@MinooFramroze Read this reviewed book in 2009 about Waugh and Orwell being spirit siblings. Good points made to support a comparison I instinctively thought ridiculous.
newcriterion.com/article/the-vi…
English
Ben Williams
10.7K posts
Ben Williams
@FaringForwards
Wherein cunning but in craft? Wherein crafty but in villainy? Wherein villainous but in all things? Wherein worthy but in nothing?
Katılım Temmuz 2017
1.8K Takip Edilen1.4K Takipçiler
I think an intelligent left winger has much in common with Waugh’s clarity - Orwell is the obvious example. Note also Perry Anderson on Powell
Rich@Rich00153
@MinooFramroze Surely there are writers who appeal much more to conservatives than liberals. Larkin, Pym, almost all golden age detective fiction. A Lefty would really struggle with Evelyn Waugh, I think. Much as I loathed Edward Bond as a student.
English
@NicholasOShaug1 It just shows their assimilation. I’m reading @scmallaby’s excellent bio of Hassabis. It’s extraordinary how unentrepreneurial we are now perceived to be in the US. (Then read the section where Deep Mind tries to *give* the NHS world beating tech. It’s a mirthless comedy)
English
No these are not the reasons, it is just that it is English and lacks the brio of America?
S. I. Rubinstein@si_rubinstein
I have always regarded North London Jewry’s lack of a Philip Roth — or a Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsburg, Mordecai Richler, &c. — as a sign of its peculiarly suburban, conservative, petit-bourgeois character.
English
Ben Williams retweetledi
I would have expected a crab museum to be the one place I was safe from being lectured to about British colonialism.
English
@si_rubinstein Do you lurk at night in the University Parks keening wistfully at Keble?
English
@NicholasOShaug1 @MinooFramroze I’m not sure my nephew would be able reliably to identify my godchildren. On the other hand, he is 6.
English
Nicholas apparently this is inaccurate! The Waldies are scandalised by the imputation
Nicholas O'Shaughnessy@NicholasOShaug1
@MinooFramroze Waldegrave
English
@si_rubinstein It’s never previously occurred to me to ask where the h came from. We anglicise the triumvir as Antony. Is it just something done to bamboozle Americans - in case we ever need a British shibboleth? I would ask Oliver Kamm, but then I remembered he’s unbearable.
English
@BucketsOf_Rain Only someone with the self-assurance flowing from a naturally magnificent embonpoint could be so dismissive of our miracle-working new Messiah. Shocked.
English
It’s amazing to me that Zack Polanski, someone so utterly lacking in charisma, intelligence, wit and looks can be so popular- particularly among the young. He has no redeeming qualities whatsoever
English
Many congratulations to sweet little Dick on beating the restriction on X to the over 13s. Give that lad the latest Super Mario and a gobstopper!
RICHARD VAUGHTON@dicofran
@FaringForwards More like.... "Ben Williams @FartingForwards
English
@blagden_david @HoyasFan07 It’s so dumb it’s hard not to think there’s
an underlying psychology. I think part of it is we’ve come terms with the post 1945 loss of hard power, much of which is irreversible, by telling ourselves that such power is at best irrelevant or even a malignant temptation to badness.
English
(Of course, Britain’s strategic default in recent history has been the exact opposite: prostrating the country before both superpowers, be that over London embassies or Indian Ocean air bases, in hope that the costs of independent self-protection can somehow be avoided…)
English
A China-centric world order would be awful. A US-centric world order has turned bad.
Major European powers like the UK can’t reorder the wider world. But they can absolutely make their benign home region into a bristling fortress that outsiders see no point tangling with…
1/2
Sari Arho Havrén@SariArhoHavren
The Economist gives a welcome glimpse from Kazakhstan of what a China-centred global order, aka governance, really means. It may not sound like much to exchange economic gains for loyalty, but in reality, sovereign countries need to be ready to sentence their citizens if they cross China’s red lines.
