Excellent header, Cyclefree. I suspect you have this ready to go for some time ?
As far as external stakeholders who put and keep sustained pressure on it to make that change; and... goes, we've already had the Chair of the London Assembly Police and Crime Committee on R4 this morning criticising the decision to terminate Dick, and claiming that '99% of officers are brave and good'... Not a great start.
Part of the problem, of course. I have no doubt that many of the homophobic etc officers are physical;y brave and, where homophobia isn't an issue, competent.
I listened to the interview, and it was very much a 'just a few bad apples' argument. And on what basis can you claim that 99% of officers are brave, or good, or even competent ? It's just rhetorical bullshit.
How can you even begin to reform an organisation if you start out with those assumptions ?
How many bad apples does it take to keep a guy known as “The Rapist” in the force, in a specialist armed unit at that, until one day he uses his badge to abduct, rape and kill a random member of the public?
That’s not one bad apple, thats a rotten orchard.
Three more rapes have been in court in recent months too.
Wayne Couzens was nicknamed "the rapist" in his previous job, not in the Metropolitan Police. It may have been a failure of vetting on his recruitment but once he was in the Met, it is hard to see how they could have dismissed him for having a nickname they did not know about. Should using prostitutes be held against him?
Yes, the problem is not just the Met, it is pretty universal in UK forces, just gets more attention in London. Indeed, plenty of evidence of similar or worse in other countries Police forces too.
To an extent it is intrinsic to the nature of policing. The job is to control, and physically interdict those society considers deviants and is attractive to people who rather relish that power.
Which is why you need effective training, professionalism, a good culture and strong leadership to ensure that that power does not get abused.
Yes, in my business too. Otherwise you get the sort of abuse of power seen in "This is Going to Hurt" the other night. I thought it appalling and misogynistic, and am horrified by some of the applause on medical twitter.
If maternity units are really like that, then no wonder we have repeated scandals in Nottingham, Shropshire, Morecombe, Essex etc.
Any job where people have power over others has an attraction for those who enjoy that power, and for those weaker souls that enable or accept it. It needs to be actively called out, and those who do so to be supported.
Though that programme was absurd. Do Doctors really treat each other like that?
I quit a job because the culture was toxic, but it was nothing on that.
Boris Johnson returning to the kowtowing complacency of Cameron and May on China would be a serious and obviously stupid retrograde step.
Huawei Harri's appointment does nothing to suggest otherwise.
The schtick around Harri was all seasoned operator, knows his stuff, will steady the ship. Actually I'm getting a grandad doesn't know how to work the remote vibe.
A recording of the Hum - or the Hummadruz - in Taos, New Mexico
It starts off relatively inoffensive, but - as the FT writer notes - the longer it goes on the more it drills into your head, until it becomes seriously and eerily disquieting. If I heard this all the time I'd go nuts (OK, even more nuts)
Low level infrasonic sounds have been blamed for the fear induced by "ghosts" - because big cat predators supposedly emit an identical infrasonic growl just as they attack, and they do this so as to paralyse their pray with nameless dread. We have inherited the dread of this low edge-of-perception growling sound, so that is why similar sounds give us the creeps - or make us see ghosts.
I'm going to be smug now, because I predicted this defence a few weeks ago. Whilst lots of people were working from home, nearly all of them were doing so alone, or at most with a partner. Number Ten has to be pretty close to unique in the country in that it is simulatneously both the PM's home and a workplace that other people work in and it was able to function as a workplace throughout the period. With that combination it's not impossible that it has fallen into a gap in the regulations that could leave the PM's actions technically legal.
Not that "technically legal" would save him politically.
It might well save him politically (after all who else ties the factions that Bozo created within the Parliamentary Tory Party together as well as Bozo does) but it won't save him morally.
And it's the moral side of things that may have an impact in polling and the next General Election.
Though that puts the day of reckoning off until 2023/4.
And by Bozza's standards, that's quite a long-term win.
The next Commissioner of the Met will be recommended by the Home Secretary. Given Ms Patel's record in office is anyone seriously expecting the selection of a policing genius?
We need Sam Vimes. We are more likely to get the Keystone Cops.
In consultation with Khan, which will be an interesting process. Note this has apparently come as a complete surprise to Patel, so it's unlikely she has anyone pencilled in ? It's possible they might pick someone really good by accident, but I'm not holding my breath.
According someone on the World Service news earlier it was a bit of a surprise to Khan as well.
Serving officers seem overwhelmingly pro Dick and anti Khan, who is attracting accusations of opportunism from lots of quarters this morning
He is being utterly opportunistic. He should have acted much much earlier than now. Why did racism and homophobia at one police station cause him to act when the Met Commissioner's obstruction of justice in the Morgan case did not? The fact that he has finally done something shows that he too does not really get it it and will likely not apply the consistent pressure and oversight needed over the years it will take to effect real improvement.
I read it as indecision and/or weakness rather than opportunism, FWIW. That doesn't make the prospects for his applying consistent pressure and oversight all that much better, of course.
A really fascinating article about a mysterious phenomenon known as The Hum. A low, persistent throbbing or droning sound, in the background, heard in certain places, by certain people - and with no obvious origin. Sometimes it can be so bad it can send people half mad, or force them to move
Enjoyably, the writer approaches it as a skeptic, cannot hear the sound herself, but then DOES hear it, and finds it really quite unsettling
However as the commenters below have noted, she hasn't properly done her research. There is an associated (identical?) phenomenon known as The Hummadruz which has been recorded since at least Victorian times, if not before, and often in deep rural locations - thus ruling out the "engine or factory noise" explanation which is posited by many
So what is it? Auditory hallucination? Mere tinnitus? Infrasound? A mixture? A vile prank by Second Vote Remoaners?
A pleasant mystery
How much does a subscription to Conspiracy & Mysteries Monthly cost nowadays?
I have experience not of it but of people in a robustly rural, agricultural, no nonsense community saying exactly the same thing. They call it "The [Village] Hum". No one can place where it is. It is in all likelihood a power generator on a quiet, still night but no one quite knows.
Yet there are plenty of accounts of it dating back to Victorian times and in very rural locations. A power generator?!
It is peculiar, and intriguing. I suspect it is a mix of all these things, an infrasonic sound of *some* kind - could be organic OR mechanical, which then kicks off our evolved dread of these sounds, inducing feelings of unease, even panic
Incidentally, I know La Truss was trying to make herself look Thatcher-like with her fur hat etc.
But to me she looks like a jilted estate agent's wife investigating a murder on one of those ITV3 shows.
Oh dear - why so bitch? Does that pass for political comment these days? Can we all join in now? Any woman in any party?
The evidence would suggest that yes, we can all join in, any woman in any party.
Just a small point - because of UK weather, nearly no-one in the UK has a presentable hat for actually keeping your head warm in cold weather. Skiing stuff, yes sometimes, but nothing you'd want to wear casually.
So every member of my family I can think of who has gone to Moscow, or similar weather destinations, ended up buying a hat there.
A really fascinating article about a mysterious phenomenon known as The Hum. A low, persistent throbbing or droning sound, in the background, heard in certain places, by certain people - and with no obvious origin. Sometimes it can be so bad it can send people half mad, or force them to move
Enjoyably, the writer approaches it as a skeptic, cannot hear the sound herself, but then DOES hear it, and finds it really quite unsettling
However as the commenters below have noted, she hasn't properly done her research. There is an associated (identical?) phenomenon known as The Hummadruz which has been recorded since at least Victorian times, if not before, and often in deep rural locations - thus ruling out the "engine or factory noise" explanation which is posited by many
"Boris Johnson was today warned that his own MPs will try to force him from office if he is fined by police over Partygate and fails to resign.
A senior Tory MP told the FT 'a confidence vote would be on the cards straight away', adding: 'Johnson's position is not sustainable if he or his team are served with a fixed-penalty notice . . . it will be impossible to govern with any sort of credibility."
Hmm. Patel's pick for the next commissioner needs to be kept an *extremely* careful eye on, given this government's well-established record in these kinds of areas now.
Incidentally, I know La Truss was trying to make herself look Thatcher-like with her fur hat etc.
But to me she looks like a jilted estate agent's wife investigating a murder on one of those ITV3 shows.
Oh dear - why so bitch? Does that pass for political comment these days? Can we all join in now? Any woman in any party?
The more salient point is that she turned up severely underprepared.
When you're insisting on the importance of recognising and respecting international borders, it's pretty important to make it clear that you respect Russia's borders, too. These sorts of geographical blunders completely undermine the point - and send the message that you don't take your interlocutor seriously enough to care.
That is incredibly stupid.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/feb/10/russia-must-respect-ukraine-sovereignty-liz-truss-talks-open ...Away from the cameras, Truss allegedly confused the Russian regions of Voronezh and Rostov with Ukrainian territory when Lavrov asked her whether she recognised Russia’s sovereignty over them. She repeatedly told Lavrov that the UK would never recognise Moscow’s claim, until the British ambassador was forced to step in to correct her, the Russian business daily Kommersant reported.
Truss partly confirmed the account in an interview with Russian press: “It seemed to me that Minister Lavrov was talking about a part of Ukraine. I have clearly indicated that these regions [Rostov and Voronezh] are part of sovereign Russia,” she said, according to the British embassy in Moscow.
The episode follows a previous taunt by Russia last week when the foreign secretary was taken to task over her comment that “we are supplying and offering extra support to our Baltic allies across the Black Sea”. The Baltic Sea and the Black Sea – where Ukraine sits on the coast – are on opposite sides of Europe....
A recording of the Hum - or the Hummadruz - in Taos, New Mexico
It starts off relatively inoffensive, but - as the FT writer notes - the longer it goes on the more it drills into your head, until it becomes seriously and eerily disquieting. If I heard this all the time I'd go nuts (OK, even more nuts)
Low level infrasonic sounds have been blamed for the fear induced by "ghosts" - because big cat predators supposedly emit an identical infrasonic growl just as they attack, and they do this so as to paralyse their pray with nameless dread. We have inherited the dread of this low edge-of-perception growling sound, so that is why similar sounds give us the creeps - or make us see ghosts.
So the theory goes
Why do I suspect a future S. K. Tremayne novel is going to have an random, unexplainable hum as a major plot element?
Don't treat this as sarcasm, I think it would fit the mood of those novels rather well
You mean in a old isolated farmhouse on the Herefordshire/Welsh border, near, say, Craswall, where a woman goes to help her brother, after the childrens' mother dies, and the kids start to see and hear things, and then the father also shows signs of being haunted, but won't admit it?
And this weird hum permeates the building, but is only discernible to a few?
If I ever bump into Miss Tremayne, I shall pop this idea in her head
A really fascinating article about a mysterious phenomenon known as The Hum. A low, persistent throbbing or droning sound, in the background, heard in certain places, by certain people - and with no obvious origin. Sometimes it can be so bad it can send people half mad, or force them to move
Enjoyably, the writer approaches it as a skeptic, cannot hear the sound herself, but then DOES hear it, and finds it really quite unsettling
However as the commenters below have noted, she hasn't properly done her research. There is an associated (identical?) phenomenon known as The Hummadruz which has been recorded since at least Victorian times, if not before, and often in deep rural locations - thus ruling out the "engine or factory noise" explanation which is posited by many
So what is it? Auditory hallucination? Mere tinnitus? Infrasound? A mixture? A vile prank by Second Vote Remoaners?
A pleasant mystery
How much does a subscription to Conspiracy & Mysteries Monthly cost nowadays?
I have experience not of it but of people in a robustly rural, agricultural, no nonsense community saying exactly the same thing. They call it "The [Village] Hum". No one can place where it is. It is in all likelihood a power generator on a quiet, still night but no one quite knows.
Yet there are plenty of accounts of it dating back to Victorian times and in very rural locations. A power generator?!
It is peculiar, and intriguing. I suspect it is a mix of all these things, an infrasonic sound of *some* kind - could be organic OR mechanical, which then kicks off our evolved dread of these sounds, inducing feelings of unease, even panic
That's bollocks the Withdrawal Agreement specifically ruled it out unless or until there was a two-thirds majority vote which would mean that quotas and tariffs are waived on country of origin category goods and services.
Oh, sorry, pressed the auto-respond to @Leon button by mistake. .
Boris Johnson returning to the kowtowing complacency of Cameron and May on China would be a serious and obviously stupid retrograde step.
Huawei Harri's appointment does nothing to suggest otherwise.
The schtick around Harri was all seasoned operator, knows his stuff, will steady the ship. Actually I'm getting a grandad doesn't know how to work the remote vibe.
His sole qualification is that he is a Boris acolyte.
Yet there are plenty of accounts of it dating back to Victorian times and in very rural locations. A power generator?!
It is peculiar, and intriguing. I suspect it is a mix of all these things, an infrasonic sound of *some* kind - could be organic OR mechanical, which then kicks off our evolved dread of these sounds, inducing feelings of unease, even panic
I have a friend who is being driven to distraction by a very low, loud noise at night. She lives in Islington, and it started about a year ago. Her partner can't hear it, but she is finding it so intrusive that she cannot sleep. She's a very level-headed woman, not given to imagining things or believing fantasies. There is a hospital quite near, which she suspects might be the source of the noise (some air-conditioning or other equipment, perhaps), but she hasn't been able to pin it down. Another theory is that it is something to do with the tube line, which runs not far away. It started quite suddenly, which does suggest that it is some piece of equipment that wasn't installed previously.
A really fascinating article about a mysterious phenomenon known as The Hum. A low, persistent throbbing or droning sound, in the background, heard in certain places, by certain people - and with no obvious origin. Sometimes it can be so bad it can send people half mad, or force them to move
Enjoyably, the writer approaches it as a skeptic, cannot hear the sound herself, but then DOES hear it, and finds it really quite unsettling
However as the commenters below have noted, she hasn't properly done her research. There is an associated (identical?) phenomenon known as The Hummadruz which has been recorded since at least Victorian times, if not before, and often in deep rural locations - thus ruling out the "engine or factory noise" explanation which is posited by many
Excellent header, Cyclefree. I suspect you have this ready to go for some time ?
As far as external stakeholders who put and keep sustained pressure on it to make that change; and... goes, we've already had the Chair of the London Assembly Police and Crime Committee on R4 this morning criticising the decision to terminate Dick, and claiming that '99% of officers are brave and good'... Not a great start.
Part of the problem, of course. I have no doubt that many of the homophobic etc officers are physical;y brave and, where homophobia isn't an issue, competent.
I listened to the interview, and it was very much a 'just a few bad apples' argument. And on what basis can you claim that 99% of officers are brave, or good, or even competent ? It's just rhetorical bullshit.
How can you even begin to reform an organisation if you start out with those assumptions ?
How many bad apples does it take to keep a guy known as “The Rapist” in the force, in a specialist armed unit at that, until one day he uses his badge to abduct, rape and kill a random member of the public?
That’s not one bad apple, thats a rotten orchard.
Three more rapes have been in court in recent months too.
Wayne Couzens was nicknamed "the rapist" in his previous job, not in the Metropolitan Police. It may have been a failure of vetting on his recruitment but once he was in the Met, it is hard to see how they could have dismissed him for having a nickname they did not know about. Should using prostitutes be held against him?
