Steve Bannon: “You (Britain) don’t make anything anymore,”...Sure you guys make automobiles but it is nothing in the grand scheme of things. They’re kind of bespoke Jaguars and Aston Martins.”
Bannon the latest in the “Britain doesn’t manufacture anything” brigade. It’s a boring trope you hear repeated in the media a lot.
In fact the UK remains the 8th or 9th biggest manufacturer in the world. 10% of our GDP with some of the most advanced manufacturing anywhere.
Manufacturing employs 2.6 million people in the UK. Just because relatively few elites (people like Bannon) would know any of those people, doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
If we HAVE located life on one random planet, then statistically it must be all over the Universe. (So will say the Drake equation.)
The idea of it just being us was always Humanoid Exceptionalism taken to the nth degree.
Life on our planet includes, inter alia, us, plankton and squids. There's a good chance that life in another galaxy, far, far away, evolved or developed in an entirely different fashion.
I’ve worked for three very large telecoms companies and not once have I ever felt the need to put my pronouns on an email. I never have and never will as I can’t personally see the point.
But if somebody wants to, isn’t that up to them? I agree we should not force people to do it but assuming that’s the case would you still have a problem with it?
This seems no different than forcing me to wear a suit. I’m glad that’s over.
They can stick their pronouns up their butts, I use name or him / her, rest of the bollox they can get stuffed.
I suspect "the bollox" might be the point of contention on this subject.
Regarding the pronoun debate - I am bemused. I very rarely see pronouns shown, even from the public sector (contrary to claims) so I did a review of my emails where there was a personal sign off. Not one had a pronoun. They were from UCL, Royal Surrey Hospital, Doctor, Dentist, HMRC, DVLA, L&G, Standard Life, umpteen MPs.
From memory I can only recall one use of a pronoun in the past in an email and that was from Daisy Cooper (she/her).
Bizarrely it can be useful with unusual names. Even not so unusual names. My wife has a Scottish name that seems obviously female to me, but seems to confuse some and also being a Doctor her prefix of Dr does not help. So many assume she is male. So it could help. Not that she or I use pronouns.
You are a despicable liar. "Everyone is passively pressured to do that, and comply with gender identity ideology, on pain of otherwise being accused of being a bigot."
Its true. You're in denial. Everyone has to do it. Even on here.
Ian (He/Him)
Right, I've done a 10-minute very non-scientific study of my inbox.
- The majority of people in my organisation have pronouns in their email signatures. However, the incidence of people not using pronouns is probably higher than I'd imagined. - Interestingly, a similar scan through a random sample (this week, three years ago) seems to suggest fewer pronouns than a few years ago. - That said, this is difficult to evaluate fully because, also possibly interestingly, there are far more emails without signatures at all - It's hard to tell objectively to what extent we have been 'pressured' - certainly I remember emails from HR asking us to add pronouns to signatures, though this is hard to dig out with a simple search of the word 'pronoun' because the word 'pronoun' features in the signature of so many emails - but clearly many people such as me haven't: this isn't necessarily a principled objection, but could equally well be reluctance to do a very low-priority admin task - external emails from other public sector organisations are also majoritavely pronouned - external emails from people trying to sell things to the public sector through spam are almost entirely pronouned - external emails from consultants (and - while I don't know who @Casino_Royale is in real life, I think I know what industry he works in - and particularly from consultants his industry) are almost entirely pronouned. - external emails from the general public almost entirely unpronouned.
However, I'm perfectly willing to believe e.g. Foxy that he rarely sees pronouns. Maybe we're all telling the truth and it varies from industry to industry.
Interesting, because my list was from a wide variety of public sector and private sector from the last couple of weeks. I obviously didn't count generic stuff that didn't have a person's name. Not a single pronoun where someone signed off with their name. Not one. I am involved in a campaign where I get or am copied in on a lot of emails from MPs. Again not one had a pronoun next to the name of the MP. On the contrary most these days have become more informal as if I know them personally.
As far as prior to that I can't be sure obviously, but it struck me when I had an email from Daisy Cooper (generic, not just to me) where she did use (she/her) and because of that I noticed it, which sort of implies if someone else had done so I would have noticed that also. It struck me because it was the first time I had seen it, rather than hearing about it.
Others have said it so I'm just clogging up the thread (as usual) but if you are dealing with the public sector, using pronouns is a thing in your email signature. Within the public sector, it is very much a thing, indeed it is often mandated by the senior leadership of these organisations.
I never had an issue with it at all - it's often a point of clarity and clarification to know how to refer to the person with whom you are dealing. Companies on the phone often ask me how I wish to be addressed and that's fine as well.
If people wish to be referred to as "they/them" that's their right and I respect it. I can't know it in advance but if they tell me I know and it's something of which I have to be aware.
You've never clogged up the thread in the 20-odd years you've been here, Stodge! Always interesting.
I must admit, I do wince when asked to refer to a known individual as 'they'. It just seems linguistically wrong. You might argue that actually it's fine, but it feels wrong. (An unknown individual doesn't feel so clunky, oddly, though I still try to avoid using that particular form - again, because it just doesn't feel the right use of language.)
Just 35% of Brits now see the US as an ally, while 34% view it as a threat. A dramatic shift in public opinion in response to #Trump. Here’s what the latest @OpiniumResearch polling reveals
Steve Bannon: “You (Britain) don’t make anything anymore,”...Sure you guys make automobiles but it is nothing in the grand scheme of things. They’re kind of bespoke Jaguars and Aston Martins.”
Bannon the latest in the “Britain doesn’t manufacture anything” brigade. It’s a boring trope you hear repeated in the media a lot.
In fact the UK remains the 8th or 9th biggest manufacturer in the world. 10% of our GDP with some of the most advanced manufacturing anywhere.
Manufacturing employs 2.6 million people in the UK. Just because relatively few elites (people like Bannon) would know any of those people, doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
I never know if Bannon´s lies are accidental, because he is mostly an ignoramus, or deliberate, because he is mostly evil, or some combination of the two.
Either way the typical bravado of the far right should be greeted with strong scepticism or derision, depending on the absurdity of the statement.
Steve Bannon: “You (Britain) don’t make anything anymore,”...Sure you guys make automobiles but it is nothing in the grand scheme of things. They’re kind of bespoke Jaguars and Aston Martins.”
Bannon the latest in the “Britain doesn’t manufacture anything” brigade. It’s a boring trope you hear repeated in the media a lot.
In fact the UK remains the 8th or 9th biggest manufacturer in the world. 10% of our GDP with some of the most advanced manufacturing anywhere.
