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Truss would stand a good chance of winning another member’s ballot – politicalbetting.com

SystemSystem Posts: 11,683
edited February 2023 in General
imageTruss would stand a good chance of winning another member’s ballot – politicalbetting.com

One of the great strengths that Liz Trust has is her popularity with the Conservative membership. This was seen in the months and years leading up to the July-September 2022 leadership election when she regularly topped the monthly Conservative Home survey of the most favoured Cabinet ministers.

Read the full story here

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  • Options
    tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,190
    First like Arsenal.
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    Mr. 86, any ETA for penalties Man City might face for financial naughtiness?
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    SelebianSelebian Posts: 7,442
    edited February 2023
    We're assuming the Tory membership has memory issues, along with their other oddities?

    Has there been any polling showing that she is still popular? Does she get into the ConHome polls now she has no cabinet position - were they just ratings of the cabinet?

    ETA: Anyway, they'd (the membership, not the MPs, thankfully - I think) go for Johnson, given the chance, wouldn't they?
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    LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 15,263
    Was it not noted at the time that Truss' winning margin in the member's ballot was the lowest for all the Conservative leadership elections that have gone to such a ballot?

    That doesn't seem to me to be particular evidence of a unique popular appeal among the membership, and I would have thought there would be at least some erstwhile supporters discouraged by the inept and chaotic way that she failed to implement her plans.
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    Sandpit said:

    The 3rd party clients were making a lot of revenue that Twitter are going to try and collect. It’s going to cost thousands a month to run coprorate Twitter accounts, complete with the analytics software similar to that which the 3rd parties used to sell to corporates.

    There’s hundreds of millions in extra revenue, and more importantly a diversification away from the fickle and cyclical advertising market.

    Okay but here in the present the Twitter app is absolute trash. They seem to have taken out the competition rather than trying to improve.
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    SelebianSelebian Posts: 7,442
    FPT: I have free Spotify which I listen to when physically in work and use to discover new artists. Then I still buy the stuff, preferably digitally in FLAC*, on CD when that's not possible or CD is much cheaper**

    * lossless, so this is my archive copy which I can transcode to whatever is the fashionable lossless version of the time for portable devices - mostly still MP3 or Theora
    ** which it sometimes is, even though someone has to make and ship a physical thing and then I have to rip it
  • Options
    tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,190
    edited February 2023

    Mr. 86, any ETA for penalties Man City might face for financial naughtiness?

    August 2008?

    In all seriousness, I don't want them losing points this season (I don't think they would anyway as its far too short notice).
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    Mr. 86, I have a small bet on Arsenal for the title, so if they got a penalty it'd be nice.

    Bit like Juventus in Serie A (small bet on Napoli).
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    Recently we have 6 polling companies with weekly polls: YouGov, Techne, Omnisis, Deltapoll, PeoplePolling and Redfield & Wilton.

    So I have calculated the weekly average for those polling companies only from November onwards. There is a break for Christmas and the New Year, otherwise it is complete.

    Not much movement.




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    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,007
    No she wouldn't.

    Tory MPs would certainly back Sunak over her as they did in the leadership election last summer even before her disastrous premiership, so she has no chance of becoming PM and Tory leader again before the next general election.

    Nor would she likely become Leader of the Opposition either. Most members polls last summer had Badenoch or Mordaunt beating Truss with members for instance. Someone like Steve Barclay would also likely now get more Tory MPs support than her too
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    tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,190

    Mr. 86, I have a small bet on Arsenal for the title, so if they got a penalty it'd be nice.

    Bit like Juventus in Serie A (small bet on Napoli).

    I don't think Napoli need any help! (hopefully Arsenal don't either)
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    Mr. Cookie, I sometimes also find music by YouTube. Found some new classical music and older Queen tracks that way.
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    SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,897
    Curse of the new thread!

    Sandpit said:

    Good morning, everyone.

    Other countries are also looking at this, but not a fan of digital currency:
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-64536593

    Maybe it's just me but I really don't get what this is. How does this differ from the GBP in my bank accounts etc. now?

    I don't imagine the NSI are sitting on a pile of £coins or £notes which represent my Premium Bond holdings, nor could my bank point to a vault that holds the money it's got recorded in my accounts.

    No, they hold it digitally, surely?


    If someone could explain what I'm missing I'd be grateful.
    It’s a centralised version of Bitcoin, which would become an alternative over time to using cash and cards.

    The concerns against such systems, are that anonymity becomes impossible, and that a scammer or state actor could ‘un-person’ an individual trivially and with no recourse.
    Thanks for this, and the other various responses. You say anonymity becomes possible, others say it would be lost, so I am none the wiser really.

    All in all it feels like a solution looking for a problem.
    The anonymity of cash transactions, is not present with card or “digital currency” transactions.

    It’s indeed a solution looking for a problem. Those pushing it either have a vested interest in the system itself, or are authoritarians in love with the control it would give the operators. Central digital currency was one of the major talking points at the recent WEF summit.

    The WEF white paper from a couple of years ago. https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Digital_Currency_Governance_Consortium_White_Paper_Series_2021.pdf

    I tried to find a news article that was anything other than heavily biased against the concept, but struggled!
    This is as close as I got, with actual quotes from the Mastercard CEO, who said that the idea is to eliminate SWIFT and ‘regular’ banking within five years.
    https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/mastercard-ceo-tells-world-economic-forum-digital-currencies-may-replace-global-banking-system/
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    Greg Hands party chairman.
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    Sky News also understands business, energy and industrial strategy secretary Grant Shapps will be made energy security secretary in a newly created department dedicated to energy.

    And former Tory leadership contender Kemi Badenoch is to be moved from international trade secretary to business secretary, taking over part of the role Mr Shapps leaves vacant.

    https://news.sky.com/story/cabinet-reshuffle-greg-hands-replaces-zahawi-as-conservative-party-chairman-as-sunaks-first-reshuffle-begins-12805147
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    BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,668
    tlg86 said:

    Mr. 86, any ETA for penalties Man City might face for financial naughtiness?

    August 2008?

    In all seriousness, I don't want them losing points this season (I don't think they would anyway as its far too short notice).
    Although any club that goes into administration* doesn't get much notice of the points deduction.

    (* Which is another way of cheating the financial regulations.)
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    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,613
    edited February 2023

    Sandpit said:

    The 3rd party clients were making a lot of revenue that Twitter are going to try and collect. It’s going to cost thousands a month to run coprorate Twitter accounts, complete with the analytics software similar to that which the 3rd parties used to sell to corporates.

    There’s hundreds of millions in extra revenue, and more importantly a diversification away from the fickle and cyclical advertising market.

    Okay but here in the present the Twitter app is absolute trash. They seem to have taken out the competition rather than trying to improve.
    They also considerably degraded the general user experience. Though I recognise that could be temporary, I suspect it won't be, given the drive to increase revenue per user. That's what made Facebook a mess.

    The USP of Twitter was (and still is) basically for the user to be able to curate their own user experience; that's what makes it so useful a tool. They've made that considerably more hit and miss.
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    SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,897

    Sky News also understands business, energy and industrial strategy secretary Grant Shapps will be made energy security secretary in a newly created department dedicated to energy.

    And former Tory leadership contender Kemi Badenoch is to be moved from international trade secretary to business secretary, taking over part of the role Mr Shapps leaves vacant.

    https://news.sky.com/story/cabinet-reshuffle-greg-hands-replaces-zahawi-as-conservative-party-chairman-as-sunaks-first-reshuffle-begins-12805147

    Big job for Kemi, responsible for business regulation and growth opportunities.

    Worth a few quid on the next leader market.
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    BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,668
    tlg86 said:

    Mr. 86, any ETA for penalties Man City might face for financial naughtiness?

    August 2008?

    In all seriousness, I don't want them losing points this season (I don't think they would anyway as its far too short notice).

    As it's a first offence, I think they should have one point deducted from the 2011-12 season. ;-)
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    tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,190

    tlg86 said:

    Mr. 86, any ETA for penalties Man City might face for financial naughtiness?

    August 2008?

    In all seriousness, I don't want them losing points this season (I don't think they would anyway as its far too short notice).
    Although any club that goes into administration* doesn't get much notice of the points deduction.

    (* Which is another way of cheating the financial regulations.)
    I would be surprised if anything is concluded before the end of this season.
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    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,007
    edited February 2023
    Sandpit said:

    Sky News also understands business, energy and industrial strategy secretary Grant Shapps will be made energy security secretary in a newly created department dedicated to energy.

    And former Tory leadership contender Kemi Badenoch is to be moved from international trade secretary to business secretary, taking over part of the role Mr Shapps leaves vacant.

    https://news.sky.com/story/cabinet-reshuffle-greg-hands-replaces-zahawi-as-conservative-party-chairman-as-sunaks-first-reshuffle-begins-12805147

    Big job for Kemi, responsible for business regulation and growth opportunities.

    Worth a few quid on the next leader market.
    Yes Badenoch or Barclay I would now make as favourites to be next Conservative leader.

    Truss has had her go at the leadership but blew it
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    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,007

    Greg Hands party chairman.

    Excellent choice, safe pair of hands
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    Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,953
    Nigelb said:

    The USP of Twitter was (and still is) basically for the user to be able to curate their own user experience; that's what makes it so useful a tool. They've made that considerably more hit and miss.

    Elon has made it much easier for nutters to publish, and he is apparently monetizing the MAGA crowd on that basis. For the rest of us, yes, it is a much poorer consumer experience.
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    SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,897

    tlg86 said:

    Mr. 86, any ETA for penalties Man City might face for financial naughtiness?

    August 2008?

    In all seriousness, I don't want them losing points this season (I don't think they would anyway as its far too short notice).

    As it's a first offence, I think they should have one point deducted from the 2011-12 season. ;-)
    1 point for the first offence,
    2 points for the second offence,
    4 points for the third offence,
    and so on…

    (Yes, I know, it’s a variation on the old ‘grains of rice on a chessboard’ problem - but with a 10x10 chessboard!).
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    BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,668

    Recently we have 6 polling companies with weekly polls: YouGov, Techne, Omnisis, Deltapoll, PeoplePolling and Redfield & Wilton.

    So I have calculated the weekly average for those polling companies only from November onwards. There is a break for Christmas and the New Year, otherwise it is complete.

    Not much movement.




    You are obviously keeping that as a spreadsheet - do you fancy populating it back to the beginning of September (or may it available and I will) so that we can see how much improvement Sunak has delivered?
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    Sandpit said:

    Sky News also understands business, energy and industrial strategy secretary Grant Shapps will be made energy security secretary in a newly created department dedicated to energy.

    And former Tory leadership contender Kemi Badenoch is to be moved from international trade secretary to business secretary, taking over part of the role Mr Shapps leaves vacant.

    https://news.sky.com/story/cabinet-reshuffle-greg-hands-replaces-zahawi-as-conservative-party-chairman-as-sunaks-first-reshuffle-begins-12805147

    Big job for Kemi, responsible for business regulation and growth opportunities.

    Worth a few quid on the next leader market.
    God help us all.
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    Sandpit said:

    Sky News also understands business, energy and industrial strategy secretary Grant Shapps will be made energy security secretary in a newly created department dedicated to energy.

    And former Tory leadership contender Kemi Badenoch is to be moved from international trade secretary to business secretary, taking over part of the role Mr Shapps leaves vacant.

    https://news.sky.com/story/cabinet-reshuffle-greg-hands-replaces-zahawi-as-conservative-party-chairman-as-sunaks-first-reshuffle-begins-12805147

    Big job for Kemi, responsible for business regulation and growth opportunities.

    Worth a few quid on the next leader market.
    God help us all.
    Truss for PM!!!
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    Nigelb said:

    Sandpit said:

    The 3rd party clients were making a lot of revenue that Twitter are going to try and collect. It’s going to cost thousands a month to run coprorate Twitter accounts, complete with the analytics software similar to that which the 3rd parties used to sell to corporates.

    There’s hundreds of millions in extra revenue, and more importantly a diversification away from the fickle and cyclical advertising market.

    Okay but here in the present the Twitter app is absolute trash. They seem to have taken out the competition rather than trying to improve.
    They also considerably degraded the general user experience. Though I recognise that could be temporary, I suspect it won't be, given the drive to increase revenue per user. That's what made Facebook a mess.

