It’s a reasonable argument that the government should seek a positive net return . However it spends hundreds of billions on youth welfare benefits that produce no return and worse destroy meaningful lives .
It’s seems therefore illogical to deny a poultry sun for a northern ( listening Andy?) icon that is respected locally , nationally and internationally
They just need to rename it Jodrell North Bank and the money will come flowing in.
Jodrell West Bank, and then all the Greens will come on board.
Reform UK say they are reporting Green Party leader Zack Polanski to the police after he shared a post to his Instagram which included a photo of a man wearing a top featuring the name "Nigel" alongside an image of a guillotine.
Should they not be reporting the bloke wearing the t-shirt first if that is the route they want to go down?
I am no Polanski fan, but retweeting an unpleasant post about Farage and the work of the Grim Reaper is less problematic than Farage quoting Andrew Tate bullshite which caused riots and the attempted burning of migrants in their hotel beds.
Farage considers he is such a victim.
It's not the grim reaper it's a guillotine. Implication quite clear. And should someone behead Farage tonight you would look rather foolish.
Polanski is an idiot, every bit as stupid as Corbyn.
Worse, I reckon.
JCorbz had something of the holy fool about him. He should never have been Labour leader, and it was right to kick him out of the Labour party, but he was just the channel for some well-meaning but wrong ideas.
Zack P gives every impression of knowing exactly what he's doing, which is the advancement of Zack P. Farage doesn't deserve that photo, but otherwise, NF and ZP deserve each other.
A decade ago, politicians have discovered they can win a campaign just on hatred. That hasn't really changed yet.
Polanski shouldn’t have tweeted that picture and is an idiot . And especially given recent events it was just a moronic thing to do .
The more exposure this guy gets the more he's revealed as an intellectual/moral midget. If this is the challenge to Labour from the hard left bring it on.
I think the Hundred are getting really desparate, 4 emails today with offers.
Not surprised.
I went to a lot of Hundred matches last year and the year before, and was thinking about going to the match yesterday at Trent Bridge. But then I saw the price was £54 instead of £40 last year and decided not to go. £40 was already a bit on the steep side for that type of slightly trashy cricket.
£54 for a Hundred match? T20 Blast have got that expensive like that, didn't realise Hundred had. All the offers I am getting is come for £25, then £20, now £15 and bring kids for a £5.
I presume these are the amounts they are paying you to go ?
LOL. Even then I will probably give it a pass. I just can't stand all the fake US inspired "hyping" and TikTok-esque constant over stimulation. And I say that am really enjoying going to England T20 where there is plenty of music and sing-alongs. I know its for the kiddies, but its like the worst bits of US sports attempts at filling dead air.
I'm just a grumpy old man about all this, and having been brought up on Lords and the Oval, for the last 40 years have lived outside first class cricket country. Children got into the Oval for 1/6 when I first went in about 1962/3.
Cricket is now fragmented, commercialised and often fake, with often nothing at stake but cash. That's fine with football, it's a viable culture. Cricket is only a viable culture if the game matters more than money, if there is something real at stake and if it is accessible at a high level nationally.
I don't believe it can ever recover until home test matches are live on free to air, until test series are the crown of the year and the County Championship (in a single division) is the main dish.
It is sad to remember how recently - 2005 was it - that a five match ashes series on free to air telly captivated millions.
Thinking about our woeful ashes series in the winter, and the rubbish we played against NZ, and looking at empty stands in the WI tests makes me think it may well be beyond recovery except at the very local level, where it quietly carries on.
My only disagreement is the county championship. It's fine as two divisions. The top 4-5 sides are much stronger than the div two sides and that makes for better, tougher cricket.
The walls are closing in on Todd Blanche, Trump's Attorney General.
Katie Phang, a campaigning lawyer who has taken Court Action to force the release of particular unredacted emails where individuals other than victims' have had their details redacted in violation of the law, reviewing a few items of detail like an impatient school teacher:
Reform UK say they are reporting Green Party leader Zack Polanski to the police after he shared a post to his Instagram which included a photo of a man wearing a top featuring the name "Nigel" alongside an image of a guillotine.
Reform UK say they are reporting Green Party leader Zack Polanski to the police after he shared a post to his Instagram which included a photo of a man wearing a top featuring the name "Nigel" alongside an image of a guillotine.
Should they not be reporting the bloke wearing the t-shirt first if that is the route they want to go down?
I am no Polanski fan, but retweeting an unpleasant post about Farage and the work of the Grim Reaper is less problematic than Farage quoting Andrew Tate bullshite which caused riots and the attempted burning of migrants in their hotel beds.
Farage considers he is such a victim.
It's not the grim reaper it's a guillotine. Implication quite clear. And should someone behead Farage tonight you would look rather foolish.
Polanski is an idiot, every bit as stupid as Corbyn.
Worse, I reckon.
JCorbz had something of the holy fool about him. He should never have been Labour leader, and it was right to kick him out of the Labour party, but he was just the channel for some well-meaning but wrong ideas.
Zack P gives every impression of knowing exactly what he's doing, which is the advancement of Zack P. Farage doesn't deserve that photo, but otherwise, NF and ZP deserve each other.
A decade ago, politicians have discovered they can win a campaign just on hatred. That hasn't really changed yet.
Polanski can't win with this type of shite - it feels like a *very* niche core vote strategy.
Polanski shouldn’t have tweeted that picture and is an idiot . And especially given recent events it was just a moronic thing to do .
The more exposure this guy gets the more he's revealed as an intellectual/moral midget. If this is the challenge to Labour from the hard left bring it on.
If the poll is correct the Greens are getting badly squeezed anyway which is a huzzah. Hopefully Polanski will prove to be a passing cloud.
