They are all junk apart from the Z3 (which shares its underpinnings with the E36 and is therefore awesome) and maybe the W210 as long as it has the M119 motor.
V8 E-Class wagons are always cool.
The best E Klasse was the W124 500E which was developed by Porsche and actually assembled in the Porsche factory at Zuffenhausen.
If yours has the 5.5 M113 do the oil pickup and pump mods before it decides to do them for you. See XF Motorsports on YouTube. He is the M113 god.
Yes, the W124 500E was a very special car indeed, sadly they go for serious money these days.
I’ve got the 5.0 M113 in mine, that’s the bulletproof one. Only 75k km on it too. Now I’ve said that, it will blow up next week!
It's the lawlessness that might do it for this government.
I've had three motor scooters stolen in the last 14 months. The second was filmed on two separate CCTV cameras. The police were inaccessible on all three occasions. The only way of contacting them is online or dialling 999 which mustn't be used other than in an emergency "or you could be putting someone's life at risk" .
Having done a little detective work online it appears these thefts have reached epidemic proportions. The common thread is we don't have a functioning police force.
Welcome to the world of de-prioritised crime.
A farmer I knew never could get the police interested in the steady stream of thefts over the years.
When he started putting a roof on an ancient stone walled building (a farm cottage that hadn't been lived in since year X and was just the walls and grass) to create a secure store for some equipment, the planning officers and police were out in force. Within hours of the day he started work.
Bicycle theft is a huge problem, too. The victims tend to be people on lower incomes, often use then for work/commuting, and are a serious deterrent to people switching to green transport.
A white van used to park up near George Square in Edinburgh and leave with about 15 bikes each run. Witnessed a taxi ram a thief off a bike once. Hero.
It's the lawlessness that might do it for this government.
I've had three motor scooters stolen in the last 14 months. The second was filmed on two separate CCTV cameras. The police were inaccessible on all three occasions. The only way of contacting them is online or dialling 999 which mustn't be used other than in an emergency "or you could be putting someone's life at risk" .
Having done a little detective work online it appears these thefts have reached epidemic proportions. The common thread is we don't have a functioning police force.
That's part of the charm of living in a big city Roger.
In all seriousness though, that sucks, but you have two ways of dealing with it. One is the 'law and order' route which rather unfashionable, and the other one is dealing with underlying 'social issues' which people don't have too much faith in directly.
The fashionable view is that "minor" crime shouldn't be prosecuted because the "minor" criminals are themselves victims.
The detailed crime maps show why that view is..... interesting... Look for the strange "holes" where no minor crimes are reported.....
It is a strange "fashion" when the only time you hear people mention it are not those advocating it but instead those criticising the mystery, silent, people who do advocate it.
It's the lawlessness that might do it for this government.
I've had three motor scooters stolen in the last 14 months. The second was filmed on two separate CCTV cameras. The police were inaccessible on all three occasions. The only way of contacting them is online or dialling 999 which mustn't be used other than in an emergency "or you could be putting someone's life at risk" .
Having done a little detective work online it appears these thefts have reached epidemic proportions. The common thread is we don't have a functioning police force.
Welcome to the world of de-prioritised crime.
A farmer I knew never could get the police interested in the steady stream of thefts over the years.
When he started putting a roof on an ancient stone walled building (a farm cottage that hadn't been lived in since year X and was just the walls and grass) to create a secure store for some equipment, the planning officers and police were out in force. Within hours of the day he started work.
Bicycle theft is a huge problem, too. The victims tend to be people on lower incomes, often use then for work/commuting, and are a serious deterrent to people switching to green transport.
A white van used to park up near George Square in Edinburgh and leave with about 15 bikes each run. Witnessed a taxi ram a thief off a bike once. Hero.
Many years ago, an arse of boss had his bike stolen.
Because he was rolling in money, he had spent all the money on his toy. Custom carbon fibre etc... It was well into 5 figures, which apparently made it a serious theft. So the police actually turned out...
In court the lawyer for the thief argued it was unfair that the police looked for fingerprints etc because a "normal" bike theft would just be NFA'd.....
He had it in October, so that's some fast waning natural immunity, and I assume he's had all of his jabs.
Only in terms of testing positive. Presumably he's had Delta and Omicron, which isn't really a surprise to be honest.
That's almost certainly correct, at least his immune system should be getting a good workout. It does also demonstrate that in the medium to long term, if not sooner, everybody is going to get covid.
It's the lawlessness that might do it for this government.
I've had three motor scooters stolen in the last 14 months. The second was filmed on two separate CCTV cameras. The police were inaccessible on all three occasions. The only way of contacting them is online or dialling 999 which mustn't be used other than in an emergency "or you could be putting someone's life at risk" .
Having done a little detective work online it appears these thefts have reached epidemic proportions. The common thread is we don't have a functioning police force.
Welcome to the world of de-prioritised crime.
A farmer I knew never could get the police interested in the steady stream of thefts over the years.
When he started putting a roof on an ancient stone walled building (a farm cottage that hadn't been lived in since year X and was just the walls and grass) to create a secure store for some equipment, the planning officers and police were out in force. Within hours of the day he started work.
If the police were involved and came along - that farmer has some VERY interesting flags on both the council and police computer systems...
A brilliant piece of investigative reporting into planning fandangos on Teesside. Local Tories up in arms about housing proposal, but their mate the mayor is silent. Then you look at who his donors are...
Planning inspectorate grants permission for houses.
Sorry but any sane person would do the same as what is done has been done and clearly Stockton don’t have decent planners*
* this is a given, when the top rate for a public sector planner is £40,000 anyone good moves to the private sector quickly.
Point is that people don't want them. Tory voters. Tory MP. Despite me being told the opposite. Nor does having a local plan and shitloads of houses being built protect you from being overridden by the same planning inspector. Despite being told "if you had a local plan you can stop these developments".
I did enjoy the dig into who the mayor's donors are. This is twice now he has trampled on a local Tory MP - the previous mega coalition of Tories all firing on the same front down there is collapsing fast.
Which "people don't want them"?
Do you mean the landowner? If so, they can veto the development? Do you mean the developers? If so, it won't go ahead. Do you mean potential purchasers? If so, they won't get sold.
Or do you mean unrelated whining NIMBY shitmunchers who have no connection whatsoever to the development?
If the Mayor is ignoring them and listening to the authorities and those who actually have a stake in the development then good.
It's the lawlessness that might do it for this government.
I've had three motor scooters stolen in the last 14 months. The second was filmed on two separate CCTV cameras. The police were inaccessible on all three occasions. The only way of contacting them is online or dialling 999 which mustn't be used other than in an emergency "or you could be putting someone's life at risk" .
Having done a little detective work online it appears these thefts have reached epidemic proportions. The common thread is we don't have a functioning police force.
Welcome to the world of de-prioritised crime.
A farmer I knew never could get the police interested in the steady stream of thefts over the years.
When he started putting a roof on an ancient stone walled building (a farm cottage that hadn't been lived in since year X and was just the walls and grass) to create a secure store for some equipment, the planning officers and police were out in force. Within hours of the day he started work.
Bicycle theft is a huge problem, too. The victims tend to be people on lower incomes, often use then for work/commuting, and are a serious deterrent to people switching to green transport.
A white van used to park up near George Square in Edinburgh and leave with about 15 bikes each run. Witnessed a taxi ram a thief off a bike once. Hero.
Many years ago, an arse of boss had his bike stolen.
Because he was rolling in money, he had spent all the money on his toy. Custom carbon fibre etc... It was well into 5 figures, which apparently made it a serious theft. So the police actually turned out...
In court the lawyer for the thief argued it was unfair that the police looked for fingerprints etc because a "normal" bike theft would just be NFA'd.....
Might be because it was easily identified when he tried to sell it on gumtree or something. There are quite a few fun stories of people retrieving their bikes after taking then for a 'test ride' after seeing the ad.
It's the lawlessness that might do it for this government.
I've had three motor scooters stolen in the last 14 months. The second was filmed on two separate CCTV cameras. The police were inaccessible on all three occasions. The only way of contacting them is online or dialling 999 which mustn't be used other than in an emergency "or you could be putting someone's life at risk" .
Having done a little detective work online it appears these thefts have reached epidemic proportions. The common thread is we don't have a functioning police force.
Welcome to the world of de-prioritised crime.
A farmer I knew never could get the police interested in the steady stream of thefts over the years.
When he started putting a roof on an ancient stone walled building (a farm cottage that hadn't been lived in since year X and was just the walls and grass) to create a secure store for some equipment, the planning officers and police were out in force. Within hours of the day he started work.
If the police were involved and came along - that farmer has some VERY interesting flags on both the council and police computer systems...
Yeah - "this twat keeps pestering us with burglary reports and it's making us look bad in the crime stats"
We know that Omicron cases include many more reinfections than previous variants., 10-15% of cases are reinfections. These are not included in the reported numbers in the UK, except in Wales which does include them. How do other countries address this issue?
Any idea WHY we are not counting them? Seems odd, especially now that they are more common.
Because of the way the infections are registered to NHS numbers. We count new NHS numbers with a positive test result against them. Reinfections won't change that flag so they don't get counted. Aiui it's a fairly big technical challenge to count reinfections programmatically.
Good god, in 2022 we can't solve that challenge? How hard can it be?
Thanks for confirming that you aren't a programmer.
Oh and that is the cost for a single system, you need to make a similar change in every other production (and non production) system that accesses that field - I call it an endless merry-go-round task.
Note for future pandemics when adding a field use an integer rather than boolean....
Yep - I am absolutely NOT a programmer, and never claimed to be. I just find it fascinating that this information is that hard.
IANADP (**), but;
Changing something may be *really* easy (*). Changing something so it doesn't break the entire system - or other peoples systems that rely on it - can be really difficult. And breaking a system can mean downtime whilst you recover, or even make the data irretrievable. Worse, it can break client's systems, if their systems are not well written. And yes, this has happened to a company I know of - an innocuous change they made caused one of their customer's databases to fail, and with it their entire purchasing system.
This is why it's worth spending time early on in a project working out exactly what you need, and what you *may* need in the future. Something that's really hard to do IMO, but can really pay off.
(*) Actually, there should be processes in place to ensure it isn't easy to blindly change something, but that's often not the case. (**) I Am Not A Database Person
It's the lawlessness that might do it for this government.
I've had three motor scooters stolen in the last 14 months. The second was filmed on two separate CCTV cameras. The police were inaccessible on all three occasions. The only way of contacting them is online or dialling 999 which mustn't be used other than in an emergency "or you could be putting someone's life at risk" .
Having done a little detective work online it appears these thefts have reached epidemic proportions. The common thread is we don't have a functioning police force.
Welcome to the world of de-prioritised crime.
A farmer I knew never could get the police interested in the steady stream of thefts over the years.
When he started putting a roof on an ancient stone walled building (a farm cottage that hadn't been lived in since year X and was just the walls and grass) to create a secure store for some equipment, the planning officers and police were out in force. Within hours of the day he started work.
Bicycle theft is a huge problem, too. The victims tend to be people on lower incomes, often use then for work/commuting, and are a serious deterrent to people switching to green transport.
A white van used to park up near George Square in Edinburgh and leave with about 15 bikes each run. Witnessed a taxi ram a thief off a bike once. Hero.
Many years ago, an arse of boss had his bike stolen.
Because he was rolling in money, he had spent all the money on his toy. Custom carbon fibre etc... It was well into 5 figures, which apparently made it a serious theft. So the police actually turned out...
In court the lawyer for the thief argued it was unfair that the police looked for fingerprints etc because a "normal" bike theft would just be NFA'd.....
Might be because it was easily identified when he tried to sell it on gumtree or something. There are quite a few fun stories of people retrieving their bikes after taking then for a 'test ride' after seeing the ad.
High end bikes (say 5 grand up) always get parted out and the frames end up in SE Asia bike shops.
ISTM that "kids" is vaguely pejorative; horrid/horrible I would see more as a class indicator, likewise pudding and dessert; and movie is just going with the times as most people consume films on US streaming services and those films in any case are usually US-made.
I see kids more as informal than pejorative. But if OKC sees it as pejorative I can see why. Horrid feels horribly Enid Blyton and twee. (I have actually read a good argument that horrid is the least horrible of the four horrible words, which, getting more horrible, are horrid, horrible, horrendous and horrific. So perhaps has a use as 'horrible, but not that horrible'.) Movie is just not as good a word as film. I have also seen an argument that movie denotes a certain sort of film - big Hollywood blockbuster - whereas film is its more thoughtful or arty counterpart. Again, I could get on board with that. But movie seems to just be used for all films nowadays. Sigh. And dessert just sounds to me like an affectation. Though I have an Irish friend who finds the word pudding hilarious - hears it as very English and therefore very posh, which is kind of the reverse of how I hear it.
I think the problem with 'film' is that it means many different things. It can be used as a noun (a thin film) or a verb (I'm filming the action, or to cover something with a layer). Whereas 'movie' just refers to the recorded film.
Movie is not a nice word IMO, but it refers much better to its subject than 'film'.
For me a 'film' is a thin layer, whereas a 'fillim' is what I watch when I go to the pictures.
Most of the movies that get shown these days are talkies. Interesting that the earlier word has stuck.
It's the lawlessness that might do it for this government.
I've had three motor scooters stolen in the last 14 months. The second was filmed on two separate CCTV cameras. The police were inaccessible on all three occasions. The only way of contacting them is online or dialling 999 which mustn't be used other than in an emergency "or you could be putting someone's life at risk" .
Having done a little detective work online it appears these thefts have reached epidemic proportions. The common thread is we don't have a functioning police force.
Welcome to the world of de-prioritised crime.
A farmer I knew never could get the police interested in the steady stream of thefts over the years.
When he started putting a roof on an ancient stone walled building (a farm cottage that hadn't been lived in since year X and was just the walls and grass) to create a secure store for some equipment, the planning officers and police were out in force. Within hours of the day he started work.
Bicycle theft is a huge problem, too. The victims tend to be people on lower incomes, often use then for work/commuting, and are a serious deterrent to people switching to green transport.
A white van used to park up near George Square in Edinburgh and leave with about 15 bikes each run. Witnessed a taxi ram a thief off a bike once. Hero.
