Rishi would be smart to not fight the election on the Tory record.
So that’s exactly what he’s going to do.
Boasting about tax cuts when taxes are at a record high. Criticising Starmer about 100k illegal refugees when legal immigrants are nearly that a month
What could go wrong?
The A&E '% seen within 4 hours' is telling too.
Not quite so dramatic maybe but pretty clear.
As always with graphs/charts; look at what they're saying. In this case, why does one graph start well after the other? What happened in the earlier years?
Not saying this doesn't show a problem; just that it's the sort of thing that always pops into my mind when I see any chart.
Good question.
I'm struggling in a quick search to find pre-2010 data for A&E waiting times, so I wonder where that FT graph got its data from. Was that target measured before 2003?
There's no reason why the two graphs should have the same x-axis limits of course, they work independently.
If, as I hope, Labour do use any of these they really need to make sure they're watertight though
Good afternoon
I am not posting much due to my on going health issues but I would just say that as poor as England's NHS stats are, Wales are worse and this is the responsibility of Wales Labour government
9 weeks ago today at this time I was sent directly into A & E by my GP as a medical emergency. I was triaged at 5.30pm, had blood at 6.30pm and then my wife and I waited with 114 other patients overnight, being asked back at 3.00am for more bloods as they had made an error with those at 6.30pm
It was 7.00am, (over 13 hours later) I first saw the A & E doctor who immediately admitted me to hospital and arranged an emergency ultrasound which confirmed a massive left thigh DVT and other issues
I continue under the care of the hospital and three consultants, but the point I would make is that it not just an English issues, but also a Welsh and as I understand it from our family, a Scottish one which covers the political divide of Conservative, Labour and SNP
I do not know the answer and certainly Streeting will have his work cut out to come a anywhere near a resolution for England, and as for Wales I see little prospect of improvement in the short term
Really sorry to hear about your health issues Big_G and your terrible experience at A&E.
You may be right about Welsh Labour but I can't escape the feeling that this is all determined in Westminster. I suspect the powers of the Welsh and Scottish governments are severely constrained by what Westminster does.
Thank you and I certainly am not as active as I was and just wait for the results of my various tests, and possibly more in the new year
It will be interesting as we move to a Welsh labour government and an English one just how this plays out in Wales
Drakeford has resigned at just the point when his popularity and labour's show falls in the polls, not least from the terrible implementation of the 20mph scheme which is widely criticised and with a Labour government in Westminster and Cardiff the conservatives cannot be blamed as Wales NHS will almost certainly continue to fail
Of course the Tories can be blames - and are. The devolved administrations manage their own budgets - but only within the boundaries of the cash the are given and can generate. A shortage of cash is the issue, which is how we see a variety of parties in a variety of bodies all having a lack of cash.
"Don't blame the government, blame your council" doesn't work either.
You misread my post
I said that when Labour are in power in Westminster and also in Wales (first time since 2010) then Wales NHS continued failure cannot be blamed on the conservatives then
And as you are aware Wales and Scotland receive money through the devolved settlement and how they choose to spend that money or indeed raise taxes is in their own hands
I didn't misread it.
Westminster set the overall budgets - for departments, for councils, for devolved administrations. Who then have to operate with those constraints. If the overall budget isn't enough then is the fault with the council going bust or with the government who set out to bust them?
Circulating on chat groups right now “takeaway from Figma/Adobe is don’t open a UK office as a US startup”
I've experienced another side of this (*): massive companies approaching smaller companies to take them over; doing 'due diligence'; pulling out of the deal; then using the information gained in 'due diligence' against the smaller company.
As a loose rule of thumb: when it comes to massive company against small company, I'm on team small company every time.
Rishi would be smart to not fight the election on the Tory record.
So that’s exactly what he’s going to do.
Boasting about tax cuts when taxes are at a record high. Criticising Starmer about 100k illegal refugees when legal immigrants are nearly that a month
What could go wrong?
The A&E '% seen within 4 hours' is telling too.
Not quite so dramatic maybe but pretty clear.
As always with graphs/charts; look at what they're saying. In this case, why does one graph start well after the other? What happened in the earlier years?
Not saying this doesn't show a problem; just that it's the sort of thing that always pops into my mind when I see any chart.
Good question.
I'm struggling in a quick search to find pre-2010 data for A&E waiting times, so I wonder where that FT graph got its data from. Was that target measured before 2003?
There's no reason why the two graphs should have the same x-axis limits of course, they work independently.
If, as I hope, Labour do use any of these they really need to make sure they're watertight though
Good afternoon
I am not posting much due to my on going health issues but I would just say that as poor as England's NHS stats are, Wales are worse and this is the responsibility of Wales Labour government
9 weeks ago today at this time I was sent directly into A & E by my GP as a medical emergency. I was triaged at 5.30pm, had blood at 6.30pm and then my wife and I waited with 114 other patients overnight, being asked back at 3.00am for more bloods as they had made an error with those at 6.30pm
It was 7.00am, (over 13 hours later) I first saw the A & E doctor who immediately admitted me to hospital and arranged an emergency ultrasound which confirmed a massive left thigh DVT and other issues
I continue under the care of the hospital and three consultants, but the point I would make is that it not just an English issues, but also a Welsh and as I understand it from our family, a Scottish one which covers the political divide of Conservative, Labour and SNP
I do not know the answer and certainly Streeting will have his work cut out to come a anywhere near a resolution for England, and as for Wales I see little prospect of improvement in the short term
Really sorry to hear about your health issues Big_G and your terrible experience at A&E.
You may be right about Welsh Labour but I can't escape the feeling that this is all determined in Westminster. I suspect the powers of the Welsh and Scottish governments are severely constrained by what Westminster does.
Thank you and I certainly am not as active as I was and just wait for the results of my various tests, and possibly more in the new year
It will be interesting as we move to a Welsh labour government and an English one just how this plays out in Wales
Drakeford has resigned at just the point when his popularity and labour's show falls in the polls, not least from the terrible implementation of the 20mph scheme which is widely criticised and with a Labour government in Westminster and Cardiff the conservatives cannot be blamed as Wales NHS will almost certainly continue to fail
Of course the Tories can be blames - and are. The devolved administrations manage their own budgets - but only within the boundaries of the cash the are given and can generate. A shortage of cash is the issue, which is how we see a variety of parties in a variety of bodies all having a lack of cash.
"Don't blame the government, blame your council" doesn't work either.
You misread my post
I said that when Labour are in power in Westminster and also in Wales (first time since 2010) then Wales NHS continued failure cannot be blamed on the conservatives then
And as you are aware Wales and Scotland receive money through the devolved settlement and how they choose to spend that money or indeed raise taxes is in their own hands
I didn't misread it.
Westminster set the overall budgets - for departments, for councils, for devolved administrations. Who then have to operate with those constraints. If the overall budget isn't enough then is the fault with the council going bust or with the government who set out to bust them?
There's some truth to that; but it also appears that some of the councils have been caught out by events (e.g. court cases over equal rights), or have made *spectacularly* bad investment/procurement decisions.
Rishi would be smart to not fight the election on the Tory record.
So that’s exactly what he’s going to do.
Boasting about tax cuts when taxes are at a record high. Criticising Starmer about 100k illegal refugees when legal immigrants are nearly that a month
What could go wrong?
Rishi Sunak is a Labour plant? How can anyone be this dumb, I do not understand it.
Immigration is the achilles heel of the Tories and yet he wants to make it his mission to highlight how bad it is. He is doing nothing about the migration he can control and then to make it worse, is highlighting how his party can't handle illegal migration either.
It is honestly baffling - but just shows him to be a bit thick.
If in doubt, return the basic principle that Sunak Is Crap At Politics. That is almost always the explanation for whatever the day's self-own happens to be.
The principle needs a name, like Cookie's Law. Rishi's Razor?
Sunak's Saw: 'No matter how badly a message can be presented Rishi Sunak will find a way to make it worse'.
I was musing the other day about words matched with Prime Ministers.
Fear. Thatcher.
Respect. Brown.
Horror. Truss.
Pity. Sunak
As a politician, to be pitied is worse than any other emotion...
Won't argue with the others, but "Respect. Brown."?
Really?
A man who set the dogs of Hell on any rivals, and for years fought for the PMship, then when he got it, had f-all idea what to do with it? A man who fought hos rivals within Labour more strongly then he did his enemies outside?
Nasty. That is the word that should be associated with Brown. Nasty.
Brown did not "set the dogs of hell on any rivals" as most of them were included in his Cabinet.
How can Miriam Cates be accused of damaging the reputation of the Commons, when nobody knows what she’s supposed to have done?
Something Kafkaesque about this process, even if I am hardly a natural supporter of the loonbag Ms Cates.
Let me get this right, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards is currently investigating eight MPs:
Rt Hon. Colonel Bob Stewart (Con*) Mr Andrew Bridgen (Con*) Ms Virginia Crosbie (Con) Rt Hon. Dame Eleanor Laing (Con) Mr Marco Longhi (Con) Mr David Duguid (Con) Sir Bernard Jenkin (Con) Ms Miriam Cates (Con)
Is there a pattern I wonder?
(*Elected as Con, now disowned by them - too late.)
Bernard Jenkin and Eleanor Laing feel like odd-ones-out on that list though. I wouldn't have ranked them alongside full-bore moonhowlers like Cates and Bridgen.
Maybe it's just me, but I'm not entirely comfortable with Eleanor Laing continuing as Deputy Speaker (and Chair of Ways and Means) until the investigation into her (for actions causing significant damage to the reputation of the House etc.) is completed. Maybe she should step down temporarily.
She’s never been the same since HYUFD moved from her constituency. She’s obviously lost her moral compass.
Third festive engagement of the season done. Four more to go
It is an endurance race, isn't it? Why do we do this? Pack everything into two or three insane frenetic weeks?
The oysters are nice, tho
When I was a young whippersnapper of a stockbroker my Decembers were horrific/amazing. 4 days a week, every week, in December were either very pissy client lunches that went on until late or client dinners that went later. I was shoving every supplement I could get into my system to keep going. We always still managed to find room in the schedule for a big lunch to thank all the corporate clients’ support staff which coincidentally were all the prettiest girls we vaguely had any professional contact with.
