The point being they were an even bigger shit show when they were in public hands. Priatisation gave us the ability to move away from them. I had Mercury and then Virgin (and a hugely better service) as soon as possible in the 90s while BT were still no where in sight. Something that was actually illegal prior to 1982.
Using the continued failings of the formally public company as an argument against the ability to choose other, better service providers is, frankly, perverse.
So you are, as usual, talking bollocks
You've worked in telecoms have you? It sounds like you haven't, because you are talking out of your rear end.
If BT had been allowed to install FTTP to every home, we'd have the best broadband network in the world. It would have cost a fraction of what it is costing now. These are objective facts, feel free to Google FTTP rollout per KM now vs 1980 but I know you won't.
Following on from my previous post about Putin, here's some more that makes it seem as though he is utterly disconnected to reality:
"Russia's invasion of Ukraine has already led to Ukraine's "demilitarisation", Putin claims as he continues his speech in St Petersburg - an objective named by Moscow at the start of the war.
"As regards demilitarisation, look, Ukraine will soon completely stop using its own hardware," he tells the economic forum in St Petersburg.
Kyiv has "nothing left", he declares.
"One cannot fight for too long like that. Do you understand?" Putin says.
Mr. Boy, the fiction that England 'must' be split up rather than have its own Parliament is the view of those who have no idea that English identity exists. The sort of politicians who are content to be British but rather wary of ever being English.
Whether England's regions should have their own representation in a federal set up is a question for the English, I'm not expressing a normative view here. I'm simply pointing out that a federal set up where one part is 90% of the population of the whole is going to run into problems pretty quickly. But ignoring Scotland's desire to run much of its own affairs simply wasn't, and still isn't, an option, sorry.
Fine and when Scotland gets Tory UK governments it doesn't vote for like now then it has its own Parliament for most of its domestic policy.
However if and when England votes for a majority of Tory MPs but gets a Labour UK government thanks to Scottish and Welsh Labour MPs then there will be a huge backlash in England in the way there wasn't in 1964 and 1974 when the same thing happened as then we were all one Union whereas now we are effectively a Federal UK with every home nation except England having its own Parliament for most of its domestic policy. Now England does not even have English Votes for English Laws
British Telecom literally wrote the book on FTTP, in fact they were so good at it other countries paid us for advice. Many of the patents, innovations and technology were invented here in the UK.
When St Margaret stopped BT's FTTP rollout because of fears it would damage competition, we sold all our expertise and knowledge, to South Korea.
Who leads the world in broadband now? South Korea.
I will not be argued with by people that have no actual knowledge of working in this sector, as is manifestly clear from some of the absolute rubbish I see written on here about BT.
You learnt so much from your time in a customer call centre I see.
I'm happy to support free choice, just people need to accept that the only reason we are having good outcomes now in FTTP rollout is because of regulation, not because of the market working. The Government and Ofcom concluded the market had failed.
Specifically regulation that has forced OpenReach to compete and treat customers equally, which in-turn has made it viable for other companies to roll-out fibre on a large scale, because prior to that OpenReach could mess them around with access, charges, phone services, and so on.
Nobody is saying don't regulate, what the state has done is put a gun to BT's head and say "stop dicking around", now that OpenReach is behaving better the market is working quite well.
Following on from my previous post about Putin, here's some more that makes it seem as though he is utterly disconnected to reality:
"Russia's invasion of Ukraine has already led to Ukraine's "demilitarisation", Putin claims as he continues his speech in St Petersburg - an objective named by Moscow at the start of the war.
"As regards demilitarisation, look, Ukraine will soon completely stop using its own hardware," he tells the economic forum in St Petersburg.
Kyiv has "nothing left", he declares.
"One cannot fight for too long like that. Do you understand?" Putin says.
LOL. Oryx has documented 651 Russian tanks either abandoned or captured by the Ukrainians, leaving the defenders with considerably more tanks now, than they had at the start of the war 16 months ago!
Personally as a patriotic Brit who loves this country, I am proud of the innovations we've made and some of the companies and institutions we created.
Were they perfect, heck no. But the Tories are only interested in selling them off to the lowest bidder and damaging our legacies.
The country that invented the train can't run one on time. The country that pioneered the sewage system has yearly droughts. The country that invented much of the mobile technology system can't even get a train to have a reliable phone signal.
We are on our arses, it is time we did something different. Let's figure out what works and what doesn't. This country is broken.
British Telecom literally wrote the book on FTTP, in fact they were so good at it other countries paid us for advice. Many of the patents, innovations and technology were invented here in the UK.
When St Margaret stopped BT's FTTP rollout because of fears it would damage competition, we sold all our expertise and knowledge, to South Korea.
Who leads the world in broadband now? South Korea.
I will not be argued with by people that have no actual knowledge of working in this sector, as is manifestly clear from some of the absolute rubbish I see written on here about BT.
You learnt so much from your time in a customer call centre I see.
Attack me personally when you've lost the argument. Good evening, prat.
The point being they were an even bigger shit show when they were in public hands. Priatisation gave us the ability to move away from them. I had Mercury and then Virgin (and a hugely better service) as soon as possible in the 90s while BT were still no where in sight. Something that was actually illegal prior to 1982.
Using the continued failings of the formally public company as an argument against the ability to choose other, better service providers is, frankly, perverse.
So you are, as usual, talking bollocks
You've worked in telecoms have you? It sounds like you haven't, because you are talking out of your rear end.
If BT had been allowed to install FTTP to every home, we'd have the best broadband network in the world. It would have cost a fraction of what it is costing now. These are objective facts, feel free to Google FTTP rollout per KM now vs 1980 but I know you won't.
Sod off out of here.
"This call is being monitored for customer service purposes. What is your issue please caller".
I suppose we should be glad that at least you weren't doing it from India.
Mr. L, the political divergence is a natural consequence of embedding a permanent political division of powers.
Labour were simply concerned with getting themselves an eternal fiefdom (ahem). They didn't consider, or didn't understand, that fiddling about with the political settlement might have consequences beyond perpetual electoral glory for Labour.
Not just the fact of devolution itself, but the asymmetry of devoloution, leads to different issues being relevant for a UK GE in England and Scotland. This wouldn’t be the case if there was an English Parliament.
Or if we still had EVEL
You should! As long as you’re happy for the DUP not to prop up the Tories in extremists.
In 2017 and 2010 the Tories won a majority in England, so would have needed neither LD or DUP support to get most English domestic policy through
Agreed. But 2017?
May won a clear majority in England then with 296 Conservative MPs in England to just 227 Labour MPs in England and 8 LDs
Following on from my previous post about Putin, here's some more that makes it seem as though he is utterly disconnected to reality:
"Russia's invasion of Ukraine has already led to Ukraine's "demilitarisation", Putin claims as he continues his speech in St Petersburg - an objective named by Moscow at the start of the war.
"As regards demilitarisation, look, Ukraine will soon completely stop using its own hardware," he tells the economic forum in St Petersburg.
Kyiv has "nothing left", he declares.
"One cannot fight for too long like that. Do you understand?" Putin says.
It's obvious bollocks, but looks to me a way of saying "objective achieved" and accepting no further progress will be had. A step in the right direction but not yet a withdrawal.
I'm happy to support free choice, just people need to accept that the only reason we are having good outcomes now in FTTP rollout is because of regulation, not because of the market working. The Government and Ofcom concluded the market had failed.
Specifically regulation that has forced OpenReach to compete and treat customers equally, which in-turn has made it viable for other companies to roll-out fibre on a large scale, because prior to that OpenReach could mess them around with access, charges, phone services, and so on.
Nobody is saying don't regulate, what the state has done is put a gun to BT's head and say "stop dicking around", now that OpenReach is behaving better the market is working quite well.
*Openreach.
The regulation was if you don't stop dicking around we will take Openreach and your copper assets off you. That's why BT's approach changed.
Nobody serious thinks it is alt-nets or competitors that will provide a large-scale rollout. It will be a combination of Virgin via HFC/FTTP in newer areas and Openreach doing FTTP. Many of the alt-nets are slowly going bust or now slowing down the rollout. Virgin/Liberty will likely buy these up as they did with Smallworld
British Telecom literally wrote the book on FTTP, in fact they were so good at it other countries paid us for advice. Many of the patents, innovations and technology were invented here in the UK.
When St Margaret stopped BT's FTTP rollout because of fears it would damage competition, we sold all our expertise and knowledge, to South Korea.
Who leads the world in broadband now? South Korea.
I will not be argued with by people that have no actual knowledge of working in this sector, as is manifestly clear from some of the absolute rubbish I see written on here about BT.
You learnt so much from your time in a customer call centre I see.
Attack me personally when you've lost the argument. Good evening, prat.
No I have been answering your fatuous comments. I just like taking the piss out of you as a sideline.
Personally as a patriotic Brit who loves this country, I am proud of the innovations we've made and some of the companies and institutions we created.
Were they perfect, heck no. But the Tories are only interested in selling them off to the lowest bidder and damaging our legacies.
The country that invented the train can't run one on time. The country that pioneered the sewage system has yearly droughts. The country that invented much of the mobile technology system can't even get a train to have a reliable phone signal.
We are on our arses, it is time we did something different. Let's figure out what works and what doesn't. This country is broken.
If only the Romans had thought of having a sewage system. If we weren’t “on our arses” so much then it would at least give the sewerage system some time to regroup however.
Following on from my previous post about Putin, here's some more that makes it seem as though he is utterly disconnected to reality:
"Russia's invasion of Ukraine has already led to Ukraine's "demilitarisation", Putin claims as he continues his speech in St Petersburg - an objective named by Moscow at the start of the war.
"As regards demilitarisation, look, Ukraine will soon completely stop using its own hardware," he tells the economic forum in St Petersburg.
Kyiv has "nothing left", he declares.
"One cannot fight for too long like that. Do you understand?" Putin says.
LOL. Oryx has documented 651 Russian tanks either abandoned or captured by the Ukrainians, leaving the defenders with considerably more tanks now, than they had at the start of the war 16 months ago!
Found this in another place -
“Well you can kindof see what he's getting at. Ukraine has used shot of a load of stronk Russian kit and replaced it with gay, pathetic, weak Patriots, Challengers, Leopards, NLAWs, Javelins, GMLRS, Hawks, NASAMS, Panzerfaust 3's, Storm Shadows...
