Ersatz TLS discussion

Hello, everyone.

Welcome to the new thread. Another public holiday here in France, lundi de Pentecôte / Whit Monday. Blue skies and sunshine, for now at least, after thunder, heavy rain, hail yesterday.

From my reading of last week, do people see themselves in this, I wonder?

Alongside my bed there is always a Lazy Stack and a Hard Stack. I put Flora’s book onto the Hard Stack, which included Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande, two works by Svetlana Alexievich, and other books on species loss, viruses, antibiotic resistance, and how to prepare dried food. These were books I would avoid reading until some wellspring of mental energy was uncapped. Still, I usually managed to read the books in my Hard Stack, eventually. On top of my Lazy Stack was Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier, which I was reading again because I liked Rebecca—bad Rebecca—better than the goody-goody shrinking narrator.

Louise Erdrich, The Sentence

As always, here's hoping for good reads for all.

Wonderful late spring day here...22c, a steady cool breeze, if only the whole summer was like this but that is never the case now.

Still enjoying Victorian Cities which has gone from Manchester, to Leeds, to Birmingham, to Middlesborough and now to Melbourne. Middlesborough was the fastest growing city in england from the 1860s to 1890s but Melbourne was the fastest in the Empire, from a small settlement to a top 10 empire city in 30 years

My latest classic novel is Up Above The World by Paul Bowles(1966). His only major novel set outside North Africa and i will be interested to see if it matches his masterpieces.

In The Flames of Calais Airey Neave tells of the doomed British defence of Calais in May 1940, as the Dunkirk evacuations were underway, keeping German troops tied down to the West of Dunkirk.

AB76 wrote: "Wonderful late spring day here...22c, a steady cool breeze, if only the whole summer was like this but that is never the case now.

Still enjoying Victorian Cities which has gone from Manchester, ..."

That Bowles has been sitting on my shelf for ages, but I think I might get to his Collected Stories first

Paul wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Wonderful late spring day here...22c, a steady cool breeze, if only the whole summer was like this but that is never the case now.

Still enjoying Victorian Cities which has gone from ..."

The stories are good but i think his novels are better(though no decision pronounced on Up Above The World yet, as only just started it). He has become a key author to look to in my reading over the last 14 years, fiction and non fiction.

I recommend collections of his travel writing too, this time last year i spent a month reading a collection of his travel writing and it was of the highest standard. Bill mentioned his music too and i have a CD on my side of his piano work that i must listen to

AB76 wrote: "Paul wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Wonderful late spring day here...22c, a steady cool breeze, if only the whole summer was like this but that is never the case now.

Still enjoying Victorian Cities which h..."

I've already read The Sheltering Sky and loved, so his novels are up at the top of my list of priorities but I love short story collections

Paul wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Paul wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Wonderful late spring day here...22c, a steady cool breeze, if only the whole summer was like this but that is never the case now.

Still enjoying Victorian C..."

my favourites are Let It Come Down and The Spiders House though The Sheltering Sky was superb too

Thanks to Gpfr as always for the new thread.

Paul Bowles: I still haven't tried anything. Is The Sheltering Sky the place to start?

I'm about to start one or maybe two new books today but haven't actually done so yet so I'll wait before posting. There's also one of my ongoing books I might read first. And there's a movie I'd like to see as well - good thing it's a holiday, I might even get one of the above done!

Berkley wrote: "Thanks to Gpfr as always for the new thread.

Paul Bowles: I still haven't tried anything. Is The Sheltering Sky the place to start?

