Are the ousting of Johnson, the farmers protests all over Europe and the awful assassination of poor Mr Abe part of a pattern?
I would say yes
The governments of the developed economies have stopped offering their voters paths to prosperity and progress.
Their offer now is 'help' with the sacrifices they are asking people to make. The point is, however, that general trajectory is downwards and not upwards and nobody seems to have noticed.
Well the voters are noticing. In democracies, this a recipe for growing instability. It will go on until someone cuts and runs and ditches the green agenda completely in their country.
Yes the combination of fast demographic change and economic decline is a toxic combination for the UK and indeed Europe. I have no doubt in time leaders will emerge who make Trump seem like a cuddly liberal...meantime the tories agonise over morduant or wallace lol
Epsom & Ewell - Ewell West Residents Association 549, 43.4% (-29.0% on May 2019) Labour 395, 31.2% (+20.4%) Conservative 205, 16.2% (+8.3%) Liberal Democrats 117, 9.2% (+0.3%)
In other news, this week it was revealed that Elon Musk has had twins with a female executive at one of his companies.
Seeing the Musk fans try to spin this is quite hilarious.
Why do they have to spin it? He hasn’t done anything illegal. It might be a sackable offence in some companies (is it?) but then he’s not going to sack himself, he owns the company
That's the point. You don't shag around with the staff, even consensually: especially when you are the top boss.
It should be noted that Musk's companies are facing numerous race and sexual discrimination lawsuits.
A fish rots from its head.
What puritanical bullshit!
What consensual adults do in their own beds is between them and nobody else.
A significant proportion of the married people I know met their spouses through work, when you're spending all day at work and the only people you meet most of the time are at work, its entirely natural and normal for intimate relations to happen.
People need to grow up and stop puritanically staring at other people in judgement.
It isn't 'puritanical'; it's common sense. There have been too many cases of bosses abusing their positions in various ways. Just look at the movie industry for one example.
I met my wife through work, when I was project managing her. That was difficult enough, and I'd like to think we handled it well (and were both relatively junior).
But if you're one of the top bods, it really isn't rocket science to say that you don't shag the staff. And Musk has massive opportunities to meet people outside his various companies. Grimes, for example ...
You're right its not rocket science to say that, its puritanical bullshit to say it.
If Musk and the executive are attracted to each other and get intimate that's between them and there is nothing wrong with that any more than you and your then-future wife doing the same.
Abuse is wrong, consensual is not. So long as it is consensual, it is OK.
It really is not puritanical. It's safeguarding the company and its staff.
And there's a vast difference between our situation and theirs, in virtually every way. I can go into details if you want: but if you are one of the top guys or gals, you do not have a relationship with the staff. And if you must, make sure it's open, don't get them pregnant, and especially don't do it if you're having a surrogate child with your girlfriend at the same time.
Bollocks, bollocks and more bollocks.
Keeping your private life private is entirely appropriate, so long as its consensual.
Them having a child is between them, and his then-girlfriend perhaps, not anyone else or the firm.
What consensual adults do is between them. You're acting like people who object to gays having sex because men sleeping with men is immoral supposedly. So long as they're genuinely consenting, its between them, whether it be man with woman, man with man, or employer with employee.
It really is not bollocks. Look at the vast number of abuses that have turned up over the years in all areas.
And your comment about gays is wrong, laughable and crass.
The point is that the boss has massive power over the individual - in the same way a university lecturer has over an adult student (in fact, bosses often have more power). It's not about the relationship: it's about the potential for abuse of power.
(In our case, that did not really exist. We were essentially at the same level, and I was just project managing her on a couple of projects: she was just as likely to have pm'ed me if circs had been different. And as we told our bosses, and they ensured there could be no abuses.)
If power is abused, deal with the abuse.
If its consensual, there's no abuse, just puritanism.
Relationships end. All Musk's relationships have ended, some acrimoniously. When they end, often one party or both feel aggrieved, rightly or not. How the heck is a company to (fairly) work out if there has been abuse or not? Did the boss promise something? A promotion? Were company resources used during the relationship? etc, etc.
It's about power. The bigger the gap between the staff members, the greater the risk of abuse.
It was done your way for centuries, and lots of people were abused.
As I said, Musk has plenty of opportunities to dip his wick in people who do not work for his companies. Including his (apparently now-ex) gf.
Just because there's a potential for abuse doesn't mean that consensual adults can't consensually do what consensual adults want to do. 🤦♂️
Yes he has opportunities to "dip his wick" for people outside of his company. He also has opportunities to do so for people inside it to, if they consensually agree.
If sex isn't consensual, it should be for the Police to investigate more than the company.
You appear to be totally missing my point. Do you think university lecturers should be free to have relationships with students?
Anyway, I doubt we're going to agree on this...
So long as the university students are over 18 and consenting, yes of course I do.
I agree with what I believe the law is, that sex with children under 16 is not ok, and if you're in a position of authority over a 16 or 17 year old then that is not OK either.
I am completely liberal on matters of sex: What consenting adults do is up to them.
Not if its abusive. And abuse of power is an abuse.
If it's abusive it should be a matter for the Police.
If it's consenting, it should not be.
Either way, it's up to the adults involved.
Oh lordy, you're missing the point. What does 'consenting' mean if a boss promises an employee an advantage? Is that fair towards other employees? If such a promise is later made, how does the company work out if it is true? What happens if it is 'sleep with me or you won't get promotion'? How do you prove that? Disprove it?
And there are many other potential conflicts as well.
When there are power disparities, it's best all round if relationships are avoided. And if they cannot, they have to be open and visible, not hidden. Which is difficult if one or both of the parties are married...
And how are you going to promote openly visible relationships when you puritanically try to drive relationships underground by prohibiting them? Your own logic is self-contradictory.
If you want to encourage honesty and openness, then being puritanical or promoting a "don't ask, don't tell" attitude won't get it.
It really isn't self-contradictory. And it's about preventing and reducing the abuses that the approach you seem to prefer has caused so many times.
Abusers need to be punished and abuse taken seriously not brushed under the rug.
Taking away everyone else's liberties isn't a way to do that. Driving relationships underground as you've frowned upon them and made them socially unacceptable just plays into the abusers hands, as abusers have more opportunities for abuse when everything is underground.
Openness and honesty is the polar opposite of prohibition, not its friend. Your puritanical prohibitionism won't stop adults screwing each other, it will just make them do so in secret more, which will make the abusers job easier. 🤦♂️
Prohibition does not work.
You're forgetting two basic principles.
1. It's a huge problem for any employer. If they tell you, in induction, not to do it, then you can't complain when you do it in secret or openly, and they get you for it.
2. You just don't do things that conflict with your employer's interests (except in permitted areas such as TUS work). I work for Widgets PLC, I'm not allowed to post on here saying they are crap and Thingummies Ltd's products are superior. I'm not allowed to put laxative in the shop-floor manager's tea. And I'm not allowed to jump the manager's spouse, certainly if we're in the same line of management, because that tends to lead to equally messy results in the workplace.
Re the libertarian thing - if one doesn't like it, then one can piss off the moment the no-conflict rule comes up at induction. Even if one does not have the common sense to realise it a priori.
I am not forgetting either.
Companies can have policies, even bad policies, I agree with that. Doesn't make those policies universal, or correct.
However Josias is acting as if the bad policies he knows are universal and appropriate. They're not universal. They're not the law. Many, many employers do not have such policies as has already been confirmed by many here.
Just because other companies have bad policies, doesn't mean Musk or anyone else needs to adopt such bad policies in their own business.
If there is no conflict there is no issue. Two of my friends at work got married. No problem.
As has been indicated below, it's also about the company protecting itself from claims in the future. Or even the bad atmosphere that can occur if a relationship goes sour.
It's also about the 'potential' for conflict, not just whether conflict occurs. If someone at my grade is promoted ahead of me, and they've been having an affair with the CEO, it would be fair for me to wonder if there was a connection between the promotion and the affair. And it would be the devil's job to prove there was no connection.
Bart's way has been tried for centuries, and it has led to lots of problems and abuse of power. I'm not talking about new laws (I don't think I've mentioned the law at all); just that institutions need to protect themselves and their employees.
Musk's behaviour will be noted by others further down the organisational chain. If the boss can do it, so can they. And his companies are not exactly free from strife atm...
Men and women haven't only had sex for centuries, they've had sex for as long as humanity has existed.
You might want to try to regulate away people's sex drives, but you're as puritanical and as doomed to failure as those who wish to pray away the gay.
Absolutely Musk's employees can have sex and get pregnant. That's kind of how humanity propagates itself you know?
"Men and women haven't only had sex for centuries, they've had sex for as long as humanity has existed."
Wow. I never knew that. Thanks for enlightening me! (/sarcasm)
I don't want to regulate away people's sex drives. Far from. And neither am I being puritanical, however many times you say it.
But if we're going to take such a tone: you're shouting for sexual and other abuses. Because the system you're promoting has been done, and abuse has occurred because of it. And you evidently don't care.
Abuse has always happened and will always happen. I evidently do care, but I care to tackle the abusers and systems that push abuse under the carpet - not people who consensually have sex with each other. 🤦♂️
The Catholic Priests who systematically abused vulnerable people did so while supposedly celibate. Celibacy has been tried and failed too. Pushing relationships under the carpet has been tried and failed too.
Openness and honesty works and honesty only works when prohibition doesn't happen.
You didn't object to any supposed abuse, you have provided literally zero evidence of abuse, you objected to a pregnancy. All this started by discussing childbirth. People are entitled to get pregnant and have a child. If they want to they should be entitled to have an abortion, and if they don't want to they should be able to have children - even, yes, twins as in this case.
If any evidence of actual, you know, abuse turns up then lets discuss that but in the meantime without any such evidence businesses have absolutely no rightful place in telling employees who can or can not have children or get pregnant.
@OnlyLivingBoy - You've got me googling now. The Woke people at the Indy also reviewed this "Millions of Women" book. I apologise for the chunk of quotation, but their review is worth reading at length, so we can all grasp the true depravity of this man "@SeanT":
"On the cover of my proof copy of Sean Thomas's non-fiction account of his adventures on the internet-dating scene, Millions of Women Are Waiting to Meet You, there is a jokey warning that "this book reveals how men really think." This isn't true. Sean Thomas may believe himself to be a normal man, but in the course of this book he decides a woman named "Bongowoman" is an appealing person to go on a date with; describes how his first sexual experience (at 12 years old) involved him flashing at his parents' cleaning woman; reveals that he can only go out with women who are shorter than him (he describes such women as "sit-on-my-lap girls"); fakes suicide to impress a girl who's broken up with him; suffers from several bouts of serious impotence; catches crabs from an Australian woman; boasts about the TV celebrity he used to date, a relationship which began when he shoved his hand up her skirt; gets so addicted to internet porn (particularly "Bernie's Spanking Pages" and "extremely convoluted scenarios where submissive Danish actresses are intimately shaved by their dominant female doctors in the shower") that he masturbates himself into the hospital, where he ends up on a saline drip; goes into a 15-page explanation of why he doesn't want to sodomise a woman who's begged him to do so, before deciding that he will do it after all; explains how when he was 30 he made his 17-year old schoolgirl lover have an abortion; gets a blow-job from his best friend's girlfriend on Bayswater Road in full view of the public; performs oral sex on a woman moments after she has finished having sex with his friend in the other room; goes to a strip club in Thailand so often over a three-month period that one of the strippers writes messages to him with a pen clenched in her vagina; has an abortive threesome in Russia which ends with him prematurely ejaculating over the carpet, and in one of the book's most flabbergasting chapters, mistakenly believes he's impregnated a prostitute and considers throwing everything in and starting a family with her.
Now, Sean, that ain't normal. It is, however, hilarious. I can't remember reading a book that's made me laugh out loud as much as this one. Thomas must be extraordinarily brave...."
In agreement with Germany, the Canadian government intends to release a turbine caught up in sanctions against Russia critical for the Nord Stream gas pipeline. This will set a precedent for slow embargo lifting at the request of an aggressor state.
The most ironic thing about all of the fines etc is that the one Boris and Sunak got probably shouldn't have been either....the incidents Boris didn't get fined for, well that's a different matter.
I would say Sunak has been the unluckiest of everybody...standing a distance away from somebody without even a diet coke in hand at their place of work and gets a FPN.
In other news, this week it was revealed that Elon Musk has had twins with a female executive at one of his companies.
Seeing the Musk fans try to spin this is quite hilarious.
I note our SLS /Starship bet is still live. Indeed a version of Starship HAS actually flown and landed , which is more than SLS...
I can't even remember what the bet was! Can you confirm?
I'd love it if SLS flies successfully before Starship. And even more if New Glenn reaches orbit before Starship (though that's unlikely).
