@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
Speaking of 'nature cannot be fooled,' I assumed that Trump tweet @williamglenn regaled is with on the last thread was a parody.
I now find it wasn't.
Plus he had another one ranting about evil left wing judges.
With any other person we'd be talking not just about the 25th but about him being sectioned. Trump is clearly off his head.
In his last administration he was malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, displayed truly shocking judgement and a very thin skin and was totally incompetent but he was not actually insane. Nor did he have untrammelled power as he now does.
The big worry, and this is why he should never have been nominated, is that he's surrounded by sycophants who won't do what is necessary to either constrain or remove him.
When America lurches from crisis to crisis over the next four years Republicans (and the Supreme Court) have only themselves to blame, but I'm willing to bet that like NASA they will blame everyone else first.
At least as the World hurtles into recession, sorry depression, the Labour Government will crash and burn and we here in Brexitland will be delivered a shiny Nigel Farage (who has all the answers) premiership. I suspect right wing populism will become the new normal across the planet, even if Trump does crash Earth. He can always blame foreigners.
Every cloud etc.
Here is the problem with the progressive's sneer at the populist right - they know enough about our problems to actually *try* to get stuff done. Pop-right government's don't just crash and burn because they target the obvious stuff we all know is wrong and get on with targeting them.
I heard an interview with the Polish foreign minister who talked about how they had defeated the pop-right - he said you have to go do stuff. Starmer is at least trying to go after the migration crisis - he's deported an awful lot of people in a relatively small amount of time.
His problem? They aren't shouting it from the rafters. Had Farage become PM and started deporting people it would be *everywhere*. But that is the only thing Starmer is doing. There's an obvious list of stuff to target and Labour are in denial about chunks of them...
And yet the Lib Dems are famous for doing reasonably well electorally for getting local stuff done like filling potholes. Wouldn't they be doing even better if that premise is good?
You don't give Tesco some sort of special award or notice because it manages to stock baked beans and sliced bread. Local government actually doing its ordinary job is not some stellar thing, it is the most basic expectation.
Increasingly all levels of the state expect us to think it astonishing and praiseworthy that they actually do the many jobs they have taken to themselves to perform, while they have unlimited freedom to require us to pay for by taxes.
Tesco level of service should be the basic level of all state provision.
But as I've said passim. I'd be in favour of a targeted approach to footpaths. It's surprising how piecemeal footpath provision is: as an example, my own home turf is reasonably well provided for in terms of footpaths and bridleways, whilst Lincolnshire has terrible provision. And it's not just about medium or long-distance routes, short paths out of villages can be really useful.
I'd also encourage landowners and farmers to open more concessionary routes, rather than legal footpaths.
Not much football in Uktraine's no man's land yesterday - another 1,540 Russian/North Korean casualties on Christmas Day.
There’s suggestions online that the NorKs are actually their good soldiers, rather than the idiot conscripts many of us had thought they’d sent. If the good soldiers are getting killed at a rate of over a thousand a day, then their army isn’t going to last too long in an actual war.
The idea was to give them "live fire exercises" on a modern battlefield (given they haven't done anything since meat-wave attacks in the 1950's). However, not many will be going back to pass on their expertise.
But as I've said passim. I'd be in favour of a targeted approach to footpaths. It's surprising how piecemeal footpath provision is: as an example, my own home turf is reasonably well provided for in terms of footpaths and bridleways, whilst Lincolnshire has terrible provision. And it's not just about medium or long-distance routes, short paths out of villages can be really useful.
I'd also encourage landowners and farmers to open more concessionary routes, rather than legal footpaths.
This, also in the news today (I suspect both targeting the Boxing Day walkies thing), is relevant.
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
A(nother) great article from Cyclefree.
It is the departure from reality that is most worrying about the recent surge of populist politics. Pretending climate change isn’t real won’t stop its effects. Pretending vaccines are dangerous will kill. And so on.
Climate change denial (specifically denial, not scepticism) has been around for well over four decades. Originally funded by the oil companies, via tobacco style scientific smokescreen, but since then taken in a life of its own. Carter had put very large investment towards developing solar energy in his 1980 budget. Cancelled overnight when oil industry backed Reagan took office. Bush's election in 2000 gave it another kick.
As someone who ran an engineering company making safety critical parts for nuclear power and aircraft engines, the engineers were allowed to get on with the necessary testing and verification of parts/assemblies due to the customer. Your local nuclear plant has remained safe, and the planes you have flown on have arrived at their destination not only due to engineers but due to realistic customers paying what was necessary.
Many of the issues regarding engineering failures comes down to penny pinching. Engineers know what they are doing.
Indeed so. Ask Boeing how the last couple of decades of replacing engineers with MBAs in the management grades has gone.
That said, the graph of commercial aviation accidents over time is utterly astonishing. Modern planes just don’t crash any more, unless they’re shot down.
The thing about aviation is that the NTSB et al run investigations to find out why the accident occurred so the causes can be fixed or mitigated rather than so that someone can be blamed. This has led to every accident being a learning experience which contributed to the incremental safety of air travel.
There are a few exceptions to this but not many
Absolutely.
Transport accidents pretty much stopped happening because the NTSB (in the UK the AAIB and RIAB) investigates every incident and accident, and makes recommendations aimed at preventing the next one.
We can all learn from that approach, of looking at causes of incidents rather than rushing to apportion blame. No-blame culture works, ask the Mercedes F1 team who won seven championships in a row using just that approach.
When I was inducted into the mysteries of timetableing for a school my master made sure that I fully understood the concept and importance of a “no-blame” culture: mistakes will be made, but making sure you understand what went wrong and ensuring it doesn’t happen again are the only things to worry about.
I’m particularly keen on it as half the time I’m the one who made the mistake…
I am now going to indulge in shameless self-promotion. I have spent much of the past few months writing a book on scandals and investigations: why the former happens, why they reasons they happen are the same - no matter what the sector - and why the inquiries and their usually sensible recommendations are ignored so that we can repeat the mistakes and tragedies over and over again.
Would you believe there was a sensible inquiry into and report on public inquiries some 4 years which made a lot of useful recommendations to stop them being so long and expensive? It has been ignored and so another report has just come out saying the same things again and Please Do them THIS TIME.
The book is probably rubbish, certainly needs considerable pruning and editing and may be of no commercial interest to anyone. But it has clarified my thoughts and so I will answer some of your questions.
THE reason why inquiries are so long is that we allow scandals to go on for far too long. If we only investigated things properly right at the first signs of trouble they could be done and dusted in weeks or months. And there'd be no need for the whole panoply of inquiries etc. But this failure to investigate is endemic and is the one thing we get wrong over and over again.
The PO disaster for instance could have been resolved in 2001 when concerns were first raised by Alan Bates or again in 2003. And it would not have needed a public inquiry to do so. Just bloody good fearless investigators and the will to do find out. It's the latter which is lacking.
The same could be said of blood contamination, pretty much every financial scandal, Grenfell, many NHS ones, the BBC and Savile and the Panorama programme on Diana, the British Museum, and on and on and on.
Good early investigation is the key to stopping a problem turning into a crisis.
You won't know until you pitch it. Best to do this before writing the book, but I've done a big re-write of an existing book based on publisher demands and it went ok.
Get a ghost writer used to the popular style to dumb it down for you, and I don't see why the topic couldn't be hit. One chapter per disaster.
But as I've said passim. I'd be in favour of a targeted approach to footpaths. It's surprising how piecemeal footpath provision is: as an example, my own home turf is reasonably well provided for in terms of footpaths and bridleways, whilst Lincolnshire has terrible provision. And it's not just about medium or long-distance routes, short paths out of villages can be really useful.
I'd also encourage landowners and farmers to open more concessionary routes, rather than legal footpaths.
This, also in the news today (I suspect both targeting the Boxing Day walkies thing), is relevant.
I have some sympathy with that, and indeed, I can point out to such paths that already exist (often concessionary). In addition, many farmers seem to tacitly allow people to follow field edges anyway, at least in my local area.
But with family in farming (I'll be off for Boxing Day fun with them in a couple of hours), I can see the other side of the view: that far too many members of the public are utterly irresponsible when it comes to accessing the paths and bridleways that do exist. Also, access requires gates/stiles, and sometimes fences will be required - and these are not cheap for the landowner.
These are not reasons not to do it, but it'd be good if they could be addressed.
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
A(nother) great article from Cyclefree.
It is the departure from reality that is most worrying about the recent surge of populist politics. Pretending climate change isn’t real won’t stop its effects. Pretending vaccines are dangerous will kill. And so on.
The departure from reality about climate change is not really about the new breed of populists. The serious minded global conferences, political action and agreements have now being going on for a few decades. The net result thus far is that the continuing net output of CO2 is not falling but rising and very non populist China is still building coal fired power stations.
Is it surprising that many voters have decided that the serious centrists as well as the oligarchs don't actually mean what they say?
This is what happens when you stop pretending: If the science is right, then what it forsees is going to happen because there is no global will to stop it.
The only chances: Mitigation; preparedness; tech solutions; hope for and look for the upside to be greater than the downside; hope the science is wrong.
I think you underestimate the progress China is making on decarbonisation, for example this on electric vehicles:
China's lead on green technology in terms of both innovation and volume is going to overwhelming a lot of conventional industry in our stagnant economies.
As someone for whom the Challenger disaster was one of his earliest news memories, aged eight at the time, the inquiry and reporting on the incident have always struck a nerve. It only took a couple of days before the playground jokes started about NASA being an acronym for Need Another Seven Astronauts, but only later when reading the material on the disaster (incuding Adam Higginbotham’s excellent book) did it dawn on me just how much it was a human failure rather than a technological one, on that cold January day.
Almost everyone involved in the project knew that it wasn’t safe to launch the Shuttle in freezing ambient temperatures, yet somehow they all convinced each other it was going to be fine, because it was more important to keep going than to be the one who called stop when it needed to be stopped. The O-rings in the boosters had almost failed before, and a disaster had been averted more by luck than by judgement. They’d delayed STS-51-L several times already, and the senior management at NASA were very keen to avoid further delays to the mission.
Making things worse on the day, was that one of the mission tasks was an outreach programme to American schoolchildren about spaceflight, called the Teacher In Space project. Astronaut Christa McAucliffe was to be the first teacher in space, having won a national competition, and would be giving lessons from orbit. For this reason millions of American kids watched the disaster unfold live, on televisions brought into classrooms and assembly halls across the country. Thousands of teachers had to explain to the children what had just happened, minutes after the event.
Reagan’s address to the Nation that evening was a masterclass in communication, something from which today’s politicians can learn a lot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qa7icmqgsow
I’m sure that, like the rest of us, he was absolutely furious when he discovered what had actually happened in the lead up to the decision to fly. Nixon had pre-recorded several addresses to be broadcast in the event of the Apollo 11 mission failing, because he said that he couldn’t have coped with having to do it live. Reagan’s words that day, incuding the extract from John Magee’s poem that’s been read at the funerals of many aviators over the decades, perfectly captured the mood of the public at the time.
There’s obviously so much that can be learned from the disaster, from the treatment of whistleblowers to the need for timely investigations into incidents, but sadly NASA needed yet another seven astronauts only a few years later, after Shuttle Columbia succumbed to yet another well-known issue that the system failed to properly address before a disaster occurred.
Right, now back to the LEGO.
An interesting book I am reading currently, by Dan Davies, titled the Unaccountability Machine, draws on the history of cybernetics to argue that large organisations can be considered a form of artificial intelligence, with the people working within largely applying preset policies to each situation as it comes along with no-one exercising real accountability or discretion. It’s a thought provoking read with lots of examples of organisations doing counter-productive things for which no-one turns out to be personally accountable, usually when a general policy meets an unanticipated circumstance.
Clearly his thesis is pertinent to a range of topical scandals including many covered in leads by our own Sig.ra Ciclolibero. Despite our thirst for holding individuals involved in such scandals to account afterwards, the reality is that you could swap out all the people and run the simulation again, and get exactly the same outcome, because it’s the system design that drives how the people within it are behaving.
Indeed. But Cyclefree's argument, I think, is that you can design into the machine error correction systems to address that. A string whistleblowing system, which is one way of allowing critical thinking about the machine to be listened to, is one such.
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
A(nother) great article from Cyclefree.
It is the departure from reality that is most worrying about the recent surge of populist politics. Pretending climate change isn’t real won’t stop its effects. Pretending vaccines are dangerous will kill. And so on.
Of course the reverse can be equally argued..electric cars can't be sold with high costs/lack of infrastructure..vaccines can't be promoted honestly when they don't stop transmission..🧐🥴
Stopping transmission is not needed: reducing it is enough to make most of them worthwhile.
But as I've said passim. I'd be in favour of a targeted approach to footpaths. It's surprising how piecemeal footpath provision is: as an example, my own home turf is reasonably well provided for in terms of footpaths and bridleways, whilst Lincolnshire has terrible provision. And it's not just about medium or long-distance routes, short paths out of villages can be really useful.
I'd also encourage landowners and farmers to open more concessionary routes, rather than legal footpaths.
This, also in the news today (I suspect both targeting the Boxing Day walkies thing), is relevant.
I have some sympathy with that, and indeed, I can point out to such paths that already exist (often concessionary). In addition, many farmers seem to tacitly allow people to follow field edges anyway, at least in my local area.
But with family in farming (I'll be off for Boxing Day fun with them in a couple of hours), I can see the other side of the view: that far too many members of the public are utterly irresponsible when it comes to accessing the paths and bridleways that do exist. Also, access requires gates/stiles, and sometimes fences will be required - and these are not cheap for the landowner.
These are not reasons not to do it, but it'd be good if they could be addressed.
Quite so.
I can well imagine that, in England, you're screwed if there is no RoW going through your nice new executive estate on the outskirts of some village and the landowner is not in a mood to be helpful ...
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
Speaking of 'nature cannot be fooled,' I assumed that Trump tweet @williamglenn regaled is with on the last thread was a parody.
I now find it wasn't.
Plus he had another one ranting about evil left wing judges.
With any other person we'd be talking not just about the 25th but about him being sectioned. Trump is clearly off his head.
In his last administration he was malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, displayed truly shocking judgement and a very thin skin and was totally incompetent but he was not actually insane. Nor did he have untrammelled power as he now does.
The big worry, and this is why he should never have been nominated, is that he's surrounded by sycophants who won't do what is necessary to either constrain or remove him.
When America lurches from crisis to crisis over the next four years Republicans (and the Supreme Court) have only themselves to blame, but I'm willing to bet that like NASA they will blame everyone else first.
The even bigger worry is that Trump was put forward and financed by malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt bastards displaying truly shocking judgement - who intend to move him on using the 25th and install sombody who is so malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, and displaying truly shocking judgement that he would never have got elected in his own right.
Step forward in 2025 President Vance.
That's possible, but if so it was a rather silly strategy. The reason I say that is because under the procedure for invoking the 25th two thirds of Congress would be required to vote through a contested declaration of inability and that will happen when BJO declares for Starmer or Leon admits he's wrong about something.
They could of course just get rid of Trump. Unexplained heart attack, maybe?
If Trump is demonstrably bonkers, what are Congress going to do? Keep the mad bastard in place? With the nuclear codes?
Vance was on the ticket. America knew who would step up if Trump fell down.
They did with Nixon until Agnew was replaced by Ford.
Thing is, there's not much evidence Vance is any saner.
I don't like Vance or his politics, but he is both intelligent and sane.
Vance is the ultimate political chameleon, changing colour to fit the ambiance. A Hillbilly when it suits, a Harvard Lawyer when it suits, a Never-Trumper when it suits and a Trumper when that suits. It's only when he reaches the ultimate position that we will see him become his own person.
Your optimism that that "own person" will be both intelligent and sane is commendable and we can only hope that you prove to be right.
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
Speaking of 'nature cannot be fooled,' I assumed that Trump tweet @williamglenn regaled is with on the last thread was a parody.
I now find it wasn't.
Plus he had another one ranting about evil left wing judges.
With any other person we'd be talking not just about the 25th but about him being sectioned. Trump is clearly off his head.
In his last administration he was malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, displayed truly shocking judgement and a very thin skin and was totally incompetent but he was not actually insane. Nor did he have untrammelled power as he now does.
The big worry, and this is why he should never have been nominated, is that he's surrounded by sycophants who won't do what is necessary to either constrain or remove him.
When America lurches from crisis to crisis over the next four years Republicans (and the Supreme Court) have only themselves to blame, but I'm willing to bet that like NASA they will blame everyone else first.
At least as the World hurtles into recession, sorry depression, the Labour Government will crash and burn and we here in Brexitland will be delivered a shiny Nigel Farage (who has all the answers) premiership. I suspect right wing populism will become the new normal across the planet, even if Trump does crash Earth. He can always blame foreigners.
Every cloud etc.
Here is the problem with the progressive's sneer at the populist right - they know enough about our problems to actually *try* to get stuff done. Pop-right government's don't just crash and burn because they target the obvious stuff we all know is wrong and get on with targeting them.
I heard an interview with the Polish foreign minister who talked about how they had defeated the pop-right - he said you have to go do stuff. Starmer is at least trying to go after the migration crisis - he's deported an awful lot of people in a relatively small amount of time.
His problem? They aren't shouting it from the rafters. Had Farage become PM and started deporting people it would be *everywhere*. But that is the only thing Starmer is doing. There's an obvious list of stuff to target and Labour are in denial about chunks of them...
And yet the Lib Dems are famous for doing reasonably well electorally for getting local stuff done like filling potholes. Wouldn't they be doing even better if that premise is good?
You don't give Tesco some sort of special award or notice because it manages to stock baked beans and sliced bread. Local government actually doing its ordinary job is not some stellar thing, it is the most basic expectation.
Increasingly all levels of the state expect us to think it astonishing and praiseworthy that they actually do the many jobs they have taken to themselves to perform, while they have unlimited freedom to require us to pay for by taxes.
Tesco level of service should be the basic level of all state provision.
Tesco and local government have very different mechanisms to determine their budgets.
Of course inquiries are long, expensive and pointless.
Politicians need a way to dodge questions so there's a whole industry to support. Cynical, parasitical lawyers and consultants have to eat somehow and useless judges need some form of retirement income - God forbid they should rely on their gold-plated pensions.
The inquiry industry also explains why building new infrastructure costs four times what it should and gives us ridiculous bat tunnels.