I'm about to start one or maybe two new books today but haven't..."

i think "Let It Come Down" is best place to start, its where i was introduced to him. he has a unique, hard, cold style, with realist and modernist elements. Not quite an existentalist writer but with elements of that too

All his big novels are set in Morrocco(Tangiers and Fez or Algeria. The setting of The Sheltering Sky could be Algiers and the Sahara plays a large part too

Three O'Clock in the Morning is a really interesting novel and the second Carafiglio they i have really enjoyed

i'm about a third of the way in and very much like The Silence of the Wave, im admiring the style of writing, the seriousness and also the echoes of great Italian writers from the post-war generation(1945-1970). So much better than his crime novels

The Sentence. This is the second book I've read by Louise Erdrich and the first novel. I really liked her memoir Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country.
Gladarvor and Lass have both praised The Sentence and I loved it. Tookie, an ex-convict, and Pollux, an ex-Tribal policeman who arrested her, are now married and happy.

Now I live as a person with a regular life. A job with regular hours after which I come home to a regular husband. ... I live what can be called a normal life only if you've always expected to live such a way. If you think you have the right. ... Knowing what I know of my tribe's history, remembering what I can bear to remember of my own, I can only call the life I live now a life of heaven.

Tookie works in a bookstore specialising in Native books.

In November 2019, death took one of my most annoying customers. But she did not disappear.

From November 2019 to November 2020, the 'annoying customer' was of course not the only thing to affect Tookie's life in Minneapolis: Covid, then George Floyd's killing and the subsequent protests ...
Highly recommended.

Preparing to write this set me thinking about what is the acceptable term to use nowadays — I found this from the National Museum of the American Indian:

In the United States, Native American has been widely used but is falling out of favor with some groups, and the terms American Indian or Indigenous American are preferred by many Native people.

AB76 wrote: "Three O'Clock in the Morning is a really interesting novel and the second Carafiglio i have really enjoyed..."

Unlike you, I like his crime novels a lot, but I'm interested to check out his other writing.

Gpfr wrote: "Hello, everyone.

Welcome to the new thread. Another public holiday here in France, lundi de Pentecôte / Whit Monday. Blue skies and sunshine, for now at least, after thunder, heavy rain, hail yest..."

Thanks, Gp, for the new thread...

This bank holiday caught daughter no. 1 by surprise (and we'd forgotten about it...) She went over to our place in Brittany on Friday, with her partner, two dogs, two friends and their baby, and was most disappointed to find the shops shut and no market on the Monday!

Berkley wrote: "Paul Bowles: I still haven't tried anything. Is The Sheltering Sky the place to start?"

Same here... thought I'd check it out on Wikipedia, where it says:

"The Sheltering Sky is a 1949 novel of alienation and existential despair by American writer and composer Paul Bowles."

Good grief! I thought... How Un-American! (showing my tendency to stereotyping there). No happy ending, I assume!

Looks like I should have read that alongside Camus and Gide all those years ago. Do I want to go there again? Possibly.

Gpfr wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Three O'Clock in the Morning is a really interesting novel and the second Carafiglio i have really enjoyed..."

Unlike you, I like his crime novels a lot..."

Same here. I may have a look at the others - eventually.

Gpfr wrote: "... do people see themselves in this, I wonder? "Alongside my bed there is always a Lazy Stack and a Hard Stack...""

Almost... not in physical terms - the bedside table is too small to contain mountains of books, but I do have a mental list of books 'to be read anytime', and books 'to be read when I have time, energy and patience'. It's for that reason it took me a year to read Évariste and only 2-3 days to read Cinnamon Kiss. Which is not to say that Mosley doesn't make some serious points about racism and politics in the USA, but they're mainly PI investigations...

There is a discussion of art appreciation between Tam and Bill in the last thread. This interests me, though I have not studied it and have no expertise. I did like Bill's comment that:

I’ve read quite a bit of standard art history, at least up through the 1970s, and I know what I’m supposed to like. My problem (not really a “problem”, let’s say, “issue”) is: I don’t always like what I’m supposed to like, preferring, for instance, the Pre-Raphaelites to the Impressionists, which has led me to the borderlands of aesthetics, which is a branch of philosophy rather than history (I’m definitely more comfortable with the latter).

