Yes, of course, the Industrial Revolution actually started in West Africa, went to Jamaica, via slaves, then evil Britons stole it away, and started their foundries in Coalbrookdale
It's probably bollocks but bigger picture-wise, the industrial revolution was probably largely inspired by slavery. People woke up to what unlimited cheap or free power could get you.
I'm not sure about "inspired". Every empire had slavery. Esp the Muslims
If slaves is all you need, then the Romans, Greeks, Ottomans, Arabs, Chinese, Mughals, and so on, would have devised the Industrial Revolution. They did not
Did slaves power the industrial revolution? Certainly: cotton picking slaves in Deep South USA fed English mills, and on we went. Shameful
But let's not alter the truth to fit our political convictions
Surely it's more likely to be the opposite: the lack of cheap labour meant people were forced to innovate.
(While swimming today, I listened to a Malcolm Gladwell podcast that touched in this very issue, making the case that the industrial revolution happened in the UK for - among other reasons - the fact that the UK was more of a bottom minimisation than a top maximisation society.)
There is surely something in that. Indeed I've done it myself. You've got yowling, or unhappy, or snappish kids in the car, you just want them to shut up and eat SOMETHING, and there is McDonalds. And it is cheap, and convenient, and you don't have to persuade them to try whelks
It doesn't explain, however, why so many middle class adult Americans are so obscenely FAT. I know the Brits are bad, but Midwest America, wow. Something has gone very wrong in their food culture
Yes, of course, the Industrial Revolution actually started in West Africa, went to Jamaica, via slaves, then evil Britons stole it away, and started their foundries in Coalbrookdale
It's probably bollocks but bigger picture-wise, the industrial revolution was probably largely inspired by slavery. People woke up to what unlimited cheap or free power could get you.
I'm not sure about "inspired". Every empire had slavery. Esp the Muslims
If slaves is all you need, then the Romans, Greeks, Ottomans, Arabs, Chinese, Mughals, and so on, would have devised the Industrial Revolution. They did not
Did slaves power the industrial revolution? Certainly: cotton picking slaves in Deep South USA fed English mills, and on we went. Shameful
But let's not alter the truth to fit our political convictions
Surely it's more likely to be the opposite: the lack of cheap labour meant people were forced to innovate.
(While swimming today, I listened to a Malcolm Gladwell podcast that touched in this very issue, making the case that the industrial revolution happened in the UK for - among other reasons - the fact that the UK was more of a bottom minimisation than a top maximisation society.)
Yes, of course, the Industrial Revolution actually started in West Africa, went to Jamaica, via slaves, then evil Britons stole it away, and started their foundries in Coalbrookdale
Why quack?
It seems to be based on historical research and documents.
West Africans didn't even have the fucking wheel til it was given to them in the mid 19th century. Yet they mastered one of the crucial processes of the Industrial Revolution? Which was then "stolen" by the Evil White Imperialist Slaving Britons?
We are entering the era of post-Scientific Truth, let alone post-Truth
You don't need a wheel to smelt iron, and the article explained it via the adaption of sugar cane rollers.
There was extensive metal working in West Africa, indeed it was access to West African gold that the Europeans originally wanted from their trade, only later moving to the sugar and slave industrial model.
On the face of it, it looks like total bollocks.
The tell us that both academics provide some accompanying spin that “the story here is Britain closing down, through military force, competition,” and that the findings are relevant to the reparations movement.
Though we did deliberately destroy the Indian shipbuilding and cotton cloth economy in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries by tariff enforced by military force.
In the Eighteenth century we imported Indian chintz, but by the Twentieth we exported Manchester cotton to them.
Yes, of course, the Industrial Revolution actually started in West Africa, went to Jamaica, via slaves, then evil Britons stole it away, and started their foundries in Coalbrookdale
It's probably bollocks but bigger picture-wise, the industrial revolution was probably largely inspired by slavery. People woke up to what unlimited cheap or free power could get you.
You've got that the wrong way round.
Slave states did not originate the industrial revolution.
The industrial revolution happened in non-slave places and was based on machine power.
The slavery-dependent South stagnated while that anti-anti-slavery North industrialised, and grew wealthy.
Discuss.
No discussion. Entirely true
If you can import/utilise endless cheap human labour you have no need to innovate, and you will create enormous wealth (cf the Roman Empire)
A lesson here for pro-immigration lefties (er, like you): endless immigration of unskilled workers - aka EU Free Movement - does not make for prosperity, in the end
Wow! We’ve already had a Primeminister slain by a lettuce, now Mickey Mouse thinks he’s hard enough to take on “Whitewash” Jenrick. Who’s going to win this one?
The home office staff are absolutely correct - Jenrick is out of order 100%
But he has to win though, when elected politicians give an order the unelected blob have got to obey it?
Jenrick’s argument is that mural is sucking more boats across the channel, something none of us want to see. Whether we believe he has a strong or not so strong argument doesn’t really matter does it, he won the general election, he has the mandate until whenever it’s taken away by voters.
Yes, of course, the Industrial Revolution actually started in West Africa, went to Jamaica, via slaves, then evil Britons stole it away, and started their foundries in Coalbrookdale
Why quack?
It seems to be based on historical research and documents.
West Africans didn't even have the fucking wheel til it was given to them in the mid 19th century. Yet they mastered one of the crucial processes of the Industrial Revolution? Which was then "stolen" by the Evil White Imperialist Slaving Britons?
We are entering the era of post-Scientific Truth, let alone post-Truth
You don't need a wheel to smelt iron, and the article explained it via the adaption of sugar cane rollers.
There was extensive metal working in West Africa, indeed it was access to West African gold that the Europeans originally wanted from their trade, only later moving to the sugar and slave industrial model.
On the face of it, it looks like total bollocks.
The tell us that both academics provide some accompanying spin that “the story here is Britain closing down, through military force, competition,” and that the findings are relevant to the reparations movement.
Though we did deliberately destroy the Indian shipbuilding and cotton cloth economy in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries by tariff enforced by military force.
In the Eighteenth century we imported Indian chintz, but by the Twentieth we exported Manchester cotton to them.
I want to read more about that.
What you describe has suddenly become the received view, but the counter argument is that an industrialising Lancashire simply outcompeted the Bengal.
I don’t want to minimise the culpability of the East India Company, which committed many evils.
Big G used the internet to buy his season tickets in the 1990s?
OK.
You have misread my post
I did not have a season ticket but I took 18 journeys to London in 2 years and never went near a ticket office
But you said you bought them online, earlier in your reply to me. Thinking back, that wasn't possible in 1993 - I changed jobs and email was barely a thing. 1999?
Edit: it hardly matters when. The basic point was you knew what ticket to buy and where to go. But the ticketing and fares system is still horrendous. It's a ripoff charter to abolish ticket offices.
As I recall I ordered and paid my tickets direct to Virgin Trains
Biut I repeat: you knew which tickets to order, and where to get them. And had the kit to get them.
Indeed but then we are 30 years on and in the age of the internet
Many in my age group worry about parking apps but it is getting impossible not to have to use them
It is not as convenient for some but it is the way the world is going
That's rather too convenient for some. Look at this, and look at the DM reports and the comments there. They are absolutely ballistic.
They are barbarians who dreamt up this policy and should not be let off so lightly.
I have little doubt they will be closed in due course but if I were to travel by rail I would use Trainline or similar anyway
In other words - you are happy to justify the further deterioration of public services, presumably by way oif support for a non-Labour government, and rely on a website known not to give good value remiably or be propery coordinated with the operators. For instance:
I would just say I have travelled extensively by train in the UK and also abroad including the Ghan and the Blue Train in South Africa and have not experienced problems you mention in either web sites or any other agency
It is not a political issue for me but as in parking apps so rail will inevitably follow though the unions will resist no doubt
Parking apps is an obvious area where the state should just sanction one app - have competitive a 5 year franchise by all means but one app nationwide.
What advantage would having 1 app nationwide bring?
I wouldn't turn up at a car park which uses an app new to me and try and fail to download it due to mobile coverage (happens a lot in rural towns). Plus the sheer waste of fucking time if I can actually get a connection: download a new app, register my details to yet another company I've never heard of before. Pisses me off a lot!
Extreme faff. Britain is over-ridden with it.
OK, so what is to be done about it?
(Suspicion: both low cost government and business spivs create faff because they navigate by cutting costs and faff passes costs on to customers by making them waste time. And as customers, Britons are too tempted to take shitty service to shave a few pence off the price.)
Wow! We’ve already had a Primeminister slain by a lettuce, now Mickey Mouse thinks he’s hard enough to take on “Whitewash” Jenrick. Who’s going to win this one?
The home office staff are absolutely correct - Jenrick is out of order 100%
But he has to win though, when elected politicians give an order the unelected blob have got to obey it?
Jenrick’s argument is that mural is sucking more boats across the channel, something none of us want to see. Whether we believe he has a strong or not so strong argument doesn’t really matter does it, he won the general election, he has the mandate until whenever it’s taken away by voters.
Wow! We’ve already had a Primeminister slain by a lettuce, now Mickey Mouse thinks he’s hard enough to take on “Whitewash” Jenrick. Who’s going to win this one?
The home office staff are absolutely correct - Jenrick is out of order 100%
Though possibly their mural is a copyright violation of Disneys rights...
Personally I have always thought the cartoons on children's facilities quite sinister.
You think Mickey and Mini Mouse saying welcome is sinister?
The one thing I have heard about batteries is there is concern about the weight of modern hybrid vehicles especially those parked in multi-storey car parks where there is concern the structures built in thr 60s and 70s can't take the weight of hundreds of hybrid vehicles.
Anyone heard this?
Yes, it was on here a week or two ago. I think @rcs1000 pooh-poohed it on various grounds which I really wish I could remember...😀
It's a fair concern, but one that is easily fixed by (for older structures) removing a proportion of spaces on higher floors.
It's also clearly bullshit to put this all on electric cars. If you were to draw a line with vehicle weight over time, they were rising long before Mr Tesla started selling his vehicles. Now, have electric and PHEV made the problem worse? Sure. But it smacks of hypocrisy that the people worrying about it were so unconcerned by the rising weight of ICEs in the past.
There is surely something in that. Indeed I've done it myself. You've got yowling, or unhappy, or snappish kids in the car, you just want them to shut up and eat SOMETHING, and there is McDonalds. And it is cheap, and convenient, and you don't have to persuade them to try whelks
It doesn't explain, however, why so many middle class adult Americans are so obscenely FAT. I know the Brits are bad, but Midwest America, wow. Something has gone very wrong in their food culture
Isn't the relative cost of eating out compared with cooking at home much lower in the USA ?
Big G used the internet to buy his season tickets in the 1990s?
OK.
You have misread my post
I did not have a season ticket but I took 18 journeys to London in 2 years and never went near a ticket office
But you said you bought them online, earlier in your reply to me. Thinking back, that wasn't possible in 1993 - I changed jobs and email was barely a thing. 1999?
Edit: it hardly matters when. The basic point was you knew what ticket to buy and where to go. But the ticketing and fares system is still horrendous. It's a ripoff charter to abolish ticket offices.
As I recall I ordered and paid my tickets direct to Virgin Trains
Biut I repeat: you knew which tickets to order, and where to get them. And had the kit to get them.
Indeed but then we are 30 years on and in the age of the internet
Many in my age group worry about parking apps but it is getting impossible not to have to use them
It is not as convenient for some but it is the way the world is going
That's rather too convenient for some. Look at this, and look at the DM reports and the comments there. They are absolutely ballistic.
They are barbarians who dreamt up this policy and should not be let off so lightly.
I have little doubt they will be closed in due course but if I were to travel by rail I would use Trainline or similar anyway
In other words - you are happy to justify the further deterioration of public services, presumably by way oif support for a non-Labour government, and rely on a website known not to give good value remiably or be propery coordinated with the operators. For instance:
I would just say I have travelled extensively by train in the UK and also abroad including the Ghan and the Blue Train in South Africa and have not experienced problems you mention in either web sites or any other agency
It is not a political issue for me but as in parking apps so rail will inevitably follow though the unions will resist no doubt
Parking apps is an obvious area where the state should just sanction one app - have competitive a 5 year franchise by all means but one app nationwide.
What advantage would having 1 app nationwide bring?
I wouldn't turn up at a car park which uses an app new to me and try and fail to download it due to mobile coverage (happens a lot in rural towns). Plus the sheer waste of fucking time if I can actually get a connection: download a new app, register my details to yet another company I've never heard of before. Pisses me off a lot!
Extreme faff. Britain is over-ridden with it.
OK, so what is to be done about it?
(Suspicion: both low cost government and business spivs create faff because they navigate by cutting costs and faff passes costs on to customers by making them waste time. And as customers, Britons are too tempted to take shitty service to shave a few pence off the price.)
Certain markets: train tickets, parking apps, insurance and financial instruments generally, mobile phone deals - are ridden with faff.
The government, as I said, needs to be an activist consumer champion and regulate.
Of course, you need to operate carefully to avoid shutting off competition, but it seems to me that Britain regulates for all of the wrong reasons and few of the right ones. See the recent kerfuffle on new planning laws that seem to impose hideous designs on new-built houses to avoid people falling out of windows. Gove has rightly agreed to intervene.
Britain over-regulates “for safety” and under-regulates for consumer ease.
