Glad we've parked the NT discussion (apparently). So, anyone want to join me in a discussion on the veracity of the Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster?
Well......
Keir Starmer may come to miss Boris Johnson. Some historians believe that each prime minister is the antithesis of their predecessor, as we always replace overly charismatic leaders with boring ones. The historian David Starkey says all PMs are either bookies or bishops, and that the righteous Starmer has just lost his useful sinner. “Boris is the archetypal cheating bookie,” Starkey tells All Talk.
“Starmer is worse than a bishop: he’s a moderator of the Church of Scotland.” The theory might fall down if Liz Truss wins. It’s hard to see how she could be viewed as a bishop, though she might be more of a nun-entity.
Truss does not easily fall into the category of either charismatic or dull. She is no Brown or Major or Callaghan. But then again, she clearly isn't a Wilson, Thatcher, Blair or Cameron.
If I had to choose an analog for Ms Truss, it would not be a British politician.
I've just cracked up laughing watching Harold Wilson in the Crown, having to repeat to the Queen, the obscene limericks shared by Princess Margaret and Lyndon Johnson.
Nervously, Wilson begins "There once was a woman from Dallas, who enjoyed a dynamite phallus"
Queen, poker-faced, " You've come this f
"She left her vagina, in North Carolina, and her arsehole in Buckingham Palace."
I sort of went off the Crown. Olivia Coleman played it as Olivia Coleman with an accent - perhaps she couldn’t help herself - and I thought the producers wouldn’t be able to help themselves with the Thatcher years and, low and behold, I was right.
It was best done as a period piece in the 50s and 60s and left at that.
Agreed. Olivia Colman, good actress though she is, was miscast as HMQ. She should have played Thatcher. Gillian Anderson played Thatcher as a parody.
The only characters well acted were Wilson, Charles and Anne and, above all, Philip, beautifully played by Tobias Menzies.
But the earlier period was also more interesting because it was about the transition to becoming Queen and the personal and political aspects of that, as well as interesting depictions of events from the country's past.
I also preferred the earlier series. I can't quite decide whether it was the lack of familiarity with the earlier period that made it more interesting to me... or the fact that it was kind of depoliticised by distance. I thought Claire Foy was really brilliant and watchable.
Genuinely a show that had all 3 generations in my household watching at one point - which is pretty rare. It also sparked some curiosity in me about certain historical events (Great smog, Aberfan disaster) which I hadn't heard of, and so went away to read up on.
Truss has so many big problems I wonder if her team know which to deny first? Not supported by most Tory MPs Cost of Living catastrophe where the solutions are politically or economically untenable A coterie of the wort members of Johnson's government plus a choice of 2019 mince to promote
If they seriously try and market themselves as a "new" government I expect the response will get pretty brutal. No government would get through this winter without scars. None. But across Europe governments are showing voters they understand the crisis, they are prepared to do whatever it takes, and are putting lots of money into it.
The only money Trussteam are putting up is new debt to give themselves a tax cut, and opening a credit line in the Fetlife store.
*googles Fetlife* ... the things one learns on PB. "FetLife is the Social Network for the BDSM, Fetish & Kinky Community. Like Facebook, but run by kinksters like you and me. We think it is more fun that way."
And there was me thinking it was a harmless website for lovers of feta cheese...
Indeed. The expertise and knowledge of of PBers is impressive, from moths downward.
Except on matters to do with religion, judging from last night's increasingly bizarre debate which bore little resemblance to expertise on either side.
Ignorance of a subject, combined with confidence, is a common combination.
That has to be one of the best posts for sometime here and should be referenced during many future arguments. Many of us may take notice, one won't.
One of the things I remember from starting my A levels - was the economics teacher saying - everything you have been taught so far was simplified - and simplified means it's going to be wrong...
Which means I'm happy to wander off and triple check everything because sods law says the thing I'm looking at is an edge case where the simplification falls apart.
Ahhhh we were told something similar when starting my maths degree. Something along the lines of 'the obvious is probably wrong and the simple things will be hard to prove'. It was also apparent that what you were taught in school were very special cases.
On the topic of essential stuff that should be taught in schools (and this may well have changed) we learnt stuff in maths that most people will never use, but I was never taught any logic at school. Some very basic logic is very useful in everyday life.
Some of the issue comes from UK history. We had all the agricultural land and oceans we needed to feed a growing population. All the coal to power an Industrial Revolution. All the oil and gas to get us through the oil shock. So. We must have plentiful shale gas, mustn't we? Even the most optimistic projections suggest we simply don't have enough to even replace the loss of North Sea fields. Not even close.
I think those fields have an important role to play whilst we put up nuclear power plants and wind and solar and batterys. The timescale for all that happening suddenly got a hell of alot more urgent though.
If you've read the posts today - you will see that we have far less Shale gas than was believed and it's proven far harder (and more expensive) to reach than expected.
I meant the remaining gas fields in the north sea, not fracking fields. Fracking might be viable somewhere in the UK, but it's like hunting for El Dorado at the moment. England's best bet might be nuclear. Scottish independence could stuff us on renewables.
Don't get the nuclear love in. You have to really be shutting ears, eyes, and singing 'la la la' at the moment to think that's a shout.
I'm open minded to the mini reactors if the security and environmental issues surrounding big nuclear plants can be ameliorated significantly.
Tidal seems great. Offshore wind is great (even better if we made the turbines here). Incineration of non-recyclable waste is great. Coal and carbon capture should not be ruled out. A way of storing excess renewable energy is vital - not necessarily batteries, there are simpler ways - weights in mineshafts etc.
Renewables are fine if we remain as an entire United Kingdom - basically Scotland has much of the prime wind location in the UK. Scotland leaving the UK presents a real energy problem for England.. it's a big card for the nats whether you like it or not.
This isn't strictly true, for onshore yes due to elevation and population density but offshore has huge areas to develop for England, NI and Wales. That's not to say Scotland doesn't have large offshore potential as it does, but so too does rest of the UK
Truss has so many big problems I wonder if her team know which to deny first? Not supported by most Tory MPs Cost of Living catastrophe where the solutions are politically or economically untenable A coterie of the wort members of Johnson's government plus a choice of 2019 mince to promote
If they seriously try and market themselves as a "new" government I expect the response will get pretty brutal. No government would get through this winter without scars. None. But across Europe governments are showing voters they understand the crisis, they are prepared to do whatever it takes, and are putting lots of money into it.
The only money Trussteam are putting up is new debt to give themselves a tax cut, and opening a credit line in the Fetlife store.
*googles Fetlife* ... the things one learns on PB. "FetLife is the Social Network for the BDSM, Fetish & Kinky Community. Like Facebook, but run by kinksters like you and me. We think it is more fun that way."
And there was me thinking it was a harmless website for lovers of feta cheese...
Indeed. The expertise and knowledge of of PBers is impressive, from moths downward.
Except on matters to do with religion, judging from last night's increasingly bizarre debate which bore little resemblance to expertise on either side.
Ignorance of a subject, combined with confidence, is a common combination.
That has to be one of the best posts for sometime here and should be referenced during many future arguments. Many of us may take notice, one won't.
One of the things I remember from starting my A levels - was the economics teacher saying - everything you have been taught so far was simplified - and simplified means it's going to be wrong...
That's funny because when I started my doctorate in economics my tutor said exactly the same thing.
Similar to the old adage about Medicine. Half of what is in the textbooks is wrong, but nobody knows which half.
Some of the issue comes from UK history. We had all the agricultural land and oceans we needed to feed a growing population. All the coal to power an Industrial Revolution. All the oil and gas to get us through the oil shock. So. We must have plentiful shale gas, mustn't we? Even the most optimistic projections suggest we simply don't have enough to even replace the loss of North Sea fields. Not even close.
I think those fields have an important role to play whilst we put up nuclear power plants and wind and solar and batterys. The timescale for all that happening suddenly got a hell of alot more urgent though.
If you've read the posts today - you will see that we have far less Shale gas than was believed and it's proven far harder (and more expensive) to reach than expected.
I meant the remaining gas fields in the north sea, not fracking fields. Fracking might be viable somewhere in the UK, but it's like hunting for El Dorado at the moment. England's best bet might be nuclear. Scottish independence could stuff us on renewables.
Don't get the nuclear love in. You have to really be shutting ears, eyes, and singing 'la la la' at the moment to think that's a shout.
I'm open minded to the mini reactors if the security and environmental issues surrounding big nuclear plants can be ameliorated significantly.
Tidal seems great. Offshore wind is great (even better if we made the turbines here). Incineration of non-recyclable waste is great. Coal and carbon capture should not be ruled out. A way of storing excess renewable energy is vital - not necessarily batteries, there are simpler ways - weights in mineshafts etc.
Renewables are fine if we remain as an entire United Kingdom - basically Scotland has much of the prime wind location in the UK. Scotland leaving the UK presents a real energy problem for England.. it's a big card for the nats whether you like it or not.
I'm not going to bash my adopted country - it is a wonderful, beautiful, and well-resourced place. But I believe England has plenty of untapped renewable resources to call upon, should separation ever happen.
Regarding offshore wind, is the Irish sea not one of the windiest? Blackpool would suggest so! It would surprise me if there's a lot more wind blowing over Scottish waters than English ones. I also understand English (and Welsh) tidal ranges are better suited to power generation. If you're incinerating waste, there's a whole lot more of that generated down South too.
Just needs the Government to get a serious energy strategy in place - hopefully one with cross party and pan-UK suppport.
Truss has so many big problems I wonder if her team know which to deny first? Not supported by most Tory MPs Cost of Living catastrophe where the solutions are politically or economically untenable A coterie of the wort members of Johnson's government plus a choice of 2019 mince to promote
If they seriously try and market themselves as a "new" government I expect the response will get pretty brutal. No government would get through this winter without scars. None. But across Europe governments are showing voters they understand the crisis, they are prepared to do whatever it takes, and are putting lots of money into it.
The only money Trussteam are putting up is new debt to give themselves a tax cut, and opening a credit line in the Fetlife store.
*googles Fetlife* ... the things one learns on PB. "FetLife is the Social Network for the BDSM, Fetish & Kinky Community. Like Facebook, but run by kinksters like you and me. We think it is more fun that way."
And there was me thinking it was a harmless website for lovers of feta cheese...
Indeed. The expertise and knowledge of of PBers is impressive, from moths downward.
Except on matters to do with religion, judging from last night's increasingly bizarre debate which bore little resemblance to expertise on either side.
Ignorance of a subject, combined with confidence, is a common combination.
That has to be one of the best posts for sometime here and should be referenced during many future arguments. Many of us may take notice, one won't.
One of the things I remember from starting my A levels - was the economics teacher saying - everything you have been taught so far was simplified - and simplified means it's going to be wrong...
Which means I'm happy to wander off and triple check everything because sods law says the thing I'm looking at is an edge case where the simplification falls apart.
Ahhhh we were told something similar when starting my maths degree. Something along the lines of 'the obvious is probably wrong and the simple things will be hard to prove'. It was also apparent that what you were taught in school were very special cases.
On the topic of essential stuff that should be taught in schools (and this may well have changed) we learnt stuff in maths that most people will never use, but I was never taught any logic at school. Some very basic logic is very useful in everyday life.
a => b <=> ¬b => ¬a
is the one I can recall from logic at uni. Also necessary/sufficient.
Glad we've parked the NT discussion (apparently). So, anyone want to join me in a discussion on the veracity of the Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster?
Well......
Keir Starmer may come to miss Boris Johnson. Some historians believe that each prime minister is the antithesis of their predecessor, as we always replace overly charismatic leaders with boring ones. The historian David Starkey says all PMs are either bookies or bishops, and that the righteous Starmer has just lost his useful sinner. “Boris is the archetypal cheating bookie,” Starkey tells All Talk.
“Starmer is worse than a bishop: he’s a moderator of the Church of Scotland.” The theory might fall down if Liz Truss wins. It’s hard to see how she could be viewed as a bishop, though she might be more of a nun-entity.
Truss does not easily fall into the category of either charismatic or dull. She is no Brown or Major or Callaghan. But then again, she clearly isn't a Wilson, Thatcher, Blair or Cameron.
If I had to choose an analog for Ms Truss, it would not be a British politician.
I've just cracked up laughing watching Harold Wilson in the Crown, having to repeat to the Queen, the obscene limericks shared by Princess Margaret and Lyndon Johnson.
