Latest news with #AnthonyTrollope
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump to Washington: Drop dead
Disdain for Washington is the birthright of every American, indeed the entire English-speaking world. In his two-volume travelogue, 'North America,' English novelist Anthony Trollope described the still-incomplete city he found in 1861 'as melancholy and miserable a town as the mind of man can conceive.' He paints a picture of a transient, small city with neither robust commerce nor gracious society, and it didn't get any better from there. 'So men ate, and drank, and laughed, waiting till chaos should come,' he wrote. 'Secure in the belief that the atoms into which their world would resolve itself would connect themselves again in some other form without trouble on their part.' Mark Leibovich could lift that whole and use it in his next book. Which all makes sense, because no city of any significant size would have ever sprung up on the marshy banks of the Potomac and Anacostia rivers. Denied a great harbor, like nearby Baltimore, in order to be built inland and sheltered from invasion — which didn't even work — neither was Washington afforded a pleasant climate like the nearby foothills of the Blue Ridge. But Washington, born of a compromise between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, wasn't supposed to be a marvelous place to live and work. It was supposed to belong to no other region, a geographic leftover to which the unlovely work of government could be relegated. Like putting a power plant downriver from a city, Washington was supposed to do important, dirty work, not be beloved. Add in the very American tendency to resent those with pretenses to authority, especially when they use that authority to take people's money to spend poorly and devise rules that they do not follow themselves, and Washington was born to be disdained. But there is no class of people in the world with a more robust contempt for Washington than New Yorkers, the city that had the capital when it was traded away in 1790. It is congenital for them. Archetypal New Yorker Nora Ephron, who lived in Washington during her brief marriage to celebrity journalist Carl Bernstein, called it a city 'where ideas went to die.' Indeed, there is a whole journalistic subgenre of New Yorkers dumping on Washington. Once, in a pool report about then-President-elect Barack Obama visiting The Washington Post in 2009, a New York Times reporter even got in a jab at 'the nondescript soviet-style building at 15th and L.' A fair swipe at a city the architecture of which juxtaposes neoclassical grandeur with what appears to be a collection of Hampton Inns with metal detectors. New Yorkers particularly resent Washington's pretensions. A twelfth the size of the Big Apple — smaller than flyover places like Oklahoma City and Indianapolis that would never dare to rival New York — where does Washington, some middling city full of bureaucrats, hack pols, nerds and sticky-faced middle schoolers gawking at lunar capsules, get off? So, Donald Trump, a person who could have been produced by no city other than New York, is being very true to his roots as he declares a kind of summer-weight martial law for Washington. Citing a statute that allows the president to nationalize the city's police when 'special conditions of an emergency nature exist,' Trump has taken command of the cops and called out the National Guard. The emergency, Trump says with a New Yorker's gift for restraint, is 'crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse.' There is less violent crime in Washington than when he started his first term eight years ago, but as presidents have learned too well, an emergency is in the eye of the declarer. Congress, which is actually responsible for D.C. according to the Constitution, will no doubt assert its rightful authority here and push back against this unprecedented overreach. Right after they get done stopping the emergency tariff powers, the emergency immigration powers, the emergency energy powers and the drug emergency powers. No, we know that Washington is still Trollope's Washington. But now, they don't even eat, drink and laugh as they wait for the atoms of their world 'to connect themselves again in some other form without trouble on their part.' It's all joyless livestreams, lukewarm, protein-rich quinoa bowls and 6 a.m. cold plunges. There isn't even any smoke in the smoke-filled rooms. If Republicans love to hate Washington, though, the Democrats have the opposite problem: They hate to love it. Dems have spent nearly 40 years committed to the cause of statehood for the District, a constitutional no-no that is still irresistible to them for the promise of three Electoral College votes, two new senators and another seat in the House that would all be blue in perpetuity. The party line is that Washingtonians are some kind of American Gazans, denied self-governance by colonizers. But getting Americans to care so much about a place that is known as 'Hollywood for ugly people' is a tough pull, especially when it's a company town where the company never has a recession. And so, Washington lives out its destiny as 'someplace else,' a city whose character is defined by its transience — a place where all the most notable residents are from someplace else. Chris Stirewalt is the politics editor for The Hill, veteran campaign and elections journalist and best-selling author of books about American political history. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Solve the daily Crossword
The Hill
7 hours ago
- Politics
- The Hill
Trump to Washington: Drop dead