Now, for me, "I don’t always like what I’m supposed to like..." is absolutely about the freedom of the individual to appreciate (or not) a piece of art (visual, written, musical) on their own terms, and to refuse to bow down to some notion of an universally agreed standard. (I think, though, in music there is a standard in 'performance' - you do expect the right notes, in the right order...)
Unlike Bill, I do prefer (overall) the impressionist style to the Pre-Raphaelites, but "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"* (OK, maybe not quite 'to the death'...) reflects my attitude to disagreements about cultural norms.

*Although often attributed to Voltaire himself, according to Wikipedia:

In The Friends of Voltaire, Hall wrote: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"[4] as an illustration of Voltaire's beliefs.[5] This quotation – which is sometimes misattributed to Voltaire himself – is often cited to describe the principle of freedom of speech.

scarletnoir wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "... do people see themselves in this, I wonder? "Alongside my bed there is always a Lazy Stack and a Hard Stack...""

Almost... not in physical terms - the bedside table is too small t..."
You're going to need a bigger table!

Gpfr wrote: "Hello, everyone.

Welcome to the new thread. Another public holiday here in France, lundi de Pentecôte / Whit Monday. Blue skies and sunshine, for now at least, after thunder, heavy rain, hail yest..."

Thanks for the new post. I also have fast and slow lanes for my books.

scarletnoir wrote: "Berkley wrote: "Paul Bowles: I still haven't tried anything. Is The Sheltering Sky the place to start?"

Same here... thought I'd check it out on Wikipedia, where it says:

"The Sheltering Sky is a..."

I find Bowles defies an easy categorisation within the post-war canon. he is certainly a pessimistic writer with a keen eye for the outsider and the "other". His work can be starkly cold blooded, prose that cuts and unsettles, there is very little warmth and maybe one criticism could be a lack of humour. He is brilliant with narrative and description, never too much, never too little

He was also not a prolific writer, after the mid 1960s, his literary output came to a stop but his non-fiction continued, alongside his diaries and his study of north african folk music and translations from Arabic of various authors from Tangiers or Morrocco

Robert wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "Hello, everyone.

Welcome to the new thread. Another public holiday here in France, lundi de Pentecôte / Whit Monday. Blue skies and sunshine, for now at least, after thunder, heavy ra..."

i usually have 4 books on the go and they slot automatically into fast and slow lanes , generally the non-fiction is digested more slowly, though sometimes a book is slow to ignite and can be neglected and become very slow lane

scarletnoir wrote: "Berkley wrote: "Paul Bowles: I still haven't tried anything. Is The Sheltering Sky the place to start?"

Same here... thought I'd check it out on Wikipedia, where it says:

"The Sheltering Sky is a..."

There is a pretty good film version of 'The Sheltering Sky', by Bernado Bertolucci, 1990, which is worth catching up with, for fans of Paul Bowles. It has the same hard and distant, cold look, at the (this particular) part of world that he is somewhat renowned for. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_She...

Tam wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "Berkley wrote: "Paul Bowles: I still haven't tried anything. Is The Sheltering Sky the place to start?"

Same here... thought I'd check it out on Wikipedia, where it says:

"The..."

thanks for reminding me of that Tam....i'd forgotten a film was made

Just finished The Flames of Calais by Airey Neave, wow, what a brilliant 250 page telling of the Siege of Calais in 1940

3,800 British and French troops held out in the port city in late May 1940, suffering huge losses in hellish conditions. Their bravery is well described without any jingoism by Neave, a mixture of regular and territorial units fighting with real tenacity against the Panzer divisions. Their 4 or 5 day defiance gave breathing time for the Dunkirk evacuation to the east, which started as soon as Calais fell

Via maps and photos i feel like i have been living in Calais, which i have never visited oddly, despite knowing Northern France well. The tragedy of that attractive port city being levelled by days of Stuka attacks and mortar bombing

Individual stories stand out, the defiance of Brigadier Nicholson, with his doomed orders but obeying till the very end. He visited the frontline roadblocks every day during the siege and was to die in captivity. The countless wounded young officers who fought on with their men, weakening but brave. Lord Cromwell manned his bren gun at one roadblock till it was just him and a corporal left, hit in the arm, leg and shoulder.

