I hate to break it to you but we've got much worse powers on the books.
The UK is about to become one of the world’s foremost surveillance states, allowing its police and intelligence agencies to spy on its own people to a degree that is unprecedented for a democracy. The UN’s privacy chief has called the situation "worse than scary." Edward Snowden says it’s simply "the most extreme surveillance in the history of western democracy."
The legislation in question is called the Investigatory Powers Bill. It’s been cleared by politicians and granted royal assent on November 29th — officially becoming law. The bill will legalize the UK’s global surveillance program, which scoops up communications data from around the world, but it will also introduce new domestic powers, including a government database that stores the web history of every citizen in the country. UK spies will be empowered to hack individuals, internet infrastructure, and even whole towns — if the government deems it necessary.
I hate to break it to you but we've got much worse powers on the books.
The UK is about to become one of the world’s foremost surveillance states, allowing its police and intelligence agencies to spy on its own people to a degree that is unprecedented for a democracy. The UN’s privacy chief has called the situation "worse than scary." Edward Snowden says it’s simply "the most extreme surveillance in the history of western democracy."
The legislation in question is called the Investigatory Powers Bill. It’s been cleared by politicians and granted royal assent on November 29th — officially becoming law. The bill will legalize the UK’s global surveillance program, which scoops up communications data from around the world, but it will also introduce new domestic powers, including a government database that stores the web history of every citizen in the country. UK spies will be empowered to hack individuals, internet infrastructure, and even whole towns — if the government deems it necessary.
280k for a weekend figure is great, and we know that reported figures on Monday represent the weekly trough. Looks and feels like a proper surge to me if we get +50% WoW for the whole reporting week. That would be 3m first doses and ~0.8m second, easily surpassing the previous record for a single week.
I deleted Twitter off my iPhone this weekend, prompted by my family asking why I allowed myself to get so worked up by it. I'm going cold turkey now, but I think it's working. 10 minutes on that app is a fast track to exasperation and depression. It's also made me realise a lot of my apparent political fellow travellers are as prone to anti-science and conspiracy theorising as the rest of them.
It's just a shame I'm now missing what it's really good at: rapid dissemination of news and data, particularly on the science of Covid, before the rest of the media has caught up.
That's exactly my experience. I delayed a family trip (angering my wife) for 15 minutes because I got caught up in a pointless argument which then angered me all day.
The people I miss most are those that used to be of this parish, but are now only on there (David Herdson, Quincel, Matt Singh, and others like Hurst Llama, Geoff and even Alastair Meeks) so they should all get back on here.
I have found a reasonable solution to Twitter addiction/cold turkey.
Deactivate your present account. Create a new one and follow exactly the same people, so you get the same flow of news, jokes, arguments, data, cat gifs, nudes, scandals, rumours, amazing videos of tornados.
However DO NOT TWEET YOURSELF. That means you don't get into arguments, and end up wasting days. It's easy to follow this rule with a new account because you will have so few followers almost no one will notice or respond if you do tweet, anyway. So you might send out a few stray ones, but then the lack of reaction renders the act pointless.
It's not perfect, you will miss the debate, sometimes, but you can come here for that. You won't miss the venomous anger and vituperation. And you keep the flow of entertainment and enlightenment.
I mentioned on here last week that we've reactivated our No Deal plans.
If you were being cynical, you could observe that the deal we have is only marginally different to no deal, and the differences (from the U.K. perspective) now so minor that it retrospect it looks like a “bridge to no deal” that was planned all along.
I hate to break it to you but we've got much worse powers on the books.
The UK is about to become one of the world’s foremost surveillance states, allowing its police and intelligence agencies to spy on its own people to a degree that is unprecedented for a democracy. The UN’s privacy chief has called the situation "worse than scary." Edward Snowden says it’s simply "the most extreme surveillance in the history of western democracy."
The legislation in question is called the Investigatory Powers Bill. It’s been cleared by politicians and granted royal assent on November 29th — officially becoming law. The bill will legalize the UK’s global surveillance program, which scoops up communications data from around the world, but it will also introduce new domestic powers, including a government database that stores the web history of every citizen in the country. UK spies will be empowered to hack individuals, internet infrastructure, and even whole towns — if the government deems it necessary.