Look at the praise this very PB garlanded on barristers at the inquiries into Covid and the Post Office, but also the complaints they seemed concerned mainly with process and tittle-tattle rather than lessons for next time. Discovering which minister dropped the ball (which turns out to be most of them) is of little real use because they won't be in office when the next crisis hits.
The Covid inquiry has seemed to me to be pointless.
But what the PO Inquiry has done - very well to my mind, though it shames my profession to have to say this but it needs saying, indeed shouting from the rooftops - is show that it is not in reality an IT scandal at all but a legal one. That was not clear until the inquiry and was one reason why the story took so long to gain traction.
What happened was created by lawyers, perpetrated by lawyers and covered up by lawyers. The IT system was merely the mechanism. Every part of the legal profession has been shown wanting. It is like the GFC for the legal profession in every part of the U.K., from the Ministry of Justice and Attorney-General down. The fact that there have been heroic lawyers working to put it right does not change this depressing fact. Even now I don't think that the legal profession as a whole has understood the very great harm this scandal has done it. Nor the amount of hard work which is needed to put it right.
The Inquiry has shed a harsh light on the legal profession's dirty little secrets: that fact too many of those working in it are second and third rate, too many focus on clever tactics or clever answers to limited questions, too many ignore the essential ethical underpinnings of their work, too many forget that there is a difference between what the client wants and what the client needs and that a good lawyer needs to understand that difference especially when working in-house and too many are unwilling to call out bad behaviour. There are too many well remunerated cowards in the upper reaches of the profession and we saw some of them on show in the Inquiry.
It has also focused very much on the human impact of the tragedy and has put the subpostmasters and their stories at the heart of the evidence. That was a deliberate decision by the judge and inquiry counsel and very much to their credit. It happened too long before the ITV drama.
What it has also shown - though less obviously- is how the state abandoned its responsibilities for the criminal justice system. I have written a whole chapter on this re the PO and how it has happened elsewhere too. It is a theme - the same retreat from essential state obligations leads to great harm to citizens (Grenfell/ blood contamination) and the state then does everything it can to wash its hands of any responsibility for putting matters right or helping those affected.
This political retreat from essential state responsibilities is so corrosive of trust in the state and in politics. It is to my mind the most important political issue to put right and no-one in politics seems to have the first idea how to do this or even how big a problem it is. If anything their actions make it worse. Destroy trust and society starts failing (and politics becomes unworkable).
This is not recent either. Look at Aberfan - how the state behaved there both before, during and after is the template for how it has behaved in many tragedies / scandals since then.
The other trouble with the legal system and not just in the UK is that people can see it is stacked against them when dealing with government/large corporations/rich people.
People have made much about americans for example being supportive of the shooting of the insurance of the CEO. While I agree shooting someone is not the answer, I can also understand to an extent the support. Simply put his companies actions caused deaths and bankruptcies for people and the people affected really had no viable legal route of redress.
Increasingly the case across both the US and the UK at an ever accelerating rate especially now it is next to impossible to get legal aid. This was an element of the PO debacle.....innocent people feeling they had to plead guilty as they had no means to fight.
I'm pretty sure that it's an insight I've got from one of the smart cookies here, but when a system gives outputs you don't like, it's more than likely that the system is doing what it was asked to do. The problem is the aims and the plumbing, rather than human incompetence or malignancy.
The notorious example in schools was when we used to pour absurd amounts of resource- the most experienced staff, books and website subscriptions, motivational away days- into the small slice of year 11 who were on track for 4 GCSE passes. Because the success criterion was the proportion who got 5.
My suspicion is that, if we don't like the current setup, part of the answer is to make organisations that do stuff- whether business or government- smaller and less centralised than they currently are. Partly to allow smaller, lower risk experiments, but also to improve the chances that those giving the orders know what they're talking about.
But there must be non-malign reasons why we ended up here.
Yes, that is it, absolutely. People mostly behave as the pressures and incentives they are subject to within their organisation direct them to. When something goes wrong, everyone runs round looking for the individual(s) to blame and less commonly stand back to understand that the vast majority of people, placed into the same situation and subject to the same pressures and incentives, would have done exactly the same.
But designing systems to avoid such incidences is exceptionally hard, and even if you resolve the problem at hand, you have probably designed in some new unanticipated consequence that will later emerge
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
A(nother) great article from Cyclefree.
It is the departure from reality that is most worrying about the recent surge of populist politics. Pretending climate change isn’t real won’t stop its effects. Pretending vaccines are dangerous will kill. And so on.
Of course the reverse can be equally argued..electric cars can't be sold with high costs/lack of infrastructure..vaccines can't be promoted honestly when they don't stop transmission..🧐🥴
Stopping transmission is not needed: reducing it is enough to make most of them worthwhile.
More importantly vaccines transform severe or fatal conditions into minor, often asymptomatic infections. Reducing transmission is a bonus, not the primary purpose.
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
Speaking of 'nature cannot be fooled,' I assumed that Trump tweet @williamglenn regaled is with on the last thread was a parody.
I now find it wasn't.
Plus he had another one ranting about evil left wing judges.
With any other person we'd be talking not just about the 25th but about him being sectioned. Trump is clearly off his head.
In his last administration he was malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, displayed truly shocking judgement and a very thin skin and was totally incompetent but he was not actually insane. Nor did he have untrammelled power as he now does.
The big worry, and this is why he should never have been nominated, is that he's surrounded by sycophants who won't do what is necessary to either constrain or remove him.
When America lurches from crisis to crisis over the next four years Republicans (and the Supreme Court) have only themselves to blame, but I'm willing to bet that like NASA they will blame everyone else first.
The even bigger worry is that Trump was put forward and financed by malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt bastards displaying truly shocking judgement - who intend to move him on using the 25th and install sombody who is so malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, and displaying truly shocking judgement that he would never have got elected in his own right.
Step forward in 2025 President Vance.
The 25th is a very high bar. They can get JDV in with a simple majority in Cabinet but to make it stick they need 2/3rds super-majorities in both houses.
It's probably easier and simpler to impeach DJT if they want to get rid as more Dems will vote for that.
You might think the Republicans would have an issue with impeaching Trump for some confection, when they wouldn't do so for trying to overthrow democracy on Janary 6th. But, hey, Republicans...
As someone who ran an engineering company making safety critical parts for nuclear power and aircraft engines, the engineers were allowed to get on with the necessary testing and verification of parts/assemblies due to the customer. Your local nuclear plant has remained safe, and the planes you have flown on have arrived at their destination not only due to engineers but due to realistic customers paying what was necessary.
Many of the issues regarding engineering failures comes down to penny pinching. Engineers know what they are doing.
Indeed so. Ask Boeing how the last couple of decades of replacing engineers with MBAs in the management grades has gone.
That said, the graph of commercial aviation accidents over time is utterly astonishing. Modern planes just don’t crash any more, unless they’re shot down.
The thing about aviation is that the NTSB et al run investigations to find out why the accident occurred so the causes can be fixed or mitigated rather than so that someone can be blamed. This has led to every accident being a learning experience which contributed to the incremental safety of air travel.
There are a few exceptions to this but not many
Absolutely.
Transport accidents pretty much stopped happening because the NTSB (in the UK the AAIB and RIAB) investigates every incident and accident, and makes recommendations aimed at preventing the next one.
We can all learn from that approach, of looking at causes of incidents rather than rushing to apportion blame. No-blame culture works, ask the Mercedes F1 team who won seven championships in a row using just that approach.
When I was inducted into the mysteries of timetableing for a school my master made sure that I fully understood the concept and importance of a “no-blame” culture: mistakes will be made, but making sure you understand what went wrong and ensuring it doesn’t happen again are the only things to worry about.
I’m particularly keen on it as half the time I’m the one who made the mistake…
My school was clever enough to identify that one of its sixth formers had a particularly talent for working through and resolving complex problems and employed him during the summer holidays to work through the timetable for the entire school. And a very good job he made of it, too
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
Speaking of 'nature cannot be fooled,' I assumed that Trump tweet @williamglenn regaled is with on the last thread was a parody.
I now find it wasn't.
Plus he had another one ranting about evil left wing judges.
With any other person we'd be talking not just about the 25th but about him being sectioned. Trump is clearly off his head.
In his last administration he was malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, displayed truly shocking judgement and a very thin skin and was totally incompetent but he was not actually insane. Nor did he have untrammelled power as he now does.
The big worry, and this is why he should never have been nominated, is that he's surrounded by sycophants who won't do what is necessary to either constrain or remove him.
When America lurches from crisis to crisis over the next four years Republicans (and the Supreme Court) have only themselves to blame, but I'm willing to bet that like NASA they will blame everyone else first.
The even bigger worry is that Trump was put forward and financed by malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt bastards displaying truly shocking judgement - who intend to move him on using the 25th and install sombody who is so malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, and displaying truly shocking judgement that he would never have got elected in his own right.
Step forward in 2025 President Vance.
That's possible, but if so it was a rather silly strategy. The reason I say that is because under the procedure for invoking the 25th two thirds of Congress would be required to vote through a contested declaration of inability and that will happen when BJO declares for Starmer or Leon admits he's wrong about something.
They could of course just get rid of Trump. Unexplained heart attack, maybe?
Given Trump's diet, "unexplained" wouldn't enter into it.
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
Speaking of 'nature cannot be fooled,' I assumed that Trump tweet @williamglenn regaled is with on the last thread was a parody.
I now find it wasn't.
Plus he had another one ranting about evil left wing judges.
With any other person we'd be talking not just about the 25th but about him being sectioned. Trump is clearly off his head.
In his last administration he was malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, displayed truly shocking judgement and a very thin skin and was totally incompetent but he was not actually insane. Nor did he have untrammelled power as he now does.
The big worry, and this is why he should never have been nominated, is that he's surrounded by sycophants who won't do what is necessary to either constrain or remove him.
When America lurches from crisis to crisis over the next four years Republicans (and the Supreme Court) have only themselves to blame, but I'm willing to bet that like NASA they will blame everyone else first.
The even bigger worry is that Trump was put forward and financed by malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt bastards displaying truly shocking judgement - who intend to move him on using the 25th and install sombody who is so malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, and displaying truly shocking judgement that he would never have got elected in his own right.
Step forward in 2025 President Vance.
That's possible, but if so it was a rather silly strategy. The reason I say that is because under the procedure for invoking the 25th two thirds of Congress would be required to vote through a contested declaration of inability and that will happen when BJO declares for Starmer or Leon admits he's wrong about something.
They could of course just get rid of Trump. Unexplained heart attack, maybe?
If Trump is demonstrably bonkers, what are Congress going to do? Keep the mad bastard in place? With the nuclear codes?
Vance was on the ticket. America knew who would step up if Trump fell down.
They did with Nixon until Agnew was replaced by Ford.
Thing is, there's not much evidence Vance is any saner.
I don't like Vance or his politics, but he is both intelligent and sane.
Vance is the ultimate political chameleon, changing colour to fit the ambiance. A Hillbilly when it suits, a Harvard Lawyer when it suits, a Never-Trumper when it suits and a Trumper when that suits. It's only when he reaches the ultimate position that we will see him become his own person.
Your optimism that that "own person" will be both intelligent and sane is commendable and we can only hope that you prove to be right.
I really don't know what Vance's "own person" will look like, but plenty of intelligent and sane people do very bad things.
What happens to ambitious opportunists when they reach the top job?
But as I've said passim. I'd be in favour of a targeted approach to footpaths. It's surprising how piecemeal footpath provision is: as an example, my own home turf is reasonably well provided for in terms of footpaths and bridleways, whilst Lincolnshire has terrible provision. And it's not just about medium or long-distance routes, short paths out of villages can be really useful.
I'd also encourage landowners and farmers to open more concessionary routes, rather than legal footpaths.
This, also in the news today (I suspect both targeting the Boxing Day walkies thing), is relevant.
I have some sympathy with that, and indeed, I can point out to such paths that already exist (often concessionary). In addition, many farmers seem to tacitly allow people to follow field edges anyway, at least in my local area.
But with family in farming (I'll be off for Boxing Day fun with them in a couple of hours), I can see the other side of the view: that far too many members of the public are utterly irresponsible when it comes to accessing the paths and bridleways that do exist. Also, access requires gates/stiles, and sometimes fences will be required - and these are not cheap for the landowner.
These are not reasons not to do it, but it'd be good if they could be addressed.
Quite so.
I can well imagine that, in England, you're screwed if there is no RoW going through your nice new executive estate on the outskirts of some village and the landowner is not in a mood to be helpful ...
PS And the same in Scotland if there is no physical path to get through walls etc.
The Rogers Commission into the Space Shuttle disaster is best remembered for American celebrity physicist Richard Feynman demonstrating the O-rings' loss of elasticity when cold (and notice he uses degrees Fahrenheit!):- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raMmRKGkGD4
Yes - his work on this is one of the most fascinating aspects of the book.
Understanding risks properly is key to managing them effectively. True in lots of sectors: the financial world has given us a masterclass over decades on how poorly it understands the risks it is taking. I was surprised by NASA's failures on this, though.
Get past the ego the size of the planet Jupiter stuff, and Feynman's account of the whole thing in "What do you care what other people think?" is fascinating.
Basically, the people on the shop floor sniffed the air and came out with something like "it will blow up about 1 time in 100", whereas management had a reassuringly complex calculation that put the risk of failure much lower. Unfortunately, that calculation was based on numbers that must have been essentially made up.
As for why this happens, I suspect that bureaucratic layers and "what do you want the answer to be?" culture don't help.
The harder question is whether that is still preferable to the "whimsical despot" model of someone like Musk.
To some extent I think that the problem is that the penalties for mistakes are too great - we all make them, only 5% come to light, and 0.1% result in disaster and general horror that they happened. Acceptance that decent, rational people can make mistakes might lead to more willingness to own up to them.
The biggest flaw in our Inquiry system is the perverse belief of lawyers that you can legislate, systematise and form fill mistakes and misjudgements out of existence. It is a bizarre belief and no end of examples ever seems to extinguish it.
So, the Soham murders created a monstrous bureaucracy of certificates, approvals and regulation enormously adding to the costs of care for both the very young and the very old. Has this stopped child abuse or the bullying of the weak in care homes? Of course not.
In banking and money laundering we see ever more regulation and costs piled onto services to supposedly "protect us". Does this stop online fraud or people phoning me to ask about my recent car accident, let alone the transmission of literally billions around the world from the proceeds of illegal activity? Of course not.
There is an inevitability that the Grenfell fire inquiry will make construction in this country, already failing to keep touch with our actual needs, more bureaucratic, more expensive, more difficult and, frankly, less common. Will this prevent disasters (let alone shortages) in the future? Don't be ridiculous.
We need to change the way we think about these things. There is no way of preventing tragedies in life but the key to minimising them is, in my view, personal responsibility and accountability where that is appropriate and a culture of open disclosure (such as we have often, if not always, seen in aviation and, occasionally, in medicine) and candour. Legalising the processes just doesn't work. Even a lawyer can see that.
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
Speaking of 'nature cannot be fooled,' I assumed that Trump tweet @williamglenn regaled is with on the last thread was a parody.
I now find it wasn't.
Plus he had another one ranting about evil left wing judges.
With any other person we'd be talking not just about the 25th but about him being sectioned. Trump is clearly off his head.
In his last administration he was malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, displayed truly shocking judgement and a very thin skin and was totally incompetent but he was not actually insane. Nor did he have untrammelled power as he now does.
The big worry, and this is why he should never have been nominated, is that he's surrounded by sycophants who won't do what is necessary to either constrain or remove him.
When America lurches from crisis to crisis over the next four years Republicans (and the Supreme Court) have only themselves to blame, but I'm willing to bet that like NASA they will blame everyone else first.
The even bigger worry is that Trump was put forward and financed by malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt bastards displaying truly shocking judgement - who intend to move him on using the 25th and install sombody who is so malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, and displaying truly shocking judgement that he would never have got elected in his own right.
Step forward in 2025 President Vance.
The election's over.
You don't have to keep up the pretence that Vance is the worst ever VP candidate.
Or that Tim Walz wasn't anything other than a weak VP candidate chosen by a weak presidential candidate.
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
Speaking of 'nature cannot be fooled,' I assumed that Trump tweet @williamglenn regaled is with on the last thread was a parody.
I now find it wasn't.
Plus he had another one ranting about evil left wing judges.
With any other person we'd be talking not just about the 25th but about him being sectioned. Trump is clearly off his head.
In his last administration he was malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, displayed truly shocking judgement and a very thin skin and was totally incompetent but he was not actually insane. Nor did he have untrammelled power as he now does.
The big worry, and this is why he should never have been nominated, is that he's surrounded by sycophants who won't do what is necessary to either constrain or remove him.
When America lurches from crisis to crisis over the next four years Republicans (and the Supreme Court) have only themselves to blame, but I'm willing to bet that like NASA they will blame everyone else first.
The even bigger worry is that Trump was put forward and financed by malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt bastards displaying truly shocking judgement - who intend to move him on using the 25th and install sombody who is so malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, and displaying truly shocking judgement that he would never have got elected in his own right.
Step forward in 2025 President Vance.
That's possible, but if so it was a rather silly strategy. The reason I say that is because under the procedure for invoking the 25th two thirds of Congress would be required to vote through a contested declaration of inability and that will happen when BJO declares for Starmer or Leon admits he's wrong about something.
They could of course just get rid of Trump. Unexplained heart attack, maybe?
Given Trump's diet, "unexplained" wouldn't enter into it.
One word on the death certificate: "Inevitable".
Since everyone dies of heart failure at some point, even if they eat the healthiest diet imaginable, I'm not totally sure 'inevitable' would be a useful thing to write.
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
Speaking of 'nature cannot be fooled,' I assumed that Trump tweet @williamglenn regaled is with on the last thread was a parody.
I now find it wasn't.
Plus he had another one ranting about evil left wing judges.
With any other person we'd be talking not just about the 25th but about him being sectioned. Trump is clearly off his head.
In his last administration he was malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, displayed truly shocking judgement and a very thin skin and was totally incompetent but he was not actually insane. Nor did he have untrammelled power as he now does.
The big worry, and this is why he should never have been nominated, is that he's surrounded by sycophants who won't do what is necessary to either constrain or remove him.
When America lurches from crisis to crisis over the next four years Republicans (and the Supreme Court) have only themselves to blame, but I'm willing to bet that like NASA they will blame everyone else first.
The even bigger worry is that Trump was put forward and financed by malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt bastards displaying truly shocking judgement - who intend to move him on using the 25th and install sombody who is so malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, and displaying truly shocking judgement that he would never have got elected in his own right.
