OK, Biden is quite old, but so is Trump and Trump is overweight and less healthy. Biden can at least string a sentence together, Trump keeps interrupting himself. So, on a more serious note, will Trump get imprisoned for his many crimes? I'm wondering whether he may be offered an 'illness' get out - and if so is he sane enough to take it?
I think Trump's ego is such he would never bow out on the basis of admitting weakness like physical ineptitude.
I mean, this is a man who goes on TV to talk about his pending cases and makes what look an awful lot like incriminating statements, when you'd think he'd just stick to ranting about corruption and oppression at least, he clearly does not do things sensibly.
He's almost as old and more incoherent, but his energy, when on camera at least, appears to convince people he lacks the flaws of Biden in that area.
I continue to believe he will never see a day in prison. Hopefully that will be because of being out pending appeal rather than because he is elected President again, which is currently looking 50/50.
A ten-month criminal investigation into London’s last Russian oligarch has collapsed after the National Crime Agency admitted its armed raid on his mansion was unlawful.
Allegations of conspiring to circumvent sanctions, money laundering, fraud and perjury against Mikhail Fridman, 59, have been dropped. The NCA will have to pay damages for trespass, cover Fridman’s legal bills and return seized cash.
The abandonment of the case is an embarrassment for the NCA’s Combating Kleptocracy Cell, which was set up in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to investigate sanctions evasion.
More than 50 officials, including armed police, specialist search teams, Europol officers and a lawyer, took part in the raid on Fridman’s home — the £65 million Athlone House in Highgate, north London — last December.
In court papers the NCA said the mansion was believed to be “the largest property ever searched by UK law enforcement in terms of warrant execution”.....
...The case unravelled as lawyers for Fridman — who moved to the UK in 2014 and helped to set up the LetterOne group, which owns Holland & Barrett — pulled apart the NCA case.
It emerged that a judge had entered the wrong date on the search warrant, writing 2021 instead of 2022, and the document was neither signed by an identifiable NCA officer nor specified the area to be searched.
Material in support of the warrant appeared to have been cut and pasted from a dossier posted on the internet in 2008 to discredit Fridman and alleging he had “historical and ongoing involvement in organised crime”. It is an allegation he totally rejects.
NCA officers claimed Fridman jumped out of a window and attempted to run away but his lawyer testified that CCTV showed him “walking calmly and slowly towards the officers with his arms raised”.
Government lawyers concede the raid was “unlawful and the NCA is liable in damages for trespass to land and goods”, and Fridman is “not currently subject to any NCA criminal investigations of conspiracy to circumvent sanctions”.
His passport has been returned and bail conditions requiring him to report to police twice a week have been dropped.
However, Fridman — who described the invasion of Ukraine as “a tragedy” last year — remains under UK and European Union sanctions as one of the ownership board of Russia’s giant Alfa Bank.
So the NCA went in with a lawyer present, who had managed to miss the wrong date on the warrant, the lack of an identifiable signature, and a description of the search area? The biggest problem with the UK is too many lawyers.
Did they not think that a guy with a £65m house, might have access to some good lawyers of his own?
A ten-month criminal investigation into London’s last Russian oligarch has collapsed after the National Crime Agency admitted its armed raid on his mansion was unlawful.
Allegations of conspiring to circumvent sanctions, money laundering, fraud and perjury against Mikhail Fridman, 59, have been dropped. The NCA will have to pay damages for trespass, cover Fridman’s legal bills and return seized cash.
The abandonment of the case is an embarrassment for the NCA’s Combating Kleptocracy Cell, which was set up in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to investigate sanctions evasion.
More than 50 officials, including armed police, specialist search teams, Europol officers and a lawyer, took part in the raid on Fridman’s home — the £65 million Athlone House in Highgate, north London — last December.
In court papers the NCA said the mansion was believed to be “the largest property ever searched by UK law enforcement in terms of warrant execution”.....
...The case unravelled as lawyers for Fridman — who moved to the UK in 2014 and helped to set up the LetterOne group, which owns Holland & Barrett — pulled apart the NCA case.
It emerged that a judge had entered the wrong date on the search warrant, writing 2021 instead of 2022, and the document was neither signed by an identifiable NCA officer nor specified the area to be searched.
Material in support of the warrant appeared to have been cut and pasted from a dossier posted on the internet in 2008 to discredit Fridman and alleging he had “historical and ongoing involvement in organised crime”. It is an allegation he totally rejects.
NCA officers claimed Fridman jumped out of a window and attempted to run away but his lawyer testified that CCTV showed him “walking calmly and slowly towards the officers with his arms raised”.
Government lawyers concede the raid was “unlawful and the NCA is liable in damages for trespass to land and goods”, and Fridman is “not currently subject to any NCA criminal investigations of conspiracy to circumvent sanctions”.
His passport has been returned and bail conditions requiring him to report to police twice a week have been dropped.
However, Fridman — who described the invasion of Ukraine as “a tragedy” last year — remains under UK and European Union sanctions as one of the ownership board of Russia’s giant Alfa Bank.
So the NCA went in with a lawyer present, who had managed to miss the wrong date on the warrant, the lack of an identifiable signature, and a description of the search area? The biggest problem with the UK is too many lawyers.
Did they not think that a guy with a £65m house, might have access to some good lawyers of his own?
Labour has reacted to today's announcement by supporting a ban on American bully XL dogs, while also criticising the prime minister for "dithering" over outlawing the cross-breed. Shadow Environment Secretary Steve Reed believes the dogs leave "a trail of destruction in communities up and down the country". "Labour MPs have long called for these dogs to be banned," he adds. "Families will be furious that it has taken this long for Rishi Sunak to finally act. "But, if Rishi Sunak continues to dither, the next Labour government will do the right thing and ban these dogs causing terror.""
So fucking typical of Starmer's Labour. "We'd do exactly the same as the Tories. But not like the Tories, because they are bastards. We will be non-bastard Tories."
Colour me underwhelmed.
Starmer and Sunak both share the same delusion: that the system is fundamentally sound and all that is needed in politics is a managerial approach: triage the problems as they arise and fix the ones with most media noise/electoral salience. Neither understand that the problems we have are structural and the tools we have don't work any more.
I think many of our problems can be dealt with through a competent managerial approach. I agree there are structural problems as well which require more, but significant improvements which will be felt will still be possible through the managerial approach.
The problem of course with radical solutions even for radical problems is that if you get it wrong the results are even more disastrous. And since radical solutions are usually ideologically based not evidence based they go wrong more often than not.
[rant mode on]
All solutions are ideologically based: they just get called ideology if they don't work or are not liked!
For the next one-to-two decades we will have a voting population dominated by retired people who consume but not produce, a working population competing with 500,000 to 1,000,000 migrants each year for work and housing, a NHS taking up a considerably larger chunk of Govt expenditure than now, a government that refuses to gather money via tax to pay for it and dependency on debt that is no longer cheap, a housing market increasingly dominated by foreign ownership that exports the profits (and consequent erosion of the tax base) and a set of economic ideas that fit the neoliberal world but cannot cope with a world where peace, freedom of movement and the rule of int'l trade underwritten by the US navy is increasingly withdrawn and whose idea of a economic wheeze is to put up interest rates!
The UK's leading animal groups have issued a joint statement saying that banning American bully XLs "will sadly not stop" dog attacks.
The Dog Control Coalition is made up of RSPCA, Blue Cross, Battersea, Dogs Trust, Hope Rescue, Scottish SPCA, The Kennel Club and British Veterinary Association.
It's urging the government "to tackle the root issue by dealing with the unscrupulous breeders, who are putting profit before welfare, and the irresponsible owners whose dogs are dangerously out of control".
The coalition claims the proposed ban will have "significant impacts on owners, the animal welfare sector, vets, law enforcement and the public".
It adds that it's "deeply concerned about the lack of data" behind the decision to ban these types of dogs."
On the one hand this whole affair does seem like a kneejerk reaction to a trending media concern, and so is it really fair, but on the other even if it is not it's pretty low down on the scale of government oppressions that you cannot have a certain kind of dog, so it's hard to get very worked up about it.
When one is biting your arse I am sure you will change your opinion
Labour has reacted to today's announcement by supporting a ban on American bully XL dogs, while also criticising the prime minister for "dithering" over outlawing the cross-breed. Shadow Environment Secretary Steve Reed believes the dogs leave "a trail of destruction in communities up and down the country". "Labour MPs have long called for these dogs to be banned," he adds. "Families will be furious that it has taken this long for Rishi Sunak to finally act. "But, if Rishi Sunak continues to dither, the next Labour government will do the right thing and ban these dogs causing terror.""
So fucking typical of Starmer's Labour. "We'd do exactly the same as the Tories. But not like the Tories, because they are bastards. We will be non-bastard Tories."
Colour me underwhelmed.
Starmer and Sunak both share the same delusion: that the system is fundamentally sound and all that is needed in politics is a managerial approach: triage the problems as they arise and fix the ones with most media noise/electoral salience. Neither understand that the problems we have are structural and the tools we have don't work any more.
I think many of our problems can be dealt with through a competent managerial approach. I agree there are structural problems as well which require more, but significant improvements which will be felt will still be possible through the managerial approach.
The problem of course with radical solutions even for radical problems is that if you get it wrong the results are even more disastrous. And since radical solutions are usually ideologically based not evidence based they go wrong more often than not.
[rant mode on]
All solutions are ideologically based: they just get called ideology if they don't work or are not liked!
Fair point, but this is mostly verbal shorthand - I think its mostly clear in these situations that when criticising something as ideological it's because the criticism is of people putting their pet ideology above reality, insisting on a practical path without any consideration beyond whether it works on paper for example.
Similar to how something may be criticised as playing politics (which is a dumb criticism to make of a politician, what else are they meant to do?), when the more precise way of putting it would be that the target is engaging in a sort of empty, partisan posturing rather than disagreeing about things like, er, ideology.
The UK's leading animal groups have issued a joint statement saying that banning American bully XLs "will sadly not stop" dog attacks.
The Dog Control Coalition is made up of RSPCA, Blue Cross, Battersea, Dogs Trust, Hope Rescue, Scottish SPCA, The Kennel Club and British Veterinary Association.
It's urging the government "to tackle the root issue by dealing with the unscrupulous breeders, who are putting profit before welfare, and the irresponsible owners whose dogs are dangerously out of control".
The coalition claims the proposed ban will have "significant impacts on owners, the animal welfare sector, vets, law enforcement and the public".
It adds that it's "deeply concerned about the lack of data" behind the decision to ban these types of dogs."
On the one hand this whole affair does seem like a kneejerk reaction to a trending media concern, and so is it really fair, but on the other even if it is not it's pretty low down on the scale of government oppressions that you cannot have a certain kind of dog, so it's hard to get very worked up about it.
When one is biting your arse I am sure you will change your opinion
You may have misunderstood. I don't oppose the move, since even if it may not do much good it also does not really do any harm, so its at worse pretty neutral in effect, as people not being able to own certain dogs is not a big deal.
A ten-month criminal investigation into London’s last Russian oligarch has collapsed after the National Crime Agency admitted its armed raid on his mansion was unlawful.