Ah Jon Worth, usually found right at home in Comedy Dave's Twitter replies.
Do people genuinely think another boring ECJ case that will take years to resolve (long after a practical solution is found) is going to turn us into an international pariah? I don't think so. Half of the EU's member states just ignore most of the ECJ rulings against them already, we did when we were members.
Who else has a map of all the Eiffel Tower replicas in the world?
Vaccine anecdote, my wife mid 30s, SE England, just got the call for later in the week.
We’re pretty baffled what makes her “high risk”. Have heard the same from several people in their 30s in recent days. My suspicion is that the programme to do the over 50s ahead of schedule is such a slam dunk that they’re stuffing Cat 6 with any marginal past health event they can think of. That way they can make serious headway on Phase 2 without having to declare that Phase 1 is complete, which is no doubt a trigger point that the behavioural scientists are flagging.
I think so. My B-in-L, very mild asthma, had his first jab last week. he is I think early 40's
My GP is saying that everyone on their list who is over 50 should have had an vaccinations appointment setup by now & to phone them if you’ve been overlooked.
I've had a letter, and a text, AND an email, telling me to go and book my jab (tho I've already had it, thanks to NigelB's early flag operation).
It is impressively efficient. Indeed, the vaccination drive, in all aspects, is probably the single most effective thing a UK government has done in my adult lifetime. Bigger than the Falklands armada, and more important. Hence the polls.
Yep - its been very impressive so far. The only other thing I can think of that was as good, was the Olympics. Incredibly smoothly organised. We only attended a couple of things, but the ease of the park and ride to the rowing was amazing, and showed what can be done if you hose enough money at something...
The London Olympics were brilliant, especially the doping of the UK cyclists - superb - however even the Olympics are dwarfed by a terrifying pandemic.
We only have to gaze at the chaos across the Channel, to see what a botched vaccination drive looks like. Shameful.
On the downside, we must not forget how Bojo and friends made a total horlicks of everything from early lockdown, to test and trace, to foreign quarantine. And yet they might get away with it, because people remember endings, and they forget beginnings.
There's an Italian guy tweeting beneath that, pointing out the total madness of the situation, as the Veneto region is apparently sitting on half its OxonAX supply, because it is being refused, and going unused
What a disgraceful state of affairs. Italy is a rich country. There are poor countries suffering from Covid - look at Latin America - that would use every jab possible.
I hate to break it to you but we've got much worse powers on the books.
The UK is about to become one of the world’s foremost surveillance states, allowing its police and intelligence agencies to spy on its own people to a degree that is unprecedented for a democracy. The UN’s privacy chief has called the situation "worse than scary." Edward Snowden says it’s simply "the most extreme surveillance in the history of western democracy."
The legislation in question is called the Investigatory Powers Bill. It’s been cleared by politicians and granted royal assent on November 29th — officially becoming law. The bill will legalize the UK’s global surveillance program, which scoops up communications data from around the world, but it will also introduce new domestic powers, including a government database that stores the web history of every citizen in the country. UK spies will be empowered to hack individuals, internet infrastructure, and even whole towns — if the government deems it necessary.
Of course. The ongoing growth of the surveillance state is a worldwide phenomenon. I dislike most of it.
But the difference is I know how to get a horrible UK law repealed. I vote for a party that promises to repeal it, they get into power, it is repealed. Or I make my voice heard on UK media, and the present govt responds, if the clamour is loud enough.
See the pressure on the cops and politicians over the Everard vigil. The levers of British democracy are working fine.
But if this was an EU law, how does a voter get it repealed? Which commissioner can he throw out of office? Ah, he can't. What EU-wide media can bring pressure on the MEPs and commissioners? Ah, there isn't one.
Hence Brexit. Democracy and sovereignty.
EU Member State democratically-elected sovereign governments decided it was something they wanted. Perfectly democratic. If they didn't like it they could leave, now, couldn't they?