    The USP of Twitter was (and still is) basically for the user to be able to curate their own user experience; that's what makes it so useful a tool. They've made that considerably more hit and miss.
    They seem to think a service which is designed around up to the minute information, to be showing you information days or weeks old. They seem totally against having a chronological timeline, I just cannot understand why they think this is a good idea.
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    BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,668
    HYUFD said:

    Greg Hands party chairman.

    Excellent choice, safe pair of hands
    Just one Hands, not a pair, shirley?
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    DougSealDougSeal Posts: 11,138

    Sandpit said:

    Sky News also understands business, energy and industrial strategy secretary Grant Shapps will be made energy security secretary in a newly created department dedicated to energy.

    And former Tory leadership contender Kemi Badenoch is to be moved from international trade secretary to business secretary, taking over part of the role Mr Shapps leaves vacant.

    https://news.sky.com/story/cabinet-reshuffle-greg-hands-replaces-zahawi-as-conservative-party-chairman-as-sunaks-first-reshuffle-begins-12805147

    Big job for Kemi, responsible for business regulation and growth opportunities.

    Worth a few quid on the next leader market.
    God help us all.
    Truss for PM!!!
    You all laughed at me! Including me to be fair.
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    BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,668
    Sandpit said:

    tlg86 said:

    Mr. 86, any ETA for penalties Man City might face for financial naughtiness?

    August 2008?

    In all seriousness, I don't want them losing points this season (I don't think they would anyway as its far too short notice).

    As it's a first offence, I think they should have one point deducted from the 2011-12 season. ;-)
    1 point for the first offence,
    2 points for the second offence,
    4 points for the third offence,
    and so on…

    (Yes, I know, it’s a variation on the old ‘grains of rice on a chessboard’ problem - but with a 10x10 chessboard!).
    2^99 is a lorra points to lose.
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    LeonLeon Posts: 47,215
    Scott_xP said:

    Nigelb said:

    The USP of Twitter was (and still is) basically for the user to be able to curate their own user experience; that's what makes it so useful a tool. They've made that considerably more hit and miss.

    Elon has made it much easier for nutters to publish, and he is apparently monetizing the MAGA crowd on that basis. For the rest of us, yes, it is a much poorer consumer experience.
    How?

    Genuine question. I am reading this debate with some bewilderment

    The big change in Twitter that I can see is that there is now a choice of two tweet streams. One is more tik tok in nature. “For you”. It is tweets that the algos reckon you might find interesting based on your prior engagement (and sometimes I do find them interesting)

    The other stream is “following” which is Twitter as it always was. Your can toggle between the two. Takes half a second

    There are a few people who have been allowed back on Twitter who shouldn’t have ever been banned, on grounds of free speech alone

    That’s it. That is the big change so far. Or am I blind or deluded?!
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    DriverDriver Posts: 4,522

    Sandpit said:

    tlg86 said:

    Mr. 86, any ETA for penalties Man City might face for financial naughtiness?

    August 2008?

    In all seriousness, I don't want them losing points this season (I don't think they would anyway as its far too short notice).

    As it's a first offence, I think they should have one point deducted from the 2011-12 season. ;-)
    1 point for the first offence,
    2 points for the second offence,
    4 points for the third offence,
    and so on…

    (Yes, I know, it’s a variation on the old ‘grains of rice on a chessboard’ problem - but with a 10x10 chessboard!).
    2^99 is a lorra points to lose.
    I think it's going to be a fine, not a points deduction.


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    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 44,405
    edited February 2023

    Cookie said:

    Sean_F said:

    Sandpit said:

    On the war:

    Here's yet another threat from Lavrov against Moldova.

    https://www.dw.com/en/russia-steps-up-threats-against-republic-of-moldova/a-64612019

    You and whose army, Mr Lavrov?

    In case you missed it, you’re losing hundreds of mobliks and a dozen tanks every day in Ukraine at the moment. Not too sure there’s much left of the once-mighty Russian military to go around.
    What gets me are the idiots - and idiots are a nice term for them - who excuse Russia's actions. It's not their fault. It's ours (wrong). We promised no eastwards NATO expansion (wrong). The Ukrainians are Nazis (wrong). Russia deserves a hinterland for protection (wrong). wibble wibble Stepan Bandera (wrong). Russia wants peace (wrong). We 'poked' Russia into this war (wrong). The war needs to end now (wrong, sadly).

    All you need to do is listen to what Lavrov and Putin say to see the real cause of this war: Russian fascist imperialism. Whatever we said or did, they would have made a play for Ukraine or another state. Because that's their world view.
    You can read exactly those arguments from the MAGA’s.
    It's yet another example where hard left and hard right meet in the middle.

    It's easy to see why the hard left come up with this stuff: a combination of still liking Russia because of the USSR and Communism (even though modern Russia only takes the 'enriches those in power' from Communism); a hatred of the West and our institutions, and an utter loathing of the 'wrong' people.

    It's less easy to see what the hard right get it from. Yes, there will be a few neo-Nazis and fascists who quite like Putin's strongman act. There will be some who hate the government in power, and therefore oppose what that government supports. And there will be a few loud moths directly or indirectly in Russia's pay.

    But if you wanted America to be Great Again, then spending a relatively tiny amount of money to defeat what was your #1 enemy is surely a good thing, especially as it does not cost American lives?
    Woke?

    What Putins Russia sells is that all of Russian history is glorious, wonderful and morally perfect. Think Henty and his works, as their vision of history.

    Their fear of “Western self doubt and self loathing” is based on the idea that their power (such as it is) comes from belief. The willingness of the human waves to bayonet charge….. I their world, once you allow the Head Count to doubt The System, your culture collapses and the cold wind blows.

    It was a meme on the extreme right, before the invasion, that the proper, manly Russian army would demonstrate that their Big Weapons would annihilate Western FeminizedTransWoke armies.
    Not just on the extreme right. I rather thought that a military whose main aim was to win wars, from a culture who weren't really that bothered about how it did so, would have an edge over a military with an HR department, from a culture whose distaste for violence obliged it to tread lightly and not kill people if it could possibly avoid it. (That said, it should be noted that Ukraine is not typical of the west: its soldiers and its people are impressively motivated to fight, and I still wonder whether this would be true of societies further west).
    But it turns out that the Russian military wasn't actually there for killing people, but as a tool for enriching middlemen, and that however enthusiastic it might be to kill people, it simply wasn't equipped to do so because the resources which had been spent on it over the years had been diverted elsewhere.
    It's an interesting question: if (say) France launched an invasion of the south coast today, how hard would we Brits fight (leaving aside the strength of our respective militaries and nukes) ?

    I'd like to think we'd fight hard, especially if we were in the Ukrainian situation, where (say) Devon and Cornwall had been captured eight years earlier. But I can imagine some of us talking about how the French were in the right...
    During the Napoleonic Wars, there were a number of MPs, Peers of the realm etc who openly wished for the British military to be defeated by Napoleon. This doesn't seem to have collapsed the war effort.

    The discussion of a technology vs brute aggression in war is an old one. A sub theme of Well's "The Land Ironclads" is the defeat of the rugged outdoorsmen by the effete townies in their war machines...


    And he was much too good a journalist to spoil his contrast by remarking that the half-dozen comparatively slender young men in blue pajamas who were standing about their victorious land ironclad, drinking coffee and eating biscuits, had also in their eyes and carriage something not altogether degraded below the level of a man.


    The French discussion of red trousers before WWI is darkly comic, now.

    It's a popular fallacy that brutal behaviour, discipline etc makes better soldiers. In real life that doesn't seem to be the case.

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    GhedebravGhedebrav Posts: 3,001
    HYUFD said:

    No she wouldn't.

    Tory MPs would certainly back Sunak over her as they did in the leadership election last summer even before her disastrous premiership, so she has no chance of becoming PM and Tory leader again before the next general election.

    Nor would she likely become Leader of the Opposition either. Most members polls last summer had Badenoch or Mordaunt beating Truss with members for instance. Someone like Steve Barclay would also likely now get more Tory MPs support than her too

    IIRC Sunak's actual performance in votes counted was a lot stronger than had been predicted too. I don't buy a Truss return as feasible either.
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    DriverDriver Posts: 4,522
    Leon said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Nigelb said:

    The USP of Twitter was (and still is) basically for the user to be able to curate their own user experience; that's what makes it so useful a tool. They've made that considerably more hit and miss.

    Elon has made it much easier for nutters to publish, and he is apparently monetizing the MAGA crowd on that basis. For the rest of us, yes, it is a much poorer consumer experience.
    How?

    Genuine question. I am reading this debate with some bewilderment

    The big change in Twitter that I can see is that there is now a choice of two tweet streams. One is more tik tok in nature. “For you”. It is tweets that the algos reckon you might find interesting based on your prior engagement (and sometimes I do find them interesting)

    The other stream is “following” which is Twitter as it always was. Your can toggle between the two. Takes half a second

    There are a few people who have been allowed back on Twitter who shouldn’t have ever been banned, on grounds of free speech alone

    That’s it. That is the big change so far. Or am I blind or deluded?!
    Neither stream option, AIUI, is a pure "everyone you follow in reverse chronological order" stream - that's what I (and many others) want and the third-party apps provided.
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    Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,999



    I'd like to think we'd fight hard, especially if we were in the Ukrainian situation, where (say) Devon and Cornwall had been captured eight years earlier. But I can imagine some of us talking about how the French were in the right...

    The analogy only works if you assume Devon and Cornwall are 40% ethnically, linguistically and culturally French with the percentage increasing the closer you get to Penzance.

    One thing the UK would have going for it over Ukraine (and Russia) in that situation is that geography makes it a lot harder to leave to avoid mobilisation. 19% of the Ukrainian population (~8m) has just left. 6m going west and 2m going to Russia. They lost a lot of potential conscriptees for the meat grinder that way.
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    DougSeal said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sky News also understands business, energy and industrial strategy secretary Grant Shapps will be made energy security secretary in a newly created department dedicated to energy.

    And former Tory leadership contender Kemi Badenoch is to be moved from international trade secretary to business secretary, taking over part of the role Mr Shapps leaves vacant.

    https://news.sky.com/story/cabinet-reshuffle-greg-hands-replaces-zahawi-as-conservative-party-chairman-as-sunaks-first-reshuffle-begins-12805147

    Big job for Kemi, responsible for business regulation and growth opportunities.

    Worth a few quid on the next leader market.
    God help us all.
    Truss for PM!!!
    You all laughed at me! Including me to be fair.
    I may have done. I cannot recall doing so.

    Personally, my reasons are more Machivellean. Sunak might lose but have (say) 250 or 300 MPs. With Truss I would hope for less than 200 Tories to survive.

    The more nutters the electorate can dispose of, the better it will be for the country.
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    DriverDriver Posts: 4,522
    Dura_Ace said:



    I'd like to think we'd fight hard, especially if we were in the Ukrainian situation, where (say) Devon and Cornwall had been captured eight years earlier. But I can imagine some of us talking about how the French were in the right...

    The analogy only works if you assume Devon and Cornwall are 40% ethnically, linguistically and culturally French with the percentage increasing the closer you get to Penzance.

    One thing the UK would have going for it over Ukraine (and Russia) in that situation is that geography makes it a lot harder to leave to avoid mobilisation. 19% of the Ukrainian population (~8m) has just left. 6m going west and 2m going to Russia. They lost a lot of potential conscriptees for the meat grinder that way.
    Maybe Russia would be conscripting women and children, but I doubt Ukraine would.
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    Driver said:

    Leon said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Nigelb said:

    The USP of Twitter was (and still is) basically for the user to be able to curate their own user experience; that's what makes it so useful a tool. They've made that considerably more hit and miss.

    Elon has made it much easier for nutters to publish, and he is apparently monetizing the MAGA crowd on that basis. For the rest of us, yes, it is a much poorer consumer experience.
    How?

    Genuine question. I am reading this debate with some bewilderment

    The big change in Twitter that I can see is that there is now a choice of two tweet streams. One is more tik tok in nature. “For you”. It is tweets that the algos reckon you might find interesting based on your prior engagement (and sometimes I do find them interesting)

    The other stream is “following” which is Twitter as it always was. Your can toggle between the two. Takes half a second

    There are a few people who have been allowed back on Twitter who shouldn’t have ever been banned, on grounds of free speech alone

    That’s it. That is the big change so far. Or am I blind or deluded?!
    Neither stream option, AIUI, is a pure "everyone you follow in reverse chronological order" stream - that's what I (and many others) want and the third-party apps provided.
    Unfortunately for us, that's not where the money is- the money is provided by provided by advertisers and bigmouths craving an audience.

