prima facie - to be supernatural
Even if you dismiss all of it is as bollocks it’s compelling as a study of human psychology
Does anyone else watch/listen to the “podcast” Uncanny?
The case of Hollymount Farm is one of the clearest examples of a haunting I’ve encountered. Still might be total bull, of course
Uncanny is one of my unexpected best TV programmes at the moment, loved the first series. Kids (well, more my son) mocked it when I explained about it and that they might enjoy. They were quickly engrossed. We'll probably watch next episode today.
No idea if bull or not, but I think the people involved believe it, even if they can't explain it.
Hollymount Farm (if you’ve not seen it) is PROPERLY creepy. Even scary
As with all the best ones, and as you say - it’s the plain spoken rationality of the witnesses which most unnerves. These are ordinary but intelligent people with no interest in the paranormal - who have seen something truly frightening that they can’t explain, and which appears - prima facie - to be supernatural
Even if you dismiss all of it is as bollocks it’s compelling as a study of human psychology
I do not know exactly what ghosts might be, but I’ve heard enough rational people describe things that can only be described in supernatural terms.
You yourself have commented about the atmosphere of oppressive horror, at Babi Yar.
Does anyone else watch/listen to the “podcast” Uncanny?
The case of Hollymount Farm is one of the clearest examples of a haunting I’ve encountered. Still might be total bull, of course
Excellent series. The first is on iPlayer as well. You may think it's bunkum, but it's very entertaining.
Yeah it’s great. A lot of the stories are quite easily explicable (but still entertaining). A few stand out as Whoah
The Battersea Poltergeist was one. Also that terrifying Scottish bothy. And now Hollymount Farm. Brrrr
Danny Robbins is a very gifted presenter - likeable and plausible. Never sensational
Bothies can be deeply unsettling if you're by yourself, no signal and more than a day's walk away from civilisation.
It’s all nonsense. Good fun but nonsense.
The guy who presents Uncanny is fairly decent (although seeing him on tv makes me think of D:Ream); however for me to even vaguely consider the possibility of a ghost it would have to appear in front on me, in broad daylight, and consent to a range of tests in lab conditions. And even then my reaction would be “that’s a bloody good illusion”.
The story always involves someone in a dark, unsettling location, under psychological pressure and/or in search of an easy answer to explain a more profound trauma.
Does anyone else watch/listen to the “podcast” Uncanny?
The case of Hollymount Farm is one of the clearest examples of a haunting I’ve encountered. Still might be total bull, of course
Uncanny is one of my unexpected best TV programmes at the moment, loved the first series. Kids (well, more my son) mocked it when I explained about it and that they might enjoy. They were quickly engrossed. We'll probably watch next episode today.
No idea if bull or not, but I think the people involved believe it, even if they can't explain it.
Hollymount Farm (if you’ve not seen it) is PROPERLY creepy. Even scary
As with all the best ones, and as you say - it’s the plain spoken rationality of the witnesses which most unnerves. These are ordinary but intelligent people with no interest in the paranormal - who have seen something truly frightening that they can’t explain, and which appears - prima facie - to be supernatural
Even if you dismiss all of it is as bollocks it’s compelling as a study of human psychology
It’s fascinating. I am a skeptic, don’t believe that ghosts exist but I cannot deny this kind of testimony. The most interesting series that Robbins has done, in my opinion, was the Witch Farm, centred on a farm in the Brecon Beacons. So much stuff going on over years and yet the people who bought the place afterwards report precisely zero activity of any kind. How to explain that? Some would say that certain people are able to see and hear ghosts, others might argue that they are more susceptible to imagining things. I often wonder how much false memory plays into this. Events as described cannot have happened on their own - objects moving etc. but did they happen as described?
Does anyone else watch/listen to the “podcast” Uncanny?
The case of Hollymount Farm is one of the clearest examples of a haunting I’ve encountered. Still might be total bull, of course
Uncanny is one of my unexpected best TV programmes at the moment, loved the first series. Kids (well, more my son) mocked it when I explained about it and that they might enjoy. They were quickly engrossed. We'll probably watch next episode today.
No idea if bull or not, but I think the people involved believe it, even if they can't explain it.
Hollymount Farm (if you’ve not seen it) is PROPERLY creepy. Even scary
As with all the best ones, and as you say - it’s the plain spoken rationality of the witnesses which most unnerves. These are ordinary but intelligent people with no interest in the paranormal - who have seen something truly frightening that they can’t explain, and which appears - prima facie - to be supernatural
Even if you dismiss all of it is as bollocks it’s compelling as a study of human psychology
I do not know exactly what ghosts might be, but I’ve heard enough rational people describe things that can only be described in supernatural terms.
You yourself have commented about the atmosphere of oppressive horror, at Babi Yar.
Yes. Hence my whole concept of “noom”
I can easily be persuaded that intense human emotions can pervade places in ways we don’t understand. The idea we’ve got the entire universe sorted and comprehended is facile. Physicists can’t agree if we live in a vast simulation or an infinite series of universes - or something simply beyond our ken
We are also only beginning to grasp the intense mystery of consciousness itself and how it is intimately yet weirdly bound up with the fabric of “reality”
Humility with an open mind is the only way to approach this stuff. And I HATE being humble
Does anyone else watch/listen to the “podcast” Uncanny?
The case of Hollymount Farm is one of the clearest examples of a haunting I’ve encountered. Still might be total bull, of course
Excellent series. The first is on iPlayer as well. You may think it's bunkum, but it's very entertaining.
Yeah it’s great. A lot of the stories are quite easily explicable (but still entertaining). A few stand out as Whoah
The Battersea Poltergeist was one. Also that terrifying Scottish bothy. And now Hollymount Farm. Brrrr
Danny Robbins is a very gifted presenter - likeable and plausible. Never sensational
Bothies can be deeply unsettling if you're by yourself, no signal and more than a day's walk away from civilisation.
It’s all nonsense. Good fun but nonsense.
The guy who presents Uncanny is fairly decent (although seeing him on tv makes me think of D:Ream); however for me to even vaguely consider the possibility of a ghost it would have to appear in front on me, in broad daylight, and consent to a range of tests in lab conditions. And even then my reaction would be “that’s a bloody good illusion”.
The story always involves someone in a dark, unsettling location, under psychological pressure and/or in search of an easy answer to explain a more profound trauma.
To summarise: I ain’t afraid of no ghost.
For me this is as ludicrously over-confident as someone who insists that QAnon is real
How can you know? How many people screen out jarring or bizarre visual evidence simply because it makes no sense? To their world view?
Check the gorilla on the basketball court - a famous experiment
Or think back to how many people dismissed the idea of a global Covid pandemic until the last moment - because it had never happened before and therefore could never happen
A bad 'un. A further comment he made wrt to someone who asked for more cycle lanes. This came via a report to a (very effective) activist group in the area called Walk Ride GM:
“Another outrageous exchange came after a councillor mentions a constituent called 'Nick' who asked for more cycle lanes and comments: 'That Nick is something else.'
Mr Gwynne, who represents the Gorton and Denton constituency, replies: 'I had positive visions of him getting mown down by an Elsa Waste HGV while he's cycling to the Fallowfield Loop [cycle lane]. We couldn't be that lucky!'”
Imagine a similar "joke" about a pedestrian run down on a Zebra crossing, or a 6 year old run down crossing the road to school where the Local Highways Authority has refused to provide such a Zebra crossing.
It's mild compared to a lot of the stuff that comes in eg Facebook groups or Youtube comments for "motorists", or even the racism-hinting dog whistles put out by some of our politicians.
But we need to require elected politicians to engage with the case or issue.
The activist in person is probably a pest. You’re being an absolute snowflake, I’m afraid.
It's the kind of thing that turns cyclists into "militants". You express concern about kids being hit by drivers as they cycle to school and your local councillor responds with a hope that you are ground up under the wheels of a HGV.
When your elected representatives won't take you seriously, or indeed respond with a wish for your agonising death, you either give up or turn to more direct radical action.
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
This is silly. The MP didn’t “respond”, he made a private joke. For all we know, the activist in question is a do-gooding pest.
So police officers who make distasteful jokes on WhatsApp shouldn’t be fired then?
No, they shouldn’t. And nor should this Labour MP. And nor should the DOGE kid with his edgy tweets
We are far too censorious about all this nonsense, they are mere words, whether uttered by left, right or fucking annoying centrist dads
Give people a chance to apologise, learn from mistakes, move on
If they THEN continue to be wankers, then by all means come down much harder
"mere words" for goodness sake. What about the teenagers who have killed themselves after being bullied on social media.?
Jesus Christ. No doubt you’ll soon be comparing the poor Gwynne to Adolf Hitler, who wrote “mere words” in his best-selling joke book, Mein Kampf.
Say what you like about him, but no one could paint the inside of your house as fast as he could.
I'm on the work laptop, so I'm not Googling it. But I suspect it's "The Producers".
Does anyone else watch/listen to the “podcast” Uncanny?
The case of Hollymount Farm is one of the clearest examples of a haunting I’ve encountered. Still might be total bull, of course
Uncanny is one of my unexpected best TV programmes at the moment, loved the first series. Kids (well, more my son) mocked it when I explained about it and that they might enjoy. They were quickly engrossed. We'll probably watch next episode today.
No idea if bull or not, but I think the people involved believe it, even if they can't explain it.
Hollymount Farm (if you’ve not seen it) is PROPERLY creepy. Even scary
As with all the best ones, and as you say - it’s the plain spoken rationality of the witnesses which most unnerves. These are ordinary but intelligent people with no interest in the paranormal - who have seen something truly frightening that they can’t explain, and which appears - prima facie - to be supernatural
Even if you dismiss all of it is as bollocks it’s compelling as a study of human psychology
It’s fascinating. I am a skeptic, don’t believe that ghosts exist but I cannot deny this kind of testimony. The most interesting series that Robbins has done, in my opinion, was the Witch Farm, centred on a farm in the Brecon Beacons. So much stuff going on over years and yet the people who bought the place afterwards report precisely zero activity of any kind. How to explain that? Some would say that certain people are able to see and hear ghosts, others might argue that they are more susceptible to imagining things. I often wonder how much false memory plays into this. Events as described cannot have happened on their own - objects moving etc. but did they happen as described?
Witch Farm was great. Proper goosebumps
I think Hollymount might be better. But then it might be better because it’s a better story - and we all love a good story and will willingly suspend our disbelief to get that enjoyment
A bad 'un. A further comment he made wrt to someone who asked for more cycle lanes. This came via a report to a (very effective) activist group in the area called Walk Ride GM:
“Another outrageous exchange came after a councillor mentions a constituent called 'Nick' who asked for more cycle lanes and comments: 'That Nick is something else.'
