Best Of

A rather depressing and free read from the Times. Interview with the head of Reed, a large recruiter, on the current market and the risks to it. Basically it’s a jobs desert at the moment, AI is decimating entry level jobs for grads jn some professions, and the so-called workers rights bill, all 197 pages of it, at the behest of the Unions will not help.

Worst job market for 40 years basically.

https://www.thetimes.com/business-money/companies/article/james-reed-graduate-jobs-no-longer-a-given-fhnjk70hp

I graduated 40 years ago when there were over three million registered as unemployed and I couldn't even get into teacher training which was seen as the last resort (sorry, @ydoethur ).

I did my time queuing at the job centre with all the others who couldn't find work. Eventually, and much against my better judgement (but out of financial necessity), I worked in a bookies (which I had through my student holidays) for a year or so and hated it. Marking the board on odd afternoons was a bit of a laugh but as your main employment (apart from the money), it was very different and not pleasant.

As an aside, it would be much worse now given the long hours.

Working in a bookie 40 years ago would be great fun compared to today.

Today you’re basically babysitting the machines on which the lowest in society are losing their rent money, and dealing with a bunch of idiots waving their phones showing better odds then you can give them. All for minimum wage, and with a fair chance of getting robbed for the contents of the safe.

Turf accountancy is probably an extreme example, but it's probably true of most jobs. Captain Mainwaring's successor at Swallow Bank surely has less status and autonomy, even if the Walmington-on-Sea branch still exists. GPs get to do less of the Dr Finlay bit. And so on.

It's happened for a reason, and there's no point trying to undo the process. Things and services are cheaper and more abundant and more convenient, and we have mostly gained more on that side of the balance than we have lost on the other.

But there has been a cost, and I suspect it's one of the factors in left-behind populism. Perhaps we haven't used the gains from automation and tech-enabled management as wisely as we should.

Morning all

I'll gladly join others and congratulate @Cyclefree on yet another excellent contribution.

There are many very serious and severe problems in this country - I quoted child poverty yesterday and this is another one - but we seem obsessed currently on small boats which, and I'll stand by for the flak, is essentially trivial in the grand scheme of things.

The small boats are a symbolic thing. They are symbolic of people breaking the rules and getting away with it. Impunity is becoming a theme of our times and, for that reason, it is important that the small boats are dealt with.

And, somehow, a government has to manage to address the more severe problems and the symbolic ones, at the same time. One of the weaknesses of British politics in this era of weak Cabinets and all-powerful Prime Ministers, is that it is harder for a government to effectively multi-task. The emasculation of local authorities in favour of Whitehall centralisation has a similar enervating effect.

The government of a country of nigh on 70 million is too big a job for one person.

The problem is that the law is a mess. The law may be clear, but the application is not.

Trans-women and Trans-men exist, and in significant numbers. Accessing health care for surgical transition has become much more difficult, with the Cass report effectively closing down care as the waiting lists are many years long. Even fully "passing" post surgical Trans-folk would be restricted to use facilities of their biological sex. So these people are either forced back into the closet, housebound, or can not use public facitities. Its a very punitive approach.

Then there's the problem of enforcement. Who can check the biological sex of everyone in the workplace, restaurant or public convenience? Who is responsible for the offence caused when users are incorrectly challenged. It is facile to deny that these are real problems. In practice this law is going to be openly flouted, and a law that is widely ignored, particularly in avante garde or hipster parts of the country.

I was thinking the other night about @BlancheLivermore bad hospital experience when ill. There were several aspects to this, but one was the lack of privacy. We are unusual as a developed country to expect 6 or so people to share the same ward bay. In most similar countries hospitals have single rooms with ensuite. Similarly communal changing areas without cubicles are the norm in all the hospitals that I have worked in. This does not match modern cultural mores. Newly constructed facilities should be built differently, but we have a vast legacy estate that cannot simply be altered. Privacy includes much more than sex and gender aspects.

There was never any need to check the biological sex of people using loos and rest rooms before and there won't be now unless you assume that trans people are the sort of people who will break the law . And if they are then it is absolutely right that they should be treated like other law breakers. No man passes and no one can surgically transition to the opposite sex because changing sex is impossible. It is at best cosmetic surgery though it may make that person content. In any event, the vast majority of trans people do not have surgery of any kind and many do nothing at all - just utter magic words and expect to have access to other people's spaces. See the nurse "Rose" in Darlington, a man trying to get his girlfriend pregnant who has done nothing at all to himself.

No-one is forced to be housebound because the obvious answer is to provide unisex facilities. Take some of the men's loos and make them unisex - problem solved. Or make the men's facilities unisex. There. This claim that it is impossible to provide unisex facilities is just nonsense. Organisations were quick to turn female facilities into unisex ones so they can just unscrew the sign on the door and replace it with the correct one.

As for employees - employers need to make clear what is expected and that anyone breaching the rules will be disciplined. They have in any case been under an obligation to prevent sexual harassment of their staff since October 2024 and permitting voyeurism and indecent exposure (both criminal offences) would be caught by this duty.