In other news, ArianeSpace's Vega C is due for its first launch in a few days.
It is quite startling that Starship has been allowed to progress to this point. It is, among other things, a direct attack on SLS, a major government aerospace project. I was fully expecting that Shelby etc would have pulled SpaceX's government contracts over that.
From what I understand, there were some noises about "getting Elon back in his lane", but the military purchasers of SpaceX services said "national interest" to several politicians.
New Glenn would have to exist first. I have a theory that Sue Origin exists purely as objective proof that simply having a really big pile of personal money doesn't make successful rocket company - the painful progress of the BE-4 etc.
Orbital launch is so far away that Bezos had to buy launches (for his Project Kuiper - the competitor to Starlink) from every single provider who wasn't SpaceX at a huge markup over the SpaceX prices. If I were an Amazon shareholder, I would not be impressed.
Mind you, that has some interesting politics ramifications for Amazon. Suddenly they are the best friends of Arianespace, ULA etc - Bezos has given the non-SpaceX launch companies a few more years of life from their otherwise over priced expendable rockets.....
I have issues with the way you refer to stuff up there. You write great posts, but you do come across as a bit of a Musk fanboi at times.
You mention BE-4 as being 'painful'. Raptor was started earlier, and has yet to get to orbit. They're on their second iteration after a significant redesign, and are still suffering RUDs on the test stand. It really will be interesting to see whether BO or SpaceX get a payload to orbit first. How is that not 'painful' ?
I wish SpaceX and New Glenn well. I wish Blue Origin and New Glenn well. I'd like SLS to continue until those two are reliable, after that, chuck it on the scrapheap.
Heck, I'll even wish Virgin Orbit well, especially with their upcoming launch from Cornwall. I won't extend that to Virgin Galactic, though...
BE-4 is later than Aerojet would have been with the AR-1. Much, much later than promised. Being later than an "Old Space" company with a reputation for not being especially fast at engine development.
The engines delivered, finally, to ULA aren't quite ready for flight. Apparently they will be retrofitted after delivery.
Blue Origin have made very slow progress in building an orbital rocket. They should actually launch something. MVP and all that.
Raptor is doing 300+ second burns at McGregor, as observed by locals. The first version have powered the various Starship tests - some might say that means they have flown. I would give a half credit for that - on a vehicle, with the whole moving environment, vibration etc vs test stand.
SLS is a slow moving disaster - it can't sustain the flight rate to do anything.
Virgin Orbit is a serious effort, though their long term viability is a question - the cost of a carrier aircraft vs the cost of a bigger first stage.
Virgin Galactic - yeah. Lethally dangerous. Fundamental flaws.
Raptor has had (I think) at least three RUDs in a couple of months. Perhaps they're exploring the envelope, or perhaps they're having significant problems. We cannot know. BE-4 is doing long burns as well. Tory Bruno seems happy - and I pretty much trust him as a reasonably straight arrow in the industry.
But RUDs are not a good sign - especially when your rocket has dozens of them.
Let's see what happens. I wish them both good luck (and also RocketLab, Astra and some of the UK microlaunchers).
Incidentally, RocketLab is an example of why 'going small' to get to orbit early, the building bigger, may *not* have been the correct approach for BO. That's what RL did, and now they're going bigger to try to compete. And they're having to design not only a new rocket, but new engines as well.
Part of my issue is that I think Bezos's dream is more achievable than Musk's. Large space stations are doable. A Mars civilisation is far less certain. But I wish their companys all the best.
Tory has staked his future on BE-4. At the time it seemed like a good bet and they will probably get good engines in the end, but the time lost has been a serious issue.
On the RUDs - SpaceX were regularly destroying Merlins through the development cycles of the various versions. If nothing else, they popularised the term. It seems their style of engine development is hardware rich.
The flight engines on the various Starship tests seemed to have pretty good, stable burns.
RocketLab needed to prove that they had a viable product/team to get the investment to build bigger. Falcon 1 and all that. I think that they are more viable in the longer term than Virgin Orbit.
As to which dream will win, that isn't really up to either Bezos or Musk. If you have enough throw weight to start doing much on Mars, you have the throw weight to setup vast space stations as well. If you can chuck 50 or 100 tons into LEO for a few tens of millions, *preventing* space stations will be hard work.
Blue Origin needs to build a launcher, and learn how to use it. Then build a better one. Trying to design and build perfection from the first instance has been proven, multiple times, to be a bad idea.
"Tory has staked his future on BE-4. At the time it seemed like a good bet and they will probably get good engines in the end, but the time lost has been a serious issue. "
The payload for the first Vulcan/Centaur flight (the Peregrine lander) currently appears to be the gating issue, not the rocket itself.
You are correct about the Merlin RUDs: but the difference is they had working, stable versions for most of the time as they furthered the engine development. They don't have a proven stable version of Raptor V2. I just cannot see the RUDs being good news for this stage of Raptor development, with a suborbital launch coming up with dozens of the things on board.
(Having said that, the SSME was still having failures until relatively shortly before the first flight, so it might be okay. Might....)
Vulcan was supposed to fly in 2020. It is now looking fairly likely that it will be 2023. While the payload now being the long pole in the tent, one does have to ask what was going to be the payload in 2020....
Wayne Hale on the RS-25 is somewhere between terrifying and cautionary. Gold pins.....
SpaceX are apparently using a similar development methodology for Raptor as for Merlin. Merlin evolved much more than the apparent versioning scheme suggests - the 1D was actually about a dozen variants, for example. It's rather like software - rapid releases of versions, with testing on a per version basis. So there is a sequence of production releases, while newer versions are in Dev, Int, UAT and er.. Staging? :-)
But Merlins were flying before they got into that rapid development phase. They had a solid base as far back as 2006 (I don't think they've ever lost an orbital flight due to direct engine failure, which is quite a thing?)
BTW Starship was due to fly years ago as well. In 2017 Musk said it could be flying to Mars in 2022...
errrr Merlin 1A? First time out it had an engine fire, IIRC. (Snip)
Wasn't the Falcon 1 first flight failure a fuel line leak in the rocket? (admittedly from memory).
It was a corroded nut on a fuel line - IIRC it was actually on the connections between the lines on the engine and the rocket, so it's a bit of a "what definition do you use" thing as to engine failure vs rocket failure.
Are the ousting of Johnson, the farmers protests all over Europe and the awful assassination of poor Mr Abe part of a pattern?
I would say yes
The governments of the developed economies have stopped offering their voters paths to prosperity and progress.
Their offer now is 'help' with the sacrifices they are asking people to make. The point is, however, that general trajectory is downwards and not upwards and nobody seems to have noticed.
Well the voters are noticing. In democracies, this a recipe for growing instability. It will go on until someone cuts and runs and ditches the green agenda completely in their country.
Yes the combination of fast demographic change and economic decline is a toxic combination for the UK and indeed Europe. I have no doubt in time leaders will emerge who make Trump seem like a cuddly liberal...meantime the tories agonise over morduant or wallace lol
UK, Europe, US, Japan, Canada, Australia, NZ. Same political template. Same-ish demographics. Same problems. And they are going to get worse before they get better. Much worse.
The latest right to privacy case involving the Supreme Court...
https://twitter.com/dlippman/status/1545357451234615298 Justice Brett Kavanaugh had to exit through the rear of Morton's on Wednesday night after DC protestors showed up out front. A Morton's rep told me: "Politics … should not trample the freedom at play of the right to congregate and eat dinner."
In agreement with Germany, the Canadian government intends to release a turbine caught up in sanctions against Russia critical for the Nord Stream gas pipeline. This will set a precedent for slow embargo lifting at the request of an aggressor state.
@OnlyLivingBoy - You've got me googling now. The Woke people at the Indy also reviewed this "Millions of Women" book. I apologise for the chunk of quotation, but their review is worth reading at length, so we can all grasp the true depravity of this man "@SeanT":
"On the cover of my proof copy of Sean Thomas's non-fiction account of his adventures on the internet-dating scene, Millions of Women Are Waiting to Meet You, there is a jokey warning that "this book reveals how men really think." This isn't true. Sean Thomas may believe himself to be a normal man, but in the course of this book he decides a woman named "Bongowoman" is an appealing person to go on a date with; describes how his first sexual experience (at 12 years old) involved him flashing at his parents' cleaning woman; reveals that he can only go out with women who are shorter than him (he describes such women as "sit-on-my-lap girls"); fakes suicide to impress a girl who's broken up with him; suffers from several bouts of serious impotence; catches crabs from an Australian woman; boasts about the TV celebrity he used to date, a relationship which began when he shoved his hand up her skirt; gets so addicted to internet porn (particularly "Bernie's Spanking Pages" and "extremely convoluted scenarios where submissive Danish actresses are intimately shaved by their dominant female doctors in the shower") that he masturbates himself into the hospital, where he ends up on a saline drip; goes into a 15-page explanation of why he doesn't want to sodomise a woman who's begged him to do so, before deciding that he will do it after all; explains how when he was 30 he made his 17-year old schoolgirl lover have an abortion; gets a blow-job from his best friend's girlfriend on Bayswater Road in full view of the public; performs oral sex on a woman moments after she has finished having sex with his friend in the other room; goes to a strip club in Thailand so often over a three-month period that one of the strippers writes messages to him with a pen clenched in her vagina; has an abortive threesome in Russia which ends with him prematurely ejaculating over the carpet, and in one of the book's most flabbergasting chapters, mistakenly believes he's impregnated a prostitute and considers throwing everything in and starting a family with her.
Now, Sean, that ain't normal. It is, however, hilarious. I can't remember reading a book that's made me laugh out loud as much as this one. Thomas must be extraordinarily brave...."
Can I ask where Durham Police can send the bill to for the waste of time involved - it's my money that this pointless investigation wasted.
Are you saying that the only police investigations that are worthwhile are those that result in a prosecution?
No what I'm saying was the police investigated the case found no evidence.
They were then provided with (false) information and forced to reinvestigate only for it turn out that the reason for reopening the case was a pack of lies for political reasons.
In that case (and in all other similar cases) the people who provided the false information should be being charged with wasting police time.
Are the ousting of Johnson, the farmers protests all over Europe and the awful assassination of poor Mr Abe part of a pattern?
I would say yes
The governments of the developed economies have stopped offering their voters paths to prosperity and progress.
Their offer now is 'help' with the sacrifices they are asking people to make. The point is, however, that general trajectory is downwards and not upwards and nobody seems to have noticed.
Well the voters are noticing. In democracies, this a recipe for growing instability. It will go on until someone cuts and runs and ditches the green agenda completely in their country.
Yes the combination of fast demographic change and economic decline is a toxic combination for the UK and indeed Europe. I have no doubt in time leaders will emerge who make Trump seem like a cuddly liberal...meantime the tories agonise over morduant or wallace lol
UK, Europe, US, Japan, Canada, Australia, NZ. Same political template. Same-ish demographics. Same problems. And they are going to get worse before they get better. Much worse.
China too. Russia too. Demographic decline is a problem across the world
However AI might well save us, but it will be rocky for a while
You are overstating the case. Johnson didn't need to trim very much to survive and thrive.
A bit softer on net zero, a bit more attention to truth and the rules, a bit more aggressive on the culture wars, some definitive action on tax cuts, commitments to no more lockdowns etc.
But no. He would not trim one iota. He felt himself above it all and he would not compromise at all. That's why he is going.
Johnson is going only because of three mistakes.
1. He insisted that his MPs break the existing system of due process in a doomed attempt to save his mate Paterson from deserved censure. 2. He lied about breaking coronavirus rules instead of coming clean about it. 3. He lied about what he knew about Pincher's track record.
Some of the policy stuff didn't make MPs exactly delighted, but the end of Johnson was not motivated by a desire for a change of policy, but for a change of character. It's not just that he was a liar, but he was a really bad liar who made other people look ridiculous for being caught out lying on his behalf.
Of course a new leader is an opportunity for policy changes in all sorts of areas depending on what particularly axe a backbencher or party member wishes to grind. But policy didn't doom* Johnson and it wouldn't have saved him. This was 100% character failings.
* Note to Rejoiners, this also means Brexit had nothing to do with his end too, and there's no particular reason to expect a softening over a gardening as a result.
Can I ask where Durham Police can send the bill to for the waste of time involved - it's my money that this pointless investigation wasted.
Are you saying that the only police investigations that are worthwhile are those that result in a prosecution?
No what I'm saying was the police investigated the case found no evidence.
They were then provided with (false) information and forced to reinvestigate only for it turn out that the reason for reopening the case was a pack of lies for political reasons.
In that case (and in all other similar cases) the people who provided the false information should be being charged with wasting police time.
Right, well if what you allege is true and the police think someone was playing silly buggers, then fair enough. The statement from Durham Police does not suggest this to be the case.