Clearly when the Ukrainians get their hands all over decadent moribund lebsian F-16's, Gripens, swing-roling Eurofighters and the well-known STD-carrying ATACMS, Zelensky will be well screwed.”
The point being they were an even bigger shit show when they were in public hands. Priatisation gave us the ability to move away from them. I had Mercury and then Virgin (and a hugely better service) as soon as possible in the 90s while BT were still no where in sight. Something that was actually illegal prior to 1982.
Using the continued failings of the formally public company as an argument against the ability to choose other, better service providers is, frankly, perverse.
So you are, as usual, talking bollocks
You've worked in telecoms have you? It sounds like you haven't, because you are talking out of your rear end.
If BT had been allowed to install FTTP to every home, we'd have the best broadband network in the world. It would have cost a fraction of what it is costing now. These are objective facts, feel free to Google FTTP rollout per KM now vs 1980 but I know you won't.
Sod off out of here.
"This call is being monitored for customer service purposes. What is your issue please caller".
I suppose we should be glad that at least you weren't doing it from India.
I'm glad you've conceded you don't know what you are talking about.
Why not have English MPs only sitting at Westminster on, say, Monday and Tuesday debating English only matters and all MPs sitting on other days debating UK wide matters?
Mr. Boy, the fiction that England 'must' be split up rather than have its own Parliament is the view of those who have no idea that English identity exists. The sort of politicians who are content to be British but rather wary of ever being English.
Whether England's regions should have their own representation in a federal set up is a question for the English, I'm not expressing a normative view here. I'm simply pointing out that a federal set up where one part is 90% of the population of the whole is going to run into problems pretty quickly. But ignoring Scotland's desire to run much of its own affairs simply wasn't, and still isn't, an option, sorry.
Well it's certainly inconvenient for a federal set up that one country is much bigger than the others. But nevertheless, England is much bigger than Scotland. You can't just wish that fact away.
British Telecom literally wrote the book on FTTP, in fact they were so good at it other countries paid us for advice. Many of the patents, innovations and technology were invented here in the UK.
When St Margaret stopped BT's FTTP rollout because of fears it would damage competition, we sold all our expertise and knowledge, to South Korea.
Who leads the world in broadband now? South Korea.
I will not be argued with by people that have no actual knowledge of working in this sector, as is manifestly clear from some of the absolute rubbish I see written on here about BT.
You learnt so much from your time in a customer call centre I see.
Attack me personally when you've lost the argument. Good evening, prat.
No I have been answering your fatuous comments. I just like taking the piss out of you as a sideline.
You're doing a woeful job, your comebacks are about as strong as my phone signal, not very.
British Telecom literally wrote the book on FTTP, in fact they were so good at it other countries paid us for advice. Many of the patents, innovations and technology were invented here in the UK.
When St Margaret stopped BT's FTTP rollout because of fears it would damage competition, we sold all our expertise and knowledge, to South Korea.
Who leads the world in broadband now? South Korea.
I will not be argued with by people that have no actual knowledge of working in this sector, as is manifestly clear from some of the absolute rubbish I see written on here about BT.
My experience of dealing with then in a business context absolutely conforms with that view, FWIW.
Though of course its failures were largely as a result of its effective monopoly position, which would have persisted absent privatisation. Like much of what Thatcher did, that was a decent idea, badly botched.
Personally as a patriotic Brit who loves this country, I am proud of the innovations we've made and some of the companies and institutions we created.
Were they perfect, heck no. But the Tories are only interested in selling them off to the lowest bidder and damaging our legacies.
The country that invented the train can't run one on time. The country that pioneered the sewage system has yearly droughts. The country that invented much of the mobile technology system can't even get a train to have a reliable phone signal.
We are on our arses, it is time we did something different. Let's figure out what works and what doesn't. This country is broken.
Trains were invented and run very successfully by private individuals and companies for over a century and then fucked over by the nationalised operation who shut down most of the lines and created a service the third world would be ashamed of.
That's a fascinating story on Britain losing its telecoms lead due to anti-state dogma, Horse, although I'm not sure if all that language was quite called for.
It reminds me of an oft-told story I've often heard from a friend in computing. Britain was still pretty far ahead in the late '80s with machines like the Acorn Archimedes, largely due to the state-funded BBC Micro, which in turn had been hugely criticised at the time on the hoary old Thatcherite ideological grounds of the Dti "state picking winners". Result : no more state-funded projects like the BBC MIcro, and not that much later, most of the main parts of the British hardware computer industry had either left a long way behind, or bought out. Only Starmer shows any sign of knowing how to fix this failure of ideology in industrial policy in the long-term, unlike any of the other party leaders.
British Telecom literally wrote the book on FTTP, in fact they were so good at it other countries paid us for advice. Many of the patents, innovations and technology were invented here in the UK.
When St Margaret stopped BT's FTTP rollout because of fears it would damage competition, we sold all our expertise and knowledge, to South Korea.
Who leads the world in broadband now? South Korea.
I will not be argued with by people that have no actual knowledge of working in this sector, as is manifestly clear from some of the absolute rubbish I see written on here about BT.
My experience of dealing with then in a business context absolutely conforms with that view, FWIW.
BT under the current leadership are doing a great job, the restructuring under Marc Allera has been a breath of fresh air.
Having Openreach as a proper arms-length infrastructure operator was always what it should have been, I am glad the current BT leadership team have accepted that and ploughed the money into a proper sustainable business. I have no doubt they will reach their stated targets by 2030.
Personally as a patriotic Brit who loves this country, I am proud of the innovations we've made and some of the companies and institutions we created.
Were they perfect, heck no. But the Tories are only interested in selling them off to the lowest bidder and damaging our legacies.
The country that invented the train can't run one on time. The country that pioneered the sewage system has yearly droughts. The country that invented much of the mobile technology system can't even get a train to have a reliable phone signal.
We are on our arses, it is time we did something different. Let's figure out what works and what doesn't. This country is broken.
If only the Romans had thought of having a sewage system. If we weren’t “on our arses” so much then it would at least give the sewerage system some time to regroup however.
The Indus Valley civilisation had a very good sewage system more than a millennium before the Romans and two millennia before us.
Personally as a patriotic Brit who loves this country, I am proud of the innovations we've made and some of the companies and institutions we created.
Were they perfect, heck no. But the Tories are only interested in selling them off to the lowest bidder and damaging our legacies.
The country that invented the train can't run one on time. The country that pioneered the sewage system has yearly droughts. The country that invented much of the mobile technology system can't even get a train to have a reliable phone signal.
We are on our arses, it is time we did something different. Let's figure out what works and what doesn't. This country is broken.
If only the Romans had thought of having a sewage system. If we weren’t “on our arses” so much then it would at least give the sewerage system some time to regroup however.
The Indus Valley civilisation had a very good sewage system more than a millennium before the Romans and two millennia before us.
Were you alive then? It would explain most of your very out of date views.
On my way home from the Glasgow Real Ale Festival, so please excuse any mince I post this evening. However, the important question is - would you have declared?
Following on from my previous post about Putin, here's some more that makes it seem as though he is utterly disconnected to reality:
"Russia's invasion of Ukraine has already led to Ukraine's "demilitarisation", Putin claims as he continues his speech in St Petersburg - an objective named by Moscow at the start of the war.
"As regards demilitarisation, look, Ukraine will soon completely stop using its own hardware," he tells the economic forum in St Petersburg.
Kyiv has "nothing left", he declares.
"One cannot fight for too long like that. Do you understand?" Putin says.
It's obvious bollocks, but looks to me a way of saying "objective achieved" and accepting no further progress will be had. A step in the right direction but not yet a withdrawal.
It sounds more he's clutching at straws and thinking that if it goes on long enough, Ukraine will eventually capitulate.
Personally as a patriotic Brit who loves this country, I am proud of the innovations we've made and some of the companies and institutions we created.
Were they perfect, heck no. But the Tories are only interested in selling them off to the lowest bidder and damaging our legacies.
The country that invented the train can't run one on time. The country that pioneered the sewage system has yearly droughts. The country that invented much of the mobile technology system can't even get a train to have a reliable phone signal.
We are on our arses, it is time we did something different. Let's figure out what works and what doesn't. This country is broken.
Trains were invented and run very successfully by private individuals and companies for over a century and then fucked over by the nationalised operation who shut down most of the lines and created a service the third world would be ashamed of.
The history is a very mixed bag. I'm not sure there are any 'railway' billionaires are there?
Part of the problem has always been endless government meddling, but not all.
Personally as a patriotic Brit who loves this country, I am proud of the innovations we've made and some of the companies and institutions we created.
Were they perfect, heck no. But the Tories are only interested in selling them off to the lowest bidder and damaging our legacies.
The country that invented the train can't run one on time. The country that pioneered the sewage system has yearly droughts. The country that invented much of the mobile technology system can't even get a train to have a reliable phone signal.
We are on our arses, it is time we did something different. Let's figure out what works and what doesn't. This country is broken.
If only the Romans had thought of having a sewage system. If we weren’t “on our arses” so much then it would at least give the sewerage system some time to regroup however.
The Indus Valley civilisation had a very good sewage system more than a millennium before the Romans and two millennia before us.
Were you alive then? It would explain most of your very out of date views.
Well we know you weren't around to suffer the shit show that was the GPO or the nationalised rail network.
Why not have English MPs only sitting at Westminster on, say, Monday and Tuesday debating English only matters and all MPs sitting on other days debating UK wide matters?
That’s a good resolution of the ‘how to do it without adding hundreds more politicians and thousands more hangers-on’ question, but doesn’t resolve the ‘spending the whole election campaign talking about schools and hospitals’ question.
I suspect the solution is a much smaller Parliament of perhaps 100 members, 49 of whom are from England, that sit two days a week to discuss federal matters such as defence, international relations, federal taxation etc.
Personally as a patriotic Brit who loves this country, I am proud of the innovations we've made and some of the companies and institutions we created.
Were they perfect, heck no. But the Tories are only interested in selling them off to the lowest bidder and damaging our legacies.
The country that invented the train can't run one on time. The country that pioneered the sewage system has yearly droughts. The country that invented much of the mobile technology system can't even get a train to have a reliable phone signal.
We are on our arses, it is time we did something different. Let's figure out what works and what doesn't. This country is broken.