Nervously, Wilson begins "There once was a woman from Dallas, who enjoyed a dynamite phallus"
Queen, poker-faced, " You've come this f
"She left her vagina, in North Carolina, and her arsehole in Buckingham Palace."
I sort of went off the Crown. Olivia Coleman played it as Olivia Coleman with an accent - perhaps she couldn’t help herself - and I thought the producers wouldn’t be able to help themselves with the Thatcher years and, low and behold, I was right.
It was best done as a period piece in the 50s and 60s and left at that.
Agreed. Olivia Colman, good actress though she is, was miscast as HMQ. She should have played Thatcher. Gillian Anderson played Thatcher as a parody.
The only characters well acted were Wilson, Charles and Anne and, above all, Philip, beautifully played by Tobias Menzies.
But the earlier period was also more interesting because it was about the transition to becoming Queen and the personal and political aspects of that, as well as interesting depictions of events from the country's past.
I also preferred the earlier series. I can't quite decide whether it was the lack of familiarity with the earlier period that made it more interesting to me... or the fact that it was kind of depoliticised by distance. I thought Claire Foy was really brilliant and watchable.
Genuinely a show that had all 3 generations in my household watching at one point - which is pretty rare. It also sparked some curiosity in me about certain historical events (Great smog, Aberfan disaster) which I hadn't heard of, and so went away to read up on.
It is a brilliant show and I loved all the series so far. I thought the portrait of Thatcher was quite nuanced, as a Thatcha hater from the 80s I came away with a lot more sympathy for her. Prince Philip was also really well developed as a character, for people like me who grew up with the caricature of the old man who said embarrassing things. Claire Foy is just a much better actor than Olivia Coleman, much as I love the latter for the peerless Peep Show.
Some of the issue comes from UK history. We had all the agricultural land and oceans we needed to feed a growing population. All the coal to power an Industrial Revolution. All the oil and gas to get us through the oil shock. So. We must have plentiful shale gas, mustn't we? Even the most optimistic projections suggest we simply don't have enough to even replace the loss of North Sea fields. Not even close.
I think those fields have an important role to play whilst we put up nuclear power plants and wind and solar and batterys. The timescale for all that happening suddenly got a hell of alot more urgent though.
If you've read the posts today - you will see that we have far less Shale gas than was believed and it's proven far harder (and more expensive) to reach than expected.
I meant the remaining gas fields in the north sea, not fracking fields. Fracking might be viable somewhere in the UK, but it's like hunting for El Dorado at the moment. England's best bet might be nuclear. Scottish independence could stuff us on renewables.
Don't get the nuclear love in. You have to really be shutting ears, eyes, and singing 'la la la' at the moment to think that's a shout.
I'm open minded to the mini reactors if the security and environmental issues surrounding big nuclear plants can be ameliorated significantly.
Tidal seems great. Offshore wind is great (even better if we made the turbines here). Incineration of non-recyclable waste is great. Coal and carbon capture should not be ruled out. A way of storing excess renewable energy is vital - not necessarily batteries, there are simpler ways - weights in mineshafts etc.
Weights in mineshafts - that’s an order of magnitude problem. You can’t store enough energy that way.
Carbon capture from coal hasn’t been made to work. Despite massive investment from the coal interests in the US, for example…
There is some interesting news about Aluminium Sulfur batteries though…..
Just about the only solid state storage solution I've seen is above ground not mining..
As for the battery - it's interesting how things have changed there - it's no longer this battery is good enough for a laptop - it's can provide the night time supply for a home...
Truss has so many big problems I wonder if her team know which to deny first? Not supported by most Tory MPs Cost of Living catastrophe where the solutions are politically or economically untenable A coterie of the wort members of Johnson's government plus a choice of 2019 mince to promote
If they seriously try and market themselves as a "new" government I expect the response will get pretty brutal. No government would get through this winter without scars. None. But across Europe governments are showing voters they understand the crisis, they are prepared to do whatever it takes, and are putting lots of money into it.
The only money Trussteam are putting up is new debt to give themselves a tax cut, and opening a credit line in the Fetlife store.
*googles Fetlife* ... the things one learns on PB. "FetLife is the Social Network for the BDSM, Fetish & Kinky Community. Like Facebook, but run by kinksters like you and me. We think it is more fun that way."
And there was me thinking it was a harmless website for lovers of feta cheese...
Indeed. The expertise and knowledge of of PBers is impressive, from moths downward.
Except on matters to do with religion, judging from last night's increasingly bizarre debate which bore little resemblance to expertise on either side.
Ignorance of a subject, combined with confidence, is a common combination.
That has to be one of the best posts for sometime here and should be referenced during many future arguments. Many of us may take notice, one won't.
One of the things I remember from starting my A levels - was the economics teacher saying - everything you have been taught so far was simplified - and simplified means it's going to be wrong...
Which means I'm happy to wander off and triple check everything because sods law says the thing I'm looking at is an edge case where the simplification falls apart.
Ahhhh we were told something similar when starting my maths degree. Something along the lines of 'the obvious is probably wrong and the simple things will be hard to prove'. It was also apparent that what you were taught in school were very special cases.
On the topic of essential stuff that should be taught in schools (and this may well have changed) we learnt stuff in maths that most people will never use, but I was never taught any logic at school. Some very basic logic is very useful in everyday life.
a => b <=> ¬b => ¬a
is the one I can recall from logic at uni.
I've reached the age where I'm simply impressed that you can find the 'not' symbol on a keyboard.
Some of the issue comes from UK history. We had all the agricultural land and oceans we needed to feed a growing population. All the coal to power an Industrial Revolution. All the oil and gas to get us through the oil shock. So. We must have plentiful shale gas, mustn't we? Even the most optimistic projections suggest we simply don't have enough to even replace the loss of North Sea fields. Not even close.
I think those fields have an important role to play whilst we put up nuclear power plants and wind and solar and batterys. The timescale for all that happening suddenly got a hell of alot more urgent though.
If you've read the posts today - you will see that we have far less Shale gas than was believed and it's proven far harder (and more expensive) to reach than expected.
I meant the remaining gas fields in the north sea, not fracking fields. Fracking might be viable somewhere in the UK, but it's like hunting for El Dorado at the moment. England's best bet might be nuclear. Scottish independence could stuff us on renewables.
Don't get the nuclear love in. You have to really be shutting ears, eyes, and singing 'la la la' at the moment to think that's a shout.
I'm open minded to the mini reactors if the security and environmental issues surrounding big nuclear plants can be ameliorated significantly.
Tidal seems great. Offshore wind is great (even better if we made the turbines here). Incineration of non-recyclable waste is great. Coal and carbon capture should not be ruled out. A way of storing excess renewable energy is vital - not necessarily batteries, there are simpler ways - weights in mineshafts etc.
Renewables are fine if we remain as an entire United Kingdom - basically Scotland has much of the prime wind location in the UK. Scotland leaving the UK presents a real energy problem for England.. it's a big card for the nats whether you like it or not.
This isn't strictly true, for onshore yes due to elevation and population density but offshore has huge areas to develop for England, NI and Wales. That's not to say Scotland doesn't have large offshore potential as it does, but so too does rest of the UK
The offshore dwarfs the onshore - you can go to material limits for size. Which represents big improvements in efficiency.
Want to move a 100 meter turbine blade on land? A vast effort, if it possible. Doing it on water - get a quote from dozens of companies for whom it is almost trivial
I believe there has historically been a correlation between number of books in a house and childrens' academic performance.
How does that playout in the age of the tablet?
The correlation is probably still there but the children who love to read a book off their bookshelf will also be more likely to download a book onto their tablet.
Our youngest, 6, was recently reading a book she'd downloaded by herself onto her tablet called "the night dad went to prison". That one amused me.
Many kids will have via their tablets access to more books than ever before at home, but without access to books on their bookshelf and a love of reading how many would be using tablets to read downloaded books? And how many just playing Roblox etc?
Truss has so many big problems I wonder if her team know which to deny first? Not supported by most Tory MPs Cost of Living catastrophe where the solutions are politically or economically untenable A coterie of the wort members of Johnson's government plus a choice of 2019 mince to promote
If they seriously try and market themselves as a "new" government I expect the response will get pretty brutal. No government would get through this winter without scars. None. But across Europe governments are showing voters they understand the crisis, they are prepared to do whatever it takes, and are putting lots of money into it.
The only money Trussteam are putting up is new debt to give themselves a tax cut, and opening a credit line in the Fetlife store.
*googles Fetlife* ... the things one learns on PB. "FetLife is the Social Network for the BDSM, Fetish & Kinky Community. Like Facebook, but run by kinksters like you and me. We think it is more fun that way."
And there was me thinking it was a harmless website for lovers of feta cheese...
Indeed. The expertise and knowledge of of PBers is impressive, from moths downward.
Except on matters to do with religion, judging from last night's increasingly bizarre debate which bore little resemblance to expertise on either side.
Ignorance of a subject, combined with confidence, is a common combination.
That has to be one of the best posts for sometime here and should be referenced during many future arguments. Many of us may take notice, one won't.
One of the things I remember from starting my A levels - was the economics teacher saying - everything you have been taught so far was simplified - and simplified means it's going to be wrong...
That's funny because when I started my doctorate in economics my tutor said exactly the same thing.
Similar to the old adage about Medicine. Half of what is in the textbooks is wrong, but nobody knows which half.
Isn't that marketing?
The issue for economics is that the simplified models usually provide a good enough answer 80-90% of the time, it's the other times that have issues.
Some of the issue comes from UK history. We had all the agricultural land and oceans we needed to feed a growing population. All the coal to power an Industrial Revolution. All the oil and gas to get us through the oil shock. So. We must have plentiful shale gas, mustn't we? Even the most optimistic projections suggest we simply don't have enough to even replace the loss of North Sea fields. Not even close.
I think those fields have an important role to play whilst we put up nuclear power plants and wind and solar and batterys. The timescale for all that happening suddenly got a hell of alot more urgent though.
If you've read the posts today - you will see that we have far less Shale gas than was believed and it's proven far harder (and more expensive) to reach than expected.
I meant the remaining gas fields in the north sea, not fracking fields. Fracking might be viable somewhere in the UK, but it's like hunting for El Dorado at the moment. England's best bet might be nuclear. Scottish independence could stuff us on renewables.
Don't get the nuclear love in. You have to really be shutting ears, eyes, and singing 'la la la' at the moment to think that's a shout.
I'm open minded to the mini reactors if the security and environmental issues surrounding big nuclear plants can be ameliorated significantly.
Tidal seems great. Offshore wind is great (even better if we made the turbines here). Incineration of non-recyclable waste is great. Coal and carbon capture should not be ruled out. A way of storing excess renewable energy is vital - not necessarily batteries, there are simpler ways - weights in mineshafts etc.
Renewables are fine if we remain as an entire United Kingdom - basically Scotland has much of the prime wind location in the UK. Scotland leaving the UK presents a real energy problem for England.. it's a big card for the nats whether you like it or not.
This isn't strictly true, for onshore yes due to elevation and population density but offshore has huge areas to develop for England, NI and Wales. That's not to say Scotland doesn't have large offshore potential as it does, but so too does rest of the UK
The offshore dwarfs the onshore - you can go to material limits for size. Which represents big improvements in efficiency.
Want to move a 100 meter turbine blade on land? A vast effort, if it possible. Doing it on water - get a quote from dozens of companies for whom it is almost trivial
The North Sea may not be as windy as Scotland but the lost land of Dogger Bank looks like a gold mine.
Glad we've parked the NT discussion (apparently). So, anyone want to join me in a discussion on the veracity of the Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster?
Well......
Keir Starmer may come to miss Boris Johnson. Some historians believe that each prime minister is the antithesis of their predecessor, as we always replace overly charismatic leaders with boring ones. The historian David Starkey says all PMs are either bookies or bishops, and that the righteous Starmer has just lost his useful sinner. “Boris is the archetypal cheating bookie,” Starkey tells All Talk.
“Starmer is worse than a bishop: he’s a moderator of the Church of Scotland.” The theory might fall down if Liz Truss wins. It’s hard to see how she could be viewed as a bishop, though she might be more of a nun-entity.
Truss does not easily fall into the category of either charismatic or dull. She is no Brown or Major or Callaghan. But then again, she clearly isn't a Wilson, Thatcher, Blair or Cameron.
If I had to choose an analog for Ms Truss, it would not be a British politician.
I've just cracked up laughing watching Harold Wilson in the Crown, having to repeat to the Queen, the obscene limericks shared by Princess Margaret and Lyndon Johnson.
