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Jason Kenny becomes the 30% favourite for this year BBC SPOTY election – politicalbetting.com

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  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 18,284
    Selebian said:

    Learning to code is no longer fit for purpose

    Software developers from coding schools are losing out in the jobs market to self-starters who demonstrate genuine intellectual curiosity

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/08/09/learning-code-no-longer-fit-purpose/

    I can see that. Self-taught are probably learning either by developing something themselves (likely open source, public, may become popular) or scraching an itch contributing to an existing open source project. Both more real world experience than just doing the coding assignments.

    I used to contribute to KDE and many of the companies in that space recruited directly from the git repositories and the contributor conferences.

    Having said that, the ideal is both. Get the formal education in the overall theory of it as well in addition to getting the real world work experience. I've learned some coding on various jobs and whenever I've subsequently done a formal course I've discovered big gaps in my knowledge.
    I think one aspect is that they want people who are flexible enough to be okay with switching languages. I worked with someone who very firmly saw themselves as a C# developer, and became very unhappy when their employer decided to migrate away from using C#. That's problematic if you then have to go through redundancy and recruitment.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,404
    edited August 2021

    DavidL said:

    BBC Scotland Business and Economy Editor, tweets:

    Wind turbine blade-maker Siemens Gamesa doubling the size of its Hull factory, with £186m investment. 200 more jobs, adding to 1000 now.....

    Also in Hull, GRI Renewable Industries announces £78 million investment in an offshore wind turbine tower factory, creating up to 260 direct jobs.


    https://twitter.com/BBCDouglasF/status/1424620811520970753?s=20

    Well it could have been Bifab in Methil had the Scottish government not been so incompetent.
    There isn't anything else that could be adding to business uncertainty in Scotland is there?
    Yes Jim, we feel the love.

    image
    I'm sure this picture makes a really important and powerful point and I'm just too stupid to figure out what it is
    To be fair, it's getting to be a 'classic' as the one of Andrew Neil in Private Eye.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,287

    malcolmg said:

    DougSeal said:

    The question is, how many people will be shortlisted? If six, like the last couple of years, then JK looks good. There is a large cycling block vote and seven gold medals should nail it. If 16, like the last Olympics year, then it might be more complicated, especially if the cycling vote is split, and there were no fewer than seven cycling gold medallists, and that is betting without Mark Cavendish who equalled Eddy Merckx's Tour de France record.

    Cycling gold medallists:-

    Jason Kenny                      Cycling - Men's Keirin
    Matt Walls Cycling - Men's omnium
    Katie Archibald & Laura Kenny Cycling - Women's madison
    Tom Pidcock Cycling - men's cross-country
    Bethany Shriever Cycling - women's BMX
    Charlotte Worthington Cycling - women's freestyle BMX
    In a hundred year’s time, the cycling community will still be talking about Mark Cavendish. He is up there with the immortals now. Merckx, Bartali, Anquetil, Indurain, Armstrong, Pantani, Sagan, Bugno, Gimondi, LeMond, Cipollini, Kelly, Hinault, Cancellara, Boonen, Cavendish. He is *that* good.

    A track cyclist? Profoundly unlikely to be recalled outside that speciality.

    It’s like the difference between being President of the United States and President of Italy. Who held the latter office when Kennedy was in the White House? (Without googling.)

    Cavendish won’t win, for a large number of reasons, including
    - he is abrasive and annoying (but at least he does have a very strong personality)
    - the BBC is uninterested in cycling outwith Olympics
    - split vote
    - he races in a commercial team top (legendary Belgian outfit Deceuninck–Quick-Step), not a Yoonyun Flag (usually); and England is currently in a state of nationalistic fervour
    - he is not English
    Mark Cavendish won it in 2011. Has he stopped being English since then? Didn’t notice Andy Murray or Ryan Giggs becoming English either. Or indeed Geraint Thomas who won it (checks) as recently as 2018. Still, always good to get in an anti factual, anti-English jibe before breakfast, eh? Sets you up for the day.
    How can someone “stop being English” when they weren’t English in the first place? It’s like Charles yesterday saying that Shetland should “remain part of England”. A bit tricky when it never has been English.

    The Isle of Man isn’t even a member of the UK, let alone part of one of the member countries.

    England has moved in the wrong direction since Murray, Giggs and Thomas. Call it Brexit Derangement Syndrome.

    And self-pity is an unattractive characteristic. Make yourself a fresh coffee, tickle the hound behind the ears and snog the wife. It’ll cheer you up no end.
    You expect it from a Hooray fanny like Charles though, the 5 silver spoons mean he could say little else.
    PS: You should know well how much they love adopting winners
    Hooray fanny. VG.

    Actually I quite like Charles. He reminds me of an horrific snob, social climber and name-dropper I used to know in the 80s. Lovely, entertaining, dashing chap. Extraordinarily popular with the ladies (on one evening in Oxford I met four - yes 4 - of his girlfriends; each one firmly believing they were in a monogamous relationship). Shame he got involved in credit card fraud, shoplifting, pilfering, common assault and an astonishing number of road traffic and drug offences.

    I’ve often wondered why the English are so keen to adopt winners. It’s not as though they’re short of sporting achievers of their own. I’m sure a psychologist could enlighten me.
    I always think of Lord Snooty from The Beano of my youth when I read his posts. He fits the stereotype perfectly.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,404

    Scott_xP said:

    Its over its done we are out ... accept it.

    I have accepted it.

    I accept that it's causing food shortages.

    You appear to be the one in denial.
    Where? Not in my shopping it isn't.
    Well, something's giving rise to empty shelves locally. Or if not empty, 'dressed' with one item and nothing behind it.
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 8,684

    DavidL said:

    BBC Scotland Business and Economy Editor, tweets:

    Wind turbine blade-maker Siemens Gamesa doubling the size of its Hull factory, with £186m investment. 200 more jobs, adding to 1000 now.....

    Also in Hull, GRI Renewable Industries announces £78 million investment in an offshore wind turbine tower factory, creating up to 260 direct jobs.


    https://twitter.com/BBCDouglasF/status/1424620811520970753?s=20

    Well it could have been Bifab in Methil had the Scottish government not been so incompetent.
    There isn't anything else that could be adding to business uncertainty in Scotland is there?
    Yes Jim, we feel the love.

    image
    I'm sure this picture makes a really important and powerful point and I'm just too stupid to figure out what it is
    Dinnae fash yersel laddie. I’m just a huge Jim fan.
    Which leaves me wondering what a 'huge Jim' is and whether I dare Google it! :wink:
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,287
    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    IanB2 said:

    A letter to Boris Johnson sent a fortnight ago by James Ramsbotham called on the prime minister to save the north-east from the “damage being done to our economy” by Brexit and urged him to give it his “most urgent and personal attention”. Two weeks later, it remains unanswered.

    Ramsbotham is the chief executive of the North East England Chamber of Commerce and speaks for thousands of businesses caught by the red tape and extra costs of complying with EU rules. In a recent survey, 38% of members said sales to Europe had fallen since January.

    “This is not teething problems,” he says. “Our ports face the EU and our region has the highest proportion of any exporting to the EU. It is vital that more barriers come down.”

    Johnson wanted the office, he did not want the job. Actual work is for underlings.

    A substantive letter from the chief exec of a significant chamber of commerce deserves a considered, serious and prompt reply. Otherwise one suspects that the recipient does not have any answers. Or is an ignoramous. Or, in Johnson’s case, both.
    This is the North East England Chamber of Commerce, not Scotland.
    Your point being?
    They don’t count in your world as people who matter.
    Oh Dear , Little Englander paranoia is getting worse. Now imagining anti English rhetoric on anything any Scottish poster comments.
  • eekeek Posts: 28,319

    Selebian said:

    Learning to code is no longer fit for purpose

    Software developers from coding schools are losing out in the jobs market to self-starters who demonstrate genuine intellectual curiosity

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/08/09/learning-code-no-longer-fit-purpose/

    I can see that. Self-taught are probably learning either by developing something themselves (likely open source, public, may become popular) or scraching an itch contributing to an existing open source project. Both more real world experience than just doing the coding assignments.

    I used to contribute to KDE and many of the companies in that space recruited directly from the git repositories and the contributor conferences.

    Having said that, the ideal is both. Get the formal education in the overall theory of it as well in addition to getting the real world work experience. I've learned some coding on various jobs and whenever I've subsequently done a formal course I've discovered big gaps in my knowledge.
    I think one aspect is that they want people who are flexible enough to be okay with switching languages. I worked with someone who very firmly saw themselves as a C# developer, and became very unhappy when their employer decided to migrate away from using C#. That's problematic if you then have to go through redundancy and recruitment.
    And the thing is these courses give you a skill but rarely the confidence to do things outside that exact skill which is great up to the point you need something to do something else. And that's a problem when things are continually changing.
  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 12,541

    malcolmg said:

    DougSeal said:

    The question is, how many people will be shortlisted? If six, like the last couple of years, then JK looks good. There is a large cycling block vote and seven gold medals should nail it. If 16, like the last Olympics year, then it might be more complicated, especially if the cycling vote is split, and there were no fewer than seven cycling gold medallists, and that is betting without Mark Cavendish who equalled Eddy Merckx's Tour de France record.

    Cycling gold medallists:-

    Jason Kenny                      Cycling - Men's Keirin
    Matt Walls Cycling - Men's omnium
    Katie Archibald & Laura Kenny Cycling - Women's madison
    Tom Pidcock Cycling - men's cross-country
    Bethany Shriever Cycling - women's BMX
    Charlotte Worthington Cycling - women's freestyle BMX
    In a hundred year’s time, the cycling community will still be talking about Mark Cavendish. He is up there with the immortals now. Merckx, Bartali, Anquetil, Indurain, Armstrong, Pantani, Sagan, Bugno, Gimondi, LeMond, Cipollini, Kelly, Hinault, Cancellara, Boonen, Cavendish. He is *that* good.

    A track cyclist? Profoundly unlikely to be recalled outside that speciality.

    It’s like the difference between being President of the United States and President of Italy. Who held the latter office when Kennedy was in the White House? (Without googling.)

    Cavendish won’t win, for a large number of reasons, including
    - he is abrasive and annoying (but at least he does have a very strong personality)
    - the BBC is uninterested in cycling outwith Olympics
    - split vote
    - he races in a commercial team top (legendary Belgian outfit Deceuninck–Quick-Step), not a Yoonyun Flag (usually); and England is currently in a state of nationalistic fervour
    - he is not English
    Mark Cavendish won it in 2011. Has he stopped being English since then? Didn’t notice Andy Murray or Ryan Giggs becoming English either. Or indeed Geraint Thomas who won it (checks) as recently as 2018. Still, always good to get in an anti factual, anti-English jibe before breakfast, eh? Sets you up for the day.
    How can someone “stop being English” when they weren’t English in the first place? It’s like Charles yesterday saying that Shetland should “remain part of England”. A bit tricky when it never has been English.

    The Isle of Man isn’t even a member of the UK, let alone part of one of the member countries.

    England has moved in the wrong direction since Murray, Giggs and Thomas. Call it Brexit Derangement Syndrome.

    And self-pity is an unattractive characteristic. Make yourself a fresh coffee, tickle the hound behind the ears and snog the wife. It’ll cheer you up no end.
    You expect it from a Hooray fanny like Charles though, the 5 silver spoons mean he could say little else.
    PS: You should know well how much they love adopting winners
    Hooray fanny. VG.

    Actually I quite like Charles. He reminds me of an horrific snob, social climber and name-dropper I used to know in the 80s. Lovely, entertaining, dashing chap. Extraordinarily popular with the ladies (on one evening in Oxford I met four - yes 4 - of his girlfriends; each one firmly believing they were in a monogamous relationship). Shame he got involved in credit card fraud, shoplifting, pilfering, common assault and an astonishing number of road traffic and drug offences.

    I’ve often wondered why the English are so keen to adopt winners. It’s not as though they’re short of sporting achievers of their own. I’m sure a psychologist could enlighten me.
    Because we are a welcoming country. You don’t have to be born here to be English. Unlike your conception of Scotland.
  • malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    DougSeal said:

    The question is, how many people will be shortlisted? If six, like the last couple of years, then JK looks good. There is a large cycling block vote and seven gold medals should nail it. If 16, like the last Olympics year, then it might be more complicated, especially if the cycling vote is split, and there were no fewer than seven cycling gold medallists, and that is betting without Mark Cavendish who equalled Eddy Merckx's Tour de France record.

    Cycling gold medallists:-

    Jason Kenny                      Cycling - Men's Keirin
    Matt Walls Cycling - Men's omnium
    Katie Archibald & Laura Kenny Cycling - Women's madison
    Tom Pidcock Cycling - men's cross-country
    Bethany Shriever Cycling - women's BMX
    Charlotte Worthington Cycling - women's freestyle BMX
    In a hundred year’s time, the cycling community will still be talking about Mark Cavendish. He is up there with the immortals now. Merckx, Bartali, Anquetil, Indurain, Armstrong, Pantani, Sagan, Bugno, Gimondi, LeMond, Cipollini, Kelly, Hinault, Cancellara, Boonen, Cavendish. He is *that* good.

    A track cyclist? Profoundly unlikely to be recalled outside that speciality.

    It’s like the difference between being President of the United States and President of Italy. Who held the latter office when Kennedy was in the White House? (Without googling.)

    Cavendish won’t win, for a large number of reasons, including
    - he is abrasive and annoying (but at least he does have a very strong personality)
    - the BBC is uninterested in cycling outwith Olympics
    - split vote
    - he races in a commercial team top (legendary Belgian outfit Deceuninck–Quick-Step), not a Yoonyun Flag (usually); and England is currently in a state of nationalistic fervour
    - he is not English
    Mark Cavendish won it in 2011. Has he stopped being English since then? Didn’t notice Andy Murray or Ryan Giggs becoming English either. Or indeed Geraint Thomas who won it (checks) as recently as 2018. Still, always good to get in an anti factual, anti-English jibe before breakfast, eh? Sets you up for the day.
    How can someone “stop being English” when they weren’t English in the first place? It’s like Charles yesterday saying that Shetland should “remain part of England”. A bit tricky when it never has been English.

    The Isle of Man isn’t even a member of the UK, let alone part of one of the member countries.

    England has moved in the wrong direction since Murray, Giggs and Thomas. Call it Brexit Derangement Syndrome.

    And self-pity is an unattractive characteristic. Make yourself a fresh coffee, tickle the hound behind the ears and snog the wife. It’ll cheer you up no end.
    You expect it from a Hooray fanny like Charles though, the 5 silver spoons mean he could say little else.
    PS: You should know well how much they love adopting winners
    Hooray fanny. VG.

    Actually I quite like Charles. He reminds me of an horrific snob, social climber and name-dropper I used to know in the 80s. Lovely, entertaining, dashing chap. Extraordinarily popular with the ladies (on one evening in Oxford I met four - yes 4 - of his girlfriends; each one firmly believing they were in a monogamous relationship). Shame he got involved in credit card fraud, shoplifting, pilfering, common assault and an astonishing number of road traffic and drug offences.

    I’ve often wondered why the English are so keen to adopt winners. It’s not as though they’re short of sporting achievers of their own. I’m sure a psychologist could enlighten me.
    I always think of Lord Snooty from The Beano of my youth when I read his posts. He fits the stereotype perfectly.
    Charles is a PB treasure but in any case does not appear to be on this thread.

    And where does "adopting winners" come from? SPotY is biased against Scots; no it isn't, Andy Murray keeps winning, along with recent winners from Wales, Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man; ah yes but that is only because the biased English have "adopted" them. Is that the logic?
  • eekeek Posts: 28,319

    Scott_xP said:

    Its over its done we are out ... accept it.

    I have accepted it.

    I accept that it's causing food shortages.

    You appear to be the one in denial.
    Where? Not in my shopping it isn't.
    Well, something's giving rise to empty shelves locally. Or if not empty, 'dressed' with one item and nothing behind it.
    All supermarkets or just some of them.

