This is the News!

[Funt Solo]

Well, yes. I hope it was clear from my post upthread that I'm not anti-farmer. Nor do I believe that all farmers think in a uniform manner. Or that they're all white. Or that the white ones are all supremacists.

There is something that makes *most* folk in large cities in the US not vote for Trump. And there is something that makes *most* folk in rural areas in the US vote for Trump.

[Fortnight]

I think it's probably mostly to do with a) the concerns that Trump addresses, and his non-politician origins, are in sync with rural dwellers and their sympathies. And that the population is more dispersed. In cities there are more interactions with others, and those interactions are more significant to an individual's own life. More opportunity to fall into a clique, and less room to defy the mainstream or suffer ostracisation (which is more of a nightmare for a close community). So if it becomes "trendy" (pardon the sledgehammer of a term) to think one way, thinking another way comes at a price. Doesn't happen so much in the rural areas.
Also, the things that Trump doesn't seem to give a poo about (social care and other typically left issues) are more important in a densely populated area.

[Funt Solo]

less room to defy the mainstream or suffer ostracisation

I think that's a really interesting observation, because I'd make the same argument in reverse. Like, people who live on a farm in the countryside have literally said to me "we don't really have transgenderism here - it's a country farming community".

It feels like it's way more dangerous to pop your head above the parapet and say "I'm different" in a rural community. There's nowhere to hide, and people are set in their ways.

(The high school I attended didn't have open gayness. That's because open gayness was unsafe, not because nobody was gay.)

[Fortnight]

Good point. It's not as if it's a clear cut issue of always-this-way-in-the-country and always-that-way-in-the-city. Obviously both are types of community and all communities are vulnerable to the same types of upset. The degree & proportions vary, is all. I think that the trend is enough to cause a geographical separation of left & right. And then, of course, people migrate to where they'll feel they belong. Naturally there are other considerations to within-borders movements (finances being one), but, again, the trend is probably enough to shift red & blue further apart.

[JayzusB.Christ]

(The high school I attended didn't have open gayness. That's because open gayness was unsafe, not because nobody was gay.)

Same here. Funnily enough, not 5 minutes I was messaging an old friend from primary school. When we were about ten he told me to put my hand on my hip with one hand then pretend to bounce a tennis ball with the other, before telling our peers to 'look at the gay boy'. I had no idea what he meant.

He's happily married to another man these days. How far we've come.

Sorry, a bit off topic, and more about growing up in the 80s than growing up in the countryside, though I did both.

[Jim_Campbell]

He's happily married to another man these days. How far we've come.

For all the gloom I feel about the future, when I talk to my friends' teenage kids, the fact that they're so fantastically relaxed about their friends who are trans, non-binary, gay or bi, genuinely gives me hope. I honestly want to see them take over the planet, and I'd quite like to see what they make of it.

[Funt Solo]

I've noticed that as well, Jim, about the younger generation. Mini-Solo is non-binary, as it happens.

[Jim_Campbell]

I've noticed that as well, Jim, about the younger generation. Mini-Solo is non-binary, as it happens.

It's their turn. We've fucked the planet, but it might not be too late. Let's turn it over to them — they can't make a worse job then we have. Time to go full workerati on the place, IMO. 🙂

[JayzusB.Christ]

I've reached an age where some of my peers are banging on about how 'soft' the younger generation are, as if our generation had to endure the trenches or the Blitz rather than play Nintendo games and watch Bullseye.

[Fortnight]

It's the equivalent of my parents' generation saying "we worked hard so you could have an easier life than we had", and the next day "bloody kids have it so easy these days".
It'll be the same for the generation after us. They'll inherit the Earth regardless of what we do, so as long as enough of them are better than us, that's what counts...

[The Legendary Shark]

Humans don't inherit the Earth, the Earth inherits the humans.

[Le Fink]

For all the gloom I feel about the future, when I talk to my friends' teenage kids, the fact that they're so fantastically relaxed about their friends who are trans, non-binary, gay or bi, genuinely gives me hope. I honestly want to see them take over the planet, and I'd quite like to see what they make of it.

