My main takeaway from the Dominic Cummings session today is that the UK's Covid response was severely handicapped at a crucial point in February 2020 because so many of the key players in government were away skiing. Has there ever been more compelling evidence that there are too many posh people in positions of authority in this country?
Thatcher's cabinet had proper poshos in it and they handled the AIDS crisis brilliantly.
Maggie's poshos tended to be the One Nation, pro-European types; her Praetorian Guard were more from the lower orders. It's when your poshos are also extremists that the mix becomes deadly.
My main takeaway from the Dominic Cummings session today is that the UK's Covid response was severely handicapped at a crucial point in February 2020 because so many of the key players in government were away skiing. Has there ever been more compelling evidence that there are too many posh people in positions of authority in this country?
Thatcher's cabinet had proper poshos in it and they handled the AIDS crisis brilliantly.
'Brilliantly' is perhaps too strong, to begin with - there was a bit of anti-gay prejudice from certain political elements, certainly within the wider party. But that got pushed out fairly quickly, and, overall, compared with some other cabinets ...
I consider Norman Fowler and Thatcher (and many others) secular saints. Thanks to them hundreds of thousands of gay men are alive today thanks to them.
Yes Thatcher wanted it to be a moral hygiene campaign but once she saw the numbers she let the cabinet overrule her because she under exponential growth.
Look at how badly France handled it.
Yup.
It was cabinet government, using information.
Some people tried to make a big thing out of the fact that after Satanic Verses, the cabinet had a discussion about the implications of the continuing protection of Rushdie - given that it was costing more than protecting any individual in the government.
Some voices were raised about the cost and the ongoing diplomatic implications. But a decision was made to continue.
Customising the new MacBooks to the highest specs sets you back £7,299.
LOL....I knew when they were giving it the its only $1600 there was going to be a massive sting in the tail.
I mean do I really need 128 GB of RAM?
If you’re doing game engine rendering, or copious amounts of 4k video editing, then hell yeah.
Only a handful of years ago, that spec would be a £30-50k workstation. Now it’s in a laptop!
I'm currently contemplating an upgrade to 128GB and 16 core, but for £1500 not £7000.
Photogrammetry is memory hungry...
There is a massive Apple “tax” but a lot of people are willing to pay it.
I have an M1 Max and while I’m not tempted to upgrade this second chances, are I will be doing so sooner rather than later ( probably 14” max with a stupid amount of memory)
My M1 max (bought soon after launch) is still far too fast for 90% of the things I use it for, including photo and video editing. It's a little slower than I'd like for AI image generation and it's slow running a local LLM (though I would probably buy a PC with twin 4090s if I needed such things regularly, as they're better supported). Battery life is still a solid 10-11 hours, and the large screen is excellent for work on the go.
I see no compelling reason to upgrade for now. Most people simply don't need the kind of processing power currently on offer. I find a top of the line Mac is good for at least five years from purchase, and often more. PC laptops generally give you 2-3 years max, and are rarely trouble free, so the Apple "tax" actually works out equivalent or cheaper if you keep your device 5-6 years.
Oh I need the power - and if I sell it early next year the value of the M1 Max I currently have won’t be impacted that much.
The other thing to remember is that apple products retain their value because even a 2 year old laptop still has 3-4 years more life in it.
My 12 year old air (Battery replaced in 2021) still enjoys a quiet retirement as an occasional email and browsing device, and spends most of its golden years as a media centre plugged into my 4k tv.
I challenge anyone to find me a 13 year old windows laptop with any practical use at all.
I often think Apple products are the best contemporary example of the Vimes Boot Theory...
Coincidentally my mid-2011 Macbook Air has finally given up the ghost today, so I have just ordered a refurbed 2017 Macbook to take over its occasional browsing and email duties.
I reckon 12 years has been a good run. Previously, my Windows laptops lasted 2-3 years tops before they became gummed up with unwanted and unrequested freeware and Windows add-ons.
Customising the new MacBooks to the highest specs sets you back £7,299.
LOL....I knew when they were giving it the its only $1600 there was going to be a massive sting in the tail.
I mean do I really need 128 GB of RAM?
If you’re doing game engine rendering, or copious amounts of 4k video editing, then hell yeah.
Only a handful of years ago, that spec would be a £30-50k workstation. Now it’s in a laptop!
I'm currently contemplating an upgrade to 128GB and 16 core, but for £1500 not £7000.
Photogrammetry is memory hungry...
There is a massive Apple “tax” but a lot of people are willing to pay it.
I have an M1 Max and while I’m not tempted to upgrade this second chances, are I will be doing so sooner rather than later ( probably 14” max with a stupid amount of memory)
My M1 max (bought soon after launch) is still far too fast for 90% of the things I use it for, including photo and video editing. It's a little slower than I'd like for AI image generation and it's slow running a local LLM (though I would probably buy a PC with twin 4090s if I needed such things regularly, as they're better supported). Battery life is still a solid 10-11 hours, and the large screen is excellent for work on the go.
I see no compelling reason to upgrade for now. Most people simply don't need the kind of processing power currently on offer. I find a top of the line Mac is good for at least five years from purchase, and often more. PC laptops generally give you 2-3 years max, and are rarely trouble free, so the Apple "tax" actually works out equivalent or cheaper if you keep your device 5-6 years.
Oh I need the power - and if I sell it early next year the value of the M1 Max I currently have won’t be impacted that much.
The other thing to remember is that apple products retain their value because even a 2 year old laptop still has 3-4 years more life in it.
My 12 year old air (Battery replaced in 2021) still enjoys a quiet retirement as an occasional email and browsing device, and spends most of its golden years as a media centre plugged into my 4k tv.
I challenge anyone to find me a 13 year old windows laptop with any practical use at all.
I often think Apple products are the best contemporary example of the Vimes Boot Theory...
Bah. An acquaintance has a StrongArm-powered Network Computer still working as a network traffic monitor over 25 years after it was built, on 24-hours a day.
To make it more interesting, I don't think it was ever released to the public...
If anyone wants to know the sort of beauty I'm talking about, here's a picture. Pure p*rn.
Seriously. What a privilege to see it in this slanted light
Looks as if will be pretty impressive when they finish it. Looks like all the workers are having a siesta in that image.
The poignant thing is that originally it would have been painted in really garish - to our eyes - colours. Vivid reds and blues and whites. Like a fairground attraction
But now the colour and polish is all gone and you’re left with the naked golden limestone - which looks so much better (especially to contemporary tastes) - and absolutely gorgeous in slanted October sun
So it’s good it was ruined
It now turns out that Gobekli Tepe was painted. They’ve found scarlet pigment. It would have been multicoloured. It is inexplicable. A painted sequence of temple towns buried 10,000 years ago. An utterly confounding civilisation, 6000 years before “civilisation”
Graham Hancock may have been right then
I hardly think paint is proof that Graham Hancock is right! We have cave paintings going back 64,000 years. Paintings, i.e. uses of paint. Something being painted a mere 6,000 years ago is interesting, but hardly groundbreaking.
Apparently the reason for the crazy price of top end M3 chips and the crazy number of different SKUs is TSMC are having problems with yield of 4mn production. So basically a load of the chips with lower core counts are really defective full fat ones and because yield is so low on the all singing all dancing M3 mega MAX pro SKU is mega expensive.
That's actually fairly standard, especially for new processes. The good thing is they're getting a usable (in products) amount of top-end chips out.
I've seen wafers where over three-quarters of the 'chips' remain after testing. That's bad.
NVIDIA did this an a huge scale, for years. People said that only a single digit percentage of the huge chips they were making for GPU would be perfect. Which turned out to only be a slight exaggeration.
But only a very few people were paying top dollar for the top end max compute performance.
So they would test a whole chip and blow "fuses" in the chip to isolate the dead sections. Which would leave lots for the various grades of graphics card. The perfect ones were the top end devices.
That's very standard in the industry as part of the binning process. Hence why Intel chips have different core counts (one or more cores failed bin testing), or different single-thread speeds.
A woman who organised the Black Lives Matter protest that toppled the statue of Edward Colston has been jailed after spending more than £30,000 donated to a youth charity on Ubers, an iPhone and computer, beauty products and takeaways.
Xahra Saleem, 23, a co-founder of the All Black Lives Bristol group, was named as one of the 30 most influential under-30s in Bristol by a now-defunct youth publication, Rife Magazine.
In the summer of 2020 Saleem, then known as Yvonne Maina, was one of five young people who organised a protest on June 7 in Bristol city centre in response to the murder of George Floyd by US police officers. The merchant and slave trader’s statue was pushed into the habour that afternoon.
In the days before the march, she started a GoFundMe online fundraiser in the group’s name, with the aim of raising a few hundred pounds to cover costs and pay for Covid PPE to be handed out to protesters.
Organisers said any money left over would go to a Bristol youth group, Changing Your Mindset, which planned to use it to fund a trip to Africa for young people in the deprived St Paul’s area.
Alistair Haggerty, for the prosecution, told Bristol crown court that £32,344 was raised by the GoFundMe page from 588 donations. He said the youth group was unable to open a business bank account during the pandemic, so a decision was made for the money to be held in Saleem’s personal account. “It was a sign of how much she was trusted,” Haggerty said.
Between July 2020 and June 2021 Saleem spent the money on a new iPhone and iMac computer, hair and beauty products, Amazon purchases, clothes, taxis, takeaways and general lifestyle expenses.
Saleem, who had no wage or regular income, also spent £5,800 on Uber taxi rides in the 11 months until June 2021.
In April 2021 the other directors of Changing Your Mindset asked Saleem to transfer the donated money into a new business account they had set up.
Saleem told them various lies about why she could not transfer the money, including that Black Lives Matter had advised her not to because “some of the people the charity had worked with had made homophobic comments”.
Customising the new MacBooks to the highest specs sets you back £7,299.
LOL....I knew when they were giving it the its only $1600 there was going to be a massive sting in the tail.
I mean do I really need 128 GB of RAM?
If you’re doing game engine rendering, or copious amounts of 4k video editing, then hell yeah.
Only a handful of years ago, that spec would be a £30-50k workstation. Now it’s in a laptop!
I'm currently contemplating an upgrade to 128GB and 16 core, but for £1500 not £7000.
Photogrammetry is memory hungry...
There is a massive Apple “tax” but a lot of people are willing to pay it.
I have an M1 Max and while I’m not tempted to upgrade this second chances, are I will be doing so sooner rather than later ( probably 14” max with a stupid amount of memory)
My M1 max (bought soon after launch) is still far too fast for 90% of the things I use it for, including photo and video editing. It's a little slower than I'd like for AI image generation and it's slow running a local LLM (though I would probably buy a PC with twin 4090s if I needed such things regularly, as they're better supported). Battery life is still a solid 10-11 hours, and the large screen is excellent for work on the go.
I see no compelling reason to upgrade for now. Most people simply don't need the kind of processing power currently on offer. I find a top of the line Mac is good for at least five years from purchase, and often more. PC laptops generally give you 2-3 years max, and are rarely trouble free, so the Apple "tax" actually works out equivalent or cheaper if you keep your device 5-6 years.
Oh I need the power - and if I sell it early next year the value of the M1 Max I currently have won’t be impacted that much.
The other thing to remember is that apple products retain their value because even a 2 year old laptop still has 3-4 years more life in it.
My 12 year old air (Battery replaced in 2021) still enjoys a quiet retirement as an occasional email and browsing device, and spends most of its golden years as a media centre plugged into my 4k tv.
I challenge anyone to find me a 13 year old windows laptop with any practical use at all.
I often think Apple products are the best contemporary example of the Vimes Boot Theory...
Coincidentally my mid-2011 Macbook Air has finally given up the ghost today, so I have just ordered a refurbed 2017 Macbook to take over its occasional browsing and email duties.
I reckon 12 years has been a good run. Previously, my Windows laptops lasted 2-3 years tops before they became gummed up with unwanted and unrequested freeware and Windows add-ons.
