Starmer says UK will recognise Palestinian statehood in September unless Israel agrees ceasefire and two-state solution
Downing Street has just issued its readout of today’s cabinet meeting on Gaza.
Here is the key extract.
Turning to recognition, the prime minister said it had been this government’s longstanding position that recognition of a Palestinian state was an inalienable right of the Palestinian people and that we would recognise a Palestinian state as part of a process to peace and a two state solution.
He said that because of the increasingly intolerable situation in Gaza and the diminishing prospect of a peace process towards a two state solution, now was the right time to move this position forward. He said that the UK will recognise the state of Palestine in September, before UNGA, unless the Israeli government takes substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza, reaches a ceasefire, makes clear there will be no annexation in the West Bank, and commits to a long-term peace process that delivers a two state solution. He reiterated that there is no equivalence between Israel and Hamas and that our demands on Hamas remain, that they must release all the hostages, sign up to a ceasefire, accept that they will play no role in the government of Gaza, and disarm.
No preconditions on Hamas surrendering then, capitulation by the government and rewarding them for October 7th. Disgusting.
I don't see recognition of Hamas as Govt, or for that matter Gaza included, but it is not clear.
There are also four conditions that apply to Hamas: releasing all hostages, agreeing a ceasefire, withdrawing from the government of Gaza, and disarming. But the UK was calling for these anyway, and there seems little prospect of Hamas agreeing all of them.
I’m no longer convinced that Gaza is saveable in any recognisable form. It’s just too damaged. I wonder if a compromise could be agreed whereby the West Bank is properly protected, by UN peacekeeping forces if necessary, with a commitment to absolutely no more Israeli settlers. Gazans could be encouraged to settle in the West Bank, or stay in their present territory as part of Israel, but again, protected from violence as long as they lay down their arms. It would need support of the wider world, including the Arab nations, who seem to be not supporting their fellow Arabs sufficiently.
P.S. Has anyone ever seen Topping and Benjamin Netanyahu in the same room?
Their 'fellow Arabs' in the West Bank and Gaza who are in their eyes hand in glove with their *real* enemies - Iran and Russia?
As for Gaza I think you've misunderstood what's happening. The whole idea is and has been for some years to make it so damaged it is uninhabitable because if the 2 million Palestinians leave it (for wherever) there will be an Israeli majority in the mandate so the West Bank can be annexed, even if it is given limited autonomy within the Israeli state (and by limited autonomy I mean on the level of West Yorkshire rather than Scotland or even Wales).
Netanyahu is accelerating this process because he's scared his collar is about to be felt, but it's been ongoing since at least 2007. Indeed, Sharon's withdrawal was aimed at tightening Israel's grip on the West Bank.
The West Bank is what they really want as it has fertile land, water, a strategic position between Israel and Jordan, the Biblical and tourist heartlands and perhaps above all means that Israel will be wider than ten miles wide.
The question we might want to ask is why did Hamas hand them this opportunity to do all these things under political and diplomatic cover on a plate? And that's a question to which we still do not have a real answer. It was obvious from the get-go that this would be how Netanyahu's government would play it and that should have been obvious to Hamas too.
That’s why Palestine, i.e. the West Bank, needs to be a sovereign independent country recognised by the rest of the World. Then, if Israel invades, they are invading a sovereign country, and should be treated like Russia. Their choice.
I would note that they have invaded Syria, a sovereign country, and the rest of the world has just kinda shrugged.
Suffragette, feminist, bit of a tart, common cockney lass, "England's second richest woman", imperialist, Fascist sympathiser, possible husband-poisoner, friend of Winston Churchill and the King, newspaper magnate, opponent of Indian independence, aviation pioneer, "Saviour of the Spitfire", and so royally patriotic when the Abdication happened she stopped eating, and died
She's a pound ship Unity Mitford.
‘She believed Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler were strong leaders’
I am lightheaded with surprise.
I didn't claim she was "nice"
I said her life story is jaw-dropping. And it is
I love all the little details, eg
"In 1932, she offered to give £200,000 (equivalent to £15 million in 2023) to strengthen the British Armed Forces. The National Government refused. She hung a huge electric sign, "DOWN WITH MACDONALD THE TRAITOR", in the rigging of Liberty and sailed round Great Britain.[11]"
Nah.
If you want a really interesting and brave lady, look at Viriginia Hall, an American spy who operated in France during WW2. Who had the rather notable disadvantage of having a wooden leg.
"he Germans gave her the nickname Artemis, and the Gestapo reportedly considered her "the most dangerous of all Allied spies."[3] Having lost part of her left leg after a hunting accident, Hall used a prosthesis she named "Cuthbert." She was also known as "The Limping Lady" by the Germans and as "Marie of Lyon" by many of the SOE agents she helped."
"Hall signaled to SOE before her escape that she hoped that "Cuthbert" would not trouble her on the way. The SOE did not understand the reference and replied, "If Cuthbert troublesome, eliminate him.""
After the war, she became on of the CIA's first female employees. And was treated badly by them.
And I think Katy Perry is an untalented 40 year old singer.
Will anyone be playing her music in two decades time?
Yes probably, in the same way people listen to Bucks Fizz and Toni Basil now - as fun nostalgia. Her songs will never be regarded as classics, but a nostalgic trip down memory lane.
Her relatively cheery hit California Girls did lead bubblegum music out of its dark/all black wearing/illuminati-pop phase, for which we should all be somewhat grateful. Though someone else would have done it if she hadn't.
Wait.
People listen to Bucks Fizz these days?
Really?
And they do this non-ironically?
A while back I was walking behind two young students. One was extolling an amazing band he'd come across. Just *so good*. Etc, etc.
After a few minutes he name-dropped that it was an old obscure band called 'Dire Straits'.
I employ people who until quite recently had never heard of Oasis.
i currently have one person working for me who was born after Istanbul 2005/The greatest Ashes series ever.
Fuck me, youth to middle age isn't a marathon, it's a sprint.
In news that might cheer you up - I recently took on a new hire who's "first prime minister" was David Cameron.
I did say 'might'.
Recently I worked out my birthday is closer to the start of the National Government in 1931 than today.
Suffragette, feminist, bit of a tart, common cockney lass, "England's second richest woman", imperialist, Fascist sympathiser, possible husband-poisoner, friend of Winston Churchill and the King, newspaper magnate, opponent of Indian independence, aviation pioneer, "Saviour of the Spitfire", and so royally patriotic when the Abdication happened she stopped eating, and died
She's a pound ship Unity Mitford.
‘She believed Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler were strong leaders’
I am lightheaded with surprise.
I didn't claim she was "nice"
I said her life story is jaw-dropping. And it is
I love all the little details, eg
"In 1932, she offered to give £200,000 (equivalent to £15 million in 2023) to strengthen the British Armed Forces. The National Government refused. She hung a huge electric sign, "DOWN WITH MACDONALD THE TRAITOR", in the rigging of Liberty and sailed round Great Britain.[11]"
Nah.
If you want a really interesting and brave lady, look at Viriginia Hall, an American spy who operated in France during WW2. Who had the rather notable disadvantage of having a wooden leg.
"he Germans gave her the nickname Artemis, and the Gestapo reportedly considered her "the most dangerous of all Allied spies."[3] Having lost part of her left leg after a hunting accident, Hall used a prosthesis she named "Cuthbert." She was also known as "The Limping Lady" by the Germans and as "Marie of Lyon" by many of the SOE agents she helped."
"Hall signaled to SOE before her escape that she hoped that "Cuthbert" would not trouble her on the way. The SOE did not understand the reference and replied, "If Cuthbert troublesome, eliminate him.""
After the war, she became on of the CIA's first female employees. And was treated badly by them.
Suffragette, feminist, bit of a tart, common cockney lass, "England's second richest woman", imperialist, Fascist sympathiser, possible husband-poisoner, friend of Winston Churchill and the King, newspaper magnate, opponent of Indian independence, aviation pioneer, "Saviour of the Spitfire", and so royally patriotic when the Abdication happened she stopped eating, and died
She's a pound ship Unity Mitford.
‘She believed Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler were strong leaders’
I am lightheaded with surprise.
I didn't claim she was "nice"
I said her life story is jaw-dropping. And it is
I love all the little details, eg
"In 1932, she offered to give £200,000 (equivalent to £15 million in 2023) to strengthen the British Armed Forces. The National Government refused. She hung a huge electric sign, "DOWN WITH MACDONALD THE TRAITOR", in the rigging of Liberty and sailed round Great Britain.[11]"
Known about her for decades. She paid for the Everest flights. I had a model Westland Wallace on the shelf when I was young, which is how I know (they used to put lots of historical information in with the kits in those days).
She's utterly fabulous. OK she liked Hitler, no one is perfect
I sense an essay coming on
It was my daughter today who got me into her lifestory. As we walked around Nunhead Cemetery
That's my daughter who is reading The Master and Margarita
"proud father of daughters with excellent taste"
I read that when I was 16.
Presumably you know the story of the great Victorian cemeteries of London and the Necropolis Railway? Definitely worth a look if you haven't, including the projects that failed (waterborne funerals to riverside necropoleis to W and E).
and above all this little Gothic classic George A. Walker (1839) Gatherings from Graveyards; Particularly those of London: with a Concise History of the Modes of Interment among Different Nations, from the Earliest Periods. And a Details of Dangerous and Fatal Results Produced by the Unwise and Revolting Custom of Inhuming the Dead in the Midst of the Living
Suffragette, feminist, bit of a tart, common cockney lass, "England's second richest woman", imperialist, Fascist sympathiser, possible husband-poisoner, friend of Winston Churchill and the King, newspaper magnate, opponent of Indian independence, aviation pioneer, "Saviour of the Spitfire", and so royally patriotic when the Abdication happened she stopped eating, and died
She's a pound ship Unity Mitford.
‘She believed Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler were strong leaders’
I am lightheaded with surprise.
I didn't claim she was "nice"
I said her life story is jaw-dropping. And it is
I love all the little details, eg
"In 1932, she offered to give £200,000 (equivalent to £15 million in 2023) to strengthen the British Armed Forces. The National Government refused. She hung a huge electric sign, "DOWN WITH MACDONALD THE TRAITOR", in the rigging of Liberty and sailed round Great Britain.[11]"
Known about her for decades. She paid for the Everest flights. I had a model Westland Wallace on the shelf when I was young, which is how I know (they used to put lots of historical information in with the kits in those days).
Westland Wallace? Blimey, that's obscure. Airfix? Rather wonderful and idiosyncratic the range of models that Airfix produced in its prime. Revell was another, and Matchbox. Them were the days.
And I think Katy Perry is an untalented 40 year old singer.
Will anyone be playing her music in two decades time?
Yes probably, in the same way people listen to Bucks Fizz and Toni Basil now - as fun nostalgia. Her songs will never be regarded as classics, but a nostalgic trip down memory lane.
Her relatively cheery hit California Girls did lead bubblegum music out of its dark/all black wearing/illuminati-pop phase, for which we should all be somewhat grateful. Though someone else would have done it if she hadn't.
Wait.
People listen to Bucks Fizz these days?
Really?
And they do this non-ironically?
A while back I was walking behind two young students. One was extolling an amazing band he'd come across. Just *so good*. Etc, etc.
After a few minutes he name-dropped that it was an old obscure band called 'Dire Straits'.
I employ people who until quite recently had never heard of Oasis.
i currently have one person working for me who was born after Istanbul 2005/The greatest Ashes series ever.
Fuck me, youth to middle age isn't a marathon, it's a sprint.
In news that might cheer you up - I recently took on a new hire who's "first prime minister" was David Cameron.
I did say 'might'.
Recently I worked out my birthday is closer to the start of the National Government in 1931 than today.
I call bullshit on that. Your birthday will almost certainly be less than a year away, and two and a half at the most.
And, in another sense, isn't the date of birth of everyone alive today (excluding those born today) closer to every historical event happening before their birth than today is?
Suffragette, feminist, bit of a tart, common cockney lass, "England's second richest woman", imperialist, Fascist sympathiser, possible husband-poisoner, friend of Winston Churchill and the King, newspaper magnate, opponent of Indian independence, aviation pioneer, "Saviour of the Spitfire", and so royally patriotic when the Abdication happened she stopped eating, and died
She's a pound ship Unity Mitford.
‘She believed Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler were strong leaders’
I am lightheaded with surprise.
I didn't claim she was "nice"
I said her life story is jaw-dropping. And it is
I love all the little details, eg
"In 1932, she offered to give £200,000 (equivalent to £15 million in 2023) to strengthen the British Armed Forces. The National Government refused. She hung a huge electric sign, "DOWN WITH MACDONALD THE TRAITOR", in the rigging of Liberty and sailed round Great Britain.[11]"
Nah.
If you want a really interesting and brave lady, look at Viriginia Hall, an American spy who operated in France during WW2. Who had the rather notable disadvantage of having a wooden leg.
"he Germans gave her the nickname Artemis, and the Gestapo reportedly considered her "the most dangerous of all Allied spies."[3] Having lost part of her left leg after a hunting accident, Hall used a prosthesis she named "Cuthbert." She was also known as "The Limping Lady" by the Germans and as "Marie of Lyon" by many of the SOE agents she helped."
"Hall signaled to SOE before her escape that she hoped that "Cuthbert" would not trouble her on the way. The SOE did not understand the reference and replied, "If Cuthbert troublesome, eliminate him.""
After the war, she became on of the CIA's first female employees. And was treated badly by them.
Suffragette, feminist, bit of a tart, common cockney lass, "England's second richest woman", imperialist, Fascist sympathiser, possible husband-poisoner, friend of Winston Churchill and the King, newspaper magnate, opponent of Indian independence, aviation pioneer, "Saviour of the Spitfire", and so royally patriotic when the Abdication happened she stopped eating, and died
She's a pound ship Unity Mitford.
‘She believed Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler were strong leaders’
I am lightheaded with surprise.
I didn't claim she was "nice"
I said her life story is jaw-dropping. And it is
I love all the little details, eg
"In 1932, she offered to give £200,000 (equivalent to £15 million in 2023) to strengthen the British Armed Forces. The National Government refused. She hung a huge electric sign, "DOWN WITH MACDONALD THE TRAITOR", in the rigging of Liberty and sailed round Great Britain.[11]"
Known about her for decades. She paid for the Everest flights. I had a model Westland Wallace on the shelf when I was young, which is how I know (they used to put lots of historical information in with the kits in those days).
She's utterly fabulous. OK she liked Hitler, no one is perfect
I sense an essay coming on
It was my daughter today who got me into her lifestory. As we walked around Nunhead Cemetery
That's my daughter who is reading The Master and Margarita
"proud father of daughters with excellent taste"
I read that when I was 16.
Presumably you know the story of the great Victorian cemeteries of London and the Necropolis Railway? Definitely worth a look if you haven't, including the projects that failed (waterborne funerals to riverside necropoleis to W and E).
and above all this little Gothic classic George A. Walker (1839) Gatherings from Graveyards; Particularly those of London: with a Concise History of the Modes of Interment among Different Nations, from the Earliest Periods. And a Details of Dangerous and Fatal Results Produced by the Unwise and Revolting Custom of Inhuming the Dead in the Midst of the Living
My Dad read The Master and Margarita and raved about it around 1980, then pressed it on me. I read it, and indeed adored it. Still one of my very favourite novels
What's nice about this story is that my older daughter simply walked into a north London library a couple of days ago, couldn't find the book she wanted, but then saw "The Master and Margarita" and thought - that looks interesting. Then today she said, unprompted, to me "OMG I'm reading this amazing novel... it's called...."
So that's grandfather, father, daughter, all loving the same magical book. Sweet
Thanks for the cemetery links, they are amazing rewilded chunks of London history
I’ve just read the article, and to draw such a comparison, between modern Scotland, and Jim Crow era America, with its very different demographic and socio-economic profile, seems like an argument made in bad faith to me.
I'm just not sure what is gained by the analogy in the context made, even within the wider article. Bearing in mind an experienced academic said it in that context they presumably think it a great point, but at best it seems a distraction to me from broader and more positive arguments being sought.
It doesn't make sense at any level. That's *beyond* "Death Recorded" level of stupidity.
I presume it is part of the Americanisation of socio-political discourse.
There was someone ranting about the price of drugs in healthcare the other day, on Reddit. For the UK.
He exploded when various people pointed out that NHS bulk buys and gets very good prices on most things. When it was pointed out that some of the reforms to bulk buying and using generics happened under Thatcher - he nearly got banned by the mods. From his "points" he had obviously absorbed a lot of content about US healthcare.
Giving the best possible case for the argument: you could perhaps argue that if the Jim Crow South can manage to appoint that many black people then a Scottish University drawing on the peoples of the British Empire ought to have at least managed reach that same low bar?
The racial make-up still doesn’t make any sense of course: the Scottish Universities should (by this argument) have been recruiting this fraction mostly from the Indian subcontinent, not people of African descent.
I don't understand that - are you saying that Scottish universities should have more ethnic diversity than the Scottish population, due to international students/fellows?
By this argument, yes? Why should Scottish universities restrict themselves only to Scottish academics?
I’m not 100% pushing this line, but it’s a line you could take - a colourable argument as US lawyers like to say.
Does anyone have data on the international cohort of students/fellows etc at Scottish universities vs other universities? I would suspect that Edinburgh and St Andrews would have quite a few...
Given the fees international students are paying, I think most Scottish universities are in the same boat. They are quite the income stream nowadays.