When we weren’t entertaining we were being entertained by our counterparts. Very messy and numerous mornings waking up in hotel rooms with randoms and having to get a quick taxi home, shower and change whilst they waited, a morning of work then back on it.
Couldn’t do it now as I would die and it’s a bit frowned upon these days sadly. Definitely got more new and further business from the relationships and laughs made during December than any competence, which was lucky.
Oh god yeah. In reality I can't believe I am complaining about a handful of functions. My social diary is pitiful compared to what I used to do in London in my 20s and 30s
From about Dec 5th on there was often 3 or 4 different media/TV/magazine/flint knapping parties a night, maybe 3 nights a week, and you would try to hit 2 of them
So you could end up doing literally 20 parties by December 25 at which point you collapsed into an alcoholic coma and your family wondered why you looked a bit peaky and subdued on Xmas Day morning
Honestly, you're meant to be a writer. What's with the 'literally' in the last paragraph? Down with the kids?
Rishi would be smart to not fight the election on the Tory record.
So that’s exactly what he’s going to do.
Boasting about tax cuts when taxes are at a record high. Criticising Starmer about 100k illegal refugees when legal immigrants are nearly that a month
What could go wrong?
Rishi Sunak is a Labour plant? How can anyone be this dumb, I do not understand it.
Immigration is the achilles heel of the Tories and yet he wants to make it his mission to highlight how bad it is. He is doing nothing about the migration he can control and then to make it worse, is highlighting how his party can't handle illegal migration either.
It is honestly baffling - but just shows him to be a bit thick.
If in doubt, return the basic principle that Sunak Is Crap At Politics. That is almost always the explanation for whatever the day's self-own happens to be.
The principle needs a name, like Cookie's Law. Rishi's Razor?
Sunak's Saw: 'No matter how badly a message can be presented Rishi Sunak will find a way to make it worse'.
I was musing the other day about words matched with Prime Ministers.
Fear. Thatcher.
Respect. Brown.
Horror. Truss.
Pity. Sunak
As a politician, to be pitied is worse than any other emotion...
Won't argue with the others, but "Respect. Brown."?
Really?
A man who set the dogs of Hell on any rivals, and for years fought for the PMship, then when he got it, had f-all idea what to do with it? A man who fought hos rivals within Labour more strongly then he did his enemies outside?
Nasty. That is the word that should be associated with Brown. Nasty.
Brown did not "set the dogs of hell on any rivals" as most of them were included in his Cabinet.
That's *after* they had been eliminated as rivals.
And remember Red Rag, and everything else that was going on at the time. Brown was utterly craven in his lust for power; in a way that you would utterly condemn if he was a Tory.
Third festive engagement of the season done. Four more to go
It is an endurance race, isn't it? Why do we do this? Pack everything into two or three insane frenetic weeks?
The oysters are nice, tho
When I was a young whippersnapper of a stockbroker my Decembers were horrific/amazing. 4 days a week, every week, in December were either very pissy client lunches that went on until late or client dinners that went later. I was shoving every supplement I could get into my system to keep going. We always still managed to find room in the schedule for a big lunch to thank all the corporate clients’ support staff which coincidentally were all the prettiest girls we vaguely had any professional contact with.
When we weren’t entertaining we were being entertained by our counterparts. Very messy and numerous mornings waking up in hotel rooms with randoms and having to get a quick taxi home, shower and change whilst they waited, a morning of work then back on it.
Couldn’t do it now as I would die and it’s a bit frowned upon these days sadly. Definitely got more new and further business from the relationships and laughs made during December than any competence, which was lucky.
Oh god yeah. In reality I can't believe I am complaining about a handful of functions. My social diary is pitiful compared to what I used to do in London in my 20s and 30s
From about Dec 5th on there was often 3 or 4 different media/TV/magazine/flint knapping parties a night, maybe 3 nights a week, and you would try to hit 2 of them
So you could end up doing literally 20 parties by December 25 at which point you collapsed into an alcoholic coma and your family wondered why you looked a bit peaky and subdued on Xmas Day morning
Honestly, you're meant to be a writer. What's with the 'literally' in the last paragraph? Down with the kids?
I love using literally in a way that literally bursts the spleens of wanky people than moan about "literally"
Just one of the candidates selected to fight Labour’s most winnable 100 constituencies works for a company listed on the London Stock Exchange.
Analysis of Labour’s prospective parliamentary candidates by Apella Advisors, a strategic communications and public affairs consultancy, has laid bare the lack of business experience among those most likely to be elected as new MPs.
Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, and Rachel Reeves, shadow chancellor, have embarked on an extensive charm offensive to win over British business leaders and international investors in the past 18 months.
Rishi would be smart to not fight the election on the Tory record.
So that’s exactly what he’s going to do.
Boasting about tax cuts when taxes are at a record high. Criticising Starmer about 100k illegal refugees when legal immigrants are nearly that a month
What could go wrong?
Rishi Sunak is a Labour plant? How can anyone be this dumb, I do not understand it.
Immigration is the achilles heel of the Tories and yet he wants to make it his mission to highlight how bad it is. He is doing nothing about the migration he can control and then to make it worse, is highlighting how his party can't handle illegal migration either.
It is honestly baffling - but just shows him to be a bit thick.
If in doubt, return the basic principle that Sunak Is Crap At Politics. That is almost always the explanation for whatever the day's self-own happens to be.
The principle needs a name, like Cookie's Law. Rishi's Razor?
Sunak's Saw: 'No matter how badly a message can be presented Rishi Sunak will find a way to make it worse'.
I was musing the other day about words matched with Prime Ministers.
Fear. Thatcher.
Respect. Brown.
Horror. Truss.
Pity. Sunak
As a politician, to be pitied is worse than any other emotion...
Won't argue with the others, but "Respect. Brown."?
Really?
A man who set the dogs of Hell on any rivals, and for years fought for the PMship, then when he got it, had f-all idea what to do with it? A man who fought hos rivals within Labour more strongly then he did his enemies outside?
Nasty. That is the word that should be associated with Brown. Nasty.
Brown did not "set the dogs of hell on any rivals" as most of them were included in his Cabinet.
The idea that the main descriptive word that attaches to the conceot "Gordon Brown Prime Minister" is "respect" is... uniquely special
Just one of the candidates selected to fight Labour’s most winnable 100 constituencies works for a company listed on the London Stock Exchange.
Analysis of Labour’s prospective parliamentary candidates by Apella Advisors, a strategic communications and public affairs consultancy, has laid bare the lack of business experience among those most likely to be elected as new MPs.
Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, and Rachel Reeves, shadow chancellor, have embarked on an extensive charm offensive to win over British business leaders and international investors in the past 18 months.
Rishi would be smart to not fight the election on the Tory record.
So that’s exactly what he’s going to do.
Boasting about tax cuts when taxes are at a record high. Criticising Starmer about 100k illegal refugees when legal immigrants are nearly that a month
What could go wrong?
Rishi Sunak is a Labour plant? How can anyone be this dumb, I do not understand it.
Immigration is the achilles heel of the Tories and yet he wants to make it his mission to highlight how bad it is. He is doing nothing about the migration he can control and then to make it worse, is highlighting how his party can't handle illegal migration either.
It is honestly baffling - but just shows him to be a bit thick.
If in doubt, return the basic principle that Sunak Is Crap At Politics. That is almost always the explanation for whatever the day's self-own happens to be.
The principle needs a name, like Cookie's Law. Rishi's Razor?
Sunak's Saw: 'No matter how badly a message can be presented Rishi Sunak will find a way to make it worse'.
I was musing the other day about words matched with Prime Ministers.
Fear. Thatcher.
Respect. Brown.
Horror. Truss.
Pity. Sunak
As a politician, to be pitied is worse than any other emotion...
Won't argue with the others, but "Respect. Brown."?
Really?
A man who set the dogs of Hell on any rivals, and for years fought for the PMship, then when he got it, had f-all idea what to do with it? A man who fought hos rivals within Labour more strongly then he did his enemies outside?
Nasty. That is the word that should be associated with Brown. Nasty.
Brown did not "set the dogs of hell on any rivals" as most of them were included in his Cabinet.
The idea that the main descriptive word that attaches to the conceot "Gordon Brown Prime Minister" is "respect" is... uniquely special
I think "knob" and "risible twat"
In 2005, Tories led with Vote Blair, Get Brown until they found Gordon was the more popular of the two.
Third festive engagement of the season done. Four more to go
It is an endurance race, isn't it? Why do we do this? Pack everything into two or three insane frenetic weeks?
The oysters are nice, tho
When I was a young whippersnapper of a stockbroker my Decembers were horrific/amazing. 4 days a week, every week, in December were either very pissy client lunches that went on until late or client dinners that went later. I was shoving every supplement I could get into my system to keep going. We always still managed to find room in the schedule for a big lunch to thank all the corporate clients’ support staff which coincidentally were all the prettiest girls we vaguely had any professional contact with.
When we weren’t entertaining we were being entertained by our counterparts. Very messy and numerous mornings waking up in hotel rooms with randoms and having to get a quick taxi home, shower and change whilst they waited, a morning of work then back on it.
Couldn’t do it now as I would die and it’s a bit frowned upon these days sadly. Definitely got more new and further business from the relationships and laughs made during December than any competence, which was lucky.
Oh god yeah. In reality I can't believe I am complaining about a handful of functions. My social diary is pitiful compared to what I used to do in London in my 20s and 30s
From about Dec 5th on there was often 3 or 4 different media/TV/magazine/flint knapping parties a night, maybe 3 nights a week, and you would try to hit 2 of them
So you could end up doing literally 20 parties by December 25 at which point you collapsed into an alcoholic coma and your family wondered why you looked a bit peaky and subdued on Xmas Day morning
Honestly, you're meant to be a writer. What's with the 'literally' in the last paragraph? Down with the kids?
Circulating on chat groups right now “takeaway from Figma/Adobe is don’t open a UK office as a US startup”
Sorry: that post has been deleted.
From what I've been able to discern, massive company wanted to take over (relative) minnow in large deal. They both agreed, but minnow's lawyers put a cancellation clause in. Perhaps to prevent the situation I described below. Massive company did not factor in/realise the possibility of regulatory failure, and allowed minnow to put in a cancellation clause. The deal did not get regulatory approval, the deal was off, and minnow gets the cancellation fee.
*If* that's what happened, it seems fine.
