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Are you a one hole or two hole person? – politicalbetting.com

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    turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 15,202
    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    If these are the summers we can now regularly expect (a big if) that is actually going to transform daily life, at least in southern England

    I remember climate changers, in the 1990s, saying we could expect London summers to be more like the Loire Valley in the 2020s-2030s, longer drier summers, wet winters, a few degrees warmer overall

    But this is more like the traditional climate of Burgundy, the Maconnais perhaps, or even further south? Will winters get harsher?

    Yes if gulf stream gets fucked up, else no. Not even global warming can convert us from island to continent.
    Yes, but that is the theory. Gulf Stream will weaken. Or maybe it already is. I'm not sure all these theories have been "debunked"

    https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/why-is-the-gulf-stream-slowing-down-and-what-does-it-mean-for-the-future-of-the-uks-climate/
    Some claim were made a while ago for slowing, but now not thought correct.
    Yes, if the Gulf Stream did shut down, hello much snowier winters, but there no evidence of it happening yet.
    There's also no evidence of my mortality, yet. The desalination theory looks pretty credible though.
    Credible theory yes, no evidence of it slowing the Gulf Stream yet though.
  • Options
    DavidLDavidL Posts: 51,307
    Well that rain stuff turned out to be a bit of a damp squib. Really disappointing. Hopefully we get more tonight but the roads, which are warm, are drying out already.
  • Options
    williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 48,071
    Some speculation that the boss of the Wagner Group may have come to an unfortunate end in Ukraine:

    https://twitter.com/ralee85/status/1558872988619051010
  • Options
    So WHY is Lizz Truss going to surprise us, I keep reading this but I am curious as to why. From a betting perspective it would be useful.
  • Options
    LeonLeon Posts: 47,249
    moonshine said:

    Liz Truss is going to be the Lady Jane Grey of politics, she's so bad even the youth wing of Sinn Fein are taking the piss out of her.




    https://twitter.com/Ogra_SF/status/1558770724793368576

    Hold on a sec. Aren’t you to this day a vocal apologist for the clusterf*cl of a govt that was the Coalition?

    Which cut our strategic natural gas storage off at the knees.

    That cow towed to the Russian regime and willingly accepted its money (even after the latter invaded Crimea and used radiological weapons on British soil), rather than underlining to allies the collective danger of them relying on Russian hydrocarbons?

    Which failed to move forward domestic nuclear, so in awe were they with achieving a superficially balanced budget and a pathetic schoolboy crush on the Chinese Communist Party, leading to a dishonest sleight of hand to shift the construction liability off balance sheet and recklessly hand the Chinese a foothold in the most key and sensitive of industries?

    That spurned tidal? Set solar back years? Which imposed “windfall” taxes on the North Sea which achieved nothing apart from disincentivising investment?

    Rather than snide smugly about a Brexit wedge issue such as this tweet, I personally am ready to give Truss a chance. She can’t do worse than those chimps “The Quad”, who to a man have shown their true colours since leaving office with the company they’ve kept. Chinese autocrats, Russian oligarchs, crooked commodity barons and Mark Zuckerburg. Not sure which is scoring worst on that front!

    If she turns out to be shit then we’ll all vote against her (or not vote). But she deserves as much of a chance as any other incoming Prime Minister from any party, until her record in office says otherwise.

    Off topic, but have you seen the latest analyses of the Calvine photo?

    Increasingly looks like it is not a “rock in a loch”. Mick West is struggling to debunk it. More eye witness testimony has emerged

    So we are left with two hypotheses

    1. It is a massively elaborate hoax over decades

    2. It shows a genuine and anomalous object in the sky over Scotland. Which could be: what?
  • Options
    AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 20,000
    edited August 2022
    Graeme Souness probably going to be in hot water for saying “football is a man’s game again”…

    …while sat next to former England Ladies footballer Karen Carney
  • Options
    Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,462
    edited August 2022
    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Carnyx said:

    biggles said:

    biggles said:

    Carnyx said:
    Let me get this straight. One end of AN ISLAND WITH ABOVE AVERAGE RAINFALL is talking about importing water from the other end of AN ISLAND WITH ABOVE AVERAGE RAINFALL rather than desalination or building more sodding reservoirs?

    Land in England, particularly the South of England, is pretty expensive. Flooding more of it to create more reservoirs doesn't seem to be a particularly good use of land. Similarly, we are in the middle of an energy crisis and desalination is ruinously energy-intensive. This also does not seem to be an optimal response. By contrast, there seems to be more than enough water in the north and the west of the island, so moving it about would seem like a logical approach - assuming you cannot convince people living in the south to move themselves to the water.
    I don’t accept that it is hard to build new reservoirs. If it’s done sympathetically it’s just a nice lake and no one can sensibly object, even in the centre of the green belt where nothing else can be built.

    Rutland Water is very nice indeed.
    It sounds a weird and quite shit proposal. Build more reservoirs. There has been a quite deliberate policy of not building them, due to EU regulations seeking to promote the idea of water scarcity. Building them is a real 'Brexit opportunity', but sadly the same sacks of shit who gold plated the EU policies are still running the show. If Liz turns this around, we'll know that we have a winner. The exact same is true at the other end of the spectrum on dredging.
    That's not strictly true: the EU has been a barrier to building new reservoirs because they have mandated a ridiculous amount of red tape arrive environmental impact.
    How else would they do it?
    You are assuming malicious intent, rather than a cumbersome bureaucracy that lacks sufficient democratic checks and balances.

    Those who are beholden to the idea that the earth can't (or shouldn't) support the world's human population at its current levels would not recognise such an intent as malicious.

    Furthermore, the passages I gave upthread make it quite clear that the European Comission mandated that increased water costs, water rationing, water reuse etc. were the preferred method of dealing any shortages and new 'water infrastructure' (which includes reservoirs) was a last resort. That is, by definition, the accusation I levelled.
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    williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 48,071

    So WHY is Lizz Truss going to surprise us, I keep reading this but I am curious as to why. From a betting perspective it would be useful.

    A lot of people seem to expect her to be a combination of IDS and Bubble from Absolutely Fabulous. It’s this expectation that she can scarcely fail to confound.
  • Options
    kyf_100kyf_100 Posts: 3,955
    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    Liz Truss is going to be the Lady Jane Grey of politics, she's so bad even the youth wing of Sinn Fein are taking the piss out of her.




    https://twitter.com/Ogra_SF/status/1558770724793368576

    Hold on a sec. Aren’t you to this day a vocal apologist for the clusterf*cl of a govt that was the Coalition?

    Which cut our strategic natural gas storage off at the knees.

    That cow towed to the Russian regime and willingly accepted its money (even after the latter invaded Crimea and used radiological weapons on British soil), rather than underlining to allies the collective danger of them relying on Russian hydrocarbons?

    Which failed to move forward domestic nuclear, so in awe were they with achieving a superficially balanced budget and a pathetic schoolboy crush on the Chinese Communist Party, leading to a dishonest sleight of hand to shift the construction liability off balance sheet and recklessly hand the Chinese a foothold in the most key and sensitive of industries?

    That spurned tidal? Set solar back years? Which imposed “windfall” taxes on the North Sea which achieved nothing apart from disincentivising investment?

    Rather than snide smugly about a Brexit wedge issue such as this tweet, I personally am ready to give Truss a chance. She can’t do worse than those chimps “The Quad”, who to a man have shown their true colours since leaving office with the company they’ve kept. Chinese autocrats, Russian oligarchs, crooked commodity barons and Mark Zuckerburg. Not sure which is scoring worst on that front!

    If she turns out to be shit then we’ll all vote against her (or not vote). But she deserves as much of a chance as any other incoming Prime Minister from any party, until her record in office says otherwise.

    Off topic, but have you seen the latest analyses of the Calvine photo?

    Increasingly looks like it is not a “rock in a loch”. Mick West is struggling to debunk it. More eye witness testimony has emerged

    So we are left with two hypotheses

    1. It is a massively elaborate hoax over decades

    2. It shows a genuine and anomalous object in the sky over Scotland. Which could be: what?
    At the risk of repeating the Father Ted / Dougal / plastic cow sketch, have we considered the possibility that the UFO is a kite or similar object very close up, with the fighter jet much further away, thus creating the optical illusion of an enormous flying saucer type thing at the same distance from the photographer as the jet?

    It could even be a Blackbird v2 spy/stealth prototype flying directly toward the photographer and therefore much closer to the camera than the jet behind it.
  • Options
    EabhalEabhal Posts: 5,906
    DavidL said:

    Well that rain stuff turned out to be a bit of a damp squib. Really disappointing. Hopefully we get more tonight but the roads, which are warm, are drying out already.

    Yeah, that was nothing. And did you see that water bottle experiment?

    https://twitter.com/UniofReading/status/1557350976725581824?s=20&t=YqVd9rL7PbDNXojZzGm3gw

  • Options

    So WHY is Lizz Truss going to surprise us, I keep reading this but I am curious as to why. From a betting perspective it would be useful.

    A lot of people seem to expect her to be a combination of IDS and Bubble from Absolutely Fabulous. It’s this expectation that she can scarcely fail to confound.
    That's not saying she's going to be good though? Why should she not be rubbish?
  • Options
    AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670

    Some speculation that the boss of the Wagner Group may have come to an unfortunate end in Ukraine:

    https://twitter.com/ralee85/status/1558872988619051010

    They posted pictures with visible street addresses.

    O

    M

    G
  • Options
    dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,977

    So WHY is Lizz Truss going to surprise us, I keep reading this but I am curious as to why. From a betting perspective it would be useful.

    A lot of people seem to expect her to be a combination of IDS and Bubble from Absolutely Fabulous. It’s this expectation that she can scarcely fail to confound.
    However. Given the situation that is hardly a glowing endorsement. Of course she'll be better than that.
  • Options
    Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,462
    DavidL said:

    Well that rain stuff turned out to be a bit of a damp squib. Really disappointing. Hopefully we get more tonight but the roads, which are warm, are drying out already.

    Damp. :lol:
  • Options
    turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 15,202
    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    Liz Truss is going to be the Lady Jane Grey of politics, she's so bad even the youth wing of Sinn Fein are taking the piss out of her.




    https://twitter.com/Ogra_SF/status/1558770724793368576

    Hold on a sec. Aren’t you to this day a vocal apologist for the clusterf*cl of a govt that was the Coalition?

    Which cut our strategic natural gas storage off at the knees.