Big G used the internet to buy his season tickets in the 1990s?
OK.
You have misread my post
I did not have a season ticket but I took 18 journeys to London in 2 years and never went near a ticket office
But you said you bought them online, earlier in your reply to me. Thinking back, that wasn't possible in 1993 - I changed jobs and email was barely a thing. 1999?
Edit: it hardly matters when. The basic point was you knew what ticket to buy and where to go. But the ticketing and fares system is still horrendous. It's a ripoff charter to abolish ticket offices.
As I recall I ordered and paid my tickets direct to Virgin Trains
Biut I repeat: you knew which tickets to order, and where to get them. And had the kit to get them.
Indeed but then we are 30 years on and in the age of the internet
Many in my age group worry about parking apps but it is getting impossible not to have to use them
It is not as convenient for some but it is the way the world is going
That's rather too convenient for some. Look at this, and look at the DM reports and the comments there. They are absolutely ballistic.
They are barbarians who dreamt up this policy and should not be let off so lightly.
I have little doubt they will be closed in due course but if I were to travel by rail I would use Trainline or similar anyway
In other words - you are happy to justify the further deterioration of public services, presumably by way oif support for a non-Labour government, and rely on a website known not to give good value remiably or be propery coordinated with the operators. For instance:
I would just say I have travelled extensively by train in the UK and also abroad including the Ghan and the Blue Train in South Africa and have not experienced problems you mention in either web sites or any other agency
It is not a political issue for me but as in parking apps so rail will inevitably follow though the unions will resist no doubt
Parking apps is an obvious area where the state should just sanction one app - have competitive a 5 year franchise by all means but one app nationwide.
I am not quite mean and luddite enough to mandate cash being accepted for parking, but I do think card payments should have to be available for any parking. If they want an app on top fine, but a physical on site card option should be mandatory.
One app to rule them all, one app to find them, One app to pay them all if common sense combined them
The slavery-dependent South stagnated while that anti-anti-slavery North industrialised, and grew wealthy.
Discuss.
No discussion. Entirely true
If you can import/utilise endless cheap human labour you have no need to innovate, and you will create enormous wealth (cf the Roman Empire)
A lesson here for pro-immigration lefties (er, like you): endless immigration of unskilled workers - aka EU Free Movement - does not make for prosperity, in the end
Were most of the people who moved lower skilled? Or were they just the ones who were most noticed and resented?
Because I suspect that a higher proportion of Polish university graduates ended up in the UK than those who were unskilled labour.
Wow! We’ve already had a Primeminister slain by a lettuce, now Mickey Mouse thinks he’s hard enough to take on “Whitewash” Jenrick. Who’s going to win this one?
The home office staff are absolutely correct - Jenrick is out of order 100%
Though possibly their mural is a copyright violation of Disneys rights...
Personally I have always thought the cartoons on children's facilities quite sinister.
You think Mickey and Mini Mouse saying welcome is sinister?
Oh hell yes. I'm with Foxy on this one - I can't put my finger on it, but there's something about a lot of cartoon figures in isolation, free of their context, which can be pretty creepy.
The one thing I have heard about batteries is there is concern about the weight of modern hybrid vehicles especially those parked in multi-storey car parks where there is concern the structures built in thr 60s and 70s can't take the weight of hundreds of hybrid vehicles.
Anyone heard this?
Yes, it was on here a week or two ago. I think @rcs1000 pooh-poohed it on various grounds which I really wish I could remember...😀
It's a fair concern, but one that is easily fixed by (for older structures) removing a proportion of spaces on higher floors.
It's also clearly bullshit to put this all on electric cars. If you were to draw a line with vehicle weight over time, they were rising long before Mr Tesla started selling his vehicles. Now, have electric and PHEV made the problem worse? Sure. But it smacks of hypocrisy that the people worrying about it were so unconcerned by the rising weight of ICEs in the past.
Mr Tesla?
"You're familiar with the phrase "man's reach exceeds his grasp"? It's a lie: man's grasp exceeds his nerve."
Yes, of course, the Industrial Revolution actually started in West Africa, went to Jamaica, via slaves, then evil Britons stole it away, and started their foundries in Coalbrookdale
It's probably bollocks but bigger picture-wise, the industrial revolution was probably largely inspired by slavery. People woke up to what unlimited cheap or free power could get you.
I'm not sure about "inspired". Every empire had slavery. Esp the Muslims
If slaves is all you need, then the Romans, Greeks, Ottomans, Arabs, Chinese, Mughals, and so on, would have devised the Industrial Revolution. They did not
Did slaves power the industrial revolution? Certainly: cotton picking slaves in Deep South USA fed English mills, and on we went. Shameful
But let's not alter the truth to fit our political convictions
Surely it's more likely to be the opposite: the lack of cheap labour meant people were forced to innovate.
(While swimming today, I listened to a Malcolm Gladwell podcast that touched in this very issue, making the case that the industrial revolution happened in the UK for - among other reasons - the fact that the UK was more of a bottom minimisation than a top maximisation society.)
Wow! We’ve already had a Primeminister slain by a lettuce, now Mickey Mouse thinks he’s hard enough to take on “Whitewash” Jenrick. Who’s going to win this one?
The home office staff are absolutely correct - Jenrick is out of order 100%
Though possibly their mural is a copyright violation of Disneys rights...
Personally I have always thought the cartoons on children's facilities quite sinister.
You think Mickey and Mini Mouse saying welcome is sinister?
Yes, of course, the Industrial Revolution actually started in West Africa, went to Jamaica, via slaves, then evil Britons stole it away, and started their foundries in Coalbrookdale
Why quack?
It seems to be based on historical research and documents.
West Africans didn't even have the fucking wheel til it was given to them in the mid 19th century. Yet they mastered one of the crucial processes of the Industrial Revolution? Which was then "stolen" by the Evil White Imperialist Slaving Britons?
We are entering the era of post-Scientific Truth, let alone post-Truth
You don't need a wheel to smelt iron, and the article explained it via the adaption of sugar cane rollers.
There was extensive metal working in West Africa, indeed it was access to West African gold that the Europeans originally wanted from their trade, only later moving to the sugar and slave industrial model.
On the face of it, it looks like total bollocks.
The tell us that both academics provide some accompanying spin that “the story here is Britain closing down, through military force, competition,” and that the findings are relevant to the reparations movement.
Though we did deliberately destroy the Indian shipbuilding and cotton cloth economy in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries by tariff enforced by military force.
In the Eighteenth century we imported Indian chintz, but by the Twentieth we exported Manchester cotton to them.
I want to read more about that.
What you describe has suddenly become the received view, but the counter argument is that an industrialising Lancashire simply outcompeted the Bengal.
I don’t want to minimise the culpability of the East India Company, which committed many evils.
Yes, of course, the Industrial Revolution actually started in West Africa, went to Jamaica, via slaves, then evil Britons stole it away, and started their foundries in Coalbrookdale
It's probably bollocks but bigger picture-wise, the industrial revolution was probably largely inspired by slavery. People woke up to what unlimited cheap or free power could get you.
I'm not sure about "inspired". Every empire had slavery. Esp the Muslims
If slaves is all you need, then the Romans, Greeks, Ottomans, Arabs, Chinese, Mughals, and so on, would have devised the Industrial Revolution. They did not
Did slaves power the industrial revolution? Certainly: cotton picking slaves in Deep South USA fed English mills, and on we went. Shameful
But let's not alter the truth to fit our political convictions
You've got some fucking nerve saying that after posting a link to an article and then completely exaggerating what it actually claims to fit your political convictions.
Hundreds of millions in Ulez fines are going unpaid as drivers “revolt” over the controversial charge, casting doubt over its expansion.
Penalty charge notices relating Sadiq Khan’s Ultra-Low Emissions Zone (ULEZ) worth £255m were outstanding at the end of last year, The Telegraph can reveal.
The Mayor of London’s flagship net zero scheme was owed more money from drivers in unpaid fines than it made during the financial year from 2022 to 2023, figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act showed.
@RochdalePioneers was irritated and angry this morning that anyone should have the temerity to complain and anyway it only affected a handful of cars
Seems it is affecting a large number of ordinary folks who are either unable to pay or won't pay
Well civil disobedience is a form of protest I am sure that all those complaining about the laws affecting JSO and XR and supporting them will also be supporting this protest
The best way is in the ballot box
The ballot box does nothing because it doesn't matter whether you vote tory,lab or lib dem
It seems to matter rather a lot to the people who do vote for one of those.
Just because you don't see a big enough difference to please you, doesn't mean others agree.
The country has a lot of stupid people....isn't that cannon on the left when you question about how people can vote tory...I just have a wider definition. I don't vote anymore because it really is a complete and utter waste of time when all three parties just want to manage the decline.
When a party comes round with an actual plan that might work I will vote for them in the meantime I will do all I can to break things
Everybody's wrong apart from me!
When people keep voting for parties that will do fuck all to improve their lot then yes they are stupid. That is the argument that people like you use for people voting tory. The only difference is I say the same about labour and the lib dems.
I get you have this impression you are somehow superior to tory voters...no you arent. Starmer will get in next time I have no doubt and under his stewardship I guarantee the lot of the bottom 70 percent of the country will worsen, would be the same if you elect the tories or the lib dems.
They all follow the same ideology we have had for the last 40 years in this country. The ideology that landed us here. Not my fault you are so tribal as to believe your team will make stuff better by following those same policies if slightly tweaked. You go ahead and believe you are an intelligent person though if it makes you feel better
Just so you know, I've voted Tory more than I've voted Labour. Back in the day when the Tories were a sensible, liberal party.
I've never voted Labour. But I might.
You're the calling (nearly) all voters stupid, not me. You're raging at your own reflection.
Voters desperately switch from one to the other hoping they will protect there middle class life styles. Sorry they wont. If the tories get in the top 20% will do well and the lifestyles of the bottom 80% will worsen, same will happen under starmer or whoever the leader of the lib dems is.
The ballot box is no longer a vehicle that can enforce change in the way the country needs because too many are just hoping to protect there lifestyle and hoping in the face of all the evidence that changing their vote from one centrist party to another will do it.
Sooner the whole country crashes and burns the sooner we can start to rebuild. Yes it will hurt but the only way things might change for the better for those less well off.
It’s interesting to get this sort of revolutionary opinion on PB as it’s quite unusual. What sort of revolution would you like, a right wing, left wing, religious, or separatist/localist sort?
I haven't argued for any way of going, I just see it as we can't keep on this path. Over the last forty years the poor have got poorer, the rich have got richer. This can't go on and electing someone of any rosette colour to keep on with the same policies is madness.
In most Western countries it’s more the case that growth has stalled and inequality has increased (though not everywhere) in the last 16 years since the financial crisis.
That's because the financial crisis discredited orthodox, free market economics amongst voters.
Completely illogically, since it occurred in the financial services sector, which is about the most regulated, government-controlled part of the private sector there is, apart maybe from housebuilding, which is of course even more screwed up.
It really isn't rocket science - markets generally allocate resources better than governments do, because people who operate in them are closer to the action and afraid of going bankrupt, whereas governments are generally but not always remote, incompetent and wasteful. And if you penalise the successful and enterprising and reward the lazy and failing, you'll have less success and enterprise and more laziness and failure.
But anyway, we've had creeping, tax-and-spend managerial socialism virtually everywhere in the free world, and, completely unsurprisingly, we're left with no growth, and even, in some years, absolute decline.
You do remember why financial services are so closely regulated surely? Or were you born after 2008?
Close regulation and competent regulation are completely independent of each other.
As Gordon Brown, his FSA, and master-of-disaster quangocrats like LORD Adair Turner and SIR Callum McCarthy proved in spectacular fashion. And so, for that matter, did the SEC in the US. Or Ofwat and the Environment Agency more recently.
Yes, it's a battery story, but Toyota is one company I'd 'trust' on such stories.
"Toyota says solid-state battery breakthrough can halve cost and size Japanese carmaker plans to commercialise technology in electric vehicles by 2027"
If they are claiming in consumer vehicles in 2027, they’d need to have a full sized test item in a test car now…
Edit : there is no existing factory for solid state batteries on such a scale. So they will need one. To get one up and running in 2027, they would need to be breaking ground… about now. Are they?
The Japanese reporting says 2027 *at the earliest*.
There is surely something in that. Indeed I've done it myself. You've got yowling, or unhappy, or snappish kids in the car, you just want them to shut up and eat SOMETHING, and there is McDonalds. And it is cheap, and convenient, and you don't have to persuade them to try whelks
It doesn't explain, however, why so many middle class adult Americans are so obscenely FAT. I know the Brits are bad, but Midwest America, wow. Something has gone very wrong in their food culture
Isn't the relative cost of eating out compared with cooking at home much lower in the USA ?
Food is insanely calorific in the US. Everything is injected with corn-syrup, sugars and fats. The cereal aisle in any supermarket looks like a bloody amusement arcade from 1985.
Such is the density of cupcake or confectionary shops in my part of Manhattan, I often wonder they are not even fatter. Seriously.
Wow! We’ve already had a Primeminister slain by a lettuce, now Mickey Mouse thinks he’s hard enough to take on “Whitewash” Jenrick. Who’s going to win this one?