Many years ago, an arse of boss had his bike stolen.
Because he was rolling in money, he had spent all the money on his toy. Custom carbon fibre etc... It was well into 5 figures, which apparently made it a serious theft. So the police actually turned out...
In court the lawyer for the thief argued it was unfair that the police looked for fingerprints etc because a "normal" bike theft would just be NFA'd.....
Might be because it was easily identified when he tried to sell it on gumtree or something. There are quite a few fun stories of people retrieving their bikes after taking then for a 'test ride' after seeing the ad.
He was a cycle courier, IIRC.
Saw the bike inside the building, in an alcove by reception. Lifted it when the receptionist was away for a moment.
They caught him from fingerprints & CCTV - saw what he touched, got the prints, ran them. Went to his home, found the bike....
Off thread already (sorry), there is a story in the Telegraph that the Six Nations might be played entirely in England. To me, that would be vastly preferable to empty stadia in Scotland and Wales (and Ireland and France?). And getting to Bristol, say, won't be massively more inconvenient for Welsh fans than getting to Cardiff. But I can't see the politics of it panning out. Nicola Sturgeon and Mark Drakeford would be furious.
Well, if Scotland, Wales, Ireland and France (not sure about Italy) are all banning crowds from stadia, and England are offering the organisers full houses of paying spectators, then the organisers are going to take the money.
6N tickets are gold dust at the best of times, they’ll have no problem selling out every venue they can find, even at short notice.
Yes, the politics of it will be awful in the other nations.
Although it also allows Sturgeon and Drakeford an easy hit at explaining differential infection rates (“stupid English”)
Previous posters applauded this story as a political masterpiece. It really, really isn’t.
Kudos to Charles for thinking twice. All too rare in the modern iteration of the Conservative Party.
It should be up to the sporting bodies. Prime facie it seems like a sensible proposal but it shouldn’t be about politics (although I have no doubt that people on both sides will try to make it about politics)
It's the lawlessness that might do it for this government.
I've had three motor scooters stolen in the last 14 months. The second was filmed on two separate CCTV cameras. The police were inaccessible on all three occasions. The only way of contacting them is online or dialling 999 which mustn't be used other than in an emergency "or you could be putting someone's life at risk" .
Having done a little detective work online it appears these thefts have reached epidemic proportions. The common thread is we don't have a functioning police force.
That's part of the charm of living in a big city Roger.
In all seriousness though, that sucks, but you have two ways of dealing with it. One is the 'law and order' route which rather unfashionable, and the other one is dealing with underlying 'social issues' which people don't have too much faith in directly.
- the synopsis is that like speeding drivers, rather than being prosecuted, cannabis (and other drug) users are being sent on 'awareness courses' which set out the impacts that drugs have. The entertaining part of this is that the line that the article takes is exactly the opposite of what you would expect given the newspaper and the headline: that Sadiq Khan's approach here is exactly the right one.
This wasn't an issue I felt particularly strongly about prior to reading the article, but probably erred on the side of not decriminalising. But I now probably agree that the new London approach is the correct one, or at least worth trying. This was one of those refreshing pieces which changes your mind about something.
We know that Omicron cases include many more reinfections than previous variants., 10-15% of cases are reinfections. These are not included in the reported numbers in the UK, except in Wales which does include them. How do other countries address this issue?
Any idea WHY we are not counting them? Seems odd, especially now that they are more common.
Because of the way the infections are registered to NHS numbers. We count new NHS numbers with a positive test result against them. Reinfections won't change that flag so they don't get counted. Aiui it's a fairly big technical challenge to count reinfections programmatically.
Good god, in 2022 we can't solve that challenge? How hard can it be?
Thanks for confirming that you aren't a programmer.
Oh and that is the cost for a single system, you need to make a similar change in every other production (and non production) system that accesses that field - I call it an endless merry-go-round task.
Note for future pandemics when adding a field use an integer rather than boolean....
Yep - I am absolutely NOT a programmer, and never claimed to be. I just find it fascinating that this information is that hard.
IANADP (**), but;
Changing something may be *really* easy (*). Changing something so it doesn't break the entire system - or other peoples systems that rely on it - can be really difficult. And breaking a system can mean downtime whilst you recover, or even make the data irretrievable. Worse, it can break client's systems, if their systems are not well written. And yes, this has happened to a company I know of - an innocuous change they made caused one of their customer's databases to fail, and with it their entire purchasing system.
This is why it's worth spending time early on in a project working out exactly what you need, and what you *may* need in the future. Something that's really hard to do IMO, but can really pay off.
(*) Actually, there should be processes in place to ensure it isn't easy to blindly change something, but that's often not the case. (**) I Am Not A Database Person
I’m not much of a database person, but changes to data structures almost always cause unintended consequences. Whether it’s an interconnected system interface, historical reports that no longer work or produce junk, version control among thousands of unmanaged clients, or half a dozen other things might that rely on the data structure being a certain way.
Always best to design tables with spare fields, and use indexes, stored procedures, and consolidated reporting tables for historic data. But, of course, most of these things in production were designed years ago, when storage and memory were really expensive and hard to scale.
It's the lawlessness that might do it for this government.
I've had three motor scooters stolen in the last 14 months. The second was filmed on two separate CCTV cameras. The police were inaccessible on all three occasions. The only way of contacting them is online or dialling 999 which mustn't be used other than in an emergency "or you could be putting someone's life at risk" .
Having done a little detective work online it appears these thefts have reached epidemic proportions. The common thread is we don't have a functioning police force.
Welcome to the world of de-prioritised crime.
A farmer I knew never could get the police interested in the steady stream of thefts over the years.
When he started putting a roof on an ancient stone walled building (a farm cottage that hadn't been lived in since year X and was just the walls and grass) to create a secure store for some equipment, the planning officers and police were out in force. Within hours of the day he started work.
If the police were involved and came along - that farmer has some VERY interesting flags on both the council and police computer systems...
Yeah - "this twat keeps pestering us with burglary reports and it's making us look bad in the crime stats"
When I previously mentioned this, someone linked to a case where a planning officer was murdered by loon. So maybe it was one of those "safety case" things.
EDIT: Being a farmer, he probably had a shotgun. So a license. So someone probably went "GUNS!"
OK. Let's stop this self-serving horse shit that the course of Omicron was utterly uninfluencable by restrictions except the most Draconian, so why bother. Yes, light measures wouldn't have taken Rt below 1, but achieving a slowing from 1.7 to 1.5 would have been worth it to flatten the curve a little, to reduce the peak. I fully accepted the Delta thinking, poorly explained, that it was about flow control rather than prevention, but HMG threw flow control out of the window as well for political weakness and expediency.
I don't exactly agree with the Scottish measures either, but it should be noted that the Central Belt was ready to explode at the same point as London and they have successfully delayed and likely lowered a massive peak. (Wale's late measures, not so much yet).
So, is it too late now or is that also self-serving horse shit? I don't think we have much influence on the peak at this stage, but is a degree of suppression and of re-establishing flow control beyond the peak worth it, is helping NHS recovery worth it? If the measures can be found, then, yes.
So what is the problem. Not cases, not deaths this time, but hospital capacity, both from bed occupation and staff absence. And let's be clear the bed occupation is still 'for COVID' - the proportion of 'fors' may have dropped (75->65%) but this is not a withdemic - that is another bit of self-serving bolleaux.
London looks beyond peak, but any kick on in New Year, a single doubling - likely outer London led - looks NHS fatal at this stage and is certainly not beyond the realms.
So let's start slowing the right things. I'm not on the pub closing page, here, I'm still on the restricting the unvaccinated in a proportionate way for their own health and for health provision for all:
- Ban unvaccinated and never registered positive over 18s from pubs, sit down restaurants, entertainment venues, from close contact personal care and from household mixing except for care giving. - Ban not boosted (or double vaccinated plus infected) over 60s in the same way. - Too late to set up Vaxports as the central gatekeeper of this or business to enforce. Compliance is an individual responsibility, and 7 days at a police station to prove status would do, as per driving. - Strongly advise critical workers to follow the same guidelines as the unvaccinated wherever possible. - Strong message to all other to prioritise the contacts most important to them, whatever those are - properly government led, not Whitty as a lone voice. - Testing and earlier returns for critical workers (as soon as negative) - For the unvaccinated, non clinically urgent hospital attendances should be delayed, where there is a clear clinical benefit to the unvaccinated avoiding Omicronny settings.
A lot of Omicron will still find these people in more roundabout ways, but every person who catches it in February rather than January is a win and this should start to make a difference quickly if done.
The case hasn’t be made banning people from ordinary every day activities
It's the lawlessness that might do it for this government.
I've had three motor scooters stolen in the last 14 months. The second was filmed on two separate CCTV cameras. The police were inaccessible on all three occasions. The only way of contacting them is online or dialling 999 which mustn't be used other than in an emergency "or you could be putting someone's life at risk" .
Having done a little detective work online it appears these thefts have reached epidemic proportions. The common thread is we don't have a functioning police force.
Welcome to the world of de-prioritised crime.
A farmer I knew never could get the police interested in the steady stream of thefts over the years.
When he started putting a roof on an ancient stone walled building (a farm cottage that hadn't been lived in since year X and was just the walls and grass) to create a secure store for some equipment, the planning officers and police were out in force. Within hours of the day he started work.
Bicycle theft is a huge problem, too. The victims tend to be people on lower incomes, often use then for work/commuting, and are a serious deterrent to people switching to green transport.
A white van used to park up near George Square in Edinburgh and leave with about 15 bikes each run. Witnessed a taxi ram a thief off a bike once. Hero.
Many years ago, an arse of boss had his bike stolen.
Because he was rolling in money, he had spent all the money on his toy. Custom carbon fibre etc... It was well into 5 figures, which apparently made it a serious theft. So the police actually turned out...
In court the lawyer for the thief argued it was unfair that the police looked for fingerprints etc because a "normal" bike theft would just be NFA'd.....
Might be because it was easily identified when he tried to sell it on gumtree or something. There are quite a few fun stories of people retrieving their bikes after taking then for a 'test ride' after seeing the ad.
I had a bike stolen about five years ago - it was of reasonable but not stellar quality, costing about £400. I left it locked up with a shitty lock near St. James' Park and walked about 20 yards away to sit on a bench for ten minutes and it was gone when I got back. Anyway, I reported the theft to an utterly uninterested policewoman and about a year later was amazed to get an email from the police that they had found the guy, who was a habitual bike thief, and he had had pictures of it on his phone.
Of course I never heard anything more about it or got compensation or anything like that, but I was still pretty surprised that they'd tracked him down.
Perhaps he's just caught COVID twice? Plenty people have. Lots recently boostered or infected too. In fact. Bloody everybody's got it, recently had it or soon will have, so it's hardly a surprise.
We know that Omicron cases include many more reinfections than previous variants., 10-15% of cases are reinfections. These are not included in the reported numbers in the UK, except in Wales which does include them. How do other countries address this issue?
Any idea WHY we are not counting them? Seems odd, especially now that they are more common.
Because of the way the infections are registered to NHS numbers. We count new NHS numbers with a positive test result against them. Reinfections won't change that flag so they don't get counted. Aiui it's a fairly big technical challenge to count reinfections programmatically.
Good god, in 2022 we can't solve that challenge? How hard can it be?
Thanks for confirming that you aren't a programmer.
Oh and that is the cost for a single system, you need to make a similar change in every other production (and non production) system that accesses that field - I call it an endless merry-go-round task.
Note for future pandemics when adding a field use an integer rather than boolean....
Yep - I am absolutely NOT a programmer, and never claimed to be. I just find it fascinating that this information is that hard.
IANADP (**), but;
Changing something may be *really* easy (*). Changing something so it doesn't break the entire system - or other peoples systems that rely on it - can be really difficult. And breaking a system can mean downtime whilst you recover, or even make the data irretrievable. Worse, it can break client's systems, if their systems are not well written. And yes, this has happened to a company I know of - an innocuous change they made caused one of their customer's databases to fail, and with it their entire purchasing system.
This is why it's worth spending time early on in a project working out exactly what you need, and what you *may* need in the future. Something that's really hard to do IMO, but can really pay off.
(*) Actually, there should be processes in place to ensure it isn't easy to blindly change something, but that's often not the case. (**) I Am Not A Database Person
I’m not much of a database person, but changes to data structures almost always cause unintended consequences. Whether it’s an interconnected system interface, historical reports that no longer work or produce junk, version control among thousands of unmanaged clients, or half a dozen other things might that rely on the data structure being a certain way.
Always best to design tables with spare fields, and use indexes, stored procedures, and consolidated reporting tables for historic data. But, of course, most of these things in production were designed years ago, when storage and memory were really expensive and hard to scale.
Worse, many systems have not been designed. Well, they may have been initially, but over time requirements change, and a series of contractors are hired in to make small changes. If they are paid to, they will update the documentation. If you are lucky, they will be competent. As the system changes, you end up with scores of seemingly innocuous changes and new dependencies that are either undocumented or poorly documented, and no-one who knows the system as a whole. If systems are massive, you can get the same effect with teams of contractors or analysts.
Many moons ago, I did a little work for an organisation whose sole income was selling data. It was an old organisation, and the selling was placed at a much higher priority than the data, which used to be held in books, and was now held electronically. If I had been running the business, my focus would have been on managing that data and nurturing the systems that held it. Instead, the data and computers were an afterthought. The salesmen were king. They'd even got rid of some of the data entry people, saying their clients could enter the data. Except, of course, clients frequently entered the data incorrectly...
This is true for many organisations nowadays: even if they are not in the computer business, they utterly rely on computers, but neglect them. Computers are a cost, and not seen as the core of the business.
It's the lawlessness that might do it for this government.
I've had three motor scooters stolen in the last 14 months. The second was filmed on two separate CCTV cameras. The police were inaccessible on all three occasions. The only way of contacting them is online or dialling 999 which mustn't be used other than in an emergency "or you could be putting someone's life at risk" .
Having done a little detective work online it appears these thefts have reached epidemic proportions. The common thread is we don't have a functioning police force.
Welcome to the world of de-prioritised crime.
A farmer I knew never could get the police interested in the steady stream of thefts over the years.