Nervously, Wilson begins "There once was a woman from Dallas, who enjoyed a dynamite phallus"
Queen, poker-faced, " You've come this f
"She left her vagina, in North Carolina, and her arsehole in Buckingham Palace."
I sort of went off the Crown. Olivia Coleman played it as Olivia Coleman with an accent - perhaps she couldn’t help herself - and I thought the producers wouldn’t be able to help themselves with the Thatcher years and, low and behold, I was right.
It was best done as a period piece in the 50s and 60s and left at that.
Agreed. Olivia Colman, good actress though she is, was miscast as HMQ. She should have played Thatcher. Gillian Anderson played Thatcher as a parody.
The only characters well acted were Wilson, Charles and Anne and, above all, Philip, beautifully played by Tobias Menzies.
But the earlier period was also more interesting because it was about the transition to becoming Queen and the personal and political aspects of that, as well as interesting depictions of events from the country's past.
I also preferred the earlier series. I can't quite decide whether it was the lack of familiarity with the earlier period that made it more interesting to me... or the fact that it was kind of depoliticised by distance. I thought Claire Foy was really brilliant and watchable.
Genuinely a show that had all 3 generations in my household watching at one point - which is pretty rare. It also sparked some curiosity in me about certain historical events (Great smog, Aberfan disaster) which I hadn't heard of, and so went away to read up on.
Effectively we're all saying that young people must be stupid because they don't know the things that we know (that the Danube is a river); just don't forget that young people think we're (I'm going with posters being middle aged and above) stupid because we don't know the things that they know - how to share a tiktok video, how to make a podcast, which Kardashian sister is oldest etc.
Increasingly important is not the need to have knowledge but the ability to find that knowledge when you need it - so an ability to parse the internet to find reliable sources and identify unreliable sources is much more important than holding knowledge in your brain (totally inefficient).
It can make conversation with young people dull for sure, but we've outsourced knowledge retention to the cloud - the smart people know how to get it out quickly.
It is notable that the people who seem most prone to falling for nonsense they read online are older. I think the main disservice that phones have done to young people is to screw up their attention span. If you can keep them off phones and devices through their primary school years then I suspect/hope that you can prevent too much damage to their cognitive abilities. That has been our strategy at least.
In falling for nonsense online: there's also a big role for confirmation bias (to which we're all susceptible). Great book on finding ways around it (and the author notes she fell into the same traps herself even whilst researching the book): https://www.amazon.co.uk/Scout-Mindset-People-Things-Clearly/dp/034942764X
I particularly like the pithy summary of how we treat evidence related to things we want to be true ("Can I believe this?" - looking for a reason to say yes) and things we don't want to be true ("Must I believe this?" - looking for a reason to say no).
Some of the issue comes from UK history. We had all the agricultural land and oceans we needed to feed a growing population. All the coal to power an Industrial Revolution. All the oil and gas to get us through the oil shock. So. We must have plentiful shale gas, mustn't we? Even the most optimistic projections suggest we simply don't have enough to even replace the loss of North Sea fields. Not even close.
I think those fields have an important role to play whilst we put up nuclear power plants and wind and solar and batterys. The timescale for all that happening suddenly got a hell of alot more urgent though.
If you've read the posts today - you will see that we have far less Shale gas than was believed and it's proven far harder (and more expensive) to reach than expected.
I meant the remaining gas fields in the north sea, not fracking fields. Fracking might be viable somewhere in the UK, but it's like hunting for El Dorado at the moment. England's best bet might be nuclear. Scottish independence could stuff us on renewables.
Don't get the nuclear love in. You have to really be shutting ears, eyes, and singing 'la la la' at the moment to think that's a shout.
I'm open minded to the mini reactors if the security and environmental issues surrounding big nuclear plants can be ameliorated significantly.
Tidal seems great. Offshore wind is great (even better if we made the turbines here). Incineration of non-recyclable waste is great. Coal and carbon capture should not be ruled out. A way of storing excess renewable energy is vital - not necessarily batteries, there are simpler ways - weights in mineshafts etc.
Renewables are fine if we remain as an entire United Kingdom - basically Scotland has much of the prime wind location in the UK. Scotland leaving the UK presents a real energy problem for England.. it's a big card for the nats whether you like it or not.
This isn't strictly true, for onshore yes due to elevation and population density but offshore has huge areas to develop for England, NI and Wales. That's not to say Scotland doesn't have large offshore potential as it does, but so too does rest of the UK
The offshore dwarfs the onshore - you can go to material limits for size. Which represents big improvements in efficiency.
Want to move a 100 meter turbine blade on land? A vast effort, if it possible. Doing it on water - get a quote from dozens of companies for whom it is almost trivial
The North Sea may not be as windy as Scotland but the lost land of Dogger Bank looks like a gold mine.
Too much wind is actually an issue with some of the Scottish sites. Same as the old days of windmills.
Some of the issue comes from UK history. We had all the agricultural land and oceans we needed to feed a growing population. All the coal to power an Industrial Revolution. All the oil and gas to get us through the oil shock. So. We must have plentiful shale gas, mustn't we? Even the most optimistic projections suggest we simply don't have enough to even replace the loss of North Sea fields. Not even close.
I think those fields have an important role to play whilst we put up nuclear power plants and wind and solar and batterys. The timescale for all that happening suddenly got a hell of alot more urgent though.
If you've read the posts today - you will see that we have far less Shale gas than was believed and it's proven far harder (and more expensive) to reach than expected.
I meant the remaining gas fields in the north sea, not fracking fields. Fracking might be viable somewhere in the UK, but it's like hunting for El Dorado at the moment. England's best bet might be nuclear. Scottish independence could stuff us on renewables.
Don't get the nuclear love in. You have to really be shutting ears, eyes, and singing 'la la la' at the moment to think that's a shout.
I'm open minded to the mini reactors if the security and environmental issues surrounding big nuclear plants can be ameliorated significantly.
Tidal seems great. Offshore wind is great (even better if we made the turbines here). Incineration of non-recyclable waste is great. Coal and carbon capture should not be ruled out. A way of storing excess renewable energy is vital - not necessarily batteries, there are simpler ways - weights in mineshafts etc.
Renewables are fine if we remain as an entire United Kingdom - basically Scotland has much of the prime wind location in the UK. Scotland leaving the UK presents a real energy problem for England.. it's a big card for the nats whether you like it or not.
This isn't strictly true, for onshore yes due to elevation and population density but offshore has huge areas to develop for England, NI and Wales. That's not to say Scotland doesn't have large offshore potential as it does, but so too does rest of the UK
The offshore dwarfs the onshore - you can go to material limits for size. Which represents big improvements in efficiency.
Want to move a 100 meter turbine blade on land? A vast effort, if it possible. Doing it on water - get a quote from dozens of companies for whom it is almost trivial
The North Sea may not be as windy as Scotland but the lost land of Dogger Bank looks like a gold mine.
Too much wind is actually an issue with some of the Scottish sites. Same as the old days of windmills.
Yes, that's often forgotten.
It isn't a linear relationship of more wind = more power. Particularly as you go up in scale.
Clearly NHS and social care problems are related, not least by bed-blocking, but that should not mean it is a zero-sum game.
Makes sense though. We were going to pay more NI to try and fill the hole in the NHS to later allow £ to flow to social care. As (a) that has now been scrapped and (b) that plan was laughable guff from the start, a new plan is needed. Which is (c) harangue voters for not having the common sense to have BUPA.
There is a serious element here, 12M in a backlog, people ill becuase they are not seen or treated quick enough - potential in this situation to kill more people in covid backlog than actual covid in the long run in few years lost to cancer death cert won’t say “weren’t caught quickly enough, stuck in backlog.”
This is how I explain the politics, correct me where wrong.
New NI tax came from Boris declaring “we are about to sort the Social Care problem once and for all” At time it hit commons the news of covid backlog was horrible, so is sold as vote for more tax to sort covid backlog and social care crisis badly need it - and the Tory MPs voted for the new tax that now seems so unpopular and easily dispensable ? Truss now trying to win by both cancelling the new tax AND respending the raised money in a popular way?
Glad we've parked the NT discussion (apparently). So, anyone want to join me in a discussion on the veracity of the Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster?
Well......
Keir Starmer may come to miss Boris Johnson. Some historians believe that each prime minister is the antithesis of their predecessor, as we always replace overly charismatic leaders with boring ones. The historian David Starkey says all PMs are either bookies or bishops, and that the righteous Starmer has just lost his useful sinner. “Boris is the archetypal cheating bookie,” Starkey tells All Talk.
“Starmer is worse than a bishop: he’s a moderator of the Church of Scotland.” The theory might fall down if Liz Truss wins. It’s hard to see how she could be viewed as a bishop, though she might be more of a nun-entity.
Truss does not easily fall into the category of either charismatic or dull. She is no Brown or Major or Callaghan. But then again, she clearly isn't a Wilson, Thatcher, Blair or Cameron.
If I had to choose an analog for Ms Truss, it would not be a British politician.
I've just cracked up laughing watching Harold Wilson in the Crown, having to repeat to the Queen, the obscene limericks shared by Princess Margaret and Lyndon Johnson.
Nervously, Wilson begins "There once was a woman from Dallas, who enjoyed a dynamite phallus"
Queen, poker-faced, " You've come this f
"She left her vagina, in North Carolina, and her arsehole in Buckingham Palace."
I sort of went off the Crown. Olivia Coleman played it as Olivia Coleman with an accent - perhaps she couldn’t help herself - and I thought the producers wouldn’t be able to help themselves with the Thatcher years and, low and behold, I was right.
It was best done as a period piece in the 50s and 60s and left at that.
Agreed. Olivia Colman, good actress though she is, was miscast as HMQ. She should have played Thatcher. Gillian Anderson played Thatcher as a parody.
The only characters well acted were Wilson, Charles and Anne and, above all, Philip, beautifully played by Tobias Menzies.
But the earlier period was also more interesting because it was about the transition to becoming Queen and the personal and political aspects of that, as well as interesting depictions of events from the country's past.
I also preferred the earlier series. I can't quite decide whether it was the lack of familiarity with the earlier period that made it more interesting to me... or the fact that it was kind of depoliticised by distance. I thought Claire Foy was really brilliant and watchable.
Genuinely a show that had all 3 generations in my household watching at one point - which is pretty rare. It also sparked some curiosity in me about certain historical events (Great smog, Aberfan disaster) which I hadn't heard of, and so went away to read up on.
I went to Aberfan in the sunny lockdown spring of 2020. Despite the sun, I confess I wept. Actual blubbing
An unbearable place with an unbearable story. Once you become a parent anything that involves the suffering and death of children is emotionally intolerable
Glad we've parked the NT discussion (apparently). So, anyone want to join me in a discussion on the veracity of the Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster?
Well......
Keir Starmer may come to miss Boris Johnson. Some historians believe that each prime minister is the antithesis of their predecessor, as we always replace overly charismatic leaders with boring ones. The historian David Starkey says all PMs are either bookies or bishops, and that the righteous Starmer has just lost his useful sinner. “Boris is the archetypal cheating bookie,” Starkey tells All Talk.
“Starmer is worse than a bishop: he’s a moderator of the Church of Scotland.” The theory might fall down if Liz Truss wins. It’s hard to see how she could be viewed as a bishop, though she might be more of a nun-entity.
Truss does not easily fall into the category of either charismatic or dull. She is no Brown or Major or Callaghan. But then again, she clearly isn't a Wilson, Thatcher, Blair or Cameron.
If I had to choose an analog for Ms Truss, it would not be a British politician.
I've just cracked up laughing watching Harold Wilson in the Crown, having to repeat to the Queen, the obscene limericks shared by Princess Margaret and Lyndon Johnson.
Nervously, Wilson begins "There once was a woman from Dallas, who enjoyed a dynamite phallus"
Queen, poker-faced, " You've come this f
"She left her vagina, in North Carolina, and her arsehole in Buckingham Palace."
I sort of went off the Crown. Olivia Coleman played it as Olivia Coleman with an accent - perhaps she couldn’t help herself - and I thought the producers wouldn’t be able to help themselves with the Thatcher years and, low and behold, I was right.
It was best done as a period piece in the 50s and 60s and left at that.
Agreed. Olivia Colman, good actress though she is, was miscast as HMQ. She should have played Thatcher. Gillian Anderson played Thatcher as a parody.
