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#31

Off the Record / Re: The Off Topic Topic

Last post by mongers - December 21, 2025, 07:58:26 PM

In an age when salt was hard to acquire, I don't think they were tossing it away after an accidental spill.

Well I looked in my Brewer's and it mentions the Romans and goes onto explain the throwing over the shoulder, but doesn't say the Romans originated that and it has no reference for either point.

I looked on the wiki for 'spilling salt' and it too mentions the Romans regarded it as bad luck, but doesn't mention them throwing it.

And amusingly the reference for this, the first one in the wiki, is to the previous 19th edition of 'Brewer's Phrase and Fable'. I was looking at my 20th edition.

So I don't think I'll get any further with this enquiry.

#32

Off the Record / Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinc...

Last post by Legbiter - December 21, 2025, 07:52:36 PM

Look on the bright side, the North Atlantic conveyor shuts down, Iceland drops to -25C, so Legbiter and his 'cousins' are forced to raid Northern British monasteries for gold and deritos; which vastly increases the likelihood of future old style pan-European Languish meet-ups.   

We herd lava when it gets too bothersome. We survived the Little Ice Age, smallpox and Laki.

Also, I'd raid for Mars bars...

#33

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by Sophie Scholl - December 21, 2025, 07:45:49 PM

Chomsky didn't start hanging out and conversing with Epstein till *after* Epstein first ran into his legal issues, so he almost had to know. Chomsky has had huge areas where he's been weird or awful for years. I'm not overly surprised, though I am disappointed. If he hangs with the rest, so be it. He deserves it for being involved.

#34

Off the Record / Re: The Off Topic Topic

Last post by crazy canuck - December 21, 2025, 07:45:24 PM

In an age when salt was hard to acquire, I don't think they were tossing it away after an accidental spill.

#35

Off the Record / Re: What are your favorite Chr...

Last post by mongers - December 21, 2025, 07:38:56 PM

Some good choices there Sav.

Though unfortunately, for me anyone of the Xmas classic singles from my childhood will do the trick, so Roy Wood, Slade et eal. 

#36

Off the Record / Re: The Off Topic Topic

Last post by mongers - December 21, 2025, 07:30:54 PM

If I recall correctly, inadvertently spilling salt was indeed considered an ill omen in Roman times, but I don't recall reading anything about throwing salt over one's shoulder.

Thanks, interesting, maybe something like Brewers might have something to say on the matter?

[How so? Well, one of Britain's biggest economic problems is that it is too hard to build. In London and the southeast, the thing we haven't built is houses — millions of them. But in the north it's the transport links to ship people from those houses into the local city centres, and indeed between them.]

#37

Off the Record / Re: Brexit and the waning days...

Last post by Sheilbh - December 21, 2025, 07:15:39 PM

Times opinion piece on Leeds:

Northern cities can't thrive when London keeps throttling them
Centralisation has stripped communities of power, money and agency
Robert Colvile
Saturday December 20 2025, 11.00pm, The Sunday Times

Must Leeds always lose? The question came not from a disgruntled fan at Elland Road but the high-minded intellectuals at The Economist magazine. Their point was a simple one: despite the city's best efforts to prosper, it has been screwed over by Westminster again and again.

How so? Well, one of Britain's biggest economic problems is that it is too hard to build. In London and the southeast, the thing we haven't built is houses — millions of them. But in the north it's the transport links to ship people from those houses into the local city centres, and indeed between them.

As Tracy Brabin, the mayor of West Yorkshire, likes to point out, the Leeds region used to have more than 80 tram routes and 200 miles of track. Now it has zero miles and zero routes.

There have been attempts to change this. In 1993 parliament passed the Leeds Supertram Act, paving the way for a new tram system. In 2005 it was cancelled. Alistair Darling, then transport secretary, said a trolleybus scheme would deliver 90 per cent of the benefits at 50 per cent of the cost. It turned out that it would deliver 0 per cent of the benefits, because it was cancelled in 2016. Leeds was going to get a branch of HS2. It got cancelled. And HS3/Northern Powerhouse Rail, across the Pennines. It got cancelled.

As a consolation prize, Leeds got more funding for trams. Spades were going to go into the ground in 2028. But after another government review, it has been pushed back by five years, or maybe ten — because the business case and route planning will now be undertaken sequentially rather than in tandem. And it's by no means guaranteed that it will happen at all.