There's an Italian guy tweeting beneath that, pointing out the total madness of the situation, as the Veneto region is apparently sitting on half its OxonAX supply, because it is being refused, and going unused
What a disgraceful state of affairs. Italy is a rich country. There are poor countries suffering from Covid - look at Latin America - that would use every jab possible.
The Thai reaction was instructive.
“Blimey these Europeans are suspending the use of AZ, we’d better have a look at it”.
Five minutes later:
“There’s nothing in this at all - are they on drugs?”
I mentioned on here last week that we've reactivated our No Deal plans.
If you were being cynical, you could observe that the deal we have is only marginally different to no deal, and the differences (from the U.K. perspective) now so minor that it retrospect it looks like a “bridge to no deal” that was planned all along.
I did say in the run-up to Christmas that the logistics industry had assumed no-deal and acted accordingly. The deal we signed doesn't functionally work very well, so its that dissimilar to not having a deal. Our problems - a complete lack of action in hiring customs agents or construction of customs infrastructure and a lack of vets to certify animal products like Chocolate Digestives - are entirely of our own making.
So why not have the perfidious Europeans sink our glorious deal? We know its a disaster but its Their fault. Blame them.
Vaccine anecdote. After I walked one of my kids to school this morning I went home a slightly different way as I had to go to the post office. The route went past a new vaccination centre in our local village pharmacy. On the 400m stretch of road I was stopped 3 times by cars asking for where it was. I know it is just a small incident but I have a feeling that the numbers that come out tomorrow will be big.
Awful polling for Starmer, and it will only embolden his hard left critics. As I wrote in my header last week, there is a rather basic problem with Labour activists no longer being like Labour voters. If they keep pushing for their version of the party they will keep losing.
Vaccine anecdote, my wife mid 30s, SE England, just got the call for later in the week.
We’re pretty baffled what makes her “high risk”. Have heard the same from several people in their 30s in recent days. My suspicion is that the programme to do the over 50s ahead of schedule is such a slam dunk that they’re stuffing Cat 6 with any marginal past health event they can think of. That way they can make serious headway on Phase 2 without having to declare that Phase 1 is complete, which is no doubt a trigger point that the behavioural scientists are flagging.
I think so. My B-in-L, very mild asthma, had his first jab last week. he is I think early 40's
My GP is saying that everyone on their list who is over 50 should have had an vaccinations appointment setup by now & to phone them if you’ve been overlooked.
I've had a letter, and a text, AND an email, telling me to go and book my jab (tho I've already had it, thanks to NigelB's early flag operation).
It is impressively efficient. Indeed, the vaccination drive, in all aspects, is probably the single most effective thing a UK government has done in my adult lifetime. Bigger than the Falklands armada, and more important. Hence the polls.
Yep - its been very impressive so far. The only other thing I can think of that was as good, was the Olympics. Incredibly smoothly organised. We only attended a couple of things, but the ease of the park and ride to the rowing was amazing, and showed what can be done if you hose enough money at something...
The London Olympics were brilliant, especially the doping of the UK cyclists - superb - however even the Olympics are dwarfed by a terrifying pandemic.
We only have to gaze at the chaos across the Channel, to see what a botched vaccination drive looks like. Shameful.
On the downside, we must not forget how Bojo and friends made a total horlicks of everything from early lockdown, to test and trace, to foreign quarantine. And yet they might get away with it, because people remember endings, and they forget beginnings.
Saving Private Ryan.
Did they get him in the end?
Indeed. A rare exception. A famously brilliant opening half hour, the rest is meh.
But my point is sound. Remember the old days when we used to actually go to cinemas, many years ago. A movie with a superb ending sends you out of the cinema on a high. Buzzing. Wanting to talk about it. But a good movie with a really poor ending sends you out subdued, disappointed, even if the film had merit.
Great endings generate word of mouth.
Boris may get a great ending to his pandemic, meaning we will forgive the shonky opening scenes
There's an Italian guy tweeting beneath that, pointing out the total madness of the situation, as the Veneto region is apparently sitting on half its OxonAX supply, because it is being refused, and going unused
What a disgraceful state of affairs. Italy is a rich country. There are poor countries suffering from Covid - look at Latin America - that would use every jab possible.