In other news, this week it was revealed that Elon Musk has had twins with a female executive at one of his companies.
Seeing the Musk fans try to spin this is quite hilarious.
Why do they have to spin it? He hasn’t done anything illegal. It might be a sackable offence in some companies (is it?) but then he’s not going to sack himself, he owns the company
That's the point. You don't shag around with the staff, even consensually: especially when you are the top boss.
It should be noted that Musk's companies are facing numerous race and sexual discrimination lawsuits.
A fish rots from its head.
What puritanical bullshit!
What consensual adults do in their own beds is between them and nobody else.
A significant proportion of the married people I know met their spouses through work, when you're spending all day at work and the only people you meet most of the time are at work, its entirely natural and normal for intimate relations to happen.
People need to grow up and stop puritanically staring at other people in judgement.
It isn't 'puritanical'; it's common sense. There have been too many cases of bosses abusing their positions in various ways. Just look at the movie industry for one example.
I met my wife through work, when I was project managing her. That was difficult enough, and I'd like to think we handled it well (and were both relatively junior).
But if you're one of the top bods, it really isn't rocket science to say that you don't shag the staff. And Musk has massive opportunities to meet people outside his various companies. Grimes, for example ...
You're right its not rocket science to say that, its puritanical bullshit to say it.
If Musk and the executive are attracted to each other and get intimate that's between them and there is nothing wrong with that any more than you and your then-future wife doing the same.
Abuse is wrong, consensual is not. So long as it is consensual, it is OK.
It really is not puritanical. It's safeguarding the company and its staff.
And there's a vast difference between our situation and theirs, in virtually every way. I can go into details if you want: but if you are one of the top guys or gals, you do not have a relationship with the staff. And if you must, make sure it's open, don't get them pregnant, and especially don't do it if you're having a surrogate child with your girlfriend at the same time.
Bollocks, bollocks and more bollocks.
Keeping your private life private is entirely appropriate, so long as its consensual.
Them having a child is between them, and his then-girlfriend perhaps, not anyone else or the firm.
What consensual adults do is between them. You're acting like people who object to gays having sex because men sleeping with men is immoral supposedly. So long as they're genuinely consenting, its between them, whether it be man with woman, man with man, or employer with employee.
It really is not bollocks. Look at the vast number of abuses that have turned up over the years in all areas.
And your comment about gays is wrong, laughable and crass.
The point is that the boss has massive power over the individual - in the same way a university lecturer has over an adult student (in fact, bosses often have more power). It's not about the relationship: it's about the potential for abuse of power.
(In our case, that did not really exist. We were essentially at the same level, and I was just project managing her on a couple of projects: she was just as likely to have pm'ed me if circs had been different. And as we told our bosses, and they ensured there could be no abuses.)
If power is abused, deal with the abuse.
If its consensual, there's no abuse, just puritanism.
Relationships end. All Musk's relationships have ended, some acrimoniously. When they end, often one party or both feel aggrieved, rightly or not. How the heck is a company to (fairly) work out if there has been abuse or not? Did the boss promise something? A promotion? Were company resources used during the relationship? etc, etc.
It's about power. The bigger the gap between the staff members, the greater the risk of abuse.
It was done your way for centuries, and lots of people were abused.
As I said, Musk has plenty of opportunities to dip his wick in people who do not work for his companies. Including his (apparently now-ex) gf.
Just because there's a potential for abuse doesn't mean that consensual adults can't consensually do what consensual adults want to do. 🤦♂️
Yes he has opportunities to "dip his wick" for people outside of his company. He also has opportunities to do so for people inside it to, if they consensually agree.
If sex isn't consensual, it should be for the Police to investigate more than the company.
You appear to be totally missing my point. Do you think university lecturers should be free to have relationships with students?
Anyway, I doubt we're going to agree on this...
So long as the university students are over 18 and consenting, yes of course I do.
I agree with what I believe the law is, that sex with children under 16 is not ok, and if you're in a position of authority over a 16 or 17 year old then that is not OK either.
I am completely liberal on matters of sex: What consenting adults do is up to them.
Not if its abusive. And abuse of power is an abuse.
If it's abusive it should be a matter for the Police.
If it's consenting, it should not be.
Either way, it's up to the adults involved.
Oh lordy, you're missing the point. What does 'consenting' mean if a boss promises an employee an advantage? Is that fair towards other employees? If such a promise is later made, how does the company work out if it is true? What happens if it is 'sleep with me or you won't get promotion'? How do you prove that? Disprove it?
And there are many other potential conflicts as well.
When there are power disparities, it's best all round if relationships are avoided. And if they cannot, they have to be open and visible, not hidden. Which is difficult if one or both of the parties are married...
And how are you going to promote openly visible relationships when you puritanically try to drive relationships underground by prohibiting them? Your own logic is self-contradictory.
If you want to encourage honesty and openness, then being puritanical or promoting a "don't ask, don't tell" attitude won't get it.
It really isn't self-contradictory. And it's about preventing and reducing the abuses that the approach you seem to prefer has caused so many times.
Abusers need to be punished and abuse taken seriously not brushed under the rug.
Taking away everyone else's liberties isn't a way to do that. Driving relationships underground as you've frowned upon them and made them socially unacceptable just plays into the abusers hands, as abusers have more opportunities for abuse when everything is underground.
Openness and honesty is the polar opposite of prohibition, not its friend. Your puritanical prohibitionism won't stop adults screwing each other, it will just make them do so in secret more, which will make the abusers job easier. 🤦♂️
Prohibition does not work.
You're forgetting two basic principles.
1. It's a huge problem for any employer. If they tell you, in induction, not to do it, then you can't complain when you do it in secret or openly, and they get you for it.
2. You just don't do things that conflict with your employer's interests (except in permitted areas such as TUS work). I work for Widgets PLC, I'm not allowed to post on here saying they are crap and Thingummies Ltd's products are superior. I'm not allowed to put laxative in the shop-floor manager's tea. And I'm not allowed to jump the manager's spouse, certainly if we're in the same line of management, because that tends to lead to equally messy results in the workplace.
Re the libertarian thing - if one doesn't like it, then one can piss off the moment the no-conflict rule comes up at induction. Even if one does not have the common sense to realise it a priori.
I am not forgetting either.
Companies can have policies, even bad policies, I agree with that. Doesn't make those policies universal, or correct.
However Josias is acting as if the bad policies he knows are universal and appropriate. They're not universal. They're not the law. Many, many employers do not have such policies as has already been confirmed by many here.
Just because other companies have bad policies, doesn't mean Musk or anyone else needs to adopt such bad policies in their own business.
If there is no conflict there is no issue. Two of my friends at work got married. No problem.
As has been indicated below, it's also about the company protecting itself from claims in the future. Or even the bad atmosphere that can occur if a relationship goes sour.
It's also about the 'potential' for conflict, not just whether conflict occurs. If someone at my grade is promoted ahead of me, and they've been having an affair with the CEO, it would be fair for me to wonder if there was a connection between the promotion and the affair. And it would be the devil's job to prove there was no connection.
Bart's way has been tried for centuries, and it has led to lots of problems and abuse of power. I'm not talking about new laws (I don't think I've mentioned the law at all); just that institutions need to protect themselves and their employees.
Musk's behaviour will be noted by others further down the organisational chain. If the boss can do it, so can they. And his companies are not exactly free from strife atm...
Men and women haven't only had sex for centuries, they've had sex for as long as humanity has existed.
You might want to try to regulate away people's sex drives, but you're as puritanical and as doomed to failure as those who wish to pray away the gay.
Absolutely Musk's employees can have sex and get pregnant. That's kind of how humanity propagates itself you know?
"Men and women haven't only had sex for centuries, they've had sex for as long as humanity has existed."
Wow. I never knew that. Thanks for enlightening me! (/sarcasm)
I don't want to regulate away people's sex drives. Far from. And neither am I being puritanical, however many times you say it.
But if we're going to take such a tone: you're shouting for sexual and other abuses. Because the system you're promoting has been done, and abuse has occurred because of it. And you evidently don't care.
Abuse has always happened and will always happen. I evidently do care, but I care to tackle the abusers and systems that push abuse under the carpet - not people who consensually have sex with each other. 🤦♂️
The Catholic Priests who systematically abused vulnerable people did so while supposedly celibate. Celibacy has been tried and failed too. Pushing relationships under the carpet has been tried and failed too.
Openness and honesty works and honesty only works when prohibition doesn't happen.
You didn't object to any supposed abuse, you have provided literally zero evidence of abuse, you objected to a pregnancy. All this started by discussing childbirth. People are entitled to get pregnant and have a child. If they want to they should be entitled to have an abortion, and if they don't want to they should be able to have children - even, yes, twins as in this case.
If any evidence of actual, you know, abuse turns up then lets discuss that but in the meantime without any such evidence businesses have absolutely no rightful place in telling employees who can or can not have children or get pregnant.
I was in a sense, my future wife's boss, when I got engaged to her. I was a local councillor, supervising the department she worked in. But, we both reported our relationship to our superiors, and I don't consider there was any impropriety to it.
Yeah it was so partisan, idiots not realising the rules were different in April 2021 to most of 2020.
Well, on the night Starmer was having a curry and a beer indoors, I was getting told off for talking to a friend in a pub car park.
In County Durham or elsewhere?
In England. Last time I looked, the laws of England apply to the whole country.
We don't have a national police force - so just because you are in an area where the police are being told something that is wrong doesn't make it an issue for the rest of us.
I actually like Durham Police, as they are awfully pragmatic and have the sanity to actually apply modern systems to various items (see the multiple apps they and Cumbria use for easy of reporting and the centralised custody centre that the Tories tried to stop). They also refuse to touch Cleveland Police with a bargepole no matter how many times they've been asked to merge.
You are overstating the case. Johnson didn't need to trim very much to survive and thrive.
A bit softer on net zero, a bit more attention to truth and the rules, a bit more aggressive on the culture wars, some definitive action on tax cuts, commitments to no more lockdowns etc.
But no. He would not trim one iota. He felt himself above it all and he would not compromise at all. That's why he is going.
Johnson is going only because of three mistakes.
1. He insisted that his MPs break the existing system of due process in a doomed attempt to save his mate Paterson from deserved censure. 2. He lied about breaking coronavirus rules instead of coming clean about it. 3. He lied about what he knew about Pincher's track record.
Some of the policy stuff didn't make MPs exactly delighted, but the end of Johnson was not motivated by a desire for a change of policy, but for a change of character. It's not just that he was a liar, but he was a really bad liar who made other people look ridiculous for being caught out lying on his behalf.
Of course a new leader is an opportunity for policy changes in all sorts of areas depending on what particularly axe a backbencher or party member wishes to grind. But policy didn't doom* Johnson and it wouldn't have saved him. This was 100% character failings.
* Note to Rejoiners, this also means Brexit had nothing to do with his end too, and there's no particular reason to expect a softening over a gardening as a result.
The crapness of his lies is a peculiar aspect. Because they often got him into more and deeper trouble
Was it sheer laziness? Was it arrogance ("they will believe any old shit")? Was it a simple inability to lie well, perhaps because it troubles him subconsciously?
A mix?
He is a genuinely fascinating character. because he has so many talents alongside so many flaws; for this reason - and others - his book will SELL. People want to know, even some of the haters
Must be a shock for Germany to have to consider this sort of thing. They haven't had any shortages of anything since the 1950s, whereas we did in the 1970s during the Winter of Discontent, etc.
They are talking about restricting heat during the 11p to 6am window.
Does German energy demand work the other way round to ours?
I don't think the challenge is meeting peak demand, but in meeting total aggregate demand, because they have a reasonable amount of storage.
We're more vulnerable to problems meeting peak demand, because we have little storage and so might have issues if there's a temporary interruption or delay in gas deliveries.
