Guardian front page has 'Tory peer investigated for racist messages' at the top.
Strangely we didn't get the same prominance for Labour Lord convicted of child rape yesterday.
Weirdly, the Morning Star hardly ran any stories about Stalin's crimes.
Didn't run any. It was the Daily Worker then! Tended, in the 50's to concentrate, as I recall, on industrial matters. Used to buy it at the station on the way to school from when I was about 14. I think the station, in what is now Southend West, had about three copies.
I think there might be a bit of COVID about in Italy....
A total of 125 passengers who arrived in the northern Indian city of Amritsar on a chartered flight from Italy have tested positive for Covid-19. They were among 179 passengers on the flight from Milan which landed in Amritsar on Wednesday afternoon.
Remember the weird "flamethrowers" they are apparently using in Xi'an, creating various theories? - eg they are exterminating rats and mice, or "this is Chinese theatre" - a fake stunt designed to impress the public with the severity of their counter-Covid measures
One of the first theories was that "this is merely a malfunction" - the foggers can suddenly start shooting out flames. It was greeted skeptically (as it didn't seem to match the behaviour of the users) nonetheless, it turns out, it is almost certainly true. There are several non-suspicious videos of the foggers doing exactly this, malfunctioning and shooting out flame
Twitter solved this problem. Social media is not all bad
You set 'em going, you kill 'em off.
Alternatively, I am curious, and I just want the truth. You're welcome
I think the most plausible theory is that the Winter Olympics start next month in Beijing and the Chinese aren't taking any risks.
I'm not talking about Xi'an per se, I'm referring specifically to their habit of disinfecting entire cities with foggers of all kinds (sometimes enormous tankers doing whole streets in one go)
No other country - as far as I know - has used this technique. Yet the Chinese have done it from the get-go in Wuhan, and then elsewhere
Odd
And they are - if their stats are to be believed - by a distance THE most successful country when it comes to controlling Covid. Perhaps we should all be out with our foggers
Well the Chinese created the virus, they know how to defeat it.
That is the obvious but unspoken implication. Tho you went and spake it
Guardian front page has 'Tory peer investigated for racist messages' at the top.
Strangely we didn't get the same prominance for Labour Lord convicted of child rape yesterday.
We did but you didn't look hard enough or often enough.
Wayback machine confirms it was never given the same prominance, despite being much more of a story (conviction vs investigation, single racist message vs multiple child rape).
Guardian front page has 'Tory peer investigated for racist messages' at the top.
Strangely we didn't get the same prominance for Labour Lord convicted of child rape yesterday.
We did but you didn't look hard enough or often enough.
Wayback machine confirms it was never given the same prominance, despite being much more of a story (conviction vs investigation, single racist message vs multiple child rape).
This isn't a difficult one.
It was on the app.
I'm sure it was. I'm not saying they ignored it completely.
I'm saying they've got a much lesser story about a Tory at the very top of their website, when something far worse about an equivalent Labour figure was pushed down the page.
Looking again he is also referred to as 'former Peer' with no party affiliation given. It's a pretty open and shut case of political bias. They're the Guardian, it's allowed, no one is forced to buy then, but it is worthy of note.
You don't look very hard do you?
Appointed a life peer by Tony Blair, Ahmed resigned from the Labour party in 2013.
Guardian front page has 'Tory peer investigated for racist messages' at the top.
Strangely we didn't get the same prominance for Labour Lord convicted of child rape yesterday.
I thought it quite justifiably got rather a lot of coverage across the media.
The Labour Party may be a miserable bunch of lowlifes for enobling Ahmed in the same way the Conservatives were for knighting Peter Morrison. Nonetheless I don't really think the Labour Party can be blamed directly for the crimes of Ahmed.
All fair, but not particularly addressing my point.
Today the Guardian has a much more minor story about a Tory Peer at the top of the page and the headline makes it all about her being a Tory, when it is equally not relevant.
Yesterday a significantly worse story was given much less prominance (3rd on the side bar for 3 hours then removed from front page completely), and they never even mentioned Labour in the headline.
I'm not saying no one covered it. I'm saying the Guardian let their bias show for all to see.
Was he not removed or suspended from the Labour whip on charging?
OTOH the Graun is happy to refer to the 'ex-SNP MP' Ms Ferrier as standing trial, so that doesn't work.
Actually, he left Labour several years before that. He's dodgy as f*** and should never have been ennobled. But his history in the Labour Party is long over.
Guardian front page has 'Tory peer investigated for racist messages' at the top.
Strangely we didn't get the same prominance for Labour Lord convicted of child rape yesterday.
I thought it quite justifiably got rather a lot of coverage across the media.
The Labour Party may be a miserable bunch of lowlifes for enobling Ahmed in the same way the Conservatives were for knighting Peter Morrison. Nonetheless I don't really think the Labour Party can be blamed directly for the crimes of Ahmed.
All fair, but not particularly addressing my point.
Today the Guardian has a much more minor story about a Tory Peer at the top of the page and the headline makes it all about her being a Tory, when it is equally not relevant.
Yesterday a significantly worse story was given much less prominance (3rd on the side bar for 3 hours then removed from front page completely), and they never even mentioned Labour in the headline.
I'm not saying no one covered it. I'm saying the Guardian let their bias show for all to see.
Guardian front page has 'Tory peer investigated for racist messages' at the top.
Strangely we didn't get the same prominance for Labour Lord convicted of child rape yesterday.
I thought it quite justifiably got rather a lot of coverage across the media.
The Labour Party may be a miserable bunch of lowlifes for enobling Ahmed in the same way the Conservatives were for knighting Peter Morrison. Nonetheless I don't really think the Labour Party can be blamed directly for the crimes of Ahmed.
No, and I don’t think anyone is saying that it should be. But there does appear to be a double standard with how they are reported.
In ALL the news reports I saw, heard or read Ahmed was described as a "former LABOUR peer". I don't see a double standard at all from the Guardian.
If you both believe Tony Blair should apologise for enobling Ahmed, I don't disagree with your call.
What is remarkable to me in the abolition of slavery and the slave trade in the British Empire is that despite fierce opposition, a majority decision was taken to end an extremely lucrative trade on almost solely moral grounds. There are few precedents. I'd say I was proud, but that would imply I'm ashamed of the slave trade that preceded it, which I'm not, not being responsible for either.
What I also find interesting is that the campaign to extirpate it that followed wasn't just a half-hearted then effort. It was full on in every way. I'm thinking of such things as the enthusiasm with which the RN used the slightest resistance by slavers to charge them with piracy and hang them, among other things.
Something to liven up the days, and also HMG allowed them the prize money sales of the captures, and paid an allowance per head (both ofd the enemy crews, and the slaves rescued) too. But good for them.
And of course once you had seen a slave ship ...
The head & prize money made sure that the best and brightest of the RN headed to the antislavery patrols. IIRC some cruises set petty officers etc for life - pubs bought etc.
It was also part of the commitment - it was a lot of hard cash.
Another interesting one - when they found that slave ships at auction were being bought by other slavers, they started burning or chopping them up. Instead of telling the RN crews "sorry, no prize money", the government paid for the prizes. Which was another serious pile of cash.
INdeed. And it made up somewhat for the loss of life to tropical disease.
BTW HMS Trincomalee now at Hartlepool (Nelson era tech) and HMS Gannet now at Chatham (1870s) both served on anti slavery duties at different times.
When I was at uni I came across a kind of diary in one of the second shops near the British museum.
It was a book of letters to and from a brother and his sisters. The brother been a teenage midshipman in the RN. The booked ended with a letter from the ships Captain, telling the story of his death at the hands of a slaver crew he was boarding with his boats crew - the boat had been on detached service from the ship itself.
There was a further letter, badly spelt and capitalised from a member of the boats crew - about how he'd been a good officer and everyone in the crew had liked him.
So when he was killed by a shot from the slaver they'd boarded the slaver and killed the entire crew. Including the ones trying to surrender.
FPT but too good a story not to say many thanks for it.
A fascinating story, and thanks both for the other info. Not to be a party pooper, but I don't really approve of summary executions of slavers either I'm afraid. Though it was probably a bit of a bugger to know what to do with them.
By firing on an RN vessel, even without killing anyone, they had opened hostilities.
Because they weren't a national ship, they would have thus classed themselves as pirates.
In theory, you could hang the whole crew, IIRC. After a trial....
I think there might be a bit of COVID about in Italy....
A total of 125 passengers who arrived in the northern Indian city of Amritsar on a chartered flight from Italy have tested positive for Covid-19. They were among 179 passengers on the flight from Milan which landed in Amritsar on Wednesday afternoon.
The bit that leaps out of me is how everything in Scotland is now prefixed with Scottish....
That's something that is going to be very hard to fix but continually reinforces that all services are Scottish - without revealing that they only exist because of cross subsidies from other parts of the UK*. Which means it's easy for the Scottish Government to play their rulebook of celebrate success and blame London for the failures.
* for MalcolmG and co that isn't an invitation to insult or call me wrong - it's a simple fact of life that Governments borrow money.
The interesting thing about this is how pervasive this is even outside of politics. "National" newspapers prefix "Scottish" before their name. If you talk about "the FA" or the "Premier League", you will be understood as talking about the English FA and English Premier League even if you're in Scotland. Scotland is constantly "othered", even by itself. In fact, it's ironically one of the things that unites people from England, Scotland, and beyond: England is the UK, and Scotland is an awkward add-on that sort of is and sort of isn't England.
Not true at the Olympics, the UN, the G7 and G20. Not true at Westminster either as will be clear if Starmer becomes PM of the UK with SNP and LD support despite another Tory majority in England, as the latest RedfieldWilton poll suggests could happen
No, but now you mention the Olympics, Team GB is a weird one. It includes Northern Ireland, apparently, but the name implies not. And that reminds me too about Ireland in the rugby union, which covers Northern Ireland. The more you look, the more you see. We really do live in a strangely ill-fitting set of social, political, and legal categories.
IIRC there's an all-Ireland cricket set up, but not a football one. Class-orientated?
Speaking of which, England cricket covers Wales and not Scotland. It's all very weird.
It's stranger than that. Scotland used to be a County Cricket Team but (from memory) took umbridge when Durham became a first class county so in 1992 left the TCCB and applied for Associate ICC membership which they got in 1994.
Remember the weird "flamethrowers" they are apparently using in Xi'an, creating various theories? - eg they are exterminating rats and mice, or "this is Chinese theatre" - a fake stunt designed to impress the public with the severity of their counter-Covid measures
One of the first theories was that "this is merely a malfunction" - the foggers can suddenly start shooting out flames. It was greeted skeptically (as it didn't seem to match the behaviour of the users) nonetheless, it turns out, it is almost certainly true. There are several non-suspicious videos of the foggers doing exactly this, malfunctioning and shooting out flame
Twitter solved this problem. Social media is not all bad
You set 'em going, you kill 'em off.
Alternatively, I am curious, and I just want the truth. You're welcome
I think the most plausible theory is that the Winter Olympics start next month in Beijing and the Chinese aren't taking any risks.
I'm not talking about Xi'an per se, I'm referring specifically to their habit of disinfecting entire cities with foggers of all kinds (sometimes enormous tankers doing whole streets in one go)
No other country - as far as I know - has used this technique. Yet the Chinese have done it from the get-go in Wuhan, and then elsewhere
Odd
And they are - if their stats are to be believed - by a distance THE most successful country when it comes to controlling Covid. Perhaps we should all be out with our foggers
Well the Chinese created the virus, they know how to defeat it.
That is the obvious but unspoken implication. Tho you went and spake it
It was a joke.
If the Chinese had really created the virus then their vaccine wouldn't be less effective than the ones the West created.
Guardian front page has 'Tory peer investigated for racist messages' at the top.
Strangely we didn't get the same prominance for Labour Lord convicted of child rape yesterday.
I thought it quite justifiably got rather a lot of coverage across the media.
The Labour Party may be a miserable bunch of lowlifes for enobling Ahmed in the same way the Conservatives were for knighting Peter Morrison. Nonetheless I don't really think the Labour Party can be blamed directly for the crimes of Ahmed.
All fair, but not particularly addressing my point.
Today the Guardian has a much more minor story about a Tory Peer at the top of the page and the headline makes it all about her being a Tory, when it is equally not relevant.
Yesterday a significantly worse story was given much less prominance (3rd on the side bar for 3 hours then removed from front page completely), and they never even mentioned Labour in the headline.
I'm not saying no one covered it. I'm saying the Guardian let their bias show for all to see.
Was he not removed or suspended from the Labour whip on charging?
OTOH the Graun is happy to refer in its headline today (UK news) to the 'ex-SNP MP' Ms Ferrier as standing trial, so that doesn't work.
Thank goodness no one from HMG's party broke any Covid rules!
Its a good job he had a snafu with his change of phone....
This paragraph at the very bottom of Geidt's letter to the PM seems very important. He says that if he'd seen the WhatsApp exchange he likely would have found that the PM didn't follow the rules on declaring his interests.
Is Johnson claiming that because he had a new device he couldn't access his old WhatApp messages? For that to be the case he'd surely have had to change the phone number and advise all his WhatsApp contacts of that fact. Seems very odd - why does anyone get a new number with an new device these days?