Allegations of conspiring to circumvent sanctions, money laundering, fraud and perjury against Mikhail Fridman, 59, have been dropped. The NCA will have to pay damages for trespass, cover Fridman’s legal bills and return seized cash.
The abandonment of the case is an embarrassment for the NCA’s Combating Kleptocracy Cell, which was set up in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to investigate sanctions evasion.
More than 50 officials, including armed police, specialist search teams, Europol officers and a lawyer, took part in the raid on Fridman’s home — the £65 million Athlone House in Highgate, north London — last December.
In court papers the NCA said the mansion was believed to be “the largest property ever searched by UK law enforcement in terms of warrant execution”.....
...The case unravelled as lawyers for Fridman — who moved to the UK in 2014 and helped to set up the LetterOne group, which owns Holland & Barrett — pulled apart the NCA case.
It emerged that a judge had entered the wrong date on the search warrant, writing 2021 instead of 2022, and the document was neither signed by an identifiable NCA officer nor specified the area to be searched.
Material in support of the warrant appeared to have been cut and pasted from a dossier posted on the internet in 2008 to discredit Fridman and alleging he had “historical and ongoing involvement in organised crime”. It is an allegation he totally rejects.
NCA officers claimed Fridman jumped out of a window and attempted to run away but his lawyer testified that CCTV showed him “walking calmly and slowly towards the officers with his arms raised”.
Government lawyers concede the raid was “unlawful and the NCA is liable in damages for trespass to land and goods”, and Fridman is “not currently subject to any NCA criminal investigations of conspiracy to circumvent sanctions”.
His passport has been returned and bail conditions requiring him to report to police twice a week have been dropped.
However, Fridman — who described the invasion of Ukraine as “a tragedy” last year — remains under UK and European Union sanctions as one of the ownership board of Russia’s giant Alfa Bank.
So the NCA went in with a lawyer present, who had managed to miss the wrong date on the warrant, the lack of an identifiable signature, and a description of the search area? The biggest problem with the UK is too many lawyers.
Did they not think that a guy with a £65m house, might have access to some good lawyers of his own?
The positive is that the law applied. In Russia if a perceived enemy had his home raided and there were errors it wouldn’t have made any difference as the past would have been changed by the time it came to “trial”.
I would rather the authorities fuck up and they are held up for it than the authorities can fuck up on a technicality and the state ignores it.
headhunters are offering Dominic Raab's CV to various City employers in a sign of what could be a frenzied search for new jobs as scores of (mostly) Tory MPs leave Westminster
Off topic, but part of my effort to add a little context to the pictures of the US given by some travelers:
Kirkland 4th (2):
Like the group from the Iman Center, I showed you recently, this Falun Gong group is a regular at our 4th of July parades:
I suspect both groups include refugees, and children of refugees, but haven't verified that.
Note, by the way, the two flags at the back of the group. Like the Iman Center group I showed you before, the group was waiting their turn to join the parade. The light was better there, than on most of the route, which is why I picked that location for the pictures.
(There are, of course, many other regular groups including, for example, a local DeLorean club and, especially in election years, many candidates with their supporters.
This year, MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) appeared, and received more than scattered applause.)
Labour has reacted to today's announcement by supporting a ban on American bully XL dogs, while also criticising the prime minister for "dithering" over outlawing the cross-breed. Shadow Environment Secretary Steve Reed believes the dogs leave "a trail of destruction in communities up and down the country". "Labour MPs have long called for these dogs to be banned," he adds. "Families will be furious that it has taken this long for Rishi Sunak to finally act. "But, if Rishi Sunak continues to dither, the next Labour government will do the right thing and ban these dogs causing terror.""
So fucking typical of Starmer's Labour. "We'd do exactly the same as the Tories. But not like the Tories, because they are bastards. We will be non-bastard Tories."
Colour me underwhelmed.
Starmer and Sunak both share the same delusion: that the system is fundamentally sound and all that is needed in politics is a managerial approach: triage the problems as they arise and fix the ones with most media noise/electoral salience. Neither understand that the problems we have are structural and the tools we have don't work any more.
I think many of our problems can be dealt with through a competent managerial approach. I agree there are structural problems as well which require more, but significant improvements which will be felt will still be possible through the managerial approach.
The problem of course with radical solutions even for radical problems is that if you get it wrong the results are even more disastrous. And since radical solutions are usually ideologically based not evidence based they go wrong more often than not.
[rant mode on]
All solutions are ideologically based: they just get called ideology if they don't work or are not liked!
For the next one-to-two decades we will have a voting population dominated by retired people who consume but not produce, a working population competing with 500,000 to 1,000,000 migrants each year for work and housing, a NHS taking up a considerably larger chunk of Govt expenditure than now, a government that refuses to gather money via tax to pay for it and dependency on debt that is no longer cheap, a housing market increasingly dominated by foreign ownership that exports the profits (and consequent erosion of the tax base) and a set of economic ideas that fit the neoliberal world but cannot cope with a world where peace, freedom of movement and the rule of int'l trade underwritten by the US navy is increasingly withdrawn and whose idea of a economic wheeze is to put up interest rates!
[rant mode off]
The housing market is totally dominated by owner-occupiers. That's why it's lightly taxed. Not the nasty foreigners. Something 60% of people own isn't going to be taxed to hand cash to younger people.
There's a phrase, common in the US, that illusrates Cyclefree's central point: "Violence erupted."
It's used when a journalist wants to avoid blaming anyone in particular. For whatever reason.
(Having read many, perhaps too many, popular geology books, and living where I often see volcanos, the phrase always makes me picture a volcano -- which is probably not what the speaker or writer intends me to do.)
Mistakes were made etc.
One example of where writing makes something that was completely passive more active is when journalists decide they want to evoke grassroots uproar that's actually just them being editorially against something.
"Fury as Starmer refuses to come clean on Donkey Sanctuary story". "Community in uproar as wind farms to be built miles away and out of sight"
The use of "refuses to" in cases where someone simply hasn't done something that nobody expected them to do in the first place is a regular press tactic.
See also some Z-lister having a "romp" with their "lover" rather than a romantic evening with their partner.
Little bit of info for anyone who is attacked by a dog or sees someone attacked by a dog and wishes to intervene. If you grab their front paws and pull them away from each other (that is, out to the sides). it'll likely render the dog immobile and stop the attack.
I haven't tried it and it's probably a lot easier said than done. And it'll probably do tremendous damage to the dog, so don't do it unless truly necessary. Most dog bites aren't sustained attacks and wouldn't need such drastic action. But it something to keep in mind in case you ever need it.
Yep I've heard of that. Again no actual experience.
BBC 6 o’clock news report on the rollout of 20MPH speed limits in wales might as well have been written by the Welsh regime and Brake.
To be fair Plaid forced Welsh labour this week into conceding it will keep it under review and allow councils more discretion
There is a lot of anger about it both in the media and social media
One local takeaway has advertised
Be sure to get your hot takeaway by tomorrow
After that it will be cold !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That's a pretty stupid advert to be honest. Once that limit is in place, they certainly won't want people to think that ordering from them will get you a cold takeaway, even if it's true, which it probably isn't.
Labour has reacted to today's announcement by supporting a ban on American bully XL dogs, while also criticising the prime minister for "dithering" over outlawing the cross-breed. Shadow Environment Secretary Steve Reed believes the dogs leave "a trail of destruction in communities up and down the country". "Labour MPs have long called for these dogs to be banned," he adds. "Families will be furious that it has taken this long for Rishi Sunak to finally act. "But, if Rishi Sunak continues to dither, the next Labour government will do the right thing and ban these dogs causing terror.""
So fucking typical of Starmer's Labour. "We'd do exactly the same as the Tories. But not like the Tories, because they are bastards. We will be non-bastard Tories."
Colour me underwhelmed.
Starmer and Sunak both share the same delusion: that the system is fundamentally sound and all that is needed in politics is a managerial approach: triage the problems as they arise and fix the ones with most media noise/electoral salience. Neither understand that the problems we have are structural and the tools we have don't work any more.
I think many of our problems can be dealt with through a competent managerial approach. I agree there are structural problems as well which require more, but significant improvements which will be felt will still be possible through the managerial approach.
The problem of course with radical solutions even for radical problems is that if you get it wrong the results are even more disastrous. And since radical solutions are usually ideologically based not evidence based they go wrong more often than not.
[rant mode on]
All solutions are ideologically based: they just get called ideology if they don't work or are not liked!
For the next one-to-two decades we will have a voting population dominated by retired people who consume but not produce, a working population competing with 500,000 to 1,000,000 migrants each year for work and housing, a NHS taking up a considerably larger chunk of Govt expenditure than now, a government that refuses to gather money via tax to pay for it and dependency on debt that is no longer cheap, a housing market increasingly dominated by foreign ownership that exports the profits (and consequent erosion of the tax base) and a set of economic ideas that fit the neoliberal world but cannot cope with a world where peace, freedom of movement and the rule of int'l trade underwritten by the US navy is increasingly withdrawn and whose idea of a economic wheeze is to put up interest rates!
[rant mode off]
The housing market is totally dominated by owner-occupiers. That's why it's lightly taxed. Not the nasty foreigners. Something 60% of people own isn't going to be taxed to hand cash to younger people.
I said increasingly dominated...
Have a look sometime at the explosion of tall accommodation blocks in the UK. It's happening in Leeds. It's happening in London. It's happening in Reading. See recent comments about the number of new commuter train stations. Ever wondered why?
From memory, there are about 26 million households in E&W, ranging from a small studio to Buckingham Palace. Population in mid 1990s was around 57 million, and when the 2021/2 Census figures come out that'll be around 68 million. At current input rates it'll be around 75 million by 2031.
Where are they going to live, and who has got the dosh to build the millions of new flats to accommodate seven million new people? Hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds, pension funds do. Mr&Mrs Owner-occupier don't.
Labour has reacted to today's announcement by supporting a ban on American bully XL dogs, while also criticising the prime minister for "dithering" over outlawing the cross-breed. Shadow Environment Secretary Steve Reed believes the dogs leave "a trail of destruction in communities up and down the country". "Labour MPs have long called for these dogs to be banned," he adds. "Families will be furious that it has taken this long for Rishi Sunak to finally act. "But, if Rishi Sunak continues to dither, the next Labour government will do the right thing and ban these dogs causing terror.""
So fucking typical of Starmer's Labour. "We'd do exactly the same as the Tories. But not like the Tories, because they are bastards. We will be non-bastard Tories."
Colour me underwhelmed.
Starmer and Sunak both share the same delusion: that the system is fundamentally sound and all that is needed in politics is a managerial approach: triage the problems as they arise and fix the ones with most media noise/electoral salience. Neither understand that the problems we have are structural and the tools we have don't work any more.
I think many of our problems can be dealt with through a competent managerial approach. I agree there are structural problems as well which require more, but significant improvements which will be felt will still be possible through the managerial approach.
The problem of course with radical solutions even for radical problems is that if you get it wrong the results are even more disastrous. And since radical solutions are usually ideologically based not evidence based they go wrong more often than not.
