One senior figure on the '22 tells me that they now favour a delegation going to tell Boris Johnson that it is over, and that they'll change the rules if he won't resign https://twitter.com/JGForsyth/status/1544617641142370304
If he calls a GE, he's out, certainly of No. 10, possibly of Parliament!
If he hangs on, he can hope the '22 Cttee don't change the rules and maybe something comes along. Starmer gets an FPN. Something happens in Ukraine. This is his only route, hanging on, and this is what he is doing.
One senior figure on the '22 tells me that they now favour a delegation going to tell Boris Johnson that it is over, and that they'll change the rules if he won't resign https://twitter.com/JGForsyth/status/1544617641142370304
5 Live seems to have abandoned it's MP's panel. I sincerely hope that isn't because the government has refused, or couldn't find, anyone to go on it. That would be wrong.
looking at the list of resignations and the list of MPs already against Johnson, does he even have enough support to fill a payroll with all the junior positions etc?
Even considering the ambition of MPs to get ministerial positions, I think the answer is no, isn't it?
The slippery eel Zahawi is on Radio 4 in five minutes. That should be a keeper!
'The good news is I got a promotion...."
Is he going to confirm that he supports his government's policy which would have had him deported to Rwanda for life?
NR lined himself up for that question but pulled out
'Mr Zahawi. I know you can remember your father being torn away from you by the secret police in Iran and you arriving in this country not speaking a word of English and now you're Chancellor of the Exchequer. Can you believe it?'
'I have to pinch myself. Never a day goes by when I don't think how lucky I am.....'
On another but even more important topic, these two threads are interesting on how the longer-range precision artillery that Ukraine is now receiving from the West is going to allow them to badly disrupt Russian logistics:
looking at the list of resignations and the list of MPs already against Johnson, does he even have enough support to fill a payroll with all the junior positions etc?
Even considering the ambition of MPs to get ministerial positions, I think the answer is no, isn't it?
One senior figure on the '22 tells me that they now favour a delegation going to tell Boris Johnson that it is over, and that they'll change the rules if he won't resign https://twitter.com/JGForsyth/status/1544617641142370304
It’s weird how DALL-E hasn’t *quite* mastered eyes and noses - yet. I suspect this is a lagging glitch from its former constraint - don’t use faces
Hair colours totally wrong for Betty and Barny. Fail.
The actual Flintstone's content there is very low. Outfits, jewellery, hairstyles on the ladies are totally different. I'm not 'knocking' the technology; it's interesting. But I think I'm missing something. It just runs through hundreds of thousands of stock images on a database and finesses them into a single image using the command - is that right? That's impressive but not an unexpected or radical development surely?
It does seem to be a key element of how it works. Where they talk about 'training data', that's all the world's art and photography libraries (one assumes) that has been run through it. Don't get me wrong; it's very clever, just not imo extremely radical.
Dalle-2 can be recreated by any moderately capable programmer, if given massive amounts of free computer time.
1. Take existing image recognition library 2. Lazily parse input text ("oil painting", "Homer Simpson" etc) 3. Start with 100 randomly generated images 4. Score those 100 against your input text (of course you'll get 0.0000001 for "oil painting" in even your best random image). Choose the best 10. 5. Randomly transform each of those 10 in 10 different ways so they don't move too much between images. 6. Keep scoring and keep randomly changing the images until you get to 0.73 on "oil painting" and 0.82 on "Homer Simpson"
I'm tempted to do it myself, just to prove there is no magic involved.
This Kettle piece poses a couple of interesting questions - the first of which I was familiar with but the second was one I hadn't thought of before. First, what kind of Conservatism will follow Johnson? The answer seems to be low tax low regulation Thatcherism mk2, but one wonders whether that matches the public mood or the situation the country is in. And second, what will Johnson do next in political terms? Ousted leaders usually give their successor some time to build their administration before lobbing in grenades from the sidelines, but I don't see that kind of graciousness or humility in Johnson's character. He could remain a real headache for the party after he is kicked out.
No, I think most of us thought it was a bit out of place today tbh.
No, I liked the header and if you think about the most recent holes Boris has been in, the header is to the point. But it is tiresome if people just write "nice header" so I don't. Perhaps there should be a like button on headers as there is on btl posts. @rcs1000 is this possible?
"Off topic" complaints rather miss the point of the header, which is surely that the problems in the political system run much deeper than just Boris.
Yes - that is exactly my point. And to puncture some of the Labour self-righteousness. Plus - above all - to remember the poor staff who face the abuse and harassment and who get forgotten.
I try to avoid writing stuff that others - OGH and TSE - are going to write and bring my own particular perspective, arising from my own professional experiences and interests. Off beam sometimes I realise. But there you go. Life would be dull if we all thought and wrote in the same way.
I am sure I will get an apology for all the people that said I was wrong. If we'd taken their advice Moon would still be in trouble.
And if she replied to her email from Rob she would be back posting. Give it a rest.
Didn't know you'd joined the moderation team Tubbs
No more than you, and I have no desire to. You seem to fighting a battle for someone who wasn't even trying to engage with the moderating team. I think sometimes you just want a fight.
One senior figure on the '22 tells me that they now favour a delegation going to tell Boris Johnson that it is over, and that they'll change the rules if he won't resign https://twitter.com/JGForsyth/status/1544617641142370304
Anyway, the disastrous Conservative car crash continues.
They have to stop this and fast. The more this goes on, the more likely a Labour victory becomes and the longer the wilderness years will be. Remember this.
When the Tories replaced Thatcher in 1990 they may have scraped home in 1992 but lost by their worst landslide defeat in 1997 and were in the wilderness for 13 years.
Had they kept Thatcher even had they lost in 1992 it would not have been assad as their 1997 defeat and they may even have beaten PM Kinnock in 1997
Had they kept Thatcher, they would have lost badly in 1992. The electorate don't often vote a government out after one term, so Labour would have been well-positioned in 1997. I can't see what particular factors would have gotten voters flocking back to the Tories in 1997 after a 1992 defeat.
A Kinnock government would have been far more high tax and spend than the later Blair government was
Support rapidly draining from Boris Johnson. Many of these MPs and ministers won’t be known to voters but they represent all wings of the Conservative Party. Several previously backed him. No Prime Minister can fight this level of opposition in their own party for long. #Johnson https://twitter.com/BBCVickiYoung/status/1544615727218540544
Really - I suspect Bozo thinks he has 11 months to turn things round....