Yep. I still have a 2014 era windows laptop lovingly borrowed from my company's IT department, who did not ask for its return when I left the company.
The only way I got any use out of it at all post 2018 was to install chrome OS on it and turn it into a fairly crappy chromebook. The 2011 Macbook Air still chugs on, though it's showing its age.
Still, Apple of that era have definite flaws. Between 2018 and 2020 I went through three work-issued 13" macbook pros with the crappy keyboards, all of which broke in months. Corporate IT had a policy of just sending back for a new one, but I understand they were a bugger to fix anyway, given the way they were built. Not a golden era for Apple, and I'm glad I never shelled out my own money for one.
I challenge anyone to find me a 13 year old windows laptop with any practical use at all.
My laptop is 12 years old. It presently has an i7 quad-core CPU, 16GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD and runs Windows 10. It's a bit chunky by today's standards, but works well for everything bar gaming. It has the advantage of being stupidly easy to repair, parts are cheap and it's robust enough that it survived a 3-foot fall onto concrete with a small dent in the lid. Also, the chunky frame means room for very good speakers and, amazingly, a small subwoofer.
I keep it because modern laptops sacrifice too much to be thin and light, two attributes I'm not all that bothered about.
Customising the new MacBooks to the highest specs sets you back £7,299.
LOL....I knew when they were giving it the its only $1600 there was going to be a massive sting in the tail.
I mean do I really need 128 GB of RAM?
If you’re doing game engine rendering, or copious amounts of 4k video editing, then hell yeah.
Only a handful of years ago, that spec would be a £30-50k workstation. Now it’s in a laptop!
I'm currently contemplating an upgrade to 128GB and 16 core, but for £1500 not £7000.
Photogrammetry is memory hungry...
There is a massive Apple “tax” but a lot of people are willing to pay it.
I have an M1 Max and while I’m not tempted to upgrade this second chances, are I will be doing so sooner rather than later ( probably 14” max with a stupid amount of memory)
My M1 max (bought soon after launch) is still far too fast for 90% of the things I use it for, including photo and video editing. It's a little slower than I'd like for AI image generation and it's slow running a local LLM (though I would probably buy a PC with twin 4090s if I needed such things regularly, as they're better supported). Battery life is still a solid 10-11 hours, and the large screen is excellent for work on the go.
I see no compelling reason to upgrade for now. Most people simply don't need the kind of processing power currently on offer. I find a top of the line Mac is good for at least five years from purchase, and often more. PC laptops generally give you 2-3 years max, and are rarely trouble free, so the Apple "tax" actually works out equivalent or cheaper if you keep your device 5-6 years.
Oh I need the power - and if I sell it early next year the value of the M1 Max I currently have won’t be impacted that much.
The other thing to remember is that apple products retain their value because even a 2 year old laptop still has 3-4 years more life in it.
My 13 year old air (Battery replaced in 2021) still enjoys a quiet retirement as an occasional email and browsing device, and spends most of its golden years as a media centre plugged into my 4k tv.
I challenge anyone to find me a 13 year old windows laptop with any practical use at all.
I often think Apple products are the best contemporary example of the Vimes Boot Theory...
My Mac stuff tends be put out to pasture due to lack of security updates rather than hardware failure.
Apparently the reason for the crazy price of top end M3 chips and the crazy number of different SKUs is TSMC are having problems with yield of 4mn production. So basically a load of the chips with lower core counts are really defective full fat ones and because yield is so low on the all singing all dancing M3 mega MAX pro SKU is mega expensive.
That's actually fairly standard, especially for new processes. The good thing is they're getting a usable (in products) amount of top-end chips out.
I've seen wafers where over three-quarters of the 'chips' remain after testing. That's bad.
NVIDIA did this an a huge scale, for years. People said that only a single digit percentage of the huge chips they were making for GPU would be perfect. Which turned out to only be a slight exaggeration.
But only a very few people were paying top dollar for the top end max compute performance.
So they would test a whole chip and blow "fuses" in the chip to isolate the dead sections. Which would leave lots for the various grades of graphics card. The perfect ones were the top end devices.
That's very standard in the industry as part of the binning process. Hence why Intel chips have different core counts (one or more cores failed bin testing), or different single-thread speeds.
Yes - but NVIDIA elevated it to being a core part of their business plan. Previously, it had been used, but for the Tesla series chips it was the only way to get them out the door.
Seriously. What a privilege to see it in this slanted light
Looks as if will be pretty impressive when they finish it. Looks like all the workers are having a siesta in that image.
The poignant thing is that originally it would have been painted in really garish - to our eyes - colours. Vivid reds and blues and whites. Like a fairground attraction
But now the colour and polish is all gone and you’re left with the naked golden limestone - which looks so much better (especially to contemporary tastes) - and absolutely gorgeous in slanted October sun
So it’s good it was ruined
It now turns out that Gobekli Tepe was painted. They’ve found scarlet pigment. It would have been multicoloured. It is inexplicable. A painted sequence of temple towns buried 10,000 years ago. An utterly confounding civilisation, 6000 years before “civilisation”
Graham Hancock may have been right then
I hardly think paint is proof that Graham Hancock is right! We have cave paintings going back 64,000 years. Paintings, i.e. uses of paint. Something being painted a mere 6,000 years ago is interesting, but hardly groundbreaking.
Just a little warning: security is a potentially-large issue with older hardware, and it gets larger the older any hardware gets. Not just because of software/OS vulnerabilities, but also the increasing hardware-level vulnerabilities.
IMV don't use any hardware that's not got up-to-date software updates for anything that could reveal information you don't want anyone to get hold of (such as, but not limited to, credit card details...).
Courthouse News Service - Poll: Trump keeps big lead in Iowa, but Haley moves up to tie with DeSantis
Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley “are on ground that you could only describe as shaky compared to the solid ground that Donald Trump stands on,” said pollster J. Ann Selzer.
DES MOINES, Iowa (CN) — Despite his legal troubles, former President Donald Trump maintains a commanding 27-point lead in Iowa over his nearest rivals for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, according to a new poll published Monday by the Des Moines Register. Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley moved up to tie for second with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
Forty-three percent of Iowa Republicans likely to attend their party caucuses Jan. 15, 2024, declared Trump their top pick, which is up a tick from his support among 42% of likely GOP caucusgoers in the Register’s August poll....
The caucuses are in January, and a couple of months ahead of Super Tuesday or whatever they're calling it now. Given Trump's troubles, it's all to play for.
If Haley can knock out Tim Scott by then, and shade DeSantis - a reasonably likely combination - then she has a real shot at subsequently taking down a damaged Trump.
At somewhere around 10/1 for the nomination, I think she's decent value.
Iowa GOP precinct caucus results (or at least what initially is reported as such) will be important.
However, even MORE important methinks, will be early PRIMARY results from New Hampshire, the date of which has NOT yet be set (by NH secretary of state) but it will be BEFORE any other primary.
BTW, here is list of candidates who have filed for NH presidential primary; filing period has ended.
REPUBLICANS Scott Alan Ayers Ryan L. Binkley Doug Burgum Robert S Carney Jr. John Anthony Castro Chris Christie Ron DeSantis Nikki Haley Asa Hutchinson Peter Jedick Perry Johnson Donald Kjornes Mary Maxwell Glenn J. McPeters Scott Peterson Merrell Darius L. Mitchell Mike Pence Vivek Ramaswamy Tim Scott Hirsh V. Singh Samuel Howard Sloan David Stuckenberg Rachel Swift Donald Trump
DEMOCRATS President R. Boddie Terrisa Bukovinac Eban Cambridge Gabriel Cornejo Mark Stewart Greenstein Tom Koos Paul V. LaCava Star Locke Frankie Lozada Stephen P. Lyons Raymond Michael Moroz Derek Nadeau Jason Michael Palmer Armando "Mando" Perez-Serrato Dean Phillips Donald Picard Paperboy Prince Richard Rist Vermin Supreme John Vail Marianne Williamson
wikipedia - "Incumbent President Joe Biden announced on April 25, 2023 his bid for a second term. However, Biden's team indicated that he would not appear on the New Hampshire primary ballot if the state defies the DNC's calendar and schedules its race before South Carolina's. In October 2023, the manager for the Biden campaign, Julie Chávez Rodriguez, confirmed in a letter to the chair of the New Hampshire Democratic Party Raymond Buckley that Biden would not appear on the primary ballot in order to comply with the DNC's calendar. Pro-Biden New Hampshire Democrats, including Kathy Sullivan (the former chairwoman of the state Democratic party) and former Representatives Paul Hodes and Carol Shea-Porter, launched a formal write-in campaign on October 30."
SSI - given this situation,
> Many Democrats and leaners will be inclined/tempted/urged to vote in the NH Republican primary (crossovers).
> In the Democratic primary, one very interesting number will be write-ins cast for Joe Biden.
As unconvincing lies go, that's up there with Jeremy Corbyn's claim he isn't an antisemite.
I genuinely think Corbyn isn't an antisemite, he's too thick to be one.
Nah. You’d have to own an iq under 70 to miss the anti semitism that swirled around jezzbollah
He was thick but not that thick. Someone with an iq under 70 can barely wash dishes and certainly couldn’t use a smartphone
I can believe he was a boiled frog. He tolerated a certain amount of obvious anti Semitism around him early on, as he genuinely despised Israel the zio colonialist state. As it got worse and more obvious he simply didn’t notice as by then he was used to the discourse. Used to the warming water
Indeed I think this is one of the great dangers of anti Semitism. It can become easily normalised. There must have been Corbyns in early Nazi Germany who thought “oh well this isn’t great but the Jews are annoying and it surely won’t get any worse than this….”
As unconvincing lies go, that's up there with Jeremy Corbyn's claim he isn't an antisemite.
I genuinely think Corbyn isn't an antisemite, he's too thick to be one.
And I genuinely think Cummings believes his actions were reasonable, because he's so stupid he genuinely doesn't realise he's talking nonsense.
That's been a problem throughout his career, why would he change a winning formula?
I've said on here before, somebody who I know who knows Cummings say it is entirely believable that Cummings didn't have a single friend in London to help him.
As unconvincing lies go, that's up there with Jeremy Corbyn's claim he isn't an antisemite.
I genuinely think Corbyn isn't an antisemite, he's too thick to be one.
And I genuinely think Cummings believes his actions were reasonable, because he's so stupid he genuinely doesn't realise he's talking nonsense.
That's been a problem throughout his career, why would he change a winning formula?
I've said on here before, somebody who I know who knows Cummings say it is entirely believable that Cummings didn't have a single friend in London to help him.
Maybe. But Mary Wakefield is by all accounts charming and personable - she would have had friends
Also Cummings REALLY isn’t stupid. A tad neurodivergent, yes
As unconvincing lies go, that's up there with Jeremy Corbyn's claim he isn't an antisemite.
I genuinely think Corbyn isn't an antisemite, he's too thick to be one.
And I genuinely think Cummings believes his actions were reasonable, because he's so stupid he genuinely doesn't realise he's talking nonsense.
That's been a problem throughout his career, why would he change a winning formula?
I've said on here before, somebody who I know who knows Cummings say it is entirely believable that Cummings didn't have a single friend in London to help him.
Maybe. But Mary Wakefield is by all accounts charming and personable - she would have had friends
Also Cummings REALLY isn’t stupid. A tad neurodivergent, yes
If he isn't stupid, how come he understands nothing and gets every decision he makes wrong?
As unconvincing lies go, that's up there with Jeremy Corbyn's claim he isn't an antisemite.
I genuinely think Corbyn isn't an antisemite, he's too thick to be one.
And I genuinely think Cummings believes his actions were reasonable, because he's so stupid he genuinely doesn't realise he's talking nonsense.
That's been a problem throughout his career, why would he change a winning formula?
