Yea Steve. When I was a kid it was ‘GB’ everywhere. I remember my Dad sticking a GB sticker on the car when we trundled across to France on a Sealink Ferry. Now it’s always the insipid ‘UK’.- Yookay instead.
The 2012 Olympics still celebrated ‘Team GB’ but even that, in retrospect, seems like a qualifier.
You'd think devolution would be an anathema to getting back into the EU but in effect it's just creating additional layers of middle management bureaucracy so no one ever has to take responsibility for the shitstorms they create
Exactly. It creates an illusion of ‘more democracy’, while divorcing the people from the actual centres of power. And providing local politicians with a money trough. 🙄
Brilliant if depressing LSO! I marvel when seeing it written down like this that most people don’t see the situation in the same way. Why anyone votes for this shower is beyond me.
This is so true. Do you remember a black comedy sci fi film (I know- not selling it ..my brother made me watch it decades ago) called 'Death Star'? About a spaceship where someone had accidentally pushed the self-destruct button and no-one on board could work out how to turn it off. The ship's computer announcing cheerily every so often, the countdown to self-destruct. It was a great psychological discourse on how human beings behave when faced with a literal deadline. I wonder if we aren't, as a nation, following the same pattern: irritation at the system glitching, complacent we can fix this tinkering with no sense of urgency, then frantic button-pushing, then sickening realisation depression, then total breakdown of all norms and rules with anarchy.
Reckon we are still at the complacent tinkering stage, but everyone deep down knows where this is heading.
Yes!! Dark Star. Bombed out in space with a spaced out bomb. Was the tag line I think. An early John Carpenter movie.
What a perfect metaphor for the catastrophe that is modern Britain. The ‘abort’ button is right there. But instead they are off tinkering with the toilet’s broken flush system. ☄️
The plan is essentially to solve the problems of all the governments of the last.25 years - by creating more government. Brilliant. At least we know it's going to be a crap idea before it starts.
Just another aside as to how divided and lost we are. A well known beauty spot near me has closed permanently (Burnsall Park) as the owners were fed up of the anti social behaviour they were tasked with dealing with. Its literally a field in a village in the Yorkshire dales on the banks of the Wharfe. They had to employ security to d/w miscreants and regularly dredge the river for soiled nappies. They posted images on Facebook of the clientele. Its an hour or so from Bradford. One image showed a large group of young Asian lads. Comments - a picture tells a thousand words. The reply - what do you mean, those lads were born here 🙄😬 This country is on a fast track to destruction and nobody gives a shit. We have millions of people here who have no idea how to behave, who have no respect for this country including our beautiful countryside. I fear how bad things will get.
It is, pre kids hubs and I used to do a circular walk from Grassington to Burnsall and back to Grassington via the old lead mines. Absolutely stunning, in all seasons. Apparently the hordes are also ruining Grassington too and Linton Falls. Bolton Abbey went downhill several years ago, although if you're prepared to walk you can quickly escape the jabbering multitudes - my kids have been maybe once. Malham is fast going the same way. Tiktok has a lot to answer for as well, apparently. Someone posts a video of a “hidden gem” and within an hour it's no longer bloody hidden.
Manchester isn't really north you know, not true north. Its only just above the Midlands.....sorry, I just can't bear to be associated in any way with this midwitted fool, as a northerner. He will return this country to the 1970s and it won't take much as we're halfway there already.
I give him until Christmas before he's as unpopular as Starmer. And that's generous.
He's already pretty unpopular with anyone up here with more than two functioning brain cells.
You’re right, of course. I’ve been up there and back from London today. That’s one reason I keep thinking HS2 is such a waste of money. The existing line seems pretty good to me. It’s a journey I do quite often.
I’ve been in despair about Burnham to be honest. Everything he suggesting has been tried and failed before. And all these people talk as if they are champions of the less well off, when in fact The ideas they are proposing have been proven time and time again just to make poor people poorer.
Of course it’s young people who will face the brunt of all this. It’s an incredibly tough time for them.
Aim not leaving Cheshire, Aindy. Ai'll miss hot yoga and the gels....methinks Mrs Burnham is more hyacinth Bucket. And they live in Premier league footballer land 🤣😂
It will all be fine, don't you see? Leftists are so much better than us in every way. We should be, and will be made to be, grateful for them. Burnham, Khan, Mamdani and the rest: the new Übermenchen.
A lot of right wingers actually support UBI (I'm not a right winger tho). I guess they like the idea of it replacing benefits as costing less In administration and can be clawed back thru taxation. It would be detrimental for people in need as not enough to live on which is I guess why they like it.
I’ve never met a right winger who supports the idea of a UBI Maddalene. Maybe I should try and meet a few more!
