OT linkedin just showed me a job advert for a sys admin at the Home Office, which at a guess is at least £20,000 below market rates. That pension must sure be attractive, and there's an outside chance you'll score a signed photo of Priti Patel.
ETA they are advertising £30-£38k; the guesswork is in the market rate.
Sysadmin is one of those roles where I'd rather pay £120k for the right person, than pay 3 x £35k for people with the right qualifications.
Oh, very much so - but try explaining that one to the civil service, with their rigid pay scales and fetishisation of worthless pieces of paper.
If you want a laugh, try and find the job description. I expect the main competencies will be nothing to do with the actual job.
Hell yeah. HR departments and practices are the bane of IT guys everywhere.
It was always a running joke, that it would take a month for companies to start posting job ads asking for a decade of experience, in any newly-announced technology or programming language.
This is hyperbole. I made the decision to get vaccinated. But I'm not going to poor scorn on anyone who doesn't. Certainly not for 'not understanding science' - almost no-one, on either side of the argument, has read the relevant studies. At best, we have read second or third hand accounts. I don't fully understand what the motivations of antivaxxers are, but I doubt they are callousness. Let's not try to demonise people who have reached different conclusions. Not least because it doesn't tend to work.
My list of anti-vax reasons that seem to come across to me:
* Not sure about long term safety of something new * It doesn't work, I know a bloke who was vaxed and is now dead. * No need as I have had covid * No need as I am young/healthy/never had flu etc * Don't trust doctors * Don't trust the government * The vax is all about money for Big Pharma otherwise why boosters? * Covid doesn't exist * Piers Corbyn is right
That's off top of my head. First three or four could be worth persuading against and GPs should try, after that one is away with the loons.
So you might be left with they have to choose between 'Piers Corbyn is right' and 'no holiday abroad for you this year or next'.
Regarding known prior infection, it should be viewed as equivalent to a single vaccine shot - which it more or less is.
About 42,000 Brits were killed in the Blitz, and around 140,000 have been killed by Covid.
Time to update the header.
140000 may have passed away within 28 days of testing positive for Covid 19, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they would all still be alive had Covid 19 never existed.
Excess deaths since March 2020 = circa 130k according to the Economist's figures.
Thing is there is no way we will ever know how many died because of Covid. Excess deaths is reasonable but is also susceptible to the base number variation. Death certification is not exact, and the within 28 days of a positive test is an approximation that gives quick numbers. Besides, I suspect there are a lot of deaths from other things that are exacerbated by Covid, but won’t be ascribed to it, such as depression leading to suicide, undiagnosed cancers and so on.
Surprised GCHQ isn’t using AWS already. I’d be curious to know what their mitigation is for the unavailability of the service. If I were a hostile foreign power, I could do a lot of harm by interrupting AWS. Even a few moments might be enough.
What they’ll actually be contracting, is an Amazon-based data centre or two, rather than using the services the rest of us use. The spooks will have their own massive leased lines into them, they won’t be connected to the public internet, except for the incoming stream of information they’ll be collecting.
OT linkedin just showed me a job advert for a sys admin at the Home Office, which at a guess is at least £20,000 below market rates. That pension must sure be attractive, and there's an outside chance you'll score a signed photo of Priti Patel.
ETA they are advertising £30-£38k; the guesswork is in the market rate.
Sysadmin is one of those roles where I'd rather pay £120k for the right person, than pay 3 x £35k for people with the right qualifications.
Oh, very much so - but try explaining that one to the civil service, with their rigid pay scales and fetishisation of worthless pieces of paper.
If you want a laugh, try and find the job description. I expect the main competencies will be nothing to do with the actual job.
Hell yeah. HR departments and practices are the bane of IT guys everywhere.
It was always a running joke, that it would take a month for companies to start posting job ads asking for a decade of experience, in any newly-announced technology or programming language.
One company I worked for diid that, literally.
Since the post required X experience, the job spec we sent up the line was reworked to include X years of Java development. At the time, the history of Java was less than X.....
This is hyperbole. I made the decision to get vaccinated. But I'm not going to poor scorn on anyone who doesn't. Certainly not for 'not understanding science' - almost no-one, on either side of the argument, has read the relevant studies. At best, we have read second or third hand accounts. I don't fully understand what the motivations of antivaxxers are, but I doubt they are callousness. Let's not try to demonise people who have reached different conclusions. Not least because it doesn't tend to work.
My list of anti-vax reasons that seem to come across to me:
* Not sure about long term safety of something new * It doesn't work, I know a bloke who was vaxed and is now dead. * No need as I have had covid * No need as I am young/healthy/never had flu etc * Don't trust doctors * Don't trust the government * The vax is all about money for Big Pharma otherwise why boosters? * Covid doesn't exist * Piers Corbyn is right
That's off top of my head. First three or four could be worth persuading against and GPs should try, after that one is away with the loons.
So you might be left with they have to choose between 'Piers Corbyn is right' and 'no holiday abroad for you this year or next'.
I know very few anti-vaxxers, but the ones I know are conspiracy theorists about other things too, and they are wrong about lots of things.
If you are looking for a non crazy reason for being ant vax, might it be that lots of people who work for the NHS (ITV says 100,000) have refused the vaccine, and they know more than I do and can't all be wrong?
Making a quip to a group of junior school kids that went down well.
He seems reasonably well-briefed for this. Cow-burping not cow-farting. Seaweed for cows. Breeding less carbon generating cows.
I quite like the "more polite cows" that burp less.
I think the problem with quote-mining plus finger-pointing is that it crowds out attempted critiques to the status of twitter trivia, and gives BJ a free pass.
Personally, I rather more concerned that WWF are being given such a platform.
OT linkedin just showed me a job advert for a sys admin at the Home Office, which at a guess is at least £20,000 below market rates. That pension must sure be attractive, and there's an outside chance you'll score a signed photo of Priti Patel.
ETA they are advertising £30-£38k; the guesswork is in the market rate.
The comparison between vaccine refusers and blackout breakers is not one that I would advocate.
The vaccine refusers are mainly putting themselves at risk. This is creating a burden on the NHS but as people have pointed out, this is true for many avoidable health problems. There are benefits of the vaccine in reducing the spread and transmissability of the virus, but these are not absolute; the virus can still spread even when people are vaccinated; so this is not a good justification for compelling people to take the jabs.
The most convincing way of getting the hesitant to get vaccinated is that of self interest. Get the vaccine to protect yourself. Forcing people to take the vaccine by way of extreme social pressure or excluding them from society if they fail to do so may get a few more to do so, but is also fuelling distrust in our political system and conspiracy theories; which are themselves extremely dangerous.
The best way of countering the conspiracy theories prevalent amongst anti vaxxers is looking at the governments yellow card scheme. There is a transparent system for reporting adverse reactions. That would not exist if there was a grand conspiracy in place. It exists alongside data that reports deaths and hospitalisations associated with Covid, which show that these are overwhelmingly amongst those who are not vaccinated.
About 42,000 Brits were killed in the Blitz, and around 140,000 have been killed by Covid.
Time to update the header.
140000 may have passed away within 28 days of testing positive for Covid 19, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they would all still be alive had Covid 19 never existed.
Excess deaths since March 2020 = circa 130k according to the Economist's figures.
Thing is there is no way we will ever know how many died because of Covid. Excess deaths is reasonable but is also susceptible to the base number variation. Death certification is not exact, and the within 28 days of a positive test is an approximation that gives quick numbers. Besides, I suspect there are a lot of deaths from other things that are exacerbated by Covid, but won’t be ascribed to it, such as depression leading to suicide, undiagnosed cancers and so on.
About 42,000 Brits were killed in the Blitz, and around 140,000 have been killed by Covid.
Time to update the header.
140000 may have passed away within 28 days of testing positive for Covid 19, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they would all still be alive had Covid 19 never existed.
Excess deaths since March 2020 = circa 130k according to the Economist's figures.
Thing is there is no way we will ever know how many died because of Covid. Excess deaths is reasonable but is also susceptible to the base number variation. Death certification is not exact, and the within 28 days of a positive test is an approximation that gives quick numbers. Besides, I suspect there are a lot of deaths from other things that are exacerbated by Covid, but won’t be ascribed to it, such as depression leading to suicide, undiagnosed cancers and so on.
About 42,000 Brits were killed in the Blitz, and around 140,000 have been killed by Covid.
Time to update the header.
140000 may have passed away within 28 days of testing positive for Covid 19, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they would all still be alive had Covid 19 never existed.
Excess deaths since March 2020 = circa 130k according to the Economist's figures.
Thing is there is no way we will ever know how many died because of Covid. Excess deaths is reasonable but is also susceptible to the base number variation. Death certification is not exact, and the within 28 days of a positive test is an approximation that gives quick numbers. Besides, I suspect there are a lot of deaths from other things that are exacerbated by Covid, but won’t be ascribed to it, such as depression leading to suicide, undiagnosed cancers and so on.
About 42,000 Brits were killed in the Blitz, and around 140,000 have been killed by Covid.
Time to update the header.
140000 may have passed away within 28 days of testing positive for Covid 19, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they would all still be alive had Covid 19 never existed.
Excess deaths since March 2020 = circa 130k according to the Economist's figures.
Thing is there is no way we will ever know how many died because of Covid. Excess deaths is reasonable but is also susceptible to the base number variation. Death certification is not exact, and the within 28 days of a positive test is an approximation that gives quick numbers. Besides, I suspect there are a lot of deaths from other things that are exacerbated by Covid, but won’t be ascribed to it, such as depression leading to suicide, undiagnosed cancers and so on.
OT linkedin just showed me a job advert for a sys admin at the Home Office, which at a guess is at least £20,000 below market rates. That pension must sure be attractive, and there's an outside chance you'll score a signed photo of Priti Patel.
ETA they are advertising £30-£38k; the guesswork is in the market rate.
Could be a honeypot, the only reason a competent sysadmin would take a job like that would be for the espionnage opportunities.
See my earlier post. We are putting all our national secrets on Amazon, under the control of a foreign power. Espionage is dead. Otoh, there's still Priti's signed photo.
Non paywall - GCGQ has been using it for several years - data storage will be in UK:
Sometimes it’s better to develop systems yourself, and sometimes it’s better to buy them in.
I’ll take a good guess that the British system is doing better than the French system, a few years down the line.
The UK contract will be watertight with regard to data storage and encryption. Amazon are big players in the enterprise IT market.
It's also very difficult to escape AWS, GCP or Azure. Loads of "independent" cloud operators turn out to be resellers of those three.
Additionally there will be features on AWS that would be either expensive or impossible to build out. Stuff like Sagemaker for rapid ML modelling will be seen as a huge advantage of using AWS over a homegrown solution because we simply lack the firepower to hire the best AI people to build rapid ML for a single client cloud computing company.
There has been a trade off in the security vs capability equation, no doubt. I guess the SiS feel that AWS is still very secure and gives them a lot more capability than having a 100% secure in house system. The French may end up regretting going down their own path, cloud computing is extremely investment heavy and a lot of the time for very little return until it has been scaled.
Only recently we were either praising British AI know-how or lamenting that it was all being bought up by Americans.
And on the hosting front, what is so complex? A cloud datacentre is little more than a warehouse filled with computers running more-or-less open source software. France's main problem will be designing new logos and translating documentation into French. Of course, the computer hardware inside the French or putative British datacentres will be American (or Chinese). That's not the point.
But yes, we probably are saving a couple of hundred million in upfront investment but it would be investment. More British jobs. Less of a trade deficit. Not to mention that it will be the same argument when the new NHS systems are to be handed over to American companies, along with every other government (and indeed private sector) system because there is no alternative if we never invest in an alternative.
This is hyperbole. I made the decision to get vaccinated. But I'm not going to poor scorn on anyone who doesn't. Certainly not for 'not understanding science' - almost no-one, on either side of the argument, has read the relevant studies. At best, we have read second or third hand accounts. I don't fully understand what the motivations of antivaxxers are, but I doubt they are callousness. Let's not try to demonise people who have reached different conclusions. Not least because it doesn't tend to work.
My list of anti-vax reasons that seem to come across to me:
* Not sure about long term safety of something new * It doesn't work, I know a bloke who was vaxed and is now dead. * No need as I have had covid * No need as I am young/healthy/never had flu etc * Don't trust doctors * Don't trust the government * The vax is all about money for Big Pharma otherwise why boosters? * Covid doesn't exist * Piers Corbyn is right
That's off top of my head. First three or four could be worth persuading against and GPs should try, after that one is away with the loons.
So you might be left with they have to choose between 'Piers Corbyn is right' and 'no holiday abroad for you this year or next'.
I know very few anti-vaxxers, but the ones I know are conspiracy theorists about other things too, and they are wrong about lots of things.
If you are looking for a non crazy reason for being ant vax, might it be that lots of people who work for the NHS (ITV says 100,000) have refused the vaccine, and they know more than I do and can't all be wrong?
Dunno. I suspect the apparent large number of NHS refusers is just another example of % of very large number syndrome. NHS is a massive employer.
Alternatively, medical people might be more sceptical of the speed of the clinical trials than the public in general.
About 42,000 Brits were killed in the Blitz, and around 140,000 have been killed by Covid.
Time to update the header.
140000 may have passed away within 28 days of testing positive for Covid 19, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they would all still be alive had Covid 19 never existed.
