At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…
This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?
You have lived a largely “safe” life. You have had a good career and lived in a country which, bar the odd uncomfortable time has not realistically been under threat in your lifetime.
You take for granted a factor of soft nationalism that many people in most countries don’t take for granted. To a huge amount of people on the planet, whether they live in democracies or dictatorships, the state protects them. There will always be minorities who the state oppresses but your average man on the street believes that the state, their state is protecting them.
Back to the whole lack of understanding because of the privilege of living in a very free and tolerant country. You have no cultural or direct knowledge of what it’s like to lose it so the things that attach you to that state, the UK, it’s flag and anthem are disposable.
I live in a place that has largely the same protections but it also has people alive who lived under the Nazis, they lived in fear and it was physically and mentally awful. The national anthem and display of flags is very important culturally because there is a cultural memory of losing that.
So you can cock a snook at it but maybe think about the fact that seemingly minor trivial and silly things like “a song” or a “bit of cloth” represent something more - they represent a country where someone from the arse end of nowhere can move through the system and get a well paid city career that allows them a comfortable late age existence where they can freely criticise the govern,ent or future government without fear of someone knocking on the door one night.
It’s not a bad thing to have love for your country and often that’s as simple as singing a patriotic song, like pretty much every nation in the world does, often very happily. Don’t mock, it’s allowed you to exist the way you do.
If you don't have much, at least you have your country. I'm proud of being from Scotland (and the UK), but it constitutes only a small part of my self-worth because of my education, my job, my stable relationship, my experiences travelling around the world. If I didn't have those things, being Scottish would be much more important.
I think that's what explains these different attitudes to nationalism.
(I know that having children delivers a huge amount of self-worth to people too, which I think explains why people don't have them as much any more - that self-worth is now delivered by all these other experiences.)
At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…
This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?
You have lived a largely “safe” life. You have had a good career and lived in a country which, bar the odd uncomfortable time has not realistically been under threat in your lifetime.
You take for granted a factor of soft nationalism that many people in most countries don’t take for granted. To a huge amount of people on the planet, whether they live in democracies or dictatorships, the state protects them. There will always be minorities who the state oppresses but your average man on the street believes that the state, their state is protecting them.
Back to the whole lack of understanding because of the privilege of living in a very free and tolerant country. You have no cultural or direct knowledge of what it’s like to lose it so the things that attach you to that state, the UK, it’s flag and anthem are disposable.
I live in a place that has largely the same protections but it also has people alive who lived under the Nazis, they lived in fear and it was physically and mentally awful. The national anthem and display of flags is very important culturally because there is a cultural memory of losing that.
So you can cock a snook at it but maybe think about the fact that seemingly minor trivial and silly things like “a song” or a “bit of cloth” represent something more - they represent a country where someone from the arse end of nowhere can move through the system and get a well paid city career that allows them a comfortable late age existence where they can freely criticise the govern,ent or future government without fear of someone knocking on the door one night.
It’s not a bad thing to have love for your country and often that’s as simple as singing a patriotic song, like pretty much every nation in the world does, often very happily. Don’t mock, it’s allowed you to exist the way you do.
I thought this terrific privileged country which we all should be proud of was becoming such a hellhole it's understandable that a new party of racists, grifters and weirdos is 10 pts clear in polls?
William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill · 3h BBC News is now running a full-blown recruitment campaign for Reform. This report, by the BBC political editor, doesn't even make a stab at neutrality in its breathless enthusiasm for Farage
At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…
This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?
You have lived a largely “safe” life. You have had a good career and lived in a country which, bar the odd uncomfortable time has not realistically been under threat in your lifetime.
You take for granted a factor of soft nationalism that many people in most countries don’t take for granted. To a huge amount of people on the planet, whether they live in democracies or dictatorships, the state protects them. There will always be minorities who the state oppresses but your average man on the street believes that the state, their state is protecting them.
Back to the whole lack of understanding because of the privilege of living in a very free and tolerant country. You have no cultural or direct knowledge of what it’s like to lose it so the things that attach you to that state, the UK, it’s flag and anthem are disposable.
I live in a place that has largely the same protections but it also has people alive who lived under the Nazis, they lived in fear and it was physically and mentally awful. The national anthem and display of flags is very important culturally because there is a cultural memory of losing that.
So you can cock a snook at it but maybe think about the fact that seemingly minor trivial and silly things like “a song” or a “bit of cloth” represent something more - they represent a country where someone from the arse end of nowhere can move through the system and get a well paid city career that allows them a comfortable late age existence where they can freely criticise the govern,ent or future government without fear of someone knocking on the door one night.
It’s not a bad thing to have love for your country and often that’s as simple as singing a patriotic song, like pretty much every nation in the world does, often very happily. Don’t mock, it’s allowed you to exist the way you do.
I thought this terrific privileged country which we all should be proud of was becoming such a hellhole it's understandable that a new party of racists, grifters and weirdos is 10 pts clear in polls?
Luckily we are allowed different political beliefs, they aren’t for me but they still aren’t remotely as horrific as many of their peers in other European countries are.
But the signs are there. It's very concerning and not one iota understandable let alone justified. I'm astonished that so many feel it is. Keep saying airy stuff like "well if mainstream politicians don't deliver, what do you expect?" I mean, c'mon.
It is understandable. Reform are something new. People latch onto what they like about the something new (like controlling illegal immigration sonehow) and hope they don't really mean what they say about the stuff they are less enthusiastic about (like, say, the Putinism) and ignore the slight unsavouriness of some of the true believers. It was almost exactly the same with Cirbyn in 2017.
The fact that someone appears to be listening is enough to get them a hearing.
At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…
This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?
You have lived a largely “safe” life. You have had a good career and lived in a country which, bar the odd uncomfortable time has not realistically been under threat in your lifetime.
You take for granted a factor of soft nationalism that many people in most countries don’t take for granted. To a huge amount of people on the planet, whether they live in democracies or dictatorships, the state protects them. There will always be minorities who the state oppresses but your average man on the street believes that the state, their state is protecting them.
Back to the whole lack of understanding because of the privilege of living in a very free and tolerant country. You have no cultural or direct knowledge of what it’s like to lose it so the things that attach you to that state, the UK, it’s flag and anthem are disposable.
I live in a place that has largely the same protections but it also has people alive who lived under the Nazis, they lived in fear and it was physically and mentally awful. The national anthem and display of flags is very important culturally because there is a cultural memory of losing that.
So you can cock a snook at it but maybe think about the fact that seemingly minor trivial and silly things like “a song” or a “bit of cloth” represent something more - they represent a country where someone from the arse end of nowhere can move through the system and get a well paid city career that allows them a comfortable late age existence where they can freely criticise the govern,ent or future government without fear of someone knocking on the door one night.
It’s not a bad thing to have love for your country and often that’s as simple as singing a patriotic song, like pretty much every nation in the world does, often very happily. Don’t mock, it’s allowed you to exist the way you do.
I thought this terrific privileged country which we all should be proud of was becoming such a hellhole it's understandable that a new party of racists, grifters and weirdos is 10 pts clear in polls?
William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill · 3h BBC News is now running a full-blown recruitment campaign for Reform. This report, by the BBC political editor, doesn't even make a stab at neutrality in its breathless enthusiasm for Farage
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
It seems the BBC’s Chris Mason is copping a load of flak for honestly reporting what he saw rather than what centrists want to read
“Centrist” has had quite the journey. From term of abuse by very online lefties at people they consider worse than Tories, to term of abuse by very online righties at people they consider worse than communists.
It’s no more a term of abuse than ‘leftie’ or ‘rightie’, and many people apply the label to themselves.
Yes, I am quite happy being called a Centrist Dad, because I am one.
(It does depend on what is meant by centrist of course. I am dry as dust on economic matters very liberal on social issues, so it averages out overall.
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
It seems the BBC’s Chris Mason is copping a load of flak for honestly reporting what he saw rather than what centrists want to read
Yes. I read it. He discovered exactly what the Guardian reporter discovered - a genuine sense of optimism allied with serious money, scale and intent. Yet also a sense it could go wrong
For that he is labelled a “Nazi journalist”??
There are many reasons to despise the PB centrist dad. But perhaps the most salient is their lame, feeble, cringeworthy stupidity
All that report on Reform is fine in itself line by line, but we've seen bits of the deeply MAGA stuff today, anti vaxx, Connolly, so to say that Farage called for "discipline" without even mentioning all that is, in itself, an act of sane washing.
The Connolly stuff is the aspect of Reform that could turn to the far-right, or the more extreme end of Maga. They are currently poised between this and Farage's personal business vanity project, with the Telegraph and GB News helpfully and partly playing the role that Berluscomi's own TV channels used to in this.
I find it all quite vexing. I'm the sort of voter who on the face of it ought to be Reform-curious. I'm the sort of culturally-right voter who never felt fully at home with the Conservatives. I'm exasperated with the way we are governed. Hurray that this voice is being heard, for what feels like the first time in my lifetime. But I don't want Putinism with that. I think the closure of tge North Sea oilfield is madness, but that doesn't mean I hate renewables and love fossil fuels. I definitely don't want antivaxery. I'd like to stand firm against the culture warriors who've dragged us into madness in the last fifteen years, but that doesn't mean I want to be opening new fronts like abortion. I hate compulsory enthusiasm for Pride, but that doesn't mean I want to put the gays back in the closet. Reform appear to have taken a promising niche and extrapolated it far far too far. I don't want to be contrarian on everything.
This post has reminded me of a very funny old sketch by Julie Walters.
"I was very anti-Falklands for example. I wanted to boycott Fray Bentos and leave it at that."
Cool Hand Luke forgive me doing a Leon but perhaps the most significant commercial of my career. I'd been asked by the agency to shoot a poster for Greenhall using the commercials location and actor. We shot in Almeria and Shepperton.The producer was Tony Scott's wife Glynnis and the first assistant was Roger Lyons.
Two Rogers we became friends. He wanted to direct and the agency creative asked me if I'd like to give it a try. I was a fashion photographer at the time . We both went on to direct. Roger L became the hottest director in town and did Levi's Laundrette among other stuff.
He later had a shoot in Italy and fell over a cliff and died. Tony left Glynnis and later took his own life....Back at Shepperton Ridley shot 1984 Apple with Roger L as his first assistant Reckoned to be the best commercial ever made......
So that's how you got started, 🫡
Number 2 son has gone into your line of work, at a small agency down in the Smoke. Mostly he is editing and fettling the videos, as befits a junior, but he is very creative and ambitious, and beginning to catch the eye of the bosses.
That's great news. There are many ways in and editing is one of the most popular. When he gets to know a few people and gets liked then relied on its possible to move up quite fast.There's some luck but if he's good and hard working it's possible to get anywhere. It's a very honest and straight profession and as everyon'e freelance you just have to do your job well and wait your chance. I was a stills photographer which at the time was a way in. It was a time when a lot of commercials were very styalised so well suited to stills photographers.
Roger Lyons came from assistant directing which was rare. A few worked their way up through being crew but as many through editing. It depends where he's up to and if he's a runner who he's running for but a lot try their hand at shorts for competions. Brian Percival a friend did a short which won him a Bafta. He then got picked up by the BBC which gave him Shakespeare retold then Fellows gave him Downton . It is a great profession and if he's good enough with a bit of luck he'll work his way up. Much more concentrated than stills.In all the time I shot commercials no member of the crew was ever late wherever you had to be they'd find a way. Where's he doing his editing?
Going back upthread - you shot a Greenall's commercial - please tell me it's "I wish I was in Greenall Whitley land..."
That was possibly the greatest series of adverts ever made. Still raises a slight lump to the throat.
At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…
This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?
You have lived a largely “safe” life. You have had a good career and lived in a country which, bar the odd uncomfortable time has not realistically been under threat in your lifetime.
You take for granted a factor of soft nationalism that many people in most countries don’t take for granted. To a huge amount of people on the planet, whether they live in democracies or dictatorships, the state protects them. There will always be minorities who the state oppresses but your average man on the street believes that the state, their state is protecting them.
Back to the whole lack of understanding because of the privilege of living in a very free and tolerant country. You have no cultural or direct knowledge of what it’s like to lose it so the things that attach you to that state, the UK, it’s flag and anthem are disposable.
I live in a place that has largely the same protections but it also has people alive who lived under the Nazis, they lived in fear and it was physically and mentally awful. The national anthem and display of flags is very important culturally because there is a cultural memory of losing that.
So you can cock a snook at it but maybe think about the fact that seemingly minor trivial and silly things like “a song” or a “bit of cloth” represent something more - they represent a country where someone from the arse end of nowhere can move through the system and get a well paid city career that allows them a comfortable late age existence where they can freely criticise the govern,ent or future government without fear of someone knocking on the door one night.
It’s not a bad thing to have love for your country and often that’s as simple as singing a patriotic song, like pretty much every nation in the world does, often very happily. Don’t mock, it’s allowed you to exist the way you do.
If you don't have much, at least you have your country. I'm proud of being from Scotland (and the UK), but it constitutes only a small part of my self-worth because of my education, my job, my stable relationship, my experiences travelling around the world. If I didn't have those things, being Scottish would be much more important.
I think that's what explains these different attitudes to nationalism.
(I know that having children delivers a huge amount of self-worth to people too, which I think explains why people don't have them as much any more - that self-worth is now delivered by all these other experiences.)
There are very many people who are a great deal better educated, better travelled, wealthier, and with longer marriages and relationships on the clock than you, who are also a great deal more patriotic than you. Claiming that patriotism is some sort of substitute for success and happiness is patronisingly obtuse almost to the point of parody.
At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…
This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?
You have lived a largely “safe” life. You have had a good career and lived in a country which, bar the odd uncomfortable time has not realistically been under threat in your lifetime.
You take for granted a factor of soft nationalism that many people in most countries don’t take for granted. To a huge amount of people on the planet, whether they live in democracies or dictatorships, the state protects them. There will always be minorities who the state oppresses but your average man on the street believes that the state, their state is protecting them.
Back to the whole lack of understanding because of the privilege of living in a very free and tolerant country. You have no cultural or direct knowledge of what it’s like to lose it so the things that attach you to that state, the UK, it’s flag and anthem are disposable.
I live in a place that has largely the same protections but it also has people alive who lived under the Nazis, they lived in fear and it was physically and mentally awful. The national anthem and display of flags is very important culturally because there is a cultural memory of losing that.
So you can cock a snook at it but maybe think about the fact that seemingly minor trivial and silly things like “a song” or a “bit of cloth” represent something more - they represent a country where someone from the arse end of nowhere can move through the system and get a well paid city career that allows them a comfortable late age existence where they can freely criticise the govern,ent or future government without fear of someone knocking on the door one night.
It’s not a bad thing to have love for your country and often that’s as simple as singing a patriotic song, like pretty much every nation in the world does, often very happily. Don’t mock, it’s allowed you to exist the way you do.
I thought this terrific privileged country which we all should be proud of was becoming such a hellhole it's understandable that a new party of racists, grifters and weirdos is 10 pts clear in polls?
Luckily we are allowed different political beliefs, they aren’t for me but they still aren’t remotely as horrific as many of their peers in other European countries are.
But the signs are there. It's very concerning and not one iota understandable let alone justified. I'm astonished that so many feel it is. Keep saying airy stuff like "well if mainstream politicians don't deliver, what do you expect?" I mean, c'mon.
It is understandable. Reform are something new. People latch onto what they like about the something new (like controlling illegal immigration sonehow) and hope they don't really mean what they say about the stuff they are less enthusiastic about (like, say, the Putinism) and ignore the slight unsavouriness of some of the true believers. It was almost exactly the same with Cirbyn in 2017.
The fact that someone appears to be listening is enough to get them a hearing.
Slight unsavouriness? It's way more than that. Just watch the space if you haven't yet seen enough to convince you these people aren't fit to be anywhere near positions of power.
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
It seems the BBC’s Chris Mason is copping a load of flak for honestly reporting what he saw rather than what centrists want to read
Yes. I read it. He discovered exactly what the Guardian reporter discovered - a genuine sense of optimism allied with serious money, scale and intent. Yet also a sense it could go wrong
For that he is labelled a “Nazi journalist”??
There are many reasons to despise the PB centrist dad. But perhaps the most salient is their lame, feeble, cringeworthy stupidity
All that report on Reform is fine in itself line by line, but we've seen bits of the deeply MAGA stuff today, anti vaxx, Connolly, so to say that Farage called for "discipline" without even mentioning all that is, in itself, an act of sane washing.
The content of Lucy Connolly's interview was I thought quite interesting for the PB lefty brigade, given that she has seemingly emerged from prison thinking that half the women in the prison estate should be let out and need rehabilitation instead. She has also repeatedly refused to condemn Ricky Jones and is glad that he has avoided gaol time.
The first opinion I think puts her somewhat at odds with Reform, given their 'Nightingale prisons' policy. It's at odds with me too - though I am interested in what Connolly has to say.
All of which is rather discomfiting for Reform, and something our Starmer rescue squad might have enjoyed chewing over if they'd actually troubled themselves to watch the interview rather than just have fits of the vapours about it.
Yes, I think she may well be right (and at considerable odds with both Reform and Tory Parties) that we lock up far too many people that would be better dealt with via mental health and addiction programmes than prison. I think that probably true of male convicts too.
On the other hand as she seems to think that calling for arson and murder in the middle of nationwide riots is just free speech then she may not be a very good judge of what is right or wrong conduct.
The right are happy to beatify Connolly because her tweet was against a group they hate , I doubt we’d be seeing her lauded if she had applied that to a church . Suddenly the freedom of speech warriors would have gone quiet . This is the thing with the right of today as we can see in the USA , once in they will start attacking anyone who disagrees with their world view , it will be framed as being unpatriotic to disagree . The freedom of speech is really freedom to only agree with them .
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
It seems the BBC’s Chris Mason is copping a load of flak for honestly reporting what he saw rather than what centrists want to read
Yes. I read it. He discovered exactly what the Guardian reporter discovered - a genuine sense of optimism allied with serious money, scale and intent. Yet also a sense it could go wrong
For that he is labelled a “Nazi journalist”??
There are many reasons to despise the PB centrist dad. But perhaps the most salient is their lame, feeble, cringeworthy stupidity
All that report on Reform is fine in itself line by line, but we've seen bits of the deeply MAGA stuff today, anti vaxx, Connolly, so to say that Farage called for "discipline" without even mentioning all that is, in itself, an act of sane washing.
The Connolly stuff is the aspect of Reform that could turn to the far-right, or the more extreme end of Maga. They are currently poised between this and Farage's personal business vanity project, with the Telegraph and GB News helpfully and partly playing the role that Berluscomi's own TV channels used to in this.
I find it all quite vexing. I'm the sort of voter who on the face of it ought to be Reform-curious. I'm the sort of culturally-right voter who never felt fully at home with the Conservatives. I'm exasperated with the way we are governed. Hurray that this voice is being heard, for what feels like the first time in my lifetime. But I don't want Putinism with that. I think the closure of tge North Sea oilfield is madness, but that doesn't mean I hate renewables and love fossil fuels. I definitely don't want antivaxery. I'd like to stand firm against the culture warriors who've dragged us into madness in the last fifteen years, but that doesn't mean I want to be opening new fronts like abortion. I hate compulsory enthusiasm for Pride, but that doesn't mean I want to put the gays back in the closet. Reform appear to have taken a promising niche and extrapolated it far far too far. I don't want to be contrarian on everything.
This post has reminded me of a very funny old sketch by Julie Walters.
"I was very anti-Falklands for example. I wanted to boycott Fray Bentos and leave it at that."
Well fair enough. But 'm quite prepared to get all Reformy on immigration and crime. I just don't see wht the antivaxery or the operating in Fahrenheit or the Putinism is needed. I'm quite prepares to break eggs to make an omelette. But only the omelettes which actually need making.
William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill · 3h BBC News is now running a full-blown recruitment campaign for Reform. This report, by the BBC political editor, doesn't even make a stab at neutrality in its breathless enthusiasm for Farage
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
It seems the BBC’s Chris Mason is copping a load of flak for honestly reporting what he saw rather than what centrists want to read
“Centrist” has had quite the journey. From term of abuse by very online lefties at people they consider worse than Tories, to term of abuse by very online righties at people they consider worse than communists.
It’s no more a term of abuse than ‘leftie’ or ‘rightie’, and many people apply the label to themselves.
Yes, I am quite happy being called a Centrist Dad, because I am one.
(It does depend on what is meant by centrist of course. I am dry as dust on economic matters very liberal on social issues, so it averages out overall.
If thise things are both fundamental to your political make up, you're not centrist. A centrist doesn't have political principles that cannot be altered to stand in the middle of the prevailing fashion.