A party of Royal Marines landed on the last day and set to digging in around the railway station, they must have known they were entering a situation they may not escape but they boosted morale along the line. The Royal Navy kept evacuating wounded until the almost the final minutes, shelling German positions non-stop.

At the surrender near the railway station a German officer, furious at the huge losses his men had suffered, gestured by slitting his throat at a British officer. The officer laughed out loud and slapped his thigh, the German stalked off and nothing happened.

Neave was wounded early on and spent a lot of the battle in the cellars of the Military Hospital with hundreds of wounded, he staggered through Calais on the last day to get to the Railway station, concerned he could be buried alive in the cellars, bent double due to his wounds but made it to those positions and then into captivity. He escaped later in the war and made it to the UK, he was killed by the IRA in the 1970s

Thanks for that graphic summary, AB, and for your previous comments. Calais is so often treated as a foot-note to Dunkirk. Airey Neave clearly does justice to those brave men.

Logger24 wrote: "Thanks for that graphic summary, AB, and for your previous comments. Calais is so often treated as a foot-note to Dunkirk. Airey Neave clearly does justice to those brave men."

i have some aerial shots of the Calais from 1930, which show how it used to look but they are very large. I will post some edited sections in photos now

am suprised how wide and well ordered the streets of Calais Nord were and i cant see a car in sight

The German war diaries from the Panzer units showed a respect for the english defenders, described as "tenacious and tough". General Shaale took much longer to take the city than he expected and at one point, Guderian asked him if it would be possible to take the city by the end of the 26th May, if not the luftwaffe will simply destroy Calais.

Shaale conquered the city on the 26th, so no luftwaffe annilhilation was needed, though arguably it was already a ruined city

Born OTD: Richard Wagner (1813) and Arthur Conan Doyle (1859).

Well, Watson, you have one more specimen of the tragic and grotesque to add to your collection. By the way, it is not eight o'clock, and a Wagner night at Covent Garden! If we hurry, we might be in time for the second act.

- The Adventure of the Red Circle

General Election for 4th July called in the UK

Sunak announced it in the pouring rain, his suit getting wetter and wetter as protestors played "things can only get better" at ear splitting volume

14 years of these Tories...what a mess, i dont think Sunak will be bothering the greatest PM list any time soon...

AB76 wrote: "General Election for 4th July called in the UK

Sunak announced it in the pouring rain, his suit getting wetter and wetter as protestors played "things can only get better" at ear splitting volume
..."


I will never understand how in most of Europe, elections are held....sporadically

Paul wrote: "AB76 wrote: "General Election for 4th July called in the UK

Sunak announced it in the pouring rain, his suit getting wetter and wetter as protestors played "things can only get better" at ear spli..."

you mean as opposed to the set dates in the USA?
in 2010 we did have a fixed parliaments act decided where the PM lost the ability to call an election whenever he wanted. It was a Tory-Liberal idea but predictably once the tories held all the power again, they didnt like the idea and scrapped it, so briefly, we resembled the USA

i'm sad we have had two cheapened elections that broke the cycle for the first time since the 1970s(roughly 4-5 year gaps), in 2017 and 2019. Both were caused by the brexit folly, one was a fudged bungle by the hapless, robotic Theresa May which led to a hung parliament when we didnt need one and the second was a liars banquet of nonsense from the totally hopeless Boris Johnson, which gave us the worst PM in living memory...until Liz Truss....lol

So we now have another few weeks of politicians of all parties lying through their teeth about what they are going to do for the country without telling us how. If there is a Monster Raving Loony Party candidate standing in my constituency I may just be inclined to vote for them

Cynical, moi?