He has 1 hour and 20 minutes to turn things round.
I find it hard to believe he won't resign before PMQs. Even with just over an hour to go.
You were brave to make that prediction yesterday. I have no problem with such brave predictions, especially having done a few myself like "he's toast" that a few posters were mocking me for only last week.
He won't go before PMQs. We get to watch 30+ minutes of hilarity. Then supposedly Javid (and Sunak???) are making resignation statements. Then later the liaison committee. He will still be PM at tea time. Beyond that? Who knows. Its soon, but not as soon as you predicted. Sadly.
It’s weird how DALL-E hasn’t *quite* mastered eyes and noses - yet. I suspect this is a lagging glitch from its former constraint - don’t use faces
Hair colours totally wrong for Betty and Barny. Fail.
The actual Flintstone's content there is very low. Outfits, jewellery, hairstyles on the ladies are totally different. I'm not 'knocking' the technology; it's interesting. But I think I'm missing something. It just runs through hundreds of thousands of stock images on a database and finesses them into a single image using the command - is that right? That's impressive but not an unexpected or radical development surely?
It does seem to be a key element of how it works. Where they talk about 'training data', that's all the world's art and photography libraries (one assumes) that has been run through it. Don't get me wrong; it's very clever, just not imo extremely radical.
Dalle-2 can be recreated by any moderately capable programmer, if given massive amounts of free computer time.
1. Take existing image recognition library 2. Lazily parse input text ("oil painting", "Homer Simpson" etc) 3. Start with 100 randomly generated images 4. Score those 100 against your input text (of course you'll get 0.0000001 for "oil painting" in even your best random image). Choose the best 10. 5. Randomly transform each of those 10 in 10 different ways so they don't move too much between images. 6. Keep scoring and keep randomly changing the images until you get to 0.73 on "oil painting" and 0.82 on "Homer Simpson"
I'm tempted to do it myself, just to prove there is no magic involved.
This is one of the reasons people are impressed. It’s actually quite simple. It just has a huge training data set (650 million images)
The absence of magic does not mean it is not magical. Any technology sufficiently advanced, etc
And consider human consciousness. It arises in a brain that is 90% water that evolved from acids in a soup. Not magic. But magical
What, in the absence of Boris, is a Boris loyalist? What is the political philosophy known as Borisism that a future PM might be loyal to?
Eating cake and having cake seems to be the only Johnson philosophy. So I guess a loyalist ticket would continue the tradition of making sweeping, grandiose promises with no back up and then lying about the outcomes.
Very tetchy on here today. I guess it's just a quiet news day with nothing much to talk about in the world of UK politics. But still, chill out people! We are all part of the rich PB tapestry.
One senior figure on the '22 tells me that they now favour a delegation going to tell Boris Johnson that it is over, and that they'll change the rules if he won't resign https://twitter.com/JGForsyth/status/1544617641142370304
Which is exactly how I said this would end. Last week. Brady gives Boris 48 hours to get his affairs in order. And if there isn't a lectern* in Downing Street at the end of those 48 hours...
(*I actually said podium in my mothing-session sleep-deprived state....)
Support rapidly draining from Boris Johnson. Many of these MPs and ministers won’t be known to voters but they represent all wings of the Conservative Party. Several previously backed him. No Prime Minister can fight this level of opposition in their own party for long. #Johnson https://twitter.com/BBCVickiYoung/status/1544615727218540544
Really - I suspect Bozo thinks he has 11 months to turn things round....
He has 1 hour and 20 minutes to turn things round.
I find it hard to believe he won't resign before PMQs. Even with just over an hour to go.
It's Bozo - the only thing that matters is staying in power....
Many of us - heck most of us, would have walked away late last year with claiming Brexit is done, Covid is finished I'm not 100% due to Covid and left for a highly profitable retirement reputation intact.
The fact Bozo didn't see this coming and decided to remain in power tells you an awful lot about both how blind he is and how far he will go to cling onto power.
Anyway, the disastrous Conservative car crash continues.
They have to stop this and fast. The more this goes on, the more likely a Labour victory becomes and the longer the wilderness years will be. Remember this.
When the Tories replaced Thatcher in 1990 they may have scraped home in 1992 but lost by their worst landslide defeat in 1997 and were in the wilderness for 13 years.
Had they kept Thatcher even had they lost in 1992 it would not have been assad as their 1997 defeat and they may even have beaten PM Kinnock in 1997
Had they kept Thatcher, they would have lost badly in 1992. The electorate don't often vote a government out after one term, so Labour would have been well-positioned in 1997. I can't see what particular factors would have gotten voters flocking back to the Tories in 1997 after a 1992 defeat.
A Kinnock government would have been far more high tax and spend than the later Blair government was
And that would probably have been popular with voters.
I am sure I will get an apology for all the people that said I was wrong. If we'd taken their advice Moon would still be in trouble.
And if she replied to her email from Rob she would be back posting. Give it a rest.
Didn't know you'd joined the moderation team Tubbs
No more than you, and I have no desire to. You seem to fighting a battle for someone who wasn't even trying to engage with the moderating team. I think sometimes you just want a fight.
That's not what Moon said to me, you've only heard it from the moderation team's POV.
I stand up for what I think is right - and I have done that here.
I don't like fighting anyone and would never look for one. If that's how you feel then I will end our relationship here.
If Boris is removed by MPs not the electorate he will also stay in the Commons waiting for his return.
If the Tories lose the next general election, even if more narrowly than maybe now Boris will say had he been leader he would have won it.
If a Labour government then becomes unpopular as inflation continues to surge then Boris will plot his return, just as Trump is plotting his revenge and return now the Biden administration is unpopular having been denied a second term in 2020
Which is exactly how I said this would end. Last week. Brady gives Boris 48 hours to get his affairs in order. And if there isn't a lectern* in Downing Street at the end of those 48 hours...
(*I actually said podium in my mothing-session sleep-deprived state....)
And BoZo tells Brady to Fck off and take his letters with him
It’s weird how DALL-E hasn’t *quite* mastered eyes and noses - yet. I suspect this is a lagging glitch from its former constraint - don’t use faces
Hair colours totally wrong for Betty and Barny. Fail.
