All women shortlist chosen for Conservative members to choose from as their candidate for the Tiverton and Honiton by election. All 3 are local women from the area
No: "The three women were chosen on merit rather than as part of a deliberate “all-women shortlist”. The idea of a quota system was rejected by Michelle Donelan, the universities minister, as “demeaning” earlier this month."
That's the difference between non-Woke and Woke. Fairness not ideology.
I'm convinced the same people who lecture people on holding the correct Woke attitudes today would have been the most conservative and religious people in, say, Victorian times. Their beliefs change over the generations, but their hectoring and lecturing doesn't.
Do you consider it woke/lecturing/hectoring when the government and others tells businesses and people that they must work from the office?
Doesn't that depend upon how effective the output of those people who work from home is compared to when they didn't work from home ?
Now how much the government knows what the general effectiveness of working from home is they must by now have a pretty good idea about how government departments are affected by working from home.
If its negatively so then they have every right, indeed a responsibility, to restrict working from home.
What other organisations do is up to themselves to sort out.
Speaking personally I would do less work and do it less effectively if I worked from home.
How many others are like that ?
Don't know but its a three part division:
1) Those who work less effectively at home and are honest about it 2) Those who work less effectively at home but lie about it 3) Those who work as effectively at home
As others have said, there is a chunk who work more effectively from home too. But it's genuinely difficult to assess. What I will say is that if you have an employee who takes the opportunity of wfh to skive off and do rubbish work, then you have a problem which being in the office will not solve.
A second issue is that it appears that wfh has become an important recruitment factor for many. At a time of full employment, HR departments need to avoid rules which make it hard to recruit. That applies esecially to organisations outside major cities with good commuting options. If you're based in, say, Eastwood in Nottinghamshire AND you insist that people must come in to work, then you restrict applicants to people willing to live near Eastwood, which - no offence to Eastwood - is a rather small group. If you're willing to accept wfh, you have the entire world to recruit from.
I'm convinced the same people who lecture people on holding the correct Woke attitudes today would have been the most conservative and religious people in, say, Victorian times. Their beliefs change over the generations, but their hectoring and lecturing doesn't.
Do you consider it woke/lecturing/hectoring when the government and others tells businesses and people that they must work from the office?
Doesn't that depend upon how effective the output of those people who work from home is compared to when they didn't work from home ?
Now how much the government knows what the general effectiveness of working from home is they must by now have a pretty good idea about how government departments are affected by working from home.
If its negatively so then they have every right, indeed a responsibility, to restrict working from home.
What other organisations do is up to themselves to sort out.
Speaking personally I would do less work and do it less effectively if I worked from home.
How many others are like that ?
Don't know but its a three part division:
1) Those who work less effectively at home and are honest about it 2) Those who work less effectively at home but lie about it 3) Those who work as effectively at home
I work more effectively, the fewer hours commuting is a game changer.
So a few hours commuting per day wore you down and reduced your effectiveness ?
I can believe it - I have an under ten minute commute and that's a big advantage to both me and my employer.
The changes caused by the disruption from covid are fascinating and often very individual.
The long term effects we can only guess at.
A little bit, but what WFH means I don't have to wake up at 5am, I can wake up at 6.30am/7am, start working whilst I have my breakfast.
I'm more fresher and work get more out of me, because I can work later in to the evenings when something comes up, as I'm not struggling for reception on the train.
As I noted the other day, WFH has also allowed me to recruit from a wider talent pool.
In the last month I've hired somebody based in Birmingham who we wouldn't have been able to recruit if we didn't offer 80% WFH option.
My employer did extensive WFH analysis and it is something that had improved productivity and retention.
I'm in the office two days a week and hybrid working is great.
FWIW - The last three months have been the most stressful for me at work because of my dealings with OFSI but WFH made it palatable.
"Ukraine rules out ceasefire deal that gives land to Russia"
Oh well no ceasefire then.
Alas, neither side have suffered enough casualties to bring a degree of pragmatism to the matter.
We still regularly get posts on pb.com exulting (ugh) about Russian deaths. It is in the nature of war that Ukrainian deaths will be comparable to Russian deaths.
We can look forward to a Vietnam War on Europe's doorstep at this rate.
At some point, it will dawn on Biden & Johnson that a massive war, a tragic & ongoing refugee crisis, economic sanctions that hurt everyones' economy, together with major famines in a number of poor countries, are not going to help the re-election chances of either the Democrats or the Tories.
But, we are not there yet ... there has not been enough killing to satisfy those who live over the hills and far away.
I expect it will end up ... maybe in 2 years time as the Democrats and the Tories grapple with their electoral prospects ... with Ukraine being forced to give up some land for guarantees of protection from the US/West.
Good post It's easy to be gung ho about war when we are not doing the fighting and tens of thousands of Ukrainians are dying How would we like it if Manchester was completely destroyed for example as Mariupol has been
The stupid North Vietnamese could have saved so much pain and suffering by surrendering, couldn’t they?
We solved the land-for-peace issue the other day, anyway. The Ukrainians keep their land. Any other country that wants a land-for-peace deal gives Russia some land.
Which bits of Wales should we give them?
It was not the North Vietnamese that were sustained by American weapons. It was the South Vietnamese.
Only a moron could come up with such a stupid analogy. Time for you to start some insane babbling about White Australia?
And yes, the South Vietnamese should have surrendered. They did after all in the end, once the US got bored.
North Vietnam was entirely sustained by Russian and Chinese weapons. There was a reason it was called a proxy war.
Not quite entirely. And it should be noted the Chinese nicked quite a lot of the Russian weapons while they were in transit.
But yes, it would have been much harder for the Viet Cong to carry on the fight, certainly for such a long time, without Russian support.
Although that didn't stop the Vietnamese defeating China by themselves (how seriously China took the war is another question).
I'm convinced the same people who lecture people on holding the correct Woke attitudes today would have been the most conservative and religious people in, say, Victorian times. Their beliefs change over the generations, but their hectoring and lecturing doesn't.
Do you consider it woke/lecturing/hectoring when the government and others tells businesses and people that they must work from the office?
Doesn't that depend upon how effective the output of those people who work from home is compared to when they didn't work from home ?
Now how much the government knows what the general effectiveness of working from home is they must by now have a pretty good idea about how government departments are affected by working from home.
If its negatively so then they have every right, indeed a responsibility, to restrict working from home.
What other organisations do is up to themselves to sort out.
Speaking personally I would do less work and do it less effectively if I worked from home.
How many others are like that ?
Don't know but its a three part division:
1) Those who work less effectively at home and are honest about it 2) Those who work less effectively at home but lie about it 3) Those who work as effectively at home
Up to a point, Lord Copper.
Remember, though, that it might still be worth taking a hit on output per office worker. After all, the cost of a desk space is non-trivial, especially in Central London. See the recent fiasco at the Department for Education, where demanding everyone return to the office meant that there weren't enough desks for everyone.
And if remote/hybrid work is seen as attractive by employees, that eventually means that non-remote work becomes something employers have to pay a premium for.
Now it is possible that Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg have gone through the calculations and concluded that a return to the office is the right thing to do. Of course, it'spossible, but is it really that likely?
Well someone should have looked at the data and done the calculations.
But you highlight one of the contentious areas - where its in the interest of an organisation that employees work from home but not in the interests of the employees.
I suspect that long term we will see a drift to organisations which want working from home having a workforce which wants to work from home. And vice versa.
Getting to that final goal will involve much inconvenience for many employers and employees in upcoming years.
One other factor on the WFH debate is salary. It is great to be paid a London salary and work in some rural idyll, possibly even abroad where accommodation is cheap and domestic servants cheaper. But already some employers are cottoning on to this and looking to reduce wages (although at a time of skills shortages, that is not possible).
And I expect some will one day be caught out by different employment laws and tax issues in different countries (or even states in the US, for instance). I'm sceptical that some 20-person start-up really has an HR department that is up to speed on this. Is your Glasgow WFH-er on English or Scottish PAYE rates, for instance? Is the chap in Berlin protected by German anti-age discrimination law?
Employers will pay the market rate they need to pay to get the talent they want.
Everything else is noise.
The tax, visa and data protection issues are already raising their heads. I forecast a profitable near future for lawyers specialising in these areas.
Also workplace H&S. if you get a bad back, hunting over the laptop at the kitchen table, while working for EvilCorp, who is liable? If you trip over in “the home office”….
"Ukraine rules out ceasefire deal that gives land to Russia"
Oh well no ceasefire then.
Alas, neither side have suffered enough casualties to bring a degree of pragmatism to the matter.
We still regularly get posts on pb.com exulting (ugh) about Russian deaths. It is in the nature of war that Ukrainian deaths will be comparable to Russian deaths.
We can look forward to a Vietnam War on Europe's doorstep at this rate.
At some point, it will dawn on Biden & Johnson that a massive war, a tragic & ongoing refugee crisis, economic sanctions that hurt everyones' economy, together with major famines in a number of poor countries, are not going to help the re-election chances of either the Democrats or the Tories.
But, we are not there yet ... there has not been enough killing to satisfy those who live over the hills and far away.
I expect it will end up ... maybe in 2 years time as the Democrats and the Tories grapple with their electoral prospects ... with Ukraine being forced to give up some land for guarantees of protection from the US/West.
Good post It's easy to be gung ho about war when we are not doing the fighting and tens of thousands of Ukrainians are dying How would we like it if Manchester was completely destroyed for example as Mariupol has been
The stupid North Vietnamese could have saved so much pain and suffering by surrendering, couldn’t they?
We solved the land-for-peace issue the other day, anyway. The Ukrainians keep their land. Any other country that wants a land-for-peace deal gives Russia some land.
Which bits of Wales should we give them?
It was not the North Vietnamese that were sustained by American weapons. It was the South Vietnamese.
Only a moron could come up with such a stupid analogy. Time for you to start some insane babbling about White Australia?
And yes, the South Vietnamese should have surrendered. They did after all in the end, once the US got bored.
North Vietnam was entirely sustained by Russian and Chinese weapons. There was a reason it was called a proxy war.
Not quite entirely. And it should be noted the Chinese nicked quite a lot of the Russian weapons while they were in transit.
But yes, it would have been much harder for the Viet Cong to carry on the fight, certainly for such a long time, without Russian support.
Although that didn't stop the Vietnamese defeating China by themselves (how seriously China took the war is another question).
They would have lost, in short order, against the South Vietnamese backed by the Americans, without the Russian weapons.
The Viet Cong were pretty much wiped out - the war was actually carried out by the North Vietnamese army.
I'm convinced the same people who lecture people on holding the correct Woke attitudes today would have been the most conservative and religious people in, say, Victorian times. Their beliefs change over the generations, but their hectoring and lecturing doesn't.
Do you consider it woke/lecturing/hectoring when the government and others tells businesses and people that they must work from the office?
Doesn't that depend upon how effective the output of those people who work from home is compared to when they didn't work from home ?
Now how much the government knows what the general effectiveness of working from home is they must by now have a pretty good idea about how government departments are affected by working from home.
If its negatively so then they have every right, indeed a responsibility, to restrict working from home.
What other organisations do is up to themselves to sort out.
Speaking personally I would do less work and do it less effectively if I worked from home.
How many others are like that ?
Don't know but its a three part division:
1) Those who work less effectively at home and are honest about it 2) Those who work less effectively at home but lie about it 3) Those who work as effectively at home
Up to a point, Lord Copper.
Remember, though, that it might still be worth taking a hit on output per office worker. After all, the cost of a desk space is non-trivial, especially in Central London. See the recent fiasco at the Department for Education, where demanding everyone return to the office meant that there weren't enough desks for everyone.
And if remote/hybrid work is seen as attractive by employees, that eventually means that non-remote work becomes something employers have to pay a premium for.
Now it is possible that Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg have gone through the calculations and concluded that a return to the office is the right thing to do. Of course, it'spossible, but is it really that likely?
Well someone should have looked at the data and done the calculations.
But you highlight one of the contentious areas - where its in the interest of an organisation that employees work from home but not in the interests of the employees.
I suspect that long term we will see a drift to organisations which want working from home having a workforce which wants to work from home. And vice versa.
Getting to that final goal will involve much inconvenience for many employers and employees in upcoming years.
One other factor on the WFH debate is salary. It is great to be paid a London salary and work in some rural idyll, possibly even abroad where accommodation is cheap and domestic servants cheaper. But already some employers are cottoning on to this and looking to reduce wages (although at a time of skills shortages, that is not possible).
And I expect some will one day be caught out by different employment laws and tax issues in different countries (or even states in the US, for instance). I'm sceptical that some 20-person start-up really has an HR department that is up to speed on this. Is your Glasgow WFH-er on English or Scottish PAYE rates, for instance? Is the chap in Berlin protected by German anti-age discrimination law?
Employers will pay the market rate they need to pay to get the talent they want.
Everything else is noise.
The tax, visa and data protection issues are already raising their heads. I forecast a profitable near future for lawyers specialising in these areas.
Also workplace H&S. if you get a bad back, hunting over the laptop at the kitchen table, while working for EvilCorp, who is liable? If you trip over in “the home office”….
Is WFH better or worse? I suspect the answer is “yes”…
In my own case, teaching is much harder and also much less effective when not in a classroom/lab. Marking and preparation I have always tried to get done before going home as well, though I know that is impossible for those poor souls who are not Physics teachers, I am also only twenty minutes from work: and that’s when I walk in, so commuting time is not really an issue. Indeed, by going home the long way I can get my daily 10,000 steps in.
I'm convinced the same people who lecture people on holding the correct Woke attitudes today would have been the most conservative and religious people in, say, Victorian times. Their beliefs change over the generations, but their hectoring and lecturing doesn't.
Do you consider it woke/lecturing/hectoring when the government and others tells businesses and people that they must work from the office?
Doesn't that depend upon how effective the output of those people who work from home is compared to when they didn't work from home ?
Now how much the government knows what the general effectiveness of working from home is they must by now have a pretty good idea about how government departments are affected by working from home.
If its negatively so then they have every right, indeed a responsibility, to restrict working from home.
What other organisations do is up to themselves to sort out.
Speaking personally I would do less work and do it less effectively if I worked from home.
How many others are like that ?
Don't know but its a three part division:
1) Those who work less effectively at home and are honest about it 2) Those who work less effectively at home but lie about it 3) Those who work as effectively at home
Up to a point, Lord Copper.
Remember, though, that it might still be worth taking a hit on output per office worker. After all, the cost of a desk space is non-trivial, especially in Central London. See the recent fiasco at the Department for Education, where demanding everyone return to the office meant that there weren't enough desks for everyone.
And if remote/hybrid work is seen as attractive by employees, that eventually means that non-remote work becomes something employers have to pay a premium for.
Now it is possible that Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg have gone through the calculations and concluded that a return to the office is the right thing to do. Of course, it'spossible, but is it really that likely?
Well someone should have looked at the data and done the calculations.
But you highlight one of the contentious areas - where its in the interest of an organisation that employees work from home but not in the interests of the employees.
I suspect that long term we will see a drift to organisations which want working from home having a workforce which wants to work from home. And vice versa.
Getting to that final goal will involve much inconvenience for many employers and employees in upcoming years.
One other factor on the WFH debate is salary. It is great to be paid a London salary and work in some rural idyll, possibly even abroad where accommodation is cheap and domestic servants cheaper. But already some employers are cottoning on to this and looking to reduce wages (although at a time of skills shortages, that is not possible).
And I expect some will one day be caught out by different employment laws and tax issues in different countries (or even states in the US, for instance). I'm sceptical that some 20-person start-up really has an HR department that is up to speed on this. Is your Glasgow WFH-er on English or Scottish PAYE rates, for instance? Is the chap in Berlin protected by German anti-age discrimination law?
Employers will pay the market rate they need to pay to get the talent they want.
Everything else is noise.
The tax, visa and data protection issues are already raising their heads. I forecast a profitable near future for lawyers specialising in these areas.
Also workplace H&S. if you get a bad back, hunting over the laptop at the kitchen table, while working for EvilCorp, who is liable? If you trip over in “the home office”….
Fords were into that 25 years ago. Colleague of mine, whose husband was 'applying' to WFH was somewhat 'iffy' about 'the woman from HR' inspecting her home!
I'm convinced the same people who lecture people on holding the correct Woke attitudes today would have been the most conservative and religious people in, say, Victorian times. Their beliefs change over the generations, but their hectoring and lecturing doesn't.
Do you consider it woke/lecturing/hectoring when the government and others tells businesses and people that they must work from the office?
Doesn't that depend upon how effective the output of those people who work from home is compared to when they didn't work from home ?
Now how much the government knows what the general effectiveness of working from home is they must by now have a pretty good idea about how government departments are affected by working from home.
If its negatively so then they have every right, indeed a responsibility, to restrict working from home.
What other organisations do is up to themselves to sort out.
Speaking personally I would do less work and do it less effectively if I worked from home.
How many others are like that ?
Don't know but its a three part division:
1) Those who work less effectively at home and are honest about it 2) Those who work less effectively at home but lie about it 3) Those who work as effectively at home
As others have said, there is a chunk who work more effectively from home too. But it's genuinely difficult to assess. What I will say is that if you have an employee who takes the opportunity of wfh to skive off and do rubbish work, then you have a problem which being in the office will not solve.
A second issue is that it appears that wfh has become an important recruitment factor for many. At a time of full employment, HR departments need to avoid rules which make it hard to recruit. That applies esecially to organisations outside major cities with good commuting options. If you're based in, say, Eastwood in Nottinghamshire AND you insist that people must come in to work, then you restrict applicants to people willing to live near Eastwood, which - no offence to Eastwood - is a rather small group. If you're willing to accept wfh, you have the entire world to recruit from.
Your first paragraph is wrong.
If I worked from home I would be on PB and YouTube much of the day.
And I suspect my work effectiveness would diminish.
I don't go on them at my workplace.
I respect all the people who have the self-discipline to genuinely ignore distractions at home but not everyone is like that.
As for your second paragraph - having the whole world to recruit from could have an effect on pay rates.
Working from home in the UK might be harder if you're competing against someone willing to work from home in India, at Indian pay rates.
"Ukraine rules out ceasefire deal that gives land to Russia"
Oh well no ceasefire then.
Alas, neither side have suffered enough casualties to bring a degree of pragmatism to the matter.