    That cow towed to the Russian regime and willingly accepted its money (even after the latter invaded Crimea and used radiological weapons on British soil), rather than underlining to allies the collective danger of them relying on Russian hydrocarbons?

    Which failed to move forward domestic nuclear, so in awe were they with achieving a superficially balanced budget and a pathetic schoolboy crush on the Chinese Communist Party, leading to a dishonest sleight of hand to shift the construction liability off balance sheet and recklessly hand the Chinese a foothold in the most key and sensitive of industries?

    That spurned tidal? Set solar back years? Which imposed “windfall” taxes on the North Sea which achieved nothing apart from disincentivising investment?

    Rather than snide smugly about a Brexit wedge issue such as this tweet, I personally am ready to give Truss a chance. She can’t do worse than those chimps “The Quad”, who to a man have shown their true colours since leaving office with the company they’ve kept. Chinese autocrats, Russian oligarchs, crooked commodity barons and Mark Zuckerburg. Not sure which is scoring worst on that front!

    If she turns out to be shit then we’ll all vote against her (or not vote). But she deserves as much of a chance as any other incoming Prime Minister from any party, until her record in office says otherwise.

    Off topic, but have you seen the latest analyses of the Calvine photo?

    Increasingly looks like it is not a “rock in a loch”. Mick West is struggling to debunk it. More eye witness testimony has emerged

    So we are left with two hypotheses

    1. It is a massively elaborate hoax over decades

    2. It shows a genuine and anomalous object in the sky over Scotland. Which could be: what?
    At the risk of repeating the Father Ted / Dougal / plastic cow sketch, have we considered the possibility that the UFO is a kite or similar object very close up, with the fighter jet much further away, thus creating the optical illusion of an enormous flying saucer type thing at the same distance from the photographer as the jet?

    It could even be a Blackbird v2 spy/stealth prototype flying directly toward the photographer and therefore much closer to the camera than the jet behind it.
    Allegedly there were six photos. However, as always we only have one, and this is hugely suspicious. This is the one that ‘worked’.
    If you are bored, google Gordon Faulkner Warminster for similar.
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,631
    A few days ago, the Grey Zone (RSOTM) Telegram channel posted photos of a visit to the so-called Wagner HQ in the Donbas (Popasna). Prigozhin may have been there.

    The photos were apparently easy to geolocate. Ukraine destroyed it in a HIMARS strike today.

    https://twitter.com/AricToler/status/1558869697747107840
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    DavidLDavidL Posts: 51,307
    Eabhal said:

    DavidL said:

    Well that rain stuff turned out to be a bit of a damp squib. Really disappointing. Hopefully we get more tonight but the roads, which are warm, are drying out already.

    Yeah, that was nothing. And did you see that water bottle experiment?

    https://twitter.com/UniofReading/status/1557350976725581824?s=20&t=YqVd9rL7PbDNXojZzGm3gw

    Yep, that is a really vivid demonstration of a well known phenomenon.
  • Options
    rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,255
    boulay said:

    Eabhal said:

    Off topic - a large number of Rowans round me have ripe berries. Is that unusual? The internet isn't helping too much.

    Seem to be a little earlier but only a couple of weeks here.



    Normal.

    As a child we always took a holiday in the last two weeks of August usually in Yorkshire. I recall thinking every year that it's nearly holiday time when the rowan tree down the road started to get red.
  • Options
    AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    Nigelb said:

    A few days ago, the Grey Zone (RSOTM) Telegram channel posted photos of a visit to the so-called Wagner HQ in the Donbas (Popasna). Prigozhin may have been there.

    The photos were apparently easy to geolocate. Ukraine destroyed it in a HIMARS strike today.

    https://twitter.com/AricToler/status/1558869697747107840

    "easy to geolocate" means there was a visible address nameplate in one of the photos. They may as well have posted the what3words location.
  • Options
    EabhalEabhal Posts: 5,906
    edited August 2022
    Alistair said:

    Nigelb said:

    A few days ago, the Grey Zone (RSOTM) Telegram channel posted photos of a visit to the so-called Wagner HQ in the Donbas (Popasna). Prigozhin may have been there.

    The photos were apparently easy to geolocate. Ukraine destroyed it in a HIMARS strike today.

    https://twitter.com/AricToler/status/1558869697747107840

    "easy to geolocate" means there was a visible address nameplate in one of the photos. They may as well have posted the what3words location.
    If they'd used what3words but missed a plural, they could've end up hitting Copenhagen instead.

    (sorry, I didn't mean to set him off....)
  • Options
    EabhalEabhal Posts: 5,906

    boulay said:

    Eabhal said:

    Off topic - a large number of Rowans round me have ripe berries. Is that unusual? The internet isn't helping too much.

    Seem to be a little earlier but only a couple of weeks here.



    Normal.

    As a child we always took a holiday in the last two weeks of August usually in Yorkshire. I recall thinking every year that it's nearly holiday time when the rowan tree down the road started to get red.
    Crosses that one off my list of portents of the apocalypse.
  • Options
    Richard_TyndallRichard_Tyndall Posts: 30,955
    edited August 2022

    MattW said:

    biggles said:

    Carnyx said:
    Let me get this straight. One end of AN ISLAND WITH ABOVE AVERAGE RAINFALL is talking about importing water from the other end of AN ISLAND WITH ABOVE AVERAGE RAINFALL rather than desalination or building more sodding reservoirs?

    I'd say it's total BS. Distraction tactics for Nimbies.

    Having crippled HS2 to save £18bn and keep people in their aeroplanes and freight on the roads, some anon chinless wonder thinks they can pull £14bn (cost of the Coutour Canal a decade ago) out of thin air to build a route to Kielder Water. Current claimed cost would be more like £20-25bn. Final cost more like £50, perhaps?

    The entire max capacity of Kielder Water is 199M m3, which is the same as Rutland Water plus Graffham Water within 10%. The forecast capacity of the Abingdon setup, for which property purchases have been happening for decades, is about 75% of Kielder Water afaics, and is currently costed (2018) at approx £1.5bn.

    The economics are challenging to an extent that Stalin would blink.

    From another angle Thames Water put out 2.4bn l of water per day, and leak approx 600m l/day - a number down from 700m l/day.

    They are committed to a further 20% reduction by 2030.

    I just don't see a "canal" as a credible option.
    And yet it is already being done. Anglian Water - to their great credit - have spent the last few years planning and constructing a large main to transfer water from the north of their region to the south. Construction is going on right now in the fields around my village. And very well planned and thought out it is as well. They have held close discussions with all communities along the route and have actively replanned sections to avoid areas of archaeological, natural or social concern.

    The idea that this cannot be done just shows both a lack of imagination and realism. It is already happening and more will be done.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lincolnshire-57602841

    Oh and it has bugger all to do with Boris and his ideas. Anglian Water are doing it because it makes commercial and practical sense.

    That is Anglia distributing water in their region - their job. The Boris Crevasse was to take water from NornEngland, Scotland and Wales and steal it for that London. Not the same thing...
    Any national system will by necessity also be local in its construction. I have no real interest in the Boris Canal as a specific solution but the basic premise - of taking water from areas that have a lot and redistributing it to those that don't have enough - is an obvious and sensible idea as long as we are not willing to consider the alternative of stopping building new houses in areas with not enough water. The idea that it is 'stealing' is just wrong.
  • Options
    Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,462

    So WHY is Lizz Truss going to surprise us, I keep reading this but I am curious as to why. From a betting perspective it would be useful.

    A lot of people seem to expect her to be a combination of IDS and Bubble from Absolutely Fabulous. It’s this expectation that she can scarcely fail to confound.
    I feel that her ministerial record demonstrates how she'll do. Solid, a plodder, not always the best communicator, but relentlessly chalking up fairly good and positive achievements. Borises time as Foreign Sec was a fairly good preview of his time as PM. May's 'grimly hanging on' tenure at the Home Office had a lot of parallels with her time as PM. People don't really change. Truss was, in sum, a successful Minister, so she'll be a successful PM.
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    DavidLDavidL Posts: 51,307

    DavidL said:

    Well that rain stuff turned out to be a bit of a damp squib. Really disappointing. Hopefully we get more tonight but the roads, which are warm, are drying out already.

    Damp. :lol:
    I even meant it 😉
  • Options
    williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 48,071

    So WHY is Lizz Truss going to surprise us, I keep reading this but I am curious as to why. From a betting perspective it would be useful.

    A lot of people seem to expect her to be a combination of IDS and Bubble from Absolutely Fabulous. It’s this expectation that she can scarcely fail to confound.
    That's not saying she's going to be good though? Why should she not be rubbish?
    She’s a new kind of PM that we haven’t seen before: a generation younger than Starmer, a modern Tory not in the shadow of Blair, a moderniser not in the shadow of Cameron, and a post-Brexit PM not overly encumbered by the divisions of the referendum.

  • Options

    So WHY is Lizz Truss going to surprise us, I keep reading this but I am curious as to why. From a betting perspective it would be useful.

    A lot of people seem to expect her to be a combination of IDS and Bubble from Absolutely Fabulous. It’s this expectation that she can scarcely fail to confound.
    That's not saying she's going to be good though? Why should she not be rubbish?
    She’s a new kind of PM that we haven’t seen before: a generation younger than Starmer, a modern Tory not in the shadow of Blair, a moderniser not in the shadow of Cameron, and a post-Brexit PM not overly encumbered by the divisions of the referendum.

    12 years is a "generation"? So IndyRef2 in 2026, then?
  • Options
    kyf_100kyf_100 Posts: 3,955

    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    Liz Truss is going to be the Lady Jane Grey of politics, she's so bad even the youth wing of Sinn Fein are taking the piss out of her.




    https://twitter.com/Ogra_SF/status/1558770724793368576

    Hold on a sec. Aren’t you to this day a vocal apologist for the clusterf*cl of a govt that was the Coalition?

    Which cut our strategic natural gas storage off at the knees.

    That cow towed to the Russian regime and willingly accepted its money (even after the latter invaded Crimea and used radiological weapons on British soil), rather than underlining to allies the collective danger of them relying on Russian hydrocarbons?

    Which failed to move forward domestic nuclear, so in awe were they with achieving a superficially balanced budget and a pathetic schoolboy crush on the Chinese Communist Party, leading to a dishonest sleight of hand to shift the construction liability off balance sheet and recklessly hand the Chinese a foothold in the most key and sensitive of industries?

    That spurned tidal? Set solar back years? Which imposed “windfall” taxes on the North Sea which achieved nothing apart from disincentivising investment?

