Those are woeful ratings for Badenoch . They should have picked Cleverly who has much more cross over appeal .
Cummings' prediction was that they would go for Cleverly next.
A man so daft that he plotted himself out of a leadership race.
That was his backers tbf. They tried to engineer his preferred opponent for the run off and succeeded in engineering the man himself out of the run off. You couldn't make it up. Literally couldn't make it up. If you submitted that in a script for a political drama you'd get it returned with a cover note saying "rejected on grounds of credulity".
While I share your general amusement, the pedant in me bridles at the phrase 'couldn't make it up', especially when paired with the word 'literally' - I'm fairly sure you could make it up. People make stuff up all the time, much of it less believable than that. Look at Star Wars, for example.
No but that's literally what I'm saying. You *could* make it up, yes, but not if you wanted it accepted as a serious proposition by the commissioning editor. So to all intents and purposes you couldn't.
Oh come on! This is exactly the sort of thing which happened in The Thick of It.
I'm not disputing how ridiculous the situation was. I'm pedantically disputing the use of the phrase 'you couldn't make it up'. People make up implausible stuff all the time, and much of it gets commissioned for telly. (Look at Death in Paradise. 50% of the time that finishes and you look at the wife and both shake your heads and say 'no...'. Still watch the next one though. I like light-hearted crime drama where the main puzzle is 'how'. And I have some sympathy for the writers still trying to come up with plots 100-odd episodes in).
'You couldn't make it up' is just a phrase I can rarely let go without a quibble. (See also describing Great Britain - the 8th largest and, what, 3rd most populous island in the world - as a 'small island', the use of the word 'stunning' to mean 'nice', and the misuse of the word 'literally'.)
I don't trying to fall out about it. This is just pb pedantry.
But TTOI was a comedy. Of course you could make it up as a joke. The Cleverly thing works fine as deliberate farce or even as a piece of whimsy. What I'm saying is you couldn't make it up and be taken seriously. That's what the phrase means in my book.
All right, House of Cards? To Play the King? Both of those contained plots more far fetched.
Your problem with the Clevershambles is that it is a) improbable and b) funny. Drama has a problem with things that are funny, preferring tense looks all the time. And that is why drama is almost never fulfilling - because the real world isn't like that. Funny things happen all the time. Just because something's funny doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken seriously.
We're at cross purposes. When I say "serious drama" I mean the likes of Kavanaugh QC or Smiley's People. Straightforward story telling with no attempt to be kooky or satirical. That genre. There's no place there for the sort of nonsense that happened with James Cleverly (or tbf his backers). If you tried to put something like that in you'd be told to go and have a rethink. Meaning you'd have failed to make it up.
I've never watched either of those shows, but if neither of them could have a storyline like this, then it sounds more like they're dull and shit than because drama can't include made up events like this.
Every good drama I've seen has had comparably farcical situations.
The West Wing was a serious drama and had many such absurd storylines at times, because absurd things can and do happen.
Or if you want a British example other than TTOI, what about a Cabinet Minister getting pulled over by the cops for being inebriated then becoming Prime Minister because the Home Secretary got pulled over by the cops for being inebriated? Don't worry too much about how the sausage is made, just ensure its not a Eurosausage.
Jaw-dropping footage revealed by @markwhiteTV today showing what GB News believes to be Sudanese migrants showing off their 4* hotels.
This is a mockery. There are homeless British citizens sleeping rough on the street and economic migrants fleeing France are a priority for our government.
Keir Starmer promised he would end the migrant hotels, yet another failure.
These videos are nothing but an advertisement for others to come to the UK, of which we believe, there are thousands more queueing up.
If we allowed asylum seekers to work, which that moron May stopped, we wouldn't need to host them in hotels, 4* or otherwise.
Truly one of the worst policy decisions of my lifetime.
Generally speaking, the political decisions of the period 2015-2024 seem to have uniformly bad. And those the Coalition period weren't often better.
I agree (with the exception of schools, where our position in the PISA rankings notably improved), but why are you stopping in 2024? It's not as if July 2024 marked some kind of dramatic improvement (or improvement of any kind) in governance.
Until we have a government that is prepared to risk short term unpopularity to make correct economic decisions, I'm afraid we'll continue our current depressing trajectory of stagnation punctuated by periods of decline.
Even with big majorities government has been reluctant to risk short term unpopularity. Starmer seems to have been partly willing, but probably not enough, and in fairness I hold us the public largely responsible for that. We're both hugely cynical but also wildly optimistic that things cannot be as bad as they look.
Those are woeful ratings for Badenoch . They should have picked Cleverly who has much more cross over appeal .
Cummings' prediction was that they would go for Cleverly next.
A man so daft that he plotted himself out of a leadership race.
That was his backers tbf. They tried to engineer his preferred opponent for the run off and succeeded in engineering the man himself out of the run off. You couldn't make it up. Literally couldn't make it up. If you submitted that in a script for a political drama you'd get it returned with a cover note saying "rejected on grounds of credulity".
While I share your general amusement, the pedant in me bridles at the phrase 'couldn't make it up', especially when paired with the word 'literally' - I'm fairly sure you could make it up. People make stuff up all the time, much of it less believable than that. Look at Star Wars, for example.
No but that's literally what I'm saying. You *could* make it up, yes, but not if you wanted it accepted as a serious proposition by the commissioning editor. So to all intents and purposes you couldn't.
Oh come on! This is exactly the sort of thing which happened in The Thick of It.
I'm not disputing how ridiculous the situation was. I'm pedantically disputing the use of the phrase 'you couldn't make it up'. People make up implausible stuff all the time, and much of it gets commissioned for telly. (Look at Death in Paradise. 50% of the time that finishes and you look at the wife and both shake your heads and say 'no...'. Still watch the next one though. I like light-hearted crime drama where the main puzzle is 'how'. And I have some sympathy for the writers still trying to come up with plots 100-odd episodes in).
'You couldn't make it up' is just a phrase I can rarely let go without a quibble. (See also describing Great Britain - the 8th largest and, what, 3rd most populous island in the world - as a 'small island', the use of the word 'stunning' to mean 'nice', and the misuse of the word 'literally'.)
I don't trying to fall out about it. This is just pb pedantry.
But TTOI was a comedy. Of course you could make it up as a joke. The Cleverly thing works fine as deliberate farce or even as a piece of whimsy. What I'm saying is you couldn't make it up and be taken seriously. That's what the phrase means in my book.
All right, House of Cards? To Play the King? Both of those contained plots more far fetched.
Your problem with the Clevershambles is that it is a) improbable and b) funny. Drama has a problem with things that are funny, preferring tense looks all the time. And that is why drama is almost never fulfilling - because the real world isn't like that. Funny things happen all the time. Just because something's funny doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken seriously.
We're at cross purposes. When I say "serious drama" I mean the likes of Kavanaugh QC or Smiley's People. Straightforward story telling with no attempt to be kooky or satirical. That genre. There's no place there for the sort of nonsense that happened with James Cleverly (or tbf his backers). If you tried to put something like that in you'd be told to go and have a rethink. Meaning you'd have failed to make it up.
It’s Kavanagh QC.
Not to be confused with Kavana, the rock icon from the late nineties.
That's the one. Thaw.
An absolute legend, and a decent bloke too.
The Sweeney is just brilliant. Ace TV and great characters and a London long gone.
Me and my mate, Baker, called each other Jack and George for many years.
My father loved The Sweeney, he also said it was a tribute to John Thaw that after a few episodes of Morse he didn't see him as Jack Regan.
Rewatching Morse, having not seen it since childhood, Thaw is stunning. Never not completely convincing.
There’s only a couple of duff episodes. I remember being absolutely shocked at the reveals in ‘Driven to Distraction’ and ‘Way through the woods’.
I also think Kevin Whateley, James Grout and Peter Woodthorpe as supports were really good too.
Those are woeful ratings for Badenoch . They should have picked Cleverly who has much more cross over appeal .
Cummings' prediction was that they would go for Cleverly next.
A man so daft that he plotted himself out of a leadership race.
That was his backers tbf. They tried to engineer his preferred opponent for the run off and succeeded in engineering the man himself out of the run off. You couldn't make it up. Literally couldn't make it up. If you submitted that in a script for a political drama you'd get it returned with a cover note saying "rejected on grounds of credulity".
While I share your general amusement, the pedant in me bridles at the phrase 'couldn't make it up', especially when paired with the word 'literally' - I'm fairly sure you could make it up. People make stuff up all the time, much of it less believable than that. Look at Star Wars, for example.
No but that's literally what I'm saying. You *could* make it up, yes, but not if you wanted it accepted as a serious proposition by the commissioning editor. So to all intents and purposes you couldn't.
Oh come on! This is exactly the sort of thing which happened in The Thick of It.
I'm not disputing how ridiculous the situation was. I'm pedantically disputing the use of the phrase 'you couldn't make it up'. People make up implausible stuff all the time, and much of it gets commissioned for telly. (Look at Death in Paradise. 50% of the time that finishes and you look at the wife and both shake your heads and say 'no...'. Still watch the next one though. I like light-hearted crime drama where the main puzzle is 'how'. And I have some sympathy for the writers still trying to come up with plots 100-odd episodes in).
'You couldn't make it up' is just a phrase I can rarely let go without a quibble. (See also describing Great Britain - the 8th largest and, what, 3rd most populous island in the world - as a 'small island', the use of the word 'stunning' to mean 'nice', and the misuse of the word 'literally'.)
I don't trying to fall out about it. This is just pb pedantry.
But TTOI was a comedy. Of course you could make it up as a joke. The Cleverly thing works fine as deliberate farce or even as a piece of whimsy. What I'm saying is you couldn't make it up and be taken seriously. That's what the phrase means in my book.
All right, House of Cards? To Play the King? Both of those contained plots more far fetched.
Your problem with the Clevershambles is that it is a) improbable and b) funny. Drama has a problem with things that are funny, preferring tense looks all the time. And that is why drama is almost never fulfilling - because the real world isn't like that. Funny things happen all the time. Just because something's funny doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken seriously.
We're at cross purposes. When I say "serious drama" I mean the likes of Kavanaugh QC or Smiley's People. Straightforward story telling with no attempt to be kooky or satirical. That genre. There's no place there for the sort of nonsense that happened with James Cleverly (or tbf his backers). If you tried to put something like that in you'd be told to go and have a rethink. Meaning you'd have failed to make it up.
The fault here is with most drama's utter aversion to anything amusing happening.
But House of Cards was a proper drama. And it's a plausible plotline for one of that series. After all, the Chief Whip ended up as PM.
Where we appear to be is that you could make it up, but if you did, and presented it to the humourless commissioners of TV drama, they wouldn't like it as a plotline because in their world nothing is allowed to be in the least bit amusing.
I'm going to go and make an omelette now. Mushroom, onion, pancetta, potato and cheese. Maybe a bit of chorizo if there's any in the fridge.
The best thing about UK House of Cards was Sir Ian Richardson's acting.
As Lent comes to an end and we move into the Easter weekend, I want to wish Christians everywhere remembering the death and celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ a very happy Easter.
He's listening and taking some seriously good advice.
I really hope starmer doesn't do a trade deal with Trump. As Krugman points out: you cannot do deals with Trump
"So Big Law has just discovered what it should have known all along: Giving Trump what he wants doesn’t buy you lenient treatment. All it does is signal weakness, which leads to even more onerous demands."
Those are woeful ratings for Badenoch . They should have picked Cleverly who has much more cross over appeal .
Cummings' prediction was that they would go for Cleverly next.
A man so daft that he plotted himself out of a leadership race.
That was his backers tbf. They tried to engineer his preferred opponent for the run off and succeeded in engineering the man himself out of the run off. You couldn't make it up. Literally couldn't make it up. If you submitted that in a script for a political drama you'd get it returned with a cover note saying "rejected on grounds of credulity".
While I share your general amusement, the pedant in me bridles at the phrase 'couldn't make it up', especially when paired with the word 'literally' - I'm fairly sure you could make it up. People make stuff up all the time, much of it less believable than that. Look at Star Wars, for example.
No but that's literally what I'm saying. You *could* make it up, yes, but not if you wanted it accepted as a serious proposition by the commissioning editor. So to all intents and purposes you couldn't.
Oh come on! This is exactly the sort of thing which happened in The Thick of It.
I'm not disputing how ridiculous the situation was. I'm pedantically disputing the use of the phrase 'you couldn't make it up'. People make up implausible stuff all the time, and much of it gets commissioned for telly. (Look at Death in Paradise. 50% of the time that finishes and you look at the wife and both shake your heads and say 'no...'. Still watch the next one though. I like light-hearted crime drama where the main puzzle is 'how'. And I have some sympathy for the writers still trying to come up with plots 100-odd episodes in).
'You couldn't make it up' is just a phrase I can rarely let go without a quibble. (See also describing Great Britain - the 8th largest and, what, 3rd most populous island in the world - as a 'small island', the use of the word 'stunning' to mean 'nice', and the misuse of the word 'literally'.)
I don't trying to fall out about it. This is just pb pedantry.
But TTOI was a comedy. Of course you could make it up as a joke. The Cleverly thing works fine as deliberate farce or even as a piece of whimsy. What I'm saying is you couldn't make it up and be taken seriously. That's what the phrase means in my book.
All right, House of Cards? To Play the King? Both of those contained plots more far fetched.
Your problem with the Clevershambles is that it is a) improbable and b) funny. Drama has a problem with things that are funny, preferring tense looks all the time. And that is why drama is almost never fulfilling - because the real world isn't like that. Funny things happen all the time. Just because something's funny doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken seriously.
We're at cross purposes. When I say "serious drama" I mean the likes of Kavanaugh QC or Smiley's People. Straightforward story telling with no attempt to be kooky or satirical. That genre. There's no place there for the sort of nonsense that happened with James Cleverly (or tbf his backers). If you tried to put something like that in you'd be told to go and have a rethink. Meaning you'd have failed to make it up.
It’s Kavanagh QC.
Not to be confused with Kavana, the rock icon from the late nineties.
That's the one. Thaw.
An absolute legend, and a decent bloke too.
The Sweeney is just brilliant. Ace TV and great characters and a London long gone.
Me and my mate, Baker, called each other Jack and George for many years.
My father loved The Sweeney, he also said it was a tribute to John Thaw that after a few episodes of Morse he didn't see him as Jack Regan.
Rewatching Morse, having not seen it since childhood, Thaw is stunning. Never not completely convincing.
There’s only a couple of duff episodes. I remember being absolutely shocked at the reveals in ‘Driven to Distraction’ and ‘Way through the woods’.
I also think Kevin Whateley, James Grout and Peter Woodthorpe as supports were really good too.
I caught a bit of the one with the rave storyline a few years ago and it seemed to have dated more than others.
Those are woeful ratings for Badenoch . They should have picked Cleverly who has much more cross over appeal .
Cummings' prediction was that they would go for Cleverly next.
A man so daft that he plotted himself out of a leadership race.
That was his backers tbf. They tried to engineer his preferred opponent for the run off and succeeded in engineering the man himself out of the run off. You couldn't make it up. Literally couldn't make it up. If you submitted that in a script for a political drama you'd get it returned with a cover note saying "rejected on grounds of credulity".
While I share your general amusement, the pedant in me bridles at the phrase 'couldn't make it up', especially when paired with the word 'literally' - I'm fairly sure you could make it up. People make stuff up all the time, much of it less believable than that. Look at Star Wars, for example.
No but that's literally what I'm saying. You *could* make it up, yes, but not if you wanted it accepted as a serious proposition by the commissioning editor. So to all intents and purposes you couldn't.
Oh come on! This is exactly the sort of thing which happened in The Thick of It.
I'm not disputing how ridiculous the situation was. I'm pedantically disputing the use of the phrase 'you couldn't make it up'. People make up implausible stuff all the time, and much of it gets commissioned for telly. (Look at Death in Paradise. 50% of the time that finishes and you look at the wife and both shake your heads and say 'no...'. Still watch the next one though. I like light-hearted crime drama where the main puzzle is 'how'. And I have some sympathy for the writers still trying to come up with plots 100-odd episodes in).
'You couldn't make it up' is just a phrase I can rarely let go without a quibble. (See also describing Great Britain - the 8th largest and, what, 3rd most populous island in the world - as a 'small island', the use of the word 'stunning' to mean 'nice', and the misuse of the word 'literally'.)
I don't trying to fall out about it. This is just pb pedantry.
But TTOI was a comedy. Of course you could make it up as a joke. The Cleverly thing works fine as deliberate farce or even as a piece of whimsy. What I'm saying is you couldn't make it up and be taken seriously. That's what the phrase means in my book.
All right, House of Cards? To Play the King? Both of those contained plots more far fetched.
Your problem with the Clevershambles is that it is a) improbable and b) funny. Drama has a problem with things that are funny, preferring tense looks all the time. And that is why drama is almost never fulfilling - because the real world isn't like that. Funny things happen all the time. Just because something's funny doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken seriously.
We're at cross purposes. When I say "serious drama" I mean the likes of Kavanaugh QC or Smiley's People. Straightforward story telling with no attempt to be kooky or satirical. That genre. There's no place there for the sort of nonsense that happened with James Cleverly (or tbf his backers). If you tried to put something like that in you'd be told to go and have a rethink. Meaning you'd have failed to make it up.
It’s Kavanagh QC.
Not to be confused with Kavana, the rock icon from the late nineties.
That's the one. Thaw.
An absolute legend, and a decent bloke too.
The Sweeney is just brilliant. Ace TV and great characters and a London long gone.
Me and my mate, Baker, called each other Jack and George for many years.
I’d drive my Triumph Acclaim like it was the old Cortina off to a blag up west where they were tooled up with shooters.
Which were you? Or did you alternate?
😂😂
Always Jack, although as I drove I should have been the driver.
Our mate Soapy, so named after a Wilfred Hyde-white character in a Peter Sellers film was named Daniel’s after John Alkin’s character Tom Daniels
Appreciate this sounds shite but these were great days. Happy days and I loved them and when we meet up we just talk about them. Nostalgia isn’t what it was. But it’s great.
Alkin left acting and married Kenny Everett’s ex wife and got into tantric healing, or something similar.
Those are woeful ratings for Badenoch . They should have picked Cleverly who has much more cross over appeal .
Cummings' prediction was that they would go for Cleverly next.
A man so daft that he plotted himself out of a leadership race.
That was his backers tbf. They tried to engineer his preferred opponent for the run off and succeeded in engineering the man himself out of the run off. You couldn't make it up. Literally couldn't make it up. If you submitted that in a script for a political drama you'd get it returned with a cover note saying "rejected on grounds of credulity".
While I share your general amusement, the pedant in me bridles at the phrase 'couldn't make it up', especially when paired with the word 'literally' - I'm fairly sure you could make it up. People make stuff up all the time, much of it less believable than that. Look at Star Wars, for example.
No but that's literally what I'm saying. You *could* make it up, yes, but not if you wanted it accepted as a serious proposition by the commissioning editor. So to all intents and purposes you couldn't.
Oh come on! This is exactly the sort of thing which happened in The Thick of It.
