gdp's Comments

The Toast : Movie Yelling With Nicole and Mallory: Crimson Peak

Thu, 22 Oct 2015 17:21:51 +0000

I dunno about kilt boy - he could've been Scottish and I didn't notice though I feel like I would've. I will return when we have watched it again and report on that! But everyone else was definitely Northern English, like, had proper Northern English accents, definitely not Scottish ones, was what I meant. I know 'cause after misreading Cumbernauld I was all ready to be offended at them treating part of Scotland like England (and also calling it England!) so I was listening out during the post depot scene and there wasn't a single Scottish accent among 'em! :-)

The Toast : Movie Yelling With Nicole and Mallory: Crimson Peak

Thu, 22 Oct 2015 15:15:54 +0000

I loved this movie. And this recap. But those weren't Scottish accents, they were Northern English. Though I did initially read 'Cumberland' as 'Cumbernauld' in the on-screen text, which IS in Scotland and had me going WHAT WHY DO THEY KEEP SAYING ENGLAND. But later they said Cumberland pretty consistently and I realised I must've misread. ~mo

The Toast : The Ghosts of Anne Lister

Mon, 3 Nov 2014 16:49:16 +0000

Just gorgeous.

The Toast : Ghost Tours I Have Known: A Ranking

Sat, 25 Oct 2014 00:15:50 +0000

They're vaults, technically, rather than catacombs, as they were never for storing dead bodies. Fun fact: no one ever baked to death in that vault. The fire did spread down the mile that far, but not into those vaults. Nevertheless I had fellow guides when I worked those tours who swear up and down that they had stones thrown at them from the empty vault behind the one where they end the tour. Most of the guides though were much more scared of the 'old coven' - the one with the stone circle in it and the damp down one wall. Those who claimed to be 'sensitive' said that room was much worse than 'the Haunted Vault' where we lied about the fire.

The Toast : Ghost Tours I Have Known: A Ranking

Sat, 25 Oct 2014 00:11:54 +0000

Haha, they might tout themselves as all drama students, but having worked for them I can confirm they definitely aren't (I'm not, for a start, and nor were a good half dozen other current/former CotD guides with them I can think of). What they do have though is practice a pretty good line in psychological torture - scaring tourists for fun and profit - oh, the lies I told! The big secret: that 'most haunted tomb' at the end? We used a different tomb depending how big the tour group was.

The Toast : Link Roundup!

Thu, 18 Sep 2014 17:51:16 +0000

This essay by a friend of mine, an ex-pat Scot in Montreal, might interest you - as might his next entry on the same topic. http://sasoriuk.blogspot.ca/2014/09/scottish-refe...

The Toast : Link Roundup!

Thu, 18 Sep 2014 15:05:00 +0000

Not enough people have liked this joke. I think it is because they do not know who Ruth Davidson is. Everybody: go and read about Ruth Davidson. Then come back and upvote this comment for its SHEER GENIUS. (EDIT: To clarify: I am not a Tory (like obvs) but I actually quite like Ruth Davidson. All teasing meant fondly and in the spirit of sisterhood.)

The Toast : Your New Hero: Mongolia's 13-Year-Old "Eagle Huntress"

Wed, 16 Apr 2014 18:42:20 +0000

I don't mince with words but didn't feel I said anything unfair. However, I'm sorry to have caused offence. x

The Toast : Your New Hero: Mongolia's 13-Year-Old "Eagle Huntress"

Wed, 16 Apr 2014 08:22:06 +0000

Okay, so I feel like it's probably not very productive to discuss this, but I too was a little disappointed by Mallory's 'tude in this article so I'm gonna. I think it's patently clear that those things are being compared unfavourably due to their context, and to claim otherwise seems to me to be deeply disingenuous, particularly when the author herself describes herself as 'sneering' above and clearly 100% accepts erindubitably's premise that her characterisation was meant to be negative. So I have to wonder why you would want to push this point. Are you just trying to start a derailing semantic argument 'cause you're bored in school? 'Cause I mean, I can do those, but it's not really something I expect on the Toast comment threads; I kinda thought they were better than that.

The Toast : Your New Hero: Mongolia's 13-Year-Old "Eagle Huntress"

Tue, 15 Apr 2014 21:57:28 +0000

Pretty sure the premise of the above comment is that those AREN'T necessarily bad, and shouldn't be castigated or compared unfavourably with eagle-hunting. Crossed wires, perhaps?

The Toast : A Linguist Explains What Old-School British Accents Sounded Like

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 22:00:19 +0000

Rhoticity died out in Lancashire later than elsewhere in England (West Country aside) but it's still pretty solidly non-rhotic at this point - interesting article here: http://swphonetics.com/2013/09/21/rhoticity-in-la... Merry and Sam were both doing West Country in LotR - Pippin didn't have to as he just kept his charming Scottish accent. What interested me about LotR was the way that even the RP speakers like Elrond and Gandalf would pronounce some words - notably the word 'Mordor' - rhotically. This will not have been accidental given Tolkein's linguistic prowess, I'm interested by the fact they chose to do that. Another observation along similar lines: the AMERICAN announcer for the Narnia trailers pronounced 'Narnia' NON-rhotically - Nanny-ah. That amused me greatly.