When he started putting a roof on an ancient stone walled building (a farm cottage that hadn't been lived in since year X and was just the walls and grass) to create a secure store for some equipment, the planning officers and police were out in force. Within hours of the day he started work.
If the police were involved and came along - that farmer has some VERY interesting flags on both the council and police computer systems...
Yeah - "this twat keeps pestering us with burglary reports and it's making us look bad in the crime stats"
When I previously mentioned this, someone linked to a case where a planning officer was murdered by loon. So maybe it was one of those "safety case" things.
EDIT: Being a farmer, he probably had a shotgun. So a license. So someone probably went "GUNS!"
Would take more than just having a shotgun license for the police to turn up.
Reason I know this - think about where Mrs Eek works....
It's the lawlessness that might do it for this government.
I've had three motor scooters stolen in the last 14 months. The second was filmed on two separate CCTV cameras. The police were inaccessible on all three occasions. The only way of contacting them is online or dialling 999 which mustn't be used other than in an emergency "or you could be putting someone's life at risk" .
Having done a little detective work online it appears these thefts have reached epidemic proportions. The common thread is we don't have a functioning police force.
Welcome to the world of de-prioritised crime.
A farmer I knew never could get the police interested in the steady stream of thefts over the years.
When he started putting a roof on an ancient stone walled building (a farm cottage that hadn't been lived in since year X and was just the walls and grass) to create a secure store for some equipment, the planning officers and police were out in force. Within hours of the day he started work.
Bicycle theft is a huge problem, too. The victims tend to be people on lower incomes, often use then for work/commuting, and are a serious deterrent to people switching to green transport.
A white van used to park up near George Square in Edinburgh and leave with about 15 bikes each run. Witnessed a taxi ram a thief off a bike once. Hero.
Many years ago, an arse of boss had his bike stolen.
Because he was rolling in money, he had spent all the money on his toy. Custom carbon fibre etc... It was well into 5 figures, which apparently made it a serious theft. So the police actually turned out...
In court the lawyer for the thief argued it was unfair that the police looked for fingerprints etc because a "normal" bike theft would just be NFA'd.....
Might be because it was easily identified when he tried to sell it on gumtree or something. There are quite a few fun stories of people retrieving their bikes after taking then for a 'test ride' after seeing the ad.
I had a bike stolen about five years ago - it was of reasonable but not stellar quality, costing about £400. I left it locked up with a shitty lock near St. James' Park and walked about 20 yards away to sit on a bench for ten minutes and it was gone when I got back. Anyway, I reported the theft to an utterly uninterested policewoman and about a year later was amazed to get an email from the police that they had found the guy, who was a habitual bike thief, and he had had pictures of it on his phone.
Of course I never heard anything more about it or got compensation or anything like that, but I was still pretty surprised that they'd tracked him down.
Top tip: on most house insurance policies you can add a bike without using a particular kind of lock if the bike is worth less than £1000. Above that you need to use a Gold standard one.
I was surprised at how cheap mine was the insure tbh.
It's the lawlessness that might do it for this government.
I've had three motor scooters stolen in the last 14 months. The second was filmed on two separate CCTV cameras. The police were inaccessible on all three occasions. The only way of contacting them is online or dialling 999 which mustn't be used other than in an emergency "or you could be putting someone's life at risk" .
Having done a little detective work online it appears these thefts have reached epidemic proportions. The common thread is we don't have a functioning police force.
Welcome to the world of de-prioritised crime.
A farmer I knew never could get the police interested in the steady stream of thefts over the years.
When he started putting a roof on an ancient stone walled building (a farm cottage that hadn't been lived in since year X and was just the walls and grass) to create a secure store for some equipment, the planning officers and police were out in force. Within hours of the day he started work.
Bicycle theft is a huge problem, too. The victims tend to be people on lower incomes, often use then for work/commuting, and are a serious deterrent to people switching to green transport.
A white van used to park up near George Square in Edinburgh and leave with about 15 bikes each run. Witnessed a taxi ram a thief off a bike once. Hero.
Many years ago, an arse of boss had his bike stolen.
Because he was rolling in money, he had spent all the money on his toy. Custom carbon fibre etc... It was well into 5 figures, which apparently made it a serious theft. So the police actually turned out...
In court the lawyer for the thief argued it was unfair that the police looked for fingerprints etc because a "normal" bike theft would just be NFA'd.....
Might be because it was easily identified when he tried to sell it on gumtree or something. There are quite a few fun stories of people retrieving their bikes after taking then for a 'test ride' after seeing the ad.
I had a bike stolen about five years ago - it was of reasonable but not stellar quality, costing about £400. I left it locked up with a shitty lock near St. James' Park and walked about 20 yards away to sit on a bench for ten minutes and it was gone when I got back. Anyway, I reported the theft to an utterly uninterested policewoman and about a year later was amazed to get an email from the police that they had found the guy, who was a habitual bike thief, and he had had pictures of it on his phone.
Of course I never heard anything more about it or got compensation or anything like that, but I was still pretty surprised that they'd tracked him down.
When they catch people - and they almost certainly caught him for running a "business" of stealing bikes, rather than an individual theft - they offer deals if the criminal admits lots of other crimes*.
So the police get to solve a zillion crimes and the criminal gets treated less harshly. What's not to like?
*If they haven't actually committed the crimes they put their hands up for, who cares?
There’s a big push uniting Tory backbenchers and the Daily Mirror to cut VAT to help with the credit crunch “heat or eat” but Boris said that merely gives money back to many who don’t need it.
BTW Scott, have you found that lie you were accusing Liz Truss of yet?
It wasn’t Liz Truss but her spokesman. The spokesman (apparently) originally said they booked the more expensive option because of short notice and lack of alternatives.
He’s got worked up about that. Rather than looking at whether the expenditure was reasonable in the context of what it was trying to achieve.
The expenditure of £1,400 or even £3,000 is back of the sofa money (literally so for half the Cabinet). The significant parts are first that HMG lied about it, and second that HMG thought it necessary to lie about it, presumably because they thought there was something to hide. They'd not counted on the spin effort to distract critics back to the relatively small amount spent.
A brilliant piece of investigative reporting into planning fandangos on Teesside. Local Tories up in arms about housing proposal, but their mate the mayor is silent. Then you look at who his donors are...
Planning inspectorate grants permission for houses.
Sorry but any sane person would do the same as what is done has been done and clearly Stockton don’t have decent planners*
* this is a given, when the top rate for a public sector planner is £40,000 anyone good moves to the private sector quickly.
Point is that people don't want them. Tory voters. Tory MP. Despite me being told the opposite. Nor does having a local plan and shitloads of houses being built protect you from being overridden by the same planning inspector. Despite being told "if you had a local plan you can stop these developments".
I did enjoy the dig into who the mayor's donors are. This is twice now he has trampled on a local Tory MP - the previous mega coalition of Tories all firing on the same front down there is collapsing fast.
Which "people don't want them"?
Do you mean the landowner? If so, they can veto the development? Do you mean the developers? If so, it won't go ahead. Do you mean potential purchasers? If so, they won't get sold.
Or do you mean unrelated whining NIMBY shitmunchers who have no connection whatsoever to the development?
If the Mayor is ignoring them and listening to the authorities and those who actually have a stake in the development then good.
People as in voters. Putting out a leaflet saying "Dear whining NIMBY shitmunchers, if you vote for me I promise to utterly ignore your views and instead back my patrons who have given me handsome donations" may not be a vote winner.
A brilliant piece of investigative reporting into planning fandangos on Teesside. Local Tories up in arms about housing proposal, but their mate the mayor is silent. Then you look at who his donors are...
Planning inspectorate grants permission for houses.
Sorry but any sane person would do the same as what is done has been done and clearly Stockton don’t have decent planners*
* this is a given, when the top rate for a public sector planner is £40,000 anyone good moves to the private sector quickly.
Point is that people don't want them. Tory voters. Tory MP. Despite me being told the opposite. Nor does having a local plan and shitloads of houses being built protect you from being overridden by the same planning inspector. Despite being told "if you had a local plan you can stop these developments".
I did enjoy the dig into who the mayor's donors are. This is twice now he has trampled on a local Tory MP - the previous mega coalition of Tories all firing on the same front down there is collapsing fast.
Which "people don't want them"?
Do you mean the landowner? If so, they can veto the development? Do you mean the developers? If so, it won't go ahead. Do you mean potential purchasers? If so, they won't get sold.
Or do you mean unrelated whining NIMBY shitmunchers who have no connection whatsoever to the development?
If the Mayor is ignoring them and listening to the authorities and those who actually have a stake in the development then good.
Ha ha - you and I have very different views on the form that development should take in this country. But on the above I fully agree with you. I might not have used the term 'shitmunchers' though, but I'll add it to my lexicon.
It's the lawlessness that might do it for this government.
I've had three motor scooters stolen in the last 14 months. The second was filmed on two separate CCTV cameras. The police were inaccessible on all three occasions. The only way of contacting them is online or dialling 999 which mustn't be used other than in an emergency "or you could be putting someone's life at risk" .
Having done a little detective work online it appears these thefts have reached epidemic proportions. The common thread is we don't have a functioning police force.
Welcome to the world of de-prioritised crime.
A farmer I knew never could get the police interested in the steady stream of thefts over the years.
When he started putting a roof on an ancient stone walled building (a farm cottage that hadn't been lived in since year X and was just the walls and grass) to create a secure store for some equipment, the planning officers and police were out in force. Within hours of the day he started work.
If the police were involved and came along - that farmer has some VERY interesting flags on both the council and police computer systems...
Yeah - "this twat keeps pestering us with burglary reports and it's making us look bad in the crime stats"
When I previously mentioned this, someone linked to a case where a planning officer was murdered by loon. So maybe it was one of those "safety case" things.
EDIT: Being a farmer, he probably had a shotgun. So a license. So someone probably went "GUNS!"
Would take more than just having a shotgun license for the police to turn up.
Reason I know this - think about where Mrs Eek works....
Whilst I am in anecdote mood:
A relative lives in the countryside. One evening, a neighbour (a good half mile or so away) arrives back home in the dark to find his wife being held by men. Confusion reigns, the men leave, and the police are called. Since guns had been reported, the police 'copter goes up and starts searching the area as it is believed the suspects may have left on foot.
Meanwhile, my relative's husband hears the police 'copter. He goes out with his torch to check the barns and equipment. Suddenly, he is captured in the light from the copter. He goes back into the cottage.
Unfortunately, my relative shoots and keeps guns at home (fully licenced). A while later, armed police turn up at their front door, the 'copter having reported someone running into the cottage, and the police check showing that the relative has access to guns.
We know that Omicron cases include many more reinfections than previous variants., 10-15% of cases are reinfections. These are not included in the reported numbers in the UK, except in Wales which does include them. How do other countries address this issue?
Any idea WHY we are not counting them? Seems odd, especially now that they are more common.
Because of the way the infections are registered to NHS numbers. We count new NHS numbers with a positive test result against them. Reinfections won't change that flag so they don't get counted. Aiui it's a fairly big technical challenge to count reinfections programmatically.
Good god, in 2022 we can't solve that challenge? How hard can it be?
Thanks for confirming that you aren't a programmer.
Oh and that is the cost for a single system, you need to make a similar change in every other production (and non production) system that accesses that field - I call it an endless merry-go-round task.
Note for future pandemics when adding a field use an integer rather than boolean....
Yep - I am absolutely NOT a programmer, and never claimed to be. I just find it fascinating that this information is that hard.
IANADP (**), but;
Changing something may be *really* easy (*). Changing something so it doesn't break the entire system - or other peoples systems that rely on it - can be really difficult. And breaking a system can mean downtime whilst you recover, or even make the data irretrievable. Worse, it can break client's systems, if their systems are not well written. And yes, this has happened to a company I know of - an innocuous change they made caused one of their customer's databases to fail, and with it their entire purchasing system.
This is why it's worth spending time early on in a project working out exactly what you need, and what you *may* need in the future. Something that's really hard to do IMO, but can really pay off.
(*) Actually, there should be processes in place to ensure it isn't easy to blindly change something, but that's often not the case. (**) I Am Not A Database Person
I’m not much of a database person, but changes to data structures almost always cause unintended consequences. Whether it’s an interconnected system interface, historical reports that no longer work or produce junk, version control among thousands of unmanaged clients, or half a dozen other things might that rely on the data structure being a certain way.
Always best to design tables with spare fields, and use indexes, stored procedures, and consolidated reporting tables for historic data. But, of course, most of these things in production were designed years ago, when storage and memory were really expensive and hard to scale.
There is no such thing as an innocuous or minor change on a database system.
Sadly modern convenience means its now rare to have complete separation between databases and the objects used by the systems above the database. Entity frameworks and similar coding "improvements" mean that creating an index has to cope with software that is generating queries based on external 3rd party code that may not work the way you expect.
On the other hand it's now possible to build systems that run entirely in memory so indexes aren't the complete be all and end all that they used to be.
1) The futility of mask wearing 2) That Starmer cannot do a LFT properly 3) That Starmer has been over testing himself
4) That Starmer lives in North London which is the Covid capital of the civilised world (or at least gets a darkish cell on @Malmesbury's tables)
Doesn't he have a school age family as well?
SKS may just be one of those people genetically more or less susceptible, and HoC is virus central anyway with people like Mr Johnson setting an example or not as the case may be.
We know that Omicron cases include many more reinfections than previous variants., 10-15% of cases are reinfections. These are not included in the reported numbers in the UK, except in Wales which does include them. How do other countries address this issue?
Any idea WHY we are not counting them? Seems odd, especially now that they are more common.
Because of the way the infections are registered to NHS numbers. We count new NHS numbers with a positive test result against them. Reinfections won't change that flag so they don't get counted. Aiui it's a fairly big technical challenge to count reinfections programmatically.
Good god, in 2022 we can't solve that challenge? How hard can it be?
Thanks for confirming that you aren't a programmer.
Oh and that is the cost for a single system, you need to make a similar change in every other production (and non production) system that accesses that field - I call it an endless merry-go-round task.
Note for future pandemics when adding a field use an integer rather than boolean....
Yep - I am absolutely NOT a programmer, and never claimed to be. I just find it fascinating that this information is that hard.