..if Brits share Burnham’s view about neglect of the north, they are less engaged by his argument that neo-liberalism is to blame for our problems. 20% say it is to blame, 12% it isn’t. But that may be because only 1 in 5 say they could actually describe what neoliberalism is https://x.com/LukeTryl/status/2081425154316386638
I'm astonished it's 1 in 5. My guess is that maybe 1 in 20 could actually do so.
(Or they're just confident they could google it.)
Probably about the same number who can define liberalism, socialism, social democracy, conservatism and populism
I doubt if any two PB posters would agree about the definition of any of those. I wonder if there is a market in political journalism for writers who specialise in precision of thought, language and expression. It seems to me that the Guardian, BBC, Spectator and (slightly to my surprise) the New Statesman are lost causes in this respect. Of the well known pile the Economist does best.
Reform UK say they are reporting Green Party leader Zack Polanski to the police after he shared a post to his Instagram which included a photo of a man wearing a top featuring the name "Nigel" alongside an image of a guillotine.
Should they not be reporting the bloke wearing the t-shirt first if that is the route they want to go down?
I am no Polanski fan, but retweeting an unpleasant post about Farage and the work of the Grim Reaper is less problematic than Farage quoting Andrew Tate bullshite which caused riots and the attempted burning of migrants in their hotel beds.
Farage considers he is such a victim.
It's not the grim reaper it's a guillotine. Implication quite clear. And should someone behead Farage tonight you would look rather foolish.
Polanski is an idiot, every bit as stupid as Corbyn.
Worse, I reckon.
JCorbz had something of the holy fool about him. He should never have been Labour leader, and it was right to kick him out of the Labour party, but he was just the channel for some well-meaning but wrong ideas.
Zack P gives every impression of knowing exactly what he's doing, which is the advancement of Zack P. Farage doesn't deserve that photo, but otherwise, NF and ZP deserve each other.
A decade ago, politicians have discovered they can win a campaign just on hatred. That hasn't really changed yet.
Polanski can't win with this type of shite - it feels like a *very* niche core vote strategy.
I suspect that both the Greens and Reform are hoping for an Alien Vs Predator faceoff, which would make 2019 look like springtime for centrists.
The Greens are an utter embarrassment, therefore they are well suited to having an immature idiot like Polanski as leader. Any other party leader would have to resign over this, but their core support is well meaning wet Waitrose Greens who will overlook it, Corbynistas who were too mental for Labour who won't care, and Islamists who are using the first two groups and won't give a shit.
It’s a reasonable argument that the government should seek a positive net return . However it spends hundreds of billions on youth welfare benefits that produce no return and worse destroy meaningful lives .
It’s seems therefore illogical to deny a poultry sun for a northern ( listening Andy?) icon that is respected locally , nationally and internationally
They just need to rename it Jodrell North Bank and the money will come flowing in.
Jodrell West Bank, and then all the Greens will come on board.
Jodrell left bank. Get the bohemians on board.
Jodrell Nat West Bank. Get city finance, the SNP, PC, Jordan, Israel and Palestine on board.
It say’s, “they are only making plans for Nigel” but the blade already has blood on it. The guillotine was invented during the French Revolution to provide a more humane, swift, and egalitarian method of execution. Ann Widdecombe was was beaten to death."
Now I think Farage / Reform make a lot out of nothing most of the the time, but erhh this 2 weeks after a politician has been murdered. Seems like Walter Titty has deleted it now, I am sure he will claim something or other about not noticing.
That would be terminal for another leader. Like any other leader. Of any other party.
Except, probably, for Reform which is modelling itself on Trump. Look what saying the unsayable did for him. Sadly, a lot of people just don't care, or don't notice.
The brutal truth is that crowding the media space works. And by mouthing the unconscionable these grotesques make themselves political players, although as Polanski may be finding out, it works much better for the populist right.
Polanski shouldn’t have tweeted that picture and is an idiot . And especially given recent events it was just a moronic thing to do .
The more exposure this guy gets the more he's revealed as an intellectual/moral midget. If this is the challenge to Labour from the hard left bring it on.
The contrast with the highly respected Caroline Lucas, who was for so long the public face of the Greens, is really striking.
Politically, it should badly damage the Greens, and (I pretty much agree with @Luckyguy1983 on this one) should finish Zack. He is playing with images of political violence against an identified individual at a violent time. Standards of application of law must be consistent.
I only see these references amongst crazier extremists, and some MAGAs, and not often in the UK with reference to individuals. It was a more common meme used amongst some bloggers (esp. libertarian swear bloggers) about some politicians and activists they opposed back in the 2007+ period, as were fantasies about violence, but that style has I think vanished from anything even vaguely mainstream.
Now I think Farage / Reform make a lot out of nothing most of the the time, but erhh this 2 weeks after a politician has been murdered. Seems like Walter Titty has deleted it now, I am sure he will claim something or other about not noticing.
That would be terminal for another leader. Like any other leader. Of any other party.
Except, probably, for Reform which is modelling itself on Trump. Look what saying the unsayable did for him. Sadly, a lot of people just don't care, or don't notice.
The brutal truth is that crowding the media space works. And by mouthing the unconscionable these grotesques make themselves political players, although as Polanski may be finding out, it works much better for the populist right.
Perhaps you should have a think about why it is that when a left wing politician makes a post which is flagrantly inciteful, in the wake of the brutal murder of a colleague of the proposed target, why you have to spend most of your response engaged in whataboutery about Reform. Some self reflection might not do you any harm.
Obloquy: are there any other examples in the English languages of a consonant following a 'qu'?