No I think he is trying to claim they didn't all transfer over......
"why does anyone get a new number with an new device these days"
Actually, there is a really annoying loophole to PAC / moving number system that providers exploit. There are deals which aren't available to existing customers, especially getting the latest phones. If you want to keep your number and get a new phone, they will offer you a worse tariff to "Upgrade".
The only other way get it is to cancel your contract and sign up. But in doing so, they won't let you do it in the time period that PAC works.
Buy the phone direct from the manufacturer and go SIM only.
The reason I know is I had this situation a couple of years ago, but the deal I was trying to "exploit" was just too good when combined with an offer via one of these money back sites.
I think it was basically as brand new Samsung S10, which cost a £1000 from the manufacturer. You paid £250 upfront and contract is £25 a month, but you got the free wireless earbuds (£150) for pre-ordering via the operator and the money back site was offering the ability to stack offers to get I think £300 back.
So free phone, free earbuds, tariff £25 a month, while the equivalent sim only deal was more than £25 a month. But I ended up having to change my phone number.
Sim only deal >£25 pm? You couldn't have looked very hard.
Mine is over that, though it includes 83 country roaming, Spotify and unlimited 5G data with unlimited tethering included. I think it's good value, though other people might not.
The bit that leaps out of me is how everything in Scotland is now prefixed with Scottish....
That's something that is going to be very hard to fix but continually reinforces that all services are Scottish - without revealing that they only exist because of cross subsidies from other parts of the UK*. Which means it's easy for the Scottish Government to play their rulebook of celebrate success and blame London for the failures.
* for MalcolmG and co that isn't an invitation to insult or call me wrong - it's a simple fact of life that Governments borrow money.
The interesting thing about this is how pervasive this is even outside of politics. "National" newspapers prefix "Scottish" before their name. If you talk about "the FA" or the "Premier League", you will be understood as talking about the English FA and English Premier League even if you're in Scotland. Scotland is constantly "othered", even by itself. In fact, it's ironically one of the things that unites people from England, Scotland, and beyond: England is the UK, and Scotland is an awkward add-on that sort of is and sort of isn't England.
Not true at the Olympics, the UN, the G7 and G20. Not true at Westminster either as will be clear if Starmer becomes PM of the UK with SNP and LD support despite another Tory majority in England, as the latest RedfieldWilton poll suggests could happen
No, but now you mention the Olympics, Team GB is a weird one. It includes Northern Ireland, apparently, but the name implies not. And that reminds me too about Ireland in the rugby union, which covers Northern Ireland. The more you look, the more you see. We really do live in a strangely ill-fitting set of social, political, and legal categories.
Anyone from Northern Ireland has the nice option of picking the team they wish to join when they are first selected.
A Northern Ireland Boxer, say, can pick to be on either the Irish or GB teams based on personal preference and / or likelihood of selection.
Ok. But whichever they choose, the name isn't quite right.
In this case, I think GB is actually short for GB&NI. Which is still incorrect as I think the Manx and Channel Islanders compete for "GB" at the Olympics.
You're right and wrong. TeamGB is the branding, and the "official" name is as you say. The owner is the British Olympic Association, so we're back to the same issue. In any case, I'm not very worried about it, it's just an example of how names can sometimes poorly represent the things they stand for, so the point is unaffected. TeamGB knows itself as TeamGB, deliberately and consciously, it's not just a case of public ignorance. Northern Ireland, like Scotland but more so, is a liminal place that is left undescribed by things which cover it. It's leads to a tiny psychological discontinuity that, I think, makes things like the Brexit border down the Irish sea slightly more possible than it otherwise would have been. It's just one straw on the camel's back, but it is there.
Guardian front page has 'Tory peer investigated for racist messages' at the top.
Strangely we didn't get the same prominance for Labour Lord convicted of child rape yesterday.
Weirdly, the Morning Star hardly ran any stories about Stalin's crimes.
Comparing the front pages
Same sidebar. Michelle gets a photo.
Yes, top of sidebar always has a photo in their layout. I would suggest anyone arguing the lower ranks of that sidebar is equal prominance to the top item with a photo is trying a little hard.
The bit that leaps out of me is how everything in Scotland is now prefixed with Scottish....
That's something that is going to be very hard to fix but continually reinforces that all services are Scottish - without revealing that they only exist because of cross subsidies from other parts of the UK*. Which means it's easy for the Scottish Government to play their rulebook of celebrate success and blame London for the failures.
* for MalcolmG and co that isn't an invitation to insult or call me wrong - it's a simple fact of life that Governments borrow money.
The interesting thing about this is how pervasive this is even outside of politics. "National" newspapers prefix "Scottish" before their name. If you talk about "the FA" or the "Premier League", you will be understood as talking about the English FA and English Premier League even if you're in Scotland. Scotland is constantly "othered", even by itself. In fact, it's ironically one of the things that unites people from England, Scotland, and beyond: England is the UK, and Scotland is an awkward add-on that sort of is and sort of isn't England.
The oddities are fascinating. Like (I think this the case) all postage stamps state their country of origin except those of the UK.
The Guardian used to be the Manchester Guardian but dropped the local name, without substituting British, English or UK.
Is part of the problem that the proper name of our state - the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland - in no form lends itself to adjectivalising - 'The UK Sun', 'The UKGB+NI Mail' has no ring like 'The Scottish Sun' and to use any other term like British or English is to exclude and divide
"The anarchist Peter Kropotkin called it the “mad summer of 1874”. Thousands of radical students poured out of the universities in Moscow and St Petersburg and journeyed into the countryside to, in the words of the historian Orlando Figes, “start out on a new life with the Russian peasantry”, among whom they hoped to find “a new brotherhood of man”. As I reread Figes’s superb cultural history of Russia, Natasha’s Dance, the episode stood out for certain irresistible modern parallels. The idealistic young students, Figes writes, were “riddled with the guilt of privilege”." (£)
Never understood why we have a Team GB at the Olympics, when in every major team sport we compete as separate nations:
• Football • Rugby Union • Cricket • Golf • Netball • Hockey (outside the Olympics) • Rugby League
The list goes on...
There's a correlation there, those sports are generally the ones invented or first administered by the UK.
And even then it is complicated e.g. Ryder Cup was originally Great Britain vs USA, they let the Europeans join GB because America kept winning. Cricket isn't England, it is England and Wales...
The bit that leaps out of me is how everything in Scotland is now prefixed with Scottish....
That's something that is going to be very hard to fix but continually reinforces that all services are Scottish - without revealing that they only exist because of cross subsidies from other parts of the UK*. Which means it's easy for the Scottish Government to play their rulebook of celebrate success and blame London for the failures.
* for MalcolmG and co that isn't an invitation to insult or call me wrong - it's a simple fact of life that Governments borrow money.
The interesting thing about this is how pervasive this is even outside of politics. "National" newspapers prefix "Scottish" before their name. If you talk about "the FA" or the "Premier League", you will be understood as talking about the English FA and English Premier League even if you're in Scotland. Scotland is constantly "othered", even by itself. In fact, it's ironically one of the things that unites people from England, Scotland, and beyond: England is the UK, and Scotland is an awkward add-on that sort of is and sort of isn't England.
Not true at the Olympics, the UN, the G7 and G20. Not true at Westminster either as will be clear if Starmer becomes PM of the UK with SNP and LD support despite another Tory majority in England, as the latest RedfieldWilton poll suggests could happen
No, but now you mention the Olympics, Team GB is a weird one. It includes Northern Ireland, apparently, but the name implies not. And that reminds me too about Ireland in the rugby union, which covers Northern Ireland. The more you look, the more you see. We really do live in a strangely ill-fitting set of social, political, and legal categories.
IIRC there's an all-Ireland cricket set up, but not a football one. Class-orientated?
Speaking of which, England cricket covers Wales and not Scotland. It's all very weird.
It's stranger than that. Scotland used to be a County Cricket Team but (from memory) took umbridge when Durham became a first class county so in 1992 left the TCCB and applied for Associate ICC membership which they got in 1994.
As my Scottish boss says (a huge cricket lover) says the issue with professional/first class cricket in Scotland is that the climate doesn't allow for proper pitches.
A Scottish county cricket team would be getting 25 point penalties for an unsuitable pitch after every first class game.
Guardian front page has 'Tory peer investigated for racist messages' at the top.
Strangely we didn't get the same prominance for Labour Lord convicted of child rape yesterday.
I thought it quite justifiably got rather a lot of coverage across the media.
The Labour Party may be a miserable bunch of lowlifes for enobling Ahmed in the same way the Conservatives were for knighting Peter Morrison. Nonetheless I don't really think the Labour Party can be blamed directly for the crimes of Ahmed.
All fair, but not particularly addressing my point.
Today the Guardian has a much more minor story about a Tory Peer at the top of the page and the headline makes it all about her being a Tory, when it is equally not relevant.
Yesterday a significantly worse story was given much less prominance (3rd on the side bar for 3 hours then removed from front page completely), and they never even mentioned Labour in the headline.
I'm not saying no one covered it. I'm saying the Guardian let their bias show for all to see.
Was he not removed or suspended from the Labour whip on charging?
OTOH the Graun is happy to refer in its headline today (UK news) to the 'ex-SNP MP' Ms Ferrier as standing trial, so that doesn't work.
Thank goodness no one from HMG's party broke any Covid rules!
The ex-SNP in the headline is very much as in ex-Norwegian Blue.
Part of the story is of course how Ms F was pretty summarily told off and dumped by the SNP when her actions came to light (in hindsight, it jmight seem a bit harsh given what we now know about covid brain fog and panic, ditto Mr Cummings: but in their position ...).
The novelty of this particular famine, what made it so diabolical, is that it was not the result of some catastrophe like a drought or an epidemic. It was the deliberate creation of a bureaucratic mind which demanded the collectivization of agriculture, immediately, as a purely theoretical proposition, without any consideration whatever of the consequences in human suffering.
Guardian front page has 'Tory peer investigated for racist messages' at the top.
Strangely we didn't get the same prominance for Labour Lord convicted of child rape yesterday.
We did but you didn't look hard enough or often enough.
Wayback machine confirms it was never given the same prominance, despite being much more of a story (conviction vs investigation, single racist message vs multiple child rape).
Guardian front page has 'Tory peer investigated for racist messages' at the top.
Strangely we didn't get the same prominance for Labour Lord convicted of child rape yesterday.
We did but you didn't look hard enough or often enough.
Wayback machine confirms it was never given the same prominance, despite being much more of a story (conviction vs investigation, single racist message vs multiple child rape).
This isn't a difficult one.
It was on the app.
I'm sure it was. I'm not saying they ignored it completely.
I'm saying they've got a much lesser story about a Tory at the very top of their website, when something far worse about an equivalent Labour figure was pushed down the page.
Looking again he is also referred to as 'former Peer' with no party affiliation given. It's a pretty open and shut case of political bias. They're the Guardian, it's allowed, no one is forced to buy then, but it is worthy of note.
You don't look very hard do you?
Appointed a life peer by Tony Blair, Ahmed resigned from the Labour party in 2013.
Its a good job he had a snafu with his change of phone....
This paragraph at the very bottom of Geidt's letter to the PM seems very important. He says that if he'd seen the WhatsApp exchange he likely would have found that the PM didn't follow the rules on declaring his interests.
Is Johnson claiming that because he had a new device he couldn't access his old WhatApp messages? For that to be the case he'd surely have had to change the phone number and advise all his WhatsApp contacts of that fact. Seems very odd - why does anyone get a new number with an new device these days?
No I think he is trying to claim they didn't all transfer over......
"why does anyone get a new number with an new device these days"
Actually, there is a really annoying loophole to PAC / moving number system that providers exploit. There are deals which aren't available to existing customers, especially getting the latest phones. If you want to keep your number and get a new phone, they will offer you a worse tariff to "Upgrade".
The only other way get it is to cancel your contract and sign up. But in doing so, they won't let you do it in the time period that PAC works.
Buy the phone direct from the manufacturer and go SIM only.
The reason I know is I had this situation a couple of years ago, but the deal I was trying to "exploit" was just too good when combined with an offer via one of these money back sites.
I think it was basically as brand new Samsung S10, which cost a £1000 from the manufacturer. You paid £250 upfront and contract is £25 a month, but you got the free wireless earbuds (£150) for pre-ordering via the operator and the money back site was offering the ability to stack offers to get I think £300 back.
So free phone, free earbuds, tariff £25 a month, while the equivalent sim only deal was more than £25 a month. But I ended up having to change my phone number.
Sim only deal >£25 pm? You couldn't have looked very hard.
Mine is over that, though it includes 83 country roaming, Spotify and unlimited 5G data with unlimited tethering included. I think it's good value, though other people might not.
Who is that with?
It sounds like my Vodafone contract - great (except in parts of Wales) but blooming expensive.