Manufacturing employs 2.6 million people in the UK. Just because relatively few elites (people like Bannon) would know any of those people, doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
Regarding the pronoun debate - I am bemused. I very rarely see pronouns shown, even from the public sector (contrary to claims) so I did a review of my emails where there was a personal sign off. Not one had a pronoun. They were from UCL, Royal Surrey Hospital, Doctor, Dentist, HMRC, DVLA, L&G, Standard Life, umpteen MPs.
From memory I can only recall one use of a pronoun in the past in an email and that was from Daisy Cooper (she/her).
Bizarrely it can be useful with unusual names. Even not so unusual names. My wife has a Scottish name that seems obviously female to me, but seems to confuse some and also being a Doctor her prefix of Dr does not help. So many assume she is male. So it could help. Not that she or I use pronouns.
You are a despicable liar. "Everyone is passively pressured to do that, and comply with gender identity ideology, on pain of otherwise being accused of being a bigot."
Its true. You're in denial. Everyone has to do it. Even on here.
Ian (He/Him)
Right, I've done a 10-minute very non-scientific study of my inbox.
- The majority of people in my organisation have pronouns in their email signatures. However, the incidence of people not using pronouns is probably higher than I'd imagined. - Interestingly, a similar scan through a random sample (this week, three years ago) seems to suggest fewer pronouns than a few years ago. - That said, this is difficult to evaluate fully because, also possibly interestingly, there are far more emails without signatures at all - It's hard to tell objectively to what extent we have been 'pressured' - certainly I remember emails from HR asking us to add pronouns to signatures, though this is hard to dig out with a simple search of the word 'pronoun' because the word 'pronoun' features in the signature of so many emails - but clearly many people such as me haven't: this isn't necessarily a principled objection, but could equally well be reluctance to do a very low-priority admin task - external emails from other public sector organisations are also majoritavely pronouned - external emails from people trying to sell things to the public sector through spam are almost entirely pronouned - external emails from consultants (and - while I don't know who @Casino_Royale is in real life, I think I know what industry he works in - and particularly from consultants his industry) are almost entirely pronouned. - external emails from the general public almost entirely unpronouned.
However, I'm perfectly willing to believe e.g. Foxy that he rarely sees pronouns. Maybe we're all telling the truth and it varies from industry to industry.
Interesting, because my list was from a wide variety of public sector and private sector from the last couple of weeks. I obviously didn't count generic stuff that didn't have a person's name. Not a single pronoun where someone signed off with their name. Not one. I am involved in a campaign where I get or am copied in on a lot of emails from MPs. Again not one had a pronoun next to the name of the MP. On the contrary most these days have become more informal as if I know them personally.
As far as prior to that I can't be sure obviously, but it struck me when I had an email from Daisy Cooper (generic, not just to me) where she did use (she/her) and because of that I noticed it, which sort of implies if someone else had done so I would have noticed that also. It struck me because it was the first time I had seen it, rather than hearing about it.
Others have said it so I'm just clogging up the thread (as usual) but if you are dealing with the public sector, using pronouns is a thing in your email signature. Within the public sector, it is very much a thing, indeed it is often mandated by the senior leadership of these organisations.
I never had an issue with it at all - it's often a point of clarity and clarification to know how to refer to the person with whom you are dealing. Companies on the phone often ask me how I wish to be addressed and that's fine as well.
If people wish to be referred to as "they/them" that's their right and I respect it. I can't know it in advance but if they tell me I know and it's something of which I have to be aware.
If people put their given names I usually use those, unless I want to be sarky or officious. Can be difficult with unusual names, like mine, or names which can be either sex. I've a distant relative called Leslie, and as far as I'm concerned that's a male spelling. However she's very definitely female. She's also American, so maybe it's another of their oddities.
Oddly enough, when I had plenty of dealings with local Councils, I find marked differences in deference. It made little or no difference which Party was running the Council.
At one authority, the Leader of the Council was called "Leader" by senior officers and other Cabinet members in all settings. Others are happy to use christian names all the time. There was a time when an officer would never refer to a Councillor by their christian name - they would always be "Councillor" or "County Councillor" but that has largely gone by the board now.
Regarding the pronoun debate - I am bemused. I very rarely see pronouns shown, even from the public sector (contrary to claims) so I did a review of my emails where there was a personal sign off. Not one had a pronoun. They were from UCL, Royal Surrey Hospital, Doctor, Dentist, HMRC, DVLA, L&G, Standard Life, umpteen MPs.
From memory I can only recall one use of a pronoun in the past in an email and that was from Daisy Cooper (she/her).
Bizarrely it can be useful with unusual names. Even not so unusual names. My wife has a Scottish name that seems obviously female to me, but seems to confuse some and also being a Doctor her prefix of Dr does not help. So many assume she is male. So it could help. Not that she or I use pronouns.
You are a despicable liar. "Everyone is passively pressured to do that, and comply with gender identity ideology, on pain of otherwise being accused of being a bigot."
Its true. You're in denial. Everyone has to do it. Even on here.
Ian (He/Him)
Right, I've done a 10-minute very non-scientific study of my inbox.
- The majority of people in my organisation have pronouns in their email signatures. However, the incidence of people not using pronouns is probably higher than I'd imagined. - Interestingly, a similar scan through a random sample (this week, three years ago) seems to suggest fewer pronouns than a few years ago. - That said, this is difficult to evaluate fully because, also possibly interestingly, there are far more emails without signatures at all - It's hard to tell objectively to what extent we have been 'pressured' - certainly I remember emails from HR asking us to add pronouns to signatures, though this is hard to dig out with a simple search of the word 'pronoun' because the word 'pronoun' features in the signature of so many emails - but clearly many people such as me haven't: this isn't necessarily a principled objection, but could equally well be reluctance to do a very low-priority admin task - external emails from other public sector organisations are also majoritavely pronouned - external emails from people trying to sell things to the public sector through spam are almost entirely pronouned - external emails from consultants (and - while I don't know who @Casino_Royale is in real life, I think I know what industry he works in - and particularly from consultants his industry) are almost entirely pronouned. - external emails from the general public almost entirely unpronouned.
However, I'm perfectly willing to believe e.g. Foxy that he rarely sees pronouns. Maybe we're all telling the truth and it varies from industry to industry.
Interesting, because my list was from a wide variety of public sector and private sector from the last couple of weeks. I obviously didn't count generic stuff that didn't have a person's name. Not a single pronoun where someone signed off with their name. Not one. I am involved in a campaign where I get or am copied in on a lot of emails from MPs. Again not one had a pronoun next to the name of the MP. On the contrary most these days have become more informal as if I know them personally.
As far as prior to that I can't be sure obviously, but it struck me when I had an email from Daisy Cooper (generic, not just to me) where she did use (she/her) and because of that I noticed it, which sort of implies if someone else had done so I would have noticed that also. It struck me because it was the first time I had seen it, rather than hearing about it.
