Oh so Keirs comments seem planned Couldn't say Pakistan because there are too many British Pakistani's in swing seats. Bangladesh is safe as they are fewer of them and concentrated in safer seats. Are they seeing a drift to reform?
There's quite a lot in his own constituency of Holborn and St Pancras.
Happy image from my evening. Victoria Tap, Manchester. Three old ladies. Well dressed old ladies, but dressed like old ladies used to dress: smart floral dresses. Glasses of white wine in front of them. Break off from.their earnest and animated conversation to sing along lustily as tge Zombies' "She's not there" comes on over the speakers. Which I suppose is the same vintage they are, but rather cooler than what you would normally exoect women in their late 70s and 80s be into. Good grief it's late. Then back to their conversation. Clearly Talking Heads doesn't catch their imagination the same way.
Another 0-0 being ground out on the telly. Good grief football is turgid.
i think this is my favourite genre of PB, the little vignettes of PBers’ lives
One of the great things that @MikeSmithson did - and may all good fortune and good wishes go with him - is gather together a spectacularly disparate group of intelligent people. Yes we may verge towards the geeky, but we also verge towards WTAF. We have fabulously eloquent nutters like @Dura_Ace and we also have insanely centrist sensibles like @kle4. More importantly, it gathers in generally civil conversation a bunch of properly smart people with wildly different perspectives and experiences, and thanks to the gentle moderation - kudos to @TSE and @rcs1000 - it remains quite cordial even as it allows vicious rivalries
That’s really hard to achieve. I’m sure we all take different things from this site, but for me one of the most precious is articulate glimpses of other lives, other worlds, like this what you just did
I’ll stop being sentimental now and go back to insulting David Duke of Brexit, the Gaylording Ponceyboots Hisself, Mr Daveyboy “I think I’d be good at it, oops I’m historically terrible” Cameron, but just wanted to get that out there
For instance off the top of my head, I’d say seats that are way more likely to go REF than many on that list (and, to be clear, this isn’t a prediction, just a “if Reform did get 18 seats”) positing:
- South Holland and the Deepings - Gainsborough - North West Norfolk - Maldon - Basildon and Billericay
Far, far more likely to fall than seats like Skipton & Ripon and Cotswold North!
I wouldn't be shocked if the Barnsley Doncaster part of South Yorkshire (where I'm from) returned at least one Reform MP.
I think everything will revert to/remain as Labour, although there's been almost nil campaigning.
The Doncaster seat (or its new equivalent) that went to Nick Fletcher last time (previously Caroline Flint) has always contained Tory wards which aren't really going to vote Reform and I don't think there are enough of the Labour -> Boris -> Reform type switchers to make more than a minor dent.
Barnsley may be different.
The voting shifts in this election are such that it’s very hard to start thinking about a seat, even one known well, and predict how it will turn out. For example, I might say that the Tories will never lose Sevenoaks, or Reform will never win IOW E, but the difficulty is that I (and I suspect we all) am struggling to imagine the scale of the change we may be about ti see.
It’s easier to start by thinking about how many seats a party is likely to win, and then consider how likely it is that a given seat will be one of them. For example, I still put the Tories on a hundred or more, so thinking about the Tories being reduced to 100 seats, yes, Sevenoaks would very likely be one of those. Similarly, if Reform won say 25 seats, how likely is it that IOW E could be one of them - quite possible, I’d say. Currently I don’t think they will win 25 seats, and if they win say five, would IOW E be one; no. Thinking about seats from the global totals downwards seems an easier way to go.
Vanilla - the only thing in the known universe more useless than the Department for Education.
I disagree. The Perl programming language would give it a run for its money. The only "write once, never edit" language known.
Perl was write once, make sure it works and then never ever go near it again.
I remember a Perl expert writing what should have been a 200 line script in a single completely and utterly unreadable line, assembler was easier to read and follow...
You think that's bad? I once had to port over a major codebase - on my own - from a third party company. Lots of the 'code' was written in the C preprocessor. A header file of a few lines became hundreds of K of preprocessor output.
Try finding a bug in that. If you ever thought Macromedia Flash was an awful buggy hellhole, I'd like to introduce you to the Macromedia Shockwave sourcecode.
Think I'm a bit behind (iPlayer), but there seems to be someone yelling somewhere in the building. Nottingham Trent not covering themselves in glory!
