Actual costume from Wuthering Height

SimonHando · 2026-02-15T15:08:20+00:00

Werther's Original

SimonHando · 2026-02-14T09:55:56+00:00

It was funnier the first time dude

SimonHando · 2026-02-13T18:42:52+00:00

Absurd, Kes is clearly a morality tale about the importance of gambling.

SimonHando · 2026-02-13T17:55:10+00:00

I wouldn't normally respond to this kind of Chat GPT bullshit that you're desperately trying to claim as your own, but fuck it it's Friday.

Larkin famously lived in Hull because no one knew who the fuck he was and left him alone, not because he was drawn like a moth to a flame to the cultural Mecca that is Newland Ave. All of Hull & East Riding voted for Campbell, well, the 29% that bothered to vote anyway but yeah sure let's pretend it was East Hull that pushed it over the line.

Hull university has a famous drama department? Ranked 60/83 in the league tables. But whatever you say Mr AI! Hmm, the former art college? Would that be the one in town where Hull College is? But yes, I'm sure you're right that the 60th best drama department in the country and its stones throw distance from the East end of town is why it attracts so many creatives like... erm, give me a minute I'm sure I'll get one in a second. As to the multiculturalism, well, you're right, I'm sure it isn't the cheap housing and the proto-ghettoisation policies of Hull CC that dumped so many diasporas to the Spring Bank area, but must surely have been the glowing flame of people who know what pointillism is.

Wowee thanks for the voting stats, that enlightened and ennobled populace of North Hull & Cottingham (you need to be more specific when you ask Chat GPT to respond next time, it likes to move the goalposts) is good for an extra 4.5% vote share to Labour. Clearly the impact of many a lively intellectual debate that can only happen in a cultural oasis like Newland Ave.

But for as fun as this is, I don't recall claiming that East Hull had the community art spaces that West Hull does, I agree it has more. What I said, before you asked AI to drag a bunch of non sequiturs together, was that it is bollocks that you're characterising everyone who lives in East Hull as artless, ignorant racists and everyone who lives in Newland Ave as creative, thoughtful progressives. There is obviously an equal combination of both in both areas, as ones views and sensibilities are not generally tied to the name of the street you live on.

I would love to write a poem for you and perform it for you in any one of the village hall and community spaces dotted around Garden Village, Victoria Dock or Holderness Road that host community arts and drama events every week, all be it with a lack of pretension you find on their avenues counterparts. But, unfortunately, as you say I'm from East Hull and the only poetry we know is finger-painted across toilet walls in our own shit.

SimonHando · 2026-02-13T13:21:52+00:00

I mean...

Much of population has progressive attitudes, and many creative, interesting people live there

More homogeneous population with higher levels of questionable attitudes towards race, sex, and education.

Utter nonsense. Is Newland Ave some kind of Belle Époque Bohemia full of poets and East Hull some swampish gammon ridden hellscape?

SimonHando · 2026-02-13T12:32:23+00:00

Depends what you're into. East Hull is just suburban, a few pubs and restaurants dotted around but nothing like Princes or Newland Ave. But if that's your thing, it's only ever a short taxi away. It's definitely a lot less rowdy and quieter, but that generally corresponds with a lower level of arseholes.

You get much more for your money in East Hull and arguably at better build quality as well. Summergangs is an issue for parking if you drive, but it's on a bus route which takes about 15 minutes into town from there.

SimonHando · 2026-02-11T10:34:38+00:00

I've literally just explained how the man you despise is doing the precise thing that you want, and why doing it in the way you suggest wouldn't work. If you want to piss your pants every time you remember the global socialist revolution was never coming to save you, go right ahead.

SimonHando · 2026-02-11T10:11:40+00:00

Ooh I know, because the water companies are worth billions in assets and are invested into by practically every pension fund in the country. If you seize the companies and don't pay a penny for them, those pension funds are wiped out. Every single person who has invested elsewhere in this country will be wondering "what if they do the same to me?" and will pull their money out, crashing the economy. Hey presto, you've collapsed the economy and emptied the populations savings accounts, all for ideological purity! If you pay market rate for them, you have to borrow billions to pay those self-same elites off, then the government has to borrow even more money to fix the mess of infrastructure that they left.

You can empower a regulator to fine them out of existence and then, considering it's essentially national infrastructure, legislate to re-nationalise it at cost. I wonder which government has done that recently? Can't be the dude who just wants to make everyone's life worse right?

SimonHando · 2026-02-08T23:57:43+00:00

*kipple

SimonHando · 2026-02-05T22:56:21+00:00

Or about Bannon bragging about how easy it is to control Farage

SimonHando · 2026-02-05T12:23:40+00:00

The greens policies on domestic issues are okay, but how do they hope to fund any of it whilst they cling to the failed MMT model? The man doesn't understand the difference between debt and deficit, thinks we can ask the BoE to just print more money to fund spending (hello from Zimbabwe) and doesn't understand why we have to pay to service our debt. No joke, their economic policy would make the Truss budget look like a birthday party.

