https://www.greaterlondon.co/p/safer-streets ...About eight percent of those killed on the road each year – 130 people – are killed by that one percent of uninsured drivers. According to West Mercia Police, uninsured drivers are also ten times more likely to be a convicted drink driver, six times more likely to have a defective vehicle, and five times more likely to get caught speeding by cameras. Clearly not all serious car crimes are committed by those driving without insurance, but a significant fraction are.
What makes this especially notable is that there is an easy way we could make a big difference to the number of uninsured and untaxed drivers on London’s streets, making the roads safer for other road users. You will already know that there are about 2,000 cameras around London, which use automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) to enforce the congestion charge, ultra-low emissions zone, and more. They’re also accessible by police.
Police cars have their own cameras. If one of the police cameras sees an uninsured or untaxed car it pings the policeman automatically and they can decide whether to pursue and stop it. But the vast majority of cameras, the non-police cameras that you go past every day on London’s roads, don’t alert them: they just pump the data (which numberplates were where) into a database.
To be clear, the police are allowed to access this information, they just don’t get sent it by default. If they did manually pore over the records they would find all the uninsured and untaxed drivers driving around, plus those previously used for crimes, and those with suspicious plates. But by the time they did that the car would be long gone, so in practice the perpetrators get away with it practically every time. What the Met need is an automatic ping, like they get with their own cameras.
This could go beyond telling police where uninsured drivers are going. Cloning number plates is itself a crime, but it is also only useful if you are trying to cover up another crime by pretending to be someone else, so picking up those driving with fake numberplates could help prevent many other crimes. It would only take a simple predictive system, which looked at where the car was registered, and where it had last been tracked by cameras, to identify and rapidly investigate suspicious cars...
I'm against anything that might be described as Orwellian.
Even a dark satirical novel about the horrors of totalitarianism?
Solicitor disciplined for showing sexual photo to colleague in courtroom
Tribunal says inappropriate conduct damages public trust in legal profession
A senior lawyer has been reprimanded for sharing a sexual photo with a junior female colleague in a courtroom.
Geoffrey White, a criminal defence solicitor, was found to have breached professional standards after making sexually explicit and derogatory comments to a probation officer at Crawley Magistrates’ Court in 2021.
The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) on Tuesday said that the 66-year-old would benefit from diversity and inclusion training after his inappropriate conduct damaged the public’s trust and confidence in the legal industry.
Judge Edward Nally said: “Attitudes have changed, the profession has modernised.”
The probation officer, referred to as Person A, claimed Mr White showed her a meme on his mobile phone of a naked woman lying down on a table at a barbeque with bottles covering her breasts in May 2021. The naked image had a caption to the effect of “if you have left your wife at the BBQ, please come and get her”, according to legal documents referred to in the hearing and prepared by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, which brought the case.
Mr White, who runs his own law firm specialising in legal aid, then told Person A that “it looks a bit like you” and “your hair looks the same”.
The SDT also found that Mr White made further sexual comments about Person A in July 2021, when joking about a female client arrested on suspicion of having sex on a train. Person A overheard Mr White tell a prosecutor that she “knows all about that, standard probation practice”.
The probation officer said that both incidents made her feel uncomfortable and that she continued to feel uneasy when she saw or spoke to him.
Mr White, who has represented 25,000 people across the past three decades, claimed that he was trying to make Person A laugh rather than offend her.
The Sussex-based lawyer said that he wanted to “lighten the mood” and diffuse the tension with the woman, who appeared “nervous and so serious” in her new role in the probation service.
I don't like Big Brother automatic pinging in most things in general but we're already required to have insurance etc by law and in the event I'm hit by another vehicle I want their insurance to put it right and they can't if they don't have any.
I'm interested if there is a bit of a causation/correlation conflation happening here, but it would appear to be a strong signal that someone is not taking their duties to other road users seriously. Consider this recent revelation in Edinburgh - record of previous collisions, cancels insurance and then a toddler killed:
In this case, it might not have been callousness but rather a decline in faculties. Either way, the cancellation of insurance should've raised a flag with the police.
In general yes, but not sure that's the best example of someone who doesn't care, sounds like someone who had dementia which is a whole different kettle of fish.
I don't like Big Brother automatic pinging in most things in general but we're already required to have insurance etc by law and in the event I'm hit by another vehicle I want their insurance to put it right and they can't if they don't have any.
That was my gut reaction. Glad to have the PB libertarian on board with that.
https://www.greaterlondon.co/p/safer-streets ...About eight percent of those killed on the road each year – 130 people – are killed by that one percent of uninsured drivers. According to West Mercia Police, uninsured drivers are also ten times more likely to be a convicted drink driver, six times more likely to have a defective vehicle, and five times more likely to get caught speeding by cameras. Clearly not all serious car crimes are committed by those driving without insurance, but a significant fraction are.
What makes this especially notable is that there is an easy way we could make a big difference to the number of uninsured and untaxed drivers on London’s streets, making the roads safer for other road users. You will already know that there are about 2,000 cameras around London, which use automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) to enforce the congestion charge, ultra-low emissions zone, and more. They’re also accessible by police.
Police cars have their own cameras. If one of the police cameras sees an uninsured or untaxed car it pings the policeman automatically and they can decide whether to pursue and stop it. But the vast majority of cameras, the non-police cameras that you go past every day on London’s roads, don’t alert them: they just pump the data (which numberplates were where) into a database.
To be clear, the police are allowed to access this information, they just don’t get sent it by default. If they did manually pore over the records they would find all the uninsured and untaxed drivers driving around, plus those previously used for crimes, and those with suspicious plates. But by the time they did that the car would be long gone, so in practice the perpetrators get away with it practically every time. What the Met need is an automatic ping, like they get with their own cameras.
This could go beyond telling police where uninsured drivers are going. Cloning number plates is itself a crime, but it is also only useful if you are trying to cover up another crime by pretending to be someone else, so picking up those driving with fake numberplates could help prevent many other crimes. It would only take a simple predictive system, which looked at where the car was registered, and where it had last been tracked by cameras, to identify and rapidly investigate suspicious cars...
I suspect that such surveillance would payoff by detecting a lot of other crimes and antisocial behavior.
Nick them and confiscate their vehicles.
If we surveil people 24hrs a day and combine it with numerous "nudge" and hate-crime programs, we can realistically reduce crime and antisocial behaviour to zero...
...But having built Hell, who would want to live in it?
https://www.greaterlondon.co/p/safer-streets ...About eight percent of those killed on the road each year – 130 people – are killed by that one percent of uninsured drivers. According to West Mercia Police, uninsured drivers are also ten times more likely to be a convicted drink driver, six times more likely to have a defective vehicle, and five times more likely to get caught speeding by cameras. Clearly not all serious car crimes are committed by those driving without insurance, but a significant fraction are.
What makes this especially notable is that there is an easy way we could make a big difference to the number of uninsured and untaxed drivers on London’s streets, making the roads safer for other road users. You will already know that there are about 2,000 cameras around London, which use automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) to enforce the congestion charge, ultra-low emissions zone, and more. They’re also accessible by police.
Police cars have their own cameras. If one of the police cameras sees an uninsured or untaxed car it pings the policeman automatically and they can decide whether to pursue and stop it. But the vast majority of cameras, the non-police cameras that you go past every day on London’s roads, don’t alert them: they just pump the data (which numberplates were where) into a database.
To be clear, the police are allowed to access this information, they just don’t get sent it by default. If they did manually pore over the records they would find all the uninsured and untaxed drivers driving around, plus those previously used for crimes, and those with suspicious plates. But by the time they did that the car would be long gone, so in practice the perpetrators get away with it practically every time. What the Met need is an automatic ping, like they get with their own cameras.
This could go beyond telling police where uninsured drivers are going. Cloning number plates is itself a crime, but it is also only useful if you are trying to cover up another crime by pretending to be someone else, so picking up those driving with fake numberplates could help prevent many other crimes. It would only take a simple predictive system, which looked at where the car was registered, and where it had last been tracked by cameras, to identify and rapidly investigate suspicious cars...
I suspect that such surveillance would payoff by detecting a lot of other crimes and antisocial behavior.
Nick them and confiscate their vehicles.
If we surveil people 24hrs a day and combine it with numerous "nudge" and hate-crime programs, we can realistically reduce crime and antisocial behaviour to zero...
...But having built Hell, who would want to live in it?
You’re so unambitious, we want to focus on pre-crime like in Minority Report.
Since most posters here have had their say about Leon, here's mine. He is (was?) the most iteresting poster by far. That includes my vicarious interest in his travel reports. Hopefully his Spectator pieces will continue, but they are no substitute for his more ad lib contributions here. The Paretian 80:20 rule applies here as in many areas of life and too many of the most interesting 20% have departed over the years. A bit more tolerance and give and take wouldn't go amiss, here and more generally
Sadly the logical path seems to be:
Being interesting => being different => being a target
Or, the logical path; being rude and offensive, being controversial, breaching codes, getting banned, getting reinstated, being rude and offensive, being controversial, breaching codes, getting banned, changing identity, being rude and offensive...
I don't like Big Brother automatic pinging in most things in general but we're already required to have insurance etc by law and in the event I'm hit by another vehicle I want their insurance to put it right and they can't if they don't have any.
I guess the question for me is about who owns the cameras involved, and who has access to the data from them?
If they're talking about networking all ANPR cameras (including privately-owned ones at car parks or petrol stations, for example), and giving the police access to real-time data from them, then I'd be pretty wary. Not least because the job of securely integrating all the different systems is likely to be hugely expensive.
But if they're only talking about public, regulated speed cameras, congestion charge cameras, that sort of thing, then I don't see the problem with it. It's just taking existing data, and using it for purposes that are already allowed.
Whether the police have the resources to follow up on all the people they catch is another matter!
Since most posters here have had their say about Leon, here's mine. He is (was?) the most iteresting poster by far. That includes my vicarious interest in his travel reports. Hopefully his Spectator pieces will continue, but they are no substitute for his more ad lib contributions here. The Paretian 80:20 rule applies here as in many areas of life and too many of the most interesting 20% have departed over the years. A bit more tolerance and give and take wouldn't go amiss, here and more generally
Sadly the logical path seems to be:
Being interesting => being different => being a target
Or, the logical path; being rude and offensive, being controversial, breaching codes, getting banned, getting reinstated, being rude and offensive, being controversial, breaching codes, getting banned, getting reinstated...
If only PB was grey and boring and we could discuss odds of the likely winner of the Brecon and Radnorshire constituency all day long.
https://www.greaterlondon.co/p/safer-streets ...About eight percent of those killed on the road each year – 130 people – are killed by that one percent of uninsured drivers. According to West Mercia Police, uninsured drivers are also ten times more likely to be a convicted drink driver, six times more likely to have a defective vehicle, and five times more likely to get caught speeding by cameras. Clearly not all serious car crimes are committed by those driving without insurance, but a significant fraction are.
What makes this especially notable is that there is an easy way we could make a big difference to the number of uninsured and untaxed drivers on London’s streets, making the roads safer for other road users. You will already know that there are about 2,000 cameras around London, which use automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) to enforce the congestion charge, ultra-low emissions zone, and more. They’re also accessible by police.
Police cars have their own cameras. If one of the police cameras sees an uninsured or untaxed car it pings the policeman automatically and they can decide whether to pursue and stop it. But the vast majority of cameras, the non-police cameras that you go past every day on London’s roads, don’t alert them: they just pump the data (which numberplates were where) into a database.