    Round here Morrisons and Sainsbury's has problems, but Aldi* and Marks don't

    * the fact it is a "flagship" Aldi and the distribution hub / regional head office is less than 1 mile away may be a factor there.
  • eekeek Posts: 28,319
    DougSeal said:

    malcolmg said:

    DougSeal said:

    The question is, how many people will be shortlisted? If six, like the last couple of years, then JK looks good. There is a large cycling block vote and seven gold medals should nail it. If 16, like the last Olympics year, then it might be more complicated, especially if the cycling vote is split, and there were no fewer than seven cycling gold medallists, and that is betting without Mark Cavendish who equalled Eddy Merckx's Tour de France record.

    Cycling gold medallists:-

    Jason Kenny                      Cycling - Men's Keirin
    Matt Walls Cycling - Men's omnium
    Katie Archibald & Laura Kenny Cycling - Women's madison
    Tom Pidcock Cycling - men's cross-country
    Bethany Shriever Cycling - women's BMX
    Charlotte Worthington Cycling - women's freestyle BMX
    In a hundred year’s time, the cycling community will still be talking about Mark Cavendish. He is up there with the immortals now. Merckx, Bartali, Anquetil, Indurain, Armstrong, Pantani, Sagan, Bugno, Gimondi, LeMond, Cipollini, Kelly, Hinault, Cancellara, Boonen, Cavendish. He is *that* good.

    A track cyclist? Profoundly unlikely to be recalled outside that speciality.

    It’s like the difference between being President of the United States and President of Italy. Who held the latter office when Kennedy was in the White House? (Without googling.)

    Cavendish won’t win, for a large number of reasons, including
    - he is abrasive and annoying (but at least he does have a very strong personality)
    - the BBC is uninterested in cycling outwith Olympics
    - split vote
    - he races in a commercial team top (legendary Belgian outfit Deceuninck–Quick-Step), not a Yoonyun Flag (usually); and England is currently in a state of nationalistic fervour
    - he is not English
    Mark Cavendish won it in 2011. Has he stopped being English since then? Didn’t notice Andy Murray or Ryan Giggs becoming English either. Or indeed Geraint Thomas who won it (checks) as recently as 2018. Still, always good to get in an anti factual, anti-English jibe before breakfast, eh? Sets you up for the day.
    How can someone “stop being English” when they weren’t English in the first place? It’s like Charles yesterday saying that Shetland should “remain part of England”. A bit tricky when it never has been English.

    The Isle of Man isn’t even a member of the UK, let alone part of one of the member countries.

    England has moved in the wrong direction since Murray, Giggs and Thomas. Call it Brexit Derangement Syndrome.

    And self-pity is an unattractive characteristic. Make yourself a fresh coffee, tickle the hound behind the ears and snog the wife. It’ll cheer you up no end.
    You expect it from a Hooray fanny like Charles though, the 5 silver spoons mean he could say little else.
    PS: You should know well how much they love adopting winners
    Hooray fanny. VG.

    Actually I quite like Charles. He reminds me of an horrific snob, social climber and name-dropper I used to know in the 80s. Lovely, entertaining, dashing chap. Extraordinarily popular with the ladies (on one evening in Oxford I met four - yes 4 - of his girlfriends; each one firmly believing they were in a monogamous relationship). Shame he got involved in credit card fraud, shoplifting, pilfering, common assault and an astonishing number of road traffic and drug offences.

    I’ve often wondered why the English are so keen to adopt winners. It’s not as though they’re short of sporting achievers of their own. I’m sure a psychologist could enlighten me.
    Because we are a welcoming country. You don’t have to be born here to be English. Unlike your conception of Scotland.
    Scotland welcomes anyone - provided they aren't from England...
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,287
    edited August 2021
    DougSeal said:

    malcolmg said:

    DougSeal said:

    The question is, how many people will be shortlisted? If six, like the last couple of years, then JK looks good. There is a large cycling block vote and seven gold medals should nail it. If 16, like the last Olympics year, then it might be more complicated, especially if the cycling vote is split, and there were no fewer than seven cycling gold medallists, and that is betting without Mark Cavendish who equalled Eddy Merckx's Tour de France record.

    Cycling gold medallists:-

    Jason Kenny                      Cycling - Men's Keirin
    Matt Walls Cycling - Men's omnium
    Katie Archibald & Laura Kenny Cycling - Women's madison
    Tom Pidcock Cycling - men's cross-country
    Bethany Shriever Cycling - women's BMX
    Charlotte Worthington Cycling - women's freestyle BMX
    In a hundred year’s time, the cycling community will still be talking about Mark Cavendish. He is up there with the immortals now. Merckx, Bartali, Anquetil, Indurain, Armstrong, Pantani, Sagan, Bugno, Gimondi, LeMond, Cipollini, Kelly, Hinault, Cancellara, Boonen, Cavendish. He is *that* good.

    A track cyclist? Profoundly unlikely to be recalled outside that speciality.

    It’s like the difference between being President of the United States and President of Italy. Who held the latter office when Kennedy was in the White House? (Without googling.)

    Cavendish won’t win, for a large number of reasons, including
    - he is abrasive and annoying (but at least he does have a very strong personality)
    - the BBC is uninterested in cycling outwith Olympics
    - split vote
    - he races in a commercial team top (legendary Belgian outfit Deceuninck–Quick-Step), not a Yoonyun Flag (usually); and England is currently in a state of nationalistic fervour
    - he is not English
    Mark Cavendish won it in 2011. Has he stopped being English since then? Didn’t notice Andy Murray or Ryan Giggs becoming English either. Or indeed Geraint Thomas who won it (checks) as recently as 2018. Still, always good to get in an anti factual, anti-English jibe before breakfast, eh? Sets you up for the day.
    LOL, Mr Insecure whining about anti-English in the middle of the night as well now. Did poor diddums put his tanktop on back to front this morning and make himself all sensitive and cranky.
    A bit early to be on the sauce Malc. Some of us have jobs that require us to get out of bed at 6. Not all of us can open the Fosters at 7. Poor guy, must be hard being so full of self doubt that he has to come on here and rant at strangers all day and every day.
    Dearie me , the retort of an uneducated thick person who has lost the argument. How the mighty have fallen, how low can you stoop you clown, get out of the gutter. Typical pipsqueak, I bet I start work earlier than you and make a lot more money as well , I am intelligent and do not have to resort to pathetic posts with feeble supposed insults such as yours. Crawl back under your rock and stick to playing with your dolls.

    PS: Stop stalking me it is tedious , get back to that much vaunted promise that you would not post to me again.
  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 12,541

    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    DougSeal said:

    The question is, how many people will be shortlisted? If six, like the last couple of years, then JK looks good. There is a large cycling block vote and seven gold medals should nail it. If 16, like the last Olympics year, then it might be more complicated, especially if the cycling vote is split, and there were no fewer than seven cycling gold medallists, and that is betting without Mark Cavendish who equalled Eddy Merckx's Tour de France record.

    Cycling gold medallists:-

    Jason Kenny                      Cycling - Men's Keirin
    Matt Walls Cycling - Men's omnium
    Katie Archibald & Laura Kenny Cycling - Women's madison
    Tom Pidcock Cycling - men's cross-country
    Bethany Shriever Cycling - women's BMX
    Charlotte Worthington Cycling - women's freestyle BMX
    In a hundred year’s time, the cycling community will still be talking about Mark Cavendish. He is up there with the immortals now. Merckx, Bartali, Anquetil, Indurain, Armstrong, Pantani, Sagan, Bugno, Gimondi, LeMond, Cipollini, Kelly, Hinault, Cancellara, Boonen, Cavendish. He is *that* good.

    A track cyclist? Profoundly unlikely to be recalled outside that speciality.

    It’s like the difference between being President of the United States and President of Italy. Who held the latter office when Kennedy was in the White House? (Without googling.)

    Cavendish won’t win, for a large number of reasons, including
    - he is abrasive and annoying (but at least he does have a very strong personality)
    - the BBC is uninterested in cycling outwith Olympics
    - split vote
    - he races in a commercial team top (legendary Belgian outfit Deceuninck–Quick-Step), not a Yoonyun Flag (usually); and England is currently in a state of nationalistic fervour
    - he is not English
    Mark Cavendish won it in 2011. Has he stopped being English since then? Didn’t notice Andy Murray or Ryan Giggs becoming English either. Or indeed Geraint Thomas who won it (checks) as recently as 2018. Still, always good to get in an anti factual, anti-English jibe before breakfast, eh? Sets you up for the day.
    How can someone “stop being English” when they weren’t English in the first place? It’s like Charles yesterday saying that Shetland should “remain part of England”. A bit tricky when it never has been English.

    The Isle of Man isn’t even a member of the UK, let alone part of one of the member countries.

    England has moved in the wrong direction since Murray, Giggs and Thomas. Call it Brexit Derangement Syndrome.

    And self-pity is an unattractive characteristic. Make yourself a fresh coffee, tickle the hound behind the ears and snog the wife. It’ll cheer you up no end.
    You expect it from a Hooray fanny like Charles though, the 5 silver spoons mean he could say little else.
    PS: You should know well how much they love adopting winners
    Hooray fanny. VG.

    Actually I quite like Charles. He reminds me of an horrific snob, social climber and name-dropper I used to know in the 80s. Lovely, entertaining, dashing chap. Extraordinarily popular with the ladies (on one evening in Oxford I met four - yes 4 - of his girlfriends; each one firmly believing they were in a monogamous relationship). Shame he got involved in credit card fraud, shoplifting, pilfering, common assault and an astonishing number of road traffic and drug offences.

    I’ve often wondered why the English are so keen to adopt winners. It’s not as though they’re short of sporting achievers of their own. I’m sure a psychologist could enlighten me.
    I always think of Lord Snooty from The Beano of my youth when I read his posts. He fits the stereotype perfectly.
    Charles is a PB treasure but in any case does not appear to be on this thread.

    And where does "adopting winners" come from? SPotY is biased against Scots; no it isn't, Andy Murray keeps winning, along with recent winners from Wales, Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man; ah yes but that is only because the biased English have "adopted" them. Is that the logic?
    I’d leave it. The two of them are at a plane of existence far above we mere mortals.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,487
    edited August 2021
    Selebian said:

    Learning to code is no longer fit for purpose

    Software developers from coding schools are losing out in the jobs market to self-starters who demonstrate genuine intellectual curiosity

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/08/09/learning-code-no-longer-fit-purpose/

    I can see that. Self-taught are probably learning either by developing something themselves (likely open source, public, may become popular) or scraching an itch contributing to an existing open source project. Both more real world experience than just doing the coding assignments.

    I used to contribute to KDE and many of the companies in that space recruited directly from the git repositories and the contributor conferences.

    Having said that, the ideal is both. Get the formal education in the overall theory of it as well in addition to getting the real world work experience. I've learned some coding on various jobs and whenever I've subsequently done a formal course I've discovered big gaps in my knowledge.
    When I started in the industry, IMV the best coders were self-taught (*); people who had started coding as kids on the Spectrum or BBC B. Who had wasted countless hours making mistakes, but learning from them, as they tried to fit things into a few KB.

    Many got degrees outside computing; physics, maths, geography, etc, but they maintained an interest in coding.

    As time went on, I saw fewer of such people entering companies. Instead, many were people who chose software engineering with little practical experience of writing software. Some were brilliant; others had rather gaping holes in their experience.

    I do wonder if things like Arduino and Raspberry Pi will get us back towards the old days of the enthusiast coder.

    (*) I am mostly self-taught; I am also an exception to this ...;)
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 60,216
    Herald reporting the S Telegraph poll:

    Poll: Independence support would fall if Scotland was set to drop the pound

    https://twitter.com/HTScotPol/status/1424633226564448257?s=20
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,287
    eek said:

    DougSeal said:

    malcolmg said:

    DougSeal said:

    The question is, how many people will be shortlisted? If six, like the last couple of years, then JK looks good. There is a large cycling block vote and seven gold medals should nail it. If 16, like the last Olympics year, then it might be more complicated, especially if the cycling vote is split, and there were no fewer than seven cycling gold medallists, and that is betting without Mark Cavendish who equalled Eddy Merckx's Tour de France record.

    Cycling gold medallists:-

    Jason Kenny                      Cycling - Men's Keirin
    Matt Walls Cycling - Men's omnium
    Katie Archibald & Laura Kenny Cycling - Women's madison
    Tom Pidcock Cycling - men's cross-country
    Bethany Shriever Cycling - women's BMX
    Charlotte Worthington Cycling - women's freestyle BMX
    In a hundred year’s time, the cycling community will still be talking about Mark Cavendish. He is up there with the immortals now. Merckx, Bartali, Anquetil, Indurain, Armstrong, Pantani, Sagan, Bugno, Gimondi, LeMond, Cipollini, Kelly, Hinault, Cancellara, Boonen, Cavendish. He is *that* good.

    A track cyclist? Profoundly unlikely to be recalled outside that speciality.

    It’s like the difference between being President of the United States and President of Italy. Who held the latter office when Kennedy was in the White House? (Without googling.)

    Cavendish won’t win, for a large number of reasons, including
    - he is abrasive and annoying (but at least he does have a very strong personality)
    - the BBC is uninterested in cycling outwith Olympics
    - split vote
    - he races in a commercial team top (legendary Belgian outfit Deceuninck–Quick-Step), not a Yoonyun Flag (usually); and England is currently in a state of nationalistic fervour
    - he is not English
    Mark Cavendish won it in 2011. Has he stopped being English since then? Didn’t notice Andy Murray or Ryan Giggs becoming English either. Or indeed Geraint Thomas who won it (checks) as recently as 2018. Still, always good to get in an anti factual, anti-English jibe before breakfast, eh? Sets you up for the day.
    How can someone “stop being English” when they weren’t English in the first place? It’s like Charles yesterday saying that Shetland should “remain part of England”. A bit tricky when it never has been English.

    The Isle of Man isn’t even a member of the UK, let alone part of one of the member countries.

    England has moved in the wrong direction since Murray, Giggs and Thomas. Call it Brexit Derangement Syndrome.

    And self-pity is an unattractive characteristic. Make yourself a fresh coffee, tickle the hound behind the ears and snog the wife. It’ll cheer you up no end.
    You expect it from a Hooray fanny like Charles though, the 5 silver spoons mean he could say little else.
    PS: You should know well how much they love adopting winners
    Hooray fanny. VG.

    Actually I quite like Charles. He reminds me of an horrific snob, social climber and name-dropper I used to know in the 80s. Lovely, entertaining, dashing chap. Extraordinarily popular with the ladies (on one evening in Oxford I met four - yes 4 - of his girlfriends; each one firmly believing they were in a monogamous relationship). Shame he got involved in credit card fraud, shoplifting, pilfering, common assault and an astonishing number of road traffic and drug offences.

    I’ve often wondered why the English are so keen to adopt winners. It’s not as though they’re short of sporting achievers of their own. I’m sure a psychologist could enlighten me.
    Because we are a welcoming country. You don’t have to be born here to be English. Unlike your conception of Scotland.
    Scotland welcomes anyone - provided they aren't from England...
    Jingo boys are out in force early today, boulders on each shoulder , whining xenophobia to the moon.
  • eekeek Posts: 28,319
    edited August 2021

    Selebian said:

    Learning to code is no longer fit for purpose

    Software developers from coding schools are losing out in the jobs market to self-starters who demonstrate genuine intellectual curiosity

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/08/09/learning-code-no-longer-fit-purpose/

    I can see that. Self-taught are probably learning either by developing something themselves (likely open source, public, may become popular) or scraching an itch contributing to an existing open source project. Both more real world experience than just doing the coding assignments.

    I used to contribute to KDE and many of the companies in that space recruited directly from the git repositories and the contributor conferences.

    Having said that, the ideal is both. Get the formal education in the overall theory of it as well in addition to getting the real world work experience. I've learned some coding on various jobs and whenever I've subsequently done a formal course I've discovered big gaps in my knowledge.
    When I started in the industry, IMV the best coders were self-taught (*); people who had started coding as kids on the Spectrum or BBC B. Who had wasted countless hours making mistakes, but learning from them, as they tried to fit things into a few KB.