The actual Flintstone's content there is very low. Outfits, jewellery, hairstyles on the ladies are totally different. I'm not 'knocking' the technology; it's interesting. But I think I'm missing something. It just runs through hundreds of thousands of stock images on a database and finesses them into a single image using the command - is that right? That's impressive but not an unexpected or radical development surely?
It does seem to be a key element of how it works. Where they talk about 'training data', that's all the world's art and photography libraries (one assumes) that has been run through it. Don't get me wrong; it's very clever, just not imo extremely radical.
Dalle-2 can be recreated by any moderately capable programmer, if given massive amounts of free computer time.
1. Take existing image recognition library 2. Lazily parse input text ("oil painting", "Homer Simpson" etc) 3. Start with 100 randomly generated images 4. Score those 100 against your input text (of course you'll get 0.0000001 for "oil painting" in even your best random image). Choose the best 10. 5. Randomly transform each of those 10 in 10 different ways so they don't move too much between images. 6. Keep scoring and keep randomly changing the images until you get to 0.73 on "oil painting" and 0.82 on "Homer Simpson"
I'm tempted to do it myself, just to prove there is no magic involved.
I believe you. The ability to create composite images with the appropriate light/perspective etc. is impressive. But the 'creativity' less so imo. The sources of 'inspiration' are usually quite recognisable.
On another but even more important topic, these two threads are interesting on how the longer-range precision artillery that Ukraine is now receiving from the West is going to allow them to badly disrupt Russian logistics:
Anyway, the disastrous Conservative car crash continues.
They have to stop this and fast. The more this goes on, the more likely a Labour victory becomes and the longer the wilderness years will be. Remember this.
When the Tories replaced Thatcher in 1990 they may have scraped home in 1992 but lost by their worst landslide defeat in 1997 and were in the wilderness for 13 years.
Had they kept Thatcher even had they lost in 1992 it would not have been assad as their 1997 defeat and they may even have beaten PM Kinnock in 1997
Had they kept Thatcher, they would have lost badly in 1992. The electorate don't often vote a government out after one term, so Labour would have been well-positioned in 1997. I can't see what particular factors would have gotten voters flocking back to the Tories in 1997 after a 1992 defeat.
A Kinnock government would have been far more high tax and spend than the later Blair government was
But not as high tax and spend as the current conservative government
If Boris is removed by MPs not the electorate he will also stay in the Commons waiting for his return.
If the Tories lose the next general election, even if more narrowly than maybe now Boris will say had he been leader he would have won it.
If a Labour government then becomes unpopular as inflation continues to surge then Boris will plot his return, just as Trump is plotting his revenge and return now the Biden administration is unpopular having been denied a second term in 2020
Boris will immediately call a by-election and go off to collect his millions.
On another but even more important topic, these two threads are interesting on how the longer-range precision artillery that Ukraine is now receiving from the West is going to allow them to badly disrupt Russian logistics:
My concern is that Ukraine aren't getting that many and can't these be easily knocked out. Talking from ignorance so would love to be corrected.
I'm no expert, obv, but I'd have thought they don't need very many to make a big difference if they concentrate on targeting ammunition depots and unloading points, which is what they seem to be doing.
Also, these weapons aren't very easy to knock out because they are highly mobile: you punch in the coordinates of the target, fire, and leg it before the enemy has had time to locate you and fire back.
If Boris is removed by MPs not the electorate he will also stay in the Commons waiting for his return.
If the Tories lose the next general election, even if more narrowly than maybe now Boris will say had he been leader he would have won it.
If a Labour government then becomes unpopular as inflation continues to surge then Boris will plot his return, just as Trump is plotting his revenge and return now the Biden administration is unpopular having been denied a second term in 2020
You're as delusional as Trumpists.
Boris will take the Chiltern Hundreds the second a new PM has kissed the Queen's Hand.
Support rapidly draining from Boris Johnson. Many of these MPs and ministers won’t be known to voters but they represent all wings of the Conservative Party. Several previously backed him. No Prime Minister can fight this level of opposition in their own party for long. #Johnson https://twitter.com/BBCVickiYoung/status/1544615727218540544
Really - I suspect Bozo thinks he has 11 months to turn things round....
He has 1 hour and 20 minutes to turn things round.
I find it hard to believe he won't resign before PMQs. Even with just over an hour to go.
It's Bozo - the only thing that matters is staying in power....
Many of us - heck most of us, would have walked away late last year with claiming Brexit is done, Covid is finished I'm not 100% due to Covid and left for a highly profitable retirement reputation intact.
The fact Bozo didn't see this coming and decided to remain in power tells you an awful lot about both how blind he is and how far he will go to cling onto power.
Will be interesting to observe his tone. My expectation: 1. He starts a little contrite. Mistakes made, moving on, will deliver. 2. What's left of the whips operation hands out fawning question to what's left of the lickspittle group of backbenchers. Johnson responds with boosterist enthusiasm 3. By the back end of PMQs he is roaring at the opposition benches about how marvellous he is and how dangerous Starmer would be 4. He then fucks off as Javid stands to give his resignation statement. To derision from his own benches
The liaison committee. Which Tories are on it, and any chance some of them could withdraw their support for him during the session to his face?
Anyway, the disastrous Conservative car crash continues.
They have to stop this and fast. The more this goes on, the more likely a Labour victory becomes and the longer the wilderness years will be. Remember this.
When the Tories replaced Thatcher in 1990 they may have scraped home in 1992 but lost by their worst landslide defeat in 1997 and were in the wilderness for 13 years.
Had they kept Thatcher even had they lost in 1992 it would not have been assad as their 1997 defeat and they may even have beaten PM Kinnock in 1997
Had they kept Thatcher, they would have lost badly in 1992. The electorate don't often vote a government out after one term, so Labour would have been well-positioned in 1997. I can't see what particular factors would have gotten voters flocking back to the Tories in 1997 after a 1992 defeat.
A Kinnock government would have been far more high tax and spend than the later Blair government was
But not as high tax and spend as the current conservative government
It is almost as if tax and spend policies should be based on the pragmatics of the country and economy at the time, rather than blindly following a set textbook ideologies.......
Incidentally, I really dislike the personal poster on poster abuse. I welcome other female voices on here. But if some posters are not too taste it is easy enough to scroll past rather than have fights. Endless name-calling is very tedious.