The only characters well acted were Wilson, Charles and Anne and, above all, Philip, beautifully played by Tobias Menzies.
But the earlier period was also more interesting because it was about the transition to becoming Queen and the personal and political aspects of that, as well as interesting depictions of events from the country's past.
I also preferred the earlier series. I can't quite decide whether it was the lack of familiarity with the earlier period that made it more interesting to me... or the fact that it was kind of depoliticised by distance. I thought Claire Foy was really brilliant and watchable.
Genuinely a show that had all 3 generations in my household watching at one point - which is pretty rare. It also sparked some curiosity in me about certain historical events (Great smog, Aberfan disaster) which I hadn't heard of, and so went away to read up on.
I went to Aberfan in the sunny lockdown spring of 2020. Despite the sun, I confess I wept. Actual blubbing
An unbearable place with an unbearable story. Once you become a parent anything that involves the suffering and death of children is emotionally intolerable
I was very wary of having children. I just didn't think I could cope if anything happened to them.
Effectively we're all saying that young people must be stupid because they don't know the things that we know (that the Danube is a river); just don't forget that young people think we're (I'm going with posters being middle aged and above) stupid because we don't know the things that they know - how to share a tiktok video, how to make a podcast, which Kardashian sister is oldest etc.
Increasingly important is not the need to have knowledge but the ability to find that knowledge when you need it - so an ability to parse the internet to find reliable sources and identify unreliable sources is much more important than holding knowledge in your brain (totally inefficient).
It can make conversation with young people dull for sure, but we've outsourced knowledge retention to the cloud - the smart people know how to get it out quickly.
It is notable that the people who seem most prone to falling for nonsense they read online are older. I think the main disservice that phones have done to young people is to screw up their attention span. If you can keep them off phones and devices through their primary school years then I suspect/hope that you can prevent too much damage to their cognitive abilities. That has been our strategy at least.
In falling for nonsense online: there's also a big role for confirmation bias (to which we're all susceptible). Great book on finding ways around it (and the author notes she fell into the same traps herself even whilst researching the book): https://www.amazon.co.uk/Scout-Mindset-People-Things-Clearly/dp/034942764X
I particularly like the pithy summary of how we treat evidence related to things we want to be true ("Can I believe this?" - looking for a reason to say yes) and things we don't want to be true ("Must I believe this?" - looking for a reason to say no).
Quite a few times I've been about to post a long reply only to abandon it when I can't find an online source for its central assertion.
Truss has so many big problems I wonder if her team know which to deny first? Not supported by most Tory MPs Cost of Living catastrophe where the solutions are politically or economically untenable A coterie of the wort members of Johnson's government plus a choice of 2019 mince to promote
If they seriously try and market themselves as a "new" government I expect the response will get pretty brutal. No government would get through this winter without scars. None. But across Europe governments are showing voters they understand the crisis, they are prepared to do whatever it takes, and are putting lots of money into it.
The only money Trussteam are putting up is new debt to give themselves a tax cut, and opening a credit line in the Fetlife store.
*googles Fetlife* ... the things one learns on PB. "FetLife is the Social Network for the BDSM, Fetish & Kinky Community. Like Facebook, but run by kinksters like you and me. We think it is more fun that way."
And there was me thinking it was a harmless website for lovers of feta cheese...
Indeed. The expertise and knowledge of of PBers is impressive, from moths downward.
Intelligent people are often incredibly thick in the real world. Any truly clever person wouldn’t come near an obscure querulous blog.
And young people are a bit dim
I just watched this hilarious but terrifying video of American Gen Zs failing to answer the most basic questions
Perhaps the best is the girl who is asked “if you drive at 60mph for an hour, how far will you go?”
First she says “that’s fast” then she says “I don’t drive”
They exhibit mental retardation. Yet seem apparently normal. We are doomed (part 739)
Silly question, because without defining the type of road and what is meant by 'how far' the answer is unknowable.
If (for example) you do 60mph for one hour round a mile long circuit, the correct answer is 'no distance.'
I did one of those motorway awareness courses just recently, and one of the questions they ask you to guess is, if someone who normally drives at 80mph and their journey takes them an hour, how much longer will it take it they drive at 70mph? The group all guessed various numbers of minutes but the official course answer is apparently 86 seconds. How they arrived at that answer, I do not know.
Clear lie, or at best not a maths question but a real life data one. If they drive at 80 for an hour it’s 80 miles. At 70 that take 1.14 h, so an extra 504 seconds.
I’d suggest they are using real life studies, not theoretical maths.
Fantastic that Rishi Sunak has seen the light on lockdowns.
Yes, good for Sunak. Well said
There are people on Twitter who are saying that this…
“Sunak says it was a mistake to ‘empower scientists’ during Covid pandemic”
… is some kind of outrage. A statement so foul and evil it could only come from Nazi Tories. It’s the usual suspects - mad Remainers, FBPEers, James O’Brien
I can’t quite work out why there is such an overlap between Remoaners and 2nd voters and being fiercely pro-lockdown. But that overlap definitely exists. Starmer is an example
Jacob Young - MP for Redcar who voted to allow all the turds now turning his beach into a no-go zone - is only tweeting about the forrin menace on boats in the channel...
Clearly NHS and social care problems are related, not least by bed-blocking, but that should not mean it is a zero-sum game.
Makes sense though. We were going to pay more NI to try and fill the hole in the NHS to later allow £ to flow to social care. As (a) that has now been scrapped and (b) that plan was laughable guff from the start, a new plan is needed. Which is (c) harangue voters for not having the common sense to have BUPA.
There is a serious element here, 12M in a backlog, people ill becuase they are not seen or treated quick enough - potential in this situation to kill more people in covid backlog than actual covid in the long run in few years lost to cancer death cert won’t say “weren’t caught quickly enough, stuck in backlog.”
This is how I explain the politics, correct me where wrong.
New NI tax came from Boris declaring “we are about to sort the Social Care problem once and for all” At time it hit commons the news of covid backlog was horrible, so is sold as vote for more tax to sort covid backlog and social care crisis badly need it - and the Tory MPs voted for the new tax that now seems so unpopular and easily dispensable ? Truss now trying to win by both cancelling the new tax AND respending the raised money in a popular way?
She's apparently going to steal the money from the NHS to pay for it. Good news for people needing social care. Bad news for people needing physical care. Not sure how people dying waiting for an ambulance will be popular.
Effectively we're all saying that young people must be stupid because they don't know the things that we know (that the Danube is a river); just don't forget that young people think we're (I'm going with posters being middle aged and above) stupid because we don't know the things that they know - how to share a tiktok video, how to make a podcast, which Kardashian sister is oldest etc.
Increasingly important is not the need to have knowledge but the ability to find that knowledge when you need it - so an ability to parse the internet to find reliable sources and identify unreliable sources is much more important than holding knowledge in your brain (totally inefficient).
It can make conversation with young people dull for sure, but we've outsourced knowledge retention to the cloud - the smart people know how to get it out quickly.
It is notable that the people who seem most prone to falling for nonsense they read online are older. I think the main disservice that phones have done to young people is to screw up their attention span. If you can keep them off phones and devices through their primary school years then I suspect/hope that you can prevent too much damage to their cognitive abilities. That has been our strategy at least.
In falling for nonsense online: there's also a big role for confirmation bias (to which we're all susceptible). Great book on finding ways around it (and the author notes she fell into the same traps herself even whilst researching the book): https://www.amazon.co.uk/Scout-Mindset-People-Things-Clearly/dp/034942764X
I particularly like the pithy summary of how we treat evidence related to things we want to be true ("Can I believe this?" - looking for a reason to say yes) and things we don't want to be true ("Must I believe this?" - looking for a reason to say no).
Quite a few times I've been about to post a long reply only to abandon it when I can't find an online source for its central assertion.
+1 - I'm glad it's not just me that double checks things before hitting post..
And one of the nice things here is that you know most people do similar (unlike other sites)...
Truss has so many big problems I wonder if her team know which to deny first? Not supported by most Tory MPs Cost of Living catastrophe where the solutions are politically or economically untenable A coterie of the wort members of Johnson's government plus a choice of 2019 mince to promote
If they seriously try and market themselves as a "new" government I expect the response will get pretty brutal. No government would get through this winter without scars. None. But across Europe governments are showing voters they understand the crisis, they are prepared to do whatever it takes, and are putting lots of money into it.
The only money Trussteam are putting up is new debt to give themselves a tax cut, and opening a credit line in the Fetlife store.
*googles Fetlife* ... the things one learns on PB. "FetLife is the Social Network for the BDSM, Fetish & Kinky Community. Like Facebook, but run by kinksters like you and me. We think it is more fun that way."
And there was me thinking it was a harmless website for lovers of feta cheese...
Indeed. The expertise and knowledge of of PBers is impressive, from moths downward.
Intelligent people are often incredibly thick in the real world. Any truly clever person wouldn’t come near an obscure querulous blog.
And young people are a bit dim
I just watched this hilarious but terrifying video of American Gen Zs failing to answer the most basic questions
Perhaps the best is the girl who is asked “if you drive at 60mph for an hour, how far will you go?”
First she says “that’s fast” then she says “I don’t drive”
They exhibit mental retardation. Yet seem apparently normal. We are doomed (part 739)
Silly question, because without defining the type of road and what is meant by 'how far' the answer is unknowable.
If (for example) you do 60mph for one hour round a mile long circuit, the correct answer is 'no distance.'
I did one of those motorway awareness courses just recently, and one of the questions they ask you to guess is, if someone who normally drives at 80mph and their journey takes them an hour, how much longer will it take it they drive at 70mph? The group all guessed various numbers of minutes but the official course answer is apparently 86 seconds. How they arrived at that answer, I do not know.
Clear lie, or at best not a maths question but a real life data one. If they drive at 80 for an hour it’s 80 miles. At 70 that take 1.14 h, so an extra 504 seconds.
I’d suggest they are using real life studies, not theoretical maths.
Nooooo tubbs. Its (rounded) 1h 14mins not 1.14 hours! Edit - shut up Woolie, you're wrong. I nominate myself spanner of the hour
Truss has so many big problems I wonder if her team know which to deny first? Not supported by most Tory MPs Cost of Living catastrophe where the solutions are politically or economically untenable A coterie of the wort members of Johnson's government plus a choice of 2019 mince to promote
If they seriously try and market themselves as a "new" government I expect the response will get pretty brutal. No government would get through this winter without scars. None. But across Europe governments are showing voters they understand the crisis, they are prepared to do whatever it takes, and are putting lots of money into it.
The only money Trussteam are putting up is new debt to give themselves a tax cut, and opening a credit line in the Fetlife store.
*googles Fetlife* ... the things one learns on PB. "FetLife is the Social Network for the BDSM, Fetish & Kinky Community. Like Facebook, but run by kinksters like you and me. We think it is more fun that way."
And there was me thinking it was a harmless website for lovers of feta cheese...
Indeed. The expertise and knowledge of of PBers is impressive, from moths downward.
Intelligent people are often incredibly thick in the real world. Any truly clever person wouldn’t come near an obscure querulous blog.
And young people are a bit dim
I just watched this hilarious but terrifying video of American Gen Zs failing to answer the most basic questions
Perhaps the best is the girl who is asked “if you drive at 60mph for an hour, how far will you go?”
First she says “that’s fast” then she says “I don’t drive”
They exhibit mental retardation. Yet seem apparently normal. We are doomed (part 739)
Silly question, because without defining the type of road and what is meant by 'how far' the answer is unknowable.
If (for example) you do 60mph for one hour round a mile long circuit, the correct answer is 'no distance.'
I did one of those motorway awareness courses just recently, and one of the questions they ask you to guess is, if someone who normally drives at 80mph and their journey takes them an hour, how much longer will it take it they drive at 70mph? The group all guessed various numbers of minutes but the official course answer is apparently 86 seconds. How they arrived at that answer, I do not know.
Clear lie, or at best not a maths question but a real life data one. If they drive at 80 for an hour it’s 80 miles. At 70 that take 1.14 h, so an extra 504 seconds.
I’d suggest they are using real life studies, not theoretical maths.
You need to check the source code in your calculator.
Truss has so many big problems I wonder if her team know which to deny first? Not supported by most Tory MPs Cost of Living catastrophe where the solutions are politically or economically untenable A coterie of the wort members of Johnson's government plus a choice of 2019 mince to promote
If they seriously try and market themselves as a "new" government I expect the response will get pretty brutal. No government would get through this winter without scars. None. But across Europe governments are showing voters they understand the crisis, they are prepared to do whatever it takes, and are putting lots of money into it.