The Toast : Men Apologizing To Me

Wed, 9 Oct 2013 17:10:14 +0000

Oh, me me! <img src="http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ly0kwg5PhS1qim0two2_500.gif">

The Toast : A Scotswoman And Her Girlfriend Explain Scottish Politics

Tue, 8 Oct 2013 07:26:11 +0000

There's also, of course, the big furore over tuition fees, where a whole shit-ton of Lib Dems pledged to support the thoroughly progressive and lefty idea of a graduate tax rather than tuition fees, and then right after they got into power next to the Conservatives helped vote through a truly massive hike in fees. The resulting scheme, of course, actually _does_ amount to a tax... so why not call it one and work it that way? Oh yeah, because we don't like tax; we like oppressing young poor people. That's what we do now. ~Morag

The Toast : A Scotswoman And Her Girlfriend Explain Scottish Politics

Mon, 7 Oct 2013 23:02:03 +0000

Oh, actually there's another note on this. Unless I'm misremembering, if you remove London from the equation basically everyone else in the UK is doing about the same as Scotland - and NI and Wales are doing worse. Sparser population = higher cost of living - lower class sizes, more teachers, more doctors, smaller more scattered hospitals, MPs with smaller constituencies... it all adds up.

The Toast : A Scotswoman And Her Girlfriend Explain Scottish Politics

Mon, 7 Oct 2013 22:59:31 +0000

Thank you! Alas, I did not pick it myself.

The Toast : A Scotswoman And Her Girlfriend Explain Scottish Politics

Mon, 7 Oct 2013 22:07:59 +0000

You are correct, it's 1998 - my bad. Absolutely, the Democrats are right of Labour, and the Republicans are right of even the wingnut Tory backbenches, but I wasn't so much trying to map UK politics exactly to the USA's as give people a quick reference guide (I was already over wordcount!). And in terms of the two-party system (so far as it still exists in the UK, which 'eh') Democrats are on the left of the Republicans. ~Morag

The Toast : A Scotswoman And Her Girlfriend Explain Scottish Politics

Mon, 7 Oct 2013 22:01:50 +0000

The Lib Dems are principally centrist, but they're definitely not Libertarian. Or... didn't used to be. They might be this week. ~Morag

The Toast : A Scotswoman And Her Girlfriend Explain Scottish Politics

Mon, 7 Oct 2013 22:00:27 +0000

Hm. This is a pretty complicated question. In the long term, none of us can afford to keep going on the way we do due to a combination of our ageing population and an inability to actually give a duck about the young un(der)employed (beyond an apparently fervent desire to punish and persecute and demonise them, presently). We've been balancing a (perfectly reasonable) budget of our own for some time now - we don't pay for prescriptions or tuition fees because our government saw the will of the people and chose to protect those things, and made savings elsewhere. If we became independent we'd struggle a while (a bridging currency union with Sterling to build up an independent credit rating would help with this). Oil revenue is absolutely a factor but to be honest I don't like to take it into account too loudly because should we really be pinning our future on encouraging the destruction of the planet with fossil fuels? The solution is the Scandinavian model, of course - higher, more progressive taxation and a welfare state that gives back to all, supporting and subsidising private enterprise as well as those less fortunate and creating a socialist utopia (*stops to salute the red flag*). There are a couple of issues with the idea of going forward with this. Firstly, Scandinavians are happy with their system because they have had it long enough that everyone, rich and poor, is reaping the benefits of their system. It'll take some convincing to get rich Scots to believe that they will see a real-terms benefit from their hard-won money. Secondly, most land in that part of the world is state-owned, whereas Scotland has a _massive_ amount of privately owned property (a long-lived legacy from feudalism, thanks David I) which limits the state's ability to benefit from it somewhat. The key would be pouring heavy subsidy into private enterprise, so that start-up companies see strong state support to shore them up so they can become wealthy and starting paying back said subsidy in lovely lovely taxes. Anyway, the truth is, we can't support our ageing population anyway - anywhere; nor can we boost employment without changing the basis on which we run our economy - and honestly if you want to become more agile and more flexible, there's an argument that smaller is better. At the end of the day, hard financial times are ahead regardless, and while I try to avoid the financial arguments (for reasons described in my article), if I WAS going to take them into account I'd say that on balance I'd rather be a wee scrapper than a hulking big tank hurtling toward yet more disgusting levels of social inequality driven by a combination of punitive austerity measures and a wool-over-the-eyes 'growth' agenda. The other option: 18-25 year olds burned for heat. Thoughts?