[rant mode on]
All solutions are ideologically based: they just get called ideology if they don't work or are not liked!
For the next one-to-two decades we will have a voting population dominated by retired people who consume but not produce, a working population competing with 500,000 to 1,000,000 migrants each year for work and housing, a NHS taking up a considerably larger chunk of Govt expenditure than now, a government that refuses to gather money via tax to pay for it and dependency on debt that is no longer cheap, a housing market increasingly dominated by foreign ownership that exports the profits (and consequent erosion of the tax base) and a set of economic ideas that fit the neoliberal world but cannot cope with a world where peace, freedom of movement and the rule of int'l trade underwritten by the US navy is increasingly withdrawn and whose idea of a economic wheeze is to put up interest rates!
[rant mode off]
The housing market is totally dominated by owner-occupiers. That's why it's lightly taxed. Not the nasty foreigners. Something 60% of people own isn't going to be taxed to hand cash to younger people.
I said increasingly dominated...
Have a look sometime at the explosion of tall accommodation blocks in the UK. It's happening in Leeds. It's happening in London. It's happening in Reading. See recent comments about the number of new commuter train stations. Ever wondered why?
From memory, there are about 26 million households in E&W, ranging from a small studio to Buckingham Palace. Population in mid 1990s was around 57 million, and when the 2021/2 Census figures come out that'll be around 68 million. At current input rates it'll be around 75 million by 2031.
Where are they going to live, and who has got the dosh to build the millions of new flats to accommodate seven million new people? Hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds, pension funds do. Mr&Mrs Owner-occupier don't.
The new blocks in Leeds aren't particularly tall (unlike Manchester). However, many of them are rental only, not available to buy.
BBC 6 o’clock news report on the rollout of 20MPH speed limits in wales might as well have been written by the Welsh regime and Brake.
This is my favourite tweet on the subject:
Someone just tried to genuinely make the point that the 20mph limit was unfair on people hoping for an organ donation because fewer fatal accidents would mean fewer organ donors.
BBC 6 o’clock news report on the rollout of 20MPH speed limits in wales might as well have been written by the Welsh regime and Brake.
To be fair Plaid forced Welsh labour this week into conceding it will keep it under review and allow councils more discretion
There is a lot of anger about it both in the media and social media
One local takeaway has advertised
Be sure to get your hot takeaway by tomorrow
After that it will be cold !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If a bunch of Clarkson-worshiping gammons are getting irate, then it must be a good policy.
Why would you insult the very many Welsh residents across the political spectrum who disagree with the policy ?
If they disagree they need to vote out the Welsh government. Isn't that what those of us unhappy with the past 13 years of Tory mis-rule have been constantly told?
Long years when I ran the family company I used to host European students for a month in the summer, and at some point I would introduce them to the founder of the company, my mother. One year when I introduced the student to my parents at their home their Labrador attacked my guest. “Never done anything like that before!” applies.
In over 50 years of canvassing, I've only had a single nip once, and in general tell voters who try to reassure me that it's the humans I worry about, which generally evokes a laugh (they imagine, sometimes correctly, that I'm not talking about them). I'm very sorry for the handful of people who've been attacked, but on the list of things needing urgent government action it comes pretty low down.
I was bitten once while canvassing by the Alsatian belonging to one of the local GP’s. It wasn’t severe and his nurse wife cleaned and dressed the wound. No idea if they voted for us, though.
I've had a finger completely ripped open down to the bone delivering. Required stitches and the feeling is impaired due to scarring. They got their leaflet but I suspect it was somewhat blood stained. I have also been chased by 2 dobermans but made to the gate just in time.
Reading this sort of thing makes me feel the lightweight I am. I'm a Labour member but my campaigning hasn't extended beyond filling envelopes and manning a tombola.
Not sure if this is true or not but this account has been a reliable source previously. Ukraine hit and damaged another Russian warship yesterday. If it is true then Russia is clearly finding it almost impossible to defend its Black Sea fleet.
👍Experimental "Sea Kid" of the SBU damaged the Russian missile ship "Samum"
Yesterday, the SBU sea drone made a "cotton" attack on the Samum missile ship near the entrance to the Sevastopol Bay. "Sea Kid" hit the rear right part of the Rashist ship, causing significant damage, the ship lost speed.
The Russians had to tow "Samum" for repairs with a large trim to the stern and a list to starboard.
For this attack, the SBU used an experimental model of a marine drone, which is capable of operating in a storm, hiding from detection behind high waves. During the special operation, the height of the waves reached 1.5 - 2 m.
The question arises, if Russia can’t defend its Black Sea fleet, can any country actually defended its fleet from drone attacks? Can Taiwan take out a Chinese invasion fleet? Can China take out a US fleet defending Taiwan? Etc.?
A ten-month criminal investigation into London’s last Russian oligarch has collapsed after the National Crime Agency admitted its armed raid on his mansion was unlawful.
Allegations of conspiring to circumvent sanctions, money laundering, fraud and perjury against Mikhail Fridman, 59, have been dropped. The NCA will have to pay damages for trespass, cover Fridman’s legal bills and return seized cash.
The abandonment of the case is an embarrassment for the NCA’s Combating Kleptocracy Cell, which was set up in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to investigate sanctions evasion.
More than 50 officials, including armed police, specialist search teams, Europol officers and a lawyer, took part in the raid on Fridman’s home — the £65 million Athlone House in Highgate, north London — last December.
In court papers the NCA said the mansion was believed to be “the largest property ever searched by UK law enforcement in terms of warrant execution”.....
...The case unravelled as lawyers for Fridman — who moved to the UK in 2014 and helped to set up the LetterOne group, which owns Holland & Barrett — pulled apart the NCA case.
It emerged that a judge had entered the wrong date on the search warrant, writing 2021 instead of 2022, and the document was neither signed by an identifiable NCA officer nor specified the area to be searched.
Material in support of the warrant appeared to have been cut and pasted from a dossier posted on the internet in 2008 to discredit Fridman and alleging he had “historical and ongoing involvement in organised crime”. It is an allegation he totally rejects.
NCA officers claimed Fridman jumped out of a window and attempted to run away but his lawyer testified that CCTV showed him “walking calmly and slowly towards the officers with his arms raised”.
Government lawyers concede the raid was “unlawful and the NCA is liable in damages for trespass to land and goods”, and Fridman is “not currently subject to any NCA criminal investigations of conspiracy to circumvent sanctions”.
His passport has been returned and bail conditions requiring him to report to police twice a week have been dropped.
However, Fridman — who described the invasion of Ukraine as “a tragedy” last year — remains under UK and European Union sanctions as one of the ownership board of Russia’s giant Alfa Bank.
So the NCA went in with a lawyer present, who had managed to miss the wrong date on the warrant, the lack of an identifiable signature, and a description of the search area? The biggest problem with the UK is too many lawyers.
Did they not think that a guy with a £65m house, might have access to some good lawyers of his own?
Deleted - muddling the lawyers.
More importantly, probably -
Material in support of the warrant appeared to have been cut and pasted from a dossier posted on the internet in 2008 to discredit Fridman and alleging he had “historical and ongoing involvement in organised crime”. It is an allegation he totally rejects.
You are not supposed to use Wikipedia for your homework, Officer.
Long years when I ran the family company I used to host European students for a month in the summer, and at some point I would introduce them to the founder of the company, my mother. One year when I introduced the student to my parents at their home their Labrador attacked my guest. “Never done anything like that before!” applies.
In over 50 years of canvassing, I've only had a single nip once, and in general tell voters who try to reassure me that it's the humans I worry about, which generally evokes a laugh (they imagine, sometimes correctly, that I'm not talking about them). I'm very sorry for the handful of people who've been attacked, but on the list of things needing urgent government action it comes pretty low down.
I was bitten once while canvassing by the Alsatian belonging to one of the local GP’s. It wasn’t severe and his nurse wife cleaned and dressed the wound. No idea if they voted for us, though.
I've had a finger completely ripped open down to the bone delivering. Required stitches and the feeling is impaired due to scarring. They got their leaflet but I suspect it was somewhat blood stained. I have also been chased by 2 dobermans but made to the gate just in time.
Reading this sort of thing makes me feel the lightweight I am. I'm a Labour member but my campaigning hasn't extended beyond filling envelopes and manning a tombola.
I wasn’t campaigning for Labour. So don’t feel too bad.
BBC 6 o’clock news report on the rollout of 20MPH speed limits in wales might as well have been written by the Welsh regime and Brake.
To be fair Plaid forced Welsh labour this week into conceding it will keep it under review and allow councils more discretion
There is a lot of anger about it both in the media and social media
One local takeaway has advertised
Be sure to get your hot takeaway by tomorrow
After that it will be cold !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If a bunch of Clarkson-worshiping gammons are getting irate, then it must be a good policy.
Why would you insult the very many Welsh residents across the political spectrum who disagree with the policy ?
If they disagree they need to vote out the Welsh government. Isn't that what those of us unhappy with the past 13 years of Tory mis-rule have been constantly told?
Plaid effectively forced labour into a compromise solution this week, winning a vote on their amendment that the Welsh Government have to keep the policy under review, give local authorities more discretion, and pay for any further alterations
I am not anti 20mph, indeed I support it around schools and congested areas, but to force the whole Principality to default 20mph is causing considerable anger across the political divide especially when it is on roads that 30mph is reasonable
Long years when I ran the family company I used to host European students for a month in the summer, and at some point I would introduce them to the founder of the company, my mother. One year when I introduced the student to my parents at their home their Labrador attacked my guest. “Never done anything like that before!” applies.
In over 50 years of canvassing, I've only had a single nip once, and in general tell voters who try to reassure me that it's the humans I worry about, which generally evokes a laugh (they imagine, sometimes correctly, that I'm not talking about them). I'm very sorry for the handful of people who've been attacked, but on the list of things needing urgent government action it comes pretty low down.
I was bitten once while canvassing by the Alsatian belonging to one of the local GP’s. It wasn’t severe and his nurse wife cleaned and dressed the wound. No idea if they voted for us, though.
I've had a finger completely ripped open down to the bone delivering. Required stitches and the feeling is impaired due to scarring. They got their leaflet but I suspect it was somewhat blood stained. I have also been chased by 2 dobermans but made to the gate just in time.
Reading this sort of thing makes me feel the lightweight I am. I'm a Labour member but my campaigning hasn't extended beyond filling envelopes and manning a tombola.
I wasn’t campaigning for Labour. So don’t feel too bad.
Back in the day I had the dobermans set on me as well - broke my personal 50 yard record by quite some way. I've had dogs come to the door while I deliver but if you do a round regularly, you get to know the "dog" houses and plan accordingly. I just wonder how the dog feels slamming itself into the door every time there's movement - subtle it isn't.
I remember what that area flared up a few years ago it felt like the first time in quite some time, in Europe, to see some old fashioned war of conquest stuff going on.
Given Azerbaijan won that conflict and Russian peacekeeping forces were deployed as part of the ceasefire agreement, I guess it was only a matter of time before they came back to finish the job.