To be clear, the police are allowed to access this information, they just don’t get sent it by default. If they did manually pore over the records they would find all the uninsured and untaxed drivers driving around, plus those previously used for crimes, and those with suspicious plates. But by the time they did that the car would be long gone, so in practice the perpetrators get away with it practically every time. What the Met need is an automatic ping, like they get with their own cameras.
This could go beyond telling police where uninsured drivers are going. Cloning number plates is itself a crime, but it is also only useful if you are trying to cover up another crime by pretending to be someone else, so picking up those driving with fake numberplates could help prevent many other crimes. It would only take a simple predictive system, which looked at where the car was registered, and where it had last been tracked by cameras, to identify and rapidly investigate suspicious cars...
I'm against anything that might be described as Orwellian.
Even a dark satirical novel about the horrors of totalitarianism?
I'm VERY MUCH against describing anything as Orwellian, apart from possibly the fruit of George Orwell's typewriter. Apart from anything else it makes the author who wrote that clichés “have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves” restless in his grave.
I don't like Big Brother automatic pinging in most things in general but we're already required to have insurance etc by law and in the event I'm hit by another vehicle I want their insurance to put it right and they can't if they don't have any.
That was my gut reaction. Glad to have the PB libertarian on board with that.
I'm saying no. I dislike uninsured drivers as much as the next man. And once upon a time I might have gone for this. But covid changed my mind. The way the state and the police abused their powers during lockdown makes me extremely wary of ever making it easy for them to do so again.
Dave Leip's prediction map is about to flip to the Democrats. This site is probably the original site for US elections: I remember using it in 2004, and perhaps also 2000 (not sure).
I don't like Big Brother automatic pinging in most things in general but we're already required to have insurance etc by law and in the event I'm hit by another vehicle I want their insurance to put it right and they can't if they don't have any.
That was my gut reaction. Glad to have the PB libertarian on board with that.
Boring but important: you are ok in those circs. The victims of uninsured drivers scheme pays out and pursued the perp for recovery. This does impact you indirectly presumably because the scheme is funded by motor insurers so it puts everyone's premium up.
I don't like Big Brother automatic pinging in most things in general but we're already required to have insurance etc by law and in the event I'm hit by another vehicle I want their insurance to put it right and they can't if they don't have any.
I guess the question for me is about who owns the cameras involved, and who has access to the data from them?
If they're talking about networking all ANPR cameras (including privately-owned ones at car parks or petrol stations, for example), and giving the police access to real-time data from them, then I'd be pretty wary. Not least because the job of securely integrating all the different systems is likely to be hugely expensive.
But if they're only talking about public, regulated speed cameras, congestion charge cameras, that sort of thing, then I don't see the problem with it. It's just taking existing data, and using it for purposes that are already allowed.
Whether the police have the resources to follow up on all the people they catch is another matter!
From the article, it seems to refer only to the regulated cameras.
Confiscating uninsured vehicles would probably pay for itself over time
Since most posters here have had their say about Leon, here's mine. He is (was?) the most iteresting poster by far. That includes my vicarious interest in his travel reports. Hopefully his Spectator pieces will continue, but they are no substitute for his more ad lib contributions here. The Paretian 80:20 rule applies here as in many areas of life and too many of the most interesting 20% have departed over the years. A bit more tolerance and give and take wouldn't go amiss, here and more generally
Sadly the logical path seems to be:
Being interesting => being different => being a target
Or, the logical path; being rude and offensive, being controversial, breaching codes, getting banned, getting reinstated, being rude and offensive, being controversial, breaching codes, getting banned, getting reinstated...
If only PB was grey and boring and we could discuss odds of the likely winner of the Brecon and Radnorshire constituency all day long.
I regret to inform you that the Brecon and Radnorshire constituency has joined the bleedin' choir invisible.
Since most posters here have had their say about Leon, here's mine. He is (was?) the most iteresting poster by far. That includes my vicarious interest in his travel reports. Hopefully his Spectator pieces will continue, but they are no substitute for his more ad lib contributions here. The Paretian 80:20 rule applies here as in many areas of life and too many of the most interesting 20% have departed over the years. A bit more tolerance and give and take wouldn't go amiss, here and more generally
Sadly the logical path seems to be:
Being interesting => being different => being a target
Or, the logical path; being rude and offensive, being controversial, breaching codes, getting banned, getting reinstated, being rude and offensive, being controversial, breaching codes, getting banned, getting reinstated...
If only PB was grey and boring and we could discuss odds of the likely winner of the Brecon and Radnorshire constituency all day long.
Since most posters here have had their say about Leon, here's mine. He is (was?) the most iteresting poster by far. That includes my vicarious interest in his travel reports. Hopefully his Spectator pieces will continue, but they are no substitute for his more ad lib contributions here. The Paretian 80:20 rule applies here as in many areas of life and too many of the most interesting 20% have departed over the years. A bit more tolerance and give and take wouldn't go amiss, here and more generally
Sadly the logical path seems to be:
Being interesting => being different => being a target
Or, the logical path; being rude and offensive, being controversial, breaching codes, getting banned, getting reinstated, being rude and offensive, being controversial, breaching codes, getting banned, getting reinstated...
If only PB was grey and boring and we could discuss odds of the likely winner of the Brecon and Radnorshire constituency all day long.
I regret to inform you that the Brecon and Radnorshire constituency has joined the bleedin' choir invisible.
Er, logic: doesn't mean we couldn't discuss the odds of the Tories winning a now hypothetical constituency all day and all night too, Some of us come very close to that.
She would be better advised to see the funny side, laugh it off, make a joke about herself and so on.
"I'm here, where is this mythical lettuce?" or something like that.
Storming off just gives people an incentive to do it again.
Letting it go water off a duck's back means it stops being funny.
A major problem for Truss was and is that she has literally no sense of humour.
Humour. Really.
Led By Donkeys are tedious wankers just going after a political irrelevance. She was a useless PM promoted way in excess of her abilities but this is verging on the bullying now.
She's still going around trying to be a massive influence on global politics - endorsing Trump, claiming that her approach to economics is the only good one, but was thwarted by a sinister cabal of Leftist puppet masters. This is serious stuff with consequences. She neither deserves, nor should be allowed, to go about unchallenged.
She is going around making arguments and seeking to promulgate and popularise her political views. That you think she deserves unnamed 'consequences' for doing so says a world more about you than it does about anyone else.
I'm still floored that there's more than one person who thinks an acceptable solution to a group of middle aged men hiding behind their keyboards hounding a woman in this way is for that hounding to be successful in shutting her up. Some people in here have the moral compass of something from under a rock.
I don’t really get why people seem to think Jenrick would be a disaster. He is quite effective.
I personally can’t stand him but divorcing my views from the situation they can surely do far worse.
I don't think he'll last until the next GE as leader if he wins in autumn.
He will do nothing to shift the polls and will prove unpopular with public because he's just another public school over promoted oxbridge lawyer who owns about five huge houses.
I don't like Big Brother automatic pinging in most things in general but we're already required to have insurance etc by law and in the event I'm hit by another vehicle I want their insurance to put it right and they can't if they don't have any.
I guess the question for me is about who owns the cameras involved, and who has access to the data from them?
If they're talking about networking all ANPR cameras (including privately-owned ones at car parks or petrol stations, for example), and giving the police access to real-time data from them, then I'd be pretty wary. Not least because the job of securely integrating all the different systems is likely to be hugely expensive.
But if they're only talking about public, regulated speed cameras, congestion charge cameras, that sort of thing, then I don't see the problem with it. It's just taking existing data, and using it for purposes that are already allowed.
Whether the police have the resources to follow up on all the people they catch is another matter!
From the article, it seems to refer only to the regulated cameras.
Confiscating uninsured vehicles would probably pay for itself over time
I would guess they are usually either rust buckets or stolen
She would be better advised to see the funny side, laugh it off, make a joke about herself and so on.
"I'm here, where is this mythical lettuce?" or something like that.
Storming off just gives people an incentive to do it again.
Letting it go water off a duck's back means it stops being funny.
A major problem for Truss was and is that she has literally no sense of humour.
Humour. Really.
Led By Donkeys are tedious wankers just going after a political irrelevance. She was a useless PM promoted way in excess of her abilities but this is verging on the bullying now.
She's still going around trying to be a massive influence on global politics - endorsing Trump, claiming that her approach to economics is the only good one, but was thwarted by a sinister cabal of Leftist puppet masters. This is serious stuff with consequences. She neither deserves, nor should be allowed, to go about unchallenged.
She is going around making arguments and seeking to promulgate and popularise her political views. That you think she deserves unnamed 'consequences' for doing so says a world more about you than it does about anyone else.
I'm still floored that there's more than one person who thinks an acceptable solution to a group of middle aged men hiding behind their keyboards hounding a woman in this way is for that hounding to be successful in shutting her up. Some people in here have the moral compass of something from under a rock.
It's interesting how many people today support Orwellian developments, such as tracking everything someone does, just because they've become addicted to smartphones and don't want to admit it might have been a mistake.
It's interesting how many people today support Orwellian developments, such as tracking everything someone does, just because they've become addicted to smartphones and don't want to admit it might have been a mistake.
I must have missed the proposal to stream number plate data real time on public websites.
I don't like Big Brother automatic pinging in most things in general but we're already required to have insurance etc by law and in the event I'm hit by another vehicle I want their insurance to put it right and they can't if they don't have any.
I guess the question for me is about who owns the cameras involved, and who has access to the data from them?
If they're talking about networking all ANPR cameras (including privately-owned ones at car parks or petrol stations, for example), and giving the police access to real-time data from them, then I'd be pretty wary. Not least because the job of securely integrating all the different systems is likely to be hugely expensive.
But if they're only talking about public, regulated speed cameras, congestion charge cameras, that sort of thing, then I don't see the problem with it. It's just taking existing data, and using it for purposes that are already allowed.
Whether the police have the resources to follow up on all the people they catch is another matter!
From the article, it seems to refer only to the regulated cameras.
Confiscating uninsured vehicles would probably pay for itself over time
I would guess they are usually either rust buckets or stolen
What does it say about the country today that the Police going after those who have stolen goods seems such an alien concept?
I don’t really get why people seem to think Jenrick would be a disaster. He is quite effective.
I personally can’t stand him but divorcing my views from the situation they can surely do far worse.
I don't think he'll last until the next GE as leader if he wins in autumn.
He will do nothing to shift the polls and will prove unpopular with public because he's just another public school over promoted oxbridge lawyer who owns about five huge houses.
The MPs will oust him in two or three years time.
That's my view, for what it's worth.
Just look at the video. Starts with the Rwanda nonsense. Claims hundreds of dangerous criminals have been released, forgetting he is one. Goes on to an 'invented' black hole in public funds, which does exist.
My princiial takeaway from the Truss story is that the staunch defender of free speech finds the British media "particularly vociferous" and "not deferential". Which would be great if she didn't voice that as a criticism.
Frank Luntz @FrankLuntz · 19h Pennsylvania could take multiple days to count all votes for the 2024 race, because state Republicans rejected a bill allowing them to count early mail ballots as they come in.
Instead, mail ballots will only be counted starting at 7AM on Election Day.
In a further slight enshittification of cricket, the BBC is now reporting scores in the Hundred just by teams' confected nicknames e.g. 'Spirit' 'Fire'. So not only do I now have to translate "Southern" - ah, they mean "Hampshire"; I have to go through two stages i.e. "Brave" - who are ... brave? ah, yes, "Southern" - so they must mean Hampshire.
It's as if the ECB hadn't noticed the existence of the T20 blast, which does everything they wanted the Hundred to do, only much better.
I don’t really get why people seem to think Jenrick would be a disaster. He is quite effective.