Suffragette, feminist, bit of a tart, common cockney lass, "England's second richest woman", imperialist, Fascist sympathiser, possible husband-poisoner, friend of Winston Churchill and the King, newspaper magnate, opponent of Indian independence, aviation pioneer, "Saviour of the Spitfire", and so royally patriotic when the Abdication happened she stopped eating, and died
She's a pound ship Unity Mitford.
‘She believed Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler were strong leaders’
I am lightheaded with surprise.
I didn't claim she was "nice"
I said her life story is jaw-dropping. And it is
I love all the little details, eg
"In 1932, she offered to give £200,000 (equivalent to £15 million in 2023) to strengthen the British Armed Forces. The National Government refused. She hung a huge electric sign, "DOWN WITH MACDONALD THE TRAITOR", in the rigging of Liberty and sailed round Great Britain.[11]"
Nah.
If you want a really interesting and brave lady, look at Viriginia Hall, an American spy who operated in France during WW2. Who had the rather notable disadvantage of having a wooden leg.
"he Germans gave her the nickname Artemis, and the Gestapo reportedly considered her "the most dangerous of all Allied spies."[3] Having lost part of her left leg after a hunting accident, Hall used a prosthesis she named "Cuthbert." She was also known as "The Limping Lady" by the Germans and as "Marie of Lyon" by many of the SOE agents she helped."
"Hall signaled to SOE before her escape that she hoped that "Cuthbert" would not trouble her on the way. The SOE did not understand the reference and replied, "If Cuthbert troublesome, eliminate him.""
After the war, she became on of the CIA's first female employees. And was treated badly by them.
The existence of one really interesting but surprisingly unknown female life story in the 20th century does not preclude the existence of others
Yeah, but I prefer the ones who fought the fascists, not supported them.
You differ. Unsurprisingly.
Oh FFS. Why are you always like this? Such a monotoned, morally simplistic berk?
I like a good STORY. Lady Houston's story is exceptional - and better than that of your brave, morally superior heroine (who is incredible) - because it is so rich, diverse and unexpected
It would be a great lifestory if she ended up supporting Stalin and communism, or turning Japanese and reverting to Shinto. That's all. It is so full of surprise and weirdness
I’ve just read the article, and to draw such a comparison, between modern Scotland, and Jim Crow era America, with its very different demographic and socio-economic profile, seems like an argument made in bad faith to me.
I'm just not sure what is gained by the analogy in the context made, even within the wider article. Bearing in mind an experienced academic said it in that context they presumably think it a great point, but at best it seems a distraction to me from broader and more positive arguments being sought.
It doesn't make sense at any level. That's *beyond* "Death Recorded" level of stupidity.
I presume it is part of the Americanisation of socio-political discourse.
There was someone ranting about the price of drugs in healthcare the other day, on Reddit. For the UK.
He exploded when various people pointed out that NHS bulk buys and gets very good prices on most things. When it was pointed out that some of the reforms to bulk buying and using generics happened under Thatcher - he nearly got banned by the mods. From his "points" he had obviously absorbed a lot of content about US healthcare.
Giving the best possible case for the argument: you could perhaps argue that if the Jim Crow South can manage to appoint that many black people then a Scottish University drawing on the peoples of the British Empire ought to have at least managed reach that same low bar?
The racial make-up still doesn’t make any sense of course: the Scottish Universities should (by this argument) have been recruiting this fraction mostly from the Indian subcontinent, not people of African descent.
I don't understand that - are you saying that Scottish universities should have more ethnic diversity than the Scottish population, due to international students/fellows?
By this argument, yes? Why should Scottish universities restrict themselves only to Scottish academics?
I’m not 100% pushing this line, but it’s a line you could take - a colourable argument as US lawyers like to say.
Does anyone have data on the international cohort of students/fellows etc at Scottish universities vs other universities? I would suspect that Edinburgh and St Andrews would have quite a few...
Given the fees international students are paying, I think most Scottish universities are in the same boat. They are quite the income stream nowadays.
Especially in the humanities, relative to what they get. A friend referred to his Art History PhD as the world's most expensive library card.
Suffragette, feminist, bit of a tart, common cockney lass, "England's second richest woman", imperialist, Fascist sympathiser, possible husband-poisoner, friend of Winston Churchill and the King, newspaper magnate, opponent of Indian independence, aviation pioneer, "Saviour of the Spitfire", and so royally patriotic when the Abdication happened she stopped eating, and died
She's a pound ship Unity Mitford.
‘She believed Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler were strong leaders’
I am lightheaded with surprise.
I didn't claim she was "nice"
I said her life story is jaw-dropping. And it is
I love all the little details, eg
"In 1932, she offered to give £200,000 (equivalent to £15 million in 2023) to strengthen the British Armed Forces. The National Government refused. She hung a huge electric sign, "DOWN WITH MACDONALD THE TRAITOR", in the rigging of Liberty and sailed round Great Britain.[11]"
Known about her for decades. She paid for the Everest flights. I had a model Westland Wallace on the shelf when I was young, which is how I know (they used to put lots of historical information in with the kits in those days).
Westland Wallace? Blimey, that's obscure. Airfix? Rather wonderful and idiosyncratic the range of models that Airfix produced in its prime. Revell was another, and Matchbox. Them were the days.
Frog was the maker, actually. The plane was quite famous in its day (before my time, but still well enough remembered even then). Part of a range called Trail BLazers, including Amy Johnson's plane, DH88 Comet Racer, Alcock and Brown's Vimy, and S.6B (courtesy Lady Houston), and others I forget at this range in time but which would set Leon aquiver like a red, white and blue blancmange.
A little digging reveals my memory of Lady H being recalled by the makers is actually accurate:
The Gazette has asked me to write about this thing called "the Online Safety Act"
Has anyone got any thoughts? I hear bad things
Beyond terrible. Another post passed as we sleepwalk our way into the totalitarian surveillance state. And all to appease earnestly woke do-gooders who wouldn't recognise a VPL if it joined them for breakfast.
Is it during the traditional twerking stage of breakfast that you recognise the visible panty line?
How are you doing, you poor old sod? Are you still in hospital? Do you need cheering up?!
Stop it, he's in no mood for a sponge bath.
I was being unusually nice!
I like @BlancheLivermore - he's one of the sanest posters on here. Dryly funny, and with a fresh take on stuff. A valuable commenter. I also really like his walking holiday travelogues. sorry if this is coming across as saccharine or schmaltzy
I was genuinely horrified to read of his car accident. I hope he's ok
I know you were, I was just making a ribald joke in response.
Suffragette, feminist, bit of a tart, common cockney lass, "England's second richest woman", imperialist, Fascist sympathiser, possible husband-poisoner, friend of Winston Churchill and the King, newspaper magnate, opponent of Indian independence, aviation pioneer, "Saviour of the Spitfire", and so royally patriotic when the Abdication happened she stopped eating, and died
She's a pound ship Unity Mitford.
‘She believed Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler were strong leaders’
I am lightheaded with surprise.
I didn't claim she was "nice"
I said her life story is jaw-dropping. And it is
I love all the little details, eg
"In 1932, she offered to give £200,000 (equivalent to £15 million in 2023) to strengthen the British Armed Forces. The National Government refused. She hung a huge electric sign, "DOWN WITH MACDONALD THE TRAITOR", in the rigging of Liberty and sailed round Great Britain.[11]"
Nah.
If you want a really interesting and brave lady, look at Viriginia Hall, an American spy who operated in France during WW2. Who had the rather notable disadvantage of having a wooden leg.
"he Germans gave her the nickname Artemis, and the Gestapo reportedly considered her "the most dangerous of all Allied spies."[3] Having lost part of her left leg after a hunting accident, Hall used a prosthesis she named "Cuthbert." She was also known as "The Limping Lady" by the Germans and as "Marie of Lyon" by many of the SOE agents she helped."
"Hall signaled to SOE before her escape that she hoped that "Cuthbert" would not trouble her on the way. The SOE did not understand the reference and replied, "If Cuthbert troublesome, eliminate him.""
After the war, she became on of the CIA's first female employees. And was treated badly by them.
Suffragette, feminist, bit of a tart, common cockney lass, "England's second richest woman", imperialist, Fascist sympathiser, possible husband-poisoner, friend of Winston Churchill and the King, newspaper magnate, opponent of Indian independence, aviation pioneer, "Saviour of the Spitfire", and so royally patriotic when the Abdication happened she stopped eating, and died
She's a pound ship Unity Mitford.
‘She believed Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler were strong leaders’
I am lightheaded with surprise.
I didn't claim she was "nice"
I said her life story is jaw-dropping. And it is
I love all the little details, eg
"In 1932, she offered to give £200,000 (equivalent to £15 million in 2023) to strengthen the British Armed Forces. The National Government refused. She hung a huge electric sign, "DOWN WITH MACDONALD THE TRAITOR", in the rigging of Liberty and sailed round Great Britain.[11]"
Known about her for decades. She paid for the Everest flights. I had a model Westland Wallace on the shelf when I was young, which is how I know (they used to put lots of historical information in with the kits in those days).
Westland Wallace? Blimey, that's obscure. Airfix? Rather wonderful and idiosyncratic the range of models that Airfix produced in its prime. Revell was another, and Matchbox. Them were the days.
I guessed Frog, checked and I was right. You can never take the boy nerd out of the man nerd.
Suffragette, feminist, bit of a tart, common cockney lass, "England's second richest woman", imperialist, Fascist sympathiser, possible husband-poisoner, friend of Winston Churchill and the King, newspaper magnate, opponent of Indian independence, aviation pioneer, "Saviour of the Spitfire", and so royally patriotic when the Abdication happened she stopped eating, and died
She's a pound ship Unity Mitford.
‘She believed Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler were strong leaders’
I am lightheaded with surprise.
I didn't claim she was "nice"
I said her life story is jaw-dropping. And it is
I love all the little details, eg
"In 1932, she offered to give £200,000 (equivalent to £15 million in 2023) to strengthen the British Armed Forces. The National Government refused. She hung a huge electric sign, "DOWN WITH MACDONALD THE TRAITOR", in the rigging of Liberty and sailed round Great Britain.[11]"
Known about her for decades. She paid for the Everest flights. I had a model Westland Wallace on the shelf when I was young, which is how I know (they used to put lots of historical information in with the kits in those days).
She's utterly fabulous. OK she liked Hitler, no one is perfect
I sense an essay coming on
It was my daughter today who got me into her lifestory. As we walked around Nunhead Cemetery
That's my daughter who is reading The Master and Margarita
"proud father of daughters with excellent taste"
I read that when I was 16.
Presumably you know the story of the great Victorian cemeteries of London and the Necropolis Railway? Definitely worth a look if you haven't, including the projects that failed (waterborne funerals to riverside necropoleis to W and E).
and above all this little Gothic classic George A. Walker (1839) Gatherings from Graveyards; Particularly those of London: with a Concise History of the Modes of Interment among Different Nations, from the Earliest Periods. And a Details of Dangerous and Fatal Results Produced by the Unwise and Revolting Custom of Inhuming the Dead in the Midst of the Living
My Dad read The Master and Margarita and raved about it around 1980, then pressed it on me. I read it, and indeed adored it. Still one of my very favourite novels
What's nice about this story is that my older daughter simply walked into a north London library a couple of days ago, couldn't find the book she wanted, but then saw "The Master and Margarita" and thought - that looks interesting. Then today she said, unprompted, to me "OMG I'm reading this amazing novel... it's called...."
So that's grandfather, father, daughter, all loving the same magical book. Sweet
Thanks for the cemetery links, they are amazing rewilded chunks of London history
Indeed: and I should add that I was being entirely positive about the Bulgakov book - memorable book for a teenager (still in the bookcase btw). (Not in the least intended as a snot, quite the reverse.)
Suffragette, feminist, bit of a tart, common cockney lass, "England's second richest woman", imperialist, Fascist sympathiser, possible husband-poisoner, friend of Winston Churchill and the King, newspaper magnate, opponent of Indian independence, aviation pioneer, "Saviour of the Spitfire", and so royally patriotic when the Abdication happened she stopped eating, and died
She's a pound ship Unity Mitford.
‘She believed Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler were strong leaders’
I am lightheaded with surprise.
I didn't claim she was "nice"
I said her life story is jaw-dropping. And it is
I love all the little details, eg
"In 1932, she offered to give £200,000 (equivalent to £15 million in 2023) to strengthen the British Armed Forces. The National Government refused. She hung a huge electric sign, "DOWN WITH MACDONALD THE TRAITOR", in the rigging of Liberty and sailed round Great Britain.[11]"
Known about her for decades. She paid for the Everest flights. I had a model Westland Wallace on the shelf when I was young, which is how I know (they used to put lots of historical information in with the kits in those days).
Westland Wallace? Blimey, that's obscure. Airfix? Rather wonderful and idiosyncratic the range of models that Airfix produced in its prime. Revell was another, and Matchbox. Them were the days.
Frog was the maker, actually. The plane was quite famous in its day (before my time, but still well enough remembered even then). Part of a range called Trail BLazers, including Amy Johnson's plane, DH88 Comet Racer, Alcock and Brown's Vimy, and S.6B (courtesy Lady Houston), and others I forget at this range in time but which would set Leon aquiver like a red, white and blue blancmange.
A little digging reveals my memory of Lady H being recalled by the makers is actually accurate:
Those of a Star Trek frame of mind will remember the Aurora/AMT kits of the USS Enterprise and the Klingon D7. I could never get the pylons to stick nor get the nacelles to remain parallel to the nominal horizontal. Other kids had parents who could afford airbrushes, modellers putty and scalpels, but no not young viewcode, limited to mum's pegs. Bastards.
Matchbox was not as good as Airfix but were cast in coloured plastic, reducing the need to paint them. Oh, fond memories, jumpers for goalposts...
Suffragette, feminist, bit of a tart, common cockney lass, "England's second richest woman", imperialist, Fascist sympathiser, possible husband-poisoner, friend of Winston Churchill and the King, newspaper magnate, opponent of Indian independence, aviation pioneer, "Saviour of the Spitfire", and so royally patriotic when the Abdication happened she stopped eating, and died
She's a pound ship Unity Mitford.
‘She believed Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler were strong leaders’
I am lightheaded with surprise.
I didn't claim she was "nice"
I said her life story is jaw-dropping. And it is
I love all the little details, eg
"In 1932, she offered to give £200,000 (equivalent to £15 million in 2023) to strengthen the British Armed Forces. The National Government refused. She hung a huge electric sign, "DOWN WITH MACDONALD THE TRAITOR", in the rigging of Liberty and sailed round Great Britain.[11]"
Known about her for decades. She paid for the Everest flights. I had a model Westland Wallace on the shelf when I was young, which is how I know (they used to put lots of historical information in with the kits in those days).
She's utterly fabulous. OK she liked Hitler, no one is perfect
I sense an essay coming on
It was my daughter today who got me into her lifestory. As we walked around Nunhead Cemetery
That's my daughter who is reading The Master and Margarita
"proud father of daughters with excellent taste"
I read that when I was 16.
Presumably you know the story of the great Victorian cemeteries of London and the Necropolis Railway? Definitely worth a look if you haven't, including the projects that failed (waterborne funerals to riverside necropoleis to W and E).
and above all this little Gothic classic George A. Walker (1839) Gatherings from Graveyards; Particularly those of London: with a Concise History of the Modes of Interment among Different Nations, from the Earliest Periods. And a Details of Dangerous and Fatal Results Produced by the Unwise and Revolting Custom of Inhuming the Dead in the Midst of the Living
My Dad read The Master and Margarita and raved about it around 1980, then pressed it on me. I read it, and indeed adored it. Still one of my very favourite novels
What's nice about this story is that my older daughter simply walked into a north London library a couple of days ago, couldn't find the book she wanted, but then saw "The Master and Margarita" and thought - that looks interesting. Then today she said, unprompted, to me "OMG I'm reading this amazing novel... it's called...."
So that's grandfather, father, daughter, all loving the same magical book. Sweet
Thanks for the cemetery links, they are amazing rewilded chunks of London history
Indeed: and I should add that I was being entirely positive about the Bulgakov book - memorable book for a teenager (still in the bookcase btw). (Not in the least intended as a snot, quite the reverse.)
Bulgakov’s masterpiece deserves a new and sexy movie adaptation
Edit: there actually is a recent anti-Putin adaptation
I’ve just read the article, and to draw such a comparison, between modern Scotland, and Jim Crow era America, with its very different demographic and socio-economic profile, seems like an argument made in bad faith to me.
I'm just not sure what is gained by the analogy in the context made, even within the wider article. Bearing in mind an experienced academic said it in that context they presumably think it a great point, but at best it seems a distraction to me from broader and more positive arguments being sought.
It doesn't make sense at any level. That's *beyond* "Death Recorded" level of stupidity.
I presume it is part of the Americanisation of socio-political discourse.
There was someone ranting about the price of drugs in healthcare the other day, on Reddit. For the UK.
He exploded when various people pointed out that NHS bulk buys and gets very good prices on most things. When it was pointed out that some of the reforms to bulk buying and using generics happened under Thatcher - he nearly got banned by the mods. From his "points" he had obviously absorbed a lot of content about US healthcare.
Giving the best possible case for the argument: you could perhaps argue that if the Jim Crow South can manage to appoint that many black people then a Scottish University drawing on the peoples of the British Empire ought to have at least managed reach that same low bar?
The racial make-up still doesn’t make any sense of course: the Scottish Universities should (by this argument) have been recruiting this fraction mostly from the Indian subcontinent, not people of African descent.
