Today I had an appointment with the Respiratory Clinic a year after I was admitted with serious chest pain. I assumed it was a routine follow up but in fact I was told that last year my right lung had collapsed because of the cancer & that there was some metastatic cancer in the lung, which had not spread since treatment started. I even got shown a picture of it, lucky old me, as well as of some efflusion, which is minor but with a warning that if it gets worse it might need to be drained.
Now the fact that the treatment seems to be keeping the cancer at bay is good. But this is the first time I've been told the disease is in my lungs, as well as breast, spine, pelvis & ribs. The oncologist's correspondence has never mentioned it. It's news to me. So what else has been kept from me? Or is it just one clinic not talking to the other?
Also the scans from the hospital are not shared with the GP if they are more than 3 months old. Why not? On Tuesday I get to hear the result of the hip X-ray to see what's causing the pain making it hard for me to walk. I am bracing myself for more unexpected/bad/what the fuck does this mean now news.
Meanwhile the nice lady registrar did tell me how important it was to avoid infection. Which I know. I did point out that I survived the Covid years without catching it & have not in fact had a cold, sore throat or flu in years. A fat lot of good that has done me.
I am finding this all hard to process. The weather is gorgeous - like last year - so it feels unreal that something bad is happening to me. The debates on here seem pointless. There are no elections where I live. As for Wales I feel about it much as Sir Thomas More did in his comment to Richie Rich in A Man For All Seasons.
As for what is happening to Jews in this country, it is beyond depressing. Too many on here seem unable to condemn what is being done to our fellow citizens here without a lot of whtaboutery. There is a lot of bad faith commentary which suggests that many still feel that Jews have to justify why they should not be attacked or made to feel unsafe. They don't. That this should need saying is evidence to me of a latent sort of unconscious anti-semitism which somehow does not see Jews as fully belonging. It is repellent. Starmer's speech was pretty good but far too late. Real effective action now needs to follow. The advice of the anti-terrorism tsar, Jonathan Hall KC, should be listened to -
This is, IMO, true. And has been true from the start. If you organise a march in favour of those carrying out a massacre while they are still doing it (the first pro-Palestine March was organised on the afternoon of 7 October) you are not a good faith actor in any sense.
FWIW the Golders Green attack was being discussed by two people in the waiting room & they were pretty angry at the criticisms being made of the police as they were trying to disarm the attacker.
At any event, I am taking a break for a bit. It's all too much.
I'm a big skeptic of the police and the need to hold them to high standards, but in a literal life and death situation a la disarming an attacker, I think a less than perfect execution of procedure would need to be accepted to a degree.
And I do think whilst extremely few people dismiss concerns outright, the day to day threat to jewish people is very much underestimated by a lot of people.
So Iran will play in the World Cup says Infantino. Was not aware that if they finish second in their group (not implausible as they have Egypt and New Zealand), and USA do too, then they meet in last 32. Wouldn't that be something?
So Iran will play in the World Cup says Infantino. Was not aware that if they finish second in their group (not implausible as they have Egypt and New Zealand), and USA do too, then they meet in last 32. Wouldn't that be something?
So Iran will play in the World Cup says Infantino. Was not aware that if they finish second in their group (not implausible as they have Egypt and New Zealand), and USA do too, then they meet in last 32. Wouldn't that be something?
I predict a stalemate if they do meet.
The USA dominating possession and firing off dozens of shots, Iran 11 men behind the ball and holding out for an undeserved 0-0 draw despite 3 players going off injured.
So Iran will play in the World Cup says Infantino. Was not aware that if they finish second in their group (not implausible as they have Egypt and New Zealand), and USA do too, then they meet in last 32. Wouldn't that be something?
I predict a stalemate if they do meet.
The USA dominating possession and firing off dozens of shots, Iran 11 men behind the ball and holding out for an undeserved 0-0 draw despite 3 players going off injured.
I assume it was agreed in advance they would be removed, so that it seemed like His Majesty achieved something tangible.
But I do like when politicians (national, regional, and local) claim credit for achieving X because they supported X.
You see it a lot at local level in particular because of how unlikely it is that the politician was actually involved in something - unless you're in a Cabinet it is very unusual an individual would have personal decision-making authority, by the way local government powers work - so they have to fall back on implying they were instrumental.
So Iran will play in the World Cup says Infantino. Was not aware that if they finish second in their group (not implausible as they have Egypt and New Zealand), and USA do too, then they meet in last 32. Wouldn't that be something?
I predict a stalemate if they do meet.
The USA dominating possession and firing off dozens of shots, Iran 11 men behind the ball and holding out for an undeserved 0-0 draw despite 3 players going off injured.
Fortunately for Reform the Senedd elections next week are being held via closed list PR, hence tactical voting won't apply. Reform are neck and neck with Plaid for most seats though Plaid will almost certainly form the next Welsh government after a deal with Labour
You do not understand how toxic labour are in Wales
Rhun ap Iorwerth has stated he will run a minority government if necessary and certainly he is not going to have a formal coalition with labour
This is what Alex Salmond did when he just edged one more MSP than Labour in 2007. The rest is history - in 2011 Salmond won a majority and forced IndyRef. Labour should beware - there may be no coming back if ap Iorwerth is half as savvy as Eck.
Salmond relied on Tory confidence and supply in 2007 not Labour
LOL. I actually think that might backfire. He would have been better just greeting the news, thanking the king for his efforts, and leaving it at that.
The idea that Trump would be influenced by someone he's probably forgotten ever meeting is self-evidently risible.
Actress from the show Outlander. Quite talented, and starting to get film roles.
Ok, I don't feel too out of touch having never heard of her then.
She was the mother in Ken Branagh's "Belfast" too.
She is however huge from Outlander. All 8 series of it.
I watched the first series. Thought she was very good, as were the other main actors, and the scenery, but oddly I wasn't hooked by the story, and I normally love a time-travelling caper.
Didn't realise they'd made it to eight series! I know the book series was quite long.
"As for what is happening to Jews in this country, it is beyond depressing. Too many on here seem unable to condemn what is being done to our fellow citizens here without a lot of whtaboutery. There is a lot of bad faith commentary which suggests that many still feel that Jews have to justify why they should not be attacked or made to feel unsafe. They don't. That this should need saying is evidence to me of a latent sort of unconscious anti-semitism which somehow does not see Jews as fully belonging. It is repellent."
Thank you, thank you, thank you for saying that, Cyclefree, especially when your own life is so troubled.
What you wrote reminds me of Orwell's quote about the "first duty of an intelligent man".
"As for what is happening to Jews in this country, it is beyond depressing. Too many on here seem unable to condemn what is being done to our fellow citizens here without a lot of whtaboutery. There is a lot of bad faith commentary which suggests that many still feel that Jews have to justify why they should not be attacked or made to feel unsafe. They don't. That this should need saying is evidence to me of a latent sort of unconscious anti-semitism which somehow does not see Jews as fully belonging. It is repellent."
Thank you, thank you, thank you for saying that, Cyclefree, especially when your own life is so troubled.
What you wrote reminds me of Orwell's quote about the "first duty of an intelligent man".
That's true.
But the solution to this should not be the suppression of free speech. People are angry about what Israel is doing, and they should be allowed to protest that, just as they were allowed to protest Charlie Hebdo and apartheit in South Africa.
Today I had an appointment with the Respiratory Clinic a year after I was admitted with serious chest pain. I assumed it was a routine follow up but in fact I was told that last year my right lung had collapsed because of the cancer & that there was some metastatic cancer in the lung, which had not spread since treatment started. I even got shown a picture of it, lucky old me, as well as of some efflusion, which is minor but with a warning that if it gets worse it might need to be drained.
Now the fact that the treatment seems to be keeping the cancer at bay is good. But this is the first time I've been told the disease is in my lungs, as well as breast, spine, pelvis & ribs. The oncologist's correspondence has never mentioned it. It's news to me. So what else has been kept from me? Or is it just one clinic not talking to the other?
Also the scans from the hospital are not shared with the GP if they are more than 3 months old. Why not? On Tuesday I get to hear the result of the hip X-ray to see what's causing the pain making it hard for me to walk. I am bracing myself for more unexpected/bad/what the fuck does this mean now news.
Meanwhile the nice lady registrar did tell me how important it was to avoid infection. Which I know. I did point out that I survived the Covid years without catching it & have not in fact had a cold, sore throat or flu in years. A fat lot of good that has done me.
I am finding this all hard to process. The weather is gorgeous - like last year - so it feels unreal that something bad is happening to me. The debates on here seem pointless. There are no elections where I live. As for Wales I feel about it much as Sir Thomas More did in his comment to Richie Rich in A Man For All Seasons.
As for what is happening to Jews in this country, it is beyond depressing. Too many on here seem unable to condemn what is being done to our fellow citizens here without a lot of whtaboutery. There is a lot of bad faith commentary which suggests that many still feel that Jews have to justify why they should not be attacked or made to feel unsafe. They don't. That this should need saying is evidence to me of a latent sort of unconscious anti-semitism which somehow does not see Jews as fully belonging. It is repellent. Starmer's speech was pretty good but far too late. Real effective action now needs to follow. The advice of the anti-terrorism tsar, Jonathan Hall KC, should be listened to -
This is, IMO, true. And has been true from the start. If you organise a march in favour of those carrying out a massacre while they are still doing it (the first pro-Palestine March was organised on the afternoon of 7 October) you are not a good faith actor in any sense.
FWIW the Golders Green attack was being discussed by two people in the waiting room & they were pretty angry at the criticisms being made of the police as they were trying to disarm the attacker.
At any event, I am taking a break for a bit. It's all too much.
I'm a big skeptic of the police and the need to hold them to high standards, but in a literal life and death situation a la disarming an attacker, I think a less than perfect execution of procedure would need to be accepted to a degree.
And I do think whilst extremely few people dismiss concerns outright, the day to day threat to jewish people is very much underestimated by a lot of people.
Bearing in mind that this guy had just stabbed a couple of people, and was still holding the knife, I think the police deserve at least a bit of credit for disarming him and arresting him alive, rather than dead with several bullets in him. That's realistically the main alternative.
I can't help but feel sometimes that there are trojan horses on the left trying to bring about a hard right government. The latest example would be criticising the police over their actions in Golders Green.
"As for what is happening to Jews in this country, it is beyond depressing. Too many on here seem unable to condemn what is being done to our fellow citizens here without a lot of whtaboutery. There is a lot of bad faith commentary which suggests that many still feel that Jews have to justify why they should not be attacked or made to feel unsafe. They don't. That this should need saying is evidence to me of a latent sort of unconscious anti-semitism which somehow does not see Jews as fully belonging. It is repellent."
Thank you, thank you, thank you for saying that, Cyclefree, especially when your own life is so troubled.
What you wrote reminds me of Orwell's quote about the "first duty of an intelligent man".
That's true.
But the solution to this should not be the suppression of free speech. People are angry about what Israel is doing, and they should be allowed to protest that, just as they were allowed to protest Charlie Hebdo and apartheit in South Africa.
And as you know inciting violence is an exception to free speech. Which is what some of those marches were doing. What Israel was doing on 8 October 2023 was collecting bodies or bits of them of people who had been brutally raped, tortured and murdered. No decent person protests against that. Those protests were by people supporting the murderers, the rapists, the torturers, the hostage takers. The deputy leader of the Green Party was praising what happened. So I am going to call such people out as people who are on the side of those committing evil. The people who murdered the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists were not protesting or exercising free speech. They were carrying out evil acts.
These so-called anti-racists have never protested the genocide of the Uyghurs by China. They have been silent at the slaughter of thousands of young Iranians and have praised the leaders murdering them. They have been silent at the news coming out of Gaza of the sexual assault of Palestinian women, many widows, by Palestinian men. They have not marched against the killing of Christians in Pakistan or in Nigeria.
It is not - and never has been - free speech to incite violence. We have seen praise and support and incitement of violence against Jews on the streets of London and online. It has led to the actual violence we have seen against Jews. And it has to stop.
"As for what is happening to Jews in this country, it is beyond depressing. Too many on here seem unable to condemn what is being done to our fellow citizens here without a lot of whtaboutery. There is a lot of bad faith commentary which suggests that many still feel that Jews have to justify why they should not be attacked or made to feel unsafe. They don't. That this should need saying is evidence to me of a latent sort of unconscious anti-semitism which somehow does not see Jews as fully belonging. It is repellent."
Thank you, thank you, thank you for saying that, Cyclefree, especially when your own life is so troubled.
What you wrote reminds me of Orwell's quote about the "first duty of an intelligent man".
That's true.
But the solution to this should not be the suppression of free speech. People are angry about what Israel is doing, and they should be allowed to protest that, just as they were allowed to protest Charlie Hebdo and apartheit in South Africa.
That is right. If someone is inciting violence on a march they can and should be arrested under current laws and powers. Instead the police arrest elderly for holding paper signs.
I appreciate that the Israeli government doesn't like demonstrations for a free Palestinian state, but it is not anti-semitic to call for one. Indeed it is government policy.
Banning such marches is also likely to be counter productive, as it is with the farce of the Palestine Action arrests, and would cause far wider civil disobedience. It would be unenforceable.