@OnlyLivingBoy - You've got me googling now. The Woke people at the Indy also reviewed this "Millions of Women" book. I apologise for the chunk of quotation, but their review is worth reading at length, so we can all grasp the true depravity of this man "@SeanT":
"On the cover of my proof copy of Sean Thomas's non-fiction account of his adventures on the internet-dating scene, Millions of Women Are Waiting to Meet You, there is a jokey warning that "this book reveals how men really think." This isn't true. Sean Thomas may believe himself to be a normal man, but in the course of this book he decides a woman named "Bongowoman" is an appealing person to go on a date with; describes how his first sexual experience (at 12 years old) involved him flashing at his parents' cleaning woman; reveals that he can only go out with women who are shorter than him (he describes such women as "sit-on-my-lap girls"); fakes suicide to impress a girl who's broken up with him; suffers from several bouts of serious impotence; catches crabs from an Australian woman; boasts about the TV celebrity he used to date, a relationship which began when he shoved his hand up her skirt; gets so addicted to internet porn (particularly "Bernie's Spanking Pages" and "extremely convoluted scenarios where submissive Danish actresses are intimately shaved by their dominant female doctors in the shower") that he masturbates himself into the hospital, where he ends up on a saline drip; goes into a 15-page explanation of why he doesn't want to sodomise a woman who's begged him to do so, before deciding that he will do it after all; explains how when he was 30 he made his 17-year old schoolgirl lover have an abortion; gets a blow-job from his best friend's girlfriend on Bayswater Road in full view of the public; performs oral sex on a woman moments after she has finished having sex with his friend in the other room; goes to a strip club in Thailand so often over a three-month period that one of the strippers writes messages to him with a pen clenched in her vagina; has an abortive threesome in Russia which ends with him prematurely ejaculating over the carpet, and in one of the book's most flabbergasting chapters, mistakenly believes he's impregnated a prostitute and considers throwing everything in and starting a family with her.
Now, Sean, that ain't normal. It is, however, hilarious. I can't remember reading a book that's made me laugh out loud as much as this one. Thomas must be extraordinarily brave...."
Can I ask where Durham Police can send the bill to for the waste of time involved - it's my money that this pointless investigation wasted.
Are you saying that the only police investigations that are worthwhile are those that result in a prosecution?
No what I'm saying was the police investigated the case found no evidence.
They were then provided with (false) information and forced to reinvestigate only for it turn out that the reason for reopening the case was a pack of lies for political reasons.
In that case (and in all other similar cases) the people who provided the false information should be being charged with wasting police time.
Right, well if what you allege is true and the police think someone was playing silly buggers, then fair enough. The statement from Durham Police does not suggest this to be the case.
As I understand it,
1) Various eye witness saw some things. 2) Starmer and others present don't deny these things happened. 3) The investigation was into whether these things added up to a breach of the law. 4) Durham police have decided that they don't add up to an offence.
You are overstating the case. Johnson didn't need to trim very much to survive and thrive.
A bit softer on net zero, a bit more attention to truth and the rules, a bit more aggressive on the culture wars, some definitive action on tax cuts, commitments to no more lockdowns etc.
But no. He would not trim one iota. He felt himself above it all and he would not compromise at all. That's why he is going.
Johnson is going only because of three mistakes.
1. He insisted that his MPs break the existing system of due process in a doomed attempt to save his mate Paterson from deserved censure. 2. He lied about breaking coronavirus rules instead of coming clean about it. 3. He lied about what he knew about Pincher's track record.
Some of the policy stuff didn't make MPs exactly delighted, but the end of Johnson was not motivated by a desire for a change of policy, but for a change of character. It's not just that he was a liar, but he was a really bad liar who made other people look ridiculous for being caught out lying on his behalf.
Of course a new leader is an opportunity for policy changes in all sorts of areas depending on what particularly axe a backbencher or party member wishes to grind. But policy didn't doom* Johnson and it wouldn't have saved him. This was 100% character failings.
* Note to Rejoiners, this also means Brexit had nothing to do with his end too, and there's no particular reason to expect a softening over a gardening as a result.
The crapness of his lies is a peculiar aspect. Because they often got him into more and deeper trouble
Was it sheer laziness? Was it arrogance ("they will believe any old shit")? Was it a simple inability to lie well, perhaps because it troubles him subconsciously?
A mix?
He is a genuinely fascinating character. because he has so many talents alongside so many flaws; for this reason - and others - his book will SELL. People want to know, even some of the haters
First rule of Boris: there is *always* more to come. Given his corruption over Arcuri and Blowjobgate I have high hopes of enough emerging over Lebedev to put him in clink.
Yeah it was so partisan, idiots not realising the rules were different in April 2021 to most of 2020.
Well, on the night Starmer was having a curry and a beer indoors, I was getting told off for talking to a friend in a pub car park.
In County Durham or elsewhere?
In England. Last time I looked, the laws of England apply to the whole country.
We don't have a national police force - so just because you are in an area where the police are being told something that is wrong doesn't make it an issue for the rest of us.
I actually like Durham Police, as they are awfully pragmatic and have the sanity to actually apply modern systems to various items (see the multiple apps they and Cumbria use for easy of reporting and the centralised custody centre that the Tories tried to stop). They also refuse to touch Cleveland Police with a bargepole no matter how many times they've been asked to merge.
So what you're saying is the Met are a ****ing disgrace for fining politicians for things that, quite frankly, should be let go?
At what point, do the Germans finally realise the importance of defeating Putin in the war?
Wouldn't be surprised if Germany pushed for a settlement with Russia as things get difficult over the winter
Angela Merkel was regarded as THE template for a pan European leader by many remainers. Remember Cameron's sniveling obeisance at the mother of parliaments?
What is happening now is on her. This was her strategy. War and mass deprivation are her legacy.
You are overstating the case. Johnson didn't need to trim very much to survive and thrive.
A bit softer on net zero, a bit more attention to truth and the rules, a bit more aggressive on the culture wars, some definitive action on tax cuts, commitments to no more lockdowns etc.
But no. He would not trim one iota. He felt himself above it all and he would not compromise at all. That's why he is going.
Johnson is going only because of three mistakes.
1. He insisted that his MPs break the existing system of due process in a doomed attempt to save his mate Paterson from deserved censure. 2. He lied about breaking coronavirus rules instead of coming clean about it. 3. He lied about what he knew about Pincher's track record.
Some of the policy stuff didn't make MPs exactly delighted, but the end of Johnson was not motivated by a desire for a change of policy, but for a change of character. It's not just that he was a liar, but he was a really bad liar who made other people look ridiculous for being caught out lying on his behalf.
Of course a new leader is an opportunity for policy changes in all sorts of areas depending on what particularly axe a backbencher or party member wishes to grind. But policy didn't doom* Johnson and it wouldn't have saved him. This was 100% character failings.
* Note to Rejoiners, this also means Brexit had nothing to do with his end too, and there's no particular reason to expect a softening over a gardening as a result.
The crapness of his lies is a peculiar aspect. Because they often got him into more and deeper trouble
Was it sheer laziness? Was it arrogance ("they will believe any old shit")? Was it a simple inability to lie well, perhaps because it troubles him subconsciously?
A mix?
He is a genuinely fascinating character. because he has so many talents alongside so many flaws; for this reason - and others - his book will SELL. People want to know, even some of the haters
Laziness and arrogance, yes. Confirmation bias as well - his lies have been tolerated and even welcomed his whole life - why not for one more week?
At what point, do the Germans finally realise the importance of defeating Putin in the war?
Mate you have explained why you are abroad and I totally respect that.
But don't start playing fast and loose on behalf of a sovereign state saying that they should as a matter of course make their population suffer.
From the outset it was obvious that Germany would have to think long and hard about their energy situation and that any penal action taken against Russia would also impact the German people.
Yeah it was so partisan, idiots not realising the rules were different in April 2021 to most of 2020.
Well, on the night Starmer was having a curry and a beer indoors, I was getting told off for talking to a friend in a pub car park.
In County Durham or elsewhere?
In England. Last time I looked, the laws of England apply to the whole country.
We don't have a national police force - so just because you are in an area where the police are being told something that is wrong doesn't make it an issue for the rest of us.
I actually like Durham Police, as they are awfully pragmatic and have the sanity to actually apply modern systems to various items (see the multiple apps they and Cumbria use for easy of reporting and the centralised custody centre that the Tories tried to stop). They also refuse to touch Cleveland Police with a bargepole no matter how many times they've been asked to merge.
So what you're saying is the Met are a ****ing disgrace for fining politicians for things that, quite frankly, should be let go?
No what I'm saying is that we don't have a national police force.
Which means that when you complain about a police force doing XYZ when they shouldn't be that is very much a local issue.
Here the police did issue FPN when appropriate - but the SKS case wasn't one of them at the time and it wasn't one when the police were forced to re-open the case for politically motivated reasons.
@OnlyLivingBoy - You've got me googling now. The Woke people at the Indy also reviewed this "Millions of Women" book. I apologise for the chunk of quotation, but their review is worth reading at length, so we can all grasp the true depravity of this man "@SeanT":
"On the cover of my proof copy of Sean Thomas's non-fiction account of his adventures on the internet-dating scene, Millions of Women Are Waiting to Meet You, there is a jokey warning that "this book reveals how men really think." This isn't true. Sean Thomas may believe himself to be a normal man, but in the course of this book he decides a woman named "Bongowoman" is an appealing person to go on a date with; describes how his first sexual experience (at 12 years old) involved him flashing at his parents' cleaning woman; reveals that he can only go out with women who are shorter than him (he describes such women as "sit-on-my-lap girls"); fakes suicide to impress a girl who's broken up with him; suffers from several bouts of serious impotence; catches crabs from an Australian woman; boasts about the TV celebrity he used to date, a relationship which began when he shoved his hand up her skirt; gets so addicted to internet porn (particularly "Bernie's Spanking Pages" and "extremely convoluted scenarios where submissive Danish actresses are intimately shaved by their dominant female doctors in the shower") that he masturbates himself into the hospital, where he ends up on a saline drip; goes into a 15-page explanation of why he doesn't want to sodomise a woman who's begged him to do so, before deciding that he will do it after all; explains how when he was 30 he made his 17-year old schoolgirl lover have an abortion; gets a blow-job from his best friend's girlfriend on Bayswater Road in full view of the public; performs oral sex on a woman moments after she has finished having sex with his friend in the other room; goes to a strip club in Thailand so often over a three-month period that one of the strippers writes messages to him with a pen clenched in her vagina; has an abortive threesome in Russia which ends with him prematurely ejaculating over the carpet, and in one of the book's most flabbergasting chapters, mistakenly believes he's impregnated a prostitute and considers throwing everything in and starting a family with her.
Now, Sean, that ain't normal. It is, however, hilarious. I can't remember reading a book that's made me laugh out loud as much as this one. Thomas must be extraordinarily brave...."
I must buy that book, although I have difficulty believing all of that.
My publishing contacts at the Gazette assure me it is true. Indeed there are rumours of a second volume, where all the stories that were "too outrageous to go in the first book", finally see daylight
Should be quite a read, albeit repellent, of course
As for Starmer, he should have been fined. I get that there were 350 parties/meetings at Downing Street but the ones we have seen pictures of were likewise reasonable work events or whatever the term was.
For those events they should either have fined both of them or neither.
In other news, this week it was revealed that Elon Musk has had twins with a female executive at one of his companies.
Seeing the Musk fans try to spin this is quite hilarious.
Why do they have to spin it? He hasn’t done anything illegal. It might be a sackable offence in some companies (is it?) but then he’s not going to sack himself, he owns the company
That's the point. You don't shag around with the staff, even consensually: especially when you are the top boss.
It should be noted that Musk's companies are facing numerous race and sexual discrimination lawsuits.
A fish rots from its head.
What puritanical bullshit!
What consensual adults do in their own beds is between them and nobody else.
A significant proportion of the married people I know met their spouses through work, when you're spending all day at work and the only people you meet most of the time are at work, its entirely natural and normal for intimate relations to happen.
People need to grow up and stop puritanically staring at other people in judgement.
It isn't 'puritanical'; it's common sense. There have been too many cases of bosses abusing their positions in various ways. Just look at the movie industry for one example.
I met my wife through work, when I was project managing her. That was difficult enough, and I'd like to think we handled it well (and were both relatively junior).
But if you're one of the top bods, it really isn't rocket science to say that you don't shag the staff. And Musk has massive opportunities to meet people outside his various companies. Grimes, for example ...
You're right its not rocket science to say that, its puritanical bullshit to say it.
If Musk and the executive are attracted to each other and get intimate that's between them and there is nothing wrong with that any more than you and your then-future wife doing the same.
Abuse is wrong, consensual is not. So long as it is consensual, it is OK.
It really is not puritanical. It's safeguarding the company and its staff.
And there's a vast difference between our situation and theirs, in virtually every way. I can go into details if you want: but if you are one of the top guys or gals, you do not have a relationship with the staff. And if you must, make sure it's open, don't get them pregnant, and especially don't do it if you're having a surrogate child with your girlfriend at the same time.
Bollocks, bollocks and more bollocks.
Keeping your private life private is entirely appropriate, so long as its consensual.
Them having a child is between them, and his then-girlfriend perhaps, not anyone else or the firm.
What consensual adults do is between them. You're acting like people who object to gays having sex because men sleeping with men is immoral supposedly. So long as they're genuinely consenting, its between them, whether it be man with woman, man with man, or employer with employee.
It really is not bollocks. Look at the vast number of abuses that have turned up over the years in all areas.
And your comment about gays is wrong, laughable and crass.
