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  • Charles said:

    Mike Huckabee needs a history lesson.

    Churchill retreated at Dunkerque.

    Also is Huckabee advocating Trump makes Hillary Clinton Vice-President?

    https://twitter.com/GovMikeHuckabee/status/945739713138315264

    That was a tactical withdrawal not a retreat!

    The March on Corunna was a retreat

    http://www.poetrybyheart.org.uk/poems/the-burial-of-sir-john-moore-after-corunna/
    You say tomato...
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,733
    Charles said:

    No - I'm very cosmopolitan

    1/8 American, 1/4 Irish, 1/4 Welsh 1/4 Scottish and 1/8 English with assorted cousins in New Zealand, South Africa, Gibraltar, France and Belgium

    To quote Dorothy Sayers, 'that proves you're English. No other race would be proud of its mongrel heritage. I myself am quite offensively English for I am one-sixteenth French.'
  • DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    kle4 said:

    brendan16 said:
    I'm no lawyer with a specialty in nationality law, but I find it hard to see how. EU citizenship was conferred as being part of the EU, and when we are not in it, we won't have it. Neither we nor the EU are responsible for how other countries confer their own national citizenship, which can be very generous (to the extent many Australian politicians didn't even know they had foreign citizenship!), so if some people are able to claim Irish citizenship or some other citizenship, that's something they could do others could not already, if it is one the countries where it is due to a parent or grandparent. It would just now grant even more benefits, with no noticeable drawbacks (like the Australian example did due to their laws on those with dual citizenship being elected)
    Presumably when they are locked up in some dodgy EU country who wouldn't know a fair trial if you hit them over the head with it but with which they have dual citizenship there will be screams for our Foreign Secretary to take a personal interest.
    I take the point that some EU countries don't benefit from the English legal system. But it would be very hard to claim that Danish or Irish, or even French or Dutch citizens, are worse off than Brits.

    Come to think of it, the arrest warrant will probably not lapse on leaving. May seems so authoritarian that she'll want to keep it! If so, Brits. can still be arrested for committing a 'crime' in Romania, Bulgaria or Croatia which isn't an offence here.
    Some seem ok (and I am Scottish rather than English). I agree that we will probably keep the European Arrest Warrant. In my experience this is mainly a problem for Poles who have fallen foul of their legal system (which doesn't seem too tricky) than Brits. For a time there was a defence that their jails were so appalling that sending people there was not compliant with Article 2 but they seem to have got around that.
    Presumably the shite Polish jail defence is now redundant.

    'Conditions at Liverpool prison the worst ever inspected, says report

    https://tinyurl.com/yaqxdeeq

    I don't think our Prison Inspectors get to Poland. It may give them a broader range of comparisons.
    An indea I had many years ago was to outsource the UK prison service to the third world. Benefits would include:

    1) A useful source of income for third world countries
    2) Greater deterrent factor
    3) Free up land for redevelopment in UK cities
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,761
    ydoethur said:

    Elliot said:

    rkrkrk said:

    Again, with respect, you are both completely missing the point (as is Johnson). The University provides facilities for the guild, which every student is compelled to be a member of. All student bodies must be recognised by the guild - we had endless trouble with a research group we set up until the Head of History obligingly adopted us. If they are not recognised then they are not permitted to use the facilities of the guild or he University and technically shouldn't meet at all. This gives de facto veto over the types of groups allowed and what they can do.

    A particularly insane example is when a Christian group at Aberystwyth were forced to disband because they said any non-Christian members would be encouraged to convert to Christianity against union policy which said any group must be open to all religions. Now as it happens, that group were a bunch of homophobic bastards whom I would not willingly have been seen dead or alive with. But the union, which was controlled by a bunch of Fascist thugs, was out to get them for their religious views, which were perfectly legal and indeed were the majority religion in this country - and came up with that excuse. Do I disapprove of proselytism? Yes, as it happens. Do I see a difference between an avowedly Christian group expecting its be Christian or at least interested in Christianity and the Choral Union (of which I was a member) holding auditions to make sure it only got half-decent singers? No, I can't say I do. I can see however a thoroughly vicious religious agenda behind it. Not the least reason for my anger was that I found myself on the side of the homophobic bastards because they were clearly right and the guild was clearly wrong.

    I quit the Guild in disgust and told the sports officer exactly what I thought of them, to his face and to his shock. If I tell you he was 5ft 6, weighed 212 lb and was appointed because he had self-esteem issues over his weight, you will see the problem.

    It's the power of the guilds needs breaking. Everyone here is looking at symptoms and ignoring the root cause. Weakening the NUS, who are considerably worse - the only reason that they are not the worst union in education is that the UCU set the bar extraordinarily high - would also help.
    The only time I do recall us all turning out for a "political" issue at Dundee was a meeting to disaffiliate the Union from the NUS. Every member who had anything to do with the politics of the Union opposed it. But they lost.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392
    edited December 2017
    ydoethur said:

    Charles said:

    No - I'm very cosmopolitan

    1/8 American, 1/4 Irish, 1/4 Welsh 1/4 Scottish and 1/8 English with assorted cousins in New Zealand, South Africa, Gibraltar, France and Belgium

    To quote Dorothy Sayers, 'that proves you're English. No other race would be proud of its mongrel heritage. I myself am quite offensively English for I am one-sixteenth French.'
    The americans are very proud of such heritage of course - just look at the wikipedia page of any american actor and see how they usually make sure to specify they are of scots-irish, scandanavian and bolivian heritage, or the like.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,733
    kle4 said:

    ydoethur said:

    Charles said:

    No - I'm very cosmopolitan

    1/8 American, 1/4 Irish, 1/4 Welsh 1/4 Scottish and 1/8 English with assorted cousins in New Zealand, South Africa, Gibraltar, France and Belgium

    To quote Dorothy Sayers, 'that proves you're English. No other race would be proud of its mongrel heritage. I myself am quite offensively English for I am one-sixteenth French.'
    The americans are very proud of such heritage of course - just look at the wikipedia page of any american actor and see how they usually make sure to specify they are of scots-irish, scandanavian and bolivian heritage, or the like.
    But surely the Americans are less advanced versions of the English? :smiley:

    (As I am not English, I disclaim responsibility for them!)
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392
    ydoethur said:

    kle4 said:

    ydoethur said:

    Charles said:

    No - I'm very cosmopolitan

    1/8 American, 1/4 Irish, 1/4 Welsh 1/4 Scottish and 1/8 English with assorted cousins in New Zealand, South Africa, Gibraltar, France and Belgium

    To quote Dorothy Sayers, 'that proves you're English. No other race would be proud of its mongrel heritage. I myself am quite offensively English for I am one-sixteenth French.'
    The americans are very proud of such heritage of course - just look at the wikipedia page of any american actor and see how they usually make sure to specify they are of scots-irish, scandanavian and bolivian heritage, or the like.
    But surely the Americans are less advanced versions of the English? :smiley:

    (As I am not English, I disclaim responsibility for them!)
    I could not possibly comment. But yes.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,761

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    kle4 said:

    brendan16 said:
    I take the point that some EU countries don't benefit from the English legal system. But it would be very hard to claim that Danish or Irish, or even French or Dutch citizens, are worse off than Brits.

