#liz and phil

[royalpain16]

Prince Philip gives Princess Elizabeth (Queen Elizabeth II) a hand in Gozo in 1951

[thelassoway]

2012 Leap Day Episodes: Modern Family || 3.17 Leap Day Parks and Recreation || 4.16 Sweet Sixteen 30 Rock || 6.09 Leap Day

[wad-polaroids]

From liz 하늘 @higaytus on Twitter

[aimeedaisies]

Princess Elizabeth, The Duchess of Edinburgh, Prince Philip The Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Charles, The Duke of Cornwall and Princess Anne of Edinburgh pictured for ‘Everybody’s’ magazine published 25th August 1951

[sclangelcs]

i need everybody to know my little brother is obsessed with dan and phil dragon city gameplay. so at least they have one fan

[clankryze511]

“So let me get this straight… just so we got this whole thing clear and laid out you’re not an EVO that might’ve been transferred to some dimension or one we missed after me and my friends cured the entire world… but you’re a man… well you’re probably 3 years older than me who was bitten by a radioactive spider and your some sort of Cross-Species Human mutate and you call yourself… The Human Spider?”

“Well that was one of the names I had working on but Spider-Man sounded right.”

“This is New York but not my New York”

“Everything’s different.”

“Midtown High, ESU, and Queens and Forest Hills are all there but not everything else that I know. Nobody i knew who is gonna be able to help me and a few of my craziest and worst enemies get back home.”

“Come on. How many are we talking here?”

“Possibly six.”

“HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!”

“Better make that 13.”

“So what do say?”

“Hello wackos. Now thrill us!”

THE BIGGEST CROSSOVER YOU ALL NEVER THOUGHT POSSIBLE IS COMING!

GENERATOR REX | SPIDER-MAN: The Ultimate Spin

[danandfuckingjonlmao]

dan’s stupid hyena cackle my fucking beloved ❤️

(no transcript bc it’s just dan cackling over and over while phil talks)

[grandmaster-anne]

17th June 1984 Prince Philip and Queen Elizabeth II arriving at Smith's Lawn at the Guard's Polo Club with their grandchildren Zara and Peter Phillips (you can see Peter's arm behind them) for a Polo Match in Windsor, England.

[comicwaren]

From Red Goblin #008

Art by Chris Campana, Roberto Poggi and David Curiel

Written by Alex Paknadel

[camyfilms]

THE ARISTOCATS 1970

Ladies don't start fights, but they can finish them!

[pictureamoebae]

Hope you don't mind a non sims question, but I'd be interested in your take on what is up with the Tories?

hoo boy

Difficult to know where to start with this one. I'm answering this about 15 minutes after Truss resigned, making her the shortest ever serving Prime Minister.

The first thing I'll say is that lots of people are saying "surely there has to be a General Election now" without really understanding how everything works.

Only the PM can call a GE (unless Parliament is dissolved by the King, which is extremely unlikely to ever happen). All the petitions and calls in the world for a GE from Labour won't make any difference. The priority of the Tory Party is the continued existence of the Tory Party and the cementing of their power. The priority of individual Tory MPs is the continued existence of their seats.

idk if you follow me on my regular twitter (not my Sims twitter), but I've been trying to explain for weeks that it's extremely unlikely (as close to impossible as you can get) there's going to be a GE while the Tories are polling so dreadfully. They currently enjoy an 80 seat majority. That means, regardless of public support or opposition from Labour and others, they can get through pretty much any piece of legislation they want, as was seen with the Fracking Bill last night. Why would they throw that away when they're polling so atrociously?

I argued that Truss' first move would be to sack Kwarteng and blame him for the chaos of the mini budget, and that's what she did. And I argued that the Tories would move heaven and earth to get Truss to stand down, and that's what they've done. They'll be hoping that someone more palatable to both organised capital and the media class is put in her place, and that it'll lead to a bump in the polls.

It's unlikely that they're going to wipe out all of Labour's lead now though, so I think a Labour victory in 2024 is likely (but never say never -- if they manage to somehow engineer a return for Johnson the polls may tighten enough that it's a hung Parliament, but I think at this stage even that's unlikely).

As for why the Tories are in such a mess, that's a complex subject and it's one you can find the answer to here. Short answer is it's a long time coming, with many of the seeds of their downfall being sown during Thatcher's time. The Tories built themselves very successfully on shaping a particular fraction of society to be forever-Tory voters by affording them the security of property ownership (among other things). That fraction is becoming ever smaller as the neoliberal project has destabilised the economy and made home ownership a pipe dream for most people under the age of 40. A Tory Party trading off the desire to maintain the security of home ownership is in a perilous position when there is no more security of home ownership. It's a slightly more nuanced argument to the refrain that Tory voters are dying off.

Most people say that you become more conservative as you age, but that doesn't understand why that has been the case over the past few decades: it's been because as you age you generally gain that security of home ownership and you become sensitive to those security issues. If that's taken out of the equation, what will be the mechanism that makes people become more conservative? If middle age is all about precarity and struggle people will be looking for something to solve that. The right isn't entirely stupid, they understand this, and it's why we've seen such an enormous swing towards culture war issues over the past decade. Doubling down on the idea that the cause of your precarity is trans people and immigrants and the wokerati is intended to hold on to the last dwindling remnants of their support, and to develop new seams of support outside of the traditional property owning classes. We can expect harsher and more vicious attacks on minorities to continue as the power of the right recedes.