We still regularly get posts on pb.com exulting (ugh) about Russian deaths. It is in the nature of war that Ukrainian deaths will be comparable to Russian deaths.
We can look forward to a Vietnam War on Europe's doorstep at this rate.
At some point, it will dawn on Biden & Johnson that a massive war, a tragic & ongoing refugee crisis, economic sanctions that hurt everyones' economy, together with major famines in a number of poor countries, are not going to help the re-election chances of either the Democrats or the Tories.
But, we are not there yet ... there has not been enough killing to satisfy those who live over the hills and far away.
I expect it will end up ... maybe in 2 years time as the Democrats and the Tories grapple with their electoral prospects ... with Ukraine being forced to give up some land for guarantees of protection from the US/West.
Good post It's easy to be gung ho about war when we are not doing the fighting and tens of thousands of Ukrainians are dying How would we like it if Manchester was completely destroyed for example as Mariupol has been
The stupid North Vietnamese could have saved so much pain and suffering by surrendering, couldn’t they?
We solved the land-for-peace issue the other day, anyway. The Ukrainians keep their land. Any other country that wants a land-for-peace deal gives Russia some land.
Which bits of Wales should we give them?
It was not the North Vietnamese that were sustained by American weapons. It was the South Vietnamese.
Only a moron could come up with such a stupid analogy. Time for you to start some insane babbling about White Australia?
And yes, the South Vietnamese should have surrendered. They did after all in the end, once the US got bored.
North Vietnam was entirely sustained by Russian and Chinese weapons. There was a reason it was called a proxy war.
The point of my post was that America (& the West) will eventually get bored with the Ukraine, as they did with South Vietnam.
The war will start to hurt Biden and the Democrats. There will be painful economic consequences for ordinary Americans. Not much of this has so far been felt.
There will be a Presidential election. And then, there will be a desire to end it.
There will then be an electoral gain to be made by a politician who can say. "I want to end this War that is hurting ordinary Americans. We need to look after our own interests." In fact, Trump may well say it, and after 2 years of economic consequences of the War, it may well resonate.
Your point that Russian and China fought a proxy way on the side of North Vietnam is standard Malmesbury irrelevance -- because Russia and China are not democracies.
"Ukraine rules out ceasefire deal that gives land to Russia"
Oh well no ceasefire then.
Alas, neither side have suffered enough casualties to bring a degree of pragmatism to the matter.
We still regularly get posts on pb.com exulting (ugh) about Russian deaths. It is in the nature of war that Ukrainian deaths will be comparable to Russian deaths.
We can look forward to a Vietnam War on Europe's doorstep at this rate.
At some point, it will dawn on Biden & Johnson that a massive war, a tragic & ongoing refugee crisis, economic sanctions that hurt everyones' economy, together with major famines in a number of poor countries, are not going to help the re-election chances of either the Democrats or the Tories.
But, we are not there yet ... there has not been enough killing to satisfy those who live over the hills and far away.
I expect it will end up ... maybe in 2 years time as the Democrats and the Tories grapple with their electoral prospects ... with Ukraine being forced to give up some land for guarantees of protection from the US/West.
Good post It's easy to be gung ho about war when we are not doing the fighting and tens of thousands of Ukrainians are dying How would we like it if Manchester was completely destroyed for example as Mariupol has been
The stupid North Vietnamese could have saved so much pain and suffering by surrendering, couldn’t they?
We solved the land-for-peace issue the other day, anyway. The Ukrainians keep their land. Any other country that wants a land-for-peace deal gives Russia some land.
Which bits of Wales should we give them?
It was not the North Vietnamese that were sustained by American weapons. It was the South Vietnamese.
Only a moron could come up with such a stupid analogy. Time for you to start some insane babbling about White Australia?
And yes, the South Vietnamese should have surrendered. They did after all in the end, once the US got bored.
North Vietnam was entirely sustained by Russian and Chinese weapons. There was a reason it was called a proxy war.
The point of my post was that America (& the West) will eventually get bored with the Ukraine, as they did with South Vietnam.
The war will start to hurt Biden and the Democrats. There will be painful economic consequences for ordinary Americans. Not much of this has so far been felt.
There will be a Presidential election. And then, there will be a desire to end it.
There will then be an electoral gain to be made by a politician who can say. "I want to end this War that is hurting ordinary Americans. We need to look after our own interests." In fact, Trump may well say it, and after 2 years of economic consequences of the War, it may well resonate.
Your point that Russian and China fought a proxy way on the side of North Vietnam is standard Malmesbury irrelevance -- because Russia and China are not democracies.
They don't face the same electoral constraints.
Trump will claim that he has influence with Putin.
Burn down the Student Loans Company. They're too stupid to exist.
--> Email to me to support Middle Child's continued student finance. That's fine, no problem.
-> Please log in with email address and password. No problem.
-> "What is your secret answer?" To WHAT?
Like - so, you asked me years ago a question when Eldest Daughter started out and I gave an answer - but it's considered polite to give a clue as to WHAT THE BLOODY QUESTION WAS!!!
Mother' maiden name didn't work Dream job as a child didn't work Town of birth didn't work.
GIVE ME A SODDING CLUE YOU MORONS!
Hope this helps but for us the secret answer was the road you lived in when you were 10. As it is for both of us it might be the question for all.
I posted the other day I like chopping wood when frustrated and having dealt with them I needed a forest. Since then it had got more frustrating. I have only just had to deal with them because my wife retired and as I am already retired we have gone from a high income (so little dealing with them) to next to nothing. We have to prove our income and some of what they want is impossible. They just cater for the norm and not people who have less normal income.
It will be a strong password with at least 12 letters, including 2 numbers and an exclamation mark.
It is not a password, it is your secret word (there is also a password). As for both of us it was the street we lived in when 10 and that is not something either of us use normally it was obviously something they asked of us.
I would be stuffed then: I lived on a farm and the address was: Name of Farm Name of Town County Postcode.
No road or street in sight.
You are not alone, as Andy and myself have stated dealing with sfe is like swimming through treacle.
"Ukraine rules out ceasefire deal that gives land to Russia"
Oh well no ceasefire then.
Alas, neither side have suffered enough casualties to bring a degree of pragmatism to the matter.
We still regularly get posts on pb.com exulting (ugh) about Russian deaths. It is in the nature of war that Ukrainian deaths will be comparable to Russian deaths.
We can look forward to a Vietnam War on Europe's doorstep at this rate.
At some point, it will dawn on Biden & Johnson that a massive war, a tragic & ongoing refugee crisis, economic sanctions that hurt everyones' economy, together with major famines in a number of poor countries, are not going to help the re-election chances of either the Democrats or the Tories.
But, we are not there yet ... there has not been enough killing to satisfy those who live over the hills and far away.
I expect it will end up ... maybe in 2 years time as the Democrats and the Tories grapple with their electoral prospects ... with Ukraine being forced to give up some land for guarantees of protection from the US/West.
Good post It's easy to be gung ho about war when we are not doing the fighting and tens of thousands of Ukrainians are dying How would we like it if Manchester was completely destroyed for example as Mariupol has been
The stupid North Vietnamese could have saved so much pain and suffering by surrendering, couldn’t they?
We solved the land-for-peace issue the other day, anyway. The Ukrainians keep their land. Any other country that wants a land-for-peace deal gives Russia some land.
Which bits of Wales should we give them?
It was not the North Vietnamese that were sustained by American weapons. It was the South Vietnamese.
Only a moron could come up with such a stupid analogy. Time for you to start some insane babbling about White Australia?
And yes, the South Vietnamese should have surrendered. They did after all in the end, once the US got bored.
North Vietnam was entirely sustained by Russian and Chinese weapons. There was a reason it was called a proxy war.
The point of my post was that America (& the West) will eventually get bored with the Ukraine, as they did with South Vietnam.
The war will start to hurt Biden and the Democrats. There will be painful economic consequences for ordinary Americans. Not much of this has so far been felt.
There will be a Presidential election. And then, there will be a desire to end it.
There will then be an electoral gain to be made by a politician who can say. "I want to end this War that is hurting ordinary Americans. We need to look after our own interests." In fact, Trump may well say it, and after 2 years of economic consequences of the War, it may well resonate.
Your point that Russian and China fought a proxy way on the side of North Vietnam is standard Malmesbury irrelevance -- because Russia and China are not democracies.
"Ukraine rules out ceasefire deal that gives land to Russia"
Oh well no ceasefire then.
Alas, neither side have suffered enough casualties to bring a degree of pragmatism to the matter.
We still regularly get posts on pb.com exulting (ugh) about Russian deaths. It is in the nature of war that Ukrainian deaths will be comparable to Russian deaths.
We can look forward to a Vietnam War on Europe's doorstep at this rate.
At some point, it will dawn on Biden & Johnson that a massive war, a tragic & ongoing refugee crisis, economic sanctions that hurt everyones' economy, together with major famines in a number of poor countries, are not going to help the re-election chances of either the Democrats or the Tories.
But, we are not there yet ... there has not been enough killing to satisfy those who live over the hills and far away.
I expect it will end up ... maybe in 2 years time as the Democrats and the Tories grapple with their electoral prospects ... with Ukraine being forced to give up some land for guarantees of protection from the US/West.
Good post It's easy to be gung ho about war when we are not doing the fighting and tens of thousands of Ukrainians are dying How would we like it if Manchester was completely destroyed for example as Mariupol has been
The stupid North Vietnamese could have saved so much pain and suffering by surrendering, couldn’t they?
We solved the land-for-peace issue the other day, anyway. The Ukrainians keep their land. Any other country that wants a land-for-peace deal gives Russia some land.
Which bits of Wales should we give them?
It was not the North Vietnamese that were sustained by American weapons. It was the South Vietnamese.
Only a moron could come up with such a stupid analogy. Time for you to start some insane babbling about White Australia?
And yes, the South Vietnamese should have surrendered. They did after all in the end, once the US got bored.
North Vietnam was entirely sustained by Russian and Chinese weapons. There was a reason it was called a proxy war.
The point of my post was that America (& the West) will eventually get bored with the Ukraine, as they did with South Vietnam.
The war will start to hurt Biden and the Democrats. There will be painful economic consequences for ordinary Americans. Not much of this has so far been felt.
There will be a Presidential election. And then, there will be a desire to end it.
There will then be an electoral gain to be made by a politician who can say. "I want to end this War that is hurting ordinary Americans. We need to look after our own interests." In fact, Trump may well say it, and after 2 years of economic consequences of the War, it may well resonate.
Your point that Russian and China fought a proxy way on the side of North Vietnam is standard Malmesbury irrelevance -- because Russia and China are not democracies.
They don't face the same electoral constraints.
The war isn't going to last at this intensity for that long:
Ukrainian forces also captured a pair of Russian BMP-1 IFVs at the same time. It is notable that in recent times BMP-1 have appeared more and more, whilst during the earlier Russian campaigns they were uncommon.
I'm convinced the same people who lecture people on holding the correct Woke attitudes today would have been the most conservative and religious people in, say, Victorian times. Their beliefs change over the generations, but their hectoring and lecturing doesn't.
Do you consider it woke/lecturing/hectoring when the government and others tells businesses and people that they must work from the office?
Doesn't that depend upon how effective the output of those people who work from home is compared to when they didn't work from home ?
Now how much the government knows what the general effectiveness of working from home is they must by now have a pretty good idea about how government departments are affected by working from home.
If its negatively so then they have every right, indeed a responsibility, to restrict working from home.
What other organisations do is up to themselves to sort out.
Speaking personally I would do less work and do it less effectively if I worked from home.
How many others are like that ?
Don't know but its a three part division:
1) Those who work less effectively at home and are honest about it 2) Those who work less effectively at home but lie about it 3) Those who work as effectively at home
Up to a point, Lord Copper.
Remember, though, that it might still be worth taking a hit on output per office worker. After all, the cost of a desk space is non-trivial, especially in Central London. See the recent fiasco at the Department for Education, where demanding everyone return to the office meant that there weren't enough desks for everyone.
And if remote/hybrid work is seen as attractive by employees, that eventually means that non-remote work becomes something employers have to pay a premium for.
Now it is possible that Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg have gone through the calculations and concluded that a return to the office is the right thing to do. Of course, it'spossible, but is it really that likely?
Well someone should have looked at the data and done the calculations.
But you highlight one of the contentious areas - where its in the interest of an organisation that employees work from home but not in the interests of the employees.
I suspect that long term we will see a drift to organisations which want working from home having a workforce which wants to work from home. And vice versa.
Getting to that final goal will involve much inconvenience for many employers and employees in upcoming years.
One other factor on the WFH debate is salary. It is great to be paid a London salary and work in some rural idyll, possibly even abroad where accommodation is cheap and domestic servants cheaper. But already some employers are cottoning on to this and looking to reduce wages (although at a time of skills shortages, that is not possible).
And I expect some will one day be caught out by different employment laws and tax issues in different countries (or even states in the US, for instance). I'm sceptical that some 20-person start-up really has an HR department that is up to speed on this. Is your Glasgow WFH-er on English or Scottish PAYE rates, for instance? Is the chap in Berlin protected by German anti-age discrimination law?
Employers will pay the market rate they need to pay to get the talent they want.
Everything else is noise.
The tax, visa and data protection issues are already raising their heads. I forecast a profitable near future for lawyers specialising in these areas.
Also workplace H&S. if you get a bad back, hunting over the laptop at the kitchen table, while working for EvilCorp, who is liable? If you trip over in “the home office”….
Is WFH better or worse? I suspect the answer is “yes”…
In my own case, teaching is much harder and also much less effective when not in a classroom/lab. Marking and preparation I have always tried to get done before going home as well, though I know that is impossible for those poor souls who are not Physics teachers, I am also only twenty minutes from work: and that’s when I walk in, so commuting time is not really an issue. Indeed, by going home the long way I can get my daily 10,000 steps in.
I think it is also true that dustmen find it difficult to work from home.
I'm convinced the same people who lecture people on holding the correct Woke attitudes today would have been the most conservative and religious people in, say, Victorian times. Their beliefs change over the generations, but their hectoring and lecturing doesn't.
Do you consider it woke/lecturing/hectoring when the government and others tells businesses and people that they must work from the office?
Doesn't that depend upon how effective the output of those people who work from home is compared to when they didn't work from home ?
Now how much the government knows what the general effectiveness of working from home is they must by now have a pretty good idea about how government departments are affected by working from home.
If its negatively so then they have every right, indeed a responsibility, to restrict working from home.
What other organisations do is up to themselves to sort out.
Speaking personally I would do less work and do it less effectively if I worked from home.
How many others are like that ?
Don't know but its a three part division:
1) Those who work less effectively at home and are honest about it 2) Those who work less effectively at home but lie about it 3) Those who work as effectively at home
Up to a point, Lord Copper.
Remember, though, that it might still be worth taking a hit on output per office worker. After all, the cost of a desk space is non-trivial, especially in Central London. See the recent fiasco at the Department for Education, where demanding everyone return to the office meant that there weren't enough desks for everyone.
And if remote/hybrid work is seen as attractive by employees, that eventually means that non-remote work becomes something employers have to pay a premium for.
Now it is possible that Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg have gone through the calculations and concluded that a return to the office is the right thing to do. Of course, it'spossible, but is it really that likely?
Well someone should have looked at the data and done the calculations.
But you highlight one of the contentious areas - where its in the interest of an organisation that employees work from home but not in the interests of the employees.
I suspect that long term we will see a drift to organisations which want working from home having a workforce which wants to work from home. And vice versa.
Getting to that final goal will involve much inconvenience for many employers and employees in upcoming years.
One other factor on the WFH debate is salary. It is great to be paid a London salary and work in some rural idyll, possibly even abroad where accommodation is cheap and domestic servants cheaper. But already some employers are cottoning on to this and looking to reduce wages (although at a time of skills shortages, that is not possible).
And I expect some will one day be caught out by different employment laws and tax issues in different countries (or even states in the US, for instance). I'm sceptical that some 20-person start-up really has an HR department that is up to speed on this. Is your Glasgow WFH-er on English or Scottish PAYE rates, for instance? Is the chap in Berlin protected by German anti-age discrimination law?
Employers will pay the market rate they need to pay to get the talent they want.
Everything else is noise.
The tax, visa and data protection issues are already raising their heads. I forecast a profitable near future for lawyers specialising in these areas.
Also workplace H&S. if you get a bad back, hunting over the laptop at the kitchen table, while working for EvilCorp, who is liable? If you trip over in “the home office”….
Is WFH better or worse? I suspect the answer is “yes”…
In my own case, teaching is much harder and also much less effective when not in a classroom/lab. Marking and preparation I have always tried to get done before going home as well, though I know that is impossible for those poor souls who are not Physics teachers, I am also only twenty minutes from work: and that’s when I walk in, so commuting time is not really an issue. Indeed, by going home the long way I can get my daily 10,000 steps in.
Is it usual for teachers to live so close to work? I'd always imagined they'd want to live miles away so as not to run into pupils and parents in the Red Lion church. Though come to think of it, I suppose lots of boarding school teachers live literally alongside their charges.
"Ukraine rules out ceasefire deal that gives land to Russia"
Oh well no ceasefire then.
Alas, neither side have suffered enough casualties to bring a degree of pragmatism to the matter.
We still regularly get posts on pb.com exulting (ugh) about Russian deaths. It is in the nature of war that Ukrainian deaths will be comparable to Russian deaths.
We can look forward to a Vietnam War on Europe's doorstep at this rate.
At some point, it will dawn on Biden & Johnson that a massive war, a tragic & ongoing refugee crisis, economic sanctions that hurt everyones' economy, together with major famines in a number of poor countries, are not going to help the re-election chances of either the Democrats or the Tories.
But, we are not there yet ... there has not been enough killing to satisfy those who live over the hills and far away.
I expect it will end up ... maybe in 2 years time as the Democrats and the Tories grapple with their electoral prospects ... with Ukraine being forced to give up some land for guarantees of protection from the US/West.
Good post It's easy to be gung ho about war when we are not doing the fighting and tens of thousands of Ukrainians are dying How would we like it if Manchester was completely destroyed for example as Mariupol has been
The stupid North Vietnamese could have saved so much pain and suffering by surrendering, couldn’t they?
We solved the land-for-peace issue the other day, anyway. The Ukrainians keep their land. Any other country that wants a land-for-peace deal gives Russia some land.