I would say the fundamentals of centrism are: -Belief in the state - not the nation state specifically, but all manifestations of state power -Belief in a notion of 'modernity' and not being behind the times, but in a very malleable way. If enough people tell a centrist that moisturising with a dog turd is what all the right-thinking people are doing now, they will do it. -A strong wish to identity oneself with elite power and wealth, and the prevailing intelligentsia.
At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…
This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?
You have lived a largely “safe” life. You have had a good career and lived in a country which, bar the odd uncomfortable time has not realistically been under threat in your lifetime.
You take for granted a factor of soft nationalism that many people in most countries don’t take for granted. To a huge amount of people on the planet, whether they live in democracies or dictatorships, the state protects them. There will always be minorities who the state oppresses but your average man on the street believes that the state, their state is protecting them.
Back to the whole lack of understanding because of the privilege of living in a very free and tolerant country. You have no cultural or direct knowledge of what it’s like to lose it so the things that attach you to that state, the UK, it’s flag and anthem are disposable.
I live in a place that has largely the same protections but it also has people alive who lived under the Nazis, they lived in fear and it was physically and mentally awful. The national anthem and display of flags is very important culturally because there is a cultural memory of losing that.
So you can cock a snook at it but maybe think about the fact that seemingly minor trivial and silly things like “a song” or a “bit of cloth” represent something more - they represent a country where someone from the arse end of nowhere can move through the system and get a well paid city career that allows them a comfortable late age existence where they can freely criticise the govern,ent or future government without fear of someone knocking on the door one night.
It’s not a bad thing to have love for your country and often that’s as simple as singing a patriotic song, like pretty much every nation in the world does, often very happily. Don’t mock, it’s allowed you to exist the way you do.
If you don't have much, at least you have your country. I'm proud of being from Scotland (and the UK), but it constitutes only a small part of my self-worth because of my education, my job, my stable relationship, my experiences travelling around the world. If I didn't have those things, being Scottish would be much more important.
I think that's what explains these different attitudes to nationalism.
(I know that having children delivers a huge amount of self-worth to people too, which I think explains why people don't have them as much any more - that self-worth is now delivered by all these other experiences.)
There are very many people who are a great deal better educated, better travelled, wealthier, and with longer marriages and relationships on the clock than you, who are also a great deal more patriotic than you. Claiming that patriotism is some sort of substitute for success and happiness is patronisingly obtuse almost to the point of parody.
Read my post again. I don't think it substitutes whatever patriotism you have at all.
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
It seems the BBC’s Chris Mason is copping a load of flak for honestly reporting what he saw rather than what centrists want to read
“Centrist” has had quite the journey. From term of abuse by very online lefties at people they consider worse than Tories, to term of abuse by very online righties at people they consider worse than communists.
It’s no more a term of abuse than ‘leftie’ or ‘rightie’, and many people apply the label to themselves.
Yes, I am quite happy being called a Centrist Dad, because I am one.
(It does depend on what is meant by centrist of course. I am dry as dust on economic matters very liberal on social issues, so it averages out overall.
If thise things are both fundamental to your political make up, you're not centrist. A centrist doesn't have political principles that cannot be altered to stand in the middle of the prevailing fashion.
I would say the fundamentals of centrism are: -Belief in the state - not the nation state specifically, but all manifestations of state power -Belief in a notion of 'modernity' and not being behind the times, but in a very malleable way. If enough people tell a centrist that moisturising with a dog turd is what all the right-thinking people are doing now, they will do it. -A strong wish to identity oneself with elite power and wealth, and the prevailing intelligentsia.
Centrism is the new woke then. Stuff you don't like.
At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…
This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?
You have lived a largely “safe” life. You have had a good career and lived in a country which, bar the odd uncomfortable time has not realistically been under threat in your lifetime.
You take for granted a factor of soft nationalism that many people in most countries don’t take for granted. To a huge amount of people on the planet, whether they live in democracies or dictatorships, the state protects them. There will always be minorities who the state oppresses but your average man on the street believes that the state, their state is protecting them.
Back to the whole lack of understanding because of the privilege of living in a very free and tolerant country. You have no cultural or direct knowledge of what it’s like to lose it so the things that attach you to that state, the UK, it’s flag and anthem are disposable.
I live in a place that has largely the same protections but it also has people alive who lived under the Nazis, they lived in fear and it was physically and mentally awful. The national anthem and display of flags is very important culturally because there is a cultural memory of losing that.
So you can cock a snook at it but maybe think about the fact that seemingly minor trivial and silly things like “a song” or a “bit of cloth” represent something more - they represent a country where someone from the arse end of nowhere can move through the system and get a well paid city career that allows them a comfortable late age existence where they can freely criticise the govern,ent or future government without fear of someone knocking on the door one night.
It’s not a bad thing to have love for your country and often that’s as simple as singing a patriotic song, like pretty much every nation in the world does, often very happily. Don’t mock, it’s allowed you to exist the way you do.
I thought this terrific privileged country which we all should be proud of was becoming such a hellhole it's understandable that a new party of racists, grifters and weirdos is 10 pts clear in polls?
At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…
This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?
You have lived a largely “safe” life. You have had a good career and lived in a country which, bar the odd uncomfortable time has not realistically been under threat in your lifetime.
You take for granted a factor of soft nationalism that many people in most countries don’t take for granted. To a huge amount of people on the planet, whether they live in democracies or dictatorships, the state protects them. There will always be minorities who the state oppresses but your average man on the street believes that the state, their state is protecting them.
Back to the whole lack of understanding because of the privilege of living in a very free and tolerant country. You have no cultural or direct knowledge of what it’s like to lose it so the things that attach you to that state, the UK, it’s flag and anthem are disposable.
I live in a place that has largely the same protections but it also has people alive who lived under the Nazis, they lived in fear and it was physically and mentally awful. The national anthem and display of flags is very important culturally because there is a cultural memory of losing that.
So you can cock a snook at it but maybe think about the fact that seemingly minor trivial and silly things like “a song” or a “bit of cloth” represent something more - they represent a country where someone from the arse end of nowhere can move through the system and get a well paid city career that allows them a comfortable late age existence where they can freely criticise the govern,ent or future government without fear of someone knocking on the door one night.
It’s not a bad thing to have love for your country and often that’s as simple as singing a patriotic song, like pretty much every nation in the world does, often very happily. Don’t mock, it’s allowed you to exist the way you do.
I thought this terrific privileged country which we all should be proud of was becoming such a hellhole it's understandable that a new party of racists, grifters and weirdos is 10 pts clear in polls?
Luckily we are allowed different political beliefs, they aren’t for me but they still aren’t remotely as horrific as many of their peers in other European countries are.
But the signs are there. It's very concerning and not one iota understandable let alone justified. I'm astonished that so many feel it is. Keep saying airy stuff like "well if mainstream politicians don't deliver, what do you expect?" I mean, c'mon.
It is understandable. Reform are something new. People latch onto what they like about the something new (like controlling illegal immigration sonehow) and hope they don't really mean what they say about the stuff they are less enthusiastic about (like, say, the Putinism) and ignore the slight unsavouriness of some of the true believers. It was almost exactly the same with Cirbyn in 2017.
The fact that someone appears to be listening is enough to get them a hearing.
Slight unsavouriness? It's way more than that. Just watch the space if you haven't yet seen enough to convince you these people aren't fit to be anywhere near positions of power.
Yeah, well, ditto Corbyn and you could understand that.
I'm not making a case for Reform here. I'm not planning to vote for them. But I can absolutely see why people do. It's human nature to pick on a 'finally someone understands' and choose to overlook the myriad ways the new hope isn't actually as great a fit as one had hoped.
Cool Hand Luke forgive me doing a Leon but perhaps the most significant commercial of my career. I'd been asked by the agency to shoot a poster for Greenhall using the commercials location and actor. We shot in Almeria and Shepperton.The producer was Tony Scott's wife Glynnis and the first assistant was Roger Lyons.
Two Rogers we became friends. He wanted to direct and the agency creative asked me if I'd like to give it a try. I was a fashion photographer at the time . We both went on to direct. Roger L became the hottest director in town and did Levi's Laundrette among other stuff.
He later had a shoot in Italy and fell over a cliff and died. Tony left Glynnis and later took his own life....Back at Shepperton Ridley shot 1984 Apple with Roger L as his first assistant Reckoned to be the best commercial ever made......
So that's how you got started, 🫡
Number 2 son has gone into your line of work, at a small agency down in the Smoke. Mostly he is editing and fettling the videos, as befits a junior, but he is very creative and ambitious, and beginning to catch the eye of the bosses.
That's great news. There are many ways in and editing is one of the most popular. When he gets to know a few people and gets liked then relied on its possible to move up quite fast.There's some luck but if he's good and hard working it's possible to get anywhere. It's a very honest and straight profession and as everyon'e freelance you just have to do your job well and wait your chance. I was a stills photographer which at the time was a way in. It was a time when a lot of commercials were very styalised so well suited to stills photographers.
Roger Lyons came from assistant directing which was rare. A few worked their way up through being crew but as many through editing. It depends where he's up to and if he's a runner who he's running for but a lot try their hand at shorts for competions. Brian Percival a friend did a short which won him a Bafta. He then got picked up by the BBC which gave him Shakespeare retold then Fellows gave him Downton . It is a great profession and if he's good enough with a bit of luck he'll work his way up. Much more concentrated than stills.In all the time I shot commercials no member of the crew was ever late wherever you had to be they'd find a way. Where's he doing his editing?
Going back upthread - you shot a Greenall's commercial - please tell me it's "I wish I was in Greenall Whitley land..."
That was possibly the greatest series of adverts ever made. Still raises a slight lump to the throat.
Tis the one returned by a Greenall Whitley Cool Hand Luke search on YouTube!
The downstairs toilet lock had gone at that time in our house and singing on the loo was necessary. That song became the chosen "occupied" notification.
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
It seems the BBC’s Chris Mason is copping a load of flak for honestly reporting what he saw rather than what centrists want to read
“Centrist” has had quite the journey. From term of abuse by very online lefties at people they consider worse than Tories, to term of abuse by very online righties at people they consider worse than communists.
It’s no more a term of abuse than ‘leftie’ or ‘rightie’, and many people apply the label to themselves.
Yes, I am quite happy being called a Centrist Dad, because I am one.
(It does depend on what is meant by centrist of course. I am dry as dust on economic matters very liberal on social issues, so it averages out overall.
If thise things are both fundamental to your political make up, you're not centrist. A centrist doesn't have political principles that cannot be altered to stand in the middle of the prevailing fashion.
I would say the fundamentals of centrism are: -Belief in the state - not the nation state specifically, but all manifestations of state power -Belief in a notion of 'modernity' and not being behind the times, but in a very malleable way. If enough people tell a centrist that moisturising with a dog turd is what all the right-thinking people are doing now, they will do it. -A strong wish to identity oneself with elite power and wealth, and the prevailing intelligentsia.
Centrism is the new woke then. Stuff you don't like.
Not at all. I think woke is a very clearly defined ideology, with critical race theory and a lot of other writing (I cannot call it academia) at its heart.
Centrism by its nature is not an ideology because it is a triangulation between the two opposing points in any political system. You can (and did) have centrist Nazis and Communists. The centrists of today have utterly different views than the centrists of 20 years ago. That's because their views were never based on conviction, they were just what was in the middle then.
It takes around 80 Labour MPs to get nominated for the deputy leadership. I don’t doubt that someone from the left will win but a major drama is being overblown by the media . I expect it will be more the softer left as the membership has changed since the Corbyn days and Labour have also lost more members after Starmers Trump sycophancy and Reform lite tribute act .
William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill · 3h BBC News is now running a full-blown recruitment campaign for Reform. This report, by the BBC political editor, doesn't even make a stab at neutrality in its breathless enthusiasm for Farage
William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill · 3h BBC News is now running a full-blown recruitment campaign for Reform. This report, by the BBC political editor, doesn't even make a stab at neutrality in its breathless enthusiasm for Farage
William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill · 3h BBC News is now running a full-blown recruitment campaign for Reform. This report, by the BBC political editor, doesn't even make a stab at neutrality in its breathless enthusiasm for Farage
"Japanese town proposes two-hour daily limit on smartphones
A central Japanese town wants to limit smartphone use for all its 69,000 residents to two hours a day, in a move that has sparked intense debate on device addiction. The proposal, believed to be the first of its kind in Japan, is currently being debated by lawmakers after being submitted by Toyoake municipal government in Aichi earlier this week. Toyoake's mayor said the proposal - which only applies outside of work and study - would not be strictly enforced, but rather was meant to "encourage" residents to better manage their screen time."
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
As I was at pains to point out, the Greens also have/had an optimistic view of the future:
Llandudno RNLI inshore lifeboat was called to an injury to a lady in her 70s have fallen in a local speedboat on a trip and, whilst the speedboat came alongside the jetty, she couldn't move and the 4 person crew administered Entonox [ they are trained to do this] and with the help of the coastguards carried her to a local hotel to await ambulance
It arrived 9 [Nine] hours later to take her to hospital !!!!!!
That is shocking. I, and I suspect most, have already concluded that if I or my wife ever need a hip or knee replacement or rapid attention to a variety of ailments then there is little option other than to go private with the NHS being a literal and unacceptable pain. But A&E is one of the things they are supposed to be good at. £188bn in a year. WTF are they spending it on other than themselves?
I'm with you that the response time is slow, even though it is non-emergency. Did they get a paramedic? I had a look at response time targets.
It's devolved by nation, remember. These are the Welsh categories:
The categories for the response model are as follows:
“Red” refers to immediately life-threatening incidents “Amber” refers to incidents that are serious, but not immediately life-threatening “Green” refers to neither serious, nor life-threatening incidents
Wales has no target response standard for non-life-threatening response times (which I did not know).
Ambulance response standards for Wales Only Red calls have a set response standard. 65% of these types of calls are expected to have an emergency response at the scene within 8 minutes.
ESNI are comprehensive in defined response times. The Scottish targets are interestingly different to E & NI, which are afaics aligned. Wales only has a target for life-threatening cases, which is a decision taken to 'focus on the immediately life-threatening".
William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill · 3h BBC News is now running a full-blown recruitment campaign for Reform. This report, by the BBC political editor, doesn't even make a stab at neutrality in its breathless enthusiasm for Farage
He's probably just annoyed that the BBC isn't being positively anti-Reform for the first time ever.
The BBC have spent the last few months fawning over Reform which came to a head today with Masons article .
How absurd you are! A newish party comfortably leads in all the polls and you object because the BBC reports on the phenomenon. If the government showed a modicum of competence on any of the key issues Reform would be no threat. When you add bucket loads of corruption and hypocrisy... The plain truth is that the Labour seat majority flatters to deceive when you look at votes cast. It hasn't required much to leave them holes below the waterline. They are now objects of contempt and ridicule and to expect the important news outlets to pretend otherwise is utterly absurd.
Llandudno RNLI inshore lifeboat was called to an injury to a lady in her 70s have fallen in a local speedboat on a trip and, whilst the speedboat came alongside the jetty, she couldn't move and the 4 person crew administered Entonox [ they are trained to do this] and with the help of the coastguards carried her to a local hotel to await ambulance
It arrived 9 [Nine] hours later to take her to hospital !!!!!!
That is shocking. I, and I suspect most, have already concluded that if I or my wife ever need a hip or knee replacement or rapid attention to a variety of ailments then there is little option other than to go private with the NHS being a literal and unacceptable pain. But A&E is one of the things they are supposed to be good at. £188bn in a year. WTF are they spending it on other than themselves?
I'm with you that the response time is slow, even though it is non-emergency. Did they get a paramedic? I had a look at response time targets.
It's devolved by nation, remember. These are the Welsh categories:
The categories for the response model are as follows:
“Red” refers to immediately life-threatening incidents “Amber” refers to incidents that are serious, but not immediately life-threatening “Green” refers to neither serious, nor life-threatening incidents
Wales has no target response standard for non-life-threatening response times (which I did not know).
Ambulance response standards for Wales Only Red calls have a set response standard. 65% of these types of calls are expected to have an emergency response at the scene within 8 minutes.
ESNI are comprehensive in defined response times. The Scottish targets are interestingly different to E & NI, which are afaics aligned. Wales only has a target for life-threatening cases, which is a decision taken to 'focus on the immediately life-threatening".
Llandudno RNLI inshore lifeboat was called to an injury to a lady in her 70s have fallen in a local speedboat on a trip and, whilst the speedboat came alongside the jetty, she couldn't move and the 4 person crew administered Entonox [ they are trained to do this] and with the help of the coastguards carried her to a local hotel to await ambulance
It arrived 9 [Nine] hours later to take her to hospital !!!!!!
That is shocking. I, and I suspect most, have already concluded that if I or my wife ever need a hip or knee replacement or rapid attention to a variety of ailments then there is little option other than to go private with the NHS being a literal and unacceptable pain. But A&E is one of the things they are supposed to be good at. £188bn in a year. WTF are they spending it on other than themselves?
I'm with you that the response time is slow, even though it is non-emergency. Did they get a paramedic? I had a look at response time targets.
It's devolved by nation, remember. These are the Welsh categories:
The categories for the response model are as follows:
“Red” refers to immediately life-threatening incidents “Amber” refers to incidents that are serious, but not immediately life-threatening “Green” refers to neither serious, nor life-threatening incidents
Wales has no target response standard for non-life-threatening response times (which I did not know).
Ambulance response standards for Wales Only Red calls have a set response standard. 65% of these types of calls are expected to have an emergency response at the scene within 8 minutes.
ESNI are comprehensive in defined response times. The Scottish targets are interestingly different to E & NI, which are afaics aligned. Wales only has a target for life-threatening cases, which is a decision taken to 'focus on the immediately life-threatening".
William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill · 3h BBC News is now running a full-blown recruitment campaign for Reform. This report, by the BBC political editor, doesn't even make a stab at neutrality in its breathless enthusiasm for Farage
He's probably just annoyed that the BBC isn't being positively anti-Reform for the first time ever.
The BBC have spent the last few months fawning over Reform which came to a head today with Masons article .
How absurd you are! A newish party comfortably leads in all the polls and you object because the BBC reports on the phenomenon. If the government showed a modicum of competence on any of the key issues Reform would be no threat. When you add bucket loads of corruption and hypocrisy... The plain truth is that the Labour seat majority flatters to deceive when you look at votes cast. It hasn't required much to leave them holes below the waterline. They are now objects of contempt and ridicule and to expect the important news outlets to pretend otherwise is utterly absurd.
I am concerned just how poorly Labour supporters are reacting to the coverage of Farage and Reform
The way to tackle Reform is to govern properly and frankly stop trying to mimic them
And as for media bias they are only reacting to what is clearly a very new political climate and Raynergate has just ramped up the problems for Starmer and labour
I do not support Farage or Reform in any way whatsoever but the reality is Farage is taking all the headlines and all Labour are doing is adding to his publicity
My advise to those who are really upset and even trying to close down media coverage of Farage is reflect on why Starmer and labour have created space for this change in politics
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
It seems the BBC’s Chris Mason is copping a load of flak for honestly reporting what he saw rather than what centrists want to read
“Centrist” has had quite the journey. From term of abuse by very online lefties at people they consider worse than Tories, to term of abuse by very online righties at people they consider worse than communists.
It’s no more a term of abuse than ‘leftie’ or ‘rightie’, and many people apply the label to themselves.
Yes, I am quite happy being called a Centrist Dad, because I am one.
(It does depend on what is meant by centrist of course. I am dry as dust on economic matters very liberal on social issues, so it averages out overall.
If thise things are both fundamental to your political make up, you're not centrist. A centrist doesn't have political principles that cannot be altered to stand in the middle of the prevailing fashion.
I would say the fundamentals of centrism are: -Belief in the state - not the nation state specifically, but all manifestations of state power -Belief in a notion of 'modernity' and not being behind the times, but in a very malleable way. If enough people tell a centrist that moisturising with a dog turd is what all the right-thinking people are doing now, they will do it. -A strong wish to identity oneself with elite power and wealth, and the prevailing intelligentsia.
Centrism is the new woke then. Stuff you don't like.
Not at all. I think woke is a very clearly defined ideology, with critical race theory and a lot of other writing (I cannot call it academia) at its heart.
Centrism by its nature is not an ideology because it is a triangulation between the two opposing points in any political system. You can (and did) have centrist Nazis and Communists. The centrists of today have utterly different views than the centrists of 20 years ago. That's because their views were never based on conviction, they were just what was in the middle then.
There's so much b/s in that.
"Centrist" isn't someone picking both extremes and then choosing a middle position. It's about people whose views fall naturally within the centre. Whilst, I might add, many right-wing shits and left wing fools seem to race to the extremes as some form of badge of honour.
