If you choose to make a political point out of looking "into the eyes of people I’ve served and represented" over 20 year legal career as a reason to be elected to No10 - as Starmer did on Jan 4 - then the public have a right to know what that actually entailed
This is dangerously close to "enemies of the people" by the Sun here. I thought only the Mail was that wedded to undermining the rule of law but it seems they're not alone.
Perhaps the timing of the election will relate to when the muckspreader finds a nice juicy sticky turd that makes people go "ewwww". They have tried curry and donkeys and Saville. They're now having a try at Starmer persecuted postmasters and Starmer in British Justice Shock.
If they really want to hurt him, just go after what he is. A SIR. Not one of the ordinary people like Rishi Sunak.
Unusual sight of lying snow this morning in south Devon.
What does snow round your way normally do, then?
We had two weeks of it closing roads with the Beast from the East, but prevailing winds are from the SE. Winds from the east are quite rare. It usually thinks about it for a short while, then melts away.
If you choose to make a political point out of looking "into the eyes of people I’ve served and represented" over 20 year legal career as a reason to be elected to No10 - as Starmer did on Jan 4 - then the public have a right to know what that actually entailed
Struggling to see your point. These are all campaigns to stop criminals being sentenced to death for their crimes not to release them. Seems like an ethical campaign to me.
I am no fan of Starmer and I'm sure this type of campaigning works but it is immoral and intended to make him seem as bad or worse than Boris, which he isn't. And anyway Boris isn't there now.
It is identical to @TheKitchenCabinet re Biden and Trump. There is no hiding Trumps flaws so lets try and imply Biden is as bad. He isn't, not by a long way.
https://twitter.com/SeanSafyre/status/1744138937239822685 Found an iPhone on the side of the road... Still in airplane mode with half a battery and open to a baggage claim for #AlaskaAirlines ASA1282 Survived a 16,000 foot drop perfectly intact!
Sounds impressive, but although it would have taken half an hour to reach the ground, its speed of impact would be the same as dropping it from less than ten feet above the ground, I think?
You and Cookie are probably right - for a skydiver, max veolocity is more or less reached in 200 metres - a phone is denser and would accelerate faster, but we're probably talking somewhere around a fairly high building.
The answer to how it survived is mostly to do with what it landed on, as anyone who has ever dropped a phone will know.
https://twitter.com/SeanSafyre/status/1744138937239822685 Found an iPhone on the side of the road... Still in airplane mode with half a battery and open to a baggage claim for #AlaskaAirlines ASA1282 Survived a 16,000 foot drop perfectly intact!
Sounds impressive, but although it would have taken half an hour to reach the ground, its speed of impact would be the same as dropping it from less than ten feet above the ground, I think?
That - doesn't sound right to me. Instinctively, I'd think it would take an iphone a good 100 feet of falling at least to reach terminal velocity. But I'm not sure offhand how to do the sums. Your overall point is right though, I think - falling from a plane isn't much worse than falling from a high building.
Surely better from a plane, if you have time to plan where and how you land?
Also, squirrels can survive a fall from any height, apparently.
All they need to do is use the technology that worked so well in 1969.
Lol. Just wondering where you draw the line on that one. Apollo wasn't exactly accident free - several dead in Apollo 1 and a moon landing abandoned and miraculous recovery in Apollo 13. Do we abandon flight because a window falls out of a plane, go back to horse and carriage because trains and cars crash. Go back to the stone age because people die in fires. I mean where do you draw the line?
I just find it so odd. With very limited technology and virtually zero computer power we managed to fly 250,000 miles to the moon, land, play golf, drive an electric car around, take off and meet up with an orbiter doing 5000 mph around the moon and then fly back to earth and land safely. This was 55 years ago. Since 1972 the furthest a human has flown away from earth is just 350 miles and all these new attempts to send someone back to the moon always have issues. Just imagine telling a person alive in 1972 that by 2024 not only would Apollo 17 be the last time a human went to the moon but it would also be the last time a human left earth orbit. There are now only 4 astronauts who walked on the moon left alive, soon it will be zero.
Im sure people will say lack of funding etc but that is not an explanation. Why hasn't China done it?
Because this time it needs to have a commercial justification. China certainly has the capacity - they've already sent landers which have retrieved samples from the far side of the moon.
The US will return there soon - but the plan is to set up permanent infrastructure, and do it affordably. The equivalent spending on Apollo would be nearly a trillion dollars today.
We had the technology to send man to the moon in 1969, why not just use that?
Every new attempt always has issues. In 1961 the USA had not even been into space, yet just 8 years later they landed and returned from the moon. This was with zero technology compared to today. Other than the fire on the ground for Apollo 1, the Apollo programme had a perfect safety reord and even Apollo 13 managed to orbit the moon despite the explosion (which was caused by a manufacturing error and not poor design)
Its like the first landing of the Boeing 747 at Heathrow in 1970 and then not having another one land there for 50 years.
Because it would enormously expensive, and an extremely dangerous dead end. Great recipe for halting the programme completely if there were a disaster.
Instead, the US is iterating with much cheaper private sector developments, until the technology is proved reliable.
If you choose to make a political point out of looking "into the eyes of people I’ve served and represented" over 20 year legal career as a reason to be elected to No10 - as Starmer did on Jan 4 - then the public have a right to know what that actually entailed
This is dangerously close to "enemies of the people" by the Sun here. I thought only the Mail was that wedded to undermining the rule of law but it seems they're not alone.
I wonder if they’re trying to work an angle to attack him on Savile. He does make an awful lot of “When I was DPP” to make himself seem like the Sheriff riding into town, so his enemies are going to try and dirty that image
The Boris/Tory/Leave vs Starmer/Remain fight really reminds me of Axelrod vs Chuck in Billions - at first you assume Bobby is the bad guy because Chuck is a man of legal honour but they’re both flawed
If you choose to make a political point out of looking "into the eyes of people I’ve served and represented" over 20 year legal career as a reason to be elected to No10 - as Starmer did on Jan 4 - then the public have a right to know what that actually entailed
Struggling to see your point. These are all campaigns to stop criminals being sentenced to death for their crimes not to release them. Seems like an ethical campaign to me.
I am no fan of Starmer and I'm sure this type of campaigning works but it is immoral and intended to make him seem as bad or worse than Boris, which he isn't. And anyway Boris isn't there now.
It is identical to @TheKitchenCabinet re Biden and Trump. There is no hiding Trumps flaws so lets try and imply Biden is as bad. He isn't, not by a long way.
Honestly, why would you say ‘your point’ when it is a tweet from The Sun’s political editor?
Perhaps the timing of the election will relate to when the muckspreader finds a nice juicy sticky turd that makes people go "ewwww". They have tried curry and donkeys and Saville. They're now having a try at Starmer persecuted postmasters and Starmer in British Justice Shock.
If they really want to hurt him, just go after what he is. A SIR. Not one of the ordinary people like Rishi Sunak.
Labour mock up Sunak to look like he’s running a cash and carry in their campaign. Borderline racist but does make him seem less part of an elite
All they need to do is use the technology that worked so well in 1969.
Lol. Just wondering where you draw the line on that one. Apollo wasn't exactly accident free - several dead in Apollo 1 and a moon landing abandoned and miraculous recovery in Apollo 13. Do we abandon flight because a window falls out of a plane, go back to horse and carriage because trains and cars crash. Go back to the stone age because people die in fires. I mean where do you draw the line?
I just find it so odd. With very limited technology and virtually zero computer power we managed to fly 250,000 miles to the moon, land, play golf, drive an electric car around, take off and meet up with an orbiter doing 5000 mph around the moon and then fly back to earth and land safely. This was 55 years ago. Since 1972 the furthest a human has flown away from earth is just 350 miles and all these new attempts to send someone back to the moon always have issues. Just imagine telling a person alive in 1972 that by 2024 not only would Apollo 17 be the last time a human went to the moon but it would also be the last time a human left earth orbit. There are now only 4 astronauts who walked on the moon left alive, soon it will be zero.
Im sure people will say lack of funding etc but that is not an explanation. Why hasn't China done it?
Because this time it needs to have a commercial justification. China certainly has the capacity - they've already sent landers which have retrieved samples from the far side of the moon.
The US will return there soon - but the plan is to set up permanent infrastructure, and do it affordably. The equivalent spending on Apollo would be nearly a trillion dollars today.
We had the technology to send man to the moon in 1969, why not just use that?
Every new attempt always has issues. In 1961 the USA had not even been into space, yet just 8 years later they landed and returned from the moon. This was with zero technology compared to today. Other than the fire on the ground for Apollo 1, the Apollo programme had a perfect safety reord and even Apollo 13 managed to orbit the moon despite the explosion ( which was caused by a manufacturing error and not poor design)
Its like the first landing of the Boeing 747 at Heathrow in 1970 and then not having another one land there for 50 years.
Because we move on. We improve. Nobody would touch Apollo now. Then brilliant. Now it is antiquated. I don't get this wanting to stay antiquated.
Using your logic because Horizon was such a mess we should go back to pencils and ledgers. They worked. Do you believe that? Sadly I'm guess some postmasters will after their appalling experiences, but the failure was not the faults in the code (there always will be) but the way humans handled it (very badly).
Unusual sight of lying snow this morning in south Devon.
What does snow round your way normally do, then?
We had two weeks of it closing roads with the Beast from the East, but prevailing winds are from the SE. Winds from the east are quite rare. It usually thinks about it for a short while, then melts away.
Yes, we had snow (actually, graupel) falling steadily yesterday afternoon, but it didn't settle, and there doesn't seem to have been any overnight. The east wind usually pushes much of the beach up to the end with the pub.
https://twitter.com/SeanSafyre/status/1744138937239822685 Found an iPhone on the side of the road... Still in airplane mode with half a battery and open to a baggage claim for #AlaskaAirlines ASA1282 Survived a 16,000 foot drop perfectly intact!
Sounds impressive, but although it would have taken half an hour to reach the ground, its speed of impact would be the same as dropping it from less than ten feet above the ground, I think?
Half an hour ? Did the phone have it's own parachute ?
If you choose to make a political point out of looking "into the eyes of people I’ve served and represented" over 20 year legal career as a reason to be elected to No10 - as Starmer did on Jan 4 - then the public have a right to know what that actually entailed
Struggling to see your point. These are all campaigns to stop criminals being sentenced to death for their crimes not to release them. Seems like an ethical campaign to me.
I am no fan of Starmer and I'm sure this type of campaigning works but it is immoral and intended to make him seem as bad or worse than Boris, which he isn't. And anyway Boris isn't there now.
It is identical to @TheKitchenCabinet re Biden and Trump. There is no hiding Trumps flaws so lets try and imply Biden is as bad. He isn't, not by a long way.
Honestly, why would you say ‘your point’ when it is a tweet from The Sun’s political editor?
Doh. Well because you posted it, presumably to make YOUR point.
@DavidL asked earlier where, really, the buck stopped as between the PO and government.
According to Nick Wallis, whatever the formal position, PO people were in and out of the Business Department all the time and in reality taking their orders from them. But the focus was all on getting it back into profit and so one can see how in such an environment the Horizon issues and their consequences would have been ignored or downplayed.
https://twitter.com/SeanSafyre/status/1744138937239822685 Found an iPhone on the side of the road... Still in airplane mode with half a battery and open to a baggage claim for #AlaskaAirlines ASA1282 Survived a 16,000 foot drop perfectly intact!
Sounds impressive, but although it would have taken half an hour to reach the ground, its speed of impact would be the same as dropping it from less than ten feet above the ground, I think?
That - doesn't sound right to me. Instinctively, I'd think it would take an iphone a good 100 feet of falling at least to reach terminal velocity. But I'm not sure offhand how to do the sums. Your overall point is right though, I think - falling from a plane isn't much worse than falling from a high building.
Surely better from a plane, if you have time to plan where and how you land?
Also, squirrels can survive a fall from any height, apparently.
Babies have fallen from balconies several stories up, and survived if they land on grass or earth rather than a hard surface. They don't tense as they fall.
https://twitter.com/SeanSafyre/status/1744138937239822685 Found an iPhone on the side of the road... Still in airplane mode with half a battery and open to a baggage claim for #AlaskaAirlines ASA1282 Survived a 16,000 foot drop perfectly intact!
Sounds impressive, but although it would have taken half an hour to reach the ground, its speed of impact would be the same as dropping it from less than ten feet above the ground, I think?
You and Cookie are probably right - for a skydiver, max veolocity is more or less reached in 200 metres - a phone is denser and would accelerate faster, but we're probably talking somewhere around a fairly high building.
The answer to how it survived is mostly to do with what it landed on, as anyone who has ever dropped a phone will know.
Exactly - Nicholas Stephen Alkemade (10 December 1922 – 22 June 1987) was a British tail gunner in the Royal Air Force during World War II who survived a freefall of 18,000 feet (5,490 m) without a parachute after abandoning his out-of-control, burning Avro Lancaster heavy bomber over Germany.
Perhaps the timing of the election will relate to when the muckspreader finds a nice juicy sticky turd that makes people go "ewwww". They have tried curry and donkeys and Saville. They're now having a try at Starmer persecuted postmasters and Starmer in British Justice Shock.
If they really want to hurt him, just go after what he is. A SIR. Not one of the ordinary people like Rishi Sunak.
Labour mock up Sunak to look like he’s running a cash and carry in their campaign. Borderline racist but does make him seem less part of an elite
Hang on, you're saying that only Asian people run cash and carry businesses?
All they need to do is use the technology that worked so well in 1969.
Lol. Just wondering where you draw the line on that one. Apollo wasn't exactly accident free - several dead in Apollo 1 and a moon landing abandoned and miraculous recovery in Apollo 13. Do we abandon flight because a window falls out of a plane, go back to horse and carriage because trains and cars crash. Go back to the stone age because people die in fires. I mean where do you draw the line?
I just find it so odd. With very limited technology and virtually zero computer power we managed to fly 250,000 miles to the moon, land, play golf, drive an electric car around, take off and meet up with an orbiter doing 5000 mph around the moon and then fly back to earth and land safely. This was 55 years ago. Since 1972 the furthest a human has flown away from earth is just 350 miles and all these new attempts to send someone back to the moon always have issues. Just imagine telling a person alive in 1972 that by 2024 not only would Apollo 17 be the last time a human went to the moon but it would also be the last time a human left earth orbit. There are now only 4 astronauts who walked on the moon left alive, soon it will be zero.
Im sure people will say lack of funding etc but that is not an explanation. Why hasn't China done it?
Because this time it needs to have a commercial justification. China certainly has the capacity - they've already sent landers which have retrieved samples from the far side of the moon.
The US will return there soon - but the plan is to set up permanent infrastructure, and do it affordably. The equivalent spending on Apollo would be nearly a trillion dollars today.
We had the technology to send man to the moon in 1969, why not just use that?
Every new attempt always has issues. In 1961 the USA had not even been into space, yet just 8 years later they landed and returned from the moon. This was with zero technology compared to today. Other than the fire on the ground for Apollo 1, the Apollo programme had a perfect safety reord and even Apollo 13 managed to orbit the moon despite the explosion ( which was caused by a manufacturing error and not poor design)
Its like the first landing of the Boeing 747 at Heathrow in 1970 and then not having another one land there for 50 years.
Because we move on. We improve. Nobody would touch Apollo now. Then brilliant. Now it is antiquated. I don't get this wanting to stay antiquated.
Using your logic because Horizon was such a mess we should go back to pencils and ledgers. They worked. Do you believe that? Sadly I'm guess some postmasters will after their appalling experiences, but the failure was not the faults in the code (there always will be) but the way humans handled it (very badly).
One subpostmistress did keep her own handwritten accounts of all her transactions and so avoided prosecution because she was able to show what was actually going on at her branch.
Perhaps the timing of the election will relate to when the muckspreader finds a nice juicy sticky turd that makes people go "ewwww". They have tried curry and donkeys and Saville. They're now having a try at Starmer persecuted postmasters and Starmer in British Justice Shock.
If they really want to hurt him, just go after what he is. A SIR. Not one of the ordinary people like Rishi Sunak.
Labour mock up Sunak to look like he’s running a cash and carry in their campaign. Borderline racist but does make him seem less part of an elite
Hang on, you're saying that only Asian people run cash and carry businesses?
Wow...
You’re saying it’s not a stereotype? How wet is it behind your ears?
All they need to do is use the technology that worked so well in 1969.
