The Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology (yes, it is that time of the year again) has been awarded to the discoverers of T-cells. One of the recipients cannot be contacted as he has gone ‘off-grid’.
Computer security news: the Online Safety Act is, no, only joking.
Discord has announced a third-party data breach: stolen data may include names, email addresses, billing information such as payment type and the last four digits of credit cards, and – in some cases – images of government IDs provided for age verification purposes. https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/06/discord_support_data_breach/
Computer security news: the Online Safety Act is, no, only joking.
Discord has announced a third-party data breach: stolen data may include names, email addresses, billing information such as payment type and the last four digits of credit cards, and – in some cases – images of government IDs provided for age verification purposes. https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/06/discord_support_data_breach/
And that's why I only upload other PBers driving licenses to age verification services.
Absolutely fucking bizarre how many senior Republicans don't know who was president in 2020.
The 2020 Census was a fraud. The Biden admin used a shady “privacy” formula that scrambled the data and miscounted 14 states. It included illegal immigrants and handed Democrats extra seats. Americans deserve a fair count and I’m fighting to fix it. https://x.com/SenatorBanks/status/1975242153942020548
A federal judge on Monday declined to block the deployment of National Guard troops to Illinois, a mobilization that the state’s governor, JB Pritzker, labeled an “unconstitutional invasion” by the federal government.
The judge’s ruling, which allows the deployment to move ahead for now, came as a military official said 200 troops from the Texas Guard were headed to Illinois, and lawyers from the Trump administration said they were expected to be deployed by Tuesday or Wednesday. A similar effort to send Texas troops to Portland, Ore., has been blocked for now.
NY Times live blog
I'd have thought the US president can send federal troops wherever he likes. That's one of the points of being president.
In the US the States are far more important than their equivalents in Europe. The federal government was established by the States to coordinate activity rather than power being devolved from the centre
Yes, the US derives its powers from the States. There’s a very long history of arguments between the States and the Federal government about who should be in charge of what. Governors and Presidents have been fighting each other, sometimes literally, for 250 years!
That massive Crimean oil terminal does appear to be still, umm, experiencing operational difficulties, following last night’s unexpected conflagration.
The Tyumen oil refinery, nearly 2,000km from Ukraine, may also now have been hit.
It's a middle-sized refinery that hasn't been hit before.
Ukraine do seem to be stepping up the tempo of their attacks on Russian oil refineries.
It’s almost as if someone just gave them a lot of Storm Shadows to play with
The range of storm shadow is only 250km. I don't think Russian air defences are yet so weak that Ukrainian jets are roaming deep into Russian airspace.
550km
Oops, yes.
I made the mistake of relying on the AI summary from my search, rather than reading a more reliable source.
Still, the oil refinery is nearly four times further away.
Brought to mine this old meme :
There are ferries from Portsmouth to Spain, so they could have got to Spain. But they would have had to sit down a lot. However they also do overnight ferries so they could have had a nice lie down before expending the last of their miles at Bilbao or Santander. Perhaps they could have taken a packed lunch.
(Ahem). Having started a long walk in Edinburgh, and having passed through Leith within a couple of miles of the start and end, I could like to point out the stupidity of assuming a *straight* line. If the Proclaimers, being good Leith boys, decided on a coastal walk, then 500 miles would have got them to the wonders around Skegness / Boston.
Alternatively, as that is in England, a widdershins walks would have got them to around the Cromarty / Inverness area.
This is so obviously the correct answer I fail to understand how anyone could even argue with it...
The Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology (yes, it is that time of the year again) has been awarded to the discoverers of T-cells. One of the recipients cannot be contacted as he has gone ‘off-grid’.
The seminal paper of Shimon Sakaguchi published in 1995 @J_Immunol where he discovered CD4+ CD25+ cells that actively suppress autoimmunity. It was the first time T regulatory cells appeared in the literature. Not all Nobel Prize winning work need to be in glamorous journals. https://x.com/taurine__/status/1975181717297082407
The Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology (yes, it is that time of the year again) has been awarded to the discoverers of T-cells. One of the recipients cannot be contacted as he has gone ‘off-grid’.
They're the ones involved in telling T-cells not to attack your own cells.
I’m sure that @Jossiasjessop would appreciate the fact that one of the winners is on a hike in Idaho and uncontactable - so doesn’t know he’s won the Nobel Prize…
The Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology (yes, it is that time of the year again) has been awarded to the discoverers of T-cells. One of the recipients cannot be contacted as he has gone ‘off-grid’.
A federal judge on Monday declined to block the deployment of National Guard troops to Illinois, a mobilization that the state’s governor, JB Pritzker, labeled an “unconstitutional invasion” by the federal government.
The judge’s ruling, which allows the deployment to move ahead for now, came as a military official said 200 troops from the Texas Guard were headed to Illinois, and lawyers from the Trump administration said they were expected to be deployed by Tuesday or Wednesday. A similar effort to send Texas troops to Portland, Ore., has been blocked for now.
NY Times live blog
I'd have thought the US president can send federal troops wherever he likes. That's one of the points of being president.
What he can do legally is federalise (take control of) the local National Guard. Each State has its own Army - called the National Guard - for its own purposes and the President can take control of it. But Trump is taking the piss by sending the Texas National Guard into Illinois, and I can't help thinking the Illinois National Guard would be legally justified in shooting the Texans.
I can’t help but think they’d be much better off shooting the President.
Police say they have dismantled an international gang suspected of smuggling up to 40,000 stolen mobile phones from the UK to China in the last year. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20vlpwrzwdo
Police say they have dismantled an international gang suspected of smuggling up to 40,000 stolen mobile phones from the UK to China in the last year. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20vlpwrzwdo
Meanwhile, British Transport Police have announced open season for criminals to steal bikes and cars parked at stations:
Computer security news: the Online Safety Act is, no, only joking.
Discord has announced a third-party data breach: stolen data may include names, email addresses, billing information such as payment type and the last four digits of credit cards, and – in some cases – images of government IDs provided for age verification purposes. https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/06/discord_support_data_breach/
Good morning, everyone.
Colour me shocked. Shocked, I tell you! Who could've imagined this terribly designed piece of legislation could've had any negative consequences.
This, needing it for Xbox social stuff, and the like is going to seriously piss off a lot of people. It may not affect Labour's polling as they've already annoyed a lot of people, but I'd be very inclined to listen to parties (not Reform/Green) who indicate they'd axe this OSA bullshit. And Labour's online ID cards.
Police say they have dismantled an international gang suspected of smuggling up to 40,000 stolen mobile phones from the UK to China in the last year. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20vlpwrzwdo
Meanwhile, British Transport Police have announced open season for criminals to steal bikes and cars parked at stations:
The higher-ups at the police clearly want Farage as next PM.
They can seemingly always spare officers to knock on doors half a dozen at a time because someone was offended by a Facebook post, yet have no time to investigate acquisitive crimes against people and businesses. Bike theft and phone theft are horrible events for the victims.
I regularly review CCTV at work. It would take about five minutes to find when a bike was stolen on a 10-hour digital tape, if I knew at what time it had been parked and had a description of the owner and/or the bike.
That chocolate bar. Understand the process: 1) Ideation - lets hand out Cadbury bars with a slogan on the wrapper 2) Design - a template is made and slogans written 3) Approval - someone signs off the file to print 4) Creation - printer receives the file, pisses himself, fulfils the contract. Box(es) of labels sent to CCHQ 5) Wrappers are removed from Cadbury bars and the new wrapper is applied and glued 6) Slogan chocs packed into boxes 7) Boxes unpacked and the contents put into goody bags for delegates and hacks
At multiple points people had eyeballs on the wrapper. Design, approval, wrapping, distribution
So either: it's deliberate mendacious wrecking. Or the party is grotesquely monumentally stupid.
Even at the last minute once they started bing handed out surely someone would notice not spelt gud and pull them back.
How the hell did this happen?
The other possibility is a variant on the "grotesquely monumentally stupid" theory.
The actual functioning of politics has depended, for all my life, on a cohort of bright young things, mostly graduates, prepared to do lots of work for relatively little money. There was a splendid example who came and shook things up on the Solent coast for a bit, until the activists make it clear that they didn't like being shook up, dayglo posters and whatnot. The supply of such people is partly about belief in the cause and partly about getting a foot in the door for something better later.
Now consider the Conservative predicament. There are approximately no Tory Boys left- hardly anyone under the age of about 50 votes for them. Partly Brexit, partly all the other social stuff, mostly because the Conservative Party have made it clear that working aged people are viewed as cash cows to fund pensioners. So you can forget people working for a cause they belive in. And there's not much point in getting your foot in the door of a building that is on fire. So forget the careerists.
I'd say "would the last campaign professional turn out the lights", except it's possibly too late for that. Simpler to wait for the electricity to be cut off for non-payment of bills.
Broadly, almost anybody under 50, who is on the Right, now supports Reform. Their supporters’ age profile now resembles that of the Conservatives, in the past. It increases with age, but a significant minority of young people support them.
All organisations run their course, eventually, and that’s likely true of the Conservatives. They are no longer relevant, in the voters’ eyes.
Except that isn't entirely true, indeed the only age group the Conservatives now still regularly lead Reform in polls is 18 to 24s. The only age group Kemi has made gains with since the last general election rather than losses is under 30s
I'm not sure that's true - YouGov have Ref beating Con by 12% to 7% in the 18-24 age group. For 25-49 it's Ref 24, Con 13. Even Labour are polling better than the Conservatives in the 50-64 age group.
Just a bit tragic really. I think we'll regret our politics replicating the America in the long term.
Yougov and many other pollsters have had the Conservatives ahead of Reform with 18 to 24s in recent months.
Though overall the trend is to the white nationalist right over the centre right here as in the US, France, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands and to some extent Germany.
If the trend continues I would not be surprised to see a near all out war between white nationalists and Muslims and the woke left in our towns and cities in a decade or two. Maybe even a Fascist government in some western nations, others seeing further growth in the populist left
The populist left isn’t doing particularly well anywhere. The only exceptions are those where there is a nationalist identitarian angle, as with some pro-Putin types in Eastern Europe.
The new cleavage seems more to be between the populist right and the internationist liberal centre. We see this pattern in action in France, Poland, Germany, Romania, Moldova, Hungary, Turkey and so on.
Melenchon's populist left block has most seats in the French Assembly. Corbyn got 40% of the vote in 2017 and the Polanski Greens are already polling over 10%. Podemos are in government in Spain. Linke are on over 10% in Germany. Bernie Sanders won many primaries in 2016 and 2020.
The west is now converging on three blocks, nationalist right and liberal centre as you say but also populist left too. The Conservatives problem is they are about two thirds nationalist right and a third liberal centre now
If AI leads to loss of permanent jobs with no replacement then the populist left will grow yet further to hammer corporations and the rich with tax to fund UBIs
I gave 'the AI' a bit of a workout this past week. Converting the user interface from one set of frameworks to another one we are standardising on. I estimated before-hand at roughly a full-time good developer taking a year to do it.
The coding agents did it in just under two days at a cost of about 30 quid.
There was a lot of prep-work and to-and-fro to get things to be in the position of making it a success. But still. This will all end up fine.
To be fair, that's *exactly* what LLMs are best at: i.e. converting something with existing logic to something fuctionally identical using a different API or library.
The Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology (yes, it is that time of the year again) has been awarded to the discoverers of T-cells. One of the recipients cannot be contacted as he has gone ‘off-grid’.
They're the ones involved in telling T-cells not to attack your own cells.
I’m sure that @Jossiasjessop would appreciate the fact that one of the winners is on a hike in Idaho and uncontactable - so doesn’t know he’s won the Nobel Prize…
We should perhaps write a paper on "Schrödinger's Nobel Prize": if you win the Nobel Prize but do not know it, have you actually won?
(Can you *reject* a Nobel Prize? It's hard to imagine why you would, but is there a process? And if it's an award for two or three people, would your name be left off, or would the entire team lost it?)
The Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology (yes, it is that time of the year again) has been awarded to the discoverers of T-cells. One of the recipients cannot be contacted as he has gone ‘off-grid’.
They're the ones involved in telling T-cells not to attack your own cells.
I’m sure that @Jossiasjessop would appreciate the fact that one of the winners is on a hike in Idaho and uncontactable - so doesn’t know he’s won the Nobel Prize…
We should perhaps write a paper on "Schrödinger's Nobel Prize": if you win the Nobel Prize but do not know it, have you actually won?
(Can you *reject* a Nobel Prize? It's hard to imagine why you would, but is there a process? And if it's an award for two or three people, would your name be left off, or would the entire team lost it?)
Yes. Jean-Paul Satre did, for instance, although as far as I know he’s the only one who has done so for reasons other than political pressure.
When Hitler forced one chemist to refuse the award I think the other (Swiss) scientists in his team still got it.
The Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology (yes, it is that time of the year again) has been awarded to the discoverers of T-cells. One of the recipients cannot be contacted as he has gone ‘off-grid’.
They're the ones involved in telling T-cells not to attack your own cells.
I’m sure that @Jossiasjessop would appreciate the fact that one of the winners is on a hike in Idaho and uncontactable - so doesn’t know he’s won the Nobel Prize…
We should perhaps write a paper on "Schrödinger's Nobel Prize": if you win the Nobel Prize but do not know it, have you actually won?
(Can you *reject* a Nobel Prize? It's hard to imagine why you would, but is there a process? And if it's an award for two or three people, would your name be left off, or would the entire team lost it?)