The home office staff are absolutely correct - Jenrick is out of order 100%
Though possibly their mural is a copyright violation of Disneys rights...
Personally I have always thought the cartoons on children's facilities quite sinister.
You think Mickey and Mini Mouse saying welcome is sinister?
Oh hell yes. I'm with Foxy on this one - I can't put my finger on it, but there's something about a lot of cartoon figures in isolation, free of their context, which can be pretty creepy.
You reckon that's why Jenrick ordered them to be whitewashed over - because they were sinister?
Wow! We’ve already had a Primeminister slain by a lettuce, now Mickey Mouse thinks he’s hard enough to take on “Whitewash” Jenrick. Who’s going to win this one?
Wow! We’ve already had a Primeminister slain by a lettuce, now Mickey Mouse thinks he’s hard enough to take on “Whitewash” Jenrick. Who’s going to win this one?
The home office staff are absolutely correct - Jenrick is out of order 100%
Though possibly their mural is a copyright violation of Disneys rights...
Personally I have always thought the cartoons on children's facilities quite sinister.
You think Mickey and Mini Mouse saying welcome is sinister?
Yes, because it is a trick when the kids are not being welcomed. I have similar issues with the ones on kids wards at hospital. They exploit the gullibility of kids in order to get them to do something that they would rather not do.
I accept mine is a minority view, but I think children benefit from adults being honest with them.
Yes, of course, the Industrial Revolution actually started in West Africa, went to Jamaica, via slaves, then evil Britons stole it away, and started their foundries in Coalbrookdale
It's probably bollocks but bigger picture-wise, the industrial revolution was probably largely inspired by slavery. People woke up to what unlimited cheap or free power could get you.
I'm not sure about "inspired". Every empire had slavery. Esp the Muslims
If slaves is all you need, then the Romans, Greeks, Ottomans, Arabs, Chinese, Mughals, and so on, would have devised the Industrial Revolution. They did not
Did slaves power the industrial revolution? Certainly: cotton picking slaves in Deep South USA fed English mills, and on we went. Shameful
But let's not alter the truth to fit our political convictions
Surely it's more likely to be the opposite: the lack of cheap labour meant people were forced to innovate.
(While swimming today, I listened to a Malcolm Gladwell podcast that touched in this very issue, making the case that the industrial revolution happened in the UK for - among other reasons - the fact that the UK was more of a bottom minimisation than a top maximisation society.)
As an aside, the podcast would have been an utter anathema to @HYUFD. Basically, the case was made that the biggest economic gains come not from plowing money into making the top 1% as productive as possible, but in educating and improving the skills of the bottom 45%.
If you look at Europe, you can argue that that is something that Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands have done really well, with education spending that is biased towards equipping everyone with employable skills.
The slavery-dependent South stagnated while that anti-anti-slavery North industrialised, and grew wealthy.
Discuss.
No discussion. Entirely true
If you can import/utilise endless cheap human labour you have no need to innovate, and you will create enormous wealth (cf the Roman Empire)
A lesson here for pro-immigration lefties (er, like you): endless immigration of unskilled workers - aka EU Free Movement - does not make for prosperity, in the end
Were most of the people who moved lower skilled? Or were they just the ones who were most noticed and resented?
Because I suspect that a higher proportion of Polish university graduates ended up in the UK than those who were unskilled labour.
Yes, I agree. European migration was so beneficial precisely because it tended to be more highly skilled.
Even the -on paper- lower earners were more likely the be on a trajectory toward higher earning.
DfT has published list of 53 stations which will be added to the London contactless ticketing area by end of 2023, some are lot further from London, than others not on list, eg Shepperton but not Esher
Apsley NEED Ashford (Surrey) GOT Basildon GOT Bat & Ball NEED Beaconsfield NEED Benfleet GOT Berkhamsted NEED Bletchley GOT Bricket Wood GOT Chalkwell GOT Cheddington NEED Datchet NEED Denham GOT Denham Golf Club GOT Dunton Green NEED East Tilbury NEED Egham NEED Eynsford NEED Garston GOT Gerrards Cross NEED Hemel Hempstead NEED High Wycombe GOT How Wood NEED Kempton Park GOT Kings Langley NEED Laindon NEED Leigh-on-Sea GOT Leighton Buzzard NEED Otford GOT Park Street NEED Pitsea GOT Seer Green & Jordans NEED Sevenoaks GOT Shepperton GOT Shoeburyness GOT Shoreham (Kent) NEED Southend Central GOT Southend East GOT St Albans Abbey GOT Staines GOT Stanford-le-Hope GOT Sunbury GOT Sunnymeads NEED Thorpe Bay GOT Tilbury Town NEED Tring NEED Upper Halliford GOT Virginia Water GOT Watford North GOT West Horndon NEED Westcliff GOT Windsor & Eton Riverside GOT Wraysbury NEED
Um, the GOTs and NEEDs are whether Sunil's visited these or not at any time over the last 15 years
The slavery-dependent South stagnated while that anti-anti-slavery North industrialised, and grew wealthy.
Discuss.
No discussion. Entirely true
If you can import/utilise endless cheap human labour you have no need to innovate, and you will create enormous wealth (cf the Roman Empire)
A lesson here for pro-immigration lefties (er, like you): endless immigration of unskilled workers - aka EU Free Movement - does not make for prosperity, in the end
Were most of the people who moved lower skilled? Or were they just the ones who were most noticed and resented?
Because I suspect that a higher proportion of Polish university graduates ended up in the UK than those who were unskilled labour.
I'm not sure of the exact percentage - but it would be interesting to see the breakdown across various countries.
I know at my place we have a very high % of _extremely_ brilliant Bulgarians for instance. Whereas not long ago I was chased down the road by some random folk for taking a photo at a car valet place. For what I'm assuming was for quasi-legal reasons.
Wow! We’ve already had a Primeminister slain by a lettuce, now Mickey Mouse thinks he’s hard enough to take on “Whitewash” Jenrick. Who’s going to win this one?
The home office staff are absolutely correct - Jenrick is out of order 100%
Though possibly their mural is a copyright violation of Disneys rights...
Personally I have always thought the cartoons on children's facilities quite sinister.
You think Mickey and Mini Mouse saying welcome is sinister?
Oh hell yes. I'm with Foxy on this one - I can't put my finger on it, but there's something about a lot of cartoon figures in isolation, free of their context, which can be pretty creepy.
You reckon that's why Jenrick ordered them to be whitewashed over - because they were sinister?
Or was he in fact just being an arse?
It is perfectly possible, indeed very likely that both cartoons being sinister and Jenrick being an arse are true
Wow! We’ve already had a Primeminister slain by a lettuce, now Mickey Mouse thinks he’s hard enough to take on “Whitewash” Jenrick. Who’s going to win this one?
Wow! We’ve already had a Primeminister slain by a lettuce, now Mickey Mouse thinks he’s hard enough to take on “Whitewash” Jenrick. Who’s going to win this one?
The home office staff are absolutely correct - Jenrick is out of order 100%
Though possibly their mural is a copyright violation of Disneys rights...
Personally I have always thought the cartoons on children's facilities quite sinister.
You think Mickey and Mini Mouse saying welcome is sinister?
Oh hell yes. I'm with Foxy on this one - I can't put my finger on it, but there's something about a lot of cartoon figures in isolation, free of their context, which can be pretty creepy.
You reckon that's why Jenrick ordered them to be whitewashed over - because they were sinister?
Or was he in fact just being an arse?
I very much doubt he thinks cartoon characters are sinister, only weirdos like me and Foxy would think that. I'm genuinely facinated to learn more about this story and why he is getting involved to order it, since I cannot think of a non-arse reason.
Yes, of course, the Industrial Revolution actually started in West Africa, went to Jamaica, via slaves, then evil Britons stole it away, and started their foundries in Coalbrookdale
It's probably bollocks but bigger picture-wise, the industrial revolution was probably largely inspired by slavery. People woke up to what unlimited cheap or free power could get you.
More that slavery, historically, put people off mechanisation.
One reason that the Romans got to a certain stage of mechanisation and didn't move further was that their system ran on mass, cheap slavery.
The progress in water and windmills *after* the Romans was rapid.
ONS, or OSR as they now style themselves, rebukes Sadiq Khan for his figures that suggest only 10% of vehicles currently driving in the expanded zone, are not exempt from paying the charge.
Meanwhile, figures for last year, with the smaller zone around the A406 and A205 (north circular and south circular roads) show revenues of £230m (including £75m in fines), and outstanding fines of £250m.
Oh, and the expansion zone is many times bigger than the existing zone.
£12.50 a day. All day, every day.
You can get a compliant car for less than that.
Can you? Link please, to car that’s £12.50 a day. Presumably one of these American-style “Buy Here Pay Here” dealerships now has one available?
£12.50/day is £375/month. That's going to buy something reasonable, if not DuraAce-compliant.
The important point is that no deposit and no credit rating needs to be required - a product available for someone on a zero-hours contract, let’s say delivering parcels.
Hang on: you don't mean *no* credit rating. Because the only people with *no* credit rating will be people who have never had a single bill - no electricity, no gas, no council tax, no mobile phone contract.
And most importantly... no car insurance.
Now, sure, these people will exist, but there won't be many of them. (And mostly they will be fresh off the MegaBus.)
What I think you mean is people with poor credit.
The credit rating agencies have zero information on me. It can be done. Albeit it takes some effort.
Oh? So it was unfair of one of us to suggest that Leon was this chap, and you are the better candidate?
Big G used the internet to buy his season tickets in the 1990s?
OK.
You have misread my post
I did not have a season ticket but I took 18 journeys to London in 2 years and never went near a ticket office
But you said you bought them online, earlier in your reply to me. Thinking back, that wasn't possible in 1993 - I changed jobs and email was barely a thing. 1999?
Edit: it hardly matters when. The basic point was you knew what ticket to buy and where to go. But the ticketing and fares system is still horrendous. It's a ripoff charter to abolish ticket offices.
As I recall I ordered and paid my tickets direct to Virgin Trains
Biut I repeat: you knew which tickets to order, and where to get them. And had the kit to get them.
Indeed but then we are 30 years on and in the age of the internet
Many in my age group worry about parking apps but it is getting impossible not to have to use them
It is not as convenient for some but it is the way the world is going
That's rather too convenient for some. Look at this, and look at the DM reports and the comments there. They are absolutely ballistic.
They are barbarians who dreamt up this policy and should not be let off so lightly.
I have little doubt they will be closed in due course but if I were to travel by rail I would use Trainline or similar anyway
In other words - you are happy to justify the further deterioration of public services, presumably by way oif support for a non-Labour government, and rely on a website known not to give good value remiably or be propery coordinated with the operators. For instance:
I would just say I have travelled extensively by train in the UK and also abroad including the Ghan and the Blue Train in South Africa and have not experienced problems you mention in either web sites or any other agency
It is not a political issue for me but as in parking apps so rail will inevitably follow though the unions will resist no doubt
Parking apps is an obvious area where the state should just sanction one app - have competitive a 5 year franchise by all means but one app nationwide.
What advantage would having 1 app nationwide bring?
Not having to have 38 different apps on one's phone
See, you don't have 38 parking apps on your phone
But actually I do, adjusted for exaggeration. And 27 of them I have had to download on the fly in flaky coverage and tell them my cc number and resting penis length just to pay the fuckers for an hours bloody parking
I can assure you that that problem exists worldwide.
DfT has published list of 53 stations which will be added to the London contactless ticketing area by end of 2023, some are lot further from London, than others not on list, eg Shepperton but not Esher
Apsley NEED Ashford (Surrey) GOT Basildon GOT Bat & Ball NEED Beaconsfield NEED Benfleet GOT Berkhamsted NEED Bletchley GOT Bricket Wood GOT Chalkwell GOT Cheddington NEED Datchet NEED Denham GOT Denham Golf Club GOT Dunton Green NEED East Tilbury NEED Egham NEED Eynsford NEED Garston GOT Gerrards Cross NEED Hemel Hempstead NEED High Wycombe GOT How Wood NEED Kempton Park GOT Kings Langley NEED Laindon NEED Leigh-on-Sea GOT Leighton Buzzard NEED Otford GOT Park Street NEED Pitsea GOT Seer Green & Jordans NEED Sevenoaks GOT Shepperton GOT Shoeburyness GOT Shoreham (Kent) NEED Southend Central GOT Southend East GOT St Albans Abbey GOT Staines GOT Stanford-le-Hope GOT Sunbury GOT Sunnymeads NEED Thorpe Bay GOT Tilbury Town NEED Tring NEED Upper Halliford GOT Virginia Water GOT Watford North GOT West Horndon NEED Westcliff GOT Windsor & Eton Riverside GOT Wraysbury NEED
Um, the GOTs and NEEDs are whether Sunil's visited these or not at any time over the last 15 years
I can't help but feel that the the GOTs and NEEDs point to a deeper 'need'.
Big G used the internet to buy his season tickets in the 1990s?
OK.
You have misread my post
I did not have a season ticket but I took 18 journeys to London in 2 years and never went near a ticket office
But you said you bought them online, earlier in your reply to me. Thinking back, that wasn't possible in 1993 - I changed jobs and email was barely a thing. 1999?
Edit: it hardly matters when. The basic point was you knew what ticket to buy and where to go. But the ticketing and fares system is still horrendous. It's a ripoff charter to abolish ticket offices.