Bill wrote: "By the way, it is not eight o'clock, and a Wagner night at Covent Garden! If we hurry, we might be in time for the second act.
- The Adventure of the Red Circle"

Waltzing into an opera for the second act, without buying tickets in advance, it's the kind of thing you read about a lot in 19th Century novels. A bit like oyster suppers, very much a thing of the past.

giveusaclue wrote: "So we now have another few weeks of politicians of all parties lying through their teeth about what they are going to do for the country without telling us how. If there is a Monster Raving Loony P..."

i hear you and yes politics is at its cheapest and most shallow right now, though i also feel with the right wing bias in the UK press, it will be labour facing the hardest questions as they navigate the 80% of the press who are intrinsically conservative.

Only the SNP get a harder press coverage than Labour in the UK

The problem with the UK voting system is that you cannot vote in a national manner as its FPTP. My area was roughly 60% Tory-35% Lib Dem, with no Labour chance of winning at all, so a vote for Labour is totally wasted. They split the seat in two with these dodgy boundary changes, which means the Northern part of the old seat is likely to go Lib Dem, while the South is a marginal but i fear that it may be closer and at least one seat will be Tory

AB76 wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "So we now have another few weeks of politicians of all parties lying through their teeth about what they are going to do for the country without telling us how. If there is a Mo..."

Opponents of the BBC may disagree with you!!

My area varies from election to election but I doubt Maggie Throup (OBE!!!!) will get back in again.

FPTP must have been very annoying to the Libs given their votes/seats compared to the SNPs. Wasn't it Tony Blair who tried to bribe the Libs before the 1997 election with hints of proportional representation, then realised he didn't need them? But it will be interesting to see how many SNPs get elected this time. Because, if the English MPs are bad, a certain number of the SNMPs are worse. And exactly how long does it take a police force to find where a missing £600,000 has gone, given that it should have been kept in a separate referendum account, not be paid into the general account.

giveusaclue wrote: "AB76 wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "So we now have another few weeks of politicians of all parties lying through their teeth about what they are going to do for the country without telling us how. If ..."

the classic example of how FPTP is outdated came almost 41 years ago in the 1983 election. Where the SDP-Liberal Alliance got only 23 seats for 7,794,770 votes, compared to Labour who got 209 seats with 8,456,934 votes!

And yes the BBC got criticised but a lot of its by the same right wing press that criticise labour and dislike the BBC as it is not part of the right wing block, alongside The Mirror, The Guardian and Channel 4 News. The rest is basically Tory country....

AB76 wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "AB76 wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "So we now have another few weeks of politicians of all parties lying through their teeth about what they are going to do for the country without..."

Well the Mirror, Guardian, Channel 4 and the Beeb is quite a lot! 😀

Though I have to say that since Covid I haven't watched too many news programmes on tv. The wall to wall gloom put me off.

AB76 wrote: "Just finished The Flames of Calais by Airey Neave, wow, what a brilliant 250 page telling of the Siege of Calais in 1940

3,800 British and French troops held out in the port city in late May 1940..."

Haven't heard of this one before. Sounds like I need to take a look.

Paul wrote: "I will never understand how in most of Europe, elections are held....sporadically.."

Actually - no. Nearly all European countries have fixed terms. The UK is an exception.

Very warm here, and our lovely hummingbirds are back. Other recent sightings: a turtle crossing a busy road, lots of wild turkey (reintroduced in Vermont 50+ years ago), carpenter bees (a menace, drilling into the eaves), a red-crested woodpecker (hammering as I sit here), and a black bear exploring round the house.

giveusaclue wrote: "So we now have another few weeks of politicians of all parties lying through their teeth about what they are going to do for the country without telling us how. If there is a Monster Raving Loony P..."

This sounds suspiciously like the "they are all as bad as each other" argument being put about by the Tories as the only reason to continue in power: "We know we are terrible, but so are the other lot - indeed, they are a little bit worse."

In truth, in my long-ish life of 75 years I have lived through very many administrations, both Tory and Labour, and can say with certainty: this is the worst, most incompetent, most corrupt and most despicable bunch of shysters to run the country in that time. I care not who people vote for so long as it's not the Tories or Reform (Nigel Farage's private company). I do hope people vote tactically to get these con men and women out of there ASAP.