The point is that the boss has massive power over the individual - in the same way a university lecturer has over an adult student (in fact, bosses often have more power). It's not about the relationship: it's about the potential for abuse of power.
(In our case, that did not really exist. We were essentially at the same level, and I was just project managing her on a couple of projects: she was just as likely to have pm'ed me if circs had been different. And as we told our bosses, and they ensured there could be no abuses.)
If power is abused, deal with the abuse.
If its consensual, there's no abuse, just puritanism.
Relationships end. All Musk's relationships have ended, some acrimoniously. When they end, often one party or both feel aggrieved, rightly or not. How the heck is a company to (fairly) work out if there has been abuse or not? Did the boss promise something? A promotion? Were company resources used during the relationship? etc, etc.
It's about power. The bigger the gap between the staff members, the greater the risk of abuse.
It was done your way for centuries, and lots of people were abused.
As I said, Musk has plenty of opportunities to dip his wick in people who do not work for his companies. Including his (apparently now-ex) gf.
Just because there's a potential for abuse doesn't mean that consensual adults can't consensually do what consensual adults want to do. 🤦♂️
Yes he has opportunities to "dip his wick" for people outside of his company. He also has opportunities to do so for people inside it to, if they consensually agree.
If sex isn't consensual, it should be for the Police to investigate more than the company.
You appear to be totally missing my point. Do you think university lecturers should be free to have relationships with students?
Anyway, I doubt we're going to agree on this...
So long as the university students are over 18 and consenting, yes of course I do.
I agree with what I believe the law is, that sex with children under 16 is not ok, and if you're in a position of authority over a 16 or 17 year old then that is not OK either.
I am completely liberal on matters of sex: What consenting adults do is up to them.
Not if its abusive. And abuse of power is an abuse.
If it's abusive it should be a matter for the Police.
If it's consenting, it should not be.
Either way, it's up to the adults involved.
Oh lordy, you're missing the point. What does 'consenting' mean if a boss promises an employee an advantage? Is that fair towards other employees? If such a promise is later made, how does the company work out if it is true? What happens if it is 'sleep with me or you won't get promotion'? How do you prove that? Disprove it?
And there are many other potential conflicts as well.
When there are power disparities, it's best all round if relationships are avoided. And if they cannot, they have to be open and visible, not hidden. Which is difficult if one or both of the parties are married...
And how are you going to promote openly visible relationships when you puritanically try to drive relationships underground by prohibiting them? Your own logic is self-contradictory.
If you want to encourage honesty and openness, then being puritanical or promoting a "don't ask, don't tell" attitude won't get it.
It really isn't self-contradictory. And it's about preventing and reducing the abuses that the approach you seem to prefer has caused so many times.
Abusers need to be punished and abuse taken seriously not brushed under the rug.
Taking away everyone else's liberties isn't a way to do that. Driving relationships underground as you've frowned upon them and made them socially unacceptable just plays into the abusers hands, as abusers have more opportunities for abuse when everything is underground.
Openness and honesty is the polar opposite of prohibition, not its friend. Your puritanical prohibitionism won't stop adults screwing each other, it will just make them do so in secret more, which will make the abusers job easier. 🤦♂️
Prohibition does not work.
You're forgetting two basic principles.
1. It's a huge problem for any employer. If they tell you, in induction, not to do it, then you can't complain when you do it in secret or openly, and they get you for it.
2. You just don't do things that conflict with your employer's interests (except in permitted areas such as TUS work). I work for Widgets PLC, I'm not allowed to post on here saying they are crap and Thingummies Ltd's products are superior. I'm not allowed to put laxative in the shop-floor manager's tea. And I'm not allowed to jump the manager's spouse, certainly if we're in the same line of management, because that tends to lead to equally messy results in the workplace.
Re the libertarian thing - if one doesn't like it, then one can piss off the moment the no-conflict rule comes up at induction. Even if one does not have the common sense to realise it a priori.
I am not forgetting either.
Companies can have policies, even bad policies, I agree with that. Doesn't make those policies universal, or correct.
However Josias is acting as if the bad policies he knows are universal and appropriate. They're not universal. They're not the law. Many, many employers do not have such policies as has already been confirmed by many here.
Just because other companies have bad policies, doesn't mean Musk or anyone else needs to adopt such bad policies in their own business.
If there is no conflict there is no issue. Two of my friends at work got married. No problem.
As has been indicated below, it's also about the company protecting itself from claims in the future. Or even the bad atmosphere that can occur if a relationship goes sour.
It's also about the 'potential' for conflict, not just whether conflict occurs. If someone at my grade is promoted ahead of me, and they've been having an affair with the CEO, it would be fair for me to wonder if there was a connection between the promotion and the affair. And it would be the devil's job to prove there was no connection.
Bart's way has been tried for centuries, and it has led to lots of problems and abuse of power. I'm not talking about new laws (I don't think I've mentioned the law at all); just that institutions need to protect themselves and their employees.
Musk's behaviour will be noted by others further down the organisational chain. If the boss can do it, so can they. And his companies are not exactly free from strife atm...
Men and women haven't only had sex for centuries, they've had sex for as long as humanity has existed.
You might want to try to regulate away people's sex drives, but you're as puritanical and as doomed to failure as those who wish to pray away the gay.
Absolutely Musk's employees can have sex and get pregnant. That's kind of how humanity propagates itself you know?
"Men and women haven't only had sex for centuries, they've had sex for as long as humanity has existed."
Wow. I never knew that. Thanks for enlightening me! (/sarcasm)
I don't want to regulate away people's sex drives. Far from. And neither am I being puritanical, however many times you say it.
But if we're going to take such a tone: you're shouting for sexual and other abuses. Because the system you're promoting has been done, and abuse has occurred because of it. And you evidently don't care.
Abuse has always happened and will always happen. I evidently do care, but I care to tackle the abusers and systems that push abuse under the carpet - not people who consensually have sex with each other. 🤦♂️
The Catholic Priests who systematically abused vulnerable people did so while supposedly celibate. Celibacy has been tried and failed too. Pushing relationships under the carpet has been tried and failed too.
Openness and honesty works and honesty only works when prohibition doesn't happen.
You didn't object to any supposed abuse, you have provided literally zero evidence of abuse, you objected to a pregnancy. All this started by discussing childbirth. People are entitled to get pregnant and have a child. If they want to they should be entitled to have an abortion, and if they don't want to they should be able to have children - even, yes, twins as in this case.
If any evidence of actual, you know, abuse turns up then lets discuss that but in the meantime without any such evidence businesses have absolutely no rightful place in telling employees who can or can not have children or get pregnant.
I was in a sense, my future wife's boss, when I got engaged to her. I was a local councillor, supervising the department she worked in. But, we both reported our relationship to our superiors, and I don't consider there was any impropriety to it.
Similar here.
It is perfectly normal and natural. Employers can very reasonably object to abuse, but not to pregnancy, or engagements, or relationships.
You are overstating the case. Johnson didn't need to trim very much to survive and thrive.
A bit softer on net zero, a bit more attention to truth and the rules, a bit more aggressive on the culture wars, some definitive action on tax cuts, commitments to no more lockdowns etc.
But no. He would not trim one iota. He felt himself above it all and he would not compromise at all. That's why he is going.
Johnson is going only because of three mistakes.
1. He insisted that his MPs break the existing system of due process in a doomed attempt to save his mate Paterson from deserved censure. 2. He lied about breaking coronavirus rules instead of coming clean about it. 3. He lied about what he knew about Pincher's track record.
Some of the policy stuff didn't make MPs exactly delighted, but the end of Johnson was not motivated by a desire for a change of policy, but for a change of character. It's not just that he was a liar, but he was a really bad liar who made other people look ridiculous for being caught out lying on his behalf.
Of course a new leader is an opportunity for policy changes in all sorts of areas depending on what particularly axe a backbencher or party member wishes to grind. But policy didn't doom* Johnson and it wouldn't have saved him. This was 100% character failings.
* Note to Rejoiners, this also means Brexit had nothing to do with his end too, and there's no particular reason to expect a softening over a gardening as a result.
The crapness of his lies is a peculiar aspect. Because they often got him into more and deeper trouble
Was it sheer laziness? Was it arrogance ("they will believe any old shit")? Was it a simple inability to lie well, perhaps because it troubles him subconsciously?
A mix?
He is a genuinely fascinating character. because he has so many talents alongside so many flaws; for this reason - and others - his book will SELL. People want to know, even some of the haters
What's the point of reading a book by someone who just makes stuff up?
Yeah it was so partisan, idiots not realising the rules were different in April 2021 to most of 2020.
Well, on the night Starmer was having a curry and a beer indoors, I was getting told off for talking to a friend in a pub car park.
In County Durham or elsewhere?
In England. Last time I looked, the laws of England apply to the whole country.
We don't have a national police force - so just because you are in an area where the police are being told something that is wrong doesn't make it an issue for the rest of us.
I actually like Durham Police, as they are awfully pragmatic and have the sanity to actually apply modern systems to various items (see the multiple apps they and Cumbria use for easy of reporting and the centralised custody centre that the Tories tried to stop). They also refuse to touch Cleveland Police with a bargepole no matter how many times they've been asked to merge.
So what you're saying is the Met are a ****ing disgrace for fining politicians for things that, quite frankly, should be let go?
Boris and in particular Rishi should not have been fined for the birthday cake event, but Boris should have been fined for other party and social events he attended illegally.
Yeah it was so partisan, idiots not realising the rules were different in April 2021 to most of 2020.
Well, on the night Starmer was having a curry and a beer indoors, I was getting told off for talking to a friend in a pub car park.
In County Durham or elsewhere?
In England. Last time I looked, the laws of England apply to the whole country.
We don't have a national police force - so just because you are in an area where the police are being told something that is wrong doesn't make it an issue for the rest of us.
I actually like Durham Police, as they are awfully pragmatic and have the sanity to actually apply modern systems to various items (see the multiple apps they and Cumbria use for easy of reporting and the centralised custody centre that the Tories tried to stop). They also refuse to touch Cleveland Police with a bargepole no matter how many times they've been asked to merge.
So what you're saying is the Met are a ****ing disgrace for fining politicians for things that, quite frankly, should be let go?
No what I'm saying is that we don't have a national police force.
Which means that when you complain about a police force doing XYZ when they shouldn't be that is very much a local issue.
Here the police did issue FPN when appropriate - but the SKS case wasn't one of them at the time and it wasn't one when the police were forced to re-open the case for politically motivated reasons.
To repeat, I was told off by a member of staff not the police. The pub - the local that I was supporting - was seriously worried about anyone breaching the utterly ludicrous rules that were in place in April 2021.
The politicians - Starmer included - created that situation.
In other news, this week it was revealed that Elon Musk has had twins with a female executive at one of his companies.
Seeing the Musk fans try to spin this is quite hilarious.
Why do they have to spin it? He hasn’t done anything illegal. It might be a sackable offence in some companies (is it?) but then he’s not going to sack himself, he owns the company
That's the point. You don't shag around with the staff, even consensually: especially when you are the top boss.
It should be noted that Musk's companies are facing numerous race and sexual discrimination lawsuits.
A fish rots from its head.
What puritanical bullshit!
What consensual adults do in their own beds is between them and nobody else.
A significant proportion of the married people I know met their spouses through work, when you're spending all day at work and the only people you meet most of the time are at work, its entirely natural and normal for intimate relations to happen.
People need to grow up and stop puritanically staring at other people in judgement.
It isn't 'puritanical'; it's common sense. There have been too many cases of bosses abusing their positions in various ways. Just look at the movie industry for one example.
I met my wife through work, when I was project managing her. That was difficult enough, and I'd like to think we handled it well (and were both relatively junior).
But if you're one of the top bods, it really isn't rocket science to say that you don't shag the staff. And Musk has massive opportunities to meet people outside his various companies. Grimes, for example ...
You're right its not rocket science to say that, its puritanical bullshit to say it.
If Musk and the executive are attracted to each other and get intimate that's between them and there is nothing wrong with that any more than you and your then-future wife doing the same.
Abuse is wrong, consensual is not. So long as it is consensual, it is OK.
It really is not puritanical. It's safeguarding the company and its staff.
And there's a vast difference between our situation and theirs, in virtually every way. I can go into details if you want: but if you are one of the top guys or gals, you do not have a relationship with the staff. And if you must, make sure it's open, don't get them pregnant, and especially don't do it if you're having a surrogate child with your girlfriend at the same time.
Bollocks, bollocks and more bollocks.
Keeping your private life private is entirely appropriate, so long as its consensual.
Them having a child is between them, and his then-girlfriend perhaps, not anyone else or the firm.
What consensual adults do is between them. You're acting like people who object to gays having sex because men sleeping with men is immoral supposedly. So long as they're genuinely consenting, its between them, whether it be man with woman, man with man, or employer with employee.