As I recall I ordered and paid my tickets direct to Virgin Trains
Biut I repeat: you knew which tickets to order, and where to get them. And had the kit to get them.
Indeed but then we are 30 years on and in the age of the internet
Many in my age group worry about parking apps but it is getting impossible not to have to use them
It is not as convenient for some but it is the way the world is going
That's rather too convenient for some. Look at this, and look at the DM reports and the comments there. They are absolutely ballistic.
They are barbarians who dreamt up this policy and should not be let off so lightly.
I have little doubt they will be closed in due course but if I were to travel by rail I would use Trainline or similar anyway
In other words - you are happy to justify the further deterioration of public services, presumably by way oif support for a non-Labour government, and rely on a website known not to give good value remiably or be propery coordinated with the operators. For instance:
I would just say I have travelled extensively by train in the UK and also abroad including the Ghan and the Blue Train in South Africa and have not experienced problems you mention in either web sites or any other agency
It is not a political issue for me but as in parking apps so rail will inevitably follow though the unions will resist no doubt
Parking apps is an obvious area where the state should just sanction one app - have competitive a 5 year franchise by all means but one app nationwide.
What advantage would having 1 app nationwide bring?
Not having to have 38 different apps on one's phone
See, you don't have 38 parking apps on your phone
But actually I do, adjusted for exaggeration. And 27 of them I have had to download on the fly in flaky coverage and tell them my cc number and resting penis length just to pay the fuckers for an hours bloody parking
I can assure you that that problem exists worldwide.
But parking is generally less of a problem in the US. I was astonished to discover you can pretty much park freely in quite a bit of Manhattan.
The slavery-dependent South stagnated while that anti-anti-slavery North industrialised, and grew wealthy.
Discuss.
No discussion. Entirely true
If you can import/utilise endless cheap human labour you have no need to innovate, and you will create enormous wealth (cf the Roman Empire)
A lesson here for pro-immigration lefties (er, like you): endless immigration of unskilled workers - aka EU Free Movement - does not make for prosperity, in the end
Were most of the people who moved lower skilled? Or were they just the ones who were most noticed and resented?
Because I suspect that a higher proportion of Polish university graduates ended up in the UK than those who were unskilled labour.
A hotel chambermaid with a degree is still a hotel chambermaid.
You could argue that a few years working in an unskilled job in a richer country might still be financially better than in a skilled job (which may not even exist) in their own country with the added benefit of improving their English language skills and cultural experience.
Wow! We’ve already had a Primeminister slain by a lettuce, now Mickey Mouse thinks he’s hard enough to take on “Whitewash” Jenrick. Who’s going to win this one?
The home office staff are absolutely correct - Jenrick is out of order 100%
Though possibly their mural is a copyright violation of Disneys rights...
Personally I have always thought the cartoons on children's facilities quite sinister.
You think Mickey and Mini Mouse saying welcome is sinister?
Anyway. If this is helping the evil people smugglers, our asylum centres twinned with Disneyland, then Jenrick is right. In fact putting that on the front page of the “I” is irresponsible in itself showing how welcoming asylum centres are, I wouldn’t be surprise if the government or New Conservatives complain
There is surely something in that. Indeed I've done it myself. You've got yowling, or unhappy, or snappish kids in the car, you just want them to shut up and eat SOMETHING, and there is McDonalds. And it is cheap, and convenient, and you don't have to persuade them to try whelks
It doesn't explain, however, why so many middle class adult Americans are so obscenely FAT. I know the Brits are bad, but Midwest America, wow. Something has gone very wrong in their food culture
Isn't the relative cost of eating out compared with cooking at home much lower in the USA ?
Food is insanely calorific in the US. Everything is injected with corn-syrup, sugars and fats. The cereal aisle in any supermarket looks like a bloody amusement arcade from 1985.
Such is the density of cupcake or confectionary shops in my part of Manhattan, I often wonder they are not even fatter. Seriously.
Perhaps I might interest you, in exciting new franchising opportunity in your own humble hood
> Charles Dickens' Authentic Olde Englishe Gruele Buckete
Wednesday Special features all-you-can-stomach of old-fashioned luke-warm re-cycled mush
"Please, sir and/or madam, may I NOT have another bowl?"
Try the concoction that moved Mr Micawber (so to speak) to attempt emigration halfway around the world, on a leaky over-loaded death-trap, in order to escape from it.
Yes, of course, the Industrial Revolution actually started in West Africa, went to Jamaica, via slaves, then evil Britons stole it away, and started their foundries in Coalbrookdale
Why quack?
It seems to be based on historical research and documents.
West Africans didn't even have the fucking wheel til it was given to them in the mid 19th century. Yet they mastered one of the crucial processes of the Industrial Revolution? Which was then "stolen" by the Evil White Imperialist Slaving Britons?
Wow! We’ve already had a Primeminister slain by a lettuce, now Mickey Mouse thinks he’s hard enough to take on “Whitewash” Jenrick. Who’s going to win this one?
The home office staff are absolutely correct - Jenrick is out of order 100%
Though possibly their mural is a copyright violation of Disneys rights...
Personally I have always thought the cartoons on children's facilities quite sinister.
You think Mickey and Mini Mouse saying welcome is sinister?
Oh hell yes. I'm with Foxy on this one - I can't put my finger on it, but there's something about a lot of cartoon figures in isolation, free of their context, which can be pretty creepy.
Is it that they're often not quite faithful to the original, and thus exist in the "uncanny valley"?
Or is it that Mickey Mouse as a character is actually derived from blackface minstrels
Both valid points, but to me it is the deception in reception that irritates.
Yes, of course, the Industrial Revolution actually started in West Africa, went to Jamaica, via slaves, then evil Britons stole it away, and started their foundries in Coalbrookdale
Why quack?
It seems to be based on historical research and documents.
West Africans didn't even have the fucking wheel til it was given to them in the mid 19th century. Yet they mastered one of the crucial processes of the Industrial Revolution? Which was then "stolen" by the Evil White Imperialist Slaving Britons?
The slavery-dependent South stagnated while that anti-anti-slavery North industrialised, and grew wealthy.
Discuss.
No discussion. Entirely true
If you can import/utilise endless cheap human labour you have no need to innovate, and you will create enormous wealth (cf the Roman Empire)
A lesson here for pro-immigration lefties (er, like you): endless immigration of unskilled workers - aka EU Free Movement - does not make for prosperity, in the end
Were most of the people who moved lower skilled? Or were they just the ones who were most noticed and resented?
Because I suspect that a higher proportion of Polish university graduates ended up in the UK than those who were unskilled labour.
A hotel chambermaid with a degree is still a hotel chambermaid.
You could argue that a few years working in an unskilled job in a richer country might still be financially better than in a skilled job (which may not even exist) in their own country with the added benefit of improving their English language skills and cultural experience.
There were plenty of hotel chambermaids, sure. But what are the actual numbers? (And - of course - I'm not sure hospitality is a great example because that has lots of semi-skilled people getting temporary visas across the world.)
Someone needs to invent a “faffometer”. How much faff, or conversely, how little faff, is involved in everyday tasks?
Faff is a pain. It degrades quality of life.
Faff seems to multiply in more densely-populated places because there is more resource contestation and systems designed to manage that are usually faffy.
America often surprises on the faffy (litigious) and the non-faffy (car parking).
Britain is quite faffy. Japan and Germany and Swiss seem less faffy. Italy can be very faffy.
It should be government’s mission to remove faff. Faff is generally a kind of tax on the poor.
This sort of thing could be cost-free policies for a new government that would improve quality of life without having to fund the tax revenue to pay for it.
Things like the faff of having to phone insurance companies to get the non-piss-take renewal quote, or the companies that force you to phone to cancel a service and endure endless, "Are you sure? Really?" questioning, etc.
There are so many ways in which companies have found that it's more profitable to organise things in a way that pisses people off, because people generally don't have the time or energy to make the company suffer for it.
The danger is that it becomes a bit "cones hotline" but if it's something a government works on somewhat unobtrusively they will make people's lives better and not look ridiculous for it.
Over the last decade capital equipment budgets, training budgets and public health budgets have all been raided to prop up "front line services". This soon results in a hollow shell of a service, with neither resilience nor productivity.
I think I have had a drink the majority of nights since the old man died. And probably quite a few of the nights in the few weeks before that when he was gravely ill.
Probably a good job that I am on holiday for basically the rest of the month from Friday. I need to get this in check. Its not a dependence on alcohol - have seen that before and I'm not remotely that out of control.
More that I have stuff I can't process (though my dreams are having a decent go of it) and the sauce helps.
Wow! We’ve already had a Primeminister slain by a lettuce, now Mickey Mouse thinks he’s hard enough to take on “Whitewash” Jenrick. Who’s going to win this one?
The home office staff are absolutely correct - Jenrick is out of order 100%
Though possibly their mural is a copyright violation of Disneys rights...
Personally I have always thought the cartoons on children's facilities quite sinister.
You think Mickey and Mini Mouse saying welcome is sinister?
Oh hell yes. I'm with Foxy on this one - I can't put my finger on it, but there's something about a lot of cartoon figures in isolation, free of their context, which can be pretty creepy.
Is it that they're often not quite faithful to the original, and thus exist in the "uncanny valley"?
Or is it that Mickey Mouse as a character is actually derived from blackface minstrels
Both valid points, but to me it is the deception in reception that irritates.
You mean your perception of deception in reception.
Ironically, one of the reasons for the industrial revolution was the surfeit of labour created by the agricultural revolution. Efficient farming -> surplus of labour -> scalable production -> capital investment in improved processes becomes profitable.
Of course, slave labour undermines the the last of those steps but in non-slave economies an excess of labour makes for good investment conditions which incentivises innovation.
That's not ironic, that's the fundamental core of the whole thing. There had to be a surplus to invest in be forms of production.
This is why, for example, the USSR stole grain from Ukraine - thus creating a famine - in order to generate the foreign revenue to pay for industrial development.
As I mentioned several months ago, my mother went in to hospital for suspected pancreatitis. They had her all sorted and ready to go home within 36 hours but in the end she stayed in hospital for 6 days because they were unable to fit her in for a CT scan to make sure there was nothing more serious. Every time she was lined up for the scan there was something more serious which (understandably) had to take priority on the machine and they didn't have enough trained staff to run it continuously.
I was left wondering just how many 'blocked' beds are taken up by people they cannot get the necessary timely scans/analysis for.
There is surely something in that. Indeed I've done it myself. You've got yowling, or unhappy, or snappish kids in the car, you just want them to shut up and eat SOMETHING, and there is McDonalds. And it is cheap, and convenient, and you don't have to persuade them to try whelks
It doesn't explain, however, why so many middle class adult Americans are so obscenely FAT. I know the Brits are bad, but Midwest America, wow. Something has gone very wrong in their food culture
SeanT nervously entered Doctor Foxy's surgery. One thing troubled him: where was the ever so slightly effete and woke Foxy? Foxy's chair was behind the desk at the far end of the room, though its back was facing SeanT. He slowly approached the desk. It was when he was halfway across the surgery that all of a sudden, the chair swivelled round, and there, to SeanT's infinite horror, instead of the mild-mannered Foxy, was the dread Lipo-Suction Monster!
SeanT gaped in amazement; he was completely and utterly taken aback by the presence of the black-cloaked creature. The Liposuction Monster's eyes met SeanT's, and his mouth curled upwards in a malicious grin.
"Ah, my boy, we meet again!" the Lipo-Suction Monster exclaimed in his comically heavy Transylvanian accent. "Er, I see you still haven't slimmed down yet. Why not?" He leant across the desk as he spoke the last two words.
"Um, I tried, Lipo! Honest, I tried!" SeanT answered, sensing what was going to happen next wouldn't entirely be to his advantage.
"Trying is not good enough!" roared the Lipo-Suction Monster. And he leapt out from the chair, and over the desk, grabbing SeanT in the process, and throwing him onto the nearby couch. Laughing maniacally, the Monster returned to the desk, opened one of the drawers and produced a massive hack-saw!
"No! Please, Lipo! Please, no!" SeanT screamed.
The monster went back to his victim, who was quivering with fear, resigned to his fate. SeanT screamed as the evil creature proceeded to chop off his pseudo-feminine moobs!
Mutilated and bleeding profusely, he begged for mercy, but the Liposuction Monster was adamant to teach him a lesson. He did something which even SeanT swore was just a myth. He opened his mouth and extended his twelve-inch long proboscis, and - once again giggling dementedly - punctured the poor sod's blubbery abdominal region with it.
And sucked hard!
SeanT squealed in agony as he felt the monster suck up all of his precious fat, but the squeals soon faded away as within minutes he was quite literally nothing but a sack of skin and bone, fat-less, yes, but unfortunately life-less too....
Yes, of course, the Industrial Revolution actually started in West Africa, went to Jamaica, via slaves, then evil Britons stole it away, and started their foundries in Coalbrookdale
Why quack?
It seems to be based on historical research and documents.
West Africans didn't even have the fucking wheel til it was given to them in the mid 19th century. Yet they mastered one of the crucial processes of the Industrial Revolution? Which was then "stolen" by the Evil White Imperialist Slaving Britons?
We are entering the era of post-Scientific Truth, let alone post-Truth
Have you read the actual research paper?