Today I had an appointment with the Respiratory Clinic a year after I was admitted with serious chest pain. I assumed it was a routine follow up but in fact I was told that last year my right lung had collapsed because of the cancer & that there was some metastatic cancer in the lung, which had not spread since treatment started. I even got shown a picture of it, lucky old me, as well as of some efflusion, which is minor but with a warning that if it gets worse it might need to be drained.
Now the fact that the treatment seems to be keeping the cancer at bay is good. But this is the first time I've been told the disease is in my lungs, as well as breast, spine, pelvis & ribs. The oncologist's correspondence has never mentioned it. It's news to me. So what else has been kept from me? Or is it just one clinic not talking to the other?
Also the scans from the hospital are not shared with the GP if they are more than 3 months old. Why not? On Tuesday I get to hear the result of the hip X-ray to see what's causing the pain making it hard for me to walk. I am bracing myself for more unexpected/bad/what the fuck does this mean now news.
Meanwhile the nice lady registrar did tell me how important it was to avoid infection. Which I know. I did point out that I survived the Covid years without catching it & have not in fact had a cold, sore throat or flu in years. A fat lot of good that has done me.
I am finding this all hard to process. The weather is gorgeous - like last year - so it feels unreal that something bad is happening to me. The debates on here seem pointless. There are no elections where I live. As for Wales I feel about it much as Sir Thomas More did in his comment to Richie Rich in A Man For All Seasons.
As for what is happening to Jews in this country, it is beyond depressing. Too many on here seem unable to condemn what is being done to our fellow citizens here without a lot of whtaboutery. There is a lot of bad faith commentary which suggests that many still feel that Jews have to justify why they should not be attacked or made to feel unsafe. They don't. That this should need saying is evidence to me of a latent sort of unconscious anti-semitism which somehow does not see Jews as fully belonging. It is repellent. Starmer's speech was pretty good but far too late. Real effective action now needs to follow. The advice of the anti-terrorism tsar, Jonathan Hall KC, should be listened to -
This is, IMO, true. And has been true from the start. If you organise a march in favour of those carrying out a massacre while they are still doing it (the first pro-Palestine March was organised on the afternoon of 7 October) you are not a good faith actor in any sense.
FWIW the Golders Green attack was being discussed by two people in the waiting room & they were pretty angry at the criticisms being made of the police as they were trying to disarm the attacker.
At any event, I am taking a break for a bit. It's all too much.
Leaving politics aside for a moment, every sympathy for what you're going through, and the apparently random way it's being passed on to you or not. We all hope that the success of the treatment in keeping the cancer from spreading in your lungs extends as far as possible.
well this is nice but not sure who would be more surprised to learn he was Jewish: ( the late), Congegationalist Asa Briggs ( a friend and superb historian) or Mick Jagger?
"As for what is happening to Jews in this country, it is beyond depressing. Too many on here seem unable to condemn what is being done to our fellow citizens here without a lot of whtaboutery. There is a lot of bad faith commentary which suggests that many still feel that Jews have to justify why they should not be attacked or made to feel unsafe. They don't. That this should need saying is evidence to me of a latent sort of unconscious anti-semitism which somehow does not see Jews as fully belonging. It is repellent."
Thank you, thank you, thank you for saying that, Cyclefree, especially when your own life is so troubled.
What you wrote reminds me of Orwell's quote about the "first duty of an intelligent man".
That's true.
But the solution to this should not be the suppression of free speech. People are angry about what Israel is doing, and they should be allowed to protest that, just as they were allowed to protest Charlie Hebdo and apartheit in South Africa.
And as you know inciting violence is an exception to free speech. Which is what some of those marches were doing. What Israel was doing on 8 October 2023 was collecting bodies or bits of them of people who had been brutally raped, tortured and murdered. No decent person protests against that. Those protests were by people supporting the murderers, the rapists, the torturers, the hostage takers. The deputy leader of the Green Party was praising what happened. So I am going to call such people out as people who are on the side of those committing evil. The people who murdered the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists were not protesting or exercising free speech. They were carrying out evil acts.
These so-called anti-racists have never protested the genocide of the Uyghurs by China. They have been silent at the slaughter of thousands of young Iranians and have praised the leaders murdering them. They have been silent at the news coming out of Gaza of the sexual assault of Palestinian women, many widows, by Palestinian men. They have not marched against the killing of Christians in Pakistan or in Nigeria.
It is not - and never has been - free speech to incite violence. We have seen praise and support and incitement of violence against Jews on the streets of London and online. It has led to the actual violence we have seen against Jews. And it has to stop.
Of course.
If people on these marches incite violence then that is a criminal offence that should be prosecuted.
But reading your post, it seemed to me that you weren't very keen on people being able to demonsrate their unhappiness with the Israeli government.
Today I had an appointment with the Respiratory Clinic a year after I was admitted with serious chest pain. I assumed it was a routine follow up but in fact I was told that last year my right lung had collapsed because of the cancer & that there was some metastatic cancer in the lung, which had not spread since treatment started. I even got shown a picture of it, lucky old me, as well as of some efflusion, which is minor but with a warning that if it gets worse it might need to be drained.
Now the fact that the treatment seems to be keeping the cancer at bay is good. But this is the first time I've been told the disease is in my lungs, as well as breast, spine, pelvis & ribs. The oncologist's correspondence has never mentioned it. It's news to me. So what else has been kept from me? Or is it just one clinic not talking to the other?
Also the scans from the hospital are not shared with the GP if they are more than 3 months old. Why not? On Tuesday I get to hear the result of the hip X-ray to see what's causing the pain making it hard for me to walk. I am bracing myself for more unexpected/bad/what the fuck does this mean now news.
Meanwhile the nice lady registrar did tell me how important it was to avoid infection. Which I know. I did point out that I survived the Covid years without catching it & have not in fact had a cold, sore throat or flu in years. A fat lot of good that has done me.
I am finding this all hard to process. The weather is gorgeous - like last year - so it feels unreal that something bad is happening to me. The debates on here seem pointless. There are no elections where I live. As for Wales I feel about it much as Sir Thomas More did in his comment to Richie Rich in A Man For All Seasons.
As for what is happening to Jews in this country, it is beyond depressing. Too many on here seem unable to condemn what is being done to our fellow citizens here without a lot of whtaboutery. There is a lot of bad faith commentary which suggests that many still feel that Jews have to justify why they should not be attacked or made to feel unsafe. They don't. That this should need saying is evidence to me of a latent sort of unconscious anti-semitism which somehow does not see Jews as fully belonging. It is repellent. Starmer's speech was pretty good but far too late. Real effective action now needs to follow. The advice of the anti-terrorism tsar, Jonathan Hall KC, should be listened to -
This is, IMO, true. And has been true from the start. If you organise a march in favour of those carrying out a massacre while they are still doing it (the first pro-Palestine March was organised on the afternoon of 7 October) you are not a good faith actor in any sense.
FWIW the Golders Green attack was being discussed by two people in the waiting room & they were pretty angry at the criticisms being made of the police as they were trying to disarm the attacker.
At any event, I am taking a break for a bit. It's all too much.
well this is nice but not sure who would be more surprised to learn he was Jewish: ( the late), Congegationalist Asa Briggs ( a friend and superb historian) or Mick Jagger?
well this is nice but not sure who would be more surprised to learn he was Jewish: ( the late), Congegationalist Asa Briggs ( a friend and superb historian) or Mick Jagger?
'We will kill you and burn your house': Council staff under attack from High Street gangs
Halfway down that appalling report
“A failed asylum seeker”
Basically, we have imported a million or more people who are criminals who have no right to be here and who contribute nothing but crime, misery and corruption. And they all have to go
Its a truly terrible time in our politics. I am 64 and I cannot remember a time like it. As a child we had Wilson, one of the youngest Oxford dons, a genuinely brilliant man. Healey, Roy Mason, even Foot, these were men of genuine talent, skills and passion. Thatcher's government was incredible by today's standards. Howe, Whitelaw, Carrington, Lawson, Pym, even Heseltine, a government of genuine talent. Blair and Brown, not my taste, especially the latter but gifted, Blair especially. The Coalition, Cameron, Osborne, Clegg. Serious people doing a serious job to the best of their ability.
No one is going to agree with everyone on that list and what they did, hell, I don't. But we had leadership and a sense of purpose. Now, in every party, we seem to have people whose primary goal is to be PM. Just for their own egos. With no idea what they want this country to be, how to improve the lives of those that live here, no clear plan at all. It's tragic.
For me we hit rock bottom under Truss and are now slowly recovering. Sunak and Starmer have both had impressive jobs in their respective fields and were not career politicians.
The current labour cabinet is quite lawyer/NGO/spad heavy and would benefit from a broader range of backgrounds, but i think there's only a few who are just desperate to become PM (Streeting is the obvious one).
well this is nice but not sure who would be more surprised to learn he was Jewish: ( the late), Congegationalist Asa Briggs ( a friend and superb historian) or Mick Jagger?
well this is nice but not sure who would be more surprised to learn he was Jewish: ( the late), Congegationalist Asa Briggs ( a friend and superb historian) or Mick Jagger?
Its a truly terrible time in our politics. I am 64 and I cannot remember a time like it. As a child we had Wilson, one of the youngest Oxford dons, a genuinely brilliant man. Healey, Roy Mason, even Foot, these were men of genuine talent, skills and passion. Thatcher's government was incredible by today's standards. Howe, Whitelaw, Carrington, Lawson, Pym, even Heseltine, a government of genuine talent. Blair and Brown, not my taste, especially the latter but gifted, Blair especially. The Coalition, Cameron, Osborne, Clegg. Serious people doing a serious job to the best of their ability.
No one is going to agree with everyone on that list and what they did, hell, I don't. But we had leadership and a sense of purpose. Now, in every party, we seem to have people whose primary goal is to be PM. Just for their own egos. With no idea what they want this country to be, how to improve the lives of those that live here, no clear plan at all. It's tragic.
You have a point, but you also show the limits of having brilliant or talented people. Wilson, for instance, got the highest mark ever in his Oxford economics exam, and indeed considered becoming an Oxford don, but under him the UK suffered economic disaster after humiliation, many of them entirely unnecessary, and ended up just after he left at the IMF. Starmer and Reeves are taking us in the same direction, but nowhere near as far yet, despite the latter being utterly unfit to tie Wilson's shoelaces intellectually.
(There are two main reasons for why Wilson was so rubbish in government. The UK economics he learned at university was focused on preventing a return to the depression of the 1930s, and simply had nothing to say about the very different problems of the 1960s and 1970s, and secondly, as a short-termist political animal he was simply incapable of saying no to ever larger demands for public spending from his MPs and the unions. His drunkenness and incipient senility towards the end didn't help either).
Intellectual brilliance and talent isn't enough, or even particularly important, otherwise we could just confine the vote to university professors and a few businessmen. Good judgement and backbone are far more important, and, above a certain level, I don't think they are well correlated.
I have just had an email from NASUWT claiming every school in England is to be forced to join an academy chain.
Is this true and if so is Bridget Phillipson totally fucking insane?
Well I can't find any reference to it online so it comes down to why would the NASUWT lie about something that might encourage teachers to join them / remain a member?
Well Matt Wrack is somebody I don’t trust an inch, but this is the statement:
I cannot imagine that they would have written in quite these terms of somebody was not at least flying a kite and they were trying to force a denial.
I very much hope either they are wrong or this action forestalls it. Whatever the rights and wrongs of academies academy chains - well, autocorrect made them ‘scammed chains’ and I wouldn’t say it was wrong.
Looks like it refers back to the white paper covered here;
3. Standalone trusts ‘challenged’ to defragment system The government wants all schools to join or form trusts. Councils and local area partnerships will also be given the power to launch their own chains. To help manage potential conflicts of interest, restrictions on local authority involvement in the day-to-day running of their trusts will be introduced. Pointing to the number of single-academy trusts in deficit, the document posed a “challenge to our best standalone schools” to partner with others and make the system less fragmented.
"Wants" isn't the same as "forced to", and has been department policy for a while, hasn't it- possibly back to the days of NiMo? Free-standing state schools only works if you ignore the capacity for management in the system and oversight in the government.
Government giving up governing?
SPADs, outsourcing, Think Tanks etc. Makes sense given the poor quality of today's politicians. Perhaps the Blob have had enough of trying to explain the minutiae of governance to the current and future (Reform) governments.
Its a truly terrible time in our politics. I am 64 and I cannot remember a time like it. As a child we had Wilson, one of the youngest Oxford dons, a genuinely brilliant man. Healey, Roy Mason, even Foot, these were men of genuine talent, skills and passion. Thatcher's government was incredible by today's standards. Howe, Whitelaw, Carrington, Lawson, Pym, even Heseltine, a government of genuine talent. Blair and Brown, not my taste, especially the latter but gifted, Blair especially. The Coalition, Cameron, Osborne, Clegg. Serious people doing a serious job to the best of their ability.
No one is going to agree with everyone on that list and what they did, hell, I don't. But we had leadership and a sense of purpose. Now, in every party, we seem to have people whose primary goal is to be PM. Just for their own egos. With no idea what they want this country to be, how to improve the lives of those that live here, no clear plan at all. It's tragic.
You have a point, but you also show the limits of having brilliant or talented people. Wilson, for instance, got the highest mark ever in his Oxford economics exam, and indeed considered becoming an Oxford don, but under him the UK suffered economic disaster after humiliation, many of them entirely unnecessary, and ended up just after he left at the IMF. Starmer and Reeves are taking us in the same direction, but nowhere near as far yet, despite the latter being utterly unfit to tie Wilson's shoelaces intellectually.
