29 minutes ago, MigL said:

At least EEnglish cooking has clearly defined meat, like cheap fish or mutton; swarma has 'mystery' meat 😄 .

I mean, the various puddings and pastries in British cuisine with their chopped... things, often surrounded by gelatinous goo... not sure whether it gets much more mysterious than that. At least in shawarma the meat has to have a consistency that makes it stackable.

2 hours ago, sethoflagos said:

I quote from The Migration Observatory (University of Oxford)

The only group housed for any length of time in ''big hotels at taxpayers expense" are individuals with pending asylum claims who are unable to support themselves financially. These people have an entirely legal right to remain until their application has been rejected and all rights of appeal exhausted. You are clearly very confused. Which group exactly are you complaining about?

In passing The Migration Observatory also has clear data on taxpayer cost:

Since the new Labour goverment has dramatically reversed the long term (deliberate?) neglect of this issue, and promised to close all asylum hotels by the end of this parliament, I imagine they must have your wholehearted support.

And who exactly has presided over the decline of your town over the bulk of the last twenty years? And encouraged you to blame it on the immigrants rather than the greed of their financial backers? (A bait you seem to have swallowed hook, line, and sinker)

Also note that in OP it was about immigrants in general. Though quite often the least liked group (e.g. asylum seekers) are picked out to represent the rest. I wonder why it is so.

Heavens! A curated assemblage of pertinent facts!

I admit I didn't know much about the UK system until I saw Dirty Pretty Things a few years ago. Which, though not a curated assemblage of facts, did make me aware of the no-work requirement for asylum seekers. It did leave me curious about the work ban. If the asylum seekers are only getting a pittance from the government, wouldn't it give them a bit of dignity (and possibly help with joining UK life, if they end up staying) to at least work part-time in areas where labour is short supply? (Or will they all end up preyed upon by kidney black marketeers, as in DPT?)

1 hour ago, TheVat said:

wouldn't it give them a bit of dignity (and possibly help with joining UK life, if they end up staying) to at least work part-time in areas where labour is short supply?

They will do the work the natives feel is beneath their dignity (!); support themselves; and pay taxes to support Reform voting old gits' pensions. Win-win all round to my way of thinking.

4 hours ago, CharonY said:

I mean, the various puddings and pastries in British cuisine with their chopped... things, often surrounded by gelatinous goo... not sure whether it gets much more mysterious than that.

Yes, you lot stick to your wholesome, tasty chlorinated McNuggets and stuff and leave all those nasty organ meats to those who know no better!

11 hours ago, swansont said:

That’s probably part of the problem; in the US we have politicians describing big cities they don’t live in as hellscapes, describing problems that don’t exist as justification for hating the cities and the people living there. Other people latch on to those descriptions as being true, yet the folks who actually live there are doing just fine.

IMO this is one of the biggest problems in American politics, I hear people complain strongly about places they have never even been to, much less actually know someone from, a lot. Given that, I don't see how you can have an opinion strong enough to bother complaining to the point of taking up time to enjoy life or talk about something you might actually be able to solve.

On 8/28/2026 at 5:48 AM, sethoflagos said:

When I asked my mother why all the meats had French names, she put it quite succinctly:

It's so everyone knew who got to raise the animals, and who got to eat them.

Yes that is part of what we were taught.

20 hours ago, CharonY said:

But I would argue that that asylum seekers actually play a critical role here. If they are all gone and the infrastructure remains crappy, who is left to blame? Having a group to scapegoat is a time-honored tradition to avoid accountability and you wouldn't want to lose that.

After all, NHS was fixed by Brexit, right?

The French would love it, if we realised our mistake and tried to re-join the global economy, by reversing Brexit; they'd make us suffer alright....

56 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

The French would love it, if we realised our mistake and tried to re-join the global economy, by reversing Brexit; they'd make us suffer alright....

I doubt it, I think they'd be welcome.
It's not the 60s anymore, and C de Gaulle has been dead since 1970.
Europe knows it is stronger united.