YES
So, here's a quote (I've only skimmed):
"At the same time, Reeder sent to England to engage 60 white artificers for the instruction of Black metallurgists in using this specialist machinery,Footnote99 but rapidly found their services unnecessary. Within a few years, the Black metallurgists were ‘sufficiently acquainted with the business for Reeder to dismiss all the white men but two & a perfect foundry was established where not only sugar utensils were made but cannon manufactured’.Footnote100"
That people from Africa were able to learn how to operate the foundaries doesn't really have any relevance to your claim about the wheel, no? Unless you are saying that the foundry owner himself (Reeder) was lying about the capabilities of his slaves.
Wow! We’ve already had a Primeminister slain by a lettuce, now Mickey Mouse thinks he’s hard enough to take on “Whitewash” Jenrick. Who’s going to win this one?
The home office staff are absolutely correct - Jenrick is out of order 100%
Though possibly their mural is a copyright violation of Disneys rights...
Personally I have always thought the cartoons on children's facilities quite sinister.
You think Mickey and Mini Mouse saying welcome is sinister?
Oh hell yes. I'm with Foxy on this one - I can't put my finger on it, but there's something about a lot of cartoon figures in isolation, free of their context, which can be pretty creepy.
Over the last decade capital equipment budgets, training budgets and public health budgets have all been raided to prop up "front line services". This soon results in a hollow shell of a service, with neither resilience nor productivity.
I see it every day.
The Tories are crap at looking after our health services - no one can doubt it, surely?
Just saying “oh well, the world is getting more shit” is probably not the best messaging by the Tories.
I occasionally used the ticket office in the UK to: Figure out the best deal Upgrade to first class Clarify connection times. Buy a ticket when machines are broken Buy tickets for large groups with different needs Get a refund
And I am hardly some elderly drooler with limited digital skills.
The proposals don't invisage that a station whose ticket office is closed necessarily becomes staff-less. There would normally be a member of staff on the platform, who could do some of those tasks with the machine slung around his waist, like an on-board ticket inspector.
It's still a backward step, but it seems to be being widely construed as staffless stations, which isn't the same thing.
I’m posting again on the bizarre idea - signed off by the government - to close railway ticket offices.
Apparently all ticket offices at Euston, for example, are to go.
This is the “enshittification” of the railways.
I used to commute regularly to London when in business in the 1990s and never used a ticket office even then
When I lived in London in 1991-5, I used monthly tickets. But I purchased them at the ticket office.
Times and tech have changed since then, though.
One thing I will say though, as an occasional visitor to London: Oyster and tap-in, tap-out are non-intuitive and non-obvious compared to tickets. Great for the frequent user, opaque to someone who rarely frequents the metropolis.
Oh Christ, this is barmy.
Why would anyone use a bloody ticket? Or an Oyster for that matter? Just tap your phone.
ONS, or OSR as they now style themselves, rebukes Sadiq Khan for his figures that suggest only 10% of vehicles currently driving in the expanded zone, are not exempt from paying the charge.
Meanwhile, figures for last year, with the smaller zone around the A406 and A205 (north circular and south circular roads) show revenues of £230m (including £75m in fines), and outstanding fines of £250m.
Oh, and the expansion zone is many times bigger than the existing zone.
£12.50 a day. All day, every day.
You can get a compliant car for less than that.
Can you? Link please, to car that’s £12.50 a day. Presumably one of these American-style “Buy Here Pay Here” dealerships now has one available?
£12.50/day is £375/month. That's going to buy something reasonable, if not DuraAce-compliant.
The important point is that no deposit and no credit rating needs to be required - a product available for someone on a zero-hours contract, let’s say delivering parcels.
While we are taking about people who are in such positions…
A while back we were discussing bank account access for the poor. Given the profusion of accounts with rapid sign up, offering no credit, but with all the other facilities of a bank account, from both the banks and the alt-banks, what is the significant blocker for poor people getting a simple account like that?
Credit worthiness shouldn’t be the block there - what is?
Depends on whether they are available from the HS or only online. For the 14 million people with very limited or no online access the latter could be a problem.
Obviously if there is a HS option that does not apply.
Anyone on Universal Credit pretty much has to be online, or have a helper who can get online for them.
I think the latter is more likely to be the case given that the Digital Poverty charity are the ones I am quoting to get the 14 million figure (which I must admit very mch surprised me when I first heard it a couple of months ago).
Having someone do the online UC stuff for you once every few months is not the same as having daily or even weekly access to banking
It isn't once every few months. You get regular to-do lists and all queries, complaints, questions are Online.
Still something that can be dealt with by getting someone else to access for you.
So the question remains, how do 14 million people with limited or no internet access manage to handle online banking?
Lots of different numbers around even in this one report but "According to Ofcom’s Communications Affordability Tracker, the latest estimate regarding the number of households which do not have internet access, at least partially due to cost, stands at 100,000". Admittedly other numbers in the report are higher but not anywhere near 14 million.
The 14 million number likely includes lots of people who have internet access but consider it expensive and/or people who actively choose mobile internet access ahead of landline internet access.
And of those without internet access the most common reason by far (74%) was no need to go online. Price was at around 11%.
As I said the 14 million comes from the Digital Poverty Alliance and to be honest I would trust them a hell of a lot more than Ofcom.
From their own website
"6% of the UK population have no access to the internet – with 20% of young people aged 8-24 lacking the ability to get online."
That is around 4 million people with no access at all. There are an additional 10 million with only very limited access.
That said, the Digital Poverty Alliance is a pressure group with a mission to pursue. It's a laudable mission imo but they are clearly not unbiased.
You might as well trust the Taxpayers' Alliance.
Yes, I don't trust any group whose very purpose means you can write their response to anything without them even bothering. It's not as though evidence would change a pressure group's mind, even the one's with positive goals.
I welcome any input, but I dispute that such groups produce any sort of genuine analysis.
So you only trust the official Government figures? That is.... quaint.
As I mentioned several months ago, my mother went in to hospital for suspected pancreatitis. They had her all sorted and ready to go home within 36 hours but in the end she stayed in hospital for 6 days because they were unable to fit her in for a CT scan to make sure there was nothing more serious. Every time she was lined up for the scan there was something more serious which (understandably) had to take priority on the machine and they didn't have enough trained staff to run it continuously.
I was left wondering just how many 'blocked' beds are taken up by people they cannot get the necessary timely scans/analysis for.
Worse than that. Waiting times for outpatient scans are so long that sometimes patients are admitted in order to get one in a timely manner.
ONS, or OSR as they now style themselves, rebukes Sadiq Khan for his figures that suggest only 10% of vehicles currently driving in the expanded zone, are not exempt from paying the charge.
Meanwhile, figures for last year, with the smaller zone around the A406 and A205 (north circular and south circular roads) show revenues of £230m (including £75m in fines), and outstanding fines of £250m.
Oh, and the expansion zone is many times bigger than the existing zone.
£12.50 a day. All day, every day.
You can get a compliant car for less than that.
Can you? Link please, to car that’s £12.50 a day. Presumably one of these American-style “Buy Here Pay Here” dealerships now has one available?
£12.50/day is £375/month. That's going to buy something reasonable, if not DuraAce-compliant.
The important point is that no deposit and no credit rating needs to be required - a product available for someone on a zero-hours contract, let’s say delivering parcels.
While we are taking about people who are in such positions…
A while back we were discussing bank account access for the poor. Given the profusion of accounts with rapid sign up, offering no credit, but with all the other facilities of a bank account, from both the banks and the alt-banks, what is the significant blocker for poor people getting a simple account like that?
Credit worthiness shouldn’t be the block there - what is?
Depends on whether they are available from the HS or only online. For the 14 million people with very limited or no online access the latter could be a problem.
Obviously if there is a HS option that does not apply.
Anyone on Universal Credit pretty much has to be online, or have a helper who can get online for them.
I think the latter is more likely to be the case given that the Digital Poverty charity are the ones I am quoting to get the 14 million figure (which I must admit very mch surprised me when I first heard it a couple of months ago).
Having someone do the online UC stuff for you once every few months is not the same as having daily or even weekly access to banking
It isn't once every few months. You get regular to-do lists and all queries, complaints, questions are Online.
Still something that can be dealt with by getting someone else to access for you.
So the question remains, how do 14 million people with limited or no internet access manage to handle online banking?
Lots of different numbers around even in this one report but "According to Ofcom’s Communications Affordability Tracker, the latest estimate regarding the number of households which do not have internet access, at least partially due to cost, stands at 100,000". Admittedly other numbers in the report are higher but not anywhere near 14 million.
The 14 million number likely includes lots of people who have internet access but consider it expensive and/or people who actively choose mobile internet access ahead of landline internet access.
And of those without internet access the most common reason by far (74%) was no need to go online. Price was at around 11%.
As I said the 14 million comes from the Digital Poverty Alliance and to be honest I would trust them a hell of a lot more than Ofcom.
From their own website
"6% of the UK population have no access to the internet – with 20% of young people aged 8-24 lacking the ability to get online."
That is around 4 million people with no access at all. There are an additional 10 million with only very limited access.
That said, the Digital Poverty Alliance is a pressure group with a mission to pursue. It's a laudable mission imo but they are clearly not unbiased.
You might as well trust the Taxpayers' Alliance.
Yes, I don't trust any group whose very purpose means you can write their response to anything without them even bothering. It's not as though evidence would change a pressure group's mind, even the one's with positive goals.
I welcome any input, but I dispute that such groups produce any sort of genuine analysis.
So you only trust the official Government figures? That is.... quaint.
I never trust anything until it has been officially denied.
Lots and lots of non-Londoners/bumpkins whining about the Ulez-X again I note. Again, it’s been in force inside the North Circ for 18 months, and is working brilliantly.
Wow! We’ve already had a Primeminister slain by a lettuce, now Mickey Mouse thinks he’s hard enough to take on “Whitewash” Jenrick. Who’s going to win this one?
The home office staff are absolutely correct - Jenrick is out of order 100%
Though possibly their mural is a copyright violation of Disneys rights...
Personally I have always thought the cartoons on children's facilities quite sinister.
You think Mickey and Mini Mouse saying welcome is sinister?
Yes, because it is a trick when the kids are not being welcomed. I have similar issues with the ones on kids wards at hospital. They exploit the gullibility of kids in order to get them to do something that they would rather not do.
I accept mine is a minority view, but I think children benefit from adults being honest with them.
The really grim thought experiment... How would you feel about welcoming cartoon figures on the corridor leading to a one way ticket to Rwanda? At some point, nice decoration makes underlying terrible treatment worse not better.
I don't think that government actions have quite got that bad yet; this instruction from the minister was just the minister being performatively mean. But compared with the government's intentions, the decoration of the walls is neither here nor there.
Yes, of course, the Industrial Revolution actually started in West Africa, went to Jamaica, via slaves, then evil Britons stole it away, and started their foundries in Coalbrookdale
Why quack?
It seems to be based on historical research and documents.
West Africans didn't even have the fucking wheel til it was given to them in the mid 19th century. Yet they mastered one of the crucial processes of the Industrial Revolution? Which was then "stolen" by the Evil White Imperialist Slaving Britons?
We are entering the era of post-Scientific Truth, let alone post-Truth
You don't need a wheel to smelt iron, and the article explained it via the adaption of sugar cane rollers.
There was extensive metal working in West Africa, indeed it was access to West African gold that the Europeans originally wanted from their trade, only later moving to the sugar and slave industrial model.
On the face of it, it looks like total bollocks.
The tell us that both academics provide some accompanying spin that “the story here is Britain closing down, through military force, competition,” and that the findings are relevant to the reparations movement.
Though we did deliberately destroy the Indian shipbuilding and cotton cloth economy in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries by tariff enforced by military force.
In the Eighteenth century we imported Indian chintz, but by the Twentieth we exported Manchester cotton to them.
I want to read more about that.
What you describe has suddenly become the received view, but the counter argument is that an industrialising Lancashire simply outcompeted the Bengal.
I don’t want to minimise the culpability of the East India Company, which committed many evils.
But that does not support the hard claim, which you repeat, that “Britain deliberately destroyed the Bengali textile industry”.
What happened is that Britain opened up Bengal to British manufactures (not in itself a bad thing), while protecting the Lancashire trade. But Bengal had hardly grown wealthy based on exports to Britain, and protecting Lancashire against those exports does not amount to “deliberate destruction”.
Also, as the article notes, it became more profitable for Bengali producers to focus on agriculture after the 1780s.
Ultimately Bengal could not compete with British manufacturing, and the British rulers didn’t care. The greater sin was the punitive extraction of taxes which led to the famines of 1770.
I think I have had a drink the majority of nights since the old man died. And probably quite a few of the nights in the few weeks before that when he was gravely ill.
Probably a good job that I am on holiday for basically the rest of the month from Friday. I need to get this in check. Its not a dependence on alcohol - have seen that before and I'm not remotely that out of control.
More that I have stuff I can't process (though my dreams are having a decent go of it) and the sauce helps.
It helps, or it makes you forget? Talking helps more than drinking, in most cases.
TBH when I have years where I don't take holidays until the summer I am in need of the break. This year ever more so. Taking a break from talking as everyone on the outside seems to have one view about how I should feel which differs from my reality.