I'm not disputing how ridiculous the situation was. I'm pedantically disputing the use of the phrase 'you couldn't make it up'. People make up implausible stuff all the time, and much of it gets commissioned for telly. (Look at Death in Paradise. 50% of the time that finishes and you look at the wife and both shake your heads and say 'no...'. Still watch the next one though. I like light-hearted crime drama where the main puzzle is 'how'. And I have some sympathy for the writers still trying to come up with plots 100-odd episodes in).
'You couldn't make it up' is just a phrase I can rarely let go without a quibble. (See also describing Great Britain - the 8th largest and, what, 3rd most populous island in the world - as a 'small island', the use of the word 'stunning' to mean 'nice', and the misuse of the word 'literally'.)
I don't trying to fall out about it. This is just pb pedantry.
But TTOI was a comedy. Of course you could make it up as a joke. The Cleverly thing works fine as deliberate farce or even as a piece of whimsy. What I'm saying is you couldn't make it up and be taken seriously. That's what the phrase means in my book.
All right, House of Cards? To Play the King? Both of those contained plots more far fetched.
Your problem with the Clevershambles is that it is a) improbable and b) funny. Drama has a problem with things that are funny, preferring tense looks all the time. And that is why drama is almost never fulfilling - because the real world isn't like that. Funny things happen all the time. Just because something's funny doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken seriously.
We're at cross purposes. When I say "serious drama" I mean the likes of Kavanaugh QC or Smiley's People. Straightforward story telling with no attempt to be kooky or satirical. That genre. There's no place there for the sort of nonsense that happened with James Cleverly (or tbf his backers). If you tried to put something like that in you'd be told to go and have a rethink. Meaning you'd have failed to make it up.
It’s Kavanagh QC.
Not to be confused with Kavana, the rock icon from the late nineties.
That's the one. Thaw.
An absolute legend, and a decent bloke too.
The Sweeney is just brilliant. Ace TV and great characters and a London long gone.
Me and my mate, Baker, called each other Jack and George for many years.
My father loved The Sweeney, he also said it was a tribute to John Thaw that after a few episodes of Morse he didn't see him as Jack Regan.
Rewatching Morse, having not seen it since childhood, Thaw is stunning. Never not completely convincing.
There’s only a couple of duff episodes. I remember being absolutely shocked at the reveals in ‘Driven to Distraction’ and ‘Way through the woods’.
I also think Kevin Whateley, James Grout and Peter Woodthorpe as supports were really good too.
I caught a bit of the one with the rave storyline a few years ago and it seemed to have dated more than others.
The diet,one with the overweight people in was pretty crap too.
Those are woeful ratings for Badenoch . They should have picked Cleverly who has much more cross over appeal .
Cummings' prediction was that they would go for Cleverly next.
A man so daft that he plotted himself out of a leadership race.
That was his backers tbf. They tried to engineer his preferred opponent for the run off and succeeded in engineering the man himself out of the run off. You couldn't make it up. Literally couldn't make it up. If you submitted that in a script for a political drama you'd get it returned with a cover note saying "rejected on grounds of credulity".
While I share your general amusement, the pedant in me bridles at the phrase 'couldn't make it up', especially when paired with the word 'literally' - I'm fairly sure you could make it up. People make stuff up all the time, much of it less believable than that. Look at Star Wars, for example.
No but that's literally what I'm saying. You *could* make it up, yes, but not if you wanted it accepted as a serious proposition by the commissioning editor. So to all intents and purposes you couldn't.
Oh come on! This is exactly the sort of thing which happened in The Thick of It.
I'm not disputing how ridiculous the situation was. I'm pedantically disputing the use of the phrase 'you couldn't make it up'. People make up implausible stuff all the time, and much of it gets commissioned for telly. (Look at Death in Paradise. 50% of the time that finishes and you look at the wife and both shake your heads and say 'no...'. Still watch the next one though. I like light-hearted crime drama where the main puzzle is 'how'. And I have some sympathy for the writers still trying to come up with plots 100-odd episodes in).
'You couldn't make it up' is just a phrase I can rarely let go without a quibble. (See also describing Great Britain - the 8th largest and, what, 3rd most populous island in the world - as a 'small island', the use of the word 'stunning' to mean 'nice', and the misuse of the word 'literally'.)
I don't trying to fall out about it. This is just pb pedantry.
But TTOI was a comedy. Of course you could make it up as a joke. The Cleverly thing works fine as deliberate farce or even as a piece of whimsy. What I'm saying is you couldn't make it up and be taken seriously. That's what the phrase means in my book.
All right, House of Cards? To Play the King? Both of those contained plots more far fetched.
Your problem with the Clevershambles is that it is a) improbable and b) funny. Drama has a problem with things that are funny, preferring tense looks all the time. And that is why drama is almost never fulfilling - because the real world isn't like that. Funny things happen all the time. Just because something's funny doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken seriously.
We're at cross purposes. When I say "serious drama" I mean the likes of Kavanaugh QC or Smiley's People. Straightforward story telling with no attempt to be kooky or satirical. That genre. There's no place there for the sort of nonsense that happened with James Cleverly (or tbf his backers). If you tried to put something like that in you'd be told to go and have a rethink. Meaning you'd have failed to make it up.
I've never watched either of those shows, but if neither of them could have a storyline like this, then it sounds more like they're dull and shit than because drama can't include made up events like this.
Every good drama I've seen has had comparably farcical situations.
The West Wing was a serious drama and had many such absurd storylines at times, because absurd things can and do happen.
Or if you want a British example other than TTOI, what about a Cabinet Minister getting pulled over by the cops for being inebriated then becoming Prime Minister because the Home Secretary got pulled over by the cops for being inebriated? Don't worry too much about how the sausage is made, just ensure its not a Eurosausage.
The Home Secretary wasn't pulled over for being drunk, he knocked over a nuclear waste lorry whilst drunk.
Plus the Foreign Secretary was some kind of economic fraudster and the Chancellor had apparently been shagging anything with a pulse including those potentially compromised by foreign governments.
When you consider the series ended with Hacker blackmailing the Cabinet Secretary to lie in order to protect him, and the former PM quitting in rather unusual circumstances, it makes you question whether the unnamed opposition would have been the better choice.
Jaw-dropping footage revealed by @markwhiteTV today showing what GB News believes to be Sudanese migrants showing off their 4* hotels.
This is a mockery. There are homeless British citizens sleeping rough on the street and economic migrants fleeing France are a priority for our government.
Keir Starmer promised he would end the migrant hotels, yet another failure.
These videos are nothing but an advertisement for others to come to the UK, of which we believe, there are thousands more queueing up.
We've woven a hell of a tangled web on border control.
Those are woeful ratings for Badenoch . They should have picked Cleverly who has much more cross over appeal .
Cummings' prediction was that they would go for Cleverly next.
A man so daft that he plotted himself out of a leadership race.
That was his backers tbf. They tried to engineer his preferred opponent for the run off and succeeded in engineering the man himself out of the run off. You couldn't make it up. Literally couldn't make it up. If you submitted that in a script for a political drama you'd get it returned with a cover note saying "rejected on grounds of credulity".
While I share your general amusement, the pedant in me bridles at the phrase 'couldn't make it up', especially when paired with the word 'literally' - I'm fairly sure you could make it up. People make stuff up all the time, much of it less believable than that. Look at Star Wars, for example.
No but that's literally what I'm saying. You *could* make it up, yes, but not if you wanted it accepted as a serious proposition by the commissioning editor. So to all intents and purposes you couldn't.
Oh come on! This is exactly the sort of thing which happened in The Thick of It.
I'm not disputing how ridiculous the situation was. I'm pedantically disputing the use of the phrase 'you couldn't make it up'. People make up implausible stuff all the time, and much of it gets commissioned for telly. (Look at Death in Paradise. 50% of the time that finishes and you look at the wife and both shake your heads and say 'no...'. Still watch the next one though. I like light-hearted crime drama where the main puzzle is 'how'. And I have some sympathy for the writers still trying to come up with plots 100-odd episodes in).
'You couldn't make it up' is just a phrase I can rarely let go without a quibble. (See also describing Great Britain - the 8th largest and, what, 3rd most populous island in the world - as a 'small island', the use of the word 'stunning' to mean 'nice', and the misuse of the word 'literally'.)
I don't trying to fall out about it. This is just pb pedantry.
But TTOI was a comedy. Of course you could make it up as a joke. The Cleverly thing works fine as deliberate farce or even as a piece of whimsy. What I'm saying is you couldn't make it up and be taken seriously. That's what the phrase means in my book.
All right, House of Cards? To Play the King? Both of those contained plots more far fetched.
Your problem with the Clevershambles is that it is a) improbable and b) funny. Drama has a problem with things that are funny, preferring tense looks all the time. And that is why drama is almost never fulfilling - because the real world isn't like that. Funny things happen all the time. Just because something's funny doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken seriously.
We're at cross purposes. When I say "serious drama" I mean the likes of Kavanaugh QC or Smiley's People. Straightforward story telling with no attempt to be kooky or satirical. That genre. There's no place there for the sort of nonsense that happened with James Cleverly (or tbf his backers). If you tried to put something like that in you'd be told to go and have a rethink. Meaning you'd have failed to make it up.
The fault here is with most drama's utter aversion to anything amusing happening.
But House of Cards was a proper drama. And it's a plausible plotline for one of that series. After all, the Chief Whip ended up as PM.
Where we appear to be is that you could make it up, but if you did, and presented it to the humourless commissioners of TV drama, they wouldn't like it as a plotline because in their world nothing is allowed to be in the least bit amusing.
I'm going to go and make an omelette now. Mushroom, onion, pancetta, potato and cheese. Maybe a bit of chorizo if there's any in the fridge.
The best thing about UK House of Cards was Sir Ian Richardson's acting.
Those are woeful ratings for Badenoch . They should have picked Cleverly who has much more cross over appeal .
Cummings' prediction was that they would go for Cleverly next.
A man so daft that he plotted himself out of a leadership race.
That was his backers tbf. They tried to engineer his preferred opponent for the run off and succeeded in engineering the man himself out of the run off. You couldn't make it up. Literally couldn't make it up. If you submitted that in a script for a political drama you'd get it returned with a cover note saying "rejected on grounds of credulity".
While I share your general amusement, the pedant in me bridles at the phrase 'couldn't make it up', especially when paired with the word 'literally' - I'm fairly sure you could make it up. People make stuff up all the time, much of it less believable than that. Look at Star Wars, for example.
No but that's literally what I'm saying. You *could* make it up, yes, but not if you wanted it accepted as a serious proposition by the commissioning editor. So to all intents and purposes you couldn't.
Oh come on! This is exactly the sort of thing which happened in The Thick of It.
I'm not disputing how ridiculous the situation was. I'm pedantically disputing the use of the phrase 'you couldn't make it up'. People make up implausible stuff all the time, and much of it gets commissioned for telly. (Look at Death in Paradise. 50% of the time that finishes and you look at the wife and both shake your heads and say 'no...'. Still watch the next one though. I like light-hearted crime drama where the main puzzle is 'how'. And I have some sympathy for the writers still trying to come up with plots 100-odd episodes in).
'You couldn't make it up' is just a phrase I can rarely let go without a quibble. (See also describing Great Britain - the 8th largest and, what, 3rd most populous island in the world - as a 'small island', the use of the word 'stunning' to mean 'nice', and the misuse of the word 'literally'.)
I don't trying to fall out about it. This is just pb pedantry.
But TTOI was a comedy. Of course you could make it up as a joke. The Cleverly thing works fine as deliberate farce or even as a piece of whimsy. What I'm saying is you couldn't make it up and be taken seriously. That's what the phrase means in my book.
All right, House of Cards? To Play the King? Both of those contained plots more far fetched.
Your problem with the Clevershambles is that it is a) improbable and b) funny. Drama has a problem with things that are funny, preferring tense looks all the time. And that is why drama is almost never fulfilling - because the real world isn't like that. Funny things happen all the time. Just because something's funny doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken seriously.
We're at cross purposes. When I say "serious drama" I mean the likes of Kavanaugh QC or Smiley's People. Straightforward story telling with no attempt to be kooky or satirical. That genre. There's no place there for the sort of nonsense that happened with James Cleverly (or tbf his backers). If you tried to put something like that in you'd be told to go and have a rethink. Meaning you'd have failed to make it up.
I've never watched either of those shows, but if neither of them could have a storyline like this, then it sounds more like they're dull and shit than because drama can't include made up events like this.
Every good drama I've seen has had comparably farcical situations.
The West Wing was a serious drama and had many such absurd storylines at times, because absurd things can and do happen.
Or if you want a British example other than TTOI, what about a Cabinet Minister getting pulled over by the cops for being inebriated then becoming Prime Minister because the Home Secretary got pulled over by the cops for being inebriated? Don't worry too much about how the sausage is made, just ensure its not a Eurosausage.
Soap is fine, esp classy soap like WW, but that's a different genre to (eg) Smiley's People. I like both as it happens, but only the latter is relevant to the point I was making about James Cleverly.
Those are woeful ratings for Badenoch . They should have picked Cleverly who has much more cross over appeal .
Cummings' prediction was that they would go for Cleverly next.
A man so daft that he plotted himself out of a leadership race.
That was his backers tbf. They tried to engineer his preferred opponent for the run off and succeeded in engineering the man himself out of the run off. You couldn't make it up. Literally couldn't make it up. If you submitted that in a script for a political drama you'd get it returned with a cover note saying "rejected on grounds of credulity".
While I share your general amusement, the pedant in me bridles at the phrase 'couldn't make it up', especially when paired with the word 'literally' - I'm fairly sure you could make it up. People make stuff up all the time, much of it less believable than that. Look at Star Wars, for example.
No but that's literally what I'm saying. You *could* make it up, yes, but not if you wanted it accepted as a serious proposition by the commissioning editor. So to all intents and purposes you couldn't.
Oh come on! This is exactly the sort of thing which happened in The Thick of It.
I'm not disputing how ridiculous the situation was. I'm pedantically disputing the use of the phrase 'you couldn't make it up'. People make up implausible stuff all the time, and much of it gets commissioned for telly. (Look at Death in Paradise. 50% of the time that finishes and you look at the wife and both shake your heads and say 'no...'. Still watch the next one though. I like light-hearted crime drama where the main puzzle is 'how'. And I have some sympathy for the writers still trying to come up with plots 100-odd episodes in).
'You couldn't make it up' is just a phrase I can rarely let go without a quibble. (See also describing Great Britain - the 8th largest and, what, 3rd most populous island in the world - as a 'small island', the use of the word 'stunning' to mean 'nice', and the misuse of the word 'literally'.)
I don't trying to fall out about it. This is just pb pedantry.
But TTOI was a comedy. Of course you could make it up as a joke. The Cleverly thing works fine as deliberate farce or even as a piece of whimsy. What I'm saying is you couldn't make it up and be taken seriously. That's what the phrase means in my book.
All right, House of Cards? To Play the King? Both of those contained plots more far fetched.
Your problem with the Clevershambles is that it is a) improbable and b) funny. Drama has a problem with things that are funny, preferring tense looks all the time. And that is why drama is almost never fulfilling - because the real world isn't like that. Funny things happen all the time. Just because something's funny doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken seriously.
We're at cross purposes. When I say "serious drama" I mean the likes of Kavanaugh QC or Smiley's People. Straightforward story telling with no attempt to be kooky or satirical. That genre. There's no place there for the sort of nonsense that happened with James Cleverly (or tbf his backers). If you tried to put something like that in you'd be told to go and have a rethink. Meaning you'd have failed to make it up.
The fault here is with most drama's utter aversion to anything amusing happening.
But House of Cards was a proper drama. And it's a plausible plotline for one of that series. After all, the Chief Whip ended up as PM.
Where we appear to be is that you could make it up, but if you did, and presented it to the humourless commissioners of TV drama, they wouldn't like it as a plotline because in their world nothing is allowed to be in the least bit amusing.
I'm going to go and make an omelette now. Mushroom, onion, pancetta, potato and cheese. Maybe a bit of chorizo if there's any in the fridge.
The best thing about UK House of Cards was Sir Ian Richardson's acting.
Those are woeful ratings for Badenoch . They should have picked Cleverly who has much more cross over appeal .
Cummings' prediction was that they would go for Cleverly next.
A man so daft that he plotted himself out of a leadership race.
That was his backers tbf. They tried to engineer his preferred opponent for the run off and succeeded in engineering the man himself out of the run off. You couldn't make it up. Literally couldn't make it up. If you submitted that in a script for a political drama you'd get it returned with a cover note saying "rejected on grounds of credulity".
While I share your general amusement, the pedant in me bridles at the phrase 'couldn't make it up', especially when paired with the word 'literally' - I'm fairly sure you could make it up. People make stuff up all the time, much of it less believable than that. Look at Star Wars, for example.
No but that's literally what I'm saying. You *could* make it up, yes, but not if you wanted it accepted as a serious proposition by the commissioning editor. So to all intents and purposes you couldn't.
Oh come on! This is exactly the sort of thing which happened in The Thick of It.
I'm not disputing how ridiculous the situation was. I'm pedantically disputing the use of the phrase 'you couldn't make it up'. People make up implausible stuff all the time, and much of it gets commissioned for telly. (Look at Death in Paradise. 50% of the time that finishes and you look at the wife and both shake your heads and say 'no...'. Still watch the next one though. I like light-hearted crime drama where the main puzzle is 'how'. And I have some sympathy for the writers still trying to come up with plots 100-odd episodes in).
'You couldn't make it up' is just a phrase I can rarely let go without a quibble. (See also describing Great Britain - the 8th largest and, what, 3rd most populous island in the world - as a 'small island', the use of the word 'stunning' to mean 'nice', and the misuse of the word 'literally'.)
I don't trying to fall out about it. This is just pb pedantry.
But TTOI was a comedy. Of course you could make it up as a joke. The Cleverly thing works fine as deliberate farce or even as a piece of whimsy. What I'm saying is you couldn't make it up and be taken seriously. That's what the phrase means in my book.
All right, House of Cards? To Play the King? Both of those contained plots more far fetched.
Your problem with the Clevershambles is that it is a) improbable and b) funny. Drama has a problem with things that are funny, preferring tense looks all the time. And that is why drama is almost never fulfilling - because the real world isn't like that. Funny things happen all the time. Just because something's funny doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken seriously.
We're at cross purposes. When I say "serious drama" I mean the likes of Kavanaugh QC or Smiley's People. Straightforward story telling with no attempt to be kooky or satirical. That genre. There's no place there for the sort of nonsense that happened with James Cleverly (or tbf his backers). If you tried to put something like that in you'd be told to go and have a rethink. Meaning you'd have failed to make it up.
The fault here is with most drama's utter aversion to anything amusing happening.
But House of Cards was a proper drama. And it's a plausible plotline for one of that series. After all, the Chief Whip ended up as PM.
Where we appear to be is that you could make it up, but if you did, and presented it to the humourless commissioners of TV drama, they wouldn't like it as a plotline because in their world nothing is allowed to be in the least bit amusing.
I'm going to go and make an omelette now. Mushroom, onion, pancetta, potato and cheese. Maybe a bit of chorizo if there's any in the fridge.
The best thing about UK House of Cards was Sir Ian Richardson's acting.
He perfected the upper class, camp bully.
See Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
That is a much superior drama.
Albeit rather slow.
I watched it on a flight to and from Fuerteventura when we had a holiday the week after I retired.
I do think it could easily lose a couple of episode and not be any worse off.
Those are woeful ratings for Badenoch . They should have picked Cleverly who has much more cross over appeal .
Cummings' prediction was that they would go for Cleverly next.
A man so daft that he plotted himself out of a leadership race.
That was his backers tbf. They tried to engineer his preferred opponent for the run off and succeeded in engineering the man himself out of the run off. You couldn't make it up. Literally couldn't make it up. If you submitted that in a script for a political drama you'd get it returned with a cover note saying "rejected on grounds of credulity".
While I share your general amusement, the pedant in me bridles at the phrase 'couldn't make it up', especially when paired with the word 'literally' - I'm fairly sure you could make it up. People make stuff up all the time, much of it less believable than that. Look at Star Wars, for example.
No but that's literally what I'm saying. You *could* make it up, yes, but not if you wanted it accepted as a serious proposition by the commissioning editor. So to all intents and purposes you couldn't.
Oh come on! This is exactly the sort of thing which happened in The Thick of It.
I'm not disputing how ridiculous the situation was. I'm pedantically disputing the use of the phrase 'you couldn't make it up'. People make up implausible stuff all the time, and much of it gets commissioned for telly. (Look at Death in Paradise. 50% of the time that finishes and you look at the wife and both shake your heads and say 'no...'. Still watch the next one though. I like light-hearted crime drama where the main puzzle is 'how'. And I have some sympathy for the writers still trying to come up with plots 100-odd episodes in).
'You couldn't make it up' is just a phrase I can rarely let go without a quibble. (See also describing Great Britain - the 8th largest and, what, 3rd most populous island in the world - as a 'small island', the use of the word 'stunning' to mean 'nice', and the misuse of the word 'literally'.)
I don't trying to fall out about it. This is just pb pedantry.
But TTOI was a comedy. Of course you could make it up as a joke. The Cleverly thing works fine as deliberate farce or even as a piece of whimsy. What I'm saying is you couldn't make it up and be taken seriously. That's what the phrase means in my book.
All right, House of Cards? To Play the King? Both of those contained plots more far fetched.
Your problem with the Clevershambles is that it is a) improbable and b) funny. Drama has a problem with things that are funny, preferring tense looks all the time. And that is why drama is almost never fulfilling - because the real world isn't like that. Funny things happen all the time. Just because something's funny doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken seriously.
We're at cross purposes. When I say "serious drama" I mean the likes of Kavanaugh QC or Smiley's People. Straightforward story telling with no attempt to be kooky or satirical. That genre. There's no place there for the sort of nonsense that happened with James Cleverly (or tbf his backers). If you tried to put something like that in you'd be told to go and have a rethink. Meaning you'd have failed to make it up.
The fault here is with most drama's utter aversion to anything amusing happening.
But House of Cards was a proper drama. And it's a plausible plotline for one of that series. After all, the Chief Whip ended up as PM.
Where we appear to be is that you could make it up, but if you did, and presented it to the humourless commissioners of TV drama, they wouldn't like it as a plotline because in their world nothing is allowed to be in the least bit amusing.
I'm going to go and make an omelette now. Mushroom, onion, pancetta, potato and cheese. Maybe a bit of chorizo if there's any in the fridge.
The best thing about UK House of Cards was Sir Ian Richardson's acting.
Those are woeful ratings for Badenoch . They should have picked Cleverly who has much more cross over appeal .
Cummings' prediction was that they would go for Cleverly next.
A man so daft that he plotted himself out of a leadership race.
That was his backers tbf. They tried to engineer his preferred opponent for the run off and succeeded in engineering the man himself out of the run off. You couldn't make it up. Literally couldn't make it up. If you submitted that in a script for a political drama you'd get it returned with a cover note saying "rejected on grounds of credulity".
While I share your general amusement, the pedant in me bridles at the phrase 'couldn't make it up', especially when paired with the word 'literally' - I'm fairly sure you could make it up. People make stuff up all the time, much of it less believable than that. Look at Star Wars, for example.
No but that's literally what I'm saying. You *could* make it up, yes, but not if you wanted it accepted as a serious proposition by the commissioning editor. So to all intents and purposes you couldn't.
Oh come on! This is exactly the sort of thing which happened in The Thick of It.
I'm not disputing how ridiculous the situation was. I'm pedantically disputing the use of the phrase 'you couldn't make it up'. People make up implausible stuff all the time, and much of it gets commissioned for telly. (Look at Death in Paradise. 50% of the time that finishes and you look at the wife and both shake your heads and say 'no...'. Still watch the next one though. I like light-hearted crime drama where the main puzzle is 'how'. And I have some sympathy for the writers still trying to come up with plots 100-odd episodes in).
'You couldn't make it up' is just a phrase I can rarely let go without a quibble. (See also describing Great Britain - the 8th largest and, what, 3rd most populous island in the world - as a 'small island', the use of the word 'stunning' to mean 'nice', and the misuse of the word 'literally'.)
I don't trying to fall out about it. This is just pb pedantry.
But TTOI was a comedy. Of course you could make it up as a joke. The Cleverly thing works fine as deliberate farce or even as a piece of whimsy. What I'm saying is you couldn't make it up and be taken seriously. That's what the phrase means in my book.
All right, House of Cards? To Play the King? Both of those contained plots more far fetched.
Your problem with the Clevershambles is that it is a) improbable and b) funny. Drama has a problem with things that are funny, preferring tense looks all the time. And that is why drama is almost never fulfilling - because the real world isn't like that. Funny things happen all the time. Just because something's funny doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken seriously.
We're at cross purposes. When I say "serious drama" I mean the likes of Kavanaugh QC or Smiley's People. Straightforward story telling with no attempt to be kooky or satirical. That genre. There's no place there for the sort of nonsense that happened with James Cleverly (or tbf his backers). If you tried to put something like that in you'd be told to go and have a rethink. Meaning you'd have failed to make it up.
The fault here is with most drama's utter aversion to anything amusing happening.
But House of Cards was a proper drama. And it's a plausible plotline for one of that series. After all, the Chief Whip ended up as PM.
Where we appear to be is that you could make it up, but if you did, and presented it to the humourless commissioners of TV drama, they wouldn't like it as a plotline because in their world nothing is allowed to be in the least bit amusing.
I'm going to go and make an omelette now. Mushroom, onion, pancetta, potato and cheese. Maybe a bit of chorizo if there's any in the fridge.
The best thing about UK House of Cards was Sir Ian Richardson's acting.
He perfected the upper class, camp bully.
See Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
He was also very good in the now almost forgotten Porterhouse Blue, one of the great comedy series of the 1980s.
Jaw-dropping footage revealed by @markwhiteTV today showing what GB News believes to be Sudanese migrants showing off their 4* hotels.
This is a mockery. There are homeless British citizens sleeping rough on the street and economic migrants fleeing France are a priority for our government.
Keir Starmer promised he would end the migrant hotels, yet another failure.
These videos are nothing but an advertisement for others to come to the UK, of which we believe, there are thousands more queueing up.
If we allowed asylum seekers to work, which that moron May stopped, we wouldn't need to host them in hotels, 4* or otherwise.
Truly one of the worst policy decisions of my lifetime.
That was an early Blair-era decision.
I'm happy to blame May for a lot, but she escapes on that one.
Those are woeful ratings for Badenoch . They should have picked Cleverly who has much more cross over appeal .
Cummings' prediction was that they would go for Cleverly next.
A man so daft that he plotted himself out of a leadership race.
That was his backers tbf. They tried to engineer his preferred opponent for the run off and succeeded in engineering the man himself out of the run off. You couldn't make it up. Literally couldn't make it up. If you submitted that in a script for a political drama you'd get it returned with a cover note saying "rejected on grounds of credulity".
While I share your general amusement, the pedant in me bridles at the phrase 'couldn't make it up', especially when paired with the word 'literally' - I'm fairly sure you could make it up. People make stuff up all the time, much of it less believable than that. Look at Star Wars, for example.
No but that's literally what I'm saying. You *could* make it up, yes, but not if you wanted it accepted as a serious proposition by the commissioning editor. So to all intents and purposes you couldn't.
Oh come on! This is exactly the sort of thing which happened in The Thick of It.
I'm not disputing how ridiculous the situation was. I'm pedantically disputing the use of the phrase 'you couldn't make it up'. People make up implausible stuff all the time, and much of it gets commissioned for telly. (Look at Death in Paradise. 50% of the time that finishes and you look at the wife and both shake your heads and say 'no...'. Still watch the next one though. I like light-hearted crime drama where the main puzzle is 'how'. And I have some sympathy for the writers still trying to come up with plots 100-odd episodes in).
'You couldn't make it up' is just a phrase I can rarely let go without a quibble. (See also describing Great Britain - the 8th largest and, what, 3rd most populous island in the world - as a 'small island', the use of the word 'stunning' to mean 'nice', and the misuse of the word 'literally'.)
I don't trying to fall out about it. This is just pb pedantry.
But TTOI was a comedy. Of course you could make it up as a joke. The Cleverly thing works fine as deliberate farce or even as a piece of whimsy. What I'm saying is you couldn't make it up and be taken seriously. That's what the phrase means in my book.
All right, House of Cards? To Play the King? Both of those contained plots more far fetched.
Your problem with the Clevershambles is that it is a) improbable and b) funny. Drama has a problem with things that are funny, preferring tense looks all the time. And that is why drama is almost never fulfilling - because the real world isn't like that. Funny things happen all the time. Just because something's funny doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken seriously.
We're at cross purposes. When I say "serious drama" I mean the likes of Kavanaugh QC or Smiley's People. Straightforward story telling with no attempt to be kooky or satirical. That genre. There's no place there for the sort of nonsense that happened with James Cleverly (or tbf his backers). If you tried to put something like that in you'd be told to go and have a rethink. Meaning you'd have failed to make it up.
I've never watched either of those shows, but if neither of them could have a storyline like this, then it sounds more like they're dull and shit than because drama can't include made up events like this.
Every good drama I've seen has had comparably farcical situations.
The West Wing was a serious drama and had many such absurd storylines at times, because absurd things can and do happen.
Or if you want a British example other than TTOI, what about a Cabinet Minister getting pulled over by the cops for being inebriated then becoming Prime Minister because the Home Secretary got pulled over by the cops for being inebriated? Don't worry too much about how the sausage is made, just ensure its not a Eurosausage.
Soap is fine, esp classy soap like WW, but that's a different genre to (eg) Smiley's People. I like both as it happens, but only the latter is relevant to the point I was making about James Cleverly.
WW is political drama not a soap, and given your original comment was merely that you couldn't make it up without qualifier, then no, not only one crap and unimaginative show is relevant to the discussion.
The plethora of counter-examples that have been broadcast in political dramas that are equivalent show that you both could make it up, and if pitching the idea could be taken seriously and have the idea filmed and broadcast and potentially spoken about years or decades later.
Those are woeful ratings for Badenoch . They should have picked Cleverly who has much more cross over appeal .
Cummings' prediction was that they would go for Cleverly next.
A man so daft that he plotted himself out of a leadership race.
That was his backers tbf. They tried to engineer his preferred opponent for the run off and succeeded in engineering the man himself out of the run off. You couldn't make it up. Literally couldn't make it up. If you submitted that in a script for a political drama you'd get it returned with a cover note saying "rejected on grounds of credulity".
While I share your general amusement, the pedant in me bridles at the phrase 'couldn't make it up', especially when paired with the word 'literally' - I'm fairly sure you could make it up. People make stuff up all the time, much of it less believable than that. Look at Star Wars, for example.
No but that's literally what I'm saying. You *could* make it up, yes, but not if you wanted it accepted as a serious proposition by the commissioning editor. So to all intents and purposes you couldn't.
Oh come on! This is exactly the sort of thing which happened in The Thick of It.
I'm not disputing how ridiculous the situation was. I'm pedantically disputing the use of the phrase 'you couldn't make it up'. People make up implausible stuff all the time, and much of it gets commissioned for telly. (Look at Death in Paradise. 50% of the time that finishes and you look at the wife and both shake your heads and say 'no...'. Still watch the next one though. I like light-hearted crime drama where the main puzzle is 'how'. And I have some sympathy for the writers still trying to come up with plots 100-odd episodes in).
'You couldn't make it up' is just a phrase I can rarely let go without a quibble. (See also describing Great Britain - the 8th largest and, what, 3rd most populous island in the world - as a 'small island', the use of the word 'stunning' to mean 'nice', and the misuse of the word 'literally'.)
I don't trying to fall out about it. This is just pb pedantry.
But TTOI was a comedy. Of course you could make it up as a joke. The Cleverly thing works fine as deliberate farce or even as a piece of whimsy. What I'm saying is you couldn't make it up and be taken seriously. That's what the phrase means in my book.
All right, House of Cards? To Play the King? Both of those contained plots more far fetched.
Your problem with the Clevershambles is that it is a) improbable and b) funny. Drama has a problem with things that are funny, preferring tense looks all the time. And that is why drama is almost never fulfilling - because the real world isn't like that. Funny things happen all the time. Just because something's funny doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken seriously.
We're at cross purposes. When I say "serious drama" I mean the likes of Kavanaugh QC or Smiley's People. Straightforward story telling with no attempt to be kooky or satirical. That genre. There's no place there for the sort of nonsense that happened with James Cleverly (or tbf his backers). If you tried to put something like that in you'd be told to go and have a rethink. Meaning you'd have failed to make it up.
It’s Kavanagh QC.
Not to be confused with Kavana, the rock icon from the late nineties.
That's the one. Thaw.
An absolute legend, and a decent bloke too.
The Sweeney is just brilliant. Ace TV and great characters and a London long gone.
Me and my mate, Baker, called each other Jack and George for many years.
My father loved The Sweeney, he also said it was a tribute to John Thaw that after a few episodes of Morse he didn't see him as Jack Regan.
Whereas Dennis Waterman in Minder was George Carter if he had gone off the rails. Even down to,the boxing.
I often chat with Rodney Marshall on Twitter whose Dad, Roger, was a prolific TV writer and wrote Sweeney episodes. He adored John Thaw as an actor, was great to write for, and always put his heart and soul into it.
In an early Sweeney episode he had a scene with John Forgeham, a bit of a tough guy, and forgeham had to hit thaw in the scene as it was a blag.
Thaw started feeding him his lines which gave Forgeham the right hump, so he hit Thaw for real.
My gran used to live next door to John Thaw's parents. That's as good as my insight gets on this subject. Sorry.
Those are woeful ratings for Badenoch . They should have picked Cleverly who has much more cross over appeal .
Cummings' prediction was that they would go for Cleverly next.
A man so daft that he plotted himself out of a leadership race.
That was his backers tbf. They tried to engineer his preferred opponent for the run off and succeeded in engineering the man himself out of the run off. You couldn't make it up. Literally couldn't make it up. If you submitted that in a script for a political drama you'd get it returned with a cover note saying "rejected on grounds of credulity".
While I share your general amusement, the pedant in me bridles at the phrase 'couldn't make it up', especially when paired with the word 'literally' - I'm fairly sure you could make it up. People make stuff up all the time, much of it less believable than that. Look at Star Wars, for example.
No but that's literally what I'm saying. You *could* make it up, yes, but not if you wanted it accepted as a serious proposition by the commissioning editor. So to all intents and purposes you couldn't.
Oh come on! This is exactly the sort of thing which happened in The Thick of It.
I'm not disputing how ridiculous the situation was. I'm pedantically disputing the use of the phrase 'you couldn't make it up'. People make up implausible stuff all the time, and much of it gets commissioned for telly. (Look at Death in Paradise. 50% of the time that finishes and you look at the wife and both shake your heads and say 'no...'. Still watch the next one though. I like light-hearted crime drama where the main puzzle is 'how'. And I have some sympathy for the writers still trying to come up with plots 100-odd episodes in).
'You couldn't make it up' is just a phrase I can rarely let go without a quibble. (See also describing Great Britain - the 8th largest and, what, 3rd most populous island in the world - as a 'small island', the use of the word 'stunning' to mean 'nice', and the misuse of the word 'literally'.)
I don't trying to fall out about it. This is just pb pedantry.
But TTOI was a comedy. Of course you could make it up as a joke. The Cleverly thing works fine as deliberate farce or even as a piece of whimsy. What I'm saying is you couldn't make it up and be taken seriously. That's what the phrase means in my book.
All right, House of Cards? To Play the King? Both of those contained plots more far fetched.
Your problem with the Clevershambles is that it is a) improbable and b) funny. Drama has a problem with things that are funny, preferring tense looks all the time. And that is why drama is almost never fulfilling - because the real world isn't like that. Funny things happen all the time. Just because something's funny doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken seriously.
We're at cross purposes. When I say "serious drama" I mean the likes of Kavanaugh QC or Smiley's People. Straightforward story telling with no attempt to be kooky or satirical. That genre. There's no place there for the sort of nonsense that happened with James Cleverly (or tbf his backers). If you tried to put something like that in you'd be told to go and have a rethink. Meaning you'd have failed to make it up.
The fault here is with most drama's utter aversion to anything amusing happening.
But House of Cards was a proper drama. And it's a plausible plotline for one of that series. After all, the Chief Whip ended up as PM.
Where we appear to be is that you could make it up, but if you did, and presented it to the humourless commissioners of TV drama, they wouldn't like it as a plotline because in their world nothing is allowed to be in the least bit amusing.
I'm going to go and make an omelette now. Mushroom, onion, pancetta, potato and cheese. Maybe a bit of chorizo if there's any in the fridge.
The best thing about UK House of Cards was Sir Ian Richardson's acting.
He perfected the upper class, camp bully.
See Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
He was also very good in the now almost forgotten Porterhouse Blue, one of the great comedy series of the 1980s.
Yes, that’s very good from a time when Channel 4 made great original drama.
Also Murder Rooms, which I managed to grab from YouTube a couple of years ago.
Those are woeful ratings for Badenoch . They should have picked Cleverly who has much more cross over appeal .
Cummings' prediction was that they would go for Cleverly next.
A man so daft that he plotted himself out of a leadership race.
That was his backers tbf. They tried to engineer his preferred opponent for the run off and succeeded in engineering the man himself out of the run off. You couldn't make it up. Literally couldn't make it up. If you submitted that in a script for a political drama you'd get it returned with a cover note saying "rejected on grounds of credulity".
While I share your general amusement, the pedant in me bridles at the phrase 'couldn't make it up', especially when paired with the word 'literally' - I'm fairly sure you could make it up. People make stuff up all the time, much of it less believable than that. Look at Star Wars, for example.
No but that's literally what I'm saying. You *could* make it up, yes, but not if you wanted it accepted as a serious proposition by the commissioning editor. So to all intents and purposes you couldn't.
Oh come on! This is exactly the sort of thing which happened in The Thick of It.
I'm not disputing how ridiculous the situation was. I'm pedantically disputing the use of the phrase 'you couldn't make it up'. People make up implausible stuff all the time, and much of it gets commissioned for telly. (Look at Death in Paradise. 50% of the time that finishes and you look at the wife and both shake your heads and say 'no...'. Still watch the next one though. I like light-hearted crime drama where the main puzzle is 'how'. And I have some sympathy for the writers still trying to come up with plots 100-odd episodes in).
