Mr. B2, aye, someone else mentioned Denmark too. Hmm. May be the oldest in Europe, but I think Japan must have a good shout for being the oldest nation still existent. Depends a lot how you determine things, though.
Yep, Denmark is a really old country. From where most of the Vikings came from, even though we tend to think that Vikings means fjords and Norway. Vikings ran England under Cnut and took over for a second time when William from Norman(Northeman)dy gained control and banished all the Saxons to peasantry for centuries thereafter. The Vikings sacked Rome, arguably founded Russia via the Rus, and settled in various parts of Europe including Sicily and Sardinia. And they 'discovered' America and settled in Iceland - another very old country. For a small part of the world their influence on subsequent history has been truly dramatic.
Denmark has the oldest flag in the world. The Dannebrog.
Yes, but its really dull. All the FinniScandiwegianLand flags are some variation of a cross on its side: great for the dark ages, not so great in the days of design packages...
Mr. B2, aye, someone else mentioned Denmark too. Hmm. May be the oldest in Europe, but I think Japan must have a good shout for being the oldest nation still existent. Depends a lot how you determine things, though.
Yep, Denmark is a really old country. From where most of the Vikings came from, even though we tend to think that Vikings means fjords and Norway. Vikings ran England under Cnut and took over for a second time when William from Norman(Northeman)dy gained control and banished all the Saxons to peasantry for centuries thereafter. The Vikings sacked Rome, arguably founded Russia via the Rus, and settled in various parts of Europe including Sicily and Sardinia. And they 'discovered' America and settled in Iceland - another very old country. For a small part of the world their influence on subsequent history has been truly dramatic.
Denmark has the oldest flag in the world. The Dannebrog.
Yes, but its really dull. All the FinniScandiwegianLand flags are some variation of a cross on its side: great for the dark ages, not so great in the days of design packages...
Switzerland and the Vatican City are the only states with a square flag. Nepal the only one which isn't square or rectangular. The height/width ratio of flags is very variable from country to country. See?
Mr. B2, aye, someone else mentioned Denmark too. Hmm. May be the oldest in Europe, but I think Japan must have a good shout for being the oldest nation still existent. Depends a lot how you determine things, though.
Yep, Denmark is a really old country. From where most of the Vikings came from, even though we tend to think that Vikings means fjords and Norway. Vikings ran England under Cnut and took over for a second time when William from Norman(Northeman)dy gained control and banished all the Saxons to peasantry for centuries thereafter. The Vikings sacked Rome, arguably founded Russia via the Rus, and settled in various parts of Europe including Sicily and Sardinia. And they 'discovered' America and settled in Iceland - another very old country. For a small part of the world their influence on subsequent history has been truly dramatic.
In a sense, they overran England twice, as the Angles/Saxons/Jutes came from Denmark and adjoining parts of Northern Germany. The Norse aimed more for Scotland, Ireland, Normandy, and the Isle of Man.
Mr. B2, aye, someone else mentioned Denmark too. Hmm. May be the oldest in Europe, but I think Japan must have a good shout for being the oldest nation still existent. Depends a lot how you determine things, though.
Yep, Denmark is a really old country. From where most of the Vikings came from, even though we tend to think that Vikings means fjords and Norway. Vikings ran England under Cnut and took over for a second time when William from Norman(Northeman)dy gained control and banished all the Saxons to peasantry for centuries thereafter. The Vikings sacked Rome, arguably founded Russia via the Rus, and settled in various parts of Europe including Sicily and Sardinia. And they 'discovered' America and settled in Iceland - another very old country. For a small part of the world their influence on subsequent history has been truly dramatic.
Denmark has the oldest flag in the world. The Dannebrog.
Yes, but its really dull. All the FinniScandiwegianLand flags are some variation of a cross on its side: great for the dark ages, not so great in the days of design packages...
Could make a case for England, or France. Many countries are surprisingly young (Italy, Germany, Spain). The difficulty is constitutional arrangements. France's current one is less than a century old. Likewise most countries. If the UK is considered a continuation/successor of England, and the monarchy a consistent thread, you could certainly go back to Alfred, maybe around 500 AD.
If you're going by territory, then it's the early 20th century.
A bit like 'Was the Eastern Roman Empire really the Roman Empire'? There are plenty of valid and differing perspectives. It's an interesting debate but there isn't really a right answer. And, if there were, it wouldn't really matter.
France’s current constitution is 60 years old. An infant really.
I had one of the worst meals of my life in Zurich - pasta with cranberry sauce. Utterly disgusting.
Surely you only order a dish like that if you want something that is only going to trouble your insides for a very short period of time?
Faute de mieux. It was either that or going to bed hungry.
You'll have to advise us as to what extent going to bed after throwing up pasta and cranberry is an improvement on hunger...
I didn’t throw it up.
The only other place I have eaten badly was Russia 1988. The meat was indescribable and inedible. The water tasted as if someone had farted in it. The only vegetable to be had was cucumber. There was no fruit at all though we were once shown an orange. In Kiev we managed to find some prune juice.
The only edible food was the bread. And vodka. I came home a stone lighter. Mind you, I met my other half on that trip so possibly it was the hunger-induced hallucinations which drew us together.
Could make a case for England, or France. Many countries are surprisingly young (Italy, Germany, Spain). The difficulty is constitutional arrangements. France's current one is less than a century old. Likewise most countries. If the UK is considered a continuation/successor of England, and the monarchy a consistent thread, you could certainly go back to Alfred, maybe around 500 AD.
If you're going by territory, then it's the early 20th century.
A bit like 'Was the Eastern Roman Empire really the Roman Empire'? There are plenty of valid and differing perspectives. It's an interesting debate but there isn't really a right answer. And, if there were, it wouldn't really matter.
France’s current constitution is 60 years old. An infant really.
I had one of the worst meals of my life in Zurich - pasta with cranberry sauce. Utterly disgusting.