16 hours ago, npts2020 said:

IMO this is one of the biggest problems in American politics, I hear people complain strongly about places they have never even been to, much less actually know someone from, a lot. Given that, I don't see how you can have an opinion strong enough to bother complaining to the point of taking up time to enjoy life or talk about something you might actually be able to solve.

Yep. I recall when Portland was in the RW crosshairs as Shithole of the Month. Anyone who has actually been to Portland had a good laugh - has to be one of the prettiest and most livable large cities in the nation.

21 hours ago, MigL said:

I doubt it, I think they'd be welcome.
It's not the 60s anymore, and C de Gaulle has been dead since 1970.

I'm not saying they'd block us, just twist the knife a little, as a lesson...

21 hours ago, MigL said:

Europe knows it is stronger united.

Not all of Europe it seems. 🤔

2 hours ago, dimreepr said:

Not all of Europe it seems. 🤔

Maybe not.

But Europe ( and Canada ) have come to realize, as the French did long ago, that the US cannot be depended on, nor trusted.

22 hours ago, MigL said:

Maybe not.

But Europe ( and Canada ) have come to realize, as the French did long ago, that the US cannot be depended on, nor trusted.

When has any nation been dependable/trustworthy?

We're all in it for ourselves, at every level of the cultured; that's kinda the point of diplomacy

And why we get confused with certain pronunciations; is it Farage with an extra aaghe or garage without?

Edited August 31Aug 31 by dimreepr

4 hours ago, dimreepr said:

When has any nation been dependable/trustworthy?

We're all in it for ourselves, at every level of the cultured; that's kinda the point of diplomacy

There are certain conventions folks adhered to after the fall of empires. I am pretty sure that at least partially it can be attributed to the realization that a full-on might makes right attitude, that had been so pervasive in our history, has real potential for total annihilation in the modern world. Thus, there was an incentive to find a win-win for everyone involved and for a short while concepts like liberalism, rule of law and associated concepts seemed to gain popularity until, well, now.

 

5 hours ago, dimreepr said:

And why we get confused with certain pronunciations; is it Farage with an extra aaghe or garage without?

I think the proper pronunciation is "tool". With an extra "absolute".

19 hours ago, CharonY said:

There are certain conventions folks adhered to after the fall of empires. I am pretty sure that at least partially it can be attributed to the realization that a full-on might makes right attitude, that had been so pervasive in our history, has real potential for total annihilation in the modern world. Thus, there was an incentive to find a win-win for everyone involved and for a short while concepts like liberalism, rule of law and associated concepts seemed to gain popularity until, well, now.

Most religions got it right initially, all they had to do for assimilation is, say "I believe what your teaching.", even today it has value, with the right intentions; you don't even have to believe in ghost's or special rock's...

19 hours ago, CharonY said:

I think the proper pronunciation is "tool". With an extra "absolute".

Wouldn't it be wonderful if everyone this side of the pond could understand your American dialect.

Now that we know that God's not real, we need an ubermenche to explain why it doen't need to be real or relevant.

Edited September 1Sep 1 by dimreepr

4 hours ago, dimreepr said:

Wouldn't it be wonderful if everyone this side of the pond could understand your American dialect.

I can pull out my German dialect, which is more to the point and probably not suitable for a public forum.

On 8/9/2026 at 1:01 AM, studiot said:

You posted a whole load of links to unreliable sources without saying why,

As far as I understand, you can deny any fact (declare it fake) simply because it does not fit into your worldview and make you feel cognitive dissonance?

7 hours ago, Linkey said:

As far as I understand, you can deny any fact (declare it fake) simply because it does not fit into your worldview and make you feel cognitive dissonance?

How about you address questions asked of you before starting anew tangent or asking ones of your own?

The underlying point is that you need to establish something is a fact; saying a source is unreliable calls into question whether something is indeed a fact. Until you verify the alleged fact, one need not assume it’s true.