Remember the weird "flamethrowers" they are apparently using in Xi'an, creating various theories? - eg they are exterminating rats and mice, or "this is Chinese theatre" - a fake stunt designed to impress the public with the severity of their counter-Covid measures
One of the first theories was that "this is merely a malfunction" - the foggers can suddenly start shooting out flames. It was greeted skeptically (as it didn't seem to match the behaviour of the users) nonetheless, it turns out, it is almost certainly true. There are several non-suspicious videos of the foggers doing exactly this, malfunctioning and shooting out flame
Twitter solved this problem. Social media is not all bad
You set 'em going, you kill 'em off.
Alternatively, I am curious, and I just want the truth. You're welcome
I think the most plausible theory is that the Winter Olympics start next month in Beijing and the Chinese aren't taking any risks.
I'm not talking about Xi'an per se, I'm referring specifically to their habit of disinfecting entire cities with foggers of all kinds (sometimes enormous tankers doing whole streets in one go)
No other country - as far as I know - has used this technique. Yet the Chinese have done it from the get-go in Wuhan, and then elsewhere
Odd
And they are - if their stats are to be believed - by a distance THE most successful country when it comes to controlling Covid. Perhaps we should all be out with our foggers
Well the Chinese created the virus, they know how to defeat it.
That is the obvious but unspoken implication. Tho you went and spake it
It was a joke.
If the Chinese had really created the virus then their vaccine wouldn't be less effective than the ones the West created.
No. It is quite plausible they bio-engineered the virus, perhaps even as a potential weapon, but it was accidentally leaked before they had an effective vaccine ready
This might sound unlikely, but there are scientific papers by Chinese military scientists - linked with the Wuhan lab - discussing exactly this scenario: the creation of a novel coronavirus to cripple rival economies. They date, IIRC, from around 2015 onwards
The novelty of this particular famine, what made it so diabolical, is that it was not the result of some catastrophe like a drought or an epidemic. It was the deliberate creation of a bureaucratic mind which demanded the collectivization of agriculture, immediately, as a purely theoretical proposition, without any consideration whatever of the consequences in human suffering.
There is a strong argument that every famine of the last 100 years has been man made.
Never understood why we have a Team GB at the Olympics, when in every major team sport we compete as separate nations:
• Football • Rugby Union • Cricket • Golf • Netball • Hockey (outside the Olympics) • Rugby League
The list goes on...
There's a correlation there, those sports are generally the ones invented or first administered by the UK.
It's deeper than that. Taking something largely at random, chess, that has separate teams too. Chess is an Eastern invention, and reached a mature and stable form in mainland Europe. FIDE was formed in France. Curious.
Its a good job he had a snafu with his change of phone....
This paragraph at the very bottom of Geidt's letter to the PM seems very important. He says that if he'd seen the WhatsApp exchange he likely would have found that the PM didn't follow the rules on declaring his interests.
Is Johnson claiming that because he had a new device he couldn't access his old WhatApp messages? For that to be the case he'd surely have had to change the phone number and advise all his WhatsApp contacts of that fact. Seems very odd - why does anyone get a new number with an new device these days?
No I think he is trying to claim they didn't all transfer over......
"why does anyone get a new number with an new device these days"
Actually, there is a really annoying loophole to PAC / moving number system that providers exploit. There are deals which aren't available to existing customers, especially getting the latest phones. If you want to keep your number and get a new phone, they will offer you a worse tariff to "Upgrade".
The only other way get it is to cancel your contract and sign up. But in doing so, they won't let you do it in the time period that PAC works.
Buy the phone direct from the manufacturer and go SIM only.
The reason I know is I had this situation a couple of years ago, but the deal I was trying to "exploit" was just too good when combined with an offer via one of these money back sites.
I think it was basically as brand new Samsung S10, which cost a £1000 from the manufacturer. You paid £250 upfront and contract is £25 a month, but you got the free wireless earbuds (£150) for pre-ordering via the operator and the money back site was offering the ability to stack offers to get I think £300 back.
So free phone, free earbuds, tariff £25 a month, while the equivalent sim only deal was more than £25 a month. But I ended up having to change my phone number.
Sim only deal >£25 pm? You couldn't have looked very hard.
Mine is over that, though it includes 83 country roaming, Spotify and unlimited 5G data with unlimited tethering included. I think it's good value, though other people might not.
Who is that with?
It sounds like my Vodafone contract - great (except in parts of Wales) but blooming expensive.
I'm a dual simmer, have a contract with EE and O2, get pretty much excellent coverage between those two, except in rural Wales, and remote Scotland.
Remember the weird "flamethrowers" they are apparently using in Xi'an, creating various theories? - eg they are exterminating rats and mice, or "this is Chinese theatre" - a fake stunt designed to impress the public with the severity of their counter-Covid measures
One of the first theories was that "this is merely a malfunction" - the foggers can suddenly start shooting out flames. It was greeted skeptically (as it didn't seem to match the behaviour of the users) nonetheless, it turns out, it is almost certainly true. There are several non-suspicious videos of the foggers doing exactly this, malfunctioning and shooting out flame
Twitter solved this problem. Social media is not all bad
You set 'em going, you kill 'em off.
Alternatively, I am curious, and I just want the truth. You're welcome
I think the most plausible theory is that the Winter Olympics start next month in Beijing and the Chinese aren't taking any risks.
I'm not talking about Xi'an per se, I'm referring specifically to their habit of disinfecting entire cities with foggers of all kinds (sometimes enormous tankers doing whole streets in one go)
No other country - as far as I know - has used this technique. Yet the Chinese have done it from the get-go in Wuhan, and then elsewhere
Odd
And they are - if their stats are to be believed - by a distance THE most successful country when it comes to controlling Covid. Perhaps we should all be out with our foggers
Well the Chinese created the virus, they know how to defeat it.
Chinese covid is a bit crap. Easily beaten by Indian, South African and even Kentish versions. Second division at best.
Guardian front page has 'Tory peer investigated for racist messages' at the top.
Strangely we didn't get the same prominance for Labour Lord convicted of child rape yesterday.
Weirdly, the Morning Star hardly ran any stories about Stalin's crimes.
Comparing the front pages
Same sidebar. Michelle gets a photo.
Yes, top of sidebar always has a photo in their layout. I would suggest anyone arguing the lower ranks of that sidebar is equal prominance to the top item with a photo is trying a little hard.
Also only one has a party affiliation - compare "Tory peer" and "Former peer".
I wonder if anyone has ever given Boris Johnson the benefit of the doubt and not later regretted it.
There are quite a few Tory Party members, but I suspect that a large number of them might be slowly and uncomfortably coming to the conclusion that they made a massive mistake.
Its a good job he had a snafu with his change of phone....
This paragraph at the very bottom of Geidt's letter to the PM seems very important. He says that if he'd seen the WhatsApp exchange he likely would have found that the PM didn't follow the rules on declaring his interests.
Is Johnson claiming that because he had a new device he couldn't access his old WhatApp messages? For that to be the case he'd surely have had to change the phone number and advise all his WhatsApp contacts of that fact. Seems very odd - why does anyone get a new number with an new device these days?
No I think he is trying to claim they didn't all transfer over......
"why does anyone get a new number with an new device these days"
Actually, there is a really annoying loophole to PAC / moving number system that providers exploit. There are deals which aren't available to existing customers, especially getting the latest phones. If you want to keep your number and get a new phone, they will offer you a worse tariff to "Upgrade".
The only other way get it is to cancel your contract and sign up. But in doing so, they won't let you do it in the time period that PAC works.
Buy the phone direct from the manufacturer and go SIM only.
The reason I know is I had this situation a couple of years ago, but the deal I was trying to "exploit" was just too good when combined with an offer via one of these money back sites.
I think it was basically as brand new Samsung S10, which cost a £1000 from the manufacturer. You paid £250 upfront and contract is £25 a month, but you got the free wireless earbuds (£150) for pre-ordering via the operator and the money back site was offering the ability to stack offers to get I think £300 back.
So free phone, free earbuds, tariff £25 a month, while the equivalent sim only deal was more than £25 a month. But I ended up having to change my phone number.
Sim only deal >£25 pm? You couldn't have looked very hard.
Mine is over that, though it includes 83 country roaming, Spotify and unlimited 5G data with unlimited tethering included. I think it's good value, though other people might not.
Who is that with?
It sounds like my Vodafone contract - great (except in parts of Wales) but blooming expensive.
Can't beat my business contract. £10+VAT a month. Unlimited calls / texts / data / tethering. OK its on Three but their coverage is really good up here.
The novelty of this particular famine, what made it so diabolical, is that it was not the result of some catastrophe like a drought or an epidemic. It was the deliberate creation of a bureaucratic mind which demanded the collectivization of agriculture, immediately, as a purely theoretical proposition, without any consideration whatever of the consequences in human suffering.
There is a strong argument that every famine of the last 100 years has been man made.
A jolly silly argument, especially when used as an apology for Stalin.
That said, I am still a little confused by Chinese behaviour vis-a-vis the virus
They really are doing some VERY determined disinfecting in Xi'an (and, piquantly, you can briefly see another fogger spazzing out and squirting flame).
Why? Do they really think this works against an airborne virus? If so, why has no other country disinfected spaces like this? What if it DOES work, and explains China's remarkable success in suppressing Covid-19? We might all be missing a trick
"xi'an city Chinese biochemistry stormtroopers are striking again to sanitize the entire city ! This time they used an electro-tricycle. 2022/1/6"
Well: one would have thought it would work, in that if aerosol droplets of disinfectant come into contact with viral matter, that it will be viral matter that came off worse.
But.
I'd question whether it is worth doing in 99.9% of situations. Outside is a pretty hostile environment for Covid anyway.
If it was an area where there was very poor natural ventilation, no sunlight, and lots of people (but which was frequently empty enough to spray aerosolized disenfectant) then yes, maybe it's a good idea.
But I would think that would be a very small list of places.
Never understood why we have a Team GB at the Olympics, when in every major team sport we compete as separate nations:
• Football • Rugby Union • Cricket • Golf • Netball • Hockey (outside the Olympics) • Rugby League
The list goes on...
Firstly, the Olympics isn't really a team sport - there are team events, but the only sense Laura Kenny and Tom Daley are on the same team is that they parade together on the opening day.
Secondly, some of those examples are questionable (e.g. England's cricket team is technically England and Wales Cricket Board, plus it has often had Scottish players and Irish ones pre-Test status - indeed, Mike Denness was a Scottish England captain).
Thirdly, the IOC have just always been pretty nervous about doing it - some countries take a very different approach than the UK on countries within countries so there are precedent issues and, given the first point that it only matters in a limited way, there's never been much of a push from the UK.
Its a good job he had a snafu with his change of phone....
This paragraph at the very bottom of Geidt's letter to the PM seems very important. He says that if he'd seen the WhatsApp exchange he likely would have found that the PM didn't follow the rules on declaring his interests.
Is Johnson claiming that because he had a new device he couldn't access his old WhatApp messages? For that to be the case he'd surely have had to change the phone number and advise all his WhatsApp contacts of that fact. Seems very odd - why does anyone get a new number with an new device these days?
No I think he is trying to claim they didn't all transfer over......
"why does anyone get a new number with an new device these days"
Actually, there is a really annoying loophole to PAC / moving number system that providers exploit. There are deals which aren't available to existing customers, especially getting the latest phones. If you want to keep your number and get a new phone, they will offer you a worse tariff to "Upgrade".
The only other way get it is to cancel your contract and sign up. But in doing so, they won't let you do it in the time period that PAC works.
Buy the phone direct from the manufacturer and go SIM only.
The reason I know is I had this situation a couple of years ago, but the deal I was trying to "exploit" was just too good when combined with an offer via one of these money back sites.
I think it was basically as brand new Samsung S10, which cost a £1000 from the manufacturer. You paid £250 upfront and contract is £25 a month, but you got the free wireless earbuds (£150) for pre-ordering via the operator and the money back site was offering the ability to stack offers to get I think £300 back.
So free phone, free earbuds, tariff £25 a month, while the equivalent sim only deal was more than £25 a month. But I ended up having to change my phone number.
Sim only deal >£25 pm? You couldn't have looked very hard.
Mine is over that, though it includes 83 country roaming, Spotify and unlimited 5G data with unlimited tethering included. I think it's good value, though other people might not.
Who is that with?
It sounds like my Vodafone contract - great (except in parts of Wales) but blooming expensive.
Can't beat my business contract. £10+VAT a month. Unlimited calls / texts / data / tethering. OK its on Three but their coverage is really good up here.
Three are utter shits.
What they do is go a big city or town, stick one 5G mast there, and then launch a blizzard of publicity that we have 5G in x number of cities/towns when one mast is no way near enough to cope with the load.
When people complain they say, it will be fixed and people end up stuck in 2 year contracts they cannot get out of because they are misleading about coverage.
The bit that leaps out of me is how everything in Scotland is now prefixed with Scottish....
That's something that is going to be very hard to fix but continually reinforces that all services are Scottish - without revealing that they only exist because of cross subsidies from other parts of the UK*. Which means it's easy for the Scottish Government to play their rulebook of celebrate success and blame London for the failures.
* for MalcolmG and co that isn't an invitation to insult or call me wrong - it's a simple fact of life that Governments borrow money.
