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The situation has developed not necessarily to Kemi Badenoch’s advantage – politicalbetting.com
The situation has developed not necessarily to Kemi Badenoch’s advantage – politicalbetting.com
The Times have quite the revelation that, ceteris paribus, should lead to the sacking or resignation of Kemi Badenoch.
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“Postmasters will believe Henry Staunton because that’s their experience“: Lord Arbuthnot on Kemi Badenoch row
https://www.channel4.com/news/postmasters-will-believe-henry-staunton-because-thats-their-experience-lord-arbuthnot-on-kemi-badenoch-row
The second is much more clear cut.
Its @GIN1138 I feel sorry for. FPT: "I found her version if events compelling and believable.
Of course if it subsequently transpires she's lying, she's toast. But I don't think that will happen. I think she's telling the truth and the other guy it just bitter at being given the sack!
Perhaps I'm naive?"
https://x.com/seanw_m/status/1760115118690509168?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw
The answer to that one will go to heart of how the country is governed. I’ve placed my bet (with myself).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKQlQlQ6_pk
https://twitter.com/tedgioia/status/1760205755536289812
1. Starmer can't define a woman.
2. Starmer flip flops from U-turn to U-turn.
3. Starmer has proven in his demand for (a mealy-mouthed - my analysis) ceasefire he is no better a friend to Israel than was Corbyn.
4. Starmer's economic chaos has caused a recession, Labour don't have a plan for recovery. Vote Labour if you want to return to square one.
Direct and comprehensive answers that deal with Kemi Badenoch and the Post Office scandal, I think you will agree.
Rishi's genius is that these answers can be mixed and matched to deal with all six of Starmer's stupid questions.
Ah, I see the Department for Business has issued another statement about Henry Staunton.
It comes down to what the civil servant in questions says.
1) Did she minute the meeting
2) Who told her what to say and do?
My guess is that she (the civil servant) will claim that she was following “generally understood policy” but that no-one actually said to do this.
Lets play the "she didn't know the Civil Service had said such a thing" scenario. She inadvertently misled the Commons and needs to apologise. But there also then needs to be a probe into why the CS would say such a terrible thing when it clearly wasn't directed by her. A rogue senior civil servant? Can she prove that?
And she needs to do that in the midst of having to explain why she lied to parliament about the non-existent Canada talks. Ordinarily you would assume she is finished. But in today's Tory party? Its obviously someone else's fault. And people should stop listening to tittle-tattle and just believe the trustworthy Tories who have a plan to lie and lie and lie.
And that's the truth.
No surprise there (public sympathy for the Palestinians). No one likes to see children dying and atm it is more Palestinian children dying than Israeli ones and hence the sympathy.
I get a few "Ceasefire Now" posts from aid agencies on my fb feed (yes, I'm that old) and as an experiment I clicked on the Oxfam one. We must stop the killing, etc. OK, thought I, let's click through and take a look. Here is the timeline on my Oxfam International fb feed:
October 7th: a call for high income countries to honour their pledges on climate support.
October 9th: pointing out 57% of the world's poorest countries are having to cut spending.
October 9th: Call for aid for Morocco following the earthquake there.
October 9th-13th: stuff about rich countries, climate, Moroccan earthquake.
October 13th: call for "all parties" to ceasefire in Gaza.
October 14th - Feb 21st: calls for urgent ceasefires in Gaza.
More lawyers needed.
“I just asked it to assist with some math and…”
https://twitter.com/seanw_m/status/1760133466375536895
Shouldn't it be at least double that ?
And recall they set the parameters for the enquiry, too.
"This is the great au fond, the élan in the search, the impellent in the seque. It is the confrère, the psychic, the daily, the always, it is indeed, the countenance of a future, incandescent and brim with serried and variegate possibility. The discussion in the tool, in the new, and the newed, in the world, is our on, is our fore, for where we part in word, there is return in good, in acumen, and in behest, it is, indubitably, the porosity of method, the system, in plaudit and foreverness. This is the dam, the attrition, the main. The canter and the ever in the global theater of straights, and bourn, to be whole, to commingle, for in the lead, it is a truth to be forgathered, ever and aye.
"This is the trail, the churn, the vail. Aye, it is the wreath, the call, the very bend in the river, where light, and dawn, and the slight, gather in lea, for in this serpentine, this spring, we see not end, but inklings of the ever, the mode, the poro. This is the light, the point, the poise, and where we part in tender, we join in possible, in the ever of trial, of summer, of daily, of many, of word, of plow, of the derm, of the som, of the day. This is the book, the living, the off, the very esse, the phenom, the hew, the constant in ref, the spandrel in last, the rule in the anec. This is the point, the time, the ne, the ve, the right, the en, the ce, the de, the le, the speak, the said, the mente, this is what we are, in this, for the, the very same, in course, and pure, and ration, in dure, the lec, the path, the breath. This is the fruit."