I don't understand that - are you saying that Scottish universities should have more ethnic diversity than the Scottish population, due to international students/fellows?
By this argument, yes? Why should Scottish universities restrict themselves only to Scottish academics?
I’m not 100% pushing this line, but it’s a line you could take - a colourable argument as US lawyers like to say.
Does anyone have data on the international cohort of students/fellows etc at Scottish universities vs other universities? I would suspect that Edinburgh and St Andrews would have quite a few...
Given the fees international students are paying, I think most Scottish universities are in the same boat. They are quite the income stream nowadays.
The ball park figures I heard recently they aimed for for one undergraduate BSc admissions cohort at St A's was a roughly equal split between Scotland, rUK and international (and in St A's rather specifically the US contingent is absolutely massive).
Suffragette, feminist, bit of a tart, common cockney lass, "England's second richest woman", imperialist, Fascist sympathiser, possible husband-poisoner, friend of Winston Churchill and the King, newspaper magnate, opponent of Indian independence, aviation pioneer, "Saviour of the Spitfire", and so royally patriotic when the Abdication happened she stopped eating, and died
She's a pound ship Unity Mitford.
‘She believed Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler were strong leaders’
I am lightheaded with surprise.
I didn't claim she was "nice"
I said her life story is jaw-dropping. And it is
I love all the little details, eg
"In 1932, she offered to give £200,000 (equivalent to £15 million in 2023) to strengthen the British Armed Forces. The National Government refused. She hung a huge electric sign, "DOWN WITH MACDONALD THE TRAITOR", in the rigging of Liberty and sailed round Great Britain.[11]"
Known about her for decades. She paid for the Everest flights. I had a model Westland Wallace on the shelf when I was young, which is how I know (they used to put lots of historical information in with the kits in those days).
Westland Wallace? Blimey, that's obscure. Airfix? Rather wonderful and idiosyncratic the range of models that Airfix produced in its prime. Revell was another, and Matchbox. Them were the days.
Frog was the maker, actually. The plane was quite famous in its day (before my time, but still well enough remembered even then). Part of a range called Trail BLazers, including Amy Johnson's plane, DH88 Comet Racer, Alcock and Brown's Vimy, and S.6B (courtesy Lady Houston), and others I forget at this range in time but which would set Leon aquiver like a red, white and blue blancmange.
A little digging reveals my memory of Lady H being recalled by the makers is actually accurate:
Those of a Star Trek frame of mind will remember the Aurora/AMT kits of the USS Enterprise and the Klingon D7. I could never get the pylons to stick nor get the nacelles to remain parallel to the nominal horizontal. Other kids had parents who could afford airbrushes, modellers putty and scalpels, but no not young viewcode, limited to mum's pegs. Bastards.
Matchbox was not as good as Airfix but were cast in coloured plastic, reducing the need to paint them. Oh, fond memories, jumpers for goalposts...
[deletes long list of models I did because embarrassment]
Suffragette, feminist, bit of a tart, common cockney lass, "England's second richest woman", imperialist, Fascist sympathiser, possible husband-poisoner, friend of Winston Churchill and the King, newspaper magnate, opponent of Indian independence, aviation pioneer, "Saviour of the Spitfire", and so royally patriotic when the Abdication happened she stopped eating, and died
She's a pound ship Unity Mitford.
‘She believed Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler were strong leaders’
I am lightheaded with surprise.
I didn't claim she was "nice"
I said her life story is jaw-dropping. And it is
I love all the little details, eg
"In 1932, she offered to give £200,000 (equivalent to £15 million in 2023) to strengthen the British Armed Forces. The National Government refused. She hung a huge electric sign, "DOWN WITH MACDONALD THE TRAITOR", in the rigging of Liberty and sailed round Great Britain.[11]"
Known about her for decades. She paid for the Everest flights. I had a model Westland Wallace on the shelf when I was young, which is how I know (they used to put lots of historical information in with the kits in those days).
She's utterly fabulous. OK she liked Hitler, no one is perfect
I sense an essay coming on
It was my daughter today who got me into her lifestory. As we walked around Nunhead Cemetery
That's my daughter who is reading The Master and Margarita
"proud father of daughters with excellent taste"
I read that when I was 16.
Presumably you know the story of the great Victorian cemeteries of London and the Necropolis Railway? Definitely worth a look if you haven't, including the projects that failed (waterborne funerals to riverside necropoleis to W and E).
and above all this little Gothic classic George A. Walker (1839) Gatherings from Graveyards; Particularly those of London: with a Concise History of the Modes of Interment among Different Nations, from the Earliest Periods. And a Details of Dangerous and Fatal Results Produced by the Unwise and Revolting Custom of Inhuming the Dead in the Midst of the Living
My Dad read The Master and Margarita and raved about it around 1980, then pressed it on me. I read it, and indeed adored it. Still one of my very favourite novels
What's nice about this story is that my older daughter simply walked into a north London library a couple of days ago, couldn't find the book she wanted, but then saw "The Master and Margarita" and thought - that looks interesting. Then today she said, unprompted, to me "OMG I'm reading this amazing novel... it's called...."
So that's grandfather, father, daughter, all loving the same magical book. Sweet
Thanks for the cemetery links, they are amazing rewilded chunks of London history
Indeed: and I should add that I was being entirely positive about the Bulgakov book - memorable book for a teenager (still in the bookcase btw). (Not in the least intended as a snot, quite the reverse.)
Jagger’s favourite book I believe and inspiration for Sympathy for the Devil.
Read it in a flea infested attic flat in Buckingham Terrace in the early 80s. Happy if itchy days.
I’ve just read the article, and to draw such a comparison, between modern Scotland, and Jim Crow era America, with its very different demographic and socio-economic profile, seems like an argument made in bad faith to me.
I'm just not sure what is gained by the analogy in the context made, even within the wider article. Bearing in mind an experienced academic said it in that context they presumably think it a great point, but at best it seems a distraction to me from broader and more positive arguments being sought.
It doesn't make sense at any level. That's *beyond* "Death Recorded" level of stupidity.
I presume it is part of the Americanisation of socio-political discourse.
There was someone ranting about the price of drugs in healthcare the other day, on Reddit. For the UK.
He exploded when various people pointed out that NHS bulk buys and gets very good prices on most things. When it was pointed out that some of the reforms to bulk buying and using generics happened under Thatcher - he nearly got banned by the mods. From his "points" he had obviously absorbed a lot of content about US healthcare.
Giving the best possible case for the argument: you could perhaps argue that if the Jim Crow South can manage to appoint that many black people then a Scottish University drawing on the peoples of the British Empire ought to have at least managed reach that same low bar?
The racial make-up still doesn’t make any sense of course: the Scottish Universities should (by this argument) have been recruiting this fraction mostly from the Indian subcontinent, not people of African descent.
I don't understand that - are you saying that Scottish universities should have more ethnic diversity than the Scottish population, due to international students/fellows?
By this argument, yes? Why should Scottish universities restrict themselves only to Scottish academics?
I’m not 100% pushing this line, but it’s a line you could take - a colourable argument as US lawyers like to say.
Does anyone have data on the international cohort of students/fellows etc at Scottish universities vs other universities? I would suspect that Edinburgh and St Andrews would have quite a few...
Given the fees international students are paying, I think most Scottish universities are in the same boat. They are quite the income stream nowadays.
The ball park figures I heard recently they aimed for for one undergraduate BSc admissions cohort at St A's was a roughly equal split between Scotland, rUK and international (and in St A's rather specifically the US contingent is absolutely massive).
I can confirm that the American student presence in St Andrews is huge. Half my daughter’s new uni friends are American
Suffragette, feminist, bit of a tart, common cockney lass, "England's second richest woman", imperialist, Fascist sympathiser, possible husband-poisoner, friend of Winston Churchill and the King, newspaper magnate, opponent of Indian independence, aviation pioneer, "Saviour of the Spitfire", and so royally patriotic when the Abdication happened she stopped eating, and died
She's a pound ship Unity Mitford.
‘She believed Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler were strong leaders’
I am lightheaded with surprise.
I didn't claim she was "nice"
I said her life story is jaw-dropping. And it is
I love all the little details, eg
"In 1932, she offered to give £200,000 (equivalent to £15 million in 2023) to strengthen the British Armed Forces. The National Government refused. She hung a huge electric sign, "DOWN WITH MACDONALD THE TRAITOR", in the rigging of Liberty and sailed round Great Britain.[11]"
Known about her for decades. She paid for the Everest flights. I had a model Westland Wallace on the shelf when I was young, which is how I know (they used to put lots of historical information in with the kits in those days).
She's utterly fabulous. OK she liked Hitler, no one is perfect
I sense an essay coming on
It was my daughter today who got me into her lifestory. As we walked around Nunhead Cemetery
That's my daughter who is reading The Master and Margarita
"proud father of daughters with excellent taste"
I read that when I was 16.
Presumably you know the story of the great Victorian cemeteries of London and the Necropolis Railway? Definitely worth a look if you haven't, including the projects that failed (waterborne funerals to riverside necropoleis to W and E).
and above all this little Gothic classic George A. Walker (1839) Gatherings from Graveyards; Particularly those of London: with a Concise History of the Modes of Interment among Different Nations, from the Earliest Periods. And a Details of Dangerous and Fatal Results Produced by the Unwise and Revolting Custom of Inhuming the Dead in the Midst of the Living
My Dad read The Master and Margarita and raved about it around 1980, then pressed it on me. I read it, and indeed adored it. Still one of my very favourite novels
What's nice about this story is that my older daughter simply walked into a north London library a couple of days ago, couldn't find the book she wanted, but then saw "The Master and Margarita" and thought - that looks interesting. Then today she said, unprompted, to me "OMG I'm reading this amazing novel... it's called...."
So that's grandfather, father, daughter, all loving the same magical book. Sweet
Thanks for the cemetery links, they are amazing rewilded chunks of London history
Indeed: and I should add that I was being entirely positive about the Bulgakov book - memorable book for a teenager (still in the bookcase btw). (Not in the least intended as a snot, quite the reverse.)
Suffragette, feminist, bit of a tart, common cockney lass, "England's second richest woman", imperialist, Fascist sympathiser, possible husband-poisoner, friend of Winston Churchill and the King, newspaper magnate, opponent of Indian independence, aviation pioneer, "Saviour of the Spitfire", and so royally patriotic when the Abdication happened she stopped eating, and died
She's a pound ship Unity Mitford.
‘She believed Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler were strong leaders’
I am lightheaded with surprise.
I didn't claim she was "nice"
I said her life story is jaw-dropping. And it is
I love all the little details, eg
"In 1932, she offered to give £200,000 (equivalent to £15 million in 2023) to strengthen the British Armed Forces. The National Government refused. She hung a huge electric sign, "DOWN WITH MACDONALD THE TRAITOR", in the rigging of Liberty and sailed round Great Britain.[11]"
Known about her for decades. She paid for the Everest flights. I had a model Westland Wallace on the shelf when I was young, which is how I know (they used to put lots of historical information in with the kits in those days).
She's utterly fabulous. OK she liked Hitler, no one is perfect
I sense an essay coming on
It was my daughter today who got me into her lifestory. As we walked around Nunhead Cemetery
That's my daughter who is reading The Master and Margarita
"proud father of daughters with excellent taste"
I read that when I was 16.
Presumably you know the story of the great Victorian cemeteries of London and the Necropolis Railway? Definitely worth a look if you haven't, including the projects that failed (waterborne funerals to riverside necropoleis to W and E).
and above all this little Gothic classic George A. Walker (1839) Gatherings from Graveyards; Particularly those of London: with a Concise History of the Modes of Interment among Different Nations, from the Earliest Periods. And a Details of Dangerous and Fatal Results Produced by the Unwise and Revolting Custom of Inhuming the Dead in the Midst of the Living
My Dad read The Master and Margarita and raved about it around 1980, then pressed it on me. I read it, and indeed adored it. Still one of my very favourite novels
What's nice about this story is that my older daughter simply walked into a north London library a couple of days ago, couldn't find the book she wanted, but then saw "The Master and Margarita" and thought - that looks interesting. Then today she said, unprompted, to me "OMG I'm reading this amazing novel... it's called...."
So that's grandfather, father, daughter, all loving the same magical book. Sweet
Thanks for the cemetery links, they are amazing rewilded chunks of London history
Indeed: and I should add that I was being entirely positive about the Bulgakov book - memorable book for a teenager (still in the bookcase btw). (Not in the least intended as a snot, quite the reverse.)
Bulgakov’s masterpiece deserves a new and sexy movie adaptation
Edit: there actually is a recent anti-Putin adaptation
Suffragette, feminist, bit of a tart, common cockney lass, "England's second richest woman", imperialist, Fascist sympathiser, possible husband-poisoner, friend of Winston Churchill and the King, newspaper magnate, opponent of Indian independence, aviation pioneer, "Saviour of the Spitfire", and so royally patriotic when the Abdication happened she stopped eating, and died
She's a pound ship Unity Mitford.
‘She believed Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler were strong leaders’
I am lightheaded with surprise.
I didn't claim she was "nice"
I said her life story is jaw-dropping. And it is
I love all the little details, eg
"In 1932, she offered to give £200,000 (equivalent to £15 million in 2023) to strengthen the British Armed Forces. The National Government refused. She hung a huge electric sign, "DOWN WITH MACDONALD THE TRAITOR", in the rigging of Liberty and sailed round Great Britain.[11]"
Known about her for decades. She paid for the Everest flights. I had a model Westland Wallace on the shelf when I was young, which is how I know (they used to put lots of historical information in with the kits in those days).
She's utterly fabulous. OK she liked Hitler, no one is perfect
I sense an essay coming on
It was my daughter today who got me into her lifestory. As we walked around Nunhead Cemetery
That's my daughter who is reading The Master and Margarita
"proud father of daughters with excellent taste"
I read that when I was 16.
Presumably you know the story of the great Victorian cemeteries of London and the Necropolis Railway? Definitely worth a look if you haven't, including the projects that failed (waterborne funerals to riverside necropoleis to W and E).
and above all this little Gothic classic George A. Walker (1839) Gatherings from Graveyards; Particularly those of London: with a Concise History of the Modes of Interment among Different Nations, from the Earliest Periods. And a Details of Dangerous and Fatal Results Produced by the Unwise and Revolting Custom of Inhuming the Dead in the Midst of the Living
My Dad read The Master and Margarita and raved about it around 1980, then pressed it on me. I read it, and indeed adored it. Still one of my very favourite novels
What's nice about this story is that my older daughter simply walked into a north London library a couple of days ago, couldn't find the book she wanted, but then saw "The Master and Margarita" and thought - that looks interesting. Then today she said, unprompted, to me "OMG I'm reading this amazing novel... it's called...."
So that's grandfather, father, daughter, all loving the same magical book. Sweet
Thanks for the cemetery links, they are amazing rewilded chunks of London history
Indeed: and I should add that I was being entirely positive about the Bulgakov book - memorable book for a teenager (still in the bookcase btw). (Not in the least intended as a snot, quite the reverse.)
Bulgakov’s masterpiece deserves a new and sexy movie adaptation
Edit: there actually is a recent anti-Putin adaptation
Ok, ok, I give in. I will order a copy. See if Abe can do me a deal.
Everyman Classics do a very smart affordable hardback edition with an interesting introduction and timeline. Agree with the PB consensus: a sparkling book. Read it last year.
David Brindle @DavidJ_Brindle · 7h Almost 1 in 4 #socialcare jobs now held by non-EU overseas workers, @skillsforcare reports. Numbers doubled in just 2 years. Hard to see how sector will cope with visa clampdown.
The old stat was ~84% were British, while people act like all care workers are non-British. Holding the wages down at minimum wage and opening up visas has lowered the British percentage but its still over three quarters.
The sector can cope by paying its staff a market rate. Then people will apply for the jobs. Or the sector can go bust and shut down due to lack of employees. Their choice. No need to import minimum wage people to save a sector from paying a market rate.
As always it’s not that simple…
About half of people in care homes are private pay and the other half are state funded which means they essentially have limited assets.
So if you want to pay care home workers a better salary then local government needs to spend much more (labour costs are c 60% of opex in a care home). If they don’t want to then profits will be basically wiped out - a 33% increase in wages is a 20% increase in costs (which would make most care homes unprofitable).
A significant reduction in care home capacity - which is what you suggest - would result in many people having to stay home (often in unsuitable accommodation) and be cared for by their families. Which would result in a loss of productive capacity in the economy as (usually) women stay home. This would also result in a significant reduction in incomes in these houses with the knock on economic impact.
It all comes down to tax and spend more or allow immigration to plug the gap.
"Allison Pearson They tried to break Lucy Connolly, but the decent people of Britain will never desert her A year on from the Southport massacre, the childminder who dared to express her anger over immigration is still in jail" (£)
Suffragette, feminist, bit of a tart, common cockney lass, "England's second richest woman", imperialist, Fascist sympathiser, possible husband-poisoner, friend of Winston Churchill and the King, newspaper magnate, opponent of Indian independence, aviation pioneer, "Saviour of the Spitfire", and so royally patriotic when the Abdication happened she stopped eating, and died
She's a pound ship Unity Mitford.
‘She believed Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler were strong leaders’
I am lightheaded with surprise.
I didn't claim she was "nice"
I said her life story is jaw-dropping. And it is
I love all the little details, eg
"In 1932, she offered to give £200,000 (equivalent to £15 million in 2023) to strengthen the British Armed Forces. The National Government refused. She hung a huge electric sign, "DOWN WITH MACDONALD THE TRAITOR", in the rigging of Liberty and sailed round Great Britain.[11]"
Known about her for decades. She paid for the Everest flights. I had a model Westland Wallace on the shelf when I was young, which is how I know (they used to put lots of historical information in with the kits in those days).