I personally can’t stand him but divorcing my views from the situation they can surely do far worse.
I don't think he'll last until the next GE as leader if he wins in autumn.
He will do nothing to shift the polls and will prove unpopular with public because he's just another public school over promoted oxbridge lawyer who owns about five huge houses.
The MPs will oust him in two or three years time.
That's my view, for what it's worth.
A large part of whether the polls will shift will depend on how Labour perform in office. I don’t think the public care too much about privilege (didn’t do Dave any harm) so long as the person in charge can make a compelling case (this was Sunak’s problem).
I suspect the next Tory leader has a decent chance of lasting the full Parliament, because they don’t have a huge talent pool to go fishing in, and positioning/survival is the order of the day. I may be wrong.
Frank Luntz @FrankLuntz · 19h Pennsylvania could take multiple days to count all votes for the 2024 race, because state Republicans rejected a bill allowing them to count early mail ballots as they come in.
Instead, mail ballots will only be counted starting at 7AM on Election Day.
Personally I'd say one of the hallmarks of a full democracy is counting the votes fairly quickly after voting ends. If you don't do that, and therefore make space for conspiracy theories about the result while votes are counted, it isn't a good situation.
Frank Luntz @FrankLuntz · 19h Pennsylvania could take multiple days to count all votes for the 2024 race, because state Republicans rejected a bill allowing them to count early mail ballots as they come in.
Instead, mail ballots will only be counted starting at 7AM on Election Day.
I don't like Big Brother automatic pinging in most things in general but we're already required to have insurance etc by law and in the event I'm hit by another vehicle I want their insurance to put it right and they can't if they don't have any.
I'm interested if there is a bit of a causation/correlation conflation happening here, but it would appear to be a strong signal that someone is not taking their duties to other road users seriously. Consider this recent revelation in Edinburgh - record of previous collisions, cancels insurance and then a toddler killed:
In this case, it might not have been callousness but rather a decline in faculties. Either way, the cancellation of insurance should've raised a flag with the police.
In general yes, but not sure that's the best example of someone who doesn't care, sounds like someone who had dementia which is a whole different kettle of fish.
That was my point - the cancellation of insurance was a big signal that *something* was up and if ANPR had picked up that someone was still driving the associated car around, that kid *might* still be alive. That something doesn't necessarily have to be dangerous driving.
A more important change would be to legislate away "the sun was in my eyes" and "temporary blackout" - now standard defences for when cyclists and pedestrians get hit. The former should always be solid evidence careless driving (you need to be able to see), the latter a permanent disqualification.
I don’t really get why people seem to think Jenrick would be a disaster. He is quite effective.
I personally can’t stand him but divorcing my views from the situation they can surely do far worse.
I don't think he'll last until the next GE as leader if he wins in autumn.
He will do nothing to shift the polls and will prove unpopular with public because he's just another public school over promoted oxbridge lawyer who owns about five huge houses.
The MPs will oust him in two or three years time.
That's my view, for what it's worth.
Just look at the video. Starts with the Rwanda nonsense. Claims hundreds of dangerous criminals have been released, forgetting he is one. Goes on to an 'invented' black hole in public funds, which does exist.
I guess all that matters at this stage is whether the video appeals to the few thousand tory members left sentient enough to be able to vote in the autumn.
I honestly can't say. Has he thrown enough red meat out there?
Solicitor disciplined for showing sexual photo to colleague in courtroom
Tribunal says inappropriate conduct damages public trust in legal profession
A senior lawyer has been reprimanded for sharing a sexual photo with a junior female colleague in a courtroom.
Geoffrey White, a criminal defence solicitor, was found to have breached professional standards after making sexually explicit and derogatory comments to a probation officer at Crawley Magistrates’ Court in 2021.
The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) on Tuesday said that the 66-year-old would benefit from diversity and inclusion training after his inappropriate conduct damaged the public’s trust and confidence in the legal industry.
Judge Edward Nally said: “Attitudes have changed, the profession has modernised.”
The probation officer, referred to as Person A, claimed Mr White showed her a meme on his mobile phone of a naked woman lying down on a table at a barbeque with bottles covering her breasts in May 2021. The naked image had a caption to the effect of “if you have left your wife at the BBQ, please come and get her”, according to legal documents referred to in the hearing and prepared by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, which brought the case.
Mr White, who runs his own law firm specialising in legal aid, then told Person A that “it looks a bit like you” and “your hair looks the same”.
The SDT also found that Mr White made further sexual comments about Person A in July 2021, when joking about a female client arrested on suspicion of having sex on a train. Person A overheard Mr White tell a prosecutor that she “knows all about that, standard probation practice”.
The probation officer said that both incidents made her feel uncomfortable and that she continued to feel uneasy when she saw or spoke to him.
Mr White, who has represented 25,000 people across the past three decades, claimed that he was trying to make Person A laugh rather than offend her.
The Sussex-based lawyer said that he wanted to “lighten the mood” and diffuse the tension with the woman, who appeared “nervous and so serious” in her new role in the probation service.
I mused about changing his profile name to Leon the Cat Botherer and/or change his profile pic to a cat.
Weird, I'm pretty sure I read a post from you threatening to ban him. Then one saying you wouldn't but you might change his name.
I asked him to STFU.
As with AI once he gets monomanicial on a topic, he ends up spamming the site which ends up driving other people off the site.
And as he noted, he had mentioned pets/humans twice. Or were you getting your retaliation in early.
Twice? The fucking shitstain had been hammering away at it all night.
I think we can take the use of the word "twice" as in times the topic had been discussed.
In the same way that the wife, accused by her husband of cheating, meant when she said she'd only been unfaithful twice - once with Steve their neighbour and once with the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment.
Since most posters here have had their say about Leon, here's mine. He is (was?) the most iteresting poster by far. That includes my vicarious interest in his travel reports. Hopefully his Spectator pieces will continue, but they are no substitute for his more ad lib contributions here. The Paretian 80:20 rule applies here as in many areas of life and too many of the most interesting 20% have departed over the years. A bit more tolerance and give and take wouldn't go amiss, here and more generally
Sadly the logical path seems to be:
Being interesting => being different => being a target
Or, the logical path; being rude and offensive, being controversial, breaching codes, getting banned, getting reinstated, being rude and offensive, being controversial, breaching codes, getting banned, getting reinstated...
If only PB was grey and boring and we could discuss odds of the likely winner of the Brecon and Radnorshire constituency all day long.
I regret to inform you that the Brecon and Radnorshire constituency has joined the bleedin' choir invisible.
In a further slight enshittification of cricket, the BBC is now reporting scores in the Hundred just by teams' confected nicknames e.g. 'Spirit' 'Fire'. So not only do I now have to translate "Southern" - ah, they mean "Hampshire"; I have to go through two stages i.e. "Brave" - who are ... brave? ah, yes, "Southern" - so they must mean Hampshire.
It's as if the ECB hadn't noticed the existence of the T20 blast, which does everything they wanted the Hundred to do, only much better.
Warwickshire* doesn't even have the correct nickname. I mean who has heard of the Birmingham Phoenix ? At least Birmingham Bears would have some alliteration and historical allegory.
She would be better advised to see the funny side, laugh it off, make a joke about herself and so on.
"I'm here, where is this mythical lettuce?" or something like that.
Storming off just gives people an incentive to do it again.
Letting it go water off a duck's back means it stops being funny.
A major problem for Truss was and is that she has literally no sense of humour.
Humour. Really.
Led By Donkeys are tedious wankers just going after a political irrelevance. She was a useless PM promoted way in excess of her abilities but this is verging on the bullying now.
She's still going around trying to be a massive influence on global politics - endorsing Trump, claiming that her approach to economics is the only good one, but was thwarted by a sinister cabal of Leftist puppet masters. This is serious stuff with consequences. She neither deserves, nor should be allowed, to go about unchallenged.
She is going around making arguments and seeking to promulgate and popularise her political views. That you think she deserves unnamed 'consequences' for doing so says a world more about you than it does about anyone else.
I'm still floored that there's more than one person who thinks an acceptable solution to a group of middle aged men hiding behind their keyboards hounding a woman in this way is for that hounding to be successful in shutting her up. Some people in here have the moral compass of something from under a rock.
There are a whole group of people who didn't do too badly out of opposing the Tories. Be it this lot, Good Law, or various talking heads on either TV or social media, your Supertanskiii's and so on, grifting their way through the last parliament who, now, suddenly have seen a meal ticket dry up. They are unlikely to turn on labour so are desperate to remain in some sort of spotlight and keep going.
I agree with your point entirely too. This is not "challenging" her, to challenge her would to be to debate her as happened recently at the fringe. This is exactly what you say in your second paragraph.
I don't like Big Brother automatic pinging in most things in general but we're already required to have insurance etc by law and in the event I'm hit by another vehicle I want their insurance to put it right and they can't if they don't have any.
I guess the question for me is about who owns the cameras involved, and who has access to the data from them?
If they're talking about networking all ANPR cameras (including privately-owned ones at car parks or petrol stations, for example), and giving the police access to real-time data from them, then I'd be pretty wary. Not least because the job of securely integrating all the different systems is likely to be hugely expensive.
But if they're only talking about public, regulated speed cameras, congestion charge cameras, that sort of thing, then I don't see the problem with it. It's just taking existing data, and using it for purposes that are already allowed.
Whether the police have the resources to follow up on all the people they catch is another matter!
From the article, it seems to refer only to the regulated cameras.
Confiscating uninsured vehicles would probably pay for itself over time
I would guess they are usually either rust buckets or stolen
Since most posters here have had their say about Leon, here's mine. He is (was?) the most iteresting poster by far. That includes my vicarious interest in his travel reports. Hopefully his Spectator pieces will continue, but they are no substitute for his more ad lib contributions here. The Paretian 80:20 rule applies here as in many areas of life and too many of the most interesting 20% have departed over the years. A bit more tolerance and give and take wouldn't go amiss, here and more generally
Sadly the logical path seems to be:
Being interesting => being different => being a target
Or, the logical path; being rude and offensive, being controversial, breaching codes, getting banned, getting reinstated, being rude and offensive, being controversial, breaching codes, getting banned, getting reinstated...
If only PB was grey and boring and we could discuss odds of the likely winner of the Brecon and Radnorshire constituency all day long.
I regret to inform you that the Brecon and Radnorshire constituency has joined the bleedin' choir invisible.
Ok. Back to the cats then.
Has anyone, @viewcode for example, made the Mrs Slocombe gag yet ?
"German authorities have issued an arrest warrant over the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines nearly two years ago, according to German news outlets ARD, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Die Zeit.
In an investigation published Wednesday, the outlets reported that the suspect is a Ukrainian diving instructor, named only as Volodymyr Z. for privacy reasons.
It is alleged he attacked the pipelines in tandem with at least two others, who are also believed to be Ukrainian citizens.
The suspect was believed to last be living in Poland, but Polish authorities said they could not act on the warrant because he had left the country."
Frank Luntz @FrankLuntz · 19h Pennsylvania could take multiple days to count all votes for the 2024 race, because state Republicans rejected a bill allowing them to count early mail ballots as they come in.
Instead, mail ballots will only be counted starting at 7AM on Election Day.
Personally I'd say one of the hallmarks of a full democracy is counting the votes fairly quickly after voting ends. If you don't do that, and therefore make space for conspiracy theories about the result while votes are counted, it isn't a good situation.
I think we can be sure that this autumn's election is not going to be "a good situation."
If nobody is killed in the aftermath it will be a miracle to be honest.