Disdain for Washington is the birthright of every American, indeed the entire English-speaking world. In his two-volume travelogue, 'North America,' English novelist Anthony Trollope described the still-incomplete city he found in 1861 'as melancholy and miserable a town as the mind of man can conceive.' He paints a picture of a transient, small city with neither robust commerce nor gracious society, and it didn't get any better from there. 'So men ate, and drank, and laughed, waiting till chaos should come,' he wrote. 'Secure in the belief that the atoms into which their world would resolve itself would connect themselves again in some other form without trouble on their part.' Mark Leibovich could lift that whole and use it in his next book. Which all makes sense, because no city of any significant size would have ever sprung up on the marshy banks of the Potomac and Anacostia rivers. Denied a great harbor, like nearby Baltimore, in order to be built inland and sheltered from invasion — which didn't even work — neither was Washington afforded a pleasant climate like the nearby foothills of the Blue Ridge. But Washington, born of a compromise between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, wasn't supposed to be a marvelous place to live and work. It was supposed to belong to no other region, a geographic leftover to which the unlovely work of government could be relegated. Like putting a power plant downriver from a city, Washington was supposed to do important, dirty work, not be beloved. Add in the very American tendency to resent those with pretenses to authority, especially when they use that authority to take people's money to spend poorly and devise rules that they do not follow themselves, and Washington was born to be disdained. But there is no class of people in the world with a more robust contempt for Washington than New Yorkers, the city that had the capital when it was traded away in 1790. It is congenital for them. Archetypal New Yorker Nora Ephron, who lived in Washington during her brief marriage to celebrity journalist Carl Bernstein, called it a city 'where ideas went to die.' Indeed, there is a whole journalistic subgenre of New Yorkers dumping on Washington. Once, in a pool report about then-President-elect Barack Obama visiting The Washington Post in 2009, a New York Times reporter even got in a jab at 'the nondescript soviet-style building at 15th and L.' A fair swipe at a city the architecture of which juxtaposes neoclassical grandeur with what appears to be a collection of Hampton Inns with metal detectors. New Yorkers particularly resent Washington's pretensions. A twelfth the size of the Big Apple — smaller than flyover places like Oklahoma City and Indianapolis that would never dare to rival New York — where does Washington, some middling city full of bureaucrats, hack pols, nerds and sticky-faced middle schoolers gawking at lunar capsules, get off? So, Donald Trump, a person who could have been produced by no city other than New York, is being very true to his roots as he declares a kind of summer-weight martial law for Washington. Citing a statute that allows the president to nationalize the city's police when 'special conditions of an emergency nature exist,' Trump has taken command of the cops and called out the National Guard. The emergency, Trump says with a New Yorker's gift for restraint, is 'crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse.' There is less violent crime in Washington than when he started his first term eight years ago, but as presidents have learned too well, an emergency is in the eye of the declarer. Congress, which is actually responsible for D.C. according to the Constitution, will no doubt assert its rightful authority here and push back against this unprecedented overreach. Right after they get done stopping the emergency tariff powers, the emergency immigration powers, the emergency energy powers and the drug emergency powers. No, we know that Washington is still Trollope's Washington. But now, they don't even eat, drink and laugh as they wait for the atoms of their world 'to connect themselves again in some other form without trouble on their part.' It's all joyless livestreams, lukewarm, protein-rich quinoa bowls and 6 a.m. cold plunges. There isn't even any smoke in the smoke-filled rooms. If Republicans love to hate Washington, though, the Democrats have the opposite problem: They hate to love it. Dems have spent nearly 40 years committed to the cause of statehood for the District, a constitutional no-no that is still irresistible to them for the promise of three Electoral College votes, two new senators and another seat in the House that would all be blue in perpetuity. The party line is that Washingtonians are some kind of American Gazans, denied self-governance by colonizers. But getting Americans to care so much about a place that is known as 'Hollywood for ugly people' is a tough pull, especially when it's a company town where the company never has a recession. And so, Washington lives out its destiny as 'someplace else,' a city whose character is defined by its transience — a place where all the most notable residents are from someplace else.
Evening Standard
11-07-2025
- Business
- Evening Standard
Fewer deliveries, more expensive stamps... Ofcom has got Royal Mail 'reform' so wrong
The Communication Workers' Union argues that the proposed changes are not a solution to Royal Mail's problems and could lead to job losses and a decline in service quality: this is less of a warning than a statement of the obvious. If only this Labour government could have listened to the union; instead, the Business Secretary, Jonathan Reynolds has registered no interest whatever in safeguarding a service that, a century ago, would have enabled any of us to send a card in the morning inviting a friend to lunch, and to expect a reply by return. We can only dream now of the vanished efficiency that Anthony Trollope presided over at the Post Office. But obviously, the Conservatives caused the problem in the first place by ill-thought through privatisation, splitting off the Post Office from Royal Mail.
Daily Mail
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Which book makes Quentin Letts cry every time?