Which bits of Wales should we give them?
It was not the North Vietnamese that were sustained by American weapons. It was the South Vietnamese.
Only a moron could come up with such a stupid analogy. Time for you to start some insane babbling about White Australia?
And yes, the South Vietnamese should have surrendered. They did after all in the end, once the US got bored.
North Vietnam was entirely sustained by Russian and Chinese weapons. There was a reason it was called a proxy war.
The point of my post was that America (& the West) will eventually get bored with the Ukraine, as they did with South Vietnam.
The war will start to hurt Biden and the Democrats. There will be painful economic consequences for ordinary Americans. Not much of this has so far been felt.
There will be a Presidential election. And then, there will be a desire to end it.
There will then be an electoral gain to be made by a politician who can say. "I want to end this War that is hurting ordinary Americans. We need to look after our own interests." In fact, Trump may well say it, and after 2 years of economic consequences of the War, it may well resonate.
Your point that Russian and China fought a proxy way on the side of North Vietnam is standard Malmesbury irrelevance -- because Russia and China are not democracies.
They don't face the same electoral constraints.
The war isn't going to last at this intensity for that long:
Ukrainian forces also captured a pair of Russian BMP-1 IFVs at the same time. It is notable that in recent times BMP-1 have appeared more and more, whilst during the earlier Russian campaigns they were uncommon.
"Ukraine rules out ceasefire deal that gives land to Russia"
Oh well no ceasefire then.
Alas, neither side have suffered enough casualties to bring a degree of pragmatism to the matter.
We still regularly get posts on pb.com exulting (ugh) about Russian deaths. It is in the nature of war that Ukrainian deaths will be comparable to Russian deaths.
We can look forward to a Vietnam War on Europe's doorstep at this rate.
At some point, it will dawn on Biden & Johnson that a massive war, a tragic & ongoing refugee crisis, economic sanctions that hurt everyones' economy, together with major famines in a number of poor countries, are not going to help the re-election chances of either the Democrats or the Tories.
But, we are not there yet ... there has not been enough killing to satisfy those who live over the hills and far away.
I expect it will end up ... maybe in 2 years time as the Democrats and the Tories grapple with their electoral prospects ... with Ukraine being forced to give up some land for guarantees of protection from the US/West.
Good post It's easy to be gung ho about war when we are not doing the fighting and tens of thousands of Ukrainians are dying How would we like it if Manchester was completely destroyed for example as Mariupol has been
The stupid North Vietnamese could have saved so much pain and suffering by surrendering, couldn’t they?
We solved the land-for-peace issue the other day, anyway. The Ukrainians keep their land. Any other country that wants a land-for-peace deal gives Russia some land.
Which bits of Wales should we give them?
It was not the North Vietnamese that were sustained by American weapons. It was the South Vietnamese.
Only a moron could come up with such a stupid analogy. Time for you to start some insane babbling about White Australia?
And yes, the South Vietnamese should have surrendered. They did after all in the end, once the US got bored.
North Vietnam was entirely sustained by Russian and Chinese weapons. There was a reason it was called a proxy war.
The point of my post was that America (& the West) will eventually get bored with the Ukraine, as they did with South Vietnam.
The war will start to hurt Biden and the Democrats. There will be painful economic consequences for ordinary Americans. Not much of this has so far been felt.
There will be a Presidential election. And then, there will be a desire to end it.
There will then be an electoral gain to be made by a politician who can say. "I want to end this War that is hurting ordinary Americans. We need to look after our own interests." In fact, Trump may well say it, and after 2 years of economic consequences of the War, it may well resonate.
Your point that Russian and China fought a proxy way on the side of North Vietnam is standard Malmesbury irrelevance -- because Russia and China are not democracies.
They don't face the same electoral constraints.
The war isn't going to last at this intensity for that long:
Ukrainian forces also captured a pair of Russian BMP-1 IFVs at the same time. It is notable that in recent times BMP-1 have appeared more and more, whilst during the earlier Russian campaigns they were uncommon.
Russia is steadily burning through its most modern equipment and replacing them with older, inferior models.
While Soviet vehicles weren’t designed for survivability, generally, I still have a hard time with the thought process that ended up with fuel tanks in the doors of the BMP-1.
"Ukraine rules out ceasefire deal that gives land to Russia"
Oh well no ceasefire then.
Alas, neither side have suffered enough casualties to bring a degree of pragmatism to the matter.
We still regularly get posts on pb.com exulting (ugh) about Russian deaths. It is in the nature of war that Ukrainian deaths will be comparable to Russian deaths.
We can look forward to a Vietnam War on Europe's doorstep at this rate.
At some point, it will dawn on Biden & Johnson that a massive war, a tragic & ongoing refugee crisis, economic sanctions that hurt everyones' economy, together with major famines in a number of poor countries, are not going to help the re-election chances of either the Democrats or the Tories.
But, we are not there yet ... there has not been enough killing to satisfy those who live over the hills and far away.
I expect it will end up ... maybe in 2 years time as the Democrats and the Tories grapple with their electoral prospects ... with Ukraine being forced to give up some land for guarantees of protection from the US/West.
Good post It's easy to be gung ho about war when we are not doing the fighting and tens of thousands of Ukrainians are dying How would we like it if Manchester was completely destroyed for example as Mariupol has been
The stupid North Vietnamese could have saved so much pain and suffering by surrendering, couldn’t they?
We solved the land-for-peace issue the other day, anyway. The Ukrainians keep their land. Any other country that wants a land-for-peace deal gives Russia some land.
Which bits of Wales should we give them?
It was not the North Vietnamese that were sustained by American weapons. It was the South Vietnamese.
Only a moron could come up with such a stupid analogy. Time for you to start some insane babbling about White Australia?
And yes, the South Vietnamese should have surrendered. They did after all in the end, once the US got bored.
North Vietnam was entirely sustained by Russian and Chinese weapons. There was a reason it was called a proxy war.
The point of my post was that America (& the West) will eventually get bored with the Ukraine, as they did with South Vietnam.
The war will start to hurt Biden and the Democrats. There will be painful economic consequences for ordinary Americans. Not much of this has so far been felt.
There will be a Presidential election. And then, there will be a desire to end it.
There will then be an electoral gain to be made by a politician who can say. "I want to end this War that is hurting ordinary Americans. We need to look after our own interests." In fact, Trump may well say it, and after 2 years of economic consequences of the War, it may well resonate.
Your point that Russian and China fought a proxy way on the side of North Vietnam is standard Malmesbury irrelevance -- because Russia and China are not democracies.
They don't face the same electoral constraints.
The war isn't going to last at this intensity for that long:
Ukrainian forces also captured a pair of Russian BMP-1 IFVs at the same time. It is notable that in recent times BMP-1 have appeared more and more, whilst during the earlier Russian campaigns they were uncommon.
"Ukraine rules out ceasefire deal that gives land to Russia"
Oh well no ceasefire then.
Alas, neither side have suffered enough casualties to bring a degree of pragmatism to the matter.
We still regularly get posts on pb.com exulting (ugh) about Russian deaths. It is in the nature of war that Ukrainian deaths will be comparable to Russian deaths.
We can look forward to a Vietnam War on Europe's doorstep at this rate.
At some point, it will dawn on Biden & Johnson that a massive war, a tragic & ongoing refugee crisis, economic sanctions that hurt everyones' economy, together with major famines in a number of poor countries, are not going to help the re-election chances of either the Democrats or the Tories.
But, we are not there yet ... there has not been enough killing to satisfy those who live over the hills and far away.
I expect it will end up ... maybe in 2 years time as the Democrats and the Tories grapple with their electoral prospects ... with Ukraine being forced to give up some land for guarantees of protection from the US/West.
Good post It's easy to be gung ho about war when we are not doing the fighting and tens of thousands of Ukrainians are dying How would we like it if Manchester was completely destroyed for example as Mariupol has been
The stupid North Vietnamese could have saved so much pain and suffering by surrendering, couldn’t they?
We solved the land-for-peace issue the other day, anyway. The Ukrainians keep their land. Any other country that wants a land-for-peace deal gives Russia some land.
Which bits of Wales should we give them?
It was not the North Vietnamese that were sustained by American weapons. It was the South Vietnamese.
Only a moron could come up with such a stupid analogy. Time for you to start some insane babbling about White Australia?
And yes, the South Vietnamese should have surrendered. They did after all in the end, once the US got bored.
North Vietnam was entirely sustained by Russian and Chinese weapons. There was a reason it was called a proxy war.
The point of my post was that America (& the West) will eventually get bored with the Ukraine, as they did with South Vietnam.
The war will start to hurt Biden and the Democrats. There will be painful economic consequences for ordinary Americans. Not much of this has so far been felt.
There will be a Presidential election. And then, there will be a desire to end it.
There will then be an electoral gain to be made by a politician who can say. "I want to end this War that is hurting ordinary Americans. We need to look after our own interests." In fact, Trump may well say it, and after 2 years of economic consequences of the War, it may well resonate.
Your point that Russian and China fought a proxy way on the side of North Vietnam is standard Malmesbury irrelevance -- because Russia and China are not democracies.
They don't face the same electoral constraints.
The war isn't going to last at this intensity for that long:
Ukrainian forces also captured a pair of Russian BMP-1 IFVs at the same time. It is notable that in recent times BMP-1 have appeared more and more, whilst during the earlier Russian campaigns they were uncommon.
Russia is steadily burning through its most modern equipment and replacing them with older, inferior models.
While Soviet vehicles weren’t designed for survivability, generally, I still have a hard time with the thought process that ended up with fuel tanks in the doors of the BMP-1.
Designed in the era when a million casualties was a rounding error to the Soviet Union.
I'm convinced the same people who lecture people on holding the correct Woke attitudes today would have been the most conservative and religious people in, say, Victorian times. Their beliefs change over the generations, but their hectoring and lecturing doesn't.
Do you consider it woke/lecturing/hectoring when the government and others tells businesses and people that they must work from the office?
Doesn't that depend upon how effective the output of those people who work from home is compared to when they didn't work from home ?
Now how much the government knows what the general effectiveness of working from home is they must by now have a pretty good idea about how government departments are affected by working from home.
If its negatively so then they have every right, indeed a responsibility, to restrict working from home.
What other organisations do is up to themselves to sort out.
Speaking personally I would do less work and do it less effectively if I worked from home.
How many others are like that ?
Don't know but its a three part division:
1) Those who work less effectively at home and are honest about it 2) Those who work less effectively at home but lie about it 3) Those who work as effectively at home
Up to a point, Lord Copper.
Remember, though, that it might still be worth taking a hit on output per office worker. After all, the cost of a desk space is non-trivial, especially in Central London. See the recent fiasco at the Department for Education, where demanding everyone return to the office meant that there weren't enough desks for everyone.
And if remote/hybrid work is seen as attractive by employees, that eventually means that non-remote work becomes something employers have to pay a premium for.
Now it is possible that Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg have gone through the calculations and concluded that a return to the office is the right thing to do. Of course, it'spossible, but is it really that likely?
Well someone should have looked at the data and done the calculations.
But you highlight one of the contentious areas - where its in the interest of an organisation that employees work from home but not in the interests of the employees.
I suspect that long term we will see a drift to organisations which want working from home having a workforce which wants to work from home. And vice versa.
Getting to that final goal will involve much inconvenience for many employers and employees in upcoming years.
One other factor on the WFH debate is salary. It is great to be paid a London salary and work in some rural idyll, possibly even abroad where accommodation is cheap and domestic servants cheaper. But already some employers are cottoning on to this and looking to reduce wages (although at a time of skills shortages, that is not possible).
And I expect some will one day be caught out by different employment laws and tax issues in different countries (or even states in the US, for instance). I'm sceptical that some 20-person start-up really has an HR department that is up to speed on this. Is your Glasgow WFH-er on English or Scottish PAYE rates, for instance? Is the chap in Berlin protected by German anti-age discrimination law?
Employers will pay the market rate they need to pay to get the talent they want.
Everything else is noise.
The tax, visa and data protection issues are already raising their heads. I forecast a profitable near future for lawyers specialising in these areas.
Also workplace H&S. if you get a bad back, hunting over the laptop at the kitchen table, while working for EvilCorp, who is liable? If you trip over in “the home office”….
Is WFH better or worse? I suspect the answer is “yes”…
In my own case, teaching is much harder and also much less effective when not in a classroom/lab. Marking and preparation I have always tried to get done before going home as well, though I know that is impossible for those poor souls who are not Physics teachers, I am also only twenty minutes from work: and that’s when I walk in, so commuting time is not really an issue. Indeed, by going home the long way I can get my daily 10,000 steps in.
Is it usual for teachers to live so close to work? I'd always imagined they'd want to live miles away so as not to run into pupils and parents in the Red Lion church. Though come to think of it, I suppose lots of boarding school teachers live literally alongside their charges.
Depends on the school. There is at least one pub I now avoid to stop the chorus of “ hello sir” as I go to the bar, but otherwise current and ex-pupils are pretty polite to me. Other schools say not living in the catchment area is a good idea…
Burn down the Student Loans Company. They're too stupid to exist.
--> Email to me to support Middle Child's continued student finance. That's fine, no problem.
-> Please log in with email address and password. No problem.
-> "What is your secret answer?" To WHAT?
Like - so, you asked me years ago a question when Eldest Daughter started out and I gave an answer - but it's considered polite to give a clue as to WHAT THE BLOODY QUESTION WAS!!!
Mother' maiden name didn't work Dream job as a child didn't work Town of birth didn't work.
GIVE ME A SODDING CLUE YOU MORONS!
Hope this helps but for us the secret answer was the road you lived in when you were 10. As it is for both of us it might be the question for all.
I posted the other day I like chopping wood when frustrated and having dealt with them I needed a forest. Since then it had got more frustrating. I have only just had to deal with them because my wife retired and as I am already retired we have gone from a high income (so little dealing with them) to next to nothing. We have to prove our income and some of what they want is impossible. They just cater for the norm and not people who have less normal income.
It will be a strong password with at least 12 letters, including 2 numbers and an exclamation mark.
It is not a password, it is your secret word (there is also a password). As for both of us it was the street we lived in when 10 and that is not something either of us use normally it was obviously something they asked of us.
I would be stuffed then: I lived on a farm and the address was: Name of Farm Name of Town County Postcode.
No road or street in sight.
You are not alone, as Andy and myself have stated dealing with sfe is like swimming through treacle.
Had an hour on hold to them after finding the menu option to reset a password by human (rather than the several.options being told to do it online). A big surprise that I was I still on record with them having paid off my one term of student loan by 1997 - how does that work with GDPR?
All OK and my numbers in but wife has to do separately for an even older loan repayment.
"Ukraine rules out ceasefire deal that gives land to Russia"
Oh well no ceasefire then.
Alas, neither side have suffered enough casualties to bring a degree of pragmatism to the matter.
We still regularly get posts on pb.com exulting (ugh) about Russian deaths. It is in the nature of war that Ukrainian deaths will be comparable to Russian deaths.
We can look forward to a Vietnam War on Europe's doorstep at this rate.
At some point, it will dawn on Biden & Johnson that a massive war, a tragic & ongoing refugee crisis, economic sanctions that hurt everyones' economy, together with major famines in a number of poor countries, are not going to help the re-election chances of either the Democrats or the Tories.
But, we are not there yet ... there has not been enough killing to satisfy those who live over the hills and far away.
I expect it will end up ... maybe in 2 years time as the Democrats and the Tories grapple with their electoral prospects ... with Ukraine being forced to give up some land for guarantees of protection from the US/West.
Good post It's easy to be gung ho about war when we are not doing the fighting and tens of thousands of Ukrainians are dying How would we like it if Manchester was completely destroyed for example as Mariupol has been
The stupid North Vietnamese could have saved so much pain and suffering by surrendering, couldn’t they?
We solved the land-for-peace issue the other day, anyway. The Ukrainians keep their land. Any other country that wants a land-for-peace deal gives Russia some land.
Which bits of Wales should we give them?
It was not the North Vietnamese that were sustained by American weapons. It was the South Vietnamese.
Only a moron could come up with such a stupid analogy. Time for you to start some insane babbling about White Australia?
And yes, the South Vietnamese should have surrendered. They did after all in the end, once the US got bored.
North Vietnam was entirely sustained by Russian and Chinese weapons. There was a reason it was called a proxy war.
The point of my post was that America (& the West) will eventually get bored with the Ukraine, as they did with South Vietnam.
The war will start to hurt Biden and the Democrats. There will be painful economic consequences for ordinary Americans. Not much of this has so far been felt.
There will be a Presidential election. And then, there will be a desire to end it.
There will then be an electoral gain to be made by a politician who can say. "I want to end this War that is hurting ordinary Americans. We need to look after our own interests." In fact, Trump may well say it, and after 2 years of economic consequences of the War, it may well resonate.
Your point that Russian and China fought a proxy way on the side of North Vietnam is standard Malmesbury irrelevance -- because Russia and China are not democracies.
They don't face the same electoral constraints.
The war isn't going to last at this intensity for that long:
Ukrainian forces also captured a pair of Russian BMP-1 IFVs at the same time. It is notable that in recent times BMP-1 have appeared more and more, whilst during the earlier Russian campaigns they were uncommon.
Russia is steadily burning through its most modern equipment and replacing them with older, inferior models.
While Soviet vehicles weren’t designed for survivability, generally, I still have a hard time with the thought process that ended up with fuel tanks in the doors of the BMP-1.
They are the aux tanks to extend its range. Also, it's diesel fuelled so quite hard to ignite with small arms fire. In combat they should be empty. Of course, lots of things that should happen, don't.
I had to set up a new BT account the other day over the phone and was asked to set a new secret q&a and went for name of first pet.
When I went to log in online it asked me for my mother’s maiden name. I thought it was odd, but it is linked to my old account so I thought maybe it was my old secret question.
I put in her maiden name and it told me I was wrong. I now have to remember my mum is aka Denise Gumdrop.
I'm convinced the same people who lecture people on holding the correct Woke attitudes today would have been the most conservative and religious people in, say, Victorian times. Their beliefs change over the generations, but their hectoring and lecturing doesn't.
Do you consider it woke/lecturing/hectoring when the government and others tells businesses and people that they must work from the office?