    Rather than snide smugly about a Brexit wedge issue such as this tweet, I personally am ready to give Truss a chance. She can’t do worse than those chimps “The Quad”, who to a man have shown their true colours since leaving office with the company they’ve kept. Chinese autocrats, Russian oligarchs, crooked commodity barons and Mark Zuckerburg. Not sure which is scoring worst on that front!

    If she turns out to be shit then we’ll all vote against her (or not vote). But she deserves as much of a chance as any other incoming Prime Minister from any party, until her record in office says otherwise.

    Off topic, but have you seen the latest analyses of the Calvine photo?

    Increasingly looks like it is not a “rock in a loch”. Mick West is struggling to debunk it. More eye witness testimony has emerged

    So we are left with two hypotheses

    1. It is a massively elaborate hoax over decades

    2. It shows a genuine and anomalous object in the sky over Scotland. Which could be: what?
    At the risk of repeating the Father Ted / Dougal / plastic cow sketch, have we considered the possibility that the UFO is a kite or similar object very close up, with the fighter jet much further away, thus creating the optical illusion of an enormous flying saucer type thing at the same distance from the photographer as the jet?

    It could even be a Blackbird v2 spy/stealth prototype flying directly toward the photographer and therefore much closer to the camera than the jet behind it.
    Allegedly there were six photos. However, as always we only have one, and this is hugely suspicious. This is the one that ‘worked’.
    If you are bored, google Gordon Faulkner Warminster for similar.
    Assuming there are eyewitness accounts of a bloody fast, black triangular thing booming about Scotland, with only the one photo to back it up...

    If you look at renders of the supposed stealth spyplane the US was developing in the late 80s, especially the view from behind as it flies away from you, I would say it's a more likely explanation than extraterrestrials.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_(aircraft)
  • Options
    kle4kle4 Posts: 91,780
    Leon said:

    Liz Truss is going to be the Lady Jane Grey of politics, she's so bad even the youth wing of Sinn Fein are taking the piss out of her.




    https://twitter.com/Ogra_SF/status/1558770724793368576

    I predict that Liz Truss is going to surprise you. On the upside. And these predictions of her catastrophic ineptitude will look foolish

    Of course, I might like the fool in six months time. I just have a hunch she's cannier than most suspect
    I don't think it is a question of her ineptitude. Were it not for the enthusiastic support of idiots like JRM, who she will presumably reward, I'd be far less concerned about her premiership - she rose to high office quickly and has honestly not seemed that bad as far as I can see.

    But she is choosing to pitch as the Boris candidate whilst also disavowing many of his policies, which is just silly, and seems to be making a virtue of throwing any old idea at the wall and hoping something sticks. Given the scale of the problems the country appears to be facing, such a cavalier attitude worries me.
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    HYUFD said:
    On the face of it I agree with Packham - not a common occurrence for me.

    The argument the Norwegians make is that the Walrus was dangerous if people went too near it. They warned people to stay away but people ignored the warnings. At this point the obvious solution would have been to say if you get hurt it is your own stupid fault. Why kill the walrus when it is the people who are in the wrong?

    This is very strange for a country that has Preikestolen as one of its most popular tourist attractions.

    https://preikestolen365.com/
  • Options

    So WHY is Lizz Truss going to surprise us, I keep reading this but I am curious as to why. From a betting perspective it would be useful.

    A lot of people seem to expect her to be a combination of IDS and Bubble from Absolutely Fabulous. It’s this expectation that she can scarcely fail to confound.
    That's not saying she's going to be good though? Why should she not be rubbish?
    She’s a new kind of PM that we haven’t seen before: a generation younger than Starmer, a modern Tory not in the shadow of Blair, a moderniser not in the shadow of Cameron, and a post-Brexit PM not overly encumbered by the divisions of the referendum.

    A modern Tory? She's trying be another Thatcher, what is modern about that?

    What is she trying to modernise? She's trying to continue Johnson's policies and leadership style.

    She might be very good, she doesn't seem to be a "different kind of PM", rather more of the same.
  • Options
    JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 39,031
    Incidentally, as we're talking about both water supply and interesting topological shapes, in the 1970s there was a scheme to put large storage reservoirs in The Wash. Two doughnut-shaped test reservoirs were built - I've walked out to the smaller of the two.

    Sadly the tests did not work - IIRC salt migrated through the reservoir walls into the stored water.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Trial_Bank
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    kle4kle4 Posts: 91,780
    Eabhal said:

    DavidL said:

    Well that rain stuff turned out to be a bit of a damp squib. Really disappointing. Hopefully we get more tonight but the roads, which are warm, are drying out already.

    Yeah, that was nothing. And did you see that water bottle experiment?

    https://twitter.com/UniofReading/status/1557350976725581824?s=20&t=YqVd9rL7PbDNXojZzGm3gw

    Light but persistent rain needed now. Normally Britain provides that, but we don't seem lucky right now.
  • Options
    turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 15,202
    kyf_100 said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    Liz Truss is going to be the Lady Jane Grey of politics, she's so bad even the youth wing of Sinn Fein are taking the piss out of her.




    https://twitter.com/Ogra_SF/status/1558770724793368576

    Hold on a sec. Aren’t you to this day a vocal apologist for the clusterf*cl of a govt that was the Coalition?

    Which cut our strategic natural gas storage off at the knees.

    That cow towed to the Russian regime and willingly accepted its money (even after the latter invaded Crimea and used radiological weapons on British soil), rather than underlining to allies the collective danger of them relying on Russian hydrocarbons?

    Which failed to move forward domestic nuclear, so in awe were they with achieving a superficially balanced budget and a pathetic schoolboy crush on the Chinese Communist Party, leading to a dishonest sleight of hand to shift the construction liability off balance sheet and recklessly hand the Chinese a foothold in the most key and sensitive of industries?

    That spurned tidal? Set solar back years? Which imposed “windfall” taxes on the North Sea which achieved nothing apart from disincentivising investment?

    Rather than snide smugly about a Brexit wedge issue such as this tweet, I personally am ready to give Truss a chance. She can’t do worse than those chimps “The Quad”, who to a man have shown their true colours since leaving office with the company they’ve kept. Chinese autocrats, Russian oligarchs, crooked commodity barons and Mark Zuckerburg. Not sure which is scoring worst on that front!

    If she turns out to be shit then we’ll all vote against her (or not vote). But she deserves as much of a chance as any other incoming Prime Minister from any party, until her record in office says otherwise.

    Off topic, but have you seen the latest analyses of the Calvine photo?

    Increasingly looks like it is not a “rock in a loch”. Mick West is struggling to debunk it. More eye witness testimony has emerged

    So we are left with two hypotheses

    1. It is a massively elaborate hoax over decades

    2. It shows a genuine and anomalous object in the sky over Scotland. Which could be: what?
    At the risk of repeating the Father Ted / Dougal / plastic cow sketch, have we considered the possibility that the UFO is a kite or similar object very close up, with the fighter jet much further away, thus creating the optical illusion of an enormous flying saucer type thing at the same distance from the photographer as the jet?

    It could even be a Blackbird v2 spy/stealth prototype flying directly toward the photographer and therefore much closer to the camera than the jet behind it.
    Allegedly there were six photos. However, as always we only have one, and this is hugely suspicious. This is the one that ‘worked’.
    If you are bored, google Gordon Faulkner Warminster for similar.
    Assuming there are eyewitness accounts of a bloody fast, black triangular thing booming about Scotland, with only the one photo to back it up...

    If you look at renders of the supposed stealth spyplane the US was developing in the late 80s, especially the view from behind as it flies away from you, I would say it's a more likely explanation than extraterrestrials.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_(aircraft)
    Iirc there were not a lot of eye witness reports from this alleged encounter. I also find the description funny, or off. Cowering in bushes? Why? Most would be “ooh, what do you think that is”. Until more evidence emergencies (eg the other photos) I’m stuck on hoax, that put the wing up the raf.
  • Options
    williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 48,071

    So WHY is Lizz Truss going to surprise us, I keep reading this but I am curious as to why. From a betting perspective it would be useful.

    A lot of people seem to expect her to be a combination of IDS and Bubble from Absolutely Fabulous. It’s this expectation that she can scarcely fail to confound.
    That's not saying she's going to be good though? Why should she not be rubbish?
    She’s a new kind of PM that we haven’t seen before: a generation younger than Starmer, a modern Tory not in the shadow of Blair, a moderniser not in the shadow of Cameron, and a post-Brexit PM not overly encumbered by the divisions of the referendum.

    A modern Tory? She's trying be another Thatcher, what is modern about that?

    What is she trying to modernise? She's trying to continue Johnson's policies and leadership style.

    She might be very good, she doesn't seem to be a "different kind of PM", rather more of the same.
    She’ll be the PM of the “#Uber-riding #Airbnb-ing #Deliveroo-eating #freedomfighters”

    https://twitter.com/trussliz/status/975822789759389698

  • Options
    turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 15,202
    kle4 said:

    Eabhal said:

    DavidL said:

    Well that rain stuff turned out to be a bit of a damp squib. Really disappointing. Hopefully we get more tonight but the roads, which are warm, are drying out already.

    Yeah, that was nothing. And did you see that water bottle experiment?

    https://twitter.com/UniofReading/status/1557350976725581824?s=20&t=YqVd9rL7PbDNXojZzGm3gw

    Light but persistent rain needed now. Normally Britain provides that, but we don't seem lucky right now.
    Wed looks promising for the right areas to get useful rain.
  • Options
    MattWMattW Posts: 18,575
    edited August 2022
    Alistair said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "Why eco-alarmists are wrong about almost everything
    The Great Barrier Reef is not dying, and the world is not coming to an end.
    Brendan O'Neill"

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/08/14/why-eco-alarmists-are-wrong-about-almost-everything/

    This should be read two ways:

    Firstly, great news about the reef.

    Secondly, an acknowledgement that the Australian government implemented a lot of environmental legislation that prevented mining runoff in Queensland from poisoning the reef.
    "We don't hear about the hole in the Ozone layer anymore, bunch of alarmist nonsense wasn't it?!!?"
    No.

    We took notice, took measures, and it is slowly recovering.

    On a watching brief:
    https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/copernicus-tracks-ozone-hole-closure-2021-one-longest-lived-antarctic-ozone-holes-record
  • Options
    kle4kle4 Posts: 91,780

    So WHY is Lizz Truss going to surprise us, I keep reading this but I am curious as to why. From a betting perspective it would be useful.