    Come to think of it, the arrest warrant will probably not lapse on leaving. May seems so authoritarian that she'll want to keep it! If so, Brits. can still be arrested for committing a 'crime' in Romania, Bulgaria or Croatia which isn't an offence here.
    Some seem ok (and I am Scottish rather than English). I agree that we will probably keep the European Arrest Warrant. In my experience this is mainly a problem for Poles who have fallen foul of their legal system (which doesn't seem too tricky) than Brits. For a time there was a defence that their jails were so appalling that sending people there was not compliant with Article 2 but they seem to have got around that.
    Presumably the shite Polish jail defence is now redundant.

    'Conditions at Liverpool prison the worst ever inspected, says report

    https://tinyurl.com/yaqxdeeq

    I don't think our Prison Inspectors get to Poland. It may give them a broader range of comparisons.
    An indea I had many years ago was to outsource the UK prison service to the third world. Benefits would include:

    1) A useful source of income for third world countries
    2) Greater deterrent factor
    3) Free up land for redevelopment in UK cities
    The downside is that we need to recognise that what we want coming out of prisons is normalised, clean (in the drug sense), employable members of society integrated with their families and in a position to make a contribution to make up for what they have already cost society. We really need to work back from that objective in determining what our prisons are like, what we do to facilitate family contact, what work and training is provided, what efforts are made to ensure that they have accommodation and ideally job prospects when they come out, what medical follow ups are necessary to lock in any progress whilst in jail etc etc.

    Unless you plan to lock people up for the rest of their lives anything else is really futile.
  • nielhnielh Posts: 1,307
    brendan16 said:

    Judging by the comments in this twitter thread, there have been a fair few fraught Christmases again this year:

    https://twitter.com/alexowatts/status/944534837809106945

    Imagine going onto Twitter and attacking your own mother about a passport. What an ungrateful spoilt brat!

    Maybe his mum just wanted the right to visa free travel to Iran!
    It is absolutely right to point out the hypocrisy of her stance. But that doesn't mean disowning her or breaking up the family.
  • alex.alex. Posts: 4,658
    edited December 2017

    Pulpstar said:


    Am I unusually British ? My nearest non British relative is my great great grandmother from Belgium.

    You might be average. We're mostly mongrels!

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatfeedback/4201967/So-you-think-youre-English.html
    Most branches of my family tree have been done back to the 16 hundreds and the closest I can do to “foreign” is some Welsh blood in the early 19th century (unsurprisingly I can’t trace that one back any further). A reasonable amount of Yorkshire though,

  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,761
    In my wife's family on her father's side as many generations as they could trace came from the fishing community of Auchmithy, north of Arbroath, which was tiny, even its heyday. Fishers married fishers for generation after generation. The inbreeding must have been remarkable.
  • brendan16brendan16 Posts: 2,315
    edited December 2017
    nielh said:

    brendan16 said:

    Judging by the comments in this twitter thread, there have been a fair few fraught Christmases again this year:

    https://twitter.com/alexowatts/status/944534837809106945

    Imagine going onto Twitter and attacking your own mother about a passport. What an ungrateful spoilt brat!

    Maybe his mum just wanted the right to visa free travel to Iran!
    It is absolutely right to point out the hypocrisy of her stance. But that doesn't mean disowning her or breaking up the family.
    If he feels the need to criticise her do so in private - not to the whole world on Twitter.

    This was the woman who carried him for 9 months, gave birth to him, who presumably looked after and supported him for 18 years and provided him with a home. And he attacks her on Twitter for how she voted in a referendum?

    What a disrespectful ungrateful little s**t.

    Anyone who falls out with close family over a referendum vote really needs to take a good hard look at themselves.
  • DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    kle4 said:

    brendan16 said:
    I take the point that some EU countries don't benefit from the English legal system. But it would be very hard to claim that Danish or Irish, or even French or Dutch citizens, are worse off than Brits.

    Come to think of it, the arrest warrant will probably not lapse on leaving. May seems so authoritarian that she'll want to keep it! If so, Brits. can still be arrested for committing a 'crime' in Romania, Bulgaria or Croatia which isn't an offence here.
    Some seem ok (and I am Scottish rather than English). I agree that we will probably keep the European Arrest Warrant. In my experience this is mainly a problem for Poles who have fallen foul of their legal system (which doesn't seem too tricky) than Brits. For a time there was a defence that their jails were so appalling that sending people there was not compliant with Article 2 but they seem to have got around that.
    Presumably the shite Polish jail defence is now redundant.

    'Conditions at Liverpool prison the worst ever inspected, says report

    https://tinyurl.com/yaqxdeeq

    I don't think our Prison Inspectors get to Poland. It may give them a broader range of comparisons.
    An indea I had many years ago was to outsource the UK prison service to the third world. Benefits would include:

    1) A useful source of income for third world countries
    2) Greater deterrent factor
    3) Free up land for redevelopment in UK cities
    The downside is that we need to recognise that what we want coming out of prisons is normalised, clean (in the drug sense), employable members of society integrated with their families and in a position to make a contribution to make up for what they have already cost society. We really need to work back from that objective in determining what our prisons are like, what we do to facilitate family contact, what work and training is provided, what efforts are made to ensure that they have accommodation and ideally job prospects when they come out, what medical follow ups are necessary to lock in any progress whilst in jail etc etc.

    Unless you plan to lock people up for the rest of their lives anything else is really futile.
    We hardly have a good record of rehabilitation of criminals now.
  • geoffwgeoffw Posts: 8,092
    DavidL said:

    ydoethur said:

    Elliot said:

    rkrkrk said:

    Again, with respect, you are both completely missing the point (as is Johnson). The University provides facilities for the guild, which every student is compelled to be a member of. All student bodies must be recognised by the guild - we had endless trouble with a research group we set up until the Head of History obligingly adopted us. If they are not recognised then they are not permitted to use the facilities of the guild or he University and technically shouldn't meet at all. This gives de facto veto over the types of groups allowed and what they can do.

    A particularly insane example is when a Christian group at Aberystwyth were forced to disband because they said any non-Christian members would be encouraged to convert to Christianity against union policy which said any group must be open to all religions. Now as it happens, that group were a bunch of homophobic bastards whom I would not willingly have been seen dead or alive with. But the union, which was controlled by a bunch of Fascist thugs, was out to get them for their religious views, which were perfectly legal and indeed were the majority religion in this country - and came up with that excuse. Do I disapprove of proselytism? Yes, as it happens. Do I see a difference between an avowedly Christian group expecting its be Christian or at least interested in Christianity and the Choral Union (of which I was a member) holding auditions to make sure it only got half-decent singers? No, I can't say I do. I can see however a thoroughly vicious religious agenda behind it. Not the least reason for my anger was that I found myself on the side of the homophobic bastards because they were clearly right and the guild was clearly wrong.