Others have said it so I'm just clogging up the thread (as usual) but if you are dealing with the public sector, using pronouns is a thing in your email signature. Within the public sector, it is very much a thing, indeed it is often mandated by the senior leadership of these organisations.
I never had an issue with it at all - it's often a point of clarity and clarification to know how to refer to the person with whom you are dealing. Companies on the phone often ask me how I wish to be addressed and that's fine as well.
If people wish to be referred to as "they/them" that's their right and I respect it. I can't know it in advance but if they tell me I know and it's something of which I have to be aware.
I have emails from UCL Dental Hospital from 2 distinct people, DVLA and HMRC in the past week. None had pronouns. Here is a bit of the email from DVLA about getting historic tax status for my Cobra.
PS I agree with the clarity bit as I mentioned earlier. My wife has that issue with her first name and her prefix being Dr. so is often addressed as a male. Not that she cares.
PPS Also as mentioned, as per that email above, I am finding the sign offs are getting more and more informal, which I like.
I’ve worked for three very large telecoms companies and not once have I ever felt the need to put my pronouns on an email. I never have and never will as I can’t personally see the point.
But if somebody wants to, isn’t that up to them? I agree we should not force people to do it but assuming that’s the case would you still have a problem with it?
This seems no different than forcing me to wear a suit. I’m glad that’s over.
They can stick their pronouns up their butts, I use name or him / her, rest of the bollox they can get stuffed.
Never used pronouns. For me or for anybody else. Never had to.
That's just the way it rolls down here in Devon.
But you’re all weirdos down there in the West Country calling everybody ‘my lover’.
When I was a callow 17 year old visiting the West Country for the first time getting called ‘my lover’ was a eye/ear opener, thank Allah my mother wasn’t there, the shock would have killed her.
Not so very different from the levels of affection shown to strangers in Sheffield though? I was quite surprised when I went there at the age of 18 to find 'love' casually used by bus drivers, shop assistants, barbers, etc, regardless of the gender of the interactors.
Steve Bannon: “You (Britain) don’t make anything anymore,”...Sure you guys make automobiles but it is nothing in the grand scheme of things. They’re kind of bespoke Jaguars and Aston Martins.”
Bannon the latest in the “Britain doesn’t manufacture anything” brigade. It’s a boring trope you hear repeated in the media a lot.
In fact the UK remains the 8th or 9th biggest manufacturer in the world. 10% of our GDP with some of the most advanced manufacturing anywhere.
Manufacturing employs 2.6 million people in the UK. Just because relatively few elites (people like Bannon) would know any of those people, doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
Yet even so as the sixth largest economy in the world we clearly underperform on manufacturing relative to China, Japan and Germany and over perform on services
If we HAVE located life on one random planet, then statistically it must be all over the Universe. (So will say the Drake equation.)
The idea of it just being us was always Humanoid Exceptionalism taken to the nth degree.
Life on our planet includes, inter alia, us, plankton and squids. There's a good chance that life in another galaxy, far, far away, evolved or developed in an entirely different fashion.
The sheer diversity of lifeforms here on earth is staggering enough. What life developed on a different planet would be like is simply mind-blowing.
If we HAVE located life on one random planet, then statistically it must be all over the Universe. (So will say the Drake equation.)
The idea of it just being us was always Humanoid Exceptionalism taken to the nth degree.
Life on our planet includes, inter alia, us, plankton and squids. There's a good chance that life in another galaxy, far, far away, evolved or developed in an entirely different fashion.
Time is the element that people often overlook though. Life has existed on earth only for a tiny proportion of the planet's existence, and there is no guarantee it will endure. To what extent will life here coincide with its existence on other planets? Does it matter if they are light years away? We are probably not alone but for the purposes of meaningful contact we may as well be.
If we HAVE located life on one random planet, then statistically it must be all over the Universe. (So will say the Drake equation.)
The idea of it just being us was always Humanoid Exceptionalism taken to the nth degree.
Life on our planet includes, inter alia, us, plankton and squids. There's a good chance that life in another galaxy, far, far away, evolved or developed in an entirely different fashion.
The sheer diversity of lifeforms here on earth is staggering enough. What life developed on a different planet would be like is simply mind-blowing.
Even though I understand how they detect molecules on planets they can't even see, I still find it mind blowing that it is possible (when I say understand I mean in the broadest sense).
I’ve worked for three very large telecoms companies and not once have I ever felt the need to put my pronouns on an email. I never have and never will as I can’t personally see the point.
But if somebody wants to, isn’t that up to them? I agree we should not force people to do it but assuming that’s the case would you still have a problem with it?
This seems no different than forcing me to wear a suit. I’m glad that’s over.
They can stick their pronouns up their butts, I use name or him / her, rest of the bollox they can get stuffed.
Never used pronouns. For me or for anybody else. Never had to.
That's just the way it rolls down here in Devon.
But you’re all weirdos down there in the West Country calling everybody ‘my lover’.
When I was a callow 17 year old visiting the West Country for the first time getting called ‘my lover’ was a eye/ear opener, thank Allah my mother wasn’t there, the shock would have killed her.
Not so very different from the levels of affection shown to strangers in Sheffield though? I was quite surprised when I went there at the age of 18 to find 'love' casually used by bus drivers, shop assistants, barbers, etc, regardless of the gender of the interactors.
Regarding the pronoun debate - I am bemused. I very rarely see pronouns shown, even from the public sector (contrary to claims) so I did a review of my emails where there was a personal sign off. Not one had a pronoun. They were from UCL, Royal Surrey Hospital, Doctor, Dentist, HMRC, DVLA, L&G, Standard Life, umpteen MPs.
From memory I can only recall one use of a pronoun in the past in an email and that was from Daisy Cooper (she/her).
Bizarrely it can be useful with unusual names. Even not so unusual names. My wife has a Scottish name that seems obviously female to me, but seems to confuse some and also being a Doctor her prefix of Dr does not help. So many assume she is male. So it could help. Not that she or I use pronouns.
You are a despicable liar. "Everyone is passively pressured to do that, and comply with gender identity ideology, on pain of otherwise being accused of being a bigot."
Its true. You're in denial. Everyone has to do it. Even on here.
Ian (He/Him)
Right, I've done a 10-minute very non-scientific study of my inbox.