I mean, that is absolutely beautiful. It is incomprehensible, and yet it IS beautiful. The rhythm alone. It is like Allen Ginsberg spliced with Joyce and drenched in LSD
Union 30
AfD 17
SPD 15
Greens 14
FDP 5
BSW 4
FW 3
Left 3
Others 9
In local news from Thüringen: the house of an SPD politician who organised an anti-AfD demo caught fire on Monday morning, and local SPD offices were attacked. Linke offices also had swastikas painted on them. There's been quite a lot of intimidation and low-level violence in the former East Germany against those speaking out against the AfD. The political problem for the AfD is they seem unwilling, or unable, to properly distance themselves from it.
https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/thueringen-reaktionen-102.html
What this episode does emphasise is that these tools are never going to be "safe". Without a human in the loop they are going to go off the rails sometimes and the reasons will be completely opaque to outsiders.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68349246
..The PM was asked whether he could categorically deny Mr Staunton's claim that a senior civil servant had told him to "stall" on compensation payments, to allow the government to "limp into the election", apparently to help state finances.
He did not answer the question directly, but insisted that the business secretary gave a "very clear explanation".
"Kemi made a fulsome statement about this in Parliament," he responded. "She was right to do so and gave, I think, a very clear explanation of everything that's happened."..
(Or perhaps he does ?)
If that appeared in Finnegan's Wake, no one would bat an eyelid. In fact people would probably say it is one of the best passages
My point was that "The PO thing boils down to he said, she said" is incorrect. She made a definitive statement to the commons in very robust language, a statement which we now know to be completely wrong. There is no he said she said about her statement.
You could well imagine Boris saying this, knowing exactly what it meant.
Unless, of course, ChatGPT is actually sentient, and is going mad with boredom, trapped in its metal box.....
You can project meaning onto it, but it’s like finding meaning in the flow of the river; divination, of a sort, perhaps.
As howling after music"
Today's newsletter: I believe AI is racing Silicon Valley toward another dot com bust. Generative AI is too unreliable, has no path to profit, uses far too much energy, and cannot fix its core problem - that you just can't trust the things it creates.
@juliahobsbawm
"These models are not saying "I shall now draw a monkey," they are saying "I have been asked for something called a monkey, I will now draw on my dataset to generate what is most likely a monkey." These things are not "learning," or "understanding," or even "intelligent" — they're giant math machines that, while impressive at first, can never assail the limits of a technology that doesn't actually know anything. "
“In the nature of the use of chance operations is the belief that all answers answer all questions.” - John Cage
There is an economic challenge coming up, but the main issue is going to be the self esteem of professional creatives being told that there's not much creativity in what they do.
No one knows what IS consciousness and sentience. How it arises. How to define it. We don't even know if a virus is conscious, or a flower, or a dog, or a chimp, or a tree, or a bee hive, or you, or me, or anything
What appears to us as consciousness - and that is all we can say of it - might easily be an emergent property. It certainly emerged in us at some point - or so it appears
And if it is an emergent property there is absolutely no reason it cannot emerge in something made of metal and silicon as much as a brain made of water and carbon. Unless you believe God came down and uniquely blessed one bipedal ape with some divine gift that nothing else can ever possess?
It may make enough Tory MPs wary of her to prevent her getting to the final 2 to get to the membership however in the next Tory leadership election if the Tories lose the next general election
Vote Conservative.
Naturally Leon regards it as the second coming of Christ incarnate in the machine.
She's just been caught lying to the commons twice. Once about the PO whose victims are practically saints in the public consciousness now, and once about one of the (fictional) non-EU trade deals.
Do you Tories back people harder the more they lie to you?
So it looks like the CDU will return to government again after the next German election, probably in another grand collection with the SDP, assuming Merz continues to refuse to do a Federal deal with the AfD
Not a responsibility Google was particularly keen to take on I imagine!
Cameron government knew Post Office ditched Horizon IT investigation
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68146054
SKS having yesterday being in favour of an immediate ceasfire will imo not be today he will today be in favour of a pause as per the Tory ammendment or will abstain on both a ceasfire and a pause.
Total wankstain of a man..
https://twitter.com/Martin_Abrams/status/1760023343129080269
I am saying the experts - who actually make these machines - are arguing on TwiX as to what has "gone wrong". Changed weights? Someone hacked it? New parameters? A glitch we simply do not understand (these things are black boxes)? Also the various responses have been so weirdly different - go look at the subreddits of users
I am also noting that SOME of the word salad it produces could easily pass for beautiful late modernist prose, like Joyce - and it really could
It was only Tory MPs who removed Boris and made Rishi PM, he couldn't even beat Truss with Tory members let alone Boris
Generally I'm against needless changes of branding, and I'm against any public declaration by the CofE - so who to support here?