I've said on here before, somebody who I know who knows Cummings say it is entirely believable that Cummings didn't have a single friend in London to help him.
Maybe. But Mary Wakefield is by all accounts charming and personable - she would have had friends
Also Cummings REALLY isn’t stupid. A tad neurodivergent, yes
If he isn't stupid, how come he understands nothing and gets every decision he makes wrong?
Because he gets big calls really right and he is deeply perceptive and obviously articulate. And intelligent. You know, that. Hence his constant victories
It is really fucking tiresome the way people are unable to acknowledge virtues - moral or intellectual - in people they politically resent
I mean, I despise almost everything Nicola Sturgeon stands for - from her Wokeness to her Scottish Nationalism - I think she is personally quite an unpleasant hypocrite
I also think she is seriously smart and a very able politician. I’m relieved she is gone because she WAS good - a threat to the Union
It's in the nature of history that there are lots of histories. I suppose if the statement was that, "the history of Wales is incomplete without the history of black experience in Wales," then that would be less prone to willful misunderstanding, but it's perhaps not so pithy.
As unconvincing lies go, that's up there with Jeremy Corbyn's claim he isn't an antisemite.
I genuinely think Corbyn isn't an antisemite, he's too thick to be one.
And I genuinely think Cummings believes his actions were reasonable, because he's so stupid he genuinely doesn't realise he's talking nonsense.
That's been a problem throughout his career, why would he change a winning formula?
I've said on here before, somebody who I know who knows Cummings say it is entirely believable that Cummings didn't have a single friend in London to help him.
Maybe. But Mary Wakefield is by all accounts charming and personable - she would have had friends
Also Cummings REALLY isn’t stupid. A tad neurodivergent, yes
If he isn't stupid, how come he understands nothing and gets every decision he makes wrong?
Because he gets big calls really right and he is deeply perceptive and obviously articulate. And intelligent. You know, that. Hence his constant victories
It is really fucking tiresome the way people are unable to acknowledge virtues - moral or intellectual - in people they politically resent
I mean, I despise almost everything Nicola Sturgeon stands for - from her Wokeness to her Scottish Nationalism - I think she is personally quite an unpleasant hypocrite
I also think she is seriously smart and a very able politician. I’m relieved she is gone because she WAS good - a threat to the Union
What big calls did you have in mind? I can't think of any.
As unconvincing lies go, that's up there with Jeremy Corbyn's claim he isn't an antisemite.
I genuinely think Corbyn isn't an antisemite, he's too thick to be one.
And I genuinely think Cummings believes his actions were reasonable, because he's so stupid he genuinely doesn't realise he's talking nonsense.
That's been a problem throughout his career, why would he change a winning formula?
I've said on here before, somebody who I know who knows Cummings say it is entirely believable that Cummings didn't have a single friend in London to help him.
Maybe. But Mary Wakefield is by all accounts charming and personable - she would have had friends
Also Cummings REALLY isn’t stupid. A tad neurodivergent, yes
If he isn't stupid, how come he understands nothing and gets every decision he makes wrong?
Because he gets big calls really right and he is deeply perceptive and obviously articulate. And intelligent. You know, that. Hence his constant victories
It is really fucking tiresome the way people are unable to acknowledge virtues - moral or intellectual - in people they politically resent
I mean, I despise almost everything Nicola Sturgeon stands for - from her Wokeness to her Scottish Nationalism - I think she is personally quite an unpleasant hypocrite
I also think she is seriously smart and a very able politician. I’m relieved she is gone because she WAS good - a threat to the Union
What big calls did you have in mind? I can't think of any.
I dunno. God. You’ve got me there. Stumped!
Oh, wait: winning the Brexit referendum with “take back control” and thereby changing British and world history
As unconvincing lies go, that's up there with Jeremy Corbyn's claim he isn't an antisemite.
I genuinely think Corbyn isn't an antisemite, he's too thick to be one.
For someone who isn't anti-semitic Corbyn certainly acts a lot like someone who is, and his reaction to the Labour anti-Semitism report demonstrated an unwillingness to reflect on his own actions to avoid being anti-Semitic unintentionally.
As unconvincing lies go, that's up there with Jeremy Corbyn's claim he isn't an antisemite.
I genuinely think Corbyn isn't an antisemite, he's too thick to be one.
And I genuinely think Cummings believes his actions were reasonable, because he's so stupid he genuinely doesn't realise he's talking nonsense.
That's been a problem throughout his career, why would he change a winning formula?
I've said on here before, somebody who I know who knows Cummings say it is entirely believable that Cummings didn't have a single friend in London to help him.
Maybe. But Mary Wakefield is by all accounts charming and personable - she would have had friends
Also Cummings REALLY isn’t stupid. A tad neurodivergent, yes
If he isn't stupid, how come he understands nothing and gets every decision he makes wrong?
Because stupidity and intelligence are not points on a one dimensional scale. High IQ but low EQ; the absent-minded professor; the idiot savant - these are all reflections of this.
(Indeed we have a regular poster on here with an IQ of about 176.3 who is also extremely dim.)
As unconvincing lies go, that's up there with Jeremy Corbyn's claim he isn't an antisemite.
I genuinely think Corbyn isn't an antisemite, he's too thick to be one.
And I genuinely think Cummings believes his actions were reasonable, because he's so stupid he genuinely doesn't realise he's talking nonsense.
That's been a problem throughout his career, why would he change a winning formula?
I've said on here before, somebody who I know who knows Cummings say it is entirely believable that Cummings didn't have a single friend in London to help him.
Maybe. But Mary Wakefield is by all accounts charming and personable - she would have had friends
Also Cummings REALLY isn’t stupid. A tad neurodivergent, yes
If he isn't stupid, how come he understands nothing and gets every decision he makes wrong?
Because he gets big calls really right and he is deeply perceptive and obviously articulate. And intelligent. You know, that. Hence his constant victories
It is really fucking tiresome the way people are unable to acknowledge virtues - moral or intellectual - in people they politically resent
I mean, I despise almost everything Nicola Sturgeon stands for - from her Wokeness to her Scottish Nationalism - I think she is personally quite an unpleasant hypocrite
I also think she is seriously smart and a very able politician. I’m relieved she is gone because she WAS good - a threat to the Union
What big calls did you have in mind? I can't think of any.
I dunno. God. You’ve got me there. Stumped!
Oh, wait: winning the Brexit referendum with “take back control” and thereby changing British and world history
Yeah, that
On which every single statement he made was, in fact, wrong. Not merely wrong, but either so dishonest as to demonstrate he made Goebbels look honest, or so error-strewn as to think Oxford should be stripped of degree awarding powers.
Winning something doesn't make him right.
I'm asking for a time when his judgement has been vindicated.
As unconvincing lies go, that's up there with Jeremy Corbyn's claim he isn't an antisemite.
I genuinely think Corbyn isn't an antisemite, he's too thick to be one.
And I genuinely think Cummings believes his actions were reasonable, because he's so stupid he genuinely doesn't realise he's talking nonsense.
That's been a problem throughout his career, why would he change a winning formula?
I've said on here before, somebody who I know who knows Cummings say it is entirely believable that Cummings didn't have a single friend in London to help him.
Maybe. But Mary Wakefield is by all accounts charming and personable - she would have had friends
Also Cummings REALLY isn’t stupid. A tad neurodivergent, yes
If he isn't stupid, how come he understands nothing and gets every decision he makes wrong?
Because he gets big calls really right and he is deeply perceptive and obviously articulate. And intelligent. You know, that. Hence his constant victories
It is really fucking tiresome the way people are unable to acknowledge virtues - moral or intellectual - in people they politically resent
I mean, I despise almost everything Nicola Sturgeon stands for - from her Wokeness to her Scottish Nationalism - I think she is personally quite an unpleasant hypocrite
I also think she is seriously smart and a very able politician. I’m relieved she is gone because she WAS good - a threat to the Union
What big calls did you have in mind? I can't think of any.
I dunno. God. You’ve got me there. Stumped!
Oh, wait: winning the Brexit referendum with “take back control” and thereby changing British and world history
Yeah, that
Brexit is the prime example of a big call he got completely wrong of course. Sure, he chose the winning side but the prize is utterly shit.
Customising the new MacBooks to the highest specs sets you back £7,299.
LOL....I knew when they were giving it the its only $1600 there was going to be a massive sting in the tail.
I mean do I really need 128 GB of RAM?
If you’re doing game engine rendering, or copious amounts of 4k video editing, then hell yeah.
Only a handful of years ago, that spec would be a £30-50k workstation. Now it’s in a laptop!
I'm currently contemplating an upgrade to 128GB and 16 core, but for £1500 not £7000.
Photogrammetry is memory hungry...
There is a massive Apple “tax” but a lot of people are willing to pay it.
I have an M1 Max and while I’m not tempted to upgrade this second chances, are I will be doing so sooner rather than later ( probably 14” max with a stupid amount of memory)
My M1 max (bought soon after launch) is still far too fast for 90% of the things I use it for, including photo and video editing. It's a little slower than I'd like for AI image generation and it's slow running a local LLM (though I would probably buy a PC with twin 4090s if I needed such things regularly, as they're better supported). Battery life is still a solid 10-11 hours, and the large screen is excellent for work on the go.
I see no compelling reason to upgrade for now. Most people simply don't need the kind of processing power currently on offer. I find a top of the line Mac is good for at least five years from purchase, and often more. PC laptops generally give you 2-3 years max, and are rarely trouble free, so the Apple "tax" actually works out equivalent or cheaper if you keep your device 5-6 years.
Oh I need the power - and if I sell it early next year the value of the M1 Max I currently have won’t be impacted that much.
The other thing to remember is that apple products retain their value because even a 2 year old laptop still has 3-4 years more life in it.
My 12 year old air (Battery replaced in 2021) still enjoys a quiet retirement as an occasional email and browsing device, and spends most of its golden years as a media centre plugged into my 4k tv.
I challenge anyone to find me a 13 year old windows laptop with any practical use at all.
I often think Apple products are the best contemporary example of the Vimes Boot Theory...
Not 13 years old but I have a nearly 11 year old Dell Inspiron laptop. Still plodding along for me, taking IT exams, light browsing and acting as a media server.
As unconvincing lies go, that's up there with Jeremy Corbyn's claim he isn't an antisemite.
I genuinely think Corbyn isn't an antisemite, he's too thick to be one.
And I genuinely think Cummings believes his actions were reasonable, because he's so stupid he genuinely doesn't realise he's talking nonsense.
That's been a problem throughout his career, why would he change a winning formula?
I've said on here before, somebody who I know who knows Cummings say it is entirely believable that Cummings didn't have a single friend in London to help him.
Maybe. But Mary Wakefield is by all accounts charming and personable - she would have had friends
Also Cummings REALLY isn’t stupid. A tad neurodivergent, yes
If he isn't stupid, how come he understands nothing and gets every decision he makes wrong?
Because he gets big calls really right and he is deeply perceptive and obviously articulate. And intelligent. You know, that. Hence his constant victories
It is really fucking tiresome the way people are unable to acknowledge virtues - moral or intellectual - in people they politically resent
I mean, I despise almost everything Nicola Sturgeon stands for - from her Wokeness to her Scottish Nationalism - I think she is personally quite an unpleasant hypocrite
I also think she is seriously smart and a very able politician. I’m relieved she is gone because she WAS good - a threat to the Union
What big calls did you have in mind? I can't think of any.
I dunno. God. You’ve got me there. Stumped!
Oh, wait: winning the Brexit referendum with “take back control” and thereby changing British and world history
Yeah, that
Brexit is the prime example of a big call he got completely wrong of course. Sure, he chose the winning side but the prize is utterly shit.
He’s not a politician. He’s a campaigner and thinker and sometimes a political spin doctor. His job - his call - was to win the Brexit referendum. And win it he did, in high style, against the odds
As unconvincing lies go, that's up there with Jeremy Corbyn's claim he isn't an antisemite.