- The majority of people in my organisation have pronouns in their email signatures. However, the incidence of people not using pronouns is probably higher than I'd imagined. - Interestingly, a similar scan through a random sample (this week, three years ago) seems to suggest fewer pronouns than a few years ago. - That said, this is difficult to evaluate fully because, also possibly interestingly, there are far more emails without signatures at all - It's hard to tell objectively to what extent we have been 'pressured' - certainly I remember emails from HR asking us to add pronouns to signatures, though this is hard to dig out with a simple search of the word 'pronoun' because the word 'pronoun' features in the signature of so many emails - but clearly many people such as me haven't: this isn't necessarily a principled objection, but could equally well be reluctance to do a very low-priority admin task - external emails from other public sector organisations are also majoritavely pronouned - external emails from people trying to sell things to the public sector through spam are almost entirely pronouned - external emails from consultants (and - while I don't know who @Casino_Royale is in real life, I think I know what industry he works in - and particularly from consultants his industry) are almost entirely pronouned. - external emails from the general public almost entirely unpronouned.
However, I'm perfectly willing to believe e.g. Foxy that he rarely sees pronouns. Maybe we're all telling the truth and it varies from industry to industry.
Interesting, because my list was from a wide variety of public sector and private sector from the last couple of weeks. I obviously didn't count generic stuff that didn't have a person's name. Not a single pronoun where someone signed off with their name. Not one. I am involved in a campaign where I get or am copied in on a lot of emails from MPs. Again not one had a pronoun next to the name of the MP. On the contrary most these days have become more informal as if I know them personally.
As far as prior to that I can't be sure obviously, but it struck me when I had an email from Daisy Cooper (generic, not just to me) where she did use (she/her) and because of that I noticed it, which sort of implies if someone else had done so I would have noticed that also. It struck me because it was the first time I had seen it, rather than hearing about it.
Others have said it so I'm just clogging up the thread (as usual) but if you are dealing with the public sector, using pronouns is a thing in your email signature. Within the public sector, it is very much a thing, indeed it is often mandated by the senior leadership of these organisations.
I never had an issue with it at all - it's often a point of clarity and clarification to know how to refer to the person with whom you are dealing. Companies on the phone often ask me how I wish to be addressed and that's fine as well.
If people wish to be referred to as "they/them" that's their right and I respect it. I can't know it in advance but if they tell me I know and it's something of which I have to be aware.
You've never clogged up the thread in the 20-odd years you've been here, Stodge! Always interesting.
I must admit, I do wince when asked to refer to a known individual as 'they'. It just seems linguistically wrong. You might argue that actually it's fine, but it feels wrong. (An unknown individual doesn't feel so clunky, oddly, though I still try to avoid using that particular form - again, because it just doesn't feel the right use of language.)
I agree with your other two paras however.
Thanks for the kind word and may I reciprocate as I always enjoy your contributions.
I do agree on the linguistic front and I've got it wrong more than once. My brain is not yet "wired" to deal with the non binary individual and rather like trying to speak a foreign language, if you're not fluent, you're trying to think about what you say (which you should anyway) all the time and in the heat of conversation, ranting or babbling, old habits emerge....
Steve Bannon: “You (Britain) don’t make anything anymore,”...Sure you guys make automobiles but it is nothing in the grand scheme of things. They’re kind of bespoke Jaguars and Aston Martins.”
Telegraph
Is he so stupid he doesn't know Jaguar are not making cars at the moment?
Sure they are. F-Pace is still in production on the Solihull line. I mean, nobody is buying the fucking thing but they are still building it.
I could be wrong but from what I heard they shut that down last December* and are just selling pre-made stock at the moment, if anyone buys them.
*The original plan was to keep it running but as you say, nobody was buying.
Regarding the pronoun debate - I am bemused. I very rarely see pronouns shown, even from the public sector (contrary to claims) so I did a review of my emails where there was a personal sign off. Not one had a pronoun. They were from UCL, Royal Surrey Hospital, Doctor, Dentist, HMRC, DVLA, L&G, Standard Life, umpteen MPs.
From memory I can only recall one use of a pronoun in the past in an email and that was from Daisy Cooper (she/her).
Bizarrely it can be useful with unusual names. Even not so unusual names. My wife has a Scottish name that seems obviously female to me, but seems to confuse some and also being a Doctor her prefix of Dr does not help. So many assume she is male. So it could help. Not that she or I use pronouns.
You are a despicable liar. "Everyone is passively pressured to do that, and comply with gender identity ideology, on pain of otherwise being accused of being a bigot."
Its true. You're in denial. Everyone has to do it. Even on here.
Ian (He/Him)
Right, I've done a 10-minute very non-scientific study of my inbox.
- The majority of people in my organisation have pronouns in their email signatures. However, the incidence of people not using pronouns is probably higher than I'd imagined. - Interestingly, a similar scan through a random sample (this week, three years ago) seems to suggest fewer pronouns than a few years ago. - That said, this is difficult to evaluate fully because, also possibly interestingly, there are far more emails without signatures at all - It's hard to tell objectively to what extent we have been 'pressured' - certainly I remember emails from HR asking us to add pronouns to signatures, though this is hard to dig out with a simple search of the word 'pronoun' because the word 'pronoun' features in the signature of so many emails - but clearly many people such as me haven't: this isn't necessarily a principled objection, but could equally well be reluctance to do a very low-priority admin task - external emails from other public sector organisations are also majoritavely pronouned - external emails from people trying to sell things to the public sector through spam are almost entirely pronouned - external emails from consultants (and - while I don't know who @Casino_Royale is in real life, I think I know what industry he works in - and particularly from consultants his industry) are almost entirely pronouned. - external emails from the general public almost entirely unpronouned.
However, I'm perfectly willing to believe e.g. Foxy that he rarely sees pronouns. Maybe we're all telling the truth and it varies from industry to industry.
Interesting, because my list was from a wide variety of public sector and private sector from the last couple of weeks. I obviously didn't count generic stuff that didn't have a person's name. Not a single pronoun where someone signed off with their name. Not one. I am involved in a campaign where I get or am copied in on a lot of emails from MPs. Again not one had a pronoun next to the name of the MP. On the contrary most these days have become more informal as if I know them personally.
As far as prior to that I can't be sure obviously, but it struck me when I had an email from Daisy Cooper (generic, not just to me) where she did use (she/her) and because of that I noticed it, which sort of implies if someone else had done so I would have noticed that also. It struck me because it was the first time I had seen it, rather than hearing about it.
Others have said it so I'm just clogging up the thread (as usual) but if you are dealing with the public sector, using pronouns is a thing in your email signature. Within the public sector, it is very much a thing, indeed it is often mandated by the senior leadership of these organisations.
I never had an issue with it at all - it's often a point of clarity and clarification to know how to refer to the person with whom you are dealing. Companies on the phone often ask me how I wish to be addressed and that's fine as well.
If people wish to be referred to as "they/them" that's their right and I respect it. I can't know it in advance but if they tell me I know and it's something of which I have to be aware.
You've never clogged up the thread in the 20-odd years you've been here, Stodge! Always interesting.