Lol. Just wondering where you draw the line on that one. Apollo wasn't exactly accident free - several dead in Apollo 1 and a moon landing abandoned and miraculous recovery in Apollo 13. Do we abandon flight because a window falls out of a plane, go back to horse and carriage because trains and cars crash. Go back to the stone age because people die in fires. I mean where do you draw the line?
I just find it so odd. With very limited technology and virtually zero computer power we managed to fly 250,000 miles to the moon, land, play golf, drive an electric car around, take off and meet up with an orbiter doing 5000 mph around the moon and then fly back to earth and land safely. This was 55 years ago. Since 1972 the furthest a human has flown away from earth is just 350 miles and all these new attempts to send someone back to the moon always have issues. Just imagine telling a person alive in 1972 that by 2024 not only would Apollo 17 be the last time a human went to the moon but it would also be the last time a human left earth orbit. There are now only 4 astronauts who walked on the moon left alive, soon it will be zero.
Im sure people will say lack of funding etc but that is not an explanation. Why hasn't China done it?
Because this time it needs to have a commercial justification. China certainly has the capacity - they've already sent landers which have retrieved samples from the far side of the moon.
The US will return there soon - but the plan is to set up permanent infrastructure, and do it affordably. The equivalent spending on Apollo would be nearly a trillion dollars today.
We had the technology to send man to the moon in 1969, why not just use that?
Every new attempt always has issues. In 1961 the USA had not even been into space, yet just 8 years later they landed and returned from the moon. This was with zero technology compared to today. Other than the fire on the ground for Apollo 1, the Apollo programme had a perfect safety reord and even Apollo 13 managed to orbit the moon despite the explosion ( which was caused by a manufacturing error and not poor design)
Its like the first landing of the Boeing 747 at Heathrow in 1970 and then not having another one land there for 50 years.
Because we move on. We improve. Nobody would touch Apollo now. Then brilliant. Now it is antiquated. I don't get this wanting to stay antiquated.
Using your logic because Horizon was such a mess we should go back to pencils and ledgers. They worked. Do you believe that? Sadly I'm guess some postmasters will after their appalling experiences, but the failure was not the faults in the code (there always will be) but the way humans handled it (very badly).
The Horizon system was effectively the sub-postmaster's accounting system, bank account, auditor & prosecutor ! In any other business those functions are very very separate. We use paper slips for the cash tins.
All they need to do is use the technology that worked so well in 1969.
Lol. Just wondering where you draw the line on that one. Apollo wasn't exactly accident free - several dead in Apollo 1 and a moon landing abandoned and miraculous recovery in Apollo 13. Do we abandon flight because a window falls out of a plane, go back to horse and carriage because trains and cars crash. Go back to the stone age because people die in fires. I mean where do you draw the line?
Nixon delayed one of the lunar landings (apollo 17, I think) so, if there was an accident, it would not interfere with an election campaign.
The entire Apollo stack was very marginal; ISTR there was a meeting in about 1970, where engineers could not guarantee even a 1-in-1 chance of any individual mission succeeding, and only a 75% chance of crew surviving any particular mission.
I enjoyed the space expert on R4 this morning describing the loss of the lunar module, which will become space debris in a day or two, as a "minor setback". "Just a flesh wound?" came back the retort from the presenter!
The NASA/private sector moon program assumed from the start that they might lose several efforts. That was the point of having multiple 'shots on goal'. Still disappointing.
Fifty years ago Apollo 11 blasted off from the Kennedy Space Centre to put a man on the Moon. When NASA wrote the computer program that initiated that launch, you'd have thought they'd have given it a pretty dry name. "Launch program one", maybe? Oh no, not a word of it. When the geeks at NASA blasted Neil Armstrong and crew into the heavens they named the computer program: "Burn Baby Burn".
All they need to do is use the technology that worked so well in 1969.
Lol. Just wondering where you draw the line on that one. Apollo wasn't exactly accident free - several dead in Apollo 1 and a moon landing abandoned and miraculous recovery in Apollo 13. Do we abandon flight because a window falls out of a plane, go back to horse and carriage because trains and cars crash. Go back to the stone age because people die in fires. I mean where do you draw the line?
I just find it so odd. With very limited technology and virtually zero computer power we managed to fly 250,000 miles to the moon, land, play golf, drive an electric car around, take off and meet up with an orbiter doing 5000 mph around the moon and then fly back to earth and land safely. This was 55 years ago. Since 1972 the furthest a human has flown away from earth is just 350 miles and all these new attempts to send someone back to the moon always have issues. Just imagine telling a person alive in 1972 that by 2024 not only would Apollo 17 be the last time a human went to the moon but it would also be the last time a human left earth orbit. There are now only 4 astronauts who walked on the moon left alive, soon it will be zero.
Im sure people will say lack of funding etc but that is not an explanation. Why hasn't China done it?
Because this time it needs to have a commercial justification. China certainly has the capacity - they've already sent landers which have retrieved samples from the far side of the moon.
The US will return there soon - but the plan is to set up permanent infrastructure, and do it affordably. The equivalent spending on Apollo would be nearly a trillion dollars today.
We had the technology to send man to the moon in 1969, why not just use that?
Every new attempt always has issues. In 1961 the USA had not even been into space, yet just 8 years later they landed and returned from the moon. This was with zero technology compared to today. Other than the fire on the ground for Apollo 1, the Apollo programme had a perfect safety reord and even Apollo 13 managed to orbit the moon despite the explosion ( which was caused by a manufacturing error and not poor design)
Its like the first landing of the Boeing 747 at Heathrow in 1970 and then not having another one land there for 50 years.
Because we move on. We improve. Nobody would touch Apollo now. Then brilliant. Now it is antiquated. I don't get this wanting to stay antiquated.
Using your logic because Horizon was such a mess we should go back to pencils and ledgers. They worked. Do you believe that? Sadly I'm guess some postmasters will after their appalling experiences, but the failure was not the faults in the code (there always will be) but the way humans handled it (very badly).
One subpostmistress did keep her own handwritten accounts of all her transactions and so avoided prosecution because she was able to show what was actually going on at her branch.
It is a sad that, that is true. It is also true, from my experiences, I would probably do the same.
If you choose to make a political point out of looking "into the eyes of people I’ve served and represented" over 20 year legal career as a reason to be elected to No10 - as Starmer did on Jan 4 - then the public have a right to know what that actually entailed
Struggling to see your point. These are all campaigns to stop criminals being sentenced to death for their crimes not to release them. Seems like an ethical campaign to me.
I am no fan of Starmer and I'm sure this type of campaigning works but it is immoral and intended to make him seem as bad or worse than Boris, which he isn't. And anyway Boris isn't there now.
It is identical to @TheKitchenCabinet re Biden and Trump. There is no hiding Trumps flaws so lets try and imply Biden is as bad. He isn't, not by a long way.
Honestly, why would you say ‘your point’ when it is a tweet from The Sun’s political editor?
Doh. Well because you posted it, presumably to make YOUR point.
It’s a follow up from his earlier tweet that I posted and people criticised me for.
Either way, if it was my point how can you struggle to see it? In fact you don’t struggle to see it, as you’ve said what it is in your second paragraph
https://twitter.com/SeanSafyre/status/1744138937239822685 Found an iPhone on the side of the road... Still in airplane mode with half a battery and open to a baggage claim for #AlaskaAirlines ASA1282 Survived a 16,000 foot drop perfectly intact!
Sounds impressive, but although it would have taken half an hour to reach the ground, its speed of impact would be the same as dropping it from less than ten feet above the ground, I think?
That - doesn't sound right to me. Instinctively, I'd think it would take an iphone a good 100 feet of falling at least to reach terminal velocity. But I'm not sure offhand how to do the sums. Your overall point is right though, I think - falling from a plane isn't much worse than falling from a high building.
Surely better from a plane, if you have time to plan where and how you land?
Also, squirrels can survive a fall from any height, apparently.
Yes, probably. Though how well I would go about planning where and how to land while plummeting from an aeroplane I have my doubts.
I think in theory squirrels can survive a fall from any height - but a couple of years ago my wife, along with a few others, saw one fall out of a tree onto a road. It wasn't killed, but it was clearly quite injured. Some builders working on a house moved it out of the road to a place of safety. The squirrel's friend (sibling? partner? parent? child?) came and sat with it and tried to calm it. Not knowing what to do, the humans involved called, I think, the RSPCA, who came and took them both away and killed them, because grey squirrels are an invasive species, which I don't think was the ending anyone involved, human or sciurine, wanted.
If you choose to make a political point out of looking "into the eyes of people I’ve served and represented" over 20 year legal career as a reason to be elected to No10 - as Starmer did on Jan 4 - then the public have a right to know what that actually entailed
Struggling to see your point. These are all campaigns to stop criminals being sentenced to death for their crimes not to release them. Seems like an ethical campaign to me.
I am no fan of Starmer and I'm sure this type of campaigning works but it is immoral and intended to make him seem as bad or worse than Boris, which he isn't. And anyway Boris isn't there now.
It is identical to @TheKitchenCabinet re Biden and Trump. There is no hiding Trumps flaws so lets try and imply Biden is as bad. He isn't, not by a long way.
Indeed, being opposed to capital punishment and acting on those belifs makes me more favourable to Starmer rather than less. Unlike most politicians (if you will excuse my cynicism), he will at least be able to get to the end of his career and honestly say he did some good in the world.
All they need to do is use the technology that worked so well in 1969.
Lol. Just wondering where you draw the line on that one. Apollo wasn't exactly accident free - several dead in Apollo 1 and a moon landing abandoned and miraculous recovery in Apollo 13. Do we abandon flight because a window falls out of a plane, go back to horse and carriage because trains and cars crash. Go back to the stone age because people die in fires. I mean where do you draw the line?
I just find it so odd. With very limited technology and virtually zero computer power we managed to fly 250,000 miles to the moon, land, play golf, drive an electric car around, take off and meet up with an orbiter doing 5000 mph around the moon and then fly back to earth and land safely. This was 55 years ago. Since 1972 the furthest a human has flown away from earth is just 350 miles and all these new attempts to send someone back to the moon always have issues. Just imagine telling a person alive in 1972 that by 2024 not only would Apollo 17 be the last time a human went to the moon but it would also be the last time a human left earth orbit. There are now only 4 astronauts who walked on the moon left alive, soon it will be zero.
Im sure people will say lack of funding etc but that is not an explanation. Why hasn't China done it?
Because this time it needs to have a commercial justification. China certainly has the capacity - they've already sent landers which have retrieved samples from the far side of the moon.
The US will return there soon - but the plan is to set up permanent infrastructure, and do it affordably. The equivalent spending on Apollo would be nearly a trillion dollars today.
We had the technology to send man to the moon in 1969, why not just use that?
Every new attempt always has issues. In 1961 the USA had not even been into space, yet just 8 years later they landed and returned from the moon. This was with zero technology compared to today. Other than the fire on the ground for Apollo 1, the Apollo programme had a perfect safety reord and even Apollo 13 managed to orbit the moon despite the explosion ( which was caused by a manufacturing error and not poor design)
Its like the first landing of the Boeing 747 at Heathrow in 1970 and then not having another one land there for 50 years.
Because we move on. We improve. Nobody would touch Apollo now. Then brilliant. Now it is antiquated. I don't get this wanting to stay antiquated.
Using your logic because Horizon was such a mess we should go back to pencils and ledgers. They worked. Do you believe that? Sadly I'm guess some postmasters will after their appalling experiences, but the failure was not the faults in the code (there always will be) but the way humans handled it (very badly).
My logic is Apollo worked, its in various Science Museums around the world, use that design and upgrade it to include modern technology. Thats whats been happening in aviation for years. A jet plane now looks very similar to a jet plane from the 1970s and it does basically the same job, but the technology in it is so much better. Why hasn't that been done with Apollo?
@DavidL asked earlier where, really, the buck stopped as between the PO and government.
According to Nick Wallis, whatever the formal position, PO people were in and out of the Business Department all the time and in reality taking their orders from them. But the focus was all on getting it back into profit and so one can see how in such an environment the Horizon issues and their consequences would have been ignored or downplayed.
Simplistically, there's a chain of people from the lowly programmer through Fujitsu management into Post Office management and finishing with the minister. Up went the message "we've checked and the system is working fine", and the culprit is the first person and then every person to have said that knowing it wasn't true, with culpability for those further up the chain who believed it and reasonably had the wherewithal to double check themselves. That's well below you get up to any of the government ministers, Labour, LibDem or Tory.
Government will have some accountability for their decisions having contributed to creating what became the mess in the first place.
Government has a lot more accountability for not stepping in once the issues were in the public arena, and especially after the facts had been established in court.
Despite the Tory attempts at smears about what happened or didn't happen in the late 1990s through to early 2010s, the showering of preferment on Vennells when she left the PO in 2019, and the failure to give any priority to the issue until it became a prime time TV drama, are the most egregious mistakes from the politicians. Plus some historic changes to the law in respect of computer evidence and false convictions, as evidenced by our CF.
All they need to do is use the technology that worked so well in 1969.
Lol. Just wondering where you draw the line on that one. Apollo wasn't exactly accident free - several dead in Apollo 1 and a moon landing abandoned and miraculous recovery in Apollo 13. Do we abandon flight because a window falls out of a plane, go back to horse and carriage because trains and cars crash. Go back to the stone age because people die in fires. I mean where do you draw the line?
I just find it so odd. With very limited technology and virtually zero computer power we managed to fly 250,000 miles to the moon, land, play golf, drive an electric car around, take off and meet up with an orbiter doing 5000 mph around the moon and then fly back to earth and land safely. This was 55 years ago. Since 1972 the furthest a human has flown away from earth is just 350 miles and all these new attempts to send someone back to the moon always have issues. Just imagine telling a person alive in 1972 that by 2024 not only would Apollo 17 be the last time a human went to the moon but it would also be the last time a human left earth orbit. There are now only 4 astronauts who walked on the moon left alive, soon it will be zero.
Im sure people will say lack of funding etc but that is not an explanation. Why hasn't China done it?
Because this time it needs to have a commercial justification. China certainly has the capacity - they've already sent landers which have retrieved samples from the far side of the moon.
The US will return there soon - but the plan is to set up permanent infrastructure, and do it affordably. The equivalent spending on Apollo would be nearly a trillion dollars today.
We had the technology to send man to the moon in 1969, why not just use that?
Every new attempt always has issues. In 1961 the USA had not even been into space, yet just 8 years later they landed and returned from the moon. This was with zero technology compared to today. Other than the fire on the ground for Apollo 1, the Apollo programme had a perfect safety reord and even Apollo 13 managed to orbit the moon despite the explosion ( which was caused by a manufacturing error and not poor design)
Its like the first landing of the Boeing 747 at Heathrow in 1970 and then not having another one land there for 50 years.
Because we move on. We improve. Nobody would touch Apollo now. Then brilliant. Now it is antiquated. I don't get this wanting to stay antiquated.
Using your logic because Horizon was such a mess we should go back to pencils and ledgers. They worked. Do you believe that? Sadly I'm guess some postmasters will after their appalling experiences, but the failure was not the faults in the code (there always will be) but the way humans handled it (very badly).
https://twitter.com/SeanSafyre/status/1744138937239822685 Found an iPhone on the side of the road... Still in airplane mode with half a battery and open to a baggage claim for #AlaskaAirlines ASA1282 Survived a 16,000 foot drop perfectly intact!
Sounds impressive, but although it would have taken half an hour to reach the ground, its speed of impact would be the same as dropping it from less than ten feet above the ground, I think?
Half an hour ? Did the phone have it's own parachute ?
That's why you pay a premium for Apple products. You wouldn't get an app like that on an Android phone.
All they need to do is use the technology that worked so well in 1969.
Lol. Just wondering where you draw the line on that one. Apollo wasn't exactly accident free - several dead in Apollo 1 and a moon landing abandoned and miraculous recovery in Apollo 13. Do we abandon flight because a window falls out of a plane, go back to horse and carriage because trains and cars crash. Go back to the stone age because people die in fires. I mean where do you draw the line?
I just find it so odd. With very limited technology and virtually zero computer power we managed to fly 250,000 miles to the moon, land, play golf, drive an electric car around, take off and meet up with an orbiter doing 5000 mph around the moon and then fly back to earth and land safely. This was 55 years ago. Since 1972 the furthest a human has flown away from earth is just 350 miles and all these new attempts to send someone back to the moon always have issues. Just imagine telling a person alive in 1972 that by 2024 not only would Apollo 17 be the last time a human went to the moon but it would also be the last time a human left earth orbit. There are now only 4 astronauts who walked on the moon left alive, soon it will be zero.