I genuinely think Corbyn isn't an antisemite, he's too thick to be one.
And I genuinely think Cummings believes his actions were reasonable, because he's so stupid he genuinely doesn't realise he's talking nonsense.
That's been a problem throughout his career, why would he change a winning formula?
I've said on here before, somebody who I know who knows Cummings say it is entirely believable that Cummings didn't have a single friend in London to help him.
Maybe. But Mary Wakefield is by all accounts charming and personable - she would have had friends
Also Cummings REALLY isn’t stupid. A tad neurodivergent, yes
If he isn't stupid, how come he understands nothing and gets every decision he makes wrong?
Because he gets big calls really right and he is deeply perceptive and obviously articulate. And intelligent. You know, that. Hence his constant victories
It is really fucking tiresome the way people are unable to acknowledge virtues - moral or intellectual - in people they politically resent
I mean, I despise almost everything Nicola Sturgeon stands for - from her Wokeness to her Scottish Nationalism - I think she is personally quite an unpleasant hypocrite
I also think she is seriously smart and a very able politician. I’m relieved she is gone because she WAS good - a threat to the Union
What big calls did you have in mind? I can't think of any.
I dunno. God. You’ve got me there. Stumped!
Oh, wait: winning the Brexit referendum with “take back control” and thereby changing British and world history
Yeah, that
On which every single statement he made was, in fact, wrong. Not merely wrong, but either so dishonest as to demonstrate he made Goebbels look honest, or so error-strewn as to think Oxford should be stripped of degree awarding powers.
Winning something doesn't make him right.
I'm asking for a time when his judgement has been vindicated.
His judgment was that the referendum could be won - was actually winnable - against the odds - if they let him devise the strategy and guide the campaign
And it was the best thing to happen to Britain in the last two decades. We won’t see the benefit for another decade at least
As unconvincing lies go, that's up there with Jeremy Corbyn's claim he isn't an antisemite.
I genuinely think Corbyn isn't an antisemite, he's too thick to be one.
And I genuinely think Cummings believes his actions were reasonable, because he's so stupid he genuinely doesn't realise he's talking nonsense.
That's been a problem throughout his career, why would he change a winning formula?
I've said on here before, somebody who I know who knows Cummings say it is entirely believable that Cummings didn't have a single friend in London to help him.
Maybe. But Mary Wakefield is by all accounts charming and personable - she would have had friends
Also Cummings REALLY isn’t stupid. A tad neurodivergent, yes
If he isn't stupid, how come he understands nothing and gets every decision he makes wrong?
Because he gets big calls really right and he is deeply perceptive and obviously articulate. And intelligent. You know, that. Hence his constant victories
It is really fucking tiresome the way people are unable to acknowledge virtues - moral or intellectual - in people they politically resent
I mean, I despise almost everything Nicola Sturgeon stands for - from her Wokeness to her Scottish Nationalism - I think she is personally quite an unpleasant hypocrite
I also think she is seriously smart and a very able politician. I’m relieved she is gone because she WAS good - a threat to the Union
What big calls did you have in mind? I can't think of any.
I dunno. God. You’ve got me there. Stumped!
Oh, wait: winning the Brexit referendum with “take back control” and thereby changing British and world history
Yeah, that
Brexit is the prime example of a big call he got completely wrong of course. Sure, he chose the winning side but the prize is utterly shit.
He’s not a politician. He’s a campaigner and thinker and sometimes a political spin doctor. His job - his call - was to win the Brexit referendum. And win it he did, in high style, against the odds
After that it was up to others
He surely chose to campaign for Brexit rather than against it. Are you suggesting he didn't make a judgement that Brexit was a 'good thing'?
Also, I take issue with the idea Cummings is 'deeply perceptive.' He has a habit of talking about problems and has ideas on how to deal with them, sure. But I'm really struggling to think of a time when his ideas haven't been a complete fiasco.
I do agree he's articulate. I think that may be part of the problem. He retcons his past to make himself look better and more perceptive than he is, and people swallow it.
For example, he claims to have single-handedly run the campaign on the NE Assembly referendum. In fact, he worked on it for two days and came up with one slogan.
He also claims to have been trying to keep Johnson away from decision making for reasons of state. Utter bull. He did it because he thought he could do better. He couldn't.
His exam reforms have been such a fiasco that even while praising them his own acolyte Sunak has announced he's scrapping them.
His claims to have forecast the pandemic rely on edited blogposts.
As for his claims on the EU, don't get me started.
I can see how to those who don't bother to scrutinise his record in depth might be impressed. But in reality he's a superficial intellectual lightweight with a massive ego and a lack of integrity and moral fibre who has failed disastrously at every task he's ever set himself, doing enormous damage along the way.
I can see why he's an effective campaigner in the age of social media. But a capable person? Let's not be silly here. He isn't.
As unconvincing lies go, that's up there with Jeremy Corbyn's claim he isn't an antisemite.
I genuinely think Corbyn isn't an antisemite, he's too thick to be one.
And I genuinely think Cummings believes his actions were reasonable, because he's so stupid he genuinely doesn't realise he's talking nonsense.
That's been a problem throughout his career, why would he change a winning formula?
I've said on here before, somebody who I know who knows Cummings say it is entirely believable that Cummings didn't have a single friend in London to help him.
Maybe. But Mary Wakefield is by all accounts charming and personable - she would have had friends
Also Cummings REALLY isn’t stupid. A tad neurodivergent, yes
If he isn't stupid, how come he understands nothing and gets every decision he makes wrong?
Because he gets big calls really right and he is deeply perceptive and obviously articulate. And intelligent. You know, that. Hence his constant victories
It is really fucking tiresome the way people are unable to acknowledge virtues - moral or intellectual - in people they politically resent
I mean, I despise almost everything Nicola Sturgeon stands for - from her Wokeness to her Scottish Nationalism - I think she is personally quite an unpleasant hypocrite
I also think she is seriously smart and a very able politician. I’m relieved she is gone because she WAS good - a threat to the Union
What big calls did you have in mind? I can't think of any.
I dunno. God. You’ve got me there. Stumped!
Oh, wait: winning the Brexit referendum with “take back control” and thereby changing British and world history
Yeah, that
On which every single statement he made was, in fact, wrong. Not merely wrong, but either so dishonest as to demonstrate he made Goebbels look honest, or so error-strewn as to think Oxford should be stripped of degree awarding powers.
Winning something doesn't make him right.
I'm asking for a time when his judgement has been vindicated.
His judgment was that the referendum could be won - was actually winnable - against the odds - if they let him devise the strategy and guide the campaign
And it was the best thing to happen to Britain in the last two decades. We won’t see the benefit for another decade at least
Funny that, this bloke suggested it would be coming good by 2026:
As unconvincing lies go, that's up there with Jeremy Corbyn's claim he isn't an antisemite.
I genuinely think Corbyn isn't an antisemite, he's too thick to be one.
And I genuinely think Cummings believes his actions were reasonable, because he's so stupid he genuinely doesn't realise he's talking nonsense.
That's been a problem throughout his career, why would he change a winning formula?
I've said on here before, somebody who I know who knows Cummings say it is entirely believable that Cummings didn't have a single friend in London to help him.
Maybe. But Mary Wakefield is by all accounts charming and personable - she would have had friends
Also Cummings REALLY isn’t stupid. A tad neurodivergent, yes
If he isn't stupid, how come he understands nothing and gets every decision he makes wrong?
Because he gets big calls really right and he is deeply perceptive and obviously articulate. And intelligent. You know, that. Hence his constant victories
It is really fucking tiresome the way people are unable to acknowledge virtues - moral or intellectual - in people they politically resent
I mean, I despise almost everything Nicola Sturgeon stands for - from her Wokeness to her Scottish Nationalism - I think she is personally quite an unpleasant hypocrite
I also think she is seriously smart and a very able politician. I’m relieved she is gone because she WAS good - a threat to the Union
What big calls did you have in mind? I can't think of any.
I dunno. God. You’ve got me there. Stumped!
Oh, wait: winning the Brexit referendum with “take back control” and thereby changing British and world history
Yeah, that
On which every single statement he made was, in fact, wrong. Not merely wrong, but either so dishonest as to demonstrate he made Goebbels look honest, or so error-strewn as to think Oxford should be stripped of degree awarding powers.
Winning something doesn't make him right.
I'm asking for a time when his judgement has been vindicated.
As unconvincing lies go, that's up there with Jeremy Corbyn's claim he isn't an antisemite.
I genuinely think Corbyn isn't an antisemite, he's too thick to be one.
And I genuinely think Cummings believes his actions were reasonable, because he's so stupid he genuinely doesn't realise he's talking nonsense.
That's been a problem throughout his career, why would he change a winning formula?
I've said on here before, somebody who I know who knows Cummings say it is entirely believable that Cummings didn't have a single friend in London to help him.
Maybe. But Mary Wakefield is by all accounts charming and personable - she would have had friends
Also Cummings REALLY isn’t stupid. A tad neurodivergent, yes
If he isn't stupid, how come he understands nothing and gets every decision he makes wrong?
Because he gets big calls really right and he is deeply perceptive and obviously articulate. And intelligent. You know, that. Hence his constant victories
It is really fucking tiresome the way people are unable to acknowledge virtues - moral or intellectual - in people they politically resent
I mean, I despise almost everything Nicola Sturgeon stands for - from her Wokeness to her Scottish Nationalism - I think she is personally quite an unpleasant hypocrite
I also think she is seriously smart and a very able politician. I’m relieved she is gone because she WAS good - a threat to the Union
What big calls did you have in mind? I can't think of any.
I dunno. God. You’ve got me there. Stumped!
Oh, wait: winning the Brexit referendum with “take back control” and thereby changing British and world history
Yeah, that
On which every single statement he made was, in fact, wrong. Not merely wrong, but either so dishonest as to demonstrate he made Goebbels look honest, or so error-strewn as to think Oxford should be stripped of degree awarding powers.
Winning something doesn't make him right.
I'm asking for a time when his judgement has been vindicated.
His judgment was that the referendum could be won - was actually winnable - against the odds - if they let him devise the strategy and guide the campaign
And it was the best thing to happen to Britain in the last two decades. We won’t see the benefit for another decade at least
Funny that, this bloke suggested it would be coming good by 2026:
Odey Asset Management is closing down, five months after allegations of sexual misconduct made by junior female members of staff against its founder Crispin Odey threw the hedge fund into turmoil.
The business said on its website: “Odey Asset Management [OAM], including Brook Asset Management and Odey Wealth, will be closing. Fund managers and funds have moved to new asset managers.”
Earlier this month, the investment group, founded by the multimillionaire Conservative party donor 32 years ago, said its wealth management arm would be wound down.
As unconvincing lies go, that's up there with Jeremy Corbyn's claim he isn't an antisemite.
I genuinely think Corbyn isn't an antisemite, he's too thick to be one.
And I genuinely think Cummings believes his actions were reasonable, because he's so stupid he genuinely doesn't realise he's talking nonsense.
That's been a problem throughout his career, why would he change a winning formula?
I've said on here before, somebody who I know who knows Cummings say it is entirely believable that Cummings didn't have a single friend in London to help him.
Maybe. But Mary Wakefield is by all accounts charming and personable - she would have had friends
Also Cummings REALLY isn’t stupid. A tad neurodivergent, yes
If he isn't stupid, how come he understands nothing and gets every decision he makes wrong?
Because he gets big calls really right and he is deeply perceptive and obviously articulate. And intelligent. You know, that. Hence his constant victories
It is really fucking tiresome the way people are unable to acknowledge virtues - moral or intellectual - in people they politically resent
I mean, I despise almost everything Nicola Sturgeon stands for - from her Wokeness to her Scottish Nationalism - I think she is personally quite an unpleasant hypocrite
I also think she is seriously smart and a very able politician. I’m relieved she is gone because she WAS good - a threat to the Union
What big calls did you have in mind? I can't think of any.