Doesn't that depend upon how effective the output of those people who work from home is compared to when they didn't work from home ?
Now how much the government knows what the general effectiveness of working from home is they must by now have a pretty good idea about how government departments are affected by working from home.
If its negatively so then they have every right, indeed a responsibility, to restrict working from home.
What other organisations do is up to themselves to sort out.
Speaking personally I would do less work and do it less effectively if I worked from home.
How many others are like that ?
Don't know but its a three part division:
1) Those who work less effectively at home and are honest about it 2) Those who work less effectively at home but lie about it 3) Those who work as effectively at home
I work more effectively, the fewer hours commuting is a game changer.
So a few hours commuting per day wore you down and reduced your effectiveness ?
I can believe it - I have an under ten minute commute and that's a big advantage to both me and my employer.
The changes caused by the disruption from covid are fascinating and often very individual.
The long term effects we can only guess at.
A little bit, but what WFH means I don't have to wake up at 5am, I can wake up at 6.30am/7am, start working whilst I have my breakfast.
I'm more fresher and work get more out of me, because I can work later in to the evenings when something comes up, as I'm not struggling for reception on the train.
As I noted the other day, WFH has also allowed me to recruit from a wider talent pool.
In the last month I've hired somebody based in Birmingham who we wouldn't have been able to recruit if we didn't offer 80% WFH option.
My employer did extensive WFH analysis and it is something that had improved productivity and retention.
I'm in the office two days a week and hybrid working is great.
FWIW - The last three months have been the most stressful for me at work because of my dealings with OFSI but WFH made it palatable.
Your dodgy dealings with the Kremlin are finally coming home to roost?
I had to set up a new BT account the other day over the phone and was asked to set a new secret q&a and went for name of first pet.
When I went to log in online it asked me for my mother’s maiden name. I thought it was odd, but it is linked to my old account so I thought maybe it was my old secret question.
I put in her maiden name and it told me I was wrong. I now have to remember my mum is aka Denise Gumdrop.
There are arguments in favour of using wrong answers to standard questions. Ease of remembering might not be one of them.
I'm convinced the same people who lecture people on holding the correct Woke attitudes today would have been the most conservative and religious people in, say, Victorian times. Their beliefs change over the generations, but their hectoring and lecturing doesn't.
Do you consider it woke/lecturing/hectoring when the government and others tells businesses and people that they must work from the office?
Doesn't that depend upon how effective the output of those people who work from home is compared to when they didn't work from home ?
Now how much the government knows what the general effectiveness of working from home is they must by now have a pretty good idea about how government departments are affected by working from home.
If its negatively so then they have every right, indeed a responsibility, to restrict working from home.
What other organisations do is up to themselves to sort out.
Speaking personally I would do less work and do it less effectively if I worked from home.
How many others are like that ?
Don't know but its a three part division:
1) Those who work less effectively at home and are honest about it 2) Those who work less effectively at home but lie about it 3) Those who work as effectively at home
Up to a point, Lord Copper.
Remember, though, that it might still be worth taking a hit on output per office worker. After all, the cost of a desk space is non-trivial, especially in Central London. See the recent fiasco at the Department for Education, where demanding everyone return to the office meant that there weren't enough desks for everyone.
And if remote/hybrid work is seen as attractive by employees, that eventually means that non-remote work becomes something employers have to pay a premium for.
Now it is possible that Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg have gone through the calculations and concluded that a return to the office is the right thing to do. Of course, it'spossible, but is it really that likely?
Well someone should have looked at the data and done the calculations.
But you highlight one of the contentious areas - where its in the interest of an organisation that employees work from home but not in the interests of the employees.
I suspect that long term we will see a drift to organisations which want working from home having a workforce which wants to work from home. And vice versa.
Getting to that final goal will involve much inconvenience for many employers and employees in upcoming years.
One other factor on the WFH debate is salary. It is great to be paid a London salary and work in some rural idyll, possibly even abroad where accommodation is cheap and domestic servants cheaper. But already some employers are cottoning on to this and looking to reduce wages (although at a time of skills shortages, that is not possible).
And I expect some will one day be caught out by different employment laws and tax issues in different countries (or even states in the US, for instance). I'm sceptical that some 20-person start-up really has an HR department that is up to speed on this. Is your Glasgow WFH-er on English or Scottish PAYE rates, for instance? Is the chap in Berlin protected by German anti-age discrimination law?
Employers will pay the market rate they need to pay to get the talent they want.
Everything else is noise.
The tax, visa and data protection issues are already raising their heads. I forecast a profitable near future for lawyers specialising in these areas.
Also workplace H&S. if you get a bad back, hunting over the laptop at the kitchen table, while working for EvilCorp, who is liable? If you trip over in “the home office”….
Is WFH better or worse? I suspect the answer is “yes”…
In my own case, teaching is much harder and also much less effective when not in a classroom/lab. Marking and preparation I have always tried to get done before going home as well, though I know that is impossible for those poor souls who are not Physics teachers, I am also only twenty minutes from work: and that’s when I walk in, so commuting time is not really an issue. Indeed, by going home the long way I can get my daily 10,000 steps in.
Is it usual for teachers to live so close to work? I'd always imagined they'd want to live miles away so as not to run into pupils and parents in the Red Lion church. Though come to think of it, I suppose lots of boarding school teachers live literally alongside their charges.
My old man did once get into a physical altercation with my then year 3 teacher in his local pub.
I'm convinced the same people who lecture people on holding the correct Woke attitudes today would have been the most conservative and religious people in, say, Victorian times. Their beliefs change over the generations, but their hectoring and lecturing doesn't.
Do you consider it woke/lecturing/hectoring when the government and others tells businesses and people that they must work from the office?
Doesn't that depend upon how effective the output of those people who work from home is compared to when they didn't work from home ?
Now how much the government knows what the general effectiveness of working from home is they must by now have a pretty good idea about how government departments are affected by working from home.
If its negatively so then they have every right, indeed a responsibility, to restrict working from home.
What other organisations do is up to themselves to sort out.
Speaking personally I would do less work and do it less effectively if I worked from home.
How many others are like that ?
Don't know but its a three part division:
1) Those who work less effectively at home and are honest about it 2) Those who work less effectively at home but lie about it 3) Those who work as effectively at home
I work more effectively, the fewer hours commuting is a game changer.
So a few hours commuting per day wore you down and reduced your effectiveness ?
I can believe it - I have an under ten minute commute and that's a big advantage to both me and my employer.
The changes caused by the disruption from covid are fascinating and often very individual.
The long term effects we can only guess at.
A little bit, but what WFH means I don't have to wake up at 5am, I can wake up at 6.30am/7am, start working whilst I have my breakfast.
I'm more fresher and work get more out of me, because I can work later in to the evenings when something comes up, as I'm not struggling for reception on the train.
As I noted the other day, WFH has also allowed me to recruit from a wider talent pool.
In the last month I've hired somebody based in Birmingham who we wouldn't have been able to recruit if we didn't offer 80% WFH option.
My employer did extensive WFH analysis and it is something that had improved productivity and retention.
I'm in the office two days a week and hybrid working is great.
FWIW - The last three months have been the most stressful for me at work because of my dealings with OFSI but WFH made it palatable.
Your dodgy dealings with the Kremlin are finally coming home to roost?
Yup. I had to declare that I was once invited to an event at the Russian embassy.
I had to set up a new BT account the other day over the phone and was asked to set a new secret q&a and went for name of first pet.
When I went to log in online it asked me for my mother’s maiden name. I thought it was odd, but it is linked to my old account so I thought maybe it was my old secret question.
I put in her maiden name and it told me I was wrong. I now have to remember my mum is aka Denise Gumdrop.
At a previous job, the IT department challenged us to come up with the most unguessable, yet personal memorable password (not a bad competition, as it made us all think). I offered them "Trotsky1847". "A Russian revolutionary personally acquainted with my grandfather with the year of his 19th century birth."
I won, the prize being a chocolate Easter egg. Not sure Trotsky would have approved.
A cursory knowledge of Welsh is very helpful in constructing passwords.
I use Madagascan placenames
Is anyone going to guess "Tsiroanomandidy39"??
Yes. Both examples on this thread would be found by a password-cracking program that works by combining names from dictionaries with numbers. You might do slightly better putting the number at the start.
OK, my go-to ultimate password is a tiny tiny village in the south of Madagascar, which is barely on Google maps, the name of which is very long and unpronounceable (I only remember it because I've been there) and is combined with three numbers
A computer would have to go through a practically infinite number of variations of letters and numbers before cracking it
Yes. Unless, as actually happens, they use dictionaries of names and place names (and ordinary words, of course).
I find this genuinely intriguing
So they have a list of ALL the placenames in the world, right down to tiny hamlets (like this). That must be many millions of places. Hundreds of millions?
So they can run through all of those - plus every single other word or name - and then combine each with three numbers, and get each of these digits in the right order?
Does that not take years? And a ridiculous, unaffordable amount of computing power? It seems near-impossible to me
But I am happy to be schooled! My work is done for the day and I am heading down to the waterside for a vino
This is a reasonable breakdown of the speed it takes to hack a random password - remember known words will be caught quickly by a separate dictionary check.
The best hope the Conservatives now have is to ride out the storm and hope it has blown through by 2024.
It's probably too late now to save things by ditching the oaf at the top. The more he ramps up the culture wars and whips the Daily Mail into propaganda, the more hardened but smaller their voter base will become. We've seen this all before and it NEVER works.
Prepare for a landslide defeat.
the Horror that is Woke
It's really little wonder that you and I dislike each other!
I note that Australia has just booted out the right. I suspect, fairly strongly, that voters are turning left as usually happens during an economic downturn which the Right have failed to stem.
The cost of living crisis is going to do for the Conservatives but the likelihood, or inevitability according to the Telegraph, of recession will really screw them. Hence why I think a landslide defeat is on the cards.
Appealing to culture wars in a time of economic crisis is a well-worn tactic. It might have worked in Germany in the 1930s but recent history suggests it won't now.
The only caution I would make is that a RMT rail strike led by 3 Putin apologists paralysing the country would play into Boris's hands (or whoever is conservative leader) and at the same time Rishi comes to his senses and delivers a fair and sensible package of measures to address some of the worst effects of our current col crisis could well change the narrative
Yes I totally agree with you about this.
As a Left-leaner the thought of a national rail strike fills me with political dread, for the very reason you suggest.
It could play right into Boris' hands.
The problem is that the three RMT leaders are Putin apologists and easily identified as such therefore providing a gift to Boris and a nightmare for labour
Is this true or are you merely repeating some tripe you read in the Daily Mail?
The is the CPB, which seek a 'socialist revolution', and Gordon has been, and may well be still (that link is 2018), on the Exec.
Putin Apologist?
Well, after 3 months of Russia's blockade of Ukraine's grain exports, he's promoting the narrative that food exports are slow because of sanctions. Nothing to do with Putin's War, apparently.
Perhaps @Tres you could show that some of the other claims in the Mail piece linked are untrue.
Personally, I'm happy with the view that the President of the RMT is, politically, a bit of a nutter. And I'm quite pleased that we only have about 4 or perhaps 5 TUs under that kind of influence.
I'm convinced the same people who lecture people on holding the correct Woke attitudes today would have been the most conservative and religious people in, say, Victorian times. Their beliefs change over the generations, but their hectoring and lecturing doesn't.
Do you consider it woke/lecturing/hectoring when the government and others tells businesses and people that they must work from the office?
Doesn't that depend upon how effective the output of those people who work from home is compared to when they didn't work from home ?
Now how much the government knows what the general effectiveness of working from home is they must by now have a pretty good idea about how government departments are affected by working from home.
If its negatively so then they have every right, indeed a responsibility, to restrict working from home.
What other organisations do is up to themselves to sort out.
Speaking personally I would do less work and do it less effectively if I worked from home.
How many others are like that ?
Don't know but its a three part division:
1) Those who work less effectively at home and are honest about it 2) Those who work less effectively at home but lie about it 3) Those who work as effectively at home
Up to a point, Lord Copper.
Remember, though, that it might still be worth taking a hit on output per office worker. After all, the cost of a desk space is non-trivial, especially in Central London. See the recent fiasco at the Department for Education, where demanding everyone return to the office meant that there weren't enough desks for everyone.
And if remote/hybrid work is seen as attractive by employees, that eventually means that non-remote work becomes something employers have to pay a premium for.
Now it is possible that Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg have gone through the calculations and concluded that a return to the office is the right thing to do. Of course, it'spossible, but is it really that likely?
Well someone should have looked at the data and done the calculations.
But you highlight one of the contentious areas - where its in the interest of an organisation that employees work from home but not in the interests of the employees.
I suspect that long term we will see a drift to organisations which want working from home having a workforce which wants to work from home. And vice versa.
Getting to that final goal will involve much inconvenience for many employers and employees in upcoming years.
One other factor on the WFH debate is salary. It is great to be paid a London salary and work in some rural idyll, possibly even abroad where accommodation is cheap and domestic servants cheaper. But already some employers are cottoning on to this and looking to reduce wages (although at a time of skills shortages, that is not possible).
And I expect some will one day be caught out by different employment laws and tax issues in different countries (or even states in the US, for instance). I'm sceptical that some 20-person start-up really has an HR department that is up to speed on this. Is your Glasgow WFH-er on English or Scottish PAYE rates, for instance? Is the chap in Berlin protected by German anti-age discrimination law?
Employers will pay the market rate they need to pay to get the talent they want.
Everything else is noise.
The tax, visa and data protection issues are already raising their heads. I forecast a profitable near future for lawyers specialising in these areas.
Also workplace H&S. if you get a bad back, hunting over the laptop at the kitchen table, while working for EvilCorp, who is liable? If you trip over in “the home office”….
Is WFH better or worse? I suspect the answer is “yes”…
In my own case, teaching is much harder and also much less effective when not in a classroom/lab. Marking and preparation I have always tried to get done before going home as well, though I know that is impossible for those poor souls who are not Physics teachers, I am also only twenty minutes from work: and that’s when I walk in, so commuting time is not really an issue. Indeed, by going home the long way I can get my daily 10,000 steps in.
Is it usual for teachers to live so close to work? I'd always imagined they'd want to live miles away so as not to run into pupils and parents in the Red Lion church. Though come to think of it, I suppose lots of boarding school teachers live literally alongside their charges.
My old man did once get into a physical altercation with my then year 3 teacher in his local pub.
Either the names of the year groups have changed, or he was a very precocious 7 year old…
"Ukraine rules out ceasefire deal that gives land to Russia"
Oh well no ceasefire then.
Alas, neither side have suffered enough casualties to bring a degree of pragmatism to the matter.
We still regularly get posts on pb.com exulting (ugh) about Russian deaths. It is in the nature of war that Ukrainian deaths will be comparable to Russian deaths.
We can look forward to a Vietnam War on Europe's doorstep at this rate.
At some point, it will dawn on Biden & Johnson that a massive war, a tragic & ongoing refugee crisis, economic sanctions that hurt everyones' economy, together with major famines in a number of poor countries, are not going to help the re-election chances of either the Democrats or the Tories.
But, we are not there yet ... there has not been enough killing to satisfy those who live over the hills and far away.
I expect it will end up ... maybe in 2 years time as the Democrats and the Tories grapple with their electoral prospects ... with Ukraine being forced to give up some land for guarantees of protection from the US/West.
Good post It's easy to be gung ho about war when we are not doing the fighting and tens of thousands of Ukrainians are dying How would we like it if Manchester was completely destroyed for example as Mariupol has been
The stupid North Vietnamese could have saved so much pain and suffering by surrendering, couldn’t they?
We solved the land-for-peace issue the other day, anyway. The Ukrainians keep their land. Any other country that wants a land-for-peace deal gives Russia some land.
Which bits of Wales should we give them?
It was not the North Vietnamese that were sustained by American weapons. It was the South Vietnamese.
Only a moron could come up with such a stupid analogy. Time for you to start some insane babbling about White Australia?
And yes, the South Vietnamese should have surrendered. They did after all in the end, once the US got bored.
North Vietnam was entirely sustained by Russian and Chinese weapons. There was a reason it was called a proxy war.
The point of my post was that America (& the West) will eventually get bored with the Ukraine, as they did with South Vietnam.
The war will start to hurt Biden and the Democrats. There will be painful economic consequences for ordinary Americans. Not much of this has so far been felt.
There will be a Presidential election. And then, there will be a desire to end it.
There will then be an electoral gain to be made by a politician who can say. "I want to end this War that is hurting ordinary Americans. We need to look after our own interests." In fact, Trump may well say it, and after 2 years of economic consequences of the War, it may well resonate.
Your point that Russian and China fought a proxy way on the side of North Vietnam is standard Malmesbury irrelevance -- because Russia and China are not democracies.
They don't face the same electoral constraints.
The war isn't going to last at this intensity for that long:
Ukrainian forces also captured a pair of Russian BMP-1 IFVs at the same time. It is notable that in recent times BMP-1 have appeared more and more, whilst during the earlier Russian campaigns they were uncommon.
Russia is steadily burning through its most modern equipment and replacing them with older, inferior models.
While Soviet vehicles weren’t designed for survivability, generally, I still have a hard time with the thought process that ended up with fuel tanks in the doors of the BMP-1.
They are the aux tanks to extend its range. Also, it's diesel fuelled so quite hard to ignite with small arms fire. In combat they should be empty. Of course, lots of things that should happen, don't.
One light cannon round has set them off, time and again.
Didn’t they test it? The comparison with the heartache over the motorcycle for the Bradley…
At a previous job, the IT department challenged us to come up with the most unguessable, yet personal memorable password (not a bad competition, as it made us all think). I offered them "Trotsky1847". "A Russian revolutionary personally acquainted with my grandfather with the year of his 19th century birth."
I won, the prize being a chocolate Easter egg. Not sure Trotsky would have approved.
A cursory knowledge of Welsh is very helpful in constructing passwords.
I use Madagascan placenames
Is anyone going to guess "Tsiroanomandidy39"??
Yes. Both examples on this thread would be found by a password-cracking program that works by combining names from dictionaries with numbers. You might do slightly better putting the number at the start.
OK, my go-to ultimate password is a tiny tiny village in the south of Madagascar, which is barely on Google maps, the name of which is very long and unpronounceable (I only remember it because I've been there) and is combined with three numbers
A computer would have to go through a practically infinite number of variations of letters and numbers before cracking it
Yes. Unless, as actually happens, they use dictionaries of names and place names (and ordinary words, of course).
