A poll that tells us nothing more than 41% of Americans are f******' headers!
41% is near down to the GOP core though, 41% of Americans even voted for Bob Dole over Bill Clinton in 1996 and that was the worst defeat the Republicans have had in a presidential election in the last 30 years
Can somebody explain the appeal of Andy Burnham? He just seems like an even worse Keir Starmer in every way.
He's less obviously departed from traditional Labour values - help for poorer people, higher taxes to finance the help, etc. While there's a market for Starmerist thinking - in particular, taxes unchanged as an article of faith - it's not where most members are.
Burnham ran for the leadership, had a lacklustre campaign devoid of ideas, and lost to Corbyn.
Enough said.
He still beat Cooper and Kendall to be runner up.
Had Burnham won the Labour leadership in 2015 he may well have beaten May's Tories in 2017 and won most seats and become PM.
Corbyn however fell short despite gains and was heavily beaten in 2019 and probably cost Labour at least an extra 5-7 years out of power as a result
Had Burnham been Labour leader it is unlikely (a) that there would have been an election in 2017 or (b) that May would have campaigned on anything controversial.
Can somebody explain the appeal of Andy Burnham? He just seems like an even worse Keir Starmer in every way.
He's less obviously departed from traditional Labour values - help for poorer people, higher taxes to finance the help, etc. While there's a market for Starmerist thinking - in particular, taxes unchanged as an article of faith - it's not where most members are.
Burnham ran for the leadership, had a lacklustre campaign devoid of ideas, and lost to Corbyn.
Enough said.
He still beat Cooper and Kendall to be runner up.
Had Burnham won the Labour leadership in 2015 he may well have beaten May's Tories in 2017 and won most seats and become PM.
Corbyn however fell short despite gains and was heavily beaten in 2019 and probably cost Labour at least an extra 5-7 years out of power as a result
Had Burnham been Labour leader it is unlikely (a) that there would have been an election in 2017 or (b) that May would have campaigned on anything controversial.
Reading a thread on all that the late Pope did for humanity. Compassion, humility, joy. Francis was woke.
Happily now we can have people seeking a “MAGA pope”. A pope who can shout damnation onto people because of their sexuality and perspectives on society. A pope who can take God’s authority and say it how angry white men think God would want it, especially when you set aside all that Jesus woke DEI stuff.
The world is going to miss Francis a lot.
Calling the Pope "Woke" further demonstrates how meaningless the word has become.
That said, he was better than most Popes, though that is a pretty low bar.
Thank you for writing this header. I've not read a description of Hyperliberalism before. It seems that like Neoliberalism, Hyperliberalism has got nothing to do with Liberty, or "Liberalism". Liberalism is about liberty of course, but not just my liberty, or the 'our' liberty of an in group. It is the belief in the liberty even of those we disagree with.
I liked the description of Classical Liberalism as "agreeing to disagree". It is born from the idea that everyone should have the liberty to their own belief, even if I disagree. Apply Voltare's maxim on free speech to liberty, then contrast with Woke ideology. 'I may disagree profoundly with what you believe, but I will defend your liberty to believe it, act on it, and express it' vs 'You can't believe that, you can only believe this, or we'll call you a hater, a bigot and a phobe'. If Woke is genuinely an expression of Hyperliberalism, then Hyperliberalism just isn't Liberal.
That isn't what "Woke" means.
"Woke" means being aware of structural inequalities in society, particularly in relation to characteristics such as ethnicity.
I think "Hyperliberalism" is an equally useless term as it also is made up as a straw man. So I don't think it a useful concept.
You are the quintessence of Woke. One of the most peculiar aspects of Woke people is that they pompously deny it exists, even as they exude it
You’re a vain and silly man. You’re also probably decent, upstanding, intelligent and honest - and many other good things
Can somebody explain the appeal of Andy Burnham? He just seems like an even worse Keir Starmer in every way.
He's less obviously departed from traditional Labour values - help for poorer people, higher taxes to finance the help, etc. While there's a market for Starmerist thinking - in particular, taxes unchanged as an article of faith - it's not where most members are.
Burnham ran for the leadership, had a lacklustre campaign devoid of ideas, and lost to Corbyn.
Enough said.
How many people even moderately into politics remember the details of a party leadership campaign a decade ago though (enough to have an opinion on whether Burnham acquitted himself well or badly in it)? There's plenty of scope for people to have forgotten about that and to be evaluating Burnham on his current stances and media appearances.
In Trumpworld, the USA's neighbours may need a form of nuclear umbrella from somewhere, or it's own deterrent, to make the USA stay within their own border. Is that too extreme a thought?
Greenland's new prime minister has said the island is not a "piece of property that can be bought", in response to Donald Trump's repeated calls for the US to take control of the autonomous Danish territory.
On a visit to Copenhagen on Sunday, Jens-Frederick Nielsen said Greenland and Denmark must stand together in the face of "disrespectful" US rhetoric.
He was speaking alongside Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in what has been viewed as another show of unity between the two leaders.
Thank you for writing this header. I've not read a description of Hyperliberalism before. It seems that like Neoliberalism, Hyperliberalism has got nothing to do with Liberty, or "Liberalism". Liberalism is about liberty of course, but not just my liberty, or the 'our' liberty of an in group. It is the belief in the liberty even of those we disagree with.
I liked the description of Classical Liberalism as "agreeing to disagree". It is born from the idea that everyone should have the liberty to their own belief, even if I disagree. Apply Voltare's maxim on free speech to liberty, then contrast with Woke ideology. 'I may disagree profoundly with what you believe, but I will defend your liberty to believe it, act on it, and express it' vs 'You can't believe that, you can only believe this, or we'll call you a hater, a bigot and a phobe'. If Woke is genuinely an expression of Hyperliberalism, then Hyperliberalism just isn't Liberal.
That isn't what "Woke" means.
"Woke" means being aware of structural inequalities in society, particularly in relation to characteristics such as ethnicity.
I think "Hyperliberalism" is an equally useless term as it also is made up as a straw man. So I don't think it a useful concept.
No, that's just what you want it to mean.
What you want it to still mean is perhaps more fair.
Yes, language evolves. And it's important — even necessary — to "wake-up" to the fact that others often face challenges you might not fully appreciate, and to genuinely try to see the world from their perspective. But that doesn't mean you must blindly accept rigid, ideological policy solutions in response. Which is what the Wokeists seems to demand.
One vital point that's almost never discussed is the role of stable, hard-working nuclear families in creating strong outcomes — probably because this truth cuts against core liberal assumptions and risks sounding "judgmental." Yet it explains why Chinese and Indian families, who often emphasise these values, consistently outperform not just minority groups but even White families — while WWC, travellers, and Black families - the ones most likely to have split or broken family - often struggle most. This uncomfortable fact doesn't fit the cultural marxist narrative currently in vogue where structural racism must explain everything, and 'White Privilege' accounts for the lot.
Today’s hyperliberals have unknowingly aligned themselves with cultural marxists — are uninterested in the evidence, and seem oblivious to the consequences.
It's by no means the defininition of "woke", but the "uninterested in the evidence" is the key part of the mind set that fuels the culture war. Blaming racism for all the world's ills while analyses show that controlling for affluence is often all that is needed to explain differential outcomes, or John Oliver trying to assert that men have no advantage over women in sport. The repeated assertions as unquestionable of things that can easily be rebutted makes intelligent debate impossible. I certainly have more than a few beams in my own eye, but I try to extract them when someone shows convincing evidence.
"John Oliver trying to assert that men have no advantage over women in sport" - source? because I heard him just the other day explicitly saying the opposite.
It would be very disappointing if someone complained about other people being uninterested in evidence, and in the sane post made a (fairly implausible) claim without being able to back it up with any evidence. Losing my faith in PB.com
Can somebody explain the appeal of Andy Burnham? He just seems like an even worse Keir Starmer in every way.
He's less obviously departed from traditional Labour values - help for poorer people, higher taxes to finance the help, etc. While there's a market for Starmerist thinking - in particular, taxes unchanged as an article of faith - it's not where most members are.
Burnham ran for the leadership, had a lacklustre campaign devoid of ideas, and lost to Corbyn.
Enough said.
He still beat Cooper and Kendall to be runner up.
Had Burnham won the Labour leadership in 2015 he may well have beaten May's Tories in 2017 and won most seats and become PM.
Corbyn however fell short despite gains and was heavily beaten in 2019 and probably cost Labour at least an extra 5-7 years out of power as a result
Had Burnham been Labour leader it is unlikely (a) that there would have been an election in 2017 or (b) that May would have campaigned on anything controversial.
I think Burnham would have lost in 2017.
Both the party and the country wanted a change from the staleness of the New Labour project which was running on empty.
Corbyn caught the Zeitgeist in the post 2015 leadership contest because he was a clear break from the Blair/Brown years. Similar in 2017 when he energised the campaign and a lot of disenchanted voters. He offered something different from any other politician, and then as now people were craving change. Left Populism can be as intoxicating as the right version.
Can somebody explain the appeal of Andy Burnham? He just seems like an even worse Keir Starmer in every way.
He's less obviously departed from traditional Labour values - help for poorer people, higher taxes to finance the help, etc. While there's a market for Starmerist thinking - in particular, taxes unchanged as an article of faith - it's not where most members are.
Burnham ran for the leadership, had a lacklustre campaign devoid of ideas, and lost to Corbyn.
Enough said.
He still beat Cooper and Kendall to be runner up.
Had Burnham won the Labour leadership in 2015 he may well have beaten May's Tories in 2017 and won most seats and become PM.
Corbyn however fell short despite gains and was heavily beaten in 2019 and probably cost Labour at least an extra 5-7 years out of power as a result
Had Burnham been Labour leader it is unlikely (a) that there would have been an election in 2017 or (b) that May would have campaigned on anything controversial.