(There are two main reasons for why Wilson was so rubbish in government. The UK economics he learned at university was focused on preventing a return to the depression of the 1930s, and simply had nothing to say about the very different problems of the 1960s and 1970s, and secondly, as a short-termist political animal he was simply incapable of saying no to ever larger demands for public spending from his MPs and the unions. His drunkenness and incipient senility towards the end didn't help either).
Intellectual brilliance and talent isn't enough, or even particularly important, otherwise we could just confine the vote to university professors and a few businessmen. Good judgement and backbone are far more important, and, above a certain level, I don't think they are well correlated.
I take your point that cleverness alone is not enough but its a start. More important is having a clear idea of what you are looking to do and how you think the lot of the populace can be improved. I think cleverness and the ability to think analytically can help with that.
Economically, Wilson's government were pursuing a dead end. It wasn't so much the 30s in my view, it was more a consensus that the capitalist system was exploitative and the objective should be to ensure that as much of the profit should be earned by the workers as possible. Inevitably, this led to the wholesale massacre of the geese laying the golden eggs and it was only with the labour reforms of the early 80s under Thatcher that a better way forward was found.
Today we have corporate managerialism but we have again lost our focus on growth, the need to encourage investment and training and the need to be competitive in a world that owes us nothing.
This seems a good moment to report Mrs PtP's visit to Golders Green on Wednesday when she happened to have a work appointment there with the Jewish Chronicle. She didn't witness the attack but spoke to a number who did. They made it clear to her that it had little to do with anti-semitism and everything to do with a nutcase committing a horrible crime, because that's what some nutcases do. It isn't surprising that local leaders have taken the opportunity to press their claims in the aftermath but any suggestion that Golders Green or anywhere else in London is a no go zone are complete bollox. I have passed through myself several times in the past few days and there are no signs of the local Jews hiding in terror, covering their stars of David, removing their skull caps, or dressing any differently to the way they do normally. I was personally able to make my usual visit to Daniels and scoff a smoked salmon bagel without fear. In short, it is business as usual.
Mrs PtP is half Jewish. I am not Jewish, although I do have a roman nose. Neither of us has a dog in this fight. I used to think this was perhaps a lazy or unprincipled position but increasingly I see it as one to be proud of.
"As for what is happening to Jews in this country, it is beyond depressing. Too many on here seem unable to condemn what is being done to our fellow citizens here without a lot of whtaboutery. There is a lot of bad faith commentary which suggests that many still feel that Jews have to justify why they should not be attacked or made to feel unsafe. They don't. That this should need saying is evidence to me of a latent sort of unconscious anti-semitism which somehow does not see Jews as fully belonging. It is repellent."
Thank you, thank you, thank you for saying that, Cyclefree, especially when your own life is so troubled.
What you wrote reminds me of Orwell's quote about the "first duty of an intelligent man".
That's true.
But the solution to this should not be the suppression of free speech. People are angry about what Israel is doing, and they should be allowed to protest that, just as they were allowed to protest Charlie Hebdo and apartheit in South Africa.
And as you know inciting violence is an exception to free speech. Which is what some of those marches were doing. What Israel was doing on 8 October 2023 was collecting bodies or bits of them of people who had been brutally raped, tortured and murdered. No decent person protests against that. Those protests were by people supporting the murderers, the rapists, the torturers, the hostage takers. The deputy leader of the Green Party was praising what happened. So I am going to call such people out as people who are on the side of those committing evil. The people who murdered the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists were not protesting or exercising free speech. They were carrying out evil acts.
These so-called anti-racists have never protested the genocide of the Uyghurs by China. They have been silent at the slaughter of thousands of young Iranians and have praised the leaders murdering them. They have been silent at the news coming out of Gaza of the sexual assault of Palestinian women, many widows, by Palestinian men. They have not marched against the killing of Christians in Pakistan or in Nigeria.
It is not - and never has been - free speech to incite violence. We have seen praise and support and incitement of violence against Jews on the streets of London and online. It has led to the actual violence we have seen against Jews. And it has to stop.
Of course.
If people on these marches incite violence then that is a criminal offence that should be prosecuted.
But reading your post, it seemed to me that you weren't very keen on people being able to demonsrate their unhappiness with the Israeli government.
Well as we saw yesterday some people consider even criticism of Bibi’s regime to be anti semitic.
This from the Guardian is worth a read, about the deep roots of Labour’s impending failure in London; in particular the origins of the housing crisis and Labour’s failure on housing during the Blair years:
This seems a good moment to report Mrs PtP's visit to Golders Green on Wednesday when she happened to have a work appointment there with the Jewish Chronicle. She didn't witness the attack but spoke to a number who did. They made it clear to her that it had little to do with anti-semitism and everything to do with a nutcase committing a horrible crime, because that's what some nutcases do. It isn't surprising that local leaders have taken the opportunity to press their claims in the aftermath but any suggestion that Golders Green or anywhere else in London is a no go zone are complete bollox. I have passed through myself several times in the past few days and there are no signs of the local Jews hiding in terror, covering their stars of David, removing their skull caps, or dressing any differently to the way they do normally. I was personally able to make my usual visit to Daniels and scoff a smoked salmon bagel without fear. In short, it is business as usual.
Mrs PtP is half Jewish. I am not Jewish, although I do have a roman nose. Neither of us has a dog in this fight. I used to think this was perhaps a lazy or unprincipled position but increasingly I see it as one to be proud of.
I hope it doesn't cause offence.
Appreciate the view from the front line so to speak. It does seem there will be an outcry; a bandwagon; point scoring; and then it drifts away until the next time. Meanwhile women will be beaten, threatened, abused, exploited on a daily basis and the world will shrug.
What I can't understand is that universally we have a mother. Some will have wives. Some will even have daughters but we have a blind spot to how one half of the world treats the other half.
Its a truly terrible time in our politics. I am 64 and I cannot remember a time like it. As a child we had Wilson, one of the youngest Oxford dons, a genuinely brilliant man. Healey, Roy Mason, even Foot, these were men of genuine talent, skills and passion. Thatcher's government was incredible by today's standards. Howe, Whitelaw, Carrington, Lawson, Pym, even Heseltine, a government of genuine talent. Blair and Brown, not my taste, especially the latter but gifted, Blair especially. The Coalition, Cameron, Osborne, Clegg. Serious people doing a serious job to the best of their ability.
No one is going to agree with everyone on that list and what they did, hell, I don't. But we had leadership and a sense of purpose. Now, in every party, we seem to have people whose primary goal is to be PM. Just for their own egos. With no idea what they want this country to be, how to improve the lives of those that live here, no clear plan at all. It's tragic.
You have a point, but you also show the limits of having brilliant or talented people. Wilson, for instance, got the highest mark ever in his Oxford economics exam, and indeed considered becoming an Oxford don, but under him the UK suffered economic disaster after humiliation, many of them entirely unnecessary, and ended up just after he left at the IMF. Starmer and Reeves are taking us in the same direction, but nowhere near as far yet, despite the latter being utterly unfit to tie Wilson's shoelaces intellectually.
(There are two main reasons for why Wilson was so rubbish in government. The UK economics he learned at university was focused on preventing a return to the depression of the 1930s, and simply had nothing to say about the very different problems of the 1960s and 1970s, and secondly, as a short-termist political animal he was simply incapable of saying no to ever larger demands for public spending from his MPs and the unions. His drunkenness and incipient senility towards the end didn't help either).
Intellectual brilliance and talent isn't enough, or even particularly important, otherwise we could just confine the vote to university professors and a few businessmen. Good judgement and backbone are far more important, and, above a certain level, I don't think they are well correlated.
I take your point that cleverness alone is not enough but its a start. More important is having a clear idea of what you are looking to do and how you think the lot of the populace can be improved. I think cleverness and the ability to think analytically can help with that.
Economically, Wilson's government were pursuing a dead end. It wasn't so much the 30s in my view, it was more a consensus that the capitalist system was exploitative and the objective should be to ensure that as much of the profit should be earned by the workers as possible. Inevitably, this led to the wholesale massacre of the geese laying the golden eggs and it was only with the labour reforms of the early 80s under Thatcher that a better way forward was found.
Today we have corporate managerialism but we have again lost our focus on growth, the need to encourage investment and training and the need to be competitive in a world that owes us nothing.
We have also lost any sense of redistribution.
1976 was the year that Wilson left office, it was also the year our gini coefficient was at its lowest, and the happiest year. These things are not coincidence.
Nope. It was never perceived as a single nation until well into the 9th century and probably the early 10th. Offa in the late 8th century does not refer to himself as King of England, only Mercia. The first King to refer to himself as King of the English (Rex Anglorum) was Athelstan as LostPassword said earlier.
Alfred issued what he intended to be the first unified coinage system in England in 886 AD but at the time the Eastern part of England was still under Danelaw so there was no unified England at that point.
The first person to be crowned King of a unified England was even later than Athelstan - Edgar in 973 AD
Not sure I agree
You are correct that was when the single country named England with its approximate current boundaries came into being.
But kingdoms are organic - “England” was just a political figleaf to hide what was really a Greater Wessex. And that had been an extant kingdom for hundreds of years
Er no. It was one of a number of Kingdoms existing side by side and often at war with each other.
If a single European state ever comes into existence you wouldn't date its founding from Napoleon's time. It would be patent nonsense.
Northumbria was an independent kIngdom until 867 East Anglia was an independent Kingdom until 869 Mercia was an independent Kingdom until 879
All of these fell because of the Danes and then remained under Danish control to agreater or lesser degree until the early 10th century.
Wessex tried very hard to gain control of its neighbours but it didn't succeed until after the end of Danelaw. And even Wessex wasn't a stable kingdom until Ecgberht in the early 9th century
The idea there was a single political entity called England before Athelstan simply isn't true.
You are missing my point.
“Emgland” wasn’t a new political entity. Wessex conquered the other kingdoms and the danelaw. “England” was just a rebranding of “Wessex” to make it more politically acceptable
Hence the correct date is the foundation of Wessex.
Fortunately for Reform the Senedd elections next week are being held via closed list PR, hence tactical voting won't apply. Reform are neck and neck with Plaid for most seats though Plaid will almost certainly form the next Welsh government after a deal with Labour
That presumes people understand what voting system they’re using, and it’s far from clear that they do in this case.
Its a truly terrible time in our politics. I am 64 and I cannot remember a time like it. As a child we had Wilson, one of the youngest Oxford dons, a genuinely brilliant man. Healey, Roy Mason, even Foot, these were men of genuine talent, skills and passion. Thatcher's government was incredible by today's standards. Howe, Whitelaw, Carrington, Lawson, Pym, even Heseltine, a government of genuine talent. Blair and Brown, not my taste, especially the latter but gifted, Blair especially. The Coalition, Cameron, Osborne, Clegg. Serious people doing a serious job to the best of their ability.
No one is going to agree with everyone on that list and what they did, hell, I don't. But we had leadership and a sense of purpose. Now, in every party, we seem to have people whose primary goal is to be PM. Just for their own egos. With no idea what they want this country to be, how to improve the lives of those that live here, no clear plan at all. It's tragic.
It’s been a shift in the culture over the last 30 years - driven by the media and now social media. To be a politician is hugely unpleasant.
I have a number of friends who a generation ago would have gone into politics, most likely content to be backbenchers and serve their local communities. But the environment is so unpleasant now that none of them have the slightest interest
King had personally lobbied Trump for this, including back in Windsor.
We’re supposed to be grateful for a scrap when his stupid war is going to cause huge economic misery for the UK .
Fxck him and fxck his cesspit administration,
It’s £150m exports for the Scottish whisky industry. In return for 4 days making Trump feel good about himself. That’s worth having regardless of anything else
I went to my local ward hustings tonight. The publicity for this was pretty derisory - and the audience was tiny - and of the five candidates only the Tory incumbent turned up. Nevertheless, as the group leader of the currently large - likely soon to be somewhat smaller - Tory opposition on the island, he did promise me that he’d have nothing to do with Reform running the council. Which - should they do well but not quite well enough, as is still possible, could be a relevant factor in who forms the administration for IOWC after next week.
What on earth happened to the LD stronghold that was the IoW?
It was almost a thing once wasn't it?
Best to steer clear of Reform.
If you look at the council composition, as well as four LibDems, there are a group of various independents, many under the "Island Independents Network" banner, who are essentially centre-left folk akin to the liberals who ran the island prior to the coalition. Since then, they've preferred to stress their independence rather than their politics. Next week's election is essentially a competition between the current Indy-LibDem-Green coalition that's narrowly been running the council, and Reform, essentially coming from nowhere, with the Tory group - the administration not so long ago and the opposition now, only a smidgin short of control - quite possibly being reduced to onlookers.
As for Reform, they've put up candidates in every ward, but few people know who they actually are. They've almost all refused to engage with local media, returning "no response received" statements in the local newpaper and news websites analysis of each ward, and the leaflets coming through our doors are national Nigel Farage mailshots with nothing about our local patch or who the candidate is, whatsoever.