Westland Wallace? Blimey, that's obscure. Airfix? Rather wonderful and idiosyncratic the range of models that Airfix produced in its prime. Revell was another, and Matchbox. Them were the days.
Frog was the maker, actually. The plane was quite famous in its day (before my time, but still well enough remembered even then). Part of a range called Trail BLazers, including Amy Johnson's plane, DH88 Comet Racer, Alcock and Brown's Vimy, and S.6B (courtesy Lady Houston), and others I forget at this range in time but which would set Leon aquiver like a red, white and blue blancmange.
A little digging reveals my memory of Lady H being recalled by the makers is actually accurate:
I’ve just read the article, and to draw such a comparison, between modern Scotland, and Jim Crow era America, with its very different demographic and socio-economic profile, seems like an argument made in bad faith to me.
I'm just not sure what is gained by the analogy in the context made, even within the wider article. Bearing in mind an experienced academic said it in that context they presumably think it a great point, but at best it seems a distraction to me from broader and more positive arguments being sought.
It doesn't make sense at any level. That's *beyond* "Death Recorded" level of stupidity.
I presume it is part of the Americanisation of socio-political discourse.
There was someone ranting about the price of drugs in healthcare the other day, on Reddit. For the UK.
He exploded when various people pointed out that NHS bulk buys and gets very good prices on most things. When it was pointed out that some of the reforms to bulk buying and using generics happened under Thatcher - he nearly got banned by the mods. From his "points" he had obviously absorbed a lot of content about US healthcare.
Giving the best possible case for the argument: you could perhaps argue that if the Jim Crow South can manage to appoint that many black people then a Scottish University drawing on the peoples of the British Empire ought to have at least managed reach that same low bar?
The racial make-up still doesn’t make any sense of course: the Scottish Universities should (by this argument) have been recruiting this fraction mostly from the Indian subcontinent, not people of African descent.
I don't understand that - are you saying that Scottish universities should have more ethnic diversity than the Scottish population, due to international students/fellows?
By this argument, yes? Why should Scottish universities restrict themselves only to Scottish academics?
I’m not 100% pushing this line, but it’s a line you could take - a colourable argument as US lawyers like to say.
Does anyone have data on the international cohort of students/fellows etc at Scottish universities vs other universities? I would suspect that Edinburgh and St Andrews would have quite a few...
Given the fees international students are paying, I think most Scottish universities are in the same boat. They are quite the income stream nowadays.
The ball park figures I heard recently they aimed for for one undergraduate BSc admissions cohort at St A's was a roughly equal split between Scotland, rUK and international (and in St A's rather specifically the US contingent is absolutely massive).
I can confirm that the American student presence in St Andrews is huge. Half my daughter’s new uni friends are American
Gotta pay the bills somehow. US students are paying, what, £18K maybe even £20K a year?
"Allison Pearson They tried to break Lucy Connolly, but the decent people of Britain will never desert her A year on from the Southport massacre, the childminder who dared to express her anger over immigration is still in jail" (£)
The Gazette has asked me to write about this thing called "the Online Safety Act"
Has anyone got any thoughts? I hear bad things
Beyond terrible. Another post passed as we sleepwalk our way into the totalitarian surveillance state. And all to appease earnestly woke do-gooders who wouldn't recognise a VPL if it joined them for breakfast.
Is it during the traditional twerking stage of breakfast that you recognise the visible panty line?
How are you doing, you poor old sod? Are you still in hospital? Do you need cheering up?!
I'm back home now, which is much better
I miss the morphine drip and button, but it's so much calmer and quieter here. And they have given me a bottle of Oramorph and loads of codeine, so I'm managing the pain
I live across the road from my folks, so my Mum is delivering three meals a day and helping keep the house clean, and my Dad is nearby for medical expertise
I can't believe how many cards I've had, mostly from people I deliver mail to. And quite a few have had cash in too. I always try to be a cheerful and friendly postie, but the support from people has been rather surprising
I'm being as idle as possible, which I find really difficult..
And I think Katy Perry is an untalented 40 year old singer.
Will anyone be playing her music in two decades time?
Yes probably, in the same way people listen to Bucks Fizz and Toni Basil now - as fun nostalgia. Her songs will never be regarded as classics, but a nostalgic trip down memory lane.
Her relatively cheery hit California Girls did lead bubblegum music out of its dark/all black wearing/illuminati-pop phase, for which we should all be somewhat grateful. Though someone else would have done it if she hadn't.
Wait.
People listen to Bucks Fizz these days?
Really?
And they do this non-ironically?
Yes, via channels like Youtube and at Rewind Festivals etc. There will always be an audience keen on reliving their youth, and another audience keen on rediscovering a youth that wasn't theirs.
Phew.
Is there any way of identifying these people, so I can avoid having to engage them in conversation?
"Allison Pearson They tried to break Lucy Connolly, but the decent people of Britain will never desert her A year on from the Southport massacre, the childminder who dared to express her anger over immigration is still in jail" (£)
"Tate blames Brexit for slump in visitors Maria Balshaw says upheaval and Covid has kept young Europeans away from London sites, contributing to a 27pc attendance drop since 2019"
The Gazette has asked me to write about this thing called "the Online Safety Act"
Has anyone got any thoughts? I hear bad things
Beyond terrible. Another post passed as we sleepwalk our way into the totalitarian surveillance state. And all to appease earnestly woke do-gooders who wouldn't recognise a VPL if it joined them for breakfast.
Is it during the traditional twerking stage of breakfast that you recognise the visible panty line?
How are you doing, you poor old sod? Are you still in hospital? Do you need cheering up?!
I'm back home now, which is much better
I miss the morphine drip and button, but it's so much calmer and quieter here. And they have given me a bottle of Oramorph and loads of codeine, so I'm managing the pain
I live across the road from my folks, so my Mum is delivering three meals a day and helping keep the house clean, and my Dad is nearby for medical expertise
I can't believe how many cards I've had, mostly from people I deliver mail to. And quite a few have had cash in too. I always try to be a cheerful and friendly postie, but the support from people has been rather surprising
I'm being as idle as possible, which I find really difficult..
Top news that you are home!!
Enjoy the rest and the greeting cards. There'll be plenty of post to do when you get back.
"Tate blames Brexit for slump in visitors Maria Balshaw says upheaval and Covid has kept young Europeans away from London sites, contributing to a 27pc attendance drop since 2019"
"Allison Pearson They tried to break Lucy Connolly, but the decent people of Britain will never desert her A year on from the Southport massacre, the childminder who dared to express her anger over immigration is still in jail" (£)
I’ve just read the article, and to draw such a comparison, between modern Scotland, and Jim Crow era America, with its very different demographic and socio-economic profile, seems like an argument made in bad faith to me.
I'm just not sure what is gained by the analogy in the context made, even within the wider article. Bearing in mind an experienced academic said it in that context they presumably think it a great point, but at best it seems a distraction to me from broader and more positive arguments being sought.
It doesn't make sense at any level. That's *beyond* "Death Recorded" level of stupidity.
I presume it is part of the Americanisation of socio-political discourse.
There was someone ranting about the price of drugs in healthcare the other day, on Reddit. For the UK.
He exploded when various people pointed out that NHS bulk buys and gets very good prices on most things. When it was pointed out that some of the reforms to bulk buying and using generics happened under Thatcher - he nearly got banned by the mods. From his "points" he had obviously absorbed a lot of content about US healthcare.
Giving the best possible case for the argument: you could perhaps argue that if the Jim Crow South can manage to appoint that many black people then a Scottish University drawing on the peoples of the British Empire ought to have at least managed reach that same low bar?
The racial make-up still doesn’t make any sense of course: the Scottish Universities should (by this argument) have been recruiting this fraction mostly from the Indian subcontinent, not people of African descent.
I don't understand that - are you saying that Scottish universities should have more ethnic diversity than the Scottish population, due to international students/fellows?
By this argument, yes? Why should Scottish universities restrict themselves only to Scottish academics?
I’m not 100% pushing this line, but it’s a line you could take - a colourable argument as US lawyers like to say.
Does anyone have data on the international cohort of students/fellows etc at Scottish universities vs other universities? I would suspect that Edinburgh and St Andrews would have quite a few...
Given the fees international students are paying, I think most Scottish universities are in the same boat. They are quite the income stream nowadays.
The ball park figures I heard recently they aimed for for one undergraduate BSc admissions cohort at St A's was a roughly equal split between Scotland, rUK and international (and in St A's rather specifically the US contingent is absolutely massive).
I can confirm that the American student presence in St Andrews is huge. Half my daughter’s new uni friends are American
Suffragette, feminist, bit of a tart, common cockney lass, "England's second richest woman", imperialist, Fascist sympathiser, possible husband-poisoner, friend of Winston Churchill and the King, newspaper magnate, opponent of Indian independence, aviation pioneer, "Saviour of the Spitfire", and so royally patriotic when the Abdication happened she stopped eating, and died
She's a pound ship Unity Mitford.
‘She believed Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler were strong leaders’
I am lightheaded with surprise.
I didn't claim she was "nice"
I said her life story is jaw-dropping. And it is
I love all the little details, eg
"In 1932, she offered to give £200,000 (equivalent to £15 million in 2023) to strengthen the British Armed Forces. The National Government refused. She hung a huge electric sign, "DOWN WITH MACDONALD THE TRAITOR", in the rigging of Liberty and sailed round Great Britain.[11]"
Known about her for decades. She paid for the Everest flights. I had a model Westland Wallace on the shelf when I was young, which is how I know (they used to put lots of historical information in with the kits in those days).
Westland Wallace? Blimey, that's obscure. Airfix? Rather wonderful and idiosyncratic the range of models that Airfix produced in its prime. Revell was another, and Matchbox. Them were the days.
Frog was the maker, actually. The plane was quite famous in its day (before my time, but still well enough remembered even then). Part of a range called Trail BLazers, including Amy Johnson's plane, DH88 Comet Racer, Alcock and Brown's Vimy, and S.6B (courtesy Lady Houston), and others I forget at this range in time but which would set Leon aquiver like a red, white and blue blancmange.
A little digging reveals my memory of Lady H being recalled by the makers is actually accurate:
The first and last Airfix model I ever built was a Lockheed Lightning. Over sixty years later the silhouette was a clue in a pub quiz and I was the only person to get it right, earning me an entirely unjustified reputation as an ace plane-spotter. You just have to take these plaudits when you can, and forget about the others you deserve but never get.
And I think Katy Perry is an untalented 40 year old singer.
Will anyone be playing her music in two decades time?
Yes probably, in the same way people listen to Bucks Fizz and Toni Basil now - as fun nostalgia. Her songs will never be regarded as classics, but a nostalgic trip down memory lane.
Her relatively cheery hit California Girls did lead bubblegum music out of its dark/all black wearing/illuminati-pop phase, for which we should all be somewhat grateful. Though someone else would have done it if she hadn't.
I don't think it's unknown, but it's not noted nearly enough, how much of the female pop of this century is driven by a small cohort of superstar but not vastly known co-writers who lurk behind Lennon and McCartney only in their chart success - Max Martin, Steve Mac, Dr. Luke, Wayne Hector creating the sort of production line that Motown could only dream of.
To take Martin, he now edges ahead of Lennon in US number ones, with large chunks of the Britney, Perry, Pink, Swift, Grande and Weeknd songbooks.
I wonder if the wheel is turning a bit now, rather than putting out songs that would be appropriate for a range of artists, it looks to me that more recent artists are looking for slightly more personal sounds and the newest co-writers are almost having to become biographers.
The Gazette has asked me to write about this thing called "the Online Safety Act"
Has anyone got any thoughts? I hear bad things
Beyond terrible. Another post passed as we sleepwalk our way into the totalitarian surveillance state. And all to appease earnestly woke do-gooders who wouldn't recognise a VPL if it joined them for breakfast.
Is it during the traditional twerking stage of breakfast that you recognise the visible panty line?
How are you doing, you poor old sod? Are you still in hospital? Do you need cheering up?!
I'm back home now, which is much better
I miss the morphine drip and button, but it's so much calmer and quieter here. And they have given me a bottle of Oramorph and loads of codeine, so I'm managing the pain
I live across the road from my folks, so my Mum is delivering three meals a day and helping keep the house clean, and my Dad is nearby for medical expertise
I can't believe how many cards I've had, mostly from people I deliver mail to. And quite a few have had cash in too. I always try to be a cheerful and friendly postie, but the support from people has been rather surprising
I'm being as idle as possible, which I find really difficult..
Good to hear you are being nursed. What a nasty surprise
I can recommend Tehran, Clarkson's Farm 2, and The Leopard in terms of recent TV, to see you through the idleness
The Gazette has asked me to write about this thing called "the Online Safety Act"
Has anyone got any thoughts? I hear bad things
Beyond terrible. Another post passed as we sleepwalk our way into the totalitarian surveillance state. And all to appease earnestly woke do-gooders who wouldn't recognise a VPL if it joined them for breakfast.
Is it during the traditional twerking stage of breakfast that you recognise the visible panty line?
How are you doing, you poor old sod? Are you still in hospital? Do you need cheering up?!
I'm back home now, which is much better
I miss the morphine drip and button, but it's so much calmer and quieter here. And they have given me a bottle of Oramorph and loads of codeine, so I'm managing the pain
I live across the road from my folks, so my Mum is delivering three meals a day and helping keep the house clean, and my Dad is nearby for medical expertise
I can't believe how many cards I've had, mostly from people I deliver mail to. And quite a few have had cash in too. I always try to be a cheerful and friendly postie, but the support from people has been rather surprising
I'm being as idle as possible, which I find really difficult..
Great to hear you're out of hospital. Your story of the NHS is sadly typical. If you don't scream and shout or have someone who can scream and shout (or cajole) on your behalf, you're fucked.
I always feel sorry for those who "don't make a fuss" and suffer as a result.
The NHS is just absolute garbage. Institutionally. I'm sure you had instances of great care from individuals.
"Allison Pearson They tried to break Lucy Connolly, but the decent people of Britain will never desert her A year on from the Southport massacre, the childminder who dared to express her anger over immigration is still in jail" (£)
The Gazette has asked me to write about this thing called "the Online Safety Act"
Has anyone got any thoughts? I hear bad things
Beyond terrible. Another post passed as we sleepwalk our way into the totalitarian surveillance state. And all to appease earnestly woke do-gooders who wouldn't recognise a VPL if it joined them for breakfast.
Is it during the traditional twerking stage of breakfast that you recognise the visible panty line?
How are you doing, you poor old sod? Are you still in hospital? Do you need cheering up?!
I'm back home now, which is much better
I miss the morphine drip and button, but it's so much calmer and quieter here. And they have given me a bottle of Oramorph and loads of codeine, so I'm managing the pain
I live across the road from my folks, so my Mum is delivering three meals a day and helping keep the house clean, and my Dad is nearby for medical expertise
I can't believe how many cards I've had, mostly from people I deliver mail to. And quite a few have had cash in too. I always try to be a cheerful and friendly postie, but the support from people has been rather surprising
I'm being as idle as possible, which I find really difficult..
Good to hear you are being nursed. What a nasty surprise
I can recommend Tehran, Clarkson's Farm 2, and The Leopard in terms of recent TV, to see you through the idleness
Just done Tehran series 1 and 2 thanks to PB recommendations.
I'm very curious though - is there really an elite Iranian superclass of junta members whose children live in hedonistic and insanely rich madness e.g. fast sports cars, tennis clubs, high end drinking dens, drugs out of their ears, wild discos etc etc???
The Gazette has asked me to write about this thing called "the Online Safety Act"
Has anyone got any thoughts? I hear bad things
Beyond terrible. Another post passed as we sleepwalk our way into the totalitarian surveillance state. And all to appease earnestly woke do-gooders who wouldn't recognise a VPL if it joined them for breakfast.
Is it during the traditional twerking stage of breakfast that you recognise the visible panty line?
How are you doing, you poor old sod? Are you still in hospital? Do you need cheering up?!
I'm back home now, which is much better
I miss the morphine drip and button, but it's so much calmer and quieter here. And they have given me a bottle of Oramorph and loads of codeine, so I'm managing the pain
I live across the road from my folks, so my Mum is delivering three meals a day and helping keep the house clean, and my Dad is nearby for medical expertise
I can't believe how many cards I've had, mostly from people I deliver mail to. And quite a few have had cash in too. I always try to be a cheerful and friendly postie, but the support from people has been rather surprising
I'm being as idle as possible, which I find really difficult..
Great to hear you're out of hospital. Your story of the NHS is sadly typical. If you don't scream and shout or have someone who can scream and shout (or cajole) on your behalf, you're fucked.
I always feel sorry for those who "don't make a fuss" and suffer as a result.
The NHS is just absolute garbage. Institutionally. I'm sure you had instances of great care from individuals.
My father should escape their clutches tomorrow.
He was pretty poorly last week and the doctors have fast tracked him out with a party pack of drugs (who says we don't have assisted dying already?) but this week he looks much better and I suspect they have been somewhat pessimistic, though only time will tell.
If I hadn't turned up at mealtimes he would have suffered the usual indignity of having lunch left out of his reach and then taken away again with the usual 'not hungry today [name]?' Grrrr.
Some nurses did make an effort, others not so much.