There are positives. My relationship with Mrs RP is as solid as it has been for ages, and we go into our 20th Anniversary in September in a brilliant place. And my relationship with my brother is tighter than it has been in a long time.
Someone needs to invent a “faffometer”. How much faff, or conversely, how little faff, is involved in everyday tasks?
Faff is a pain. It degrades quality of life.
Faff seems to multiply in more densely-populated places because there is more resource contestation and systems designed to manage that are usually faffy.
America often surprises on the faffy (litigious) and the non-faffy (car parking).
Britain is quite faffy. Japan and Germany and Swiss seem less faffy. Italy can be very faffy.
It should be government’s mission to remove faff. Faff is generally a kind of tax on the poor.
This sort of thing could be cost-free policies for a new government that would improve quality of life without having to fund the tax revenue to pay for it.
Things like the faff of having to phone insurance companies to get the non-piss-take renewal quote, or the companies that force you to phone to cancel a service and endure endless, "Are you sure? Really?" questioning, etc.
There are so many ways in which companies have found that it's more profitable to organise things in a way that pisses people off, because people generally don't have the time or energy to make the company suffer for it.
The danger is that it becomes a bit "cones hotline" but if it's something a government works on somewhat unobtrusively they will make people's lives better and not look ridiculous for it.
The system of being able to demand a PAC code from your mobile provider, and get it in a timely manner is a great example of good regulation.
It made transferring you number between mobile phone providers much, much easier.
I’m posting again on the bizarre idea - signed off by the government - to close railway ticket offices.
Apparently all ticket offices at Euston, for example, are to go.
This is the “enshittification” of the railways.
I used to commute regularly to London when in business in the 1990s and never used a ticket office even then
When I lived in London in 1991-5, I used monthly tickets. But I purchased them at the ticket office.
Times and tech have changed since then, though.
One thing I will say though, as an occasional visitor to London: Oyster and tap-in, tap-out are non-intuitive and non-obvious compared to tickets. Great for the frequent user, opaque to someone who rarely frequents the metropolis.
I agree they could do with better signage and instructions around tap-in and out, especially since there are so many tourists in London.
I’m posting again on the bizarre idea - signed off by the government - to close railway ticket offices.
Apparently all ticket offices at Euston, for example, are to go.
This is the “enshittification” of the railways.
I used to commute regularly to London when in business in the 1990s and never used a ticket office even then
When I lived in London in 1991-5, I used monthly tickets. But I purchased them at the ticket office.
Times and tech have changed since then, though.
One thing I will say though, as an occasional visitor to London: Oyster and tap-in, tap-out are non-intuitive and non-obvious compared to tickets. Great for the frequent user, opaque to someone who rarely frequents the metropolis.
I agree they could do with better signage and instructions around tap-in and out, especially since there are so many tourists in London.
It is utterly confusing. I don't know what journeys I can use it on, and cannot (given some of my journeys are slightly uncommon). And the extension of tap-in outside of London will make it much worse.
This is one of the reasons I'm against the closure of ticket offices.
You literally just tap it to open the gate at one end and then again at the other end. It is by far the simplest system in the UK. Hard/impossible to see how it could be any more logical.
Someone here (and I can't remember who, and I think I'd rather not be reminded) is convinced that the NHS's problem is that it doesn't run its scanners 24:7, because that would be more efficient.
The slavery-dependent South stagnated while that anti-anti-slavery North industrialised, and grew wealthy.
Discuss.
No discussion. Entirely true
If you can import/utilise endless cheap human labour you have no need to innovate, and you will create enormous wealth (cf the Roman Empire)
A lesson here for pro-immigration lefties (er, like you): endless immigration of unskilled workers - aka EU Free Movement - does not make for prosperity, in the end
Aren't EU immigrants on average higher skilled than British workers, though?
Entirely off-topic but experts on here to consult. I'm going to defect from Windows to Mac. Much as I like the form factor of this Surface Pro 8, it's already showing its age (15 months of heavy use) and Windows 11 is still a pain.
Need to improve and greatly speed up video processing and workflow, want a unit that is robust and lasts a few years. Need to work on the move so that rules out a Mini. Soooo I think a 14" Pro will fit the bill.
A few questions about 10 core vs 12 core processors, or do I go mad and go M2 Max? Budget less of an issue than getting the spec right, don't want to go completely overboard but also a few hundred quid more on various options better to spend up front than end up under-spec. Anyway its a company purchase so true cost is 70% of retail anyway.
Very wise. Windows is garbage. Once you Mac, you don’t go back.
Entirely off-topic but experts on here to consult. I'm going to defect from Windows to Mac. Much as I like the form factor of this Surface Pro 8, it's already showing its age (15 months of heavy use) and Windows 11 is still a pain.
Need to improve and greatly speed up video processing and workflow, want a unit that is robust and lasts a few years. Need to work on the move so that rules out a Mini. Soooo I think a 14" Pro will fit the bill.
A few questions about 10 core vs 12 core processors, or do I go mad and go M2 Max? Budget less of an issue than getting the spec right, don't want to go completely overboard but also a few hundred quid more on various options better to spend up front than end up under-spec. Anyway its a company purchase so true cost is 70% of retail anyway.
You're only 28 years late. But the right decision.
Someone needs to invent a “faffometer”. How much faff, or conversely, how little faff, is involved in everyday tasks?
Faff is a pain. It degrades quality of life.
Faff seems to multiply in more densely-populated places because there is more resource contestation and systems designed to manage that are usually faffy.
America often surprises on the faffy (litigious) and the non-faffy (car parking).
Britain is quite faffy. Japan and Germany and Swiss seem less faffy. Italy can be very faffy.
It should be government’s mission to remove faff. Faff is generally a kind of tax on the poor.
This sort of thing could be cost-free policies for a new government that would improve quality of life without having to fund the tax revenue to pay for it.
Things like the faff of having to phone insurance companies to get the non-piss-take renewal quote, or the companies that force you to phone to cancel a service and endure endless, "Are you sure? Really?" questioning, etc.
There are so many ways in which companies have found that it's more profitable to organise things in a way that pisses people off, because people generally don't have the time or energy to make the company suffer for it.
The danger is that it becomes a bit "cones hotline" but if it's something a government works on somewhat unobtrusively they will make people's lives better and not look ridiculous for it.
The system of being able to demand a PAC code from your mobile provider, and get it in a timely manner is a great example of good regulation.
It made transferring you number between mobile phone providers much, much easier.
Exactly this.
Conversely, it is almost impossible to cancel a Times subscription.
Wow! We’ve already had a Primeminister slain by a lettuce, now Mickey Mouse thinks he’s hard enough to take on “Whitewash” Jenrick. Who’s going to win this one?
The home office staff are absolutely correct - Jenrick is out of order 100%
Though possibly their mural is a copyright violation of Disneys rights...
Personally I have always thought the cartoons on children's facilities quite sinister.
You think Mickey and Mini Mouse saying welcome is sinister?
Oh hell yes. I'm with Foxy on this one - I can't put my finger on it, but there's something about a lot of cartoon figures in isolation, free of their context, which can be pretty creepy.
Is it that they're often not quite faithful to the original, and thus exist in the "uncanny valley"?
Or is it that Mickey Mouse as a character is actually derived from blackface minstrels
Both valid points, but to me it is the deception in reception that irritates.
You mean your perception of deception in reception.
Seriously, all decoration is deception, isn't it?
You mean simultaneous deceptive and receptive behaviour is the governments whole approach to boats? Or you saying murals as deception in asylum reception, as within minutes the children will be tagged and chained?
Or some of the worlds most loved cartoon characters just freak you out is what you told the kids, when you saw the cost of a stay in Disneyland?
I admit I don’t understand. But it all sounds wrong in any case.
I’m having an early night becuaee I’m going shopping before the cricket starts.
I hope I have helped clarify the important points today 🙋♀️
I’m posting again on the bizarre idea - signed off by the government - to close railway ticket offices.
Apparently all ticket offices at Euston, for example, are to go.
This is the “enshittification” of the railways.
I used to commute regularly to London when in business in the 1990s and never used a ticket office even then
When I lived in London in 1991-5, I used monthly tickets. But I purchased them at the ticket office.
Times and tech have changed since then, though.
One thing I will say though, as an occasional visitor to London: Oyster and tap-in, tap-out are non-intuitive and non-obvious compared to tickets. Great for the frequent user, opaque to someone who rarely frequents the metropolis.
I agree they could do with better signage and instructions around tap-in and out, especially since there are so many tourists in London.
I’m posting again on the bizarre idea - signed off by the government - to close railway ticket offices.
Apparently all ticket offices at Euston, for example, are to go.
This is the “enshittification” of the railways.
I used to commute regularly to London when in business in the 1990s and never used a ticket office even then
When I lived in London in 1991-5, I used monthly tickets. But I purchased them at the ticket office.
Times and tech have changed since then, though.
One thing I will say though, as an occasional visitor to London: Oyster and tap-in, tap-out are non-intuitive and non-obvious compared to tickets. Great for the frequent user, opaque to someone who rarely frequents the metropolis.
I agree they could do with better signage and instructions around tap-in and out, especially since there are so many tourists in London.
It is utterly confusing. I don't know what journeys I can use it on, and cannot (given some of my journeys are slightly uncommon). And the extension of tap-in outside of London will make it much worse.
This is one of the reasons I'm against the closure of ticket offices.
You literally just tap it to open the gate at one end and then again at the other end. It is by far the simplest system in the UK. Hard/impossible to see how it could be any more logical.
Yes @JosiasJessop critisicm is bizarre. If the entire bus and train network of the UK ran on the same basis it would improve matters grately.
Entirely off-topic but experts on here to consult. I'm going to defect from Windows to Mac. Much as I like the form factor of this Surface Pro 8, it's already showing its age (15 months of heavy use) and Windows 11 is still a pain.
Need to improve and greatly speed up video processing and workflow, want a unit that is robust and lasts a few years. Need to work on the move so that rules out a Mini. Soooo I think a 14" Pro will fit the bill.
A few questions about 10 core vs 12 core processors, or do I go mad and go M2 Max? Budget less of an issue than getting the spec right, don't want to go completely overboard but also a few hundred quid more on various options better to spend up front than end up under-spec. Anyway its a company purchase so true cost is 70% of retail anyway.
Very wise. Windows is garbage. Once you Mac, you don’t go back.
I quit Windows for Chrome OS during Covid (simpler times...). Chrome does all the basics I need very well. But as client demands increased post-Covid I needed to go back into Windows and MS365. Needed to spec a recommended laptop for a previous client's needs and MS stuff made the most sense (Surface Laptop or Surface Pro). I then bought a Pro 8 to test for them and ended up owning the thing.
Its very good. For a Windows laptop. But like every other work laptop I have had for the last ages it is already showing signs of wear after a year and a bit. Its been a good long while since I've driven Apple, and have been an ardent critic of much they stood for. But now? Screw it...
DfT has published list of 53 stations which will be added to the London contactless ticketing area by end of 2023, some are lot further from London, than others not on list, eg Shepperton but not Esher
Apsley NEED Ashford (Surrey) GOT Basildon GOT Bat & Ball NEED Beaconsfield NEED Benfleet GOT Berkhamsted NEED Bletchley GOT Bricket Wood GOT Chalkwell GOT Cheddington NEED Datchet NEED Denham GOT Denham Golf Club GOT Dunton Green NEED East Tilbury NEED Egham NEED Eynsford NEED Garston GOT Gerrards Cross NEED Hemel Hempstead NEED High Wycombe GOT How Wood NEED Kempton Park GOT Kings Langley NEED Laindon NEED Leigh-on-Sea GOT Leighton Buzzard NEED Otford GOT Park Street NEED Pitsea GOT Seer Green & Jordans NEED Sevenoaks GOT Shepperton GOT Shoeburyness GOT Shoreham (Kent) NEED Southend Central GOT Southend East GOT St Albans Abbey GOT Staines GOT Stanford-le-Hope GOT Sunbury GOT Sunnymeads NEED Thorpe Bay GOT Tilbury Town NEED Tring NEED Upper Halliford GOT Virginia Water GOT Watford North GOT West Horndon NEED Westcliff GOT Windsor & Eton Riverside GOT Wraysbury NEED
Um, the GOTs and NEEDs are whether Sunil's visited these or not at any time over the last 15 years
I can't help but feel that the the GOTs and NEEDs point to a deeper 'need'.
The slavery-dependent South stagnated while that anti-anti-slavery North industrialised, and grew wealthy.
Discuss.
No discussion. Entirely true
If you can import/utilise endless cheap human labour you have no need to innovate, and you will create enormous wealth (cf the Roman Empire)
A lesson here for pro-immigration lefties (er, like you): endless immigration of unskilled workers - aka EU Free Movement - does not make for prosperity, in the end
Were most of the people who moved lower skilled? Or were they just the ones who were most noticed and resented?
Because I suspect that a higher proportion of Polish university graduates ended up in the UK than those who were unskilled labour.
A hotel chambermaid with a degree is still a hotel chambermaid.
You could argue that a few years working in an unskilled job in a richer country might still be financially better than in a skilled job (which may not even exist) in their own country with the added benefit of improving their English language skills and cultural experience.
There were plenty of hotel chambermaids, sure. But what are the actual numbers? (And - of course - I'm not sure hospitality is a great example because that has lots of semi-skilled people getting temporary visas across the world.)