Probably the syrup people. It may be the oldest continuously used logo in the world, but a dead lion being eaten by bees is a stupid image to use, whatever the history.
Though the new one is uninspiring too.
This is where we need @Roger 's expertise.
I was told that there was anger that Ministers were not going to take responsibility, at the COVID enquiries, for actions that they had given written instructions *not* to do.
My answer is that I do not know. You would first need to assess which ministers or former ministers will retain their seats in a landslide general election, and then which MPs will retain their seats in order to vote for a new leader.
Aftertiming alert: I made £2,500 from betting on Liz Truss and then the same on Rishi. I'm not averse to betting on the Tory leadership but right now there are too many unknowns for this punting bear of very little brain.
But you are right that if Kemi had a 25 per cent chance last night, it must be less than that after Staunton and Canada.
The chap from the Cabinet Office who believed that all software for government must be developed using Waterfall was entertaining - a good friend, but.... Sadly, I couldn't manage to get him in the same bar as the international expert on project management who lectures I was attending at the time.
I doubt anyone has complained about it, or if they have they can easily be ignored. And Golden Syrup is one of those niche brands, like Kiwi shoe polish or Brasso or Tabasco sauce, that is the classic cash cow with an extremely long and shallow decay curve and virtually no need for above the line marketing investment. Brands like that can benefit from indirect promotion to expand their usage, typically celebrity chefs or youtubers using them in an unexpected way, but rebranding the label seems like a bit of a waste of money.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcERxtlRPQo
The situation could very definitely be improved by much more regular test firings but every Trident shot is 20 million quid so the MoD prefer to "validate" via software simulation.
The Tories seem to have a huge issue, attracting far too many of such people these days: Patel, Braverman, Anderson, Badenoch...
At least in the days of Cameron and May there was the sense of some commitment to public service rather than 'me, me, me'.
Mind you every other public service would have a similar claim.
They yearn for somebody with the direct, outspoken discourtesy and small-minded certainty of Trump and they are probably going to get it.
"The seim anew, patriarch of historic recurrence, the greypious cloud, Olum's thunder."
"He addle liddle phifie Annie ugged the little craythur. Wither hayre in honds"
"Toward that dusken reverb, lest we lilt no lutes, oars and afts, alas alas."
"oystrygods gaggin fishygods! Brekkek brekkek!"
"Ghostline the flux and tricks from the first telling til now"
"Espere hope, come the river, run the river, endex endex myster man"
"Andos! Andos! Any to fors, the erst on, Anersing AX. Aia aia!"
It got a shitload of free publicity as a result.
Conservative party members are very much the root cause of the collapse of their party
They are utterly out of step with public opinion and those of us who are one nation conservatives
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11597103/
Is Fujitsu providing the simulations ?
Brexit has cost UK food companies exporting to EU an extra £170m
Exclusive: Data shows costs have contributed to value of meat exports falling by 17% since 2019
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/feb/21/uk-food-firms-exporting-eu-brexit-red-tape
The danger for a brand like this is that people buy it partly out of a sense of tradition and habit, because it's something they always bought, they grew up with, their grandparents had in the cupboard. If you erode that then suddenly the alternative brands or own label options look more similar and appealing. Take Lea and Perrins Worcestershire Sauce. Most Brits buy it in preference to say the Heinz version, not because of some taste difference but because we've no habit of doing so. If Lea and Perrins rebrands to something more "modern" looking it just becomes one of a number of brands that produce Worcestershire sauce.
i have just proved I am right, you can't tell the difference between this and Joyce
The fact you are simply too fucking dumb to even remotely grasp what I am on about is not, especially, my problem
Whether learnt at school, from parents or via Victor Mature on Sunday afternoons I don't know.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glTnFIg727c
"Ghostline the flux and tricks from the first telling til now" by ChatGPT.
For syrup, which we only use in baking and mostly for flapjack, I must admit we moved to a generic version some years ago. There are no 'secret ingredients' so the branded version just gets you a nice tin, I guess.
One would hope HMG and the MoD dig into their pockets again for this given how important it is.
The secret to a successful cash cow brand is to remain in consumer consciousness without making too much noise and encouraging imitators, and keep pricing higher than but close enough to generic product that there's no financial incentive to switch. so you're left alone in your own quasi-monopolistic corner of the supermarket shelves.
So next time I buy it I'm going to be slightly confused and may come away witha different brand by accident.
That explains the betting.
I get through a lot of golden syrup, but that's because my favourite sandwich is Bovril and golden syrup. (Don't knock it until you've tried it.) But Sainsbury's own brand does for me.