Step forward in 2025 President Vance.
That's possible, but if so it was a rather silly strategy. The reason I say that is because under the procedure for invoking the 25th two thirds of Congress would be required to vote through a contested declaration of inability and that will happen when BJO declares for Starmer or Leon admits he's wrong about something.
They could of course just get rid of Trump. Unexplained heart attack, maybe?
If Trump is demonstrably bonkers, what are Congress going to do? Keep the mad bastard in place? With the nuclear codes?
Vance was on the ticket. America knew who would step up if Trump fell down.
They did with Nixon until Agnew was replaced by Ford.
Thing is, there's not much evidence Vance is any saner.
I don't like Vance or his politics, but he is both intelligent and sane.
Vance is the ultimate political chameleon, changing colour to fit the ambiance. A Hillbilly when it suits, a Harvard Lawyer when it suits, a Never-Trumper when it suits and a Trumper when that suits. It's only when he reaches the ultimate position that we will see him become his own person.
Your optimism that that "own person" will be both intelligent and sane is commendable and we can only hope that you prove to be right.
I really don't know what Vance's "own person" will look like, but plenty of intelligent and sane people do very bad things.
What happens to ambitious opportunists when they reach the top job?
Well, in Boris's case, the same flaws that got him there, his willingness to lie, to ignore the inconvenient and to acknowledge that life is little more than a preposterous joke, destroyed him.
Good morning all. Seeing the front page of the Telegraph has given me a Boxing Day smile. And I'm not referring to the picture of Kate.
This story?
Rocket scientist’s cast iron pan threatens to topple Le Creuset
A rocket scientist from the University of Oxford has invented a new type of cast iron pan using thermodynamics that could persuade home cooks away from their Le Creuset.
The enamelled cast iron Dutch oven with fins around the outside was inspired by heat transfer methods of jet engines and rocket design and leads to quicker cooking.
The fins around the pans are designed to improve heat distribution and improve efficiency. Heat that would otherwise be lost around the outside of a pan can be captured and used to create an “oven-like” effect.
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
Speaking of 'nature cannot be fooled,' I assumed that Trump tweet @williamglenn regaled is with on the last thread was a parody.
I now find it wasn't.
Plus he had another one ranting about evil left wing judges.
With any other person we'd be talking not just about the 25th but about him being sectioned. Trump is clearly off his head.
In his last administration he was malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, displayed truly shocking judgement and a very thin skin and was totally incompetent but he was not actually insane. Nor did he have untrammelled power as he now does.
The big worry, and this is why he should never have been nominated, is that he's surrounded by sycophants who won't do what is necessary to either constrain or remove him.
When America lurches from crisis to crisis over the next four years Republicans (and the Supreme Court) have only themselves to blame, but I'm willing to bet that like NASA they will blame everyone else first.
The even bigger worry is that Trump was put forward and financed by malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt bastards displaying truly shocking judgement - who intend to move him on using the 25th and install sombody who is so malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, and displaying truly shocking judgement that he would never have got elected in his own right.
Step forward in 2025 President Vance.
That's possible, but if so it was a rather silly strategy. The reason I say that is because under the procedure for invoking the 25th two thirds of Congress would be required to vote through a contested declaration of inability and that will happen when BJO declares for Starmer or Leon admits he's wrong about something.
They could of course just get rid of Trump. Unexplained heart attack, maybe?
Given Trump's diet, "unexplained" wouldn't enter into it.
One word on the death certificate: "Inevitable".
Since everyone dies of heart failure at some point, even if they eat the healthiest diet imaginable, I'm not totally sure 'inevitable' would be a useful thing to write.
If you are wanting to move him on, it exactly does the job.
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
Speaking of 'nature cannot be fooled,' I assumed that Trump tweet @williamglenn regaled is with on the last thread was a parody.
I now find it wasn't.
Plus he had another one ranting about evil left wing judges.
With any other person we'd be talking not just about the 25th but about him being sectioned. Trump is clearly off his head.
In his last administration he was malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, displayed truly shocking judgement and a very thin skin and was totally incompetent but he was not actually insane. Nor did he have untrammelled power as he now does.
The big worry, and this is why he should never have been nominated, is that he's surrounded by sycophants who won't do what is necessary to either constrain or remove him.
When America lurches from crisis to crisis over the next four years Republicans (and the Supreme Court) have only themselves to blame, but I'm willing to bet that like NASA they will blame everyone else first.
The even bigger worry is that Trump was put forward and financed by malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt bastards displaying truly shocking judgement - who intend to move him on using the 25th and install sombody who is so malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, and displaying truly shocking judgement that he would never have got elected in his own right.
Step forward in 2025 President Vance.
That's possible, but if so it was a rather silly strategy. The reason I say that is because under the procedure for invoking the 25th two thirds of Congress would be required to vote through a contested declaration of inability and that will happen when BJO declares for Starmer or Leon admits he's wrong about something.
They could of course just get rid of Trump. Unexplained heart attack, maybe?
If Trump is demonstrably bonkers, what are Congress going to do? Keep the mad bastard in place? With the nuclear codes?
Vance was on the ticket. America knew who would step up if Trump fell down.
They did with Nixon until Agnew was replaced by Ford.
Thing is, there's not much evidence Vance is any saner.
I don't like Vance or his politics, but he is both intelligent and sane.
Vance is the ultimate political chameleon, changing colour to fit the ambiance. A Hillbilly when it suits, a Harvard Lawyer when it suits, a Never-Trumper when it suits and a Trumper when that suits. It's only when he reaches the ultimate position that we will see him become his own person.
Your optimism that that "own person" will be both intelligent and sane is commendable and we can only hope that you prove to be right.
I really don't know what Vance's "own person" will look like, but plenty of intelligent and sane people do very bad things.
What happens to ambitious opportunists when they reach the top job?
Well, in Boris's case, the same flaws that got him there, his willingness to lie, to ignore the inconvenient and to acknowledge that life is little more than a preposterous joke, destroyed him.
Yes, that is the essence of the Greek concept of Tragedy in a theatrical sense. People get destroyed by their own character flaws.
It's funny how Johnson was so versed in Classics yet failed to understand that key point.
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
Speaking of 'nature cannot be fooled,' I assumed that Trump tweet @williamglenn regaled is with on the last thread was a parody.
I now find it wasn't.
Plus he had another one ranting about evil left wing judges.
With any other person we'd be talking not just about the 25th but about him being sectioned. Trump is clearly off his head.
In his last administration he was malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, displayed truly shocking judgement and a very thin skin and was totally incompetent but he was not actually insane. Nor did he have untrammelled power as he now does.
The big worry, and this is why he should never have been nominated, is that he's surrounded by sycophants who won't do what is necessary to either constrain or remove him.
When America lurches from crisis to crisis over the next four years Republicans (and the Supreme Court) have only themselves to blame, but I'm willing to bet that like NASA they will blame everyone else first.
The even bigger worry is that Trump was put forward and financed by malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt bastards displaying truly shocking judgement - who intend to move him on using the 25th and install sombody who is so malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, and displaying truly shocking judgement that he would never have got elected in his own right.
Step forward in 2025 President Vance.
That's possible, but if so it was a rather silly strategy. The reason I say that is because under the procedure for invoking the 25th two thirds of Congress would be required to vote through a contested declaration of inability and that will happen when BJO declares for Starmer or Leon admits he's wrong about something.
They could of course just get rid of Trump. Unexplained heart attack, maybe?
Given Trump's diet, "unexplained" wouldn't enter into it.
One word on the death certificate: "Inevitable".
Since everyone dies of heart failure at some point, even if they eat the healthiest diet imaginable, I'm not totally sure 'inevitable' would be a useful thing to write.
If you are wanting to move him on, it exactly does the job.
They will force him to burger off, and then all chip in?
Good morning all. I hope everyone enjoyed Christmas Day in their own ways. Assuming, of course, that it was a day which they 'celebrated'!
On topic, I found Ms Cyclefeee's intro interesting, as indeed, I usually find her writings, but it put me in mind of something written in the 50's by the late Professor Northcote Parkinson. I can't lay hands on the actually quote at the moment, but it concerned, IIRC, a projected space mission and the decisions made en route to lift off. The Chief engineer's concerns were repeatedly ignored 'because a deadline had been agreed for the launch'. I also remain concerned that when the Report on the Post Office Affair is finally written the 'Great and Good' will be found to have relied on subordinates, who will consequently be tossed to the wolves.
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
Speaking of 'nature cannot be fooled,' I assumed that Trump tweet @williamglenn regaled is with on the last thread was a parody.
I now find it wasn't.
Plus he had another one ranting about evil left wing judges.
With any other person we'd be talking not just about the 25th but about him being sectioned. Trump is clearly off his head.
In his last administration he was malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, displayed truly shocking judgement and a very thin skin and was totally incompetent but he was not actually insane. Nor did he have untrammelled power as he now does.
The big worry, and this is why he should never have been nominated, is that he's surrounded by sycophants who won't do what is necessary to either constrain or remove him.
When America lurches from crisis to crisis over the next four years Republicans (and the Supreme Court) have only themselves to blame, but I'm willing to bet that like NASA they will blame everyone else first.
At least as the World hurtles into recession, sorry depression, the Labour Government will crash and burn and we here in Brexitland will be delivered a shiny Nigel Farage (who has all the answers) premiership. I suspect right wing populism will become the new normal across the planet, even if Trump does crash Earth. He can always blame foreigners.
Every cloud etc.
Here is the problem with the progressive's sneer at the populist right - they know enough about our problems to actually *try* to get stuff done. Pop-right government's don't just crash and burn because they target the obvious stuff we all know is wrong and get on with targeting them.
I heard an interview with the Polish foreign minister who talked about how they had defeated the pop-right - he said you have to go do stuff. Starmer is at least trying to go after the migration crisis - he's deported an awful lot of people in a relatively small amount of time.
His problem? They aren't shouting it from the rafters. Had Farage become PM and started deporting people it would be *everywhere*. But that is the only thing Starmer is doing. There's an obvious list of stuff to target and Labour are in denial about chunks of them...
Whatever success is supposed to look like, I suspect at the end of the next four and a half years it will not appear good enough for Farage, GBNews, the Mail and The Telegraph. If immigration reaches net zero Farage would promise -1,000,000 each year. If the NHS is functioning like a Swiss watch, it will still be too expensive for the above parties. If economic growth reaches 2% pa ( unlikely given Brexit, Trump and Reeves's mis steps) Farage would promise 5%.
For me, adequate housing, no further need for food banks, ex-Servicemen not living in Halfords tents and recently revived childhood Victorian diseases becoming a thing of the past would be a win. But the new Government doesn't appear to have looked into any of that.
It is fascinating that the future looks Farage shaped and the Conservatives, despite rabid claims that Labour are finished (possibly true) on here, appear to remain dead in the water. Oh for a functioning Tory Party of Ken Clark, Heseltine, Pryor and Whitelaw.
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
Speaking of 'nature cannot be fooled,' I assumed that Trump tweet @williamglenn regaled is with on the last thread was a parody.
I now find it wasn't.
Plus he had another one ranting about evil left wing judges.
With any other person we'd be talking not just about the 25th but about him being sectioned. Trump is clearly off his head.
In his last administration he was malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, displayed truly shocking judgement and a very thin skin and was totally incompetent but he was not actually insane. Nor did he have untrammelled power as he now does.
The big worry, and this is why he should never have been nominated, is that he's surrounded by sycophants who won't do what is necessary to either constrain or remove him.
When America lurches from crisis to crisis over the next four years Republicans (and the Supreme Court) have only themselves to blame, but I'm willing to bet that like NASA they will blame everyone else first.
The even bigger worry is that Trump was put forward and financed by malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt bastards displaying truly shocking judgement - who intend to move him on using the 25th and install sombody who is so malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, and displaying truly shocking judgement that he would never have got elected in his own right.
Step forward in 2025 President Vance.
The election's over.
You don't have to keep up the pretence that Vance is the worst ever VP candidate.
Or that Tim Walz wasn't anything other than a weak VP candidate chosen by a weak presidential candidate.
I'm intrigued. Whom would you nominate for worst ever VP candidate? John C. Breckinridge is so far as I know the only other one who retrospectively supported actions that would have seen the violent overthrow of the government.
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
Speaking of 'nature cannot be fooled,' I assumed that Trump tweet @williamglenn regaled is with on the last thread was a parody.
I now find it wasn't.
Plus he had another one ranting about evil left wing judges.
With any other person we'd be talking not just about the 25th but about him being sectioned. Trump is clearly off his head.
In his last administration he was malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, displayed truly shocking judgement and a very thin skin and was totally incompetent but he was not actually insane. Nor did he have untrammelled power as he now does.
The big worry, and this is why he should never have been nominated, is that he's surrounded by sycophants who won't do what is necessary to either constrain or remove him.
When America lurches from crisis to crisis over the next four years Republicans (and the Supreme Court) have only themselves to blame, but I'm willing to bet that like NASA they will blame everyone else first.
The even bigger worry is that Trump was put forward and financed by malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt bastards displaying truly shocking judgement - who intend to move him on using the 25th and install sombody who is so malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, and displaying truly shocking judgement that he would never have got elected in his own right.
Step forward in 2025 President Vance.
That's possible, but if so it was a rather silly strategy. The reason I say that is because under the procedure for invoking the 25th two thirds of Congress would be required to vote through a contested declaration of inability and that will happen when BJO declares for Starmer or Leon admits he's wrong about something.
They could of course just get rid of Trump. Unexplained heart attack, maybe?
Given Trump's diet, "unexplained" wouldn't enter into it.
One word on the death certificate: "Inevitable".
Since everyone dies of heart failure at some point, even if they eat the healthiest diet imaginable, I'm not totally sure 'inevitable' would be a useful thing to write.
If you are wanting to move him on, it exactly does the job.
They will force him to burger off, and then all chip in?
As someone who ran an engineering company making safety critical parts for nuclear power and aircraft engines, the engineers were allowed to get on with the necessary testing and verification of parts/assemblies due to the customer. Your local nuclear plant has remained safe, and the planes you have flown on have arrived at their destination not only due to engineers but due to realistic customers paying what was necessary.
Many of the issues regarding engineering failures comes down to penny pinching. Engineers know what they are doing.
Indeed so. Ask Boeing how the last couple of decades of replacing engineers with MBAs in the management grades has gone.
That said, the graph of commercial aviation accidents over time is utterly astonishing. Modern planes just don’t crash any more, unless they’re shot down.
The thing about aviation is that the NTSB et al run investigations to find out why the accident occurred so the causes can be fixed or mitigated rather than so that someone can be blamed. This has led to every accident being a learning experience which contributed to the incremental safety of air travel.
There are a few exceptions to this but not many
Absolutely.
Transport accidents pretty much stopped happening because the NTSB (in the UK the AAIB and RIAB) investigates every incident and accident, and makes recommendations aimed at preventing the next one.
We can all learn from that approach, of looking at causes of incidents rather than rushing to apportion blame. No-blame culture works, ask the Mercedes F1 team who won seven championships in a row using just that approach.
When I was inducted into the mysteries of timetableing for a school my master made sure that I fully understood the concept and importance of a “no-blame” culture: mistakes will be made, but making sure you understand what went wrong and ensuring it doesn’t happen again are the only things to worry about.
I’m particularly keen on it as half the time I’m the one who made the mistake…
My school was clever enough to identify that one of its sixth formers had a particularly talent for working through and resolving complex problems and employed him during the summer holidays to work through the timetable for the entire school. And a very good job he made of it, too
We really want a timetable done before the end of the summer term so that staff know what they are getting in September. My aim is to get it done in time for the new staff to be given their timetables when they come for their induction days. Heads of Year and Heads of department also need some time to work out which pupils will be in which groups, and the admin staff need a week or two to put that info into the system. A local school had a new Assistant Head who tried to do it over the summer holidays by setting up the automatic function of the timetable software and leaving it to run. Unsurprisingly to anyone who has used such software, it didn’t work and the school ended up starting in September without a timetable. The other problem on relying on a Sixth former, however good, is that they are only around for a couple of years. It takes that long to get used to the software.
As someone who ran an engineering company making safety critical parts for nuclear power and aircraft engines, the engineers were allowed to get on with the necessary testing and verification of parts/assemblies due to the customer. Your local nuclear plant has remained safe, and the planes you have flown on have arrived at their destination not only due to engineers but due to realistic customers paying what was necessary.
Many of the issues regarding engineering failures comes down to penny pinching. Engineers know what they are doing.
Indeed so. Ask Boeing how the last couple of decades of replacing engineers with MBAs in the management grades has gone.
That said, the graph of commercial aviation accidents over time is utterly astonishing. Modern planes just don’t crash any more, unless they’re shot down.
The thing about aviation is that the NTSB et al run investigations to find out why the accident occurred so the causes can be fixed or mitigated rather than so that someone can be blamed. This has led to every accident being a learning experience which contributed to the incremental safety of air travel.
There are a few exceptions to this but not many
Absolutely.
Transport accidents pretty much stopped happening because the NTSB (in the UK the AAIB and RIAB) investigates every incident and accident, and makes recommendations aimed at preventing the next one.
We can all learn from that approach, of looking at causes of incidents rather than rushing to apportion blame. No-blame culture works, ask the Mercedes F1 team who won seven championships in a row using just that approach.
When I was inducted into the mysteries of timetableing for a school my master made sure that I fully understood the concept and importance of a “no-blame” culture: mistakes will be made, but making sure you understand what went wrong and ensuring it doesn’t happen again are the only things to worry about.
I’m particularly keen on it as half the time I’m the one who made the mistake…
My school was clever enough to identify that one of its sixth formers had a particularly talent for working through and resolving complex problems and employed him during the summer holidays to work through the timetable for the entire school. And a very good job he made of it, too
We really want a timetable done before the end of the summer term so that staff know what they are getting in September. My aim is to get it done in time for the new staff to be given their timetables when they come for their induction days. Heads of Year and Heads of department also need some time to work out which pupils will be in which groups, and the admin staff need a week or two to put that info into the system. A local school had a new Assistant Head who tried to do it over the summer holidays by setting up the automatic function of the timetable software and leaving it to run. Unsurprisingly to anyone who has used such software, it didn’t work and the school ended up starting in September without a timetable. The other problem on relying on a Sixth former, however good, is that they are only around for a couple of years. It takes that long to get used to the software.
I'm assuming that in IanB2's case this was in the not very good old days when it was all done on paper...very slowly...