Suffragette, feminist, bit of a tart, common cockney lass, "England's second richest woman", imperialist, Fascist sympathiser, possible husband-poisoner, friend of Winston Churchill and the King, newspaper magnate, opponent of Indian independence, aviation pioneer, "Saviour of the Spitfire", and so royally patriotic when the Abdication happened she stopped eating, and died
She's a pound ship Unity Mitford.
‘She believed Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler were strong leaders’
I am lightheaded with surprise.
I didn't claim she was "nice"
I said her life story is jaw-dropping. And it is
I love all the little details, eg
"In 1932, she offered to give £200,000 (equivalent to £15 million in 2023) to strengthen the British Armed Forces. The National Government refused. She hung a huge electric sign, "DOWN WITH MACDONALD THE TRAITOR", in the rigging of Liberty and sailed round Great Britain.[11]"
Known about her for decades. She paid for the Everest flights. I had a model Westland Wallace on the shelf when I was young, which is how I know (they used to put lots of historical information in with the kits in those days).
Westland Wallace? Blimey, that's obscure. Airfix? Rather wonderful and idiosyncratic the range of models that Airfix produced in its prime. Revell was another, and Matchbox. Them were the days.
I did Airfix Braniff 747, Concorde, AWACS, Space Shuttle, Harrier, Hunter, Mosquito, Blenheim, He 170 (obscure!), Stormovik, HMS Hood, and Italeri Pocket Battleship Lutzow and Mig-37 Stealth (speculative!!), and a Japanese (Tamiya?) destroyer Akizuki.
Sci-fi: the AMT Enterprise (TOS and Movie versions), Kiingon battlecruiser, Romulan Bird of Prey, Enterprise-D, and from Star Wars X-wing and A-wing.
The Gazette has asked me to write about this thing called "the Online Safety Act"
Has anyone got any thoughts? I hear bad things
Beyond terrible. Another post passed as we sleepwalk our way into the totalitarian surveillance state. And all to appease earnestly woke do-gooders who wouldn't recognise a VPL if it joined them for breakfast.
Is it during the traditional twerking stage of breakfast that you recognise the visible panty line?
How are you doing, you poor old sod? Are you still in hospital? Do you need cheering up?!
I'm back home now, which is much better
I miss the morphine drip and button, but it's so much calmer and quieter here. And they have given me a bottle of Oramorph and loads of codeine, so I'm managing the pain
I live across the road from my folks, so my Mum is delivering three meals a day and helping keep the house clean, and my Dad is nearby for medical expertise
I can't believe how many cards I've had, mostly from people I deliver mail to. And quite a few have had cash in too. I always try to be a cheerful and friendly postie, but the support from people has been rather surprising
I'm being as idle as possible, which I find really difficult..
Again, very best wishes.
Might I humbly suggest that you devote a portion of your enforced idleness to getting a physio plan setup?
My experience with the healthcare system says that you will need to start organising it (and badgering various orgs about it) long before you can actually do something.
The Gazette has asked me to write about this thing called "the Online Safety Act"
Has anyone got any thoughts? I hear bad things
Beyond terrible. Another post passed as we sleepwalk our way into the totalitarian surveillance state. And all to appease earnestly woke do-gooders who wouldn't recognise a VPL if it joined them for breakfast.
Is it during the traditional twerking stage of breakfast that you recognise the visible panty line?
How are you doing, you poor old sod? Are you still in hospital? Do you need cheering up?!
I'm back home now, which is much better
I miss the morphine drip and button, but it's so much calmer and quieter here. And they have given me a bottle of Oramorph and loads of codeine, so I'm managing the pain
I live across the road from my folks, so my Mum is delivering three meals a day and helping keep the house clean, and my Dad is nearby for medical expertise
I can't believe how many cards I've had, mostly from people I deliver mail to. And quite a few have had cash in too. I always try to be a cheerful and friendly postie, but the support from people has been rather surprising
I'm being as idle as possible, which I find really difficult..
Good to hear you are being nursed. What a nasty surprise
I can recommend Tehran, Clarkson's Farm 2, and The Leopard in terms of recent TV, to see you through the idleness
Just done Tehran series 1 and 2 thanks to PB recommendations.
I'm very curious though - is there really an elite Iranian superclass of junta members whose children live in hedonistic and insanely rich madness e.g. fast sports cars, tennis clubs, high end drinking dens, drugs out of their ears, wild discos etc etc???
The Gazette has asked me to write about this thing called "the Online Safety Act"
Has anyone got any thoughts? I hear bad things
Beyond terrible. Another post passed as we sleepwalk our way into the totalitarian surveillance state. And all to appease earnestly woke do-gooders who wouldn't recognise a VPL if it joined them for breakfast.
Is it during the traditional twerking stage of breakfast that you recognise the visible panty line?
How are you doing, you poor old sod? Are you still in hospital? Do you need cheering up?!
I'm back home now, which is much better
I miss the morphine drip and button, but it's so much calmer and quieter here. And they have given me a bottle of Oramorph and loads of codeine, so I'm managing the pain
I live across the road from my folks, so my Mum is delivering three meals a day and helping keep the house clean, and my Dad is nearby for medical expertise
I can't believe how many cards I've had, mostly from people I deliver mail to. And quite a few have had cash in too. I always try to be a cheerful and friendly postie, but the support from people has been rather surprising
I'm being as idle as possible, which I find really difficult..
Great to hear you're out of hospital. Your story of the NHS is sadly typical. If you don't scream and shout or have someone who can scream and shout (or cajole) on your behalf, you're fucked.
I always feel sorry for those who "don't make a fuss" and suffer as a result.
The NHS is just absolute garbage. Institutionally. I'm sure you had instances of great care from individuals.
It seems to me the public atittude towards the NHS has completely changed in the last few years, yet this has gone unnoticed
eg if we had an Olympics now, would there really be a 2 minute segment in the Opening Ceremony singing its praises? I doubt it. Likewise, would any politician say, with a straight face, "it's the envy of the world"? Or call it "our beloved NHS"?
No, they wouldn't. Or if they did they'd be laughed to scorn. There is much more negativity, and a much wider acceptance that the NHS is a middling health system with some great bits and some terrible flaws. This is a positive evolution for the UK, losing this absurd religion
I’ve just read the article, and to draw such a comparison, between modern Scotland, and Jim Crow era America, with its very different demographic and socio-economic profile, seems like an argument made in bad faith to me.
I'm just not sure what is gained by the analogy in the context made, even within the wider article. Bearing in mind an experienced academic said it in that context they presumably think it a great point, but at best it seems a distraction to me from broader and more positive arguments being sought.
It doesn't make sense at any level. That's *beyond* "Death Recorded" level of stupidity.
I presume it is part of the Americanisation of socio-political discourse.
There was someone ranting about the price of drugs in healthcare the other day, on Reddit. For the UK.
He exploded when various people pointed out that NHS bulk buys and gets very good prices on most things. When it was pointed out that some of the reforms to bulk buying and using generics happened under Thatcher - he nearly got banned by the mods. From his "points" he had obviously absorbed a lot of content about US healthcare.
Giving the best possible case for the argument: you could perhaps argue that if the Jim Crow South can manage to appoint that many black people then a Scottish University drawing on the peoples of the British Empire ought to have at least managed reach that same low bar?
The racial make-up still doesn’t make any sense of course: the Scottish Universities should (by this argument) have been recruiting this fraction mostly from the Indian subcontinent, not people of African descent.
I don't understand that - are you saying that Scottish universities should have more ethnic diversity than the Scottish population, due to international students/fellows?
By this argument, yes? Why should Scottish universities restrict themselves only to Scottish academics?
I’m not 100% pushing this line, but it’s a line you could take - a colourable argument as US lawyers like to say.
Does anyone have data on the international cohort of students/fellows etc at Scottish universities vs other universities? I would suspect that Edinburgh and St Andrews would have quite a few...
Given the fees international students are paying, I think most Scottish universities are in the same boat. They are quite the income stream nowadays.
The ball park figures I heard recently they aimed for for one undergraduate BSc admissions cohort at St A's was a roughly equal split between Scotland, rUK and international (and in St A's rather specifically the US contingent is absolutely massive).
I can confirm that the American student presence in St Andrews is huge. Half my daughter’s new uni friends are American
If you spend any more time in St Andrews, my hometown, and SE14, my adopted home, I'll start to think you are stalking me!
The Gazette has asked me to write about this thing called "the Online Safety Act"
Has anyone got any thoughts? I hear bad things
Beyond terrible. Another post passed as we sleepwalk our way into the totalitarian surveillance state. And all to appease earnestly woke do-gooders who wouldn't recognise a VPL if it joined them for breakfast.
Is it during the traditional twerking stage of breakfast that you recognise the visible panty line?
How are you doing, you poor old sod? Are you still in hospital? Do you need cheering up?!
I'm back home now, which is much better
I miss the morphine drip and button, but it's so much calmer and quieter here. And they have given me a bottle of Oramorph and loads of codeine, so I'm managing the pain
I live across the road from my folks, so my Mum is delivering three meals a day and helping keep the house clean, and my Dad is nearby for medical expertise
I can't believe how many cards I've had, mostly from people I deliver mail to. And quite a few have had cash in too. I always try to be a cheerful and friendly postie, but the support from people has been rather surprising
I'm being as idle as possible, which I find really difficult..
Great to hear you're out of hospital. Your story of the NHS is sadly typical. If you don't scream and shout or have someone who can scream and shout (or cajole) on your behalf, you're fucked.
I always feel sorry for those who "don't make a fuss" and suffer as a result.
The NHS is just absolute garbage. Institutionally. I'm sure you had instances of great care from individuals.
My father should escape their clutches tomorrow.
He was pretty poorly last week and the doctors have fast tracked him out with a party pack of drugs (who says we don't have assisted dying already?) but this week he looks much better and I suspect they have been somewhat pessimistic, though only time will tell.
If I hadn't turned up at mealtimes he would have suffered the usual indignity of having lunch left out of his reach and then taken away again with the usual 'not hungry today [name]?' Grrrr.
Some nurses did make an effort, others not so much.
The interesting, if so sad thing is that if you relate any given story of abuse while at the hands of the NHS you will more often than not be met by a similar story from the person you are speaking to.
"Allison Pearson They tried to break Lucy Connolly, but the decent people of Britain will never desert her A year on from the Southport massacre, the childminder who dared to express her anger over immigration is still in jail" (£)
"Lucy’s role was to be a cautionary tale: a deterrent to anyone thinking of giving voice to their fears about migration."
I suggest she checks out the original tweet.
It was not exactly "I am somewhat worried by immigration and am i bit scared I may not get a GP appointment on time"
There were other tweets she made so it’s not just the one that got all the headlines. The beatification of Connolly by some on the right is vomit inducing .
I’ve just read the article, and to draw such a comparison, between modern Scotland, and Jim Crow era America, with its very different demographic and socio-economic profile, seems like an argument made in bad faith to me.
I'm just not sure what is gained by the analogy in the context made, even within the wider article. Bearing in mind an experienced academic said it in that context they presumably think it a great point, but at best it seems a distraction to me from broader and more positive arguments being sought.
It doesn't make sense at any level. That's *beyond* "Death Recorded" level of stupidity.
I presume it is part of the Americanisation of socio-political discourse.
There was someone ranting about the price of drugs in healthcare the other day, on Reddit. For the UK.
He exploded when various people pointed out that NHS bulk buys and gets very good prices on most things. When it was pointed out that some of the reforms to bulk buying and using generics happened under Thatcher - he nearly got banned by the mods. From his "points" he had obviously absorbed a lot of content about US healthcare.
Giving the best possible case for the argument: you could perhaps argue that if the Jim Crow South can manage to appoint that many black people then a Scottish University drawing on the peoples of the British Empire ought to have at least managed reach that same low bar?
The racial make-up still doesn’t make any sense of course: the Scottish Universities should (by this argument) have been recruiting this fraction mostly from the Indian subcontinent, not people of African descent.
I don't understand that - are you saying that Scottish universities should have more ethnic diversity than the Scottish population, due to international students/fellows?
By this argument, yes? Why should Scottish universities restrict themselves only to Scottish academics?
I’m not 100% pushing this line, but it’s a line you could take - a colourable argument as US lawyers like to say.
Does anyone have data on the international cohort of students/fellows etc at Scottish universities vs other universities? I would suspect that Edinburgh and St Andrews would have quite a few...
Given the fees international students are paying, I think most Scottish universities are in the same boat. They are quite the income stream nowadays.
The ball park figures I heard recently they aimed for for one undergraduate BSc admissions cohort at St A's was a roughly equal split between Scotland, rUK and international (and in St A's rather specifically the US contingent is absolutely massive).
I can confirm that the American student presence in St Andrews is huge. Half my daughter’s new uni friends are American
If you spend any more time in St Andrews, my hometown, and SE14, my adopted home, I'll start to think you are stalking me!
I've spent about 3 hours of my life in St Andrews, which included not being allowed to visit the botanical gardens because of covid restrictions, but we could go in shops with a face-mask.
I’ve just read the article, and to draw such a comparison, between modern Scotland, and Jim Crow era America, with its very different demographic and socio-economic profile, seems like an argument made in bad faith to me.
I'm just not sure what is gained by the analogy in the context made, even within the wider article. Bearing in mind an experienced academic said it in that context they presumably think it a great point, but at best it seems a distraction to me from broader and more positive arguments being sought.
It doesn't make sense at any level. That's *beyond* "Death Recorded" level of stupidity.
I presume it is part of the Americanisation of socio-political discourse.
There was someone ranting about the price of drugs in healthcare the other day, on Reddit. For the UK.
He exploded when various people pointed out that NHS bulk buys and gets very good prices on most things. When it was pointed out that some of the reforms to bulk buying and using generics happened under Thatcher - he nearly got banned by the mods. From his "points" he had obviously absorbed a lot of content about US healthcare.
Giving the best possible case for the argument: you could perhaps argue that if the Jim Crow South can manage to appoint that many black people then a Scottish University drawing on the peoples of the British Empire ought to have at least managed reach that same low bar?
The racial make-up still doesn’t make any sense of course: the Scottish Universities should (by this argument) have been recruiting this fraction mostly from the Indian subcontinent, not people of African descent.
I don't understand that - are you saying that Scottish universities should have more ethnic diversity than the Scottish population, due to international students/fellows?
By this argument, yes? Why should Scottish universities restrict themselves only to Scottish academics?
I’m not 100% pushing this line, but it’s a line you could take - a colourable argument as US lawyers like to say.
Does anyone have data on the international cohort of students/fellows etc at Scottish universities vs other universities? I would suspect that Edinburgh and St Andrews would have quite a few...
Given the fees international students are paying, I think most Scottish universities are in the same boat. They are quite the income stream nowadays.
The ball park figures I heard recently they aimed for for one undergraduate BSc admissions cohort at St A's was a roughly equal split between Scotland, rUK and international (and in St A's rather specifically the US contingent is absolutely massive).
I can confirm that the American student presence in St Andrews is huge. Half my daughter’s new uni friends are American
If you spend any more time in St Andrews, my hometown, and SE14, my adopted home, I'll start to think you are stalking me!
I've spent about 3 hours of my life in St Andrews, which included not being allowed to visit the botanical gardens because of covid restrictions, but we could go in shops with a face-mask.
"Allison Pearson They tried to break Lucy Connolly, but the decent people of Britain will never desert her A year on from the Southport massacre, the childminder who dared to express her anger over immigration is still in jail" (£)
"Lucy’s role was to be a cautionary tale: a deterrent to anyone thinking of giving voice to their fears about migration."
I suggest she checks out the original tweet.
It was not exactly "I am somewhat worried by immigration and am i bit scared I may not get a GP appointment on time"
There were other tweets she made so it’s not just the one that got all the headlines. The beatification of Connolly by some on the right is vomit inducing .
I think there was one more questionable tweet about three years prior? Something like that?
For this she got 31 months in jail. Given what actual violent criminals get, her sentence is absurdly harsh. And as Pearson points out, in the end it will rebound on this repulsive and illegitimate government, because they have created a martyr
And not a dodgy martyr like Tommeh, a very British mother with no criminal history
I’ve just read the article, and to draw such a comparison, between modern Scotland, and Jim Crow era America, with its very different demographic and socio-economic profile, seems like an argument made in bad faith to me.
I'm just not sure what is gained by the analogy in the context made, even within the wider article. Bearing in mind an experienced academic said it in that context they presumably think it a great point, but at best it seems a distraction to me from broader and more positive arguments being sought.
It doesn't make sense at any level. That's *beyond* "Death Recorded" level of stupidity.
I presume it is part of the Americanisation of socio-political discourse.
There was someone ranting about the price of drugs in healthcare the other day, on Reddit. For the UK.
He exploded when various people pointed out that NHS bulk buys and gets very good prices on most things. When it was pointed out that some of the reforms to bulk buying and using generics happened under Thatcher - he nearly got banned by the mods. From his "points" he had obviously absorbed a lot of content about US healthcare.
Giving the best possible case for the argument: you could perhaps argue that if the Jim Crow South can manage to appoint that many black people then a Scottish University drawing on the peoples of the British Empire ought to have at least managed reach that same low bar?
The racial make-up still doesn’t make any sense of course: the Scottish Universities should (by this argument) have been recruiting this fraction mostly from the Indian subcontinent, not people of African descent.
I don't understand that - are you saying that Scottish universities should have more ethnic diversity than the Scottish population, due to international students/fellows?
By this argument, yes? Why should Scottish universities restrict themselves only to Scottish academics?