Yes. Jean-Paul Satre did, for instance, although as far as I know he’s the only one who has done so for reasons other than political pressure.
When Hitler forced one chemist to refuse the award I think the other (Swiss) scientists in his team still got it.
Thanks. I was not being fully serious, and love the fact someone knew the facts!
Police say they have dismantled an international gang suspected of smuggling up to 40,000 stolen mobile phones from the UK to China in the last year. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20vlpwrzwdo
Meanwhile, British Transport Police have announced open season for criminals to steal bikes and cars parked at stations:
The higher-ups at the police clearly want Farage as next PM.
They can seemingly always spare officers to knock on doors half a dozen at a time because someone was offended by a Facebook post, yet have no time to investigate acquisitive crimes against people and businesses. Bike theft and phone theft are horrible events for the victims.
I regularly review CCTV at work. It would take about five minutes to find when a bike was stolen on a 10-hour digital tape, if I knew at what time it had been parked and had a description of the owner and/or the bike.
Account£ding to the FSU just over 30 people a day are arrested for social media posts. Far more than other less enlightened nations like Belarus, Russia and China.
With phone theft they can track where the phone is and the Police won’t bother.
"Irishman Aiden Minnis, fighting for Russia in the special military operation zone, dramatically burned his British passport with the phrase "Britain, go to hell!", accompanying it with a burst from an automatic rifle."
"Mr Minnis is a former drug addict who was also previously a member of the far-right National Front party during his time in the UK. In 2008 he was jailed for 4 years and 3 months for an unprovoked racially assaulting on a man in the street"
A federal judge on Monday declined to block the deployment of National Guard troops to Illinois, a mobilization that the state’s governor, JB Pritzker, labeled an “unconstitutional invasion” by the federal government.
The judge’s ruling, which allows the deployment to move ahead for now, came as a military official said 200 troops from the Texas Guard were headed to Illinois, and lawyers from the Trump administration said they were expected to be deployed by Tuesday or Wednesday. A similar effort to send Texas troops to Portland, Ore., has been blocked for now.
NY Times live blog
I'd have thought the US president can send federal troops wherever he likes. That's one of the points of being president.
What he can do legally is federalise (take control of) the local National Guard. Each State has its own Army - called the National Guard - for its own purposes and the President can take control of it. But Trump is taking the piss by sending the Texas National Guard into Illinois, and I can't help thinking the Illinois National Guard would be legally justified in shooting the Texans.
I can’t help but think they’d be much better off shooting the President.
The Kirk shooting demonstrates that would be counter productive and Civil War would follow quickly.
Our only hope is The Terminator films are based on a reality. Personally I'd send Arnie back in time to deal with the teenage Stephen Miller. I believe everyone is "mis-underestimating" Stephen Miller's capacity for undiluted evil.
Bigger question is how Heath got elected as Conservative Party leader in the first place with social skills that poor
He was posh in a time where posh was important.
Behaving appropriately to subordinates ( even posh ones) wasn't really a requirement.bsck then.
He was actually from a working-class background and got into Oxford on a scholarship. People liked to mock his posh accent because they thought he was putting it on but I've never believed that, it was just how Oxford students talked at the time, and you naturally speak like the people you're around after a while.
Grammar school boy from Broadstairs, I believe.
His father was a carpenter and his mother a lady's maid.
Police say they have dismantled an international gang suspected of smuggling up to 40,000 stolen mobile phones from the UK to China in the last year. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20vlpwrzwdo
Meanwhile, British Transport Police have announced open season for criminals to steal bikes and cars parked at stations:
The higher-ups at the police clearly want Farage as next PM.
They can seemingly always spare officers to knock on doors half a dozen at a time because someone was offended by a Facebook post, yet have no time to investigate acquisitive crimes against people and businesses. Bike theft and phone theft are horrible events for the victims.
I regularly review CCTV at work. It would take about five minutes to find when a bike was stolen on a 10-hour digital tape, if I knew at what time it had been parked and had a description of the owner and/or the bike.
Account£ding to the FSU just over 30 people a day are arrested for social media posts. Far more than other less enlightened nations like Belarus, Russia and China.
With phone theft they can track where the phone is and the Police won’t bother.
I’ve seen a number of stories where stolen items were tracked to an address, but the police were seemingly uninterested in doing anything to recover them.
That said, this phone theft gang getting rounded up does appear to be positive news today.
Police say they have dismantled an international gang suspected of smuggling up to 40,000 stolen mobile phones from the UK to China in the last year. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20vlpwrzwdo
Meanwhile, British Transport Police have announced open season for criminals to steal bikes and cars parked at stations:
The higher-ups at the police clearly want Farage as next PM.
They can seemingly always spare officers to knock on doors half a dozen at a time because someone was offended by a Facebook post, yet have no time to investigate acquisitive crimes against people and businesses. Bike theft and phone theft are horrible events for the victims.
I regularly review CCTV at work. It would take about five minutes to find when a bike was stolen on a 10-hour digital tape, if I knew at what time it had been parked and had a description of the owner and/or the bike.
Account£ding to the FSU just over 30 people a day are arrested for social media posts. Far more than other less enlightened nations like Belarus, Russia and China.
With phone theft they can track where the phone is and the Police won’t bother.
I’ve seen a number of stories where stolen items were tracked to an address, but the police were seemingly uninterested in doing anything to recover them.
That said, this phone theft gang getting rounded up does appear to be positive news today.
Yes it does, although I expect like with drug gangs, there’ll be another to fill the gap shortly as rage demand has not gone.
I’ve also seen on Twitter people spraying pickpockets with paint in London. Not sure how I feel about it, but if the Polixe do little about a problem people take matters into their own hands.
Bigger question is how Heath got elected as Conservative Party leader in the first place with social skills that poor
He was posh in a time where posh was important.
Behaving appropriately to subordinates ( even posh ones) wasn't really a requirement.bsck then.
He was actually from a working-class background and got into Oxford on a scholarship. People liked to mock his posh accent because they thought he was putting it on but I've never believed that, it was just how Oxford students talked at the time, and you naturally speak like the people you're around after a while.
Grammar school boy from Broadstairs, I believe.
His father was a carpenter and his mother a lady's maid.
You really don't get the class system. In fact both Heath and Wilson were grammar school boys. At the time this was a new thing and seen as the end of the old boy network, and the end of elitism. The generation of politicians that had "a good war" were not like their predecessors McMillan and Home, and for many the relatively humble background of Heath in particular was the source of derision ("Grocer" Heath). It explains why Heath remained bitter after his outer, not just against fellow grammar schooler, Margaret Thatcher, but those in her entourage that were quite snobbish towards Heath, but entertained ludicrous ideas that Thatcher was the illegitimate daughter of a Duke, rather than the actual Grocer, Alderman Roberts.
"Irishman Aiden Minnis, fighting for Russia in the special military operation zone, dramatically burned his British passport with the phrase "Britain, go to hell!", accompanying it with a burst from an automatic rifle."
"Mr Minnis is a former drug addict who was also previously a member of the far-right National Front party during his time in the UK. In 2008 he was jailed for 4 years and 3 months for an unprovoked racially assaulting on a man in the street"
He’ll fit in well in the Russian army. For a week or two anyway.
Life expectancy on the front line now said to be 12 days for Russians, they’re doing stupid stuff like amassing troops and equipment on the wrong side of the river near Lyman, and only then trying to build the bridge across. The bridge never gets finished before it gets the Storm Shadow treatment, meanwhile half an army are sitting ducks for Ukranian artillery.
The Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology (yes, it is that time of the year again) has been awarded to the discoverers of T-cells. One of the recipients cannot be contacted as he has gone ‘off-grid’.
The Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology (yes, it is that time of the year again) has been awarded to the discoverers of T-cells. One of the recipients cannot be contacted as he has gone ‘off-grid’.
They're the ones involved in telling T-cells not to attack your own cells.
I’m sure that @Jossiasjessop would appreciate the fact that one of the winners is on a hike in Idaho and uncontactable - so doesn’t know he’s won the Nobel Prize…
We should perhaps write a paper on "Schrödinger's Nobel Prize": if you win the Nobel Prize but do not know it, have you actually won?
(Can you *reject* a Nobel Prize? It's hard to imagine why you would, but is there a process? And if it's an award for two or three people, would your name be left off, or would the entire team lost it?)
I think Boris Pasternak was forced to refuse it, while Kissinger accepted it despite Le Duc Tho (his counterpart) declining it on the grounds that peace hadn’t been achieved
The Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology (yes, it is that time of the year again) has been awarded to the discoverers of T-cells. One of the recipients cannot be contacted as he has gone ‘off-grid’.
"Irishman Aiden Minnis, fighting for Russia in the special military operation zone, dramatically burned his British passport with the phrase "Britain, go to hell!", accompanying it with a burst from an automatic rifle."
"Mr Minnis is a former drug addict who was also previously a member of the far-right National Front party during his time in the UK. In 2008 he was jailed for 4 years and 3 months for an unprovoked racially assaulting on a man in the street"
He’ll fit in well in the Russian army. For a week or two anyway.
Life expectancy on the front line now said to be 12 days for Russians, they’re doing stupid stuff like amassing troops and equipment on the wrong side of the river near Lyman, and only then trying to build the bridge across. The bridge never gets finished before it gets the Storm Shadow treatment, meanwhile half an army are sitting ducks for Ukranian artillery.
That must be an interesting judgement.
How much time/material do you let the Russians utilise before you take it out? The risk being they complete it. I’d probably go at 70% but could see the argument for more
Bigger question is how Heath got elected as Conservative Party leader in the first place with social skills that poor
He was posh in a time where posh was important.
Behaving appropriately to subordinates ( even posh ones) wasn't really a requirement.bsck then.
He was actually from a working-class background and got into Oxford on a scholarship. People liked to mock his posh accent because they thought he was putting it on but I've never believed that, it was just how Oxford students talked at the time, and you naturally speak like the people you're around after a while.
Grammar school boy from Broadstairs, I believe.
His father was a carpenter and his mother a lady's maid.
You really don't get the class system. In fact both Heath and Wilson were grammar school boys. At the time this was a new thing and seen as the end of the old boy network, and the end of elitism. The generation of politicians that had "a good war" were not like their predecessors McMillan and Home, and for many the relatively humble background of Heath in particular was the source of derision ("Grocer" Heath). It explains why Heath remained bitter after his outer, not just against fellow grammar schooler, Margaret Thatcher, but those in her entourage that were quite snobbish towards Heath, but entertained ludicrous ideas that Thatcher was the illegitimate daughter of a Duke, rather than the actual Grocer, Alderman Roberts.
Who in Margaret Thatcher's entourage believed she was the illegitimate daughter of a Duke?
Bigger question is how Heath got elected as Conservative Party leader in the first place with social skills that poor
He was posh in a time where posh was important.
Behaving appropriately to subordinates ( even posh ones) wasn't really a requirement.bsck then.
He was actually from a working-class background and got into Oxford on a scholarship. People liked to mock his posh accent because they thought he was putting it on but I've never believed that, it was just how Oxford students talked at the time, and you naturally speak like the people you're around after a while.
Grammar school boy from Broadstairs, I believe.
His father was a carpenter and his mother a lady's maid.
You really don't get the class system. In fact both Heath and Wilson were grammar school boys. At the time this was a new thing and seen as the end of the old boy network, and the end of elitism. The generation of politicians that had "a good war" were not like their predecessors McMillan and Home, and for many the relatively humble background of Heath in particular was the source of derision ("Grocer" Heath). It explains why Heath remained bitter after his outer, not just against fellow grammar schooler, Margaret Thatcher, but those in her entourage that were quite snobbish towards Heath, but entertained ludicrous ideas that Thatcher was the illegitimate daughter of a Duke, rather than the actual Grocer, Alderman Roberts.
Who in Margaret Thatcher's entourage believed she was the illegitimate daughter of a Duke?
It's quoted in Alan Clarke's diaries. "There's blood; there, blood".
The Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology (yes, it is that time of the year again) has been awarded to the discoverers of T-cells. One of the recipients cannot be contacted as he has gone ‘off-grid’.
They're the ones involved in telling T-cells not to attack your own cells.
I’m sure that @Jossiasjessop would appreciate the fact that one of the winners is on a hike in Idaho and uncontactable - so doesn’t know he’s won the Nobel Prize…
We should perhaps write a paper on "Schrödinger's Nobel Prize": if you win the Nobel Prize but do not know it, have you actually won?
(Can you *reject* a Nobel Prize? It's hard to imagine why you would, but is there a process? And if it's an award for two or three people, would your name be left off, or would the entire team lost it?)
I think Boris Pasternak was forced to refuse it, while Kissinger accepted it despite Le Duc Tho (his counterpart) declining it on the grounds that peace hadn’t been achieved
The Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology (yes, it is that time of the year again) has been awarded to the discoverers of T-cells. One of the recipients cannot be contacted as he has gone ‘off-grid’.
They're the ones involved in telling T-cells not to attack your own cells.
I’m sure that @Jossiasjessop would appreciate the fact that one of the winners is on a hike in Idaho and uncontactable - so doesn’t know he’s won the Nobel Prize…
We should perhaps write a paper on "Schrödinger's Nobel Prize": if you win the Nobel Prize but do not know it, have you actually won?
(Can you *reject* a Nobel Prize? It's hard to imagine why you would, but is there a process? And if it's an award for two or three people, would your name be left off, or would the entire team lost it?)