IANADP (**), but;
Changing something may be *really* easy (*). Changing something so it doesn't break the entire system - or other peoples systems that rely on it - can be really difficult. And breaking a system can mean downtime whilst you recover, or even make the data irretrievable. Worse, it can break client's systems, if their systems are not well written. And yes, this has happened to a company I know of - an innocuous change they made caused one of their customer's databases to fail, and with it their entire purchasing system.
This is why it's worth spending time early on in a project working out exactly what you need, and what you *may* need in the future. Something that's really hard to do IMO, but can really pay off.
(*) Actually, there should be processes in place to ensure it isn't easy to blindly change something, but that's often not the case. (**) I Am Not A Database Person
I’m not much of a database person, but changes to data structures almost always cause unintended consequences. Whether it’s an interconnected system interface, historical reports that no longer work or produce junk, version control among thousands of unmanaged clients, or half a dozen other things might that rely on the data structure being a certain way.
Always best to design tables with spare fields, and use indexes, stored procedures, and consolidated reporting tables for historic data. But, of course, most of these things in production were designed years ago, when storage and memory were really expensive and hard to scale.
Worse, many systems have not been designed. Well, they may have been initially, but over time requirements change, and a series of contractors are hired in to make small changes. If they are paid to, they will update the documentation. If you are lucky, they will be competent. As the system changes, you end up with scores of seemingly innocuous changes and new dependencies that are either undocumented or poorly documented, and no-one who knows the system as a whole. If systems are massive, you can get the same effect with teams of contractors or analysts.
Many moons ago, I did a little work for an organisation whose sole income was selling data. It was an old organisation, and the selling was placed at a much higher priority than the data, which used to be held in books, and was now held electronically. If I had been running the business, my focus would have been on managing that data and nurturing the systems that held it. Instead, the data and computers were an afterthought. The salesmen were king. They'd even got rid of some of the data entry people, saying their clients could enter the data. Except, of course, clients frequently entered the data incorrectly...
This is true for many organisations nowadays: even if they are not in the computer business, they utterly rely on computers, but neglect them. Computers are a cost, and not seen as the core of the business.
Indeed. Many systems are not designed - well they were once. Then over the years semi-random changes were made, that kind of improved the system. For one thing. But then made it more unstable and worse at other things.
Finally the entire system is a collection of bodges, fixes to bodges, bodges to fixes, and obsolete software.
Bit like RNA virus replication, really.
"X is not our Core Business" - people who say that, burn them with fire.
We know that Omicron cases include many more reinfections than previous variants., 10-15% of cases are reinfections. These are not included in the reported numbers in the UK, except in Wales which does include them. How do other countries address this issue?
Any idea WHY we are not counting them? Seems odd, especially now that they are more common.
Because of the way the infections are registered to NHS numbers. We count new NHS numbers with a positive test result against them. Reinfections won't change that flag so they don't get counted. Aiui it's a fairly big technical challenge to count reinfections programmatically.
Good god, in 2022 we can't solve that challenge? How hard can it be?
Thanks for confirming that you aren't a programmer.
Oh and that is the cost for a single system, you need to make a similar change in every other production (and non production) system that accesses that field - I call it an endless merry-go-round task.
Note for future pandemics when adding a field use an integer rather than boolean....
Yep - I am absolutely NOT a programmer, and never claimed to be. I just find it fascinating that this information is that hard.
IANADP (**), but;
Changing something may be *really* easy (*). Changing something so it doesn't break the entire system - or other peoples systems that rely on it - can be really difficult. And breaking a system can mean downtime whilst you recover, or even make the data irretrievable. Worse, it can break client's systems, if their systems are not well written. And yes, this has happened to a company I know of - an innocuous change they made caused one of their customer's databases to fail, and with it their entire purchasing system.
This is why it's worth spending time early on in a project working out exactly what you need, and what you *may* need in the future. Something that's really hard to do IMO, but can really pay off.
(*) Actually, there should be processes in place to ensure it isn't easy to blindly change something, but that's often not the case. (**) I Am Not A Database Person
I’m not much of a database person, but changes to data structures almost always cause unintended consequences. Whether it’s an interconnected system interface, historical reports that no longer work or produce junk, version control among thousands of unmanaged clients, or half a dozen other things might that rely on the data structure being a certain way.
Always best to design tables with spare fields, and use indexes, stored procedures, and consolidated reporting tables for historic data. But, of course, most of these things in production were designed years ago, when storage and memory were really expensive and hard to scale.
Worse, many systems have not been designed. Well, they may have been initially, but over time requirements change, and a series of contractors are hired in to make small changes. If they are paid to, they will update the documentation. If you are lucky, they will be competent. As the system changes, you end up with scores of seemingly innocuous changes and new dependencies that are either undocumented or poorly documented, and no-one who knows the system as a whole. If systems are massive, you can get the same effect with teams of contractors or analysts.
Many moons ago, I did a little work for an organisation whose sole income was selling data. It was an old organisation, and the selling was placed at a much higher priority than the data, which used to be held in books, and was now held electronically. If I had been running the business, my focus would have been on managing that data and nurturing the systems that held it. Instead, the data and computers were an afterthought. The salesmen were king. They'd even got rid of some of the data entry people, saying their clients could enter the data. Except, of course, clients frequently entered the data incorrectly...
This is true for many organisations nowadays: even if they are not in the computer business, they utterly rely on computers, but neglect them. Computers are a cost, and not seen as the core of the business.
One of the most painful conversations I have with CEO and boards is the "You aren't a company that does XYZ, you are a software company that makes their money from doing XYZ".
Now let's see how we can utilise new technology to reduce those software costs.
We know that Omicron cases include many more reinfections than previous variants., 10-15% of cases are reinfections. These are not included in the reported numbers in the UK, except in Wales which does include them. How do other countries address this issue?
Any idea WHY we are not counting them? Seems odd, especially now that they are more common.
Because of the way the infections are registered to NHS numbers. We count new NHS numbers with a positive test result against them. Reinfections won't change that flag so they don't get counted. Aiui it's a fairly big technical challenge to count reinfections programmatically.
Good god, in 2022 we can't solve that challenge? How hard can it be?
Thanks for confirming that you aren't a programmer.
Oh and that is the cost for a single system, you need to make a similar change in every other production (and non production) system that accesses that field - I call it an endless merry-go-round task.
Note for future pandemics when adding a field use an integer rather than boolean....
Yep - I am absolutely NOT a programmer, and never claimed to be. I just find it fascinating that this information is that hard.
IANADP (**), but;
Changing something may be *really* easy (*). Changing something so it doesn't break the entire system - or other peoples systems that rely on it - can be really difficult. And breaking a system can mean downtime whilst you recover, or even make the data irretrievable. Worse, it can break client's systems, if their systems are not well written. And yes, this has happened to a company I know of - an innocuous change they made caused one of their customer's databases to fail, and with it their entire purchasing system.
This is why it's worth spending time early on in a project working out exactly what you need, and what you *may* need in the future. Something that's really hard to do IMO, but can really pay off.
(*) Actually, there should be processes in place to ensure it isn't easy to blindly change something, but that's often not the case. (**) I Am Not A Database Person
I’m not much of a database person, but changes to data structures almost always cause unintended consequences. Whether it’s an interconnected system interface, historical reports that no longer work or produce junk, version control among thousands of unmanaged clients, or half a dozen other things might that rely on the data structure being a certain way.
Always best to design tables with spare fields, and use indexes, stored procedures, and consolidated reporting tables for historic data. But, of course, most of these things in production were designed years ago, when storage and memory were really expensive and hard to scale.
Worse, many systems have not been designed. Well, they may have been initially, but over time requirements change, and a series of contractors are hired in to make small changes. If they are paid to, they will update the documentation. If you are lucky, they will be competent. As the system changes, you end up with scores of seemingly innocuous changes and new dependencies that are either undocumented or poorly documented, and no-one who knows the system as a whole. If systems are massive, you can get the same effect with teams of contractors or analysts.
Many moons ago, I did a little work for an organisation whose sole income was selling data. It was an old organisation, and the selling was placed at a much higher priority than the data, which used to be held in books, and was now held electronically. If I had been running the business, my focus would have been on managing that data and nurturing the systems that held it. Instead, the data and computers were an afterthought. The salesmen were king. They'd even got rid of some of the data entry people, saying their clients could enter the data. Except, of course, clients frequently entered the data incorrectly...
This is true for many organisations nowadays: even if they are not in the computer business, they utterly rely on computers, but neglect them. Computers are a cost, and not seen as the core of the business.
Indeed. Many systems are not designed - well they were once. Then over the years semi-random changes were made, that kind of improved the system. For one thing. But then made it more unstable and worse at other things.
Finally the entire system is a collection of bodges, fixes to bodges, bodges to fixes, and obsolete software.
Bit like RNA virus replication, really.
"X is not our Core Business" - people who say that, burn them with fire.
We know that Omicron cases include many more reinfections than previous variants., 10-15% of cases are reinfections. These are not included in the reported numbers in the UK, except in Wales which does include them. How do other countries address this issue?
Any idea WHY we are not counting them? Seems odd, especially now that they are more common.
Because of the way the infections are registered to NHS numbers. We count new NHS numbers with a positive test result against them. Reinfections won't change that flag so they don't get counted. Aiui it's a fairly big technical challenge to count reinfections programmatically.
Good god, in 2022 we can't solve that challenge? How hard can it be?
Thanks for confirming that you aren't a programmer.
Oh and that is the cost for a single system, you need to make a similar change in every other production (and non production) system that accesses that field - I call it an endless merry-go-round task.
Note for future pandemics when adding a field use an integer rather than boolean....
Yep - I am absolutely NOT a programmer, and never claimed to be. I just find it fascinating that this information is that hard.
IANADP (**), but;
Changing something may be *really* easy (*). Changing something so it doesn't break the entire system - or other peoples systems that rely on it - can be really difficult. And breaking a system can mean downtime whilst you recover, or even make the data irretrievable. Worse, it can break client's systems, if their systems are not well written. And yes, this has happened to a company I know of - an innocuous change they made caused one of their customer's databases to fail, and with it their entire purchasing system.
This is why it's worth spending time early on in a project working out exactly what you need, and what you *may* need in the future. Something that's really hard to do IMO, but can really pay off.
(*) Actually, there should be processes in place to ensure it isn't easy to blindly change something, but that's often not the case. (**) I Am Not A Database Person
I’m not much of a database person, but changes to data structures almost always cause unintended consequences. Whether it’s an interconnected system interface, historical reports that no longer work or produce junk, version control among thousands of unmanaged clients, or half a dozen other things might that rely on the data structure being a certain way.
Always best to design tables with spare fields, and use indexes, stored procedures, and consolidated reporting tables for historic data. But, of course, most of these things in production were designed years ago, when storage and memory were really expensive and hard to scale.
Worse, many systems have not been designed. Well, they may have been initially, but over time requirements change, and a series of contractors are hired in to make small changes. If they are paid to, they will update the documentation. If you are lucky, they will be competent. As the system changes, you end up with scores of seemingly innocuous changes and new dependencies that are either undocumented or poorly documented, and no-one who knows the system as a whole. If systems are massive, you can get the same effect with teams of contractors or analysts.
Many moons ago, I did a little work for an organisation whose sole income was selling data. It was an old organisation, and the selling was placed at a much higher priority than the data, which used to be held in books, and was now held electronically. If I had been running the business, my focus would have been on managing that data and nurturing the systems that held it. Instead, the data and computers were an afterthought. The salesmen were king. They'd even got rid of some of the data entry people, saying their clients could enter the data. Except, of course, clients frequently entered the data incorrectly...
This is true for many organisations nowadays: even if they are not in the computer business, they utterly rely on computers, but neglect them. Computers are a cost, and not seen as the core of the business.
Indeed. Many systems are not designed - well they were once. Then over the years semi-random changes were made, that kind of improved the system. For one thing. But then made it more unstable and worse at other things.
Finally the entire system is a collection of bodges, fixes to bodges, bodges to fixes, and obsolete software.
Bit like RNA virus replication, really.
"X is not our Core Business" - people who say that, burn them with fire.
Or the UK tax system.
All legal system.....
I was quite impressed with attempting to read the new immigration bill - the one where people where getting concerned with legal liability of the RNLI - it appeared to completely consist of "In the previous law, amend paragraph x and point y, with fragment of sentence z".
It made it it impossible to read, unless you have a turned yourself into a search-and-replace engine.
It seemed quite possible to create an automated tool that could take the previous law, do the changes (highlighted) and present to user - does such a thing exist already?
It also occurred to me that such a structure is perfect for making it impossible for a casual reader to notice things in a law.....
On Djokovic it seems one of the exemptions is a positive PCR test within 6 months. That will cover a lot of people. Powerful multi millionaires may also find it easy to find a doctor willing to certify such.
We know that Omicron cases include many more reinfections than previous variants., 10-15% of cases are reinfections. These are not included in the reported numbers in the UK, except in Wales which does include them. How do other countries address this issue?
Any idea WHY we are not counting them? Seems odd, especially now that they are more common.
Because of the way the infections are registered to NHS numbers. We count new NHS numbers with a positive test result against them. Reinfections won't change that flag so they don't get counted. Aiui it's a fairly big technical challenge to count reinfections programmatically.
Good god, in 2022 we can't solve that challenge? How hard can it be?
Thanks for confirming that you aren't a programmer.
Oh and that is the cost for a single system, you need to make a similar change in every other production (and non production) system that accesses that field - I call it an endless merry-go-round task.
Note for future pandemics when adding a field use an integer rather than boolean....
Yep - I am absolutely NOT a programmer, and never claimed to be. I just find it fascinating that this information is that hard.
IANADP (**), but;
Changing something may be *really* easy (*). Changing something so it doesn't break the entire system - or other peoples systems that rely on it - can be really difficult. And breaking a system can mean downtime whilst you recover, or even make the data irretrievable. Worse, it can break client's systems, if their systems are not well written. And yes, this has happened to a company I know of - an innocuous change they made caused one of their customer's databases to fail, and with it their entire purchasing system.
This is why it's worth spending time early on in a project working out exactly what you need, and what you *may* need in the future. Something that's really hard to do IMO, but can really pay off.