The interesting thing about this is how pervasive this is even outside of politics. "National" newspapers prefix "Scottish" before their name. If you talk about "the FA" or the "Premier League", you will be understood as talking about the English FA and English Premier League even if you're in Scotland. Scotland is constantly "othered", even by itself. In fact, it's ironically one of the things that unites people from England, Scotland, and beyond. England is the UK, and Scotland is an awkward add-on that sort of is and sort of isn't England.
Been like that for more than a century, actually, even when it comes to central government admin as I commented in the last thread btw.
I suspect it was originally intended to indicate to Scots that their distinct identity was respected and not subsumed. It was perhaps not foreseen that it might have the reverse effect .
The bit that leaps out of me is how everything in Scotland is now prefixed with Scottish....
That's something that is going to be very hard to fix but continually reinforces that all services are Scottish - without revealing that they only exist because of cross subsidies from other parts of the UK*. Which means it's easy for the Scottish Government to play their rulebook of celebrate success and blame London for the failures.
* for MalcolmG and co that isn't an invitation to insult or call me wrong - it's a simple fact of life that Governments borrow money.
The interesting thing about this is how pervasive this is even outside of politics. "National" newspapers prefix "Scottish" before their name. If you talk about "the FA" or the "Premier League", you will be understood as talking about the English FA and English Premier League even if you're in Scotland. Scotland is constantly "othered", even by itself. In fact, it's ironically one of the things that unites people from England, Scotland, and beyond: England is the UK, and Scotland is an awkward add-on that sort of is and sort of isn't England.
Not true at the Olympics, the UN, the G7 and G20. Not true at Westminster either as will be clear if Starmer becomes PM of the UK with SNP and LD support despite another Tory majority in England, as the latest RedfieldWilton poll suggests could happen
No, but now you mention the Olympics, Team GB is a weird one. It includes Northern Ireland, apparently, but the name implies not. And that reminds me too about Ireland in the rugby union, which covers Northern Ireland. The more you look, the more you see. We really do live in a strangely ill-fitting set of social, political, and legal categories.
IIRC there's an all-Ireland cricket set up, but not a football one. Class-orientated?
Speaking of which, England cricket covers Wales and not Scotland. It's all very weird.
It's stranger than that. Scotland used to be a County Cricket Team but (from memory) took umbridge when Durham became a first class county so in 1992 left the TCCB and applied for Associate ICC membership which they got in 1994.
As my Scottish boss says (a huge cricket lover) says the issue with professional/first class cricket in Scotland is that the climate doesn't allow for proper pitches.
A Scottish county cricket team would be getting 25 point penalties for an unsuitable pitch after every first class game.
They did play in some ODI "county cricket" tournaments at one point e.g.
Interesting data from Wales showing that despite Covid admissions/hospitalisations increasing, total admissions/hospitalisations are not - would be good to have similar data for England NB. Hospitals still under v. high pressure due to staff absence & infection control needs.
The bit that leaps out of me is how everything in Scotland is now prefixed with Scottish....
That's something that is going to be very hard to fix but continually reinforces that all services are Scottish - without revealing that they only exist because of cross subsidies from other parts of the UK*. Which means it's easy for the Scottish Government to play their rulebook of celebrate success and blame London for the failures.
* for MalcolmG and co that isn't an invitation to insult or call me wrong - it's a simple fact of life that Governments borrow money.
The interesting thing about this is how pervasive this is even outside of politics. "National" newspapers prefix "Scottish" before their name. If you talk about "the FA" or the "Premier League", you will be understood as talking about the English FA and English Premier League even if you're in Scotland. Scotland is constantly "othered", even by itself. In fact, it's ironically one of the things that unites people from England, Scotland, and beyond: England is the UK, and Scotland is an awkward add-on that sort of is and sort of isn't England.
All bodies with "Scottish" or "Scotland" that I am aware of have a specific Scotland remit. The SFA looks after football in Scotland; Scottish Water only supplies water to Scotland; NHS Scotland looks after healthcare in Scotland. UK wide bodies such as DHSS and HMRC don't have Scottish versions. Arguably the health service in England should always be referred to as NHS England, Forestry Commission as Forestry England and so on, but it's a bit haphazard.
The bit that leaps out of me is how everything in Scotland is now prefixed with Scottish....
That's something that is going to be very hard to fix but continually reinforces that all services are Scottish - without revealing that they only exist because of cross subsidies from other parts of the UK*. Which means it's easy for the Scottish Government to play their rulebook of celebrate success and blame London for the failures.
* for MalcolmG and co that isn't an invitation to insult or call me wrong - it's a simple fact of life that Governments borrow money.
The interesting thing about this is how pervasive this is even outside of politics. "National" newspapers prefix "Scottish" before their name. If you talk about "the FA" or the "Premier League", you will be understood as talking about the English FA and English Premier League even if you're in Scotland. Scotland is constantly "othered", even by itself. In fact, it's ironically one of the things that unites people from England, Scotland, and beyond: England is the UK, and Scotland is an awkward add-on that sort of is and sort of isn't England.
Not true at the Olympics, the UN, the G7 and G20. Not true at Westminster either as will be clear if Starmer becomes PM of the UK with SNP and LD support despite another Tory majority in England, as the latest RedfieldWilton poll suggests could happen
No, but now you mention the Olympics, Team GB is a weird one. It includes Northern Ireland, apparently, but the name implies not. And that reminds me too about Ireland in the rugby union, which covers Northern Ireland. The more you look, the more you see. We really do live in a strangely ill-fitting set of social, political, and legal categories.
IIRC there's an all-Ireland cricket set up, but not a football one. Class-orientated?
Speaking of which, England cricket covers Wales and not Scotland. It's all very weird.
It's stranger than that. Scotland used to be a County Cricket Team but (from memory) took umbridge when Durham became a first class county so in 1992 left the TCCB and applied for Associate ICC membership which they got in 1994.
As my Scottish boss says (a huge cricket lover) says the issue with professional/first class cricket in Scotland is that the climate doesn't allow for proper pitches.
A Scottish county cricket team would be getting 25 point penalties for an unsuitable pitch after every first class game.
They did play in some ODI "county cricket" tournaments at one point e.g.
The bit that leaps out of me is how everything in Scotland is now prefixed with Scottish....
That's something that is going to be very hard to fix but continually reinforces that all services are Scottish - without revealing that they only exist because of cross subsidies from other parts of the UK*. Which means it's easy for the Scottish Government to play their rulebook of celebrate success and blame London for the failures.
* for MalcolmG and co that isn't an invitation to insult or call me wrong - it's a simple fact of life that Governments borrow money.
The interesting thing about this is how pervasive this is even outside of politics. "National" newspapers prefix "Scottish" before their name. If you talk about "the FA" or the "Premier League", you will be understood as talking about the English FA and English Premier League even if you're in Scotland. Scotland is constantly "othered", even by itself. In fact, it's ironically one of the things that unites people from England, Scotland, and beyond: England is the UK, and Scotland is an awkward add-on that sort of is and sort of isn't England.
Not true at the Olympics, the UN, the G7 and G20. Not true at Westminster either as will be clear if Starmer becomes PM of the UK with SNP and LD support despite another Tory majority in England, as the latest RedfieldWilton poll suggests could happen
No, but now you mention the Olympics, Team GB is a weird one. It includes Northern Ireland, apparently, but the name implies not. And that reminds me too about Ireland in the rugby union, which covers Northern Ireland. The more you look, the more you see. We really do live in a strangely ill-fitting set of social, political, and legal categories.
Anyone from Northern Ireland has the nice option of picking the team they wish to join when they are first selected.
A Northern Ireland Boxer, say, can pick to be on either the Irish or GB teams based on personal preference and / or likelihood of selection.
Ok. But whichever they choose, the name isn't quite right.
In this case, I think GB is actually short for GB&NI. Which is still incorrect as I think the Manx and Channel Islanders compete for "GB" at the Olympics.
You're right and wrong. TeamGB is the branding, and the "official" name is as you say. The owner is the British Olympic Association, so we're back to the same issue. In any case, I'm not very worried about it, it's just an example of how names can sometimes poorly represent the things they stand for, so the point is unaffected. TeamGB knows itself as TeamGB, deliberately and consciously, it's not just a case of public ignorance. Northern Ireland, like Scotland but more so, is a liminal place that is left undescribed by things which cover it. It's leads to a tiny psychological discontinuity that, I think, makes things like the Brexit border down the Irish sea slightly more possible than it otherwise would have been. It's just one straw on the camel's back, but it is there.
British Olympic Association? Not really the same because Britain is synonymous with the UK, not with Great Britain. But maybe that is changing as recently HMG has taken to tagging everything UK.
These idiots who don't use vaults / hardware wallets, sticking all their massively expensive jpegs in the same wallet that they just go clicking buttons that interact with smart contracts that they don't know what they authorize.
Guardian front page has 'Tory peer investigated for racist messages' at the top.
Strangely we didn't get the same prominance for Labour Lord convicted of child rape yesterday.
We did but you didn't look hard enough or often enough.
Wayback machine confirms it was never given the same prominance, despite being much more of a story (conviction vs investigation, single racist message vs multiple child rape).
Guardian front page has 'Tory peer investigated for racist messages' at the top.
Strangely we didn't get the same prominance for Labour Lord convicted of child rape yesterday.
We did but you didn't look hard enough or often enough.
Wayback machine confirms it was never given the same prominance, despite being much more of a story (conviction vs investigation, single racist message vs multiple child rape).
This isn't a difficult one.
It was on the app.
I'm sure it was. I'm not saying they ignored it completely.
I'm saying they've got a much lesser story about a Tory at the very top of their website, when something far worse about an equivalent Labour figure was pushed down the page.
Looking again he is also referred to as 'former Peer' with no party affiliation given. It's a pretty open and shut case of political bias. They're the Guardian, it's allowed, no one is forced to buy then, but it is worthy of note.
You don't look very hard do you?
Appointed a life peer by Tony Blair, Ahmed resigned from the Labour party in 2013.
For anyone interested in a gentle introduction to the Ukraine famine, I can recommend the film Mr Jones, directed by Agnieszka Holland. It's a pretty decent effort without the usual flaws historical films make. Nicely shot too.
That said, I am still a little confused by Chinese behaviour vis-a-vis the virus
They really are doing some VERY determined disinfecting in Xi'an (and, piquantly, you can briefly see another fogger spazzing out and squirting flame).
Why? Do they really think this works against an airborne virus? If so, why has no other country disinfected spaces like this? What if it DOES work, and explains China's remarkable success in suppressing Covid-19? We might all be missing a trick
"xi'an city Chinese biochemistry stormtroopers are striking again to sanitize the entire city ! This time they used an electro-tricycle. 2022/1/6"
Well: one would have thought it would work, in that if aerosol droplets of disinfectant come into contact with viral matter, that it will be viral matter that came off worse.
But.
I'd question whether it is worth doing in 99.9% of situations. Outside is a pretty hostile environment for Covid anyway.
If it was an area where there was very poor natural ventilation, no sunlight, and lots of people (but which was frequently empty enough to spray aerosolized disenfectant) then yes, maybe it's a good idea.
But I would think that would be a very small list of places.
Yes, it doesn't quite make sense. In internal spaces, sure. But along open roads? Really?
Incidentally, before I am accused of "scare-mongering" or Sinophobia or whatever, I am completely right about the Chinese coronavirus bioweapon stuff. And it was 2015. Just checked
"Beijing: A document written by Chinese scientists and health officials before the pandemic in 2015 states that SARS coronaviruses were a "new era of genetic weapons" that could be "artificially manipulated into an emerging human disease virus, then weaponised and unleashed, reported Weekend Australian.
"The paper titled The Unnatural Origin of SARS and New Species of Man-Made Viruses as Genetic Bioweapons suggested that World War Three would be fought with biological weapons. The document revealed that Chinese military scientists were discussing the weaponisation of SARS coronaviruses five years before the COVID-19 pandemic. The report by Weekend Australian was published in news.com.au.
"Peter Jennings, the executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), told news.com.au that the document is as close to a "smoking gun" as we've got.
"I think this is significant because it clearly shows that Chinese scientists were thinking about military application for different strains of the coronavirus and thinking about how it could be deployed," Jennings said.""
If you add it all together, the evidence against China and the Wuhan lab is pretty overwhelming. It is quite an achievement, by them, that half the world still thinks it came from a fucking pangolin on a market stall
These idiots who don't use vaults / hardware wallet, sticking all their massively expensive jpegs in the same wallet that they just go clicking buttons with.
Guardian front page has 'Tory peer investigated for racist messages' at the top.
Strangely we didn't get the same prominance for Labour Lord convicted of child rape yesterday.
We did but you didn't look hard enough or often enough.
Wayback machine confirms it was never given the same prominance, despite being much more of a story (conviction vs investigation, single racist message vs multiple child rape).
Guardian front page has 'Tory peer investigated for racist messages' at the top.
Strangely we didn't get the same prominance for Labour Lord convicted of child rape yesterday.
We did but you didn't look hard enough or often enough.
Wayback machine confirms it was never given the same prominance, despite being much more of a story (conviction vs investigation, single racist message vs multiple child rape).
This isn't a difficult one.