As the Tory councillor said at tonight's meeting, the first Reform councillor elected on the island actually lived in the Midlands, and used his girlfriend's father's holiday home address to stand as a candidate in the by-election, which he won, and after a few months of not attending any meetings, promptly resigned. Only for a new Reform candidate to win again. The second Reform councillor elected was a woman who, somehow, managed to persuade the council's legal officers not to disclose the properties she owned on the island within her declaration of interests; when these were eventually revealed, after a sustained councillor and local campaign, it turned out she was a slum landlord awash with complaints from her tenants, and Farage threw her out of Reform. Then, somehow, her Reform membership was restored but she didn't team up with the first Reform councillor to form a group. Now, despite still being a Reform member, she's re-standing in her ward facing an official Reform opponent.
To be fair, in Leics our minority Reform council is not noticeably any more useless than the previous Tory controlled one.
I think this mostly down to the complete neutering of local government over the years. It is just statuary duties and silly stunts.
I said yesterday that Reform councils had failed and some nobber tried to poke a stick at me personally whilst insisting they hadn't failed because having promised to cut council tax they had put it up.
This seems a good moment to report Mrs PtP's visit to Golders Green on Wednesday when she happened to have a work appointment there with the Jewish Chronicle. She didn't witness the attack but spoke to a number who did. They made it clear to her that it had little to do with anti-semitism and everything to do with a nutcase committing a horrible crime, because that's what some nutcases do. It isn't surprising that local leaders have taken the opportunity to press their claims in the aftermath but any suggestion that Golders Green or anywhere else in London is a no go zone are complete bollox. I have passed through myself several times in the past few days and there are no signs of the local Jews hiding in terror, covering their stars of David, removing their skull caps, or dressing any differently to the way they do normally. I was personally able to make my usual visit to Daniels and scoff a smoked salmon bagel without fear. In short, it is business as usual.
Mrs PtP is half Jewish. I am not Jewish, although I do have a roman nose. Neither of us has a dog in this fight. I used to think this was perhaps a lazy or unprincipled position but increasingly I see it as one to be proud of.
I hope it doesn't cause offence.
It did surprise me that the authorities were quick to declare it a terrorist incident when it's more usual to declare terrorist attacks as mental health incidents.
King had personally lobbied Trump for this, including back in Windsor.
We’re supposed to be grateful for a scrap when his stupid war is going to cause huge economic misery for the UK .
Fxck him and fxck his cesspit administration,
It’s £150m exports for the Scottish whisky industry. In return for 4 days making Trump feel good about himself. That’s worth having regardless of anything else
Yes it’s good news until Trump throws a tirade and hammers the UK on something else .
The economic damage caused by his war is going to cause untold economic misery for many people in the UK and around the world .
Fortunately for Reform the Senedd elections next week are being held via closed list PR, hence tactical voting won't apply. Reform are neck and neck with Plaid for most seats though Plaid will almost certainly form the next Welsh government after a deal with Labour
That presumes people understand what voting system they’re using, and it’s far from clear that they do in this case.
That is a very good point. People still thinking that they need to vote X to keep Y out, even though a vote for Z would do the job just as well.
Of course, politicians would never want to give voters the wrong impression of how the system works for party advantage.
BTW: Only one person at a time in the voting booth - d'Hondt stand so close to me.
Its a truly terrible time in our politics. I am 64 and I cannot remember a time like it. As a child we had Wilson, one of the youngest Oxford dons, a genuinely brilliant man. Healey, Roy Mason, even Foot, these were men of genuine talent, skills and passion. Thatcher's government was incredible by today's standards. Howe, Whitelaw, Carrington, Lawson, Pym, even Heseltine, a government of genuine talent. Blair and Brown, not my taste, especially the latter but gifted, Blair especially. The Coalition, Cameron, Osborne, Clegg. Serious people doing a serious job to the best of their ability.
No one is going to agree with everyone on that list and what they did, hell, I don't. But we had leadership and a sense of purpose. Now, in every party, we seem to have people whose primary goal is to be PM. Just for their own egos. With no idea what they want this country to be, how to improve the lives of those that live here, no clear plan at all. It's tragic.
It’s been a shift in the culture over the last 30 years - driven by the media and now social media. To be a politician is hugely unpleasant.
I have a number of friends who a generation ago would have gone into politics, most likely content to be backbenchers and serve their local communities. But the environment is so unpleasant now that none of them have the slightest interest
I'm increasingly convinced that the loss of the bit in bold is part of our collective problem.
It's understandable that we didn't want part-time MPs (or councillors) treating the role as one thing you do out of many. But if everyone going to Westminster has ambitions that can only be fulfilled by being a Top Minister (hello Al! hello Wes! hello Robert! etc), then it's going to be a ghastly place to work. And then the people who are good and with a healthy five percent of self-doubt get squeezed out by the pure ambition balls.
Labour politicians looking at Keir and thinking "I could do better than that" might not get entirely wrong. But it's still their choice to be dicks about it.
King had personally lobbied Trump for this, including back in Windsor.
We’re supposed to be grateful for a scrap when his stupid war is going to cause huge economic misery for the UK .
Fxck him and fxck his cesspit administration,
It’s £150m exports for the Scottish whisky industry. In return for 4 days making Trump feel good about himself. That’s worth having regardless of anything else
Yes it’s good news until Trump throws a tirade and hammers the UK on something else .
The economic damage caused by his war is going to cause untold economic misery for many people in the UK and around the world .
Though markets seem barely ruffled at the prospect. Why?
I said yesterday that Reform councils had failed and some nobber tried to poke a stick at me personally whilst insisting they hadn't failed because having promised to cut council tax they had put it up.
You claimed Durham, along with Kent, is a failed council. It isn’t. It’s doing fine. Won an award. I’ve seen improvements from the last time where I live and council tax, in real terms, has gone down.
I get it you don’t like Reform and I get it you don’t have a high opinion of people who vote for them even though you understand why. However some balance on their performance at a council level may be more interesting than ‘they’re all shit’ 👍
Its a truly terrible time in our politics. I am 64 and I cannot remember a time like it. As a child we had Wilson, one of the youngest Oxford dons, a genuinely brilliant man. Healey, Roy Mason, even Foot, these were men of genuine talent, skills and passion. Thatcher's government was incredible by today's standards. Howe, Whitelaw, Carrington, Lawson, Pym, even Heseltine, a government of genuine talent. Blair and Brown, not my taste, especially the latter but gifted, Blair especially. The Coalition, Cameron, Osborne, Clegg. Serious people doing a serious job to the best of their ability.
No one is going to agree with everyone on that list and what they did, hell, I don't. But we had leadership and a sense of purpose. Now, in every party, we seem to have people whose primary goal is to be PM. Just for their own egos. With no idea what they want this country to be, how to improve the lives of those that live here, no clear plan at all. It's tragic.
It’s been a shift in the culture over the last 30 years - driven by the media and now social media. To be a politician is hugely unpleasant.
I have a number of friends who a generation ago would have gone into politics, most likely content to be backbenchers and serve their local communities. But the environment is so unpleasant now that none of them have the slightest interest
I'm increasingly convinced that the loss of the bit in bold is part of our collective problem.
It's understandable that we didn't want part-time MPs (or councillors) treating the role as one thing you do out of many. But if everyone going to Westminster has ambitions that can only be fulfilled by being a Top Minister (hello Al! hello Wes! hello Robert! etc), then it's going to be a ghastly place to work. And then the people who are good and with a healthy five percent of self-doubt get squeezed out by the pure ambition balls.
Labour politicians looking at Keir and thinking "I could do better than that" might not get entirely wrong. But it's still their choice to be dicks about it.
I don't want my MP to be a glorified social worker, swamped with 'case work'. I want them to be focused on issues of national and international importance, yes bringing a regional perspective to the table where appropriate, but not bothering themselves with faff that should be the concern of local councillors (or nobody at all).
The English Devolution and Empowerment Bill has received Royal Assent this means future mayoralty elections will go back to using the Supplementary Vote system .
King had personally lobbied Trump for this, including back in Windsor.
We’re supposed to be grateful for a scrap when his stupid war is going to cause huge economic misery for the UK .
Fxck him and fxck his cesspit administration,
It’s £150m exports for the Scottish whisky industry. In return for 4 days making Trump feel good about himself. That’s worth having regardless of anything else
Yes it’s good news until Trump throws a tirade and hammers the UK on something else .
The economic damage caused by his war is going to cause untold economic misery for many people in the UK and around the world .
Though markets seem barely ruffled at the prospect. Why?
I think they’re in denial ! We’re only just at the beginning of the economic effects .
King had personally lobbied Trump for this, including back in Windsor.
We’re supposed to be grateful for a scrap when his stupid war is going to cause huge economic misery for the UK .
Fxck him and fxck his cesspit administration,
It’s £150m exports for the Scottish whisky industry. In return for 4 days making Trump feel good about himself. That’s worth having regardless of anything else
Yes it’s good news until Trump throws a tirade and hammers the UK on something else .
The economic damage caused by his war is going to cause untold economic misery for many people in the UK and around the world .
Though markets seem barely ruffled at the prospect. Why?
“Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.”
The English Devolution and Empowerment Bill has received Royal Assent this means future mayoralty elections will go back to using the Supplementary Vote system .
King had personally lobbied Trump for this, including back in Windsor.
We’re supposed to be grateful for a scrap when his stupid war is going to cause huge economic misery for the UK .
Fxck him and fxck his cesspit administration,
It’s £150m exports for the Scottish whisky industry. In return for 4 days making Trump feel good about himself. That’s worth having regardless of anything else
Yes it’s good news until Trump throws a tirade and hammers the UK on something else .
The economic damage caused by his war is going to cause untold economic misery for many people in the UK and around the world .
Though markets seem barely ruffled at the prospect. Why?
“Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.”
I don't think it's irrational in this case, everyone is probably looking at things and coming up with different scenarios so with no consistent outcome the markets reflect the fact everyone is expecting different failures..
The English Devolution and Empowerment Bill has received Royal Assent this means future mayoralty elections will go back to using the Supplementary Vote system .
AV would be so much better.
Having to assume who will be in the top two is likely to be more of a challenge in our new multi-party environment.
The English Devolution and Empowerment Bill has received Royal Assent this means future mayoralty elections will go back to using the Supplementary Vote system .
Should’ve been AV, but better than nothing.
Yes AV is fairer . The Tories made the change to FPTP in an effort to win more mayoralties. Labour have changed it back which helps protect them especially in London .
This seems a good moment to report Mrs PtP's visit to Golders Green on Wednesday when she happened to have a work appointment there with the Jewish Chronicle. She didn't witness the attack but spoke to a number who did. They made it clear to her that it had little to do with anti-semitism and everything to do with a nutcase committing a horrible crime, because that's what some nutcases do. It isn't surprising that local leaders have taken the opportunity to press their claims in the aftermath but any suggestion that Golders Green or anywhere else in London is a no go zone are complete bollox. I have passed through myself several times in the past few days and there are no signs of the local Jews hiding in terror, covering their stars of David, removing their skull caps, or dressing any differently to the way they do normally. I was personally able to make my usual visit to Daniels and scoff a smoked salmon bagel without fear. In short, it is business as usual.
Mrs PtP is half Jewish. I am not Jewish, although I do have a roman nose. Neither of us has a dog in this fight. I used to think this was perhaps a lazy or unprincipled position but increasingly I see it as one to be proud of.
I hope it doesn't cause offence.
It did surprise me that the authorities were quick to declare it a terrorist incident when it's more usual to declare terrorist attacks as mental health incidents.
It’s a weird fetish of modern society that the main argument after a act of violence is what it is classified as ( terrorism , racial , mental heath ) as this this is the important thing and not the violence murder . If I get killed by a terrorist incident I am not sure it would make me feel better if I knew I was killed by only a good old fashioned act of crime
Nope. It was never perceived as a single nation until well into the 9th century and probably the early 10th. Offa in the late 8th century does not refer to himself as King of England, only Mercia. The first King to refer to himself as King of the English (Rex Anglorum) was Athelstan as LostPassword said earlier.
Alfred issued what he intended to be the first unified coinage system in England in 886 AD but at the time the Eastern part of England was still under Danelaw so there was no unified England at that point.
The first person to be crowned King of a unified England was even later than Athelstan - Edgar in 973 AD
Not sure I agree
You are correct that was when the single country named England with its approximate current boundaries came into being.
But kingdoms are organic - “England” was just a political figleaf to hide what was really a Greater Wessex. And that had been an extant kingdom for hundreds of years
Er no. It was one of a number of Kingdoms existing side by side and often at war with each other.
If a single European state ever comes into existence you wouldn't date its founding from Napoleon's time. It would be patent nonsense.
Northumbria was an independent kIngdom until 867 East Anglia was an independent Kingdom until 869 Mercia was an independent Kingdom until 879
All of these fell because of the Danes and then remained under Danish control to agreater or lesser degree until the early 10th century.
Wessex tried very hard to gain control of its neighbours but it didn't succeed until after the end of Danelaw. And even Wessex wasn't a stable kingdom until Ecgberht in the early 9th century
The idea there was a single political entity called England before Athelstan simply isn't true.
You are missing my point.
“Emgland” wasn’t a new political entity. Wessex conquered the other kingdoms and the danelaw. “England” was just a rebranding of “Wessex” to make it more politically acceptable
Hence the correct date is the foundation of Wessex.
