Tangent

Siri, tell me how I use Twitter.

@JohnRentoul @SVunny52957 @pghoskin Lord Robert was reluctant to leave the Commons. He even contemplated ignoring the Writ of Summons.

@SVunny52957 @pghoskin Yes, but no one has been since

Great chart by @pghoskin on how long ex-PMs stayed in the Commons conservativehome.com/to-the-point/2…

I think we're now able to build a pretty clear picture of the most likely mechanism of the train crash at Adamuz in Spain.

@Layo_FH @edwest 2 is a reworking of Matthew Arnold's Culture and Anarchy, with its threefold division of Barbarians, Philistines and Populace. Barbarians and Populace still have a common interest against the Philistines.

There are some good theories as to why this is the case and my hunch is it’s 3 factors. 1. Scott Alexander’s theory below, which certainly feels part of it to me. 2. @edwest theory that the upper classes and today’s working / petit bourgeois both align in lots of ways - they’re general more socially conservative, more patriotic, generally more accepting of violence, roughousing/banter with ‘an edge’, and the carnivalesque. While today’s middle classes have their lineage in the social strivers of yesteryear, the social reformers, co-ops and TUs, the autodidacts pre WW2 and the grads post WW2, the types who were scornful of blood sports and carnivalesque and violent past times. And 3. The lack of self-consciousness that comes from being old money. You’ve got nothing to prove it’s all "hurrah! jolly good! Do you wanna get lashed together? If this horse wins Deano old boy, I’ll buy it for you! What banter!" The most snobby people I’ve met have been very intelligent, very successful, middle or upper middle class strivers who despite their relative privilege remain a bit chippy and they remain socially awkward around people outside their particular rung on the social ladder. They sneer both up and down the ladder, particularly at people they don’t think are as bright as them.

Labour need to understand that most Britons despise the liberal cosmopolitan middle classes but don’t mind poshos so much, particularly poshos that seem authentic and not self-conscious. It’s only the liberal middle class, and a small number of working class tribal socialists (the type you only find in enclaves anymore, in places like Liverpool) who hate poshos, and then, it’s often a bit performative.

Just copying in my theory of why Mr. Brightside is more popular in the UK than America from a group chat

“President Carter told a funny story. Everyone must laugh.”

@Bloopie98598925 @guineagibbs @SCP_Hughes Mid-80s: the precinct was completed in 1988. It mostly replaced Jones & Higgins' department store. (The bus garage was replaced by the open-air station in 1995. The car park was largely a result of enemy action during the War; the surviving buildings were gradually levelled.)

Proposed replacement of a large retail site in Peckham with a mixed use development including 877 homes. This is not a perfect proposal, but it seems like an obviously better use of land by a high street and a railway station in a city with an acute housing shortage.

@100YearsAgoLive He was the son, son-in-law and father of past and future Governors/Governors-General of New Zealand, and also a grandfather of a High Commissioner of New Zealand.

Sir Charles Ferguson takes office as the 3rd Governor-General of New Zealand.

@SarkerNotParker @LogicalVaxxer @CoKeynesian @MasterVril In British terms, the traditional Palace view is that the existence of a Deputy PM should not be seen as limiting the Monarch's prerogative to summon anyone suitable to form a gov't in circs such as these.

@LogicalVaxxer @CoKeynesian @MasterVril wasn't he Deputy PM? Maybe British legal/political norms for Chain of Succession are different from American ones but that hardly seems like an unreasonable pick for an interim PM in the event of a sudden loss, no?

@CoKeynesian @MasterVril Disagree strongly. Willie would have ended up in charge in the interim, but the "continuity candidate" would have been whoever looked best out of Howe or Lawson. Heseltine might have struck, but would have been unlikely to win.

i love watching a coup fall apart and monday morning quarter backing it like "ah yeah you gotta get your party on your side" like i know how to do that shit

A lot to say about the figuring of class & gender in this from a man who was, pre-fame, let’s remember, a petty bourgeois grocer, and the venom in "a handful of middle class women of a certain age".

One of my ghost notions is that all sense experience in literature that does not depend on the subject's prior categories results in a disordered subject, constantly trying to file the sensation so as to restore that sense of order.

@SirClmnt @korejay @funkomi Yes: large parts of both Hither Green and Ilford were developed by the Victorian builder Cameron Corbett, and this is often used as a selling point today.

@korejay @funkomi Yea there are quite a few of them in Hither Green & 🐈‍⬛ford… yea this is Lewisham

Looks nice for a terrace house but 1.4m for a TERRACE house in Hither Green is diabolical tbh. I don’t understand this “market” anymore.

@robpalkwriter Disraeli did spend a great deal of time in his final premiership writing long love letters to Lady Bradford.

@metaboatchris @bouledenerfs_ In 2007, an ARD documentary exposed a lot of the Quandt family's activities in the Nazi era. In response, the family commissioned an independent historian to study the issue. The study backed up the doc, and the family & BMW accepted the response.

@bouledenerfs_ When I was at the BMW museum during the summer I was surprised by how frank, open and apologetic about what they did during the War Period. Looked like a recent addition to the museum, mind.

@DenisMacShane @MichaelLCrick Tony Benn replaced Cousins in Cabinet, building the stature he needed to become the leader of the anti-consensus left. Oh - and a certain Mrs. Thatcher made the best Commons speech of her career to date attacking the P&I Act.

@DenisMacShane @MichaelLCrick Part of the government's reaction was the P&I Act 1966, with its wage/price freeze, which caused Frank Cousins to resign; & we embarked on the road which led to In Place of Strife, Heath's IR Act, the Social Contract and the WoD.

For all the nice words about John Prescott from Keir Starmer and other leading Labour figures yesterday, he almost certainly wouldn't be allowed to be a Labour candidate these days - as a left-wing, trouble-making trade-unionist.

@Random832 @yesterdaysprint That's Bank. London buses going to or stopping at the Bank of England would simply refer to the location as "Bank"; the underground station there is still known as Bank.

@yesterdaysprint the bus ad that just says "dank"

Illustrated Police News, England, November 21, 1896

So little of what made John Prescott makes any sense now — ocean liners, failing the eleven-plus, union membership, working class autodidactism — that it’s unsurprising he is being eulogised as a light entertainment star by so much of Westminster.