'qu' is a single phoneme, ie treat the letter combination as a single consonant. 'y' is a vowel here (and is more often a vowel than a consonant). So you have consonant followed by vowel, as is typical in English. Same as 'why'.
(May not have the terminology 100% but that's the idea)
Polanski shouldn’t have tweeted that picture and is an idiot . And especially given recent events it was just a moronic thing to do .
The more exposure this guy gets the more he's revealed as an intellectual/moral midget. If this is the challenge to Labour from the hard left bring it on.
If the poll is correct the Greens are getting badly squeezed anyway which is a huzzah. Hopefully Polanski will prove to be a passing cloud.
A lot of the Green appeal (imo) was down to lefties being turned off by Starmer. Which I can relate to since I felt a bit of it myself. Now he's gone I think they might struggle. Especially since the leader is out of his depth.
It say’s, “they are only making plans for Nigel” but the blade already has blood on it. The guillotine was invented during the French Revolution to provide a more humane, swift, and egalitarian method of execution. Ann Widdecombe was was beaten to death."
One odd thing about Trump, he doesn’t seem to care at all about his political legacy. How he would wish to be remembered. A more authentic politician in second term would be focussed now on securing a strong legacy from time in office. Trump cares about making money, making money for his family - not much beyond that. What he values seems so much more transactional, living life in the moment, not to the horizon. He ripped up Obama Administration deal with Iran in his first term, calling it the worst deal ever in US history; a real politician right now would feel the heat from needing to make a better deal than the one he ripped up, one that befits the greatest deal making president in US history. But he doesn’t seem to care at all. Sure, the so easy to predict going through the motions is happening - today was day for talks to start, so violence occurred in the run up for a predictable silence in hostilities today: he’s thinks he is negotiating with a gun to their head, making them an offer they can’t refuse - you could be too quick to say he’s actually wrestling a pig in mud that’s very much enjoying itself and in no rush to surrender. But which party really is that pig, that just doesn’t give a damn.
Polanski shouldn’t have tweeted that picture and is an idiot . And especially given recent events it was just a moronic thing to do .
The more exposure this guy gets the more he's revealed as an intellectual/moral midget. If this is the challenge to Labour from the hard left bring it on.
The contrast with the highly respected Caroline Lucas, who was for so long the public face of the Greens, is really striking.
The Greens became so self indulgent they thought they would elect him just cos they could (and he sort of did a funny run at a conference) . Shows how vacuous they are really
Obloquy: are there any other examples in the English languages of a consonant following a 'qu'?
'qu' is a single phoneme, ie treat the letter combination as a single consonant. 'y' is a vowel here (and is more often a vowel than a consonant). So you have consonant followed by vowel, as is typical in English. Same as 'why'.
(May not have the terminology 100% but that's the idea)
I get the logic. But it's still slightly jarring visually. But as someone pointed out, 'soliloquy'.
Obloquy: are there any other examples in the English languages of a consonant following a 'qu'?
'qu' is a single phoneme, ie treat the letter combination as a single consonant. 'y' is a vowel here (and is more often a vowel than a consonant). So you have consonant followed by vowel, as is typical in English. Same as 'why'.
(May not have the terminology 100% but that's the idea)
Hmmm.
Qom is in the same category, but I assume that is transliterated Persian (?) .
We also have Al Quds, and Quran. And Qat, the drug plant from East Africa (?).
Now I think Farage / Reform make a lot out of nothing most of the the time, but erhh this 2 weeks after a politician has been murdered. Seems like Walter Titty has deleted it now, I am sure he will claim something or other about not noticing.
That would be terminal for another leader. Like any other leader. Of any other party.
Except, probably, for Reform which is modelling itself on Trump. Look what saying the unsayable did for him. Sadly, a lot of people just don't care, or don't notice.
The brutal truth is that crowding the media space works. And by mouthing the unconscionable these grotesques make themselves political players, although as Polanski may be finding out, it works much better for the populist right.
Perhaps you should have a think about why it is that when a left wing politician makes a post which is flagrantly inciteful, in the wake of the brutal murder of a colleague of the proposed target, why you have to spend most of your response engaged in whataboutery about Reform. Some self reflection might not do you any harm.
I refer you to the comments made by Farage after Southport. Etc.
He has every right to be outraged by Polanski, but he has contributed to this grim efflorescence of lurid language. No whataboutery about it at all.
Now I think Farage / Reform make a lot out of nothing most of the the time, but erhh this 2 weeks after a politician has been murdered. Seems like Walter Titty has deleted it now, I am sure he will claim something or other about not noticing.
That would be terminal for another leader. Like any other leader. Of any other party.
Except, probably, for Reform which is modelling itself on Trump. Look what saying the unsayable did for him. Sadly, a lot of people just don't care, or don't notice.
The brutal truth is that crowding the media space works. And by mouthing the unconscionable these grotesques make themselves political players, although as Polanski may be finding out, it works much better for the populist right.
Perhaps you should have a think about why it is that when a left wing politician makes a post which is flagrantly inciteful, in the wake of the brutal murder of a colleague of the proposed target, why you have to spend most of your response engaged in whataboutery about Reform. Some self reflection might not do you any harm.
It's simply pointing out the hypocrisy of making a massive deal out of free speech then coming over all precious and running to the police when some nasty stuff comes their way. It's just like the Magas. All abuse and hate speech under the sun, fine, but only if they are the ones dishing it out.
Obloquy: are there any other examples in the English languages of a consonant following a 'qu'?
'qu' is a single phoneme, ie treat the letter combination as a single consonant. 'y' is a vowel here (and is more often a vowel than a consonant). So you have consonant followed by vowel, as is typical in English. Same as 'why'.
(May not have the terminology 100% but that's the idea)
Hmmm.