Yes, the problem is not just the Met, it is pretty universal in UK forces, just gets more attention in London. Indeed, plenty of evidence of similar or worse in other countries Police forces too.
To an extent it is intrinsic to the nature of policing. The job is to control, and physically interdict those society considers deviants and is attractive to people who rather relish that power.
Which is why you need effective training, professionalism, a good culture and strong leadership to ensure that that power does not get abused.
Yes, in my business too. Otherwise you get the sort of abuse of power seen in "This is Going to Hurt" the other night. I thought it appalling and misogynistic, and am horrified by some of the applause on medical twitter.
If maternity units are really like that, then no wonder we have repeated scandals in Nottingham, Shropshire, Morecombe, Essex etc.
Any job where people have power over others has an attraction for those who enjoy that power, and for those weaker souls that enable or accept it. It needs to be actively called out, and those who do so to be supported.
Though that programme was absurd. Do Doctors really treat each other like that?
I quit a job because the culture was toxic, but it was nothing on that.
It's drama, so obviously subject to exaggeration, but some doctors, almost certainly. @Foxy 's neck of the woods seems to be a bastion of good practice (as I noticed at the beginning of the pandemic at the time of the discharge into care homes disasters).
Incidentally, I know La Truss was trying to make herself look Thatcher-like with her fur hat etc.
But to me she looks like a jilted estate agent's wife investigating a murder on one of those ITV3 shows.
Oh dear - why so bitch? Does that pass for political comment these days? Can we all join in now? Any woman in any party?
The more salient point is that she turned up severely underprepared.
When you're insisting on the importance of recognising international borders, it's pretty important to make it clear that you respect Russia's borders, too. These sorts of geographical blunders completely undermine the point - and send the message that you don't take your interlocutor seriously enough to care.
That is incredibly stupid.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/feb/10/russia-must-respect-ukraine-sovereignty-liz-truss-talks-open ...Away from the cameras, Truss allegedly confused the Russian regions of Voronezh and Rostov with Ukrainian territory when Lavrov asked her whether she recognised Russia’s sovereignty over them. She repeatedly told Lavrov that the UK would never recognise Moscow’s claim, until the British ambassador was forced to step in to correct her, the Russian business daily Kommersant reported.
Truss partly confirmed the account in an interview with Russian press: “It seemed to me that Minister Lavrov was talking about a part of Ukraine. I have clearly indicated that these regions [Rostov and Voronezh] are part of sovereign Russia,” she said, according to the British embassy in Moscow.
The episode follows a previous taunt by Russia last week when the foreign secretary was taken to task over her comment that “we are supplying and offering extra support to our Baltic allies across the Black Sea”. The Baltic Sea and the Black Sea – where Ukraine sits on the coast – are on opposite sides of Europe....
Careful, you're in danger of being called Moscow's useful idiot by the mere fact of recounting things that actually happened.
We asked a sample of MPs the same simple probability question we asked them ten years ago - if you toss a coin twice, what is the probability of getting two heads?
This time round, around half of respondents (52%) gave the correct answer of 25%
This is a likely improvement from when we polled MPs in 2011, when 40% of respondents gave the correct answer.
Excellent header, Cyclefree. I suspect you have this ready to go for some time ?
As far as external stakeholders who put and keep sustained pressure on it to make that change; and... goes, we've already had the Chair of the London Assembly Police and Crime Committee on R4 this morning criticising the decision to terminate Dick, and claiming that '99% of officers are brave and good'... Not a great start.
Part of the problem, of course. I have no doubt that many of the homophobic etc officers are physical;y brave and, where homophobia isn't an issue, competent.
I listened to the interview, and it was very much a 'just a few bad apples' argument. And on what basis can you claim that 99% of officers are brave, or good, or even competent ? It's just rhetorical bullshit.
How can you even begin to reform an organisation if you start out with those assumptions ?
How many bad apples does it take to keep a guy known as “The Rapist” in the force, in a specialist armed unit at that, until one day he uses his badge to abduct, rape and kill a random member of the public?
That’s not one bad apple, thats a rotten orchard.
Three more rapes have been in court in recent months too.
Wayne Couzens was nicknamed "the rapist" in his previous job, not in the Metropolitan Police. It may have been a failure of vetting on his recruitment but once he was in the Met, it is hard to see how they could have dismissed him for having a nickname they did not know about. Should using prostitutes be held against him?
Yes, the problem is not just the Met, it is pretty universal in UK forces, just gets more attention in London. Indeed, plenty of evidence of similar or worse in other countries Police forces too.
To an extent it is intrinsic to the nature of policing. The job is to control, and physically interdict those society considers deviants and is attractive to people who rather relish that power.
Which is why you need effective training, professionalism, a good culture and strong leadership to ensure that that power does not get abused.
Yes, in my business too. Otherwise you get the sort of abuse of power seen in "This is Going to Hurt" the other night. I thought it appalling and misogynistic, and am horrified by some of the applause on medical twitter.
If maternity units are really like that, then no wonder we have repeated scandals in Nottingham, Shropshire, Morecombe, Essex etc.
Any job where people have power over others has an attraction for those who enjoy that power, and for those weaker souls that enable or accept it. It needs to be actively called out, and those who do so to be supported.
Though that programme was absurd. Do Doctors really treat each other like that?
I quit a job because the culture was toxic, but it was nothing on that.
It is supposedly based on real experiences as a junior obstetrician in the best selling book of the same name.
Lots of comments below from doctors and similar saying that their unit was the same.
Medicine, like any job at the sharp end of messy human existence has dark and gallows humour as a coping mechanism. I know the police do too. It can be the slippery slope though to some real bad behaviour, as I think we see in this supposed comedy series.
Biden confirms he will not send any US troops to Ukraine if Russia invades, even to rescue any US citizens left there. He urges all Americans left in Ukraine to get out now
Those four B-52s that just turned up at Fairford, for ‘pre-planned exercises that have nothing to do with the Ukranian situation’ on the other hand. Maybe they came to admire the English countryside.
If Putin goes beyond Ukraine and into a NATO nation then those B52s and the extra US and NATO troops being sent to Poland, Romania and the Baltic States would be used.
Ukraine alone however would not lead to war, just US led economic sanctions on Russia
The minute Russia crosses into Ukraine Biden publicly stated he would take out Nordstream pipeline and this with the German Chancellor standing beside him
Furthermore millions of Ukraine peoples will overwhelm the EU borders and it will escalate into war as the Baltic states act to protect themselves
Economic sanctions as I said not military actions.
The Baltic states would defend themselves backed by NATO and send troops to the border to control refugees, they would not go to war with Russia over Ukraine
We asked a sample of MPs the same simple probability question we asked them ten years ago - if you toss a coin twice, what is the probability of getting two heads?
This time round, around half of respondents (52%) gave the correct answer of 25%
This is a likely improvement from when we polled MPs in 2011, when 40% of respondents gave the correct answer.
Incidentally, I know La Truss was trying to make herself look Thatcher-like with her fur hat etc.
But to me she looks like a jilted estate agent's wife investigating a murder on one of those ITV3 shows.
Oh dear - why so bitch? Does that pass for political comment these days? Can we all join in now? Any woman in any party?
The more salient point is that she turned up severely underprepared.
When you're insisting on the importance of recognising international borders, it's pretty important to make it clear that you respect Russia's borders, too. These sorts of geographical blunders completely undermine the point - and send the message that you don't take your interlocutor seriously enough to care.
That is incredibly stupid.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/feb/10/russia-must-respect-ukraine-sovereignty-liz-truss-talks-open ...Away from the cameras, Truss allegedly confused the Russian regions of Voronezh and Rostov with Ukrainian territory when Lavrov asked her whether she recognised Russia’s sovereignty over them. She repeatedly told Lavrov that the UK would never recognise Moscow’s claim, until the British ambassador was forced to step in to correct her, the Russian business daily Kommersant reported.
Truss partly confirmed the account in an interview with Russian press: “It seemed to me that Minister Lavrov was talking about a part of Ukraine. I have clearly indicated that these regions [Rostov and Voronezh] are part of sovereign Russia,” she said, according to the British embassy in Moscow.
The episode follows a previous taunt by Russia last week when the foreign secretary was taken to task over her comment that “we are supplying and offering extra support to our Baltic allies across the Black Sea”. The Baltic Sea and the Black Sea – where Ukraine sits on the coast – are on opposite sides of Europe....
Careful, you're in danger of being called Moscow's useful idiot by the mere fact of recounting things that actually happened.
A couple of days' serious preparation, and she could have enhanced her reputation rather than trashing it.
A really fascinating article about a mysterious phenomenon known as The Hum. A low, persistent throbbing or droning sound, in the background, heard in certain places, by certain people - and with no obvious origin. Sometimes it can be so bad it can send people half mad, or force them to move
Enjoyably, the writer approaches it as a skeptic, cannot hear the sound herself, but then DOES hear it, and finds it really quite unsettling
However as the commenters below have noted, she hasn't properly done her research. There is an associated (identical?) phenomenon known as The Hummadruz which has been recorded since at least Victorian times, if not before, and often in deep rural locations - thus ruling out the "engine or factory noise" explanation which is posited by many
So what is it? Auditory hallucination? Mere tinnitus? Infrasound? A mixture? A vile prank by Second Vote Remoaners?
A pleasant mystery
I am not sure if I should be saying but you can still read paywalled FT articles by googling on FT and the headline.
Yes, I am aware of that. It amazes me that newspapers haven't closed this loophole
It doesn't see to work with the NYT? But I haven't tried very hard
Most newspaper and magazine paywalls are very badly designed, if their aim is to prevent people (and search engine bots) from reading the content without a subscription.
No developer tasked with actually hiding the content behind a login page would go down the route the news media has taken, they would go down the same route as Facebook, Instagram and increasingly Twitter.
Therefore, the conclusion is that they are not too worried about such activity, and are happy that a few IT geeks writing JavaScript to get around them, and a few more using private browsing or judicious use of the stop button when the page is half loaded, if it means their stories get wide distribution and become part of ‘the conversation’.
We asked a sample of MPs the same simple probability question we asked them ten years ago - if you toss a coin twice, what is the probability of getting two heads?
This time round, around half of respondents (52%) gave the correct answer of 25%
This is a likely improvement from when we polled MPs in 2011, when 40% of respondents gave the correct answer.
I'm going to be smug now, because I predicted this defence a few weeks ago. Whilst lots of people were working from home, nearly all of them were doing so alone, or at most with a partner. Number Ten has to be pretty close to unique in the country in that it is simulatneously both the PM's home and a workplace that other people work in and it was able to function as a workplace throughout the period. With that combination it's not impossible that it has fallen into a gap in the regulations that could leave the PM's actions technically legal.
Not that "technically legal" would save him politically.
Try not to laugh, but "ambushed by a cake" is a test for this defence. You acknowledge that the gatherings were not reasonably necessary for the purposes of work, and therefore everyone else attending them didn't have a reasonable excuse to be outside their home, so must be fined. However, the PM was an innocent bystander in his own home while they happened. For this argument to work, it has to be accepted that the whole complex is his "home", so for example heading down to the Cabinet room is not being outside his home.
There are the separate "meet with" tests (I can't remember the phrasing but applied to 2 or more gathering indoors who were part of the same household) which would apply if he gathered with people in his home. So he has to then argue that the unlawful gatherings were adjacent to him but he wasn't attending them as events in his home. Our even, bizarrely, that everyone there was part of the "household" because they worked in his home.
Clearly this doesn't work so well for any events in the flat, unless there's an attempt to argue that even the flat is functionally part of the office complex and so other people were able to come and have an illegal gathering there without the PM arranging, inviting or attending.
Later on when the "organiser" offences are introduced it gets harder again because he/Carrie also have to demonstrate that they didn't arrange or initiate the gatherings.
And the public are irrational. Custody suites are being centralised in County Durham in a scheme designed to save millions up front (everywhere needs to be improved) and save money year on year. Yet the locals protested because someone said custody suites need to be local (even though it doesn't actually work).
There are any number of armchair police who Know What Should Be Done. Locally the police want to supplement their other contact options by having a roving "Reporting van", which will visit each locality on specified days and welcome people coming to report regular problems in that locatiy. Given the near-disappearance of fixed police stations (because they tie down officers sitting around all day with almost nobody physically crossing town to visit them), this gives quite a good option for scattered communities. Reaction from councillors generally negative - "They should be on the beat! It's just PR!"
Actually, living in a community of 5000+, where the nearest police station is about 6 miles away, that sounds like a very good idea. If we knew there would be a 'Reporting Van' in the market place on, for example, every Wednesday it would save the Neighbourhood Watch people a good deal of time on Facebook.
Now put that roar below 20Hz, so you can't actually hear it, but you do experience all the dread, panic, horror and shivers. And tigers can do that
"Tigers release infrasound in their roars. But do they consciously use infrasound to ground their prey? Many believe so. Wildlife researcher and professor Mel Sunquist and his wife experienced a tiger’s roar front and center in the jungle. The two survived the tiger’s wrath, but felt overwhelmed and paralyzed in place as it happened, "It feels like the sound is actually penetrating you. It's so forceful. My wife said she felt like she couldn't move. She felt like she was sort of frozen." Many tiger researchers believe that these fearsome predators deliberately employ deep infrasonic sound blasts to disorient prey."
Someone in Hollywood should make a movie where the soundtrack throughout has noises below 20Hz. It would scare the living squits out of everyone, and make a billion quid
I'm going to be smug now, because I predicted this defence a few weeks ago. Whilst lots of people were working from home, nearly all of them were doing so alone, or at most with a partner. Number Ten has to be pretty close to unique in the country in that it is simulatneously both the PM's home and a workplace that other people work in and it was able to function as a workplace throughout the period. With that combination it's not impossible that it has fallen into a gap in the regulations that could leave the PM's actions technically legal.
Not that "technically legal" would save him politically.
It might well save him politically (after all who else ties the factions that Bozo created within the Parliamentary Tory Party together as well as Bozo does) but it won't save him morally.
And it's the moral side of things that may have an impact in polling and the next General Election.
Though that puts the day of reckoning off until 2023/4.
And by Bozza's standards, that's quite a long-term win.
Unless the polls change it could be the May local elections that finish Boris off as they finished May off in 2019 after heavy Tory losses.
On current polling lots of Tory councillors would lose their seats and on the latest Yougov London subsample the Tories face near wipeout in the capital, losing Barnet, Hillingdon, Westminster and Wandsworth to Labour.
Only Bexley and narrowly Bromley and Kensington and Chelsea would stay blue
Dominic Cummings @Dominic2306 NB. he will try to keep his written evidence to cops secret (MPs shd insist it's published) but also there is *written evidence* re organisation/behaviour in the flat, so normal tactic of lying cd >> perjury
Excellent header, Cyclefree. I suspect you have this ready to go for some time ?
As far as external stakeholders who put and keep sustained pressure on it to make that change; and... goes, we've already had the Chair of the London Assembly Police and Crime Committee on R4 this morning criticising the decision to terminate Dick, and claiming that '99% of officers are brave and good'... Not a great start.
Part of the problem, of course. I have no doubt that many of the homophobic etc officers are physical;y brave and, where homophobia isn't an issue, competent.
