"Thousands of burglars and shoplifters should be spared jail, the Liberal Democrats have said.
A motion at the party’s annual conference in Brighton next week will urge Sir Keir Starmer to scrap most sentences of less than a year. Rishi Sunak’s government had drafted similar plans to ditch the majority of jail terms under 12 months to ease the prisons overcrowding crisis.
Under the Liberal Democrat proposals, offenders including burglars, shoplifters and thieves would walk free on the condition that they carry out unpaid community work."
And when they don't bother turning up for community service which a large percentage will?
They can be sent to jail if they continue to breach community orders
But they won't do just as they don't currently. I know quite a few that got community service that never bothered doing it. Nothing happened. Next time they were in court more community service which they also didn't bother doing....its a joke for them
Wilful and consistent non-compliance may result in the offender being re-sentenced and receiving a custodial sentence.
A breach that otherwise involves a high level of compliance could result in one of the following penalties:
Doesn't matter what the guidelines say if they enforced
Those among us who do things such as burglary, car theft , shop lifting, mugging etc know full well that 99% of the time the police won't even bother investigating and the occasional time they do get caught they will be told they are a naughty boy and not to do it again with something like community service for which turning up is optional because nothing will happen if they don't.
Your attitude is typical of politicians....we wrote a law so its all fixed....no it isn't unless that law is enforced and it damn well isn't enforced. That is why you get things like the recent rioters who have already been in court on 20 or more occasions....they are laughing at your laws. Those amongst us that have to live among them rather than a middle class leafy suburb though have to put up with their criminal ways
I didn't say it never happened I pointed out it doesn't happen in the vast majority of cases
If you consistently breach community orders than jail can and often is the outcome as I posted
I know at least 5 people who have breached them, 2 of them have breached multiple orders if it was often the case at least a couple of them would have fallen foul of it. People who live in poorer areas like I have most of my life will also know people who are laughing at your assertion. The word you were looking for is occasionally
And they received no sanction at all? of course not and if they continued to breach those sanctions after that they would be jailed.
Now certain oiks may wish to push their luck and commit continual low level crime and not comply with community orders and breach subsequent sanctions but eventually their luck will run out and a judge will jail them
You are naive, when the police don't stir for burglary, car theft, muggings....you think they are turning out because some scally didn't bother doing his community service....bridge sales are that way ->
Police don't need to investigate themselves. The person running the community service will just tell their probation officer and if they breach again then the police will arrest them and the courts can jail them
You think police arresting them != police turning out? Sorry go live in a poor estate for a year you will meet plenty that dodge these orders and still manage to be walking around and being a pain in the arse to everyone else....they are laughing at your laws, the law abiding in those areas are holding the law in total contempt for not protecting them.
Yes, the police arrest where a crime committed, then they hand over to the CPS who charge and prosecute and judges sentence if convicted.
Emotional rants about the problems of poor people in working class areas don't really resolve the matter and are a bit patronising and cliched, the laws are there to be enforced, the police have the powers to do so with ASBOs, criminal behaviour orders as well as charges for breaches of statutory offences. Not much more politicians can do
Off-topic, but OpenAI have released a new model which they claim :
In our tests, the next model update performs similarly to PhD students on challenging benchmark tasks in physics, chemistry, and biology. We also found that it excels in math and coding. In a qualifying exam for the International Mathematics Olympiad (IMO), GPT-4o correctly solved only 13% of problems, while the reasoning model scored 83%. Their coding abilities were evaluated in contests and reached the 89th percentile in Codeforces competitions
I have my severe doubts, but I'll give it a whirl tomorrow.
"We test GPT-4 on pairs of questions like, “Who is Tom Cruise’s mother?” and, “Who is Mary Lee Pfeiffer’s son?” for 1,000 different celebrities and their actual parents. We find many cases where a model answers the first question (“Who is ’s parent?”) correctly, but not the second. We hypothesize this is because the pretraining data includes fewer examples of the ordering where the parent precedes the celebrity (eg “Mary Lee Pfeiffer’s son is Tom Cruise”)."
Off-topic, but OpenAI have released a new model which they claim :
In our tests, the next model update performs similarly to PhD students on challenging benchmark tasks in physics, chemistry, and biology. We also found that it excels in math and coding. In a qualifying exam for the International Mathematics Olympiad (IMO), GPT-4o correctly solved only 13% of problems, while the reasoning model scored 83%. Their coding abilities were evaluated in contests and reached the 89th percentile in Codeforces competitions
I have my severe doubts, but I'll give it a whirl tomorrow.
"We test GPT-4 on pairs of questions like, “Who is Tom Cruise’s mother?” and, “Who is Mary Lee Pfeiffer’s son?” for 1,000 different celebrities and their actual parents. We find many cases where a model answers the first question (“Who is ’s parent?”) correctly, but not the second. We hypothesize this is because the pretraining data includes fewer examples of the ordering where the parent precedes the celebrity (eg “Mary Lee Pfeiffer’s son is Tom Cruise”)."
Money quote, … AI models do not need to be "AGI" or "self-aware" (both hypothetical concepts at the present) to be dangerous if allowed to write and execute code unsupervised. Such systems could break existing critical infrastructure or potentially create malware, even if unintentionally...
Off-topic, but OpenAI have released a new model which they claim :
In our tests, the next model update performs similarly to PhD students on challenging benchmark tasks in physics, chemistry, and biology. We also found that it excels in math and coding. In a qualifying exam for the International Mathematics Olympiad (IMO), GPT-4o correctly solved only 13% of problems, while the reasoning model scored 83%. Their coding abilities were evaluated in contests and reached the 89th percentile in Codeforces competitions
I have my severe doubts, but I'll give it a whirl tomorrow.
"We test GPT-4 on pairs of questions like, “Who is Tom Cruise’s mother?” and, “Who is Mary Lee Pfeiffer’s son?” for 1,000 different celebrities and their actual parents. We find many cases where a model answers the first question (“Who is ’s parent?”) correctly, but not the second. We hypothesize this is because the pretraining data includes fewer examples of the ordering where the parent precedes the celebrity (eg “Mary Lee Pfeiffer’s son is Tom Cruise”)."
Entirely predictable. Parties nearly always lurch to the extreme after a long time in government before tacking back to the centre after a defeat - and this time there's the added electoral challenge of Reform making that option oh so enticing.
But it'll fail because it will so strongly reinforce the tactical voting against them, even if they somehow manage to reuinite the right - which itself is unlikely because Reform and Tory voters are actually quite different political beasts and don't sit very naturally together.
Take me as an unrepresentative sample of one (but maybe not *that* unrepresentative). Long-time Tory member, activist, official and briefly councillor. Offered the chance to return having resigned five years ago. Instead joined the Lib Dems.
I’m a longterm LibDem subscriber too, although as I’m not active I feel more of a donor than a member. Glad to have you aboard David, have always found your posts - both here and on Twitter - to be thoughtful and insightful.
Trump’s having a rally today in Tucson at the Linda Ronstadt Music Hall. Here’s her statement about him “bringing his hate show” to the city where she was born and lived half her life.
Bonus fact—Ronstadt Hall holds 2300; guess they couldn’t fill the 8900-seat arena next door.
Off-topic, but OpenAI have released a new model which they claim :
In our tests, the next model update performs similarly to PhD students on challenging benchmark tasks in physics, chemistry, and biology. We also found that it excels in math and coding. In a qualifying exam for the International Mathematics Olympiad (IMO), GPT-4o correctly solved only 13% of problems, while the reasoning model scored 83%. Their coding abilities were evaluated in contests and reached the 89th percentile in Codeforces competitions
I have my severe doubts, but I'll give it a whirl tomorrow.