    I quit the Guild in disgust and told the sports officer exactly what I thought of them, to his face and to his shock. If I tell you he was 5ft 6, weighed 212 lb and was appointed because he had self-esteem issues over his weight, you will see the problem.

    It's the power of the guilds needs breaking. Everyone here is looking at symptoms and ignoring the root cause. Weakening the NUS, who are considerably worse - the only reason that they are not the worst union in education is that the UCU set the bar extraordinarily high - would also help.
    The only time I do recall us all turning out for a "political" issue at Dundee was a meeting to disaffiliate the Union from the NUS. Every member who had anything to do with the politics of the Union opposed it. But they lost.
    A bit like Brexit then. So Duxit, but who led whom?
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,270
    edited December 2017
    alex. said:

    Pulpstar said:


    Am I unusually British ? My nearest non British relative is my great great grandmother from Belgium.

    You might be average. We're mostly mongrels!

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatfeedback/4201967/So-you-think-youre-English.html
    Most branches of my family tree have been done back to the 16 hundreds and the closest I can do to “foreign” is some Welsh blood in the early 19th century (unsurprisingly I can’t trace that one back any further). A reasonable amount of Yorkshire though,

    Most branches traced back to the 1600s? That's very impressive as it's likely to be 1000s of lines unless your family is significantly inbred :smile:

    The reality is most of us are largely bred from immigrant European ancestors if you go back far enough.
  • nielhnielh Posts: 1,307
    brendan16 said:

    nielh said:

    brendan16 said:

    Judging by the comments in this twitter thread, there have been a fair few fraught Christmases again this year:

    https://twitter.com/alexowatts/status/944534837809106945

    Imagine going onto Twitter and attacking your own mother about a passport. What an ungrateful spoilt brat!

    Maybe his mum just wanted the right to visa free travel to Iran!
    It is absolutely right to point out the hypocrisy of her stance. But that doesn't mean disowning her or breaking up the family.
    If he feels the need to criticise her do so in private - not to the whole world on Twitter.

    This was the woman who carried him for 9 months, gave birth to him, who presumably looked after and supported him for 18 years and provided him with a home. And he attacks her on Twitter for how she voted in a referendum?

    What a disrespectful ungrateful little s**t.

    Anyone who falls out with close family over a referendum vote really needs to take a good hard look at themselves.
    I am actually pretty ambivalent about Brexit, but your logic is totally flawed.

    1. Your parents gave birth to you, and 2. Your parents bought you up for 18 years, therefore

    3. You cannot ever criticise your parents on twitter.

    Its up to him. I don't care. Who knows what relationship they have. It isn't for us to pass judgement on other people.

  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,761

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    kle4 said:

    brendan16 said:
    I take the point that some EU countries don't benefit from the English legal system. But it would be very hard to claim that Danish or Irish, or even French or Dutch citizens, are worse off than Brits.

    Come to think of it, the arrest warrant will probably not lapse on leaving. May seems so authoritarian that she'll want to keep it! If so, Brits. can still be arrested for committing a 'crime' in Romania, Bulgaria or Croatia which isn't an offence here.
    Some seem ok (and I am Scottish rather than English). I agree that we will probably keep the European Arrest Warrant. In my experience this is mainly a problem for Poles who have fallen foul of their legal system (which doesn't seem too tricky) than Brits. For a time there was a defence that their jails were so appalling that sending people there was not compliant with Article 2 but they seem to have got around that.
    Presumably the shite Polish jail defence is now redundant.

    'Conditions at Liverpool prison the worst ever inspected, says report

    https://tinyurl.com/yaqxdeeq

    I don't think our Prison Inspectors get to Poland. It may give them a broader range of comparisons.
    An indea I had many years ago was to outsource the UK prison service to the third world. Benefits would include:

    1) A useful source of income for third world countries
    2) Greater deterrent factor
    3) Free up land for redevelopment in UK cities
    The downside is that we need to recognise that what we want coming out of prisons is normalised, clean (in the drug sense), employable members of society integrated with their families and in a position to make a contribution to make up for what they have already cost society. We really need to work back from that objective in determining what our prisons are like, what we do to facilitate family contact, what work and training is provided, what efforts are made to ensure that they have accommodation and ideally job prospects when they come out, what medical follow ups are necessary to lock in any progress whilst in jail etc etc.

    Unless you plan to lock people up for the rest of their lives anything else is really futile.
    We hardly have a good record of rehabilitation of criminals now.
    Oh its totally crap. We need major reform but we also need to be clear about our objectives.
  • nielhnielh Posts: 1,307
    edited December 2017

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    kle4 said:

    brendan16 said:
    I take the point that some EU countries don't benefit from the English legal system. But it would be very hard to claim that Danish or Irish, or even French or Dutch citizens, are worse off than Brits.

    Come to think of it, the arrest warrant will probably not lapse on leaving. May seems so authoritarian that she'll want to keep it! If so, Brits. can still be arrested for committing a 'crime' in Romania, Bulgaria or Croatia which isn't an offence here.

    Presumably the shite Polish jail defence is now redundant.

    'Conditions at Liverpool prison the worst ever inspected, says report

    https://tinyurl.com/yaqxdeeq

    I don't think our Prison Inspectors get to Poland. It may give them a broader range of comparisons.
    An indea I had many years ago was to outsource the UK prison service to the third world. Benefits would include:

    1) A useful source of income for third world countries
    2) Greater deterrent factor
    3) Free up land for redevelopment in UK cities
    The downside is that we need to recognise that what we want coming out of prisons is normalised, clean (in the drug sense), employable members of society integrated with their families and in a position to make a contribution to make up for what they have already cost society. We really need to work back from that objective in determining what our prisons are like, what we do to facilitate family contact, what work and training is provided, what efforts are made to ensure that they have accommodation and ideally job prospects when they come out, what medical follow ups are necessary to lock in any progress whilst in jail etc etc.
    .
    We hardly have a good record of rehabilitation of criminals now.
    You should apply for a job in the civil service as policy advisor in the ministry of justice, sounds like you have some brilliant ideas about prisons and insights about rehabilitation.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,080

    alex. said:

    Pulpstar said:


    Am I unusually British ? My nearest non British relative is my great great grandmother from Belgium.

    You might be average. We're mostly mongrels!

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatfeedback/4201967/So-you-think-youre-English.html
    Most branches of my family tree have been done back to the 16 hundreds and the closest I can do to “foreign” is some Welsh blood in the early 19th century (unsurprisingly I can’t trace that one back any further). A reasonable amount of Yorkshire though,

    Most branches traced back to the 1600s? That's very impressive as it's likely to be 1000s of lines unless your family is significantly inbred :smile:

    The reality is most of us are largely bred from immigrant European ancestors if you go back far enough.
    "Most of us"? During the Ice Age Britain was uninhabited.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,270
    IanB2 said:

    alex. said:

    Pulpstar said:


    Am I unusually British ? My nearest non British relative is my great great grandmother from Belgium.