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
Speaking of 'nature cannot be fooled,' I assumed that Trump tweet @williamglenn regaled is with on the last thread was a parody.
I now find it wasn't.
Plus he had another one ranting about evil left wing judges.
With any other person we'd be talking not just about the 25th but about him being sectioned. Trump is clearly off his head.
In his last administration he was malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, displayed truly shocking judgement and a very thin skin and was totally incompetent but he was not actually insane. Nor did he have untrammelled power as he now does.
The big worry, and this is why he should never have been nominated, is that he's surrounded by sycophants who won't do what is necessary to either constrain or remove him.
When America lurches from crisis to crisis over the next four years Republicans (and the Supreme Court) have only themselves to blame, but I'm willing to bet that like NASA they will blame everyone else first.
The even bigger worry is that Trump was put forward and financed by malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt bastards displaying truly shocking judgement - who intend to move him on using the 25th and install sombody who is so malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, and displaying truly shocking judgement that he would never have got elected in his own right.
Step forward in 2025 President Vance.
That's possible, but if so it was a rather silly strategy. The reason I say that is because under the procedure for invoking the 25th two thirds of Congress would be required to vote through a contested declaration of inability and that will happen when BJO declares for Starmer or Leon admits he's wrong about something.
They could of course just get rid of Trump. Unexplained heart attack, maybe?
Given Trump's diet, "unexplained" wouldn't enter into it.
One word on the death certificate: "Inevitable".
Since everyone dies of heart failure at some point...
Not sure that is entirely true. A very close friend of mine died because her brain just switched off. Didn't give the heart a chance to pack up.
As someone who ran an engineering company making safety critical parts for nuclear power and aircraft engines, the engineers were allowed to get on with the necessary testing and verification of parts/assemblies due to the customer. Your local nuclear plant has remained safe, and the planes you have flown on have arrived at their destination not only due to engineers but due to realistic customers paying what was necessary.
Many of the issues regarding engineering failures comes down to penny pinching. Engineers know what they are doing.
Indeed so. Ask Boeing how the last couple of decades of replacing engineers with MBAs in the management grades has gone.
That said, the graph of commercial aviation accidents over time is utterly astonishing. Modern planes just don’t crash any more, unless they’re shot down.
The thing about aviation is that the NTSB et al run investigations to find out why the accident occurred so the causes can be fixed or mitigated rather than so that someone can be blamed. This has led to every accident being a learning experience which contributed to the incremental safety of air travel.
There are a few exceptions to this but not many
Absolutely.
Transport accidents pretty much stopped happening because the NTSB (in the UK the AAIB and RIAB) investigates every incident and accident, and makes recommendations aimed at preventing the next one.
We can all learn from that approach, of looking at causes of incidents rather than rushing to apportion blame. No-blame culture works, ask the Mercedes F1 team who won seven championships in a row using just that approach.
When I was inducted into the mysteries of timetableing for a school my master made sure that I fully understood the concept and importance of a “no-blame” culture: mistakes will be made, but making sure you understand what went wrong and ensuring it doesn’t happen again are the only things to worry about.
I’m particularly keen on it as half the time I’m the one who made the mistake…
My school was clever enough to identify that one of its sixth formers had a particularly talent for working through and resolving complex problems and employed him during the summer holidays to work through the timetable for the entire school. And a very good job he made of it, too
We really want a timetable done before the end of the summer term so that staff know what they are getting in September. My aim is to get it done in time for the new staff to be given their timetables when they come for their induction days. Heads of Year and Heads of department also need some time to work out which pupils will be in which groups, and the admin staff need a week or two to put that info into the system. A local school had a new Assistant Head who tried to do it over the summer holidays by setting up the automatic function of the timetable software and leaving it to run. Unsurprisingly to anyone who has used such software, it didn’t work and the school ended up starting in September without a timetable. The other problem on relying on a Sixth former, however good, is that they are only around for a couple of years. It takes that long to get used to the software.
I'm assuming that in IanB2's case this was in the not very good old days when it was all done on paper...very slowly...
The system used at my school immediately pre computers involved large numbers of Lego blocks.
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
Speaking of 'nature cannot be fooled,' I assumed that Trump tweet @williamglenn regaled is with on the last thread was a parody.
I now find it wasn't.
Plus he had another one ranting about evil left wing judges.
With any other person we'd be talking not just about the 25th but about him being sectioned. Trump is clearly off his head.
In his last administration he was malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, displayed truly shocking judgement and a very thin skin and was totally incompetent but he was not actually insane. Nor did he have untrammelled power as he now does.
The big worry, and this is why he should never have been nominated, is that he's surrounded by sycophants who won't do what is necessary to either constrain or remove him.
When America lurches from crisis to crisis over the next four years Republicans (and the Supreme Court) have only themselves to blame, but I'm willing to bet that like NASA they will blame everyone else first.
The even bigger worry is that Trump was put forward and financed by malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt bastards displaying truly shocking judgement - who intend to move him on using the 25th and install sombody who is so malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, and displaying truly shocking judgement that he would never have got elected in his own right.
Step forward in 2025 President Vance.
That's possible, but if so it was a rather silly strategy. The reason I say that is because under the procedure for invoking the 25th two thirds of Congress would be required to vote through a contested declaration of inability and that will happen when BJO declares for Starmer or Leon admits he's wrong about something.
They could of course just get rid of Trump. Unexplained heart attack, maybe?
Given Trump's diet, "unexplained" wouldn't enter into it.
One word on the death certificate: "Inevitable".
Since everyone dies of heart failure at some point...
Not sure that is entirely true. A very close friend of mine died because her brain just switched off. Didn't give the heart a chance to pack up.
Even under such sad circumstances isn't @ydoethur 's assertion still correct. Even without a functioning brain it requires the heart to stop pumping blood (possibly as a result of the former) before it is goodnight Vienna.
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
A(nother) great article from Cyclefree.
It is the departure from reality that is most worrying about the recent surge of populist politics. Pretending climate change isn’t real won’t stop its effects. Pretending vaccines are dangerous will kill. And so on.
The departure from reality about climate change is not really about the new breed of populists. The serious minded global conferences, political action and agreements have now being going on for a few decades. The net result thus far is that the continuing net output of CO2 is not falling but rising and very non populist China is still building coal fired power stations.
Is it surprising that many voters have decided that the serious centrists as well as the oligarchs don't actually mean what they say?
This is what happens when you stop pretending: If the science is right, then what it forsees is going to happen because there is no global will to stop it.
The only chances: Mitigation; preparedness; tech solutions; hope for and look for the upside to be greater than the downside; hope the science is wrong.
I think I would add a further necessary component to your list of chances: a form of global truth and reconciliation commission for crimes against the climate and future generations. It would allow current representatives of countries with historic responsibility for altering the climate to acknowledge the current benefits to their countries from past climate crimes, including reparations where these are deemed justified (based on current benefit deriving from past burning of fossil fuels).
It would aim to heal the desire for retribution from climate losers.
I don't think it will happen, but think it is needed.
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
A(nother) great article from Cyclefree.
It is the departure from reality that is most worrying about the recent surge of populist politics. Pretending climate change isn’t real won’t stop its effects. Pretending vaccines are dangerous will kill. And so on.
The departure from reality about climate change is not really about the new breed of populists. The serious minded global conferences, political action and agreements have now being going on for a few decades. The net result thus far is that the continuing net output of CO2 is not falling but rising and very non populist China is still building coal fired power stations.
Is it surprising that many voters have decided that the serious centrists as well as the oligarchs don't actually mean what they say?
This is what happens when you stop pretending: If the science is right, then what it forsees is going to happen because there is no global will to stop it.
The only chances: Mitigation; preparedness; tech solutions; hope for and look for the upside to be greater than the downside; hope the science is wrong.
I think I would add a further necessary component to your list of chances: a form of global truth and reconciliation commission for crimes against the climate and future generations. It would allow current representatives of countries with historic responsibility for altering the climate to acknowledge the current benefits to their countries from past climate crimes, including reparations where these are deemed justified (based on current benefit deriving from past burning of fossil fuels).
It would aim to heal the desire for retribution from climate losers.
I don't think it will happen, but think it is needed.
Trying to get reparations out of western democracies is a sure fire way to get the likes of Farage and Trump elected I fear.
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
Speaking of 'nature cannot be fooled,' I assumed that Trump tweet @williamglenn regaled is with on the last thread was a parody.
I now find it wasn't.
Plus he had another one ranting about evil left wing judges.
With any other person we'd be talking not just about the 25th but about him being sectioned. Trump is clearly off his head.
In his last administration he was malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, displayed truly shocking judgement and a very thin skin and was totally incompetent but he was not actually insane. Nor did he have untrammelled power as he now does.
The big worry, and this is why he should never have been nominated, is that he's surrounded by sycophants who won't do what is necessary to either constrain or remove him.
When America lurches from crisis to crisis over the next four years Republicans (and the Supreme Court) have only themselves to blame, but I'm willing to bet that like NASA they will blame everyone else first.
The even bigger worry is that Trump was put forward and financed by malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt bastards displaying truly shocking judgement - who intend to move him on using the 25th and install sombody who is so malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, and displaying truly shocking judgement that he would never have got elected in his own right.
Step forward in 2025 President Vance.
That's possible, but if so it was a rather silly strategy. The reason I say that is because under the procedure for invoking the 25th two thirds of Congress would be required to vote through a contested declaration of inability and that will happen when BJO declares for Starmer or Leon admits he's wrong about something.
They could of course just get rid of Trump. Unexplained heart attack, maybe?
Given Trump's diet, "unexplained" wouldn't enter into it.
One word on the death certificate: "Inevitable".
Since everyone dies of heart failure at some point, even if they eat the healthiest diet imaginable, I'm not totally sure 'inevitable' would be a useful thing to write.
If you are wanting to move him on, it exactly does the job.
They will force him to burger off, and then all chip in?
Yes - if they want to shake things up.
His enemies will give no Quarter, Pounder away until he is gone.
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
Speaking of 'nature cannot be fooled,' I assumed that Trump tweet @williamglenn regaled is with on the last thread was a parody.
I now find it wasn't.
Plus he had another one ranting about evil left wing judges.
With any other person we'd be talking not just about the 25th but about him being sectioned. Trump is clearly off his head.
In his last administration he was malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, displayed truly shocking judgement and a very thin skin and was totally incompetent but he was not actually insane. Nor did he have untrammelled power as he now does.
The big worry, and this is why he should never have been nominated, is that he's surrounded by sycophants who won't do what is necessary to either constrain or remove him.
When America lurches from crisis to crisis over the next four years Republicans (and the Supreme Court) have only themselves to blame, but I'm willing to bet that like NASA they will blame everyone else first.
The even bigger worry is that Trump was put forward and financed by malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt bastards displaying truly shocking judgement - who intend to move him on using the 25th and install sombody who is so malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, and displaying truly shocking judgement that he would never have got elected in his own right.
Step forward in 2025 President Vance.
That's possible, but if so it was a rather silly strategy. The reason I say that is because under the procedure for invoking the 25th two thirds of Congress would be required to vote through a contested declaration of inability and that will happen when BJO declares for Starmer or Leon admits he's wrong about something.
They could of course just get rid of Trump. Unexplained heart attack, maybe?
Given Trump's diet, "unexplained" wouldn't enter into it.
One word on the death certificate: "Inevitable".
Since everyone dies of heart failure at some point, even if they eat the healthiest diet imaginable, I'm not totally sure 'inevitable' would be a useful thing to write.
If you are wanting to move him on, it exactly does the job.
They will force him to burger off, and then all chip in?
Yes - if they want to shake things up.
His enemies will give no Quarter, Pounder away until he is gone.
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
Speaking of 'nature cannot be fooled,' I assumed that Trump tweet @williamglenn regaled is with on the last thread was a parody.
I now find it wasn't.
Plus he had another one ranting about evil left wing judges.
With any other person we'd be talking not just about the 25th but about him being sectioned. Trump is clearly off his head.
In his last administration he was malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, displayed truly shocking judgement and a very thin skin and was totally incompetent but he was not actually insane. Nor did he have untrammelled power as he now does.
The big worry, and this is why he should never have been nominated, is that he's surrounded by sycophants who won't do what is necessary to either constrain or remove him.
When America lurches from crisis to crisis over the next four years Republicans (and the Supreme Court) have only themselves to blame, but I'm willing to bet that like NASA they will blame everyone else first.
The even bigger worry is that Trump was put forward and financed by malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt bastards displaying truly shocking judgement - who intend to move him on using the 25th and install sombody who is so malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, and displaying truly shocking judgement that he would never have got elected in his own right.
Step forward in 2025 President Vance.
That's possible, but if so it was a rather silly strategy. The reason I say that is because under the procedure for invoking the 25th two thirds of Congress would be required to vote through a contested declaration of inability and that will happen when BJO declares for Starmer or Leon admits he's wrong about something.
They could of course just get rid of Trump. Unexplained heart attack, maybe?
Given Trump's diet, "unexplained" wouldn't enter into it.
One word on the death certificate: "Inevitable".
Since everyone dies of heart failure at some point...
Not sure that is entirely true. A very close friend of mine died because her brain just switched off. Didn't give the heart a chance to pack up.
Even under such sad circumstances isn't @ydoethur 's assertion still correct. Even without a functioning brain it requires the heart to stop pumping blood (possibly as a result of the former) before it is goodnight Vienna.
Blimey. What happened to festive fun. 🤦♀️
Couldn’t you just have a ham and cheese toastie with pumpkin latte and lighten up?
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
Speaking of 'nature cannot be fooled,' I assumed that Trump tweet @williamglenn regaled is with on the last thread was a parody.
I now find it wasn't.
Plus he had another one ranting about evil left wing judges.
With any other person we'd be talking not just about the 25th but about him being sectioned. Trump is clearly off his head.
In his last administration he was malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, displayed truly shocking judgement and a very thin skin and was totally incompetent but he was not actually insane. Nor did he have untrammelled power as he now does.
The big worry, and this is why he should never have been nominated, is that he's surrounded by sycophants who won't do what is necessary to either constrain or remove him.
When America lurches from crisis to crisis over the next four years Republicans (and the Supreme Court) have only themselves to blame, but I'm willing to bet that like NASA they will blame everyone else first.
The even bigger worry is that Trump was put forward and financed by malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt bastards displaying truly shocking judgement - who intend to move him on using the 25th and install sombody who is so malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, and displaying truly shocking judgement that he would never have got elected in his own right.
Step forward in 2025 President Vance.
That's possible, but if so it was a rather silly strategy. The reason I say that is because under the procedure for invoking the 25th two thirds of Congress would be required to vote through a contested declaration of inability and that will happen when BJO declares for Starmer or Leon admits he's wrong about something.
They could of course just get rid of Trump. Unexplained heart attack, maybe?
Given Trump's diet, "unexplained" wouldn't enter into it.
One word on the death certificate: "Inevitable".
Since everyone dies of heart failure at some point...
Not sure that is entirely true. A very close friend of mine died because her brain just switched off. Didn't give the heart a chance to pack up.
Even under such sad circumstances isn't @ydoethur 's assertion still correct. Even without a functioning brain it requires the heart to stop pumping blood (possibly as a result of the former) before it is goodnight Vienna.
Blimey. What happened to festive fun. 🤦♀️
Couldn’t you just have a ham and cheese toastie with pumpkin latte and lighten up?
Growing up, “festive fun” always included a Bond movie…
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
A(nother) great article from Cyclefree.
It is the departure from reality that is most worrying about the recent surge of populist politics. Pretending climate change isn’t real won’t stop its effects. Pretending vaccines are dangerous will kill. And so on.
The departure from reality about climate change is not really about the new breed of populists. The serious minded global conferences, political action and agreements have now being going on for a few decades. The net result thus far is that the continuing net output of CO2 is not falling but rising and very non populist China is still building coal fired power stations.
Is it surprising that many voters have decided that the serious centrists as well as the oligarchs don't actually mean what they say?
This is what happens when you stop pretending: If the science is right, then what it forsees is going to happen because there is no global will to stop it.
The only chances: Mitigation; preparedness; tech solutions; hope for and look for the upside to be greater than the downside; hope the science is wrong.
I think I would add a further necessary component to your list of chances: a form of global truth and reconciliation commission for crimes against the climate and future generations. It would allow current representatives of countries with historic responsibility for altering the climate to acknowledge the current benefits to their countries from past climate crimes, including reparations where these are deemed justified (based on current benefit deriving from past burning of fossil fuels).
It would aim to heal the desire for retribution from climate losers.
I don't think it will happen, but think it is needed.
Trying to get reparations out of western democracies is a sure fire way to get the likes of Farage and Trump elected I fear.
Oh I agree. I'm not saying it's possible, just that it's needed.
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
Speaking of 'nature cannot be fooled,' I assumed that Trump tweet @williamglenn regaled is with on the last thread was a parody.
I now find it wasn't.
Plus he had another one ranting about evil left wing judges.
With any other person we'd be talking not just about the 25th but about him being sectioned. Trump is clearly off his head.
In his last administration he was malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, displayed truly shocking judgement and a very thin skin and was totally incompetent but he was not actually insane. Nor did he have untrammelled power as he now does.
The big worry, and this is why he should never have been nominated, is that he's surrounded by sycophants who won't do what is necessary to either constrain or remove him.
When America lurches from crisis to crisis over the next four years Republicans (and the Supreme Court) have only themselves to blame, but I'm willing to bet that like NASA they will blame everyone else first.
The even bigger worry is that Trump was put forward and financed by malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt bastards displaying truly shocking judgement - who intend to move him on using the 25th and install sombody who is so malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, and displaying truly shocking judgement that he would never have got elected in his own right.
Step forward in 2025 President Vance.
That's possible, but if so it was a rather silly strategy. The reason I say that is because under the procedure for invoking the 25th two thirds of Congress would be required to vote through a contested declaration of inability and that will happen when BJO declares for Starmer or Leon admits he's wrong about something.
They could of course just get rid of Trump. Unexplained heart attack, maybe?
Given Trump's diet, "unexplained" wouldn't enter into it.
One word on the death certificate: "Inevitable".
Since everyone dies of heart failure at some point...
Not sure that is entirely true. A very close friend of mine died because her brain just switched off. Didn't give the heart a chance to pack up.
Even under such sad circumstances isn't @ydoethur 's assertion still correct. Even without a functioning brain it requires the heart to stop pumping blood (possibly as a result of the former) before it is goodnight Vienna.
