I see the government is pushing forward on VPN registration - and talking about banning children from having a VPN account.
I foresee a new playground business. Tech Boy selling access to his homebrew VPN.
Let’s just ban the entire internet and be done with it. We can have a government approved intranet portal telling us of all the wonderful things the Dear Leader is doing for us.
I see the government is pushing forward on VPN registration - and talking about banning children from having a VPN account.
I foresee a new playground business. Tech Boy selling access to his homebrew VPN.
Let’s just ban the entire internet and be done with it. We can have a government approved intranet portal telling us of all the wonderful things the Dear Leader is doing for us.
It’s the King Cnut / Canute / Luddite approach of trying to prevent the inevitable.
VPNs are essential technology for businesses, social media is awful but already exists.
Neither are things (alongside a million others that will appear in the next few years) that can be stopped and any attempt to do so will be utterly pointless.
Farage is apparently announcing his frontbench opposition spokespeople tomorrow. Media are calling it his shadow cabinet which it isn't.
Why isn't it a shadow cabinet? Is that something only the official opposition is allowed to have? In which case it's something of a technicality.
Only His Majesties Loyal Opposition has a shadow cabinet.
Are you saying Reform aren’t loyal?
I mean it’s obvious from the behavior of Jenrick and co but I wouldn’t have been so blunt
We do have a very loyal PM. Loyal to the wrong people of course. And only loyal until he’s forced to pretend he was never really loyal in the first place.
I see the government is pushing forward on VPN registration - and talking about banning children from having a VPN account.
I foresee a new playground business. Tech Boy selling access to his homebrew VPN.
Let’s just ban the entire internet and be done with it. We can have a government approved intranet portal telling us of all the wonderful things the Dear Leader is doing for us.
It’s the King Cnut / Canute / Luddite approach of trying to prevent the inevitable.
VPNs are essential technology for businesses, social media is awful but already exists.
Neither are things (alongside a million others that will appear in the next few years) that can be stopped and any attempt to do so will be utterly pointless.
On topic. No. Labour are hiding behind “legal opinion” for a political decision to u-turn before the campaign kicks off and is made all about Labour cancelling democracy to save their skins.
The Conservatives successfully cancelled elections for this reorganisation in both 2019 and 2022, so there is NO WAY this government would have lost this case in the courts, even if it may have taken more than one visit.
Todays definitely not based on legal advice but wholly political u-turn from Labour, knowingly and unnecessarily puts hundreds of thousands of tax payers money straight into Nigel’s and Zia’s pockets.
As usual, I find myself splitting the difference on this. The cancellation of elections for a second year in places like Norfolk, Suffolk, Hampshire and the two Sussexes was and is indefensible but for those in the earlier stages of re-organisation, I think a 12-month postponement is justifiable and as you say this was a game the Conservatives played when in office.
It’s no game. What is the point holding elections electing someone to a council role and a council that doesn’t exist in less than 12 months? What is harm in extending for 1 year someone only elected 4 years ago?
The game Farage and the Daily Telegraph been playing here is utterly, money wasting nimbyism. The type of opportunist shit that holds this country back.
What’s so special about councillors can’t extend a year over 4 or it’s an outrage and democracy starts falling apart?
And what game Kemi and her front bench doing here? They were actually in a government that actually done this, they justified on grounds it’s sound fiscal conservatism!
12 months? Luxury.
We've just had a byelection to Bradford council less than 3 months before the winning candidate has to seek re-election.
Was it legally obliged to happen? Or like Parliament constituencies, the timing of by-election a political plaything?
When 2019 elections cancelled, the Conservative Party defended it as a necessary step to support local government reorganisation. The primary reasons provided were: * Protecting Reorganisation Work: Postponing the polls enabled councils to focus their time and energy on implementing the transition from a "two-tier" system (county and district councils) to new, single unitary authorities. * Avoiding Waste of Resources: The government argued it would be "financially wasteful" and "distracting" to hold elections for short-term posts on councils that were due to be abolished shortly thereafter. * Capacity Constraints: Ministers stated that councils undergoing significant structural changes might lack the capacity to manage resource-intensive election administration simultaneously with the reorganisation process. * Ensuring Continuity: Existing councillors had their terms extended to maintain leadership and stability until the new unitary councils were established.