The book I linked to above is likely to get a second edition next year covering everything that's happened since Johnson exited. It's really a great place to start to give a proper run-down of what the Tory Party is, how it's shaped itself and British politics over the decades, and why it's the architect of its own downfall. He blogs here, if you want shorter, more easily digestible pieces.

As for what happens next, there's going to be a membership vote for the election of the next leader. The membership are more right wing and batshit than even the MPs themselves. The nominees aren't confirmed yet (Truss only just resigned after all), but early suggestions are that it may be Sunak and Braverman, and possibly Badenoch . If that's the case, Braverman or Badenoch are likely the favourites to win among the membership, which will spell even more chaos. Great for the accelerationists out there, because it will hasten the Tory demise. Not so great for everyone else if they manage to stay in the position for any amount of time because they’re both basically fash. That's not me saying I support Sunak. I don't support any Tory. They're all dangerous ghouls. If Johnson returns, well, everything’s up in the air.

There's so much bad blood in the Tory Party now that it's hard to see which candidate (even beyond Sunak and Braverman) could unite them. Sections of the party viscerally hate each other. A 'moderate with a nice haircut and a shiny suit' would placate the press and organised capital, but the civil war within the party would rage on, and it's probably too late now for it to be fixed up by anything other than the flimsiest of sticking plasters that falls off with the slightest nudge. Even with a bump in the polls from a more acceptable leader, the long term Tory decline is set to continue.

[tweetingukpolitics]

[celeste-fitzgerald]

Sweet quotes about Kelly Groucutt from his friends

(most of these are from after his death so they're quite bittersweet, but still very sweet <3 )

Bev Bevan:

"He was such a bundle of energy, totally irrepressible. Kelly was the life and soul of the party, the practical joker in the band. He was the type of character who was always joking around and could light up a room whenever he arrived... "I remember being on the road with Kelly back in the 70s. It was a great time to be out there and he kept us entertained. He used to have an endless supply of bad jokes. He was always on the go, couldn’t sit still, and even when he did he would be playing with a Rubik’s cube or something like that. Kelly was a real gentle soul as well – he wouldn’t harm a fly."

Louis Clark:

"I have so many memories, like closing many bars with him in hotels all over the world having solved the world's problems, his silly jokes, which I found funny for their sheer silliness, sitting next to him on planes in the early 80's with the constant clicking of his Rubik's cube. "I'll always remember around the same time period while in L.A. recording Kelly's first solo album, him climbing from room to room over our balconies at least 20 stories up. "I also remember more recently when my watch strap broke and the local repair shop said it would have to be sent to the manufacturer. I gave it to Kelly and he fixed it in three minutes. He was "Mr. Fix It" and the "Gadget Man". "Kelly always made time for everyone, us the band, anyone in trouble and his fans who he genuinely loved talking with."

Mik Kaminski:

"We were like brothers. We would call each other anytime we needed to. He was always there for me. Even though he’s gone, I keep expecting him to phone me up at any minute...Kelly had loads of birds. Whenever I rang him up it was like calling Regent’s Park Zoo!"

Mik Kaminski again, in interview with Martin Kinch:

Martin: "Are there any certain songs that you perform when you, uh, think about him more than others?" Mik: "Um...well, all of them, really, because Kelly had his [unintelligible] little piece he'd do in the middle of a song, he'd...he'd walk over and...you know, he had quite a [laughs] comical edge about him when he was performing and you can always see him coming over and doing his bits even though he's not there, so...they're all pretty much...you know, there's a bit of Kelly in all of them."

Melvyn Gale, in an interview:

KJS: Finally ... what is your #1 favourite ELO song and why? Mel: Got to be Midnight Blue, because it reminds me of Kelly.

Parthenon Huxley, of ELO Part II and The Orchestra:

"In late 1998 I walked into a large, well worn rehearsal room in Birmingham, England for my audition with ELO Part II. I wasn't sure who everyone was, but immediately Kelly Groucutt positioned himself directly in front of me, tilted his head upwards and said, 'You're TOO TALL!' We laughed. Leave it to Kelly to be the icebreaker... "Fans of ELO Part II and now The Orchestra will attest that Kelly was always available after a gig for an autograph, a photo, a cigarette, a drink, whatever was happening at the moment. Hours after a performance the last thing fans heard in the parking lot was usually a tour manager shouting, 'Kelly! The bus is leaving!' He gave the fans every spare minute he had... "Kelly was a tinkerer, a gadgets freak, a student of puns, an expert Country & Western singer, a walking encyclopedia of music history (song title, artist, year released), a loving Dad, a smoker, a drinker, a traveller (China, Cuba, Chile...hmmm...never noticed how much he liked "C" countries), a joke teller, a tireless chatterbug, a generous friend, a lyrics freak, a willing accomplice."

Phil Bates, from ELO Part II and The Orchestra:

"On tour, he was my greatest friend. When I was having health problems, and waking up in the middle of the night, in some far-flung place 5,000 miles from home with some extremely worrying things happening to me, Kelly told me to call him, whatever time of the night, and he would come and help me through my difficulties. That was the kind of friend he was, and the hole he will leave will be impossible to fill."

[born-to-lose]

Let me be annoying about Devil's Bells and ask me about them

[coolscreenshotsbro]