Good Articles That Don't Deserve Their Own Threads


This is a FANTASTIC piece on Charles Koch
 

"Firefighting foams are known to contain high levels of PFASs, so firefighters are exposed to higher than average levels of those chemicals. The landmark trial tested 285 Australian firefighters for PFAS in their blood over the course of one year. Some donated blood, some did not. PFAS chemicals bind to serum proteins in the blood, and researchers found that PFAS levels in the bloodstream of those donating were significantly reduced. One possible explanation is that the donors' bodies did indeed offload the PFAS-contaminated blood, and replaced it with unpolluted blood."

Bring back bloodletting as a form of treatment.
 

“Instead of promoting happiness as the elixir for life, our society needs to explore how people can find contentment.”

“When I ask my patients, ’Do you ever feel content?,‘ the thread running through the answers of those who do is connection. Those who feel connected to some purpose, passion or other person have an enhanced sense of well-being. This is a more enduring state of mind than mere moments of happiness. Establishing a deep connection to something or someone reinforces self-esteem. This is the seed of grit, which can help someone choose to get out of bed in the morning even when they are feeling blue. For those who don’t experience contentment, their longing makes them vulnerable to quick fixes and despair, to being in constant pursuit of the next hit of happiness.”

But what is happiness? It's the moment before you need more happiness.
 
Interesting stuff. What say youse poms?
Well, Pimpy's view would be interesting as he originally hails from just across the water on the Wirral.

I have a love/hate relationship regards Scousers, as I was brought up with them, and have spent most of my professional life around them but am not one of them. Pimpy isn't a Scouser either, but he has a closer relationship to them than I do as I'm a Lancastrian.
 
Well, Pimpy's view would be interesting as he originally hails from just across the water on the Wirral.

I have a love/hate relationship regards Scousers, as I was brought up with them, and have spent most of my professional life around them but am not one of them. Pimpy isn't a Scouser either, but he has a closer relationship to them than I do as I'm a Lancastrian.
Read it now, very interesting, but as you would expect I have some different takes on certain issues, but most of the bases are covered. With the exception of the effect of Alan Bleasdale's Boys from The Blackstuff which runs into the negative stereotypes of Brookside.

Need a bit of time over the weekend to come back. It's an excellent piece.

To me, there's two distinctive regional accents that had the fancy patter: one was cockney the other scouse. No other accents or dialects in the UK, with the exception of some soft Glaswegian and Irish come close.

But I will come back in full with my take on it over the weekend.
 
Read it now, very interesting, but as you would expect I have some different takes on certain issues, but most of the bases are covered. With the exception of the effect of Alan Bleasdale's Boys from The Blackstuff which runs into the negative stereotypes of Brookside.

Need a bit of time over the weekend to come back. It's an excellent piece.

To me, there's two distinctive regional accents that had the fancy patter: one was cockney the other scouse. No other accents or dialects in the UK, with the exception of some soft Glaswegian and Irish come close.

But I will come back in full with my take on it over the weekend.
Yeah, I used to enjoy being in a gang of cockneys and scousers. The banter, one-upmanship, and piss-taking was something else...

Glaswegians can be hard to understand on their own turf, a bit like Geordies. Never fallen for the Irish blarney even though the Southern Irish accent sounds nice, as does the Southern Welsh and North Scottish accents. The Northern Irish accent is harsh. Every time I hear one it reminds of Ian Paisley. Awful.
 
Last edited:
Interesting stuff. What say youse poms?
Being from the Wirral, I fall into the Woolly Back or Sheep Shagger category which is someone from Wales and trust me, for some Liverpudlians, anyone from that side of the Mersey is from Wales.

In saying that, Liverpool was always a very international and outward looking city - the Scouse accent has been around since the 1890s and is a mixture of several accents from Irish, Lancastrian, Welsh and Scottish.

Like Manchester and other English cities it experienced a decline after WWII and much of that was to do with the containerization of the shipping industry and like some American cities the growth of the suburbs and people left the city for better places to live. Lots of thriving towns and cities around Liverpool.