Excess deaths since March 2020 = circa 130k according to the Economist's figures.
Thing is there is no way we will ever know how many died because of Covid. Excess deaths is reasonable but is also susceptible to the base number variation. Death certification is not exact, and the within 28 days of a positive test is an approximation that gives quick numbers. Besides, I suspect there are a lot of deaths from other things that are exacerbated by Covid, but won’t be ascribed to it, such as depression leading to suicide, undiagnosed cancers and so on.
The polls at the equivalent stage of Ed Miliband’s time as LotO. Can someone run them through Electoral Calculus please, and share with us what the result of the 2015 Election is going to be?
About 42,000 Brits were killed in the Blitz, and around 140,000 have been killed by Covid.
Time to update the header.
140000 may have passed away within 28 days of testing positive for Covid 19, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they would all still be alive had Covid 19 never existed.
Excess deaths since March 2020 = circa 130k according to the Economist's figures.
Thing is there is no way we will ever know how many died because of Covid. Excess deaths is reasonable but is also susceptible to the base number variation. Death certification is not exact, and the within 28 days of a positive test is an approximation that gives quick numbers. Besides, I suspect there are a lot of deaths from other things that are exacerbated by Covid, but won’t be ascribed to it, such as depression leading to suicide, undiagnosed cancers and so on.
For example, cooped up close to home means fewer opportunities to search out appropriate bridges, cliffs etc.
? I’m feeling suicidal but will just stop at home instead of topping myself cos otherwise I’d be breaking lockdown regs said no one ever.
In fact I believe it's been shown that small barriers (sometimes literally) which would not stop a determined person can have a surprisingly disincentive effect.
About 42,000 Brits were killed in the Blitz, and around 140,000 have been killed by Covid.
Time to update the header.
140000 may have passed away within 28 days of testing positive for Covid 19, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they would all still be alive had Covid 19 never existed.
Excess deaths since March 2020 = circa 130k according to the Economist's figures.
Thing is there is no way we will ever know how many died because of Covid. Excess deaths is reasonable but is also susceptible to the base number variation. Death certification is not exact, and the within 28 days of a positive test is an approximation that gives quick numbers. Besides, I suspect there are a lot of deaths from other things that are exacerbated by Covid, but won’t be ascribed to it, such as depression leading to suicide, undiagnosed cancers and so on.
For example, cooped up close to home means fewer opportunities to search out appropriate bridges, cliffs etc.
? I’m feeling suicidal but will just stop at home instead of topping myself cos otherwise I’d be breaking lockdown regs said no one ever.
So nobody ever jumped off a bridge while drunk and depressed in your world?
Haven’t a clue what point your trying to make, but yes, people in my world, friends and family, have killed themselves in various ways, including jumping off the Forth road bridge.
About 42,000 Brits were killed in the Blitz, and around 140,000 have been killed by Covid.
Time to update the header.
140000 may have passed away within 28 days of testing positive for Covid 19, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they would all still be alive had Covid 19 never existed.
Excess deaths since March 2020 = circa 130k according to the Economist's figures.
Thing is there is no way we will ever know how many died because of Covid. Excess deaths is reasonable but is also susceptible to the base number variation. Death certification is not exact, and the within 28 days of a positive test is an approximation that gives quick numbers. Besides, I suspect there are a lot of deaths from other things that are exacerbated by Covid, but won’t be ascribed to it, such as depression leading to suicide, undiagnosed cancers and so on.
For example, cooped up close to home means fewer opportunities to search out appropriate bridges, cliffs etc.
? I’m feeling suicidal but will just stop at home instead of topping myself cos otherwise I’d be breaking lockdown regs said no one ever.
AIUI there is an element of availability of opportunity in the risk. Killing yourself is not exactly like a project plan that you lay out and carry out. And suicidal feelings, or the decision / resolution to follow through on them, can wax and wane rather than be consistent.
As a society we've had a lot more conversations about mental health in the last 2 years, and I wonder whether that has made us more self-aware?
(I might be inclined to think there may have been too many, and that mental health problems are becoming the latest trendy talking point for slebs to be at the front of the stage.)
OT linkedin just showed me a job advert for a sys admin at the Home Office, which at a guess is at least £20,000 below market rates. That pension must sure be attractive, and there's an outside chance you'll score a signed photo of Priti Patel.
ETA they are advertising £30-£38k; the guesswork is in the market rate.
Could be a honeypot, the only reason a competent sysadmin would take a job like that would be for the espionnage opportunities.
See my earlier post. We are putting all our national secrets on Amazon, under the control of a foreign power. Espionage is dead. Otoh, there's still Priti's signed photo.
Non paywall - GCGQ has been using it for several years - data storage will be in UK:
Sometimes it’s better to develop systems yourself, and sometimes it’s better to buy them in.
I’ll take a good guess that the British system is doing better than the French system, a few years down the line.
The UK contract will be watertight with regard to data storage and encryption. Amazon are big players in the enterprise IT market.
It's also very difficult to escape AWS, GCP or Azure. Loads of "independent" cloud operators turn out to be resellers of those three.
Additionally there will be features on AWS that would be either expensive or impossible to build out. Stuff like Sagemaker for rapid ML modelling will be seen as a huge advantage of using AWS over a homegrown solution because we simply lack the firepower to hire the best AI people to build rapid ML for a single client cloud computing company.
There has been a trade off in the security vs capability equation, no doubt. I guess the SiS feel that AWS is still very secure and gives them a lot more capability than having a 100% secure in house system. The French may end up regretting going down their own path, cloud computing is extremely investment heavy and a lot of the time for very little return until it has been scaled.
Only recently we were either praising British AI know-how or lamenting that it was all being bought up by Americans.
And on the hosting front, what is so complex? A cloud datacentre is little more than a warehouse filled with computers running more-or-less open source software. France's main problem will be designing new logos and translating documentation into French. Of course, the computer hardware inside the French or putative British datacentres will be American (or Chinese). That's not the point.
But yes, we probably are saving a couple of hundred million in upfront investment but it would be investment. More British jobs. Less of a trade deficit. Not to mention that it will be the same argument when the new NHS systems are to be handed over to American companies, along with every other government (and indeed private sector) system because there is no alternative if we never invest in an alternative.
And security.
Yep - security - the cost of identifying rogue access / hacking attempts is so great that only AWS / Azure / GCP can afford to do it.
I've been here in the past with a large international firm, they basically have ended up on Azure with BYOK (Bring your own key) because nothing else scales. AWS and Azure are occasionally caught out but both spend billions on security, no-one else can compete in the arms race when the Chinese / Russians / North Koreans only need to hit lucky once in a million attempts.
Edit to add - both AWS and Azure have UK Government only sites - perfectly possible when the bill is big enough.
Do you have the right to stop the government injecting something into your body?
I am sure you do have the right, as does the government to take public health measures to protect the rest of us from the deniers
You have to be careful with this sort of thing. You may think this is ok, but you might inadvertently set a precedent for future governments.
The idea that you will be denied liberties unless you take government approved medicine for the greater good sounds like a bad scifi plot.
What absolute rubbish you talk sometimes. It sounds like an excellent sci-fi plot.
EDIT: I'm currently reading Brave New World
I was catching up with Dark Waters last night - I suppose it's the contrarian in me, but while a clear case is made that Dupont covered up the effects of teflon waste in drinking water, I felt the film goes OTT by implying that (a) teflon has a huge effect on the population and (b) 99% of the world has some teflon in their bloodstream so (in a narrative PS to the film) (c) activists are trying to get it banned worldwide. If 99% of us have some of it, clearly some of it isn't killing us all off. Net effect on me was to be slightly more inclined to ignore warnings about teflon. Overstated cases undermine real concerns.
It's one of those situations where we need a control world but sadly (happily?) haven't got one.
Who's to say that without Teflon even fewer people would have died. Who's to say that without taking your child out of school for two weeks instead of their achievements they might not have achieved still more. Who's to say that without masks Covid cases would have been higher/lower than they were with masks.
About 42,000 Brits were killed in the Blitz, and around 140,000 have been killed by Covid.
Time to update the header.
140000 may have passed away within 28 days of testing positive for Covid 19, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they would all still be alive had Covid 19 never existed.
Excess deaths since March 2020 = circa 130k according to the Economist's figures.
Thing is there is no way we will ever know how many died because of Covid. Excess deaths is reasonable but is also susceptible to the base number variation. Death certification is not exact, and the within 28 days of a positive test is an approximation that gives quick numbers. Besides, I suspect there are a lot of deaths from other things that are exacerbated by Covid, but won’t be ascribed to it, such as depression leading to suicide, undiagnosed cancers and so on.
For example, cooped up close to home means fewer opportunities to search out appropriate bridges, cliffs etc.
? I’m feeling suicidal but will just stop at home instead of topping myself cos otherwise I’d be breaking lockdown regs said no one ever.
So nobody ever jumped off a bridge while drunk and depressed in your world?
Haven’t a clue what point your trying to make, but yes, people in my world, friends and family, have killed themselves in various ways, including jumping off the Forth road bridge.
I'm saying a lot of suicides can be 'of opportunity' types rather than premeditated. Someone leaves a pub drunk and feeling depressed, then jumps off a bridge or into the river on the way home.
If the pubs are closed etc those 'opportunities' don't exist.
The polls at the equivalent stage of Ed Miliband’s time as LotO. Can someone run them through Electoral Calculus please, and share with us what the result of the 2015 Election is going to be?
LOL!
The ironic thing is that during that period Ed Miliband had bigger poll leads than Corbyn ever got and Starmer ever has but he also failed to do as well as Corbyn in 2017 in 2015 even if he did better than Corbyn did in 2019
This is hyperbole. I made the decision to get vaccinated. But I'm not going to poor scorn on anyone who doesn't. Certainly not for 'not understanding science' - almost no-one, on either side of the argument, has read the relevant studies. At best, we have read second or third hand accounts. I don't fully understand what the motivations of antivaxxers are, but I doubt they are callousness. Let's not try to demonise people who have reached different conclusions. Not least because it doesn't tend to work.
My list of anti-vax reasons that seem to come across to me:
* Not sure about long term safety of something new * It doesn't work, I know a bloke who was vaxed and is now dead. * No need as I have had covid * No need as I am young/healthy/never had flu etc * Don't trust doctors * Don't trust the government * The vax is all about money for Big Pharma otherwise why boosters? * Covid doesn't exist * Piers Corbyn is right
That's off top of my head. First three or four could be worth persuading against and GPs should try, after that one is away with the loons.
So you might be left with they have to choose between 'Piers Corbyn is right' and 'no holiday abroad for you this year or next'.
I know very few anti-vaxxers, but the ones I know are conspiracy theorists about other things too, and they are wrong about lots of things.
If you are looking for a non crazy reason for being ant vax, might it be that lots of people who work for the NHS (ITV says 100,000) have refused the vaccine, and they know more than I do and can't all be wrong?
Dunno. I suspect the apparent large number of NHS refusers is just another example of % of very large number syndrome. NHS is a massive employer.
Alternatively, medical people might be more sceptical of the speed of the clinical trials than the public in general.
I know many Doctors. A significant percentage smoke!
There is a focus on the “unacceptability” of 800-1,000 deaths per week for the UK. This number is taken completely out of context (about 12,000 people die here every week). “Unacceptability” is a moral judgment but the claim is asserted, rather than argued in ethical terms.
On a commercial level, it is stupid. Economically, it is self-defeating. As for secrecy, the first rule of spies is you don't hand over the keys to the kingdom to a foreign power. For all those reasons, the CIA will stick with Americans. Nothing to do with Little Englandism or Making America Great Again.
We put up with NOFORN (ie US citizens only) areas and a separate US only network on HMS QE so it's a bit late to be worrying about sovereignty.
Those USAF bases whose names start with "RAF" always make me laugh.
About 42,000 Brits were killed in the Blitz, and around 140,000 have been killed by Covid.
Time to update the header.
140000 may have passed away within 28 days of testing positive for Covid 19, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they would all still be alive had Covid 19 never existed.
Excess deaths since March 2020 = circa 130k according to the Economist's figures.
Thing is there is no way we will ever know how many died because of Covid. Excess deaths is reasonable but is also susceptible to the base number variation. Death certification is not exact, and the within 28 days of a positive test is an approximation that gives quick numbers. Besides, I suspect there are a lot of deaths from other things that are exacerbated by Covid, but won’t be ascribed to it, such as depression leading to suicide, undiagnosed cancers and so on.
For example, cooped up close to home means fewer opportunities to search out appropriate bridges, cliffs etc.
iirc someone posted on here that it was a false stat as there were no coroners courts to register as suicide or something along those lines.
I honestly don't know. I know it is said that suicide rates generally drop during wartimes.
One theory is that people who normally feel they are suffering uniquely from loneliness, fear, and other afflictions sometimes feel irrationally guilty as well ("how can I be so pathetic?"), and when the entire community has similar, justified fears, it doesn't feel nearly as bad. That's not a reason for any policy change and looks impossible to test reliably, but it's a possible contra-intuitive side-effect.
Anecdotally, I know someone who suffers from intermittent anxiety and depression who has got better over the last year - feels her issues have been put a bit in perspective by the concerns for the world as a whole.