I must admit, I do wince when asked to refer to a known individual as 'they'. It just seems linguistically wrong. You might argue that actually it's fine, but it feels wrong. (An unknown individual doesn't feel so clunky, oddly, though I still try to avoid using that particular form - again, because it just doesn't feel the right use of language.)
I agree with your other two paras however.
Suspect that the issue isn't so much the pronoun tagging (fairly harmless, sometimes useful) as the way that certain people in certain organisations try to enforce it. Which, even if well-meaning, can be counterproductive.
Doesn't excuse the louder manifestations of the backlash, though.
Steve Bannon: “You (Britain) don’t make anything anymore,”...Sure you guys make automobiles but it is nothing in the grand scheme of things. They’re kind of bespoke Jaguars and Aston Martins.”
Bannon the latest in the “Britain doesn’t manufacture anything” brigade. It’s a boring trope you hear repeated in the media a lot.
In fact the UK remains the 8th or 9th biggest manufacturer in the world. 10% of our GDP with some of the most advanced manufacturing anywhere.
Manufacturing employs 2.6 million people in the UK. Just because relatively few elites (people like Bannon) would know any of those people, doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
Yet even so as the sixth largest economy in the world we clearly underperform on manufacturing relative to China, Japan and Germany and over perform on services
That depends on whether or not you think we need to be competitive in manufacturing cheap plastic crap. Let the poorer countries of the world make such stuff, where we need to compete is in higher value goods, and we do okay there. Nobody rational should want to onshore making low-value products that are easily made, the competition will be brutal, and you divert capital and labour from better uses. The US will end up learning this lesson if they aren't careful.
@viewcode Just seen your reply to me on 15 April thread as I only get notifications when I'm on my laptop. Many thanks for the clarification of the term toilets. I haven't yet ventured into any private messaging, and I gather your piece will appear here as a thread header eventually. So thanks, but no thanks.
Steve Bannon: “You (Britain) don’t make anything anymore,”...Sure you guys make automobiles but it is nothing in the grand scheme of things. They’re kind of bespoke Jaguars and Aston Martins.”
Telegraph
Manufacturing is about 8% of GDP for the UK, versus 10% of the United States. On some measures, the UK has a larger industrial base than the US, particularly after PPP, and we have more employment in that sector too.
We should let him believe whatever he wants if it helps get a tariff free deal without diluting food standards because "we don't really make anything anyway" then so much the better.
If we HAVE located life on one random planet, then statistically it must be all over the Universe. (So will say the Drake equation.)
The idea of it just being us was always Humanoid Exceptionalism taken to the nth degree.
There are people (mostly Americans) who are arguing that space is fake and that Katy Perry didn't get launched into the Thermosphere and is a human baby eating satanist, cgi, green screen, blah, blah.. and you want these people to believe NASA has found life trillions of miles away?
Just 35% of Brits now see the US as an ally, while 34% view it as a threat. A dramatic shift in public opinion in response to #Trump. Here’s what the latest @OpiniumResearch polling reveals
That is reflected in a recent experience of mine. A friend of my family, a woman in her early twenties, recently flew to Central America for an organised holiday. Although not a political type and generally not particularly interested in foreign affairs, she flatly refused to fly there via the US because she was worried that something might happen to her while passing though. This seemed a bit over the top to me, but there are some people who, without particular reason, are sufficiently scared by Trump to avoid the US.
On other matters, I'm looking at the Canadian polling and I'm seeing telephone polls give better results for the Liberals than online polling. Like here, older Canadians tend to be Conservative, younger ones more Liberal with the NDP strongest among the 18-24 age group.
Did we have a debate on here once about the merits of polling techniques? Do we regard telephone polling as more accurate than online or Interactive Voice Response (IVR)?
Both Canada and Australia have had Leaders' Debates in the past 24 hours - will they shift polling? I'm not sure they do as it ends up more like baseline tennis. From what little I've seen and read, the Canadian debate was, not surprisingly, all about how to deal with Trump while in Australia, Liberal leader Peter Dutton has backtracked on his views on climate change which he apparently now accepts. Whether this Damascene conversion will help the struggling Liberal campaign is debatable.
The Aussie equivalent of PB, Pollbludger, gives a good flavour of the election debate.
Just 35% of Brits now see the US as an ally, while 34% view it as a threat. A dramatic shift in public opinion in response to #Trump. Here’s what the latest @OpiniumResearch polling reveals
That is reflected in a recent experience of mine. A friend of my family, a woman in her early twenties, recently flew to Central America for an organised holiday. Although not a political type and generally not particularly interested in foreign affairs, she flatly refused to fly there via the US because she was worried that something might happen to her while passing though. This seemed a bit over the top to me, but there are some people who, without particular reason, are sufficiently scared by Trump to avoid the US.
The FT published charts showing the dramatic decline in travel from various European countries to the US. The response from MAGA morons? "The decline started under Biden". Yes, a slight dip entirely seasonal as demonstrated by the rest of the chart. A slight dip, not a near vertical decline as shown under their regime.
America is rapidly turning itself into a pariah state.
Steve Bannon: “You (Britain) don’t make anything anymore,”...Sure you guys make automobiles but it is nothing in the grand scheme of things. They’re kind of bespoke Jaguars and Aston Martins.”
Bannon the latest in the “Britain doesn’t manufacture anything” brigade. It’s a boring trope you hear repeated in the media a lot.
In fact the UK remains the 8th or 9th biggest manufacturer in the world. 10% of our GDP with some of the most advanced manufacturing anywhere.
Manufacturing employs 2.6 million people in the UK. Just because relatively few elites (people like Bannon) would know any of those people, doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
Yet even so as the sixth largest economy in the world we clearly underperform on manufacturing relative to China, Japan and Germany and over perform on services
That depends on whether or not you think we need to be competitive in manufacturing cheap plastic crap. Let the poorer countries of the world make such stuff, where we need to compete is in higher value goods, and we do okay there. Nobody rational should want to onshore making low-value products that are easily made, the competition will be brutal, and you divert capital and labour from better uses. The US will end up learning this lesson if they aren't careful.
Even on high value goods we underperform Japan and Germany
Regarding the pronoun debate - I am bemused. I very rarely see pronouns shown, even from the public sector (contrary to claims) so I did a review of my emails where there was a personal sign off. Not one had a pronoun. They were from UCL, Royal Surrey Hospital, Doctor, Dentist, HMRC, DVLA, L&G, Standard Life, umpteen MPs.
From memory I can only recall one use of a pronoun in the past in an email and that was from Daisy Cooper (she/her).
Bizarrely it can be useful with unusual names. Even not so unusual names. My wife has a Scottish name that seems obviously female to me, but seems to confuse some and also being a Doctor her prefix of Dr does not help. So many assume she is male. So it could help. Not that she or I use pronouns.
