Best Of

Poor pathetic Kemi.

If youre going to ask an Emergency Question and actually piss off the actual Shadow Minister in the process by elbowing in

Don't try to defend your defence record whilst trying to attack Labour

All mouth no substance

Eviscerated by erm Luke Pollard

He pays tribute to HEALY, explaining he's only here because HEALY asked him to stay

One wonders where the actual Shadow Minister is?

Pollard goes on to quietly explain

YES Labour are spending more

£11 Billion more in first Labour year than last Tory year

Working to phase out old technologies and build or purchase new

Biggest Armed Forces pay rise in 20 years

Biggest investment in Armed Forces housing stock in history, 9 billion over 10 years

intake up 11%
Outflow reduced 8%

Ashen faced Tories totally exposed for 14 years of wilful neglect

Mate, the Tories did a Shit job on defence. Labour did a Shit job on defence before them, and are doing such a shit job now that the SofS and Minister both resigned in protest.

You trying to score party points on this is top quality cabaret, albeit one where I suspect you haven't realised how much of a tit you look.

Not as much avtit as the clusterfuck Tories

Btw

2010 defence spending was 2.5% of GDP was it not?

However

Badenoch calls Dan Jarvis, a former Army Officer a coward

Is told he's with the King

Swayne calls Jarvis a coward

Told he's been summoned by the King to be made a Privy Councillor

Leigh calls Jarvis a Coward

Is adminished by Speaker who has confirmed Jarvis is with the King

Utter Tory clusterfuck

Took defence spending from 2.5 % to below 2%

Labour increasing by 11 billion a yrar

No one no one can say Labour are not increasing defence spending

Not fast enough but who hollowed it out in the first place

Hollowed it out whilst taking funds from Putin Oligarchs, slipping security to meet the KGB and prostituting themselves for games of tennis, meals and dances with known Russian KGB Putin money nen

Thatcher got it right

THE ENEMY WITHIN

SAME OLD TORIES

CORRUPT
TREACHEROUS
TRAITORS

As someone who at least nominally agrees with you on party preference, I think with respect that you've got the tone wrong for PB. Shorter, less shouty, posts are more effective here.

Wise words as ever @NickPalmer

Regarding the proposed social media ban for under 16s...
The devil is naturally in the detail, particularly around enforcement, but the intent is hard to argue with.

Allowing social media companies to optimise children’s attention and emotional development around engagement metrics may prove to be one of the most damaging public policy failures of the early 21st century.

We impose rigorous safety standards on toys, medicines, food, cars, playgrounds and school buildings. We demand evidence, testing, regulation and oversight before exposing children to even relatively minor risks.

Yet somehow we collectively decided it was perfectly reasonable to hand children devices connected to platforms whose business model depends on maximising engagement, harvesting attention and encouraging compulsive use, then act surprised when rates of anxiety, self-harm, sleep deprivation and social dysfunction started moving in the wrong direction.

If a toy manufacturer discovered a mechanism that kept children compulsively pulling a lever hundreds of times a day, we would ban it. If a food company deliberately engineered products to create dependency in children, there would be parliamentary inquiries. Yet when technology companies use behavioural psychology to achieve similar outcomes, we call it innovation.

Whether a ban is practical is a separate question. But the idea that society should simply shrug and accept unlimited access to algorithmically-curated social media for 12 and 13 year-olds has always struck me as one of the stranger orthodoxies of the digital age.

Future generations may look back on it in much the same way we look back on cigarette adverts featuring doctors.

Totally agree - the way policymakers accepted the guff about them not being publishers was also remiss. I appreciate they aren’t a book publisher or even a newspaper publisher - but they are still the gatekeeper on what gets published, and promoted and demoted.

I don't see why they are less responsible for people publishing comments via their sites than a newspaper publishing comments.

I guess it’s not directly equivalent. Newspapers consider what is published whereas social media platforms publish everything automatically.

Just because you do something automatically, does not mean you can avoid responsibility for it.

If you choose to do something automatically at enormous scale, you arguably bear more responsibility, not less.

In software engineering we’ve spent the last decade automating deployments through CI/CD pipelines. Nobody would accept “the release was automatic” as an excuse if a company repeatedly shipped defective or harmful code into production.