(*) Actually, there should be processes in place to ensure it isn't easy to blindly change something, but that's often not the case. (**) I Am Not A Database Person
I’m not much of a database person, but changes to data structures almost always cause unintended consequences. Whether it’s an interconnected system interface, historical reports that no longer work or produce junk, version control among thousands of unmanaged clients, or half a dozen other things might that rely on the data structure being a certain way.
Always best to design tables with spare fields, and use indexes, stored procedures, and consolidated reporting tables for historic data. But, of course, most of these things in production were designed years ago, when storage and memory were really expensive and hard to scale.
Worse, many systems have not been designed. Well, they may have been initially, but over time requirements change, and a series of contractors are hired in to make small changes. If they are paid to, they will update the documentation. If you are lucky, they will be competent. As the system changes, you end up with scores of seemingly innocuous changes and new dependencies that are either undocumented or poorly documented, and no-one who knows the system as a whole. If systems are massive, you can get the same effect with teams of contractors or analysts.
Many moons ago, I did a little work for an organisation whose sole income was selling data. It was an old organisation, and the selling was placed at a much higher priority than the data, which used to be held in books, and was now held electronically. If I had been running the business, my focus would have been on managing that data and nurturing the systems that held it. Instead, the data and computers were an afterthought. The salesmen were king. They'd even got rid of some of the data entry people, saying their clients could enter the data. Except, of course, clients frequently entered the data incorrectly...
This is true for many organisations nowadays: even if they are not in the computer business, they utterly rely on computers, but neglect them. Computers are a cost, and not seen as the core of the business.
Indeed. Many systems are not designed - well they were once. Then over the years semi-random changes were made, that kind of improved the system. For one thing. But then made it more unstable and worse at other things.
Finally the entire system is a collection of bodges, fixes to bodges, bodges to fixes, and obsolete software.
Bit like RNA virus replication, really.
"X is not our Core Business" - people who say that, burn them with fire.
Or the UK tax system.
Or HMG's Pensions Dept, as @Felix and I were complaining the other day. It still seems to be stuck in an era of weekly payments - admittedly now multiplied to 4-weekly payments, but that makes me wonder what sort of software they are running if it only works by weeks.
As for State Pension forecasts - infamously incompetent for many years (not sure if they are any better now). The Consumers Association had a string of features in Which? over many years warning of the unreliability.
We know that Omicron cases include many more reinfections than previous variants., 10-15% of cases are reinfections. These are not included in the reported numbers in the UK, except in Wales which does include them. How do other countries address this issue?
Any idea WHY we are not counting them? Seems odd, especially now that they are more common.
Because of the way the infections are registered to NHS numbers. We count new NHS numbers with a positive test result against them. Reinfections won't change that flag so they don't get counted. Aiui it's a fairly big technical challenge to count reinfections programmatically.
Good god, in 2022 we can't solve that challenge? How hard can it be?
Thanks for confirming that you aren't a programmer.
Oh and that is the cost for a single system, you need to make a similar change in every other production (and non production) system that accesses that field - I call it an endless merry-go-round task.
Note for future pandemics when adding a field use an integer rather than boolean....
Yep - I am absolutely NOT a programmer, and never claimed to be. I just find it fascinating that this information is that hard.
IANADP (**), but;
Changing something may be *really* easy (*). Changing something so it doesn't break the entire system - or other peoples systems that rely on it - can be really difficult. And breaking a system can mean downtime whilst you recover, or even make the data irretrievable. Worse, it can break client's systems, if their systems are not well written. And yes, this has happened to a company I know of - an innocuous change they made caused one of their customer's databases to fail, and with it their entire purchasing system.
This is why it's worth spending time early on in a project working out exactly what you need, and what you *may* need in the future. Something that's really hard to do IMO, but can really pay off.
(*) Actually, there should be processes in place to ensure it isn't easy to blindly change something, but that's often not the case. (**) I Am Not A Database Person
I’m not much of a database person, but changes to data structures almost always cause unintended consequences. Whether it’s an interconnected system interface, historical reports that no longer work or produce junk, version control among thousands of unmanaged clients, or half a dozen other things might that rely on the data structure being a certain way.
Always best to design tables with spare fields, and use indexes, stored procedures, and consolidated reporting tables for historic data. But, of course, most of these things in production were designed years ago, when storage and memory were really expensive and hard to scale.
Worse, many systems have not been designed. Well, they may have been initially, but over time requirements change, and a series of contractors are hired in to make small changes. If they are paid to, they will update the documentation. If you are lucky, they will be competent. As the system changes, you end up with scores of seemingly innocuous changes and new dependencies that are either undocumented or poorly documented, and no-one who knows the system as a whole. If systems are massive, you can get the same effect with teams of contractors or analysts.
Many moons ago, I did a little work for an organisation whose sole income was selling data. It was an old organisation, and the selling was placed at a much higher priority than the data, which used to be held in books, and was now held electronically. If I had been running the business, my focus would have been on managing that data and nurturing the systems that held it. Instead, the data and computers were an afterthought. The salesmen were king. They'd even got rid of some of the data entry people, saying their clients could enter the data. Except, of course, clients frequently entered the data incorrectly...
This is true for many organisations nowadays: even if they are not in the computer business, they utterly rely on computers, but neglect them. Computers are a cost, and not seen as the core of the business.
One of the most painful conversations I have with CEO and boards is the "You aren't a company that does XYZ, you are a software company that makes their money from doing XYZ".
Now let's see how we can utilise new technology to reduce those software costs.
But... but the software isn't Core Business. So must be outsourced and sold to the cheapest possible provider. Or you are a heretic?
Plus updating software is hard and expensive and might not show a big enough effect in the 1-3 years in which the CEO will stay in post before fucking off with his golden handshake, to his next job (with golden hello).
On Djokovic it seems one of the exemptions is a positive PCR test within 6 months. That will cover a lot of people. Powerful multi millionaires may also find it easy to find a doctor willing to certify such.
I half expect the Australian Border force to pay very close attention to the evidence presented and then send him back...
He does test positive at very convenient times doesn’t he.
I assume he doesn’t want to be asked about Sir TB
There is this thing Mr A. G. Bell invented that is called a "telephone". Apparently the gentleman from the Times need no longer actually present his card at SKS's door. Whatever will they think of next?
He does test positive at very convenient times doesn’t he.
I assume he doesn’t want to be asked about Sir TB
Asked by whom exactly? I can't see Johnson looking to make capital out of it given that would look like an insult to the Queen and MPs will all be aware of public opinion on the matter.
We know that Omicron cases include many more reinfections than previous variants., 10-15% of cases are reinfections. These are not included in the reported numbers in the UK, except in Wales which does include them. How do other countries address this issue?
Any idea WHY we are not counting them? Seems odd, especially now that they are more common.
Because of the way the infections are registered to NHS numbers. We count new NHS numbers with a positive test result against them. Reinfections won't change that flag so they don't get counted. Aiui it's a fairly big technical challenge to count reinfections programmatically.
Good god, in 2022 we can't solve that challenge? How hard can it be?
Thanks for confirming that you aren't a programmer.
Oh and that is the cost for a single system, you need to make a similar change in every other production (and non production) system that accesses that field - I call it an endless merry-go-round task.
Note for future pandemics when adding a field use an integer rather than boolean....
Yep - I am absolutely NOT a programmer, and never claimed to be. I just find it fascinating that this information is that hard.
IANADP (**), but;
Changing something may be *really* easy (*). Changing something so it doesn't break the entire system - or other peoples systems that rely on it - can be really difficult. And breaking a system can mean downtime whilst you recover, or even make the data irretrievable. Worse, it can break client's systems, if their systems are not well written. And yes, this has happened to a company I know of - an innocuous change they made caused one of their customer's databases to fail, and with it their entire purchasing system.
This is why it's worth spending time early on in a project working out exactly what you need, and what you *may* need in the future. Something that's really hard to do IMO, but can really pay off.
(*) Actually, there should be processes in place to ensure it isn't easy to blindly change something, but that's often not the case. (**) I Am Not A Database Person
I’m not much of a database person, but changes to data structures almost always cause unintended consequences. Whether it’s an interconnected system interface, historical reports that no longer work or produce junk, version control among thousands of unmanaged clients, or half a dozen other things might that rely on the data structure being a certain way.
Always best to design tables with spare fields, and use indexes, stored procedures, and consolidated reporting tables for historic data. But, of course, most of these things in production were designed years ago, when storage and memory were really expensive and hard to scale.
Worse, many systems have not been designed. Well, they may have been initially, but over time requirements change, and a series of contractors are hired in to make small changes. If they are paid to, they will update the documentation. If you are lucky, they will be competent. As the system changes, you end up with scores of seemingly innocuous changes and new dependencies that are either undocumented or poorly documented, and no-one who knows the system as a whole. If systems are massive, you can get the same effect with teams of contractors or analysts.
Many moons ago, I did a little work for an organisation whose sole income was selling data. It was an old organisation, and the selling was placed at a much higher priority than the data, which used to be held in books, and was now held electronically. If I had been running the business, my focus would have been on managing that data and nurturing the systems that held it. Instead, the data and computers were an afterthought. The salesmen were king. They'd even got rid of some of the data entry people, saying their clients could enter the data. Except, of course, clients frequently entered the data incorrectly...
This is true for many organisations nowadays: even if they are not in the computer business, they utterly rely on computers, but neglect them. Computers are a cost, and not seen as the core of the business.
Indeed. Many systems are not designed - well they were once. Then over the years semi-random changes were made, that kind of improved the system. For one thing. But then made it more unstable and worse at other things.
Finally the entire system is a collection of bodges, fixes to bodges, bodges to fixes, and obsolete software.
Bit like RNA virus replication, really.
"X is not our Core Business" - people who say that, burn them with fire.
Or the UK tax system.
Or HMG's Pensions Dept, as @Felix and I were complaining the other day. It still seems to be stuck in an era of weekly payments - admittedly now multiplied to 4-weekly payments, but that makes me wonder what sort of software they are running if it only works by weeks.
As for State Pension forecasts - infamously incompetent for many years (not sure if they are any better). The Consumers Association had a string of features in Which? over many years warning of the unreliability.
As recently as 2007, I was working with a company who had a 100,000 person payroll, running weekly on a mainframe with tape drives for data.
As recently as 2009, I was working with a company who had a 15,000 staff running with an entirely paper-based HR system, except for the payroll. Every holiday form had at least half a dozen physical signatures.
He does test positive at very convenient times doesn’t he.
I assume he doesn’t want to be asked about Sir TB
There is this thing Mr A. G. Bell invented that is called a "telephone". Apparently the gentleman from the Times need no longer actually present his card at SKS's door. Whatever will they think of next?
What was the famous line....
"Prime Minister, there are some men from the press and a gentleman from the Times to see you."
But LFTs won't be recorded unless one writes/calls in. UNlike PCRs.
"Writes in" - do you mean takes the minute or so to register it on the website ?
Quite. But it's a further step and not everyone will bother. Or even have web access.
It has been a requirement to report them since day 1. Every single page of the instruction booklet has a banner telling you to do so.
Quite. But do people? Especially now Mr Johnson is reportedly to say forget about PCRs.
At least with PCRs the test analysis is done centrally. Reporting can't be forgotten, omitted or deliberately evaded. LFTs, oh yes.
People who don't report LFTs are probably not particularly likely to do PCR tests to confirm things if they don't like the result. Besides that's it probably won't make much difference in the end, we already know that lots of asymptomatic and mild cases are missed. The ONS survey will still remain the gold standard for what is really going on.
We know that Omicron cases include many more reinfections than previous variants., 10-15% of cases are reinfections. These are not included in the reported numbers in the UK, except in Wales which does include them. How do other countries address this issue?
Any idea WHY we are not counting them? Seems odd, especially now that they are more common.
Because of the way the infections are registered to NHS numbers. We count new NHS numbers with a positive test result against them. Reinfections won't change that flag so they don't get counted. Aiui it's a fairly big technical challenge to count reinfections programmatically.
Good god, in 2022 we can't solve that challenge? How hard can it be?
Thanks for confirming that you aren't a programmer.
Oh and that is the cost for a single system, you need to make a similar change in every other production (and non production) system that accesses that field - I call it an endless merry-go-round task.
Note for future pandemics when adding a field use an integer rather than boolean....
Yep - I am absolutely NOT a programmer, and never claimed to be. I just find it fascinating that this information is that hard.
IANADP (**), but;
Changing something may be *really* easy (*). Changing something so it doesn't break the entire system - or other peoples systems that rely on it - can be really difficult. And breaking a system can mean downtime whilst you recover, or even make the data irretrievable. Worse, it can break client's systems, if their systems are not well written. And yes, this has happened to a company I know of - an innocuous change they made caused one of their customer's databases to fail, and with it their entire purchasing system.
This is why it's worth spending time early on in a project working out exactly what you need, and what you *may* need in the future. Something that's really hard to do IMO, but can really pay off.
(*) Actually, there should be processes in place to ensure it isn't easy to blindly change something, but that's often not the case. (**) I Am Not A Database Person
I’m not much of a database person, but changes to data structures almost always cause unintended consequences. Whether it’s an interconnected system interface, historical reports that no longer work or produce junk, version control among thousands of unmanaged clients, or half a dozen other things might that rely on the data structure being a certain way.
Always best to design tables with spare fields, and use indexes, stored procedures, and consolidated reporting tables for historic data. But, of course, most of these things in production were designed years ago, when storage and memory were really expensive and hard to scale.
Worse, many systems have not been designed. Well, they may have been initially, but over time requirements change, and a series of contractors are hired in to make small changes. If they are paid to, they will update the documentation. If you are lucky, they will be competent. As the system changes, you end up with scores of seemingly innocuous changes and new dependencies that are either undocumented or poorly documented, and no-one who knows the system as a whole. If systems are massive, you can get the same effect with teams of contractors or analysts.
Many moons ago, I did a little work for an organisation whose sole income was selling data. It was an old organisation, and the selling was placed at a much higher priority than the data, which used to be held in books, and was now held electronically. If I had been running the business, my focus would have been on managing that data and nurturing the systems that held it. Instead, the data and computers were an afterthought. The salesmen were king. They'd even got rid of some of the data entry people, saying their clients could enter the data. Except, of course, clients frequently entered the data incorrectly...