I listened to the interview, and it was very much a 'just a few bad apples' argument. And on what basis can you claim that 99% of officers are brave, or good, or even competent ? It's just rhetorical bullshit.
How can you even begin to reform an organisation if you start out with those assumptions ?
How many bad apples does it take to keep a guy known as “The Rapist” in the force, in a specialist armed unit at that, until one day he uses his badge to abduct, rape and kill a random member of the public?
That’s not one bad apple, thats a rotten orchard.
Three more rapes have been in court in recent months too.
Wayne Couzens was nicknamed "the rapist" in his previous job, not in the Metropolitan Police. It may have been a failure of vetting on his recruitment but once he was in the Met, it is hard to see how they could have dismissed him for having a nickname they did not know about. Should using prostitutes be held against him?
Yes, the problem is not just the Met, it is pretty universal in UK forces, just gets more attention in London. Indeed, plenty of evidence of similar or worse in other countries Police forces too.
To an extent it is intrinsic to the nature of policing. The job is to control, and physically interdict those society considers deviants and is attractive to people who rather relish that power.
Which is why you need effective training, professionalism, a good culture and strong leadership to ensure that that power does not get abused.
Yes, in my business too. Otherwise you get the sort of abuse of power seen in "This is Going to Hurt" the other night. I thought it appalling and misogynistic, and am horrified by some of the applause on medical twitter.
If maternity units are really like that, then no wonder we have repeated scandals in Nottingham, Shropshire, Morecombe, Essex etc.
Any job where people have power over others has an attraction for those who enjoy that power, and for those weaker souls that enable or accept it. It needs to be actively called out, and those who do so to be supported.
Though that programme was absurd. Do Doctors really treat each other like that?
I quit a job because the culture was toxic, but it was nothing on that.
It is supposedly based on real experiences as a junior obstetrician in the best selling book of the same name.
Lots of comments below from doctors and similar saying that their unit was the same.
Medicine, like any job at the sharp end of messy human existence has dark and gallows humour as a coping mechanism. I know the police do too. It can be the slippery slope though to some real bad behaviour, as I think we see in this supposed comedy series.
Something I found interesting, talking to doctors, is how chunks of the NHS management system and culture are straight out of the 1950s. And not in a good way.
Since many doctors have no professional experience outside healthcare, they assume that is just how it is.
Incidentally, I know La Truss was trying to make herself look Thatcher-like with her fur hat etc.
But to me she looks like a jilted estate agent's wife investigating a murder on one of those ITV3 shows.
Oh dear - why so bitch? Does that pass for political comment these days? Can we all join in now? Any woman in any party?
The more salient point is that she turned up severely underprepared.
When you're insisting on the importance of recognising and respecting international borders, it's pretty important to make it clear that you respect Russia's borders, too. These sorts of geographical blunders completely undermine the point - and send the message that you don't take your interlocutor seriously enough to care.
That is incredibly stupid.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/feb/10/russia-must-respect-ukraine-sovereignty-liz-truss-talks-open ...Away from the cameras, Truss allegedly confused the Russian regions of Voronezh and Rostov with Ukrainian territory when Lavrov asked her whether she recognised Russia’s sovereignty over them. She repeatedly told Lavrov that the UK would never recognise Moscow’s claim, until the British ambassador was forced to step in to correct her, the Russian business daily Kommersant reported.
Truss partly confirmed the account in an interview with Russian press: “It seemed to me that Minister Lavrov was talking about a part of Ukraine. I have clearly indicated that these regions [Rostov and Voronezh] are part of sovereign Russia,” she said, according to the British embassy in Moscow.
The episode follows a previous taunt by Russia last week when the foreign secretary was taken to task over her comment that “we are supplying and offering extra support to our Baltic allies across the Black Sea”. The Baltic Sea and the Black Sea – where Ukraine sits on the coast – are on opposite sides of Europe....
Glad to see the anti-government section of the British press happily retweeting the Russian propoganda.
This is exactly the same as we saw with the Brexit negotiations, where the EU side could happily rely on a substantial section of the UK media endlessly repeating their talking points.
Incidentally, I know La Truss was trying to make herself look Thatcher-like with her fur hat etc.
But to me she looks like a jilted estate agent's wife investigating a murder on one of those ITV3 shows.
Oh dear - why so bitch? Does that pass for political comment these days? Can we all join in now? Any woman in any party?
The more salient point is that she turned up severely underprepared.
When you're insisting on the importance of recognising and respecting international borders, it's pretty important to make it clear that you respect Russia's borders, too. These sorts of geographical blunders completely undermine the point - and send the message that you don't take your interlocutor seriously enough to care.
That is incredibly stupid.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/feb/10/russia-must-respect-ukraine-sovereignty-liz-truss-talks-open ...Away from the cameras, Truss allegedly confused the Russian regions of Voronezh and Rostov with Ukrainian territory when Lavrov asked her whether she recognised Russia’s sovereignty over them. She repeatedly told Lavrov that the UK would never recognise Moscow’s claim, until the British ambassador was forced to step in to correct her, the Russian business daily Kommersant reported.
Truss partly confirmed the account in an interview with Russian press: “It seemed to me that Minister Lavrov was talking about a part of Ukraine. I have clearly indicated that these regions [Rostov and Voronezh] are part of sovereign Russia,” she said, according to the British embassy in Moscow.
The episode follows a previous taunt by Russia last week when the foreign secretary was taken to task over her comment that “we are supplying and offering extra support to our Baltic allies across the Black Sea”. The Baltic Sea and the Black Sea – where Ukraine sits on the coast – are on opposite sides of Europe....
Oh dear. Everyone makes mistakes, of course, but those are real clangers.
Rather undermines the sense of competence she'd hope to project as a result of concluding all those trade deals.
Later on when the "organiser" offences are introduced it gets harder again because he/Carrie also have to demonstrate that they didn't arrange or initiate the gatherings.
Surely the police have to demonstrate that they did?
Now put that roar below 20Hz, so you can't actually hear it, but you do experience all the dread, panic, horror and shivers. And tigers can do that
"Tigers release infrasound in their roars. But do they consciously use infrasound to ground their prey? Many believe so. Wildlife researcher and professor Mel Sunquist and his wife experienced a tiger’s roar front and center in the jungle. The two survived the tiger’s wrath, but felt overwhelmed and paralyzed in place as it happened, "It feels like the sound is actually penetrating you. It's so forceful. My wife said she felt like she couldn't move. She felt like she was sort of frozen." Many tiger researchers believe that these fearsome predators deliberately employ deep infrasonic sound blasts to disorient prey."
Someone in Hollywood should make a movie where the soundtrack throughout has noises below 20Hz. It would scare the living squits out of everyone, and make a billion quid
There is an excellent podcast - twenty thousand Hertz ( https://www.20k.org/) which deals with all kinds of such phenomena. Well worth listening to.
Biden confirms he will not send any US troops to Ukraine if Russia invades, even to rescue any US citizens left there. He urges all Americans left in Ukraine to get out now
Those four B-52s that just turned up at Fairford, for ‘pre-planned exercises that have nothing to do with the Ukranian situation’ on the other hand. Maybe they came to admire the English countryside.
Pretty close to Salisbury..
Not that close - at least 50 mles. Maybe closer as the B52 flies...
Incidentally, I know La Truss was trying to make herself look Thatcher-like with her fur hat etc.
But to me she looks like a jilted estate agent's wife investigating a murder on one of those ITV3 shows.
Oh dear - why so bitch? Does that pass for political comment these days? Can we all join in now? Any woman in any party?
The more salient point is that she turned up severely underprepared.
When you're insisting on the importance of recognising international borders, it's pretty important to make it clear that you respect Russia's borders, too. These sorts of geographical blunders completely undermine the point - and send the message that you don't take your interlocutor seriously enough to care.
That is incredibly stupid.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/feb/10/russia-must-respect-ukraine-sovereignty-liz-truss-talks-open ...Away from the cameras, Truss allegedly confused the Russian regions of Voronezh and Rostov with Ukrainian territory when Lavrov asked her whether she recognised Russia’s sovereignty over them. She repeatedly told Lavrov that the UK would never recognise Moscow’s claim, until the British ambassador was forced to step in to correct her, the Russian business daily Kommersant reported.
Truss partly confirmed the account in an interview with Russian press: “It seemed to me that Minister Lavrov was talking about a part of Ukraine. I have clearly indicated that these regions [Rostov and Voronezh] are part of sovereign Russia,” she said, according to the British embassy in Moscow.
The episode follows a previous taunt by Russia last week when the foreign secretary was taken to task over her comment that “we are supplying and offering extra support to our Baltic allies across the Black Sea”. The Baltic Sea and the Black Sea – where Ukraine sits on the coast – are on opposite sides of Europe....
Careful, you're in danger of being called Moscow's useful idiot by the mere fact of recounting things that actually happened.
A couple of days' serious preparation, and she could have enhanced her reputation rather than trashing it.
That would have been a more fitting Thatch tribute act than a furry bunnet. The seat of the pants stuff is very Johnsonian..
I'm going to be smug now, because I predicted this defence a few weeks ago. Whilst lots of people were working from home, nearly all of them were doing so alone, or at most with a partner. Number Ten has to be pretty close to unique in the country in that it is simulatneously both the PM's home and a workplace that other people work in and it was able to function as a workplace throughout the period. With that combination it's not impossible that it has fallen into a gap in the regulations that could leave the PM's actions technically legal.
Not that "technically legal" would save him politically.
It might well save him politically (after all who else ties the factions that Bozo created within the Parliamentary Tory Party together as well as Bozo does) but it won't save him morally.
And it's the moral side of things that may have an impact in polling and the next General Election.
Greased piglet time again. How about his Missus, though?
Excellent header, Cyclefree. I suspect you have this ready to go for some time ?
As far as external stakeholders who put and keep sustained pressure on it to make that change; and... goes, we've already had the Chair of the London Assembly Police and Crime Committee on R4 this morning criticising the decision to terminate Dick, and claiming that '99% of officers are brave and good'... Not a great start.
Part of the problem, of course. I have no doubt that many of the homophobic etc officers are physical;y brave and, where homophobia isn't an issue, competent.
I listened to the interview, and it was very much a 'just a few bad apples' argument. And on what basis can you claim that 99% of officers are brave, or good, or even competent ? It's just rhetorical bullshit.
How can you even begin to reform an organisation if you start out with those assumptions ?
How many bad apples does it take to keep a guy known as “The Rapist” in the force, in a specialist armed unit at that, until one day he uses his badge to abduct, rape and kill a random member of the public?
That’s not one bad apple, thats a rotten orchard.
Three more rapes have been in court in recent months too.
Wayne Couzens was nicknamed "the rapist" in his previous job, not in the Metropolitan Police. It may have been a failure of vetting on his recruitment but once he was in the Met, it is hard to see how they could have dismissed him for having a nickname they did not know about. Should using prostitutes be held against him?
Yes, the problem is not just the Met, it is pretty universal in UK forces, just gets more attention in London. Indeed, plenty of evidence of similar or worse in other countries Police forces too.
To an extent it is intrinsic to the nature of policing. The job is to control, and physically interdict those society considers deviants and is attractive to people who rather relish that power.
Which is why you need effective training, professionalism, a good culture and strong leadership to ensure that that power does not get abused.
Yes, in my business too. Otherwise you get the sort of abuse of power seen in "This is Going to Hurt" the other night. I thought it appalling and misogynistic, and am horrified by some of the applause on medical twitter.
If maternity units are really like that, then no wonder we have repeated scandals in Nottingham, Shropshire, Morecombe, Essex etc.
Any job where people have power over others has an attraction for those who enjoy that power, and for those weaker souls that enable or accept it. It needs to be actively called out, and those who do so to be supported.
Though that programme was absurd. Do Doctors really treat each other like that?
I quit a job because the culture was toxic, but it was nothing on that.
It's drama, so obviously subject to exaggeration, but some doctors, almost certainly. @Foxy 's neck of the woods seems to be a bastion of good practice (as I noticed at the beginning of the pandemic at the time of the discharge into care homes disasters).
My Trust is not without incident, and not immune to national trends and issues. I do think our SMT are pretty good, albeit constrained by finance and national policy.
That said in my time as a Case Investigator for the Medical Director I did see some worrying things. These were being addressed, but these are only ever the tip of an iceberg.
Yet there are plenty of accounts of it dating back to Victorian times and in very rural locations. A power generator?!
It is peculiar, and intriguing. I suspect it is a mix of all these things, an infrasonic sound of *some* kind - could be organic OR mechanical, which then kicks off our evolved dread of these sounds, inducing feelings of unease, even panic
I have a friend who is being driven to distraction by a very low, loud noise at night. She lives in Islington, and it started about a year ago. Her partner can't hear it, but she is finding it so intrusive that she cannot sleep. She's a very level-headed woman, not given to imagining things or believing fantasies. There is a hospital quite near, which she suspects might be the source of the noise (some air-conditioning or other equipment, perhaps), but she hasn't been able to pin it down. Another theory is that it is something to do with the tube line, which runs not far away. It started quite suddenly, which does suggest that it is some piece of equipment that wasn't installed previously.
Fascinating, it really does seem this is quite common, but untalked-of. People scared of being seen as a bit barmy?
Sympathies to your friend. From the FT article it clearly does drive people up the wall. Another point of interest made in that piece: once you become aware of it, then it doesn't go away. But you can apparently live in blissful ignorance until that anti-epiphany
Something similar-ish happened to me, during Lockdown 1, when, for the first time - in those silenced streets - I realised just how loud some moped and motorbikes have become, due to doctored exhausts (a debate we had on PB the other day). Now I cannot UNhear them, and the rasping crackle of them revving at the lights makes me murderous
Luckily I don't hear it that often. But I can share your friend's angst
Later on when the "organiser" offences are introduced it gets harder again because he/Carrie also have to demonstrate that they didn't arrange or initiate the gatherings.
Surely the police have to demonstrate that they did?
I'm not sure how that would be handled in practice. If there's a load of people in your flat, I think there might be a reasonable presumption that you arranged it unless you can provide evidence to the contrary. It's perhaps difficult for the PM and his wife in a highly-policed building to argue that a gang of party people sneaked into their flat without their knowledge and consent, and that they were not able to arrange for them to leave the moment they became aware of it.
For the gatherings in the wider No. 10 complex I agree.
I'm going to be smug now, because I predicted this defence a few weeks ago. Whilst lots of people were working from home, nearly all of them were doing so alone, or at most with a partner. Number Ten has to be pretty close to unique in the country in that it is simulatneously both the PM's home and a workplace that other people work in and it was able to function as a workplace throughout the period. With that combination it's not impossible that it has fallen into a gap in the regulations that could leave the PM's actions technically legal.
Not that "technically legal" would save him politically.
It might well save him politically (after all who else ties the factions that Bozo created within the Parliamentary Tory Party together as well as Bozo does) but it won't save him morally.
And it's the moral side of things that may have an impact in polling and the next General Election.
Though that puts the day of reckoning off until 2023/4.
And by Bozza's standards, that's quite a long-term win.
Unless the polls change it could be the May local elections that finish Boris off as they finished May off in 2019 after heavy Tory losses.