Mr Gwynne, who represents the Gorton and Denton constituency, replies: 'I had positive visions of him getting mown down by an Elsa Waste HGV while he's cycling to the Fallowfield Loop [cycle lane]. We couldn't be that lucky!'”
Imagine a similar "joke" about a pedestrian run down on a Zebra crossing, or a 6 year old run down crossing the road to school where the Local Highways Authority has refused to provide such a Zebra crossing.
It's mild compared to a lot of the stuff that comes in eg Facebook groups or Youtube comments for "motorists", or even the racism-hinting dog whistles put out by some of our politicians.
But we need to require elected politicians to engage with the case or issue.
The activist in person is probably a pest. You’re being an absolute snowflake, I’m afraid.
It's the kind of thing that turns cyclists into "militants". You express concern about kids being hit by drivers as they cycle to school and your local councillor responds with a hope that you are ground up under the wheels of a HGV.
When your elected representatives won't take you seriously, or indeed respond with a wish for your agonising death, you either give up or turn to more direct radical action.
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
This is silly. The MP didn’t “respond”, he made a private joke. For all we know, the activist in question is a do-gooding pest.
So police officers who make distasteful jokes on WhatsApp shouldn’t be fired then?
No, they shouldn’t. And nor should this Labour MP. And nor should the DOGE kid with his edgy tweets
We are far too censorious about all this nonsense, they are mere words, whether uttered by left, right or fucking annoying centrist dads
Give people a chance to apologise, learn from mistakes, move on
If they THEN continue to be wankers, then by all means come down much harder
For the DOGE kid, I'm more concerned about his being granted access to classified information (UK equivalent would perhaps be the entire HMRC or DVLA database), and the Trump/Musk regime's belief that it is OK to do this with no security clearance in basic violation of the law.
But those are simply the values of the regime.
Was 'Big Balls' the racist, or the one who was previously sacked for leaking confidential information ?
I'm not totally au fait with all the details - but this is a partial summary:
There is a 25 year old called Marko Elez who was allowed Read Only access under the initial interim injunction, who resigned when his posts promoting eugenics and racism came out. He is thought to have obtained write access and to have been recoding parts of the national payments systems. He was reinstated one day later.
Big Balls was one social media pseudonym of a 19 year old called 19-year-old Edward Coristine, who had been sacked from a previous employer for leaking confidential information to a competitor.
I am not aware that Coristine has been sacked since he is afaics ruled out of access by the temporary injunction.
worth saying that vermeule’s view that “separation of powers means the president is an elected despot” is fucking stupid and has no basis in the constitution as written
There is a future in which the supposed guardrails of democracy and legality in the US hold, as they mostly did last time
But there is also a (much more likely) future in which neither are true.
I am not convinced enough people are freaking out to the required degree about this...
Yes. There is a very precise thing to watch; and I hope the media do their job. And that's the arcane matter of the rule of law.
In UK if a court says the government/state agency is wrong and make an order, it is (after any appeals) obeyed. This used to be boringly routine but, to their shame, the last government got the habit of saying 'we think the court is wrong but we'll do as they say like a sullen teenager'. This was the begining of bad stuff.
There are now multiple court cases arising from events since Trump2. Will, where relevant, Trump's government (1) obey (2) obey but say this is all terrible and try to bypass or legislate it away or (3) override and ignore, including by force?
Option (3) is the directly fascist one. It's a bit of a shibboleth. It also has a wider effect; the western countries have a tradition of the reliability and efficacy of things like commercial litigation. Without it commerce is a lottery/casino.
I think it is quite hard to run a properly fascist state if you do not control the courts.
Does anyone else watch/listen to the “podcast” Uncanny?
The case of Hollymount Farm is one of the clearest examples of a haunting I’ve encountered. Still might be total bull, of course
Uncanny is one of my unexpected best TV programmes at the moment, loved the first series. Kids (well, more my son) mocked it when I explained about it and that they might enjoy. They were quickly engrossed. We'll probably watch next episode today.
No idea if bull or not, but I think the people involved believe it, even if they can't explain it.
Hollymount Farm (if you’ve not seen it) is PROPERLY creepy. Even scary
As with all the best ones, and as you say - it’s the plain spoken rationality of the witnesses which most unnerves. These are ordinary but intelligent people with no interest in the paranormal - who have seen something truly frightening that they can’t explain, and which appears - prima facie - to be supernatural
Even if you dismiss all of it is as bollocks it’s compelling as a study of human psychology
It’s fascinating. I am a skeptic, don’t believe that ghosts exist but I cannot deny this kind of testimony. The most interesting series that Robbins has done, in my opinion, was the Witch Farm, centred on a farm in the Brecon Beacons. So much stuff going on over years and yet the people who bought the place afterwards report precisely zero activity of any kind. How to explain that? Some would say that certain people are able to see and hear ghosts, others might argue that they are more susceptible to imagining things. I often wonder how much false memory plays into this. Events as described cannot have happened on their own - objects moving etc. but did they happen as described?
Witch Farm was great. Proper goosebumps
I think Hollymount might be better. But then it might be better because it’s a better story - and we all love a good story and will willingly suspend our disbelief to get that enjoyment
I have generally found the early Uncannies betterthat later ones. There was one with Daisy May Cooper which felt like a parody, as if she was using the show for some reason. A bit like the first ever season of Big Brother, where the contestants had no prior knowledge compared to later series where they all did. I worry now that some people might be trying to get on the show.
Does anyone else watch/listen to the “podcast” Uncanny?
The case of Hollymount Farm is one of the clearest examples of a haunting I’ve encountered. Still might be total bull, of course
Excellent series. The first is on iPlayer as well. You may think it's bunkum, but it's very entertaining.
Yeah it’s great. A lot of the stories are quite easily explicable (but still entertaining). A few stand out as Whoah
The Battersea Poltergeist was one. Also that terrifying Scottish bothy. And now Hollymount Farm. Brrrr
Danny Robbins is a very gifted presenter - likeable and plausible. Never sensational
Bothies can be deeply unsettling if you're by yourself, no signal and more than a day's walk away from civilisation.
It’s all nonsense. Good fun but nonsense.
The guy who presents Uncanny is fairly decent (although seeing him on tv makes me think of D:Ream); however for me to even vaguely consider the possibility of a ghost it would have to appear in front on me, in broad daylight, and consent to a range of tests in lab conditions. And even then my reaction would be “that’s a bloody good illusion”.
The story always involves someone in a dark, unsettling location, under psychological pressure and/or in search of an easy answer to explain a more profound trauma.
To summarise: I ain’t afraid of no ghost.
For me this is as ludicrously over-confident as someone who insists that QAnon is real
How can you know? How many people screen out jarring or bizarre visual evidence simply because it makes no sense? To their world view?
Check the gorilla on the basketball court - a famous experiment
Or think back to how many people dismissed the idea of a global Covid pandemic until the last moment - because it had never happened before and therefore could never happen
Read the actual words. I am applying sensible scepticism which used to be mainstream until the West started going weird (insert essay here about the death of mainstream religion having a bad side as well as a good one).
If you want me to develop the point, what I am saying is this: no matter how credible the individual seems, if they report that an object moved by itself or a person appeared and disappearing, there are many KNOWN explanations we can reach for before we toy with an unknown one.
I am scientist. I would love us to discover a new complexity to the universe. And as you say, in many ways we know nothing. But anything we discover must be measured and codified to prove that it is something new. Otherwise, we might as well go back to pagan gods.
Ghosts, in the sense of the dead speaking to the living, must also answer the same logic challenge as UFOs. Why do so cryptically and not in the open in front of everyone? If my grandparents could speak to me from beyond the veil, I am confident they would do just that. Politely knock on the door and come in for a chat.
If they are meant to be a sort of “psychic imprint” then why aren’t they everywhere?
A bad 'un. A further comment he made wrt to someone who asked for more cycle lanes. This came via a report to a (very effective) activist group in the area called Walk Ride GM:
“Another outrageous exchange came after a councillor mentions a constituent called 'Nick' who asked for more cycle lanes and comments: 'That Nick is something else.'
Mr Gwynne, who represents the Gorton and Denton constituency, replies: 'I had positive visions of him getting mown down by an Elsa Waste HGV while he's cycling to the Fallowfield Loop [cycle lane]. We couldn't be that lucky!'”
Imagine a similar "joke" about a pedestrian run down on a Zebra crossing, or a 6 year old run down crossing the road to school where the Local Highways Authority has refused to provide such a Zebra crossing.
It's mild compared to a lot of the stuff that comes in eg Facebook groups or Youtube comments for "motorists", or even the racism-hinting dog whistles put out by some of our politicians.
But we need to require elected politicians to engage with the case or issue.
The activist in person is probably a pest. You’re being an absolute snowflake, I’m afraid.
It's the kind of thing that turns cyclists into "militants". You express concern about kids being hit by drivers as they cycle to school and your local councillor responds with a hope that you are ground up under the wheels of a HGV.
When your elected representatives won't take you seriously, or indeed respond with a wish for your agonising death, you either give up or turn to more direct radical action.
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
This is silly. The MP didn’t “respond”, he made a private joke. For all we know, the activist in question is a do-gooding pest.
So police officers who make distasteful jokes on WhatsApp shouldn’t be fired then?
No, they shouldn’t. And nor should this Labour MP. And nor should the DOGE kid with his edgy tweets
We are far too censorious about all this nonsense, they are mere words, whether uttered by left, right or fucking annoying centrist dads
Give people a chance to apologise, learn from mistakes, move on
If they THEN continue to be wankers, then by all means come down much harder
For the DOGE kid, I'm more concerned about his being granted access to classified information (UK equivalent would perhaps be the entire HMRC or DVLA database), and the Trump/Musk regime's belief that it is OK to do this with no security clearance in basic violation of the law.
But those are simply the values of the regime.
Was 'Big Balls' the racist, or the one who was previously sacked for leaking confidential information ?
I'm not totally au fait with all the details - but this is a partial summary:
There is a 25 year old called Marko Elez who was allowed Read Only access under the initial interim injunction, who resigned when his posts promoting eugenics and racism came out. He is thought to have obtained write access and to have been recoding parts of the national payments systems. He was reinstated one day later.
Big Balls was one social media pseudonym of a 19 year old called 19-year-old Edward Coristine, who had been sacked from a previous employer for leaking confidential information to a competitor.
I am not aware that Coristine has been sacked since he is afaics ruled out of access by the temporary injunction.
The ONLY think stopping these numpties from crashing the entire US Government is that most of the systems are written in COBOL, and they haven't (yet) deleted the critical bits...
To be fair, I think he’s honest. I don’t think he hides his malign intent.
