Adam Cain

I had one of those lightbulb moments hearing Roy Hattersley explain that the defining feature of an ideology is that to the adherent it can never be proved wrong.

If the approved policy works: the ideology is right! If it doesn't: you didn't do it enough, do more of it.

(At least, when they do, it's standard adolescence, and you view your own parents with more sympathy)
- The people who fuss are grandparents and others who don't actually see A Kid on a daily basis.

Of course, the last group do tend to vote, and buy newspapers, so....

Fair point, but sorta shows the limits of all these moral panics.

- the papers fuss about Kids If Today
- The Kids ignore them
- So do childless people
- Having been a parent, I'd say parents aren't much bothered, you tend to spot your children haven't turned into monsters.

PS absolutely no-one ever called them “Hero Turtles”, they were always called “Ninja Turtles.” It wasn’t edgy to do so.

Well, I can only say that I was a 20-something at the time, and no-one I knew gave a shit about any of it.

There was a certain amount of crap in the Express and Sun at the time. It was a given that the Express and Sun were comics anyway. See also: punk, a few years earlier.

1. Erm, there isn’t one.
2. There are some laws about swords. We also have laws about guns. We don’t think carrying lethal weapons is civilised. Who does?

"There" in Yugoslavia, but not, I think, in Crete?

Didn't his CO leave him behind due to fear that someone would shoot Waugh in the back?

Still, I daresay he spoke to those who went, the books as a whole seem very plausible.

I know it’s fiction, but in Evelyn Waugh’s “Sword of Honour” trilogy, there are scenes set during the Crete campaign and later ones with Yugoslav partisans.

IIRC he is quite rude about the relative ineffectiveness of RAF air support in the latter case compared to the Luftwaffe in the former.

Interesting.

So would that mean that the RAF went into the war with no interest in tactical/air support?

IIRC they weren’t very interested in anti-submarine warfare either.

Can you explain the rubbishness of the Fairey Battle to me?

On crude stats it doesn’t look much different to the Stuka to me. Was it really rubbish, or was the problem the RAF’s refusal to countenance dive bombing, thereby condemning any tactical bomber to level bombing?

Lib Dems, wisely, like cheese too much to be tied down to one favourite.

We are like de Gaulle’s French, a party of 246 cheeses.

Played outside right for Charlton Athletic in the 50s IIRC.

I think you underestimate your point; I don't think it's a small thing at all.

You can see the exact opposite demonstrated by Trump.

Can see Mitchell and Webb doing that brilliantly.

It's a fair point that the actual premise of Jim'll Fix It was brilliant and would absolutely work today in any country if you could lose the Saville association.

Cricket largely upper class (especially in southern England) but c.50 years ago used to have working class pockets (Yorks, Lancs, London to some extent). Bowlers usually more working class (hence captains are usually batters.)

Now also has Asian strongholds cutting across class a bit.

Bloody hell.

Brought into the BBC in the late 60s by execs with no knowledge of youth culture (other than a correct realisation that the Beeb needed to engage with it) because he owned venues where teens went.

Then embedded at the Beeb when it was 50% of kids' TV (and no other video available.)

Absolutely one of the best war films of all time.

I'd have it and Colonel Blimp in my top three British war films.

Oh, I hadn't put two and two together on that, but that's a very good spot

This, but also:

Critical thinking should not only be part of the curriculum, it is the core of all education, to which *all* subject-based teaching should be tied.

I confess to being close to that myself, at least as a gut-reaction, even though I know it's irrational.

I think online safety is a serious and growing problem. If the govt wants to do something about it I think they're right, and a response of "LOL, it'll never work, idiots" makes me mulish.

2-tier authorities where planning is at district level but education, highways and public transport at county doesn't help either.

But essentially "private sector proposes, govt approves" is wrong way round, it should be "govt commissions, planning towns not just houses, private sector builds".

Circular issue.

If there's no facilities on the estate (and NB as well as the ones mentioned, there's never any business offering work; these are always dormitory estates for other towns/cities) then residents need to travel for *everything*, and public transport is another thing that's none of.

Pretty much where I am too.

I'm not buying the "just as bad as the Tories/Farage" line because however disappointing Starmer is, I've looked at Badenoch and Farage.

(For these purposes, John Major is an honorary Labour PM. Because Not Thatcher.)

Well, I'm going to riff on something I've said on another thread, but to the British right Labour government is not legitimate.

Therefore anything that happened under Labour was bad irrespective of what it actually was.

They were having a rubbish time, so the country must have been rubbish.

Right from the start the Telegraph/Spectator crowd haven't just criticized, they've painted Labour as illegitimate.

I'm a critic of Labour myself, but it's a different thing with them.

That's what strikes me about all stories of people who supposedly swung from one wild extreme to another - the common thing is the wild extreme and nonsense, the flavour of the nonsense barely matters.

(Been listening to Ashley Blakers Hyperfixations on R4 this week and it's the same story really.)

Gower was my first thought too, as was the age thing.