I would also say that when I have had personal troubles some posters have been exceedingly helpful and kind. Plus the chat on here has helped in the last few years when socialising in person has been difficult. I suspect that this has helped a lot of us.
It'd be nice to recognise this rather than call people bitter or old or lonely. They may well be but why would we not want to be kind to them when it costs us so little other than tapping a few words out?
It’s weird how DALL-E hasn’t *quite* mastered eyes and noses - yet. I suspect this is a lagging glitch from its former constraint - don’t use faces
Hair colours totally wrong for Betty and Barny. Fail.
The actual Flintstone's content there is very low. Outfits, jewellery, hairstyles on the ladies are totally different. I'm not 'knocking' the technology; it's interesting. But I think I'm missing something. It just runs through hundreds of thousands of stock images on a database and finesses them into a single image using the command - is that right? That's impressive but not an unexpected or radical development surely?
It does seem to be a key element of how it works. Where they talk about 'training data', that's all the world's art and photography libraries (one assumes) that has been run through it. Don't get me wrong; it's very clever, just not imo extremely radical.
Dalle-2 can be recreated by any moderately capable programmer, if given massive amounts of free computer time.
1. Take existing image recognition library 2. Lazily parse input text ("oil painting", "Homer Simpson" etc) 3. Start with 100 randomly generated images 4. Score those 100 against your input text (of course you'll get 0.0000001 for "oil painting" in even your best random image). Choose the best 10. 5. Randomly transform each of those 10 in 10 different ways so they don't move too much between images. 6. Keep scoring and keep randomly changing the images until you get to 0.73 on "oil painting" and 0.82 on "Homer Simpson"
I'm tempted to do it myself, just to prove there is no magic involved.
Yep - nothing new there at all Kevin Kelly covered it in Out of Control back in 1995 so it's been around since at least 1990 albeit randomly editing 10 pictures in 10 different ways would have taken a week back then.
Anyway, the disastrous Conservative car crash continues.
They have to stop this and fast. The more this goes on, the more likely a Labour victory becomes and the longer the wilderness years will be. Remember this.
When the Tories replaced Thatcher in 1990 they may have scraped home in 1992 but lost by their worst landslide defeat in 1997 and were in the wilderness for 13 years.
Had they kept Thatcher even had they lost in 1992 it would not have been assad as their 1997 defeat and they may even have beaten PM Kinnock in 1997
Had they kept Thatcher, they would have lost badly in 1992. The electorate don't often vote a government out after one term, so Labour would have been well-positioned in 1997. I can't see what particular factors would have gotten voters flocking back to the Tories in 1997 after a 1992 defeat.
A Kinnock government would have been far more high tax and spend than the later Blair government was
And that would probably have been popular with voters.
It was probably Andrew Neil at the Sunday Times who imported the American tax and spend meme. What it misses in translation is that in this country, public spending is generally quite popular. It got Boris elected.
TL;dr: (I think): the Russian military generally does not use western-style containerised or palletised logistics. This means instead of being loaded and unloaded, supplies are manhandled on and off lorries. This takes much longer, and creates much larger ammunition and equipment dumps. Which the longer-range Ukrainian artillery can hit.
And that new artillery has a range *greater* than a Russian truck's daily range for one trip. So if you want your ammunition dumps outside the range of Ukrainian artillery, trucks are very hard to use as they can make less than one journey a day. Which means the Russians will have to rely much more heavily on railways. And trains (especially sidings) are much easier to find and hit than trucks.
Support rapidly draining from Boris Johnson. Many of these MPs and ministers won’t be known to voters but they represent all wings of the Conservative Party. Several previously backed him. No Prime Minister can fight this level of opposition in their own party for long. #Johnson https://twitter.com/BBCVickiYoung/status/1544615727218540544
Really - I suspect Bozo thinks he has 11 months to turn things round....
He has 1 hour and 20 minutes to turn things round.
I find it hard to believe he won't resign before PMQs. Even with just over an hour to go.
It's Bozo - the only thing that matters is staying in power....
Many of us - heck most of us, would have walked away late last year with claiming Brexit is done, Covid is finished I'm not 100% due to Covid and left for a highly profitable retirement reputation intact.
The fact Bozo didn't see this coming and decided to remain in power tells you an awful lot about both how blind he is and how far he will go to cling onto power.
Will be interesting to observe his tone. My expectation: 1. He starts a little contrite. Mistakes made, moving on, will deliver. 2. What's left of the whips operation hands out fawning question to what's left of the lickspittle group of backbenchers. Johnson responds with boosterist enthusiasm 3. By the back end of PMQs he is roaring at the opposition benches about how marvellous he is and how dangerous Starmer would be 4. He then fucks off as Javid stands to give his resignation statement. To derision from his own benches
The liaison committee. Which Tories are on it, and any chance some of them could withdraw their support for him during the session to his face?
He's generally too late when it comes to being contrite, but he does being contrite well. (Maybe practice from years of experience with unhappy girlfriends and wives?) If he'd done his Pincher "I'm sorry" interview last Friday, he wouldn't be where he is now.
If Boris is removed by MPs not the electorate he will also stay in the Commons waiting for his return.
If the Tories lose the next general election, even if more narrowly than maybe now Boris will say had he been leader he would have won it.
If a Labour government then becomes unpopular as inflation continues to surge then Boris will plot his return, just as Trump is plotting his revenge and return now the Biden administration is unpopular having been denied a second term in 2020
Boris will immediately call a by-election and go off to collect his millions.
There is No Way On This Planet that he will meekly sit there as lame duck PM whilst they select a successor. He will resign. Making Raaaaaab the comedy PM for a period. I also expect him to quit as an MP citing the desperate need to earn proper money to pay for his divorce settlement to Carrie.
Raaaaaaaab as PM will be the thing that focuses the Tories to not engage in a lengthy fight for supremacy. So gormless and error-prone as to force the party to get on with selecting a leader with a brain cell.
Which is exactly how I said this would end. Last week. Brady gives Boris 48 hours to get his affairs in order. And if there isn't a lectern* in Downing Street at the end of those 48 hours...
(*I actually said podium in my mothing-session sleep-deprived state....)
And BoZo tells Brady to Fck off and take his letters with him
And by early evening, Boris gets to see how massively he has lost the Party.