    You might be average. We're mostly mongrels!

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatfeedback/4201967/So-you-think-youre-English.html
    Most branches of my family tree have been done back to the 16 hundreds and the closest I can do to “foreign” is some Welsh blood in the early 19th century (unsurprisingly I can’t trace that one back any further). A reasonable amount of Yorkshire though,

    Most branches traced back to the 1600s? That's very impressive as it's likely to be 1000s of lines unless your family is significantly inbred :smile:

    The reality is most of us are largely bred from immigrant European ancestors if you go back far enough.
    "Most of us"? During the Ice Age Britain was uninhabited.
    Recognising that some of us are not descended from European ancestors but Asian or African for example.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,080

    IanB2 said:

    alex. said:

    Pulpstar said:


    Am I unusually British ? My nearest non British relative is my great great grandmother from Belgium.

    You might be average. We're mostly mongrels!

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatfeedback/4201967/So-you-think-youre-English.html
    Most branches of my family tree have been done back to the 16 hundreds and the closest I can do to “foreign” is some Welsh blood in the early 19th century (unsurprisingly I can’t trace that one back any further). A reasonable amount of Yorkshire though,

    Most branches traced back to the 1600s? That's very impressive as it's likely to be 1000s of lines unless your family is significantly inbred :smile:

    The reality is most of us are largely bred from immigrant European ancestors if you go back far enough.
    "Most of us"? During the Ice Age Britain was uninhabited.
    Recognising that some of us are not descended from European ancestors but Asian or African for example.
    Ultimately we all are. Most probably.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,764
    nielh said:

    brendan16 said:

    nielh said:

    brendan16 said:

    Judging by the comments in this twitter thread, there have been a fair few fraught Christmases again this year:

    https://twitter.com/alexowatts/status/944534837809106945

    Imagine going onto Twitter and attacking your own mother about a passport. What an ungrateful spoilt brat!

    Maybe his mum just wanted the right to visa free travel to Iran!
    It is absolutely right to point out the hypocrisy of her stance. But that doesn't mean disowning her or breaking up the family.
    If he feels the need to criticise her do so in private - not to the whole world on Twitter.

    This was the woman who carried him for 9 months, gave birth to him, who presumably looked after and supported him for 18 years and provided him with a home. And he attacks her on Twitter for how she voted in a referendum?

    What a disrespectful ungrateful little s**t.

    Anyone who falls out with close family over a referendum vote really needs to take a good hard look at themselves.
    I am actually pretty ambivalent about Brexit, but your logic is totally flawed.

    1. Your parents gave birth to you, and 2. Your parents bought you up for 18 years, therefore

    3. You cannot ever criticise your parents on twitter.

    Its up to him. I don't care. Who knows what relationship they have. It isn't for us to pass judgement on other people.

    I think that criticising one's parents in front of strangers is pretty indecent, unless they've done something terrible.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,764
    IanB2 said:

    alex. said:

    Pulpstar said:


    Am I unusually British ? My nearest non British relative is my great great grandmother from Belgium.

    You might be average. We're mostly mongrels!

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatfeedback/4201967/So-you-think-youre-English.html
    Most branches of my family tree have been done back to the 16 hundreds and the closest I can do to “foreign” is some Welsh blood in the early 19th century (unsurprisingly I can’t trace that one back any further). A reasonable amount of Yorkshire though,

    Most branches traced back to the 1600s? That's very impressive as it's likely to be 1000s of lines unless your family is significantly inbred :smile:

    The reality is most of us are largely bred from immigrant European ancestors if you go back far enough.
    "Most of us"? During the Ice Age Britain was uninhabited.
    Sparsely populated, but certainly inhabited.
  • brendan16brendan16 Posts: 2,315
    Sean_F said:

    nielh said:

    brendan16 said:

    nielh said:

    brendan16 said:

    Judging by the comments in this twitter thread, there have been a fair few fraught Christmases again this year:

    https://twitter.com/alexowatts/status/944534837809106945

    Imagine going onto Twitter and attacking your own mother about a passport. What an ungrateful spoilt brat!

    Maybe his mum just wanted the right to visa free travel to Iran!
    It is absolutely right to point out the hypocrisy of her stance. But that doesn't mean disowning her or breaking up the family.
    If he feels the need to criticise her do so in private - not to the whole world on Twitter.

    This was the woman who carried him for 9 months, gave birth to him, who presumably looked after and supported him for 18 years and provided him with a home. And he attacks her on Twitter for how she voted in a referendum?

    What a disrespectful ungrateful little s**t.

    Anyone who falls out with close family over a referendum vote really needs to take a good hard look at themselves.
    I am actually pretty ambivalent about Brexit, but your logic is totally flawed.

    1. Your parents gave birth to you, and 2. Your parents bought you up for 18 years, therefore

    3. You cannot ever criticise your parents on twitter.

    Its up to him. I don't care. Who knows what relationship they have. It isn't for us to pass judgement on other people.

    I think that criticising one's parents in front of strangers is pretty indecent, unless they've done something terrible.
    I agree - but it's more than a few strangers he has criticised his mother to the nation in effect via Twitter.

    And for that reason he is unsuited to Irish citizenship anyway - you don't publicly criticise your mammy like that just for her democratic choice. It's just not the Irish way!!
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,761
    Sean_F said:

    nielh said:

    brendan16 said:

    nielh said:

    brendan16 said:

    Judging by the comments in this twitter thread, there have been a fair few fraught Christmases again this year:

    https://twitter.com/alexowatts/status/944534837809106945

    Imagine going onto Twitter and attacking your own mother about a passport. What an ungrateful spoilt brat!

    Maybe his mum just wanted the right to visa free travel to Iran!
    It is absolutely right to point out the hypocrisy of her stance. But that doesn't mean disowning her or breaking up the family.
    If he feels the need to criticise her do so in private - not to the whole world on Twitter.

    This was the woman who carried him for 9 months, gave birth to him, who presumably looked after and supported him for 18 years and provided him with a home. And he attacks her on Twitter for how she voted in a referendum?

    What a disrespectful ungrateful little s**t.

    Anyone who falls out with close family over a referendum vote really needs to take a good hard look at themselves.
    I am actually pretty ambivalent about Brexit, but your logic is totally flawed.

    1. Your parents gave birth to you, and 2. Your parents bought you up for 18 years, therefore

    3. You cannot ever criticise your parents on twitter.

    Its up to him. I don't care. Who knows what relationship they have. It isn't for us to pass judgement on other people.

    I think that criticising one's parents in front of strangers is pretty indecent, unless they've done something terrible.
    Honour your father and your mother. I am sure I read that somewhere.
  • alex.alex. Posts: 4,658
    edited December 2017

    alex. said:

    Pulpstar said:


    Am I unusually British ? My nearest non British relative is my great great grandmother from Belgium.