I find this genuinely intriguing
So they have a list of ALL the placenames in the world, right down to tiny hamlets (like this). That must be many millions of places. Hundreds of millions?
So they can run through all of those - plus every single other word or name - and then combine each with three numbers, and get each of these digits in the right order?
Does that not take years? And a ridiculous, unaffordable amount of computing power? It seems near-impossible to me
But I am happy to be schooled! My work is done for the day and I am heading down to the waterside for a vino
This is a reasonable breakdown of the speed it takes to hack a random password - remember known words will be caught quickly by a separate dictionary check.
Fantastic
*quickly adds a couple of symbols to his ‘photo vault’ password*
O/t but. Just after asking Mr Jessop about his wildlife observations yesterday morning yesterday stopped being a GOOD DAY. Because I fell ….. tripped an uneven pavement…., en route to the paper shop, was carted off, by a very cheerful and positive ambulance crew, to hospital, was checked over quite thoroughly, including by the frailty team …..84 year old has nasty fall…… and was finally picked up, still unsteady on my feet by my wife, at about 3pm. Broke my glasses, have two black eyes and various other grazes on my face and arms. Looks dreadful! So life has changed again.
However, most of the blue-tit chicks seem fit and healthy!
Oh dear; in case correlation == causation I shall refrain from mentioning the chicks. Hope you feel better soon - sounds like it could have been worse.
Personally I would far rather read your calming and beautiful wildlife postings than yet another tipsy travel boast from Leon.
You are the only person who felt the need to make a dig at another poster in an otherwise friendly and concerned series of posts. What does that say about you?
Lots of birds feeding in my garden and quite a variety too. But the real beauty is seeing kestrels soar high above. It's not the first time I've seen them round here but it never fails to impress.
Kestrels are great.
We used to have kestrels, ospreys and the occasional red kite where I grew up. Loved lying in the grass lazily watching them float high above
The best hope the Conservatives now have is to ride out the storm and hope it has blown through by 2024.
It's probably too late now to save things by ditching the oaf at the top. The more he ramps up the culture wars and whips the Daily Mail into propaganda, the more hardened but smaller their voter base will become. We've seen this all before and it NEVER works.
Prepare for a landslide defeat.
the Horror that is Woke
It's really little wonder that you and I dislike each other!
I note that Australia has just booted out the right. I suspect, fairly strongly, that voters are turning left as usually happens during an economic downturn which the Right have failed to stem.
The cost of living crisis is going to do for the Conservatives but the likelihood, or inevitability according to the Telegraph, of recession will really screw them. Hence why I think a landslide defeat is on the cards.
Appealing to culture wars in a time of economic crisis is a well-worn tactic. It might have worked in Germany in the 1930s but recent history suggests it won't now.
The only caution I would make is that a RMT rail strike led by 3 Putin apologists paralysing the country would play into Boris's hands (or whoever is conservative leader) and at the same time Rishi comes to his senses and delivers a fair and sensible package of measures to address some of the worst effects of our current col crisis could well change the narrative
Yes I totally agree with you about this.
As a Left-leaner the thought of a national rail strike fills me with political dread, for the very reason you suggest.
It could play right into Boris' hands.
The problem is that the three RMT leaders are Putin apologists and easily identified as such therefore providing a gift to Boris and a nightmare for labour
Is this true or are you merely repeating some tripe you read in the Daily Mail?
The is the CPB, which seek a 'socialist revolution', and Gordon has been, and may well be still (that link is 2018), on the Exec.
Putin Apologist?
Well, after 3 months of Russia's blockade of Ukraine's grain exports, he's promoting the narrative that food exports are slow because of sanctions. Nothing to do with Putin's War, apparently.
Perhaps @Tres you could show that some of the other claims in the Mail piece linked are untrue.
Personally, I'm happy with the view that the President of the RMT is, politically, a bit of a nutter. And I'm quite pleased that we only have about 4 or perhaps 5 TUs under that kind of influence.
Well, it is true that Russian exports are off-limits because of sanctions. It is also true this chap is a communist. Whether there is evidence that strikes are threatened because the RMT is following orders from the Kremlin is another question.
I'm convinced the same people who lecture people on holding the correct Woke attitudes today would have been the most conservative and religious people in, say, Victorian times. Their beliefs change over the generations, but their hectoring and lecturing doesn't.
Do you consider it woke/lecturing/hectoring when the government and others tells businesses and people that they must work from the office?
Doesn't that depend upon how effective the output of those people who work from home is compared to when they didn't work from home ?
Now how much the government knows what the general effectiveness of working from home is they must by now have a pretty good idea about how government departments are affected by working from home.
If its negatively so then they have every right, indeed a responsibility, to restrict working from home.
What other organisations do is up to themselves to sort out.
Speaking personally I would do less work and do it less effectively if I worked from home.
How many others are like that ?
Don't know but its a three part division:
1) Those who work less effectively at home and are honest about it 2) Those who work less effectively at home but lie about it 3) Those who work as effectively at home
I work more effectively, the fewer hours commuting is a game changer.
So a few hours commuting per day wore you down and reduced your effectiveness ?
I can believe it - I have an under ten minute commute and that's a big advantage to both me and my employer.
The changes caused by the disruption from covid are fascinating and often very individual.
The long term effects we can only guess at.
A little bit, but what WFH means I don't have to wake up at 5am, I can wake up at 6.30am/7am, start working whilst I have my breakfast.
I'm more fresher and work get more out of me, because I can work later in to the evenings when something comes up, as I'm not struggling for reception on the train.
As I noted the other day, WFH has also allowed me to recruit from a wider talent pool.
In the last month I've hired somebody based in Birmingham who we wouldn't have been able to recruit if we didn't offer 80% WFH option.
My employer did extensive WFH analysis and it is something that had improved productivity and retention.
I'm in the office two days a week and hybrid working is great.
FWIW - The last three months have been the most stressful for me at work because of my dealings with OFSI but WFH made it palatable.
If only your colleagues didn’t break the rules quite as much as they do…
I'm convinced the same people who lecture people on holding the correct Woke attitudes today would have been the most conservative and religious people in, say, Victorian times. Their beliefs change over the generations, but their hectoring and lecturing doesn't.
Do you consider it woke/lecturing/hectoring when the government and others tells businesses and people that they must work from the office?
Doesn't that depend upon how effective the output of those people who work from home is compared to when they didn't work from home ?
Now how much the government knows what the general effectiveness of working from home is they must by now have a pretty good idea about how government departments are affected by working from home.
If its negatively so then they have every right, indeed a responsibility, to restrict working from home.
What other organisations do is up to themselves to sort out.
Speaking personally I would do less work and do it less effectively if I worked from home.
How many others are like that ?
Don't know but its a three part division:
1) Those who work less effectively at home and are honest about it 2) Those who work less effectively at home but lie about it 3) Those who work as effectively at home
Up to a point, Lord Copper.
Remember, though, that it might still be worth taking a hit on output per office worker. After all, the cost of a desk space is non-trivial, especially in Central London. See the recent fiasco at the Department for Education, where demanding everyone return to the office meant that there weren't enough desks for everyone.
And if remote/hybrid work is seen as attractive by employees, that eventually means that non-remote work becomes something employers have to pay a premium for.
Now it is possible that Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg have gone through the calculations and concluded that a return to the office is the right thing to do. Of course, it'spossible, but is it really that likely?
Well someone should have looked at the data and done the calculations.
But you highlight one of the contentious areas - where its in the interest of an organisation that employees work from home but not in the interests of the employees.
I suspect that long term we will see a drift to organisations which want working from home having a workforce which wants to work from home. And vice versa.
Getting to that final goal will involve much inconvenience for many employers and employees in upcoming years.
One other factor on the WFH debate is salary. It is great to be paid a London salary and work in some rural idyll, possibly even abroad where accommodation is cheap and domestic servants cheaper. But already some employers are cottoning on to this and looking to reduce wages (although at a time of skills shortages, that is not possible).
And I expect some will one day be caught out by different employment laws and tax issues in different countries (or even states in the US, for instance). I'm sceptical that some 20-person start-up really has an HR department that is up to speed on this. Is your Glasgow WFH-er on English or Scottish PAYE rates, for instance? Is the chap in Berlin protected by German anti-age discrimination law?
Employers will pay the market rate they need to pay to get the talent they want.
Everything else is noise.
The tax, visa and data protection issues are already raising their heads. I forecast a profitable near future for lawyers specialising in these areas.
Also workplace H&S. if you get a bad back, hunting over the laptop at the kitchen table, while working for EvilCorp, who is liable? If you trip over in “the home office”….
Is WFH better or worse? I suspect the answer is “yes”…
In my own case, teaching is much harder and also much less effective when not in a classroom/lab. Marking and preparation I have always tried to get done before going home as well, though I know that is impossible for those poor souls who are not Physics teachers, I am also only twenty minutes from work: and that’s when I walk in, so commuting time is not really an issue. Indeed, by going home the long way I can get my daily 10,000 steps in.
Is it usual for teachers to live so close to work? I'd always imagined they'd want to live miles away so as not to run into pupils and parents in the Red Lion church. Though come to think of it, I suppose lots of boarding school teachers live literally alongside their charges.
Depends on the school. There is at least one pub I now avoid to stop the chorus of “ hello sir” as I go to the bar, but otherwise current and ex-pupils are pretty polite to me. Other schools say not living in the catchment area is a good idea…
My dad lived within easy walking distance of his school. He would never go to the local pubs, and for many years would only go out to the rugby club bar - if there was any hint of grief there was a scrum worth of people ready to intervene on his side. I don't think he started using anywhere else regularly till about a decade after he retired, and even then it was the saloon bar in a local hotel rather than the public.
At a previous job, the IT department challenged us to come up with the most unguessable, yet personal memorable password (not a bad competition, as it made us all think). I offered them "Trotsky1847". "A Russian revolutionary personally acquainted with my grandfather with the year of his 19th century birth."
I won, the prize being a chocolate Easter egg. Not sure Trotsky would have approved.
A cursory knowledge of Welsh is very helpful in constructing passwords.
I use Madagascan placenames
Is anyone going to guess "Tsiroanomandidy39"??
Yes. Both examples on this thread would be found by a password-cracking program that works by combining names from dictionaries with numbers. You might do slightly better putting the number at the start.
OK, my go-to ultimate password is a tiny tiny village in the south of Madagascar, which is barely on Google maps, the name of which is very long and unpronounceable (I only remember it because I've been there) and is combined with three numbers
A computer would have to go through a practically infinite number of variations of letters and numbers before cracking it
Yes. Unless, as actually happens, they use dictionaries of names and place names (and ordinary words, of course).
I find this genuinely intriguing
So they have a list of ALL the placenames in the world, right down to tiny hamlets (like this). That must be many millions of places. Hundreds of millions?
So they can run through all of those - plus every single other word or name - and then combine each with three numbers, and get each of these digits in the right order?
Does that not take years? And a ridiculous, unaffordable amount of computing power? It seems near-impossible to me
But I am happy to be schooled! My work is done for the day and I am heading down to the waterside for a vino
This is a reasonable breakdown of the speed it takes to hack a random password - remember known words will be caught quickly by a separate dictionary check.
Fantastic
*quickly adds a couple of symbols to his ‘photo vault’ password*
You also mentioned it as a "go to" password, suggesting you use it for more than one system. That means if a hacker got into a weaker system through another method, they could add your password to lists associated with your name, then get into everything else.
Quick question for those what knows about polling.
I'm interested in commissioning some single-issue polling within just one city (of c. 150,000 inhabitants) at a reasonably low cost.
The obvious way to do this is to get a question in one of the omnibus surveys, but I'm not aware of any that will target a single city. YouGov have their CityBus product but they offer that as (say) "500 respondents (e.g. 100 respondents in 5 different cities".
Are there any organisations that can offer a single city poll?
At a previous job, the IT department challenged us to come up with the most unguessable, yet personal memorable password (not a bad competition, as it made us all think). I offered them "Trotsky1847". "A Russian revolutionary personally acquainted with my grandfather with the year of his 19th century birth."
I won, the prize being a chocolate Easter egg. Not sure Trotsky would have approved.
A cursory knowledge of Welsh is very helpful in constructing passwords.
I use Madagascan placenames
Is anyone going to guess "Tsiroanomandidy39"??
Yes. Both examples on this thread would be found by a password-cracking program that works by combining names from dictionaries with numbers. You might do slightly better putting the number at the start.
OK, my go-to ultimate password is a tiny tiny village in the south of Madagascar, which is barely on Google maps, the name of which is very long and unpronounceable (I only remember it because I've been there) and is combined with three numbers
A computer would have to go through a practically infinite number of variations of letters and numbers before cracking it
Yes. Unless, as actually happens, they use dictionaries of names and place names (and ordinary words, of course).
I find this genuinely intriguing
So they have a list of ALL the placenames in the world, right down to tiny hamlets (like this). That must be many millions of places. Hundreds of millions?
So they can run through all of those - plus every single other word or name - and then combine each with three numbers, and get each of these digits in the right order?
Does that not take years? And a ridiculous, unaffordable amount of computing power? It seems near-impossible to me
But I am happy to be schooled! My work is done for the day and I am heading down to the waterside for a vino
This is a reasonable breakdown of the speed it takes to hack a random password - remember known words will be caught quickly by a separate dictionary check.
Urgh,, contemplating buying a password manager software for some time, and this has put the cherry on the German biscuit. Will have to go and look up what Which recommend ...
The best hope the Conservatives now have is to ride out the storm and hope it has blown through by 2024.
It's probably too late now to save things by ditching the oaf at the top. The more he ramps up the culture wars and whips the Daily Mail into propaganda, the more hardened but smaller their voter base will become. We've seen this all before and it NEVER works.
Prepare for a landslide defeat.
the Horror that is Woke
It's really little wonder that you and I dislike each other!
I note that Australia has just booted out the right. I suspect, fairly strongly, that voters are turning left as usually happens during an economic downturn which the Right have failed to stem.
The cost of living crisis is going to do for the Conservatives but the likelihood, or inevitability according to the Telegraph, of recession will really screw them. Hence why I think a landslide defeat is on the cards.
Appealing to culture wars in a time of economic crisis is a well-worn tactic. It might have worked in Germany in the 1930s but recent history suggests it won't now.
The only caution I would make is that a RMT rail strike led by 3 Putin apologists paralysing the country would play into Boris's hands (or whoever is conservative leader) and at the same time Rishi comes to his senses and delivers a fair and sensible package of measures to address some of the worst effects of our current col crisis could well change the narrative
Yes I totally agree with you about this.
As a Left-leaner the thought of a national rail strike fills me with political dread, for the very reason you suggest.
It could play right into Boris' hands.
The problem is that the three RMT leaders are Putin apologists and easily identified as such therefore providing a gift to Boris and a nightmare for labour
Is this true or are you merely repeating some tripe you read in the Daily Mail?
The is the CPB, which seek a 'socialist revolution', and Gordon has been, and may well be still (that link is 2018), on the Exec.
Putin Apologist?
Well, after 3 months of Russia's blockade of Ukraine's grain exports, he's promoting the narrative that food exports are slow because of sanctions. Nothing to do with Putin's War, apparently.
Perhaps @Tres you could show that some of the other claims in the Mail piece linked are untrue.
Personally, I'm happy with the view that the President of the RMT is, politically, a bit of a nutter. And I'm quite pleased that we only have about 4 or perhaps 5 TUs under that kind of influence.
Well, it is true that Russian exports are off-limits because of sanctions. It is also true this chap is a communist. Whether there is evidence that strikes are threatened because the RMT is following orders from the Kremlin is another question.
IIRC Russian grain exports are not sanctioned - and if they were, there are plenty of countries that don’t have sanctions on Russia that will want to buy wheat etc. India, for example.
The problem is that Ukrainian, not Russian exports have been blocked.
At a previous job, the IT department challenged us to come up with the most unguessable, yet personal memorable password (not a bad competition, as it made us all think). I offered them "Trotsky1847". "A Russian revolutionary personally acquainted with my grandfather with the year of his 19th century birth."
I won, the prize being a chocolate Easter egg. Not sure Trotsky would have approved.
A cursory knowledge of Welsh is very helpful in constructing passwords.
I use Madagascan placenames
Is anyone going to guess "Tsiroanomandidy39"??
Yes. Both examples on this thread would be found by a password-cracking program that works by combining names from dictionaries with numbers. You might do slightly better putting the number at the start.
OK, my go-to ultimate password is a tiny tiny village in the south of Madagascar, which is barely on Google maps, the name of which is very long and unpronounceable (I only remember it because I've been there) and is combined with three numbers
A computer would have to go through a practically infinite number of variations of letters and numbers before cracking it
Yes. Unless, as actually happens, they use dictionaries of names and place names (and ordinary words, of course).
I find this genuinely intriguing
So they have a list of ALL the placenames in the world, right down to tiny hamlets (like this). That must be many millions of places. Hundreds of millions?
So they can run through all of those - plus every single other word or name - and then combine each with three numbers, and get each of these digits in the right order?
Does that not take years? And a ridiculous, unaffordable amount of computing power? It seems near-impossible to me
But I am happy to be schooled! My work is done for the day and I am heading down to the waterside for a vino
This is a reasonable breakdown of the speed it takes to hack a random password - remember known words will be caught quickly by a separate dictionary check.
Fantastic
*quickly adds a couple of symbols to his ‘photo vault’ password*
You also mentioned it as a "go to" password, suggesting you use it for more than one system. That means if a hacker got into a weaker system through another method, they could add your password to lists associated with your name, then get into everything else.
I use it for just one app - which contains all my other passwords - which are easier and shorter the less important the security
According to that super handy table, it would take a hacker 200,000 years to break it, which is fine
"Ukraine rules out ceasefire deal that gives land to Russia"
Oh well no ceasefire then.
Alas, neither side have suffered enough casualties to bring a degree of pragmatism to the matter.
We still regularly get posts on pb.com exulting (ugh) about Russian deaths. It is in the nature of war that Ukrainian deaths will be comparable to Russian deaths.
We can look forward to a Vietnam War on Europe's doorstep at this rate.