Stopped at a friends house for a few weeks 30 or so years ago, whilst waiting to move home. They had two Rottweilers, a mother and son. First evening I walked through the door and they came charging at me down the hall, the lady owner shouted "Friend" and they froze, then retreated back to the Kitchen. They were as good as gold with me after that, slept on the floor across my bedroom door and did not budge when I was told to step over them. Then one evening I came back to the house when the owners were out and they sat with me whilst I watched football, one at my feet , the other on the settee next to me. This example offers clear support to the RSPCA case about good owners, but of course not everyone will be and stricter controls are obviously necessary.
Labour has reacted to today's announcement by supporting a ban on American bully XL dogs, while also criticising the prime minister for "dithering" over outlawing the cross-breed. Shadow Environment Secretary Steve Reed believes the dogs leave "a trail of destruction in communities up and down the country". "Labour MPs have long called for these dogs to be banned," he adds. "Families will be furious that it has taken this long for Rishi Sunak to finally act. "But, if Rishi Sunak continues to dither, the next Labour government will do the right thing and ban these dogs causing terror.""
So fucking typical of Starmer's Labour. "We'd do exactly the same as the Tories. But not like the Tories, because they are bastards. We will be non-bastard Tories."
Colour me underwhelmed.
Starmer and Sunak both share the same delusion: that the system is fundamentally sound and all that is needed in politics is a managerial approach: triage the problems as they arise and fix the ones with most media noise/electoral salience. Neither understand that the problems we have are structural and the tools we have don't work any more.
I think many of our problems can be dealt with through a competent managerial approach. I agree there are structural problems as well which require more, but significant improvements which will be felt will still be possible through the managerial approach.
The problem of course with radical solutions even for radical problems is that if you get it wrong the results are even more disastrous. And since radical solutions are usually ideologically based not evidence based they go wrong more often than not.
[rant mode on]
All solutions are ideologically based: they just get called ideology if they don't work or are not liked!
For the next one-to-two decades we will have a voting population dominated by retired people who consume but not produce, a working population competing with 500,000 to 1,000,000 migrants each year for work and housing, a NHS taking up a considerably larger chunk of Govt expenditure than now, a government that refuses to gather money via tax to pay for it and dependency on debt that is no longer cheap, a housing market increasingly dominated by foreign ownership that exports the profits (and consequent erosion of the tax base) and a set of economic ideas that fit the neoliberal world but cannot cope with a world where peace, freedom of movement and the rule of int'l trade underwritten by the US navy is increasingly withdrawn and whose idea of a economic wheeze is to put up interest rates!
[rant mode off]
The housing market is totally dominated by owner-occupiers. That's why it's lightly taxed. Not the nasty foreigners. Something 60% of people own isn't going to be taxed to hand cash to younger people.
I said increasingly dominated...
Have a look sometime at the explosion of tall accommodation blocks in the UK. It's happening in Leeds. It's happening in London. It's happening in Reading. See recent comments about the number of new commuter train stations. Ever wondered why?
From memory, there are about 26 million households in E&W, ranging from a small studio to Buckingham Palace. Population in mid 1990s was around 57 million, and when the 2021/2 Census figures come out that'll be around 68 million. At current input rates it'll be around 75 million by 2031.
Where are they going to live, and who has got the dosh to build the millions of new flats to accommodate seven million new people? Hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds, pension funds do. Mr&Mrs Owner-occupier don't.
If it's not dominated, it's not increasingly dominated.
Of course one family can't afford to pay for ten million flats. But as long as the family can pay for one house, sorted. And most can, with a mortgage. Another two big chunks will be bought by BTL and social landlords. So, I think the purported problem is miscalibrated.
On topic of euphemisms gone wild, reminds me of an incident that occurred after Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860, but before he was inaugurated in March of 1861.
Lincoln was in process of putting together his Cabinet, and one key consideration was geographical balance. Including the political necessity of appointing at least one cabinet secretary from the Keystone State of Pennsylvania: critical to his electoral victory AND to future governance, especially as Civil War loomed.
So Abe called in a leading PA politico, Thaddeus Stevens, already a power in the US House and destined to become THE top Republican in Congress (and beyond) post-Civil War.
The President-Elect inquired as to the qualifications of big-time Pennsylvania political boss, Simon Cameron. Specifically, was Cameron an honest man?
Stevens snorted, sneered, then replied, "Well, I don't think he'd steal a hot stove."
Lincoln nearly fell out his chair laughing - his appreciation of a good joke was and still is proverbial - and simply could NOT resist repeating Stevens' "testimonial". In short order, Simon Cameron (who was in fact as crooked as a country road) got to hear of it, was highly offended, and complained to Lincoln.
Who asked Thad to come by for another chat, during which he said that Cameron was irate, and would Stevens consider retracting his previous remark?
"All right," Stevens responded, "now that I think of it, I'm positive that Simon Cameron WOULD steal a hot stove."
Old Abe roared again with laughter. Somehow he soothed Cameron's ruffled feathers, and appointed this bird as the new Secretary of War. Which when actual War (not very Civil) broke out, he soon proved to be both larcenous AND incompetent.
Lincoln needed to solve this problem, but NOT alienate Cameron (still a power in the PA GOP). Which he achieved by shuffling Simon out of his DC hot seat . . . all the way to St Petersburg as American minister to Russia.
Stopped at a friends house for a few weeks 30 or so years ago, whilst waiting to move home. They had two Rottweilers, a mother and son. First evening I walked through the door and they came charging at me down the hall, the lady owner shouted "Friend" and they froze, then retreated back to the Kitchen. They were as good as gold with me after that, slept on the floor across my bedroom door and did not budge when I was told to step over them. Then one evening I came back to the house when the owners were out and they sat with me whilst I watched football, one at my feet , the other on the settee next to me. This example offers clear support to the RSPCA case about good owners, but of course not everyone will be and stricter controls are obviously necessary.
Compare dogs and kids. Some kids you can be 'good' to, and they will learn good habits and become good members of society. But some kids... however good you are to them, they may turn out to be sh*ts. Whereas some kids have terrible parents, and end up good, despite some hideous experiences.
It's not nature vs nurture; it's both.
It'll be the same with dogs. But if you breed dogs to be bad, a bully, perhaps, the the chances are that nature will mostly overcome nurture.
If it's not dominated, it's not increasingly dominated.
Of course one family can't afford to pay for ten million flats. But as long as the family can pay for one house, sorted. And most can, with a mortgage. Another two big chunks will be bought by BTL and social landlords. So, I think the purported problem is miscalibrated.
As a broad generalisation, we can build upwards (yes, tall buildings with lots of flats) or outwards (goodbye Green Belt). Most countries in the West build up, far more than we do.
Of course there are issues of maintenance and nearby facilities asnd connections, and people who really want a nice detached house and garden won't be satisfied. But if the choice is an affordable good modern flat with a good view or a crumbling semi, enough people will decide on the former.
I remember what that area flared up a few years ago it felt like the first time in quite some time, in Europe, to see some old fashioned war of conquest stuff going on.
Given Azerbaijan won that conflict and Russian peacekeeping forces were deployed as part of the ceasefire agreement, I guess it was only a matter of time before they came back to finish the job.
Yes - at that time Armenia was backed by Russia and Azerbaijan by Turkey and the West. There appears to have been a crossover, though I think that Russia and anyone else who counts on either being a loyal ally is going to be disappointed.
Love your stuff Cyclefree, but 'The last 2 days have given us 2 examples...'?! Oh dear, oh dear.
As I hurtle, with worrying rapidity, through my forties things which, even a few short years ago, would never bother me in the slightest now really grind my gears. Cars parking on grass verges, for example. Why, oh why must moronic motorists make grass verges resemble Passchendaele? Summary execution is too good for them.
One other minor, totally and utterly inconsequential thing that gets my blood pressure rocketing, that instantly gets the molars grinding away, is the use of the number two when the word 'two' should be, to my befuddled mind at least, always, always be used in cases like this.
No doubt some fancy-pants will be able to cite Shakespeare or some other venerable wordsmith doing it in an original manuscript - '2 be or not 2 be' in a spidery hand on some yellowed parchment somewhere perhaps, to give this travesty a sheen of respectability, a gossamer thin legitimacy but I don't care. I will not engage. I am embracing my incipient fogeyism, drawing a line in the sand, choosing this particular hillock to expire on, and issuing a firm 'No, Cyclefree, no!'
It's not that I'm angry, just disappointed. It'll probably cast an unwelcome pall over the entire weekend. I hope you can spend some quiet time to contemplate precisely what you have done.
Stopped at a friends house for a few weeks 30 or so years ago, whilst waiting to move home. They had two Rottweilers, a mother and son. First evening I walked through the door and they came charging at me down the hall, the lady owner shouted "Friend" and they froze, then retreated back to the Kitchen. They were as good as gold with me after that, slept on the floor across my bedroom door and did not budge when I was told to step over them. Then one evening I came back to the house when the owners were out and they sat with me whilst I watched football, one at my feet , the other on the settee next to me. This example offers clear support to the RSPCA case about good owners, but of course not everyone will be and stricter controls are obviously necessary.
Compare dogs and kids. Some kids you can be 'good' to, and they will learn good habits and become good members of society. But some kids... however good you are to them, they may turn out to be sh*ts. Whereas some kids have terrible parents, and end up good, despite some hideous experiences.
It's not nature vs nurture; it's both.
It'll be the same with dogs. But if you breed dogs to be bad, a bully, perhaps, the the chances are that nature will mostly overcome nurture.
I have had dogs all my life, and different breeds, but Mrs Foxy hadn't. She never realised how bred for a purpose dogs were (being more a mad cat lady) so tried to choose by cuteness etc.
Different breeds have different characteristics that cannot be trained out for generations. My current dog is a sight hound and cannot resist chasing small mammals and birds, on the other hand doesn't like to be more than a few metres away as always wants to be by the "hunter". I had a labrador that you couldn't keep out of the water, a terrier who loved to dig, a sheepdog that herded everybody etc.
American Bully's are always going to have fighting instincts very difficult to overcome, so not safe in public.
Stopped at a friends house for a few weeks 30 or so years ago, whilst waiting to move home. They had two Rottweilers, a mother and son. First evening I walked through the door and they came charging at me down the hall, the lady owner shouted "Friend" and they froze, then retreated back to the Kitchen. They were as good as gold with me after that, slept on the floor across my bedroom door and did not budge when I was told to step over them. Then one evening I came back to the house when the owners were out and they sat with me whilst I watched football, one at my feet , the other on the settee next to me. This example offers clear support to the RSPCA case about good owners, but of course not everyone will be and stricter controls are obviously necessary.
Compare dogs and kids. Some kids you can be 'good' to, and they will learn good habits and become good members of society. But some kids... however good you are to them, they may turn out to be sh*ts. Whereas some kids have terrible parents, and end up good, despite some hideous experiences.
It's not nature vs nurture; it's both.
It'll be the same with dogs. But if you breed dogs to be bad, a bully, perhaps, the the chances are that nature will mostly overcome nurture.
I have had dogs all my life, and different breeds, but Mrs Foxy hadn't. She never realised how bred for a purpose dogs were (being more a mad cat lady) so tried to choose by cuteness etc.