Surely you only order a dish like that if you want something that is only going to trouble your insides for a very short period of time?
Faute de mieux. It was either that or going to bed hungry.
You'll have to advise us as to what extent going to bed after throwing up pasta and cranberry is an improvement on hunger...
I didn’t throw it up.
The only other place I have eaten badly was Russia 1988. The meat was indescribable and inedible. The water tasted as if someone had farted in it. The only vegetable to be had was cucumber. There was no fruit at all though we were once shown an orange. In Kiev we managed to find some prune juice.
The only edible food was the bread. And vodka. I came home a stone lighter. Mind you, I met my other half on that trip so possibly it was the hunger-induced hallucinations which drew us together.
You will be able to relive the experience once Momentum are running the economy!!!
It's so bloody obvious what the game is. What's depressing is that it's being fallen for again.
As Boris gets older, his window of opportunity narrows, and so his strategy becomes more obvious and less sophisticated. Given the pace of demographic change in his part of London, plus the people he has already let down over the airport, he is gambling in last chance saloon.
It's so bloody obvious what the game is. What's depressing is that it's being fallen for again.
As Boris gets older, his window of opportunity narrows, and so his strategy becomes more obvious and less sophisticated. Given the pace of demographic change in his part of London, plus the people he has already let down over the airport, he is gambling in last chance saloon.
And make him even more popular with the grass roots and appear as a martyr to political correctness? The poll is 19 months old but 2015 Tory voters favoured a burqa ban by 66 to 17 per cent and Boris' position isnt that hardline. Even a plurality of Lib Dem and Labour voters backed a ban on that poll.
It's also banned in many of our closest neighbours - France, Belgium, Denmark and in many public places The Netherlands and I see no sign of Macron for example reversing it. It's a matter surely worth a public debate rather then shutting it down.
Boris will not apologise for something that the vast majority of the population agree with.
That people wearing burqas look like bank robbers?
Almost the whole political spectrum is united in saying burqas are used to oppress women and no-one should be forced to wear one. The debate SHOULD be had.
There was NO reason for Boris to undermine that by using stupid, crass, dog-whistle language like "they look like letter boxes". Other than he's a scheming, amoral tit.
"Labour has nothing to fear from its moderate MPs because it is firmly and irrevocably in the hands of the hard Left: the Marxists, the Trotskyists, the anarchists, the revolutionaries, the west-haters, and the anti-Semites."
It's so bloody obvious what the game is. What's depressing is that it's being fallen for again.
As Boris gets older, his window of opportunity narrows, and so his strategy becomes more obvious and less sophisticated. Given the pace of demographic change in his part of London, plus the people he has already let down over the airport, he is gambling in last chance saloon.
It's so bloody obvious what the game is. What's depressing is that it's being fallen for again.
As Boris gets older, his window of opportunity narrows, and so his strategy becomes more obvious and less sophisticated. Given the pace of demographic change in his part of London, plus the people he has already let down over the airport, he is gambling in last chance saloon.
And make him even more popular with the grass roots and appear as a martyr to political correctness? The poll is 19 months old but 2015 Tory voters favoured a burqa ban by 66 to 17 per cent and Boris' position isnt that hardline. Even a plurality of Lib Dem and Labour voters backed a ban on that poll.
It's also banned in many of our closest neighbours - France, Belgium, Denmark and in many public places The Netherlands and I see no sign of Macron for example reversing it. It's a matter surely worth a public debate rather then shutting it down.
Hang on. His article was mocking of the Niqab, but against banning it, as I recall.
I wouldn't mock it, but agree that it should not be banned. I would allow that organisations could ban it as part of their dress code, as my hospital does for example.
It's so bloody obvious what the game is. What's depressing is that it's being fallen for again.
As Boris gets older, his window of opportunity narrows, and so his strategy becomes more obvious and less sophisticated. Given the pace of demographic change in his part of London, plus the people he has already let down over the airport, he is gambling in last chance saloon.
It's so bloody obvious what the game is. What's depressing is that it's being fallen for again.
As Boris gets older, his window of opportunity narrows, and so his strategy becomes more obvious and less sophisticated. Given the pace of demographic change in his part of London, plus the people he has already let down over the airport, he is gambling in last chance saloon.
And make him even more popular with the grass roots and appear as a martyr to political correctness? The poll is 19 months old but 2015 Tory voters favoured a burqa ban by 66 to 17 per cent and Boris' position isnt that hardline. Even a plurality of Lib Dem and Labour voters backed a ban on that poll.
It's also banned in many of our closest neighbours - France, Belgium, Denmark and in many public places The Netherlands and I see no sign of Macron for example reversing it. It's a matter surely worth a public debate rather then shutting it down.
What Boris has turned the debate into is not merits or otherwise of religious clothing, but the degree you can insult people and make them feel uncomfortable as part of electioneering.
Jeremy Corbyn is more reminiscent of Julian the Apostate. A man of inflexible and long-held beliefs, vainly trying to resurrect a dead religion, he attracts curiosity, achieves considerable success in battle, before eventually falling victim to his own injudicious decisions about the near East.
Quite a flattering comparison. Here is what Edward Gibbon said about his death.
"The remains of Julian were interred at Tarsus in Cilicia; but his stately tomb, which arose in that city, on the banks of the cold and limpid Cydnus, was displeasing to the faithful friends, who loved and revered the memory of that extraordinary man. The philosopher expressed a very reasonable wish, that the disciple of Plato might have reposed amidst the groves of the academy; while the soldier exclaimed, in bolder accents, that the ashes of Julian should have been mingled with those of Caesar, in the field of Mars, and among the ancient monuments of Roman virtue. The history of princes does not very frequently renew the examples of a similar competition."
It's so bloody obvious what the game is. What's depressing is that it's being fallen for again.
As Boris gets older, his window of opportunity narrows, and so his strategy becomes more obvious and less sophisticated. Given the pace of demographic change in his part of London, plus the people he has already let down over the airport, he is gambling in last chance saloon.