Likewise, your sentence about 'wokeism' is also rather lacking, and disagrees with much of what the anti-wokeists screech about.
I'd also argue that many of the current Reform supporters have totally different views from twenty years ago as well - especially the ones moving over from a traditional Labour position. And that's because politics moves and changes as the world changes - many Conservative Party policies of 2019 would appear anathema to the party in 1979, let alone 1945. And the same with Labour, though that tends to change at a slower rate.
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
As I was at pains to point out, the Greens also have/had an optimistic view of the future:
The Greens, along with the fruit and nut party (yet to be formally named), are a melange of apology/guilt (for Great Britain's imperial past), protest (with an obsession about Gaza) and whining, with a doom and gloom message if the UK government doesn't make a radical left turn in its policy direction. They fail to recognise the dire economic situation of the UK, similar to 1976, and the need to cut state profligacy and immigration drastically, unlike Reform.
UK governments in the last 20 years have used massive immigration cynically to grow the overall GDP. However, the GDP per capita hasn't increased over this period, while prices have gone up generally, so individuals feel worse off. Immigration has also been a prime cause of the stresses on housing and public services, as well as changing the character of many areas. As in 1905, the British people don't like those with different customs who keep themselves apart.
The Greens haven't done themselves any favours in the choice of their new leader, whose views and background are an anathema to most Britons.
If Reform sustain a vote share exceeding 30% at the time of the next GE, and shares for other parties are at or below 20% or thereabouts, they could win under FPTP. In Europe, different electoral arrangements enable traditional mainstream parties to erect a cordon sanitaire to exclude far right parties such as the AfD from government.
Llandudno RNLI inshore lifeboat was called to an injury to a lady in her 70s have fallen in a local speedboat on a trip and, whilst the speedboat came alongside the jetty, she couldn't move and the 4 person crew administered Entonox [ they are trained to do this] and with the help of the coastguards carried her to a local hotel to await ambulance
It arrived 9 [Nine] hours later to take her to hospital !!!!!!
That is shocking. I, and I suspect most, have already concluded that if I or my wife ever need a hip or knee replacement or rapid attention to a variety of ailments then there is little option other than to go private with the NHS being a literal and unacceptable pain. But A&E is one of the things they are supposed to be good at. £188bn in a year. WTF are they spending it on other than themselves?
I'm with you that the response time is slow, even though it is non-emergency. Did they get a paramedic? I had a look at response time targets.
It's devolved by nation, remember. These are the Welsh categories:
The categories for the response model are as follows:
“Red” refers to immediately life-threatening incidents “Amber” refers to incidents that are serious, but not immediately life-threatening “Green” refers to neither serious, nor life-threatening incidents
Wales has no target response standard for non-life-threatening response times (which I did not know).
Ambulance response standards for Wales Only Red calls have a set response standard. 65% of these types of calls are expected to have an emergency response at the scene within 8 minutes.
ESNI are comprehensive in defined response times. The Scottish targets are interestingly different to E & NI, which are afaics aligned. Wales only has a target for life-threatening cases, which is a decision taken to 'focus on the immediately life-threatening".
The RNLI crew stayed with her for the whole 9 hours monitoring her stats and keeping her as comfortable as possible
They are trained in casualty care and did provide relief crew
She was seriously injured and it is simply unacceptable that an ambulance took nine hours to take her to hospital
Absolutely.
Someone in my block of flats suffered a major crush injury to their right foot 10 weeks ago on the lawn, due to an RTA. A neighbour kindly drove them to the nearest A&E, as the ambulance response time (in England) was predicted to exceed 6 hours.
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
As I was at pains to point out, the Greens also have/had an optimistic view of the future:
The Greens, along with the fruit and nut party (yet to be formally named), are a melange of apology/guilt (for Great Britain's imperial past), protest (with an obsession about Gaza) and whining, with a doom and gloom message if the UK government doesn't make a radical left turn in its policy direction. They fail to recognise the dire economic situation of the UK, similar to 1976, and the need to cut state profligacy and immigration drastically, unlike Reform.
UK governments in the last 20 years have used massive immigration cynically to grow the overall GDP. However, the GDP per capita hasn't increased over this period, while prices have gone up generally, so individuals feel worse off. Immigration has also been a prime cause of the stresses on housing and public services, as well as changing the character of many areas. As in 1905, the British people don't like those with different customs who keep themselves apart.
The Greens haven't done themselves any favours in the choice of their new leader, whose views and background are an anathema to most Britons.
If Reform sustain a vote share exceeding 30% at the time of the next GE, and shares for other parties are at or below 20% or thereabouts, they could win under FPTP. In Europe, different electoral arrangements enable traditional mainstream parties to erect a cordon sanitaire to exclude far right parties such as the AfD from government.
Llandudno RNLI inshore lifeboat was called to an injury to a lady in her 70s have fallen in a local speedboat on a trip and, whilst the speedboat came alongside the jetty, she couldn't move and the 4 person crew administered Entonox [ they are trained to do this] and with the help of the coastguards carried her to a local hotel to await ambulance
It arrived 9 [Nine] hours later to take her to hospital !!!!!!
That is shocking. I, and I suspect most, have already concluded that if I or my wife ever need a hip or knee replacement or rapid attention to a variety of ailments then there is little option other than to go private with the NHS being a literal and unacceptable pain. But A&E is one of the things they are supposed to be good at. £188bn in a year. WTF are they spending it on other than themselves?
I'm with you that the response time is slow, even though it is non-emergency. Did they get a paramedic? I had a look at response time targets.
It's devolved by nation, remember. These are the Welsh categories:
The categories for the response model are as follows:
“Red” refers to immediately life-threatening incidents “Amber” refers to incidents that are serious, but not immediately life-threatening “Green” refers to neither serious, nor life-threatening incidents
Wales has no target response standard for non-life-threatening response times (which I did not know).
Ambulance response standards for Wales Only Red calls have a set response standard. 65% of these types of calls are expected to have an emergency response at the scene within 8 minutes.
ESNI are comprehensive in defined response times. The Scottish targets are interestingly different to E & NI, which are afaics aligned. Wales only has a target for life-threatening cases, which is a decision taken to 'focus on the immediately life-threatening".
The RNLI crew stayed with her for the whole 9 hours monitoring her stats and keeping her as comfortable as possible
They are trained in casualty care and did provide relief crew
She was seriously injured and it is simply unacceptable that an ambulance took nine hours to take her to hospital
Absolutely.
Someone in my block of flats suffered a major crush injury to their right foot 10 weeks ago on the lawn, due to an RTA. A neighbour kindly drove them to the nearest A&E, as the ambulance response time (in England) was predicted to exceed 6 hours.
If only countries with no immigration -like Japan- had done really well.
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
As I was at pains to point out, the Greens also have/had an optimistic view of the future:
The Greens, along with the fruit and nut party (yet to be formally named), are a melange of apology/guilt (for Great Britain's imperial past), protest (with an obsession about Gaza) and whining, with a doom and gloom message if the UK government doesn't make a radical left turn in its policy direction. They fail to recognise the dire economic situation of the UK, similar to 1976, and the need to cut state profligacy and immigration drastically, unlike Reform.
UK governments in the last 20 years have used massive immigration cynically to grow the overall GDP. However, the GDP per capita hasn't increased over this period, while prices have gone up generally, so individuals feel worse off. Immigration has also been a prime cause of the stresses on housing and public services, as well as changing the character of many areas. As in 1905, the British people don't like those with different customs who keep themselves apart.
The Greens haven't done themselves any favours in the choice of their new leader, whose views and background are an anathema to most Britons.
If Reform sustain a vote share exceeding 30% at the time of the next GE, and shares for other parties are at or below 20% or thereabouts, they could win under FPTP. In Europe, different electoral arrangements enable traditional mainstream parties to erect a cordon sanitaire to exclude far right parties such as the AfD from government.
Llandudno RNLI inshore lifeboat was called to an injury to a lady in her 70s have fallen in a local speedboat on a trip and, whilst the speedboat came alongside the jetty, she couldn't move and the 4 person crew administered Entonox [ they are trained to do this] and with the help of the coastguards carried her to a local hotel to await ambulance
It arrived 9 [Nine] hours later to take her to hospital !!!!!!
That is shocking. I, and I suspect most, have already concluded that if I or my wife ever need a hip or knee replacement or rapid attention to a variety of ailments then there is little option other than to go private with the NHS being a literal and unacceptable pain. But A&E is one of the things they are supposed to be good at. £188bn in a year. WTF are they spending it on other than themselves?
I'm with you that the response time is slow, even though it is non-emergency. Did they get a paramedic? I had a look at response time targets.
It's devolved by nation, remember. These are the Welsh categories:
The categories for the response model are as follows:
“Red” refers to immediately life-threatening incidents “Amber” refers to incidents that are serious, but not immediately life-threatening “Green” refers to neither serious, nor life-threatening incidents
Wales has no target response standard for non-life-threatening response times (which I did not know).
Ambulance response standards for Wales Only Red calls have a set response standard. 65% of these types of calls are expected to have an emergency response at the scene within 8 minutes.
ESNI are comprehensive in defined response times. The Scottish targets are interestingly different to E & NI, which are afaics aligned. Wales only has a target for life-threatening cases, which is a decision taken to 'focus on the immediately life-threatening".
The RNLI crew stayed with her for the whole 9 hours monitoring her stats and keeping her as comfortable as possible
They are trained in casualty care and did provide relief crew
She was seriously injured and it is simply unacceptable that an ambulance took nine hours to take her to hospital
Absolutely.
Someone in my block of flats suffered a major crush injury to their right foot 10 weeks ago on the lawn, due to an RTA. A neighbour kindly drove them to the nearest A&E, as the ambulance response time (in England) was predicted to exceed 6 hours.
IMV the issue for Greens in the UK (*) is that whilst they do have a pleasant vision for the future of the country, they also do not sell that vision very well, support policies and issues (often fringe) that do not align with that vision, and take an unrealistic view of how to get to those sunny uplands. In fact, they often come across more as a collection of disparate campaign groups rather than a holistic party.
(*) Green parties in other countries can be rather different.
William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill · 3h BBC News is now running a full-blown recruitment campaign for Reform. This report, by the BBC political editor, doesn't even make a stab at neutrality in its breathless enthusiasm for Farage
He's probably just annoyed that the BBC isn't being positively anti-Reform for the first time ever.
The BBC have spent the last few months fawning over Reform which came to a head today with Masons article .
How absurd you are! A newish party comfortably leads in all the polls and you object because the BBC reports on the phenomenon. If the government showed a modicum of competence on any of the key issues Reform would be no threat. When you add bucket loads of corruption and hypocrisy... The plain truth is that the Labour seat majority flatters to deceive when you look at votes cast. It hasn't required much to leave them holes below the waterline. They are now objects of contempt and ridicule and to expect the important news outlets to pretend otherwise is utterly absurd.
I am concerned just how poorly Labour supporters are reacting to the coverage of Farage and Reform
The way to tackle Reform is to govern properly and frankly stop trying to mimic them
And as for media bias they are only reacting to what is clearly a very new political climate and Raynergate has just ramped up the problems for Starmer and labour
I do not support Farage or Reform in any way whatsoever but the reality is Farage is taking all the headlines and all Labour are doing is adding to his publicity
My advise to those who are really upset and even trying to close down media coverage of Farage is reflect on why Starmer and labour have created space for this change in politics
I think Reform are largely taking Tory votes. Its the failure of the Tory party that has turbocharged their rise. A more competent Tory party would have them leading in the polls.
Starmer is clearly trying to do everything he can to address the grievances of Reform voters, to the point that he is surely losing more votes to his left than his right.
William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill · 3h BBC News is now running a full-blown recruitment campaign for Reform. This report, by the BBC political editor, doesn't even make a stab at neutrality in its breathless enthusiasm for Farage
At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…
This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?
You have lived a largely “safe” life. You have had a good career and lived in a country which, bar the odd uncomfortable time has not realistically been under threat in your lifetime.
You take for granted a factor of soft nationalism that many people in most countries don’t take for granted. To a huge amount of people on the planet, whether they live in democracies or dictatorships, the state protects them. There will always be minorities who the state oppresses but your average man on the street believes that the state, their state is protecting them.
Back to the whole lack of understanding because of the privilege of living in a very free and tolerant country. You have no cultural or direct knowledge of what it’s like to lose it so the things that attach you to that state, the UK, it’s flag and anthem are disposable.
I live in a place that has largely the same protections but it also has people alive who lived under the Nazis, they lived in fear and it was physically and mentally awful. The national anthem and display of flags is very important culturally because there is a cultural memory of losing that.
So you can cock a snook at it but maybe think about the fact that seemingly minor trivial and silly things like “a song” or a “bit of cloth” represent something more - they represent a country where someone from the arse end of nowhere can move through the system and get a well paid city career that allows them a comfortable late age existence where they can freely criticise the govern,ent or future government without fear of someone knocking on the door one night.
It’s not a bad thing to have love for your country and often that’s as simple as singing a patriotic song, like pretty much every nation in the world does, often very happily. Don’t mock, it’s allowed you to exist the way you do.
I thought this terrific privileged country which we all should be proud of was becoming such a hellhole it's understandable that a new party of racists, grifters and weirdos is 10 pts clear in polls?
William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill · 3h BBC News is now running a full-blown recruitment campaign for Reform. This report, by the BBC political editor, doesn't even make a stab at neutrality in its breathless enthusiasm for Farage
He's probably just annoyed that the BBC isn't being positively anti-Reform for the first time ever.
The BBC have spent the last few months fawning over Reform which came to a head today with Masons article .
How absurd you are! A newish party comfortably leads in all the polls and you object because the BBC reports on the phenomenon. If the government showed a modicum of competence on any of the key issues Reform would be no threat. When you add bucket loads of corruption and hypocrisy... The plain truth is that the Labour seat majority flatters to deceive when you look at votes cast. It hasn't required much to leave them holes below the waterline. They are now objects of contempt and ridicule and to expect the important news outlets to pretend otherwise is utterly absurd.
All quite true.
Reform seems to make people here irrational bordering conspiracy theorist.
Of course they’re going get coverage and the BBC hardly gave Richard Tice an easy ride this week. The BBC are there to report not do the other parties job for them. It’s all a bit Norman Tebbit in the eighties on here.
No one here complains about the blatant left of centre slant of channel 4 news.
William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill · 3h BBC News is now running a full-blown recruitment campaign for Reform. This report, by the BBC political editor, doesn't even make a stab at neutrality in its breathless enthusiasm for Farage
William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill · 3h BBC News is now running a full-blown recruitment campaign for Reform. This report, by the BBC political editor, doesn't even make a stab at neutrality in its breathless enthusiasm for Farage
William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill · 3h BBC News is now running a full-blown recruitment campaign for Reform. This report, by the BBC political editor, doesn't even make a stab at neutrality in its breathless enthusiasm for Farage
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
As I was at pains to point out, the Greens also have/had an optimistic view of the future:
The Greens, along with the fruit and nut party (yet to be formally named), are a melange of apology/guilt (for Great Britain's imperial past), protest (with an obsession about Gaza) and whining, with a doom and gloom message if the UK government doesn't make a radical left turn in its policy direction. They fail to recognise the dire economic situation of the UK, similar to 1976, and the need to cut state profligacy and immigration drastically, unlike Reform.
UK governments in the last 20 years have used massive immigration cynically to grow the overall GDP. However, the GDP per capita hasn't increased over this period, while prices have gone up generally, so individuals feel worse off. Immigration has also been a prime cause of the stresses on housing and public services, as well as changing the character of many areas. As in 1905, the British people don't like those with different customs who keep themselves apart.
The Greens haven't done themselves any favours in the choice of their new leader, whose views and background are an anathema to most Britons.
If Reform sustain a vote share exceeding 30% at the time of the next GE, and shares for other parties are at or below 20% or thereabouts, they could win under FPTP. In Europe, different electoral arrangements enable traditional mainstream parties to erect a cordon sanitaire to exclude far right parties such as the AfD from government.
Llandudno RNLI inshore lifeboat was called to an injury to a lady in her 70s have fallen in a local speedboat on a trip and, whilst the speedboat came alongside the jetty, she couldn't move and the 4 person crew administered Entonox [ they are trained to do this] and with the help of the coastguards carried her to a local hotel to await ambulance
It arrived 9 [Nine] hours later to take her to hospital !!!!!!
That is shocking. I, and I suspect most, have already concluded that if I or my wife ever need a hip or knee replacement or rapid attention to a variety of ailments then there is little option other than to go private with the NHS being a literal and unacceptable pain. But A&E is one of the things they are supposed to be good at. £188bn in a year. WTF are they spending it on other than themselves?
I'm with you that the response time is slow, even though it is non-emergency. Did they get a paramedic? I had a look at response time targets.
It's devolved by nation, remember. These are the Welsh categories:
The categories for the response model are as follows:
“Red” refers to immediately life-threatening incidents “Amber” refers to incidents that are serious, but not immediately life-threatening “Green” refers to neither serious, nor life-threatening incidents
Wales has no target response standard for non-life-threatening response times (which I did not know).
Ambulance response standards for Wales Only Red calls have a set response standard. 65% of these types of calls are expected to have an emergency response at the scene within 8 minutes.
ESNI are comprehensive in defined response times. The Scottish targets are interestingly different to E & NI, which are afaics aligned. Wales only has a target for life-threatening cases, which is a decision taken to 'focus on the immediately life-threatening".
The RNLI crew stayed with her for the whole 9 hours monitoring her stats and keeping her as comfortable as possible
They are trained in casualty care and did provide relief crew
She was seriously injured and it is simply unacceptable that an ambulance took nine hours to take her to hospital
Absolutely.
Someone in my block of flats suffered a major crush injury to their right foot 10 weeks ago on the lawn, due to an RTA. A neighbour kindly drove them to the nearest A&E, as the ambulance response time (in England) was predicted to exceed 6 hours.
IMV the issue for Greens in the UK (*) is that whilst they do have a pleasant vision for the future of the country, they also do not sell that vision very well, support policies and issues (often fringe) that do not align with that vision, and take an unrealistic view of how to get to those sunny uplands. In fact, they often come across more as a collection of disparate campaign groups rather than a holistic party.
(*) Green parties in other countries can be rather different.
The UK Green Party (or technically the Green Party of England and Wales) has historically been anti-Progress.
They don't want a prosperous, successful society based around clean energy generation. They want a world with fewer people in it, living pre-industrial lives.
Read Green Alternatives to Globalisation, by Caroline Lucas, if you don't believe me. That is a manifesto that should chill you to the bone.
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
It seems the BBC’s Chris Mason is copping a load of flak for honestly reporting what he saw rather than what centrists want to read
“Centrist” has had quite the journey. From term of abuse by very online lefties at people they consider worse than Tories, to term of abuse by very online righties at people they consider worse than communists.
It’s no more a term of abuse than ‘leftie’ or ‘rightie’, and many people apply the label to themselves.
Yes, I am quite happy being called a Centrist Dad, because I am one.
(It does depend on what is meant by centrist of course. I am dry as dust on economic matters very liberal on social issues, so it averages out overall.
If thise things are both fundamental to your political make up, you're not centrist. A centrist doesn't have political principles that cannot be altered to stand in the middle of the prevailing fashion.
I would say the fundamentals of centrism are: -Belief in the state - not the nation state specifically, but all manifestations of state power -Belief in a notion of 'modernity' and not being behind the times, but in a very malleable way. If enough people tell a centrist that moisturising with a dog turd is what all the right-thinking people are doing now, they will do it. -A strong wish to identity oneself with elite power and wealth, and the prevailing intelligentsia.
With due respect that is total nonsense.
Centrist politics is a belief that a free enterprise capitalist economy needs a degree of government oversight and regulation for example on labour rights, pollution, consumer standards. It also entails a great deal of social freedom in personal matters, but sets limits on this where it impinges on other people and groups.
Sure there are changes over time (we didn't need to regulate Social Media 3 decades ago) as new challenges arise, but the fundamental principles still apply.
Centrist beliefs can be accommodated in most parties in their moderate wings, and I dare say are even found amongst Reform voters, if not amongst Reform conference attenders.
At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…
This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?
You have lived a largely “safe” life. You have had a good career and lived in a country which, bar the odd uncomfortable time has not realistically been under threat in your lifetime.
You take for granted a factor of soft nationalism that many people in most countries don’t take for granted. To a huge amount of people on the planet, whether they live in democracies or dictatorships, the state protects them. There will always be minorities who the state oppresses but your average man on the street believes that the state, their state is protecting them.
Back to the whole lack of understanding because of the privilege of living in a very free and tolerant country. You have no cultural or direct knowledge of what it’s like to lose it so the things that attach you to that state, the UK, it’s flag and anthem are disposable.
