The English

Now that she’s a Baroness as well as a Dame and also the widow of a knight she’s, what?

Dame Margaret, Lady Hodge, Lady Hodge

No?

Bristol has one of the country’s lowest birthrates. Here’s why

Imagine, if you can manage the horror, living in Bristol. You look at the environment around you and decide you want to bring new life into this?

Quite, quite, all is explained.

A multimillionaire backer of Reform was threatened with being stripped of his OBE over a social media attack on Sir Sadiq Khan.

The secretive Honours Forfeiture Committee first accused Charlie Mullins of “bringing the honours system into disrepute” in September, over comments dating back to 2022.

They said they were “minded to recommend to His Majesty that your OBE be revoked”.

Mr Mullins, the founder of Pimlico Plumbers, accused Sir Keir Starmer of a political revenge attack on Monday night after officials attempted to revoke the honour. They cited a controversial post about the Mayor of London as well as offensive jokes made online and in person.

Offensive jokes, eh?

Sure, there’s that committee that revokes honours. Get jugged and they’ll whip your BEM off you. This is why peerages can only be revoked by a bill of attainder. Because a peerage (not so much now for hereditaries but still) brings with it legislative position and power and we’re not going to have that decided by some appointed grouping of pecksniffs. That is, we know the dangers of having committees deciding who gets to keep their honours.

Won’t be long now, you’ll only keep your CBE as long as you say Ed’s right on net zero….

Lord Don Foster

No, he’s not.

Among things he is is someone who proved that Wera is not the worst MP Bath could have – some feat.

Among the things he’s not is the younger son of a Duke. He is Don, Lord Foster.

Anthony Keith Book was born in 1934 in Bath, Somerset. The son of a captain quartermaster in the Somerset Light Infantry, he spent seven years of his childhood near the city of Davangere in southwest India, where his father was serving. The family returned to Bath when Book was 12, by which time he had six brothers. He often played football barefoot at local parks with his friends, as he had in India. After leaving West Twerton Secondary Modern, he joined Peasedown Miners FC of the Western League and after completing National Service worked as a bricklayer. In 1956 he joined Bath City in the Southern League and would play almost 400 games for the club over the next eight years — while starting each day on building sites at 6am.

From the obit of a bloke who went on to captian, then manage, Man City.

West Twerton Sec Mod? Peasedown? Capt Q Master? India? There’s just so much potted social history in that one paragraph.

Supermarkets have been accused of ruining Christmas after shoppers claimed their turkeys went off before their use-by date.

Upset customers took to social media to share images of “rotten” poultry they had bought from Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Lidl.

Images showed the birds appearing discoloured and blackened despite being within the use-by dates on their labels.

One Sainsbury’s customer took to X, formerly Twitter, to show their £14.36 turkey had an ominous black spot despite its use-by date being Dec 27.

They said: “Christmas is officially ruined! I’ve just got the turkey out of the fridge and it’s rotten! It smells so bad. I can’t believe you could sell this?”

Can’t have christmas without complaints about roitten turkeys now, can we?

Lord Edward Somerset obituary: Aristocrat jailed for domestic abuse
Wayward second son of the Duke of Beaufort who was found guilty in 2013 of repeated violence against his wife

Junior sons of a Duke – and only junior sons of a Duke – are Lord first name, second name.

Other peers are first name, Lord, second name.

It is Prem, Lord Sikka, not Lord Prem Sikka.

This is one of those linguistic hills I shall die upon.

Maga men love Trump and his war against the age of wokeness

Big chunk of women are in favour too.

America is both the most advanced and important country on earth, and, by European standards, one of the most backward, too

Note the implicit claim there – our way is the more advanced. Instead of the one that more closely accords with voter desire…..

A Remembrance Sunday minute’s silence before Kilmarnock’s clash with Celtic was abandoned after nine seconds when fans of the Scottish Premiership champions booed and sang pro-IRA songs.

Suspected Green Brigade members in the away end also waved Irish and Palestinian flags in an act of defiance against the pre-match show of respect for Britain’s war dead.

One of those little memories of Ireland’s colonisation of Scotland perhaps. One of those little things that shows that it’s not always the English at fault for colonisation even.

Clichéd images of the north have historically revolved around whippets and flat caps — but now a judge has added swearing to the list of stereotypes.

Overseeing a tribunal in Manchester, Judge Jetinder Shergill has backed a claim from a delivery driver who was sacked for describing a female colleague as a “f***ing mong” during an argument about her weight.

As rude as the comment was, the so-called f-word had become commonplace “in the public sphere” — and that was particularly the case in the north of England. “Mong” is a derogatory term for someone with a learning disability, especially related to Down’s syndrome, and is also used as a synonym for “idiot”.

In 2015, David Cameron’s government decided to define HS2 as an “England and Wales project”. In technical jargon this means they applied a 0% comparability factor for Wales to HS2 spending. That may seem hard to decipher, but what you need to know is this: though it sounds fairly innocuous, designating HS2 an “England and Wales project” was utterly devastating to Wales because it meant that Cymru did not receive any consequential funding from the project.

The complaint is that Wales did not receive any money from the building of a railway that does not go through or to Wales.

That really has put the kibosh on that old certainty that the Welsh moan about everything, hasn’t it?

Roughly 46% of the cabinet had parents with working-class occupations – well above the average for the rest of the working population, according to sociologists Aaron Reeves and Sam Friedman’s new book, Born to Rule: the Making and Remaking of the British Elite.

Therefore the working class is well less than 46% of the population. The actual rich are already defined as the 1%. Which means that the majority – a significant majority – of the country is bourgeois.

Which is fine – but that does mean we need to run the country for the majority, the bourgeois, doesn’t it? Wealth cascading down the generations for example, as the certainties of financial independence from the State are supported by not having inheritance tax…..