If only the Romans had thought of having a sewage system. If we weren’t “on our arses” so much then it would at least give the sewerage system some time to regroup however.
The Indus Valley civilisation had a very good sewage system more than a millennium before the Romans and two millennia before us.
Sorry was using the Romans as an obvious example. I think the chaps in the Orkneys had the whole sewage and running water thing going when god was a boy as well. Probably for the better for all those early Scots who foresaw Nichola Sturgeon’s downfall and needed to avoid pissing themselves laughing.
Personally as a patriotic Brit who loves this country, I am proud of the innovations we've made and some of the companies and institutions we created.
Were they perfect, heck no. But the Tories are only interested in selling them off to the lowest bidder and damaging our legacies.
The country that invented the train can't run one on time. The country that pioneered the sewage system has yearly droughts. The country that invented much of the mobile technology system can't even get a train to have a reliable phone signal.
We are on our arses, it is time we did something different. Let's figure out what works and what doesn't. This country is broken.
If only the Romans had thought of having a sewage system. If we weren’t “on our arses” so much then it would at least give the sewerage system some time to regroup however.
The Indus Valley civilisation had a very good sewage system more than a millennium before the Romans and two millennia before us.
I believe the odd Romano-British sewer is still in operation. Certainly at the Baths in, well, Bath. Possibly elsewhere?
Personally as a patriotic Brit who loves this country, I am proud of the innovations we've made and some of the companies and institutions we created.
Were they perfect, heck no. But the Tories are only interested in selling them off to the lowest bidder and damaging our legacies.
The country that invented the train can't run one on time. The country that pioneered the sewage system has yearly droughts. The country that invented much of the mobile technology system can't even get a train to have a reliable phone signal.
We are on our arses, it is time we did something different. Let's figure out what works and what doesn't. This country is broken.
If only the Romans had thought of having a sewage system. If we weren’t “on our arses” so much then it would at least give the sewerage system some time to regroup however.
The Indus Valley civilisation had a very good sewage system more than a millennium before the Romans and two millennia before us.
Were you alive then? It would explain most of your very out of date views.
Well we know you weren't around to suffer the shit show that was the GPO or the nationalised rail network.
We know you've been visiting Mars when looking at the current telecoms industry in this country.
The country that invented much of the mobile technology system can't even get a train to have a reliable phone signal.
I didn't realise that AT&T, Nortel, Ericsson, Nokia, Siemens, Qualcomm, NTT, Alcatel, Motorola, Bell Labs, and many more companies were British. You learn a lot on PB.
Personally as a patriotic Brit who loves this country, I am proud of the innovations we've made and some of the companies and institutions we created.
Were they perfect, heck no. But the Tories are only interested in selling them off to the lowest bidder and damaging our legacies.
The country that invented the train can't run one on time. The country that pioneered the sewage system has yearly droughts. The country that invented much of the mobile technology system can't even get a train to have a reliable phone signal.
We are on our arses, it is time we did something different. Let's figure out what works and what doesn't. This country is broken.
If only the Romans had thought of having a sewage system. If we weren’t “on our arses” so much then it would at least give the sewerage system some time to regroup however.
The Indus Valley civilisation had a very good sewage system more than a millennium before the Romans and two millennia before us.
I believe the odd Romano-British sewer is still in operation. Certainly at the Baths in, well, Bath. Possibly elsewhere?
I'm happy to support free choice, just people need to accept that the only reason we are having good outcomes now in FTTP rollout is because of regulation, not because of the market working. The Government and Ofcom concluded the market had failed.
Specifically regulation that has forced OpenReach to compete and treat customers equally, which in-turn has made it viable for other companies to roll-out fibre on a large scale, because prior to that OpenReach could mess them around with access, charges, phone services, and so on.
Nobody is saying don't regulate, what the state has done is put a gun to BT's head and say "stop dicking around", now that OpenReach is behaving better the market is working quite well.
*Openreach.
The regulation was if you don't stop dicking around we will take Openreach and your copper assets off you. That's why BT's approach changed.
Nobody serious thinks it is alt-nets or competitors that will provide a large-scale rollout. It will be a combination of Virgin via HFC/FTTP in newer areas and Openreach doing FTTP. Many of the alt-nets are slowly going bust or now slowing down the rollout. Virgin/Liberty will likely buy these up as they did with Smallworld
VMO2's plan is to completely replace their cable network with FTTP and expand it as well.
Mr. Boy, the fiction that England 'must' be split up rather than have its own Parliament is the view of those who have no idea that English identity exists. The sort of politicians who are content to be British but rather wary of ever being English.
Whether England's regions should have their own representation in a federal set up is a question for the English, I'm not expressing a normative view here. I'm simply pointing out that a federal set up where one part is 90% of the population of the whole is going to run into problems pretty quickly. But ignoring Scotland's desire to run much of its own affairs simply wasn't, and still isn't, an option, sorry.
We discussed that on PB quite a lot and (sometimes) amicably in 2013-14, but couldn't resolve that contradiction. And we all know what old Uncle Karl said about contradictions.
Personally as a patriotic Brit who loves this country, I am proud of the innovations we've made and some of the companies and institutions we created.
Were they perfect, heck no. But the Tories are only interested in selling them off to the lowest bidder and damaging our legacies.
The country that invented the train can't run one on time. The country that pioneered the sewage system has yearly droughts. The country that invented much of the mobile technology system can't even get a train to have a reliable phone signal.
We are on our arses, it is time we did something different. Let's figure out what works and what doesn't. This country is broken.
Trains were invented and run very successfully by private individuals and companies for over a century and then fucked over by the nationalised operation who shut down most of the lines and created a service the third world would be ashamed of.
The history is a very mixed bag. I'm not sure there are any 'railway' billionaires are there?
Part of the problem has always been endless government meddling, but not all.
Sone people got very, very rich in the railway boom. Some of those then became very, very poor. Peto was a fascinating example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morton_Peto
Personally as a patriotic Brit who loves this country, I am proud of the innovations we've made and some of the companies and institutions we created.
Were they perfect, heck no. But the Tories are only interested in selling them off to the lowest bidder and damaging our legacies.
The country that invented the train can't run one on time. The country that pioneered the sewage system has yearly droughts. The country that invented much of the mobile technology system can't even get a train to have a reliable phone signal.
We are on our arses, it is time we did something different. Let's figure out what works and what doesn't. This country is broken.
If only the Romans had thought of having a sewage system. If we weren’t “on our arses” so much then it would at least give the sewerage system some time to regroup however.
The Indus Valley civilisation had a very good sewage system more than a millennium before the Romans and two millennia before us.
I believe the odd Romano-British sewer is still in operation. Certainly at the Baths in, well, Bath. Possibly elsewhere?
Mr. Boy, the fiction that England 'must' be split up rather than have its own Parliament is the view of those who have no idea that English identity exists. The sort of politicians who are content to be British but rather wary of ever being English.
Whether England's regions should have their own representation in a federal set up is a question for the English, I'm not expressing a normative view here. I'm simply pointing out that a federal set up where one part is 90% of the population of the whole is going to run into problems pretty quickly. But ignoring Scotland's desire to run much of its own affairs simply wasn't, and still isn't, an option, sorry.
Well it's certainly inconvenient for a federal set up that one country is much bigger than the others. But nevertheless, England is much bigger than Scotland. You can't just wish that fact away.
There have been other countries where one part of a federation was far bigger than the others. Prussia in Imperial/Weimar Germany and Russia in the Soviet Union. We could do worse than model ourselves on those stunning successes.
Mr. Boy, the fiction that England 'must' be split up rather than have its own Parliament is the view of those who have no idea that English identity exists. The sort of politicians who are content to be British but rather wary of ever being English.
Even the strongest English regional identity wouldn't support local parliaments and the like, for another absurdity.
That's often said... But is it true? Really? There are plenty of bits of England with chunky regional identities.
Yorkshire, natch. Granadaland, as they used to call it on the telly. The far south west, Cornwall and Devon. Proper East Anglia London as a great metropolis distinct from the boring bits outside the M25.
That's not to say that there aren't bits of England that aren't bland and a bit anonymous- there's a great sweep from Kent to Hampshire to Northamptonshire to Essex which don't really have a regional focus. Or rather, the focus is London and those places define themselves as Not London, Actually.
But what would this English Parliament be for? What are the decisions that should be taken at that level that wouldn't be better done at a smaller scale? Or is it just for the feels?
(My answer remains the Spanish one, when they decentralised after Franco. Put the devolved powers of Scotland in a box. If the other existing devolved nations, or London, wish to take on some or all of those responsibilities and have a plan to do so democratically, they can. If a county (or more likely, a cluster of counties) wish to do the same, they can. The bits of England with strong regional sense will quickly grab a lot. The more generic regions may take a while to build up, but are likely to follow the same path.)
Mr. Boy, the fiction that England 'must' be split up rather than have its own Parliament is the view of those who have no idea that English identity exists. The sort of politicians who are content to be British but rather wary of ever being English.
Whether England's regions should have their own representation in a federal set up is a question for the English, I'm not expressing a normative view here. I'm simply pointing out that a federal set up where one part is 90% of the population of the whole is going to run into problems pretty quickly. But ignoring Scotland's desire to run much of its own affairs simply wasn't, and still isn't, an option, sorry.
Well it's certainly inconvenient for a federal set up that one country is much bigger than the others. But nevertheless, England is much bigger than Scotland. You can't just wish that fact away.
There have been other countries where one part of a federation was far bigger than the others. Prussia in Imperial/Weimar Germany and Russia in the Soviet Union. We could do worse than model ourselves on those stunning successes.
Prussia was also distinct during the NS-Zeit, or at least part of it. IIRC Goering was Ministerpraesident in the 1930s. But I'm not sure how far the different states were gegleischschaltete from 1933 onwards.
Why not have English MPs only sitting at Westminster on, say, Monday and Tuesday debating English only matters and all MPs sitting on other days debating UK wide matters?
I have no idea, seems fair to me.
Also, Onlylivingboy makes the point about the disparity in the size of the administrative regions of England and the other Home Nations, but name a scenario where this becomes a constitutional problem? Shouldn't be too tricky if it's so obvious.
If BT was still nationalised, I doubt people would still be waiting months for a phone line.
As OldKingCole mentioned recently, it would also be important not to conflate ownership with technological changes, because, and particularly in the case of telecoms, these both happened around at a similar time.