All this has not just chewed up millions of pounds via endless plans, inquiries and contracts. It's left Leeds as the largest city in Europe without a mass transit system. Marseille, which is roughly the same size, has two metro lines and three tram lines — which is why 87 per cent of its residents can reach the city centre within 30 minutes, as against 38 per cent in Leeds. Which helps explain why Marseille is so much more productive, and therefore so much richer.

What makes matters worse is that Leeds has been trying — trying so desperately hard — to do the right things. It's got the skills, the companies, the appetite to grow. But every time it stands up, Whitehall knocks it back down. In particular, the tram delay may well kibosh the expansion of Leeds United's stadium, and the billion-pound regeneration around it, given that the M621 already turns into a parking lot on match days.

So what are the lessons here — apart from one of Britain's largest cities continuing to be a painfully on-the-nose metaphor for our national dysfunction?

Well, the most obvious lesson for Labour in Westminster is: if you say you're going to do something, bloody well do it.

When Rishi Sunak announced the cancellation of the Manchester leg of HS2, Keir Starmer condemned it as "a complete fiasco", complaining that "many, many people ... were promised something the government has now ripped apart". Well, right back at you, Keir. It boggles the mind that a prime minister who went to university in Leeds, and a chancellor who has her actual constituency there, could have been so cack-handed — even if this delay really is just a delay, and not the prelude to yet another cancellation.

There's an echo here of the party's attitude to housing. Last week ministers unveiled a new set of planning rules that really were a step in the right direction — as you could tell from the chorus of nimby wibbling from the opposition benches. But separately, as part of a rather grubby raid on Tory councils, they took away the extra business rates income local authorities got from new development — which was one of the few incentives to approve it. Ministers still don't seem to have learnt that if something's their priority, they should make it the priority.

Yet when it comes to Leeds — and everywhere else in the country — there's an even simpler lesson. Why in the name of Joseph Chamberlain's rapidly revolving corpse is it any business of Whitehall's who builds what where? Why does Leeds, a great and proud city, have to abase itself before an endless succession of Treasury committees? Everyone in the city knows they need mass transit. They've needed it for 40 years. So why can't they just build it?

In October one of my colleagues at the Centre for Policy Studies think tank co-wrote a paper with fellow experts at Labour Together and the Centre for British Progress. It pointed out that only nine British cities have a tram or metro, compared with 30 French cities and 60 German cities. In fact every French city with a population above 150,000 has a tram or metro: that's the equivalent of Newport, Peterborough or Dundee. And even when things do get built here, it takes years longer and billions of pounds more than it should.

So what is the magic ingredient? Those communities can raise their own cash. In campaigning for re-election as mayor of West Yorkshire, Brabin — who wrote the foreword to the paper — promised to begin construction on the tram by the end of her four-year term. But that promise was not hers to deliver: all she could do was lobby central government. By contrast, in Madrid in 1995 the People's Party won election promising not just to start building a new metro but to finish 30 miles of it. They did, and won re-election. In fact, they've won every regional election since.

As I've pointed out again and again, Britain is one of the most centralised countries in the western world — arguably the most centralised, full stop. Just look at the way Whitehall is unilaterally redrawing council boundaries, resulting in the controversial postponement of many local elections. There could hardly be a clearer demonstration of where power truly lies.

Yet centralisation, under both Labour and the Tories, has stripped communities of power, money and agency. It has made them dependent on central largesse for even the tiniest crumbs of capital, only for the cash to be whisked away when the weather changes.

It is no coincidence that our economic geography is also hideously lopsided, with London and the southeast remarkably affluent and many other areas remarkably poor — even with huge amounts of tax revenue being sluiced from the former to pay for the latter.

Must Leeds always lose? No. But until it gets genuine control of its own destiny, it will lose and lose again. As will all those other parts of the country clutched tight in Whitehall's deathly grip.

I'd add Tom Forth is always worth following on this - and from (and in) Leeds. He has noted that this is ultimately Whitehall wading in and to get on the Governments Major Project Portfolio you need to get an opinion from NISTA (the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority) sho are recommending an independent review by independent experts, like the panel of experts of NISTA (who basically all live in London or the South-East). That's arguably the role of politics - you've got a PM who went to university in Leeds and a Chancellor who is a Leeds MP.