It strikes me as the enemy of industry, both personal and economic. Many have said AI will make its rollout inevitable and it’s striking how many science fiction story, by no means all dystopian, feature a version. So maybe it is the future.
I don’t quite understand who is meant to be paying in if everyone is taking out. But that is a problem we are already facing.
Certainly an interesting topic. It feels a bit ‘end of an empire’ to me, but I guess we’ll find out.
"....And the idea that there are genuinely 1.4 million British people too mental to look after themselves"
Probably driven mad by the fact they,'ll never be able to buy their own house or get a Council house because to quote you "For foreign born benefit recipients, the real ‘free town’ is London. There, for people like them at least, housing, education, and healthcare, is completely free"
So just why don't these nutters want to work a McJob, pay taxes, and never be able to keep you ( ...for instance) happy, LSO?
I know its multifaceted, but if you were starting out now.....would you work the system as is ( supposing you were , Jo sixpack and not this Charles Dickens reincarnate, of course)?
I certainly don’t blame these people for gaming the system. I don’t even really blame people for claiming that they are fleeing persecution in France. I blame the people who put the incentives in place that means that for millions these are sensible choices. That’s why I never talk about ‘scroungers’. A lot of people are simply responding rationally to incentives offered by self serving politicians, and other elites.
> Now our bosses believe the UK is incapable of running its own domestic affairs
Yabut you make it very clear how true that is. And -- remembering that you can't believe most of what you read -- many people seem to agree that the yookay would have been slightly less poor if it had remained in the loving embrace of the eeyoo. Dunno, if your ship is going to sink anyway, you may as well sit in the most comfortable deck chair you can find before it goes under.
And maybe you're being a bit hasty dumping on devolution. Yeah, there's no magic bullet, but one hears that some of these devolved places are doing rather well. Barcelona. Given how useless Westminster is, could devolution really be any worse? I get the feeling that fragmentation is inevitable -- may as well make it official. And, just possibly, just maybe, Englishmen might set up a little dukedom that remains English and is *not* planing on becoming an emirate?
Hmmm ... well yeah, it could go that way, and of course that's what the political class has in mind, OTOH, once the new layer is in place, it might just decide to tell Westminster to fuck off. As I said, I can see the country breaking up into a bunch of little ... well ... there'd be emirates, people's republics, boat people's paradises ... nope ... who would feed them? Dukedoms and so on. Sorta like it was before the Romans imposed order -- and in a generation a bunch of blue faced barbarian cannibals were all wearing togas. Yes, maybe one of the little kingdoms will rediscover it's Celtic roots. Sikhs could have a little Kalistan. Blacks could found New Wakanda. It could almost be fun except that the many emirates would of course be making jihad on everyone else.
Yes, to watch a once mighty nation self destruct like this. It's taken over a hundred years and not quite finished yet. They say it took a few centuries for Rome to fall. Interesting -- a civilization can build up this enormous, invisible momentum -- like a giant, invisible flywheel that takes a century to finally wind down.
If oor Andy is planning to expand the public sector, the majority employer in many parts of England (and very likely in Wales and Scotland, but I'm less familiar with them) might that be to expand the class of the easily offended sheep voters and cushion them from the inevitable imperial collapse!
A universal basic income in return for a nice squishy cull of the do-gooder sector would suit me fine.
However, either way, as Che Noir once said "the nigga that feeds you is the nigga that starves you".
Plebs like us are not allowed an opinion and you have beautifully demonstrated why. We don’t understand them.
Plus at the end you point out that Great Britain used to rule the waves, but now the UK is incapable of anything.
Notice how they have changed the name of our country. I don’t claim credit for noticing, someone else did but I can’t remember who.
Yea Steve. When I was a kid it was ‘GB’ everywhere. I remember my Dad sticking a GB sticker on the car when we trundled across to France on a Sealink Ferry. Now it’s always the insipid ‘UK’.- Yookay instead.
The 2012 Olympics still celebrated ‘Team GB’ but even that, in retrospect, seems like a qualifier.
You'd think devolution would be an anathema to getting back into the EU but in effect it's just creating additional layers of middle management bureaucracy so no one ever has to take responsibility for the shitstorms they create
Exactly. It creates an illusion of ‘more democracy’, while divorcing the people from the actual centres of power. And providing local politicians with a money trough. 🙄
Brilliant if depressing LSO! I marvel when seeing it written down like this that most people don’t see the situation in the same way. Why anyone votes for this shower is beyond me.
Thanks Steve. I guess the million little individual incentives work together to create the situation automatically.
It’s like we’re living inside a giant machine that we ourselves have set to ‘auto destruct’ ! Enjoy the sun ☀️
Someone needs to pull the plug out then!