Yes I find this very positive too. It helps with the increase in positive representation on the TV, with the likes of Sex Education, which is brilliant by the way. Adverts have moved on a lot too.

[The Doctor Alt 8]

Croydon Dose It Again.... Hat-trick heroes: Perry and Philp set an Eye 'awards' record
Posted on January 4, 2024 by insidecroydon
It's the annual awards that no local council ever wants to feature in.


Eye, eye, eye: in all good newsagents, and some not so good, today

But this year, thanks to Tory double act Jason Perry and Chris Philp, Croydon Council has picked up no fewer than three "gongs" in Private Eye's much-anticipated Rotten Borough Awards for 2023.

Lord Gnome, the legendary proprietor of the country's best-selling fortnightly satirical magazine, has confirmed that in doing so, Croydon has set another unwanted record, as no other authority has ever managed to claim a hat-trick of Rotten Borough titles in one year.

And they also ensured another record, as this was the seventh successive year that Croydon has been nominated for one award or another. The trophy cabinet in chief exec Katherine Kerswell's office in Fisher's Folly must be groaning under the weight of all those unwanted but very well-deserved trophies.

Given the omnishambles that the previous lot in charge of Croydon Town Hall left the place ("the ultimate rotten borough", according to previous Eye reporting), Perry, ably backed up by Croydon South MP Philp, has clearly embarked on a mission of "whatever you do, we can do worse...".

First, Philp and Perry, jointly, picked up the gong for "Responsible Social Media Initiative", for the pair's on-going involvement in a Facebook group that appears to condone, at least, the millions of pounds' worth of criminal damage inflicted on ULEZ infrastructure in and around Croydon.

Pro-pollution Perry and Philp's involvement in the "Stop the ULEZ expansion to Croydon" group is, of course, a clear breach of the council's, and Parliament's, codes of conduct, breaks a handful of the Nolan Principles, and is especially awks for the MP, who just happens to be... checks notes... a government minister for policing.

What was it that Philp was saying only yesterday? "There is no excuse at all for any criminal activity." And how many instances of ULEZ vandalism has Philp reported as a result of being a member of the "Stop the ULEZ expansion to Croydon" page? That'll be zero...

Perry was only elected as Croydon Mayor in 2022, but he is already on track to surpass all the Rotten Borough gongs that even Tony Newman and his sidekick, Paul Scott, managed to accumulate during their wretched time in office.

The Eye has warded Perry the "Must Try Harder" award after he "showed the depth of his political incompetence when he tried to score points off Labour over the previous regime's disastrous Brick by Brick housing company", the magazine explained.

What was the worst thing Perry had discovered about the Brick by Brick debacle, the Mayor was asked in a typically patsy question at a Town Hall meeting.

"Finding a two-storey house without a staircase," Perry replied, only for it to emerge that no such stair-less house ever actually existed. The Mayor had been "misinformed" was Perry's excuse for lying to a Town Hall meeting.

Perry nabbed his third medal with the "Art of the Deal Award" for his part in the on-going saga over Croydon's vanished bus shelters – almost three years since the council uprooted its shelters on the promise of big bucks by a New York-based con man who was clearly never properly checked out by council officials.

Today, Tim Minogue, who edits the Rotten Boroughs page, told Inside Croydon: "Croydon council can rightly be proud that the international panel of highly respected judges was once again of the view that this authority was deserving of such recognition at Britain's most prestigious local government awards."/font]

[Funt Solo]

Sort of on-topic, there was this: Mona: Court rules women's-only exhibit must allow male visitors

TL/DR - Feminist art exhibition tries to make point about historical disenfranchisement by excluding men. Man sues and wins right of access.

Linguist's corner: article contains word "contumelious".

[Angry Vince]

Linguist's corner: article contains word "contumelious".

My new favourite word (after obstreperous)