This is true for many organisations nowadays: even if they are not in the computer business, they utterly rely on computers, but neglect them. Computers are a cost, and not seen as the core of the business.
Indeed. Many systems are not designed - well they were once. Then over the years semi-random changes were made, that kind of improved the system. For one thing. But then made it more unstable and worse at other things.
Finally the entire system is a collection of bodges, fixes to bodges, bodges to fixes, and obsolete software.
Bit like RNA virus replication, really.
"X is not our Core Business" - people who say that, burn them with fire.
Or the UK tax system.
All legal system.....
I was quite impressed with attempting to read the new immigration bill - the one where people where getting concerned with legal liability of the RNLI - it appeared to completely consist of "In the previous law, amend paragraph x and point y, with fragment of sentence z".
It made it it impossible to read, unless you have a turned yourself into a search-and-replace engine.
It seemed quite possible to create an automated tool that could take the previous law, do the changes (highlighted) and present to user - does such a thing exist already?
It also occurred to me that such a structure is perfect for making it impossible for a casual reader to notice things in a law.....
The legislation website is very good at highlighting and reflecting historic changes but not so good for things going through Parliament
We know that Omicron cases include many more reinfections than previous variants., 10-15% of cases are reinfections. These are not included in the reported numbers in the UK, except in Wales which does include them. How do other countries address this issue?
Any idea WHY we are not counting them? Seems odd, especially now that they are more common.
Because of the way the infections are registered to NHS numbers. We count new NHS numbers with a positive test result against them. Reinfections won't change that flag so they don't get counted. Aiui it's a fairly big technical challenge to count reinfections programmatically.
Good god, in 2022 we can't solve that challenge? How hard can it be?
Thanks for confirming that you aren't a programmer.
Oh and that is the cost for a single system, you need to make a similar change in every other production (and non production) system that accesses that field - I call it an endless merry-go-round task.
Note for future pandemics when adding a field use an integer rather than boolean....
Yep - I am absolutely NOT a programmer, and never claimed to be. I just find it fascinating that this information is that hard.
IANADP (**), but;
Changing something may be *really* easy (*). Changing something so it doesn't break the entire system - or other peoples systems that rely on it - can be really difficult. And breaking a system can mean downtime whilst you recover, or even make the data irretrievable. Worse, it can break client's systems, if their systems are not well written. And yes, this has happened to a company I know of - an innocuous change they made caused one of their customer's databases to fail, and with it their entire purchasing system.
This is why it's worth spending time early on in a project working out exactly what you need, and what you *may* need in the future. Something that's really hard to do IMO, but can really pay off.
(*) Actually, there should be processes in place to ensure it isn't easy to blindly change something, but that's often not the case. (**) I Am Not A Database Person
I’m not much of a database person, but changes to data structures almost always cause unintended consequences. Whether it’s an interconnected system interface, historical reports that no longer work or produce junk, version control among thousands of unmanaged clients, or half a dozen other things might that rely on the data structure being a certain way.
Always best to design tables with spare fields, and use indexes, stored procedures, and consolidated reporting tables for historic data. But, of course, most of these things in production were designed years ago, when storage and memory were really expensive and hard to scale.
Worse, many systems have not been designed. Well, they may have been initially, but over time requirements change, and a series of contractors are hired in to make small changes. If they are paid to, they will update the documentation. If you are lucky, they will be competent. As the system changes, you end up with scores of seemingly innocuous changes and new dependencies that are either undocumented or poorly documented, and no-one who knows the system as a whole. If systems are massive, you can get the same effect with teams of contractors or analysts.
Many moons ago, I did a little work for an organisation whose sole income was selling data. It was an old organisation, and the selling was placed at a much higher priority than the data, which used to be held in books, and was now held electronically. If I had been running the business, my focus would have been on managing that data and nurturing the systems that held it. Instead, the data and computers were an afterthought. The salesmen were king. They'd even got rid of some of the data entry people, saying their clients could enter the data. Except, of course, clients frequently entered the data incorrectly...
This is true for many organisations nowadays: even if they are not in the computer business, they utterly rely on computers, but neglect them. Computers are a cost, and not seen as the core of the business.
One of the most painful conversations I have with CEO and boards is the "You aren't a company that does XYZ, you are a software company that makes their money from doing XYZ".
Now let's see how we can utilise new technology to reduce those software costs.
But... but the software isn't Core Business. So must be outsourced and sold to the cheapest possible provider. Or you are a heretic?
Plus updating software is hard and expensive and might not show a big enough effect in the 1-3 years in which the CEO will stay in post before fucking off with his golden handshake, to his next job (with golden hello).
True but remember I do low code solutions.
I can introduce cost savings within weeks (usually there will be a better system somewhere within a month with cost savings flowing immediately).
Does any of the polling on Blair’s knighthood, make it clear that this was an award personally from HMQ, with neither Johnson nor Starmer having anything to do with it?
No sign of a hit over the slowish roll out of the booster then?
Is 11% roughly in line with the number that refuse vaccination?
On another note I didn't know we'd struck lithium in Cornwall. Chance for some leveling up.
I'm unsure the booster rollout was slow or poorly planned; it's just that the circumstances changed.
It looks as though current vaccines are most effective for six months, waning slightly through that time (although still better than nothing afterwards).
It also looks as though Covid is 'worst' during the colder winter months, either because of poor ventilation, low Vit-D, or other health effects.
Therefore, if you were looking at this over the summer, you would want to ensure December to March were 'covered' by boosters. If you start in August with the most vulnerable, their immunity may be declining by February. Hence, in the pre-Omicron world, you want to start in mid-late autumn and get the vulnerable jabbed before winter. Not too early, not too late.
Then Omicron came along. It was soon clear that not only the vulnerable had to be jabbed, but everyone. IMV the government did well to scale up the program as they have, although others may obviously differ.
Nobody has him in the Dead Pool before anyone asks.
I reckon Johnson is such a slack twat he's bound to get it again.
Likely now that nobody wins the DP. My hunch without doing the necessary maths - ho ho as if that's a piece of cake - is that you'd expect somebody would have done. There were some frivolous selections (eg Owen Jones) but most of us approached it with the care and deadly seriousness that such a comp clearly merited.
He does test positive at very convenient times doesn’t he.
I assume he doesn’t want to be asked about Sir TB
There is this thing Mr A. G. Bell invented that is called a "telephone". Apparently the gentleman from the Times need no longer actually present his card at SKS's door. Whatever will they think of next?
What was the famous line....
"Prime Minister, there are some men from the press and a gentleman from the Times to see you."
I'm currently reading the Graham Greene biography Russian Roulette. He enjoyed working at the Times and liked the chaps there.
We know that Omicron cases include many more reinfections than previous variants., 10-15% of cases are reinfections. These are not included in the reported numbers in the UK, except in Wales which does include them. How do other countries address this issue?
Any idea WHY we are not counting them? Seems odd, especially now that they are more common.
Because of the way the infections are registered to NHS numbers. We count new NHS numbers with a positive test result against them. Reinfections won't change that flag so they don't get counted. Aiui it's a fairly big technical challenge to count reinfections programmatically.
Good god, in 2022 we can't solve that challenge? How hard can it be?
Thanks for confirming that you aren't a programmer.
Oh and that is the cost for a single system, you need to make a similar change in every other production (and non production) system that accesses that field - I call it an endless merry-go-round task.
Note for future pandemics when adding a field use an integer rather than boolean....
Yep - I am absolutely NOT a programmer, and never claimed to be. I just find it fascinating that this information is that hard.
IANADP (**), but;
Changing something may be *really* easy (*). Changing something so it doesn't break the entire system - or other peoples systems that rely on it - can be really difficult. And breaking a system can mean downtime whilst you recover, or even make the data irretrievable. Worse, it can break client's systems, if their systems are not well written. And yes, this has happened to a company I know of - an innocuous change they made caused one of their customer's databases to fail, and with it their entire purchasing system.
This is why it's worth spending time early on in a project working out exactly what you need, and what you *may* need in the future. Something that's really hard to do IMO, but can really pay off.
(*) Actually, there should be processes in place to ensure it isn't easy to blindly change something, but that's often not the case. (**) I Am Not A Database Person
I’m not much of a database person, but changes to data structures almost always cause unintended consequences. Whether it’s an interconnected system interface, historical reports that no longer work or produce junk, version control among thousands of unmanaged clients, or half a dozen other things might that rely on the data structure being a certain way.
Always best to design tables with spare fields, and use indexes, stored procedures, and consolidated reporting tables for historic data. But, of course, most of these things in production were designed years ago, when storage and memory were really expensive and hard to scale.
Worse, many systems have not been designed. Well, they may have been initially, but over time requirements change, and a series of contractors are hired in to make small changes. If they are paid to, they will update the documentation. If you are lucky, they will be competent. As the system changes, you end up with scores of seemingly innocuous changes and new dependencies that are either undocumented or poorly documented, and no-one who knows the system as a whole. If systems are massive, you can get the same effect with teams of contractors or analysts.
Many moons ago, I did a little work for an organisation whose sole income was selling data. It was an old organisation, and the selling was placed at a much higher priority than the data, which used to be held in books, and was now held electronically. If I had been running the business, my focus would have been on managing that data and nurturing the systems that held it. Instead, the data and computers were an afterthought. The salesmen were king. They'd even got rid of some of the data entry people, saying their clients could enter the data. Except, of course, clients frequently entered the data incorrectly...
This is true for many organisations nowadays: even if they are not in the computer business, they utterly rely on computers, but neglect them. Computers are a cost, and not seen as the core of the business.
One of the most painful conversations I have with CEO and boards is the "You aren't a company that does XYZ, you are a software company that makes their money from doing XYZ".
Now let's see how we can utilise new technology to reduce those software costs.
But... but the software isn't Core Business. So must be outsourced and sold to the cheapest possible provider. Or you are a heretic?
Plus updating software is hard and expensive and might not show a big enough effect in the 1-3 years in which the CEO will stay in post before fucking off with his golden handshake, to his next job (with golden hello).
I had a consultant tell me that, because so much IT was outsourced, particularly change projects, this meant it came under CapEx and not OpEx. I think this can help a lot, because it doesn't affect the gross profit margin.
Corporate spending on IT continues to grow strongly.
I hope and expect we are going to see a big rethink of people's priorities on the NHS. It feels obvious we have focused too much on efficiency and not on having spare capacity. The long-term workforce planning seems dire. People want to get involved, increases in applications to medicine, nursing etc. So let's increase places, at the start of the pipeline and all the way along. Oh and yeah, can we fix that stupid pension problem that penalizes work!
We need to draw the link between proper NHS funding & not having to shut down activities when we get hit by a surge. Covid isn't going away - it will be a big pressure on the health system for a long, long time.
Has the government put any policies in place yet to bolster the NHS and increase capacity over the medium to longer term? It's been clear since almost the start of the pandemic that winters were going to be a real strain. (Genuine question -- I tend to avoid the news, and "govt rolls out boring but effective changes" doesn't tend to get much coverage anyway...)
He does test positive at very convenient times doesn’t he.
I assume he doesn’t want to be asked about Sir TB
One of the few notable things about Starmer is that he isn't embarrassed to have TB as a predecessor. There was the reference to Education x 3 in his conference speech, for example.
I'm sure he would have been delighted to have had the opportunity to congratulate Sir TB.
I hope and expect we are going to see a big rethink of people's priorities on the NHS. It feels obvious we have focused too much on efficiency and not on having spare capacity. The long-term workforce planning seems dire. People want to get involved, increases in applications to medicine, nursing etc. So let's increase places, at the start of the pipeline and all the way along. Oh and yeah, can we fix that stupid pension problem that penalizes work!
We need to draw the link between proper NHS funding & not having to shut down activities when we get hit by a surge. Covid isn't going away - it will be a big pressure on the health system for a long, long time.
Has the government put any policies in place yet to bolster the NHS and increase capacity over the medium to longer term? It's been clear since almost the start of the pandemic that winters were going to be a real strain. (Genuine question -- I tend to avoid the news, and "govt rolls out boring but effective changes" doesn't tend to get much coverage anyway...)
No because no one wants to pay for it. Do you want income tax to go up to 25% and 45%?
He does test positive at very convenient times doesn’t he.
I assume he doesn’t want to be asked about Sir TB
Asked by whom exactly? I can't see Johnson looking to make capital out of it given that would look like an insult to the Queen and MPs will all be aware of public opinion on the matter.
Johnson of course has ambitions.
And if repeated lying became a reason for refusing honours ......
A brilliant piece of investigative reporting into planning fandangos on Teesside. Local Tories up in arms about housing proposal, but their mate the mayor is silent. Then you look at who his donors are...
1 - The Mayor has planning powers. 2 - The PP was passed by the Planning Inspector on Appeal, with the Mayor not making representations. 3 - A Director of the applying company donated to Mayoral campaign.
And goes on to make dark hints about the Mayor being 'conflicted'.
In the absence of evidence rather than circumstantial, I'd say a more likely and rational conclusion is that the Mayor either knew he was of no relevance to the particular local housing estate PP, and that his planning powers are nothing to do with it, or recused himself.
The chap also has a somewhat limited understanding of the Planning System.
(PB Angle: the comments on Matt Vickers' MP Facebook Post on this outcome seem to be less hostile than I would expect at this time from the Red Wall - very much anti-London. https://www.facebook.com/mattvickers.stockton )
If 10 - 15% of Covid infections are reinfections, that looks to me more or less that simple infection with a previous variant of either delta, wuhan or alpha provides ~ zero defense against simple reinfection with Omicron.
If 10 - 15% of Covid infections are reinfections, that looks to me more or less that simple infection with a previous variant of either delta, wuhan or alpha provides ~ zero defense against simple reinfection with Omicron.
i don;t think you can say that it is zero, just because some are getting reinfected.
We know that Omicron cases include many more reinfections than previous variants., 10-15% of cases are reinfections. These are not included in the reported numbers in the UK, except in Wales which does include them. How do other countries address this issue?
Any idea WHY we are not counting them? Seems odd, especially now that they are more common.
Because of the way the infections are registered to NHS numbers. We count new NHS numbers with a positive test result against them. Reinfections won't change that flag so they don't get counted. Aiui it's a fairly big technical challenge to count reinfections programmatically.