The only money Trussteam are putting up is new debt to give themselves a tax cut, and opening a credit line in the Fetlife store.
*googles Fetlife* ... the things one learns on PB. "FetLife is the Social Network for the BDSM, Fetish & Kinky Community. Like Facebook, but run by kinksters like you and me. We think it is more fun that way."
And there was me thinking it was a harmless website for lovers of feta cheese...
Indeed. The expertise and knowledge of of PBers is impressive, from moths downward.
Intelligent people are often incredibly thick in the real world. Any truly clever person wouldn’t come near an obscure querulous blog.
And young people are a bit dim
I just watched this hilarious but terrifying video of American Gen Zs failing to answer the most basic questions
Perhaps the best is the girl who is asked “if you drive at 60mph for an hour, how far will you go?”
First she says “that’s fast” then she says “I don’t drive”
They exhibit mental retardation. Yet seem apparently normal. We are doomed (part 739)
Silly question, because without defining the type of road and what is meant by 'how far' the answer is unknowable.
If (for example) you do 60mph for one hour round a mile long circuit, the correct answer is 'no distance.'
I did one of those motorway awareness courses just recently, and one of the questions they ask you to guess is, if someone who normally drives at 80mph and their journey takes them an hour, how much longer will it take it they drive at 70mph? The group all guessed various numbers of minutes but the official course answer is apparently 86 seconds. How they arrived at that answer, I do not know.
Clear lie, or at best not a maths question but a real life data one. If they drive at 80 for an hour it’s 80 miles. At 70 that take 1.14 h, so an extra 504 seconds.
I’d suggest they are using real life studies, not theoretical maths.
I think we worked out how they screwed up earlier (the saving is 8.6 minutes but they've swapped something round to make it look great). But it's one of those times where you just accept their answer to get out the door and pass the course...
The one thing that I do remember from my last speed awareness course is the difference in stopping distances from I think 28 and 33 miles per hour. That was enough by itself to ensure I slow down...
Glad we've parked the NT discussion (apparently). So, anyone want to join me in a discussion on the veracity of the Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster?
Well......
Keir Starmer may come to miss Boris Johnson. Some historians believe that each prime minister is the antithesis of their predecessor, as we always replace overly charismatic leaders with boring ones. The historian David Starkey says all PMs are either bookies or bishops, and that the righteous Starmer has just lost his useful sinner. “Boris is the archetypal cheating bookie,” Starkey tells All Talk.
“Starmer is worse than a bishop: he’s a moderator of the Church of Scotland.” The theory might fall down if Liz Truss wins. It’s hard to see how she could be viewed as a bishop, though she might be more of a nun-entity.
Truss does not easily fall into the category of either charismatic or dull. She is no Brown or Major or Callaghan. But then again, she clearly isn't a Wilson, Thatcher, Blair or Cameron.
If I had to choose an analog for Ms Truss, it would not be a British politician.
I've just cracked up laughing watching Harold Wilson in the Crown, having to repeat to the Queen, the obscene limericks shared by Princess Margaret and Lyndon Johnson.
Nervously, Wilson begins "There once was a woman from Dallas, who enjoyed a dynamite phallus"
Queen, poker-faced, " You've come this f
"She left her vagina, in North Carolina, and her arsehole in Buckingham Palace."
I sort of went off the Crown. Olivia Coleman played it as Olivia Coleman with an accent - perhaps she couldn’t help herself - and I thought the producers wouldn’t be able to help themselves with the Thatcher years and, low and behold, I was right.
It was best done as a period piece in the 50s and 60s and left at that.
Agreed. Olivia Colman, good actress though she is, was miscast as HMQ. She should have played Thatcher. Gillian Anderson played Thatcher as a parody.
The only characters well acted were Wilson, Charles and Anne and, above all, Philip, beautifully played by Tobias Menzies.
But the earlier period was also more interesting because it was about the transition to becoming Queen and the personal and political aspects of that, as well as interesting depictions of events from the country's past.
I also preferred the earlier series. I can't quite decide whether it was the lack of familiarity with the earlier period that made it more interesting to me... or the fact that it was kind of depoliticised by distance. I thought Claire Foy was really brilliant and watchable.
Genuinely a show that had all 3 generations in my household watching at one point - which is pretty rare. It also sparked some curiosity in me about certain historical events (Great smog, Aberfan disaster) which I hadn't heard of, and so went away to read up on.
It is striking that back then, there was no expectation that the state would, in Boris's words, put its arms round the victims. Sometimes I wonder if we've gone too far the other way, with today's news that: Kobe Bryant's widow has been awarded $16m (£13.6m) in damages over leaked graphic photos of the helicopter crash that killed the US basketball star and his daughter in 2020. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-62669240
In darker moments, I wonder if lottery-sized payouts should not be confined to those who actually play the lottery, but there ought to be a halfway house between this and nothing as at Aberfan.
Effectively we're all saying that young people must be stupid because they don't know the things that we know (that the Danube is a river); just don't forget that young people think we're (I'm going with posters being middle aged and above) stupid because we don't know the things that they know - how to share a tiktok video, how to make a podcast, which Kardashian sister is oldest etc.
Increasingly important is not the need to have knowledge but the ability to find that knowledge when you need it - so an ability to parse the internet to find reliable sources and identify unreliable sources is much more important than holding knowledge in your brain (totally inefficient).
It can make conversation with young people dull for sure, but we've outsourced knowledge retention to the cloud - the smart people know how to get it out quickly.
It is notable that the people who seem most prone to falling for nonsense they read online are older. I think the main disservice that phones have done to young people is to screw up their attention span. If you can keep them off phones and devices through their primary school years then I suspect/hope that you can prevent too much damage to their cognitive abilities. That has been our strategy at least.
In falling for nonsense online: there's also a big role for confirmation bias (to which we're all susceptible). Great book on finding ways around it (and the author notes she fell into the same traps herself even whilst researching the book): https://www.amazon.co.uk/Scout-Mindset-People-Things-Clearly/dp/034942764X
I particularly like the pithy summary of how we treat evidence related to things we want to be true ("Can I believe this?" - looking for a reason to say yes) and things we don't want to be true ("Must I believe this?" - looking for a reason to say no).
Quite a few times I've been about to post a long reply only to abandon it when I can't find an online source for its central assertion.
+1 - I'm glad it's not just me that double checks things before hitting post..
And one of the nice things here is that you know most people do similar (unlike other sites)...
Yes I do this. I get all het up and think THAT’S TOTAL RUBBISH YOU DISMAL FOOL and I am about to post this then I think, Er wait, is it rubbish?
And I quietly check first, and sometimes it turns out I am completely mistaken (not often, you understand) and my HYSTERICALLY ANGRY REBUTTAL is discreetly shelved and no one is any the wiser
And I quietly check first, and sometimes it turns out I am completely mistaken (not often, you understand) and my HYSTERICALLY ANGRY REBUTTAL is discreetly shelved and no one is any the wiser
I thought you just posted it from a different account...
Sunak is making a perfectly valid point. We gave the lockdowny boffins way too much unaccountable power. Yet the red mist of Remoanerism means Dunt cannot see this
When this hits the wiki page I make it Labour in stronger position and Tories in weakest than anytime in long time, even worse now than day before Boris resigned. Even Opinium and Kantor kindest to Tories now show incredible bad poll for them in their unique way.
Something definitely happened. Something big. It’s not for BJO to explain, it’s for us all to explain.
TSE argued yesterday evening it all stems from Labours Great Freeze announcement (and Team Truss response “no not doing that or any windfall tax rises or handouts, we are doing tax cuts). But is it really true one policy announcement and crap response can do that? The voters really so aware and so quickly responsive to fundamentally changing polls on one popular policy announcement - Great Freeze from Starmer - IHT from Dave and George? Call me still sceptical and unconvinced by that argument.
Fantastic that Rishi Sunak has seen the light on lockdowns.
Yes, good for Sunak. Well said
There are people on Twitter who are saying that this…
“Sunak says it was a mistake to ‘empower scientists’ during Covid pandemic”
… is some kind of outrage. A statement so foul and evil it could only come from Nazi Tories. It’s the usual suspects - mad Remainers, FBPEers, James O’Brien
I can’t quite work out why there is such an overlap between Remoaners and 2nd voters and being fiercely pro-lockdown. But that overlap definitely exists. Starmer is an example
Awful people
It's remarkable to me that Conservative politicians like Sunak think "the scientists/civil servants made me do it" is a winning argument. It makes them look so incredibly weak.
This also means that the biggest source of CO2 in the UK is going...
Thanks for the tip off. On line now panic buying. 👍🏻
The country is falling apart around us. Big industrial can't afford energy bills so proposes to shut. We either (a) subsidise its energy bill and thus keep strategic industry alive, or (b) let it fail, "market forces", and then face fun* when we have to try and import fertiliser and CO2 forever.
I am involved with an operation that signs up pensions for businesses using auto enrolment - As new businesses are formed under Auto Enrolment they need to sign their employees into a pension. In June the number signing up was 21% down on the same month last year and in July 46% down. The economy is juddering to a halt.
Truss has so many big problems I wonder if her team know which to deny first? Not supported by most Tory MPs Cost of Living catastrophe where the solutions are politically or economically untenable A coterie of the wort members of Johnson's government plus a choice of 2019 mince to promote
If they seriously try and market themselves as a "new" government I expect the response will get pretty brutal. No government would get through this winter without scars. None. But across Europe governments are showing voters they understand the crisis, they are prepared to do whatever it takes, and are putting lots of money into it.
The only money Trussteam are putting up is new debt to give themselves a tax cut, and opening a credit line in the Fetlife store.
*googles Fetlife* ... the things one learns on PB. "FetLife is the Social Network for the BDSM, Fetish & Kinky Community. Like Facebook, but run by kinksters like you and me. We think it is more fun that way."
And there was me thinking it was a harmless website for lovers of feta cheese...
Indeed. The expertise and knowledge of of PBers is impressive, from moths downward.
Intelligent people are often incredibly thick in the real world. Any truly clever person wouldn’t come near an obscure querulous blog.
And young people are a bit dim
I just watched this hilarious but terrifying video of American Gen Zs failing to answer the most basic questions
Perhaps the best is the girl who is asked “if you drive at 60mph for an hour, how far will you go?”
First she says “that’s fast” then she says “I don’t drive”
They exhibit mental retardation. Yet seem apparently normal. We are doomed (part 739)
Silly question, because without defining the type of road and what is meant by 'how far' the answer is unknowable.
If (for example) you do 60mph for one hour round a mile long circuit, the correct answer is 'no distance.'
I did one of those motorway awareness courses just recently, and one of the questions they ask you to guess is, if someone who normally drives at 80mph and their journey takes them an hour, how much longer will it take it they drive at 70mph? The group all guessed various numbers of minutes but the official course answer is apparently 86 seconds. How they arrived at that answer, I do not know.
Clear lie, or at best not a maths question but a real life data one. If they drive at 80 for an hour it’s 80 miles. At 70 that take 1.14 h, so an extra 504 seconds.
I’d suggest they are using real life studies, not theoretical maths.
I think we worked out how they screwed up earlier (the saving is 8.6 minutes but they've swapped something round to make it look great). But it's one of those times where you just accept their answer to get out the door and pass the course...
The one thing that I do remember from my last speed awareness course is the difference in stopping distances from I think 28 and 33 miles per hour. That was enough by itself to ensure I slow down...
Sunak is making a perfectly valid point. We gave the lockdowny boffins way too much unaccountable power. Yet the red mist of Remoanerism means Dunt cannot see this
Dunno. The scientists give advice, it's up to ministers to make decisions.
Sunak is making a perfectly valid point. We gave the lockdowny boffins way too much unaccountable power. Yet the red mist of Remoanerism means Dunt cannot see this
SAGE is a Scientific Advisory Group.
If the politicians used it without considering other aspects of lockdowns then that is their fault, not the scientists.
When this hits the wiki page I make it Labour in stronger position and Tories in weakest than anytime in long time, even worse now than day before Boris resigned. Even Opinium and Kantor kindest to Tories now show incredible bad poll for them in their unique way.
Something definitely happened. Something big. It’s not for BJO to explain, it’s for us all to explain.