Im sure people will say lack of funding etc but that is not an explanation. Why hasn't China done it?
Because this time it needs to have a commercial justification. China certainly has the capacity - they've already sent landers which have retrieved samples from the far side of the moon.
The US will return there soon - but the plan is to set up permanent infrastructure, and do it affordably. The equivalent spending on Apollo would be nearly a trillion dollars today.
We had the technology to send man to the moon in 1969, why not just use that?
Every new attempt always has issues. In 1961 the USA had not even been into space, yet just 8 years later they landed and returned from the moon. This was with zero technology compared to today. Other than the fire on the ground for Apollo 1, the Apollo programme had a perfect safety reord and even Apollo 13 managed to orbit the moon despite the explosion ( which was caused by a manufacturing error and not poor design)
Its like the first landing of the Boeing 747 at Heathrow in 1970 and then not having another one land there for 50 years.
The reason the Apollo program stopped was this -
The Apollo program was a drop-everything-get-there-first program. The designers deliberately chose a system they could build faster, but was more expensive to use. Each mission was a complete throw away. The payloads could not be expanded (much)
So all you could do was send 2 men to the moon for a few days.
Added to this, the whole system was incredibly dangerous. The Lunar Lander, in particular was full of systems with no redundancy (weight) that had to work perfectly.
NASA lobbied Nixon to replace Apollo with the Shuttle. Which they saw as moving back to the “correct” way of doing space - see X15 and X20. This would make payload to orbit so cheap that missions to Moon and Mars could be assembled in orbit. And was supposed to be much, much safer.
The costs escalated and the Shuttle system turned out to be a dog. And quite dangerous. So using it for more than space station re supply never happened.
The Shuttle became the political incumbent system - billions spent in the right places. So moving on from Shuttle was almost impossible.
So the US space program got stuck in a rut for decades.
Interestingly, SpaceX has reached some of the numbers that were promised for Shuttle - launching every week, with a marginal launch cost of $28 million dollars (at one point, it was claimed that the marginal cost of a shuttle launch would be $20 million. In 1975 dollars)
https://twitter.com/SeanSafyre/status/1744138937239822685 Found an iPhone on the side of the road... Still in airplane mode with half a battery and open to a baggage claim for #AlaskaAirlines ASA1282 Survived a 16,000 foot drop perfectly intact!
Sounds impressive, but although it would have taken half an hour to reach the ground, its speed of impact would be the same as dropping it from less than ten feet above the ground, I think?
You and Cookie are probably right - for a skydiver, max veolocity is more or less reached in 200 metres - a phone is denser and would accelerate faster, but we're probably talking somewhere around a fairly high building.
The answer to how it survived is mostly to do with what it landed on, as anyone who has ever dropped a phone will know.
Exactly - Nicholas Stephen Alkemade (10 December 1922 – 22 June 1987) was a British tail gunner in the Royal Air Force during World War II who survived a freefall of 18,000 feet (5,490 m) without a parachute after abandoning his out-of-control, burning Avro Lancaster heavy bomber over Germany.
A few years ago a Wiltshire woman survived a skydiving parachute sabotage murder attempt
She fell from about four thousand feet into a newly ploughed field
https://twitter.com/SeanSafyre/status/1744138937239822685 Found an iPhone on the side of the road... Still in airplane mode with half a battery and open to a baggage claim for #AlaskaAirlines ASA1282 Survived a 16,000 foot drop perfectly intact!
Sounds impressive, but although it would have taken half an hour to reach the ground, its speed of impact would be the same as dropping it from less than ten feet above the ground, I think?
You and Cookie are probably right - for a skydiver, max veolocity is more or less reached in 200 metres - a phone is denser and would accelerate faster, but we're probably talking somewhere around a fairly high building.
The answer to how it survived is mostly to do with what it landed on, as anyone who has ever dropped a phone will know.
Exactly - Nicholas Stephen Alkemade (10 December 1922 – 22 June 1987) was a British tail gunner in the Royal Air Force during World War II who survived a freefall of 18,000 feet (5,490 m) without a parachute after abandoning his out-of-control, burning Avro Lancaster heavy bomber over Germany.
Vesna Vulovic (not a BG3 character as the name implies) fell onto Czechoslovakia from a DC-9 at FL300+.
All they need to do is use the technology that worked so well in 1969.
Lol. Just wondering where you draw the line on that one. Apollo wasn't exactly accident free - several dead in Apollo 1 and a moon landing abandoned and miraculous recovery in Apollo 13. Do we abandon flight because a window falls out of a plane, go back to horse and carriage because trains and cars crash. Go back to the stone age because people die in fires. I mean where do you draw the line?
I just find it so odd. With very limited technology and virtually zero computer power we managed to fly 250,000 miles to the moon, land, play golf, drive an electric car around, take off and meet up with an orbiter doing 5000 mph around the moon and then fly back to earth and land safely. This was 55 years ago. Since 1972 the furthest a human has flown away from earth is just 350 miles and all these new attempts to send someone back to the moon always have issues. Just imagine telling a person alive in 1972 that by 2024 not only would Apollo 17 be the last time a human went to the moon but it would also be the last time a human left earth orbit. There are now only 4 astronauts who walked on the moon left alive, soon it will be zero.
Im sure people will say lack of funding etc but that is not an explanation. Why hasn't China done it?
Because this time it needs to have a commercial justification. China certainly has the capacity - they've already sent landers which have retrieved samples from the far side of the moon.
The US will return there soon - but the plan is to set up permanent infrastructure, and do it affordably. The equivalent spending on Apollo would be nearly a trillion dollars today.
We had the technology to send man to the moon in 1969, why not just use that?
Every new attempt always has issues. In 1961 the USA had not even been into space, yet just 8 years later they landed and returned from the moon. This was with zero technology compared to today. Other than the fire on the ground for Apollo 1, the Apollo programme had a perfect safety reord and even Apollo 13 managed to orbit the moon despite the explosion ( which was caused by a manufacturing error and not poor design)
Its like the first landing of the Boeing 747 at Heathrow in 1970 and then not having another one land there for 50 years.
Because we move on. We improve. Nobody would touch Apollo now. Then brilliant. Now it is antiquated. I don't get this wanting to stay antiquated.
Using your logic because Horizon was such a mess we should go back to pencils and ledgers. They worked. Do you believe that? Sadly I'm guess some postmasters will after their appalling experiences, but the failure was not the faults in the code (there always will be) but the way humans handled it (very badly).
The Horizon system was effectively the sub-postmaster's accounting system, bank account, auditor & prosecutor ! In any other business those functions are very very separate. We use paper slips for the cash tins.
And the fatal weakness in it was that the subpostmasters, despite being self-employed business owners, couldn't get any business information out of the system other than till receipts transaction by transaction, and what the system thought their weekly balance should be, afterwards.
All they need to do is use the technology that worked so well in 1969.
Lol. Just wondering where you draw the line on that one. Apollo wasn't exactly accident free - several dead in Apollo 1 and a moon landing abandoned and miraculous recovery in Apollo 13. Do we abandon flight because a window falls out of a plane, go back to horse and carriage because trains and cars crash. Go back to the stone age because people die in fires. I mean where do you draw the line?
I just find it so odd. With very limited technology and virtually zero computer power we managed to fly 250,000 miles to the moon, land, play golf, drive an electric car around, take off and meet up with an orbiter doing 5000 mph around the moon and then fly back to earth and land safely. This was 55 years ago. Since 1972 the furthest a human has flown away from earth is just 350 miles and all these new attempts to send someone back to the moon always have issues. Just imagine telling a person alive in 1972 that by 2024 not only would Apollo 17 be the last time a human went to the moon but it would also be the last time a human left earth orbit. There are now only 4 astronauts who walked on the moon left alive, soon it will be zero.
Im sure people will say lack of funding etc but that is not an explanation. Why hasn't China done it?
Because this time it needs to have a commercial justification. China certainly has the capacity - they've already sent landers which have retrieved samples from the far side of the moon.
The US will return there soon - but the plan is to set up permanent infrastructure, and do it affordably. The equivalent spending on Apollo would be nearly a trillion dollars today.
We had the technology to send man to the moon in 1969, why not just use that?
Every new attempt always has issues. In 1961 the USA had not even been into space, yet just 8 years later they landed and returned from the moon. This was with zero technology compared to today. Other than the fire on the ground for Apollo 1, the Apollo programme had a perfect safety reord and even Apollo 13 managed to orbit the moon despite the explosion ( which was caused by a manufacturing error and not poor design)
Its like the first landing of the Boeing 747 at Heathrow in 1970 and then not having another one land there for 50 years.
The reason the Apollo program stopped was this -
The Apollo program was a drop-everything-get-there-first program. The designers deliberately chose a system they could build faster, but was more expensive to use. Each mission was a complete throw away. The payloads could not be expanded (much)
So all you could do was send 2 men to the moon for a few days.
Added to this, the whole system was incredibly dangerous. The Lunar Lander, in particular was full of systems with no redundancy (weight) that had to work perfectly.
NASA lobbied Nixon to replace Apollo with the Shuttle. Which they saw as moving back to the “correct” way of doing space - see X15 and X20. This would make payload to orbit so cheap that missions to Moon and Mars could be assembled in orbit. And was supposed to be much, much safer.
The costs escalated and the Shuttle system turned out to be a dog. And quite dangerous. So using it for more than space station re supply never happened.
The Shuttle became the political incumbent system - billions spent in the right places. So moving on from Shuttle was almost impossible.
So the US space program got stuck in a rut for decades.
Interestingly, SpaceX has reached some of the numbers that were promised for Shuttle - launching every week, with a marginal launch cost of $28 million dollars (at one point, it was claimed that the marginal cost of a shuttle launch would be $20 million. In 1975 dollars)
It's a bit lost in the news of the lunar lander mishap, but ULA's Vulcan Centaur had it's maiden launch I think and seems to have worked well. Of course it can't influence the payload after deployment - and ULA will want to double check the release didn't damage the payload on their side.
All they need to do is use the technology that worked so well in 1969.
Lol. Just wondering where you draw the line on that one. Apollo wasn't exactly accident free - several dead in Apollo 1 and a moon landing abandoned and miraculous recovery in Apollo 13. Do we abandon flight because a window falls out of a plane, go back to horse and carriage because trains and cars crash. Go back to the stone age because people die in fires. I mean where do you draw the line?
I just find it so odd. With very limited technology and virtually zero computer power we managed to fly 250,000 miles to the moon, land, play golf, drive an electric car around, take off and meet up with an orbiter doing 5000 mph around the moon and then fly back to earth and land safely. This was 55 years ago. Since 1972 the furthest a human has flown away from earth is just 350 miles and all these new attempts to send someone back to the moon always have issues. Just imagine telling a person alive in 1972 that by 2024 not only would Apollo 17 be the last time a human went to the moon but it would also be the last time a human left earth orbit. There are now only 4 astronauts who walked on the moon left alive, soon it will be zero.
Im sure people will say lack of funding etc but that is not an explanation. Why hasn't China done it?
Because this time it needs to have a commercial justification. China certainly has the capacity - they've already sent landers which have retrieved samples from the far side of the moon.
The US will return there soon - but the plan is to set up permanent infrastructure, and do it affordably. The equivalent spending on Apollo would be nearly a trillion dollars today.
We had the technology to send man to the moon in 1969, why not just use that?
Every new attempt always has issues. In 1961 the USA had not even been into space, yet just 8 years later they landed and returned from the moon. This was with zero technology compared to today. Other than the fire on the ground for Apollo 1, the Apollo programme had a perfect safety reord and even Apollo 13 managed to orbit the moon despite the explosion ( which was caused by a manufacturing error and not poor design)
Its like the first landing of the Boeing 747 at Heathrow in 1970 and then not having another one land there for 50 years.
The reason the Apollo program stopped was this -
The Apollo program was a drop-everything-get-there-first program. The designers deliberately chose a system they could build faster, but was more expensive to use. Each mission was a complete throw away. The payloads could not be expanded (much)
So all you could do was send 2 men to the moon for a few days.
Added to this, the whole system was incredibly dangerous. The Lunar Lander, in particular was full of systems with no redundancy (weight) that had to work perfectly.
NASA lobbied Nixon to replace Apollo with the Shuttle. Which they saw as moving back to the “correct” way of doing space - see X15 and X20. This would make payload to orbit so cheap that missions to Moon and Mars could be assembled in orbit. And was supposed to be much, much safer.
The costs escalated and the Shuttle system turned out to be a dog. And quite dangerous. So using it for more than space station re supply never happened.
The Shuttle became the political incumbent system - billions spent in the right places. So moving on from Shuttle was almost impossible.
So the US space program got stuck in a rut for decades.
Interestingly, SpaceX has reached some of the numbers that were promised for Shuttle - launching every week, with a marginal launch cost of $28 million dollars (at one point, it was claimed that the marginal cost of a shuttle launch would be $20 million. In 1975 dollars)
"all you could do was send 2 men to the moon for a few days."
We can't do that now, the Apollo astronauts also managed to put together an electric car on the moon and drive around in it so they clearly did not think the lunar lander was that dangerous.
If you choose to make a political point out of looking "into the eyes of people I’ve served and represented" over 20 year legal career as a reason to be elected to No10 - as Starmer did on Jan 4 - then the public have a right to know what that actually entailed
Struggling to see your point. These are all campaigns to stop criminals being sentenced to death for their crimes not to release them. Seems like an ethical campaign to me.
I am no fan of Starmer and I'm sure this type of campaigning works but it is immoral and intended to make him seem as bad or worse than Boris, which he isn't. And anyway Boris isn't there now.
It is identical to @TheKitchenCabinet re Biden and Trump. There is no hiding Trumps flaws so lets try and imply Biden is as bad. He isn't, not by a long way.
Honestly, why would you say ‘your point’ when it is a tweet from The Sun’s political editor?
Doh. Well because you posted it, presumably to make YOUR point.
It’s a follow up from his earlier tweet that I posted and people criticised me for.
Either way, if it was my point how can you struggle to see it? In fact you don’t struggle to see it, as you’ve said what it is in your second paragraph
Sorry this is getting bizarre. So you are saying I do see your point because I have said what it is in my 2nd paragraph. You freely admit what I have said in my 2nd paragraph is your point? You really are? I was giving you credit for the fact that you couldn't possibly mean that.
Let's us get this clear you are saying that you approve of campaigns that immorally try and make politicians look worse by misrepresenting ethical actions as evil.
https://twitter.com/SeanSafyre/status/1744138937239822685 Found an iPhone on the side of the road... Still in airplane mode with half a battery and open to a baggage claim for #AlaskaAirlines ASA1282 Survived a 16,000 foot drop perfectly intact!
Sounds impressive, but although it would have taken half an hour to reach the ground, its speed of impact would be the same as dropping it from less than ten feet above the ground, I think?
That - doesn't sound right to me. Instinctively, I'd think it would take an iphone a good 100 feet of falling at least to reach terminal velocity. But I'm not sure offhand how to do the sums. Your overall point is right though, I think - falling from a plane isn't much worse than falling from a high building.
Surely better from a plane, if you have time to plan where and how you land?
Also, squirrels can survive a fall from any height, apparently.
Yes, probably. Though how well I would go about planning where and how to land while plummeting from an aeroplane I have my doubts.
I think in theory squirrels can survive a fall from any height - but a couple of years ago my wife, along with a few others, saw one fall out of a tree onto a road. It wasn't killed, but it was clearly quite injured. Some builders working on a house moved it out of the road to a place of safety. The squirrel's friend (sibling? partner? parent? child?) came and sat with it and tried to calm it. Not knowing what to do, the humans involved called, I think, the RSPCA, who came and took them both away and killed them, because grey squirrels are an invasive species, which I don't think was the ending anyone involved, human or sciurine, wanted.
They should have got some auburn hair dye and given it a good wash in it, first, since reds are protected
It has been reported Ed Davey avoided tonight's debate on the Royal Mail scandal in the house
Not a good look
Newsnight asked Bates about Davey last night, and he replied that he didn’t want to single out Davey and blamed the people advising him more. When they asked him about whether Vennells should return her CBE, he was much more combative, asking who made the decision to give it to her in the first place.