It should be remembered that massive company may have gained information during arranging the deal that could allow them to destroy the small company.
As usual, late to the discussions but who cares? Trains - it's complex. Most of my rail travel is in and around London or to Surrey, Hampshire, Kent and what could be called the Home Counties. Generally, it's not bad - the problems, as happened today at Guildford, are often caused by events outside the control of any train company. It's a hard fact a few people each year choose to end their lives by stepping or falling into the path of a train. I cannot begin to imagine what's like for the driver or for those who have to deal with the consequences. South Western Railway have put gates at stations with fast trains like Surbiton (akin to what's on both the newer parts of the Jubilee lIne and the Elizabeth Line) to try and deter such events but out in the country much more difficult.
When it happens, the inevitable delay is frustrating but hard to blame the train operators. Infrastructure problems are the other issue - signals and points failing (track circuit failures in hot weather another issue).
I also travel further afield and to be blunt the further one gets from London the more sporadic the service becomes. I've travelled with East Midlands Railway and they are brutally inefficient at getting trains away. A 10-coach train to Sheffield is loaded up in 10 minutes and off we go - despite frequent announcements, people still think the doors will be open until the advertised departure time - they aren't.
The other issue is carriage design - to accommodate numbers and seats, space for luggage is at an absolute premium but a lot of people travelling distance will have suitcases. One poor example is trains to Southampton, Britain's biggest cruise terminal, are designed for commuters but cruise passengers have luggage and nowhere to stow it (so to speak).
EMR is just as bad - the Sheffield trains are ideal for commuters but rubbish for anyone else. Given post-pandemic rail travel is more about leisure, I'd be looking at carriage re-design. It also doesn't help when a five coach train has two carriages of first class and half of another carriage taken up by a buffet counter which is no longer used.
Nearly four years on and there seems no evidence any train company has understood any of the lessons from the pandemic but the one thing which did break was the operating model. Should we be trying to run trains to make a profit or is it about providing a service which is generously subsidised at a time with so many other calls on Government funds including care for vulnerable children and defence (as well as debt interest payments)?
Rishi would be smart to not fight the election on the Tory record.
So that’s exactly what he’s going to do.
Boasting about tax cuts when taxes are at a record high. Criticising Starmer about 100k illegal refugees when legal immigrants are nearly that a month
What could go wrong?
Rishi Sunak is a Labour plant? How can anyone be this dumb, I do not understand it.
Immigration is the achilles heel of the Tories and yet he wants to make it his mission to highlight how bad it is. He is doing nothing about the migration he can control and then to make it worse, is highlighting how his party can't handle illegal migration either.
It is honestly baffling - but just shows him to be a bit thick.
If in doubt, return the basic principle that Sunak Is Crap At Politics. That is almost always the explanation for whatever the day's self-own happens to be.
The principle needs a name, like Cookie's Law. Rishi's Razor?
Sunak's Saw: 'No matter how badly a message can be presented Rishi Sunak will find a way to make it worse'.
I was musing the other day about words matched with Prime Ministers.
Fear. Thatcher.
Respect. Brown.
Horror. Truss.
Pity. Sunak
As a politician, to be pitied is worse than any other emotion...
Won't argue with the others, but "Respect. Brown."?
Really?
A man who set the dogs of Hell on any rivals, and for years fought for the PMship, then when he got it, had f-all idea what to do with it? A man who fought hos rivals within Labour more strongly then he did his enemies outside?
Nasty. That is the word that should be associated with Brown. Nasty.
Brown did not "set the dogs of hell on any rivals" as most of them were included in his Cabinet.
The idea that the main descriptive word that attaches to the conceot "Gordon Brown Prime Minister" is "respect" is... uniquely special
I think "knob" and "risible twat"
In 2005, Tories led with Vote Blair, Get Brown until they found Gordon was the more popular of the two.
Yes, Gordon Brown, prime minister of the century. Who can forget his charming smiley Youtube videos when he deployed his famously authentic and winning smile, time and again, to smilingly win so many elections
As usual, late to the discussions but who cares? Trains - it's complex. Most of my rail travel is in and around London or to Surrey, Hampshire, Kent and what could be called the Home Counties. Generally, it's not bad - the problems, as happened today at Guildford, are often caused by events outside the control of any train company. It's a hard fact a few people each year choose to end their lives by stepping or falling into the path of a train. I cannot begin to imagine what's like for the driver or for those who have to deal with the consequences. South Western Railway have put gates at stations with fast trains like Surbiton (akin to what's on both the newer parts of the Jubilee lIne and the Elizabeth Line) to try and deter such events but out in the country much more difficult.
When it happens, the inevitable delay is frustrating but hard to blame the train operators. Infrastructure problems are the other issue - signals and points failing (track circuit failures in hot weather another issue).
I also travel further afield and to be blunt the further one gets from London the more sporadic the service becomes. I've travelled with East Midlands Railway and they are brutally inefficient at getting trains away. A 10-coach train to Sheffield is loaded up in 10 minutes and off we go - despite frequent announcements, people still think the doors will be open until the advertised departure time - they aren't.
The other issue is carriage design - to accommodate numbers and seats, space for luggage is at an absolute premium but a lot of people travelling distance will have suitcases. One poor example is trains to Southampton, Britain's biggest cruise terminal, are designed for commuters but cruise passengers have luggage and nowhere to stow it (so to speak).
EMR is just as bad - the Sheffield trains are ideal for commuters but rubbish for anyone else. Given post-pandemic rail travel is more about leisure, I'd be looking at carriage re-design. It also doesn't help when a five coach train has two carriages of first class and half of another carriage taken up by a buffet counter which is no longer used.
Nearly four years on and there seems no evidence any train company has understood any of the lessons from the pandemic but the one thing which did break was the operating model. Should we be trying to run trains to make a profit or is it about providing a service which is generously subsidised at a time with so many other calls on Government funds including care for vulnerable children and defence (as well as debt interest payments)?
Train design is increasingly becoming the responsibility of the DfT. And not to the benefit of the passengers.
WRT your last paragraph; the operating model is *not* the responsibility of the operator. It is the responsibility of the government, through the DfT and treasury. They set the trains that can run and, increasingly, the number of carriages on each train. The operators get paid / pay for running the specified service.
On to health - also complex. I've had a few minor health problems which has brought me into the orbit of the NHS and its associates. The GP changed my medication and I've had three agencies all ring up and ask me how I'm doing with the new cocktail of tablets (fine as it happens).
I'm fortunate I have an understanding employer as I've had a lot of hospital appointments (another tomorrow) in the past month but my experience is the NHS staff remain the organisation's biggest asset followed by the technology. Rather like turning up without a reservation on a weekend train, I wouldn't go to A&E on a Saturday night if I didn't have to but when I did have to on a Tuesday afternoon the service was very good apart from the waiting (a lot of that) which meant I was six and a half hours door to door but at no point did I ever feel forgotten.
Could it be better? Of course - the primary issue to this observer is the lack of communication across services and departments which is an echo of many businesses in truth. Even with the advent of joined up networks you rely on someone reading your notes before they see you which doesn't always happen.
Isn't it great when two very rich people get into a public squabble about which of them is the most corrupt?
Much more fun when sex is involved.
Seriously? Sunak and Mone are.......?
No.
Good to see the fine upstanding Baroness is putting her Villa up for sale. Rumour has it she was thinking of upgrading to the late Tina Turner's close by......
Third festive engagement of the season done. Four more to go
It is an endurance race, isn't it? Why do we do this? Pack everything into two or three insane frenetic weeks?
The oysters are nice, tho
It’s to ameliorate the depression over the otherwise three most miserable weeks of the year.
And to be fair it is good at that. Fending off the dark winter demons until the pit of the year, thin St Lucy's Day, the nadir of light
And then slowly the sun begins its long painful return
January, tho. JANUARY
Why not make it even more miserable, by doing Dry January? Such a genius idea by the temperance movement.
God willing, I shall be in the Siamese stews of the Big Mango, by about Jan 10th
It is the perfect combo, if you can nail it. You have all the social fun of London in December (and it is fun) and then the blissful warmth of dry season Bangkok. Mmmmmmm
Third festive engagement of the season done. Four more to go
It is an endurance race, isn't it? Why do we do this? Pack everything into two or three insane frenetic weeks?
The oysters are nice, tho
When I was a young whippersnapper of a stockbroker my Decembers were horrific/amazing. 4 days a week, every week, in December were either very pissy client lunches that went on until late or client dinners that went later. I was shoving every supplement I could get into my system to keep going. We always still managed to find room in the schedule for a big lunch to thank all the corporate clients’ support staff which coincidentally were all the prettiest girls we vaguely had any professional contact with.
When we weren’t entertaining we were being entertained by our counterparts. Very messy and numerous mornings waking up in hotel rooms with randoms and having to get a quick taxi home, shower and change whilst they waited, a morning of work then back on it.
Couldn’t do it now as I would die and it’s a bit frowned upon these days sadly. Definitely got more new and further business from the relationships and laughs made during December than any competence, which was lucky.
Oh god yeah. In reality I can't believe I am complaining about a handful of functions. My social diary is pitiful compared to what I used to do in London in my 20s and 30s
From about Dec 5th on there was often 3 or 4 different media/TV/magazine/flint knapping parties a night, maybe 3 nights a week, and you would try to hit 2 of them
So you could end up doing literally 20 parties by December 25 at which point you collapsed into an alcoholic coma and your family wondered why you looked a bit peaky and subdued on Xmas Day morning
When I was in my late 20s I worked in construction in London...Xmas started around 1st December and was almost every night to New Year. It was a hell of a time but my body just can not take that level of abuse these days....
It’s been said before, but the UK has too few sunlight hours. London is bad enough, but heaven save us from, say, February in Ulster.
SKS needs to get onto this.
Also, we don't use the ones we have optimally.
The Scandi model- accept that winter and summer are different and need different approaches to the Good Life- must be better.
Embrace the winterness of winter and the summerrness of summer. (See also the way that Mediterranean Europe just shuts down in August)... The seasons are going to win anyway, so don't try to beat them.
Redfield & Wilton ends with a solid 18-point Labour lead. Compared to its first poll of 2023 on 2-3 January, Labour are down five, the Conservatives down three, the Liberal Democrats down one, the Greens up three and Reform up five. The Lab/LD/Green vs Con/Ref split tonight is 59-34 - at the beginning of the year it was 62-32 so not a lot of change in truth.