Frank Luntz @FrankLuntz · 19h Pennsylvania could take multiple days to count all votes for the 2024 race, because state Republicans rejected a bill allowing them to count early mail ballots as they come in.
Instead, mail ballots will only be counted starting at 7AM on Election Day.
"German authorities have issued an arrest warrant over the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines nearly two years ago, according to German news outlets ARD, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Die Zeit.
In an investigation published Wednesday, the outlets reported that the suspect is a Ukrainian diving instructor, named only as Volodymyr Z. for privacy reasons.
It is alleged he attacked the pipelines in tandem with at least two others, who are also believed to be Ukrainian citizens.
The suspect was believed to last be living in Poland, but Polish authorities said they could not act on the warrant because he had left the country."
"German authorities have issued an arrest warrant over the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines nearly two years ago, according to German news outlets ARD, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Die Zeit.
In an investigation published Wednesday, the outlets reported that the suspect is a Ukrainian diving instructor, named only as Volodymyr Z. for privacy reasons.
It is alleged he attacked the pipelines in tandem with at least two others, who are also believed to be Ukrainian citizens.
The suspect was believed to last be living in Poland, but Polish authorities said they could not act on the warrant because he had left the country."
I don’t really get why people seem to think Jenrick would be a disaster. He is quite effective.
I personally can’t stand him but divorcing my views from the situation they can surely do far worse.
I don't think he'll last until the next GE as leader if he wins in autumn.
He will do nothing to shift the polls and will prove unpopular with public because he's just another public school over promoted oxbridge lawyer who owns about five huge houses.
The gammons and chavs don't mind a bit of posh as long as they are transgressive or what passes for funny in right wing circles. Johnson, Farage, etc.
As Jenrick is as funny as having piles and the flu at the same he'll have to rely on being an outspoken populist delivering thick ropes of common sense jizz into the screaming faces of the wokerati. He'd probably be at least ok at that. If he makes it to LotO his big challenge will maintaining coherence and discipline over the knot of elapids that is the tory party. Nothing we have seen from him to date suggests he'd be any use at that at all.
Since most posters here have had their say about Leon, here's mine. He is (was?) the most iteresting poster by far. That includes my vicarious interest in his travel reports. Hopefully his Spectator pieces will continue, but they are no substitute for his more ad lib contributions here. The Paretian 80:20 rule applies here as in many areas of life and too many of the most interesting 20% have departed over the years. A bit more tolerance and give and take wouldn't go amiss, here and more generally
Sadly the logical path seems to be:
Being interesting => being different => being a target
Or, the logical path; being rude and offensive, being controversial, breaching codes, getting banned, getting reinstated, being rude and offensive, being controversial, breaching codes, getting banned, getting reinstated...
If only PB was grey and boring and we could discuss odds of the likely winner of the Brecon and Radnorshire constituency all day long.
I regret to inform you that the Brecon and Radnorshire constituency has joined the bleedin' choir invisible.
Ok. Back to the cats then.
Has anyone, @viewcode for example, made the Mrs Slocombe gag yet ?
"German authorities have issued an arrest warrant over the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines nearly two years ago, according to German news outlets ARD, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Die Zeit.
In an investigation published Wednesday, the outlets reported that the suspect is a Ukrainian diving instructor, named only as Volodymyr Z. for privacy reasons.
It is alleged he attacked the pipelines in tandem with at least two others, who are also believed to be Ukrainian citizens.
The suspect was believed to last be living in Poland, but Polish authorities said they could not act on the warrant because he had left the country."
Utterly disgraceful to be wanting to arrest a Ukrainian for attacking Russian infrastructure during a war Russia has started.
I don’t really get why people seem to think Jenrick would be a disaster. He is quite effective.
I personally can’t stand him but divorcing my views from the situation they can surely do far worse.
I don't think he'll last until the next GE as leader if he wins in autumn.
He will do nothing to shift the polls and will prove unpopular with public because he's just another public school over promoted oxbridge lawyer who owns about five huge houses.
The MPs will oust him in two or three years time.
That's my view, for what it's worth.
A large part of whether the polls will shift will depend on how Labour perform in office. I don’t think the public care too much about privilege (didn’t do Dave any harm) so long as the person in charge can make a compelling case (this was Sunak’s problem).
I suspect the next Tory leader has a decent chance of lasting the full Parliament, because they don’t have a huge talent pool to go fishing in, and positioning/survival is the order of the day. I may be wrong.
On the other hand, the downside of their reduced pool of MPs is that VONCs will be easier, with only 19 MPs needed to trigger one.
2. Trump IS more popular this time, in the sense that his favorability polling isn't as bad this time compared to 2016 or 2020. I think this is something we should think about on this side of the Atlantic, as it's certainly surprising to me, and the consensus here is he is a much worse candidate in 2024 than the last 2 times.
...
This second point is the sort of thing that makes me think we're still on track for a Trump victory that will complete blindside almost everyone on pb.com.
Logically it shouldn't be possible, after January 6th, all the court cases, his obvious grifting, his age and incoherence - and above all being a bit fat crybaby loser who lost in 2020 but can't accept it.
But then, most of us thought that he couldn't possibly win in 2016, and too many people are still locked in the same mode of thought.
The most likely explanation is economic. People think better of Trump now because of the experience of inflation during the Biden Presidency, and so they think that going back to the economy of the Trump Presidency wouldn't be such a bad thing.
Not sure we will all be "blindsided" by Trump 2.0.
Plenty on here saying too early, polls could change, Trump will do better in ECV, she's too liberal etc etc.
I'd say the collective PB vote would be 'too close to call' at this stage.
I think that's right.
I'm confident Trump is tracking to lose (and possibly lose big) but there's only a smallish group of PBers who share that opinion. Off the cuff I'd name MarqueMark, NigelB, Monksfield, ThomasNashe, IanB2. I'll have missed some (and apols to them) but not too many.
Everyone else are either 'coin toss' or Harris slight fav or Trump slight fav or Trump big fav.
Trump certainly should lose big now that his opponent (unlike him) possesses the minimum qualifications for the job, but I think there's enough people in his corner that have been entrenched there by the way the last three-plus years have played out that he probably will avoid a big loss - unless, of course, he completely implodes between now and November, which can't be ruled out but I wouldn't say I'm confident of it happening.
Solicitor disciplined for showing sexual photo to colleague in courtroom
Tribunal says inappropriate conduct damages public trust in legal profession
A senior lawyer has been reprimanded for sharing a sexual photo with a junior female colleague in a courtroom.
Geoffrey White, a criminal defence solicitor, was found to have breached professional standards after making sexually explicit and derogatory comments to a probation officer at Crawley Magistrates’ Court in 2021.
The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) on Tuesday said that the 66-year-old would benefit from diversity and inclusion training after his inappropriate conduct damaged the public’s trust and confidence in the legal industry.
Judge Edward Nally said: “Attitudes have changed, the profession has modernised.”
The probation officer, referred to as Person A, claimed Mr White showed her a meme on his mobile phone of a naked woman lying down on a table at a barbeque with bottles covering her breasts in May 2021. The naked image had a caption to the effect of “if you have left your wife at the BBQ, please come and get her”, according to legal documents referred to in the hearing and prepared by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, which brought the case.
Mr White, who runs his own law firm specialising in legal aid, then told Person A that “it looks a bit like you” and “your hair looks the same”.
The SDT also found that Mr White made further sexual comments about Person A in July 2021, when joking about a female client arrested on suspicion of having sex on a train. Person A overheard Mr White tell a prosecutor that she “knows all about that, standard probation practice”.
The probation officer said that both incidents made her feel uncomfortable and that she continued to feel uneasy when she saw or spoke to him.
Mr White, who has represented 25,000 people across the past three decades, claimed that he was trying to make Person A laugh rather than offend her.
The Sussex-based lawyer said that he wanted to “lighten the mood” and diffuse the tension with the woman, who appeared “nervous and so serious” in her new role in the probation service.
Although the ones who committed perjury for the PO haven't been struck off yet as far as I know.
I did like the claim that the Post Office proves the NU10K thesis is rubbish.
So far, after decades of lying to courts, conspiracy to lie to the courts etc etc... no one has received even a bad review at work - "This year, performance 5/10. Must stop committing crimes"
I don’t really get why people seem to think Jenrick would be a disaster. He is quite effective.
I personally can’t stand him but divorcing my views from the situation they can surely do far worse.
I don't think he'll last until the next GE as leader if he wins in autumn.
He will do nothing to shift the polls and will prove unpopular with public because he's just another public school over promoted oxbridge lawyer who owns about five huge houses.
The gammons and chavs don't mind a bit of posh as long as they are transgressive or what passes for funny in right wing circles. Johnson, Farage, etc.
As Jenrick is as funny as having piles and the flu at the same he'll have to rely on being an outspoken populist delivering thick ropes of common sense jizz into the screaming faces of the wokerati. He'd probably be at least ok at that. If he makes it to LotO his big challenge will maintaining coherence and discipline over the knot of elapids that is the tory party. Nothing we have seen from him to date suggests he'd be any use at that at all.
Elapid is good.
Though "permanently erect" isn't a phrase you ordinarily associate with the current Tory membership.
I don’t really get why people seem to think Jenrick would be a disaster. He is quite effective.
I personally can’t stand him but divorcing my views from the situation they can surely do far worse.
I don't think he'll last until the next GE as leader if he wins in autumn.
He will do nothing to shift the polls and will prove unpopular with public because he's just another public school over promoted oxbridge lawyer who owns about five huge houses.
The MPs will oust him in two or three years time.
That's my view, for what it's worth.
A large part of whether the polls will shift will depend on how Labour perform in office. I don’t think the public care too much about privilege (didn’t do Dave any harm) so long as the person in charge can make a compelling case (this was Sunak’s problem).
I suspect the next Tory leader has a decent chance of lasting the full Parliament, because they don’t have a huge talent pool to go fishing in, and positioning/survival is the order of the day. I may be wrong.
On the other hand, the downside of their reduced pool of MPs is that VONCs will be easier, with only 19 MPs needed to trigger one.
Probably harder to get 19 MPs now than the amount before the election since 19 will be a much, much greater percentage of the non-payroll vote than it was.
Since most posters here have had their say about Leon, here's mine. He is (was?) the most iteresting poster by far. That includes my vicarious interest in his travel reports. Hopefully his Spectator pieces will continue, but they are no substitute for his more ad lib contributions here. The Paretian 80:20 rule applies here as in many areas of life and too many of the most interesting 20% have departed over the years. A bit more tolerance and give and take wouldn't go amiss, here and more generally
Sadly the logical path seems to be:
Being interesting => being different => being a target
Or, the logical path; being rude and offensive, being controversial, breaching codes, getting banned, getting reinstated, being rude and offensive, being controversial, breaching codes, getting banned, getting reinstated...
If only PB was grey and boring and we could discuss odds of the likely winner of the Brecon and Radnorshire constituency all day long.
I regret to inform you that the Brecon and Radnorshire constituency has joined the bleedin' choir invisible.
Ok. Back to the cats then.
Has anyone, @viewcode for example, made the Mrs Slocombe gag yet ?
https://www.greaterlondon.co/p/safer-streets ...About eight percent of those killed on the road each year – 130 people – are killed by that one percent of uninsured drivers. According to West Mercia Police, uninsured drivers are also ten times more likely to be a convicted drink driver, six times more likely to have a defective vehicle, and five times more likely to get caught speeding by cameras. Clearly not all serious car crimes are committed by those driving without insurance, but a significant fraction are.
What makes this especially notable is that there is an easy way we could make a big difference to the number of uninsured and untaxed drivers on London’s streets, making the roads safer for other road users. You will already know that there are about 2,000 cameras around London, which use automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) to enforce the congestion charge, ultra-low emissions zone, and more. They’re also accessible by police.