At some point, it will dawn on Biden & Johnson that a massive war, a tragic & ongoing refugee crisis, economic sanctions that hurt everyones' economy, together with major famines in a number of poor countries, are not going to help the re-election chances of either the Democrats or the Tories.
But, we are not there yet ... there has not been enough killing to satisfy those who live over the hills and far away.
I expect it will end up ... maybe in 2 years time as the Democrats and the Tories grapple with their electoral prospects ... with Ukraine being forced to give up some land for guarantees of protection from the US/West.
Good post It's easy to be gung ho about war when we are not doing the fighting and tens of thousands of Ukrainians are dying How would we like it if Manchester was completely destroyed for example as Mariupol has been
The stupid North Vietnamese could have saved so much pain and suffering by surrendering, couldn’t they?
We solved the land-for-peace issue the other day, anyway. The Ukrainians keep their land. Any other country that wants a land-for-peace deal gives Russia some land.
Which bits of Wales should we give them?
It was not the North Vietnamese that were sustained by American weapons. It was the South Vietnamese.
Only a moron could come up with such a stupid analogy. Time for you to start some insane babbling about White Australia?
And yes, the South Vietnamese should have surrendered. They did after all in the end, once the US got bored.
North Vietnam was entirely sustained by Russian and Chinese weapons. There was a reason it was called a proxy war.
The point of my post was that America (& the West) will eventually get bored with the Ukraine, as they did with South Vietnam.
The war will start to hurt Biden and the Democrats. There will be painful economic consequences for ordinary Americans. Not much of this has so far been felt.
There will be a Presidential election. And then, there will be a desire to end it.
There will then be an electoral gain to be made by a politician who can say. "I want to end this War that is hurting ordinary Americans. We need to look after our own interests." In fact, Trump may well say it, and after 2 years of economic consequences of the War, it may well resonate.
Your point that Russian and China fought a proxy way on the side of North Vietnam is standard Malmesbury irrelevance -- because Russia and China are not democracies.
They don't face the same electoral constraints.
The war isn't going to last at this intensity for that long:
Ukrainian forces also captured a pair of Russian BMP-1 IFVs at the same time. It is notable that in recent times BMP-1 have appeared more and more, whilst during the earlier Russian campaigns they were uncommon.
Russia is steadily burning through its most modern equipment and replacing them with older, inferior models.
While Soviet vehicles weren’t designed for survivability, generally, I still have a hard time with the thought process that ended up with fuel tanks in the doors of the BMP-1.
They are the aux tanks to extend its range. Also, it's diesel fuelled so quite hard to ignite with small arms fire. In combat they should be empty. Of course, lots of things that should happen, don't.
One light cannon round has set them off, time and again.
Didn’t they test it? The comparison with the heartache over the motorcycle for the Bradley…
BMP-1? APCs weren't AIFVs at that time - just armoured boxes with a 0.5 Browning or a DShK 12.7mm on top. Not nearly so many light cannon around in those days. The BMP was quite unusual in having the 73mm low velocity cannon as I recall.
At a previous job, the IT department challenged us to come up with the most unguessable, yet personal memorable password (not a bad competition, as it made us all think). I offered them "Trotsky1847". "A Russian revolutionary personally acquainted with my grandfather with the year of his 19th century birth."
I won, the prize being a chocolate Easter egg. Not sure Trotsky would have approved.
A cursory knowledge of Welsh is very helpful in constructing passwords.
I use Madagascan placenames
Is anyone going to guess "Tsiroanomandidy39"??
Yes. Both examples on this thread would be found by a password-cracking program that works by combining names from dictionaries with numbers. You might do slightly better putting the number at the start.
OK, my go-to ultimate password is a tiny tiny village in the south of Madagascar, which is barely on Google maps, the name of which is very long and unpronounceable (I only remember it because I've been there) and is combined with three numbers
A computer would have to go through a practically infinite number of variations of letters and numbers before cracking it
Yes. Unless, as actually happens, they use dictionaries of names and place names (and ordinary words, of course).
I find this genuinely intriguing
So they have a list of ALL the placenames in the world, right down to tiny hamlets (like this). That must be many millions of places. Hundreds of millions?
So they can run through all of those - plus every single other word or name - and then combine each with three numbers, and get each of these digits in the right order?
Does that not take years? And a ridiculous, unaffordable amount of computing power? It seems near-impossible to me
But I am happy to be schooled! My work is done for the day and I am heading down to the waterside for a vino
This is a reasonable breakdown of the speed it takes to hack a random password - remember known words will be caught quickly by a separate dictionary check.
Fantastic
*quickly adds a couple of symbols to his ‘photo vault’ password*
In truth, it is unlikely anyone will want to crack your password in particular. You are not important enough, and nor am I. Even if we were, these days spear-phishing attacks are more likely (like sending a SpAd a note ostensibly from their Minister asking for access).
If a password database is stolen from a hacked site, then all of the passwords within it will be subjected to computerised cracking attempts back at Villainy HQ.
What is common these days, as @Malmesbury already mentioned, is simply trying frequently used passwords (recall the hacked voicemail scandals) and so-called credential stuffing where the baddies try your username (often email address) and password (stolen from one site) against other sites, which is why reusing passwords for different sites is a bad idea, however carefully crafted that shared password might be.
At a previous job, the IT department challenged us to come up with the most unguessable, yet personal memorable password (not a bad competition, as it made us all think). I offered them "Trotsky1847". "A Russian revolutionary personally acquainted with my grandfather with the year of his 19th century birth."
I won, the prize being a chocolate Easter egg. Not sure Trotsky would have approved.
A cursory knowledge of Welsh is very helpful in constructing passwords.
I use Madagascan placenames
Is anyone going to guess "Tsiroanomandidy39"??
Yes. Both examples on this thread would be found by a password-cracking program that works by combining names from dictionaries with numbers. You might do slightly better putting the number at the start.
OK, my go-to ultimate password is a tiny tiny village in the south of Madagascar, which is barely on Google maps, the name of which is very long and unpronounceable (I only remember it because I've been there) and is combined with three numbers
A computer would have to go through a practically infinite number of variations of letters and numbers before cracking it
Yes. Unless, as actually happens, they use dictionaries of names and place names (and ordinary words, of course).
I find this genuinely intriguing
So they have a list of ALL the placenames in the world, right down to tiny hamlets (like this). That must be many millions of places. Hundreds of millions?
So they can run through all of those - plus every single other word or name - and then combine each with three numbers, and get each of these digits in the right order?
Does that not take years? And a ridiculous, unaffordable amount of computing power? It seems near-impossible to me
But I am happy to be schooled! My work is done for the day and I am heading down to the waterside for a vino
This is a reasonable breakdown of the speed it takes to hack a random password - remember known words will be caught quickly by a separate dictionary check.
Interesting - my system works 😁
I take words around a theme, split it in parts with a pattern of numbers and add a symbol. Minimum 10 letters.
Urgh,, contemplating buying a password manager software for some time, and this has put the cherry on the German biscuit. Will have to go and look up what Which recommend ...
PasswordSafe is excellent.
If you just want a long password, Diceware is also useful
"Ukraine rules out ceasefire deal that gives land to Russia"
Oh well no ceasefire then.
Alas, neither side have suffered enough casualties to bring a degree of pragmatism to the matter.
We still regularly get posts on pb.com exulting (ugh) about Russian deaths. It is in the nature of war that Ukrainian deaths will be comparable to Russian deaths.
We can look forward to a Vietnam War on Europe's doorstep at this rate.
At some point, it will dawn on Biden & Johnson that a massive war, a tragic & ongoing refugee crisis, economic sanctions that hurt everyones' economy, together with major famines in a number of poor countries, are not going to help the re-election chances of either the Democrats or the Tories.
But, we are not there yet ... there has not been enough killing to satisfy those who live over the hills and far away.
I expect it will end up ... maybe in 2 years time as the Democrats and the Tories grapple with their electoral prospects ... with Ukraine being forced to give up some land for guarantees of protection from the US/West.
Good post It's easy to be gung ho about war when we are not doing the fighting and tens of thousands of Ukrainians are dying How would we like it if Manchester was completely destroyed for example as Mariupol has been
The stupid North Vietnamese could have saved so much pain and suffering by surrendering, couldn’t they?
We solved the land-for-peace issue the other day, anyway. The Ukrainians keep their land. Any other country that wants a land-for-peace deal gives Russia some land.
Which bits of Wales should we give them?
It was not the North Vietnamese that were sustained by American weapons. It was the South Vietnamese.
Only a moron could come up with such a stupid analogy. Time for you to start some insane babbling about White Australia?
And yes, the South Vietnamese should have surrendered. They did after all in the end, once the US got bored.
North Vietnam was entirely sustained by Russian and Chinese weapons. There was a reason it was called a proxy war.
The point of my post was that America (& the West) will eventually get bored with the Ukraine, as they did with South Vietnam.
The war will start to hurt Biden and the Democrats. There will be painful economic consequences for ordinary Americans. Not much of this has so far been felt.
There will be a Presidential election. And then, there will be a desire to end it.
There will then be an electoral gain to be made by a politician who can say. "I want to end this War that is hurting ordinary Americans. We need to look after our own interests." In fact, Trump may well say it, and after 2 years of economic consequences of the War, it may well resonate.
Your point that Russian and China fought a proxy way on the side of North Vietnam is standard Malmesbury irrelevance -- because Russia and China are not democracies.
They don't face the same electoral constraints.
The war isn't going to last at this intensity for that long:
Ukrainian forces also captured a pair of Russian BMP-1 IFVs at the same time. It is notable that in recent times BMP-1 have appeared more and more, whilst during the earlier Russian campaigns they were uncommon.
Russia is steadily burning through its most modern equipment and replacing them with older, inferior models.
While Soviet vehicles weren’t designed for survivability, generally, I still have a hard time with the thought process that ended up with fuel tanks in the doors of the BMP-1.
They are the aux tanks to extend its range. Also, it's diesel fuelled so quite hard to ignite with small arms fire. In combat they should be empty. Of course, lots of things that should happen, don't.
One light cannon round has set them off, time and again.
Didn’t they test it? The comparison with the heartache over the motorcycle for the Bradley…
BMP-1? APCs weren't AIFVs at that time - just armoured boxes with a 0.5 Browning or a DShK 12.7mm on top. Not nearly so many light cannon around in those days. The BMP was quite unusual in having the 73mm low velocity cannon as I recall.
Mounting light cannon was becoming popular - because of the proliferation of 0.50 /12.7 proof vehicles.
The 73mm was more a light support weapon to back infantry attacks against positions, IIRC
At a previous job, the IT department challenged us to come up with the most unguessable, yet personal memorable password (not a bad competition, as it made us all think). I offered them "Trotsky1847". "A Russian revolutionary personally acquainted with my grandfather with the year of his 19th century birth."
I won, the prize being a chocolate Easter egg. Not sure Trotsky would have approved.
Where’s CorrectHorseBatteryStaple when you need him?
At a previous job, the IT department challenged us to come up with the most unguessable, yet personal memorable password (not a bad competition, as it made us all think). I offered them "Trotsky1847". "A Russian revolutionary personally acquainted with my grandfather with the year of his 19th century birth."
I won, the prize being a chocolate Easter egg. Not sure Trotsky would have approved.
A cursory knowledge of Welsh is very helpful in constructing passwords.
I use Madagascan placenames
Is anyone going to guess "Tsiroanomandidy39"??
Yes. Both examples on this thread would be found by a password-cracking program that works by combining names from dictionaries with numbers. You might do slightly better putting the number at the start.
OK, my go-to ultimate password is a tiny tiny village in the south of Madagascar, which is barely on Google maps, the name of which is very long and unpronounceable (I only remember it because I've been there) and is combined with three numbers
A computer would have to go through a practically infinite number of variations of letters and numbers before cracking it
Yes. Unless, as actually happens, they use dictionaries of names and place names (and ordinary words, of course).
I find this genuinely intriguing
So they have a list of ALL the placenames in the world, right down to tiny hamlets (like this). That must be many millions of places. Hundreds of millions?
So they can run through all of those - plus every single other word or name - and then combine each with three numbers, and get each of these digits in the right order?
Does that not take years? And a ridiculous, unaffordable amount of computing power? It seems near-impossible to me
But I am happy to be schooled! My work is done for the day and I am heading down to the waterside for a vino
This is a reasonable breakdown of the speed it takes to hack a random password - remember known words will be caught quickly by a separate dictionary check.
Interesting - my system works 😁
I take words around a theme, split it in parts with a pattern of numbers and add a symbol. Minimum 10 letters.
Easy to remember and hard to crack
Unless the wily hackers know your pattern and theme, which you have just posted on a well-known political betting site and which might easily be inferred from knowing a couple of examples.
Urgh,, contemplating buying a password manager software for some time, and this has put the cherry on the German biscuit. Will have to go and look up what Which recommend ...
PasswordSafe is excellent.
If you just want a long password, Diceware is also useful
These days, browsers can do most of the work but I'd not want to risk it on an easily-stolen laptop or phone.
I'm convinced the same people who lecture people on holding the correct Woke attitudes today would have been the most conservative and religious people in, say, Victorian times. Their beliefs change over the generations, but their hectoring and lecturing doesn't.
Do you consider it woke/lecturing/hectoring when the government and others tells businesses and people that they must work from the office?
Doesn't that depend upon how effective the output of those people who work from home is compared to when they didn't work from home ?
Now how much the government knows what the general effectiveness of working from home is they must by now have a pretty good idea about how government departments are affected by working from home.
If its negatively so then they have every right, indeed a responsibility, to restrict working from home.
What other organisations do is up to themselves to sort out.
Speaking personally I would do less work and do it less effectively if I worked from home.
How many others are like that ?
Don't know but its a three part division:
1) Those who work less effectively at home and are honest about it 2) Those who work less effectively at home but lie about it 3) Those who work as effectively at home
As others have said, there is a chunk who work more effectively from home too. But it's genuinely difficult to assess. What I will say is that if you have an employee who takes the opportunity of wfh to skive off and do rubbish work, then you have a problem which being in the office will not solve.
A second issue is that it appears that wfh has become an important recruitment factor for many. At a time of full employment, HR departments need to avoid rules which make it hard to recruit. That applies esecially to organisations outside major cities with good commuting options. If you're based in, say, Eastwood in Nottinghamshire AND you insist that people must come in to work, then you restrict applicants to people willing to live near Eastwood, which - no offence to Eastwood - is a rather small group. If you're willing to accept wfh, you have the entire world to recruit from.
I have noticed the "full, clean driving licence" has disappeared from quite a few person specs for jobs which didn't require any driving whatsoever.
The best hope the Conservatives now have is to ride out the storm and hope it has blown through by 2024.
It's probably too late now to save things by ditching the oaf at the top. The more he ramps up the culture wars and whips the Daily Mail into propaganda, the more hardened but smaller their voter base will become. We've seen this all before and it NEVER works.
Prepare for a landslide defeat.
the Horror that is Woke
It's really little wonder that you and I dislike each other!
I note that Australia has just booted out the right. I suspect, fairly strongly, that voters are turning left as usually happens during an economic downturn which the Right have failed to stem.
The cost of living crisis is going to do for the Conservatives but the likelihood, or inevitability according to the Telegraph, of recession will really screw them. Hence why I think a landslide defeat is on the cards.
Appealing to culture wars in a time of economic crisis is a well-worn tactic. It might have worked in Germany in the 1930s but recent history suggests it won't now.
The only caution I would make is that a RMT rail strike led by 3 Putin apologists paralysing the country would play into Boris's hands (or whoever is conservative leader) and at the same time Rishi comes to his senses and delivers a fair and sensible package of measures to address some of the worst effects of our current col crisis could well change the narrative
Yes I totally agree with you about this.
As a Left-leaner the thought of a national rail strike fills me with political dread, for the very reason you suggest.
It could play right into Boris' hands.
The problem is that the three RMT leaders are Putin apologists and easily identified as such therefore providing a gift to Boris and a nightmare for labour
Is this true or are you merely repeating some tripe you read in the Daily Mail?
The is the CPB, which seek a 'socialist revolution', and Gordon has been, and may well be still (that link is 2018), on the Exec.
Putin Apologist?
Well, after 3 months of Russia's blockade of Ukraine's grain exports, he's promoting the narrative that food exports are slow because of sanctions. Nothing to do with Putin's War, apparently.
Perhaps @Tres you could show that some of the other claims in the Mail piece linked are untrue.
Personally, I'm happy with the view that the President of the RMT is, politically, a bit of a nutter. And I'm quite pleased that we only have about 4 or perhaps 5 TUs under that kind of influence.
Well, it is true that Russian exports are off-limits because of sanctions. It is also true this chap is a communist. Whether there is evidence that strikes are threatened because the RMT is following orders from the Kremlin is another question.
1 - Who has claimed that the RMT are following orders from the Kremlin? The DM didn't, nor anyone else of whom I am aware.
"Ukraine rules out ceasefire deal that gives land to Russia"
Oh well no ceasefire then.
Alas, neither side have suffered enough casualties to bring a degree of pragmatism to the matter.
We still regularly get posts on pb.com exulting (ugh) about Russian deaths. It is in the nature of war that Ukrainian deaths will be comparable to Russian deaths.
We can look forward to a Vietnam War on Europe's doorstep at this rate.
At some point, it will dawn on Biden & Johnson that a massive war, a tragic & ongoing refugee crisis, economic sanctions that hurt everyones' economy, together with major famines in a number of poor countries, are not going to help the re-election chances of either the Democrats or the Tories.
But, we are not there yet ... there has not been enough killing to satisfy those who live over the hills and far away.
I expect it will end up ... maybe in 2 years time as the Democrats and the Tories grapple with their electoral prospects ... with Ukraine being forced to give up some land for guarantees of protection from the US/West.
It's a very non-cynical view to think that Biden and Johnson are not aware of the economical damage. They seem rather to be using it as convenient cover for bucks that would otherwise stop with them.
The best hope the Conservatives now have is to ride out the storm and hope it has blown through by 2024.
It's probably too late now to save things by ditching the oaf at the top. The more he ramps up the culture wars and whips the Daily Mail into propaganda, the more hardened but smaller their voter base will become. We've seen this all before and it NEVER works.
Prepare for a landslide defeat.
the Horror that is Woke
It's really little wonder that you and I dislike each other!