I think Burnham would have lost in 2017.
Both the party and the country wanted a change from the staleness of the New Labour project which was running on empty.
Corbyn caught the Zeitgeist in the post 2015 leadership contest because he was a clear break from the Blair/Brown years. Similar in 2017 when he energised the campaign and a lot of disenchanted voters. He offered something different from any other politician, and then as now people were craving change. Left Populism can be as intoxicating as the right version.
On the flip side, he wouldn't have energised people to vote against him in the way that Corbyn did- even in 2017.
May-Burnham, whenever it happened, seems likely to have been the electoral equivalent of Reading vs. Blackpool on a wet weeknight in October.
On topic, a few months ago I criticised “The Traitors” and said I didn’t see the reason for completing season 2, as it felt like a rehash of the excellent season 1, and I knew what was gonna happen
How wrong can you be? Stuck for something to watch out here in Bishkek, I returned to season 2 of The Traitors, from where I left it (around episode 5). OMFG it’s superb. Reality TV at its best. Pure drama, pure human theatre, so so clever
That thread just highlights the problem @Leon has been saying for a while about BlueSky.
All the comments are just everyone agreeing with each other.
Doesn't X demonstrate a similar opposite symmetry? X is all about Trump good, Dems bad. Woke bad, racism good. Israel good, Palestinians bad, Russia good, Zelenskyy bad.
Indeed: the problem is that the town hall of Twitter splintered. It used to be that you got all political voices there. Now you should see the vitriol lashed out to people who (for example) point out that Russia invaded Ukraine.
And therefore people of a certain political persuasion chose to leave.
Pretty much any criticism of Blue Sky is also true of Twitter, just from the opposite political point of view. (With the exception, of course, that Elon is quite happy to silence right wing voices too, if they have the temerity to argue with him in public.)
There was an element of "I'm too pure to dirty myself here" about those who left X for bluesky though. Typical centrist behaviour really
The problem with the right’s endless wailing and gnashing against woke is this. Practically everyone agrees that the left have gone way too far. Chest feeding instead of breastfeeding was given to me as one example of stupid.
Problem is that instead of “let’s stop saying stupid” the right give the impression that they want to go back to the good old days of being a twat to people for their crime of not being white male christian rich enough for them.
One other thing- there is a generational aspect to this.
Not everyone pushing back against woke hyperliberalism is a disgruntled baby boomer who hasn't taken a back seat ever in their life and resents being expected to now...
... but an awful lot are.
Nah, that's a very old trope and just a bit of convenient ad hominem.
Look at how this is affecting and polarising Gen Z, and the toxic effect on boys.
On topic, a few months ago I criticised “The Traitors” and said I didn’t see the reason for completing season 2, as it felt like a rehash of the excellent season 1, and I knew what was gonna happen
How wrong can you be? Stuck for something to watch out here in Bishkek, I returned to season 2 of The Traitors, from where I left it (around episode 5). OMFG it’s superb. Reality TV at its best. Pure drama, pure human theatre, so so clever
Thank you for writing this header. I've not read a description of Hyperliberalism before. It seems that like Neoliberalism, Hyperliberalism has got nothing to do with Liberty, or "Liberalism". Liberalism is about liberty of course, but not just my liberty, or the 'our' liberty of an in group. It is the belief in the liberty even of those we disagree with.
I liked the description of Classical Liberalism as "agreeing to disagree". It is born from the idea that everyone should have the liberty to their own belief, even if I disagree. Apply Voltare's maxim on free speech to liberty, then contrast with Woke ideology. 'I may disagree profoundly with what you believe, but I will defend your liberty to believe it, act on it, and express it' vs 'You can't believe that, you can only believe this, or we'll call you a hater, a bigot and a phobe'. If Woke is genuinely an expression of Hyperliberalism, then Hyperliberalism just isn't Liberal.
That isn't what "Woke" means.
"Woke" means being aware of structural inequalities in society, particularly in relation to characteristics such as ethnicity.
I think "Hyperliberalism" is an equally useless term as it also is made up as a straw man. So I don't think it a useful concept.
"Woke" goes beyond an awareness of structural inequalities. It's thinking that all inequalities are caused by structural discrimination, even if you can't explain how. This perceived structural discrimination is then used to justify genuine structural discrimination in the other direction in order to level the playing field.
And then rips society apart, and leads to Trump.
Nope. Voters have agency. No one is responsible for Trump apart from those who voted for him. The same goes for Starmer.
We are all responsible for choices offered to us in the society in which we live.
With all due respect that is bollocks.
No. It isn't bollocks.
The actions of hyperliberals are creating resentment which is absolutely creating a ready constituency for Trump. The resistance to this plain and simple fact I find fascinating: you are helping create the very monster you despise. Probably because you don't want to fact up to it.
If you listened to people more and dropped the dogmatic policy his ravings would have no currency.
I'm nothing like a hyperliberal. I don't believe Edward Colston should be thrown into Bristol Docks or Cecil Rhodes pulled from Oxford University buildings. I am not calling for Whiteladies Road or Blackboy Hill to be cleansed of their colours. I don't want to give reparations to Africa or the West Indies (if they deserve reparations so do I for my forefathers who worked in the coal mines of South Wales for poverty wages).
On the other hand I accept I have benefitted from white priviledge, simply for being left alone by the police whilst walking or driving on the highways and byways of Britain. I don't belive history should be rewritten in either direction, should Trump be removing all traces of Colin Powell from the Pentagon because he was black? On a visit to English Harbour I asked an Antiguan guide why she never mentioned slavery, she responded by saying "why would I generate an argument with my American customers who believe slaves were merely indentured servants, I need the tips".
So the stuff you don't like ( and neither do I) about unfair positive discrimination, and rewriting history to make "white British" (or white Americans) look guilty also works in the other direction. Roll all the playing fields flat and I am cool with that. But my liberalism didn't make Trump beatup on black and coloured people. He does that because he's a racist like his father and probably always was.
Thank you. I appreciate you showing some balance in this post, and I mean that sincerely.
As a short diversion, here is an image in the occasional political landscape quiz.
Where is the (very divisive) politics in this picture I took this morning? Location is in South Yorkshire.
Orgreave?
Not Orgreave, but the right idea.
Many old woodlands near pit villages have stands of even aged coppice about 40 years old (Sycamore in this case).
The original trees were cut by the miners for heating as of course they had no coal or income.
It is quite an obvious feature when you look for it. I don't know how much longer this piece of history will remain visible but for the moment it is politics written in bluebells.
On topic, a few months ago I criticised “The Traitors” and said I didn’t see the reason for completing season 2, as it felt like a rehash of the excellent season 1, and I knew what was gonna happen
How wrong can you be? Stuck for something to watch out here in Bishkek, I returned to season 2 of The Traitors, from where I left it (around episode 5). OMFG it’s superb. Reality TV at its best. Pure drama, pure human theatre, so so clever
And well done Harry. Legend, yourself
In one of your brief stays in the home country will you be attending the Proms Traitors performance, a ‘spine-tingling celebration of musical treachery’, or do you think it will be a load of low-brow, populist shite?
John Gray could bore the paint off a wall. He has absolutely no clue about what's going on in society, other than having detected that something is - big deal! And if it wasn't so sad that he thinks of himself as a deep thinker it would be funny. Give him a wide berth and everything will be okay. It wouldn't even be worth bothering working out how one might try to wake the moron up a little, because the effort would be futile. The thought that some people at dinner parties discuss his scribblings...makes me glad I don't go to dinner parties. I've always viewed him the way one might regard the village idiot in an academic faculty.
John Gray could bore the paint off a wall. He has absolutely no clue about what's going on in society, other than having detected that something is - big deal! And if it wasn't so sad that he thinks of himself as a deep thinker it would be funny. Give him a wide berth and everything will be okay. It wouldn't even be worth bothering working out how one might try to wake the moron up a little, because the effort would be futile. The thought that some people at dinner parties discuss his scribblings...makes me glad I don't go to dinner parties.
Your comment suggests you get invited to dinner parties, which is ridiculous to start with. No one has dinner parties anymore anyway
The fathers of two of the young girls murdered in the Southport massacre have just completed the London marathon in memory of their daughters. I am truly in awe of these brave men - Sergio Aguiar (father of Alice) and David Stancombe (father of Elsie).
John Gray could bore the paint off a wall. He has absolutely no clue about what's going on in society, other than having detected that something is - big deal! And if it wasn't so sad that he thinks of himself as a deep thinker it would be funny. Give him a wide berth and everything will be okay. It wouldn't even be worth bothering working out how one might try to wake the moron up a little, because the effort would be futile. The thought that some people at dinner parties discuss his scribblings...makes me glad I don't go to dinner parties.
Your comment suggests you get invited to dinner parties, which is ridiculous to start with. No one has dinner parties anymore anyway
Reading a thread on all that the late Pope did for humanity. Compassion, humility, joy. Francis was woke.
Happily now we can have people seeking a “MAGA pope”. A pope who can shout damnation onto people because of their sexuality and perspectives on society. A pope who can take God’s authority and say it how angry white men think God would want it, especially when you set aside all that Jesus woke DEI stuff.
The world is going to miss Francis a lot.
Though there is a strong possibility the next Pope will be black African or Filipino
An even stronger possibility I suspect, that the next Pope will be both male and Catholic.
John Gray could bore the paint off a wall. He has absolutely no clue about what's going on in society, other than having detected that something is - big deal! And if it wasn't so sad that he thinks of himself as a deep thinker it would be funny. Give him a wide berth and everything will be okay. It wouldn't even be worth bothering working out how one might try to wake the moron up a little, because the effort would be futile. The thought that some people at dinner parties discuss his scribblings...makes me glad I don't go to dinner parties.
Your comment suggests you get invited to dinner parties, which is ridiculous to start with. No one has dinner parties anymore anyway
Errr.