On current polling lots of Tory councillors would lose their seats and on the latest Yougov London subsample the Tories face near wipeout in the capital, losing Barnet, Hillingdon, Westminster and Wandsworth to Labour.
Only Bexley and narrowly Bromley and Kensington and Chelsea would stay blue
Thanks Hyufd.
It's an event I'm not betting on but if I had to I would guess that some time soon after the May local elections would be the most likely point of departure.
Incidentally, I know La Truss was trying to make herself look Thatcher-like with her fur hat etc.
But to me she looks like a jilted estate agent's wife investigating a murder on one of those ITV3 shows.
Oh dear - why so bitch? Does that pass for political comment these days? Can we all join in now? Any woman in any party?
The more salient point is that she turned up severely underprepared.
When you're insisting on the importance of recognising and respecting international borders, it's pretty important to make it clear that you respect Russia's borders, too. These sorts of geographical blunders completely undermine the point - and send the message that you don't take your interlocutor seriously enough to care.
That is incredibly stupid.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/feb/10/russia-must-respect-ukraine-sovereignty-liz-truss-talks-open ...Away from the cameras, Truss allegedly confused the Russian regions of Voronezh and Rostov with Ukrainian territory when Lavrov asked her whether she recognised Russia’s sovereignty over them. She repeatedly told Lavrov that the UK would never recognise Moscow’s claim, until the British ambassador was forced to step in to correct her, the Russian business daily Kommersant reported.
Truss partly confirmed the account in an interview with Russian press: “It seemed to me that Minister Lavrov was talking about a part of Ukraine. I have clearly indicated that these regions [Rostov and Voronezh] are part of sovereign Russia,” she said, according to the British embassy in Moscow.
The episode follows a previous taunt by Russia last week when the foreign secretary was taken to task over her comment that “we are supplying and offering extra support to our Baltic allies across the Black Sea”. The Baltic Sea and the Black Sea – where Ukraine sits on the coast – are on opposite sides of Europe....
Glad to see the anti-government section of the British press happily retweeting the Russian propoganda.
This is exactly the same as we saw with the Brexit negotiations, where the EU side could happily rely on a substantial section of the UK media endlessly repeating their talking points.
Is it propaganda ? The FO has not denied either comment (as a quick google shows), merely 'clarified' them.
Your 'Brexit' comparison is otiose. I am completely in sympathy with the message we're trying to send to Moscow; Truss undermined it.
PS I thought "glad to see" was one of the PB tropes we'd agreed to outlaw.
Excellent header by @Cyclefree, by the way. Those selecting the next Met commissioner, everyone on Sadiq Khan's staff, everyone in the Home Office, and all senior police officers should read and reflect upon it.
Incidentally, I know La Truss was trying to make herself look Thatcher-like with her fur hat etc.
But to me she looks like a jilted estate agent's wife investigating a murder on one of those ITV3 shows.
Oh dear - why so bitch? Does that pass for political comment these days? Can we all join in now? Any woman in any party?
The more salient point is that she turned up severely underprepared.
When you're insisting on the importance of recognising and respecting international borders, it's pretty important to make it clear that you respect Russia's borders, too. These sorts of geographical blunders completely undermine the point - and send the message that you don't take your interlocutor seriously enough to care.
That is incredibly stupid.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/feb/10/russia-must-respect-ukraine-sovereignty-liz-truss-talks-open ...Away from the cameras, Truss allegedly confused the Russian regions of Voronezh and Rostov with Ukrainian territory when Lavrov asked her whether she recognised Russia’s sovereignty over them. She repeatedly told Lavrov that the UK would never recognise Moscow’s claim, until the British ambassador was forced to step in to correct her, the Russian business daily Kommersant reported.
Truss partly confirmed the account in an interview with Russian press: “It seemed to me that Minister Lavrov was talking about a part of Ukraine. I have clearly indicated that these regions [Rostov and Voronezh] are part of sovereign Russia,” she said, according to the British embassy in Moscow.
The episode follows a previous taunt by Russia last week when the foreign secretary was taken to task over her comment that “we are supplying and offering extra support to our Baltic allies across the Black Sea”. The Baltic Sea and the Black Sea – where Ukraine sits on the coast – are on opposite sides of Europe....
Glad to see the anti-government section of the British press happily retweeting the Russian propoganda.
This is exactly the same as we saw with the Brexit negotiations, where the EU side could happily rely on a substantial section of the UK media endlessly repeating their talking points.
It is an interesting connection, as while I share your concern at British media outlets spouting Russian "propaganda" (if that is what it is), I would also make the point that our government is stuffed full of incompetents and lightweights because of the person who is at the top who was put there by Tory Party members who were obsessed by Brexit. Brexit is one of the fundamental reasons for our decline in the eyes of the world, largely because it resulted in some of the most talented people in the Conservative party being ousted or side lined by the Brexit's Chief Clown. Russia holds us in contempt, and Liz Truss has not exactly helped to disabuse them of that view.
Incidentally I am fully aware that she was originally a "remainer", but nonetheless she would not be in her current role without The Clown's patronage.
Yet there are plenty of accounts of it dating back to Victorian times and in very rural locations. A power generator?!
It is peculiar, and intriguing. I suspect it is a mix of all these things, an infrasonic sound of *some* kind - could be organic OR mechanical, which then kicks off our evolved dread of these sounds, inducing feelings of unease, even panic
I have a friend who is being driven to distraction by a very low, loud noise at night. She lives in Islington, and it started about a year ago. Her partner can't hear it, but she is finding it so intrusive that she cannot sleep. She's a very level-headed woman, not given to imagining things or believing fantasies. There is a hospital quite near, which she suspects might be the source of the noise (some air-conditioning or other equipment, perhaps), but she hasn't been able to pin it down. Another theory is that it is something to do with the tube line, which runs not far away. It started quite suddenly, which does suggest that it is some piece of equipment that wasn't installed previously.
Fascinating, it really does seem this is quite common, but untalked-of. People scared of being seen as a bit barmy?
Sympathies to your friend. From the FT article it clearly does drive people up the wall. Another point of interest made in that piece: once you become aware of it, then it doesn't go away. But you can apparently live in blissful ignorance until that anti-epiphany
Something similar-ish happened to me, during Lockdown 1, when, for the first time - in those silenced streets - I realised just how loud some moped and motorbikes have become, due to doctored exhausts (a debate we had on PB the other day). Now I cannot UNhear them, and the rasping crackle of them revving at the lights makes me murderous
Luckily I don't hear it that often. But I can share your friend's angst
I have a pal who experienced a persistent hum in his house, had noise control officers in a couple of times and had started forcefully demanding that they put in noise monitoring equipment when one of them suggested he should check with a doctor if he had tinnitus.
After a visit to doc, perfect silence (from him) ensued.
Excellent header, Cyclefree. I suspect you have this ready to go for some time ?
As far as external stakeholders who put and keep sustained pressure on it to make that change; and... goes, we've already had the Chair of the London Assembly Police and Crime Committee on R4 this morning criticising the decision to terminate Dick, and claiming that '99% of officers are brave and good'... Not a great start.
Part of the problem, of course. I have no doubt that many of the homophobic etc officers are physical;y brave and, where homophobia isn't an issue, competent.
I listened to the interview, and it was very much a 'just a few bad apples' argument. And on what basis can you claim that 99% of officers are brave, or good, or even competent ? It's just rhetorical bullshit.
How can you even begin to reform an organisation if you start out with those assumptions ?
How many bad apples does it take to keep a guy known as “The Rapist” in the force, in a specialist armed unit at that, until one day he uses his badge to abduct, rape and kill a random member of the public?
That’s not one bad apple, thats a rotten orchard.
Three more rapes have been in court in recent months too.
Wayne Couzens was nicknamed "the rapist" in his previous job, not in the Metropolitan Police. It may have been a failure of vetting on his recruitment but once he was in the Met, it is hard to see how they could have dismissed him for having a nickname they did not know about. Should using prostitutes be held against him?
Yes, the problem is not just the Met, it is pretty universal in UK forces, just gets more attention in London. Indeed, plenty of evidence of similar or worse in other countries Police forces too.
To an extent it is intrinsic to the nature of policing. The job is to control, and physically interdict those society considers deviants and is attractive to people who rather relish that power.
Which is why you need effective training, professionalism, a good culture and strong leadership to ensure that that power does not get abused.
Yes, in my business too. Otherwise you get the sort of abuse of power seen in "This is Going to Hurt" the other night. I thought it appalling and misogynistic, and am horrified by some of the applause on medical twitter.
If maternity units are really like that, then no wonder we have repeated scandals in Nottingham, Shropshire, Morecombe, Essex etc.
Any job where people have power over others has an attraction for those who enjoy that power, and for those weaker souls that enable or accept it. It needs to be actively called out, and those who do so to be supported.
Though that programme was absurd. Do Doctors really treat each other like that?
I quit a job because the culture was toxic, but it was nothing on that.
It is supposedly based on real experiences as a junior obstetrician in the best selling book of the same name.
Lots of comments below from doctors and similar saying that their unit was the same.
Medicine, like any job at the sharp end of messy human existence has dark and gallows humour as a coping mechanism. I know the police do too. It can be the slippery slope though to some real bad behaviour, as I think we see in this supposed comedy series.
Something I found interesting, talking to doctors, is how chunks of the NHS management system and culture are straight out of the 1950s. And not in a good way.
Since many doctors have no professional experience outside healthcare, they assume that is just how it is.
No, I don't think that true at all.
NHS management didn't really exist until the 1980s, seriously.
A really fascinating article about a mysterious phenomenon known as The Hum. A low, persistent throbbing or droning sound, in the background, heard in certain places, by certain people - and with no obvious origin. Sometimes it can be so bad it can send people half mad, or force them to move
Enjoyably, the writer approaches it as a skeptic, cannot hear the sound herself, but then DOES hear it, and finds it really quite unsettling
However as the commenters below have noted, she hasn't properly done her research. There is an associated (identical?) phenomenon known as The Hummadruz which has been recorded since at least Victorian times, if not before, and often in deep rural locations - thus ruling out the "engine or factory noise" explanation which is posited by many
So what is it? Auditory hallucination? Mere tinnitus? Infrasound? A mixture? A vile prank by Second Vote Remoaners?
A pleasant mystery
I am not sure if I should be saying but you can still read paywalled FT articles by googling on FT and the headline.
Yes, I am aware of that. It amazes me that newspapers haven't closed this loophole
It doesn't see to work with the NYT? But I haven't tried very hard
Most newspaper and magazine paywalls are very badly designed, if their aim is to prevent people (and search engine bots) from reading the content without a subscription.
No developer tasked with actually hiding the content behind a login page would go down the route the news media has taken, they would go down the same route as Facebook, Instagram and increasingly Twitter.
Therefore, the conclusion is that they are not too worried about such activity, and are happy that a few IT geeks writing JavaScript to get around them, and a few more using private browsing or judicious use of the stop button when the page is half loaded, if it means their stories get wide distribution and become part of ‘the conversation’.
It's a matter of process - the FT, Times and NYT all operate on the basis of send a bit of the article, then check the subscription and then send the rest of the article.
Other papers work on send everything to the reader, then check the subscription and if it's invalid hide most of the article.
It doesn't take much to inject something in the latter cases and stop the javascript before it deletes the text - so as you say it's almost intentional.
Later on when the "organiser" offences are introduced it gets harder again because he/Carrie also have to demonstrate that they didn't arrange or initiate the gatherings.
Surely the police have to demonstrate that they did?
I'm not sure how that would be handled in practice. If there's a load of people in your flat, I think there might be a reasonable presumption that you arranged it unless you can provide evidence to the contrary. It's perhaps difficult for the PM and his wife in a highly-policed building to argue that a gang of party people sneaked into their flat without their knowledge and consent, and that they were not able to arrange for them to leave the moment they became aware of it.
For the gatherings in the wider No. 10 complex I agree.
In which case, the one event with the PM in attendance that’s genuinely suspicious, is the gathering in the flat allegedly initiated by Mrs Johnson on the day Mr Cummings departed. So was the PM there at the start of it, or did he go upstairs to find a ‘party’ in progress?
I'm going to be smug now, because I predicted this defence a few weeks ago. Whilst lots of people were working from home, nearly all of them were doing so alone, or at most with a partner. Number Ten has to be pretty close to unique in the country in that it is simulatneously both the PM's home and a workplace that other people work in and it was able to function as a workplace throughout the period. With that combination it's not impossible that it has fallen into a gap in the regulations that could leave the PM's actions technically legal.
Not that "technically legal" would save him politically.
Employment lawyer here. .
The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) Regulations 2020
"7. During the emergency period, no person may participate in a gathering in a public place of more than two people except—
(a)where all the persons in the gathering are members of the same household, (b)where the gathering is essential for work purposes, ...."
In the absence of a definition of "public place" within the regulations or their parent legislation we have to look at the intention of Parliament. What you say Johnson will argue is that Number 10 Downing Street was not a "not public place" and so a gathering of people there was and could be lawful whatever the circumstances. Think about the implications of that. Could everyone in a block of flats (a "not public place") have had a party? Could people have hopped over garden fences (one "not public place" place to another "not public place") to have a party? The Queen could have had a party for all her staff at Buck House? Huge if true.
Alternatively it is a public place and his June 2020 birthday party was "essential for work purposes". Again, huge if true.
Incidentally, I know La Truss was trying to make herself look Thatcher-like with her fur hat etc.
But to me she looks like a jilted estate agent's wife investigating a murder on one of those ITV3 shows.
Oh dear - why so bitch? Does that pass for political comment these days? Can we all join in now? Any woman in any party?
The more salient point is that she turned up severely underprepared.
When you're insisting on the importance of recognising international borders, it's pretty important to make it clear that you respect Russia's borders, too. These sorts of geographical blunders completely undermine the point - and send the message that you don't take your interlocutor seriously enough to care.
That is incredibly stupid.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/feb/10/russia-must-respect-ukraine-sovereignty-liz-truss-talks-open ...Away from the cameras, Truss allegedly confused the Russian regions of Voronezh and Rostov with Ukrainian territory when Lavrov asked her whether she recognised Russia’s sovereignty over them. She repeatedly told Lavrov that the UK would never recognise Moscow’s claim, until the British ambassador was forced to step in to correct her, the Russian business daily Kommersant reported.
Truss partly confirmed the account in an interview with Russian press: “It seemed to me that Minister Lavrov was talking about a part of Ukraine. I have clearly indicated that these regions [Rostov and Voronezh] are part of sovereign Russia,” she said, according to the British embassy in Moscow.
The episode follows a previous taunt by Russia last week when the foreign secretary was taken to task over her comment that “we are supplying and offering extra support to our Baltic allies across the Black Sea”. The Baltic Sea and the Black Sea – where Ukraine sits on the coast – are on opposite sides of Europe....
Careful, you're in danger of being called Moscow's useful idiot by the mere fact of recounting things that actually happened.