It's about more than kingdom titles, though, isn't it? The question is whether the concept of all the people's living south and east of the mountains where the heathen celts live were seen as one people, or peoples of separate, warring kingdoms. Richard is right that, prior to Athelstan, there wasn't really that sense of commonality, other than that all the kingdoms had faced recurring threat from the Vikings. Leon's blunder into what is really an academic debate reflected the mistranslation he has of Bede's actual work, which referred to "our island and nation" - suggesting that, if Bede did indeed perceive some wider community of interest beyond the individual kingdoms, he was imagining Great Britain and not England.
“I was in Stranger's Bar on Monday night. The reports about Angela Rayner are true. If the choice facing the Labour Party is between her and Keir Starmer, they must stick with Starmer > Daily Mail >”
King had personally lobbied Trump for this, including back in Windsor.
We’re supposed to be grateful for a scrap when his stupid war is going to cause huge economic misery for the UK .
Fxck him and fxck his cesspit administration,
It’s £150m exports for the Scottish whisky industry. In return for 4 days making Trump feel good about himself. That’s worth having regardless of anything else
Yes it’s good news until Trump throws a tirade and hammers the UK on something else .
The economic damage caused by his war is going to cause untold economic misery for many people in the UK and around the world .
Though markets seem barely ruffled at the prospect. Why?
“Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.”
I don't think it's irrational in this case, everyone is probably looking at things and coming up with different scenarios so with no consistent outcome the markets reflect the fact everyone is expecting different failures..
The markets appear to reflect that the consensus view of investors is that there will not be significant failures. Or that the failures will not be significant in comparison to the successes. I disagree.
Fortunately for Reform the Senedd elections next week are being held via closed list PR, hence tactical voting won't apply. Reform are neck and neck with Plaid for most seats though Plaid will almost certainly form the next Welsh government after a deal with Labour
That presumes people understand what voting system they’re using, and it’s far from clear that they do in this case.
That is a very good point. People still thinking that they need to vote X to keep Y out, even though a vote for Z would do the job just as well.
Of course, politicians would never want to give voters the wrong impression of how the system works for party advantage.
BTW: Only one person at a time in the voting booth - d'Hondt stand so close to me.
We also know people take time to understand how transferable votes (as in STV or AV) work - voters' first assumption is often that it's like Eurovision and that a party somehow benefits from a second preference, at a lower level than for a first preference. Whereas in reality unless and until the first preference party is eliminated (and even then, requiring the second pref party not to have been eliminated prior), a second preference is of no value. Maybe TSE could do a thread on it, some time?
Its a truly terrible time in our politics. I am 64 and I cannot remember a time like it. As a child we had Wilson, one of the youngest Oxford dons, a genuinely brilliant man. Healey, Roy Mason, even Foot, these were men of genuine talent, skills and passion. Thatcher's government was incredible by today's standards. Howe, Whitelaw, Carrington, Lawson, Pym, even Heseltine, a government of genuine talent. Blair and Brown, not my taste, especially the latter but gifted, Blair especially. The Coalition, Cameron, Osborne, Clegg. Serious people doing a serious job to the best of their ability.
No one is going to agree with everyone on that list and what they did, hell, I don't. But we had leadership and a sense of purpose. Now, in every party, we seem to have people whose primary goal is to be PM. Just for their own egos. With no idea what they want this country to be, how to improve the lives of those that live here, no clear plan at all. It's tragic.
It’s been a shift in the culture over the last 30 years - driven by the media and now social media. To be a politician is hugely unpleasant.
I have a number of friends who a generation ago would have gone into politics, most likely content to be backbenchers and serve their local communities. But the environment is so unpleasant now that none of them have the slightest interest
I'm increasingly convinced that the loss of the bit in bold is part of our collective problem.
It's understandable that we didn't want part-time MPs (or councillors) treating the role as one thing you do out of many. But if everyone going to Westminster has ambitions that can only be fulfilled by being a Top Minister (hello Al! hello Wes! hello Robert! etc), then it's going to be a ghastly place to work. And then the people who are good and with a healthy five percent of self-doubt get squeezed out by the pure ambition balls.
Labour politicians looking at Keir and thinking "I could do better than that" might not get entirely wrong. But it's still their choice to be dicks about it.
I don't think that is the case. LD, SNP, PC, DUP, Green MPs are unlikely to ever be government ministers for example, let alone PM, and I suspect that neither do many Labour MPs.
There is a noticeable trend for high turnover of MPs, and while much of this is down to mercurial voting by the electorate, a lot of MPs have stood down prematurely over recent parliaments. Some of this is policy differences such as the purge of Tory Remainers, but a lot of MPs cite the abuse they get, particularly on Social Media.
I do not think this is unique to MPs. We have become a much less tolerant society over the last decade or so, and show little respect for people in authority and the professions. Such abuse is why there is such a retention problem with skilled teachers, frontline NHS staff, but also on hospitality workers etc.
We have become a lot less civil as a society, not just via anti-semitism, misogyny, Transphobia and Islamophobia, but in our daily interactions too.
I said yesterday that Reform councils had failed and some nobber tried to poke a stick at me personally whilst insisting they hadn't failed because having promised to cut council tax they had put it up.
You claimed Durham, along with Kent, is a failed council. It isn’t. It’s doing fine. Won an award. I’ve seen improvements from the last time where I live and council tax, in real terms, has gone down.
I get it you don’t like Reform and I get it you don’t have a high opinion of people who vote for them even though you understand why. However some balance on their performance at a council level may be more interesting than ‘they’re all shit’ 👍
I gave them as examples and said they had failed *on their own terms*. We're talking politics here. People who say "fuck Labour and Tory I want things to change" and voting for the party offering massive change.
Staffordshire in the FT piece. Another example. Reform would cut council tax. Fail. Would scrap woke. Fail. Would do proper governance. Fail. Their words, not mine. Their voter's expectations, not mine.
It isn't about what you or I think, its about what *the voters* think. They voted for a promised tax cut. And got a rise. They voted for change. And got chaos. As they sit in their decaying communities which continue to decay, you think they will be satisfied with "yebbut my council tax went up by a few tenths of a percent vs that Labour council"?
Nope. It was never perceived as a single nation until well into the 9th century and probably the early 10th. Offa in the late 8th century does not refer to himself as King of England, only Mercia. The first King to refer to himself as King of the English (Rex Anglorum) was Athelstan as LostPassword said earlier.
Alfred issued what he intended to be the first unified coinage system in England in 886 AD but at the time the Eastern part of England was still under Danelaw so there was no unified England at that point.
The first person to be crowned King of a unified England was even later than Athelstan - Edgar in 973 AD
Not sure I agree
You are correct that was when the single country named England with its approximate current boundaries came into being.
But kingdoms are organic - “England” was just a political figleaf to hide what was really a Greater Wessex. And that had been an extant kingdom for hundreds of years
Er no. It was one of a number of Kingdoms existing side by side and often at war with each other.
If a single European state ever comes into existence you wouldn't date its founding from Napoleon's time. It would be patent nonsense.
Northumbria was an independent kIngdom until 867 East Anglia was an independent Kingdom until 869 Mercia was an independent Kingdom until 879
All of these fell because of the Danes and then remained under Danish control to agreater or lesser degree until the early 10th century.
Wessex tried very hard to gain control of its neighbours but it didn't succeed until after the end of Danelaw. And even Wessex wasn't a stable kingdom until Ecgberht in the early 9th century
The idea there was a single political entity called England before Athelstan simply isn't true.
You are missing my point.
“Emgland” wasn’t a new political entity. Wessex conquered the other kingdoms and the danelaw. “England” was just a rebranding of “Wessex” to make it more politically acceptable
Hence the correct date is the foundation of Wessex.
Nope that is ridiculous. There is no evidence of such a rebranding exercise nor was there any need for it.
Nope. It was never perceived as a single nation until well into the 9th century and probably the early 10th. Offa in the late 8th century does not refer to himself as King of England, only Mercia. The first King to refer to himself as King of the English (Rex Anglorum) was Athelstan as LostPassword said earlier.
Alfred issued what he intended to be the first unified coinage system in England in 886 AD but at the time the Eastern part of England was still under Danelaw so there was no unified England at that point.
The first person to be crowned King of a unified England was even later than Athelstan - Edgar in 973 AD
Not sure I agree
You are correct that was when the single country named England with its approximate current boundaries came into being.
But kingdoms are organic - “England” was just a political figleaf to hide what was really a Greater Wessex. And that had been an extant kingdom for hundreds of years
Er no. It was one of a number of Kingdoms existing side by side and often at war with each other.
If a single European state ever comes into existence you wouldn't date its founding from Napoleon's time. It would be patent nonsense.
Northumbria was an independent kIngdom until 867 East Anglia was an independent Kingdom until 869 Mercia was an independent Kingdom until 879
All of these fell because of the Danes and then remained under Danish control to agreater or lesser degree until the early 10th century.
Wessex tried very hard to gain control of its neighbours but it didn't succeed until after the end of Danelaw. And even Wessex wasn't a stable kingdom until Ecgberht in the early 9th century
The idea there was a single political entity called England before Athelstan simply isn't true.
You are missing my point.
“Emgland” wasn’t a new political entity. Wessex conquered the other kingdoms and the danelaw. “England” was just a rebranding of “Wessex” to make it more politically acceptable
Hence the correct date is the foundation of Wessex.
It's about more than kingdom titles, though, isn't it? The question is whether the concept of all the people's living south and east of the mountains where the heathen celts live were seen as one people, or peoples of separate, warring kingdoms. Richard is right that, prior to Athelstan, there wasn't really that sense of commonality, other than that all the kingdoms had faced recurring threat from the Vikings. Leon's blunder into what is really an academic debate reflected the mistranslation he has of Bede's actual work, which referred to "our island and nation" - suggesting that, if Bede did indeed perceive some wider community of interest beyond the individual kingdoms, he was imagining Great Britain and not England.
This is ignorant bollocks. I know my Dark Age English history well
Bede constructed a vision of the *gens Anglorum* - the English people - as a single Christian nation with a shared destiny. Even though politically they were fragmented into Mercia, Wessex, Northumbria, and the rest. That said, he excluded the Isle of Wight because the inhabitants were known for bestiality, but otherwise: English
Bede essentially confirmed the English as a self-conscious people before England existed as a state
Its a truly terrible time in our politics. I am 64 and I cannot remember a time like it. As a child we had Wilson, one of the youngest Oxford dons, a genuinely brilliant man. Healey, Roy Mason, even Foot, these were men of genuine talent, skills and passion. Thatcher's government was incredible by today's standards. Howe, Whitelaw, Carrington, Lawson, Pym, even Heseltine, a government of genuine talent. Blair and Brown, not my taste, especially the latter but gifted, Blair especially. The Coalition, Cameron, Osborne, Clegg. Serious people doing a serious job to the best of their ability.
No one is going to agree with everyone on that list and what they did, hell, I don't. But we had leadership and a sense of purpose. Now, in every party, we seem to have people whose primary goal is to be PM. Just for their own egos. With no idea what they want this country to be, how to improve the lives of those that live here, no clear plan at all. It's tragic.
It’s been a shift in the culture over the last 30 years - driven by the media and now social media. To be a politician is hugely unpleasant.
I have a number of friends who a generation ago would have gone into politics, most likely content to be backbenchers and serve their local communities. But the environment is so unpleasant now that none of them have the slightest interest
I'm increasingly convinced that the loss of the bit in bold is part of our collective problem.
It's understandable that we didn't want part-time MPs (or councillors) treating the role as one thing you do out of many. But if everyone going to Westminster has ambitions that can only be fulfilled by being a Top Minister (hello Al! hello Wes! hello Robert! etc), then it's going to be a ghastly place to work. And then the people who are good and with a healthy five percent of self-doubt get squeezed out by the pure ambition balls.
Labour politicians looking at Keir and thinking "I could do better than that" might not get entirely wrong. But it's still their choice to be dicks about it.
I don't want my MP to be a glorified social worker, swamped with 'case work'. I want them to be focused on issues of national and international importance, yes bringing a regional perspective to the table where appropriate, but not bothering themselves with faff that should be the concern of local councillors (or nobody at all).
They get a generous allowance to employ a team of usually aspirant young politicos to do all the casework for them. Compared to the days of snail mail, emails flood into MPs' offices nowadays - the caseworker reads it, identifies whether the issue is already covered by a template answer prepared earlier, and if not, identifies the civil servant (or other relevant person) to forward it to, and when the civil servant replies, forwards that back to the voter. Much of it, the MP will never see, simply getting a summary of issues raised; the caseworkers know the MP's views on the major contentious issues of the day, or will ask if they need a steer on what line to take.
“I was in Stranger's Bar on Monday night. The reports about Angela Rayner are true. If the choice facing the Labour Party is between her and Keir Starmer, they must stick with Starmer > Daily Mail >”
Its a truly terrible time in our politics. I am 64 and I cannot remember a time like it. As a child we had Wilson, one of the youngest Oxford dons, a genuinely brilliant man. Healey, Roy Mason, even Foot, these were men of genuine talent, skills and passion. Thatcher's government was incredible by today's standards. Howe, Whitelaw, Carrington, Lawson, Pym, even Heseltine, a government of genuine talent. Blair and Brown, not my taste, especially the latter but gifted, Blair especially. The Coalition, Cameron, Osborne, Clegg. Serious people doing a serious job to the best of their ability.