It’s a pro-Palestine protest. The key issue at this election.
Well of course it is. Its the only thing anyone is talking about in this election.
BTW the protest is so grating that I think there could be a real risk that one or the other of them loses their shit before the end.
My Labour candidate is Luke Akehurst. He will win and I follow him on Twitter. He seems personable enough but every tweet of him campaigning draws all manner of batshit loons banging on about Gaza. He is either, depending on your view, a pro Israeli lobbyist or a genocide apologist. I think it’s the former rather than the latter and it’s an issue of little importance to most of my fellow constituents.
Vanilla - the only thing in the known universe more useless than the Department for Education.
I disagree. The Perl programming language would give it a run for its money. The only "write once, never edit" language known.
Perl was write once, make sure it works and then never ever go near it again.
I remember a Perl expert writing what should have been a 200 line script in a single completely and utterly unreadable line, assembler was easier to read and follow...
It was a thing amongst Perl programmers. They took a perverse delight in writing unreadable code.
Ook. Ook? Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook! Ook? Ook? Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook? Ook! Ook! Ook? Ook! Ook? Ook. Ook! Ook. Ook. Ook? Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook! Ook? Ook? Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook? Ook! Ook! Ook? Ook! Ook? Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook! Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook! Ook. Ook! Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook! Ook. Ook. Ook? Ook. Ook? Ook. Ook? Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook! Ook? Ook? Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook? Ook! Ook! Ook? Ook! Ook? Ook. Ook! Ook. Ook. Ook? Ook. Ook? Ook. Ook? Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook! Ook? Ook? Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook? Ook! Ook! Ook? Ook! Ook? Ook. Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook. Ook? Ook. Ook? Ook. Ook? Ook. Ook? Ook. Ook! Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook! Ook. Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook. Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook. Ook. Ook? Ook. Ook? Ook. Ook. Ook! Ook.
is valid code in the ook language just saying
You gone librarian poo?
I suspect the librarian was indeed the inspiration but it is a genuinely compilable language
Vanilla - the only thing in the known universe more useless than the Department for Education.
I disagree. The Perl programming language would give it a run for its money. The only "write once, never edit" language known.
Perl was write once, make sure it works and then never ever go near it again.
I remember a Perl expert writing what should have been a 200 line script in a single completely and utterly unreadable line, assembler was easier to read and follow...
It was a thing amongst Perl programmers. They took a perverse delight in writing unreadable code.
Well, they had no choice...
Truthfully, I did always like Perl. Especially the construct of `do_y() unless $x`. I know ruby and others reused it - but it read very well.
FORTH is the only language I've never really got on with.
Why doesn't Sunak note he hasn't even been in Parliament for 14 years! Plus tax rises were, in part, due to Covid. Why doesn't he disclaimer that?
Because its not substantially true.
The UK's welfare bill has gone up to more under Sunak than it was under Brown.
Not because of Covid though, and not because of the unemployed (unemployment is lower than it was under Brown) either.
The Tories are ramping up welfare as deliberate policy and that takes taxes. The welfare is not going to the poor though, or people in lockdown which is nobody today.
Vanilla - the only thing in the known universe more useless than the Department for Education.
I disagree. The Perl programming language would give it a run for its money. The only "write once, never edit" language known.
Perl was write once, make sure it works and then never ever go near it again.
I remember a Perl expert writing what should have been a 200 line script in a single completely and utterly unreadable line, assembler was easier to read and follow...
You think that's bad? I once had to port over a major codebase - on my own - from a third party company. Lots of the 'code' was written in the C preprocessor. A header file of a few lines became hundreds of K of preprocessor output.
Try finding a bug in that. If you ever thought Macromedia Flash was an awful buggy hellhole, I'd like to introduce you to the Macromedia Shockwave sourcecode.
Thanks Andy. I'm changing my vote that is disgusting.
He’s basically saying we shouldn’t send them to Rwanda but instead send them back to where they came from.
He wants votes from Reform.
This is all purely performative.
I did wonder about that. Perhaps private polling is telling Labour to be worried about the Reform vote? Nigel is drawing adoring crowds, SKS is drawing yawns?
Yes, that's the obvious conclusion to draw.
In which case giving Galloway a huge boost in return for a few reform returners is not very wise.
There won't be any Reform returners. Nobody who's gone Reform is going to be remotely swayed by SKS getting a highly unconvincing cob on about migrants. The fact it would even be tried surely shows desperation.