    Many got degrees outside computing; physics, maths, geography, etc, but they maintained an interest in coding.

    As time went on, I saw fewer of such people entering companies. Instead, many were people who chose software engineering with little practical experience of writing software. Some were brilliant; others had rather gaping holes in their experience.

    I do wonder if things like Arduino and Raspberry Pi will get us back towards the old days of the enthusiast coder.

    (*) I am mostly self-taught; I am also an exception to this ...;)
    I seriously doubt it - things are way more complex nowadays and there are a whole different set of things to distract children (internet, gaming....).

    Equally coding really isn't what it was 30 years ago, nowadays I can develop in 30 minutes (using WYSIWYG tools like Power Automate) things that 5 years ago would have taken a month to do in C#.

    When I'm interviewing coding skills really aren't that important anymore - what I want to see is problem solving skills breaking an item down into its necessary parts.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 54,522
    eek said:

    Selebian said:

    Learning to code is no longer fit for purpose

    Software developers from coding schools are losing out in the jobs market to self-starters who demonstrate genuine intellectual curiosity

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/08/09/learning-code-no-longer-fit-purpose/

    I can see that. Self-taught are probably learning either by developing something themselves (likely open source, public, may become popular) or scraching an itch contributing to an existing open source project. Both more real world experience than just doing the coding assignments.

    I used to contribute to KDE and many of the companies in that space recruited directly from the git repositories and the contributor conferences.

    Having said that, the ideal is both. Get the formal education in the overall theory of it as well in addition to getting the real world work experience. I've learned some coding on various jobs and whenever I've subsequently done a formal course I've discovered big gaps in my knowledge.
    I think one aspect is that they want people who are flexible enough to be okay with switching languages. I worked with someone who very firmly saw themselves as a C# developer, and became very unhappy when their employer decided to migrate away from using C#. That's problematic if you then have to go through redundancy and recruitment.
    And the thing is these courses give you a skill but rarely the confidence to do things outside that exact skill which is great up to the point you need something to do something else. And that's a problem when things are continually changing.
    Hence the running joke, that it only takes a few weeks after a new language is released before HR departments start asking for candidates to have five years’ experience in it!
  • eekeek Posts: 28,319
    malcolmg said:

    eek said:

    DougSeal said:

    malcolmg said:

    DougSeal said:

    The question is, how many people will be shortlisted? If six, like the last couple of years, then JK looks good. There is a large cycling block vote and seven gold medals should nail it. If 16, like the last Olympics year, then it might be more complicated, especially if the cycling vote is split, and there were no fewer than seven cycling gold medallists, and that is betting without Mark Cavendish who equalled Eddy Merckx's Tour de France record.

    Cycling gold medallists:-

    Jason Kenny                      Cycling - Men's Keirin
    Matt Walls Cycling - Men's omnium
    Katie Archibald & Laura Kenny Cycling - Women's madison
    Tom Pidcock Cycling - men's cross-country
    Bethany Shriever Cycling - women's BMX
    Charlotte Worthington Cycling - women's freestyle BMX
    In a hundred year’s time, the cycling community will still be talking about Mark Cavendish. He is up there with the immortals now. Merckx, Bartali, Anquetil, Indurain, Armstrong, Pantani, Sagan, Bugno, Gimondi, LeMond, Cipollini, Kelly, Hinault, Cancellara, Boonen, Cavendish. He is *that* good.

    A track cyclist? Profoundly unlikely to be recalled outside that speciality.

    It’s like the difference between being President of the United States and President of Italy. Who held the latter office when Kennedy was in the White House? (Without googling.)

    Cavendish won’t win, for a large number of reasons, including
    - he is abrasive and annoying (but at least he does have a very strong personality)
    - the BBC is uninterested in cycling outwith Olympics
    - split vote
    - he races in a commercial team top (legendary Belgian outfit Deceuninck–Quick-Step), not a Yoonyun Flag (usually); and England is currently in a state of nationalistic fervour
    - he is not English
    Mark Cavendish won it in 2011. Has he stopped being English since then? Didn’t notice Andy Murray or Ryan Giggs becoming English either. Or indeed Geraint Thomas who won it (checks) as recently as 2018. Still, always good to get in an anti factual, anti-English jibe before breakfast, eh? Sets you up for the day.
    How can someone “stop being English” when they weren’t English in the first place? It’s like Charles yesterday saying that Shetland should “remain part of England”. A bit tricky when it never has been English.

    The Isle of Man isn’t even a member of the UK, let alone part of one of the member countries.

    England has moved in the wrong direction since Murray, Giggs and Thomas. Call it Brexit Derangement Syndrome.

    And self-pity is an unattractive characteristic. Make yourself a fresh coffee, tickle the hound behind the ears and snog the wife. It’ll cheer you up no end.
    You expect it from a Hooray fanny like Charles though, the 5 silver spoons mean he could say little else.
    PS: You should know well how much they love adopting winners
    Hooray fanny. VG.

    Actually I quite like Charles. He reminds me of an horrific snob, social climber and name-dropper I used to know in the 80s. Lovely, entertaining, dashing chap. Extraordinarily popular with the ladies (on one evening in Oxford I met four - yes 4 - of his girlfriends; each one firmly believing they were in a monogamous relationship). Shame he got involved in credit card fraud, shoplifting, pilfering, common assault and an astonishing number of road traffic and drug offences.

    I’ve often wondered why the English are so keen to adopt winners. It’s not as though they’re short of sporting achievers of their own. I’m sure a psychologist could enlighten me.
    Because we are a welcoming country. You don’t have to be born here to be English. Unlike your conception of Scotland.
    Scotland welcomes anyone - provided they aren't from England...
    Jingo boys are out in force early today, boulders on each shoulder , whining xenophobia to the moon.
    I rest my case...
  • dr_spyndr_spyn Posts: 11,300
    And the Monet kept rolling in my friends.

    https://twitter.com/ITVNewsPolitics/status/1424638306508279811

    Supporting new, emerging talent, becomes a political statement. Must be August, or another deceased feline on the rebound.

  • eek said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Its over its done we are out ... accept it.

    I have accepted it.

    I accept that it's causing food shortages.

    You appear to be the one in denial.
    Where? Not in my shopping it isn't.
    Well, something's giving rise to empty shelves locally. Or if not empty, 'dressed' with one item and nothing behind it.
    All supermarkets or just some of them.

    Round here Morrisons and Sainsbury's has problems, but Aldi* and Marks don't

    * the fact it is a "flagship" Aldi and the distribution hub / regional head office is less than 1 mile away may be a factor there.
    I have seen a lot of empty shelves in Sainsbury’s and Waitrose recently, but the Tesco’s I went to last week was well stocked. The produce is mostly available, the issue is getting it to the stores. There is a shortage of drivers largely because the government refused to think through the consequences of the Brexit it chose to pursue.

  • eekeek Posts: 28,319
    edited August 2021

    eek said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Its over its done we are out ... accept it.

    I have accepted it.

    I accept that it's causing food shortages.

    You appear to be the one in denial.
    Where? Not in my shopping it isn't.
    Well, something's giving rise to empty shelves locally. Or if not empty, 'dressed' with one item and nothing behind it.
    All supermarkets or just some of them.

    Round here Morrisons and Sainsbury's has problems, but Aldi* and Marks don't

    * the fact it is a "flagship" Aldi and the distribution hub / regional head office is less than 1 mile away may be a factor there.
    I have seen a lot of empty shelves in Sainsbury’s and Waitrose recently, but the Tesco’s I went to last week was well stocked. The produce is mostly available, the issue is getting it to the stores. There is a shortage of drivers largely because the government refused to think through the consequences of the Brexit it chose to pursue.

    Were Brexit the cause we would have seen shortages in April, we didn't.

    The issue comes down to the IR35 tax changes that have screwed up a lot of low cost driving agencies who can no longer find drivers with the cash they have available as HMRC have stopped their tax avoiding ways.

    It's worth remembering that Tesco's delivery drivers are Tesco's staff, that often isn't the case elsewhere.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,341
    eek said:

    DougSeal said:

    malcolmg said:

    DougSeal said:

    The question is, how many people will be shortlisted? If six, like the last couple of years, then JK looks good. There is a large cycling block vote and seven gold medals should nail it. If 16, like the last Olympics year, then it might be more complicated, especially if the cycling vote is split, and there were no fewer than seven cycling gold medallists, and that is betting without Mark Cavendish who equalled Eddy Merckx's Tour de France record.

    Cycling gold medallists:-

    Jason Kenny                      Cycling - Men's Keirin
    Matt Walls Cycling - Men's omnium
    Katie Archibald & Laura Kenny Cycling - Women's madison
    Tom Pidcock Cycling - men's cross-country
    Bethany Shriever Cycling - women's BMX
    Charlotte Worthington Cycling - women's freestyle BMX
    In a hundred year’s time, the cycling community will still be talking about Mark Cavendish. He is up there with the immortals now. Merckx, Bartali, Anquetil, Indurain, Armstrong, Pantani, Sagan, Bugno, Gimondi, LeMond, Cipollini, Kelly, Hinault, Cancellara, Boonen, Cavendish. He is *that* good.

    A track cyclist? Profoundly unlikely to be recalled outside that speciality.

    It’s like the difference between being President of the United States and President of Italy. Who held the latter office when Kennedy was in the White House? (Without googling.)

    Cavendish won’t win, for a large number of reasons, including
    - he is abrasive and annoying (but at least he does have a very strong personality)
    - the BBC is uninterested in cycling outwith Olympics
    - split vote
    - he races in a commercial team top (legendary Belgian outfit Deceuninck–Quick-Step), not a Yoonyun Flag (usually); and England is currently in a state of nationalistic fervour
    - he is not English
    Mark Cavendish won it in 2011. Has he stopped being English since then? Didn’t notice Andy Murray or Ryan Giggs becoming English either. Or indeed Geraint Thomas who won it (checks) as recently as 2018. Still, always good to get in an anti factual, anti-English jibe before breakfast, eh? Sets you up for the day.
    How can someone “stop being English” when they weren’t English in the first place? It’s like Charles yesterday saying that Shetland should “remain part of England”. A bit tricky when it never has been English.

    The Isle of Man isn’t even a member of the UK, let alone part of one of the member countries.

    England has moved in the wrong direction since Murray, Giggs and Thomas. Call it Brexit Derangement Syndrome.

    And self-pity is an unattractive characteristic. Make yourself a fresh coffee, tickle the hound behind the ears and snog the wife. It’ll cheer you up no end.
    You expect it from a Hooray fanny like Charles though, the 5 silver spoons mean he could say little else.
    PS: You should know well how much they love adopting winners
    Hooray fanny. VG.

    Actually I quite like Charles. He reminds me of an horrific snob, social climber and name-dropper I used to know in the 80s. Lovely, entertaining, dashing chap. Extraordinarily popular with the ladies (on one evening in Oxford I met four - yes 4 - of his girlfriends; each one firmly believing they were in a monogamous relationship). Shame he got involved in credit card fraud, shoplifting, pilfering, common assault and an astonishing number of road traffic and drug offences.

    I’ve often wondered why the English are so keen to adopt winners. It’s not as though they’re short of sporting achievers of their own. I’m sure a psychologist could enlighten me.
    Because we are a welcoming country. You don’t have to be born here to be English. Unlike your conception of Scotland.
    Scotland welcomes anyone - provided they aren't from England...
    A story is told of a nineteenth century preacher in the Highlands whose text was, ‘Love they neighbour.’

    ‘Who is our neighbour?’ he asked. ‘It does not just mean those in your clan, or even those in other clans. It is the Mussulman in Arabia, the Hindoo in India, the Spaniard in Spain and the Slav in Russia.’

    He paused, and then went on,

    ‘Aye, even the very Englishman is our neighbour too.’
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,341
    edited August 2021

    Selebian said:

    Learning to code is no longer fit for purpose

    Software developers from coding schools are losing out in the jobs market to self-starters who demonstrate genuine intellectual curiosity

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/08/09/learning-code-no-longer-fit-purpose/

    I can see that. Self-taught are probably learning either by developing something themselves (likely open source, public, may become popular) or scraching an itch contributing to an existing open source project. Both more real world experience than just doing the coding assignments.

    I used to contribute to KDE and many of the companies in that space recruited directly from the git repositories and the contributor conferences.

    Having said that, the ideal is both. Get the formal education in the overall theory of it as well in addition to getting the real world work experience. I've learned some coding on various jobs and whenever I've subsequently done a formal course I've discovered big gaps in my knowledge.
    When I started in the industry, IMV the best coders were self-taught (*); people who had started coding as kids on the Spectrum or BBC B. Who had wasted countless hours making mistakes, but learning from them, as they tried to fit things into a few KB.

    Many got degrees outside computing; physics, maths, geography, etc, but they maintained an interest in coding.

    As time went on, I saw fewer of such people entering companies. Instead, many were people who chose software engineering with little practical experience of writing software. Some were brilliant; others had rather gaping holes in their experience.

    I do wonder if things like Arduino and Raspberry Pi will get us back towards the old days of the enthusiast coder.

    (*) I am mostly self-taught; I am also an exception to this ...;)
    I am told that computer programming is essentially binary.

    You understand it, or you don’t.

    Which may be why I didn’t understand that last paragraph.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,487
    eek said:

    Selebian said:

    Learning to code is no longer fit for purpose

    Software developers from coding schools are losing out in the jobs market to self-starters who demonstrate genuine intellectual curiosity

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/08/09/learning-code-no-longer-fit-purpose/

    I can see that. Self-taught are probably learning either by developing something themselves (likely open source, public, may become popular) or scraching an itch contributing to an existing open source project. Both more real world experience than just doing the coding assignments.

    I used to contribute to KDE and many of the companies in that space recruited directly from the git repositories and the contributor conferences.

    Having said that, the ideal is both. Get the formal education in the overall theory of it as well in addition to getting the real world work experience. I've learned some coding on various jobs and whenever I've subsequently done a formal course I've discovered big gaps in my knowledge.
    When I started in the industry, IMV the best coders were self-taught (*); people who had started coding as kids on the Spectrum or BBC B. Who had wasted countless hours making mistakes, but learning from them, as they tried to fit things into a few KB.

    Many got degrees outside computing; physics, maths, geography, etc, but they maintained an interest in coding.

    As time went on, I saw fewer of such people entering companies. Instead, many were people who chose software engineering with little practical experience of writing software. Some were brilliant; others had rather gaping holes in their experience.

    I do wonder if things like Arduino and Raspberry Pi will get us back towards the old days of the enthusiast coder.

    (*) I am mostly self-taught; I am also an exception to this ...;)
    I seriously doubt it - things are way more complex nowadays and there are a whole different set of things to distract children (internet, gaming....).

    Equally coding really isn't what it was 30 years ago, nowadays I can develop in 30 minutes (using WYSIWYG tools like Power Automate) things that 5 years ago would have taken a month to do in C#.

    When I'm interviewing coding skills really aren't that important anymore - what I want to see is problem solving skills breaking an item down into its necessary parts.
    To a large extent I agree: except my part of the industry was rather lower-level than most. It was the sort of world where we had to go very close to the metal, often to work around bugs in chips (as I used to say to Mrs J: I fix the bugs in your chips. For some reason she still married me ...)

    Doing things efficiently at a very low level is an important skill: and I think that ability to do that improves your ability at higher levels as well.

    If you're designing a website, or coding a database, or other high-level tasks, you can use such tools. For low-level things it is much harder (although I have been out of the industry for a while now).
  • eek said:

    eek said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Its over its done we are out ... accept it.

    I have accepted it.

    I accept that it's causing food shortages.

    You appear to be the one in denial.
    Where? Not in my shopping it isn't.
    Well, something's giving rise to empty shelves locally. Or if not empty, 'dressed' with one item and nothing behind it.
    All supermarkets or just some of them.