It's so bloody obvious what the game is. What's depressing is that it's being fallen for again.
As Boris gets older, his window of opportunity narrows, and so his strategy becomes more obvious and less sophisticated. Given the pace of demographic change in his part of London, plus the people he has already let down over the airport, he is gambling in last chance saloon.
And make him even more popular with the grass roots and appear as a martyr to political correctness? The poll is 19 months old but 2015 Tory voters favoured a burqa ban by 66 to 17 per cent and Boris' position isnt that hardline. Even a plurality of Lib Dem and Labour voters backed a ban on that poll.
It's also banned in many of our closest neighbours - France, Belgium, Denmark and in many public places The Netherlands and I see no sign of Macron for example reversing it. It's a matter surely worth a public debate rather then shutting it down.
What Boris has turned the debate into is not merits or otherwise of religious clothing, but the degree you can insult people and make them feel uncomfortable as part of electioneering.
During World War II, San Marino remained neutral, although it was wrongly reported in an article from The New York Times that it had declared war on the United Kingdom on 17 September 1940.[16] The Sammarinese government later transmitted a message to the British government stating that they had not declared war on the United Kingdom.[17]
And that's why Berwick upon Tweed has been at war with Russia since 1856.
The BBC programme Nationwide investigated this story in the 1970s, and found that while Berwick was not mentioned in the Treaty of Paris [concluding the Crimean War], it was not mentioned in the declaration of war either. The question remained as to whether Berwick had ever been at war with Russia in the first place. The true situation is that since the Wales and Berwick Act 1746 had already made it clear that all references to England included Berwick, the town had no special status at either the start or end of the war.
On the topic of Berwick-upon-Tweed, the oft-forgotten Three Hundred and Thirty Five Years' War:
So the difference is that Conservatives and Lib Dems don't like Corbyn, where as Lib Dems definitely don't want May to go - possibly because they think her replacement will be worse. Neither Conservative or Labour supporters particularly want their leader to go.
UKIP has suspended three party members after protesters wearing Donald Trump masks and hats stormed a socialist bookshop.
Police were called to Bookmarks, in central London, on Saturday to claims a group of demonstrators were "intimidating" staff and customers.
Video footage of the incident shows them chanting in support of Tommy Robinson, the founder of the far-right English Defence League who has been recently released from prison.
There were no arrests and no reports of any injuries following the incident.
Was what he said Islamaphobia, really? He was defending the right of people to wear a burqa.
How many of our politicians openly defend the rights of women who are forced by their community or family members to wear a burqa or niqab here and abroad when they don't want to. Because for many Muslim women it is not a choice at all.
Was what he said Islamaphobia, really? He was defending the right of people to wear a burqa.
How many of our politicians openly defend the rights of women who are forced by their community or family members to wear a burqa or niqab here and abroad when they don't want to. Because for many Muslim women it is not a choice at all.
And of course, the way we help these women is to fucking insult them in national newspaper columns.
That's Boris great contribution to the debate. Being needlessly insulting and malevolent to a minority he apparently thinks are oppressed.
Good. Maybe the Irish will stop being idiots and come back to the table. Maybe resume the work the unilaterally dropped on sorting the border issue out before they decided they could annex Northern Ireland instead.
Was what he said Islamaphobia, really? He was defending the right of people to wear a burqa.
How many of our politicians openly defend the rights of women who are forced by their community or family members to wear a burqa or niqab here and abroad when they don't want to. Because for many Muslim women it is not a choice at all.
And of course, the way we help these women is to fucking insult them in national newspaper columns.
That's Boris great contribution to the debate. Being needlessly insulting and malevolent to a minority he apparently thinks are oppressed.
Gee thanks Boris you hideous twat.
The way to help these women is to stop pussyfooting around the issue pretending it is "a choice" or "just clothes" or "aesthetics" and to acknowledge it for what it is.
It's so bloody obvious what the game is. What's depressing is that it's being fallen for again.
As Boris gets older, his window of opportunity narrows, and so his strategy becomes more obvious and less sophisticated. Given the pace of demographic change in his part of London, plus the people he has already let down over the airport, he is gambling in last chance saloon.
It's so bloody obvious what the game is. What's depressing is that it's being fallen for again.
As Boris gets older, his window of opportunity narrows, and so his strategy becomes more obvious and less sophisticated. Given the pace of demographic change in his part of London, plus the people he has already let down over the airport, he is gambling in last chance saloon.
And make him even more popular with the grass roots and appear as a martyr to political correctness? The poll is 19 months old but 2015 Tory voters favoured a burqa ban by 66 to 17 per cent and Boris' position isnt that hardline. Even a plurality of Lib Dem and Labour voters backed a ban on that poll.
It's also banned in many of our closest neighbours - France, Belgium, Denmark and in many public places The Netherlands and I see no sign of Macron for example reversing it. It's a matter surely worth a public debate rather then shutting it down.
I'm OK with a burqua ban, so long as we're also banning balaclavas. A person has the right to wear what they want to wear. (And I include swastikas and KKK outfits.) You have no right not to be offended.
The lines are: 1. Are women being forced to wear burqas? (Or indeed, anything else.) And 2. Are you inciting violence?
What do you mean by now? A majority of all parties supporters have backed banning it for years and Boris did not go as far as that.
Some people are terribly out of touch if they think calling out the burqa some as unpleasant is hideous Islamophobia at a time Denmark, France, Belgium and the Netherlands are banning it.
Was what he said Islamaphobia, really? He was defending the right of people to wear a burqa.
How many of our politicians openly defend the rights of women who are forced by their community or family members to wear a burqa or niqab here and abroad when they don't want to. Because for many Muslim women it is not a choice at all.
And of course, the way we help these women is to fucking insult them in national newspaper columns.
That's Boris great contribution to the debate. Being needlessly insulting and malevolent to a minority he apparently thinks are oppressed.