I live in a place that has largely the same protections but it also has people alive who lived under the Nazis, they lived in fear and it was physically and mentally awful. The national anthem and display of flags is very important culturally because there is a cultural memory of losing that.
So you can cock a snook at it but maybe think about the fact that seemingly minor trivial and silly things like “a song” or a “bit of cloth” represent something more - they represent a country where someone from the arse end of nowhere can move through the system and get a well paid city career that allows them a comfortable late age existence where they can freely criticise the govern,ent or future government without fear of someone knocking on the door one night.
It’s not a bad thing to have love for your country and often that’s as simple as singing a patriotic song, like pretty much every nation in the world does, often very happily. Don’t mock, it’s allowed you to exist the way you do.
I thought this terrific privileged country which we all should be proud of was becoming such a hellhole it's understandable that a new party of racists, grifters and weirdos is 10 pts clear in polls?
William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill · 3h BBC News is now running a full-blown recruitment campaign for Reform. This report, by the BBC political editor, doesn't even make a stab at neutrality in its breathless enthusiasm for Farage
At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…
This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?
You have lived a largely “safe” life. You have had a good career and lived in a country which, bar the odd uncomfortable time has not realistically been under threat in your lifetime.
You take for granted a factor of soft nationalism that many people in most countries don’t take for granted. To a huge amount of people on the planet, whether they live in democracies or dictatorships, the state protects them. There will always be minorities who the state oppresses but your average man on the street believes that the state, their state is protecting them.
Back to the whole lack of understanding because of the privilege of living in a very free and tolerant country. You have no cultural or direct knowledge of what it’s like to lose it so the things that attach you to that state, the UK, it’s flag and anthem are disposable.
I live in a place that has largely the same protections but it also has people alive who lived under the Nazis, they lived in fear and it was physically and mentally awful. The national anthem and display of flags is very important culturally because there is a cultural memory of losing that.
So you can cock a snook at it but maybe think about the fact that seemingly minor trivial and silly things like “a song” or a “bit of cloth” represent something more - they represent a country where someone from the arse end of nowhere can move through the system and get a well paid city career that allows them a comfortable late age existence where they can freely criticise the govern,ent or future government without fear of someone knocking on the door one night.
It’s not a bad thing to have love for your country and often that’s as simple as singing a patriotic song, like pretty much every nation in the world does, often very happily. Don’t mock, it’s allowed you to exist the way you do.
I thought this terrific privileged country which we all should be proud of was becoming such a hellhole it's understandable that a new party of racists, grifters and weirdos is 10 pts clear in polls?
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
As I was at pains to point out, the Greens also have/had an optimistic view of the future:
The Greens, along with the fruit and nut party (yet to be formally named), are a melange of apology/guilt (for Great Britain's imperial past), protest (with an obsession about Gaza) and whining, with a doom and gloom message if the UK government doesn't make a radical left turn in its policy direction. They fail to recognise the dire economic situation of the UK, similar to 1976, and the need to cut state profligacy and immigration drastically, unlike Reform.
UK governments in the last 20 years have used massive immigration cynically to grow the overall GDP. However, the GDP per capita hasn't increased over this period, while prices have gone up generally, so individuals feel worse off. Immigration has also been a prime cause of the stresses on housing and public services, as well as changing the character of many areas. As in 1905, the British people don't like those with different customs who keep themselves apart.
The Greens haven't done themselves any favours in the choice of their new leader, whose views and background are an anathema to most Britons.
If Reform sustain a vote share exceeding 30% at the time of the next GE, and shares for other parties are at or below 20% or thereabouts, they could win under FPTP. In Europe, different electoral arrangements enable traditional mainstream parties to erect a cordon sanitaire to exclude far right parties such as the AfD from government.
Llandudno RNLI inshore lifeboat was called to an injury to a lady in her 70s have fallen in a local speedboat on a trip and, whilst the speedboat came alongside the jetty, she couldn't move and the 4 person crew administered Entonox [ they are trained to do this] and with the help of the coastguards carried her to a local hotel to await ambulance
It arrived 9 [Nine] hours later to take her to hospital !!!!!!
That is shocking. I, and I suspect most, have already concluded that if I or my wife ever need a hip or knee replacement or rapid attention to a variety of ailments then there is little option other than to go private with the NHS being a literal and unacceptable pain. But A&E is one of the things they are supposed to be good at. £188bn in a year. WTF are they spending it on other than themselves?
I'm with you that the response time is slow, even though it is non-emergency. Did they get a paramedic? I had a look at response time targets.
It's devolved by nation, remember. These are the Welsh categories:
The categories for the response model are as follows:
“Red” refers to immediately life-threatening incidents “Amber” refers to incidents that are serious, but not immediately life-threatening “Green” refers to neither serious, nor life-threatening incidents
Wales has no target response standard for non-life-threatening response times (which I did not know).
Ambulance response standards for Wales Only Red calls have a set response standard. 65% of these types of calls are expected to have an emergency response at the scene within 8 minutes.
ESNI are comprehensive in defined response times. The Scottish targets are interestingly different to E & NI, which are afaics aligned. Wales only has a target for life-threatening cases, which is a decision taken to 'focus on the immediately life-threatening".
The RNLI crew stayed with her for the whole 9 hours monitoring her stats and keeping her as comfortable as possible
They are trained in casualty care and did provide relief crew
She was seriously injured and it is simply unacceptable that an ambulance took nine hours to take her to hospital
Absolutely.
Someone in my block of flats suffered a major crush injury to their right foot 10 weeks ago on the lawn, due to an RTA. A neighbour kindly drove them to the nearest A&E, as the ambulance response time (in England) was predicted to exceed 6 hours.
IMV the issue for Greens in the UK (*) is that whilst they do have a pleasant vision for the future of the country, they also do not sell that vision very well, support policies and issues (often fringe) that do not align with that vision, and take an unrealistic view of how to get to those sunny uplands. In fact, they often come across more as a collection of disparate campaign groups rather than a holistic party.
(*) Green parties in other countries can be rather different.
The UK Green Party (or technically the Green Party of England and Wales) has historically been anti-Progress.
They don't want a prosperous, successful society based around clean energy generation. They want a world with fewer people in it, living pre-industrial lives.
Read Green Alternatives to Globalisation, by Caroline Lucas, if you don't believe me. That is a manifesto that should chill you to the bone.
I think that progress requires limiting our impact on the planet, and that economic growth is not an untramelled good if it adversely impacts on nature and climate.
Greens are not anti-progress, they care deeply about the progress of society, they just want to progress to a different goal.
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
As I was at pains to point out, the Greens also have/had an optimistic view of the future:
The Greens, along with the fruit and nut party (yet to be formally named), are a melange of apology/guilt (for Great Britain's imperial past), protest (with an obsession about Gaza) and whining, with a doom and gloom message if the UK government doesn't make a radical left turn in its policy direction. They fail to recognise the dire economic situation of the UK, similar to 1976, and the need to cut state profligacy and immigration drastically, unlike Reform.
UK governments in the last 20 years have used massive immigration cynically to grow the overall GDP. However, the GDP per capita hasn't increased over this period, while prices have gone up generally, so individuals feel worse off. Immigration has also been a prime cause of the stresses on housing and public services, as well as changing the character of many areas. As in 1905, the British people don't like those with different customs who keep themselves apart.
The Greens haven't done themselves any favours in the choice of their new leader, whose views and background are an anathema to most Britons.
If Reform sustain a vote share exceeding 30% at the time of the next GE, and shares for other parties are at or below 20% or thereabouts, they could win under FPTP. In Europe, different electoral arrangements enable traditional mainstream parties to erect a cordon sanitaire to exclude far right parties such as the AfD from government.
Llandudno RNLI inshore lifeboat was called to an injury to a lady in her 70s have fallen in a local speedboat on a trip and, whilst the speedboat came alongside the jetty, she couldn't move and the 4 person crew administered Entonox [ they are trained to do this] and with the help of the coastguards carried her to a local hotel to await ambulance
It arrived 9 [Nine] hours later to take her to hospital !!!!!!
That is shocking. I, and I suspect most, have already concluded that if I or my wife ever need a hip or knee replacement or rapid attention to a variety of ailments then there is little option other than to go private with the NHS being a literal and unacceptable pain. But A&E is one of the things they are supposed to be good at. £188bn in a year. WTF are they spending it on other than themselves?
I'm with you that the response time is slow, even though it is non-emergency. Did they get a paramedic? I had a look at response time targets.
It's devolved by nation, remember. These are the Welsh categories:
The categories for the response model are as follows:
“Red” refers to immediately life-threatening incidents “Amber” refers to incidents that are serious, but not immediately life-threatening “Green” refers to neither serious, nor life-threatening incidents
Wales has no target response standard for non-life-threatening response times (which I did not know).
Ambulance response standards for Wales Only Red calls have a set response standard. 65% of these types of calls are expected to have an emergency response at the scene within 8 minutes.
ESNI are comprehensive in defined response times. The Scottish targets are interestingly different to E & NI, which are afaics aligned. Wales only has a target for life-threatening cases, which is a decision taken to 'focus on the immediately life-threatening".
The RNLI crew stayed with her for the whole 9 hours monitoring her stats and keeping her as comfortable as possible
They are trained in casualty care and did provide relief crew
She was seriously injured and it is simply unacceptable that an ambulance took nine hours to take her to hospital
Absolutely.
Someone in my block of flats suffered a major crush injury to their right foot 10 weeks ago on the lawn, due to an RTA. A neighbour kindly drove them to the nearest A&E, as the ambulance response time (in England) was predicted to exceed 6 hours.
IMV the issue for Greens in the UK (*) is that whilst they do have a pleasant vision for the future of the country, they also do not sell that vision very well, support policies and issues (often fringe) that do not align with that vision, and take an unrealistic view of how to get to those sunny uplands. In fact, they often come across more as a collection of disparate campaign groups rather than a holistic party.
(*) Green parties in other countries can be rather different.
The UK Green Party (or technically the Green Party of England and Wales) has historically been anti-Progress.
They don't want a prosperous, successful society based around clean energy generation. They want a world with fewer people in it, living pre-industrial lives.
Read Green Alternatives to Globalisation, by Caroline Lucas, if you don't believe me. That is a manifesto that should chill you to the bone.
I think that progress requires limiting our impact on the planet, and that economic growth is not an untramelled good if it adversely impacts on nature and climate.
Greens are not anti-progress, they care deeply about the progress of society, they just want to progress to a different goal.
I'm sure you know many Greens who are not anti-progress.
Personally, I am all for encouraging people and businesses to act in a more sustainable, less polluting way. I just believe the right way to do that is via harnessing capitalism and the profit motive, to encourage people to make the right choices.
All too often the Green movement (and in particular prominent Green politicians like Caroline Lucas) prove themselves not that interested in practical solutions that might help resolve global warming, and more interested in turning the clock back. They are just Reform, only their rose tinted view of the past is wrong in a different way.
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
As I was at pains to point out, the Greens also have/had an optimistic view of the future:
The Greens, along with the fruit and nut party (yet to be formally named), are a melange of apology/guilt (for Great Britain's imperial past), protest (with an obsession about Gaza) and whining, with a doom and gloom message if the UK government doesn't make a radical left turn in its policy direction. They fail to recognise the dire economic situation of the UK, similar to 1976, and the need to cut state profligacy and immigration drastically, unlike Reform.
UK governments in the last 20 years have used massive immigration cynically to grow the overall GDP. However, the GDP per capita hasn't increased over this period, while prices have gone up generally, so individuals feel worse off. Immigration has also been a prime cause of the stresses on housing and public services, as well as changing the character of many areas. As in 1905, the British people don't like those with different customs who keep themselves apart.
The Greens haven't done themselves any favours in the choice of their new leader, whose views and background are an anathema to most Britons.
If Reform sustain a vote share exceeding 30% at the time of the next GE, and shares for other parties are at or below 20% or thereabouts, they could win under FPTP. In Europe, different electoral arrangements enable traditional mainstream parties to erect a cordon sanitaire to exclude far right parties such as the AfD from government.
Llandudno RNLI inshore lifeboat was called to an injury to a lady in her 70s have fallen in a local speedboat on a trip and, whilst the speedboat came alongside the jetty, she couldn't move and the 4 person crew administered Entonox [ they are trained to do this] and with the help of the coastguards carried her to a local hotel to await ambulance
It arrived 9 [Nine] hours later to take her to hospital !!!!!!
That is shocking. I, and I suspect most, have already concluded that if I or my wife ever need a hip or knee replacement or rapid attention to a variety of ailments then there is little option other than to go private with the NHS being a literal and unacceptable pain. But A&E is one of the things they are supposed to be good at. £188bn in a year. WTF are they spending it on other than themselves?
I'm with you that the response time is slow, even though it is non-emergency. Did they get a paramedic? I had a look at response time targets.
It's devolved by nation, remember. These are the Welsh categories:
The categories for the response model are as follows:
“Red” refers to immediately life-threatening incidents “Amber” refers to incidents that are serious, but not immediately life-threatening “Green” refers to neither serious, nor life-threatening incidents
Wales has no target response standard for non-life-threatening response times (which I did not know).
Ambulance response standards for Wales Only Red calls have a set response standard. 65% of these types of calls are expected to have an emergency response at the scene within 8 minutes.
ESNI are comprehensive in defined response times. The Scottish targets are interestingly different to E & NI, which are afaics aligned. Wales only has a target for life-threatening cases, which is a decision taken to 'focus on the immediately life-threatening".
The RNLI crew stayed with her for the whole 9 hours monitoring her stats and keeping her as comfortable as possible
They are trained in casualty care and did provide relief crew
She was seriously injured and it is simply unacceptable that an ambulance took nine hours to take her to hospital
Absolutely.
Someone in my block of flats suffered a major crush injury to their right foot 10 weeks ago on the lawn, due to an RTA. A neighbour kindly drove them to the nearest A&E, as the ambulance response time (in England) was predicted to exceed 6 hours.
IMV the issue for Greens in the UK (*) is that whilst they do have a pleasant vision for the future of the country, they also do not sell that vision very well, support policies and issues (often fringe) that do not align with that vision, and take an unrealistic view of how to get to those sunny uplands. In fact, they often come across more as a collection of disparate campaign groups rather than a holistic party.
(*) Green parties in other countries can be rather different.
The UK Green Party (or technically the Green Party of England and Wales) has historically been anti-Progress.
They don't want a prosperous, successful society based around clean energy generation. They want a world with fewer people in it, living pre-industrial lives.
Read Green Alternatives to Globalisation, by Caroline Lucas, if you don't believe me. That is a manifesto that should chill you to the bone.
I think that progress requires limiting our impact on the planet, and that economic growth is not an untramelled good if it adversely impacts on nature and climate.
Greens are not anti-progress, they care deeply about the progress of society, they just want to progress to a different goal.
I fully expect greens to adopt some sort of degrowth agenda in future.
I’m afraid all our actions have an impact. We need to try to mitigate not stop. It’s easy for the wealthy and privileged to rail against growth. However there are many communities where there has been little and could do with some
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
As I was at pains to point out, the Greens also have/had an optimistic view of the future:
The Greens, along with the fruit and nut party (yet to be formally named), are a melange of apology/guilt (for Great Britain's imperial past), protest (with an obsession about Gaza) and whining, with a doom and gloom message if the UK government doesn't make a radical left turn in its policy direction. They fail to recognise the dire economic situation of the UK, similar to 1976, and the need to cut state profligacy and immigration drastically, unlike Reform.
UK governments in the last 20 years have used massive immigration cynically to grow the overall GDP. However, the GDP per capita hasn't increased over this period, while prices have gone up generally, so individuals feel worse off. Immigration has also been a prime cause of the stresses on housing and public services, as well as changing the character of many areas. As in 1905, the British people don't like those with different customs who keep themselves apart.
The Greens haven't done themselves any favours in the choice of their new leader, whose views and background are an anathema to most Britons.
If Reform sustain a vote share exceeding 30% at the time of the next GE, and shares for other parties are at or below 20% or thereabouts, they could win under FPTP. In Europe, different electoral arrangements enable traditional mainstream parties to erect a cordon sanitaire to exclude far right parties such as the AfD from government.
Llandudno RNLI inshore lifeboat was called to an injury to a lady in her 70s have fallen in a local speedboat on a trip and, whilst the speedboat came alongside the jetty, she couldn't move and the 4 person crew administered Entonox [ they are trained to do this] and with the help of the coastguards carried her to a local hotel to await ambulance
It arrived 9 [Nine] hours later to take her to hospital !!!!!!
That is shocking. I, and I suspect most, have already concluded that if I or my wife ever need a hip or knee replacement or rapid attention to a variety of ailments then there is little option other than to go private with the NHS being a literal and unacceptable pain. But A&E is one of the things they are supposed to be good at. £188bn in a year. WTF are they spending it on other than themselves?
I'm with you that the response time is slow, even though it is non-emergency. Did they get a paramedic? I had a look at response time targets.
It's devolved by nation, remember. These are the Welsh categories:
The categories for the response model are as follows:
“Red” refers to immediately life-threatening incidents “Amber” refers to incidents that are serious, but not immediately life-threatening “Green” refers to neither serious, nor life-threatening incidents
Wales has no target response standard for non-life-threatening response times (which I did not know).
Ambulance response standards for Wales Only Red calls have a set response standard. 65% of these types of calls are expected to have an emergency response at the scene within 8 minutes.
ESNI are comprehensive in defined response times. The Scottish targets are interestingly different to E & NI, which are afaics aligned. Wales only has a target for life-threatening cases, which is a decision taken to 'focus on the immediately life-threatening".
The RNLI crew stayed with her for the whole 9 hours monitoring her stats and keeping her as comfortable as possible
They are trained in casualty care and did provide relief crew
She was seriously injured and it is simply unacceptable that an ambulance took nine hours to take her to hospital
Absolutely.
Someone in my block of flats suffered a major crush injury to their right foot 10 weeks ago on the lawn, due to an RTA. A neighbour kindly drove them to the nearest A&E, as the ambulance response time (in England) was predicted to exceed 6 hours.
IMV the issue for Greens in the UK (*) is that whilst they do have a pleasant vision for the future of the country, they also do not sell that vision very well, support policies and issues (often fringe) that do not align with that vision, and take an unrealistic view of how to get to those sunny uplands. In fact, they often come across more as a collection of disparate campaign groups rather than a holistic party.
(*) Green parties in other countries can be rather different.
The UK Green Party (or technically the Green Party of England and Wales) has historically been anti-Progress.
They don't want a prosperous, successful society based around clean energy generation. They want a world with fewer people in it, living pre-industrial lives.
Read Green Alternatives to Globalisation, by Caroline Lucas, if you don't believe me. That is a manifesto that should chill you to the bone.
I think that progress requires limiting our impact on the planet, and that economic growth is not an untramelled good if it adversely impacts on nature and climate.
Greens are not anti-progress, they care deeply about the progress of society, they just want to progress to a different goal.
I fully expect greens to adopt some sort of degrowth agenda in future.
I’m afraid all our actions have an impact. We need to try to mitigate not stop. It’s easy for the wealthy and privileged to rail against growth. However there are many communities where there has been little and could do with some
A slightly controversial argument: someone in the lowest 5% of income in the UK, has a far better life than someone in the lowest 5% of income 100 years ago. Or even 50 years ago. Whilst the improvement for someone in the top 5% has increased much less.
William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill · 3h BBC News is now running a full-blown recruitment campaign for Reform. This report, by the BBC political editor, doesn't even make a stab at neutrality in its breathless enthusiasm for Farage
Well it did. And I loathe Reform. Hitler was one popular.
Godwins. And so early in the day.
Springtime for Farage. He was just a paper hanger.
May I ask; do you see any negatives, or have genuine criticisms, about Farage and his party?
I have posted several here.
Not being rabidly anti reform and seeing them as the new Nazis does not make one a supporter. I just find the hysteria around them odd
I have a foreign-born wife. In fact, one who was born in a Muslim country. I don't think it's 'hysterical' to see what many Reform-aligned people say as a threat to her. And indeed, our son.
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
As I was at pains to point out, the Greens also have/had an optimistic view of the future:
The Greens, along with the fruit and nut party (yet to be formally named), are a melange of apology/guilt (for Great Britain's imperial past), protest (with an obsession about Gaza) and whining, with a doom and gloom message if the UK government doesn't make a radical left turn in its policy direction. They fail to recognise the dire economic situation of the UK, similar to 1976, and the need to cut state profligacy and immigration drastically, unlike Reform.