Does that mean that PeoplePolling was correct, and Reform really are on 25%? Do we need more PeoplePolling PeoplePolls?
Saw a Tory election broadcast on Monday. It was Laura Farris (IIRC) just reading, badly, a script about labour tax rises.
It was so dreary.
I am convinced this election is Rishi Sunak playing a game of Brewsters Millions but with Tory seats not greenbacks.
It was the worst PPB in terms of production quality I have ever seen.
Out of interest I watched a bit of the first morning of GB News to see what it was like. Production values were inept. Compared to this Tory PPB it was a pristine and polished performance.
These betting politicians are going to get political betting banned altogether aren't they.
I fully expect more regulation on betting under a Starmer government, all under the guise of protecting the punter.
Yet another reason not to vote Labour methinks. God save us from people who want to protect us from ourselves. CS Lewis was right.
You think a post from from a Tory vaguely imagining a Labour policy is helpful for deciding your vote?
Conclusive? No. Contributory? Yes. Albeit small in magnitude.
My reasons for wanting the Conservatives to lose by lots is that they should go away and rebuild from first principles what party they need to be. I don't think they will, and the current crop are really dumb, but I think they should.
But by the same coin I think Labour are a bit lost. My criticism of Goodwin's elite's observations are not that they are wrong (I don't think they are) but that he thinks the Right is immune (it isn't). This distancing of politicians from everyday lives concerns me and I don't think Labour understands the things I think are a threat[1] nor how to fix them. I look forward on being proved wrong but some of the prior indications (Labour's "countries and regions" plan, Streeting talking hard to the NHS) make me think they're going to apply a Nineties solution to a Twenties' problem...which isn't going to work.
[1] the oncoming Boomer death wave, very poor defence, massively indebted councils, the collapse in the tax system as people move out, inherited wealth perpetuating inequality, inability to build houses, overreliance on inward migration labour, worship of growth over happiness, pensionerism, stacks of debt, the learned helplessness of the nation-state in the face of transnational/supranational capital...
"If you listened to people more in the country you wouldn't be so out of touch"
Oof
Seem a cheap jibe if he did oppose it as Sunak said.
Oppose what?
The question was regarding the policy of what to do if someone on welfare refuses to take a job after twelve months.
This is from 12 years ago:
""Under the new rules there will be three levels of sanction. For "low and intermediate level" issues, such as failure to actively look for a job or be available to work, claimants would lose their benefit for one month for the first offence and three months for subsequent events. The higher level of sanction for people who refused a job or left one without good reason would be three months for the first time, six months the second time, and three years subsequently.""
Vanilla - the only thing in the known universe more useless than the Department for Education.
I disagree. The Perl programming language would give it a run for its money. The only "write once, never edit" language known.
Perl was write once, make sure it works and then never ever go near it again.
I remember a Perl expert writing what should have been a 200 line script in a single completely and utterly unreadable line, assembler was easier to read and follow...
It was a thing amongst Perl programmers. They took a perverse delight in writing unreadable code.
Well, they had no choice...
Truthfully, I did always like Perl. Especially the construct of `do_y() unless $x`. I know ruby and others reused it - but it read very well.
FORTH is the only language I've never really got on with.
I had forgotten that particular horror show, but for me, Smalltalk80 put me right off OOP for a few years
Does he not get that ranting across Starmer and the host with the same incoherent point looks bad?
Has Sunak ever, in his entire life, been in a situation where he has been weighed and found wanting like this before? Or where behaving like this has real negative consequences?
Vanilla - the only thing in the known universe more useless than the Department for Education.
I disagree. The Perl programming language would give it a run for its money. The only "write once, never edit" language known.
Perl was write once, make sure it works and then never ever go near it again.
I remember a Perl expert writing what should have been a 200 line script in a single completely and utterly unreadable line, assembler was easier to read and follow...
It was a thing amongst Perl programmers. They took a perverse delight in writing unreadable code.