Blimey. What happened to festive fun. 🤦♀️
Couldn’t you just have a ham and cheese toastie with pumpkin latte and lighten up?
Pumpkin latte! What mark of sick Communism is that?
As it is still Christmas would that be a glazed gammon and stilton toastie?
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
Speaking of 'nature cannot be fooled,' I assumed that Trump tweet @williamglenn regaled is with on the last thread was a parody.
I now find it wasn't.
Plus he had another one ranting about evil left wing judges.
With any other person we'd be talking not just about the 25th but about him being sectioned. Trump is clearly off his head.
In his last administration he was malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, displayed truly shocking judgement and a very thin skin and was totally incompetent but he was not actually insane. Nor did he have untrammelled power as he now does.
The big worry, and this is why he should never have been nominated, is that he's surrounded by sycophants who won't do what is necessary to either constrain or remove him.
When America lurches from crisis to crisis over the next four years Republicans (and the Supreme Court) have only themselves to blame, but I'm willing to bet that like NASA they will blame everyone else first.
The even bigger worry is that Trump was put forward and financed by malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt bastards displaying truly shocking judgement - who intend to move him on using the 25th and install sombody who is so malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, and displaying truly shocking judgement that he would never have got elected in his own right.
Step forward in 2025 President Vance.
The election's over.
You don't have to keep up the pretence that Vance is the worst ever VP candidate.
Or that Tim Walz wasn't anything other than a weak VP candidate chosen by a weak presidential candidate.
And do you think Trump will make a better President? Do you think threatening to invade Panama and Greenland is a good idea? Have you read the report into Matt Gaetz, who used prostitutes illegally (including one who was under the age of consent), took all sorts of drugs, cheated on campaign finances and lied to passport officials? Do you think Trump was right to nominate him for Attorney General? Is Trump right to nominate Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense, despite the rape case? Do you think Hegseth and Tusli Gabbard are good nominations given their anti-Ukraine comments? Is Mehmet Oz a good nomination given the many health scams he’s been involved with?
As someone who ran an engineering company making safety critical parts for nuclear power and aircraft engines, the engineers were allowed to get on with the necessary testing and verification of parts/assemblies due to the customer. Your local nuclear plant has remained safe, and the planes you have flown on have arrived at their destination not only due to engineers but due to realistic customers paying what was necessary.
Many of the issues regarding engineering failures comes down to penny pinching. Engineers know what they are doing.
Indeed so. Ask Boeing how the last couple of decades of replacing engineers with MBAs in the management grades has gone.
That said, the graph of commercial aviation accidents over time is utterly astonishing. Modern planes just don’t crash any more, unless they’re shot down.
The thing about aviation is that the NTSB et al run investigations to find out why the accident occurred so the causes can be fixed or mitigated rather than so that someone can be blamed. This has led to every accident being a learning experience which contributed to the incremental safety of air travel.
There are a few exceptions to this but not many
Absolutely.
Transport accidents pretty much stopped happening because the NTSB (in the UK the AAIB and RIAB) investigates every incident and accident, and makes recommendations aimed at preventing the next one.
We can all learn from that approach, of looking at causes of incidents rather than rushing to apportion blame. No-blame culture works, ask the Mercedes F1 team who won seven championships in a row using just that approach.
When I was inducted into the mysteries of timetableing for a school my master made sure that I fully understood the concept and importance of a “no-blame” culture: mistakes will be made, but making sure you understand what went wrong and ensuring it doesn’t happen again are the only things to worry about.
I’m particularly keen on it as half the time I’m the one who made the mistake…
My school was clever enough to identify that one of its sixth formers had a particularly talent for working through and resolving complex problems and employed him during the summer holidays to work through the timetable for the entire school. And a very good job he made of it, too
We really want a timetable done before the end of the summer term so that staff know what they are getting in September. My aim is to get it done in time for the new staff to be given their timetables when they come for their induction days. Heads of Year and Heads of department also need some time to work out which pupils will be in which groups, and the admin staff need a week or two to put that info into the system. A local school had a new Assistant Head who tried to do it over the summer holidays by setting up the automatic function of the timetable software and leaving it to run. Unsurprisingly to anyone who has used such software, it didn’t work and the school ended up starting in September without a timetable. The other problem on relying on a Sixth former, however good, is that they are only around for a couple of years. It takes that long to get used to the software.
I'm assuming that in IanB2's case this was in the not very good old days when it was all done on paper...very slowly...
The system used at my school immediately pre computers involved large numbers of Lego blocks.
My old school had something that looked like a proprietary version of Lego, with coloured rods on a black backing board. I imagine that most years there was no change except the name of a new teacher replacing the one who'd just left.
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
Speaking of 'nature cannot be fooled,' I assumed that Trump tweet @williamglenn regaled is with on the last thread was a parody.
I now find it wasn't.
Plus he had another one ranting about evil left wing judges.
With any other person we'd be talking not just about the 25th but about him being sectioned. Trump is clearly off his head.
In his last administration he was malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, displayed truly shocking judgement and a very thin skin and was totally incompetent but he was not actually insane. Nor did he have untrammelled power as he now does.
The big worry, and this is why he should never have been nominated, is that he's surrounded by sycophants who won't do what is necessary to either constrain or remove him.
When America lurches from crisis to crisis over the next four years Republicans (and the Supreme Court) have only themselves to blame, but I'm willing to bet that like NASA they will blame everyone else first.
At least as the World hurtles into recession, sorry depression, the Labour Government will crash and burn and we here in Brexitland will be delivered a shiny Nigel Farage (who has all the answers) premiership. I suspect right wing populism will become the new normal across the planet, even if Trump does crash Earth. He can always blame foreigners.
Every cloud etc.
Here is the problem with the progressive's sneer at the populist right - they know enough about our problems to actually *try* to get stuff done. Pop-right government's don't just crash and burn because they target the obvious stuff we all know is wrong and get on with targeting them.
I heard an interview with the Polish foreign minister who talked about how they had defeated the pop-right - he said you have to go do stuff. Starmer is at least trying to go after the migration crisis - he's deported an awful lot of people in a relatively small amount of time.
His problem? They aren't shouting it from the rafters. Had Farage become PM and started deporting people it would be *everywhere*. But that is the only thing Starmer is doing. There's an obvious list of stuff to target and Labour are in denial about chunks of them...
And yet the Lib Dems are famous for doing reasonably well electorally for getting local stuff done like filling potholes. Wouldn't they be doing even better if that premise is good?
You don't give Tesco some sort of special award or notice because it manages to stock baked beans and sliced bread. Local government actually doing its ordinary job is not some stellar thing, it is the most basic expectation.
Increasingly all levels of the state expect us to think it astonishing and praiseworthy that they actually do the many jobs they have taken to themselves to perform, while they have unlimited freedom to require us to pay for by taxes.
Tesco level of service should be the basic level of all state provision.
Tesco and local government have very different mechanisms to determine their budgets.
Of course, but is that a reason to stop a normal expectation that if the state undertakes to take something on then it will do it properly, having as it does an unlimited power to require us to pay for it, and through parliament the power to decide what it shall take on and what it shall not?
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
Speaking of 'nature cannot be fooled,' I assumed that Trump tweet @williamglenn regaled is with on the last thread was a parody.
I now find it wasn't.
Plus he had another one ranting about evil left wing judges.
With any other person we'd be talking not just about the 25th but about him being sectioned. Trump is clearly off his head.
In his last administration he was malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, displayed truly shocking judgement and a very thin skin and was totally incompetent but he was not actually insane. Nor did he have untrammelled power as he now does.
The big worry, and this is why he should never have been nominated, is that he's surrounded by sycophants who won't do what is necessary to either constrain or remove him.
When America lurches from crisis to crisis over the next four years Republicans (and the Supreme Court) have only themselves to blame, but I'm willing to bet that like NASA they will blame everyone else first.
The even bigger worry is that Trump was put forward and financed by malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt bastards displaying truly shocking judgement - who intend to move him on using the 25th and install sombody who is so malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, and displaying truly shocking judgement that he would never have got elected in his own right.
Step forward in 2025 President Vance.
The election's over.
You don't have to keep up the pretence that Vance is the worst ever VP candidate.
Or that Tim Walz wasn't anything other than a weak VP candidate chosen by a weak presidential candidate.
And do you think Trump will make a better President? Do you think threatening to invade Panama and Greenland is a good idea? Have you read the report into Matt Gaetz, who used prostitutes illegally (including one who was under the age of consent), took all sorts of drugs, cheated on campaign finances and lied to passport officials? Do you think Trump was right to nominate him for Attorney General? Is Trump right to nominate Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense, despite the rape case? Do you think Hegseth and Tusli Gabbard are good nominations given their anti-Ukraine comments? Is Mehmet Oz a good nomination given the many health scams he’s been involved with?
That's a great many questions. At least DJT is entertaining. It'll be a diverting change in tone after four years of Biden's senile earnestness.
Add Musk, who is basically now Daniel Plainview in the last 20 minutes of There Will Be Blood, and you've got lolz aplenty.
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
Speaking of 'nature cannot be fooled,' I assumed that Trump tweet @williamglenn regaled is with on the last thread was a parody.
I now find it wasn't.
Plus he had another one ranting about evil left wing judges.
With any other person we'd be talking not just about the 25th but about him being sectioned. Trump is clearly off his head.
In his last administration he was malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, displayed truly shocking judgement and a very thin skin and was totally incompetent but he was not actually insane. Nor did he have untrammelled power as he now does.
The big worry, and this is why he should never have been nominated, is that he's surrounded by sycophants who won't do what is necessary to either constrain or remove him.
When America lurches from crisis to crisis over the next four years Republicans (and the Supreme Court) have only themselves to blame, but I'm willing to bet that like NASA they will blame everyone else first.
The even bigger worry is that Trump was put forward and financed by malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt bastards displaying truly shocking judgement - who intend to move him on using the 25th and install sombody who is so malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, and displaying truly shocking judgement that he would never have got elected in his own right.
Step forward in 2025 President Vance.
The election's over.
You don't have to keep up the pretence that Vance is the worst ever VP candidate.
Or that Tim Walz wasn't anything other than a weak VP candidate chosen by a weak presidential candidate.
And do you think Trump will make a better President? Do you think threatening to invade Panama and Greenland is a good idea? Have you read the report into Matt Gaetz, who used prostitutes illegally (including one who was under the age of consent), took all sorts of drugs, cheated on campaign finances and lied to passport officials? Do you think Trump was right to nominate him for Attorney General? Is Trump right to nominate Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense, despite the rape case? Do you think Hegseth and Tusli Gabbard are good nominations given their anti-Ukraine comments? Is Mehmet Oz a good nomination given the many health scams he’s been involved with?
I'm always mildly amused, given what we hear of Trump's dietary habits, to read of foreign statesman (etc) going to 'dine' at Mar-a-lago. I would like, one day, to see a menu.
The biggest flaw in our Inquiry system is the perverse belief of lawyers that you can legislate, systematise and form fill mistakes and misjudgements out of existence. It is a bizarre belief and no end of examples ever seems to extinguish it.
So, the Soham murders created a monstrous bureaucracy of certificates, approvals and regulation enormously adding to the costs of care for both the very young and the very old. Has this stopped child abuse or the bullying of the weak in care homes? Of course not.
In banking and money laundering we see ever more regulation and costs piled onto services to supposedly "protect us". Does this stop online fraud or people phoning me to ask about my recent car accident, let alone the transmission of literally billions around the world from the proceeds of illegal activity? Of course not.
There is an inevitability that the Grenfell fire inquiry will make construction in this country, already failing to keep touch with our actual needs, more bureaucratic, more expensive, more difficult and, frankly, less common. Will this prevent disasters (let alone shortages) in the future? Don't be ridiculous.
We need to change the way we think about these things. There is no way of preventing tragedies in life but the key to minimising them is, in my view, personal responsibility and accountability where that is appropriate and a culture of open disclosure (such as we have often, if not always, seen in aviation and, occasionally, in medicine) and candour. Legalising the processes just doesn't work. Even a lawyer can see that.
The idea that every social ill has a bureaucratic solution is essentially a form of outdoor relief for the upper classes.
The biggest flaw in our Inquiry system is the perverse belief of lawyers that you can legislate, systematise and form fill mistakes and misjudgements out of existence. It is a bizarre belief and no end of examples ever seems to extinguish it.
So, the Soham murders created a monstrous bureaucracy of certificates, approvals and regulation enormously adding to the costs of care for both the very young and the very old. Has this stopped child abuse or the bullying of the weak in care homes? Of course not.
In banking and money laundering we see ever more regulation and costs piled onto services to supposedly "protect us". Does this stop online fraud or people phoning me to ask about my recent car accident, let alone the transmission of literally billions around the world from the proceeds of illegal activity? Of course not.
There is an inevitability that the Grenfell fire inquiry will make construction in this country, already failing to keep touch with our actual needs, more bureaucratic, more expensive, more difficult and, frankly, less common. Will this prevent disasters (let alone shortages) in the future? Don't be ridiculous.
We need to change the way we think about these things. There is no way of preventing tragedies in life but the key to minimising them is, in my view, personal responsibility and accountability where that is appropriate and a culture of open disclosure (such as we have often, if not always, seen in aviation and, occasionally, in medicine) and candour. Legalising the processes just doesn't work. Even a lawyer can see that.
The idea that every social ill has a bureaucratic solution is essentially a form of outdoor relief for the upper classes.
Reminds me a little of reading about sociology at university. Everything's 'society's fault'. No need for private agency or personal responsibility.
“My old school had something that looked like a proprietary version of Lego, with coloured rods on a black backing board. I imagine that most years there was no change except the name of a new teacher replacing the one who'd just left.”
Just about possible if the school is small enough, all replacements are like-for like (so no newly qualified or part-time teachers), there is no choice as to what subjects each pupil does (so the number of sets stays the same), and teachers do not follow their classes from Y10 to Y11 or Y12 to Y13. Oh, and the people teaching double Y10 on a Friday afternoon are happy to do that for ever.
“My old school had something that looked like a proprietary version of Lego, with coloured rods on a black backing board. I imagine that most years there was no change except the name of a new teacher replacing the one who'd just left.”
Just about possible if the school is small enough, all replacements are like-for like (so no newly qualified or part-time teachers), there is no choice as to what subjects each pupil does (so the number of sets stays the same), and teachers do not follow their classes from Y10 to Y11 or Y12 to Y13. Oh, and the people teaching double Y10 on a Friday afternoon are happy to do that for ever.
Teaching double year 10 history on a Friday for ever, where they've chosen to do it and are keen to finish the week on a high? Bring it on!
Teaching double year 10 bottom set English? Fuck off!
The biggest flaw in our Inquiry system is the perverse belief of lawyers that you can legislate, systematise and form fill mistakes and misjudgements out of existence. It is a bizarre belief and no end of examples ever seems to extinguish it.
So, the Soham murders created a monstrous bureaucracy of certificates, approvals and regulation enormously adding to the costs of care for both the very young and the very old. Has this stopped child abuse or the bullying of the weak in care homes? Of course not.
In banking and money laundering we see ever more regulation and costs piled onto services to supposedly "protect us". Does this stop online fraud or people phoning me to ask about my recent car accident, let alone the transmission of literally billions around the world from the proceeds of illegal activity? Of course not.
There is an inevitability that the Grenfell fire inquiry will make construction in this country, already failing to keep touch with our actual needs, more bureaucratic, more expensive, more difficult and, frankly, less common. Will this prevent disasters (let alone shortages) in the future? Don't be ridiculous.
We need to change the way we think about these things. There is no way of preventing tragedies in life but the key to minimising them is, in my view, personal responsibility and accountability where that is appropriate and a culture of open disclosure (such as we have often, if not always, seen in aviation and, occasionally, in medicine) and candour. Legalising the processes just doesn't work. Even a lawyer can see that.
"Management is that for which there is no algorithm; if there's an algorithm, it's administration." -- Maurice Wilkes (IIRC)
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
Speaking of 'nature cannot be fooled,' I assumed that Trump tweet @williamglenn regaled is with on the last thread was a parody.
I now find it wasn't.
Plus he had another one ranting about evil left wing judges.
With any other person we'd be talking not just about the 25th but about him being sectioned. Trump is clearly off his head.
In his last administration he was malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, displayed truly shocking judgement and a very thin skin and was totally incompetent but he was not actually insane. Nor did he have untrammelled power as he now does.
The big worry, and this is why he should never have been nominated, is that he's surrounded by sycophants who won't do what is necessary to either constrain or remove him.
When America lurches from crisis to crisis over the next four years Republicans (and the Supreme Court) have only themselves to blame, but I'm willing to bet that like NASA they will blame everyone else first.
The even bigger worry is that Trump was put forward and financed by malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt bastards displaying truly shocking judgement - who intend to move him on using the 25th and install sombody who is so malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, and displaying truly shocking judgement that he would never have got elected in his own right.
Step forward in 2025 President Vance.
That's possible, but if so it was a rather silly strategy. The reason I say that is because under the procedure for invoking the 25th two thirds of Congress would be required to vote through a contested declaration of inability and that will happen when BJO declares for Starmer or Leon admits he's wrong about something.
They could of course just get rid of Trump. Unexplained heart attack, maybe?
Given Trump's diet, "unexplained" wouldn't enter into it.
One word on the death certificate: "Inevitable".
Since everyone dies of heart failure at some point...
Not sure that is entirely true. A very close friend of mine died because her brain just switched off. Didn't give the heart a chance to pack up.
Even under such sad circumstances isn't @ydoethur 's assertion still correct. Even without a functioning brain it requires the heart to stop pumping blood (possibly as a result of the former) before it is goodnight Vienna.
Blimey. What happened to festive fun. 🤦♀️
Couldn’t you just have a ham and cheese toastie with pumpkin latte and lighten up?
Growing up, “festive fun” always included a Bond movie…
On Her Majesties Secret Service on later today, the Pineapple Pizza of the Bond franchise, either loved or not.
The biggest flaw in our Inquiry system is the perverse belief of lawyers that you can legislate, systematise and form fill mistakes and misjudgements out of existence. It is a bizarre belief and no end of examples ever seems to extinguish it.
So, the Soham murders created a monstrous bureaucracy of certificates, approvals and regulation enormously adding to the costs of care for both the very young and the very old. Has this stopped child abuse or the bullying of the weak in care homes? Of course not.