    Those of using using Twitter mostly to listen to others aren't the customer; we're the product Musk is trying to monetise.
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    Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,999
    Driver said:

    Dura_Ace said:



    I'd like to think we'd fight hard, especially if we were in the Ukrainian situation, where (say) Devon and Cornwall had been captured eight years earlier. But I can imagine some of us talking about how the French were in the right...

    The analogy only works if you assume Devon and Cornwall are 40% ethnically, linguistically and culturally French with the percentage increasing the closer you get to Penzance.

    One thing the UK would have going for it over Ukraine (and Russia) in that situation is that geography makes it a lot harder to leave to avoid mobilisation. 19% of the Ukrainian population (~8m) has just left. 6m going west and 2m going to Russia. They lost a lot of potential conscriptees for the meat grinder that way.
    Maybe Russia would be conscripting women and children, but I doubt Ukraine would.
    Ukraine has been conscripting women since October though only volunteers get combat roles.
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    DriverDriver Posts: 4,522

    Driver said:

    Leon said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Nigelb said:

    The USP of Twitter was (and still is) basically for the user to be able to curate their own user experience; that's what makes it so useful a tool. They've made that considerably more hit and miss.

    Elon has made it much easier for nutters to publish, and he is apparently monetizing the MAGA crowd on that basis. For the rest of us, yes, it is a much poorer consumer experience.
    How?

    Genuine question. I am reading this debate with some bewilderment

    The big change in Twitter that I can see is that there is now a choice of two tweet streams. One is more tik tok in nature. “For you”. It is tweets that the algos reckon you might find interesting based on your prior engagement (and sometimes I do find them interesting)

    The other stream is “following” which is Twitter as it always was. Your can toggle between the two. Takes half a second

    There are a few people who have been allowed back on Twitter who shouldn’t have ever been banned, on grounds of free speech alone

    That’s it. That is the big change so far. Or am I blind or deluded?!
    Neither stream option, AIUI, is a pure "everyone you follow in reverse chronological order" stream - that's what I (and many others) want and the third-party apps provided.
    Unfortunately for us, that's not where the money is- the money is provided by provided by advertisers and bigmouths craving an audience.

    Those of using using Twitter mostly to listen to others aren't the customer; we're the product Musk is trying to monetise.
    Which is why it's critical we aren't driven away.
  • Options
    CookieCookie Posts: 11,449

    Cookie said:

    Sean_F said:

    Sandpit said:

    On the war:

    Here's yet another threat from Lavrov against Moldova.

    https://www.dw.com/en/russia-steps-up-threats-against-republic-of-moldova/a-64612019

    You and whose army, Mr Lavrov?

    In case you missed it, you’re losing hundreds of mobliks and a dozen tanks every day in Ukraine at the moment. Not too sure there’s much left of the once-mighty Russian military to go around.
    What gets me are the idiots - and idiots are a nice term for them - who excuse Russia's actions. It's not their fault. It's ours (wrong). We promised no eastwards NATO expansion (wrong). The Ukrainians are Nazis (wrong). Russia deserves a hinterland for protection (wrong). wibble wibble Stepan Bandera (wrong). Russia wants peace (wrong). We 'poked' Russia into this war (wrong). The war needs to end now (wrong, sadly).

    All you need to do is listen to what Lavrov and Putin say to see the real cause of this war: Russian fascist imperialism. Whatever we said or did, they would have made a play for Ukraine or another state. Because that's their world view.
    You can read exactly those arguments from the MAGA’s.
    It's yet another example where hard left and hard right meet in the middle.

    It's easy to see why the hard left come up with this stuff: a combination of still liking Russia because of the USSR and Communism (even though modern Russia only takes the 'enriches those in power' from Communism); a hatred of the West and our institutions, and an utter loathing of the 'wrong' people.

    It's less easy to see what the hard right get it from. Yes, there will be a few neo-Nazis and fascists who quite like Putin's strongman act. There will be some who hate the government in power, and therefore oppose what that government supports. And there will be a few loud moths directly or indirectly in Russia's pay.

    But if you wanted America to be Great Again, then spending a relatively tiny amount of money to defeat what was your #1 enemy is surely a good thing, especially as it does not cost American lives?
    Woke?

    What Putins Russia sells is that all of Russian history is glorious, wonderful and morally perfect. Think Henty and his works, as their vision of history.

    Their fear of “Western self doubt and self loathing” is based on the idea that their power (such as it is) comes from belief. The willingness of the human waves to bayonet charge….. I their world, once you allow the Head Count to doubt The System, your culture collapses and the cold wind blows.

    It was a meme on the extreme right, before the invasion, that the proper, manly Russian army would demonstrate that their Big Weapons would annihilate Western FeminizedTransWoke armies.
    Not just on the extreme right. I rather thought that a military whose main aim was to win wars, from a culture who weren't really that bothered about how it did so, would have an edge over a military with an HR department, from a culture whose distaste for violence obliged it to tread lightly and not kill people if it could possibly avoid it. (That said, it should be noted that Ukraine is not typical of the west: its soldiers and its people are impressively motivated to fight, and I still wonder whether this would be true of societies further west).
    But it turns out that the Russian military wasn't actually there for killing people, but as a tool for enriching middlemen, and that however enthusiastic it might be to kill people, it simply wasn't equipped to do so because the resources which had been spent on it over the years had been diverted elsewhere.
    It's an interesting question: if (say) France launched an invasion of the south coast today, how hard would we Brits fight (leaving aside the strength of our respective militaries and nukes) ?

    I'd like to think we'd fight hard, especially if we were in the Ukrainian situation, where (say) Devon and Cornwall had been captured eight years earlier. But I can imagine some of us talking about how the French were in the right...
    During the Napoleonic Wars, there were a number of MPs, Peers of the realm etc who openly wished for the British military to be defeated by Napoleon. This doesn't seem to have collapsed the war effort.

    The discussion of a technology vs brute aggression in war is an old one. A sub theme of Well's "The Land Ironclads" is the defeat of the rugged outdoorsmen by the effete townies in their war machines...


    And he was much too good a journalist to spoil his contrast by remarking that the half-dozen comparatively slender young men in blue pajamas who were standing about their victorious land ironclad, drinking coffee and eating biscuits, had also in their eyes and carriage something not altogether degraded below the level of a man.


    The French discussion of red trousers before WWI is darkly comic, now.

    It's a popular fallacy that brutal behaviour, discipline etc makes better soldiers. In real life that doesn't seem to be the case.

    Interesting stuff.
    Reflecting further, it's not that I thought the Russian approach to soldiering per se (the brutal behaviour and the disciple) would yield results, it was the sense of purpose. To strip away any sort of nuance for a moment, they expect their military to win wars, we expect our military to follow rules and 21st century conventions. My assumption was that we are disadvantaging our own side in this.
    I don't think, for example, that brutal behaviour necessarily helps you win wars. But things we do - like preventing white men from joining the RAF, for example - would appear to be placing another objective ahead of your ability to carry out war effectively.
    But it turns out that the Russians are also placing another objective ahead of their ability to carry out war - that is, enriching middlemen at the expense of the military (clearly this isn't the aim itself but a product of the Russian model of governance.)
    It also turns out that the Russians are surprisingly bad at war. Possibly this does stem from the brutality-and-discipline aspect - that is, their soldiers just aren't very motivated. Or possibly it just happens to be that the Russians are making the wrong decisions and in an alternative universe a similarly brutal culture could be more successful.
  • Options
    Scott_xP said:
    So if there aren't major trade developments, does that mean we have Quiet Bat People in government?

    (More importantly, why reorganise now? Why not 100 days ago?)
  • Options
    Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,953
    ...
  • Options
    Pro_RataPro_Rata Posts: 4,812
    Badenoch - not keen, I think she is more a US Republican than a British Conservative, but I can't argue with the logic that she needs a bigger sink or swim job
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    Sandpit said:

    tlg86 said:

    Mr. 86, any ETA for penalties Man City might face for financial naughtiness?

    August 2008?

    In all seriousness, I don't want them losing points this season (I don't think they would anyway as its far too short notice).

    As it's a first offence, I think they should have one point deducted from the 2011-12 season. ;-)
    1 point for the first offence,
    2 points for the second offence,
    4 points for the third offence,
    and so on…

    (Yes, I know, it’s a variation on the old ‘grains of rice on a chessboard’ problem - but with a 10x10 chessboard!).
    Good morning

    Reading various reports on this City are facing extremely serious charges dating back to 2008 right up to now and the Premier League could even demote them

    Apparently there is no appeal against the Premier League decision and any penalty is likely to be applied in the season the Premier League's investigation concludes, so it could even be in the 2023 - 24 season

    It is said the Premier League are alarmed at the government's proposals for an Independent authority governing all matters football and they have decided now is the time to show their own compliance is robust

    It seems Pep will resign if allegations are proven, and it must be a toss up between City and Liverpool supporters as to who are most depressed today
  • Options
    CookieCookie Posts: 11,449
    Dura_Ace said:

    Driver said:

    Dura_Ace said:



    I'd like to think we'd fight hard, especially if we were in the Ukrainian situation, where (say) Devon and Cornwall had been captured eight years earlier. But I can imagine some of us talking about how the French were in the right...

    The analogy only works if you assume Devon and Cornwall are 40% ethnically, linguistically and culturally French with the percentage increasing the closer you get to Penzance.

    One thing the UK would have going for it over Ukraine (and Russia) in that situation is that geography makes it a lot harder to leave to avoid mobilisation. 19% of the Ukrainian population (~8m) has just left. 6m going west and 2m going to Russia. They lost a lot of potential conscriptees for the meat grinder that way.
    Maybe Russia would be conscripting women and children, but I doubt Ukraine would.
    Ukraine has been conscripting women since October though only volunteers get combat roles.
    Last April, a lefty friend of mine expressed some outrage that Ukraine had been preventing men leaving in order to run an army, but allowing women to do so. 'Not very 2020s', she said, rather sniffily. On reflection, she then admitted she'd be horrified to be conscripted, could never kill anyone and would be useless as a soldier. What rankled with her was someone else assuming this would be so because of her sex.
    This sort of illustrates the earlier point - we in the west place adhering to a set of 2020s values ahead of doing what works. What would we do in a war situation? I don't know and I hope I never find out.
  • Options
    BarnesianBarnesian Posts: 7,989
    HYUFD said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sky News also understands business, energy and industrial strategy secretary Grant Shapps will be made energy security secretary in a newly created department dedicated to energy.

    And former Tory leadership contender Kemi Badenoch is to be moved from international trade secretary to business secretary, taking over part of the role Mr Shapps leaves vacant.

    https://news.sky.com/story/cabinet-reshuffle-greg-hands-replaces-zahawi-as-conservative-party-chairman-as-sunaks-first-reshuffle-begins-12805147

    Big job for Kemi, responsible for business regulation and growth opportunities.

    Worth a few quid on the next leader market.
    Yes Badenoch or Barclay I would now make as favourites to be next Conservative leader.

    Truss has had her go at the leadership but blew it
    How about Penny?
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    LeonLeon Posts: 47,215
    Driver said:

    Leon said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Nigelb said:

    The USP of Twitter was (and still is) basically for the user to be able to curate their own user experience; that's what makes it so useful a tool. They've made that considerably more hit and miss.

    Elon has made it much easier for nutters to publish, and he is apparently monetizing the MAGA crowd on that basis. For the rest of us, yes, it is a much poorer consumer experience.
    How?