If Boris is removed by MPs not the electorate he will also stay in the Commons waiting for his return.
If the Tories lose the next general election, even if more narrowly than maybe now Boris will say had he been leader he would have won it.
If a Labour government then becomes unpopular as inflation continues to surge then Boris will plot his return, just as Trump is plotting his revenge and return now the Biden administration is unpopular having been denied a second term in 2020
You're as delusional as Trumpists.
Boris will take the Chiltern Hundreds the second a new PM has kissed the Queen's Hand.
Before that. You think he will sit there meekly as a lame duck having ceased to be Tory leader? He will flounce.
If Boris is removed by MPs not the electorate he will also stay in the Commons waiting for his return.
If the Tories lose the next general election, even if more narrowly than maybe now Boris will say had he been leader he would have won it.
If a Labour government then becomes unpopular as inflation continues to surge then Boris will plot his return, just as Trump is plotting his revenge and return now the Biden administration is unpopular having been denied a second term in 2020
You're as delusional as Trumpists.
Boris will take the Chiltern Hundreds the second a new PM has kissed the Queen's Hand.
Anyway, the disastrous Conservative car crash continues.
They have to stop this and fast. The more this goes on, the more likely a Labour victory becomes and the longer the wilderness years will be. Remember this.
When the Tories replaced Thatcher in 1990 they may have scraped home in 1992 but lost by their worst landslide defeat in 1997 and were in the wilderness for 13 years.
Had they kept Thatcher even had they lost in 1992 it would not have been assad as their 1997 defeat and they may even have beaten PM Kinnock in 1997
Had they kept Thatcher, they would have lost badly in 1992. The electorate don't often vote a government out after one term, so Labour would have been well-positioned in 1997. I can't see what particular factors would have gotten voters flocking back to the Tories in 1997 after a 1992 defeat.
A Kinnock government would have been far more high tax and spend than the later Blair government was
And that would probably have been popular with voters.
It was probably Andrew Neil at the Sunday Times who imported the American tax and spend meme. What it misses in translation is that in this country, public spending is generally quite popular. It got Boris elected.
It is popular in the US in concrete terms - people love getting money from government. But it is not popular in the abstract. Whereas here it is popular in both the abstract and the concrete.
The most amusing dissection of the contradictory US attitudes to public spending I have ever seen is this short Michael Moore clip from the 90s. It makes fun of the fact that Newt Gingrich's constituency was one of the biggest recipients of federal funds in the US.
Anyway, the disastrous Conservative car crash continues.
They have to stop this and fast. The more this goes on, the more likely a Labour victory becomes and the longer the wilderness years will be. Remember this.
When the Tories replaced Thatcher in 1990 they may have scraped home in 1992 but lost by their worst landslide defeat in 1997 and were in the wilderness for 13 years.
Had they kept Thatcher even had they lost in 1992 it would not have been assad as their 1997 defeat and they may even have beaten PM Kinnock in 1997
Had they kept Thatcher, they would have lost badly in 1992. The electorate don't often vote a government out after one term, so Labour would have been well-positioned in 1997. I can't see what particular factors would have gotten voters flocking back to the Tories in 1997 after a 1992 defeat.
A Kinnock government would have been far more high tax and spend than the later Blair government was
And that would probably have been popular with voters.
It was probably Andrew Neil at the Sunday Times who imported the American tax and spend meme. What it misses in translation is that in this country, public spending is generally quite popular. It got Boris elected.
The problem is that we don't really tax and spend. We tax and bribe - so for example we destroy SureStart which benefited families with young children and threw the money at pensioners instead.
It’s weird how DALL-E hasn’t *quite* mastered eyes and noses - yet. I suspect this is a lagging glitch from its former constraint - don’t use faces
Hair colours totally wrong for Betty and Barny. Fail.
The actual Flintstone's content there is very low. Outfits, jewellery, hairstyles on the ladies are totally different. I'm not 'knocking' the technology; it's interesting. But I think I'm missing something. It just runs through hundreds of thousands of stock images on a database and finesses them into a single image using the command - is that right? That's impressive but not an unexpected or radical development surely?
It does seem to be a key element of how it works. Where they talk about 'training data', that's all the world's art and photography libraries (one assumes) that has been run through it. Don't get me wrong; it's very clever, just not imo extremely radical.
Dalle-2 can be recreated by any moderately capable programmer, if given massive amounts of free computer time.
1. Take existing image recognition library 2. Lazily parse input text ("oil painting", "Homer Simpson" etc) 3. Start with 100 randomly generated images 4. Score those 100 against your input text (of course you'll get 0.0000001 for "oil painting" in even your best random image). Choose the best 10. 5. Randomly transform each of those 10 in 10 different ways so they don't move too much between images. 6. Keep scoring and keep randomly changing the images until you get to 0.73 on "oil painting" and 0.82 on "Homer Simpson"
I'm tempted to do it myself, just to prove there is no magic involved.
Yep - nothing new there at all Kevin Kelly covered it in Out of Control back in 1995 so it's been around since at least 1990 albeit randomly editing 10 pictures in 10 different ways would have taken a week back then.
And I'm assuming the massive increase in speed is based around not using truly random starting pixel patterns, but having a library of 20-30,000 which score well on many common metrics.
If Boris is removed by MPs not the electorate he will also stay in the Commons waiting for his return.
If the Tories lose the next general election, even if more narrowly than maybe now Boris will say had he been leader he would have won it.
If a Labour government then becomes unpopular as inflation continues to surge then Boris will plot his return, just as Trump is plotting his revenge and return now the Biden administration is unpopular having been denied a second term in 2020
You're as delusional as Trumpists.
Boris will take the Chiltern Hundreds the second a new PM has kissed the Queen's Hand.
Anyway, the disastrous Conservative car crash continues.
They have to stop this and fast. The more this goes on, the more likely a Labour victory becomes and the longer the wilderness years will be. Remember this.
When the Tories replaced Thatcher in 1990 they may have scraped home in 1992 but lost by their worst landslide defeat in 1997 and were in the wilderness for 13 years.
Had they kept Thatcher even had they lost in 1992 it would not have been assad as their 1997 defeat and they may even have beaten PM Kinnock in 1997
Had they kept Thatcher, they would have lost badly in 1992. The electorate don't often vote a government out after one term, so Labour would have been well-positioned in 1997. I can't see what particular factors would have gotten voters flocking back to the Tories in 1997 after a 1992 defeat.