OT linkedin just showed me a job advert for a sys admin at the Home Office, which at a guess is at least £20,000 below market rates. That pension must sure be attractive, and there's an outside chance you'll score a signed photo of Priti Patel.
ETA they are advertising £30-£38k; the guesswork is in the market rate.
This is hyperbole. I made the decision to get vaccinated. But I'm not going to poor scorn on anyone who doesn't. Certainly not for 'not understanding science' - almost no-one, on either side of the argument, has read the relevant studies. At best, we have read second or third hand accounts. I don't fully understand what the motivations of antivaxxers are, but I doubt they are callousness. Let's not try to demonise people who have reached different conclusions. Not least because it doesn't tend to work.
My list of anti-vax reasons that seem to come across to me:
* Not sure about long term safety of something new * It doesn't work, I know a bloke who was vaxed and is now dead. * No need as I have had covid * No need as I am young/healthy/never had flu etc * Don't trust doctors * Don't trust the government * The vax is all about money for Big Pharma otherwise why boosters? * Covid doesn't exist * Piers Corbyn is right
That's off top of my head. First three or four could be worth persuading against and GPs should try, after that one is away with the loons.
So you might be left with they have to choose between 'Piers Corbyn is right' and 'no holiday abroad for you this year or next'.
I know very few anti-vaxxers, but the ones I know are conspiracy theorists about other things too, and they are wrong about lots of things.
If you are looking for a non crazy reason for being ant vax, might it be that lots of people who work for the NHS (ITV says 100,000) have refused the vaccine, and they know more than I do and can't all be wrong?
I would be very interested to hear the reasoning of those 100,000. To add a personal anecdote, a woman I know who works in a care-home initially refused the vaccine. She fell into the first category of refuser in that she didn't want to take something that (to her mind) was so untested. I think it was being among the first that she objected to. She eventually got it, of course, because her concern was allayed.
I also have a great Uncle (never personally met the man though) on the other hand, who loves Piers Corbyn. I don't think you could ever convince him.
Even better, my brother works with a guy who proudly refuses to get it, because he can't be arsed but has said that he 'probably will' when it becomes inconvenient for him to not have it. I think this guy is in a, hopefully small, additional category of 'selfish pricks who don't want to inconvenience themselves by getting the vaccine', but perhaps I editorialise slightly...
About 42,000 Brits were killed in the Blitz, and around 140,000 have been killed by Covid.
Time to update the header.
140000 may have passed away within 28 days of testing positive for Covid 19, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they would all still be alive had Covid 19 never existed.
Excess deaths since March 2020 = circa 130k according to the Economist's figures.
Thing is there is no way we will ever know how many died because of Covid. Excess deaths is reasonable but is also susceptible to the base number variation. Death certification is not exact, and the within 28 days of a positive test is an approximation that gives quick numbers. Besides, I suspect there are a lot of deaths from other things that are exacerbated by Covid, but won’t be ascribed to it, such as depression leading to suicide, undiagnosed cancers and so on.
OT linkedin just showed me a job advert for a sys admin at the Home Office, which at a guess is at least £20,000 below market rates. That pension must sure be attractive, and there's an outside chance you'll score a signed photo of Priti Patel.
ETA they are advertising £30-£38k; the guesswork is in the market rate.
Could be a honeypot, the only reason a competent sysadmin would take a job like that would be for the espionnage opportunities.
See my earlier post. We are putting all our national secrets on Amazon, under the control of a foreign power. Espionage is dead. Otoh, there's still Priti's signed photo.
Non paywall - GCGQ has been using it for several years - data storage will be in UK:
Sometimes it’s better to develop systems yourself, and sometimes it’s better to buy them in.
I’ll take a good guess that the British system is doing better than the French system, a few years down the line.
The UK contract will be watertight with regard to data storage and encryption. Amazon are big players in the enterprise IT market.
It's also very difficult to escape AWS, GCP or Azure. Loads of "independent" cloud operators turn out to be resellers of those three.
Additionally there will be features on AWS that would be either expensive or impossible to build out. Stuff like Sagemaker for rapid ML modelling will be seen as a huge advantage of using AWS over a homegrown solution because we simply lack the firepower to hire the best AI people to build rapid ML for a single client cloud computing company.
There has been a trade off in the security vs capability equation, no doubt. I guess the SiS feel that AWS is still very secure and gives them a lot more capability than having a 100% secure in house system. The French may end up regretting going down their own path, cloud computing is extremely investment heavy and a lot of the time for very little return until it has been scaled.
Only recently we were either praising British AI know-how or lamenting that it was all being bought up by Americans.
And on the hosting front, what is so complex? A cloud datacentre is little more than a warehouse filled with computers running more-or-less open source software. France's main problem will be designing new logos and translating documentation into French. Of course, the computer hardware inside the French or putative British datacentres will be American (or Chinese). That's not the point.
But yes, we probably are saving a couple of hundred million in upfront investment but it would be investment. More British jobs. Less of a trade deficit. Not to mention that it will be the same argument when the new NHS systems are to be handed over to American companies, along with every other government (and indeed private sector) system because there is no alternative if we never invest in an alternative.
And security.
Yep - security - the cost of identifying rogue access / hacking attempts is so great that only AWS / Azure / GCP can afford to do it.
I've been here in the past with a large international firm, they basically have ended up on Azure with BYOK (Bring your own key) because nothing else scales. AWS and Azure are occasionally caught out but both spend billions on security, no-one else can compete in the arms race when the Chinese / Russians / North Koreans only need to hit lucky once in a million attempts.
Edit to add - both AWS and Azure have UK Government only sites - perfectly possible when the bill is big enough.
Actually I meant security in the sense of keeping British secrets secret from the Americans. Though in the particular case of GCHQ they are already hand-in-glove with, and heavily dependent on, the American NSA.
ETA you would hope internet access (where the bad guys lurk) will be limited but it is unlikely to be zero.
About 42,000 Brits were killed in the Blitz, and around 140,000 have been killed by Covid.
Time to update the header.
140000 may have passed away within 28 days of testing positive for Covid 19, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they would all still be alive had Covid 19 never existed.
Excess deaths since March 2020 = circa 130k according to the Economist's figures.
Thing is there is no way we will ever know how many died because of Covid. Excess deaths is reasonable but is also susceptible to the base number variation. Death certification is not exact, and the within 28 days of a positive test is an approximation that gives quick numbers. Besides, I suspect there are a lot of deaths from other things that are exacerbated by Covid, but won’t be ascribed to it, such as depression leading to suicide, undiagnosed cancers and so on.
For example, cooped up close to home means fewer opportunities to search out appropriate bridges, cliffs etc.
iirc someone posted on here that it was a false stat as there were no coroners courts to register as suicide or something along those lines.
I honestly don't know. I know it is said that suicide rates generally drop during wartimes.
One theory is that people who normally feel they are suffering uniquely from loneliness, fear, and other afflictions sometimes feel irrationally guilty as well ("how can I be so pathetic?"), and when the entire community has similar, justified fears, it doesn't feel nearly as bad. That's not a reason for any policy change and looks impossible to test reliably, but it's a possible contra-intuitive side-effect.
Anecdotally, I know someone who suffers from intermittent anxiety and depression who has got better over the last year - feels her issues have been put a bit in perspective by the concerns for the world as a whole.
There is a bit of an analogy here with banking bonuses. If you pay X £100K and Y £200K and X finds out, X feels incredibly disgruntled. But if everyone gets zero, everyone feels as though they are in the same boat and less resentment.
The polls at the equivalent stage of Ed Miliband’s time as LotO. Can someone run them through Electoral Calculus please, and share with us what the result of the 2015 Election is going to be?
LOL!
The ironic thing is that during that period Ed Miliband had bigger poll leads than Corbyn ever got and Starmer ever has but he also failed to do as well as Corbyn in 2017 in 2015 even if he did better than Corbyn did in 2019
About 42,000 Brits were killed in the Blitz, and around 140,000 have been killed by Covid.
Time to update the header.
140000 may have passed away within 28 days of testing positive for Covid 19, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they would all still be alive had Covid 19 never existed.
Excess deaths since March 2020 = circa 130k according to the Economist's figures.
Thing is there is no way we will ever know how many died because of Covid. Excess deaths is reasonable but is also susceptible to the base number variation. Death certification is not exact, and the within 28 days of a positive test is an approximation that gives quick numbers. Besides, I suspect there are a lot of deaths from other things that are exacerbated by Covid, but won’t be ascribed to it, such as depression leading to suicide, undiagnosed cancers and so on.
For example, cooped up close to home means fewer opportunities to search out appropriate bridges, cliffs etc.
? I’m feeling suicidal but will just stop at home instead of topping myself cos otherwise I’d be breaking lockdown regs said no one ever.
AIUI there is an element of availability of opportunity in the risk. Killing yourself is not exactly like a project plan that you lay out and carry out. And suicidal feelings, or the decision / resolution to follow through on them, can wax and wane rather than be consistent.
Suicide can be exactly a project plan that you lay out and carry out, there isn’t a single template. I fail to see how COVID rules would add noticeably to existing restrictions on access to bridges, railway lines, medication, alcohol, ropes, razor blades etc.
About 42,000 Brits were killed in the Blitz, and around 140,000 have been killed by Covid.
Time to update the header.
140000 may have passed away within 28 days of testing positive for Covid 19, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they would all still be alive had Covid 19 never existed.
Excess deaths since March 2020 = circa 130k according to the Economist's figures.
Thing is there is no way we will ever know how many died because of Covid. Excess deaths is reasonable but is also susceptible to the base number variation. Death certification is not exact, and the within 28 days of a positive test is an approximation that gives quick numbers. Besides, I suspect there are a lot of deaths from other things that are exacerbated by Covid, but won’t be ascribed to it, such as depression leading to suicide, undiagnosed cancers and so on.
For example, cooped up close to home means fewer opportunities to search out appropriate bridges, cliffs etc.
? I’m feeling suicidal but will just stop at home instead of topping myself cos otherwise I’d be breaking lockdown regs said no one ever.
AIUI there is an element of availability of opportunity in the risk. Killing yourself is not exactly like a project plan that you lay out and carry out. And suicidal feelings, or the decision / resolution to follow through on them, can wax and wane rather than be consistent.
Suicide can be exactly a project plan that you lay out and carry out, there isn’t a single template. I fail to see how COVID rules would add noticeably to existing restrictions on access to bridges, railway lines, medication, alcohol, ropes, razor blades etc.
It can be but it can also be something they do in a moment of crisis with an opportunity before them, that they don't do if the circumstances are slightly different. Hence a lot of the things the Samaritans do.
If you change people's circumstances that can have a dramatic impact.
Do you have the right to stop the government injecting something into your body?
I am sure you do have the right, as does the government to take public health measures to protect the rest of us from the deniers
You have to be careful with this sort of thing. You may think this is ok, but you might inadvertently set a precedent for future governments.
The idea that you will be denied liberties unless you take government approved medicine for the greater good sounds like a bad scifi plot.
What absolute rubbish you talk sometimes. It sounds like an excellent sci-fi plot.
EDIT: I'm currently reading Brave New World
I was catching up with Dark Waters last night - I suppose it's the contrarian in me, but while a clear case is made that Dupont covered up the effects of teflon waste in drinking water, I felt the film goes OTT by implying that (a) teflon has a huge effect on the population and (b) 99% of the world has some teflon in their bloodstream so (in a narrative PS to the film) (c) activists are trying to get it banned worldwide. If 99% of us have some of it, clearly some of it isn't killing us all off. Net effect on me was to be slightly more inclined to ignore warnings about teflon. Overstated cases undermine real concerns.
There have been a lot of allegations about Teflon over the years, but no one has made any of them stick.
The polls at the equivalent stage of Ed Miliband’s time as LotO. Can someone run them through Electoral Calculus please, and share with us what the result of the 2015 Election is going to be?
LOL!
The ironic thing is that during that period Ed Miliband had bigger poll leads than Corbyn ever got and Starmer ever has but he also failed to do as well as Corbyn in 2017 in 2015 even if he did better than Corbyn did in 2019
A repackaged "But 2017". Speckled.
I'm putting that in my jotter pad. Cheers!
If Starmer repeated Corbyn's 2017 result he could well become PM, even if the Tories won most seats again.
Given the Tories already have 7 fewer seats in Scotland than May won in 2017 it is unlikely they would have enough seats even to form a government with the DUP if Starmer matched the 262 MPs Corbyn won then and got a hung parliament. Plus of course the DUP and NI Unionist MPs would demand the Irish Sea border is removed before doing any deal with Boris. So the way would be clear for Starmer to be PM with SNP and LD confidence and supply
About 42,000 Brits were killed in the Blitz, and around 140,000 have been killed by Covid.
Time to update the header.
140000 may have passed away within 28 days of testing positive for Covid 19, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they would all still be alive had Covid 19 never existed.
Excess deaths since March 2020 = circa 130k according to the Economist's figures.
Thing is there is no way we will ever know how many died because of Covid. Excess deaths is reasonable but is also susceptible to the base number variation. Death certification is not exact, and the within 28 days of a positive test is an approximation that gives quick numbers. Besides, I suspect there are a lot of deaths from other things that are exacerbated by Covid, but won’t be ascribed to it, such as depression leading to suicide, undiagnosed cancers and so on.