"We test GPT-4 on pairs of questions like, “Who is Tom Cruise’s mother?” and, “Who is Mary Lee Pfeiffer’s son?” for 1,000 different celebrities and their actual parents. We find many cases where a model answers the first question (“Who is ’s parent?”) correctly, but not the second. We hypothesize this is because the pretraining data includes fewer examples of the ordering where the parent precedes the celebrity (eg “Mary Lee Pfeiffer’s son is Tom Cruise”)."
Money quote, … AI models do not need to be "AGI" or "self-aware" (both hypothetical concepts at the present) to be dangerous if allowed to write and execute code unsupervised. Such systems could break existing critical infrastructure or potentially create malware, even if unintentionally...
Completely off topic: I’ve been watching Somerset play Surrey in the county championship. Good start by Somerset but heading fo a draw after rain today, so I switched to something else. Just seen that they won with Archie Vaughan getting 12 wickets. Serves me right for giving up too early: I missed seven wickets in about an hour.
There have been a lot of tight finishes in the CC in the last few years for the top clubs. Across the 2 divisions there should be enough exciting passages of play to put together a highlights package. It's a sign of a team right at the top of their game when they have the self-belief to force a win like today. Essex had it a few years ago when they were dominant, I hope Somerset manage to overtake Surrey in the last 2 matches.
"On her record so far, Reeves is quickly turning out to be the worst Chancellor of modern times – and it won’t be long before there is talk about replacing her."
Says the Telegraph. Let's wait until she does cockups which inevitably will happen. You have a budget in a month. Honestly the impatience of people to show Labour are failing is laughable. There are 4 to 5 years to go. Can we not wait a few more months until something really happens.
I voted Labour and have a bit of Buyers remorse at the moment but it is far too early to castigate Rachel Reeves.
I agree with the WFA cut, I do not see that she has done anything wrong so far apart from, possibly, the way it was handled.
TBH I get why the Tories and their supporters cannot wait to try to show labour is failing us. If would be no different if the boot was on the other foot.
The Tory press is doing exactly what you’d expect it to do, and it’s perfectly within its rights to do so. Of course the Telegraph is going to say things like Reeves is the worse chancellor in history. It may well be working: Labour have lost the spin battles since July.
Equally it makes sense for supporters of Labour to position this as desperate bleating by a right wing press in denial. Which might also work a bit.
I don't have a great sense of spin battles being either lost or won atm.
Labour will dip a fair bit in the polls and Tories will claim success. Tories have forgotten how to govern. Year 1, clear the decks, announce anything bad. Year 4 spread the jam.
That of course supposes that there is any jam in Year 4, which given Labour's extraordinary anti-growth policies on tax, Net Zero, regulation, well everything except a bit on housing, is very unlikely. And that's assuming there aren't any large external shocks.
Also it's by no means even certain, as the Conservatives found out in 1997, that the electorate will thank you for good economic news. If the narrative has set in that you're crap, it's incredibly difficult to shift.
Why do you think they've made growth politically totemic if their policies are anti growth?
That's a very interesting question.
I'd say probably a combination of reasons.
Firstly they believe the fantasy of "green growth", "green jobs", etc., peddled by Miliband and others - the idea that jobs lost by massively increasing regulatory burdens will somehow be outweighed by jobs created in elsewhere in the economy to implement growth. Whereas, of course, the opposite has been and will continue to be the case - our industry is shafted with the highest energy costs in the world, while most of the "green" manufacturing jobs, such as they are, have gone overseas.
Secondly, neither Starmer nor his Chancellor have ever earned a penny from business or been involved in supply side economic policy. Reeves' only experience was as a tea girl in the Bank of England, which deals with demand side policy, not supply side, whereas the obstacles to growth in this country are all on the supply side. This lack of experience means they simply don't understand the importance, and fragility, of business confidence and light regulation in economic growth.
Thirdly, Starmer in particular is a technocrat, and like all technocrats of both parties - Heseltine, Gordon Brown, Ted Heath, etc. - completely overestimates the ability of the government to promote economic growth by meddling with the market. They think that government can create good and viable businesses (rather than union-dominated obsolete wrecks) and that a subsidy here or there will make business more effective, rather than just encouraging business to seek more subsidies as that's much easier than increasing sales and cutting costs.
Fourthly, related, Starmer is a lawyer, and like all lawyers has a tendency to assume that if the government issues a law, it will happen, and the law, being issued by him, must be good and so will never have negative side-effects. Whereas, in fact, all laws have negative side-effects, which very often outweigh whatever good comes of them (see lockdowns as the most egregious recent example).
Fifthly, he may have believed his own propaganda that leaving the Single Market had a massive negative effect on the UK economy, and that if he turned up smiling in Brussels they would fall over themselves to give him an amazing deal which would get things back to the Nirvana of 2015.
Finally, of course, there is the electoral reason. The electorate realises, however dimly, that the economy hasn't done well over the last decade and a half and he needs to pretend he has some answers.
Hmm, most of that is standard right wing 'small state' fare with a dash of climate scepticism and some special pleading on behalf of Brexit. You can't expect a Labour government to be driven by those beliefs.
Nah, it's mostly basic economics combined with decades of experience in economic policy-making. It's hardly rocket science: markets allocate resources better than government, regulation has huge costs, often unintended and always underestiated, and people who've spent their whole working lives in the public sector won't understand industry or finance.
Obviously a Labour government doesn't understand basic economics - that's not a revelation. Viewing the productive and enterprising and the private sector generally as an ATM for their pet projects and client groups is hardly likely to promote growth. And the last government was rarely great on that metric. But claiming to be pro-growth while simultaneously screwing over industry is positively Orwellian.
Off-topic, but OpenAI have released a new model which they claim :
In our tests, the next model update performs similarly to PhD students on challenging benchmark tasks in physics, chemistry, and biology. We also found that it excels in math and coding. In a qualifying exam for the International Mathematics Olympiad (IMO), GPT-4o correctly solved only 13% of problems, while the reasoning model scored 83%. Their coding abilities were evaluated in contests and reached the 89th percentile in Codeforces competitions
I have my severe doubts, but I'll give it a whirl tomorrow.
"We test GPT-4 on pairs of questions like, “Who is Tom Cruise’s mother?” and, “Who is Mary Lee Pfeiffer’s son?” for 1,000 different celebrities and their actual parents. We find many cases where a model answers the first question (“Who is ’s parent?”) correctly, but not the second. We hypothesize this is because the pretraining data includes fewer examples of the ordering where the parent precedes the celebrity (eg “Mary Lee Pfeiffer’s son is Tom Cruise”)."
Money quote, … AI models do not need to be "AGI" or "self-aware" (both hypothetical concepts at the present) to be dangerous if allowed to write and execute code unsupervised. Such systems could break existing critical infrastructure or potentially create malware, even if unintentionally...
The “it’s not real intelligence” crowd are missing the point.
If you really want to worry about AI, the drone war in Ukraine is getting to the point where the solution to jamming is to let the drones find their own targets: using AI…
Off-topic, but OpenAI have released a new model which they claim :
In our tests, the next model update performs similarly to PhD students on challenging benchmark tasks in physics, chemistry, and biology. We also found that it excels in math and coding. In a qualifying exam for the International Mathematics Olympiad (IMO), GPT-4o correctly solved only 13% of problems, while the reasoning model scored 83%. Their coding abilities were evaluated in contests and reached the 89th percentile in Codeforces competitions
I have my severe doubts, but I'll give it a whirl tomorrow.
"We test GPT-4 on pairs of questions like, “Who is Tom Cruise’s mother?” and, “Who is Mary Lee Pfeiffer’s son?” for 1,000 different celebrities and their actual parents. We find many cases where a model answers the first question (“Who is ’s parent?”) correctly, but not the second. We hypothesize this is because the pretraining data includes fewer examples of the ordering where the parent precedes the celebrity (eg “Mary Lee Pfeiffer’s son is Tom Cruise”)."
Money quote, … AI models do not need to be "AGI" or "self-aware" (both hypothetical concepts at the present) to be dangerous if allowed to write and execute code unsupervised. Such systems could break existing critical infrastructure or potentially create malware, even if unintentionally...