Ook. Ook? Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook! Ook? Ook? Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook? Ook! Ook! Ook? Ook! Ook? Ook. Ook! Ook. Ook. Ook? Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook! Ook? Ook? Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook? Ook! Ook! Ook? Ook! Ook? Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook! Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook! Ook. Ook! Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook! Ook. Ook. Ook? Ook. Ook? Ook. Ook? Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook! Ook? Ook? Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook? Ook! Ook! Ook? Ook! Ook? Ook. Ook! Ook. Ook. Ook? Ook. Ook? Ook. Ook? Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook! Ook? Ook? Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook? Ook! Ook! Ook? Ook! Ook? Ook. Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook. Ook? Ook. Ook? Ook. Ook? Ook. Ook? Ook. Ook! Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook! Ook. Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook. Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook. Ook. Ook? Ook. Ook? Ook. Ook. Ook! Ook.
is valid code in the ook language just saying
You gone librarian poo?
I suspect the librarian was indeed the inspiration but it is a genuinely compilable language
Vanilla - the only thing in the known universe more useless than the Department for Education.
I disagree. The Perl programming language would give it a run for its money. The only "write once, never edit" language known.
Perl was write once, make sure it works and then never ever go near it again.
I remember a Perl expert writing what should have been a 200 line script in a single completely and utterly unreadable line, assembler was easier to read and follow...
It was a thing amongst Perl programmers. They took a perverse delight in writing unreadable code.
Well, they had no choice...
Truthfully, I did always like Perl. Especially the construct of `do_y() unless $x`. I know ruby and others reused it - but it read very well.
FORTH is the only language I've never really got on with.
Perl was my first (programming) language, and I still have a soft spot for the literate syntax (see also the '...or die;' pattern).
It's perfectly possible to write readable, maintainable Perl but you have to be very disciplined to do so and, in retrospect, There's More Than One Way To Do It turned out to be a better fit for hacking than for engineering.
Back to the debate: Rishi really should have taken that valium beforehand. He's bouncing up and down and gabbling again.
Vanilla - the only thing in the known universe more useless than the Department for Education.
I disagree. The Perl programming language would give it a run for its money. The only "write once, never edit" language known.
Perl was write once, make sure it works and then never ever go near it again.
I remember a Perl expert writing what should have been a 200 line script in a single completely and utterly unreadable line, assembler was easier to read and follow...
You think that's bad? I once had to port over a major codebase - on my own - from a third party company. Lots of the 'code' was written in the C preprocessor. A header file of a few lines became hundreds of K of preprocessor output.
Try finding a bug in that. If you ever thought Macromedia Flash was an awful buggy hellhole, I'd like to introduce you to the Macromedia Shockwave sourcecode.
(Weeps gently in the background)
Thus why preprocessors are largely "banned" these days.
These days we use Regex backtracks to destroy performance.
Vanilla - the only thing in the known universe more useless than the Department for Education.
I disagree. The Perl programming language would give it a run for its money. The only "write once, never edit" language known.
Perl was write once, make sure it works and then never ever go near it again.
I remember a Perl expert writing what should have been a 200 line script in a single completely and utterly unreadable line, assembler was easier to read and follow...
You think that's bad? I once had to port over a major codebase - on my own - from a third party company. Lots of the 'code' was written in the C preprocessor. A header file of a few lines became hundreds of K of preprocessor output.
Try finding a bug in that. If you ever thought Macromedia Flash was an awful buggy hellhole, I'd like to introduce you to the Macromedia Shockwave sourcecode.
(Weeps gently in the background)
PB.com Programmers Bragging
Not really bragging... in need of counselling.
From memory (and it was thankfully over 25 years ago...) version 4 had MIN and MAX macros. Which returned true if the given was larger or smaller, as you would expect.
In V5, the MIN and MAX macro operands had been reversed; as had all the places the macros were used.
These betting politicians are going to get political betting banned altogether aren't they.
I fully expect more regulation on betting under a Starmer government, all under the guise of protecting the punter.
Yet another reason not to vote Labour methinks. God save us from people who want to protect us from ourselves. CS Lewis was right.
You think a post from from a Tory vaguely imagining a Labour policy is helpful for deciding your vote?
Conclusive? No. Contributory? Yes. Albeit small in magnitude.
My reasons for wanting the Conservatives to lose by lots is that they should go away and rebuild from first principles what party they need to be. I don't think they will, and the current crop are really dumb, but I think they should.
But by the same coin I think Labour are a bit lost. My criticism of Goodwin's elite's observations are not that they are wrong (I don't think they are) but that he thinks the Right is immune (it isn't). This distancing of politicians from everyday lives concerns me and I don't think Labour understands the things I think are a threat[1] nor how to fix them. I look forward on being proved wrong but some of the prior indications (Labour's "countries and regions" plan, Streeting talking hard to the NHS) make me think they're going to apply a Nineties solution to a Twenties' problem...which isn't going to work.