Who knows what the relevant numbers are as I've never seen published details of where migrants go and what they do in those places.
Big G used the internet to buy his season tickets in the 1990s?
OK.
You have misread my post
I did not have a season ticket but I took 18 journeys to London in 2 years and never went near a ticket office
But you said you bought them online, earlier in your reply to me. Thinking back, that wasn't possible in 1993 - I changed jobs and email was barely a thing. 1999?
Edit: it hardly matters when. The basic point was you knew what ticket to buy and where to go. But the ticketing and fares system is still horrendous. It's a ripoff charter to abolish ticket offices.
As I recall I ordered and paid my tickets direct to Virgin Trains
Biut I repeat: you knew which tickets to order, and where to get them. And had the kit to get them.
Indeed but then we are 30 years on and in the age of the internet
Many in my age group worry about parking apps but it is getting impossible not to have to use them
It is not as convenient for some but it is the way the world is going
That's rather too convenient for some. Look at this, and look at the DM reports and the comments there. They are absolutely ballistic.
They are barbarians who dreamt up this policy and should not be let off so lightly.
I have little doubt they will be closed in due course but if I were to travel by rail I would use Trainline or similar anyway
In other words - you are happy to justify the further deterioration of public services, presumably by way oif support for a non-Labour government, and rely on a website known not to give good value remiably or be propery coordinated with the operators. For instance:
I would just say I have travelled extensively by train in the UK and also abroad including the Ghan and the Blue Train in South Africa and have not experienced problems you mention in either web sites or any other agency
It is not a political issue for me but as in parking apps so rail will inevitably follow though the unions will resist no doubt
Parking apps is an obvious area where the state should just sanction one app - have competitive a 5 year franchise by all means but one app nationwide.
What advantage would having 1 app nationwide bring?
Not having to have 38 different apps on one's phone
See, you don't have 38 parkin cc gvgg apps on your phone
But actually I do, adjusted for exaggeration. And 27 of them I have had to download on the fly in flaky coverage and tell them my cc number and resting penis length just to pay the fuckers for an hours bloody parking
And a lot of the time the stupid apps don't work, don't have the car park you're standing in in their database, or insist on you providing a piece of information you don't have to use their crap payment page (none of my cards have had a valid from date for at least a decade, why is this a compulsory field on your payment page, why, FFS?).
ONS, or OSR as they now style themselves, rebukes Sadiq Khan for his figures that suggest only 10% of vehicles currently driving in the expanded zone, are not exempt from paying the charge.
Meanwhile, figures for last year, with the smaller zone around the A406 and A205 (north circular and south circular roads) show revenues of £230m (including £75m in fines), and outstanding fines of £250m.
Oh, and the expansion zone is many times bigger than the existing zone.
£12.50 a day. All day, every day.
You can get a compliant car for less than that.
Can you? Link please, to car that’s £12.50 a day. Presumably one of these American-style “Buy Here Pay Here” dealerships now has one available?
£12.50/day is £375/month. That's going to buy something reasonable, if not DuraAce-compliant.
The important point is that no deposit and no credit rating needs to be required - a product available for someone on a zero-hours contract, let’s say delivering parcels.
While we are taking about people who are in such positions…
A while back we were discussing bank account access for the poor. Given the profusion of accounts with rapid sign up, offering no credit, but with all the other facilities of a bank account, from both the banks and the alt-banks, what is the significant blocker for poor people getting a simple account like that?
Credit worthiness shouldn’t be the block there - what is?
Depends on whether they are available from the HS or only online. For the 14 million people with very limited or no online access the latter could be a problem.
Obviously if there is a HS option that does not apply.
Anyone on Universal Credit pretty much has to be online, or have a helper who can get online for them.
I think the latter is more likely to be the case given that the Digital Poverty charity are the ones I am quoting to get the 14 million figure (which I must admit very mch surprised me when I first heard it a couple of months ago).
Having someone do the online UC stuff for you once every few months is not the same as having daily or even weekly access to banking
It isn't once every few months. You get regular to-do lists and all queries, complaints, questions are Online.
Still something that can be dealt with by getting someone else to access for you.
So the question remains, how do 14 million people with limited or no internet access manage to handle online banking?
Lots of different numbers around even in this one report but "According to Ofcom’s Communications Affordability Tracker, the latest estimate regarding the number of households which do not have internet access, at least partially due to cost, stands at 100,000". Admittedly other numbers in the report are higher but not anywhere near 14 million.
The 14 million number likely includes lots of people who have internet access but consider it expensive and/or people who actively choose mobile internet access ahead of landline internet access.
And of those without internet access the most common reason by far (74%) was no need to go online. Price was at around 11%.
As I said the 14 million comes from the Digital Poverty Alliance and to be honest I would trust them a hell of a lot more than Ofcom.
From their own website
"6% of the UK population have no access to the internet – with 20% of young people aged 8-24 lacking the ability to get online."
That is around 4 million people with no access at all. There are an additional 10 million with only very limited access.
That said, the Digital Poverty Alliance is a pressure group with a mission to pursue. It's a laudable mission imo but they are clearly not unbiased.
You might as well trust the Taxpayers' Alliance.
Yes, I don't trust any group whose very purpose means you can write their response to anything without them even bothering. It's not as though evidence would change a pressure group's mind, even the one's with positive goals.
I welcome any input, but I dispute that such groups produce any sort of genuine analysis.
So you only trust the official Government figures? That is.... quaint.
I didn't say that. I'm wary of any figures or policies. I just think groups which exist primarily to lobby for a particular solution or option try to present as being objective and analytical when they are ideologically driven and so any 'analysis' is just a figleaf to push the thing they already want to do. Is anyone ever surprised by something the Taxpayer alliance says in response to anything?
Such groups might as well just save time and effort and not bother with research and analysis. What, they're going to change their minds about the correct option if it shows something different? Beyond trivial, minor details?
Someone needs to invent a “faffometer”. How much faff, or conversely, how little faff, is involved in everyday tasks?
Faff is a pain. It degrades quality of life.
Faff seems to multiply in more densely-populated places because there is more resource contestation and systems designed to manage that are usually faffy.
America often surprises on the faffy (litigious) and the non-faffy (car parking).
Britain is quite faffy. Japan and Germany and Swiss seem less faffy. Italy can be very faffy.
It should be government’s mission to remove faff. Faff is generally a kind of tax on the poor.
This sort of thing could be cost-free policies for a new government that would improve quality of life without having to fund the tax revenue to pay for it.
Things like the faff of having to phone insurance companies to get the non-piss-take renewal quote, or the companies that force you to phone to cancel a service and endure endless, "Are you sure? Really?" questioning, etc.
There are so many ways in which companies have found that it's more profitable to organise things in a way that pisses people off, because people generally don't have the time or energy to make the company suffer for it.
The danger is that it becomes a bit "cones hotline" but if it's something a government works on somewhat unobtrusively they will make people's lives better and not look ridiculous for it.
The system of being able to demand a PAC code from your mobile provider, and get it in a timely manner is a great example of good regulation.
It made transferring you number between mobile phone providers much, much easier.
Exactly this.
Conversely, it is almost impossible to cancel a Times subscription.
You ring up whereupon they offer you another three months at slightly less cheap than your current rate.
I’m posting again on the bizarre idea - signed off by the government - to close railway ticket offices.
Apparently all ticket offices at Euston, for example, are to go.
This is the “enshittification” of the railways.
I used to commute regularly to London when in business in the 1990s and never used a ticket office even then
When I lived in London in 1991-5, I used monthly tickets. But I purchased them at the ticket office.
Times and tech have changed since then, though.
One thing I will say though, as an occasional visitor to London: Oyster and tap-in, tap-out are non-intuitive and non-obvious compared to tickets. Great for the frequent user, opaque to someone who rarely frequents the metropolis.
Oh Christ, this is barmy.
Why would anyone use a bloody ticket? Or an Oyster for that matter? Just tap your phone.
I did Manchester - Dirty Leeds and back last week on Northern. From observation the only pax with paper tickets was the school party. Everyone else was on etickets.
For tourists? They need a ticket office and paper tickets. Or places just off the edge of etickets. My outside London hotel is walking distance from Stone Crossing. I bought Travelcards from there - on paper as beyond Z6 and contactless. The fix is roll contactless out. I can go Luton Airport - Luton Parkway - That London or Gatwick - That London on contactless, why not other places that are less far away?
Yes, of course, the Industrial Revolution actually started in West Africa, went to Jamaica, via slaves, then evil Britons stole it away, and started their foundries in Coalbrookdale
It's probably bollocks but bigger picture-wise, the industrial revolution was probably largely inspired by slavery. People woke up to what unlimited cheap or free power could get you.
I'm not sure about "inspired". Every empire had slavery. Esp the Muslims
If slaves is all you need, then the Romans, Greeks, Ottomans, Arabs, Chinese, Mughals, and so on, would have devised the Industrial Revolution. They did not
Did slaves power the industrial revolution? Certainly: cotton picking slaves in Deep South USA fed English mills, and on we went. Shameful
But let's not alter the truth to fit our political convictions
The Atlantic slave trade combined slavery with colonialism and capitalism, that was what was new. Slavery produced huge profits because it brought together abundant land in the new world, cheap labour and new agricultural products for which there was huge demand. These profits - capital - were then funnelled by the capitalist system into driving the investment required by the industrial revolution. It also provided raw materials and products for the industrial workers to consume. Our whole economy was built on slavery and its profits.
Yes, of course, the Industrial Revolution actually started in West Africa, went to Jamaica, via slaves, then evil Britons stole it away, and started their foundries in Coalbrookdale
Why quack?
It seems to be based on historical research and documents.
West Africans didn't even have the fucking wheel til it was given to them in the mid 19th century. Yet they mastered one of the crucial processes of the Industrial Revolution? Which was then "stolen" by the Evil White Imperialist Slaving Britons?
We are entering the era of post-Scientific Truth, let alone post-Truth
You don't need a wheel to smelt iron, and the article explained it via the adaption of sugar cane rollers.
There was extensive metal working in West Africa, indeed it was access to West African gold that the Europeans originally wanted from their trade, only later moving to the sugar and slave industrial model.
On the face of it, it looks like total bollocks.
The tell us that both academics provide some accompanying spin that “the story here is Britain closing down, through military force, competition,” and that the findings are relevant to the reparations movement.
Though we did deliberately destroy the Indian shipbuilding and cotton cloth economy in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries by tariff enforced by military force.
In the Eighteenth century we imported Indian chintz, but by the Twentieth we exported Manchester cotton to them.
I want to read more about that.
What you describe has suddenly become the received view, but the counter argument is that an industrialising Lancashire simply outcompeted the Bengal.
I don’t want to minimise the culpability of the East India Company, which committed many evils.
That's not really a counter argument.
A sovereign Bengal could have protected its textile industries until they too developed. (As happened in bits of Europe.) Imperial Britain enforced free trade for its own benefit - and the severe disbenefit of Bengal.
Someone needs to invent a “faffometer”. How much faff, or conversely, how little faff, is involved in everyday tasks?
Faff is a pain. It degrades quality of life.
Faff seems to multiply in more densely-populated places because there is more resource contestation and systems designed to manage that are usually faffy.
America often surprises on the faffy (litigious) and the non-faffy (car parking).
Britain is quite faffy. Japan and Germany and Swiss seem less faffy. Italy can be very faffy.
It should be government’s mission to remove faff. Faff is generally a kind of tax on the poor.
This sort of thing could be cost-free policies for a new government that would improve quality of life without having to fund the tax revenue to pay for it.
Things like the faff of having to phone insurance companies to get the non-piss-take renewal quote, or the companies that force you to phone to cancel a service and endure endless, "Are you sure? Really?" questioning, etc.
There are so many ways in which companies have found that it's more profitable to organise things in a way that pisses people off, because people generally don't have the time or energy to make the company suffer for it.
The danger is that it becomes a bit "cones hotline" but if it's something a government works on somewhat unobtrusively they will make people's lives better and not look ridiculous for it.
The system of being able to demand a PAC code from your mobile provider, and get it in a timely manner is a great example of good regulation.
It made transferring you number between mobile phone providers much, much easier.
Exactly this.
Conversely, it is almost impossible to cancel a Times subscription.
A national gym chain I belong to has the following cancellation policy: cancel your direct debit - and your entry code will stop working. That's it.
This should be mandatory for direct debits, which are heavily regulated anyway. And perhaps too for credit card subscriptions - credit cards are already highly regulated too.
I’m posting again on the bizarre idea - signed off by the government - to close railway ticket offices.
Apparently all ticket offices at Euston, for example, are to go.
This is the “enshittification” of the railways.
I used to commute regularly to London when in business in the 1990s and never used a ticket office even then
Presumably that was by having a season ticket. I can't think of any other way in which you could not use the ticket office at that time.
Ticket machines date back to the late 80s.
I forgot about those. In fact I thought basic ticket machines came in a lot earlier, like the 60s or 70s.
It's a fascinating question, and I'm sure @Sunil_Prasannan knows more than I do...
BUT: tube ticket machines date way, way back with the first (entirely mechanical) ones coming pre-WW2.
Train tickets, with their variety of options (destination, fare type, etc.), are much more recent. Charing Cross station, I think, got them first in the early 80s, but widespread adoption took the Ascom machine at the end of the decade.