UK governments in the last 20 years have used massive immigration cynically to grow the overall GDP. However, the GDP per capita hasn't increased over this period, while prices have gone up generally, so individuals feel worse off. Immigration has also been a prime cause of the stresses on housing and public services, as well as changing the character of many areas. As in 1905, the British people don't like those with different customs who keep themselves apart.
The Greens haven't done themselves any favours in the choice of their new leader, whose views and background are an anathema to most Britons.
If Reform sustain a vote share exceeding 30% at the time of the next GE, and shares for other parties are at or below 20% or thereabouts, they could win under FPTP. In Europe, different electoral arrangements enable traditional mainstream parties to erect a cordon sanitaire to exclude far right parties such as the AfD from government.
Llandudno RNLI inshore lifeboat was called to an injury to a lady in her 70s have fallen in a local speedboat on a trip and, whilst the speedboat came alongside the jetty, she couldn't move and the 4 person crew administered Entonox [ they are trained to do this] and with the help of the coastguards carried her to a local hotel to await ambulance
It arrived 9 [Nine] hours later to take her to hospital !!!!!!
That is shocking. I, and I suspect most, have already concluded that if I or my wife ever need a hip or knee replacement or rapid attention to a variety of ailments then there is little option other than to go private with the NHS being a literal and unacceptable pain. But A&E is one of the things they are supposed to be good at. £188bn in a year. WTF are they spending it on other than themselves?
I'm with you that the response time is slow, even though it is non-emergency. Did they get a paramedic? I had a look at response time targets.
It's devolved by nation, remember. These are the Welsh categories:
The categories for the response model are as follows:
“Red” refers to immediately life-threatening incidents “Amber” refers to incidents that are serious, but not immediately life-threatening “Green” refers to neither serious, nor life-threatening incidents
Wales has no target response standard for non-life-threatening response times (which I did not know).
Ambulance response standards for Wales Only Red calls have a set response standard. 65% of these types of calls are expected to have an emergency response at the scene within 8 minutes.
ESNI are comprehensive in defined response times. The Scottish targets are interestingly different to E & NI, which are afaics aligned. Wales only has a target for life-threatening cases, which is a decision taken to 'focus on the immediately life-threatening".
The RNLI crew stayed with her for the whole 9 hours monitoring her stats and keeping her as comfortable as possible
They are trained in casualty care and did provide relief crew
She was seriously injured and it is simply unacceptable that an ambulance took nine hours to take her to hospital
Absolutely.
Someone in my block of flats suffered a major crush injury to their right foot 10 weeks ago on the lawn, due to an RTA. A neighbour kindly drove them to the nearest A&E, as the ambulance response time (in England) was predicted to exceed 6 hours.
IMV the issue for Greens in the UK (*) is that whilst they do have a pleasant vision for the future of the country, they also do not sell that vision very well, support policies and issues (often fringe) that do not align with that vision, and take an unrealistic view of how to get to those sunny uplands. In fact, they often come across more as a collection of disparate campaign groups rather than a holistic party.
(*) Green parties in other countries can be rather different.
The UK Green Party (or technically the Green Party of England and Wales) has historically been anti-Progress.
They don't want a prosperous, successful society based around clean energy generation. They want a world with fewer people in it, living pre-industrial lives.
Read Green Alternatives to Globalisation, by Caroline Lucas, if you don't believe me. That is a manifesto that should chill you to the bone.
I think that progress requires limiting our impact on the planet, and that economic growth is not an untramelled good if it adversely impacts on nature and climate.
Greens are not anti-progress, they care deeply about the progress of society, they just want to progress to a different goal.
I fully expect greens to adopt some sort of degrowth agenda in future.
I’m afraid all our actions have an impact. We need to try to mitigate not stop. It’s easy for the wealthy and privileged to rail against growth. However there are many communities where there has been little and could do with some
A slightly controversial argument: someone in the lowest 5% of income in the UK, has a far better life than someone in the lowest 5% of income 100 years ago. Or even 50 years ago. Whilst the improvement for someone in the top 5% has increased much less.
I don’t doubt that but it’s all relative. I had a much better life than my Dad who had a better life than his.
You really want to keep improving that for people. Some people still live awful lives in awful places
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
As I was at pains to point out, the Greens also have/had an optimistic view of the future:
The Greens, along with the fruit and nut party (yet to be formally named), are a melange of apology/guilt (for Great Britain's imperial past), protest (with an obsession about Gaza) and whining, with a doom and gloom message if the UK government doesn't make a radical left turn in its policy direction. They fail to recognise the dire economic situation of the UK, similar to 1976, and the need to cut state profligacy and immigration drastically, unlike Reform.
UK governments in the last 20 years have used massive immigration cynically to grow the overall GDP. However, the GDP per capita hasn't increased over this period, while prices have gone up generally, so individuals feel worse off. Immigration has also been a prime cause of the stresses on housing and public services, as well as changing the character of many areas. As in 1905, the British people don't like those with different customs who keep themselves apart.
The Greens haven't done themselves any favours in the choice of their new leader, whose views and background are an anathema to most Britons.
If Reform sustain a vote share exceeding 30% at the time of the next GE, and shares for other parties are at or below 20% or thereabouts, they could win under FPTP. In Europe, different electoral arrangements enable traditional mainstream parties to erect a cordon sanitaire to exclude far right parties such as the AfD from government.
Llandudno RNLI inshore lifeboat was called to an injury to a lady in her 70s have fallen in a local speedboat on a trip and, whilst the speedboat came alongside the jetty, she couldn't move and the 4 person crew administered Entonox [ they are trained to do this] and with the help of the coastguards carried her to a local hotel to await ambulance
It arrived 9 [Nine] hours later to take her to hospital !!!!!!
That is shocking. I, and I suspect most, have already concluded that if I or my wife ever need a hip or knee replacement or rapid attention to a variety of ailments then there is little option other than to go private with the NHS being a literal and unacceptable pain. But A&E is one of the things they are supposed to be good at. £188bn in a year. WTF are they spending it on other than themselves?
I'm with you that the response time is slow, even though it is non-emergency. Did they get a paramedic? I had a look at response time targets.
It's devolved by nation, remember. These are the Welsh categories:
The categories for the response model are as follows:
“Red” refers to immediately life-threatening incidents “Amber” refers to incidents that are serious, but not immediately life-threatening “Green” refers to neither serious, nor life-threatening incidents
Wales has no target response standard for non-life-threatening response times (which I did not know).
Ambulance response standards for Wales Only Red calls have a set response standard. 65% of these types of calls are expected to have an emergency response at the scene within 8 minutes.
ESNI are comprehensive in defined response times. The Scottish targets are interestingly different to E & NI, which are afaics aligned. Wales only has a target for life-threatening cases, which is a decision taken to 'focus on the immediately life-threatening".
The RNLI crew stayed with her for the whole 9 hours monitoring her stats and keeping her as comfortable as possible
They are trained in casualty care and did provide relief crew
She was seriously injured and it is simply unacceptable that an ambulance took nine hours to take her to hospital
Absolutely.
Someone in my block of flats suffered a major crush injury to their right foot 10 weeks ago on the lawn, due to an RTA. A neighbour kindly drove them to the nearest A&E, as the ambulance response time (in England) was predicted to exceed 6 hours.
IMV the issue for Greens in the UK (*) is that whilst they do have a pleasant vision for the future of the country, they also do not sell that vision very well, support policies and issues (often fringe) that do not align with that vision, and take an unrealistic view of how to get to those sunny uplands. In fact, they often come across more as a collection of disparate campaign groups rather than a holistic party.
(*) Green parties in other countries can be rather different.
The UK Green Party (or technically the Green Party of England and Wales) has historically been anti-Progress.
They don't want a prosperous, successful society based around clean energy generation. They want a world with fewer people in it, living pre-industrial lives.
Read Green Alternatives to Globalisation, by Caroline Lucas, if you don't believe me. That is a manifesto that should chill you to the bone.
I think that progress requires limiting our impact on the planet, and that economic growth is not an untramelled good if it adversely impacts on nature and climate.
Greens are not anti-progress, they care deeply about the progress of society, they just want to progress to a different goal.
I'm sure you know many Greens who are not anti-progress.
Personally, I am all for encouraging people and businesses to act in a more sustainable, less polluting way. I just believe the right way to do that is via harnessing capitalism and the profit motive, to encourage people to make the right choices.
All too often the Green movement (and in particular prominent Green politicians like Caroline Lucas) prove themselves not that interested in practical solutions that might help resolve global warming, and more interested in turning the clock back. They are just Reform, only their rose tinted view of the past is wrong in a different way.
Yes, but the Greens have their Centrist Dads too! There is dialogue between more radical ideas and more gradualist ones. In particular Greens have a lot of local autonomy with local parties not all following the same line. This is right and proper in a party that believes in localism, rather than top down policy making.
William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill · 3h BBC News is now running a full-blown recruitment campaign for Reform. This report, by the BBC political editor, doesn't even make a stab at neutrality in its breathless enthusiasm for Farage
Well it did. And I loathe Reform. Hitler was one popular.
Godwins. And so early in the day.
Springtime for Farage. He was just a paper hanger.
May I ask; do you see any negatives, or have genuine criticisms, about Farage and his party?
I have posted several here.
Not being rabidly anti reform and seeing them as the new Nazis does not make one a supporter. I just find the hysteria around them odd
I have a foreign-born wife. In fact, one who was born in a Muslim country. I don't think it's 'hysterical' to see what many Reform-aligned people say as a threat to her. And indeed, our son.
That’s not really what I’m talking about and all parties have supporters who are assholes.
William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill · 3h BBC News is now running a full-blown recruitment campaign for Reform. This report, by the BBC political editor, doesn't even make a stab at neutrality in its breathless enthusiasm for Farage
He's probably just annoyed that the BBC isn't being positively anti-Reform for the first time ever.
The BBC have spent the last few months fawning over Reform which came to a head today with Masons article .
How absurd you are! A newish party comfortably leads in all the polls and you object because the BBC reports on the phenomenon. If the government showed a modicum of competence on any of the key issues Reform would be no threat. When you add bucket loads of corruption and hypocrisy... The plain truth is that the Labour seat majority flatters to deceive when you look at votes cast. It hasn't required much to leave them holes below the waterline. They are now objects of contempt and ridicule and to expect the important news outlets to pretend otherwise is utterly absurd.
I am concerned just how poorly Labour supporters are reacting to the coverage of Farage and Reform
The way to tackle Reform is to govern properly and frankly stop trying to mimic them
And as for media bias they are only reacting to what is clearly a very new political climate and Raynergate has just ramped up the problems for Starmer and labour
I do not support Farage or Reform in any way whatsoever but the reality is Farage is taking all the headlines and all Labour are doing is adding to his publicity
My advise to those who are really upset and even trying to close down media coverage of Farage is reflect on why Starmer and labour have created space for this change in politics
The media are reacting, but their coverage is superficial and incurious, and not asking any difficult question or accepting being fobbed off.
For example, Farage's restrictions on Free Speech and journalism, whilst maintaining that he does not do so.
William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill · 3h BBC News is now running a full-blown recruitment campaign for Reform. This report, by the BBC political editor, doesn't even make a stab at neutrality in its breathless enthusiasm for Farage
Well it did. And I loathe Reform. Hitler was one popular.
Godwins. And so early in the day.
Springtime for Farage. He was just a paper hanger.
May I ask; do you see any negatives, or have genuine criticisms, about Farage and his party?
I have posted several here.
Not being rabidly anti reform and seeing them as the new Nazis does not make one a supporter. I just find the hysteria around them odd
I have a foreign-born wife. In fact, one who was born in a Muslim country. I don't think it's 'hysterical' to see what many Reform-aligned people say as a threat to her. And indeed, our son.
That’s not really what I’m talking about and all parties have supporters who are assholes.
In Reform's case, the asshole comprises the whole body, and especially the head.
William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill · 3h BBC News is now running a full-blown recruitment campaign for Reform. This report, by the BBC political editor, doesn't even make a stab at neutrality in its breathless enthusiasm for Farage
Well it did. And I loathe Reform. Hitler was one popular.
Godwins. And so early in the day.
Springtime for Farage. He was just a paper hanger.
May I ask; do you see any negatives, or have genuine criticisms, about Farage and his party?
I have posted several here.
Not being rabidly anti reform and seeing them as the new Nazis does not make one a supporter. I just find the hysteria around them odd
I have a foreign-born wife. In fact, one who was born in a Muslim country. I don't think it's 'hysterical' to see what many Reform-aligned people say as a threat to her. And indeed, our son.
That’s not really what I’m talking about and all parties have supporters who are assholes.
In Reform's case, the asshole comprises the whole body, and especially the head.
Morning PB.
The body of Farage is part of the Holy Trinity of British populism. Trump is the Father, and Farage is the Son. Robert Jenrick and Andrea Jenkyn, together,. make up he Holy Spirit. Are there are any more questions ?if not, let us pray for deliverance.
William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill · 3h BBC News is now running a full-blown recruitment campaign for Reform. This report, by the BBC political editor, doesn't even make a stab at neutrality in its breathless enthusiasm for Farage
Well it did. And I loathe Reform. Hitler was one popular.
Godwins. And so early in the day.
Springtime for Farage. He was just a paper hanger.
May I ask; do you see any negatives, or have genuine criticisms, about Farage and his party?
I have posted several here.
Not being rabidly anti reform and seeing them as the new Nazis does not make one a supporter. I just find the hysteria around them odd
I have a foreign-born wife. In fact, one who was born in a Muslim country. I don't think it's 'hysterical' to see what many Reform-aligned people say as a threat to her. And indeed, our son.
That’s not really what I’m talking about and all parties have supporters who are assholes.
In Reform's case, the asshole comprises the whole body, and especially the head.
Morning PB.
The body of Farage is part of the Holy Trriniy of British populism. Trump is the Father, and Farage is the Son. Robert Jenrick and Andrea Jenkyn, together,. make up he Holy Spirit. Are there are any more questions ?if not, let us pray for deliverance.
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
As I was at pains to point out, the Greens also have/had an optimistic view of the future:
The Greens, along with the fruit and nut party (yet to be formally named), are a melange of apology/guilt (for Great Britain's imperial past), protest (with an obsession about Gaza) and whining, with a doom and gloom message if the UK government doesn't make a radical left turn in its policy direction. They fail to recognise the dire economic situation of the UK, similar to 1976, and the need to cut state profligacy and immigration drastically, unlike Reform.
UK governments in the last 20 years have used massive immigration cynically to grow the overall GDP. However, the GDP per capita hasn't increased over this period, while prices have gone up generally, so individuals feel worse off. Immigration has also been a prime cause of the stresses on housing and public services, as well as changing the character of many areas. As in 1905, the British people don't like those with different customs who keep themselves apart.
The Greens haven't done themselves any favours in the choice of their new leader, whose views and background are an anathema to most Britons.
If Reform sustain a vote share exceeding 30% at the time of the next GE, and shares for other parties are at or below 20% or thereabouts, they could win under FPTP. In Europe, different electoral arrangements enable traditional mainstream parties to erect a cordon sanitaire to exclude far right parties such as the AfD from government.
Llandudno RNLI inshore lifeboat was called to an injury to a lady in her 70s have fallen in a local speedboat on a trip and, whilst the speedboat came alongside the jetty, she couldn't move and the 4 person crew administered Entonox [ they are trained to do this] and with the help of the coastguards carried her to a local hotel to await ambulance
It arrived 9 [Nine] hours later to take her to hospital !!!!!!
That is shocking. I, and I suspect most, have already concluded that if I or my wife ever need a hip or knee replacement or rapid attention to a variety of ailments then there is little option other than to go private with the NHS being a literal and unacceptable pain. But A&E is one of the things they are supposed to be good at. £188bn in a year. WTF are they spending it on other than themselves?
I'm with you that the response time is slow, even though it is non-emergency. Did they get a paramedic? I had a look at response time targets.
It's devolved by nation, remember. These are the Welsh categories:
The categories for the response model are as follows:
“Red” refers to immediately life-threatening incidents “Amber” refers to incidents that are serious, but not immediately life-threatening “Green” refers to neither serious, nor life-threatening incidents
Wales has no target response standard for non-life-threatening response times (which I did not know).
Ambulance response standards for Wales Only Red calls have a set response standard. 65% of these types of calls are expected to have an emergency response at the scene within 8 minutes.
ESNI are comprehensive in defined response times. The Scottish targets are interestingly different to E & NI, which are afaics aligned. Wales only has a target for life-threatening cases, which is a decision taken to 'focus on the immediately life-threatening".
The RNLI crew stayed with her for the whole 9 hours monitoring her stats and keeping her as comfortable as possible
They are trained in casualty care and did provide relief crew
She was seriously injured and it is simply unacceptable that an ambulance took nine hours to take her to hospital
Absolutely.
Someone in my block of flats suffered a major crush injury to their right foot 10 weeks ago on the lawn, due to an RTA. A neighbour kindly drove them to the nearest A&E, as the ambulance response time (in England) was predicted to exceed 6 hours.
IMV the issue for Greens in the UK (*) is that whilst they do have a pleasant vision for the future of the country, they also do not sell that vision very well, support policies and issues (often fringe) that do not align with that vision, and take an unrealistic view of how to get to those sunny uplands. In fact, they often come across more as a collection of disparate campaign groups rather than a holistic party.
(*) Green parties in other countries can be rather different.
The UK Green Party (or technically the Green Party of England and Wales) has historically been anti-Progress.
They don't want a prosperous, successful society based around clean energy generation. They want a world with fewer people in it, living pre-industrial lives.
Read Green Alternatives to Globalisation, by Caroline Lucas, if you don't believe me. That is a manifesto that should chill you to the bone.
I think that progress requires limiting our impact on the planet, and that economic growth is not an untramelled good if it adversely impacts on nature and climate.
Greens are not anti-progress, they care deeply about the progress of society, they just want to progress to a different goal.
I fully expect greens to adopt some sort of degrowth agenda in future.
I’m afraid all our actions have an impact. We need to try to mitigate not stop. It’s easy for the wealthy and privileged to rail against growth. However there are many communities where there has been little and could do with some
That sounds like an issue with inequality, not economic growth.
William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill · 3h BBC News is now running a full-blown recruitment campaign for Reform. This report, by the BBC political editor, doesn't even make a stab at neutrality in its breathless enthusiasm for Farage
Well it did. And I loathe Reform. Hitler was one popular.
Godwins. And so early in the day.
Springtime for Farage. He was just a paper hanger.
May I ask; do you see any negatives, or have genuine criticisms, about Farage and his party?
I have posted several here.
Not being rabidly anti reform and seeing them as the new Nazis does not make one a supporter. I just find the hysteria around them odd
I have a foreign-born wife. In fact, one who was born in a Muslim country. I don't think it's 'hysterical' to see what many Reform-aligned people say as a threat to her. And indeed, our son.
That’s not really what I’m talking about and all parties have supporters who are assholes.
In Reform's case, the asshole comprises the whole body, and especially the head.
Morning PB.
The body of Farage is part of the Holy Trriniy of British populism. Trump is the Father, and Farage is the Son. Robert Jenrick and Andrea Jenkyn, together,. make up he Holy Spirit. Are there are any more questions ?if not, let us pray for deliverance.
You the guy with the Banjo ?
I am a visiting trendy vicar from a more urban parish.
At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…
This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?
You have lived a largely “safe” life. You have had a good career and lived in a country which, bar the odd uncomfortable time has not realistically been under threat in your lifetime.
You take for granted a factor of soft nationalism that many people in most countries don’t take for granted. To a huge amount of people on the planet, whether they live in democracies or dictatorships, the state protects them. There will always be minorities who the state oppresses but your average man on the street believes that the state, their state is protecting them.
Back to the whole lack of understanding because of the privilege of living in a very free and tolerant country. You have no cultural or direct knowledge of what it’s like to lose it so the things that attach you to that state, the UK, it’s flag and anthem are disposable.
I live in a place that has largely the same protections but it also has people alive who lived under the Nazis, they lived in fear and it was physically and mentally awful. The national anthem and display of flags is very important culturally because there is a cultural memory of losing that.
So you can cock a snook at it but maybe think about the fact that seemingly minor trivial and silly things like “a song” or a “bit of cloth” represent something more - they represent a country where someone from the arse end of nowhere can move through the system and get a well paid city career that allows them a comfortable late age existence where they can freely criticise the govern,ent or future government without fear of someone knocking on the door one night.
It’s not a bad thing to have love for your country and often that’s as simple as singing a patriotic song, like pretty much every nation in the world does, often very happily. Don’t mock, it’s allowed you to exist the way you do.
I thought this terrific privileged country which we all should be proud of was becoming such a hellhole it's understandable that a new party of racists, grifters and weirdos is 10 pts clear in polls?