Different breeds have different characteristics that cannot be trained out for generations. My current dog is a sight hound and cannot resist chasing small mammals and birds, on the other hand doesn't like to be more than a few metres away as always wants to be by the "hunter". I had a labrador that you couldn't keep out of the water, a terrier who loved to dig, a sheepdog that herded everybody etc.
American Bully's are always going to have fighting instincts very difficult to overcome, so not safe in public.
The name alone is pretty bad branding as far as the genteel British old codger goes.
Labour has reacted to today's announcement by supporting a ban on American bully XL dogs, while also criticising the prime minister for "dithering" over outlawing the cross-breed. Shadow Environment Secretary Steve Reed believes the dogs leave "a trail of destruction in communities up and down the country". "Labour MPs have long called for these dogs to be banned," he adds. "Families will be furious that it has taken this long for Rishi Sunak to finally act. "But, if Rishi Sunak continues to dither, the next Labour government will do the right thing and ban these dogs causing terror.""
So fucking typical of Starmer's Labour. "We'd do exactly the same as the Tories. But not like the Tories, because they are bastards. We will be non-bastard Tories."
Colour me underwhelmed.
Starmer and Sunak both share the same delusion: that the system is fundamentally sound and all that is needed in politics is a managerial approach: triage the problems as they arise and fix the ones with most media noise/electoral salience. Neither understand that the problems we have are structural and the tools we have don't work any more.
I think many of our problems can be dealt with through a competent managerial approach. I agree there are structural problems as well which require more, but significant improvements which will be felt will still be possible through the managerial approach.
The problem of course with radical solutions even for radical problems is that if you get it wrong the results are even more disastrous. And since radical solutions are usually ideologically based not evidence based they go wrong more often than not.
[rant mode on]
All solutions are ideologically based: they just get called ideology if they don't work or are not liked!
For the next one-to-two decades we will have a voting population dominated by retired people who consume but not produce, a working population competing with 500,000 to 1,000,000 migrants each year for work and housing, a NHS taking up a considerably larger chunk of Govt expenditure than now, a government that refuses to gather money via tax to pay for it and dependency on debt that is no longer cheap, a housing market increasingly dominated by foreign ownership that exports the profits (and consequent erosion of the tax base) and a set of economic ideas that fit the neoliberal world but cannot cope with a world where peace, freedom of movement and the rule of int'l trade underwritten by the US navy is increasingly withdrawn and whose idea of a economic wheeze is to put up interest rates!
[rant mode off]
The housing market is totally dominated by owner-occupiers. That's why it's lightly taxed. Not the nasty foreigners. Something 60% of people own isn't going to be taxed to hand cash to younger people.
I said increasingly dominated...
Have a look sometime at the explosion of tall accommodation blocks in the UK. It's happening in Leeds. It's happening in London. It's happening in Reading. See recent comments about the number of new commuter train stations. Ever wondered why?
From memory, there are about 26 million households in E&W, ranging from a small studio to Buckingham Palace. Population in mid 1990s was around 57 million, and when the 2021/2 Census figures come out that'll be around 68 million. At current input rates it'll be around 75 million by 2031.
Where are they going to live, and who has got the dosh to build the millions of new flats to accommodate seven million new people? Hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds, pension funds do. Mr&Mrs Owner-occupier don't.
If it's not dominated, it's not increasingly dominated.
Of course one family can't afford to pay for ten million flats. But as long as the family can pay for one house, sorted. And most can, with a mortgage. Another two big chunks will be bought by BTL and social landlords. So, I think the purported problem is miscalibrated.
You don't buy flats. You buy (more likely get a mortgage on) the leasehold. The owner of the building still owns the freehold. And they will charge you ground rent and maintenance costs. And they go up every year.
Still cannot get over that letter from Dr Peter Hilton.
It's fairly rare to come across such views without some kind of obscuring language.
I expect he was also one of those who didn't agree with restrictions on junior doctors hours: "I worked 120 hour weeks and it never did me any harm" In fact, that might be the explanation for his letter. He's just overtired.
Not fully transparent doesn't necessarily mean he lied. It includes sins of omission.
He may not have lied, but should have said something he didn't.
Or he may have answered a question such as "Are these all the relationships you had with work colleagues?" with a "Yes", which would be a lie.
Notable that there was a whistleblowing followed by an independent investigation which uncovered the facts leading to his departure. A lesson there for the NHS.
Labour has reacted to today's announcement by supporting a ban on American bully XL dogs, while also criticising the prime minister for "dithering" over outlawing the cross-breed. Shadow Environment Secretary Steve Reed believes the dogs leave "a trail of destruction in communities up and down the country". "Labour MPs have long called for these dogs to be banned," he adds. "Families will be furious that it has taken this long for Rishi Sunak to finally act. "But, if Rishi Sunak continues to dither, the next Labour government will do the right thing and ban these dogs causing terror.""
So fucking typical of Starmer's Labour. "We'd do exactly the same as the Tories. But not like the Tories, because they are bastards. We will be non-bastard Tories."
Colour me underwhelmed.
Starmer and Sunak both share the same delusion: that the system is fundamentally sound and all that is needed in politics is a managerial approach: triage the problems as they arise and fix the ones with most media noise/electoral salience. Neither understand that the problems we have are structural and the tools we have don't work any more.
I think many of our problems can be dealt with through a competent managerial approach. I agree there are structural problems as well which require more, but significant improvements which will be felt will still be possible through the managerial approach.
The problem of course with radical solutions even for radical problems is that if you get it wrong the results are even more disastrous. And since radical solutions are usually ideologically based not evidence based they go wrong more often than not.
[rant mode on]
All solutions are ideologically based: they just get called ideology if they don't work or are not liked!
For the next one-to-two decades we will have a voting population dominated by retired people who consume but not produce, a working population competing with 500,000 to 1,000,000 migrants each year for work and housing, a NHS taking up a considerably larger chunk of Govt expenditure than now, a government that refuses to gather money via tax to pay for it and dependency on debt that is no longer cheap, a housing market increasingly dominated by foreign ownership that exports the profits (and consequent erosion of the tax base) and a set of economic ideas that fit the neoliberal world but cannot cope with a world where peace, freedom of movement and the rule of int'l trade underwritten by the US navy is increasingly withdrawn and whose idea of a economic wheeze is to put up interest rates!
[rant mode off]
The housing market is totally dominated by owner-occupiers. That's why it's lightly taxed. Not the nasty foreigners. Something 60% of people own isn't going to be taxed to hand cash to younger people.
I said increasingly dominated...
Have a look sometime at the explosion of tall accommodation blocks in the UK. It's happening in Leeds. It's happening in London. It's happening in Reading. See recent comments about the number of new commuter train stations. Ever wondered why?
From memory, there are about 26 million households in E&W, ranging from a small studio to Buckingham Palace. Population in mid 1990s was around 57 million, and when the 2021/2 Census figures come out that'll be around 68 million. At current input rates it'll be around 75 million by 2031.
Where are they going to live, and who has got the dosh to build the millions of new flats to accommodate seven million new people? Hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds, pension funds do. Mr&Mrs Owner-occupier don't.
If it's not dominated, it's not increasingly dominated.
Of course one family can't afford to pay for ten million flats. But as long as the family can pay for one house, sorted. And most can, with a mortgage. Another two big chunks will be bought by BTL and social landlords. So, I think the purported problem is miscalibrated.
You don't buy flats. You buy (more likely get a mortgage on) the leasehold. The owner of the building still owns the freehold. And they will charge you ground rent and maintenance costs. And they go up every year.
Hasn't England got rid of all that yet? I've not been paying attention. I have a vague memory that it was part of Gove's plans?
Labour has reacted to today's announcement by supporting a ban on American bully XL dogs, while also criticising the prime minister for "dithering" over outlawing the cross-breed. Shadow Environment Secretary Steve Reed believes the dogs leave "a trail of destruction in communities up and down the country". "Labour MPs have long called for these dogs to be banned," he adds. "Families will be furious that it has taken this long for Rishi Sunak to finally act. "But, if Rishi Sunak continues to dither, the next Labour government will do the right thing and ban these dogs causing terror.""
So fucking typical of Starmer's Labour. "We'd do exactly the same as the Tories. But not like the Tories, because they are bastards. We will be non-bastard Tories."
Colour me underwhelmed.
Starmer and Sunak both share the same delusion: that the system is fundamentally sound and all that is needed in politics is a managerial approach: triage the problems as they arise and fix the ones with most media noise/electoral salience. Neither understand that the problems we have are structural and the tools we have don't work any more.
I think many of our problems can be dealt with through a competent managerial approach. I agree there are structural problems as well which require more, but significant improvements which will be felt will still be possible through the managerial approach.
The problem of course with radical solutions even for radical problems is that if you get it wrong the results are even more disastrous. And since radical solutions are usually ideologically based not evidence based they go wrong more often than not.
[rant mode on]
All solutions are ideologically based: they just get called ideology if they don't work or are not liked!
For the next one-to-two decades we will have a voting population dominated by retired people who consume but not produce, a working population competing with 500,000 to 1,000,000 migrants each year for work and housing, a NHS taking up a considerably larger chunk of Govt expenditure than now, a government that refuses to gather money via tax to pay for it and dependency on debt that is no longer cheap, a housing market increasingly dominated by foreign ownership that exports the profits (and consequent erosion of the tax base) and a set of economic ideas that fit the neoliberal world but cannot cope with a world where peace, freedom of movement and the rule of int'l trade underwritten by the US navy is increasingly withdrawn and whose idea of a economic wheeze is to put up interest rates!
[rant mode off]
The housing market is totally dominated by owner-occupiers. That's why it's lightly taxed. Not the nasty foreigners. Something 60% of people own isn't going to be taxed to hand cash to younger people.
I said increasingly dominated...
Have a look sometime at the explosion of tall accommodation blocks in the UK. It's happening in Leeds. It's happening in London. It's happening in Reading. See recent comments about the number of new commuter train stations. Ever wondered why?
From memory, there are about 26 million households in E&W, ranging from a small studio to Buckingham Palace. Population in mid 1990s was around 57 million, and when the 2021/2 Census figures come out that'll be around 68 million. At current input rates it'll be around 75 million by 2031.
Where are they going to live, and who has got the dosh to build the millions of new flats to accommodate seven million new people? Hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds, pension funds do. Mr&Mrs Owner-occupier don't.
If it's not dominated, it's not increasingly dominated.
Of course one family can't afford to pay for ten million flats. But as long as the family can pay for one house, sorted. And most can, with a mortgage. Another two big chunks will be bought by BTL and social landlords. So, I think the purported problem is miscalibrated.
You don't buy flats. You buy (more likely get a mortgage on) the leasehold. The owner of the building still owns the freehold. And they will charge you ground rent and maintenance costs. And they go up every year.
Hasn't England got rid of all that yet? I've not been paying attention. I have a vague memory that it was part of Gove's plans?
Often flats are sold with a share of freehold of the overall building as I recall.
Not fully transparent doesn't necessarily mean he lied. It includes sins of omission.
He may not have lied, but should have said something he didn't.
Or he may have answered a question such as "Are these all the relationships you had with work colleagues?" with a "Yes", which would be a lie.