I’m not 100% pushing this line, but it’s a line you could take - a colourable argument as US lawyers like to say.
Does anyone have data on the international cohort of students/fellows etc at Scottish universities vs other universities? I would suspect that Edinburgh and St Andrews would have quite a few...
Given the fees international students are paying, I think most Scottish universities are in the same boat. They are quite the income stream nowadays.
The ball park figures I heard recently they aimed for for one undergraduate BSc admissions cohort at St A's was a roughly equal split between Scotland, rUK and international (and in St A's rather specifically the US contingent is absolutely massive).
I can confirm that the American student presence in St Andrews is huge. Half my daughter’s new uni friends are American
If you spend any more time in St Andrews, my hometown, and SE14, my adopted home, I'll start to think you are stalking me!
I've spent about 3 hours of my life in St Andrews, which included not being allowed to visit the botanical gardens because of covid restrictions, but we could go in shops with a face-mask.
My favourite covid restriction was in St David’s where I wasn’t allowed to visit the Bishops Palace (essentially an outdoor ruin) because you had to book online in advance. Place was empty.
The Gazette has asked me to write about this thing called "the Online Safety Act"
Has anyone got any thoughts? I hear bad things
Beyond terrible. Another post passed as we sleepwalk our way into the totalitarian surveillance state. And all to appease earnestly woke do-gooders who wouldn't recognise a VPL if it joined them for breakfast.
Is it during the traditional twerking stage of breakfast that you recognise the visible panty line?
How are you doing, you poor old sod? Are you still in hospital? Do you need cheering up?!
I'm back home now, which is much better
I miss the morphine drip and button, but it's so much calmer and quieter here. And they have given me a bottle of Oramorph and loads of codeine, so I'm managing the pain
I live across the road from my folks, so my Mum is delivering three meals a day and helping keep the house clean, and my Dad is nearby for medical expertise
I can't believe how many cards I've had, mostly from people I deliver mail to. And quite a few have had cash in too. I always try to be a cheerful and friendly postie, but the support from people has been rather surprising
I'm being as idle as possible, which I find really difficult..
Good to hear you are being nursed. What a nasty surprise
I can recommend Tehran, Clarkson's Farm 2, and The Leopard in terms of recent TV, to see you through the idleness
Just done Tehran series 1 and 2 thanks to PB recommendations.
I'm very curious though - is there really an elite Iranian superclass of junta members whose children live in hedonistic and insanely rich madness e.g. fast sports cars, tennis clubs, high end drinking dens, drugs out of their ears, wild discos etc etc???
Following the Russian model?
Islamic societies do have quite a tradition of young men going out to get it out of their system, and ... in our terms ... "sowing their wild oats".
The Gazette has asked me to write about this thing called "the Online Safety Act"
Has anyone got any thoughts? I hear bad things
Beyond terrible. Another post passed as we sleepwalk our way into the totalitarian surveillance state. And all to appease earnestly woke do-gooders who wouldn't recognise a VPL if it joined them for breakfast.
Is it during the traditional twerking stage of breakfast that you recognise the visible panty line?
How are you doing, you poor old sod? Are you still in hospital? Do you need cheering up?!
I'm back home now, which is much better
I miss the morphine drip and button, but it's so much calmer and quieter here. And they have given me a bottle of Oramorph and loads of codeine, so I'm managing the pain
I live across the road from my folks, so my Mum is delivering three meals a day and helping keep the house clean, and my Dad is nearby for medical expertise
I can't believe how many cards I've had, mostly from people I deliver mail to. And quite a few have had cash in too. I always try to be a cheerful and friendly postie, but the support from people has been rather surprising
I'm being as idle as possible, which I find really difficult..
Good to hear you are being nursed. What a nasty surprise
I can recommend Tehran, Clarkson's Farm 2, and The Leopard in terms of recent TV, to see you through the idleness
Just done Tehran series 1 and 2 thanks to PB recommendations.
I'm very curious though - is there really an elite Iranian superclass of junta members whose children live in hedonistic and insanely rich madness e.g. fast sports cars, tennis clubs, high end drinking dens, drugs out of their ears, wild discos etc etc???
Following the Russian model?
Tehran is impeccably researched in all aspects. There is very definitely an elite princeling class in Tehran that behaves as shown in the drama
The regime basically buys off their discontent by ignoring their hedonism. Otherwise these bored smart rich kids would be leading another revolution
Suffragette, feminist, bit of a tart, common cockney lass, "England's second richest woman", imperialist, Fascist sympathiser, possible husband-poisoner, friend of Winston Churchill and the King, newspaper magnate, opponent of Indian independence, aviation pioneer, "Saviour of the Spitfire", and so royally patriotic when the Abdication happened she stopped eating, and died
She's a pound ship Unity Mitford.
‘She believed Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler were strong leaders’
I am lightheaded with surprise.
I didn't claim she was "nice"
I said her life story is jaw-dropping. And it is
I love all the little details, eg
"In 1932, she offered to give £200,000 (equivalent to £15 million in 2023) to strengthen the British Armed Forces. The National Government refused. She hung a huge electric sign, "DOWN WITH MACDONALD THE TRAITOR", in the rigging of Liberty and sailed round Great Britain.[11]"
Known about her for decades. She paid for the Everest flights. I had a model Westland Wallace on the shelf when I was young, which is how I know (they used to put lots of historical information in with the kits in those days).
Westland Wallace? Blimey, that's obscure. Airfix? Rather wonderful and idiosyncratic the range of models that Airfix produced in its prime. Revell was another, and Matchbox. Them were the days.
I did Airfix Braniff 747, Concorde, AWACS, Space Shuttle, Harrier, Hunter, Mosquito, Blenheim, He 170 (obscure!), Stormovik, HMS Hood, and Italeri Pocket Battleship Lutzow and Mig-37 Stealth (speculative!!), and a Japanese (Tamiya?) destroyer Akizuki.
Sci-fi: the AMT Enterprise (TOS and Movie versions), Kiingon battlecruiser, Romulan Bird of Prey, Enterprise-D, and from Star Wars X-wing and A-wing.
Ooops missed out the TBD Devastator, possibly Airfix!
Suffragette, feminist, bit of a tart, common cockney lass, "England's second richest woman", imperialist, Fascist sympathiser, possible husband-poisoner, friend of Winston Churchill and the King, newspaper magnate, opponent of Indian independence, aviation pioneer, "Saviour of the Spitfire", and so royally patriotic when the Abdication happened she stopped eating, and died
She's a pound ship Unity Mitford.
‘She believed Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler were strong leaders’
I am lightheaded with surprise.
I didn't claim she was "nice"
I said her life story is jaw-dropping. And it is
I love all the little details, eg
"In 1932, she offered to give £200,000 (equivalent to £15 million in 2023) to strengthen the British Armed Forces. The National Government refused. She hung a huge electric sign, "DOWN WITH MACDONALD THE TRAITOR", in the rigging of Liberty and sailed round Great Britain.[11]"
Known about her for decades. She paid for the Everest flights. I had a model Westland Wallace on the shelf when I was young, which is how I know (they used to put lots of historical information in with the kits in those days).
Westland Wallace? Blimey, that's obscure. Airfix? Rather wonderful and idiosyncratic the range of models that Airfix produced in its prime. Revell was another, and Matchbox. Them were the days.
Frog was the maker, actually. The plane was quite famous in its day (before my time, but still well enough remembered even then). Part of a range called Trail BLazers, including Amy Johnson's plane, DH88 Comet Racer, Alcock and Brown's Vimy, and S.6B (courtesy Lady Houston), and others I forget at this range in time but which would set Leon aquiver like a red, white and blue blancmange.
A little digging reveals my memory of Lady H being recalled by the makers is actually accurate:
Those of a Star Trek frame of mind will remember the Aurora/AMT kits of the USS Enterprise and the Klingon D7. I could never get the pylons to stick nor get the nacelles to remain parallel to the nominal horizontal. Other kids had parents who could afford airbrushes, modellers putty and scalpels, but no not young viewcode, limited to mum's pegs. Bastards.
Matchbox was not as good as Airfix but were cast in coloured plastic, reducing the need to paint them. Oh, fond memories, jumpers for goalposts...
[deletes long list of models I did because embarrassment]
Hasegawa made the most desirable stuff, but most of it was beyond my pocket as a kid.
Suffragette, feminist, bit of a tart, common cockney lass, "England's second richest woman", imperialist, Fascist sympathiser, possible husband-poisoner, friend of Winston Churchill and the King, newspaper magnate, opponent of Indian independence, aviation pioneer, "Saviour of the Spitfire", and so royally patriotic when the Abdication happened she stopped eating, and died
She's a pound ship Unity Mitford.
‘She believed Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler were strong leaders’
I am lightheaded with surprise.
I didn't claim she was "nice"
I said her life story is jaw-dropping. And it is
I love all the little details, eg
"In 1932, she offered to give £200,000 (equivalent to £15 million in 2023) to strengthen the British Armed Forces. The National Government refused. She hung a huge electric sign, "DOWN WITH MACDONALD THE TRAITOR", in the rigging of Liberty and sailed round Great Britain.[11]"
Known about her for decades. She paid for the Everest flights. I had a model Westland Wallace on the shelf when I was young, which is how I know (they used to put lots of historical information in with the kits in those days).
Westland Wallace? Blimey, that's obscure. Airfix? Rather wonderful and idiosyncratic the range of models that Airfix produced in its prime. Revell was another, and Matchbox. Them were the days.
Frog was the maker, actually. The plane was quite famous in its day (before my time, but still well enough remembered even then). Part of a range called Trail BLazers, including Amy Johnson's plane, DH88 Comet Racer, Alcock and Brown's Vimy, and S.6B (courtesy Lady Houston), and others I forget at this range in time but which would set Leon aquiver like a red, white and blue blancmange.
A little digging reveals my memory of Lady H being recalled by the makers is actually accurate:
Those of a Star Trek frame of mind will remember the Aurora/AMT kits of the USS Enterprise and the Klingon D7. I could never get the pylons to stick nor get the nacelles to remain parallel to the nominal horizontal. Other kids had parents who could afford airbrushes, modellers putty and scalpels, but no not young viewcode, limited to mum's pegs. Bastards.
Matchbox was not as good as Airfix but were cast in coloured plastic, reducing the need to paint them. Oh, fond memories, jumpers for goalposts...
[deletes long list of models I did because embarrassment]
Is this overlapping with the Channel 4 strand now?
"Allison Pearson They tried to break Lucy Connolly, but the decent people of Britain will never desert her A year on from the Southport massacre, the childminder who dared to express her anger over immigration is still in jail" (£)
"Lucy’s role was to be a cautionary tale: a deterrent to anyone thinking of giving voice to their fears about migration."
I suggest she checks out the original tweet.
It was not exactly "I am somewhat worried by immigration and am i bit scared I may not get a GP appointment on time"
There were other tweets she made so it’s not just the one that got all the headlines. The beatification of Connolly by some on the right is vomit inducing .
I think there was one more questionable tweet about three years prior? Something like that?
For this she got 31 months in jail. Given what actual violent criminals get, her sentence is absurdly harsh. And as Pearson points out, in the end it will rebound on this repulsive and illegitimate government, because they have created a martyr
And not a dodgy martyr like Tommeh, a very British mother with no criminal history
I don’t agree with the length of the sentence. Connolly is clearly not the Flying Nun though !
Suffragette, feminist, bit of a tart, common cockney lass, "England's second richest woman", imperialist, Fascist sympathiser, possible husband-poisoner, friend of Winston Churchill and the King, newspaper magnate, opponent of Indian independence, aviation pioneer, "Saviour of the Spitfire", and so royally patriotic when the Abdication happened she stopped eating, and died
She's a pound ship Unity Mitford.
‘She believed Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler were strong leaders’
I am lightheaded with surprise.
I didn't claim she was "nice"
I said her life story is jaw-dropping. And it is
I love all the little details, eg
"In 1932, she offered to give £200,000 (equivalent to £15 million in 2023) to strengthen the British Armed Forces. The National Government refused. She hung a huge electric sign, "DOWN WITH MACDONALD THE TRAITOR", in the rigging of Liberty and sailed round Great Britain.[11]"
Known about her for decades. She paid for the Everest flights. I had a model Westland Wallace on the shelf when I was young, which is how I know (they used to put lots of historical information in with the kits in those days).
Westland Wallace? Blimey, that's obscure. Airfix? Rather wonderful and idiosyncratic the range of models that Airfix produced in its prime. Revell was another, and Matchbox. Them were the days.
Frog was the maker, actually. The plane was quite famous in its day (before my time, but still well enough remembered even then). Part of a range called Trail BLazers, including Amy Johnson's plane, DH88 Comet Racer, Alcock and Brown's Vimy, and S.6B (courtesy Lady Houston), and others I forget at this range in time but which would set Leon aquiver like a red, white and blue blancmange.
A little digging reveals my memory of Lady H being recalled by the makers is actually accurate:
Those of a Star Trek frame of mind will remember the Aurora/AMT kits of the USS Enterprise and the Klingon D7. I could never get the pylons to stick nor get the nacelles to remain parallel to the nominal horizontal. Other kids had parents who could afford airbrushes, modellers putty and scalpels, but no not young viewcode, limited to mum's pegs. Bastards.
Matchbox was not as good as Airfix but were cast in coloured plastic, reducing the need to paint them. Oh, fond memories, jumpers for goalposts...
[deletes long list of models I did because embarrassment]
Is this overlapping with the Channel 4 strand now?
I'm in my weekday digs with no telly access. Unless it involves a kitchen table, sprues, glue and brushes, probably not 😀
The Gazette has asked me to write about this thing called "the Online Safety Act"
Has anyone got any thoughts? I hear bad things
Beyond terrible. Another post passed as we sleepwalk our way into the totalitarian surveillance state. And all to appease earnestly woke do-gooders who wouldn't recognise a VPL if it joined them for breakfast.
Is it during the traditional twerking stage of breakfast that you recognise the visible panty line?
How are you doing, you poor old sod? Are you still in hospital? Do you need cheering up?!
I'm back home now, which is much better
I miss the morphine drip and button, but it's so much calmer and quieter here. And they have given me a bottle of Oramorph and loads of codeine, so I'm managing the pain
I live across the road from my folks, so my Mum is delivering three meals a day and helping keep the house clean, and my Dad is nearby for medical expertise
I can't believe how many cards I've had, mostly from people I deliver mail to. And quite a few have had cash in too. I always try to be a cheerful and friendly postie, but the support from people has been rather surprising
I'm being as idle as possible, which I find really difficult..
Great to hear you're out of hospital. Your story of the NHS is sadly typical. If you don't scream and shout or have someone who can scream and shout (or cajole) on your behalf, you're fucked.
I always feel sorry for those who "don't make a fuss" and suffer as a result.
The NHS is just absolute garbage. Institutionally. I'm sure you had instances of great care from individuals.
It seems to me the public atittude towards the NHS has completely changed in the last few years, yet this has gone unnoticed
eg if we had an Olympics now, would there really be a 2 minute segment in the Opening Ceremony singing its praises? I doubt it. Likewise, would any politician say, with a straight face, "it's the envy of the world"? Or call it "our beloved NHS"?
No, they wouldn't. Or if they did they'd be laughed to scorn. There is much more negativity, and a much wider acceptance that the NHS is a middling health system with some great bits and some terrible flaws. This is a positive evolution for the UK, losing this absurd religion
Agree.
The ridiculous quasi-religious worship is just nuts.
It is a curate's egg of a system and a massive outlier as to its structure and financing.
It is not world beating and it is not the envy of the world. Yet there are numerous pockets of brilliance and individual teams of excellence that are world beating. Its ability to take on new research at least in pockets must be world class. A close relative has an absolute brilliant consultant doctor who she has been seeing for years and who runs an incredible tight ship department and yet this doctor is surrounded by semi-chaos in the other related departments.
Yet the general sharing of excellence and best practice is woeful. The information systems side of things is just beyond shite. Joined up thinking is a joke.
The interface between NHS and social care is a clusterfuck you can see from space.
Anyone who feels the itching urge to bang a pan outside their front door should think about the massive maternity deaths inquiry possibly covering 1000s of deaths or the Nottingham mental health scandal (public inquiries just started). Or listen to the tale on PB on this evening of someone not getting water on the ward because nurses can't nurse.
The worst of it is that anyone who says 'maybe we should have a rethink for the 21st century' just gets shouted down as a privatiser who wants to make the NHS like American healthcare.
The Gazette has asked me to write about this thing called "the Online Safety Act"
Has anyone got any thoughts? I hear bad things
Beyond terrible. Another post passed as we sleepwalk our way into the totalitarian surveillance state. And all to appease earnestly woke do-gooders who wouldn't recognise a VPL if it joined them for breakfast.
Is it during the traditional twerking stage of breakfast that you recognise the visible panty line?
How are you doing, you poor old sod? Are you still in hospital? Do you need cheering up?!
I'm back home now, which is much better
I miss the morphine drip and button, but it's so much calmer and quieter here. And they have given me a bottle of Oramorph and loads of codeine, so I'm managing the pain
I live across the road from my folks, so my Mum is delivering three meals a day and helping keep the house clean, and my Dad is nearby for medical expertise
I can't believe how many cards I've had, mostly from people I deliver mail to. And quite a few have had cash in too. I always try to be a cheerful and friendly postie, but the support from people has been rather surprising
I'm being as idle as possible, which I find really difficult..