I dunno. God. You’ve got me there. Stumped!
Oh, wait: winning the Brexit referendum with “take back control” and thereby changing British and world history
Yeah, that
Brexit is the prime example of a big call he got completely wrong of course. Sure, he chose the winning side but the prize is utterly shit.
Of course I would argue that Brexit was something he got absolutely right. This is the problem with all the criticism of Cummings. It is based on the fact that people hate the causes he has campaigned for. Ydoethur is a classic example of this. He opposes what Cummings believes and he denies the underlying problems that need to be solved and as a result he has a deep and abiding hatred for Cummings.
It is clear from the Whatsapp messages and emails being sent at the time that, in spite of the blind disbelief by many, Cummings did understand the seriousness of what was going on but was, far too often, ignored. He has the messages to prove it.
Did he make mistakes? Of course and he still refuses to admit to some of those. But he got plenty right - far more than morons like Hancock - and it is a shame he wasn't listened to more often.
As unconvincing lies go, that's up there with Jeremy Corbyn's claim he isn't an antisemite.
I genuinely think Corbyn isn't an antisemite, he's too thick to be one.
And I genuinely think Cummings believes his actions were reasonable, because he's so stupid he genuinely doesn't realise he's talking nonsense.
That's been a problem throughout his career, why would he change a winning formula?
I've said on here before, somebody who I know who knows Cummings say it is entirely believable that Cummings didn't have a single friend in London to help him.
Maybe. But Mary Wakefield is by all accounts charming and personable - she would have had friends
Also Cummings REALLY isn’t stupid. A tad neurodivergent, yes
If he isn't stupid, how come he understands nothing and gets every decision he makes wrong?
Because he gets big calls really right and he is deeply perceptive and obviously articulate. And intelligent. You know, that. Hence his constant victories
It is really fucking tiresome the way people are unable to acknowledge virtues - moral or intellectual - in people they politically resent
I mean, I despise almost everything Nicola Sturgeon stands for - from her Wokeness to her Scottish Nationalism - I think she is personally quite an unpleasant hypocrite
I also think she is seriously smart and a very able politician. I’m relieved she is gone because she WAS good - a threat to the Union
What big calls did you have in mind? I can't think of any.
I dunno. God. You’ve got me there. Stumped!
Oh, wait: winning the Brexit referendum with “take back control” and thereby changing British and world history
Yeah, that
On which every single statement he made was, in fact, wrong. Not merely wrong, but either so dishonest as to demonstrate he made Goebbels look honest, or so error-strewn as to think Oxford should be stripped of degree awarding powers.
Winning something doesn't make him right.
I'm asking for a time when his judgement has been vindicated.
As unconvincing lies go, that's up there with Jeremy Corbyn's claim he isn't an antisemite.
I genuinely think Corbyn isn't an antisemite, he's too thick to be one.
And I genuinely think Cummings believes his actions were reasonable, because he's so stupid he genuinely doesn't realise he's talking nonsense.
That's been a problem throughout his career, why would he change a winning formula?
I've said on here before, somebody who I know who knows Cummings say it is entirely believable that Cummings didn't have a single friend in London to help him.
Maybe. But Mary Wakefield is by all accounts charming and personable - she would have had friends
Also Cummings REALLY isn’t stupid. A tad neurodivergent, yes
If he isn't stupid, how come he understands nothing and gets every decision he makes wrong?
Because he gets big calls really right and he is deeply perceptive and obviously articulate. And intelligent. You know, that. Hence his constant victories
It is really fucking tiresome the way people are unable to acknowledge virtues - moral or intellectual - in people they politically resent
I mean, I despise almost everything Nicola Sturgeon stands for - from her Wokeness to her Scottish Nationalism - I think she is personally quite an unpleasant hypocrite
I also think she is seriously smart and a very able politician. I’m relieved she is gone because she WAS good - a threat to the Union
What big calls did you have in mind? I can't think of any.
I dunno. God. You’ve got me there. Stumped!
Oh, wait: winning the Brexit referendum with “take back control” and thereby changing British and world history
Yeah, that
On which every single statement he made was, in fact, wrong. Not merely wrong, but either so dishonest as to demonstrate he made Goebbels look honest, or so error-strewn as to think Oxford should be stripped of degree awarding powers.
Winning something doesn't make him right.
I'm asking for a time when his judgement has been vindicated.
His judgment was that the referendum could be won - was actually winnable - against the odds - if they let him devise the strategy and guide the campaign
And it was the best thing to happen to Britain in the last two decades. We won’t see the benefit for another decade at least
Funny that, this bloke suggested it would be coming good by 2026:
As unconvincing lies go, that's up there with Jeremy Corbyn's claim he isn't an antisemite.
I genuinely think Corbyn isn't an antisemite, he's too thick to be one.
And I genuinely think Cummings believes his actions were reasonable, because he's so stupid he genuinely doesn't realise he's talking nonsense.
That's been a problem throughout his career, why would he change a winning formula?
I've said on here before, somebody who I know who knows Cummings say it is entirely believable that Cummings didn't have a single friend in London to help him.
Maybe. But Mary Wakefield is by all accounts charming and personable - she would have had friends
Also Cummings REALLY isn’t stupid. A tad neurodivergent, yes
If he isn't stupid, how come he understands nothing and gets every decision he makes wrong?
Because he gets big calls really right and he is deeply perceptive and obviously articulate. And intelligent. You know, that. Hence his constant victories
It is really fucking tiresome the way people are unable to acknowledge virtues - moral or intellectual - in people they politically resent
I mean, I despise almost everything Nicola Sturgeon stands for - from her Wokeness to her Scottish Nationalism - I think she is personally quite an unpleasant hypocrite
I also think she is seriously smart and a very able politician. I’m relieved she is gone because she WAS good - a threat to the Union
What big calls did you have in mind? I can't think of any.
I dunno. God. You’ve got me there. Stumped!
Oh, wait: winning the Brexit referendum with “take back control” and thereby changing British and world history
Yeah, that
56% of the electorate now disagree with you, versus 36% who would still agree.
As unconvincing lies go, that's up there with Jeremy Corbyn's claim he isn't an antisemite.
I genuinely think Corbyn isn't an antisemite, he's too thick to be one.
And I genuinely think Cummings believes his actions were reasonable, because he's so stupid he genuinely doesn't realise he's talking nonsense.
That's been a problem throughout his career, why would he change a winning formula?
I've said on here before, somebody who I know who knows Cummings say it is entirely believable that Cummings didn't have a single friend in London to help him.
Maybe. But Mary Wakefield is by all accounts charming and personable - she would have had friends
Also Cummings REALLY isn’t stupid. A tad neurodivergent, yes
If he isn't stupid, how come he understands nothing and gets every decision he makes wrong?
Because he gets big calls really right and he is deeply perceptive and obviously articulate. And intelligent. You know, that. Hence his constant victories
It is really fucking tiresome the way people are unable to acknowledge virtues - moral or intellectual - in people they politically resent
I mean, I despise almost everything Nicola Sturgeon stands for - from her Wokeness to her Scottish Nationalism - I think she is personally quite an unpleasant hypocrite
I also think she is seriously smart and a very able politician. I’m relieved she is gone because she WAS good - a threat to the Union
What big calls did you have in mind? I can't think of any.
I dunno. God. You’ve got me there. Stumped!
Oh, wait: winning the Brexit referendum with “take back control” and thereby changing British and world history
Yeah, that
Brexit is the prime example of a big call he got completely wrong of course. Sure, he chose the winning side but the prize is utterly shit.
Of course I would argue that Brexit was something he got absolutely right. This is the problem with all the criticism of Cummings. It is based on the fact that people hate the causes he has campaigned for. Ydoethur is a classic example of this. He opposes what Cummings believes and he denies the underlying problems that need to be solved and as a result he has a deep and abiding hatred for Cummings.
It is clear from the Whatsapp messages and emails being sent at the time that, in spite of the blind disbelief by many, Cummings did understand the seriousness of what was going on but was, far too often, ignored. He has the messages to prove it.
Did he make mistakes? Of course and he still refuses to admit to some of those. But he got plenty right - far more than morons like Hancock - and it is a shame he wasn't listened to more often.
That's a classic example of a backwards argument Richard.
I don't hate him because I reject his analysis.
I hate him because he's a stupid twat whose solutions even to problems he's identified correctly are invariably not only wrong but make things a hundred times worse.
Edit - it's worth remembering that on paper I supported his initial ideas on education (as put forward by Gove). It's the shoddy implementation that revealed the depth of their ignorance and arrogance that has turned me against them.
As unconvincing lies go, that's up there with Jeremy Corbyn's claim he isn't an antisemite.
I genuinely think Corbyn isn't an antisemite, he's too thick to be one.
And I genuinely think Cummings believes his actions were reasonable, because he's so stupid he genuinely doesn't realise he's talking nonsense.
That's been a problem throughout his career, why would he change a winning formula?
I've said on here before, somebody who I know who knows Cummings say it is entirely believable that Cummings didn't have a single friend in London to help him.
Maybe. But Mary Wakefield is by all accounts charming and personable - she would have had friends
Also Cummings REALLY isn’t stupid. A tad neurodivergent, yes
If he isn't stupid, how come he understands nothing and gets every decision he makes wrong?
Because stupidity and intelligence are not points on a one dimensional scale. High IQ but low EQ; the absent-minded professor; the idiot savant - these are all reflections of this.
(Indeed we have a regular poster on here with an IQ of about 176.3 who is also extremely dim.)
Not even just that.
Smart people can convince themselves of extremely dumb stuff. Indeed, they're more prone to it than the less intelligent, because they can better think through the contortions needed to think that diesel is a lovely sauce to put on ice cream.
Heck, there are some (I am sure) very intelligent people who persuaded themselves that having Boris Johnson as Prime Minister was a really good idea.
Seriously. What a privilege to see it in this slanted light
Looks as if will be pretty impressive when they finish it. Looks like all the workers are having a siesta in that image.
The poignant thing is that originally it would have been painted in really garish - to our eyes - colours. Vivid reds and blues and whites. Like a fairground attraction
But now the colour and polish is all gone and you’re left with the naked golden limestone - which looks so much better (especially to contemporary tastes) - and absolutely gorgeous in slanted October sun
So it’s good it was ruined
It now turns out that Gobekli Tepe was painted. They’ve found scarlet pigment. It would have been multicoloured. It is inexplicable. A painted sequence of temple towns buried 10,000 years ago. An utterly confounding civilisation, 6000 years before “civilisation”
Graham Hancock may have been right then
I hardly think paint is proof that Graham Hancock is right! We have cave paintings going back 64,000 years. Paintings, i.e. uses of paint. Something being painted a mere 6,000 years ago is interesting, but hardly groundbreaking.
Er, 12,000 years ago. Idiot
Still not 60,000 years. Graham Hancock has never knowingly been right on anything he has ever written on archaeology and I don't expect him to start now.
In retrospect, I appear to have been overgenerous.
I wonder if the allegations that patients with covid were illegally discharged to care homes without a manager present to sign for them that have been running around the West Midlands will get an airing.
In retrospect, I appear to have been overgenerous.
I wonder if the allegations that patients with covid were illegally discharged to care homes without a manager present to sign for them that have been running around the West Midlands will get an airing.
As unconvincing lies go, that's up there with Jeremy Corbyn's claim he isn't an antisemite.
I genuinely think Corbyn isn't an antisemite, he's too thick to be one.
For someone who isn't anti-semitic Corbyn certainly acts a lot like someone who is, and his reaction to the Labour anti-Semitism report demonstrated an unwillingness to reflect on his own actions to avoid being anti-Semitic unintentionally.
Corbyn is antisemitic in the sense of being anti-Israel but not in the sense of being anti-Jewish.