Good god, in 2022 we can't solve that challenge? How hard can it be?
Thanks for confirming that you aren't a programmer.
Oh and that is the cost for a single system, you need to make a similar change in every other production (and non production) system that accesses that field - I call it an endless merry-go-round task.
Note for future pandemics when adding a field use an integer rather than boolean....
Yep - I am absolutely NOT a programmer, and never claimed to be. I just find it fascinating that this information is that hard.
IANADP (**), but;
Changing something may be *really* easy (*). Changing something so it doesn't break the entire system - or other peoples systems that rely on it - can be really difficult. And breaking a system can mean downtime whilst you recover, or even make the data irretrievable. Worse, it can break client's systems, if their systems are not well written. And yes, this has happened to a company I know of - an innocuous change they made caused one of their customer's databases to fail, and with it their entire purchasing system.
This is why it's worth spending time early on in a project working out exactly what you need, and what you *may* need in the future. Something that's really hard to do IMO, but can really pay off.
(*) Actually, there should be processes in place to ensure it isn't easy to blindly change something, but that's often not the case. (**) I Am Not A Database Person
I’m not much of a database person, but changes to data structures almost always cause unintended consequences. Whether it’s an interconnected system interface, historical reports that no longer work or produce junk, version control among thousands of unmanaged clients, or half a dozen other things might that rely on the data structure being a certain way.
Always best to design tables with spare fields, and use indexes, stored procedures, and consolidated reporting tables for historic data. But, of course, most of these things in production were designed years ago, when storage and memory were really expensive and hard to scale.
Worse, many systems have not been designed. Well, they may have been initially, but over time requirements change, and a series of contractors are hired in to make small changes. If they are paid to, they will update the documentation. If you are lucky, they will be competent. As the system changes, you end up with scores of seemingly innocuous changes and new dependencies that are either undocumented or poorly documented, and no-one who knows the system as a whole. If systems are massive, you can get the same effect with teams of contractors or analysts.
Many moons ago, I did a little work for an organisation whose sole income was selling data. It was an old organisation, and the selling was placed at a much higher priority than the data, which used to be held in books, and was now held electronically. If I had been running the business, my focus would have been on managing that data and nurturing the systems that held it. Instead, the data and computers were an afterthought. The salesmen were king. They'd even got rid of some of the data entry people, saying their clients could enter the data. Except, of course, clients frequently entered the data incorrectly...
This is true for many organisations nowadays: even if they are not in the computer business, they utterly rely on computers, but neglect them. Computers are a cost, and not seen as the core of the business.
Indeed. Many systems are not designed - well they were once. Then over the years semi-random changes were made, that kind of improved the system. For one thing. But then made it more unstable and worse at other things.
Finally the entire system is a collection of bodges, fixes to bodges, bodges to fixes, and obsolete software.
Bit like RNA virus replication, really.
"X is not our Core Business" - people who say that, burn them with fire.
Or the UK tax system.
Or HMG's Pensions Dept, as @Felix and I were complaining the other day. It still seems to be stuck in an era of weekly payments - admittedly now multiplied to 4-weekly payments, but that makes me wonder what sort of software they are running if it only works by weeks.
As for State Pension forecasts - infamously incompetent for many years (not sure if they are any better). The Consumers Association had a string of features in Which? over many years warning of the unreliability.
As recently as 2007, I was working with a company who had a 100,000 person payroll, running weekly on a mainframe with tape drives for data.
As recently as 2009, I was working with a company who had a 15,000 staff running with an entirely paper-based HR system, except for the payroll. Every holiday form had at least half a dozen physical signatures.
Ooh, tape drives ... I remember them from the University Computer Centre mainframe when I was an undergraduate in the late 1970s.
If 10 - 15% of Covid infections are reinfections, that looks to me more or less that simple infection with a previous variant of either delta, wuhan or alpha provides ~ zero defense against simple reinfection with Omicron.
i don;t think you can say that it is zero, just because some are getting reinfected.
Plus we also don't have data on which original infection the person has had. There may be differences between original, alpha and delta.
Nobody has him in the Dead Pool before anyone asks.
I reckon Johnson is such a slack twat he's bound to get it again.
Likely now that nobody wins the DP. My hunch without doing the necessary maths - ho ho as if that's a piece of cake - is that you'd expect somebody would have done. There were some frivolous selections (eg Owen Jones) but most of us approached it with the care and deadly seriousness that such a comp clearly merited.
There is still a couple of good shouts on there:
@ukpaul Alex Jones - AJ claims to be not vaxxed and is a fat fuck @kinabula The Queen - 95 has to be a toss up if she gets it, vaxxed or not @paulyork64 Paul Gascoigne - dying of covid would be #classicgazza
A nurse friend who works in a high dependency ward at a major London teaching hospital tells me that they are no longer putting vaccination status on the bedside notes as the staff get so annoyed at the (very) high numbers of the unvaccinated they are dealing with
Darwinism in action.
If this carries on it must in the end affect demographics? The types of people who refuse to be vaccinated must surely take a statistical hit in their weighting? Political ramifications?
When I was in hospital I had a red band on detailing my allergy to a popular painkiller.
I think a rather effective way to highlight the risks of being unvaccinated would be to have a similar one for non-COVID, non-vaxxed patients. You could pass it off as "just trying to keep you safe while you are in here".
On legal matters, I'm sure the lawyers here will advise on the underlying theme.
The Guardian reports that 'The Mail on Sunday will pay the Duchess of Sussex just £1 in damages for invading her privacy by publishing a private letter she had sent to her father.'
They do have something else to pay, and of course, there's the question of costs.
A brilliant piece of investigative reporting into planning fandangos on Teesside. Local Tories up in arms about housing proposal, but their mate the mayor is silent. Then you look at who his donors are...
1 - The Mayor has planning powers. 2 - The PP was passed by the Planning Inspector on Appeal, with the Mayor not making representations. 3 - A Director of the applying company donated to Mayoral campaign.
And goes on to make dark hints about the Mayor being 'conflicted'.
In the absence of evidence rather than circumstantial, I'd say a more likely and rational conclusion is that the Mayor either knew he was of no relevance to the particular local housing estate PP, and that his planning powers are nothing to do with it, or recused himself.
The chap also has a somewhat limited understanding of the Planning System.
(PB Angle: the comments on Matt Vickers' MP Facebook Post on this outcome seem to be less hostile than I would expect at this time from the Red Wall - very much anti-London. https://www.facebook.com/mattvickers.stockton )
The Tees Valley Mayor's planning powers relate to strategy setting within the region not day to day developments.
As for Matt Vickers comment - it's interesting that he ignores the fact Stockton Council accepted the 90 metre road design. By accepting the 90m scheme the Planning Inspector had little choice but to approve to appeal.
A nurse friend who works in a high dependency ward at a major London teaching hospital tells me that they are no longer putting vaccination status on the bedside notes as the staff get so annoyed at the (very) high numbers of the unvaccinated they are dealing with
Darwinism in action.
If this carries on it must in the end affect demographics? The types of people who refuse to be vaccinated must surely take a statistical hit in their weighting? Political ramifications?
When I was in hospital I had a red band on detailing my allergy to a popular painkiller.
I think a rather effective way to highlight the risks of being unvaccinated would be to have a similar one for non-COVID, non-vaxxed patients. You could pass it off as "just trying to keep you safe while you are in here".
Would that get past ethical standards?
Better than chucking them out in the street, as advocated by some here.
Off thread already (sorry), there is a story in the Telegraph that the Six Nations might be played entirely in England. To me, that would be vastly preferable to empty stadia in Scotland and Wales (and Ireland and France?). And getting to Bristol, say, won't be massively more inconvenient for Welsh fans than getting to Cardiff. But I can't see the politics of it panning out. Nicola Sturgeon and Mark Drakeford would be furious.
Well, if Scotland, Wales, Ireland and France (not sure about Italy) are all banning crowds from stadia, and England are offering the organisers full houses of paying spectators, then the organisers are going to take the money.
6N tickets are gold dust at the best of times, they’ll have no problem selling out every venue they can find, even at short notice.
Yes, the politics of it will be awful in the other nations.
Although it also allows Sturgeon and Drakeford an easy hit at explaining differential infection rates (“stupid English”)
Previous posters applauded this story as a political masterpiece. It really, really isn’t.
Kudos to Charles for thinking twice. All too rare in the modern iteration of the Conservative Party.
5 Feb through to 19 March.
Judging by SA, could we be towards clear of Omicron by then?
I'd leave them where they were planned, and let the local Govts take the political benefit or hit.
A nurse friend who works in a high dependency ward at a major London teaching hospital tells me that they are no longer putting vaccination status on the bedside notes as the staff get so annoyed at the (very) high numbers of the unvaccinated they are dealing with
Darwinism in action.
If this carries on it must in the end affect demographics? The types of people who refuse to be vaccinated must surely take a statistical hit in their weighting? Political ramifications?
When I was in hospital I had a red band on detailing my allergy to a popular painkiller.
I think a rather effective way to highlight the risks of being unvaccinated would be to have a similar one for non-COVID, non-vaxxed patients. You could pass it off as "just trying to keep you safe while you are in here".
Would that get past ethical standards?
I am somewhat surprised that they are "no longer putting vaccination status on the bedside notes" - isn't that medically relevant information??
I hope and expect we are going to see a big rethink of people's priorities on the NHS. It feels obvious we have focused too much on efficiency and not on having spare capacity. The long-term workforce planning seems dire. People want to get involved, increases in applications to medicine, nursing etc. So let's increase places, at the start of the pipeline and all the way along. Oh and yeah, can we fix that stupid pension problem that penalizes work!
We need to draw the link between proper NHS funding & not having to shut down activities when we get hit by a surge. Covid isn't going away - it will be a big pressure on the health system for a long, long time.
Has the government put any policies in place yet to bolster the NHS and increase capacity over the medium to longer term? It's been clear since almost the start of the pandemic that winters were going to be a real strain. (Genuine question -- I tend to avoid the news, and "govt rolls out boring but effective changes" doesn't tend to get much coverage anyway...)
No because no one wants to pay for it. Do you want income tax to go up to 25% and 45%?
The government's job is to provide and fund a health service which is proportionate to need. It has had two years now. The government's job is not to strip away individual's liberties.
A nurse friend who works in a high dependency ward at a major London teaching hospital tells me that they are no longer putting vaccination status on the bedside notes as the staff get so annoyed at the (very) high numbers of the unvaccinated they are dealing with
Darwinism in action.
If this carries on it must in the end affect demographics? The types of people who refuse to be vaccinated must surely take a statistical hit in their weighting? Political ramifications?
When I was in hospital I had a red band on detailing my allergy to a popular painkiller.
I think a rather effective way to highlight the risks of being unvaccinated would be to have a similar one for non-COVID, non-vaxxed patients. You could pass it off as "just trying to keep you safe while you are in here".
Would that get past ethical standards?
I am somewhat surprised that they are "no longer putting vaccination status on the bedside notes" - isn't that medically relevant information??
I suspect it isn't significantly important to impact care while removing a major source of annoyance for the staff...
If 10 - 15% of Covid infections are reinfections, that looks to me more or less that simple infection with a previous variant of either delta, wuhan or alpha provides ~ zero defense against simple reinfection with Omicron.
i don;t think you can say that it is zero, just because some are getting reinfected.
It's thought to be quite low though. Although "reinfection" doesn't really cover the severity.
Off thread already (sorry), there is a story in the Telegraph that the Six Nations might be played entirely in England. To me, that would be vastly preferable to empty stadia in Scotland and Wales (and Ireland and France?). And getting to Bristol, say, won't be massively more inconvenient for Welsh fans than getting to Cardiff. But I can't see the politics of it panning out. Nicola Sturgeon and Mark Drakeford would be furious.
Well, if Scotland, Wales, Ireland and France (not sure about Italy) are all banning crowds from stadia, and England are offering the organisers full houses of paying spectators, then the organisers are going to take the money.
6N tickets are gold dust at the best of times, they’ll have no problem selling out every venue they can find, even at short notice.
Yes, the politics of it will be awful in the other nations.
Although it also allows Sturgeon and Drakeford an easy hit at explaining differential infection rates (“stupid English”)
Previous posters applauded this story as a political masterpiece. It really, really isn’t.
Kudos to Charles for thinking twice. All too rare in the modern iteration of the Conservative Party.
5 Feb through to 19 March.
Judging by SA, could we be towards clear of Omicron by then?
I'd leave them where they were planned, and let the local Govts take the political benefit or hit.
I think the game here is to try and force the Welsh / Scottish Governments to allow the games to go ahead with full admission, foot the bills or accept the games will be played in England. By talking about playing the home matches in England the Governments are going to have to make a decision.
Do these people plan on restricting themselves forever ?
Do they think that covid is something to be avoided at all costs ? If so why ?
Do they think that covid is going to disappear ?
How about those who have already been infected - do they view covid and restrictions differently from those who haven't been infected ?
Do those people restricting themselves realise there's a significant chance they've already been infected without realising it ?
Now perhaps there's a different mentality in the waitrose belt but everyone I know has been leading a normal life since they were vaccinated.
You sound annoyed with them, which I think is just as mistaken as being annoyed with people who decide to pursue normal lives. In the absence of mandatory rules, we all have to decide for ourselves and we shouldn't be frustrated by people who reach different conclusions from perhaps different personal lives.
But, although I obviously can't speak for them or generalise, I think they'd generally reply:
They hope not to have restrictions forever, but as the situation is continuing to evolve, they want to be as safe as possible for now. They rate not getting even "a bad case of flu" (with possible long covid following) as more important than having a party. They would go to something really important to them like a wedding or a funeral, but a party or a crowded pub or a workplace if their work doesn't require it? Not so much.
They hope that covid will subside (through vaccinations, boosters and possible evolution of the virus) to the level where it really is just like having a cold from time to time, in which case they'll resume normal life with enthusiasm and relief.
People who've already had it (perhaps without knowing it) note the reports that perhaps 25% of infections are in fact re-infections, so they aren't treating it differently from being vaccinated and boosted. Again, they follow the news and will welcome any changes in advice on that.