The man who aspires to be the world´s first trillionaire, by crashing USAid with no notice at all, has just shut the worlds largest food programmes for the poorest people on the planet.
Does anyone else watch/listen to the “podcast” Uncanny?
The case of Hollymount Farm is one of the clearest examples of a haunting I’ve encountered. Still might be total bull, of course
Excellent series. The first is on iPlayer as well. You may think it's bunkum, but it's very entertaining.
Yeah it’s great. A lot of the stories are quite easily explicable (but still entertaining). A few stand out as Whoah
The Battersea Poltergeist was one. Also that terrifying Scottish bothy. And now Hollymount Farm. Brrrr
Danny Robbins is a very gifted presenter - likeable and plausible. Never sensational
Bothies can be deeply unsettling if you're by yourself, no signal and more than a day's walk away from civilisation.
It’s all nonsense. Good fun but nonsense.
The guy who presents Uncanny is fairly decent (although seeing him on tv makes me think of D:Ream); however for me to even vaguely consider the possibility of a ghost it would have to appear in front on me, in broad daylight, and consent to a range of tests in lab conditions. And even then my reaction would be “that’s a bloody good illusion”.
The story always involves someone in a dark, unsettling location, under psychological pressure and/or in search of an easy answer to explain a more profound trauma.
To summarise: I ain’t afraid of no ghost.
For me this is as ludicrously over-confident as someone who insists that QAnon is real
How can you know? How many people screen out jarring or bizarre visual evidence simply because it makes no sense? To their world view?
Check the gorilla on the basketball court - a famous experiment
Or think back to how many people dismissed the idea of a global Covid pandemic until the last moment - because it had never happened before and therefore could never happen
Read the actual words. I am applying sensible scepticism which used to be mainstream until the West started going weird (insert essay here about the death of mainstream religion having a bad side as well as a good one).
If you want me to develop the point, what I am saying is this: no matter how credible the individual seems, if they report that an object moved by itself or a person appeared and disappearing, there are many KNOWN explanations we can reach for before we toy with an unknown one.
I am scientist. I would love us to discover a new complexity to the universe. And as you say, in many ways we know nothing. But anything we discover must be measured and codified to prove that it is something new. Otherwise, we might as well go back to pagan gods.
Ghosts, in the sense of the dead speaking to the living, must also answer the same logic challenge as UFOs. Why do so cryptically and not in the open in front of everyone? If my grandparents could speak to me from beyond the veil, I am confident they would do just that. Politely knock on the door and come in for a chat.
If they are meant to be a sort of “psychic imprint” then why aren’t they everywhere?
Houdini famously said that he would come back if it was possible. He didn’t.
One of the issues with a lot of the more exotic interpretations of Fortean style events is that they are often nice sounding ideas with no basis in reality or means to test. A classic is Stone Tape Theory. How do you test such an idea? The believer on the show spouts such things all the time as if they are accepted ideas akin to scientifically proven and tested ideas. They are not.
As in eg Uganda under Amin, the independent judiciary, and independent institutions such as churches, will be the last bulwarks of a free society that can continue to exist.
You haven't seen the Whitehouse Faith Advisor then
"Any offence against Trump is an offence against God..."
I saw the full Trump address at the National Prayer Breakfast.
I can't source that quote, but I'm assuming it comes from his "Faith Adviser" Paula White, who is a Megachurch Minister with a private jet, who is associated with the "Word of Faith" movement aka Prosperity Gospel. It flourishes in wealthy circles in the USA because it gives a theology justifying being rich, and staying rich. It has it's origins in characters such as Kenneth Hagin, and Kenneth Hopeland - and arguably before that Oral Roberts, and more recently Benny Hinn. PBers may be more familiar with the latter two.
Bluntly, I'd call it a perversion of Christian doctrine. It tends not to do well in the UK because UK Evangelical circles have a far more integrated social concern tradition going back to at least Wesley, and our society is less Balkanised by wealth than the USA.
Trump's support afaics comes from some Evangelicals who I term Trumpvangelicals, who tend to be concentrated in charismatic megachurches, places such as "Reformed" churches which embrace dogmas making women second class humans ("Male Headship"), and conservative / charismatic denominations - anti-abortion movement heartlands, and parts of the Roman Catholic Right (where JD Vance comes from, and where eg Opus Dei are influential in the Federalist Society).
Trump also has some sort of "faith task group" in the White House; I am not sure who they are yet. He's embracing caricatured "protect white people" policies already - as eg in his assault on the new (quite reasonable - I posted an analysis from RC Bishops) Compulsory Purchase law in South Africa. I assume the latter is motivated by Musk.
I'd expect some figures to emerge to speak against Trump who will be the equivalent of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, as they will be in time be some of the few who will have platforms he cannot destroy from which to make criticisms - even though false narratives are already being propagated about for example the Lutheran Church.
I'd be interested in comment from @HYUFD or others, who may have knowledge in this area.
The prosperity Gospel is a lie, because Christ was plain that misfortune befalls righteous and unrighteous alike; and that His followers would often face terrible times.
Christ advocates humility, being meek, generosity and forgiveness.
Trumpvangelicals have absolutely no time for Christ, beyond as a totem, for his words are that of a woke libtard to them.
Does anyone else watch/listen to the “podcast” Uncanny?
The case of Hollymount Farm is one of the clearest examples of a haunting I’ve encountered. Still might be total bull, of course
Uncanny is one of my unexpected best TV programmes at the moment, loved the first series. Kids (well, more my son) mocked it when I explained about it and that they might enjoy. They were quickly engrossed. We'll probably watch next episode today.
No idea if bull or not, but I think the people involved believe it, even if they can't explain it.
Hollymount Farm (if you’ve not seen it) is PROPERLY creepy. Even scary
As with all the best ones, and as you say - it’s the plain spoken rationality of the witnesses which most unnerves. These are ordinary but intelligent people with no interest in the paranormal - who have seen something truly frightening that they can’t explain, and which appears - prima facie - to be supernatural
Even if you dismiss all of it is as bollocks it’s compelling as a study of human psychology
I do not know exactly what ghosts might be, but I’ve heard enough rational people describe things that can only be described in supernatural terms.
You yourself have commented about the atmosphere of oppressive horror, at Babi Yar.
Yes. Hence my whole concept of “noom”
I can easily be persuaded that intense human emotions can pervade places in ways we don’t understand. The idea we’ve got the entire universe sorted and comprehended is facile. Physicists can’t agree if we live in a vast simulation or an infinite series of universes - or something simply beyond our ken
We are also only beginning to grasp the intense mystery of consciousness itself and how it is intimately yet weirdly bound up with the fabric of “reality”
Humility with an open mind is the only way to approach this stuff. And I HATE being humble
Indeed. There isn't even a reliable disproof of Berkeley's idealism - the entire non existence of the physical universe, and minds and ideas being the only existences.
While I think he is wrong, it is at least possible he is right. Whereas those who think the opposite - that physics and physical things is all there is - have to face the undeniable existence of their consciousness or mental states, irreducible to physical states.
I think it is quite hard to run a properly fascist state if you do not control the courts.
Vamce, and others, have already said the courts can't overrule the President.
It should be nonsense, but we are about to find out how many people take it seriously
I mean, in theory he has a majority in both Houses. So unless he wants to try something unconstitutional, he can’t whinge about not being able to do anything.
Does anyone else watch/listen to the “podcast” Uncanny?
The case of Hollymount Farm is one of the clearest examples of a haunting I’ve encountered. Still might be total bull, of course
Uncanny is one of my unexpected best TV programmes at the moment, loved the first series. Kids (well, more my son) mocked it when I explained about it and that they might enjoy. They were quickly engrossed. We'll probably watch next episode today.
No idea if bull or not, but I think the people involved believe it, even if they can't explain it.
Hollymount Farm (if you’ve not seen it) is PROPERLY creepy. Even scary
As with all the best ones, and as you say - it’s the plain spoken rationality of the witnesses which most unnerves. These are ordinary but intelligent people with no interest in the paranormal - who have seen something truly frightening that they can’t explain, and which appears - prima facie - to be supernatural
Even if you dismiss all of it is as bollocks it’s compelling as a study of human psychology
It’s fascinating. I am a skeptic, don’t believe that ghosts exist but I cannot deny this kind of testimony. The most interesting series that Robbins has done, in my opinion, was the Witch Farm, centred on a farm in the Brecon Beacons. So much stuff going on over years and yet the people who bought the place afterwards report precisely zero activity of any kind. How to explain that? Some would say that certain people are able to see and hear ghosts, others might argue that they are more susceptible to imagining things. I often wonder how much false memory plays into this. Events as described cannot have happened on their own - objects moving etc. but did they happen as described?
Witch Farm was great. Proper goosebumps
I think Hollymount might be better. But then it might be better because it’s a better story - and we all love a good story and will willingly suspend our disbelief to get that enjoyment
I have generally found the early Uncannies betterthat later ones. There was one with Daisy May Cooper which felt like a parody, as if she was using the show for some reason. A bit like the first ever season of Big Brother, where the contestants had no prior knowledge compared to later series where they all did. I worry now that some people might be trying to get on the show.
Yes I agree. Also it’s a first album syndrome
When a band makes the first album they have all the great songs they’ve acquired in the years leading up to that - and they all go on that first effort
To be fair, I think he’s honest. I don’t think he hides his malign intent.
For someone who is honest, he says and posts an awful lot of things that are false.
To be fair, we’re slight divided by the English language here. He lies a lot, but I was giving him some credit for not hiding his intent or true self. In that sense, he’s honest. A bit like Trump.
Does anyone else watch/listen to the “podcast” Uncanny?
The case of Hollymount Farm is one of the clearest examples of a haunting I’ve encountered. Still might be total bull, of course
Uncanny is one of my unexpected best TV programmes at the moment, loved the first series. Kids (well, more my son) mocked it when I explained about it and that they might enjoy. They were quickly engrossed. We'll probably watch next episode today.
No idea if bull or not, but I think the people involved believe it, even if they can't explain it.
Hollymount Farm (if you’ve not seen it) is PROPERLY creepy. Even scary
As with all the best ones, and as you say - it’s the plain spoken rationality of the witnesses which most unnerves. These are ordinary but intelligent people with no interest in the paranormal - who have seen something truly frightening that they can’t explain, and which appears - prima facie - to be supernatural
Even if you dismiss all of it is as bollocks it’s compelling as a study of human psychology
It’s fascinating. I am a skeptic, don’t believe that ghosts exist but I cannot deny this kind of testimony. The most interesting series that Robbins has done, in my opinion, was the Witch Farm, centred on a farm in the Brecon Beacons. So much stuff going on over years and yet the people who bought the place afterwards report precisely zero activity of any kind. How to explain that? Some would say that certain people are able to see and hear ghosts, others might argue that they are more susceptible to imagining things. I often wonder how much false memory plays into this. Events as described cannot have happened on their own - objects moving etc. but did they happen as described?