Seriously. What a privilege to see it in this slanted light
Looks as if will be pretty impressive when they finish it. Looks like all the workers are having a siesta in that image.
The poignant thing is that originally it would have been painted in really garish - to our eyes - colours. Vivid reds and blues and whites. Like a fairground attraction
But now the colour and polish is all gone and you’re left with the naked golden limestone - which looks so much better (especially to contemporary tastes) - and absolutely gorgeous in slanted October sun
So it’s good it was ruined
It now turns out that Gobekli Tepe was painted. They’ve found scarlet pigment. It would have been multicoloured. It is inexplicable. A painted sequence of temple towns buried 10,000 years ago. An utterly confounding civilisation, 6000 years before “civilisation”
Graham Hancock may have been right then
I hardly think paint is proof that Graham Hancock is right! We have cave paintings going back 64,000 years. Paintings, i.e. uses of paint. Something being painted a mere 6,000 years ago is interesting, but hardly groundbreaking.
Er, 12,000 years ago. Idiot
Still not 60,000 years. Graham Hancock has never knowingly been right on anything he has ever written on archaeology and I don't expect him to start now.
Er, Gobekli Tepe's heyday wasn't 60,000 years ago.
Ironically, EQ is a great example of a thing that smart people believe is real, but which probably doesn't exist, it's just intellectually appealing because it implies symmetry.
As unconvincing lies go, that's up there with Jeremy Corbyn's claim he isn't an antisemite.
I genuinely think Corbyn isn't an antisemite, he's too thick to be one.
And I genuinely think Cummings believes his actions were reasonable, because he's so stupid he genuinely doesn't realise he's talking nonsense.
That's been a problem throughout his career, why would he change a winning formula?
I've said on here before, somebody who I know who knows Cummings say it is entirely believable that Cummings didn't have a single friend in London to help him.
Maybe. But Mary Wakefield is by all accounts charming and personable - she would have had friends
Also Cummings REALLY isn’t stupid. A tad neurodivergent, yes
If he isn't stupid, how come he understands nothing and gets every decision he makes wrong?
Because stupidity and intelligence are not points on a one dimensional scale. High IQ but low EQ; the absent-minded professor; the idiot savant - these are all reflections of this.
(Indeed we have a regular poster on here with an IQ of about 176.3 who is also extremely dim.)
Not even just that.
Smart people can convince themselves of extremely dumb stuff. Indeed, they're more prone to it than the less intelligent, because they can better think through the contortions needed to think that diesel is a lovely sauce to put on ice cream.
Heck, there are some (I am sure) very intelligent people who persuaded themselves that having Boris Johnson as Prime Minister was a really good idea.
As unconvincing lies go, that's up there with Jeremy Corbyn's claim he isn't an antisemite.
I genuinely think Corbyn isn't an antisemite, he's too thick to be one.
For someone who isn't anti-semitic Corbyn certainly acts a lot like someone who is, and his reaction to the Labour anti-Semitism report demonstrated an unwillingness to reflect on his own actions to avoid being anti-Semitic unintentionally.
Corbyn is antisemitic in the sense of being anti-Israel but not in the sense of being anti-Jewish.
Supporting, enthusiastically, people who declaim the Blood Libel (among other fun stuff) means you are supporting anti-semitism.
In that instance, Corbyn tried denying that the person in question had said it, when a journalist played a speech by the that person, he tried claiming that the translation must be wrong....
Seriously. What a privilege to see it in this slanted light
Looks as if will be pretty impressive when they finish it. Looks like all the workers are having a siesta in that image.
The poignant thing is that originally it would have been painted in really garish - to our eyes - colours. Vivid reds and blues and whites. Like a fairground attraction
But now the colour and polish is all gone and you’re left with the naked golden limestone - which looks so much better (especially to contemporary tastes) - and absolutely gorgeous in slanted October sun
So it’s good it was ruined
It now turns out that Gobekli Tepe was painted. They’ve found scarlet pigment. It would have been multicoloured. It is inexplicable. A painted sequence of temple towns buried 10,000 years ago. An utterly confounding civilisation, 6000 years before “civilisation”
Graham Hancock may have been right then
I hardly think paint is proof that Graham Hancock is right! We have cave paintings going back 64,000 years. Paintings, i.e. uses of paint. Something being painted a mere 6,000 years ago is interesting, but hardly groundbreaking.
Gobekli Tepe's heyday was over 10,000 years ago.
You’re right. Forgive my error. But 6k or 10k or 12k doesn’t change the point!
As unconvincing lies go, that's up there with Jeremy Corbyn's claim he isn't an antisemite.
I genuinely think Corbyn isn't an antisemite, he's too thick to be one.
And I genuinely think Cummings believes his actions were reasonable, because he's so stupid he genuinely doesn't realise he's talking nonsense.
That's been a problem throughout his career, why would he change a winning formula?
I've said on here before, somebody who I know who knows Cummings say it is entirely believable that Cummings didn't have a single friend in London to help him.
Maybe. But Mary Wakefield is by all accounts charming and personable - she would have had friends
Also Cummings REALLY isn’t stupid. A tad neurodivergent, yes
If he isn't stupid, how come he understands nothing and gets every decision he makes wrong?
Because he gets big calls really right and he is deeply perceptive and obviously articulate. And intelligent. You know, that. Hence his constant victories
It is really fucking tiresome the way people are unable to acknowledge virtues - moral or intellectual - in people they politically resent
I mean, I despise almost everything Nicola Sturgeon stands for - from her Wokeness to her Scottish Nationalism - I think she is personally quite an unpleasant hypocrite
I also think she is seriously smart and a very able politician. I’m relieved she is gone because she WAS good - a threat to the Union
What big calls did you have in mind? I can't think of any.
I dunno. God. You’ve got me there. Stumped!
Oh, wait: winning the Brexit referendum with “take back control” and thereby changing British and world history
Yeah, that
On which every single statement he made was, in fact, wrong. Not merely wrong, but either so dishonest as to demonstrate he made Goebbels look honest, or so error-strewn as to think Oxford should be stripped of degree awarding powers.
Winning something doesn't make him right.
I'm asking for a time when his judgement has been vindicated.
His judgment was that the referendum could be won - was actually winnable - against the odds - if they let him devise the strategy and guide the campaign
And it was the best thing to happen to Britain in the last two decades. We won’t see the benefit for another decade at least
Funny that, this bloke suggested it would be coming good by 2026:
As unconvincing lies go, that's up there with Jeremy Corbyn's claim he isn't an antisemite.
I genuinely think Corbyn isn't an antisemite, he's too thick to be one.
For someone who isn't anti-semitic Corbyn certainly acts a lot like someone who is, and his reaction to the Labour anti-Semitism report demonstrated an unwillingness to reflect on his own actions to avoid being anti-Semitic unintentionally.
Corbyn is antisemitic in the sense of being anti-Israel but not in the sense of being anti-Jewish.
Supporting, enthusiastically, people who declaim the Blood Libel (among other fun stuff) means you are supporting anti-semitism.
In that instance, Corbyn tried denying that the person in question had said it, when a journalist played a speech by the that person, he tried claiming that the translation must be wrong....
So Corbyn did not speak the language in which the speech was made? In any case, the distinction is valid. It is telling that even as an Arsenal supporter, he's never been recorded using the y-word about Spurs, let alone Jews.
Seriously. What a privilege to see it in this slanted light
Looks as if will be pretty impressive when they finish it. Looks like all the workers are having a siesta in that image.
The poignant thing is that originally it would have been painted in really garish - to our eyes - colours. Vivid reds and blues and whites. Like a fairground attraction
But now the colour and polish is all gone and you’re left with the naked golden limestone - which looks so much better (especially to contemporary tastes) - and absolutely gorgeous in slanted October sun
So it’s good it was ruined
It now turns out that Gobekli Tepe was painted. They’ve found scarlet pigment. It would have been multicoloured. It is inexplicable. A painted sequence of temple towns buried 10,000 years ago. An utterly confounding civilisation, 6000 years before “civilisation”
Graham Hancock may have been right then
I hardly think paint is proof that Graham Hancock is right! We have cave paintings going back 64,000 years. Paintings, i.e. uses of paint. Something being painted a mere 6,000 years ago is interesting, but hardly groundbreaking.
Er, 12,000 years ago. Idiot
Still not 60,000 years. Graham Hancock has never knowingly been right on anything he has ever written on archaeology and I don't expect him to start now.
Er, Gobekli Tepe's heyday wasn't 60,000 years ago.
No, it wasn’t. But cave paintings go back to >60k was the point Richard T was making.
Is it just me, all the liberal use of Whatsapp through government seems errh a tad problematic from a security point of view.
If these sorts of informal discussions happened in phone calls or in person as in the past, they would be largely forgotten, or at best lightly minuted.
And now they don't get archived at all, and so entirely forgotten, unless there's a major inquiry.
As Sandpit sets out the key is having an appropriate protocol about what communication should be undertaken in what manner, and so some stuff can reasonably be 'lost' - not holding on to everything is part of good records management too. But officials in communications generally needs to be accessible.
But we all know good protocols don't survive contact with human beings who want to keep things private, even if it is not nefarious.
BTW, our village has a really good system for trick and treat. If you have a pumpkin outside your house, you have treats. If there is no pumpkin, don't call.
In the years we didn't put pumpkins out, we had zero callers or nuisance. Now we do, we get loads of callers and lots of fun.
Not a bad gag, but it does make me wonder (since they do always get attention) why they are unable to become a bigger deal. They also think they are a more major force than they are as a result.
Seriously. What a privilege to see it in this slanted light
Looks as if will be pretty impressive when they finish it. Looks like all the workers are having a siesta in that image.
The poignant thing is that originally it would have been painted in really garish - to our eyes - colours. Vivid reds and blues and whites. Like a fairground attraction
But now the colour and polish is all gone and you’re left with the naked golden limestone - which looks so much better (especially to contemporary tastes) - and absolutely gorgeous in slanted October sun
So it’s good it was ruined
It now turns out that Gobekli Tepe was painted. They’ve found scarlet pigment. It would have been multicoloured. It is inexplicable. A painted sequence of temple towns buried 10,000 years ago. An utterly confounding civilisation, 6000 years before “civilisation”
Graham Hancock may have been right then
I hardly think paint is proof that Graham Hancock is right! We have cave paintings going back 64,000 years. Paintings, i.e. uses of paint. Something being painted a mere 6,000 years ago is interesting, but hardly groundbreaking.
Er, 12,000 years ago. Idiot
Still not 60,000 years. Graham Hancock has never knowingly been right on anything he has ever written on archaeology and I don't expect him to start now.
Er, Gobekli Tepe's heyday wasn't 60,000 years ago.
No, it wasn’t. But cave paintings go back to >60k was the point Richard T was making.
It's in the nature of history that there are lots of histories. I suppose if the statement was that, "the history of Wales is incomplete without the history of black experience in Wales," then that would be less prone to willful misunderstanding, but it's perhaps not so pithy.
IDK, it seems about as pithy to me, and clearer. So poor drafting is all.
With respect (in some manner of speaking) to Dominic Cummings and his ilk, believe it is a cardinal error for an elected politico, to bring his/her political consultant/fixer/guru/manager into the inner circles of government as a key governing advisor.
Much better to keep them close at hand, but a role where they oversee/preside over patronage and personnel as opposed to policy.
An example is Franklin D. Roosevelts 1932/36 campaign manager Jim Farley, who FDR appointed to his cabinet, but as Postmaster General which was NOT a key policy role.
For one thing, even top-class political hacks rarely manage more than one or at best two first-class electoral victories, at the pinnacle of their career.
Thus Farley was a key player in FDR's winning the Democratic nomination and thus the presidency in 1932. But his role was FAR less important by 1936. (By 1940 he was in the anti-FDR camp, indeed was a candidate - sorta - against his old boss.)