For example, cooped up close to home means fewer opportunities to search out appropriate bridges, cliffs etc.
iirc someone posted on here that it was a false stat as there were no coroners courts to register as suicide or something along those lines.
I honestly don't know. I know it is said that suicide rates generally drop during wartimes.
One theory is that people who normally feel they are suffering uniquely from loneliness, fear, and other afflictions sometimes feel irrationally guilty as well ("how can I be so pathetic?"), and when the entire community has similar, justified fears, it doesn't feel nearly as bad. That's not a reason for any policy change and looks impossible to test reliably, but it's a possible contra-intuitive side-effect.
Anecdotally, I know someone who suffers from intermittent anxiety and depression who has got better over the last year - feels her issues have been put a bit in perspective by the concerns for the world as a whole.
For me one of the "learnings" (copyright Borat) from Covid has been about social networks / contact. Something that I have neglected - partly through being self-sufficient anyway (something to do with commuting to school for 10 years?), partly perhaps because I was reduced to a household of one just pre-lockdown.
The time I had this previously was moving to London with only one contact social some years ago, as an IT contractor in the CoL. The CoL is a very strangely unstable place to work if contracting.
About 42,000 Brits were killed in the Blitz, and around 140,000 have been killed by Covid.
Time to update the header.
140000 may have passed away within 28 days of testing positive for Covid 19, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they would all still be alive had Covid 19 never existed.
Excess deaths since March 2020 = circa 130k according to the Economist's figures.
Thing is there is no way we will ever know how many died because of Covid. Excess deaths is reasonable but is also susceptible to the base number variation. Death certification is not exact, and the within 28 days of a positive test is an approximation that gives quick numbers. Besides, I suspect there are a lot of deaths from other things that are exacerbated by Covid, but won’t be ascribed to it, such as depression leading to suicide, undiagnosed cancers and so on.
For example, cooped up close to home means fewer opportunities to search out appropriate bridges, cliffs etc.
? I’m feeling suicidal but will just stop at home instead of topping myself cos otherwise I’d be breaking lockdown regs said no one ever.
AIUI there is an element of availability of opportunity in the risk. Killing yourself is not exactly like a project plan that you lay out and carry out. And suicidal feelings, or the decision / resolution to follow through on them, can wax and wane rather than be consistent.
Suicide can be exactly a project plan that you lay out and carry out, there isn’t a single template. I fail to see how COVID rules would add noticeably to existing restrictions on access to bridges, railway lines, medication, alcohol, ropes, razor blades etc.
Particularly since, in the UK, you were allowed out once a day, and even taking the advice over-literally your exercise could last an hour. Most people would have a bridge etc. within an hour's walk.
Good morning everyone. If there is a public sector pay rise, does that mean public sector pensions will rise too?
More to do with CPI surely?
I think most are no longer final salary, but rather career average earnings, so there will be some rise for new pension takers. I am counting the days...
I'm one of the later ones on final salary. And I was lucky enough to get an upgrade six months before I retired. I did have a few more responsibilities though, but heigh ho.....
Which was a huge ‘thing’ across the public sector for decades, and which has led to the massive liabilities we see in government-backed pensions today.
Give the guy a £10k pay rise for his last six months, and pay an extra £5k a year out in pension for the next 30 years.
It’s the same as the non-exec directors setting boardroom pay, when they all sit on each others’ boards and all behave the same way to each other.
For an obvious reason I'm not inclined to cynicism about MPs, but I was pleasantly surprised in 1996 to find that the job I was seeking at a pay rate of £34K had suddenly been voted to be worth £44K by the outgoing Parliament, many of whom were headed for pensions based on final salary.
To be fair I think that there had been a long period of zero rises and there's never a good moment to give MPs a popular pay rise. But possibly the impact on pensions on people about to lose their seats crossed a few minds too.
OT linkedin just showed me a job advert for a sys admin at the Home Office, which at a guess is at least £20,000 below market rates. That pension must sure be attractive, and there's an outside chance you'll score a signed photo of Priti Patel.
ETA they are advertising £30-£38k; the guesswork is in the market rate.
That job title covers an awful lot of different jobs. Robert has it right, you need to find the right person for what’s increasingly becoming a key role for businesses, and certainly a key risk if you screw it up.
OT linkedin just showed me a job advert for a sys admin at the Home Office, which at a guess is at least £20,000 below market rates. That pension must sure be attractive, and there's an outside chance you'll score a signed photo of Priti Patel.
ETA they are advertising £30-£38k; the guesswork is in the market rate.
Could be a honeypot, the only reason a competent sysadmin would take a job like that would be for the espionnage opportunities.
See my earlier post. We are putting all our national secrets on Amazon, under the control of a foreign power. Espionage is dead. Otoh, there's still Priti's signed photo.
Non paywall - GCGQ has been using it for several years - data storage will be in UK:
Sometimes it’s better to develop systems yourself, and sometimes it’s better to buy them in.
I’ll take a good guess that the British system is doing better than the French system, a few years down the line.
The UK contract will be watertight with regard to data storage and encryption. Amazon are big players in the enterprise IT market.
It's also very difficult to escape AWS, GCP or Azure. Loads of "independent" cloud operators turn out to be resellers of those three.
Additionally there will be features on AWS that would be either expensive or impossible to build out. Stuff like Sagemaker for rapid ML modelling will be seen as a huge advantage of using AWS over a homegrown solution because we simply lack the firepower to hire the best AI people to build rapid ML for a single client cloud computing company.
There has been a trade off in the security vs capability equation, no doubt. I guess the SiS feel that AWS is still very secure and gives them a lot more capability than having a 100% secure in house system. The French may end up regretting going down their own path, cloud computing is extremely investment heavy and a lot of the time for very little return until it has been scaled.
Only recently we were either praising British AI know-how or lamenting that it was all being bought up by Americans.
And on the hosting front, what is so complex? A cloud datacentre is little more than a warehouse filled with computers running more-or-less open source software. France's main problem will be designing new logos and translating documentation into French. Of course, the computer hardware inside the French or putative British datacentres will be American (or Chinese). That's not the point.
But yes, we probably are saving a couple of hundred million in upfront investment but it would be investment. More British jobs. Less of a trade deficit. Not to mention that it will be the same argument when the new NHS systems are to be handed over to American companies, along with every other government (and indeed private sector) system because there is no alternative if we never invest in an alternative.
And security.
Yep - security - the cost of identifying rogue access / hacking attempts is so great that only AWS / Azure / GCP can afford to do it.
I've been here in the past with a large international firm, they basically have ended up on Azure with BYOK (Bring your own key) because nothing else scales. AWS and Azure are occasionally caught out but both spend billions on security, no-one else can compete in the arms race when the Chinese / Russians / North Koreans only need to hit lucky once in a million attempts.
Edit to add - both AWS and Azure have UK Government only sites - perfectly possible when the bill is big enough.
Actually I meant security in the sense of keeping British secrets secret from the Americans. Though in the particular case of GCHQ they are already hand-in-glove with, and heavily dependent on, the American NSA.
ETA you would hope internet access (where the bad guys lurk) will be limited but it is unlikely to be zero.
Once you move from zero to any internet access, and that is any internet access, anywhere on the network - the genie is already out of the bottle. Your biggest issue then is attack vectors used before you discover they exist and that is a numbers game where again you need to be really big with significant staff numbers to know them, identify new ones and resolve them.
The polls at the equivalent stage of Ed Miliband’s time as LotO. Can someone run them through Electoral Calculus please, and share with us what the result of the 2015 Election is going to be?
LOL!
The ironic thing is that during that period Ed Miliband had bigger poll leads than Corbyn ever got and Starmer ever has but he also failed to do as well as Corbyn in 2017 in 2015 even if he did better than Corbyn did in 2019
To which you need to ask yourself
Did Corbyn do well in 2017 or did May do disastrously (even though the reason for the disaster is something that still needs to be fixed)
OT linkedin just showed me a job advert for a sys admin at the Home Office, which at a guess is at least £20,000 below market rates. That pension must sure be attractive, and there's an outside chance you'll score a signed photo of Priti Patel.
ETA they are advertising £30-£38k; the guesswork is in the market rate.
Could be a honeypot, the only reason a competent sysadmin would take a job like that would be for the espionnage opportunities.
See my earlier post. We are putting all our national secrets on Amazon, under the control of a foreign power. Espionage is dead. Otoh, there's still Priti's signed photo.
Non paywall - GCGQ has been using it for several years - data storage will be in UK:
Sometimes it’s better to develop systems yourself, and sometimes it’s better to buy them in.
I’ll take a good guess that the British system is doing better than the French system, a few years down the line.
The UK contract will be watertight with regard to data storage and encryption. Amazon are big players in the enterprise IT market.
It's also very difficult to escape AWS, GCP or Azure. Loads of "independent" cloud operators turn out to be resellers of those three.
Additionally there will be features on AWS that would be either expensive or impossible to build out. Stuff like Sagemaker for rapid ML modelling will be seen as a huge advantage of using AWS over a homegrown solution because we simply lack the firepower to hire the best AI people to build rapid ML for a single client cloud computing company.
There has been a trade off in the security vs capability equation, no doubt. I guess the SiS feel that AWS is still very secure and gives them a lot more capability than having a 100% secure in house system. The French may end up regretting going down their own path, cloud computing is extremely investment heavy and a lot of the time for very little return until it has been scaled.
Only recently we were either praising British AI know-how or lamenting that it was all being bought up by Americans.
And on the hosting front, what is so complex? A cloud datacentre is little more than a warehouse filled with computers running more-or-less open source software. France's main problem will be designing new logos and translating documentation into French. Of course, the computer hardware inside the French or putative British datacentres will be American (or Chinese). That's not the point.
But yes, we probably are saving a couple of hundred million in upfront investment but it would be investment. More British jobs. Less of a trade deficit. Not to mention that it will be the same argument when the new NHS systems are to be handed over to American companies, along with every other government (and indeed private sector) system because there is no alternative if we never invest in an alternative.
And security.
Yep - security - the cost of identifying rogue access / hacking attempts is so great that only AWS / Azure / GCP can afford to do it.
I've been here in the past with a large international firm, they basically have ended up on Azure with BYOK (Bring your own key) because nothing else scales. AWS and Azure are occasionally caught out but both spend billions on security, no-one else can compete in the arms race when the Chinese / Russians / North Koreans only need to hit lucky once in a million attempts.
Edit to add - both AWS and Azure have UK Government only sites - perfectly possible when the bill is big enough.
Actually I meant security in the sense of keeping British secrets secret from the Americans. Though in the particular case of GCHQ they are already hand-in-glove with, and heavily dependent on, the American NSA.
ETA you would hope internet access (where the bad guys lurk) will be limited but it is unlikely to be zero.
Once you move from zero to any internet access, and that is any internet access, anywhere on the network - the genie is already out of the bottle. Your biggest issue then is attack vectors used before you discover they exist and that is a numbers game where again you need to be really big with significant staff numbers to know them, identify new ones and resolve them.
Exactly.
I'd be far more worried that a badly designed "sovereign" system could be attacked by hostile states like the Russians and Chinese, than that a well designed Amazon system might be attacked by an ally like the Americans.
Good morning everyone. If there is a public sector pay rise, does that mean public sector pensions will rise too?
More to do with CPI surely?
I think most are no longer final salary, but rather career average earnings, so there will be some rise for new pension takers. I am counting the days...
I'm one of the later ones on final salary. And I was lucky enough to get an upgrade six months before I retired. I did have a few more responsibilities though, but heigh ho.....
Which was a huge ‘thing’ across the public sector for decades, and which has led to the massive liabilities we see in government-backed pensions today.
Give the guy a £10k pay rise for his last six months, and pay an extra £5k a year out in pension for the next 30 years.
It’s the same as the non-exec directors setting boardroom pay, when they all sit on each others’ boards and all behave the same way to each other.
For an obvious reason I'm not inclined to cynicism about MPs, but I was pleasantly surprised in 1996 to find that the job I was seeking at a pay rate of £34K had suddenly been voted to be worth £44K by the outgoing Parliament, many of whom were headed for pensions based on final salary.
To be fair I think that there had been a long period of zero rises and there's never a good moment to give MPs a popular pay rise. But possibly the impact on pensions on people about to lose their seats crossed a few minds too.
Indeed, you get a good pension as an MP as you do in most public sector roles compared to the private sector, even if you can earn more in the private sector at the top end doing the same role.
Despite the occasional moan MPs pay is not that bad either now and puts them in the top 5% of earners but of course public service should be the motivator not pay
OT linkedin just showed me a job advert for a sys admin at the Home Office, which at a guess is at least £20,000 below market rates. That pension must sure be attractive, and there's an outside chance you'll score a signed photo of Priti Patel.
ETA they are advertising £30-£38k; the guesswork is in the market rate.
That job title covers an awful lot of different jobs. Robert has it right, you need to find the right person for what’s increasingly becoming a key role for businesses, and certainly a key risk if you screw it up.
It's similar to "DBA" - a role that be anything from the junior script monkey, to a grey beard who is on personal terms with all the electrons in database and can save the world by knowing *everything*
You need the later kind of people - and they are worth multiple 100K.
I can tell you stories of panics, where a bank was in the shit because of X. So they ring Dave, in the middle of the night. Dave, sleepily says "FFS. Do this - {fixes}. Why are you bothering me?". So the particular system is up and and the bank doesn't loose x hours of trading. Which pays Dave's salary. For the next couple of centuries.