    Round here Morrisons and Sainsbury's has problems, but Aldi* and Marks don't

    * the fact it is a "flagship" Aldi and the distribution hub / regional head office is less than 1 mile away may be a factor there.
    I have seen a lot of empty shelves in Sainsbury’s and Waitrose recently, but the Tesco’s I went to last week was well stocked. The produce is mostly available, the issue is getting it to the stores. There is a shortage of drivers largely because the government refused to think through the consequences of the Brexit it chose to pursue.

    Were Brexit the cause we would have seen shortages in April, we didn't.

    The issue comes down to the IR35 tax changes that have screwed up a lot of low cost driving agencies who can no longer find drivers with the cash they have available as HMRC have stopped their tax avoiding ways.

    It's worth remembering that Tesco's delivery drivers are Tesco's staff, that often isn't the case elsewhere.
    The government refused to think through the consequences of choices it made. It’s all inter-related. There are not enough drivers because the government chose to restrict the supply of drivers.

  • eek said:

    Selebian said:

    Learning to code is no longer fit for purpose

    Software developers from coding schools are losing out in the jobs market to self-starters who demonstrate genuine intellectual curiosity

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/08/09/learning-code-no-longer-fit-purpose/

    I can see that. Self-taught are probably learning either by developing something themselves (likely open source, public, may become popular) or scraching an itch contributing to an existing open source project. Both more real world experience than just doing the coding assignments.

    I used to contribute to KDE and many of the companies in that space recruited directly from the git repositories and the contributor conferences.

    Having said that, the ideal is both. Get the formal education in the overall theory of it as well in addition to getting the real world work experience. I've learned some coding on various jobs and whenever I've subsequently done a formal course I've discovered big gaps in my knowledge.
    When I started in the industry, IMV the best coders were self-taught (*); people who had started coding as kids on the Spectrum or BBC B. Who had wasted countless hours making mistakes, but learning from them, as they tried to fit things into a few KB.

    Many got degrees outside computing; physics, maths, geography, etc, but they maintained an interest in coding.

    As time went on, I saw fewer of such people entering companies. Instead, many were people who chose software engineering with little practical experience of writing software. Some were brilliant; others had rather gaping holes in their experience.

    I do wonder if things like Arduino and Raspberry Pi will get us back towards the old days of the enthusiast coder.

    (*) I am mostly self-taught; I am also an exception to this ...;)
    I seriously doubt it - things are way more complex nowadays and there are a whole different set of things to distract children (internet, gaming....).

    Equally coding really isn't what it was 30 years ago, nowadays I can develop in 30 minutes (using WYSIWYG tools like Power Automate) things that 5 years ago would have taken a month to do in C#.

    When I'm interviewing coding skills really aren't that important anymore - what I want to see is problem solving skills breaking an item down into its necessary parts.
    Indeed. IT and programming skills these days are likely to mean how to set up an ecommerce web site in half an hour on Wix or Squarespace or Shopify.

    Even Dominic Cummings' very bright physicists that rescued the nation from poor civil servants back in 2020 seem just to have been setting up dashboards which takes about half a day using freely available analysis and graphing packages. I used to do it a lot and quite often would have a prototype in about a minute, which often was enough to satisfy the customer (since often when they request analytic features, they really mean they want to know the answer right now and will never look at it again, so a quick shell one-liner to parse some log file and bang out the top ten whatevers will do: no need even to spend half an hour installing grafana, which would actually take a week to get proper authorisation and test procedures).

    Every day on this very pb, graphs and tables are shown on Covid progress which – not having done it so take this with a pinch of salt – are probably just public api calls to retrieve data, piped to a standard plotting library. Dominic Cummings was probably wrongly blaming stupid civil service coders when the issue was arranging access to secure, confidential data sources without spilling patients' details.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 41,927
    John Redwood on R4 to provide an ‘alternative’ view on Green issues: Britain world leading but it’s all China’s fault and the US & Germany are a bit shit too, we in UK mustn’t do anything drastic that might inconvenience people.

    Did he always have that perpetually whiny note in his voice or is it something that comes upon all victimy right wingers as they age?
  • dr_spyn said:

    And the Monet kept rolling in my friends.

    https://twitter.com/ITVNewsPolitics/status/1424638306508279811

    Supporting new, emerging talent, becomes a political statement. Must be August, or another deceased feline on the rebound.

    Can't they hang Boris's bus paintings or were they too a figment of Boris's imagination?
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 51,515


    Did he always have that perpetually whiny note in his voice or is it something that comes upon all victimy right wingers as they age?

    This is from his leadership bid in 1995:

    https://youtu.be/37tS9ZYG7zU
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 27,789
    edited August 2021

    eek said:

    Selebian said:

    Learning to code is no longer fit for purpose

    Software developers from coding schools are losing out in the jobs market to self-starters who demonstrate genuine intellectual curiosity

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/08/09/learning-code-no-longer-fit-purpose/

    I can see that. Self-taught are probably learning either by developing something themselves (likely open source, public, may become popular) or scraching an itch contributing to an existing open source project. Both more real world experience than just doing the coding assignments.

    I used to contribute to KDE and many of the companies in that space recruited directly from the git repositories and the contributor conferences.

    Having said that, the ideal is both. Get the formal education in the overall theory of it as well in addition to getting the real world work experience. I've learned some coding on various jobs and whenever I've subsequently done a formal course I've discovered big gaps in my knowledge.
    When I started in the industry, IMV the best coders were self-taught (*); people who had started coding as kids on the Spectrum or BBC B. Who had wasted countless hours making mistakes, but learning from them, as they tried to fit things into a few KB.

    Many got degrees outside computing; physics, maths, geography, etc, but they maintained an interest in coding.

    As time went on, I saw fewer of such people entering companies. Instead, many were people who chose software engineering with little practical experience of writing software. Some were brilliant; others had rather gaping holes in their experience.

    I do wonder if things like Arduino and Raspberry Pi will get us back towards the old days of the enthusiast coder.

    (*) I am mostly self-taught; I am also an exception to this ...;)
    I seriously doubt it - things are way more complex nowadays and there are a whole different set of things to distract children (internet, gaming....).

    Equally coding really isn't what it was 30 years ago, nowadays I can develop in 30 minutes (using WYSIWYG tools like Power Automate) things that 5 years ago would have taken a month to do in C#.

    When I'm interviewing coding skills really aren't that important anymore - what I want to see is problem solving skills breaking an item down into its necessary parts.
    To a large extent I agree: except my part of the industry was rather lower-level than most. It was the sort of world where we had to go very close to the metal, often to work around bugs in chips (as I used to say to Mrs J: I fix the bugs in your chips. For some reason she still married me ...)

    Doing things efficiently at a very low level is an important skill: and I think that ability to do that improves your ability at higher levels as well.

    If you're designing a website, or coding a database, or other high-level tasks, you can use such tools. For low-level things it is much harder (although I have been out of the industry for a while now).
    The joys of the cloud. Let the boffins at Google, Amazon and Microsoft sweat the small stuff. If your site is too slow then you could try performance analysis and debugging but if it's good enough for ten months of the year and only a crisis at Christmas, then pay for a CDN or go to your cloud console and add memory or processors at the click of a button.
  • mwadamsmwadams Posts: 3,583

    Selebian said:

    Learning to code is no longer fit for purpose

    Software developers from coding schools are losing out in the jobs market to self-starters who demonstrate genuine intellectual curiosity

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/08/09/learning-code-no-longer-fit-purpose/

    I can see that. Self-taught are probably learning either by developing something themselves (likely open source, public, may become popular) or scraching an itch contributing to an existing open source project. Both more real world experience than just doing the coding assignments.

    I used to contribute to KDE and many of the companies in that space recruited directly from the git repositories and the contributor conferences.

    Having said that, the ideal is both. Get the formal education in the overall theory of it as well in addition to getting the real world work experience. I've learned some coding on various jobs and whenever I've subsequently done a formal course I've discovered big gaps in my knowledge.
    I think one aspect is that they want people who are flexible enough to be okay with switching languages. I worked with someone who very firmly saw themselves as a C# developer, and became very unhappy when their employer decided to migrate away from using C#. That's problematic if you then have to go through redundancy and recruitment.
    The "I'm a [whatever] developer" is a really strong indicator for me of a closed mindset - and a lack of understanding of the pace of change in the industry over a 30-40 year career. A grad today is *not* going to be using the languages and tools she's learned when she retires. You have to remain curious to stand still, let alone get ahead.

    That said, coding boot-camps are great for levelling playing fields and getting people started. They are not mutually exclusive with evidence of being an autodidact.

    It's also encouraging to see hiring managers levelling up - looking for evidence of curiosity, rather than a shopping list of technology is a huge shift in our industry.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 35,959

    The joys of the cloud. Let the boffins at Google, Amazon and Microsoft sweat the small stuff.

    That in itself can be a problem.

    The folks who have spent their entire career on the small stuff now need to reskill to a level of abstraction that obscures some things completely.
  • Scott_xP said:

    Brexit has given us the sovereignty to ask our army to drive supermarket lorries before we run out of food 👍
    https://twitter.com/FlyOnNo10Wall/status/1424398535638896645

    You really are a very sad individual. Its over its done we are out ... accept it.
    It is done alright! I assume that you will cheer on our brave boys doing the jobs that unpatriotic Brits refuse to do?
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 41,927


    Did he always have that perpetually whiny note in his voice or is it something that comes upon all victimy right wingers as they age?

    This is from his leadership bid in 1995:

    https://youtu.be/37tS9ZYG7zU
    That’s classic robotic Redwood. Presumably his designers now want to inject more human emotion into his chip and self pity was all they could manage.
  • mwadamsmwadams Posts: 3,583
    eek said:

    Selebian said:

    Learning to code is no longer fit for purpose

    Software developers from coding schools are losing out in the jobs market to self-starters who demonstrate genuine intellectual curiosity

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/08/09/learning-code-no-longer-fit-purpose/

    I can see that. Self-taught are probably learning either by developing something themselves (likely open source, public, may become popular) or scraching an itch contributing to an existing open source project. Both more real world experience than just doing the coding assignments.

    I used to contribute to KDE and many of the companies in that space recruited directly from the git repositories and the contributor conferences.

    Having said that, the ideal is both. Get the formal education in the overall theory of it as well in addition to getting the real world work experience. I've learned some coding on various jobs and whenever I've subsequently done a formal course I've discovered big gaps in my knowledge.
    When I started in the industry, IMV the best coders were self-taught (*); people who had started coding as kids on the Spectrum or BBC B. Who had wasted countless hours making mistakes, but learning from them, as they tried to fit things into a few KB.

    Many got degrees outside computing; physics, maths, geography, etc, but they maintained an interest in coding.

    As time went on, I saw fewer of such people entering companies. Instead, many were people who chose software engineering with little practical experience of writing software. Some were brilliant; others had rather gaping holes in their experience.

    I do wonder if things like Arduino and Raspberry Pi will get us back towards the old days of the enthusiast coder.

    (*) I am mostly self-taught; I am also an exception to this ...;)
    I seriously doubt it - things are way more complex nowadays and there are a whole different set of things to distract children (internet, gaming....).

    Equally coding really isn't what it was 30 years ago, nowadays I can develop in 30 minutes (using WYSIWYG tools like Power Automate) things that 5 years ago would have taken a month to do in C#.

    When I'm interviewing coding skills really aren't that important anymore - what I want to see is problem solving skills breaking an item down into its necessary parts.
    We're definitely seeing more enthusiast coders in our grad pools - often people who started with Scratch at school. And while I don't think we will see another "Bedrooms to Billions" generation, the tools to get started having fun with coding, rather than just playing, are being given to kids at 5,6,7 years old (just as I was lucky enough to get given in the late 70s/early 80s).
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 35,959
    mwadams said:

    It's also encouraging to see hiring managers levelling up - looking for evidence of curiosity, rather than a shopping list of technology is a huge shift in our industry.

    We just hired a guy who on paper would never get a look in. It's working well.
  • ydoethur said:

    Selebian said:

    Learning to code is no longer fit for purpose

    Software developers from coding schools are losing out in the jobs market to self-starters who demonstrate genuine intellectual curiosity

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/08/09/learning-code-no-longer-fit-purpose/

    I can see that. Self-taught are probably learning either by developing something themselves (likely open source, public, may become popular) or scraching an itch contributing to an existing open source project. Both more real world experience than just doing the coding assignments.

    I used to contribute to KDE and many of the companies in that space recruited directly from the git repositories and the contributor conferences.

    Having said that, the ideal is both. Get the formal education in the overall theory of it as well in addition to getting the real world work experience. I've learned some coding on various jobs and whenever I've subsequently done a formal course I've discovered big gaps in my knowledge.
    When I started in the industry, IMV the best coders were self-taught (*); people who had started coding as kids on the Spectrum or BBC B. Who had wasted countless hours making mistakes, but learning from them, as they tried to fit things into a few KB.

    Many got degrees outside computing; physics, maths, geography, etc, but they maintained an interest in coding.

    As time went on, I saw fewer of such people entering companies. Instead, many were people who chose software engineering with little practical experience of writing software. Some were brilliant; others had rather gaping holes in their experience.

    I do wonder if things like Arduino and Raspberry Pi will get us back towards the old days of the enthusiast coder.

    (*) I am mostly self-taught; I am also an exception to this ...;)
    I am told that computer programming is essentially binary.

    You understand it, or you don’t.

    Which may be why I didn’t understand that last paragraph.
    Arduino and Raspberry Pi are very cheap, barebones, computer hardware so enthusiasts can have fun. Similar (and a damn sight cheaper) than the old days of enthusiasts figuring things out for themselves on new-fangled home computers in the 1980s.
  • eekeek Posts: 28,319
    edited August 2021

    ydoethur said:

    Selebian said:

    Learning to code is no longer fit for purpose

    Software developers from coding schools are losing out in the jobs market to self-starters who demonstrate genuine intellectual curiosity

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/08/09/learning-code-no-longer-fit-purpose/

    I can see that. Self-taught are probably learning either by developing something themselves (likely open source, public, may become popular) or scraching an itch contributing to an existing open source project. Both more real world experience than just doing the coding assignments.

    I used to contribute to KDE and many of the companies in that space recruited directly from the git repositories and the contributor conferences.

    Having said that, the ideal is both. Get the formal education in the overall theory of it as well in addition to getting the real world work experience. I've learned some coding on various jobs and whenever I've subsequently done a formal course I've discovered big gaps in my knowledge.
    When I started in the industry, IMV the best coders were self-taught (*); people who had started coding as kids on the Spectrum or BBC B. Who had wasted countless hours making mistakes, but learning from them, as they tried to fit things into a few KB.

    Many got degrees outside computing; physics, maths, geography, etc, but they maintained an interest in coding.

    As time went on, I saw fewer of such people entering companies. Instead, many were people who chose software engineering with little practical experience of writing software. Some were brilliant; others had rather gaping holes in their experience.

    I do wonder if things like Arduino and Raspberry Pi will get us back towards the old days of the enthusiast coder.

    (*) I am mostly self-taught; I am also an exception to this ...;)
    I am told that computer programming is essentially binary.

    You understand it, or you don’t.

    Which may be why I didn’t understand that last paragraph.
    Arduino and Raspberry Pi are very cheap, barebones, computer hardware so enthusiasts can have fun. Similar (and a damn sight cheaper) than the old days of enthusiasts figuring things out for themselves on new-fangled home computers in the 1980s.
    But in the old days, you programmed a computer to perform the task you wanted.

    I have multiple Raspberry Pis round the house, all doing specific tasks that others have created software for (mainly as music streaming devices to replace the dying slimdevices squeezeboxes we used to use).

    As @mwadams points out your typical child coder will be using Scratch or Mindcraft rather than an arduino or Raspberry Pi. The latter have different use cases in the most part.
  • Scott_xP said:

    The joys of the cloud. Let the boffins at Google, Amazon and Microsoft sweat the small stuff.

    That in itself can be a problem.

    The folks who have spent their entire career on the small stuff now need to reskill to a level of abstraction that obscures some things completely.
    Indeed. Even Mrs @JosiasJessop's chips are pretty much a fiction, with many cores and several caches, but presenting an api that pretends to be 1980s-era hardware being programmed in C.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,487

    Scott_xP said:

    The joys of the cloud. Let the boffins at Google, Amazon and Microsoft sweat the small stuff.