In banking and money laundering we see ever more regulation and costs piled onto services to supposedly "protect us". Does this stop online fraud or people phoning me to ask about my recent car accident, let alone the transmission of literally billions around the world from the proceeds of illegal activity? Of course not.
There is an inevitability that the Grenfell fire inquiry will make construction in this country, already failing to keep touch with our actual needs, more bureaucratic, more expensive, more difficult and, frankly, less common. Will this prevent disasters (let alone shortages) in the future? Don't be ridiculous.
We need to change the way we think about these things. There is no way of preventing tragedies in life but the key to minimising them is, in my view, personal responsibility and accountability where that is appropriate and a culture of open disclosure (such as we have often, if not always, seen in aviation and, occasionally, in medicine) and candour. Legalising the processes just doesn't work. Even a lawyer can see that.
"Management is that for which there is no algorithm; if there's an algorithm, it's administration." -- Maurice Wilkes (IIRC)
Legislation is written by mp's, 20% of mps have a law background.....who does legalising processes make work for? Lawyers.
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
Speaking of 'nature cannot be fooled,' I assumed that Trump tweet @williamglenn regaled is with on the last thread was a parody.
I now find it wasn't.
Plus he had another one ranting about evil left wing judges.
With any other person we'd be talking not just about the 25th but about him being sectioned. Trump is clearly off his head.
In his last administration he was malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, displayed truly shocking judgement and a very thin skin and was totally incompetent but he was not actually insane. Nor did he have untrammelled power as he now does.
The big worry, and this is why he should never have been nominated, is that he's surrounded by sycophants who won't do what is necessary to either constrain or remove him.
When America lurches from crisis to crisis over the next four years Republicans (and the Supreme Court) have only themselves to blame, but I'm willing to bet that like NASA they will blame everyone else first.
The even bigger worry is that Trump was put forward and financed by malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt bastards displaying truly shocking judgement - who intend to move him on using the 25th and install sombody who is so malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, and displaying truly shocking judgement that he would never have got elected in his own right.
Step forward in 2025 President Vance.
That's possible, but if so it was a rather silly strategy. The reason I say that is because under the procedure for invoking the 25th two thirds of Congress would be required to vote through a contested declaration of inability and that will happen when BJO declares for Starmer or Leon admits he's wrong about something.
They could of course just get rid of Trump. Unexplained heart attack, maybe?
Given Trump's diet, "unexplained" wouldn't enter into it.
One word on the death certificate: "Inevitable".
Since everyone dies of heart failure at some point...
Not sure that is entirely true. A very close friend of mine died because her brain just switched off. Didn't give the heart a chance to pack up.
Even under such sad circumstances isn't @ydoethur 's assertion still correct. Even without a functioning brain it requires the heart to stop pumping blood (possibly as a result of the former) before it is goodnight Vienna.
Blimey. What happened to festive fun. 🤦♀️
Couldn’t you just have a ham and cheese toastie with pumpkin latte and lighten up?
Growing up, “festive fun” always included a Bond movie…
On Her Majesties Secret Service on later today, the Pineapple Pizza of the Bond franchise, either loved or not.
One of the best screenplays from the early films. Unfortunately with a totally unsuitable Australian model playing Bond. The amplification of how poorly Lazenby plays Bond can be seen in the scene where Bond is disguised as Sir Hilary and the character is voiced by George Baker rather than Lazenby.
“My old school had something that looked like a proprietary version of Lego, with coloured rods on a black backing board. I imagine that most years there was no change except the name of a new teacher replacing the one who'd just left.”
Just about possible if the school is small enough, all replacements are like-for like (so no newly qualified or part-time teachers), there is no choice as to what subjects each pupil does (so the number of sets stays the same), and teachers do not follow their classes from Y10 to Y11 or Y12 to Y13. Oh, and the people teaching double Y10 on a Friday afternoon are happy to do that for ever.
Teaching double year 10 history on a Friday for ever, where they've chosen to do it and are keen to finish the week on a high? Bring it on!
Teaching double year 10 bottom set English? Fuck off!
Acquaintance of mine used to be a peripatetic timetable compiler. He'd 'do' three or four schools each summer. I'm not sure how often he was asked to come back.
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
A(nother) great article from Cyclefree.
It is the departure from reality that is most worrying about the recent surge of populist politics. Pretending climate change isn’t real won’t stop its effects. Pretending vaccines are dangerous will kill. And so on.
The departure from reality about climate change is not really about the new breed of populists. The serious minded global conferences, political action and agreements have now being going on for a few decades. The net result thus far is that the continuing net output of CO2 is not falling but rising and very non populist China is still building coal fired power stations.
Is it surprising that many voters have decided that the serious centrists as well as the oligarchs don't actually mean what they say?
This is what happens when you stop pretending: If the science is right, then what it forsees is going to happen because there is no global will to stop it.
The only chances: Mitigation; preparedness; tech solutions; hope for and look for the upside to be greater than the downside; hope the science is wrong.
I think I would add a further necessary component to your list of chances: a form of global truth and reconciliation commission for crimes against the climate and future generations. It would allow current representatives of countries with historic responsibility for altering the climate to acknowledge the current benefits to their countries from past climate crimes, including reparations where these are deemed justified (based on current benefit deriving from past burning of fossil fuels).
It would aim to heal the desire for retribution from climate losers.
I don't think it will happen, but think it is needed.
Trying to get reparations out of western democracies is a sure fire way to get the likes of Farage and Trump elected I fear.
Oh I agree. I'm not saying it's possible, just that it's needed.
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
Speaking of 'nature cannot be fooled,' I assumed that Trump tweet @williamglenn regaled is with on the last thread was a parody.
I now find it wasn't.
Plus he had another one ranting about evil left wing judges.
With any other person we'd be talking not just about the 25th but about him being sectioned. Trump is clearly off his head.
In his last administration he was malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, displayed truly shocking judgement and a very thin skin and was totally incompetent but he was not actually insane. Nor did he have untrammelled power as he now does.
The big worry, and this is why he should never have been nominated, is that he's surrounded by sycophants who won't do what is necessary to either constrain or remove him.
When America lurches from crisis to crisis over the next four years Republicans (and the Supreme Court) have only themselves to blame, but I'm willing to bet that like NASA they will blame everyone else first.
The even bigger worry is that Trump was put forward and financed by malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt bastards displaying truly shocking judgement - who intend to move him on using the 25th and install sombody who is so malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, and displaying truly shocking judgement that he would never have got elected in his own right.
Step forward in 2025 President Vance.
That's possible, but if so it was a rather silly strategy. The reason I say that is because under the procedure for invoking the 25th two thirds of Congress would be required to vote through a contested declaration of inability and that will happen when BJO declares for Starmer or Leon admits he's wrong about something.
They could of course just get rid of Trump. Unexplained heart attack, maybe?
Given Trump's diet, "unexplained" wouldn't enter into it.
One word on the death certificate: "Inevitable".
Since everyone dies of heart failure at some point...
Not sure that is entirely true. A very close friend of mine died because her brain just switched off. Didn't give the heart a chance to pack up.
Even under such sad circumstances isn't @ydoethur 's assertion still correct. Even without a functioning brain it requires the heart to stop pumping blood (possibly as a result of the former) before it is goodnight Vienna.
Blimey. What happened to festive fun. 🤦♀️
Couldn’t you just have a ham and cheese toastie with pumpkin latte and lighten up?
Growing up, “festive fun” always included a Bond movie…
On Her Majesties Secret Service on later today, the Pineapple Pizza of the Bond franchise, either loved or not.
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
Speaking of 'nature cannot be fooled,' I assumed that Trump tweet @williamglenn regaled is with on the last thread was a parody.
I now find it wasn't.
Plus he had another one ranting about evil left wing judges.
With any other person we'd be talking not just about the 25th but about him being sectioned. Trump is clearly off his head.
In his last administration he was malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, displayed truly shocking judgement and a very thin skin and was totally incompetent but he was not actually insane. Nor did he have untrammelled power as he now does.
The big worry, and this is why he should never have been nominated, is that he's surrounded by sycophants who won't do what is necessary to either constrain or remove him.
When America lurches from crisis to crisis over the next four years Republicans (and the Supreme Court) have only themselves to blame, but I'm willing to bet that like NASA they will blame everyone else first.
The even bigger worry is that Trump was put forward and financed by malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt bastards displaying truly shocking judgement - who intend to move him on using the 25th and install sombody who is so malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, and displaying truly shocking judgement that he would never have got elected in his own right.
Step forward in 2025 President Vance.
That's possible, but if so it was a rather silly strategy. The reason I say that is because under the procedure for invoking the 25th two thirds of Congress would be required to vote through a contested declaration of inability and that will happen when BJO declares for Starmer or Leon admits he's wrong about something.
They could of course just get rid of Trump. Unexplained heart attack, maybe?
Given Trump's diet, "unexplained" wouldn't enter into it.
One word on the death certificate: "Inevitable".
Since everyone dies of heart failure at some point...
Not sure that is entirely true. A very close friend of mine died because her brain just switched off. Didn't give the heart a chance to pack up.
Even under such sad circumstances isn't @ydoethur 's assertion still correct. Even without a functioning brain it requires the heart to stop pumping blood (possibly as a result of the former) before it is goodnight Vienna.
Blimey. What happened to festive fun. 🤦♀️
Couldn’t you just have a ham and cheese toastie with pumpkin latte and lighten up?
Growing up, “festive fun” always included a Bond movie…
On Her Majesties Secret Service on later today, the Pineapple Pizza of the Bond franchise, either loved or not.
One of the best screenplays from the early films. Unfortunately with a totally unsuitable Australian model playing Bond. The amplification of how poorly Lazenby plays Bond can be seen in the scene where Bond is disguised as Sir Hilary and the character is voiced by George Baker rather than Lazenby.
He definitely wasn't a good enough actor to play Bond playing Hillary. He just switched to playing Hillary. He did a pretty good job in other parts though. The scene at the end is genuinely emotional. He probably doesn't deserve massive condemnation or revisionist adulation for his performance. He was just 'OK'.
The biggest flaw in our Inquiry system is the perverse belief of lawyers that you can legislate, systematise and form fill mistakes and misjudgements out of existence. It is a bizarre belief and no end of examples ever seems to extinguish it.
So, the Soham murders created a monstrous bureaucracy of certificates, approvals and regulation enormously adding to the costs of care for both the very young and the very old. Has this stopped child abuse or the bullying of the weak in care homes? Of course not.
In banking and money laundering we see ever more regulation and costs piled onto services to supposedly "protect us". Does this stop online fraud or people phoning me to ask about my recent car accident, let alone the transmission of literally billions around the world from the proceeds of illegal activity? Of course not.
There is an inevitability that the Grenfell fire inquiry will make construction in this country, already failing to keep touch with our actual needs, more bureaucratic, more expensive, more difficult and, frankly, less common. Will this prevent disasters (let alone shortages) in the future? Don't be ridiculous.
We need to change the way we think about these things. There is no way of preventing tragedies in life but the key to minimising them is, in my view, personal responsibility and accountability where that is appropriate and a culture of open disclosure (such as we have often, if not always, seen in aviation and, occasionally, in medicine) and candour. Legalising the processes just doesn't work. Even a lawyer can see that.
"Management is that for which there is no algorithm; if there's an algorithm, it's administration." -- Maurice Wilkes (IIRC)
Legislation is written by mp's, 20% of mps have a law background.....who does legalising processes make work for? Lawyers.
Legislation is not written by MPs, who would be completely incapable of doing so. Parliamentary draughtmen put into legal from the often ludicrous ideas of governments and eccentric backbenchers.
Just read the schedules and transitional provisions of a major bill, and it will quickly be discovered that the office of these draughtsmen is where Vholes and other Dickensian lawyers go to die a dry and dusty death. Great moments in their lives include the impossibilities of the Rwanda bill deeming untruths to be facts, and the glories of the ever changing Covid rules.
The biggest flaw in our Inquiry system is the perverse belief of lawyers that you can legislate, systematise and form fill mistakes and misjudgements out of existence. It is a bizarre belief and no end of examples ever seems to extinguish it.
So, the Soham murders created a monstrous bureaucracy of certificates, approvals and regulation enormously adding to the costs of care for both the very young and the very old. Has this stopped child abuse or the bullying of the weak in care homes? Of course not.
In banking and money laundering we see ever more regulation and costs piled onto services to supposedly "protect us". Does this stop online fraud or people phoning me to ask about my recent car accident, let alone the transmission of literally billions around the world from the proceeds of illegal activity? Of course not.
There is an inevitability that the Grenfell fire inquiry will make construction in this country, already failing to keep touch with our actual needs, more bureaucratic, more expensive, more difficult and, frankly, less common. Will this prevent disasters (let alone shortages) in the future? Don't be ridiculous.
We need to change the way we think about these things. There is no way of preventing tragedies in life but the key to minimising them is, in my view, personal responsibility and accountability where that is appropriate and a culture of open disclosure (such as we have often, if not always, seen in aviation and, occasionally, in medicine) and candour. Legalising the processes just doesn't work. Even a lawyer can see that.
The idea that every social ill has a bureaucratic solution is essentially a form of outdoor relief for the upper classes.
The idea that every social ill has a *solely* bureaucratic solution…
Hence the reaction to Grenfell is to add an additional ton of paperwork. Not more inspectors to check that they are not building flats out of fire lighters.
The biggest flaw in our Inquiry system is the perverse belief of lawyers that you can legislate, systematise and form fill mistakes and misjudgements out of existence. It is a bizarre belief and no end of examples ever seems to extinguish it.
So, the Soham murders created a monstrous bureaucracy of certificates, approvals and regulation enormously adding to the costs of care for both the very young and the very old. Has this stopped child abuse or the bullying of the weak in care homes? Of course not.
In banking and money laundering we see ever more regulation and costs piled onto services to supposedly "protect us". Does this stop online fraud or people phoning me to ask about my recent car accident, let alone the transmission of literally billions around the world from the proceeds of illegal activity? Of course not.
There is an inevitability that the Grenfell fire inquiry will make construction in this country, already failing to keep touch with our actual needs, more bureaucratic, more expensive, more difficult and, frankly, less common. Will this prevent disasters (let alone shortages) in the future? Don't be ridiculous.
We need to change the way we think about these things. There is no way of preventing tragedies in life but the key to minimising them is, in my view, personal responsibility and accountability where that is appropriate and a culture of open disclosure (such as we have often, if not always, seen in aviation and, occasionally, in medicine) and candour. Legalising the processes just doesn't work. Even a lawyer can see that.
The idea that every social ill has a bureaucratic solution is essentially a form of outdoor relief for the upper classes.
Reminds me a little of reading about sociology at university. Everything's 'society's fault'. No need for private agency or personal responsibility.
Where would we, or sociology, be without what they call the 'social imaginary'?
How could we proceed without being able to call on 'society' to blame or do something. But by far my favourite is 'the international community' which is both to blame for everything and simultaneously is the only known cure, (and which patently does not exist) currently a top pick for BBC journalists reporting from some bombed out god forsaken hell hole.
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
Speaking of 'nature cannot be fooled,' I assumed that Trump tweet @williamglenn regaled is with on the last thread was a parody.
I now find it wasn't.
Plus he had another one ranting about evil left wing judges.
With any other person we'd be talking not just about the 25th but about him being sectioned. Trump is clearly off his head.
In his last administration he was malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, displayed truly shocking judgement and a very thin skin and was totally incompetent but he was not actually insane. Nor did he have untrammelled power as he now does.
The big worry, and this is why he should never have been nominated, is that he's surrounded by sycophants who won't do what is necessary to either constrain or remove him.
When America lurches from crisis to crisis over the next four years Republicans (and the Supreme Court) have only themselves to blame, but I'm willing to bet that like NASA they will blame everyone else first.
The even bigger worry is that Trump was put forward and financed by malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt bastards displaying truly shocking judgement - who intend to move him on using the 25th and install sombody who is so malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, and displaying truly shocking judgement that he would never have got elected in his own right.
Step forward in 2025 President Vance.
The election's over.
You don't have to keep up the pretence that Vance is the worst ever VP candidate.
Or that Tim Walz wasn't anything other than a weak VP candidate chosen by a weak presidential candidate.
And do you think Trump will make a better President? Do you think threatening to invade Panama and Greenland is a good idea? Have you read the report into Matt Gaetz, who used prostitutes illegally (including one who was under the age of consent), took all sorts of drugs, cheated on campaign finances and lied to passport officials? Do you think Trump was right to nominate him for Attorney General? Is Trump right to nominate Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense, despite the rape case? Do you think Hegseth and Tusli Gabbard are good nominations given their anti-Ukraine comments? Is Mehmet Oz a good nomination given the many health scams he’s been involved with?
That Trump is so evidently unfit to be president merely highlights how weak the Harris-Walz combination were.
Too many Pbers indulged in imbecilic levels of cheerleading and wishful thinking about Harris-Walz.
The peak being when people were defending 'Coach Walz' insinuating that Vance was a furniture-fucker.
With anyone not joining in with the groupthink being accused of being a Trump supporter.
ReformUK are reporting that they've overtaken the Tories in terms of membership numbers.
If the incels who have joined Reform think that this will be as good a dating agency as Young Conservatives were in Surrey in the 1950s they are, I think, sadly mistaken. They should try Young Farmers which is outstanding in this respect, although the new IHT rules have knocked a tiny bit of shine off the best candidates.
The biggest flaw in our Inquiry system is the perverse belief of lawyers that you can legislate, systematise and form fill mistakes and misjudgements out of existence. It is a bizarre belief and no end of examples ever seems to extinguish it.
So, the Soham murders created a monstrous bureaucracy of certificates, approvals and regulation enormously adding to the costs of care for both the very young and the very old. Has this stopped child abuse or the bullying of the weak in care homes? Of course not.
In banking and money laundering we see ever more regulation and costs piled onto services to supposedly "protect us". Does this stop online fraud or people phoning me to ask about my recent car accident, let alone the transmission of literally billions around the world from the proceeds of illegal activity? Of course not.
There is an inevitability that the Grenfell fire inquiry will make construction in this country, already failing to keep touch with our actual needs, more bureaucratic, more expensive, more difficult and, frankly, less common. Will this prevent disasters (let alone shortages) in the future? Don't be ridiculous.
We need to change the way we think about these things. There is no way of preventing tragedies in life but the key to minimising them is, in my view, personal responsibility and accountability where that is appropriate and a culture of open disclosure (such as we have often, if not always, seen in aviation and, occasionally, in medicine) and candour. Legalising the processes just doesn't work. Even a lawyer can see that.