The Thai reaction was instructive.
“Blimey these Europeans are suspending the use of AZ, we’d better have a look at it”.
Five minutes later:
“There’s nothing in this at all - are they on drugs?”
Yes, the data on it is incontrovertible. There's simply no way that a problem like this would go undetected for as long as this after 10m people have received the vaccine in the UK. It would require a coverup of the scale we've never seen involving silencing grieving families, doctors and NHS management as well as the independent regulator.
That's what those European regulators are effectively alleging is happening in the UK right now. It's completely stupid.
Totally off-topic, but are there any broadband experts on here? My office (former bank) has a fibre cable. BT couldn't find it, Openreach confirmed it is there, BT local business have had a rummage around and believe its a disconnected leased line.
A quick Google suggests that instead of £normal costs for a fibre connection (say 100Mbps), a leased line can cost £lotsandlots with the cheapest I can spot offering s l o w (10Mbps) for multiple the cost for FTTP. Have I got this right?
Depends on whether your local exchange has the kit installed for ISPs to offer FTTP. Check with Zen - their online checker ought to be able to tell you whether they can offer it in your area. If so, they’ll give you a gigabit connection for ~£60 / month I believe (actual bitrate may vary - the checker claims I would get 270Mbps).
A one off hookup to a piece of dark fibre that happens to go to the exchange is going to cost a lot more, unless you can find someone who has kit in the exchange already.
NB if Zen say no then in your position, with a nice piece of fibre already in place, I would send a quiet email to Andrews & Arnold and ask them if they can do anything for you, or know anyone who can.
My understanding of a "leased line" is that it goes direct to the exchange as opposed to via the local cabinet with FTTP. The cable is already here, sat unconnected to anything in one of the rooms in this former bank. I don't need any physical installation, only a connection via the existing cable.
Its the leased line element I don't understand. In England I had 100Mbps fibre. Yes it would slow below that, but was regularly up at 100. Here, a leased line talks about 10Mb/s speeds - at that kind of speed stuff slows down! I don't get it, why is 10Mbps even a stable constant 10Mbps speed any good and why bother with a vastly expensive fibre just to be that slow?
The difference between a leased line and the consumer broadband offered by BT, Virgin etc, is that the bandwidth on the leased line is 'uncontended' - ie you're not sharing it with anyone else. I don't think anyone is leasing 10Mbps lines these days. 1Gb is about £300 pcm.
There's an Italian guy tweeting beneath that, pointing out the total madness of the situation, as the Veneto region is apparently sitting on half its OxonAX supply, because it is being refused, and going unused
What a disgraceful state of affairs. Italy is a rich country. There are poor countries suffering from Covid - look at Latin America - that would use every jab possible.
I deleted Twitter off my iPhone this weekend, prompted by my family asking why I allowed myself to get so worked up by it. I'm going cold turkey now, but I think it's working. 10 minutes on that app is a fast track to exasperation and depression. It's also made me realise a lot of my apparent political fellow travellers are as prone to anti-science and conspiracy theorising as the rest of them.
It's just a shame I'm now missing what it's really good at: rapid dissemination of news and data, particularly on the science of Covid, before the rest of the media has caught up.
That's exactly my experience. I delayed a family trip (angering my wife) for 15 minutes because I got caught up in a pointless argument which then angered me all day.
The people I miss most are those that used to be of this parish, but are now only on there (David Herdson, Quincel, Matt Singh, and others like Hurst Llama, Geoff and even Alastair Meeks) so they should all get back on here.
I have found a reasonable solution to Twitter addiction/cold turkey.
Deactivate your present account. Create a new one and follow exactly the same people, so you get the same flow of news, jokes, arguments, data, cat gifs, nudes, scandals, rumours, amazing videos of tornados.
However DO NOT TWEET YOURSELF. That means you don't get into arguments, and end up wasting days. It's easy to follow this rule with a new account because you will have so few followers almost no one will notice or respond if you do tweet, anyway. So you might send out a few stray ones, but then the lack of reaction renders the act pointless.