    That in itself can be a problem.

    The folks who have spent their entire career on the small stuff now need to reskill to a level of abstraction that obscures some things completely.
    Indeed. Even Mrs @JosiasJessop's chips are pretty much a fiction, with many cores and several caches, but presenting an api that pretends to be 1980s-era hardware being programmed in C.
    ???
  • So the 'food shortages' turn out to be Waitrose not paying its drivers enough.

    Not really Leningrad during the siege is it.

    Still good for a bit of schadenfreude among those whose custom Waitrose doesn't want.

    Now if you want a story which might damage Boris then try the new baby - he looks like one of those feckless fathers on poverty porn programs.

    Not a good look when you're going to preach about environmental sustainability.
  • squareroot2squareroot2 Posts: 6,709
    edited August 2021

    DavidL said:

    Really strange numbers in this article. Did anyone at the Guardian check them? How can it take 256.6m doses to give everyone in the UK a maximum of three doses each? The analysis completely neglects the 7m doses already being distributed to other countries, only having those mentioned by HMG's rebuttal.

    https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/aug/09/uk-set-to-hoard-up-to-210m-doses-of-covid-vaccine-research-suggests

    You can always count on innumeracy in our media.
    Well, I've tried tweeting the journalist.
    When we were in the EU billions were spent on the butter mountain the wine lake and so on and so forth keeping prices up unrealistically to keep the French happy.

    I havent found any shortages when I have been shopping. Most of the shortages .. such as they are have been caused because of people being furloughed. It will sort itself out given time.

    You just jump on anything to stick it to brexit.... you have not acepted if... If you had, you wouldn't be slagging it off every day.
  • eekeek Posts: 28,319

    Scott_xP said:

    Brexit has given us the sovereignty to ask our army to drive supermarket lorries before we run out of food 👍
    https://twitter.com/FlyOnNo10Wall/status/1424398535638896645

    You really are a very sad individual. Its over its done we are out ... accept it.
    It is done alright! I assume that you will cheer on our brave boys doing the jobs that unpatriotic Brits refuse to do?
    At the moment, even if we could find people willing to drive lorries there isn't the capacity to train them quickly enough.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,487
    eek said:

    ydoethur said:

    Selebian said:

    Learning to code is no longer fit for purpose

    Software developers from coding schools are losing out in the jobs market to self-starters who demonstrate genuine intellectual curiosity

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/08/09/learning-code-no-longer-fit-purpose/

    I can see that. Self-taught are probably learning either by developing something themselves (likely open source, public, may become popular) or scraching an itch contributing to an existing open source project. Both more real world experience than just doing the coding assignments.

    I used to contribute to KDE and many of the companies in that space recruited directly from the git repositories and the contributor conferences.

    Having said that, the ideal is both. Get the formal education in the overall theory of it as well in addition to getting the real world work experience. I've learned some coding on various jobs and whenever I've subsequently done a formal course I've discovered big gaps in my knowledge.
    When I started in the industry, IMV the best coders were self-taught (*); people who had started coding as kids on the Spectrum or BBC B. Who had wasted countless hours making mistakes, but learning from them, as they tried to fit things into a few KB.

    Many got degrees outside computing; physics, maths, geography, etc, but they maintained an interest in coding.

    As time went on, I saw fewer of such people entering companies. Instead, many were people who chose software engineering with little practical experience of writing software. Some were brilliant; others had rather gaping holes in their experience.

    I do wonder if things like Arduino and Raspberry Pi will get us back towards the old days of the enthusiast coder.

    (*) I am mostly self-taught; I am also an exception to this ...;)
    I am told that computer programming is essentially binary.

    You understand it, or you don’t.

    Which may be why I didn’t understand that last paragraph.
    Arduino and Raspberry Pi are very cheap, barebones, computer hardware so enthusiasts can have fun. Similar (and a damn sight cheaper) than the old days of enthusiasts figuring things out for themselves on new-fangled home computers in the 1980s.
    But in the old days, you programmed a computer to perform the task you wanted.

    I have multiple Raspberry Pis round the house, all doing specific tasks that others have created software for (mainly as music streaming devices to replace the dying slimdevices squeezeboxes we used to use).

    As @mwadams points out your typical child coder will be using Scratch or Mindcraft rather than an arduino or Raspberry Pi. The latter have different use cases in the most part.
    There is room for both. I've heard about the 'death of assembler' for decades now; yet people still seem to want people who can code at that sort of level.
  • NickPalmerNickPalmer Posts: 21,520
    ydoethur said:

    A story is told of a nineteenth century preacher in the Highlands whose text was, ‘Love they neighbour.’

    ‘Who is our neighbour?’ he asked. ‘It does not just mean those in your clan, or even those in other clans. It is the Mussulman in Arabia, the Hindoo in India, the Spaniard in Spain and the Slav in Russia.’

    He paused, and then went on,

    ‘Aye, even the very Englishman is our neighbour too.’

    A Scotswoman who I used to know married a Pakistani whom she met at St Andrews. Neither were very religious but they thought it'd be nice to have a blessing, and they were pleased to see that the university chapel offered marriage services "across religions". So they went and asked, and learning he was nominally Muslim they were very apologetic: "Sorry, we meant we don't mind if one of you is Church of England..."
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 27,789
    edited August 2021

    Scott_xP said:

    The joys of the cloud. Let the boffins at Google, Amazon and Microsoft sweat the small stuff.

    That in itself can be a problem.

    The folks who have spent their entire career on the small stuff now need to reskill to a level of abstraction that obscures some things completely.
    Indeed. Even Mrs @JosiasJessop's chips are pretty much a fiction, with many cores and several caches, but presenting an api that pretends to be 1980s-era hardware being programmed in C.
    ???
    Ask the missus. Hardware has moved beyond the software model of it.
  • So the 'food shortages' turn out to be Waitrose not paying its drivers enough.

    Not really Leningrad during the siege is it.

    Still good for a bit of schadenfreude among those whose custom Waitrose doesn't want.

    Now if you want a story which might damage Boris then try the new baby - he looks like one of those feckless fathers on poverty porn programs.

    Not a good look when you're going to preach about environmental sustainability.

    How have you reached that conclusion? There are tens of thousands fewer drivers than are required, with more retiring every month than are being replaced. So we now have some desperate companies like Tesco offering big dollah to entice drivers to defect, but that doesn't fix the problem either - the industry would be better served by Tesco spending the money on driver training.
  • eekeek Posts: 28,319

    So the 'food shortages' turn out to be Waitrose not paying its drivers enough.

    Not really Leningrad during the siege is it.

    Still good for a bit of schadenfreude among those whose custom Waitrose doesn't want.

    Now if you want a story which might damage Boris then try the new baby - he looks like one of those feckless fathers on poverty porn programs.

    Not a good look when you're going to preach about environmental sustainability.

    How have you reached that conclusion? There are tens of thousands fewer drivers than are required, with more retiring every month than are being replaced. So we now have some desperate companies like Tesco offering big dollah to entice drivers to defect, but that doesn't fix the problem either - the industry would be better served by Tesco spending the money on driver training.
    That doesn't solve their immediate shortage though, so they really need to be doing both due to lead times on training.
  • eek said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Brexit has given us the sovereignty to ask our army to drive supermarket lorries before we run out of food 👍
    https://twitter.com/FlyOnNo10Wall/status/1424398535638896645

    You really are a very sad individual. Its over its done we are out ... accept it.
    It is done alright! I assume that you will cheer on our brave boys doing the jobs that unpatriotic Brits refuse to do?
    At the moment, even if we could find people willing to drive lorries there isn't the capacity to train them quickly enough.
    Exactly. People don't want to drive Lorries. Whilst better pay and conditions may entice some in over the long term that will help drive inflation and does nothing for the short term.

    Our managed migration policy is supposed to allow the government to target people we need. Right now we need truck drivers and farm workers. So why aren't they being allowed in? Because propaganda - there are no downsides to our glorious Brexit so there can't be any labour issues so we don't need immigrants.
  • ydoethur said:

    A story is told of a nineteenth century preacher in the Highlands whose text was, ‘Love they neighbour.’

    ‘Who is our neighbour?’ he asked. ‘It does not just mean those in your clan, or even those in other clans. It is the Mussulman in Arabia, the Hindoo in India, the Spaniard in Spain and the Slav in Russia.’

    He paused, and then went on,

    ‘Aye, even the very Englishman is our neighbour too.’

    A Scotswoman who I used to know married a Pakistani whom she met at St Andrews. Neither were very religious but they thought it'd be nice to have a blessing, and they were pleased to see that the university chapel offered marriage services "across religions". So they went and asked, and learning he was nominally Muslim they were very apologetic: "Sorry, we meant we don't mind if one of you is Church of England..."
    Dara O Briain on mixed marriages.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0thRUS1wUw
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,404
    eek said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Its over its done we are out ... accept it.

    I have accepted it.

    I accept that it's causing food shortages.

    You appear to be the one in denial.
    Where? Not in my shopping it isn't.
    Well, something's giving rise to empty shelves locally. Or if not empty, 'dressed' with one item and nothing behind it.
    All supermarkets or just some of them.

    Round here Morrisons and Sainsbury's has problems, but Aldi* and Marks don't

    * the fact it is a "flagship" Aldi and the distribution hub / regional head office is less than 1 mile away may be a factor there.
    Two Tesco's and the local Co-op. According to my wife, who is thinking about a trip to Sainsbury's 'just to see'.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,341

    ydoethur said:

    A story is told of a nineteenth century preacher in the Highlands whose text was, ‘Love they neighbour.’

    ‘Who is our neighbour?’ he asked. ‘It does not just mean those in your clan, or even those in other clans. It is the Mussulman in Arabia, the Hindoo in India, the Spaniard in Spain and the Slav in Russia.’

    He paused, and then went on,

    ‘Aye, even the very Englishman is our neighbour too.’

    A Scotswoman who I used to know married a Pakistani whom she met at St Andrews. Neither were very religious but they thought it'd be nice to have a blessing, and they were pleased to see that the university chapel offered marriage services "across religions". So they went and asked, and learning he was nominally Muslim they were very apologetic: "Sorry, we meant we don't mind if one of you is Church of England..."
    In a Calvinistic chapel in Wales of course, it would be the other way round. ‘Dewch i mewn, my Muslim friend! Very happy we are to give you your blessing. If you had been English of course...’
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 17,351
    Cynical hat says it will say - "Its even worse than before, we really mean it now, we are all doomed!".

    I am fully signed up to net zero, protecting the environment, properly using resources - the whole green thing. But I find the increasingly shrill desperation and scare tactics from the climate scientist lobby, without a balance of proper skeptical science at times counter productive. The recent pandemic has revealed the limits of modelling in complex scenarios.

    We need to reach a point where we no longer use fossil fuels and have a fully sustainable existence. We need to stop destroying habitats and making species go extinct. But to say we have to do this because the global temperature (whatever that even is) will rise by a degree or two, against a setting where the planet ranges from -50 to +50 deg C, and even in temperate UK from -19 to +38 deg C is nonsense. I am also surprised that the scientists now seem confident to link extreme weather events to climate change. One of the issues is we now have world wide reporting, so any extreme event gets reported, whereas even 20 years ago that was not the case. This adds to the feeling of doom everywhere, when in reality, for much of the world, extremes have always happened.
    Homes being flooded is far more because of where they have built their houses, not necessarily due to more rain.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,738

    dr_spyn said:

    And the Monet kept rolling in my friends.

    https://twitter.com/ITVNewsPolitics/status/1424638306508279811

    Supporting new, emerging talent, becomes a political statement. Must be August, or another deceased feline on the rebound.

    Can't they hang Boris's bus paintings or were they too a figment of Boris's imagination?
    They were 3-D, I believe: so to be put on plinths. Maybe the one in Trafalgar Square would do.
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 60,216
    Just 4% of people in the U.K. are hesitant towards the Covid-19 vaccine.

    The antivaxx crowd on Twitter is totally unrepresentative.

    Twitter is not real life.


    https://twitter.com/matthewlesh/status/1424650611669225482?s=20
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,404
    edited August 2021

    ydoethur said:

    A story is told of a nineteenth century preacher in the Highlands whose text was, ‘Love they neighbour.’

    ‘Who is our neighbour?’ he asked. ‘It does not just mean those in your clan, or even those in other clans. It is the Mussulman in Arabia, the Hindoo in India, the Spaniard in Spain and the Slav in Russia.’

    He paused, and then went on,

    ‘Aye, even the very Englishman is our neighbour too.’

    A Scotswoman who I used to know married a Pakistani whom she met at St Andrews. Neither were very religious but they thought it'd be nice to have a blessing, and they were pleased to see that the university chapel offered marriage services "across religions". So they went and asked, and learning he was nominally Muslim they were very apologetic: "Sorry, we meant we don't mind if one of you is Church of England..."
    A niece of mine married (ex St Andrews, oddly enough) married a Protestant Ulsterman and it was discovered that she was nominally a Catholic. That caused a certain amount of problems, although she'd not been inside a church since baptism.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 17,351

    Just 4% of people in the U.K. are hesitant towards the Covid-19 vaccine.

    The antivaxx crowd on Twitter is totally unrepresentative.

    Twitter is not real life.


    https://twitter.com/matthewlesh/status/1424650611669225482?s=20

    And yet that I read at the weekend that half of all black Brits have not yet had the jab. (Apologies if that's not the correct term)
  • So the 'food shortages' turn out to be Waitrose not paying its drivers enough.

    Not really Leningrad during the siege is it.

    Still good for a bit of schadenfreude among those whose custom Waitrose doesn't want.

    Now if you want a story which might damage Boris then try the new baby - he looks like one of those feckless fathers on poverty porn programs.

    Not a good look when you're going to preach about environmental sustainability.

    How have you reached that conclusion? There are tens of thousands fewer drivers than are required, with more retiring every month than are being replaced. So we now have some desperate companies like Tesco offering big dollah to entice drivers to defect, but that doesn't fix the problem either - the industry would be better served by Tesco spending the money on driver training.
    What's wrong with pay rates rising for skilled workers ?
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,738
    edited August 2021
    Selebian said:

    DavidL said:

    BBC Scotland Business and Economy Editor, tweets:

    Wind turbine blade-maker Siemens Gamesa doubling the size of its Hull factory, with £186m investment. 200 more jobs, adding to 1000 now.....

    Also in Hull, GRI Renewable Industries announces £78 million investment in an offshore wind turbine tower factory, creating up to 260 direct jobs.


    https://twitter.com/BBCDouglasF/status/1424620811520970753?s=20

    Well it could have been Bifab in Methil had the Scottish government not been so incompetent.
    There isn't anything else that could be adding to business uncertainty in Scotland is there?
    Yes Jim, we feel the love.

    image
    I'm sure this picture makes a really important and powerful point and I'm just too stupid to figure out what it is
    Dinnae fash yersel laddie. I’m just a huge Jim fan.
    Which leaves me wondering what a 'huge Jim' is and whether I dare Google it! :wink:
    Mr Jim Murphy. A tall, lanky gent famous for the fulfilment of his unintentionally Delphic [edit] prophecy not to lose a single SLAB seat in the relevant GE. One of the many leaders of SLAB receding into the distance of memory (I honestly can't put them in numerical order).
  • eek said:

    So the 'food shortages' turn out to be Waitrose not paying its drivers enough.

    Not really Leningrad during the siege is it.

    Still good for a bit of schadenfreude among those whose custom Waitrose doesn't want.

    Now if you want a story which might damage Boris then try the new baby - he looks like one of those feckless fathers on poverty porn programs.

    Not a good look when you're going to preach about environmental sustainability.