Yes they do.
They are now “supper parties”. Get with the lingo, daddio
John Gray could bore the paint off a wall. He has absolutely no clue about what's going on in society, other than having detected that something is - big deal! And if it wasn't so sad that he thinks of himself as a deep thinker it would be funny. Give him a wide berth and everything will be okay. It wouldn't even be worth bothering working out how one might try to wake the moron up a little, because the effort would be futile. The thought that some people at dinner parties discuss his scribblings...makes me glad I don't go to dinner parties.
Your comment suggests you get invited to dinner parties, which is ridiculous to start with. No one has dinner parties anymore anyway
Errr.
Yes they do.
They are now “supper parties”. Get with the lingo, daddio
Hmmm. I’m finding “Supper” is being used by the Hyacinth Buckets of the world to try and sound casually sophisticated. The cool cats are saying “night eating with friends and drinking” to distance themselves from hoi polloi moving onto their linguistic turf.
John Gray could bore the paint off a wall. He has absolutely no clue about what's going on in society, other than having detected that something is - big deal! And if it wasn't so sad that he thinks of himself as a deep thinker it would be funny. Give him a wide berth and everything will be okay. It wouldn't even be worth bothering working out how one might try to wake the moron up a little, because the effort would be futile. The thought that some people at dinner parties discuss his scribblings...makes me glad I don't go to dinner parties.
Your comment suggests you get invited to dinner parties, which is ridiculous to start with. No one has dinner parties anymore anyway
Errr.
Yes they do.
They are now “supper parties”. Get with the lingo, daddio
Evening. Host cooks food.
A bottle of wine per person, per course.
Who gives a shit what it’s called. Especially when we’ve got to the cheese.
John Gray could bore the paint off a wall. He has absolutely no clue about what's going on in society, other than having detected that something is - big deal! And if it wasn't so sad that he thinks of himself as a deep thinker it would be funny. Give him a wide berth and everything will be okay. It wouldn't even be worth bothering working out how one might try to wake the moron up a little, because the effort would be futile. The thought that some people at dinner parties discuss his scribblings...makes me glad I don't go to dinner parties.
Your comment suggests you get invited to dinner parties, which is ridiculous to start with. No one has dinner parties anymore anyway
Errr.
Yes they do.
They are now “supper parties”. Get with the lingo, daddio
Hmmm. I’m finding “Supper” is being used by the Hyacinth Buckets of the world to try and sound casually sophisticated. The cool cats are saying “night eating with friends and drinking” to distance themselves from hoi polloi moving onto their linguistic turf.
Don’t you live in Jersey? I’m not sure Jersey has ever been adjacent to “coolness”
John Gray could bore the paint off a wall. He has absolutely no clue about what's going on in society, other than having detected that something is - big deal! And if it wasn't so sad that he thinks of himself as a deep thinker it would be funny. Give him a wide berth and everything will be okay. It wouldn't even be worth bothering working out how one might try to wake the moron up a little, because the effort would be futile. The thought that some people at dinner parties discuss his scribblings...makes me glad I don't go to dinner parties.
Your comment suggests you get invited to dinner parties, which is ridiculous to start with. No one has dinner parties anymore anyway
Errr.
Yes they do.
They are now “supper parties”. Get with the lingo, daddio
Hmmm. I’m finding “Supper” is being used by the Hyacinth Buckets of the world to try and sound casually sophisticated. The cool cats are saying “night eating with friends and drinking” to distance themselves from hoi polloi moving onto their linguistic turf.
Don’t you live in Jersey? I’m not sure Jersey has ever been adjacent to “coolness”
We are cool because we never try and be cool. When has Camden ever produced anyone as cool as Charlie Hungerford or Jim Bergerac? And don’t give me Amy Winehouse, Lilly Langtry knocks her into a cocked hat.
Antony Beevor’s “Russia: Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921”
Extraordinary, lurid, vivid and brutal. I thought I basically knew the story. Turns out I knew 5%
The cruelty is mind-boggling, on both sides
One of the best books Ive read lately
The sheer mindless brutality and pointless slaughter are what stick with me. A war with no good guys.
It’s fascinating to read it - as I am - on the then-bloody periphery of the Russian Empire/USSR
I see it got sniffy reviews from some Russia specialists. ie they are jealous that Beevor has the novelist’s gift for telling detail and gripping narrative and thus makes v nice money. One reviewer complains that Beevor “ignores detail in favour of accessibility”
Antony Beevor’s “Russia: Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921”
Extraordinary, lurid, vivid and brutal. I thought I basically knew the story. Turns out I knew 5%
The cruelty is mind-boggling, on both sides
One of the best books Ive read lately
The sheer mindless brutality and pointless slaughter are what stick with me. A war with no good guys.
It’s fascinating to read it - as I am - on the then-bloody periphery of the Russian Empire/USSR
I see it got sniffy reviews from some Russia specialists. ie they are jealous that Beevor has the novelist’s gift for telling detail and gripping narrative and thus makes v nice money. One reviewer complains that Beevor “ignores detail in favour of accessibility”
Ive read other histories of the Russian Civil War, they mostly skip over the massacres and sadistic torture of innocent civilians. Beevor brings them all to light and in a way explain the screwed up mess which is the Soviet Union and modern Russia. The Nazis were treading a well worn path..
Reading a thread on all that the late Pope did for humanity. Compassion, humility, joy. Francis was woke.
Happily now we can have people seeking a “MAGA pope”. A pope who can shout damnation onto people because of their sexuality and perspectives on society. A pope who can take God’s authority and say it how angry white men think God would want it, especially when you set aside all that Jesus woke DEI stuff.
The world is going to miss Francis a lot.
Though there is a strong possibility the next Pope will be black African or Filipino
An even stronger possibility I suspect, that the next Pope will be both male and Catholic.
I am surprised that the sportsmen amongst us aren't betting on the *name* the new Pope will take. Guessing on the winner is surely futile (far too many candidates, for one thing) but the list of appropriate names is much smaller. I doubt if the new chap will take the name Kevin, or Dave, but what about Boniface, or Hadrian, or John-Paul? Or Georges-Ringo? Or Innocent? I understand that for things like the Grand National, amateur punters make their choice based on the nag's name - well, here's a Pontifical equivalent.
Antony Beevor’s “Russia: Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921”
Extraordinary, lurid, vivid and brutal. I thought I basically knew the story. Turns out I knew 5%
The cruelty is mind-boggling, on both sides
One of the best books Ive read lately
The sheer mindless brutality and pointless slaughter are what stick with me. A war with no good guys.
It’s fascinating to read it - as I am - on the then-bloody periphery of the Russian Empire/USSR
I see it got sniffy reviews from some Russia specialists. ie they are jealous that Beevor has the novelist’s gift for telling detail and gripping narrative and thus makes v nice money. One reviewer complains that Beevor “ignores detail in favour of accessibility”
I find Beevor gets the perfect balance of detail and narrative. I have never been overly interested in WW2 (find medieval history more interesting and WW1 more heart rending) but I bought a load of his books (you’ve got to support impoverished academic old boys who shunned the world of finance don’t you) and they are perfect.
I’m sure some dry historians get bent out of shape by him but then it’s up to them to up their game.
Antony Beevor’s “Russia: Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921”
Extraordinary, lurid, vivid and brutal. I thought I basically knew the story. Turns out I knew 5%
The cruelty is mind-boggling, on both sides
One of the best books Ive read lately
The sheer mindless brutality and pointless slaughter are what stick with me. A war with no good guys.
It’s fascinating to read it - as I am - on the then-bloody periphery of the Russian Empire/USSR
I see it got sniffy reviews from some Russia specialists. ie they are jealous that Beevor has the novelist’s gift for telling detail and gripping narrative and thus makes v nice money. One reviewer complains that Beevor “ignores detail in favour of accessibility”
I find Beevor gets the perfect balance of detail and narrative. I have never been overly interested in WW2 (find medieval history more interesting and WW1 more heart rending) but I bought a load of his books (you’ve got to support impoverished academic old boys who shunned the world of finance don’t you) and they are perfect.
I’m sure some dry historians get bent out of shape by him but then it’s up to them to up their game.
Historians are a notably bitchy bunch when irt comes to reviewing other historians' work, but none seem to be quite as bitchy as Military Historians (with the possible exception of Tudorbethans.)
This whole analysis of “woke” as being hyperliberal seems entirely at odds with the proponents of “woke”, who would have eschewed traditional liberalism and were working in a more socialist or Marxist tradition, or within Garveyism.
Economically is today's explosion at the Shahid Rajaee Port in Iran an event on the same level as the one at the Evangelos Florakis Naval Base in Cyprus in 2011, or does it compare more with the Port of Beirut explosion in 2020? Russia is sending assistance.
Antony Beevor’s “Russia: Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921”
Extraordinary, lurid, vivid and brutal. I thought I basically knew the story. Turns out I knew 5%
The cruelty is mind-boggling, on both sides
One of the best books Ive read lately
The sheer mindless brutality and pointless slaughter are what stick with me. A war with no good guys.
It’s fascinating to read it - as I am - on the then-bloody periphery of the Russian Empire/USSR
I see it got sniffy reviews from some Russia specialists. ie they are jealous that Beevor has the novelist’s gift for telling detail and gripping narrative and thus makes v nice money. One reviewer complains that Beevor “ignores detail in favour of accessibility”
I find Beevor gets the perfect balance of detail and narrative. I have never been overly interested in WW2 (find medieval history more interesting and WW1 more heart rending) but I bought a load of his books (you’ve got to support impoverished academic old boys who shunned the world of finance don’t you) and they are perfect.
I’m sure some dry historians get bent out of shape by him but then it’s up to them to up their game.