On a commercial level, it is stupid. Economically, it is self-defeating. As for secrecy, the first rule of spies is you don't hand over the keys to the kingdom to a foreign power. For all those reasons, the CIA will stick with Americans. Nothing to do with Little Englandism or Making America Great Again.
We put up with NOFORN (ie US citizens only) areas and a separate US only network on HMS QE so it's a bit late to be worrying about sovereignty.
Those USAF bases whose names start with "RAF" always make me laugh.
6,000 service personnel at 'RAF' Lakenheath with one RAF officer. One day he hopes to get the wifi password.
The polls at the equivalent stage of Ed Miliband’s time as LotO. Can someone run them through Electoral Calculus please, and share with us what the result of the 2015 Election is going to be?
LOL!
The ironic thing is that during that period Ed Miliband had bigger poll leads than Corbyn ever got and Starmer ever has but he also failed to do as well as Corbyn in 2017 in 2015 even if he did better than Corbyn did in 2019
To which you need to ask yourself
Did Corbyn do well in 2017 or did May do disastrously (even though the reason for the disaster is something that still needs to be fixed)
A bit of both, one thing Boris correctly learnt was not to consider anything like her dementia tax ever.
Starmer does not rally the left as much as Corbyn but he also does not turn off the centrist vote either like Corbyn did, some Remainers lent their votes to Corbyn in 2017 to prevent a hard Brexit, then when he got close switched to LD in 2011 but are back voting Labour again now Starmer has replaced him.
Good morning everyone. If there is a public sector pay rise, does that mean public sector pensions will rise too?
More to do with CPI surely?
I think most are no longer final salary, but rather career average earnings, so there will be some rise for new pension takers. I am counting the days...
I'm one of the later ones on final salary. And I was lucky enough to get an upgrade six months before I retired. I did have a few more responsibilities though, but heigh ho.....
Which was a huge ‘thing’ across the public sector for decades, and which has led to the massive liabilities we see in government-backed pensions today.
Give the guy a £10k pay rise for his last six months, and pay an extra £5k a year out in pension for the next 30 years.
It’s the same as the non-exec directors setting boardroom pay, when they all sit on each others’ boards and all behave the same way to each other.
For an obvious reason I'm not inclined to cynicism about MPs, but I was pleasantly surprised in 1996 to find that the job I was seeking at a pay rate of £34K had suddenly been voted to be worth £44K by the outgoing Parliament, many of whom were headed for pensions based on final salary.
To be fair I think that there had been a long period of zero rises and there's never a good moment to give MPs a popular pay rise. But possibly the impact on pensions on people about to lose their seats crossed a few minds too.
Ha, I didn’t know that one.
MPs, as you know, have one of the best pension schemes in the country - and I’m actually okay with that, I don’t want to see former MPs trying to find all sorts of dodgy ways to earn money in lobbying jobs - hello Nick Clegg - but think that your own path in advocating animal welfare standards is a great example of how retired MPs should behave.
On a commercial level, it is stupid. Economically, it is self-defeating. As for secrecy, the first rule of spies is you don't hand over the keys to the kingdom to a foreign power. For all those reasons, the CIA will stick with Americans. Nothing to do with Little Englandism or Making America Great Again.
We put up with NOFORN (ie US citizens only) areas and a separate US only network on HMS QE so it's a bit late to be worrying about sovereignty.
Those USAF bases whose names start with "RAF" always make me laugh.
6,000 service personnel at 'RAF' Lakenheath with one RAF officer. One day he hopes to get the wifi password.
On the flip side, we have UK scientists in the labs where the US nuclear weapons are designed.
Who participate in the design and manufacturing to the point that Chuck Hansen suggested that the US nuclear weapons program is really a joint UK/US program.
OT linkedin just showed me a job advert for a sys admin at the Home Office, which at a guess is at least £20,000 below market rates. That pension must sure be attractive, and there's an outside chance you'll score a signed photo of Priti Patel.
ETA they are advertising £30-£38k; the guesswork is in the market rate.
That job title covers an awful lot of different jobs. Robert has it right, you need to find the right person for what’s increasingly becoming a key role for businesses, and certainly a key risk if you screw it up.
It's similar to "DBA" - a role that be anything from the junior script monkey, to a grey beard who is on personal terms with all the electrons in database and can save the world by knowing *everything*
You need the later kind of people - and they are worth multiple 100K.
I can tell you stories of panics, where a bank was in the shit because of X. So they ring Dave, in the middle of the night. Dave, sleepily says "FFS. Do this - {fixes}. Why are you bothering me?". So the particular system is up and and the bank doesn't loose x hours of trading. Which pays Dave's salary. For the next couple of centuries.
I know fuck all about IT but I recall one torrid episode when the nerd who looks after the IT at my wife's dental practice went full Hikikomori so I was pressganged into service. So I just started googling answers to the problems and looking on forums. Then I realised that about 95% of the people who were getting paid to do this WERE DOING EXACTLY THE SAME FUCKING THING. The 'industry' seems to have a small number of people who actually know what they are doing and another much larger group who are searching the Internet for solutions provided by the first group.
Do you have the right to stop the government injecting something into your body?
I am sure you do have the right, as does the government to take public health measures to protect the rest of us from the deniers
You have to be careful with this sort of thing. You may think this is ok, but you might inadvertently set a precedent for future governments.
The idea that you will be denied liberties unless you take government approved medicine for the greater good sounds like a bad scifi plot.
What absolute rubbish you talk sometimes. It sounds like an excellent sci-fi plot.
EDIT: I'm currently reading Brave New World
I was catching up with Dark Waters last night - I suppose it's the contrarian in me, but while a clear case is made that Dupont covered up the effects of teflon waste in drinking water, I felt the film goes OTT by implying that (a) teflon has a huge effect on the population and (b) 99% of the world has some teflon in their bloodstream so (in a narrative PS to the film) (c) activists are trying to get it banned worldwide. If 99% of us have some of it, clearly some of it isn't killing us all off. Net effect on me was to be slightly more inclined to ignore warnings about teflon. Overstated cases undermine real concerns.
There have been a lot of allegations about Teflon over the years, but no one has made any of them stick.
The allegations tend to slide off, when you look at them at an angle...
The polls at the equivalent stage of Ed Miliband’s time as LotO. Can someone run them through Electoral Calculus please, and share with us what the result of the 2015 Election is going to be?
LOL!
The ironic thing is that during that period Ed Miliband had bigger poll leads than Corbyn ever got and Starmer ever has but he also failed to do as well as Corbyn in 2017 in 2015 even if he did better than Corbyn did in 2019
To which you need to ask yourself
Did Corbyn do well in 2017 or did May do disastrously (even though the reason for the disaster is something that still needs to be fixed)
A bit of both, one thing Boris correctly learnt was not to consider anything like her dementia tax ever.
Starmer does not rally the left as much as Corbyn but he also does not turn off the centrist vote either like Corbyn did, some Remainers lent their votes to Corbyn in 2017 to prevent a hard Brexit, then when he got close switched to LD in 2011 but are back voting Labour again now Starmer has replaced him.
OT linkedin just showed me a job advert for a sys admin at the Home Office, which at a guess is at least £20,000 below market rates. That pension must sure be attractive, and there's an outside chance you'll score a signed photo of Priti Patel.
ETA they are advertising £30-£38k; the guesswork is in the market rate.
That job title covers an awful lot of different jobs. Robert has it right, you need to find the right person for what’s increasingly becoming a key role for businesses, and certainly a key risk if you screw it up.
It's similar to "DBA" - a role that be anything from the junior script monkey, to a grey beard who is on personal terms with all the electrons in database and can save the world by knowing *everything*
You need the later kind of people - and they are worth multiple 100K.
I can tell you stories of panics, where a bank was in the shit because of X. So they ring Dave, in the middle of the night. Dave, sleepily says "FFS. Do this - {fixes}. Why are you bothering me?". So the particular system is up and and the bank doesn't loose x hours of trading. Which pays Dave's salary. For the next couple of centuries.
I know fuck all about IT but I recall one torrid episode when the nerd who looks after the IT at my wife's dental practice went full Hikikomori so I was pressganged into service. So I just started googling answers to the problems and looking on forums. Then I realised that about 95% of the people who were getting paid to do this WERE DOING EXACTLY THE SAME FUCKING THING. The 'industry' seems to have a small number of people who actually know what they are doing and another much larger group who are searching the Internet for solutions provided by the first group.
The other thing to bear in mind is that the vast majority of security breaches will be through the human link in the chain.
It makes little difference whether your data is on AWS or in a nuclear bunker. People will be given access to it either way and they may take it upon themselves to share those secrets.
OT linkedin just showed me a job advert for a sys admin at the Home Office, which at a guess is at least £20,000 below market rates. That pension must sure be attractive, and there's an outside chance you'll score a signed photo of Priti Patel.
ETA they are advertising £30-£38k; the guesswork is in the market rate.
That job title covers an awful lot of different jobs. Robert has it right, you need to find the right person for what’s increasingly becoming a key role for businesses, and certainly a key risk if you screw it up.
It's similar to "DBA" - a role that be anything from the junior script monkey, to a grey beard who is on personal terms with all the electrons in database and can save the world by knowing *everything*
You need the later kind of people - and they are worth multiple 100K.
I can tell you stories of panics, where a bank was in the shit because of X. So they ring Dave, in the middle of the night. Dave, sleepily says "FFS. Do this - {fixes}. Why are you bothering me?". So the particular system is up and and the bank doesn't loose x hours of trading. Which pays Dave's salary. For the next couple of centuries.
I know fuck all about IT but I recall one torrid episode when the nerd who looks after the IT at my wife's dental practice went full Hikikomori so I was pressganged into service. So I just started googling answers to the problems and looking on forums. Then I realised that about 95% of the people who were getting paid to do this WERE DOING EXACTLY THE SAME FUCKING THING. The 'industry' seems to have a small number of people who actually know what they are doing and another much larger group who are searching the Internet for solutions provided by the first group.
I do a presentation on this subject, but yes, basically you’re right.
The scope of knowledge required by a generalist IT guy is now off the page.
Modern IT management is the knowledge of basic princables, alongside having to deal with a lot of marketing-led bollocks led by vendors.
OT linkedin just showed me a job advert for a sys admin at the Home Office, which at a guess is at least £20,000 below market rates. That pension must sure be attractive, and there's an outside chance you'll score a signed photo of Priti Patel.
ETA they are advertising £30-£38k; the guesswork is in the market rate.
That job title covers an awful lot of different jobs. Robert has it right, you need to find the right person for what’s increasingly becoming a key role for businesses, and certainly a key risk if you screw it up.
It's similar to "DBA" - a role that be anything from the junior script monkey, to a grey beard who is on personal terms with all the electrons in database and can save the world by knowing *everything*
You need the later kind of people - and they are worth multiple 100K.
I can tell you stories of panics, where a bank was in the shit because of X. So they ring Dave, in the middle of the night. Dave, sleepily says "FFS. Do this - {fixes}. Why are you bothering me?". So the particular system is up and and the bank doesn't loose x hours of trading. Which pays Dave's salary. For the next couple of centuries.
I know fuck all about IT but I recall one torrid episode when the nerd who looks after the IT at my wife's dental practice went full Hikikomori so I was pressganged into service. So I just started googling answers to the problems and looking on forums. Then I realised that about 95% of the people who were getting paid to do this WERE DOING EXACTLY THE SAME FUCKING THING. The 'industry' seems to have a small number of people who actually know what they are doing and another much larger group who are searching the Internet for solutions provided by the first group.
You would be surprised how many people employed in IT lack the Google skills to solve their problems with stackoverflow.
OT linkedin just showed me a job advert for a sys admin at the Home Office, which at a guess is at least £20,000 below market rates. That pension must sure be attractive, and there's an outside chance you'll score a signed photo of Priti Patel.
ETA they are advertising £30-£38k; the guesswork is in the market rate.
That job title covers an awful lot of different jobs. Robert has it right, you need to find the right person for what’s increasingly becoming a key role for businesses, and certainly a key risk if you screw it up.
It's similar to "DBA" - a role that be anything from the junior script monkey, to a grey beard who is on personal terms with all the electrons in database and can save the world by knowing *everything*
You need the later kind of people - and they are worth multiple 100K.
I can tell you stories of panics, where a bank was in the shit because of X. So they ring Dave, in the middle of the night. Dave, sleepily says "FFS. Do this - {fixes}. Why are you bothering me?". So the particular system is up and and the bank doesn't loose x hours of trading. Which pays Dave's salary. For the next couple of centuries.
I know fuck all about IT but I recall one torrid episode when the nerd who looks after the IT at my wife's dental practice went full Hikikomori so I was pressganged into service. So I just started googling answers to the problems and looking on forums. Then I realised that about 95% of the people who were getting paid to do this WERE DOING EXACTLY THE SAME FUCKING THING. The 'industry' seems to have a small number of people who actually know what they are doing and another much larger group who are searching the Internet for solutions provided by the first group.
tbf, a lot of the skill is knowing what to type into Google and how to sift through the results, many of which are sub-optimal, to put it politely.