    How have you reached that conclusion? There are tens of thousands fewer drivers than are required, with more retiring every month than are being replaced. So we now have some desperate companies like Tesco offering big dollah to entice drivers to defect, but that doesn't fix the problem either - the industry would be better served by Tesco spending the money on driver training.
    That doesn't solve their immediate shortage though, so they really need to be doing both due to lead times on training.
    From Tesco's point of view? Sure. As Philip would say the market will sort this. Tesco and the big companies can afford all the drivers, leaving smaller companies with no drivers and bankrupt and their customers screwed. It isn't a solution for anyone other than Tesco.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,487

    Scott_xP said:

    The joys of the cloud. Let the boffins at Google, Amazon and Microsoft sweat the small stuff.

    That in itself can be a problem.

    The folks who have spent their entire career on the small stuff now need to reskill to a level of abstraction that obscures some things completely.
    Indeed. Even Mrs @JosiasJessop's chips are pretty much a fiction, with many cores and several caches, but presenting an api that pretends to be 1980s-era hardware being programmed in C.
    ???
    Ask the missus. Hardware has moved beyond the software model of it.
    And your knowledge of what Mrs J does is ... ?
  • So the 'food shortages' turn out to be Waitrose not paying its drivers enough.

    Not really Leningrad during the siege is it.

    Still good for a bit of schadenfreude among those whose custom Waitrose doesn't want.

    Now if you want a story which might damage Boris then try the new baby - he looks like one of those feckless fathers on poverty porn programs.

    Not a good look when you're going to preach about environmental sustainability.

    How have you reached that conclusion? There are tens of thousands fewer drivers than are required, with more retiring every month than are being replaced. So we now have some desperate companies like Tesco offering big dollah to entice drivers to defect, but that doesn't fix the problem either - the industry would be better served by Tesco spending the money on driver training.
    What's wrong with pay rates rising for skilled workers ?
    Nothing at all - there has been a race to the bottom over the last decade and more for truck drivers and a whole load of other industries.

    My points are simple: they will drive costs and thus inflation, and it does not solve the driver crisis in the short to medium term. "Pay the drivers more" is not a solution for tens of thousands of vacancies you cannot fill. It is a strategy for 3 years hence which is fine, but needs to go hand in hand with a solution to the crisis - which has to be imported drivers.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 95,994

    Cynical hat says it will say - "Its even worse than before, we really mean it now, we are all doomed!".

    I am fully signed up to net zero, protecting the environment, properly using resources - the whole green thing. But I find the increasingly shrill desperation and scare tactics from the climate scientist lobby, without a balance of proper skeptical science at times counter productive. The recent pandemic has revealed the limits of modelling in complex scenarios.

    We need to reach a point where we no longer use fossil fuels and have a fully sustainable existence. We need to stop destroying habitats and making species go extinct. But to say we have to do this because the global temperature (whatever that even is) will rise by a degree or two, against a setting where the planet ranges from -50 to +50 deg C, and even in temperate UK from -19 to +38 deg C is nonsense. I am also surprised that the scientists now seem confident to link extreme weather events to climate change. One of the issues is we now have world wide reporting, so any extreme event gets reported, whereas even 20 years ago that was not the case. This adds to the feeling of doom everywhere, when in reality, for much of the world, extremes have always happened.
    Homes being flooded is far more because of where they have built their houses, not necessarily due to more rain.
    I dont agree on the point about global temperature, but it is the case that as bad as things may be previous estimates feel like they were that things would be even worse.

    Based on predictions of 80s videos we had to watch at school in the 90s I'm surprised theres any amazon rainforest left.

    I'm not sure how one appropriately lists concern. If you don't set a date theres no urgency but if you then reach that date without widespread catastrophe it undermines future warnings, yet its also probably the case that by the time its obvious it's too late.

    It does seem true that more people are more passionately concerned about these issues than just 5 years ago, but given its certain that lots things in any report stated as needing to happen will not happen, by that logic we're already doomed.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 54,522
    edited August 2021

    eek said:

    ydoethur said:

    Selebian said:

    Learning to code is no longer fit for purpose

    Software developers from coding schools are losing out in the jobs market to self-starters who demonstrate genuine intellectual curiosity

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/08/09/learning-code-no-longer-fit-purpose/

    I can see that. Self-taught are probably learning either by developing something themselves (likely open source, public, may become popular) or scraching an itch contributing to an existing open source project. Both more real world experience than just doing the coding assignments.

    I used to contribute to KDE and many of the companies in that space recruited directly from the git repositories and the contributor conferences.

    Having said that, the ideal is both. Get the formal education in the overall theory of it as well in addition to getting the real world work experience. I've learned some coding on various jobs and whenever I've subsequently done a formal course I've discovered big gaps in my knowledge.
    When I started in the industry, IMV the best coders were self-taught (*); people who had started coding as kids on the Spectrum or BBC B. Who had wasted countless hours making mistakes, but learning from them, as they tried to fit things into a few KB.

    Many got degrees outside computing; physics, maths, geography, etc, but they maintained an interest in coding.

    As time went on, I saw fewer of such people entering companies. Instead, many were people who chose software engineering with little practical experience of writing software. Some were brilliant; others had rather gaping holes in their experience.

    I do wonder if things like Arduino and Raspberry Pi will get us back towards the old days of the enthusiast coder.

    (*) I am mostly self-taught; I am also an exception to this ...;)
    I am told that computer programming is essentially binary.

    You understand it, or you don’t.

    Which may be why I didn’t understand that last paragraph.
    Arduino and Raspberry Pi are very cheap, barebones, computer hardware so enthusiasts can have fun. Similar (and a damn sight cheaper) than the old days of enthusiasts figuring things out for themselves on new-fangled home computers in the 1980s.
    But in the old days, you programmed a computer to perform the task you wanted.

    I have multiple Raspberry Pis round the house, all doing specific tasks that others have created software for (mainly as music streaming devices to replace the dying slimdevices squeezeboxes we used to use).

    As @mwadams points out your typical child coder will be using Scratch or Mindcraft rather than an arduino or Raspberry Pi. The latter have different use cases in the most part.
    There is room for both. I've heard about the 'death of assembler' for decades now; yet people still seem to want people who can code at that sort of level.
    I know a COBOL programmer in his mid 70s. He’s up to about £3k a day now, 2-3 days a week, as his company appears utterly determined to not let him retire.
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 60,216

    Just 4% of people in the U.K. are hesitant towards the Covid-19 vaccine.

    The antivaxx crowd on Twitter is totally unrepresentative.

    Twitter is not real life.


    https://twitter.com/matthewlesh/status/1424650611669225482?s=20

    And yet that I read at the weekend that half of all black Brits have not yet had the jab. (Apologies if that's not the correct term)
    Don't know where that comes from - it could cover a multitude of factors - eg age effects. They are more hesitant:

    Black or Black British adults were most likely to report vaccine hesitancy compared with White adults. Around 1 in 5 (21%) Black or Black British adults reported vaccine hesitancy, compared with 4% of White adults (23 June to 18 July 2021).

    Vaccine hesitancy refers to those who have either declined a COVID-19 vaccine offer, report being unlikely to accept a vaccine or report being undecided.


    https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/articles/coronaviruscovid19latestinsights/vaccines

  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 17,351
    edited August 2021

    Just 4% of people in the U.K. are hesitant towards the Covid-19 vaccine.

    The antivaxx crowd on Twitter is totally unrepresentative.

    Twitter is not real life.


    https://twitter.com/matthewlesh/status/1424650611669225482?s=20

    And yet that I read at the weekend that half of all black Brits have not yet had the jab. (Apologies if that's not the correct term)
    Don't know where that comes from - it could cover a multitude of factors - eg age effects. They are more hesitant:

    Black or Black British adults were most likely to report vaccine hesitancy compared with White adults. Around 1 in 5 (21%) Black or Black British adults reported vaccine hesitancy, compared with 4% of White adults (23 June to 18 July 2021).

    Vaccine hesitancy refers to those who have either declined a COVID-19 vaccine offer, report being unlikely to accept a vaccine or report being undecided.


    https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/articles/coronaviruscovid19latestinsights/vaccines

    That's terrible writing isn't it - 1 in 5 vs 4%! I know they put the % in brackets but why not just say 215 vs 4%...
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 18,284

    Cynical hat says it will say - "Its even worse than before, we really mean it now, we are all doomed!".

    I am fully signed up to net zero, protecting the environment, properly using resources - the whole green thing. But I find the increasingly shrill desperation and scare tactics from the climate scientist lobby, without a balance of proper skeptical science at times counter productive. The recent pandemic has revealed the limits of modelling in complex scenarios.

    We need to reach a point where we no longer use fossil fuels and have a fully sustainable existence. We need to stop destroying habitats and making species go extinct. But to say we have to do this because the global temperature (whatever that even is) will rise by a degree or two, against a setting where the planet ranges from -50 to +50 deg C, and even in temperate UK from -19 to +38 deg C is nonsense. I am also surprised that the scientists now seem confident to link extreme weather events to climate change. One of the issues is we now have world wide reporting, so any extreme event gets reported, whereas even 20 years ago that was not the case. This adds to the feeling of doom everywhere, when in reality, for much of the world, extremes have always happened.
    Homes being flooded is far more because of where they have built their houses, not necessarily due to more rain.
    The difference between mile-high ice sheets over New York City and the pre-industrial climate that gave rise to civilisation, was a mere six degrees in the global average (and really, you're nit-picking over taking an average?) so an increase of a couple of degrees (at best) does sound like a big deal to me.
  • QuincelQuincel Posts: 4,042

    Cynical hat says it will say - "Its even worse than before, we really mean it now, we are all doomed!".

    I am fully signed up to net zero, protecting the environment, properly using resources - the whole green thing. But I find the increasingly shrill desperation and scare tactics from the climate scientist lobby, without a balance of proper skeptical science at times counter productive. The recent pandemic has revealed the limits of modelling in complex scenarios.

    We need to reach a point where we no longer use fossil fuels and have a fully sustainable existence. We need to stop destroying habitats and making species go extinct. But to say we have to do this because the global temperature (whatever that even is) will rise by a degree or two, against a setting where the planet ranges from -50 to +50 deg C, and even in temperate UK from -19 to +38 deg C is nonsense. I am also surprised that the scientists now seem confident to link extreme weather events to climate change. One of the issues is we now have world wide reporting, so any extreme event gets reported, whereas even 20 years ago that was not the case. This adds to the feeling of doom everywhere, when in reality, for much of the world, extremes have always happened.
    Homes being flooded is far more because of where they have built their houses, not necessarily due to more rain.
    Genuinely curious why you think the IPCC hasn't considered the quality of past/current datasets on natural disasters when forming their conclusions, and why you think they have reached conclusions on extreme weather events without properly weighing the evidence.

    Scientists aren't infallible, but these people do spend their lives studying this stuff and there's no reason to think they haven't factored in these fairly basic complications into the situation. I also think the comparison to pandemic modelling isn't a useful one, because climate modelling has been able to be tested against climate change for 20+ years now whereas pandemic modelling couldn't. We can have much more confidence in climate models because they have already been proven mostly accurate - forecasts of the rate of warming made 10 years ago have so far been pretty close.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,723

    So the 'food shortages' turn out to be Waitrose not paying its drivers enough.

    Not really Leningrad during the siege is it.

    Still good for a bit of schadenfreude among those whose custom Waitrose doesn't want.

    Now if you want a story which might damage Boris then try the new baby - he looks like one of those feckless fathers on poverty porn programs.

    Not a good look when you're going to preach about environmental sustainability.

    How have you reached that conclusion? There are tens of thousands fewer drivers than are required, with more retiring every month than are being replaced. So we now have some desperate companies like Tesco offering big dollah to entice drivers to defect, but that doesn't fix the problem either - the industry would be better served by Tesco spending the money on driver training.
    Do you understand how the free market works at all?
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 17,351
    kle4 said:

    Cynical hat says it will say - "Its even worse than before, we really mean it now, we are all doomed!".

    I am fully signed up to net zero, protecting the environment, properly using resources - the whole green thing. But I find the increasingly shrill desperation and scare tactics from the climate scientist lobby, without a balance of proper skeptical science at times counter productive. The recent pandemic has revealed the limits of modelling in complex scenarios.

    We need to reach a point where we no longer use fossil fuels and have a fully sustainable existence. We need to stop destroying habitats and making species go extinct. But to say we have to do this because the global temperature (whatever that even is) will rise by a degree or two, against a setting where the planet ranges from -50 to +50 deg C, and even in temperate UK from -19 to +38 deg C is nonsense. I am also surprised that the scientists now seem confident to link extreme weather events to climate change. One of the issues is we now have world wide reporting, so any extreme event gets reported, whereas even 20 years ago that was not the case. This adds to the feeling of doom everywhere, when in reality, for much of the world, extremes have always happened.
    Homes being flooded is far more because of where they have built their houses, not necessarily due to more rain.
    I dont agree on the point about global temperature, but it is the case that as bad as things may be previous estimates feel like they were that things would be even worse.

    Based on predictions of 80s videos we had to watch at school in the 90s I'm surprised theres any amazon rainforest left.

    I'm not sure how one appropriately lists concern. If you don't set a date theres no urgency but if you then reach that date without widespread catastrophe it undermines future warnings, yet its also probably the case that by the time its obvious it's too late.

    It does seem true that more people are more passionately concerned about these issues than just 5 years ago, but given its certain that lots things in any report stated as needing to happen will not happen, by that logic we're already doomed.
    I'm happy to disagree - but what do you understand the global temperature to be? I think it is a stupid concept, but that might just be me.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 95,994
    Carnyx said:

    Selebian said:

    DavidL said:

    BBC Scotland Business and Economy Editor, tweets:

    Wind turbine blade-maker Siemens Gamesa doubling the size of its Hull factory, with £186m investment. 200 more jobs, adding to 1000 now.....

    Also in Hull, GRI Renewable Industries announces £78 million investment in an offshore wind turbine tower factory, creating up to 260 direct jobs.


    https://twitter.com/BBCDouglasF/status/1424620811520970753?s=20

    Well it could have been Bifab in Methil had the Scottish government not been so incompetent.
    There isn't anything else that could be adding to business uncertainty in Scotland is there?
    Yes Jim, we feel the love.

    image
    I'm sure this picture makes a really important and powerful point and I'm just too stupid to figure out what it is
    Dinnae fash yersel laddie. I’m just a huge Jim fan.
    Which leaves me wondering what a 'huge Jim' is and whether I dare Google it! :wink:
    Mr Jim Murphy. A tall, lanky gent famous for the fulfilment of his unintentionally Delphic [edit] prophecy not to lose a single SLAB seat in the relevant GE. One of the many leaders of SLAB receding into the distance of memory (I honestly can't put them in numerical order).
    Modern historical and archaeological research suggests they are like the mythological early Japanese emperors and probably never existed. Fascinating how human tales develop.
  • MaxPB said:

    So the 'food shortages' turn out to be Waitrose not paying its drivers enough.

    Not really Leningrad during the siege is it.

    Still good for a bit of schadenfreude among those whose custom Waitrose doesn't want.

    Now if you want a story which might damage Boris then try the new baby - he looks like one of those feckless fathers on poverty porn programs.

    Not a good look when you're going to preach about environmental sustainability.

    How have you reached that conclusion? There are tens of thousands fewer drivers than are required, with more retiring every month than are being replaced. So we now have some desperate companies like Tesco offering big dollah to entice drivers to defect, but that doesn't fix the problem either - the industry would be better served by Tesco spending the money on driver training.
    Do you understand how the free market works at all?

    If we had a free market we would not have a shortage of lorry drivers.

  • So the 'food shortages' turn out to be Waitrose not paying its drivers enough.

    Not really Leningrad during the siege is it.

    Still good for a bit of schadenfreude among those whose custom Waitrose doesn't want.

    Now if you want a story which might damage Boris then try the new baby - he looks like one of those feckless fathers on poverty porn programs.

    Not a good look when you're going to preach about environmental sustainability.

    How have you reached that conclusion? There are tens of thousands fewer drivers than are required, with more retiring every month than are being replaced. So we now have some desperate companies like Tesco offering big dollah to entice drivers to defect, but that doesn't fix the problem either - the industry would be better served by Tesco spending the money on driver training.
    What's wrong with pay rates rising for skilled workers ?
    Nothing at all - there has been a race to the bottom over the last decade and more for truck drivers and a whole load of other industries.