Isn't it great when two very rich people get into a public squabble about which of them is the most corrupt?
Much more fun when sex is involved.
Seriously? Sunak and Mone are.......?
No.
Good to see the fine upstanding Baroness is putting her Villa up for sale. Rumour has it she was thinking of upgrading to the late Tina Turner's close by......
As usual, late to the discussions but who cares? Trains - it's complex. Most of my rail travel is in and around London or to Surrey, Hampshire, Kent and what could be called the Home Counties. Generally, it's not bad - the problems, as happened today at Guildford, are often caused by events outside the control of any train company. It's a hard fact a few people each year choose to end their lives by stepping or falling into the path of a train. I cannot begin to imagine what's like for the driver or for those who have to deal with the consequences. South Western Railway have put gates at stations with fast trains like Surbiton (akin to what's on both the newer parts of the Jubilee lIne and the Elizabeth Line) to try and deter such events but out in the country much more difficult.
When it happens, the inevitable delay is frustrating but hard to blame the train operators. Infrastructure problems are the other issue - signals and points failing (track circuit failures in hot weather another issue).
I also travel further afield and to be blunt the further one gets from London the more sporadic the service becomes. I've travelled with East Midlands Railway and they are brutally inefficient at getting trains away. A 10-coach train to Sheffield is loaded up in 10 minutes and off we go - despite frequent announcements, people still think the doors will be open until the advertised departure time - they aren't.
The other issue is carriage design - to accommodate numbers and seats, space for luggage is at an absolute premium but a lot of people travelling distance will have suitcases. One poor example is trains to Southampton, Britain's biggest cruise terminal, are designed for commuters but cruise passengers have luggage and nowhere to stow it (so to speak).
EMR is just as bad - the Sheffield trains are ideal for commuters but rubbish for anyone else. Given post-pandemic rail travel is more about leisure, I'd be looking at carriage re-design. It also doesn't help when a five coach train has two carriages of first class and half of another carriage taken up by a buffet counter which is no longer used.
Nearly four years on and there seems no evidence any train company has understood any of the lessons from the pandemic but the one thing which did break was the operating model. Should we be trying to run trains to make a profit or is it about providing a service which is generously subsidised at a time with so many other calls on Government funds including care for vulnerable children and defence (as well as debt interest payments)?
Train design is increasingly becoming the responsibility of the DfT. And not to the benefit of the passengers.
WRT your last paragraph; the operating model is *not* the responsibility of the operator. It is the responsibility of the government, through the DfT and treasury. They set the trains that can run and, increasingly, the number of carriages on each train. The operators get paid / pay for running the specified service.
I was thinking more about the financial operating model which relied on the income from commuting fares.
I didn't realise Government told EMR how many coaches should be on each train. South West Railways run 12-coach services during the middle of the day which are probably 10-15% full at most.
There's a need for a service standard to be set and (hopefully) constantly reviewed. Whether that's something Government should be doing is debatable.
Isn't it great when two very rich people get into a public squabble about which of them is the most corrupt?
Much more fun when sex is involved.
Seriously? Sunak and Mone are.......?
No.
Good to see the fine upstanding Baroness is putting her Villa up for sale. Rumour has it she was thinking of upgrading to the late Tina Turner's close by......
Third festive engagement of the season done. Four more to go
It is an endurance race, isn't it? Why do we do this? Pack everything into two or three insane frenetic weeks?
The oysters are nice, tho
When I was a young whippersnapper of a stockbroker my Decembers were horrific/amazing. 4 days a week, every week, in December were either very pissy client lunches that went on until late or client dinners that went later. I was shoving every supplement I could get into my system to keep going. We always still managed to find room in the schedule for a big lunch to thank all the corporate clients’ support staff which coincidentally were all the prettiest girls we vaguely had any professional contact with.
When we weren’t entertaining we were being entertained by our counterparts. Very messy and numerous mornings waking up in hotel rooms with randoms and having to get a quick taxi home, shower and change whilst they waited, a morning of work then back on it.
Couldn’t do it now as I would die and it’s a bit frowned upon these days sadly. Definitely got more new and further business from the relationships and laughs made during December than any competence, which was lucky.
Oh god yeah. In reality I can't believe I am complaining about a handful of functions. My social diary is pitiful compared to what I used to do in London in my 20s and 30s
From about Dec 5th on there was often 3 or 4 different media/TV/magazine/flint knapping parties a night, maybe 3 nights a week, and you would try to hit 2 of them
So you could end up doing literally 20 parties by December 25 at which point you collapsed into an alcoholic coma and your family wondered why you looked a bit peaky and subdued on Xmas Day morning
Honestly, you're meant to be a writer. What's with the 'literally' in the last paragraph? Down with the kids?
I love using literally in a way that literally bursts the spleens of wanky people than moan about "literally"
It’s been said before, but the UK has too few sunlight hours. London is bad enough, but heaven save us from, say, February in Ulster.
SKS needs to get onto this.
Also, we don't use the ones we have optimally.
The Scandi model- accept that winter and summer are different and need different approaches to the Good Life- must be better.
Embrace the winterness of winter and the summerrness of summer. (See also the way that Mediterranean Europe just shuts down in August)... The seasons are going to win anyway, so don't try to beat them.
The trouble is winter isn’t very wintry here. It’s just a dark late Autumn. On our road it’s characterised by the slow mulching down of tonnes of fallen leaves into a sort of pavement compost and drain blockage medium, dotted with occasional dog shits and strewn with fox-drawn plastic bags and chicken bones.
The Tories are now calling a Gove a traitor. God help us
The Tories are tired and need a good few years out of power.
Having said that, I expect them to get worse before they get better: as the Tories did with IDS, or Labour with Corbyn.
IMV, short of unexpected events (of which we have had none recently...) we are looking at three terms for Labour.
That's your decade of national renewal right there.
Lol. More like a decade of decline through splurging money at an unreformed public sector until they leave a note to the next Tory administration saying "sorry there is no money left".
The Tories might be terrible, but Labour have been put on this earth to remind us that putting amateurs in charge (the Tories tried it with Johnson) never makes anything work better.
There's already no money left. We're going to have to be incredibly creative to get where we need to be and hopefully you'll climb aboard for the journey. I think you will. I think this 'tory pitbull' persona is all for show.
Redfield & Wilton ends with a solid 18-point Labour lead. Compared to its first poll of 2023 on 2-3 January, Labour are down five, the Conservatives down three, the Liberal Democrats down one, the Greens up three and Reform up five. The Lab/LD/Green vs Con/Ref split tonight is 59-34 - at the beginning of the year it was 62-32 so not a lot of change in truth.
59% is one of the lowest LLG scores for a while though. Lib Dems being down one is against the run of play for other pollsters.
Labour are still scoring in the 40s. The whole Tory fightback narrative will of course kick into overdrive as soon as Labour get a polling score beginning with 3. They’ve got close a few times recently.
As usual, late to the discussions but who cares? Trains - it's complex. Most of my rail travel is in and around London or to Surrey, Hampshire, Kent and what could be called the Home Counties. Generally, it's not bad - the problems, as happened today at Guildford, are often caused by events outside the control of any train company. It's a hard fact a few people each year choose to end their lives by stepping or falling into the path of a train. I cannot begin to imagine what's like for the driver or for those who have to deal with the consequences. South Western Railway have put gates at stations with fast trains like Surbiton (akin to what's on both the newer parts of the Jubilee lIne and the Elizabeth Line) to try and deter such events but out in the country much more difficult.
When it happens, the inevitable delay is frustrating but hard to blame the train operators. Infrastructure problems are the other issue - signals and points failing (track circuit failures in hot weather another issue).
I also travel further afield and to be blunt the further one gets from London the more sporadic the service becomes. I've travelled with East Midlands Railway and they are brutally inefficient at getting trains away. A 10-coach train to Sheffield is loaded up in 10 minutes and off we go - despite frequent announcements, people still think the doors will be open until the advertised departure time - they aren't.
The other issue is carriage design - to accommodate numbers and seats, space for luggage is at an absolute premium but a lot of people travelling distance will have suitcases. One poor example is trains to Southampton, Britain's biggest cruise terminal, are designed for commuters but cruise passengers have luggage and nowhere to stow it (so to speak).
EMR is just as bad - the Sheffield trains are ideal for commuters but rubbish for anyone else. Given post-pandemic rail travel is more about leisure, I'd be looking at carriage re-design. It also doesn't help when a five coach train has two carriages of first class and half of another carriage taken up by a buffet counter which is no longer used.
Nearly four years on and there seems no evidence any train company has understood any of the lessons from the pandemic but the one thing which did break was the operating model. Should we be trying to run trains to make a profit or is it about providing a service which is generously subsidised at a time with so many other calls on Government funds including care for vulnerable children and defence (as well as debt interest payments)?
Train design is increasingly becoming the responsibility of the DfT. And not to the benefit of the passengers.
WRT your last paragraph; the operating model is *not* the responsibility of the operator. It is the responsibility of the government, through the DfT and treasury. They set the trains that can run and, increasingly, the number of carriages on each train. The operators get paid / pay for running the specified service.
I was thinking more about the financial operating model which relied on the income from commuting fares.
I didn't realise Government told EMR how many coaches should be on each train. South West Railways run 12-coach services during the middle of the day which are probably 10-15% full at most.
There's a need for a service standard to be set and (hopefully) constantly reviewed. Whether that's something Government should be doing is debatable.
AIUI they do specify services to that detail; or at least some services.
The 12-coach train problem is an interesting one. They would need trains that length for the rush hours; to reduce them for the non-rush hour periods you would need somewhere to 'store' the carriages (actually, due to fixed formations, trains...) for a few hours, and then have the train in the right place to pick them up again ready for the evening rush hour.
It is simpler just to run the same fixed formation throughout the day. The exception is when trains split or merge to form different services. BR discovered this very rapidly (AIUI, so did the LMS and LNER).
More interesting to me is the abolition of First Class on some services. I can see that becoming common on 'commuter' services at least.
Third festive engagement of the season done. Four more to go
It is an endurance race, isn't it? Why do we do this? Pack everything into two or three insane frenetic weeks?