I think Boris Pasternak was forced to refuse it, while Kissinger accepted it despite Le Duc Tho (his counterpart) declining it on the grounds that peace hadn’t been achieved
Computer security news: the Online Safety Act is, no, only joking.
Discord has announced a third-party data breach: stolen data may include names, email addresses, billing information such as payment type and the last four digits of credit cards, and – in some cases – images of government IDs provided for age verification purposes. https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/06/discord_support_data_breach/
VPN set to the Isle of Man and the problem goes away...
That chocolate bar. Understand the process: 1) Ideation - lets hand out Cadbury bars with a slogan on the wrapper 2) Design - a template is made and slogans written 3) Approval - someone signs off the file to print 4) Creation - printer receives the file, pisses himself, fulfils the contract. Box(es) of labels sent to CCHQ 5) Wrappers are removed from Cadbury bars and the new wrapper is applied and glued 6) Slogan chocs packed into boxes 7) Boxes unpacked and the contents put into goody bags for delegates and hacks
At multiple points people had eyeballs on the wrapper. Design, approval, wrapping, distribution
So either: it's deliberate mendacious wrecking. Or the party is grotesquely monumentally stupid.
Even at the last minute once they started bing handed out surely someone would notice not spelt gud and pull them back.
How the hell did this happen?
The other possibility is a variant on the "grotesquely monumentally stupid" theory.
The actual functioning of politics has depended, for all my life, on a cohort of bright young things, mostly graduates, prepared to do lots of work for relatively little money. There was a splendid example who came and shook things up on the Solent coast for a bit, until the activists make it clear that they didn't like being shook up, dayglo posters and whatnot. The supply of such people is partly about belief in the cause and partly about getting a foot in the door for something better later.
Now consider the Conservative predicament. There are approximately no Tory Boys left- hardly anyone under the age of about 50 votes for them. Partly Brexit, partly all the other social stuff, mostly because the Conservative Party have made it clear that working aged people are viewed as cash cows to fund pensioners. So you can forget people working for a cause they belive in. And there's not much point in getting your foot in the door of a building that is on fire. So forget the careerists.
I'd say "would the last campaign professional turn out the lights", except it's possibly too late for that. Simpler to wait for the electricity to be cut off for non-payment of bills.
Broadly, almost anybody under 50, who is on the Right, now supports Reform. Their supporters’ age profile now resembles that of the Conservatives, in the past. It increases with age, but a significant minority of young people support them.
All organisations run their course, eventually, and that’s likely true of the Conservatives. They are no longer relevant, in the voters’ eyes.
Except that isn't entirely true, indeed the only age group the Conservatives now still regularly lead Reform in polls is 18 to 24s. The only age group Kemi has made gains with since the last general election rather than losses is under 30s
I'm not sure that's true - YouGov have Ref beating Con by 12% to 7% in the 18-24 age group. For 25-49 it's Ref 24, Con 13. Even Labour are polling better than the Conservatives in the 50-64 age group.
Just a bit tragic really. I think we'll regret our politics replicating the America in the long term.
Yougov and many other pollsters have had the Conservatives ahead of Reform with 18 to 24s in recent months.
Though overall the trend is to the white nationalist right over the centre right here as in the US, France, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands and to some extent Germany.
If the trend continues I would not be surprised to see a near all out war between white nationalists and Muslims and the woke left in our towns and cities in a decade or two. Maybe even a Fascist government in some western nations, others seeing further growth in the populist left
"Irishman Aiden Minnis, fighting for Russia in the special military operation zone, dramatically burned his British passport with the phrase "Britain, go to hell!", accompanying it with a burst from an automatic rifle."
"Mr Minnis is a former drug addict who was also previously a member of the far-right National Front party during his time in the UK. In 2008 he was jailed for 4 years and 3 months for an unprovoked racially assaulting on a man in the street"
He’ll fit in well in the Russian army. For a week or two anyway.
Life expectancy on the front line now said to be 12 days for Russians, they’re doing stupid stuff like amassing troops and equipment on the wrong side of the river near Lyman, and only then trying to build the bridge across. The bridge never gets finished before it gets the Storm Shadow treatment, meanwhile half an army are sitting ducks for Ukranian artillery.
That must be an interesting judgement.
How much time/material do you let the Russians utilise before you take it out? The risk being they complete it. I’d probably go at 70% but could see the argument for more
That sounds about right.
While taking out the bridge is clearly important, the more valuable target is the bridge-building equipment and the men doing the building. It’s a specialised task that uses rare machinery to construct the bridge then tow it into place, so you want to take it out just as they’re nearing the end of the construction process.
"Irishman Aiden Minnis, fighting for Russia in the special military operation zone, dramatically burned his British passport with the phrase "Britain, go to hell!", accompanying it with a burst from an automatic rifle."
"Mr Minnis is a former drug addict who was also previously a member of the far-right National Front party during his time in the UK. In 2008 he was jailed for 4 years and 3 months for an unprovoked racially assaulting on a man in the street"
He’ll fit in well in the Russian army. For a week or two anyway.
Life expectancy on the front line now said to be 12 days for Russians, they’re doing stupid stuff like amassing troops and equipment on the wrong side of the river near Lyman, and only then trying to build the bridge across. The bridge never gets finished before it gets the Storm Shadow treatment, meanwhile half an army are sitting ducks for Ukranian artillery.
Surely that's SOP to a certain extent, if you're trying to force a contested bridgehead?
You need to build a bridge to get the armour and troops across; but if you don't have the armour or troops nearby to exploit that bridgehead, it's pointless and gives time for the bridge to be attacked and destroyed. So you need to keep the material near the bridgehead to exploit it the moment it is finished. Keep them too far back, then they can get hammered travelling to the bridgehead, and takes longer to exploit the new bridge and form a bridgehead.
So it's a compromise: you need the forces near where you are going to build the bridge and bridgehead, but dispersed enough to make them harder to attack. But the latter has issues as well. Then if the bridge takes longer to build than planned, they are sitting ducks.
A mate at uni was an engineer in the OTC, and he spent many weekends building and taking down military bridges. He loved it, but was aware how short his life expectancy might be in a very hot war. Bridging units are prime targets, and far more valuable than (say) tanks.
(I will let the real military experts LOL at this post...)
Or at least, the developing world does. Meanwhile the rest of us start the long road back to the Middle Ages, led by Trump and his cabal.
China remains way ahead in clean energy growth, adding more solar and wind capacity than the rest of the world combined. This enabled the growth in renewable generation in China to outpace rising electricity demand and helped reduce its fossil fuel generation by 2%. India experienced slower electricity demand growth and also added significant new solar and wind capacity, meaning it too cut back on coal and gas. In contrast, developed nations like the US, and also the EU, saw the opposite trend. In the US, electricity demand grew faster than clean energy output, increasing reliance on fossil fuels, while in the EU, months of weak wind and hydropower performance led to a rise in coal and gas generation.
Alternately encouraging and depressing at the same time.
"Irishman Aiden Minnis, fighting for Russia in the special military operation zone, dramatically burned his British passport with the phrase "Britain, go to hell!", accompanying it with a burst from an automatic rifle."
"Mr Minnis is a former drug addict who was also previously a member of the far-right National Front party during his time in the UK. In 2008 he was jailed for 4 years and 3 months for an unprovoked racially assaulting on a man in the street"
He’ll fit in well in the Russian army. For a week or two anyway.
Life expectancy on the front line now said to be 12 days for Russians, they’re doing stupid stuff like amassing troops and equipment on the wrong side of the river near Lyman, and only then trying to build the bridge across. The bridge never gets finished before it gets the Storm Shadow treatment, meanwhile half an army are sitting ducks for Ukranian artillery.
That must be an interesting judgement.
How much time/material do you let the Russians utilise before you take it out? The risk being they complete it. I’d probably go at 70% but could see the argument for more
That sounds about right.
While taking out the bridge is clearly important, the more valuable target is the bridge-building equipment and the men doing the building. It’s a specialised task that uses rare machinery to construct the bridge then tow it into place, so you want to take it out just as they’re nearing the end of the construction process.
Earlier on in the war, there was a video where you could see a destroyed temporary Russian bridge across a river, with the remains of two previous attempts a short distance along the river. And lots of destroyed vehicles.
Police say they have dismantled an international gang suspected of smuggling up to 40,000 stolen mobile phones from the UK to China in the last year. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20vlpwrzwdo
Meanwhile, British Transport Police have announced open season for criminals to steal bikes and cars parked at stations:
The higher-ups at the police clearly want Farage as next PM.
They can seemingly always spare officers to knock on doors half a dozen at a time because someone was offended by a Facebook post, yet have no time to investigate acquisitive crimes against people and businesses. Bike theft and phone theft are horrible events for the victims.
I regularly review CCTV at work. It would take about five minutes to find when a bike was stolen on a 10-hour digital tape, if I knew at what time it had been parked and had a description of the owner and/or the bike.
Devil's Advocate on this: this news story entirely backs up the police's approach. If they had every constable chasing down every phone nicked in London, they'd never get anywhere given the scale of the issue, and the time spent on sexual assaults etc etc would have to fall.
Instead, some smart officer has noted that this particular phone is in a big warehouse, and that it's in a large parcel heading overseas. They've allocated resources including forensics (usually tied up in much nastier stuff) and with only a small team smashed a huge gang and disrupted 40% of phone thefts in London.
We know anecdotally that it's the same with bike theft - I've even narrowed it down to a particular industrial estate in Edinburgh. Let's hope the police take the same approach there.
The Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology (yes, it is that time of the year again) has been awarded to the discoverers of T-cells. One of the recipients cannot be contacted as he has gone ‘off-grid’.
They're the ones involved in telling T-cells not to attack your own cells.
I’m sure that @Jossiasjessop would appreciate the fact that one of the winners is on a hike in Idaho and uncontactable - so doesn’t know he’s won the Nobel Prize…
We should perhaps write a paper on "Schrödinger's Nobel Prize": if you win the Nobel Prize but do not know it, have you actually won?
(Can you *reject* a Nobel Prize? It's hard to imagine why you would, but is there a process? And if it's an award for two or three people, would your name be left off, or would the entire team lost it?)
I think Boris Pasternak was forced to refuse it, while Kissinger accepted it despite Le Duc Tho (his counterpart) declining it on the grounds that peace hadn’t been achieved
And that satire was now dead.
That was Tom Lehrer, allegedly.
Bob Dylan accepted the poetry prize with obvious reluctance, possibly on the grounds that a palaver invented to whitewash the armaments industry didn't fit well with his peacenik status.
Police say they have dismantled an international gang suspected of smuggling up to 40,000 stolen mobile phones from the UK to China in the last year. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20vlpwrzwdo
Meanwhile, British Transport Police have announced open season for criminals to steal bikes and cars parked at stations:
The higher-ups at the police clearly want Farage as next PM.
They can seemingly always spare officers to knock on doors half a dozen at a time because someone was offended by a Facebook post, yet have no time to investigate acquisitive crimes against people and businesses. Bike theft and phone theft are horrible events for the victims.
I regularly review CCTV at work. It would take about five minutes to find when a bike was stolen on a 10-hour digital tape, if I knew at what time it had been parked and had a description of the owner and/or the bike.
Devil's Advocate on this: this news story entirely backs up the police's approach. If they had every constable chasing down every phone nicked in London, they'd never get anywhere given the scale of the issue, and the time spent on sexual assaults etc etc would have to fall.
Instead, some smart officer has noted that this particular phone is in a big warehouse, and that it's in a large parcel heading overseas. They've allocated resources including forensics (usually tied up in much nastier stuff) and with only a small team smashed a huge gang and disrupted 40% of phone thefts in London.
We know anecdotally that it's the same with bike theft - I've even narrowed it down to a particular industrial estate in Edinburgh. Let's hope the police take the same approach there.
Up to a point. It looks like the police have broken up a significant smuggling operation. What they have not done is arrest any of the people actually stealing the phones in the first place, and it is hard to be sure how those thieves will react to a loss of a large part of the market.
That massive Crimean oil terminal does appear to be still, umm, experiencing operational difficulties, following last night’s unexpected conflagration.
The Tyumen oil refinery, nearly 2,000km from Ukraine, may also now have been hit.
It's a middle-sized refinery that hasn't been hit before.
Ukraine do seem to be stepping up the tempo of their attacks on Russian oil refineries.
It’s almost as if someone just gave them a lot of Storm Shadows to play with
The range of storm shadow is only 250km. I don't think Russian air defences are yet so weak that Ukrainian jets are roaming deep into Russian airspace.
550km
Oops, yes.
I made the mistake of relying on the AI summary from my search, rather than reading a more reliable source.
Still, the oil refinery is nearly four times further away.
Brought to mine this old meme :
There are ferries from Portsmouth to Spain, so they could have got to Spain. But they would have had to sit down a lot. However they also do overnight ferries so they could have had a nice lie down before expending the last of their miles at Bilbao or Santander. Perhaps they could have taken a packed lunch.
(Ahem). Having started a long walk in Edinburgh, and having passed through Leith within a couple of miles of the start and end, I could like to point out the stupidity of assuming a *straight* line. If the Proclaimers, being good Leith boys, decided on a coastal walk, then 500 miles would have got them to the wonders around Skegness / Boston.
Alternatively, as that is in England, a widdershins walks would have got them to around the Cromarty / Inverness area.
This is so obviously the correct answer I fail to understand how anyone could even argue with it...
This guy - GeoWizard - did a "no roads" walk across London North to South in a straight line (+/- a few m sideways). About 30 miles.