The “it’s not real intelligence” crowd are missing the point.
If you really want to worry about AI, the drone war in Ukraine is getting to the point where the solution to jamming is to let the drones find their own targets: using AI…
New York Times - Trump Says He Won’t Debate Harris Again
Donald Trump posted on Truth Social two days after a face-off with Kamala Harris in which he was widely criticized for delivering a poor performance. Harris’s campaign said it raised $47 million in the 24 hours after the debate.
SSI - So DJT is frit of KH . . . surprise, surprise!
Completely off topic: I’ve been watching Somerset play Surrey in the county championship. Good start by Somerset but heading fo a draw after rain today, so I switched to something else. Just seen that they won with Archie Vaughan getting 12 wickets. Serves me right for giving up too early: I missed seven wickets in about an hour.
There have been a lot of tight finishes in the CC in the last few years for the top clubs. Across the 2 divisions there should be enough exciting passages of play to put together a highlights package. It's a sign of a team right at the top of their game when they have the self-belief to force a win like today. Essex had it a few years ago when they were dominant, I hope Somerset manage to overtake Surrey in the last 2 matches.
I was blown away both by the cricket and the quality of the stream: at least as good as the BBC used to put on when they had test matches (and indeed Sky back when I subscribed), decent commentary, including Vic Marks, and all for 2-3k viewers.
New York Times - Trump Says He Won’t Debate Harris Again
Donald Trump posted on Truth Social two days after a face-off with Kamala Harris in which he was widely criticized for delivering a poor performance. Harris’s campaign said it raised $47 million in the 24 hours after the debate.
SSI - So DJT is frit of KH . . . surprise, surprise!
He doesn't have much to gain by doing so.
Realistically, he's not likely to improve on that, and he doesn't want to cause even more unease among soft republicans.
Completely off topic: I’ve been watching Somerset play Surrey in the county championship. Good start by Somerset but heading fo a draw after rain today, so I switched to something else. Just seen that they won with Archie Vaughan getting 12 wickets. Serves me right for giving up too early: I missed seven wickets in about an hour.
There have been a lot of tight finishes in the CC in the last few years for the top clubs. Across the 2 divisions there should be enough exciting passages of play to put together a highlights package. It's a sign of a team right at the top of their game when they have the self-belief to force a win like today. Essex had it a few years ago when they were dominant, I hope Somerset manage to overtake Surrey in the last 2 matches.
I'm a good Glos man, but I will cheering Somerset on. Would be great to see them win the Championship at last.
That's without disrespect to Surrey, by the way, who do a lot of good for English cricket as well.
Off-topic, but OpenAI have released a new model which they claim :
In our tests, the next model update performs similarly to PhD students on challenging benchmark tasks in physics, chemistry, and biology. We also found that it excels in math and coding. In a qualifying exam for the International Mathematics Olympiad (IMO), GPT-4o correctly solved only 13% of problems, while the reasoning model scored 83%. Their coding abilities were evaluated in contests and reached the 89th percentile in Codeforces competitions
I have my severe doubts, but I'll give it a whirl tomorrow.
"We test GPT-4 on pairs of questions like, “Who is Tom Cruise’s mother?” and, “Who is Mary Lee Pfeiffer’s son?” for 1,000 different celebrities and their actual parents. We find many cases where a model answers the first question (“Who is ’s parent?”) correctly, but not the second. We hypothesize this is because the pretraining data includes fewer examples of the ordering where the parent precedes the celebrity (eg “Mary Lee Pfeiffer’s son is Tom Cruise”)."
Money quote, … AI models do not need to be "AGI" or "self-aware" (both hypothetical concepts at the present) to be dangerous if allowed to write and execute code unsupervised. Such systems could break existing critical infrastructure or potentially create malware, even if unintentionally...
The “it’s not real intelligence” crowd are missing the point.
If you really want to worry about AI, the drone war in Ukraine is getting to the point where the solution to jamming is to let the drones find their own targets: using AI…
Off-topic, but OpenAI have released a new model which they claim :
In our tests, the next model update performs similarly to PhD students on challenging benchmark tasks in physics, chemistry, and biology. We also found that it excels in math and coding. In a qualifying exam for the International Mathematics Olympiad (IMO), GPT-4o correctly solved only 13% of problems, while the reasoning model scored 83%. Their coding abilities were evaluated in contests and reached the 89th percentile in Codeforces competitions
I have my severe doubts, but I'll give it a whirl tomorrow.
"We test GPT-4 on pairs of questions like, “Who is Tom Cruise’s mother?” and, “Who is Mary Lee Pfeiffer’s son?” for 1,000 different celebrities and their actual parents. We find many cases where a model answers the first question (“Who is ’s parent?”) correctly, but not the second. We hypothesize this is because the pretraining data includes fewer examples of the ordering where the parent precedes the celebrity (eg “Mary Lee Pfeiffer’s son is Tom Cruise”)."
Money quote, … AI models do not need to be "AGI" or "self-aware" (both hypothetical concepts at the present) to be dangerous if allowed to write and execute code unsupervised. Such systems could break existing critical infrastructure or potentially create malware, even if unintentionally...
The “it’s not real intelligence” crowd are missing the point.
If you really want to worry about AI, the drone war in Ukraine is getting to the point where the solution to jamming is to let the drones find their own targets: using AI…
Good to see you around, hope you are keeping OK?
Had a minor op last week that ended up with a few complications, so I’m trying to set cover work for classes I still haven’t seen. Not my best star to a school year.
Off-topic, but OpenAI have released a new model which they claim :
In our tests, the next model update performs similarly to PhD students on challenging benchmark tasks in physics, chemistry, and biology. We also found that it excels in math and coding. In a qualifying exam for the International Mathematics Olympiad (IMO), GPT-4o correctly solved only 13% of problems, while the reasoning model scored 83%. Their coding abilities were evaluated in contests and reached the 89th percentile in Codeforces competitions
I have my severe doubts, but I'll give it a whirl tomorrow.
"We test GPT-4 on pairs of questions like, “Who is Tom Cruise’s mother?” and, “Who is Mary Lee Pfeiffer’s son?” for 1,000 different celebrities and their actual parents. We find many cases where a model answers the first question (“Who is ’s parent?”) correctly, but not the second. We hypothesize this is because the pretraining data includes fewer examples of the ordering where the parent precedes the celebrity (eg “Mary Lee Pfeiffer’s son is Tom Cruise”)."
Money quote, … AI models do not need to be "AGI" or "self-aware" (both hypothetical concepts at the present) to be dangerous if allowed to write and execute code unsupervised. Such systems could break existing critical infrastructure or potentially create malware, even if unintentionally...
The “it’s not real intelligence” crowd are missing the point.
If you really want to worry about AI, the drone war in Ukraine is getting to the point where the solution to jamming is to let the drones find their own targets: using AI…
Good to see you around, hope you are keeping OK?
Had a minor op last week that ended up with a few complications, so I’m trying to set cover work for classes I still haven’t seen. Not my best star to a school year.
Ouch, that is tough on both counts. Hope the recovery is rapid.
(One thing for those who talk about how teachers have it easy - a teacher on sick leave having to keep working...)
Off-topic, but OpenAI have released a new model which they claim :
In our tests, the next model update performs similarly to PhD students on challenging benchmark tasks in physics, chemistry, and biology. We also found that it excels in math and coding. In a qualifying exam for the International Mathematics Olympiad (IMO), GPT-4o correctly solved only 13% of problems, while the reasoning model scored 83%. Their coding abilities were evaluated in contests and reached the 89th percentile in Codeforces competitions
I have my severe doubts, but I'll give it a whirl tomorrow.