It's not perfect, you will miss the debate, sometimes, but you can come here for that. You won't miss the venomous anger and vituperation. And you keep the flow of entertainment and enlightenment.
Vaccine anecdote. After I walked one of my kids to school this morning I went home a slightly different way as I had to go to the post office. The route went past a new vaccination centre in our local village pharmacy. On the 400m stretch of road I was stopped 3 times by cars asking for where it was. I know it is just a small incident but I have a feeling that the numbers that come out tomorrow will be big.
Wednesday-Thursday numbers more like. See if we can bust through 750k this week....
Vaccine anecdote, my wife mid 30s, SE England, just got the call for later in the week.
We’re pretty baffled what makes her “high risk”. Have heard the same from several people in their 30s in recent days. My suspicion is that the programme to do the over 50s ahead of schedule is such a slam dunk that they’re stuffing Cat 6 with any marginal past health event they can think of. That way they can make serious headway on Phase 2 without having to declare that Phase 1 is complete, which is no doubt a trigger point that the behavioural scientists are flagging.
I think so. My B-in-L, very mild asthma, had his first jab last week. he is I think early 40's
My GP is saying that everyone on their list who is over 50 should have had an vaccinations appointment setup by now & to phone them if you’ve been overlooked.
I've had a letter, and a text, AND an email, telling me to go and book my jab (tho I've already had it, thanks to NigelB's early flag operation).
It is impressively efficient. Indeed, the vaccination drive, in all aspects, is probably the single most effective thing a UK government has done in my adult lifetime. Bigger than the Falklands armada, and more important. Hence the polls.
Yep - its been very impressive so far. The only other thing I can think of that was as good, was the Olympics. Incredibly smoothly organised. We only attended a couple of things, but the ease of the park and ride to the rowing was amazing, and showed what can be done if you hose enough money at something...
The London Olympics were brilliant, especially the doping of the UK cyclists - superb - however even the Olympics are dwarfed by a terrifying pandemic.
We only have to gaze at the chaos across the Channel, to see what a botched vaccination drive looks like. Shameful.
On the downside, we must not forget how Bojo and friends made a total horlicks of everything from early lockdown, to test and trace, to foreign quarantine. And yet they might get away with it, because people remember endings, and they forget beginnings.
Saving Private Ryan.
Did they get him in the end?
Indeed. A rare exception. A famously brilliant opening half hour, the rest is meh.
But my point is sound. Remember the old days when we used to actually go to cinemas, many years ago. A movie with a superb ending sends you out of the cinema on a high. Buzzing. Wanting to talk about it. But a good movie with a really poor ending sends you out subdued, disappointed, even if the film had merit.
Great endings generate word of mouth.
Boris may get a great ending to his pandemic, meaning we will forgive the shonky opening scenes
Awful polling for Starmer, and it will only embolden his hard left critics. As I wrote in my header last week, there is a rather basic problem with Labour activists no longer being like Labour voters. If they keep pushing for their version of the party they will keep losing.
From what I see Labour voters are rather more alike to Labour activists than I'd thought, it's just there's a cleave in the middle with the former.
What they're both definitely not like is the voters then need to win over to regain office.
Vaccine anecdote. After I walked one of my kids to school this morning I went home a slightly different way as I had to go to the post office. The route went past a new vaccination centre in our local village pharmacy. On the 400m stretch of road I was stopped 3 times by cars asking for where it was. I know it is just a small incident but I have a feeling that the numbers that come out tomorrow will be big.
Or wed. There is considerable debate about the reporting lag on vaccination.
280k for a weekend figure is great, and we know that reported figures on Monday represent the weekly trough. Looks and feels like a proper surge to me if we get +50% WoW for the whole reporting week. That would be 3m first doses and ~0.8m second, easily surpassing the previous record for a single week.
It's been a frustrating 3 or 4 weeks but hopefully its time to really move again.
Lord knows how the Europeans will feel when they see that. So far the impression I have got is that their governments are facing a lot less grief for this than they should, the expected results in Holland being an example, but when they see us over 50% and climbing with lockdown being wound down some serious questions are going to be asked.