Or at least, the developing world does. Meanwhile the rest of us start the long road back to the Middle Ages, led by Trump and his cabal.
China remains way ahead in clean energy growth, adding more solar and wind capacity than the rest of the world combined. This enabled the growth in renewable generation in China to outpace rising electricity demand and helped reduce its fossil fuel generation by 2%. India experienced slower electricity demand growth and also added significant new solar and wind capacity, meaning it too cut back on coal and gas. In contrast, developed nations like the US, and also the EU, saw the opposite trend. In the US, electricity demand grew faster than clean energy output, increasing reliance on fossil fuels, while in the EU, months of weak wind and hydropower performance led to a rise in coal and gas generation.
Alternately encouraging and depressing at the same time.
What is depressing is the repeated tendency of green zealots to hand out 'well done for trying' medals to the world's biggest polluters but insisting that Britain should not get its oil and gas out of the ground and would be evil to open a single coal mine.
The energy policies of China and India are entirely operated according to their national interest. Where they add renewable capacity, it is based purely on expediency. I don't think anybody, however anti-green, would object if we added renewable capacity purely where and when it was the cheapest form of energy. If we did, our energy mix would be something like China's probably, and we would be more prosperous for it.
It is particularly galling that such commentors often trumpet China's amazing technological leadership in green energy - a leadership they have fostered by using dirty fuel to make them the cheapest supplier on the market, without being stupid enough to put the same restrictions on their economy as we have. It is a similar story to how the USA grew fat from being a supplier rather than a combatant when the British Empire was locked in conflict with the Nazis from 1939.
In any case, we need to grow up and ditch this nonsense whilst we still have the vestiges of an economy.
Bigger question is how Heath got elected as Conservative Party leader in the first place with social skills that poor
He was posh in a time where posh was important.
Behaving appropriately to subordinates ( even posh ones) wasn't really a requirement.bsck then.
He was actually from a working-class background and got into Oxford on a scholarship. People liked to mock his posh accent because they thought he was putting it on but I've never believed that, it was just how Oxford students talked at the time, and you naturally speak like the people you're around after a while.
Grammar school boy from Broadstairs, I believe.
His father was a carpenter and his mother a lady's maid.
You really don't get the class system. In fact both Heath and Wilson were grammar school boys. At the time this was a new thing and seen as the end of the old boy network, and the end of elitism. The generation of politicians that had "a good war" were not like their predecessors McMillan and Home, and for many the relatively humble background of Heath in particular was the source of derision ("Grocer" Heath). It explains why Heath remained bitter after his outer, not just against fellow grammar schooler, Margaret Thatcher, but those in her entourage that were quite snobbish towards Heath, but entertained ludicrous ideas that Thatcher was the illegitimate daughter of a Duke, rather than the actual Grocer, Alderman Roberts.
I am sure that PBers older than me remember it better, but at the time both Heath and Wilson were seen as breaths of fresh air, and the pair dominated politics for over a decade, fighting 4 General Elections, all of which were fairly close. Now it is rare for a politician to survive a single defeat, but each had the backing of their party for multiple attempts.
Neither get the credit that they deserve for shaping politics for so long. Because of his great sulk and aloofness people forget Heath's brilliant intellect and vision. Similarly because of the failures of his 1975 government, people forget Wilsons political cunning and ability to unite a fissile party. The pair were political enemies but each was a titan shaping modern Britain.
That massive Crimean oil terminal does appear to be still, umm, experiencing operational difficulties, following last night’s unexpected conflagration.
The Tyumen oil refinery, nearly 2,000km from Ukraine, may also now have been hit.
It's a middle-sized refinery that hasn't been hit before.
Ukraine do seem to be stepping up the tempo of their attacks on Russian oil refineries.
It’s almost as if someone just gave them a lot of Storm Shadows to play with
The range of storm shadow is only 250km. I don't think Russian air defences are yet so weak that Ukrainian jets are roaming deep into Russian airspace.
550km
Oops, yes.
I made the mistake of relying on the AI summary from my search, rather than reading a more reliable source.
Still, the oil refinery is nearly four times further away.
Brought to mine this old meme :
There are ferries from Portsmouth to Spain, so they could have got to Spain. But they would have had to sit down a lot. However they also do overnight ferries so they could have had a nice lie down before expending the last of their miles at Bilbao or Santander. Perhaps they could have taken a packed lunch.
(Ahem). Having started a long walk in Edinburgh, and having passed through Leith within a couple of miles of the start and end, I could like to point out the stupidity of assuming a *straight* line. If the Proclaimers, being good Leith boys, decided on a coastal walk, then 500 miles would have got them to the wonders around Skegness / Boston.
Alternatively, as that is in England, a widdershins walks would have got them to around the Cromarty / Inverness area.
This is so obviously the correct answer I fail to understand how anyone could even argue with it...
This guy - GeoWizard - did a "no roads" walk across London North to South in a straight line (+/- a few m sideways). About 30 miles.
Police say they have dismantled an international gang suspected of smuggling up to 40,000 stolen mobile phones from the UK to China in the last year. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20vlpwrzwdo
Meanwhile, British Transport Police have announced open season for criminals to steal bikes and cars parked at stations:
The higher-ups at the police clearly want Farage as next PM.
They can seemingly always spare officers to knock on doors half a dozen at a time because someone was offended by a Facebook post, yet have no time to investigate acquisitive crimes against people and businesses. Bike theft and phone theft are horrible events for the victims.
I regularly review CCTV at work. It would take about five minutes to find when a bike was stolen on a 10-hour digital tape, if I knew at what time it had been parked and had a description of the owner and/or the bike.
Devil's Advocate on this: this news story entirely backs up the police's approach. If they had every constable chasing down every phone nicked in London, they'd never get anywhere given the scale of the issue, and the time spent on sexual assaults etc etc would have to fall.
Instead, some smart officer has noted that this particular phone is in a big warehouse, and that it's in a large parcel heading overseas. They've allocated resources including forensics (usually tied up in much nastier stuff) and with only a small team smashed a huge gang and disrupted 40% of phone thefts in London.
We know anecdotally that it's the same with bike theft - I've even narrowed it down to a particular industrial estate in Edinburgh. Let's hope the police take the same approach there.
Up to a point. It looks like the police have broken up a significant smuggling operation. What they have not done is arrest any of the people actually stealing the phones in the first place, and it is hard to be sure how those thieves will react to a loss of a large part of the market.
There is limited value in capturing the small fry.
Police say they have dismantled an international gang suspected of smuggling up to 40,000 stolen mobile phones from the UK to China in the last year. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20vlpwrzwdo
Meanwhile, British Transport Police have announced open season for criminals to steal bikes and cars parked at stations:
The higher-ups at the police clearly want Farage as next PM.
They can seemingly always spare officers to knock on doors half a dozen at a time because someone was offended by a Facebook post, yet have no time to investigate acquisitive crimes against people and businesses. Bike theft and phone theft are horrible events for the victims.
I regularly review CCTV at work. It would take about five minutes to find when a bike was stolen on a 10-hour digital tape, if I knew at what time it had been parked and had a description of the owner and/or the bike.
Devil's Advocate on this: this news story entirely backs up the police's approach. If they had every constable chasing down every phone nicked in London, they'd never get anywhere given the scale of the issue, and the time spent on sexual assaults etc etc would have to fall.
Instead, some smart officer has noted that this particular phone is in a big warehouse, and that it's in a large parcel heading overseas. They've allocated resources including forensics (usually tied up in much nastier stuff) and with only a small team smashed a huge gang and disrupted 40% of phone thefts in London.
We know anecdotally that it's the same with bike theft - I've even narrowed it down to a particular industrial estate in Edinburgh. Let's hope the police take the same approach there.
Up to a point. It looks like the police have broken up a significant smuggling operation. What they have not done is arrest any of the people actually stealing the phones in the first place, and it is hard to be sure how those thieves will react to a loss of a large part of the market.
I tend to agree. It's like busting a drug ring or 'smashing a gang'. If the demand is still there and the means is still there, a new organisation (if there isn't a rival one anyway) will fill the void.
Low level crime needs to be made impossible. Then the whole thing dies.
Police say they have dismantled an international gang suspected of smuggling up to 40,000 stolen mobile phones from the UK to China in the last year. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20vlpwrzwdo
Meanwhile, British Transport Police have announced open season for criminals to steal bikes and cars parked at stations:
The higher-ups at the police clearly want Farage as next PM.
They can seemingly always spare officers to knock on doors half a dozen at a time because someone was offended by a Facebook post, yet have no time to investigate acquisitive crimes against people and businesses. Bike theft and phone theft are horrible events for the victims.
I regularly review CCTV at work. It would take about five minutes to find when a bike was stolen on a 10-hour digital tape, if I knew at what time it had been parked and had a description of the owner and/or the bike.
Devil's Advocate on this: this news story entirely backs up the police's approach. If they had every constable chasing down every phone nicked in London, they'd never get anywhere given the scale of the issue, and the time spent on sexual assaults etc etc would have to fall.
Instead, some smart officer has noted that this particular phone is in a big warehouse, and that it's in a large parcel heading overseas. They've allocated resources including forensics (usually tied up in much nastier stuff) and with only a small team smashed a huge gang and disrupted 40% of phone thefts in London.
We know anecdotally that it's the same with bike theft - I've even narrowed it down to a particular industrial estate in Edinburgh. Let's hope the police take the same approach there.
Up to a point. It looks like the police have broken up a significant smuggling operation. What they have not done is arrest any of the people actually stealing the phones in the first place, and it is hard to be sure how those thieves will react to a loss of a large part of the market.
The demand was insane. £300 per phone? That's why it's exploded as an issue and neutralising that is by far the most important thing to do. I don't think you'll achieve much arresting the actual people on the bikes - but the worrying thing is they've all lost a big source of income and are now well-acquainted with petty crime.
Police say they have dismantled an international gang suspected of smuggling up to 40,000 stolen mobile phones from the UK to China in the last year. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20vlpwrzwdo
Meanwhile, British Transport Police have announced open season for criminals to steal bikes and cars parked at stations:
The higher-ups at the police clearly want Farage as next PM.
They can seemingly always spare officers to knock on doors half a dozen at a time because someone was offended by a Facebook post, yet have no time to investigate acquisitive crimes against people and businesses. Bike theft and phone theft are horrible events for the victims.
I regularly review CCTV at work. It would take about five minutes to find when a bike was stolen on a 10-hour digital tape, if I knew at what time it had been parked and had a description of the owner and/or the bike.
Devil's Advocate on this: this news story entirely backs up the police's approach. If they had every constable chasing down every phone nicked in London, they'd never get anywhere given the scale of the issue, and the time spent on sexual assaults etc etc would have to fall.
Instead, some smart officer has noted that this particular phone is in a big warehouse, and that it's in a large parcel heading overseas. They've allocated resources including forensics (usually tied up in much nastier stuff) and with only a small team smashed a huge gang and disrupted 40% of phone thefts in London.
We know anecdotally that it's the same with bike theft - I've even narrowed it down to a particular industrial estate in Edinburgh. Let's hope the police take the same approach there.
Up to a point. It looks like the police have broken up a significant smuggling operation. What they have not done is arrest any of the people actually stealing the phones in the first place, and it is hard to be sure how those thieves will react to a loss of a large part of the market.
There is limited value in capturing the small fry.
The guy who had his property stolen, often violently, disagrees.
Picking up the fences shipping parcels to China, does little to get the tea leaves and their dodgy scooters off the streets.
Nicholas sounds like an extraordinary guy. Confirmation if it were needed that the US prison system is hell on earth, both for the inmates and to be strictly fair, the staff. Striking that run down towns that had lobbied for prisons during the correctional facility building boom of the 80s & 90s were now in danger of losing even that source of employment due to falling crime rates.
Police say they have dismantled an international gang suspected of smuggling up to 40,000 stolen mobile phones from the UK to China in the last year. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20vlpwrzwdo
Meanwhile, British Transport Police have announced open season for criminals to steal bikes and cars parked at stations:
The higher-ups at the police clearly want Farage as next PM.
They can seemingly always spare officers to knock on doors half a dozen at a time because someone was offended by a Facebook post, yet have no time to investigate acquisitive crimes against people and businesses. Bike theft and phone theft are horrible events for the victims.
I regularly review CCTV at work. It would take about five minutes to find when a bike was stolen on a 10-hour digital tape, if I knew at what time it had been parked and had a description of the owner and/or the bike.
Devil's Advocate on this: this news story entirely backs up the police's approach. If they had every constable chasing down every phone nicked in London, they'd never get anywhere given the scale of the issue, and the time spent on sexual assaults etc etc would have to fall.
Instead, some smart officer has noted that this particular phone is in a big warehouse, and that it's in a large parcel heading overseas. They've allocated resources including forensics (usually tied up in much nastier stuff) and with only a small team smashed a huge gang and disrupted 40% of phone thefts in London.
We know anecdotally that it's the same with bike theft - I've even narrowed it down to a particular industrial estate in Edinburgh. Let's hope the police take the same approach there.
Up to a point. It looks like the police have broken up a significant smuggling operation. What they have not done is arrest any of the people actually stealing the phones in the first place, and it is hard to be sure how those thieves will react to a loss of a large part of the market.
There is limited value in capturing the small fry.
I would like to see what behavioural science that's based on.
Police say they have dismantled an international gang suspected of smuggling up to 40,000 stolen mobile phones from the UK to China in the last year. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20vlpwrzwdo
Meanwhile, British Transport Police have announced open season for criminals to steal bikes and cars parked at stations:
The higher-ups at the police clearly want Farage as next PM.