[1] the oncoming Boomer death wave, very poor defence, massively indebted councils, the collapse in the tax system as people move out, inherited wealth perpetuating inequality, inability to build houses, overreliance on inward migration labour, worship of growth over happiness, pensionerism, stacks of debt, the learned helplessness of the nation-state in the face of transnational/supranational capital...
This discussion reminds me, it's time to put the organic kippers on the grill and open some wine to have with them. A dry rose from France. And brown bread and butter.
I bloody love kippers. It is a source of persistent disappointment that B&Bs no longer serve them for breakfast.
I seek out the ones that do. Or at least where I can.
Does he not get that ranting across Starmer and the host with the same incoherent point looks bad?
Has Sunak ever, in his entire life, been in a situation where he has been weighed and found wanting like this before? Or where behaving like this has real negative consequences?
Poor dear hasn't really had to learn inner calm.
He was elevated too far too fast and it just shows so badly.
The fact is, if the Tories go down to 50 seats next week it is absolutely no-one else’s fault but theirs. The way they have treated government particularly in the last parliament gives the electorate every excuse to throw the book at them.
Sure! And he'll get more. But look at him. Listen to him. He's ranting. His pitch is increasing, and he is getting increasingly exasperated and that means he is getting faster and faster and faster.
Sure! And he'll get more. But look at him. Listen to him. He's ranting. His pitch is increasing, and he is getting increasingly exasperated and that means he is getting faster and faster and faster.
He’s really not. Starmer is absolutely on the back foot and Sunak isn’t being screechy just battering Starmer. Sunak is remarkably calm and Starmer is that gimp man from the ministry.
Vanilla - the only thing in the known universe more useless than the Department for Education.
I disagree. The Perl programming language would give it a run for its money. The only "write once, never edit" language known.
Perl was write once, make sure it works and then never ever go near it again.
I remember a Perl expert writing what should have been a 200 line script in a single completely and utterly unreadable line, assembler was easier to read and follow...
You think that's bad? I once had to port over a major codebase - on my own - from a third party company. Lots of the 'code' was written in the C preprocessor. A header file of a few lines became hundreds of K of preprocessor output.
Try finding a bug in that. If you ever thought Macromedia Flash was an awful buggy hellhole, I'd like to introduce you to the Macromedia Shockwave sourcecode.
(Weeps gently in the background)
PB.com Programmers Bragging
Not really bragging... in need of counselling.
From memory (and it was thankfully over 25 years ago...) version 4 had MIN and MAX macros. Which returned true if the given was larger or smaller, as you would expect.
In V5, the MIN and MAX macro operands had been reversed; as had all the places the macros were used.
In V6, they were back to how they were in V4.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is Quality Coding...
I remember using a VMS(ish) system back in the day. It allowed this kind of thing :
$ cd directory-that-doesnt-exist $ echo "hello" > file.txt $ cd .. $ cat directory-that-doesnt-exist/file.txt > no such file or directory
Vanilla - the only thing in the known universe more useless than the Department for Education.
I disagree. The Perl programming language would give it a run for its money. The only "write once, never edit" language known.
Perl was write once, make sure it works and then never ever go near it again.
I remember a Perl expert writing what should have been a 200 line script in a single completely and utterly unreadable line, assembler was easier to read and follow...
You think that's bad? I once had to port over a major codebase - on my own - from a third party company. Lots of the 'code' was written in the C preprocessor. A header file of a few lines became hundreds of K of preprocessor output.
Try finding a bug in that. If you ever thought Macromedia Flash was an awful buggy hellhole, I'd like to introduce you to the Macromedia Shockwave sourcecode.
(Weeps gently in the background)
PB.com Programmers Bragging
Not really bragging... in need of counselling.
From memory (and it was thankfully over 25 years ago...) version 4 had MIN and MAX macros. Which returned true if the given was larger or smaller, as you would expect.
In V5, the MIN and MAX macro operands had been reversed; as had all the places the macros were used.
In V6, they were back to how they were in V4.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is Quality Coding...
What about
#define FOUR 5
That sort of thing triggers so many mental hiccups when reading code
Sunak has no other card to play than this. ELE is here. So he is coming out of the blocks swinging, saying literally anything he thinks may resonate. Anything. However absurd the point or how ranty the tone.