Gee thanks Boris you hideous twat.
The way to help these women is to stop pussyfooting around the issue pretending it is "a choice" or "just clothes" or "aesthetics" and to acknowledge it for what it is.
Except Boris isn't trying to help these women or move the debate on, he's just interested in insulting them for his own political ends.
Boris is trying to ride two horses at once: stick to the details of his 'liberal' conservatism while getting a headline that will appeal to critics of Islam.
Good. Maybe the Irish will stop being idiots and come back to the table. Maybe resume the work the unilaterally dropped on sorting the border issue out before they decided they could annex Northern Ireland instead.
There were two comments by Lucinda Creighton in that report which caught my eye. The first is that EU officials think the UK leaving has nothing to do with them. That lack of self-reflection by EU officials is possibly one of the reasons why the UK is leaving.
The second, more worrying for the Irish I’d have thought, was the statement that while EU officials had sympathy with the Irish over the border, they were not sympathetic over broader economic issues. Not sure quite what that encompasses but it must worry the Irish. If there really is no deal, they will be expected to put up a hard border anyway and then what?
Boris is trying to ride two horses at once: stick to the details of his 'liberal' conservatism while getting a headline that will appeal to critics of Islam.
Critics of [extremist] Islam span the liberal world.
France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark are all liberal nations and have all taken MORE extreme actions than Boris.
It isn't liberal to view women as second class citizens that should be neither seen nor heard.
Was what he said Islamaphobia, really? He was defending the right of people to wear a burqa.
How many of our politicians openly defend the rights of women who are forced by their community or family members to wear a burqa or niqab here and abroad when they don't want to. Because for many Muslim women it is not a choice at all.
And of course, the way we help these women is to fucking insult them in national newspaper columns.
That's Boris great contribution to the debate. Being needlessly insulting and malevolent to a minority he apparently thinks are oppressed.
Gee thanks Boris you hideous twat.
The way to help these women is to stop pussyfooting around the issue pretending it is "a choice" or "just clothes" or "aesthetics" and to acknowledge it for what it is.
Except Boris isn't trying to help these women or move the debate on, he's just interested in insulting them for his own political ends.
The garb deserves to be insulted. We need to insult it more like drink driving it isn't right. He's not gone as far as banning it though, hopefully pointing out how ridiculous and oppressive it is will work in place of a ban.
I'm also a critic of being gratuitously insulting to an oppressed minority for your personal electoral gain.
I can do both, because unlike Boris, I'm not an actual amoral sociopath.
What's your method of tackling the burqa and without banning it getting it off our streets? You got a better suggestion than Boris or merely criticising without anything positive to say?
Boris is trying to ride two horses at once: stick to the details of his 'liberal' conservatism while getting a headline that will appeal to critics of Islam.
Critics of [extremist] Islam span the liberal world.
France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark are all liberal nations and have all taken MORE extreme actions than Boris.
It isn't liberal to view women as second class citizens that should be neither seen nor heard.
Have you met/spoken any women who wear the Niqab?
I know two, their choice exasperated their husbands/family.
Edit - And a friend of my mother, her son turned down an arranged marriage because his bride to be wore one.
The garb deserves to be insulted. We need to insult it more like drink driving it isn't right. He's not gone as far as banning it though, hopefully pointing out how ridiculous and oppressive it is will work in place of a ban.
Ah yes, insulting the victims of oppression. That well-known route to helping them.
What is wrong with you? How does insulting women we all agree are oppressed achieve anything than making their life *even worse*?
I mean, obviously Boris cares not one second the harm he's causing oppressed minorities, because as a sociopath he's incapable of feeling remorse.
But I'd like to think that PB is a little better than that, so we're going to have to feel the remorse that eludes him, for him.
Was what he said Islamaphobia, really? He was defending the right of people to wear a burqa.
I don’t think you do that by insulting those wearing it.
Boris is such an arse. His big project, Brexit, is going down in flames. He leaves the scene of battle and instead of trying to come up with some half-way intelligent / practical solution he focuses on a minor issue and does so in a twattish way.
If he was genuinely concerned about the plight of Muslim women why didn’t he follow up on the stories the Times has been publishing all week about the abuse of the family visa system and the systematic rape and forced marriage of young British girls taken off to the third world?
I'm also a critic of being gratuitously insulting to an oppressed minority for your personal electoral gain.
I can do both, because unlike Boris, I'm not an actual amoral sociopath.
What's your method of tackling the burqa and without banning it getting it off our streets? You got a better suggestion than Boris or merely criticising without anything positive to say?
Even calling what Boris said a "suggestion" is giving it too much credit. It would actually have been more intellectually defensible (even if I would have strongly disagreed with it) if he HAD called for a burqa ban; then atleast there would've been a POINT to his article, even if that point would've been very contentious. As it was, just saying "they look like letterboxes!" is the type of inane babble you'd expect from a 10-year-old.
I'm also a critic of being gratuitously insulting to an oppressed minority for your personal electoral gain.
I can do both, because unlike Boris, I'm not an actual amoral sociopath.
What's your method of tackling the burqa and without banning it getting it off our streets? You got a better suggestion than Boris or merely criticising without anything positive to say?
What possible positive thing is there to say about an amoral sociopath deciding to attack one of the most vulnerable groups of women in the UK for his own political ends?
I mean I'm really, really trying to see a positive in this.
Honestly, Boris being a high functioning sociopath is about the kindest interpretation I can come up with.
Project Fear from the NFU - The Tory Party of the Soil.
It's certainly not the right time to be considering a ban on the consumption of dogs.
That article is estimating when the UK could run out of food if we had to be wholly self sufficient in food, which no-one is suggesting.
That would suggest the EU could impose an absolute economic blockade on the UK’s ability to trade with it and the rest of the world way more effective than the Kriegsmarine managed in WWII.
Fact for the day: we import a smaller proportion of the calories we eat today than in 1900.