What Book... ...are you reading now? Having just chewed through Samantha Harvey 's Booker prize-winner, Orbital, I fancied another voyage story, this time more dangerous. Joseph Conrad's 1897 novella about the merchant ship Narcissus, sometimes titled The Children Of The Sea, is certainly that: surging, salt pages of muscular peril. My criticism of Orbital, though I admired its idea, its dreamy prose and brevity, is that little happens in space. Astronauts are quite boring. Conrad's 'immortal sea' is a constant threat, as are his gnarled, desperate characters – though he was terrible at dialogue. Halfway through the excellent Penguin Classics edition, I have a suspicion Narcissus and her crew may meet a pitchy end. ...would you take to a desert island? Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now. It describes, with dry humour, an opulent conman who fools 19th century London. The Victorian House of Commons leaps to life. David Suchet was perfect in the BBC 's 2001 adaptation. Trollope is good at depicting women, and in my 20s I fell in love with Madame Max Goesler, a 30-something Viennese widow in several of his novels. ...first gave you the reading bug? My father was a schoolmaster. Books were everywhere: GA Henty's imperial adventure yarns, PG Wodehouse's surreal souffles, RJ Unstead's history stories and H Rider Haggard's sultry King Solomon's Mines. Quite sexy, though as a ten-year-old I didn't realise that. I was gripped, too, by Rosemary Sutcliff's more prim The Eagle Of The Ninth and I gurgled at Gerald Durrell's animal-packed comic memoirs. We had a children's edition of The Odyssey. Disguised Odysseus returns home to Ithaca after 20 years. The only being to recognise him is his dog, Argos, who has waited for his master's return. Faithful Argos is in a bad state. He wags his tail, sighs, dies. Made me cry every time. ...left you cold? St Paul's letters in the New Testament. Too intellectual for me. I can never work out what he is saying. And I have tried, four times, Anthony Powell's A Dance To The Music Of Time. One day I'll crack it.
The Guardian
09-04-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Royal Mail trials postbox with parcel hatch, solar panels and barcode scanner
Royal Mail has unveiled a solar-powered 'postbox of the future' with a built-in barcode reader and a hatch to accept parcels larger than letterbox size. In the 'biggest change to postbox design since their introduction more than 175 years ago', the hi-tech pillar box looks as if it is wearing a jaunty beret. The black, chequered lid is in fact solar panels that power the scanner. The postbox's extra-large opening hatch offers a new way for the postal service to cash in on a roaring parcel trade. While letter volumes are in steep decline, Britain is in the grip of a secondhand selling boom as consumers use sites such as Vinted to make extra cash. In a process that will be familiar to those with side hustles, the postboxes can be used to drop off packages that have barcoded postage. Once customers have scanned their code – the postbox's batteries store energy to power its scanner when there is no sun – the drawer on the front opens. They can then use the Royal Mail app to request 'proof of posting'. With competition fierce among delivery services, Royal Mail said the redesigned postboxes would make it easier and more convenient for customers to use its network. There are 115,000 postboxes in the UK, and the company flagged the potential to adapt 'thousands' to accept larger parcels. The red pillarbox has a storied history, with the author Anthony Trollope proposing their introduction in the 1850s when he was working as a surveyor's clerk for the Post Office. The design was not standardised until 1859 when two sizes with a cylindrical shape, painted green, were settled upon. However, people complained that green was difficult to spot and, in 1874, the distinctive red colour was chosen to replace it, although it took 10 years to repaint them all. The Royal Mail's chief executive, Emma Gilthorpe, said that 'in an era where letter volumes continue to decline and parcels are booming, we are giving our iconic postboxes a new lease of life on street corners across the nation'. You may have to wait for one near you, though, as the trial involves just five in the Ware, Hertford and Fowlmere areas of Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire. News of the postbox pilot comes before the imminent sale of Royal Mail's parent company, International Distribution Services, to the Czech energy billionaire Daniel Křetínský's EP Group in a £3.57bn deal. At the same time, Royal Mail is grappling with a shake-up of postal service rules it must follow. As part of a modernisation plan drawn up by Ofcom, it would only have to deliver second-class letters on alternate weekdays. However, the regulator also wants to set new reliability targets requiring 99.5% of first-class letters to be delivered within three days, and 99.5% of second-class letters within five days. Sign up to Business Today Get set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning after newsletter promotion In Royal Mail's response to the consultation, published on Wednesday, it complained that these targets would 'add significant cost', potentially resulting in even higher prices for consumers. (On Monday, the price of a first-class stamp increased by 5p to £1.70, while second-class stamps went up by 2p to 87p.) The company also called for the rules to be changed so it could offer tracking on all parcels sent first- or second-class around the UK. Currently, customers are required to select and pay for a tracked service, rather than allowing Royal Mail to offer tracking for letters and parcels sent using standard postage services.