    Genuine question. I am reading this debate with some bewilderment

    The big change in Twitter that I can see is that there is now a choice of two tweet streams. One is more tik tok in nature. “For you”. It is tweets that the algos reckon you might find interesting based on your prior engagement (and sometimes I do find them interesting)

    The other stream is “following” which is Twitter as it always was. Your can toggle between the two. Takes half a second

    There are a few people who have been allowed back on Twitter who shouldn’t have ever been banned, on grounds of free speech alone

    That’s it. That is the big change so far. Or am I blind or deluded?!
    Neither stream option, AIUI, is a pure "everyone you follow in reverse chronological order" stream - that's what I (and many others) want and the third-party apps provided.
    For me, the Following stream seems to be exactly that. Everyone I follow in order of the most recent tweets first

    I just had a look. The most recent tweet is 3 seconds old from someone I follow. Then 15s. Then 40s. Than 2m old. All people that I know that I follow

    Either Twitter is uniquely giving me access to Old Twitter or someone here is gravely mistaken. It could be me but I just can’t see it…
  • Options
    Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,999
    Cookie said:

    But things we do - like preventing white men from joining the RAF, for example - would appear to be placing another objective ahead of your ability to carry out war effectively.

    You still end up with the same number of pilots, etc. so how does biasing recruitment against white men affect combat efficacy?
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,613
    .

    Nigelb said:

    Sandpit said:

    The 3rd party clients were making a lot of revenue that Twitter are going to try and collect. It’s going to cost thousands a month to run coprorate Twitter accounts, complete with the analytics software similar to that which the 3rd parties used to sell to corporates.

    There’s hundreds of millions in extra revenue, and more importantly a diversification away from the fickle and cyclical advertising market.

    Okay but here in the present the Twitter app is absolute trash. They seem to have taken out the competition rather than trying to improve.
    They also considerably degraded the general user experience. Though I recognise that could be temporary, I suspect it won't be, given the drive to increase revenue per user. That's what made Facebook a mess.

    The USP of Twitter was (and still is) basically for the user to be able to curate their own user experience; that's what makes it so useful a tool. They've made that considerably more hit and miss.
    They seem to think a service which is designed around up to the minute information, to be showing you information days or weeks old. They seem totally against having a chronological timeline, I just cannot understand why they think this is a good idea.
    It's not; that implementation is just shit.
    You can more or less now default back to your own followed accounts, which seems to work reasonably well at the moment.

    But they're still determinedly trying to get users to change to features users don't want, just because that's easier to monetise.

    For now it's still usable, but that could still change. It's not a technical problem; it's that Twitter isn't going to change into the kind of ap Musk wants; or at least most if its users would be reluctant to stay committed to such a thing.
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    MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,607
    Barnesian said:

    HYUFD said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sky News also understands business, energy and industrial strategy secretary Grant Shapps will be made energy security secretary in a newly created department dedicated to energy.

    And former Tory leadership contender Kemi Badenoch is to be moved from international trade secretary to business secretary, taking over part of the role Mr Shapps leaves vacant.

    https://news.sky.com/story/cabinet-reshuffle-greg-hands-replaces-zahawi-as-conservative-party-chairman-as-sunaks-first-reshuffle-begins-12805147

    Big job for Kemi, responsible for business regulation and growth opportunities.

    Worth a few quid on the next leader market.
    Yes Badenoch or Barclay I would now make as favourites to be next Conservative leader.

    Truss has had her go at the leadership but blew it
    How about Penny?
    Too woke, Nicola's gender madness will have done her no favours as a supporter of that policy.
  • Options
    MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,607
    The new departments make sense to me, if Rishi had won the membership vote and implemented this on day one of his leadership it may have been enough to make a difference for a Q4 2024 election, sadly we've wasted the last six months (year really since we knew Boris was going to have to resign) and now the Tories are stuffed because there's no agenda that can push them to victory. Really what Rishi should have pushed through was the dissolution of the Treasury and OBR, replace them with a simple forecasting unit made up of City quants and the Chancellor is directly in charge of spending decisions with no interference from the civil servants who seem to do their best to hold the country back.
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    Pro_RataPro_Rata Posts: 4,812
    Regarding Truss, and for that matter Johnson. If ConHome don't already track them as they are not ministers, then maybe they should be doing 'very selected others' section.
  • Options
    BarnesianBarnesian Posts: 7,989
    edited February 2023
    MaxPB said:

    Barnesian said:

    HYUFD said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sky News also understands business, energy and industrial strategy secretary Grant Shapps will be made energy security secretary in a newly created department dedicated to energy.

    And former Tory leadership contender Kemi Badenoch is to be moved from international trade secretary to business secretary, taking over part of the role Mr Shapps leaves vacant.

    https://news.sky.com/story/cabinet-reshuffle-greg-hands-replaces-zahawi-as-conservative-party-chairman-as-sunaks-first-reshuffle-begins-12805147

    Big job for Kemi, responsible for business regulation and growth opportunities.

    Worth a few quid on the next leader market.
    Yes Badenoch or Barclay I would now make as favourites to be next Conservative leader.

    Truss has had her go at the leadership but blew it
    How about Penny?
    Too woke, Nicola's gender madness will have done her no favours as a supporter of that policy.
    She's got a good voice, and good hair.

    I'm on her at 10/1 as next Tory leader.
  • Options
    LeonLeon Posts: 47,215
    Nigelb said:

    .

    Nigelb said:

    Sandpit said:

    The 3rd party clients were making a lot of revenue that Twitter are going to try and collect. It’s going to cost thousands a month to run coprorate Twitter accounts, complete with the analytics software similar to that which the 3rd parties used to sell to corporates.

    There’s hundreds of millions in extra revenue, and more importantly a diversification away from the fickle and cyclical advertising market.

    Okay but here in the present the Twitter app is absolute trash. They seem to have taken out the competition rather than trying to improve.
    They also considerably degraded the general user experience. Though I recognise that could be temporary, I suspect it won't be, given the drive to increase revenue per user. That's what made Facebook a mess.

    The USP of Twitter was (and still is) basically for the user to be able to curate their own user experience; that's what makes it so useful a tool. They've made that considerably more hit and miss.
    They seem to think a service which is designed around up to the minute information, to be showing you information days or weeks old. They seem totally against having a chronological timeline, I just cannot understand why they think this is a good idea.
    It's not; that implementation is just shit.
    You can more or less now default back to your own followed accounts, which seems to work reasonably well at the moment.

    But they're still determinedly trying to get users to change to features users don't want, just because that's easier to monetise.

    For now it's still usable, but that could still change. It's not a technical problem; it's that Twitter isn't going to change into the kind of ap Musk wants; or at least most if its users would be reluctant to stay committed to such a thing.
    You literally just toggle to “Following” and Twitter is exactly what it was. You move one finger for about 1/3 of a second

    That’s it. And the For You stream is sometimes rather enlightening, and sometimes not. It is the Tik Tok algo applied to Twitter

    I am also (tho this IS more subjective) seeing fewer ads - “promoted tweets”, I think (which is an improvement if this is the case)

  • Options
    DJ41aDJ41a Posts: 174
    Dominic Raab did survive, then.
    Is Greg Hands a US citizen?
  • Options
    On topic:

    "If there was to be another ballot, and it’s far from certain that will be the case, it is probably best to assume that she would have similar levels of support."

    I just don't see how this is a safe assumption from OGH. It's hard to get away from the fact it was a total disaster when she had her chance, and I cannot see any way that her support wouldn't have eroded significantly. And that's premised on her getting to the members' ballot, which is even more unlikely as MPs are even more aware of what a disaster she was.
  • Options
    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 44,405
    Cookie said:

    Cookie said:

    Sean_F said:

    Sandpit said:

    On the war:

    Here's yet another threat from Lavrov against Moldova.

    https://www.dw.com/en/russia-steps-up-threats-against-republic-of-moldova/a-64612019

    You and whose army, Mr Lavrov?

    In case you missed it, you’re losing hundreds of mobliks and a dozen tanks every day in Ukraine at the moment. Not too sure there’s much left of the once-mighty Russian military to go around.
    What gets me are the idiots - and idiots are a nice term for them - who excuse Russia's actions. It's not their fault. It's ours (wrong). We promised no eastwards NATO expansion (wrong). The Ukrainians are Nazis (wrong). Russia deserves a hinterland for protection (wrong). wibble wibble Stepan Bandera (wrong). Russia wants peace (wrong). We 'poked' Russia into this war (wrong). The war needs to end now (wrong, sadly).

    All you need to do is listen to what Lavrov and Putin say to see the real cause of this war: Russian fascist imperialism. Whatever we said or did, they would have made a play for Ukraine or another state. Because that's their world view.
    You can read exactly those arguments from the MAGA’s.
    It's yet another example where hard left and hard right meet in the middle.

    It's easy to see why the hard left come up with this stuff: a combination of still liking Russia because of the USSR and Communism (even though modern Russia only takes the 'enriches those in power' from Communism); a hatred of the West and our institutions, and an utter loathing of the 'wrong' people.

    It's less easy to see what the hard right get it from. Yes, there will be a few neo-Nazis and fascists who quite like Putin's strongman act. There will be some who hate the government in power, and therefore oppose what that government supports. And there will be a few loud moths directly or indirectly in Russia's pay.

    But if you wanted America to be Great Again, then spending a relatively tiny amount of money to defeat what was your #1 enemy is surely a good thing, especially as it does not cost American lives?
    Woke?

    What Putins Russia sells is that all of Russian history is glorious, wonderful and morally perfect. Think Henty and his works, as their vision of history.

    Their fear of “Western self doubt and self loathing” is based on the idea that their power (such as it is) comes from belief. The willingness of the human waves to bayonet charge….. I their world, once you allow the Head Count to doubt The System, your culture collapses and the cold wind blows.

    It was a meme on the extreme right, before the invasion, that the proper, manly Russian army would demonstrate that their Big Weapons would annihilate Western FeminizedTransWoke armies.
    Not just on the extreme right. I rather thought that a military whose main aim was to win wars, from a culture who weren't really that bothered about how it did so, would have an edge over a military with an HR department, from a culture whose distaste for violence obliged it to tread lightly and not kill people if it could possibly avoid it. (That said, it should be noted that Ukraine is not typical of the west: its soldiers and its people are impressively motivated to fight, and I still wonder whether this would be true of societies further west).
    But it turns out that the Russian military wasn't actually there for killing people, but as a tool for enriching middlemen, and that however enthusiastic it might be to kill people, it simply wasn't equipped to do so because the resources which had been spent on it over the years had been diverted elsewhere.
    It's an interesting question: if (say) France launched an invasion of the south coast today, how hard would we Brits fight (leaving aside the strength of our respective militaries and nukes) ?

    I'd like to think we'd fight hard, especially if we were in the Ukrainian situation, where (say) Devon and Cornwall had been captured eight years earlier. But I can imagine some of us talking about how the French were in the right...
    During the Napoleonic Wars, there were a number of MPs, Peers of the realm etc who openly wished for the British military to be defeated by Napoleon. This doesn't seem to have collapsed the war effort.

    The discussion of a technology vs brute aggression in war is an old one. A sub theme of Well's "The Land Ironclads" is the defeat of the rugged outdoorsmen by the effete townies in their war machines...


    And he was much too good a journalist to spoil his contrast by remarking that the half-dozen comparatively slender young men in blue pajamas who were standing about their victorious land ironclad, drinking coffee and eating biscuits, had also in their eyes and carriage something not altogether degraded below the level of a man.


    The French discussion of red trousers before WWI is darkly comic, now.

    It's a popular fallacy that brutal behaviour, discipline etc makes better soldiers. In real life that doesn't seem to be the case.

    Interesting stuff.
    Reflecting further, it's not that I thought the Russian approach to soldiering per se (the brutal behaviour and the disciple) would yield results, it was the sense of purpose. To strip away any sort of nuance for a moment, they expect their military to win wars, we expect our military to follow rules and 21st century conventions. My assumption was that we are disadvantaging our own side in this.
    I don't think, for example, that brutal behaviour necessarily helps you win wars. But things we do - like preventing white men from joining the RAF, for example - would appear to be placing another objective ahead of your ability to carry out war effectively.
    But it turns out that the Russians are also placing another objective ahead of their ability to carry out war - that is, enriching middlemen at the expense of the military (clearly this isn't the aim itself but a product of the Russian model of governance.)
    It also turns out that the Russians are surprisingly bad at war. Possibly this does stem from the brutality-and-discipline aspect - that is, their soldiers just aren't very motivated. Or possibly it just happens to be that the Russians are making the wrong decisions and in an alternative universe a similarly brutal culture could be more successful.
    Historically, the armies that have used brutality for discipline have ultimately failed.