Witch Farm was great. Proper goosebumps
I think Hollymount might be better. But then it might be better because it’s a better story - and we all love a good story and will willingly suspend our disbelief to get that enjoyment
I have generally found the early Uncannies betterthat later ones. There was one with Daisy May Cooper which felt like a parody, as if she was using the show for some reason. A bit like the first ever season of Big Brother, where the contestants had no prior knowledge compared to later series where they all did. I worry now that some people might be trying to get on the show.
Yes I agree. Also it’s a first album syndrome
When a band makes the first album they have all the great songs they’ve acquired in the years leading up to that - and they all go on that first effort
For many it’s the peak moment then downhill
However check Hollymount
I have. Enjoyed it, and I got echoes of the Witch Farm from it.
Does anyone else watch/listen to the “podcast” Uncanny?
The case of Hollymount Farm is one of the clearest examples of a haunting I’ve encountered. Still might be total bull, of course
Excellent series. The first is on iPlayer as well. You may think it's bunkum, but it's very entertaining.
Yeah it’s great. A lot of the stories are quite easily explicable (but still entertaining). A few stand out as Whoah
The Battersea Poltergeist was one. Also that terrifying Scottish bothy. And now Hollymount Farm. Brrrr
Danny Robbins is a very gifted presenter - likeable and plausible. Never sensational
Bothies can be deeply unsettling if you're by yourself, no signal and more than a day's walk away from civilisation.
It’s all nonsense. Good fun but nonsense.
The guy who presents Uncanny is fairly decent (although seeing him on tv makes me think of D:Ream); however for me to even vaguely consider the possibility of a ghost it would have to appear in front on me, in broad daylight, and consent to a range of tests in lab conditions. And even then my reaction would be “that’s a bloody good illusion”.
The story always involves someone in a dark, unsettling location, under psychological pressure and/or in search of an easy answer to explain a more profound trauma.
To summarise: I ain’t afraid of no ghost.
For me this is as ludicrously over-confident as someone who insists that QAnon is real
How can you know? How many people screen out jarring or bizarre visual evidence simply because it makes no sense? To their world view?
Check the gorilla on the basketball court - a famous experiment
Or think back to how many people dismissed the idea of a global Covid pandemic until the last moment - because it had never happened before and therefore could never happen
Read the actual words. I am applying sensible scepticism which used to be mainstream until the West started going weird (insert essay here about the death of mainstream religion having a bad side as well as a good one).
If you want me to develop the point, what I am saying is this: no matter how credible the individual seems, if they report that an object moved by itself or a person appeared and disappearing, there are many KNOWN explanations we can reach for before we toy with an unknown one.
I am scientist. I would love us to discover a new complexity to the universe. And as you say, in many ways we know nothing. But anything we discover must be measured and codified to prove that it is something new. Otherwise, we might as well go back to pagan gods.
Ghosts, in the sense of the dead speaking to the living, must also answer the same logic challenge as UFOs. Why do so cryptically and not in the open in front of everyone? If my grandparents could speak to me from beyond the veil, I am confident they would do just that. Politely knock on the door and come in for a chat.
If they are meant to be a sort of “psychic imprint” then why aren’t they everywhere?
Houdini famously said that he would come back if it was possible. He didn’t.
One of the issues with a lot of the more exotic interpretations of Fortean style events is that they are often nice sounding ideas with no basis in reality or means to test. A classic is Stone Tape Theory. How do you test such an idea? The believer on the show spouts such things all the time as if they are accepted ideas akin to scientifically proven and tested ideas. They are not.
Agreed. Those who criticise us taking a sceptical view and wanting to apply the scientific method usually don’t fully understand what we mean. They think we’re somehow attached to the current model, and don’t understand that nothing could be further from the truth. We’re always testing it and would love to break it.
Does anyone else watch/listen to the “podcast” Uncanny?
The case of Hollymount Farm is one of the clearest examples of a haunting I’ve encountered. Still might be total bull, of course
Excellent series. The first is on iPlayer as well. You may think it's bunkum, but it's very entertaining.
Yeah it’s great. A lot of the stories are quite easily explicable (but still entertaining). A few stand out as Whoah
The Battersea Poltergeist was one. Also that terrifying Scottish bothy. And now Hollymount Farm. Brrrr
Danny Robbins is a very gifted presenter - likeable and plausible. Never sensational
Bothies can be deeply unsettling if you're by yourself, no signal and more than a day's walk away from civilisation.
It’s all nonsense. Good fun but nonsense.
The guy who presents Uncanny is fairly decent (although seeing him on tv makes me think of D:Ream); however for me to even vaguely consider the possibility of a ghost it would have to appear in front on me, in broad daylight, and consent to a range of tests in lab conditions. And even then my reaction would be “that’s a bloody good illusion”.
The story always involves someone in a dark, unsettling location, under psychological pressure and/or in search of an easy answer to explain a more profound trauma.
To summarise: I ain’t afraid of no ghost.
For me this is as ludicrously over-confident as someone who insists that QAnon is real
How can you know? How many people screen out jarring or bizarre visual evidence simply because it makes no sense? To their world view?
Check the gorilla on the basketball court - a famous experiment
Or think back to how many people dismissed the idea of a global Covid pandemic until the last moment - because it had never happened before and therefore could never happen
Read the actual words. I am applying sensible scepticism which used to be mainstream until the West started going weird (insert essay here about the death of mainstream religion having a bad side as well as a good one).
If you want me to develop the point, what I am saying is this: no matter how credible the individual seems, if they report that an object moved by itself or a person appeared and disappearing, there are many KNOWN explanations we can reach for before we toy with an unknown one.
I am scientist. I would love us to discover a new complexity to the universe. And as you say, in many ways we know nothing. But anything we discover must be measured and codified to prove that it is something new. Otherwise, we might as well go back to pagan gods.
Ghosts, in the sense of the dead speaking to the living, must also answer the same logic challenge as UFOs. Why do so cryptically and not in the open in front of everyone? If my grandparents could speak to me from beyond the veil, I am confident they would do just that. Politely knock on the door and come in for a chat.
If they are meant to be a sort of “psychic imprint” then why aren’t they everywhere?
I could be wrong but weren’t you the guy that said you’d only believe in UFOs if one landed on the White House lawn in front of 3000 live cameras and even then you wouldn’t believe it?! Apologies if I’ve got that wrong
Also, the idea that we should all worship at the door of the science lab as that is a source of unimpeachable truth has surely been destroyed by Covid. Whether you believe in lab leak or not (spoiler: it happened) the entire scientific elite conspired to conceal a very plausible explanation for a hideous disaster likely caused by science
In short, scientists lied because scientists are human with human fears and interests and flaws and prejudices - and credulities
(For me, the War Zone is notable. I'm not sure about HuffPo.)
Anybody who thinks The War Zone shouldn't be read in a defence context is not serious.
The most important thing for any Department of State in the USA, here, or anywhere else is that it lets the specialist press in to criticise. See the Computer Weekly example.
Does anyone else watch/listen to the “podcast” Uncanny?
The case of Hollymount Farm is one of the clearest examples of a haunting I’ve encountered. Still might be total bull, of course
Excellent series. The first is on iPlayer as well. You may think it's bunkum, but it's very entertaining.
Yeah it’s great. A lot of the stories are quite easily explicable (but still entertaining). A few stand out as Whoah
The Battersea Poltergeist was one. Also that terrifying Scottish bothy. And now Hollymount Farm. Brrrr
Danny Robbins is a very gifted presenter - likeable and plausible. Never sensational
Bothies can be deeply unsettling if you're by yourself, no signal and more than a day's walk away from civilisation.
It’s all nonsense. Good fun but nonsense.
The guy who presents Uncanny is fairly decent (although seeing him on tv makes me think of D:Ream); however for me to even vaguely consider the possibility of a ghost it would have to appear in front on me, in broad daylight, and consent to a range of tests in lab conditions. And even then my reaction would be “that’s a bloody good illusion”.
The story always involves someone in a dark, unsettling location, under psychological pressure and/or in search of an easy answer to explain a more profound trauma.
To summarise: I ain’t afraid of no ghost.
For me this is as ludicrously over-confident as someone who insists that QAnon is real
How can you know? How many people screen out jarring or bizarre visual evidence simply because it makes no sense? To their world view?
Check the gorilla on the basketball court - a famous experiment
Or think back to how many people dismissed the idea of a global Covid pandemic until the last moment - because it had never happened before and therefore could never happen
Read the actual words. I am applying sensible scepticism which used to be mainstream until the West started going weird (insert essay here about the death of mainstream religion having a bad side as well as a good one).
If you want me to develop the point, what I am saying is this: no matter how credible the individual seems, if they report that an object moved by itself or a person appeared and disappearing, there are many KNOWN explanations we can reach for before we toy with an unknown one.
I am scientist. I would love us to discover a new complexity to the universe. And as you say, in many ways we know nothing. But anything we discover must be measured and codified to prove that it is something new. Otherwise, we might as well go back to pagan gods.
Ghosts, in the sense of the dead speaking to the living, must also answer the same logic challenge as UFOs. Why do so cryptically and not in the open in front of everyone? If my grandparents could speak to me from beyond the veil, I am confident they would do just that. Politely knock on the door and come in for a chat.
If they are meant to be a sort of “psychic imprint” then why aren’t they everywhere?
Suppose there are realities that cannot be measured and codified. Take this proposition: "On planet earth torturing children for fun is always wrong". Now I think that is true, not because I think it and not because lots of people think it but because its a truth arising from the moral fabric of the universe. I accept I may be wrong. But I don't accept that it stops being true if lots of people stop thinking it or f I stop thinking it. I think it is objectively true. Which would make it as much part of total reality - what makes up the universe - as quarks and oak trees and the law of gravity.
That is exactly what I think, and it requires no extant divinity to think it, as Kant helpfully but not very simply pointed out in about 1790.
Does anyone else watch/listen to the “podcast” Uncanny?
The case of Hollymount Farm is one of the clearest examples of a haunting I’ve encountered. Still might be total bull, of course
Excellent series. The first is on iPlayer as well. You may think it's bunkum, but it's very entertaining.
Yeah it’s great. A lot of the stories are quite easily explicable (but still entertaining). A few stand out as Whoah
The Battersea Poltergeist was one. Also that terrifying Scottish bothy. And now Hollymount Farm. Brrrr
Danny Robbins is a very gifted presenter - likeable and plausible. Never sensational
Bothies can be deeply unsettling if you're by yourself, no signal and more than a day's walk away from civilisation.