The oysters are nice, tho
When I was a young whippersnapper of a stockbroker my Decembers were horrific/amazing. 4 days a week, every week, in December were either very pissy client lunches that went on until late or client dinners that went later. I was shoving every supplement I could get into my system to keep going. We always still managed to find room in the schedule for a big lunch to thank all the corporate clients’ support staff which coincidentally were all the prettiest girls we vaguely had any professional contact with.
When we weren’t entertaining we were being entertained by our counterparts. Very messy and numerous mornings waking up in hotel rooms with randoms and having to get a quick taxi home, shower and change whilst they waited, a morning of work then back on it.
Couldn’t do it now as I would die and it’s a bit frowned upon these days sadly. Definitely got more new and further business from the relationships and laughs made during December than any competence, which was lucky.
Oh god yeah. In reality I can't believe I am complaining about a handful of functions. My social diary is pitiful compared to what I used to do in London in my 20s and 30s
From about Dec 5th on there was often 3 or 4 different media/TV/magazine/flint knapping parties a night, maybe 3 nights a week, and you would try to hit 2 of them
So you could end up doing literally 20 parties by December 25 at which point you collapsed into an alcoholic coma and your family wondered why you looked a bit peaky and subdued on Xmas Day morning
Honestly, you're meant to be a writer. What's with the 'literally' in the last paragraph? Down with the kids?
I love using literally in a way that literally bursts the spleens of wanky people than moan about "literally"
Why do you spell "though" as "tho". Looks wanky to me
As usual, late to the discussions but who cares? Trains - it's complex. Most of my rail travel is in and around London or to Surrey, Hampshire, Kent and what could be called the Home Counties. Generally, it's not bad - the problems, as happened today at Guildford, are often caused by events outside the control of any train company. It's a hard fact a few people each year choose to end their lives by stepping or falling into the path of a train. I cannot begin to imagine what's like for the driver or for those who have to deal with the consequences. South Western Railway have put gates at stations with fast trains like Surbiton (akin to what's on both the newer parts of the Jubilee lIne and the Elizabeth Line) to try and deter such events but out in the country much more difficult.
When it happens, the inevitable delay is frustrating but hard to blame the train operators. Infrastructure problems are the other issue - signals and points failing (track circuit failures in hot weather another issue).
I also travel further afield and to be blunt the further one gets from London the more sporadic the service becomes. I've travelled with East Midlands Railway and they are brutally inefficient at getting trains away. A 10-coach train to Sheffield is loaded up in 10 minutes and off we go - despite frequent announcements, people still think the doors will be open until the advertised departure time - they aren't.
The other issue is carriage design - to accommodate numbers and seats, space for luggage is at an absolute premium but a lot of people travelling distance will have suitcases. One poor example is trains to Southampton, Britain's biggest cruise terminal, are designed for commuters but cruise passengers have luggage and nowhere to stow it (so to speak).
EMR is just as bad - the Sheffield trains are ideal for commuters but rubbish for anyone else. Given post-pandemic rail travel is more about leisure, I'd be looking at carriage re-design. It also doesn't help when a five coach train has two carriages of first class and half of another carriage taken up by a buffet counter which is no longer used.
Nearly four years on and there seems no evidence any train company has understood any of the lessons from the pandemic but the one thing which did break was the operating model. Should we be trying to run trains to make a profit or is it about providing a service which is generously subsidised at a time with so many other calls on Government funds including care for vulnerable children and defence (as well as debt interest payments)?
Train design is increasingly becoming the responsibility of the DfT. And not to the benefit of the passengers.
WRT your last paragraph; the operating model is *not* the responsibility of the operator. It is the responsibility of the government, through the DfT and treasury. They set the trains that can run and, increasingly, the number of carriages on each train. The operators get paid / pay for running the specified service.
I was thinking more about the financial operating model which relied on the income from commuting fares.
I didn't realise Government told EMR how many coaches should be on each train. South West Railways run 12-coach services during the middle of the day which are probably 10-15% full at most.
There's a need for a service standard to be set and (hopefully) constantly reviewed. Whether that's something Government should be doing is debatable.
AIUI they do specify services to that detail; or at least some services.
The 12-coach train problem is an interesting one. They would need trains that length for the rush hours; to reduce them for the non-rush hour periods you would need somewhere to 'store' the carriages (actually, due to fixed formations, trains...) for a few hours, and then have the train in the right place to pick them up again ready for the evening rush hour.
It is simpler just to run the same fixed formation throughout the day. The exception is when trains split or merge to form different services. BR discovered this very rapidly (AIUI, so did the LMS and LNER).
More interesting to me is the abolition of First Class on some services. I can see that becoming common on 'commuter' services at least.
It's already starting. SWR have drastically reduced the first class accommodation to basically eight seats at the end of one carriage - Thameslink run a lot of "standard class only" services except on the main Brighton route. I've no objection to First Class per se but when it takes up 40% of the capacity there are questions to be answered.
I saw this story the other day on Twitter, and it seems absolutely crazy; especially given what's just happened to the British Library.
I see nobody seems to have raised the issue of legibility - in my experience it is sometimes necessary to go back to the original and not rely on some often perfunctory scan to see what was actually written.
Digital media are NOT suitable for storage over decades or centuries. Beanpole Tory Tophat guy (forgotten the name) was exactly right when he insisted i keeping vellum parchment for Acts and Bills.
Digital media are NOT suitable for storage over decades or centuries. Beanpole Tory Tophat guy (forgotten the name) was exactly right when he insisted i keeping vellum parchment for Acts and Bills.
Poor Mr J. Rees-Mogg. Already dust on the winds of history, together with CP/M and 5.25" floppies.
Digital media are NOT suitable for storage over decades or centuries. Beanpole Tory Tophat guy (forgotten the name) was exactly right when he insisted i keeping vellum parchment for Acts and Bills.
Actually, if sensible methods are used, the lifespan of digital documents is infinite. The loses of vellum/parchment over the centuries to fire, rats etc are immense.
Digital media are NOT suitable for storage over decades or centuries. Beanpole Tory Tophat guy (forgotten the name) was exactly right when he insisted i keeping vellum parchment for Acts and Bills.
Actually, if sensible methods are used, the lifespan of digital documents is infinite. The loses of vellum/parchment over the centuries to fire, rats etc are immense.
Oh? Perhaps you could show us the digital files used by Bede for the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and the original Excel spreadsheet used for Domesday?
Digital media are NOT suitable for storage over decades or centuries. Beanpole Tory Tophat guy (forgotten the name) was exactly right when he insisted i keeping vellum parchment for Acts and Bills.
Actually, if sensible methods are used, the lifespan of digital documents is infinite. The loses of vellum/parchment over the centuries to fire, rats etc are immense.
Oh? Perhaps you could show us the digital files used by Bede for the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and the original Excel spreadsheet used for Domesday?
As I understand it, it went something like this. The system went down. And then it came back up again. And the files were lost from, er, after the last time they were, er, backed up. Milud.
A related issue is the fanatical resistance to archivists to digitalisation. Dragons sitting on gold isn’t the half of it.
Digitisation isn't a problem in itself - it's the destruction of the paper record that is the issue.
Keeping infinite piles of paper just ends up providing kindling for the next fire. Digitisation could make the data actually usable.
What do you mean? Been useable for years.
Don't know if you do genealogical or other historical research, but the wills *are* available online already for a moderate fee - you specify the deceased (in terms of year and page of the probate register) and bingo, a few days later a linky comes to download.
In the old days it was a photocopy in the post.
Pre-1858 (or something like that) E&W wills can be had instantly on line, albeit from a "commercial partner".
You still have to order birth, death and wedding certs onliune as above in E&W - in Scotland they are instantly available.
Digital media are NOT suitable for storage over decades or centuries. Beanpole Tory Tophat guy (forgotten the name) was exactly right when he insisted i keeping vellum parchment for Acts and Bills.
Actually, if sensible methods are used, the lifespan of digital documents is infinite. The loses of vellum/parchment over the centuries to fire, rats etc are immense.
Physically stored digital documents last only as long as the physical medium does not degrade and the machines use for playback survives.
If it's paper it's easy: acid-free paper, dry cold rooms, shelves. Only problem is bulk If it's digital it's on a machine, and those machines have to be maintained.
Digital media are NOT suitable for storage over decades or centuries. Beanpole Tory Tophat guy (forgotten the name) was exactly right when he insisted i keeping vellum parchment for Acts and Bills.
Actually, if sensible methods are used, the lifespan of digital documents is infinite. The loses of vellum/parchment over the centuries to fire, rats etc are immense.
Physically stored digital documents last only as long as the physical medium does not degrade and the machines use for playback survives.
If it's paper it's easy: acid-free paper, dry cold rooms, shelves. Only problem is bulk If it's digital it's on a machine, and those machines have to be maintained.
Some of us have run into that problem already with our own text files - even simple ones. I was looking the other day at some research notes originally prepared in Locoscript on CP/M and converted to MS/DOS format in, oh, 1990 or so. Several of the files are now digital middens.
Digital media are NOT suitable for storage over decades or centuries. Beanpole Tory Tophat guy (forgotten the name) was exactly right when he insisted i keeping vellum parchment for Acts and Bills.
Actually, if sensible methods are used, the lifespan of digital documents is infinite. The loses of vellum/parchment over the centuries to fire, rats etc are immense.
Oh? Perhaps you could show us the digital files used by Bede for the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and the original Excel spreadsheet used for Domesday?
Things like this ?
EDIT: we have less than 1% of Greek and Roman literature….
Redfield & Wilton ends with a solid 18-point Labour lead. Compared to its first poll of 2023 on 2-3 January, Labour are down five, the Conservatives down three, the Liberal Democrats down one, the Greens up three and Reform up five. The Lab/LD/Green vs Con/Ref split tonight is 59-34 - at the beginning of the year it was 62-32 so not a lot of change in truth.
59% is one of the lowest LLG scores for a while though. Lib Dems being down one is against the run of play for other pollsters.
Labour are still scoring in the 40s. The whole Tory fightback narrative will of course kick into overdrive as soon as Labour get a polling score beginning with 3. They’ve got close a few times recently.
Can’t read too much into one poll, but Labours war tanking is letting the LLG down.
Tories can only have a fight back narrative with polling scores starting with 3 themselves. What’s interesting from Labour polling slump is Tories have their own malaise at same time, not benefiting from it.