    A lot of people seem to expect her to be a combination of IDS and Bubble from Absolutely Fabulous. It’s this expectation that she can scarcely fail to confound.
    That's not saying she's going to be good though? Why should she not be rubbish?
    She’s a new kind of PM that we haven’t seen before: a generation younger than Starmer, a modern Tory not in the shadow of Blair, a moderniser not in the shadow of Cameron, and a post-Brexit PM not overly encumbered by the divisions of the referendum.

    What on earth are you talking about? Truss may have been a remainer but she's falling back on the same tired arguments over Brexit, perpetuating the divisions there seem like it will play a big part of her strategy, as we are likely to see over Northern Ireland.

    As for a kind of PM we've never seen before, how is that? She's not unique in age, gender, background or experience, her flexibility has been praised as a strength so she's hardly committed to modernisation, or indeed any other approach.

    I don't fear Truss, unless she promotes the plainly inadequate, but where's this hagiography coming from?
  • Options
    turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 15,202
    kle4 said:

    So WHY is Lizz Truss going to surprise us, I keep reading this but I am curious as to why. From a betting perspective it would be useful.

    A lot of people seem to expect her to be a combination of IDS and Bubble from Absolutely Fabulous. It’s this expectation that she can scarcely fail to confound.
    That's not saying she's going to be good though? Why should she not be rubbish?
    She’s a new kind of PM that we haven’t seen before: a generation younger than Starmer, a modern Tory not in the shadow of Blair, a moderniser not in the shadow of Cameron, and a post-Brexit PM not overly encumbered by the divisions of the referendum.

    What on earth are you talking about? Truss may have been a remainer but she's falling back on the same tired arguments over Brexit, perpetuating the divisions there seem like it will play a big part of her strategy, as we are likely to see over Northern Ireland.

    As for a kind of PM we've never seen before, how is that? She's not unique in age, gender, background or experience, her flexibility has been praised as a strength so she's hardly committed to modernisation, or indeed any other approach.

    I don't fear Truss, unless she promotes the plainly inadequate, but where's this hagiography coming from?
    Same place the derision is coming from. No one really knows yet.
  • Options
    EabhalEabhal Posts: 5,906

    HYUFD said:
    On the face of it I agree with Packham - not a common occurrence for me.

    The argument the Norwegians make is that the Walrus was dangerous if people went too near it. They warned people to stay away but people ignored the warnings. At this point the obvious solution would have been to say if you get hurt it is your own stupid fault. Why kill the walrus when it is the people who are in the wrong?

    This is very strange for a country that has Preikestolen as one of its most popular tourist attractions.

    https://preikestolen365.com/
    That's nothing on Trolltunga. Got one of my favourite photos there - me realising, mid-jump, that maybe I was just a little too close to the edge.
  • Options
    TazTaz Posts: 11,183

    Tomatoes going in the oven. How did my plant make the perfect number ready for my favourite oven dish?


    That looks like it’s going to be divine. The humble tomato in skilled hands is a joy to eat.
  • Options

    So WHY is Lizz Truss going to surprise us, I keep reading this but I am curious as to why. From a betting perspective it would be useful.

    A lot of people seem to expect her to be a combination of IDS and Bubble from Absolutely Fabulous. It’s this expectation that she can scarcely fail to confound.
    That's not saying she's going to be good though? Why should she not be rubbish?
    She’s a new kind of PM that we haven’t seen before: a generation younger than Starmer, a modern Tory not in the shadow of Blair, a moderniser not in the shadow of Cameron, and a post-Brexit PM not overly encumbered by the divisions of the referendum.

    A modern Tory? She's trying be another Thatcher, what is modern about that?

    What is she trying to modernise? She's trying to continue Johnson's policies and leadership style.

    She might be very good, she doesn't seem to be a "different kind of PM", rather more of the same.
    She’ll be the PM of the “#Uber-riding #Airbnb-ing #Deliveroo-eating #freedomfighters”

    https://twitter.com/trussliz/status/975822789759389698

    Goodness me she does not appeal to anyone under the age of 50
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,631
    kle4 said:

    OnboardG1 said:

    My partner is a topologist and I asked her about the OP. My view is that there is only one hole because if you take a straw and stretch it out onto a 2d plane you'd get an annulus which only has one hole. My partner said something about s2 projections and the euler characteristics of the shape and proclaimed it either only had one hole or no holes, depending on whether you consider it a volume in 3d space. So there. I'm happy to take her word for it. She's much smarter than me.

    "My partner is a topologist" has gotta win some kind of PB award for opening lines given the header theme.

    Respect.

    It's a rare circumstance that someone can (even virtually) wade into a situation saying 'Stand back everyone, I'm a [insert profession here]'. Only physicians generally get to try that line, it's good a topologist gets a chance.
    Never seems to work for the teachers.
  • Options
    kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,226
    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    Liz Truss is going to be the Lady Jane Grey of politics, she's so bad even the youth wing of Sinn Fein are taking the piss out of her.




    https://twitter.com/Ogra_SF/status/1558770724793368576

    Hold on a sec. Aren’t you to this day a vocal apologist for the clusterf*cl of a govt that was the Coalition?

    Which cut our strategic natural gas storage off at the knees.

    That cow towed to the Russian regime and willingly accepted its money (even after the latter invaded Crimea and used radiological weapons on British soil), rather than underlining to allies the collective danger of them relying on Russian hydrocarbons?

    Which failed to move forward domestic nuclear, so in awe were they with achieving a superficially balanced budget and a pathetic schoolboy crush on the Chinese Communist Party, leading to a dishonest sleight of hand to shift the construction liability off balance sheet and recklessly hand the Chinese a foothold in the most key and sensitive of industries?

    That spurned tidal? Set solar back years? Which imposed “windfall” taxes on the North Sea which achieved nothing apart from disincentivising investment?

    Rather than snide smugly about a Brexit wedge issue such as this tweet, I personally am ready to give Truss a chance. She can’t do worse than those chimps “The Quad”, who to a man have shown their true colours since leaving office with the company they’ve kept. Chinese autocrats, Russian oligarchs, crooked commodity barons and Mark Zuckerburg. Not sure which is scoring worst on that front!

    If she turns out to be shit then we’ll all vote against her (or not vote). But she deserves as much of a chance as any other incoming Prime Minister from any party, until her record in office says otherwise.

    Off topic, but have you seen the latest analyses of the Calvine photo?

    Increasingly looks like it is not a “rock in a loch”. Mick West is struggling to debunk it. More eye witness testimony has emerged

    So we are left with two hypotheses

    1. It is a massively elaborate hoax over decades

    2. It shows a genuine and anomalous object in the sky over Scotland. Which could be: what?
    Malcolm?

    Would explain why he hasn't been posting.
  • Options
    Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 7,543

    So WHY is Lizz Truss going to surprise us, I keep reading this but I am curious as to why. From a betting perspective it would be useful.

    A lot of people seem to expect her to be a combination of IDS and Bubble from Absolutely Fabulous. It’s this expectation that she can scarcely fail to confound.
    That's not saying she's going to be good though? Why should she not be rubbish?
    She’s a new kind of PM that we haven’t seen before: a generation younger than Starmer, a modern Tory not in the shadow of Blair, a moderniser not in the shadow of Cameron, and a post-Brexit PM not overly encumbered by the divisions of the referendum.

    A modern Tory? She's trying be another Thatcher, what is modern about that?

    What is she trying to modernise? She's trying to continue Johnson's policies and leadership style.

    She might be very good, she doesn't seem to be a "different kind of PM", rather more of the same.
    She’ll be the PM of the “#Uber-riding #Airbnb-ing #Deliveroo-eating #freedomfighters”

    https://twitter.com/trussliz/status/975822789759389698

    Or, to put it another way, the PM of shit wages, zero=hour contracts and expensive housing.
  • Options
    AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    MattW said:

    Alistair said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "Why eco-alarmists are wrong about almost everything
    The Great Barrier Reef is not dying, and the world is not coming to an end.
    Brendan O'Neill"

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/08/14/why-eco-alarmists-are-wrong-about-almost-everything/

    This should be read two ways:

    Firstly, great news about the reef.

    Secondly, an acknowledgement that the Australian government implemented a lot of environmental legislation that prevented mining runoff in Queensland from poisoning the reef.
    "We don't hear about the hole in the Ozone layer anymore, bunch of alarmist nonsense wasn't it?!!?"
    No.

    We took notice, took measures, and it is slowly recovering.

    On a watching brief:
    https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/copernicus-tracks-ozone-hole-closure-2021-one-longest-lived-antarctic-ozone-holes-record
    Next you'll be saying there was massive, globally co-ordinated action on Acid Rain!!?
  • Options
    kjhkjh Posts: 10,635
    Eabhal said:

    Alistair said:

    Nigelb said:

    A few days ago, the Grey Zone (RSOTM) Telegram channel posted photos of a visit to the so-called Wagner HQ in the Donbas (Popasna). Prigozhin may have been there.

    The photos were apparently easy to geolocate. Ukraine destroyed it in a HIMARS strike today.

    https://twitter.com/AricToler/status/1558869697747107840

    "easy to geolocate" means there was a visible address nameplate in one of the photos. They may as well have posted the what3words location.
    If they'd used what3words but missed a plural, they could've end up hitting Copenhagen instead.

    (sorry, I didn't mean to set him off....)
    It's alright anything or nothing acts as a trigger. We won't blame you.
  • Options
    turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 15,202

    So WHY is Lizz Truss going to surprise us, I keep reading this but I am curious as to why. From a betting perspective it would be useful.

    A lot of people seem to expect her to be a combination of IDS and Bubble from Absolutely Fabulous. It’s this expectation that she can scarcely fail to confound.
    That's not saying she's going to be good though? Why should she not be rubbish?
    She’s a new kind of PM that we haven’t seen before: a generation younger than Starmer, a modern Tory not in the shadow of Blair, a moderniser not in the shadow of Cameron, and a post-Brexit PM not overly encumbered by the divisions of the referendum.

    A modern Tory? She's trying be another Thatcher, what is modern about that?

    What is she trying to modernise? She's trying to continue Johnson's policies and leadership style.

    She might be very good, she doesn't seem to be a "different kind of PM", rather more of the same.
    She’ll be the PM of the “#Uber-riding #Airbnb-ing #Deliveroo-eating #freedomfighters”

    https://twitter.com/trussliz/status/975822789759389698

    Goodness me she does not appeal to anyone under the age of 50
    Have you asked them all?😀

    The job can change people. Not everyone, as the current incumbent shows, but some. It can reveal your flaws, as with Brown ( all his life he wanted it, but never knew what to do with it), Johnson (lying shit who thought he could do and say anything with no consequence).