"We test GPT-4 on pairs of questions like, “Who is Tom Cruise’s mother?” and, “Who is Mary Lee Pfeiffer’s son?” for 1,000 different celebrities and their actual parents. We find many cases where a model answers the first question (“Who is ’s parent?”) correctly, but not the second. We hypothesize this is because the pretraining data includes fewer examples of the ordering where the parent precedes the celebrity (eg “Mary Lee Pfeiffer’s son is Tom Cruise”)."
Off-topic, but OpenAI have released a new model which they claim :
In our tests, the next model update performs similarly to PhD students on challenging benchmark tasks in physics, chemistry, and biology. We also found that it excels in math and coding. In a qualifying exam for the International Mathematics Olympiad (IMO), GPT-4o correctly solved only 13% of problems, while the reasoning model scored 83%. Their coding abilities were evaluated in contests and reached the 89th percentile in Codeforces competitions
I have my severe doubts, but I'll give it a whirl tomorrow.
"We test GPT-4 on pairs of questions like, “Who is Tom Cruise’s mother?” and, “Who is Mary Lee Pfeiffer’s son?” for 1,000 different celebrities and their actual parents. We find many cases where a model answers the first question (“Who is ’s parent?”) correctly, but not the second. We hypothesize this is because the pretraining data includes fewer examples of the ordering where the parent precedes the celebrity (eg “Mary Lee Pfeiffer’s son is Tom Cruise”)."
Money quote, … AI models do not need to be "AGI" or "self-aware" (both hypothetical concepts at the present) to be dangerous if allowed to write and execute code unsupervised. Such systems could break existing critical infrastructure or potentially create malware, even if unintentionally...
Completely off topic: I’ve been watching Somerset play Surrey in the county championship. Good start by Somerset but heading fo a draw after rain today, so I switched to something else. Just seen that they won with Archie Vaughan getting 12 wickets. Serves me right for giving up too early: I missed seven wickets in about an hour.
There have been a lot of tight finishes in the CC in the last few years for the top clubs. Across the 2 divisions there should be enough exciting passages of play to put together a highlights package. It's a sign of a team right at the top of their game when they have the self-belief to force a win like today. Essex had it a few years ago when they were dominant, I hope Somerset manage to overtake Surrey in the last 2 matches.
I'm a good Glos man, but I will cheering Somerset on. Would be great to see them win the Championship at last.
That's without disrespect to Surrey, by the way, who do a lot of good for English cricket as well.
New York Times - Trump Says He Won’t Debate Harris Again
Donald Trump posted on Truth Social two days after a face-off with Kamala Harris in which he was widely criticized for delivering a poor performance. Harris’s campaign said it raised $47 million in the 24 hours after the debate.
SSI - So DJT is frit of KH . . . surprise, surprise!
Good.
There's always a chance she'll fuck up if doing another one just because anyone can have a screwy moment in these situations.
As Carville has been saying: "Just keep saying when's the next debate" knowing there wont be one and also as an answer to why there is no long and tedious one-to-one interviews with CNN etc.
Really top stuff although you have to strain sometimes to get through the olde southern accent.
Public couldn't give a shit he reckons about these long one-on-ones the media desperate for her to do. They just wanna know when the next debate is. Keep 'em on that he reckons and maybe do a policy speech or two to keep media busy with analysis.
Completely off topic: I’ve been watching Somerset play Surrey in the county championship. Good start by Somerset but heading fo a draw after rain today, so I switched to something else. Just seen that they won with Archie Vaughan getting 12 wickets. Serves me right for giving up too early: I missed seven wickets in about an hour.
There have been a lot of tight finishes in the CC in the last few years for the top clubs. Across the 2 divisions there should be enough exciting passages of play to put together a highlights package. It's a sign of a team right at the top of their game when they have the self-belief to force a win like today. Essex had it a few years ago when they were dominant, I hope Somerset manage to overtake Surrey in the last 2 matches.
I'm a good Glos man, but I will cheering Somerset on. Would be great to see them win the Championship at last.
That's without disrespect to Surrey, by the way, who do a lot of good for English cricket as well.
Not too bad. Currently wasting much time that could be spent on more useful things chasing British Gas and their equally criminal solicitors Womble Bond Dickinson for their various misdemeanours, which will unfortunately swallow up my day off tomorrow, but the business still earns an honest crust and I've dodged the VAT threshold last year.
Off-topic, but OpenAI have released a new model which they claim :
In our tests, the next model update performs similarly to PhD students on challenging benchmark tasks in physics, chemistry, and biology. We also found that it excels in math and coding. In a qualifying exam for the International Mathematics Olympiad (IMO), GPT-4o correctly solved only 13% of problems, while the reasoning model scored 83%. Their coding abilities were evaluated in contests and reached the 89th percentile in Codeforces competitions
I have my severe doubts, but I'll give it a whirl tomorrow.
"We test GPT-4 on pairs of questions like, “Who is Tom Cruise’s mother?” and, “Who is Mary Lee Pfeiffer’s son?” for 1,000 different celebrities and their actual parents. We find many cases where a model answers the first question (“Who is ’s parent?”) correctly, but not the second. We hypothesize this is because the pretraining data includes fewer examples of the ordering where the parent precedes the celebrity (eg “Mary Lee Pfeiffer’s son is Tom Cruise”)."
Money quote, … AI models do not need to be "AGI" or "self-aware" (both hypothetical concepts at the present) to be dangerous if allowed to write and execute code unsupervised. Such systems could break existing critical infrastructure or potentially create malware, even if unintentionally...
The “it’s not real intelligence” crowd are missing the point.
If you really want to worry about AI, the drone war in Ukraine is getting to the point where the solution to jamming is to let the drones find their own targets: using AI…
Good to see you around, hope you are keeping OK?
Had a minor op last week that ended up with a few complications, so I’m trying to set cover work for classes I still haven’t seen. Not my best star to a school year.
Ouch, that is tough on both counts. Hope the recovery is rapid.
(One thing for those who talk about how teachers have it easy - a teacher on sick leave having to keep working...)
They gave me some interesting pain killers today, so my quality of work might go down if I have to take them.
School is being pretty supportive so far: I’ve been told not to come back until I’m better.
Completely off topic: I’ve been watching Somerset play Surrey in the county championship. Good start by Somerset but heading fo a draw after rain today, so I switched to something else. Just seen that they won with Archie Vaughan getting 12 wickets. Serves me right for giving up too early: I missed seven wickets in about an hour.
There have been a lot of tight finishes in the CC in the last few years for the top clubs. Across the 2 divisions there should be enough exciting passages of play to put together a highlights package. It's a sign of a team right at the top of their game when they have the self-belief to force a win like today. Essex had it a few years ago when they were dominant, I hope Somerset manage to overtake Surrey in the last 2 matches.
I'm a good Glos man, but I will cheering Somerset on. Would be great to see them win the Championship at last.
That's without disrespect to Surrey, by the way, who do a lot of good for English cricket as well.
Not too bad. Currently wasting much time that could be spent on more useful things chasing British Gas and their equally criminal solicitors Womble Bond Dickinson for their various misdemeanours, which will unfortunately swallow up my day off tomorrow, but the business still earns an honest crust and I've dodged the VAT threshold last year.
I found British Gas had been charging me a service fee for both my old and new houses for about eight months. Much to my surprise it only took one (quite long) phone call to sort it out: I even got a refund!
Completely off topic: I’ve been watching Somerset play Surrey in the county championship. Good start by Somerset but heading fo a draw after rain today, so I switched to something else. Just seen that they won with Archie Vaughan getting 12 wickets. Serves me right for giving up too early: I missed seven wickets in about an hour.
There have been a lot of tight finishes in the CC in the last few years for the top clubs. Across the 2 divisions there should be enough exciting passages of play to put together a highlights package. It's a sign of a team right at the top of their game when they have the self-belief to force a win like today. Essex had it a few years ago when they were dominant, I hope Somerset manage to overtake Surrey in the last 2 matches.