TSE argued yesterday evening it all stems from Labours Great Freeze announcement (and Team Truss response “no not doing that or any windfall tax rises or handouts, we are doing tax cuts). But is it really true one policy announcement and crap response can do that? The voters really so aware and so quickly responsive to fundamentally changing polls on one popular policy announcement - Great Freeze from Starmer - IHT from Dave and George? Call me still sceptical and unconvinced by that argument.
Its my economy stupid.
As I have been flagging for a while, this winter will be so bad they will be teaching it in the breath as the 78 winter of discontent, the three day week and the general strike.
The government have shown repeatedly and consistently that (a) they don't think there is a big crisis and (b) they don't care what it does to people.
Truss may indeed do a full 18 and propose a big package on day 1. But the damage is done - people can feel just how bad this is and the government have told them they won't help.
That the "Labour" (LibDem) plan isn't a magic wand which takes all the problems away doesn't matter. The opposition have said they know there is a problem, they care about people, and have a plan. Vs a government saying "no handouts".
Add into the atmosphere a clear view of a country where basic functions are falling apart and its no wonder the lead is shooting up.
Sunak is making a perfectly valid point. We gave the lockdowny boffins way too much unaccountable power. Yet the red mist of Remoanerism means Dunt cannot see this
Sunak actively fought against lockdowns, especially in Autumn 2020, which delayed and prevented lockdowns being put in place as the scientists advised. As a result we clearly didn't give them unaccountable power as the politicians didn't do what the experts wanted.
And the kicker is by doing so Sunak made lockdowns simultaneously less effectively AND that they had to last longer.
This also means that the biggest source of CO2 in the UK is going...
Thanks for the tip off. On line now panic buying. 👍🏻
The country is falling apart around us.
You're proof that people can have a fetish for hyperbole.
My proof that Tory rampers will continue to deny there is a problem even after everyone else agrees "there is a problem", fixes the problem and goes home.
I am involved with an operation that signs up pensions for businesses using auto enrolment - As new businesses are formed under Auto Enrolment they need to sign their employees into a pension. In June the number signing up was 21% down on the same month last year and in July 46% down. The economy is juddering to a halt.
I'm lost. Is that fewer new companies, existing cos recruiting fewer staff, or existing companies with same number of new staff, but new staff declining to sign up for pensions?
Sunak is making a perfectly valid point. We gave the lockdowny boffins way too much unaccountable power. Yet the red mist of Remoanerism means Dunt cannot see this
Dunno. The scientists give advice, it's up to ministers to make decisions.
Which in the case of September 2020, they decided against locking down in the face of rising Covid.
Fantastic that Rishi Sunak has seen the light on lockdowns.
Yes, good for Sunak. Well said
There are people on Twitter who are saying that this…
“Sunak says it was a mistake to ‘empower scientists’ during Covid pandemic”
… is some kind of outrage. A statement so foul and evil it could only come from Nazi Tories. It’s the usual suspects - mad Remainers, FBPEers, James O’Brien
I can’t quite work out why there is such an overlap between Remoaners and 2nd voters and being fiercely pro-lockdown. But that overlap definitely exists. Starmer is an example
Awful people
It's remarkable to me that Conservative politicians like Sunak think "the scientists/civil servants made me do it" is a winning argument. It makes them look so incredibly weak.
To be fair to Sunak, wasn't he key in getting Carl Heneghan and Sunetra Gupta in to speak to the Cabinet around September 2020 in order to pass on their insights that it was now all false positives and we were all immune and covid couldn'
This also means that the biggest source of CO2 in the UK is going...
Thanks for the tip off. On line now panic buying. 👍🏻
The country is falling apart around us. Big industrial can't afford energy bills so proposes to shut. We either (a) subsidise its energy bill and thus keep strategic industry alive, or (b) let it fail, "market forces", and then face fun* when we have to try and import fertiliser and CO2 forever.
I still can't believe how the long the Tory leadership election is taking at an urgent national point for decisions. It could and should have been done and dusted a week ago at the latest.
Sunak is making a perfectly valid point. We gave the lockdowny boffins way too much unaccountable power. Yet the red mist of Remoanerism means Dunt cannot see this
Sunak actively fought against lockdowns, especially in Autumn 2020, which delayed and prevented lockdowns being put in place as the scientists advised. As a result we clearly didn't give them unaccountable power as the politicians didn't do what the experts wanted.
And the kicker is by doing so Sunak made lockdowns simultaneously less effectively AND that they had to last longer.
Sunak was crucial in preventing lockdown 4. Which would have lasted Dec 21-March 22
For that we must all be grateful
I’m not sure any of the lockdowns were worth it, apart from the first weeks of lockdown 1. We screwed the economy and killed thousands of people to protect the very old and the very fat
This also means that the biggest source of CO2 in the UK is going...
Thanks for the tip off. On line now panic buying. 👍🏻
The country is falling apart around us. Big industrial can't afford energy bills so proposes to shut. We either (a) subsidise its energy bill and thus keep strategic industry alive, or (b) let it fail, "market forces", and then face fun* when we have to try and import fertiliser and CO2 forever.
I still can't believe how the long the Tory leadership election is taking at an urgent national point for decisions. It could and should have been done and dusted a week ago at the latest.
When this hits the wiki page I make it Labour in stronger position and Tories in weakest than anytime in long time, even worse now than day before Boris resigned. Even Opinium and Kantor kindest to Tories now show incredible bad poll for them in their unique way.
Something definitely happened. Something big. It’s not for BJO to explain, it’s for us all to explain.
TSE argued yesterday evening it all stems from Labours Great Freeze announcement (and Team Truss response “no not doing that or any windfall tax rises or handouts, we are doing tax cuts). But is it really true one policy announcement and crap response can do that? The voters really so aware and so quickly responsive to fundamentally changing polls on one popular policy announcement - Great Freeze from Starmer - IHT from Dave and George? Call me still sceptical and unconvinced by that argument.
My view is that its a combination of labour offering 'something' (its a crap policy but it has the advantage of existing), sheer boredom with the leadership battle, annoyance at no energy solution being offered by govt and some 'protest' false/loose opposition support. In the round Labour are acting like a shadow government and the Tories are squabbling like rats in a sack. In a week and a half we have a government again and how they respond to this crisis will set the polling tone till winter probably.
Summary of what is being expressed in the polling right now - a collective FFS
I am involved with an operation that signs up pensions for businesses using auto enrolment - As new businesses are formed under Auto Enrolment they need to sign their employees into a pension. In June the number signing up was 21% down on the same month last year and in July 46% down. The economy is juddering to a halt.
I'm lost. Is that fewer new companies, existing cos recruiting fewer staff, or existing companies with same number of new staff, but new staff declining to sign up for pensions?
Fewer new companies or companies closing completely
Sunak is making a perfectly valid point. We gave the lockdowny boffins way too much unaccountable power. Yet the red mist of Remoanerism means Dunt cannot see this
Sunak actively fought against lockdowns, especially in Autumn 2020, which delayed and prevented lockdowns being put in place as the scientists advised. As a result we clearly didn't give them unaccountable power as the politicians didn't do what the experts wanted.
And the kicker is by doing so Sunak made lockdowns simultaneously less effectively AND that they had to last longer.
Sunak is making a perfectly valid point. We gave the lockdowny boffins way too much unaccountable power. Yet the red mist of Remoanerism means Dunt cannot see this
It's not the substantive point it's the "He was for it before he was against it" thing.
The PB right had a curiously retro mini-wave of anti lockdown mewling yesterday. Either Sunak reads here (hi Rishi!) or it was part of a bigger trend on twitter or somewhere that he has picked up on. To test the hypothesis let's all moan about, I dunno, the swathe of high rise hedgehog sanctuaries disfiguring the countryside and see if that crops up this evening.
Truss has so many big problems I wonder if her team know which to deny first? Not supported by most Tory MPs Cost of Living catastrophe where the solutions are politically or economically untenable A coterie of the wort members of Johnson's government plus a choice of 2019 mince to promote
If they seriously try and market themselves as a "new" government I expect the response will get pretty brutal. No government would get through this winter without scars. None. But across Europe governments are showing voters they understand the crisis, they are prepared to do whatever it takes, and are putting lots of money into it.
The only money Trussteam are putting up is new debt to give themselves a tax cut, and opening a credit line in the Fetlife store.
*googles Fetlife* ... the things one learns on PB. "FetLife is the Social Network for the BDSM, Fetish & Kinky Community. Like Facebook, but run by kinksters like you and me. We think it is more fun that way."
And there was me thinking it was a harmless website for lovers of feta cheese...
Indeed. The expertise and knowledge of of PBers is impressive, from moths downward.
Intelligent people are often incredibly thick in the real world. Any truly clever person wouldn’t come near an obscure querulous blog.
And young people are a bit dim
I just watched this hilarious but terrifying video of American Gen Zs failing to answer the most basic questions
Perhaps the best is the girl who is asked “if you drive at 60mph for an hour, how far will you go?”
First she says “that’s fast” then she says “I don’t drive”
They exhibit mental retardation. Yet seem apparently normal. We are doomed (part 739)
Silly question, because without defining the type of road and what is meant by 'how far' the answer is unknowable.
If (for example) you do 60mph for one hour round a mile long circuit, the correct answer is 'no distance.'
I did one of those motorway awareness courses just recently, and one of the questions they ask you to guess is, if someone who normally drives at 80mph and their journey takes them an hour, how much longer will it take it they drive at 70mph? The group all guessed various numbers of minutes but the official course answer is apparently 86 seconds. How they arrived at that answer, I do not know.
Clear lie, or at best not a maths question but a real life data one. If they drive at 80 for an hour it’s 80 miles. At 70 that take 1.14 h, so an extra 504 seconds.
I’d suggest they are using real life studies, not theoretical maths.
You need to check the source code in your calculator.
Truss has so many big problems I wonder if her team know which to deny first? Not supported by most Tory MPs Cost of Living catastrophe where the solutions are politically or economically untenable A coterie of the wort members of Johnson's government plus a choice of 2019 mince to promote
If they seriously try and market themselves as a "new" government I expect the response will get pretty brutal. No government would get through this winter without scars. None. But across Europe governments are showing voters they understand the crisis, they are prepared to do whatever it takes, and are putting lots of money into it.
The only money Trussteam are putting up is new debt to give themselves a tax cut, and opening a credit line in the Fetlife store.
*googles Fetlife* ... the things one learns on PB. "FetLife is the Social Network for the BDSM, Fetish & Kinky Community. Like Facebook, but run by kinksters like you and me. We think it is more fun that way."
And there was me thinking it was a harmless website for lovers of feta cheese...
Indeed. The expertise and knowledge of of PBers is impressive, from moths downward.
Intelligent people are often incredibly thick in the real world. Any truly clever person wouldn’t come near an obscure querulous blog.
And young people are a bit dim
I just watched this hilarious but terrifying video of American Gen Zs failing to answer the most basic questions
Perhaps the best is the girl who is asked “if you drive at 60mph for an hour, how far will you go?”
First she says “that’s fast” then she says “I don’t drive”
They exhibit mental retardation. Yet seem apparently normal. We are doomed (part 739)
Silly question, because without defining the type of road and what is meant by 'how far' the answer is unknowable.
If (for example) you do 60mph for one hour round a mile long circuit, the correct answer is 'no distance.'
I did one of those motorway awareness courses just recently, and one of the questions they ask you to guess is, if someone who normally drives at 80mph and their journey takes them an hour, how much longer will it take it they drive at 70mph? The group all guessed various numbers of minutes but the official course answer is apparently 86 seconds. How they arrived at that answer, I do not know.
Clear lie, or at best not a maths question but a real life data one. If they drive at 80 for an hour it’s 80 miles. At 70 that take 1.14 h, so an extra 504 seconds.
I’d suggest they are using real life studies, not theoretical maths.
I think we worked out how they screwed up earlier (the saving is 8.6 minutes but they've swapped something round to make it look great). But it's one of those times where you just accept their answer to get out the door and pass the course...
The one thing that I do remember from my last speed awareness course is the difference in stopping distances from I think 28 and 33 miles per hour. That was enough by itself to ensure I slow down...
That first one is fun - but uses the wrong stopping distance. Or, to put it another way, they're comparing the braking distance with the Highway Code's stopping distance (braking distance plus thinking distance), because the flags aren't exactly coming as a surprise to them.
Looks like they'd still have stopped short, but instead of 240 feet, it should have been 180 feet. Which might have made Jeremy and James look a little less comfortable.
Been invited to a residents' meeting to discuss "heating and hot water charges moving forward." Oh dear. Moving forward.
