Posts by Rob Hosking
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Hard News: The epitome of reason, in reply to Emma Hart,
I think one of the most significant differences between Labour and the Greens is that the Greens are currently having a leadership battle, and the media is completely ignoring it. Labour should be so lucky.
It's had coverage. It hasn't had as much coverage, perhaps, because the candidates have not gone all Rats in the Ranks on each other (which is not to say there aren't a few tensions).
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Great post. Does anyone else find it difficult, as parents of autistic kids, not to divide the world into 'those who get it' and 'those who don't?'
Ok, maybe not divide as such - because that does become an automatic necessity, I think - but divide people too excessively this way?
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Hard News: Friday Music: It's good to…, in reply to Rich Lock,
Spike Milligan has a piece in one of his war memoir books about being on home defence in the early part of the war, and sitting in a pillbox with his mates and a record player listening to tunes, with one eye out for the German invasion and the other looking out for any approaching officers. He notes that despite loving the music, there are still certain records he can't listen to as they bring up too many memories, and too many ghosts.
Yeah, There's another one where he's in action in Italy at an observation post on the wireless with headphones on, moving between signals and hearing desperate communications from men pinned down by the Germans: then he gets a bit of classical music (Bach, I think) from a radio station and the savage surrealism of it all is too much and he bursts into tears.
One of the other soldiers asks him whats up and he says its the music, to which his comrade says 'must be fucken awful music to make you cry'
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Hard News: Friday Music: It's good to…, in reply to B Jones,
Yeah, I saw that Pratchett quote too...I hope he went the way he wanted to.
Paul Kelly has done a couple of songs which have choked me up: saw him stun a hall with 'How To Make Gravy' . Wasn't the only one with a bit of surprise ocular leakage.
Then there's Deeper Water, for a bit more personal reasons, 'cos of someone I tried to help once....
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Cracker: Lundy and Me., in reply to Hebe,
That always got to beloved and I: Lundy is such a terrible actor. That funeral performance was hollow, and I can believe the no tears claim.
Yeah - a lot of people were sympathetic or at least agnostic until they saw that. It looked too unreal, too staged. And because of that it was quite chilling to watch.
But one possiblity is he didn't do it, but was quite glad it happened, and had to fake grief.
Personally, I've come to no firm conclusions at all - until recently I felt he had probably done it, but some of the recent evidence makes me doubt that.
I suppose we shall have to see what comes out of all this.
I've got
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Hard News: Doing over the witness, in reply to nzlemming,
It was the police who used the word, just so you know, so we can probably assume it to be technically correct.
We haven't actually heard from the cops. We've heard Hager say they said he is a witness, and I accept that they used that word, but it seems to me people are leaping from that to take the view he is just a witness.
His role in all this is much more active than that of witness and it is either sloppy or tendentious to put quite so much emphasis on that term.
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This use of the word 'witness' to characterise Hager's role: really?
Because - without necessarily buying into the whole 'receiver of stolen property' thing - it seems to me that to characterise Hager's role in all this as just a witness does quite a bit of damage to the English language.
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Hard News: The humanity, in reply to Paul Campbell,
rather than just reporting what the process is and explaining why no one is talking
But they *are* talking. Despite Cunliffe telling them not to.
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Impromptu, wordless, rude and yet....
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Mid '85, it was first shown here. VERY late at night, so as not to upset people.
It became a ritual, at a Very Large Flat I was in, to go to the pitchers on Friday night, come home, let off some fireworks (a flatmate was a dangerous goods inspector at the Dept of Labour & he could get all these free, banned fireworks, at any time) and then watch the Young Ones.
'Hands Up Who Likes Me!' [EVERYONE POINTS TO THE FLOOR] and 'Well that's no reason to hassle me when I'm on the toilet' and [when interviewing prospective flatmates] 'YES WE'VE GOT A VIDEO' became catchphrases.
I think this was my favourite one.... It has lasted not too foully.