    Hard to build trust in a organisation that seems to believe that rape* is disciplinary method.

    Modern warfare is more about educated individuals making decisions in a framework that is flexible enough to allow them to act upon them.

    *Yes, really.
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,613
    Leon said:

    Driver said:

    Leon said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Nigelb said:

    The USP of Twitter was (and still is) basically for the user to be able to curate their own user experience; that's what makes it so useful a tool. They've made that considerably more hit and miss.

    Elon has made it much easier for nutters to publish, and he is apparently monetizing the MAGA crowd on that basis. For the rest of us, yes, it is a much poorer consumer experience.
    How?

    Genuine question. I am reading this debate with some bewilderment

    The big change in Twitter that I can see is that there is now a choice of two tweet streams. One is more tik tok in nature. “For you”. It is tweets that the algos reckon you might find interesting based on your prior engagement (and sometimes I do find them interesting)

    The other stream is “following” which is Twitter as it always was. Your can toggle between the two. Takes half a second

    There are a few people who have been allowed back on Twitter who shouldn’t have ever been banned, on grounds of free speech alone

    That’s it. That is the big change so far. Or am I blind or deluded?!
    Neither stream option, AIUI, is a pure "everyone you follow in reverse chronological order" stream - that's what I (and many others) want and the third-party apps provided.
    For me, the Following stream seems to be exactly that. Everyone I follow in order of the most recent tweets first

    I just had a look. The most recent tweet is 3 seconds old from someone I follow. Then 15s. Then 40s. Than 2m old. All people that I know that I follow

    Either Twitter is uniquely giving me access to Old Twitter or someone here is gravely mistaken. It could be me but I just can’t see it…
    That's currently my experience.
    It's been flakey, though (which tbf was never an unusual state of affairs).
  • Options
    CookieCookie Posts: 11,449
    Cyclefree said:

    Anyway, today is my birthday. When my father reached the age I am now he had less than 9 months left to live.

    Also the cats decided to mark the occasion by leaving a large dead bird on the kitchen floor - along with feathers scattered everywhere - so clearing that up will be my first task of the day. There is no cat flap in the kitchen so they must have killed it outside, dragged it in through the cat flap downstairs and brought it upstairs. It is quite determined and skilful of them. I only wish they could use that skill to bring me a cup of tea in bed or, even, clean the bloody thing up themselves.

    The joys of country living, eh!

    Happy birthday! And how clever of the cats to bring you a present.
    Your cats are hardier than ours. They do hunt, but only hunt in the summer. Every day since September they've scurried to the back door to be let out as soon as I've got up only to look at me incredulously when I open the door 'what? why is it so cold? where is the sunshine? where are the moths to play with?' Three feebler cats you will never meet.
  • Options
    LeonLeon Posts: 47,215
    edited February 2023
    Talking of RAF recruitment last night some friends took me to yet another amazing Bangkok restaurant





    The curries are sublime. The food in Bangkok now is possibly the best in the world. The competition is so intense

    I really wish this restaurant would expand into london. But they might have to change the name. Because in Thailand everyone casually calls this chain (without malice) “super N-word”. That’s how they pronounce it

    For westerners it is quite startling and causes grave awkwardness
  • Options
    MaxPB said:

    The new departments make sense to me, if Rishi had won the membership vote and implemented this on day one of his leadership it may have been enough to make a difference for a Q4 2024 election, sadly we've wasted the last six months (year really since we knew Boris was going to have to resign) and now the Tories are stuffed because there's no agenda that can push them to victory. Really what Rishi should have pushed through was the dissolution of the Treasury and OBR, replace them with a simple forecasting unit made up of City quants and the Chancellor is directly in charge of spending decisions with no interference from the civil servants who seem to do their best to hold the country back.

    Sidelining the Treasury and OBR is what Truss & Kwarteng did a few months back, and it did not work out for them or the country, at least not in the short term.
  • Options
    CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,205
    MaxPB said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Anyway, today is my birthday. When my father reached the age I am now he had less than 9 months left to live.

    Also the cats decided to mark the occasion by leaving a large dead bird on the kitchen floor - along with feathers scattered everywhere - so clearing that up will be my first task of the day. There is no cat flap in the kitchen so they must have killed it outside, dragged it in through the cat flap downstairs and brought it upstairs. It is quite determined and skilful of them. I only wish they could use that skill to bring me a cup of tea in bed or, even, clean the bloody thing up themselves.

    The joys of country living, eh!

    Happy Birthday Cyclefree!
    Thank you.
  • Options
    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 44,405
    Dura_Ace said:

    Cookie said:

    But things we do - like preventing white men from joining the RAF, for example - would appear to be placing another objective ahead of your ability to carry out war effectively.

    You still end up with the same number of pilots, etc. so how does biasing recruitment against white men affect combat efficacy?
    I think someone is assuming a drop in standards to get sufficient applicants, in the required groups.

    To be fair, this is what the police did.
  • Options
    CookieCookie Posts: 11,449

    Cookie said:

    Cookie said:

    Sean_F said:

    Sandpit said:

    On the war:

    Here's yet another threat from Lavrov against Moldova.

    https://www.dw.com/en/russia-steps-up-threats-against-republic-of-moldova/a-64612019

    You and whose army, Mr Lavrov?

    In case you missed it, you’re losing hundreds of mobliks and a dozen tanks every day in Ukraine at the moment. Not too sure there’s much left of the once-mighty Russian military to go around.
    What gets me are the idiots - and idiots are a nice term for them - who excuse Russia's actions. It's not their fault. It's ours (wrong). We promised no eastwards NATO expansion (wrong). The Ukrainians are Nazis (wrong). Russia deserves a hinterland for protection (wrong). wibble wibble Stepan Bandera (wrong). Russia wants peace (wrong). We 'poked' Russia into this war (wrong). The war needs to end now (wrong, sadly).

    All you need to do is listen to what Lavrov and Putin say to see the real cause of this war: Russian fascist imperialism. Whatever we said or did, they would have made a play for Ukraine or another state. Because that's their world view.
    You can read exactly those arguments from the MAGA’s.
    It's yet another example where hard left and hard right meet in the middle.

    It's easy to see why the hard left come up with this stuff: a combination of still liking Russia because of the USSR and Communism (even though modern Russia only takes the 'enriches those in power' from Communism); a hatred of the West and our institutions, and an utter loathing of the 'wrong' people.

    It's less easy to see what the hard right get it from. Yes, there will be a few neo-Nazis and fascists who quite like Putin's strongman act. There will be some who hate the government in power, and therefore oppose what that government supports. And there will be a few loud moths directly or indirectly in Russia's pay.

    But if you wanted America to be Great Again, then spending a relatively tiny amount of money to defeat what was your #1 enemy is surely a good thing, especially as it does not cost American lives?
    Woke?

    What Putins Russia sells is that all of Russian history is glorious, wonderful and morally perfect. Think Henty and his works, as their vision of history.

    Their fear of “Western self doubt and self loathing” is based on the idea that their power (such as it is) comes from belief. The willingness of the human waves to bayonet charge….. I their world, once you allow the Head Count to doubt The System, your culture collapses and the cold wind blows.

    It was a meme on the extreme right, before the invasion, that the proper, manly Russian army would demonstrate that their Big Weapons would annihilate Western FeminizedTransWoke armies.
    Not just on the extreme right. I rather thought that a military whose main aim was to win wars, from a culture who weren't really that bothered about how it did so, would have an edge over a military with an HR department, from a culture whose distaste for violence obliged it to tread lightly and not kill people if it could possibly avoid it. (That said, it should be noted that Ukraine is not typical of the west: its soldiers and its people are impressively motivated to fight, and I still wonder whether this would be true of societies further west).
    But it turns out that the Russian military wasn't actually there for killing people, but as a tool for enriching middlemen, and that however enthusiastic it might be to kill people, it simply wasn't equipped to do so because the resources which had been spent on it over the years had been diverted elsewhere.
    It's an interesting question: if (say) France launched an invasion of the south coast today, how hard would we Brits fight (leaving aside the strength of our respective militaries and nukes) ?

    I'd like to think we'd fight hard, especially if we were in the Ukrainian situation, where (say) Devon and Cornwall had been captured eight years earlier. But I can imagine some of us talking about how the French were in the right...
    During the Napoleonic Wars, there were a number of MPs, Peers of the realm etc who openly wished for the British military to be defeated by Napoleon. This doesn't seem to have collapsed the war effort.

    The discussion of a technology vs brute aggression in war is an old one. A sub theme of Well's "The Land Ironclads" is the defeat of the rugged outdoorsmen by the effete townies in their war machines...


    And he was much too good a journalist to spoil his contrast by remarking that the half-dozen comparatively slender young men in blue pajamas who were standing about their victorious land ironclad, drinking coffee and eating biscuits, had also in their eyes and carriage something not altogether degraded below the level of a man.


    The French discussion of red trousers before WWI is darkly comic, now.

    It's a popular fallacy that brutal behaviour, discipline etc makes better soldiers. In real life that doesn't seem to be the case.

    Interesting stuff.
    Reflecting further, it's not that I thought the Russian approach to soldiering per se (the brutal behaviour and the disciple) would yield results, it was the sense of purpose. To strip away any sort of nuance for a moment, they expect their military to win wars, we expect our military to follow rules and 21st century conventions. My assumption was that we are disadvantaging our own side in this.
    I don't think, for example, that brutal behaviour necessarily helps you win wars. But things we do - like preventing white men from joining the RAF, for example - would appear to be placing another objective ahead of your ability to carry out war effectively.
    But it turns out that the Russians are also placing another objective ahead of their ability to carry out war - that is, enriching middlemen at the expense of the military (clearly this isn't the aim itself but a product of the Russian model of governance.)
    It also turns out that the Russians are surprisingly bad at war. Possibly this does stem from the brutality-and-discipline aspect - that is, their soldiers just aren't very motivated. Or possibly it just happens to be that the Russians are making the wrong decisions and in an alternative universe a similarly brutal culture could be more successful.
    Historically, the armies that have used brutality for discipline have ultimately failed.

    Hard to build trust in a organisation that seems to believe that rape* is disciplinary method.

    Modern warfare is more about educated individuals making decisions in a framework that is flexible enough to allow them to act upon them.

    *Yes, really.
    Really? Which armies were those?
  • Options
    algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 10,541
    Going back for a moment to the discussion Hezza's speech in the Lords, while it was excellent in so many ways it, SFAICS, missed out the difficulties; which are these

    1) He lauds the single market. But with the single exception of FoM between countries at very different levels of development the SM was not the big issue in the Brexit debate. SM as regulatory trade harmonisation with an international arbitration system would never have precipitated Brexit.

    2) He ignores the repeated Referendum issues. He ignores the political union aspects. He ignored the non democratic elements. he ignores the creeping politicisation of what began as a big trade association.

    So while the rhetoric is great, he actually repeats the problem. On the whole the UK wanted half of what the EU had become (mostly about trade) but not the other half (mostly about politics).
  • Options
    NickyBreakspearNickyBreakspear Posts: 687
    edited February 2023

    Recently we have 6 polling companies with weekly polls: YouGov, Techne, Omnisis, Deltapoll, PeoplePolling and Redfield & Wilton.

    So I have calculated the weekly average for those polling companies only from November onwards. There is a break for Christmas and the New Year, otherwise it is complete.

    Not much movement.




    You are obviously keeping that as a spreadsheet - do you fancy populating it back to the beginning of September (or may it available and I will) so that we can see how much improvement Sunak has delivered?
    I am getting the numbers from the useful wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election

    I have gone back to mid september as before then we do not have a consistent weekly polling by those 6 polling companies.

    This just about shows the Truss dip.


  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,613
    Sandpit said:

    Sky News also understands business, energy and industrial strategy secretary Grant Shapps will be made energy security secretary in a newly created department dedicated to energy.

    And former Tory leadership contender Kemi Badenoch is to be moved from international trade secretary to business secretary, taking over part of the role Mr Shapps leaves vacant.

    https://news.sky.com/story/cabinet-reshuffle-greg-hands-replaces-zahawi-as-conservative-party-chairman-as-sunaks-first-reshuffle-begins-12805147

    Big job for Kemi, responsible for business regulation and growth opportunities.