No one is going to agree with everyone on that list and what they did, hell, I don't. But we had leadership and a sense of purpose. Now, in every party, we seem to have people whose primary goal is to be PM. Just for their own egos. With no idea what they want this country to be, how to improve the lives of those that live here, no clear plan at all. It's tragic.
It’s been a shift in the culture over the last 30 years - driven by the media and now social media. To be a politician is hugely unpleasant.
I have a number of friends who a generation ago would have gone into politics, most likely content to be backbenchers and serve their local communities. But the environment is so unpleasant now that none of them have the slightest interest
I'm increasingly convinced that the loss of the bit in bold is part of our collective problem.
It's understandable that we didn't want part-time MPs (or councillors) treating the role as one thing you do out of many. But if everyone going to Westminster has ambitions that can only be fulfilled by being a Top Minister (hello Al! hello Wes! hello Robert! etc), then it's going to be a ghastly place to work. And then the people who are good and with a healthy five percent of self-doubt get squeezed out by the pure ambition balls.
Labour politicians looking at Keir and thinking "I could do better than that" might not get entirely wrong. But it's still their choice to be dicks about it.
I don't think that is the case. LD, SNP, PC, DUP, Green MPs are unlikely to ever be government ministers for example, let alone PM, and I suspect that neither do many Labour MPs.
There is a noticeable trend for high turnover of MPs, and while much of this is down to mercurial voting by the electorate, a lot of MPs have stood down prematurely over recent parliaments. Some of this is policy differences such as the purge of Tory Remainers, but a lot of MPs cite the abuse they get, particularly on Social Media.
I do not think this is unique to MPs. We have become a much less tolerant society over the last decade or so, and show little respect for people in authority and the professions. Such abuse is why there is such a retention problem with skilled teachers, frontline NHS staff, but also on hospitality workers etc.
We have become a lot less civil as a society, not just via anti-semitism, misogyny, Transphobia and Islamophobia, but in our daily interactions too.
Nope. It was never perceived as a single nation until well into the 9th century and probably the early 10th. Offa in the late 8th century does not refer to himself as King of England, only Mercia. The first King to refer to himself as King of the English (Rex Anglorum) was Athelstan as LostPassword said earlier.
Alfred issued what he intended to be the first unified coinage system in England in 886 AD but at the time the Eastern part of England was still under Danelaw so there was no unified England at that point.
The first person to be crowned King of a unified England was even later than Athelstan - Edgar in 973 AD
Not sure I agree
You are correct that was when the single country named England with its approximate current boundaries came into being.
But kingdoms are organic - “England” was just a political figleaf to hide what was really a Greater Wessex. And that had been an extant kingdom for hundreds of years
Er no. It was one of a number of Kingdoms existing side by side and often at war with each other.
If a single European state ever comes into existence you wouldn't date its founding from Napoleon's time. It would be patent nonsense.
Northumbria was an independent kIngdom until 867 East Anglia was an independent Kingdom until 869 Mercia was an independent Kingdom until 879
All of these fell because of the Danes and then remained under Danish control to agreater or lesser degree until the early 10th century.
Wessex tried very hard to gain control of its neighbours but it didn't succeed until after the end of Danelaw. And even Wessex wasn't a stable kingdom until Ecgberht in the early 9th century
The idea there was a single political entity called England before Athelstan simply isn't true.
You are missing my point.
“Emgland” wasn’t a new political entity. Wessex conquered the other kingdoms and the danelaw. “England” was just a rebranding of “Wessex” to make it more politically acceptable
Hence the correct date is the foundation of Wessex.
It's about more than kingdom titles, though, isn't it? The question is whether the concept of all the people's living south and east of the mountains where the heathen celts live were seen as one people, or peoples of separate, warring kingdoms. Richard is right that, prior to Athelstan, there wasn't really that sense of commonality, other than that all the kingdoms had faced recurring threat from the Vikings. Leon's blunder into what is really an academic debate reflected the mistranslation he has of Bede's actual work, which referred to "our island and nation" - suggesting that, if Bede did indeed perceive some wider community of interest beyond the individual kingdoms, he was imagining Great Britain and not England.
This is ignorant bollocks. I know my Dark Age English history well
Bede constructed a vision of the *gens Anglorum* - the English people - as a single Christian nation with a shared destiny. Even though politically they were fragmented into Mercia, Wessex, Northumbria, and the rest. That said, he excluded the Isle of Wight because the inhabitants were known for bestiality, but otherwise: English
Bede essentially confirmed the English as a self-conscious people before England existed as a state
Yes, just as there were Germans before there was a Germany.
As for English, wind back the language. Anglish. Used to describe not just the Angles but the Saxons and the Jutes and the Romano-Celts and everyone else. As "English" is a genetic evolution of all those groups and Norse and French, its crazy to try and name a hard date where it started. Genetically, phonetically, politically you need to wait until long after the Normal conquest to amalgamate them fully. But that would be daft, so we use the ish, just as Germans use the ic.
Nope. It was never perceived as a single nation until well into the 9th century and probably the early 10th. Offa in the late 8th century does not refer to himself as King of England, only Mercia. The first King to refer to himself as King of the English (Rex Anglorum) was Athelstan as LostPassword said earlier.
Alfred issued what he intended to be the first unified coinage system in England in 886 AD but at the time the Eastern part of England was still under Danelaw so there was no unified England at that point.
The first person to be crowned King of a unified England was even later than Athelstan - Edgar in 973 AD
Not sure I agree
You are correct that was when the single country named England with its approximate current boundaries came into being.
But kingdoms are organic - “England” was just a political figleaf to hide what was really a Greater Wessex. And that had been an extant kingdom for hundreds of years
Er no. It was one of a number of Kingdoms existing side by side and often at war with each other.
If a single European state ever comes into existence you wouldn't date its founding from Napoleon's time. It would be patent nonsense.
Northumbria was an independent kIngdom until 867 East Anglia was an independent Kingdom until 869 Mercia was an independent Kingdom until 879
All of these fell because of the Danes and then remained under Danish control to agreater or lesser degree until the early 10th century.
Wessex tried very hard to gain control of its neighbours but it didn't succeed until after the end of Danelaw. And even Wessex wasn't a stable kingdom until Ecgberht in the early 9th century
The idea there was a single political entity called England before Athelstan simply isn't true.
You are missing my point.
“Emgland” wasn’t a new political entity. Wessex conquered the other kingdoms and the danelaw. “England” was just a rebranding of “Wessex” to make it more politically acceptable
Hence the correct date is the foundation of Wessex.
It's about more than kingdom titles, though, isn't it? The question is whether the concept of all the people's living south and east of the mountains where the heathen celts live were seen as one people, or peoples of separate, warring kingdoms. Richard is right that, prior to Athelstan, there wasn't really that sense of commonality, other than that all the kingdoms had faced recurring threat from the Vikings. Leon's blunder into what is really an academic debate reflected the mistranslation he has of Bede's actual work, which referred to "our island and nation" - suggesting that, if Bede did indeed perceive some wider community of interest beyond the individual kingdoms, he was imagining Great Britain and not England.
This is ignorant bollocks. I know my Dark Age English history well
Bede constructed a vision of the *gens Anglorum* - the English people - as a single Christian nation with a shared destiny. Even though politically they were fragmented into Mercia, Wessex, Northumbria, and the rest. That said, he excluded the Isle of Wight because the inhabitants were known for bestiality, but otherwise: English
Bede essentially confirmed the English as a self-conscious people before England existed as a state
The original contention was however about "England" as a nation or state. Reference to the common religion of peoples on the island doesn't imply nationhood. Bede was not describing a national people in anything like the later medieval or modern sense. He was describing a loose cultural‑linguistic category whose unity was primarily religious, not political. “English” is simply a convenient label for the peoples evangelised by Augustine’s mission; akin to Caesar's references to 'the Gauls' in his earlier writings.
Nope. It was never perceived as a single nation until well into the 9th century and probably the early 10th. Offa in the late 8th century does not refer to himself as King of England, only Mercia. The first King to refer to himself as King of the English (Rex Anglorum) was Athelstan as LostPassword said earlier.
Alfred issued what he intended to be the first unified coinage system in England in 886 AD but at the time the Eastern part of England was still under Danelaw so there was no unified England at that point.
The first person to be crowned King of a unified England was even later than Athelstan - Edgar in 973 AD
Not sure I agree
You are correct that was when the single country named England with its approximate current boundaries came into being.
But kingdoms are organic - “England” was just a political figleaf to hide what was really a Greater Wessex. And that had been an extant kingdom for hundreds of years
Er no. It was one of a number of Kingdoms existing side by side and often at war with each other.
If a single European state ever comes into existence you wouldn't date its founding from Napoleon's time. It would be patent nonsense.
Northumbria was an independent kIngdom until 867 East Anglia was an independent Kingdom until 869 Mercia was an independent Kingdom until 879
All of these fell because of the Danes and then remained under Danish control to agreater or lesser degree until the early 10th century.
Wessex tried very hard to gain control of its neighbours but it didn't succeed until after the end of Danelaw. And even Wessex wasn't a stable kingdom until Ecgberht in the early 9th century
The idea there was a single political entity called England before Athelstan simply isn't true.
You are missing my point.
“Emgland” wasn’t a new political entity. Wessex conquered the other kingdoms and the danelaw. “England” was just a rebranding of “Wessex” to make it more politically acceptable
Hence the correct date is the foundation of Wessex.
It's about more than kingdom titles, though, isn't it? The question is whether the concept of all the people's living south and east of the mountains where the heathen celts live were seen as one people, or peoples of separate, warring kingdoms. Richard is right that, prior to Athelstan, there wasn't really that sense of commonality, other than that all the kingdoms had faced recurring threat from the Vikings. Leon's blunder into what is really an academic debate reflected the mistranslation he has of Bede's actual work, which referred to "our island and nation" - suggesting that, if Bede did indeed perceive some wider community of interest beyond the individual kingdoms, he was imagining Great Britain and not England.
I think we also project our own modern nationalism onto history to create a mythology of origin. Pretty much every nationalism from Scotland to Tigray to USA to Palestine does this.
The reality is that in the early middle ages loyalties were more around individuals and dynasties than around the modern concept of nationality. So if we want to put a date on the origin of England then the unification under a single monarch is a better choice than ideas of culture, religion or language.
well this is nice but not sure who would be more surprised to learn he was Jewish: ( the late), Congegationalist Asa Briggs ( a friend and superb historian) or Mick Jagger?
Ostentatious pro-Zionism seems to be like having a Duke of Edinburgh award for right wing turds these days.
It's the standard "my enemy's enemy is my friend" stuff.
As of course is the anti-Israeli focus of so many on the left.
For example I don't believe Jeremy Corbyn and co are directly anti-Semitic. They are anti-Western and because the Israelis are generally thought to be on the same side as (especially) America they are therefore bad. And correspondingly Hamas and Hezbollah are good.
The English Devolution and Empowerment Bill has received Royal Assent this means future mayoralty elections will go back to using the Supplementary Vote system .
AV would be so much better.
Having to assume who will be in the top two is likely to be more of a challenge in our new multi-party environment.
In London it’s really down to Labour and Green v Tory and Reform. It might be a bit more complicated elsewhere but returning to AV certainly helps Sadiq Khan.
Nope. It was never perceived as a single nation until well into the 9th century and probably the early 10th. Offa in the late 8th century does not refer to himself as King of England, only Mercia. The first King to refer to himself as King of the English (Rex Anglorum) was Athelstan as LostPassword said earlier.
Alfred issued what he intended to be the first unified coinage system in England in 886 AD but at the time the Eastern part of England was still under Danelaw so there was no unified England at that point.
The first person to be crowned King of a unified England was even later than Athelstan - Edgar in 973 AD
Not sure I agree
You are correct that was when the single country named England with its approximate current boundaries came into being.
But kingdoms are organic - “England” was just a political figleaf to hide what was really a Greater Wessex. And that had been an extant kingdom for hundreds of years
Er no. It was one of a number of Kingdoms existing side by side and often at war with each other.
If a single European state ever comes into existence you wouldn't date its founding from Napoleon's time. It would be patent nonsense.
Northumbria was an independent kIngdom until 867 East Anglia was an independent Kingdom until 869 Mercia was an independent Kingdom until 879
All of these fell because of the Danes and then remained under Danish control to agreater or lesser degree until the early 10th century.
Wessex tried very hard to gain control of its neighbours but it didn't succeed until after the end of Danelaw. And even Wessex wasn't a stable kingdom until Ecgberht in the early 9th century
The idea there was a single political entity called England before Athelstan simply isn't true.
You are missing my point.
“Emgland” wasn’t a new political entity. Wessex conquered the other kingdoms and the danelaw. “England” was just a rebranding of “Wessex” to make it more politically acceptable
Hence the correct date is the foundation of Wessex.
It's about more than kingdom titles, though, isn't it? The question is whether the concept of all the people's living south and east of the mountains where the heathen celts live were seen as one people, or peoples of separate, warring kingdoms. Richard is right that, prior to Athelstan, there wasn't really that sense of commonality, other than that all the kingdoms had faced recurring threat from the Vikings. Leon's blunder into what is really an academic debate reflected the mistranslation he has of Bede's actual work, which referred to "our island and nation" - suggesting that, if Bede did indeed perceive some wider community of interest beyond the individual kingdoms, he was imagining Great Britain and not England.