This is hilarious, and in one sense brilliant. It's also democratically ridiculous (as has been the actions of the state legislature, FWIW).
Gov. Evers, by vetoing the digits "20" and the hyphen from a reference to the 2024-25 academic year, has created an annual school funding increase authorization that persists for more than four hundred years. https://twitter.com/JSEllenberg/status/1676665157789929477
Comments
Discuss.
(While swimming today, I listened to a Malcolm Gladwell podcast that touched in this very issue, making the case that the industrial revolution happened in the UK for - among other reasons - the fact that the UK was more of a bottom minimisation than a top maximisation society.)
In the Eighteenth century we imported Indian chintz, but by the Twentieth we exported Manchester cotton to them.
Slave states did not originate the industrial revolution.
The industrial revolution happened in non-slave places and was based on machine power.
If you can import/utilise endless cheap human labour you have no need to innovate, and you will create enormous wealth (cf the Roman Empire)
A lesson here for pro-immigration lefties (er, like you): endless immigration of unskilled workers - aka EU Free Movement - does not make for prosperity, in the end
Jenrick’s argument is that mural is sucking more boats across the channel, something none of us want to see. Whether we believe he has a strong or not so strong argument doesn’t really matter does it, he won the general election, he has the mandate until whenever it’s taken away by voters.
What you describe has suddenly become the received view, but the counter argument is that an industrialising Lancashire simply outcompeted the Bengal.
I don’t want to minimise the culpability of the East India Company, which committed many evils.
(Suspicion: both low cost government and business spivs create faff because they navigate by cutting costs and faff passes costs on to customers by making them waste time. And as customers, Britons are too tempted to take shitty service to shave a few pence off the price.)
It's also clearly bullshit to put this all on electric cars. If you were to draw a line with vehicle weight over time, they were rising long before Mr Tesla started selling his vehicles. Now, have electric and PHEV made the problem worse? Sure. But it smacks of hypocrisy that the people worrying about it were so unconcerned by the rising weight of ICEs in the past.
The government, as I said, needs to be an activist consumer champion and regulate.
Of course, you need to operate carefully to avoid shutting off competition, but it seems to me that Britain regulates for all of the wrong reasons and few of the right ones. See the recent kerfuffle on new planning laws that seem to impose hideous designs on new-built houses to avoid people falling out of windows. Gove has rightly agreed to intervene.
Britain over-regulates “for safety” and under-regulates for consumer ease.
one app to find them,
One app to pay them all
if common sense combined them
Because I suspect that a higher proportion of Polish university graduates ended up in the UK than those who were unskilled labour.
"You're familiar with the phrase "man's reach exceeds his grasp"? It's a lie: man's grasp exceeds his nerve."
Highly recommended for anyone who swims.
Has several supporting references.
As Gordon Brown, his FSA, and master-of-disaster quangocrats like LORD Adair Turner and SIR Callum McCarthy proved in spectacular fashion. And so, for that matter, did the SEC in the US. Or Ofwat and the Environment Agency more recently.
Everything is injected with corn-syrup, sugars and fats. The cereal aisle in any supermarket looks like a bloody amusement arcade from 1985.
Such is the density of cupcake or confectionary shops in my part of Manhattan, I often wonder they are not even fatter. Seriously.
Or was he in fact just being an arse?
I accept mine is a minority view, but I think children benefit from adults being honest with them.
If you look at Europe, you can argue that that is something that Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands have done really well, with education spending that is biased towards equipping everyone with employable skills.
European migration was so beneficial precisely because it tended to be more highly skilled.
Even the -on paper- lower earners were more likely the be on a trajectory toward higher earning.
DfT has published list of 53 stations which will be added to the London contactless ticketing area by end of 2023, some are lot further from London, than others not on list, eg Shepperton but not Esher
Apsley NEED
Ashford (Surrey) GOT
Basildon GOT
Bat & Ball NEED
Beaconsfield NEED
Benfleet GOT
Berkhamsted NEED
Bletchley GOT
Bricket Wood GOT
Chalkwell GOT
Cheddington NEED
Datchet NEED
Denham GOT
Denham Golf Club GOT
Dunton Green NEED
East Tilbury NEED
Egham NEED
Eynsford NEED
Garston GOT
Gerrards Cross NEED
Hemel Hempstead NEED
High Wycombe GOT
How Wood NEED
Kempton Park GOT
Kings Langley NEED
Laindon NEED
Leigh-on-Sea GOT
Leighton Buzzard NEED
Otford GOT
Park Street NEED
Pitsea GOT
Seer Green & Jordans NEED
Sevenoaks GOT
Shepperton GOT
Shoeburyness GOT
Shoreham (Kent) NEED
Southend Central GOT
Southend East GOT
St Albans Abbey GOT
Staines GOT
Stanford-le-Hope GOT
Sunbury GOT
Sunnymeads NEED
Thorpe Bay GOT
Tilbury Town NEED
Tring NEED
Upper Halliford GOT
Virginia Water GOT
Watford North GOT
West Horndon NEED
Westcliff GOT
Windsor & Eton Riverside GOT
Wraysbury NEED
Um, the GOTs and NEEDs are whether Sunil's visited these or not at any time over the last 15 years
I know at my place we have a very high % of _extremely_ brilliant Bulgarians for instance. Whereas not long ago I was chased down the road by some random folk for taking a photo at a car valet place. For what I'm assuming was for quasi-legal reasons.
One reason that the Romans got to a certain stage of mechanisation and didn't move further was that their system ran on mass, cheap slavery.
The progress in water and windmills *after* the Romans was rapid.
But hey, whatever turns you on.
I was astonished to discover you can pretty much park freely in quite a bit of Manhattan.
You could argue that a few years working in an unskilled job in a richer country might still be financially better than in a skilled job (which may not even exist) in their own country with the added benefit of improving their English language skills and cultural experience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Js52aIAYo2o
Wow that must be where they actually live.
Anyway. If this is helping the evil people smugglers, our asylum centres twinned with Disneyland, then Jenrick is right.
In fact putting that on the front page of the “I” is irresponsible in itself showing how welcoming asylum centres are, I wouldn’t be surprise if the government or New Conservatives complain
> Charles Dickens' Authentic Olde Englishe Gruele Buckete
Wednesday Special features all-you-can-stomach of old-fashioned luke-warm re-cycled mush
"Please, sir and/or madam, may I NOT have another bowl?"
Try the concoction that moved Mr Micawber (so to speak) to attempt emigration halfway around the world, on a leaky over-loaded death-trap, in order to escape from it.
Things like the faff of having to phone insurance companies to get the non-piss-take renewal quote, or the companies that force you to phone to cancel a service and endure endless, "Are you sure? Really?" questioning, etc.
There are so many ways in which companies have found that it's more profitable to organise things in a way that pisses people off, because people generally don't have the time or energy to make the company suffer for it.
The danger is that it becomes a bit "cones hotline" but if it's something a government works on somewhat unobtrusively they will make people's lives better and not look ridiculous for it.
I see it every day.
Probably a good job that I am on holiday for basically the rest of the month from Friday. I need to get this in check. Its not a dependence on alcohol - have seen that before and I'm not remotely that out of control.
More that I have stuff I can't process (though my dreams are having a decent go of it) and the sauce helps.
Seriously, all decoration is deception, isn't it?
This is why, for example, the USSR stole grain from Ukraine - thus creating a famine - in order to generate the foreign revenue to pay for industrial development.
I was left wondering just how many 'blocked' beds are taken up by people they cannot get the necessary timely scans/analysis for.
SeanT gaped in amazement; he was completely and utterly taken aback by the presence of the black-cloaked creature. The Liposuction Monster's eyes met SeanT's, and his mouth curled upwards in a malicious grin.
"Ah, my boy, we meet again!" the Lipo-Suction Monster exclaimed in his comically heavy Transylvanian accent. "Er, I see you still haven't slimmed down yet. Why not?" He leant across the desk as he spoke the last two words.
"Um, I tried, Lipo! Honest, I tried!" SeanT answered, sensing what was going to happen next wouldn't entirely be to his advantage.
"Trying is not good enough!" roared the Lipo-Suction Monster. And he leapt out from the chair, and over the desk, grabbing SeanT in the process, and throwing him onto the nearby couch. Laughing maniacally, the Monster returned to the desk, opened one of the drawers and produced a massive hack-saw!
"No! Please, Lipo! Please, no!" SeanT screamed.
The monster went back to his victim, who was quivering with fear, resigned to his fate. SeanT screamed as the evil creature proceeded to chop off his pseudo-feminine moobs!
Mutilated and bleeding profusely, he begged for mercy, but the Liposuction Monster was adamant to teach him a lesson. He did something which even SeanT swore was just a myth. He opened his mouth and extended his twelve-inch long proboscis, and - once again giggling dementedly - punctured the poor sod's blubbery abdominal region with it.
And sucked hard!
SeanT squealed in agony as he felt the monster suck up all of his precious fat, but the squeals soon faded away as within minutes he was quite literally nothing but a sack of skin and bone, fat-less, yes, but unfortunately life-less too....
"At the same time, Reeder sent to England to engage 60 white artificers for the instruction of Black metallurgists in using this specialist machinery,Footnote99 but rapidly found their services unnecessary. Within a few years, the Black metallurgists were ‘sufficiently acquainted with the business for Reeder to dismiss all the white men but two & a perfect foundry was established where not only sugar utensils were made but cannon manufactured’.Footnote100"
That people from Africa were able to learn how to operate the foundaries doesn't really have any relevance to your claim about the wheel, no? Unless you are saying that the foundry owner himself (Reeder) was lying about the capabilities of his slaves.
It's still a backward step, but it seems to be being widely construed as staffless stations, which isn't the same thing.
Why would anyone use a bloody ticket? Or an Oyster for that matter? Just tap your phone.
Air quality needs sorting here. Get it done.
I don't think that government actions have quite got that bad yet; this instruction from the minister was just the minister being performatively mean. But compared with the government's intentions, the decoration of the walls is neither here nor there.
"AI chatbot told intruder to kill the Queen"
https://news.sky.com/story/thursdays-national-newspaper-front-pages-12427754
But that does not support the hard claim, which you repeat, that “Britain deliberately destroyed the Bengali textile industry”.
What happened is that Britain opened up Bengal to British manufactures (not in itself a bad thing), while protecting the Lancashire trade. But Bengal had hardly grown wealthy based on exports to Britain, and protecting Lancashire against those exports does not amount to “deliberate destruction”.
Also, as the article notes, it became more profitable for Bengali producers to focus on agriculture after the 1780s.
Ultimately Bengal could not compete with British manufacturing, and the British rulers didn’t care.
The greater sin was the punitive extraction of taxes which led to the famines of 1770.
There are positives. My relationship with Mrs RP is as solid as it has been for ages, and we go into our 20th Anniversary in September in a brilliant place. And my relationship with my brother is tighter than it has been in a long time.
It made transferring you number between mobile phone providers much, much easier.
is by far the simplest system in the UK. Hard/impossible to see how it could be any more logical.
Spend some fucking money on capital investment.
It seems baked into the DNA that it is better to employ a bunch of serfs cheaply.
Conversely, it is almost impossible to cancel a Times subscription.
Or some of the worlds most loved cartoon characters just freak you out is what you told the kids, when you saw the cost of a stay in Disneyland?
I admit I don’t understand. But it all sounds wrong in any case.
I’m having an early night becuaee I’m going shopping before the cricket starts.
I hope I have helped clarify the important points today 🙋♀️
Now. Parking apps....
Its very good. For a Windows laptop. But like every other work laptop I have had for the last ages it is already showing signs of wear after a year and a bit. Its been a good long while since I've driven Apple, and have been an ardent critic of much they stood for. But now? Screw it...
Such groups might as well just save time and effort and not bother with research and analysis. What, they're going to change their minds about the correct option if it shows something different? Beyond trivial, minor details?
For tourists? They need a ticket office and paper tickets. Or places just off the edge of etickets. My outside London hotel is walking distance from Stone Crossing. I bought Travelcards from there - on paper as beyond Z6 and contactless. The fix is roll contactless out. I can go Luton Airport - Luton Parkway - That London or Gatwick - That London on contactless, why not other places that are less far away?
A sovereign Bengal could have protected its textile industries until they too developed.
(As happened in bits of Europe.)
Imperial Britain enforced free trade for its own benefit - and the severe disbenefit of Bengal.
This should be mandatory for direct debits, which are heavily regulated anyway. And perhaps too for credit card subscriptions - credit cards are already highly regulated too.
BUT: tube ticket machines date way, way back with the first (entirely mechanical) ones coming pre-WW2.
Train tickets, with their variety of options (destination, fare type, etc.), are much more recent. Charing Cross station, I think, got them first in the early 80s, but widespread adoption took the Ascom machine at the end of the decade.
Edit to add: and this is what Google has thrown up - https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/the-introduction-of-ticket-machines.234410/
It's also democratically ridiculous (as has been the actions of the state legislature, FWIW).
Gov. Evers, by vetoing the digits "20" and the hyphen from a reference to the 2024-25 academic year, has created an annual school funding increase authorization that persists for more than four hundred years.
https://twitter.com/JSEllenberg/status/1676665157789929477