Also Yorkshire Post reporting that apparently there's already recommendations to consider whether the same benefit of a tram system could just be delivered by buses. Which seems like the first step to cancelling it.

I'd add that sort of gravy train is perhaps why we've also had a story today on the costs of refurbishing Parliament (which is (1) riddled with asbestos and (2) a massive fire hazard - Notre Dame waiting to happen with worse escape routes) have now gone up to £15 billion. I think they were about £3 billion when I first posted about it

Couldn't help but think about Forth's point seeing the Guardian front page story that Starmer has no coherent social mobility plan according to the Social Mobility Commission. That Commission has recently done a report on entrenched inequalities in deindustrialised areas - plus a bit of what sounds dangerously like tall poppy syndrome noting that some cities like Manchester, Edinburgh and Bristol are doing well but success is "overconcentrated". They've called for an overarching policy strategy in Whitehall being led from the top by Downing Street. I looked them up and the chair is also CEO of a higher education college in Blackpool. The rest of the board is Resham Kotecha who is head of policy at the Open Data Institute (London), Rob Wilson former MP for Reading East and now tech investor (so South-East probably), Dr Raghib Ali (Cambridge University), Ryan Henson, CEO of the Coalition for Global Prosperity (HQed in London), Parminder Kohli, chair of Shell (London) and Baroness Stowell former civil servant and BBC now in the House of Lords (London) - obviously supported by a no doubt very bright and well-meaning group of civil servants given that the SMC is based in the Cabinet Office.

I can't help but feel that a more geographically diverse group might focus more on how their regions can become like Manchester, Bristol and Edinburgh and less about the need for a national Whitehall-led strategy to prevent those cities from "overconcentrating" success. I'm reminded of how the British government basically kneecapped Birmingham in the post-war.

#38

Off the Record / Re: [Canada] Canadian Politics...

Last post by viper37 - December 21, 2025, 05:40:51 PM

I have to agree with the crypto Judeo-Moor on this one Viper, sorry. Get your clichés right!

By the way, Cabral is close enough to cabrão (think of gros bouc), for the pun brigade or herd.

I see a Gabriel Cabral in your link, not Emanuel but that's indeed Portuguese.

Half of the Portuguese in Montreal have Cabral as a surname, they are hard to keep track.  Half are wine importers, the other half own restaurants.   (ok, Asterix joke, there are only two Portuguese restaurants in Montreal, apparently, I met one of them, ate the other's restaurants).

Emmanuel is the fund collector who threw the party where the image was taken from.
Link

#39

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by Zoupa - December 21, 2025, 05:22:21 PM

That's the mother of all cope takes, Josq.

#40

Off the Record / What are your favorite Christm...

Last post by Savonarola - December 21, 2025, 04:27:01 PM

I find that I burn out on Christmas music quickly and I only put on Christmas albums about two weeks before the holiday.  Even then I only listen sporadically as they tend to have the same songs and just all run together.  The ones that I must hear are:

Ella Fitzgerald:  Ella wishes you a Swinging Christmas - It covers the same ground as most other albums of Christmas standards, but I personally prefer Ella's take on the hits to, say, Bing Crosby or Nat King Cole.

The Staple Singers: The 25th Day of December - Again a lot of standards, but done in a soulful blues/gospel way as only the Staple Singers could.

New York Latvian Concert Choir:  Christmas Joy in Latvia - A collection of Latvian Christmas Cantatas, I think this is great throughout and very different from most other Christmas albums.

The Beach Boys: The Beach Boys' Christmas Album - This is my favorite rock take on Christmas with the Beach Boys' gorgeous harmonies and enough original composition to keep the album fresh.

The Vince Guaraldi Trio: A Charlie Brown Christmas - The classic with a mixture of both original composition and Guaraldi's very jazzy take on Christmas standards.

Christopher Hogwood: Handel: Messiah - The first recorded version of the Messiah to be done on period instruments and, in my opinion, the best take on the work.

What are your must hear albums for the holidays? (not necessarily Christmas, Hanukkah or Kwanza or whatever albums are fine as well.)