One helped galvanise the other. The idea that BT would be better now if it were still in public hands - particularly if it still had the telecoms monopoly as it did until pivatisation, is for the birds. There would simply have been no pressure for improvement.
The only reason they improved was because of Government regulation. What is the point in arguing with you about this when you don't respond to any of the points I made?
Before my current job, I worked in the telecoms sector. I can tell you for a categorical fact that BT was an absolute basket case.
Which is precisely why we need privatisation.
BT being a basket case means you can choose other providers.
Nationalisation and BT is a basket case means you're stuck with the basket case.
That's it. You've 100% demonstrated the need for privatisation in a single statement.
Personally as a patriotic Brit who loves this country, I am proud of the innovations we've made and some of the companies and institutions we created.
Were they perfect, heck no. But the Tories are only interested in selling them off to the lowest bidder and damaging our legacies.
The country that invented the train can't run one on time. The country that pioneered the sewage system has yearly droughts. The country that invented much of the mobile technology system can't even get a train to have a reliable phone signal.
We are on our arses, it is time we did something different. Let's figure out what works and what doesn't. This country is broken.
If only the Romans had thought of having a sewage system. If we weren’t “on our arses” so much then it would at least give the sewerage system some time to regroup however.
The Indus Valley civilisation had a very good sewage system more than a millennium before the Romans and two millennia before us.
Were you alive then? It would explain most of your very out of date views.
Well we know you weren't around to suffer the shit show that was the GPO or the nationalised rail network.
I can tell you that the shittiness coefficent rapidly increased on privatisation!
Personally as a patriotic Brit who loves this country, I am proud of the innovations we've made and some of the companies and institutions we created.
Were they perfect, heck no. But the Tories are only interested in selling them off to the lowest bidder and damaging our legacies.
The country that invented the train can't run one on time. The country that pioneered the sewage system has yearly droughts. The country that invented much of the mobile technology system can't even get a train to have a reliable phone signal.
We are on our arses, it is time we did something different. Let's figure out what works and what doesn't. This country is broken.
If only the Romans had thought of having a sewage system. If we weren’t “on our arses” so much then it would at least give the sewerage system some time to regroup however.
The Indus Valley civilisation had a very good sewage system more than a millennium before the Romans and two millennia before us.
Were you alive then? It would explain most of your very out of date views.
Well we know you weren't around to suffer the shit show that was the GPO or the nationalised rail network.
We know you've been visiting Mars when looking at the current telecoms industry in this country.
CHB, when you get back from your run please realise that RT is 100% right as to the awfulness of the telephone network pre-privatisation. I can't recall the numbers, but it was something like a pound a minute to phone anywhere long-distance, and that was defined as beyond about 20 miles.
The rail network compared with today wasn't quite such an extreme case, but the comparison is still chalk and cheese.
Personally as a patriotic Brit who loves this country, I am proud of the innovations we've made and some of the companies and institutions we created.
Were they perfect, heck no. But the Tories are only interested in selling them off to the lowest bidder and damaging our legacies.
The country that invented the train can't run one on time. The country that pioneered the sewage system has yearly droughts. The country that invented much of the mobile technology system can't even get a train to have a reliable phone signal.
We are on our arses, it is time we did something different. Let's figure out what works and what doesn't. This country is broken.
If only the Romans had thought of having a sewage system. If we weren’t “on our arses” so much then it would at least give the sewerage system some time to regroup however.
The Indus Valley civilisation had a very good sewage system more than a millennium before the Romans and two millennia before us.
I believe the odd Romano-British sewer is still in operation. Certainly at the Baths in, well, Bath. Possibly elsewhere?
Bar Italia in Soho?
Oh? Not one I know.
It was a shit joke based on it being an Italian place in London we would all end up in at 6am after a night out where the loos would end up being punished violently after a few of their espressos following a good night out clubbing. A nice end to the night and a less than fresh start to the morning.
However I am pleased to discover that parts of the Cloaca Maxima are still in use today - the joys of nationalisation under the empire.
Why not have English MPs only sitting at Westminster on, say, Monday and Tuesday debating English only matters and all MPs sitting on other days debating UK wide matters?
I have no idea, seems fair to me.
Also, Onlylivingboy makes the point about the disparity in the size of the administrative regions of England and the other Home Nations, but name a scenario where this becomes a constitutional problem? Shouldn't be too tricky if it's so obvious.
Decision to hold a referendum for Scottish Independence. Voted for on any metric (seats at Westminster, Holyrood, votes cast, etc.) Permanently blocked by rUK veto. Simple as that.
Personally as a patriotic Brit who loves this country, I am proud of the innovations we've made and some of the companies and institutions we created.
Were they perfect, heck no. But the Tories are only interested in selling them off to the lowest bidder and damaging our legacies.
The country that invented the train can't run one on time. The country that pioneered the sewage system has yearly droughts. The country that invented much of the mobile technology system can't even get a train to have a reliable phone signal.
We are on our arses, it is time we did something different. Let's figure out what works and what doesn't. This country is broken.
If only the Romans had thought of having a sewage system. If we weren’t “on our arses” so much then it would at least give the sewerage system some time to regroup however.
The Indus Valley civilisation had a very good sewage system more than a millennium before the Romans and two millennia before us.
Were you alive then? It would explain most of your very out of date views.
Well we know you weren't around to suffer the shit show that was the GPO or the nationalised rail network.
I can tell you that the shittiness coefficent rapidly increased on privatisation!
Personally as a patriotic Brit who loves this country, I am proud of the innovations we've made and some of the companies and institutions we created.
Were they perfect, heck no. But the Tories are only interested in selling them off to the lowest bidder and damaging our legacies.
The country that invented the train can't run one on time. The country that pioneered the sewage system has yearly droughts. The country that invented much of the mobile technology system can't even get a train to have a reliable phone signal.
We are on our arses, it is time we did something different. Let's figure out what works and what doesn't. This country is broken.
If only the Romans had thought of having a sewage system. If we weren’t “on our arses” so much then it would at least give the sewerage system some time to regroup however.
The Indus Valley civilisation had a very good sewage system more than a millennium before the Romans and two millennia before us.
Were you alive then? It would explain most of your very out of date views.
Well we know you weren't around to suffer the shit show that was the GPO or the nationalised rail network.
I can tell you that the shittiness coefficent rapidly increased on privatisation!
This just simply isn't true.
I was there! I had to make a lot of cross country journeys and the connections went to pot as the companies wouldn't cooperate,
Comedy doesn't always age terribly well. I thought the Two Ronnies was funny in the 80s, but watching reruns it doesn't really work as well. No criticism of them - they are both funny men - but the material we find funny changes. I don't know why that should be so, but it does. It's not even that different generations find different things funny: things which are funny then are often just not funny now. Nothing to do with woke - just our collective tastes change. I guess something to do with humour being a defying of expectations; if you know the sort of thing to expect, maybe that takes away some of the humour. I still find them enjoyably clever sometimes, though (which is almost, but not quite, the same thing), like the Mastermind 'answering the previous question' specialist subject. And I find Ronnie Corbett's monologues funnier now than I did then. Monty Python, OTOH, I think has aged very well indeed and is almost as good now as it was back then.
Dad’s Army is still good. (I think, I haven’t seen an episode in about 20 years).
I saw an episode of It Ain’t Half Hot Mum about ten years ago and I thought it was actually pretty good, all things considered.
Sitcoms date OK, the good ones anyway.
Thinking about it, you're right - some sitcoms date rather better. I can confirm that Dad's Army is still good (indeed, weirdly, I'd say it's better now than it was 30 years ago. Perhaps the humour has passed through being slightly dated, if it ever was, and come through as antique.) I would also add Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads (though it's predecessor, from the 60s 'The Likely Lads' has aged terribly - it feels like the writers were terrified of letting 20 seconds go by without a joke, with the result that none of them are any good; there is no space whatsoever in the script). Also Porridge. Also Allo Allo, I think. There are a lot which have aged terribly mind (or perhaps weren't very good in the first place).
Even when sitcoms aren't uproariously funny any more, they provide a fascinating bit of social history. I got quite absorbed a year or two back by 'I Didn't Know You Cared' - a fascinating picture of 1970s Sheffield; not for the bits you were necessarily expected to laugh at, but at the background situations you were expected to take as read. Similarly, 'Chance in a Million' from the 80s (which is also genuinely still funny).
The first couple of seasons of HI-de-Hi with Simon Cadell are also massively underrated (the later seasons are total trash). I think Allo Allo follows the same pattern.
Allo' Allo' just went on too long. Interesting comment in the Blackadder programme last night about why there was no fitf
On my way home from the Glasgow Real Ale Festival, so please excuse any mince I post this evening. However, the important question is - would you have declared?
No, not with Joe Root still in. Bonkers.
If a wicket or two had fallen I’d have said Genius, but sadly I suspect we are 60-70 runs light, and may end up with a first innings deficit.
Mr. Boy, the fiction that England 'must' be split up rather than have its own Parliament is the view of those who have no idea that English identity exists. The sort of politicians who are content to be British but rather wary of ever being English.
Whether England's regions should have their own representation in a federal set up is a question for the English, I'm not expressing a normative view here. I'm simply pointing out that a federal set up where one part is 90% of the population of the whole is going to run into problems pretty quickly. But ignoring Scotland's desire to run much of its own affairs simply wasn't, and still isn't, an option, sorry.
Well it's certainly inconvenient for a federal set up that one country is much bigger than the others. But nevertheless, England is much bigger than Scotland. You can't just wish that fact away.
No, indeed not. Nor can one wish away Scotland's desire not to be run by people they didn't vote for, or pretend that devolution only exists as some kind of failed Labour Party power play. Personally, I think some kind of messy, illogical compromise is the best we can hope for.
Personally as a patriotic Brit who loves this country, I am proud of the innovations we've made and some of the companies and institutions we created.
Were they perfect, heck no. But the Tories are only interested in selling them off to the lowest bidder and damaging our legacies.
The country that invented the train can't run one on time. The country that pioneered the sewage system has yearly droughts. The country that invented much of the mobile technology system can't even get a train to have a reliable phone signal.
We are on our arses, it is time we did something different. Let's figure out what works and what doesn't. This country is broken.
If only the Romans had thought of having a sewage system. If we weren’t “on our arses” so much then it would at least give the sewerage system some time to regroup however.