'You couldn't make it up' is just a phrase I can rarely let go without a quibble. (See also describing Great Britain - the 8th largest and, what, 3rd most populous island in the world - as a 'small island', the use of the word 'stunning' to mean 'nice', and the misuse of the word 'literally'.)
I don't trying to fall out about it. This is just pb pedantry.
But TTOI was a comedy. Of course you could make it up as a joke. The Cleverly thing works fine as deliberate farce or even as a piece of whimsy. What I'm saying is you couldn't make it up and be taken seriously. That's what the phrase means in my book.
All right, House of Cards? To Play the King? Both of those contained plots more far fetched.
Your problem with the Clevershambles is that it is a) improbable and b) funny. Drama has a problem with things that are funny, preferring tense looks all the time. And that is why drama is almost never fulfilling - because the real world isn't like that. Funny things happen all the time. Just because something's funny doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken seriously.
We're at cross purposes. When I say "serious drama" I mean the likes of Kavanaugh QC or Smiley's People. Straightforward story telling with no attempt to be kooky or satirical. That genre. There's no place there for the sort of nonsense that happened with James Cleverly (or tbf his backers). If you tried to put something like that in you'd be told to go and have a rethink. Meaning you'd have failed to make it up.
It’s Kavanagh QC.
Not to be confused with Kavana, the rock icon from the late nineties.
That's the one. Thaw.
An absolute legend, and a decent bloke too.
The Sweeney is just brilliant. Ace TV and great characters and a London long gone.
Me and my mate, Baker, called each other Jack and George for many years.
My father loved The Sweeney, he also said it was a tribute to John Thaw that after a few episodes of Morse he didn't see him as Jack Regan.
Whereas Dennis Waterman in Minder was George Carter if he had gone off the rails. Even down to,the boxing.
...
There was an element of typecasting for Waterman who came from a boxing family – his brother was British and European welterweight champion – so was one of the few actors who did know how to throw a punch.
Jaw-dropping footage revealed by @markwhiteTV today showing what GB News believes to be Sudanese migrants showing off their 4* hotels.
This is a mockery. There are homeless British citizens sleeping rough on the street and economic migrants fleeing France are a priority for our government.
Keir Starmer promised he would end the migrant hotels, yet another failure.
These videos are nothing but an advertisement for others to come to the UK, of which we believe, there are thousands more queueing up.
If we allowed asylum seekers to work, which that moron May stopped, we wouldn't need to host them in hotels, 4* or otherwise.
Truly one of the worst policy decisions of my lifetime.
That was an early Blair-era decision.
I'm happy to blame May for a lot, but she escapes on that one.
That said, asylum seekers never used to be put up in hotels. They'd be sent to low-quality HMO housing. I remember stories about locks being changed on their accommodation when their initial claims had been rejected, making them homeless.
Not sure why so many are in hotels now when previous governments, both red and blue, were happy to see asylum seekers destitute and homeless.
I wonder if this is another stage in the housing crisis and lack of supply. There's such a large deficit of housing that the government can't secure even the lowest quality housing for asylum seekers who are at a pre-decision stage, and so they have to turn to hotels.
Housing theory of everything again. Has the newish government made any progress on that yet?
Oh oh, latest news : “Your presence in the UK is not considered to be conducive to the public good... ” — interdiction d’accès.
Queue people who demand the border is controlled and that others get turned away getting outraged that the border is controlled and someone is being turned away.
Jaw-dropping footage revealed by @markwhiteTV today showing what GB News believes to be Sudanese migrants showing off their 4* hotels.
This is a mockery. There are homeless British citizens sleeping rough on the street and economic migrants fleeing France are a priority for our government.
Keir Starmer promised he would end the migrant hotels, yet another failure.
These videos are nothing but an advertisement for others to come to the UK, of which we believe, there are thousands more queueing up.
If we allowed asylum seekers to work, which that moron May stopped, we wouldn't need to host them in hotels, 4* or otherwise.
Truly one of the worst policy decisions of my lifetime.
That was an early Blair-era decision.
I'm happy to blame May for a lot, but she escapes on that one.
That said, asylum seekers never used to be put up in hotels. They'd be sent to low-quality HMO housing. I remember stories about locks being changed on their accommodation when their initial claims had been rejected, making them homeless.
Not sure why so many are in hotels now when previous governments, both red and blue, were happy to see asylum seekers destitute and homeless.
I wonder if this is another stage in the housing crisis and lack of supply. There's such a large deficit of housing that the government can't secure even the lowest quality housing for asylum seekers who are at a pre-decision stage, and so they have to turn to hotels.
Housing theory of everything again. Has the newish government made any progress on that yet?
I think they may have tried using MoD housing, that's often pretty shit.
Chat GPT is thinking about a blister pack Lee Anderson.
Hmmm. I gave it Roderick Spode & Eulalie, plus 'symbols associated with Lee Anderson'.
It missed the shorts.
Love the Barnsley chop.
On which note, lamb is even more expensive in France than it is in Britain.
The economics of a sheep are not great. Expensive for the consumer and unprofitable for the farmer. The wool is largely worthless. You sell one ewe for meat and you get 2 shoulders (farm shop price maybe 30-40 each), 2 legs cut off before the shank (60-70 each), 2 rear shanks (7-8 each?), neck for about 20, best end / rack another 30-40, rump 20, breast 15, then a few bits to sell for merguez and offal. There’s not the charcuterie options with lamb that there are with pork.
That’s around £350 for a whole animal, yet all those cuts sound relatively expensive don’t they?
Contrast with a cow or pig, both of which have much greater weight of flesh, are less suicidal when in the fields, and are more nose to tail in usage.
Oh oh, latest news : “Your presence in the UK is not considered to be conducive to the public good... ” — interdiction d’accès.
Queue people who demand the border is controlled and that others get turned away getting outraged that the border is controlled and someone is being turned away.
I expect more a mild observation that the government appears capable of keeping people out when it suits them.
Jaw-dropping footage revealed by @markwhiteTV today showing what GB News believes to be Sudanese migrants showing off their 4* hotels.
This is a mockery. There are homeless British citizens sleeping rough on the street and economic migrants fleeing France are a priority for our government.
Keir Starmer promised he would end the migrant hotels, yet another failure.
These videos are nothing but an advertisement for others to come to the UK, of which we believe, there are thousands more queueing up.
We've woven a hell of a tangled web on border control.
Madness.
Do we know yet whether the video is genuine?
As I say - to my eye it looks a bit fake, as are quite a few of the stories on GB News.
Those are woeful ratings for Badenoch . They should have picked Cleverly who has much more cross over appeal .
Cummings' prediction was that they would go for Cleverly next.
A man so daft that he plotted himself out of a leadership race.
That was his backers tbf. They tried to engineer his preferred opponent for the run off and succeeded in engineering the man himself out of the run off. You couldn't make it up. Literally couldn't make it up. If you submitted that in a script for a political drama you'd get it returned with a cover note saying "rejected on grounds of credulity".
While I share your general amusement, the pedant in me bridles at the phrase 'couldn't make it up', especially when paired with the word 'literally' - I'm fairly sure you could make it up. People make stuff up all the time, much of it less believable than that. Look at Star Wars, for example.
No but that's literally what I'm saying. You *could* make it up, yes, but not if you wanted it accepted as a serious proposition by the commissioning editor. So to all intents and purposes you couldn't.
Oh come on! This is exactly the sort of thing which happened in The Thick of It.
I'm not disputing how ridiculous the situation was. I'm pedantically disputing the use of the phrase 'you couldn't make it up'. People make up implausible stuff all the time, and much of it gets commissioned for telly. (Look at Death in Paradise. 50% of the time that finishes and you look at the wife and both shake your heads and say 'no...'. Still watch the next one though. I like light-hearted crime drama where the main puzzle is 'how'. And I have some sympathy for the writers still trying to come up with plots 100-odd episodes in).
'You couldn't make it up' is just a phrase I can rarely let go without a quibble. (See also describing Great Britain - the 8th largest and, what, 3rd most populous island in the world - as a 'small island', the use of the word 'stunning' to mean 'nice', and the misuse of the word 'literally'.)
I don't trying to fall out about it. This is just pb pedantry.
But TTOI was a comedy. Of course you could make it up as a joke. The Cleverly thing works fine as deliberate farce or even as a piece of whimsy. What I'm saying is you couldn't make it up and be taken seriously. That's what the phrase means in my book.
All right, House of Cards? To Play the King? Both of those contained plots more far fetched.
Your problem with the Clevershambles is that it is a) improbable and b) funny. Drama has a problem with things that are funny, preferring tense looks all the time. And that is why drama is almost never fulfilling - because the real world isn't like that. Funny things happen all the time. Just because something's funny doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken seriously.
We're at cross purposes. When I say "serious drama" I mean the likes of Kavanaugh QC or Smiley's People. Straightforward story telling with no attempt to be kooky or satirical. That genre. There's no place there for the sort of nonsense that happened with James Cleverly (or tbf his backers). If you tried to put something like that in you'd be told to go and have a rethink. Meaning you'd have failed to make it up.
It’s Kavanagh QC.
Not to be confused with Kavana, the rock icon from the late nineties.
That's the one. Thaw.
An absolute legend, and a decent bloke too.
The Sweeney is just brilliant. Ace TV and great characters and a London long gone.
Me and my mate, Baker, called each other Jack and George for many years.
My father loved The Sweeney, he also said it was a tribute to John Thaw that after a few episodes of Morse he didn't see him as Jack Regan.
Whereas Dennis Waterman in Minder was George Carter if he had gone off the rails. Even down to,the boxing.
...
There was an element of typecasting for Waterman who came from a boxing family – his brother was British and European welterweight champion – so was one of the few actors who did know how to throw a punch.
Never knew that about his brother. Fascinating. Makes sense. When you watch an episode and he’s throwing a punch, I’ve been watching New Tricks from the start and am up to season 10, he seems to know the right position to adopt.
Oh oh, latest news : “Your presence in the UK is not considered to be conducive to the public good... ” — interdiction d’accès.
Queue people who demand the border is controlled and that others get turned away getting outraged that the border is controlled and someone is being turned away.
Oh oh, latest news : “Your presence in the UK is not considered to be conducive to the public good... ” — interdiction d’accès.
Queue people who demand the border is controlled and that others get turned away getting outraged that the border is controlled and someone is being turned away.
Just shows they can turn people away when they make the effort !
Oh oh, latest news : “Your presence in the UK is not considered to be conducive to the public good... ” — interdiction d’accès.
Queue people who demand the border is controlled and that others get turned away getting outraged that the border is controlled and someone is being turned away.
I expect more a mild observation that the government appears capable of keeping people out when it suits them.
I don't think Camus was planning on sneaking in on a small boat when nobody was looking, though I may be wrong.
Oh oh, latest news : “Your presence in the UK is not considered to be conducive to the public good... ” — interdiction d’accès.
Queue people who demand the border is controlled and that others get turned away getting outraged that the border is controlled and someone is being turned away.
(LuckyGuy1983) Cue. (/LuckyGuy1983)
My dyslexic daughter considers the word 'queue' the most ridiculous word in the language. 80% of it is superfluous.
In all seriousness, if I was the Lib Dems I would have jumped on the AI action figure trend. Perhaps drop the dodgy bar chart and post office logo, but appearing to not be stuck up your arse goes down well with the public.
They could have done a set of them with his different stunts.
Being a likable clown as opposed to dislikable one like Trump is a great USP. It gets my vote
Except of course Sir Edward has a 1st from Oxford and is an exceptionally determined and shrewd politician.
LDs 'Winning here'. The LDs only like him as leader because they don't have the foggiest as to anything much. Completely clueless.
I think it's fair to say that such is the state of the nation and those that live in it generally. Disappointing though it is as an observation.
Political debate seems long gone.
Interesting view in all the LDs who post here. We are all clueless are we? Even though between us we include successful business people, doctors, etc. Yet generalized comments like 'they don't have the foggiest as to anything and completely clueless applies does it?
Honestly?
I certainly don't think the LDs are individually clueless - I count many among my friends and I live in a LibDem-dominated area (Oxfordshire). But it's regrettably true that I have little idea, despite reading their literature and taking a keen interest, as to what they collectively stand for.
Oh oh, latest news : “Your presence in the UK is not considered to be conducive to the public good... ” — interdiction d’accès.
Queue people who demand the border is controlled and that others get turned away getting outraged that the border is controlled and someone is being turned away.
(LuckyGuy1983) Cue. (/LuckyGuy1983)
My dyslexic daughter considers the word 'queue' the most ridiculous word in the language. 80% of it is superfluous.
Jaw-dropping footage revealed by @markwhiteTV today showing what GB News believes to be Sudanese migrants showing off their 4* hotels.
This is a mockery. There are homeless British citizens sleeping rough on the street and economic migrants fleeing France are a priority for our government.
Keir Starmer promised he would end the migrant hotels, yet another failure.
These videos are nothing but an advertisement for others to come to the UK, of which we believe, there are thousands more queueing up.
If we allowed asylum seekers to work, which that moron May stopped, we wouldn't need to host them in hotels, 4* or otherwise.
Truly one of the worst policy decisions of my lifetime.
That was an early Blair-era decision.
I'm happy to blame May for a lot, but she escapes on that one.
That said, asylum seekers never used to be put up in hotels. They'd be sent to low-quality HMO housing. I remember stories about locks being changed on their accommodation when their initial claims had been rejected, making them homeless.
Not sure why so many are in hotels now when previous governments, both red and blue, were happy to see asylum seekers destitute and homeless.
I wonder if this is another stage in the housing crisis and lack of supply. There's such a large deficit of housing that the government can't secure even the lowest quality housing for asylum seekers who are at a pre-decision stage, and so they have to turn to hotels.
Housing theory of everything again. Has the newish government made any progress on that yet?
As noted the other day on pb, getting migrants out of hotels might present its own political controversy if it means they are prioritised over locals for new housing.
Those are woeful ratings for Badenoch . They should have picked Cleverly who has much more cross over appeal .
Cummings' prediction was that they would go for Cleverly next.
A man so daft that he plotted himself out of a leadership race.
That was his backers tbf. They tried to engineer his preferred opponent for the run off and succeeded in engineering the man himself out of the run off. You couldn't make it up. Literally couldn't make it up. If you submitted that in a script for a political drama you'd get it returned with a cover note saying "rejected on grounds of credulity".
While I share your general amusement, the pedant in me bridles at the phrase 'couldn't make it up', especially when paired with the word 'literally' - I'm fairly sure you could make it up. People make stuff up all the time, much of it less believable than that. Look at Star Wars, for example.
No but that's literally what I'm saying. You *could* make it up, yes, but not if you wanted it accepted as a serious proposition by the commissioning editor. So to all intents and purposes you couldn't.
Oh come on! This is exactly the sort of thing which happened in The Thick of It.
I'm not disputing how ridiculous the situation was. I'm pedantically disputing the use of the phrase 'you couldn't make it up'. People make up implausible stuff all the time, and much of it gets commissioned for telly. (Look at Death in Paradise. 50% of the time that finishes and you look at the wife and both shake your heads and say 'no...'. Still watch the next one though. I like light-hearted crime drama where the main puzzle is 'how'. And I have some sympathy for the writers still trying to come up with plots 100-odd episodes in).
'You couldn't make it up' is just a phrase I can rarely let go without a quibble. (See also describing Great Britain - the 8th largest and, what, 3rd most populous island in the world - as a 'small island', the use of the word 'stunning' to mean 'nice', and the misuse of the word 'literally'.)
I don't trying to fall out about it. This is just pb pedantry.
But TTOI was a comedy. Of course you could make it up as a joke. The Cleverly thing works fine as deliberate farce or even as a piece of whimsy. What I'm saying is you couldn't make it up and be taken seriously. That's what the phrase means in my book.
All right, House of Cards? To Play the King? Both of those contained plots more far fetched.
Your problem with the Clevershambles is that it is a) improbable and b) funny. Drama has a problem with things that are funny, preferring tense looks all the time. And that is why drama is almost never fulfilling - because the real world isn't like that. Funny things happen all the time. Just because something's funny doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken seriously.
We're at cross purposes. When I say "serious drama" I mean the likes of Kavanaugh QC or Smiley's People. Straightforward story telling with no attempt to be kooky or satirical. That genre. There's no place there for the sort of nonsense that happened with James Cleverly (or tbf his backers). If you tried to put something like that in you'd be told to go and have a rethink. Meaning you'd have failed to make it up.
I've never watched either of those shows, but if neither of them could have a storyline like this, then it sounds more like they're dull and shit than because drama can't include made up events like this.
Every good drama I've seen has had comparably farcical situations.
The West Wing was a serious drama and had many such absurd storylines at times, because absurd things can and do happen.
Or if you want a British example other than TTOI, what about a Cabinet Minister getting pulled over by the cops for being inebriated then becoming Prime Minister because the Home Secretary got pulled over by the cops for being inebriated? Don't worry too much about how the sausage is made, just ensure its not a Eurosausage.
Soap is fine, esp classy soap like WW, but that's a different genre to (eg) Smiley's People. I like both as it happens, but only the latter is relevant to the point I was making about James Cleverly.
WW is political drama not a soap, and given your original comment was merely that you couldn't make it up without qualifier, then no, not only one crap and unimaginative show is relevant to the discussion.
The plethora of counter-examples that have been broadcast in political dramas that are equivalent show that you both could make it up, and if pitching the idea could be taken seriously and have the idea filmed and broadcast and potentially spoken about years or decades later.
You ought to watch Smiley's People (or Kavanagh KC) before pronouncing it "dull and unimaginative". If you do, and still feel that, we can explore where you're going wrong, but we can't do that in a vacuum.
Those are woeful ratings for Badenoch . They should have picked Cleverly who has much more cross over appeal .
Cummings' prediction was that they would go for Cleverly next.
A man so daft that he plotted himself out of a leadership race.
That was his backers tbf. They tried to engineer his preferred opponent for the run off and succeeded in engineering the man himself out of the run off. You couldn't make it up. Literally couldn't make it up. If you submitted that in a script for a political drama you'd get it returned with a cover note saying "rejected on grounds of credulity".
While I share your general amusement, the pedant in me bridles at the phrase 'couldn't make it up', especially when paired with the word 'literally' - I'm fairly sure you could make it up. People make stuff up all the time, much of it less believable than that. Look at Star Wars, for example.
No but that's literally what I'm saying. You *could* make it up, yes, but not if you wanted it accepted as a serious proposition by the commissioning editor. So to all intents and purposes you couldn't.
Oh come on! This is exactly the sort of thing which happened in The Thick of It.
I'm not disputing how ridiculous the situation was. I'm pedantically disputing the use of the phrase 'you couldn't make it up'. People make up implausible stuff all the time, and much of it gets commissioned for telly. (Look at Death in Paradise. 50% of the time that finishes and you look at the wife and both shake your heads and say 'no...'. Still watch the next one though. I like light-hearted crime drama where the main puzzle is 'how'. And I have some sympathy for the writers still trying to come up with plots 100-odd episodes in).