The only fundamental difference now from then is scale. The Cancellations 2019-2021 were pilot schemes, to prove the change of scrapping local authorities to next step be rolled out.
There’s no way the Government would have lost this challenge to the glib paper thin Reform position in court.
Where is your legal opinion on your last sentence
Sky reports government lawyers said they would not only lose but their action was illegal, hence today's PR disaster for Starmer
It's utterly bizarre as despite the easy jokes there are plenty of smart people in government, and the first thing you'd think they'd have done was get a cast iron opinion on how to do it legally.
And if they couldn't, putb a Bill before Parliament
I see a pattern.
1) the comic bat tunnel. Not the idea of protecting bats, but the apparent fact that the requirement was expressed as an impossible “no bat must be harmed”. It’s impossible to guarantee such things - even at vast cost. All such requirements should be expressed as a probability and, ideally, given a “cost per event avoided” in the spec. 2) in the contract for Rolls Royce to build SMRs, a requirement was added to have a number of asylum seekers employed by the project. It’s illegal for asylum seekers to work.
Both these (and many others) and the case over the elections strongly suggest that domain experts are not being involved at fundamental level in policy implementation. That nearly random suggestions - “wouldn’t it be nice…” from amateurs are being incorporated into the plans and actions.
I'm not sure I understand that about Asylum seekers. We had some Syrian asylum seekers when I worked at the Jobcentre and they were indeed allowed to work, in fact they claimed benefits in the same way and under the same conditions as anyone else. So you are allowed to work as an asylum seeker where you have reached a certain stage of the process.
I see the government is pushing forward on VPN registration - and talking about banning children from having a VPN account.
I foresee a new playground business. Tech Boy selling access to his homebrew VPN.
Backhaul via Starlink, no doubt.
Or by Amazon Leo or the Chinese mega constellations. Did you know that the Chinese have applied to the ITU to orbit 200,000 satellites?
Yes, I saw that. I can't imagine anyone will say no.
Shame about the night sky, eh?
Depends what we build up there.
“To grow in knowledge and in stature. Lofty halls of adamant and titanium, lit with the very light of dreams. Epic bridges between planets, wonders made manifest. And then at last, the last great adventure - to dare the gulf between the stars.”
I see the government is pushing forward on VPN registration - and talking about banning children from having a VPN account.
I foresee a new playground business. Tech Boy selling access to his homebrew VPN.
My Norton AV has a VPN. It's a standard account so I'm sure it would be available whoever logs on.
Don’t worry - that’s round 37 of the laws. Anyone providing a VPN to someone under 16 will be subject to a massive fine and be put on the register of offenders. So your children would be taken into care.
The war on Social Media will be completely different to the War On Drugs. To start with, we will lose it quicker.
I see the government is pushing forward on VPN registration - and talking about banning children from having a VPN account.
I foresee a new playground business. Tech Boy selling access to his homebrew VPN.
My Norton AV has a VPN. It's a standard account so I'm sure it would be available whoever logs on.
The government has not thought this through. Too busy on their AI Skill Hub doing worthless courses.
There have to be some MPs who are aware of these things, they're not all octogenarians or Jacob Rees-Moggs.
My father, who is quite ancient, sent me a link to a news story on this. He commented that nothing has changed since the Athenians gave Socrates a free drink for “Corrupting Youth”
That is absolutely insane. £100 fine is the worse you can get. Oh nooo....I do 24 in a 20 and I get rammed up the arse and 4 of those in 3 years loss of licence. Just put invisible plates on even if i am caught, its £100 and that's it.
The fact you basically need no checks to supply them either is crazy given how over regulated so many industries are.
This ought to be a prestige series for Apple or Amazon.
We were promised a whole ocean of sequels drawn from Patrick O’Brian's twenty-book treasury, yet we were left with only this one magnificent voyage.
The disappointment is almost domestic in its sadness: the picture came out just after everyone had stuffed themselves on Pirates of the Caribbean’s rum-soaked capers. And although it was critically adored and pulled in respectable money worldwide, it didn't quite deliver the obscene domestic blockbuster numbers the studios now insist on before they’ll green-light another expensive wooden ship full of extras getting wet and cold for months on end.