To be honest they don’t look any more nerdy or weird than anyone of their age at a party conference. No women, but that just goes to show which is the wiser sex.
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
It seems the BBC’s Chris Mason is copping a load of flak for honestly reporting what he saw rather than what centrists want to read
“Centrist” has had quite the journey. From term of abuse by very online lefties at people they consider worse than Tories, to term of abuse by very online righties at people they consider worse than communists.
It’s no more a term of abuse than ‘leftie’ or ‘rightie’, and many people apply the label to themselves.
Yes, I am quite happy being called a Centrist Dad, because I am one.
(It does depend on what is meant by centrist of course. I am dry as dust on economic matters very liberal on social issues, so it averages out overall.
Sp what are you plans to cutting government spending so we live within our means?
William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill · 3h BBC News is now running a full-blown recruitment campaign for Reform. This report, by the BBC political editor, doesn't even make a stab at neutrality in its breathless enthusiasm for Farage
He's probably just annoyed that the BBC isn't being positively anti-Reform for the first time ever.
The BBC have spent the last few months fawning over Reform which came to a head today with Masons article .
How absurd you are! A newish party comfortably leads in all the polls and you object because the BBC reports on the phenomenon. If the government showed a modicum of competence on any of the key issues Reform would be no threat. When you add bucket loads of corruption and hypocrisy... The plain truth is that the Labour seat majority flatters to deceive when you look at votes cast. It hasn't required much to leave them holes below the waterline. They are now objects of contempt and ridicule and to expect the important news outlets to pretend otherwise is utterly absurd.
I am concerned just how poorly Labour supporters are reacting to the coverage of Farage and Reform
The way to tackle Reform is to govern properly and frankly stop trying to mimic them
And as for media bias they are only reacting to what is clearly a very new political climate and Raynergate has just ramped up the problems for Starmer and labour
I do not support Farage or Reform in any way whatsoever but the reality is Farage is taking all the headlines and all Labour are doing is adding to his publicity
My advise to those who are really upset and even trying to close down media coverage of Farage is reflect on why Starmer and labour have created space for this change in politics
I think Reform are largely taking Tory votes. Its the failure of the Tory party that has turbocharged their rise. A more competent Tory party would have them leading in the polls.
Starmer is clearly trying to do everything he can to address the grievances of Reform voters, to the point that he is surely losing more votes to his left than his right.
We had this conversation yesterday. The boffins who have looked at the changes on support agree with you.
As to the motives, the classy thing to do is to ask people "why do you think that?" I can think of various reasons why people want to blame Starmer for a collapse in Conservative support since the election, but I'm not sure any of them are very good. There must be better ones out there.
William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill · 3h BBC News is now running a full-blown recruitment campaign for Reform. This report, by the BBC political editor, doesn't even make a stab at neutrality in its breathless enthusiasm for Farage
He's probably just annoyed that the BBC isn't being positively anti-Reform for the first time ever.
The BBC have spent the last few months fawning over Reform which came to a head today with Masons article .
How absurd you are! A newish party comfortably leads in all the polls and you object because the BBC reports on the phenomenon. If the government showed a modicum of competence on any of the key issues Reform would be no threat. When you add bucket loads of corruption and hypocrisy... The plain truth is that the Labour seat majority flatters to deceive when you look at votes cast. It hasn't required much to leave them holes below the waterline. They are now objects of contempt and ridicule and to expect the important news outlets to pretend otherwise is utterly absurd.
What’s absurd is writing an article which omits any counter on the day they invited two people to the conference which any other party would have been severely criticised for .
I have zero issue with Reforms conference being reported as optimistic , a big event etc . And I agree with your post about Labours majority and current state . I don’t expect the media to ignore that .
This doesn’t mean that other parties issues are ignored . And that’s the point !
At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…
This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?
You have lived a largely “safe” life. You have had a good career and lived in a country which, bar the odd uncomfortable time has not realistically been under threat in your lifetime.
You take for granted a factor of soft nationalism that many people in most countries don’t take for granted. To a huge amount of people on the planet, whether they live in democracies or dictatorships, the state protects them. There will always be minorities who the state oppresses but your average man on the street believes that the state, their state is protecting them.
Back to the whole lack of understanding because of the privilege of living in a very free and tolerant country. You have no cultural or direct knowledge of what it’s like to lose it so the things that attach you to that state, the UK, it’s flag and anthem are disposable.
I live in a place that has largely the same protections but it also has people alive who lived under the Nazis, they lived in fear and it was physically and mentally awful. The national anthem and display of flags is very important culturally because there is a cultural memory of losing that.
So you can cock a snook at it but maybe think about the fact that seemingly minor trivial and silly things like “a song” or a “bit of cloth” represent something more - they represent a country where someone from the arse end of nowhere can move through the system and get a well paid city career that allows them a comfortable late age existence where they can freely criticise the govern,ent or future government without fear of someone knocking on the door one night.
It’s not a bad thing to have love for your country and often that’s as simple as singing a patriotic song, like pretty much every nation in the world does, often very happily. Don’t mock, it’s allowed you to exist the way you do.
If you don't have much, at least you have your country. I'm proud of being from Scotland (and the UK), but it constitutes only a small part of my self-worth because of my education, my job, my stable relationship, my experiences travelling around the world. If I didn't have those things, being Scottish would be much more important.
I think that's what explains these different attitudes to nationalism.
(I know that having children delivers a huge amount of self-worth to people too, which I think explains why people don't have them as much any more - that self-worth is now delivered by all these other experiences.)
There are very many people who are a great deal better educated, better travelled, wealthier, and with longer marriages and relationships on the clock than you, who are also a great deal more patriotic than you. Claiming that patriotism is some sort of substitute for success and happiness is patronisingly obtuse almost to the point of parody.
Done right, patriotism is simply a realisation that we are all part of a larger community. (Our family, street, neighbourhood, football club and, ultimately country).
Singing “God save the King” is a recognition of that relationship has a focal point. But it’s also a statement that there is a social contract between the governed and the governor:
May he defend our laws, and ever give us cause to sing with one heart and voice: God save the King!” is statement of his obligation to us (it’s “our” not “his” laws) and a warning that we are *choosing* to support him (“may he ever give us cause”) and that consent can be withdrawn at any time
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
It seems the BBC’s Chris Mason is copping a load of flak for honestly reporting what he saw rather than what centrists want to read
“Centrist” has had quite the journey. From term of abuse by very online lefties at people they consider worse than Tories, to term of abuse by very online righties at people they consider worse than communists.
It’s no more a term of abuse than ‘leftie’ or ‘rightie’, and many people apply the label to themselves.
Yes, I am quite happy being called a Centrist Dad, because I am one.
(It does depend on what is meant by centrist of course. I am dry as dust on economic matters very liberal on social issues, so it averages out overall.
Sp what are you plans to cutting government spending so we live within our means?
The budget can also be balanced by tax rises, but in terms of plans to cut government spending I would scrap the Triple Lock and indexing of benefits, leaving both to the Chancellors discretion in view of the overall financial picture.
Does anyone know what the "two fingers and a thumb" raised hand sign means?
I think it may be a variation on the "White Power" hand signal. The three raised fingers make the W, and the curled fingers together with the palm make the P, thereby showing as WP. More usually it is done like the OK hand signal: 👌, so making it deniable, but the context tends to make the meaning clear. It is often done as a deliberate troll so as to make out that those who point it out are imagining it
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
As I was at pains to point out, the Greens also have/had an optimistic view of the future:
The Greens, along with the fruit and nut party (yet to be formally named), are a melange of apology/guilt (for Great Britain's imperial past), protest (with an obsession about Gaza) and whining, with a doom and gloom message if the UK government doesn't make a radical left turn in its policy direction. They fail to recognise the dire economic situation of the UK, similar to 1976, and the need to cut state profligacy and immigration drastically, unlike Reform.
UK governments in the last 20 years have used massive immigration cynically to grow the overall GDP. However, the GDP per capita hasn't increased over this period, while prices have gone up generally, so individuals feel worse off. Immigration has also been a prime cause of the stresses on housing and public services, as well as changing the character of many areas. As in 1905, the British people don't like those with different customs who keep themselves apart.
The Greens haven't done themselves any favours in the choice of their new leader, whose views and background are an anathema to most Britons.
If Reform sustain a vote share exceeding 30% at the time of the next GE, and shares for other parties are at or below 20% or thereabouts, they could win under FPTP. In Europe, different electoral arrangements enable traditional mainstream parties to erect a cordon sanitaire to exclude far right parties such as the AfD from government.
Llandudno RNLI inshore lifeboat was called to an injury to a lady in her 70s have fallen in a local speedboat on a trip and, whilst the speedboat came alongside the jetty, she couldn't move and the 4 person crew administered Entonox [ they are trained to do this] and with the help of the coastguards carried her to a local hotel to await ambulance
It arrived 9 [Nine] hours later to take her to hospital !!!!!!
That is shocking. I, and I suspect most, have already concluded that if I or my wife ever need a hip or knee replacement or rapid attention to a variety of ailments then there is little option other than to go private with the NHS being a literal and unacceptable pain. But A&E is one of the things they are supposed to be good at. £188bn in a year. WTF are they spending it on other than themselves?
I'm with you that the response time is slow, even though it is non-emergency. Did they get a paramedic? I had a look at response time targets.
It's devolved by nation, remember. These are the Welsh categories:
The categories for the response model are as follows:
“Red” refers to immediately life-threatening incidents “Amber” refers to incidents that are serious, but not immediately life-threatening “Green” refers to neither serious, nor life-threatening incidents
Wales has no target response standard for non-life-threatening response times (which I did not know).
Ambulance response standards for Wales Only Red calls have a set response standard. 65% of these types of calls are expected to have an emergency response at the scene within 8 minutes.
ESNI are comprehensive in defined response times. The Scottish targets are interestingly different to E & NI, which are afaics aligned. Wales only has a target for life-threatening cases, which is a decision taken to 'focus on the immediately life-threatening".
The RNLI crew stayed with her for the whole 9 hours monitoring her stats and keeping her as comfortable as possible
They are trained in casualty care and did provide relief crew
She was seriously injured and it is simply unacceptable that an ambulance took nine hours to take her to hospital
Absolutely.
Someone in my block of flats suffered a major crush injury to their right foot 10 weeks ago on the lawn, due to an RTA. A neighbour kindly drove them to the nearest A&E, as the ambulance response time (in England) was predicted to exceed 6 hours.
IMV the issue for Greens in the UK (*) is that whilst they do have a pleasant vision for the future of the country, they also do not sell that vision very well, support policies and issues (often fringe) that do not align with that vision, and take an unrealistic view of how to get to those sunny uplands. In fact, they often come across more as a collection of disparate campaign groups rather than a holistic party.
(*) Green parties in other countries can be rather different.
The UK Green Party (or technically the Green Party of England and Wales) has historically been anti-Progress.
They don't want a prosperous, successful society based around clean energy generation. They want a world with fewer people in it, living pre-industrial lives.
Read Green Alternatives to Globalisation, by Caroline Lucas, if you don't believe me. That is a manifesto that should chill you to the bone.
I think that progress requires limiting our impact on the planet, and that economic growth is not an untramelled good if it adversely impacts on nature and climate.
Greens are not anti-progress, they care deeply about the progress of society, they just want to progress to a different goal.
I fully expect greens to adopt some sort of degrowth agenda in future.
I’m afraid all our actions have an impact. We need to try to mitigate not stop. It’s easy for the wealthy and privileged to rail against growth. However there are many communities where there has been little and could do with some
A slightly controversial argument: someone in the lowest 5% of income in the UK, has a far better life than someone in the lowest 5% of income 100 years ago. Or even 50 years ago. Whilst the improvement for someone in the top 5% has increased much less.
What on earth can be done to help the people in the top 5% catch up with the least well off.
At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…
This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?
You have lived a largely “safe” life. You have had a good career and lived in a country which, bar the odd uncomfortable time has not realistically been under threat in your lifetime.
You take for granted a factor of soft nationalism that many people in most countries don’t take for granted. To a huge amount of people on the planet, whether they live in democracies or dictatorships, the state protects them. There will always be minorities who the state oppresses but your average man on the street believes that the state, their state is protecting them.
Back to the whole lack of understanding because of the privilege of living in a very free and tolerant country. You have no cultural or direct knowledge of what it’s like to lose it so the things that attach you to that state, the UK, it’s flag and anthem are disposable.
I live in a place that has largely the same protections but it also has people alive who lived under the Nazis, they lived in fear and it was physically and mentally awful. The national anthem and display of flags is very important culturally because there is a cultural memory of losing that.
So you can cock a snook at it but maybe think about the fact that seemingly minor trivial and silly things like “a song” or a “bit of cloth” represent something more - they represent a country where someone from the arse end of nowhere can move through the system and get a well paid city career that allows them a comfortable late age existence where they can freely criticise the govern,ent or future government without fear of someone knocking on the door one night.
It’s not a bad thing to have love for your country and often that’s as simple as singing a patriotic song, like pretty much every nation in the world does, often very happily. Don’t mock, it’s allowed you to exist the way you do.
If you don't have much, at least you have your country. I'm proud of being from Scotland (and the UK), but it constitutes only a small part of my self-worth because of my education, my job, my stable relationship, my experiences travelling around the world. If I didn't have those things, being Scottish would be much more important.
I think that's what explains these different attitudes to nationalism.
(I know that having children delivers a huge amount of self-worth to people too, which I think explains why people don't have them as much any more - that self-worth is now delivered by all these other experiences.)
There are very many people who are a great deal better educated, better travelled, wealthier, and with longer marriages and relationships on the clock than you, who are also a great deal more patriotic than you. Claiming that patriotism is some sort of substitute for success and happiness is patronisingly obtuse almost to the point of parody.
Done right, patriotism is simply a realisation that we are all part of a larger community. (Our family, street, neighbourhood, football club and, ultimately country).
Yes, and that is the positive about being patriotic. It also means that excluding some Britons from society or politics is inherently anti-patriotic.
Llandudno RNLI inshore lifeboat was called to an injury to a lady in her 70s have fallen in a local speedboat on a trip and, whilst the speedboat came alongside the jetty, she couldn't move and the 4 person crew administered Entonox [ they are trained to do this] and with the help of the coastguards carried her to a local hotel to await ambulance
It arrived 9 [Nine] hours later to take her to hospital !!!!!!
That is shocking. I, and I suspect most, have already concluded that if I or my wife ever need a hip or knee replacement or rapid attention to a variety of ailments then there is little option other than to go private with the NHS being a literal and unacceptable pain. But A&E is one of the things they are supposed to be good at. £188bn in a year. WTF are they spending it on other than themselves?
I'm with you that the response time is slow, even though it is non-emergency. Did they get a paramedic? I had a look at response time targets.
It's devolved by nation, remember. These are the Welsh categories:
The categories for the response model are as follows:
“Red” refers to immediately life-threatening incidents “Amber” refers to incidents that are serious, but not immediately life-threatening “Green” refers to neither serious, nor life-threatening incidents
Wales has no target response standard for non-life-threatening response times (which I did not know).
Ambulance response standards for Wales Only Red calls have a set response standard. 65% of these types of calls are expected to have an emergency response at the scene within 8 minutes.
ESNI are comprehensive in defined response times. The Scottish targets are interestingly different to E & NI, which are afaics aligned. Wales only has a target for life-threatening cases, which is a decision taken to 'focus on the immediately life-threatening".
The RNLI crew stayed with her for the whole 9 hours monitoring her stats and keeping her as comfortable as possible
They are trained in casualty care and did provide relief crew
She was seriously injured and it is simply unacceptable that an ambulance took nine hours to take her to hospital
That’s the real issue: the actions of the NHS meant that an RNLI crew was unavailable to help anyone else in need. They need to consider broader resource allocation
At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…
This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?
You have lived a largely “safe” life. You have had a good career and lived in a country which, bar the odd uncomfortable time has not realistically been under threat in your lifetime.
You take for granted a factor of soft nationalism that many people in most countries don’t take for granted. To a huge amount of people on the planet, whether they live in democracies or dictatorships, the state protects them. There will always be minorities who the state oppresses but your average man on the street believes that the state, their state is protecting them.
Back to the whole lack of understanding because of the privilege of living in a very free and tolerant country. You have no cultural or direct knowledge of what it’s like to lose it so the things that attach you to that state, the UK, it’s flag and anthem are disposable.
I live in a place that has largely the same protections but it also has people alive who lived under the Nazis, they lived in fear and it was physically and mentally awful. The national anthem and display of flags is very important culturally because there is a cultural memory of losing that.
So you can cock a snook at it but maybe think about the fact that seemingly minor trivial and silly things like “a song” or a “bit of cloth” represent something more - they represent a country where someone from the arse end of nowhere can move through the system and get a well paid city career that allows them a comfortable late age existence where they can freely criticise the govern,ent or future government without fear of someone knocking on the door one night.
It’s not a bad thing to have love for your country and often that’s as simple as singing a patriotic song, like pretty much every nation in the world does, often very happily. Don’t mock, it’s allowed you to exist the way you do.
If you don't have much, at least you have your country. I'm proud of being from Scotland (and the UK), but it constitutes only a small part of my self-worth because of my education, my job, my stable relationship, my experiences travelling around the world. If I didn't have those things, being Scottish would be much more important.
I think that's what explains these different attitudes to nationalism.
(I know that having children delivers a huge amount of self-worth to people too, which I think explains why people don't have them as much any more - that self-worth is now delivered by all these other experiences.)
There are very many people who are a great deal better educated, better travelled, wealthier, and with longer marriages and relationships on the clock than you, who are also a great deal more patriotic than you. Claiming that patriotism is some sort of substitute for success and happiness is patronisingly obtuse almost to the point of parody.
Done right, patriotism is simply a realisation that we are all part of a larger community. (Our family, street, neighbourhood, football club and, ultimately country).
Singing “God save the King” is a recognition of that relationship has a focal point. But it’s also a statement that there is a social contract between the governed and the governor:
May he defend our laws, and ever give us cause to sing with one heart and voice: God save the King!” is statement of his obligation to us (it’s “our” not “his” laws) and a warning that we are *choosing* to support him (“may he ever give us cause”) and that consent can be withdrawn at any time
I have never sung the national anthem because the words are ridiculous and infers that we are all subservient to the monarchy
I would not bow to any member of the royal family, but would be perfectly happy to receive a handshake
I was brought up in a family that generally were happy to sing the anthem, and at the late Queens coronation in 1953 my grandmother jumped to attention every time the anthem was played
I support the monarchy, as I do not think a republic would be any better, but subservience, no
Llandudno RNLI inshore lifeboat was called to an injury to a lady in her 70s have fallen in a local speedboat on a trip and, whilst the speedboat came alongside the jetty, she couldn't move and the 4 person crew administered Entonox [ they are trained to do this] and with the help of the coastguards carried her to a local hotel to await ambulance
It arrived 9 [Nine] hours later to take her to hospital !!!!!!
That is shocking. I, and I suspect most, have already concluded that if I or my wife ever need a hip or knee replacement or rapid attention to a variety of ailments then there is little option other than to go private with the NHS being a literal and unacceptable pain. But A&E is one of the things they are supposed to be good at. £188bn in a year. WTF are they spending it on other than themselves?
I'm with you that the response time is slow, even though it is non-emergency. Did they get a paramedic? I had a look at response time targets.
It's devolved by nation, remember. These are the Welsh categories:
The categories for the response model are as follows:
“Red” refers to immediately life-threatening incidents “Amber” refers to incidents that are serious, but not immediately life-threatening “Green” refers to neither serious, nor life-threatening incidents
Wales has no target response standard for non-life-threatening response times (which I did not know).
Ambulance response standards for Wales Only Red calls have a set response standard. 65% of these types of calls are expected to have an emergency response at the scene within 8 minutes.
ESNI are comprehensive in defined response times. The Scottish targets are interestingly different to E & NI, which are afaics aligned. Wales only has a target for life-threatening cases, which is a decision taken to 'focus on the immediately life-threatening".
The RNLI crew stayed with her for the whole 9 hours monitoring her stats and keeping her as comfortable as possible
They are trained in casualty care and did provide relief crew
She was seriously injured and it is simply unacceptable that an ambulance took nine hours to take her to hospital
That’s the real issue: the actions of the NHS meant that an RNLI crew was unavailable to help anyone else in need. They need to consider broader resource allocation
I expect there will be an investigation because it is not acceptable for the crews to be unavailable for an urgent shout to save lives at sea
At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…
This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?
You have lived a largely “safe” life. You have had a good career and lived in a country which, bar the odd uncomfortable time has not realistically been under threat in your lifetime.