    Worth a few quid on the next leader market.
    Will she now be the one who gets to exercise most of the powers in the EU regulation removal bill currently winding through Parliament ?
  • Options
    bigjohnowlsbigjohnowls Posts: 21,860

    Sandpit said:

    Sky News also understands business, energy and industrial strategy secretary Grant Shapps will be made energy security secretary in a newly created department dedicated to energy.

    And former Tory leadership contender Kemi Badenoch is to be moved from international trade secretary to business secretary, taking over part of the role Mr Shapps leaves vacant.

    https://news.sky.com/story/cabinet-reshuffle-greg-hands-replaces-zahawi-as-conservative-party-chairman-as-sunaks-first-reshuffle-begins-12805147

    Big job for Kemi, responsible for business regulation and growth opportunities.

    Worth a few quid on the next leader market.
    God help us all.
    Tories are screwed.
  • Options
    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 44,405
    Cookie said:

    Cookie said:

    Cookie said:

    Sean_F said:

    Sandpit said:

    On the war:

    Here's yet another threat from Lavrov against Moldova.

    https://www.dw.com/en/russia-steps-up-threats-against-republic-of-moldova/a-64612019

    You and whose army, Mr Lavrov?

    In case you missed it, you’re losing hundreds of mobliks and a dozen tanks every day in Ukraine at the moment. Not too sure there’s much left of the once-mighty Russian military to go around.
    What gets me are the idiots - and idiots are a nice term for them - who excuse Russia's actions. It's not their fault. It's ours (wrong). We promised no eastwards NATO expansion (wrong). The Ukrainians are Nazis (wrong). Russia deserves a hinterland for protection (wrong). wibble wibble Stepan Bandera (wrong). Russia wants peace (wrong). We 'poked' Russia into this war (wrong). The war needs to end now (wrong, sadly).

    All you need to do is listen to what Lavrov and Putin say to see the real cause of this war: Russian fascist imperialism. Whatever we said or did, they would have made a play for Ukraine or another state. Because that's their world view.
    You can read exactly those arguments from the MAGA’s.
    It's yet another example where hard left and hard right meet in the middle.

    It's easy to see why the hard left come up with this stuff: a combination of still liking Russia because of the USSR and Communism (even though modern Russia only takes the 'enriches those in power' from Communism); a hatred of the West and our institutions, and an utter loathing of the 'wrong' people.

    It's less easy to see what the hard right get it from. Yes, there will be a few neo-Nazis and fascists who quite like Putin's strongman act. There will be some who hate the government in power, and therefore oppose what that government supports. And there will be a few loud moths directly or indirectly in Russia's pay.

    But if you wanted America to be Great Again, then spending a relatively tiny amount of money to defeat what was your #1 enemy is surely a good thing, especially as it does not cost American lives?
    Woke?

    What Putins Russia sells is that all of Russian history is glorious, wonderful and morally perfect. Think Henty and his works, as their vision of history.

    Their fear of “Western self doubt and self loathing” is based on the idea that their power (such as it is) comes from belief. The willingness of the human waves to bayonet charge….. I their world, once you allow the Head Count to doubt The System, your culture collapses and the cold wind blows.

    It was a meme on the extreme right, before the invasion, that the proper, manly Russian army would demonstrate that their Big Weapons would annihilate Western FeminizedTransWoke armies.
    Not just on the extreme right. I rather thought that a military whose main aim was to win wars, from a culture who weren't really that bothered about how it did so, would have an edge over a military with an HR department, from a culture whose distaste for violence obliged it to tread lightly and not kill people if it could possibly avoid it. (That said, it should be noted that Ukraine is not typical of the west: its soldiers and its people are impressively motivated to fight, and I still wonder whether this would be true of societies further west).
    But it turns out that the Russian military wasn't actually there for killing people, but as a tool for enriching middlemen, and that however enthusiastic it might be to kill people, it simply wasn't equipped to do so because the resources which had been spent on it over the years had been diverted elsewhere.
    It's an interesting question: if (say) France launched an invasion of the south coast today, how hard would we Brits fight (leaving aside the strength of our respective militaries and nukes) ?

    I'd like to think we'd fight hard, especially if we were in the Ukrainian situation, where (say) Devon and Cornwall had been captured eight years earlier. But I can imagine some of us talking about how the French were in the right...
    During the Napoleonic Wars, there were a number of MPs, Peers of the realm etc who openly wished for the British military to be defeated by Napoleon. This doesn't seem to have collapsed the war effort.

    The discussion of a technology vs brute aggression in war is an old one. A sub theme of Well's "The Land Ironclads" is the defeat of the rugged outdoorsmen by the effete townies in their war machines...


    And he was much too good a journalist to spoil his contrast by remarking that the half-dozen comparatively slender young men in blue pajamas who were standing about their victorious land ironclad, drinking coffee and eating biscuits, had also in their eyes and carriage something not altogether degraded below the level of a man.


    The French discussion of red trousers before WWI is darkly comic, now.

    It's a popular fallacy that brutal behaviour, discipline etc makes better soldiers. In real life that doesn't seem to be the case.

    Interesting stuff.
    Reflecting further, it's not that I thought the Russian approach to soldiering per se (the brutal behaviour and the disciple) would yield results, it was the sense of purpose. To strip away any sort of nuance for a moment, they expect their military to win wars, we expect our military to follow rules and 21st century conventions. My assumption was that we are disadvantaging our own side in this.
    I don't think, for example, that brutal behaviour necessarily helps you win wars. But things we do - like preventing white men from joining the RAF, for example - would appear to be placing another objective ahead of your ability to carry out war effectively.
    But it turns out that the Russians are also placing another objective ahead of their ability to carry out war - that is, enriching middlemen at the expense of the military (clearly this isn't the aim itself but a product of the Russian model of governance.)
    It also turns out that the Russians are surprisingly bad at war. Possibly this does stem from the brutality-and-discipline aspect - that is, their soldiers just aren't very motivated. Or possibly it just happens to be that the Russians are making the wrong decisions and in an alternative universe a similarly brutal culture could be more successful.
    Historically, the armies that have used brutality for discipline have ultimately failed.

    Hard to build trust in a organisation that seems to believe that rape* is disciplinary method.

    Modern warfare is more about educated individuals making decisions in a framework that is flexible enough to allow them to act upon them.

    *Yes, really.
    Really? Which armies were those?
    There were several instances, both recently and over the years, where rape and other sexual assaults were found to be being used as "discipline" in the Russian army.

    Complete with the nuttier talking heads on Russian media claiming this was all perfectly normal and totally non-gay....
  • Options
    CookieCookie Posts: 11,449
    Dura_Ace said:

    Cookie said:

    But things we do - like preventing white men from joining the RAF, for example - would appear to be placing another objective ahead of your ability to carry out war effectively.

    You still end up with the same number of pilots, etc. so how does biasing recruitment against white men affect combat efficacy?
    It doesn't, if you assume all potential pilots are equally good. But if you assume that only a small minority will have the potential to be good pilots, and your recruitment exercise is trying to find these, if you exclude 90% of potential candidates, it is less likely you will find the candidates at the top end of that.
  • Options
    DriverDriver Posts: 4,522
    Leon said:

    Driver said:

    Leon said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Nigelb said:

    The USP of Twitter was (and still is) basically for the user to be able to curate their own user experience; that's what makes it so useful a tool. They've made that considerably more hit and miss.

    Elon has made it much easier for nutters to publish, and he is apparently monetizing the MAGA crowd on that basis. For the rest of us, yes, it is a much poorer consumer experience.
    How?

    Genuine question. I am reading this debate with some bewilderment

    The big change in Twitter that I can see is that there is now a choice of two tweet streams. One is more tik tok in nature. “For you”. It is tweets that the algos reckon you might find interesting based on your prior engagement (and sometimes I do find them interesting)

    The other stream is “following” which is Twitter as it always was. Your can toggle between the two. Takes half a second

    There are a few people who have been allowed back on Twitter who shouldn’t have ever been banned, on grounds of free speech alone

    That’s it. That is the big change so far. Or am I blind or deluded?!
    Neither stream option, AIUI, is a pure "everyone you follow in reverse chronological order" stream - that's what I (and many others) want and the third-party apps provided.
    For me, the Following stream seems to be exactly that. Everyone I follow in order of the most recent tweets first

    I just had a look. The most recent tweet is 3 seconds old from someone I follow. Then 15s. Then 40s. Than 2m old. All people that I know that I follow

    Either Twitter is uniquely giving me access to Old Twitter or someone here is gravely mistaken. It could be me but I just can’t see it…
    Mine is more than 10% ads. That's way too much.
  • Options
    malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 41,974
    Dura_Ace said:

    Cookie said:

    But things we do - like preventing white men from joining the RAF, for example - would appear to be placing another objective ahead of your ability to carry out war effectively.

    You still end up with the same number of pilots, etc. so how does biasing recruitment against white men affect combat efficacy?
    Well if you are basing your choice on sex or colour only there is very good chance you get duffers and so don't get the number of pilots you need, being a woman or an ethnic minor does not hep you fly a plane.
  • Options
    Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,953
    Leon said:

    For me, the Following stream seems to be exactly that. Everyone I follow in order of the most recent tweets first

    I just had a look. The most recent tweet is 3 seconds old from someone I follow. Then 15s. Then 40s. Than 2m old. All people that I know that I follow

    Either Twitter is uniquely giving me access to Old Twitter or someone here is gravely mistaken. It could be me but I just can’t see it…

    Even if you are seeing Tweets from people you follow (Yay!) in the order they are posted (Yay again!) the complaint from producers rather than consumers seems to be that not everybody who follows them can see all of their posts, and you have no way of knowing that.
  • Options
    CookieCookie Posts: 11,449

    Cookie said:

    Cookie said:

    Cookie said:

    Sean_F said:

    Sandpit said:

    On the war:

    Here's yet another threat from Lavrov against Moldova.

    https://www.dw.com/en/russia-steps-up-threats-against-republic-of-moldova/a-64612019

    You and whose army, Mr Lavrov?

    In case you missed it, you’re losing hundreds of mobliks and a dozen tanks every day in Ukraine at the moment. Not too sure there’s much left of the once-mighty Russian military to go around.
    What gets me are the idiots - and idiots are a nice term for them - who excuse Russia's actions. It's not their fault. It's ours (wrong). We promised no eastwards NATO expansion (wrong). The Ukrainians are Nazis (wrong). Russia deserves a hinterland for protection (wrong). wibble wibble Stepan Bandera (wrong). Russia wants peace (wrong). We 'poked' Russia into this war (wrong). The war needs to end now (wrong, sadly).

    All you need to do is listen to what Lavrov and Putin say to see the real cause of this war: Russian fascist imperialism. Whatever we said or did, they would have made a play for Ukraine or another state. Because that's their world view.
    You can read exactly those arguments from the MAGA’s.
    It's yet another example where hard left and hard right meet in the middle.

    It's easy to see why the hard left come up with this stuff: a combination of still liking Russia because of the USSR and Communism (even though modern Russia only takes the 'enriches those in power' from Communism); a hatred of the West and our institutions, and an utter loathing of the 'wrong' people.

    It's less easy to see what the hard right get it from. Yes, there will be a few neo-Nazis and fascists who quite like Putin's strongman act. There will be some who hate the government in power, and therefore oppose what that government supports. And there will be a few loud moths directly or indirectly in Russia's pay.

    But if you wanted America to be Great Again, then spending a relatively tiny amount of money to defeat what was your #1 enemy is surely a good thing, especially as it does not cost American lives?
    Woke?

    What Putins Russia sells is that all of Russian history is glorious, wonderful and morally perfect. Think Henty and his works, as their vision of history.

    Their fear of “Western self doubt and self loathing” is based on the idea that their power (such as it is) comes from belief. The willingness of the human waves to bayonet charge….. I their world, once you allow the Head Count to doubt The System, your culture collapses and the cold wind blows.