Liverpool's support for remaining in the EU is in my opinion down to travel and wanting to maintain that. As a port city and with a history of being on the route to the New World, the Cunard Yanks, the Western Approaches in WWII, football success in Europe - it gets into the blood. It's that simple. More so than other English cities.

It was a city of comedians, The Beatles and the accent was like Arthur Askey's or Paul McCartney's and the football rivalry between Liverpool and Everton was always friendly. Unlike Newcastle and Sunderland which is like a civil war.

But Liverpool by the early 80s and certainly by the riots of 1981 had became the patron saint of inner city decay and was viewed in the media and by some politicians as somehow unique in it's decline - it wasn't.

I've been out of the UK now for well over 20 years, that's a long time and I worked intensely with scousers in the first 10 years of my career and also worked with those from the North East, Mancunians and Glaswegians and in the last 4 years before I left England I was traveling a lot to various places throughout the UK. So I have some perspective on regional differences and now being an outsider.

My position is that Liverpool served a purpose - a pressure release one - for other working class communities and cities in decline i.e. look at the state of those scousers. As you may know, Liverpool football fans get lots of abuse from other football teams with chants on how poor and scummy they are. That's today. That leads to resentment.

But why Liverpool?

A number of factors: (i) the toxic bent socialist council of Degsy and his chums which made Liverpool unattractive to invest in; (ii) the Liverpool mafia flooding the city with hard drugs (also Birkenhead and the Blacon Estate in Chester); (iii) Alan Bleasdale's Boys from the Blackstuff and (iv) Phil Redmond's Brookside.

The last two are culturally important. They were the late 70s and early 80s equivalent of Kitchen Sink drama and what was depicted was not unique to Liverpool, far from it, but in the common culture - it became solely associated with Liverpool. And by the late 80s Harry Enfield and the likes taking the piss out of scousers as permed haired, double milk bottom glasses, track suit wearing half-wits.

The final nail in the coffin is Hillsborough and the establishment cover up, aided and abetted by the MSM, and that resentment runs very deep. And this is often interpreted as a chip on the shoulder of scousers. It isn't.

By 1994 the long recession in Liverpool started to end and I'm glad the city continues to rise again.

Yeah, I used to enjoy being in a gang of cockneys and scousers. The banter, one-upmanship, and piss-taking was something else...
Scousers are still around, but I'm not sure cockneys are. The East End of London is a different country now.

Came across this the other day, it gets to grips with some class resentment that is considered common to cockneys and scousers, but when it comes to banter no one comes close...



And this of course is the song that Michael Caine was helping Quincy Jones with:

 
That was in the Gradiaon. How could you trust those commos.

John Stuart Mill:

“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion... Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them...he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.”



Karl Marx:

"Know your enemies arguments better than they know them themselves"
 
I don't have the Economist, so can't read it. But the Dutch are equally obsessed with American politics.

All those Michelle Obama autobiographies. They printed a lot didn't they? Everywhere still.

Now you have the good-to-go working class guy, Bruce Springsteen and Obama in Renegades an everyday story of how Springsteen found redemption through facial plastic surgery and fillers, then realised all his fans in the 80s were rascist bigots. He hasn't handed any money over yet in reparations to Obama, but will do one day soon, as he comes to terms with the racial abuse Clarence Clemens suffered by his fans.

You can't walk into a book shop without the latest hand written book recommendation on American left wing politics prominently displayed.
 
I don't have the Economist, so can't read it. But the Dutch are equally obsessed with American politics.

All those Michelle Obama autobiographies. They printed a lot didn't they? Everywhere still.

Now you have the good-to-go working class guy, Bruce Springsteen and Obama in Renegades an everyday story of how Springsteen found redemption through facial plastic surgery and fillers, then realised all his fans in the 80s were rascist bigots. He hasn't handed any money over yet in reparations to Obama, but will do one day soon, as he comes to terms with the racial abuse Clarence Clemens suffered by his fans.

You can't walk into a book shop without the latest hand written book recommendation on American left wing politics prominently displayed.
Baby Boomers GIF by MOODMAN
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top Bottom