Does anyone else struggle to find the good stuff on Netflix?? Anything you've found and want to recommend?? I'll start the ball rolling - Icarus - brilliant documentary on the Russian Olympic doping scandal. Just won Oscar for best documentary, but don't let that put you off.
Ah .... now I understand. Too technical, so I can happily ignore it. Cheers, Jez. I'll sleep well tonight. How did you know we have net curtains????
Brothers Grimsby....filmed in Tilbury Essex where i was brought up.....or should i say dragged up. Real rough area. (It must be if they filmed it there instead d of Grimsby) This is one funny film. I havent laughed as much in ages. Bit crude in places but so funny.
Does anyone know anyone who has been fined for not having a TV license?? I'm convinced those vans you see very occasionally are just dummies,my brother got rid of his TV several years ago,and every so often he gets a threatening letter saying he needs to get a licence..they go in the bin
The tv licence is unique in being a civil debt, non payment of which is enforced through the criminal system. You don’t get sued for non payment you get prosecuted just like for fiddling your taxes. Enforcement action has b****r all to do with detector vans.....and probably always did. Do you know what ‘tempest’ is and Faraday cages? Basically a live screen is a short range transmitter that can be detected and viewed - an issue for all forms of espionage. However, the threat of voodoo electronics was used as a herding device to get people to cough up. In truth, it is all done through databases (remember the purchase forms?) and people like us get caught where the mobile population is not even chased. However it all gets a bit vague in the proof department if you deny having live viewing (yeah the dish is still up but we have no box) because the enforcement people have no rights of access to your house. You can say no....... I just pay but agitate at every opportunity for decriminalisation and massive amputation of chunks of the Beeb. Public Service broadcasting needs radical redefinition in the C21.
What boils my piss most about paying the TV license fee is that more and more these days the BBC is just pushing out it's own political agenda while telling people it's totally impartial and can be trusted.
No legal way if you have a tv or stream BBC on one of your devices. Personally I'm a big fan of the BBC so don't begrudge paying the licence fee. Not so much for the TV, more for the radio.
Yes, my wife twice . Once when she answered the door when she was visiting my flat (before we lived together) she gave her name etc and they prosecuted her, second time we moved house and everything was in her name, she forgot to amend our address so thinking we were ok she showed our old addresses licence and because we were not covered in our new address they prosecuted her again. Fine was if I recall correctly was £120.00 each time. First time yep I didn’t have a licence and she caught the bullet, second time was rough justice.
Back to the original purpose of the thread. "The Civil War" - Ken Burns superb 9 part history of the American Civil War. All done through narration, letters and contemporary photographs - no crappy "dramatisation". If you have the slightest interest in military history then this will draw you in! It's hugely significant to the history of the United States but also important historically as it marks the transition from traditional methods of fighting to what we would recognise as modern warfare. It saw: The first use of the machine (Gatling) gun. The first time troops and material were moved en mass by train. The first naval battles with armoured or "ironclad" ships. The first use of POW camps (as we would recognise them). The introduction of trench warfare - little different to the WW1 except they used spiked logs instead of barbed wire. The bombardment of towns and civilians - the pictures of Atlanta at the end of the war are no different to bombed German cities of WW2.
I got shot of my TV licence last year, only program I miss is the MotoGP, everything else gets to either Netflix or Amazon Prime eventually so I just have those. As for recommends, hmm, all depends on what you are into. I really love the Marvel programs; Jessica Jones, Punisher, Daredevil, Gotham is great but not part of the Marvel universe. If you like westerns, then Godless and Damnation are both worth a watch.If into crime/gangsters etc then Breaking Bad, El Chapo, Narcos, Peaky Blinders and dare I say it Sons of Anarchy are all great watching. Although Kevin Spacey is not really in the public's good books atm, House of Cards is an absolute must watch, it is so well scripted and acted, it is scarily close to the bone on how politics works If humour is your thing then Rick & Morty and Archer are brilliant. If you like a bit of modern history drama then The Crown is amazing and again with historic drama the Medici is also very good. If into sci-fi then Star Trek Discovery is bloody marvellous. That is a wedge from Netflix... Now for Prime: Vikings, it is a must watch as is Black Sails. Versailles is also very good (if historical dramas are your thing) as is Turn Washington Spies. Halt and Catch Fire is great for those of you into the 80's computer industry, The Tick is hilarious, Patriot, Lucifer, Fear the Walking Dead, Sneaky Pete.... there is just soooo much to watch that is good. Far far better value than the BBC.
You always stick your neck out talking about ‘traditional’ v. ‘Modern’ warfare. Certainly the US Civil War was viewed differently with hindsight as it became better understood how factory output was being delivered to the battlefield but some of the features you cite were found in the Crimea 10 years earlier. The single thing most overlooked was the advantage conferred to a defender by breech loading and faster firing longer range weapons, obstacles and improvements in supply. This is what stabilised front lines and created siege like conditions that foreshadowed WWI where restoring mobility and manoeuvre was the holy grail.....but the Civil War saw saw plenty of muzzle loading rifles too like the Minie and the Gatling was deployed more like an artillery piece on wheels. Custer fatefully left his behind when chasing the Sioux. The problem was that immediately subsequent US and European experience from Spanish-American and Mexico through to Franco-Prussian and Zulu then Boer Wars were all mobile false prophets. The bolt action rifle, Maxim gun in its various forms and better fused breech loading artillery harnessed to rail and the internal combustion engine all combined in 1914 to surprise all combatants.
http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/...-castle/history-and-stories/prisoners-of-war/ "Prisoners have always been taken during warfare – not just in the 20th century. From the 16th century, as armies grew and weapons became more sophisticated, far more prisoners were taken. In Britain, buildings like Portchester Castle were used to hold them in growing numbers. Portchester first held prisoners during the Anglo-Dutch wars of the 1660s. But it was its final phase as a prison, during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars (1793–1815), that saw the greatest numbers of prisoners at the castle – up to 8,000 at any one time. Where did they come from, and what was prison life like for them?"
Durham Cathedral was used as a PoW camp by Cromwell after the Battle of Dunbar 1650! There are mass grave sites in Durham while some were transported to the Colonies and their descendants are proud Americans.
Prisoners have always been taken in war. The point about the American Civil War was that both sides kept them in appalling conditions, especially the Confederate prison at Anderson. Photos of starving soldiers after two years of captivity look little different to the victims of Auschwitz.
Cromwell prisoners didn’t get bedtime stories either!......... Early photography should not lead you to conclude things were ‘new’....other than photography itself.
I agree mate - I could have gone into much more depth about the issues and been less glib in my statements but I wanted to catch peoples attention and hopefully encourage people to watch the series rather than put them off!
Don’t worry! I invariably shout at the screen when journalists or cod historians claim peculiar insights or novelty for their narrative. The Romans knew all about counter terrorism and herding prisoners....... Just remember by the end the Confederacy itself was starving so Union photos of starving prisoners need to be understood in the context of the wider population. The South was agrarian with its farmers at war while the North was far more industrial. Time was always against the South hence a strategy to win fast and furious to force the Union to negotiate a peace.
Very true - plus it's ports were blockaded by the Union navy. Still, without the civil war and it's Generals the Americans wouldn't have had any names for their tanks in WW2!