Essentially their difference from your friends is that they see a high level of uncertainty and they attach a lot more importance to minimising uncertain risk than to going to (or even organing) crowded events if they don't have to. Most of them are either somewhat vulnerable or they have relatives who are. I think they'd all accept that there's a scale of risk/benefit and they would expect to move along it (one way or the other) as the situation devleops. Is that all that different in principle from most people everywhere, even if they place themselves currently at a different point in the range?
If 10 - 15% of Covid infections are reinfections, that looks to me more or less that simple infection with a previous variant of either delta, wuhan or alpha provides ~ zero defense against simple reinfection with Omicron.
i don;t think you can say that it is zero, just because some are getting reinfected.
Plus we also don't have data on which original infection the person has had. There may be differences between original, alpha and delta.
According to my workings, ~ 17% of England has had a known non Omicron infection. So 10-15% certainly hints at lowish efficacy of prevention of infection by previous variants. Many I expect will be broadly asymptomatic infections that may clear quickly, but they are still infections.
ISTM that "kids" is vaguely pejorative; horrid/horrible I would see more as a class indicator, likewise pudding and dessert; and movie is just going with the times as most people consume films on US streaming services and those films in any case are usually US-made.
I see kids more as informal than pejorative. But if OKC sees it as pejorative I can see why. Horrid feels horribly Enid Blyton and twee. (I have actually read a good argument that horrid is the least horrible of the four horrible words, which, getting more horrible, are horrid, horrible, horrendous and horrific. So perhaps has a use as 'horrible, but not that horrible'.) Movie is just not as good a word as film. I have also seen an argument that movie denotes a certain sort of film - big Hollywood blockbuster - whereas film is its more thoughtful or arty counterpart. Again, I could get on board with that. But movie seems to just be used for all films nowadays. Sigh. And dessert just sounds to me like an affectation. Though I have an Irish friend who finds the word pudding hilarious - hears it as very English and therefore very posh, which is kind of the reverse of how I hear it.
Never really had an issue with the horri family. Technically, what is horrible or horrendous is what makes you bristle, and horrid is the state you are consequently in on seeing something horrible.
Cf suck and suckle: babies suck, mothers suckle.
Objections to "kids" have completely floored me.
There are many meanings "pudding", including "you great daft pudding".
Comments
I’ve got the 5.0 M113 in mine, that’s the bulletproof one. Only 75k km on it too. Now I’ve said that, it will blow up next week!
I reckon Johnson is such a slack twat he's bound to get it again.
A white van used to park up near George Square in Edinburgh and leave with about 15 bikes each run. Witnessed a taxi ram a thief off a bike once. Hero.
1) The futility of mask wearing
2) That Starmer cannot do a LFT properly
3) That Starmer has been over testing himself
Because he was rolling in money, he had spent all the money on his toy. Custom carbon fibre etc... It was well into 5 figures, which apparently made it a serious theft. So the police actually turned out...
In court the lawyer for the thief argued it was unfair that the police looked for fingerprints etc because a "normal" bike theft would just be NFA'd.....
Do you mean the landowner? If so, they can veto the development?
Do you mean the developers? If so, it won't go ahead.
Do you mean potential purchasers? If so, they won't get sold.
Or do you mean unrelated whining NIMBY shitmunchers who have no connection whatsoever to the development?
If the Mayor is ignoring them and listening to the authorities and those who actually have a stake in the development then good.
Changing something may be *really* easy (*). Changing something so it doesn't break the entire system - or other peoples systems that rely on it - can be really difficult. And breaking a system can mean downtime whilst you recover, or even make the data irretrievable. Worse, it can break client's systems, if their systems are not well written. And yes, this has happened to a company I know of - an innocuous change they made caused one of their customer's databases to fail, and with it their entire purchasing system.
This is why it's worth spending time early on in a project working out exactly what you need, and what you *may* need in the future. Something that's really hard to do IMO, but can really pay off.
(*) Actually, there should be processes in place to ensure it isn't easy to blindly change something, but that's often not the case.
(**) I Am Not A Database Person
https://tinyurl.com/2p8d7edw
Week-ending: 5-year average|COVID deaths|non-COVID deaths|non-COVID excess
24-Sep-21: 9,264|888|9,796|532
01-Oct-21: 9,377|783|9,727|350
08-Oct-21: 9,555|666|10,141|586
15-Oct-21: 9,811|713|10,464|653
22-Oct-21: 9,865|792|10,516|651
29-Oct-21: 9,759|859|10,128|369
05-Nov-21: 9,891|995|10,555|664
12-Nov-21: 10,331|1,020|11,030|699
19-Nov-21: 10,350|952|11,151|801
26-Nov-21: 10,380|817|10,650|270
03-Dec-21: 10,357|792|10,867|510
10-Dec-21: 10,695|764|11,166|471
17-Dec-21: 10,750|755|11,645|895
24-Dec-21: 11,548|591|12,419|871
Interesting that there was quite a big drop in COVID deaths in the week-ending 24 Dec, which wasn't replicated in the general day to day data.
Most of the movies that get shown these days are talkies. Interesting that the earlier word has stuck.
Saw the bike inside the building, in an alcove by reception. Lifted it when the receptionist was away for a moment.
They caught him from fingerprints & CCTV - saw what he touched, got the prints, ran them. Went to his home, found the bike....
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-59876203
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/01/04/sadiq-khan-decriminalising-dangerous-drugs/
- the synopsis is that like speeding drivers, rather than being prosecuted, cannabis (and other drug) users are being sent on 'awareness courses' which set out the impacts that drugs have.
The entertaining part of this is that the line that the article takes is exactly the opposite of what you would expect given the newspaper and the headline: that Sadiq Khan's approach here is exactly the right one.
This wasn't an issue I felt particularly strongly about prior to reading the article, but probably erred on the side of not decriminalising. But I now probably agree that the new London approach is the correct one, or at least worth trying. This was one of those refreshing pieces which changes your mind about something.
Always best to design tables with spare fields, and use indexes, stored procedures, and consolidated reporting tables for historic data. But, of course, most of these things in production were designed years ago, when storage and memory were really expensive and hard to scale.
EDIT: Being a farmer, he probably had a shotgun. So a license. So someone probably went "GUNS!"
Of course I never heard anything more about it or got compensation or anything like that, but I was still pretty surprised that they'd tracked him down.
https://metro.co.uk/2021/07/01/pupils-use-lemon-juice-to-fake-positive-covid-test-and-get-classes-sent-home-14858148/
In fact. Bloody everybody's got it, recently had it or soon will have, so it's hardly a surprise.
Many moons ago, I did a little work for an organisation whose sole income was selling data. It was an old organisation, and the selling was placed at a much higher priority than the data, which used to be held in books, and was now held electronically. If I had been running the business, my focus would have been on managing that data and nurturing the systems that held it. Instead, the data and computers were an afterthought. The salesmen were king. They'd even got rid of some of the data entry people, saying their clients could enter the data. Except, of course, clients frequently entered the data incorrectly...
This is true for many organisations nowadays: even if they are not in the computer business, they utterly rely on computers, but neglect them. Computers are a cost, and not seen as the core of the business.
Reason I know this - think about where Mrs Eek works....
I was surprised at how cheap mine was the insure tbh.
So the police get to solve a zillion crimes and the criminal gets treated less harshly. What's not to like?
*If they haven't actually committed the crimes they put their hands up for, who cares?
What’s your take on that Big G?
At least with PCRs the test analysis is done centrally. Reporting can't be forgotten, omitted or deliberately evaded. LFTs, oh yes.
A relative lives in the countryside. One evening, a neighbour (a good half mile or so away) arrives back home in the dark to find his wife being held by men. Confusion reigns, the men leave, and the police are called. Since guns had been reported, the police 'copter goes up and starts searching the area as it is believed the suspects may have left on foot.
Meanwhile, my relative's husband hears the police 'copter. He goes out with his torch to check the barns and equipment. Suddenly, he is captured in the light from the copter. He goes back into the cottage.
Unfortunately, my relative shoots and keeps guns at home (fully licenced). A while later, armed police turn up at their front door, the 'copter having reported someone running into the cottage, and the police check showing that the relative has access to guns.
They laugh about it now ...
Sadly modern convenience means its now rare to have complete separation between databases and the objects used by the systems above the database. Entity frameworks and similar coding "improvements" mean that creating an index has to cope with software that is generating queries based on external 3rd party code that may not work the way you expect.
On the other hand it's now possible to build systems that run entirely in memory so indexes aren't the complete be all and end all that they used to be.
SKS may just be one of those people genetically more or less susceptible, and HoC is virus central anyway with people like Mr Johnson setting an example or not as the case may be.
Finally the entire system is a collection of bodges, fixes to bodges, bodges to fixes, and obsolete software.
Bit like RNA virus replication, really.
"X is not our Core Business" - people who say that, burn them with fire.
Now let's see how we can utilise new technology to reduce those software costs.
I was quite impressed with attempting to read the new immigration bill - the one where people where getting concerned with legal liability of the RNLI - it appeared to completely consist of "In the previous law, amend paragraph x and point y, with fragment of sentence z".
It made it it impossible to read, unless you have a turned yourself into a search-and-replace engine.
It seemed quite possible to create an automated tool that could take the previous law, do the changes (highlighted) and present to user - does such a thing exist already?
It also occurred to me that such a structure is perfect for making it impossible for a casual reader to notice things in a law.....
Is 11% roughly in line with the number that refuse vaccination?
On another note I didn't know we'd struck lithium in Cornwall. Chance for some leveling up.
As for State Pension forecasts - infamously incompetent for many years (not sure if they are any better now). The Consumers Association had a string of features in Which? over many years warning of the unreliability.
I assume he doesn’t want to be asked about Sir TB
Plus updating software is hard and expensive and might not show a big enough effect in the 1-3 years in which the CEO will stay in post before fucking off with his golden handshake, to his next job (with golden hello).
As recently as 2009, I was working with a company who had a 15,000 staff running with an entirely paper-based HR system, except for the payroll. Every holiday form had at least half a dozen physical signatures.
"Prime Minister, there are some men from the press and a gentleman from the Times to see you."
This is the British Nationality Act 1981
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1981/61/contents
I can introduce cost savings within weeks (usually there will be a better system somewhere within a month with cost savings flowing immediately).
It looks as though current vaccines are most effective for six months, waning slightly through that time (although still better than nothing afterwards).
It also looks as though Covid is 'worst' during the colder winter months, either because of poor ventilation, low Vit-D, or other health effects.
Therefore, if you were looking at this over the summer, you would want to ensure December to March were 'covered' by boosters. If you start in August with the most vulnerable, their immunity may be declining by February. Hence, in the pre-Omicron world, you want to start in mid-late autumn and get the vulnerable jabbed before winter. Not too early, not too late.
Then Omicron came along. It was soon clear that not only the vulnerable had to be jabbed, but everyone. IMV the government did well to scale up the program as they have, although others may obviously differ.
Corporate spending on IT continues to grow strongly.
I'm sure he would have been delighted to have had the opportunity to congratulate Sir TB.
18 29 3,050,693
30 39 2,680,906
40 49 1,946,861
50 54 691,735
55 59 532,633
60 64 325,536
65 69 184,346
70 74 126,208
75 79 85,989
80+ 152,719
that's 9,777,626 overall and just 2,099,166 over 50s left
It's calculated by looking at the number of those with a second vaccination (from 90 days ago), but not a third.
And if repeated lying became a reason for refusing honours ......
The chap has:
1 - The Mayor has planning powers.
2 - The PP was passed by the Planning Inspector on Appeal, with the Mayor not making representations.
3 - A Director of the applying company donated to Mayoral campaign.
And goes on to make dark hints about the Mayor being 'conflicted'.
In the absence of evidence rather than circumstantial, I'd say a more likely and rational conclusion is that the Mayor either knew he was of no relevance to the particular local housing estate PP, and that his planning powers are nothing to do with it, or recused himself.
The chap also has a somewhat limited understanding of the Planning System.
(PB Angle: the comments on Matt Vickers' MP Facebook Post on this outcome seem to be less hostile than I would expect at this time from the Red Wall - very much anti-London.
https://www.facebook.com/mattvickers.stockton )
@ukpaul Alex Jones - AJ claims to be not vaxxed and is a fat fuck
@kinabula The Queen - 95 has to be a toss up if she gets it, vaxxed or not
@paulyork64 Paul Gascoigne - dying of covid would be #classicgazza
The Guardian reports that 'The Mail on Sunday will pay the Duchess of Sussex just £1 in damages for invading her privacy by publishing a private letter she had sent to her father.'
They do have something else to pay, and of course, there's the question of costs.
As for Matt Vickers comment - it's interesting that he ignores the fact Stockton Council accepted the 90 metre road design. By accepting the 90m scheme the Planning Inspector had little choice but to approve to appeal.
Judging by SA, could we be towards clear of Omicron by then?
I'd leave them where they were planned, and let the local Govts take the political benefit or hit.
These are the key points for me.
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/232698/omicron-largely-evades-immunity-from-past/
But, although I obviously can't speak for them or generalise, I think they'd generally reply:
They hope not to have restrictions forever, but as the situation is continuing to evolve, they want to be as safe as possible for now. They rate not getting even "a bad case of flu" (with possible long covid following) as more important than having a party. They would go to something really important to them like a wedding or a funeral, but a party or a crowded pub or a workplace if their work doesn't require it? Not so much.
They hope that covid will subside (through vaccinations, boosters and possible evolution of the virus) to the level where it really is just like having a cold from time to time, in which case they'll resume normal life with enthusiasm and relief.
People who've already had it (perhaps without knowing it) note the reports that perhaps 25% of infections are in fact re-infections, so they aren't treating it differently from being vaccinated and boosted. Again, they follow the news and will welcome any changes in advice on that.
Essentially their difference from your friends is that they see a high level of uncertainty and they attach a lot more importance to minimising uncertain risk than to going to (or even organing) crowded events if they don't have to. Most of them are either somewhat vulnerable or they have relatives who are. I think they'd all accept that there's a scale of risk/benefit and they would expect to move along it (one way or the other) as the situation devleops. Is that all that different in principle from most people everywhere, even if they place themselves currently at a different point in the range?
Many I expect will be broadly asymptomatic infections that may clear quickly, but they are still infections.
There are many meanings "pudding", including "you great daft pudding".