Sure! And he'll get more. But look at him. Listen to him. He's ranting. His pitch is increasing, and he is getting increasingly exasperated and that means he is getting faster and faster and faster.
He’s really not. Starmer is absolutely on the back foot and Sunak isn’t being screechy just battering Starmer. Sunak is remarkably calm and Starmer is that gimp man from the ministry.
You don't have to be a Putin fan to accept that no one is going to evict him from the six counties oblasts (five in Ukraine plus Transdinistra) any time soon and an armistice with partition, then support to make it stick a la South Korea is better than continuing the slaughter and risking it escalating further, and being of the view that interfering in other countries affairs on sanctimonious moral grounds often disguising vested interests (Ukraine 2014, Libya 2011, Iraq 2003, Afghanistan 2003-2022, Iran 1953 ends up causing far worse problems than the ones they were intended to resolve.
Remember: invading is usually the easy part.
And it's the occupation that usually kills you.
Those Oblasts will be a constant resource drain on the Russian economy, in terms of men and material, and they will produce bugger all tax revenue.
And all the time, Russia will grow economically weaker. It is utterly dependent on energy exports, and it has completely fucked itself.
And it is hard to consider but Putin will die. He might be like my dad and think he won't, but he will. And the world will be a better place.
You are joking?
Whoever replaces Putin will be far worse (if we are lucky he might be less skilled at the art of politics (unless less skilled in the Kaiser Bill sense).
One reason Putin went in in 2022 was becsause it was a domestic issue big enough that he might have been vulnerable to hardliners if he didn't.
And so we get closer to house in the Russia talking points bingo. “Whoever succeeds Putin will be worse!” Tell that to Ukrainians being subjected to all out war and the attempted obliteration of their country and culture.
Seriously, that is straight from the textbook. And if you follow the history of deposed or naturally dying tyrants, most of the time it’s bogus.
You can presumably point to some solid indications that if Putin falls, he will be replaced by a nice, moderate pro-Westerner? Or perhaps some case studies of other nasty dictators that the West has toppled recently leading to the establishment of a nice, pro-Western peace-loving democracy? Or do people just keep saying it because it's not a bad best guess?
That’s Russia’s business, not Tim’s. Which was his point, if you didn’t get it.
If we end up with Libya, except with nukes, that's everyone's business - that is everyone sane's point, in case you're struggling.
Or 1930s Germany with Nukes.
That's effectively what we have now you pillock. Putin's already tried his version of annexing the Sudatenland, only with more violence.
No we don't. Putin is Ruthless, patient, Cold and Calculating. Hitler was a nutter liable to make crazy decisions in a fit of rage if crossed.
Hitler would probably have nuked Kiev after the Kerch Bridge was attacked.
Putin is a nutter too, who believes his own garbage and spin.
A calculating leader would never have made such a horrendous mistake as to invade Ukraine.
All long term leaders suffer from too many people feeding them bullshit because they think that is what they want to hear.
In Russia, Ukrainan control of Crimea and Donbass (and the coast to Odesa and Kharkiv is seen by many in the same light as Alsace-Lorraine was with France from 1870 to 1918, a historic monumental wrong crying out to heaven for venegance.
Putin never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. He has by his actions created a Ukranian nationalist consciousness in places that never had it before, and earned the permanent opposition of Russian speaking Ukranians.
In very much the same way that British actions over the 1916 Easter rising and the Black and Tans created Nationalist Ireland.
But doubled down in the six Oblasts Counties.
Its going to end up with Ulster type partition.
And yes just as much strong feelings on both sides of that partition.
Thats just reality.
It's hard to tell, for obvious reasons, but I doubt that pro-Russian sentiment in Russian-occupied Ukraine is as strong as pro-British sentiment in Northern Ireland.
Crimea 100% certain pro russian. Think county Down or Antrim if the inhabitants of West Belfast had been sent packing at partition
Donetsk/Luhansk - Londonderry/Armagh - except the Russians don't control the "Bogside" and "South Armagh"
The halves of Zaporizhzhia (without) and Kherson (wjthout) they have. Think Tyrone and Fermanagh. Majority "Republican" but hung on to make the place viable (and land bridge to Crimea).
Maybe they are now. Because most of the Ukrainian population left during the 10 years of war in the Donbas. The war started by covert and not so covert Russian agents.