The Indus Valley civilisation had a very good sewage system more than a millennium before the Romans and two millennia before us.
I believe the odd Romano-British sewer is still in operation. Certainly at the Baths in, well, Bath. Possibly elsewhere?
Bar Italia in Soho?
Oh? Not one I know.
It was a shit joke based on it being an Italian place in London we would all end up in at 6am after a night out where the loos would end up being punished violently after a few of their espressos following a good night out clubbing. A nice end to the night and a less than fresh start to the morning.
However I am pleased to discover that parts of the Cloaca Maxima are still in use today - the joys of nationalisation under the empire.
Thanks - actually I could well believe there really is a Roman sewer still working under London, though IIRS Soho is outside the main builtup area.
Mr. Boy, the fiction that England 'must' be split up rather than have its own Parliament is the view of those who have no idea that English identity exists. The sort of politicians who are content to be British but rather wary of ever being English.
Whether England's regions should have their own representation in a federal set up is a question for the English, I'm not expressing a normative view here. I'm simply pointing out that a federal set up where one part is 90% of the population of the whole is going to run into problems pretty quickly. But ignoring Scotland's desire to run much of its own affairs simply wasn't, and still isn't, an option, sorry.
Well it's certainly inconvenient for a federal set up that one country is much bigger than the others. But nevertheless, England is much bigger than Scotland. You can't just wish that fact away.
There have been other countries where one part of a federation was far bigger than the others. Prussia in Imperial/Weimar Germany and Russia in the Soviet Union. We could do worse than model ourselves on those stunning successes.
Prussia was also distinct during the NS-Zeit, or at least part of it. IIRC Goering was Ministerpraesident in the 1930s. But I'm not sure how far the different states were gegleischschaltete from 1933 onwards.
AAUI the states still legally existed but without functioning administrations as all local government was exercised by the Gau.
Personally as a patriotic Brit who loves this country, I am proud of the innovations we've made and some of the companies and institutions we created.
Were they perfect, heck no. But the Tories are only interested in selling them off to the lowest bidder and damaging our legacies.
The country that invented the train can't run one on time. The country that pioneered the sewage system has yearly droughts. The country that invented much of the mobile technology system can't even get a train to have a reliable phone signal.
We are on our arses, it is time we did something different. Let's figure out what works and what doesn't. This country is broken.
If only the Romans had thought of having a sewage system. If we weren’t “on our arses” so much then it would at least give the sewerage system some time to regroup however.
The Indus Valley civilisation had a very good sewage system more than a millennium before the Romans and two millennia before us.
I believe the odd Romano-British sewer is still in operation. Certainly at the Baths in, well, Bath. Possibly elsewhere?
Bar Italia in Soho?
Oh? Not one I know.
It was a shit joke based on it being an Italian place in London we would all end up in at 6am after a night out where the loos would end up being punished violently after a few of their espressos following a good night out clubbing. A nice end to the night and a less than fresh start to the morning.
However I am pleased to discover that parts of the Cloaca Maxima are still in use today - the joys of nationalisation under the empire.
Thanks - actually I could well believe there really is a Roman sewer still working under London, though IIRS Soho is outside the main builtup area.
Agreed re C. M.
I guess the Fleet and the Wallbrook were technically sewers and probably part of the sewerage network today but I can’t be arsed to check so you are most likely, in my expert opinion, correct.
Personally as a patriotic Brit who loves this country, I am proud of the innovations we've made and some of the companies and institutions we created.
Were they perfect, heck no. But the Tories are only interested in selling them off to the lowest bidder and damaging our legacies.
The country that invented the train can't run one on time. The country that pioneered the sewage system has yearly droughts. The country that invented much of the mobile technology system can't even get a train to have a reliable phone signal.
We are on our arses, it is time we did something different. Let's figure out what works and what doesn't. This country is broken.
If only the Romans had thought of having a sewage system. If we weren’t “on our arses” so much then it would at least give the sewerage system some time to regroup however.
The Indus Valley civilisation had a very good sewage system more than a millennium before the Romans and two millennia before us.
Were you alive then? It would explain most of your very out of date views.
Well we know you weren't around to suffer the shit show that was the GPO or the nationalised rail network.
I can tell you that the shittiness coefficent rapidly increased on privatisation!
This just simply isn't true.
I was there! I had to make a lot of cross country journeys and the connections went to pot as the companies wouldn't cooperate,
Well we'll disagree then. My experience of the pre-privatisation railways was universally awful. It's gradually improved over the years since privatisation to 'rather disappointing'.
Why not have English MPs only sitting at Westminster on, say, Monday and Tuesday debating English only matters and all MPs sitting on other days debating UK wide matters?
I have no idea, seems fair to me.
Also, Onlylivingboy makes the point about the disparity in the size of the administrative regions of England and the other Home Nations, but name a scenario where this becomes a constitutional problem? Shouldn't be too tricky if it's so obvious.
Decision to hold a referendum for Scottish Independence. Voted for on any metric (seats at Westminster, Holyrood, votes cast, etc.) Permanently blocked by rUK veto. Simple as that.
Ditto Brexit.
Sorry I wasn't clearer, I meant to question what issues would be caused by having an English parliament (as opposed to several regional ones) alongside the other Home nation Parliaments.
Why not have English MPs only sitting at Westminster on, say, Monday and Tuesday debating English only matters and all MPs sitting on other days debating UK wide matters?
I have no idea, seems fair to me.
Also, Onlylivingboy makes the point about the disparity in the size of the administrative regions of England and the other Home Nations, but name a scenario where this becomes a constitutional problem? Shouldn't be too tricky if it's so obvious.
Decision to hold a referendum for Scottish Independence. Voted for on any metric (seats at Westminster, Holyrood, votes cast, etc.) Permanently blocked by rUK veto. Simple as that.
Ditto Brexit.
Correctly as it is a reserved power to Westminster as the UK SC affirmed.
Personally as a patriotic Brit who loves this country, I am proud of the innovations we've made and some of the companies and institutions we created.
Were they perfect, heck no. But the Tories are only interested in selling them off to the lowest bidder and damaging our legacies.
The country that invented the train can't run one on time. The country that pioneered the sewage system has yearly droughts. The country that invented much of the mobile technology system can't even get a train to have a reliable phone signal.
We are on our arses, it is time we did something different. Let's figure out what works and what doesn't. This country is broken.
If only the Romans had thought of having a sewage system. If we weren’t “on our arses” so much then it would at least give the sewerage system some time to regroup however.
The Indus Valley civilisation had a very good sewage system more than a millennium before the Romans and two millennia before us.
I believe the odd Romano-British sewer is still in operation. Certainly at the Baths in, well, Bath. Possibly elsewhere?
Bar Italia in Soho?
Oh? Not one I know.
It was a shit joke based on it being an Italian place in London we would all end up in at 6am after a night out where the loos would end up being punished violently after a few of their espressos following a good night out clubbing. A nice end to the night and a less than fresh start to the morning.
However I am pleased to discover that parts of the Cloaca Maxima are still in use today - the joys of nationalisation under the empire.
PS Still better - under the republic or the Kings.
Why not have English MPs only sitting at Westminster on, say, Monday and Tuesday debating English only matters and all MPs sitting on other days debating UK wide matters?
I have no idea, seems fair to me.
Also, Onlylivingboy makes the point about the disparity in the size of the administrative regions of England and the other Home Nations, but name a scenario where this becomes a constitutional problem? Shouldn't be too tricky if it's so obvious.
Decision to hold a referendum for Scottish Independence. Voted for on any metric (seats at Westminster, Holyrood, votes cast, etc.) Permanently blocked by rUK veto. Simple as that.
Ditto Brexit.
Correctly as it is a reserved power to Westminster as the UK SC affirmed.
Mr. Boy, the fiction that England 'must' be split up rather than have its own Parliament is the view of those who have no idea that English identity exists. The sort of politicians who are content to be British but rather wary of ever being English.
Whether England's regions should have their own representation in a federal set up is a question for the English, I'm not expressing a normative view here. I'm simply pointing out that a federal set up where one part is 90% of the population of the whole is going to run into problems pretty quickly. But ignoring Scotland's desire to run much of its own affairs simply wasn't, and still isn't, an option, sorry.
‘Look , you Jocks were asked once in 307 years, that’s good enough for anyone’ is the traditional response I believe.
That's a fascinating story on Britain losing its telecoms lead due to anti-state dogma, Horse, although I'm not sure if all that language was quite called for.
It reminds me of an oft-told story I've often heard from a friend in computing. Britain was still pretty far ahead in the late '80s with machines like the Acorn Archimedes, largely due to the state-funded BBC Micro, which in turn had been hugely criticised at the time on the hoary old Thatcherite ideological grounds of the Dti "state picking winners". Result : no more state-funded projects like the BBC MIcro, and not that much later, most of the main parts of the British hardware computer industry had either left a long way behind, or bought out. Only Starmer shows any sign of knowing how to fix this failure of ideology in industrial policy in the long-term, unlike any of the other party leaders.
Most of that is simply not true. The Archimedes came out when it was already far too late to try and buck the "IBM compatible" standard
The failure to get out of the hobby machine space was the real problem, much earlier
So Sinclair didn't make a machine with a keyboard you could actually type on.
One company made an after market setup for the ZX-81 - a metal case, a bit like the BBC shape. Ventilation, space for the 16K RAM pack (on a cable to prevent wobble problems). The power supply was in the case, but in a separate, ventilated compartment. The external plug sockets on the case were robust.
Essentially they'd fixed nearly all the problems with the ZX-81. Even as a kid, I could see that.... Sinclair sued them, of course.
Personally as a patriotic Brit who loves this country, I am proud of the innovations we've made and some of the companies and institutions we created.
Were they perfect, heck no. But the Tories are only interested in selling them off to the lowest bidder and damaging our legacies.
The country that invented the train can't run one on time. The country that pioneered the sewage system has yearly droughts. The country that invented much of the mobile technology system can't even get a train to have a reliable phone signal.
We are on our arses, it is time we did something different. Let's figure out what works and what doesn't. This country is broken.
If only the Romans had thought of having a sewage system. If we weren’t “on our arses” so much then it would at least give the sewerage system some time to regroup however.
The Indus Valley civilisation had a very good sewage system more than a millennium before the Romans and two millennia before us.