Police cars have their own cameras. If one of the police cameras sees an uninsured or untaxed car it pings the policeman automatically and they can decide whether to pursue and stop it. But the vast majority of cameras, the non-police cameras that you go past every day on London’s roads, don’t alert them: they just pump the data (which numberplates were where) into a database.
To be clear, the police are allowed to access this information, they just don’t get sent it by default. If they did manually pore over the records they would find all the uninsured and untaxed drivers driving around, plus those previously used for crimes, and those with suspicious plates. But by the time they did that the car would be long gone, so in practice the perpetrators get away with it practically every time. What the Met need is an automatic ping, like they get with their own cameras.
This could go beyond telling police where uninsured drivers are going. Cloning number plates is itself a crime, but it is also only useful if you are trying to cover up another crime by pretending to be someone else, so picking up those driving with fake numberplates could help prevent many other crimes. It would only take a simple predictive system, which looked at where the car was registered, and where it had last been tracked by cameras, to identify and rapidly investigate suspicious cars...
I suspect that such surveillance would payoff by detecting a lot of other crimes and antisocial behavior.
Nick them and confiscate their vehicles.
If we surveil people 24hrs a day and combine it with numerous "nudge" and hate-crime programs, we can realistically reduce crime and antisocial behaviour to zero...
...But having built Hell, who would want to live in it?
You’re so unambitious, we want to focus on pre-crime like in Minority Report.
I loved that film and was quite attracted to the idea of arresting a perp before he gets to actually perp. Devil in the detail though.
https://www.greaterlondon.co/p/safer-streets ...About eight percent of those killed on the road each year – 130 people – are killed by that one percent of uninsured drivers. According to West Mercia Police, uninsured drivers are also ten times more likely to be a convicted drink driver, six times more likely to have a defective vehicle, and five times more likely to get caught speeding by cameras. Clearly not all serious car crimes are committed by those driving without insurance, but a significant fraction are.
What makes this especially notable is that there is an easy way we could make a big difference to the number of uninsured and untaxed drivers on London’s streets, making the roads safer for other road users. You will already know that there are about 2,000 cameras around London, which use automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) to enforce the congestion charge, ultra-low emissions zone, and more. They’re also accessible by police.
Police cars have their own cameras. If one of the police cameras sees an uninsured or untaxed car it pings the policeman automatically and they can decide whether to pursue and stop it. But the vast majority of cameras, the non-police cameras that you go past every day on London’s roads, don’t alert them: they just pump the data (which numberplates were where) into a database.
To be clear, the police are allowed to access this information, they just don’t get sent it by default. If they did manually pore over the records they would find all the uninsured and untaxed drivers driving around, plus those previously used for crimes, and those with suspicious plates. But by the time they did that the car would be long gone, so in practice the perpetrators get away with it practically every time. What the Met need is an automatic ping, like they get with their own cameras.
This could go beyond telling police where uninsured drivers are going. Cloning number plates is itself a crime, but it is also only useful if you are trying to cover up another crime by pretending to be someone else, so picking up those driving with fake numberplates could help prevent many other crimes. It would only take a simple predictive system, which looked at where the car was registered, and where it had last been tracked by cameras, to identify and rapidly investigate suspicious cars...
I suspect that such surveillance would payoff by detecting a lot of other crimes and antisocial behavior.
Nick them and confiscate their vehicles.
If we surveil people 24hrs a day and combine it with numerous "nudge" and hate-crime programs, we can realistically reduce crime and antisocial behaviour to zero...
...But having built Hell, who would want to live in it?
You’re so unambitious, we want to focus on pre-crime like in Minority Report.
I loved that film and was quite attracted to the idea of arresting a perp before he gets to actually perp. Devil in the detail though.
Honestly? You do realise it's supposed to be a dystopia?
In a further slight enshittification of cricket, the BBC is now reporting scores in the Hundred just by teams' confected nicknames e.g. 'Spirit' 'Fire'. So not only do I now have to translate "Southern" - ah, they mean "Hampshire"; I have to go through two stages i.e. "Brave" - who are ... brave? ah, yes, "Southern" - so they must mean Hampshire.
It's as if the ECB hadn't noticed the existence of the T20 blast, which does everything they wanted the Hundred to do, only much better.
Hmm, maybe I was wrong. I always thought the idea of the Hundred was just to kill off the counties that don't have Test grounds, but maybe it's to kill off the county structure entirely.
https://www.greaterlondon.co/p/safer-streets ...About eight percent of those killed on the road each year – 130 people – are killed by that one percent of uninsured drivers. According to West Mercia Police, uninsured drivers are also ten times more likely to be a convicted drink driver, six times more likely to have a defective vehicle, and five times more likely to get caught speeding by cameras. Clearly not all serious car crimes are committed by those driving without insurance, but a significant fraction are.
What makes this especially notable is that there is an easy way we could make a big difference to the number of uninsured and untaxed drivers on London’s streets, making the roads safer for other road users. You will already know that there are about 2,000 cameras around London, which use automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) to enforce the congestion charge, ultra-low emissions zone, and more. They’re also accessible by police.
Police cars have their own cameras. If one of the police cameras sees an uninsured or untaxed car it pings the policeman automatically and they can decide whether to pursue and stop it. But the vast majority of cameras, the non-police cameras that you go past every day on London’s roads, don’t alert them: they just pump the data (which numberplates were where) into a database.
To be clear, the police are allowed to access this information, they just don’t get sent it by default. If they did manually pore over the records they would find all the uninsured and untaxed drivers driving around, plus those previously used for crimes, and those with suspicious plates. But by the time they did that the car would be long gone, so in practice the perpetrators get away with it practically every time. What the Met need is an automatic ping, like they get with their own cameras.
This could go beyond telling police where uninsured drivers are going. Cloning number plates is itself a crime, but it is also only useful if you are trying to cover up another crime by pretending to be someone else, so picking up those driving with fake numberplates could help prevent many other crimes. It would only take a simple predictive system, which looked at where the car was registered, and where it had last been tracked by cameras, to identify and rapidly investigate suspicious cars...
I suspect that such surveillance would payoff by detecting a lot of other crimes and antisocial behavior.
Nick them and confiscate their vehicles.
If we surveil people 24hrs a day and combine it with numerous "nudge" and hate-crime programs, we can realistically reduce crime and antisocial behaviour to zero...
...But having built Hell, who would want to live in it?
You’re so unambitious, we want to focus on pre-crime like in Minority Report.
I loved that film and was quite attracted to the idea of arresting a perp before he gets to actually perp. Devil in the detail though.
Honestly? You do realise it's supposed to be a dystopia?
There is no freedom the British so cherish as to interfere with the freedoms of others.
Frank Luntz @FrankLuntz · 19h Pennsylvania could take multiple days to count all votes for the 2024 race, because state Republicans rejected a bill allowing them to count early mail ballots as they come in.
Instead, mail ballots will only be counted starting at 7AM on Election Day.
Go forth and ... Liz Truss still opinionating that Trump will probably win because of the economy.
(Burning my image quota for the day, and acknowledging @Foxy got there first, and slightly trimming on my temporary PB-break because we are having good posts / conversation.)
If I were Liz Truss I'd stop wearing (lettuce) green.
"German authorities have issued an arrest warrant over the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines nearly two years ago, according to German news outlets ARD, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Die Zeit.
In an investigation published Wednesday, the outlets reported that the suspect is a Ukrainian diving instructor, named only as Volodymyr Z. for privacy reasons.
It is alleged he attacked the pipelines in tandem with at least two others, who are also believed to be Ukrainian citizens.
The suspect was believed to last be living in Poland, but Polish authorities said they could not act on the warrant because he had left the country."
Utterly disgraceful to be wanting to arrest a Ukrainian for attacking Russian infrastructure during a war Russia has started.
Shame on Germany.
You can't just go round fighting wars because you feel like it.
Under the Geneva & Hague Conventions, there are various tests to be a recognised combatant.
There's no evidence as to whom he may or may not have been acting on behalf of.
Another thing that is of interest - in the description of what happened, two divers entered the water. But there is no mention of the several hundred kilos of explosives, that were believed to have been used. The yacht master would have noticed them and mentioned them in his statement, surely?
In the body "In a letter, the school claimed “the possible impact of VAT on school fees” was also a factor in the decision."
The massive funding black hole they had also did not help.
Expect a few more of these. Closures claimed to be due to labours VAT raid and being nothing of the sort.
That isn't the first example - I pointed out this exact argument was being used by the school Casino's children went to which had similar structural finance issues..
In the body "In a letter, the school claimed “the possible impact of VAT on school fees” was also a factor in the decision."
The massive funding black hole they had also did not help.
Expect a few more of these. Closures claimed to be due to labours VAT raid and being nothing of the sort.
There are a lot of private schools right on the edge at the moment. Fuel inflation is a killer, for starters. Rolls are down due to cost.
I can imagine several families might have made the decision to pull out in July rather than switch schools mid-year, even before the election result, and that's having a knock on effect.
But I would expect the main rash of closures to be in July 2026 as the effect of those who clung on to finish GCSEs and A-levels works its way through. It will most likely start with mergers - schools combining on one site and selling the other for building to try and create endowments.
I'd be really worried if we start getting disorderly closures in the spring of 2025 or 2026 when there's very little time to try and find a new school and finish the course before exams. Probably minted due to the desperation for private tuition, but worried. That really would be a bad thing.
The other possibility would be overseas companies buying these places up cheap. That has happened already (Howells in Denbigh or Abbotsholme near Uttoxeter spring to mind). However, the money has traditionally come from China which is not exactly flush right now.
What's most annoying of course is the likes of Eton will drift along without ever noticing.
https://www.greaterlondon.co/p/safer-streets ...About eight percent of those killed on the road each year – 130 people – are killed by that one percent of uninsured drivers. According to West Mercia Police, uninsured drivers are also ten times more likely to be a convicted drink driver, six times more likely to have a defective vehicle, and five times more likely to get caught speeding by cameras. Clearly not all serious car crimes are committed by those driving without insurance, but a significant fraction are.
What makes this especially notable is that there is an easy way we could make a big difference to the number of uninsured and untaxed drivers on London’s streets, making the roads safer for other road users. You will already know that there are about 2,000 cameras around London, which use automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) to enforce the congestion charge, ultra-low emissions zone, and more. They’re also accessible by police.
Police cars have their own cameras. If one of the police cameras sees an uninsured or untaxed car it pings the policeman automatically and they can decide whether to pursue and stop it. But the vast majority of cameras, the non-police cameras that you go past every day on London’s roads, don’t alert them: they just pump the data (which numberplates were where) into a database.
To be clear, the police are allowed to access this information, they just don’t get sent it by default. If they did manually pore over the records they would find all the uninsured and untaxed drivers driving around, plus those previously used for crimes, and those with suspicious plates. But by the time they did that the car would be long gone, so in practice the perpetrators get away with it practically every time. What the Met need is an automatic ping, like they get with their own cameras.
This could go beyond telling police where uninsured drivers are going. Cloning number plates is itself a crime, but it is also only useful if you are trying to cover up another crime by pretending to be someone else, so picking up those driving with fake numberplates could help prevent many other crimes. It would only take a simple predictive system, which looked at where the car was registered, and where it had last been tracked by cameras, to identify and rapidly investigate suspicious cars...
I suspect that such surveillance would payoff by detecting a lot of other crimes and antisocial behavior.
Nick them and confiscate their vehicles.