    My points are simple: they will drive costs and thus inflation, and it does not solve the driver crisis in the short to medium term. "Pay the drivers more" is not a solution for tens of thousands of vacancies you cannot fill. It is a strategy for 3 years hence which is fine, but needs to go hand in hand with a solution to the crisis - which has to be imported drivers.

    As consumers we also need to accept that it will lead to higher prices. This will make the triple lock even more difficult to sustain.

  • kle4kle4 Posts: 95,994

    kle4 said:

    Cynical hat says it will say - "Its even worse than before, we really mean it now, we are all doomed!".

    I am fully signed up to net zero, protecting the environment, properly using resources - the whole green thing. But I find the increasingly shrill desperation and scare tactics from the climate scientist lobby, without a balance of proper skeptical science at times counter productive. The recent pandemic has revealed the limits of modelling in complex scenarios.

    We need to reach a point where we no longer use fossil fuels and have a fully sustainable existence. We need to stop destroying habitats and making species go extinct. But to say we have to do this because the global temperature (whatever that even is) will rise by a degree or two, against a setting where the planet ranges from -50 to +50 deg C, and even in temperate UK from -19 to +38 deg C is nonsense. I am also surprised that the scientists now seem confident to link extreme weather events to climate change. One of the issues is we now have world wide reporting, so any extreme event gets reported, whereas even 20 years ago that was not the case. This adds to the feeling of doom everywhere, when in reality, for much of the world, extremes have always happened.
    Homes being flooded is far more because of where they have built their houses, not necessarily due to more rain.
    I dont agree on the point about global temperature, but it is the case that as bad as things may be previous estimates feel like they were that things would be even worse.

    Based on predictions of 80s videos we had to watch at school in the 90s I'm surprised theres any amazon rainforest left.

    I'm not sure how one appropriately lists concern. If you don't set a date theres no urgency but if you then reach that date without widespread catastrophe it undermines future warnings, yet its also probably the case that by the time its obvious it's too late.

    It does seem true that more people are more passionately concerned about these issues than just 5 years ago, but given its certain that lots things in any report stated as needing to happen will not happen, by that logic we're already doomed.
    I'm happy to disagree - but what do you understand the global temperature to be? I think it is a stupid concept, but that might just be me.
    I'm not a scientist and have not explored the issue so couldn't answer with any authority, I just don't see the idea of average global temperatures as inherently nonsense. If there are criticisms of such a thing I'd listen.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,404
    MaxPB said:

    So the 'food shortages' turn out to be Waitrose not paying its drivers enough.

    Not really Leningrad during the siege is it.

    Still good for a bit of schadenfreude among those whose custom Waitrose doesn't want.

    Now if you want a story which might damage Boris then try the new baby - he looks like one of those feckless fathers on poverty porn programs.

    Not a good look when you're going to preach about environmental sustainability.

    How have you reached that conclusion? There are tens of thousands fewer drivers than are required, with more retiring every month than are being replaced. So we now have some desperate companies like Tesco offering big dollah to entice drivers to defect, but that doesn't fix the problem either - the industry would be better served by Tesco spending the money on driver training.
    Do you understand how the free market works at all?
    Difference between short and long term solutions to a problem. Temporary alleviation....... import drivers. Long term solution ...... make the job more attractive, train more locals.
  • MaxPB said:

    So the 'food shortages' turn out to be Waitrose not paying its drivers enough.

    Not really Leningrad during the siege is it.

    Still good for a bit of schadenfreude among those whose custom Waitrose doesn't want.

    Now if you want a story which might damage Boris then try the new baby - he looks like one of those feckless fathers on poverty porn programs.

    Not a good look when you're going to preach about environmental sustainability.

    How have you reached that conclusion? There are tens of thousands fewer drivers than are required, with more retiring every month than are being replaced. So we now have some desperate companies like Tesco offering big dollah to entice drivers to defect, but that doesn't fix the problem either - the industry would be better served by Tesco spending the money on driver training.
    Do you understand how the free market works at all?
    lol yes. Explain to me how if you have a 60k shortage of drivers how "pay them more" is a market solution for now. Its a solution to the big companies with the big pockets. When the smaller companies go pop the bigger ones can't pick up the business - your free market solution - because there is a 60k shortage of drivers...

    We either find a shit ton of trained drivers available for work at a price - also a free market solution - or the problem remains until both the 60k gap and the retiring drivers have been replaced by newly trained British drivers. The industry needs a good 18 months at the least to do that. You can't pay your way out of a shortage when the work is skilled - people suddenly attracted by the higher pay can't start tomorrow.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 17,351
    Quincel said:

    Cynical hat says it will say - "Its even worse than before, we really mean it now, we are all doomed!".

    I am fully signed up to net zero, protecting the environment, properly using resources - the whole green thing. But I find the increasingly shrill desperation and scare tactics from the climate scientist lobby, without a balance of proper skeptical science at times counter productive. The recent pandemic has revealed the limits of modelling in complex scenarios.

    We need to reach a point where we no longer use fossil fuels and have a fully sustainable existence. We need to stop destroying habitats and making species go extinct. But to say we have to do this because the global temperature (whatever that even is) will rise by a degree or two, against a setting where the planet ranges from -50 to +50 deg C, and even in temperate UK from -19 to +38 deg C is nonsense. I am also surprised that the scientists now seem confident to link extreme weather events to climate change. One of the issues is we now have world wide reporting, so any extreme event gets reported, whereas even 20 years ago that was not the case. This adds to the feeling of doom everywhere, when in reality, for much of the world, extremes have always happened.
    Homes being flooded is far more because of where they have built their houses, not necessarily due to more rain.
    Genuinely curious why you think the IPCC hasn't considered the quality of past/current datasets on natural disasters when forming their conclusions, and why you think they have reached conclusions on extreme weather events without properly weighing the evidence.

    Scientists aren't infallible, but these people do spend their lives studying this stuff and there's no reason to think they haven't factored in these fairly basic complications into the situation. I also think the comparison to pandemic modelling isn't a useful one, because climate modelling has been able to be tested against climate change for 20+ years now whereas pandemic modelling couldn't. We can have much more confidence in climate models because they have already been proven mostly accurate - forecasts of the rate of warming made 10 years ago have so far been pretty close.
    I think that climate science an issue, like many other disciplines. Its a lot easier to gain attention for 'its worse than we thought' than for 'its bad, but not as bad'. Maybe I'm being unfair, but there are a lot of climate scientists who espouse the most scary projections (or maybe that just the ones that make it to the media?) and many more more moderate who dont get the prominence?
    Climate change is undeniable - too much evidence has been gathered to show this, but we are still back on the 'prediction is hard, especially about the future' problem. I know you can say its not the same, but just why did no-one predict falling Covid cases three weeks ago? The climate models from 20 or 30 years ago have overstated the levels of warming, and i believe that current ones are too.

    Does this effect what I think we should do? No - we must move away from fossil fuels, and learn who to live a balanced life, protecting the planet, not depleting its resources and keeping the flora and fauna that have as much right to exist as we do. I just keep a slightly skeptical head on when climate alarmism raises its head,
  • Scott_xP said:

    The joys of the cloud. Let the boffins at Google, Amazon and Microsoft sweat the small stuff.

    That in itself can be a problem.

    The folks who have spent their entire career on the small stuff now need to reskill to a level of abstraction that obscures some things completely.
    Indeed. Even Mrs @JosiasJessop's chips are pretty much a fiction, with many cores and several caches, but presenting an api that pretends to be 1980s-era hardware being programmed in C.
    ???
    Ask the missus. Hardware has moved beyond the software model of it.
    And your knowledge of what Mrs J does is ... ?
    Based entirely on your account on this very thread.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 17,351
    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Cynical hat says it will say - "Its even worse than before, we really mean it now, we are all doomed!".

    I am fully signed up to net zero, protecting the environment, properly using resources - the whole green thing. But I find the increasingly shrill desperation and scare tactics from the climate scientist lobby, without a balance of proper skeptical science at times counter productive. The recent pandemic has revealed the limits of modelling in complex scenarios.

    We need to reach a point where we no longer use fossil fuels and have a fully sustainable existence. We need to stop destroying habitats and making species go extinct. But to say we have to do this because the global temperature (whatever that even is) will rise by a degree or two, against a setting where the planet ranges from -50 to +50 deg C, and even in temperate UK from -19 to +38 deg C is nonsense. I am also surprised that the scientists now seem confident to link extreme weather events to climate change. One of the issues is we now have world wide reporting, so any extreme event gets reported, whereas even 20 years ago that was not the case. This adds to the feeling of doom everywhere, when in reality, for much of the world, extremes have always happened.
    Homes being flooded is far more because of where they have built their houses, not necessarily due to more rain.
    I dont agree on the point about global temperature, but it is the case that as bad as things may be previous estimates feel like they were that things would be even worse.

    Based on predictions of 80s videos we had to watch at school in the 90s I'm surprised theres any amazon rainforest left.

    I'm not sure how one appropriately lists concern. If you don't set a date theres no urgency but if you then reach that date without widespread catastrophe it undermines future warnings, yet its also probably the case that by the time its obvious it's too late.

    It does seem true that more people are more passionately concerned about these issues than just 5 years ago, but given its certain that lots things in any report stated as needing to happen will not happen, by that logic we're already doomed.
    I'm happy to disagree - but what do you understand the global temperature to be? I think it is a stupid concept, but that might just be me.
    I'm not a scientist and have not explored the issue so couldn't answer with any authority, I just don't see the idea of average global temperatures as inherently nonsense. If there are criticisms of such a thing I'd listen.
    My criticism is what is the average temperature of the the earth today? And where? There is a huge spread across the globe. If you take 100 people and measured the average height to be say 5 foot 10, no-one would be that far from that average. Instead if you took insects and elephants and averaged the height it would be meaningless for all of them.

    I believe the temp change given is actually the average rise of all the observations around the world. I have issues with that too - most observation sites have changed markedly over the last 150 years, and are subject to urban heat island effects. Climate scientist try to mitigate this (I have seen some talk about this) but I remain unconvinced.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 18,284
    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Cynical hat says it will say - "Its even worse than before, we really mean it now, we are all doomed!".

    I am fully signed up to net zero, protecting the environment, properly using resources - the whole green thing. But I find the increasingly shrill desperation and scare tactics from the climate scientist lobby, without a balance of proper skeptical science at times counter productive. The recent pandemic has revealed the limits of modelling in complex scenarios.

    We need to reach a point where we no longer use fossil fuels and have a fully sustainable existence. We need to stop destroying habitats and making species go extinct. But to say we have to do this because the global temperature (whatever that even is) will rise by a degree or two, against a setting where the planet ranges from -50 to +50 deg C, and even in temperate UK from -19 to +38 deg C is nonsense. I am also surprised that the scientists now seem confident to link extreme weather events to climate change. One of the issues is we now have world wide reporting, so any extreme event gets reported, whereas even 20 years ago that was not the case. This adds to the feeling of doom everywhere, when in reality, for much of the world, extremes have always happened.
    Homes being flooded is far more because of where they have built their houses, not necessarily due to more rain.
    I dont agree on the point about global temperature, but it is the case that as bad as things may be previous estimates feel like they were that things would be even worse.

    Based on predictions of 80s videos we had to watch at school in the 90s I'm surprised theres any amazon rainforest left.

    I'm not sure how one appropriately lists concern. If you don't set a date theres no urgency but if you then reach that date without widespread catastrophe it undermines future warnings, yet its also probably the case that by the time its obvious it's too late.

    It does seem true that more people are more passionately concerned about these issues than just 5 years ago, but given its certain that lots things in any report stated as needing to happen will not happen, by that logic we're already doomed.
    I'm happy to disagree - but what do you understand the global temperature to be? I think it is a stupid concept, but that might just be me.
    I'm not a scientist and have not explored the issue so couldn't answer with any authority, I just don't see the idea of average global temperatures as inherently nonsense. If there are criticisms of such a thing I'd listen.
    From a scientific point of view it would be better to use observations of ocean heat content - that would give you a very accurate measurement of the radiation imbalance.

    Unfortunately, we don't have these accurate observations back all that far. Using surface temperature is not as good (because random changes in the distribution of ocean heat can produce large random changes in year-to-year surface temperature), but it's not completely useless, and it's as good as we've got for the 19th and early 20th century.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 23,064

    So the 'food shortages' turn out to be Waitrose not paying its drivers enough.

    Not really Leningrad during the siege is it.

    Still good for a bit of schadenfreude among those whose custom Waitrose doesn't want.

    Now if you want a story which might damage Boris then try the new baby - he looks like one of those feckless fathers on poverty porn programs.

    Not a good look when you're going to preach about environmental sustainability.

    Last night I was in my local mini-coop-shop, and the spirit/liqueuer shelves were quite empty.

    "Are you having trouble getting deliveries?"
    "No, we have a lot of shoplifting at the moment."

    The alcohol shelves are sited right by the exit door...
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 35,959
    8 months on from Brexit, there is only one country in Europe grappling with these kinds of shortages. A sad but inevitable consequence of putting ideology over pragmatism. https://twitter.com/JohnOBrennan2/status/1424586340331671554/photo/1
  • So the 'food shortages' turn out to be Waitrose not paying its drivers enough.

    Not really Leningrad during the siege is it.

    Still good for a bit of schadenfreude among those whose custom Waitrose doesn't want.

    Now if you want a story which might damage Boris then try the new baby - he looks like one of those feckless fathers on poverty porn programs.

    Not a good look when you're going to preach about environmental sustainability.

    How have you reached that conclusion? There are tens of thousands fewer drivers than are required, with more retiring every month than are being replaced. So we now have some desperate companies like Tesco offering big dollah to entice drivers to defect, but that doesn't fix the problem either - the industry would be better served by Tesco spending the money on driver training.
    What's wrong with pay rates rising for skilled workers ?
    Nothing at all - there has been a race to the bottom over the last decade and more for truck drivers and a whole load of other industries.

    My points are simple: they will drive costs and thus inflation, and it does not solve the driver crisis in the short to medium term. "Pay the drivers more" is not a solution for tens of thousands of vacancies you cannot fill. It is a strategy for 3 years hence which is fine, but needs to go hand in hand with a solution to the crisis - which has to be imported drivers.

    As consumers we also need to accept that it will lead to higher prices. This will make the triple lock even more difficult to sustain.

    There is (as Ed Milliband identified) a cost of living crisis. Everything costs lots but wages don't keep up. So higher prices for all due to cost inflation to the pay the wages of a few only makes the crisis worse.

    An example of the problem. My client's company has a contract with DHL to deliver parcels. They offered the most competitive package of all the big companies. Like all of them they charge a premium for "Highlands and Islands" because costs, which in DHL's case starts in the western suburbs of Aberdeen just 10 miles from the depot.

    What does this matter? Well DHL charge 2.5x the rate to deliver 10 miles from the depot in "Highlands and Islands" vs delivering 40 miles from the depot not in that zone. The driver is a contractor and gets a flat rate for delivery. DHL incur no additional cost but charge 2.5x more. And they aren't alone - all the parcel companies run the same scam.

    Perhaps part of the cost of living crisis is profiteering by companies like DHL? If they passed on the premium charged to their sub-contractor then the money would circulate. Instead it stays in their pockets.
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 8,684
    edited August 2021
    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Cynical hat says it will say - "Its even worse than before, we really mean it now, we are all doomed!".

    I am fully signed up to net zero, protecting the environment, properly using resources - the whole green thing. But I find the increasingly shrill desperation and scare tactics from the climate scientist lobby, without a balance of proper skeptical science at times counter productive. The recent pandemic has revealed the limits of modelling in complex scenarios.