You are a despicable liar. "Everyone is passively pressured to do that, and comply with gender identity ideology, on pain of otherwise being accused of being a bigot."
Its true. You're in denial. Everyone has to do it. Even on here.
Ian (He/Him)
Right, I've done a 10-minute very non-scientific study of my inbox.
- The majority of people in my organisation have pronouns in their email signatures. However, the incidence of people not using pronouns is probably higher than I'd imagined. - Interestingly, a similar scan through a random sample (this week, three years ago) seems to suggest fewer pronouns than a few years ago. - That said, this is difficult to evaluate fully because, also possibly interestingly, there are far more emails without signatures at all - It's hard to tell objectively to what extent we have been 'pressured' - certainly I remember emails from HR asking us to add pronouns to signatures, though this is hard to dig out with a simple search of the word 'pronoun' because the word 'pronoun' features in the signature of so many emails - but clearly many people such as me haven't: this isn't necessarily a principled objection, but could equally well be reluctance to do a very low-priority admin task - external emails from other public sector organisations are also majoritavely pronouned - external emails from people trying to sell things to the public sector through spam are almost entirely pronouned - external emails from consultants (and - while I don't know who @Casino_Royale is in real life, I think I know what industry he works in - and particularly from consultants his industry) are almost entirely pronouned. - external emails from the general public almost entirely unpronouned.
However, I'm perfectly willing to believe e.g. Foxy that he rarely sees pronouns. Maybe we're all telling the truth and it varies from industry to industry.
Interesting, because my list was from a wide variety of public sector and private sector from the last couple of weeks. I obviously didn't count generic stuff that didn't have a person's name. Not a single pronoun where someone signed off with their name. Not one. I am involved in a campaign where I get or am copied in on a lot of emails from MPs. Again not one had a pronoun next to the name of the MP. On the contrary most these days have become more informal as if I know them personally.
As far as prior to that I can't be sure obviously, but it struck me when I had an email from Daisy Cooper (generic, not just to me) where she did use (she/her) and because of that I noticed it, which sort of implies if someone else had done so I would have noticed that also. It struck me because it was the first time I had seen it, rather than hearing about it.
Others have said it so I'm just clogging up the thread (as usual) but if you are dealing with the public sector, using pronouns is a thing in your email signature. Within the public sector, it is very much a thing, indeed it is often mandated by the senior leadership of these organisations.
I never had an issue with it at all - it's often a point of clarity and clarification to know how to refer to the person with whom you are dealing. Companies on the phone often ask me how I wish to be addressed and that's fine as well.
If people wish to be referred to as "they/them" that's their right and I respect it. I can't know it in advance but if they tell me I know and it's something of which I have to be aware.
I have emails from UCL Dental Hospital from 2 distinct people, DVLA and HMRC in the past week. None had pronouns. Here is a bit of the email from DVLA about getting historic tax status for my Cobra.
PS I agree with the clarity bit as I mentioned earlier. My wife has that issue with her first name and her prefix being Dr. so is often addressed as a male. Not that she cares.
PPS Also as mentioned, as per that email above, I am finding the sign offs are getting more and more informal, which I like.
Your DVLA letter shows two different features of modern life. It is signed by Eleanor, with no other name or indication of job title. The line above warns that any reply to that message will not be read.
Steve Bannon: “You (Britain) don’t make anything anymore,”...Sure you guys make automobiles but it is nothing in the grand scheme of things. They’re kind of bespoke Jaguars and Aston Martins.”
Bannon the latest in the “Britain doesn’t manufacture anything” brigade. It’s a boring trope you hear repeated in the media a lot.
In fact the UK remains the 8th or 9th biggest manufacturer in the world. 10% of our GDP with some of the most advanced manufacturing anywhere.
Manufacturing employs 2.6 million people in the UK. Just because relatively few elites (people like Bannon) would know any of those people, doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
There's an important qualification: "You don’t make anything we’re trying to bring back."
It's clear now that they want a soft American variant of the Khmer Rouge. Autarky, a focus on very low value manufacturing and agriculture, attacks on free speech, restrictions on medical care like vaccines, repression and deportation of intellectuals and so on.
If we HAVE located life on one random planet, then statistically it must be all over the Universe. (So will say the Drake equation.)
The idea of it just being us was always Humanoid Exceptionalism taken to the nth degree.
There are people (mostly Americans) who are arguing that space is fake and that Katy Perry didn't get launched into the Thermosphere and is a human baby eating satanist, cgi, green screen, blah, blah.. and you want these people to believe NASA has found life trillions of miles away?
The reaction to the all-female sub-orbital spaceflight has been quite hysterical. It's long been suspected that NASA had avoided doing an all-female crew, and that now seems rather sensible of them.
Regarding the pronoun debate - I am bemused. I very rarely see pronouns shown, even from the public sector (contrary to claims) so I did a review of my emails where there was a personal sign off. Not one had a pronoun. They were from UCL, Royal Surrey Hospital, Doctor, Dentist, HMRC, DVLA, L&G, Standard Life, umpteen MPs.
From memory I can only recall one use of a pronoun in the past in an email and that was from Daisy Cooper (she/her).
Bizarrely it can be useful with unusual names. Even not so unusual names. My wife has a Scottish name that seems obviously female to me, but seems to confuse some and also being a Doctor her prefix of Dr does not help. So many assume she is male. So it could help. Not that she or I use pronouns.
You are a despicable liar. "Everyone is passively pressured to do that, and comply with gender identity ideology, on pain of otherwise being accused of being a bigot."
Its true. You're in denial. Everyone has to do it. Even on here.
Ian (He/Him)
Right, I've done a 10-minute very non-scientific study of my inbox.
- The majority of people in my organisation have pronouns in their email signatures. However, the incidence of people not using pronouns is probably higher than I'd imagined. - Interestingly, a similar scan through a random sample (this week, three years ago) seems to suggest fewer pronouns than a few years ago. - That said, this is difficult to evaluate fully because, also possibly interestingly, there are far more emails without signatures at all - It's hard to tell objectively to what extent we have been 'pressured' - certainly I remember emails from HR asking us to add pronouns to signatures, though this is hard to dig out with a simple search of the word 'pronoun' because the word 'pronoun' features in the signature of so many emails - but clearly many people such as me haven't: this isn't necessarily a principled objection, but could equally well be reluctance to do a very low-priority admin task - external emails from other public sector organisations are also majoritavely pronouned - external emails from people trying to sell things to the public sector through spam are almost entirely pronouned - external emails from consultants (and - while I don't know who @Casino_Royale is in real life, I think I know what industry he works in - and particularly from consultants his industry) are almost entirely pronouned. - external emails from the general public almost entirely unpronouned.