There are not parallels between Putin’s power/land/money grab in Ukraine and what happened in Ireland.
Vanilla - the only thing in the known universe more useless than the Department for Education.
I disagree. The Perl programming language would give it a run for its money. The only "write once, never edit" language known.
Perl was write once, make sure it works and then never ever go near it again.
I remember a Perl expert writing what should have been a 200 line script in a single completely and utterly unreadable line, assembler was easier to read and follow...
You think that's bad? I once had to port over a major codebase - on my own - from a third party company. Lots of the 'code' was written in the C preprocessor. A header file of a few lines became hundreds of K of preprocessor output.
Try finding a bug in that. If you ever thought Macromedia Flash was an awful buggy hellhole, I'd like to introduce you to the Macromedia Shockwave sourcecode.
(Weeps gently in the background)
PB.com Programmers Bragging
Not really bragging... in need of counselling.
From memory (and it was thankfully over 25 years ago...) version 4 had MIN and MAX macros. Which returned true if the given was larger or smaller, as you would expect.
In V5, the MIN and MAX macro operands had been reversed; as had all the places the macros were used.
In V6, they were back to how they were in V4.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is Quality Coding...
What about
#define FOUR 5
That sort of thing triggers so many mental hiccups when reading code
Now you've triggered my operator overloading PTSD.
These betting politicians are going to get political betting banned altogether aren't they.
I fully expect more regulation on betting under a Starmer government, all under the guise of protecting the punter.
Yet another reason not to vote Labour methinks. God save us from people who want to protect us from ourselves. CS Lewis was right.
You think a post from from a Tory vaguely imagining a Labour policy is helpful for deciding your vote?
Conclusive? No. Contributory? Yes. Albeit small in magnitude.
My reasons for wanting the Conservatives to lose by lots is that they should go away and rebuild from first principles what party they need to be. I don't think they will, and the current crop are really dumb, but I think they should.
But by the same coin I think Labour are a bit lost. My criticism of Goodwin's elite's observations are not that they are wrong (I don't think they are) but that he thinks the Right is immune (it isn't). This distancing of politicians from everyday lives concerns me and I don't think Labour understands the things I think are a threat[1] nor how to fix them. I look forward on being proved wrong but some of the prior indications (Labour's "countries and regions" plan, Streeting talking hard to the NHS) make me think they're going to apply a Nineties solution to a Twenties' problem...which isn't going to work.
[1] the oncoming Boomer death wave, very poor defence, massively indebted councils, the collapse in the tax system as people move out, inherited wealth perpetuating inequality, inability to build houses, overreliance on inward migration labour, worship of growth over happiness, pensionerism, stacks of debt, the learned helplessness of the nation-state in the face of transnational/supranational capital...
Who are you going to vote for then?
Do you mind if I don't say? I genuinely don't know yet. I won't spoil my ballot paper nor refuse to vote, because you should always vote. But I don't know and it may well be gut feeling over considered thought. So I'll take the Fifth on this one please.
Comments
It was so dreary.
I am convinced this election is Rishi Sunak playing a game of Brewsters Millions but with Tory seats not greenbacks.
BTW the protest is so grating that I think there could be a real risk that one or the other of them loses their shit before the end.
It’s easier to start by thinking about how many seats a party is likely to win, and then consider how likely it is that a given seat will be one of them. For example, I still put the Tories on a hundred or more, so thinking about the Tories being reduced to 100 seats, yes, Sevenoaks would very likely be one of those. Similarly, if Reform won say 25 seats, how likely is it that IOW E could be one of them - quite possible, I’d say. Currently I don’t think they will win 25 seats, and if they win say five, would IOW E be one; no. Thinking about seats from the global totals downwards seems an easier way to go.
Oof
Try finding a bug in that. If you ever thought Macromedia Flash was an awful buggy hellhole, I'd like to introduce you to the Macromedia Shockwave sourcecode.
(Weeps gently in the background)
Truthfully, I did always like Perl. Especially the construct of `do_y() unless $x`. I know ruby and others reused it - but it read very well.