A Kinnock government would have been far more high tax and spend than the later Blair government was
And that would probably have been popular with voters.
It was probably Andrew Neil at the Sunday Times who imported the American tax and spend meme. What it misses in translation is that in this country, public spending is generally quite popular. It got Boris elected.
The problem is that we don't really tax and spend. We tax and bribe - so for example we destroy SureStart which benefited families with young children and threw the money at pensioners instead.
Support rapidly draining from Boris Johnson. Many of these MPs and ministers won’t be known to voters but they represent all wings of the Conservative Party. Several previously backed him. No Prime Minister can fight this level of opposition in their own party for long. #Johnson https://twitter.com/BBCVickiYoung/status/1544615727218540544
Really - I suspect Bozo thinks he has 11 months to turn things round....
He has 1 hour and 20 minutes to turn things round.
I find it hard to believe he won't resign before PMQs. Even with just over an hour to go.
It's Bozo - the only thing that matters is staying in power....
Many of us - heck most of us, would have walked away late last year with claiming Brexit is done, Covid is finished I'm not 100% due to Covid and left for a highly profitable retirement reputation intact.
The fact Bozo didn't see this coming and decided to remain in power tells you an awful lot about both how blind he is and how far he will go to cling onto power.
Will be interesting to observe his tone. My expectation: 1. He starts a little contrite. Mistakes made, moving on, will deliver. 2. What's left of the whips operation hands out fawning question to what's left of the lickspittle group of backbenchers. Johnson responds with boosterist enthusiasm 3. By the back end of PMQs he is roaring at the opposition benches about how marvellous he is and how dangerous Starmer would be 4. He then fucks off as Javid stands to give his resignation statement. To derision from his own benches
The liaison committee. Which Tories are on it, and any chance some of them could withdraw their support for him during the session to his face?
The liaison committee is all the select committee chairs, so by definition no members of the government. It includes a fair few vocal critics.
Back in 2019 a majority of Leave-supporting Tory voters wished for a "rule-breaking" leader, and said they would see the Tory party destroyed, if it meant "getting Brexit done".
Anyway, the disastrous Conservative car crash continues.
They have to stop this and fast. The more this goes on, the more likely a Labour victory becomes and the longer the wilderness years will be. Remember this.
When the Tories replaced Thatcher in 1990 they may have scraped home in 1992 but lost by their worst landslide defeat in 1997 and were in the wilderness for 13 years.
Had they kept Thatcher even had they lost in 1992 it would not have been assad as their 1997 defeat and they may even have beaten PM Kinnock in 1997
Had they kept Thatcher, they would have lost badly in 1992. The electorate don't often vote a government out after one term, so Labour would have been well-positioned in 1997. I can't see what particular factors would have gotten voters flocking back to the Tories in 1997 after a 1992 defeat.
A Kinnock government would have been far more high tax and spend than the later Blair government was
And that would probably have been popular with voters.
It was probably Andrew Neil at the Sunday Times who imported the American tax and spend meme. What it misses in translation is that in this country, public spending is generally quite popular. It got Boris elected.
It is popular in the US in concrete terms - people love getting money from government. But it is not popular in the abstract. Whereas here it is popular in both the abstract and the concrete.
The most amusing dissection of the contradictory US attitudes to public spending I have ever seen is this short Michael Moore clip from the 90s. It makes fun of the fact that Newt Gingrich's constituency was one of the biggest recipients of federal funds in the US.
Incidentally, I really dislike the personal poster on poster abuse. I welcome other female voices on here. But if some posters are not too taste it is easy enough to scroll past rather than have fights. Endless name-calling is very tedious.
I would also say that when I have had personal troubles some posters have been exceedingly helpful and kind. Plus the chat on here has helped in the last few years when socialising in person has been difficult. I suspect that this has helped a lot of us.
It'd be nice to recognise this rather than call people bitter or old or lonely. They may well be but why would we not want to be kind to them when it costs us so little other than tapping a few words out?
Incidentally, I really dislike the personal poster on poster abuse. I welcome other female voices on here. But if some posters are not too taste it is easy enough to scroll past rather than have fights. Endless name-calling is very tedious.
I would also say that when I have had personal troubles some posters have been exceedingly helpful and kind. Plus the chat on here has helped in the last few years when socialising in person has been difficult. I suspect that this has helped a lot of us.
It'd be nice to recognise this rather than call people bitter or old or lonely. They may well be but why would we not want to be kind to them when it costs us so little other than tapping a few words out?
@Cyclefree has been banned for violating the "must be a snowflake rule"
If Boris is removed by MPs not the electorate he will also stay in the Commons waiting for his return.
If the Tories lose the next general election, even if more narrowly than maybe now Boris will say had he been leader he would have won it.
If a Labour government then becomes unpopular as inflation continues to surge then Boris will plot his return, just as Trump is plotting his revenge and return now the Biden administration is unpopular having been denied a second term in 2020
You're as delusional as Trumpists.
Boris will take the Chiltern Hundreds the second a new PM has kissed the Queen's Hand.
He would plot his revenge as much as Trump is
Such utter bitterness
It is over and he will be history very soon
People thought that about Trump after he was removed in 2020, yet 2 years later he is back leading Biden and Harris in some polls
It's a bit off that she ignores me, but complains to you.
It's a bit off that some posters insisted she wasn't banned
There's a lot of soft moderation that goes on. The posters on here don't get to see my personal email messages.
Broadly speaking there are four levels of PB access:
(1) admin - who can post what they like and never get trapped in the spam or abuse filter (2) member - can post, but will occasionally trigger vanilla thinking they are posting spam (3) applicant - a soft ban, usually requiring only an email response to clear up (4) actual ban - which can be revoked, but only manually
And no, I'm not upgrading you to admin status.
Re vanilla, it used to be ridiculously sensitive to posts that referenced certain pills that would apparently stiffen the make member, and would unceramoniously dump people down to applicant for mentioning them.