This is ignorant bollocks. I know my Dark Age English history well
Bede constructed a vision of the *gens Anglorum* - the English people - as a single Christian nation with a shared destiny. Even though politically they were fragmented into Mercia, Wessex, Northumbria, and the rest. That said, he excluded the Isle of Wight because the inhabitants were known for bestiality, but otherwise: English
Bede essentially confirmed the English as a self-conscious people before England existed as a state
Yes, just as there were Germans before there was a Germany.
As for English, wind back the language. Anglish. Used to describe not just the Angles but the Saxons and the Jutes and the Romano-Celts and everyone else. As "English" is a genetic evolution of all those groups and Norse and French, its crazy to try and name a hard date where it started. Genetically, phonetically, politically you need to wait until long after the Normal conquest to amalgamate them fully. But that would be daft, so we use the ish, just as Germans use the ic.
Quite so. It is impossible to precisely date the inception of an ancient nation like England (or France, Japan, etc). They aren’t places that formally declared independence and nationhood and suddenly existed like the USA
For Bede to write his book the idea of the “English people” must have been around for a while - culturally, linguistically, etc
But he was the first person to famously say it, so 731AD - the date of his statement - is a decent compromise if we insist on pinning it down
“I was in Stranger's Bar on Monday night. The reports about Angela Rayner are true. If the choice facing the Labour Party is between her and Keir Starmer, they must stick with Starmer > Daily Mail >”
On peoples without nations: after the Eastern Roman Empire shattered the unified Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy the peninsula had over a thousand years of fragmentation before it was unified, but people still knew what Italians were.
It's also worth mentioning the capital of England is London and it very rapidly moved there from the Wessex capital of Winchester.
Edited extra bit: London was, traditionally, a Mercian city.
“I was in Stranger's Bar on Monday night. The reports about Angela Rayner are true. If the choice facing the Labour Party is between her and Keir Starmer, they must stick with Starmer > Daily Mail >”
If the US can have drunken Pete why can’t we have drunken Ange !
Seriously though if the story is true then it’s rather troubling . But we live in strange times and I still wouldn’t rule out PM Rayner .
It’s a bit depressing tho, isn’t it?
Yes the choices aren’t great . I do like Rayner but she shouldn’t be getting that drunk in public . If of course the story is true . Dan Hodges loathes Starmer so if he’s now saying hang onto him if Rayner is the choice then perhaps it’s more than just mischief making .
I think Labour currently is the “Keir Starmer party”.
When he goes, the polling may change.
Yes, but he has shaped the government in his image: wooden, process driven, ponderous, pompous and petulant. A new broom would have to sweep clean to change the polling.
I am not sure that it is do-able but may mitigate the Labour disaster of GE 2029 to a degree.
Nope. It was never perceived as a single nation until well into the 9th century and probably the early 10th. Offa in the late 8th century does not refer to himself as King of England, only Mercia. The first King to refer to himself as King of the English (Rex Anglorum) was Athelstan as LostPassword said earlier.
Alfred issued what he intended to be the first unified coinage system in England in 886 AD but at the time the Eastern part of England was still under Danelaw so there was no unified England at that point.
The first person to be crowned King of a unified England was even later than Athelstan - Edgar in 973 AD
Not sure I agree
You are correct that was when the single country named England with its approximate current boundaries came into being.
But kingdoms are organic - “England” was just a political figleaf to hide what was really a Greater Wessex. And that had been an extant kingdom for hundreds of years
Er no. It was one of a number of Kingdoms existing side by side and often at war with each other.
If a single European state ever comes into existence you wouldn't date its founding from Napoleon's time. It would be patent nonsense.
Northumbria was an independent kIngdom until 867 East Anglia was an independent Kingdom until 869 Mercia was an independent Kingdom until 879
All of these fell because of the Danes and then remained under Danish control to agreater or lesser degree until the early 10th century.
Wessex tried very hard to gain control of its neighbours but it didn't succeed until after the end of Danelaw. And even Wessex wasn't a stable kingdom until Ecgberht in the early 9th century
The idea there was a single political entity called England before Athelstan simply isn't true.
You are missing my point.
“Emgland” wasn’t a new political entity. Wessex conquered the other kingdoms and the danelaw. “England” was just a rebranding of “Wessex” to make it more politically acceptable
Hence the correct date is the foundation of Wessex.
It's about more than kingdom titles, though, isn't it? The question is whether the concept of all the people's living south and east of the mountains where the heathen celts live were seen as one people, or peoples of separate, warring kingdoms. Richard is right that, prior to Athelstan, there wasn't really that sense of commonality, other than that all the kingdoms had faced recurring threat from the Vikings. Leon's blunder into what is really an academic debate reflected the mistranslation he has of Bede's actual work, which referred to "our island and nation" - suggesting that, if Bede did indeed perceive some wider community of interest beyond the individual kingdoms, he was imagining Great Britain and not England.
This is ignorant bollocks. I know my Dark Age English history well
Bede constructed a vision of the *gens Anglorum* - the English people - as a single Christian nation with a shared destiny. Even though politically they were fragmented into Mercia, Wessex, Northumbria, and the rest. That said, he excluded the Isle of Wight because the inhabitants were known for bestiality, but otherwise: English
Bede essentially confirmed the English as a self-conscious people before England existed as a state
The original contention was however about "England" as a nation or state. Reference to the common religion of peoples on the island doesn't imply nationhood. Bede was not describing a national people in anything like the later medieval or modern sense. He was describing a loose cultural‑linguistic category whose unity was primarily religious, not political. “English” is simply a convenient label for the peoples evangelised by Augustine’s mission; akin to Caesar's references to 'the Gauls' in his earlier writings.
Again, you’re simply wrong. The whole POINT of Bede’s boook is to establish and cement the idea of the *gens Anglorum*’ - the Christian, English-speaking people who inhabit this island. He contrasts them with the British Celts
In Book I, chapter 15, he gives his famous account of the adventus Saxonum - the arrival of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes. From the get-go he starts treating these distinct peoples as a single emergent gens. He notes their separate origins before quickly folding them together. Et voila, England. A nation. The “same people in the same place”
By your definition Germany didn’t exist until January 1871 when it was formally unified as a state. But does anyone sensible think that? No
“I was in Stranger's Bar on Monday night. The reports about Angela Rayner are true. If the choice facing the Labour Party is between her and Keir Starmer, they must stick with Starmer > Daily Mail >”
Golly, if I heard aright the crowd in Golders Green were chanting 'traitor, traitor' at Starmer during his visit yesterday. While far from an SKS fan, that seems a bit strong. Who or what is he a traitor to?
Nope. It was never perceived as a single nation until well into the 9th century and probably the early 10th. Offa in the late 8th century does not refer to himself as King of England, only Mercia. The first King to refer to himself as King of the English (Rex Anglorum) was Athelstan as LostPassword said earlier.
Alfred issued what he intended to be the first unified coinage system in England in 886 AD but at the time the Eastern part of England was still under Danelaw so there was no unified England at that point.
The first person to be crowned King of a unified England was even later than Athelstan - Edgar in 973 AD
Not sure I agree
You are correct that was when the single country named England with its approximate current boundaries came into being.
But kingdoms are organic - “England” was just a political figleaf to hide what was really a Greater Wessex. And that had been an extant kingdom for hundreds of years
Er no. It was one of a number of Kingdoms existing side by side and often at war with each other.
If a single European state ever comes into existence you wouldn't date its founding from Napoleon's time. It would be patent nonsense.
Northumbria was an independent kIngdom until 867 East Anglia was an independent Kingdom until 869 Mercia was an independent Kingdom until 879
All of these fell because of the Danes and then remained under Danish control to agreater or lesser degree until the early 10th century.
Wessex tried very hard to gain control of its neighbours but it didn't succeed until after the end of Danelaw. And even Wessex wasn't a stable kingdom until Ecgberht in the early 9th century
The idea there was a single political entity called England before Athelstan simply isn't true.
You are missing my point.
“Emgland” wasn’t a new political entity. Wessex conquered the other kingdoms and the danelaw. “England” was just a rebranding of “Wessex” to make it more politically acceptable
Hence the correct date is the foundation of Wessex.
It's about more than kingdom titles, though, isn't it? The question is whether the concept of all the people's living south and east of the mountains where the heathen celts live were seen as one people, or peoples of separate, warring kingdoms. Richard is right that, prior to Athelstan, there wasn't really that sense of commonality, other than that all the kingdoms had faced recurring threat from the Vikings. Leon's blunder into what is really an academic debate reflected the mistranslation he has of Bede's actual work, which referred to "our island and nation" - suggesting that, if Bede did indeed perceive some wider community of interest beyond the individual kingdoms, he was imagining Great Britain and not England.
This is ignorant bollocks. I know my Dark Age English history well
Bede constructed a vision of the *gens Anglorum* - the English people - as a single Christian nation with a shared destiny. Even though politically they were fragmented into Mercia, Wessex, Northumbria, and the rest. That said, he excluded the Isle of Wight because the inhabitants were known for bestiality, but otherwise: English
Bede essentially confirmed the English as a self-conscious people before England existed as a state
Yes, just as there were Germans before there was a Germany.
As for English, wind back the language. Anglish. Used to describe not just the Angles but the Saxons and the Jutes and the Romano-Celts and everyone else. As "English" is a genetic evolution of all those groups and Norse and French, its crazy to try and name a hard date where it started. Genetically, phonetically, politically you need to wait until long after the Normal conquest to amalgamate them fully. But that would be daft, so we use the ish, just as Germans use the ic.
Quite so. It is impossible to precisely date the inception of an ancient nation like England (or France, Japan, etc). They aren’t places that formally declared independence and nationhood and suddenly existed like the USA
For Bede to write his book the idea of the “English people” must have been around for a while - culturally, linguistically, etc
But he was the first person to famously say it, so 731AD - the date of his statement - is a decent compromise if we insist on pinning it down
And "nation" of people is separate from "state" in whatever form you want to imagine it - city, princedom, kingdom etc.
Although whilst Bede may be describing the English people, how many of the English people would describe themselves thus?
I'm not sure it matters. The nation is bloody old and survived multiple invasions by simply folding the invaders into who we are. I spent 15 years living in a town named after a Viking lord and have a name derived from old French. And am English. We English wouldn't be English without the vikings and normans adding to us. We evolve. Which is why the petty bigotry from so many makes me chuckle. Migrants? Check your history luv...
“I was in Stranger's Bar on Monday night. The reports about Angela Rayner are true. If the choice facing the Labour Party is between her and Keir Starmer, they must stick with Starmer > Daily Mail >”
Golly, if I heard aright the crowd in Golders Green were chanting 'traitor, traitor' at Starmer during his visit yesterday. While far from an SKS fan, that seems a bit strong. Who or what is he a traitor to?
The British people? I don't think that, but they are hardly alone in labelling him so.
This seems a good moment to report Mrs PtP's visit to Golders Green on Wednesday when she happened to have a work appointment there with the Jewish Chronicle. She didn't witness the attack but spoke to a number who did. They made it clear to her that it had little to do with anti-semitism and everything to do with a nutcase committing a horrible crime, because that's what some nutcases do. It isn't surprising that local leaders have taken the opportunity to press their claims in the aftermath but any suggestion that Golders Green or anywhere else in London is a no go zone are complete bollox. I have passed through myself several times in the past few days and there are no signs of the local Jews hiding in terror, covering their stars of David, removing their skull caps, or dressing any differently to the way they do normally. I was personally able to make my usual visit to Daniels and scoff a smoked salmon bagel without fear. In short, it is business as usual.
Mrs PtP is half Jewish. I am not Jewish, although I do have a roman nose. Neither of us has a dog in this fight. I used to think this was perhaps a lazy or unprincipled position but increasingly I see it as one to be proud of.
I hope it doesn't cause offence.
I share much of that sentiment (and FWIW, my wife recently discovered she is three quarters, rather than half Jewish).
But I think you're a little complacent about 'business as usual'. One of my children (who is no sympathiser of Zionism) attended a course on Yiddish a while back. The security arrangements and vetting in advance were an eye opener.
It would be hyperbolic and incorrect to say that British Jews live in fear, but I think that many exercise caution in their lives beyond that which the rest of us find necessary.
Today I had an appointment with the Respiratory Clinic a year after I was admitted with serious chest pain. I assumed it was a routine follow up but in fact I was told that last year my right lung had collapsed because of the cancer & that there was some metastatic cancer in the lung, which had not spread since treatment started. I even got shown a picture of it, lucky old me, as well as of some efflusion, which is minor but with a warning that if it gets worse it might need to be drained.
Now the fact that the treatment seems to be keeping the cancer at bay is good. But this is the first time I've been told the disease is in my lungs, as well as breast, spine, pelvis & ribs. The oncologist's correspondence has never mentioned it. It's news to me. So what else has been kept from me? Or is it just one clinic not talking to the other?
Also the scans from the hospital are not shared with the GP if they are more than 3 months old. Why not? On Tuesday I get to hear the result of the hip X-ray to see what's causing the pain making it hard for me to walk. I am bracing myself for more unexpected/bad/what the fuck does this mean now news.
Meanwhile the nice lady registrar did tell me how important it was to avoid infection. Which I know. I did point out that I survived the Covid years without catching it & have not in fact had a cold, sore throat or flu in years. A fat lot of good that has done me.