It is easy to confuse the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea, but it should not be if you the Foreign Secretary at a crucial meeting
I'm going to be smug now, because I predicted this defence a few weeks ago. Whilst lots of people were working from home, nearly all of them were doing so alone, or at most with a partner. Number Ten has to be pretty close to unique in the country in that it is simulatneously both the PM's home and a workplace that other people work in and it was able to function as a workplace throughout the period. With that combination it's not impossible that it has fallen into a gap in the regulations that could leave the PM's actions technically legal.
Not that "technically legal" would save him politically.
It might well save him politically (after all who else ties the factions that Bozo created within the Parliamentary Tory Party together as well as Bozo does) but it won't save him morally.
And it's the moral side of things that may have an impact in polling and the next General Election.
Though that puts the day of reckoning off until 2023/4.
And by Bozza's standards, that's quite a long-term win.
Unless the polls change it could be the May local elections that finish Boris off as they finished May off in 2019 after heavy Tory losses.
On current polling lots of Tory councillors would lose their seats and on the latest Yougov London subsample the Tories face near wipeout in the capital, losing Barnet, Hillingdon, Westminster and Wandsworth to Labour.
Only Bexley and narrowly Bromley and Kensington and Chelsea would stay blue
That's quite some expectation management. I have a feeling the Tories will do a lot less badly in London than expected although still lose at least a modest no. of seats. Labour will probably gain Wandsworth but I'm not at all sure about that and I'm less confident about predicting Barnet.
They will probably get completely hammered in northern metropolitan districts but they have limited numbers of seats to lose there.
They are also vulnerable in Somerset to the Lib Dems but even last night's by election there which the LDs gained actually showed a small swing from the Lib Dems to the Tories
I'm not sure how the Tories lose more than ~200 seats overall TBH
Excellent header, Cyclefree. I suspect you have this ready to go for some time ?
As far as external stakeholders who put and keep sustained pressure on it to make that change; and... goes, we've already had the Chair of the London Assembly Police and Crime Committee on R4 this morning criticising the decision to terminate Dick, and claiming that '99% of officers are brave and good'... Not a great start.
Part of the problem, of course. I have no doubt that many of the homophobic etc officers are physical;y brave and, where homophobia isn't an issue, competent.
I listened to the interview, and it was very much a 'just a few bad apples' argument. And on what basis can you claim that 99% of officers are brave, or good, or even competent ? It's just rhetorical bullshit.
How can you even begin to reform an organisation if you start out with those assumptions ?
How many bad apples does it take to keep a guy known as “The Rapist” in the force, in a specialist armed unit at that, until one day he uses his badge to abduct, rape and kill a random member of the public?
That’s not one bad apple, thats a rotten orchard.
Three more rapes have been in court in recent months too.
Wayne Couzens was nicknamed "the rapist" in his previous job, not in the Metropolitan Police. It may have been a failure of vetting on his recruitment but once he was in the Met, it is hard to see how they could have dismissed him for having a nickname they did not know about. Should using prostitutes be held against him?
Yes, the problem is not just the Met, it is pretty universal in UK forces, just gets more attention in London. Indeed, plenty of evidence of similar or worse in other countries Police forces too.
To an extent it is intrinsic to the nature of policing. The job is to control, and physically interdict those society considers deviants and is attractive to people who rather relish that power.
Which is why you need effective training, professionalism, a good culture and strong leadership to ensure that that power does not get abused.
Yes, in my business too. Otherwise you get the sort of abuse of power seen in "This is Going to Hurt" the other night. I thought it appalling and misogynistic, and am horrified by some of the applause on medical twitter.
If maternity units are really like that, then no wonder we have repeated scandals in Nottingham, Shropshire, Morecombe, Essex etc.
Any job where people have power over others has an attraction for those who enjoy that power, and for those weaker souls that enable or accept it. It needs to be actively called out, and those who do so to be supported.
Though that programme was absurd. Do Doctors really treat each other like that?
I quit a job because the culture was toxic, but it was nothing on that.
It's drama, so obviously subject to exaggeration, but some doctors, almost certainly. @Foxy 's neck of the woods seems to be a bastion of good practice (as I noticed at the beginning of the pandemic at the time of the discharge into care homes disasters).
My Trust is not without incident, and not immune to national trends and issues. I do think our SMT are pretty good, albeit constrained by finance and national policy.
That said in my time as a Case Investigator for the Medical Director I did see some worrying things. These were being addressed, but these are only ever the tip of an iceberg.
That's vastly better than denial, which is sometimes the case elsewhere.
I'm going to be smug now, because I predicted this defence a few weeks ago. Whilst lots of people were working from home, nearly all of them were doing so alone, or at most with a partner. Number Ten has to be pretty close to unique in the country in that it is simulatneously both the PM's home and a workplace that other people work in and it was able to function as a workplace throughout the period. With that combination it's not impossible that it has fallen into a gap in the regulations that could leave the PM's actions technically legal.
Not that "technically legal" would save him politically.
Try not to laugh, but "ambushed by a cake" is a test for this defence. You acknowledge that the gatherings were not reasonably necessary for the purposes of work, and therefore everyone else attending them didn't have a reasonable excuse to be outside their home, so must be fined. However, the PM was an innocent bystander in his own home while they happened. For this argument to work, it has to be accepted that the whole complex is his "home", so for example heading down to the Cabinet room is not being outside his home.
There are the separate "meet with" tests (I can't remember the phrasing but applied to 2 or more gathering indoors who were part of the same household) which would apply if he gathered with people in his home. So he has to then argue that the unlawful gatherings were adjacent to him but he wasn't attending them as events in his home. Our even, bizarrely, that everyone there was part of the "household" because they worked in his home.
Clearly this doesn't work so well for any events in the flat, unless there's an attempt to argue that even the flat is functionally part of the office complex and so other people were able to come and have an illegal gathering there without the PM arranging, inviting or attending.
Later on when the "organiser" offences are introduced it gets harder again because he/Carrie also have to demonstrate that they didn't arrange or initiate the gatherings.
While I realise that stately homes, as places to visit, were closed during lockdown, was the position of the workers and residents (when there were any) allowed for in the regulations?
We asked a sample of MPs the same simple probability question we asked them ten years ago - if you toss a coin twice, what is the probability of getting two heads?
This time round, around half of respondents (52%) gave the correct answer of 25%
This is a likely improvement from when we polled MPs in 2011, when 40% of respondents gave the correct answer.
Some of them around Johnson give the answer of 100%. If you want it to be heads then they will tell you it is heads no matter what happens. When you say that 'no that is a tail actually', they will gaslight you and tell you that you are wrong and need your eyes checking and so on. They will never admit that it was a tail, no matter what happens.
If Boris is going to argue that it was OK because he was at home, doesn't that mean he was organising parties in his home? I'm not sure that entirely smart as a defence...
Excellent header, Cyclefree. I suspect you have this ready to go for some time ?
As far as external stakeholders who put and keep sustained pressure on it to make that change; and... goes, we've already had the Chair of the London Assembly Police and Crime Committee on R4 this morning criticising the decision to terminate Dick, and claiming that '99% of officers are brave and good'... Not a great start.
Part of the problem, of course. I have no doubt that many of the homophobic etc officers are physical;y brave and, where homophobia isn't an issue, competent.
I listened to the interview, and it was very much a 'just a few bad apples' argument. And on what basis can you claim that 99% of officers are brave, or good, or even competent ? It's just rhetorical bullshit.
How can you even begin to reform an organisation if you start out with those assumptions ?
How many bad apples does it take to keep a guy known as “The Rapist” in the force, in a specialist armed unit at that, until one day he uses his badge to abduct, rape and kill a random member of the public?
That’s not one bad apple, thats a rotten orchard.
Three more rapes have been in court in recent months too.
Wayne Couzens was nicknamed "the rapist" in his previous job, not in the Metropolitan Police. It may have been a failure of vetting on his recruitment but once he was in the Met, it is hard to see how they could have dismissed him for having a nickname they did not know about. Should using prostitutes be held against him?
Yes, the problem is not just the Met, it is pretty universal in UK forces, just gets more attention in London. Indeed, plenty of evidence of similar or worse in other countries Police forces too.
To an extent it is intrinsic to the nature of policing. The job is to control, and physically interdict those society considers deviants and is attractive to people who rather relish that power.
Which is why you need effective training, professionalism, a good culture and strong leadership to ensure that that power does not get abused.
Yes, in my business too. Otherwise you get the sort of abuse of power seen in "This is Going to Hurt" the other night. I thought it appalling and misogynistic, and am horrified by some of the applause on medical twitter.
If maternity units are really like that, then no wonder we have repeated scandals in Nottingham, Shropshire, Morecombe, Essex etc.
Any job where people have power over others has an attraction for those who enjoy that power, and for those weaker souls that enable or accept it. It needs to be actively called out, and those who do so to be supported.
Though that programme was absurd. Do Doctors really treat each other like that?
I quit a job because the culture was toxic, but it was nothing on that.
It is supposedly based on real experiences as a junior obstetrician in the best selling book of the same name.
Lots of comments below from doctors and similar saying that their unit was the same.
Medicine, like any job at the sharp end of messy human existence has dark and gallows humour as a coping mechanism. I know the police do too. It can be the slippery slope though to some real bad behaviour, as I think we see in this supposed comedy series.
Something I found interesting, talking to doctors, is how chunks of the NHS management system and culture are straight out of the 1950s. And not in a good way.
Since many doctors have no professional experience outside healthcare, they assume that is just how it is.
No, I don't think that true at all.
NHS management didn't really exist until the 1980s, seriously.
Excellent header, Cyclefree. I suspect you have this ready to go for some time ?
As far as external stakeholders who put and keep sustained pressure on it to make that change; and... goes, we've already had the Chair of the London Assembly Police and Crime Committee on R4 this morning criticising the decision to terminate Dick, and claiming that '99% of officers are brave and good'... Not a great start.
Part of the problem, of course. I have no doubt that many of the homophobic etc officers are physical;y brave and, where homophobia isn't an issue, competent.
I listened to the interview, and it was very much a 'just a few bad apples' argument. And on what basis can you claim that 99% of officers are brave, or good, or even competent ? It's just rhetorical bullshit.
How can you even begin to reform an organisation if you start out with those assumptions ?
How many bad apples does it take to keep a guy known as “The Rapist” in the force, in a specialist armed unit at that, until one day he uses his badge to abduct, rape and kill a random member of the public?
That’s not one bad apple, thats a rotten orchard.
Three more rapes have been in court in recent months too.
Wayne Couzens was nicknamed "the rapist" in his previous job, not in the Metropolitan Police. It may have been a failure of vetting on his recruitment but once he was in the Met, it is hard to see how they could have dismissed him for having a nickname they did not know about. Should using prostitutes be held against him?
Yes, the problem is not just the Met, it is pretty universal in UK forces, just gets more attention in London. Indeed, plenty of evidence of similar or worse in other countries Police forces too.
To an extent it is intrinsic to the nature of policing. The job is to control, and physically interdict those society considers deviants and is attractive to people who rather relish that power.
Which is why you need effective training, professionalism, a good culture and strong leadership to ensure that that power does not get abused.
Yes, in my business too. Otherwise you get the sort of abuse of power seen in "This is Going to Hurt" the other night. I thought it appalling and misogynistic, and am horrified by some of the applause on medical twitter.
If maternity units are really like that, then no wonder we have repeated scandals in Nottingham, Shropshire, Morecombe, Essex etc.
Any job where people have power over others has an attraction for those who enjoy that power, and for those weaker souls that enable or accept it. It needs to be actively called out, and those who do so to be supported.
Though that programme was absurd. Do Doctors really treat each other like that?
I quit a job because the culture was toxic, but it was nothing on that.
It's drama, so obviously subject to exaggeration, but some doctors, almost certainly. @Foxy 's neck of the woods seems to be a bastion of good practice (as I noticed at the beginning of the pandemic at the time of the discharge into care homes disasters).
My Trust is not without incident, and not immune to national trends and issues. I do think our SMT are pretty good, albeit constrained by finance and national policy.
That said in my time as a Case Investigator for the Medical Director I did see some worrying things. These were being addressed, but these are only ever the tip of an iceberg.
That's vastly better than denial, which is sometimes the case elsewhere.
I think in an organisation of 12 000 people, with 600 consultants, that there is always going to be someone up to no good somewhere. It is a part of a good hospital culture to try and address it, and that isn't always by forcing people out. I am quite an exponent of workplace mediation and re-education.
I'm going to be smug now, because I predicted this defence a few weeks ago. Whilst lots of people were working from home, nearly all of them were doing so alone, or at most with a partner. Number Ten has to be pretty close to unique in the country in that it is simulatneously both the PM's home and a workplace that other people work in and it was able to function as a workplace throughout the period. With that combination it's not impossible that it has fallen into a gap in the regulations that could leave the PM's actions technically legal.
Not that "technically legal" would save him politically.
It might well save him politically (after all who else ties the factions that Bozo created within the Parliamentary Tory Party together as well as Bozo does) but it won't save him morally.
And it's the moral side of things that may have an impact in polling and the next General Election.
Though that puts the day of reckoning off until 2023/4.
And by Bozza's standards, that's quite a long-term win.
Unless the polls change it could be the May local elections that finish Boris off as they finished May off in 2019 after heavy Tory losses.
On current polling lots of Tory councillors would lose their seats and on the latest Yougov London subsample the Tories face near wipeout in the capital, losing Barnet, Hillingdon, Westminster and Wandsworth to Labour.
Only Bexley and narrowly Bromley and Kensington and Chelsea would stay blue
That's quite some expectation management. I have a feeling the Tories will do a lot less badly in London than expected although still lose at least a modest no. of seats. Labour will probably gain Wandsworth but I'm not at all sure about that and I'm less confident about predicting Barnet.
They will probably get completely hammered in northern metropolitan districts but they have limited numbers of seats to lose there.
They are also vulnerable in Somerset to the Lib Dems but even last night's by election there which the LDs gained actually showed a small swing from the Lib Dems to the Tories
I'm not sure how the Tories lose more than ~200 seats overall TBH
On UNS from the 2018 London local elections to the latest Yougov London subsample the Tories would certainly lose Barnet and Wandsworth and probably Westminster and Hillingdon too.
The Tories face their worst local election results in London ever, even worse than 1994 and 1998.
Excellent header, Cyclefree. I suspect you have this ready to go for some time ?
As far as external stakeholders who put and keep sustained pressure on it to make that change; and... goes, we've already had the Chair of the London Assembly Police and Crime Committee on R4 this morning criticising the decision to terminate Dick, and claiming that '99% of officers are brave and good'... Not a great start.
Part of the problem, of course. I have no doubt that many of the homophobic etc officers are physical;y brave and, where homophobia isn't an issue, competent.
I listened to the interview, and it was very much a 'just a few bad apples' argument. And on what basis can you claim that 99% of officers are brave, or good, or even competent ? It's just rhetorical bullshit.
How can you even begin to reform an organisation if you start out with those assumptions ?
How many bad apples does it take to keep a guy known as “The Rapist” in the force, in a specialist armed unit at that, until one day he uses his badge to abduct, rape and kill a random member of the public?
That’s not one bad apple, thats a rotten orchard.
Three more rapes have been in court in recent months too.