It really is not bollocks. Look at the vast number of abuses that have turned up over the years in all areas.
And your comment about gays is wrong, laughable and crass.
The point is that the boss has massive power over the individual - in the same way a university lecturer has over an adult student (in fact, bosses often have more power). It's not about the relationship: it's about the potential for abuse of power.
(In our case, that did not really exist. We were essentially at the same level, and I was just project managing her on a couple of projects: she was just as likely to have pm'ed me if circs had been different. And as we told our bosses, and they ensured there could be no abuses.)
If power is abused, deal with the abuse.
If its consensual, there's no abuse, just puritanism.
Relationships end. All Musk's relationships have ended, some acrimoniously. When they end, often one party or both feel aggrieved, rightly or not. How the heck is a company to (fairly) work out if there has been abuse or not? Did the boss promise something? A promotion? Were company resources used during the relationship? etc, etc.
It's about power. The bigger the gap between the staff members, the greater the risk of abuse.
It was done your way for centuries, and lots of people were abused.
As I said, Musk has plenty of opportunities to dip his wick in people who do not work for his companies. Including his (apparently now-ex) gf.
Just because there's a potential for abuse doesn't mean that consensual adults can't consensually do what consensual adults want to do. 🤦♂️
Yes he has opportunities to "dip his wick" for people outside of his company. He also has opportunities to do so for people inside it to, if they consensually agree.
If sex isn't consensual, it should be for the Police to investigate more than the company.
You appear to be totally missing my point. Do you think university lecturers should be free to have relationships with students?
Anyway, I doubt we're going to agree on this...
So long as the university students are over 18 and consenting, yes of course I do.
I agree with what I believe the law is, that sex with children under 16 is not ok, and if you're in a position of authority over a 16 or 17 year old then that is not OK either.
I am completely liberal on matters of sex: What consenting adults do is up to them.
Not if its abusive. And abuse of power is an abuse.
If it's abusive it should be a matter for the Police.
If it's consenting, it should not be.
Either way, it's up to the adults involved.
Oh lordy, you're missing the point. What does 'consenting' mean if a boss promises an employee an advantage? Is that fair towards other employees? If such a promise is later made, how does the company work out if it is true? What happens if it is 'sleep with me or you won't get promotion'? How do you prove that? Disprove it?
And there are many other potential conflicts as well.
When there are power disparities, it's best all round if relationships are avoided. And if they cannot, they have to be open and visible, not hidden. Which is difficult if one or both of the parties are married...
And how are you going to promote openly visible relationships when you puritanically try to drive relationships underground by prohibiting them? Your own logic is self-contradictory.
If you want to encourage honesty and openness, then being puritanical or promoting a "don't ask, don't tell" attitude won't get it.
It really isn't self-contradictory. And it's about preventing and reducing the abuses that the approach you seem to prefer has caused so many times.
Abusers need to be punished and abuse taken seriously not brushed under the rug.
Taking away everyone else's liberties isn't a way to do that. Driving relationships underground as you've frowned upon them and made them socially unacceptable just plays into the abusers hands, as abusers have more opportunities for abuse when everything is underground.
Openness and honesty is the polar opposite of prohibition, not its friend. Your puritanical prohibitionism won't stop adults screwing each other, it will just make them do so in secret more, which will make the abusers job easier. 🤦♂️
Prohibition does not work.
You're forgetting two basic principles.
1. It's a huge problem for any employer. If they tell you, in induction, not to do it, then you can't complain when you do it in secret or openly, and they get you for it.
2. You just don't do things that conflict with your employer's interests (except in permitted areas such as TUS work). I work for Widgets PLC, I'm not allowed to post on here saying they are crap and Thingummies Ltd's products are superior. I'm not allowed to put laxative in the shop-floor manager's tea. And I'm not allowed to jump the manager's spouse, certainly if we're in the same line of management, because that tends to lead to equally messy results in the workplace.
Re the libertarian thing - if one doesn't like it, then one can piss off the moment the no-conflict rule comes up at induction. Even if one does not have the common sense to realise it a priori.
I am not forgetting either.
Companies can have policies, even bad policies, I agree with that. Doesn't make those policies universal, or correct.
However Josias is acting as if the bad policies he knows are universal and appropriate. They're not universal. They're not the law. Many, many employers do not have such policies as has already been confirmed by many here.
Just because other companies have bad policies, doesn't mean Musk or anyone else needs to adopt such bad policies in their own business.
If there is no conflict there is no issue. Two of my friends at work got married. No problem.
As has been indicated below, it's also about the company protecting itself from claims in the future. Or even the bad atmosphere that can occur if a relationship goes sour.
It's also about the 'potential' for conflict, not just whether conflict occurs. If someone at my grade is promoted ahead of me, and they've been having an affair with the CEO, it would be fair for me to wonder if there was a connection between the promotion and the affair. And it would be the devil's job to prove there was no connection.
Bart's way has been tried for centuries, and it has led to lots of problems and abuse of power. I'm not talking about new laws (I don't think I've mentioned the law at all); just that institutions need to protect themselves and their employees.
Musk's behaviour will be noted by others further down the organisational chain. If the boss can do it, so can they. And his companies are not exactly free from strife atm...
Men and women haven't only had sex for centuries, they've had sex for as long as humanity has existed.
You might want to try to regulate away people's sex drives, but you're as puritanical and as doomed to failure as those who wish to pray away the gay.
Absolutely Musk's employees can have sex and get pregnant. That's kind of how humanity propagates itself you know?
"Men and women haven't only had sex for centuries, they've had sex for as long as humanity has existed."
Wow. I never knew that. Thanks for enlightening me! (/sarcasm)
I don't want to regulate away people's sex drives. Far from. And neither am I being puritanical, however many times you say it.
But if we're going to take such a tone: you're shouting for sexual and other abuses. Because the system you're promoting has been done, and abuse has occurred because of it. And you evidently don't care.
Abuse has always happened and will always happen. I evidently do care, but I care to tackle the abusers and systems that push abuse under the carpet - not people who consensually have sex with each other. 🤦♂️
(Snip)
If you do care, given abusive relationships between adults have happened for years in organisations, how do you stop it?
Your approach appears to be one of: "nothing to see here, move on..."
And that is to push abuse under the carpet (that's really not good imagery), and I don't think you've got any other solution to the problem.
To take an extreme example: say you run a company. A senior manager has had an affair with a staff member two ranks lower than him, and she got a promotion. The relationship has broken down, and she is now claiming he forced her to have sex on occasion, and later an abortion, and she got the promotion in return for keeping quiet.
It is a mess. As the boss, how can you tell how much the relationship was consensual? Is he lying? Is she lying? Is the truth somewhere in between? Was her promotion truly deserved, or was she promoted because of the affair? Do you protect him, as he's a darned good manager? Do you protect her? Do you sling both of them out?
These sorts of things happen (anecdotally something similar happened at a company here in Cambridge, which I won't name - and it's not one we've worked for).
This is the sort of absolute mess that organisations need to protect themselves from.
And worse, if workers lower down the organisation's hierarchy see the bosses shagging their juniors, they'll be more likely to do it as well. The fish rotting from the head. In the same way if they see a boss being racist or sexist, they'll be more likely to think that sort of behaviour is acceptable.
I'm not calling for a law on this. Just that if I was the boss of that company, I'd want that senior manager to be out on his ear: it's a clear-cut case to me (and hopefully the company's regs would back me up).
At what point, do the Germans finally realise the importance of defeating Putin in the war?
Mate you have explained why you are abroad and I totally respect that.
But don't start playing fast and loose on behalf of a sovereign state saying that they should as a matter of course make their population suffer.
From the outset it was obvious that Germany would have to think long and hard about their energy situation and that any penal action taken against Russia would also impact the German people.
So what you're saying is the Germans should sell their souls for cheaper gas supplies?
Must be a shock for Germany to have to consider this sort of thing. They haven't had any shortages of anything since the 1950s, whereas we did in the 1970s during the Winter of Discontent, etc.
They are talking about restricting heat during the 11p to 6am window.
Does German energy demand work the other way round to ours?
I don't think the challenge is meeting peak demand, but in meeting total aggregate demand, because they have a reasonable amount of storage.
We're more vulnerable to problems meeting peak demand, because we have little storage and so might have issues if there's a temporary interruption or delay in gas deliveries.
Germany's biggest problem is that they should be filling their reserves up now because their international supply doesn't support winter demand so they always use a fair bit of what is stored over winter.
Unfortunately they are not currently able to fill their reserves which means come winter Germany are going to have similar problems to us.
As for Starmer, he should have been fined. I get that there were 350 parties/meetings at Downing Street but the ones we have seen pictures of were likewise reasonable work events or whatever the term was.
For those events they should either have fined both of them or neither.
Give over, Beergate was never more than a confected attempted gotcha. It was plain as the nose on your face that the gathering was totally legitimate.
You are overstating the case. Johnson didn't need to trim very much to survive and thrive.
A bit softer on net zero, a bit more attention to truth and the rules, a bit more aggressive on the culture wars, some definitive action on tax cuts, commitments to no more lockdowns etc.
But no. He would not trim one iota. He felt himself above it all and he would not compromise at all. That's why he is going.
Johnson is going only because of three mistakes.
1. He insisted that his MPs break the existing system of due process in a doomed attempt to save his mate Paterson from deserved censure. 2. He lied about breaking coronavirus rules instead of coming clean about it. 3. He lied about what he knew about Pincher's track record.
Some of the policy stuff didn't make MPs exactly delighted, but the end of Johnson was not motivated by a desire for a change of policy, but for a change of character. It's not just that he was a liar, but he was a really bad liar who made other people look ridiculous for being caught out lying on his behalf.
Of course a new leader is an opportunity for policy changes in all sorts of areas depending on what particularly axe a backbencher or party member wishes to grind. But policy didn't doom* Johnson and it wouldn't have saved him. This was 100% character failings.
* Note to Rejoiners, this also means Brexit had nothing to do with his end too, and there's no particular reason to expect a softening over a gardening as a result.
The crapness of his lies is a peculiar aspect. Because they often got him into more and deeper trouble
Was it sheer laziness? Was it arrogance ("they will believe any old shit")? Was it a simple inability to lie well, perhaps because it troubles him subconsciously?
A mix?
He is a genuinely fascinating character. because he has so many talents alongside so many flaws; for this reason - and others - his book will SELL. People want to know, even some of the haters
He has in front of him a paper cut out of @HYUFD. His litmus test, when he thinks of some outrageous lie he plans to tell is - will *this* person fall for it.
And they have. Consistently. Boris called it well for some time indeed even up until the very end he was fooling some of the people most of the time.
UK food inflation has hit 8.6% – but closer to Russia it is over 20%
Food inflation in Lithuania, Bulgaria and Hungary is running at over 20%, while Baltic neighbours Latvia and Estonia are not far behind at 18.8% and 17.4% respectively.
In other news, this week it was revealed that Elon Musk has had twins with a female executive at one of his companies.
Seeing the Musk fans try to spin this is quite hilarious.
Why do they have to spin it? He hasn’t done anything illegal. It might be a sackable offence in some companies (is it?) but then he’s not going to sack himself, he owns the company
That's the point. You don't shag around with the staff, even consensually: especially when you are the top boss.
It should be noted that Musk's companies are facing numerous race and sexual discrimination lawsuits.
A fish rots from its head.
What puritanical bullshit!
What consensual adults do in their own beds is between them and nobody else.
A significant proportion of the married people I know met their spouses through work, when you're spending all day at work and the only people you meet most of the time are at work, its entirely natural and normal for intimate relations to happen.
People need to grow up and stop puritanically staring at other people in judgement.
It isn't 'puritanical'; it's common sense. There have been too many cases of bosses abusing their positions in various ways. Just look at the movie industry for one example.
I met my wife through work, when I was project managing her. That was difficult enough, and I'd like to think we handled it well (and were both relatively junior).
But if you're one of the top bods, it really isn't rocket science to say that you don't shag the staff. And Musk has massive opportunities to meet people outside his various companies. Grimes, for example ...
You're right its not rocket science to say that, its puritanical bullshit to say it.
If Musk and the executive are attracted to each other and get intimate that's between them and there is nothing wrong with that any more than you and your then-future wife doing the same.
Abuse is wrong, consensual is not. So long as it is consensual, it is OK.
It really is not puritanical. It's safeguarding the company and its staff.
And there's a vast difference between our situation and theirs, in virtually every way. I can go into details if you want: but if you are one of the top guys or gals, you do not have a relationship with the staff. And if you must, make sure it's open, don't get them pregnant, and especially don't do it if you're having a surrogate child with your girlfriend at the same time.
Bollocks, bollocks and more bollocks.