I was blown away both by the cricket and the quality of the stream: at least as good as the BBC used to put on when they had test matches (and indeed Sky back when I subscribed), decent commentary, including Vic Marks, and all for 2-3k viewers.
ETA This was on YouTube.
Reportedly they got up to 16K, the youtube footage usually has the local radio commentary and the quality varies. Essex get Don Topley and at most 2 cameras.
Completely off topic: I’ve been watching Somerset play Surrey in the county championship. Good start by Somerset but heading fo a draw after rain today, so I switched to something else. Just seen that they won with Archie Vaughan getting 12 wickets. Serves me right for giving up too early: I missed seven wickets in about an hour.
There have been a lot of tight finishes in the CC in the last few years for the top clubs. Across the 2 divisions there should be enough exciting passages of play to put together a highlights package. It's a sign of a team right at the top of their game when they have the self-belief to force a win like today. Essex had it a few years ago when they were dominant, I hope Somerset manage to overtake Surrey in the last 2 matches.
I was blown away both by the cricket and the quality of the stream: at least as good as the BBC used to put on when they had test matches (and indeed Sky back when I subscribed), decent commentary, including Vic Marks, and all for 2-3k viewers.
ETA This was on YouTube.
Reportedly they got up to 16K, the youtube footage usually has the local radio commentary and the quality varies. Essex get Don Topley and at most 2 cameras.
I will definitely be watching more next summer, and what is left of this season.
Completely off topic: I’ve been watching Somerset play Surrey in the county championship. Good start by Somerset but heading fo a draw after rain today, so I switched to something else. Just seen that they won with Archie Vaughan getting 12 wickets. Serves me right for giving up too early: I missed seven wickets in about an hour.
There have been a lot of tight finishes in the CC in the last few years for the top clubs. Across the 2 divisions there should be enough exciting passages of play to put together a highlights package. It's a sign of a team right at the top of their game when they have the self-belief to force a win like today. Essex had it a few years ago when they were dominant, I hope Somerset manage to overtake Surrey in the last 2 matches.
I was blown away both by the cricket and the quality of the stream: at least as good as the BBC used to put on when they had test matches (and indeed Sky back when I subscribed), decent commentary, including Vic Marks, and all for 2-3k viewers.
ETA This was on YouTube.
Reportedly they got up to 16K, the youtube footage usually has the local radio commentary and the quality varies. Essex get Don Topley and at most 2 cameras.
I will definitely be watching more next summer, and what is left of this season.
There is talk of putting them behind paywalls next summer.
While I can see the logic of that when several counties are really struggling financially, I hope the ECB have the sense to put at least one match per round on YouTube still. It's worth a million Hundreds in terms of getting the game out there.
Completely off topic: I’ve been watching Somerset play Surrey in the county championship. Good start by Somerset but heading fo a draw after rain today, so I switched to something else. Just seen that they won with Archie Vaughan getting 12 wickets. Serves me right for giving up too early: I missed seven wickets in about an hour.
There have been a lot of tight finishes in the CC in the last few years for the top clubs. Across the 2 divisions there should be enough exciting passages of play to put together a highlights package. It's a sign of a team right at the top of their game when they have the self-belief to force a win like today. Essex had it a few years ago when they were dominant, I hope Somerset manage to overtake Surrey in the last 2 matches.
I was blown away both by the cricket and the quality of the stream: at least as good as the BBC used to put on when they had test matches (and indeed Sky back when I subscribed), decent commentary, including Vic Marks, and all for 2-3k viewers.
ETA This was on YouTube.
Reportedly they got up to 16K, the youtube footage usually has the local radio commentary and the quality varies. Essex get Don Topley and at most 2 cameras.
I will definitely be watching more next summer, and what is left of this season.
There is talk of putting them behind paywalls next summer.
While I can see the logic of that when several counties are really struggling financially, I hope the ECB have the sense to put at least one match per round on YouTube still. It's worth a million Hundreds in terms of getting the game out there.
If they are not stupid about the price, I might pay for it: the quality was really good, both in the he cricket and in the stream itself.
Steve Baker is best ignored I'm afraid. He has become a rather sad thing these days. My feeling is that he was leant on very hard by the Sunkites to change his Brexity ways - coincidentally around the time of his self-confessed mental health issues.
Off-topic, but OpenAI have released a new model which they claim :
In our tests, the next model update performs similarly to PhD students on challenging benchmark tasks in physics, chemistry, and biology. We also found that it excels in math and coding. In a qualifying exam for the International Mathematics Olympiad (IMO), GPT-4o correctly solved only 13% of problems, while the reasoning model scored 83%. Their coding abilities were evaluated in contests and reached the 89th percentile in Codeforces competitions
I have my severe doubts, but I'll give it a whirl tomorrow.
"We test GPT-4 on pairs of questions like, “Who is Tom Cruise’s mother?” and, “Who is Mary Lee Pfeiffer’s son?” for 1,000 different celebrities and their actual parents. We find many cases where a model answers the first question (“Who is ’s parent?”) correctly, but not the second. We hypothesize this is because the pretraining data includes fewer examples of the ordering where the parent precedes the celebrity (eg “Mary Lee Pfeiffer’s son is Tom Cruise”)."
Off-topic, but OpenAI have released a new model which they claim :
In our tests, the next model update performs similarly to PhD students on challenging benchmark tasks in physics, chemistry, and biology. We also found that it excels in math and coding. In a qualifying exam for the International Mathematics Olympiad (IMO), GPT-4o correctly solved only 13% of problems, while the reasoning model scored 83%. Their coding abilities were evaluated in contests and reached the 89th percentile in Codeforces competitions
I have my severe doubts, but I'll give it a whirl tomorrow.
"We test GPT-4 on pairs of questions like, “Who is Tom Cruise’s mother?” and, “Who is Mary Lee Pfeiffer’s son?” for 1,000 different celebrities and their actual parents. We find many cases where a model answers the first question (“Who is ’s parent?”) correctly, but not the second. We hypothesize this is because the pretraining data includes fewer examples of the ordering where the parent precedes the celebrity (eg “Mary Lee Pfeiffer’s son is Tom Cruise”)."
Money quote, … AI models do not need to be "AGI" or "self-aware" (both hypothetical concepts at the present) to be dangerous if allowed to write and execute code unsupervised. Such systems could break existing critical infrastructure or potentially create malware, even if unintentionally...
The “it’s not real intelligence” crowd are missing the point.
Don't think so. Thick but also terrifyingly dangerous is a well understood combination.
No, this is new, and not at all well understood. And it’s only early days.
And there’s a huge economic incentive to make instances of it ubiquitous.
OK. It seems to me to be eerily in line with predictions made in fiction by Gibson (1984) and paperclip maximiser thought experiments made by lots of people since.
2,500 jobs gone in Port Talbot and now 500 in Grangemouth
I thought Miliband was promising a green revolution of jobs, but he lost 3,000 this week alone
Are you suggesting these jobs wouldn't have been lost under a Conservative Government?
Grangemouth had the possibility of staying open with fresh investment. But the messaging from Miliband that he wants to destroy the Oil and Gas industry has put paid to that.
Contrast with Norway where the ONS trade show in Stavanger a couple of weeks ago was attended by both the Prime Minister and King of Norway. This follows a report in August from the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate that said that continued exploration was worth $1.4 trillion dollars to the Norwegian economy.
"Thousands of burglars and shoplifters should be spared jail, the Liberal Democrats have said.
A motion at the party’s annual conference in Brighton next week will urge Sir Keir Starmer to scrap most sentences of less than a year. Rishi Sunak’s government had drafted similar plans to ditch the majority of jail terms under 12 months to ease the prisons overcrowding crisis.
Under the Liberal Democrat proposals, offenders including burglars, shoplifters and thieves would walk free on the condition that they carry out unpaid community work."
And when they don't bother turning up for community service which a large percentage will?