One of the bitchier reviews was in the FT from one “Catriona Kelly”. I’ve never heard of her so I looked her up. A dry old Woke husk of a feminist Russian-history academic, with a very posh background; I bet Beevor’s fluent male brilliance chews her up
She is responsible for earthquaking historical classics such as:
Refining Russia: Advice Literature, Polite Culture, and Gender from Catherine to Yeltsin (Oxford University Press, 2001)
And
Socialist Churches: Radical Secularization and the Preservation of the Past in Petrograd and Leningrad, 1918-1988, Soviet Art House: Lenfilm Studio under Brezhnev (Oxford University Press, 2021)
I bet she’s never written a single witty or poetic sentence in her stupid, pointless life. She probably goes to dinner parties with @bondegezou
As a short diversion, here is an image in the occasional political landscape quiz.
Where is the (very divisive) politics in this picture I took this morning? Location is in South Yorkshire.
Planning and infrastructure bill. Labour wants you to bulldoze that for profit.
Answer as above - this was about the miner's strike in the 1980s.
There is a pit tip next to this woodland which has been bulldozed for housing though - and some of the bulldozing has infringed on the edge of the wood. The developer owns the bit they have messed up but it will be a failure to meet planning conditions I would guess.
Nothing will be done, of course. Local Wildlife Sites have no real protection in law.
Neither the current Labour council nor the Reform one to come will be that bothered by such niceties.
As a short diversion, here is an image in the occasional political landscape quiz.
Where is the (very divisive) politics in this picture I took this morning? Location is in South Yorkshire.
Planning and infrastructure bill. Labour wants you to bulldoze that for profit.
Answer as above - this was about the miner's strike in the 1980s.
There is a pit tip next to this woodland which has been bulldozed for housing though - and some of the bulldozing has infringed on the edge of the wood. The developer owns the bit they have messed up but it will be a failure to meet planning conditions I would guess.
Nothing will be done, of course. Local Wildlife Sites have no real protection in law.
Neither the current Labour council nor the Reform one to come will be that bothered by such niceties.
I was there.
Glad to see we got something beautiful out of it. Cos it wasn’t any fun at the time. And every time I look back it seems crueler, stupider, worse.
Rather lazy first day by my holiday standards, only 18 miles walked today
I really wanted to stay a night in Saint Jean Pied de Port, so decided to split the journey there in two. I’m at quite a nice hotel in Atxissou (which I presume is pronounced something like a sneeze)
I’m right at the edge of the Pyrenees now, the picture is from the hotel car park
Antony Beevor’s “Russia: Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921”
Extraordinary, lurid, vivid and brutal. I thought I basically knew the story. Turns out I knew 5%
The cruelty is mind-boggling, on both sides
One of the best books Ive read lately
The sheer mindless brutality and pointless slaughter are what stick with me. A war with no good guys.
It’s fascinating to read it - as I am - on the then-bloody periphery of the Russian Empire/USSR
I see it got sniffy reviews from some Russia specialists. ie they are jealous that Beevor has the novelist’s gift for telling detail and gripping narrative and thus makes v nice money. One reviewer complains that Beevor “ignores detail in favour of accessibility”
I find Beevor gets the perfect balance of detail and narrative. I have never been overly interested in WW2 (find medieval history more interesting and WW1 more heart rending) but I bought a load of his books (you’ve got to support impoverished academic old boys who shunned the world of finance don’t you) and they are perfect.
I’m sure some dry historians get bent out of shape by him but then it’s up to them to up their game.
Historians are a notably bitchy bunch when irt comes to reviewing other historians' work, but none seem to be quite as bitchy as Military Historians (with the possible exception of Tudorbethans.)
What was Kissinger’s famous quote?
“Why is academic rivalry and office politics so brutal: because the stakes are so small”
Something like that. Poets are the same. Bitter lifelong feuds can erupt when someone wins the biannual Shrewsbury Poetry Prize of £35 and a bottle of mead
So everyone goes particularly mad when an actual bestselling historian steers into port: eg Antony Beevor, who doesn’t even need a ridiculous footling academic job to get by
Rather lazy first day by my holiday standards, only 18 miles walked today
I really wanted to stay a night in Saint Jean Pied de Port, so decided to split the journey there in two. I’m at quite a nice hotel in Atxissou (which I presume is pronounced something like a sneeze)
I’m right at the edge of the Pyrenees now, the picture is from the hotel car park
Eia Eia alala! Are you crossing the Basque Pyrenees?
Economically is today's explosion at the Shahid Rajaee Port in Iran an event on the same level as the one at the Evangelos Florakis Naval Base in Cyprus in 2011, or does it compare more with the Port of Beirut explosion in 2020? Russia is sending assistance.
Looks to have been a lower yield than Beirut. Which was the size of a small nuclear weapon.
Rather lazy first day by my holiday standards, only 18 miles walked today
I really wanted to stay a night in Saint Jean Pied de Port, so decided to split the journey there in two. I’m at quite a nice hotel in Atxissou (which I presume is pronounced something like a sneeze)
I’m right at the edge of the Pyrenees now, the picture is from the hotel car park
Eia Eia alala! Are you crossing the Basque Pyrenees?
Not crossing them, just joining up with where I got to last time. So I will have crossed them, just not in one go
I’ve ordered my dinner: Pyrenean trout gravadlax to start, and pork loin with some things I didn’t have time to look up before the lady came to take my order
Antony Beevor’s “Russia: Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921”
Extraordinary, lurid, vivid and brutal. I thought I basically knew the story. Turns out I knew 5%
The cruelty is mind-boggling, on both sides
One of the best books Ive read lately
The sheer mindless brutality and pointless slaughter are what stick with me. A war with no good guys.
It’s fascinating to read it - as I am - on the then-bloody periphery of the Russian Empire/USSR
I see it got sniffy reviews from some Russia specialists. ie they are jealous that Beevor has the novelist’s gift for telling detail and gripping narrative and thus makes v nice money. One reviewer complains that Beevor “ignores detail in favour of accessibility”
I find Beevor gets the perfect balance of detail and narrative. I have never been overly interested in WW2 (find medieval history more interesting and WW1 more heart rending) but I bought a load of his books (you’ve got to support impoverished academic old boys who shunned the world of finance don’t you) and they are perfect.
I’m sure some dry historians get bent out of shape by him but then it’s up to them to up their game.
"Old boys" in both senses.
What does Beevor say about the mad baron, Ungern-Sternberg?
U-S was possibly more of a lifelong headbanger than Gabriele D'Annunzio and therefore...coming to a Spectator column soon?
Some Estonians wanted to raise a statue to U-S, earlier this decade. Not sure whether they were of Baltic-German stock.
There is a danger extreme hyberliberalism and wokeism leads to a loss of national, religious and gender and family identity. In which case the rise of the strongman leader becomes necessary to restore order again.
Whereas the liberalism of Locke, who believed in liberty and limited government and basic rights and freedoms was also based on support for private property and experience and reason via empiricism (Locke buried near us in High Laver).
That seems a load of horse manure.
The 'strongman leader' is little to do with restoring order, and rather more about taking advantage of disorder - perceived or real - for their personal gain. They tend to foment disorder in order to take power.
John Gray could bore the paint off a wall. He has absolutely no clue about what's going on in society, other than having detected that something is - big deal! And if it wasn't so sad that he thinks of himself as a deep thinker it would be funny. Give him a wide berth and everything will be okay. It wouldn't even be worth bothering working out how one might try to wake the moron up a little, because the effort would be futile. The thought that some people at dinner parties discuss his scribblings...makes me glad I don't go to dinner parties.
Your comment suggests you get invited to dinner parties, which is ridiculous to start with. No one has dinner parties anymore anyway
I don't get invited to dinner parties. That suggestion was in your mind only.
What you wrote about Antony Beevor's book on the Russian civil war made me think maybe I should read it. (I'm interested in a few specific areas - the Makhnovists, Ungern-Sternberg, the Czech legion, anywhere in "war communism" where they are said to have abolished money, Gavril Miasnikov, etc., but not so much in the foreign interventions.) But if you rate Gray... hmmm ...
Rather lazy first day by my holiday standards, only 18 miles walked today
I really wanted to stay a night in Saint Jean Pied de Port, so decided to split the journey there in two. I’m at quite a nice hotel in Atxissou (which I presume is pronounced something like a sneeze)
I’m right at the edge of the Pyrenees now, the picture is from the hotel car park
Looks like the GR10 but that doesn't go through Lourdes and you've got a left turn to Montpellier at the end. Is this an actual GR route or your own confection. Hope the weather is kind to you on the higher levels.
Did the Grand St Bernard last year and hit the perfect week to do it. Good weather makes all the difference.
Antony Beevor’s “Russia: Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921”
Extraordinary, lurid, vivid and brutal. I thought I basically knew the story. Turns out I knew 5%
The cruelty is mind-boggling, on both sides
One of the best books Ive read lately
The sheer mindless brutality and pointless slaughter are what stick with me. A war with no good guys.
It’s fascinating to read it - as I am - on the then-bloody periphery of the Russian Empire/USSR
I see it got sniffy reviews from some Russia specialists. ie they are jealous that Beevor has the novelist’s gift for telling detail and gripping narrative and thus makes v nice money. One reviewer complains that Beevor “ignores detail in favour of accessibility”
Ive read other histories of the Russian Civil War, they mostly skip over the massacres and sadistic torture of innocent civilians. Beevor brings them all to light and in a way explain the screwed up mess which is the Soviet Union and modern Russia. The Nazis were treading a well worn path..
All revolutions are cruel and messy. Look at the much celebrated French one. Liberty, Egality, Fraternity ... and a whole heap of bloodlust.
Antony Beevor’s “Russia: Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921”
Extraordinary, lurid, vivid and brutal. I thought I basically knew the story. Turns out I knew 5%
The cruelty is mind-boggling, on both sides
One of the best books Ive read lately
The sheer mindless brutality and pointless slaughter are what stick with me. A war with no good guys.