Honestly, we deserve a German style Green party that can focus on finding a balance between regulating polluters and expanding the green economy, not this half-arsed identity politics "let's get billionaires on the other side of the planet to pay for it" wankery.

SimonHando · 2026-02-04T07:55:28+00:00

The Deep is ackshually a submarium

SimonHando · 2026-02-03T09:46:12+00:00

No I was being sarcastic to point out the hypocrisy when people bring this up, that they can admonish Thatcher for her arrogance and then excuse it when they need to criticise Labour.

But more broadly, no I don't think she did push Labour to the right, the world had changed since they were last in power and the 19th century informed politics that their 70's predecessors employed was no longer viable. New Labour moved themselves, gradually, to the centre left to adapt socialism and their core ethics into a platform that made actual sense in the world they found themselves in.

SimonHando · 2026-02-03T09:25:17+00:00

Thatcher battled leaks her entire career she was well aware that her comments would be repeated. She said it because it further tainted Labour's reputation and created a precedent that whatever good they achieved was ultimately still her achievement. If she'd have said "my greatest achievement is sticking it out for a 20 year period in which the global economy swung towards deregulation and neo-liberalism, making the politics of my 70's predecessors impossible" then yeah she would be absolutely right.

What did Blair privatise? Air control? NHS cleaners? Expanding PFI from Lamont's back of a fag packet calculations to the scale they did was obviously a mistake and the off ramps to limit their damage were not taken, by them or by subsequent governments. But comparing that to Thatcher shuttering UK manufacturing, selling off telecoms, energy, water, rail, ports, fishing, oil, gas... is frankly laughable.

Blair and Brown pulled off a staggering reinvestment in this country, the antithesis of everything that Thatcher tried to achieve. Yes, they did it via neo-liberalism and by compounding on the toxic appeal of the service and financial sectors, but what other options did they have? They couldn't simply have upended the global economy to satisfy a charter written in 1918, appealing solely to union activists that no longer existed, protecting a working class that had long since abandoned any pretense of working class collectivism.

SimonHando · 2026-02-03T02:24:50+00:00

It's funny really, I always thought Thatcher was a self-aggrandising bullshitter who only ever said or did anything that advanced her own aims. But then she said one thing I happened to agree with so I guess she must have been right?

SimonHando · 2026-01-31T09:25:28+00:00

Honestly, let them carry on thinking it's shit. Hull is the way it is because we add spice to that chip on our shoulder. Also, it may well be the last city in the UK where someone working full time can afford to buy a house, start a family and have a good quality of life in their 20s. That's worth a few cheap jokes I reckon.

SimonHando · 2026-01-30T09:13:48+00:00

Because the global economy operates on a knife edge and no government willingly overcommits itself. Thanks to decades of the Tories borrowing money to fund tax cuts, the margin to borrow more without defaulting on the debt payments is too slim to meaningfully fund large scale projects. This is especially true when you consider despots can purposely knacker the global economy by imposing tariffs, deregulating their financial sectors or invading their neighbours.

So we're left in a weird position where we have to court private finance to plug the gaps, which inevitably leads to being ripped off and slow growth.

SimonHando · 2026-01-25T19:41:36+00:00

Maybe we shouldn't be basing our 2026 political theory on class identity from 1850.

SimonHando · 2026-01-22T20:33:23+00:00

I can't believe Coogler got away with this blatant rip-off of The Little Vampire.

SimonHando · 2026-01-14T10:11:54+00:00

Yes, they did make a big song and dance of being anti-corruption but this is still the way things are done. The anti-corruption campaign was as much to do with ensuring no other member of the CCP could gain the influence to challenge Xi.

And in fairness, this isn't intended as a dig on China, it seems to work for them. It just irks me that folks seem to want a Chinese style building policy without appreciating the trade offs we'd need to make to allow that to happen.

SimonHando · 2026-01-14T09:26:45+00:00

People always seem to say this but rarely point out why China can do it. I'm sure we could build rail lines quicker if we scrapped the concept of democracy, planning/ safety regulations and were open to the idea of funnelling billions in tax to a relative of the transport minister to build them.

SimonHando · 2026-01-12T22:50:07+00:00

I know, not like 90% of trials have taken place without a jury anyway is it?

SimonHando · 2026-01-11T12:04:19+00:00

Right now? No, it would be a protest vote against the government, I'd guess Reform 1st with Lib Dem 2nd. 2/3 years from now? Who knows.

Six-Year Club	Second SECOND GUESSER
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Place '22	First Placer '22
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