The Process State
“The entire natural world is a non-linear system. It appears chaotic, but with layers of apparent order, depending on the scale. So we can predict the climate, but not the weather in a month’s time. This goes for Humans as well – and most of our works. This in turn means that a rigid system of rules, applied without exceptions to human endeavours, will fail. This is a mathematical certainty.
Hence the ever tighter grip of systems with totalitarian aspirations – try ing to crush those pesky humans into Perfect Order. And this is why totalitarian systems always fail.”
Memo to Russia - if you have shot down an Azeri airliner near Grozny causing a lethal crash in Kazakhstan, you are in for a very bad few weeks and deservedly so.
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
Speaking of 'nature cannot be fooled,' I assumed that Trump tweet @williamglenn regaled is with on the last thread was a parody.
I now find it wasn't.
Plus he had another one ranting about evil left wing judges.
With any other person we'd be talking not just about the 25th but about him being sectioned. Trump is clearly off his head.
In his last administration he was malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, displayed truly shocking judgement and a very thin skin and was totally incompetent but he was not actually insane. Nor did he have untrammelled power as he now does.
The big worry, and this is why he should never have been nominated, is that he's surrounded by sycophants who won't do what is necessary to either constrain or remove him.
When America lurches from crisis to crisis over the next four years Republicans (and the Supreme Court) have only themselves to blame, but I'm willing to bet that like NASA they will blame everyone else first.
The even bigger worry is that Trump was put forward and financed by malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt bastards displaying truly shocking judgement - who intend to move him on using the 25th and install sombody who is so malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, and displaying truly shocking judgement that he would never have got elected in his own right.
Step forward in 2025 President Vance.
The election's over.
You don't have to keep up the pretence that Vance is the worst ever VP candidate.
Or that Tim Walz wasn't anything other than a weak VP candidate chosen by a weak presidential candidate.
And do you think Trump will make a better President? Do you think threatening to invade Panama and Greenland is a good idea? Have you read the report into Matt Gaetz, who used prostitutes illegally (including one who was under the age of consent), took all sorts of drugs, cheated on campaign finances and lied to passport officials? Do you think Trump was right to nominate him for Attorney General? Is Trump right to nominate Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense, despite the rape case? Do you think Hegseth and Tusli Gabbard are good nominations given their anti-Ukraine comments? Is Mehmet Oz a good nomination given the many health scams he’s been involved with?
That Trump is so evidently unfit to be president merely highlights how weak the Harris-Walz combination were.
Too many Pbers indulged in imbecilic levels of cheerleading and wishful thinking about Harris-Walz.
The peak being when people were defending 'Coach Walz' insinuating that Vance was a furniture-fucker.
With anyone not joining in with the groupthink being accused of being a Trump supporter.
Merry Christmas to you too.
I suspect a number of us overdosed on hopium in the light of the Republican being absolutely unfit for office. In fact the candidate should have spent the election serving time in Terra Haute for sedition and treason.
I don't recall many posters making too much of Vance and the sofa, although it was absurdly funny. He could be condemned on more substantive evidence.
Adam Boulton called it right. Harris overcoming being both a woman and a woman of colour was perhaps too much to ask.
As someone who ran an engineering company making safety critical parts for nuclear power and aircraft engines, the engineers were allowed to get on with the necessary testing and verification of parts/assemblies due to the customer. Your local nuclear plant has remained safe, and the planes you have flown on have arrived at their destination not only due to engineers but due to realistic customers paying what was necessary.
Many of the issues regarding engineering failures comes down to penny pinching. Engineers know what they are doing.
Indeed so. Ask Boeing how the last couple of decades of replacing engineers with MBAs in the management grades has gone.
That said, the graph of commercial aviation accidents over time is utterly astonishing. Modern planes just don’t crash any more, unless they’re shot down.
The thing about aviation is that the NTSB et al run investigations to find out why the accident occurred so the causes can be fixed or mitigated rather than so that someone can be blamed. This has led to every accident being a learning experience which contributed to the incremental safety of air travel.
There are a few exceptions to this but not many
Absolutely.
Transport accidents pretty much stopped happening because the NTSB (in the UK the AAIB and RIAB) investigates every incident and accident, and makes recommendations aimed at preventing the next one.
We can all learn from that approach, of looking at causes of incidents rather than rushing to apportion blame. No-blame culture works, ask the Mercedes F1 team who won seven championships in a row using just that approach.
When I was inducted into the mysteries of timetableing for a school my master made sure that I fully understood the concept and importance of a “no-blame” culture: mistakes will be made, but making sure you understand what went wrong and ensuring it doesn’t happen again are the only things to worry about.
I’m particularly keen on it as half the time I’m the one who made the mistake…
My school was clever enough to identify that one of its sixth formers had a particularly talent for working through and resolving complex problems and employed him during the summer holidays to work through the timetable for the entire school. And a very good job he made of it, too
We really want a timetable done before the end of the summer term so that staff know what they are getting in September. My aim is to get it done in time for the new staff to be given their timetables when they come for their induction days. Heads of Year and Heads of department also need some time to work out which pupils will be in which groups, and the admin staff need a week or two to put that info into the system. A local school had a new Assistant Head who tried to do it over the summer holidays by setting up the automatic function of the timetable software and leaving it to run. Unsurprisingly to anyone who has used such software, it didn’t work and the school ended up starting in September without a timetable. The other problem on relying on a Sixth former, however good, is that they are only around for a couple of years. It takes that long to get used to the software.
lol @ software!
I did it with lots of little magnetic coloured squares on a large metal wall board.
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
Speaking of 'nature cannot be fooled,' I assumed that Trump tweet @williamglenn regaled is with on the last thread was a parody.
I now find it wasn't.
Plus he had another one ranting about evil left wing judges.
With any other person we'd be talking not just about the 25th but about him being sectioned. Trump is clearly off his head.
In his last administration he was malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, displayed truly shocking judgement and a very thin skin and was totally incompetent but he was not actually insane. Nor did he have untrammelled power as he now does.
The big worry, and this is why he should never have been nominated, is that he's surrounded by sycophants who won't do what is necessary to either constrain or remove him.
When America lurches from crisis to crisis over the next four years Republicans (and the Supreme Court) have only themselves to blame, but I'm willing to bet that like NASA they will blame everyone else first.
The even bigger worry is that Trump was put forward and financed by malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt bastards displaying truly shocking judgement - who intend to move him on using the 25th and install sombody who is so malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, and displaying truly shocking judgement that he would never have got elected in his own right.
Step forward in 2025 President Vance.
The election's over.
You don't have to keep up the pretence that Vance is the worst ever VP candidate.
Or that Tim Walz wasn't anything other than a weak VP candidate chosen by a weak presidential candidate.
And do you think Trump will make a better President? Do you think threatening to invade Panama and Greenland is a good idea? Have you read the report into Matt Gaetz, who used prostitutes illegally (including one who was under the age of consent), took all sorts of drugs, cheated on campaign finances and lied to passport officials? Do you think Trump was right to nominate him for Attorney General? Is Trump right to nominate Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense, despite the rape case? Do you think Hegseth and Tusli Gabbard are good nominations given their anti-Ukraine comments? Is Mehmet Oz a good nomination given the many health scams he’s been involved with?
That Trump is so evidently unfit to be president merely highlights how weak the Harris-Walz combination were.
Too many Pbers indulged in imbecilic levels of cheerleading and wishful thinking about Harris-Walz.
The peak being when people were defending 'Coach Walz' insinuating that Vance was a furniture-fucker.
With anyone not joining in with the groupthink being accused of being a Trump supporter.
That is not true, and you know it is not true (just as you knew Russell was a better keeper than Stewart).
What did happen is that most people who didn't want Harris to win for reasons of their own (mostly stupid or false ones, e.g. related to 'Woke' myths) were ramping the lies and nonsense put out by Trump and batting away all the very clear evidence of his unfitness as well as downplaying (or even denying) the crimes he had committed.
Exhibits A and B - William Glenn and Leon.
The rest of us are horrified that a fat old sex offender and forger with a track record of criminality, violence and treason and a mental age of three backed by a pair of deeply sinister figures in Vance and Musk has been voted back into office ahead of a perfectly capable team of Harris and Walz who may have been dull but were not malign. And, moreover, deeply concerned with what it shows about America's politics and society.
Memo to Russia - if you have shot down an Azeri airliner near Grozny causing a lethal crash in Kazakhstan, you are in for a very bad few weeks and deservedly so.
Diverting the damaged airliner over the sea, seems like an attempt to drown the evidence.
The pilots saved the lives of some of the passengers. Given they appeared to have no elevator control this was an incredible act of airmanship.
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
Speaking of 'nature cannot be fooled,' I assumed that Trump tweet @williamglenn regaled is with on the last thread was a parody.
I now find it wasn't.
Plus he had another one ranting about evil left wing judges.
With any other person we'd be talking not just about the 25th but about him being sectioned. Trump is clearly off his head.
In his last administration he was malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, displayed truly shocking judgement and a very thin skin and was totally incompetent but he was not actually insane. Nor did he have untrammelled power as he now does.
The big worry, and this is why he should never have been nominated, is that he's surrounded by sycophants who won't do what is necessary to either constrain or remove him.
When America lurches from crisis to crisis over the next four years Republicans (and the Supreme Court) have only themselves to blame, but I'm willing to bet that like NASA they will blame everyone else first.
The even bigger worry is that Trump was put forward and financed by malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt bastards displaying truly shocking judgement - who intend to move him on using the 25th and install sombody who is so malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, and displaying truly shocking judgement that he would never have got elected in his own right.
Step forward in 2025 President Vance.
The election's over.
You don't have to keep up the pretence that Vance is the worst ever VP candidate.
Or that Tim Walz wasn't anything other than a weak VP candidate chosen by a weak presidential candidate.
And do you think Trump will make a better President? Do you think threatening to invade Panama and Greenland is a good idea? Have you read the report into Matt Gaetz, who used prostitutes illegally (including one who was under the age of consent), took all sorts of drugs, cheated on campaign finances and lied to passport officials? Do you think Trump was right to nominate him for Attorney General? Is Trump right to nominate Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense, despite the rape case? Do you think Hegseth and Tusli Gabbard are good nominations given their anti-Ukraine comments? Is Mehmet Oz a good nomination given the many health scams he’s been involved with?
That Trump is so evidently unfit to be president merely highlights how weak the Harris-Walz combination were.
Too many Pbers indulged in imbecilic levels of cheerleading and wishful thinking about Harris-Walz.
The peak being when people were defending 'Coach Walz' insinuating that Vance was a furniture-fucker.
With anyone not joining in with the groupthink being accused of being a Trump supporter.
Merry Christmas to you too.
I suspect a number of us overdosed on hopium in the light of the Republican being absolutely unfit for office. In fact the candidate should have spent the election serving time in Terra Haute for sedition and treason.
I don't recall many posters making too much of Vance and the sofa, although it was absurdly funny. He could be condemned on more substantive evidence.
Adam Boulton called it right. Harris overcoming being both a woman and a woman of colour was perhaps too much to ask.
Harris was simply second rate at national level politics. Which is why she lost the nomination to Biden, originally.
Hoping that the proven second rater would mutate into a first rate politician....
I remember when people said that America would never elect a black president - citing the joke candidacies of Jesse Jackson. They elected the first black presidential candidate actually offered to them. Because he was a good candidate.
Whitehall ‘braced for private schools collapse’ due to fee rises
The Independent Schools Council says the threat of closures after the imposition of VAT on fees is ‘very rea
Contingency plans are being drawn up in Whitehall for an influx in demand for state school places amid fears private schools will go bankrupt and close because of fee increases.
Officials are braced for the prospect that some independent schools may collapse when VAT on school fees comes into force in the new year.
Schools that are smaller, with lower fees and in areas with higher levels of competition are most at risk, government sources told The Times.
They are being monitored to see how they fare under the change, combined with publicly available information about their finances from Companies House.
Campaigners against the change warn some parents will be unable to pay a fee rise of 20 per cent, given some private schools are preparing to pass on the costs in full.
The VAT imposition will come into effect on January 1, with Treasury estimates suggesting it will lead to 37,000 fewer private school pupils in the long term — equal to about 6 per cent of children at private schools.
However, there is expected to be a smaller, more immediate impact. About 3,000 children will be taken out of private schools and will need a state place before the end of the academic year, the government believes.
My view, as a mid-level project manager who sometimes gets a glimpse of decisions near the top of large organisations, is that the main reason is the lack of willingness of senior management to accept bad news. It takes courage to tell management that we have an issue and your pet project is going to miss the deadline that will determine the value of your bonus this year. Even if you do pluck up the courage, most of the time your concerns will be dismissed airily - and so will you. (This is one of the reasons why I remain a mid-level project manager, rather than in senior management). Seeing a project unfold exactly the way I'd predicted, after being overruled and then subsequently removed from it, is no consolation.
The other reason that also often applies is the level that real informed decisions can taken. As a project manager, my team come to me for decisions and I'm usually close enough to the actual work being done to make an informed decision. If I need a decision from management, I won't usually get one - they aren't close enough to the project to be well-informed enough to make one. I have to go to management to ratify the decision I have already made.
If I'm genuinely stuck the wise manager will prod and poke me with thoughts and suggestions to test my thought process until I am able to offer a solution for ratification.
A poor manager will just go for the 'no change' option. Thereafter there is often nobody else with sufficient knowledge in the decision-making chain to challenge it, so nothing to stop the inevitable from happening.
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
Speaking of 'nature cannot be fooled,' I assumed that Trump tweet @williamglenn regaled is with on the last thread was a parody.
I now find it wasn't.
Plus he had another one ranting about evil left wing judges.
With any other person we'd be talking not just about the 25th but about him being sectioned. Trump is clearly off his head.
In his last administration he was malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, displayed truly shocking judgement and a very thin skin and was totally incompetent but he was not actually insane. Nor did he have untrammelled power as he now does.
The big worry, and this is why he should never have been nominated, is that he's surrounded by sycophants who won't do what is necessary to either constrain or remove him.
When America lurches from crisis to crisis over the next four years Republicans (and the Supreme Court) have only themselves to blame, but I'm willing to bet that like NASA they will blame everyone else first.
The even bigger worry is that Trump was put forward and financed by malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt bastards displaying truly shocking judgement - who intend to move him on using the 25th and install sombody who is so malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, and displaying truly shocking judgement that he would never have got elected in his own right.
Step forward in 2025 President Vance.
The election's over.
You don't have to keep up the pretence that Vance is the worst ever VP candidate.
Or that Tim Walz wasn't anything other than a weak VP candidate chosen by a weak presidential candidate.
And do you think Trump will make a better President? Do you think threatening to invade Panama and Greenland is a good idea? Have you read the report into Matt Gaetz, who used prostitutes illegally (including one who was under the age of consent), took all sorts of drugs, cheated on campaign finances and lied to passport officials? Do you think Trump was right to nominate him for Attorney General? Is Trump right to nominate Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense, despite the rape case? Do you think Hegseth and Tusli Gabbard are good nominations given their anti-Ukraine comments? Is Mehmet Oz a good nomination given the many health scams he’s been involved with?
That Trump is so evidently unfit to be president merely highlights how weak the Harris-Walz combination were.
Too many Pbers indulged in imbecilic levels of cheerleading and wishful thinking about Harris-Walz.
The peak being when people were defending 'Coach Walz' insinuating that Vance was a furniture-fucker.
With anyone not joining in with the groupthink being accused of being a Trump supporter.
That is not true, and you know it is not true (just as you knew Russell was a better keeper than Stewart).
What did happen is that most people who didn't want Harris to win for reasons of their own (mostly stupid or false ones, e.g. related to 'Woke' myths) were ramping the lies and nonsense put out by Trump and batting away all the very clear evidence of his unfitness as well as downplaying (or even denying) the crimes he had committed.
Exhibits A and B - William Glenn and Leon.
The rest of us are horrified that a fat old sex offender and forger with a track record of criminality, violence and treason and a mental age of three backed by a pair of deeply sinister figures in Vance and Musk has been voted back into office ahead of a perfectly capable team of Harris and Walz who may have been dull but were not malign. And, moreover, deeply concerned with what it shows about America's politics and society.
Its always deemed to be someone else's fault with an undertone of 'the thick people were deceived'.
Its easier for people to wallow in this denial rather than accept unfortunate truths.
Those unfortunate truths include Biden being a poor president, Harris being a poor presidential candidate and Walz being a poor VP candidate.
And those unfortunate truths also include the numerous mistakes the Dems have made from Biden opening the border, to an obsession about abortion to a bigoted sneering about a man who had risen from actual deprivation.
Too many Dems chose to be in denial and too many PBers chose to be in denial.
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
Speaking of 'nature cannot be fooled,' I assumed that Trump tweet @williamglenn regaled is with on the last thread was a parody.
I now find it wasn't.
Plus he had another one ranting about evil left wing judges.
With any other person we'd be talking not just about the 25th but about him being sectioned. Trump is clearly off his head.
In his last administration he was malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, displayed truly shocking judgement and a very thin skin and was totally incompetent but he was not actually insane. Nor did he have untrammelled power as he now does.
The big worry, and this is why he should never have been nominated, is that he's surrounded by sycophants who won't do what is necessary to either constrain or remove him.
When America lurches from crisis to crisis over the next four years Republicans (and the Supreme Court) have only themselves to blame, but I'm willing to bet that like NASA they will blame everyone else first.
The even bigger worry is that Trump was put forward and financed by malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt bastards displaying truly shocking judgement - who intend to move him on using the 25th and install sombody who is so malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, and displaying truly shocking judgement that he would never have got elected in his own right.
Step forward in 2025 President Vance.
The election's over.
You don't have to keep up the pretence that Vance is the worst ever VP candidate.
Or that Tim Walz wasn't anything other than a weak VP candidate chosen by a weak presidential candidate.
And do you think Trump will make a better President? Do you think threatening to invade Panama and Greenland is a good idea? Have you read the report into Matt Gaetz, who used prostitutes illegally (including one who was under the age of consent), took all sorts of drugs, cheated on campaign finances and lied to passport officials? Do you think Trump was right to nominate him for Attorney General? Is Trump right to nominate Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense, despite the rape case? Do you think Hegseth and Tusli Gabbard are good nominations given their anti-Ukraine comments? Is Mehmet Oz a good nomination given the many health scams he’s been involved with?
That Trump is so evidently unfit to be president merely highlights how weak the Harris-Walz combination were.
