Best Of

1) Most remaining civilians have not fled El Fasher - likely trapped or dead
2) RSF continues mass killings
3) Displaced people visible in Garni, location of reported gross human rights abuses.
https://x.com/HRL_YaleSPH/status/1984438122369659362

Hundreds of thousands are at risk of murder in Sudan.
Or already dead.

I've been banging on about the shameful lack of media interest in the war in Sudan (and the DRC and Myanmar) for a few years. Wall-to-wall Gaza news (which is also a horrific situation, don't get me wrong) but .. that's it. Mono-focus. They got bored of Ukraine, so onto Gaza for a while. Now they're beginning to get bored of Gaza.

Now I expect lots of reports about Sudan, hand-wringing podcasts with media people asking media people some moderately difficult questions to which they already know the answers,

I remember - many years ago - and been reminded by a comment up-thread about the World Service. It really was a marvel. News from deeply involved correspondents across the globe. Now their main news programme is just a copy'n'paste from various other BBC show snippets.

All to save the money it'd cost for an episode or two of "Celebrity Bake-Off". Though I guess training and allowing journalists to flourish costs almost 3-4 episodes.

I turned on BBC News during a major news event, and they were talking about Heidi Klum's Halloween party.
We used to be a proper country.

We are a proper country. We just don’t have a proper national broadcaster.

Sky News are at least making an attempt to get someone on the scene now.

The merger of BBC News and BBC World has led directly to a massive decline in the output of the BBC News channel.

The BBC find trouble in getting to Cambridgeshire due to funding issues?

No, due to priorities.

They never find trouble in getting to Glastonbury.

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.

For many solicitors, the direction of travel is the same. Far more time is devoted to box-ticking compliance, and serving as an amateur tax collector, than in the past.

Train stabbing latest: Two arrested after multiple people stabbed | UK News | Sky News https://share.google/MO6eqafkHIJyHOQTI

St Pancras to Peterborough, or the reverse, it looks like. Perhaps there are shorter local routes.

Happened between Stevenage and Huntingdon on the train towards Peterborough, per BBC.

Only on PB would the news of a train stabbing be followed by a discussion of the train route...

It beats most of what is below the line on the newspaper websites. Whilst a few people are expressing concern for the victims, overwhelmingly it is references to boats, immigrants and Starmer failing to keep us safe. Long before there is any indication of who the perps actually are. It rreally is a sewer.

It reminds me of the day of the Norway attacks when most people (with the notable exception of myself and SeanT) were discussing it being an islamic attack.

Yes it may well turn out this is some form of terrorist attack. But the glee with which people declare it so before there is an hint of evidence is pretty sickening.

First we lost the front room...

Now we are losing the lounge...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c93063q2lzeo

I always thought they were one and the same?

* The front parlour/front room is where you do special things (eg the man who wishes to court your daughter, or you put the coffin when your mum dies)
* The lounge/living room is where you have the sofa and watch telly

Next: why the meal you have at 5pm-7pm is tea, not dinner.

Don’t you put your mum’s coffin in the chapel?

Why even bother with a coffin? Mine’s been fine in her favourite rocking chair upstairs for years.

I am quite exhausted from last night's partying, therefore tapping out of this thread.

Before I call it a night, I'd like to return to a point I made earlier about how groups with specific agendas want to present the worst of a minority, and use their behaviour to suggest that all members of that group are therefore a threat.

I said: "On the subject of trans people attacking gender critical conferences and the like, I will simply say that this is a tiny minority of very pissed off radicals, and does not reflect the views of any of trans people I know. It's akin to one Muslim being a jihadi and now every other Muslim has to put up with being called a terrorist."

I would like to add -

I think the reasons I am utterly ok with trans people is because I've spent the last decade of my life surrounded by them. They have ranged from dear, sweet, kind-hearted humans like my partner, to annoying, bitchy gossip queens I couldn't bear to be in a room with for a minute, to - and these are absolutely the minority - the radical, "activist" types who go round smashing windows and calling for "terfs" to be "murdered". As I say, these represent a tiny minority of the community I've met. Less than 1%.

And it occurs to me that, the more you get to know people, the less you fear them.

I, for example, have a bit of a fear of radical Islam. Mainly because I have no Muslim friends, and I've spent the last decade convinced that they all think that people like my partner and I should be thrown off a rooftop for being in a queer relationship. If, on the other hand, I had a devout Muslim neighbour called Abdul who invited me and the Mrs over for tea (supper!) once a week my view might be very different.

My point is that once you get to know people, you stop seeing them as a bloc. The real extremists are the ones who want to pick the very worst examples from a community they hate, and use those examples to make people fear the entire community. This is undoubtedly the gender critical / "terf" agenda and it doesn't match my lived experience of trans people at all.

How much can be said for other communities, of which we on PB know very little?

PB often debates blocs - transes, Muslims, etc, as blocs of which most of us have little real world experience. Bad eggs exist in all communities, but if we got to know our neighbours a little better, perhaps we'd realise we're all just human beings just trying to live our lives as best as we can.

Near the end of his life, Aldous Huxley said he was embarrassed that, after a lifetime trying to understand the human condition, all he could suggest was that we should "try to be a little kinder" to one another.

Perhaps this is good advice for us all.