I deleted Twitter off my iPhone this weekend, prompted by my family asking why I allowed myself to get so worked up by it. I'm going cold turkey now, but I think it's working. 10 minutes on that app is a fast track to exasperation and depression. It's also made me realise a lot of my apparent political fellow travellers are as prone to anti-science and conspiracy theorising as the rest of them.
It's just a shame I'm now missing what it's really good at: rapid dissemination of news and data, particularly on the science of Covid, before the rest of the media has caught up.
That's exactly my experience. I delayed a family trip (angering my wife) for 15 minutes because I got caught up in a pointless argument which then angered me all day.
The people I miss most are those that used to be of this parish, but are now only on there (David Herdson, Quincel, Matt Singh, and others like Hurst Llama, Geoff and even Alastair Meeks) so they should all get back on here.
I have found a reasonable solution to Twitter addiction/cold turkey.
Deactivate your present account. Create a new one and follow exactly the same people, so you get the same flow of news, jokes, arguments, data, cat gifs, nudes, scandals, rumours, amazing videos of tornados.
However DO NOT TWEET YOURSELF. That means you don't get into arguments, and end up wasting days. It's easy to follow this rule with a new account because you will have so few followers almost no one will notice or respond if you do tweet, anyway. So you might send out a few stray ones, but then the lack of reaction renders the act pointless.
It's not perfect, you will miss the debate, sometimes, but you can come here for that. You won't miss the venomous anger and vituperation. And you keep the flow of entertainment and enlightenment.
Good advice.
It's worked really well for me. When I am bored I can still go on Twitter for an amusing hour or two. But I can't remember the last time I had a long pointless argument, laced with nastiness. It was when I was still regularly Tweeting under my own name. A year ago?
There is, also, now, zero risk I will tweet something drunk and stupid and give myself grief. Win win.
There's an Italian guy tweeting beneath that, pointing out the total madness of the situation, as the Veneto region is apparently sitting on half its OxonAX supply, because it is being refused, and going unused
What a disgraceful state of affairs. Italy is a rich country. There are poor countries suffering from Covid - look at Latin America - that would use every jab possible.
The Thai reaction was instructive.
“Blimey these Europeans are suspending the use of AZ, we’d better have a look at it”.
Five minutes later:
“There’s nothing in this at all - are they on drugs?”
Yes, the data on it is incontrovertible. There's simply no way that a problem like this would go undetected for as long as this after 10m people have received the vaccine in the UK. It would require a coverup of the scale we've never seen involving silencing grieving families, doctors and NHS management as well as the independent regulator.
That's what those European regulators are effectively alleging is happening in the UK right now. It's completely stupid.
I posted at the weekend that someone who has been vaccinated must have died in a car accident by now (average is about 8-10 a day I think). Was that down to the vaccine? Or are my hayfever symptoms, which started about a week after my first jab, down to the vaccine. Of course not. I'm not suggesting that no-one has had or will have a bad reaction to the vaccine, but we have done a rather large population based study, with no obvious issues through the yellow card system.
280k for a weekend figure is great, and we know that reported figures on Monday represent the weekly trough. Looks and feels like a proper surge to me if we get +50% WoW for the whole reporting week. That would be 3m first doses and ~0.8m second, easily surpassing the previous record for a single week.
I’ll admit to being slightly underwhelmed. I’d hoped to be well north of 350k today, paving the way for a 650k later in the week. We’ve got a lot of catching up to do after a very slow early March.
Wow. This is getting close to Corbyn levels it seems.
It would be interesting to have a betting market on who would be first out: Starmer or Johnson (or Davey).
Im increasingly convinced he will face a leadership challenge after the May elections. It will be hard for him to gain any polling traction in the next few weeks with the vaccine rollout going well.
I also believe he would win said leadership challenge and it might actually do him some good to have the spotlight shone on him.
Wow. This is getting close to Corbyn levels it seems.
It would be interesting to have a betting market on who would be first out: Starmer or Johnson (or Davey).
Im increasingly convinced he will face a leadership challenge after the May elections. It will be hard for him to gain any polling traction in the next few weeks with the vaccine rollout going well.