It’s fascinating to read it - as I am - on the then-bloody periphery of the Russian Empire/USSR
I see it got sniffy reviews from some Russia specialists. ie they are jealous that Beevor has the novelist’s gift for telling detail and gripping narrative and thus makes v nice money. One reviewer complains that Beevor “ignores detail in favour of accessibility”
I find Beevor gets the perfect balance of detail and narrative. I have never been overly interested in WW2 (find medieval history more interesting and WW1 more heart rending) but I bought a load of his books (you’ve got to support impoverished academic old boys who shunned the world of finance don’t you) and they are perfect.
I’m sure some dry historians get bent out of shape by him but then it’s up to them to up their game.
One of the bitchier reviews was in the FT from one “Catriona Kelly”. I’ve never heard of her so I looked her up. A dry old Woke husk of a feminist Russian-history academic, with a very posh background; I bet Beevor’s fluent male brilliance chews her up
She is responsible for earthquaking historical classics such as:
Refining Russia: Advice Literature, Polite Culture, and Gender from Catherine to Yeltsin (Oxford University Press, 2001)
And
Socialist Churches: Radical Secularization and the Preservation of the Past in Petrograd and Leningrad, 1918-1988, Soviet Art House: Lenfilm Studio under Brezhnev (Oxford University Press, 2021)
I bet she’s never written a single witty or poetic sentence in her stupid, pointless life. She probably goes to dinner parties with @bondegezou
Titles like those raise my hopes that my own life has not been entirely wasted. At least I never spent time reading them.
Antony Beevor’s “Russia: Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921”
Extraordinary, lurid, vivid and brutal. I thought I basically knew the story. Turns out I knew 5%
The cruelty is mind-boggling, on both sides
One of the best books Ive read lately
The sheer mindless brutality and pointless slaughter are what stick with me. A war with no good guys.
It’s fascinating to read it - as I am - on the then-bloody periphery of the Russian Empire/USSR
I see it got sniffy reviews from some Russia specialists. ie they are jealous that Beevor has the novelist’s gift for telling detail and gripping narrative and thus makes v nice money. One reviewer complains that Beevor “ignores detail in favour of accessibility”
Ive read other histories of the Russian Civil War, they mostly skip over the massacres and sadistic torture of innocent civilians. Beevor brings them all to light and in a way explain the screwed up mess which is the Soviet Union and modern Russia. The Nazis were treading a well worn path..
All revolutions are cruel and messy. Look at the much celebrated French one. Liberty, Egality, Fraternity ... and a whole heap of bloodlust.
Britain had a slow motion revolution that left out bloodlust.
Antony Beevor’s “Russia: Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921”
Extraordinary, lurid, vivid and brutal. I thought I basically knew the story. Turns out I knew 5%
The cruelty is mind-boggling, on both sides
One of the best books Ive read lately
The sheer mindless brutality and pointless slaughter are what stick with me. A war with no good guys.
It’s fascinating to read it - as I am - on the then-bloody periphery of the Russian Empire/USSR
I see it got sniffy reviews from some Russia specialists. ie they are jealous that Beevor has the novelist’s gift for telling detail and gripping narrative and thus makes v nice money. One reviewer complains that Beevor “ignores detail in favour of accessibility”
Ive read other histories of the Russian Civil War, they mostly skip over the massacres and sadistic torture of innocent civilians. Beevor brings them all to light and in a way explain the screwed up mess which is the Soviet Union and modern Russia. The Nazis were treading a well worn path..
All revolutions are cruel and messy. Look at the much celebrated French one. Liberty, Egality, Fraternity ... and a whole heap of bloodlust.
Britain had a slow motion revolution that left out bloodlust.
This whole analysis of “woke” as being hyperliberal seems entirely at odds with the proponents of “woke”, who would have eschewed traditional liberalism and were working in a more socialist or Marxist tradition, or within Garveyism.
Load of wank, isn't it. BOF reactionary axe grinding.
Gray, I mean, not the flawless (apart from his free speech fetish) viewcode.
I'm reading Tom Sharpe's Indecent Exposure for the first time in 30 years, and for some reason it feels very appropriate for 2025 USA, Stephen Miller as Verkramp.
John Gray could bore the paint off a wall. He has absolutely no clue about what's going on in society, other than having detected that something is - big deal! And if it wasn't so sad that he thinks of himself as a deep thinker it would be funny. Give him a wide berth and everything will be okay. It wouldn't even be worth bothering working out how one might try to wake the moron up a little, because the effort would be futile. The thought that some people at dinner parties discuss his scribblings...makes me glad I don't go to dinner parties.
Your comment suggests you get invited to dinner parties, which is ridiculous to start with. No one has dinner parties anymore anyway
Errr.
Yes they do.
They are now “supper parties”. Get with the lingo, daddio
Do the men still throw their car keys into a fruit bowl dining table centre piece at supper parties for the ladies to retrieve in a lucky dip contest?
Antony Beevor’s “Russia: Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921”
Extraordinary, lurid, vivid and brutal. I thought I basically knew the story. Turns out I knew 5%
The cruelty is mind-boggling, on both sides
One of the best books Ive read lately
The sheer mindless brutality and pointless slaughter are what stick with me. A war with no good guys.
It’s fascinating to read it - as I am - on the then-bloody periphery of the Russian Empire/USSR
I see it got sniffy reviews from some Russia specialists. ie they are jealous that Beevor has the novelist’s gift for telling detail and gripping narrative and thus makes v nice money. One reviewer complains that Beevor “ignores detail in favour of accessibility”
Ive read other histories of the Russian Civil War, they mostly skip over the massacres and sadistic torture of innocent civilians. Beevor brings them all to light and in a way explain the screwed up mess which is the Soviet Union and modern Russia. The Nazis were treading a well worn path..
All revolutions are cruel and messy. Look at the much celebrated French one. Liberty, Egality, Fraternity ... and a whole heap of bloodlust.
Britain had a slow motion revolution that left out bloodlust.
I'd count the English Civil War as a revolution.
Even there, half the parliamentary side exited stage left when the King was executed. And wacking Kings was an old, established way of doing things.
John Gray could bore the paint off a wall. He has absolutely no clue about what's going on in society, other than having detected that something is - big deal! And if it wasn't so sad that he thinks of himself as a deep thinker it would be funny. Give him a wide berth and everything will be okay. It wouldn't even be worth bothering working out how one might try to wake the moron up a little, because the effort would be futile. The thought that some people at dinner parties discuss his scribblings...makes me glad I don't go to dinner parties.
Your comment suggests you get invited to dinner parties, which is ridiculous to start with. No one has dinner parties anymore anyway
Errr.
Yes they do.
They are now “supper parties”. Get with the lingo, daddio
Do the men still throw their car keys into a fruit bowl dining table centre piece at supper parties for the ladies to retrieve in a lucky dip contest?
Thank you for writing this header. I've not read a description of Hyperliberalism before. It seems that like Neoliberalism, Hyperliberalism has got nothing to do with Liberty, or "Liberalism". Liberalism is about liberty of course, but not just my liberty, or the 'our' liberty of an in group. It is the belief in the liberty even of those we disagree with.
I liked the description of Classical Liberalism as "agreeing to disagree". It is born from the idea that everyone should have the liberty to their own belief, even if I disagree. Apply Voltare's maxim on free speech to liberty, then contrast with Woke ideology. 'I may disagree profoundly with what you believe, but I will defend your liberty to believe it, act on it, and express it' vs 'You can't believe that, you can only believe this, or we'll call you a hater, a bigot and a phobe'. If Woke is genuinely an expression of Hyperliberalism, then Hyperliberalism just isn't Liberal.
That isn't what "Woke" means.
"Woke" means being aware of structural inequalities in society, particularly in relation to characteristics such as ethnicity.
I think "Hyperliberalism" is an equally useless term as it also is made up as a straw man. So I don't think it a useful concept.
"Woke" goes beyond an awareness of structural inequalities. It's thinking that all inequalities are caused by structural discrimination, even if you can't explain how. This perceived structural discrimination is then used to justify genuine structural discrimination in the other direction in order to level the playing field.
Do you gave any compelling evidence of that, or is it just an opinion ?
I'm reading Tom Sharpe's Indecent Exposure for the first time in 30 years, and for some reason it feels very appropriate for 2025 USA, Stephen Miller as Verkramp.
As a short diversion, here is an image in the occasional political landscape quiz.
Where is the (very divisive) politics in this picture I took this morning? Location is in South Yorkshire.
Ecclesall Woods? Quite a few years since I've wandered around S.Yorkshire.
No, it's actually in Doncaster, between an old colliery and the colliery village. Cookie correctly guessed this was a miner's strike question (answer upthread).
We worry about politics being divisive today. Is it really any worse than the 1980s? Though at least we didn't have social media back then.
There is a danger extreme hyberliberalism and wokeism leads to a loss of national, religious and gender and family identity. In which case the rise of the strongman leader becomes necessary to restore order again.
Whereas the liberalism of Locke, who believed in liberty and limited government and basic rights and freedoms was also based on support for private property and experience and reason via empiricism (Locke buried near us in High Laver).
That seems a load of horse manure.
The 'strongman leader' is little to do with restoring order, and rather more about taking advantage of disorder - perceived or real - for their personal gain. They tend to foment disorder in order to take power.
And in some cases fostering it after taking power to give cover for unbridled caprice and corruption.
I'm reading Tom Sharpe's Indecent Exposure for the first time in 30 years, and for some reason it feels very appropriate for 2025 USA, Stephen Miller as Verkramp.
With a side serving of Riotous Assembly?
Pretty sure Konstable Els works at ICE.
I have my 14 year old son reading Riotous Assembly. I think he may have been reading until the early hours given how hard he was to wake this morning.