Bates can surely see how the Tories don’t have his or his SPMRs interests at heart at all, but are simply flailing around trying to pin blame on the opposition leaders - both to try and distract from the fact that Tories have presided over most of this mess and dragged their feet at resolving it for years, and are in a desperate political predicament looking for any tactic, however cynical or crass, to try rescue some popularity.
Before long we should start to learn more about the relationship between the Government and the PO Board and senior management. As you have noted elsewhere, Nick Wallis indicated in his book that it was a close one, but so far the Inquiry has barely touched the subject. Vennells' testimony will be particularly interesting in this respect.
My guess is that that we will end up with confirmation of what many of us feel already, i.e. that no Party comes out of this well, but the one that has been in charge for the past 13 years is going to have to shoulder most of the blame, fair or not.
As you've previously noted, 2013 is the year beyond which it was no longer really possible to argue that it was all some dreadful mistake.
I'm not able to check at this moment but if that's when Second Sight began to report its concerns and the PO sacked it as a result, I would agree.
First real day back after a lovely Christmas holiday in Barcelona with one thing on my mind - people who dislike the idea of 15 minute cities are insane. Staying at my friends flat we were one block away from a square with 2 independent cafes, 2 independent pharmacies, an independent bakery, an independent fruit and veg shop, and a Spanish brand shop chain place. And a square like this was every 5-6 blocks. Not to mention all the independent butchers (as a vegetarian, no use for, but still good to see) and the ease of walking, the inclusion of regular benches and space for small greens / plazas and the general slower pace of Mediterranean living. Rinse and repeat here, please and thank you.
https://twitter.com/SeanSafyre/status/1744138937239822685 Found an iPhone on the side of the road... Still in airplane mode with half a battery and open to a baggage claim for #AlaskaAirlines ASA1282 Survived a 16,000 foot drop perfectly intact!
Sounds impressive, but although it would have taken half an hour to reach the ground, its speed of impact would be the same as dropping it from less than ten feet above the ground, I think?
You and Cookie are probably right - for a skydiver, max veolocity is more or less reached in 200 metres - a phone is denser and would accelerate faster, but we're probably talking somewhere around a fairly high building.
The answer to how it survived is mostly to do with what it landed on, as anyone who has ever dropped a phone will know.
Exactly - Nicholas Stephen Alkemade (10 December 1922 – 22 June 1987) was a British tail gunner in the Royal Air Force during World War II who survived a freefall of 18,000 feet (5,490 m) without a parachute after abandoning his out-of-control, burning Avro Lancaster heavy bomber over Germany.
A few years ago a Wiltshire woman survived a skydiving parachute sabotage murder attempt
She fell from about four thousand feet into a newly ploughed field
Reminds me of the Tim Vine joke, "I went skydiving, and they strapped me to the instructor; half way down, this guy says to me, 'so, how long have you been an instructor...?' "
All they need to do is use the technology that worked so well in 1969.
Lol. Just wondering where you draw the line on that one. Apollo wasn't exactly accident free - several dead in Apollo 1 and a moon landing abandoned and miraculous recovery in Apollo 13. Do we abandon flight because a window falls out of a plane, go back to horse and carriage because trains and cars crash. Go back to the stone age because people die in fires. I mean where do you draw the line?
I just find it so odd. With very limited technology and virtually zero computer power we managed to fly 250,000 miles to the moon, land, play golf, drive an electric car around, take off and meet up with an orbiter doing 5000 mph around the moon and then fly back to earth and land safely. This was 55 years ago. Since 1972 the furthest a human has flown away from earth is just 350 miles and all these new attempts to send someone back to the moon always have issues. Just imagine telling a person alive in 1972 that by 2024 not only would Apollo 17 be the last time a human went to the moon but it would also be the last time a human left earth orbit. There are now only 4 astronauts who walked on the moon left alive, soon it will be zero.
Im sure people will say lack of funding etc but that is not an explanation. Why hasn't China done it?
Because this time it needs to have a commercial justification. China certainly has the capacity - they've already sent landers which have retrieved samples from the far side of the moon.
The US will return there soon - but the plan is to set up permanent infrastructure, and do it affordably. The equivalent spending on Apollo would be nearly a trillion dollars today.
We had the technology to send man to the moon in 1969, why not just use that?
Every new attempt always has issues. In 1961 the USA had not even been into space, yet just 8 years later they landed and returned from the moon. This was with zero technology compared to today. Other than the fire on the ground for Apollo 1, the Apollo programme had a perfect safety reord and even Apollo 13 managed to orbit the moon despite the explosion ( which was caused by a manufacturing error and not poor design)
Its like the first landing of the Boeing 747 at Heathrow in 1970 and then not having another one land there for 50 years.
Because we move on. We improve. Nobody would touch Apollo now. Then brilliant. Now it is antiquated. I don't get this wanting to stay antiquated.
Using your logic because Horizon was such a mess we should go back to pencils and ledgers. They worked. Do you believe that? Sadly I'm guess some postmasters will after their appalling experiences, but the failure was not the faults in the code (there always will be) but the way humans handled it (very badly).
Pen and paper worked fine most of the time.
Boy am I sorry I gave that analogy, especially because of my feelings about the PO scandal and similar scandals (see earlier today). Just pointing out you don't junk new technology and go back 55 years for gods sake especially for something that has advanced so much since then.
We haven't landed men on the moon since because we have chosen not to (mainly because there is no cold war now and the expense compared to the return and safety), not because we can't and if we chose to we would use nothing from Apollo (great as it was at the time).
It has been reported Ed Davey avoided tonight's debate on the Royal Mail scandal in the house
Not a good look
Newsnight asked Bates about Davey last night, and he replied that he didn’t want to single out Davey and blamed the people advising him more. When they asked him about whether Vennells should return her CBE, he was much more combative, asking who made the decision to give it to her in the first place.
Bates can surely see how the Tories don’t have his or his SPMRs interests at heart at all, but are simply flailing around trying to pin blame on the opposition leaders - both to try and distract from the fact that Tories have presided over most of this mess and dragged their feet at resolving it for years, and are in a desperate political predicament looking for any tactic, however cynical or crass, to try rescue some popularity.
Before long we should start to learn more about the relationship between the Government and the PO Board and senior management. As you have noted elsewhere, Nick Wallis indicated in his book that it was a close one, but so far the Inquiry has barely touched the subject. Vennells' testimony will be particularly interesting in this respect.
My guess is that that we will end up with confirmation of what many of us feel already, i.e. that no Party comes out of this well, but the one that has been in charge for the past 13 years is going to have to shoulder most of the blame, fair or not.
As you've previously noted, 2013 is the year beyond which it was no longer really possible to argue that it was all some dreadful mistake.
I'm not able to check at this moment but if that's when Second Sight began to report its concerns and the PO sacked it as a result, I would agree.
The Second Sight issue really came to a head with its final report, their sacking by the PO (which also wound up the mediation scheme it had set up), and the BIS Select Committee, all of 2015. That - after that televised Select Committee - the politicians didn't give the issue any priority, when the story had both been told and effectively corroborated by Second Sight - is shocking. Zahawi is enjoying his cameo appearance recreating his combative cross-examination of Vennells for the TV drama, but despite being senior in government, what did Zahawi do by way of follow up in the nine years since? As far as I can see he enjoyed his bit of grandstanding in front of the committee and then forgot all about it....?
All they need to do is use the technology that worked so well in 1969.
Lol. Just wondering where you draw the line on that one. Apollo wasn't exactly accident free - several dead in Apollo 1 and a moon landing abandoned and miraculous recovery in Apollo 13. Do we abandon flight because a window falls out of a plane, go back to horse and carriage because trains and cars crash. Go back to the stone age because people die in fires. I mean where do you draw the line?
I just find it so odd. With very limited technology and virtually zero computer power we managed to fly 250,000 miles to the moon, land, play golf, drive an electric car around, take off and meet up with an orbiter doing 5000 mph around the moon and then fly back to earth and land safely. This was 55 years ago. Since 1972 the furthest a human has flown away from earth is just 350 miles and all these new attempts to send someone back to the moon always have issues. Just imagine telling a person alive in 1972 that by 2024 not only would Apollo 17 be the last time a human went to the moon but it would also be the last time a human left earth orbit. There are now only 4 astronauts who walked on the moon left alive, soon it will be zero.
Im sure people will say lack of funding etc but that is not an explanation. Why hasn't China done it?
Because this time it needs to have a commercial justification. China certainly has the capacity - they've already sent landers which have retrieved samples from the far side of the moon.
The US will return there soon - but the plan is to set up permanent infrastructure, and do it affordably. The equivalent spending on Apollo would be nearly a trillion dollars today.
We had the technology to send man to the moon in 1969, why not just use that?
Every new attempt always has issues. In 1961 the USA had not even been into space, yet just 8 years later they landed and returned from the moon. This was with zero technology compared to today. Other than the fire on the ground for Apollo 1, the Apollo programme had a perfect safety reord and even Apollo 13 managed to orbit the moon despite the explosion ( which was caused by a manufacturing error and not poor design)
Its like the first landing of the Boeing 747 at Heathrow in 1970 and then not having another one land there for 50 years.
Because we move on. We improve. Nobody would touch Apollo now. Then brilliant. Now it is antiquated. I don't get this wanting to stay antiquated.
Using your logic because Horizon was such a mess we should go back to pencils and ledgers. They worked. Do you believe that? Sadly I'm guess some postmasters will after their appalling experiences, but the failure was not the faults in the code (there always will be) but the way humans handled it (very badly).
Pen and paper worked fine most of the time.
Boy am I sorry I gave that analogy, especially because of my feelings about the PO scandal and similar scandals (see earlier today). Just pointing out you don't junk new technology and go back 55 years for gods sake especially for something that has advanced so much since then.
We haven't landed men on the moon since because we have chosen not to (mainly because there is no cold war now and the expense compared to the return and safety), not because we can't and if we chose to we would use nothing from Apollo (great as it was at the time).
We switched back to putting the payload/capsule on the top of the rocket after a ~ 40 year dead end route with the space shuttle plonking it on the side as the top is much safer compared to the side...
All they need to do is use the technology that worked so well in 1969.
Lol. Just wondering where you draw the line on that one. Apollo wasn't exactly accident free - several dead in Apollo 1 and a moon landing abandoned and miraculous recovery in Apollo 13. Do we abandon flight because a window falls out of a plane, go back to horse and carriage because trains and cars crash. Go back to the stone age because people die in fires. I mean where do you draw the line?
I just find it so odd. With very limited technology and virtually zero computer power we managed to fly 250,000 miles to the moon, land, play golf, drive an electric car around, take off and meet up with an orbiter doing 5000 mph around the moon and then fly back to earth and land safely. This was 55 years ago. Since 1972 the furthest a human has flown away from earth is just 350 miles and all these new attempts to send someone back to the moon always have issues. Just imagine telling a person alive in 1972 that by 2024 not only would Apollo 17 be the last time a human went to the moon but it would also be the last time a human left earth orbit. There are now only 4 astronauts who walked on the moon left alive, soon it will be zero.
Im sure people will say lack of funding etc but that is not an explanation. Why hasn't China done it?
Because this time it needs to have a commercial justification. China certainly has the capacity - they've already sent landers which have retrieved samples from the far side of the moon.
The US will return there soon - but the plan is to set up permanent infrastructure, and do it affordably. The equivalent spending on Apollo would be nearly a trillion dollars today.
We had the technology to send man to the moon in 1969, why not just use that?
Every new attempt always has issues. In 1961 the USA had not even been into space, yet just 8 years later they landed and returned from the moon. This was with zero technology compared to today. Other than the fire on the ground for Apollo 1, the Apollo programme had a perfect safety reord and even Apollo 13 managed to orbit the moon despite the explosion ( which was caused by a manufacturing error and not poor design)
Its like the first landing of the Boeing 747 at Heathrow in 1970 and then not having another one land there for 50 years.
Because we move on. We improve. Nobody would touch Apollo now. Then brilliant. Now it is antiquated. I don't get this wanting to stay antiquated.
Using your logic because Horizon was such a mess we should go back to pencils and ledgers. They worked. Do you believe that? Sadly I'm guess some postmasters will after their appalling experiences, but the failure was not the faults in the code (there always will be) but the way humans handled it (very badly).
One subpostmistress did keep her own handwritten accounts of all her transactions and so avoided prosecution because she was able to show what was actually going on at her branch.
It is a sad that, that is true. It is also true, from my experiences, I would probably do the same.
Me too.
I often wondered why mor SPMs didn't just ask to see Horizon's audit trail. I suspect the PO would have refused, but that in itself would have been the basis for a reasonable defence.
Maybe too few of the SPMs had accountancy experience.
All they need to do is use the technology that worked so well in 1969.
Lol. Just wondering where you draw the line on that one. Apollo wasn't exactly accident free - several dead in Apollo 1 and a moon landing abandoned and miraculous recovery in Apollo 13. Do we abandon flight because a window falls out of a plane, go back to horse and carriage because trains and cars crash. Go back to the stone age because people die in fires. I mean where do you draw the line?
I just find it so odd. With very limited technology and virtually zero computer power we managed to fly 250,000 miles to the moon, land, play golf, drive an electric car around, take off and meet up with an orbiter doing 5000 mph around the moon and then fly back to earth and land safely. This was 55 years ago. Since 1972 the furthest a human has flown away from earth is just 350 miles and all these new attempts to send someone back to the moon always have issues. Just imagine telling a person alive in 1972 that by 2024 not only would Apollo 17 be the last time a human went to the moon but it would also be the last time a human left earth orbit. There are now only 4 astronauts who walked on the moon left alive, soon it will be zero.
Im sure people will say lack of funding etc but that is not an explanation. Why hasn't China done it?
Because this time it needs to have a commercial justification. China certainly has the capacity - they've already sent landers which have retrieved samples from the far side of the moon.
The US will return there soon - but the plan is to set up permanent infrastructure, and do it affordably. The equivalent spending on Apollo would be nearly a trillion dollars today.
We had the technology to send man to the moon in 1969, why not just use that?
Every new attempt always has issues. In 1961 the USA had not even been into space, yet just 8 years later they landed and returned from the moon. This was with zero technology compared to today. Other than the fire on the ground for Apollo 1, the Apollo programme had a perfect safety reord and even Apollo 13 managed to orbit the moon despite the explosion ( which was caused by a manufacturing error and not poor design)
Its like the first landing of the Boeing 747 at Heathrow in 1970 and then not having another one land there for 50 years.
Because we move on. We improve. Nobody would touch Apollo now. Then brilliant. Now it is antiquated. I don't get this wanting to stay antiquated.
Using your logic because Horizon was such a mess we should go back to pencils and ledgers. They worked. Do you believe that? Sadly I'm guess some postmasters will after their appalling experiences, but the failure was not the faults in the code (there always will be) but the way humans handled it (very badly).
One subpostmistress did keep her own handwritten accounts of all her transactions and so avoided prosecution because she was able to show what was actually going on at her branch.
It is a sad that, that is true. It is also true, from my experiences, I would probably do the same.
Me too.
I often wondered why mor SPMs didn't just ask to see Horizon's audit trail. I suspect the PO would have refused, but that in itself would have been the basis for a reasonable defence.
Maybe too few of the SPMs had accountancy experience.
If the system was randomly adding transactions (Either randomly or via remote access) that couldn't be distinguished from the sub-postmaster's entries then the audit trail wouldn't have been much use in the sub-postmaster's defence. The Auditors were post office management or Fujitsu engineers iirc...
A couple more things - the errors shown in the drama were always shortfalls. Random computer error you might expect some 'overs'... Also since the sub-postmasters were paying out of their own pockets to make up the fake shortfalls it means the PO's historical accounts must be wrong.
First real day back after a lovely Christmas holiday in Barcelona with one thing on my mind - people who dislike the idea of 15 minute cities are insane. Staying at my friends flat we were one block away from a square with 2 independent cafes, 2 independent pharmacies, an independent bakery, an independent fruit and veg shop, and a Spanish brand shop chain place. And a square like this was every 5-6 blocks. Not to mention all the independent butchers (as a vegetarian, no use for, but still good to see) and the ease of walking, the inclusion of regular benches and space for small greens / plazas and the general slower pace of Mediterranean living. Rinse and repeat here, please and thank you.
You need a certain density to make that work though. Take a typical British suburb at about 15 dwelling per hectare, net; you wouldn't be able to support anything like that number of businesses. I'm not saying you're wrong - but outside Central London, there's very few places you can do it without starting from scratch. (Though where you can start from scratch - as Manchester has essentially done since 1990 - I think you should).
