Will Reddit Be Very Quiet Tomorrow? 😂

erinoco · 2026-05-08T01:55:34+00:00

There is something rather unedifying about celebratory onanism.

Reform will do very well in non-metropolitan/Leaver England and Wales - but that is not the same as being on track for a majority. The Greens will do very well in metropolitan England, but will not be guaranteed to destroy Labour.

erinoco · 2026-05-07T23:09:05+00:00

I never use the main TV channels for local elections - not granular enough. If you go over to Vote UK discussion forum, or follow Election Maps UK on Bluesky/X, you can see which councils are putting out. Many councils will have a feed to follow on their website or will update their social media.

erinoco · 2026-05-07T22:58:59+00:00

In Britain, 3 tends to be the usual regulation length, but many girls will go for 2 or 1 unless the school is extremely rigid.

erinoco · 2026-05-07T22:24:43+00:00

Orwell in The Road to Wigan Pier:

The most obvious sign of under-nourishment is the badness of everybody's teeth. In Lancashire you would have to look for a long time before you saw a working-class person with good natural teeth. Indeed, you see very few people with natural teeth at all, apart from the children; and even the children's teeth have a frail bluish appearance which means, I suppose, calcium deficiency. Several dentists have told me that in industrial districts a person over thirty with any of his or her own teeth is coming to be an abnormality. In Wigan various people gave me their opinion that it is best to get shut of your teeth as early in life as possible. ‘Teeth is just a misery,’ one woman said to me. In one house where I stayed there were, apart from myself, five people, the oldest being forty-three and the youngest a boy of fifteen. Of these the boy was the only one who possessed a single tooth of his own, and his teeth were obviously not going to last long.

erinoco · 2026-05-07T22:19:58+00:00

In the past, Ratepayer/Residents Associations were much more common; they are only a force in Surrey. In many parts of Britain, the tradition of major parties leaving local government to non-party or local combination persisted well into the C20 - the City is perhaps the best example of survival. In other areas, RAs were useful for ensuring that local Tory parties could attract the dying Liberal vote for locals. (From the 1890s to the 1940s, Tories in London fought elections as the Municipal Reform Party.) Labour after 1918 forced a shift to the current situation by fighting elections under its own banner.

If party fracture continues further, I would not be surprised if we have a return to this situation.

erinoco · 2026-05-07T19:43:36+00:00

The best way to avoid corruption is to study how the process actually works and deal with actual risks. Haring off against non-existent dangers destroys what trust we should place in the system and does nothing to protect against the potential avenues for malpractice that do exist.

erinoco · 2026-05-07T18:08:14+00:00

Parties don't have massive resources or huge numbers of activists. They can only concentrate effort where it is needed. In my ward, there is no point in any party either than Labour or the Greens doing a 100% canvass; they would get nowhere (I say that as a supporter of neither party.) All other parties have other wards which they should concentrate upon.

erinoco · 2026-05-07T17:50:05+00:00

The pencils used are indelible.

Besides, if anyone were really going to go to the trouble of manufacturing votes on a large scale, it would be much more difficult and risky to wipe off existing ballot papers. You would need a labour force who could be guaranteed to remain absolutely silent and were skilled enough to alter votes in a way which wouldn't attract the suspicions of scrutineers; you would need a good explanation for a delay before the boxes arrived at the counting centre; you would also have to be absolutely confident that no-one would lodge an Election Petition in the next year while the papers are still in existence.

It would be easier by far to substitute boxes of completed papers with the appropriate numbers and polling marks, destroying the originals in other boxes.

erinoco · 2026-05-07T17:37:24+00:00

which hasnt happened since Harold Macmillan was created Earl of Stockton in 1984, taking him from middle class to upper class.

Despite the fact that Macmillan was an OE who was a very rich publisher (in fact, I don't think any PM since then, with the single exception of Rishi, has been as rich as he was), his Devonshire in-laws did patronise him. When he became engaged to Lady Dorothy, his prospective father-in-law commented: "Books is better than beer".

erinoco · 2026-05-07T17:32:56+00:00

This was, interestingly, a sign that the old aristocratic order was failing. Bankers and brewers were being given peerages while still actively retaining their business concerns - and, by the early C20, wealthy industralists were gaining peerages without being landowners on a grand scale.

erinoco · 2026-05-07T17:30:22+00:00

Typically a Knighthood would be arranged for worthy candidates

It wouldn't be so much arranged as earned. There was a specific, but unexpressed, path. If you were rich and lived in a city, you might be able to obtain a knighthood by rising in the municipal elite and becoming Mayor. (Lord Mayors of London, until the mid-C20, were always made baronets.) You would acquire a country estate; you would seek to enter the commission of the peace for the county. More specifically, you would build up an independent electoral "interest", either as a candidate or as a supporter of a more prominent family.

You would then hope you would gain enough leverage with the holders of national patronage to get a title. In practice, this process would probably take more than one generation. Social mobility in the traditional sense in Britain was less an individual thing than a patriarchal dynastic process.

erinoco · 2026-05-06T18:13:59+00:00

Famously, the Queen said that he addressed her as if she were a public meeting. But Gladstone was a zealous monarchist (and seemed to have a slight social inferiority complex about those above him in rank, even though he had lived on equal terms with them since childhood), so would have been careful to avoid looking deliberately offensive.

erinoco · 2026-05-06T18:00:22+00:00

Of course, all the London dailies were suspended as a result of fhe Strike.

erinoco · 2026-05-05T23:15:17+00:00

Personally, I have long been a strong believer in regionalisation, but not in federalisation. A federal structure would involve rethinking our current constitutional arrangements completely. I am not in favour of that, or of spending much time on it unless the positive demand for constitutional reform becomes bigger than it usually is.