Assuming Labour win, will we be in a land of milk and honey from day 1? Of course not - Brexit kicked a massive hole in public finances; the privatised companies (look at water, recently) have borrowed billions and paid it to shareholders and executives, rather than spending it on infrastructure - the EU would have landed the government with huge fines for allowing the pollution. In fact, we are so far down that it'll take a long, long haul to get back to anything resembling a civilised country - if it ever can be done.

So - politicians are to be taken with a pinch of salt - definitely - but some are worse (no, much worse) than others.

giveusaclue wrote: "Well the Mirror, Guardian, Channel 4 and the Beeb is quite a lot! 😀"

Just for context, and for our non-UK based readers, let's look at newspaper and media ownership here, by readership as reported:

1. Metro (free London paper)
2. Daily Mail
3. Mail on Sunday
4. Evening Standard (free)
5. Daily Mirror
6. Sunday Mirror
7. Daily Express
8. Daily Star
9. Sunday Express
10. i (online)
11. Financial Times
etc.

Ownership of the first three lies with DMG Media whose effective owner is Lord Rothermere... Jonathan Harold Esmond Vere Harmsworth, 4th Viscount Rothermere (born 3 December 1967), is a British peer and owner of a newspaper and media empire founded by his great-grandfather Harold Sidney Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere. He is the chairman and controlling shareholder of the Daily Mail and General Trust, formerly "Associated Newspapers", a media conglomerate which includes the Daily Mail... He has non-domicile (non-dom) tax status and owns his media businesses through a complex structure of offshore holdings and trusts.

This individual does not pay UK taxes (as a 'non-dom) and yet controls the largest UK media company which tells people in the country how to think and who to vote for. And who is that? The Conservative party!

Next: The Evening Standard, around 25% owned by the Mail company and most of the rest by Evgeny Lebedev: Born in Moscow, Lebedev is the son of Alexander Lebedev, a Russian banker and former officer of the First Chief Directorate of the USSR's KGB and later its successor, the SVR...In July 2020, Lebedev was nominated for a life peerage by Boris Johnson in the 2020 Political Honours.[28] On 19 November 2020, he was created Baron Lebedev, of Hampton in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames and of Siberia in the Russian Federation.
The Standard supports the Conservatives, according to Wikipedia.

The Sun, Times, Telegraph and Guardian titles no longer provide data for this exercise, but their circulation comes in that order.

The Sun and Times titles are owned by News UK whose controlling interest lies with Rupert Murdoch, sometime Australian now a US citizen. Murdoch does not pay taxes in the UK, and yet his papers - like Rothermere's Mail titles - campaign tirelessly for the Conservatives. Their other media interests are similarly aligned.

The Telegraph titles were until recently owned by the Barclay twins, who in true James Bond villain style owned their own tax-free island - Brecqhou in the Channel islands. Financial problems have led to ownership passing to other family members and affiliates, though the titles invariably support... the Conservatives! This link shows a nice picture of the Barclays' island castle:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_a...

So, to cut a long story short - most newspapers (and linked radio and TV stations) in the UK are owned by individuals who:
1. are either not British and don't pay taxes here, or
2. are British but don't pay taxes here either!

And yet... they feel free to tell us how to vote. How can that be right? I'd be interested to know how many US papers, radio stations and TV stations are owned by people who simply don't pay US taxes.

scarletnoir wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "Well the Mirror, Guardian, Channel 4 and the Beeb is quite a lot! 😀"

Just for context, and for our non-UK based readers, let's look at newspaper and media ownership here, by re..."

Quite right Scarlet. I agree with you totally!... We are being fed news, largely, by the morally bankrupt, and the current crop of parliamentarians are probably the worst crop we have ever had... at least within living memory...

scarletnoir wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "So we now have another few weeks of politicians of all parties lying through their teeth about what they are going to do for the country without telling us how. If there is a Mo..."