I also believe he would win said leadership challenge and it might actually do him some good to have the spotlight shone on him.
On the other hand, 38% is not a bad vote share for Labour - particularly in the context of Scotland having knocked circa 2% of the party's GB vote share relative to pre-2015.This is a higher level than achieved at elections by Callaghan,Foot, Kinnock, Millband, and Brown. Moreover, Blair only managed 36% in 2005 whilst Wilson matched 38% in Feb 1974. 45% is good for the Tories - but likely to be flattered by the pandemic vaccination bounce.
Totally off-topic, but are there any broadband experts on here? My office (former bank) has a fibre cable. BT couldn't find it, Openreach confirmed it is there, BT local business have had a rummage around and believe its a disconnected leased line.
A quick Google suggests that instead of £normal costs for a fibre connection (say 100Mbps), a leased line can cost £lotsandlots with the cheapest I can spot offering s l o w (10Mbps) for multiple the cost for FTTP. Have I got this right?
Depends on whether your local exchange has the kit installed for ISPs to offer FTTP. Check with Zen - their online checker ought to be able to tell you whether they can offer it in your area. If so, they’ll give you a gigabit connection for ~£60 / month I believe (actual bitrate may vary - the checker claims I would get 270Mbps).
A one off hookup to a piece of dark fibre that happens to go to the exchange is going to cost a lot more, unless you can find someone who has kit in the exchange already.
NB if Zen say no then in your position, with a nice piece of fibre already in place, I would send a quiet email to Andrews & Arnold and ask them if they can do anything for you, or know anyone who can.
My understanding of a "leased line" is that it goes direct to the exchange as opposed to via the local cabinet with FTTP. The cable is already here, sat unconnected to anything in one of the rooms in this former bank. I don't need any physical installation, only a connection via the existing cable.
Its the leased line element I don't understand. In England I had 100Mbps fibre. Yes it would slow below that, but was regularly up at 100. Here, a leased line talks about 10Mb/s speeds - at that kind of speed stuff slows down! I don't get it, why is 10Mbps even a stable constant 10Mbps speed any good and why bother with a vastly expensive fibre just to be that slow?
They’re very different products. A leased line is designed for an ultra-stable and reliable business platform, will have enterprise-grade (expensive!) equipment at both ends, and more likely to used for moving small amounts of data in both directions.
The bank would use it for the connection between the branch and the head office mainframe transactional computer over a VPN connection, which has to stay up 99.99% of the time and not lose any data on the way.
A consumer fibre line, on the other hand, is designed for moving large amounts of data in one direction, using cheap equipment, and with no guarantee of either reliability or download speed.
The trick is to try and find out where the other end of the cable goes, probably from BT. Sadly, it probably ends up in a corporate data centre somewhere, from which there’s no chance of a regular home broadband connection without a massive installation charge (five figures).
Ask your neighbours what they use for internet and ask that provider for service, mentioning the old fibre you found. As others have said, also register an interest with Starlink for when their satellite service goes live.
Wow. This is getting close to Corbyn levels it seems.
It would be interesting to have a betting market on who would be first out: Starmer or Johnson (or Davey).
Im increasingly convinced he will face a leadership challenge after the May elections. It will be hard for him to gain any polling traction in the next few weeks with the vaccine rollout going well.
I also believe he would win said leadership challenge and it might actually do him some good to have the spotlight shone on him.
Wow. This is getting close to Corbyn levels it seems.
It would be interesting to have a betting market on who would be first out: Starmer or Johnson (or Davey).
Im increasingly convinced he will face a leadership challenge after the May elections. It will be hard for him to gain any polling traction in the next few weeks with the vaccine rollout going well.
I also believe he would win said leadership challenge and it might actually do him some good to have the spotlight shone on him.
On the other hand, 38% is not a bad vote share for Labour - particularly in the context of Scotland having knocked circa 2% of the party's GB vote share relative to pre-2015.This is a higher level than achieved at elections by Callaghan,Foot, Kinnock, Millband, and Brown. Moreover, Blair only managed 36% in 2005 whilst Wilson matched 38% in Feb 1974. 45% is good for the Tories - but likely to be flattered by the pandemic vaccination bounce.