🤣
This is so true. Do you remember a black comedy sci fi film (I know- not selling it ..my brother made me watch it decades ago) called 'Death Star'? About a spaceship where someone had accidentally pushed the self-destruct button and no-one on board could work out how to turn it off. The ship's computer announcing cheerily every so often, the countdown to self-destruct. It was a great psychological discourse on how human beings behave when faced with a literal deadline. I wonder if we aren't, as a nation, following the same pattern: irritation at the system glitching, complacent we can fix this tinkering with no sense of urgency, then frantic button-pushing, then sickening realisation depression, then total breakdown of all norms and rules with anarchy.
Reckon we are still at the complacent tinkering stage, but everyone deep down knows where this is heading.
Yes!! Dark Star. Bombed out in space with a spaced out bomb. Was the tag line I think. An early John Carpenter movie.
What a perfect metaphor for the catastrophe that is modern Britain. The ‘abort’ button is right there. But instead they are off tinkering with the toilet’s broken flush system. ☄️
Yes, Dark not Death! Yes, we are watching ourselves implode in slow motion.
The plan is essentially to solve the problems of all the governments of the last.25 years - by creating more government. Brilliant. At least we know it's going to be a crap idea before it starts.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
🎯🎯
I detected no irony or even a hint of sarcasm. Please do better!!! Unvarnished prose is all I managed to get out of it..
Many thanks for holding me to account Michael.
Would an additional level of bureaucracy, or perhaps a new regulatory body, maybe ‘OfLow’ help?
Just another aside as to how divided and lost we are. A well known beauty spot near me has closed permanently (Burnsall Park) as the owners were fed up of the anti social behaviour they were tasked with dealing with. Its literally a field in a village in the Yorkshire dales on the banks of the Wharfe. They had to employ security to d/w miscreants and regularly dredge the river for soiled nappies. They posted images on Facebook of the clientele. Its an hour or so from Bradford. One image showed a large group of young Asian lads. Comments - a picture tells a thousand words. The reply - what do you mean, those lads were born here 🙄😬 This country is on a fast track to destruction and nobody gives a shit. We have millions of people here who have no idea how to behave, who have no respect for this country including our beautiful countryside. I fear how bad things will get.
Just looked it up. A beautiful spot. 🙄
It is, pre kids hubs and I used to do a circular walk from Grassington to Burnsall and back to Grassington via the old lead mines. Absolutely stunning, in all seasons. Apparently the hordes are also ruining Grassington too and Linton Falls. Bolton Abbey went downhill several years ago, although if you're prepared to walk you can quickly escape the jabbering multitudes - my kids have been maybe once. Malham is fast going the same way. Tiktok has a lot to answer for as well, apparently. Someone posts a video of a “hidden gem” and within an hour it's no longer bloody hidden.
Manchester isn't really north you know, not true north. Its only just above the Midlands.....sorry, I just can't bear to be associated in any way with this midwitted fool, as a northerner. He will return this country to the 1970s and it won't take much as we're halfway there already.
I give him until Christmas before he's as unpopular as Starmer. And that's generous.
He's already pretty unpopular with anyone up here with more than two functioning brain cells.
What a time to be alive .....
You’re right, of course. I’ve been up there and back from London today. That’s one reason I keep thinking HS2 is such a waste of money. The existing line seems pretty good to me. It’s a journey I do quite often.
I’ve been in despair about Burnham to be honest. Everything he suggesting has been tried and failed before. And all these people talk as if they are champions of the less well off, when in fact The ideas they are proposing have been proven time and time again just to make poor people poorer.
Of course it’s young people who will face the brunt of all this. It’s an incredibly tough time for them.
Overheard in a kitchen oop north:
Mrs. Burnham [for it is she]: " ... and if tha thinks we're movin' to that shithole in London tha's another think comin' ..."
Young Andy screws up his eyes as the Muse descends his brightest heaven of invention,
"Nay lass - we'll 'ave No 10 oop here in t'North".
Thus are matters of State decided upon in modern day Britain.
🤣
Aim not leaving Cheshire, Aindy. Ai'll miss hot yoga and the gels....methinks Mrs Burnham is more hyacinth Bucket. And they live in Premier league footballer land 🤣😂
Yes. This Cambridge educated ‘outsider’ who is only ever worked at the highest level in politics is absolutely spinning us a yarn…
It will all be fine, don't you see? Leftists are so much better than us in every way. We should be, and will be made to be, grateful for them. Burnham, Khan, Mamdani and the rest: the new Übermenchen.