Great to hear you're out of hospital. Your story of the NHS is sadly typical. If you don't scream and shout or have someone who can scream and shout (or cajole) on your behalf, you're fucked.
I always feel sorry for those who "don't make a fuss" and suffer as a result.
The NHS is just absolute garbage. Institutionally. I'm sure you had instances of great care from individuals.
My father should escape their clutches tomorrow.
He was pretty poorly last week and the doctors have fast tracked him out with a party pack of drugs (who says we don't have assisted dying already?) but this week he looks much better and I suspect they have been somewhat pessimistic, though only time will tell.
If I hadn't turned up at mealtimes he would have suffered the usual indignity of having lunch left out of his reach and then taken away again with the usual 'not hungry today [name]?' Grrrr.
Some nurses did make an effort, others not so much.
Also my experience with my hospitalised dad some years back. Went for fluids as well as food. I’m fairly sure a number of elderly patients without regular visitors die of inadequate nutrition.
Suffragette, feminist, bit of a tart, common cockney lass, "England's second richest woman", imperialist, Fascist sympathiser, possible husband-poisoner, friend of Winston Churchill and the King, newspaper magnate, opponent of Indian independence, aviation pioneer, "Saviour of the Spitfire", and so royally patriotic when the Abdication happened she stopped eating, and died
She's a pound ship Unity Mitford.
‘She believed Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler were strong leaders’
I am lightheaded with surprise.
I didn't claim she was "nice"
I said her life story is jaw-dropping. And it is
I love all the little details, eg
"In 1932, she offered to give £200,000 (equivalent to £15 million in 2023) to strengthen the British Armed Forces. The National Government refused. She hung a huge electric sign, "DOWN WITH MACDONALD THE TRAITOR", in the rigging of Liberty and sailed round Great Britain.[11]"
Known about her for decades. She paid for the Everest flights. I had a model Westland Wallace on the shelf when I was young, which is how I know (they used to put lots of historical information in with the kits in those days).
Westland Wallace? Blimey, that's obscure. Airfix? Rather wonderful and idiosyncratic the range of models that Airfix produced in its prime. Revell was another, and Matchbox. Them were the days.
I did Airfix Braniff 747, Concorde, AWACS, Space Shuttle, Harrier, Hunter, Mosquito, Blenheim, He 170 (obscure!), Stormovik, HMS Hood, and Italeri Pocket Battleship Lutzow and Mig-37 Stealth (speculative!!), and a Japanese (Tamiya?) destroyer Akizuki.
Sci-fi: the AMT Enterprise (TOS and Movie versions), Kiingon battlecruiser, Romulan Bird of Prey, Enterprise-D, and from Star Wars X-wing and A-wing.
Suffragette, feminist, bit of a tart, common cockney lass, "England's second richest woman", imperialist, Fascist sympathiser, possible husband-poisoner, friend of Winston Churchill and the King, newspaper magnate, opponent of Indian independence, aviation pioneer, "Saviour of the Spitfire", and so royally patriotic when the Abdication happened she stopped eating, and died
She's a pound ship Unity Mitford.
‘She believed Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler were strong leaders’
I am lightheaded with surprise.
I didn't claim she was "nice"
I said her life story is jaw-dropping. And it is
I love all the little details, eg
"In 1932, she offered to give £200,000 (equivalent to £15 million in 2023) to strengthen the British Armed Forces. The National Government refused. She hung a huge electric sign, "DOWN WITH MACDONALD THE TRAITOR", in the rigging of Liberty and sailed round Great Britain.[11]"
Known about her for decades. She paid for the Everest flights. I had a model Westland Wallace on the shelf when I was young, which is how I know (they used to put lots of historical information in with the kits in those days).
Westland Wallace? Blimey, that's obscure. Airfix? Rather wonderful and idiosyncratic the range of models that Airfix produced in its prime. Revell was another, and Matchbox. Them were the days.
I did Airfix Braniff 747, Concorde, AWACS, Space Shuttle, Harrier, Hunter, Mosquito, Blenheim, He 170 (obscure!), Stormovik, HMS Hood, and Italeri Pocket Battleship Lutzow and Mig-37 Stealth (speculative!!), and a Japanese (Tamiya?) destroyer Akizuki.
Sci-fi: the AMT Enterprise (TOS and Movie versions), Kiingon battlecruiser, Romulan Bird of Prey, Enterprise-D, and from Star Wars X-wing and A-wing.
Was your Harrier 1/24th scale? They were huge.
No, it was 1:72. The speculative "MiG-37" was 1:48, however.
The Gazette has asked me to write about this thing called "the Online Safety Act"
Has anyone got any thoughts? I hear bad things
Beyond terrible. Another post passed as we sleepwalk our way into the totalitarian surveillance state. And all to appease earnestly woke do-gooders who wouldn't recognise a VPL if it joined them for breakfast.
Is it during the traditional twerking stage of breakfast that you recognise the visible panty line?
How are you doing, you poor old sod? Are you still in hospital? Do you need cheering up?!
I'm back home now, which is much better
I miss the morphine drip and button, but it's so much calmer and quieter here. And they have given me a bottle of Oramorph and loads of codeine, so I'm managing the pain
I live across the road from my folks, so my Mum is delivering three meals a day and helping keep the house clean, and my Dad is nearby for medical expertise
I can't believe how many cards I've had, mostly from people I deliver mail to. And quite a few have had cash in too. I always try to be a cheerful and friendly postie, but the support from people has been rather surprising
I'm being as idle as possible, which I find really difficult..
Great to hear you're out of hospital. Your story of the NHS is sadly typical. If you don't scream and shout or have someone who can scream and shout (or cajole) on your behalf, you're fucked.
I always feel sorry for those who "don't make a fuss" and suffer as a result.
The NHS is just absolute garbage. Institutionally. I'm sure you had instances of great care from individuals.
My father should escape their clutches tomorrow.
He was pretty poorly last week and the doctors have fast tracked him out with a party pack of drugs (who says we don't have assisted dying already?) but this week he looks much better and I suspect they have been somewhat pessimistic, though only time will tell.
If I hadn't turned up at mealtimes he would have suffered the usual indignity of having lunch left out of his reach and then taken away again with the usual 'not hungry today [name]?' Grrrr.
Some nurses did make an effort, others not so much.
My sympathies for your Father. We've been having a similar issue with. Y grandmother recently. She was in hospital after a fall and was sent to a 'rehabilitation unit' to get her back on her feet. They did no rehabilitation while she got sicker with various infections. They had the gall to call one of them a "Community transmitted infection" rather than "Hospital transmitted infection". She started to lose her faculties as they left all of her magazines and things out of reach.
By contrast my husband has been having health problems recently and has had an excellent experience with the NHS. I can only conclude that they put less effort into treating the elderly.
Suffragette, feminist, bit of a tart, common cockney lass, "England's second richest woman", imperialist, Fascist sympathiser, possible husband-poisoner, friend of Winston Churchill and the King, newspaper magnate, opponent of Indian independence, aviation pioneer, "Saviour of the Spitfire", and so royally patriotic when the Abdication happened she stopped eating, and died
She's a pound ship Unity Mitford.
‘She believed Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler were strong leaders’
I am lightheaded with surprise.
I didn't claim she was "nice"
I said her life story is jaw-dropping. And it is
I love all the little details, eg
"In 1932, she offered to give £200,000 (equivalent to £15 million in 2023) to strengthen the British Armed Forces. The National Government refused. She hung a huge electric sign, "DOWN WITH MACDONALD THE TRAITOR", in the rigging of Liberty and sailed round Great Britain.[11]"
Known about her for decades. She paid for the Everest flights. I had a model Westland Wallace on the shelf when I was young, which is how I know (they used to put lots of historical information in with the kits in those days).
Westland Wallace? Blimey, that's obscure. Airfix? Rather wonderful and idiosyncratic the range of models that Airfix produced in its prime. Revell was another, and Matchbox. Them were the days.
Frog was the maker, actually. The plane was quite famous in its day (before my time, but still well enough remembered even then). Part of a range called Trail BLazers, including Amy Johnson's plane, DH88 Comet Racer, Alcock and Brown's Vimy, and S.6B (courtesy Lady Houston), and others I forget at this range in time but which would set Leon aquiver like a red, white and blue blancmange.
A little digging reveals my memory of Lady H being recalled by the makers is actually accurate:
Those of a Star Trek frame of mind will remember the Aurora/AMT kits of the USS Enterprise and the Klingon D7. I could never get the pylons to stick nor get the nacelles to remain parallel to the nominal horizontal. Other kids had parents who could afford airbrushes, modellers putty and scalpels, but no not young viewcode, limited to mum's pegs. Bastards.
Matchbox was not as good as Airfix but were cast in coloured plastic, reducing the need to paint them. Oh, fond memories, jumpers for goalposts...
[deletes long list of models I did because embarrassment]
Is this overlapping with the Channel 4 strand now?
The Gazette has asked me to write about this thing called "the Online Safety Act"
Has anyone got any thoughts? I hear bad things
Beyond terrible. Another post passed as we sleepwalk our way into the totalitarian surveillance state. And all to appease earnestly woke do-gooders who wouldn't recognise a VPL if it joined them for breakfast.
Is it during the traditional twerking stage of breakfast that you recognise the visible panty line?
How are you doing, you poor old sod? Are you still in hospital? Do you need cheering up?!
I'm back home now, which is much better
I miss the morphine drip and button, but it's so much calmer and quieter here. And they have given me a bottle of Oramorph and loads of codeine, so I'm managing the pain
I live across the road from my folks, so my Mum is delivering three meals a day and helping keep the house clean, and my Dad is nearby for medical expertise
I can't believe how many cards I've had, mostly from people I deliver mail to. And quite a few have had cash in too. I always try to be a cheerful and friendly postie, but the support from people has been rather surprising
I'm being as idle as possible, which I find really difficult..
Great to hear you're out of hospital. Your story of the NHS is sadly typical. If you don't scream and shout or have someone who can scream and shout (or cajole) on your behalf, you're fucked.
I always feel sorry for those who "don't make a fuss" and suffer as a result.
The NHS is just absolute garbage. Institutionally. I'm sure you had instances of great care from individuals.
It seems to me the public atittude towards the NHS has completely changed in the last few years, yet this has gone unnoticed
eg if we had an Olympics now, would there really be a 2 minute segment in the Opening Ceremony singing its praises? I doubt it. Likewise, would any politician say, with a straight face, "it's the envy of the world"? Or call it "our beloved NHS"?
No, they wouldn't. Or if they did they'd be laughed to scorn. There is much more negativity, and a much wider acceptance that the NHS is a middling health system with some great bits and some terrible flaws. This is a positive evolution for the UK, losing this absurd religion
Agree.
The ridiculous quasi-religious worship is just nuts.
It is a curate's egg of a system and a massive outlier as to its structure and financing.
It is not world beating and it is not the envy of the world. Yet there are numerous pockets of brilliance and individual teams of excellence that are world beating. Its ability to take on new research at least in pockets must be world class. A close relative has an absolute brilliant consultant doctor who she has been seeing for years and who runs an incredible tight ship department and yet this doctor is surrounded by semi-chaos in the other related departments.
Yet the general sharing of excellence and best practice is woeful. The information systems side of things is just beyond shite. Joined up thinking is a joke.
The interface between NHS and social care is a clusterfuck you can see from space.
Anyone who feels the itching urge to bang a pan outside their front door should think about the massive maternity deaths inquiry possibly covering 1000s of deaths or the Nottingham mental health scandal (public inquiries just started). Or listen to the tale on PB on this evening of someone not getting water on the ward because nurses can't nurse.
The worst of it is that anyone who says 'maybe we should have a rethink for the 21st century' just gets shouted down as a privatiser who wants to make the NHS like American healthcare.
The people who work in the NHS are generally good, and well intentioned. I've met some exceptions. But they are rare.
The system appears to be designed to prevent health care. The National Healthcare Prevention Service.
"So did anyone have to verify their age to watch Bonnie Blue getting graphically railed on Channel 4 tonight, or does the dystopian new Online Safety Bill not apply to mainstream TV, that kids can watch?"
The Gazette has asked me to write about this thing called "the Online Safety Act"
Has anyone got any thoughts? I hear bad things
Beyond terrible. Another post passed as we sleepwalk our way into the totalitarian surveillance state. And all to appease earnestly woke do-gooders who wouldn't recognise a VPL if it joined them for breakfast.
Is it during the traditional twerking stage of breakfast that you recognise the visible panty line?
How are you doing, you poor old sod? Are you still in hospital? Do you need cheering up?!
I'm back home now, which is much better
I miss the morphine drip and button, but it's so much calmer and quieter here. And they have given me a bottle of Oramorph and loads of codeine, so I'm managing the pain
I live across the road from my folks, so my Mum is delivering three meals a day and helping keep the house clean, and my Dad is nearby for medical expertise
I can't believe how many cards I've had, mostly from people I deliver mail to. And quite a few have had cash in too. I always try to be a cheerful and friendly postie, but the support from people has been rather surprising
I'm being as idle as possible, which I find really difficult..
Great to hear you're out of hospital. Your story of the NHS is sadly typical. If you don't scream and shout or have someone who can scream and shout (or cajole) on your behalf, you're fucked.
I always feel sorry for those who "don't make a fuss" and suffer as a result.
The NHS is just absolute garbage. Institutionally. I'm sure you had instances of great care from individuals.
My father should escape their clutches tomorrow.
He was pretty poorly last week and the doctors have fast tracked him out with a party pack of drugs (who says we don't have assisted dying already?) but this week he looks much better and I suspect they have been somewhat pessimistic, though only time will tell.
If I hadn't turned up at mealtimes he would have suffered the usual indignity of having lunch left out of his reach and then taken away again with the usual 'not hungry today [name]?' Grrrr.
Some nurses did make an effort, others not so much.
My sympathies for your Father. We've been having a similar issue with. Y grandmother recently. She was in hospital after a fall and was sent to a 'rehabilitation unit' to get her back on her feet. They did no rehabilitation while she got sicker with various infections. They had the gall to call one of them a "Community transmitted infection" rather than "Hospital transmitted infection". She started to lose her faculties as they left all of her magazines and things out of reach.
By contrast my husband has been having health problems recently and has had an excellent experience with the NHS. I can only conclude that they put less effort into treating the elderly.
As I posted down the thread a few minutes ago - the NHS is a total patchwork. It seems just bare brute luck whether you get shite or brilliance in your particular situation.
My personal experience of hospital wards and the elderly is do not allow your aged relative to be admitted under almost all circumstances because they will get worse.
The Gazette has asked me to write about this thing called "the Online Safety Act"
Has anyone got any thoughts? I hear bad things
Beyond terrible. Another post passed as we sleepwalk our way into the totalitarian surveillance state. And all to appease earnestly woke do-gooders who wouldn't recognise a VPL if it joined them for breakfast.
Is it during the traditional twerking stage of breakfast that you recognise the visible panty line?
How are you doing, you poor old sod? Are you still in hospital? Do you need cheering up?!
I'm back home now, which is much better
I miss the morphine drip and button, but it's so much calmer and quieter here. And they have given me a bottle of Oramorph and loads of codeine, so I'm managing the pain
I live across the road from my folks, so my Mum is delivering three meals a day and helping keep the house clean, and my Dad is nearby for medical expertise
I can't believe how many cards I've had, mostly from people I deliver mail to. And quite a few have had cash in too. I always try to be a cheerful and friendly postie, but the support from people has been rather surprising
I'm being as idle as possible, which I find really difficult..
Great to hear you're out of hospital. Your story of the NHS is sadly typical. If you don't scream and shout or have someone who can scream and shout (or cajole) on your behalf, you're fucked.
I always feel sorry for those who "don't make a fuss" and suffer as a result.
The NHS is just absolute garbage. Institutionally. I'm sure you had instances of great care from individuals.
My father should escape their clutches tomorrow.
He was pretty poorly last week and the doctors have fast tracked him out with a party pack of drugs (who says we don't have assisted dying already?) but this week he looks much better and I suspect they have been somewhat pessimistic, though only time will tell.
If I hadn't turned up at mealtimes he would have suffered the usual indignity of having lunch left out of his reach and then taken away again with the usual 'not hungry today [name]?' Grrrr.
Some nurses did make an effort, others not so much.
Also my experience with my hospitalised dad some years back. Went for fluids as well as food. I’m fairly sure a number of elderly patients without regular visitors die of inadequate nutrition.
My experience is that the wards are dire.
No idea what the problem is. Lack of staff? Lack of trained staff? Lack of a matron (Tory/Reform view)? If nurses now need three years of degree-level study how come they can't keep their patiences hydrated*?
* another aged relative of mine actually got discharged from a ward and turned up back home with a UTI thanks to dehydration.
"So did anyone have to verify their age to watch Bonnie Blue getting graphically railed on Channel 4 tonight, or does the dystopian new Online Safety Bill not apply to mainstream TV, that kids can watch?"
Wait until the Witchfinder Generals find out what we were watching on Top Of the Pops in mid 1970s.
"Allison Pearson They tried to break Lucy Connolly, but the decent people of Britain will never desert her A year on from the Southport massacre, the childminder who dared to express her anger over immigration is still in jail" (£)
"Lucy’s role was to be a cautionary tale: a deterrent to anyone thinking of giving voice to their fears about migration."
I suggest she checks out the original tweet.
It was not exactly "I am somewhat worried by immigration and am i bit scared I may not get a GP appointment on time"
There were other tweets she made so it’s not just the one that got all the headlines. The beatification of Connolly by some on the right is vomit inducing .