It’s all nonsense. Good fun but nonsense.
The guy who presents Uncanny is fairly decent (although seeing him on tv makes me think of D:Ream); however for me to even vaguely consider the possibility of a ghost it would have to appear in front on me, in broad daylight, and consent to a range of tests in lab conditions. And even then my reaction would be “that’s a bloody good illusion”.
The story always involves someone in a dark, unsettling location, under psychological pressure and/or in search of an easy answer to explain a more profound trauma.
To summarise: I ain’t afraid of no ghost.
For me this is as ludicrously over-confident as someone who insists that QAnon is real
How can you know? How many people screen out jarring or bizarre visual evidence simply because it makes no sense? To their world view?
Check the gorilla on the basketball court - a famous experiment
Or think back to how many people dismissed the idea of a global Covid pandemic until the last moment - because it had never happened before and therefore could never happen
Read the actual words. I am applying sensible scepticism which used to be mainstream until the West started going weird (insert essay here about the death of mainstream religion having a bad side as well as a good one).
If you want me to develop the point, what I am saying is this: no matter how credible the individual seems, if they report that an object moved by itself or a person appeared and disappearing, there are many KNOWN explanations we can reach for before we toy with an unknown one.
I am scientist. I would love us to discover a new complexity to the universe. And as you say, in many ways we know nothing. But anything we discover must be measured and codified to prove that it is something new. Otherwise, we might as well go back to pagan gods.
Ghosts, in the sense of the dead speaking to the living, must also answer the same logic challenge as UFOs. Why do so cryptically and not in the open in front of everyone? If my grandparents could speak to me from beyond the veil, I am confident they would do just that. Politely knock on the door and come in for a chat.
If they are meant to be a sort of “psychic imprint” then why aren’t they everywhere?
I could be wrong but weren’t you the guy that said you’d only believe in UFOs if one landed on the White House lawn in front of 3000 live cameras and even then you wouldn’t believe it?! Apologies if I’ve got that wrong
Also, the idea that we should all worship at the door of the science lab as that is a source of unimpeachable truth has surely been destroyed by Covid. Whether you believe in lab leak or not (spoiler: it happened) the entire scientific elite conspired to conceal a very plausible explanation for a hideous disaster likely caused by science
In short, scientists lied because scientists are human with human fears and interests and flaws and prejudices - and credulities
Whether you are right or wrong about covid, you are wrong to describe around five scientists as ‘the entire scientific elite’.
Does anyone else watch/listen to the “podcast” Uncanny?
The case of Hollymount Farm is one of the clearest examples of a haunting I’ve encountered. Still might be total bull, of course
Excellent series. The first is on iPlayer as well. You may think it's bunkum, but it's very entertaining.
Yeah it’s great. A lot of the stories are quite easily explicable (but still entertaining). A few stand out as Whoah
The Battersea Poltergeist was one. Also that terrifying Scottish bothy. And now Hollymount Farm. Brrrr
Danny Robbins is a very gifted presenter - likeable and plausible. Never sensational
Bothies can be deeply unsettling if you're by yourself, no signal and more than a day's walk away from civilisation.
It’s all nonsense. Good fun but nonsense.
The guy who presents Uncanny is fairly decent (although seeing him on tv makes me think of D:Ream); however for me to even vaguely consider the possibility of a ghost it would have to appear in front on me, in broad daylight, and consent to a range of tests in lab conditions. And even then my reaction would be “that’s a bloody good illusion”.
The story always involves someone in a dark, unsettling location, under psychological pressure and/or in search of an easy answer to explain a more profound trauma.
To summarise: I ain’t afraid of no ghost.
For me this is as ludicrously over-confident as someone who insists that QAnon is real
How can you know? How many people screen out jarring or bizarre visual evidence simply because it makes no sense? To their world view?
Check the gorilla on the basketball court - a famous experiment
Or think back to how many people dismissed the idea of a global Covid pandemic until the last moment - because it had never happened before and therefore could never happen
Read the actual words. I am applying sensible scepticism which used to be mainstream until the West started going weird (insert essay here about the death of mainstream religion having a bad side as well as a good one).
If you want me to develop the point, what I am saying is this: no matter how credible the individual seems, if they report that an object moved by itself or a person appeared and disappearing, there are many KNOWN explanations we can reach for before we toy with an unknown one.
I am scientist. I would love us to discover a new complexity to the universe. And as you say, in many ways we know nothing. But anything we discover must be measured and codified to prove that it is something new. Otherwise, we might as well go back to pagan gods.
Ghosts, in the sense of the dead speaking to the living, must also answer the same logic challenge as UFOs. Why do so cryptically and not in the open in front of everyone? If my grandparents could speak to me from beyond the veil, I am confident they would do just that. Politely knock on the door and come in for a chat.
If they are meant to be a sort of “psychic imprint” then why aren’t they everywhere?
I could be wrong but weren’t you the guy that said you’d only believe in UFOs if one landed on the White House lawn in front of 3000 live cameras and even then you wouldn’t believe it?! Apologies if I’ve got that wrong
Also, the idea that we should all worship at the door of the science lab as that is a source of unimpeachable truth has surely been destroyed by Covid. Whether you believe in lab leak or not (spoiler: it happened) the entire scientific elite conspired to conceal a very plausible explanation for a hideous disaster likely caused by science
In short, scientists lied because scientists are human with human fears and interests and flaws and prejudices - and credulities
I don’t think so, unless I was being extremely flippant for some reason, or choosing to play devil’s advocate for fun. Always possible on here. I’m more the guy that would say “until the doors open and I see Klatu, I’m quite worried that this is our new Chinese overlords”.
RE: The lab leak. I would argue that the breaking down of some of the lies and obfuscation is a tribute to scientists being scientists. See the BBC podcast series - a lot of them were the ones who picked holes in the convenient open and shut case presented.
From my perspective, your willingness to be more open to the existence of ghosts makes you analogous to those who wanted it to be all about nature and the wet market.
To be fair, I think he’s honest. I don’t think he hides his malign intent.
For someone who is honest, he says and posts an awful lot of things that are false.
To be fair, we’re slight divided by the English language here. He lies a lot, but I was giving him some credit for not hiding his intent or true self. In that sense, he’s honest. A bit like Trump.
"true to character" sure when character = malevolent, racist, psychopathic, lying, greedy, megalomaniac con artist
Does anyone else watch/listen to the “podcast” Uncanny?
The case of Hollymount Farm is one of the clearest examples of a haunting I’ve encountered. Still might be total bull, of course
Excellent series. The first is on iPlayer as well. You may think it's bunkum, but it's very entertaining.
Yeah it’s great. A lot of the stories are quite easily explicable (but still entertaining). A few stand out as Whoah
The Battersea Poltergeist was one. Also that terrifying Scottish bothy. And now Hollymount Farm. Brrrr
Danny Robbins is a very gifted presenter - likeable and plausible. Never sensational
Bothies can be deeply unsettling if you're by yourself, no signal and more than a day's walk away from civilisation.
It’s all nonsense. Good fun but nonsense.
The guy who presents Uncanny is fairly decent (although seeing him on tv makes me think of D:Ream); however for me to even vaguely consider the possibility of a ghost it would have to appear in front on me, in broad daylight, and consent to a range of tests in lab conditions. And even then my reaction would be “that’s a bloody good illusion”.
The story always involves someone in a dark, unsettling location, under psychological pressure and/or in search of an easy answer to explain a more profound trauma.
To summarise: I ain’t afraid of no ghost.
For me this is as ludicrously over-confident as someone who insists that QAnon is real
How can you know? How many people screen out jarring or bizarre visual evidence simply because it makes no sense? To their world view?
Check the gorilla on the basketball court - a famous experiment
Or think back to how many people dismissed the idea of a global Covid pandemic until the last moment - because it had never happened before and therefore could never happen
Read the actual words. I am applying sensible scepticism which used to be mainstream until the West started going weird (insert essay here about the death of mainstream religion having a bad side as well as a good one).
If you want me to develop the point, what I am saying is this: no matter how credible the individual seems, if they report that an object moved by itself or a person appeared and disappearing, there are many KNOWN explanations we can reach for before we toy with an unknown one.
I am scientist. I would love us to discover a new complexity to the universe. And as you say, in many ways we know nothing. But anything we discover must be measured and codified to prove that it is something new. Otherwise, we might as well go back to pagan gods.
Ghosts, in the sense of the dead speaking to the living, must also answer the same logic challenge as UFOs. Why do so cryptically and not in the open in front of everyone? If my grandparents could speak to me from beyond the veil, I am confident they would do just that. Politely knock on the door and come in for a chat.
If they are meant to be a sort of “psychic imprint” then why aren’t they everywhere?
Suppose there are realities that cannot be measured and codified. Take this proposition: "On planet earth torturing children for fun is always wrong". Now I think that is true, not because I think it and not because lots of people think it but because its a truth arising from the moral fabric of the universe. I accept I may be wrong. But I don't accept that it stops being true if lots of people stop thinking it or f I stop thinking it. I think it is objectively true. Which would make it as much part of total reality - what makes up the universe - as quarks and oak trees and the law of gravity.
That is exactly what I think, and it requires no extant divinity to think it, as Kant helpfully but not very simply pointed out in about 1790.
I would say morality and ethics are totally separate from science. Science can tell you for how long and how severely you need to torture a child to get a given result: it will be silent on whether or not you should.
Understanding how the world works is only relevant to my moral/ethical view in so far as it stops me thinking it is unethical to choose not to sprout wings and fly.
(For me, the War Zone is notable. I'm not sure about HuffPo.)
On The War Zone, they have no presence there. No idea what Hegseth is playing at.
Maybe you saw the news that TWZ was one of the outlets listed in the expanded rotational media office space initiative that Pentagon is now executing. We were one of the additional four outlets rotating out.
The funny thing is, we have no physical presence in the Pentagon, let alone a desk or office space. None. Never have. We don't even have a Pentagon corespondent. We are a tiny little outlet that does everything possible, and as policy, to remain apolitical.
It is Congress’s responsibility to hold the President to account. If they do not, then they are failing in their constitutional responsibility. It is up to the Democrats (and others opposed) to communicate that to voters.
I am worried the whole system is failing. That may be what some voters wanted but the results are going to be very unpredictable and, ultimately, I doubt they will be favourable to the white working class in forgotten Appalachia, for example, regardless of what they voted for.
Does anyone else watch/listen to the “podcast” Uncanny?