    She might be shit, but the default of anti Tories on pb is that she will be shit because they don’t like Tories and she has clearly tried to copy Thatcher in some ways.

    I don’t see the last as a bad thing. Would it be wrong if Ten Hag copied Fergie?
  • Options
    kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,226

    So WHY is Lizz Truss going to surprise us, I keep reading this but I am curious as to why. From a betting perspective it would be useful.

    A lot of people seem to expect her to be a combination of IDS and Bubble from Absolutely Fabulous. It’s this expectation that she can scarcely fail to confound.
    That's not saying she's going to be good though? Why should she not be rubbish?
    She’s a new kind of PM that we haven’t seen before: a generation younger than Starmer, a modern Tory not in the shadow of Blair, a moderniser not in the shadow of Cameron, and a post-Brexit PM not overly encumbered by the divisions of the referendum.

    A modern Tory? She's trying be another Thatcher, what is modern about that?

    What is she trying to modernise? She's trying to continue Johnson's policies and leadership style.

    She might be very good, she doesn't seem to be a "different kind of PM", rather more of the same.
    She’ll be the PM of the “#Uber-riding #Airbnb-ing #Deliveroo-eating #freedomfighters”

    https://twitter.com/trussliz/status/975822789759389698

    Goodness me she does not appeal to anyone under the age of 50
    Yep - even amongst the Con members her support is skewed elderly cf Sunak.

    Reactionary old fogies are wielding disproportionate power in our land.

    Twas ever thus? Arguably yes but particularly so right now.
  • Options
    IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    Taz said:

    Tomatoes going in the oven. How did my plant make the perfect number ready for my favourite oven dish?


    That looks like it’s going to be divine. The humble tomato in skilled hands is a joy to eat.
    Kill me
  • Options
    ydoethurydoethur Posts: 67,267

    kyf_100 said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    Liz Truss is going to be the Lady Jane Grey of politics, she's so bad even the youth wing of Sinn Fein are taking the piss out of her.




    https://twitter.com/Ogra_SF/status/1558770724793368576

    Hold on a sec. Aren’t you to this day a vocal apologist for the clusterf*cl of a govt that was the Coalition?

    Which cut our strategic natural gas storage off at the knees.

    That cow towed to the Russian regime and willingly accepted its money (even after the latter invaded Crimea and used radiological weapons on British soil), rather than underlining to allies the collective danger of them relying on Russian hydrocarbons?

    Which failed to move forward domestic nuclear, so in awe were they with achieving a superficially balanced budget and a pathetic schoolboy crush on the Chinese Communist Party, leading to a dishonest sleight of hand to shift the construction liability off balance sheet and recklessly hand the Chinese a foothold in the most key and sensitive of industries?

    That spurned tidal? Set solar back years? Which imposed “windfall” taxes on the North Sea which achieved nothing apart from disincentivising investment?

    Rather than snide smugly about a Brexit wedge issue such as this tweet, I personally am ready to give Truss a chance. She can’t do worse than those chimps “The Quad”, who to a man have shown their true colours since leaving office with the company they’ve kept. Chinese autocrats, Russian oligarchs, crooked commodity barons and Mark Zuckerburg. Not sure which is scoring worst on that front!

    If she turns out to be shit then we’ll all vote against her (or not vote). But she deserves as much of a chance as any other incoming Prime Minister from any party, until her record in office says otherwise.

    Off topic, but have you seen the latest analyses of the Calvine photo?

    Increasingly looks like it is not a “rock in a loch”. Mick West is struggling to debunk it. More eye witness testimony has emerged

    So we are left with two hypotheses

    1. It is a massively elaborate hoax over decades

    2. It shows a genuine and anomalous object in the sky over Scotland. Which could be: what?
    At the risk of repeating the Father Ted / Dougal / plastic cow sketch, have we considered the possibility that the UFO is a kite or similar object very close up, with the fighter jet much further away, thus creating the optical illusion of an enormous flying saucer type thing at the same distance from the photographer as the jet?

    It could even be a Blackbird v2 spy/stealth prototype flying directly toward the photographer and therefore much closer to the camera than the jet behind it.
    Allegedly there were six photos. However, as always we only have one, and this is hugely suspicious. This is the one that ‘worked’.
    If you are bored, google Gordon Faulkner Warminster for similar.
    Assuming there are eyewitness accounts of a bloody fast, black triangular thing booming about Scotland, with only the one photo to back it up...

    If you look at renders of the supposed stealth spyplane the US was developing in the late 80s, especially the view from behind as it flies away from you, I would say it's a more likely explanation than extraterrestrials.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_(aircraft)
    Iirc there were not a lot of eye witness reports from this alleged encounter. I also find the description funny, or off. Cowering in bushes? Why? Most would be “ooh, what do you think that is”. Until more evidence emergencies (eg the other photos) I’m stuck on hoax, that put the wing up the raf.
    Now that is a truly epic autocorrect fail, or a very determined attempt at a pun.
  • Options
    I recommended a live show of a band called Lake Street Dive to @Gardenwalker the other day having posted their lockdown NPR Tiny Desk video. I don't think I've posted their first Tiny Desk show which might have been when I first heard them a few years back.

    Rachael Price, the singer, is absolutely top drawer. The only downside to this is how easy it becomes to ignore the excellent band that she's part of.

    Would love to know musical PBers thoughts..

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdRAcoD5Gt0


  • Options
    kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,226

    So WHY is Lizz Truss going to surprise us, I keep reading this but I am curious as to why. From a betting perspective it would be useful.

    A lot of people seem to expect her to be a combination of IDS and Bubble from Absolutely Fabulous. It’s this expectation that she can scarcely fail to confound.
    That's not saying she's going to be good though? Why should she not be rubbish?
    She’s a new kind of PM that we haven’t seen before: a generation younger than Starmer, a modern Tory not in the shadow of Blair, a moderniser not in the shadow of Cameron, and a post-Brexit PM not overly encumbered by the divisions of the referendum.
    William.
  • Options
    ydoethurydoethur Posts: 67,267
    edited August 2022
    A thought occurs to me:

    Liz Truss will be the first ex-Liberal to lead a Tory government since David Lloyd George in 1922.

    But there, of course, the resemblance ends. Nobody accuses her of being a sex maniac, a crook, or banging on and on about her provincial background while living in London.
  • Options
    IshmaelZ said:

    Taz said:

    Tomatoes going in the oven. How did my plant make the perfect number ready for my favourite oven dish?


    That looks like it’s going to be divine. The humble tomato in skilled hands is a joy to eat.
    Kill me
    I think I've got enough tomatoes to stuff your throat? :wink:
  • Options
    turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 15,202
    ydoethur said:

    kyf_100 said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    Liz Truss is going to be the Lady Jane Grey of politics, she's so bad even the youth wing of Sinn Fein are taking the piss out of her.




    https://twitter.com/Ogra_SF/status/1558770724793368576

    Hold on a sec. Aren’t you to this day a vocal apologist for the clusterf*cl of a govt that was the Coalition?

    Which cut our strategic natural gas storage off at the knees.

    That cow towed to the Russian regime and willingly accepted its money (even after the latter invaded Crimea and used radiological weapons on British soil), rather than underlining to allies the collective danger of them relying on Russian hydrocarbons?

    Which failed to move forward domestic nuclear, so in awe were they with achieving a superficially balanced budget and a pathetic schoolboy crush on the Chinese Communist Party, leading to a dishonest sleight of hand to shift the construction liability off balance sheet and recklessly hand the Chinese a foothold in the most key and sensitive of industries?

    That spurned tidal? Set solar back years? Which imposed “windfall” taxes on the North Sea which achieved nothing apart from disincentivising investment?

    Rather than snide smugly about a Brexit wedge issue such as this tweet, I personally am ready to give Truss a chance. She can’t do worse than those chimps “The Quad”, who to a man have shown their true colours since leaving office with the company they’ve kept. Chinese autocrats, Russian oligarchs, crooked commodity barons and Mark Zuckerburg. Not sure which is scoring worst on that front!

    If she turns out to be shit then we’ll all vote against her (or not vote). But she deserves as much of a chance as any other incoming Prime Minister from any party, until her record in office says otherwise.

    Off topic, but have you seen the latest analyses of the Calvine photo?

    Increasingly looks like it is not a “rock in a loch”. Mick West is struggling to debunk it. More eye witness testimony has emerged

    So we are left with two hypotheses

    1. It is a massively elaborate hoax over decades

    2. It shows a genuine and anomalous object in the sky over Scotland. Which could be: what?
    At the risk of repeating the Father Ted / Dougal / plastic cow sketch, have we considered the possibility that the UFO is a kite or similar object very close up, with the fighter jet much further away, thus creating the optical illusion of an enormous flying saucer type thing at the same distance from the photographer as the jet?

    It could even be a Blackbird v2 spy/stealth prototype flying directly toward the photographer and therefore much closer to the camera than the jet behind it.
    Allegedly there were six photos. However, as always we only have one, and this is hugely suspicious. This is the one that ‘worked’.
    If you are bored, google Gordon Faulkner Warminster for similar.
    Assuming there are eyewitness accounts of a bloody fast, black triangular thing booming about Scotland, with only the one photo to back it up...

    If you look at renders of the supposed stealth spyplane the US was developing in the late 80s, especially the view from behind as it flies away from you, I would say it's a more likely explanation than extraterrestrials.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_(aircraft)
    Iirc there were not a lot of eye witness reports from this alleged encounter. I also find the description funny, or off. Cowering in bushes? Why? Most would be “ooh, what do you think that is”. Until more evidence emergencies (eg the other photos) I’m stuck on hoax, that put the wing up the raf.
    Now that is a truly epic autocorrect fail, or a very determined attempt at a pun.
    Autocorrect. I loathe it. But almost funny too.
  • Options
    MattWMattW Posts: 18,575
    edited August 2022
    Alistair said:

    MattW said:

    Alistair said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "Why eco-alarmists are wrong about almost everything
    The Great Barrier Reef is not dying, and the world is not coming to an end.
    Brendan O'Neill"

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/08/14/why-eco-alarmists-are-wrong-about-almost-everything/

    This should be read two ways:

    Firstly, great news about the reef.

    Secondly, an acknowledgement that the Australian government implemented a lot of environmental legislation that prevented mining runoff in Queensland from poisoning the reef.
    "We don't hear about the hole in the Ozone layer anymore, bunch of alarmist nonsense wasn't it?!!?"
    No.

