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In fact Mabel as a name has been steadily increasing in popularity in England & Wales in recent years. In 2021 (the most recent figures available) 839 baby girls were registered as Mabel, putting the name in 59th place. A famous bearer of the name is the singer-songwriter Mabel, who is Neneh Cherry's daughter.

"Why people think the NHS is struggling" is not the same as "Why the NHS is struggling". Two of my best mates are consultant doctors, one in Acute Medicine, the other in A&E and at our meet-up over Christmas, the A&E doctor (who is technically still a junior at the moment and has been on the picket lines) said he fully understands the appeal of Australia and has seen plenty of doctors make the jump on social media and it looks amazing. They both shared a few details of the shambles that is hospital care in 2023-24, how winter pressures are now all-year-round pressures and it felt very much like they were shielding the worst of things from the non-doctors in our party to avoid us having a meltdown at the state of our healthcare system. The problem in the 21st century is this belief that whatever the voters think is automatically the right call and that said voters are 100% convinced that whatever they think is correct. And, on the flip side, engagement in politics has dropped dramatically, political literacy and critical thinking are virtually non-existent and misinformation is everywhere. It's led the rise of the far-right, the Brexit disaster, the Covid Conspiracy nonsense and 101 things besides. People are looking for simple explanations because they're not intelligent enough, or committed enough, to look into the details of how the world works and the complex reasons and histories of why situations develop. The NHS is struggling because too many immigrants are coming in is simplistic nonsense. The NHS is struggling for a huge number of reasons, from lack of doctors numbers to underfunding, to a chronic lack of social care provision. Blaming immigrants ignores the fact that many immigrants come to work in the NHS is a range of capacities, from clinical care to porters and cleaners. It ignores that the vast majority of immigrants who come to this country are young, fit and healthy which means they use the NHS a lot less than, say, our rapidly aging population who are living longer and, in many cases, more sickly. Perhaps that has something to do with pressures on the NHS too? Wow, what a thought...

Now in slightly more rural NZ, down coast from Dunedin. By my reckoning, I’m currently one of the southernmost 0.005% of people in the world. Sunset was nice.

Make that in two weekends... First, thank you for the patience everyone! There have been four deaths since this pool started. 1. @Spade_Cooley got us started with Johnny Ruffo on November 10th 2. @time is next up with Brigit Forsyth on December 1st. 3. @diego scored with Glynis Johns on January 4th. The other death, Richard McKenzie, also died on December 1st and is one of @justonecornetto subs. Maybe a rule in a future version will include two subs = 1 of the 3 deaths needed to win? Unsure... Side-notes: I apologize for the format of the entry list and some of the other sections. I will work on it and hopefully roll out a better looking/working version by next round. I also need to retire the "List of the Missed", it is just too much work to track all these shows. Might try a different version of it in the future...

Woodrow Wilson died on this day 100 years ago, aged 67. - Wilson's actual first name was Thomas, and he went by his middle name- derived from his mother's maiden name. While his grandfather James was an abolitionist, his father Joseph supported the Confederacy during the Civil War. - Wilson is the only US president to receive a PhD degree, awarded to him by Johns Hopkins University in 1886. He would later serve as a professor of history and political science, and would be promoted to the president of Princeton University in 1902. For these reasons, he has been nicknamed "The Schoolmaster" by some. - Wilson's tenure at Princeton got New Jersey's Democratic Party officials to encourage him to run for governor, and he won the 1910 election. Wilson quickly became a rising star in the party, and was the Democratic nominee for president in 1912- winning in a landslide due to the Republicans splitting between Theodore Roosevelt and the incumbent William Howard Taft. - Wilson's presidency is known for introducing the Federal Reserve, failing to stay out of World War I after three years of isolationism (leading to the League of Nations, which earned him the 1920 Nobel Peace Prize), and screening the first movie shown at the White House- The Birth of a Nation (Wilson was horribly racist and openly tried to remove Black people from federal jobs). - In 1919, Wilson suffered a severe stroke that left him bedbound- his wife Edith would determine which documents would be given to him, and some jest she was the first female US president. By 1920, news of his condition reached the public, and although he wished to seek a third term, his political party quickly disassociated with him to find a healthier candidate. He was unable to attend Warren G. Harding's inauguration, although the two of them had tea together the day before. His health would not improve over the last three years of his life.