If we surveil people 24hrs a day and combine it with numerous "nudge" and hate-crime programs, we can realistically reduce crime and antisocial behaviour to zero...
...But having built Hell, who would want to live in it?
You’re so unambitious, we want to focus on pre-crime like in Minority Report.
I loved that film and was quite attracted to the idea of arresting a perp before he gets to actually perp. Devil in the detail though.
In a further slight enshittification of cricket, the BBC is now reporting scores in the Hundred just by teams' confected nicknames e.g. 'Spirit' 'Fire'. So not only do I now have to translate "Southern" - ah, they mean "Hampshire"; I have to go through two stages i.e. "Brave" - who are ... brave? ah, yes, "Southern" - so they must mean Hampshire.
It's as if the ECB hadn't noticed the existence of the T20 blast, which does everything they wanted the Hundred to do, only much better.
Hmm, maybe I was wrong. I always thought the idea of the Hundred was just to kill off the counties that don't have Test grounds, but maybe it's to kill off the county structure entirely.
Durham isn't part of the Hundred - so it wasn't all counties with Test grounds...
Edit and I enjoy a good (heck even a bad) one day or T20 match. For some reason I just don't like the Hundred...
"German authorities have issued an arrest warrant over the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines nearly two years ago, according to German news outlets ARD, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Die Zeit.
In an investigation published Wednesday, the outlets reported that the suspect is a Ukrainian diving instructor, named only as Volodymyr Z. for privacy reasons.
It is alleged he attacked the pipelines in tandem with at least two others, who are also believed to be Ukrainian citizens.
The suspect was believed to last be living in Poland, but Polish authorities said they could not act on the warrant because he had left the country."
Utterly disgraceful to be wanting to arrest a Ukrainian for attacking Russian infrastructure during a war Russia has started.
Shame on Germany.
You can't just go round fighting wars because you feel like it.
Under the Geneva & Hague Conventions, there are various tests to be a recognised combatant.
There's no evidence as to whom he may or may not have been acting on behalf of.
Another thing that is of interest - in the description of what happened, two divers entered the water. But there is no mention of the several hundred kilos of explosives, that were believed to have been used. The yacht master would have noticed them and mentioned them in his statement, surely?
Frank Luntz @FrankLuntz · 19h Pennsylvania could take multiple days to count all votes for the 2024 race, because state Republicans rejected a bill allowing them to count early mail ballots as they come in.
Instead, mail ballots will only be counted starting at 7AM on Election Day.
I don't like Big Brother automatic pinging in most things in general but we're already required to have insurance etc by law and in the event I'm hit by another vehicle I want their insurance to put it right and they can't if they don't have any.
That was my gut reaction. Glad to have the PB libertarian on board with that.
I'm saying no. I dislike uninsured drivers as much as the next man. And once upon a time I might have gone for this. But covid changed my mind. The way the state and the police abused their powers during lockdown makes me extremely wary of ever making it easy for them to do so again.
I think a fond farewell to the idea of Barty Bobbins being 'the PB-libertarian' is somewhat overdue. Apart from a vocal desire to carpet the country with rabbit hutches, I struggle to detect any libertarian instincts at all.
In the body "In a letter, the school claimed “the possible impact of VAT on school fees” was also a factor in the decision."
The massive funding black hole they had also did not help.
Expect a few more of these. Closures claimed to be due to labours VAT raid and being nothing of the sort.
There are a lot of private schools right on the edge at the moment. Fuel inflation is a killer, for starters. Rolls are down due to cost.
I can imagine several families might have made the decision to pull out in July rather than switch schools mid-year, even before the election result, and that's having a knock on effect.
But I would expect the main rash of closures to be in July 2026 as the effect of those who clung on to finish GCSEs and A-levels works its way through. It will most likely start with mergers - schools combining on one site and selling the other for building to try and create endowments.
I'd be really worried if we start getting disorderly closures in the spring of 2025 or 2026 when there's very little time to try and find a new school and finish the course before exams. Probably minted due to the desperation for private tuition, but worried. That really would be a bad thing.
The other possibility would be overseas companies buying these places up cheap. That has happened already (Howells in Denbigh or Abbotsholme near Uttoxeter spring to mind). However, the money has traditionally come from China which is not exactly flush right now.
What's most annoying of course is the likes of Eton will drift along without ever noticing.
Given the hilarious incident when Eton made a profit on digging the rowing lake for the Olympics, I fully expect that when VAT comes in, that they end up getting a substantial VAT rebate each year, form the government.
I don’t really get why people seem to think Jenrick would be a disaster. He is quite effective.
I personally can’t stand him but divorcing my views from the situation they can surely do far worse.
I don't think he'll last until the next GE as leader if he wins in autumn.
He will do nothing to shift the polls and will prove unpopular with public because he's just another public school over promoted oxbridge lawyer who owns about five huge houses.
The gammons and chavs don't mind a bit of posh as long as they are transgressive or what passes for funny in right wing circles. Johnson, Farage, etc.
As Jenrick is as funny as having piles and the flu at the same he'll have to rely on being an outspoken populist delivering thick ropes of common sense jizz into the screaming faces of the wokerati. He'd probably be at least ok at that. If he makes it to LotO his big challenge will maintaining coherence and discipline over the knot of elapids that is the tory party. Nothing we have seen from him to date suggests he'd be any use at that at all.
Saw Thick Ropes of Common Sense Jizz supporting CR⩜⃝SS in '82. Punchy set.
"German authorities have issued an arrest warrant over the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines nearly two years ago, according to German news outlets ARD, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Die Zeit.
In an investigation published Wednesday, the outlets reported that the suspect is a Ukrainian diving instructor, named only as Volodymyr Z. for privacy reasons.
It is alleged he attacked the pipelines in tandem with at least two others, who are also believed to be Ukrainian citizens.
The suspect was believed to last be living in Poland, but Polish authorities said they could not act on the warrant because he had left the country."
Utterly disgraceful to be wanting to arrest a Ukrainian for attacking Russian infrastructure during a war Russia has started.
Shame on Germany.
Massive fuckup by Ukraine if they got caught carrying out pointless international terrorism and so risk public support in what could soon be their most important ally. Different thing if they destroy pipelines in Russia - and they have had plenty of opportunity to destroy the ones that go via Ukraine which are still running, but they havent. Not a good look.
"German authorities have issued an arrest warrant over the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines nearly two years ago, according to German news outlets ARD, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Die Zeit.
In an investigation published Wednesday, the outlets reported that the suspect is a Ukrainian diving instructor, named only as Volodymyr Z. for privacy reasons.
It is alleged he attacked the pipelines in tandem with at least two others, who are also believed to be Ukrainian citizens.
The suspect was believed to last be living in Poland, but Polish authorities said they could not act on the warrant because he had left the country."
Utterly disgraceful to be wanting to arrest a Ukrainian for attacking Russian infrastructure during a war Russia has started.
Shame on Germany.
You can't just go round fighting wars because you feel like it.
Under the Geneva & Hague Conventions, there are various tests to be a recognised combatant.
There's no evidence as to whom he may or may not have been acting on behalf of.
Another thing that is of interest - in the description of what happened, two divers entered the water. But there is no mention of the several hundred kilos of explosives, that were believed to have been used. The yacht master would have noticed them and mentioned them in his statement, surely?
George W. Bush would beg to differ.
Indeed.
But the US military meets the tests of being recognised combatants.
Matt Goodwin @GoodwinMJ · 1h "It wasn’t Farage who decimated the communities that saw the worst rioting by ushering in globalisation, mass immigration, & deindustrialisation; it was the elite class. It wasn’t Farage who promised they'd lower immigration only to do the opposite; it was the elite class"
In a further slight enshittification of cricket, the BBC is now reporting scores in the Hundred just by teams' confected nicknames e.g. 'Spirit' 'Fire'. So not only do I now have to translate "Southern" - ah, they mean "Hampshire"; I have to go through two stages i.e. "Brave" - who are ... brave? ah, yes, "Southern" - so they must mean Hampshire.
It's as if the ECB hadn't noticed the existence of the T20 blast, which does everything they wanted the Hundred to do, only much better.
Hmm, maybe I was wrong. I always thought the idea of the Hundred was just to kill off the counties that don't have Test grounds, but maybe it's to kill off the county structure entirely.
Durham isn't part of the Hundred - so it wasn't all counties with Test grounds...
Edit and I enjoy a good (heck even a bad) one day or T20 match. For some reason I just don't like the Hundred...
Is CLS still a Test ground? I don't recall one there for a while.
In the body "In a letter, the school claimed “the possible impact of VAT on school fees” was also a factor in the decision."
The massive funding black hole they had also did not help.
Expect a few more of these. Closures claimed to be due to labours VAT raid and being nothing of the sort.
There are a lot of private schools right on the edge at the moment. Fuel inflation is a killer, for starters. Rolls are down due to cost.
I can imagine several families might have made the decision to pull out in July rather than switch schools mid-year, even before the election result, and that's having a knock on effect.
But I would expect the main rash of closures to be in July 2026 as the effect of those who clung on to finish GCSEs and A-levels works its way through. It will most likely start with mergers - schools combining on one site and selling the other for building to try and create endowments.
I'd be really worried if we start getting disorderly closures in the spring of 2025 or 2026 when there's very little time to try and find a new school and finish the course before exams. Probably minted due to the desperation for private tuition, but worried. That really would be a bad thing.
The other possibility would be overseas companies buying these places up cheap. That has happened already (Howells in Denbigh or Abbotsholme near Uttoxeter spring to mind). However, the money has traditionally come from China which is not exactly flush right now.
What's most annoying of course is the likes of Eton will drift along without ever noticing.
Given the hilarious incident when Eton made a profit on digging the rowing lake for the Olympics, I fully expect that when VAT comes in, that they end up getting a substantial VAT rebate each year, form the government.
Especially since they must have the most ingenious accountants in the world on tap to try and figure out how to dodge paying the tax to start.
For them, it might be profitable.
For the likes of Redmaids in Bristol, or Dean Close, or Lichfield Cathedral School...rather less so.
"German authorities have issued an arrest warrant over the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines nearly two years ago, according to German news outlets ARD, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Die Zeit.
In an investigation published Wednesday, the outlets reported that the suspect is a Ukrainian diving instructor, named only as Volodymyr Z. for privacy reasons.
It is alleged he attacked the pipelines in tandem with at least two others, who are also believed to be Ukrainian citizens.
The suspect was believed to last be living in Poland, but Polish authorities said they could not act on the warrant because he had left the country."
Utterly disgraceful to be wanting to arrest a Ukrainian for attacking Russian infrastructure during a war Russia has started.
Shame on Germany.
You can't just go round fighting wars because you feel like it.
Under the Geneva & Hague Conventions, there are various tests to be a recognised combatant.
There's no evidence as to whom he may or may not have been acting on behalf of.
Another thing that is of interest - in the description of what happened, two divers entered the water. But there is no mention of the several hundred kilos of explosives, that were believed to have been used. The yacht master would have noticed them and mentioned them in his statement, surely?
George W. Bush would beg to differ.
Indeed.
But the US military meets the tests of being recognised combatants.
I don’t really get why people seem to think Jenrick would be a disaster. He is quite effective.
I personally can’t stand him but divorcing my views from the situation they can surely do far worse.
I don't think he'll last until the next GE as leader if he wins in autumn.
He will do nothing to shift the polls and will prove unpopular with public because he's just another public school over promoted oxbridge lawyer who owns about five huge houses.
The gammons and chavs don't mind a bit of posh as long as they are transgressive or what passes for funny in right wing circles. Johnson, Farage, etc.