Qom is in the same category, but I assume that is transliterated Persian (?) .
We also have Al Quds, and Quran. And Qat, the drug plant from East Africa (?).
Also Qubit and Qudit, although arguably they are both abbreviations.
I find it hard to believe that competence has been a key criterion in the appointment of the Cabinet
Seriously?
No Cabinet had ever been formed on the basis of "competence" - you either surround yourself with allies or you find yourself surrounded by enemies. Most Prime MInisters, if in the latter situation, take the opportunity to move out the potential malcontents.
To imagine the basis of Cabinet Government to be competence suggests a political naivete of embarrassing proportions,
I find it hard to believe that competence has been a key criterion in the appointment of the Cabinet
Seriously?
No Cabinet had ever been formed on the basis of "competence" - you either surround yourself with allies or you find yourself surrounded by enemies. Most Prime MInisters, if in the latter situation, take the opportunity to move out the potential malcontents.
To imagine the basis of Cabinet Government to be competence suggests a political naivete of embarrassing proportions,
Churchill's cabinet in Ww2 might be a possible exception to that.
Even Sir John Simon, ennobled and sent to the Woolsack to keep the Liberal Nationals quiet, was considered a superb Lord Chancellor.
Why pick a hostile actor like Kuennsberg? First major error.
Nothing we didn't know already in it. Burnham will back re evaluation of council house bands to catch more London mansions perhaps biggest new news. So Tories win back Cities of London and Westminster and Kensington and Bayswater and Chelsea and Fulham a good call for the next GE
Bille Oddie was his real name. It wasn't a stage name.
His mother also spent most of his childhood with schizophrenia and hospitalised at the Barnsley Hall Hospital psychiatric facility while his father was working as an accountant. So he had to amuse himself in nature
The walls are closing in on Todd Blanche, Trump's Attorney General.
Katie Phang, a campaigning lawyer who has taken Court Action to force the release of particular unredacted emails where individuals other than victims' have had their details redacted in violation of the law, reviewing a few items of detail like an impatient school teacher:
So how many times is Donald Trump's name going to appear on these redacted emails? There should be a spread sheet.
The particular ones in the Katie Phang action are targeted at exposing the DoJ abuse of process, and as clear examples of how the DoJ have not followed the "Epstein File4s Transparency Law". The Judge is forcing disclosure of the small number of samples in camera, so she can Judge.
On Trump, we have data from the parts of the files which have been published. The redaction was incompetent and some slipped through.
We also iirc have some data, which I am not convinced is reliable, from when some members of I think the House of Representatives Judicial Committee were allowed into the Department of Justice to examine the documents on DOJ owned computers in a secure room - as sometimes happens here. They made some comments on number of results in keyword searches, but I do not know where it is all detailed.
Why pick a hostile actor like Kuennsberg? First major error.
Nothing we didn't know already in it. Burnham will back re evaluation of council house bands to catch more London mansions perhaps biggest new news. So Tories win back Cities of London and Westminster and Kensington and Bayswater and Chelsea and Fulham a good call for the next GE
Indeed, we knew there was nothing in the interview because it was pre-released on iplayer (and possibly YouTube).
Peter Hitchens did have a point (and that's not something I say every day) when he said recently that things were better in the 70s...
No social media making politicians attention seeking morons (David Cameron was dead right with his comment, at the start of the social media revolution about Too Many Tweets Make A...) and stirring up hatred on both sides.
And news was genuine "NEWS" !
On the BBC you had just three news bulletins a day (1pm, 6pm 9/10pm) and that was it. Time was limited so they had to make sure the things they were reporting were genuine "news" rather than nonsense and tittle tattle.
In between the news everyone just watched Dallas and Bouquet Of Barbed Wire (when the power was actually on) and got on with their lives...
There wasn't the nevereding psycho dramas we get now despite the fact the country was actually in far more "crisis" in the 70s than it is now or has been at any time since.
People had perspective and a sense of proportion. I guess that's partly because there were still a lot of people around that went through WW1 and nearly everyone was still alive who lived through WW2.
I've said it before. 24hr rolling "news" means they have to keep an endless cycle of drama and scandal going, in order to have something to talk about to fill the (literally) endless hours of "news" coverage. A new scandal or disaster needs to be discovered at all times... And when you add to it, journalists are generally terrible, cynical, ghastly people... you can see the problem.
24hr news is a horribly destructive thing that has done so much damage since it arrived here in the 1980s (spearheaded by Andrew Neil - Wonder what he thinks about it all now) and then when you add it to the harm and damage of the social media revolution... That is why we have had 7 Prime Minister in ten years and why the country is largely ungovernable.
Until a government or PM has the strength to take this head on and deal it, this endless cycle of drama, crisis and the revolving door in Downing Street, will go on...
I find it hard to believe that competence has been a key criterion in the appointment of the Cabinet
Seriously?
No Cabinet had ever been formed on the basis of "competence" - you either surround yourself with allies or you find yourself surrounded by enemies. Most Prime MInisters, if in the latter situation, take the opportunity to move out the potential malcontents.
To imagine the basis of Cabinet Government to be competence suggests a political naivete of embarrassing proportions,
Churchill's cabinet in Ww2 might be a possible exception to that.
Even Sir John Simon, ennobled and sent to the Woolsack to keep the Liberal Nationals quiet, was considered a superb Lord Chancellor.
Surely reflecting the party balance is conventional wisdom when forming Cabinets. One thinks also of the wets appointed by Mrs Thatcher, for instance, and both Blair and Brown appointed their rivals. Some say Burnham has made a mistake in sacking the Starmer contingent.
Despite high expectations, and generally liking the output by Nolan that I've seen, I felt it was flat, turgid, way too long and pretty badly acted. Gratified to see a similar criticism.