The phrase "moving forward" is a retard's marker for the future tense.
Usually they've already said "will" or "shall", so there is no need for another marker, but they don't bother thinking about what they're saying, any more than a pig weighs up the pros and cons of grunting before it grunts. They just copy. Some people would stick their head in the gas oven if they saw other people doing it, and then they'd get right nasty with anyone who queried their action. They might even say the sceptics were paid by Putin.
Cf. "let's liberate Crimea". "Ah, so you don't rate the referendum that highly then? And you're not bothered with Russia having such a large nuclear arsenal?" "F*** off, you traitor! That's all meaningless!"
This is how a culture ends...barbarianism almost literally. "Moving forward". "Absolutely". "The United Kingdom is a country", etc. etc. etc. "Bah bah bah". People don't realise they are talking sh*t, getting ever more retarded as they pick their little handheld microwave trackers.
Sunak is making a perfectly valid point. We gave the lockdowny boffins way too much unaccountable power. Yet the red mist of Remoanerism means Dunt cannot see this
It's not the substantive point it's the "He was for it before he was against it" thing.
The PB right had a curiously retro mini-wave of anti lockdown mewling yesterday. Either Sunak reads here (hi Rishi!) or it was part of a bigger trend on twitter or somewhere that he has picked up on. To test the hypothesis let's all moan about, I dunno, the swathe of high rise hedgehog sanctuaries disfiguring the countryside and see if that crops up this evening.
There's hedgehogs all over the Green Belt these days. It's a damned disgrace.
We won't need lockdown this winter. People will simply have less / no spare cash to go out and have fun. A disaster for the hospitality industry who face insane bills with a cut in income.
Sunak is making a perfectly valid point. We gave the lockdowny boffins way too much unaccountable power. Yet the red mist of Remoanerism means Dunt cannot see this
Dunno. The scientists give advice, it's up to ministers to make decisions.
How quickly we forget the way we all fetishised the boffins. Worshipped them as we worshipped the NHS
Politicians are humans. They don’t operate in a void. They were susceptible to the same pressures of public opinion as anyone. “Listen to Chris Whitty! Lock everything down!”
Sunak is making a perfectly valid point. We gave the lockdowny boffins way too much unaccountable power. Yet the red mist of Remoanerism means Dunt cannot see this
Dunno. The scientists give advice, it's up to ministers to make decisions.
And when the advice wasn’t taken (too the liking of some of the scientists) some scientists went screaming to the media to get their way.
Sunak is making a perfectly valid point. We gave the lockdowny boffins way too much unaccountable power. Yet the red mist of Remoanerism means Dunt cannot see this
It's not the substantive point it's the "He was for it before he was against it" thing.
The PB right had a curiously retro mini-wave of anti lockdown mewling yesterday. Either Sunak reads here (hi Rishi!) or it was part of a bigger trend on twitter or somewhere that he has picked up on. To test the hypothesis let's all moan about, I dunno, the swathe of high rise hedgehog sanctuaries disfiguring the countryside and see if that crops up this evening.
There's hedgehogs all over the Green Belt these days. It's a damned disgrace.
Absolutely scandalous. Not just the Green Belt too but even in towns. And in the countryside.
Nasty prickles. Carry fleas too. Beatrix Potter has a lot to answer for.
Sunak is making a perfectly valid point. We gave the lockdowny boffins way too much unaccountable power. Yet the red mist of Remoanerism means Dunt cannot see this
It's not the substantive point it's the "He was for it before he was against it" thing.
The PB right had a curiously retro mini-wave of anti lockdown mewling yesterday. Either Sunak reads here (hi Rishi!) or it was part of a bigger trend on twitter or somewhere that he has picked up on. To test the hypothesis let's all moan about, I dunno, the swathe of high rise hedgehog sanctuaries disfiguring the countryside and see if that crops up this evening.
There's hedgehogs all over the Green Belt these days. It's a damned disgrace.
Sunak is making a perfectly valid point. We gave the lockdowny boffins way too much unaccountable power. Yet the red mist of Remoanerism means Dunt cannot see this
Dunno. The scientists give advice, it's up to ministers to make decisions.
How quickly we forget the way we all fetishised the boffins. Worshipped them as we worshipped the NHS
Politicians are humans. They don’t operate in a void. They were susceptible to the same pressures of public opinion as anyone. “Listen to Chris Whitty! Lock everything down!”
So they did
If our gullible Oxford PPE and Classics educated government has no understanding of science or its limitations then that is their fault. They are willfully ignorant most of the time.
Just playing with the QCovid calculator. A 59 year old male, a little over average height with average weight, unvaccinated in the first wave(s) would have had a 4.1% chance of being hospitalised by covid and 1.1% chance of dying from it.
Assuming healthcare was available, which was the point of the lockdowns. So, basically, we locked down to protect people in that category as well.
YMMV as to whether or not we should bother to protect 59 year old white males with no co-morbidities and average height and weight, of course.
Sunak is making a perfectly valid point. We gave the lockdowny boffins way too much unaccountable power. Yet the red mist of Remoanerism means Dunt cannot see this
It's not the substantive point it's the "He was for it before he was against it" thing.
The PB right had a curiously retro mini-wave of anti lockdown mewling yesterday. Either Sunak reads here (hi Rishi!) or it was part of a bigger trend on twitter or somewhere that he has picked up on. To test the hypothesis let's all moan about, I dunno, the swathe of high rise hedgehog sanctuaries disfiguring the countryside and see if that crops up this evening.
There's hedgehogs all over the Green Belt these days. It's a damned disgrace.
Lock Them Up.
Can't sleep for them mating. (On reflection, perhaps not surprising.)
Sunak is making a perfectly valid point. We gave the lockdowny boffins way too much unaccountable power. Yet the red mist of Remoanerism means Dunt cannot see this
Dunno. The scientists give advice, it's up to ministers to make decisions.
And when the advice wasn’t taken (too the liking of some of the scientists) some scientists went screaming to the media to get their way.
And some still are to whichever rag will listen to their screeching.
Sunak is making a perfectly valid point. We gave the lockdowny boffins way too much unaccountable power. Yet the red mist of Remoanerism means Dunt cannot see this
Dunno. The scientists give advice, it's up to ministers to make decisions.
How quickly we forget the way we all fetishised the boffins. Worshipped them as we worshipped the NHS
Politicians are humans. They don’t operate in a void. They were susceptible to the same pressures of public opinion as anyone. “Listen to Chris Whitty! Lock everything down!”
So they did
If our gullible Oxford PPE and Classics educated government has no understanding of science or its limitations then that is their fault. They are willfully ignorant most of the time.
Maths too. Mrs T knew what an exponential function was (for one thing, from chemical reaction kinetics).
How quickly we forget the way we all fetishised the boffins. Worshipped them as we worshipped the NHS
Politicians are humans. They don’t operate in a void. They were susceptible to the same pressures of public opinion as anyone. “Listen to Chris Whitty! Lock everything down!”
So they did
Of course, *Sage* took all the decisions. Must have imagined the multiple press conferences where Boris Johnson told us to enjoy Christmas while Vallance and Whitty shifted uncomfortably at their podiums. https://twitter.com/aljwhite/status/1562697882603438087/photo/1
Sunak is making a perfectly valid point. We gave the lockdowny boffins way too much unaccountable power. Yet the red mist of Remoanerism means Dunt cannot see this
It's not the substantive point it's the "He was for it before he was against it" thing.
The PB right had a curiously retro mini-wave of anti lockdown mewling yesterday. Either Sunak reads here (hi Rishi!) or it was part of a bigger trend on twitter or somewhere that he has picked up on. To test the hypothesis let's all moan about, I dunno, the swathe of high rise hedgehog sanctuaries disfiguring the countryside and see if that crops up this evening.
There's hedgehogs all over the Green Belt these days. It's a damned disgrace.
Absolutely scandalous. Not just the Green Belt too but even in towns. And in the countryside.
Nasty prickles. Carry fleas too. Beatrix Potter has a lot to answer for.
Its the high rise nature of the hedgehog sanctuaries that is the problem.
I would blame illegal hedgehog dinghy arrivals if that idea hadn't gone pop.
Truss has so many big problems I wonder if her team know which to deny first? Not supported by most Tory MPs Cost of Living catastrophe where the solutions are politically or economically untenable A coterie of the wort members of Johnson's government plus a choice of 2019 mince to promote
If they seriously try and market themselves as a "new" government I expect the response will get pretty brutal. No government would get through this winter without scars. None. But across Europe governments are showing voters they understand the crisis, they are prepared to do whatever it takes, and are putting lots of money into it.
The only money Trussteam are putting up is new debt to give themselves a tax cut, and opening a credit line in the Fetlife store.
*googles Fetlife* ... the things one learns on PB. "FetLife is the Social Network for the BDSM, Fetish & Kinky Community. Like Facebook, but run by kinksters like you and me. We think it is more fun that way."
And there was me thinking it was a harmless website for lovers of feta cheese...
Indeed. The expertise and knowledge of of PBers is impressive, from moths downward.
Intelligent people are often incredibly thick in the real world. Any truly clever person wouldn’t come near an obscure querulous blog.
And young people are a bit dim
I just watched this hilarious but terrifying video of American Gen Zs failing to answer the most basic questions
Perhaps the best is the girl who is asked “if you drive at 60mph for an hour, how far will you go?”
First she says “that’s fast” then she says “I don’t drive”
They exhibit mental retardation. Yet seem apparently normal. We are doomed (part 739)
Silly question, because without defining the type of road and what is meant by 'how far' the answer is unknowable.
If (for example) you do 60mph for one hour round a mile long circuit, the correct answer is 'no distance.'
I did one of those motorway awareness courses just recently, and one of the questions they ask you to guess is, if someone who normally drives at 80mph and their journey takes them an hour, how much longer will it take it they drive at 70mph? The group all guessed various numbers of minutes but the official course answer is apparently 86 seconds. How they arrived at that answer, I do not know.
Clear lie, or at best not a maths question but a real life data one. If they drive at 80 for an hour it’s 80 miles. At 70 that take 1.14 h, so an extra 504 seconds.
I’d suggest they are using real life studies, not theoretical maths.
You need to check the source code in your calculator.
No I don’t.
It is 514 seconds.
You are dividing an exact number of hundreds (3600) by 7 therefore the two least significant digits have to be a multiple of 14.2xxx. 504 cannot be correct.
Fantastic that Rishi Sunak has seen the light on lockdowns.
Yes, good for Sunak. Well said
There are people on Twitter who are saying that this…
“Sunak says it was a mistake to ‘empower scientists’ during Covid pandemic”
… is some kind of outrage. A statement so foul and evil it could only come from Nazi Tories. It’s the usual suspects - mad Remainers, FBPEers, James O’Brien
I can’t quite work out why there is such an overlap between Remoaners and 2nd voters and being fiercely pro-lockdown. But that overlap definitely exists. Starmer is an example
Awful people
It's remarkable to me that Conservative politicians like Sunak think "the scientists/civil servants made me do it" is a winning argument. It makes them look so incredibly weak.
To be fair to Sunak, wasn't he key in getting Carl Heneghan and Sunetra Gupta in to speak to the Cabinet around September 2020 in order to pass on their insights that it was now all false positives and we were all immune and covid couldn'
When we say that Sunak is a better candidate for PM, that he has more principles and a better grip on reality than Truss, we are only talking comparatively, aren't we?
(As for the wider question, I think the link might go like this. There is a chink of wicked political problems which go "The will of the people is to do X, but that is really likely to have consequence Y, and the people really don't want Y." To take grammar schools, lots of people like the idea, but the obvious conseqence of having them is that lots of children will miss out, and nobody wants that. Or on lockdowns, yes they suck but if you bungle the initial response you are going to have to do them and then you are best getting on with them.
Populists cope with this by denying that consequence Y will happen, labelling it Project Fear or something. Then there's a kind of rugged anti-paternalist who copes by saying that the people need to learn from their mistakes. A truly brilliant communicator can explain consequence Y without sounding patronising, but we don't have many of those.
Starmer is trying to do the third of these, but he isn't really good enough at it. A shame, because on many issues it is the right thing to do. It's just really hard.)
Sunak is making a perfectly valid point. We gave the lockdowny boffins way too much unaccountable power. Yet the red mist of Remoanerism means Dunt cannot see this
Dunno. The scientists give advice, it's up to ministers to make decisions.