First real day back after a lovely Christmas holiday in Barcelona with one thing on my mind - people who dislike the idea of 15 minute cities are insane. Staying at my friends flat we were one block away from a square with 2 independent cafes, 2 independent pharmacies, an independent bakery, an independent fruit and veg shop, and a Spanish brand shop chain place. And a square like this was every 5-6 blocks. Not to mention all the independent butchers (as a vegetarian, no use for, but still good to see) and the ease of walking, the inclusion of regular benches and space for small greens / plazas and the general slower pace of Mediterranean living. Rinse and repeat here, please and thank you.
What about the dinner at 10pm culture? Did that agree with you?
First real day back after a lovely Christmas holiday in Barcelona with one thing on my mind - people who dislike the idea of 15 minute cities are insane. Staying at my friends flat we were one block away from a square with 2 independent cafes, 2 independent pharmacies, an independent bakery, an independent fruit and veg shop, and a Spanish brand shop chain place. And a square like this was every 5-6 blocks. Not to mention all the independent butchers (as a vegetarian, no use for, but still good to see) and the ease of walking, the inclusion of regular benches and space for small greens / plazas and the general slower pace of Mediterranean living. Rinse and repeat here, please and thank you.
First real day back after a lovely Christmas holiday in Barcelona with one thing on my mind - people who dislike the idea of 15 minute cities are insane. Staying at my friends flat we were one block away from a square with 2 independent cafes, 2 independent pharmacies, an independent bakery, an independent fruit and veg shop, and a Spanish brand shop chain place. And a square like this was every 5-6 blocks. Not to mention all the independent butchers (as a vegetarian, no use for, but still good to see) and the ease of walking, the inclusion of regular benches and space for small greens / plazas and the general slower pace of Mediterranean living. Rinse and repeat here, please and thank you.
What about the dinner at 10pm culture? Did that agree with you?
My internal clock was all messed up anyway because friend I was staying with worked nights and would come back at 4am and have their dinner. But generally, sure, why not? I was there for around 3 weeks, and I've lost a lot of weight and hardly ever eaten better.
All they need to do is use the technology that worked so well in 1969.
Lol. Just wondering where you draw the line on that one. Apollo wasn't exactly accident free - several dead in Apollo 1 and a moon landing abandoned and miraculous recovery in Apollo 13. Do we abandon flight because a window falls out of a plane, go back to horse and carriage because trains and cars crash. Go back to the stone age because people die in fires. I mean where do you draw the line?
I just find it so odd. With very limited technology and virtually zero computer power we managed to fly 250,000 miles to the moon, land, play golf, drive an electric car around, take off and meet up with an orbiter doing 5000 mph around the moon and then fly back to earth and land safely. This was 55 years ago. Since 1972 the furthest a human has flown away from earth is just 350 miles and all these new attempts to send someone back to the moon always have issues. Just imagine telling a person alive in 1972 that by 2024 not only would Apollo 17 be the last time a human went to the moon but it would also be the last time a human left earth orbit. There are now only 4 astronauts who walked on the moon left alive, soon it will be zero.
Im sure people will say lack of funding etc but that is not an explanation. Why hasn't China done it?
Because this time it needs to have a commercial justification. China certainly has the capacity - they've already sent landers which have retrieved samples from the far side of the moon.
The US will return there soon - but the plan is to set up permanent infrastructure, and do it affordably. The equivalent spending on Apollo would be nearly a trillion dollars today.
We had the technology to send man to the moon in 1969, why not just use that?
Every new attempt always has issues. In 1961 the USA had not even been into space, yet just 8 years later they landed and returned from the moon. This was with zero technology compared to today. Other than the fire on the ground for Apollo 1, the Apollo programme had a perfect safety reord and even Apollo 13 managed to orbit the moon despite the explosion ( which was caused by a manufacturing error and not poor design)
Its like the first landing of the Boeing 747 at Heathrow in 1970 and then not having another one land there for 50 years.
Because we move on. We improve. Nobody would touch Apollo now. Then brilliant. Now it is antiquated. I don't get this wanting to stay antiquated.
Using your logic because Horizon was such a mess we should go back to pencils and ledgers. They worked. Do you believe that? Sadly I'm guess some postmasters will after their appalling experiences, but the failure was not the faults in the code (there always will be) but the way humans handled it (very badly).
One subpostmistress did keep her own handwritten accounts of all her transactions and so avoided prosecution because she was able to show what was actually going on at her branch.
It is a sad that, that is true. It is also true, from my experiences, I would probably do the same.
Me too.
I often wondered why mor SPMs didn't just ask to see Horizon's audit trail. I suspect the PO would have refused, but that in itself would have been the basis for a reasonable defence.
Maybe too few of the SPMs had accountancy experience.
If the system was randomly adding transactions (Either randomly or via remote access) that couldn't be distinguished from the sub-postmaster's entries then the audit trail wouldn't have been much use in the sub-postmaster's defence. The Auditors were post office management or Fujitsu engineers iirc...
A couple more things - the errors shown in the drama were always shortfalls. Random computer error you might expect some 'overs'... Also since the sub-postmasters were paying out of their own pockets to make up the fake shortfalls it means the PO's historical accounts must be wrong.
Fujitsu charged so much for access that the PO couldn’t justify paying for access to it - was what I heard
@DavidL asked earlier where, really, the buck stopped as between the PO and government.
According to Nick Wallis, whatever the formal position, PO people were in and out of the Business Department all the time and in reality taking their orders from them. But the focus was all on getting it back into profit and so one can see how in such an environment the Horizon issues and their consequences would have been ignored or downplayed.
Simplistically, there's a chain of people from the lowly programmer through Fujitsu management into Post Office management and finishing with the minister. Up went the message "we've checked and the system is working fine", and the culprit is the first person and then every person to have said that knowing it wasn't true, with culpability for those further up the chain who believed it and reasonably had the wherewithal to double check themselves. That's well below you get up to any of the government ministers, Labour, LibDem or Tory.
Government will have some accountability for their decisions having contributed to creating what became the mess in the first place.
Government has a lot more accountability for not stepping in once the issues were in the public arena, and especially after the facts had been established in court.
Despite the Tory attempts at smears about what happened or didn't happen in the late 1990s through to early 2010s, the showering of preferment on Vennells when she left the PO in 2019, and the failure to give any priority to the issue until it became a prime time TV drama, are the most egregious mistakes from the politicians. Plus some historic changes to the law in respect of computer evidence and false convictions, as evidenced by our CF.
Yes - what happened in the 1990's and later is important and interesting in order to understand why and when matters started to go wrong and what might have been done better / differently and so - hopefully (!) - improve matters for the future.
But the Tories have been in charge since 2010 and are responsible for not sorting out this mess. The endless whataboutery is pathetic and a distraction.
Little wonder no one at a corporate level ever gets held accountable when politicians refuse to accept responsibility for what they do and not do when they are in power.
https://twitter.com/SeanSafyre/status/1744138937239822685 Found an iPhone on the side of the road... Still in airplane mode with half a battery and open to a baggage claim for #AlaskaAirlines ASA1282 Survived a 16,000 foot drop perfectly intact!
Sounds impressive, but although it would have taken half an hour to reach the ground, its speed of impact would be the same as dropping it from less than ten feet above the ground, I think?
You and Cookie are probably right - for a skydiver, max veolocity is more or less reached in 200 metres - a phone is denser and would accelerate faster, but we're probably talking somewhere around a fairly high building.
The answer to how it survived is mostly to do with what it landed on, as anyone who has ever dropped a phone will know.
An IPhone will accelerate at 9.81m/s so will a human density is never a factor in gravitational acceleration. The only thing that affects the acceleration will be air resistance. Otherwise everything accelerates at the same rate imposed by gravity
First real day back after a lovely Christmas holiday in Barcelona with one thing on my mind - people who dislike the idea of 15 minute cities are insane. Staying at my friends flat we were one block away from a square with 2 independent cafes, 2 independent pharmacies, an independent bakery, an independent fruit and veg shop, and a Spanish brand shop chain place. And a square like this was every 5-6 blocks. Not to mention all the independent butchers (as a vegetarian, no use for, but still good to see) and the ease of walking, the inclusion of regular benches and space for small greens / plazas and the general slower pace of Mediterranean living. Rinse and repeat here, please and thank you.
You need a certain density to make that work though. Take a typical British suburb at about 15 dwelling per hectare, net; you wouldn't be able to support anything like that number of businesses. I'm not saying you're wrong - but outside Central London, there's very few places you can do it without starting from scratch. (Though where you can start from scratch - as Manchester has essentially done since 1990 - I think you should).
Sure, but 15 minute cities are, as the name suggests, aimed at cities - not suburbs or villages (although I think some of this ethos could work for suburbs, just not at that density). Barcelona is more like a 2 minute city!
All they need to do is use the technology that worked so well in 1969.
Lol. Just wondering where you draw the line on that one. Apollo wasn't exactly accident free - several dead in Apollo 1 and a moon landing abandoned and miraculous recovery in Apollo 13. Do we abandon flight because a window falls out of a plane, go back to horse and carriage because trains and cars crash. Go back to the stone age because people die in fires. I mean where do you draw the line?
I just find it so odd. With very limited technology and virtually zero computer power we managed to fly 250,000 miles to the moon, land, play golf, drive an electric car around, take off and meet up with an orbiter doing 5000 mph around the moon and then fly back to earth and land safely. This was 55 years ago. Since 1972 the furthest a human has flown away from earth is just 350 miles and all these new attempts to send someone back to the moon always have issues. Just imagine telling a person alive in 1972 that by 2024 not only would Apollo 17 be the last time a human went to the moon but it would also be the last time a human left earth orbit. There are now only 4 astronauts who walked on the moon left alive, soon it will be zero.
Im sure people will say lack of funding etc but that is not an explanation. Why hasn't China done it?
Because this time it needs to have a commercial justification. China certainly has the capacity - they've already sent landers which have retrieved samples from the far side of the moon.
The US will return there soon - but the plan is to set up permanent infrastructure, and do it affordably. The equivalent spending on Apollo would be nearly a trillion dollars today.
We had the technology to send man to the moon in 1969, why not just use that?
Every new attempt always has issues. In 1961 the USA had not even been into space, yet just 8 years later they landed and returned from the moon. This was with zero technology compared to today. Other than the fire on the ground for Apollo 1, the Apollo programme had a perfect safety reord and even Apollo 13 managed to orbit the moon despite the explosion ( which was caused by a manufacturing error and not poor design)
Its like the first landing of the Boeing 747 at Heathrow in 1970 and then not having another one land there for 50 years.
The reason the Apollo program stopped was this -
The Apollo program was a drop-everything-get-there-first program. The designers deliberately chose a system they could build faster, but was more expensive to use. Each mission was a complete throw away. The payloads could not be expanded (much)
So all you could do was send 2 men to the moon for a few days.
Added to this, the whole system was incredibly dangerous. The Lunar Lander, in particular was full of systems with no redundancy (weight) that had to work perfectly.
NASA lobbied Nixon to replace Apollo with the Shuttle. Which they saw as moving back to the “correct” way of doing space - see X15 and X20. This would make payload to orbit so cheap that missions to Moon and Mars could be assembled in orbit. And was supposed to be much, much safer.
The costs escalated and the Shuttle system turned out to be a dog. And quite dangerous. So using it for more than space station re supply never happened.
The Shuttle became the political incumbent system - billions spent in the right places. So moving on from Shuttle was almost impossible.
So the US space program got stuck in a rut for decades.
Interestingly, SpaceX has reached some of the numbers that were promised for Shuttle - launching every week, with a marginal launch cost of $28 million dollars (at one point, it was claimed that the marginal cost of a shuttle launch would be $20 million. In 1975 dollars)
"all you could do was send 2 men to the moon for a few days."
We can't do that now, the Apollo astronauts also managed to put together an electric car on the moon and drive around in it so they clearly did not think the lunar lander was that dangerous.
One realistic estimate was that getting the 2 men to the surface and back to lunar orbit was 80% safe. That is, you could expect them to die on 1 in 5 landings.
I note the countries most notorious donkey botherer was in Loughborough yesterday and not in a suit. He looks a lot better for the smart casual look, it is more relatable.
Presumably people living on a barge are a lot less vulnerable to flooding than most? Was he looking for some tips?
Difficult to go for the milk if the towpath is flooded.
You can just go straight there without leaving home.
All they need to do is use the technology that worked so well in 1969.
Lol. Just wondering where you draw the line on that one. Apollo wasn't exactly accident free - several dead in Apollo 1 and a moon landing abandoned and miraculous recovery in Apollo 13. Do we abandon flight because a window falls out of a plane, go back to horse and carriage because trains and cars crash. Go back to the stone age because people die in fires. I mean where do you draw the line?
I just find it so odd. With very limited technology and virtually zero computer power we managed to fly 250,000 miles to the moon, land, play golf, drive an electric car around, take off and meet up with an orbiter doing 5000 mph around the moon and then fly back to earth and land safely. This was 55 years ago. Since 1972 the furthest a human has flown away from earth is just 350 miles and all these new attempts to send someone back to the moon always have issues. Just imagine telling a person alive in 1972 that by 2024 not only would Apollo 17 be the last time a human went to the moon but it would also be the last time a human left earth orbit. There are now only 4 astronauts who walked on the moon left alive, soon it will be zero.
Im sure people will say lack of funding etc but that is not an explanation. Why hasn't China done it?
Because this time it needs to have a commercial justification. China certainly has the capacity - they've already sent landers which have retrieved samples from the far side of the moon.
The US will return there soon - but the plan is to set up permanent infrastructure, and do it affordably. The equivalent spending on Apollo would be nearly a trillion dollars today.
We had the technology to send man to the moon in 1969, why not just use that?
Every new attempt always has issues. In 1961 the USA had not even been into space, yet just 8 years later they landed and returned from the moon. This was with zero technology compared to today. Other than the fire on the ground for Apollo 1, the Apollo programme had a perfect safety reord and even Apollo 13 managed to orbit the moon despite the explosion ( which was caused by a manufacturing error and not poor design)
Its like the first landing of the Boeing 747 at Heathrow in 1970 and then not having another one land there for 50 years.
Because we move on. We improve. Nobody would touch Apollo now. Then brilliant. Now it is antiquated. I don't get this wanting to stay antiquated.
Using your logic because Horizon was such a mess we should go back to pencils and ledgers. They worked. Do you believe that? Sadly I'm guess some postmasters will after their appalling experiences, but the failure was not the faults in the code (there always will be) but the way humans handled it (very badly).
One subpostmistress did keep her own handwritten accounts of all her transactions and so avoided prosecution because she was able to show what was actually going on at her branch.
It is a sad that, that is true. It is also true, from my experiences, I would probably do the same.
Me too.
I often wondered why mor SPMs didn't just ask to see Horizon's audit trail. I suspect the PO would have refused, but that in itself would have been the basis for a reasonable defence.
Maybe too few of the SPMs had accountancy experience.
If the system was randomly adding transactions (Either randomly or via remote access) that couldn't be distinguished from the sub-postmaster's entries then the audit trail wouldn't have been much use in the sub-postmaster's defence. The Auditors were post office management or Fujitsu engineers iirc...
A couple more things - the errors shown in the drama were always shortfalls. Random computer error you might expect some 'overs'... Also since the sub-postmasters were paying out of their own pockets to make up the fake shortfalls it means the PO's historical accounts must be wrong.
Simplified for the drama. There were overs but not so often. I speculated about why, a few days back
I note the countries most notorious donkey botherer was in Loughborough yesterday and not in a suit. He looks a lot better for the smart casual look, it is more relatable.
Presumably people living on a barge are a lot less vulnerable to flooding than most? Was he looking for some tips?
Difficult to go for the milk if the towpath is flooded.
You can just go straight there without leaving home.
How do you unmoor without a diving suit? Or find the mooring again?
Plus this is what happens when you unmoor in a strong current - or the mooring breaks. It's the Soar upstream from Loughborough, as it happens.
"He had to represent himself in the High Court and was then made bankrupt during a difficult and terrifying chain of events. He is yet to see a penny of compensation."
The postmaster played by Will Mellor, Castleton still hasn't received any compensation. How mad is that ? Just bonkers.
He needs the £20k shortfall+ £300k PO court costs + 8% compounded interest as an interim settlement yesterday.