I've not yet seen it, but I felt similarly about Oppenheimer.
I find it hard to believe that competence has been a key criterion in the appointment of the Cabinet
Seriously?
No Cabinet had ever been formed on the basis of "competence" - you either surround yourself with allies or you find yourself surrounded by enemies. Most Prime MInisters, if in the latter situation, take the opportunity to move out the potential malcontents.
To imagine the basis of Cabinet Government to be competence suggests a political naivete of embarrassing proportions,
There's a balance to be struck, though.
Truss's cabinet was all about loyalty to the cause of Truss, and we know how that went. Burnham's isn't quite as extreme as that, though it would be interesting to see who remained if you crossed off "mates from Manchester" and "people who helped topple Starmer".
The art is to find people who aren't your allies but are smart enough to a) recognise the advantages of submtting to your authority for the time being and b) do a useful job in the meantime. Besides- sometimes the most dangerous place to have your enemies is out in the cold. Recent events have reminded me a bit of what John Major said off-mic;
You are Prime Minister. You have got a majority of 18. You have got a party still harking back to a golden age that never was but is now invented. And you have three rightwing members of the Cabinet actually resigned. What happens in the parliamentary party?
Oh, I can bring in other people into the Cabinet, that is right, but where do you think most of this poison has come from? It is coming from the dispossessed and the never-possessed. You and I can both think of ex-ministers who are going around causing all sorts of trouble. Would you like three more of the bastards out there?
The logic is just as sound if your majority is 156.
Despite high expectations, and generally liking the output by Nolan that I've seen, I felt it was flat, turgid, way too long and pretty badly acted. Gratified to see a similar criticism.
I've not yet seen it, but I felt similarly about Oppenheimer.
I thought Oppenheimer started off slow but got better and better. By the end I was enthralled.
Obloquy: are there any other examples in the English languages of a consonant following a 'qu'?
'qu' is a single phoneme, ie treat the letter combination as a single consonant. 'y' is a vowel here (and is more often a vowel than a consonant). So you have consonant followed by vowel, as is typical in English. Same as 'why'.
(May not have the terminology 100% but that's the idea)
Hmmm.
Qom is in the same category, but I assume that is transliterated Persian (?) .
We also have Al Quds, and Quran. And Qat, the drug plant from East Africa (?).
I think q represents a letter in the Arabic alphabet that is sounded in the throat. When you transliterate you are obliged to use one of the 26 letters in the Roman alphabet, or a combination of letters, and you want to distinguish every letter in the source alphabet. So Arabic has letters that are transliterated respectively q, k, kh, and there will be others. I assume Persian transliterates in a similar way but I know even less about it than Arabic. There's someone in this board who does speak good Arabic I believe - maybe they will opine with some authority.
Despite high expectations, and generally liking the output by Nolan that I've seen, I felt it was flat, turgid, way too long and pretty badly acted. Gratified to see a similar criticism.
I've not yet seen it, but I felt similarly about Oppenheimer.
Not enough passion apparently ' It lacks psychological, emotional, political and ethical depth. Its narrative structure is gimmicky. The writing is abysmal. None of the characters has convincing motivation for their actions or words. There are no sex scenes, and all the food looks horrible.”
Though she still thinks it will help the humanities 'Nevertheless, Wilson acknowledged the impact the film is already having on cultural awareness of ancient Greek literature as well as cinema itself. Saying “the release of The Odyssey is still an event to celebrate,” she suggests: “This epic is bringing audiences back to cinemas … translations of Odyssey, including mine, are flying off the shelves … [and] perhaps the film will persuade a few college administrators not to cut their literature, language and history departments.”
“Nolan,” Wilson says, “is doing his best to get the general public reading again, and I am grateful.”
I find it hard to believe that competence has been a key criterion in the appointment of the Cabinet
Seriously?
No Cabinet had ever been formed on the basis of "competence" - you either surround yourself with allies or you find yourself surrounded by enemies. Most Prime MInisters, if in the latter situation, take the opportunity to move out the potential malcontents.
To imagine the basis of Cabinet Government to be competence suggests a political naivete of embarrassing proportions,
There's a balance to be struck, though.
Truss's cabinet was all about loyalty to the cause of Truss, and we know how that went. Burnham's isn't quite as extreme as that, though it would be interesting to see who remained if you crossed off "mates from Manchester" and "people who helped topple Starmer".
The art is to find people who aren't your allies but are smart enough to a) recognise the advantages of submtting to your authority for the time being and b) do a useful job in the meantime. Besides- sometimes the most dangerous place to have your enemies is out in the cold. Recent events have reminded me a bit of what John Major said off-mic;
You are Prime Minister. You have got a majority of 18. You have got a party still harking back to a golden age that never was but is now invented. And you have three rightwing members of the Cabinet actually resigned. What happens in the parliamentary party?
Oh, I can bring in other people into the Cabinet, that is right, but where do you think most of this poison has come from? It is coming from the dispossessed and the never-possessed. You and I can both think of ex-ministers who are going around causing all sorts of trouble. Would you like three more of the bastards out there?
The logic is just as sound if your majority is 156.
Well, yes.
Margaret Thatcher had a Shadow Cabinet and then Cabinet which contained many individuals who were critical if not downright hostile to her policies but she was able to call on concepts of Cabinet collective responsibility and loyalty.
Within a decade, on her watch, that was all gone and she ended up being the victim essentially of a Cabinet coup.
Cabinet management is a skill for any PM and that starts with the relationship with the Chancellor. The Burnham-Healey relationship will be the critical element - he could act as a human shield much as Reeves did for Starmer or they could be a genuine team (Cameron-Osborne) or they could end up political opponents and he ends up being sacrificed as were Lamont and Kwarteng.