'You couldn't make it up' is just a phrase I can rarely let go without a quibble. (See also describing Great Britain - the 8th largest and, what, 3rd most populous island in the world - as a 'small island', the use of the word 'stunning' to mean 'nice', and the misuse of the word 'literally'.)
I don't trying to fall out about it. This is just pb pedantry.
But TTOI was a comedy. Of course you could make it up as a joke. The Cleverly thing works fine as deliberate farce or even as a piece of whimsy. What I'm saying is you couldn't make it up and be taken seriously. That's what the phrase means in my book.
All right, House of Cards? To Play the King? Both of those contained plots more far fetched.
Your problem with the Clevershambles is that it is a) improbable and b) funny. Drama has a problem with things that are funny, preferring tense looks all the time. And that is why drama is almost never fulfilling - because the real world isn't like that. Funny things happen all the time. Just because something's funny doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken seriously.
We're at cross purposes. When I say "serious drama" I mean the likes of Kavanaugh QC or Smiley's People. Straightforward story telling with no attempt to be kooky or satirical. That genre. There's no place there for the sort of nonsense that happened with James Cleverly (or tbf his backers). If you tried to put something like that in you'd be told to go and have a rethink. Meaning you'd have failed to make it up.
It’s Kavanagh QC.
Not to be confused with Kavana, the rock icon from the late nineties.
That's the one. Thaw.
An absolute legend, and a decent bloke too.
The Sweeney is just brilliant. Ace TV and great characters and a London long gone.
Me and my mate, Baker, called each other Jack and George for many years.
My father loved The Sweeney, he also said it was a tribute to John Thaw that after a few episodes of Morse he didn't see him as Jack Regan.
Rewatching Morse, having not seen it since childhood, Thaw is stunning. Never not completely convincing.
I struggle with the fact that he's in his early to mid 40s for most of the episodes but looks about 70.
In all seriousness, if I was the Lib Dems I would have jumped on the AI action figure trend. Perhaps drop the dodgy bar chart and post office logo, but appearing to not be stuck up your arse goes down well with the public.
They could have done a set of them with his different stunts.
Being a likable clown as opposed to dislikable one like Trump is a great USP. It gets my vote
Except of course Sir Edward has a 1st from Oxford and is an exceptionally determined and shrewd politician.
LDs 'Winning here'. The LDs only like him as leader because they don't have the foggiest as to anything much. Completely clueless.
I think it's fair to say that such is the state of the nation and those that live in it generally. Disappointing though it is as an observation.
Political debate seems long gone.
I am happy to say that’s not true in the slightest.
But the Lib Dems have always been the mildly bullied swot in the classroom, ignored by the jocks and kicked or growled at by the misanthropes.
Luckily they have a liberal dogwhistle, which can only be heard by those who can be arsed to listen or read. Which is a decent slice of middle England. But shush, let’s leave the ideologues to do their noisy thing.
If it's not true in the slightest why can't I find a single good reason to vote LD even though my views are very much aligned with their place on the political map? It's just a wasteland of middle ground so far as I can see.
They're polling 15% when they should be polling 35%.
Can you really say that their dogwhistle is tuned correctly?
What do you want from the Lib Dems?
Most people decrying them as a voting option either say they need to embrace the vibe shift plus be less woke, or say they need to stop being yellow Tories and abiding by the failing neoliberal consensus.
The party is what it is: Liberal, with both a capital and a lower case L, localist and revolutionist even if that means postcode lotteries, pro-European, social democratic on tax and spend, green, generally fans of experts, and fiercely anti-Trump.
It’s not leading the polls because it isn’t one of the big 2, but it also doesn't offer simple solutions to complicated problems (it tried in 2019 by making everything about cancelling Brexit, and got mullered at the election).
It is not parroting the very fashionable, but unevidenced, notion that “the establishment” has failed and the only option is to blow everything up and start from year zero. And for that it limits its appeal.
The lib dems are liberal in the same way that fish are natural mountaineers
Re Kemi at PMQs, it is becoming harder to believe CCHQ is not deliberately undermining her. Every week we see the same mistakes. The long, rambling, multi-subject questions that allow Starmer to choose which part to answer. The central attacks on things that started under her own government. Repeating the same questions rather than having six different ones. Failing to alter course after Starmer's answers. This is not just due to her; there will be a team preparing her for PMQs and doing so implausibly badly.
Those are woeful ratings for Badenoch . They should have picked Cleverly who has much more cross over appeal .
Cummings' prediction was that they would go for Cleverly next.
A man so daft that he plotted himself out of a leadership race.
That was his backers tbf. They tried to engineer his preferred opponent for the run off and succeeded in engineering the man himself out of the run off. You couldn't make it up. Literally couldn't make it up. If you submitted that in a script for a political drama you'd get it returned with a cover note saying "rejected on grounds of credulity".
While I share your general amusement, the pedant in me bridles at the phrase 'couldn't make it up', especially when paired with the word 'literally' - I'm fairly sure you could make it up. People make stuff up all the time, much of it less believable than that. Look at Star Wars, for example.
No but that's literally what I'm saying. You *could* make it up, yes, but not if you wanted it accepted as a serious proposition by the commissioning editor. So to all intents and purposes you couldn't.
Oh come on! This is exactly the sort of thing which happened in The Thick of It.
I'm not disputing how ridiculous the situation was. I'm pedantically disputing the use of the phrase 'you couldn't make it up'. People make up implausible stuff all the time, and much of it gets commissioned for telly. (Look at Death in Paradise. 50% of the time that finishes and you look at the wife and both shake your heads and say 'no...'. Still watch the next one though. I like light-hearted crime drama where the main puzzle is 'how'. And I have some sympathy for the writers still trying to come up with plots 100-odd episodes in).
'You couldn't make it up' is just a phrase I can rarely let go without a quibble. (See also describing Great Britain - the 8th largest and, what, 3rd most populous island in the world - as a 'small island', the use of the word 'stunning' to mean 'nice', and the misuse of the word 'literally'.)
I don't trying to fall out about it. This is just pb pedantry.
But TTOI was a comedy. Of course you could make it up as a joke. The Cleverly thing works fine as deliberate farce or even as a piece of whimsy. What I'm saying is you couldn't make it up and be taken seriously. That's what the phrase means in my book.
All right, House of Cards? To Play the King? Both of those contained plots more far fetched.
Your problem with the Clevershambles is that it is a) improbable and b) funny. Drama has a problem with things that are funny, preferring tense looks all the time. And that is why drama is almost never fulfilling - because the real world isn't like that. Funny things happen all the time. Just because something's funny doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken seriously.
We're at cross purposes. When I say "serious drama" I mean the likes of Kavanaugh QC or Smiley's People. Straightforward story telling with no attempt to be kooky or satirical. That genre. There's no place there for the sort of nonsense that happened with James Cleverly (or tbf his backers). If you tried to put something like that in you'd be told to go and have a rethink. Meaning you'd have failed to make it up.
It’s Kavanagh QC.
Not to be confused with Kavana, the rock icon from the late nineties.
That's the one. Thaw.
An absolute legend, and a decent bloke too.
The Sweeney is just brilliant. Ace TV and great characters and a London long gone.
Me and my mate, Baker, called each other Jack and George for many years.
I’d drive my Triumph Acclaim like it was the old Cortina off to a blag up west where they were tooled up with shooters.
Which were you? Or did you alternate?
😂😂
Always Jack, although as I drove I should have been the driver.
Our mate Soapy, so named after a Wilfred Hyde-white character in a Peter Sellers film was named Daniel’s after John Alkin’s character Tom Daniels
Appreciate this sounds shite but these were great days. Happy days and I loved them and when we meet up we just talk about them. Nostalgia isn’t what it was. But it’s great.
Alkin left acting and married Kenny Everett’s ex wife and got into tantric healing, or something similar.
Nothing shite about quality banter between mates. And that sounds like quality banter.
It was mentioned down thread the Action Man Davey had a 1st from Oxford as a plus point...I would suggest that was a bigger black mark against him than the Post Office scandal.
Oh oh, latest news : “Your presence in the UK is not considered to be conducive to the public good... ” — interdiction d’accès.
Queue people who demand the border is controlled and that others get turned away getting outraged that the border is controlled and someone is being turned away.
(LuckyGuy1983) Cue. (/LuckyGuy1983)
My dyslexic daughter considers the word 'queue' the most ridiculous word in the language. 80% of it is superfluous.
The campaign to pronounce it "kway-way" begins here?
Those are woeful ratings for Badenoch . They should have picked Cleverly who has much more cross over appeal .
Cummings' prediction was that they would go for Cleverly next.
A man so daft that he plotted himself out of a leadership race.
That was his backers tbf. They tried to engineer his preferred opponent for the run off and succeeded in engineering the man himself out of the run off. You couldn't make it up. Literally couldn't make it up. If you submitted that in a script for a political drama you'd get it returned with a cover note saying "rejected on grounds of credulity".
While I share your general amusement, the pedant in me bridles at the phrase 'couldn't make it up', especially when paired with the word 'literally' - I'm fairly sure you could make it up. People make stuff up all the time, much of it less believable than that. Look at Star Wars, for example.
No but that's literally what I'm saying. You *could* make it up, yes, but not if you wanted it accepted as a serious proposition by the commissioning editor. So to all intents and purposes you couldn't.
Oh come on! This is exactly the sort of thing which happened in The Thick of It.
I'm not disputing how ridiculous the situation was. I'm pedantically disputing the use of the phrase 'you couldn't make it up'. People make up implausible stuff all the time, and much of it gets commissioned for telly. (Look at Death in Paradise. 50% of the time that finishes and you look at the wife and both shake your heads and say 'no...'. Still watch the next one though. I like light-hearted crime drama where the main puzzle is 'how'. And I have some sympathy for the writers still trying to come up with plots 100-odd episodes in).
'You couldn't make it up' is just a phrase I can rarely let go without a quibble. (See also describing Great Britain - the 8th largest and, what, 3rd most populous island in the world - as a 'small island', the use of the word 'stunning' to mean 'nice', and the misuse of the word 'literally'.)
I don't trying to fall out about it. This is just pb pedantry.
But TTOI was a comedy. Of course you could make it up as a joke. The Cleverly thing works fine as deliberate farce or even as a piece of whimsy. What I'm saying is you couldn't make it up and be taken seriously. That's what the phrase means in my book.
All right, House of Cards? To Play the King? Both of those contained plots more far fetched.
Your problem with the Clevershambles is that it is a) improbable and b) funny. Drama has a problem with things that are funny, preferring tense looks all the time. And that is why drama is almost never fulfilling - because the real world isn't like that. Funny things happen all the time. Just because something's funny doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken seriously.
We're at cross purposes. When I say "serious drama" I mean the likes of Kavanaugh QC or Smiley's People. Straightforward story telling with no attempt to be kooky or satirical. That genre. There's no place there for the sort of nonsense that happened with James Cleverly (or tbf his backers). If you tried to put something like that in you'd be told to go and have a rethink. Meaning you'd have failed to make it up.
It’s Kavanagh QC.
Not to be confused with Kavana, the rock icon from the late nineties.
That's the one. Thaw.
An absolute legend, and a decent bloke too.
The Sweeney is just brilliant. Ace TV and great characters and a London long gone.
Me and my mate, Baker, called each other Jack and George for many years.
My father loved The Sweeney, he also said it was a tribute to John Thaw that after a few episodes of Morse he didn't see him as Jack Regan.
Rewatching Morse, having not seen it since childhood, Thaw is stunning. Never not completely convincing.
I struggle with the fact that he's in his early to mid 40s for most of the episodes but looks about 70.
It was mentioned down thread the Action Man Davey had a 1st from Oxford as a plus point...I would suggest that was a bigger black mark against him than the Post Office scandal.
Davey’s one of the few involved with the Post Office who has admitted to errors.
Re Kemi at PMQs, it is becoming harder to believe CCHQ is not deliberately undermining her. Every week we see the same mistakes. The long, rambling, multi-subject questions that allow Starmer to choose which part to answer. The central attacks on things that started under her own government. Repeating the same questions rather than having six different ones. Failing to alter course after Starmer's answers. This is not just due to her; there will be a team preparing her for PMQs and doing so implausibly badly.
He seems to be going for Timothée Chalamet's Willy Wonka...
Those are woeful ratings for Badenoch . They should have picked Cleverly who has much more cross over appeal .
Cummings' prediction was that they would go for Cleverly next.
A man so daft that he plotted himself out of a leadership race.
That was his backers tbf. They tried to engineer his preferred opponent for the run off and succeeded in engineering the man himself out of the run off. You couldn't make it up. Literally couldn't make it up. If you submitted that in a script for a political drama you'd get it returned with a cover note saying "rejected on grounds of credulity".
While I share your general amusement, the pedant in me bridles at the phrase 'couldn't make it up', especially when paired with the word 'literally' - I'm fairly sure you could make it up. People make stuff up all the time, much of it less believable than that. Look at Star Wars, for example.
No but that's literally what I'm saying. You *could* make it up, yes, but not if you wanted it accepted as a serious proposition by the commissioning editor. So to all intents and purposes you couldn't.
Oh come on! This is exactly the sort of thing which happened in The Thick of It.
I'm not disputing how ridiculous the situation was. I'm pedantically disputing the use of the phrase 'you couldn't make it up'. People make up implausible stuff all the time, and much of it gets commissioned for telly. (Look at Death in Paradise. 50% of the time that finishes and you look at the wife and both shake your heads and say 'no...'. Still watch the next one though. I like light-hearted crime drama where the main puzzle is 'how'. And I have some sympathy for the writers still trying to come up with plots 100-odd episodes in).
'You couldn't make it up' is just a phrase I can rarely let go without a quibble. (See also describing Great Britain - the 8th largest and, what, 3rd most populous island in the world - as a 'small island', the use of the word 'stunning' to mean 'nice', and the misuse of the word 'literally'.)
I don't trying to fall out about it. This is just pb pedantry.
But TTOI was a comedy. Of course you could make it up as a joke. The Cleverly thing works fine as deliberate farce or even as a piece of whimsy. What I'm saying is you couldn't make it up and be taken seriously. That's what the phrase means in my book.
All right, House of Cards? To Play the King? Both of those contained plots more far fetched.
Your problem with the Clevershambles is that it is a) improbable and b) funny. Drama has a problem with things that are funny, preferring tense looks all the time. And that is why drama is almost never fulfilling - because the real world isn't like that. Funny things happen all the time. Just because something's funny doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken seriously.
We're at cross purposes. When I say "serious drama" I mean the likes of Kavanaugh QC or Smiley's People. Straightforward story telling with no attempt to be kooky or satirical. That genre. There's no place there for the sort of nonsense that happened with James Cleverly (or tbf his backers). If you tried to put something like that in you'd be told to go and have a rethink. Meaning you'd have failed to make it up.
It’s Kavanagh QC.
Not to be confused with Kavana, the rock icon from the late nineties.
That's the one. Thaw.
An absolute legend, and a decent bloke too.
The Sweeney is just brilliant. Ace TV and great characters and a London long gone.
Me and my mate, Baker, called each other Jack and George for many years.
I’d drive my Triumph Acclaim like it was the old Cortina off to a blag up west where they were tooled up with shooters.
Which were you? Or did you alternate?
😂😂
Always Jack, although as I drove I should have been the driver.
Our mate Soapy, so named after a Wilfred Hyde-white character in a Peter Sellers film was named Daniel’s after John Alkin’s character Tom Daniels
Appreciate this sounds shite but these were great days. Happy days and I loved them and when we meet up we just talk about them. Nostalgia isn’t what it was. But it’s great.
Alkin left acting and married Kenny Everett’s ex wife and got into tantric healing, or something similar.
Nothing shite about quality banter between mates. And that sounds like quality banter.
You know what, it is, and it is special and it means something to us all especially as we are in our late fifties now and this is going back to out late teens. It is friendship over the years, a common bond and nostalgia and my life would be all the poorer without it.
Ministers scramble to avoid Labour rebellion on disability benefit cuts
The Guardian revealed this year Kendall was particularly interested in proposals to boost the incomes of parents of children under five, which is likely to cost less than the £3.6bn it would take to remove the cap altogether.
Officials are looking at a suggestion promoted by the Fabian Society thinktank to increase universal credit payments for parents of babies and toddlers.
The group found that ministers could reduce child poverty by 280,000 by doubling the child element of universal credit for those with children under one, while raising it by 50% for those with children between one and four. Doing so would give parents of babies an extra £293 per month, and those of toddlers an extra £146 per month, at a cost of £2.4bn a year.
Alternatively, increasing the payment by £20 a week for those with babies and £10 a week for those with toddlers would lift 80,000 children out of poverty at a cost of £715m a year.
Oh oh, latest news : “Your presence in the UK is not considered to be conducive to the public good... ” — interdiction d’accès.
Queue people who demand the border is controlled and that others get turned away getting outraged that the border is controlled and someone is being turned away.
(LuckyGuy1983) Cue. (/LuckyGuy1983)
My dyslexic daughter considers the word 'queue' the most ridiculous word in the language. 80% of it is superfluous.
Not superfluous at all. 'Queue' distinguishes itself clearly from 'cue', 'Kew' and 'q'. So that you can be on cue for the queue to get into Kew Gardens while minding your ps and qs. The alternative is linguistic qaos. And greetings to your daughter.
Those are woeful ratings for Badenoch . They should have picked Cleverly who has much more cross over appeal .
Cummings' prediction was that they would go for Cleverly next.
A man so daft that he plotted himself out of a leadership race.
That was his backers tbf. They tried to engineer his preferred opponent for the run off and succeeded in engineering the man himself out of the run off. You couldn't make it up. Literally couldn't make it up. If you submitted that in a script for a political drama you'd get it returned with a cover note saying "rejected on grounds of credulity".
While I share your general amusement, the pedant in me bridles at the phrase 'couldn't make it up', especially when paired with the word 'literally' - I'm fairly sure you could make it up. People make stuff up all the time, much of it less believable than that. Look at Star Wars, for example.
No but that's literally what I'm saying. You *could* make it up, yes, but not if you wanted it accepted as a serious proposition by the commissioning editor. So to all intents and purposes you couldn't.
Oh come on! This is exactly the sort of thing which happened in The Thick of It.
I'm not disputing how ridiculous the situation was. I'm pedantically disputing the use of the phrase 'you couldn't make it up'. People make up implausible stuff all the time, and much of it gets commissioned for telly. (Look at Death in Paradise. 50% of the time that finishes and you look at the wife and both shake your heads and say 'no...'. Still watch the next one though. I like light-hearted crime drama where the main puzzle is 'how'. And I have some sympathy for the writers still trying to come up with plots 100-odd episodes in).
'You couldn't make it up' is just a phrase I can rarely let go without a quibble. (See also describing Great Britain - the 8th largest and, what, 3rd most populous island in the world - as a 'small island', the use of the word 'stunning' to mean 'nice', and the misuse of the word 'literally'.)
I don't trying to fall out about it. This is just pb pedantry.
But TTOI was a comedy. Of course you could make it up as a joke. The Cleverly thing works fine as deliberate farce or even as a piece of whimsy. What I'm saying is you couldn't make it up and be taken seriously. That's what the phrase means in my book.