    We took notice, took measures, and it is slowly recovering.

    On a watching brief:
    https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/copernicus-tracks-ozone-hole-closure-2021-one-longest-lived-antarctic-ozone-holes-record
    Next you'll be saying there was massive, globally co-ordinated action on Acid Rain!!?
    No, we're discussing the recovery of the ozone layer - I'll just provide you with the evidence for my statement :smile: .

    See the Montreal Protocol on ozone depleting gases.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#History

    As of 23 June 2015, all countries in the United Nations, the Cook Islands, Holy See, Niue as well as the European Union have ratified the original Montreal Protocol (see external link below),[40] with South Sudan being the last country to ratify the agreement, bringing the total to 197. These countries have also ratified the London, Copenhagen, Montreal, and Beijing amendments.

    Since the Montreal Protocol came into effect, the atmospheric concentrations of the most important chlorofluorocarbons and related chlorinated hydrocarbons have either leveled off or decreased.

  • Options
    eekeek Posts: 24,983

    So WHY is Lizz Truss going to surprise us, I keep reading this but I am curious as to why. From a betting perspective it would be useful.

    A lot of people seem to expect her to be a combination of IDS and Bubble from Absolutely Fabulous. It’s this expectation that she can scarcely fail to confound.
    That's not saying she's going to be good though? Why should she not be rubbish?
    She’s a new kind of PM that we haven’t seen before: a generation younger than Starmer, a modern Tory not in the shadow of Blair, a moderniser not in the shadow of Cameron, and a post-Brexit PM not overly encumbered by the divisions of the referendum.

    A modern Tory? She's trying be another Thatcher, what is modern about that?

    What is she trying to modernise? She's trying to continue Johnson's policies and leadership style.

    She might be very good, she doesn't seem to be a "different kind of PM", rather more of the same.
    She’ll be the PM of the “#Uber-riding #Airbnb-ing #Deliveroo-eating #freedomfighters”

    https://twitter.com/trussliz/status/975822789759389698

    Goodness me she does not appeal to anyone under the age of 50
    Have you asked them all?😀

    The job can change people. Not everyone, as the current incumbent shows, but some. It can reveal your flaws, as with Brown ( all his life he wanted it, but never knew what to do with it), Johnson (lying shit who thought he could do and say anything with no consequence).

    She might be shit, but the default of anti Tories on pb is that she will be shit because they don’t like Tories and she has clearly tried to copy Thatcher in some ways.

    I don’t see the last as a bad thing. Would it be wrong if Ten Hag copied Fergie?
    She will be bad because she doesn’t think or get sane advice before announcing policies

    See for example the idea of cutting wages outside London not seeing what the impact would be..
  • Options
    IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    IshmaelZ said:

    Taz said:

    Tomatoes going in the oven. How did my plant make the perfect number ready for my favourite oven dish?


    That looks like it’s going to be divine. The humble tomato in skilled hands is a joy to eat.
    Kill me
    I think I've got enough tomatoes to stuff your throat? :wink:
    As long as they are humble tomatoes
  • Options
    DavidLDavidL Posts: 51,307
    Will Jacks. Bloody hell. He surely has to get in the England team.
  • Options
    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Taz said:

    Tomatoes going in the oven. How did my plant make the perfect number ready for my favourite oven dish?


    That looks like it’s going to be divine. The humble tomato in skilled hands is a joy to eat.
    Kill me
    I think I've got enough tomatoes to stuff your throat? :wink:
    As long as they are humble tomatoes
    They are grown in a very small back yard
  • Options
    geoffwgeoffw Posts: 8,169
    kinabalu said:

    So WHY is Lizz Truss going to surprise us, I keep reading this but I am curious as to why. From a betting perspective it would be useful.

    A lot of people seem to expect her to be a combination of IDS and Bubble from Absolutely Fabulous. It’s this expectation that she can scarcely fail to confound.
    That's not saying she's going to be good though? Why should she not be rubbish?
    She’s a new kind of PM that we haven’t seen before: a generation younger than Starmer, a modern Tory not in the shadow of Blair, a moderniser not in the shadow of Cameron, and a post-Brexit PM not overly encumbered by the divisions of the referendum.
    William.
    Just William?

  • Options
    CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,791
    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    Liz Truss is going to be the Lady Jane Grey of politics, she's so bad even the youth wing of Sinn Fein are taking the piss out of her.




    https://twitter.com/Ogra_SF/status/1558770724793368576

    Hold on a sec. Aren’t you to this day a vocal apologist for the clusterf*cl of a govt that was the Coalition?

    Which cut our strategic natural gas storage off at the knees.

    That cow towed to the Russian regime and willingly accepted its money (even after the latter invaded Crimea and used radiological weapons on British soil), rather than underlining to allies the collective danger of them relying on Russian hydrocarbons?

    Which failed to move forward domestic nuclear, so in awe were they with achieving a superficially balanced budget and a pathetic schoolboy crush on the Chinese Communist Party, leading to a dishonest sleight of hand to shift the construction liability off balance sheet and recklessly hand the Chinese a foothold in the most key and sensitive of industries?

    That spurned tidal? Set solar back years? Which imposed “windfall” taxes on the North Sea which achieved nothing apart from disincentivising investment?

    Rather than snide smugly about a Brexit wedge issue such as this tweet, I personally am ready to give Truss a chance. She can’t do worse than those chimps “The Quad”, who to a man have shown their true colours since leaving office with the company they’ve kept. Chinese autocrats, Russian oligarchs, crooked commodity barons and Mark Zuckerburg. Not sure which is scoring worst on that front!

    If she turns out to be shit then we’ll all vote against her (or not vote). But she deserves as much of a chance as any other incoming Prime Minister from any party, until her record in office says otherwise.

    Off topic, but have you seen the latest analyses of the Calvine photo?

    Increasingly looks like it is not a “rock in a loch”. Mick West is struggling to debunk it. More eye witness testimony has emerged

    So we are left with two hypotheses

    1. It is a massively elaborate hoax over decades

    2. It shows a genuine and anomalous object in the sky over Scotland. Which could be: what?
    Malcolm?

    Would explain why he hasn't been posting.
    Seriously, though, I hope he is OK.
  • Options
    eek said:

    So WHY is Lizz Truss going to surprise us, I keep reading this but I am curious as to why. From a betting perspective it would be useful.

    A lot of people seem to expect her to be a combination of IDS and Bubble from Absolutely Fabulous. It’s this expectation that she can scarcely fail to confound.
    That's not saying she's going to be good though? Why should she not be rubbish?
    She’s a new kind of PM that we haven’t seen before: a generation younger than Starmer, a modern Tory not in the shadow of Blair, a moderniser not in the shadow of Cameron, and a post-Brexit PM not overly encumbered by the divisions of the referendum.

    A modern Tory? She's trying be another Thatcher, what is modern about that?

    What is she trying to modernise? She's trying to continue Johnson's policies and leadership style.

    She might be very good, she doesn't seem to be a "different kind of PM", rather more of the same.
    She’ll be the PM of the “#Uber-riding #Airbnb-ing #Deliveroo-eating #freedomfighters”

    https://twitter.com/trussliz/status/975822789759389698

    Goodness me she does not appeal to anyone under the age of 50
    Have you asked them all?😀

    The job can change people. Not everyone, as the current incumbent shows, but some. It can reveal your flaws, as with Brown ( all his life he wanted it, but never knew what to do with it), Johnson (lying shit who thought he could do and say anything with no consequence).

    She might be shit, but the default of anti Tories on pb is that she will be shit because they don’t like Tories and she has clearly tried to copy Thatcher in some ways.

    I don’t see the last as a bad thing. Would it be wrong if Ten Hag copied Fergie?
    She will be bad because she doesn’t think or get sane advice before announcing policies

    See for example the idea of cutting wages outside London not seeing what the impact would be..
    Or the Oxbridge interview thing. Or the tackling the woke antisemitic Civil Service thing. Or the solar farms thing.

    Then there's the petulant "you misunderstood it" row backs.

    But the biggest red flag of all is that she would have been happy to leave Boris in place.
  • Options
    CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,791

    I officially declare this the most on topic thread in the history of PB.

    Did you find the French holes posting I made?
  • Options

    eek said:

    So WHY is Lizz Truss going to surprise us, I keep reading this but I am curious as to why. From a betting perspective it would be useful.

    A lot of people seem to expect her to be a combination of IDS and Bubble from Absolutely Fabulous. It’s this expectation that she can scarcely fail to confound.
    That's not saying she's going to be good though? Why should she not be rubbish?
    She’s a new kind of PM that we haven’t seen before: a generation younger than Starmer, a modern Tory not in the shadow of Blair, a moderniser not in the shadow of Cameron, and a post-Brexit PM not overly encumbered by the divisions of the referendum.

    A modern Tory? She's trying be another Thatcher, what is modern about that?

    What is she trying to modernise? She's trying to continue Johnson's policies and leadership style.

    She might be very good, she doesn't seem to be a "different kind of PM", rather more of the same.
    She’ll be the PM of the “#Uber-riding #Airbnb-ing #Deliveroo-eating #freedomfighters”

    https://twitter.com/trussliz/status/975822789759389698

    Goodness me she does not appeal to anyone under the age of 50
    Have you asked them all?😀

    The job can change people. Not everyone, as the current incumbent shows, but some. It can reveal your flaws, as with Brown ( all his life he wanted it, but never knew what to do with it), Johnson (lying shit who thought he could do and say anything with no consequence).

    She might be shit, but the default of anti Tories on pb is that she will be shit because they don’t like Tories and she has clearly tried to copy Thatcher in some ways.

    I don’t see the last as a bad thing. Would it be wrong if Ten Hag copied Fergie?
    She will be bad because she doesn’t think or get sane advice before announcing policies

    See for example the idea of cutting wages outside London not seeing what the impact would be..
    Or the Oxbridge interview thing. Or the tackling the woke antisemitic Civil Service thing. Or the solar farms thing.

    Then there's the petulant "you misunderstood it" row backs.

    But the biggest red flag of all is that she would have been happy to leave Boris in place.
    She's positively Corbynesque with the I'm being smeared with my own words and press releases.

    That's the biggest red flag to me that she's just as unsuitable to be PM as Boris Johnson, his flaws was he is fundamentally lazy to be PM.
  • Options
    MattWMattW Posts: 18,575
    OnboardG1 said:

    MattW said:

    This seems to be an on topic / off topic day, so here's a note from an acquaintance as to how he keeps his passive house (in Salisbury) cool:

    MVHR = ventilation system. "The blinds" are external blinds. The main feature is a passive house is that heat is very slow getting in and out, and stays around.