Also note the rise and fall of James Carville. Famed for his important contribution to Bill Clinton's 1992 victory, by 1996 he was on the outside looking in, observing (through a glass darkly) what Dick Morris (remember him?) was up to.
Israel admits to deliberately targeting the refugee camp.
I sense the thousands of dead Gazans can’t be verified guys will shortly be pivoting to what did the Gazans expect guys.
The IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari has confirmed that Israeli fighter jets carried out the attack on the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza, which he said killed a senior commander and caused the collapse of Hamas's underground infrastructure.
With respect (in some manner of speaking) to Dominic Cummings and his ilk, believe it is a cardinal error for an elected politico, to bring his/her political consultant/fixer/guru/manager into the inner circles of government as a key governing advisor.
Much better to keep them close at hand, but a role where they oversee/preside over patronage and personnel as opposed to policy.
An example is Franklin D. Roosevelts 1932/36 campaign manager Jim Farley, who FDR appointed to his cabinet, but as Postmaster General which was NOT a key policy role.
For one thing, even top-class political hacks rarely manage more than one or at best two first-class electoral victories, at the pinnacle of their career.
Thus Farley was a key player in FDR's winning the Democratic nomination and thus the presidency in 1932. But his role was FAR less important by 1936. (By 1940 he was in the anti-FDR camp, indeed was a candidate - sorta - against his old boss.)
Also note the rise and fall of James Carville. Famed for his important contribution to Bill Clinton's 1992 victory, by 1996 he was on the outside looking in, observing (through a glass darkly) what Dick Morris (remember him?) was up to.
As unconvincing lies go, that's up there with Jeremy Corbyn's claim he isn't an antisemite.
I genuinely think Corbyn isn't an antisemite, he's too thick to be one.
And I genuinely think Cummings believes his actions were reasonable, because he's so stupid he genuinely doesn't realise he's talking nonsense.
That's been a problem throughout his career, why would he change a winning formula?
I've said on here before, somebody who I know who knows Cummings say it is entirely believable that Cummings didn't have a single friend in London to help him.
Maybe. But Mary Wakefield is by all accounts charming and personable - she would have had friends
Also Cummings REALLY isn’t stupid. A tad neurodivergent, yes
If he isn't stupid, how come he understands nothing and gets every decision he makes wrong?
Because he gets big calls really right and he is deeply perceptive and obviously articulate. And intelligent. You know, that. Hence his constant victories
It is really fucking tiresome the way people are unable to acknowledge virtues - moral or intellectual - in people they politically resent
I mean, I despise almost everything Nicola Sturgeon stands for - from her Wokeness to her Scottish Nationalism - I think she is personally quite an unpleasant hypocrite
I also think she is seriously smart and a very able politician. I’m relieved she is gone because she WAS good - a threat to the Union
What big calls did you have in mind? I can't think of any.
I dunno. God. You’ve got me there. Stumped!
Oh, wait: winning the Brexit referendum with “take back control” and thereby changing British and world history
Yeah, that
On which every single statement he made was, in fact, wrong. Not merely wrong, but either so dishonest as to demonstrate he made Goebbels look honest, or so error-strewn as to think Oxford should be stripped of degree awarding powers.
Winning something doesn't make him right.
I'm asking for a time when his judgement has been vindicated.
His judgment was that the referendum could be won - was actually winnable - against the odds - if they let him devise the strategy and guide the campaign
And it was the best thing to happen to Britain in the last two decades. We won’t see the benefit for another decade at least
Funny that, this bloke suggested it would be coming good by 2026:
Not a bad gag, but it does make me wonder (since they do always get attention) why they are unable to become a bigger deal. They also think they are a more major force than they are as a result.
What the SWP does for any demo is make a lot of posters for marchers to carry. Most people do not make their own so pick up one of the SWP ones with a pithy slogan and SWP logo. The marchers carrying the posters are not SWP members and probably do not even know what SWP stands for, in either sense of the term.
As unconvincing lies go, that's up there with Jeremy Corbyn's claim he isn't an antisemite.
I genuinely think Corbyn isn't an antisemite, he's too thick to be one.
For someone who isn't anti-semitic Corbyn certainly acts a lot like someone who is, and his reaction to the Labour anti-Semitism report demonstrated an unwillingness to reflect on his own actions to avoid being anti-Semitic unintentionally.
Corbyn is antisemitic in the sense of being anti-Israel but not in the sense of being anti-Jewish.
As uncovered by the UK’s Times newspaper, Corbyn in 2011 endorsed a new edition of the 1902 book “Imperialism: A Study,” by JA Hobson, a British economist who, according to historian William Rubinstein, is known for his “vocal anti-Semitism” both personally and in his writing.
In the book, Hobson describes the global and financial system as controlled by people “united by the strongest bonds of organisation, always in closest and quickest touch with one as other, situated in the very heart of the business capital of every state, controlled, so far as Europe is concerned, by men of a single and peculiar race, who have behind them many centuries of financial experience, they are in a unique position to control the policy of nations.”
Israel admits to deliberately targeting the refugee camp.
I sense the thousands of dead Gazans can’t be verified guys will shortly be pivoting to what did the Gazans expect guys.
The IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari has confirmed that Israeli fighter jets carried out the attack on the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza, which he said killed a senior commander and caused the collapse of Hamas's underground infrastructure.
Israel admits to deliberately targeting the refugee camp.
I sense the thousands of dead Gazans can’t be verified guys will shortly be pivoting to what did the Gazans expect guys.
What is happening, and what is likely to continue unfolding over the next few months is a human tragedy. It should not be celebrated. Perhaps, even, it can't be justified.
I was not an unequivocal supporter of US foreign policy pre 9/11, nor did I support their actions after it. That doesn't lessen the fact that 9/11 was an atrocity, either.
I don't believe anyone thinks the people of Gaza were "asking for it" to use the common phrase, but Jews around the world currently feel as if they are locked in an existential battle with people who want them all exterminated - see the scenes in Dagestan for how it goes if Jews are not allowed to defend themselves. Remember, the Holocaust happened within living memory.
I have no doubt that the Israelis are going to do lots of stupid stuff and innocent civilians are going to be killed as a result of what Hamas began 25 days ago. Neither side should be applauded. But you must also understand the current climate among the Jewish community, which is a mix of rage, anger, horror and, most importantly, fear.
I don't think there are many Jews who want to kill Palestinians simply for being Palestinian. There are many around the world who would kill Jews, simply for being Jews.
Seriously. What a privilege to see it in this slanted light
Looks as if will be pretty impressive when they finish it. Looks like all the workers are having a siesta in that image.
The poignant thing is that originally it would have been painted in really garish - to our eyes - colours. Vivid reds and blues and whites. Like a fairground attraction
But now the colour and polish is all gone and you’re left with the naked golden limestone - which looks so much better (especially to contemporary tastes) - and absolutely gorgeous in slanted October sun
So it’s good it was ruined
It now turns out that Gobekli Tepe was painted. They’ve found scarlet pigment. It would have been multicoloured. It is inexplicable. A painted sequence of temple towns buried 10,000 years ago. An utterly confounding civilisation, 6000 years before “civilisation”
Graham Hancock may have been right then
I hardly think paint is proof that Graham Hancock is right! We have cave paintings going back 64,000 years. Paintings, i.e. uses of paint. Something being painted a mere 6,000 years ago is interesting, but hardly groundbreaking.
Er, 12,000 years ago. Idiot
Still not 60,000 years. Graham Hancock has never knowingly been right on anything he has ever written on archaeology and I don't expect him to start now.
Er, Gobekli Tepe's heyday wasn't 60,000 years ago.
No, it wasn’t. But cave paintings go back to >60k was the point Richard T was making.
How about painted temples?
If you’ve been painting cave walls for tens of millennia and you start constructing your first buildings, be that Dolní Věstonice, Natufian Jericho or Goblekli Tepe, you don’t need Atlanteans or aliens to suggest maybe you could also paint on your buildings’ walls.
Not a bad gag, but it does make me wonder (since they do always get attention) why they are unable to become a bigger deal. They also think they are a more major force than they are as a result.
The reason, essentially, is that they're wankers (my personal friends who remain members excepted).
They are exceptionally intolerant to any level of disagreement, and they're not nice about, driving a lot of good people out of the organisation, causing burnout among many of those that stick it out, and being extremely cliquey.
Not a bad gag, but it does make me wonder (since they do always get attention) why they are unable to become a bigger deal. They also think they are a more major force than they are as a result.
The reason, essentially, is that they're wankers (my personal friends who remain members excepted).
They are exceptionally intolerant to any level of disagreement, and they're not nice about, driving a lot of good people out of the organisation, causing burnout among many of those that stick it out, and being extremely cliquey.
Seriously. What a privilege to see it in this slanted light
Looks as if will be pretty impressive when they finish it. Looks like all the workers are having a siesta in that image.
The poignant thing is that originally it would have been painted in really garish - to our eyes - colours. Vivid reds and blues and whites. Like a fairground attraction
But now the colour and polish is all gone and you’re left with the naked golden limestone - which looks so much better (especially to contemporary tastes) - and absolutely gorgeous in slanted October sun
So it’s good it was ruined
It now turns out that Gobekli Tepe was painted. They’ve found scarlet pigment. It would have been multicoloured. It is inexplicable. A painted sequence of temple towns buried 10,000 years ago. An utterly confounding civilisation, 6000 years before “civilisation”
Graham Hancock may have been right then
I hardly think paint is proof that Graham Hancock is right! We have cave paintings going back 64,000 years. Paintings, i.e. uses of paint. Something being painted a mere 6,000 years ago is interesting, but hardly groundbreaking.
Er, 12,000 years ago. Idiot
Still not 60,000 years. Graham Hancock has never knowingly been right on anything he has ever written on archaeology and I don't expect him to start now.
Er, Gobekli Tepe's heyday wasn't 60,000 years ago.
No, it wasn’t. But cave paintings go back to >60k was the point Richard T was making.
How about painted temples?
If you’ve been painting cave walls for tens of millennia and you start constructing your first buildings, be that Dolní Věstonice, Natufian Jericho or Goblekli Tepe, you don’t need Atlanteans or aliens to suggest maybe you could also paint on your buildings’ walls.
I have to rely on Mrs U to tell me...it would be very rude of me to suggest she might be descended from aliens.
Not a bad gag, but it does make me wonder (since they do always get attention) why they are unable to become a bigger deal. They also think they are a more major force than they are as a result.
Comments
It was cabinet government, using information.
Some people tried to make a big thing out of the fact that after Satanic Verses, the cabinet had a discussion about the implications of the continuing protection of Rushdie - given that it was costing more than protecting any individual in the government.
Some voices were raised about the cost and the ongoing diplomatic implications. But a decision was made to continue.
The paths of Black History and Welsh history are indivisible.
There is no history of Wales without the history of black experiences in Wales.
https://x.com/welshlabour/status/1719295386815197444?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
I reckon 12 years has been a good run. Previously, my Windows laptops lasted 2-3 years tops before they became gummed up with unwanted and unrequested freeware and Windows add-ons.
Hindsight is 20/20.
(Although if he lost 16% of GOP voters he's toast for POTUS 2024.)
To make it more interesting, I don't think it was ever released to the public...
If anyone wants to know the sort of beauty I'm talking about, here's a picture. Pure p*rn.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Network_Computer#/media/File:Acorn-Netstation.jpg
Xahra Saleem, 23, a co-founder of the All Black Lives Bristol group, was named as one of the 30 most influential under-30s in Bristol by a now-defunct youth publication, Rife Magazine.
In the summer of 2020 Saleem, then known as Yvonne Maina, was one of five young people who organised a protest on June 7 in Bristol city centre in response to the murder of George Floyd by US police officers. The merchant and slave trader’s statue was pushed into the habour that afternoon.
In the days before the march, she started a GoFundMe online fundraiser in the group’s name, with the aim of raising a few hundred pounds to cover costs and pay for Covid PPE to be handed out to protesters.