    You might be average. We're mostly mongrels!

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatfeedback/4201967/So-you-think-youre-English.html
    Most branches of my family tree have been done back to the 16 hundreds and the closest I can do to “foreign” is some Welsh blood in the early 19th century (unsurprisingly I can’t trace that one back any further). A reasonable amount of Yorkshire though,

    Most branches traced back to the 1600s? That's very impressive as it's likely to be 1000s of lines unless your family is significantly inbred :smile:

    The reality is most of us are largely bred from immigrant European ancestors if you go back far enough.
    Fair point, faulty memory and having checked something of an exaggeration. Most branches traced back to various points of the mid 1800s backwards with (mainly) male lines going back further. But no evidence of anything "foreign". Absence of evidence and all that (of course whenever any evidence dries up a plausible explanation is that they might have come from abroad - although in most cases the problem is having to switch to parish records and/or pre census).
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,957
    edited December 2017
    Prince Philip was a de facto member of the CND

    https://twitter.com/hendopolis/status/945775424705122305
  • Ishmael_ZIshmael_Z Posts: 8,981
    alex. said:

    alex. said:

    Pulpstar said:


    Am I unusually British ? My nearest non British relative is my great great grandmother from Belgium.

    You might be average. We're mostly mongrels!

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatfeedback/4201967/So-you-think-youre-English.html
    Most branches of my family tree have been done back to the 16 hundreds and the closest I can do to “foreign” is some Welsh blood in the early 19th century (unsurprisingly I can’t trace that one back any further). A reasonable amount of Yorkshire though,

    Most branches traced back to the 1600s? That's very impressive as it's likely to be 1000s of lines unless your family is significantly inbred :smile:

    The reality is most of us are largely bred from immigrant European ancestors if you go back far enough.
    Fair point, faulty memory and having checked something of an exaggeration. Most branches traced back to various points of the mid 1800s backwards with (mainly) male lines going back further. But no evidence of anything "foreign". Absence of evidence and all that (of course whenever any evidence dries up a plausible explanation is that they might have come from abroad - although in most cases the problem is having to switch to parish records and/or pre census).
    Not that fair, what with pedigree collapse being a thing. All families are "significantly inbred" over this timescale, because if you just count back by generation 2 ancestors, 4 ancestors, 8 ancestors... by the time you get to 1600 you have a lot more ancestors than there were people alive at the time. You need lots and lots of cousin marriages to resolve the apparent paradox.
  • nielhnielh Posts: 1,307
    Sean_F said:

    nielh said:

    brendan16 said:

    nielh said:

    brendan16 said:

    Judging by the comments in this twitter thread, there have been a fair few fraught Christmases again this year:

    https://twitter.com/alexowatts/status/944534837809106945

    Imagine going onto Twitter and attacking your own mother about a passport. What an ungrateful spoilt brat!

    Maybe his mum just wanted the right to visa free travel to Iran!
    It is absolutely right to point out the hypocrisy of her stance. But that doesn't mean disowning her or breaking up the family.
    If he feels the need to criticise her do so in private - not to the whole world on Twitter.

    This was the woman who carried him for 9 months, gave birth to him, who presumably looked after and supported him for 18 years and provided him with a home. And he attacks her on Twitter for how she voted in a referendum?

    What a disrespectful ungrateful little s**t.

    Anyone who falls out with close family over a referendum vote really needs to take a good hard look at themselves.
    I am actually pretty ambivalent about Brexit, but your logic is totally flawed.

    1. Your parents gave birth to you, and 2. Your parents bought you up for 18 years, therefore

    3. You cannot ever criticise your parents on twitter.

    Its up to him. I don't care. Who knows what relationship they have. It isn't for us to pass judgement on other people.

    I think that criticising one's parents in front of strangers is pretty indecent, unless they've done something terrible.
    You should be able to criticise your parents politics. I criticise(d) my parents politics in public and would expect my children to do the same. I'm no fan of twitter, but it is only part of normal political discourse in a democracy.

    There is a lot of unfinished intergenerational business associated with Brexit. This blue passport stuff is really rubbing salt in the wound of a lot of people. It may turn out to be a calamatous mistake. You'd better hope that leaving the EU works out well.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,270
    edited December 2017
    Ishmael_Z said:

    alex. said:

    alex. said:

    Pulpstar said:


    Am I unusually British ? My nearest non British relative is my great great grandmother from Belgium.

    You might be average. We're mostly mongrels!

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatfeedback/4201967/So-you-think-youre-English.html
    Most branches of my family tree have been done back to the 16 hundreds and the closest I can do to “foreign” is some Welsh blood in the early 19th century (unsurprisingly I can’t trace that one back any further). A reasonable amount of Yorkshire though,

    Most branches traced back to the 1600s? That's very impressive as it's likely to be 1000s of lines unless your family is significantly inbred :smile:

    The reality is most of us are largely bred from immigrant European ancestors if you go back far enough.
    Fair point, faulty memory and having checked something of an exaggeration. Most branches traced back to various points of the mid 1800s backwards with (mainly) male lines going back further. But no evidence of anything "foreign". Absence of evidence and all that (of course whenever any evidence dries up a plausible explanation is that they might have come from abroad - although in most cases the problem is having to switch to parish records and/or pre census).
    Not that fair, what with pedigree collapse being a thing. All families are "significantly inbred" over this timescale, because if you just count back by generation 2 ancestors, 4 ancestors, 8 ancestors... by the time you get to 1600 you have a lot more ancestors than there were people alive at the time. You need lots and lots of cousin marriages to resolve the apparent paradox.
    I think you'd have to go back to c.1300AD for you to have more ancestors (in the absence of cousin marriages) than there were people alive. But of course the further you go back the more cousins (especially distant ones) you have so some element of inbreeding is inevitable. It is thought that circa 1200AD is the time of peak ancestors for most of us.

    This witty article is worth a read on the topic.

    https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/01/your-family-past-present-and-future.html

    And Alex, apologies, I did not mean to infer your family is any more inbred than any others (and certainly not more than mine)! :smile:
  • geoffwgeoffw Posts: 8,092


    ..
    And Alex, apologies, I did not mean to infer your family is any more inbred than any others (and certainly not more than mine)! :smile:

    You mean imply.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,270

    Prince Philip was a de facto member of the CND

    https://twitter.com/hendopolis/status/945775424705122305

    He's gone up in my estimation! :lol:
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,270
    geoffw said:


    ..
    And Alex, apologies, I did not mean to infer your family is any more inbred than any others (and certainly not more than mine)! :smile:

    You mean imply.
    Good point. But when I said 'infer' I suspect most readers inferred that I meant 'imply' :smile:
  • Richard_TyndallRichard_Tyndall Posts: 30,846
    edited December 2017

    Mr. Tyndall, cults are all the fashion, alas.

    Mr. kle4, ha, I've heard that before.