Too many Pbers indulged in imbecilic levels of cheerleading and wishful thinking about Harris-Walz.
The peak being when people were defending 'Coach Walz' insinuating that Vance was a furniture-fucker.
With anyone not joining in with the groupthink being accused of being a Trump supporter.
Merry Christmas to you too.
I suspect a number of us overdosed on hopium in the light of the Republican being absolutely unfit for office. In fact the candidate should have spent the election serving time in Terra Haute for sedition and treason.
I don't recall many posters making too much of Vance and the sofa, although it was absurdly funny. He could be condemned on more substantive evidence.
Adam Boulton called it right. Harris overcoming being both a woman and a woman of colour was perhaps too much to ask.
Harris was simply second rate at national level politics. Which is why she lost the nomination to Biden, originally.
Hoping that the proven second rater would mutate into a first rate politician....
I remember when people said that America would never elect a black president - citing the joke candidacies of Jesse Jackson. They elected the first black presidential candidate actually offered to them. Because he was a good candidate.
I was referencing Adam Boulton, although I don't necessarily disagree.
If Harris was second rate (I thought after the late hospital pass from Biden she did just fine) what rate was Trump?
@Cyclefree, thanks for another hard-hitting article. This was the stand-out sentence for me:
''For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Not only applicable for successful technologies.
Speaking of 'nature cannot be fooled,' I assumed that Trump tweet @williamglenn regaled is with on the last thread was a parody.
I now find it wasn't.
Plus he had another one ranting about evil left wing judges.
With any other person we'd be talking not just about the 25th but about him being sectioned. Trump is clearly off his head.
In his last administration he was malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, displayed truly shocking judgement and a very thin skin and was totally incompetent but he was not actually insane. Nor did he have untrammelled power as he now does.
The big worry, and this is why he should never have been nominated, is that he's surrounded by sycophants who won't do what is necessary to either constrain or remove him.
When America lurches from crisis to crisis over the next four years Republicans (and the Supreme Court) have only themselves to blame, but I'm willing to bet that like NASA they will blame everyone else first.
The even bigger worry is that Trump was put forward and financed by malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt bastards displaying truly shocking judgement - who intend to move him on using the 25th and install sombody who is so malign, lazy, dishonest, corrupt, and displaying truly shocking judgement that he would never have got elected in his own right.
Step forward in 2025 President Vance.
The election's over.
You don't have to keep up the pretence that Vance is the worst ever VP candidate.
Or that Tim Walz wasn't anything other than a weak VP candidate chosen by a weak presidential candidate.
And do you think Trump will make a better President? Do you think threatening to invade Panama and Greenland is a good idea? Have you read the report into Matt Gaetz, who used prostitutes illegally (including one who was under the age of consent), took all sorts of drugs, cheated on campaign finances and lied to passport officials? Do you think Trump was right to nominate him for Attorney General? Is Trump right to nominate Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense, despite the rape case? Do you think Hegseth and Tusli Gabbard are good nominations given their anti-Ukraine comments? Is Mehmet Oz a good nomination given the many health scams he’s been involved with?
That Trump is so evidently unfit to be president merely highlights how weak the Harris-Walz combination were.
Too many Pbers indulged in imbecilic levels of cheerleading and wishful thinking about Harris-Walz.
The peak being when people were defending 'Coach Walz' insinuating that Vance was a furniture-fucker.
With anyone not joining in with the groupthink being accused of being a Trump supporter.
Merry Christmas to you too.
I suspect a number of us overdosed on hopium in the light of the Republican being absolutely unfit for office. In fact the candidate should have spent the election serving time in Terra Haute for sedition and treason.
I don't recall many posters making too much of Vance and the sofa, although it was absurdly funny. He could be condemned on more substantive evidence.
Adam Boulton called it right. Harris overcoming being both a woman and a woman of colour was perhaps too much to ask.
Harris was simply second rate at national level politics. Which is why she lost the nomination to Biden, originally.
Hoping that the proven second rater would mutate into a first rate politician....
I remember when people said that America would never elect a black president - citing the joke candidacies of Jesse Jackson. They elected the first black presidential candidate actually offered to them. Because he was a good candidate.
I was referencing Adam Boulton, although I don't necessarily disagree.
If Harris was second rate (I thought after the late hospital pass from Biden she did just fine) what rate was Trump?
She did as well as could be expected, I think.
Trump is something else, again - from outside conventional politics. The previous closest example was Berlusconi. And he was a good deal more sane and sensible.
Comments
Increasingly all levels of the state expect us to think it astonishing and praiseworthy that they actually do the many jobs they have taken to themselves to perform, while they have unlimited freedom to require us to pay for by taxes.
Tesco level of service should be the basic level of all state provision.
But as I've said passim. I'd be in favour of a targeted approach to footpaths. It's surprising how piecemeal footpath provision is: as an example, my own home turf is reasonably well provided for in terms of footpaths and bridleways, whilst Lincolnshire has terrible provision. And it's not just about medium or long-distance routes, short paths out of villages can be really useful.
I'd also encourage landowners and farmers to open more concessionary routes, rather than legal footpaths.
Last minute Christmas shopping in the run up, I suspect retailers will report a good Christmas, at least in Scotland. Which is good.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/dec/26/call-for-right-to-roam-on-edges-of-private-farmland-england-walking
Carter had put very large investment towards developing solar energy in his 1980 budget.
Cancelled overnight when oil industry backed Reagan took office.
Bush's election in 2000 gave it another kick.
I’m particularly keen on it as half the time I’m the one who made the mistake…
If you want a hand with the editing/proofreading, I'm available for that (no worries if not).
Get a ghost writer used to the popular style to dumb it down for you, and I don't see why the topic couldn't be hit. One chapter per disaster.
This sort of thing, which I got for Christmas:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Show-Me-Bodies-Grenfell-Happen/dp/0861546156
But with family in farming (I'll be off for Boxing Day fun with them in a couple of hours), I can see the other side of the view: that far too many members of the public are utterly irresponsible when it comes to accessing the paths and bridleways that do exist. Also, access requires gates/stiles, and sometimes fences will be required - and these are not cheap for the landowner.
These are not reasons not to do it, but it'd be good if they could be addressed.
https://bsky.app/profile/financialtimes.com/post/3le6phrwdin2q
As few Chinese live in detached homes with their own driveways they have clearly solved the charging infrastructure problem.
China is well ahead of schedule with solar and wind power too:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/11/china-building-twice-as-much-wind-and-solar-power-as-rest-of-world-report
China's lead on green technology in terms of both innovation and volume is going to overwhelming a lot of conventional industry in our stagnant economies.
But Cyclefree's argument, I think, is that you can design into the machine error correction systems to address that. A string whistleblowing system, which is one way of allowing critical thinking about the machine to be listened to, is one such.
I can well imagine that, in England, you're screwed if there is no RoW going through your nice new executive estate on the outskirts of some village and the landowner is not in a mood to be helpful ...
People have made much about americans for example being supportive of the shooting of the insurance of the CEO. While I agree shooting someone is not the answer, I can also understand to an extent the support. Simply put his companies actions caused deaths and bankruptcies for people and the people affected really had no viable legal route of redress.
Increasingly the case across both the US and the UK at an ever accelerating rate especially now it is next to impossible to get legal aid. This was an element of the PO debacle.....innocent people feeling they had to plead guilty as they had no means to fight.
But designing systems to avoid such incidences is exceptionally hard, and even if you resolve the problem at hand, you have probably designed in some new unanticipated consequence that will later emerge
Made me laugh.
One word on the death certificate: "Inevitable".
What happens to ambitious opportunists when they reach the top job?
So, the Soham murders created a monstrous bureaucracy of certificates, approvals and regulation enormously adding to the costs of care for both the very young and the very old. Has this stopped child abuse or the bullying of the weak in care homes? Of course not.
In banking and money laundering we see ever more regulation and costs piled onto services to supposedly "protect us". Does this stop online fraud or people phoning me to ask about my recent car accident, let alone the transmission of literally billions around the world from the proceeds of illegal activity? Of course not.
There is an inevitability that the Grenfell fire inquiry will make construction in this country, already failing to keep touch with our actual needs, more bureaucratic, more expensive, more difficult and, frankly, less common. Will this prevent disasters (let alone shortages) in the future? Don't be ridiculous.
We need to change the way we think about these things. There is no way of preventing tragedies in life but the key to minimising them is, in my view, personal responsibility and accountability where that is appropriate and a culture of open disclosure (such as we have often, if not always, seen in aviation and, occasionally, in medicine) and candour. Legalising the processes just doesn't work. Even a lawyer can see that.
You don't have to keep up the pretence that Vance is the worst ever VP candidate.
Or that Tim Walz wasn't anything other than a weak VP candidate chosen by a weak presidential candidate.
Rocket scientist’s cast iron pan threatens to topple Le Creuset
A rocket scientist from the University of Oxford has invented a new type of cast iron pan using thermodynamics that could persuade home cooks away from their Le Creuset.
The enamelled cast iron Dutch oven with fins around the outside was inspired by heat transfer methods of jet engines and rocket design and leads to quicker cooking.
The fins around the pans are designed to improve heat distribution and improve efficiency. Heat that would otherwise be lost around the outside of a pan can be captured and used to create an “oven-like” effect.
The pan is produced by FireUp – a company that received £10,000 from the University of Oxford’s Innovation incubator programme which gives funding to entrepreneurs in exchange for a percentage of royalties.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/12/25/oxford-rocket-scientists-cast-iron-pan-threatens-le-creuset/ (£££)
Sounds promising. Britain at the forefront of innovation, disrupting centuries' old industries.
Except they are making the bloody things in France, of all places.
It's funny how Johnson was so versed in Classics yet failed to understand that key point.
Which is why you're more likely to cut your leg off the thousandth time you use a chainsaw, rather than the first...
"Oh, I got away with that last time. It'll be okay this time..."
On topic, I found Ms Cyclefeee's intro interesting, as indeed, I usually find her writings, but it put me in mind of something written in the 50's by the late Professor Northcote Parkinson. I can't lay hands on the actually quote at the moment, but it concerned, IIRC, a projected space mission and the decisions made en route to lift off. The Chief engineer's concerns were repeatedly ignored 'because a deadline had been agreed for the launch'.
I also remain concerned that when the Report on the Post Office Affair is finally written the 'Great and Good' will be found to have relied on subordinates, who will consequently be tossed to the wolves.
For me, adequate housing, no further need for food banks, ex-Servicemen not living in Halfords tents and recently revived childhood Victorian diseases becoming a thing of the past would be a win. But the new Government doesn't appear to have looked into any of that.
It is fascinating that the future looks Farage shaped and the Conservatives, despite rabid claims that Labour are finished (possibly true) on here, appear to remain dead in the water. Oh for a functioning Tory Party of Ken Clark, Heseltine, Pryor and Whitelaw.
A local school had a new Assistant Head who tried to do it over the summer holidays by setting up the automatic function of the timetable software and leaving it to run. Unsurprisingly to anyone who has used such software, it didn’t work and the school ended up starting in September without a timetable.
The other problem on relying on a Sixth former, however good, is that they are only around for a couple of years. It takes that long to get used to the software.
Boxing Day 🐎
Kempton 1245 - Range
Kempton 1.20 - Hyland
Kempton 1.55 - Lossiemouth
Kempton 2.30 - Il Est Francais
Happy Boxing Day
It would aim to heal the desire for retribution from climate losers.
I don't think it will happen, but think it is needed.
Couldn’t you just have a ham and cheese toastie with pumpkin latte and lighten up?
As it is still Christmas would that be a glazed gammon and stilton toastie?
Egg and Chips.
I'd highly recommend it and leave the leftovers another day
Add Musk, who is basically now Daniel Plainview in the last 20 minutes of There Will Be Blood, and you've got lolz aplenty.
Dinner: Bubble and squeak, duck, stuffing and salad. Pudding: Christmas pudding and cream
Just about possible if the school is small enough, all replacements are like-for like (so no newly qualified or part-time teachers), there is no choice as to what subjects each pupil does (so the number of sets stays the same), and teachers do not follow their classes from Y10 to Y11 or Y12 to Y13. Oh, and the people teaching double Y10 on a Friday afternoon are happy to do that for ever.
Teaching double year 10 bottom set English? Fuck off!
I'm not sure how often he was asked to come back.
Just read the schedules and transitional provisions of a major bill, and it will quickly be discovered that the office of these draughtsmen is where Vholes and other Dickensian lawyers go to die a dry and dusty death. Great moments in their lives include the impossibilities of the Rwanda bill deeming untruths to be facts, and the glories of the ever changing Covid rules.
Hence the reaction to Grenfell is to add an additional ton of paperwork. Not more inspectors to check that they are not building flats out of fire lighters.
This has already happened.
How could we proceed without being able to call on 'society' to blame or do something. But by far my favourite is 'the international community' which is both to blame for everything and simultaneously is the only known cure, (and which patently does not exist) currently a top pick for BBC journalists reporting from some bombed out god forsaken hell hole.
https://www.phys.ufl.edu/~thorn/grooks.html
Too many Pbers indulged in imbecilic levels of cheerleading and wishful thinking about Harris-Walz.
The peak being when people were defending 'Coach Walz' insinuating that Vance was a furniture-fucker.
With anyone not joining in with the groupthink being accused of being a Trump supporter.
“The entire natural world is a non-linear system. It appears chaotic, but with layers of apparent order, depending on the scale. So we can predict the climate, but not the weather in a month’s time. This goes for Humans as well – and most of our works. This in turn means that a rigid system of rules, applied without exceptions to human endeavours, will fail. This is a mathematical certainty.
Hence the ever tighter grip of systems with totalitarian aspirations – try ing to crush those pesky humans into Perfect Order. And this is why totalitarian systems always fail.”
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2024/02/04/the-state-of-process-the-process-state/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgp3qx0q7wo
Memo to Russia - if you have shot down an Azeri airliner near Grozny causing a lethal crash in Kazakhstan, you are in for a very bad few weeks and deservedly so.
I suspect a number of us overdosed on hopium in the light of the Republican being absolutely unfit for office. In fact the candidate should have spent the election serving time in Terra Haute for sedition and treason.
I don't recall many posters making too much of Vance and the sofa, although it was absurdly funny. He could be condemned on more substantive evidence.
Adam Boulton called it right. Harris overcoming being both a woman and a woman of colour was perhaps too much to ask.
I did it with lots of little magnetic coloured squares on a large metal wall board.
What did happen is that most people who didn't want Harris to win for reasons of their own (mostly stupid or false ones, e.g. related to 'Woke' myths) were ramping the lies and nonsense put out by Trump and batting away all the very clear evidence of his unfitness as well as downplaying (or even denying) the crimes he had committed.
Exhibits A and B - William Glenn and Leon.
The rest of us are horrified that a fat old sex offender and forger with a track record of criminality, violence and treason and a mental age of three backed by a pair of deeply sinister figures in Vance and Musk has been voted back into office ahead of a perfectly capable team of Harris and Walz who may have been dull but were not malign. And, moreover, deeply concerned with what it shows about America's politics and society.
The pilots saved the lives of some of the passengers. Given they appeared to have no elevator control this was an incredible act of airmanship.
Hoping that the proven second rater would mutate into a first rate politician....
As to colour and women - Barak Obama won easily, twice. Polling suggested that if Nikki Haley was the Republican candidate, she would have crushed Biden - https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/haley-campaign-press-release-breaking-haley-beats-biden-18-points-national-marquette-poll
I remember when people said that America would never elect a black president - citing the joke candidacies of Jesse Jackson. They elected the first black presidential candidate actually offered to them. Because he was a good candidate.
Whitehall ‘braced for private schools collapse’ due to fee rises
The Independent Schools Council says the threat of closures after the imposition of VAT on fees is ‘very rea
Contingency plans are being drawn up in Whitehall for an influx in demand for state school places amid fears private schools will go bankrupt and close because of fee increases.
Officials are braced for the prospect that some independent schools may collapse when VAT on school fees comes into force in the new year.
Schools that are smaller, with lower fees and in areas with higher levels of competition are most at risk, government sources told The Times.
They are being monitored to see how they fare under the change, combined with publicly available information about their finances from Companies House.
Campaigners against the change warn some parents will be unable to pay a fee rise of 20 per cent, given some private schools are preparing to pass on the costs in full.
The VAT imposition will come into effect on January 1, with Treasury estimates suggesting it will lead to 37,000 fewer private school pupils in the long term — equal to about 6 per cent of children at private schools.
However, there is expected to be a smaller, more immediate impact. About 3,000 children will be taken out of private schools and will need a state place before the end of the academic year, the government believes.
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/education/article/whitehall-braced-for-private-schools-collapse-due-to-fee-rises-5x3p5xdzj
My view, as a mid-level project manager who sometimes gets a glimpse of decisions near the top of large organisations, is that the main reason is the lack of willingness of senior management to accept bad news. It takes courage to tell management that we have an issue and your pet project is going to miss the deadline that will determine the value of your bonus this year. Even if you do pluck up the courage, most of the time your concerns will be dismissed airily - and so will you. (This is one of the reasons why I remain a mid-level project manager, rather than in senior management). Seeing a project unfold exactly the way I'd predicted, after being overruled and then subsequently removed from it, is no consolation.
The other reason that also often applies is the level that real informed decisions can taken. As a project manager, my team come to me for decisions and I'm usually close enough to the actual work being done to make an informed decision. If I need a decision from management, I won't usually get one - they aren't close enough to the project to be well-informed enough to make one. I have to go to management to ratify the decision I have already made.
If I'm genuinely stuck the wise manager will prod and poke me with thoughts and suggestions to test my thought process until I am able to offer a solution for ratification.
A poor manager will just go for the 'no change' option. Thereafter there is often nobody else with sufficient knowledge in the decision-making chain to challenge it, so nothing to stop the inevitable from happening.
Its easier for people to wallow in this denial rather than accept unfortunate truths.
Those unfortunate truths include Biden being a poor president, Harris being a poor presidential candidate and Walz being a poor VP candidate.
And those unfortunate truths also include the numerous mistakes the Dems have made from Biden opening the border, to an obsession about abortion to a bigoted sneering about a man who had risen from actual deprivation.
Too many Dems chose to be in denial and too many PBers chose to be in denial.
And still are.
If Harris was second rate (I thought after the late hospital pass from Biden she did just fine) what rate was Trump?
Trump is something else, again - from outside conventional politics. The previous closest example was Berlusconi. And he was a good deal more sane and sensible.