Keeping your private life private is entirely appropriate, so long as its consensual.
Them having a child is between them, and his then-girlfriend perhaps, not anyone else or the firm.
What consensual adults do is between them. You're acting like people who object to gays having sex because men sleeping with men is immoral supposedly. So long as they're genuinely consenting, its between them, whether it be man with woman, man with man, or employer with employee.
It really is not bollocks. Look at the vast number of abuses that have turned up over the years in all areas.
And your comment about gays is wrong, laughable and crass.
The point is that the boss has massive power over the individual - in the same way a university lecturer has over an adult student (in fact, bosses often have more power). It's not about the relationship: it's about the potential for abuse of power.
(In our case, that did not really exist. We were essentially at the same level, and I was just project managing her on a couple of projects: she was just as likely to have pm'ed me if circs had been different. And as we told our bosses, and they ensured there could be no abuses.)
If power is abused, deal with the abuse.
If its consensual, there's no abuse, just puritanism.
Relationships end. All Musk's relationships have ended, some acrimoniously. When they end, often one party or both feel aggrieved, rightly or not. How the heck is a company to (fairly) work out if there has been abuse or not? Did the boss promise something? A promotion? Were company resources used during the relationship? etc, etc.
It's about power. The bigger the gap between the staff members, the greater the risk of abuse.
It was done your way for centuries, and lots of people were abused.
As I said, Musk has plenty of opportunities to dip his wick in people who do not work for his companies. Including his (apparently now-ex) gf.
Just because there's a potential for abuse doesn't mean that consensual adults can't consensually do what consensual adults want to do. 🤦♂️
Yes he has opportunities to "dip his wick" for people outside of his company. He also has opportunities to do so for people inside it to, if they consensually agree.
If sex isn't consensual, it should be for the Police to investigate more than the company.
You appear to be totally missing my point. Do you think university lecturers should be free to have relationships with students?
Anyway, I doubt we're going to agree on this...
So long as the university students are over 18 and consenting, yes of course I do.
I agree with what I believe the law is, that sex with children under 16 is not ok, and if you're in a position of authority over a 16 or 17 year old then that is not OK either.
I am completely liberal on matters of sex: What consenting adults do is up to them.
Not if its abusive. And abuse of power is an abuse.
If it's abusive it should be a matter for the Police.
If it's consenting, it should not be.
Either way, it's up to the adults involved.
Oh lordy, you're missing the point. What does 'consenting' mean if a boss promises an employee an advantage? Is that fair towards other employees? If such a promise is later made, how does the company work out if it is true? What happens if it is 'sleep with me or you won't get promotion'? How do you prove that? Disprove it?
And there are many other potential conflicts as well.
When there are power disparities, it's best all round if relationships are avoided. And if they cannot, they have to be open and visible, not hidden. Which is difficult if one or both of the parties are married...
And how are you going to promote openly visible relationships when you puritanically try to drive relationships underground by prohibiting them? Your own logic is self-contradictory.
If you want to encourage honesty and openness, then being puritanical or promoting a "don't ask, don't tell" attitude won't get it.
It really isn't self-contradictory. And it's about preventing and reducing the abuses that the approach you seem to prefer has caused so many times.
Abusers need to be punished and abuse taken seriously not brushed under the rug.
Taking away everyone else's liberties isn't a way to do that. Driving relationships underground as you've frowned upon them and made them socially unacceptable just plays into the abusers hands, as abusers have more opportunities for abuse when everything is underground.
Openness and honesty is the polar opposite of prohibition, not its friend. Your puritanical prohibitionism won't stop adults screwing each other, it will just make them do so in secret more, which will make the abusers job easier. 🤦♂️
Prohibition does not work.
You're forgetting two basic principles.
1. It's a huge problem for any employer. If they tell you, in induction, not to do it, then you can't complain when you do it in secret or openly, and they get you for it.
2. You just don't do things that conflict with your employer's interests (except in permitted areas such as TUS work). I work for Widgets PLC, I'm not allowed to post on here saying they are crap and Thingummies Ltd's products are superior. I'm not allowed to put laxative in the shop-floor manager's tea. And I'm not allowed to jump the manager's spouse, certainly if we're in the same line of management, because that tends to lead to equally messy results in the workplace.
Re the libertarian thing - if one doesn't like it, then one can piss off the moment the no-conflict rule comes up at induction. Even if one does not have the common sense to realise it a priori.
I am not forgetting either.
Companies can have policies, even bad policies, I agree with that. Doesn't make those policies universal, or correct.
However Josias is acting as if the bad policies he knows are universal and appropriate. They're not universal. They're not the law. Many, many employers do not have such policies as has already been confirmed by many here.
Just because other companies have bad policies, doesn't mean Musk or anyone else needs to adopt such bad policies in their own business.
If there is no conflict there is no issue. Two of my friends at work got married. No problem.
As has been indicated below, it's also about the company protecting itself from claims in the future. Or even the bad atmosphere that can occur if a relationship goes sour.
It's also about the 'potential' for conflict, not just whether conflict occurs. If someone at my grade is promoted ahead of me, and they've been having an affair with the CEO, it would be fair for me to wonder if there was a connection between the promotion and the affair. And it would be the devil's job to prove there was no connection.
Bart's way has been tried for centuries, and it has led to lots of problems and abuse of power. I'm not talking about new laws (I don't think I've mentioned the law at all); just that institutions need to protect themselves and their employees.
Musk's behaviour will be noted by others further down the organisational chain. If the boss can do it, so can they. And his companies are not exactly free from strife atm...
Men and women haven't only had sex for centuries, they've had sex for as long as humanity has existed.
You might want to try to regulate away people's sex drives, but you're as puritanical and as doomed to failure as those who wish to pray away the gay.
Absolutely Musk's employees can have sex and get pregnant. That's kind of how humanity propagates itself you know?
"Men and women haven't only had sex for centuries, they've had sex for as long as humanity has existed."
Wow. I never knew that. Thanks for enlightening me! (/sarcasm)
I don't want to regulate away people's sex drives. Far from. And neither am I being puritanical, however many times you say it.
But if we're going to take such a tone: you're shouting for sexual and other abuses. Because the system you're promoting has been done, and abuse has occurred because of it. And you evidently don't care.
Abuse has always happened and will always happen. I evidently do care, but I care to tackle the abusers and systems that push abuse under the carpet - not people who consensually have sex with each other. 🤦♂️
(Snip)
If you do care, given abusive relationships between adults have happened for years in organisations, how do you stop it?
Your approach appears to be one of: "nothing to see here, move on..."
And that is to push abuse under the carpet (that's really not good imagery), and I don't think you've got any other solution to the problem.
To take an extreme example: say you run a company. A senior manager has had an affair with a staff member two ranks lower than him, and she got a promotion. The relationship has broken down, and she is now claiming he forced her to have sex on occasion, and later an abortion, and she got the promotion in return for keeping quiet.
It is a mess. As the boss, how can you tell how much the relationship was consensual? Is he lying? Is she lying? Is the truth somewhere in between? Was her promotion truly deserved, or was she promoted because of the affair? Do you protect him, as he's a darned good manager? Do you protect her? Do you sling both of them out?
These sorts of things happen (anecdotally something similar happened at a company here in Cambridge, which I won't name - and it's not one we've worked for).
This is the sort of absolute mess that organisations need to protect themselves from.
And worse, if workers lower down the organisation's hierarchy see the bosses shagging their juniors, they'll be more likely to do it as well. The fish rotting from the head. In the same way if they see a boss being racist or sexist, they'll be more likely to think that sort of behaviour is acceptable.
I'm not calling for a law on this. Just that if I was the boss of that company, I'd want that senior manager to be out on his ear: it's a clear-cut case to me (and hopefully the company's regs would back me up).
But many other cases are much less clear-cut.
Considering all we have here is that someone got pregnant and had twins, yes there is nothing to see here.
You stop it by investigating allegations of abuse on a case-by-case basis and treating them with the seriousness they deserve.
In your hypothetical, I would ask for evidence. If there were evidence that was forthcoming, eg a text message that put what you said in writing, then that could be gross misconduct. If there was no evidence, then innocent until proven guilty.
People shagging each other isn't anything "rotting" from the head, genitals or anywhere else, it is human nature and entirely acceptable behaviour.
But a woman having twins is not abuse. You didn't object to abuse, you objected to a new mother and father having twins.
Following the emergence of significant new information, an investigation was launched by Durham Constabulary into a gathering at the Miners’ Hall, in Redhills, Durham on 30th April 2021. That investigation has now concluded. A substantial amount of documentary and witness evidence was obtained which identified the 17 participants and their activities during that gathering. Following the application of the evidential Full Code Test, it has been concluded that there is no case to answer for a contravention of the regulations, due to the application of an exception, namely reasonably necessary work. Accordingly, Durham Constabulary will not be issuing any fixed penalty notices in respect of the gathering and no further action will be taken. The investigation has been thorough, detailed and proportionate. The final evidence supplied by participants from the local constituency was returned to Durham Police on 5th July and analysed by investigators against all the evidence before the investigation was concluded on 8th July 2022. In line with established national policing guidelines, we will not name or otherwise identify any of those present at the gathering, all of whom have been informed of the investigation outcome by their legal representatives.
So there you go.
Which was obvious from the start. And from their original investigation. No case to answer, was a campaign event.
You are overstating the case. Johnson didn't need to trim very much to survive and thrive.
A bit softer on net zero, a bit more attention to truth and the rules, a bit more aggressive on the culture wars, some definitive action on tax cuts, commitments to no more lockdowns etc.
But no. He would not trim one iota. He felt himself above it all and he would not compromise at all. That's why he is going.
Johnson is going only because of three mistakes.
1. He insisted that his MPs break the existing system of due process in a doomed attempt to save his mate Paterson from deserved censure. 2. He lied about breaking coronavirus rules instead of coming clean about it. 3. He lied about what he knew about Pincher's track record.
Some of the policy stuff didn't make MPs exactly delighted, but the end of Johnson was not motivated by a desire for a change of policy, but for a change of character. It's not just that he was a liar, but he was a really bad liar who made other people look ridiculous for being caught out lying on his behalf.
Of course a new leader is an opportunity for policy changes in all sorts of areas depending on what particularly axe a backbencher or party member wishes to grind. But policy didn't doom* Johnson and it wouldn't have saved him. This was 100% character failings.
* Note to Rejoiners, this also means Brexit had nothing to do with his end too, and there's no particular reason to expect a softening over a gardening as a result.
The crapness of his lies is a peculiar aspect. Because they often got him into more and deeper trouble
Was it sheer laziness? Was it arrogance ("they will believe any old shit")? Was it a simple inability to lie well, perhaps because it troubles him subconsciously?
A mix?
He is a genuinely fascinating character. because he has so many talents alongside so many flaws; for this reason - and others - his book will SELL. People want to know, even some of the haters
What's the point of reading a book by someone who just makes stuff up?
But Boris does not have to make stuff up or get too jokey in his memoir (and I sincerely hope he doesn't). He's a good writer, if not immortally so, he's got an amazing wealth of material, he was there at the heart of some of the most pivotal moments of the 21st century so far - Brexit, Covid, Ukraine - this book is actually IMPORTANT. He just needs to say what happened, and say it clearly, from his perspective. He now has the time and the incentive
As for Starmer, he should have been fined. I get that there were 350 parties/meetings at Downing Street but the ones we have seen pictures of were likewise reasonable work events or whatever the term was.
For those events they should either have fined both of them or neither.
Once Starmer said he'd resign I think that made it very difficult for the police to fine him.
It was obvious from day one that the campaign against Keir’s curry was dreamed up inside Number 10 and egged on by rabid tabloids and various useful idiots.
I see Big G is pretending he has nothing to do with it.
The Tories are making a mistake by allowing very little time for the parliamentary contest. In such an open field, how are they to ensure they pick the right candidates?
No wonder Truss cut her G20 visit short, although with rich irony it’s possible she’s trashed her leadership bid before it even starts.
UK food inflation has hit 8.6% – but closer to Russia it is over 20%
Food inflation in Lithuania, Bulgaria and Hungary is running at over 20%, while Baltic neighbours Latvia and Estonia are not far behind at 18.8% and 17.4% respectively.
One potential downside of Starmer and Rayner not getting fined... it leaves Rayner free to run for the Labour leadership in the future, which potentially gives the Corbynite wing of a party another chance at taking over the party. No other candidate to the left of Nandy could make the ballot.
You are overstating the case. Johnson didn't need to trim very much to survive and thrive.
A bit softer on net zero, a bit more attention to truth and the rules, a bit more aggressive on the culture wars, some definitive action on tax cuts, commitments to no more lockdowns etc.
But no. He would not trim one iota. He felt himself above it all and he would not compromise at all. That's why he is going.