If you choose to make a political point out of looking "into the eyes of people I’ve served and represented" over 20 year legal career as a reason to be elected to No10 - as Starmer did on Jan 4 - then the public have a right to know what that actually entailed
Struggling to see your point. These are all campaigns to stop criminals being sentenced to death for their crimes not to release them. Seems like an ethical campaign to me.
I am no fan of Starmer and I'm sure this type of campaigning works but it is immoral and intended to make him seem as bad or worse than Boris, which he isn't. And anyway Boris isn't there now.
It is identical to @TheKitchenCabinet re Biden and Trump. There is no hiding Trumps flaws so lets try and imply Biden is as bad. He isn't, not by a long way.
Honestly, why would you say ‘your point’ when it is a tweet from The Sun’s political editor?
Doh. Well because you posted it, presumably to make YOUR point.
It’s a follow up from his earlier tweet that I posted and people criticised me for.
Either way, if it was my point how can you struggle to see it? In fact you don’t struggle to see it, as you’ve said what it is in your second paragraph
Sorry this is getting bizarre. So you are saying I do see your point because I have said what it is in my 2nd paragraph. You freely admit what I have said in my 2nd paragraph is your point? You really are? I was giving you credit for the fact that you couldn't possibly mean that.
Let's us get this clear you are saying that you approve of campaigns that immorally try and make politicians look worse by misrepresenting ethical actions as evil.
You are really saying that?
The way you’ve put that is too annoying to get involved with
https://twitter.com/SeanSafyre/status/1744138937239822685 Found an iPhone on the side of the road... Still in airplane mode with half a battery and open to a baggage claim for #AlaskaAirlines ASA1282 Survived a 16,000 foot drop perfectly intact!
Sounds impressive, but although it would have taken half an hour to reach the ground, its speed of impact would be the same as dropping it from less than ten feet above the ground, I think?
You and Cookie are probably right - for a skydiver, max veolocity is more or less reached in 200 metres - a phone is denser and would accelerate faster, but we're probably talking somewhere around a fairly high building.
The answer to how it survived is mostly to do with what it landed on, as anyone who has ever dropped a phone will know.
An IPhone will accelerate at 9.81m/s so will a human density is never a factor in gravitational acceleration. The only thing that affects the acceleration will be air resistance. Otherwise everything accelerates at the same rate imposed by gravity
Is there any limit to acceleration?
I mean, if, from stationary, after 1 sec the object has fallen 9.81 m and after 2 secs it has fallen more than 2 x 9.81m (as it is accelerating) is there any limit to the maximum speed it will reach?
https://twitter.com/SeanSafyre/status/1744138937239822685 Found an iPhone on the side of the road... Still in airplane mode with half a battery and open to a baggage claim for #AlaskaAirlines ASA1282 Survived a 16,000 foot drop perfectly intact!
Sounds impressive, but although it would have taken half an hour to reach the ground, its speed of impact would be the same as dropping it from less than ten feet above the ground, I think?
You and Cookie are probably right - for a skydiver, max veolocity is more or less reached in 200 metres - a phone is denser and would accelerate faster, but we're probably talking somewhere around a fairly high building.
The answer to how it survived is mostly to do with what it landed on, as anyone who has ever dropped a phone will know.
An IPhone will accelerate at 9.81m/s so will a human density is never a factor in gravitational acceleration. The only thing that affects the acceleration will be air resistance. Otherwise everything accelerates at the same rate imposed by gravity
Yes, but density is a pretty good proxy for how low the air resistance will be. Not perfect, but good.
Our justice system is one of the better ones & it’s still prone to significant miscarriages. The Sun & Sunak were happy to label the Iranian regime “barbaric” for using the death penalty. Shame this poor man didn’t have the benefit of Starmer’s services
The Sun editorial attacking Starmer actually states the Sun opposes the death penalty. It's self-refuting.
Interesting though that Rupe and his favourite cat’s paw aren’t backing SKS and in fact attacking him. A fair bit of backtracking to do if they’re going to adopt Murdoch’s sop of backing the likely winner.
https://twitter.com/SeanSafyre/status/1744138937239822685 Found an iPhone on the side of the road... Still in airplane mode with half a battery and open to a baggage claim for #AlaskaAirlines ASA1282 Survived a 16,000 foot drop perfectly intact!
Sounds impressive, but although it would have taken half an hour to reach the ground, its speed of impact would be the same as dropping it from less than ten feet above the ground, I think?
You and Cookie are probably right - for a skydiver, max veolocity is more or less reached in 200 metres - a phone is denser and would accelerate faster, but we're probably talking somewhere around a fairly high building.
The answer to how it survived is mostly to do with what it landed on, as anyone who has ever dropped a phone will know.
An IPhone will accelerate at 9.81m/s so will a human density is never a factor in gravitational acceleration. The only thing that affects the acceleration will be air resistance. Otherwise everything accelerates at the same rate imposed by gravity
Yes, but density is a pretty good proxy for how low the air resistance will be. Not perfect, but good.
Is that true? An empty box has the same surface area as a sand-filled box and so the air resistance will be the same, surely?
If you choose to make a political point out of looking "into the eyes of people I’ve served and represented" over 20 year legal career as a reason to be elected to No10 - as Starmer did on Jan 4 - then the public have a right to know what that actually entailed
Struggling to see your point. These are all campaigns to stop criminals being sentenced to death for their crimes not to release them. Seems like an ethical campaign to me.
I am no fan of Starmer and I'm sure this type of campaigning works but it is immoral and intended to make him seem as bad or worse than Boris, which he isn't. And anyway Boris isn't there now.
It is identical to @TheKitchenCabinet re Biden and Trump. There is no hiding Trumps flaws so lets try and imply Biden is as bad. He isn't, not by a long way.
Honestly, why would you say ‘your point’ when it is a tweet from The Sun’s political editor?
Because you do it so often that it's hard to tell that it's not your stance too ?
It has been reported Ed Davey avoided tonight's debate on the Royal Mail scandal in the house
Not a good look
Newsnight asked Bates about Davey last night, and he replied that he didn’t want to single out Davey and blamed the people advising him more. When they asked him about whether Vennells should return her CBE, he was much more combative, asking who made the decision to give it to her in the first place.
Bates can surely see how the Tories don’t have his or his SPMRs interests at heart at all, but are simply flailing around trying to pin blame on the opposition leaders - both to try and distract from the fact that Tories have presided over most of this mess and dragged their feet at resolving it for years, and are in a desperate political predicament looking for any tactic, however cynical or crass, to try rescue some popularity.
Before long we should start to learn more about the relationship between the Government and the PO Board and senior management. As you have noted elsewhere, Nick Wallis indicated in his book that it was a close one, but so far the Inquiry has barely touched the subject. Vennells' testimony will be particularly interesting in this respect.
My guess is that that we will end up with confirmation of what many of us feel already, i.e. that no Party comes out of this well, but the one that has been in charge for the past 13 years is going to have to shoulder most of the blame, fair or not.
As you've previously noted, 2013 is the year beyond which it was no longer really possible to argue that it was all some dreadful mistake.
I'm not able to check at this moment but if that's when Second Sight began to report its concerns and the PO sacked it as a result, I would agree.
Even that, on the face of it, was back then enough to infer that something was seriously wrong - and with hindsight we now know that was the public position after considerable positive (and dishonest) spin had been applied.
The sacking didn't occur until 2015.
This was Ron Warrington's (of Second Sight) view of the position in 2013 (reported in 2019) https://www.postofficetrial.com/2019/12/second-sights-ron-warmington-breaks-his.html .."if the Post Office Board had believed - and acted on - what Second Sight reported... instead of being led by the nose by its own middle management and in-house and external legal advisors, huge amounts of money, and human suffering, would have been avoided." "As a fraud investigator who has, for decades, dealt with real fraudsters and confidence tricksters, it struck me, six years ago, as I interviewed Subpostmaster after Subpostmaster, that these are good, honest, straight-talking people. It was very rapidly obvious that many have suffered life-changing damage because they received no investigative support when mysterious shortfalls appeared in their accounts. "Some were left in limbo when the police refused to investigate, saying that Post Office’s own investigation department should carry out the work, and the latter said they wouldn’t investigate either."..
First real day back after a lovely Christmas holiday in Barcelona with one thing on my mind - people who dislike the idea of 15 minute cities are insane. Staying at my friends flat we were one block away from a square with 2 independent cafes, 2 independent pharmacies, an independent bakery, an independent fruit and veg shop, and a Spanish brand shop chain place. And a square like this was every 5-6 blocks. Not to mention all the independent butchers (as a vegetarian, no use for, but still good to see) and the ease of walking, the inclusion of regular benches and space for small greens / plazas and the general slower pace of Mediterranean living. Rinse and repeat here, please and thank you.
What about the dinner at 10pm culture? Did that agree with you?
My internal clock was all messed up anyway because friend I was staying with worked nights and would come back at 4am and have their dinner. But generally, sure, why not? I was there for around 3 weeks, and I've lost a lot of weight and hardly ever eaten better.
Dinner at 10pm in Spain is partly a function of its time zone. Spain is (on average) west of England, but its timezone is east of England. So the sun rises and sets at a very late local time compared to here (or indeed most places). Spaniards have adjusted their habits accordingly.
And then pushed it a bit further, just for laughs.
https://twitter.com/SeanSafyre/status/1744138937239822685 Found an iPhone on the side of the road... Still in airplane mode with half a battery and open to a baggage claim for #AlaskaAirlines ASA1282 Survived a 16,000 foot drop perfectly intact!
Sounds impressive, but although it would have taken half an hour to reach the ground, its speed of impact would be the same as dropping it from less than ten feet above the ground, I think?
You and Cookie are probably right - for a skydiver, max veolocity is more or less reached in 200 metres - a phone is denser and would accelerate faster, but we're probably talking somewhere around a fairly high building.
The answer to how it survived is mostly to do with what it landed on, as anyone who has ever dropped a phone will know.
An IPhone will accelerate at 9.81m/s so will a human density is never a factor in gravitational acceleration. The only thing that affects the acceleration will be air resistance. Otherwise everything accelerates at the same rate imposed by gravity
Is there any limit to acceleration?
I mean, if, from stationary, after 1 sec the object has fallen 9.81 m and after 2 secs it has fallen more than 2 x 9.81m (as it is accelerating) is there any limit to the maximum speed it will reach?
Yes, stops when air resistance = gravitational force.
Also, if it was found with only 'half a battery' then it didn't do all that well
ETA: stops accelerating, not stops falling - that only happens when it hits the ground
ETA2: Pedantry: it hasn't fallen 9.81m after 1s - after 1s it's reached a speed of 9.81m/s - it was going slower than that during the first second.
Our justice system is one of the better ones & it’s still prone to significant miscarriages. The Sun & Sunak were happy to label the Iranian regime “barbaric” for using the death penalty. Shame this poor man didn’t have the benefit of Starmer’s services
The Sun editorial attacking Starmer actually states the Sun opposes the death penalty. It's self-refuting.
Interesting though that Rupe and his favourite cat’s paw aren’t backing SKS and in fact attacking him. A fair bit of backtracking to do if they’re going adopt Murdoch’s sop of backing the likely winner.
It is funny isn't it. The Murdoch nexus was the media backing of the 'get Rishi in' campaign, but they did seem to have gone sour on him - perhaps when the full scale of his crapness became clear. I thought they'd reluctantly back Starmer as inevitable. If so, they're not really doing themselves any favours.
https://twitter.com/SeanSafyre/status/1744138937239822685 Found an iPhone on the side of the road... Still in airplane mode with half a battery and open to a baggage claim for #AlaskaAirlines ASA1282 Survived a 16,000 foot drop perfectly intact!
Sounds impressive, but although it would have taken half an hour to reach the ground, its speed of impact would be the same as dropping it from less than ten feet above the ground, I think?
You and Cookie are probably right - for a skydiver, max veolocity is more or less reached in 200 metres - a phone is denser and would accelerate faster, but we're probably talking somewhere around a fairly high building.
The answer to how it survived is mostly to do with what it landed on, as anyone who has ever dropped a phone will know.
An IPhone will accelerate at 9.81m/s so will a human density is never a factor in gravitational acceleration. The only thing that affects the acceleration will be air resistance. Otherwise everything accelerates at the same rate imposed by gravity
In a vacuum. But density of an object becomes a factor as soon as air resistance comes into play.
https://twitter.com/SeanSafyre/status/1744138937239822685 Found an iPhone on the side of the road... Still in airplane mode with half a battery and open to a baggage claim for #AlaskaAirlines ASA1282 Survived a 16,000 foot drop perfectly intact!
Sounds impressive, but although it would have taken half an hour to reach the ground, its speed of impact would be the same as dropping it from less than ten feet above the ground, I think?
You and Cookie are probably right - for a skydiver, max veolocity is more or less reached in 200 metres - a phone is denser and would accelerate faster, but we're probably talking somewhere around a fairly high building.
The answer to how it survived is mostly to do with what it landed on, as anyone who has ever dropped a phone will know.
An IPhone will accelerate at 9.81m/s so will a human density is never a factor in gravitational acceleration. The only thing that affects the acceleration will be air resistance. Otherwise everything accelerates at the same rate imposed by gravity
Is there any limit to acceleration?
I mean, if, from stationary, after 1 sec the object has fallen 9.81 m and after 2 secs it has fallen more than 2 x 9.81m (as it is accelerating) is there any limit to the maximum speed it will reach?
The point at which the force exerted by air resistance acting upwards matches the force of gravity acting downwards. At that point the object will stop accelerating and travel at constant speed.
https://twitter.com/SeanSafyre/status/1744138937239822685 Found an iPhone on the side of the road... Still in airplane mode with half a battery and open to a baggage claim for #AlaskaAirlines ASA1282 Survived a 16,000 foot drop perfectly intact!
Sounds impressive, but although it would have taken half an hour to reach the ground, its speed of impact would be the same as dropping it from less than ten feet above the ground, I think?
You and Cookie are probably right - for a skydiver, max veolocity is more or less reached in 200 metres - a phone is denser and would accelerate faster, but we're probably talking somewhere around a fairly high building.
The answer to how it survived is mostly to do with what it landed on, as anyone who has ever dropped a phone will know.
An IPhone will accelerate at 9.81m/s so will a human density is never a factor in gravitational acceleration. The only thing that affects the acceleration will be air resistance. Otherwise everything accelerates at the same rate imposed by gravity
Is there any limit to acceleration?
I mean, if, from stationary, after 1 sec the object has fallen 9.81 m and after 2 secs it has fallen more than 2 x 9.81m (as it is accelerating) is there any limit to the maximum speed it will reach?
In a vacuum, no. In air, yes - because the upward force of air resistance increases as you go faster until it is equal to the force of gravity. This is called terminal velocity. At this point, you don't accelerate any faster. For a human, I think this is about 120mph - 200mph depending on body position (you will go faster if you are 'diving' and therefore minimising air resistance). My gut feeling is that the air resistance on an iphone will be lower than on a human, so it will have a faster terminal velocity. But it will still reach it within, I would say, the time it takes to fall from a tall building. So if it falls out of a plane it will probably reach terminal velocity within, ooh, 30 seconds or so, I would say.
https://twitter.com/SeanSafyre/status/1744138937239822685 Found an iPhone on the side of the road... Still in airplane mode with half a battery and open to a baggage claim for #AlaskaAirlines ASA1282 Survived a 16,000 foot drop perfectly intact!
Sounds impressive, but although it would have taken half an hour to reach the ground, its speed of impact would be the same as dropping it from less than ten feet above the ground, I think?
You and Cookie are probably right - for a skydiver, max veolocity is more or less reached in 200 metres - a phone is denser and would accelerate faster, but we're probably talking somewhere around a fairly high building.
The answer to how it survived is mostly to do with what it landed on, as anyone who has ever dropped a phone will know.
An IPhone will accelerate at 9.81m/s so will a human density is never a factor in gravitational acceleration. The only thing that affects the acceleration will be air resistance. Otherwise everything accelerates at the same rate imposed by gravity
Yes, but density is a pretty good proxy for how low the air resistance will be. Not perfect, but good.
Is that true? An empty box has the same surface area as a sand-filled box and so the air resistance will be the same, surely?
Yes, but the force accelerating the larger mass of the sand filled box is greater, whereas the force of resistance in both cases is the same.
https://twitter.com/SeanSafyre/status/1744138937239822685 Found an iPhone on the side of the road... Still in airplane mode with half a battery and open to a baggage claim for #AlaskaAirlines ASA1282 Survived a 16,000 foot drop perfectly intact!