How quickly we forget the way we all fetishised the boffins. Worshipped them as we worshipped the NHS
Politicians are humans. They don’t operate in a void. They were susceptible to the same pressures of public opinion as anyone. “Listen to Chris Whitty! Lock everything down!”
So they did
If our gullible Oxford PPE and Classics educated government has no understanding of science or its limitations then that is their fault. They are willfully ignorant most of the time.
Seeing as it's the issue du nos jours, how many geologists and engineers are there in gov't at the moment.
Anyway on Covid what's done is done, the UK probably would have done things differently if we knew there was going to be a land war in europe immediately after the crisis but it's all in the hindsight mirror now.
Sunak is making a perfectly valid point. We gave the lockdowny boffins way too much unaccountable power. Yet the red mist of Remoanerism means Dunt cannot see this
Dunno. The scientists give advice, it's up to ministers to make decisions.
And when the advice wasn’t taken (too the liking of some of the scientists) some scientists went screaming to the media to get their way.
To get their way, or to save thousands of lives, at least as they saw things? Remember the motivation for lockdown was to keep the NHS running. The idea that no lockdown would have meant no missed cancer screenings is for the birds because all the hospitals would have been shut owing to staff self-isolating.
Where imo boffins and ministers were culpable is in not commissioning urgent new research to resolve uncertainty about, for instance: how and how far droplets spread; mask efficacy; dodgy modelling code.
We won't need lockdown this winter. People will simply have less / no spare cash to go out and have fun. A disaster for the hospitality industry who face insane bills with a cut in income.
This winter will be a test of what a voluntary stay at home policy without support for business is like. Better or worse than a lockdown and business support type approach? We will see soon.
Comments
Second production grade BE-4 has been delivered, apparently.
Centaur still needs work though….
Genuinely a show that had all 3 generations in my household watching at one point - which is pretty rare.
It also sparked some curiosity in me about certain historical events (Great smog, Aberfan disaster) which I hadn't heard of, and so went away to read up on.
On the topic of essential stuff that should be taught in schools (and this may well have changed) we learnt stuff in maths that most people will never use, but I was never taught any logic at school. Some very basic logic is very useful in everyday life.
There're also some rumours/insinuations about the first payload being delayed as well...
We need both SpaceX and Blue Origin. When those babies fly, SLS should be abandoned.
Regarding offshore wind, is the Irish sea not one of the windiest? Blackpool would suggest so! It would surprise me if there's a lot more wind blowing over Scottish waters than English ones. I also understand English (and Welsh) tidal ranges are better suited to power generation. If you're incinerating waste, there's a whole lot more of that generated down South too.
Just needs the Government to get a serious energy strategy in place - hopefully one with cross party and pan-UK suppport.
is the one I can recall from logic at uni.
Also necessary/sufficient.
Claire Foy is just a much better actor than Olivia Coleman, much as I love the latter for the peerless Peep Show.
As for the battery - it's interesting how things have changed there - it's no longer this battery is good enough for a laptop - it's can provide the night time supply for a home...
Want to move a 100 meter turbine blade on land? A vast effort, if it possible. Doing it on water - get a quote from dozens of companies for whom it is almost trivial
Our youngest, 6, was recently reading a book she'd downloaded by herself onto her tablet called "the night dad went to prison". That one amused me.
Many kids will have via their tablets access to more books than ever before at home, but without access to books on their bookshelf and a love of reading how many would be using tablets to read downloaded books? And how many just playing Roblox etc?
The issue for economics is that the simplified models usually provide a good enough answer 80-90% of the time, it's the other times that have issues.
The economy and inflation/prices has absolutely dominated this leadership contest.
I get you hate the Tories now with the zeal of the convert but let's try and keep a grip.
All the things are x
Americans. All the things are not x.
What they mean is, not all the things are x.
It covers not just the events themselves but what happened in the years following, which are almost as cruel and depressing as the tragedy itself.
I found it very moving and wrote this article about it and some of the things that struck me about it.
https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b
The only economic points I've heard from the 2 candidates are
Sunak - no tax cuts yet we can't afford it.
Truss - I'll cut taxes tomorrow - we'll just borrow more
And Sunak saying Truss's plan is insane.
Great book on finding ways around it (and the author notes she fell into the same traps herself even whilst researching the book): https://www.amazon.co.uk/Scout-Mindset-People-Things-Clearly/dp/034942764X
I particularly like the pithy summary of how we treat evidence related to things we want to be true ("Can I believe this?" - looking for a reason to say yes) and things we don't want to be true ("Must I believe this?" - looking for a reason to say no).
Westminster Voting Intention:
LAB: 40% (+3)
CON: 33% (=)
LDM: 14% (+1)
GRN: 6% (-1)
SNP: 4% (=)
RFM: 2% (-2)
Via @Kantar_UKI, 18-22 Aug.
Changes w/ 15-17 Jul.
Congrats to yours!
It isn't a linear relationship of more wind = more power. Particularly as you go up in scale.
This is how I explain the politics, correct me where wrong.
New NI tax came from Boris declaring “we are about to sort the Social Care problem once and for all”
At time it hit commons the news of covid backlog was horrible, so is sold as vote for more tax to sort covid backlog and social care crisis badly need it - and the Tory MPs voted for the new tax that now seems so unpopular and easily dispensable ?
Truss now trying to win by both cancelling the new tax AND respending the raised money in a popular way?
An unbearable place with an unbearable story. Once you become a parent anything that involves the suffering and death of children is emotionally intolerable
This also means that the biggest source of CO2 in the UK is going...
I’d suggest they are using real life studies, not theoretical maths.
Oh dear.
Moving forward.
There are people on Twitter who are saying that this…
“Sunak says it was a mistake to ‘empower scientists’ during Covid pandemic”
… is some kind of outrage. A statement so foul and evil it could only come from Nazi Tories. It’s the usual suspects - mad Remainers, FBPEers, James O’Brien
I can’t quite work out why there is such an overlap between Remoaners and 2nd voters and being fiercely pro-lockdown. But that overlap definitely exists. Starmer is an example
Awful people
And one of the nice things here is that you know most people do similar (unlike other sites)...
Edit - shut up Woolie, you're wrong.
I nominate myself spanner of the hour
The one thing that I do remember from my last speed awareness course is the difference in stopping distances from I think 28 and 33 miles per hour. That was enough by itself to ensure I slow down...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-62669240
In darker moments, I wonder if lottery-sized payouts should not be confined to those who actually play the lottery, but there ought to be a halfway house between this and nothing as at Aberfan.
And I quietly check first, and sometimes it turns out I am completely mistaken (not often, you understand) and my HYSTERICALLY ANGRY REBUTTAL is discreetly shelved and no one is any the wiser
Sunak is making a perfectly valid point. We gave the lockdowny boffins way too much unaccountable power. Yet the red mist of Remoanerism means Dunt cannot see this
When this hits the wiki page I make it Labour in stronger position and Tories in weakest than anytime in long time, even worse now than day before Boris resigned. Even Opinium and Kantor kindest to Tories now show incredible bad poll for them in their unique way.
Something definitely happened. Something big. It’s not for BJO to explain, it’s for us all to explain.
TSE argued yesterday evening it all stems from Labours Great Freeze announcement (and Team Truss response “no not doing that or any windfall tax rises or handouts, we are doing tax cuts). But is it really true one policy announcement and crap response can do that? The voters really so aware and so quickly responsive to fundamentally changing polls on one popular policy announcement - Great Freeze from Starmer - IHT from Dave and George? Call me still sceptical and unconvinced by that argument.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWmEbbPlQ_c
And here is an older Top Gear piece suggesting the Highway Code might have had a point.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGkKDaYd3Mo
If the politicians used it without considering other aspects of lockdowns then that is their fault, not the scientists.
As I have been flagging for a while, this winter will be so bad they will be teaching it in the breath as the 78 winter of discontent, the three day week and the general strike.
The government have shown repeatedly and consistently that (a) they don't think there is a big crisis and (b) they don't care what it does to people.
Truss may indeed do a full 18 and propose a big package on day 1. But the damage is done - people can feel just how bad this is and the government have told them they won't help.
That the "Labour" (LibDem) plan isn't a magic wand which takes all the problems away doesn't matter. The opposition have said they know there is a problem, they care about people, and have a plan. Vs a government saying "no handouts".
Add into the atmosphere a clear view of a country where basic functions are falling apart and its no wonder the lead is shooting up.
And the kicker is by doing so Sunak made lockdowns simultaneously less effectively AND that they had to last longer.
For that we must all be grateful
I’m not sure any of the lockdowns were worth it, apart from the first weeks of lockdown 1. We screwed the economy and killed thousands of people to protect the very old and the very fat
Never again
In a week and a half we have a government again and how they respond to this crisis will set the polling tone till winter probably.
Summary of what is being expressed in the polling right now - a collective FFS
The PB right had a curiously retro mini-wave of anti lockdown mewling yesterday. Either Sunak reads here (hi Rishi!) or it was part of a bigger trend on twitter or somewhere that he has picked up on. To test the hypothesis let's all moan about, I dunno, the swathe of high rise hedgehog sanctuaries disfiguring the countryside and see if that crops up this evening.
Or, to put it another way, they're comparing the braking distance with the Highway Code's stopping distance (braking distance plus thinking distance), because the flags aren't exactly coming as a surprise to them.
Looks like they'd still have stopped short, but instead of 240 feet, it should have been 180 feet. Which might have made Jeremy and James look a little less comfortable.
Usually they've already said "will" or "shall", so there is no need for another marker, but they don't bother thinking about what they're saying, any more than a pig weighs up the pros and cons of grunting before it grunts. They just copy. Some people would stick their head in the gas oven if they saw other people doing it, and then they'd get right nasty with anyone who queried their action. They might even say the sceptics were paid by Putin.
Cf. "let's liberate Crimea".
"Ah, so you don't rate the referendum that highly then? And you're not bothered with Russia having such a large nuclear arsenal?"
"F*** off, you traitor! That's all meaningless!"
This is how a culture ends...barbarianism almost literally. "Moving forward". "Absolutely". "The United Kingdom is a country", etc. etc. etc. "Bah bah bah". People don't realise they are talking sh*t, getting ever more retarded as they pick their little handheld microwave trackers.
Politicians are humans. They don’t operate in a void. They were susceptible to the same pressures of public opinion as anyone. “Listen to Chris Whitty! Lock everything down!”
So they did
Nasty prickles. Carry fleas too. Beatrix Potter has a lot to answer for.
A 59 year old male, a little over average height with average weight, unvaccinated in the first wave(s) would have had a 4.1% chance of being hospitalised by covid and 1.1% chance of dying from it.
Assuming healthcare was available, which was the point of the lockdowns. So, basically, we locked down to protect people in that category as well.
YMMV as to whether or not we should bother to protect 59 year old white males with no co-morbidities and average height and weight, of course.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2MqkF30OTo
Of course, *Sage* took all the decisions. Must have imagined the multiple press conferences where Boris Johnson told us to enjoy Christmas while Vallance and Whitty shifted uncomfortably at their podiums. https://twitter.com/aljwhite/status/1562697882603438087/photo/1
I would blame illegal hedgehog dinghy arrivals if that idea hadn't gone pop.
You are dividing an exact number of hundreds (3600) by 7 therefore the two least significant digits have to be a multiple of 14.2xxx. 504 cannot be correct.
(As for the wider question, I think the link might go like this. There is a chink of wicked political problems which go "The will of the people is to do X, but that is really likely to have consequence Y, and the people really don't want Y." To take grammar schools, lots of people like the idea, but the obvious conseqence of having them is that lots of children will miss out, and nobody wants that. Or on lockdowns, yes they suck but if you bungle the initial response you are going to have to do them and then you are best getting on with them.
Populists cope with this by denying that consequence Y will happen, labelling it Project Fear or something. Then there's a kind of rugged anti-paternalist who copes by saying that the people need to learn from their mistakes. A truly brilliant communicator can explain consequence Y without sounding patronising, but we don't have many of those.
Starmer is trying to do the third of these, but he isn't really good enough at it. A shame, because on many issues it is the right thing to do. It's just really hard.)
Anyway on Covid what's done is done, the UK probably would have done things differently if we knew there was going to be a land war in europe immediately after the crisis but it's all in the hindsight mirror now.
Where imo boffins and ministers were culpable is in not commissioning urgent new research to resolve uncertainty about, for instance: how and how far droplets spread; mask efficacy; dodgy modelling code.