As Jenrick is as funny as having piles and the flu at the same he'll have to rely on being an outspoken populist delivering thick ropes of common sense jizz into the screaming faces of the wokerati. He'd probably be at least ok at that. If he makes it to LotO his big challenge will maintaining coherence and discipline over the knot of elapids that is the tory party. Nothing we have seen from him to date suggests he'd be any use at that at all.
Saw Thick Ropes of Common Sense Jizz supporting CR⩜⃝SS in '82. Punchy set.
https://www.greaterlondon.co/p/safer-streets ...About eight percent of those killed on the road each year – 130 people – are killed by that one percent of uninsured drivers. According to West Mercia Police, uninsured drivers are also ten times more likely to be a convicted drink driver, six times more likely to have a defective vehicle, and five times more likely to get caught speeding by cameras. Clearly not all serious car crimes are committed by those driving without insurance, but a significant fraction are.
What makes this especially notable is that there is an easy way we could make a big difference to the number of uninsured and untaxed drivers on London’s streets, making the roads safer for other road users. You will already know that there are about 2,000 cameras around London, which use automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) to enforce the congestion charge, ultra-low emissions zone, and more. They’re also accessible by police.
Police cars have their own cameras. If one of the police cameras sees an uninsured or untaxed car it pings the policeman automatically and they can decide whether to pursue and stop it. But the vast majority of cameras, the non-police cameras that you go past every day on London’s roads, don’t alert them: they just pump the data (which numberplates were where) into a database.
To be clear, the police are allowed to access this information, they just don’t get sent it by default. If they did manually pore over the records they would find all the uninsured and untaxed drivers driving around, plus those previously used for crimes, and those with suspicious plates. But by the time they did that the car would be long gone, so in practice the perpetrators get away with it practically every time. What the Met need is an automatic ping, like they get with their own cameras.
This could go beyond telling police where uninsured drivers are going. Cloning number plates is itself a crime, but it is also only useful if you are trying to cover up another crime by pretending to be someone else, so picking up those driving with fake numberplates could help prevent many other crimes. It would only take a simple predictive system, which looked at where the car was registered, and where it had last been tracked by cameras, to identify and rapidly investigate suspicious cars...
I suspect that such surveillance would payoff by detecting a lot of other crimes and antisocial behavior.
Nick them and confiscate their vehicles.
If we surveil people 24hrs a day and combine it with numerous "nudge" and hate-crime programs, we can realistically reduce crime and antisocial behaviour to zero...
...But having built Hell, who would want to live in it?
You’re so unambitious, we want to focus on pre-crime like in Minority Report.
I loved that film and was quite attracted to the idea of arresting a perp before he gets to actually perp. Devil in the detail though.
Honestly? You do realise it's supposed to be a dystopia?
Yep, but in theory I like it. If you really could home in on a person who was tracking for absolute certain to carry out murder most foul, planning done, route scouted, knife cleaned and sharpened, mentally 100% resolved, and today is the day. So off he goes, buys his ticket ... but then bam, the Authorities swoop in and he is foiled. Crime doesn't happen. Victim lives. Perp gets a shot at rehabilitation.
Nothing Orwellian about that. It's a deeply benign vision.
In the body "In a letter, the school claimed “the possible impact of VAT on school fees” was also a factor in the decision."
The massive funding black hole they had also did not help.
Expect a few more of these. Closures claimed to be due to labours VAT raid and being nothing of the sort.
There are a lot of private schools right on the edge at the moment. Fuel inflation is a killer, for starters. Rolls are down due to cost.
I can imagine several families might have made the decision to pull out in July rather than switch schools mid-year, even before the election result, and that's having a knock on effect.
But I would expect the main rash of closures to be in July 2026 as the effect of those who clung on to finish GCSEs and A-levels works its way through. It will most likely start with mergers - schools combining on one site and selling the other for building to try and create endowments.
I'd be really worried if we start getting disorderly closures in the spring of 2025 or 2026 when there's very little time to try and find a new school and finish the course before exams. Probably minted due to the desperation for private tuition, but worried. That really would be a bad thing.
The other possibility would be overseas companies buying these places up cheap. That has happened already (Howells in Denbigh or Abbotsholme near Uttoxeter spring to mind). However, the money has traditionally come from China which is not exactly flush right now.
What's most annoying of course is the likes of Eton will drift along without ever noticing.
Given the hilarious incident when Eton made a profit on digging the rowing lake for the Olympics, I fully expect that when VAT comes in, that they end up getting a substantial VAT rebate each year, form the government.
There are a number of things about Eton I find funny. They host a lot of the South Bucks Secondary Modern Prom nights but refused to help when the Grammar schools tried to book the facilities.
"German authorities have issued an arrest warrant over the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines nearly two years ago, according to German news outlets ARD, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Die Zeit.
In an investigation published Wednesday, the outlets reported that the suspect is a Ukrainian diving instructor, named only as Volodymyr Z. for privacy reasons.
It is alleged he attacked the pipelines in tandem with at least two others, who are also believed to be Ukrainian citizens.
The suspect was believed to last be living in Poland, but Polish authorities said they could not act on the warrant because he had left the country."
Utterly disgraceful to be wanting to arrest a Ukrainian for attacking Russian infrastructure during a war Russia has started.
Shame on Germany.
Massive fuckup by Ukraine if they got caught carrying out pointless international terrorism and so risk public support in what could soon be their most important ally. Different thing if they destroy pipelines in Russia - and they have had plenty of opportunity to destroy the ones that go via Ukraine which are still running, but they havent. Not a good look.
You're assuming national level involvement. Mind you, everyone seems to.
The pipelines were marked on standard navigation charts. The water isn't that deep. A handful of people could have done this quite easily.
Matt Goodwin @GoodwinMJ · 1h "It wasn’t Farage who decimated the communities that saw the worst rioting by ushering in globalisation, mass immigration, & deindustrialisation; it was the elite class. It wasn’t Farage who promised they'd lower immigration only to do the opposite; it was the elite class"
https://www.greaterlondon.co/p/safer-streets ...About eight percent of those killed on the road each year – 130 people – are killed by that one percent of uninsured drivers. According to West Mercia Police, uninsured drivers are also ten times more likely to be a convicted drink driver, six times more likely to have a defective vehicle, and five times more likely to get caught speeding by cameras. Clearly not all serious car crimes are committed by those driving without insurance, but a significant fraction are.
What makes this especially notable is that there is an easy way we could make a big difference to the number of uninsured and untaxed drivers on London’s streets, making the roads safer for other road users. You will already know that there are about 2,000 cameras around London, which use automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) to enforce the congestion charge, ultra-low emissions zone, and more. They’re also accessible by police.
Police cars have their own cameras. If one of the police cameras sees an uninsured or untaxed car it pings the policeman automatically and they can decide whether to pursue and stop it. But the vast majority of cameras, the non-police cameras that you go past every day on London’s roads, don’t alert them: they just pump the data (which numberplates were where) into a database.
To be clear, the police are allowed to access this information, they just don’t get sent it by default. If they did manually pore over the records they would find all the uninsured and untaxed drivers driving around, plus those previously used for crimes, and those with suspicious plates. But by the time they did that the car would be long gone, so in practice the perpetrators get away with it practically every time. What the Met need is an automatic ping, like they get with their own cameras.
This could go beyond telling police where uninsured drivers are going. Cloning number plates is itself a crime, but it is also only useful if you are trying to cover up another crime by pretending to be someone else, so picking up those driving with fake numberplates could help prevent many other crimes. It would only take a simple predictive system, which looked at where the car was registered, and where it had last been tracked by cameras, to identify and rapidly investigate suspicious cars...
I suspect that such surveillance would payoff by detecting a lot of other crimes and antisocial behavior.
Nick them and confiscate their vehicles.
If we surveil people 24hrs a day and combine it with numerous "nudge" and hate-crime programs, we can realistically reduce crime and antisocial behaviour to zero...
...But having built Hell, who would want to live in it?
You’re so unambitious, we want to focus on pre-crime like in Minority Report.
I loved that film and was quite attracted to the idea of arresting a perp before he gets to actually perp. Devil in the detail though.
Honestly? You do realise it's supposed to be a dystopia?
Yep, but in theory I like it. If you really could home in on a person who was tracking for absolute certain to carry out murder most foul, planning done, route scouted, knife cleaned and sharpened, mentally 100% resolved, and today is the day. So off he goes, buys his ticket ... but then bam, the Authorities swoop in and he is foiled. Crime doesn't happen. Victim lives. Perp gets a shot at rehabilitation.
Nothing Orwellian about that. It's a deeply benign vision.
Orwellian is the total surveillance. Which leads, inevitably, to corruption.
"German authorities have issued an arrest warrant over the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines nearly two years ago, according to German news outlets ARD, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Die Zeit.
In an investigation published Wednesday, the outlets reported that the suspect is a Ukrainian diving instructor, named only as Volodymyr Z. for privacy reasons.
It is alleged he attacked the pipelines in tandem with at least two others, who are also believed to be Ukrainian citizens.
The suspect was believed to last be living in Poland, but Polish authorities said they could not act on the warrant because he had left the country."
The name was published by the NY Times over a year ago. We've known it was the Ukrainians for at least that long.
@Leon will not let these pesky facts get in the way of his conspiracy.
"German authorities have issued an arrest warrant over the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines nearly two years ago, according to German news outlets ARD, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Die Zeit.
In an investigation published Wednesday, the outlets reported that the suspect is a Ukrainian diving instructor, named only as Volodymyr Z. for privacy reasons.
It is alleged he attacked the pipelines in tandem with at least two others, who are also believed to be Ukrainian citizens.
The suspect was believed to last be living in Poland, but Polish authorities said they could not act on the warrant because he had left the country."
Utterly disgraceful to be wanting to arrest a Ukrainian for attacking Russian infrastructure during a war Russia has started.
Shame on Germany.
Massive fuckup by Ukraine if they got caught carrying out pointless international terrorism and so risk public support in what could soon be their most important ally. Different thing if they destroy pipelines in Russia - and they have had plenty of opportunity to destroy the ones that go via Ukraine which are still running, but they havent. Not a good look.
You're assuming national level involvement. Mind you, everyone seems to.
The pipelines were marked on standard navigation charts. The water isn't that deep. A handful of people could have done this quite easily.
Yes, the story is Zelenskyy didn't know about it in advance, but it came from Zaluzhnyi who was commander in chief at the time. All speculative, but the AfD are bound to have a field day with this story.
I don’t really get why people seem to think Jenrick would be a disaster. He is quite effective.
I personally can’t stand him but divorcing my views from the situation they can surely do far worse.
I don't think he'll last until the next GE as leader if he wins in autumn.
He will do nothing to shift the polls and will prove unpopular with public because he's just another public school over promoted oxbridge lawyer who owns about five huge houses.
The gammons and chavs don't mind a bit of posh as long as they are transgressive or what passes for funny in right wing circles. Johnson, Farage, etc.
As Jenrick is as funny as having piles and the flu at the same he'll have to rely on being an outspoken populist delivering thick ropes of common sense jizz into the screaming faces of the wokerati. He'd probably be at least ok at that. If he makes it to LotO his big challenge will maintaining coherence and discipline over the knot of elapids that is the tory party. Nothing we have seen from him to date suggests he'd be any use at that at all.
He's short on the 'likeability' factor though. That's my take anyway. When I spent some time listening to him recently (for betting purposes) I thought, "this man is very hard to like, and I'm not sure people are going to manage it."