Anyone who was involved in forum moderation around the turn of the century, would know that that particular pharmaceutical was responsible for around 90% of the spam posted. The rest being bad-taste links to something about goats and something two girls were doing…
It is with great sadness that I have tendered my resignation today as a Parliamentary Private Secretary in the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. Please find my resignation letter below. https://twitter.com/FelicityBuchan/status/1544623549213810689/photo/1
If Boris is removed by MPs not the electorate he will also stay in the Commons waiting for his return.
If the Tories lose the next general election, even if more narrowly than maybe now Boris will say had he been leader he would have won it.
If a Labour government then becomes unpopular as inflation continues to surge then Boris will plot his return, just as Trump is plotting his revenge and return now the Biden administration is unpopular having been denied a second term in 2020
On another but even more important topic, these two threads are interesting on how the longer-range precision artillery that Ukraine is now receiving from the West is going to allow them to badly disrupt Russian logistics:
If Boris is removed by MPs not the electorate he will also stay in the Commons waiting for his return.
If the Tories lose the next general election, even if more narrowly than maybe now Boris will say had he been leader he would have won it.
If a Labour government then becomes unpopular as inflation continues to surge then Boris will plot his return, just as Trump is plotting his revenge and return now the Biden administration is unpopular having been denied a second term in 2020
You're as delusional as Trumpists.
Boris will take the Chiltern Hundreds the second a new PM has kissed the Queen's Hand.
He would plot his revenge as much as Trump is
You are crazy.
He will go back to writing for money and on the speech circuit loop and that would be that. If he gets "revenge" it will be like John Major making snide remarks about Boris as PM, not trying to get back into Downing Street himself.
I'm curious what you're going to write after your software update once the Tories have a new PM and you become an uberloyalist to them.
If the '22 tell BoZo they will change the rules he will call an election before he resigns
You can get odds of 1/7 on Johnson going this year, but 9/1 on a General Election this year, so fill your boots if you think that is realistic.
Spoiler: It isn't.
That is probably true, but I do wonder how long a post Johnson Tory government can limp on. Rationally they would hold out as long as possible in the hope that their fortunes improve, but it's not hard to imagine them entering a death spiral in which rational thought disappears. It already feels like they are circling the plug-hole, even if as seems likely Johnson is jettisoned soon.
On another but even more important topic, these two threads are interesting on how the longer-range precision artillery that Ukraine is now receiving from the West is going to allow them to badly disrupt Russian logistics:
My concern is that Ukraine aren't getting that many and can't these be easily knocked out. Talking from ignorance so would love to be corrected.
The Russians have managed to knock out some of the M777 howitzers, so they might eventually spot a HIMARS with a UAV and be able to drop an artillery shell on it. However they seem to be quite mobile, so if Ukraine are cautious they can pull them out of range during the day and then drive them up to firing positions during the night.
There have been some interesting videos of them reloading the things in fields, etc, which is suggestive of them being careful to distribute the reloads, so that Russia can't as easily catch one at an ammo dump.
I think Ukraine will gradually receive more of these over time.
It’s weird how DALL-E hasn’t *quite* mastered eyes and noses - yet. I suspect this is a lagging glitch from its former constraint - don’t use faces
Hair colours totally wrong for Betty and Barny. Fail.
The actual Flintstone's content there is very low. Outfits, jewellery, hairstyles on the ladies are totally different. I'm not 'knocking' the technology; it's interesting. But I think I'm missing something. It just runs through hundreds of thousands of stock images on a database and finesses them into a single image using the command - is that right? That's impressive but not an unexpected or radical development surely?
It does seem to be a key element of how it works. Where they talk about 'training data', that's all the world's art and photography libraries (one assumes) that has been run through it. Don't get me wrong; it's very clever, just not imo extremely radical.
Dalle-2 can be recreated by any moderately capable programmer, if given massive amounts of free computer time.
1. Take existing image recognition library 2. Lazily parse input text ("oil painting", "Homer Simpson" etc) 3. Start with 100 randomly generated images 4. Score those 100 against your input text (of course you'll get 0.0000001 for "oil painting" in even your best random image). Choose the best 10. 5. Randomly transform each of those 10 in 10 different ways so they don't move too much between images. 6. Keep scoring and keep randomly changing the images until you get to 0.73 on "oil painting" and 0.82 on "Homer Simpson"
I'm tempted to do it myself, just to prove there is no magic involved.
Yep - nothing new there at all Kevin Kelly covered it in Out of Control back in 1995 so it's been around since at least 1990 albeit randomly editing 10 pictures in 10 different ways would have taken a week back then.
So what? I imagine human consciousness went through some pretty primitive phases before getting where we are now, in fact "nothing new there at all" might be evolution's motto. Explaining something is not the same as explaining it away
Comments
https://twitter.com/BradenIsBased/status/1544448370500161543?s=20&t=WJuTpyygefKGU23fLA0B1A
If he hangs on, he can hope the '22 Cttee don't change the rules and maybe something comes along. Starmer gets an FPN. Something happens in Ukraine. This is his only route, hanging on, and this is what he is doing.
Oh Chris
I sincerely hope that isn't because the government has refused, or couldn't find, anyone to go on it.
That would be wrong.
Even considering the ambition of MPs to get ministerial positions, I think the answer is no, isn't it?
https://twitter.com/noclador/status/1544495879884886017
https://twitter.com/TrentTelenko/status/1544472420484091905
Let's hope this is right.
Boris is in the bath Lol. And oh dear
It’s unfortunate for Jordan P that he has quite an unimpressive, squeaky voice
Nonetheless his influence is significant. My much younger ex was massively into his books and vids. No idea why
1. Take existing image recognition library
2. Lazily parse input text ("oil painting", "Homer Simpson" etc)
3. Start with 100 randomly generated images
4. Score those 100 against your input text (of course you'll get 0.0000001 for "oil painting" in even your best random image). Choose the best 10.
5. Randomly transform each of those 10 in 10 different ways so they don't move too much between images.
6. Keep scoring and keep randomly changing the images until you get to 0.73 on "oil painting" and 0.82 on "Homer Simpson"
I'm tempted to do it myself, just to prove there is no magic involved.
This Kettle piece poses a couple of interesting questions - the first of which I was familiar with but the second was one I hadn't thought of before. First, what kind of Conservatism will follow Johnson? The answer seems to be low tax low regulation Thatcherism mk2, but one wonders whether that matches the public mood or the situation the country is in. And second, what will Johnson do next in political terms? Ousted leaders usually give their successor some time to build their administration before lobbing in grenades from the sidelines, but I don't see that kind of graciousness or humility in Johnson's character. He could remain a real headache for the party after he is kicked out.