Were you alive then? It would explain most of your very out of date views.
Well we know you weren't around to suffer the shit show that was the GPO or the nationalised rail network.
I can tell you that the shittiness coefficent rapidly increased on privatisation!
This just simply isn't true.
I was there! I had to make a lot of cross country journeys and the connections went to pot as the companies wouldn't cooperate,
Well we'll disagree then. My experience of the pre-privatisation railways was universally awful. It's gradually improved over the years since privatisation to 'rather disappointing'.
BR was simply managing delicne, to the point where “We’re getting there” was their slogan, and their service was a punch line in comedy sketches. Add to what we now see as oddities, such as everyone smoking, and It really was that bad.
Mr. Boy, the fiction that England 'must' be split up rather than have its own Parliament is the view of those who have no idea that English identity exists. The sort of politicians who are content to be British but rather wary of ever being English.
Even the strongest English regional identity wouldn't support local parliaments and the like, for another absurdity.
Probably true.
Keep a hold of our current absurdity, for fear of something more turdy. Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way (until the advent of Farage, Johnson etc).
Personally as a patriotic Brit who loves this country, I am proud of the innovations we've made and some of the companies and institutions we created.
Were they perfect, heck no. But the Tories are only interested in selling them off to the lowest bidder and damaging our legacies.
The country that invented the train can't run one on time. The country that pioneered the sewage system has yearly droughts. The country that invented much of the mobile technology system can't even get a train to have a reliable phone signal.
We are on our arses, it is time we did something different. Let's figure out what works and what doesn't. This country is broken.
If only the Romans had thought of having a sewage system. If we weren’t “on our arses” so much then it would at least give the sewerage system some time to regroup however.
The Indus Valley civilisation had a very good sewage system more than a millennium before the Romans and two millennia before us.
Were you alive then? It would explain most of your very out of date views.
Well we know you weren't around to suffer the shit show that was the GPO or the nationalised rail network.
I can tell you that the shittiness coefficent rapidly increased on privatisation!
This just simply isn't true.
I was there! I had to make a lot of cross country journeys and the connections went to pot as the companies wouldn't cooperate,
Well we'll disagree then. My experience of the pre-privatisation railways was universally awful. It's gradually improved over the years since privatisation to 'rather disappointing'.
BR was simply managing delicne, to the point where “We’re getting there” was their slogan, and their service was a punch line in comedy sketches. Add to what we now see as oddities, such as everyone smoking, and It really was that bad.
The Two Ronnies "News Item" sketch - The next Great Train Robbery foiled. Station staff became suspicious when a train left on time.
That's a fascinating story on Britain losing its telecoms lead due to anti-state dogma, Horse, although I'm not sure if all that language was quite called for.
It reminds me of an oft-told story I've often heard from a friend in computing. Britain was still pretty far ahead in the late '80s with machines like the Acorn Archimedes, largely due to the state-funded BBC Micro, which in turn had been hugely criticised at the time on the hoary old Thatcherite ideological grounds of the Dti "state picking winners". Result : no more state-funded projects like the BBC MIcro, and not that much later, most of the main parts of the British hardware computer industry had either left a long way behind, or bought out. Only Starmer shows any sign of knowing how to fix this failure of ideology in industrial policy in the long-term, unlike any of the other party leaders.
Most of that is simply not true. The Archimedes came out when it was already far too late to try and buck the "IBM compatible" standard
The failure to get out of the hobby machine space was the real problem, much earlier
So Sinclair didn't make a machine with a keyboard you could actually type on.
One company made an after market setup for the ZX-81 - a metal case, a bit like the BBC shape. Ventilation, space for the 16K RAM pack (on a cable to prevent wobble problems). The power supply was in the case, but in a separate, ventilated compartment. The external plug sockets on the case were robust.
Essentially they'd fixed nearly all the problems with the ZX-81. Even as a kid, I could see that.... Sinclair sued them, of course.
At the very least, Britain seems to have weakened its position by not investing further in hardware computing in the late '80s, which is a very, very familiar story across many sectors, as Horse points out with Britain also having lost its telecoms lead not long after this.
According to this, the Archimedes, which was originally designated a "BBC Computer" and emerged out of the subsidies for the BBC Micro, became for a while a kind of educational and music industry standard.
That would seem to strongly indicate that there was obviously enough there to build something further on.
Personally as a patriotic Brit who loves this country, I am proud of the innovations we've made and some of the companies and institutions we created.
Were they perfect, heck no. But the Tories are only interested in selling them off to the lowest bidder and damaging our legacies.
The country that invented the train can't run one on time. The country that pioneered the sewage system has yearly droughts. The country that invented much of the mobile technology system can't even get a train to have a reliable phone signal.
We are on our arses, it is time we did something different. Let's figure out what works and what doesn't. This country is broken.
If only the Romans had thought of having a sewage system. If we weren’t “on our arses” so much then it would at least give the sewerage system some time to regroup however.
The Indus Valley civilisation had a very good sewage system more than a millennium before the Romans and two millennia before us.
Were you alive then? It would explain most of your very out of date views.
Well we know you weren't around to suffer the shit show that was the GPO or the nationalised rail network.
I can tell you that the shittiness coefficent rapidly increased on privatisation!
This just simply isn't true.
I was there! I had to make a lot of cross country journeys and the connections went to pot as the companies wouldn't cooperate,
Well we'll disagree then. My experience of the pre-privatisation railways was universally awful. It's gradually improved over the years since privatisation to 'rather disappointing'.
Probably depends where you were travelling. Network Southeast was definitely improving under BR before privatisation. And the first few years of privatisation were a mess- the investment flows were clogged up and South West Trains tried to run the staffing and infrastructure at tighter margins than was viable.
There's a lot to be said for splitting the running of services from those who specify and commission them. You get much more honest information on how much things cost and the marking of homework is much more honest.
But from the perspective of now, the privatisations of the 80s and 90s did leave too much to the "companies won't be short-termist because that will be bad for their future" theory of business regulation. A lot of privatised firms did run their businesses as milk cows and assets were sweated in a way that wasn't sustainable. All very go-go, but problematic consequences now.
The balance of naivety, dogma and wanting a higher sale price in that thinking, I don't know.
That's a fascinating story on Britain losing its telecoms lead due to anti-state dogma, Horse, although I'm not sure if all that language was quite called for.
It reminds me of an oft-told story I've often heard from a friend in computing. Britain was still pretty far ahead in the late '80s with machines like the Acorn Archimedes, largely due to the state-funded BBC Micro, which in turn had been hugely criticised at the time on the hoary old Thatcherite ideological grounds of the Dti "state picking winners". Result : no more state-funded projects like the BBC MIcro, and not that much later, most of the main parts of the British hardware computer industry had either left a long way behind, or bought out. Only Starmer shows any sign of knowing how to fix this failure of ideology in industrial policy in the long-term, unlike any of the other party leaders.
Most of that is simply not true. The Archimedes came out when it was already far too late to try and buck the "IBM compatible" standard
The failure to get out of the hobby machine space was the real problem, much earlier
So Sinclair didn't make a machine with a keyboard you could actually type on.
One company made an after market setup for the ZX-81 - a metal case, a bit like the BBC shape. Ventilation, space for the 16K RAM pack (on a cable to prevent wobble problems). The power supply was in the case, but in a separate, ventilated compartment. The external plug sockets on the case were robust.
Essentially they'd fixed nearly all the problems with the ZX-81. Even as a kid, I could see that.... Sinclair sued them, of course.
By a happy coincidence, someone has just launched a proper keyboard for the ZX81.
Mr. Boy, the fiction that England 'must' be split up rather than have its own Parliament is the view of those who have no idea that English identity exists. The sort of politicians who are content to be British but rather wary of ever being English.
Whether England's regions should have their own representation in a federal set up is a question for the English, I'm not expressing a normative view here. I'm simply pointing out that a federal set up where one part is 90% of the population of the whole is going to run into problems pretty quickly. But ignoring Scotland's desire to run much of its own affairs simply wasn't, and still isn't, an option, sorry.
‘Look , you Jocks were asked once in 307 years, that’s good enough for anyone’ is the traditional response I believe.
Chin up, you've been asked more than we've been asked if we still want to be lumbered with you guys.
That's a fascinating story on Britain losing its telecoms lead due to anti-state dogma, Horse, although I'm not sure if all that language was quite called for.
It reminds me of an oft-told story I've often heard from a friend in computing. Britain was still pretty far ahead in the late '80s with machines like the Acorn Archimedes, largely due to the state-funded BBC Micro, which in turn had been hugely criticised at the time on the hoary old Thatcherite ideological grounds of the Dti "state picking winners". Result : no more state-funded projects like the BBC MIcro, and not that much later, most of the main parts of the British hardware computer industry had either left a long way behind, or bought out. Only Starmer shows any sign of knowing how to fix this failure of ideology in industrial policy in the long-term, unlike any of the other party leaders.
Most of that is simply not true. The Archimedes came out when it was already far too late to try and buck the "IBM compatible" standard
The failure to get out of the hobby machine space was the real problem, much earlier
So Sinclair didn't make a machine with a keyboard you could actually type on.
One company made an after market setup for the ZX-81 - a metal case, a bit like the BBC shape. Ventilation, space for the 16K RAM pack (on a cable to prevent wobble problems). The power supply was in the case, but in a separate, ventilated compartment. The external plug sockets on the case were robust.
Essentially they'd fixed nearly all the problems with the ZX-81. Even as a kid, I could see that.... Sinclair sued them, of course.
By a happy coincidence, someone has just launched a proper keyboard for the ZX81.
Describing the ZX-81 keyboard as unpleasant is simply not true. Describing it as a keyboard is marginal. A collection of buttons that occasionally acted as the presser intended, if operated really, really slowly, maybe?
Comedy doesn't always age terribly well. I thought the Two Ronnies was funny in the 80s, but watching reruns it doesn't really work as well. No criticism of them - they are both funny men - but the material we find funny changes. I don't know why that should be so, but it does. It's not even that different generations find different things funny: things which are funny then are often just not funny now. Nothing to do with woke - just our collective tastes change. I guess something to do with humour being a defying of expectations; if you know the sort of thing to expect, maybe that takes away some of the humour. I still find them enjoyably clever sometimes, though (which is almost, but not quite, the same thing), like the Mastermind 'answering the previous question' specialist subject. And I find Ronnie Corbett's monologues funnier now than I did then. Monty Python, OTOH, I think has aged very well indeed and is almost as good now as it was back then.