The Empire is still thrashing the world, as it should. All we need now is for those colonials to come to their political senses. After all, we do know that all of them desire to become British again so we should allow them to do so . The barrier is only their political classes worried about losing their positions. Easily solved, tuppence and a Twiglet would be the sort of compensation required, perhaps throw in a couple of glass beads.

Full adult suffrage was introduced to Anguilla in 1952.[7] After a brief period as part of the West Indies Federation (1958–1962), the island of Anguilla became part of the associated state of Saint Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla with full internal autonomy in 1967.[24] However many Anguillans had no wish to be a part of this union, and resented the dominance of St Kitts within it. On 30 May 1967 Anguillans forcibly ejected the St Kitts police force from the island and declared their separation from St Kitts following a referendum.[25][7][26] The events, led by Atlin Harrigan[27] and Ronald Webster among others, became known as the Anguillan Revolution; its goal was not independence per se, but rather independence from Saint Kitts and Nevis and a return to being a British colony.

With negotiations failing to break the deadlock, a second referendum confirming Anguillans’ desire for separation from St Kitts was held and the Republic of Anguilla was declared unilaterally, with Ronald Webster as president. Efforts by British envoy William Whitlock failed to break the impasse and 300 British troops were subsequently sent in March 1969.[7] British authority was restored, and confirmed by the Anguilla Act of July 1971.[7] In 1980, Anguilla was finally allowed to formally secede from Saint Kitts and Nevis and become a separate British Crown colony (now a British overseas territory).[28][29][24][6][7] Since then, Anguilla has been politically stable, and has seen a large growth in its tourism and offshore financing sectors.[7]

Quite, let the example of Anguilla ring out across the oceans!

Footage has emerged purportedly showing England fans ignoring calls from German police not to sing ‘10 German Bombers’ at this summer’s European Championship.

A TikTok clip captioned ‘England fans in Dusseldorf #england #euros #euro2024 #fyp’ posted on the opening night of the tournament appears to feature Three Lions supporters performing the illicit song outside a Mexican restaurant in Dusseldorf.

The footage was uploaded barely a week after the chief of police of Gelsenkirchen – the nearby city where England play Serbia in their opening Euro 2024 match on Sunday – told any supporters thinking of singing the song while attending the Euros: “Don’t be a d—.”

As I’ve been known to say we’ll take the piss out of absolutely anything.

The former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown receives the highest award of companion of honour for his public service.

One of the little conventions is that a subsequent PM doesn’t decide upon which gong he wants until the previous one has done so. Not written down anywhere, just is.

So, with Brown not having picked up anything that meant Cameron could have the Earldom he so clearly gasps for. No, the Barony to get him to be Foreign Sec isn’t the same thing. This then also applies to Boris, May and Truss.

Now that Brown is accepting the CH this might then clear the way. So, I’d say Boris is odds on to want an Earldom. Anyone else?

Bella Hoare: My family has run this bank since 1672 – I won’t apologise for being authentically posh
The scion of the famous financiers is also a gifted artist. She talks about nepotism, the responsibility of privilege and life after loss

Among the English to be a banker is not to be posh. Rather the opposite, it’s to be far too close to trade.

Now it is possible that over the generations enough daughters have been married off – with their dowries to pay for a new roof – into the aristocracy that one is indeed posh. But that’s what makes one so, not that one is related to bankers

In stark contrast to the harrowing experiences of the 155th Brigade, the Bars Kaskad unit represents a haven for Russia’s upper crust. Established by Dmitry Sablin, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma’s Defence Committee, the unit is comprised of members from the pro-Putin United Russia Party and sons of Kremlin high-ranking officials. These individuals are stationed far from the front lines, engaging in drone operations that keep them out of harm’s way.

Those sons weren’t protected, they lined up to be commissioned as 2nd Lts on the Western Front.

City centre, Bath
The Netflix show Bridgerton may be a fantastical reimagining of Regency London, but much of it is filmed in Bath – due to its protected Georgian architecture and Unesco world heritage status. This two-bedroom penthouse sits on the third floor of a classic curved terrace on The Circus in the heart of the city. It is south-facing, and has a balcony and triple-aspect views. The Royal Crescent, which has featured in the series, is just around the corner, and over the River Avon is the Holburne Museum – used as Lady Danbury’s townhouse. £675,000.

The Guardian thinks this is lovely and aye, it’s not bad. The Circus is very grand houses indeed. This one, well, slightly, it’s on the corner with Gay St, so you’ve buses bridning up to the entrance to hte Circus often enough. But the real point is that “third floor” is actually the old servants quarters up beneath the eaves. High ceilings and big windows – the standard Georgian belief – it won’t be.

There’s some debate about how closely connected, culturally or linguistically, the ancient Britons and ancient Gauls really were. But what is clear is that when a Gallic empire briefly broke away from Rome in the 3rd century, it included provinces on both sides of the Channel; later, both would be part of the same imperial “prefecture”. A short sea crossing was an inconvenience, sure – but hardly more so than many journeys over land.

Not true of Roman times, but before and after the 26 miles of the Channel were almost certainly easier than a 26 mile land journey…..

May 4th 1982: As HMS Sheffield is abandoned and the fire spreads towards the Sea Dart ammunition. The remaining crew gather on the foredeck singing “Always look on the bright side of life”.

…..

Tim Bromige
@Timbrom2

Singing led by the FC that we had loaned to them. One of our Sea Kings closed on the fo’c’sle to pick up wounded and saw them all swaying from side to side with their arms outstretched. I learned why when he got back.

Yes, I do know that second chappie there, have since before this all happened. And yes, he was there.

We’re a weird, weird, culture.