All right, House of Cards? To Play the King? Both of those contained plots more far fetched.
Your problem with the Clevershambles is that it is a) improbable and b) funny. Drama has a problem with things that are funny, preferring tense looks all the time. And that is why drama is almost never fulfilling - because the real world isn't like that. Funny things happen all the time. Just because something's funny doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken seriously.
We're at cross purposes. When I say "serious drama" I mean the likes of Kavanaugh QC or Smiley's People. Straightforward story telling with no attempt to be kooky or satirical. That genre. There's no place there for the sort of nonsense that happened with James Cleverly (or tbf his backers). If you tried to put something like that in you'd be told to go and have a rethink. Meaning you'd have failed to make it up.
It’s Kavanagh QC.
Not to be confused with Kavana, the rock icon from the late nineties.
That's the one. Thaw.
An absolute legend, and a decent bloke too.
The Sweeney is just brilliant. Ace TV and great characters and a London long gone.
Me and my mate, Baker, called each other Jack and George for many years.
My father loved The Sweeney, he also said it was a tribute to John Thaw that after a few episodes of Morse he didn't see him as Jack Regan.
Rewatching Morse, having not seen it since childhood, Thaw is stunning. Never not completely convincing.
A few years ago I came across a much earlier programme he'd been in - "Redcap" :
Worth a go if you can find it. Very much of it's time - but like quite a few series around then like "Public Eye" - quite telling of the concerns when it was written.
Oh oh, latest news : “Your presence in the UK is not considered to be conducive to the public good... ” — interdiction d’accès.
Queue people who demand the border is controlled and that others get turned away getting outraged that the border is controlled and someone is being turned away.
(LuckyGuy1983) Cue. (/LuckyGuy1983)
My dyslexic daughter considers the word 'queue' the most ridiculous word in the language. 80% of it is superfluous.
Not superfluous at all. 'Queue' distinguishes itself clearly from 'cue', 'Kew' and 'q'. So that you can be on cue for the queue to get into Kew Gardens while minding your ps and qs. The alternative is linguistic qaos. And greetings to your daughter.
Those are woeful ratings for Badenoch . They should have picked Cleverly who has much more cross over appeal .
Cummings' prediction was that they would go for Cleverly next.
A man so daft that he plotted himself out of a leadership race.
That was his backers tbf. They tried to engineer his preferred opponent for the run off and succeeded in engineering the man himself out of the run off. You couldn't make it up. Literally couldn't make it up. If you submitted that in a script for a political drama you'd get it returned with a cover note saying "rejected on grounds of credulity".
While I share your general amusement, the pedant in me bridles at the phrase 'couldn't make it up', especially when paired with the word 'literally' - I'm fairly sure you could make it up. People make stuff up all the time, much of it less believable than that. Look at Star Wars, for example.
No but that's literally what I'm saying. You *could* make it up, yes, but not if you wanted it accepted as a serious proposition by the commissioning editor. So to all intents and purposes you couldn't.
Oh come on! This is exactly the sort of thing which happened in The Thick of It.
I'm not disputing how ridiculous the situation was. I'm pedantically disputing the use of the phrase 'you couldn't make it up'. People make up implausible stuff all the time, and much of it gets commissioned for telly. (Look at Death in Paradise. 50% of the time that finishes and you look at the wife and both shake your heads and say 'no...'. Still watch the next one though. I like light-hearted crime drama where the main puzzle is 'how'. And I have some sympathy for the writers still trying to come up with plots 100-odd episodes in).
'You couldn't make it up' is just a phrase I can rarely let go without a quibble. (See also describing Great Britain - the 8th largest and, what, 3rd most populous island in the world - as a 'small island', the use of the word 'stunning' to mean 'nice', and the misuse of the word 'literally'.)
I don't trying to fall out about it. This is just pb pedantry.
But TTOI was a comedy. Of course you could make it up as a joke. The Cleverly thing works fine as deliberate farce or even as a piece of whimsy. What I'm saying is you couldn't make it up and be taken seriously. That's what the phrase means in my book.
All right, House of Cards? To Play the King? Both of those contained plots more far fetched.
Your problem with the Clevershambles is that it is a) improbable and b) funny. Drama has a problem with things that are funny, preferring tense looks all the time. And that is why drama is almost never fulfilling - because the real world isn't like that. Funny things happen all the time. Just because something's funny doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken seriously.
We're at cross purposes. When I say "serious drama" I mean the likes of Kavanaugh QC or Smiley's People. Straightforward story telling with no attempt to be kooky or satirical. That genre. There's no place there for the sort of nonsense that happened with James Cleverly (or tbf his backers). If you tried to put something like that in you'd be told to go and have a rethink. Meaning you'd have failed to make it up.
It’s Kavanagh QC.
Not to be confused with Kavana, the rock icon from the late nineties.
That's the one. Thaw.
An absolute legend, and a decent bloke too.
The Sweeney is just brilliant. Ace TV and great characters and a London long gone.
Me and my mate, Baker, called each other Jack and George for many years.
My father loved The Sweeney, he also said it was a tribute to John Thaw that after a few episodes of Morse he didn't see him as Jack Regan.
Rewatching Morse, having not seen it since childhood, Thaw is stunning. Never not completely convincing.
Ditto in Kavanagh QC.
Although it'd be Kavanagh KC now if they repeated it. Doesn't sound as good, oddly. Not sure I'd watch that.
He was quite successfully 'different' in both roles too.
Re Kemi at PMQs, it is becoming harder to believe CCHQ is not deliberately undermining her. Every week we see the same mistakes. The long, rambling, multi-subject questions that allow Starmer to choose which part to answer. The central attacks on things that started under her own government. Repeating the same questions rather than having six different ones. Failing to alter course after Starmer's answers. This is not just due to her; there will be a team preparing her for PMQs and doing so implausibly badly.
I think CCHQ are just genuinely crap.
That's Kemi's fault too - she should have gone through that place like a dose of salts when she arrived.
Those are woeful ratings for Badenoch . They should have picked Cleverly who has much more cross over appeal .
Cummings' prediction was that they would go for Cleverly next.
A man so daft that he plotted himself out of a leadership race.
That was his backers tbf. They tried to engineer his preferred opponent for the run off and succeeded in engineering the man himself out of the run off. You couldn't make it up. Literally couldn't make it up. If you submitted that in a script for a political drama you'd get it returned with a cover note saying "rejected on grounds of credulity".
While I share your general amusement, the pedant in me bridles at the phrase 'couldn't make it up', especially when paired with the word 'literally' - I'm fairly sure you could make it up. People make stuff up all the time, much of it less believable than that. Look at Star Wars, for example.
No but that's literally what I'm saying. You *could* make it up, yes, but not if you wanted it accepted as a serious proposition by the commissioning editor. So to all intents and purposes you couldn't.
Oh come on! This is exactly the sort of thing which happened in The Thick of It.
I'm not disputing how ridiculous the situation was. I'm pedantically disputing the use of the phrase 'you couldn't make it up'. People make up implausible stuff all the time, and much of it gets commissioned for telly. (Look at Death in Paradise. 50% of the time that finishes and you look at the wife and both shake your heads and say 'no...'. Still watch the next one though. I like light-hearted crime drama where the main puzzle is 'how'. And I have some sympathy for the writers still trying to come up with plots 100-odd episodes in).
'You couldn't make it up' is just a phrase I can rarely let go without a quibble. (See also describing Great Britain - the 8th largest and, what, 3rd most populous island in the world - as a 'small island', the use of the word 'stunning' to mean 'nice', and the misuse of the word 'literally'.)
I don't trying to fall out about it. This is just pb pedantry.
But TTOI was a comedy. Of course you could make it up as a joke. The Cleverly thing works fine as deliberate farce or even as a piece of whimsy. What I'm saying is you couldn't make it up and be taken seriously. That's what the phrase means in my book.
All right, House of Cards? To Play the King? Both of those contained plots more far fetched.
Your problem with the Clevershambles is that it is a) improbable and b) funny. Drama has a problem with things that are funny, preferring tense looks all the time. And that is why drama is almost never fulfilling - because the real world isn't like that. Funny things happen all the time. Just because something's funny doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken seriously.
We're at cross purposes. When I say "serious drama" I mean the likes of Kavanaugh QC or Smiley's People. Straightforward story telling with no attempt to be kooky or satirical. That genre. There's no place there for the sort of nonsense that happened with James Cleverly (or tbf his backers). If you tried to put something like that in you'd be told to go and have a rethink. Meaning you'd have failed to make it up.
It’s Kavanagh QC.
Not to be confused with Kavana, the rock icon from the late nineties.
That's the one. Thaw.
An absolute legend, and a decent bloke too.
The Sweeney is just brilliant. Ace TV and great characters and a London long gone.
Me and my mate, Baker, called each other Jack and George for many years.
My father loved The Sweeney, he also said it was a tribute to John Thaw that after a few episodes of Morse he didn't see him as Jack Regan.
Rewatching Morse, having not seen it since childhood, Thaw is stunning. Never not completely convincing.
I struggle with the fact that he's in his early to mid 40s for most of the episodes but looks about 70.
Re Kemi at PMQs, it is becoming harder to believe CCHQ is not deliberately undermining her. Every week we see the same mistakes. The long, rambling, multi-subject questions that allow Starmer to choose which part to answer. The central attacks on things that started under her own government. Repeating the same questions rather than having six different ones. Failing to alter course after Starmer's answers. This is not just due to her; there will be a team preparing her for PMQs and doing so implausibly badly.
I think CCHQ are just genuinely crap.
That's Kemi's fault too - she should have gone through that place like a dose of salts when she arrived.
Haven't they sacked a huge chunk of the staff because they have no money, not that the ones they had were up to much, see the situations Rishi Sunak got in.
It was mentioned down thread the Action Man Davey had a 1st from Oxford as a plus point...I would suggest that was a bigger black mark against him than the Post Office scandal.
Davey’s one of the few involved with the Post Office who has admitted to errors.
The LibDems are experts at the whole apologizing thing:
Those are woeful ratings for Badenoch . They should have picked Cleverly who has much more cross over appeal .
Cummings' prediction was that they would go for Cleverly next.
A man so daft that he plotted himself out of a leadership race.
That was his backers tbf. They tried to engineer his preferred opponent for the run off and succeeded in engineering the man himself out of the run off. You couldn't make it up. Literally couldn't make it up. If you submitted that in a script for a political drama you'd get it returned with a cover note saying "rejected on grounds of credulity".
While I share your general amusement, the pedant in me bridles at the phrase 'couldn't make it up', especially when paired with the word 'literally' - I'm fairly sure you could make it up. People make stuff up all the time, much of it less believable than that. Look at Star Wars, for example.
No but that's literally what I'm saying. You *could* make it up, yes, but not if you wanted it accepted as a serious proposition by the commissioning editor. So to all intents and purposes you couldn't.
Oh come on! This is exactly the sort of thing which happened in The Thick of It.
I'm not disputing how ridiculous the situation was. I'm pedantically disputing the use of the phrase 'you couldn't make it up'. People make up implausible stuff all the time, and much of it gets commissioned for telly. (Look at Death in Paradise. 50% of the time that finishes and you look at the wife and both shake your heads and say 'no...'. Still watch the next one though. I like light-hearted crime drama where the main puzzle is 'how'. And I have some sympathy for the writers still trying to come up with plots 100-odd episodes in).
'You couldn't make it up' is just a phrase I can rarely let go without a quibble. (See also describing Great Britain - the 8th largest and, what, 3rd most populous island in the world - as a 'small island', the use of the word 'stunning' to mean 'nice', and the misuse of the word 'literally'.)
I don't trying to fall out about it. This is just pb pedantry.
But TTOI was a comedy. Of course you could make it up as a joke. The Cleverly thing works fine as deliberate farce or even as a piece of whimsy. What I'm saying is you couldn't make it up and be taken seriously. That's what the phrase means in my book.
All right, House of Cards? To Play the King? Both of those contained plots more far fetched.
Your problem with the Clevershambles is that it is a) improbable and b) funny. Drama has a problem with things that are funny, preferring tense looks all the time. And that is why drama is almost never fulfilling - because the real world isn't like that. Funny things happen all the time. Just because something's funny doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken seriously.
We're at cross purposes. When I say "serious drama" I mean the likes of Kavanaugh QC or Smiley's People. Straightforward story telling with no attempt to be kooky or satirical. That genre. There's no place there for the sort of nonsense that happened with James Cleverly (or tbf his backers). If you tried to put something like that in you'd be told to go and have a rethink. Meaning you'd have failed to make it up.
It’s Kavanagh QC.
Not to be confused with Kavana, the rock icon from the late nineties.
That's the one. Thaw.
An absolute legend, and a decent bloke too.
The Sweeney is just brilliant. Ace TV and great characters and a London long gone.
Me and my mate, Baker, called each other Jack and George for many years.
My father loved The Sweeney, he also said it was a tribute to John Thaw that after a few episodes of Morse he didn't see him as Jack Regan.
Rewatching Morse, having not seen it since childhood, Thaw is stunning. Never not completely convincing.
There’s only a couple of duff episodes. I remember being absolutely shocked at the reveals in ‘Driven to Distraction’ and ‘Way through the woods’.
I also think Kevin Whateley, James Grout and Peter Woodthorpe as supports were really good too.
There are some pretty good Radio 4 'Morse' dramatisations. They work quite well as audio-only I find.
Who the fuck mapped out the frontiers of central Central Asia?
LOOK AT IT
It must have been Stalin, on acid. And meth
The geopolitics of water sources out there, and who has which bit of which rivers, is quite something - even worse than Canada having the headwaters of the rivers which Trump wants to control.
Much of it is to with irrigation of the cotton industry.
Re Kemi at PMQs, it is becoming harder to believe CCHQ is not deliberately undermining her. Every week we see the same mistakes. The long, rambling, multi-subject questions that allow Starmer to choose which part to answer. The central attacks on things that started under her own government. Repeating the same questions rather than having six different ones. Failing to alter course after Starmer's answers. This is not just due to her; there will be a team preparing her for PMQs and doing so implausibly badly.
I think CCHQ are just genuinely crap.
That's Kemi's fault too - she should have gone through that place like a dose of salts when she arrived.
Haven't they sacked a huge chunk of the staff because they have no money, not that the ones they had were up to much, see the situations Rishi Sunak got in.
Those are woeful ratings for Badenoch . They should have picked Cleverly who has much more cross over appeal .
Cummings' prediction was that they would go for Cleverly next.
A man so daft that he plotted himself out of a leadership race.
That was his backers tbf. They tried to engineer his preferred opponent for the run off and succeeded in engineering the man himself out of the run off. You couldn't make it up. Literally couldn't make it up. If you submitted that in a script for a political drama you'd get it returned with a cover note saying "rejected on grounds of credulity".
While I share your general amusement, the pedant in me bridles at the phrase 'couldn't make it up', especially when paired with the word 'literally' - I'm fairly sure you could make it up. People make stuff up all the time, much of it less believable than that. Look at Star Wars, for example.
No but that's literally what I'm saying. You *could* make it up, yes, but not if you wanted it accepted as a serious proposition by the commissioning editor. So to all intents and purposes you couldn't.
Oh come on! This is exactly the sort of thing which happened in The Thick of It.
I'm not disputing how ridiculous the situation was. I'm pedantically disputing the use of the phrase 'you couldn't make it up'. People make up implausible stuff all the time, and much of it gets commissioned for telly. (Look at Death in Paradise. 50% of the time that finishes and you look at the wife and both shake your heads and say 'no...'. Still watch the next one though. I like light-hearted crime drama where the main puzzle is 'how'. And I have some sympathy for the writers still trying to come up with plots 100-odd episodes in).
'You couldn't make it up' is just a phrase I can rarely let go without a quibble. (See also describing Great Britain - the 8th largest and, what, 3rd most populous island in the world - as a 'small island', the use of the word 'stunning' to mean 'nice', and the misuse of the word 'literally'.)
I don't trying to fall out about it. This is just pb pedantry.
But TTOI was a comedy. Of course you could make it up as a joke. The Cleverly thing works fine as deliberate farce or even as a piece of whimsy. What I'm saying is you couldn't make it up and be taken seriously. That's what the phrase means in my book.
All right, House of Cards? To Play the King? Both of those contained plots more far fetched.
Your problem with the Clevershambles is that it is a) improbable and b) funny. Drama has a problem with things that are funny, preferring tense looks all the time. And that is why drama is almost never fulfilling - because the real world isn't like that. Funny things happen all the time. Just because something's funny doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken seriously.
We're at cross purposes. When I say "serious drama" I mean the likes of Kavanaugh QC or Smiley's People. Straightforward story telling with no attempt to be kooky or satirical. That genre. There's no place there for the sort of nonsense that happened with James Cleverly (or tbf his backers). If you tried to put something like that in you'd be told to go and have a rethink. Meaning you'd have failed to make it up.
The fault here is with most drama's utter aversion to anything amusing happening.
But House of Cards was a proper drama. And it's a plausible plotline for one of that series. After all, the Chief Whip ended up as PM.
Where we appear to be is that you could make it up, but if you did, and presented it to the humourless commissioners of TV drama, they wouldn't like it as a plotline because in their world nothing is allowed to be in the least bit amusing.
I'm going to go and make an omelette now. Mushroom, onion, pancetta, potato and cheese. Maybe a bit of chorizo if there's any in the fridge.
The best thing about UK House of Cards was Sir Ian Richardson's acting.
He perfected the upper class, camp bully.
See Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
That is a much superior drama.
Albeit rather slow.
There are times when Morse is very slow. We watch him work round two sides of a college quad. Presumably insisted upon by the Oxford University tourist board.
Who the fuck mapped out the frontiers of central Central Asia?
LOOK AT IT
It must have been Stalin, on acid. And meth
Not sure. May have been Slartibartfast. He did Norway.
I asked a friend who’s a Soviet expert
“The tangled borders you’re seeing are not medieval relics or lines of actual mountains, but the product of Soviet‑era “national delimitation” in the 1920s–30s, frozen into international frontiers in 1991. Here’s what happened:
1. The Fergana Valley’s Ethnic Patchwork • The Fergana Valley (center of your map) is one of the most densely populated - and ethnically mixed—areas in Central Asia. Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Tajiks (and even minorities of Russians, Karakalpaks, etc.) live intermingled down to the village level.
• When the USSR drew internal republic borders, they tried to give each “titular nationality” a share of good land and water. In practice that meant slicing through villages, fields and irrigation channels to achieve a rough ethnic balance.
2. Divide‑and‑Rule Delimitation • Moscow’s planners deliberately created convoluted boundaries (and even a handful of enclaves and exclaves) so that no single republic was too compact or self‑sufficient - thus keeping them dependent on central Soviet authorities for trade, transport and supplies. • They also used water‑rights (canals criss‑crossing the valley) as a justification for zig‑zagging lines: “This canal taps off into Uzbek SSR, so let’s give that bend of land to Uzbekistan, then loop back into Kyrgyz.”
