One other thing which was better in the Middle Ages: the overlords did have an enforced code - enforced by the Church - of 'noblesse oblige', of having to care for their serfs and underlings. That was done away by the welfare state where all of us tax payers are obliged to pay for what in the Middle ages would be termed 'ne'er-do-wells' and worse. They did make a distinction between 'deserving' and 'undeserving' poor - the horror!
Nowadays everybody is 'deserving', provided they have a good victim card allowing them to 'receive' without even a hint of a demand of ';contribute'.
Btw - don't diss stinging nettle tincture: it's better at curing bronchitis than anything the doctor prescribes or the pharmacist sells OTC. Only aspirin works better than willowbank tincture ...
Very true! I had mentioned noblesse oblige but took out when editing and somehow forgot to put it back in... have to have a word with my editor again.
But still, it's true. That notion survived a long time - think of the towns built by enlightened Victorian industrialists. Today such an idea seems entirely alien; much easier to import workers from Krakow or Dhaka than train up people already here.
Apologies for knocking the nettles. Maybe it was the ground-up spiders that weren't so efficacious.
Yes, this notion survived a long time, and it wasn't only the aristocracy or big businessmen who followed that code. Middle-class - bourgeois! Dreadful! - people in towns and cities did this all well, e.g. setting up fund s and then building a general hospital.
It must've been those ground-up spiders which weren't effective. Still, medieval housewives might have thought these spiders had to be useful for something, having to remove them and the evidence of them from homes, stables, barns ... After all, 'let nothing go to waste' was their motto for survival - something we also might revisit nowadays.
I'm in Kent so I'll keep an eye out for the new Wat - probably going to be a well-pissed off white van man from Canterbury sick at the idea of being fined for driving to work/being a man/having a van/losing all his middle-class customers who can no longer afford new kitchens/etc
As for what's happening north o' the border - sheer madness. Still, I look forward to using gender arbitrage whenever I go up there, suddenly identifying as Frederica.
I'm yet to have an example of the allegedly heinous comments made by Rowling. Instead of Wat Tayler she seems to have taken on the totemic status of Great Satan. More power to her.
One other thing which was better in the Middle Ages: the overlords did have an enforced code - enforced by the Church - of 'noblesse oblige', of having to care for their serfs and underlings. That was done away by the welfare state where all of us tax payers are obliged to pay for what in the Middle ages would be termed 'ne'er-do-wells' and worse. They did make a distinction between 'deserving' and 'undeserving' poor - the horror!
Nowadays everybody is 'deserving', provided they have a good victim card allowing them to 'receive' without even a hint of a demand of ';contribute'.
Btw - don't diss stinging nettle tincture: it's better at curing bronchitis than anything the doctor prescribes or the pharmacist sells OTC. Only aspirin works better than willowbank tincture ...
Very true! I had mentioned noblesse oblige but took out when editing and somehow forgot to put it back in... have to have a word with my editor again.
But still, it's true. That notion survived a long time - think of the towns built by enlightened Victorian industrialists. Today such an idea seems entirely alien; much easier to import workers from Krakow or Dhaka than train up people already here.
Apologies for knocking the nettles. Maybe it was the ground-up spiders that weren't so efficacious.
Yes, this notion survived a long time, and it wasn't only the aristocracy or big businessmen who followed that code. Middle-class - bourgeois! Dreadful! - people in towns and cities did this all well, e.g. setting up fund s and then building a general hospital.
It must've been those ground-up spiders which weren't effective. Still, medieval housewives might have thought these spiders had to be useful for something, having to remove them and the evidence of them from homes, stables, barns ... After all, 'let nothing go to waste' was their motto for survival - something we also might revisit nowadays.
I'm in Kent so I'll keep an eye out for the new Wat - probably going to be a well-pissed off white van man from Canterbury sick at the idea of being fined for driving to work/being a man/having a van/losing all his middle-class customers who can no longer afford new kitchens/etc
Let's hope he keeps his head.
As for what's happening north o' the border - sheer madness. Still, I look forward to using gender arbitrage whenever I go up there, suddenly identifying as Frederica.
I'm yet to have an example of the allegedly heinous comments made by Rowling. Instead of Wat Tayler she seems to have taken on the totemic status of Great Satan. More power to her.