FORTH is the only language I've never really got on with.
https://x.com/LeftieStats/status/1806018124770431154
"Stats for Lefties 🍉🏳️⚧️
@LeftieStats
🚨 BREAKING: Bombshell poll shows Tories plunging to **15%** 😳😳
🔴 LAB 40% (-6)
🟣 REF 17% (+5)
🔵 CON 15% (-4)
🟠 LD 14% (+4)
🟢 GRN 7% (-1)
🟡 SNP 3% (-)
Via
@ElectCalculus
/
@FindoutnowUK
, 14-24 June (+/- vs 20-27 May)"
*Sunak* will lose his shit before the end. He's on the brink already...
The UK's welfare bill has gone up to more under Sunak than it was under Brown.
Not because of Covid though, and not because of the unemployed (unemployment is lower than it was under Brown) either.
The Tories are ramping up welfare as deliberate policy and that takes taxes. The welfare is not going to the poor though, or people in lockdown which is nobody today.
Does that mean that PeoplePolling was correct, and Reform really are on 25%? Do we need more PeoplePolling PeoplePolls?
It was atrocious.
My reasons for wanting the Conservatives to lose by lots is that they should go away and rebuild from first principles what party they need to be. I don't think they will, and the current crop are really dumb, but I think they should.
But by the same coin I think Labour are a bit lost. My criticism of Goodwin's elite's observations are not that they are wrong (I don't think they are) but that he thinks the Right is immune (it isn't). This distancing of politicians from everyday lives concerns me and I don't think Labour understands the things I think are a threat[1] nor how to fix them. I look forward on being proved wrong but some of the prior indications (Labour's "countries and regions" plan, Streeting talking hard to the NHS) make me think they're going to apply a Nineties solution to a Twenties' problem...which isn't going to work.
[1] the oncoming Boomer death wave, very poor defence, massively indebted councils, the collapse in the tax system as people move out, inherited wealth perpetuating inequality, inability to build houses, overreliance on inward migration labour, worship of growth over happiness, pensionerism, stacks of debt, the learned helplessness of the nation-state in the face of transnational/supranational capital...
""Under the new rules there will be three levels of sanction. For "low and intermediate level" issues, such as failure to actively look for a job or be available to work, claimants would lose their benefit for one month for the first offence and three months for subsequent events. The higher level of sanction for people who refused a job or left one without good reason would be three months for the first time, six months the second time, and three years subsequently.""
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/oct/22/jobseekers-refuse-work-benefits-cuts
"the people smugglers are going to need a bigger boat".
Poor dear hasn't really had to learn inner calm.
It's perfectly possible to write readable, maintainable Perl but you have to be very disciplined to do so and, in retrospect, There's More Than One Way To Do It turned out to be a better fit for hacking than for engineering.
Back to the debate: Rishi really should have taken that valium beforehand. He's bouncing up and down and gabbling again.
These days we use Regex backtracks to destroy performance.
From memory (and it was thankfully over 25 years ago...) version 4 had MIN and MAX macros. Which returned true if the given was larger or smaller, as you would expect.
In V5, the MIN and MAX macro operands had been reversed; as had all the places the macros were used.
In V6, they were back to how they were in V4.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is Quality Coding...
Toolmaker
Ran the CPS
Tackled terrorist gangs.
All,ticked.
The fact is, if the Tories go down to 50 seats next week it is absolutely no-one else’s fault but theirs. The way they have treated government particularly in the last parliament gives the electorate every excuse to throw the book at them.
But some of us are looking up at the stars 👍
It's way better than that kiddie toy known as Python
Surrender them to me as i have a plan to continue to get down from the err checks notes record levels under me!
But he misses the fact that's with unemployment low.
The welfare bill is not going on the unemployed. Its going elsewhere.
But don't worry, Sunak is going to keep the Triple Lock Plus.
FFS!
https://x.com/paddypower/status/1806027161435841001
The header MRP is WeThink; this poll is by Findoutnow.
$ cd directory-that-doesnt-exist
$ echo "hello" > file.txt
$ cd ..
$ cat directory-that-doesnt-exist/file.txt
> no such file or directory
#define FOUR 5
That sort of thing triggers so many mental hiccups when reading code
Fixed it for Jimmy
No mate you jailed people who stole a few pence worth of goods
You just need to be so careful with it.
https://x.com/PeterOuld/status/1806053252300996855
There are not parallels between Putin’s power/land/money grab in Ukraine and what happened in Ireland.
I find your take on this deeply objectionable.
You think this is bad? Imagine what the US one will be like tomorrow?
I doubt the Biden team will be taking pointers from Starmer about how handle such debates though...