If Elder Statesman Lord Cameron is going to receive all the credit for the Tory flip flop on calling Israel to ceasefire, tonight’s politics hub on Sky was gushing in praise for him, then he must receive credit for saving Labours troubles on this at same time. Starmer and team kept within a micrometer of the government position on this, but the Tory letter from former ministers, remarks from Wallace, Cameron’s “sustained ceasefire” phrase today parroted by Sunak, is different in what way and language from the SNP and Labour left position 4 weeks ago?
Digital media are NOT suitable for storage over decades or centuries. Beanpole Tory Tophat guy (forgotten the name) was exactly right when he insisted i keeping vellum parchment for Acts and Bills.
Actually, if sensible methods are used, the lifespan of digital documents is infinite. The loses of vellum/parchment over the centuries to fire, rats etc are immense.
Oh? Perhaps you could show us the digital files used by Bede for the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and the original Excel spreadsheet used for Domesday?
Things like this ?
EDIT: we have less than 1% of Greek and Roman literature….
A related issue is the fanatical resistance to archivists to digitalisation. Dragons sitting on gold isn’t the half of it.
Digitisation isn't a problem in itself - it's the destruction of the paper record that is the issue.
Keeping infinite piles of paper just ends up providing kindling for the next fire. Digitisation could make the data actually usable.
What do you mean? Been useable for years.
Don't know if you do genealogical or other historical research, but the wills *are* available online already for a moderate fee - you specify the deceased (in terms of year and page of the probate register) and bingo, a few days later a linky comes to download.
In the old days it was a photocopy in the post.
Pre-1858 (or something like that) E&W wills can be had instantly on line, albeit from a "commercial partner".
You still have to order birth, death and wedding certs onliune as above in E&W - in Scotland they are instantly available.
The problem is that without knowledge of what is in the document…
So searching across documents for data is impossible.
Digital media are NOT suitable for storage over decades or centuries. Beanpole Tory Tophat guy (forgotten the name) was exactly right when he insisted i keeping vellum parchment for Acts and Bills.
Actually, if sensible methods are used, the lifespan of digital documents is infinite. The loses of vellum/parchment over the centuries to fire, rats etc are immense.
Physically stored digital documents last only as long as the physical medium does not degrade and the machines use for playback survives.
If it's paper it's easy: acid-free paper, dry cold rooms, shelves. Only problem is bulk If it's digital it's on a machine, and those machines have to be maintained.
You seem to be assuming a single machine. And passive, dead storage. With live storage, where all the data is online, upgrades to formats etc can be automated to the point of requiring next to no effort.
A related issue is the fanatical resistance to archivists to digitalisation. Dragons sitting on gold isn’t the half of it.
Digitisation isn't a problem in itself - it's the destruction of the paper record that is the issue.
Keeping infinite piles of paper just ends up providing kindling for the next fire. Digitisation could make the data actually usable.
What do you mean? Been useable for years.
Don't know if you do genealogical or other historical research, but the wills *are* available online already for a moderate fee - you specify the deceased (in terms of year and page of the probate register) and bingo, a few days later a linky comes to download.
In the old days it was a photocopy in the post.
Pre-1858 (or something like that) E&W wills can be had instantly on line, albeit from a "commercial partner".
You still have to order birth, death and wedding certs onliune as above in E&W - in Scotland they are instantly available.
The problem is that without knowledge of what is in the document…
So searching across documents for data is impossible.
We're talking about wills, where the primary keywords are name, address, date of death, date of probate, etc., which are in the probate registers which have been indexed online for years now. In fact, centuries if you take into account the basic birth, marriage and death lists compiled since before the 20th century. "My niece gets the budgie" is not, by contrast, a very important keyword.
Digital media are NOT suitable for storage over decades or centuries. Beanpole Tory Tophat guy (forgotten the name) was exactly right when he insisted i keeping vellum parchment for Acts and Bills.
Actually, if sensible methods are used, the lifespan of digital documents is infinite. The loses of vellum/parchment over the centuries to fire, rats etc are immense.
Physically stored digital documents last only as long as the physical medium does not degrade and the machines use for playback survives.
If it's paper it's easy: acid-free paper, dry cold rooms, shelves. Only problem is bulk If it's digital it's on a machine, and those machines have to be maintained.
You seem to be assuming a single machine. And passive, dead storage. With live storage, where all the data is online, upgrades to formats etc can be automated to the point of requiring next to no effort.
Potentially, yes.
However, the difficulties of the BBC's Domesday 900 project show the risks of relying on digital formats.
Digitise the records, by all means... But it's a bit early to ditch the orginals, I reckon.
IIRC, developments in Loki series 2 may make the requirements for multiple variants of Kang unnecessary. Given that Major's star is about to dramatically wane, it's not impossible to cut his character out entirely whilst we all pretend not to remember what the original plan was.
A related issue is the fanatical resistance to archivists to digitalisation. Dragons sitting on gold isn’t the half of it.
Digitisation isn't a problem in itself - it's the destruction of the paper record that is the issue.
Keeping infinite piles of paper just ends up providing kindling for the next fire. Digitisation could make the data actually usable.
What do you mean? Been useable for years.
Don't know if you do genealogical or other historical research, but the wills *are* available online already for a moderate fee - you specify the deceased (in terms of year and page of the probate register) and bingo, a few days later a linky comes to download.
In the old days it was a photocopy in the post.
Pre-1858 (or something like that) E&W wills can be had instantly on line, albeit from a "commercial partner".
You still have to order birth, death and wedding certs onliune as above in E&W - in Scotland they are instantly available.
The problem is that without knowledge of what is in the document…
So searching across documents for data is impossible.
We're talking about wills, where the primary keywords are name, address, date of death, date of probate, etc., which are in the probate registers which have been indexed online for years now. In fact, centuries if you take into account the basic birth, marriage and death lists compiled since before the 20th century. "My niece gets the budgie" is not, by contrast, a very important keyword.
The contents of the will is the interesting bit - if you could search for all the budgies left to small children, you’d could write a paper on Avian Pet Inheritance In The 19th Cent.
EDIT: a relative is currently researching some obscure property records. First person to unfold a property map in a hundred years etc. Using an iPhone and some software, he is surreptitiously building a rather useful database.
Is she suggesting he set up a company, bought a load of Moderna shares before they created a vaccine (but knew they were going to) and then gave a call to the vaccine committee to arrange the Moderna approval as the third choice vaccine? He should be praised for his foresight if that’s the case.
Can only be bad news for Starmer and Labour, if they face a different PM at the General Election. This could be a genuine game changing moment, if it forces Rishi out, his unpopularity reported the same as that of his party a few days ago, whilst Penny Mourdant will have a honeymoon with public opinion in which Tories could hold the election.
IIRC, developments in Loki series 2 may make the requirements for multiple variants of Kang unnecessary. Given that Major's star is about to dramatically wane, it's not impossible to cut his character out entirely whilst we all pretend not to remember what the original plan was.
Bring in the X-Men now.
When Sir Patrick Stewart appeared as Professor X in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness I may have jizzed myself inside out at the cinema.
Digital media are NOT suitable for storage over decades or centuries. Beanpole Tory Tophat guy (forgotten the name) was exactly right when he insisted i keeping vellum parchment for Acts and Bills.
Actually, if sensible methods are used, the lifespan of digital documents is infinite. The loses of vellum/parchment over the centuries to fire, rats etc are immense.
The awful truth is that we don't know what will last into the future, or how it will do so. Who would have guessed that we would still have Elamite/Sumerian/Babylonian laundry lists and tax returns baked in clay or written on stone but had mislaid much of Sappho, Tacitus and Aristotle.
I vaguely recall a proposal to store information in a digital format as optical data on microfiche.
As long as the film isn't destroyed by fire, still readable well into the future as long as you understand the encoding scheme
Back in 1986, the BBC had a project to commemorate the 900th anniversary of the Domesday Book. Many people contributed - including colleagues of mine - to what was a major project that may well be useful to future generations.
The data was stored on 12-inch laserdiscs - I have a couple in my garage, and used somewhat propriety hardware to read and display the data. In fact, at company Y I had a working BBC Domesday system in the cubicle I shared with others - made from several other non-working systems. As far as we were aware, that was one of only a few working systems left in the world. That was in 2001, just 15 years after the project. NAd we only had it because we nicked stuff out of skips.
Since then, there have been a series of projects to resurrect that data; most have died a death or are only marginally available.
Digital media are NOT suitable for storage over decades or centuries. Beanpole Tory Tophat guy (forgotten the name) was exactly right when he insisted i keeping vellum parchment for Acts and Bills.
Actually, if sensible methods are used, the lifespan of digital documents is infinite. The loses of vellum/parchment over the centuries to fire, rats etc are immense.
Physically stored digital documents last only as long as the physical medium does not degrade and the machines use for playback survives.
If it's paper it's easy: acid-free paper, dry cold rooms, shelves. Only problem is bulk If it's digital it's on a machine, and those machines have to be maintained.
You seem to be assuming a single machine. And passive, dead storage. With live storage, where all the data is online, upgrades to formats etc can be automated to the point of requiring next to no effort.
I know what you mean, but I'm still lairy. I think the storage you refer to is conceptual: it all exists "over there" in a virtual sense, whilst the actual bits and bytes are spread over different computers and can survive a collapse in one machine/location and survive changes over time on a Trigger's Broom basis. So you are right. But I still want physical backups...
I vaguely recall a proposal to store information in a digital format as optical data on microfiche.
As long as the film isn't destroyed by fire, still readable well into the future as long as you understand the encoding scheme
Back in 1986, the BBC had a project to commemorate the 900th anniversary of the Domesday Book. Many people contributed - including colleagues of mine - to what was a major project that may well be useful to future generations.
The data was stored on 12-inch laserdiscs - I have a couple in my garage, and used somewhat propriety hardware to read and display the data. In fact, at company Y I had a working BBC Domesday system in the cubicle I shared with others - made from several other non-working systems. As far as we were aware, that was one of only a few working systems left in the world. That was in 2001, just 15 years after the project. NAd we only had it because we nicked stuff out of skips.
Since then, there have been a series of projects to resurrect that data; most have died a death or are only marginally available.
Somewhat related - I once spent far too much time writing a DMA FAT12 driver for the Atari.
But boy, could it format a 720kb floppy disk quickly.