    Our secret weapon is the little personal weather station (PWS) in the garden and with it's help this is how we've kept the house cool:

    In the evening when the outside temperature according to the PWS is below our target internal temperature of 21 degrees all doors and windows are opened and the MVHR ramped up. Overnight all the inward tilting windows are left open with the MVHR staying at a higher level and it stays like this until the PWS shows that the external temperature is rising towards our target 21 degrees - that happened at 07:50 this morning.

    As soon as the exterior temperature reaches our target then all doors and windows are closed and the MVHR is reduced to its lowest setting, we monitor the air quality with a couple of CO2 monitors and increase the MVHR speed as required to keep good air quality. All sun facing windows have the blinds down, we have the mesh style blinds that don't block off the light but stop lots of UV.

    With this technique our hallway temperature has peaked in the early evening at around 21-22 degrees and the kitchen/dining room which has lots of east and south facing glazing has stayed below 24 degrees. As soon as we open up we get rid of most of that unwanted heat. The hallway starts in the mornings around 19-20 degrees.

    https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/topic/28506-keeping-a-passive-house-cool/

    That's interesting. Is it an autonomous system that controls the windows and the like? I could imagine hooking up a Raspberry Pi with a simple PID controller running that automatically adjusts the windows for optimal cooling or heating depending on the weather.
    This one is manual.

    There are plenty of people who automate, but it takes some effort to get the HA system installed and set up.
  • Options
    Carnyx said:

    I officially declare this the most on topic thread in the history of PB.

    Did you find the French holes posting I made?
    I did.
  • Options
    IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    So WHY is Lizz Truss going to surprise us, I keep reading this but I am curious as to why. From a betting perspective it would be useful.

    A lot of people seem to expect her to be a combination of IDS and Bubble from Absolutely Fabulous. It’s this expectation that she can scarcely fail to confound.
    That's not saying she's going to be good though? Why should she not be rubbish?
    She’s a new kind of PM that we haven’t seen before: a generation younger than Starmer, a modern Tory not in the shadow of Blair, a moderniser not in the shadow of Cameron, and a post-Brexit PM not overly encumbered by the divisions of the referendum.

    A modern Tory? She's trying be another Thatcher, what is modern about that?

    What is she trying to modernise? She's trying to continue Johnson's policies and leadership style.

    She might be very good, she doesn't seem to be a "different kind of PM", rather more of the same.
    She’ll be the PM of the “#Uber-riding #Airbnb-ing #Deliveroo-eating #freedomfighters”

    https://twitter.com/trussliz/status/975822789759389698

    Goodness me she does not appeal to anyone under the age of 50
    Have you asked them all?😀

    The job can change people. Not everyone, as the current incumbent shows, but some. It can reveal your flaws, as with Brown ( all his life he wanted it, but never knew what to do with it), Johnson (lying shit who thought he could do and say anything with no consequence).

    She might be shit, but the default of anti Tories on pb is that she will be shit because they don’t like Tories and she has clearly tried to copy Thatcher in some ways.

    I don’t see the last as a bad thing. Would it be wrong if Ten Hag copied Fergie?
    Yes if the extent of the copying were driving the same make of car.
  • Options
    CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,791
    edited August 2022
    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Well that rain stuff turned out to be a bit of a damp squib. Really disappointing. Hopefully we get more tonight but the roads, which are warm, are drying out already.

    Damp. :lol:
    I even meant it 😉
    Two days of steady light rain on and off forecast, to follow the thorough soaking this afternoon. And the grass here was still green anyway. Leon still thin Scottish weather is crap?
  • Options
    ydoethur said:

    A thought occurs to me:

    Liz Truss will be the first ex-Liberal to lead a Tory government since David Lloyd George in 1922.

    But there, of course, the resemblance ends. Nobody accuses her of being a sex maniac, a crook, or banging on and on about her provincial background while living in London.

    Have you not forgotten someone else who was an ex-Liberal who led a Tory government in 1955?
  • Options
    rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,255
    California could be hit by megastorms dumping 2 inches of rain an hour for days, wave after wave, according to some models. 1 in 30 chance each year if climate change continues.



    https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/08/12/climate/california-rain-storm.html

  • Options
    algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 10,541
    edited August 2022
    kle4 said:

    OnboardG1 said:

    My partner is a topologist and I asked her about the OP. My view is that there is only one hole because if you take a straw and stretch it out onto a 2d plane you'd get an annulus which only has one hole. My partner said something about s2 projections and the euler characteristics of the shape and proclaimed it either only had one hole or no holes, depending on whether you consider it a volume in 3d space. So there. I'm happy to take her word for it. She's much smarter than me.

    "My partner is a topologist" has gotta win some kind of PB award for opening lines given the header theme.

    Respect.

    It's a rare circumstance that someone can (even virtually) wade into a situation saying 'Stand back everyone, I'm a [insert profession here]'. Only physicians generally get to try that line, it's good a topologist gets a chance.
    No, you don't need a topologist, you need the heavy lifting done by the philosophy of language. The question is testing a particular response to a particular equivocation.

    "I bat my bat with a bat"

    could mean "I hit my flying mouse with a wooden sports object"

    or could mean "I hit my wooden sports object with a flying mouse"

    and lots of other things.

    Words represent concepts, which themselves represent the world, as in " "Snow is white" is true in English if and only if snow is white."

    The question is not testing anything about maths, geometry or whatever. It's testing whether people think 'hole' means 'opening' or 'the space surrounded by matter like you get in a straw'.

    Which bit of the world does the word 'hole' represent for you? These chaps must have time on their hands.

    The don't knows got it right. The job of pollsters is of course to ask questions which don't contain equivocations. That's the job of politicians.

  • Options
    CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,791
    edited August 2022
    https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/aug/14/manchester-city-sun-cream-ban-cancer-charity

    Apparently Man U doesn't approve of fans [edit] bringing wimpy stuff like sun cream.
  • Options
    DavidLDavidL Posts: 51,307
    DavidL said:

    Will Jacks. Bloody hell. He surely has to get in the England team.

    Finishes the innings with 2x6 getting his 100 on his way. He makes Livingston look underpowered. Incredible.
  • Options
    ydoethurydoethur Posts: 67,267

    ydoethur said:

    A thought occurs to me:

    Liz Truss will be the first ex-Liberal to lead a Tory government since David Lloyd George in 1922.

    But there, of course, the resemblance ends. Nobody accuses her of being a sex maniac, a crook, or banging on and on about her provincial background while living in London.

    Have you not forgotten someone else who was an ex-Liberal who led a Tory government in 1955?
    He was such a nonentity he was easy to forget :smile:

    (Literally, he was. For a moment I was genuinely puzzled and wondering whether Eden had been a Liberal.)
  • Options

    California could be hit by megastorms dumping 2 inches of rain an hour for days, wave after wave, according to some models.

    "But how do you feel about MALE models?"
  • Options
    DavidLDavidL Posts: 51,307
    Carnyx said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Well that rain stuff turned out to be a bit of a damp squib. Really disappointing. Hopefully we get more tonight but the roads, which are warm, are drying out already.

    Damp. :lol:
    I even meant it 😉
    Two days of steady light rain on and off forecast, to follow the thorough soaking this afternoon. And the grass here was still green anyway. Leon still thin Scottish weather is crap?
    My grass is brown and we had about 45 minutes of gentle rain with a lot more thunder. We seriously need a lot of rain, but not too heavy.
  • Options
    dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,977
    ydoethur said:

    A thought occurs to me:

    Liz Truss will be the first ex-Liberal to lead a Tory government since David Lloyd George in 1922.

    But there, of course, the resemblance ends. Nobody accuses her of being a sex maniac, a crook, or banging on and on about her provincial background while living in London.

    Churchill?
  • Options
    dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,977
    This driving your car into crowds thing seems to be an epidemic in the US.

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/14/pennsylvania-car-crash-crowd-dead-injured
  • Options
    ydoethurydoethur Posts: 67,267
    dixiedean said:

    ydoethur said:

    A thought occurs to me:

    Liz Truss will be the first ex-Liberal to lead a Tory government since David Lloyd George in 1922.

    But there, of course, the resemblance ends. Nobody accuses her of being a sex maniac, a crook, or banging on and on about her provincial background while living in London.

    Churchill?
    Of course, nobody would accuse Truss of being like Churchill either. She hasn't eaten all her former principles and become a hard right unbalanced nutcase that nobody trusts.
  • Options
    DavidLDavidL Posts: 51,307
    So when David Steel said "go home and prepare for government" what he really meant was join the Conservative party and lead it. That, in fairness, sounds a lot more realistic.
  • Options
    ydoethurydoethur Posts: 67,267
    DavidL said:

    So when David Steel said "go home and prepare for government" what he really meant was join the Conservative party and lead it. That, in fairness, sounds a lot more realistic.

    And when he talked about straitjackets...
  • Options
    ydoethurydoethur Posts: 67,267
    Rain forecast for tomorrow now put back until Tuesday.

    I have one full water butt left. The others are in effect empty. So I'm at about 20% capacity.

    Garden doesn't look too bad though. In fact, as I've been putting quite a lot of water on it it's grown very well in the heat and sunlight we've had.
  • Options
    algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 10,541

    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    Liz Truss is going to be the Lady Jane Grey of politics, she's so bad even the youth wing of Sinn Fein are taking the piss out of her.




    https://twitter.com/Ogra_SF/status/1558770724793368576

    Hold on a sec. Aren’t you to this day a vocal apologist for the clusterf*cl of a govt that was the Coalition?

    Which cut our strategic natural gas storage off at the knees.

    That cow towed to the Russian regime and willingly accepted its money (even after the latter invaded Crimea and used radiological weapons on British soil), rather than underlining to allies the collective danger of them relying on Russian hydrocarbons?

    Which failed to move forward domestic nuclear, so in awe were they with achieving a superficially balanced budget and a pathetic schoolboy crush on the Chinese Communist Party, leading to a dishonest sleight of hand to shift the construction liability off balance sheet and recklessly hand the Chinese a foothold in the most key and sensitive of industries?

    That spurned tidal? Set solar back years? Which imposed “windfall” taxes on the North Sea which achieved nothing apart from disincentivising investment?

    Rather than snide smugly about a Brexit wedge issue such as this tweet, I personally am ready to give Truss a chance. She can’t do worse than those chimps “The Quad”, who to a man have shown their true colours since leaving office with the company they’ve kept. Chinese autocrats, Russian oligarchs, crooked commodity barons and Mark Zuckerburg. Not sure which is scoring worst on that front!

