Rob @robhale1.bsky.social · 29/09/2026When I was at school, the O-level history syllabus stopped about 60 years previously so we missed out almost the whole of the 20th century. History has evidently got younger. 110
Rob @robhale1.bsky.social · 27/09/2026Oh FFS if he was upset about policies in the Greater London area, he only had to move to somewhere like Epsom or Epping to avoid them, not f*** off abroad. Something in this reporting smells of bullshit. 000
Rob @robhale1.bsky.social · 24/08/2026I've been an adult for around 50 years and have always heard and used 'the UK'. What is this other-worldly halfwittery that claims this usage is new or in some way affected? Ps. suspect most of the people saying this know it's bollocks, but that's how the online right rolls. 171
Rob @robhale1.bsky.social · 13/08/2026There's at least one European country where that's not the case, and that's the one being talked about here (+ someone has mentioned Ireland too). 000
Rob @robhale1.bsky.social · 10/08/2026Not so sure due to the cult of personality aspect, and the way that the whole GOP has so publicly and aggressively debased itself to identify with his charlatanry. Plus the people around Project 2025 will still be there and powerful once the figurehead is gone. Far harder to shrug off than Nixon. 110
Rob @robhale1.bsky.social · 07/08/2026I now know some Latin and have reference books on it, and am interested as I am in all languages, but would have regarded 4 years of valuable school time spent on it as too great an opportunity cost compared to other subjects. 000
Rob @robhale1.bsky.social · 07/08/2026We had to choose between Latin and German at age 12, and as a bright student I was terrified I'd be pushed towards the former, where I saw no prospect of going on Latin exchanges, or using the language in travel in later life. Happily my school respected my wishes. 1/ 100
Rob @robhale1.bsky.social · 07/08/2026There's a type of cycling event called an audax. Only here in Cambridge have I heard the first syllable pronounced to rhyme with proud. 000
Rob @robhale1.bsky.social · 07/08/2026As is ancient Greek if you're talking about scientific and academic vocabulary. However, these roots can be learnt as vocabulary exercises in your own language without spending 5 years of valuable school time on the grammar and literature. 100
Rob @robhale1.bsky.social · 07/08/2026Alternative scenario: Estonia invokes art 5, MAGA govt in USA ignores it, as do PM Farage and President Le Pen. Bloody conflict spreads in east, drawing in Poland and Romania with 'accidental' incursions in the Nordics. Germany with big AfD influence sits on fence. NATO dead, EU in chaos. 111
Rob @robhale1.bsky.social · 30/07/2026Endlessly regurgitating the Daily Mail's greatest hits of the 1980s. 000
Rob @robhale1.bsky.social · 24/07/2026The point about her inability to invest and create jobs is a straw man, as the state could invest and create jobs with the same money, and with greater societal benefit. 020
Rob @robhale1.bsky.social · 14/07/2026My questions about the VIP lane. Was it conceived for corruption, or was it naive but in good faith? If the latter, then how, and how quickly, did it become corrupted, and with what encouragement/instigation by whom? 011
Rob @robhale1.bsky.social · 14/07/2026My thoughts on learning of the VIP lane : a mass transfer of state funds to a shady patronage network of private actors aligned to the Conservatives, to buy future favours or reward past ones, all under a semi-legal cover. Very like post-Soviet Russia - where despotism-fan Cummings spent the 90s. 131
Rob @robhale1.bsky.social · 11/07/2026Starting to sound like quantum Brexit. While you are campaigning there are endless Brexit possibilities, but the moment you try to implement it they all collapse into one, and it's shit. 040
Rob @robhale1.bsky.social · 10/07/2026It's as if they believe that all the hysterical "culture wars" guff spewing from the MAGA world is real, and not a cynical ploy to rile up the gullible. 000
Rob @robhale1.bsky.social · 06/07/2026In a just world, none of those fools and lackeys grinning and nodding along behind the human cesspit would ever hold a job or any position of power again. 040
Rob @robhale1.bsky.social · 27/06/2026Dunno, I reckon everyone should be made to water tomatoes by sucking cold bathwater through a hosepipe. Happy memories for me, and surely would appeal to Reform voters eager for the simpler old times? In fact, I'm surprised McSweeney never thought of this one. 1151