The case of Hollymount Farm is one of the clearest examples of a haunting I’ve encountered. Still might be total bull, of course
Excellent series. The first is on iPlayer as well. You may think it's bunkum, but it's very entertaining.
Yeah it’s great. A lot of the stories are quite easily explicable (but still entertaining). A few stand out as Whoah
The Battersea Poltergeist was one. Also that terrifying Scottish bothy. And now Hollymount Farm. Brrrr
Danny Robbins is a very gifted presenter - likeable and plausible. Never sensational
Bothies can be deeply unsettling if you're by yourself, no signal and more than a day's walk away from civilisation.
It’s all nonsense. Good fun but nonsense.
The guy who presents Uncanny is fairly decent (although seeing him on tv makes me think of D:Ream); however for me to even vaguely consider the possibility of a ghost it would have to appear in front on me, in broad daylight, and consent to a range of tests in lab conditions. And even then my reaction would be “that’s a bloody good illusion”.
The story always involves someone in a dark, unsettling location, under psychological pressure and/or in search of an easy answer to explain a more profound trauma.
To summarise: I ain’t afraid of no ghost.
For me this is as ludicrously over-confident as someone who insists that QAnon is real
How can you know? How many people screen out jarring or bizarre visual evidence simply because it makes no sense? To their world view?
Check the gorilla on the basketball court - a famous experiment
Or think back to how many people dismissed the idea of a global Covid pandemic until the last moment - because it had never happened before and therefore could never happen
Read the actual words. I am applying sensible scepticism which used to be mainstream until the West started going weird (insert essay here about the death of mainstream religion having a bad side as well as a good one).
If you want me to develop the point, what I am saying is this: no matter how credible the individual seems, if they report that an object moved by itself or a person appeared and disappearing, there are many KNOWN explanations we can reach for before we toy with an unknown one.
I am scientist. I would love us to discover a new complexity to the universe. And as you say, in many ways we know nothing. But anything we discover must be measured and codified to prove that it is something new. Otherwise, we might as well go back to pagan gods.
Ghosts, in the sense of the dead speaking to the living, must also answer the same logic challenge as UFOs. Why do so cryptically and not in the open in front of everyone? If my grandparents could speak to me from beyond the veil, I am confident they would do just that. Politely knock on the door and come in for a chat.
If they are meant to be a sort of “psychic imprint” then why aren’t they everywhere?
I could be wrong but weren’t you the guy that said you’d only believe in UFOs if one landed on the White House lawn in front of 3000 live cameras and even then you wouldn’t believe it?! Apologies if I’ve got that wrong
Also, the idea that we should all worship at the door of the science lab as that is a source of unimpeachable truth has surely been destroyed by Covid. Whether you believe in lab leak or not (spoiler: it happened) the entire scientific elite conspired to conceal a very plausible explanation for a hideous disaster likely caused by science
In short, scientists lied because scientists are human with human fears and interests and flaws and prejudices - and credulities
Whether you are right or wrong about covid, you are wrong to describe around five scientists as ‘the entire scientific elite’.
It was the entire establishment- such as it exists /- from fauci and Farrar and vallance and the rest - down through the lancet and nature - and down to underlings like you (tho to your credit you have admitted there was a cover up)
Anyway I’m not here to rehash that argument not today. Ghosts are more fun
A bad 'un. A further comment he made wrt to someone who asked for more cycle lanes. This came via a report to a (very effective) activist group in the area called Walk Ride GM:
“Another outrageous exchange came after a councillor mentions a constituent called 'Nick' who asked for more cycle lanes and comments: 'That Nick is something else.'
Mr Gwynne, who represents the Gorton and Denton constituency, replies: 'I had positive visions of him getting mown down by an Elsa Waste HGV while he's cycling to the Fallowfield Loop [cycle lane]. We couldn't be that lucky!'”
Imagine a similar "joke" about a pedestrian run down on a Zebra crossing, or a 6 year old run down crossing the road to school where the Local Highways Authority has refused to provide such a Zebra crossing.
It's mild compared to a lot of the stuff that comes in eg Facebook groups or Youtube comments for "motorists", or even the racism-hinting dog whistles put out by some of our politicians.
But we need to require elected politicians to engage with the case or issue.
The activist in person is probably a pest. You’re being an absolute snowflake, I’m afraid.
It's the kind of thing that turns cyclists into "militants". You express concern about kids being hit by drivers as they cycle to school and your local councillor responds with a hope that you are ground up under the wheels of a HGV.
When your elected representatives won't take you seriously, or indeed respond with a wish for your agonising death, you either give up or turn to more direct radical action.
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
This is silly. The MP didn’t “respond”, he made a private joke. For all we know, the activist in question is a do-gooding pest.
So police officers who make distasteful jokes on WhatsApp shouldn’t be fired then?
No, they shouldn’t. And nor should this Labour MP. And nor should the DOGE kid with his edgy tweets
We are far too censorious about all this nonsense, they are mere words, whether uttered by left, right or fucking annoying centrist dads
Give people a chance to apologise, learn from mistakes, move on
If they THEN continue to be wankers, then by all means come down much harder
For the DOGE kid, I'm more concerned about his being granted access to classified information (UK equivalent would perhaps be the entire HMRC or DVLA database), and the Trump/Musk regime's belief that it is OK to do this with no security clearance in basic violation of the law.
But those are simply the values of the regime.
Was 'Big Balls' the racist, or the one who was previously sacked for leaking confidential information ?
I'm not totally au fait with all the details - but this is a partial summary:
There is a 25 year old called Marko Elez who was allowed Read Only access under the initial interim injunction, who resigned when his posts promoting eugenics and racism came out. He is thought to have obtained write access and to have been recoding parts of the national payments systems. He was reinstated one day later.
Big Balls was one social media pseudonym of a 19 year old called 19-year-old Edward Coristine, who had been sacked from a previous employer for leaking confidential information to a competitor.
I am not aware that Coristine has been sacked since he is afaics ruled out of access by the temporary injunction.
The ONLY think stopping these numpties from crashing the entire US Government is that most of the systems are written in COBOL, and they haven't (yet) deleted the critical bits...
One comment I have seen is that because they are now compromised in security terms, they have to start from scratch at a cost of hundreds of billions.
Does anyone else watch/listen to the “podcast” Uncanny?
The case of Hollymount Farm is one of the clearest examples of a haunting I’ve encountered. Still might be total bull, of course
Excellent series. The first is on iPlayer as well. You may think it's bunkum, but it's very entertaining.
Yeah it’s great. A lot of the stories are quite easily explicable (but still entertaining). A few stand out as Whoah
The Battersea Poltergeist was one. Also that terrifying Scottish bothy. And now Hollymount Farm. Brrrr
Danny Robbins is a very gifted presenter - likeable and plausible. Never sensational
Bothies can be deeply unsettling if you're by yourself, no signal and more than a day's walk away from civilisation.
It’s all nonsense. Good fun but nonsense.
The guy who presents Uncanny is fairly decent (although seeing him on tv makes me think of D:Ream); however for me to even vaguely consider the possibility of a ghost it would have to appear in front on me, in broad daylight, and consent to a range of tests in lab conditions. And even then my reaction would be “that’s a bloody good illusion”.
The story always involves someone in a dark, unsettling location, under psychological pressure and/or in search of an easy answer to explain a more profound trauma.
To summarise: I ain’t afraid of no ghost.
For me this is as ludicrously over-confident as someone who insists that QAnon is real
How can you know? How many people screen out jarring or bizarre visual evidence simply because it makes no sense? To their world view?
Check the gorilla on the basketball court - a famous experiment
Or think back to how many people dismissed the idea of a global Covid pandemic until the last moment - because it had never happened before and therefore could never happen
Read the actual words. I am applying sensible scepticism which used to be mainstream until the West started going weird (insert essay here about the death of mainstream religion having a bad side as well as a good one).
If you want me to develop the point, what I am saying is this: no matter how credible the individual seems, if they report that an object moved by itself or a person appeared and disappearing, there are many KNOWN explanations we can reach for before we toy with an unknown one.
I am scientist. I would love us to discover a new complexity to the universe. And as you say, in many ways we know nothing. But anything we discover must be measured and codified to prove that it is something new. Otherwise, we might as well go back to pagan gods.
Ghosts, in the sense of the dead speaking to the living, must also answer the same logic challenge as UFOs. Why do so cryptically and not in the open in front of everyone? If my grandparents could speak to me from beyond the veil, I am confident they would do just that. Politely knock on the door and come in for a chat.
If they are meant to be a sort of “psychic imprint” then why aren’t they everywhere?
I could be wrong but weren’t you the guy that said you’d only believe in UFOs if one landed on the White House lawn in front of 3000 live cameras and even then you wouldn’t believe it?! Apologies if I’ve got that wrong
Also, the idea that we should all worship at the door of the science lab as that is a source of unimpeachable truth has surely been destroyed by Covid. Whether you believe in lab leak or not (spoiler: it happened) the entire scientific elite conspired to conceal a very plausible explanation for a hideous disaster likely caused by science
In short, scientists lied because scientists are human with human fears and interests and flaws and prejudices - and credulities
Whether you are right or wrong about covid, you are wrong to describe around five scientists as ‘the entire scientific elite’.
It was the entire establishment- such as it exists /- from fauci and Farrar and vallance and the rest - down through the lancet and nature - and down to underlings like you (tho to your credit you have admitted there was a cover up)
Anyway I’m not here to rehash that argument not today. Ghosts are more fun
So is rugby. Cmon Scotland!!
While, I don't agree with your entire representation on the situation, the Lancet editor still in place....his behaviour was proper dodgy, like other multiple occasions...and yet there he still is in charge of the publication of record for medical research.
Thanks for that post, it’s fantastic. It confirms everything I have been explaining about this.
US are playing us as their bitch on Chagos - have been doing so all along. It’s there in all the things your man didn’t say and spun around - that as patriotic Britains in our interest, not theirs, things we need to be mindful of, to cut through any “spin” in the video. I’ll repeat them, yet again.
Take the key bit, where he talks about standing beside us as we take “a hit” at the United Nations. At least he was honest about the hit - many PB pirates claim there will be no such hit!
But US won’t be taking the hit. The UN assembly have passed motions for UK to cede sovereignty, their courts have found against us on the illegality on which we took the islands, and I agree we could say no, keep appealing against it - but do you concede we cannot do this stalling without at least some reputational damage, self inflicted hit upon a senior leader in the institution?
As we swallow their “just trying to save us from our own mistake” spin your video was 100% about: we know United States (and India) behind all the “we are your special friend” have never been fans but belligerent enemies of British Colonialism - hacking away at Britains Old Empire and influence for most last hundred years - whilst, where it suits them like this - using us to do the messy stuff for them, like ethically cleanse Chagos.