I think there was one more questionable tweet about three years prior? Something like that?
For this she got 31 months in jail. Given what actual violent criminals get, her sentence is absurdly harsh. And as Pearson points out, in the end it will rebound on this repulsive and illegitimate government, because they have created a martyr
And not a dodgy martyr like Tommeh, a very British mother with no criminal history
Context is everything. She called for hotels to be set on fire during riots where people tried to do just that. She could have incited the death of dozens of people.
When you or I say 'Starmer should be put against the wall and shot' it is a figure of speech and has no consequences. It isn't going to incite anyone to do it. When kids call 999 and claim a house is on fire they need a damn good talking to (as do their parents) and have the consequences of their actions hammered home, they may even be subject to some punishment. However someone shouting 'fire' in a packed theatre could very likely be responsible for multiple deaths and therefore needs a much more serious punishment.
What she did was not trivial. It was very serious and the consequences were potentially much more serious than many violent criminals.
The Gazette has asked me to write about this thing called "the Online Safety Act"
Has anyone got any thoughts? I hear bad things
Beyond terrible. Another post passed as we sleepwalk our way into the totalitarian surveillance state. And all to appease earnestly woke do-gooders who wouldn't recognise a VPL if it joined them for breakfast.
Is it during the traditional twerking stage of breakfast that you recognise the visible panty line?
How are you doing, you poor old sod? Are you still in hospital? Do you need cheering up?!
I'm back home now, which is much better
I miss the morphine drip and button, but it's so much calmer and quieter here. And they have given me a bottle of Oramorph and loads of codeine, so I'm managing the pain
I live across the road from my folks, so my Mum is delivering three meals a day and helping keep the house clean, and my Dad is nearby for medical expertise
I can't believe how many cards I've had, mostly from people I deliver mail to. And quite a few have had cash in too. I always try to be a cheerful and friendly postie, but the support from people has been rather surprising
I'm being as idle as possible, which I find really difficult..
Great to hear you're out of hospital. Your story of the NHS is sadly typical. If you don't scream and shout or have someone who can scream and shout (or cajole) on your behalf, you're fucked.
I always feel sorry for those who "don't make a fuss" and suffer as a result.
The NHS is just absolute garbage. Institutionally. I'm sure you had instances of great care from individuals.
My father should escape their clutches tomorrow.
He was pretty poorly last week and the doctors have fast tracked him out with a party pack of drugs (who says we don't have assisted dying already?) but this week he looks much better and I suspect they have been somewhat pessimistic, though only time will tell.
If I hadn't turned up at mealtimes he would have suffered the usual indignity of having lunch left out of his reach and then taken away again with the usual 'not hungry today [name]?' Grrrr.
Some nurses did make an effort, others not so much.
My sympathies for your Father. We've been having a similar issue with. Y grandmother recently. She was in hospital after a fall and was sent to a 'rehabilitation unit' to get her back on her feet. They did no rehabilitation while she got sicker with various infections. They had the gall to call one of them a "Community transmitted infection" rather than "Hospital transmitted infection". She started to lose her faculties as they left all of her magazines and things out of reach.
By contrast my husband has been having health problems recently and has had an excellent experience with the NHS. I can only conclude that they put less effort into treating the elderly.
My 89 year old aunt on the IoW had a couple of days in St Mary's, and was full of praise.
It was pretty awful a few years ago when my uncle died there.
Its always been the case that health care is patchy, NHS or private, and sometimes a downward slide cannot be stopped.
"So did anyone have to verify their age to watch Bonnie Blue getting graphically railed on Channel 4 tonight, or does the dystopian new Online Safety Bill not apply to mainstream TV, that kids can watch?"
Wait until the Witchfinder Generals find out what we were watching on Top Of the Pops in mid 1970s.
Just listening to PB talk about the NHS proves the point
Envy of the world? Good grief
My big hope - and my one main reason for voting for Starmer - was that Labour, of all the parties, would have the guts and the majority and the public sympathy to do serious NHS reform under Streeting
Yet nothing. It is bitterly disappointing, even tragic
"Allison Pearson They tried to break Lucy Connolly, but the decent people of Britain will never desert her A year on from the Southport massacre, the childminder who dared to express her anger over immigration is still in jail" (£)
"Lucy’s role was to be a cautionary tale: a deterrent to anyone thinking of giving voice to their fears about migration."
I suggest she checks out the original tweet.
It was not exactly "I am somewhat worried by immigration and am i bit scared I may not get a GP appointment on time"
There were other tweets she made so it’s not just the one that got all the headlines. The beatification of Connolly by some on the right is vomit inducing .
I think there was one more questionable tweet about three years prior? Something like that?
For this she got 31 months in jail. Given what actual violent criminals get, her sentence is absurdly harsh. And as Pearson points out, in the end it will rebound on this repulsive and illegitimate government, because they have created a martyr
And not a dodgy martyr like Tommeh, a very British mother with no criminal history
Context is everything. She called for hotels to be set on fire during riots where people tried to do just that. She could have incited the death of dozens of people.
When you or I say 'Starmer should be put against the wall and shot' it is a figure of speech and has no consequences. It isn't going to incite anyone to do it. When kids call 999 and claim a house is on fire they need a damn good talking to (as do their parents) and have the consequences of their actions hammered home, they may even be subject to some punishment. However someone shouting 'fire' in a packed theatre could very likely be responsible for multiple deaths and therefore needs a much more serious punishment.
What she did was not trivial. It was very serious and the consequences were potentially much more serious than many violent criminals.
The people in the theatre don't mean to trample each other to death; any rioters she incited to burn hotels would have had their own criminal intent too.
"So did anyone have to verify their age to watch Bonnie Blue getting graphically railed on Channel 4 tonight, or does the dystopian new Online Safety Bill not apply to mainstream TV, that kids can watch?"
Wait until the Witchfinder Generals find out what we were watching on Top Of the Pops in mid 1970s.
Maybe early Channel 4's "Red triangle" system will come back. The big warning to all teenagers that they should 100% watch this arty filth.
Comments
If you want a really interesting and brave lady, look at Viriginia Hall, an American spy who operated in France during WW2. Who had the rather notable disadvantage of having a wooden leg.
"he Germans gave her the nickname Artemis, and the Gestapo reportedly considered her "the most dangerous of all Allied spies."[3] Having lost part of her left leg after a hunting accident, Hall used a prosthesis she named "Cuthbert." She was also known as "The Limping Lady" by the Germans and as "Marie of Lyon" by many of the SOE agents she helped."
"Hall signaled to SOE before her escape that she hoped that "Cuthbert" would not trouble her on the way. The SOE did not understand the reference and replied, "If Cuthbert troublesome, eliminate him.""
After the war, she became on of the CIA's first female employees. And was treated badly by them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Hall
Presumably you know the story of the great Victorian cemeteries of London and the Necropolis Railway? Definitely worth a look if you haven't, including the projects that failed (waterborne funerals to riverside necropoleis to W and E).
The reasons included ...
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsehistory/2023/10/31/hideous-death-pit-the-vault-at-enon-chapel/
and above all this little Gothic classic George A. Walker (1839) Gatherings from Graveyards; Particularly those of London: with a Concise History of the Modes of Interment among Different Nations, from the Earliest Periods. And a Details of Dangerous and Fatal Results Produced by the Unwise and Revolting Custom of Inhuming the Dead in the Midst of the Living
https://archive.org/details/b21902963/page/n3/mode/2up or https://wellcomecollection.org/works/qre7bheq
Rather wonderful and idiosyncratic the range of models that Airfix produced in its prime. Revell was another, and Matchbox. Them were the days.
And, in another sense, isn't the date of birth of everyone alive today (excluding those born today) closer to every historical event happening before their birth than today is?
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/qatar-saudi-arabia-egypt-sign-declaration-calling-for-hamas-to-disarm-leave-gaza-at-un-2-state-confab/?s=09
No idea if it's verifiable.
You differ. Unsurprisingly.
What's nice about this story is that my older daughter simply walked into a north London library a couple of days ago, couldn't find the book she wanted, but then saw "The Master and Margarita" and thought - that looks interesting. Then today she said, unprompted, to me "OMG I'm reading this amazing novel... it's called...."
So that's grandfather, father, daughter, all loving the same magical book. Sweet
Thanks for the cemetery links, they are amazing rewilded chunks of London history
I like a good STORY. Lady Houston's story is exceptional - and better than that of your brave, morally superior heroine (who is incredible) - because it is so rich, diverse and unexpected
It would be a great lifestory if she ended up supporting Stalin and communism, or turning Japanese and reverting to Shinto. That's all. It is so full of surprise and weirdness
A little digging reveals my memory of Lady H being recalled by the makers is actually accurate:
https://www.scalemates.com/products/img/6/9/9/158699-54-instructions.pdf
BREAKING: Dropkick Murphys just played this stunning montage of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein at their concert.
https://x.com/DemocraticWins/status/1950282867487240406
You can never take the boy nerd out of the man nerd.
Matchbox was not as good as Airfix but were cast in coloured plastic, reducing the need to paint them. Oh, fond memories, jumpers for goalposts...
Edit: there actually is a recent anti-Putin adaptation
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20240430-the-master-and-margarita-the-russian-box-office-hit-that-criticised-the-state
Read it in a flea infested attic flat in Buckingham Terrace in the early 80s. Happy if itchy days.
Not sure why they all wore such heavy cloth suits in the blistering heat and took a while to get going, but I am getting into it.
Green-The Left Party Alliance
Green-Your Party Alliance
Your Party-Green Alliance
Your Party-Green Party
So many ballot paper possibilities as the kaleidoscope gets shaken.
Green Your Party
Party Your Green
Agree with the PB consensus: a sparkling book. Read it last year.
About half of people in care homes are private pay and the other half are state funded which means they essentially have limited assets.
So if you want to pay care home workers a better salary then local government needs to spend much more (labour costs are c 60% of opex in a care home). If they don’t want to then profits will be basically wiped out - a 33% increase in wages is a 20% increase in costs (which would make most care homes unprofitable).
A significant reduction in care home capacity - which is what you suggest - would result in many people having to stay home (often in unsuitable accommodation) and be cared for by their families. Which would result in a loss of productive capacity in the economy as (usually) women stay home. This would also result in a significant reduction in incomes in these houses with the knock on economic impact.
It all comes down to tax and spend more or allow immigration to plug the gap.
They tried to break Lucy Connolly, but the decent people of Britain will never desert her
A year on from the Southport massacre, the childminder who dared to express her anger over immigration is still in jail" (£)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/29/allison-pearson-lucy-connolly-southport-decent-britain/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_flight_of_Alcock_and_Brown
The HEI model is broken
I miss the morphine drip and button, but it's so much calmer and quieter here. And they have given me a bottle of Oramorph and loads of codeine, so I'm managing the pain
I live across the road from my folks, so my Mum is delivering three meals a day and helping keep the house clean, and my Dad is nearby for medical expertise
I can't believe how many cards I've had, mostly from people I deliver mail to. And quite a few have had cash in too. I always try to be a cheerful and friendly postie, but the support from people has been rather surprising
I'm being as idle as possible, which I find really difficult..
Maria Balshaw says upheaval and Covid has kept young Europeans away from London sites, contributing to a 27pc attendance drop since 2019"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/29/tate-modern-tate-britain-brexit-covid-visitors/
Funny how the British Museum hasn't been affected by this.
Enjoy the rest and the greeting cards. There'll be plenty of post to do when you get back.
Has she done even 5 seconds of research?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_singles_chart_records_and_statistics?wprov=sfla1
(Songwriters segment about 8th category)
To take Martin, he now edges ahead of Lennon in US number ones, with large chunks of the Britney, Perry, Pink, Swift, Grande and Weeknd songbooks.
I wonder if the wheel is turning a bit now, rather than putting out songs that would be appropriate for a range of artists, it looks to me that more recent artists are looking for slightly more personal sounds and the newest co-writers are almost having to become biographers.
I can recommend Tehran, Clarkson's Farm 2, and The Leopard in terms of recent TV, to see you through the idleness
I always feel sorry for those who "don't make a fuss" and suffer as a result.
The NHS is just absolute garbage. Institutionally. I'm sure you had instances of great care from individuals.
I suggest she checks out the original tweet.
It was not exactly "I am somewhat worried by immigration and am i bit scared I may not get a GP appointment on time"
I'm very curious though - is there really an elite Iranian superclass of junta members whose children live in hedonistic and insanely rich madness e.g. fast sports cars, tennis clubs, high end drinking dens, drugs out of their ears, wild discos etc etc???
He was pretty poorly last week and the doctors have fast tracked him out with a party pack of drugs (who says we don't have assisted dying already?) but this week he looks much better and I suspect they have been somewhat pessimistic, though only time will tell.
If I hadn't turned up at mealtimes he would have suffered the usual indignity of having lunch left out of his reach and then taken away again with the usual 'not hungry today [name]?' Grrrr.
Some nurses did make an effort, others not so much.
Sci-fi: the AMT Enterprise (TOS and Movie versions), Kiingon battlecruiser, Romulan Bird of Prey, Enterprise-D, and from Star Wars X-wing and A-wing.
Might I humbly suggest that you devote a portion of your enforced idleness to getting a physio plan setup?
My experience with the healthcare system says that you will need to start organising it (and badgering various orgs about it) long before you can actually do something.
eg if we had an Olympics now, would there really be a 2 minute segment in the Opening Ceremony singing its praises? I doubt it. Likewise, would any politician say, with a straight face, "it's the envy of the world"? Or call it "our beloved NHS"?
No, they wouldn't. Or if they did they'd be laughed to scorn. There is much more negativity, and a much wider acceptance that the NHS is a middling health system with some great bits and some terrible flaws. This is a positive evolution for the UK, losing this absurd religion
For this she got 31 months in jail. Given what actual violent criminals get, her sentence is absurdly harsh. And as Pearson points out, in the end it will rebound on this repulsive and illegitimate government, because they have created a martyr
And not a dodgy martyr like Tommeh, a very British mother with no criminal history
They were terrible years for logic.
Islamic societies do have quite a tradition of young men going out to get it out of their system, and ... in our terms ... "sowing their wild oats".
The regime basically buys off their discontent by ignoring their hedonism. Otherwise these bored smart rich kids would be leading another revolution
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/07/29/trump-falling-out-jeffrey-epstein-spa-staff/85426667007/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_triangle_(Channel_4)
I think she's an ignorant, deluded numpty - but she *is* engaging in the comments to an extent, which is unusual these days.
The ridiculous quasi-religious worship is just nuts.
It is a curate's egg of a system and a massive outlier as to its structure and financing.
It is not world beating and it is not the envy of the world. Yet there are numerous pockets of brilliance and individual teams of excellence that are world beating. Its ability to take on new research at least in pockets must be world class. A close relative has an absolute brilliant consultant doctor who she has been seeing for years and who runs an incredible tight ship department and yet this doctor is surrounded by semi-chaos in the other related departments.
Yet the general sharing of excellence and best practice is woeful. The information systems side of things is just beyond shite. Joined up thinking is a joke.
The interface between NHS and social care is a clusterfuck you can see from space.
Anyone who feels the itching urge to bang a pan outside their front door should think about the massive maternity deaths inquiry possibly covering 1000s of deaths or the Nottingham mental health scandal (public inquiries just started). Or listen to the tale on PB on this evening of someone not getting water on the ward because nurses can't nurse.
The worst of it is that anyone who says 'maybe we should have a rethink for the 21st century' just gets shouted down as a privatiser who wants to make the NHS like American healthcare.
Went for fluids as well as food.
I’m fairly sure a number of elderly patients without regular visitors die of inadequate nutrition.
By contrast my husband has been having health problems recently and has had an excellent experience with the NHS. I can only conclude that they put less effort into treating the elderly.
Well I suppose it could be the hot TV lights.
The system appears to be designed to prevent health care. The National Healthcare Prevention Service.
"So did anyone have to verify their age to watch Bonnie Blue getting graphically railed on Channel 4 tonight, or does the dystopian new Online Safety Bill not apply to mainstream TV, that kids can watch?"
My personal experience of hospital wards and the elderly is do not allow your aged relative to be admitted under almost all circumstances because they will get worse.
No idea what the problem is. Lack of staff? Lack of trained staff? Lack of a matron (Tory/Reform view)? If nurses now need three years of degree-level study how come they can't keep their patiences hydrated*?
* another aged relative of mine actually got discharged from a ward and turned up back home with a UTI thanks to dehydration.
Lucy Connolly should stand as a Reform candidate for Parliament.
I don't know - could she?
(The thread is really quite rabid. They do NOT like being told that Allison Pearson is a fantasist who needs to do some homework.)
When you or I say 'Starmer should be put against the wall and shot' it is a figure of speech and has no consequences. It isn't going to incite anyone to do it. When kids call 999 and claim a house is on fire they need a damn good talking to (as do their parents) and have the consequences of their actions hammered home, they may even be subject to some punishment. However someone shouting 'fire' in a packed theatre could very likely be responsible for multiple deaths and therefore needs a much more serious punishment.
What she did was not trivial. It was very serious and the consequences were potentially much more serious than many violent criminals.
It was pretty awful a few years ago when my uncle died there.
Its always been the case that health care is patchy, NHS or private, and sometimes a downward slide cannot be stopped.
Envy of the world? Good grief
My big hope - and my one main reason for voting for Starmer - was that Labour, of all the parties, would have the guts and the majority and the public sympathy to do serious NHS reform under Streeting
Yet nothing. It is bitterly disappointing, even tragic
Roll on Reform