Notable that there was a whistleblowing followed by an independent investigation which uncovered the facts leading to his departure. A lesson there for the NHS.
Labour has reacted to today's announcement by supporting a ban on American bully XL dogs, while also criticising the prime minister for "dithering" over outlawing the cross-breed. Shadow Environment Secretary Steve Reed believes the dogs leave "a trail of destruction in communities up and down the country". "Labour MPs have long called for these dogs to be banned," he adds. "Families will be furious that it has taken this long for Rishi Sunak to finally act. "But, if Rishi Sunak continues to dither, the next Labour government will do the right thing and ban these dogs causing terror.""
So fucking typical of Starmer's Labour. "We'd do exactly the same as the Tories. But not like the Tories, because they are bastards. We will be non-bastard Tories."
Colour me underwhelmed.
Starmer and Sunak both share the same delusion: that the system is fundamentally sound and all that is needed in politics is a managerial approach: triage the problems as they arise and fix the ones with most media noise/electoral salience. Neither understand that the problems we have are structural and the tools we have don't work any more.
I think many of our problems can be dealt with through a competent managerial approach. I agree there are structural problems as well which require more, but significant improvements which will be felt will still be possible through the managerial approach.
The problem of course with radical solutions even for radical problems is that if you get it wrong the results are even more disastrous. And since radical solutions are usually ideologically based not evidence based they go wrong more often than not.
[rant mode on]
All solutions are ideologically based: they just get called ideology if they don't work or are not liked!
For the next one-to-two decades we will have a voting population dominated by retired people who consume but not produce, a working population competing with 500,000 to 1,000,000 migrants each year for work and housing, a NHS taking up a considerably larger chunk of Govt expenditure than now, a government that refuses to gather money via tax to pay for it and dependency on debt that is no longer cheap, a housing market increasingly dominated by foreign ownership that exports the profits (and consequent erosion of the tax base) and a set of economic ideas that fit the neoliberal world but cannot cope with a world where peace, freedom of movement and the rule of int'l trade underwritten by the US navy is increasingly withdrawn and whose idea of a economic wheeze is to put up interest rates!
[rant mode off]
The housing market is totally dominated by owner-occupiers. That's why it's lightly taxed. Not the nasty foreigners. Something 60% of people own isn't going to be taxed to hand cash to younger people.
I said increasingly dominated...
Have a look sometime at the explosion of tall accommodation blocks in the UK. It's happening in Leeds. It's happening in London. It's happening in Reading. See recent comments about the number of new commuter train stations. Ever wondered why?
From memory, there are about 26 million households in E&W, ranging from a small studio to Buckingham Palace. Population in mid 1990s was around 57 million, and when the 2021/2 Census figures come out that'll be around 68 million. At current input rates it'll be around 75 million by 2031.
Where are they going to live, and who has got the dosh to build the millions of new flats to accommodate seven million new people? Hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds, pension funds do. Mr&Mrs Owner-occupier don't.
If it's not dominated, it's not increasingly dominated.
Of course one family can't afford to pay for ten million flats. But as long as the family can pay for one house, sorted. And most can, with a mortgage. Another two big chunks will be bought by BTL and social landlords. So, I think the purported problem is miscalibrated.
You don't buy flats. You buy (more likely get a mortgage on) the leasehold. The owner of the building still owns the freehold. And they will charge you ground rent and maintenance costs. And they go up every year.
Hasn't England got rid of all that yet? I've not been paying attention. I have a vague memory that it was part of Gove's plans?
Often flats are sold with a share of freehold of the overall building as I recall.
Such sales are for those in smallish blocks (around five people) whose occupants are savvy enough to run and maintain the block. Most sales (I think a large majority) do not fall into that category.
Labour has reacted to today's announcement by supporting a ban on American bully XL dogs, while also criticising the prime minister for "dithering" over outlawing the cross-breed. Shadow Environment Secretary Steve Reed believes the dogs leave "a trail of destruction in communities up and down the country". "Labour MPs have long called for these dogs to be banned," he adds. "Families will be furious that it has taken this long for Rishi Sunak to finally act. "But, if Rishi Sunak continues to dither, the next Labour government will do the right thing and ban these dogs causing terror.""
So fucking typical of Starmer's Labour. "We'd do exactly the same as the Tories. But not like the Tories, because they are bastards. We will be non-bastard Tories."
Colour me underwhelmed.
Starmer and Sunak both share the same delusion: that the system is fundamentally sound and all that is needed in politics is a managerial approach: triage the problems as they arise and fix the ones with most media noise/electoral salience. Neither understand that the problems we have are structural and the tools we have don't work any more.
I think many of our problems can be dealt with through a competent managerial approach. I agree there are structural problems as well which require more, but significant improvements which will be felt will still be possible through the managerial approach.
The problem of course with radical solutions even for radical problems is that if you get it wrong the results are even more disastrous. And since radical solutions are usually ideologically based not evidence based they go wrong more often than not.
[rant mode on]
All solutions are ideologically based: they just get called ideology if they don't work or are not liked!
For the next one-to-two decades we will have a voting population dominated by retired people who consume but not produce, a working population competing with 500,000 to 1,000,000 migrants each year for work and housing, a NHS taking up a considerably larger chunk of Govt expenditure than now, a government that refuses to gather money via tax to pay for it and dependency on debt that is no longer cheap, a housing market increasingly dominated by foreign ownership that exports the profits (and consequent erosion of the tax base) and a set of economic ideas that fit the neoliberal world but cannot cope with a world where peace, freedom of movement and the rule of int'l trade underwritten by the US navy is increasingly withdrawn and whose idea of a economic wheeze is to put up interest rates!
[rant mode off]
The housing market is totally dominated by owner-occupiers. That's why it's lightly taxed. Not the nasty foreigners. Something 60% of people own isn't going to be taxed to hand cash to younger people.
I said increasingly dominated...
Have a look sometime at the explosion of tall accommodation blocks in the UK. It's happening in Leeds. It's happening in London. It's happening in Reading. See recent comments about the number of new commuter train stations. Ever wondered why?
From memory, there are about 26 million households in E&W, ranging from a small studio to Buckingham Palace. Population in mid 1990s was around 57 million, and when the 2021/2 Census figures come out that'll be around 68 million. At current input rates it'll be around 75 million by 2031.
Where are they going to live, and who has got the dosh to build the millions of new flats to accommodate seven million new people? Hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds, pension funds do. Mr&Mrs Owner-occupier don't.
If it's not dominated, it's not increasingly dominated.
Of course one family can't afford to pay for ten million flats. But as long as the family can pay for one house, sorted. And most can, with a mortgage. Another two big chunks will be bought by BTL and social landlords. So, I think the purported problem is miscalibrated.
You don't buy flats. You buy (more likely get a mortgage on) the leasehold. The owner of the building still owns the freehold. And they will charge you ground rent and maintenance costs. And they go up every year.
Hasn't England got rid of all that yet? I've not been paying attention. I have a vague memory that it was part of Gove's plans?
BBC 6 o’clock news report on the rollout of 20MPH speed limits in wales might as well have been written by the Welsh regime and Brake.
To be fair Plaid forced Welsh labour this week into conceding it will keep it under review and allow councils more discretion
There is a lot of anger about it both in the media and social media
One local takeaway has advertised
Be sure to get your hot takeaway by tomorrow
After that it will be cold !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If a bunch of Clarkson-worshiping gammons are getting irate, then it must be a good policy.
Why would you insult the very many Welsh residents across the political spectrum who disagree with the policy ?
If they disagree they need to vote out the Welsh government. Isn't that what those of us unhappy with the past 13 years of Tory mis-rule have been constantly told?
Plaid effectively forced labour into a compromise solution this week, winning a vote on their amendment that the Welsh Government have to keep the policy under review, give local authorities more discretion, and pay for any further alterations
I am not anti 20mph, indeed I support it around schools and congested areas, but to force the whole Principality to default 20mph is causing considerable anger across the political divide especially when it is on roads that 30mph is reasonable
A review is a big mistake. The opposition forced the same in Edinburgh, and the findings illustrated just how effective the 20mph limits were.
Now the council are using the same report to roll out even more 20mph limits. Woops!
Evening all. In something of a morose mood, so watching Deep Impact. Disaster movies always do the job and this one is one of the best.
The film is from 1998, released in my last year of university. I watch this and see some of the tech which was Cutting Edge at the time. The computer gear, the websites, saving the asteroid data to a floppy disc to go out in the mail...
Evening all. In something of a morose mood, so watching Deep Impact. Disaster movies always do the job and this one is one of the best.
The film is from 1998, released in my last year of university. I watch this and see some of the tech which was Cutting Edge at the time. The computer gear, the websites, saving the asteroid data to a floppy disc to go out in the mail...
You have got to see "WarGames". Eight inch floppies... 😀
On topic, I think this just demonstrates why the culture war anti-trans nonsense is damaging and dangerous. The threat to women is predatory men. Always has been. Still is. Worse is when men in power think their power extends into being able to "grab them by the pussy".
As the father of a 12 year-old daughter, I get rather wound up by such attitudes.
Evening all. In something of a morose mood, so watching Deep Impact. Disaster movies always do the job and this one is one of the best.
The film is from 1998, released in my last year of university. I watch this and see some of the tech which was Cutting Edge at the time. The computer gear, the websites, saving the asteroid data to a floppy disc to go out in the mail...
You have got to see "WarGames". Eight inch floppies... 😀
Love your stuff Cyclefree, but 'The last 2 days have given us 2 examples...'?! Oh dear, oh dear.
As I hurtle, with worrying rapidity, through my forties things which, even a few short years ago, would never bother me in the slightest now really grind my gears. Cars parking on grass verges, for example. Why, oh why must moronic motorists make grass verges resemble Passchendaele? Summary execution is too good for them.
One other minor, totally and utterly inconsequential thing that gets my blood pressure rocketing, that instantly gets the molars grinding away, is the use of the number two when the word 'two' should be, to my befuddled mind at least, always, always be used in cases like this.
No doubt some fancy-pants will be able to cite Shakespeare or some other venerable wordsmith doing it in an original manuscript - '2 be or not 2 be' in a spidery hand on some yellowed parchment somewhere perhaps, to give this travesty a sheen of respectability, a gossamer thin legitimacy but I don't care. I will not engage. I am embracing my incipient fogeyism, drawing a line in the sand, choosing this particular hillock to expire on, and issuing a firm 'No, Cyclefree, no!'
It's not that I'm angry, just disappointed. It'll probably cast an unwelcome pall over the entire weekend. I hope you can spend some quiet time to contemplate precisely what you have done.
BBC 6 o’clock news report on the rollout of 20MPH speed limits in wales might as well have been written by the Welsh regime and Brake.
To be fair Plaid forced Welsh labour this week into conceding it will keep it under review and allow councils more discretion
There is a lot of anger about it both in the media and social media
One local takeaway has advertised
Be sure to get your hot takeaway by tomorrow
After that it will be cold !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If a bunch of Clarkson-worshiping gammons are getting irate, then it must be a good policy.