Dad’s Army is still good. (I think, I haven’t seen an episode in about 20 years).
I saw an episode of It Ain’t Half Hot Mum about ten years ago and I thought it was actually pretty good, all things considered.
Sitcoms date OK, the good ones anyway.
Thinking about it, you're right - some sitcoms date rather better. I can confirm that Dad's Army is still good (indeed, weirdly, I'd say it's better now than it was 30 years ago. Perhaps the humour has passed through being slightly dated, if it ever was, and come through as antique.) I would also add Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads (though it's predecessor, from the 60s 'The Likely Lads' has aged terribly - it feels like the writers were terrified of letting 20 seconds go by without a joke, with the result that none of them are any good; there is no space whatsoever in the script). Also Porridge. Also Allo Allo, I think. There are a lot which have aged terribly mind (or perhaps weren't very good in the first place).
Even when sitcoms aren't uproariously funny any more, they provide a fascinating bit of social history. I got quite absorbed a year or two back by 'I Didn't Know You Cared' - a fascinating picture of 1970s Sheffield; not for the bits you were necessarily expected to laugh at, but at the background situations you were expected to take as read. Similarly, 'Chance in a Million' from the 80s (which is also genuinely still funny).
The first couple of seasons of HI-de-Hi with Simon Cadell are also massively underrated (the later seasons are total trash). I think Allo Allo follows the same pattern.
Allo' Allo' just went on too long. Interesting comment in the Blackadder programme last night about why there was no fitf
still seething about the declaration today - one of the most over cocky ashes decisions ever -
I don’t think it’s cocky. He wasn’t saying “We think that’s enough”. It was an attempt to throw the Aussies of balance and maybe get a wicket. I wouldn’t have done it. Presumably you wouldn’t either. But neither of us is England captain on a run of 11 wins from 13 after the previous captain had 1 in 18.
That's a fascinating story on Britain losing its telecoms lead due to anti-state dogma, Horse, although I'm not sure if all that language was quite called for.
It reminds me of an oft-told story I've often heard from a friend in computing. Britain was still pretty far ahead in the late '80s with machines like the Acorn Archimedes, largely due to the state-funded BBC Micro, which in turn had been hugely criticised at the time on the hoary old Thatcherite ideological grounds of the Dti "state picking winners". Result : no more state-funded projects like the BBC MIcro, and not that much later, most of the main parts of the British hardware computer industry had either left a long way behind, or bought out. Only Starmer shows any sign of knowing how to fix this failure of ideology in industrial policy in the long-term, unlike any of the other party leaders.
Most of that is simply not true. The Archimedes came out when it was already far too late to try and buck the "IBM compatible" standard
The failure to get out of the hobby machine space was the real problem, much earlier
So Sinclair didn't make a machine with a keyboard you could actually type on.
One company made an after market setup for the ZX-81 - a metal case, a bit like the BBC shape. Ventilation, space for the 16K RAM pack (on a cable to prevent wobble problems). The power supply was in the case, but in a separate, ventilated compartment. The external plug sockets on the case were robust.
Essentially they'd fixed nearly all the problems with the ZX-81. Even as a kid, I could see that.... Sinclair sued them, of course.
At the very least, Britain seems to have weakened its position by not investing further in hardware computing in the late '80s, which is a very, very familiar story across many sectors, as Horse points out with Britain also having lost its telecoms lead not long after this.
According to this, the Archimedes, which was originally designated a "BBC Computer" and emerged out of the subsidies for the BBC Micro, became for a while a kind of educational and music industry standard.
That would seem to strongly indicate that there was obviously enough there to build something further on.
As someone who was building computers from scratch etc at this time. No. The Archimedes attained a certain measure of success by being the very late successor to the BBC micro. But the idea that it could have ever taken on the IBM compatibles - nope. They weren't a British Apple, or anything close to that.
Comedy doesn't always age terribly well. I thought the Two Ronnies was funny in the 80s, but watching reruns it doesn't really work as well. No criticism of them - they are both funny men - but the material we find funny changes. I don't know why that should be so, but it does. It's not even that different generations find different things funny: things which are funny then are often just not funny now. Nothing to do with woke - just our collective tastes change. I guess something to do with humour being a defying of expectations; if you know the sort of thing to expect, maybe that takes away some of the humour. I still find them enjoyably clever sometimes, though (which is almost, but not quite, the same thing), like the Mastermind 'answering the previous question' specialist subject. And I find Ronnie Corbett's monologues funnier now than I did then. Monty Python, OTOH, I think has aged very well indeed and is almost as good now as it was back then.
Dad’s Army is still good. (I think, I haven’t seen an episode in about 20 years).
I saw an episode of It Ain’t Half Hot Mum about ten years ago and I thought it was actually pretty good, all things considered.
Sitcoms date OK, the good ones anyway.
Thinking about it, you're right - some sitcoms date rather better. I can confirm that Dad's Army is still good (indeed, weirdly, I'd say it's better now than it was 30 years ago. Perhaps the humour has passed through being slightly dated, if it ever was, and come through as antique.) I would also add Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads (though it's predecessor, from the 60s 'The Likely Lads' has aged terribly - it feels like the writers were terrified of letting 20 seconds go by without a joke, with the result that none of them are any good; there is no space whatsoever in the script). Also Porridge. Also Allo Allo, I think. There are a lot which have aged terribly mind (or perhaps weren't very good in the first place).
Even when sitcoms aren't uproariously funny any more, they provide a fascinating bit of social history. I got quite absorbed a year or two back by 'I Didn't Know You Cared' - a fascinating picture of 1970s Sheffield; not for the bits you were necessarily expected to laugh at, but at the background situations you were expected to take as read. Similarly, 'Chance in a Million' from the 80s (which is also genuinely still funny).
The first couple of seasons of HI-de-Hi with Simon Cadell are also massively underrated (the later seasons are total trash). I think Allo Allo follows the same pattern.
Allo' Allo' just went on too long. Interesting comment in the Blackadder programme last night about why there was no fitf
still seething about the declaration today - one of the most over cocky ashes decisions ever -
I don’t think it’s cocky. He wasn’t saying “We think that’s enough”. It was an attempt to throw the Aussies of balance and maybe get a wicket. I wouldn’t have done it. Presumably you wouldn’t either. But neither of us is England captain on a run of 11 wins from 13 after the previous captain had 1 in 18.
Edit: cursed vanilla…
Yes, exactly.
If it was me I'd have given Root free reign to keep slogging them, and to do the same tomorrow morning unless he went out.
But its not up to us and Stokes knows what he's doing and gets the best from his team and puts pressure on the opposition. Stokes brand of cricket works too, he wins much more and he may sometimes lose but if he wins more than he loses, then go for it. He's earnt the right to captain as he does.
Personally as a patriotic Brit who loves this country, I am proud of the innovations we've made and some of the companies and institutions we created.
Were they perfect, heck no. But the Tories are only interested in selling them off to the lowest bidder and damaging our legacies.
The country that invented the train can't run one on time. The country that pioneered the sewage system has yearly droughts. The country that invented much of the mobile technology system can't even get a train to have a reliable phone signal.
We are on our arses, it is time we did something different. Let's figure out what works and what doesn't. This country is broken.
If only the Romans had thought of having a sewage system. If we weren’t “on our arses” so much then it would at least give the sewerage system some time to regroup however.
The Indus Valley civilisation had a very good sewage system more than a millennium before the Romans and two millennia before us.
Were you alive then? It would explain most of your very out of date views.
Well we know you weren't around to suffer the shit show that was the GPO or the nationalised rail network.
I can tell you that the shittiness coefficent rapidly increased on privatisation!
Nah. On every measure - safety, comfort, time keeping, rolling stock, investment and choice the system got better as a result of privatisation.
Mr. Boy, the fiction that England 'must' be split up rather than have its own Parliament is the view of those who have no idea that English identity exists. The sort of politicians who are content to be British but rather wary of ever being English.
Whether England's regions should have their own representation in a federal set up is a question for the English, I'm not expressing a normative view here. I'm simply pointing out that a federal set up where one part is 90% of the population of the whole is going to run into problems pretty quickly. But ignoring Scotland's desire to run much of its own affairs simply wasn't, and still isn't, an option, sorry.
‘Look , you Jocks were asked once in 307 years, that’s good enough for anyone’ is the traditional response I believe.
Chin up, you've been asked more than we've been asked if we still want to be lumbered with you guys.
You keep voting relentlessly for people who aren’t arsed about asking you, so my heart disnae bleed etc.
That's a fascinating story on Britain losing its telecoms lead due to anti-state dogma, Horse, although I'm not sure if all that language was quite called for.
It reminds me of an oft-told story I've often heard from a friend in computing. Britain was still pretty far ahead in the late '80s with machines like the Acorn Archimedes, largely due to the state-funded BBC Micro, which in turn had been hugely criticised at the time on the hoary old Thatcherite ideological grounds of the Dti "state picking winners". Result : no more state-funded projects like the BBC MIcro, and not that much later, most of the main parts of the British hardware computer industry had either left a long way behind, or bought out. Only Starmer shows any sign of knowing how to fix this failure of ideology in industrial policy in the long-term, unlike any of the other party leaders.
Most of that is simply not true. The Archimedes came out when it was already far too late to try and buck the "IBM compatible" standard
The failure to get out of the hobby machine space was the real problem, much earlier
So Sinclair didn't make a machine with a keyboard you could actually type on.
One company made an after market setup for the ZX-81 - a metal case, a bit like the BBC shape. Ventilation, space for the 16K RAM pack (on a cable to prevent wobble problems). The power supply was in the case, but in a separate, ventilated compartment. The external plug sockets on the case were robust.
Essentially they'd fixed nearly all the problems with the ZX-81. Even as a kid, I could see that.... Sinclair sued them, of course.
At the very least, Britain seems to have weakened its position by not investing further in hardware computing in the late '80s, which is a very, very familiar story across many sectors, as Horse points out with Britain also having lost its telecoms lead not long after this.
According to this, the Archimedes, which was originally designated a "BBC Computer" and emerged out of the subsidies for the BBC Micro, became for a while a kind of educational and music industry standard.