I note that Australia has just booted out the right. I suspect, fairly strongly, that voters are turning left as usually happens during an economic downturn which the Right have failed to stem.
The cost of living crisis is going to do for the Conservatives but the likelihood, or inevitability according to the Telegraph, of recession will really screw them. Hence why I think a landslide defeat is on the cards.
Appealing to culture wars in a time of economic crisis is a well-worn tactic. It might have worked in Germany in the 1930s but recent history suggests it won't now.
The only caution I would make is that a RMT rail strike led by 3 Putin apologists paralysing the country would play into Boris's hands (or whoever is conservative leader) and at the same time Rishi comes to his senses and delivers a fair and sensible package of measures to address some of the worst effects of our current col crisis could well change the narrative
Yes I totally agree with you about this.
As a Left-leaner the thought of a national rail strike fills me with political dread, for the very reason you suggest.
It could play right into Boris' hands.
The problem is that the three RMT leaders are Putin apologists and easily identified as such therefore providing a gift to Boris and a nightmare for labour
Is this true or are you merely repeating some tripe you read in the Daily Mail?
The is the CPB, which seek a 'socialist revolution', and Gordon has been, and may well be still (that link is 2018), on the Exec.
Putin Apologist?
Well, after 3 months of Russia's blockade of Ukraine's grain exports, he's promoting the narrative that food exports are slow because of sanctions. Nothing to do with Putin's War, apparently.
Perhaps @Tres you could show that some of the other claims in the Mail piece linked are untrue.
Personally, I'm happy with the view that the President of the RMT is, politically, a bit of a nutter. And I'm quite pleased that we only have about 4 or perhaps 5 TUs under that kind of influence.
Well, it is true that Russian exports are off-limits because of sanctions. It is also true this chap is a communist. Whether there is evidence that strikes are threatened because the RMT is following orders from the Kremlin is another question.
1 - Who has claimed that the RMT are following orders from the Kremlin? The DM didn't, nor anyone else of whom I am aware.
The best hope the Conservatives now have is to ride out the storm and hope it has blown through by 2024.
It's probably too late now to save things by ditching the oaf at the top. The more he ramps up the culture wars and whips the Daily Mail into propaganda, the more hardened but smaller their voter base will become. We've seen this all before and it NEVER works.
Prepare for a landslide defeat.
the Horror that is Woke
It's really little wonder that you and I dislike each other!
I note that Australia has just booted out the right. I suspect, fairly strongly, that voters are turning left as usually happens during an economic downturn which the Right have failed to stem.
The cost of living crisis is going to do for the Conservatives but the likelihood, or inevitability according to the Telegraph, of recession will really screw them. Hence why I think a landslide defeat is on the cards.
Appealing to culture wars in a time of economic crisis is a well-worn tactic. It might have worked in Germany in the 1930s but recent history suggests it won't now.
The only caution I would make is that a RMT rail strike led by 3 Putin apologists paralysing the country would play into Boris's hands (or whoever is conservative leader) and at the same time Rishi comes to his senses and delivers a fair and sensible package of measures to address some of the worst effects of our current col crisis could well change the narrative
Yes I totally agree with you about this.
As a Left-leaner the thought of a national rail strike fills me with political dread, for the very reason you suggest.
It could play right into Boris' hands.
The problem is that the three RMT leaders are Putin apologists and easily identified as such therefore providing a gift to Boris and a nightmare for labour
Is this true or are you merely repeating some tripe you read in the Daily Mail?
The is the CPB, which seek a 'socialist revolution', and Gordon has been, and may well be still (that link is 2018), on the Exec.
Putin Apologist?
Well, after 3 months of Russia's blockade of Ukraine's grain exports, he's promoting the narrative that food exports are slow because of sanctions. Nothing to do with Putin's War, apparently.
Perhaps @Tres you could show that some of the other claims in the Mail piece linked are untrue.
Personally, I'm happy with the view that the President of the RMT is, politically, a bit of a nutter. And I'm quite pleased that we only have about 4 or perhaps 5 TUs under that kind of influence.
I'd be happier if the Daily Mail spent half as much diligence piecing together the publicly available information about donations received by members of the cabinet from mysterious Russians. But no - much more important to write about obscure trade union activists.
At a previous job, the IT department challenged us to come up with the most unguessable, yet personal memorable password (not a bad competition, as it made us all think). I offered them "Trotsky1847". "A Russian revolutionary personally acquainted with my grandfather with the year of his 19th century birth."
I won, the prize being a chocolate Easter egg. Not sure Trotsky would have approved.
A cursory knowledge of Welsh is very helpful in constructing passwords.
I use Madagascan placenames
Is anyone going to guess "Tsiroanomandidy39"??
Yes. Both examples on this thread would be found by a password-cracking program that works by combining names from dictionaries with numbers. You might do slightly better putting the number at the start.
OK, my go-to ultimate password is a tiny tiny village in the south of Madagascar, which is barely on Google maps, the name of which is very long and unpronounceable (I only remember it because I've been there) and is combined with three numbers
A computer would have to go through a practically infinite number of variations of letters and numbers before cracking it
Yes. Unless, as actually happens, they use dictionaries of names and place names (and ordinary words, of course).
I find this genuinely intriguing
So they have a list of ALL the placenames in the world, right down to tiny hamlets (like this). That must be many millions of places. Hundreds of millions?
So they can run through all of those - plus every single other word or name - and then combine each with three numbers, and get each of these digits in the right order?
Does that not take years? And a ridiculous, unaffordable amount of computing power? It seems near-impossible to me
But I am happy to be schooled! My work is done for the day and I am heading down to the waterside for a vino
This is a reasonable breakdown of the speed it takes to hack a random password - remember known words will be caught quickly by a separate dictionary check.
Urgh,, contemplating buying a password manager software for some time, and this has put the cherry on the German biscuit. Will have to go and look up what Which recommend ...
We use 1password at work - it's pretty decent. UI can leave a little bit to be desired. Bitwarden is nice (we almost went with that instead of 1password, but other units at work were using 1password so we got a price discount). I use keepass locally for some stuff - mostly for historic reasons.
Urgh,, contemplating buying a password manager software for some time, and this has put the cherry on the German biscuit. Will have to go and look up what Which recommend ...
PasswordSafe is excellent.
If you just want a long password, Diceware is also useful
In the old days when I was gainfully employed, I tried to persuade a large customer organisation to use a password safe but the problems were that they needed to persuade their outsourced IT provider, which meant they needed to persuade their own senior management to pay said outsourced IT provider.
The best hope the Conservatives now have is to ride out the storm and hope it has blown through by 2024.
It's probably too late now to save things by ditching the oaf at the top. The more he ramps up the culture wars and whips the Daily Mail into propaganda, the more hardened but smaller their voter base will become. We've seen this all before and it NEVER works.
Prepare for a landslide defeat.
the Horror that is Woke
It's really little wonder that you and I dislike each other!
I note that Australia has just booted out the right. I suspect, fairly strongly, that voters are turning left as usually happens during an economic downturn which the Right have failed to stem.
The cost of living crisis is going to do for the Conservatives but the likelihood, or inevitability according to the Telegraph, of recession will really screw them. Hence why I think a landslide defeat is on the cards.
Appealing to culture wars in a time of economic crisis is a well-worn tactic. It might have worked in Germany in the 1930s but recent history suggests it won't now.
The only caution I would make is that a RMT rail strike led by 3 Putin apologists paralysing the country would play into Boris's hands (or whoever is conservative leader) and at the same time Rishi comes to his senses and delivers a fair and sensible package of measures to address some of the worst effects of our current col crisis could well change the narrative
Yes I totally agree with you about this.
As a Left-leaner the thought of a national rail strike fills me with political dread, for the very reason you suggest.
It could play right into Boris' hands.
The problem is that the three RMT leaders are Putin apologists and easily identified as such therefore providing a gift to Boris and a nightmare for labour
Is this true or are you merely repeating some tripe you read in the Daily Mail?
The is the CPB, which seek a 'socialist revolution', and Gordon has been, and may well be still (that link is 2018), on the Exec.
Putin Apologist?
Well, after 3 months of Russia's blockade of Ukraine's grain exports, he's promoting the narrative that food exports are slow because of sanctions. Nothing to do with Putin's War, apparently.
Perhaps @Tres you could show that some of the other claims in the Mail piece linked are untrue.
Personally, I'm happy with the view that the President of the RMT is, politically, a bit of a nutter. And I'm quite pleased that we only have about 4 or perhaps 5 TUs under that kind of influence.
Well, it is true that Russian exports are off-limits because of sanctions. It is also true this chap is a communist. Whether there is evidence that strikes are threatened because the RMT is following orders from the Kremlin is another question.
1 - Who has claimed that the RMT are following orders from the Kremlin? The DM didn't, nor anyone else of whom I am aware.
Russian agriculture is facing a crunch, due to farm machinery issues. How long that takes to manifest is another question.
Before the import of a lot of Western agricultural machinery, the USSR was unable to feed itself. Despite possessing the black soil regions. The way in which production soared within a few years of the fall of Communism is often ignored.
At a previous job, the IT department challenged us to come up with the most unguessable, yet personal memorable password (not a bad competition, as it made us all think). I offered them "Trotsky1847". "A Russian revolutionary personally acquainted with my grandfather with the year of his 19th century birth."
I won, the prize being a chocolate Easter egg. Not sure Trotsky would have approved.
A cursory knowledge of Welsh is very helpful in constructing passwords.
I use Madagascan placenames
Is anyone going to guess "Tsiroanomandidy39"??
Yes. Both examples on this thread would be found by a password-cracking program that works by combining names from dictionaries with numbers. You might do slightly better putting the number at the start.
OK, my go-to ultimate password is a tiny tiny village in the south of Madagascar, which is barely on Google maps, the name of which is very long and unpronounceable (I only remember it because I've been there) and is combined with three numbers
A computer would have to go through a practically infinite number of variations of letters and numbers before cracking it
Yes. Unless, as actually happens, they use dictionaries of names and place names (and ordinary words, of course).
I find this genuinely intriguing
So they have a list of ALL the placenames in the world, right down to tiny hamlets (like this). That must be many millions of places. Hundreds of millions?
So they can run through all of those - plus every single other word or name - and then combine each with three numbers, and get each of these digits in the right order?
Does that not take years? And a ridiculous, unaffordable amount of computing power? It seems near-impossible to me
But I am happy to be schooled! My work is done for the day and I am heading down to the waterside for a vino
Modern computing hardware is in fact ridiculously fast. Most of us are unaware of it, because computers don’t seem to have got quicker to the end user but, for parallelisable tasks like password hash cracking, computing power is both unfathomably fast & very cheap.
As a point of comparison, a current mid-range graphics card like an NVidia 3080 has a peak performance around 30 TeraFLOPS. That’s 30 trillion (or million millions) floating point operations per second. This card will set you back around £800 right now.
Twenty five years ago, the ASCI Red supercomputer was commissioned in the US. It was the first supercomputer to hit a TeraFLOP & it cost $46million.
That’s the real world difference that’s showing up here.
As others have said, there is a chunk who work more effectively from home too. But it's genuinely difficult to assess. What I will say is that if you have an employee who takes the opportunity of wfh to skive off and do rubbish work, then you have a problem which being in the office will not solve.
A second issue is that it appears that wfh has become an important recruitment factor for many. At a time of full employment, HR departments need to avoid rules which make it hard to recruit. That applies esecially to organisations outside major cities with good commuting options. If you're based in, say, Eastwood in Nottinghamshire AND you insist that people must come in to work, then you restrict applicants to people willing to live near Eastwood, which - no offence to Eastwood - is a rather small group. If you're willing to accept wfh, you have the entire world to recruit from.
Your first paragraph is wrong.
If I worked from home I would be on PB and YouTube much of the day.
And I suspect my work effectiveness would diminish.
I don't go on them at my workplace.
I respect all the people who have the self-discipline to genuinely ignore distractions at home but not everyone is like that.
As for your second paragraph - having the whole world to recruit from could have an effect on pay rates.
Working from home in the UK might be harder if you're competing against someone willing to work from home in India, at Indian pay rates.
Well, I don't know your working environment, but our approach is that we set reasonably demanding targets and are satisfied if they're delivered. I sometimes post on PB or have a look at the Guardian (in the office as well as at home), but I work at my desk over a brief lunch; I have colleagues who have coffee breaks or a longer lunch. As long as we all deliver, everyone's happy. Employers who require 8 hours of non-stop concentration are not that common, if only because most work isn't optimal like that.
I agree with your last point, and from the viewpoint of the human race it's a good thing - one reason that some global levelling up has happened. Western jobs are gradually focusing on the areas where being local makes a difference - physical work, local familiarity, direct interaction, specific types of expertise. The more transfarable types of work - mass assembly, routine programming, routine call centres - were exported or automated long ago.
“This is the password I need to get access to this” = “TitpIn2ga2T#”
Are you suggesting using the short version of that or the original phrase?
The former. Take an easy-to-remember phrase, and turn that into your password.
Phew. I know a lot of people who still think taking the first letter from a set of words is better than just 'my favourite line from a slightly obscure 90s indie track!'. I think it goes back to the days when you were often limited to 8-character passwords.
The best hope the Conservatives now have is to ride out the storm and hope it has blown through by 2024.
It's probably too late now to save things by ditching the oaf at the top. The more he ramps up the culture wars and whips the Daily Mail into propaganda, the more hardened but smaller their voter base will become. We've seen this all before and it NEVER works.
Prepare for a landslide defeat.
the Horror that is Woke
It's really little wonder that you and I dislike each other!
I note that Australia has just booted out the right. I suspect, fairly strongly, that voters are turning left as usually happens during an economic downturn which the Right have failed to stem.
The cost of living crisis is going to do for the Conservatives but the likelihood, or inevitability according to the Telegraph, of recession will really screw them. Hence why I think a landslide defeat is on the cards.
Appealing to culture wars in a time of economic crisis is a well-worn tactic. It might have worked in Germany in the 1930s but recent history suggests it won't now.
The only caution I would make is that a RMT rail strike led by 3 Putin apologists paralysing the country would play into Boris's hands (or whoever is conservative leader) and at the same time Rishi comes to his senses and delivers a fair and sensible package of measures to address some of the worst effects of our current col crisis could well change the narrative
Yes I totally agree with you about this.
As a Left-leaner the thought of a national rail strike fills me with political dread, for the very reason you suggest.
It could play right into Boris' hands.
The problem is that the three RMT leaders are Putin apologists and easily identified as such therefore providing a gift to Boris and a nightmare for labour
Is this true or are you merely repeating some tripe you read in the Daily Mail?
The is the CPB, which seek a 'socialist revolution', and Gordon has been, and may well be still (that link is 2018), on the Exec.
Putin Apologist?
Well, after 3 months of Russia's blockade of Ukraine's grain exports, he's promoting the narrative that food exports are slow because of sanctions. Nothing to do with Putin's War, apparently.
Perhaps @Tres you could show that some of the other claims in the Mail piece linked are untrue.
Personally, I'm happy with the view that the President of the RMT is, politically, a bit of a nutter. And I'm quite pleased that we only have about 4 or perhaps 5 TUs under that kind of influence.
I'd be happier if the Daily Mail spent half as much diligence piecing together the publicly available information about donations received by members of the cabinet from mysterious Russians. But no - much more important to write about obscure trade union activists.
While that may be true, if the information they have provided is accurate as to his nuttiness then the truth of that is not impacted by whether they could be better employed looking at other matters.
At a previous job, the IT department challenged us to come up with the most unguessable, yet personal memorable password (not a bad competition, as it made us all think). I offered them "Trotsky1847". "A Russian revolutionary personally acquainted with my grandfather with the year of his 19th century birth."
I won, the prize being a chocolate Easter egg. Not sure Trotsky would have approved.
A cursory knowledge of Welsh is very helpful in constructing passwords.
I use Madagascan placenames
Is anyone going to guess "Tsiroanomandidy39"??
Yes. Both examples on this thread would be found by a password-cracking program that works by combining names from dictionaries with numbers. You might do slightly better putting the number at the start.
OK, my go-to ultimate password is a tiny tiny village in the south of Madagascar, which is barely on Google maps, the name of which is very long and unpronounceable (I only remember it because I've been there) and is combined with three numbers
A computer would have to go through a practically infinite number of variations of letters and numbers before cracking it
Yes. Unless, as actually happens, they use dictionaries of names and place names (and ordinary words, of course).
I find this genuinely intriguing
So they have a list of ALL the placenames in the world, right down to tiny hamlets (like this). That must be many millions of places. Hundreds of millions?
So they can run through all of those - plus every single other word or name - and then combine each with three numbers, and get each of these digits in the right order?
Does that not take years? And a ridiculous, unaffordable amount of computing power? It seems near-impossible to me
But I am happy to be schooled! My work is done for the day and I am heading down to the waterside for a vino
Modern computing hardware is in fact ridiculously fast. Most of us are unaware of it, because computers don’t seem to have got quicker to the end user but, for parallelisable tasks like password hash cracking, computing power is both unfathomably fast & very cheap.
As a point of comparison, a current mid-range graphics card like an NVidia 3080 has a peak performance around 30 TeraFLOPS. That’s 30 trillion (or million millions) floating point operations per second. This card will set you back around £800 right now.
Twenty five years ago, the ASCI Red supercomputer was commissioned in the US. It was the first supercomputer to hit a TeraFLOP & it cost $46million.
That’s the real world difference that’s showing up here.
Your *phone* is probably an order of magnitude faster than a 1980s super computer
EDIT : a Cray XMP was 400 MFlops, iPhones are now in the TeraFlops range - so it is multiple orders magnitude
"Ukraine rules out ceasefire deal that gives land to Russia"
Oh well no ceasefire then.
Alas, neither side have suffered enough casualties to bring a degree of pragmatism to the matter.
We still regularly get posts on pb.com exulting (ugh) about Russian deaths. It is in the nature of war that Ukrainian deaths will be comparable to Russian deaths.
We can look forward to a Vietnam War on Europe's doorstep at this rate.
At some point, it will dawn on Biden & Johnson that a massive war, a tragic & ongoing refugee crisis, economic sanctions that hurt everyones' economy, together with major famines in a number of poor countries, are not going to help the re-election chances of either the Democrats or the Tories.
But, we are not there yet ... there has not been enough killing to satisfy those who live over the hills and far away.