They can be sent to jail if they continue to breach community orders
But they won't do just as they don't currently. I know quite a few that got community service that never bothered doing it. Nothing happened. Next time they were in court more community service which they also didn't bother doing....its a joke for them
Wilful and consistent non-compliance may result in the offender being re-sentenced and receiving a custodial sentence.
A breach that otherwise involves a high level of compliance could result in one of the following penalties:
Doesn't matter what the guidelines say if they enforced
Those among us who do things such as burglary, car theft , shop lifting, mugging etc know full well that 99% of the time the police won't even bother investigating and the occasional time they do get caught they will be told they are a naughty boy and not to do it again with something like community service for which turning up is optional because nothing will happen if they don't.
Your attitude is typical of politicians....we wrote a law so its all fixed....no it isn't unless that law is enforced and it damn well isn't enforced. That is why you get things like the recent rioters who have already been in court on 20 or more occasions....they are laughing at your laws. Those amongst us that have to live among them rather than a middle class leafy suburb though have to put up with their criminal ways
I didn't say it never happened I pointed out it doesn't happen in the vast majority of cases
If you consistently breach community orders than jail can and often is the outcome as I posted
I know at least 5 people who have breached them, 2 of them have breached multiple orders if it was often the case at least a couple of them would have fallen foul of it. People who live in poorer areas like I have most of my life will also know people who are laughing at your assertion. The word you were looking for is occasionally
And they received no sanction at all? of course not and if they continued to breach those sanctions after that they would be jailed.
Now certain oiks may wish to push their luck and commit continual low level crime and not comply with community orders and breach subsequent sanctions but eventually their luck will run out and a judge will jail them
You are naive, when the police don't stir for burglary, car theft, muggings....you think they are turning out because some scally didn't bother doing his community service....bridge sales are that way ->
Police don't need to investigate themselves. The person running the community service will just tell their probation officer and if they breach again then the police will arrest them and the courts can jail them
You think police arresting them != police turning out? Sorry go live in a poor estate for a year you will meet plenty that dodge these orders and still manage to be walking around and being a pain in the arse to everyone else....they are laughing at your laws, the law abiding in those areas are holding the law in total contempt for not protecting them.
Yes, the police arrest where a crime committed, then they hand over to the CPS who charge and prosecute and judges sentence if convicted.
Emotional rants about the problems of poor people in working class areas don't really resolve the matter and are a bit patronising and cliched, the laws are there to be enforced, the police have the powers to do so with ASBOs, criminal behaviour orders as well as charges for breaches of statutory offences. Not much more politicians can do
Spoken as someone who doesn't live in a poor area. I am sure your policing is just fine in your leafy suburb
"Thousands of burglars and shoplifters should be spared jail, the Liberal Democrats have said.
A motion at the party’s annual conference in Brighton next week will urge Sir Keir Starmer to scrap most sentences of less than a year. Rishi Sunak’s government had drafted similar plans to ditch the majority of jail terms under 12 months to ease the prisons overcrowding crisis.
Under the Liberal Democrat proposals, offenders including burglars, shoplifters and thieves would walk free on the condition that they carry out unpaid community work."
And when they don't bother turning up for community service which a large percentage will?
They can be sent to jail if they continue to breach community orders
But they won't do just as they don't currently. I know quite a few that got community service that never bothered doing it. Nothing happened. Next time they were in court more community service which they also didn't bother doing....its a joke for them
Wilful and consistent non-compliance may result in the offender being re-sentenced and receiving a custodial sentence.
A breach that otherwise involves a high level of compliance could result in one of the following penalties:
Doesn't matter what the guidelines say if they enforced
Those among us who do things such as burglary, car theft , shop lifting, mugging etc know full well that 99% of the time the police won't even bother investigating and the occasional time they do get caught they will be told they are a naughty boy and not to do it again with something like community service for which turning up is optional because nothing will happen if they don't.
Your attitude is typical of politicians....we wrote a law so its all fixed....no it isn't unless that law is enforced and it damn well isn't enforced. That is why you get things like the recent rioters who have already been in court on 20 or more occasions....they are laughing at your laws. Those amongst us that have to live among them rather than a middle class leafy suburb though have to put up with their criminal ways
I didn't say it never happened I pointed out it doesn't happen in the vast majority of cases
If you consistently breach community orders than jail can and often is the outcome as I posted
I know at least 5 people who have breached them, 2 of them have breached multiple orders if it was often the case at least a couple of them would have fallen foul of it. People who live in poorer areas like I have most of my life will also know people who are laughing at your assertion. The word you were looking for is occasionally
And they received no sanction at all? of course not and if they continued to breach those sanctions after that they would be jailed.
Now certain oiks may wish to push their luck and commit continual low level crime and not comply with community orders and breach subsequent sanctions but eventually their luck will run out and a judge will jail them
You are naive, when the police don't stir for burglary, car theft, muggings....you think they are turning out because some scally didn't bother doing his community service....bridge sales are that way ->
Police don't need to investigate themselves. The person running the community service will just tell their probation officer and if they breach again then the police will arrest them and the courts can jail them
You think police arresting them != police turning out? Sorry go live in a poor estate for a year you will meet plenty that dodge these orders and still manage to be walking around and being a pain in the arse to everyone else....they are laughing at your laws, the law abiding in those areas are holding the law in total contempt for not protecting them.
Yes, the police arrest where a crime committed, then they hand over to the CPS who charge and prosecute and judges sentence if convicted.
Emotional rants about the problems of poor people in working class areas don't really resolve the matter and are a bit patronising and cliched, the laws are there to be enforced, the police have the powers to do so with ASBOs, criminal behaviour orders as well as charges for breaches of statutory offences. Not much more politicians can do
Spoken as someone who doesn't live in a poor area. I am sure your policing is just fine in your leafy suburb
I live in a rural hamlet not a leafy suburb and you certainly see more police in poor areas than round here. The law applies the same regardless where ever you live
So I made an announcement at work that has caused so much rancour.
Apparently I am like one of those gay bashing televangelists who gets caught cottaging.
All because I announced tomorrow I am having a doner kebab pizza for the first time.
Deviated prevert
Septums may be deviated, perverts are deviant.
“I think you're some kind of deviated prevert. I think General Ripper found out about your preversion, and that you were organizing some kind of mutiny of preverts.”
(Some years ago, a fake brown sign of 'Official Dogging Area' was put up at Birdlip with an - ahem - appropriate drawing. Cheltenham Council had a massive sense of humour failure and took it down.)
So I made an announcement at work that has caused so much rancour.
Apparently I am like one of those gay bashing televangelists who gets caught cottaging.
All because I announced tomorrow I am having a doner kebab pizza for the first time.
Deviated prevert
Septums may be deviated, perverts are deviant.
“I think you're some kind of deviated prevert. I think General Ripper found out about your preversion, and that you were organizing some kind of mutiny of preverts.”
The admiration some people have for Trump definitely counts as a Strange love.
"Ministers did not carry out a specific impact assessment on the withdrawal of the winter fuel payment from the bulk of pensioners, such as the potential effect on illness and death rates among older people, Downing Street has said."
So I made an announcement at work that has caused so much rancour.
Apparently I am like one of those gay bashing televangelists who gets caught cottaging.
All because I announced tomorrow I am having a doner kebab pizza for the first time.
Deviated prevert
Septums may be deviated, perverts are deviant.
“I think you're some kind of deviated prevert. I think General Ripper found out about your preversion, and that you were organizing some kind of mutiny of preverts.”
"Ministers did not carry out a specific impact assessment on the withdrawal of the winter fuel payment from the bulk of pensioners, such as the potential effect on illness and death rates among older people, Downing Street has said."
The video is quite something. A lot of it is shot in some rather dull forestry with a logstack of the sort which must by law have warning signs saying DON'T CLIMB ON LOG STACKS all round it and there's him and her and the three veg draped over the top of it. You would expect the camera man if nobody else to have the sense to advise against this.