You take for granted a factor of soft nationalism that many people in most countries don’t take for granted. To a huge amount of people on the planet, whether they live in democracies or dictatorships, the state protects them. There will always be minorities who the state oppresses but your average man on the street believes that the state, their state is protecting them.
Back to the whole lack of understanding because of the privilege of living in a very free and tolerant country. You have no cultural or direct knowledge of what it’s like to lose it so the things that attach you to that state, the UK, it’s flag and anthem are disposable.
I live in a place that has largely the same protections but it also has people alive who lived under the Nazis, they lived in fear and it was physically and mentally awful. The national anthem and display of flags is very important culturally because there is a cultural memory of losing that.
So you can cock a snook at it but maybe think about the fact that seemingly minor trivial and silly things like “a song” or a “bit of cloth” represent something more - they represent a country where someone from the arse end of nowhere can move through the system and get a well paid city career that allows them a comfortable late age existence where they can freely criticise the govern,ent or future government without fear of someone knocking on the door one night.
It’s not a bad thing to have love for your country and often that’s as simple as singing a patriotic song, like pretty much every nation in the world does, often very happily. Don’t mock, it’s allowed you to exist the way you do.
If you don't have much, at least you have your country. I'm proud of being from Scotland (and the UK), but it constitutes only a small part of my self-worth because of my education, my job, my stable relationship, my experiences travelling around the world. If I didn't have those things, being Scottish would be much more important.
I think that's what explains these different attitudes to nationalism.
(I know that having children delivers a huge amount of self-worth to people too, which I think explains why people don't have them as much any more - that self-worth is now delivered by all these other experiences.)
There are very many people who are a great deal better educated, better travelled, wealthier, and with longer marriages and relationships on the clock than you, who are also a great deal more patriotic than you. Claiming that patriotism is some sort of substitute for success and happiness is patronisingly obtuse almost to the point of parody.
Done right, patriotism is simply a realisation that we are all part of a larger community. (Our family, street, neighbourhood, football club and, ultimately country).
Singing “God save the King” is a recognition of that relationship has a focal point. But it’s also a statement that there is a social contract between the governed and the governor:
May he defend our laws, and ever give us cause to sing with one heart and voice: God save the King!” is statement of his obligation to us (it’s “our” not “his” laws) and a warning that we are *choosing* to support him (“may he ever give us cause”) and that consent can be withdrawn at any time
I have never sung the national anthem because the words are ridiculous and infers that we are all subservient to the monarchy
I would not bow to any member of the royal family, but would be perfectly happy to receive a handshake
I was brought up in a family that generally were happy to sing the anthem, and at the late Queens coronation in 1953 my grandmother jumped to attention every time the anthem was played
I support the monarchy, as I do not think a republic would be any better, but subservience, no
I don't like the national anthem either.
It isn't really a national anthem, it is a monarchist anthem, and also carries theological baggage about the nature of salvation.
William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill · 3h BBC News is now running a full-blown recruitment campaign for Reform. This report, by the BBC political editor, doesn't even make a stab at neutrality in its breathless enthusiasm for Farage
Well it did. And I loathe Reform. Hitler was one popular.
Godwins. And so early in the day.
Springtime for Farage. He was just a paper hanger.
May I ask; do you see any negatives, or have genuine criticisms, about Farage and his party?
I have posted several here.
Not being rabidly anti reform and seeing them as the new Nazis does not make one a supporter. I just find the hysteria around them odd
I have a foreign-born wife. In fact, one who was born in a Muslim country. I don't think it's 'hysterical' to see what many Reform-aligned people say as a threat to her. And indeed, our son.
That’s not really what I’m talking about and all parties have supporters who are assholes.
In Reform's case, the asshole comprises the whole body, and especially the head.
Morning PB.
The body of Farage is part of the Holy Trinity of British populism. Trump is the Father, and Farage is the Son. Robert Jenrick and Andrea Jenkyn, together,. make up he Holy Spirit. Are there are any more questions ?if not, let us pray for deliverance.
At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…
This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?
You have lived a largely “safe” life. You have had a good career and lived in a country which, bar the odd uncomfortable time has not realistically been under threat in your lifetime.
You take for granted a factor of soft nationalism that many people in most countries don’t take for granted. To a huge amount of people on the planet, whether they live in democracies or dictatorships, the state protects them. There will always be minorities who the state oppresses but your average man on the street believes that the state, their state is protecting them.
Back to the whole lack of understanding because of the privilege of living in a very free and tolerant country. You have no cultural or direct knowledge of what it’s like to lose it so the things that attach you to that state, the UK, it’s flag and anthem are disposable.
I live in a place that has largely the same protections but it also has people alive who lived under the Nazis, they lived in fear and it was physically and mentally awful. The national anthem and display of flags is very important culturally because there is a cultural memory of losing that.
So you can cock a snook at it but maybe think about the fact that seemingly minor trivial and silly things like “a song” or a “bit of cloth” represent something more - they represent a country where someone from the arse end of nowhere can move through the system and get a well paid city career that allows them a comfortable late age existence where they can freely criticise the govern,ent or future government without fear of someone knocking on the door one night.
It’s not a bad thing to have love for your country and often that’s as simple as singing a patriotic song, like pretty much every nation in the world does, often very happily. Don’t mock, it’s allowed you to exist the way you do.
If you don't have much, at least you have your country. I'm proud of being from Scotland (and the UK), but it constitutes only a small part of my self-worth because of my education, my job, my stable relationship, my experiences travelling around the world. If I didn't have those things, being Scottish would be much more important.
I think that's what explains these different attitudes to nationalism.
(I know that having children delivers a huge amount of self-worth to people too, which I think explains why people don't have them as much any more - that self-worth is now delivered by all these other experiences.)
There are very many people who are a great deal better educated, better travelled, wealthier, and with longer marriages and relationships on the clock than you, who are also a great deal more patriotic than you. Claiming that patriotism is some sort of substitute for success and happiness is patronisingly obtuse almost to the point of parody.
Done right, patriotism is simply a realisation that we are all part of a larger community. (Our family, street, neighbourhood, football club and, ultimately country).
Singing “God save the King” is a recognition of that relationship has a focal point. But it’s also a statement that there is a social contract between the governed and the governor:
May he defend our laws, and ever give us cause to sing with one heart and voice: God save the King!” is statement of his obligation to us (it’s “our” not “his” laws) and a warning that we are *choosing* to support him (“may he ever give us cause”) and that consent can be withdrawn at any time
I have never sung the national anthem because the words are ridiculous and infers that we are all subservient to the monarchy
I would not bow to any member of the royal family, but would be perfectly happy to receive a handshake
I was brought up in a family that generally were happy to sing the anthem, and at the late Queens coronation in 1953 my grandmother jumped to attention every time the anthem was played
I support the monarchy, as I do not think a republic would be any better, but subservience, no
That’s very interesting. A total surprise, and a useful reminder to the patriotism police on here. It doesn’t make you any less patriotic than the rest of us.
I quite happily sing the anthem, though opportunities to do so out loud are somewhat limited to live sports events.
Llandudno RNLI inshore lifeboat was called to an injury to a lady in her 70s have fallen in a local speedboat on a trip and, whilst the speedboat came alongside the jetty, she couldn't move and the 4 person crew administered Entonox [ they are trained to do this] and with the help of the coastguards carried her to a local hotel to await ambulance
It arrived 9 [Nine] hours later to take her to hospital !!!!!!
That is shocking. I, and I suspect most, have already concluded that if I or my wife ever need a hip or knee replacement or rapid attention to a variety of ailments then there is little option other than to go private with the NHS being a literal and unacceptable pain. But A&E is one of the things they are supposed to be good at. £188bn in a year. WTF are they spending it on other than themselves?
I'm with you that the response time is slow, even though it is non-emergency. Did they get a paramedic? I had a look at response time targets.
It's devolved by nation, remember. These are the Welsh categories:
The categories for the response model are as follows:
“Red” refers to immediately life-threatening incidents “Amber” refers to incidents that are serious, but not immediately life-threatening “Green” refers to neither serious, nor life-threatening incidents
Wales has no target response standard for non-life-threatening response times (which I did not know).
Ambulance response standards for Wales Only Red calls have a set response standard. 65% of these types of calls are expected to have an emergency response at the scene within 8 minutes.
ESNI are comprehensive in defined response times. The Scottish targets are interestingly different to E & NI, which are afaics aligned. Wales only has a target for life-threatening cases, which is a decision taken to 'focus on the immediately life-threatening".
The RNLI crew stayed with her for the whole 9 hours monitoring her stats and keeping her as comfortable as possible
They are trained in casualty care and did provide relief crew
She was seriously injured and it is simply unacceptable that an ambulance took nine hours to take her to hospital
That’s the real issue: the actions of the NHS meant that an RNLI crew was unavailable to help anyone else in need. They need to consider broader resource allocation
I expect there will be an investigation because it is not acceptable for the crews to be unavailable for an urgent shout to save lives at sea
Neither is it acceptable for paramedics to be tied up in hospital car parks and thereby not available for medical emergencies, but that is the daily reality.
William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill · 3h BBC News is now running a full-blown recruitment campaign for Reform. This report, by the BBC political editor, doesn't even make a stab at neutrality in its breathless enthusiasm for Farage
Well it did. And I loathe Reform. Hitler was one popular.
Godwins. And so early in the day.
Springtime for Farage. He was just a paper hanger.
May I ask; do you see any negatives, or have genuine criticisms, about Farage and his party?
I have posted several here.
Not being rabidly anti reform and seeing them as the new Nazis does not make one a supporter. I just find the hysteria around them odd
I have a foreign-born wife. In fact, one who was born in a Muslim country. I don't think it's 'hysterical' to see what many Reform-aligned people say as a threat to her. And indeed, our son.
That’s not really what I’m talking about and all parties have supporters who are assholes.
In Reform's case, the asshole comprises the whole body, and especially the head.
Morning PB.
The body of Farage is part of the Holy Trinity of British populism. Trump is the Father, and Farage is the Son. Robert Jenrick and Andrea Jenkyn, together,. make up he Holy Spirit. Are there are any more questions ?if not, let us pray for deliverance.
Isn’t Hesketh more of a spirits man?
I believe so, although if the Americans do invade Northwards I expect the Secretary of War might attempt to drink Canada dry.
Llandudno RNLI inshore lifeboat was called to an injury to a lady in her 70s have fallen in a local speedboat on a trip and, whilst the speedboat came alongside the jetty, she couldn't move and the 4 person crew administered Entonox [ they are trained to do this] and with the help of the coastguards carried her to a local hotel to await ambulance
It arrived 9 [Nine] hours later to take her to hospital !!!!!!
That is shocking. I, and I suspect most, have already concluded that if I or my wife ever need a hip or knee replacement or rapid attention to a variety of ailments then there is little option other than to go private with the NHS being a literal and unacceptable pain. But A&E is one of the things they are supposed to be good at. £188bn in a year. WTF are they spending it on other than themselves?
I'm with you that the response time is slow, even though it is non-emergency. Did they get a paramedic? I had a look at response time targets.
It's devolved by nation, remember. These are the Welsh categories:
The categories for the response model are as follows:
“Red” refers to immediately life-threatening incidents “Amber” refers to incidents that are serious, but not immediately life-threatening “Green” refers to neither serious, nor life-threatening incidents
Wales has no target response standard for non-life-threatening response times (which I did not know).
Ambulance response standards for Wales Only Red calls have a set response standard. 65% of these types of calls are expected to have an emergency response at the scene within 8 minutes.
ESNI are comprehensive in defined response times. The Scottish targets are interestingly different to E & NI, which are afaics aligned. Wales only has a target for life-threatening cases, which is a decision taken to 'focus on the immediately life-threatening".
The RNLI crew stayed with her for the whole 9 hours monitoring her stats and keeping her as comfortable as possible
They are trained in casualty care and did provide relief crew
She was seriously injured and it is simply unacceptable that an ambulance took nine hours to take her to hospital
That’s the real issue: the actions of the NHS meant that an RNLI crew was unavailable to help anyone else in need. They need to consider broader resource allocation
And the failure of social care system has meant that the NHS was unable to promptly help someone in need.
It can't be that all our problems are fundamentally about a collective unwillingness to fund social care properly through taxes, but sometimes it seems that way.
(Yes, the present government shouldn't have kicked the issue into the long grass- but that is true of their predecessors as well. It doesn't need a government with a large majority to do unpopular things, it needs one that isn't trying to win the next election. Since Sunak and Hunt were already dead from the beginning, they could have realised that grasping a few nettles couldn't kill them.)
Llandudno RNLI inshore lifeboat was called to an injury to a lady in her 70s have fallen in a local speedboat on a trip and, whilst the speedboat came alongside the jetty, she couldn't move and the 4 person crew administered Entonox [ they are trained to do this] and with the help of the coastguards carried her to a local hotel to await ambulance
It arrived 9 [Nine] hours later to take her to hospital !!!!!!
That is shocking. I, and I suspect most, have already concluded that if I or my wife ever need a hip or knee replacement or rapid attention to a variety of ailments then there is little option other than to go private with the NHS being a literal and unacceptable pain. But A&E is one of the things they are supposed to be good at. £188bn in a year. WTF are they spending it on other than themselves?
I'm with you that the response time is slow, even though it is non-emergency. Did they get a paramedic? I had a look at response time targets.
It's devolved by nation, remember. These are the Welsh categories:
The categories for the response model are as follows:
“Red” refers to immediately life-threatening incidents “Amber” refers to incidents that are serious, but not immediately life-threatening “Green” refers to neither serious, nor life-threatening incidents
Wales has no target response standard for non-life-threatening response times (which I did not know).
Ambulance response standards for Wales Only Red calls have a set response standard. 65% of these types of calls are expected to have an emergency response at the scene within 8 minutes.
ESNI are comprehensive in defined response times. The Scottish targets are interestingly different to E & NI, which are afaics aligned. Wales only has a target for life-threatening cases, which is a decision taken to 'focus on the immediately life-threatening".
The RNLI crew stayed with her for the whole 9 hours monitoring her stats and keeping her as comfortable as possible
They are trained in casualty care and did provide relief crew
She was seriously injured and it is simply unacceptable that an ambulance took nine hours to take her to hospital
That’s the real issue: the actions of the NHS meant that an RNLI crew was unavailable to help anyone else in need. They need to consider broader resource allocation
I expect there will be an investigation because it is not acceptable for the crews to be unavailable for an urgent shout to save lives at sea
Neither is it acceptable for paramedics to be tied up in hospital car parks and thereby not available for medical emergencies, but that is the daily reality.
I think this may well have been a one off because most shouts involving casualties are nearly always attended by an ambulance often before the crews land
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
It seems the BBC’s Chris Mason is copping a load of flak for honestly reporting what he saw rather than what centrists want to read
“Centrist” has had quite the journey. From term of abuse by very online lefties at people they consider worse than Tories, to term of abuse by very online righties at people they consider worse than communists.
It’s no more a term of abuse than ‘leftie’ or ‘rightie’, and many people apply the label to themselves.
Yes, I am quite happy being called a Centrist Dad, because I am one.
(It does depend on what is meant by centrist of course. I am dry as dust on economic matters very liberal on social issues, so it averages out overall.
Sp what are you plans to cutting government spending so we live within our means?
The budget can also be balanced by tax rises, but in terms of plans to cut government spending I would scrap the Triple Lock and indexing of benefits, leaving both to the Chancellors discretion in view of the overall financial picture.
A 6pp increase in taxes? That’s like a 20% increase in total taxes (from 35.5% to 41.5% of GDP). Do you think that might have an impact on growth and investment?
And you’ve not suggested cutting spending at all. Just reducing future increases.
William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill · 3h BBC News is now running a full-blown recruitment campaign for Reform. This report, by the BBC political editor, doesn't even make a stab at neutrality in its breathless enthusiasm for Farage
Well it did. And I loathe Reform. Hitler was one popular.
Godwins. And so early in the day.
Springtime for Farage. He was just a paper hanger.
May I ask; do you see any negatives, or have genuine criticisms, about Farage and his party?
I have posted several here.
Not being rabidly anti reform and seeing them as the new Nazis does not make one a supporter. I just find the hysteria around them odd
I have a foreign-born wife. In fact, one who was born in a Muslim country. I don't think it's 'hysterical' to see what many Reform-aligned people say as a threat to her. And indeed, our son.
This especially when you see how US immigration is acting with impunity and Reform's leadership's enthusiastic embrace of all things MAGA. "Every party has assholes" doesn't cut the mustard here, that a Reform government would ape the USA wholesale is a genuine fear.
At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…
This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?
You have lived a largely “safe” life. You have had a good career and lived in a country which, bar the odd uncomfortable time has not realistically been under threat in your lifetime.
You take for granted a factor of soft nationalism that many people in most countries don’t take for granted. To a huge amount of people on the planet, whether they live in democracies or dictatorships, the state protects them. There will always be minorities who the state oppresses but your average man on the street believes that the state, their state is protecting them.
Back to the whole lack of understanding because of the privilege of living in a very free and tolerant country. You have no cultural or direct knowledge of what it’s like to lose it so the things that attach you to that state, the UK, it’s flag and anthem are disposable.
I live in a place that has largely the same protections but it also has people alive who lived under the Nazis, they lived in fear and it was physically and mentally awful. The national anthem and display of flags is very important culturally because there is a cultural memory of losing that.
So you can cock a snook at it but maybe think about the fact that seemingly minor trivial and silly things like “a song” or a “bit of cloth” represent something more - they represent a country where someone from the arse end of nowhere can move through the system and get a well paid city career that allows them a comfortable late age existence where they can freely criticise the govern,ent or future government without fear of someone knocking on the door one night.
It’s not a bad thing to have love for your country and often that’s as simple as singing a patriotic song, like pretty much every nation in the world does, often very happily. Don’t mock, it’s allowed you to exist the way you do.
If you don't have much, at least you have your country. I'm proud of being from Scotland (and the UK), but it constitutes only a small part of my self-worth because of my education, my job, my stable relationship, my experiences travelling around the world. If I didn't have those things, being Scottish would be much more important.
I think that's what explains these different attitudes to nationalism.
(I know that having children delivers a huge amount of self-worth to people too, which I think explains why people don't have them as much any more - that self-worth is now delivered by all these other experiences.)
There are very many people who are a great deal better educated, better travelled, wealthier, and with longer marriages and relationships on the clock than you, who are also a great deal more patriotic than you. Claiming that patriotism is some sort of substitute for success and happiness is patronisingly obtuse almost to the point of parody.
Done right, patriotism is simply a realisation that we are all part of a larger community. (Our family, street, neighbourhood, football club and, ultimately country).
Singing “God save the King” is a recognition of that relationship has a focal point. But it’s also a statement that there is a social contract between the governed and the governor:
May he defend our laws, and ever give us cause to sing with one heart and voice: God save the King!” is statement of his obligation to us (it’s “our” not “his” laws) and a warning that we are *choosing* to support him (“may he ever give us cause”) and that consent can be withdrawn at any time
I have never sung the national anthem because the words are ridiculous and infers that we are all subservient to the monarchy
I would not bow to any member of the royal family, but would be perfectly happy to receive a handshake
I was brought up in a family that generally were happy to sing the anthem, and at the late Queens coronation in 1953 my grandmother jumped to attention every time the anthem was played
I support the monarchy, as I do not think a republic would be any better, but subservience, no
Recognition of their role doesn’t imply subservience. The words of the national anthem don’t either. It’s basically “you’ve got a job, hope it goes well mate & you’d better not screw up”
William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill · 3h BBC News is now running a full-blown recruitment campaign for Reform. This report, by the BBC political editor, doesn't even make a stab at neutrality in its breathless enthusiasm for Farage
Well it did. And I loathe Reform. Hitler was one popular.
Godwins. And so early in the day.
Springtime for Farage. He was just a paper hanger.
May I ask; do you see any negatives, or have genuine criticisms, about Farage and his party?
I have posted several here.
Not being rabidly anti reform and seeing them as the new Nazis does not make one a supporter. I just find the hysteria around them odd
I have a foreign-born wife. In fact, one who was born in a Muslim country. I don't think it's 'hysterical' to see what many Reform-aligned people say as a threat to her. And indeed, our son.
That’s not really what I’m talking about and all parties have supporters who are assholes.
In Reform's case, the asshole comprises the whole body, and especially the head.
Morning PB.
The body of Farage is part of the Holy Trinity of British populism. Trump is the Father, and Farage is the Son. Robert Jenrick and Andrea Jenkyn, together,. make up he Holy Spirit. Are there are any more questions ?if not, let us pray for deliverance.
Isn’t Hesketh more of a spirits man?
I believe so, although if the Americans do invade Northwards I expect the Secretary of War might attempt to drink Canada dry.