The whole point of automation is that you build rigorous testing, quality assurance, monitoring and controls around it.

Social media companies seem to have persuaded policymakers that because content is selected and promoted by algorithms rather than editors, they should bear less responsibility. I’ve never really understood that argument.

If anything, an editor can make a few bad decisions a day. An algorithm can make millions.

Poor pathetic Kemi.

If youre going to ask an Emergency Question and actually piss off the actual Shadow Minister in the process by elbowing in

Don't try to defend your defence record whilst trying to attack Labour

All mouth no substance

Eviscerated by erm Luke Pollard

He pays tribute to HEALY, explaining he's only here because HEALY asked him to stay

One wonders where the actual Shadow Minister is?

Pollard goes on to quietly explain

YES Labour are spending more

£11 Billion more in first Labour year than last Tory year

Working to phase out old technologies and build or purchase new

Biggest Armed Forces pay rise in 20 years

Biggest investment in Armed Forces housing stock in history, 9 billion over 10 years

intake up 11%
Outflow reduced 8%

Ashen faced Tories totally exposed for 14 years of wilful neglect

Mate, the Tories did a Shit job on defence. Labour did a Shit job on defence before them, and are doing such a shit job now that the SofS and Minister both resigned in protest.

You trying to score party points on this is top quality cabaret, albeit one where I suspect you haven't realised how much of a tit you look.

Not as much avtit as the clusterfuck Tories

Btw

2010 defence spending was 2.5% of GDP was it not?

However

Badenoch calls Dan Jarvis, a former Army Officer a coward

Is told he's with the King

Swayne calls Jarvis a coward

Told he's been summoned by the King to be made a Privy Councillor

Leigh calls Jarvis a Coward

Is adminished by Speaker who has confirmed Jarvis is with the King

Utter Tory clusterfuck

Took defence spending from 2.5 % to below 2%

Labour increasing by 11 billion a yrar

No one no one can say Labour are not increasing defence spending

Not fast enough but who hollowed it out in the first place

Hollowed it out whilst taking funds from Putin Oligarchs, slipping security to meet the KGB and prostituting themselves for games of tennis, meals and dances with known Russian KGB Putin money nen

Thatcher got it right

THE ENEMY WITHIN

SAME OLD TORIES

CORRUPT
TREACHEROUS
TRAITORS

Have you ever thought you might be posting on the wrong site? I do regularly. This is a Tory blog which makes ConHome look like the Canary.

Give you head a wobble.

You keep making this point. It isn't true. Just have a look through the posts now in this thread - the number of posts by left of centre and right of centre posters is roughly 50/50.

Poor pathetic Kemi.

If youre going to ask an Emergency Question and actually piss off the actual Shadow Minister in the process by elbowing in

Don't try to defend your defence record whilst trying to attack Labour

All mouth no substance

Eviscerated by erm Luke Pollard

He pays tribute to HEALY, explaining he's only here because HEALY asked him to stay

One wonders where the actual Shadow Minister is?

Pollard goes on to quietly explain

YES Labour are spending more

£11 Billion more in first Labour year than last Tory year

Working to phase out old technologies and build or purchase new

Biggest Armed Forces pay rise in 20 years

Biggest investment in Armed Forces housing stock in history, 9 billion over 10 years

intake up 11%
Outflow reduced 8%

Ashen faced Tories totally exposed for 14 years of wilful neglect

Mate, the Tories did a Shit job on defence. Labour did a Shit job on defence before them, and are doing such a shit job now that the SofS and Minister both resigned in protest.

You trying to score party points on this is top quality cabaret, albeit one where I suspect you haven't realised how much of a tit you look.

Not as much avtit as the clusterfuck Tories

Btw

2010 defence spending was 2.5% of GDP was it not?

However

Badenoch calls Dan Jarvis, a former Army Officer a coward

Is told he's with the King

Swayne calls Jarvis a coward

Told he's been summoned by the King to be made a Privy Councillor

Leigh calls Jarvis a Coward

Is adminished by Speaker who has confirmed Jarvis is with the King

Utter Tory clusterfuck

Took defence spending from 2.5 % to below 2%

Labour increasing by 11 billion a yrar

No one no one can say Labour are not increasing defence spending

Not fast enough but who hollowed it out in the first place

Hollowed it out whilst taking funds from Putin Oligarchs, slipping security to meet the KGB and prostituting themselves for games of tennis, meals and dances with known Russian KGB Putin money nen

Thatcher got it right

THE ENEMY WITHIN

SAME OLD TORIES

CORRUPT
TREACHEROUS
TRAITORS

Poor pathetic Kemi.