Antony Beevor’s “Russia: Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921”
Extraordinary, lurid, vivid and brutal. I thought I basically knew the story. Turns out I knew 5%
The cruelty is mind-boggling, on both sides
One of the best books Ive read lately
The sheer mindless brutality and pointless slaughter are what stick with me. A war with no good guys.
It’s fascinating to read it - as I am - on the then-bloody periphery of the Russian Empire/USSR
I see it got sniffy reviews from some Russia specialists. ie they are jealous that Beevor has the novelist’s gift for telling detail and gripping narrative and thus makes v nice money. One reviewer complains that Beevor “ignores detail in favour of accessibility”
Ive read other histories of the Russian Civil War, they mostly skip over the massacres and sadistic torture of innocent civilians. Beevor brings them all to light and in a way explain the screwed up mess which is the Soviet Union and modern Russia. The Nazis were treading a well worn path..
All revolutions are cruel and messy. Look at the much celebrated French one. Liberty, Egality, Fraternity ... and a whole heap of bloodlust.
Britain had a slow motion revolution that left out bloodlust.
Thank you for writing this header. I've not read a description of Hyperliberalism before. It seems that like Neoliberalism, Hyperliberalism has got nothing to do with Liberty, or "Liberalism". Liberalism is about liberty of course, but not just my liberty, or the 'our' liberty of an in group. It is the belief in the liberty even of those we disagree with.
I liked the description of Classical Liberalism as "agreeing to disagree". It is born from the idea that everyone should have the liberty to their own belief, even if I disagree. Apply Voltare's maxim on free speech to liberty, then contrast with Woke ideology. 'I may disagree profoundly with what you believe, but I will defend your liberty to believe it, act on it, and express it' vs 'You can't believe that, you can only believe this, or we'll call you a hater, a bigot and a phobe'. If Woke is genuinely an expression of Hyperliberalism, then Hyperliberalism just isn't Liberal.
That isn't what "Woke" means.
"Woke" means being aware of structural inequalities in society, particularly in relation to characteristics such as ethnicity.
I think "Hyperliberalism" is an equally useless term as it also is made up as a straw man. So I don't think it a useful concept.
"Woke" goes beyond an awareness of structural inequalities. It's thinking that all inequalities are caused by structural discrimination, even if you can't explain how. This perceived structural discrimination is then used to justify genuine structural discrimination in the other direction in order to level the playing field.
Do you gave any compelling evidence of that, or is it just an opinion ?
Institutional Racism is the belief that if the output is inequality in race, the system is racist.
It’s interesting to apply the methodology to other areas. The Green Belt policy is Institutionally Racist, for example.
Thank you for writing this header. I've not read a description of Hyperliberalism before. It seems that like Neoliberalism, Hyperliberalism has got nothing to do with Liberty, or "Liberalism". Liberalism is about liberty of course, but not just my liberty, or the 'our' liberty of an in group. It is the belief in the liberty even of those we disagree with.
I liked the description of Classical Liberalism as "agreeing to disagree". It is born from the idea that everyone should have the liberty to their own belief, even if I disagree. Apply Voltare's maxim on free speech to liberty, then contrast with Woke ideology. 'I may disagree profoundly with what you believe, but I will defend your liberty to believe it, act on it, and express it' vs 'You can't believe that, you can only believe this, or we'll call you a hater, a bigot and a phobe'. If Woke is genuinely an expression of Hyperliberalism, then Hyperliberalism just isn't Liberal.
That isn't what "Woke" means.
"Woke" means being aware of structural inequalities in society, particularly in relation to characteristics such as ethnicity.
I think "Hyperliberalism" is an equally useless term as it also is made up as a straw man. So I don't think it a useful concept.
"Woke" goes beyond an awareness of structural inequalities. It's thinking that all inequalities are caused by structural discrimination, even if you can't explain how. This perceived structural discrimination is then used to justify genuine structural discrimination in the other direction in order to level the playing field.
And then rips society apart, and leads to Trump.
Nope. Voters have agency. No one is responsible for Trump apart from those who voted for him. The same goes for Starmer.
We are all responsible for choices offered to us in the society in which we live.
With all due respect that is bollocks.
No. It isn't bollocks.
The actions of hyperliberals are creating resentment which is absolutely creating a ready constituency for Trump. The resistance to this plain and simple fact I find fascinating: you are helping create the very monster you despise. Probably because you don't want to fact up to it.
If you listened to people more and dropped the dogmatic policy his ravings would have no currency.
I'm nothing like a hyperliberal. I don't believe Edward Colston should be thrown into Bristol Docks or Cecil Rhodes pulled from Oxford University buildings. I am not calling for Whiteladies Road or Blackboy Hill to be cleansed of their colours. I don't want to give reparations to Africa or the West Indies (if they deserve reparations so do I for my forefathers who worked in the coal mines of South Wales for poverty wages).
On the other hand I accept I have benefitted from white priviledge, simply for being left alone by the police whilst walking or driving on the highways and byways of Britain. I don't belive history should be rewritten in either direction, should Trump be removing all traces of Colin Powell from the Pentagon because he was black? On a visit to English Harbour I asked an Antiguan guide why she never mentioned slavery, she responded by saying "why would I generate an argument with my American customers who believe slaves were merely indentured servants, I need the tips".
So the stuff you don't like ( and neither do I) about unfair positive discrimination, and rewriting history to make "white British" (or white Americans) look guilty also works in the other direction. Roll all the playing fields flat and I am cool with that. But my liberalism didn't make Trump beatup on black and coloured people. He does that because he's a racist like his father and probably always was.
The very concept of "hyperliberalism" is a great example of begging the question.
Gray - and Casino I think - simply assume its existence, and the fact that it's a widespread political philosophy, axiomatically.
They do little or none of the hard work that would be involved in delineating its real extent, and then build a series of conclusions and calls to action on the back of it.
Thank you for writing this header. I've not read a description of Hyperliberalism before. It seems that like Neoliberalism, Hyperliberalism has got nothing to do with Liberty, or "Liberalism". Liberalism is about liberty of course, but not just my liberty, or the 'our' liberty of an in group. It is the belief in the liberty even of those we disagree with.
I liked the description of Classical Liberalism as "agreeing to disagree". It is born from the idea that everyone should have the liberty to their own belief, even if I disagree. Apply Voltare's maxim on free speech to liberty, then contrast with Woke ideology. 'I may disagree profoundly with what you believe, but I will defend your liberty to believe it, act on it, and express it' vs 'You can't believe that, you can only believe this, or we'll call you a hater, a bigot and a phobe'. If Woke is genuinely an expression of Hyperliberalism, then Hyperliberalism just isn't Liberal.
That isn't what "Woke" means.
"Woke" means being aware of structural inequalities in society, particularly in relation to characteristics such as ethnicity.
I think "Hyperliberalism" is an equally useless term as it also is made up as a straw man. So I don't think it a useful concept.
"Woke" goes beyond an awareness of structural inequalities. It's thinking that all inequalities are caused by structural discrimination, even if you can't explain how. This perceived structural discrimination is then used to justify genuine structural discrimination in the other direction in order to level the playing field.
Do you gave any compelling evidence of that, or is it just an opinion ?
Institutional Racism is the belief that if the output is inequality in race, the system is racist.
It’s interesting to apply the methodology to other areas. The Green Belt policy is Institutionally Racist, for example.
John Gray could bore the paint off a wall. He has absolutely no clue about what's going on in society, other than having detected that something is - big deal! And if it wasn't so sad that he thinks of himself as a deep thinker it would be funny. Give him a wide berth and everything will be okay. It wouldn't even be worth bothering working out how one might try to wake the moron up a little, because the effort would be futile. The thought that some people at dinner parties discuss his scribblings...makes me glad I don't go to dinner parties.
Your comment suggests you get invited to dinner parties, which is ridiculous to start with. No one has dinner parties anymore anyway
Errr.
Yes they do.
They are now “supper parties”. Get with the lingo, daddio
Do the men still throw their car keys into a fruit bowl dining table centre piece at supper parties for the ladies to retrieve in a lucky dip contest?
Thank you for writing this header. I've not read a description of Hyperliberalism before. It seems that like Neoliberalism, Hyperliberalism has got nothing to do with Liberty, or "Liberalism". Liberalism is about liberty of course, but not just my liberty, or the 'our' liberty of an in group. It is the belief in the liberty even of those we disagree with.
I liked the description of Classical Liberalism as "agreeing to disagree". It is born from the idea that everyone should have the liberty to their own belief, even if I disagree. Apply Voltare's maxim on free speech to liberty, then contrast with Woke ideology. 'I may disagree profoundly with what you believe, but I will defend your liberty to believe it, act on it, and express it' vs 'You can't believe that, you can only believe this, or we'll call you a hater, a bigot and a phobe'. If Woke is genuinely an expression of Hyperliberalism, then Hyperliberalism just isn't Liberal.
That isn't what "Woke" means.
"Woke" means being aware of structural inequalities in society, particularly in relation to characteristics such as ethnicity.
I think "Hyperliberalism" is an equally useless term as it also is made up as a straw man. So I don't think it a useful concept.
You are the quintessence of Woke. One of the most peculiar aspects of Woke people is that they pompously deny it exists, even as they exude it
You’re a vain and silly man. You’re also probably decent, upstanding, intelligent and honest - and many other good things
But you are vain and silly. And Woke
You are the quintessence of question begging reaction.
You're a decent writer, and quite perceptive in some respects. But you're also a self aggrandising fabulist, and your calling anyone else 'vain' is an exercise in mordant irony.
John Gray could bore the paint off a wall. He has absolutely no clue about what's going on in society, other than having detected that something is - big deal! And if it wasn't so sad that he thinks of himself as a deep thinker it would be funny. Give him a wide berth and everything will be okay. It wouldn't even be worth bothering working out how one might try to wake the moron up a little, because the effort would be futile. The thought that some people at dinner parties discuss his scribblings...makes me glad I don't go to dinner parties.