They can seemingly always spare officers to knock on doors half a dozen at a time because someone was offended by a Facebook post, yet have no time to investigate acquisitive crimes against people and businesses. Bike theft and phone theft are horrible events for the victims.
I regularly review CCTV at work. It would take about five minutes to find when a bike was stolen on a 10-hour digital tape, if I knew at what time it had been parked and had a description of the owner and/or the bike.
Devil's Advocate on this: this news story entirely backs up the police's approach. If they had every constable chasing down every phone nicked in London, they'd never get anywhere given the scale of the issue, and the time spent on sexual assaults etc etc would have to fall.
Instead, some smart officer has noted that this particular phone is in a big warehouse, and that it's in a large parcel heading overseas. They've allocated resources including forensics (usually tied up in much nastier stuff) and with only a small team smashed a huge gang and disrupted 40% of phone thefts in London.
We know anecdotally that it's the same with bike theft - I've even narrowed it down to a particular industrial estate in Edinburgh. Let's hope the police take the same approach there.
Up to a point. It looks like the police have broken up a significant smuggling operation. What they have not done is arrest any of the people actually stealing the phones in the first place, and it is hard to be sure how those thieves will react to a loss of a large part of the market.
There is limited value in capturing the small fry.
The guy who had his property stolen, often violently, disagrees.
Picking up the fences shipping parcels to China, does little to get the tea leaves and their dodgy scooters off the streets.
Indeed he may disagree. It doesn’t make him right.
(The police are doing their best with limited resources. They need more resources for a more visible presence. But the reality is in a world of smartphones and scooters you are not going to stop opportunistic theft)
Or at least, the developing world does. Meanwhile the rest of us start the long road back to the Middle Ages, led by Trump and his cabal.
China remains way ahead in clean energy growth, adding more solar and wind capacity than the rest of the world combined. This enabled the growth in renewable generation in China to outpace rising electricity demand and helped reduce its fossil fuel generation by 2%. India experienced slower electricity demand growth and also added significant new solar and wind capacity, meaning it too cut back on coal and gas. In contrast, developed nations like the US, and also the EU, saw the opposite trend. In the US, electricity demand grew faster than clean energy output, increasing reliance on fossil fuels, while in the EU, months of weak wind and hydropower performance led to a rise in coal and gas generation.
Alternately encouraging and depressing at the same time.
I'm optimistic. It's means that the anti-renewables lobby are fighting a battle against the market rather than climate change mitigation; if we know anything from history it's that this battle is very hard to win.
Their only chance is to change public opinion but every bit of polling I've seen has large majorities against coal, even gas, and across the political spectrum, so it's looking good on that front too.
Police say they have dismantled an international gang suspected of smuggling up to 40,000 stolen mobile phones from the UK to China in the last year. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20vlpwrzwdo
Meanwhile, British Transport Police have announced open season for criminals to steal bikes and cars parked at stations:
The higher-ups at the police clearly want Farage as next PM.
They can seemingly always spare officers to knock on doors half a dozen at a time because someone was offended by a Facebook post, yet have no time to investigate acquisitive crimes against people and businesses. Bike theft and phone theft are horrible events for the victims.
I regularly review CCTV at work. It would take about five minutes to find when a bike was stolen on a 10-hour digital tape, if I knew at what time it had been parked and had a description of the owner and/or the bike.
Devil's Advocate on this: this news story entirely backs up the police's approach. If they had every constable chasing down every phone nicked in London, they'd never get anywhere given the scale of the issue, and the time spent on sexual assaults etc etc would have to fall.
Instead, some smart officer has noted that this particular phone is in a big warehouse, and that it's in a large parcel heading overseas. They've allocated resources including forensics (usually tied up in much nastier stuff) and with only a small team smashed a huge gang and disrupted 40% of phone thefts in London.
We know anecdotally that it's the same with bike theft - I've even narrowed it down to a particular industrial estate in Edinburgh. Let's hope the police take the same approach there.
Up to a point. It looks like the police have broken up a significant smuggling operation. What they have not done is arrest any of the people actually stealing the phones in the first place, and it is hard to be sure how those thieves will react to a loss of a large part of the market.
There is limited value in capturing the small fry.
I would like to see what behavioural science that's based on.
Zero tolerance policing does work, but needs resourcing. In isolation nicking the guy who steals a handset ties up a lot of resource and he will likely be straight back on the street. Even if you stick him in prison for a few months he will come back with enhanced technique and a broader criminal network
As with leaving the ECHR, the Conservative Party is responding to a series of right-wing social media talking points with proposals that will have very little impact on people’s lives and their day-to-day problems. None of this is going to reduce NHS waiting lists or help with the cost of living or boost productivity. The Conservatives need to get serious again.
Or at least, the developing world does. Meanwhile the rest of us start the long road back to the Middle Ages, led by Trump and his cabal.
China remains way ahead in clean energy growth, adding more solar and wind capacity than the rest of the world combined. This enabled the growth in renewable generation in China to outpace rising electricity demand and helped reduce its fossil fuel generation by 2%. India experienced slower electricity demand growth and also added significant new solar and wind capacity, meaning it too cut back on coal and gas. In contrast, developed nations like the US, and also the EU, saw the opposite trend. In the US, electricity demand grew faster than clean energy output, increasing reliance on fossil fuels, while in the EU, months of weak wind and hydropower performance led to a rise in coal and gas generation.
Alternately encouraging and depressing at the same time.
What is depressing is the repeated tendency of green zealots to hand out 'well done for trying' medals to the world's biggest polluters but insisting that Britain should not get its oil and gas out of the ground and would be evil to open a single coal mine.
The energy policies of China and India are entirely operated according to their national interest. Where they add renewable capacity, it is based purely on expediency. I don't think anybody, however anti-green, would object if we added renewable capacity purely where and when it was the cheapest form of energy. If we did, our energy mix would be something like China's probably, and we would be more prosperous for it.
It is particularly galling that such commentors often trumpet China's amazing technological leadership in green energy - a leadership they have fostered by using dirty fuel to make them the cheapest supplier on the market, without being stupid enough to put the same restrictions on their economy as we have. It is a similar story to how the USA grew fat from being a supplier rather than a combatant when the British Empire was locked in conflict with the Nazis from 1939.
In any case, we need to grow up and ditch this nonsense whilst we still have the vestiges of an economy.
I’m surprised and disappointed that this post didn’t entirely convince you to change your mind on green energy. I must try harder!
Police say they have dismantled an international gang suspected of smuggling up to 40,000 stolen mobile phones from the UK to China in the last year. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20vlpwrzwdo
Meanwhile, British Transport Police have announced open season for criminals to steal bikes and cars parked at stations:
The higher-ups at the police clearly want Farage as next PM.
They can seemingly always spare officers to knock on doors half a dozen at a time because someone was offended by a Facebook post, yet have no time to investigate acquisitive crimes against people and businesses. Bike theft and phone theft are horrible events for the victims.
I regularly review CCTV at work. It would take about five minutes to find when a bike was stolen on a 10-hour digital tape, if I knew at what time it had been parked and had a description of the owner and/or the bike.
Devil's Advocate on this: this news story entirely backs up the police's approach. If they had every constable chasing down every phone nicked in London, they'd never get anywhere given the scale of the issue, and the time spent on sexual assaults etc etc would have to fall.
Instead, some smart officer has noted that this particular phone is in a big warehouse, and that it's in a large parcel heading overseas. They've allocated resources including forensics (usually tied up in much nastier stuff) and with only a small team smashed a huge gang and disrupted 40% of phone thefts in London.
We know anecdotally that it's the same with bike theft - I've even narrowed it down to a particular industrial estate in Edinburgh. Let's hope the police take the same approach there.
Up to a point. It looks like the police have broken up a significant smuggling operation. What they have not done is arrest any of the people actually stealing the phones in the first place, and it is hard to be sure how those thieves will react to a loss of a large part of the market.
There is limited value in capturing the small fry.
I would like to see what behavioural science that's based on.
Zero tolerance policing does work, but needs resourcing. In isolation nicking the guy who steals a handset ties up a lot of resource and he will likely be straight back on the street. Even if you stick him in prison for a few months he will come back with enhanced technique and a broader criminal network
Zero tolerance requires more than just police resources, it requires expenditure on the entire criminal justice system from courts to effective non-custodial punishments, and we simply aren't willing to fund or otherwise resource the system.
I suspect that nicking this gang has created a new market opportunity for rivals, but that should be a spur to better intelligence led raids rather than defeatist.
Police say they have dismantled an international gang suspected of smuggling up to 40,000 stolen mobile phones from the UK to China in the last year. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20vlpwrzwdo
Meanwhile, British Transport Police have announced open season for criminals to steal bikes and cars parked at stations:
The higher-ups at the police clearly want Farage as next PM.
They can seemingly always spare officers to knock on doors half a dozen at a time because someone was offended by a Facebook post, yet have no time to investigate acquisitive crimes against people and businesses. Bike theft and phone theft are horrible events for the victims.
I regularly review CCTV at work. It would take about five minutes to find when a bike was stolen on a 10-hour digital tape, if I knew at what time it had been parked and had a description of the owner and/or the bike.
Devil's Advocate on this: this news story entirely backs up the police's approach. If they had every constable chasing down every phone nicked in London, they'd never get anywhere given the scale of the issue, and the time spent on sexual assaults etc etc would have to fall.
Instead, some smart officer has noted that this particular phone is in a big warehouse, and that it's in a large parcel heading overseas. They've allocated resources including forensics (usually tied up in much nastier stuff) and with only a small team smashed a huge gang and disrupted 40% of phone thefts in London.
We know anecdotally that it's the same with bike theft - I've even narrowed it down to a particular industrial estate in Edinburgh. Let's hope the police take the same approach there.
Up to a point. It looks like the police have broken up a significant smuggling operation. What they have not done is arrest any of the people actually stealing the phones in the first place, and it is hard to be sure how those thieves will react to a loss of a large part of the market.
How do roadmen react when a drugs gang is taken down ?
Police say they have dismantled an international gang suspected of smuggling up to 40,000 stolen mobile phones from the UK to China in the last year. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20vlpwrzwdo
Meanwhile, British Transport Police have announced open season for criminals to steal bikes and cars parked at stations:
The higher-ups at the police clearly want Farage as next PM.
They can seemingly always spare officers to knock on doors half a dozen at a time because someone was offended by a Facebook post, yet have no time to investigate acquisitive crimes against people and businesses. Bike theft and phone theft are horrible events for the victims.
I regularly review CCTV at work. It would take about five minutes to find when a bike was stolen on a 10-hour digital tape, if I knew at what time it had been parked and had a description of the owner and/or the bike.
Devil's Advocate on this: this news story entirely backs up the police's approach. If they had every constable chasing down every phone nicked in London, they'd never get anywhere given the scale of the issue, and the time spent on sexual assaults etc etc would have to fall.
Instead, some smart officer has noted that this particular phone is in a big warehouse, and that it's in a large parcel heading overseas. They've allocated resources including forensics (usually tied up in much nastier stuff) and with only a small team smashed a huge gang and disrupted 40% of phone thefts in London.
We know anecdotally that it's the same with bike theft - I've even narrowed it down to a particular industrial estate in Edinburgh. Let's hope the police take the same approach there.
Up to a point. It looks like the police have broken up a significant smuggling operation. What they have not done is arrest any of the people actually stealing the phones in the first place, and it is hard to be sure how those thieves will react to a loss of a large part of the market.
There is limited value in capturing the small fry.
I would like to see what behavioural science that's based on.
Zero tolerance policing does work, but needs resourcing. In isolation nicking the guy who steals a handset ties up a lot of resource and he will likely be straight back on the street. Even if you stick him in prison for a few months he will come back with enhanced technique and a broader criminal network
I agree - there's definitely a need for it but I think the optimal amount isn't as much as people think.
E.g. every morning outside my local primary school there are 3 cars and a van parked on the zig zags at a zebra crossing (a pretty serious offence if one of the kids is consequently killed). The parents report it but nothing is ever done, but I bet you the police would bring a prosecution if something did happen. It would take just a couple of fines on the repeat offenders and the issue goes away.
Those 35 judges Jenrick wants to sack include those who have previously done pro bono work for people without easy access to the law, which involves migration law. The man's a menace.
Those 35 judges Jenrick wants to sack include those who have previously done pro bono work for people without easy access to the law, which involves migration law. The man's a menace.
Police say they have dismantled an international gang suspected of smuggling up to 40,000 stolen mobile phones from the UK to China in the last year. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20vlpwrzwdo
Meanwhile, British Transport Police have announced open season for criminals to steal bikes and cars parked at stations:
The higher-ups at the police clearly want Farage as next PM.
They can seemingly always spare officers to knock on doors half a dozen at a time because someone was offended by a Facebook post, yet have no time to investigate acquisitive crimes against people and businesses. Bike theft and phone theft are horrible events for the victims.
I regularly review CCTV at work. It would take about five minutes to find when a bike was stolen on a 10-hour digital tape, if I knew at what time it had been parked and had a description of the owner and/or the bike.
Devil's Advocate on this: this news story entirely backs up the police's approach. If they had every constable chasing down every phone nicked in London, they'd never get anywhere given the scale of the issue, and the time spent on sexual assaults etc etc would have to fall.
Instead, some smart officer has noted that this particular phone is in a big warehouse, and that it's in a large parcel heading overseas. They've allocated resources including forensics (usually tied up in much nastier stuff) and with only a small team smashed a huge gang and disrupted 40% of phone thefts in London.