I am finding this all hard to process. The weather is gorgeous - like last year - so it feels unreal that something bad is happening to me. The debates on here seem pointless. There are no elections where I live. As for Wales I feel about it much as Sir Thomas More did in his comment to Richie Rich in A Man For All Seasons.
As for what is happening to Jews in this country, it is beyond depressing. Too many on here seem unable to condemn what is being done to our fellow citizens here without a lot of whtaboutery. There is a lot of bad faith commentary which suggests that many still feel that Jews have to justify why they should not be attacked or made to feel unsafe. They don't. That this should need saying is evidence to me of a latent sort of unconscious anti-semitism which somehow does not see Jews as fully belonging. It is repellent. Starmer's speech was pretty good but far too late. Real effective action now needs to follow. The advice of the anti-terrorism tsar, Jonathan Hall KC, should be listened to -
This is, IMO, true. And has been true from the start. If you organise a march in favour of those carrying out a massacre while they are still doing it (the first pro-Palestine March was organised on the afternoon of 7 October) you are not a good faith actor in any sense.
FWIW the Golders Green attack was being discussed by two people in the waiting room & they were pretty angry at the criticisms being made of the police as they were trying to disarm the attacker.
At any event, I am taking a break for a bit. It's all too much.
I'm a big skeptic of the police and the need to hold them to high standards, but in a literal life and death situation a la disarming an attacker, I think a less than perfect execution of procedure would need to be accepted to a degree.
And I do think whilst extremely few people dismiss concerns outright, the day to day threat to jewish people is very much underestimated by a lot of people.
just a pity it was not armed police and they could have saved a lot of time , hassle and money and served immediate justice. Might have made the next one think twice.
I can't help but feel sometimes that there are trojan horses on the left trying to bring about a hard right government. The latest example would be criticising the police over their actions in Golders Green.
Frank you credit them with too much intelligence , they are just nasty thick idiots.
Comments
And I do think whilst extremely few people dismiss concerns outright, the day to day threat to jewish people is very much underestimated by a lot of people.
Was not aware that if they finish second in their group (not implausible as they have Egypt and New Zealand), and USA do too, then they meet in last 32.
Wouldn't that be something?
https://x.com/thesnp/status/2049930505160696217
But I do like when politicians (national, regional, and local) claim credit for achieving X because they supported X.
You see it a lot at local level in particular because of how unlikely it is that the politician was actually involved in something - unless you're in a Cabinet it is very unusual an individual would have personal decision-making authority, by the way local government powers work - so they have to fall back on implying they were instrumental.
The idea that Trump would be influenced by someone he's probably forgotten ever meeting is self-evidently risible.
Didn't realise they'd made it to eight series! I know the book series was quite long.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for saying that, Cyclefree, especially when your own life is so troubled.
What you wrote reminds me of Orwell's quote about the "first duty of an intelligent man".
But the solution to this should not be the suppression of free speech. People are angry about what Israel is doing, and they should be allowed to protest that, just as they were allowed to protest Charlie Hebdo and apartheit in South Africa.
These so-called anti-racists have never protested the genocide of the Uyghurs by China. They have been silent at the slaughter of thousands of young Iranians and have praised the leaders murdering them. They have been silent at the news coming out of Gaza of the sexual assault of Palestinian women, many widows, by Palestinian men. They have not marched against the killing of Christians in Pakistan or in Nigeria.
It is not - and never has been - free speech to incite violence. We have seen praise and support and incitement of violence against Jews on the streets of London and online. It has led to the actual violence we have seen against Jews. And it has to stop.
I appreciate that the Israeli government doesn't like demonstrations for a free Palestinian state, but it is not anti-semitic to call for one. Indeed it is government policy.
Banning such marches is also likely to be counter productive, as it is with the farce of the Palestine Action arrests, and would cause far wider civil disobedience. It would be unenforceable.
well this is nice but not sure who would be more surprised to learn he was Jewish: ( the late), Congegationalist Asa Briggs ( a friend and superb historian) or Mick Jagger?
https://x.com/simon_schama/status/2049963666217275664?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
If people on these marches incite violence then that is a criminal offence that should be prosecuted.
But reading your post, it seemed to me that you weren't very keen on people being able to demonsrate their unhappiness with the Israeli government.
“A failed asylum seeker”
Basically, we have imported a million or more people who are criminals who have no right to be here and who contribute nothing but crime, misery and corruption. And they all have to go
The current labour cabinet is quite lawyer/NGO/spad heavy and would benefit from a broader range of backgrounds, but i think there's only a few who are just desperate to become PM (Streeting is the obvious one).
(There are two main reasons for why Wilson was so rubbish in government. The UK economics he learned at university was focused on preventing a return to the depression of the 1930s, and simply had nothing to say about the very different problems of the 1960s and 1970s, and secondly, as a short-termist political animal he was simply incapable of saying no to ever larger demands for public spending from his MPs and the unions. His drunkenness and incipient senility towards the end didn't help either).
Intellectual brilliance and talent isn't enough, or even particularly important, otherwise we could just confine the vote to university professors and a few businessmen. Good judgement and backbone are far more important, and, above a certain level, I don't think they are well correlated.
SPADs, outsourcing, Think Tanks etc. Makes sense given the poor quality of today's politicians. Perhaps the Blob have had enough of trying to explain the minutiae of governance to the current and future (Reform) governments.
I take y I take your point that cleverness alone is not enough but its a start. More important is having a clear idea of what you are looking to do and how you think the lot of the populace can be improved. I think cleverness and the ability to think analytically can help with that.
Economically, Wilson's government were pursuing a dead end. It wasn't so much the 30s in my view, it was more a consensus that the capitalist system was exploitative and the objective should be to ensure that as much of the profit should be earned by the workers as possible. Inevitably, this led to the wholesale massacre of the geese laying the golden eggs and it was only with the labour reforms of the early 80s under Thatcher that a better way forward was found.
Today we have corporate managerialism but we have again lost our focus on growth, the need to encourage investment and training and the need to be competitive in a world that owes us nothing.
Highgrove Single Malt https://www.thenational.scot/news/25649174.king-charles-unveils-100-english-whisky-highgrove/
Mrs PtP is half Jewish. I am not Jewish, although I do have a roman nose. Neither of us has a dog in this fight. I used to think this was perhaps a lazy or unprincipled position but increasingly I see it as one to be proud of.
I hope it doesn't cause offence.
After all, cesspits fulfil an important function.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/30/labour-wipeout-local-elections-london-housing
What I can't understand is that universally we have a mother. Some will have wives. Some will even have daughters but we have a blind spot to how one half of the world treats the other half.
1976 was the year that Wilson left office, it was also the year our gini coefficient was at its lowest, and the happiest year. These things are not coincidence.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI?locations=GB
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/1976-when-national-happiness-peaked-64679.html
“Emgland” wasn’t a new political entity. Wessex conquered the other kingdoms and the danelaw. “England” was just a rebranding of “Wessex” to make it more politically acceptable
Hence the correct date is the foundation of Wessex.
I have a number of friends who a generation ago would have gone into politics, most likely content to be backbenchers and serve their local communities. But the environment is so unpleasant now that none of them have the slightest interest
Anyway, here's a year in Staffordshire Council. 3 leaders, chaos, no DEI to cut, no DOGE savings, just incompetence and wall to wall racism: https://www.ft.com/content/3c059192-9a75-485e-b7cd-541ba2fae729?syn-25a6b1a6=1
The economic damage caused by his war is going to cause untold economic misery for many people in the UK and around the world .
Of course, politicians would never want to give voters the wrong impression of how the system works for party advantage.
BTW: Only one person at a time in the voting booth - d'Hondt stand so close to me.
It's understandable that we didn't want part-time MPs (or councillors) treating the role as one thing you do out of many. But if everyone going to Westminster has ambitions that can only be fulfilled by being a Top Minister (hello Al! hello Wes! hello Robert! etc), then it's going to be a ghastly place to work. And then the people who are good and with a healthy five percent of self-doubt get squeezed out by the pure ambition balls.
Labour politicians looking at Keir and thinking "I could do better than that" might not get entirely wrong. But it's still their choice to be dicks about it.
You claimed Durham, along with Kent, is a failed council. It isn’t. It’s doing fine. Won an award. I’ve seen improvements from the last time where I live and council tax, in real terms, has gone down.
I get it you don’t like Reform and I get it you don’t have a high opinion of people who vote for them even though you understand why. However some balance on their performance at a council level may be more interesting than ‘they’re all shit’ 👍
Having to assume who will be in the top two is likely to be more of a challenge in our new multi-party environment.
“I was in Stranger's Bar on Monday night. The reports about Angela Rayner are true. If the choice facing the Labour Party is between her and Keir Starmer, they must stick with Starmer > Daily Mail >”
https://x.com/dpjhodges/status/2050097585994551632?s=46
There is a noticeable trend for high turnover of MPs, and while much of this is down to mercurial voting by the electorate, a lot of MPs have stood down prematurely over recent parliaments. Some of this is policy differences such as the purge of Tory Remainers, but a lot of MPs cite the abuse they get, particularly on Social Media.
I do not think this is unique to MPs. We have become a much less tolerant society over the last decade or so, and show little respect for people in authority and the professions. Such abuse is why there is such a retention problem with skilled teachers, frontline NHS staff, but also on hospitality workers etc.
We have become a lot less civil as a society, not just via anti-semitism, misogyny, Transphobia and Islamophobia, but in our daily interactions too.
Staffordshire in the FT piece. Another example. Reform would cut council tax. Fail. Would scrap woke. Fail. Would do proper governance. Fail. Their words, not mine. Their voter's expectations, not mine.
It isn't about what you or I think, its about what *the voters* think. They voted for a promised tax cut. And got a rise. They voted for change. And got chaos. As they sit in their decaying communities which continue to decay, you think they will be satisfied with "yebbut my council tax went up by a few tenths of a percent vs that Labour council"?
Bede constructed a vision of the *gens Anglorum* - the English people - as a single Christian nation with a shared destiny. Even though politically they were fragmented into Mercia, Wessex, Northumbria, and the rest. That said, he excluded the Isle of Wight because the inhabitants were known for bestiality, but otherwise: English
Bede essentially confirmed the English as a self-conscious people before England existed as a state
Seriously though if the story is true then it’s rather troubling . But we live in strange times and I still wouldn’t rule out PM Rayner .
The party you've just joined.
As for English, wind back the language. Anglish. Used to describe not just the Angles but the Saxons and the Jutes and the Romano-Celts and everyone else. As "English" is a genetic evolution of all those groups and Norse and French, its crazy to try and name a hard date where it started. Genetically, phonetically, politically you need to wait until long after the Normal conquest to amalgamate them fully. But that would be daft, so we use the ish, just as Germans use the ic.
He was describing a loose cultural‑linguistic category whose unity was primarily religious, not political. “English” is simply a convenient label for the peoples evangelised by Augustine’s mission; akin to Caesar's references to 'the Gauls' in his earlier writings.
The reality is that in the early middle ages loyalties were more around individuals and dynasties than around the modern concept of nationality. So if we want to put a date on the origin of England then the unification under a single monarch is a better choice than ideas of culture, religion or language.
For example I don't believe Jeremy Corbyn and co are directly anti-Semitic. They are anti-Western and because the Israelis are generally thought to be on the same side as (especially) America they are therefore bad. And correspondingly Hamas and Hezbollah are good.
For Bede to write his book the idea of the “English people”
must have been around for a while - culturally, linguistically, etc
But he was the first person to famously say it, so 731AD - the date of his statement - is a decent compromise if we insist on pinning it down
When he goes, the polling may change.
On peoples without nations: after the Eastern Roman Empire shattered the unified Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy the peninsula had over a thousand years of fragmentation before it was unified, but people still knew what Italians were.
It's also worth mentioning the capital of England is London and it very rapidly moved there from the Wessex capital of Winchester.
Edited extra bit: London was, traditionally, a Mercian city.
I am not sure that it is do-able but may mitigate the Labour disaster of GE 2029 to a degree.
- the Christian, English-speaking people who inhabit this island. He contrasts them with the British Celts
In Book I, chapter 15, he gives his famous account of the adventus Saxonum - the arrival of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes. From the get-go he starts treating these distinct peoples as a single emergent gens. He notes their separate origins before quickly folding them together. Et voila, England. A nation. The “same people in the same place”
By your definition Germany didn’t exist until January 1871 when it was formally unified as a state. But does anyone sensible think that? No
Although whilst Bede may be describing the English people, how many of the English people would describe themselves thus?
I'm not sure it matters. The nation is bloody old and survived multiple invasions by simply folding the invaders into who we are. I spent 15 years living in a town named after a Viking lord and have a name derived from old French. And am English. We English wouldn't be English without the vikings and normans adding to us. We evolve. Which is why the petty bigotry from so many makes me chuckle. Migrants? Check your history luv...
(*Traditional 1st May greeting which you can use for the rest of today.)
But I think you're a little complacent about 'business as usual'. One of my children (who is no sympathiser of Zionism) attended a course on Yiddish a while back. The security arrangements and vetting in advance were an eye opener.
It would be hyperbolic and incorrect to say that British Jews live in fear, but I think that many exercise caution in their lives beyond that which the rest of us find necessary.
That's not just regrettable; it is wrong.