"Ministers did not carry out a specific impact assessment on the withdrawal of the winter fuel payment from the bulk of pensioners, such as the potential effect on illness and death rates among older people, Downing Street has said."
“I think the time has come for us as AZ Republicans to admit the obvious...which is that our party’s nominee is not qualified for office and that we need to vote for the adult in the room, and that is Kamala Harris.” https://x.com/highbrow_nobrow/status/1834291199144067386
2,500 jobs gone in Port Talbot and now 500 in Grangemouth
I thought Miliband was promising a green revolution of jobs, but he lost 3,000 this week alone
Are you suggesting these jobs wouldn't have been lost under a Conservative Government?
Grangemouth had the possibility of staying open with fresh investment. But the messaging from Miliband that he wants to destroy the Oil and Gas industry has put paid to that.
Contrast with Norway where the ONS trade show in Stavanger a couple of weeks ago was attended by both the Prime Minister and King of Norway. This follows a report in August from the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate that said that continued exploration was worth $1.4 trillion dollars to the Norwegian economy.
That's a whole second sovereign wealth fund! Or a new sovereign wealth fund if you don't already have one.
"Ministers did not carry out a specific impact assessment on the withdrawal of the winter fuel payment from the bulk of pensioners, such as the potential effect on illness and death rates among older people, Downing Street has said."
"Ministers did not carry out a specific impact assessment on the withdrawal of the winter fuel payment from the bulk of pensioners, such as the potential effect on illness and death rates among older people, Downing Street has said."
"Ministers did not carry out a specific impact assessment on the withdrawal of the winter fuel payment from the bulk of pensioners, such as the potential effect on illness and death rates among older people, Downing Street has said."
"Ministers did not carry out a specific impact assessment on the withdrawal of the winter fuel payment from the bulk of pensioners, such as the potential effect on illness and death rates among older people, Downing Street has said."
"Ministers did not carry out a specific impact assessment on the withdrawal of the winter fuel payment from the bulk of pensioners, such as the potential effect on illness and death rates among older people, Downing Street has said."
The video is quite something. A lot of it is shot in some rather dull forestry with a logstack of the sort which must by law have warning signs saying DON'T CLIMB ON LOG STACKS all round it and there's him and her and the three veg draped over the top of it. You would expect the camera man if nobody else to have the sense to advise against this.
One of the few rules that governed my childhood wanderings.
"Ministers did not carry out a specific impact assessment on the withdrawal of the winter fuel payment from the bulk of pensioners, such as the potential effect on illness and death rates among older people, Downing Street has said."
"Ministers did not carry out a specific impact assessment on the withdrawal of the winter fuel payment from the bulk of pensioners, such as the potential effect on illness and death rates among older people, Downing Street has said."
Exactly what they used to criticise the tories for.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
If we have a bad winter this could really cause the government a huge amount of trouble. I genuinely do not understand what they are up to. The only thing I can imagine is that having painted themselves into a corner with ruling out rises in the major taxes they are left with some very poor choices. Which is exactly what you would expect to happen after swearing off doing anything sensible with the main fiscal levers. But this is all so predictably obvious that I find it hard to believe they didn't see it coming. Surely they aren't that incompetent?
"Ministers did not carry out a specific impact assessment on the withdrawal of the winter fuel payment from the bulk of pensioners, such as the potential effect on illness and death rates among older people, Downing Street has said."
Exactly what they used to criticise the tories for.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
If we have a bad winter this could really cause the government a huge amount of trouble. I genuinely do not understand what they are up to. The only thing I can imagine is that having painted themselves into a corner with ruling out rises in the major taxes they are left with some very poor choices. Which is exactly what you would expect to happen after swearing off doing anything sensible with the main fiscal levers. But this is all so predictably obvious that I find it hard to believe they didn't see it coming. Surely they aren't that incompetent?
To me it seems like a panic response. Reeves was bounced into this by Treasury immediately after they showed her a load of very bad news about debts and she then told them she is settling the rail disputes by coughing up a ton of £ etc etc. Same old crap from the Treasury officials.
It makes no sense to do this outside of a wider Budget on 30th Oct.
Why - suddenly - in late July did they need to save £2b approx over next few months ie. dump WFA and social care cap?
Trump: "The migrants are walking off with the town's geese. They've taken the geese. You know where the geese are in the park, in the lake, and even walking off with their pets. My dog's been taken. My dog's gone."
He’ll probably still win the election, but I’m starting to hope - forlorn hope maybe, but you never know - that as president he’ll be so far down the rabbit hole, and/or in such advanced cognitive decline, that his presidency will be more of the clown show than a properly thought out programme to wrest control of the US democratic system. We’re at the stage where they’re better with a doolally président Trump than a compus mentis one.
Trump: "The migrants are walking off with the town's geese. They've taken the geese. You know where the geese are in the park, in the lake, and even walking off with their pets. My dog's been taken. My dog's gone."
The video is quite something. A lot of it is shot in some rather dull forestry with a logstack of the sort which must by law have warning signs saying DON'T CLIMB ON LOG STACKS all round it and there's him and her and the three veg draped over the top of it. You would expect the camera man if nobody else to have the sense to advise against this.
One of the few rules that governed my childhood wanderings.
Eabhal, as you're around: I'm after a view on the North of Scotland. What's Aviemore like these days? My parents used to sort of avoid it and I always got the impression it was made of concrete, but perhaps that's in the past now as Google Maps makes it look not unpleasant. Still a resort rather than an authentic small town, but I can get past that. I'd quite like to get to the North at half term and Aviemore appears to have ten times more accommodation than anywhere else.
"Ministers did not carry out a specific impact assessment on the withdrawal of the winter fuel payment from the bulk of pensioners, such as the potential effect on illness and death rates among older people, Downing Street has said."
He’ll probably still win the election, but I’m starting to hope - forlorn hope maybe, but you never know - that as president he’ll be so far down the rabbit hole, and/or in such advanced cognitive decline, that his presidency will be more of the clown show than a properly thought out programme to wrest control of the US democratic system. We’re at the stage where they’re better with a doolally président Trump than a compus mentis one.
Not really. The threat is the people behind him. Reagan was half senile yet did OK because he had a decent team. Trump won't have.
"Ministers did not carry out a specific impact assessment on the withdrawal of the winter fuel payment from the bulk of pensioners, such as the potential effect on illness and death rates among older people, Downing Street has said."
He’ll probably still win the election, but I’m starting to hope - forlorn hope maybe, but you never know - that as president he’ll be so far down the rabbit hole, and/or in such advanced cognitive decline, that his presidency will be more of the clown show than a properly thought out programme to wrest control of the US democratic system. We’re at the stage where they’re better with a doolally président Trump than a compus mentis one.
I fear there are very dark people and forces around him who will take advantage of him being too unwell to be the executive in charge in order to further their plan for Gilead meets Crypto meets Nurembourg.
He’ll probably still win the election, but I’m starting to hope - forlorn hope maybe, but you never know - that as president he’ll be so far down the rabbit hole, and/or in such advanced cognitive decline, that his presidency will be more of the clown show than a properly thought out programme to wrest control of the US democratic system. We’re at the stage where they’re better with a doolally président Trump than a compus mentis one.
At the moment Harris probably has the edge overall but it is very close. If Trump went doolally it would then be Vance mostly running the show of course as his VP
The average daily max for Colorado Springs on 12 Sept is 65F; today we’ve been pushing 90F. The media suggested this morning that today might be an all-time temperature record for Colorado on 12 Sept.
The video is quite something. A lot of it is shot in some rather dull forestry with a logstack of the sort which must by law have warning signs saying DON'T CLIMB ON LOG STACKS all round it and there's him and her and the three veg draped over the top of it. You would expect the camera man if nobody else to have the sense to advise against this.
One of the few rules that governed my childhood wanderings.