I’ll bite; where did you find that factoid, as well as your statement a few weeks ago that Europe imports less energy now than 30/40 years ago?
Not questioning the veracity, would just like to know
The energy one is easy. BP produces the Statistical Review of World Energy every year (and has done for 67 years). In it, it contains year-by-year consumption, production, and import/export of each major fuel type.
And imports - in Europe - have fallen because fossil fuel usage has come down sharply since the 1970s. Mostly this is because coal and oil usage have fallen sharply. (Oil consumption is down about 30% from the peak in most countries. Coal is more than 50%.) Natural gas consumption has increased, but not enough to compensate for the dramatic falls in the other two fossil fuels.
Some of this improvement is due to renewables, but we're also a lot more efficient than we used to be. Passenger cars in the 1970s rarely got more than 20mpg. It's not uncommon now to find vehicles that do 50. Electricity demand has been on a downward trend for a decade, as we move to LEDs and more efficient appliances.
Boris is trying to ride two horses at once: stick to the details of his 'liberal' conservatism while getting a headline that will appeal to critics of Islam.
Critics of [extremist] Islam span the liberal world.
France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark are all liberal nations and have all taken MORE extreme actions than Boris.
It isn't liberal to view women as second class citizens that should be neither seen nor heard.
Have you met/spoken any women who wear the Niqab?
I know two, their choice exasperated their husbands/family.
Edit - And a friend of my mother, her son turned down an arranged marriage because his bride to be wore one.
"Is it not the will of Allah (SWT) that we are all born stark raving naked?" - Grand Ayatollah Nudistani.
Boris is trying to ride two horses at once: stick to the details of his 'liberal' conservatism while getting a headline that will appeal to critics of Islam.
Critics of [extremist] Islam span the liberal world.
France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark are all liberal nations and have all taken MORE extreme actions than Boris.
It isn't liberal to view women as second class citizens that should be neither seen nor heard.
Have you met/spoken any women who wear the Niqab?
I know two, their choice exasperated their husbands/family.
Edit - And a friend of my mother, her son turned down an arranged marriage because his bride to be wore one.
Good on the son of the friend of your mother!
I'm sure your 2 did so entirely unilaterally and not because of pressures from indoctrination in faith or anything else. Some people willingly join cults and some people are happy to stay in abusive relationships. Doesn't stop the niqab from being an abhorrent and oppressive garb.
Was what he said Islamaphobia, really? He was defending the right of people to wear a burqa.
How many of our politicians openly defend the rights of women who are forced by their community or family members to wear a burqa or niqab here and abroad when they don't want to. Because for many Muslim women it is not a choice at all.
And of course, the way we help these women is to fucking insult them in national newspaper columns.
That's Boris great contribution to the debate. Being needlessly insulting and malevolent to a minority he apparently thinks are oppressed.
Gee thanks Boris you hideous twat.
The way to help these women is to stop pussyfooting around the issue pretending it is "a choice" or "just clothes" or "aesthetics" and to acknowledge it for what it is.
Except Boris isn't trying to help these women or move the debate on, he's just interested in insulting them for his own political ends.
The garb deserves to be insulted. We need to insult it more like drink driving it isn't right. He's not gone as far as banning it though, hopefully pointing out how ridiculous and oppressive it is will work in place of a ban.
So much hate in you. Sad.
If you want to.insult someone regarding the burka it shouldn't be the women...
The garb deserves to be insulted. We need to insult it more like drink driving it isn't right. He's not gone as far as banning it though, hopefully pointing out how ridiculous and oppressive it is will work in place of a ban.
Ah yes, insulting the victims of oppression. That well-known route to helping them.
What is wrong with you? How does insulting women we all agree are oppressed achieve anything than making their life *even worse*?
I mean, obviously Boris cares not one second the harm he's causing oppressed minorities, because as a sociopath he's incapable of feeling remorse.
But I'd like to think that PB is a little better than that, so we're going to have to feel the remorse that eludes him, for him.
He's insulted the burqa not the women. We don't know what the women look like as we can't see their faces or any other parts of them. The burqa saw to that.
Was what he said Islamaphobia, really? He was defending the right of people to wear a burqa.
How many of our politicians openly defend the rights of women who are forced by their community or family members to wear a burqa or niqab here and abroad when they don't want to. Because for many Muslim women it is not a choice at all.
And of course, the way we help these women is to fucking insult them in national newspaper columns.
That's Boris great contribution to the debate. Being needlessly insulting and malevolent to a minority he apparently thinks are oppressed.
Gee thanks Boris you hideous twat.
The way to help these women is to stop pussyfooting around the issue pretending it is "a choice" or "just clothes" or "aesthetics" and to acknowledge it for what it is.
Except Boris isn't trying to help these women or move the debate on, he's just interested in insulting them for his own political ends.
The garb deserves to be insulted. We need to insult it more like drink driving it isn't right. He's not gone as far as banning it though, hopefully pointing out how ridiculous and oppressive it is will work in place of a ban.
So much hate in you. Sad.
If you want to.insult someone regarding the burka it shouldn't be the women...
No hate and I object to the burqa not the women wearing it. As far as I know nothing was said about the women underneath the burqa if it was I apologise.
Mori - 55% of voters think Labour should change their leader before the next general election and 46% of voters think the Tories should change their leader before the next general election
Was what he said Islamaphobia, really? He was defending the right of people to wear a burqa.
How many of our politicians openly defend the rights of women who are forced by their community or family members to wear a burqa or niqab here and abroad when they don't want to. Because for many Muslim women it is not a choice at all.
And of course, the way we help these women is to fucking insult them in national newspaper columns.
That's Boris great contribution to the debate. Being needlessly insulting and malevolent to a minority he apparently thinks are oppressed.
Gee thanks Boris you hideous twat.
The way to help these women is to stop pussyfooting around the issue pretending it is "a choice" or "just clothes" or "aesthetics" and to acknowledge it for what it is.