When he repeats Mauritius want £18B the same £9B over 100 years lease money, but inflation proofed, that came into us after newspaper reports about Mauritius government allegedly said the agreement was inflation proofed, but both parties in the negotiation clearly and consistently deny that’s any part of the package - like we can’t guess now who planted that in the press to support their argument - are you quite comfortable repeating £18B?
I still claim I have the British Foreign Office and Chatham House on my side - whilst you have a Populist UK press and the US Gentleman in the video coaching you. These are the key facts I think supporting my argument, that I am wary about facing down the UN on this, as MAGA want us to: How history got us here consists of US calling all the shots on Chagos since mid 60s, such as ethically cleanse the island, which we did for them. UK negotiated this new deal not independently from USA, but with the Biden Administration - who obviously liked it as they wrote it. And India likes it too.
To what degree do you sense you have been, and maybe still being played by the likes of the Gentleman in the video?
And why do I regularly post on PB whilst eating Sunday Lunch? 🤦♀️
I agree with a large portion of your thoughts on the origins of this, but you miss two very important points.
1. The Biden administration is not the Trump administration. Even if you accept, as I do, that successive Presidencies all end up doing the same things, Trump is undoubtedly different. If this were not the case, Starmer's lot would not have tried to get it nailed down before Trump got in.
The Biden administration was, as you say, keenly anti-British, and in keeping with American foreign policy over a century of publicly claiming the UK as an ally, but privately acting against our interests and treating us as a supplicant, but with an added zeal because of the senile old corpse's visceral hatred of the UK. The Biden administration was also a lot less hostile to China than the Trump one. I never agreed with those who said that America was against the deal - clearly they were very much in favour, but that was the last lot.
2. Clearly, even if giving the territory to Mauritius was on the table, paying for the US to have a base there is simply not something any self-respecting nation would agree to. Forget self respecting nation - it's not even something the Prince of Monaco or the Bailiwick of Jersey would agree to. Britain has no strategic interest in a base in the Indian Ocean. If the US wants it, they can pay for it. Telling them that was not just an option, it is an overdue assertion of some form of dignity within what is clearly an unbalanced relationship. Even a trophy wife needs some furs and diamonds and not to appear distressed and unkempt. We need to begin to assert ourselves in the special relationship, and we must start somewhere.
(For me, the War Zone is notable. I'm not sure about HuffPo.)
On The War Zone, they have no presence there. No idea what Hegseth is playing at.
Maybe you saw the news that TWZ was one of the outlets listed in the expanded rotational media office space initiative that Pentagon is now executing. We were one of the additional four outlets rotating out.
The funny thing is, we have no physical presence in the Pentagon, let alone a desk or office space. None. Never have. We don't even have a Pentagon corespondent. We are a tiny little outlet that does everything possible, and as policy, to remain apolitical.
A bad 'un. A further comment he made wrt to someone who asked for more cycle lanes. This came via a report to a (very effective) activist group in the area called Walk Ride GM:
“Another outrageous exchange came after a councillor mentions a constituent called 'Nick' who asked for more cycle lanes and comments: 'That Nick is something else.'
Mr Gwynne, who represents the Gorton and Denton constituency, replies: 'I had positive visions of him getting mown down by an Elsa Waste HGV while he's cycling to the Fallowfield Loop [cycle lane]. We couldn't be that lucky!'”
Imagine a similar "joke" about a pedestrian run down on a Zebra crossing, or a 6 year old run down crossing the road to school where the Local Highways Authority has refused to provide such a Zebra crossing.
It's mild compared to a lot of the stuff that comes in eg Facebook groups or Youtube comments for "motorists", or even the racism-hinting dog whistles put out by some of our politicians.
But we need to require elected politicians to engage with the case or issue.
I fwiiw, believe Gwynne's commentary is unacceptable and unprofessional and he should have gone. In an earlier, less febrile time I am sure he could have passed it off as "satire".
Far from condemning Gwynne, his transparency should be applauded. Politicians should be obliged to tweet at least 100 times a day so we'd know what really lies behind the 360° smirk. QEI complained she couldn't see into men's souls. We've solved that problem.
I don’t think QEI was complaining. She had no desire to look into men’s souls.
An early version of Clinton’s “don’t ask, don’t tell”?
I do suspect she might have been stating it as a fact that it's not possible, rather than a desire. The attributed quote suggests the latter, but it's oral tradition, rather than direct quote.
Elizabeth was at times notoriously paranoid. Had the facility to read thoughts, without resorting to torture, been real, I'm not entirely convinced she'd have avoided using it.
The e use of “desire” speaks against your interpretation
She was simply creating a path to allow otherwise loyal catholics to remain in office
Does anyone else watch/listen to the “podcast” Uncanny?
The case of Hollymount Farm is one of the clearest examples of a haunting I’ve encountered. Still might be total bull, of course
Excellent series. The first is on iPlayer as well. You may think it's bunkum, but it's very entertaining.
Yeah it’s great. A lot of the stories are quite easily explicable (but still entertaining). A few stand out as Whoah
The Battersea Poltergeist was one. Also that terrifying Scottish bothy. And now Hollymount Farm. Brrrr
Danny Robbins is a very gifted presenter - likeable and plausible. Never sensational
Bothies can be deeply unsettling if you're by yourself, no signal and more than a day's walk away from civilisation.
It’s all nonsense. Good fun but nonsense.
The guy who presents Uncanny is fairly decent (although seeing him on tv makes me think of D:Ream); however for me to even vaguely consider the possibility of a ghost it would have to appear in front on me, in broad daylight, and consent to a range of tests in lab conditions. And even then my reaction would be “that’s a bloody good illusion”.
The story always involves someone in a dark, unsettling location, under psychological pressure and/or in search of an easy answer to explain a more profound trauma.
To summarise: I ain’t afraid of no ghost.
For me this is as ludicrously over-confident as someone who insists that QAnon is real
How can you know? How many people screen out jarring or bizarre visual evidence simply because it makes no sense? To their world view?
Check the gorilla on the basketball court - a famous experiment
Or think back to how many people dismissed the idea of a global Covid pandemic until the last moment - because it had never happened before and therefore could never happen
Read the actual words. I am applying sensible scepticism which used to be mainstream until the West started going weird (insert essay here about the death of mainstream religion having a bad side as well as a good one).
If you want me to develop the point, what I am saying is this: no matter how credible the individual seems, if they report that an object moved by itself or a person appeared and disappearing, there are many KNOWN explanations we can reach for before we toy with an unknown one.
I am scientist. I would love us to discover a new complexity to the universe. And as you say, in many ways we know nothing. But anything we discover must be measured and codified to prove that it is something new. Otherwise, we might as well go back to pagan gods.
Ghosts, in the sense of the dead speaking to the living, must also answer the same logic challenge as UFOs. Why do so cryptically and not in the open in front of everyone? If my grandparents could speak to me from beyond the veil, I am confident they would do just that. Politely knock on the door and come in for a chat.
If they are meant to be a sort of “psychic imprint” then why aren’t they everywhere?
Suppose there are realities that cannot be measured and codified. Take this proposition: "On planet earth torturing children for fun is always wrong". Now I think that is true, not because I think it and not because lots of people think it but because its a truth arising from the moral fabric of the universe. I accept I may be wrong. But I don't accept that it stops being true if lots of people stop thinking it or f I stop thinking it. I think it is objectively true. Which would make it as much part of total reality - what makes up the universe - as quarks and oak trees and the law of gravity.
That is exactly what I think, and it requires no extant divinity to think it, as Kant helpfully but not very simply pointed out in about 1790.
So you'll still think it's true even if you stop thinking it's true?
Comments
Kennedy is an imbecile.
I wouldn't want two years of my worst thoughts or private exasperated outbursts on the front page of the paper. That's why I don't put them on WhatsApp.
After all, another natural habitat of the priggish hypocrite is the British press.
The case of Hollymount Farm is one of the clearest examples of a haunting I’ve encountered. Still might be total bull, of course
As a record which is extremely difficult to scrub.
Was a noted exponent of the Bowie knife - there is an urban legend that he wrote a book/pamphlet on effective knife fighting.
Also kept a small cannon on his hallway for those annoying evenings when a mob with torches turns up to murder you and burn your house down.
Making a joke about him, to his face, would brave, I think.
The usual way to do this is to have a blind trust. It’s not reasonable to expect a public servant not to invest. Alternatively he recused himself from anything that touches Shein
But the Dems should explain to MAGA that it's partly his fault that Shein are refusing to pay Trump's tariffs for them.
I can't source that quote, but I'm assuming it comes from his "Faith Adviser" Paula White, who is a Megachurch Minister with a private jet, who is associated with the "Word of Faith" movement aka Prosperity Gospel. It flourishes in wealthy circles in the USA because it gives a theology justifying being rich, and staying rich. It has it's origins in characters such as Kenneth Hagin, and Kenneth Hopeland - and arguably before that Oral Roberts, and more recently Benny Hinn. PBers may be more familiar with the latter two.
Bluntly, I'd call it a perversion of Christian doctrine. It tends not to do well in the UK because UK Evangelical circles have a far more integrated social concern tradition going back to at least Wesley, and our society is less Balkanised by wealth than the USA.
Trump's support afaics comes from some Evangelicals who I term Trumpvangelicals, who tend to be concentrated in charismatic megachurches, places such as "Reformed" churches which embrace dogmas making women second class humans ("Male Headship"), and conservative / charismatic denominations - anti-abortion movement heartlands, and parts of the Roman Catholic Right (where JD Vance comes from, and where eg Opus Dei are influential in the Federalist Society).
Trump also has some sort of "faith task group" in the White House; I am not sure who they are yet. He's embracing caricatured "protect white people" policies already - as eg in his assault on the new (quite reasonable - I posted an analysis from RC Bishops) Compulsory Purchase law in South Africa. I assume the latter is motivated by Musk.
I'd expect some figures to emerge to speak against Trump who will be the equivalent of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, as they will be in time be some of the few who will have platforms he cannot destroy from which to make criticisms - even though false narratives are already being propagated about for example the Lutheran Church.
I'd be interested in comment from @HYUFD or others, who may have knowledge in this area.
But I am not close minded. Only an idiot would be close minded in the 2020s when we are daily surrounded by absolutely extraordinary things. Eg it is likely in the next 2-4 years we will invent the first advanced non human intelligence. The only one we know of in the entire universe
Are “ghosts” any more outrageous than that? The idea that intense human emotions can somehow persist in space-time in ways we don’t understand? We don’t even understand consciousness itself (as we are discovering)
Anyway go and watch Uncanny season 2 episode 1 (tv version). Hollymount Farm. On BBC iplayer
Even if you think it is eyewash it is undeniably a good ghost story
The Battersea Poltergeist was one. Also that terrifying Scottish bothy. And now Hollymount Farm. Brrrr
Danny Robbins is a very gifted presenter - likeable and plausible. Never sensational
“To say no to President Trump would be to say no to God.”