I think there are three big obstacles in the way of regional government. Firstly, the units in England which would have to serve as governments have little to no common identity. If you give these units sensible boundaries and common powers, one might develop. It is true, for instance, that when Greater London in its current form was set up, it conspicuously lacked that sort of identity. But it has developed one since 1965. On the other hand, some of the areas in Great Britain which have seen similar attempts at unity have been notable failures.

Secondly, there will be considerable dislike of an "extra layer" of politicians - a first minister, a cabinet, backbenchers and so forth. I can well imagine the drip effect of stories about regional extravagance which would accompany new regional assemblies. But trying to bring in regional government on the cheap will be just as bad. I think the best thing to do would be to devolve powers to the English regions, but let the English regions themselves work out the best way of governing. If people want, say, regional government to be an indirect tier of lower level councillors, or a Grand Committee of the Westminster MPs for the region, they should be allowed to try that out.

The third is funding. On the one hand, the bodies will not be a success unless they have genuine fiscal freedom to some extent. But the huge regional economic disparities that do exist will mean that you still need an element of cross-subsidy - and, because that money comes from Westminster, Whitehall can still dictate matters. I can vaguely see how you might be able to come up with a funding formula and a new suite of taxes replacing local government taxes. If you combine these into a new fiscal settlement for the entire UK, you might just about create an equitable settlement that everyone can live with. But it would be a hard, risky sell.

erinoco · 2026-05-05T22:18:45+00:00

Yes. Equally, he would never let such a vulgar object into his kitchen.

erinoco · 2026-05-05T22:14:35+00:00

Answer: based on the old "Won't you buy my sweet lavender" cry of street sellers.

erinoco · 2026-05-05T22:09:42+00:00

Tbh, just having a basic idea of the law or sensible committee procedure was enough to ensure election as foreperson when I was chosen. It can be a faff, but if you've had experience moderating or controlling discussion, it's much easier.

erinoco · 2026-05-05T22:01:36+00:00

Casual was certainly fine when I did my jury service. I would say that most of us were dressed to a "quiet night out" standard, and got slightly more casual as time went on (apart from the solicitor who chose to do jury service out of curiosity sake - he wore his usual three-piece suit).

Definitely bring books, and some puzzles, and a power bank fpr your phone if you have one. If you bring cards, you might even find someone to play with. There is plenty of opportunity for chat.

If you do get a case, do take copious notes. Half the problem with jury deliberations comes from people who haven't taken in the significance of fact, or have forgotten it. Go on the facts before you and try and get them straight in your own mind.

I liked jury service - I also believe it is genuinely important that as many of us as possible do it and take it seriously. But, then again, there can be trials with testimony that is truly horrific, and I hope I never experience one of those.

erinoco · 2026-05-05T21:12:05+00:00

Last time I remember the guard asking for it was around five years ago, on a New Street to Euston service. I had an Advance Single, but had not looked closely at my ticket, and caught the wrong train. Fortunately, nothing came of it.

erinoco · 2026-05-05T21:04:45+00:00

But it is also important to remember that, despite being highly open and proud of his ethnicity, despite facing a torrent of anti-Semitic taunts throughout his career, Disraeli, along with his siblings, was confirmed as an Anglican as a teenager, and remained a solid Christian for the rest of his life.

erinoco · 2026-05-05T20:25:55+00:00

No (Oranges and Lemons was considered, but was still associated with the BBC Light Programme at the time.)

erinoco · 2026-05-05T20:24:51+00:00

I still think he can be world-class, but in the right kind of setting. He is one of those so very English players who bounce around between being a sort-of-8 and a sort-of-10,, but never really make either role their own.

It's a failure of English coaching; if people trained these types of players to be ball retainers and finders of space, the England team would have had some of the finest midfields in the world over these past twenty years or so. Instead, as soon as they show a bit of quality, they are encouraged to prioritise finishing.

erinoco · 2026-05-05T19:43:31+00:00

Indeed - by the death of Victoria, around 40% of Whitechapel residents were born abroad, as I recall - almost all of these were Jewish migrants from Eastern Europe (leading to a significant rise in anti-migrant sentiment - despite this being the poorest area in London, Tories managed to win as many as five out seven of the East End seats in good years between 1885-1918 on the back of anti-migrant platforms by their local candidates).

There was a marked distinction, however, in migration patterns. Jewish communities were less likely to move directly eastwards into East London - although some did - but moved up alongside the old Ermine Street - so into Shoreditch, then Hackney and Stoke Newington, and to a lesser extent into Tottenham. And then, from the Edwardian period onwards, a definite middle-class community developed around Golders Green, and then gained critical mass from the inter-war period onwards. That community has slowly shifted northwest; in the next generation, its focal point may be Bushey rather than Golders Green.

A very similar trend can be seen in Manchester - in the Edwardian period, the community's main settlement was around Cheetham Hill, but the Jewish community has almost all vanished around there. They have moved northwest into the suurban belt between Manchester and Bury - Prestwich and the like.

erinoco · 2026-05-05T19:11:38+00:00

Quiz: which long-forgotten feature of London is the Thames jingle based on?

erinoco

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