We know anecdotally that it's the same with bike theft - I've even narrowed it down to a particular industrial estate in Edinburgh. Let's hope the police take the same approach there.
Up to a point. It looks like the police have broken up a significant smuggling operation. What they have not done is arrest any of the people actually stealing the phones in the first place, and it is hard to be sure how those thieves will react to a loss of a large part of the market.
There is limited value in capturing the small fry.
The guy who had his property stolen, often violently, disagrees.
Picking up the fences shipping parcels to China, does little to get the tea leaves and their dodgy scooters off the streets.
Economics of how to allocate finite police and court resources. Which is the only sort of economics that matters.
Let's say a stolen bike causes £300 of harm to society. How much police time is it worth spending chasing it up? And how much can you achieve in that time?
(The point about hurty words cases is that they are dead easy to investigate.)
Police say they have dismantled an international gang suspected of smuggling up to 40,000 stolen mobile phones from the UK to China in the last year. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20vlpwrzwdo
Meanwhile, British Transport Police have announced open season for criminals to steal bikes and cars parked at stations:
The higher-ups at the police clearly want Farage as next PM.
They can seemingly always spare officers to knock on doors half a dozen at a time because someone was offended by a Facebook post, yet have no time to investigate acquisitive crimes against people and businesses. Bike theft and phone theft are horrible events for the victims.
I regularly review CCTV at work. It would take about five minutes to find when a bike was stolen on a 10-hour digital tape, if I knew at what time it had been parked and had a description of the owner and/or the bike.
Devil's Advocate on this: this news story entirely backs up the police's approach. If they had every constable chasing down every phone nicked in London, they'd never get anywhere given the scale of the issue, and the time spent on sexual assaults etc etc would have to fall.
Instead, some smart officer has noted that this particular phone is in a big warehouse, and that it's in a large parcel heading overseas. They've allocated resources including forensics (usually tied up in much nastier stuff) and with only a small team smashed a huge gang and disrupted 40% of phone thefts in London.
We know anecdotally that it's the same with bike theft - I've even narrowed it down to a particular industrial estate in Edinburgh. Let's hope the police take the same approach there.
Up to a point. It looks like the police have broken up a significant smuggling operation. What they have not done is arrest any of the people actually stealing the phones in the first place, and it is hard to be sure how those thieves will react to a loss of a large part of the market.
There is limited value in capturing the small fry.
I would like to see what behavioural science that's based on.
Zero tolerance policing does work, but needs resourcing. In isolation nicking the guy who steals a handset ties up a lot of resource and he will likely be straight back on the street. Even if you stick him in prison for a few months he will come back with enhanced technique and a broader criminal network
Zero tolerance requires more than just police resources, it requires expenditure on the entire criminal justice system from courts to effective non-custodial punishments, and we simply aren't willing to fund or otherwise resource the system.
I suspect that nicking this gang has created a new market opportunity for rivals, but that should be a spur to better intelligence led raids rather than defeatist.
I suspect the biggest single win in justice/policing right now would be massively reducing the gap between crime occurring and sentencing.
Or at least, the developing world does. Meanwhile the rest of us start the long road back to the Middle Ages, led by Trump and his cabal.
China remains way ahead in clean energy growth, adding more solar and wind capacity than the rest of the world combined. This enabled the growth in renewable generation in China to outpace rising electricity demand and helped reduce its fossil fuel generation by 2%. India experienced slower electricity demand growth and also added significant new solar and wind capacity, meaning it too cut back on coal and gas. In contrast, developed nations like the US, and also the EU, saw the opposite trend. In the US, electricity demand grew faster than clean energy output, increasing reliance on fossil fuels, while in the EU, months of weak wind and hydropower performance led to a rise in coal and gas generation.
Alternately encouraging and depressing at the same time.
I'm optimistic. It's means that the anti-renewables lobby are fighting a battle against the market rather than climate change mitigation; if we know anything from history it's that this battle is very hard to win.
Their only chance is to change public opinion but every bit of polling I've seen has large majorities against coal, even gas, and across the political spectrum, so it's looking good on that front too.
Telegraph's AEP has regular pieces on transition to green energy saying there is no turning back and the market has moved. It is over for fossil albeit over the next two decades or so.
Police say they have dismantled an international gang suspected of smuggling up to 40,000 stolen mobile phones from the UK to China in the last year. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20vlpwrzwdo
Meanwhile, British Transport Police have announced open season for criminals to steal bikes and cars parked at stations:
The higher-ups at the police clearly want Farage as next PM.
They can seemingly always spare officers to knock on doors half a dozen at a time because someone was offended by a Facebook post, yet have no time to investigate acquisitive crimes against people and businesses. Bike theft and phone theft are horrible events for the victims.
I regularly review CCTV at work. It would take about five minutes to find when a bike was stolen on a 10-hour digital tape, if I knew at what time it had been parked and had a description of the owner and/or the bike.
Devil's Advocate on this: this news story entirely backs up the police's approach. If they had every constable chasing down every phone nicked in London, they'd never get anywhere given the scale of the issue, and the time spent on sexual assaults etc etc would have to fall.
Instead, some smart officer has noted that this particular phone is in a big warehouse, and that it's in a large parcel heading overseas. They've allocated resources including forensics (usually tied up in much nastier stuff) and with only a small team smashed a huge gang and disrupted 40% of phone thefts in London.
We know anecdotally that it's the same with bike theft - I've even narrowed it down to a particular industrial estate in Edinburgh. Let's hope the police take the same approach there.
Up to a point. It looks like the police have broken up a significant smuggling operation. What they have not done is arrest any of the people actually stealing the phones in the first place, and it is hard to be sure how those thieves will react to a loss of a large part of the market.
There is limited value in capturing the small fry.
I would like to see what behavioural science that's based on.
Zero tolerance policing does work, but needs resourcing. In isolation nicking the guy who steals a handset ties up a lot of resource and he will likely be straight back on the street. Even if you stick him in prison for a few months he will come back with enhanced technique and a broader criminal network
I agree - there's definitely a need for it but I think the optimal amount isn't as much as people think.
E.g. every morning outside my local primary school there are 3 cars and a van parked on the zig zags at a zebra crossing (a pretty serious offence if one of the kids is consequently killed). The parents report it but nothing is ever done, but I bet you the police would bring a prosecution if something did happen. It would take just a couple of fines on the repeat offenders and the issue goes away.
At Foxjrs primary school the headmaster used to be outside the school every morning welcoming kids (he knew them all by name) and would politely tick off parents who hadn't parked appropriately. It worked very well by social pressure as he was enormously respected.
Police say they have dismantled an international gang suspected of smuggling up to 40,000 stolen mobile phones from the UK to China in the last year. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20vlpwrzwdo
Meanwhile, British Transport Police have announced open season for criminals to steal bikes and cars parked at stations:
The higher-ups at the police clearly want Farage as next PM.
They can seemingly always spare officers to knock on doors half a dozen at a time because someone was offended by a Facebook post, yet have no time to investigate acquisitive crimes against people and businesses. Bike theft and phone theft are horrible events for the victims.
I regularly review CCTV at work. It would take about five minutes to find when a bike was stolen on a 10-hour digital tape, if I knew at what time it had been parked and had a description of the owner and/or the bike.
Devil's Advocate on this: this news story entirely backs up the police's approach. If they had every constable chasing down every phone nicked in London, they'd never get anywhere given the scale of the issue, and the time spent on sexual assaults etc etc would have to fall.
Instead, some smart officer has noted that this particular phone is in a big warehouse, and that it's in a large parcel heading overseas. They've allocated resources including forensics (usually tied up in much nastier stuff) and with only a small team smashed a huge gang and disrupted 40% of phone thefts in London.
We know anecdotally that it's the same with bike theft - I've even narrowed it down to a particular industrial estate in Edinburgh. Let's hope the police take the same approach there.
Up to a point. It looks like the police have broken up a significant smuggling operation. What they have not done is arrest any of the people actually stealing the phones in the first place, and it is hard to be sure how those thieves will react to a loss of a large part of the market.
There is limited value in capturing the small fry.
I would like to see what behavioural science that's based on.
Zero tolerance policing does work, but needs resourcing. In isolation nicking the guy who steals a handset ties up a lot of resource and he will likely be straight back on the street. Even if you stick him in prison for a few months he will come back with enhanced technique and a broader criminal network
Zero tolerance requires more than just police resources, it requires expenditure on the entire criminal justice system from courts to effective non-custodial punishments, and we simply aren't willing to fund or otherwise resource the system.
I suspect that nicking this gang has created a new market opportunity for rivals, but that should be a spur to better intelligence led raids rather than defeatist.
I suspect the biggest single win in justice/policing right now would be massively reducing the gap between crime occurring and sentencing.
I agree. Criminals are in general pretty thick and impulsive, so punishment has to be timely to be effective. Also far easier to keep contact and momentum with witnesses etc.
Kemi having to defend Jenrick on R4 over his no white faces comments is the definition of something or other. I almost feel sorry for her. Almost but not quite.
As with leaving the ECHR, the Conservative Party is responding to a series of right-wing social media talking points with proposals that will have very little impact on people’s lives and their day-to-day problems. None of this is going to reduce NHS waiting lists or help with the cost of living or boost productivity. The Conservatives need to get serious again.
But how?
As any membership organisation shrinks, it become more concentrated on the most active activists who talk more to each other and less to anyone else. All those people who only joined the Conservatives to find the right sort of marriage partner may not have done much, but they did provide informal intelligence on what people who didn't think too much about politics were like.
Police say they have dismantled an international gang suspected of smuggling up to 40,000 stolen mobile phones from the UK to China in the last year. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20vlpwrzwdo
Meanwhile, British Transport Police have announced open season for criminals to steal bikes and cars parked at stations:
The higher-ups at the police clearly want Farage as next PM.
They can seemingly always spare officers to knock on doors half a dozen at a time because someone was offended by a Facebook post, yet have no time to investigate acquisitive crimes against people and businesses. Bike theft and phone theft are horrible events for the victims.
I regularly review CCTV at work. It would take about five minutes to find when a bike was stolen on a 10-hour digital tape, if I knew at what time it had been parked and had a description of the owner and/or the bike.
Devil's Advocate on this: this news story entirely backs up the police's approach. If they had every constable chasing down every phone nicked in London, they'd never get anywhere given the scale of the issue, and the time spent on sexual assaults etc etc would have to fall.
Instead, some smart officer has noted that this particular phone is in a big warehouse, and that it's in a large parcel heading overseas. They've allocated resources including forensics (usually tied up in much nastier stuff) and with only a small team smashed a huge gang and disrupted 40% of phone thefts in London.
We know anecdotally that it's the same with bike theft - I've even narrowed it down to a particular industrial estate in Edinburgh. Let's hope the police take the same approach there.
Up to a point. It looks like the police have broken up a significant smuggling operation. What they have not done is arrest any of the people actually stealing the phones in the first place, and it is hard to be sure how those thieves will react to a loss of a large part of the market.
There is limited value in capturing the small fry.
The guy who had his property stolen, often violently, disagrees.
Picking up the fences shipping parcels to China, does little to get the tea leaves and their dodgy scooters off the streets.
Indeed he may disagree. It doesn’t make him right.
(The police are doing their best with limited resources. They need more resources for a more visible presence. But the reality is in a world of smartphones and scooters you are not going to stop opportunistic theft)
Snatching phones is rarely opportunistic. Small groups on ebikes or scooters set out to tourist hotspots for the express purpose of snatching phones from unwary users. Often their faces are covered, and number plates removed.
ETA the arrested gang is estimated to have shipped 40,000 phones. That does not mean they had 40,000 suppliers who had stolen one phone each.
Those 35 judges Jenrick wants to sack include those who have previously done pro bono work for people without easy access to the law, which involves migration law. The man's a menace.
Police say they have dismantled an international gang suspected of smuggling up to 40,000 stolen mobile phones from the UK to China in the last year. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20vlpwrzwdo
Meanwhile, British Transport Police have announced open season for criminals to steal bikes and cars parked at stations:
The higher-ups at the police clearly want Farage as next PM.
They can seemingly always spare officers to knock on doors half a dozen at a time because someone was offended by a Facebook post, yet have no time to investigate acquisitive crimes against people and businesses. Bike theft and phone theft are horrible events for the victims.
I regularly review CCTV at work. It would take about five minutes to find when a bike was stolen on a 10-hour digital tape, if I knew at what time it had been parked and had a description of the owner and/or the bike.
Devil's Advocate on this: this news story entirely backs up the police's approach. If they had every constable chasing down every phone nicked in London, they'd never get anywhere given the scale of the issue, and the time spent on sexual assaults etc etc would have to fall.
Instead, some smart officer has noted that this particular phone is in a big warehouse, and that it's in a large parcel heading overseas. They've allocated resources including forensics (usually tied up in much nastier stuff) and with only a small team smashed a huge gang and disrupted 40% of phone thefts in London.
We know anecdotally that it's the same with bike theft - I've even narrowed it down to a particular industrial estate in Edinburgh. Let's hope the police take the same approach there.
Up to a point. It looks like the police have broken up a significant smuggling operation. What they have not done is arrest any of the people actually stealing the phones in the first place, and it is hard to be sure how those thieves will react to a loss of a large part of the market.
There is limited value in capturing the small fry.
I would like to see what behavioural science that's based on.