This is not a case of it's too difficult / we can't do it. Ot is not too difficult and it can be done. It is, frankly, a case we don't want to and we don't care if women are harmed as a result. This is unacceptable.

Example: Stevenage Council has recently opened unisex changing facilities at a new sports centre. There have been complaints of voyeurism etc and the police have warned the council of the risk. And the response? We don't care and there have only been 4 reported crimes. Oh well, that's all right then. Councillors should be asked how many crimes are acceptable and which of their female relatives should be subject to such crimes.

The points I make apply equally to gays and lesbians, particularly the latter, because the SC judgment clarified - to the extent this ever needed clarifying - that sexual orientation is based on sex not certificates. It said clearly in paragraph 206 that the concept of sexual orientation towards members of a particular sex would be rendered meaningless otherwise.

Anyway here are my answers to the Frequently Argued (and often stupid) Points raised when this topic is discussed.

1. It is cis men who are a threat to women. Not TW.
They are one and the same: both members of the male sex.

2. No TW has ever assaulted a woman in a toilet.
Untrue. Lots of examples - here and in other countries. See Katie Dolatowski, for instance.

3. TW are not a threat to women.
Judging by the latest evidence from the MoJ a far greater proportion of TW prisoners are sexual offenders than male prisoners or female ones.

4. The SC judgment bans trans people from loos, changing rooms, sport etc.
No it doesn't. No-one is banned. They are simply asked to use the facilities for their sex or unisex ones. In sport they are required to compete in their sex category to ensure that female sport is fair.

5. Trans people have been using women's loos for ages.
This is the equivalent of saying that people have been committing murder or shoplifting for ages. It doesn't make it lawful.

6. No-one's complained.
Yeah right - a woman is going to complain to a man who is physically stronger than he and who has breached her boundaries. No - she won't. She will get the hell out of there because she knows how to risk assess even if the authorities have abandoned this concept.

7. Trans people are being denied rights.
No they aren't. They have exactly the same rights as everyone else. The right to be in a space, service or association for the opposite sex is not a human right of any kind. Demands are not rights.

8. Not everywhere has a unisex space.
Indeed not. Perhaps the last decade might have been better used to campaign for such spaces.

9. Men might not like having TW in with them.
They should learn to be inclusive and kind.

10. Men might attack TW.
Yes - male violence against violence against TW is a problem. It is not one which women are obliged to solve.

11. Everyone has a gender neutral toilet at home. What's your problem?
Good-oh: make your address public, opening hours, parking restrictions, cleaning regime etc., so anyone in the vicinity can use it.

12. Having men in women's sport is no different to having an exceptional sportsman or woman.
Someone does not understand the difference between categories separated on the basis of a relevant characteristic (age / sex / weight, for instance) and an exceptional member within that category.

Question (with apologies if this has already been discussed)

Why is Starmer refusing to instigate the removal of Andrew Windsor from the Succession? Does anyone really think it would be a bad idea? In purely political terms this seems like a clear win for Starmer and he would almost certainly even have the support of the King. But he apparently is resisting doing it. I find that surprising.

It would require an Act of Parliament that would then have to pass through every single Commonwealth Realm. It could be hijacked by republican movements or amended to, say, remove Harry from the succession as well - and then get stuck in horse-trading for years.

I can understand why the government don't want to open that particular can of worms for what is a purely theoretical problem.

Happy Halloween everyone.

Had a great time Trick or Treating with our little Eleven and Enid.

Lovely community spirit, everyone out and about was well dressed and mannered.

Now observing our traditional annual way of saying goodbye to Halloween and welcoming Christmas by watching Nightmare Before Christmas.

Pause

You have a child called "Eleven"?

There are stranger things to call a child than Eleven surely?

Is that the benchmark - not quite the strangest name we could call our child?

Should we turn that benchmark upside down?

I like the entirely non-binary nature of simply naming your kids by birth order.

We personally went binary. And obviously, taking our queue from indices, started at zero.

So, they're zero, one, one-zero, one-one, one-zero-zero and one-zero-one.

For the record, it isn't confusing at all.

variable bit length. That is confusing

We debated having a fixed length, but felt that would either be wasteful or -worse- we'd run out of address space and need to start over. There was also the question about whether we should use signed, or unsigned.

And my wife wanted to add a parity bit, so that we'd be able to catch people out who got our kids names wrong.

Why would it need to be signed? Are you going to have less than zero kids?

It's overflow you have to watch out for.

If you're calling your kids numbers, you just need to watch out they aren't irrational.

Question (with apologies if this has already been discussed)

Why is Starmer refusing to instigate the removal of Andrew Windsor from the Succession? Does anyone really think it would be a bad idea? In purely political terms this seems like a clear win for Starmer and he would almost certainly even have the support of the King. But he apparently is resisting doing it. I find that surprising.

Apparently the King is resisting it because it would require all the Commonwealth realms to follow suit.

There's a fear some of the realms would use the legislation to become republics.

The King is also worried about parliament in the future choosing who should succeed to the monarchy.

Starmer doesn't want to get into a row with the King, and both are working on the assumption that the eighth in line will never be King.