It was on the app.
I'm sure it was. I'm not saying they ignored it completely.
I'm saying they've got a much lesser story about a Tory at the very top of their website, when something far worse about an equivalent Labour figure was pushed down the page.
Looking again he is also referred to as 'former Peer' with no party affiliation given. It's a pretty open and shut case of political bias. They're the Guardian, it's allowed, no one is forced to buy then, but it is worthy of note.
You don't look very hard do you?
Appointed a life peer by Tony Blair, Ahmed resigned from the Labour party in 2013.
These idiots who don't use vaults / hardware wallet, sticking all their massively expensive jpegs in the same wallet that they just go clicking buttons with.
I just copied and pasted the image.
You wouldn't download a car...
The whole NFT space is just scam after scam after scam. As I have said before there is some interesting ideas there, but these stupid profile picture nonsense, all but about 1-2 will be absolutely worthless in no time.
The bit that leaps out of me is how everything in Scotland is now prefixed with Scottish....
That's something that is going to be very hard to fix but continually reinforces that all services are Scottish - without revealing that they only exist because of cross subsidies from other parts of the UK*. Which means it's easy for the Scottish Government to play their rulebook of celebrate success and blame London for the failures.
* for MalcolmG and co that isn't an invitation to insult or call me wrong - it's a simple fact of life that Governments borrow money.
The interesting thing about this is how pervasive this is even outside of politics. "National" newspapers prefix "Scottish" before their name. If you talk about "the FA" or the "Premier League", you will be understood as talking about the English FA and English Premier League even if you're in Scotland. Scotland is constantly "othered", even by itself. In fact, it's ironically one of the things that unites people from England, Scotland, and beyond. England is the UK, and Scotland is an awkward add-on that sort of is and sort of isn't England.
Been like that for more than a century, actually, even when it comes to central government admin as I commented in the last thread btw.
I suspect it was originally intended to indicate to Scots that their distinct identity was respected and not subsumed. It was perhaps not foreseen that it might have the reverse effect .
The Scottish Office and admin devolution came in in 1885. Partly to fend off Irish Home Rule-style politics that were developing at the time.
But naming was also a simple practical measure. No point in calling it (say) the Department for Education as it would only get confused with the one in Whitehall. And, as with North and South Britain, no way was the one in London going to change its name (for economy in not changing the headed notepaper and forms if nothing else). So they just added 'Scottish' to the new and smaller one up north.
Remember the weird "flamethrowers" they are apparently using in Xi'an, creating various theories? - eg they are exterminating rats and mice, or "this is Chinese theatre" - a fake stunt designed to impress the public with the severity of their counter-Covid measures
One of the first theories was that "this is merely a malfunction" - the foggers can suddenly start shooting out flames. It was greeted skeptically (as it didn't seem to match the behaviour of the users) nonetheless, it turns out, it is almost certainly true. There are several non-suspicious videos of the foggers doing exactly this, malfunctioning and shooting out flame
Twitter solved this problem. Social media is not all bad
You set 'em going, you kill 'em off.
Alternatively, I am curious, and I just want the truth. You're welcome
I think the most plausible theory is that the Winter Olympics start next month in Beijing and the Chinese aren't taking any risks.
I'm not talking about Xi'an per se, I'm referring specifically to their habit of disinfecting entire cities with foggers of all kinds (sometimes enormous tankers doing whole streets in one go)
No other country - as far as I know - has used this technique. Yet the Chinese have done it from the get-go in Wuhan, and then elsewhere
Odd
And they are - if their stats are to be believed - by a distance THE most successful country when it comes to controlling Covid. Perhaps we should all be out with our foggers
Well the Chinese created the virus, they know how to defeat it.
Wow. This place really has turned into Loony Central, hasn't it?
Remember the weird "flamethrowers" they are apparently using in Xi'an, creating various theories? - eg they are exterminating rats and mice, or "this is Chinese theatre" - a fake stunt designed to impress the public with the severity of their counter-Covid measures
One of the first theories was that "this is merely a malfunction" - the foggers can suddenly start shooting out flames. It was greeted skeptically (as it didn't seem to match the behaviour of the users) nonetheless, it turns out, it is almost certainly true. There are several non-suspicious videos of the foggers doing exactly this, malfunctioning and shooting out flame
Twitter solved this problem. Social media is not all bad
You set 'em going, you kill 'em off.
Alternatively, I am curious, and I just want the truth. You're welcome
I think the most plausible theory is that the Winter Olympics start next month in Beijing and the Chinese aren't taking any risks.
I'm not talking about Xi'an per se, I'm referring specifically to their habit of disinfecting entire cities with foggers of all kinds (sometimes enormous tankers doing whole streets in one go)
No other country - as far as I know - has used this technique. Yet the Chinese have done it from the get-go in Wuhan, and then elsewhere
Odd
And they are - if their stats are to be believed - by a distance THE most successful country when it comes to controlling Covid. Perhaps we should all be out with our foggers
Well the Chinese created the virus, they know how to defeat it.
Wow. This place really has turned into Loony Central, hasn't it?
The novelty of this particular famine, what made it so diabolical, is that it was not the result of some catastrophe like a drought or an epidemic. It was the deliberate creation of a bureaucratic mind which demanded the collectivization of agriculture, immediately, as a purely theoretical proposition, without any consideration whatever of the consequences in human suffering.
There is a strong argument that every famine of the last 100 years has been man made.
A jolly silly argument, especially when used as an apology for Stalin.
It's not a defence of Stalin. It is an observation that the world is abundent in food and that since the early 20th century to actually have a famine humans have to actively intervene to block food getting to an area.
It actually shows the monsterousness of Stalin. The USSR would have had the capability of feeding the Ukrainians but actively chose to starve them instead. Ukraine wasn't short of food, it was stolen from them. This is a pattern repeated throughout famines of the 20th century.
The bit that leaps out of me is how everything in Scotland is now prefixed with Scottish....
That's something that is going to be very hard to fix but continually reinforces that all services are Scottish - without revealing that they only exist because of cross subsidies from other parts of the UK*. Which means it's easy for the Scottish Government to play their rulebook of celebrate success and blame London for the failures.
* for MalcolmG and co that isn't an invitation to insult or call me wrong - it's a simple fact of life that Governments borrow money.
The interesting thing about this is how pervasive this is even outside of politics. "National" newspapers prefix "Scottish" before their name. If you talk about "the FA" or the "Premier League", you will be understood as talking about the English FA and English Premier League even if you're in Scotland. Scotland is constantly "othered", even by itself. In fact, it's ironically one of the things that unites people from England, Scotland, and beyond: England is the UK, and Scotland is an awkward add-on that sort of is and sort of isn't England.
Not true at the Olympics, the UN, the G7 and G20. Not true at Westminster either as will be clear if Starmer becomes PM of the UK with SNP and LD support despite another Tory majority in England, as the latest RedfieldWilton poll suggests could happen
No, but now you mention the Olympics, Team GB is a weird one. It includes Northern Ireland, apparently, but the name implies not. And that reminds me too about Ireland in the rugby union, which covers Northern Ireland. The more you look, the more you see. We really do live in a strangely ill-fitting set of social, political, and legal categories.
Anyone from Northern Ireland has the nice option of picking the team they wish to join when they are first selected.
A Northern Ireland Boxer, say, can pick to be on either the Irish or GB teams based on personal preference and / or likelihood of selection.
Ok. But whichever they choose, the name isn't quite right.
In this case, I think GB is actually short for GB&NI. Which is still incorrect as I think the Manx and Channel Islanders compete for "GB" at the Olympics.
You're right and wrong. TeamGB is the branding, and the "official" name is as you say. The owner is the British Olympic Association, so we're back to the same issue. In any case, I'm not very worried about it, it's just an example of how names can sometimes poorly represent the things they stand for, so the point is unaffected. TeamGB knows itself as TeamGB, deliberately and consciously, it's not just a case of public ignorance. Northern Ireland, like Scotland but more so, is a liminal place that is left undescribed by things which cover it. It's leads to a tiny psychological discontinuity that, I think, makes things like the Brexit border down the Irish sea slightly more possible than it otherwise would have been. It's just one straw on the camel's back, but it is there.
British Olympic Association? Not really the same because Britain is synonymous with the UK, not with Great Britain. But maybe that is changing as recently HMG has taken to tagging everything UK.
These idiots who don't use vaults / hardware wallets, sticking all their massively expensive jpegs in the same wallet that they just go clicking buttons that interact with smart contracts that they don't know what they authorize.
As I said earlier today - it's a lot of clever people doing not particular clever things because this all this crypto stuff is way harder than it should be.
Given that (NFT especially) is tulip bulb trading I'm keeping a very long way away from it.
More or less on topic, what are the scenarios under which Rishi Sunak ceases to be Chancellor?
1) He chooses to go - he simply resigns and walks away. 2) He is forced to resign because of a scandal involving him or "friends" of his. 3) He becomes Prime Minister. 4) Another candidate (Liz Truss perhaps) defeats him and gets the top job - he may well agree to stay in Cabinet for purposes of party unity but is moved perhaps to the FCO to allow one of Truss's key supporters to get the job at No.11. 5) There is a snap GE which the Conservatives lose. 6) After poor local election results, Johnson looks for a scapegoat and Rishi Sunak is the choice (as Normal Lamont was in the mid-90s and his downfall was largely due to VAT and energy bills)
I think we can discount 1,2 and 5 as being "black swan" events. 3 and 4 are dependent on Johnson ceasing to be Prime Minister and if the mood music is right and the Conservative backbenchers, though restless, won't move until nearer the next GE, that leaves the last option - the knife in the back (or the front to be honest).
I don't doubt Johnson would be that ruthless if he felt it would deflect some of the heat.
FPT because it's too frightening to be allowed to remain there:
Yes yes I know it's (republished in) the New European, but if anyone fancies being terrified like when they first watched Threads, have a read of this.
Probably not as bad as you think. Russia exports "dig and sell" commodities, most notably gas, and as a result has large foreign exchange reserves, recently estimated as $600 billion, which is about three times more than ours, for example.
The bit that leaps out of me is how everything in Scotland is now prefixed with Scottish....
That's something that is going to be very hard to fix but continually reinforces that all services are Scottish - without revealing that they only exist because of cross subsidies from other parts of the UK*. Which means it's easy for the Scottish Government to play their rulebook of celebrate success and blame London for the failures.
* for MalcolmG and co that isn't an invitation to insult or call me wrong - it's a simple fact of life that Governments borrow money.
The interesting thing about this is how pervasive this is even outside of politics. "National" newspapers prefix "Scottish" before their name. If you talk about "the FA" or the "Premier League", you will be understood as talking about the English FA and English Premier League even if you're in Scotland. Scotland is constantly "othered", even by itself. In fact, it's ironically one of the things that unites people from England, Scotland, and beyond: England is the UK, and Scotland is an awkward add-on that sort of is and sort of isn't England.
All bodies with "Scottish" or "Scotland" that I am aware of have a specific Scotland remit. The SFA looks after football in Scotland; Scottish Water only supplies water to Scotland; NHS Scotland looks after healthcare in Scotland. UK wide bodies such as DHSS and HMRC don't have Scottish versions. Arguably the health service in England should always be referred to as NHS England, Forestry Commission as Forestry England and so on, but it's a bit haphazard.
NHS used to apply only to England + Wales. We had the Scottish Health Service. Nice and clear. Till a Tory SoSfS changed the name deliberately to muddy the waters.
Remember the weird "flamethrowers" they are apparently using in Xi'an, creating various theories? - eg they are exterminating rats and mice, or "this is Chinese theatre" - a fake stunt designed to impress the public with the severity of their counter-Covid measures
One of the first theories was that "this is merely a malfunction" - the foggers can suddenly start shooting out flames. It was greeted skeptically (as it didn't seem to match the behaviour of the users) nonetheless, it turns out, it is almost certainly true. There are several non-suspicious videos of the foggers doing exactly this, malfunctioning and shooting out flame
Twitter solved this problem. Social media is not all bad
You set 'em going, you kill 'em off.
Alternatively, I am curious, and I just want the truth. You're welcome
I think the most plausible theory is that the Winter Olympics start next month in Beijing and the Chinese aren't taking any risks.
I'm not talking about Xi'an per se, I'm referring specifically to their habit of disinfecting entire cities with foggers of all kinds (sometimes enormous tankers doing whole streets in one go)
No other country - as far as I know - has used this technique. Yet the Chinese have done it from the get-go in Wuhan, and then elsewhere
Odd
And they are - if their stats are to be believed - by a distance THE most successful country when it comes to controlling Covid. Perhaps we should all be out with our foggers
Well the Chinese created the virus, they know how to defeat it.
Wow. This place really has turned into Loony Central, hasn't it?
These idiots who don't use vaults / hardware wallets, sticking all their massively expensive jpegs in the same wallet that they just go clicking buttons that interact with smart contracts that they don't know what they authorize.
As I said earlier today - it's a lot of clever people doing not particular clever things because this all this crypto stuff is way harder than it should be.
Given that (NFT especially) is tulip bulb trading I'm keeping a very long way away from it.