I try to avoid writing stuff that others - OGH and TSE - are going to write and bring my own particular perspective, arising from my own professional experiences and interests. Off beam sometimes I realise. But there you go. Life would be dull if we all thought and wrote in the same way.
He won't go before PMQs. We get to watch 30+ minutes of hilarity. Then supposedly Javid (and Sunak???) are making resignation statements. Then later the liaison committee. He will still be PM at tea time. Beyond that? Who knows. Its soon, but not as soon as you predicted. Sadly.
The absence of magic does not mean it is not magical. Any technology sufficiently advanced, etc
And consider human consciousness. It arises in a brain that is 90% water that evolved from acids in a soup. Not magic. But magical
See the personal beliefs of Trump v those of his hardcore support.
https://twitter.com/brendanhughes64/status/1544613892831301632
(*I actually said podium in my mothing-session sleep-deprived state....)
Many of us - heck most of us, would have walked away late last year with claiming Brexit is done, Covid is finished I'm not 100% due to Covid and left for a highly profitable retirement reputation intact.
The fact Bozo didn't see this coming and decided to remain in power tells you an awful lot about both how blind he is and how far he will go to cling onto power.
I stand up for what I think is right - and I have done that here.
I don't like fighting anyone and would never look for one. If that's how you feel then I will end our relationship here.
If the Tories lose the next general election, even if more narrowly than maybe now Boris will say had he been leader he would have won it.
If a Labour government then becomes unpopular as inflation continues to surge then Boris will plot his return, just as Trump is plotting his revenge and return now the Biden administration is unpopular having been denied a second term in 2020
Also, these weapons aren't very easy to knock out because they are highly mobile: you punch in the coordinates of the target, fire, and leg it before the enemy has had time to locate you and fire back.
Boris will take the Chiltern Hundreds the second a new PM has kissed the Queen's Hand.
1. He starts a little contrite. Mistakes made, moving on, will deliver.
2. What's left of the whips operation hands out fawning question to what's left of the lickspittle group of backbenchers. Johnson responds with boosterist enthusiasm
3. By the back end of PMQs he is roaring at the opposition benches about how marvellous he is and how dangerous Starmer would be
4. He then fucks off as Javid stands to give his resignation statement. To derision from his own benches
The liaison committee. Which Tories are on it, and any chance some of them could withdraw their support for him during the session to his face?
I would also say that when I have had personal troubles some posters have been exceedingly helpful and kind. Plus the chat on here has helped in the last few years when socialising in person has been difficult. I suspect that this has helped a lot of us.
It'd be nice to recognise this rather than call people bitter or old or lonely. They may well be but why would we not want to be kind to them when it costs us so little other than tapping a few words out?
He's not going down as the PM who lost his own seat.
Only raving madmen are claiming this. Yes, you are one.
https://sports.ladbrokes.com/event/politics/uk/uk-politics/boris-johnson-specials/228803216/all-markets
https://twitter.com/TrentTelenko/status/1544472420484091905
TL;dr: (I think): the Russian military generally does not use western-style containerised or palletised logistics. This means instead of being loaded and unloaded, supplies are manhandled on and off lorries. This takes much longer, and creates much larger ammunition and equipment dumps. Which the longer-range Ukrainian artillery can hit.
And that new artillery has a range *greater* than a Russian truck's daily range for one trip. So if you want your ammunition dumps outside the range of Ukrainian artillery, trucks are very hard to use as they can make less than one journey a day. Which means the Russians will have to rely much more heavily on railways. And trains (especially sidings) are much easier to find and hit than trucks.
https://twitter.com/elenicourea/status/1544621268426686473
Raaaaaaaab as PM will be the thing that focuses the Tories to not engage in a lengthy fight for supremacy. So gormless and error-prone as to force the party to get on with selecting a leader with a brain cell.
The most amusing dissection of the contradictory US attitudes to public spending I have ever seen is this short Michael Moore clip from the 90s. It makes fun of the fact that Newt Gingrich's constituency was one of the biggest recipients of federal funds in the US.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJWemnpvrSM
Nobody tells the Big Dog what to do...
“So, uh.... Dutch farmers have purchased a tank to use to block distribution centres.”
https://twitter.com/therealkeean/status/1544465282957189120?s=21&t=x9sDd90Plg7h35d8qdOJ1w
“Police have started...
...shooting
....at farmers
Pretty sure this is how civil wars are started”
https://twitter.com/joeblault/status/1544476205805719554?s=21&t=x9sDd90Plg7h35d8qdOJ1w
@williamglenn mentioned this yesterday. Insane. Can anyone summarise?
It is over and he will be history very soon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liaison_Committee_(UK)
Back in 2019 a majority of Leave-supporting Tory voters wished for a "rule-breaking" leader, and said they would see the Tory party destroyed, if it meant "getting Brexit done".
Well. This is what that looks like. ~AA https://twitter.com/BestForBritain/status/1544622901759983616/photo/1
Spoiler: It isn't.
This makes sense: and is difficult for the Russians to fix. I hope it's a big enough issue to really cause the Russians significant problems.
He will go back to writing for money and on the speech circuit loop and that would be that. If he gets "revenge" it will be like John Major making snide remarks about Boris as PM, not trying to get back into Downing Street himself.
I'm curious what you're going to write after your software update once the Tories have a new PM and you become an uberloyalist to them.
Q2 why are you still here?
Etc
I will not be doing media interviews regarding this. https://twitter.com/JohnGlenUK/status/1544623825307959300/photo/1
Resign now Johnson and at least for once you will have done the right thing
Dutch farmers have purchased a tank to use to block distribution centres.
Patterson helped kick a lot of this off, not sure who Liston is though.
There have been some interesting videos of them reloading the things in fields, etc, which is suggestive of them being careful to distribute the reloads, so that Russia can't as easily catch one at an ammo dump.
I think Ukraine will gradually receive more of these over time.
He strongly hinted that corporation tax rise from 19% to 25% will be reversed - £16bn per year
He also leaned into income tax cut - £5bn a year
https://twitter.com/Steven_Swinford/status/1544624832360357888