However, I'm perfectly willing to believe e.g. Foxy that he rarely sees pronouns. Maybe we're all telling the truth and it varies from industry to industry.
Interesting, because my list was from a wide variety of public sector and private sector from the last couple of weeks. I obviously didn't count generic stuff that didn't have a person's name. Not a single pronoun where someone signed off with their name. Not one. I am involved in a campaign where I get or am copied in on a lot of emails from MPs. Again not one had a pronoun next to the name of the MP. On the contrary most these days have become more informal as if I know them personally.
As far as prior to that I can't be sure obviously, but it struck me when I had an email from Daisy Cooper (generic, not just to me) where she did use (she/her) and because of that I noticed it, which sort of implies if someone else had done so I would have noticed that also. It struck me because it was the first time I had seen it, rather than hearing about it.
Others have said it so I'm just clogging up the thread (as usual) but if you are dealing with the public sector, using pronouns is a thing in your email signature. Within the public sector, it is very much a thing, indeed it is often mandated by the senior leadership of these organisations.
I never had an issue with it at all - it's often a point of clarity and clarification to know how to refer to the person with whom you are dealing. Companies on the phone often ask me how I wish to be addressed and that's fine as well.
If people wish to be referred to as "they/them" that's their right and I respect it. I can't know it in advance but if they tell me I know and it's something of which I have to be aware.
I have emails from UCL Dental Hospital from 2 distinct people, DVLA and HMRC in the past week. None had pronouns. Here is a bit of the email from DVLA about getting historic tax status for my Cobra.
PS I agree with the clarity bit as I mentioned earlier. My wife has that issue with her first name and her prefix being Dr. so is often addressed as a male. Not that she cares.
PPS Also as mentioned, as per that email above, I am finding the sign offs are getting more and more informal, which I like.
Your DVLA letter shows two different features of modern life. It is signed by Eleanor, with no other name or indication of job title. The line above warns that any reply to that message will not be read.
Does Eleanor even exist? Perhaps she is a bot, perhaps not even that, and just the name that gets the best response.
What amazed me in this conversation is that people actually read email signatures...
My global megacorp was obsessed. Every few months there'd be a new directive on how job titles and organisation names should be written, which version of the company logo should be included, and the typefaces (or fonts, or founts) to be used.
Just 35% of Brits now see the US as an ally, while 34% view it as a threat. A dramatic shift in public opinion in response to #Trump. Here’s what the latest @OpiniumResearch polling reveals
That is reflected in a recent experience of mine. A friend of my family, a woman in her early twenties, recently flew to Central America for an organised holiday. Although not a political type and generally not particularly interested in foreign affairs, she flatly refused to fly there via the US because she was worried that something might happen to her while passing though. This seemed a bit over the top to me, but there are some people who, without particular reason, are sufficiently scared by Trump to avoid the US.
I think that's sensible given the destination was central America. ICE are deporting people for just being in the same room as suspected criminals. You'd be worried about something similar happening on the way back, particularly if she picks up a friend (or partner) on her travels.
Steve Bannon: “You (Britain) don’t make anything anymore,”...Sure you guys make automobiles but it is nothing in the grand scheme of things. They’re kind of bespoke Jaguars and Aston Martins.”
Bannon the latest in the “Britain doesn’t manufacture anything” brigade. It’s a boring trope you hear repeated in the media a lot.
In fact the UK remains the 8th or 9th biggest manufacturer in the world. 10% of our GDP with some of the most advanced manufacturing anywhere.
Manufacturing employs 2.6 million people in the UK. Just because relatively few elites (people like Bannon) would know any of those people, doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
Yet even so as the sixth largest economy in the world we clearly underperform on manufacturing relative to China, Japan and Germany and over perform on services
That depends on whether or not you think we need to be competitive in manufacturing cheap plastic crap. Let the poorer countries of the world make such stuff, where we need to compete is in higher value goods, and we do okay there. Nobody rational should want to onshore making low-value products that are easily made, the competition will be brutal, and you divert capital and labour from better uses. The US will end up learning this lesson if they aren't careful.
We know manufacturing jobs are increasingly replaced with automation. Even if the USA brings them back, they are still going to get replaced by automation instead of foreign countries in the next decade or two anyway. It is madness.
If we HAVE located life on one random planet, then statistically it must be all over the Universe. (So will say the Drake equation.)
The idea of it just being us was always Humanoid Exceptionalism taken to the nth degree.
This is pretty much my view. Which brings us onto the Fermi Paradox (the question as to why, if life is everywhere, why have we not seen any signs of it?). My preferred response to that is: space is vast, we are only looking for certain signals, and we are too boring to routinely visit, even if they have interstellar travel.
That's a suitably boring answer compared to some of the others...
Steve Bannon: “You (Britain) don’t make anything anymore,”...Sure you guys make automobiles but it is nothing in the grand scheme of things. They’re kind of bespoke Jaguars and Aston Martins.”
Bannon the latest in the “Britain doesn’t manufacture anything” brigade. It’s a boring trope you hear repeated in the media a lot.
In fact the UK remains the 8th or 9th biggest manufacturer in the world. 10% of our GDP with some of the most advanced manufacturing anywhere.
Manufacturing employs 2.6 million people in the UK. Just because relatively few elites (people like Bannon) would know any of those people, doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
There's an important qualification: "You don’t make anything we’re trying to bring back."
It's clear now that they want a soft American variant of the Khmer Rouge. Autarky, a focus on very low value manufacturing and agriculture, attacks on free speech, restrictions on medical care like vaccines, repression and deportation of intellectuals and so on.
The type of manufacturing that gives you strategic autonomy isn't low value. It's priceless.
Regarding the pronoun debate - I am bemused. I very rarely see pronouns shown, even from the public sector (contrary to claims) so I did a review of my emails where there was a personal sign off. Not one had a pronoun. They were from UCL, Royal Surrey Hospital, Doctor, Dentist, HMRC, DVLA, L&G, Standard Life, umpteen MPs.
From memory I can only recall one use of a pronoun in the past in an email and that was from Daisy Cooper (she/her).
Bizarrely it can be useful with unusual names. Even not so unusual names. My wife has a Scottish name that seems obviously female to me, but seems to confuse some and also being a Doctor her prefix of Dr does not help. So many assume she is male. So it could help. Not that she or I use pronouns.
You are a despicable liar. "Everyone is passively pressured to do that, and comply with gender identity ideology, on pain of otherwise being accused of being a bigot."
Its true. You're in denial. Everyone has to do it. Even on here.
Ian (He/Him)
Right, I've done a 10-minute very non-scientific study of my inbox.