This is my favourite NFT story.
A reality TV star who sells her farts in jars has decided to stop selling them, despite making $1,000 per jar. But fans of her work shouldn’t worry too much. She’s still going to sell her farts as non-fungible tokens, more commonly known as NFTs.
Stephanie Matto, who appeared on the reality TV show “90-Day Fiance” and gained a huge following on TikTok, says she had to go to the hospital recently with gastric complications because she was eating so many high-fiber foods to produce more and more farts.
Remember the weird "flamethrowers" they are apparently using in Xi'an, creating various theories? - eg they are exterminating rats and mice, or "this is Chinese theatre" - a fake stunt designed to impress the public with the severity of their counter-Covid measures
One of the first theories was that "this is merely a malfunction" - the foggers can suddenly start shooting out flames. It was greeted skeptically (as it didn't seem to match the behaviour of the users) nonetheless, it turns out, it is almost certainly true. There are several non-suspicious videos of the foggers doing exactly this, malfunctioning and shooting out flame
Twitter solved this problem. Social media is not all bad
You set 'em going, you kill 'em off.
Alternatively, I am curious, and I just want the truth. You're welcome
I think the most plausible theory is that the Winter Olympics start next month in Beijing and the Chinese aren't taking any risks.
I'm not talking about Xi'an per se, I'm referring specifically to their habit of disinfecting entire cities with foggers of all kinds (sometimes enormous tankers doing whole streets in one go)
No other country - as far as I know - has used this technique. Yet the Chinese have done it from the get-go in Wuhan, and then elsewhere
Odd
And they are - if their stats are to be believed - by a distance THE most successful country when it comes to controlling Covid. Perhaps we should all be out with our foggers
Well the Chinese created the virus, they know how to defeat it.
Wow. This place really has turned into Loony Central, hasn't it?
That said, I am still a little confused by Chinese behaviour vis-a-vis the virus
They really are doing some VERY determined disinfecting in Xi'an (and, piquantly, you can briefly see another fogger spazzing out and squirting flame).
Why? Do they really think this works against an airborne virus? If so, why has no other country disinfected spaces like this? What if it DOES work, and explains China's remarkable success in suppressing Covid-19? We might all be missing a trick
"xi'an city Chinese biochemistry stormtroopers are striking again to sanitize the entire city ! This time they used an electro-tricycle. 2022/1/6"
Well: one would have thought it would work, in that if aerosol droplets of disinfectant come into contact with viral matter, that it will be viral matter that came off worse.
But.
I'd question whether it is worth doing in 99.9% of situations. Outside is a pretty hostile environment for Covid anyway.
If it was an area where there was very poor natural ventilation, no sunlight, and lots of people (but which was frequently empty enough to spray aerosolized disenfectant) then yes, maybe it's a good idea.
But I would think that would be a very small list of places.
Yes, it doesn't quite make sense. In internal spaces, sure. But along open roads? Really?
Incidentally, before I am accused of "scare-mongering" or Sinophobia or whatever, I am completely right about the Chinese coronavirus bioweapon stuff. And it was 2015. Just checked
"Beijing: A document written by Chinese scientists and health officials before the pandemic in 2015 states that SARS coronaviruses were a "new era of genetic weapons" that could be "artificially manipulated into an emerging human disease virus, then weaponised and unleashed, reported Weekend Australian.
"The paper titled The Unnatural Origin of SARS and New Species of Man-Made Viruses as Genetic Bioweapons suggested that World War Three would be fought with biological weapons. The document revealed that Chinese military scientists were discussing the weaponisation of SARS coronaviruses five years before the COVID-19 pandemic. The report by Weekend Australian was published in news.com.au.
"Peter Jennings, the executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), told news.com.au that the document is as close to a "smoking gun" as we've got.
"I think this is significant because it clearly shows that Chinese scientists were thinking about military application for different strains of the coronavirus and thinking about how it could be deployed," Jennings said.""
If you add it all together, the evidence against China and the Wuhan lab is pretty overwhelming. It is quite an achievement, by them, that half the world still thinks it came from a fucking pangolin on a market stall
Lol. You are such a purveyor of conspiracy. Has it not occurred to you that in despotic regimes most cock ups are, well, just cock ups. Are you sure you are not an anti-vaxxer too? Sympathetic to the plight of No Vax Novak?
Remember the weird "flamethrowers" they are apparently using in Xi'an, creating various theories? - eg they are exterminating rats and mice, or "this is Chinese theatre" - a fake stunt designed to impress the public with the severity of their counter-Covid measures
One of the first theories was that "this is merely a malfunction" - the foggers can suddenly start shooting out flames. It was greeted skeptically (as it didn't seem to match the behaviour of the users) nonetheless, it turns out, it is almost certainly true. There are several non-suspicious videos of the foggers doing exactly this, malfunctioning and shooting out flame
Twitter solved this problem. Social media is not all bad
You set 'em going, you kill 'em off.
Alternatively, I am curious, and I just want the truth. You're welcome
I think the most plausible theory is that the Winter Olympics start next month in Beijing and the Chinese aren't taking any risks.
I'm not talking about Xi'an per se, I'm referring specifically to their habit of disinfecting entire cities with foggers of all kinds (sometimes enormous tankers doing whole streets in one go)
No other country - as far as I know - has used this technique. Yet the Chinese have done it from the get-go in Wuhan, and then elsewhere
Odd
And they are - if their stats are to be believed - by a distance THE most successful country when it comes to controlling Covid. Perhaps we should all be out with our foggers
Well the Chinese created the virus, they know how to defeat it.
Wow. This place really has turned into Loony Central, hasn't it?
Where do you think the virus originated?
Probably from another species like a bat. The question is whether it passed to humans naturally, or was leaked out of a lab. Something of an astonishing coincidence that the outbreak started right next to a lab where they studied coronaviruses.
Remember the weird "flamethrowers" they are apparently using in Xi'an, creating various theories? - eg they are exterminating rats and mice, or "this is Chinese theatre" - a fake stunt designed to impress the public with the severity of their counter-Covid measures
One of the first theories was that "this is merely a malfunction" - the foggers can suddenly start shooting out flames. It was greeted skeptically (as it didn't seem to match the behaviour of the users) nonetheless, it turns out, it is almost certainly true. There are several non-suspicious videos of the foggers doing exactly this, malfunctioning and shooting out flame
Twitter solved this problem. Social media is not all bad
You set 'em going, you kill 'em off.
Alternatively, I am curious, and I just want the truth. You're welcome
I think the most plausible theory is that the Winter Olympics start next month in Beijing and the Chinese aren't taking any risks.
I'm not talking about Xi'an per se, I'm referring specifically to their habit of disinfecting entire cities with foggers of all kinds (sometimes enormous tankers doing whole streets in one go)
No other country - as far as I know - has used this technique. Yet the Chinese have done it from the get-go in Wuhan, and then elsewhere
Odd
And they are - if their stats are to be believed - by a distance THE most successful country when it comes to controlling Covid. Perhaps we should all be out with our foggers
Well the Chinese created the virus, they know how to defeat it.
Wow. This place really has turned into Loony Central, hasn't it?
Whoosh.
Have a bit more respect for the smartest person in the room.
Remember the weird "flamethrowers" they are apparently using in Xi'an, creating various theories? - eg they are exterminating rats and mice, or "this is Chinese theatre" - a fake stunt designed to impress the public with the severity of their counter-Covid measures
One of the first theories was that "this is merely a malfunction" - the foggers can suddenly start shooting out flames. It was greeted skeptically (as it didn't seem to match the behaviour of the users) nonetheless, it turns out, it is almost certainly true. There are several non-suspicious videos of the foggers doing exactly this, malfunctioning and shooting out flame
Twitter solved this problem. Social media is not all bad
You set 'em going, you kill 'em off.
Alternatively, I am curious, and I just want the truth. You're welcome
I think the most plausible theory is that the Winter Olympics start next month in Beijing and the Chinese aren't taking any risks.
I'm not talking about Xi'an per se, I'm referring specifically to their habit of disinfecting entire cities with foggers of all kinds (sometimes enormous tankers doing whole streets in one go)
No other country - as far as I know - has used this technique. Yet the Chinese have done it from the get-go in Wuhan, and then elsewhere
Odd
And they are - if their stats are to be believed - by a distance THE most successful country when it comes to controlling Covid. Perhaps we should all be out with our foggers
Well the Chinese created the virus, they know how to defeat it.
Wow. This place really has turned into Loony Central, hasn't it?
Perhaps you should read on MacDuff.
A nice little fishing port down the road that my parents have moved to.
Never understood why we have a Team GB at the Olympics, when in every major team sport we compete as separate nations:
• Football • Rugby Union • Cricket • Golf • Netball • Hockey (outside the Olympics) • Rugby League
The list goes on...
Firstly, the Olympics isn't really a team sport - there are team events, but the only sense Laura Kenny and Tom Daley are on the same team is that they parade together on the opening day.
Secondly, some of those examples are questionable (e.g. England's cricket team is technically England and Wales Cricket Board, plus it has often had Scottish players and Irish ones pre-Test status - indeed, Mike Denness was a Scottish England captain).
Thirdly, the IOC have just always been pretty nervous about doing it - some countries take a very different approach than the UK on countries within countries so there are precedent issues and, given the first point that it only matters in a limited way, there's never been much of a push from the UK.
Also we have the Commonwealth Games which covers most IOC sports and it allows team GB athletes to wear and compete for their "real" flag.
These idiots who don't use vaults / hardware wallets, sticking all their massively expensive jpegs in the same wallet that they just go clicking buttons that interact with smart contracts that they don't know what they authorize.
As I said earlier today - it's a lot of clever people doing not particular clever things because this all this crypto stuff is way harder than it should be.
Given that (NFT especially) is tulip bulb trading I'm keeping a very long way away from it.
I have said before, I see a lot of this as like the very early internet e-commerce boom. Some of the ideas there are interesting and have value, but the implementation of many are terrible, too costly, far too difficult.
But the Profile Picture NFT space is the worst, its is really like FIFA Ultimate Team Pack opening. People buy these stupid things that don't really have any value, hoping for a "rare" that they can flip. Then rinse and repeat. The "value" of each project is just based upon which crypto celeb owns it and how much it is being hyped up.
The bit that leaps out of me is how everything in Scotland is now prefixed with Scottish....
That's something that is going to be very hard to fix but continually reinforces that all services are Scottish - without revealing that they only exist because of cross subsidies from other parts of the UK*. Which means it's easy for the Scottish Government to play their rulebook of celebrate success and blame London for the failures.
* for MalcolmG and co that isn't an invitation to insult or call me wrong - it's a simple fact of life that Governments borrow money.
The interesting thing about this is how pervasive this is even outside of politics. "National" newspapers prefix "Scottish" before their name. If you talk about "the FA" or the "Premier League", you will be understood as talking about the English FA and English Premier League even if you're in Scotland. Scotland is constantly "othered", even by itself. In fact, it's ironically one of the things that unites people from England, Scotland, and beyond: England is the UK, and Scotland is an awkward add-on that sort of is and sort of isn't England.
All bodies with "Scottish" or "Scotland" that I am aware of have a specific Scotland remit. The SFA looks after football in Scotland; Scottish Water only supplies water to Scotland; NHS Scotland looks after healthcare in Scotland. UK wide bodies such as DHSS and HMRC don't have Scottish versions. Arguably the health service in England should always be referred to as NHS England, Forestry Commission as Forestry England and so on, but it's a bit haphazard.
Yes, but the Scottish FA is "The Scottish FA". Whereas the English one is just "The FA". You do see how in a very small way that makes England "normal" and Scotland "other", right?
These idiots who don't use vaults / hardware wallets, sticking all their massively expensive jpegs in the same wallet that they just go clicking buttons that interact with smart contracts that they don't know what they authorize.
As I said earlier today - it's a lot of clever people doing not particular clever things because this all this crypto stuff is way harder than it should be.
Given that (NFT especially) is tulip bulb trading I'm keeping a very long way away from it.
I have said before, I see a lot of this as like the very early internet e-commerce boom. Some of the ideas there are interesting and have value, but the implementation of many are terrible, too costly, far too difficult.
But the Profile Picture NFT space is the worst, its is really like FIFA Ultimate Team Pack opening. People buy these stupid things that don't really have any value, hoping for a "rare" that they can flip. Then rinse and repeat. The "value" of each project is just based upon which crypto celeb owns it and how much it is being hyped up.
NFTs make little sense to me. I read this article and it just sounds like a total scam
The novelty of this particular famine, what made it so diabolical, is that it was not the result of some catastrophe like a drought or an epidemic. It was the deliberate creation of a bureaucratic mind which demanded the collectivization of agriculture, immediately, as a purely theoretical proposition, without any consideration whatever of the consequences in human suffering.
There is a strong argument that every famine of the last 100 years has been man made.
A jolly silly argument, especially when used as an apology for Stalin.
It's not a defence of Stalin. It is an observation that the world is abundent in food and that since the early 20th century to actually have a famine humans have to actively intervene to block food getting to an area.