    It was a meme on the extreme right, before the invasion, that the proper, manly Russian army would demonstrate that their Big Weapons would annihilate Western FeminizedTransWoke armies.
    Not just on the extreme right. I rather thought that a military whose main aim was to win wars, from a culture who weren't really that bothered about how it did so, would have an edge over a military with an HR department, from a culture whose distaste for violence obliged it to tread lightly and not kill people if it could possibly avoid it. (That said, it should be noted that Ukraine is not typical of the west: its soldiers and its people are impressively motivated to fight, and I still wonder whether this would be true of societies further west).
    But it turns out that the Russian military wasn't actually there for killing people, but as a tool for enriching middlemen, and that however enthusiastic it might be to kill people, it simply wasn't equipped to do so because the resources which had been spent on it over the years had been diverted elsewhere.
    It's an interesting question: if (say) France launched an invasion of the south coast today, how hard would we Brits fight (leaving aside the strength of our respective militaries and nukes) ?

    I'd like to think we'd fight hard, especially if we were in the Ukrainian situation, where (say) Devon and Cornwall had been captured eight years earlier. But I can imagine some of us talking about how the French were in the right...
    During the Napoleonic Wars, there were a number of MPs, Peers of the realm etc who openly wished for the British military to be defeated by Napoleon. This doesn't seem to have collapsed the war effort.

    The discussion of a technology vs brute aggression in war is an old one. A sub theme of Well's "The Land Ironclads" is the defeat of the rugged outdoorsmen by the effete townies in their war machines...


    And he was much too good a journalist to spoil his contrast by remarking that the half-dozen comparatively slender young men in blue pajamas who were standing about their victorious land ironclad, drinking coffee and eating biscuits, had also in their eyes and carriage something not altogether degraded below the level of a man.


    The French discussion of red trousers before WWI is darkly comic, now.

    It's a popular fallacy that brutal behaviour, discipline etc makes better soldiers. In real life that doesn't seem to be the case.

    Interesting stuff.
    Reflecting further, it's not that I thought the Russian approach to soldiering per se (the brutal behaviour and the disciple) would yield results, it was the sense of purpose. To strip away any sort of nuance for a moment, they expect their military to win wars, we expect our military to follow rules and 21st century conventions. My assumption was that we are disadvantaging our own side in this.
    I don't think, for example, that brutal behaviour necessarily helps you win wars. But things we do - like preventing white men from joining the RAF, for example - would appear to be placing another objective ahead of your ability to carry out war effectively.
    But it turns out that the Russians are also placing another objective ahead of their ability to carry out war - that is, enriching middlemen at the expense of the military (clearly this isn't the aim itself but a product of the Russian model of governance.)
    It also turns out that the Russians are surprisingly bad at war. Possibly this does stem from the brutality-and-discipline aspect - that is, their soldiers just aren't very motivated. Or possibly it just happens to be that the Russians are making the wrong decisions and in an alternative universe a similarly brutal culture could be more successful.
    Historically, the armies that have used brutality for discipline have ultimately failed.

    Hard to build trust in a organisation that seems to believe that rape* is disciplinary method.

    Modern warfare is more about educated individuals making decisions in a framework that is flexible enough to allow them to act upon them.

    *Yes, really.
    Really? Which armies were those?
    There were several instances, both recently and over the years, where rape and other sexual assaults were found to be being used as "discipline" in the Russian army.

    Complete with the nuttier talking heads on Russian media claiming this was all perfectly normal and totally non-gay....
    It's as if the whole country is in the closet.
  • Options
    DJ41aDJ41a Posts: 174
    edited February 2023
    Cookie said:

    Cookie said:

    Sean_F said:

    Sandpit said:

    On the war:

    Here's yet another threat from Lavrov against Moldova.

    https://www.dw.com/en/russia-steps-up-threats-against-republic-of-moldova/a-64612019

    You and whose army, Mr Lavrov?

    In case you missed it, you’re losing hundreds of mobliks and a dozen tanks every day in Ukraine at the moment. Not too sure there’s much left of the once-mighty Russian military to go around.
    What gets me are the idiots - and idiots are a nice term for them - who excuse Russia's actions. It's not their fault. It's ours (wrong). We promised no eastwards NATO expansion (wrong). The Ukrainians are Nazis (wrong). Russia deserves a hinterland for protection (wrong). wibble wibble Stepan Bandera (wrong). Russia wants peace (wrong). We 'poked' Russia into this war (wrong). The war needs to end now (wrong, sadly).

    All you need to do is listen to what Lavrov and Putin say to see the real cause of this war: Russian fascist imperialism. Whatever we said or did, they would have made a play for Ukraine or another state. Because that's their world view.
    You can read exactly those arguments from the MAGA’s.
    It's yet another example where hard left and hard right meet in the middle.

    It's easy to see why the hard left come up with this stuff: a combination of still liking Russia because of the USSR and Communism (even though modern Russia only takes the 'enriches those in power' from Communism); a hatred of the West and our institutions, and an utter loathing of the 'wrong' people.

    It's less easy to see what the hard right get it from. Yes, there will be a few neo-Nazis and fascists who quite like Putin's strongman act. There will be some who hate the government in power, and therefore oppose what that government supports. And there will be a few loud moths directly or indirectly in Russia's pay.

    But if you wanted America to be Great Again, then spending a relatively tiny amount of money to defeat what was your #1 enemy is surely a good thing, especially as it does not cost American lives?
    Woke?

    What Putins Russia sells is that all of Russian history is glorious, wonderful and morally perfect. Think Henty and his works, as their vision of history.

    Their fear of “Western self doubt and self loathing” is based on the idea that their power (such as it is) comes from belief. The willingness of the human waves to bayonet charge….. I their world, once you allow the Head Count to doubt The System, your culture collapses and the cold wind blows.

    It was a meme on the extreme right, before the invasion, that the proper, manly Russian army would demonstrate that their Big Weapons would annihilate Western FeminizedTransWoke armies.
    Not just on the extreme right. I rather thought that a military whose main aim was to win wars, from a culture who weren't really that bothered about how it did so, would have an edge over a military with an HR department, from a culture whose distaste for violence obliged it to tread lightly and not kill people if it could possibly avoid it. (That said, it should be noted that Ukraine is not typical of the west: its soldiers and its people are impressively motivated to fight, and I still wonder whether this would be true of societies further west).
    But it turns out that the Russian military wasn't actually there for killing people, but as a tool for enriching middlemen, and that however enthusiastic it might be to kill people, it simply wasn't equipped to do so because the resources which had been spent on it over the years had been diverted elsewhere.
    It's an interesting question: if (say) France launched an invasion of the south coast today, how hard would we Brits fight (leaving aside the strength of our respective militaries and nukes) ?

    I'd like to think we'd fight hard, especially if we were in the Ukrainian situation, where (say) Devon and Cornwall had been captured eight years earlier. But I can imagine some of us talking about how the French were in the right...
    During the Napoleonic Wars, there were a number of MPs, Peers of the realm etc who openly wished for the British military to be defeated by Napoleon. This doesn't seem to have collapsed the war effort.

    The discussion of a technology vs brute aggression in war is an old one. A sub theme of Well's "The Land Ironclads" is the defeat of the rugged outdoorsmen by the effete townies in their war machines...


    And he was much too good a journalist to spoil his contrast by remarking that the half-dozen comparatively slender young men in blue pajamas who were standing about their victorious land ironclad, drinking coffee and eating biscuits, had also in their eyes and carriage something not altogether degraded below the level of a man.


    The French discussion of red trousers before WWI is darkly comic, now.

    It's a popular fallacy that brutal behaviour, discipline etc makes better soldiers. In real life that doesn't seem to be the case.

    Interesting stuff.
    Reflecting further, it's not that I thought the Russian approach to soldiering per se (the brutal behaviour and the disciple) would yield results, it was the sense of purpose. To strip away any sort of nuance for a moment, they expect their military to win wars, we expect our military to follow rules and 21st century conventions. My assumption was that we are disadvantaging our own side in this.
    I don't think, for example, that brutal behaviour necessarily helps you win wars. But things we do - like preventing white men from joining the RAF, for example - would appear to be placing another objective ahead of your ability to carry out war effectively.
    But it turns out that the Russians are also placing another objective ahead of their ability to carry out war - that is, enriching middlemen at the expense of the military (clearly this isn't the aim itself but a product of the Russian model of governance.)
    It also turns out that the Russians are surprisingly bad at war. Possibly this does stem from the brutality-and-discipline aspect - that is, their soldiers just aren't very motivated. Or possibly it just happens to be that the Russians are making the wrong decisions and in an alternative universe a similarly brutal culture could be more successful.
    Thank goodness they don't have anything similar to the Russian model of governance in the Ukraine.

    Monarchy and segregated schools , and pictures of emperor Franz-Joseph on the coinage - they're what make for being good at war. The bosses in Kiev, who run a completely different model from the ones in Moscow and Tbilisi, sure as damned hell know the right regime to look up to and get their weapons from. Or as might be said, "We need the clever Slavs (and other Slavophones) on our side!"

    As for what you say is the biasing of recruitment to the RAF against white men, you sound as though you believe that most people are born with a collection of talents that point them towards this kind of job and not that kind of job, and that once you've trained the first x airmen who aren't white men then when you reach the (x+1)th it's like trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
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    Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,953
    The shuffle has served its purpose in distracting from the DCMS (as was) committee hearing
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    Andy_CookeAndy_Cooke Posts: 4,818
    FPT:
    tlg86 said:

    Weekly deaths update:

    https://tinyurl.com/25f9fs4n

    Still not had a chance to look more closely at the deaths stats, but it does look like things have improved in the latest week of data. Just the 1,000 non-COVID deaths in excess of the five-year average.

    It is worth saying that since the week-ending 22 May 2020 (basically the point at which non-COVID deaths were legitimately excluding COVID deaths), we are still 18,000 below the five-year average. Back in April 2022, we were 51,000 below the five-year average, and that has gradually been eroded over the last 10 months. Of course, in that time, we're also had 21,000 COVID deaths.

    Week-ending | 5-year average | COVID deaths | non-COVID deaths | non-COVID deaths in excess of the 5-year average

    07-Oct-22 | 9,835 | 400 | 10,807 | 972
    14-Oct-22 | 10,091 | 565 | 11,134 | 1,043
    21-Oct-22 | 10,224 | 687 | 11,251 | 1,027
    28-Oct-22 | 10,013 | 651 | 10,594 | 581
    04-Nov-22 | 10,278 | 650 | 11,145 | 867
    11-Nov-22 | 10,743 | 518 | 11,020 | 277
    18-Nov-22 | 10,786 | 423 | 11,156 | 370
    25-Nov-22 | 10,705 | 348 | 11,135 | 430
    02-Dec-22 | 10,725 | 317 | 10,990 | 265
    09-Dec-22 | 11,007 | 326 | 11,368 | 361
    16-Dec-22 | 11,203 | 390 | 11,999 | 796
    23-Dec-22 | 12,037 | 429 | 14,101 | 2,064
    30-Dec-22 | 7,925 | 393 | 9,124 | 1,199
    06-Jan-23 | 12,037 | 739 | 14,244 | 2,207
    13-Jan-23 | 13,749 | 922 | 16,459 | 2,710
    20-Jan-23 | 13,098 | 781 | 15,023 | 1,925
    27-Jan-23 | 12,562 | 579 | 13,588 | 1,026

    A lot of the ambulance times/accident and emergency delays crisis has lifted, which helps. That was one of the biggest chunks of the extra deaths.
    We'll still have covid sequelae deaths for a while, but they should (hopefully) lift a bit too, as time goes by. The risk period for elevated heart issues/stroke issues seems to be highest over 1 to 2 years, and linked to the severity of the illness, so with reduced severity from widespread immunity (and protection from severe disease doesn't tend to erode like protection from infection), so hopefully those numbers will fall as well.
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    GIN1138GIN1138 Posts: 20,817
    Sandpit said:

    Sky News also understands business, energy and industrial strategy secretary Grant Shapps will be made energy security secretary in a newly created department dedicated to energy.

    And former Tory leadership contender Kemi Badenoch is to be moved from international trade secretary to business secretary, taking over part of the role Mr Shapps leaves vacant.

    https://news.sky.com/story/cabinet-reshuffle-greg-hands-replaces-zahawi-as-conservative-party-chairman-as-sunaks-first-reshuffle-begins-12805147

    Big job for Kemi, responsible for business regulation and growth opportunities.

    Worth a few quid on the next leader market.
    I tipped Kemi to LOTO ages ago! 😇
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    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,613
    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    .

    Nigelb said:

    Sandpit said:

    The 3rd party clients were making a lot of revenue that Twitter are going to try and collect. It’s going to cost thousands a month to run coprorate Twitter accounts, complete with the analytics software similar to that which the 3rd parties used to sell to corporates.