    And no. I tend to be more forgetful. Between Dragonwing and Elven Star (first two books in the Death Gate Cycle) I may have let 16 years or more elapse before I remember to buy the second one...

    For the record I would feel exactly the same way about anyone who attacked a member of their family for being a Euro federalist.
  • NickPalmerNickPalmer Posts: 21,263
    Elliot said:

    HYUFD said:

    Yougov Leave opens up a 9% lead in a hypothetical EU referendum 2 poll following the agreement on Phase 1 of the Brexit talks

    https://mobile.twitter.com/NCPoliticsUK/status/945651166691647488

    Some very interesting numbers there on the click through. Only 16% of Brits think a soft Irish border should be prioritised, far below concerns about trade, immigration and ECJ jurisdiction. France looks like it has a very negative view of the economy and ambivalence about the EU. None of the EU countries are particularly concerned about the UK getting the benefits of being in the EU without membership obligations. The French think the UK and the EU are evenly matched in leverage. There is deep hostility across EU countries to Schultz's federal Europe plan.
    Interesting ;poll. A non-political difference that isn't instantly explicable is that people in Britain, France, Norway and Finland are mostly not excited by Christmas, whereas in he other countries they're dead keen. I'd be in the "not very excited" camp, but I'm not sure why the view is so widespread here but not in, say Germany. More Christmas markets...?
  • geoffwgeoffw Posts: 8,092

    geoffw said:


    ..
    And Alex, apologies, I did not mean to infer your family is any more inbred than any others (and certainly not more than mine)! :smile:

    You mean imply.
    Good point. But when I said 'infer' I suspect most readers inferred that I meant 'imply' :smile:
    “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” :confused:
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,270

    Elliot said:

    HYUFD said:

    Yougov Leave opens up a 9% lead in a hypothetical EU referendum 2 poll following the agreement on Phase 1 of the Brexit talks

    https://mobile.twitter.com/NCPoliticsUK/status/945651166691647488

    Some very interesting numbers there on the click through. Only 16% of Brits think a soft Irish border should be prioritised, far below concerns about trade, immigration and ECJ jurisdiction. France looks like it has a very negative view of the economy and ambivalence about the EU. None of the EU countries are particularly concerned about the UK getting the benefits of being in the EU without membership obligations. The French think the UK and the EU are evenly matched in leverage. There is deep hostility across EU countries to Schultz's federal Europe plan.
    Interesting ;poll. A non-political difference that isn't instantly explicable is that people in Britain, France, Norway and Finland are mostly not excited by Christmas, whereas in he other countries they're dead keen. I'd be in the "not very excited" camp, but I'm not sure why the view is so widespread here but not in, say Germany. More Christmas markets...?
    The other thing is: why are the Danes so upbeat about just about everything?
  • foxinsoxukfoxinsoxuk Posts: 23,548
    edited December 2017

    Elliot said:

    HYUFD said:

    Yougov Leave opens up a 9% lead in a hypothetical EU referendum 2 poll following the agreement on Phase 1 of the Brexit talks

    https://mobile.twitter.com/NCPoliticsUK/status/945651166691647488

    Some very interesting numbers there on the click through. Only 16% of Brits think a soft Irish border should be prioritised, far below concerns about trade, immigration and ECJ jurisdiction. France looks like it has a very negative view of the economy and ambivalence about the EU. None of the EU countries are particularly concerned about the UK getting the benefits of being in the EU without membership obligations. The French think the UK and the EU are evenly matched in leverage. There is deep hostility across EU countries to Schultz's federal Europe plan.
    Interesting ;poll. A non-political difference that isn't instantly explicable is that people in Britain, France, Norway and Finland are mostly not excited by Christmas, whereas in he other countries they're dead keen. I'd be in the "not very excited" camp, but I'm not sure why the view is so widespread here but not in, say Germany. More Christmas markets...?
    Isn't that the wrong way round? its the Germans not so bothered.

    Edit: nope, I got the columns mixed up!

    Britons pretty negative about the economy though.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,270
    geoffw said:

    geoffw said:


    ..
    And Alex, apologies, I did not mean to infer your family is any more inbred than any others (and certainly not more than mine)! :smile:

    You mean imply.
    Good point. But when I said 'infer' I suspect most readers inferred that I meant 'imply' :smile:
    “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” :confused:
    My literary pretensions have had a great fall :disappointed:
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,270

    Elliot said:

    HYUFD said:

    Yougov Leave opens up a 9% lead in a hypothetical EU referendum 2 poll following the agreement on Phase 1 of the Brexit talks

    https://mobile.twitter.com/NCPoliticsUK/status/945651166691647488

    Some very interesting numbers there on the click through. Only 16% of Brits think a soft Irish border should be prioritised, far below concerns about trade, immigration and ECJ jurisdiction. France looks like it has a very negative view of the economy and ambivalence about the EU. None of the EU countries are particularly concerned about the UK getting the benefits of being in the EU without membership obligations. The French think the UK and the EU are evenly matched in leverage. There is deep hostility across EU countries to Schultz's federal Europe plan.
    Interesting ;poll. A non-political difference that isn't instantly explicable is that people in Britain, France, Norway and Finland are mostly not excited by Christmas, whereas in he other countries they're dead keen. I'd be in the "not very excited" camp, but I'm not sure why the view is so widespread here but not in, say Germany. More Christmas markets...?
    Isn't that the wrong way round? its the Germans not so bothered.
    64% excited 29% not excited in Germany.
  • geoffwgeoffw Posts: 8,092

    geoffw said:

    geoffw said:


    ..
    And Alex, apologies, I did not mean to infer your family is any more inbred than any others (and certainly not more than mine)! :smile:

    You mean imply.
    Good point. But when I said 'infer' I suspect most readers inferred that I meant 'imply' :smile:
    “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” :confused:
    My literary pretensions have had a great fall :disappointed:
    Just take a deep breath, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again.… :wink:
  • Ishmael_Z said:

    alex. said:

    alex. said:

    Pulpstar said:


    Am I unusually British ? My nearest non British relative is my great great grandmother from Belgium.

    You might be average. We're mostly mongrels!

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatfeedback/4201967/So-you-think-youre-English.html
    Most branches of my family tree have been done back to the 16 hundreds and the closest I can do to “foreign” is some Welsh blood in the early 19th century (unsurprisingly I can’t trace that one back any further). A reasonable amount of Yorkshire though,

    Most branches traced back to the 1600s? That's very impressive as it's likely to be 1000s of lines unless your family is significantly inbred :smile:

    The reality is most of us are largely bred from immigrant European ancestors if you go back far enough.
    Fair point, faulty memory and having checked something of an exaggeration. Most branches traced back to various points of the mid 1800s backwards with (mainly) male lines going back further. But no evidence of anything "foreign". Absence of evidence and all that (of course whenever any evidence dries up a plausible explanation is that they might have come from abroad - although in most cases the problem is having to switch to parish records and/or pre census).
    Not that fair, what with pedigree collapse being a thing. All families are "significantly inbred" over this timescale, because if you just count back by generation 2 ancestors, 4 ancestors, 8 ancestors... by the time you get to 1600 you have a lot more ancestors than there were people alive at the time. You need lots and lots of cousin marriages to resolve the apparent paradox.
    Now I might be calculating this wrong but assuming someone was born in 2000, their two parents in 1975, their four grandparents in 1950 then by the time you get to 1600 there's only 67,072 in that generation.
  • nielh said:

    Sean_F said:

    nielh said:

    brendan16 said:

    nielh said:

    brendan16 said:

    Judging by the comments in this twitter thread, there have been a fair few fraught Christmases again this year:

    https://twitter.com/alexowatts/status/944534837809106945

    Imagine going onto Twitter and attacking your own mother about a passport. What an ungrateful spoilt brat!