That would seem to strongly indicate that there was obviously enough there to build something further on.
As someone who was building computers from scratch etc at this time. No. The Archimedes attained a certain measure of success by being the very late successor to the BBC micro. But the idea that it could have ever taken on the IBM compatibles - nope. They weren't a British Apple, or anything close to that.
Yep, the market became much more international, and therefore standardised. The American companies had economies of scale and organisation to make their products the standards. So we ended up with IBMs and Apple Macs.
That's a fascinating story on Britain losing its telecoms lead due to anti-state dogma, Horse, although I'm not sure if all that language was quite called for.
It reminds me of an oft-told story I've often heard from a friend in computing. Britain was still pretty far ahead in the late '80s with machines like the Acorn Archimedes, largely due to the state-funded BBC Micro, which in turn had been hugely criticised at the time on the hoary old Thatcherite ideological grounds of the Dti "state picking winners". Result : no more state-funded projects like the BBC MIcro, and not that much later, most of the main parts of the British hardware computer industry had either left a long way behind, or bought out. Only Starmer shows any sign of knowing how to fix this failure of ideology in industrial policy in the long-term, unlike any of the other party leaders.
Most of that is simply not true. The Archimedes came out when it was already far too late to try and buck the "IBM compatible" standard
The failure to get out of the hobby machine space was the real problem, much earlier
So Sinclair didn't make a machine with a keyboard you could actually type on.
One company made an after market setup for the ZX-81 - a metal case, a bit like the BBC shape. Ventilation, space for the 16K RAM pack (on a cable to prevent wobble problems). The power supply was in the case, but in a separate, ventilated compartment. The external plug sockets on the case were robust.
Essentially they'd fixed nearly all the problems with the ZX-81. Even as a kid, I could see that.... Sinclair sued them, of course.
By a happy coincidence, someone has just launched a proper keyboard for the ZX81.
Describing the ZX-81 keyboard as unpleasant is simply not true. Describing it as a keyboard is marginal. A collection of buttons that occasionally acted as the presser intended, if operated really, really slowly, maybe?
As long as I could type `RANDOMIZE USR 1234` I was happy. See also `POKE 22,22` on a C64.
Comments
If BT had been allowed to install FTTP to every home, we'd have the best broadband network in the world. It would have cost a fraction of what it is costing now. These are objective facts, feel free to Google FTTP rollout per KM now vs 1980 but I know you won't.
Sod off out of here.
"Russia's invasion of Ukraine has already led to Ukraine's "demilitarisation", Putin claims as he continues his speech in St Petersburg - an objective named by Moscow at the start of the war.
"As regards demilitarisation, look, Ukraine will soon completely stop using its own hardware," he tells the economic forum in St Petersburg.
Kyiv has "nothing left", he declares.
"One cannot fight for too long like that. Do you understand?" Putin says.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-europe-65918754
However if and when England votes for a majority of Tory MPs but gets a Labour UK government thanks to Scottish and Welsh Labour MPs then there will be a huge backlash in England in the way there wasn't in 1964 and 1974 when the same thing happened as then we were all one Union whereas now we are effectively a Federal UK with every home nation except England having its own Parliament for most of its domestic policy. Now England does not even have English Votes for English Laws
Nobody is saying don't regulate, what the state has done is put a gun to BT's head and say "stop dicking around", now that OpenReach is behaving better the market is working quite well.
Were they perfect, heck no. But the Tories are only interested in selling them off to the lowest bidder and damaging our legacies.
The country that invented the train can't run one on time. The country that pioneered the sewage system has yearly droughts. The country that invented much of the mobile technology system can't even get a train to have a reliable phone signal.
We are on our arses, it is time we did something different. Let's figure out what works and what doesn't. This country is broken.
I suppose we should be glad that at least you weren't doing it from India.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_United_Kingdom_general_election_in_England#:~:text=The Conservatives retained a majority,did not overtake the Conservatives.
The regulation was if you don't stop dicking around we will take Openreach and your copper assets off you. That's why BT's approach changed.
Nobody serious thinks it is alt-nets or competitors that will provide a large-scale rollout. It will be a combination of Virgin via HFC/FTTP in newer areas and Openreach doing FTTP. Many of the alt-nets are slowly going bust or now slowing down the rollout. Virgin/Liberty will likely buy these up as they did with Smallworld
“Well you can kindof see what he's getting at. Ukraine has used shot of a load of stronk Russian kit and replaced it with gay, pathetic, weak Patriots, Challengers, Leopards, NLAWs, Javelins, GMLRS, Hawks, NASAMS, Panzerfaust 3's, Storm Shadows...
Clearly when the Ukrainians get their hands all over decadent moribund lebsian F-16's, Gripens, swing-roling Eurofighters and the well-known STD-carrying ATACMS, Zelensky will be well screwed.”
Though of course its failures were largely as a result of its effective monopoly position, which would have persisted absent privatisation.
Like much of what Thatcher did, that was a decent idea, badly botched.
It reminds me of an oft-told story I've often heard from a friend in computing. Britain was still pretty far ahead in the late '80s with machines like the Acorn Archimedes, largely due to the state-funded BBC Micro, which in turn had been hugely criticised at the time on the hoary old Thatcherite ideological grounds of the Dti "state picking winners". Result : no more state-funded projects like the BBC MIcro, and not that much later, most of the main parts of the British hardware computer industry had either left a long way behind, or bought out. Only Starmer shows any sign of knowing how to fix this failure of ideology in industrial policy in the long-term, unlike any of the other party leaders.
Having Openreach as a proper arms-length infrastructure operator was always what it should have been, I am glad the current BT leadership team have accepted that and ploughed the money into a proper sustainable business. I have no doubt they will reach their stated targets by 2030.
Part of the problem has always been endless government meddling, but not all.
I suspect the solution is a much smaller Parliament of perhaps 100 members, 49 of whom are from England, that sit two days a week to discuss federal matters such as defence, international relations, federal taxation etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morton_Peto
And then there's the old fraudster railway king himself:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hudson
https://jezebel.com/boris-johnson-daily-mail-columnist-ozempic-1850548252
Yorkshire, natch.
Granadaland, as they used to call it on the telly.
The far south west, Cornwall and Devon.
Proper East Anglia
London as a great metropolis distinct from the boring bits outside the M25.
That's not to say that there aren't bits of England that aren't bland and a bit anonymous- there's a great sweep from Kent to Hampshire to Northamptonshire to Essex which don't really have a regional focus. Or rather, the focus is London and those places define themselves as Not London, Actually.
But what would this English Parliament be for? What are the decisions that should be taken at that level that wouldn't be better done at a smaller scale? Or is it just for the feels?
(My answer remains the Spanish one, when they decentralised after Franco. Put the devolved powers of Scotland in a box. If the other existing devolved nations, or London, wish to take on some or all of those responsibilities and have a plan to do so democratically, they can. If a county (or more likely, a cluster of counties) wish to do the same, they can. The bits of England with strong regional sense will quickly grab a lot. The more generic regions may take a while to build up, but are likely to follow the same path.)
Also, Onlylivingboy makes the point about the disparity in the size of the administrative regions of England and the other Home Nations, but name a scenario where this becomes a constitutional problem? Shouldn't be too tricky if it's so obvious.
BT being a basket case means you can choose other providers.
Nationalisation and BT is a basket case means you're stuck with the basket case.
That's it. You've 100% demonstrated the need for privatisation in a single statement.
The rail network compared with today wasn't quite such an extreme case, but the comparison is still chalk and cheese.
However I am pleased to discover that parts of the Cloaca Maxima are still in use today - the joys of nationalisation under the empire.
Ditto Brexit.
Agreed re C. M.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloaca_Maxima#Construction_and_history
On BBC4 it's Top of the Pops from 18th June 1981 presented by Peter Powell.
The failure to get out of the hobby machine space was the real problem, much earlier
So Sinclair didn't make a machine with a keyboard you could actually type on.
One company made an after market setup for the ZX-81 - a metal case, a bit like the BBC shape. Ventilation, space for the 16K RAM pack (on a cable to prevent wobble problems). The power supply was in the case, but in a separate, ventilated compartment. The external plug sockets on the case were robust.
Essentially they'd fixed nearly all the problems with the ZX-81. Even as a kid, I could see that.... Sinclair sued them, of course.
I should add that even the QL's rubbish keyboard was approximately ten thousand times better than the crap used on the Spectrum and ZX80 and ZX81.
Keep a hold of our current absurdity, for fear of something more turdy.
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way (until the advent of Farage, Johnson etc).
According to this, the Archimedes, which was originally designated a "BBC Computer" and emerged out of the subsidies for the BBC Micro, became for a while a kind of educational and music industry standard.
That would seem to strongly indicate that there was obviously enough there to build something further on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Archimedes
There's a lot to be said for splitting the running of services from those who specify and commission them. You get much more honest information on how much things cost and the marking of homework is much more honest.
But from the perspective of now, the privatisations of the 80s and 90s did leave too much to the "companies won't be short-termist because that will be bad for their future" theory of business regulation. A lot of privatised firms did run their businesses as milk cows and assets were sweated in a way that wasn't sustainable. All very go-go, but problematic consequences now.
The balance of naivety, dogma and wanting a higher sale price in that thinking, I don't know.
I've gone onto the 4 app and I can see categories of programmes but not a live option.
Reminds me of the time he complained I posted too much, after which a quick review of post numbers revealed that I posted less often than he did…
The ZX81 finally gets the keyboard it deserves
Chap posts free specs for posh build with Cherry MX switches
https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/15/zx_81_mechanical_keyboard/
I wouldn’t have done it. Presumably you wouldn’t either. But neither of us is England captain on a run of 11 wins from 13 after the previous captain had 1 in 18.
Edit: cursed vanilla…
Found a 'Freeview Play' app, thought it might be on that. No, still no live 4 shown it still just shows categories of programmes to stream.
If it was me I'd have given Root free reign to keep slogging them, and to do the same tomorrow morning unless he went out.
But its not up to us and Stokes knows what he's doing and gets the best from his team and puts pressure on the opposition. Stokes brand of cricket works too, he wins much more and he may sometimes lose but if he wins more than he loses, then go for it. He's earnt the right to captain as he does.
It's now reached that humidity level where I feel like I'm breathing in kettle-fumes.
It's no wonder I've ended up working in IT.
And poor.