Wayne Couzens was nicknamed "the rapist" in his previous job, not in the Metropolitan Police. It may have been a failure of vetting on his recruitment but once he was in the Met, it is hard to see how they could have dismissed him for having a nickname they did not know about. Should using prostitutes be held against him?
Yes, the problem is not just the Met, it is pretty universal in UK forces, just gets more attention in London. Indeed, plenty of evidence of similar or worse in other countries Police forces too.
To an extent it is intrinsic to the nature of policing. The job is to control, and physically interdict those society considers deviants and is attractive to people who rather relish that power.
Which is why you need effective training, professionalism, a good culture and strong leadership to ensure that that power does not get abused.
Yes, in my business too. Otherwise you get the sort of abuse of power seen in "This is Going to Hurt" the other night. I thought it appalling and misogynistic, and am horrified by some of the applause on medical twitter.
If maternity units are really like that, then no wonder we have repeated scandals in Nottingham, Shropshire, Morecombe, Essex etc.
Any job where people have power over others has an attraction for those who enjoy that power, and for those weaker souls that enable or accept it. It needs to be actively called out, and those who do so to be supported.
Though that programme was absurd. Do Doctors really treat each other like that?
I quit a job because the culture was toxic, but it was nothing on that.
It is supposedly based on real experiences as a junior obstetrician in the best selling book of the same name.
Lots of comments below from doctors and similar saying that their unit was the same.
Medicine, like any job at the sharp end of messy human existence has dark and gallows humour as a coping mechanism. I know the police do too. It can be the slippery slope though to some real bad behaviour, as I think we see in this supposed comedy series.
Something I found interesting, talking to doctors, is how chunks of the NHS management system and culture are straight out of the 1950s. And not in a good way.
Since many doctors have no professional experience outside healthcare, they assume that is just how it is.
No, I don't think that true at all.
NHS management didn't really exist until the 1980s, seriously.
Prior to that it was administration and consensus.
Some of the management practises seem to be straight out of 1950s text books on management.
Not having a defined management function with skills etc (as described in that report) was part of the problem back in the day, in many industries. You had the shop floor and a bunch of people... who weren't on the shop floor.
Having a carefully defined structure, responsibilities etc was considered very American back then.
If Boris is going to argue that it was OK because he was at home, doesn't that mean he was organising parties in his home? I'm not sure that entirely smart as a defence...
I'm not sure of the detail of the regulations at the times, but for the first lockdown I don't think it was illegal to let people into your home, it was illegal for other people to enter your home.
And I suspect that they would claim that Number Ten was simultaneously a home and a workplace, or only one, or the other, depending on which provides the midst convenient interpretation of the law.
I'm going to be smug now, because I predicted this defence a few weeks ago. Whilst lots of people were working from home, nearly all of them were doing so alone, or at most with a partner. Number Ten has to be pretty close to unique in the country in that it is simulatneously both the PM's home and a workplace that other people work in and it was able to function as a workplace throughout the period. With that combination it's not impossible that it has fallen into a gap in the regulations that could leave the PM's actions technically legal.
Not that "technically legal" would save him politically.
Try not to laugh, but "ambushed by a cake" is a test for this defence. You acknowledge that the gatherings were not reasonably necessary for the purposes of work, and therefore everyone else attending them didn't have a reasonable excuse to be outside their home, so must be fined. However, the PM was an innocent bystander in his own home while they happened. For this argument to work, it has to be accepted that the whole complex is his "home", so for example heading down to the Cabinet room is not being outside his home.
There are the separate "meet with" tests (I can't remember the phrasing but applied to 2 or more gathering indoors who were part of the same household) which would apply if he gathered with people in his home. So he has to then argue that the unlawful gatherings were adjacent to him but he wasn't attending them as events in his home. Our even, bizarrely, that everyone there was part of the "household" because they worked in his home.
Clearly this doesn't work so well for any events in the flat, unless there's an attempt to argue that even the flat is functionally part of the office complex and so other people were able to come and have an illegal gathering there without the PM arranging, inviting or attending.
Later on when the "organiser" offences are introduced it gets harder again because he/Carrie also have to demonstrate that they didn't arrange or initiate the gatherings.
While I realise that stately homes, as places to visit, were closed during lockdown, was the position of the workers and residents (when there were any) allowed for in the regulations?
I don't recall it being specifically addressed, because it seemed fairly straightforward to derive from the basic rules: actual residents were the household and could gather, but those attending the location for work could be only be away from their home with reasonable excuse, which meant that a non-work gathering with anyone else was illegal. The "work event" distinction is slightly misleading - it really should be "I was working and it wasn't a party" to capture the sense of the restriction.
Incidentally, I know La Truss was trying to make herself look Thatcher-like with her fur hat etc.
But to me she looks like a jilted estate agent's wife investigating a murder on one of those ITV3 shows.
Oh dear - why so bitch? Does that pass for political comment these days? Can we all join in now? Any woman in any party?
The more salient point is that she turned up severely underprepared.
When you're insisting on the importance of recognising and respecting international borders, it's pretty important to make it clear that you respect Russia's borders, too. These sorts of geographical blunders completely undermine the point - and send the message that you don't take your interlocutor seriously enough to care.
That is incredibly stupid.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/feb/10/russia-must-respect-ukraine-sovereignty-liz-truss-talks-open ...Away from the cameras, Truss allegedly confused the Russian regions of Voronezh and Rostov with Ukrainian territory when Lavrov asked her whether she recognised Russia’s sovereignty over them. She repeatedly told Lavrov that the UK would never recognise Moscow’s claim, until the British ambassador was forced to step in to correct her, the Russian business daily Kommersant reported.
Truss partly confirmed the account in an interview with Russian press: “It seemed to me that Minister Lavrov was talking about a part of Ukraine. I have clearly indicated that these regions [Rostov and Voronezh] are part of sovereign Russia,” she said, according to the British embassy in Moscow.
The episode follows a previous taunt by Russia last week when the foreign secretary was taken to task over her comment that “we are supplying and offering extra support to our Baltic allies across the Black Sea”. The Baltic Sea and the Black Sea – where Ukraine sits on the coast – are on opposite sides of Europe....
Glad to see the anti-government section of the British press happily retweeting the Russian propoganda.
This is exactly the same as we saw with the Brexit negotiations, where the EU side could happily rely on a substantial section of the UK media endlessly repeating their talking points.
It is an interesting connection, as while I share your concern at British media outlets spouting Russian "propaganda" (if that is what it is), I would also make the point that our government is stuffed full of incompetents and lightweights because of the person who is at the top who was put there by Tory Party members who were obsessed by Brexit. Brexit is one of the fundamental reasons for our decline in the eyes of the world, largely because it resulted in some of the most talented people in the Conservative party being ousted or side lined by the Brexit's Chief Clown. Russia holds us in contempt, and Liz Truss has not exactly helped to disabuse them of that view.
Incidentally I am fully aware that she was originally a "remainer", but nonetheless she would not be in her current role without The Clown's patronage.
While be both speak in what might be slightly provocative language, I genuinely do think that there’s an issue with a lot of the UK media coverage at the moment.
They have decided that they very much dislike the government, for reasons very much to do with the EU relationship, and so will say whatever supports that viewpoint - even if that is playing into the Russian narrative.
The foreign secretary went to Moscow yesterday to try and avert a war, and today a substantial part of our media are repeating the Russian denunciation of her, and another substantial part are dedicating their coverage to what she was wearing.
We saw the same with the EU negotiations, and again with the “Independent SAGE” during the pandemic, and all it does is undermine support for British strategic aims.
By the way, well done to Starmer yesterday, for his comments on the “Stop the War” mob, who he rightly identifies as being very much in favour of a war so long as the UK, US and Israel are on the losing side. Although he didn’t mention the last one by name.
If Boris is going to argue that it was OK because he was at home, doesn't that mean he was organising parties in his home? I'm not sure that entirely smart as a defence...
I'm not sure of the detail of the regulations at the times, but for the first lockdown I don't think it was illegal to let people into your home, it was illegal for other people to enter your home.
And I suspect that they would claim that Number Ten was simultaneously a home and a workplace, or only one, or the other, depending on which provides the midst convenient interpretation of the law.
Are we suggesting that the regulations were not carefully designed to take account of unusual circumstances?
I'm going to be smug now, because I predicted this defence a few weeks ago. Whilst lots of people were working from home, nearly all of them were doing so alone, or at most with a partner. Number Ten has to be pretty close to unique in the country in that it is simulatneously both the PM's home and a workplace that other people work in and it was able to function as a workplace throughout the period. With that combination it's not impossible that it has fallen into a gap in the regulations that could leave the PM's actions technically legal.
Not that "technically legal" would save him politically.
Employment lawyer here. .
The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) Regulations 2020
"7. During the emergency period, no person may participate in a gathering in a public place of more than two people except—
(a)where all the persons in the gathering are members of the same household, (b)where the gathering is essential for work purposes, ...."
In the absence of a definition of "public place" within the regulations or their parent legislation we have to look at the intention of Parliament. What you say Johnson will argue is that Number 10 Downing Street was not a "not public place" and so a gathering of people there was and could be lawful whatever the circumstances. Think about the implications of that. Could everyone in a block of flats (a "not public place") have had a party? Could people have hopped over garden fences (one "not public place" place to another "not public place") to have a party? The Queen could have had a party for all her staff at Buck House? Huge if true.
Alternatively it is a public place and his June 2020 birthday party was "essential for work purposes". Again, huge if true.
Defining a person's home as a "public place" would certainly be huge.
A recording of the Hum - or the Hummadruz - in Taos, New Mexico
It starts off relatively inoffensive, but - as the FT writer notes - the longer it goes on the more it drills into your head, until it becomes seriously and eerily disquieting. If I heard this all the time I'd go nuts (OK, even more nuts)
Low level infrasonic sounds have been blamed for the fear induced by "ghosts" - because big cat predators supposedly emit an identical infrasonic growl just as they attack, and they do this so as to paralyse their pray with nameless dread. We have inherited the dread of this low edge-of-perception growling sound, so that is why similar sounds give us the creeps - or make us see ghosts.
I'm going to be smug now, because I predicted this defence a few weeks ago. Whilst lots of people were working from home, nearly all of them were doing so alone, or at most with a partner. Number Ten has to be pretty close to unique in the country in that it is simulatneously both the PM's home and a workplace that other people work in and it was able to function as a workplace throughout the period. With that combination it's not impossible that it has fallen into a gap in the regulations that could leave the PM's actions technically legal.
Not that "technically legal" would save him politically.
Try not to laugh, but "ambushed by a cake" is a test for this defence. You acknowledge that the gatherings were not reasonably necessary for the purposes of work, and therefore everyone else attending them didn't have a reasonable excuse to be outside their home, so must be fined. However, the PM was an innocent bystander in his own home while they happened. For this argument to work, it has to be accepted that the whole complex is his "home", so for example heading down to the Cabinet room is not being outside his home.
There are the separate "meet with" tests (I can't remember the phrasing but applied to 2 or more gathering indoors who were part of the same household) which would apply if he gathered with people in his home. So he has to then argue that the unlawful gatherings were adjacent to him but he wasn't attending them as events in his home. Our even, bizarrely, that everyone there was part of the "household" because they worked in his home.
Clearly this doesn't work so well for any events in the flat, unless there's an attempt to argue that even the flat is functionally part of the office complex and so other people were able to come and have an illegal gathering there without the PM arranging, inviting or attending.
Later on when the "organiser" offences are introduced it gets harder again because he/Carrie also have to demonstrate that they didn't arrange or initiate the gatherings.
While I realise that stately homes, as places to visit, were closed during lockdown, was the position of the workers and residents (when there were any) allowed for in the regulations?
I don't recall it being specifically addressed, because it seemed fairly straightforward to derive from the basic rules: actual residents were the household and could gather, but those attending the location for work could be only be away from their home with reasonable excuse, which meant that a non-work gathering with anyone else was illegal. The "work event" distinction is slightly misleading - it really should be "I was working and it wasn't a party" to capture the sense of the restriction.
How would it work/have worked in such places as Downton Abbey, with live-in staff? Asking for friend!
Now put that roar below 20Hz, so you can't actually hear it, but you do experience all the dread, panic, horror and shivers. And tigers can do that
[snip]
Some years ago, we did the elephant ride thing in Chitwan National Park, six of us on the elephant, looking for tigers (I think they've now stopped doing this). There had been a report that a tiger had been seen in a flattish, marshy area not far away, so we headed off in that direction. The vegetation was very thick. We crossed through a small marshy dip, and as the elephant was climbing out onto drier land, we must have got too close to a tiger completely hidden in the vegetation. It let out the most enormous roar, which sounded as though the tiger was very close, although we never saw it. It was absolutely terrifying, not least to the elephant, which started shaking in fear, trumpeted very loudly, turned tail, and legged it at high speed with us clinging on for dear life. That roar is something I will always remember,
I was on the back, so acutely aware that if the tiger did decide to chase us and attack, I'd be the first victim...
Biden confirms he will not send any US troops to Ukraine if Russia invades, even to rescue any US citizens left there. He urges all Americans left in Ukraine to get out now
Those four B-52s that just turned up at Fairford, for ‘pre-planned exercises that have nothing to do with the Ukranian situation’ on the other hand. Maybe they came to admire the English countryside.
The B-52H can't be used in contested airspace - easy pickings for the Su-30SM/Adder combo - so what are they for? Getting air supremacy over Ukraine/Russia involves starting WW3...
What they've been for since the 80s - carrying stand off weapons to the release points.
USAFE already has over 200 aircraft in Europe that can drop JASSM-ER. 4 x B-52 make no difference whatsoever. It's pure theatre.
I'm going to be smug now, because I predicted this defence a few weeks ago. Whilst lots of people were working from home, nearly all of them were doing so alone, or at most with a partner. Number Ten has to be pretty close to unique in the country in that it is simulatneously both the PM's home and a workplace that other people work in and it was able to function as a workplace throughout the period. With that combination it's not impossible that it has fallen into a gap in the regulations that could leave the PM's actions technically legal.
Not that "technically legal" would save him politically.
Employment lawyer here. .
The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) Regulations 2020
"7. During the emergency period, no person may participate in a gathering in a public place of more than two people except—
(a)where all the persons in the gathering are members of the same household, (b)where the gathering is essential for work purposes, ...."
In the absence of a definition of "public place" within the regulations or their parent legislation we have to look at the intention of Parliament. What you say Johnson will argue is that Number 10 Downing Street was not a "not public place" and so a gathering of people there was and could be lawful whatever the circumstances. Think about the implications of that. Could everyone in a block of flats (a "not public place") have had a party? Could people have hopped over garden fences (one "not public place" place to another "not public place") to have a party? The Queen could have had a party for all her staff at Buck House? Huge if true.
Alternatively it is a public place and his June 2020 birthday party was "essential for work purposes". Again, huge if true.
It is to hoped that whichever Tory donor is funding Mr & Mrs Johnson has deep pockets. This could run and run.
Perhaps we should look forward with interest to the next edition of Private Eye! Or could be up there with Peter Cook's view of the Jeremy Thorpe trial.