    If she turns out to be shit then we’ll all vote against her (or not vote). But she deserves as much of a chance as any other incoming Prime Minister from any party, until her record in office says otherwise.

    Off topic, but have you seen the latest analyses of the Calvine photo?

    Increasingly looks like it is not a “rock in a loch”. Mick West is struggling to debunk it. More eye witness testimony has emerged

    So we are left with two hypotheses

    1. It is a massively elaborate hoax over decades

    2. It shows a genuine and anomalous object in the sky over Scotland. Which could be: what?
    At the risk of repeating the Father Ted / Dougal / plastic cow sketch, have we considered the possibility that the UFO is a kite or similar object very close up, with the fighter jet much further away, thus creating the optical illusion of an enormous flying saucer type thing at the same distance from the photographer as the jet?

    It could even be a Blackbird v2 spy/stealth prototype flying directly toward the photographer and therefore much closer to the camera than the jet behind it.
    Allegedly there were six photos. However, as always we only have one, and this is hugely suspicious. This is the one that ‘worked’.
    If you are bored, google Gordon Faulkner Warminster for similar.
    Extraordinary claims require more than ordinary evidence. It seems to me there is a fundamentally suspicion causing phenomenon going on. The decent images over decades are fakes and no-one will stand by them; the images which can't possibly be determinative of anything are the ones which reasonably plausible witnesses attest to.

    If you think about the sort of evidential quality required to authenticate, say, the Higgs Boson you will realise that we are nowhere close.

    And as these sorts of stories would be worth solid gold in reputation and fame if decent science could get it to stand up, the motivation is immense to do so. But it keeps not happening. Draw the obvious conclusion.

  • Options
    TazTaz Posts: 11,183
    ydoethur said:

    Rain forecast for tomorrow now put back until Tuesday.

    I have one full water butt left. The others are in effect empty. So I'm at about 20% capacity.

    Garden doesn't look too bad though. In fact, as I've been putting quite a lot of water on it it's grown very well in the heat and sunlight we've had.

    ydoethur said:

    Rain forecast for tomorrow now put back until Tuesday.

    I have one full water butt left. The others are in effect empty. So I'm at about 20% capacity.

    Garden doesn't look too bad though. In fact, as I've been putting quite a lot of water on it it's grown very well in the heat and sunlight we've had.

    Light rain here from 5PM tomorrow is the latest forecast but we’ve had some rain recently and even the lawn needed a cut this week.

    Tuesday and Wednesday look like we will have a lot of rain.
  • Options
    wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,934
    edited August 2022
    Evening all. On thread, Two dimensional '2 holes' fuckwits deserve to be publically executed. We should be building gallows NOW. This is the hill to die on
  • Options
    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 44,429

    biggles said:

    biggles said:

    Carnyx said:
    Let me get this straight. One end of AN ISLAND WITH ABOVE AVERAGE RAINFALL is talking about importing water from the other end of AN ISLAND WITH ABOVE AVERAGE RAINFALL rather than desalination or building more sodding reservoirs?

    Land in England, particularly the South of England, is pretty expensive. Flooding more of it to create more reservoirs doesn't seem to be a particularly good use of land. Similarly, we are in the middle of an energy crisis and desalination is ruinously energy-intensive. This also does not seem to be an optimal response. By contrast, there seems to be more than enough water in the north and the west of the island, so moving it about would seem like a logical approach - assuming you cannot convince people living in the south to move themselves to the water.
    I don’t accept that it is hard to build new reservoirs. If it’s done sympathetically it’s just a nice lake and no one can sensibly object, even in the centre of the green belt where nothing else can be built.

    Precisely. Utter garbage reason.
    We have a massive housing problem, and one of the big factors in that is the high price of land, and we also do not grow enough food to feed the country - it seems illogical that you would want to flood land rather than use it for crops or housing, particularly when there is plenty of water elsewhere in the country.

    I've nothing against reservoirs as such. I've enjoyed many a pleasant walk around them, or past them. It just seems obvious to me that land is a scarce commodity in England, so if there's a way to avoid using vast areas of it for a reservoir then that would be a good idea.
    You don’t need vast areas. The total yearly water usage per person is something like 50 tons. 50m3. Then work out how much quite a small lake holds….

    We are not talking about oceans here…
  • Options
    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 44,429
    edited August 2022

    Some speculation that the boss of the Wagner Group may have come to an unfortunate end in Ukraine:

    https://twitter.com/ralee85/status/1558872988619051010

    Oh dear, what a shame. Never mind.
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,012
    edited August 2022

    ydoethur said:

    A thought occurs to me:

    Liz Truss will be the first ex-Liberal to lead a Tory government since David Lloyd George in 1922.

    But there, of course, the resemblance ends. Nobody accuses her of being a sex maniac, a crook, or banging on and on about her provincial background while living in London.

    Have you not forgotten someone else who was an ex-Liberal who led a Tory government in 1955?
    An actual Liberal was Deputy PM in a Tory led government from 2010 to 2015, Nick Clegg.
  • Options
    rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,255
    DavidL said:

    So when David Steel said "go home and prepare for government" what he really meant was join the Conservative party and lead it. That, in fairness, sounds a lot more realistic.

    Liz Truss was six at the time.

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    darkagedarkage Posts: 4,796

    I recommended a live show of a band called Lake Street Dive to @Gardenwalker the other day having posted their lockdown NPR Tiny Desk video. I don't think I've posted their first Tiny Desk show which might have been when I first heard them a few years back.

    Rachael Price, the singer, is absolutely top drawer. The only downside to this is how easy it becomes to ignore the excellent band that she's part of.

    Would love to know musical PBers thoughts..

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdRAcoD5Gt0


    I just listened to a few of their songs on spotify.
    It reminds me of the stuff my dad used to listen to, whilst testing out his hifi.
    They are very good in a 'professional musician' sort of way, the sort of thing that could be amazing in a live concert; I will check out that video at some point.

    I've been listening to Sigrid this afternoon, her 2017 EP 'don't kill my vibe'.
    I still don't see why people say that music is rubbish, there is a lot of really good stuff around, even if it isn't 'groundbreaking' in the way that pop music used to be.




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    moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,244
    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    Liz Truss is going to be the Lady Jane Grey of politics, she's so bad even the youth wing of Sinn Fein are taking the piss out of her.




    https://twitter.com/Ogra_SF/status/1558770724793368576

    Hold on a sec. Aren’t you to this day a vocal apologist for the clusterf*cl of a govt that was the Coalition?

    Which cut our strategic natural gas storage off at the knees.

    That cow towed to the Russian regime and willingly accepted its money (even after the latter invaded Crimea and used radiological weapons on British soil), rather than underlining to allies the collective danger of them relying on Russian hydrocarbons?

    Which failed to move forward domestic nuclear, so in awe were they with achieving a superficially balanced budget and a pathetic schoolboy crush on the Chinese Communist Party, leading to a dishonest sleight of hand to shift the construction liability off balance sheet and recklessly hand the Chinese a foothold in the most key and sensitive of industries?

    That spurned tidal? Set solar back years? Which imposed “windfall” taxes on the North Sea which achieved nothing apart from disincentivising investment?

    Rather than snide smugly about a Brexit wedge issue such as this tweet, I personally am ready to give Truss a chance. She can’t do worse than those chimps “The Quad”, who to a man have shown their true colours since leaving office with the company they’ve kept. Chinese autocrats, Russian oligarchs, crooked commodity barons and Mark Zuckerburg. Not sure which is scoring worst on that front!

    If she turns out to be shit then we’ll all vote against her (or not vote). But she deserves as much of a chance as any other incoming Prime Minister from any party, until her record in office says otherwise.

    Off topic, but have you seen the latest analyses of the Calvine photo?

    Increasingly looks like it is not a “rock in a loch”. Mick West is struggling to debunk it. More eye witness testimony has emerged

    So we are left with two hypotheses

    1. It is a massively elaborate hoax over decades

    2. It shows a genuine and anomalous object in the sky over Scotland. Which could be: what?
    It’s a little maddening because we do not have all the data. There’s five photos missing. We don’t have anything more than brief written eye witness testimony from anonymous sources so it’s very difficult to assess their credibility. And there’s no military report or telemetrics, from the plane/planes or ground radar, if indeed there even were any such reports written of such an incident. The only public witness is second hand in the form of Nick Pope, and he may not be a credible witness because he’s been making a career since leaving the MOD out of being “Britain’s Fox Molder”.

    So it’s an order of magnitude less compelling than the US Navy cases, where anyone that looks objectively at all the available data in the round (including the behaviour of those with top clearance that have seen evidence we have not) can only conclude something very strange indeed is going on.

    And yet… the very long period of secrecy for Calvine (extended in 2020 for another 52 years!) is intriguing. As are the declassified documents that showed that certain cabinet members received a briefing. And there’s an apparent letter to the US Air Force online (I have not verified the source), advising them of the incident, with what it must be said are curiously worded comments, apparently confirming the photo’s legitimacy:

    https://twitter.com/wilsonstraiph/status/1558773564244910080?s=21&t=LWS5yahIxkpsqlSiAoX0PA

    What’s most curious of all, is that the negatives were apparently returned to the Daily Record of Glasgow and they still did not publish them! Tabloids knowingly publish all manner of nonsense, from toast that looks like the messiah to Elvis alive in Marbella. It is said that the editor at the time (now deceased) was on the D-Notice Committee. A thicker plot than it might seem perhaps.

    So as you say, we are either left with an elaborate hoax, with the two “witnesses” embarrassed that the MoD ever got involved and wanting to stay in obscurity. Or, they really did see something amazing. As with the public US Navy cases, it’s difficult to see how this could be allied tech, there are joint chiefs and clear processes to ensure the secrecy of such programmes is
    preserved. This story leaked out easily and was given legs by the MOD staff involved in investigating it because they apparently were not being told to this day of any black ops project.

    You know where I lean. But this is not the smoking gun that convinces any waverers. If anything it feels like the sort of case that gets given a wave of publicity only to be subsequently debunked, to take attention from the extraordinary evidence, statements and political / academic processes going on in the US.


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    I think it looks good
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    TazTaz Posts: 11,183
    edited August 2022


    I think it looks good

    Most certainly does. Terrific tomato. 🤩😂

    I’ve a few plants going at the moment. Plenty tomatoes are currently ripening. Probably started them too late but this is the first year. Will definitely Start earlier next year.
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