Eabhal, as you're around: I'm after a view on the North of Scotland. What's Aviemore like these days? My parents used to sort of avoid it and I always got the impression it was made of concrete, but perhaps that's in the past now as Google Maps makes it look not unpleasant. Still a resort rather than an authentic small town, but I can get past that. I'd quite like to get to the North at half term and Aviemore appears to have ten times more accommodation than anywhere else.
If I might jump in...although it has been 4 long years since I've been able to go on a Munro bagging mission, it probably hasn't changed much in that time.
The town itself is a bit ugly but has useful shops and must take all of 5 minutes on a bike to get out of into the woods or along the river. Though if you are self-catering there are plenty of places on the fringes of Aviemore which have a better outlook. Many many many years ago it had a reputation as a bit of a party destination but I think that crowd has long gone. The ski area is much run down (that's another scandal on the lines of the Calmac Ferries but on a smaller scale).
I usually prefer Newtonmore or Boat of Garten. If you can get somewhere on the back road (Insh, for instance) then that's much better for a bit of peace and quiet.
I hear on the grapevine that the first winter snows arrived on the tops yesterday...
Trump: "The migrants are walking off with the town's geese. They've taken the geese. You know where the geese are in the park, in the lake, and even walking off with their pets. My dog's been taken. My dog's gone."
Check out her Twitter (X) - I won't post it on here as she seems to have probably posted a libelous post about a Labour cabinet minister...
Even if true, I don't get it. She alleges a Labour minister was drunk, and says if at a party, it was hypocrisy. Either Dame AJ has left out an important detail or she has not understood the essence of Partygate.
Does anyone, such as HYUFD, know what would have happened if two candidates had come equal bottom in any round of the Tory leadership vote? Would they have both been eliminated for example, meaning that one fewer round of voting would be necessary...
Does anyone, such as HYUFD, know what would have happened if two candidates had come equal bottom in any round of the Tory leadership vote? Would they have both been eliminated for example, meaning that one fewer round of voting would be necessary...
I’m not sure what the rules are on this occasion but ISTR they said last time if that happened they would run the round again and if the same two still true for bottoms then they would both be dropped.
Comments
Emotional rants about the problems of poor people in working class areas don't really resolve the matter and are a bit patronising and cliched, the laws are there to be enforced, the police have the powers to do so with ASBOs, criminal behaviour orders as well as charges for breaches of statutory offences. Not much more politicians can do
Very often it does completely the wrong thing, when it runs.
… AI models do not need to be "AGI" or "self-aware" (both hypothetical concepts at the present) to be dangerous if allowed to write and execute code unsupervised. Such systems could break existing critical infrastructure or potentially create malware, even if unintentionally...
See also.
https://x.com/RoboTeddy/status/1834298103098474733
The “it’s not real intelligence” crowd are missing the point.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxgwjC3Rxi4
Compared to the nonsense of Trump, the Categorical Imperative, however...
Obviously a Labour government doesn't understand basic economics - that's not a revelation. Viewing the productive and enterprising and the private sector generally as an ATM for their pet projects and client groups is hardly likely to promote growth. And the last government was rarely great on that metric. But claiming to be pro-growth while simultaneously screwing over industry is positively Orwellian.
Donald Trump posted on Truth Social two days after a face-off with Kamala Harris in which he was widely criticized for delivering a poor performance. Harris’s campaign said it raised $47 million in the 24 hours after the debate.
SSI - So DJT is frit of KH . . . surprise, surprise!
ETA This was on YouTube.
Realistically, he's not likely to improve on that, and he doesn't want to cause even more unease among soft republicans.
That's without disrespect to Surrey, by the way, who do a lot of good for English cricket as well.
(One thing for those who talk about how teachers have it easy - a teacher on sick leave having to keep working...)
And it’s only early days.
And there’s a huge economic incentive to make instances of it ubiquitous.
Highlights of today’s play at Taunton.
Hope you are OK!
There's always a chance she'll fuck up if doing another one just because anyone can have a screwy moment in these situations.
As Carville has been saying: "Just keep saying when's the next debate" knowing there wont be one and also as an answer to why there is no long and tedious one-to-one interviews with CNN etc.
https://conversationswithbillkristol.org/conversation/james-carville-on-harris-v-trump-after-the-debate-home-stretch/
Really top stuff although you have to strain sometimes to get through the olde southern accent.
Public couldn't give a shit he reckons about these long one-on-ones the media desperate for her to do. They just wanna know when the next debate is. Keep 'em on that he reckons and maybe do a policy speech or two to keep media busy with analysis.
School is being pretty supportive so far: I’ve been told not to come back until I’m better.
While I can see the logic of that when several counties are really struggling financially, I hope the ECB have the sense to put at least one match per round on YouTube still. It's worth a million Hundreds in terms of getting the game out there.
Kamala Harris
@KamalaHarris
Two nights ago, Donald Trump and I had our first debate.
We owe it to the voters to have another debate.
"The racist conspiracy theorist who could derail Trump’s campaign
Laura Loomer, a self-described white supremacist, is believed to be the source of Trump’s claim that Haitians eat pet dogs and cats."
Seriously riveting. Trump under the spell of a woman so mad and nasty that even his "team" have noticed.
https://x.com/Josh_Self_/status/1834174053633896655
Contrast with Norway where the ONS trade show in Stavanger a couple of weeks ago was attended by both the Prime Minister and King of Norway. This follows a report in August from the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate that said that continued exploration was worth $1.4 trillion dollars to the Norwegian economy.
Not much enlightenment from Trump mind.
The VERY risqué row behind Kate and William's latest video: Royals filmed on a NUDIST beach which locals branded a 'haven for swingers and perverts
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-13834095/The-unsavoury-row-engulfing-stunning-backdrop-Kate-William-announce-milestones-Holkham-Bay-locals-branded-beach-haven-swingers-perverts-went-war-nudists.html
My comment: Where is this? 😂
This is the line in Charlotte, North Carolina FOUR hours before VP Kamala Harris is set to speak at a rally.
https://x.com/Victorshi2020/status/1834272615222960343
Bob Hoskins
(Some years ago, a fake brown sign of 'Official Dogging Area' was put up at Birdlip with an - ahem - appropriate drawing. Cheltenham Council had a massive sense of humour failure and took it down.)
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/sep/12/no-winter-fuel-payments-impact-assessment-was-carried-out-no-10-admits
Exactly what they used to criticise the tories for.
“I think the time has come for us as AZ Republicans to admit the obvious...which is that our party’s nominee is not qualified for office and that we need to vote for the adult in the room, and that is Kamala Harris.”
https://x.com/highbrow_nobrow/status/1834291199144067386
Or a new sovereign wealth fund if you don't already have one.
Aaron Rupar
@atrupar
·
35m
Trump on the debate: "As everyone saw two nights ago, we had a monumental victory."
https://x.com/atrupar/status/1834340418227462401
It makes no sense to do this outside of a wider Budget on 30th Oct.
Why - suddenly - in late July did they need to save £2b approx over next few months ie. dump WFA and social care cap?
Republican Voters Against Trump
@AccountableGOP
·
12m
Trump: "The migrants are walking off with the town's geese. They've taken the geese. You know where the geese are in the park, in the lake, and even walking off with their pets. My dog's been taken. My dog's gone."
As I understand it by then they will have an extra £1000 which they might or might not choose to spend on heating.
That's going to totally screw up the lower end of the market.
The town itself is a bit ugly but has useful shops and must take all of 5 minutes on a bike to get out of into the woods or along the river. Though if you are self-catering there are plenty of places on the fringes of Aviemore which have a better outlook. Many many many years ago it had a reputation as a bit of a party destination but I think that crowd has long gone. The ski area is much run down (that's another scandal on the lines of the Calmac Ferries but on a smaller scale).
I usually prefer Newtonmore or Boat of Garten. If you can get somewhere on the back road (Insh, for instance) then that's much better for a bit of peace and quiet.
I hear on the grapevine that the first winter snows arrived on the tops yesterday...