Don't worry, folks won't need to vote tactically, the Tories are toast.

"This sounds suspiciously like the "they are all as bad as each other" argument being put about by the Tories as the only reason to continue in power: "We know we are terrible, but so are the other lot - indeed, they are a little bit worse."

Not quite my argument and not just a Tory argument. I've spoken to folks on both sides who don't trust either of the main parties

scarletnoir wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "So we now have another few weeks of politicians of all parties lying through their teeth about what they are going to do for the country without telling us how. If there is a Mo..."

exactly, the Tories always will be much much worse, especially since 1979.....

giveusaclue wrote: "I've spoken to folks on both sides who don't trust either of the main parties"

There is no reason to do so, since politicians invariably change their policies when it suits... so don't trust what they say they will do, but by their actions.

The Blair-Brown government left public services in good shape - the NHS, schools, local government were basically well funded. (The Iraq war was a terrible mistake, but I don't recall the Tories arguing against it.)

This lot have used 'austerity' and the next few crises as an excuse to cut all of those services to the bone... and let's face it - these were deliberate and targeted choices. There were alternatives, but they were not explored. Fine for those not dependent on public services (maybe 5%-10% of the population). Not so great for the rest.

scarletnoir wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "Well the Mirror, Guardian, Channel 4 and the Beeb is quite a lot! 😀"

Just for context, and for our non-UK based readers, let's look at newspaper and media ownership here, by re..."

Brexit was enabled by a lot of these media titans and the lies told by their political chums, the influence of the press in the UK is a disgrace but it never changes. GB News are basically The Tory Channel and breaking all the rules with impunity, they should be slapped down heavily in the next 6 weeks if they break any rules. It will be the first channel covering an election like FoxNews, dotted with MPs competing in said elections

The latest from the front line made me laugh:

Rishi Sunak has taken questions from two men dressed in hi-vis clothing at a warehouse in Derbyshire who turned out to be Conservative councillors.

The prime minister was visiting a biscuit distribution centre in the marginal constituency of Erewash, where he gave a stump speech to people who appeared to be employees of the business.

He took unchallenging questions from two men who were later found to be Conservative politicians, one of them from a different county. Ben Hall-Evans and Ross Hills were first identified by Byline Times, with Hills confirming to the outlet that he had been present.

The incident raised questions about whether the men were “plants” to ask Sunak questions on his preferred topics, and whether the Conservatives will pursue a controlling approach to the election campaign...

(Edit - I had to add this one!) Later, Sunak appeared in Barry, south Wales, where he asked people in a brewery if “all the football” of the Euros would be good for revenue. It was quickly pointed out to him that Wales had not qualified for the tournament.


https://www.theguardian.com/politics/...

scarletnoir wrote: "Paul wrote: "I will never understand how in most of Europe, elections are held....sporadically.."

Actually - no. Nearly all European countries have fixed terms. The UK is an exception."

Ahh, OK, Well, Italy is ad cazzum as well, to throw some Latin into the discussion

Paul wrote: "Ahh, OK, Well, Italy is ad cazzum as well."

Parliamentary elections... Presidents are elected for a fixed 7 year term, I think.

These are the exceptions - I think Denmark is another.

scarletnoir wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "I've spoken to folks on both sides who don't trust either of the main parties"

There is no reason to do so, since politicians invariably change their policies when it suits... ..."

Not to mention off the book debts, spoiling private pensions, selling gold cheap, praising the financial institutions for their ingenuity in finding ways to make money (that ended well) a year before the global financial crisis. Oh and GP contracts.

Against that the Tories sold everything off they could ie privatising, right to buy without insisting funds raised should go back into social housing, which Labour continued.

Neither side have done anything about the shortage of home produced medics over decades.

Ruining the economy on the altar of net zero when countries such as India, China and the US churn out all the pollution they like.

So that is the dilemma many voters face.

We''ll get back to books eventually. 😀