Digital media are NOT suitable for storage over decades or centuries. Beanpole Tory Tophat guy (forgotten the name) was exactly right when he insisted i keeping vellum parchment for Acts and Bills.
Actually, if sensible methods are used, the lifespan of digital documents is infinite. The loses of vellum/parchment over the centuries to fire, rats etc are immense.
Physically stored digital documents last only as long as the physical medium does not degrade and the machines use for playback survives.
If it's paper it's easy: acid-free paper, dry cold rooms, shelves. Only problem is bulk If it's digital it's on a machine, and those machines have to be maintained.
You seem to be assuming a single machine. And passive, dead storage. With live storage, where all the data is online, upgrades to formats etc can be automated to the point of requiring next to no effort.
Potentially, yes.
However, the difficulties of the BBC's Domesday 900 project show the risks of relying on digital formats.
Digitise the records, by all means... But it's a bit early to ditch the orginals, I reckon.
The BBC used offline, “dead” storage. The discs. Which by their nature were fixed, and not possible to upgrade.
Versus a modern online archive. For example the bank I worked for decided to change the format of all images on the internal wiki. So they ran a process that did this in the background in a few hours.
Digital media are NOT suitable for storage over decades or centuries. Beanpole Tory Tophat guy (forgotten the name) was exactly right when he insisted i keeping vellum parchment for Acts and Bills.
Actually, if sensible methods are used, the lifespan of digital documents is infinite. The loses of vellum/parchment over the centuries to fire, rats etc are immense.
Physically stored digital documents last only as long as the physical medium does not degrade and the machines use for playback survives.
If it's paper it's easy: acid-free paper, dry cold rooms, shelves. Only problem is bulk If it's digital it's on a machine, and those machines have to be maintained.
You seem to be assuming a single machine. And passive, dead storage. With live storage, where all the data is online, upgrades to formats etc can be automated to the point of requiring next to no effort.
Potentially, yes.
However, the difficulties of the BBC's Domesday 900 project show the risks of relying on digital formats.
Digitise the records, by all means... But it's a bit early to ditch the orginals, I reckon.
Don’t ditch them. Sell them, framed, for an extortionate fee per will. Could keep the government finances in the black for years to come.
Digital media are NOT suitable for storage over decades or centuries. Beanpole Tory Tophat guy (forgotten the name) was exactly right when he insisted i keeping vellum parchment for Acts and Bills.
Actually, if sensible methods are used, the lifespan of digital documents is infinite. The loses of vellum/parchment over the centuries to fire, rats etc are immense.
Oh? Perhaps you could show us the digital files used by Bede for the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and the original Excel spreadsheet used for Domesday?
Things like this ?
EDIT: we have less than 1% of Greek and Roman literature….
Digital media are NOT suitable for storage over decades or centuries. Beanpole Tory Tophat guy (forgotten the name) was exactly right when he insisted i keeping vellum parchment for Acts and Bills.
Actually, if sensible methods are used, the lifespan of digital documents is infinite. The loses of vellum/parchment over the centuries to fire, rats etc are immense.
Physically stored digital documents last only as long as the physical medium does not degrade and the machines use for playback survives.
If it's paper it's easy: acid-free paper, dry cold rooms, shelves. Only problem is bulk If it's digital it's on a machine, and those machines have to be maintained.
You seem to be assuming a single machine. And passive, dead storage. With live storage, where all the data is online, upgrades to formats etc can be automated to the point of requiring next to no effort.
I've got a copy of the original Aphex Twin 'Windowlicker' videos stored 'in the cloud'. No idea what to do with them. They're in a proprietary Intel encoded format when Intel were going tooth-to-tooth against RealPlayer. I've even asked some contacts at Intel and they've no idea.
Really disappointing. I point out a mistake in a chart. It is not fixed. It gets retweeted by top data journo. I point out again that it's wrong & prof admits it shouldn't have been included, but he won't delete or correct. Result: misinformation continues to circulate. V poor.
Quote Rob Ford @robfordmancs · 4h Replying to @NeilDotObrien and @jburnmurdoch Because the claim made in the title of the slide is correct, and robust across all the other datasets in the slide. I accept that the ESS data series is not the same as the others and should on reflection not be combined with it but removing it does not change the story"
No reason to worry about preserving records. Just put security markings on the records you wish to preserve, and the ChiComs will copy them, without even charging you. (Granted, getting access may be less easy, but no process is perfect.)
Really disappointing. I point out a mistake in a chart. It is not fixed. It gets retweeted by top data journo. I point out again that it's wrong & prof admits it shouldn't have been included, but he won't delete or correct. Result: misinformation continues to circulate. V poor.
Quote Rob Ford @robfordmancs · 4h Replying to @NeilDotObrien and @jburnmurdoch Because the claim made in the title of the slide is correct, and robust across all the other datasets in the slide. I accept that the ESS data series is not the same as the others and should on reflection not be combined with it but removing it does not change the story"
Digital media are NOT suitable for storage over decades or centuries. Beanpole Tory Tophat guy (forgotten the name) was exactly right when he insisted i keeping vellum parchment for Acts and Bills.
Actually, if sensible methods are used, the lifespan of digital documents is infinite. The loses of vellum/parchment over the centuries to fire, rats etc are immense.
Physically stored digital documents last only as long as the physical medium does not degrade and the machines use for playback survives.
If it's paper it's easy: acid-free paper, dry cold rooms, shelves. Only problem is bulk If it's digital it's on a machine, and those machines have to be maintained.
You seem to be assuming a single machine. And passive, dead storage. With live storage, where all the data is online, upgrades to formats etc can be automated to the point of requiring next to no effort.
Potentially, yes.
However, the difficulties of the BBC's Domesday 900 project show the risks of relying on digital formats.
Digitise the records, by all means... But it's a bit early to ditch the orginals, I reckon.
The BBC used offline, “dead” storage. The discs. Which by their nature were fixed, and not possible to upgrade.
Versus a modern online archive. For example the bank I worked for decided to change the format of all images on the internal wiki. So they ran a process that did this in the background in a few hours.
1. Where are you storing your digital archives? 2. What storage media are you using? 3. What budget are you allocating for the continuous maintenance and energy costs required? 4. How are you protecting your archive from malicious states with sophisticated hacking teams, an array of zero days and the budget to bribe your administrators? 5. What happens when your digital archives is targeted for 'efficiency savings' in a generations time?
Digital media are NOT suitable for storage over decades or centuries. Beanpole Tory Tophat guy (forgotten the name) was exactly right when he insisted i keeping vellum parchment for Acts and Bills.
Actually, if sensible methods are used, the lifespan of digital documents is infinite. The loses of vellum/parchment over the centuries to fire, rats etc are immense.
In theory that's true. But here's a question about reality: if people have both old analogue photo albums and photos taken on very early digital cameras, which one of those two is probably easiest for them to access and view?
Redfield & Wilton ends with a solid 18-point Labour lead. Compared to its first poll of 2023 on 2-3 January, Labour are down five, the Conservatives down three, the Liberal Democrats down one, the Greens up three and Reform up five. The Lab/LD/Green vs Con/Ref split tonight is 59-34 - at the beginning of the year it was 62-32 so not a lot of change in truth.
59% is one of the lowest LLG scores for a while though. Lib Dems being down one is against the run of play for other pollsters.
Labour are still scoring in the 40s. The whole Tory fightback narrative will of course kick into overdrive as soon as Labour get a polling score beginning with 3. They’ve got close a few times recently.
Can’t read too much into one poll, but Labours war tanking is letting the LLG down.
Tories can only have a fight back narrative with polling scores starting with 3 themselves. What’s interesting from Labour polling slump is Tories have their own malaise at same time, not benefiting from it.
If Elder Statesman Lord Cameron is going to receive all the credit for the Tory flip flop on calling Israel to ceasefire, tonight’s politics hub on Sky was gushing in praise for him, then he must receive credit for saving Labours troubles on this at same time. Starmer and team kept within a micrometer of the government position on this, but the Tory letter from former ministers, remarks from Wallace, Cameron’s “sustained ceasefire” phrase today parroted by Sunak, is different in what way and language from the SNP and Labour left position 4 weeks ago?
Obviously, I was in the loo and missed it, but the Gaza conflict has waged pretty fierce on a daily basis here on PB. Sunil and Roger versus just about everyone else? And thanks to David Cameron, Sunil and Roger are now winning.
How is Sunak’s governments Damascene Conversion on Gaza conflict being reported in Europe and Rest of the world? Is Lord Cameron’s stock rising overseas too?
Constitutional theory is about 100 years behind the reality and we could really do with a modern-day Bagehot to point out that actually, yes, the people are sovereign.
1. The principle that parliament should be elected by and is accountable to the (adult) population of the country is unchallenged, bar fringe cases.
2. Parliament may exercise sovereignty on behalf of the people but this is not the same as actually being sovereign in its own right. Legal sovereignty is not the same as the enduring political reality that underpins constitutional practice.
3. The principle that first-order political questions should be settled by the people themselves through referendums - in other words, that parliament doesn't have the authority or legitimacy to decide those questions for itself - is now a constitutional convention. (This is not the same as saying that all referendums involve first-order political questions).
4. The nature of the Parliament Act, Salisbury Convention and 'mandates' in general point to the people being the fundamental source of sovereignty.
I take your point, but it seems to me that you are arguing in effect that sovereignty of 'people' or of 'parliament' amount to the same thing. The problem with the 'people' idea is that it is not recognisably cashable in terms of governance except through what parliament does. 'People' don't have legislating power (even through referendums). Perhaps 'the sovereignty of parliament is the means by which that of the people is effected' might be the best we can do.
'Sovereignty of people' is an expression which smacks slightly of the sub-optimal elements of the French revolution, for all people are equal but when the shouting starts some tend to be more equal than others; and it also invites the cynical question: Who, whom?
I don't think that's quite what I'm saying. Go back 200 years and there was a very clear sense in which parliament was apart from 'the people', and in which 'the mob' had a semi-legitimate role in the system as an expression of the politically excluded (all male, naturally, but still ...). Parliament was, however, still very much sovereign, irrespective of its democratic deficiencies (as we would now see them), perhaps even because of them.