Zero tolerance policing does work, but needs resourcing. In isolation nicking the guy who steals a handset ties up a lot of resource and he will likely be straight back on the street. Even if you stick him in prison for a few months he will come back with enhanced technique and a broader criminal network
Zero tolerance requires more than just police resources, it requires expenditure on the entire criminal justice system from courts to effective non-custodial punishments, and we simply aren't willing to fund or otherwise resource the system.
I suspect that nicking this gang has created a new market opportunity for rivals, but that should be a spur to better intelligence led raids rather than defeatist.
I suspect the biggest single win in justice/policing right now would be massively reducing the gap between crime occurring and sentencing.
I agree. Criminals are in general pretty thick and impulsive, so punishment has to be timely to be effective. Also far easier to keep contact and momentum with witnesses etc.
In a world where politicians are obsessed with sentencing and the police seem mostly focused on providing CRNs for insurance claims, actually catching and charging the perpetrators could do with a bit of focus.
Police say they have dismantled an international gang suspected of smuggling up to 40,000 stolen mobile phones from the UK to China in the last year. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20vlpwrzwdo
Meanwhile, British Transport Police have announced open season for criminals to steal bikes and cars parked at stations:
The higher-ups at the police clearly want Farage as next PM.
They can seemingly always spare officers to knock on doors half a dozen at a time because someone was offended by a Facebook post, yet have no time to investigate acquisitive crimes against people and businesses. Bike theft and phone theft are horrible events for the victims.
I regularly review CCTV at work. It would take about five minutes to find when a bike was stolen on a 10-hour digital tape, if I knew at what time it had been parked and had a description of the owner and/or the bike.
Devil's Advocate on this: this news story entirely backs up the police's approach. If they had every constable chasing down every phone nicked in London, they'd never get anywhere given the scale of the issue, and the time spent on sexual assaults etc etc would have to fall.
Instead, some smart officer has noted that this particular phone is in a big warehouse, and that it's in a large parcel heading overseas. They've allocated resources including forensics (usually tied up in much nastier stuff) and with only a small team smashed a huge gang and disrupted 40% of phone thefts in London.
We know anecdotally that it's the same with bike theft - I've even narrowed it down to a particular industrial estate in Edinburgh. Let's hope the police take the same approach there.
Up to a point. It looks like the police have broken up a significant smuggling operation. What they have not done is arrest any of the people actually stealing the phones in the first place, and it is hard to be sure how those thieves will react to a loss of a large part of the market.
There is limited value in capturing the small fry.
I would like to see what behavioural science that's based on.
Zero tolerance policing does work, but needs resourcing. In isolation nicking the guy who steals a handset ties up a lot of resource and he will likely be straight back on the street. Even if you stick him in prison for a few months he will come back with enhanced technique and a broader criminal network
I agree - there's definitely a need for it but I think the optimal amount isn't as much as people think.
E.g. every morning outside my local primary school there are 3 cars and a van parked on the zig zags at a zebra crossing (a pretty serious offence if one of the kids is consequently killed). The parents report it but nothing is ever done, but I bet you the police would bring a prosecution if something did happen. It would take just a couple of fines on the repeat offenders and the issue goes away.
At Foxjrs primary school the headmaster used to be outside the school every morning welcoming kids (he knew them all by name) and would politely tick off parents who hadn't parked appropriately. It worked very well by social pressure as he was enormously respected.
Police say they have dismantled an international gang suspected of smuggling up to 40,000 stolen mobile phones from the UK to China in the last year. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20vlpwrzwdo
Meanwhile, British Transport Police have announced open season for criminals to steal bikes and cars parked at stations:
The higher-ups at the police clearly want Farage as next PM.
They can seemingly always spare officers to knock on doors half a dozen at a time because someone was offended by a Facebook post, yet have no time to investigate acquisitive crimes against people and businesses. Bike theft and phone theft are horrible events for the victims.
I regularly review CCTV at work. It would take about five minutes to find when a bike was stolen on a 10-hour digital tape, if I knew at what time it had been parked and had a description of the owner and/or the bike.
Devil's Advocate on this: this news story entirely backs up the police's approach. If they had every constable chasing down every phone nicked in London, they'd never get anywhere given the scale of the issue, and the time spent on sexual assaults etc etc would have to fall.
Instead, some smart officer has noted that this particular phone is in a big warehouse, and that it's in a large parcel heading overseas. They've allocated resources including forensics (usually tied up in much nastier stuff) and with only a small team smashed a huge gang and disrupted 40% of phone thefts in London.
We know anecdotally that it's the same with bike theft - I've even narrowed it down to a particular industrial estate in Edinburgh. Let's hope the police take the same approach there.
Up to a point. It looks like the police have broken up a significant smuggling operation. What they have not done is arrest any of the people actually stealing the phones in the first place, and it is hard to be sure how those thieves will react to a loss of a large part of the market.
There is limited value in capturing the small fry.
The guy who had his property stolen, often violently, disagrees.
Picking up the fences shipping parcels to China, does little to get the tea leaves and their dodgy scooters off the streets.
Economics of how to allocate finite police and court resources. Which is the only sort of economics that matters.
Let's say a stolen bike causes £300 of harm to society. How much police time is it worth spending chasing it up? And how much can you achieve in that time?
(The point about hurty words cases is that they are dead easy to investigate.)
If the victim comes to the police station and says that they have a tracker on their stolen item, and can see it’s located at 123 Letsbe Avenue, one might understand why they’d be a little miffed if all the police want to do is hand them a reference number.
In a world of policing by consent, the lack of empathy shown to victims sows a general public distrust of the police as an organisation.
It doesn’t help when there’s seemingly daily reports of the police showing up mob-handed to police speech, or the speed camera van sitting 24/7 on an empty road.
Police say they have dismantled an international gang suspected of smuggling up to 40,000 stolen mobile phones from the UK to China in the last year. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20vlpwrzwdo
Meanwhile, British Transport Police have announced open season for criminals to steal bikes and cars parked at stations:
The higher-ups at the police clearly want Farage as next PM.
They can seemingly always spare officers to knock on doors half a dozen at a time because someone was offended by a Facebook post, yet have no time to investigate acquisitive crimes against people and businesses. Bike theft and phone theft are horrible events for the victims.
I regularly review CCTV at work. It would take about five minutes to find when a bike was stolen on a 10-hour digital tape, if I knew at what time it had been parked and had a description of the owner and/or the bike.
Devil's Advocate on this: this news story entirely backs up the police's approach. If they had every constable chasing down every phone nicked in London, they'd never get anywhere given the scale of the issue, and the time spent on sexual assaults etc etc would have to fall.
Instead, some smart officer has noted that this particular phone is in a big warehouse, and that it's in a large parcel heading overseas. They've allocated resources including forensics (usually tied up in much nastier stuff) and with only a small team smashed a huge gang and disrupted 40% of phone thefts in London.
We know anecdotally that it's the same with bike theft - I've even narrowed it down to a particular industrial estate in Edinburgh. Let's hope the police take the same approach there.
Up to a point. It looks like the police have broken up a significant smuggling operation. What they have not done is arrest any of the people actually stealing the phones in the first place, and it is hard to be sure how those thieves will react to a loss of a large part of the market.
There is limited value in capturing the small fry.
I would like to see what behavioural science that's based on.
Zero tolerance policing does work, but needs resourcing. In isolation nicking the guy who steals a handset ties up a lot of resource and he will likely be straight back on the street. Even if you stick him in prison for a few months he will come back with enhanced technique and a broader criminal network
I agree - there's definitely a need for it but I think the optimal amount isn't as much as people think.
E.g. every morning outside my local primary school there are 3 cars and a van parked on the zig zags at a zebra crossing (a pretty serious offence if one of the kids is consequently killed). The parents report it but nothing is ever done, but I bet you the police would bring a prosecution if something did happen. It would take just a couple of fines on the repeat offenders and the issue goes away.
At Foxjrs primary school the headmaster used to be outside the school every morning welcoming kids (he knew them all by name) and would politely tick off parents who hadn't parked appropriately. It worked very well by social pressure as he was enormously respected.
Why don't kids walk to school anymore?
They do?* Overwhelmingly at our local primary, at least 70% when the school last counted. And the headteacher stands outside the gates each morning.
Now our youngest is at secondary she walks to the bus stop and catches the bus.
“There is limited value in capturing the small fry”.
Nonsense. People with criminal intent should be excluded from society, otherwise they will likely continue to commit a multitude of other crimes. For this particular crime, many of them could be excluded through deportation.
Police say they have dismantled an international gang suspected of smuggling up to 40,000 stolen mobile phones from the UK to China in the last year. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20vlpwrzwdo
Meanwhile, British Transport Police have announced open season for criminals to steal bikes and cars parked at stations:
The higher-ups at the police clearly want Farage as next PM.
They can seemingly always spare officers to knock on doors half a dozen at a time because someone was offended by a Facebook post, yet have no time to investigate acquisitive crimes against people and businesses. Bike theft and phone theft are horrible events for the victims.
I regularly review CCTV at work. It would take about five minutes to find when a bike was stolen on a 10-hour digital tape, if I knew at what time it had been parked and had a description of the owner and/or the bike.
Devil's Advocate on this: this news story entirely backs up the police's approach. If they had every constable chasing down every phone nicked in London, they'd never get anywhere given the scale of the issue, and the time spent on sexual assaults etc etc would have to fall.
Instead, some smart officer has noted that this particular phone is in a big warehouse, and that it's in a large parcel heading overseas. They've allocated resources including forensics (usually tied up in much nastier stuff) and with only a small team smashed a huge gang and disrupted 40% of phone thefts in London.
We know anecdotally that it's the same with bike theft - I've even narrowed it down to a particular industrial estate in Edinburgh. Let's hope the police take the same approach there.
Up to a point. It looks like the police have broken up a significant smuggling operation. What they have not done is arrest any of the people actually stealing the phones in the first place, and it is hard to be sure how those thieves will react to a loss of a large part of the market.
There is limited value in capturing the small fry.
I would like to see what behavioural science that's based on.
Zero tolerance policing does work, but needs resourcing. In isolation nicking the guy who steals a handset ties up a lot of resource and he will likely be straight back on the street. Even if you stick him in prison for a few months he will come back with enhanced technique and a broader criminal network
I agree - there's definitely a need for it but I think the optimal amount isn't as much as people think.
E.g. every morning outside my local primary school there are 3 cars and a van parked on the zig zags at a zebra crossing (a pretty serious offence if one of the kids is consequently killed). The parents report it but nothing is ever done, but I bet you the police would bring a prosecution if something did happen. It would take just a couple of fines on the repeat offenders and the issue goes away.
At Foxjrs primary school the headmaster used to be outside the school every morning welcoming kids (he knew them all by name) and would politely tick off parents who hadn't parked appropriately. It worked very well by social pressure as he was enormously respected.
Why don't kids walk to school anymore?
At primary schools, mostly because their parent doesn’t have the time to walk there and walk back, because they need to be at work. So they drop off the kids by car on their way out in the morning.
It’s a consequence of an increase in families where both parents work.
Police say they have dismantled an international gang suspected of smuggling up to 40,000 stolen mobile phones from the UK to China in the last year. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20vlpwrzwdo
Meanwhile, British Transport Police have announced open season for criminals to steal bikes and cars parked at stations:
The higher-ups at the police clearly want Farage as next PM.
They can seemingly always spare officers to knock on doors half a dozen at a time because someone was offended by a Facebook post, yet have no time to investigate acquisitive crimes against people and businesses. Bike theft and phone theft are horrible events for the victims.
I regularly review CCTV at work. It would take about five minutes to find when a bike was stolen on a 10-hour digital tape, if I knew at what time it had been parked and had a description of the owner and/or the bike.
Devil's Advocate on this: this news story entirely backs up the police's approach. If they had every constable chasing down every phone nicked in London, they'd never get anywhere given the scale of the issue, and the time spent on sexual assaults etc etc would have to fall.
Instead, some smart officer has noted that this particular phone is in a big warehouse, and that it's in a large parcel heading overseas. They've allocated resources including forensics (usually tied up in much nastier stuff) and with only a small team smashed a huge gang and disrupted 40% of phone thefts in London.
We know anecdotally that it's the same with bike theft - I've even narrowed it down to a particular industrial estate in Edinburgh. Let's hope the police take the same approach there.
Up to a point. It looks like the police have broken up a significant smuggling operation. What they have not done is arrest any of the people actually stealing the phones in the first place, and it is hard to be sure how those thieves will react to a loss of a large part of the market.
There is limited value in capturing the small fry.
I would like to see what behavioural science that's based on.
Zero tolerance policing does work, but needs resourcing. In isolation nicking the guy who steals a handset ties up a lot of resource and he will likely be straight back on the street. Even if you stick him in prison for a few months he will come back with enhanced technique and a broader criminal network
I agree - there's definitely a need for it but I think the optimal amount isn't as much as people think.
E.g. every morning outside my local primary school there are 3 cars and a van parked on the zig zags at a zebra crossing (a pretty serious offence if one of the kids is consequently killed). The parents report it but nothing is ever done, but I bet you the police would bring a prosecution if something did happen. It would take just a couple of fines on the repeat offenders and the issue goes away.
At Foxjrs primary school the headmaster used to be outside the school every morning welcoming kids (he knew them all by name) and would politely tick off parents who hadn't parked appropriately. It worked very well by social pressure as he was enormously respected.
Why don't kids walk to school anymore?
Both parents of most kids work nowadays.
Why I was a kid at primary school my mum walked with me to our school. She did not work so could walk back home.