OT linkedin just showed me a job advert for a sys admin at the Home Office, which at a guess is at least £20,000 below market rates. That pension must sure be attractive, and there's an outside chance you'll score a signed photo of Priti Patel.
ETA they are advertising £30-£38k; the guesswork is in the market rate.
That job title covers an awful lot of different jobs. Robert has it right, you need to find the right person for what’s increasingly becoming a key role for businesses, and certainly a key risk if you screw it up.
It's similar to "DBA" - a role that be anything from the junior script monkey, to a grey beard who is on personal terms with all the electrons in database and can save the world by knowing *everything*
You need the later kind of people - and they are worth multiple 100K.
I can tell you stories of panics, where a bank was in the shit because of X. So they ring Dave, in the middle of the night. Dave, sleepily says "FFS. Do this - {fixes}. Why are you bothering me?". So the particular system is up and and the bank doesn't loose x hours of trading. Which pays Dave's salary. For the next couple of centuries.
I know fuck all about IT but I recall one torrid episode when the nerd who looks after the IT at my wife's dental practice went full Hikikomori so I was pressganged into service. So I just started googling answers to the problems and looking on forums. Then I realised that about 95% of the people who were getting paid to do this WERE DOING EXACTLY THE SAME FUCKING THING. The 'industry' seems to have a small number of people who actually know what they are doing and another much larger group who are searching the Internet for solutions provided by the first group.
If I wanted to cripple the world, I would bring down Stack Overflow.
It's actually an example of using negative features in people's personalities to an advantage. Nerd Boasting in this case - complete with points - I Know More Than Anyone Else!
So there is a large community of people, often with quite... interesting personalities, who compete crazily to be first to come up with the best answer to problem X. And give the result away, for free.
Bit like PB.....
The larger issue is that "knowing everything" about all the systems you are using is basically impossible. So either you have a zillion experts on staff, or....
Good morning everyone. If there is a public sector pay rise, does that mean public sector pensions will rise too?
More to do with CPI surely?
I think most are no longer final salary, but rather career average earnings, so there will be some rise for new pension takers. I am counting the days...
I'm one of the later ones on final salary. And I was lucky enough to get an upgrade six months before I retired. I did have a few more responsibilities though, but heigh ho.....
Which was a huge ‘thing’ across the public sector for decades, and which has led to the massive liabilities we see in government-backed pensions today.
Give the guy a £10k pay rise for his last six months, and pay an extra £5k a year out in pension for the next 30 years.
It’s the same as the non-exec directors setting boardroom pay, when they all sit on each others’ boards and all behave the same way to each other.
For an obvious reason I'm not inclined to cynicism about MPs, but I was pleasantly surprised in 1996 to find that the job I was seeking at a pay rate of £34K had suddenly been voted to be worth £44K by the outgoing Parliament, many of whom were headed for pensions based on final salary.
To be fair I think that there had been a long period of zero rises and there's never a good moment to give MPs a popular pay rise. But possibly the impact on pensions on people about to lose their seats crossed a few minds too.
I *am* inclined to cynicism about MPs where pay is concerned , having followed the record. And in particular the tendency of the short institutional memory which allows forgetting past pay rises.
AFAICS there is a pattern of regular increases (currently done on IPSA advice), occasionally slugged for political reasons, followed by a big "one off" increase that happens once a Parliament or perhaps a little less often.
I recall Sir Stuart Bell working his way around the TV studios in 2009 or thereabouts, as a member of one of the relevant committees, making false claims about the record.
On being looked up, iirc the data said in the previous 18 years MP pay had risen by 30% above average earnings increases. The numbers had risen rapidly from the mid-1990s.
More on topic, some of the early retirement packages offered by TFL in recent years have been eyewatering.
OT linkedin just showed me a job advert for a sys admin at the Home Office, which at a guess is at least £20,000 below market rates. That pension must sure be attractive, and there's an outside chance you'll score a signed photo of Priti Patel.
ETA they are advertising £30-£38k; the guesswork is in the market rate.
That job title covers an awful lot of different jobs. Robert has it right, you need to find the right person for what’s increasingly becoming a key role for businesses, and certainly a key risk if you screw it up.
It's similar to "DBA" - a role that be anything from the junior script monkey, to a grey beard who is on personal terms with all the electrons in database and can save the world by knowing *everything*
You need the later kind of people - and they are worth multiple 100K.
I can tell you stories of panics, where a bank was in the shit because of X. So they ring Dave, in the middle of the night. Dave, sleepily says "FFS. Do this - {fixes}. Why are you bothering me?". So the particular system is up and and the bank doesn't loose x hours of trading. Which pays Dave's salary. For the next couple of centuries.
I know fuck all about IT but I recall one torrid episode when the nerd who looks after the IT at my wife's dental practice went full Hikikomori so I was pressganged into service. So I just started googling answers to the problems and looking on forums. Then I realised that about 95% of the people who were getting paid to do this WERE DOING EXACTLY THE SAME FUCKING THING. The 'industry' seems to have a small number of people who actually know what they are doing and another much larger group who are searching the Internet for solutions provided by the first group.
OT linkedin just showed me a job advert for a sys admin at the Home Office, which at a guess is at least £20,000 below market rates. That pension must sure be attractive, and there's an outside chance you'll score a signed photo of Priti Patel.
ETA they are advertising £30-£38k; the guesswork is in the market rate.
That job title covers an awful lot of different jobs. Robert has it right, you need to find the right person for what’s increasingly becoming a key role for businesses, and certainly a key risk if you screw it up.
It's similar to "DBA" - a role that be anything from the junior script monkey, to a grey beard who is on personal terms with all the electrons in database and can save the world by knowing *everything*
You need the later kind of people - and they are worth multiple 100K.
I can tell you stories of panics, where a bank was in the shit because of X. So they ring Dave, in the middle of the night. Dave, sleepily says "FFS. Do this - {fixes}. Why are you bothering me?". So the particular system is up and and the bank doesn't loose x hours of trading. Which pays Dave's salary. For the next couple of centuries.
I know fuck all about IT but I recall one torrid episode when the nerd who looks after the IT at my wife's dental practice went full Hikikomori so I was pressganged into service. So I just started googling answers to the problems and looking on forums. Then I realised that about 95% of the people who were getting paid to do this WERE DOING EXACTLY THE SAME FUCKING THING. The 'industry' seems to have a small number of people who actually know what they are doing and another much larger group who are searching the Internet for solutions provided by the first group.
You would be surprised how many people employed in IT lack the Google skills to solve their problems with stackoverflow.
It appears to be harder than it sounds. You have to understand the problem you have and use critical reading to identify the appropriate fix.
OT linkedin just showed me a job advert for a sys admin at the Home Office, which at a guess is at least £20,000 below market rates. That pension must sure be attractive, and there's an outside chance you'll score a signed photo of Priti Patel.
ETA they are advertising £30-£38k; the guesswork is in the market rate.
That job title covers an awful lot of different jobs. Robert has it right, you need to find the right person for what’s increasingly becoming a key role for businesses, and certainly a key risk if you screw it up.
It's similar to "DBA" - a role that be anything from the junior script monkey, to a grey beard who is on personal terms with all the electrons in database and can save the world by knowing *everything*
You need the later kind of people - and they are worth multiple 100K.
I can tell you stories of panics, where a bank was in the shit because of X. So they ring Dave, in the middle of the night. Dave, sleepily says "FFS. Do this - {fixes}. Why are you bothering me?". So the particular system is up and and the bank doesn't loose x hours of trading. Which pays Dave's salary. For the next couple of centuries.
I know fuck all about IT but I recall one torrid episode when the nerd who looks after the IT at my wife's dental practice went full Hikikomori so I was pressganged into service. So I just started googling answers to the problems and looking on forums. Then I realised that about 95% of the people who were getting paid to do this WERE DOING EXACTLY THE SAME FUCKING THING. The 'industry' seems to have a small number of people who actually know what they are doing and another much larger group who are searching the Internet for solutions provided by the first group.
You would be surprised how many people employed in IT lack the Google skills to solve their problems with stackoverflow.
Yep - although I've joked for 22 years that my chief skillset is being able to Google better than other people.
OT linkedin just showed me a job advert for a sys admin at the Home Office, which at a guess is at least £20,000 below market rates. That pension must sure be attractive, and there's an outside chance you'll score a signed photo of Priti Patel.
ETA they are advertising £30-£38k; the guesswork is in the market rate.
That job title covers an awful lot of different jobs. Robert has it right, you need to find the right person for what’s increasingly becoming a key role for businesses, and certainly a key risk if you screw it up.
It's similar to "DBA" - a role that be anything from the junior script monkey, to a grey beard who is on personal terms with all the electrons in database and can save the world by knowing *everything*
You need the later kind of people - and they are worth multiple 100K.
I can tell you stories of panics, where a bank was in the shit because of X. So they ring Dave, in the middle of the night. Dave, sleepily says "FFS. Do this - {fixes}. Why are you bothering me?". So the particular system is up and and the bank doesn't loose x hours of trading. Which pays Dave's salary. For the next couple of centuries.
I know fuck all about IT but I recall one torrid episode when the nerd who looks after the IT at my wife's dental practice went full Hikikomori so I was pressganged into service. So I just started googling answers to the problems and looking on forums. Then I realised that about 95% of the people who were getting paid to do this WERE DOING EXACTLY THE SAME FUCKING THING. The 'industry' seems to have a small number of people who actually know what they are doing and another much larger group who are searching the Internet for solutions provided by the first group.
You would be surprised how many people employed in IT lack the Google skills to solve their problems with stackoverflow.
Yep - although I've joked for 22 years that my chief skillset is being able to Google better than other people.
I have that skillset too. Amazing how suddenly it’s valued, after a decade of being ignored.
The polls at the equivalent stage of Ed Miliband’s time as LotO. Can someone run them through Electoral Calculus please, and share with us what the result of the 2015 Election is going to be?
LOL!
The ironic thing is that during that period Ed Miliband had bigger poll leads than Corbyn ever got and Starmer ever has but he also failed to do as well as Corbyn in 2017 in 2015 even if he did better than Corbyn did in 2019
And it's worth asking ourselves why that might be so.
Are the mid term blues just one of those things that crowds do, or are they a rational public response to the Scrooge-Santa cycle that a government in control of events will impose on the economy?
If it's the first, BoJo et al are sitting pretty. If it's the second, the fiscal pain has barely started yet and the surprise might be that the gap is as small as it is. (After all, a 3 point lead looks like it puts the Conservatives in office but with minimal power to do anything controversial. Imagine TMay, only weaker.)
3. Let's look at when you leave your home. What's the best transport choice for the climate: buying an electric car or using public transport as much as possible?
OT linkedin just showed me a job advert for a sys admin at the Home Office, which at a guess is at least £20,000 below market rates. That pension must sure be attractive, and there's an outside chance you'll score a signed photo of Priti Patel.
ETA they are advertising £30-£38k; the guesswork is in the market rate.
That job title covers an awful lot of different jobs. Robert has it right, you need to find the right person for what’s increasingly becoming a key role for businesses, and certainly a key risk if you screw it up.
It's similar to "DBA" - a role that be anything from the junior script monkey, to a grey beard who is on personal terms with all the electrons in database and can save the world by knowing *everything*
You need the later kind of people - and they are worth multiple 100K.
I can tell you stories of panics, where a bank was in the shit because of X. So they ring Dave, in the middle of the night. Dave, sleepily says "FFS. Do this - {fixes}. Why are you bothering me?". So the particular system is up and and the bank doesn't loose x hours of trading. Which pays Dave's salary. For the next couple of centuries.
I know fuck all about IT but I recall one torrid episode when the nerd who looks after the IT at my wife's dental practice went full Hikikomori so I was pressganged into service. So I just started googling answers to the problems and looking on forums. Then I realised that about 95% of the people who were getting paid to do this WERE DOING EXACTLY THE SAME FUCKING THING. The 'industry' seems to have a small number of people who actually know what they are doing and another much larger group who are searching the Internet for solutions provided by the first group.
If I wanted to cripple the world, I would bring down Stack Overflow.
It's actually an example of using negative features in people's personalities to an advantage. Nerd Boasting in this case - complete with points - I Know More Than Anyone Else!
So there is a large community of people, often with quite... interesting personalities, who compete crazily to be first to come up with the best answer to problem X. And give the result away, for free.
Bit like PB.....
The larger issue is that "knowing everything" about all the systems you are using is basically impossible. So either you have a zillion experts on staff, or....
One recent (or not) phenomenon is companies getting rid of inhouse experts and relying on support contracts with companies who have been getting rid of inhouse experts and relying on support contracts and so on up the chain. It rarely ends well but otoh you can always blame someone else, which is key to advancement.
OT linkedin just showed me a job advert for a sys admin at the Home Office, which at a guess is at least £20,000 below market rates. That pension must sure be attractive, and there's an outside chance you'll score a signed photo of Priti Patel.
ETA they are advertising £30-£38k; the guesswork is in the market rate.
That job title covers an awful lot of different jobs. Robert has it right, you need to find the right person for what’s increasingly becoming a key role for businesses, and certainly a key risk if you screw it up.
It's similar to "DBA" - a role that be anything from the junior script monkey, to a grey beard who is on personal terms with all the electrons in database and can save the world by knowing *everything*
You need the later kind of people - and they are worth multiple 100K.