Johnson is going only because of three mistakes.
1. He insisted that his MPs break the existing system of due process in a doomed attempt to save his mate Paterson from deserved censure. 2. He lied about breaking coronavirus rules instead of coming clean about it. 3. He lied about what he knew about Pincher's track record.
Some of the policy stuff didn't make MPs exactly delighted, but the end of Johnson was not motivated by a desire for a change of policy, but for a change of character. It's not just that he was a liar, but he was a really bad liar who made other people look ridiculous for being caught out lying on his behalf.
Of course a new leader is an opportunity for policy changes in all sorts of areas depending on what particularly axe a backbencher or party member wishes to grind. But policy didn't doom* Johnson and it wouldn't have saved him. This was 100% character failings.
* Note to Rejoiners, this also means Brexit had nothing to do with his end too, and there's no particular reason to expect a softening over a gardening as a result.
The crapness of his lies is a peculiar aspect. Because they often got him into more and deeper trouble
Was it sheer laziness? Was it arrogance ("they will believe any old shit")? Was it a simple inability to lie well, perhaps because it troubles him subconsciously?
A mix?
He is a genuinely fascinating character. because he has so many talents alongside so many flaws; for this reason - and others - his book will SELL. People want to know, even some of the haters
What's the point of reading a book by someone who just makes stuff up?
But Boris does not have to make stuff up or get too jokey in his memoir (and I sincerely hope he doesn't). He's a good writer, if not immortally so, he's got an amazing wealth of material, he was there at the heart of some of the most pivotal moments of the 21st century so far - Brexit, Covid, Ukraine - this book is actually IMPORTANT. He just needs to say what happened, and say it clearly, from his perspective. He now has the time and the incentive
BORIS, DON'T FUCK IT UP
It's going to be like his speech - a lengthy and pained self justification with little humility or self awareness and with the facts changed to suit the conclusion
The Tories are making a mistake by allowing very little time for the parliamentary contest. In such an open field, how are they to ensure they pick the right candidates?
They don't have an option - recess starts in less than two weeks.
Yet another Chinese academic cheating scandal....for those that don't know NeurIPS is the absolute cream of the crop of international ML conferences (and this comes on the back of several plagiarism scandals where papers from Chinese research groups have just copy / pasted from somebodies else's work and some poor PhD student has been thrown under the bus claiming they were solely responsible for the copying).
0 papers at NeurIPS and suddenly 12 publications at NeurIPS 2021🤔This may be the most pervasive cheating scandal I've seen in academia
Once he became the area chair of NeurIPS 2021, he suddenly got 12 papers accepted in NeurIPS 2021. The potential reason is that Yisen colluded with other area chairs/reviewers: He and the other 7 people had a WeChat group; most of them are area chairs in NeurIPS, ICML, and ICLR - to be specific, almost all of them are NeurIPS2021 area chairs. They arranged online meetings to bid each other’s papers so that their papers can be accepted with a higher probability.
That's the shares from not the last local election just gone but the one before.
Labour took the seat in May but the candidate was so surprised he had to be woken from bed. He then resigned a few weeks later saying he hadn't expected to have been elected so he was stepping down due to work commitments.
Hence why the electorate was p1ssed at Labour as well as Conservatives.
Comments
Residents Association 549, 43.4% (-29.0% on May 2019)
Labour 395, 31.2% (+20.4%)
Conservative 205, 16.2% (+8.3%)
Liberal Democrats 117, 9.2% (+0.3%)
Residents Association HOLD
It's the hope that kills you.
The Catholic Priests who systematically abused vulnerable people did so while supposedly celibate. Celibacy has been tried and failed too. Pushing relationships under the carpet has been tried and failed too.
Openness and honesty works and honesty only works when prohibition doesn't happen.
You didn't object to any supposed abuse, you have provided literally zero evidence of abuse, you objected to a pregnancy. All this started by discussing childbirth. People are entitled to get pregnant and have a child. If they want to they should be entitled to have an abortion, and if they don't want to they should be able to have children - even, yes, twins as in this case.
If any evidence of actual, you know, abuse turns up then lets discuss that but in the meantime without any such evidence businesses have absolutely no rightful place in telling employees who can or can not have children or get pregnant.
In agreement with Germany, the Canadian government intends to release a turbine caught up in sanctions against Russia critical for the Nord Stream gas pipeline. This will set a precedent for slow embargo lifting at the request of an aggressor state.
https://www.eurointegration.com.ua/eng/news/2022/07/7/7142802/
I would say Sunak has been the unluckiest of everybody...standing a distance away from somebody without even a diet coke in hand at their place of work and gets a FPN.
Good Week/Bad Week Index
Lab +232
Grn +89
LDm +80
Con -157
Adjusted Seat Value
Lab +3.9
Grn +1.5
LDm +1.3
Con -2.6
Johnson has gone and Starmer fighting the next election v a new conservative pm is excellent news for the conservatives
Utter bollocks, of course, but Starmer voted for that bollocks.
https://twitter.com/dlippman/status/1545357451234615298
Justice Brett Kavanaugh had to exit through the rear of Morton's on Wednesday night after DC protestors showed up out front. A Morton's rep told me: "Politics … should not trample the freedom at play of the right to congregate and eat dinner."
We need to kick Canada out of the Commonwealth.
They were then provided with (false) information and forced to reinvestigate only for it turn out that the reason for reopening the case was a pack of lies for political reasons.
In that case (and in all other similar cases) the people who provided the false information should be being charged with wasting police time.
However AI might well save us, but it will be rocky for a while
1. He insisted that his MPs break the existing system of due process in a doomed attempt to save his mate Paterson from deserved censure.
2. He lied about breaking coronavirus rules instead of coming clean about it.
3. He lied about what he knew about Pincher's track record.
Some of the policy stuff didn't make MPs exactly delighted, but the end of Johnson was not motivated by a desire for a change of policy, but for a change of character. It's not just that he was a liar, but he was a really bad liar who made other people look ridiculous for being caught out lying on his behalf.
Of course a new leader is an opportunity for policy changes in all sorts of areas depending on what particularly axe a backbencher or party member wishes to grind. But policy didn't doom* Johnson and it wouldn't have saved him. This was 100% character failings.
* Note to Rejoiners, this also means Brexit had nothing to do with his end too, and there's no particular reason to expect a softening over a gardening as a result.
Please acknowledge my email, or I will be forced to wave the ban hammer.
I think it was probably my campaign donation that secured the win. ;-)
I actually like Durham Police, as they are awfully pragmatic and have the sanity to actually apply modern systems to various items (see the multiple apps they and Cumbria use for easy of reporting and the centralised custody centre that the Tories tried to stop). They also refuse to touch Cleveland Police with a bargepole no matter how many times they've been asked to merge.
Was it sheer laziness? Was it arrogance ("they will believe any old shit")? Was it a simple inability to lie well, perhaps because it troubles him subconsciously?
A mix?
He is a genuinely fascinating character. because he has so many talents alongside so many flaws; for this reason - and others - his book will SELL. People want to know, even some of the haters
We're more vulnerable to problems meeting peak demand, because we have little storage and so might have issues if there's a temporary interruption or delay in gas deliveries.
1) Various eye witness saw some things.
2) Starmer and others present don't deny these things happened.
3) The investigation was into whether these things added up to a breach of the law.
4) Durham police have decided that they don't add up to an offence.
To me, it means the Russian army f***ing off back to Russia, then we talk.
Angela Merkel was regarded as THE template for a pan European leader by many remainers. Remember Cameron's sniveling obeisance at the mother of parliaments?
What is happening now is on her. This was her strategy. War and mass deprivation are her legacy.
But don't start playing fast and loose on behalf of a sovereign state saying that they should as a matter of course make their population suffer.
From the outset it was obvious that Germany would have to think long and hard about their energy situation and that any penal action taken against Russia would also impact the German people.
Flashback: CCHQ declared beergate was the most successful political operation in its recent history a few months back.
https://twitter.com/benrileysmith/status/1545373319901417473
Which means that when you complain about a police force doing XYZ when they shouldn't be that is very much a local issue.
Here the police did issue FPN when appropriate - but the SKS case wasn't one of them at the time and it wasn't one when the police were forced to re-open the case for politically motivated reasons.
Should be quite a read, albeit repellent, of course
For those events they should either have fined both of them or neither.
It is perfectly normal and natural. Employers can very reasonably object to abuse, but not to pregnancy, or engagements, or relationships.
That the met are a disgrace is generally true.
The politicians - Starmer included - created that situation.
Your approach appears to be one of: "nothing to see here, move on..."
And that is to push abuse under the carpet (that's really not good imagery), and I don't think you've got any other solution to the problem.
To take an extreme example: say you run a company. A senior manager has had an affair with a staff member two ranks lower than him, and she got a promotion. The relationship has broken down, and she is now claiming he forced her to have sex on occasion, and later an abortion, and she got the promotion in return for keeping quiet.
It is a mess. As the boss, how can you tell how much the relationship was consensual? Is he lying? Is she lying? Is the truth somewhere in between? Was her promotion truly deserved, or was she promoted because of the affair? Do you protect him, as he's a darned good manager? Do you protect her? Do you sling both of them out?
These sorts of things happen (anecdotally something similar happened at a company here in Cambridge, which I won't name - and it's not one we've worked for).
This is the sort of absolute mess that organisations need to protect themselves from.
And worse, if workers lower down the organisation's hierarchy see the bosses shagging their juniors, they'll be more likely to do it as well. The fish rotting from the head. In the same way if they see a boss being racist or sexist, they'll be more likely to think that sort of behaviour is acceptable.
I'm not calling for a law on this. Just that if I was the boss of that company, I'd want that senior manager to be out on his ear: it's a clear-cut case to me (and hopefully the company's regs would back me up).
But many other cases are much less clear-cut.
Unfortunately they are not currently able to fill their reserves which means come winter Germany are going to have similar problems to us.
It's over; move on.
And they have. Consistently. Boris called it well for some time indeed even up until the very end he was fooling some of the people most of the time.
Food inflation in Lithuania, Bulgaria and Hungary is running at over 20%, while Baltic neighbours Latvia and Estonia are not far behind at 18.8% and 17.4% respectively.
https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/fmcg-prices-and-promotions/uk-food-inflation-vs-the-rest-of-the-world-how-britain-compares/669057.article
I blame Leon, swanning around these Eastern European parts, throwing his money around and causing shortages.
You stop it by investigating allegations of abuse on a case-by-case basis and treating them with the seriousness they deserve.
In your hypothetical, I would ask for evidence. If there were evidence that was forthcoming, eg a text message that put what you said in writing, then that could be gross misconduct. If there was no evidence, then innocent until proven guilty.
People shagging each other isn't anything "rotting" from the head, genitals or anywhere else, it is human nature and entirely acceptable behaviour.
But a woman having twins is not abuse. You didn't object to abuse, you objected to a new mother and father having twins.
But Boris does not have to make stuff up or get too jokey in his memoir (and I sincerely hope he doesn't). He's a good writer, if not immortally so, he's got an amazing wealth of material, he was there at the heart of some of the most pivotal moments of the 21st century so far - Brexit, Covid, Ukraine - this book is actually IMPORTANT. He just needs to say what happened, and say it clearly, from his perspective. He now has the time and the incentive
BORIS, DON'T FUCK IT UP
I see Big G is pretending he has nothing to do with it.
No wonder Truss cut her G20 visit short, although with rich irony it’s possible she’s trashed her leadership bid before it even starts.
https://twitter.com/adamcooperF1/status/1545374573876617218
Meanwhile farmers across the eurozone are being told to slash food production because the climate, innit.
0 papers at NeurIPS and suddenly 12 publications at NeurIPS 2021🤔This may be the most pervasive cheating scandal I've seen in academia
https://twitter.com/dustinvtran/status/1545282338560495616?s=20&t=C2QV61utW2QeIUgLTPDRPg
Once he became the area chair of NeurIPS 2021, he suddenly got 12 papers accepted in NeurIPS 2021. The potential reason is that Yisen colluded with other area chairs/reviewers: He and the other 7 people had a WeChat group; most of them are area chairs in NeurIPS, ICML, and ICLR - to be specific, almost all of them are NeurIPS2021 area chairs. They arranged online meetings to bid each other’s papers so that their papers can be accepted with a higher probability.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/vtow5o/d_an_accusation_of_academic_misconduct_by_prof/
-_------------------+++++
Split result
Labour took the seat in May but the candidate was so surprised he had to be woken from bed. He then resigned a few weeks later saying he hadn't expected to have been elected so he was stepping down due to work commitments.
Hence why the electorate was p1ssed at Labour as well as Conservatives. Ignorant question: how is it a gain from Labour when the Conservatives had more votes last time?