Reform UK say they are reporting Green Party leader Zack Polanski to the police after he shared a post to his Instagram which included a photo of a man wearing a top featuring the name "Nigel" alongside an image of a guillotine.
Should they not be reporting the bloke wearing the t-shirt first if that is the route they want to go down?
I am no Polanski fan, but retweeting an unpleasant post about Farage and the work of the Grim Reaper is less problematic than Farage quoting Andrew Tate bullshite which caused riots and the attempted burning of migrants in their hotel beds.
Farage considers he is such a victim.
In this case he has every right to complain. Polanski might have shared this unintentionally, as he claims, but the image itself is utterly indefensible in the current climate.
...Polanski accepted a request to collaborate with another account and shared a series of pictures of a Green Party event on Sunday with his 713,000 followers. One of the images showed a man in a black t-shirt with a large guillotine image and the words "We're only making plans for Nigel". A Green Party spokesperson said: "Once this image was brought to [Zack's] attention he immediately unshared the post. He unequivocally does not support this type of dangerous message."..
Reform UK say they are reporting Green Party leader Zack Polanski to the police after he shared a post to his Instagram which included a photo of a man wearing a top featuring the name "Nigel" alongside an image of a guillotine.
Should they not be reporting the bloke wearing the t-shirt first if that is the route they want to go down?
I am no Polanski fan, but retweeting an unpleasant post about Farage and the work of the Grim Reaper is less problematic than Farage quoting Andrew Tate bullshite which caused riots and the attempted burning of migrants in their hotel beds.
Farage considers he is such a victim.
It's not the grim reaper it's a guillotine. Implication quite clear. And should someone behead Farage tonight you would look rather foolish.
Polanski is an idiot, every bit as stupid as Corbyn.
Worse, I reckon.
JCorbz had something of the holy fool about him...
Peter Hitchens did have a point (and that's not something I say every day) when he said recently that things were better in the 70s...
No social media making politicians attention seeking morons (David Cameron was dead right with his comment, at the start of the social media revolution about Too Many Tweets Make A...) and stirring up hatred on both sides.
And news was genuine "NEWS" !
On the BBC you had just three news bulletins a day (1pm, 6pm 9/10pm) and that was it. Time was limited so they had to make sure the things they were reporting were genuine "news" rather than nonsense and tittle tattle.
In between the news everyone just watched Dallas and Bouquet Of Barbed Wire (when the power was actually on) and got on with their lives...
There wasn't the nevereding psycho dramas we get now despite the fact the country was actually in far more "crisis" in the 70s than it is now or has been at any time since.
People had perspective and a sense of proportion. I guess that's partly because there were still a lot of people around that went through WW1 and nearly everyone was still alive who lived through WW2.
I've said it before. 24hr rolling "news" means they have to keep an endless cycle of drama and scandal going, in order to have something to talk about to fill the (literally) endless hours of "news" coverage. A new scandal or disaster needs to be discovered at all times... And when you add to it, journalists are generally terrible, cynical, ghastly people... you can see the problem.
24hr news is a horribly destructive thing that has done so much damage since it arrived here in the 1980s (spearheaded by Andrew Neil - Wonder what he thinks about it all now) and then when you add it to the harm and damage of the social media revolution... That is why we have had 7 Prime Minister in ten years and why the country is largely ungovernable.
Until a government or PM has the strength to take this head on and deal it, this endless cycle of drama, crisis and the revolving door in Downing Street, will go on...
Andrew Neil's other mistake, at least in hindsight, was importing the term ‘tax and spend’ from American politics. Over here, even those who disapprove of tax might like spend.
On the Zack Polanski question, one place to watch is Youtube analyst Mallen Baker, who is an excellent fairly dispassionate summariser / analyst, who back in the 1990s was one of the leaders of the Green Party.
His daily vid should be appearing here, some time in the next 2 hours:
Anyway, focusing on the important things about the header: 'Focussing' just looks wrong to me.
Lots of language points today, which is great. Focusing and focussing are both OK. The logic behind the double s is that you often double the final consonant when adding a suffix, eg sit / sitting.
Reform UK say they are reporting Green Party leader Zack Polanski to the police after he shared a post to his Instagram which included a photo of a man wearing a top featuring the name "Nigel" alongside an image of a guillotine.
Should they not be reporting the bloke wearing the t-shirt first if that is the route they want to go down?
I am no Polanski fan, but retweeting an unpleasant post about Farage and the work of the Grim Reaper is less problematic than Farage quoting Andrew Tate bullshite which caused riots and the attempted burning of migrants in their hotel beds.
Farage considers he is such a victim.
In this case he has every right to complain. Polanski might have shared this unintentionally, as he claims, but the image itself is utterly indefensible in the current climate.
...Polanski accepted a request to collaborate with another account and shared a series of pictures of a Green Party event on Sunday with his 713,000 followers. One of the images showed a man in a black t-shirt with a large guillotine image and the words "We're only making plans for Nigel". A Green Party spokesperson said: "Once this image was brought to [Zack's] attention he immediately unshared the post. He unequivocally does not support this type of dangerous message."..
It reminds of Corbyn's attempts to explain away his sharing of that reworked Nazi mural, claiming he had worked with that person on other things and hadn't realised it was antisemitic.
You never, ever surrender control of your SM account to an outside person, especially not if you're in a party of fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists. (Yes, I did just compare his party to Farage's.)
In an ever changing world one can be sure of the Monday TACO.
The US and Iran are always close to a deal. Trouble is it can be derailed by any extremist with a drone.
It can be derailed by a butterfly farting over the pacific!