    There’s hundreds of millions in extra revenue, and more importantly a diversification away from the fickle and cyclical advertising market.

    Okay but here in the present the Twitter app is absolute trash. They seem to have taken out the competition rather than trying to improve.
    They also considerably degraded the general user experience. Though I recognise that could be temporary, I suspect it won't be, given the drive to increase revenue per user. That's what made Facebook a mess.

    The USP of Twitter was (and still is) basically for the user to be able to curate their own user experience; that's what makes it so useful a tool. They've made that considerably more hit and miss.
    They seem to think a service which is designed around up to the minute information, to be showing you information days or weeks old. They seem totally against having a chronological timeline, I just cannot understand why they think this is a good idea.
    It's not; that implementation is just shit.
    You can more or less now default back to your own followed accounts, which seems to work reasonably well at the moment.

    But they're still determinedly trying to get users to change to features users don't want, just because that's easier to monetise.

    For now it's still usable, but that could still change. It's not a technical problem; it's that Twitter isn't going to change into the kind of ap Musk wants; or at least most if its users would be reluctant to stay committed to such a thing.
    You literally just toggle to “Following” and Twitter is exactly what it was. You move one finger for about 1/3 of a second

    That’s it. And the For You stream is sometimes rather enlightening, and sometimes not. It is the Tik Tok algo applied to Twitter

    I am also (tho this IS more subjective) seeing fewer ads - “promoted tweets”, I think (which is an improvement if this is the case)

    Indeed, that's what I said. For now it works.

    And at the moment, there's nothing that provides what Twitter does.
    But it's not at all hard to imagine how someone might recreate the user-personalised news/information/gossip service, with a similar reach, using an AI.

    What people are missing about current AIs is that while they aren't necessarily particularly intelligent or interesting in themselves, they enable all sorts of services. See also the threat to Amazon's retail model.
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    SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 20,616
    "Rishi Sunak Gives Hands Job"
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    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,613
    algarkirk said:

    Going back for a moment to the discussion Hezza's speech in the Lords, while it was excellent in so many ways it, SFAICS, missed out the difficulties; which are these

    1) He lauds the single market. But with the single exception of FoM between countries at very different levels of development the SM was not the big issue in the Brexit debate. SM as regulatory trade harmonisation with an international arbitration system would never have precipitated Brexit.

    2) He ignores the repeated Referendum issues. He ignores the political union aspects. He ignored the non democratic elements. he ignores the creeping politicisation of what began as a big trade association.

    So while the rhetoric is great, he actually repeats the problem. On the whole the UK wanted half of what the EU had become (mostly about trade) but not the other half (mostly about politics).

    But the thrust of his speech was about the undesirability of the regulations bill, and more generally the cluelessness around what Brexit is about, not a call to rejoin.

    ...Once the decision was taken—I was rather against it—it was important to get on and do something about the new world, because the uncertainty was bound to be burdensome and frustrating. I thought it was absolutely right that the principal Brexiteers were put in charge of the show: Boris Johnson, David Davis and Liam Fox. They, after all, presumably knew what the opportunities were, what needed to be done and what was holding us back, so they were in charge. Well, that did not last long. We had Jacob Rees-Mogg, with his Robespierrean fanaticism, and a whole new government department called Exiting the European Union. Let us not get carried away: the nameplate on the door changed. With Robespierrean fanaticism, he threw himself into the task. There was an uncharacteristic lack of history here, because of course Robespierre followed Louis XIV to the guillotine. Well, it is a more generous and kinder world that we live in today. Four Prime Ministers later, Jacob Rees-Mogg is back on the Back Benches. Dozens of Ministers have lost their jobs. I say to my noble friends on the Front Bench, “Beware: here today, gone tomorrow”. That has an ominous ring for anyone who becomes mired in this Brexit saga.

    The essence, of course, is that, for all the empty generalisations, all the promises and all that new world, there was nothing there. This Bill demonstrates beyond peradventure that they did not know what they were doing. Six years on, they did not know what they were doing. They have now actually created a giant question mark over a whole realm of regulations that are the custodian that separates us from the law of the jungle. They are what defines a civilised society. At a time of economic stress, when we need desperately to increase the levels of investment in our economy, what have they provided? A giant question mark for anyone seeking to know whether to spend a penny piece in the United Kingdom economy. I beg noble Lords not to let this legislation leave this place unscathed...
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    algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 10,541
    edited February 2023
    "TRUSS WOULD STAND A GOOD CHANCE OF WINNING ANOTHER MEMBER’S BALLOT"

    This excellent PB headline is untestable as there isn't going to be one this side of a GE.

    After which it is debatable whether the 1922 committee will or will not be able to meet in a telephone box, though the party membership will still be indistinguishable from a box of frogs.
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    LeonLeon Posts: 47,215
    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    .

    Nigelb said:

    Sandpit said:

    The 3rd party clients were making a lot of revenue that Twitter are going to try and collect. It’s going to cost thousands a month to run coprorate Twitter accounts, complete with the analytics software similar to that which the 3rd parties used to sell to corporates.

    There’s hundreds of millions in extra revenue, and more importantly a diversification away from the fickle and cyclical advertising market.

    Okay but here in the present the Twitter app is absolute trash. They seem to have taken out the competition rather than trying to improve.
    They also considerably degraded the general user experience. Though I recognise that could be temporary, I suspect it won't be, given the drive to increase revenue per user. That's what made Facebook a mess.

    The USP of Twitter was (and still is) basically for the user to be able to curate their own user experience; that's what makes it so useful a tool. They've made that considerably more hit and miss.
    They seem to think a service which is designed around up to the minute information, to be showing you information days or weeks old. They seem totally against having a chronological timeline, I just cannot understand why they think this is a good idea.
    It's not; that implementation is just shit.
    You can more or less now default back to your own followed accounts, which seems to work reasonably well at the moment.

    But they're still determinedly trying to get users to change to features users don't want, just because that's easier to monetise.

    For now it's still usable, but that could still change. It's not a technical problem; it's that Twitter isn't going to change into the kind of ap Musk wants; or at least most if its users would be reluctant to stay committed to such a thing.
    You literally just toggle to “Following” and Twitter is exactly what it was. You move one finger for about 1/3 of a second

    That’s it. And the For You stream is sometimes rather enlightening, and sometimes not. It is the Tik Tok algo applied to Twitter

    I am also (tho this IS more subjective) seeing fewer ads - “promoted tweets”, I think (which is an improvement if this is the case)

    Indeed, that's what I said. For now it works.

    And at the moment, there's nothing that provides what Twitter does.
    But it's not at all hard to imagine how someone might recreate the user-personalised news/information/gossip service, with a similar reach, using an AI.

    What people are missing about current AIs is that while they aren't necessarily particularly intelligent or interesting in themselves, they enable all sorts of services. See also the threat to Amazon's retail model.
    So basically your complaint about Twitter is that "Twitter is basically the same as it was, and it works, but it also gives you other options, now"

    This doesn't sound devastating for Elon and Twitter, TBH

    I agree that AI is a threat to Twitter, but then it is a threat to everyone and everything as we know it
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    Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,999

    Dura_Ace said:

    Cookie said:

    But things we do - like preventing white men from joining the RAF, for example - would appear to be placing another objective ahead of your ability to carry out war effectively.

    You still end up with the same number of pilots, etc. so how does biasing recruitment against white men affect combat efficacy?
    I think someone is assuming a drop in standards to get sufficient applicants, in the required groups.

    To be fair, this is what the police did.
    The British military aviation training system is very narrow pipeline that wings comparatively few crew every year. The pool of applicants is so large compared to the available places there is no need to reduce entry standards no matter how the intake is demographically conditioned.

    For decades aircrew in particular were recruited by looking for a definite type - privately educated hooligans with an excess of self-confidence, an aptitude for team sports and a lack of intellect. Basically, people like me. Of course, the system wasn't perfect and the occasional comprehensively educated intellectual introvert slipped through but they could be shuffled off to the C-130 fleet.

    So the senior officers on selection panels tended to be of a particular type looking to recruit 21 year old versions of themselves. Without some active measures this particular niche of the Armed Forces is never going to reflect the composition of the country it is putative defending.
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    LeonLeon Posts: 47,215
    Working From Home is Coming To An End

    Bwahahahahahahahah


    https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20230206-the-companies-backtracking-on-flexible-work


    Get back to your desks, wage-slaves
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    SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,897
    Leon said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Nigelb said:

    The USP of Twitter was (and still is) basically for the user to be able to curate their own user experience; that's what makes it so useful a tool. They've made that considerably more hit and miss.

    Elon has made it much easier for nutters to publish, and he is apparently monetizing the MAGA crowd on that basis. For the rest of us, yes, it is a much poorer consumer experience.
    How?

    Genuine question. I am reading this debate with some bewilderment

    The big change in Twitter that I can see is that there is now a choice of two tweet streams. One is more tik tok in nature. “For you”. It is tweets that the algos reckon you might find interesting based on your prior engagement (and sometimes I do find them interesting)

    The other stream is “following” which is Twitter as it always was. Your can toggle between the two. Takes half a second

    There are a few people who have been allowed back on Twitter who shouldn’t have ever been banned, on grounds of free speech alone

    That’s it. That is the big change so far. Or am I blind or deluded?!
    The big change, is the change of management.

    As with Trump, Musk is a divisive figure, and many of the commentators are looking primarily at the personalities rather than the policies.
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    MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 50,125
    On topic - who the hell are these "Tory members" who would Truss is supposedly popular with?

    1. She will never get a chance to stand again - the MPs will see to that.

    2. The members wouldn't go near her again with a 20 foot pole.

    Sorry to say it, but as someone still inside the Conservative Party, this header is utter - uninformed - fantasy.
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    DriverDriver Posts: 4,522
    Nigelb said:

    algarkirk said:

    Going back for a moment to the discussion Hezza's speech in the Lords, while it was excellent in so many ways it, SFAICS, missed out the difficulties; which are these

    1) He lauds the single market. But with the single exception of FoM between countries at very different levels of development the SM was not the big issue in the Brexit debate. SM as regulatory trade harmonisation with an international arbitration system would never have precipitated Brexit.

    2) He ignores the repeated Referendum issues. He ignores the political union aspects. He ignored the non democratic elements. he ignores the creeping politicisation of what began as a big trade association.

    So while the rhetoric is great, he actually repeats the problem. On the whole the UK wanted half of what the EU had become (mostly about trade) but not the other half (mostly about politics).

    But the thrust of his speech was about the undesirability of the regulations bill, and more generally the cluelessness around what Brexit is about, not a call to rejoin.
    In which case it is rather a waste of time and energy. Moaning about the past doesn't improve the future.
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    SandraMcSandraMc Posts: 599
    Cyclefree said:

    Anyway, today is my birthday. When my father reached the age I am now he had less than 9 months left to live.

    Also the cats decided to mark the occasion by leaving a large dead bird on the kitchen floor - along with feathers scattered everywhere - so clearing that up will be my first task of the day. There is no cat flap in the kitchen so they must have killed it outside, dragged it in through the cat flap downstairs and brought it upstairs. It is quite determined and skilful of them. I only wish they could use that skill to bring me a cup of tea in bed or, even, clean the bloody thing up themselves.

    The joys of country living, eh!

    Happy birthday, Cyclefree. It is also my husband's birthday - and Charles Dickens'.
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    DriverDriver Posts: 4,522

    On topic - who the hell are these "Tory members" who would Truss is supposedly popular with?

    1. She will never get a chance to stand again - the MPs will see to that.

    2. The members wouldn't go near her again with a 20 foot pole.

    Sorry to say it, but as someone still inside the Conservative Party, this header is utter - uninformed - fantasy.

    One of the biggest trends in the past six months has been strident and utterly self-convinced analysis of the Tory party from outside.
  • Options

    On topic - who the hell are these "Tory members" who would Truss is supposedly popular with?

    1. She will never get a chance to stand again - the MPs will see to that.

    2. The members wouldn't go near her again with a 20 foot pole.

    Sorry to say it, but as someone still inside the Conservative Party, this header is utter - uninformed - fantasy.

    The people that voted for her last time? 65% of the party?
This discussion has been closed.