English
@FaringForwards Only if what follows Starmer is even worse
Which it probably will be
English
I’ve been thinking exactly this for some time.
Tim Stanley@timothy_stanley
A country that rehabilitates John Major will come to love Keir Starmer in time.
English
@JRLevinsLaw @HCH_Hill I think, in fairness, that there are people within the judiciary itself who think the division between the Com Ct (KBD) and Chancery cumbersome, illogical and confusing.
English
Outsiders simply need to learn what 'Chancery' is. This is like getting rid of all the legal terms under New Labour, and it turns out to be *more alienating* because most people pick up their background knowledge from American legal drama, which still uses them.
Harry Samuels@hnjsamuels
This would be desperately sad and destructive of centuries of history for no good reason.
English
What are we going to rename King’s Bench to? The Miscellaneous and Off-Cuts Division?
Harry Samuels@hnjsamuels
This would be desperately sad and destructive of centuries of history for no good reason.
English
@hnjsamuels Oh Harry, Harry, next thing you will be telling us that the switch to “claim form” was a bland and unpoetic monstrosity, ironically spawning a term only ever used by lawyers. And what sort of idiot could possibly think that?
English
I am so fed up of this instinct that any historic practice or tradition has to be ironed out and made as bland as possible in the name of progress. If a person doesn’t understand a word, why should that result in systemic change rather than that person learning something new?
English
I also just don’t buy that there’s any real confusion. In my experience, international clients think the Chancery Division has weight precisely because of its history and prestige. Domestic clients all know what it means (and often relish bringing a claim “in Chancery”!)
Harry Samuels@hnjsamuels
This would be desperately sad and destructive of centuries of history for no good reason.
English
@MinooFramroze (In many ways far more salacious than the other page 3)
English
@MinooFramroze The DT had a brief period of being an intelligent (if sometimes loony) paper under Black - for all the bombast, he was a good newspaperman. Page 3 of was considered in its way the most salacious in the UK. Lots of terrible crime stories the readers secretly found delicious.
English
When I was young you read it if you were posh but clever or posh but mad or all of above and in either case not particularly interested in professional advancement (the Times), but the posh but clever lot’s last stand was of course the Rory Stewart leadership campaign
Aaron Bastani@AaronBastani
I swear the Telegraph was a serious paper when I was young. Not a million miles off the FT. A paper for sober provincial solicitors. Now it talks about teenagers ‘shagging’ each other and why, 30 years later, that means they shouldn’t be…politicians.
English
@Sam345665387962 @whitesundesert @defossardf @maxtempers And you could so easily construct that. As (i) on the whole lawyers doing family law are much less well paid than those doing commercial law; and (ii) lawyers doing family law are disproportionately women. So Paula would say the only explanation for this can be sexism.
English
English
The largest supermarket in Britain, that operates on razor-thin margins, is about to be crushed for the crime of paying different jobs different salaries, while our legislature shrugs.
How dare they suggest that “so-called market rates” can exist in Soviet Britain.
Financial Times@FT
Tesco argues equal pay claim disregards ‘economic reality’ ft.trib.al/k5n8n5E
English
@DavidDPaxton I’ve always felt that watching top level players is an indistinguishable from watching magicians. Though often more enjoyable.
English
@MinooFramroze I think this is actually a rare good idea. They should also introduce a criminal division and (like Gladstone) abolish multi-tier appeals.
English
Cromwell tried to do this and was thwarted by Whitelocke & co. This government really is astonishingly consistent. I am a fanatical non populist and my wing of the Tories is tattered. Why is Labour so determined to horrify me?
Harry Samuels@hnjsamuels
This would be desperately sad and destructive of centuries of history for no good reason.
English
From @scmallaby’s superb biography of Hassabis, on AI playing Go:
‘At first it looks harmless. Then it’s just completely dominating. We don’t understand the mechanics, the tactics, the strategies. We just know that it’s in control.’
To adapt E M Forster: “only extrapolate”.
It’s like Prometheus is back. But with him, Pandora.
English