Matt Goodwin @GoodwinMJ · 1h "It wasn’t Farage who decimated the communities that saw the worst rioting by ushering in globalisation, mass immigration, & deindustrialisation; it was the elite class. It wasn’t Farage who promised they'd lower immigration only to do the opposite; it was the elite class"
When did Mr Goodwin lose any semblance of nuance? Because I can't think of anyone who has done a poorer job of recognizing the trade offs involved in these decisions.
"German authorities have issued an arrest warrant over the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines nearly two years ago, according to German news outlets ARD, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Die Zeit.
In an investigation published Wednesday, the outlets reported that the suspect is a Ukrainian diving instructor, named only as Volodymyr Z. for privacy reasons.
It is alleged he attacked the pipelines in tandem with at least two others, who are also believed to be Ukrainian citizens.
The suspect was believed to last be living in Poland, but Polish authorities said they could not act on the warrant because he had left the country."
Utterly disgraceful to be wanting to arrest a Ukrainian for attacking Russian infrastructure during a war Russia has started.
Shame on Germany.
Massive fuckup by Ukraine if they got caught carrying out pointless international terrorism and so risk public support in what could soon be their most important ally. Different thing if they destroy pipelines in Russia - and they have had plenty of opportunity to destroy the ones that go via Ukraine which are still running, but they havent. Not a good look.
You're assuming national level involvement. Mind you, everyone seems to.
The pipelines were marked on standard navigation charts. The water isn't that deep. A handful of people could have done this quite easily.
Yes, the story is Zelenskyy didn't know about it in advance, but it came from Zaluzhnyi who was commander in chief at the time. All speculative, but the AfD are bound to have a field day with this story.
Why, because the AfD are against Ukraine defending themselves?
If Russian pipelines don't want to be blown up, perhaps Russia shouldn't go invading other countries with a populace willing and able to defend themselves.
Whoever blew it up should get a medal, not an arrest warrant.
Comments
Solicitor disciplined for showing sexual photo to colleague in courtroom
Tribunal says inappropriate conduct damages public trust in legal profession
A senior lawyer has been reprimanded for sharing a sexual photo with a junior female colleague in a courtroom.
Geoffrey White, a criminal defence solicitor, was found to have breached professional standards after making sexually explicit and derogatory comments to a probation officer at Crawley Magistrates’ Court in 2021.
The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) on Tuesday said that the 66-year-old would benefit from diversity and inclusion training after his inappropriate conduct damaged the public’s trust and confidence in the legal industry.
Judge Edward Nally said: “Attitudes have changed, the profession has modernised.”
The probation officer, referred to as Person A, claimed Mr White showed her a meme on his mobile phone of a naked woman lying down on a table at a barbeque with bottles covering her breasts in May 2021. The naked image had a caption to the effect of “if you have left your wife at the BBQ, please come and get her”, according to legal documents referred to in the hearing and prepared by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, which brought the case.
Mr White, who runs his own law firm specialising in legal aid, then told Person A that “it looks a bit like you” and “your hair looks the same”.
The SDT also found that Mr White made further sexual comments about Person A in July 2021, when joking about a female client arrested on suspicion of having sex on a train. Person A overheard Mr White tell a prosecutor that she “knows all about that, standard probation practice”.
The probation officer said that both incidents made her feel uncomfortable and that she continued to feel uneasy when she saw or spoke to him.
Mr White, who has represented 25,000 people across the past three decades, claimed that he was trying to make Person A laugh rather than offend her.
The Sussex-based lawyer said that he wanted to “lighten the mood” and diffuse the tension with the woman, who appeared “nervous and so serious” in her new role in the probation service.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/08/14/solicitor-disciplined-showing-sexual-photo-colleague/
Glad to have the PB libertarian on board with that.
...But having built Hell, who would want to live in it?
If they're talking about networking all ANPR cameras (including privately-owned ones at car parks or petrol stations, for example), and giving the police access to real-time data from them, then I'd be pretty wary. Not least because the job of securely integrating all the different systems is likely to be hugely expensive.
But if they're only talking about public, regulated speed cameras, congestion charge cameras, that sort of thing, then I don't see the problem with it. It's just taking existing data, and using it for purposes that are already allowed.
Whether the police have the resources to follow up on all the people they catch is another matter!
Apart from anything else it makes the author who wrote that clichés “have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves” restless in his grave.
I dislike uninsured drivers as much as the next man. And once upon a time I might have gone for this. But covid changed my mind. The way the state and the police abused their powers during lockdown makes me extremely wary of ever making it easy for them to do so again.
I personally can’t stand him but divorcing my views from the situation they can surely do far worse.
"Former Tory deputy PM applies for Labour Treasury role
Thérèse Coffey has applied for the position which comes with a £183,400 annual salary, roughly double an MP’s wage"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/08/13/former-tory-deputy-pm-applies-for-labour-treasury-role/
Confiscating uninsured vehicles would probably pay for itself over time
I'm still floored that there's more than one person who thinks an acceptable solution to a group of middle aged men hiding behind their keyboards hounding a woman in this way is for that hounding to be successful in shutting her up. Some people in here have the moral compass of something from under a rock.
He will do nothing to shift the polls and will prove unpopular with public because he's just another public school over promoted oxbridge lawyer who owns about five huge houses.
The MPs will oust him in two or three years time.
That's my view, for what it's worth.
I must have missed the proposal to stream number plate data real time on public websites.
Which would be great if she didn't voice that as a criticism.
@FrankLuntz
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19h
Pennsylvania could take multiple days to count all votes for the 2024 race, because state Republicans rejected a bill allowing them to count early mail ballots as they come in.
Instead, mail ballots will only be counted starting at 7AM on Election Day.
https://x.com/FrankLuntz/status/1823394355354186179
It's as if the ECB hadn't noticed the existence of the T20 blast, which does everything they wanted the Hundred to do, only much better.
I suspect the next Tory leader has a decent chance of lasting the full Parliament, because they don’t have a huge talent pool to go fishing in, and positioning/survival is the order of the day. I may be wrong.
Also, shenanigans in Georgia:
https://apnews.com/article/georgia-kemp-voting-challenges-changes-aa1fd9b62c7bcdd430c24dc439f8a728
A more important change would be to legislate away "the sun was in my eyes" and "temporary blackout" - now standard defences for when cyclists and pedestrians get hit. The former should always be solid evidence careless driving (you need to be able to see), the latter a permanent disqualification.
I honestly can't say. Has he thrown enough red meat out there?
He could work for Womble Bond Dickinson.
Although the ones who committed perjury for the PO haven't been struck off yet as far as I know.
In the same way that the wife, accused by her husband of cheating, meant when she said she'd only been unfaithful twice - once with Steve their neighbour and once with the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment.
News outlets were leaked insider material from the Trump campaign. They chose not to print it
https://apnews.com/article/trump-vance-leak-media-wikileaks-e30bdccbdd4abc9506735408cdc9bf7b
They're arguably right not to do so, but if this is a change of policy, none of them have acknowledged it.
I agree with your point entirely too. This is not "challenging" her, to challenge her would to be to debate her as happened recently at the fringe. This is exactly what you say in your second paragraph.
https://www.dw.com/en/nord-stream-explosions-germany-issues-arrest-warrant/a-69933920
"German authorities have issued an arrest warrant over the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines nearly two years ago, according to German news outlets ARD, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Die Zeit.
In an investigation published Wednesday, the outlets reported that the suspect is a Ukrainian diving instructor, named only as Volodymyr Z. for privacy reasons.
It is alleged he attacked the pipelines in tandem with at least two others, who are also believed to be Ukrainian citizens.
The suspect was believed to last be living in Poland, but Polish authorities said they could not act on the warrant because he had left the country."
If nobody is killed in the aftermath it will be a miracle to be honest.
Why couldn't he have gone for Goloborodko, V?
More on the story here:
https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2024-07/nordstream-anschlag-ermittlungen-festnahme
As Jenrick is as funny as having piles and the flu at the same he'll have to rely on being an outspoken populist delivering thick ropes of common sense jizz into the screaming faces of the wokerati. He'd probably be at least ok at that. If he makes it to LotO his big challenge will maintaining coherence and discipline over the knot of elapids that is the tory party. Nothing we have seen from him to date suggests he'd be any use at that at all.
Shame on Germany.
So far, after decades of lying to courts, conspiracy to lie to the courts etc etc... no one has received even a bad review at work - "This year, performance 5/10. Must stop committing crimes"
Though "permanently erect" isn't a phrase you ordinarily associate with the current Tory membership.
Catholic boarding school closes citing Labour VAT raid
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/catholic-boarding-school-closes-citing-labour-vat-raid/ar-AA1oMvzC?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=bd3a5e71629f40a28da9f5eac07a5770&ei=19
In the body "In a letter, the school claimed “the possible impact of VAT on school fees” was also a factor in the decision."
The massive funding black hole they had also did not help.
Expect a few more of these. Closures claimed to be due to labours VAT raid and being nothing of the sort.
It is going to be a nightmare for the various states trying to count this without interference or worse.
Under the Geneva & Hague Conventions, there are various tests to be a recognised combatant.
There's no evidence as to whom he may or may not have been acting on behalf of.
Another thing that is of interest - in the description of what happened, two divers entered the water. But there is no mention of the several hundred kilos of explosives, that were believed to have been used. The yacht master would have noticed them and mentioned them in his statement, surely?
I can imagine several families might have made the decision to pull out in July rather than switch schools mid-year, even before the election result, and that's having a knock on effect.
But I would expect the main rash of closures to be in July 2026 as the effect of those who clung on to finish GCSEs and A-levels works its way through. It will most likely start with mergers - schools combining on one site and selling the other for building to try and create endowments.
I'd be really worried if we start getting disorderly closures in the spring of 2025 or 2026 when there's very little time to try and find a new school and finish the course before exams. Probably minted due to the desperation for private tuition, but worried. That really would be a bad thing.
The other possibility would be overseas companies buying these places up cheap. That has happened already (Howells in Denbigh or Abbotsholme near Uttoxeter spring to mind). However, the money has traditionally come from China which is not exactly flush right now.
What's most annoying of course is the likes of Eton will drift along without ever noticing.
Edit and I enjoy a good (heck even a bad) one day or T20 match. For some reason I just don't like the Hundred...
But the US military meets the tests of being recognised combatants.
@GoodwinMJ
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1h
"It wasn’t Farage who decimated the communities that saw the worst rioting by ushering in globalisation, mass immigration, & deindustrialisation; it was the elite class. It wasn’t Farage who promised they'd lower immigration only to do the opposite; it was the elite class"
https://x.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1823671012304556298
For them, it might be profitable.
For the likes of Redmaids in Bristol, or Dean Close, or Lichfield Cathedral School...rather less so.
Nothing Orwellian about that. It's a deeply benign vision.
The pipelines were marked on standard navigation charts. The water isn't that deep. A handful of people could have done this quite easily.
Or did you think Dr Raymond Cocteau was the hero?
They bought the private school in Cannock in 2014. Since then, the school's had six headteachers. They simply can't manage the demands of the owner.
Closure is probably a better option than that, although to be fair they do seem to have turned around Abbotsholme.
@Leon will not let these pesky facts get in the way of his conspiracy.
When did Mr Goodwin lose any semblance of nuance? Because I can't think of anyone who has done a poorer job of recognizing the trade offs involved in these decisions.
If Russian pipelines don't want to be blown up, perhaps Russia shouldn't go invading other countries with a populace willing and able to defend themselves.
Whoever blew it up should get a medal, not an arrest warrant.
New Industrialist Roundup 2024
What people are writing about rebuilding America.
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/new-industrialist-roundup-2024
It's something I don't think we've really started to get to grips with in the UK.