    Maybe his mum just wanted the right to visa free travel to Iran!
    It is absolutely right to point out the hypocrisy of her stance. But that doesn't mean disowning her or breaking up the family.
    If he feels the need to criticise her do so in private - not to the whole world on Twitter.

    This was the woman who carried him for 9 months, gave birth to him, who presumably looked after and supported him for 18 years and provided him with a home. And he attacks her on Twitter for how she voted in a referendum?

    What a disrespectful ungrateful little s**t.

    Anyone who falls out with close family over a referendum vote really needs to take a good hard look at themselves.
    I am actually pretty ambivalent about Brexit, but your logic is totally flawed.

    1. Your parents gave birth to you, and 2. Your parents bought you up for 18 years, therefore

    3. You cannot ever criticise your parents on twitter.

    Its up to him. I don't care. Who knows what relationship they have. It isn't for us to pass judgement on other people.

    I think that criticising one's parents in front of strangers is pretty indecent, unless they've done something terrible.
    You should be able to criticise your parents politics. I criticise(d) my parents politics in public and would expect my children to do the same. I'm no fan of twitter, but it is only part of normal political discourse in a democracy.

    There is a lot of unfinished intergenerational business associated with Brexit. This blue passport stuff is really rubbing salt in the wound of a lot of people. It may turn out to be a calamatous mistake. You'd better hope that leaving the EU works out well.
    There's a lot of intergenerational unfairness but it relates to university debts, housing costs and the national debt run up to spend on oldies.

    Brexit will actually be used as an excuse by a lot of young people who were never going to amount to anything as the reason why they never amounted to anything.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,270

    Ishmael_Z said:

    alex. said:

    alex. said:

    Pulpstar said:


    Am I unusually British ? My nearest non British relative is my great great grandmother from Belgium.

    You might be average. We're mostly mongrels!

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatfeedback/4201967/So-you-think-youre-English.html
    Most branches of my family tree have been done back to the 16 hundreds and the closest I can do to “foreign” is some Welsh blood in the early 19th century (unsurprisingly I can’t trace that one back any further). A reasonable amount of Yorkshire though,

    Most branches traced back to the 1600s? That's very impressive as it's likely to be 1000s of lines unless your family is significantly inbred :smile:

    The reality is most of us are largely bred from immigrant European ancestors if you go back far enough.
    Fair point, faulty memory and having checked something of an exaggeration. Most branches traced back to various points of the mid 1800s backwards with (mainly) male lines going back further. But no evidence of anything "foreign". Absence of evidence and all that (of course whenever any evidence dries up a plausible explanation is that they might have come from abroad - although in most cases the problem is having to switch to parish records and/or pre census).
    Not that fair, what with pedigree collapse being a thing. All families are "significantly inbred" over this timescale, because if you just count back by generation 2 ancestors, 4 ancestors, 8 ancestors... by the time you get to 1600 you have a lot more ancestors than there were people alive at the time. You need lots and lots of cousin marriages to resolve the apparent paradox.
    Now I might be calculating this wrong but assuming someone was born in 2000, their two parents in 1975, their four grandparents in 1950 then by the time you get to 1600 there's only 67,072 in that generation.
    I think you must be calculating wrong as 67,072 is not a power of 2.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,764

    Mr. Tyndall, cults are all the fashion, alas.

    Mr. kle4, ha, I've heard that before.

    And no. I tend to be more forgetful. Between Dragonwing and Elven Star (first two books in the Death Gate Cycle) I may have let 16 years or more elapse before I remember to buy the second one...

    For the record I would feel exactly the same way about anyone who attacked a member of their family for being a Euro federalist.
    I'm happy to state that I disagree with my father about the EU, but certainly wouldn't attack him over his views.
  • Ishmael_Z said:

    alex. said:

    alex. said:

    Pulpstar said:


    Am I unusually British ? My nearest non British relative is my great great grandmother from Belgium.

    You might be average. We're mostly mongrels!

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatfeedback/4201967/So-you-think-youre-English.html
    Most branches of my family tree have been done back to the 16 hundreds and the closest I can do to “foreign” is some Welsh blood in the early 19th century (unsurprisingly I can’t trace that one back any further). A reasonable amount of Yorkshire though,

    Most branches traced back to the 1600s? That's very impressive as it's likely to be 1000s of lines unless your family is significantly inbred :smile:

    The reality is most of us are largely bred from immigrant European ancestors if you go back far enough.
    Fair point, faulty memory and having checked something of an exaggeration. Most branches traced back to various points of the mid 1800s backwards with (mainly) male lines going back further. But no evidence of anything "foreign". Absence of evidence and all that (of course whenever any evidence dries up a plausible explanation is that they might have come from abroad - although in most cases the problem is having to switch to parish records and/or pre census).
    Not that fair, what with pedigree collapse being a thing. All families are "significantly inbred" over this timescale, because if you just count back by generation 2 ancestors, 4 ancestors, 8 ancestors... by the time you get to 1600 you have a lot more ancestors than there were people alive at the time. You need lots and lots of cousin marriages to resolve the apparent paradox.
    Now I might be calculating this wrong but assuming someone was born in 2000, their two parents in 1975, their four grandparents in 1950 then by the time you get to 1600 there's only 67,072 in that generation.
    I think you must be calculating wrong as 67,072 is not a power of 2.
    You're right - it should be 65,536.

    That's what happens when you don't use a spreadsheet.
  • Ishmael_ZIshmael_Z Posts: 8,981

    Ishmael_Z said:

    alex. said:

    alex. said:

    Pulpstar said:


    Am I unusually British ? My nearest non British relative is my great great grandmother from Belgium.

    You might be average. We're mostly mongrels!