I can tell you stories of panics, where a bank was in the shit because of X. So they ring Dave, in the middle of the night. Dave, sleepily says "FFS. Do this - {fixes}. Why are you bothering me?". So the particular system is up and and the bank doesn't loose x hours of trading. Which pays Dave's salary. For the next couple of centuries.
I know fuck all about IT but I recall one torrid episode when the nerd who looks after the IT at my wife's dental practice went full Hikikomori so I was pressganged into service. So I just started googling answers to the problems and looking on forums. Then I realised that about 95% of the people who were getting paid to do this WERE DOING EXACTLY THE SAME FUCKING THING. The 'industry' seems to have a small number of people who actually know what they are doing and another much larger group who are searching the Internet for solutions provided by the first group.
You would be surprised how many people employed in IT lack the Google skills to solve their problems with stackoverflow.
Yep - although I've joked for 22 years that my chief skillset is being able to Google better than other people.
I have that skillset too. Amazing how suddenly it’s valued, after a decade of being ignored.
OT linkedin just showed me a job advert for a sys admin at the Home Office, which at a guess is at least £20,000 below market rates. That pension must sure be attractive, and there's an outside chance you'll score a signed photo of Priti Patel.
ETA they are advertising £30-£38k; the guesswork is in the market rate.
That job title covers an awful lot of different jobs. Robert has it right, you need to find the right person for what’s increasingly becoming a key role for businesses, and certainly a key risk if you screw it up.
It's similar to "DBA" - a role that be anything from the junior script monkey, to a grey beard who is on personal terms with all the electrons in database and can save the world by knowing *everything*
You need the later kind of people - and they are worth multiple 100K.
I can tell you stories of panics, where a bank was in the shit because of X. So they ring Dave, in the middle of the night. Dave, sleepily says "FFS. Do this - {fixes}. Why are you bothering me?". So the particular system is up and and the bank doesn't loose x hours of trading. Which pays Dave's salary. For the next couple of centuries.
I know fuck all about IT but I recall one torrid episode when the nerd who looks after the IT at my wife's dental practice went full Hikikomori so I was pressganged into service. So I just started googling answers to the problems and looking on forums. Then I realised that about 95% of the people who were getting paid to do this WERE DOING EXACTLY THE SAME FUCKING THING. The 'industry' seems to have a small number of people who actually know what they are doing and another much larger group who are searching the Internet for solutions provided by the first group.
If I wanted to cripple the world, I would bring down Stack Overflow.
It's actually an example of using negative features in people's personalities to an advantage. Nerd Boasting in this case - complete with points - I Know More Than Anyone Else!
So there is a large community of people, often with quite... interesting personalities, who compete crazily to be first to come up with the best answer to problem X. And give the result away, for free.
Bit like PB.....
The larger issue is that "knowing everything" about all the systems you are using is basically impossible. So either you have a zillion experts on staff, or....
One recent (or not) phenomenon is companies getting rid of inhouse experts and relying on support contracts with companies who have been getting rid of inhouse experts and relying on support contracts and so on up the chain. It rarely ends well but otoh you can always blame someone else, which is key to advancement.
When someone says "this isn't our core business'...
It is really a sign that keeping a gang of evil assassins in black suits and sunglasses on retainer to murder executives who get out of line... should be Core Business.
The polls at the equivalent stage of Ed Miliband’s time as LotO. Can someone run them through Electoral Calculus please, and share with us what the result of the 2015 Election is going to be?
LOL!
The ironic thing is that during that period Ed Miliband had bigger poll leads than Corbyn ever got and Starmer ever has but he also failed to do as well as Corbyn in 2017 in 2015 even if he did better than Corbyn did in 2019
And it's worth asking ourselves why that might be so.
Are the mid term blues just one of those things that crowds do, or are they a rational public response to the Scrooge-Santa cycle that a government in control of events will impose on the economy?
If it's the first, BoJo et al are sitting pretty. If it's the second, the fiscal pain has barely started yet and the surprise might be that the gap is as small as it is. (After all, a 3 point lead looks like it puts the Conservatives in office but with minimal power to do anything controversial. Imagine TMay, only weaker.)
The answer is obvious Miliband, was vilified and destroyed by our marvellous media, a decent and honest man, in comparison to the liar we have in No 10 now, who the same media fawn over. No political party has won a general election without the backing of news international, for 40 years, or referendum for that matter, I have no reason to think that will change any time soon, so the nearer the election comes, get the best price you can on the Tories.
OT linkedin just showed me a job advert for a sys admin at the Home Office, which at a guess is at least £20,000 below market rates. That pension must sure be attractive, and there's an outside chance you'll score a signed photo of Priti Patel.
ETA they are advertising £30-£38k; the guesswork is in the market rate.
That job title covers an awful lot of different jobs. Robert has it right, you need to find the right person for what’s increasingly becoming a key role for businesses, and certainly a key risk if you screw it up.
It's similar to "DBA" - a role that be anything from the junior script monkey, to a grey beard who is on personal terms with all the electrons in database and can save the world by knowing *everything*
You need the later kind of people - and they are worth multiple 100K.
I can tell you stories of panics, where a bank was in the shit because of X. So they ring Dave, in the middle of the night. Dave, sleepily says "FFS. Do this - {fixes}. Why are you bothering me?". So the particular system is up and and the bank doesn't loose x hours of trading. Which pays Dave's salary. For the next couple of centuries.
I know fuck all about IT but I recall one torrid episode when the nerd who looks after the IT at my wife's dental practice went full Hikikomori so I was pressganged into service. So I just started googling answers to the problems and looking on forums. Then I realised that about 95% of the people who were getting paid to do this WERE DOING EXACTLY THE SAME FUCKING THING. The 'industry' seems to have a small number of people who actually know what they are doing and another much larger group who are searching the Internet for solutions provided by the first group.
My son, who previously knew FA about database admin, had a very similar experience recently.
The polls at the equivalent stage of Ed Miliband’s time as LotO. Can someone run them through Electoral Calculus please, and share with us what the result of the 2015 Election is going to be?
LOL!
The ironic thing is that during that period Ed Miliband had bigger poll leads than Corbyn ever got and Starmer ever has but he also failed to do as well as Corbyn in 2017 in 2015 even if he did better than Corbyn did in 2019
And it's worth asking ourselves why that might be so.
Are the mid term blues just one of those things that crowds do, or are they a rational public response to the Scrooge-Santa cycle that a government in control of events will impose on the economy?
If it's the first, BoJo et al are sitting pretty. If it's the second, the fiscal pain has barely started yet and the surprise might be that the gap is as small as it is. (After all, a 3 point lead looks like it puts the Conservatives in office but with minimal power to do anything controversial. Imagine TMay, only weaker.)
The answer is obvious Miliband, was vilified and destroyed by our marvellous media, a decent and honest man, in comparison to the liar we have in No 10 now, who the same media fawn over. No political party has won a general election without the backing of news international, for 40 years, or referendum for that matter, I have no reason to think that will change any time soon, so the nearer the election comes, get the best price you can on the Tories.
There is an awful lot of resentment here. You need to face the fact that voters don't want Labour. It has nothing to do with News Int.
OT linkedin just showed me a job advert for a sys admin at the Home Office, which at a guess is at least £20,000 below market rates. That pension must sure be attractive, and there's an outside chance you'll score a signed photo of Priti Patel.
ETA they are advertising £30-£38k; the guesswork is in the market rate.
That job title covers an awful lot of different jobs. Robert has it right, you need to find the right person for what’s increasingly becoming a key role for businesses, and certainly a key risk if you screw it up.
It's similar to "DBA" - a role that be anything from the junior script monkey, to a grey beard who is on personal terms with all the electrons in database and can save the world by knowing *everything*
You need the later kind of people - and they are worth multiple 100K.
I can tell you stories of panics, where a bank was in the shit because of X. So they ring Dave, in the middle of the night. Dave, sleepily says "FFS. Do this - {fixes}. Why are you bothering me?". So the particular system is up and and the bank doesn't loose x hours of trading. Which pays Dave's salary. For the next couple of centuries.
I know fuck all about IT but I recall one torrid episode when the nerd who looks after the IT at my wife's dental practice went full Hikikomori so I was pressganged into service. So I just started googling answers to the problems and looking on forums. Then I realised that about 95% of the people who were getting paid to do this WERE DOING EXACTLY THE SAME FUCKING THING. The 'industry' seems to have a small number of people who actually know what they are doing and another much larger group who are searching the Internet for solutions provided by the first group.
If I wanted to cripple the world, I would bring down Stack Overflow.
It's actually an example of using negative features in people's personalities to an advantage. Nerd Boasting in this case - complete with points - I Know More Than Anyone Else!
So there is a large community of people, often with quite... interesting personalities, who compete crazily to be first to come up with the best answer to problem X. And give the result away, for free.
Bit like PB.....
The larger issue is that "knowing everything" about all the systems you are using is basically impossible. So either you have a zillion experts on staff, or....
One recent (or not) phenomenon is companies getting rid of inhouse experts and relying on support contracts with companies who have been getting rid of inhouse experts and relying on support contracts and so on up the chain. It rarely ends well but otoh you can always blame someone else, which is key to advancement.
When someone says "this isn't our core business'...
It is really a sign that keeping a gang of evil assassins in black suits and sunglasses on retainer to murder executives who get out of line... should be Core Business.
Let's me explain modern day business - your company is an IT business with a sideline in selling what you sell on a daily basis.
If you don't understand that you are an IT company, at some point an IT company will arrive and take your business from you.
The polls at the equivalent stage of Ed Miliband’s time as LotO. Can someone run them through Electoral Calculus please, and share with us what the result of the 2015 Election is going to be?
LOL!
The ironic thing is that during that period Ed Miliband had bigger poll leads than Corbyn ever got and Starmer ever has but he also failed to do as well as Corbyn in 2017 in 2015 even if he did better than Corbyn did in 2019
And it's worth asking ourselves why that might be so.
Are the mid term blues just one of those things that crowds do, or are they a rational public response to the Scrooge-Santa cycle that a government in control of events will impose on the economy?
If it's the first, BoJo et al are sitting pretty. If it's the second, the fiscal pain has barely started yet and the surprise might be that the gap is as small as it is. (After all, a 3 point lead looks like it puts the Conservatives in office but with minimal power to do anything controversial. Imagine TMay, only weaker.)
The answer is obvious Miliband, was vilified and destroyed by our marvellous media, a decent and honest man, in comparison to the liar we have in No 10 now, who the same media fawn over. No political party has won a general election without the backing of news international, for 40 years, or referendum for that matter, I have no reason to think that will change any time soon, so the nearer the election comes, get the best price you can on the Tories.
There is an awful lot of resentment here. You need to face the fact that voters don't want Labour. It has nothing to do with News Int.
NI will presumably do what NI always do- back the Conservatives as long as they are popular with their readers. Then dump on them.
And if the government fails to deliver for Sun readers, we'll get a "Now we've all been screwed by Johnson" headline, a la 1992.
3. Let's look at when you leave your home. What's the best transport choice for the climate: buying an electric car or using public transport as much as possible?
Hmm, I'd like to see a full life cycle analysis on that!
Maybe 'using the electric care you already have', but it would take some journeys before you could justify the manufacturing emissions of the EV. Also, if the bus is running anyway then your marginal contribution to its emissions are minimal (your extra weight).
I think I posted here before about the analysis (cited in a PhD thesis I examined) that an efficienct ICE car could be greener than walking, which also didn't stand up to much scrutiny.
Edit: Also, for extra pedantry, what about if 'public transport' is an electric train with only a walk at either end? Quite common in the SE at least - that's my brother's commute, when he goes into the London office.
3. Let's look at when you leave your home. What's the best transport choice for the climate: buying an electric car or using public transport as much as possible?
Hmm, I'd like to see a full life cycle analysis on that!
Maybe 'using the electric care you already have', but it would take some journeys before you could justify the manufacturing emissions of the EV. Also, if the bus is running anyway then your marginal contribution to its emissions are minimal (your extra weight).
I think I posted here before about the analysis (cited in a PhD thesis I examined) that an efficienct ICE car could be greener than walking, which also didn't stand up to much scrutiny.
Edit: Also, for extra pedantry, what about if 'public transport' is an electric train with only a walk at either end? Quite common in the SE at least - that's my brother's commute, when he goes into the London office.
The 'fact' will be true for the overwhelming majority of people. Note how it says "as much as possible" in the public transport option, not "exclusively".
For the overwhelming majority of people a car is a fact of life, so public transport "when possible" will be displacement of some CO2 while an electric car would be removing much, much more.
London office workers are the exception not the rule.
The polls at the equivalent stage of Ed Miliband’s time as LotO. Can someone run them through Electoral Calculus please, and share with us what the result of the 2015 Election is going to be?
LOL!
The ironic thing is that during that period Ed Miliband had bigger poll leads than Corbyn ever got and Starmer ever has but he also failed to do as well as Corbyn in 2017 in 2015 even if he did better than Corbyn did in 2019
And it's worth asking ourselves why that might be so.
Are the mid term blues just one of those things that crowds do, or are they a rational public response to the Scrooge-Santa cycle that a government in control of events will impose on the economy?