Now put that roar below 20Hz, so you can't actually hear it, but you do experience all the dread, panic, horror and shivers. And tigers can do that
[snip]
Some years ago, we did the elephant ride thing in Chitwan National Park, six of us on the elephant, looking for tigers (I think they've now stopped doing this). There had been a report that a tiger had been seen in a flattish, marshy area not far away, so we headed off in that direction. The vegetation was very thick. We crossed through a small marshy dip, and as the elephant was climbing out onto drier land, we must have got too close to a tiger completely hidden in the vegetation. It let out the most enormous roar, which sounded as though the tiger was very close, although we never saw it. It was absolutely terrifying, not least to the elephant, which started shaking in fear, trumpeted very loudly, turned tail, and legged it at high speed with us clinging on for dear life. That roar is something I will always remember,
I was on the back, so acutely aware that if the tiger did decide to chase us and attack, I'd be the first victim...
Yes. The roar is designed to be terrifying, and it is. I heard and saw a tiger (briefly) in Ranthambore
The roar of a lion is not quite as impressive, but still something. Eerily, I often hear the Asian lions in London zoo roaring on quiet nights, near my flat. Quite disconcerting, in the civilised environs of Regent's Park - suddenly you get this interruption of the primal
Now put that roar below 20Hz, so you can't actually hear it, but you do experience all the dread, panic, horror and shivers. And tigers can do that
[snip]
Some years ago, we did the elephant ride thing in Chitwan National Park, six of us on the elephant, looking for tigers (I think they've now stopped doing this). There had been a report that a tiger had been seen in a flattish, marshy area not far away, so we headed off in that direction. The vegetation was very thick. We crossed through a small marshy dip, and as the elephant was climbing out onto drier land, we must have got too close to a tiger completely hidden in the vegetation. It let out the most enormous roar, which sounded as though the tiger was very close, although we never saw it. It was absolutely terrifying, not least to the elephant, which started shaking in fear, trumpeted very loudly, turned tail, and legged it at high speed with us clinging on for dear life. That roar is something I will always remember,
I was on the back, so acutely aware that if the tiger did decide to chase us and attack, I'd be the first victim...
When I did that very tour (it sounds like) many years ago, the elephant charged. After the tiger!
I was kind of impressed that neither the mahout or guide had any weapons.
Latter, when we were walking on foot in the reserve, the guide asks me if I was carrying the kukri I'd bought as souvenir, earlier in the tour. Because he had spotted some fresh tiger spore.....
Well, that was bizarre and annoying. browsing the internet, and the connection seems to die, but it's indicated as working. Tried the old off-and-on trick, doesn't work.
On a whim, shift back from Firefox to Chrome, which is working. Try Firefox again, it updates and is now working.
*sighs*
Give me a wax tablet and stylus.
Always start with menu > help > about to see if your browser wants to update.
Yet there are plenty of accounts of it dating back to Victorian times and in very rural locations. A power generator?!
It is peculiar, and intriguing. I suspect it is a mix of all these things, an infrasonic sound of *some* kind - could be organic OR mechanical, which then kicks off our evolved dread of these sounds, inducing feelings of unease, even panic
I have a friend who is being driven to distraction by a very low, loud noise at night. She lives in Islington, and it started about a year ago. Her partner can't hear it, but she is finding it so intrusive that she cannot sleep. She's a very level-headed woman, not given to imagining things or believing fantasies. There is a hospital quite near, which she suspects might be the source of the noise (some air-conditioning or other equipment, perhaps), but she hasn't been able to pin it down. Another theory is that it is something to do with the tube line, which runs not far away. It started quite suddenly, which does suggest that it is some piece of equipment that wasn't installed previously.
Fascinating, it really does seem this is quite common, but untalked-of. People scared of being seen as a bit barmy?
Sympathies to your friend. From the FT article it clearly does drive people up the wall. Another point of interest made in that piece: once you become aware of it, then it doesn't go away. But you can apparently live in blissful ignorance until that anti-epiphany
Something similar-ish happened to me, during Lockdown 1, when, for the first time - in those silenced streets - I realised just how loud some moped and motorbikes have become, due to doctored exhausts (a debate we had on PB the other day). Now I cannot UNhear them, and the rasping crackle of them revving at the lights makes me murderous
Luckily I don't hear it that often. But I can share your friend's angst
One of the issues with persistent noises that only some can here is how much is actually a physical noise, and how much is tinnitus. We have incredibly good ways to measure sound, and in almost all cases there is no sound to measure (cases like the Bristol hum etc). How the brain interprets signals is very complex, and it can easily be decieved - as any good optical illusion will show. Other 'sonic' issues are murky. Havana syndrome may well be entirely imaginary, and certainly not as the result of underhand enemy agents with special illness inducing sounds. Certainly there are correlations to mass hysterical illness in school children. I'd also throw into the mix some of the hysteria about spiking (drinks and using needles). The ability to actually inject someone in a nightclub with an agent that will make them pass out etc is not likely to be widespread. I have no doubt that drink spiking is common, but also that sometimes people have too much to drink without realising. Atual needle spiking I would expect to be vanishingly rare, and it also recapitulates other historical scare stories about people being injected by unknown assailants in the street. (See Fortean Times back catalogue for MANY examples of the above).
One last thing - peoples hearing is different. My wife's is better than mine - she hears the phone from upstairs and I do not. Thats good for me - I get to stay in bed...
Well, that was bizarre and annoying. browsing the internet, and the connection seems to die, but it's indicated as working. Tried the old off-and-on trick, doesn't work.
On a whim, shift back from Firefox to Chrome, which is working. Try Firefox again, it updates and is now working.
Key Orange - London Borough Green - Unitary Pink - Metropolitan Purple - District Grey - No Election.
So no elections in most of the Tory Shires.
Hence the London elections, where all councillors are up, will have even more importance and in London the swing from the Tories since this year's council seats were last up in 2018 is worse than it is across the UK as a whole
Biden confirms he will not send any US troops to Ukraine if Russia invades, even to rescue any US citizens left there. He urges all Americans left in Ukraine to get out now
Those four B-52s that just turned up at Fairford, for ‘pre-planned exercises that have nothing to do with the Ukranian situation’ on the other hand. Maybe they came to admire the English countryside.
The B-52H can't be used in contested airspace - easy pickings for the Su-30SM/Adder combo - so what are they for? Getting air supremacy over Ukraine/Russia involves starting WW3...
What they've been for since the 80s - carrying stand off weapons to the release points.
USAFE already has over 200 aircraft in Europe that can drop JASSM-ER. 4 x B-52 make no difference whatsoever. It's pure theatre.
COSTCO vs the corner shop. Everything is cheaper when in bulk....
It's also a matter of history, I think. The Russians always bought up ALCMs at disarmament conferences. Waving pictures of B52s carrying lots etc.....
The next Commissioner of the Met will be recommended by the Home Secretary. Given Ms Patel's record in office is anyone seriously expecting the selection of a policing genius?
We need Sam Vimes. We are more likely to get the Keystone Cops.
In consultation with Khan, which will be an interesting process. Note this has apparently come as a complete surprise to Patel, so it's unlikely she has anyone pencilled in ? It's possible they might pick someone really good by accident, but I'm not holding my breath.
According someone on the World Service news earlier it was a bit of a surprise to Khan as well.
Serving officers seem overwhelmingly pro Dick and anti Khan, who is attracting accusations of opportunism from lots of quarters this morning
He is being utterly opportunistic. He should have acted much much earlier than now. Why did racism and homophobia at one police station cause him to act when the Met Commissioner's obstruction of justice in the Morgan case did not? The fact that he has finally done something shows that he too does not really get it it and will likely not apply the consistent pressure and oversight needed over the years it will take to effect real improvement.
I do think all Police forces eventually tend towards corruption and rotten behaviour unless there is an effective system holding them to account. Bad Police get exposed by a rigorous criminal justice system which we do not have at present due to the woeful underfunding of the courts, probation service, CPS and particularly criminal defence. That is the real way to fix the problem as to her great credit Maggie did with the Police and Criminal Evidence act in the early 80s.
One area which does need tidying up and rationalising is the way police forces are held to account. It is a mess.
We have:-
1. The IOPC 2. Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary 3. Police and Crime Commissioners 4. The College of Policing 5. The Police Federation 6. Lots of independent reviews by judges and others. 7. In London the Mayor and the Home Secretary
All of them with slightly different aims and falling over each other and allowing everyone to point to each other and say "not me, guv" and a large part of the reason why nothing gets done or easily or quickly enough.
Key Orange - London Borough Green - Unitary Pink - Metropolitan Purple - District Grey - No Election.
So no elections in most of the Tory Shires.
Hence the London elections, where all councillors are up, will have even more importance and in London the swing from the Tories since this year's council seats were last up in 2018 is worse than it is across the UK as a whole
What's the purple patch in NE Essex or SE Suffolk?
Incidentally, I know La Truss was trying to make herself look Thatcher-like with her fur hat etc.
But to me she looks like a jilted estate agent's wife investigating a murder on one of those ITV3 shows.
Oh dear - why so bitch? Does that pass for political comment these days? Can we all join in now? Any woman in any party?
The more salient point is that she turned up severely underprepared.
When you're insisting on the importance of recognising international borders, it's pretty important to make it clear that you respect Russia's borders, too. These sorts of geographical blunders completely undermine the point - and send the message that you don't take your interlocutor seriously enough to care.
That is incredibly stupid.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/feb/10/russia-must-respect-ukraine-sovereignty-liz-truss-talks-open ...Away from the cameras, Truss allegedly confused the Russian regions of Voronezh and Rostov with Ukrainian territory when Lavrov asked her whether she recognised Russia’s sovereignty over them. She repeatedly told Lavrov that the UK would never recognise Moscow’s claim, until the British ambassador was forced to step in to correct her, the Russian business daily Kommersant reported.
Truss partly confirmed the account in an interview with Russian press: “It seemed to me that Minister Lavrov was talking about a part of Ukraine. I have clearly indicated that these regions [Rostov and Voronezh] are part of sovereign Russia,” she said, according to the British embassy in Moscow.
The episode follows a previous taunt by Russia last week when the foreign secretary was taken to task over her comment that “we are supplying and offering extra support to our Baltic allies across the Black Sea”. The Baltic Sea and the Black Sea – where Ukraine sits on the coast – are on opposite sides of Europe....
Careful, you're in danger of being called Moscow's useful idiot by the mere fact of recounting things that actually happened.
It is easy to confuse the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea, but it should not be if you the Foreign Secretary at a crucial meeting
Do we have this report of an alleged encounter authenticated?
AIUI It came from a Moscow based newspaper owned by one Alisher Usmanov.
Key Orange - London Borough Green - Unitary Pink - Metropolitan Purple - District Grey - No Election.
So no elections in most of the Tory Shires.
Hence the London elections, where all councillors are up, will have even more importance and in London the swing from the Tories since this year's council seats were last up in 2018 is worse than it is across the UK as a whole
What's the purple patch in NE Essex or SE Suffolk?
I only know definitively about a dozen of the 'male' words (I have a vague idea of maybe 4 or 5 more), while I know almost all of the 'female' words. Kicking the ass of gender stereotyping, one word at a time.
Yet there are plenty of accounts of it dating back to Victorian times and in very rural locations. A power generator?!
It is peculiar, and intriguing. I suspect it is a mix of all these things, an infrasonic sound of *some* kind - could be organic OR mechanical, which then kicks off our evolved dread of these sounds, inducing feelings of unease, even panic
I have a friend who is being driven to distraction by a very low, loud noise at night. She lives in Islington, and it started about a year ago. Her partner can't hear it, but she is finding it so intrusive that she cannot sleep. She's a very level-headed woman, not given to imagining things or believing fantasies. There is a hospital quite near, which she suspects might be the source of the noise (some air-conditioning or other equipment, perhaps), but she hasn't been able to pin it down. Another theory is that it is something to do with the tube line, which runs not far away. It started quite suddenly, which does suggest that it is some piece of equipment that wasn't installed previously.
Fascinating, it really does seem this is quite common, but untalked-of. People scared of being seen as a bit barmy?
Sympathies to your friend. From the FT article it clearly does drive people up the wall. Another point of interest made in that piece: once you become aware of it, then it doesn't go away. But you can apparently live in blissful ignorance until that anti-epiphany
Something similar-ish happened to me, during Lockdown 1, when, for the first time - in those silenced streets - I realised just how loud some moped and motorbikes have become, due to doctored exhausts (a debate we had on PB the other day). Now I cannot UNhear them, and the rasping crackle of them revving at the lights makes me murderous
Luckily I don't hear it that often. But I can share your friend's angst
One of the issues with persistent noises that only some can here is how much is actually a physical noise, and how much is tinnitus. We have incredibly good ways to measure sound, and in almost all cases there is no sound to measure (cases like the Bristol hum etc). How the brain interprets signals is very complex, and it can easily be decieved - as any good optical illusion will show. Other 'sonic' issues are murky. Havana syndrome may well be entirely imaginary, and certainly not as the result of underhand enemy agents with special illness inducing sounds. Certainly there are correlations to mass hysterical illness in school children. I'd also throw into the mix some of the hysteria about spiking (drinks and using needles). The ability to actually inject someone in a nightclub with an agent that will make them pass out etc is not likely to be widespread. I have no doubt that drink spiking is common, but also that sometimes people have too much to drink without realising. Atual needle spiking I would expect to be vanishingly rare, and it also recapitulates other historical scare stories about people being injected by unknown assailants in the street. (See Fortean Times back catalogue for MANY examples of the above).
One last thing - peoples hearing is different. My wife's is better than mine - she hears the phone from upstairs and I do not. Thats good for me - I get to stay in bed...
Incidentally, I know La Truss was trying to make herself look Thatcher-like with her fur hat etc.
But to me she looks like a jilted estate agent's wife investigating a murder on one of those ITV3 shows.
Oh dear - why so bitch? Does that pass for political comment these days? Can we all join in now? Any woman in any party?
The more salient point is that she turned up severely underprepared.
When you're insisting on the importance of recognising international borders, it's pretty important to make it clear that you respect Russia's borders, too. These sorts of geographical blunders completely undermine the point - and send the message that you don't take your interlocutor seriously enough to care.
That is incredibly stupid.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/feb/10/russia-must-respect-ukraine-sovereignty-liz-truss-talks-open ...Away from the cameras, Truss allegedly confused the Russian regions of Voronezh and Rostov with Ukrainian territory when Lavrov asked her whether she recognised Russia’s sovereignty over them. She repeatedly told Lavrov that the UK would never recognise Moscow’s claim, until the British ambassador was forced to step in to correct her, the Russian business daily Kommersant reported.
Truss partly confirmed the account in an interview with Russian press: “It seemed to me that Minister Lavrov was talking about a part of Ukraine. I have clearly indicated that these regions [Rostov and Voronezh] are part of sovereign Russia,” she said, according to the British embassy in Moscow.
The episode follows a previous taunt by Russia last week when the foreign secretary was taken to task over her comment that “we are supplying and offering extra support to our Baltic allies across the Black Sea”. The Baltic Sea and the Black Sea – where Ukraine sits on the coast – are on opposite sides of Europe....
Careful, you're in danger of being called Moscow's useful idiot by the mere fact of recounting things that actually happened.
It is easy to confuse the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea, but it should not be if you the Foreign Secretary at a crucial meeting
Do we have this report of an alleged encounter authenticated?