19 hours ago, CharonY said:

I can pull out my German dialect, which is more to the point and probably not suitable for a public forum.

Keep it down mate, are you trying to evoke Godwin's law???

23 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Keep it down mate, are you trying to evoke Godwin's law???

Reductio Hitlerum ?!?!

Would Linkey feel 'at home' in 1940 Germany ?
( and, would quite a few Republicans ? )

Edited September 2Sep 2 by MigL

Was watching Dan Snow's account of the establishment of Christianity in Ireland and onwards to Iona and Northumberland (Lindisfarne) in the 7th(?) century.

Astonished at the detail of intrigue and politicking that has been documented in these isles over this long period.

I know all countries have their own history but I wonder whether the British Isles have a more complete documented history than other political and geographic regions or have I just got tinted glasses?

They say that the Victors make history.Will it all turn to dust when Britain returns to a backwater (or subservient) status as the wheel spins around inexorably?

4 hours ago, geordief said:

I know all countries have their own history but I wonder whether the British Isles have a more complete documented history than other political and geographic regions or have I just got tinted glasses?

My guess would be on tinted glasses. There is a lot of local history in many places to astonishing detail. However, the vast majority doesn't make it into interesting books. But you could go and find local historians (quite a few of them are e.g. school teachers, and pastors perhaps unsurprisingly) and talk to them. Quite a few of them do publish articles or monographs, but they are often mostly hosted by local academic institutions and/or have a very limited print. They tend to be on the dry side and rarely make a broader circulation. But there is a ton of such documented knowledge out there.

5 hours ago, geordief said:

I know all countries have their own history but I wonder whether the British Isles have a more complete documented history than other political and geographic regions or have I just got tinted glasses?

An early, and very accurate, account of landed property, and resources in labor force and livestock ( a kind of 'dry' historical survey ), was the Domesday Book of 1086, completed by request of William the Conqueror.

Record keeping in the British Isles goes back a long way.

I think some of earliest legal and continuous records in Germany were done in Schreinsbuecher starting around the 12th century. Individual land charter documents predate those by at least a few hundred years, but they tend to be spread out between different churches and monastries.

There is the Codex Laureshamensis (now kept in Wuerzburg), a 12th century book that documents transcripts from many such localities dating back to the 7th-8th century. So even documentation of history has a history of documentation.

That being said, if we consider things like administrative records, there are very old archives that have survived. The Royal Archives of Ebla are probably one of the most famous https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebla_tablets

The Ebla tablets are a collection of as many as 1,800 complete clay tablets, 4,700 fragments, and many thousands of minor chips found in the palace archives^[1] of the ancient city of Ebla, Syria. The tablets were discovered by Italian archaeologist Paolo Matthiae and his team in 1974–75^[2] during their excavations at the ancient city at Tell Mardikh.^[3] The tablets, which were found in situ on collapsed shelves, retained many of their contemporary clay tags to help reference them. They all date to the period between c. 2500 BC and the destruction of the city c. 2250 BC.^[4] Today, the tablets are held in museums in the Syrian cities of Aleppo, Damascus, and Idlib.

There are many papers on this archive.

A bit more distributed but perhaps a credit to Chines bureaucracy are gazeteers (difangzhi) originating from early version in the 1st century CE and have evolved to become a highly systematic system of record keeping (though the bulk of surviving records are 13th-14th century onward).

On 8/10/2026 at 12:15 PM, sethoflagos said:

Now compare that with the experiences of my wife (a naturalised British citizen) living in London where she is about to be awarded an upper-class 2nd honours degree in Mental Health Nursing from Kingston University to sit alongside her other upper-class 2nd honours degree in Public Administration from the University of Lagos.

Small correction:

Apparently I underestimated Mrs Seth here (not for the first time). Just received notification today that she's been awarded First Class Honours. Still just a village girl, one of eight children raised by a woman widiwed while still in her thirties who can't speak a word of English. Another small blow to fallacious statistics.

Congratulations to your wife.