I expect it will end up ... maybe in 2 years time as the Democrats and the Tories grapple with their electoral prospects ... with Ukraine being forced to give up some land for guarantees of protection from the US/West.
Then it's credit to Biden and Johnson that they're doing the right thing despite the fact it might hurt their electoral chances.
Can you answer me a simple question: if there was a ceasefire today, with the lines exactly as they are, how do you guarantee that Russia will not be back in two or three years to salami-slice Ukraine and its neighbours some more?
“This is the password I need to get access to this” = “TitpIn2ga2T#”
Are you suggesting using the short version of that or the original phrase?
The former. Take an easy-to-remember phrase, and turn that into your password.
Phew. I know a lot of people who still think taking the first letter from a set of words is better than just 'my favourite line from a slightly obscure 90s indie track!'. I think it goes back to the days when you were often limited to 8-character passwords.
Non-phew, I think, if you read his reply.
But these people are right anyway, given that there are about 200 000 English words but an infinite number of sentences. And even if you apply limits to the possible sentences, "A 10-word sentence is then estimated to have two nouns, three verbs, one adverb, two pronouns, and one preposition. This means that the possible permutations of a 10-word sentence are over 4,741,000,000,000 sentences." Lorra OOMs there.
“This is the password I need to get access to this” = “TitpIn2ga2T#”
Are you suggesting using the short version of that or the original phrase?
The former. Take an easy-to-remember phrase, and turn that into your password.
Phew. I know a lot of people who still think taking the first letter from a set of words is better than just 'my favourite line from a slightly obscure 90s indie track!'. I think it goes back to the days when you were often limited to 8-character passwords.
Non-phew, I think, if you read his reply.
But these people are right anyway, given that there are about 200 000 English words but an infinite number of sentences. And even if you apply limits to the possible sentences, "A 10-word sentence is then estimated to have two nouns, three verbs, one adverb, two pronouns, and one preposition. This means that the possible permutations of a 10-word sentence are over 4,741,000,000,000 sentences." Lorra OOMs there.
Except...
Because you should not reuse passwords across different sites, you will need some sort of password manager to remember them all. And if you are using a password manager, even if just the one in your browser, you should have it generate a random password for you.
“This is the password I need to get access to this” = “TitpIn2ga2T#”
Are you suggesting using the short version of that or the original phrase?
The former. Take an easy-to-remember phrase, and turn that into your password.
Phew. I know a lot of people who still think taking the first letter from a set of words is better than just 'my favourite line from a slightly obscure 90s indie track!'. I think it goes back to the days when you were often limited to 8-character passwords.
Non-phew, I think, if you read his reply.
But these people are right anyway, given that there are about 200 000 English words but an infinite number of sentences. And even if you apply limits to the possible sentences, "A 10-word sentence is then estimated to have two nouns, three verbs, one adverb, two pronouns, and one preposition. This means that the possible permutations of a 10-word sentence are over 4,741,000,000,000 sentences." Lorra OOMs there.
Oh yeah - I just re-read it and had got the meaning backwards. Doh.
I don't see the Greens getting more than 4-5% nationally. I think Lab-Green switchers and Green-Lab switchers will catch each other out. I also doubt they will bother standing in a lot of Con-LD marginals in the south like in 2019.
The GPEW is a strange beast. I was surprised how poorly they did in London seatswise in the local elections under FPTP despite breakthroughs in Birmingham and the Northeast.
At the same time they also have growing strength in rural areas and have loads of seats in places like Bury St Edmunds which might actually now be their 2nd best target seat after Bristol West (they actually went backwards in IoW in 2019) .
I had to set up a new BT account the other day over the phone and was asked to set a new secret q&a and went for name of first pet.
When I went to log in online it asked me for my mother’s maiden name. I thought it was odd, but it is linked to my old account so I thought maybe it was my old secret question.
I put in her maiden name and it told me I was wrong. I now have to remember my mum is aka Denise Gumdrop.
Rogue PBers have just drained your entire account. Money now being put to better use, on Amazon!
The best hope the Conservatives now have is to ride out the storm and hope it has blown through by 2024.
It's probably too late now to save things by ditching the oaf at the top. The more he ramps up the culture wars and whips the Daily Mail into propaganda, the more hardened but smaller their voter base will become. We've seen this all before and it NEVER works.
Prepare for a landslide defeat.
the Horror that is Woke
It's really little wonder that you and I dislike each other!
I note that Australia has just booted out the right. I suspect, fairly strongly, that voters are turning left as usually happens during an economic downturn which the Right have failed to stem.
The cost of living crisis is going to do for the Conservatives but the likelihood, or inevitability according to the Telegraph, of recession will really screw them. Hence why I think a landslide defeat is on the cards.
Appealing to culture wars in a time of economic crisis is a well-worn tactic. It might have worked in Germany in the 1930s but recent history suggests it won't now.
The only caution I would make is that a RMT rail strike led by 3 Putin apologists paralysing the country would play into Boris's hands (or whoever is conservative leader) and at the same time Rishi comes to his senses and delivers a fair and sensible package of measures to address some of the worst effects of our current col crisis could well change the narrative
Yes I totally agree with you about this.
As a Left-leaner the thought of a national rail strike fills me with political dread, for the very reason you suggest.
It could play right into Boris' hands.
The problem is that the three RMT leaders are Putin apologists and easily identified as such therefore providing a gift to Boris and a nightmare for labour
Is this true or are you merely repeating some tripe you read in the Daily Mail?
The is the CPB, which seek a 'socialist revolution', and Gordon has been, and may well be still (that link is 2018), on the Exec.
Putin Apologist?
Well, after 3 months of Russia's blockade of Ukraine's grain exports, he's promoting the narrative that food exports are slow because of sanctions. Nothing to do with Putin's War, apparently.
Perhaps @Tres you could show that some of the other claims in the Mail piece linked are untrue.
Personally, I'm happy with the view that the President of the RMT is, politically, a bit of a nutter. And I'm quite pleased that we only have about 4 or perhaps 5 TUs under that kind of influence.
I'd be happier if the Daily Mail spent half as much diligence piecing together the publicly available information about donations received by members of the cabinet from mysterious Russians. But no - much more important to write about obscure trade union activists.
While that may be true, if the information they have provided is accurate as to his nuttiness then the truth of that is not impacted by whether they could be better employed looking at other matters.
Idly curious, I've just googled the CPB website, to see what they actually think about Putin. Essentially they appear to dislike both Putin and NATO, but they do disapprove of the invasion ("huge and lasting impact of the Russian offensive on hundreds of thousands of women and children fleeing Ukraine"), which is not the impression that the Mail gave.
The best hope the Conservatives now have is to ride out the storm and hope it has blown through by 2024.
It's probably too late now to save things by ditching the oaf at the top. The more he ramps up the culture wars and whips the Daily Mail into propaganda, the more hardened but smaller their voter base will become. We've seen this all before and it NEVER works.
Prepare for a landslide defeat.
the Horror that is Woke
It's really little wonder that you and I dislike each other!
I note that Australia has just booted out the right. I suspect, fairly strongly, that voters are turning left as usually happens during an economic downturn which the Right have failed to stem.
The cost of living crisis is going to do for the Conservatives but the likelihood, or inevitability according to the Telegraph, of recession will really screw them. Hence why I think a landslide defeat is on the cards.
Appealing to culture wars in a time of economic crisis is a well-worn tactic. It might have worked in Germany in the 1930s but recent history suggests it won't now.
The only caution I would make is that a RMT rail strike led by 3 Putin apologists paralysing the country would play into Boris's hands (or whoever is conservative leader) and at the same time Rishi comes to his senses and delivers a fair and sensible package of measures to address some of the worst effects of our current col crisis could well change the narrative
Yes I totally agree with you about this.
As a Left-leaner the thought of a national rail strike fills me with political dread, for the very reason you suggest.
It could play right into Boris' hands.
The problem is that the three RMT leaders are Putin apologists and easily identified as such therefore providing a gift to Boris and a nightmare for labour
Is this true or are you merely repeating some tripe you read in the Daily Mail?
The is the CPB, which seek a 'socialist revolution', and Gordon has been, and may well be still (that link is 2018), on the Exec.
Putin Apologist?
Well, after 3 months of Russia's blockade of Ukraine's grain exports, he's promoting the narrative that food exports are slow because of sanctions. Nothing to do with Putin's War, apparently.
Perhaps @Tres you could show that some of the other claims in the Mail piece linked are untrue.
Personally, I'm happy with the view that the President of the RMT is, politically, a bit of a nutter. And I'm quite pleased that we only have about 4 or perhaps 5 TUs under that kind of influence.
I'd be happier if the Daily Mail spent half as much diligence piecing together the publicly available information about donations received by members of the cabinet from mysterious Russians. But no - much more important to write about obscure trade union activists.
While that may be true, if the information they have provided is accurate as to his nuttiness then the truth of that is not impacted by whether they could be better employed looking at other matters.
Idly curious, I've just googled the CPB website, to see what they actually think about Putin. Essentially they appear to dislike both Putin and NATO, but they do disapprove of the invasion ("huge and lasting impact of the Russian offensive on hundreds of thousands of women and children fleeing Ukraine"), which is not the impression that the Mail gave.
I've yet to see a left-wing party that actually supports Putin, though I suppose they may exist.
In the RMT's case, their deputy leader Eddie Dempsey travelled to eastern Ukraine to visit the separatists in 2015.
I daresay you could try to soft-soap that into not supporting Russia or Putin, but I do think you'd need to twist your brain to do so. And now the RMT are striking...
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A second issue is that it appears that wfh has become an important recruitment factor for many. At a time of full employment, HR departments need to avoid rules which make it hard to recruit. That applies esecially to organisations outside major cities with good commuting options. If you're based in, say, Eastwood in Nottinghamshire AND you insist that people must come in to work, then you restrict applicants to people willing to live near Eastwood, which - no offence to Eastwood - is a rather small group. If you're willing to accept wfh, you have the entire world to recruit from.
I'm more fresher and work get more out of me, because I can work later in to the evenings when something comes up, as I'm not struggling for reception on the train.
As I noted the other day, WFH has also allowed me to recruit from a wider talent pool.
In the last month I've hired somebody based in Birmingham who we wouldn't have been able to recruit if we didn't offer 80% WFH option.
My employer did extensive WFH analysis and it is something that had improved productivity and retention.
I'm in the office two days a week and hybrid working is great.
FWIW - The last three months have been the most stressful for me at work because of my dealings with OFSI but WFH made it palatable.
But I've also seen the first goldfinch of the year, which is great.
But yes, it would have been much harder for the Viet Cong to carry on the fight, certainly for such a long time, without Russian support.
Although that didn't stop the Vietnamese defeating China by themselves (how seriously China took the war is another question).
Also workplace H&S. if you get a bad back, hunting over the laptop at the kitchen table, while working for EvilCorp, who is liable? If you trip over in “the home office”….
The Viet Cong were pretty much wiped out - the war was actually carried out by the North Vietnamese army.
In my own case, teaching is much harder and also much less effective when not in a classroom/lab. Marking and preparation I have always tried to get done before going home as well, though I know that is impossible for those poor souls who are not Physics teachers, I am also only twenty minutes from work: and that’s when I walk in, so commuting time is not really an issue. Indeed, by going home the long way I can get my daily 10,000 steps in.
If I worked from home I would be on PB and YouTube much of the day.
And I suspect my work effectiveness would diminish.
I don't go on them at my workplace.
I respect all the people who have the self-discipline to genuinely ignore distractions at home but not everyone is like that.
As for your second paragraph - having the whole world to recruit from could have an effect on pay rates.
Working from home in the UK might be harder if you're competing against someone willing to work from home in India, at Indian pay rates.
The war will start to hurt Biden and the Democrats. There will be painful economic consequences for ordinary Americans. Not much of this has so far been felt.
There will be a Presidential election. And then, there will be a desire to end it.
There will then be an electoral gain to be made by a politician who can say. "I want to end this War that is hurting ordinary Americans. We need to look after our own interests." In fact, Trump may well say it, and after 2 years of economic consequences of the War, it may well resonate.
Your point that Russian and China fought a proxy way on the side of North Vietnam is standard Malmesbury irrelevance -- because Russia and China are not democracies.
They don't face the same electoral constraints.
Ukrainian forces also captured a pair of Russian BMP-1 IFVs at the same time. It is notable that in recent times BMP-1 have appeared more and more, whilst during the earlier Russian campaigns they were uncommon.
https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1528317665097433088?cxt=HHwWgICywbW01rUqAAAA
Russia is steadily burning through its most modern equipment and replacing them with older, inferior models.
the Red Lionchurch. Though come to think of it, I suppose lots of boarding school teachers live literally alongside their charges.The situation is different now.
All OK and my numbers in but wife has to do separately for an even older loan repayment.
When I went to log in online it asked me for my mother’s maiden name. I thought it was odd, but it is linked to my old account so I thought maybe it was my old secret question.
I put in her maiden name and it told me I was wrong. I now have to remember my mum is aka Denise Gumdrop.
#PoliticallyExposedPerson
This is a reasonable breakdown of the speed it takes to hack a random password - remember known words will be caught quickly by a separate dictionary check.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10816883/RMT-president-threatening-bring-Britains-railways-standstill-Putin-apologist.html
"Senior Member of the Communist Party"
From the Communist Party Facebook:
Alex Gordon, train driver, Union activist, and member of Communist Party executive
https://m.facebook.com/CPBritain/posts/alex-gordon-train-driver-union-activist-and-member-of-communist-party-executive-/2204499306307406/
The is the CPB, which seek a 'socialist revolution', and Gordon has been, and may well be still (that link is 2018), on the Exec.
Putin Apologist?
Well, after 3 months of Russia's blockade of Ukraine's grain exports, he's promoting the narrative that food exports are slow because of sanctions. Nothing to do with Putin's War, apparently.
Perhaps @Tres you could show that some of the other claims in the Mail piece linked are untrue.
Personally, I'm happy with the view that the President of the RMT is, politically, a bit of a nutter. And I'm quite pleased that we only have about 4 or perhaps 5 TUs under that kind of influence.
Didn’t they test it? The comparison with the heartache over the motorcycle for the Bradley…
*quickly adds a couple of symbols to his ‘photo vault’ password*
We used to have kestrels, ospreys and the occasional red kite where I grew up. Loved lying in the grass lazily watching them float high above
I'm interested in commissioning some single-issue polling within just one city (of c. 150,000 inhabitants) at a reasonably low cost.
The obvious way to do this is to get a question in one of the omnibus surveys, but I'm not aware of any that will target a single city. YouGov have their CityBus product but they offer that as (say) "500 respondents (e.g. 100 respondents in 5 different cities".
Are there any organisations that can offer a single city poll?
The problem is that Ukrainian, not Russian exports have been blocked.
According to that super handy table, it would take a hacker 200,000 years to break it, which is fine
If a password database is stolen from a hacked site, then all of the passwords within it will be subjected to computerised cracking attempts back at Villainy HQ.
What is common these days, as @Malmesbury already mentioned, is simply trying frequently used passwords (recall the hacked voicemail scandals) and so-called credential stuffing where the baddies try your username (often email address) and password (stolen from one site) against other sites, which is why reusing passwords for different sites is a bad idea, however carefully crafted that shared password might be.
I take words around a theme, split it in parts with a pattern of numbers and add a symbol. Minimum 10 letters.
Easy to remember and hard to crack
If you just want a long password, Diceware is also useful
The 73mm was more a light support weapon to back infantry attacks against positions, IIRC
“This is the password I need to get access to this”
=
“TitpIn2ga2T#”
2 - And Russia was/is still exporting grain, according to Bloomberg 14 April:
https://farmpolicynews.illinois.edu/2022/04/russian-grain-exports-persist-as-rail-delays-impact-u-s-fertilizer-supply
Not to Western Europe, for obvious reasons.
Anyhoo - things to do.
Before the import of a lot of Western agricultural machinery, the USSR was unable to feed itself. Despite possessing the black soil regions. The way in which production soared within a few years of the fall of Communism is often ignored.
As a point of comparison, a current mid-range graphics card like an NVidia 3080 has a peak performance around 30 TeraFLOPS. That’s 30 trillion (or million millions) floating point operations per second. This card will set you back around £800 right now.
Twenty five years ago, the ASCI Red supercomputer was commissioned in the US. It was the first supercomputer to hit a TeraFLOP & it cost $46million.
That’s the real world difference that’s showing up here.
I agree with your last point, and from the viewpoint of the human race it's a good thing - one reason that some global levelling up has happened. Western jobs are gradually focusing on the areas where being local makes a difference - physical work, local familiarity, direct interaction, specific types of expertise. The more transfarable types of work - mass assembly, routine programming, routine call centres - were exported or automated long ago.
https://xkcd.com/936/
EDIT : a Cray XMP was 400 MFlops,
iPhones are now in the TeraFlops range - so it is multiple orders magnitude
Can you answer me a simple question: if there was a ceasefire today, with the lines exactly as they are, how do you guarantee that Russia will not be back in two or three years to salami-slice Ukraine and its neighbours some more?
Just as they did after 2014.
But these people are right anyway, given that there are about 200 000 English words but an infinite number of sentences. And even if you apply limits to the possible sentences, "A 10-word sentence is then estimated to have two nouns, three verbs, one adverb, two pronouns, and one preposition. This means that the possible permutations of a 10-word sentence are over 4,741,000,000,000 sentences." Lorra OOMs there.
Because you should not reuse passwords across different sites, you will need some sort of password manager to remember them all. And if you are using a password manager, even if just the one in your browser, you should have it generate a random password for you.
NEW THREAD
Please don't make light of this. There is nothing remotely funny about rape.
The GPEW is a strange beast. I was surprised how poorly they did in London seatswise in the local elections under FPTP despite breakthroughs in Birmingham and the Northeast.
At the same time they also have growing strength in rural areas and have loads of seats in places like Bury St Edmunds which might actually now be their 2nd best target seat after Bristol West (they actually went backwards in IoW in 2019) .
https://www.communistparty.org.uk/28626-2/
I've yet to see a left-wing party that actually supports Putin, though I suppose they may exist.
I daresay you could try to soft-soap that into not supporting Russia or Putin, but I do think you'd need to twist your brain to do so. And now the RMT are striking...