Organisers said any money left over would go to a Bristol youth group, Changing Your Mindset, which planned to use it to fund a trip to Africa for young people in the deprived St Paul’s area.
Alistair Haggerty, for the prosecution, told Bristol crown court that £32,344 was raised by the GoFundMe page from 588 donations. He said the youth group was unable to open a business bank account during the pandemic, so a decision was made for the money to be held in Saleem’s personal account. “It was a sign of how much she was trusted,” Haggerty said.
Between July 2020 and June 2021 Saleem spent the money on a new iPhone and iMac computer, hair and beauty products, Amazon purchases, clothes, taxis, takeaways and general lifestyle expenses.
Saleem, who had no wage or regular income, also spent £5,800 on Uber taxi rides in the 11 months until June 2021.
In April 2021 the other directors of Changing Your Mindset asked Saleem to transfer the donated money into a new business account they had set up.
Saleem told them various lies about why she could not transfer the money, including that Black Lives Matter had advised her not to because “some of the people the charity had worked with had made homophobic comments”.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/black-lives-matter-protest-organiser-colston-statue-jail-sl0fwjj5k
The only way I got any use out of it at all post 2018 was to install chrome OS on it and turn it into a fairly crappy chromebook. The 2011 Macbook Air still chugs on, though it's showing its age.
Still, Apple of that era have definite flaws. Between 2018 and 2020 I went through three work-issued 13" macbook pros with the crappy keyboards, all of which broke in months. Corporate IT had a policy of just sending back for a new one, but I understand they were a bugger to fix anyway, given the way they were built. Not a golden era for Apple, and I'm glad I never shelled out my own money for one.
I keep it because modern laptops sacrifice too much to be thin and light, two attributes I'm not all that bothered about.
Obviously not as good a Muslim as me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miWLE1yhMG0
Wonder what it is like in the UK?
IMV don't use any hardware that's not got up-to-date software updates for anything that could reveal information you don't want anyone to get hold of (such as, but not limited to, credit card details...).
However, even MORE important methinks, will be early PRIMARY results from New Hampshire, the date of which has NOT yet be set (by NH secretary of state) but it will be BEFORE any other primary.
BTW, here is list of candidates who have filed for NH presidential primary; filing period has ended.
REPUBLICANS
Scott Alan Ayers
Ryan L. Binkley
Doug Burgum
Robert S Carney Jr.
John Anthony Castro
Chris Christie
Ron DeSantis
Nikki Haley
Asa Hutchinson
Peter Jedick
Perry Johnson
Donald Kjornes
Mary Maxwell
Glenn J. McPeters
Scott Peterson Merrell
Darius L. Mitchell
Mike Pence
Vivek Ramaswamy
Tim Scott
Hirsh V. Singh
Samuel Howard Sloan
David Stuckenberg
Rachel Swift
Donald Trump
DEMOCRATS
President R. Boddie
Terrisa Bukovinac
Eban Cambridge
Gabriel Cornejo
Mark Stewart Greenstein
Tom Koos
Paul V. LaCava
Star Locke
Frankie Lozada
Stephen P. Lyons
Raymond Michael Moroz
Derek Nadeau
Jason Michael Palmer
Armando "Mando" Perez-Serrato
Dean Phillips
Donald Picard
Paperboy Prince
Richard Rist
Vermin Supreme
John Vail
Marianne Williamson
wikipedia - "Incumbent President Joe Biden announced on April 25, 2023 his bid for a second term. However, Biden's team indicated that he would not appear on the New Hampshire primary ballot if the state defies the DNC's calendar and schedules its race before South Carolina's. In October 2023, the manager for the Biden campaign, Julie Chávez Rodriguez, confirmed in a letter to the chair of the New Hampshire Democratic Party Raymond Buckley that Biden would not appear on the primary ballot in order to comply with the DNC's calendar. Pro-Biden New Hampshire Democrats, including Kathy Sullivan (the former chairwoman of the state Democratic party) and former Representatives Paul Hodes and Carol Shea-Porter, launched a formal write-in campaign on October 30."
SSI - given this situation,
> Many Democrats and leaners will be inclined/tempted/urged to vote in the NH Republican primary (crossovers).
> In the Democratic primary, one very interesting number will be write-ins cast for Joe Biden.
That's been a problem throughout his career, why would he change a winning formula?
He was thick but not that thick. Someone with an iq under 70 can barely wash dishes and certainly couldn’t use a smartphone
I can believe he was a boiled frog. He tolerated a certain amount of obvious anti Semitism around him early on, as he genuinely despised Israel the zio colonialist state. As it got worse and more obvious he simply didn’t notice as by then he was used to the discourse. Used to the warming water
Indeed I think this is one of the great dangers of anti Semitism. It can become easily normalised. There must have been Corbyns in early Nazi Germany who thought “oh well this isn’t great but the Jews are annoying and it surely won’t get any worse than this….”
Also Cummings REALLY isn’t stupid. A tad neurodivergent, yes
https://x.com/hugorifkind/status/1719368745565495370?s=20
It is really fucking tiresome the way people are unable to acknowledge virtues - moral or intellectual - in people they politically resent
I mean, I despise almost everything Nicola Sturgeon stands for - from her Wokeness to her Scottish Nationalism - I think she is personally quite an unpleasant hypocrite
I also think she is seriously smart and a very able
politician. I’m relieved she is gone because she WAS good - a threat to the Union
Oh, wait: winning the Brexit referendum with “take back control” and thereby changing British and world history
Yeah, that
(Indeed we have a regular poster on here with an IQ of about 176.3 who is also extremely dim.)
Winning something doesn't make him right.
I'm asking for a time when his judgement has been vindicated.
After that it was up to others
And it was the best thing to happen to Britain in the last two decades. We won’t see the benefit for another decade at least
I do agree he's articulate. I think that may be part of the problem. He retcons his past to make himself look better and more perceptive than he is, and people swallow it.
For example, he claims to have single-handedly run the campaign on the NE Assembly referendum. In fact, he worked on it for two days and came up with one slogan.
He also claims to have been trying to keep Johnson away from decision making for reasons of state. Utter bull. He did it because he thought he could do better. He couldn't.
His exam reforms have been such a fiasco that even while praising them his own acolyte Sunak has announced he's scrapping them.
His claims to have forecast the pandemic rely on edited blogposts.
As for his claims on the EU, don't get me started.
I can see how to those who don't bother to scrutinise his record in depth might be impressed. But in reality he's a superficial intellectual lightweight with a massive ego and a lack of integrity and moral fibre who has failed disastrously at every task he's ever set himself, doing enormous damage along the way.
I can see why he's an effective campaigner in the age of social media. But a capable person? Let's not be silly here. He isn't.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-brexit-is-just-like-having-a-baby/
Maybe the benefits of Brexit will always be 10 years away?
Let’s see then
The business said on its website: “Odey Asset Management [OAM], including Brook Asset Management and Odey Wealth, will be closing. Fund managers and funds have moved to new asset managers.”
Earlier this month, the investment group, founded by the multimillionaire Conservative party donor 32 years ago, said its wealth management arm would be wound down.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/oct/31/odey-asset-management-shut-crispin-odey-hedge-fund
It is clear from the Whatsapp messages and emails being sent at the time that, in spite of the blind disbelief by many, Cummings did understand the seriousness of what was going on but was, far too often, ignored. He has the messages to prove it.
Did he make mistakes? Of course and he still refuses to admit to some of those. But he got plenty right - far more than morons like Hancock - and it is a shame he wasn't listened to more often.
Yeah, twat.
I don't hate him because I reject his analysis.
I hate him because he's a stupid twat whose solutions even to problems he's identified correctly are invariably not only wrong but make things a hundred times worse.
Edit - it's worth remembering that on paper I supported his initial ideas on education (as put forward by Gove). It's the shoddy implementation that revealed the depth of their ignorance and arrogance that has turned me against them.
Smart people can convince themselves of extremely dumb stuff. Indeed, they're more prone to it than the less intelligent, because they can better think through the contortions needed to think that diesel is a lovely sauce to put on ice cream.
Heck, there are some (I am sure) very intelligent people who persuaded themselves that having Boris Johnson as Prime Minister was a really good idea.
https://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2020/04/21/the-index-case-dealing-with-covid-19-inside-our-care-homes/
In retrospect, I appear to have been overgenerous.
Quite some way to go.
The only night of the year that you can give sweets to kids and not get arrested for it...
Although I've stopped getting trick or treaters since I started putting this up on my door in 2014.
In that instance, Corbyn tried denying that the person in question had said it, when a journalist played a speech by the that person, he tried claiming that the translation must be wrong....
As Sandpit sets out the key is having an appropriate protocol about what communication should be undertaken in what manner, and so some stuff can reasonably be 'lost' - not holding on to everything is part of good records management too. But officials in communications generally needs to be accessible.
But we all know good protocols don't survive contact with human beings who want to keep things private, even if it is not nefarious.
In the years we didn't put pumpkins out, we had zero callers or nuisance. Now we do, we get loads of callers and lots of fun.
If you only knew Britain via protest marches, you would think that about 80% of the population are members of the Socialist Workers Party
https://nitter.net/K_Niemietz/status/1719258128263319870#m
Much better to keep them close at hand, but a role where they oversee/preside over patronage and personnel as opposed to policy.
An example is Franklin D. Roosevelts 1932/36 campaign manager Jim Farley, who FDR appointed to his cabinet, but as Postmaster General which was NOT a key policy role.
For one thing, even top-class political hacks rarely manage more than one or at best two first-class electoral victories, at the pinnacle of their career.
Thus Farley was a key player in FDR's winning the Democratic nomination and thus the presidency in 1932. But his role was FAR less important by 1936. (By 1940 he was in the anti-FDR camp, indeed was a candidate - sorta - against his old boss.)
Also note the rise and fall of James Carville. Famed for his important contribution to Bill Clinton's 1992 victory, by 1996 he was on the outside looking in, observing (through a glass darkly) what Dick Morris (remember him?) was up to.
Just had to check Yemen was actually where I thought it was, geographically.....
https://www.timesofisrael.com/corbyn-found-to-have-written-foreword-for-book-claiming-jews-control-banks/
As uncovered by the UK’s Times newspaper, Corbyn in 2011 endorsed a new edition of the 1902 book “Imperialism: A Study,” by JA Hobson, a British economist who, according to historian William Rubinstein, is known for his “vocal anti-Semitism” both personally and in his writing.
In the book, Hobson describes the global and financial system as controlled by people “united by the strongest bonds of organisation, always in closest and quickest touch with one as other, situated in the very heart of the business capital of every state, controlled, so far as Europe is concerned, by men of a single and peculiar race, who have behind them many centuries of financial experience, they are in a unique position to control the policy of nations.”
I was not an unequivocal supporter of US foreign policy pre 9/11, nor did I support their actions after it. That doesn't lessen the fact that 9/11 was an atrocity, either.
I don't believe anyone thinks the people of Gaza were "asking for it" to use the common phrase, but Jews around the world currently feel as if they are locked in an existential battle with people who want them all exterminated - see the scenes in Dagestan for how it goes if Jews are not allowed to defend themselves. Remember, the Holocaust happened within living memory.
I have no doubt that the Israelis are going to do lots of stupid stuff and innocent civilians are going to be killed as a result of what Hamas began 25 days ago. Neither side should be applauded. But you must also understand the current climate among the Jewish community, which is a mix of rage, anger, horror and, most importantly, fear.
I don't think there are many Jews who want to kill Palestinians simply for being Palestinian. There are many around the world who would kill Jews, simply for being Jews.
They are exceptionally intolerant to any level of disagreement, and they're not nice about, driving a lot of good people out of the organisation, causing burnout among many of those that stick it out, and being extremely cliquey.
Perhaps more civilians would have headed south if it was actually safe and there was sufficient aid coming in!