So the Surprise sits at anchor in our heads, her powder magazines untouched, while we quietly grieve the French frigates we never chased, the dinners in the great cabin we never attended. We wonder how the Hollywood bean-counters - who never once smelled salt spray or heard a broadside - managed to convince themselves this particular adventure wasn't worth continuing.
Plus they'd have to recast: Russell Crowe is fat and old, and Vision is booked up (and married to Jennifer Connolly - yes, really). Unless there are later books with older versions of the characters.
It pains me to say it but I’m finding difficulty finding the last time this country was properly governed. By a government that actually knew what it was doing, and used Parliament - you know that thing government uses to make laws - to actually do something that did any good. At all.
I’d say controversially 2010-2015.Some may not have liked it but by Christ at least it had a programme. Mapped out and agreed.
In fairness to David Cameron, his 2015-2016 ministry was quite well handled. The Referendum was on a matter of national importance, yet it was handled remarkably well. The vote was not rigged and was counted fairly and in good time. Parliament promptly shat the bed and Cameron ran away, but up to that point things had run OK
Except Cameron f***ed up by 1) allowing the referendum to be held in the first place 2) making vote Yes mean not a clue what we are voting for and 3) voting No given everyone their pet unicorn attached to the ability to say fu to a government 60% of the population hadn't voted for,.
And when you look at it that way I'm actually surprised No only got 51.9% of the vote.
And also by not actually trying to get any sort of deal. If he'd gone for some sort of pre-Lisbon status he could have gone down in history as the man who cut the Gordian knot of Europe. But then he would have felt left out of his euro-PMs group of chums. So he didn't bother.
Personally, I think the real opportunity lay in the creation of a proper three-tier Europe.
First tier: Eurozone Second tier: Economic integration, but not political integration. (Which I would call EEA+) Third tier: Economic cooperation, but not integration
There are quite a few countries who are EU members, but don't want the Eurozone, and/or are very unhappy about further political integration. That group would have included not just us, but the Swedes and the Poles too.
I would have called it something like Associate Member of the EU.
But that would have been too much like hard work for David Cameron.
...Alas, Master and Commander is one of those quiet sorrows that all film buffs will continue to carry like an old wound from a duel they never quite fought... https://x.com/ithacarising/status/2023054829426442668
There will always be a part of me that wants to go back in time and stop "Tron: Ares" being made.
Comments
I mean it’s obvious from the behavior of Jenrick and co but I wouldn’t have been so blunt
VPNs are essential technology for businesses, social media is awful but already exists.
Neither are things (alongside a million others that will appear in the next few years) that can be stopped and any attempt to do so will be utterly pointless.
From this year’s Spring Festival Gala performance, it’s clear that Unitree’s motion control is the strongest in the entire industry.
https://x.com/ErenChenAI/status/2023394559342903397?s=20
Shame about the night sky, eh?
This looks to be an AI generated movie - SeanT will be all over it tomorrow.
Now it’s got some jumps in logic and it’s not perfect but it will merrily fills 3 minutes and wait to the cameo at the end
https://youtu.be/V5AFQaEbHQU?si=kxKS74mDnhEZlGGj
“To grow in knowledge and in stature. Lofty halls of adamant and titanium, lit with the very light of dreams. Epic bridges between planets, wonders made manifest. And then at last, the last great adventure - to dare the gulf between the stars.”
The war on Social Media will be completely different to the War On Drugs. To start with, we will lose it quicker.
For comparison, here are similar scenes produced by conventional methods costing tens of millions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUthfKQsZ4M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fstiovuBC3M
At present, fines are non-endorsable, meaning that they do not carry points and are not recorded on a driver’s licence.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/02/16/ghost-number-plates-haunting-britain-police/
That is absolutely insane. £100 fine is the worse you can get. Oh nooo....I do 24 in a 20 and I get rammed up the arse and 4 of those in 3 years loss of licence. Just put invisible plates on even if i am caught, its £100 and that's it.
The fact you basically need no checks to supply them either is crazy given how over regulated so many industries are.
First tier: Eurozone
Second tier: Economic integration, but not political integration. (Which I would call EEA+)
Third tier: Economic cooperation, but not integration
There are quite a few countries who are EU members, but don't want the Eurozone, and/or are very unhappy about further political integration. That group would have included not just us, but the Swedes and the Poles too.
I would have called it something like Associate Member of the EU.
But that would have been too much like hard work for David Cameron.