Llandudno RNLI inshore lifeboat was called to an injury to a lady in her 70s have fallen in a local speedboat on a trip and, whilst the speedboat came alongside the jetty, she couldn't move and the 4 person crew administered Entonox [ they are trained to do this] and with the help of the coastguards carried her to a local hotel to await ambulance
It arrived 9 [Nine] hours later to take her to hospital !!!!!!
That is shocking. I, and I suspect most, have already concluded that if I or my wife ever need a hip or knee replacement or rapid attention to a variety of ailments then there is little option other than to go private with the NHS being a literal and unacceptable pain. But A&E is one of the things they are supposed to be good at. £188bn in a year. WTF are they spending it on other than themselves?
I'm with you that the response time is slow, even though it is non-emergency. Did they get a paramedic? I had a look at response time targets.
It's devolved by nation, remember. These are the Welsh categories:
The categories for the response model are as follows:
“Red” refers to immediately life-threatening incidents “Amber” refers to incidents that are serious, but not immediately life-threatening “Green” refers to neither serious, nor life-threatening incidents
Wales has no target response standard for non-life-threatening response times (which I did not know).
Ambulance response standards for Wales Only Red calls have a set response standard. 65% of these types of calls are expected to have an emergency response at the scene within 8 minutes.
ESNI are comprehensive in defined response times. The Scottish targets are interestingly different to E & NI, which are afaics aligned. Wales only has a target for life-threatening cases, which is a decision taken to 'focus on the immediately life-threatening".
The RNLI crew stayed with her for the whole 9 hours monitoring her stats and keeping her as comfortable as possible
They are trained in casualty care and did provide relief crew
She was seriously injured and it is simply unacceptable that an ambulance took nine hours to take her to hospital
That’s the real issue: the actions of the NHS meant that an RNLI crew was unavailable to help anyone else in need. They need to consider broader resource allocation
And the failure of social care system has meant that the NHS was unable to promptly help someone in need.
It can't be that all our problems are fundamentally about a collective unwillingness to fund social care properly through taxes, but sometimes it seems that way.
(Yes, the present government shouldn't have kicked the issue into the long grass- but that is true of their predecessors as well. It doesn't need a government with a large majority to do unpopular things, it needs one that isn't trying to win the next election. Since Sunak and Hunt were already dead from the beginning, they could have realised that grasping a few nettles couldn't kill them.)
Social care is the Gordian knot here, I’d agree. Another thing Osborne screwed up with his “death tax” nonsense
At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…
This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?
You have lived a largely “safe” life. You have had a good career and lived in a country which, bar the odd uncomfortable time has not realistically been under threat in your lifetime.
You take for granted a factor of soft nationalism that many people in most countries don’t take for granted. To a huge amount of people on the planet, whether they live in democracies or dictatorships, the state protects them. There will always be minorities who the state oppresses but your average man on the street believes that the state, their state is protecting them.
Back to the whole lack of understanding because of the privilege of living in a very free and tolerant country. You have no cultural or direct knowledge of what it’s like to lose it so the things that attach you to that state, the UK, it’s flag and anthem are disposable.
I live in a place that has largely the same protections but it also has people alive who lived under the Nazis, they lived in fear and it was physically and mentally awful. The national anthem and display of flags is very important culturally because there is a cultural memory of losing that.
So you can cock a snook at it but maybe think about the fact that seemingly minor trivial and silly things like “a song” or a “bit of cloth” represent something more - they represent a country where someone from the arse end of nowhere can move through the system and get a well paid city career that allows them a comfortable late age existence where they can freely criticise the govern,ent or future government without fear of someone knocking on the door one night.
It’s not a bad thing to have love for your country and often that’s as simple as singing a patriotic song, like pretty much every nation in the world does, often very happily. Don’t mock, it’s allowed you to exist the way you do.
If you don't have much, at least you have your country. I'm proud of being from Scotland (and the UK), but it constitutes only a small part of my self-worth because of my education, my job, my stable relationship, my experiences travelling around the world. If I didn't have those things, being Scottish would be much more important.
I think that's what explains these different attitudes to nationalism.
(I know that having children delivers a huge amount of self-worth to people too, which I think explains why people don't have them as much any more - that self-worth is now delivered by all these other experiences.)
There are very many people who are a great deal better educated, better travelled, wealthier, and with longer marriages and relationships on the clock than you, who are also a great deal more patriotic than you. Claiming that patriotism is some sort of substitute for success and happiness is patronisingly obtuse almost to the point of parody.
Done right, patriotism is simply a realisation that we are all part of a larger community. (Our family, street, neighbourhood, football club and, ultimately country).
Singing “God save the King” is a recognition of that relationship has a focal point. But it’s also a statement that there is a social contract between the governed and the governor:
May he defend our laws, and ever give us cause to sing with one heart and voice: God save the King!” is statement of his obligation to us (it’s “our” not “his” laws) and a warning that we are *choosing* to support him (“may he ever give us cause”) and that consent can be withdrawn at any time
I have never sung the national anthem because the words are ridiculous and infers that we are all subservient to the monarchy
I would not bow to any member of the royal family, but would be perfectly happy to receive a handshake
I was brought up in a family that generally were happy to sing the anthem, and at the late Queens coronation in 1953 my grandmother jumped to attention every time the anthem was played
I support the monarchy, as I do not think a republic would be any better, but subservience, no
Recognition of their role doesn’t imply subservience. The words of the national anthem don’t either. It’s basically “you’ve got a job, hope it goes well mate & you’d better not screw up”
Context, though, of the time. Think about the strong default involved. And consider what happened if one didn't grovel at a Drawing Room or a levee, or published rude things ...
At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…
This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?
You have lived a largely “safe” life. You have had a good career and lived in a country which, bar the odd uncomfortable time has not realistically been under threat in your lifetime.
You take for granted a factor of soft nationalism that many people in most countries don’t take for granted. To a huge amount of people on the planet, whether they live in democracies or dictatorships, the state protects them. There will always be minorities who the state oppresses but your average man on the street believes that the state, their state is protecting them.
Back to the whole lack of understanding because of the privilege of living in a very free and tolerant country. You have no cultural or direct knowledge of what it’s like to lose it so the things that attach you to that state, the UK, it’s flag and anthem are disposable.
I live in a place that has largely the same protections but it also has people alive who lived under the Nazis, they lived in fear and it was physically and mentally awful. The national anthem and display of flags is very important culturally because there is a cultural memory of losing that.
So you can cock a snook at it but maybe think about the fact that seemingly minor trivial and silly things like “a song” or a “bit of cloth” represent something more - they represent a country where someone from the arse end of nowhere can move through the system and get a well paid city career that allows them a comfortable late age existence where they can freely criticise the govern,ent or future government without fear of someone knocking on the door one night.
It’s not a bad thing to have love for your country and often that’s as simple as singing a patriotic song, like pretty much every nation in the world does, often very happily. Don’t mock, it’s allowed you to exist the way you do.
If you don't have much, at least you have your country. I'm proud of being from Scotland (and the UK), but it constitutes only a small part of my self-worth because of my education, my job, my stable relationship, my experiences travelling around the world. If I didn't have those things, being Scottish would be much more important.
I think that's what explains these different attitudes to nationalism.
(I know that having children delivers a huge amount of self-worth to people too, which I think explains why people don't have them as much any more - that self-worth is now delivered by all these other experiences.)
There are very many people who are a great deal better educated, better travelled, wealthier, and with longer marriages and relationships on the clock than you, who are also a great deal more patriotic than you. Claiming that patriotism is some sort of substitute for success and happiness is patronisingly obtuse almost to the point of parody.
Done right, patriotism is simply a realisation that we are all part of a larger community. (Our family, street, neighbourhood, football club and, ultimately country).
Singing “God save the King” is a recognition of that relationship has a focal point. But it’s also a statement that there is a social contract between the governed and the governor:
May he defend our laws, and ever give us cause to sing with one heart and voice: God save the King!” is statement of his obligation to us (it’s “our” not “his” laws) and a warning that we are *choosing* to support him (“may he ever give us cause”) and that consent can be withdrawn at any time
I have never sung the national anthem because the words are ridiculous and infers that we are all subservient to the monarchy
I would not bow to any member of the royal family, but would be perfectly happy to receive a handshake
I was brought up in a family that generally were happy to sing the anthem, and at the late Queens coronation in 1953 my grandmother jumped to attention every time the anthem was played
I support the monarchy, as I do not think a republic would be any better, but subservience, no
I take a similar view. I dont grovel and scrape and doff my cap like a good little drone. I am much less pro monarchy as a system than in my youth too. Especially with sausage fingers now arsing about and being a ridiculous twit. Steelers Wheel 'Stuck In The Middle' would be a far more apposite anthem
Comments
I think that's what explains these different attitudes to nationalism.
(I know that having children delivers a huge amount of self-worth to people too, which I think explains why people don't have them as much any more - that self-worth is now delivered by all these other experiences.)
William Dalrymple
@DalrympleWill
·
3h
BBC News is now running a full-blown recruitment campaign for Reform. This report, by the BBC political editor, doesn't even make a stab at neutrality in its breathless enthusiasm for Farage
Reform conference shows party's growing ambition
https://x.com/DalrympleWill/status/1964408520989708621
The fact that someone appears to be listening is enough to get them a hearing.
https://x.com/Joseph_Boam/status/1964401929779577322
(It does depend on what is meant by centrist of course. I am dry as dust on economic matters very liberal on social issues, so it averages out overall.
"I was very anti-Falklands for example. I wanted to boycott Fray Bentos and leave it at that."
That was possibly the greatest series of adverts ever made. Still raises a slight lump to the throat.
Is the decline of reading making politics dumber?
As people read less they think less clearly, scholars fear"
https://www.economist.com/culture/2025/09/04/is-the-decline-of-reading-making-politics-dumber
Answer = yes.
Carlo’s body is exhibited in the Church of St Mary Major in a uniquely designed, glass-sided tomb, suspended in mid-air so that it appears to have been torn from the Earth and floating to Heaven.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15072949/British-teen-Carlo-Acutis-Gen-Z-saint.html
I would say the fundamentals of centrism are:
-Belief in the state - not the nation state specifically, but all manifestations of state power
-Belief in a notion of 'modernity' and not being behind the times, but in a very malleable way. If enough people tell a centrist that moisturising with a dog turd is what all the right-thinking people are doing now, they will do it.
-A strong wish to identity oneself with elite power and wealth, and the prevailing intelligentsia.
I just better log off, I think, before my blood gets up any more than it already is. Go read a poem.
I'm not making a case for Reform here. I'm not planning to vote for them. But I can absolutely see why people do. It's human nature to pick on a 'finally someone understands' and choose to overlook the myriad ways the new hope isn't actually as great a fit as one had hoped.
The downstairs toilet lock had gone at that time in our house and singing on the loo was necessary. That song became the chosen "occupied" notification.
Centrism by its nature is not an ideology because it is a triangulation between the two opposing points in any political system. You can (and did) have centrist Nazis and Communists. The centrists of today have utterly different views than the centrists of 20 years ago. That's because their views were never based on conviction, they were just what was in the middle then.
"(((Dan Hodges)))
@DPJHodges
“I’m going to f**k him up”. Labour MPs are preparing to use the Deputy Leadership election to get their revenge on Keir Starmer > Mail Plus >"
https://x.com/DPJHodges/status/1964385299439480933
"Japanese town proposes two-hour daily limit on smartphones
A central Japanese town wants to limit smartphone use for all its 69,000 residents to two hours a day, in a move that has sparked intense debate on device addiction. The proposal, believed to be the first of its kind in Japan, is currently being debated by lawmakers after being submitted by Toyoake municipal government in Aichi earlier this week. Toyoake's mayor said the proposal - which only applies outside of work and study - would not be strictly enforced, but rather was meant to "encourage" residents to better manage their screen time."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cqlew2rv337o
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2024/05/12/solarpunk/
I hope you did not make a decision in 2023, with what happened at the Election !
Wales has a live page of E&A Dept status - is there one for ambulances?
https://aeinfo.nhs.wales/
It's devolved by nation, remember. These are the Welsh categories:
The categories for the response model are as follows:
“Red” refers to immediately life-threatening incidents
“Amber” refers to incidents that are serious, but not immediately life-threatening
“Green” refers to neither serious, nor life-threatening incidents
Wales has no target response standard for non-life-threatening response times (which I did not know).
Ambulance response standards for Wales
Only Red calls have a set response standard. 65% of these types of calls are expected to have an emergency response at the scene within 8 minutes.
ESNI are comprehensive in defined response times. The Scottish targets are interestingly different to E & NI, which are afaics aligned. Wales only has a target for life-threatening cases, which is a decision taken to 'focus on the immediately life-threatening".
https://analysisfunction.civilservice.gov.uk/government-statistical-service-and-statistician-group/user-facing-pages/health-and-care-statistics/summary-of-ambulance-response-time-data-in-the-uk/
The RNLI crew stayed with her for the whole 9 hours monitoring her stats and keeping her as comfortable as possible
They are trained in casualty care and did provide relief crew
She was seriously injured and it is simply unacceptable that an ambulance took nine hours to take her to hospital
The way to tackle Reform is to govern properly and frankly stop trying to mimic them
And as for media bias they are only reacting to what is clearly a very new political climate and Raynergate has just ramped up the problems for Starmer and labour
I do not support Farage or Reform in any way whatsoever but the reality is Farage is taking all the headlines and all Labour are doing is adding to his publicity
My advise to those who are really upset and even trying to close down media coverage of Farage is reflect on why Starmer and labour have created space for this change in politics
"Centrist" isn't someone picking both extremes and then choosing a middle position. It's about people whose views fall naturally within the centre. Whilst, I might add, many right-wing shits and left wing fools seem to race to the extremes as some form of badge of honour.
Likewise, your sentence about 'wokeism' is also rather lacking, and disagrees with much of what the anti-wokeists screech about.
I'd also argue that many of the current Reform supporters have totally different views from twenty years ago as well - especially the ones moving over from a traditional Labour position. And that's because politics moves and changes as the world changes - many Conservative Party policies of 2019 would appear anathema to the party in 1979, let alone 1945. And the same with Labour, though that tends to change at a slower rate.
Most of all: This is not a bad thing.
The Greens, along with the fruit and nut party (yet to be formally named), are a melange of apology/guilt (for Great Britain's imperial past), protest (with an obsession about Gaza) and whining, with a doom and gloom message if the UK government doesn't make a radical left turn in its policy direction. They fail to recognise the dire economic situation of the UK, similar to 1976, and the need to cut state profligacy and immigration drastically, unlike Reform.
UK governments in the last 20 years have used massive immigration cynically to grow the overall GDP. However, the GDP per capita hasn't increased over this period, while prices have gone up generally, so individuals feel worse off. Immigration has also been a prime cause of the stresses on housing and public services, as well as changing the character of many areas. As in 1905, the British people don't like those with different customs who keep themselves apart.
The Greens haven't done themselves any favours in the choice of their new leader, whose views and background are an anathema to most Britons.
If Reform sustain a vote share exceeding 30% at the time of the next GE, and shares for other parties are at or below 20% or thereabouts, they could win under FPTP. In Europe, different electoral arrangements enable traditional mainstream parties to erect a cordon sanitaire to exclude far right parties such as the AfD from government. Someone in my block of flats suffered a major crush injury to their right foot 10 weeks ago on the lawn, due to an RTA. A neighbour kindly drove them to the nearest A&E, as the ambulance response time (in England) was predicted to exceed 6 hours.
(*) Green parties in other countries can be rather different.
Starmer is clearly trying to do everything he can to address the grievances of Reform voters, to the point that he is surely losing more votes to his left than his right.
Hitler was one popular.
🙄
Reform seems to make people here irrational bordering conspiracy theorist.
Of course they’re going get coverage and the BBC hardly gave Richard Tice an easy ride this week. The BBC are there to report not do the other parties job for them. It’s all a bit Norman Tebbit in the eighties on here.
No one here complains about the blatant left of centre slant of channel 4 news.
Springtime for Farage. He was just a paper hanger.
https://x.com/archrose90/status/1964293335629127953?s=46&t=d8CnRhyZJ-m4vy0k55W8XQ
F1: backed Verstappen at 3.2 (Betfair) to win, hedged at 1.5.
https://morrisf1.blogspot.com/2025/09/italian-grand-prix-2025-pre-race.html
https://x.com/lbc/status/1964304100494921860?s=46&t=d8CnRhyZJ-m4vy0k55W8XQ
They don't want a prosperous, successful society based around clean energy generation. They want a world with fewer people in it, living pre-industrial lives.
Read Green Alternatives to Globalisation, by Caroline Lucas, if you don't believe me. That is a manifesto that should chill you to the bone.
Centrist politics is a belief that a free enterprise capitalist economy needs a degree of government oversight and regulation for example on labour rights, pollution, consumer standards. It also entails a great deal of social freedom in personal matters, but sets limits on this where it impinges on other people and groups.
Sure there are changes over time (we didn't need to regulate Social Media 3 decades ago) as new challenges arise, but the fundamental principles still apply.
Centrist beliefs can be accommodated in most parties in their moderate wings, and I dare say are even found amongst Reform voters, if not amongst Reform conference attenders.
Not being rabidly anti reform and seeing them as the new Nazis does not make one a supporter. I just find the hysteria around them odd
Greens are not anti-progress, they care deeply about the progress of society, they just want to progress to a different goal.
Personally, I am all for encouraging people and businesses to act in a more sustainable, less polluting way. I just believe the right way to do that is via harnessing capitalism and the profit motive, to encourage people to make the right choices.
All too often the Green movement (and in particular prominent Green politicians like Caroline Lucas) prove themselves not that interested in practical solutions that might help resolve global warming, and more interested in turning the clock back. They are just Reform, only their rose tinted view of the past is wrong in a different way.
I’m afraid all our actions have an impact. We need to try to mitigate not stop. It’s easy for the wealthy and privileged to rail against growth. However there are many communities where there has been little and could do with some
You really want to keep improving that for people. Some people still live awful lives in awful places
For example, Farage's restrictions on Free Speech and journalism, whilst maintaining that he does not do so.
I think with Farage, we mainly need sunlight.
https://x.com/drrosena/status/1964091400141553937?s=46&t=d8CnRhyZJ-m4vy0k55W8XQ
Does anyone know what the "two fingers and a thumb" raised hand sign means?
The body of Farage is part of the Holy Trinity of British populism. Trump is the Father, and Farage is the Son. Robert Jenrick and Andrea Jenkyn, together,. make up he Holy Spirit. Are there are any more questions ?if not, let us pray for deliverance.
As to the motives, the classy thing to do is to ask people "why do you think that?" I can think of various reasons why people want to blame Starmer for a collapse in Conservative support since the election, but I'm not sure any of them are very good. There must be better ones out there.
I have zero issue with Reforms conference being reported as optimistic , a big event etc . And I agree with your post about Labours majority and current state . I don’t expect the media to ignore that .
This doesn’t mean that other parties issues are ignored . And that’s the point !
Singing “God save the King” is a recognition of that relationship has a focal point. But it’s also a statement that there is a social contract between the governed and the governor:
May he defend our laws, and ever give us cause to sing with one heart and voice: God save the King!” is statement of his obligation to us (it’s “our” not “his” laws) and a warning that we are *choosing* to support him (“may he ever give us cause”) and that consent can be withdrawn at any time
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/09/26/anti-defamation-league-adds-ok-hand-gesture-hate-symbol-database/3772950002/
In this variation the thumb, index and middle finger are used to form the W. It is not a natural way to signal the number 3 or the letter V.
I would not bow to any member of the royal family, but would be perfectly happy to receive a handshake
I was brought up in a family that generally were happy to sing the anthem, and at the late Queens coronation in 1953 my grandmother jumped to attention every time the anthem was played
I support the monarchy, as I do not think a republic would be any better, but subservience, no
It isn't really a national anthem, it is a monarchist anthem, and also carries theological baggage about the nature of salvation.
I quite happily sing the anthem, though opportunities to do so out loud are somewhat limited to live sports events.
It can't be that all our problems are fundamentally about a collective unwillingness to fund social care properly through taxes, but sometimes it seems that way.
(Yes, the present government shouldn't have kicked the issue into the long grass- but that is true of their predecessors as well. It doesn't need a government with a large majority to do unpopular things, it needs one that isn't trying to win the next election. Since Sunak and Hunt were already dead from the beginning, they could have realised that grasping a few nettles couldn't kill them.)
And you’ve not suggested cutting spending at all. Just reducing future increases.
One hopes that the ginger ails soon
I am much less pro monarchy as a system than in my youth too. Especially with sausage fingers now arsing about and being a ridiculous twit.
Steelers Wheel 'Stuck In The Middle' would be a far more apposite anthem