It actually shows the monsterousness of Stalin. The USSR would have had the capability of feeding the Ukrainians but actively chose to starve them instead. Ukraine wasn't short of food, it was stolen from them. This is a pattern repeated throughout famines of the 20th century.
Big chance that "my apes were" stolen is a scam to try and get apes for free from people who bought the 'stolen' apes.
I don't know. There have definitely been "phishing" attacks that have cleared out peoples hot wallets, where they have clicked on a link they think came from a legit source, its says airdrop by connecting wallet or early access mint, and by doing so it interacts with a smart contract that they agree to and it basically say empty wallet.
The bit that leaps out of me is how everything in Scotland is now prefixed with Scottish....
That's something that is going to be very hard to fix but continually reinforces that all services are Scottish - without revealing that they only exist because of cross subsidies from other parts of the UK*. Which means it's easy for the Scottish Government to play their rulebook of celebrate success and blame London for the failures.
* for MalcolmG and co that isn't an invitation to insult or call me wrong - it's a simple fact of life that Governments borrow money.
The interesting thing about this is how pervasive this is even outside of politics. "National" newspapers prefix "Scottish" before their name. If you talk about "the FA" or the "Premier League", you will be understood as talking about the English FA and English Premier League even if you're in Scotland. Scotland is constantly "othered", even by itself. In fact, it's ironically one of the things that unites people from England, Scotland, and beyond: England is the UK, and Scotland is an awkward add-on that sort of is and sort of isn't England.
All bodies with "Scottish" or "Scotland" that I am aware of have a specific Scotland remit. The SFA looks after football in Scotland; Scottish Water only supplies water to Scotland; NHS Scotland looks after healthcare in Scotland. UK wide bodies such as DHSS and HMRC don't have Scottish versions. Arguably the health service in England should always be referred to as NHS England, Forestry Commission as Forestry England and so on, but it's a bit haphazard.
NHS used to apply only to England + Wales. We had the Scottish Health Service. Nice and clear. Till a Tory SoSfS changed the name deliberately to muddy the waters.
I did not know that! I had assumed the National Health Service was national. Hadn't realised that NHS Scotland is not and never has been part of the "NHS" as that is and always has been just England and Wales.
Guardian front page has 'Tory peer investigated for racist messages' at the top.
Strangely we didn't get the same prominance for Labour Lord convicted of child rape yesterday.
I thought it quite justifiably got rather a lot of coverage across the media.
The Labour Party may be a miserable bunch of lowlifes for enobling Ahmed in the same way the Conservatives were for knighting Peter Morrison. Nonetheless I don't really think the Labour Party can be blamed directly for the crimes of Ahmed.
No, and I don’t think anyone is saying that it should be. But there does appear to be a double standard with how they are reported.
What, you thought Ahmed was splashed all over just because he was Labour?
The bit that leaps out of me is how everything in Scotland is now prefixed with Scottish....
That's something that is going to be very hard to fix but continually reinforces that all services are Scottish - without revealing that they only exist because of cross subsidies from other parts of the UK*. Which means it's easy for the Scottish Government to play their rulebook of celebrate success and blame London for the failures.
* for MalcolmG and co that isn't an invitation to insult or call me wrong - it's a simple fact of life that Governments borrow money.
The interesting thing about this is how pervasive this is even outside of politics. "National" newspapers prefix "Scottish" before their name. If you talk about "the FA" or the "Premier League", you will be understood as talking about the English FA and English Premier League even if you're in Scotland. Scotland is constantly "othered", even by itself. In fact, it's ironically one of the things that unites people from England, Scotland, and beyond: England is the UK, and Scotland is an awkward add-on that sort of is and sort of isn't England.
All bodies with "Scottish" or "Scotland" that I am aware of have a specific Scotland remit. The SFA looks after football in Scotland; Scottish Water only supplies water to Scotland; NHS Scotland looks after healthcare in Scotland. UK wide bodies such as DHSS and HMRC don't have Scottish versions. Arguably the health service in England should always be referred to as NHS England, Forestry Commission as Forestry England and so on, but it's a bit haphazard.
Yes, but the Scottish FA is "The Scottish FA". Whereas the English one is just "The FA". You do see how in a very small way that makes England "normal" and Scotland "other", right?
Well the FA was the first one, so there wasn't any need to assign a territorial designation at that point.
These idiots who don't use vaults / hardware wallets, sticking all their massively expensive jpegs in the same wallet that they just go clicking buttons that interact with smart contracts that they don't know what they authorize.
As I said earlier today - it's a lot of clever people doing not particular clever things because this all this crypto stuff is way harder than it should be.
Given that (NFT especially) is tulip bulb trading I'm keeping a very long way away from it.
I have said before, I see a lot of this as like the very early internet e-commerce boom. Some of the ideas there are interesting and have value, but the implementation of many are terrible, too costly, far too difficult.
But the Profile Picture NFT space is the worst, its is really like FIFA Ultimate Team Pack opening. People buy these stupid things that don't really have any value, hoping for a "rare" that they can flip. Then rinse and repeat. The "value" of each project is just based upon which crypto celeb owns it and how much it is being hyped up.
NFTs make little sense to me. I read this article and it just sounds like a total scam
The idea has merit. The idea of being able to prove of origin of a digital item e.g. say a concert ticket or some art work.
I have seen the band Avenged Sevenfold have gone this route and I see how it would work for them, to have the hardcore fans buy a pass to their "fan club", from which they can then control the distribution of early access tickets, fast pass, backstage entry etc.
Digital artists can claim prove of ownership and ensure royalties.
But the current scene is 99.9999999% scam and / or worthless.
Mild omicron wave will bring down the Covid police state Highly transmissible but less deadly variant destroys case for restrictions on freedom . . .
The jury is out on what the long-term consequences of this experience will be for the role of the state. Yet those seeking to pare back Covid-19 regulations have an unlikely ally: the omicron variant. Its sheer transmissibility is tearing apart the justification for many Covid-19 protocols, whether the public health bureaucracy likes it or not.
. . .
The relentless unmanageable spread of this variant is simply unwinding the case for pandemic management policies, while the outbreak experience weakens public tolerance for restrictions. It would be ironic if the biggest Covid-19 wave yet was what delivered the strongest impetus to a fuller return to normality.
Remember the weird "flamethrowers" they are apparently using in Xi'an, creating various theories? - eg they are exterminating rats and mice, or "this is Chinese theatre" - a fake stunt designed to impress the public with the severity of their counter-Covid measures
One of the first theories was that "this is merely a malfunction" - the foggers can suddenly start shooting out flames. It was greeted skeptically (as it didn't seem to match the behaviour of the users) nonetheless, it turns out, it is almost certainly true. There are several non-suspicious videos of the foggers doing exactly this, malfunctioning and shooting out flame
Twitter solved this problem. Social media is not all bad
You set 'em going, you kill 'em off.
Alternatively, I am curious, and I just want the truth. You're welcome
I think the most plausible theory is that the Winter Olympics start next month in Beijing and the Chinese aren't taking any risks.
I'm not talking about Xi'an per se, I'm referring specifically to their habit of disinfecting entire cities with foggers of all kinds (sometimes enormous tankers doing whole streets in one go)
No other country - as far as I know - has used this technique. Yet the Chinese have done it from the get-go in Wuhan, and then elsewhere
Odd
And they are - if their stats are to be believed - by a distance THE most successful country when it comes to controlling Covid. Perhaps we should all be out with our foggers
Well the Chinese created the virus, they know how to defeat it.
That is the obvious but unspoken implication. Tho you went and spake it
Albeit they didn't bother developing a successful way of fighting it with vaccines. But I guess they're subtle like that.
It's not a defence of Stalin. It is an observation that the world is abundent in food and that since the early 20th century to actually have a famine humans have to actively intervene to block food getting to an area.
It actually shows the monsterousness of Stalin. The USSR would have had the capability of feeding the Ukrainians but actively chose to starve them instead. Ukraine wasn't short of food, it was stolen from them. This is a pattern repeated throughout famines of the 20th century.
Eh? Ukraine wasn't short of food? You seriously typed that out? And no, it wasn't because it had been stolen (although much of the small amount they did have was), it was because the loony ideology of Stalin had destroyed the production of what had always been a rich agricultural region.
And as for your first paragraph, it's also completely silly. Famines are caused, usually, by natural events, although the Ukraine one wasn't. You're confusing the cause of the famine with whether someone else should or could have organised relief operations. The world may have had adequate or even abundant food, but not necessarily in places and in a form where it could be distributed easily. And then you're making a further silly error of blaming people, in all cases, for 'blocking' those operations. Sure, you can find some cases where that was true, or at least partially true, but what on earth is the point of trying to reduce the realities of all famines to cartoon-villain nonsense?
Guardian front page has 'Tory peer investigated for racist messages' at the top.
Strangely we didn't get the same prominance for Labour Lord convicted of child rape yesterday.
Weirdly, the Morning Star hardly ran any stories about Stalin's crimes.
Comparing the front pages
Same sidebar. Michelle gets a photo.
The first one is "UK Edition", the second one is "International", according to the top right corners of the screenshots.
Would that make any difference to what stories are given prominence?
Home news (such as dodgy and very ex-Labour peers) would be of less interest in the international edition. That is exactly what happens with [edit] Lady Mone as well, when one toggles between editions, on checking just now - her mugshot is scratched and she moves down to the bottom of the headline section.
Guardian front page has 'Tory peer investigated for racist messages' at the top.
Strangely we didn't get the same prominance for Labour Lord convicted of child rape yesterday.
We did but you didn't look hard enough or often enough.
Wayback machine confirms it was never given the same prominance, despite being much more of a story (conviction vs investigation, single racist message vs multiple child rape).
This isn't a difficult one.
It was on the app.
I'm sure it was. I'm not saying they ignored it completely.
I'm saying they've got a much lesser story about a Tory at the very top of their website, when something far worse about an equivalent Labour figure was pushed down the page....
"Equivalent Labour figure" ?
...Appointed a life peer by Tony Blair, Ahmed resigned from the Labour party in 2013...
The bit that leaps out of me is how everything in Scotland is now prefixed with Scottish....
That's something that is going to be very hard to fix but continually reinforces that all services are Scottish - without revealing that they only exist because of cross subsidies from other parts of the UK*. Which means it's easy for the Scottish Government to play their rulebook of celebrate success and blame London for the failures.
* for MalcolmG and co that isn't an invitation to insult or call me wrong - it's a simple fact of life that Governments borrow money.
The interesting thing about this is how pervasive this is even outside of politics. "National" newspapers prefix "Scottish" before their name. If you talk about "the FA" or the "Premier League", you will be understood as talking about the English FA and English Premier League even if you're in Scotland. Scotland is constantly "othered", even by itself. In fact, it's ironically one of the things that unites people from England, Scotland, and beyond: England is the UK, and Scotland is an awkward add-on that sort of is and sort of isn't England.
All bodies with "Scottish" or "Scotland" that I am aware of have a specific Scotland remit. The SFA looks after football in Scotland; Scottish Water only supplies water to Scotland; NHS Scotland looks after healthcare in Scotland. UK wide bodies such as DHSS and HMRC don't have Scottish versions. Arguably the health service in England should always be referred to as NHS England, Forestry Commission as Forestry England and so on, but it's a bit haphazard.
Yes, but the Scottish FA is "The Scottish FA". Whereas the English one is just "The FA". You do see how in a very small way that makes England "normal" and Scotland "other", right?
The FA is the Football Association of England, Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man. It would be awfully colonial of us to include those separate entities as "England".
These idiots who don't use vaults / hardware wallets, sticking all their massively expensive jpegs in the same wallet that they just go clicking buttons that interact with smart contracts that they don't know what they authorize.
As I said earlier today - it's a lot of clever people doing not particular clever things because this all this crypto stuff is way harder than it should be.
Given that (NFT especially) is tulip bulb trading I'm keeping a very long way away from it.
I have said before, I see a lot of this as like the very early internet e-commerce boom. Some of the ideas there are interesting and have value, but the implementation of many are terrible, too costly, far too difficult.
But the Profile Picture NFT space is the worst, its is really like FIFA Ultimate Team Pack opening. People buy these stupid things that don't really have any value, hoping for a "rare" that they can flip. Then rinse and repeat. The "value" of each project is just based upon which crypto celeb owns it and how much it is being hyped up.
NFTs make little sense to me. I read this article and it just sounds like a total scam
The idea has merit. The idea of being able to prove of origin of a digital item e.g. say a concert ticket or some art work.
I have seen the band Avenged Sevenfold have gone this route and I see how it would work for them, to have the hardcore fans buy a pass to their "fan club", from which they can then control the distribution of early access tickets, fast pass, backstage entry etc.
Digital artists can claim prove of ownership and ensure royalties.
But the current scene is 99.9999999% scam and / or worthless.
Can they even do that (prove origin/ownership)? The article linked makes a reasonably compelling case that they can't.
Guardian front page has 'Tory peer investigated for racist messages' at the top.
Strangely we didn't get the same prominance for Labour Lord convicted of child rape yesterday.
We did but you didn't look hard enough or often enough.
Wayback machine confirms it was never given the same prominance, despite being much more of a story (conviction vs investigation, single racist message vs multiple child rape).