Your comment suggests you get invited to dinner parties, which is ridiculous to start with. No one has dinner parties anymore anyway
Going to one tomorrow night. Debating the future of democracy (admittedly a rather dull subject, but there we are).
As a short diversion, here is an image in the occasional political landscape quiz.
Where is the (very divisive) politics in this picture I took this morning? Location is in South Yorkshire.
Ecclesall Woods? Quite a few years since I've wandered around S.Yorkshire.
No, it's actually in Doncaster, between an old colliery and the colliery village. Cookie correctly guessed this was a miner's strike question (answer upthread).
We worry about politics being divisive today. Is it really any worse than the 1980s? Though at least we didn't have social media back then.
Visceral class war. And there was NI too. Today is tame by comparison. Domestically anyway.
Antony Beevor’s “Russia: Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921”
Extraordinary, lurid, vivid and brutal. I thought I basically knew the story. Turns out I knew 5%
The cruelty is mind-boggling, on both sides
The People’s Tragedy by Figes tells the same story and is also a striking read.
On the cruelty front as I recall there’s a horrible photo of some hapless individual (imperialist dog or red scum, does it matter) being impaled on a stake in that one.
John Gray could bore the paint off a wall. He has absolutely no clue about what's going on in society, other than having detected that something is - big deal! And if it wasn't so sad that he thinks of himself as a deep thinker it would be funny. Give him a wide berth and everything will be okay. It wouldn't even be worth bothering working out how one might try to wake the moron up a little, because the effort would be futile. The thought that some people at dinner parties discuss his scribblings...makes me glad I don't go to dinner parties.
Your comment suggests you get invited to dinner parties, which is ridiculous to start with. No one has dinner parties anymore anyway
Going to one tomorrow night. Debating the future of democracy (admittedly a rather dull subject, but there we are).
What will you discuss when you have finished discussing Trump?
John Gray could bore the paint off a wall. He has absolutely no clue about what's going on in society, other than having detected that something is - big deal! And if it wasn't so sad that he thinks of himself as a deep thinker it would be funny. Give him a wide berth and everything will be okay. It wouldn't even be worth bothering working out how one might try to wake the moron up a little, because the effort would be futile. The thought that some people at dinner parties discuss his scribblings...makes me glad I don't go to dinner parties.
Your comment suggests you get invited to dinner parties, which is ridiculous to start with. No one has dinner parties anymore anyway
Errr.
Yes they do.
They are now “supper parties”. Get with the lingo, daddio
Do the men still throw their car keys into a fruit bowl dining table centre piece at supper parties for the ladies to retrieve in a lucky dip contest?
This whole analysis of “woke” as being hyperliberal seems entirely at odds with the proponents of “woke”, who would have eschewed traditional liberalism and were working in a more socialist or Marxist tradition, or within Garveyism.
Marx was entirely focused on class-based equality and thought identity politics was a trick to keep people arguing amongst themselves, which looking at the current setup is a very neat prediction. He wouldn't have liked "woke" at all.
John Gray could bore the paint off a wall. He has absolutely no clue about what's going on in society, other than having detected that something is - big deal! And if it wasn't so sad that he thinks of himself as a deep thinker it would be funny. Give him a wide berth and everything will be okay. It wouldn't even be worth bothering working out how one might try to wake the moron up a little, because the effort would be futile. The thought that some people at dinner parties discuss his scribblings...makes me glad I don't go to dinner parties.
Your comment suggests you get invited to dinner parties, which is ridiculous to start with. No one has dinner parties anymore anyway
Going to one tomorrow night. Debating the future of democracy (admittedly a rather dull subject, but there we are).
What will you discuss when you have finished discussing Trump?
I know, its a dull topic and we usually do better. But people involved in both the WomenforScotland case and the Peggie case are going to be there so hopefully we will move onto better issues. The host is a superb cook and there is a lot of banter. Dinner parties remain a great way of spending an evening with the right crowd.
Economically is today's explosion at the Shahid Rajaee Port in Iran an event on the same level as the one at the Evangelos Florakis Naval Base in Cyprus in 2011, or does it compare more with the Port of Beirut explosion in 2020? Russia is sending assistance.
Thank you for writing this header. I've not read a description of Hyperliberalism before. It seems that like Neoliberalism, Hyperliberalism has got nothing to do with Liberty, or "Liberalism". Liberalism is about liberty of course, but not just my liberty, or the 'our' liberty of an in group. It is the belief in the liberty even of those we disagree with.
I liked the description of Classical Liberalism as "agreeing to disagree". It is born from the idea that everyone should have the liberty to their own belief, even if I disagree. Apply Voltare's maxim on free speech to liberty, then contrast with Woke ideology. 'I may disagree profoundly with what you believe, but I will defend your liberty to believe it, act on it, and express it' vs 'You can't believe that, you can only believe this, or we'll call you a hater, a bigot and a phobe'. If Woke is genuinely an expression of Hyperliberalism, then Hyperliberalism just isn't Liberal.
That isn't what "Woke" means.
"Woke" means being aware of structural inequalities in society, particularly in relation to characteristics such as ethnicity.
I think "Hyperliberalism" is an equally useless term as it also is made up as a straw man. So I don't think it a useful concept.
"Woke" goes beyond an awareness of structural inequalities. It's thinking that all inequalities are caused by structural discrimination, even if you can't explain how. This perceived structural discrimination is then used to justify genuine structural discrimination in the other direction in order to level the playing field.
And then rips society apart, and leads to Trump.
Nope. Voters have agency. No one is responsible for Trump apart from those who voted for him. The same goes for Starmer.
We are all responsible for choices offered to us in the society in which we live.
With all due respect that is bollocks.
No. It isn't bollocks.
The actions of hyperliberals are creating resentment which is absolutely creating a ready constituency for Trump. The resistance to this plain and simple fact I find fascinating: you are helping create the very monster you despise. Probably because you don't want to fact up to it.
If you listened to people more and dropped the dogmatic policy his ravings would have no currency.
I'm nothing like a hyperliberal. I don't believe Edward Colston should be thrown into Bristol Docks or Cecil Rhodes pulled from Oxford University buildings. I am not calling for Whiteladies Road or Blackboy Hill to be cleansed of their colours. I don't want to give reparations to Africa or the West Indies (if they deserve reparations so do I for my forefathers who worked in the coal mines of South Wales for poverty wages).
On the other hand I accept I have benefitted from white priviledge, simply for being left alone by the police whilst walking or driving on the highways and byways of Britain. I don't belive history should be rewritten in either direction, should Trump be removing all traces of Colin Powell from the Pentagon because he was black? On a visit to English Harbour I asked an Antiguan guide why she never mentioned slavery, she responded by saying "why would I generate an argument with my American customers who believe slaves were merely indentured servants, I need the tips".
So the stuff you don't like ( and neither do I) about unfair positive discrimination, and rewriting history to make "white British" (or white Americans) look guilty also works in the other direction. Roll all the playing fields flat and I am cool with that. But my liberalism didn't make Trump beatup on black and coloured people. He does that because he's a racist like his father and probably always was.
The very concept of "hyperliberalism" is a great example of begging the question.
Gray - and Casino I think - simply assume its existence, and the fact that it's a widespread political philosophy, axiomatically.
They do little or none of the hard work that would be involved in delineating its real extent, and then build a series of conclusions and calls to action on the back of it.
The "hyper" in "hyperliberalism" is the giveaway. It implies, by definition, that liberalism has gone too far.
And yes, like anything else, too much of a good thing is likely to be a bad thing. But that's not an especially interesting statement.
John Gray could bore the paint off a wall. He has absolutely no clue about what's going on in society, other than having detected that something is - big deal! And if it wasn't so sad that he thinks of himself as a deep thinker it would be funny. Give him a wide berth and everything will be okay. It wouldn't even be worth bothering working out how one might try to wake the moron up a little, because the effort would be futile. The thought that some people at dinner parties discuss his scribblings...makes me glad I don't go to dinner parties.
Your comment suggests you get invited to dinner parties, which is ridiculous to start with. No one has dinner parties anymore anyway
Going to one tomorrow night. Debating the future of democracy (admittedly a rather dull subject, but there we are).
What will you discuss when you have finished discussing Trump?
I know, its a dull topic and we usually do better. But people involved in both the WomenforScotland case and the Peggie case are going to be there so hopefully we will move onto better issues. The host is a superb cook and there is a lot of banter. Dinner parties remain a great way of spending an evening with the right crowd.
I hope you feel able to provide a post match report in due course.
John Gray could bore the paint off a wall. He has absolutely no clue about what's going on in society, other than having detected that something is - big deal! And if it wasn't so sad that he thinks of himself as a deep thinker it would be funny. Give him a wide berth and everything will be okay. It wouldn't even be worth bothering working out how one might try to wake the moron up a little, because the effort would be futile. The thought that some people at dinner parties discuss his scribblings...makes me glad I don't go to dinner parties.
Your comment suggests you get invited to dinner parties, which is ridiculous to start with. No one has dinner parties anymore anyway
Going to one tomorrow night. Debating the future of democracy (admittedly a rather dull subject, but there we are).
What will you discuss when you have finished discussing Trump?
I know, its a dull topic and we usually do better. But people involved in both the WomenforScotland case and the Peggie case are going to be there so hopefully we will move onto better issues. The host is a superb cook and there is a lot of banter. Dinner parties remain a great way of spending an evening with the right crowd.
I go to suppers organised by Saul David, where military historians speak, and then we discuss it over dinner. They’re immense fun.