Why would you insult the very many Welsh residents across the political spectrum who disagree with the policy ?
If they disagree they need to vote out the Welsh government. Isn't that what those of us unhappy with the past 13 years of Tory mis-rule have been constantly told?
Plaid effectively forced labour into a compromise solution this week, winning a vote on their amendment that the Welsh Government have to keep the policy under review, give local authorities more discretion, and pay for any further alterations
I am not anti 20mph, indeed I support it around schools and congested areas, but to force the whole Principality to default 20mph is causing considerable anger across the political divide especially when it is on roads that 30mph is reasonable
A review is a big mistake. The opposition forced the same in Edinburgh, and the findings illustrated just how effective the 20mph limits were.
Now the council are using the same report to roll out even more 20mph limits. Woops!
Isn’t this a bit like lockdown? Does locking down save lives? Yes. Do it, and ignore any other downsides. Does a blanket 20mph zone save lives? Yes. Do it, and ignore any potential downsides.
Personally think 20 is right in many built up areas, but depending on the road conditions, where it is etc. Blanket 20mph seems lazy.
Stopped at a friends house for a few weeks 30 or so years ago, whilst waiting to move home. They had two Rottweilers, a mother and son. First evening I walked through the door and they came charging at me down the hall, the lady owner shouted "Friend" and they froze, then retreated back to the Kitchen. They were as good as gold with me after that, slept on the floor across my bedroom door and did not budge when I was told to step over them. Then one evening I came back to the house when the owners were out and they sat with me whilst I watched football, one at my feet , the other on the settee next to me. This example offers clear support to the RSPCA case about good owners, but of course not everyone will be and stricter controls are obviously necessary.
Compare dogs and kids. Some kids you can be 'good' to, and they will learn good habits and become good members of society. But some kids... however good you are to them, they may turn out to be sh*ts. Whereas some kids have terrible parents, and end up good, despite some hideous experiences.
It's not nature vs nurture; it's both.
It'll be the same with dogs. But if you breed dogs to be bad, a bully, perhaps, the the chances are that nature will mostly overcome nurture.
I have had dogs all my life, and different breeds, but Mrs Foxy hadn't. She never realised how bred for a purpose dogs were (being more a mad cat lady) so tried to choose by cuteness etc.
Different breeds have different characteristics that cannot be trained out for generations. My current dog is a sight hound and cannot resist chasing small mammals and birds, on the other hand doesn't like to be more than a few metres away as always wants to be by the "hunter". I had a labrador that you couldn't keep out of the water, a terrier who loved to dig, a sheepdog that herded everybody etc.
American Bully's are always going to have fighting instincts very difficult to overcome, so not safe in public.
Even with breeding in of 'desired' characteristics, you don't necessarily get the desired characteristics as an output. For many farmers, dogs are working animals; yet despite a few hundred years of breeding, you can still get sheepdog pups who are useless around sheep as 'working' dogs. Ditto gundogs; an acquaintance had a gundog who was a great pet, but would run in the opposite direction and hide whenever a gun fired.
Evening all. In something of a morose mood, so watching Deep Impact. Disaster movies always do the job and this one is one of the best.
The film is from 1998, released in my last year of university. I watch this and see some of the tech which was Cutting Edge at the time. The computer gear, the websites, saving the asteroid data to a floppy disc to go out in the mail...
You have got to see "WarGames". Eight inch floppies... 😀
I have used a machine with an 8" floppy drive...
New-fangled fancy tech. When I started in IT it was paper tape, punched cards and teletypes. I worked on an ICL mainframe with an unbelievably huge 192K of memory.
Evening all. In something of a morose mood, so watching Deep Impact. Disaster movies always do the job and this one is one of the best.
The film is from 1998, released in my last year of university. I watch this and see some of the tech which was Cutting Edge at the time. The computer gear, the websites, saving the asteroid data to a floppy disc to go out in the mail...
You have got to see "WarGames". Eight inch floppies... 😀
[Engage jumpers for goalpost mode]
Using chewing gum wrappers to bypass a payphone. Beautiful vector graphics, but I think the scenarios scene and definitely the text in the "Impact" scene was raster. Backdoors. "Your wife?". "Hello, Joshua". Stephen Falken = Stephen Hawking. Defcons in the right order. "Shall we play a game". Ah, my happy place has arrived...
Evening all. In something of a morose mood, so watching Deep Impact. Disaster movies always do the job and this one is one of the best.
The film is from 1998, released in my last year of university. I watch this and see some of the tech which was Cutting Edge at the time. The computer gear, the websites, saving the asteroid data to a floppy disc to go out in the mail...
You have got to see "WarGames". Eight inch floppies... 😀
Evening all. In something of a morose mood, so watching Deep Impact. Disaster movies always do the job and this one is one of the best.
The film is from 1998, released in my last year of university. I watch this and see some of the tech which was Cutting Edge at the time. The computer gear, the websites, saving the asteroid data to a floppy disc to go out in the mail...
You have got to see "WarGames". Eight inch floppies... 😀
I have used a machine with an 8" floppy drive...
New-fangled fancy tech. When I started in IT it was paper tape, punched cards and teletypes. I worked on an ICL mainframe with an unbelievably huge 192K of memory.
Evening all. In something of a morose mood, so watching Deep Impact. Disaster movies always do the job and this one is one of the best.
The film is from 1998, released in my last year of university. I watch this and see some of the tech which was Cutting Edge at the time. The computer gear, the websites, saving the asteroid data to a floppy disc to go out in the mail...
You have got to see "WarGames". Eight inch floppies... 😀
I have used a machine with an 8" floppy drive...
New-fangled fancy tech. When I started in IT it was paper tape, punched cards and teletypes. I worked on an ICL mainframe with an unbelievably huge 192K of memory.
Much the same here. Assembly languages and machine code. Great fun.
Evening all. In something of a morose mood, so watching Deep Impact. Disaster movies always do the job and this one is one of the best.
The film is from 1998, released in my last year of university. I watch this and see some of the tech which was Cutting Edge at the time. The computer gear, the websites, saving the asteroid data to a floppy disc to go out in the mail...
You have got to see "WarGames". Eight inch floppies... 😀
Stopped at a friends house for a few weeks 30 or so years ago, whilst waiting to move home. They had two Rottweilers, a mother and son. First evening I walked through the door and they came charging at me down the hall, the lady owner shouted "Friend" and they froze, then retreated back to the Kitchen. They were as good as gold with me after that, slept on the floor across my bedroom door and did not budge when I was told to step over them. Then one evening I came back to the house when the owners were out and they sat with me whilst I watched football, one at my feet , the other on the settee next to me. This example offers clear support to the RSPCA case about good owners, but of course not everyone will be and stricter controls are obviously necessary.
Compare dogs and kids. Some kids you can be 'good' to, and they will learn good habits and become good members of society. But some kids... however good you are to them, they may turn out to be sh*ts. Whereas some kids have terrible parents, and end up good, despite some hideous experiences.
It's not nature vs nurture; it's both.
It'll be the same with dogs. But if you breed dogs to be bad, a bully, perhaps, the the chances are that nature will mostly overcome nurture.
I have had dogs all my life, and different breeds, but Mrs Foxy hadn't. She never realised how bred for a purpose dogs were (being more a mad cat lady) so tried to choose by cuteness etc.
Different breeds have different characteristics that cannot be trained out for generations. My current dog is a sight hound and cannot resist chasing small mammals and birds, on the other hand doesn't like to be more than a few metres away as always wants to be by the "hunter". I had a labrador that you couldn't keep out of the water, a terrier who loved to dig, a sheepdog that herded everybody etc.
American Bully's are always going to have fighting instincts very difficult to overcome, so not safe in public.
Even with breeding in of 'desired' characteristics, you don't necessarily get the desired characteristics as an output. For many farmers, dogs are working animals; yet despite a few hundred years of breeding, you can still get sheepdog pups who are useless around sheep as 'working' dogs. Ditto gundogs; an acquaintance had a gundog who was a great pet, but would run in the opposite direction and hide whenever a gun fired.
Sure, there always throwbacks who regress to the mean, but breeds are very task specific.
Evening all. In something of a morose mood, so watching Deep Impact. Disaster movies always do the job and this one is one of the best.
The film is from 1998, released in my last year of university. I watch this and see some of the tech which was Cutting Edge at the time. The computer gear, the websites, saving the asteroid data to a floppy disc to go out in the mail...
You have got to see "WarGames". Eight inch floppies... 😀
I have used a machine with an 8" floppy drive...
New-fangled fancy tech. When I started in IT it was paper tape, punched cards and teletypes. I worked on an ICL mainframe with an unbelievably huge 192K of memory.
A little before my time. I would love to get my hands on some old tech for me - a BBC B computer and a copy of Granny's Garden...
Stopped at a friends house for a few weeks 30 or so years ago, whilst waiting to move home. They had two Rottweilers, a mother and son. First evening I walked through the door and they came charging at me down the hall, the lady owner shouted "Friend" and they froze, then retreated back to the Kitchen. They were as good as gold with me after that, slept on the floor across my bedroom door and did not budge when I was told to step over them. Then one evening I came back to the house when the owners were out and they sat with me whilst I watched football, one at my feet , the other on the settee next to me. This example offers clear support to the RSPCA case about good owners, but of course not everyone will be and stricter controls are obviously necessary.
Compare dogs and kids. Some kids you can be 'good' to, and they will learn good habits and become good members of society. But some kids... however good you are to them, they may turn out to be sh*ts. Whereas some kids have terrible parents, and end up good, despite some hideous experiences.
It's not nature vs nurture; it's both.
It'll be the same with dogs. But if you breed dogs to be bad, a bully, perhaps, the the chances are that nature will mostly overcome nurture.
I have had dogs all my life, and different breeds, but Mrs Foxy hadn't. She never realised how bred for a purpose dogs were (being more a mad cat lady) so tried to choose by cuteness etc.
Different breeds have different characteristics that cannot be trained out for generations. My current dog is a sight hound and cannot resist chasing small mammals and birds, on the other hand doesn't like to be more than a few metres away as always wants to be by the "hunter". I had a labrador that you couldn't keep out of the water, a terrier who loved to dig, a sheepdog that herded everybody etc.
American Bully's are always going to have fighting instincts very difficult to overcome, so not safe in public.
Mm. I used to take a friend's flatcoat retriever for walks - if we were in a group and it split in two it used to get very distressed as it didn't know what to do.
Trouble is some breeds have massive jaws. Staffies for instance. I was once on a walk and one ran up to me and started eating my hand. Very sharp teeth, didn't quite break the skin. Fortunately I didn't panic as I realised it was only a young one overjoyed at the opportunity to play and make friends with me, but even so ... I disengaged myself gently and did express my views to the owner - not loudly or aggressively.
BBC 6 o’clock news report on the rollout of 20MPH speed limits in wales might as well have been written by the Welsh regime and Brake.
To be fair Plaid forced Welsh labour this week into conceding it will keep it under review and allow councils more discretion
There is a lot of anger about it both in the media and social media
One local takeaway has advertised
Be sure to get your hot takeaway by tomorrow
After that it will be cold !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If a bunch of Clarkson-worshiping gammons are getting irate, then it must be a good policy.