A lot of right wingers actually support UBI (I'm not a right winger tho). I guess they like the idea of it replacing benefits as costing less In administration and can be clawed back thru taxation. It would be detrimental for people in need as not enough to live on which is I guess why they like it.
I’ve never met a right winger who supports the idea of a UBI Maddalene. Maybe I should try and meet a few more!
It strikes me as the enemy of industry, both personal and economic. Many have said AI will make its rollout inevitable and it’s striking how many science fiction story, by no means all dystopian, feature a version. So maybe it is the future.
I don’t quite understand who is meant to be paying in if everyone is taking out. But that is a problem we are already facing.
Certainly an interesting topic. It feels a bit ‘end of an empire’ to me, but I guess we’ll find out.
Great post. ‘King of the north’ my arse.
Careful, you are giving him ideas.
Burnham is a ‘chip-on-the-shoulder’ politician.
His policies are and will be driven by the chips he carries on his shoulder.
Basking in the climate apocalypse and your exceptional writing! I love the 'Labour party succumbing to group think' paragraph!
Absolutely on the money....just like Labour who seem to have aligned their generous Labour donors with winning generous government contracts.
Many thanks David! Yes. A lot of people seem to be getting very rich by keeping people poor. ATB
"....And the idea that there are genuinely 1.4 million British people too mental to look after themselves"
Probably driven mad by the fact they,'ll never be able to buy their own house or get a Council house because to quote you "For foreign born benefit recipients, the real ‘free town’ is London. There, for people like them at least, housing, education, and healthcare, is completely free"
So just why don't these nutters want to work a McJob, pay taxes, and never be able to keep you ( ...for instance) happy, LSO?
It's a friggin mystery, init?
I know its multifaceted, but if you were starting out now.....would you work the system as is ( supposing you were , Jo sixpack and not this Charles Dickens reincarnate, of course)?
I certainly don’t blame these people for gaming the system. I don’t even really blame people for claiming that they are fleeing persecution in France. I blame the people who put the incentives in place that means that for millions these are sensible choices. That’s why I never talk about ‘scroungers’. A lot of people are simply responding rationally to incentives offered by self serving politicians, and other elites.
This reply was a thoughtful addendum, which would have added incorporative depth to a complex treatise.
Forgive my pickiness, and thanks for replying to my short-form barbs.
It reflects well on the Author, and on work I love, in general.
> Now our bosses believe the UK is incapable of running its own domestic affairs
Yabut you make it very clear how true that is. And -- remembering that you can't believe most of what you read -- many people seem to agree that the yookay would have been slightly less poor if it had remained in the loving embrace of the eeyoo. Dunno, if your ship is going to sink anyway, you may as well sit in the most comfortable deck chair you can find before it goes under.
And maybe you're being a bit hasty dumping on devolution. Yeah, there's no magic bullet, but one hears that some of these devolved places are doing rather well. Barcelona. Given how useless Westminster is, could devolution really be any worse? I get the feeling that fragmentation is inevitable -- may as well make it official. And, just possibly, just maybe, Englishmen might set up a little dukedom that remains English and is *not* planing on becoming an emirate?
Hi Ray
‘Given how useless Westminster is, could devolution really be any worse?’
It’s never an alternative to central power though is it? It’s always just another layer on top.
Hmmm ... well yeah, it could go that way, and of course that's what the political class has in mind, OTOH, once the new layer is in place, it might just decide to tell Westminster to fuck off. As I said, I can see the country breaking up into a bunch of little ... well ... there'd be emirates, people's republics, boat people's paradises ... nope ... who would feed them? Dukedoms and so on. Sorta like it was before the Romans imposed order -- and in a generation a bunch of blue faced barbarian cannibals were all wearing togas. Yes, maybe one of the little kingdoms will rediscover it's Celtic roots. Sikhs could have a little Kalistan. Blacks could found New Wakanda. It could almost be fun except that the many emirates would of course be making jihad on everyone else.
Yes, to watch a once mighty nation self destruct like this. It's taken over a hundred years and not quite finished yet. They say it took a few centuries for Rome to fall. Interesting -- a civilization can build up this enormous, invisible momentum -- like a giant, invisible flywheel that takes a century to finally wind down.
If oor Andy is planning to expand the public sector, the majority employer in many parts of England (and very likely in Wales and Scotland, but I'm less familiar with them) might that be to expand the class of the easily offended sheep voters and cushion them from the inevitable imperial collapse!
A universal basic income in return for a nice squishy cull of the do-gooder sector would suit me fine.
However, either way, as Che Noir once said "the nigga that feeds you is the nigga that starves you".
I’m not familiar with the young lady’s oeuvre. Nor tbh much of a fan of her vocabulary.
But she certainly seems to have a broad handle on the situation. 🤔🤣