This isn't a difficult one.
It was on the app.
I'm sure it was. I'm not saying they ignored it completely.
I'm saying they've got a much lesser story about a Tory at the very top of their website, when something far worse about an equivalent Labour figure was pushed down the page....
"Equivalent Labour figure" ?
...Appointed a life peer by Tony Blair, Ahmed resigned from the Labour party in 2013...
I guess the better way to ask this is if Ahmed was a Tory peer who resigned in 2013 would the headline have read as it did or "former Tory peer Lord Ahmed..."?
Cases down week on week, mainly due to prior week data dumps but nevertheless either at or near a peak it seems once we get a few days out and look at the speciment date data for around now.
The bit that leaps out of me is how everything in Scotland is now prefixed with Scottish....
That's something that is going to be very hard to fix but continually reinforces that all services are Scottish - without revealing that they only exist because of cross subsidies from other parts of the UK*. Which means it's easy for the Scottish Government to play their rulebook of celebrate success and blame London for the failures.
* for MalcolmG and co that isn't an invitation to insult or call me wrong - it's a simple fact of life that Governments borrow money.
The interesting thing about this is how pervasive this is even outside of politics. "National" newspapers prefix "Scottish" before their name. If you talk about "the FA" or the "Premier League", you will be understood as talking about the English FA and English Premier League even if you're in Scotland. Scotland is constantly "othered", even by itself. In fact, it's ironically one of the things that unites people from England, Scotland, and beyond: England is the UK, and Scotland is an awkward add-on that sort of is and sort of isn't England.
All bodies with "Scottish" or "Scotland" that I am aware of have a specific Scotland remit. The SFA looks after football in Scotland; Scottish Water only supplies water to Scotland; NHS Scotland looks after healthcare in Scotland. UK wide bodies such as DHSS and HMRC don't have Scottish versions. Arguably the health service in England should always be referred to as NHS England, Forestry Commission as Forestry England and so on, but it's a bit haphazard.
Yes, but the Scottish FA is "The Scottish FA". Whereas the English one is just "The FA". You do see how in a very small way that makes England "normal" and Scotland "other", right?
Well the FA was the first one, so there wasn't any need to assign a territorial designation at that point.
OTOH the Scots invented golf at least in its modern form, an d we have the SGA.
Completely off topic, I stumbled onto the celebrity urban myths site and there are some proper crackers on there. I obviously can't post on here but Joanna Lumley gets a decent showing but the one that made me laugh the most was the one about Adrian Chiles.
Also, turns out that Una Stubbs' children discouraged her from using the Internet because they feared she would google her name and discover one rumour regarding her...
Comments
Used to buy it at the station on the way to school from when I was about 14. I think the station, in what is now Southend West, had about three copies.
A total of 125 passengers who arrived in the northern Indian city of Amritsar on a chartered flight from Italy have tested positive for Covid-19. They were among 179 passengers on the flight from Milan which landed in Amritsar on Wednesday afternoon.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-59894989
If you both believe Tony Blair should apologise for enobling Ahmed, I don't disagree with your call.
Because they weren't a national ship, they would have thus classed themselves as pirates.
In theory, you could hang the whole crew, IIRC. After a trial....
• Football
• Rugby Union
• Cricket
• Golf
• Netball
• Hockey (outside the Olympics)
• Rugby League
The list goes on...
So what?
If the Chinese had really created the virus then their vaccine wouldn't be less effective than the ones the West created.
In any case, I'm not very worried about it, it's just an example of how names can sometimes poorly represent the things they stand for, so the point is unaffected. TeamGB knows itself as TeamGB, deliberately and consciously, it's not just a case of public ignorance. Northern Ireland, like Scotland but more so, is a liminal place that is left undescribed by things which cover it. It's leads to a tiny psychological discontinuity that, I think, makes things like the Brexit border down the Irish sea slightly more possible than it otherwise would have been. It's just one straw on the camel's back, but it is there.
The Guardian used to be the Manchester Guardian but dropped the local name, without substituting British, English or UK.
Is part of the problem that the proper name of our state - the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland - in no form lends itself to adjectivalising - 'The UK Sun', 'The UKGB+NI Mail' has no ring like 'The Scottish Sun' and to use any other term like British or English is to exclude and divide
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dostoevsky-wrote-the-book-on-culture-wars-whj7wsp70
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/mar/03/ex-tory-mp-charlie-elphicke-fails-in-bid-to-appeal-against-jail-term-for-sexual-assault
Ex-Tory MP fails in bid to appeal against jail term for sexual assault
A Scottish county cricket team would be getting 25 point penalties for an unsuitable pitch after every first class game.
Part of the story is of course how Ms F was pretty summarily told off and dumped by the SNP when her actions came to light (in hindsight, it jmight seem a bit harsh given what we now know about covid brain fog and panic, ditto Mr Cummings: but in their position ...).
On which subject, this is a fascinating 1983 interview with Muggeridge, by a Ukrainian writer and broadcaster:
https://www.ukrweekly.com/uwwp/deliberate-diabolical-starvation-malcolm-muggeridge-on-stalins-famine/
The novelty of this particular famine, what made it so diabolical, is that it was not the result of some catastrophe like a drought or an epidemic. It was the deliberate creation of a bureaucratic mind which demanded the collectivization of agriculture, immediately, as a purely theoretical proposition, without any consideration whatever of the consequences in human suffering.
Ahmed is neither Labour nor a Lord. But apart from that...
This might sound unlikely, but there are scientific papers by Chinese military scientists - linked with the Wuhan lab - discussing exactly this scenario: the creation of a novel coronavirus to cripple rival economies. They date, IIRC, from around 2015 onwards
With China, who knows
Week on week that is down over 2000 cases.
Reporting day figures are fun.
But.
I'd question whether it is worth doing in 99.9% of situations. Outside is a pretty hostile environment for Covid anyway.
If it was an area where there was very poor natural ventilation, no sunlight, and lots of people (but which was frequently empty enough to spray aerosolized disenfectant) then yes, maybe it's a good idea.
But I would think that would be a very small list of places.
Secondly, some of those examples are questionable (e.g. England's cricket team is technically England and Wales Cricket Board, plus it has often had Scottish players and Irish ones pre-Test status - indeed, Mike Denness was a Scottish England captain).
Thirdly, the IOC have just always been pretty nervous about doing it - some countries take a very different approach than the UK on countries within countries so there are precedent issues and, given the first point that it only matters in a limited way, there's never been much of a push from the UK.
What they do is go a big city or town, stick one 5G mast there, and then launch a blizzard of publicity that we have 5G in x number of cities/towns when one mast is no way near enough to cope with the load.
When people complain they say, it will be fixed and people end up stuck in 2 year contracts they cannot get out of because they are misleading about coverage.
https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/todd-kramer-nft-theft-1234614874/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Clydesdale_Bank_40
NB. Hospitals still under v. high pressure due to staff absence & infection control needs.
https://twitter.com/drraghibali/status/1479105819668987907
Further fuel on the with/for fire
Incidentally, before I am accused of "scare-mongering" or Sinophobia or whatever, I am completely right about the Chinese coronavirus bioweapon stuff. And it was 2015. Just checked
"Beijing: A document written by Chinese scientists and health officials before the pandemic in 2015 states that SARS coronaviruses were a "new era of genetic weapons" that could be "artificially manipulated into an emerging human disease virus, then weaponised and unleashed, reported Weekend Australian.
"The paper titled The Unnatural Origin of SARS and New Species of Man-Made Viruses as Genetic Bioweapons suggested that World War Three would be fought with biological weapons. The document revealed that Chinese military scientists were discussing the weaponisation of SARS coronaviruses five years before the COVID-19 pandemic. The report by Weekend Australian was published in news.com.au.
"Peter Jennings, the executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), told news.com.au that the document is as close to a "smoking gun" as we've got.
"I think this is significant because it clearly shows that Chinese scientists were thinking about military application for different strains of the coronavirus and thinking about how it could be deployed," Jennings said.""
https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/chinese-scientists-discussed-weaponising-coronavirus-in-2015-report-2438321
If you add it all together, the evidence against China and the Wuhan lab is pretty overwhelming. It is quite an achievement, by them, that half the world still thinks it came from a fucking pangolin on a market stall
You wouldn't download a car...
But naming was also a simple practical measure. No point in calling it (say) the Department for Education as it would only get confused with the one in Whitehall. And, as with North and South Britain, no way was the one in London going to change its name (for economy in not changing the headed notepaper and forms if nothing else). So they just added 'Scottish' to the new and smaller one up north.
It actually shows the monsterousness of Stalin. The USSR would have had the capability of feeding the Ukrainians but actively chose to starve them instead. Ukraine wasn't short of food, it was stolen from them. This is a pattern repeated throughout famines of the 20th century.
Given that (NFT especially) is tulip bulb trading I'm keeping a very long way away from it.
More or less on topic, what are the scenarios under which Rishi Sunak ceases to be Chancellor?
1) He chooses to go - he simply resigns and walks away.
2) He is forced to resign because of a scandal involving him or "friends" of his.
3) He becomes Prime Minister.
4) Another candidate (Liz Truss perhaps) defeats him and gets the top job - he may well agree to stay in Cabinet for purposes of party unity but is moved perhaps to the FCO to allow one of Truss's key supporters to get the job at No.11.
5) There is a snap GE which the Conservatives lose.
6) After poor local election results, Johnson looks for a scapegoat and Rishi Sunak is the choice (as Normal Lamont was in the mid-90s and his downfall was largely due to VAT and energy bills)
I think we can discount 1,2 and 5 as being "black swan" events. 3 and 4 are dependent on Johnson ceasing to be Prime Minister and if the mood music is right and the Conservative backbenchers, though restless, won't move until nearer the next GE, that leaves the last option - the knife in the back (or the front to be honest).
I don't doubt Johnson would be that ruthless if he felt it would deflect some of the heat.
A reality TV star who sells her farts in jars has decided to stop selling them, despite making $1,000 per jar. But fans of her work shouldn’t worry too much. She’s still going to sell her farts as non-fungible tokens, more commonly known as NFTs.
Stephanie Matto, who appeared on the reality TV show “90-Day Fiance” and gained a huge following on TikTok, says she had to go to the hospital recently with gastric complications because she was eating so many high-fiber foods to produce more and more farts.
https://gizmodo.com/tiktok-star-who-sells-her-farts-in-jars-starts-selling-1848305521
What about it...?
But the Profile Picture NFT space is the worst, its is really like FIFA Ultimate Team Pack opening. People buy these stupid things that don't really have any value, hoping for a "rare" that they can flip. Then rinse and repeat. The "value" of each project is just based upon which crypto celeb owns it and how much it is being hyped up.
Would that make any difference to what stories are given prominence?
"The fast and the curious: the rise of the running club
Catch up with the latest way to socialise"
https://www.ft.com/content/9a777a67-8d8e-40c5-a03b-286ceab99aa7
https://antsstyle.medium.com/why-nfts-are-bad-the-long-version-2c16dae145e2
I have so much to learn about my new country...
I have seen the band Avenged Sevenfold have gone this route and I see how it would work for them, to have the hardcore fans buy a pass to their "fan club", from which they can then control the distribution of early access tickets, fast pass, backstage entry etc.
Digital artists can claim prove of ownership and ensure royalties.
But the current scene is 99.9999999% scam and / or worthless.
Mild omicron wave will bring down the Covid police state
Highly transmissible but less deadly variant destroys case for restrictions on freedom
. . .
The jury is out on what the long-term consequences of this experience will be for the role of the state. Yet those seeking to pare back Covid-19 regulations have an unlikely ally: the omicron variant. Its sheer transmissibility is tearing apart the justification for many Covid-19 protocols, whether the public health bureaucracy likes it or not.
. . .
The relentless unmanageable spread of this variant is simply unwinding the case for pandemic management policies, while the outbreak experience weakens public tolerance for restrictions. It would be ironic if the biggest Covid-19 wave yet was what delivered the strongest impetus to a fuller return to normality.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/01/06/mild-omicron-wave-will-bring-covid-police-state-public-lose/ (£)
And as for your first paragraph, it's also completely silly. Famines are caused, usually, by natural events, although the Ukraine one wasn't. You're confusing the cause of the famine with whether someone else should or could have organised relief operations. The world may have had adequate or even abundant food, but not necessarily in places and in a form where it could be distributed easily. And then you're making a further silly error of blaming people, in all cases, for 'blocking' those operations. Sure, you can find some cases where that was true, or at least partially true, but what on earth is the point of trying to reduce the realities of all famines to cartoon-villain nonsense?
...Appointed a life peer by Tony Blair, Ahmed resigned from the Labour party in 2013...
Being the Guardian, my guess is on the latter.
Mechanical ventilation beds down again. All looking excellent.
Exclusive: Leaked files suggest Mone and her husband were involved in business given £200m contracts
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/06/tory-peer-michelle-mone-involved-ppe-medpro-government-contracts
Also, turns out that Una Stubbs' children discouraged her from using the Internet because they feared she would google her name and discover one rumour regarding her...
Not surprising given cases peak 10 days ago, but excellent news nonetheless.