I think 38% is at the higher end, the average of the past month is around 36% and the direction of travel is downwards at the moment. All up against a government that has served 11 years.
It's not terrible but probably not enough to stop a Tory majority let alone bring about a Labour government. But Starmer does probably deserve a shot at a general election given Corbyn faced two. As we know the problems with the Labour party run far deeper than the leadership.
Comments
Build a wall...
NI : 4,266 1st dose/ 2,229 235k equiv
Scotland: 20,294 / 1,907 Equivalent of ~260k UK wide.
The irony is that the coalition government asked for a review and this is what David Anderson proposed.
What are you ?
Deactivate your present account. Create a new one and follow exactly the same people, so you get the same flow of news, jokes, arguments, data, cat gifs, nudes, scandals, rumours, amazing videos of tornados.
However DO NOT TWEET YOURSELF. That means you don't get into arguments, and end up wasting days. It's easy to follow this rule with a new account because you will have so few followers almost no one will notice or respond if you do tweet, anyway. So you might send out a few stray ones, but then the lack of reaction renders the act pointless.
It's not perfect, you will miss the debate, sometimes, but you can come here for that. You won't miss the venomous anger and vituperation. And you keep the flow of entertainment and enlightenment.
I thought it only permitted checks by the spooks.
https://jonworth.eu/the-weird-and-wonderful-world-of-eiffel-tower-replicas-and-derivatives-geoguessr/
A proppa blogger.
Did they get him in the end?
What a disgraceful state of affairs. Italy is a rich country. There are poor countries suffering from Covid - look at Latin America - that would use every jab possible.
Are you really arguing that we should respect laws even before they have been enacted ?
I know there are a number of social authoritarians on here, but that is a novel position indeed.
“Blimey these Europeans are suspending the use of AZ, we’d better have a look at it”.
Five minutes later:
“There’s nothing in this at all - are they on drugs?”
So why not have the perfidious Europeans sink our glorious deal? We know its a disaster but its Their fault. Blame them.
Remember England is first in terms of first jabs.
But my point is sound. Remember the old days when we used to actually go to cinemas, many years ago. A movie with a superb ending sends you out of the cinema on a high. Buzzing. Wanting to talk about it. But a good movie with a really poor ending sends you out subdued, disappointed, even if the film had merit.
Great endings generate word of mouth.
Boris may get a great ending to his pandemic, meaning we will forgive the shonky opening scenes
That's what those European regulators are effectively alleging is happening in the UK right now. It's completely stupid.
I don't think anyone is leasing 10Mbps lines these days.
1Gb is about £300 pcm.
I'll get my coat.
remind me?
What they're both definitely not like is the voters then need to win over to regain office.
Lord knows how the Europeans will feel when they see that. So far the impression I have got is that their governments are facing a lot less grief for this than they should, the expected results in Holland being an example, but when they see us over 50% and climbing with lockdown being wound down some serious questions are going to be asked.
There is, also, now, zero risk I will tweet something drunk and stupid and give myself grief. Win win.
45% is good for the Tories - but likely to be flattered by the pandemic vaccination bounce.
The bank would use it for the connection between the branch and the head office mainframe transactional computer over a VPN connection, which has to stay up 99.99% of the time and not lose any data on the way.
A consumer fibre line, on the other hand, is designed for moving large amounts of data in one direction, using cheap equipment, and with no guarantee of either reliability or download speed.
The trick is to try and find out where the other end of the cable goes, probably from BT. Sadly, it probably ends up in a corporate data centre somewhere, from which there’s no chance of a regular home broadband connection without a massive installation charge (five figures).
Ask your neighbours what they use for internet and ask that provider for service, mentioning the old fibre you found. As others have said, also register an interest with Starlink for when their satellite service goes live.
It's not terrible but probably not enough to stop a Tory majority let alone bring about a Labour government. But Starmer does probably deserve a shot at a general election given Corbyn faced two. As we know the problems with the Labour party run far deeper than the leadership.