There is a tiny problem with such a deal.
Both sides can't compromise enough to actually meet in the middle - Trump because that means admitting he's fucked up. It's existential for Iranian regime.
So both will continue to announce that the other side has signed up to a deal which is a victory for them.
Anyway, focusing on the important things about the header: 'Focussing' just looks wrong to me.
Lots of language points today, which is great. Focusing and focussing are both OK. The logic behind the double s is that you often double the final consonant when adding a suffix, eg sit / sitting.
I accept both are 'allowed' but generally for words with two or more syllables you only double the final consonant if the stress falls on the very last syllable. That's not happening with focusing. (Not when I am listening anyway.)
Despite high expectations, and generally liking the output by Nolan that I've seen, I felt it was flat, turgid, way too long and pretty badly acted. Gratified to see a similar criticism.
I've not yet seen it, but I felt similarly about Oppenheimer.
I thought Oppenheimer started off slow but got better and better. By the end I was enthralled.
If you can't get enthralled by detonating the first nuke...
Anyway, focusing on the important things about the header: 'Focussing' just looks wrong to me.
Lots of language points today, which is great. Focusing and focussing are both OK. The logic behind the double s is that you often double the final consonant when adding a suffix, eg sit / sitting.
I accept both are 'allowed' but generally for words with two or more syllables you only double the final consonant if the stress falls on the very last syllable. That's not happening with focusing. (Not when I am listening anyway.)
Agreed; the double s just looks wrong to me. But it's a matter of taste.
Comments
JCorbz had something of the holy fool about him. He should never have been Labour leader, and it was right to kick him out of the Labour party, but he was just the channel for some well-meaning but wrong ideas.
Zack P gives every impression of knowing exactly what he's doing, which is the advancement of Zack P. Farage doesn't deserve that photo, but otherwise, NF and ZP deserve each other.
A decade ago, politicians have discovered they can win a campaign just on hatred. That hasn't really changed yet.
"Jonah
@IIIIII881247
It say’s, “they are only making plans for Nigel” but the blade already has blood on it. The guillotine was invented during the French Revolution to provide a more humane, swift, and egalitarian method of execution. Ann Widdecombe was was beaten to death."
https://x.com/IIIIII881247/status/2081799370903625990
The brutal truth is that crowding the media space works. And by mouthing the unconscionable these grotesques make themselves political players, although as Polanski may be finding out, it works much better for the populist right.
Here is the reference to a 1979 pop song by XTC "Making plans for Nigel". The song itself is innocuous.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s29RKnB7l7o
Politically, it should badly damage the Greens, and (I pretty much agree with @Luckyguy1983 on this one) should finish Zack. He is playing with images of political violence against an identified individual at a violent time. Standards of application of law must be consistent.
I only see these references amongst crazier extremists, and some MAGAs, and not often in the UK with reference to individuals. It was a more common meme used amongst some bloggers (esp. libertarian swear bloggers) about some politicians and activists they opposed back in the 2007+ period, as were fantasies about violence, but that style has I think vanished from anything even vaguely mainstream.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/california-wildfires/article/An-800-mile-firebreak-once-protected-15713546.php
(May not have the terminology 100% but that's the idea)
Kemi 5.2
Farage 6
then a very big gap to:
Rayner 23
Jenrick 24
Carns 26
Cooper 26
Streeting 27
etc
This is what Zack Polanski has just posted on his instagram.
If I was to post anything as inciteful then I would expect to be arrested, and so should Polanski."
https://x.com/Nigel_Farage/status/2081778915903779244
Two things have combined at once to make this country (mostly) ungovernable and to give us the political discourse of the sewar.
1, Social media.
2. 24hr rolling news.
Both should be banned completely (but never will be) so things will just go from bad to worse.
Shame.
Ssssss.
He ripped up Obama Administration deal with Iran in his first term, calling it the worst deal ever in US history; a real politician right now would feel the heat from needing to make a better deal than the one he ripped up, one that befits the greatest deal making president in US history. But he doesn’t seem to care at all. Sure, the so easy to predict going through the motions is happening - today was day for talks to start, so violence occurred in the run up for a predictable silence in hostilities today: he’s thinks he is negotiating with a gun to their head, making them an offer they can’t refuse - you could be too quick to say he’s actually wrestling a pig in mud that’s very much enjoying itself and in no rush to surrender. But which party really is that pig, that just doesn’t give a damn.
But as someone pointed out, 'soliloquy'.
But I have changed it to focusing.
Qom is in the same category, but I assume that is transliterated Persian (?) .
We also have Al Quds, and Quran. And Qat, the drug plant from East Africa (?).
He has every right to be outraged by Polanski, but he has contributed to this grim efflorescence of lurid language. No whataboutery about it at all.
Gregory Brew
@gbrew24
Trump is now saying the US and Iran are close to a deal.
https://x.com/gbrew24/status/2081815473629606205
In an ever changing world one can be sure of the Monday TACO.
No Cabinet had ever been formed on the basis of "competence" - you either surround yourself with allies or you find yourself surrounded by enemies. Most Prime MInisters, if in the latter situation, take the opportunity to move out the potential malcontents.
To imagine the basis of Cabinet Government to be competence suggests a political naivete of embarrassing proportions,
Guido Fawkes
@GuidoFawkes
·
20m
Andy Burnham appoints Bridget Phillipson as Labour Party Chairman
Even Sir John Simon, ennobled and sent to the Woolsack to keep the Liberal Nationals quiet, was considered a superb Lord Chancellor.
On Trump, we have data from the parts of the files which have been published. The redaction was incompetent and some slipped through.