    We need to reach a point where we no longer use fossil fuels and have a fully sustainable existence. We need to stop destroying habitats and making species go extinct. But to say we have to do this because the global temperature (whatever that even is) will rise by a degree or two, against a setting where the planet ranges from -50 to +50 deg C, and even in temperate UK from -19 to +38 deg C is nonsense. I am also surprised that the scientists now seem confident to link extreme weather events to climate change. One of the issues is we now have world wide reporting, so any extreme event gets reported, whereas even 20 years ago that was not the case. This adds to the feeling of doom everywhere, when in reality, for much of the world, extremes have always happened.
    Homes being flooded is far more because of where they have built their houses, not necessarily due to more rain.
    I dont agree on the point about global temperature, but it is the case that as bad as things may be previous estimates feel like they were that things would be even worse.

    Based on predictions of 80s videos we had to watch at school in the 90s I'm surprised theres any amazon rainforest left.

    I'm not sure how one appropriately lists concern. If you don't set a date theres no urgency but if you then reach that date without widespread catastrophe it undermines future warnings, yet its also probably the case that by the time its obvious it's too late.

    It does seem true that more people are more passionately concerned about these issues than just 5 years ago, but given its certain that lots things in any report stated as needing to happen will not happen, by that logic we're already doomed.
    I'm happy to disagree - but what do you understand the global temperature to be? I think it is a stupid concept, but that might just be me.
    I'm not a scientist and have not explored the issue so couldn't answer with any authority, I just don't see the idea of average global temperatures as inherently nonsense. If there are criticisms of such a thing I'd listen.
    I used to work on the edge of this field (in some of the tech used, as a scientist, but not as a climate scientist per se - nonetheless I was surrounded by climate scientist, went to the seminars).

    The global temperature is used because it's both easy as a concept and relatively easy to model (increased CO2 etc, plus/minus some albedo changes gives you an overall figure). It is limited because temperature is lumpy and effects are lumpy. Sea level change for example depends on temperature near the poles, which depends also on changing ocean currents etc. So if the heating was mostly near the equator you'd have crises there but not parts of countries disappearing due to rising sea levels. Unfortunately, many models have more extreme heating at the poles.

    But if you want some overall target to explain it easily, you can see how keep it under 2 degrees is more public friendly than keep CO2 below 450ppm,* particularly when it's not just CO2 that is important.

    *this specific figure plucked from my behind, I don't know the appropriate number.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,487

    Scott_xP said:

    The joys of the cloud. Let the boffins at Google, Amazon and Microsoft sweat the small stuff.

    That in itself can be a problem.

    The folks who have spent their entire career on the small stuff now need to reskill to a level of abstraction that obscures some things completely.
    Indeed. Even Mrs @JosiasJessop's chips are pretty much a fiction, with many cores and several caches, but presenting an api that pretends to be 1980s-era hardware being programmed in C.
    ???
    Ask the missus. Hardware has moved beyond the software model of it.
    And your knowledge of what Mrs J does is ... ?
    Based entirely on your account on this very thread.
    Well, insinuating her work a 'fiction' shows you have very little knowledge about it!
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 78,098
    edited August 2021

    kle4 said:

    Cynical hat says it will say - "Its even worse than before, we really mean it now, we are all doomed!".

    I am fully signed up to net zero, protecting the environment, properly using resources - the whole green thing. But I find the increasingly shrill desperation and scare tactics from the climate scientist lobby, without a balance of proper skeptical science at times counter productive. The recent pandemic has revealed the limits of modelling in complex scenarios.

    We need to reach a point where we no longer use fossil fuels and have a fully sustainable existence. We need to stop destroying habitats and making species go extinct. But to say we have to do this because the global temperature (whatever that even is) will rise by a degree or two, against a setting where the planet ranges from -50 to +50 deg C, and even in temperate UK from -19 to +38 deg C is nonsense. I am also surprised that the scientists now seem confident to link extreme weather events to climate change. One of the issues is we now have world wide reporting, so any extreme event gets reported, whereas even 20 years ago that was not the case. This adds to the feeling of doom everywhere, when in reality, for much of the world, extremes have always happened.
    Homes being flooded is far more because of where they have built their houses, not necessarily due to more rain.
    I dont agree on the point about global temperature, but it is the case that as bad as things may be previous estimates feel like they were that things would be even worse.

    Based on predictions of 80s videos we had to watch at school in the 90s I'm surprised theres any amazon rainforest left.

    I'm not sure how one appropriately lists concern. If you don't set a date theres no urgency but if you then reach that date without widespread catastrophe it undermines future warnings, yet its also probably the case that by the time its obvious it's too late.

    It does seem true that more people are more passionately concerned about these issues than just 5 years ago, but given its certain that lots things in any report stated as needing to happen will not happen, by that logic we're already doomed.
    I'm happy to disagree - but what do you understand the global temperature to be? I think it is a stupid concept, but that might just be me.
    It's been around 14 C +/- 0.5C for the previous 12000 years or so. Now it's 15 C with additional carbon dioxide released. Nowhere near as warm as when the dinosaurs were around with their ~ 2000 ppm CO2
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 17,351
    Scott_xP said:

    8 months on from Brexit, there is only one country in Europe grappling with these kinds of shortages. A sad but inevitable consequence of putting ideology over pragmatism. https://twitter.com/JohnOBrennan2/status/1424586340331671554/photo/1

    I must have missed the queues for the ration books this morning. There is a vast amount of hyperbole here. I am sure there are problems, but its not the end of civilization is it? It will also correct eventually. No one thought that there would be no issues at all did they? Surely? If you believe in the market, the market will correct this. In the mean time there might be the odd bit of minor annoyance (e,g, going over to a different supermarket to get the flaked parmesan...)
  • eekeek Posts: 28,319
    edited August 2021

    So the 'food shortages' turn out to be Waitrose not paying its drivers enough.

    Not really Leningrad during the siege is it.

    Still good for a bit of schadenfreude among those whose custom Waitrose doesn't want.

    Now if you want a story which might damage Boris then try the new baby - he looks like one of those feckless fathers on poverty porn programs.

    Not a good look when you're going to preach about environmental sustainability.

    How have you reached that conclusion? There are tens of thousands fewer drivers than are required, with more retiring every month than are being replaced. So we now have some desperate companies like Tesco offering big dollah to entice drivers to defect, but that doesn't fix the problem either - the industry would be better served by Tesco spending the money on driver training.
    What's wrong with pay rates rising for skilled workers ?
    Nothing at all - there has been a race to the bottom over the last decade and more for truck drivers and a whole load of other industries.

    My points are simple: they will drive costs and thus inflation, and it does not solve the driver crisis in the short to medium term. "Pay the drivers more" is not a solution for tens of thousands of vacancies you cannot fill. It is a strategy for 3 years hence which is fine, but needs to go hand in hand with a solution to the crisis - which has to be imported drivers.

    As consumers we also need to accept that it will lead to higher prices. This will make the triple lock even more difficult to sustain.

    There is (as Ed Milliband identified) a cost of living crisis. Everything costs lots but wages don't keep up. So higher prices for all due to cost inflation to the pay the wages of a few only makes the crisis worse.

    An example of the problem. My client's company has a contract with DHL to deliver parcels. They offered the most competitive package of all the big companies. Like all of them they charge a premium for "Highlands and Islands" because costs, which in DHL's case starts in the western suburbs of Aberdeen just 10 miles from the depot.

    What does this matter? Well DHL charge 2.5x the rate to deliver 10 miles from the depot in "Highlands and Islands" vs delivering 40 miles from the depot not in that zone. The driver is a contractor and gets a flat rate for delivery. DHL incur no additional cost but charge 2.5x more. And they aren't alone - all the parcel companies run the same scam.

    Perhaps part of the cost of living crisis is profiteering by companies like DHL? If they passed on the premium charged to their sub-contractor then the money would circulate. Instead it stays in their pockets.
    Are the delivery's the same flat rate though - I can't see many people willingly delivering parcels if they have to drive 20+ miles between each delivery for a fixed fee. So I do wonder if the per fee rate in the highlands may be higher than say central Newcastle.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 17,351
    Selebian said:

    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Cynical hat says it will say - "Its even worse than before, we really mean it now, we are all doomed!".

    I am fully signed up to net zero, protecting the environment, properly using resources - the whole green thing. But I find the increasingly shrill desperation and scare tactics from the climate scientist lobby, without a balance of proper skeptical science at times counter productive. The recent pandemic has revealed the limits of modelling in complex scenarios.

    We need to reach a point where we no longer use fossil fuels and have a fully sustainable existence. We need to stop destroying habitats and making species go extinct. But to say we have to do this because the global temperature (whatever that even is) will rise by a degree or two, against a setting where the planet ranges from -50 to +50 deg C, and even in temperate UK from -19 to +38 deg C is nonsense. I am also surprised that the scientists now seem confident to link extreme weather events to climate change. One of the issues is we now have world wide reporting, so any extreme event gets reported, whereas even 20 years ago that was not the case. This adds to the feeling of doom everywhere, when in reality, for much of the world, extremes have always happened.
    Homes being flooded is far more because of where they have built their houses, not necessarily due to more rain.
    I dont agree on the point about global temperature, but it is the case that as bad as things may be previous estimates feel like they were that things would be even worse.

    Based on predictions of 80s videos we had to watch at school in the 90s I'm surprised theres any amazon rainforest left.

    I'm not sure how one appropriately lists concern. If you don't set a date theres no urgency but if you then reach that date without widespread catastrophe it undermines future warnings, yet its also probably the case that by the time its obvious it's too late.

    It does seem true that more people are more passionately concerned about these issues than just 5 years ago, but given its certain that lots things in any report stated as needing to happen will not happen, by that logic we're already doomed.
    I'm happy to disagree - but what do you understand the global temperature to be? I think it is a stupid concept, but that might just be me.
    I'm not a scientist and have not explored the issue so couldn't answer with any authority, I just don't see the idea of average global temperatures as inherently nonsense. If there are criticisms of such a thing I'd listen.
    I used to work on the edge of this field (in some of the tech used, as a scientist, but not as a climate scientist per se - nonetheless I was surrounded by climate scientist, went to the seminars).

    The global temperature is used because it's both easy as a concept and relatively easy to model (increased CO2 etc, plus/minus some albedo changes gives you an overall figure). It is limited becauce temperature is lumpy and effects are lumpy. Sea level change for example depends on temperature near the poles, which depends also on changing ocean currents etc. So if the heating was mostly near hte equator you'd have crises there but not countries disappearing due to rising sea levels. Unfortunately, many models have more extreme heating at the poles.

    But if you want some overall target to explain it easily, you can see how keep it under 2 degrees is more public friendly than keep CO2 below 450ppm*.

    *this specific figure plucked from my behind, I don't know the appropriate number.
    I also have HUGE issues with the false precision that is implied by this. The climate system is far too complex to say this with any certainty.
  • StockyStocky Posts: 10,193

    Cynical hat says it will say - "Its even worse than before, we really mean it now, we are all doomed!".

    I am fully signed up to net zero, protecting the environment, properly using resources - the whole green thing. But I find the increasingly shrill desperation and scare tactics from the climate scientist lobby, without a balance of proper skeptical science at times counter productive. The recent pandemic has revealed the limits of modelling in complex scenarios.

    We need to reach a point where we no longer use fossil fuels and have a fully sustainable existence. We need to stop destroying habitats and making species go extinct. But to say we have to do this because the global temperature (whatever that even is) will rise by a degree or two, against a setting where the planet ranges from -50 to +50 deg C, and even in temperate UK from -19 to +38 deg C is nonsense. I am also surprised that the scientists now seem confident to link extreme weather events to climate change. One of the issues is we now have world wide reporting, so any extreme event gets reported, whereas even 20 years ago that was not the case. This adds to the feeling of doom everywhere, when in reality, for much of the world, extremes have always happened.
    Homes being flooded is far more because of where they have built their houses, not necessarily due to more rain.
    Agreed and well said.
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 61,758
    How many decades have we been 10 years from disaster?

    :p
  • Scott_xP said:

    The joys of the cloud. Let the boffins at Google, Amazon and Microsoft sweat the small stuff.

    That in itself can be a problem.

    The folks who have spent their entire career on the small stuff now need to reskill to a level of abstraction that obscures some things completely.
    Indeed. Even Mrs @JosiasJessop's chips are pretty much a fiction, with many cores and several caches, but presenting an api that pretends to be 1980s-era hardware being programmed in C.
    ???
    Ask the missus. Hardware has moved beyond the software model of it.
    And your knowledge of what Mrs J does is ... ?
    Based entirely on your account on this very thread.
    Well, insinuating her work a 'fiction' shows you have very little knowledge about it!
    Who said that? I'm talking about CPUs and do not think what I am saying is controversial. Processors are no longer single-core with flat address spaces. Hardware has moved on but they still present the earlier programming interface.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 26,157

    tlg86 said:

    Very likely to be nominated:

    Jason Kenny
    Laura Kenny
    Adam Peaty
    Max Whitlock

    It would be a shock if Tom Daley wasn’t nominated, but if he is, the BBC might feel the need to also add Tom Dean, James Guy and possibly Duncan Scott. So if the BBC were being tight on nominations and doing it on merit, Daley might miss out. But his sexuality probably gets him in.

    I’d be surprised if any other Olympians get a look-in.

    @DecrepiterJohnL - don’t rule out any cricketers or footballers just yet. James Anderson is a short price (though probably not much liquidity), but I think the one to watch is Joe Root. And given how hideously white the shortlist is looking, I can see Raheem Sterling getting nominated. Of course, Lewis Hamilton helps in that regard, and I think he could win the whole thing if he clinched the title again.

    England (football) for Team of the Year perhaps?

    Re Hideous Whiteness – yes, which is why I'd be surprised if the shortlist is not a good deal longer than most are suggesting. I'd expect a more diverse shortlist than five White blokes and Laura Kenny, all from England.

    Can Lewis Hamilton win another title in time, though, or does SPotY fall before the end of the Formula One season?

    Anthony Joshua is fighting no-one in particular (sorry, Oleksandr Usyk fans) in September but he probably needs to face (and beat) Tyson Fury to win SPotY. The AJ/Fury bout was planned but kyboshed by mandatory defences against other fighters.
    That's a good point about the F1 season. I didn't realise that the final race isn't until the 12 December - the day of the vote. There's a race the previous Sunday, too. Normally the nominees are announced 10-14 days before the vote, though I see in 2018 the nominees were announced on the night of the vote. There has to be a good chance that Hamilton at least has a chance of the title with two rounds to go, so I think the BBC will nominate him.

    I don't know much about boxing, but I see this guy is listed on Betfair for SPoTY @ 85-1:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Taylor_(boxer)

    He might make the list.
  • eekeek Posts: 28,319

    So the 'food shortages' turn out to be Waitrose not paying its drivers enough.

    Not really Leningrad during the siege is it.

    Still good for a bit of schadenfreude among those whose custom Waitrose doesn't want.

    Now if you want a story which might damage Boris then try the new baby - he looks like one of those feckless fathers on poverty porn programs.

    Not a good look when you're going to preach about environmental sustainability.

    How have you reached that conclusion? There are tens of thousands fewer drivers than are required, with more retiring every month than are being replaced. So we now have some desperate companies like Tesco offering big dollah to entice drivers to defect, but that doesn't fix the problem either - the industry would be better served by Tesco spending the money on driver training.
    What's wrong with pay rates rising for skilled workers ?
    It's only half the issue - pay rises and poaching drivers doesn't solve the need to replacing retiring drivers, it just shunts the problem to another company.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 26,157

    Laura Kenny drifting. Now out to 15/1

    The diver still FAV: 11/4

    Hamilton 16/1
    Cavendish 19/1
    Froome 50/1 (!!!! what? he’s had a nightmare season, should be 500/1)

    Shortest footballer seems to be Sterling, at 59/1. Kane is at 100/1. One almost feels sorry for them. So near, and yet so far.

    Almost.

    Of the footballers, the most deserving of a nomination is Mason Mount. But I suspect if any get nominated it will be Sterling.
  • contrariancontrarian Posts: 5,818

    How many decades have we been 10 years from disaster?

    :p

    Certainly since the 1970s.

    Why are the people who were so wrong then, so right now?
  • How many decades have we been 10 years from disaster?

    :p

    Maybe Guido has the answer to the question

    https://twitter.com/GaiaFawkes/status/1424632390887092231?s=19
This discussion has been closed.