Except Boris isn't trying to help these women or move the debate on, he's just interested in insulting them for his own political ends.
The garb deserves to be insulted. We need to insult it more like drink driving it isn't right. He's not gone as far as banning it though, hopefully pointing out how ridiculous and oppressive it is will work in place of a ban.
So much hate in you. Sad.
If you want to.insult someone regarding the burka it shouldn't be the women...
No hate and I object to the burqa not the women wearing it. As far as I know nothing was said about the women underneath the burqa if it was I apologise.
You catch more flies with honey than with acid. If you want to persuade people of the error of their ways, you don't start off by insulting them.
It's similar to any argument I had with someone who said it was an unfair restraint on religious freedom to prohibit the burning of the Koran in front of a mosque. My view is that no one who was serious about trying to convert Muslims would begin by insulting their religion.
Banning the burka in public is a respectable position to take (even though he didn't). Taking a swipe at the people who wear it (and who may have little choice in the matter) is not.
I'm also a critic of being gratuitously insulting to an oppressed minority for your personal electoral gain.
I can do both, because unlike Boris, I'm not an actual amoral sociopath.
What's your method of tackling the burqa and without banning it getting it off our streets? You got a better suggestion than Boris or merely criticising without anything positive to say?
What possible positive thing is there to say about an amoral sociopath deciding to attack one of the most vulnerable groups of women in the UK for his own political ends?
I mean I'm really, really trying to see a positive in this.
Honestly, Boris being a high functioning sociopath is about the kindest interpretation I can come up with.
That is surely true of a lot of people in positions of importance.
Project Fear from the NFU - The Tory Party of the Soil.
It's certainly not the right time to be considering a ban on the consumption of dogs.
That article is estimating when the UK could run out of food if we had to be wholly self sufficient in food, which no-one is suggesting.
That would suggest the EU could impose an absolute economic blockade on the UK’s ability to trade with it and the rest of the world way more effective than the Kriegsmarine managed in WWII.
Fact for the day: we import a smaller proportion of the calories we eat today than in 1900.
I’ll bite; where did you find that factoid, as well as your statement a few weeks ago that Europe imports less energy now than 30/40 years ago?
Not questioning the veracity, would just like to know
The energy one is easy. BP produces the Statistical Review of World Energy every year (and has done for 67 years). In it, it contains year-by-year consumption, production, and import/export of each major fuel type.
And imports - in Europe - have fallen because fossil fuel usage has come down sharply since the 1970s. Mostly this is because coal and oil usage have fallen sharply. (Oil consumption is down about 30% from the peak in most countries. Coal is more than 50%.) Natural gas consumption has increased, but not enough to compensate for the dramatic falls in the other two fossil fuels.
Some of this improvement is due to renewables, but we're also a lot more efficient than we used to be. Passenger cars in the 1970s rarely got more than 20mpg. It's not uncommon now to find vehicles that do 50. Electricity demand has been on a downward trend for a decade, as we move to LEDs and more efficient appliances.
Was what he said Islamaphobia, really? He was defending the right of people to wear a burqa.
I don’t think you do that by insulting those wearing it.
Boris is such an arse. His big project, Brexit, is going down in flames. He leaves the scene of battle and instead of trying to come up with some half-way intelligent / practical solution he focuses on a minor issue and does so in a twattish way.
If he was genuinely concerned about the plight of Muslim women why didn’t he follow up on the stories the Times has been publishing all week about the abuse of the family visa system and the systematic rape and forced marriage of young British girls taken off to the third world?
That last is is a far more important issue (and also, the continuing abuse directed against Sarah Champion).
The garb deserves to be insulted. We need to insult it more like drink driving it isn't right. He's not gone as far as banning it though, hopefully pointing out how ridiculous and oppressive it is will work in place of a ban.
Ah yes, insulting the victims of oppression. That well-known route to helping them.
What is wrong with you? How does insulting women we all agree are oppressed achieve anything than making their life *even worse*?
I mean, obviously Boris cares not one second the harm he's causing oppressed minorities, because as a sociopath he's incapable of feeling remorse.
But I'd like to think that PB is a little better than that, so we're going to have to feel the remorse that eludes him, for him.
Why are women in the UK that want to wear the burqa oppressed? They seem to have all the freedom they require to wear what they want. If they could not wear the burqa by law or husband/family pressure then that would be oppression.
I live in a fairly cosmopolitan part of London so I see both the hijab and the burqa every day. The hijab is much more widely worn than the full burqa.
A number of religions prescribe how you should live, what you should eat how and when you should pray and what you should wear.
I'm not a huge fan of any of them but if people draw comfort and a moral compass from a faith (and most faiths say positive things about helping those worse off than yourselves and supporting the community and all that) and derive a sense of belonging and comfort from living to the moral and lifestyle codes from their holy text of choice, so be it.
Some in the West have a particular issue with the burqa and I am as appalled as anyone by the notion that women are being forced against their will to wear one. I've no reference to whether this is true but I have a weak perception it's less true than is generally believed and indeed beneath the veil Islamic women have heartily embraced many of the values of the West including capitalism and consumerism.
Boris Johnson is a nasty little grasper. Everything he says and does is designed to further his rapidly waning chances of being PM. That this odious prat was ever anywhere near the FCO is deeply embarrassing.
There is a general assumption the Conservatives *will* knife May before the next election. There's an easy mechanism for the PCP to remove her, and a general agreement among MPs that she shouldn't stay.
There is a general assumption that Corbyn will not be removed, because there is actually no way to remove him. All avenues have been tried, and failed. As I have said before, I think there is a non-trivial chance he will quit next year on turning 70, but if he doesn't there's no realistic way of removing him. (I think the only person that doesn't apply to is Macdonnell - if he resigns Corbyn might well have to go too).
But i think those figures are more or less irrelevant until we have a leadership slugfest in one party or the other. If by some peculiar catastrophe Boris gets in we'll rapidly become nostalgic for May.