That has all gone. I'd argue that parliamentary sovereignty is now nothing more than the *expression* of the deeper sovereignty of the people. That while, for reasons of practical process, parliament has to embody the people's sovereignty, it nonetheless only holds that temporarily on trust rather than it being innate, hence why it feels it essential to refer questions like Brexit, Scottish independence or the GFA back to the people and to be bound by the decision - because to do otherwise would be to create a crisis of legitimacy. Such a crisis could not exist were parliament genuinely sovereign in practice as well as theory.
Comments
Westminster set the overall budgets - for departments, for councils, for devolved administrations. Who then have to operate with those constraints. If the overall budget isn't enough then is the fault with the council going bust or with the government who set out to bust them?
As a loose rule of thumb: when it comes to massive company against small company, I'm on team small company every time.
(*) If I've got what's happened right...
The read across to UK Labour is of limited value only.
(I’d say the same, though with different descriptors, about the Scottish Cons).
And remember Red Rag, and everything else that was going on at the time. Brown was utterly craven in his lust for power; in a way that you would utterly condemn if he was a Tory.
I think "knob" and "risible twat"
And then slowly the sun begins its long painful return
January, tho. JANUARY
*If* that's what happened, it seems fine.
It should be remembered that massive company may have gained information during arranging the deal that could allow them to destroy the small company.
As usual, late to the discussions but who cares? Trains - it's complex. Most of my rail travel is in and around London or to Surrey, Hampshire, Kent and what could be called the Home Counties. Generally, it's not bad - the problems, as happened today at Guildford, are often caused by events outside the control of any train company. It's a hard fact a few people each year choose to end their lives by stepping or falling into the path of a train. I cannot begin to imagine what's like for the driver or for those who have to deal with the consequences. South Western Railway have put gates at stations with fast trains like Surbiton (akin to what's on both the newer parts of the Jubilee lIne and the Elizabeth Line) to try and deter such events but out in the country much more difficult.
When it happens, the inevitable delay is frustrating but hard to blame the train operators. Infrastructure problems are the other issue - signals and points failing (track circuit failures in hot weather another issue).
I also travel further afield and to be blunt the further one gets from London the more sporadic the service becomes. I've travelled with East Midlands Railway and they are brutally inefficient at getting trains away. A 10-coach train to Sheffield is loaded up in 10 minutes and off we go - despite frequent announcements, people still think the doors will be open until the advertised departure time - they aren't.
The other issue is carriage design - to accommodate numbers and seats, space for luggage is at an absolute premium but a lot of people travelling distance will have suitcases. One poor example is trains to Southampton, Britain's biggest cruise terminal, are designed for commuters but cruise passengers have luggage and nowhere to stow it (so to speak).
EMR is just as bad - the Sheffield trains are ideal for commuters but rubbish for anyone else. Given post-pandemic rail travel is more about leisure, I'd be looking at carriage re-design. It also doesn't help when a five coach train has two carriages of first class and half of another carriage taken up by a buffet counter which is no longer used.
Nearly four years on and there seems no evidence any train company has understood any of the lessons from the pandemic but the one thing which did break was the operating model. Should we be trying to run trains to make a profit or is it about providing a service which is generously subsidised at a time with so many other calls on Government funds including care for vulnerable children and defence (as well as debt interest payments)?
SKS needs to get onto this.
https://youtu.be/TTE6cTBrGcA?si=ObMLBTqQcyQmgb68
WRT your last paragraph; the operating model is *not* the responsibility of the operator. It is the responsibility of the government, through the DfT and treasury. They set the trains that can run and, increasingly, the number of carriages on each train. The operators get paid / pay for running the specified service.
I'm fortunate I have an understanding employer as I've had a lot of hospital appointments (another tomorrow) in the past month but my experience is the NHS staff remain the organisation's biggest asset followed by the technology. Rather like turning up without a reservation on a weekend train, I wouldn't go to A&E on a Saturday night if I didn't have to but when I did have to on a Tuesday afternoon the service was very good apart from the waiting (a lot of that) which meant I was six and a half hours door to door but at no point did I ever feel forgotten.
Could it be better? Of course - the primary issue to this observer is the lack of communication across services and departments which is an echo of many businesses in truth. Even with the advent of joined up networks you rely on someone reading your notes before they see you which doesn't always happen.
Life's a bitch....
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-4681384/Michelle-Mone-puts-seven-bed-luxury-villa-sale.html
It is the perfect combo, if you can nail it. You have all the social fun of London in December (and it is fun) and then the blissful warmth of dry season Bangkok. Mmmmmmm
Correlation != causation...
The Scandi model- accept that winter and summer are different and need different approaches to the Good Life- must be better.
Embrace the winterness of winter and the summerrness of summer. (See also the way that Mediterranean Europe just shuts down in August)... The seasons are going to win anyway, so don't try to beat them.
I didn't realise Government told EMR how many coaches should be on each train. South West Railways run 12-coach services during the middle of the day which are probably 10-15% full at most.
There's a need for a service standard to be set and (hopefully) constantly reviewed. Whether that's something Government should be doing is debatable.
Labour are still scoring in the 40s. The whole Tory fightback narrative will of course kick into overdrive as soon as Labour get a polling score beginning with 3. They’ve got close a few times recently.
The 12-coach train problem is an interesting one. They would need trains that length for the rush hours; to reduce them for the non-rush hour periods you would need somewhere to 'store' the carriages (actually, due to fixed formations, trains...) for a few hours, and then have the train in the right place to pick them up again ready for the evening rush hour.
It is simpler just to run the same fixed formation throughout the day. The exception is when trains split or merge to form different services. BR discovered this very rapidly (AIUI, so did the LMS and LNER).
More interesting to me is the abolition of First Class on some services. I can see that becoming common on 'commuter' services at least.
Department hopes to save £4.5m a year by digitising – then binning – about 100m wills that date back 150 years
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/dec/18/ministry-of-justice-plan-to-destroy-historical-wills-is-insane-say-experts
Churchill WS.
"Why is the Ministry of Justice destroying paper wills?
Digitisation may be cheaper — but there are also risks
Mary Harrington"
https://unherd.com/thepost/why-is-the-ministry-of-justice-destroying-paper-wills/
Edit: and paper legal documents.
Don't know if you do genealogical or other historical research, but the wills *are* available online already for a moderate fee - you specify the deceased (in terms of year and page of the probate register) and bingo, a few days later a linky comes to download.
In the old days it was a photocopy in the post.
Pre-1858 (or something like that) E&W wills can be had instantly on line, albeit from a "commercial partner".
You still have to order birth, death and wedding certs onliune as above in E&W - in Scotland they are instantly available.
If it's paper it's easy: acid-free paper, dry cold rooms, shelves. Only problem is bulk
If it's digital it's on a machine, and those machines have to be maintained.
EDIT: we have less than 1% of Greek and Roman literature….
As long as the film isn't destroyed by fire, still readable well into the future as long as you understand the encoding scheme
Tories can only have a fight back narrative with polling scores starting with 3 themselves. What’s interesting from Labour polling slump is Tories have their own malaise at same time, not benefiting from it.
If Elder Statesman Lord Cameron is going to receive all the credit for the Tory flip flop on calling Israel to ceasefire, tonight’s politics hub on Sky was gushing in praise for him, then he must receive credit for saving Labours troubles on this at same time. Starmer and team kept within a micrometer of the government position on this, but the Tory letter from former ministers, remarks from Wallace, Cameron’s “sustained ceasefire” phrase today parroted by Sunak, is different in what way and language from the SNP and Labour left position 4 weeks ago?
So searching across documents for data is impossible.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-67727425
However, the difficulties of the BBC's Domesday 900 project show the risks of relying on digital formats.
Digitise the records, by all means... But it's a bit early to ditch the orginals, I reckon.
EDIT: a relative is currently researching some obscure property records. First person to unfold a property map in a hundred years etc. Using an iPhone and some software, he is surreptitiously building a rather useful database.
When Sir Patrick Stewart appeared as Professor X in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness I may have jizzed myself inside out at the cinema.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Domesday_Project
The data was stored on 12-inch laserdiscs - I have a couple in my garage, and used somewhat propriety hardware to read and display the data. In fact, at company Y I had a working BBC Domesday system in the cubicle I shared with others - made from several other non-working systems. As far as we were aware, that was one of only a few working systems left in the world. That was in 2001, just 15 years after the project. NAd we only had it because we nicked stuff out of skips.
Since then, there have been a series of projects to resurrect that data; most have died a death or are only marginally available.
But boy, could it format a 720kb floppy disk quickly.
#proudestmoment
Versus a modern online archive. For example the bank I worked for decided to change the format of all images on the internal wiki. So they ran a process that did this in the background in a few hours.
@NeilDotObrien
Really disappointing. I point out a mistake in a chart. It is not fixed. It gets retweeted by top data journo. I point out again that it's wrong & prof admits it shouldn't have been included, but he won't delete or correct. Result: misinformation continues to circulate. V poor.
Quote
Rob Ford
@robfordmancs
·
4h
Replying to @NeilDotObrien and @jburnmurdoch
Because the claim made in the title of the slide is correct, and robust across all the other datasets in the slide. I accept that the ESS data series is not the same as the others and should on reflection not be combined with it but removing it does not change the story"
https://twitter.com/NeilDotObrien/status/1736788832853320005
2. What storage media are you using?
3. What budget are you allocating for the continuous maintenance and energy costs required?
4. How are you protecting your archive from malicious states with sophisticated hacking teams, an
array of zero days and the budget to bribe your administrators?
5. What happens when your digital archives is targeted for 'efficiency savings' in a generations time?
Conservative MPs sign letter calling for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza conflict
https://news.sky.com/story/politics-latest-baroness-mone-ppe-labour-government-pandemic-transparency-12593360
How is Sunak’s governments Damascene Conversion on Gaza conflict being reported in Europe and Rest of the world? Is Lord Cameron’s stock rising overseas too?
What a contrast from Truss in the job!
That has all gone. I'd argue that parliamentary sovereignty is now nothing more than the *expression* of the deeper sovereignty of the people. That while, for reasons of practical process, parliament has to embody the people's sovereignty, it nonetheless only holds that temporarily on trust rather than it being innate, hence why it feels it essential to refer questions like Brexit, Scottish independence or the GFA back to the people and to be bound by the decision - because to do otherwise would be to create a crisis of legitimacy. Such a crisis could not exist were parliament genuinely sovereign in practice as well as theory.