Antony Beevor’s “Russia: Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921”
Extraordinary, lurid, vivid and brutal. I thought I basically knew the story. Turns out I knew 5%
The cruelty is mind-boggling, on both sides
One of the best books Ive read lately
The sheer mindless brutality and pointless slaughter are what stick with me. A war with no good guys.
It’s fascinating to read it - as I am - on the then-bloody periphery of the Russian Empire/USSR
I see it got sniffy reviews from some Russia specialists. ie they are jealous that Beevor has the novelist’s gift for telling detail and gripping narrative and thus makes v nice money. One reviewer complains that Beevor “ignores detail in favour of accessibility”
Ive read other histories of the Russian Civil War, they mostly skip over the massacres and sadistic torture of innocent civilians. Beevor brings them all to light and in a way explain the screwed up mess which is the Soviet Union and modern Russia. The Nazis were treading a well worn path..
The Cheka (Ч К - for Extraordinary Commission - Чрезвычайная Комиссия) were efficient for sure, including in the psychology of calling themselves by that acronym. Does anyone know of an earlier example of similar acronym use in any country??
This is the first Soviet animated film, Soviet Toys, shot by Dziga Vertov in 1924, after the civil war but still - get the plinky plonky music with the hanging as well as the obvious influence on Terry Gilliam of Monty Python:
John Gray could bore the paint off a wall. He has absolutely no clue about what's going on in society, other than having detected that something is - big deal! And if it wasn't so sad that he thinks of himself as a deep thinker it would be funny. Give him a wide berth and everything will be okay. It wouldn't even be worth bothering working out how one might try to wake the moron up a little, because the effort would be futile. The thought that some people at dinner parties discuss his scribblings...makes me glad I don't go to dinner parties.
Your comment suggests you get invited to dinner parties, which is ridiculous to start with. No one has dinner parties anymore anyway
Going to one tomorrow night. Debating the future of democracy (admittedly a rather dull subject, but there we are).
What will you discuss when you have finished discussing Trump?
I know, its a dull topic and we usually do better. But people involved in both the WomenforScotland case and the Peggie case are going to be there so hopefully we will move onto better issues. The host is a superb cook and there is a lot of banter. Dinner parties remain a great way of spending an evening with the right crowd.
I hope you feel able to provide a post match report in due course.
No, we have strict rules about that. Chatham House etc. Its a bit of a conceit since no one really cares what we think but it does allow people still in public positions to speak more freely and openly.
I should also say that car keys or Apps (thanks for that @rcs1000 ) are not involved.
Comments
That said, he was better than most Popes, though that is a pretty low bar.
You’re a vain and silly man. You’re also probably decent, upstanding, intelligent and honest - and many other good things
But you are vain and silly. And Woke
In Trumpworld, the USA's neighbours may need a form of nuclear umbrella from somewhere, or it's own deterrent, to make the USA stay within their own border. Is that too extreme a thought?
Greenland's new prime minister has said the island is not a "piece of property that can be bought", in response to Donald Trump's repeated calls for the US to take control of the autonomous Danish territory.
On a visit to Copenhagen on Sunday, Jens-Frederick Nielsen said Greenland and Denmark must stand together in the face of "disrespectful" US rhetoric.
He was speaking alongside Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in what has been viewed as another show of unity between the two leaders.
"Greenland not a piece of property, says PM after Trump threats"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly1pjnpyjpo
Both the party and the country wanted a change from the staleness of the New Labour project which was running on empty.
Corbyn caught the Zeitgeist in the post 2015 leadership contest because he was a clear break from the Blair/Brown years. Similar in 2017 when he energised the campaign and a lot of disenchanted voters. He offered something different from any other politician, and then as now people were craving change. Left Populism can be as intoxicating as the right version.
May-Burnham, whenever it happened, seems likely to have been the electoral equivalent of Reading vs. Blackpool on a wet weeknight in October.
How wrong can you be? Stuck for something to watch out here in Bishkek, I returned to season 2 of The Traitors, from where I left it (around episode 5). OMFG it’s superb. Reality TV at its best. Pure drama, pure human theatre, so so clever
And well done Harry. Legend, yourself
Southam Observer's final tweet was a good un
Look at how this is affecting and polarising Gen Z, and the toxic effect on boys.
It's Millennials who are it's greatest defenders.
Many old woodlands near pit villages have stands of even aged coppice about 40 years old (Sycamore in this case).
The original trees were cut by the miners for heating as of course they had no coal or income.
It is quite an obvious feature when you look for it. I don't know how much longer this piece of history will remain visible but for the moment it is politics written in bluebells.
Antony Beevor’s “Russia: Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921”
Extraordinary, lurid, vivid and brutal. I thought I basically knew the story. Turns out I knew 5%
The cruelty is mind-boggling, on both sides
https://x.com/paulembery/status/1916520566711865629?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
Yes they do.
A bottle of wine per person, per course.
Who gives a shit what it’s called. Especially when we’ve got to the cheese.
The sheer mindless brutality and pointless slaughter are what stick with me. A war with no good guys.
I see it got sniffy reviews from some Russia specialists. ie they are jealous that Beevor has the novelist’s gift for telling detail and gripping narrative and thus makes v nice money. One reviewer complains that Beevor “ignores detail in favour of accessibility”
screwed up mess which is the Soviet Union and modern Russia. The Nazis were treading a well worn path..
I’m sure some dry historians get bent out of shape by him but then it’s up to them to up their game.
5️⃣ - 1️⃣
🏆2️⃣0️⃣
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catriona_Kelly
She is responsible for earthquaking historical classics such as:
Refining Russia: Advice Literature, Polite Culture, and Gender from Catherine to Yeltsin (Oxford University Press, 2001)
And
Socialist Churches: Radical Secularization and the Preservation of the Past in Petrograd and Leningrad, 1918-1988, Soviet Art House: Lenfilm Studio under Brezhnev (Oxford University Press, 2021)
I bet she’s never written a single witty or poetic sentence in her stupid, pointless life. She probably goes to dinner parties with @bondegezou
There is a pit tip next to this woodland which has been bulldozed for housing though - and some of the bulldozing has infringed on the edge of the wood. The developer owns the bit they have messed up but it will be a failure to meet planning conditions I would guess.
Nothing will be done, of course. Local Wildlife Sites have no real protection in law.
Neither the current Labour council nor the Reform one to come will be that bothered by such niceties.
Glad to see we got something beautiful out of it. Cos it wasn’t any fun at the time. And every time I look back it seems crueler, stupider, worse.
I really wanted to stay a night in Saint Jean Pied de Port, so decided to split the journey there in two. I’m at quite a nice hotel in Atxissou (which I presume is pronounced something like a sneeze)
I’m right at the edge of the Pyrenees now, the picture is from the hotel car park
“Why is academic rivalry and office politics so brutal: because the stakes are so small”
Something like that. Poets are the same. Bitter lifelong feuds can erupt when someone wins the biannual Shrewsbury Poetry Prize of £35 and a bottle of mead
So everyone goes particularly mad when an actual bestselling historian steers into port: eg Antony Beevor, who doesn’t even need a ridiculous footling academic job to get by
I’ve ordered my dinner: Pyrenean trout gravadlax to start, and pork loin with some things I didn’t have time to look up before the lady came to take my order
What does Beevor say about the mad baron, Ungern-Sternberg?
U-S was possibly more of a lifelong headbanger than Gabriele D'Annunzio and therefore...coming to a Spectator column soon?
Some Estonians wanted to raise a statue to U-S, earlier this decade. Not sure whether they were of Baltic-German stock.
No (!) - it's a supershrewd 8/1 bet landing at kuntibula airport.
🕺🙃
The 'strongman leader' is little to do with restoring order, and rather more about taking advantage of disorder - perceived or real - for their personal gain.
They tend to foment disorder in order to take power.
What you wrote about Antony Beevor's book on the Russian civil war made me think maybe I should read it. (I'm interested in a few specific areas - the Makhnovists, Ungern-Sternberg, the Czech legion, anywhere in "war communism" where they are said to have abolished money, Gavril Miasnikov, etc., but not so much in the foreign interventions.) But if you rate Gray... hmmm ...
Did the Grand St Bernard last year and hit the perfect week to do it. Good weather makes all the difference.
Gray, I mean, not the flawless (apart from his free speech fetish) viewcode.
Which I'm not.
I'm genuinely grateful to viewcode for the review/precis.
Pretty sure Konstable Els works at ICE.
We worry about politics being divisive today. Is it really any worse than the 1980s? Though at least we didn't have social media back then.
We have an excellent current case study.
Tom Sharpe is more fun than John Gray. And probably more insightful too.
It’s interesting to apply the methodology to other areas. The Green Belt policy is Institutionally Racist, for example.
Gray - and Casino I think - simply assume its existence, and the fact that it's a widespread political philosophy, axiomatically.
They do little or none of the hard work that would be involved in delineating its real extent, and then build a series of conclusions and calls to action on the back of it.
You're a decent writer, and quite perceptive in some respects. But you're also a self aggrandising fabulist, and your calling anyone else 'vain' is an exercise in mordant irony.
Chemicals for rocket motors.
And yes, like anything else, too much of a good thing is likely to be a bad thing. But that's not an especially interesting statement.
A sense of humour is just common sense enjoying itself, and the most effective thing you can do to the devil is snigger.
This is the first Soviet animated film, Soviet Toys, shot by Dziga Vertov in 1924, after the civil war but still - get the plinky plonky music with the hanging as well as the obvious influence on Terry Gilliam of Monty Python:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaeolhgAlSs
I should also say that car keys or Apps (thanks for that @rcs1000 ) are not involved.
How is that going ?
Hungary’s monthly fertility rate fell to 1.25 in March 2025, 0.1 lower than a year earlier and more than 0.2 lower than two years ago.
https://x.com/TothGCsaba/status/1916037291497209914
And yet MAGA great-replacement phobes see them as a role model.
Theory is easy; real life is hard.