Now the other Steve Brown, the lyricist, composer and record producer, has died. He worked on West End Musicals Spend Spend Spend and I Can’t Sing! The X Factor Musical. He composed many of the songs and jingles on loads of programmes such as Spitting Image in the 80s/90s, Dead Ringers and The Ant and Dec Show (including Wonkey Donkey).

I register births in the UK and it is a very popular name at the moment. Mabel is here to stay!

Al Lewis died on this day 18 years ago, aged 82. He was an American actor and activist, best known for his role as Count Dracula-lookalike Grandpa on the television series The Munsters from 1964 to 1966 and its film versions. He previously also co-starred with The Munsters's Fred Gwynne in the television show Car 54, Where Are You? from 1961 to 1963. Later in life, he was a restaurant owner, political candidate, and radio broadcaster. In 1967, Lewis played the part of Zalto the magician in the Lost in Space episode "Rocket to Earth". His first role in a movie was as Machine Gun Manny in Pretty Boy Floyd (1960). He appeared as Hanging Judge Harrison in Used Cars (1980), played a security guard on an episode of Taxi, and had a minor role in Married to the Mob (1988). His last film role was in Night Terror (2002). Lewis was a recurring guest on The Howard Stern Show. In 1991, he appeared as Grandpa in an episode of Hi Honey, I'm Home on ABC. Lewis appeared in an episode of The American Experience where he recalled his experiences at Coney Island, which he frequently visited and worked at as a game barker. He was featured in the Atari 7800 videogame Midnight Mutants, an action-adventure title with a Halloween theme.

3/2/2024 46 The Kinks — Waterloo Sunset +3 20 Barry Ryan — Eloise +1 14 The Beach Boys — God Only Knows 00 The Kinks — All Day And All Of The Night -6

Dropped him from the DDp because tbh I got bored and distracted by shiny new oldies, and 20 places isn't a lot. My trying to guess who would be picked has led to two of us bringing back Nadim Sawalha after a long absence and nobody picking Brian Glanville. Or Derry Irvine!

Don Murray, Oscar-nominated star of Marilyn Monroe's Bus Stop, dead at 94.

I am hearing he has died. Anyone got anything official ? Here's something Jonnie Irwin dead aged 50

Only protestants edit Wikipedia.

Of course, only Weathers and Murray are A-listers out of those names. And really I don't get the significance of Bruce's mama's death.

Please change your scores to show my votes as well. Waterloo should now have 45 points and God only knows 18. Thank you.

03/01/24 45 The Kinks — Waterloo Sunset +4 21 Barry Ryan — Eloise 18 The Beach Boys — God Only Knows -6 12 The Kinks — All Day And All Of The Night 

In my theme team so hopefully!

Did you attend too?

Very surprised by this one. Almost 95 but was doing great some time ago. One of the last big heartthrobs born of the 50s.

Huge miss by the committee, should have been in the Top 50, cancer of lung and brain rarely has a good outcome RIP though, seemed a nice guy from few times saw him on tv

Biggest problem with Wiki is nowhere near enough ppl edit it. I don't know a single person in real life who edits Wiki. And it's not as straight forward as ppl might think, takes time to learn a lot of rules and customs so most new contributors end up doing more harm than good. We're approaching 7 million articles in the English Wiki. It's just too much to manage. Another problem is Wikis in other languages have not grown at anywhere near the rate that the English one has. This has resulted in English Wiki becoming a dumping ground for article creation about things that are almost totally irrelevant to 99.9% of native English speakers e.g. really obscure foreign actors. These individuals perhaps merit a page in their native language but it doesn't mean English Wiki needs a version. They need to seriously tighten up article creation (I'd propose restricting it to users of 5+ years and 5000+ edits) or the whole thing will just become a wasteland. Then the only option they'll have is to control a lot of it by introducing AI editing, which I'd be against.

One big issue Wikipedia has is entries being permanently stuck in the time they were created. So many bands who were around in 2006 still have MySpace links on their page. And this article, for the comedian Brother Dave Gardner (dead for over 40 years), has contained the line since its creation two decades ago.

Shecky Greene reportedly dead: https://www.reviewjournal.com/entertainment/entertainment-columns/kats/comic-legend-shecky-greene-dies-at-97-2973752/amp/