FlyTheNest

Morning all.

Morning refit, just !

Several lols in the comments on this -

Rochdale by-election today, can't wait

I was reading the comments on a Toynbee article this morning and saw a few from people discussing the lack of English grammar teaching at state schools in the 70's and 80's. After a bit of googling it's absolutely true, between some time in the late 60's and 1988 (when the National Curriculum was brought in) there was no grammar taught besides the very basics.

This would explain why, despite having an English O level, I (and presumably millions like me) would stare gormlessly when asked what a past perfect progressive tense is and consequently fail a modern English GCSE. I honestly didn't know what a morpheme was until this morning.

Has having to cobble together grammar on our own done us any harm? When I arrived at university as a mature student most of the youngsters had to do a remedial English course before starting their degrees while we oldies didn't, so it would seem not. In fact those kids would have been the first generation of students to have studied wholly under the national curriculum at school. So maybe the hippie linguists of the 60's were right.

RIP Dave Myers - an absolutely brilliant ambassador for Barrow-in-Furness (a place frequently and unfairly maligned) as well as everything else.

This could be fun.

AnatolyKasparov wrote: ↑Thu 29 Feb, 2024 2:37 pm RIP Dave Myers - an absolutely brilliant ambassador for Barrow-in-Furness (a place frequently and unfairly maligned) as well as everything else.

Absolutely, my Mum met them both and said they were lovely, I was genuinely saddened to hear he'd died and we won't be able to experience his good natured daftness again.

Not long since he had appeared to be recovering quite well, too.

Cancer is vile.

Oh ffs...there were two by-elections a couple of weeks ago on the same night and it didn't stop them airing QT earlier online. What's the difference this time?

I'm not starting a review at 20 to midnight so a running commentary is probably the best that's going to happen if I'm not already too pissed by then.

Lot's of conspiracies on Twitter about why the QT live stream was pulled with 15 minutes notice.

To be honest I actually think they dropped a bollock last time when airing it before the by-election polls had closed. As far as I can remember they've observed purdah rules on every previous occasion.

Galloway apparently thinks he has won, ugh.

Tim Stanley thinks Lee Anderson is wrong and thick but manages to avoid calling him racist then comes out with some guff about the Tory Party being in some kind of existential intellectual crisis about the balance between calling out racism and the right to free speech.

Sayeeda Warsi wonders if her colleagues are either too dim to understand the damage their Islamophobic language causes or are deliberately being racist dicks for votes.

Caroline Lucas says they are being racist dicks for votes and it's going to end badly.

David Lammy gets rightly hauled over the coals by an absolutely wonderful lady in the audience who points out Labour are expelling members for simply criticising Israel.

Hah. Caroline Lucas kicks David Lammy's arse on Labour's fear of taxing the rich and the audience love it.

Wow. On the subject of assisted dying Tim Stanley gives a well reasoned argument against it which takes the view that we'd be turning against the post WWII attitude towards the sanctity of life, while speaking out against the ideology of seeing people only for their economic worth.

So whether he understands it or not he's arguing against everything the Tories have believed since Thatcher trampled on the post war consensus.

I don't happen to agree with him, but it was interesting to hear him extolling liberal left wing values to make his case.

Last question was on the war in Ukraine.

Lammy blathered some delusional nonsense about him exerting pressure in Washington.

Warsi said it would end in negotiation, while then confusingly pointing out Putin couldn't be trusted to abide by the terms of any negotiation.

Stanley also went down the negotiation route while blaming the West for giving Ukraine unrealistic expectations.

Lucas pointed out that if the West can't stop Putin now it's in deep shit.

So the one really notable thing this evening was how the audience reacted to Sayeeda Warsi.

She's the first Tory politician to appear on QT for months who didn't face laughter, groans, or even worse tumbleweed.

Despite all the sound and fury from racist dickheads on Twitter and elsewhere over the past week, an audience with a majority of previously Tory voters treated her with respect and sympathy.

If only her Conservative colleagues were prepared to do the same.

As for Twitter, fucking hell. I'm old enough to remember when all we had were unmoderated Usenet Newsgroups and how they always eventually descended into the depths of hell as a result of a minority of dickheads. It's why we all fled/flocked to moderated forums back in the day and Usenet went from being all powerful to a withered stump.

It would seem Musk is unaware of this life/tech/financial lesson and is intent on making it again.

So tomorrow I plan to register a Bluesky account because I'm fucking sick of having to read the moronic opinion of some racist chav cunt who thinks they speak for 'The North', especially when 100% of them grew up to the South of me.