Sounds impressive, but although it would have taken half an hour to reach the ground, its speed of impact would be the same as dropping it from less than ten feet above the ground, I think?
You and Cookie are probably right - for a skydiver, max veolocity is more or less reached in 200 metres - a phone is denser and would accelerate faster, but we're probably talking somewhere around a fairly high building.
The answer to how it survived is mostly to do with what it landed on, as anyone who has ever dropped a phone will know.
An IPhone will accelerate at 9.81m/s so will a human density is never a factor in gravitational acceleration. The only thing that affects the acceleration will be air resistance. Otherwise everything accelerates at the same rate imposed by gravity
Is there any limit to acceleration?
I mean, if, from stationary, after 1 sec the object has fallen 9.81 m and after 2 secs it has fallen more than 2 x 9.81m (as it is accelerating) is there any limit to the maximum speed it will reach?
The opposing force of air resistance increases by the square of velocity, whereas the force of acceleration remains constant. 'Terminal velocity' is the speed at which the two forces balance each other.
Our justice system is one of the better ones & it’s still prone to significant miscarriages. The Sun & Sunak were happy to label the Iranian regime “barbaric” for using the death penalty. Shame this poor man didn’t have the benefit of Starmer’s services
The Sun editorial attacking Starmer actually states the Sun opposes the death penalty. It's self-refuting.
Interesting though that Rupe and his favourite cat’s paw aren’t backing SKS and in fact attacking him. A fair bit of backtracking to do if they’re going adopt Murdoch’s sop of backing the likely winner.
It is funny isn't it. The Murdoch nexus was the media backing of the 'get Rishi in' campaign, but they did seem to have gone sour on him - perhaps when the full scale of his crapness became clear. I thought they'd reluctantly back Starmer as inevitable. If so, they're not really doing themselves any favours.
To what degree does the Sun lead opinion versus follow it? I think if the Sun decided to stick by Rishi no matter what, its readership would disagree and potentially stop buying. This is one of the weird push and pulls of UK papers; unlike Fox News (which manages to seep into the brains of elderly Americans by dint of just constantly being on in the background) the right wing papers have to be sought out and bought. That allows you to shape narratives, and respond to the world in the way that suits you, but it doesn't allow you to completely ignore reality. Most people think Rishi is shit, so the Sun has to have some view on that.
I don't quite understand the header, surely that Britain has declined since 2010 is the reason we should elect Sunak and put an end to the endless years of the lefty liberal elites in charge? Just think where we would have been if we hadn't put Starmer, Clegg and Brown in charge of our recent destiny. Time for change, time for a real Conservative like Rishi.
First real day back after a lovely Christmas holiday in Barcelona with one thing on my mind - people who dislike the idea of 15 minute cities are insane. Staying at my friends flat we were one block away from a square with 2 independent cafes, 2 independent pharmacies, an independent bakery, an independent fruit and veg shop, and a Spanish brand shop chain place. And a square like this was every 5-6 blocks. Not to mention all the independent butchers (as a vegetarian, no use for, but still good to see) and the ease of walking, the inclusion of regular benches and space for small greens / plazas and the general slower pace of Mediterranean living. Rinse and repeat here, please and thank you.
You need a certain density to make that work though. Take a typical British suburb at about 15 dwelling per hectare, net; you wouldn't be able to support anything like that number of businesses. I'm not saying you're wrong - but outside Central London, there's very few places you can do it without starting from scratch. (Though where you can start from scratch - as Manchester has essentially done since 1990 - I think you should).
Sure, but 15 minute cities are, as the name suggests, aimed at cities - not suburbs or villages (although I think some of this ethos could work for suburbs, just not at that density). Barcelona is more like a 2 minute city!
Yes, but still, there are very few cities, or parts of cities, in Britain, with that kind of density. Zone 1 London, parts of Edinburgh and Glasgow, a couple of square miles of Central Manchester, a square mile or so of Central Liverpool, half a square mile or so of Central Newcastle, Birmingham, Leeds and Bristol... really not much else.
But I do agree with you that we should be developing more high-density urban areas which would support that sort of amenity!
Or was the Head of Marketing waving a Big Magnet at it whilst whistling surruptitiously?
Boeing don't build black boxes, and the voice recorder did exactly what it was meant to do.
When CVRs (Cockpit Voice Recorders) were first invented, pilots hated the idea. They were afraid that airlines would use the recordings to snoop on them on routine, non-emergency flights. So they were made that only the last two hours are recorded - after which they are overwritten.
If a place crashes, then obviously it is not recorded over, so you get the last two hours of audio. In this case, the pilots did not pull a circuit breaker which would have stopped the recording, and preserve the audio of the incident.
In this case, don't blame Boeing; blame the pilots' unions.
Our justice system is one of the better ones & it’s still prone to significant miscarriages. The Sun & Sunak were happy to label the Iranian regime “barbaric” for using the death penalty. Shame this poor man didn’t have the benefit of Starmer’s services
The Sun editorial attacking Starmer actually states the Sun opposes the death penalty. It's self-refuting.
Interesting though that Rupe and his favourite cat’s paw aren’t backing SKS and in fact attacking him. A fair bit of backtracking to do if they’re going adopt Murdoch’s sop of backing the likely winner.
It is funny isn't it. The Murdoch nexus was the media backing of the 'get Rishi in' campaign, but they did seem to have gone sour on him - perhaps when the full scale of his crapness became clear. I thought they'd reluctantly back Starmer as inevitable. If so, they're not really doing themselves any favours.
Does the Murdoch Mark of the Beast really have decisive heft these days? In the age of TikTok and easily available ketamine?
Our justice system is one of the better ones & it’s still prone to significant miscarriages. The Sun & Sunak were happy to label the Iranian regime “barbaric” for using the death penalty. Shame this poor man didn’t have the benefit of Starmer’s services
The Sun editorial attacking Starmer actually states the Sun opposes the death penalty. It's self-refuting.
Interesting though that Rupe and his favourite cat’s paw aren’t backing SKS and in fact attacking him. A fair bit of backtracking to do if they’re going adopt Murdoch’s sop of backing the likely winner.
It is funny isn't it. The Murdoch nexus was the media backing of the 'get Rishi in' campaign, but they did seem to have gone sour on him - perhaps when the full scale of his crapness became clear. I thought they'd reluctantly back Starmer as inevitable. If so, they're not really doing themselves any favours.
To what degree does the Sun lead opinion versus follow it? I think if the Sun decided to stick by Rishi no matter what, its readership would disagree and potentially stop buying. This is one of the weird push and pulls of UK papers; unlike Fox News (which manages to seep into the brains of elderly Americans by dint of just constantly being on in the background) the right wing papers have to be sought out and bought. That allows you to shape narratives, and respond to the world in the way that suits you, but it doesn't allow you to completely ignore reality. Most people think Rishi is shit, so the Sun has to have some view on that.
Agreed. My belief is that the Sun is very good at knowing what its readership want to read, and follows more than most. I'd say much the same is true of Fox news, tbh. There is just as much of a market in TV news as there is in newspapers. Fox has identified a market for consumers who want stories set out in that way and follows it.
If you choose to make a political point out of looking "into the eyes of people I’ve served and represented" over 20 year legal career as a reason to be elected to No10 - as Starmer did on Jan 4 - then the public have a right to know what that actually entailed
Struggling to see your point. These are all campaigns to stop criminals being sentenced to death for their crimes not to release them. Seems like an ethical campaign to me.
I am no fan of Starmer and I'm sure this type of campaigning works but it is immoral and intended to make him seem as bad or worse than Boris, which he isn't. And anyway Boris isn't there now.
It is identical to @TheKitchenCabinet re Biden and Trump. There is no hiding Trumps flaws so lets try and imply Biden is as bad. He isn't, not by a long way.
Honestly, why would you say ‘your point’ when it is a tweet from The Sun’s political editor?
Doh. Well because you posted it, presumably to make YOUR point.
It’s a follow up from his earlier tweet that I posted and people criticised me for.
Either way, if it was my point how can you struggle to see it? In fact you don’t struggle to see it, as you’ve said what it is in your second paragraph
Sorry this is getting bizarre. So you are saying I do see your point because I have said what it is in my 2nd paragraph. You freely admit what I have said in my 2nd paragraph is your point? You really are? I was giving you credit for the fact that you couldn't possibly mean that.
Let's us get this clear you are saying that you approve of campaigns that immorally try and make politicians look worse by misrepresenting ethical actions as evil.
You are really saying that?
The way you’ve put that is too annoying to get involved with
Well I understand the feeling because your two previous posts to me were just off the scale bizarre to put it mildly. May I suggest it is because you are trying to justify an unjustifiable position (as pointed out by many here). By all means rubbish Starmer (he is not my cup of tea either) but try not going into the gutter to do it.
Our justice system is one of the better ones & it’s still prone to significant miscarriages. The Sun & Sunak were happy to label the Iranian regime “barbaric” for using the death penalty. Shame this poor man didn’t have the benefit of Starmer’s services
The Sun editorial attacking Starmer actually states the Sun opposes the death penalty. It's self-refuting.
Interesting though that Rupe and his favourite cat’s paw aren’t backing SKS and in fact attacking him. A fair bit of backtracking to do if they’re going adopt Murdoch’s sop of backing the likely winner.
It is funny isn't it. The Murdoch nexus was the media backing of the 'get Rishi in' campaign, but they did seem to have gone sour on him - perhaps when the full scale of his crapness became clear. I thought they'd reluctantly back Starmer as inevitable. If so, they're not really doing themselves any favours.
To what degree does the Sun lead opinion versus follow it? I think if the Sun decided to stick by Rishi no matter what, its readership would disagree and potentially stop buying. This is one of the weird push and pulls of UK papers; unlike Fox News (which manages to seep into the brains of elderly Americans by dint of just constantly being on in the background) the right wing papers have to be sought out and bought. That allows you to shape narratives, and respond to the world in the way that suits you, but it doesn't allow you to completely ignore reality. Most people think Rishi is shit, so the Sun has to have some view on that.
Agreed. My belief is that the Sun is very good at knowing what its readership want to read, and follows more than most. I'd say much the same is true of Fox news, tbh. There is just as much of a market in TV news as there is in newspapers. Fox has identified a market for consumers who want stories set out in that way and follows it.
I think that's true of Fox now, perhaps, but they have managed to warp the realities of their viewership - by presenting years and years of "news" that shows an America that truly does not exist. Now that viewership have been radicalised beyond them (partly via politicians like Trump, partly via platforms like Facebook) and Fox is running to keep up (but also still trying to be taken seriously). Whilst the Sun is dross, I feel they have to have an in road with material reality more so than, like, the Express or even the Daily Mail - its readership are not well off enough to be insulated from the world to buy wholesale a different reality.
https://twitter.com/SeanSafyre/status/1744138937239822685 Found an iPhone on the side of the road... Still in airplane mode with half a battery and open to a baggage claim for #AlaskaAirlines ASA1282 Survived a 16,000 foot drop perfectly intact!
Sounds impressive, but although it would have taken half an hour to reach the ground, its speed of impact would be the same as dropping it from less than ten feet above the ground, I think?
You and Cookie are probably right - for a skydiver, max veolocity is more or less reached in 200 metres - a phone is denser and would accelerate faster, but we're probably talking somewhere around a fairly high building.
The answer to how it survived is mostly to do with what it landed on, as anyone who has ever dropped a phone will know.
An IPhone will accelerate at 9.81m/s so will a human density is never a factor in gravitational acceleration. The only thing that affects the acceleration will be air resistance. Otherwise everything accelerates at the same rate imposed by gravity
Is there any limit to acceleration?
I mean, if, from stationary, after 1 sec the object has fallen 9.81 m and after 2 secs it has fallen more than 2 x 9.81m (as it is accelerating) is there any limit to the maximum speed it will reach?
Air resistance increases with speed.
The other thing to note is that the iPhone was probably tumbling at a high rate - rotating many times a second as it fell. This would have massively increased drag.
https://twitter.com/SeanSafyre/status/1744138937239822685 Found an iPhone on the side of the road... Still in airplane mode with half a battery and open to a baggage claim for #AlaskaAirlines ASA1282 Survived a 16,000 foot drop perfectly intact!
Sounds impressive, but although it would have taken half an hour to reach the ground, its speed of impact would be the same as dropping it from less than ten feet above the ground, I think?
You and Cookie are probably right - for a skydiver, max veolocity is more or less reached in 200 metres - a phone is denser and would accelerate faster, but we're probably talking somewhere around a fairly high building.
The answer to how it survived is mostly to do with what it landed on, as anyone who has ever dropped a phone will know.
An IPhone will accelerate at 9.81m/s so will a human density is never a factor in gravitational acceleration. The only thing that affects the acceleration will be air resistance. Otherwise everything accelerates at the same rate imposed by gravity
Yes, but density is a pretty good proxy for how low the air resistance will be. Not perfect, but good.
Is that true? An empty box has the same surface area as a sand-filled box and so the air resistance will be the same, surely?
Hm. Fairly sure a sand filled box will reach a faster terminal velocity.
Got it, I think. This is because the force on the box is directly proportional to the box's weight. Thus there is a much greater force on a heavier box - but you need a much greater force to accelerate it, because its mass is greater. The end result will be that the box accelerates as fast, at first. But the upward force of air resistance varies not depending on the weight of the box but on the speed of the box. Thus, the upward force balances out the downward force sooner when the box is lighter. I think?
Our justice system is one of the better ones & it’s still prone to significant miscarriages. The Sun & Sunak were happy to label the Iranian regime “barbaric” for using the death penalty. Shame this poor man didn’t have the benefit of Starmer’s services
The Sun editorial attacking Starmer actually states the Sun opposes the death penalty. It's self-refuting.
Interesting though that Rupe and his favourite cat’s paw aren’t backing SKS and in fact attacking him. A fair bit of backtracking to do if they’re going adopt Murdoch’s sop of backing the likely winner.
It is funny isn't it. The Murdoch nexus was the media backing of the 'get Rishi in' campaign, but they did seem to have gone sour on him - perhaps when the full scale of his crapness became clear. I thought they'd reluctantly back Starmer as inevitable. If so, they're not really doing themselves any favours.
To what degree does the Sun lead opinion versus follow it? I think if the Sun decided to stick by Rishi no matter what, its readership would disagree and potentially stop buying. This is one of the weird push and pulls of UK papers; unlike Fox News (which manages to seep into the brains of elderly Americans by dint of just constantly being on in the background) the right wing papers have to be sought out and bought. That allows you to shape narratives, and respond to the world in the way that suits you, but it doesn't allow you to completely ignore reality. Most people think Rishi is shit, so the Sun has to have some view on that.
The days of the Sun making the weather (if they ever truly existed) are over but they’ve definitely been a bellwether over the years; they were even neutral over B*****! Backing stone cold loser Rishi would be a bit of a departure.
As much as I dislike Starmer, when did it become the norm to argue a lawyers unacceptableness due to representing clients when our society designed our ideas of justice around the whole concept of an adversarial system where you have presumption of innocence? Like, of course criminals will be represented by lawyers - the prosecution has to prove their case and it is the job, and duty, of the defence to do their best to defend their client. Even if the defendant did horrible things - they have a right to a lawyer. Arguably the worse the accusation the better the lawyer they should have (extraordinary claims needing extraordinary evidence). Is this the best people can do in a post Willie Horton Ad age?
In all of the excitement about how Starmer drove SPM's to suicide we have missed the accounts being published for Teesworks.
Headline is that the private developers are making a fortune with assets gifted to them by the taxpayer. Lost in the middle is a nugget about land. Ben Houchen International Airport got very het up when various people stated that land had been sold to the developers for £100. An outrageous lie said Houchen, who then spent £7k with Carter Fuck looking to sue Andy McDonald MP for libel.
The published accounts show that the land was sold for £97. So, one of two things is true: Houchen knew what McDonald said was true and was willing to sue anyway as its politically embarrassing Houchen didn't know what was going on but thought a pile on would be politically good
All they need to do is use the technology that worked so well in 1969.
Lol. Just wondering where you draw the line on that one. Apollo wasn't exactly accident free - several dead in Apollo 1 and a moon landing abandoned and miraculous recovery in Apollo 13. Do we abandon flight because a window falls out of a plane, go back to horse and carriage because trains and cars crash. Go back to the stone age because people die in fires. I mean where do you draw the line?