If youre going to ask an Emergency Question and actually piss off the actual Shadow Minister in the process by elbowing in

Don't try to defend your defence record whilst trying to attack Labour

All mouth no substance

Eviscerated by erm Luke Pollard

He pays tribute to HEALY, explaining he's only here because HEALY asked him to stay

One wonders where the actual Shadow Minister is?

Pollard goes on to quietly explain

YES Labour are spending more

£11 Billion more in first Labour year than last Tory year

Working to phase out old technologies and build or purchase new

Biggest Armed Forces pay rise in 20 years

Biggest investment in Armed Forces housing stock in history, 9 billion over 10 years

intake up 11%
Outflow reduced 8%

Ashen faced Tories totally exposed for 14 years of wilful neglect

Mate, the Tories did a Shit job on defence. Labour did a Shit job on defence before them, and are doing such a shit job now that the SofS and Minister both resigned in protest.

You trying to score party points on this is top quality cabaret, albeit one where I suspect you haven't realised how much of a tit you look.

Not as much avtit as the clusterfuck Tories

Btw

2010 defence spending was 2.5% of GDP was it not?

However

Badenoch calls Dan Jarvis, a former Army Officer a coward

Is told he's with the King

Swayne calls Jarvis a coward

Told he's been summoned by the King to be made a Privy Councillor

Leigh calls Jarvis a Coward

Is adminished by Speaker who has confirmed Jarvis is with the King

Utter Tory clusterfuck

Took defence spending from 2.5 % to below 2%

Labour increasing by 11 billion a yrar

No one no one can say Labour are not increasing defence spending

Not fast enough but who hollowed it out in the first place

Hollowed it out whilst taking funds from Putin Oligarchs, slipping security to meet the KGB and prostituting themselves for games of tennis, meals and dances with known Russian KGB Putin money nen

Thatcher got it right

THE ENEMY WITHIN

SAME OLD TORIES

CORRUPT
TREACHEROUS
TRAITORS

Have you ever thought you might be posting on the wrong site? I do regularly. This is a Tory blog which makes ConHome look like the Canary.

Give you head a wobble.

You keep making this point. It isn't true. Just have a look through the posts now in this thread - the number of posts by left of centre and right of centre posters is roughly 50/50.

Of course it's true.

There are an awful lot of fence sitters, but the pro-Tory posters are relentless at the moment and I'll count them for you. We have one, er, we have, er, one Labour poster and it was to him I was addressing my post.

We have a fair number of non-Tories who don't support Labour.

They are the fence sitters. I naturally include Lib Dems in their number.

So someone who is a Lib dem member, and even stands for the Lib Dems at election is a fence sitter?

A long term SNP supporter and voter is a fence sitter?

An avowed Green party member and voter is a fence sitter?

Really?

Labour MP (Feyral Clark) on LBC News wants under 16 exemptions for platforms she likes.

A youngster was asked how long she had been online over the weekend and said 9 hours

When asked what she would do if she could not go online she said 'stare at the wall'

One despairs

God forbid they properly interacted with other teenagers in person !

Can I relate an incident from Friday night? My two youngest daughters play cricket. Practice is on a Friday night; and the session segues seamlessly into a sort of free-for-all of kids playing. We watched this unfolding from the bar on Friday night - 20-30 boys and girls, aged roughly 9-14 engaged in huge games of their own devising. At one point they were all playing British Bulldog.
Like other humans, kids love interacting with each other in person as much as they ever did. They sometimes just need a bit of a prompt to do so. (When we were young, that prompt was provided by boredom - perhaps the root of our problem is that life isn't boring enough any more!)

Your last point is, I think, spot on.

More generally you can claim that technology in general seeks to remove the friction from life, but it's often in the friction that interesting things happen. I'm not wanting to turn the clock back, but I think we could do with thinking about how much we do things just because we can, and how we might choose to do things differently.