3. The Enclave Patchwork • Uzbek exclaves inside Kyrgyzstan (e.g. Sokh, Shohimardon) • Tajik exclave inside Kyrgyzstan (Vorukh) • Kyrgyz exclave inside Uzbekistan (Barak) These tiny pockets (sometimes just a few square kilometers) were never a big deal when they were “merely” internal Soviet boundaries. After 1991 they became international - and a source of chronic headaches for border control, road access, customs, and local residents.
4. The “Panhandle” Corridors • Look up at Tashkent: the Uzbek SSR was given a long, narrow finger of territory reaching northeast, separating southern Kazakhstan from the rest of Kyrgyzstan. That’s why today the Tashkent–Shymkent railway (green dashed line) crosses Kazakh or Kyrgyz land in odd little spurts.
5. Why It Looks “Insane” Today • Once internal lines, these borders weren’t designed to be barriers. They cut through irrigation ditches, farmland, even villages - and relied on Soviet authorities to manage the flows of people and goods across them. • After 1991, those lines hardened into international borders. No longer easy to cross on a whim (or in a tractor), they now require passports, visas, checkpoints - turning a 2 km walk across a field into an odyssey involving customs forms and border guards.
⸻
In short: what looks like an absurd, arbitrary tangle of frontiers is really the legacy of Stalin‑era border‑drawing in one of the Soviet Union’s most complex, multi‑ethnic regions—lines that never anticipated becoming impenetrable international boundaries.
Who the fuck mapped out the frontiers of central Central Asia?
LOOK AT IT
It must have been Stalin, on acid. And meth
Not sure. May have been Slartibartfast. He did Norway.
I asked a friend who’s a Soviet expert
“The tangled borders you’re seeing are not medieval relics or lines of actual mountains, but the product of Soviet‑era “national delimitation” in the 1920s–30s, frozen into international frontiers in 1991. Here’s what happened:
1. The Fergana Valley’s Ethnic Patchwork • The Fergana Valley (center of your map) is one of the most densely populated - and ethnically mixed—areas in Central Asia. Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Tajiks (and even minorities of Russians, Karakalpaks, etc.) live intermingled down to the village level.
• When the USSR drew internal republic borders, they tried to give each “titular nationality” a share of good land and water. In practice that meant slicing through villages, fields and irrigation channels to achieve a rough ethnic balance.
2. Divide‑and‑Rule Delimitation • Moscow’s planners deliberately created convoluted boundaries (and even a handful of enclaves and exclaves) so that no single republic was too compact or self‑sufficient - thus keeping them dependent on central Soviet authorities for trade, transport and supplies. • They also used water‑rights (canals criss‑crossing the valley) as a justification for zig‑zagging lines: “This canal taps off into Uzbek SSR, so let’s give that bend of land to Uzbekistan, then loop back into Kyrgyz.”
3. The Enclave Patchwork • Uzbek exclaves inside Kyrgyzstan (e.g. Sokh, Shohimardon) • Tajik exclave inside Kyrgyzstan (Vorukh) • Kyrgyz exclave inside Uzbekistan (Barak) These tiny pockets (sometimes just a few square kilometers) were never a big deal when they were “merely” internal Soviet boundaries. After 1991 they became international - and a source of chronic headaches for border control, road access, customs, and local residents.
4. The “Panhandle” Corridors • Look up at Tashkent: the Uzbek SSR was given a long, narrow finger of territory reaching northeast, separating southern Kazakhstan from the rest of Kyrgyzstan. That’s why today the Tashkent–Shymkent railway (green dashed line) crosses Kazakh or Kyrgyz land in odd little spurts.
5. Why It Looks “Insane” Today • Once internal lines, these borders weren’t designed to be barriers. They cut through irrigation ditches, farmland, even villages - and relied on Soviet authorities to manage the flows of people and goods across them. • After 1991, those lines hardened into international borders. No longer easy to cross on a whim (or in a tractor), they now require passports, visas, checkpoints - turning a 2 km walk across a field into an odyssey involving customs forms and border guards.
⸻
In short: what looks like an absurd, arbitrary tangle of frontiers is really the legacy of Stalin‑era border‑drawing in one of the Soviet Union’s most complex, multi‑ethnic regions—lines that never anticipated becoming impenetrable international boundaries.
Oh oh, latest news : “Your presence in the UK is not considered to be conducive to the public good... ” — interdiction d’accès.
Queue people who demand the border is controlled and that others get turned away getting outraged that the border is controlled and someone is being turned away.
(LuckyGuy1983) Cue. (/LuckyGuy1983)
My dyslexic daughter considers the word 'queue' the most ridiculous word in the language. 80% of it is superfluous.
Not superfluous at all. 'Queue' distinguishes itself clearly from 'cue', 'Kew' and 'q'. So that you can be on cue for the queue to get into Kew Gardens while minding your ps and qs. The alternative is linguistic qaos. And greetings to your daughter.
I make that "whilst", to be technical.
@Leon can advise - he is in a 1950s bubble at present .
Oh oh, latest news : “Your presence in the UK is not considered to be conducive to the public good... ” — interdiction d’accès.
Queue people who demand the border is controlled and that others get turned away getting outraged that the border is controlled and someone is being turned away.
(LuckyGuy1983) Cue. (/LuckyGuy1983)
My dyslexic daughter considers the word 'queue' the most ridiculous word in the language. 80% of it is superfluous.
Not superfluous at all. 'Queue' distinguishes itself clearly from 'cue', 'Kew' and 'q'. So that you can be on cue for the queue to get into Kew Gardens while minding your ps and qs. The alternative is linguistic qaos. And greetings to your daughter.
I make that "whilst", to be technical.
@Leon can advise - he is in a 1950s bubble at present .
Those are woeful ratings for Badenoch . They should have picked Cleverly who has much more cross over appeal .
Cummings' prediction was that they would go for Cleverly next.
A man so daft that he plotted himself out of a leadership race.
That was his backers tbf. They tried to engineer his preferred opponent for the run off and succeeded in engineering the man himself out of the run off. You couldn't make it up. Literally couldn't make it up. If you submitted that in a script for a political drama you'd get it returned with a cover note saying "rejected on grounds of credulity".
While I share your general amusement, the pedant in me bridles at the phrase 'couldn't make it up', especially when paired with the word 'literally' - I'm fairly sure you could make it up. People make stuff up all the time, much of it less believable than that. Look at Star Wars, for example.
No but that's literally what I'm saying. You *could* make it up, yes, but not if you wanted it accepted as a serious proposition by the commissioning editor. So to all intents and purposes you couldn't.
Oh come on! This is exactly the sort of thing which happened in The Thick of It.
I'm not disputing how ridiculous the situation was. I'm pedantically disputing the use of the phrase 'you couldn't make it up'. People make up implausible stuff all the time, and much of it gets commissioned for telly. (Look at Death in Paradise. 50% of the time that finishes and you look at the wife and both shake your heads and say 'no...'. Still watch the next one though. I like light-hearted crime drama where the main puzzle is 'how'. And I have some sympathy for the writers still trying to come up with plots 100-odd episodes in).
'You couldn't make it up' is just a phrase I can rarely let go without a quibble. (See also describing Great Britain - the 8th largest and, what, 3rd most populous island in the world - as a 'small island', the use of the word 'stunning' to mean 'nice', and the misuse of the word 'literally'.)
I don't trying to fall out about it. This is just pb pedantry.
But TTOI was a comedy. Of course you could make it up as a joke. The Cleverly thing works fine as deliberate farce or even as a piece of whimsy. What I'm saying is you couldn't make it up and be taken seriously. That's what the phrase means in my book.
All right, House of Cards? To Play the King? Both of those contained plots more far fetched.
Your problem with the Clevershambles is that it is a) improbable and b) funny. Drama has a problem with things that are funny, preferring tense looks all the time. And that is why drama is almost never fulfilling - because the real world isn't like that. Funny things happen all the time. Just because something's funny doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken seriously.
We're at cross purposes. When I say "serious drama" I mean the likes of Kavanaugh QC or Smiley's People. Straightforward story telling with no attempt to be kooky or satirical. That genre. There's no place there for the sort of nonsense that happened with James Cleverly (or tbf his backers). If you tried to put something like that in you'd be told to go and have a rethink. Meaning you'd have failed to make it up.
The fault here is with most drama's utter aversion to anything amusing happening.
But House of Cards was a proper drama. And it's a plausible plotline for one of that series. After all, the Chief Whip ended up as PM.
Where we appear to be is that you could make it up, but if you did, and presented it to the humourless commissioners of TV drama, they wouldn't like it as a plotline because in their world nothing is allowed to be in the least bit amusing.
I'm going to go and make an omelette now. Mushroom, onion, pancetta, potato and cheese. Maybe a bit of chorizo if there's any in the fridge.
The best thing about UK House of Cards was Sir Ian Richardson's acting.
He perfected the upper class, camp bully.
See Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
He was also very good in the now almost forgotten Porterhouse Blue, one of the great comedy series of the 1980s.
It's an excellent series. Only tangentially related - but I rewatched 'The History Man' starring the rather wonderful Anthony Sher a while back. Really very good.
Those are woeful ratings for Badenoch . They should have picked Cleverly who has much more cross over appeal .
Cummings' prediction was that they would go for Cleverly next.
A man so daft that he plotted himself out of a leadership race.
That was his backers tbf. They tried to engineer his preferred opponent for the run off and succeeded in engineering the man himself out of the run off. You couldn't make it up. Literally couldn't make it up. If you submitted that in a script for a political drama you'd get it returned with a cover note saying "rejected on grounds of credulity".
While I share your general amusement, the pedant in me bridles at the phrase 'couldn't make it up', especially when paired with the word 'literally' - I'm fairly sure you could make it up. People make stuff up all the time, much of it less believable than that. Look at Star Wars, for example.
No but that's literally what I'm saying. You *could* make it up, yes, but not if you wanted it accepted as a serious proposition by the commissioning editor. So to all intents and purposes you couldn't.
Oh come on! This is exactly the sort of thing which happened in The Thick of It.
I'm not disputing how ridiculous the situation was. I'm pedantically disputing the use of the phrase 'you couldn't make it up'. People make up implausible stuff all the time, and much of it gets commissioned for telly. (Look at Death in Paradise. 50% of the time that finishes and you look at the wife and both shake your heads and say 'no...'. Still watch the next one though. I like light-hearted crime drama where the main puzzle is 'how'. And I have some sympathy for the writers still trying to come up with plots 100-odd episodes in).
'You couldn't make it up' is just a phrase I can rarely let go without a quibble. (See also describing Great Britain - the 8th largest and, what, 3rd most populous island in the world - as a 'small island', the use of the word 'stunning' to mean 'nice', and the misuse of the word 'literally'.)
I don't trying to fall out about it. This is just pb pedantry.
But TTOI was a comedy. Of course you could make it up as a joke. The Cleverly thing works fine as deliberate farce or even as a piece of whimsy. What I'm saying is you couldn't make it up and be taken seriously. That's what the phrase means in my book.
All right, House of Cards? To Play the King? Both of those contained plots more far fetched.
Your problem with the Clevershambles is that it is a) improbable and b) funny. Drama has a problem with things that are funny, preferring tense looks all the time. And that is why drama is almost never fulfilling - because the real world isn't like that. Funny things happen all the time. Just because something's funny doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken seriously.
We're at cross purposes. When I say "serious drama" I mean the likes of Kavanaugh QC or Smiley's People. Straightforward story telling with no attempt to be kooky or satirical. That genre. There's no place there for the sort of nonsense that happened with James Cleverly (or tbf his backers). If you tried to put something like that in you'd be told to go and have a rethink. Meaning you'd have failed to make it up.
It’s Kavanagh QC.
Not to be confused with Kavana, the rock icon from the late nineties.
That's the one. Thaw.
An absolute legend, and a decent bloke too.
The Sweeney is just brilliant. Ace TV and great characters and a London long gone.
Me and my mate, Baker, called each other Jack and George for many years.
My father loved The Sweeney, he also said it was a tribute to John Thaw that after a few episodes of Morse he didn't see him as Jack Regan.
Rewatching Morse, having not seen it since childhood, Thaw is stunning. Never not completely convincing.
There’s only a couple of duff episodes. I remember being absolutely shocked at the reveals in ‘Driven to Distraction’ and ‘Way through the woods’.
I also think Kevin Whateley, James Grout and Peter Woodthorpe as supports were really good too.
There are some pretty good Radio 4 'Morse' dramatisations. They work quite well as audio-only I find.
I didn’t know about these. I’ll have to look them up. Do you know who plays the lead roles ?
It was mentioned down thread the Action Man Davey had a 1st from Oxford as a plus point...I would suggest that was a bigger black mark against him than the Post Office scandal.
Davey’s one of the few involved with the Post Office who has admitted to errors.
The LibDems are experts at the whole apologizing thing:
Those are woeful ratings for Badenoch . They should have picked Cleverly who has much more cross over appeal .
Cummings' prediction was that they would go for Cleverly next.
A man so daft that he plotted himself out of a leadership race.
That was his backers tbf. They tried to engineer his preferred opponent for the run off and succeeded in engineering the man himself out of the run off. You couldn't make it up. Literally couldn't make it up. If you submitted that in a script for a political drama you'd get it returned with a cover note saying "rejected on grounds of credulity".
While I share your general amusement, the pedant in me bridles at the phrase 'couldn't make it up', especially when paired with the word 'literally' - I'm fairly sure you could make it up. People make stuff up all the time, much of it less believable than that. Look at Star Wars, for example.
No but that's literally what I'm saying. You *could* make it up, yes, but not if you wanted it accepted as a serious proposition by the commissioning editor. So to all intents and purposes you couldn't.
Oh come on! This is exactly the sort of thing which happened in The Thick of It.
I'm not disputing how ridiculous the situation was. I'm pedantically disputing the use of the phrase 'you couldn't make it up'. People make up implausible stuff all the time, and much of it gets commissioned for telly. (Look at Death in Paradise. 50% of the time that finishes and you look at the wife and both shake your heads and say 'no...'. Still watch the next one though. I like light-hearted crime drama where the main puzzle is 'how'. And I have some sympathy for the writers still trying to come up with plots 100-odd episodes in).
'You couldn't make it up' is just a phrase I can rarely let go without a quibble. (See also describing Great Britain - the 8th largest and, what, 3rd most populous island in the world - as a 'small island', the use of the word 'stunning' to mean 'nice', and the misuse of the word 'literally'.)
I don't trying to fall out about it. This is just pb pedantry.
But TTOI was a comedy. Of course you could make it up as a joke. The Cleverly thing works fine as deliberate farce or even as a piece of whimsy. What I'm saying is you couldn't make it up and be taken seriously. That's what the phrase means in my book.
All right, House of Cards? To Play the King? Both of those contained plots more far fetched.
Your problem with the Clevershambles is that it is a) improbable and b) funny. Drama has a problem with things that are funny, preferring tense looks all the time. And that is why drama is almost never fulfilling - because the real world isn't like that. Funny things happen all the time. Just because something's funny doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken seriously.
We're at cross purposes. When I say "serious drama" I mean the likes of Kavanaugh QC or Smiley's People. Straightforward story telling with no attempt to be kooky or satirical. That genre. There's no place there for the sort of nonsense that happened with James Cleverly (or tbf his backers). If you tried to put something like that in you'd be told to go and have a rethink. Meaning you'd have failed to make it up.
It’s Kavanagh QC.
Not to be confused with Kavana, the rock icon from the late nineties.
That's the one. Thaw.
An absolute legend, and a decent bloke too.
The Sweeney is just brilliant. Ace TV and great characters and a London long gone.
Me and my mate, Baker, called each other Jack and George for many years.
My father loved The Sweeney, he also said it was a tribute to John Thaw that after a few episodes of Morse he didn't see him as Jack Regan.
Rewatching Morse, having not seen it since childhood, Thaw is stunning. Never not completely convincing.
There’s only a couple of duff episodes. I remember being absolutely shocked at the reveals in ‘Driven to Distraction’ and ‘Way through the woods’.
I also think Kevin Whateley, James Grout and Peter Woodthorpe as supports were really good too.
There are some pretty good Radio 4 'Morse' dramatisations. They work quite well as audio-only I find.
I didn’t know about these. I’ll have to look them up. Do you know who plays the lead roles ?
Who the fuck mapped out the frontiers of central Central Asia?
LOOK AT IT
It must have been Stalin, on acid. And meth
Not sure. May have been Slartibartfast. He did Norway.
I asked a friend who’s a Soviet expert
“The tangled borders you’re seeing are not medieval relics or lines of actual mountains, but the product of Soviet‑era “national delimitation” in the 1920s–30s, frozen into international frontiers in 1991. Here’s what happened:
1. The Fergana Valley’s Ethnic Patchwork • The Fergana Valley (center of your map) is one of the most densely populated - and ethnically mixed—areas in Central Asia. Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Tajiks (and even minorities of Russians, Karakalpaks, etc.) live intermingled down to the village level.
• When the USSR drew internal republic borders, they tried to give each “titular nationality” a share of good land and water. In practice that meant slicing through villages, fields and irrigation channels to achieve a rough ethnic balance.
2. Divide‑and‑Rule Delimitation • Moscow’s planners deliberately created convoluted boundaries (and even a handful of enclaves and exclaves) so that no single republic was too compact or self‑sufficient - thus keeping them dependent on central Soviet authorities for trade, transport and supplies. • They also used water‑rights (canals criss‑crossing the valley) as a justification for zig‑zagging lines: “This canal taps off into Uzbek SSR, so let’s give that bend of land to Uzbekistan, then loop back into Kyrgyz.”
3. The Enclave Patchwork • Uzbek exclaves inside Kyrgyzstan (e.g. Sokh, Shohimardon) • Tajik exclave inside Kyrgyzstan (Vorukh) • Kyrgyz exclave inside Uzbekistan (Barak) These tiny pockets (sometimes just a few square kilometers) were never a big deal when they were “merely” internal Soviet boundaries. After 1991 they became international - and a source of chronic headaches for border control, road access, customs, and local residents.
4. The “Panhandle” Corridors • Look up at Tashkent: the Uzbek SSR was given a long, narrow finger of territory reaching northeast, separating southern Kazakhstan from the rest of Kyrgyzstan. That’s why today the Tashkent–Shymkent railway (green dashed line) crosses Kazakh or Kyrgyz land in odd little spurts.
5. Why It Looks “Insane” Today • Once internal lines, these borders weren’t designed to be barriers. They cut through irrigation ditches, farmland, even villages - and relied on Soviet authorities to manage the flows of people and goods across them. • After 1991, those lines hardened into international borders. No longer easy to cross on a whim (or in a tractor), they now require passports, visas, checkpoints - turning a 2 km walk across a field into an odyssey involving customs forms and border guards.
⸻
In short: what looks like an absurd, arbitrary tangle of frontiers is really the legacy of Stalin‑era border‑drawing in one of the Soviet Union’s most complex, multi‑ethnic regions—lines that never anticipated becoming impenetrable international boundaries.
Ah, you mean you asked ChatGPT
The Soviet Union really fucked with Central Asia. Until visiting Kazakhstan’s national museum yesterday I had no idea they experienced a famine in the 30s which killed MORE THAN A THIRD of all Kazakh people
It was mentioned down thread the Action Man Davey had a 1st from Oxford as a plus point...I would suggest that was a bigger black mark against him than the Post Office scandal.