There is a general assumption the Conservatives *will* knife May before the next election. There's an easy mechanism for the PCP to remove her, and a general agreement among MPs that she shouldn't stay.
There is a general assumption that Corbyn will not be removed, because there is actually no way to remove him. All avenues have been tried, and failed. As I have said before, I think there is a non-trivial chance he will quit next year on turning 70, but if he doesn't there's no realistic way of removing him. (I think the only person that doesn't apply to is Macdonnell - if he resigns Corbyn might well have to go too).
But i think those figures are more or less irrelevant until we have a leadership slugfest in one party or the other. If by some peculiar catastrophe Boris gets in we'll rapidly become nostalgic for May.
The Tories under Boris would face a ticking time bomb of scandal in the way the Liberals faced one under Thorpe.
There is a general assumption the Conservatives *will* knife May before the next election. There's an easy mechanism for the PCP to remove her, and a general agreement among MPs that she shouldn't stay.
There is a general assumption that Corbyn will not be removed, because there is actually no way to remove him. All avenues have been tried, and failed. As I have said before, I think there is a non-trivial chance he will quit next year on turning 70, but if he doesn't there's no realistic way of removing him. (I think the only person that doesn't apply to is Macdonnell - if he resigns Corbyn might well have to go too).
But i think those figures are more or less irrelevant until we have a leadership slugfest in one party or the other. If by some peculiar catastrophe Boris gets in we'll rapidly become nostalgic for May.
On current polling it is only worth replacing May with Boris, all other alternatives, Mogg, Javid, Hunt and Gove would do worse than May against Corbyn Labour
There is a general assumption the Conservatives *will* knife May before the next election. There's an easy mechanism for the PCP to remove her, and a general agreement among MPs that she shouldn't stay.
There is a general assumption that Corbyn will not be removed, because there is actually no way to remove him. All avenues have been tried, and failed. As I have said before, I think there is a non-trivial chance he will quit next year on turning 70, but if he doesn't there's no realistic way of removing him. (I think the only person that doesn't apply to is Macdonnell - if he resigns Corbyn might well have to go too).
But i think those figures are more or less irrelevant until we have a leadership slugfest in one party or the other. If by some peculiar catastrophe Boris gets in we'll rapidly become nostalgic for May.
The Tories under Boris would face a ticking time bomb of scandal in the way the Liberals faced one under Thorpe.
Thorpe was the most electorally successful Liberal leader since Lloyd George and 4 years after his trial the SDP Liberal Alliance got 23%.
Though I doubt Boris will be accused of orchestrating a murder plot
Comments
Pause
We are going full-on "Fun With Flags" aren't we...
http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/16403122.two-councillors-quit-labour-but-continue-as-independent-socialists-york/?ref=twtrec
Labour PPC for York Outer resigns from Council group.
Switzerland and the Vatican City are the only states with a square flag. Nepal the only one which isn't square or rectangular. The height/width ratio of flags is very variable from country to country. See?
The only other place I have eaten badly was Russia 1988. The meat was indescribable and inedible. The water tasted as if someone had farted in it. The only vegetable to be had was cucumber. There was no fruit at all though we were once shown an orange. In Kiev we managed to find some prune juice.
The only edible food was the bread. And vodka. I came home a stone lighter. Mind you, I met my other half on that trip so possibly it was the hunger-induced hallucinations which drew us together.
It's also banned in many of our closest neighbours - France, Belgium, Denmark and in many public places The Netherlands and I see no sign of Macron for example reversing it. It's a matter surely worth a public debate rather then shutting it down.
https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/08/31/majority-public-backs-burka-ban/
Almost the whole political spectrum is united in saying burqas are used to oppress women and no-one should be forced to wear one. The debate SHOULD be had.
There was NO reason for Boris to undermine that by using stupid, crass, dog-whistle language like "they look like letter boxes". Other than he's a scheming, amoral tit.
All this stuff plays in his favour.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/08/07/have-resigned-labour-war-moderates-have-lost/
I wouldn't mock it, but agree that it should not be banned. I would allow that organisations could ban it as part of their dress code, as my hospital does for example.
"The remains of Julian were interred at Tarsus in Cilicia; but his stately tomb, which arose in that city, on the banks of the cold and limpid Cydnus, was displeasing to the faithful friends, who loved and revered the memory of that extraordinary man. The philosopher expressed a very reasonable wish, that the disciple of Plato might have reposed amidst the groves of the academy; while the soldier exclaimed, in bolder accents, that the ashes of Julian should have been mingled with those of Caesar, in the field of Mars, and among the ancient monuments of Roman virtue. The history of princes does not very frequently renew the examples of a similar competition."
"The Labour Party should change its leader before the next general election":
Agree: 55%
Disagree: 27%
"The Conservative Party should change its leader before the next general election":
Agree: 46%
Disagree: 31%
Yet there is universal agreement that Con must change leader but not Lab?
Suggests Lab may struggle if Corbyn is leader at next GE?
https://twitter.com/britainelects?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^author
"There is talk of Caroline Flint riding to the rescue as champion of the Labour Heartlands and taking the traditional Labour vote with her"
I've not seen this rumour before.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Hundred_and_Thirty_Five_Years'_War
Agree Labour should change it's leader:
Con: 71%
Lab: 37%
Lib Dem: 70%
Agree Conservatives should change it's leader:
Con: 35%
Labour: 59%
Lib Dem: 34%
So the difference is that Conservatives and Lib Dems don't like Corbyn, where as Lib Dems definitely don't want May to go - possibly because they think her replacement will be worse. Neither Conservative or Labour supporters particularly want their leader to go.
Police were called to Bookmarks, in central London, on Saturday to claims a group of demonstrators were "intimidating" staff and customers.
Video footage of the incident shows them chanting in support of Tommy Robinson, the founder of the far-right English Defence League who has been recently released from prison.