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatfeedback/4201967/So-you-think-youre-English.html
    Most branches of my family tree have been done back to the 16 hundreds and the closest I can do to “foreign” is some Welsh blood in the early 19th century (unsurprisingly I can’t trace that one back any further). A reasonable amount of Yorkshire though,

    Most branches traced back to the 1600s? That's very impressive as it's likely to be 1000s of lines unless your family is significantly inbred :smile:

    The reality is most of us are largely bred from immigrant European ancestors if you go back far enough.
    Fair point, faulty memory and having checked something of an exaggeration. Most branches traced back to various points of the mid 1800s backwards with (mainly) male lines going back further. But no evidence of anything "foreign". Absence of evidence and all that (of course whenever any evidence dries up a plausible explanation is that they might have come from abroad - although in most cases the problem is having to switch to parish records and/or pre census).
    Not that fair, what with pedigree collapse being a thing. All families are "significantly inbred" over this timescale, because if you just count back by generation 2 ancestors, 4 ancestors, 8 ancestors... by the time you get to 1600 you have a lot more ancestors than there were people alive at the time. You need lots and lots of cousin marriages to resolve the apparent paradox.
    Now I might be calculating this wrong but assuming someone was born in 2000, their two parents in 1975, their four grandparents in 1950 then by the time you get to 1600 there's only 67,072 in that generation.
    Yes I was overestimating number of generations per century.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,957

    Elliot said:

    HYUFD said:

    Yougov Leave opens up a 9% lead in a hypothetical EU referendum 2 poll following the agreement on Phase 1 of the Brexit talks

    https://mobile.twitter.com/NCPoliticsUK/status/945651166691647488

    Some very interesting numbers there on the click through. Only 16% of Brits think a soft Irish border should be prioritised, far below concerns about trade, immigration and ECJ jurisdiction. France looks like it has a very negative view of the economy and ambivalence about the EU. None of the EU countries are particularly concerned about the UK getting the benefits of being in the EU without membership obligations. The French think the UK and the EU are evenly matched in leverage. There is deep hostility across EU countries to Schultz's federal Europe plan.
    Interesting ;poll. A non-political difference that isn't instantly explicable is that people in Britain, France, Norway and Finland are mostly not excited by Christmas, whereas in he other countries they're dead keen. I'd be in the "not very excited" camp, but I'm not sure why the view is so widespread here but not in, say Germany. More Christmas markets...?
    The other thing is: why are the Danes so upbeat about just about everything?
    Carlsberg. Probably the finest polling in the world......
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,080
    Sean_F said:

    IanB2 said:

    alex. said:

    Pulpstar said:


    Am I unusually British ? My nearest non British relative is my great great grandmother from Belgium.

    You might be average. We're mostly mongrels!

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatfeedback/4201967/So-you-think-youre-English.html
    Most branches of my family tree have been done back to the 16 hundreds and the closest I can do to “foreign” is some Welsh blood in the early 19th century (unsurprisingly I can’t trace that one back any further). A reasonable amount of Yorkshire though,

    Most branches traced back to the 1600s? That's very impressive as it's likely to be 1000s of lines unless your family is significantly inbred :smile:

    The reality is most of us are largely bred from immigrant European ancestors if you go back far enough.
    "Most of us"? During the Ice Age Britain was uninhabited.
    Sparsely populated, but certainly inhabited.
    Wikipedia the island was unoccupied during the last glacial maximum, between about 25,000 and 15,000 years ago.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 20,392
    If we all trace our ancestry back far enough...

    ...it will make plenty of money for those 'find your ancestors' companies!



    Nighty night.
  • So is Boris going to have to rescue this woman as well ?

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-42483135
  • Sean_F said:

    IanB2 said:

    alex. said:

    Pulpstar said:


    Am I unusually British ? My nearest non British relative is my great great grandmother from Belgium.

    You might be average. We're mostly mongrels!

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatfeedback/4201967/So-you-think-youre-English.html
    Most branches of my family tree have been done back to the 16 hundreds and the closest I can do to “foreign” is some Welsh blood in the early 19th century (unsurprisingly I can’t trace that one back any further). A reasonable amount of Yorkshire though,

    Most branches traced back to the 1600s? That's very impressive as it's likely to be 1000s of lines unless your family is significantly inbred :smile:

    The reality is most of us are largely bred from immigrant European ancestors if you go back far enough.
    "Most of us"? During the Ice Age Britain was uninhabited.
    Sparsely populated, but certainly inhabited.
    Nope. Uninhabited for about 10,000 years at least. In fact uninhabited for most of the last 2 million years.

    The late glacial maximum.- about 11,000 BC to 9,700 BC - was the last time Britain was uninhabited.
  • NEW THREAD

  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,764

    Sean_F said:

    IanB2 said:

    alex. said:

    Pulpstar said:


    Am I unusually British ? My nearest non British relative is my great great grandmother from Belgium.

    You might be average. We're mostly mongrels!

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatfeedback/4201967/So-you-think-youre-English.html
    Most branches of my family tree have been done back to the 16 hundreds and the closest I can do to “foreign” is some Welsh blood in the early 19th century (unsurprisingly I can’t trace that one back any further). A reasonable amount of Yorkshire though,

    Most branches traced back to the 1600s? That's very impressive as it's likely to be 1000s of lines unless your family is significantly inbred :smile:

    The reality is most of us are largely bred from immigrant European ancestors if you go back far enough.
    "Most of us"? During the Ice Age Britain was uninhabited.
    Sparsely populated, but certainly inhabited.
    Nope. Uninhabited for about 10,000 years at least. In fact uninhabited for most of the last 2 million years.

    The late glacial maximum.- about 11,000 BC to 9,700 BC - was the last time Britain was uninhabited.
    IanB2 said:

    Sean_F said:

    IanB2 said:

    alex. said:

    Pulpstar said:


    Am I unusually British ? My nearest non British relative is my great great grandmother from Belgium.

    You might be average. We're mostly mongrels!

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatfeedback/4201967/So-you-think-youre-English.html
    Most branches of my family tree have been done back to the 16 hundreds and the closest I can do to “foreign” is some Welsh blood in the early 19th century (unsurprisingly I can’t trace that one back any further). A reasonable amount of Yorkshire though,

    Most branches traced back to the 1600s? That's very impressive as it's likely to be 1000s of lines unless your family is significantly inbred :smile:

    The reality is most of us are largely bred from immigrant European ancestors if you go back far enough.
    "Most of us"? During the Ice Age Britain was uninhabited.
    Sparsely populated, but certainly inhabited.
    Wikipedia the island was unoccupied during the last glacial maximum, between about 25,000 and 15,000 years ago.
    I'm surprised. Southern England was not covered by ice, and was connected to the Continent. Surely, there'd have been game and plants to live off.
  • foxinsoxukfoxinsoxuk Posts: 23,548

    So is Boris going to have to rescue this woman as well ?

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-42483135

    Tramadol is a Schedule C controlled drug in the UK, because of its addictive properties. It is not simply a painkiller. I wouldn't wish Egyptian prison on anyone, but smuggling of controlled drugs is a crime here too.
  • So is Boris going to have to rescue this woman as well ?

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-42483135

    Tramadol is a Schedule C controlled drug in the UK, because of its addictive properties. It is not simply a painkiller. I wouldn't wish Egyptian prison on anyone, but smuggling of controlled drugs is a crime here too.
    That's exactly what I thought when I read the story.
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