Davey’s one of the few involved with the Post Office who has admitted to errors.
The LibDems are experts at the whole apologizing thing:
If he is genuinely feeling at fault an honourable person would have resigned
I feel if Ed Davey ever discovers the character to make a public apology for something, it will have to be the village stocks for him, and some paid extras dressed as peasants with baskets of overripe veg. It's what he would want.
Re Kemi at PMQs, it is becoming harder to believe CCHQ is not deliberately undermining her. Every week we see the same mistakes. The long, rambling, multi-subject questions that allow Starmer to choose which part to answer. The central attacks on things that started under her own government. Repeating the same questions rather than having six different ones. Failing to alter course after Starmer's answers. This is not just due to her; there will be a team preparing her for PMQs and doing so implausibly badly.
I think CCHQ are just genuinely crap.
That's Kemi's fault too - she should have gone through that place like a dose of salts when she arrived.
Haven't they sacked a huge chunk of the staff because they have no money, not that the ones they had were up to much, see the situations Rishi Sunak got in.
One of the early stages in the oppostion grief cycle is members of the former government not coping because all the support systems you have as a minister are swiftly removed from you. That the Conservatives have no money and hardly anyone under the age of 60 who can go and think Tory thoughts makes that cold shower even more brutal than normal.
But the ways that Badenoch fails at PMQs were pretty forseeable. Too plugged into the rightwing social media sphere, and too sure of her rightness to want to course-correct.
Who the fuck mapped out the frontiers of central Central Asia?
LOOK AT IT
It must have been Stalin, on acid. And meth
Not sure. May have been Slartibartfast. He did Norway.
I asked a friend who’s a Soviet expert
“The tangled borders you’re seeing are not medieval relics or lines of actual mountains, but the product of Soviet‑era “national delimitation” in the 1920s–30s, frozen into international frontiers in 1991. Here’s what happened:
1. The Fergana Valley’s Ethnic Patchwork • The Fergana Valley (center of your map) is one of the most densely populated - and ethnically mixed—areas in Central Asia. Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Tajiks (and even minorities of Russians, Karakalpaks, etc.) live intermingled down to the village level.
• When the USSR drew internal republic borders, they tried to give each “titular nationality” a share of good land and water. In practice that meant slicing through villages, fields and irrigation channels to achieve a rough ethnic balance.
2. Divide‑and‑Rule Delimitation • Moscow’s planners deliberately created convoluted boundaries (and even a handful of enclaves and exclaves) so that no single republic was too compact or self‑sufficient - thus keeping them dependent on central Soviet authorities for trade, transport and supplies. • They also used water‑rights (canals criss‑crossing the valley) as a justification for zig‑zagging lines: “This canal taps off into Uzbek SSR, so let’s give that bend of land to Uzbekistan, then loop back into Kyrgyz.”
3. The Enclave Patchwork • Uzbek exclaves inside Kyrgyzstan (e.g. Sokh, Shohimardon) • Tajik exclave inside Kyrgyzstan (Vorukh) • Kyrgyz exclave inside Uzbekistan (Barak) These tiny pockets (sometimes just a few square kilometers) were never a big deal when they were “merely” internal Soviet boundaries. After 1991 they became international - and a source of chronic headaches for border control, road access, customs, and local residents.
4. The “Panhandle” Corridors • Look up at Tashkent: the Uzbek SSR was given a long, narrow finger of territory reaching northeast, separating southern Kazakhstan from the rest of Kyrgyzstan. That’s why today the Tashkent–Shymkent railway (green dashed line) crosses Kazakh or Kyrgyz land in odd little spurts.
5. Why It Looks “Insane” Today • Once internal lines, these borders weren’t designed to be barriers. They cut through irrigation ditches, farmland, even villages - and relied on Soviet authorities to manage the flows of people and goods across them. • After 1991, those lines hardened into international borders. No longer easy to cross on a whim (or in a tractor), they now require passports, visas, checkpoints - turning a 2 km walk across a field into an odyssey involving customs forms and border guards.
⸻
In short: what looks like an absurd, arbitrary tangle of frontiers is really the legacy of Stalin‑era border‑drawing in one of the Soviet Union’s most complex, multi‑ethnic regions—lines that never anticipated becoming impenetrable international boundaries.
Ah, you mean you asked ChatGPT
The Soviet Union really fucked with Central Asia. Until visiting Kazakhstan’s national museum yesterday I had no idea they experienced a famine in the 30s which killed MORE THAN A THIRD of all Kazakh people
1.5-2m victims, IIRC
It is amazing Russia is not MORE hated than it is
We also have the Bengal Famine of 1943 which killed anywhere from 1.5 million to 3 million people. Should we be more hated?
Who the fuck mapped out the frontiers of central Central Asia?
LOOK AT IT
It must have been Stalin, on acid. And meth
Not sure. May have been Slartibartfast. He did Norway.
I asked a friend who’s a Soviet expert
“The tangled borders you’re seeing are not medieval relics or lines of actual mountains, but the product of Soviet‑era “national delimitation” in the 1920s–30s, frozen into international frontiers in 1991. Here’s what happened:
1. The Fergana Valley’s Ethnic Patchwork • The Fergana Valley (center of your map) is one of the most densely populated - and ethnically mixed—areas in Central Asia. Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Tajiks (and even minorities of Russians, Karakalpaks, etc.) live intermingled down to the village level.
• When the USSR drew internal republic borders, they tried to give each “titular nationality” a share of good land and water. In practice that meant slicing through villages, fields and irrigation channels to achieve a rough ethnic balance.
2. Divide‑and‑Rule Delimitation • Moscow’s planners deliberately created convoluted boundaries (and even a handful of enclaves and exclaves) so that no single republic was too compact or self‑sufficient - thus keeping them dependent on central Soviet authorities for trade, transport and supplies. • They also used water‑rights (canals criss‑crossing the valley) as a justification for zig‑zagging lines: “This canal taps off into Uzbek SSR, so let’s give that bend of land to Uzbekistan, then loop back into Kyrgyz.”
3. The Enclave Patchwork • Uzbek exclaves inside Kyrgyzstan (e.g. Sokh, Shohimardon) • Tajik exclave inside Kyrgyzstan (Vorukh) • Kyrgyz exclave inside Uzbekistan (Barak) These tiny pockets (sometimes just a few square kilometers) were never a big deal when they were “merely” internal Soviet boundaries. After 1991 they became international - and a source of chronic headaches for border control, road access, customs, and local residents.
4. The “Panhandle” Corridors • Look up at Tashkent: the Uzbek SSR was given a long, narrow finger of territory reaching northeast, separating southern Kazakhstan from the rest of Kyrgyzstan. That’s why today the Tashkent–Shymkent railway (green dashed line) crosses Kazakh or Kyrgyz land in odd little spurts.
5. Why It Looks “Insane” Today • Once internal lines, these borders weren’t designed to be barriers. They cut through irrigation ditches, farmland, even villages - and relied on Soviet authorities to manage the flows of people and goods across them. • After 1991, those lines hardened into international borders. No longer easy to cross on a whim (or in a tractor), they now require passports, visas, checkpoints - turning a 2 km walk across a field into an odyssey involving customs forms and border guards.
⸻
In short: what looks like an absurd, arbitrary tangle of frontiers is really the legacy of Stalin‑era border‑drawing in one of the Soviet Union’s most complex, multi‑ethnic regions—lines that never anticipated becoming impenetrable international boundaries.
Ah, you mean you asked ChatGPT
The Soviet Union really fucked with Central Asia. Until visiting Kazakhstan’s national museum yesterday I had no idea they experienced a famine in the 30s which killed MORE THAN A THIRD of all Kazakh people
1.5-2m victims, IIRC
It is amazing Russia is not MORE hated than it is
We also have the Bengal Famine of 1943 which killed anywhere from 1.5 million to 3 million people. Should we be more hated?
Who the fuck mapped out the frontiers of central Central Asia?
LOOK AT IT
It must have been Stalin, on acid. And meth
Not sure. May have been Slartibartfast. He did Norway.
I asked a friend who’s a Soviet expert
“The tangled borders you’re seeing are not medieval relics or lines of actual mountains, but the product of Soviet‑era “national delimitation” in the 1920s–30s, frozen into international frontiers in 1991. Here’s what happened:
1. The Fergana Valley’s Ethnic Patchwork • The Fergana Valley (center of your map) is one of the most densely populated - and ethnically mixed—areas in Central Asia. Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Tajiks (and even minorities of Russians, Karakalpaks, etc.) live intermingled down to the village level.
• When the USSR drew internal republic borders, they tried to give each “titular nationality” a share of good land and water. In practice that meant slicing through villages, fields and irrigation channels to achieve a rough ethnic balance.
2. Divide‑and‑Rule Delimitation • Moscow’s planners deliberately created convoluted boundaries (and even a handful of enclaves and exclaves) so that no single republic was too compact or self‑sufficient - thus keeping them dependent on central Soviet authorities for trade, transport and supplies. • They also used water‑rights (canals criss‑crossing the valley) as a justification for zig‑zagging lines: “This canal taps off into Uzbek SSR, so let’s give that bend of land to Uzbekistan, then loop back into Kyrgyz.”
3. The Enclave Patchwork • Uzbek exclaves inside Kyrgyzstan (e.g. Sokh, Shohimardon) • Tajik exclave inside Kyrgyzstan (Vorukh) • Kyrgyz exclave inside Uzbekistan (Barak) These tiny pockets (sometimes just a few square kilometers) were never a big deal when they were “merely” internal Soviet boundaries. After 1991 they became international - and a source of chronic headaches for border control, road access, customs, and local residents.
4. The “Panhandle” Corridors • Look up at Tashkent: the Uzbek SSR was given a long, narrow finger of territory reaching northeast, separating southern Kazakhstan from the rest of Kyrgyzstan. That’s why today the Tashkent–Shymkent railway (green dashed line) crosses Kazakh or Kyrgyz land in odd little spurts.
5. Why It Looks “Insane” Today • Once internal lines, these borders weren’t designed to be barriers. They cut through irrigation ditches, farmland, even villages - and relied on Soviet authorities to manage the flows of people and goods across them. • After 1991, those lines hardened into international borders. No longer easy to cross on a whim (or in a tractor), they now require passports, visas, checkpoints - turning a 2 km walk across a field into an odyssey involving customs forms and border guards.
⸻
In short: what looks like an absurd, arbitrary tangle of frontiers is really the legacy of Stalin‑era border‑drawing in one of the Soviet Union’s most complex, multi‑ethnic regions—lines that never anticipated becoming impenetrable international boundaries.
Ah, you mean you asked ChatGPT
The Soviet Union really fucked with Central Asia. Until visiting Kazakhstan’s national museum yesterday I had no idea they experienced a famine in the 30s which killed MORE THAN A THIRD of all Kazakh people
1.5-2m victims, IIRC
It is amazing Russia is not MORE hated than it is
We also have the Bengal Famine of 1943 which killed anywhere from 1.5 million to 3 million people. Should we be more hated?
“Russia” also destroyed Kazakhstan’s mighty Aral Sea and made a large chunk of the country lethally uninhabitable (to this day) due to indiscriminate nuclear testing at Semipalatinsk
Comments
Every good drama I've seen has had comparably farcical situations.
The West Wing was a serious drama and had many such absurd storylines at times, because absurd things can and do happen.
Or if you want a British example other than TTOI, what about a Cabinet Minister getting pulled over by the cops for being inebriated then becoming Prime Minister because the Home Secretary got pulled over by the cops for being inebriated? Don't worry too much about how the sausage is made, just ensure its not a Eurosausage.
I also think Kevin Whateley, James Grout and Peter Woodthorpe as supports were really good too.
He perfected the upper class, camp bully.
"So Big Law has just discovered what it should have known all along: Giving Trump what he wants doesn’t buy you lenient treatment. All it does is signal weakness, which leads to even more onerous demands."
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/law-firms-trade-wars-and-the-weakness
Always Jack, although as I drove I should have been the driver.
Our mate Soapy, so named after a Wilfred Hyde-white character in a Peter Sellers film was named Daniel’s after John Alkin’s character Tom Daniels
Appreciate this sounds shite but these were great days. Happy days and I loved them and when we meet up we just talk about them. Nostalgia isn’t what it was. But it’s great.
Alkin left acting and married Kenny Everett’s ex wife and got into tantric healing, or something similar.
Plus the Foreign Secretary was some kind of economic fraudster and the Chancellor had apparently been shagging anything with a pulse including those potentially compromised by foreign governments.
When you consider the series ended with Hacker blackmailing the Cabinet Secretary to lie in order to protect him, and the former PM quitting in rather unusual circumstances, it makes you question whether the unnamed opposition would have been the better choice.
Madness.
Albeit rather slow.
https://x.com/renaudcamus/status/1912916580876398951
Oh oh, latest news : “Your presence in the UK is not considered to be conducive to the public good... ” — interdiction d’accès.
I do think it could easily lose a couple of episode and not be any worse off.
Great cast though.
I'm happy to blame May for a lot, but she escapes on that one.
The plethora of counter-examples that have been broadcast in political dramas that are equivalent show that you both could make it up, and if pitching the idea could be taken seriously and have the idea filmed and broadcast and potentially spoken about years or decades later.
That's as good as my insight gets on this subject. Sorry.
Also Murder Rooms, which I managed to grab from YouTube a couple of years ago.
Not sure why so many are in hotels now when previous governments, both red and blue, were happy to see asylum seekers destitute and homeless.
I wonder if this is another stage in the housing crisis and lack of supply. There's such a large deficit of housing that the government can't secure even the lowest quality housing for asylum seekers who are at a pre-decision stage, and so they have to turn to hotels.
Housing theory of everything again. Has the newish government made any progress on that yet?
- Boris, 2003.
He's very rich.
I suspect Farage et al will end up in the poorhouse if they lose this case.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/EMbc0xdqK0E
As I say - to my eye it looks a bit fake, as are quite a few of the stories on GB News.
(Historians- has Nigel ever gone up against someone as proud and as rich as Lowe before?)
Cue.
(/LuckyGuy1983)
New England cricket tops for 2025.
They’re not brilliant.
I never realised that Wodehouse had active travel debates in his books.
Here's Mr Spode vs Mr Toad (in the form of, I think, Gussy Finknottle.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWRwbsGVNCc
https://youtu.be/5Wa5CJMUIyQ?t=563
Trump: "Jimmy Carter died a happy man. You know why? Because he wasn't the worst president. Joe Biden was."
Re Kemi at PMQs, it is becoming harder to believe CCHQ is not deliberately undermining her. Every week we see the same mistakes. The long, rambling, multi-subject questions that allow Starmer to choose which part to answer. The central attacks on things that started under her own government. Repeating the same questions rather than having six different ones. Failing to alter course after Starmer's answers. This is not just due to her; there will be a team preparing her for PMQs and doing so implausibly badly.
Probably not.
The Guardian revealed this year Kendall was particularly interested in proposals to boost the incomes of parents of children under five, which is likely to cost less than the £3.6bn it would take to remove the cap altogether.
Officials are looking at a suggestion promoted by the Fabian Society thinktank to increase universal credit payments for parents of babies and toddlers.
The group found that ministers could reduce child poverty by 280,000 by doubling the child element of universal credit for those with children under one, while raising it by 50% for those with children between one and four. Doing so would give parents of babies an extra £293 per month, and those of toddlers an extra £146 per month, at a cost of £2.4bn a year.
Alternatively, increasing the payment by £20 a week for those with babies and £10 a week for those with toddlers would lift 80,000 children out of poverty at a cost of £715m a year.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/apr/17/ministers-avoid-labour-rebellion-disability-cuts
LOOK AT IT
It must have been Stalin, on acid. And meth
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redcap_(TV_series)
Worth a go if you can find it. Very much of it's time - but like quite a few series around then like "Public Eye" - quite telling of the concerns when it was written.
Just spitballing here.
That's Kemi's fault too - she should have gone through that place like a dose of salts when she arrived.
https://youtu.be/KUDjRZ30SNo?si=P-vgjfYt4tejlUCO
Much of it is to with irrigation of the cotton industry.
“The tangled borders you’re seeing are not medieval relics or lines of actual mountains, but the product of Soviet‑era “national delimitation” in the 1920s–30s, frozen into international frontiers in 1991. Here’s what happened:
1. The Fergana Valley’s Ethnic Patchwork
• The Fergana Valley (center of your map) is one of the most densely populated - and ethnically mixed—areas in Central Asia. Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Tajiks (and even minorities of Russians, Karakalpaks, etc.) live intermingled down to the village level.
• When the USSR drew internal republic borders, they tried to give each “titular nationality” a share of good land and water. In practice that meant slicing through villages, fields and irrigation channels to achieve a rough ethnic balance.
2. Divide‑and‑Rule Delimitation
• Moscow’s planners deliberately created convoluted boundaries (and even a handful of enclaves and exclaves) so that no single republic was too compact or self‑sufficient - thus keeping them dependent on central Soviet authorities for trade, transport and supplies.
• They also used water‑rights (canals criss‑crossing the valley) as a justification for zig‑zagging lines: “This canal taps off into Uzbek SSR, so let’s give that bend of land to Uzbekistan, then loop back into Kyrgyz.”
3. The Enclave Patchwork
• Uzbek exclaves inside Kyrgyzstan (e.g. Sokh, Shohimardon)
• Tajik exclave inside Kyrgyzstan (Vorukh)
• Kyrgyz exclave inside Uzbekistan (Barak)
These tiny pockets (sometimes just a few square kilometers) were never a big deal when they were “merely” internal Soviet boundaries. After 1991 they became international - and a source of chronic headaches for border control, road access, customs, and local residents.
4. The “Panhandle” Corridors
• Look up at Tashkent: the Uzbek SSR was given a long, narrow finger of territory reaching northeast, separating southern Kazakhstan from the rest of Kyrgyzstan. That’s why today the Tashkent–Shymkent railway (green dashed line) crosses Kazakh or Kyrgyz land in odd little spurts.
5. Why It Looks “Insane” Today
• Once internal lines, these borders weren’t designed to be barriers. They cut through irrigation ditches, farmland, even villages - and relied on Soviet authorities to manage the flows of people and goods across them.
• After 1991, those lines hardened into international borders. No longer easy to cross on a whim (or in a tractor), they now require passports, visas, checkpoints - turning a 2 km walk across a field into an odyssey involving customs forms and border guards.
⸻
In short: what looks like an absurd, arbitrary tangle of frontiers is really the legacy of Stalin‑era border‑drawing in one of the Soviet Union’s most complex, multi‑ethnic regions—lines that never anticipated becoming impenetrable international boundaries.
@Leon can advise - he is in a 1950s bubble at present
@Leon can advise - he is in a 1950s bubble at present
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_Man_(TV_series)
"John Shrapnel as Morse and Robert Glenister as Lewis". You can do worse, cast-wise.
**Edit: obviously, the BBC have pulled them from the iplayer due to the 100mb or so of storage being beyond them.
1.5-2m victims, IIRC
It is amazing Russia is not MORE hated than it is
But the ways that Badenoch fails at PMQs were pretty forseeable. Too plugged into the rightwing social media sphere, and too sure of her rightness to want to course-correct.