Why would you insult the very many Welsh residents across the political spectrum who disagree with the policy ?
If they disagree they need to vote out the Welsh government. Isn't that what those of us unhappy with the past 13 years of Tory mis-rule have been constantly told?
Plaid effectively forced labour into a compromise solution this week, winning a vote on their amendment that the Welsh Government have to keep the policy under review, give local authorities more discretion, and pay for any further alterations
I am not anti 20mph, indeed I support it around schools and congested areas, but to force the whole Principality to default 20mph is causing considerable anger across the political divide especially when it is on roads that 30mph is reasonable
A review is a big mistake. The opposition forced the same in Edinburgh, and the findings illustrated just how effective the 20mph limits were.
Now the council are using the same report to roll out even more 20mph limits. Woops!
Isn’t this a bit like lockdown? Does locking down save lives? Yes. Do it, and ignore any other downsides. Does a blanket 20mph zone save lives? Yes. Do it, and ignore any potential downsides.
Personally think 20 is right in many built up areas, but depending on the road conditions, where it is etc. Blanket 20mph seems lazy.
It is not a blanket......it is a default to be aplied under certain circumstances...with an alternative 30mph to be applied with local authority discretion.
Comments
I mean, this is a man who goes on TV to talk about his pending cases and makes what look an awful lot like incriminating statements, when you'd think he'd just stick to ranting about corruption and oppression at least, he clearly does not do things sensibly.
He's almost as old and more incoherent, but his energy, when on camera at least, appears to convince people he lacks the flaws of Biden in that area.
I continue to believe he will never see a day in prison. Hopefully that will be because of being out pending appeal rather than because he is elected President again, which is currently looking 50/50.
Did they not think that a guy with a £65m house, might have access to some good lawyers of his own?
All solutions are ideologically based: they just get called ideology if they don't work or are not liked!
For the next one-to-two decades we will have a voting population dominated by retired people who consume but not produce, a working population competing with 500,000 to 1,000,000 migrants each year for work and housing, a NHS taking up a considerably larger chunk of Govt expenditure than now, a government that refuses to gather money via tax to pay for it and dependency on debt that is no longer cheap, a housing market increasingly dominated by foreign ownership that exports the profits (and consequent erosion of the tax base) and a set of economic ideas that fit the neoliberal world but cannot cope with a world where peace, freedom of movement and the rule of int'l trade underwritten by the US navy is increasingly withdrawn and whose idea of a economic wheeze is to put up interest rates!
[rant mode off]
Similar to how something may be criticised as playing politics (which is a dumb criticism to make of a politician, what else are they meant to do?), when the more precise way of putting it would be that the target is engaging in a sort of empty, partisan posturing rather than disagreeing about things like, er, ideology.
Not fully transparent doesn't necessarily mean he lied. It includes sins of omission.
He may not have lied, but should have said something he didn't.
I would rather the authorities fuck up and they are held up for it than the authorities can fuck up on a technicality and the state ignores it.
So there is that.
https://www.ft.com/content/97164016-9f18-4139-8acf-867ff6a52234
Kirkland 4th (2):
Like the group from the Iman Center, I showed you recently, this Falun Gong group is a regular at our 4th of July parades:
I suspect both groups include refugees, and children of refugees, but haven't verified that.
Note, by the way, the two flags at the back of the group. Like the Iman Center group I showed you before, the group was waiting their turn to join the parade. The light was better there, than on most of the route, which is why I picked that location for the pictures.
(There are, of course, many other regular groups including, for example, a local DeLorean club and, especially in election years, many candidates with their supporters.
This year, MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) appeared, and received more than scattered applause.)
There is a lot of anger about it both in the media and social media
One local takeaway has advertised
Be sure to get your hot takeaway by tomorrow
After that it will be cold !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Have a look sometime at the explosion of tall accommodation blocks in the UK. It's happening in Leeds. It's happening in London. It's happening in Reading. See recent comments about the number of new commuter train stations. Ever wondered why?
From memory, there are about 26 million households in E&W, ranging from a small studio to Buckingham Palace. Population in mid 1990s was around 57 million, and when the 2021/2 Census figures come out that'll be around 68 million. At current input rates it'll be around 75 million by 2031.
Where are they going to live, and who has got the dosh to build the millions of new flats to accommodate seven million new people? Hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds, pension funds do. Mr&Mrs Owner-occupier don't.
Wtf own this type of dog to begin with . Zero sympathy .
To say I disagree with its message would be a terminological inexactitude.
Someone just tried to genuinely make the point that the 20mph limit was unfair on people hoping for an organ donation because fewer fatal accidents would mean fewer organ donors.
https://twitter.com/WillHayCardiff/status/1702598575874617809?t=S8mbwKN6-DNrPt4xDpPf7w&s=19
* identification of a non standard breed could be problematic.
The question arises, if Russia can’t defend its Black Sea fleet, can any country actually defended its fleet from drone attacks? Can Taiwan take out a Chinese invasion fleet? Can China take out a US fleet defending Taiwan? Etc.?
Material in support of the warrant appeared to have been cut and pasted from a dossier posted on the internet in 2008 to discredit Fridman and alleging he had “historical and ongoing involvement in organised crime”. It is an allegation he totally rejects.
You are not supposed to use Wikipedia for your homework, Officer.
I am not anti 20mph, indeed I support it around schools and congested areas, but to force the whole Principality to default 20mph is causing considerable anger across the political divide especially when it is on roads that 30mph is reasonable
Evil drivers just want to run over school kids. Or that’s the implication on ITV News report.
Open-source intelligence appears to back up Armenian claims that Azerbaijan is building up its border forces and is preparing for war
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/09/15/azerbaijani-troops-russian-style-symbols-armenia-border/ (£££)
Others are so obsessed with the apparent unconditional affection they receive from their pet, that they ignore all the other warning signs.
Which is where it should remain.
The dogs are bred to signal Instagram machismo
Mary Harrington"
https://unherd.com/2023/09/what-american-bullies-tell-us-about-men/
Given Azerbaijan won that conflict and Russian peacekeeping forces were deployed as part of the ceasefire agreement, I guess it was only a matter of time before they came back to finish the job.
This example offers clear support to the RSPCA case about good owners, but of course not everyone will be and stricter controls are obviously necessary.
So joining Meal Team 6 is cheaper.
Of course one family can't afford to pay for ten million flats. But as long as the family can pay for one house, sorted. And most can, with a mortgage. Another two big chunks will be bought by BTL and social landlords. So, I think the purported problem is miscalibrated.
On topic of euphemisms gone wild, reminds me of an incident that occurred after Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860, but before he was inaugurated in March of 1861.
Lincoln was in process of putting together his Cabinet, and one key consideration was geographical balance. Including the political necessity of appointing at least one cabinet secretary from the Keystone State of Pennsylvania: critical to his electoral victory AND to future governance, especially as Civil War loomed.
So Abe called in a leading PA politico, Thaddeus Stevens, already a power in the US House and destined to become THE top Republican in Congress (and beyond) post-Civil War.
The President-Elect inquired as to the qualifications of big-time Pennsylvania political boss, Simon Cameron. Specifically, was Cameron an honest man?
Stevens snorted, sneered, then replied, "Well, I don't think he'd steal a hot stove."
Lincoln nearly fell out his chair laughing - his appreciation of a good joke was and still is proverbial - and simply could NOT resist repeating Stevens' "testimonial". In short order, Simon Cameron (who was in fact as crooked as a country road) got to hear of it, was highly offended, and complained to Lincoln.
Who asked Thad to come by for another chat, during which he said that Cameron was irate, and would Stevens consider retracting his previous remark?
"All right," Stevens responded, "now that I think of it, I'm positive that Simon Cameron WOULD steal a hot stove."
Old Abe roared again with laughter. Somehow he soothed Cameron's ruffled feathers, and appointed this bird as the new Secretary of War. Which when actual War (not very Civil) broke out, he soon proved to be both larcenous AND incompetent.
Lincoln needed to solve this problem, but NOT alienate Cameron (still a power in the PA GOP). Which he achieved by shuffling Simon out of his DC hot seat . . . all the way to St Petersburg as American minister to Russia.
It's not nature vs nurture; it's both.
It'll be the same with dogs. But if you breed dogs to be bad, a bully, perhaps, the the chances are that nature will mostly overcome nurture.
Of course there are issues of maintenance and nearby facilities asnd connections, and people who really want a nice detached house and garden won't be satisfied. But if the choice is an affordable good modern flat with a good view or a crumbling semi, enough people will decide on the former.
https://petition.parliament.uk
When I've stopped laughing......
Different breeds have different characteristics that cannot be trained out for generations. My current dog is a sight hound and cannot resist chasing small mammals and birds, on the other hand doesn't like to be more than a few metres away as always wants to be by the "hunter". I had a labrador that you couldn't keep out of the water, a terrier who loved to dig, a sheepdog that herded everybody etc.
American Bully's are always going to have fighting instincts very difficult to overcome, so not safe in public.
I'm a Lab or Collie man myself.
In fact, that might be the explanation for his letter. He's just overtired.
She was in collision with a car in Harrow Weald, at the junction of College Hill Road and Kenton Lane, before 9am on Friday.
She was rushed to hospital but did not survive her injuries.
The woman, who was in her mid-twenties, is the fourth person to die cycling in London in 2023, the third in collision with a vehicle.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/harrow-weald-cyclist-death-junction-police-london-b1107407.html
Notable that there was a whistleblowing followed by an independent investigation which uncovered the facts leading to his departure. A lesson there for the NHS.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/sep/13/sussex-police-widen-inquiry-into-brighton-hospital-deaths?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
Now the council are using the same report to roll out even more 20mph limits. Woops!
The film is from 1998, released in my last year of university. I watch this and see some of the tech which was Cutting Edge at the time. The computer gear, the websites, saving the asteroid data to a floppy disc to go out in the mail...
The misconduct charges before the tribunal are somewhat more serious.
As the father of a 12 year-old daughter, I get rather wound up by such attitudes.
Does a blanket 20mph zone save lives? Yes. Do it, and ignore any potential downsides.
Personally think 20 is right in many built up areas, but depending on the road conditions, where it is etc. Blanket 20mph seems lazy.
I worked on an ICL mainframe with an unbelievably huge 192K of memory.
In the proposed future world of driverless cars, who would be responsible?
Using chewing gum wrappers to bypass a payphone. Beautiful vector graphics, but I think the scenarios scene and definitely the text in the "Impact" scene was raster. Backdoors. "Your wife?". "Hello, Joshua". Stephen Falken = Stephen Hawking. Defcons in the right order. "Shall we play a game". Ah, my happy place has arrived...
Good evening, everybody.
But I have not used paper tape or punch cards.
Am I a centrist Dad?
Trouble is some breeds have massive jaws. Staffies for instance. I was once on a walk and one ran up to me and started eating my hand. Very sharp teeth, didn't quite break the skin. Fortunately I didn't panic as I realised it was only a young one overjoyed at the opportunity to play and make friends with me, but even so ... I disengaged myself gently and did express my views to the owner - not loudly or aggressively.