If it's the first, BoJo et al are sitting pretty. If it's the second, the fiscal pain has barely started yet and the surprise might be that the gap is as small as it is. (After all, a 3 point lead looks like it puts the Conservatives in office but with minimal power to do anything controversial. Imagine TMay, only weaker.)
The answer is obvious Miliband, was vilified and destroyed by our marvellous media, a decent and honest man, in comparison to the liar we have in No 10 now, who the same media fawn over. No political party has won a general election without the backing of news international, for 40 years, or referendum for that matter, I have no reason to think that will change any time soon, so the nearer the election comes, get the best price you can on the Tories.
News International is a follower not a leader on much of politics though. It backs who its readers would like it to back, much more than it influencing the readers.
Plus as far as referendums are concerned, its worth noting that The Times (of News International) backed Remain.
OT linkedin just showed me a job advert for a sys admin at the Home Office, which at a guess is at least £20,000 below market rates. That pension must sure be attractive, and there's an outside chance you'll score a signed photo of Priti Patel.
ETA they are advertising £30-£38k; the guesswork is in the market rate.
That job title covers an awful lot of different jobs. Robert has it right, you need to find the right person for what’s increasingly becoming a key role for businesses, and certainly a key risk if you screw it up.
It's similar to "DBA" - a role that be anything from the junior script monkey, to a grey beard who is on personal terms with all the electrons in database and can save the world by knowing *everything*
You need the later kind of people - and they are worth multiple 100K.
I can tell you stories of panics, where a bank was in the shit because of X. So they ring Dave, in the middle of the night. Dave, sleepily says "FFS. Do this - {fixes}. Why are you bothering me?". So the particular system is up and and the bank doesn't loose x hours of trading. Which pays Dave's salary. For the next couple of centuries.
I know fuck all about IT but I recall one torrid episode when the nerd who looks after the IT at my wife's dental practice went full Hikikomori so I was pressganged into service. So I just started googling answers to the problems and looking on forums. Then I realised that about 95% of the people who were getting paid to do this WERE DOING EXACTLY THE SAME FUCKING THING. The 'industry' seems to have a small number of people who actually know what they are doing and another much larger group who are searching the Internet for solutions provided by the first group.
If I wanted to cripple the world, I would bring down Stack Overflow.
It's actually an example of using negative features in people's personalities to an advantage. Nerd Boasting in this case - complete with points - I Know More Than Anyone Else!
So there is a large community of people, often with quite... interesting personalities, who compete crazily to be first to come up with the best answer to problem X. And give the result away, for free.
Bit like PB.....
The larger issue is that "knowing everything" about all the systems you are using is basically impossible. So either you have a zillion experts on staff, or....
One recent (or not) phenomenon is companies getting rid of inhouse experts and relying on support contracts with companies who have been getting rid of inhouse experts and relying on support contracts and so on up the chain. It rarely ends well but otoh you can always blame someone else, which is key to advancement.
When someone says "this isn't our core business'...
It is really a sign that keeping a gang of evil assassins in black suits and sunglasses on retainer to murder executives who get out of line... should be Core Business.
Let's me explain modern day business - your company is an IT business with a sideline in selling what you sell on a daily basis.
If you don't understand that you are an IT company, at some point an IT company will arrive and take your business from you.
No. That is equally wrong. That way lies outsourcing all your domain knowledge, just as the MBA and lawyers think that the Core Business is only legal, accounting and a pile of actual money.
Nearly every company has IT as part of it's Core Business, though.
Comments
It was always a running joke, that it would take a month for companies to start posting job ads asking for a decade of experience, in any newly-announced technology or programming language.
For example, cooped up close to home means fewer opportunities to search out appropriate bridges, cliffs etc.
Since the post required X experience, the job spec we sent up the line was reworked to include X years of Java development. At the time, the history of Java was less than X.....
If you are looking for a non crazy reason for being ant vax, might it be that lots of people who work for the NHS (ITV says 100,000) have refused the vaccine, and they know more than I do and can't all be wrong?
He seems reasonably well-briefed for this. Cow-burping not cow-farting. Seaweed for cows. Breeding less carbon generating cows.
I quite like the "more polite cows" that burp less.
I think the problem with quote-mining plus finger-pointing is that it crowds out attempted critiques to the status of twitter trivia, and gives BJ a free pass.
Personally, I rather more concerned that WWF are being given such a platform.
https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salaries/systems-administrator-salary-SRCH_KO0,21.htm
The vaccine refusers are mainly putting themselves at risk. This is creating a burden on the NHS but as people have pointed out, this is true for many avoidable health problems. There are benefits of the vaccine in reducing the spread and transmissability of the virus, but these are not absolute; the virus can still spread even when people are vaccinated; so this is not a good justification for compelling people to take the jabs.
The most convincing way of getting the hesitant to get vaccinated is that of self interest. Get the vaccine to protect yourself. Forcing people to take the vaccine by way of extreme social pressure or excluding them from society if they fail to do so may get a few more to do so, but is also fuelling distrust in our political system and conspiracy theories; which are themselves extremely dangerous.
The best way of countering the conspiracy theories prevalent amongst anti vaxxers is looking at the governments yellow card scheme. There is a transparent system for reporting adverse reactions. That would not exist if there was a grand conspiracy in place. It exists alongside data that reports deaths and hospitalisations associated with Covid, which show that these are overwhelmingly amongst those who are not vaccinated.
I’m feeling suicidal but will just stop at home instead of topping myself cos otherwise I’d be breaking lockdown regs said no one ever.
And on the hosting front, what is so complex? A cloud datacentre is little more than a warehouse filled with computers running more-or-less open source software. France's main problem will be designing new logos and translating documentation into French. Of course, the computer hardware inside the French or putative British datacentres will be American (or Chinese). That's not the point.
But yes, we probably are saving a couple of hundred million in upfront investment but it would be investment. More British jobs. Less of a trade deficit. Not to mention that it will be the same argument when the new NHS systems are to be handed over to American companies, along with every other government (and indeed private sector) system because there is no alternative if we never invest in an alternative.
And security.
Alternatively, medical people might be more sceptical of the speed of the clinical trials than the public in general.
I honestly don't know. I know it is said that suicide rates generally drop during wartimes.
https://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help/if-youre-worried-about-someone-else/myths-about-suicide/
As a society we've had a lot more conversations about mental health in the last 2 years, and I wonder whether that has made us more self-aware?
(I might be inclined to think there may have been too many, and that mental health problems are becoming the latest trendy talking point for slebs to be at the front of the stage.)
I've been here in the past with a large international firm, they basically have ended up on Azure with BYOK (Bring your own key) because nothing else scales. AWS and Azure are occasionally caught out but both spend billions on security, no-one else can compete in the arms race when the Chinese / Russians / North Koreans only need to hit lucky once in a million attempts.
Edit to add - both AWS and Azure have UK Government only sites - perfectly possible when the bill is big enough.
Who's to say that without Teflon even fewer people would have died.
Who's to say that without taking your child out of school for two weeks instead of their achievements they might not have achieved still more.
Who's to say that without masks Covid cases would have been higher/lower than they were with masks.
If the pubs are closed etc those 'opportunities' don't exist.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/10/26/must-resist-moral-panic-pushing-us-back-lockdown/
Anecdotally, I know someone who suffers from intermittent anxiety and depression who has got better over the last year - feels her issues have been put a bit in perspective by the concerns for the world as a whole.
Some will be little different from tier 2 support, others will be higher.
The Home Office job spec is little different from the Sky one so yep the pay is wrong by about £25-30k....
I also have a great Uncle (never personally met the man though) on the other hand, who loves Piers Corbyn. I don't think you could ever convince him.
Even better, my brother works with a guy who proudly refuses to get it, because he can't be arsed but has said that he 'probably will' when it becomes inconvenient for him to not have it. I think this guy is in a, hopefully small, additional category of 'selfish pricks who don't want to inconvenience themselves by getting the vaccine', but perhaps I editorialise slightly...
ETA you would hope internet access (where the bad guys lurk) will be limited but it is unlikely to be zero.
I'm putting that in my jotter pad. Cheers!
I fail to see how COVID rules would add noticeably to existing restrictions on access to bridges, railway lines, medication, alcohol, ropes, razor blades etc.
If you change people's circumstances that can have a dramatic impact.
Given the Tories already have 7 fewer seats in Scotland than May won in 2017 it is unlikely they would have enough seats even to form a government with the DUP if Starmer matched the 262 MPs Corbyn won then and got a hung parliament. Plus of course the DUP and NI Unionist MPs would demand the Irish Sea border is removed before doing any deal with Boris. So the way would be clear for Starmer to be PM with SNP and LD confidence and supply
The time I had this previously was moving to London with only one contact social some years ago, as an IT contractor in the CoL. The CoL is a very strangely unstable place to work if contracting.
To be fair I think that there had been a long period of zero rises and there's never a good moment to give MPs a popular pay rise. But possibly the impact on pensions on people about to lose their seats crossed a few minds too.
Did Corbyn do well in 2017 or did May do disastrously (even though the reason for the disaster is something that still needs to be fixed)
I'd be far more worried that a badly designed "sovereign" system could be attacked by hostile states like the Russians and Chinese, than that a well designed Amazon system might be attacked by an ally like the Americans.
Despite the occasional moan MPs pay is not that bad either now and puts them in the top 5% of earners but of course public service should be the motivator not pay
You need the later kind of people - and they are worth multiple 100K.
I can tell you stories of panics, where a bank was in the shit because of X. So they ring Dave, in the middle of the night. Dave, sleepily says "FFS. Do this - {fixes}. Why are you bothering me?". So the particular system is up and and the bank doesn't loose x hours of trading. Which pays Dave's salary. For the next couple of centuries.
Starmer does not rally the left as much as Corbyn but he also does not turn off the centrist vote either like Corbyn did, some Remainers lent their votes to Corbyn in 2017 to prevent a hard Brexit, then when he got close switched to LD in 2011 but are back voting Labour again now Starmer has replaced him.
MPs, as you know, have one of the best pension schemes in the country - and I’m actually okay with that, I don’t want to see former MPs trying to find all sorts of dodgy ways to earn money in lobbying jobs - hello Nick Clegg - but think that your own path in advocating animal welfare standards is a great example of how retired MPs should behave.
https://twitter.com/PoliticsForAlI/status/1452906352762920960?s=20
Who participate in the design and manufacturing to the point that Chuck Hansen suggested that the US nuclear weapons program is really a joint UK/US program.
It makes little difference whether your data is on AWS or in a nuclear bunker. People will be given access to it either way and they may take it upon themselves to share those secrets.
The scope of knowledge required by a generalist IT guy is now off the page.
Modern IT management is the knowledge of basic princables, alongside having to deal with a lot of marketing-led bollocks led by vendors.
It's actually an example of using negative features in people's personalities to an advantage. Nerd Boasting in this case - complete with points - I Know More Than Anyone Else!
So there is a large community of people, often with quite... interesting personalities, who compete crazily to be first to come up with the best answer to problem X. And give the result away, for free.
Bit like PB.....
The larger issue is that "knowing everything" about all the systems you are using is basically impossible. So either you have a zillion experts on staff, or....
AFAICS there is a pattern of regular increases (currently done on IPSA advice), occasionally slugged for political reasons, followed by a big "one off" increase that happens once a Parliament or perhaps a little less often.
I recall Sir Stuart Bell working his way around the TV studios in 2009 or thereabouts, as a member of one of the relevant committees, making false claims about the record.
On being looked up, iirc the data said in the previous 18 years MP pay had risen by 30% above average earnings increases. The numbers had risen rapidly from the mid-1990s.
More on topic, some of the early retirement packages offered by TFL in recent years have been eyewatering.
For knowing what to google: $999
Are the mid term blues just one of those things that crowds do, or are they a rational public response to the Scrooge-Santa cycle that a government in control of events will impose on the economy?
If it's the first, BoJo et al are sitting pretty. If it's the second, the fiscal pain has barely started yet and the surprise might be that the gap is as small as it is. (After all, a 3 point lead looks like it puts the Conservatives in office but with minimal power to do anything controversial. Imagine TMay, only weaker.)
3. Let's look at when you leave your home. What's the best transport choice for the climate: buying an electric car or using public transport as much as possible?
It is really a sign that keeping a gang of evil assassins in black suits and sunglasses on retainer to murder executives who get out of line... should be Core Business.
If you don't understand that you are an IT company, at some point an IT company will arrive and take your business from you.
And if the government fails to deliver for Sun readers, we'll get a "Now we've all been screwed by Johnson" headline, a la 1992.
Maybe 'using the electric care you already have', but it would take some journeys before you could justify the manufacturing emissions of the EV. Also, if the bus is running anyway then your marginal contribution to its emissions are minimal (your extra weight).
I think I posted here before about the analysis (cited in a PhD thesis I examined) that an efficienct ICE car could be greener than walking, which also didn't stand up to much scrutiny.
Edit: Also, for extra pedantry, what about if 'public transport' is an electric train with only a walk at either end? Quite common in the SE at least - that's my brother's commute, when he goes into the London office.
For the overwhelming majority of people a car is a fact of life, so public transport "when possible" will be displacement of some CO2 while an electric car would be removing much, much more.
London office workers are the exception not the rule.
Plus as far as referendums are concerned, its worth noting that The Times (of News International) backed Remain.
Nearly every company has IT as part of it's Core Business, though.