I just find it so odd. With very limited technology and virtually zero computer power we managed to fly 250,000 miles to the moon, land, play golf, drive an electric car around, take off and meet up with an orbiter doing 5000 mph around the moon and then fly back to earth and land safely. This was 55 years ago. Since 1972 the furthest a human has flown away from earth is just 350 miles and all these new attempts to send someone back to the moon always have issues. Just imagine telling a person alive in 1972 that by 2024 not only would Apollo 17 be the last time a human went to the moon but it would also be the last time a human left earth orbit. There are now only 4 astronauts who walked on the moon left alive, soon it will be zero.
Im sure people will say lack of funding etc but that is not an explanation. Why hasn't China done it?
Because this time it needs to have a commercial justification. China certainly has the capacity - they've already sent landers which have retrieved samples from the far side of the moon.
The US will return there soon - but the plan is to set up permanent infrastructure, and do it affordably. The equivalent spending on Apollo would be nearly a trillion dollars today.
We had the technology to send man to the moon in 1969, why not just use that?
Every new attempt always has issues. In 1961 the USA had not even been into space, yet just 8 years later they landed and returned from the moon. This was with zero technology compared to today. Other than the fire on the ground for Apollo 1, the Apollo programme had a perfect safety reord and even Apollo 13 managed to orbit the moon despite the explosion ( which was caused by a manufacturing error and not poor design)
Its like the first landing of the Boeing 747 at Heathrow in 1970 and then not having another one land there for 50 years.
Because we move on. We improve. Nobody would touch Apollo now. Then brilliant. Now it is antiquated. I don't get this wanting to stay antiquated.
Using your logic because Horizon was such a mess we should go back to pencils and ledgers. They worked. Do you believe that? Sadly I'm guess some postmasters will after their appalling experiences, but the failure was not the faults in the code (there always will be) but the way humans handled it (very badly).
One subpostmistress did keep her own handwritten accounts of all her transactions and so avoided prosecution because she was able to show what was actually going on at her branch.
It is a sad that, that is true. It is also true, from my experiences, I would probably do the same.
Me too.
I often wondered why mor SPMs didn't just ask to see Horizon's audit trail. I suspect the PO would have refused, but that in itself would have been the basis for a reasonable defence.
Maybe too few of the SPMs had accountancy experience.
If the system was randomly adding transactions (Either randomly or via remote access) that couldn't be distinguished from the sub-postmaster's entries then the audit trail wouldn't have been much use in the sub-postmaster's defence. The Auditors were post office management or Fujitsu engineers iirc...
A couple more things - the errors shown in the drama were always shortfalls. Random computer error you might expect some 'overs'... Also since the sub-postmasters were paying out of their own pockets to make up the fake shortfalls it means the PO's historical accounts must be wrong.
Simplified for the drama. There were overs but not so often. I speculated about why, a few days back
Worth saying it wasn’t adding there were race conditions that resulted in multiple issues, say 1 balance being updated but the other side of the transaction not being updated, or the other side being updated based on the last but 1 value and not the last value
As an example say you have 2 debits from an account 1 for £10, 1 for £20.
If both kick off at the same time with the starting balance passed into the process/ transaction the end balance is going to reflect a deduction of £10 or a deduction of £20, it’s not going to show a deduction of £30.
First real day back after a lovely Christmas holiday in Barcelona with one thing on my mind - people who dislike the idea of 15 minute cities are insane. Staying at my friends flat we were one block away from a square with 2 independent cafes, 2 independent pharmacies, an independent bakery, an independent fruit and veg shop, and a Spanish brand shop chain place. And a square like this was every 5-6 blocks. Not to mention all the independent butchers (as a vegetarian, no use for, but still good to see) and the ease of walking, the inclusion of regular benches and space for small greens / plazas and the general slower pace of Mediterranean living. Rinse and repeat here, please and thank you.
Plenty of cities, towns and villages are still like that in the UK, thank God (minus the Med weather, but hey)
I live in one in Camden. At least half of my friends and fam live in such, around the UK
What we need to be doing is making sure NEW towns and burbs repeat this, and we are not. That is the criminal thing. We are throwing up endless @BartholomewRoberts Barrett Home barbarities where the nearest micro-grocery is 30 minutes away
If Sir Karmer can amend this he will deserve his victory
Our justice system is one of the better ones & it’s still prone to significant miscarriages. The Sun & Sunak were happy to label the Iranian regime “barbaric” for using the death penalty. Shame this poor man didn’t have the benefit of Starmer’s services
The Sun editorial attacking Starmer actually states the Sun opposes the death penalty. It's self-refuting.
Interesting though that Rupe and his favourite cat’s paw aren’t backing SKS and in fact attacking him. A fair bit of backtracking to do if they’re going adopt Murdoch’s sop of backing the likely winner.
It is funny isn't it. The Murdoch nexus was the media backing of the 'get Rishi in' campaign, but they did seem to have gone sour on him - perhaps when the full scale of his crapness became clear. I thought they'd reluctantly back Starmer as inevitable. If so, they're not really doing themselves any favours.
To what degree does the Sun lead opinion versus follow it? I think if the Sun decided to stick by Rishi no matter what, its readership would disagree and potentially stop buying. This is one of the weird push and pulls of UK papers; unlike Fox News (which manages to seep into the brains of elderly Americans by dint of just constantly being on in the background) the right wing papers have to be sought out and bought. That allows you to shape narratives, and respond to the world in the way that suits you, but it doesn't allow you to completely ignore reality. Most people think Rishi is shit, so the Sun has to have some view on that.
The days of the Sun making the weather (if they ever truly existed) are over but they’ve definitely been a bellwether over the years; they were even neutral over B*****! Backing stone cold loser Rishi would be a bit of a departure.
Going back to the previous thread topic, I do wonder if one of the reasons Daisy hasn't yet been able to get the top spot in the LDs is because she has been involved in the post Levenson world of media regulation advocacy, and therefore a) it is in no papers interest to shiv Ed Davies in favour of someone who might use their (smallish) platform to come after them and b) she doesn't have the kind of connections in the papers that get her positive coverage that could become a launching pad for a leadership battle. She would be the perfect villain for the Sun - a dogooder who is arguably to the left of Starmer on many things, but is actually quite attractive so their readers can hate her and fancy her at the same time.
Comments
If they really want to hurt him, just go after what he is. A SIR. Not one of the ordinary people like Rishi Sunak.
I am no fan of Starmer and I'm sure this type of campaigning works but it is immoral and intended to make him seem as bad or worse than Boris, which he isn't. And anyway Boris isn't there now.
It is identical to @TheKitchenCabinet re Biden and Trump. There is no hiding Trumps flaws so lets try and imply Biden is as bad. He isn't, not by a long way.
The answer to how it survived is mostly to do with what it landed on, as anyone who has ever dropped a phone will know.
Also, squirrels can survive a fall from any height, apparently.
Instead, the US is iterating with much cheaper private sector developments, until the technology is proved reliable.
The Boris/Tory/Leave vs Starmer/Remain fight really reminds me of Axelrod vs Chuck in Billions - at first you assume Bobby is the bad guy because Chuck is a man of legal honour but they’re both flawed
Using your logic because Horizon was such a mess we should go back to pencils and ledgers. They worked. Do you believe that? Sadly I'm guess some postmasters will after their appalling experiences, but the failure was not the faults in the code (there always will be) but the way humans handled it (very badly).
According to Nick Wallis, whatever the formal position, PO people were in and out of the Business Department all the time and in reality taking their orders from them. But the focus was all on getting it back into profit and so one can see how in such an environment the Horizon issues and their consequences would have been ignored or downplayed.
Wow...
In any other business those functions are very very separate. We use paper slips for the cash tins.
Either way, if it was my point how can you struggle to see it? In fact you don’t struggle to see it, as you’ve said what it is in your second paragraph
I think in theory squirrels can survive a fall from any height - but a couple of years ago my wife, along with a few others, saw one fall out of a tree onto a road. It wasn't killed, but it was clearly quite injured. Some builders working on a house moved it out of the road to a place of safety. The squirrel's friend (sibling? partner? parent? child?) came and sat with it and tried to calm it. Not knowing what to do, the humans involved called, I think, the RSPCA, who came and took them both away and killed them, because grey squirrels are an invasive species, which I don't think was the ending anyone involved, human or sciurine, wanted.
Government will have some accountability for their decisions having contributed to creating what became the mess in the first place.
Government has a lot more accountability for not stepping in once the issues were in the public arena, and especially after the facts had been established in court.
Despite the Tory attempts at smears about what happened or didn't happen in the late 1990s through to early 2010s, the showering of preferment on Vennells when she left the PO in 2019, and the failure to give any priority to the issue until it became a prime time TV drama, are the most egregious mistakes from the politicians. Plus some historic changes to the law in respect of computer evidence and false convictions, as evidenced by our CF.
And this note to the PM in 1999 -
The Apollo program was a drop-everything-get-there-first program. The designers deliberately chose a system they could build faster, but was more expensive to use. Each mission was a complete throw away. The payloads could not be expanded (much)
So all you could do was send 2 men to the moon for a few days.
Added to this, the whole system was incredibly dangerous. The Lunar Lander, in particular was full of systems with no redundancy (weight) that had to work perfectly.
NASA lobbied Nixon to replace Apollo with the Shuttle. Which they saw as moving back to the “correct” way of doing space - see X15 and X20. This would make payload to orbit so cheap that missions to Moon and Mars could be assembled in orbit. And was supposed to be much, much safer.
The costs escalated and the Shuttle system turned out to be a dog. And quite dangerous. So using it for more than space station re supply never happened.
The Shuttle became the political incumbent system - billions spent in the right places. So moving on from Shuttle was almost impossible.
So the US space program got stuck in a rut for decades.
Interestingly, SpaceX has reached some of the numbers that were promised for Shuttle - launching every week, with a marginal launch cost of $28 million dollars (at one point, it was claimed that the marginal cost of a shuttle launch would be $20 million. In 1975 dollars)
She fell from about four thousand feet into a newly ploughed field
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-44237336
We can't do that now, the Apollo astronauts also managed to put together an electric car on the moon and drive around in it so they clearly did not think the lunar lander was that dangerous.
Let's us get this clear you are saying that you approve of campaigns that immorally try and make politicians look worse by misrepresenting ethical actions as evil.
You are really saying that?
We haven't landed men on the moon since because we have chosen not to (mainly because there is no cold war now and the expense compared to the return and safety), not because we can't and if we chose to we would use nothing from Apollo (great as it was at the time).
I often wondered why mor SPMs didn't just ask to see Horizon's audit trail. I suspect the PO would have refused, but that in itself would have been the basis for a reasonable defence.
Maybe too few of the SPMs had accountancy experience.
A couple more things - the errors shown in the drama were always shortfalls. Random computer error you might expect some 'overs'...
Also since the sub-postmasters were paying out of their own pockets to make up the fake shortfalls it means the PO's historical accounts must be wrong.
I'm not saying you're wrong - but outside Central London, there's very few places you can do it without starting from scratch. (Though where you can start from scratch - as Manchester has essentially done since 1990 - I think you should).
But the Tories have been in charge since 2010 and are responsible for not sorting out this mess. The endless whataboutery is pathetic and a distraction.
Little wonder no one at a corporate level ever gets held accountable when politicians refuse to accept responsibility for what they do and not do when they are in power.
That’s why they cancelled more Apollo missions.
Plus this is what happens when you unmoor in a strong current - or the mooring breaks. It's the Soar upstream from Loughborough, as it happens.
https://metro.co.uk/video/narrowboat-trapped-against-bridge-river-soar-swells-following-heavy-downpours-leicestershire-3094211/
"He had to represent himself in the High Court and was then made bankrupt during a difficult and terrifying chain of events. He is yet to see a penny of compensation."
The postmaster played by Will Mellor, Castleton still hasn't received any compensation. How mad is that ? Just bonkers.
He needs the £20k shortfall+ £300k PO court costs + 8% compounded interest as an interim settlement yesterday.
https://nypost.com/2024/01/08/news/black-box-recorder-from-imperiled-alaska-airlines-flight-completely-erased-we-have-nothing/
Or was the Head of Marketing waving a Big Magnet at it whilst whistling surruptitiously?
I mean, if, from stationary, after 1 sec the object has fallen 9.81 m and after 2 secs it has fallen more than 2 x 9.81m (as it is accelerating) is there any limit to the maximum speed it will reach?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23233573
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-29130897
Even that, on the face of it, was back then enough to infer that something was seriously wrong - and with hindsight we now know that was the public position after considerable positive (and dishonest) spin had been applied.
The sacking didn't occur until 2015.
This was Ron Warrington's (of Second Sight) view of the position in 2013 (reported in 2019)
https://www.postofficetrial.com/2019/12/second-sights-ron-warmington-breaks-his.html
.."if the Post Office Board had believed - and acted on - what Second Sight reported... instead of being led by the nose by its own middle management and in-house and external legal advisors, huge amounts of money, and human suffering, would have been avoided."
"As a fraud investigator who has, for decades, dealt with real fraudsters and confidence tricksters, it struck me, six years ago, as I interviewed Subpostmaster after Subpostmaster, that these are good, honest, straight-talking people. It was very rapidly obvious that many have suffered life-changing damage because they received no investigative support when mysterious shortfalls appeared in their accounts.
"Some were left in limbo when the police refused to investigate, saying that Post Office’s own investigation department should carry out the work, and the latter said they wouldn’t investigate either."..
And then pushed it a bit further, just for laughs.
Also, if it was found with only 'half a battery' then it didn't do all that well
ETA: stops accelerating, not stops falling - that only happens when it hits the ground
ETA2: Pedantry: it hasn't fallen 9.81m after 1s - after 1s it's reached a speed of 9.81m/s - it was going slower than that during the first second.
But density of an object becomes a factor as soon as air resistance comes into play.
"Suzanne Moore: I've seen what happens when a newspaper loses the plot"
Irony is not dead.
My gut feeling is that the air resistance on an iphone will be lower than on a human, so it will have a faster terminal velocity. But it will still reach it within, I would say, the time it takes to fall from a tall building. So if it falls out of a plane it will probably reach terminal velocity within, ooh, 30 seconds or so, I would say.
'Terminal velocity' is the speed at which the two forces balance each other.
But I do agree with you that we should be developing more high-density urban areas which would support that sort of amenity!
When CVRs (Cockpit Voice Recorders) were first invented, pilots hated the idea. They were afraid that airlines would use the recordings to snoop on them on routine, non-emergency flights. So they were made that only the last two hours are recorded - after which they are overwritten.
If a place crashes, then obviously it is not recorded over, so you get the last two hours of audio. In this case, the pilots did not pull a circuit breaker which would have stopped the recording, and preserve the audio of the incident.
In this case, don't blame Boeing; blame the pilots' unions.
I'd say much the same is true of Fox news, tbh. There is just as much of a market in TV news as there is in newspapers. Fox has identified a market for consumers who want stories set out in that way and follows it.
The real worry has to be how many other bolts have they failed to tighten properly?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-67919436
The other thing to note is that the iPhone was probably tumbling at a high rate - rotating many times a second as it fell. This would have massively increased drag.
Got it, I think.
This is because the force on the box is directly proportional to the box's weight. Thus there is a much greater force on a heavier box - but you need a much greater force to accelerate it, because its mass is greater. The end result will be that the box accelerates as fast, at first. But the upward force of air resistance varies not depending on the weight of the box but on the speed of the box. Thus, the upward force balances out the downward force sooner when the box is lighter.
I think?
Headline is that the private developers are making a fortune with assets gifted to them by the taxpayer. Lost in the middle is a nugget about land. Ben Houchen International Airport got very het up when various people stated that land had been sold to the developers for £100. An outrageous lie said Houchen, who then spent £7k with Carter Fuck looking to sue Andy McDonald MP for libel.
The published accounts show that the land was sold for £97. So, one of two things is true:
Houchen knew what McDonald said was true and was willing to sue anyway as its politically embarrassing
Houchen didn't know what was going on but thought a pile on would be politically good
As an example say you have 2 debits from an account 1 for £10, 1 for £20.
If both kick off at the same time with the starting balance passed into the process/ transaction the end balance is going to reflect a deduction of £10 or a deduction of £20, it’s not going to show a deduction of £30.
I live in one in Camden. At least half of my friends and fam live in such, around the UK
What we need to be doing is making sure NEW towns and burbs repeat this, and we are not. That is the criminal thing. We are throwing up endless @BartholomewRoberts Barrett Home barbarities where the nearest micro-grocery is 30 minutes away
If Sir Karmer can amend this he will deserve his victory