Rob @robhale1.bsky.social · 26/06/2026Not weird at all, and common in many languages, not just English, for both historical and phonological reasons. Anyway, it's no business of the Turkish government, or Chinese government (Beijing Vs Peking) what other people do in their own languages. 010
Rob @robhale1.bsky.social · 02/06/2026Inversely proportional to their knowledge of the real world. 110
Rob @robhale1.bsky.social · 02/06/2026One of my first French restaurant meals in the early 80s was Vietnamese, which was unheard of in the UK at that time. Not to mention the many subsequent couscous. 1150
Rob @robhale1.bsky.social · 02/06/2026Interesting timeline there. Four months later and it would just have been Germany. 100
Rob @robhale1.bsky.social · 12/05/2026Would this be like Czechoslovakia was asking the USSR for help in 1968, or Afghanistan in 1978? 030
Rob @robhale1.bsky.social · 04/05/2026Never understood though why the alternative (or 'accurate' if you like) spelling Haisboro doesn't finish with '-borough' or even '-burgh' like every single other UK place name with this ending. But yeah, the silent pp is batty Victorian craziness. 110
Rob @robhale1.bsky.social · 02/05/2026The Daily Mail and its ilk were screeching exactly the same BS in 1999, and then - nothing. No-one in the country ever missed them, and will be the same now. 040
Rob @robhale1.bsky.social · 15/04/2026Gove is a slimy, malevolent and two-faced tosser but he's right on this one point. Funny how he waited until the Tories were in opposition before making it though. 150
Rob @robhale1.bsky.social · 13/04/2026Ah yes, that will be the anti-globalist part of Fidesz Hungarian ethno-nationalism then. No contradictions there. 0100
Rob @robhale1.bsky.social · 13/04/2026Short o ('orange') is the best approximation in British English 010
Rob @robhale1.bsky.social · 12/04/2026Maybe the killer was when he said 'my friends'. No-one likes JD. 160
Rob @robhale1.bsky.social · 05/04/2026I was born in 1962 and as a fairly aware teen in the 70s I knew of the Empire but it was firmly in the past and not part of the world I lived in. UK involvement in the dissolution of Rhodesia in 1980 came as an anachronistic shock. 130
Rob @robhale1.bsky.social · 04/04/2026The White House will need a thorough fumigation if not exorcism when the orange degenerate and his filth are finally expelled. 000
Rob @robhale1.bsky.social · 04/04/2026Matches my experience. Worked in French company for many years and don't think I ever heard the t-less variant except from us non-natives. 010
Rob @robhale1.bsky.social · 04/04/2026I worked with French teams for about 20 years and don't remember ever hearing the t-less pronunciation of août. Paris region but with people from all over. 010
Rob @robhale1.bsky.social · 04/04/2026Août is pronounced with a final t. Another weird exception to learn. Anyone mentioned plus ('plu') and plus ('pluS') yet? 100
Rob @robhale1.bsky.social · 29/03/2026As a student in the 1980s I used to ponder 1930s Germany and wonder how the mood in universities turned away from intellectual curiosity and respect towards blinkered, thuggish supremacism. I have no complete answer, but I see it happening in real time here (though thankfully still only a minority) 020
Rob @robhale1.bsky.social · 22/03/2026You forgot the random "quotation marks" and so-called CAPITAL LETTERS but the rest of it looks scarily plausible. 120
Rob @robhale1.bsky.social · 13/03/2026This unhinged aggression is surely a MAGA house style that they cultivate. Does low-education MAGA base see this ranting fury as a sign of authenticity? 000
Rob @robhale1.bsky.social · 12/03/2026I spent much of my lunchtimes from the ages of 12 to 18 in our wonderful central library and devoured all the books in the languages section. As well as individual langs I learnt of language families, and through that language change, and knew that linguistics was a thing I wanted more of. 020
Rob @robhale1.bsky.social · 11/03/2026Collapse of a once great party and their obsession with on-line trivia "deeply depressing" say much of the thinking part of the UK electorate. 030
Rob @robhale1.bsky.social · 01/03/2026If they are tax dodgers and have actively sought to harm their own country then laughter seems the least they deserve. 060