Meet televangelist Paula White, who Donald Trump just appointed to lead the White House ‘Faith Office.’
This is not normal.
https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1888106904137699827
Elizabeth was at times notoriously paranoid. Had the facility to read thoughts, without resorting to torture, been real, I'm not entirely convinced she'd have avoided using it.
The other chap wasn’t born….
It's a bad idea put forward every so often by those who think it would give their kind of English nationalism a whip hand in the UK, without thinking about regional differences and that federal type structures can only work with some balance between their composite parts.
"The White House is Holy Ground because I am there."
Yep. It's Word of Faith, with some charismatic god-is-my-personal-friend type habits inserted and taken to a ludicrous level of assertion. She sounds like one of those who is convinced God always keeps her a parking space specially.
Glossolalia, too.
@GregTSargent
Just awful: One of the inspector generals that Trump fired was examining Elon Musk's failures to meet reporting protocol designed to safeguard national security as a major recipient of Pentagon contracts.
It's time to follow up on that. New from me:
https://x.com/GregTSargent/status/1888558177853079779
No idea if bull or not, but I think the people involved believe it, even if they can't explain it.
Trump 2 is oddly passionate about crypto, mass layoffs, and the plight of the white South African. I wonder what changed with him.
https://x.com/agraybee/status/1888350143839121724
As with all the best ones, and as you say - it’s the plain spoken rationality of the witnesses which most unnerves. These are ordinary but intelligent people with no interest in the paranormal - who have seen something truly frightening that they can’t explain, and which appears - prima facie - to be supernatural
Even if you dismiss all of it is as bollocks it’s compelling as a study of human psychology
You yourself have commented about the atmosphere of oppressive horror, at Babi Yar.
But there is also a (much more likely) future in which neither are true.
I am not convinced enough people are freaking out to the required degree about this...
The guy who presents Uncanny is fairly decent (although seeing him on tv makes me think of D:Ream); however for me to even vaguely consider the possibility of a ghost it would have to appear in front on me, in broad daylight, and consent to a range of tests in lab conditions. And even then my reaction would be “that’s a bloody good illusion”.
The story always involves someone in a dark, unsettling location, under psychological pressure and/or in search of an easy answer to explain a more profound trauma.
To summarise: I ain’t afraid of no ghost.
I often wonder how much false memory plays into this. Events as described cannot have happened on their own - objects moving etc. but did they happen as described?
No: 42%
Yes: 31%
Unsure: 27%
YouGov / Feb 6, 2025 / n=1106
https://x.com/USA_Polling/status/1888360258919113171
I expect that unsure number to drop rapidly.
I can easily be persuaded that intense human emotions can pervade places in ways we don’t understand. The idea we’ve got the entire universe sorted and comprehended is facile. Physicists can’t agree if we live in a vast simulation or an infinite series of universes - or something simply beyond our ken
We are also only beginning to grasp the intense mystery of consciousness itself and how it is intimately yet weirdly bound up with the fabric of “reality”
Humility with an open mind is the only way to approach this stuff. And I HATE being humble
How can you know? How many people screen out jarring or bizarre visual evidence simply because it makes no sense? To their world view?
Check the gorilla on the basketball court - a famous experiment
Or think back to how many people dismissed the idea of a global Covid pandemic until the last moment - because it had never happened before and therefore could never happen
I think Hollymount might be better. But then it might be better because it’s a better story - and we all love a good story and will willingly suspend our disbelief to get that enjoyment
There is a 25 year old called Marko Elez who was allowed Read Only access under the initial interim injunction, who resigned when his posts promoting eugenics and racism came out. He is thought to have obtained write access and to have been recoding parts of the national payments systems. He was reinstated one day later.
Big Balls was one social media pseudonym of a 19 year old called 19-year-old Edward Coristine, who had been sacked from a previous employer for leaking confidential information to a competitor.
I am not aware that Coristine has been sacked since he is afaics ruled out of access by the temporary injunction.
Source (one amongst many):https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/08/elon-musk-doge-team-staff
@jamellebouie.net
worth saying that vermeule’s view that “separation of powers means the president is an elected despot” is fucking stupid and has no basis in the constitution as written
https://bsky.app/profile/jamellebouie.net/post/3lhqlbh6j522r
Eejit
In UK if a court says the government/state agency is wrong and make an order, it is (after any appeals) obeyed. This used to be boringly routine but, to their shame, the last government got the habit of saying 'we think the court is wrong but we'll do as they say like a sullen teenager'. This was the begining of bad stuff.
There are now multiple court cases arising from events since Trump2. Will, where relevant, Trump's government (1) obey (2) obey but say this is all terrible and try to bypass or legislate it away or (3) override and ignore, including by force?
Option (3) is the directly fascist one. It's a bit of a shibboleth. It also has a wider effect; the western countries have a tradition of the reliability and efficacy of things like commercial litigation. Without it commerce is a lottery/casino.
I think it is quite hard to run a properly fascist state if you do not control the courts.
Yes 87%
No 1%
Unsure 12%
BJO Poll Feb 9th 2025
If you want me to develop the point, what I am saying is this: no matter how credible the individual seems, if they report that an object moved by itself or a person appeared and disappearing, there are many KNOWN explanations we can reach for before we toy with an unknown one.
I am scientist. I would love us to discover a new complexity to the universe. And as you say, in many ways we know nothing. But anything we discover must be measured and codified to prove that it is something new. Otherwise, we might as well go back to pagan gods.
Ghosts, in the sense of the dead speaking to the living, must also answer the same logic challenge as UFOs. Why do so cryptically and not in the open in front of everyone? If my grandparents could speak to me from beyond the veil, I am confident they would do just that. Politely knock on the door and come in for a chat.
If they are meant to be a sort of “psychic imprint” then why aren’t they everywhere?
It should be nonsense, but we are about to find out how many people take it seriously
He´s not mad. He´s evil.
He didn’t.
One of the issues with a lot of the more exotic interpretations of Fortean style events is that they are often nice sounding ideas with no basis in reality or means to test. A classic is Stone Tape Theory. How do you test such an idea? The believer on the show spouts such things all the time as if they are accepted ideas akin to scientifically proven and tested ideas. They are not.
Trumpvangelicals have absolutely no time for Christ, beyond as a totem, for his words are that of a woke libtard to them.
While I think he is wrong, it is at least possible he is right. Whereas those who think the opposite - that physics and physical things is all there is - have to face the undeniable existence of their consciousness or mental states, irreducible to physical states.
The Pentagon just doubled the number of media “rotating out” from 4 to 8 to “make room for other outlets.”
OUT- NYT, WAPO, NBC, CNN, POLITICO, THE HILL, THE WAR ZONE, NPR
IN: NY Post, Washington Examiner
TV, OAN, Newsmax, HuffPo, The Free Press, The Daily Caller, Breitbart
https://x.com/KellieMeyerNews/status/1888020207731622069
(For me, the War Zone is notable. I'm not sure about HuffPo.)
Breakdown
6% He is a wanker but not sure if he is a C**t
4% who
and 2% depends if he donates to Reform
When a band makes the first album they have all the great songs they’ve acquired in the years leading up to that - and they all go on that first effort
For many it’s the peak moment then downhill
However check Hollymount
Also, the idea that we should all worship at the door of the science lab as that is a source of unimpeachable truth has surely been destroyed by Covid. Whether you believe in lab leak or not (spoiler: it happened) the entire scientific elite conspired to conceal a very plausible explanation for a hideous disaster likely caused by science
In short, scientists lied because scientists are human with human fears and interests and flaws and prejudices - and credulities
That is exactly what I think, and it requires no extant divinity to think it, as Kant helpfully but not very simply pointed out in about 1790.
RE: The lab leak. I would argue that the breaking down of some of the lies and obfuscation is a tribute to scientists being scientists. See the BBC podcast series - a lot of them were the ones who picked holes in the convenient open and shut case presented.
From my perspective, your willingness to be more open to the existence of ghosts makes you analogous to those who wanted it to be all about nature and the wet market.
when character = malevolent, racist, psychopathic, lying, greedy, megalomaniac con artist
Understanding how the world works is only relevant to my moral/ethical view in so far as it stops me thinking it is unethical to choose not to sprout wings and fly.
Maybe you saw the news that TWZ was one of the outlets listed in the expanded rotational media office space initiative that Pentagon is now executing. We were one of the additional four outlets rotating out.
The funny thing is, we have no physical presence in the Pentagon, let alone a desk or office space. None. Never have. We don't even have a Pentagon corespondent. We are a tiny little outlet that does everything possible, and as policy, to remain apolitical.
https://www.twz.com/news-features/bunker-talk-lets-talk-about-all-the-things-we-did-and-didnt-cover-this-week-131
I am worried the whole system is failing. That may be what some voters wanted but the results are going to be very unpredictable and, ultimately, I doubt they will be favourable to the white working class in forgotten Appalachia, for example, regardless of what they voted for.
Anyway I’m not here to rehash that argument not today. Ghosts are more fun
So is rugby. Cmon Scotland!!
I can see the point.
1. The Biden administration is not the Trump administration. Even if you accept, as I do, that successive Presidencies all end up doing the same things, Trump is undoubtedly different. If this were not the case, Starmer's lot would not have tried to get it nailed down before Trump got in.
The Biden administration was, as you say, keenly anti-British, and in keeping with American foreign policy over a century of publicly claiming the UK as an ally, but privately acting against our interests and treating us as a supplicant, but with an added zeal because of the senile old corpse's visceral hatred of the UK. The Biden administration was also a lot less hostile to China than the Trump one. I never agreed with those who said that America was against the deal - clearly they were very much in favour, but that was the last lot.
2. Clearly, even if giving the territory to Mauritius was on the table, paying for the US to have a base there is simply not something any self-respecting nation would agree to. Forget self respecting nation - it's not even something the Prince of Monaco or the Bailiwick of Jersey would agree to. Britain has no strategic interest in a base in the Indian Ocean. If the US wants it, they can pay for it. Telling them that was not just an option, it is an overdue assertion of some form of dignity within what is clearly an unbalanced relationship. Even a trophy wife needs some furs and diamonds and not to appear distressed and unkempt. We need to begin to assert ourselves in the special relationship, and we must start somewhere.
https://www.reformparty.uk/counter
She was simply creating a path to allow otherwise loyal catholics to remain in office
Just rejoice at that news.