Both my wife and I work and have to be at work on time, so I drive my kids in to their school and drop them off on the way to my work.
Police say they have dismantled an international gang suspected of smuggling up to 40,000 stolen mobile phones from the UK to China in the last year. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20vlpwrzwdo
Meanwhile, British Transport Police have announced open season for criminals to steal bikes and cars parked at stations:
The higher-ups at the police clearly want Farage as next PM.
They can seemingly always spare officers to knock on doors half a dozen at a time because someone was offended by a Facebook post, yet have no time to investigate acquisitive crimes against people and businesses. Bike theft and phone theft are horrible events for the victims.
I regularly review CCTV at work. It would take about five minutes to find when a bike was stolen on a 10-hour digital tape, if I knew at what time it had been parked and had a description of the owner and/or the bike.
Devil's Advocate on this: this news story entirely backs up the police's approach. If they had every constable chasing down every phone nicked in London, they'd never get anywhere given the scale of the issue, and the time spent on sexual assaults etc etc would have to fall.
Instead, some smart officer has noted that this particular phone is in a big warehouse, and that it's in a large parcel heading overseas. They've allocated resources including forensics (usually tied up in much nastier stuff) and with only a small team smashed a huge gang and disrupted 40% of phone thefts in London.
We know anecdotally that it's the same with bike theft - I've even narrowed it down to a particular industrial estate in Edinburgh. Let's hope the police take the same approach there.
Up to a point. It looks like the police have broken up a significant smuggling operation. What they have not done is arrest any of the people actually stealing the phones in the first place, and it is hard to be sure how those thieves will react to a loss of a large part of the market.
There is limited value in capturing the small fry.
I would like to see what behavioural science that's based on.
Zero tolerance policing does work, but needs resourcing. In isolation nicking the guy who steals a handset ties up a lot of resource and he will likely be straight back on the street. Even if you stick him in prison for a few months he will come back with enhanced technique and a broader criminal network
I agree - there's definitely a need for it but I think the optimal amount isn't as much as people think.
E.g. every morning outside my local primary school there are 3 cars and a van parked on the zig zags at a zebra crossing (a pretty serious offence if one of the kids is consequently killed). The parents report it but nothing is ever done, but I bet you the police would bring a prosecution if something did happen. It would take just a couple of fines on the repeat offenders and the issue goes away.
At Foxjrs primary school the headmaster used to be outside the school every morning welcoming kids (he knew them all by name) and would politely tick off parents who hadn't parked appropriately. It worked very well by social pressure as he was enormously respected.
Why don't kids walk to school anymore?
At primary schools, mostly because their parent doesn’t have the time to walk there and walk back, because they need to be at work. So they drop off the kids by car on their way out in the morning.
It’s a consequence of an increase in families where both parents work.
I can understand that argument if their very young and a single, but with brothers and sisters?
Comments
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/oct/07/nobel-committee-unable-to-reach-medicine-prize-winner-hiking-off-grid
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2025/press-release/
Discord has announced a third-party data breach: stolen data may include names, email addresses, billing information such as payment type and the last four digits of credit cards, and – in some cases – images of government IDs provided for age verification purposes.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/06/discord_support_data_breach/
The 2020 Census was a fraud. The Biden admin used a shady “privacy” formula that scrambled the data and miscounted 14 states. It included illegal immigrants and handed Democrats extra seats. Americans deserve a fair count and I’m fighting to fix it.
https://x.com/SenatorBanks/status/1975242153942020548
Still blooming useful though.
Alternatively, as that is in England, a widdershins walks would have got them to around the Cromarty / Inverness area.
This is so obviously the correct answer I fail to understand how anyone could even argue with it...
They're the ones involved in telling T-cells not to attack your own cells.
https://x.com/taurine__/status/1975181717297082407
Any Nobel Prize will do.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/10/13/a-year-of-convulsions-in-new-yorks-prisons?_sp=f13d08fc-f1b7-479b-b37b-1c403f449de6.1759812336671
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20vlpwrzwdo
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8jm3wxvlkjo
Colour me shocked. Shocked, I tell you! Who could've imagined this terribly designed piece of legislation could've had any negative consequences.
This, needing it for Xbox social stuff, and the like is going to seriously piss off a lot of people. It may not affect Labour's polling as they've already annoyed a lot of people, but I'd be very inclined to listen to parties (not Reform/Green) who indicate they'd axe this OSA bullshit. And Labour's online ID cards.
They can seemingly always spare officers to knock on doors half a dozen at a time because someone was offended by a Facebook post, yet have no time to investigate acquisitive crimes against people and businesses. Bike theft and phone theft are horrible events for the victims.
I regularly review CCTV at work. It would take about five minutes to find when a bike was stolen on a 10-hour digital tape, if I knew at what time it had been parked and had a description of the owner and/or the bike.
(Can you *reject* a Nobel Prize? It's hard to imagine why you would, but is there a process? And if it's an award for two or three people, would your name be left off, or would the entire team lost it?)
When Hitler forced one chemist to refuse the award I think the other (Swiss) scientists in his team still got it.
With phone theft they can track where the phone is and the Police won’t bother.
https://x.com/Beefeater_Fella/status/1975137216050446690
Obviously a proud patriot.
"Mr Minnis is a former drug addict who was also previously a member of the far-right National Front party during his time in the UK.
In 2008 he was jailed for 4 years and 3 months for an unprovoked racially assaulting on a man in the street"
Our only hope is The Terminator films are based on a reality. Personally I'd send Arnie back in time to deal with the teenage Stephen Miller. I believe everyone is "mis-underestimating" Stephen Miller's capacity for undiluted evil.
I hope to God that's no-one's idea of how our prison system - deeply flawed as it is - should be.
https://youtu.be/NZByWk6SPM0?si=M4WJavfKkAZ5fQQs
That said, this phone theft gang getting rounded up does appear to be positive news today.
I’ve also seen on Twitter people spraying pickpockets with paint in London. Not sure how I feel about it, but if the Polixe do little about a problem people take matters into their own hands.
At the time this was a new thing and seen as the end of the old boy network, and the end of elitism. The generation of politicians that had "a good war" were not like their predecessors McMillan and Home, and for many the relatively humble background of Heath in particular was the source of derision ("Grocer" Heath). It explains why Heath remained bitter after his outer, not just against fellow grammar schooler, Margaret Thatcher, but those in her entourage that were quite snobbish towards Heath, but entertained ludicrous ideas that Thatcher was the illegitimate daughter of a Duke, rather than the actual Grocer, Alderman Roberts.
I expect there are some Proud Boys hired by ICE, judging by behaviour and video reports.
I'm sure we'll find out in time.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cqle5newg0no
Life expectancy on the front line now said to be 12 days for Russians, they’re doing stupid stuff like amassing troops and equipment on the wrong side of the river near Lyman, and only then trying to build the bridge across. The bridge never gets finished before it gets the Storm Shadow treatment, meanwhile half an army are sitting ducks for Ukranian artillery.
How much time/material do you let the Russians utilise before you take it out? The risk being they complete it. I’d probably go at 70% but could see the argument for more
While taking out the bridge is clearly important, the more valuable target is the bridge-building equipment and the men doing the building. It’s a specialised task that uses rare machinery to construct the bridge then tow it into place, so you want to take it out just as they’re nearing the end of the construction process.
Here’s a good video (17m) about the failed attack across the river.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNe5Z9AiN3M
You need to build a bridge to get the armour and troops across; but if you don't have the armour or troops nearby to exploit that bridgehead, it's pointless and gives time for the bridge to be attacked and destroyed. So you need to keep the material near the bridgehead to exploit it the moment it is finished. Keep them too far back, then they can get hammered travelling to the bridgehead, and takes longer to exploit the new bridge and form a bridgehead.
So it's a compromise: you need the forces near where you are going to build the bridge and bridgehead, but dispersed enough to make them harder to attack. But the latter has issues as well. Then if the bridge takes longer to build than planned, they are sitting ducks.
A mate at uni was an engineer in the OTC, and he spent many weekends building and taking down military bridges. He loved it, but was aware how short his life expectancy might be in a very hot war. Bridging units are prime targets, and far more valuable than (say) tanks.
(I will let the real military experts LOL at this post...)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2rz08en2po.amp
Or at least, the developing world does. Meanwhile the rest of us start the long road back to the Middle Ages, led by Trump and his cabal.
China remains way ahead in clean energy growth, adding more solar and wind capacity than the rest of the world combined. This enabled the growth in renewable generation in China to outpace rising electricity demand and helped reduce its fossil fuel generation by 2%.
India experienced slower electricity demand growth and also added significant new solar and wind capacity, meaning it too cut back on coal and gas.
In contrast, developed nations like the US, and also the EU, saw the opposite trend.
In the US, electricity demand grew faster than clean energy output, increasing reliance on fossil fuels, while in the EU, months of weak wind and hydropower performance led to a rise in coal and gas generation.
Alternately encouraging and depressing at the same time.
Instead, some smart officer has noted that this particular phone is in a big warehouse, and that it's in a large parcel heading overseas. They've allocated resources including forensics (usually tied up in much nastier stuff) and with only a small team smashed a huge gang and disrupted 40% of phone thefts in London.
We know anecdotally that it's the same with bike theft - I've even narrowed it down to a particular industrial estate in Edinburgh. Let's hope the police take the same approach there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4476uSeTsg8
The energy policies of China and India are entirely operated according to their national interest. Where they add renewable capacity, it is based purely on expediency. I don't think anybody, however anti-green, would object if we added renewable capacity purely where and when it was the cheapest form of energy. If we did, our energy mix would be something like China's probably, and we would be more prosperous for it.
It is particularly galling that such commentors often trumpet China's amazing technological leadership in green energy - a leadership they have fostered by using dirty fuel to make them the cheapest supplier on the market, without being stupid enough to put the same restrictions on their economy as we have. It is a similar story to how the USA grew fat from being a supplier rather than a combatant when the British Empire was locked in conflict with the Nazis from 1939.
In any case, we need to grow up and ditch this nonsense whilst we still have the vestiges of an economy.
Neither get the credit that they deserve for shaping politics for so long. Because of his great sulk and aloofness people forget Heath's brilliant intellect and vision. Similarly because of the failures of his 1975 government, people forget Wilsons political cunning and ability to unite a fissile party. The pair were political enemies but each was a titan shaping modern Britain.
On a previous video, he walks very near my sister's countryside house.
Low level crime needs to be made impossible. Then the whole thing dies.
Picking up the fences shipping parcels to China, does little to get the tea leaves and their dodgy scooters off the streets.
Confirmation if it were needed that the US prison system is hell on earth, both for the inmates and to be strictly fair, the staff. Striking that run down towns that had lobbied for prisons during the correctional facility building boom of the 80s & 90s were now in danger of losing even that source of employment due to falling crime rates.
(The police are doing their best with limited resources. They need more resources for a more visible presence. But the reality is in a world of smartphones and scooters you are not going to stop opportunistic theft)
Their only chance is to change public opinion but every bit of polling I've seen has large majorities against coal, even gas, and across the political spectrum, so it's looking good on that front too.
Conservatives promise to scrap Sentencing Council
As with leaving the ECHR, the Conservative Party is responding to a series of right-wing social media talking points with proposals that will have very little impact on people’s lives and their day-to-day problems. None of this is going to reduce NHS waiting lists or help with the cost of living or boost productivity. The Conservatives need to get serious again.
I suspect that nicking this gang has created a new market opportunity for rivals, but that should be a spur to better intelligence led raids rather than defeatist.
They find new employers. A new gang emerges
E.g. every morning outside my local primary school there are 3 cars and a van parked on the zig zags at a zebra crossing (a pretty serious offence if one of the kids is consequently killed). The parents report it but nothing is ever done, but I bet you the police would bring a prosecution if something did happen. It would take just a couple of fines on the repeat offenders and the issue goes away.
https://www.theguardian.com/food/2025/oct/07/enjoying-international-cuisines-makes-people-more-tolerant-uk-study-finds?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
Let's say a stolen bike causes £300 of harm to society. How much police time is it worth spending chasing it up? And how much can you achieve in that time?
(The point about hurty words cases is that they are dead easy to investigate.)
Trump is just a Cnut.
As any membership organisation shrinks, it become more concentrated on the most active activists who talk more to each other and less to anyone else. All those people who only joined the Conservatives to find the right sort of marriage partner may not have done much, but they did provide informal intelligence on what people who didn't think too much about politics were like.
ETA the arrested gang is estimated to have shipped 40,000 phones. That does not mean they had 40,000 suppliers who had stolen one phone each.
https://www.the-londoner.co.uk/one-of-south-londons-oldest-turkish-restaurants-is-being-fined-2-5m-over-a-misplaced-vent/
In a world of policing by consent, the lack of empathy shown to victims sows a general public distrust of the police as an organisation.
It doesn’t help when there’s seemingly daily reports of the police showing up mob-handed to police speech, or the speed camera van sitting 24/7 on an empty road.
https://x.com/jaredlholt/status/1975331184704950753
Now our youngest is at secondary she walks to the bus stop and catches the bus.
*(or cycle)
Nonsense. People with criminal intent should be excluded from society, otherwise they will likely continue to commit a multitude of other crimes. For this particular crime, many of them could be excluded through deportation.
It’s a consequence of an increase in families where both parents work.
Why I was a kid at primary school my mum walked with me to our school. She did not work so could walk back home.
Both my wife and I work and have to be at work on time, so I drive my kids in to their school and drop them off on the way to my work.