There were no arrests and no reports of any injuries following the incident.
https://news.sky.com/story/ukip-suspends-three-members-over-socialist-bookshop-incident-11464245?dcmp=snt-sf-twitter
That's Boris great contribution to the debate. Being needlessly insulting and malevolent to a minority he apparently thinks are oppressed.
Gee thanks Boris you hideous twat.
I left it at "scheming, amoral tit".
The "he was speaking in support of the women" brigade on here are contemptible.
The lines are: 1. Are women being forced to wear burqas? (Or indeed, anything else.) And 2. Are you inciting violence?
Some people are terribly out of touch if they think calling out the burqa some as unpleasant is hideous Islamophobia at a time Denmark, France, Belgium and the Netherlands are banning it.
Imagine how desperately, terrifyingly *thick* you'd have to be to be taken in by such an obvious charlatan.
And yet, here we are.
It's in the finest traditions of British language to laugh at that which is wrong and the burqa is wrong. Or do you not accept it is wrong?
Big, Big Gove
The second, more worrying for the Irish I’d have thought, was the statement that while EU officials had sympathy with the Irish over the border, they were not sympathetic over broader economic issues. Not sure quite what that encompasses but it must worry the Irish. If there really is no deal, they will be expected to put up a hard border anyway and then what?
France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark are all liberal nations and have all taken MORE extreme actions than Boris.
It isn't liberal to view women as second class citizens that should be neither seen nor heard.
I'm also a critic of being gratuitously insulting to an oppressed minority for your personal electoral gain.
I can do both, because unlike Boris, I'm not an actual amoral sociopath.
https://twitter.com/cnbc/status/1026877285826289664?s=21
I know two, their choice exasperated their husbands/family.
Edit - And a friend of my mother, her son turned down an arranged marriage because his bride to be wore one.
What is wrong with you? How does insulting women we all agree are oppressed achieve anything than making their life *even worse*?
I mean, obviously Boris cares not one second the harm he's causing oppressed minorities, because as a sociopath he's incapable of feeling remorse.
But I'd like to think that PB is a little better than that, so we're going to have to feel the remorse that eludes him, for him.
Boris is such an arse. His big project, Brexit, is going down in flames. He leaves the scene of battle and instead of trying to come up with some half-way intelligent / practical solution he focuses on a minor issue and does so in a twattish way.
If he was genuinely concerned about the plight of Muslim women why didn’t he follow up on the stories the Times has been publishing all week about the abuse of the family visa system and the systematic rape and forced marriage of young British girls taken off to the third world?
I mean I'm really, really trying to see a positive in this.
Honestly, Boris being a high functioning sociopath is about the kindest interpretation I can come up with.
And imports - in Europe - have fallen because fossil fuel usage has come down sharply since the 1970s. Mostly this is because coal and oil usage have fallen sharply. (Oil consumption is down about 30% from the peak in most countries. Coal is more than 50%.) Natural gas consumption has increased, but not enough to compensate for the dramatic falls in the other two fossil fuels.
Some of this improvement is due to renewables, but we're also a lot more efficient than we used to be. Passenger cars in the 1970s rarely got more than 20mpg. It's not uncommon now to find vehicles that do 50. Electricity demand has been on a downward trend for a decade, as we move to LEDs and more efficient appliances.
Re food: it was in a history/economics article on the UK at the beginning of World War 1. I will dig it out. Here's an article that says that in 1871 we imported 40% of our food.
- Grand Ayatollah Nudistani.
I'm sure your 2 did so entirely unilaterally and not because of pressures from indoctrination in faith or anything else. Some people willingly join cults and some people are happy to stay in abusive relationships. Doesn't stop the niqab from being an abhorrent and oppressive garb.
If you want to.insult someone regarding the burka it shouldn't be the women...
https://mobile.twitter.com/britainelects/status/1026843326929162242
It's similar to any argument I had with someone who said it was an unfair restraint on religious freedom to prohibit the burning of the Koran in front of a mosque. My view is that no one who was serious about trying to convert Muslims would begin by insulting their religion.
Banning the burka in public is a respectable position to take (even though he didn't). Taking a swipe at the people who wear it (and who may have little choice in the matter) is not.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula-one/45105296
https://twitter.com/twlldun/status/1026890272737816576
They seem to have all the freedom they require to wear what they want.
If they could not wear the burqa by law or husband/family pressure then that would be oppression.
I live in a fairly cosmopolitan part of London so I see both the hijab and the burqa every day. The hijab is much more widely worn than the full burqa.
A number of religions prescribe how you should live, what you should eat how and when you should pray and what you should wear.
I'm not a huge fan of any of them but if people draw comfort and a moral compass from a faith (and most faiths say positive things about helping those worse off than yourselves and supporting the community and all that) and derive a sense of belonging and comfort from living to the moral and lifestyle codes from their holy text of choice, so be it.
Some in the West have a particular issue with the burqa and I am as appalled as anyone by the notion that women are being forced against their will to wear one. I've no reference to whether this is true but I have a weak perception it's less true than is generally believed and indeed beneath the veil Islamic women have heartily embraced many of the values of the West including capitalism and consumerism.
He's thrown all of us under that bus.
"There isn’t much we don’t agree on with the EU, like minded friends in an uncertain world. "
https://twitter.com/MFATgovtNZ/status/1026640462965178368
There is a general assumption that Corbyn will not be removed, because there is actually no way to remove him. All avenues have been tried, and failed. As I have said before, I think there is a non-trivial chance he will quit next year on turning 70, but if he doesn't there's no realistic way of removing him. (I think the only person that doesn't apply to is Macdonnell - if he resigns Corbyn might well have to go too).
But i think those figures are more or less irrelevant until we have a leadership slugfest in one party or the other. If by some peculiar catastrophe Boris gets in we'll rapidly become nostalgic for May.
The EU as a larger market, becomes a more important relationship than the U.K.
Though I doubt Boris will be accused of orchestrating a murder plot