AIUI It came from a Moscow based newspaper owned by one Alisher Usmanov.
I only know definitively about a dozen of the 'male' words (I have a vague idea of maybe 4 or 5 more), while I know almost all of the 'female' words. Kicking the ass of gender stereotyping, one word at a time.
Biden confirms he will not send any US troops to Ukraine if Russia invades, even to rescue any US citizens left there. He urges all Americans left in Ukraine to get out now
Those four B-52s that just turned up at Fairford, for ‘pre-planned exercises that have nothing to do with the Ukranian situation’ on the other hand. Maybe they came to admire the English countryside.
If Putin goes beyond Ukraine
He won't.
Not unless Johnson and Truss keep poking the bear enough to get what they want: an invasion.
Nothing would suit Boris Johnson better than for Russia to invade.
Rubbish. There's no evidence that anyone in the UK government is in favour of that. This is conspiracy-theory level hogwash.
This whole Russia vs Ukraine issue has been very useful for smoking out the cranks over the last couple of days. There are a lot more of them here than I had realised.
Comments
I quit a job because the culture was toxic, but it was nothing on that.
And by Bozza's standards, that's quite a long-term win.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/jun/08/jaffa-cake-biscuit-vat
"it's a cake.
it is made out of sponge - CAKE - not biscuit
jeez - if i made a biscuit in the size & shape of a poodle, would it be a dog? no - it's a still a biscuit
if you cut a scone and fill with jam and cream, is it a cake? no - it's still a scone
if i make a jelly the same size and shape as a human, can i pretend he's human and take him to the pub? yes. yes i can.
but it would not be human, it would be a jelly and i would look like a deranged idiot.
a jaffa CAKE is a cake that happens to be the size and shape of a biscuit
anyone who thinks a jaffa CAKE is a biscuit is a fool and should not be trusted with metal cutlery"
That doesn't make the prospects for his applying consistent pressure and oversight all that much better, of course.
It is peculiar, and intriguing. I suspect it is a mix of all these things, an infrasonic sound of *some* kind - could be organic OR mechanical, which then kicks off our evolved dread of these sounds, inducing feelings of unease, even panic
So every member of my family I can think of who has gone to Moscow, or similar weather destinations, ended up buying a hat there.
https://smarkets.com/event/42605599/politics/uk/police/next-metropolitan-police-commissioner
It doesn't see to work with the NYT? But I haven't tried very hard
A senior Tory MP told the FT 'a confidence vote would be on the cards straight away', adding: 'Johnson's position is not sustainable if he or his team are served with a fixed-penalty notice . . . it will be impossible to govern with any sort of credibility."
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10501631/Tory-MPs-warn-Boris-Johnson-face-confidence-vote-police-hand-Partygate-fine.html
Hmm. Patel's pick for the next commissioner needs to be kept an *extremely* careful eye on, given this government's well-established record in these kinds of areas now.
But that's just my opinion. And as one of 65 million, its basically worthless.
When you're insisting on the importance of recognising and respecting international borders, it's pretty important to make it clear that you respect Russia's borders, too.
These sorts of geographical blunders completely undermine the point - and send the message that you don't take your interlocutor seriously enough to care.
That is incredibly stupid.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/feb/10/russia-must-respect-ukraine-sovereignty-liz-truss-talks-open
...Away from the cameras, Truss allegedly confused the Russian regions of Voronezh and Rostov with Ukrainian territory when Lavrov asked her whether she recognised Russia’s sovereignty over them. She repeatedly told Lavrov that the UK would never recognise Moscow’s claim, until the British ambassador was forced to step in to correct her, the Russian business daily Kommersant reported.
Truss partly confirmed the account in an interview with Russian press: “It seemed to me that Minister Lavrov was talking about a part of Ukraine. I have clearly indicated that these regions [Rostov and Voronezh] are part of sovereign Russia,” she said, according to the British embassy in Moscow.
The episode follows a previous taunt by Russia last week when the foreign secretary was taken to task over her comment that “we are supplying and offering extra support to our Baltic allies across the Black Sea”. The Baltic Sea and the Black Sea – where Ukraine sits on the coast – are on opposite sides of Europe....
Oh, sorry, pressed the auto-respond to @Leon button by mistake.
.
@Foxy 's neck of the woods seems to be a bastion of good practice (as I noticed at the beginning of the pandemic at the time of the discharge into care homes disasters).
Royal Statistical Society @RoyalStatSoc
We asked a sample of MPs the same simple probability question we asked them ten years ago - if you toss a coin twice, what is the probability of getting two heads?
This time round, around half of respondents (52%) gave the correct answer of 25%
This is a likely improvement from when we polled MPs in 2011, when 40% of respondents gave the correct answer.
Just incredible.
https://twitter.com/RoyalStatSoc/status/1492061634562510855
https://twitter.com/amateuradam/status/1484601696177123328?t=WPy3TcyPkjD6niPl9SLfVw&s=19
Lots of comments below from doctors and similar saying that their unit was the same.
Medicine, like any job at the sharp end of messy human existence has dark and gallows humour as a coping mechanism. I know the police do too. It can be the slippery slope though to some real bad behaviour, as I think we see in this supposed comedy series.
The Baltic states would defend themselves backed by NATO and send troops to the border to control refugees, they would not go to war with Russia over Ukraine
No developer tasked with actually hiding the content behind a login page would go down the route the news media has taken, they would go down the same route as Facebook, Instagram and increasingly Twitter.
Therefore, the conclusion is that they are not too worried about such activity, and are happy that a few IT geeks writing JavaScript to get around them, and a few more using private browsing or judicious use of the stop button when the page is half loaded, if it means their stories get wide distribution and become part of ‘the conversation’.
There are the separate "meet with" tests (I can't remember the phrasing but applied to 2 or more gathering indoors who were part of the same household) which would apply if he gathered with people in his home. So he has to then argue that the unlawful gatherings were adjacent to him but he wasn't attending them as events in his home. Our even, bizarrely, that everyone there was part of the "household" because they worked in his home.
Clearly this doesn't work so well for any events in the flat, unless there's an attempt to argue that even the flat is functionally part of the office complex and so other people were able to come and have an illegal gathering there without the PM arranging, inviting or attending.
Later on when the "organiser" offences are introduced it gets harder again because he/Carrie also have to demonstrate that they didn't arrange or initiate the gatherings.
If we knew there would be a 'Reporting Van' in the market place on, for example, every Wednesday it would save the Neighbourhood Watch people a good deal of time on Facebook.
Listen to this man-eating tiger roaring (in a cage, sadly)
Fuck me that is frightening
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqDKqx6JGrk
Now put that roar below 20Hz, so you can't actually hear it, but you do experience all the dread, panic, horror and shivers. And tigers can do that
"Tigers release infrasound in their roars. But do they consciously use infrasound to ground their prey? Many believe so. Wildlife researcher and professor Mel Sunquist and his wife experienced a tiger’s roar front and center in the jungle. The two survived the tiger’s wrath, but felt overwhelmed and paralyzed in place as it happened, "It feels like the sound is actually penetrating you. It's so forceful. My wife said she felt like she couldn't move. She felt like she was sort of frozen." Many tiger researchers believe that these fearsome predators deliberately employ deep infrasonic sound blasts to disorient prey."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/12/001201152406.htm
Someone in Hollywood should make a movie where the soundtrack throughout has noises below 20Hz. It would scare the living squits out of everyone, and make a billion quid
On current polling lots of Tory councillors would lose their seats and on the latest Yougov London subsample the Tories face near wipeout in the capital, losing Barnet, Hillingdon, Westminster and Wandsworth to Labour.
Only Bexley and narrowly Bromley and Kensington and Chelsea would stay blue
@Dominic2306
NB. he will try to keep his written evidence to cops secret (MPs shd insist it's published) but also there is *written evidence* re organisation/behaviour in the flat, so normal tactic of lying cd >> perjury
Since many doctors have no professional experience outside healthcare, they assume that is just how it is.
This is exactly the same as we saw with the Brexit negotiations, where the EU side could happily rely on a substantial section of the UK media endlessly repeating their talking points.
Rather undermines the sense of competence she'd hope to project as a result of concluding all those trade deals.
That said in my time as a Case Investigator for the Medical Director I did see some worrying things. These were being addressed, but these are only ever the tip of an iceberg.
Sympathies to your friend. From the FT article it clearly does drive people up the wall. Another point of interest made in that piece: once you become aware of it, then it doesn't go away. But you can apparently live in blissful ignorance until that anti-epiphany
Something similar-ish happened to me, during Lockdown 1, when, for the first time - in those silenced streets - I realised just how loud some moped and motorbikes have become, due to doctored exhausts (a debate we had on PB the other day). Now I cannot UNhear them, and the rasping crackle of them revving at the lights makes me murderous
Luckily I don't hear it that often. But I can share your friend's angst
For the gatherings in the wider No. 10 complex I agree.
@IanDunt
They're really going to try everything aren't. All possible justifications, no matter how grubby or illogical.
https://twitter.com/IanDunt/status/1492058166133145602
It's an event I'm not betting on but if I had to I would guess that some time soon after the May local elections would be the most likely point of departure.
The FO has not denied either comment (as a quick google shows), merely 'clarified' them.
Your 'Brexit' comparison is otiose. I am completely in sympathy with the message we're trying to send to Moscow; Truss undermined it.
PS I thought "glad to see" was one of the PB tropes we'd agreed to outlaw.
Incidentally I am fully aware that she was originally a "remainer", but nonetheless she would not be in her current role without The Clown's patronage.
After a visit to doc, perfect silence (from him) ensued.
NHS management didn't really exist until the 1980s, seriously.
https://navigator.health.org.uk/theme/griffiths-report-management-nhs
Prior to that it was administration and consensus.
Other papers work on send everything to the reader, then check the subscription and if it's invalid hide most of the article.
It doesn't take much to inject something in the latter cases and stop the javascript before it deletes the text - so as you say it's almost intentional.
The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) Regulations 2020
"7. During the emergency period, no person may participate in a gathering in a public place of more than two people except—
(a)where all the persons in the gathering are members of the same household,
(b)where the gathering is essential for work purposes,
...."
In the absence of a definition of "public place" within the regulations or their parent legislation we have to look at the intention of Parliament. What you say Johnson will argue is that Number 10 Downing Street was not a "not public place" and so a gathering of people there was and could be lawful whatever the circumstances. Think about the implications of that. Could everyone in a block of flats (a "not public place") have had a party? Could people have hopped over garden fences (one "not public place" place to another "not public place") to have a party? The Queen could have had a party for all her staff at Buck House? Huge if true.
Alternatively it is a public place and his June 2020 birthday party was "essential for work purposes". Again, huge if true.
I have a feeling the Tories will do a lot less badly in London than expected although still lose at least a modest no. of seats. Labour will probably gain Wandsworth but I'm not at all sure about that and I'm less confident about predicting Barnet.
They will probably get completely hammered in northern metropolitan districts but they have limited numbers of seats to lose there.
They are also vulnerable in Somerset to the Lib Dems but even last night's by election there which the LDs gained actually showed a small swing from the Lib Dems to the Tories
I'm not sure how the Tories lose more than ~200 seats overall TBH
The Tories face their worst local election results in London ever, even worse than 1994 and 1998.
Not having a defined management function with skills etc (as described in that report) was part of the problem back in the day, in many industries. You had the shop floor and a bunch of people... who weren't on the shop floor.
Having a carefully defined structure, responsibilities etc was considered very American back then.
And I suspect that they would claim that Number Ten was simultaneously a home and a workplace, or only one, or the other, depending on which provides the midst convenient interpretation of the law.
They have decided that they very much dislike the government, for reasons very much to do with the EU relationship, and so will say whatever supports that viewpoint - even if that is playing into the Russian narrative.
The foreign secretary went to Moscow yesterday to try and avert a war, and today a substantial part of our media are repeating the Russian denunciation of her, and another substantial part are dedicating their coverage to what she was wearing.
We saw the same with the EU negotiations, and again with the “Independent SAGE” during the pandemic, and all it does is undermine support for British strategic aims.
By the way, well done to Starmer yesterday, for his comments on the “Stop the War” mob, who he rightly identifies as being very much in favour of a war so long as the UK, US and Israel are on the losing side. Although he didn’t mention the last one by name.
Really? Colour me 'surprised'!
ALIENS!HUM!Asking for friend!
Everybody Knows
https://youtu.be/Gxd23UVID7k
Can't think what else that might apply to...
I was on the back, so acutely aware that if the tiger did decide to chase us and attack, I'd be the first victim...
https://twitter.com/8RosarioSanchez/status/1491890977803579401?s=20&t=Fh-hAI6eJ2oeo6n4-NFJ0Q
Perhaps we should look forward with interest to the next edition of Private Eye!
Or could be up there with Peter Cook's view of the Jeremy Thorpe trial.
The roar of a lion is not quite as impressive, but still something. Eerily, I often hear the Asian lions in London zoo roaring on quiet nights, near my flat. Quite disconcerting, in the civilised environs of Regent's Park - suddenly you get this interruption of the primal
I was kind of impressed that neither the mahout or guide had any weapons.
Latter, when we were walking on foot in the reserve, the guide asks me if I was carrying the kukri I'd bought as souvenir, earlier in the tour. Because he had spotted some fresh tiger spore.....
Sunak: "The PM has my total support".
hmmm...
Map of 2022 local elections.
Key
Orange - London Borough
Green - Unitary
Pink - Metropolitan
Purple - District
Grey - No Election.
So no elections in most of the Tory Shires.
Other 'sonic' issues are murky. Havana syndrome may well be entirely imaginary, and certainly not as the result of underhand enemy agents with special illness inducing sounds. Certainly there are correlations to mass hysterical illness in school children. I'd also throw into the mix some of the hysteria about spiking (drinks and using needles). The ability to actually inject someone in a nightclub with an agent that will make them pass out etc is not likely to be widespread. I have no doubt that drink spiking is common, but also that sometimes people have too much to drink without realising. Atual needle spiking I would expect to be vanishingly rare, and it also recapitulates other historical scare stories about people being injected by unknown assailants in the street. (See Fortean Times back catalogue for MANY examples of the above).
One last thing - peoples hearing is different. My wife's is better than mine - she hears the phone from upstairs and I do not. Thats good for me - I get to stay in bed...
edit - I say "looking for", but really it's `"listening for"
It's also a matter of history, I think. The Russians always bought up ALCMs at disarmament conferences. Waving pictures of B52s carrying lots etc.....
We have:-
1. The IOPC
2. Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary
3. Police and Crime Commissioners
4. The College of Policing
5. The Police Federation
6. Lots of independent reviews by judges and others.
7. In London the Mayor and the Home Secretary
All of them with slightly different aims and falling over each other and allowing everyone to point to each other and say "not me, guv" and a large part of the reason why nothing gets done or easily or quickly enough.
This really needs sorting out.
AIUI It came from a Moscow based newspaper owned by one Alisher Usmanov.
https://twitter.com/jurijfedorov/status/1490151680570187777?s=20&t=3MTxbaHTVRX5CYT-t2ggdA
- with no apologies to Dan Rather