We also iirc have some data, which I am not convinced is reliable, from when some members of I think the House of Representatives Judicial Committee were allowed into the Department of Justice to examine the documents on DOJ owned computers in a secure room - as sometimes happens here. They made some comments on number of results in keyword searches, but I do not know where it is all detailed.
The DOJ put keyboard monitors on the computers and Pamela Bondi later used those detailed search history records to help her attack the individuals at a hearing alongside her "burn book".
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/12/congress-doj-pam-bondi-epstein-files-searches
Here's an NYT piece about it Trump in the files:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/01/us/trump-epstein-files.html
No social media making politicians attention seeking morons (David Cameron was dead right with his comment, at the start of the social media revolution about Too Many Tweets Make A...) and stirring up hatred on both sides.
And news was genuine "NEWS" !
On the BBC you had just three news bulletins a day (1pm, 6pm 9/10pm) and that was it. Time was limited so they had to make sure the things they were reporting were genuine "news" rather than nonsense and tittle tattle.
In between the news everyone just watched Dallas and Bouquet Of Barbed Wire (when the power was actually on) and got on with their lives...
There wasn't the nevereding psycho dramas we get now despite the fact the country was actually in far more "crisis" in the 70s than it is now or has been at any time since.
People had perspective and a sense of proportion. I guess that's partly because there were still a lot of people around that went through WW1 and nearly everyone was still alive who lived through WW2.
I've said it before. 24hr rolling "news" means they have to keep an endless cycle of drama and scandal going, in order to have something to talk about to fill the (literally) endless hours of "news" coverage. A new scandal or disaster needs to be discovered at all times... And when you add to it, journalists are generally terrible, cynical, ghastly people... you can see the problem.
24hr news is a horribly destructive thing that has done so much damage since it arrived here in the 1980s (spearheaded by Andrew Neil - Wonder what he thinks about it all now) and then when you add it to the harm and damage of the social media revolution... That is why we have had 7 Prime Minister in ten years and why the country is largely ungovernable.
Until a government or PM has the strength to take this head on and deal it, this endless cycle of drama, crisis and the revolving door in Downing Street, will go on...
Truss's cabinet was all about loyalty to the cause of Truss, and we know how that went. Burnham's isn't quite as extreme as that, though it would be interesting to see who remained if you crossed off "mates from Manchester" and "people who helped topple Starmer".
The art is to find people who aren't your allies but are smart enough to a) recognise the advantages of submtting to your authority for the time being and b) do a useful job in the meantime. Besides- sometimes the most dangerous place to have your enemies is out in the cold. Recent events have reminded me a bit of what John Major said off-mic;
You are Prime Minister. You have got a majority of 18. You have got a party still harking back to a golden age that never was but is now invented. And you have three rightwing members of the Cabinet actually resigned. What happens in the parliamentary party?
Oh, I can bring in other people into the Cabinet, that is right, but where do you think most of this poison has come from? It is coming from the dispossessed and the never-possessed. You and I can both think of ex-ministers who are going around causing all sorts of trouble. Would you like three more of the bastards out there?
The logic is just as sound if your majority is 156.
Tomorrow is my first day back at work in nearly five weeks.
Though she still thinks it will help the humanities 'Nevertheless, Wilson acknowledged the impact the film is already having on cultural awareness of ancient Greek literature as well as cinema itself. Saying “the release of The Odyssey is still an event to celebrate,” she suggests: “This epic is bringing audiences back to cinemas … translations of Odyssey, including mine, are flying off the shelves … [and] perhaps the film will persuade a few college administrators not to cut their literature, language and history departments.”
“Nolan,” Wilson says, “is doing his best to get the general public reading again, and I am grateful.”
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jul/27/odyssey-translator-emily-wilson-attacks-nolan-blockbuster
Earlier today - Monday, 27 July - we received a third-party report relating to an image shared on social media.
We take reports of this nature extremely seriously, and officers are conducting enquiries into the matter.
6:58 PM · Jul 27, 2026
1M Views
https://x.com/metpoliceuk/status/2081801291030806582
Margaret Thatcher had a Shadow Cabinet and then Cabinet which contained many individuals who were critical if not downright hostile to her policies but she was able to call on concepts of Cabinet collective responsibility and loyalty.
Within a decade, on her watch, that was all gone and she ended up being the victim essentially of a Cabinet coup.
Cabinet management is a skill for any PM and that starts with the relationship with the Chancellor. The Burnham-Healey relationship will be the critical element - he could act as a human shield much as Reeves did for Starmer or they could be a genuine team (Cameron-Osborne) or they could end up political opponents and he ends up being sacrificed as were Lamont and Kwarteng.
Polanski might have shared this unintentionally, as he claims, but the image itself is utterly indefensible in the current climate.
...Polanski accepted a request to collaborate with another account and shared a series of pictures of a Green Party event on Sunday with his 713,000 followers.
One of the images showed a man in a black t-shirt with a large guillotine image and the words "We're only making plans for Nigel".
A Green Party spokesperson said: "Once this image was brought to [Zack's] attention he immediately unshared the post. He unequivocally does not support this type of dangerous message."..
His daily vid should be appearing here, some time in the next 2 hours:
https://www.youtube.com/@MallenBaker/videos
Will they be inviting Zack Polanski to the Reform conference as they did with Lucy Connolly?
Do you want to ‘upgrade’ to DuraPete?
You never, ever surrender control of your SM account to an outside person, especially not if you're in a party of fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists. (Yes, I did just compare his party to Farage's.)
Both sides can't compromise enough to actually meet in the middle - Trump because that means admitting he's fucked up. It's existential for Iranian regime.
So both will continue to announce that the other side has signed up to a deal which is a victory for them.
And the missiles will fly.
Tough crowd.
But it's a matter of taste.