- The majority of people in my organisation have pronouns in their email signatures. However, the incidence of people not using pronouns is probably higher than I'd imagined. - Interestingly, a similar scan through a random sample (this week, three years ago) seems to suggest fewer pronouns than a few years ago. - That said, this is difficult to evaluate fully because, also possibly interestingly, there are far more emails without signatures at all - It's hard to tell objectively to what extent we have been 'pressured' - certainly I remember emails from HR asking us to add pronouns to signatures, though this is hard to dig out with a simple search of the word 'pronoun' because the word 'pronoun' features in the signature of so many emails - but clearly many people such as me haven't: this isn't necessarily a principled objection, but could equally well be reluctance to do a very low-priority admin task - external emails from other public sector organisations are also majoritavely pronouned - external emails from people trying to sell things to the public sector through spam are almost entirely pronouned - external emails from consultants (and - while I don't know who @Casino_Royale is in real life, I think I know what industry he works in - and particularly from consultants his industry) are almost entirely pronouned. - external emails from the general public almost entirely unpronouned.
However, I'm perfectly willing to believe e.g. Foxy that he rarely sees pronouns. Maybe we're all telling the truth and it varies from industry to industry.
Interesting, because my list was from a wide variety of public sector and private sector from the last couple of weeks. I obviously didn't count generic stuff that didn't have a person's name. Not a single pronoun where someone signed off with their name. Not one. I am involved in a campaign where I get or am copied in on a lot of emails from MPs. Again not one had a pronoun next to the name of the MP. On the contrary most these days have become more informal as if I know them personally.
As far as prior to that I can't be sure obviously, but it struck me when I had an email from Daisy Cooper (generic, not just to me) where she did use (she/her) and because of that I noticed it, which sort of implies if someone else had done so I would have noticed that also. It struck me because it was the first time I had seen it, rather than hearing about it.
Others have said it so I'm just clogging up the thread (as usual) but if you are dealing with the public sector, using pronouns is a thing in your email signature. Within the public sector, it is very much a thing, indeed it is often mandated by the senior leadership of these organisations.
I never had an issue with it at all - it's often a point of clarity and clarification to know how to refer to the person with whom you are dealing. Companies on the phone often ask me how I wish to be addressed and that's fine as well.
If people wish to be referred to as "they/them" that's their right and I respect it. I can't know it in advance but if they tell me I know and it's something of which I have to be aware.
I have emails from UCL Dental Hospital from 2 distinct people, DVLA and HMRC in the past week. None had pronouns. Here is a bit of the email from DVLA about getting historic tax status for my Cobra.
PS I agree with the clarity bit as I mentioned earlier. My wife has that issue with her first name and her prefix being Dr. so is often addressed as a male. Not that she cares.
PPS Also as mentioned, as per that email above, I am finding the sign offs are getting more and more informal, which I like.
Your DVLA letter shows two different features of modern life. It is signed by Eleanor, with no other name or indication of job title. The line above warns that any reply to that message will not be read.
Yes I noted that, although in fairness I was speaking to Eleanor just prior to her email and do have her details, but yes a full name and job title would be useful and not being able to respond is really annoying. The use of a single first name seems very common now. One of the others was signed off as just Ethan. I do sign off with just my first name, but my full name, telephone number and an email address that can be used is also present.
I’ve worked for three very large telecoms companies and not once have I ever felt the need to put my pronouns on an email. I never have and never will as I can’t personally see the point.
But if somebody wants to, isn’t that up to them? I agree we should not force people to do it but assuming that’s the case would you still have a problem with it?
This seems no different than forcing me to wear a suit. I’m glad that’s over.
They can stick their pronouns up their butts, I use name or him / her, rest of the bollox they can get stuffed.
Never used pronouns. For me or for anybody else. Never had to.
That's just the way it rolls down here in Devon.
But you’re all weirdos down there in the West Country calling everybody ‘my lover’.
When I was a callow 17 year old visiting the West Country for the first time getting called ‘my lover’ was a eye/ear opener, thank Allah my mother wasn’t there, the shock would have killed her.
As a 17 year old visiting a hardware shop in Manchester not knowing what size screws I wanted the shopkeeper said 'You're what we in the trade call Bohemian Buggeries'
Regarding the pronoun debate - I am bemused. I very rarely see pronouns shown, even from the public sector (contrary to claims) so I did a review of my emails where there was a personal sign off. Not one had a pronoun. They were from UCL, Royal Surrey Hospital, Doctor, Dentist, HMRC, DVLA, L&G, Standard Life, umpteen MPs.
From memory I can only recall one use of a pronoun in the past in an email and that was from Daisy Cooper (she/her).
Bizarrely it can be useful with unusual names. Even not so unusual names. My wife has a Scottish name that seems obviously female to me, but seems to confuse some and also being a Doctor her prefix of Dr does not help. So many assume she is male. So it could help. Not that she or I use pronouns.
You are a despicable liar. "Everyone is passively pressured to do that, and comply with gender identity ideology, on pain of otherwise being accused of being a bigot."
Its true. You're in denial. Everyone has to do it. Even on here.
Ian (He/Him)
Right, I've done a 10-minute very non-scientific study of my inbox.
- The majority of people in my organisation have pronouns in their email signatures. However, the incidence of people not using pronouns is probably higher than I'd imagined. - Interestingly, a similar scan through a random sample (this week, three years ago) seems to suggest fewer pronouns than a few years ago. - That said, this is difficult to evaluate fully because, also possibly interestingly, there are far more emails without signatures at all - It's hard to tell objectively to what extent we have been 'pressured' - certainly I remember emails from HR asking us to add pronouns to signatures, though this is hard to dig out with a simple search of the word 'pronoun' because the word 'pronoun' features in the signature of so many emails - but clearly many people such as me haven't: this isn't necessarily a principled objection, but could equally well be reluctance to do a very low-priority admin task - external emails from other public sector organisations are also majoritavely pronouned - external emails from people trying to sell things to the public sector through spam are almost entirely pronouned - external emails from consultants (and - while I don't know who @Casino_Royale is in real life, I think I know what industry he works in - and particularly from consultants his industry) are almost entirely pronouned. - external emails from the general public almost entirely unpronouned.
However, I'm perfectly willing to believe e.g. Foxy that he rarely sees pronouns. Maybe we're all telling the truth and it varies from industry to industry.
Interesting, because my list was from a wide variety of public sector and private sector from the last couple of weeks. I obviously didn't count generic stuff that didn't have a person's name. Not a single pronoun where someone signed off with their name. Not one. I am involved in a campaign where I get or am copied in on a lot of emails from MPs. Again not one had a pronoun next to the name of the MP. On the contrary most these days have become more informal as if I know them personally.
As far as prior to that I can't be sure obviously, but it struck me when I had an email from Daisy Cooper (generic, not just to me) where she did use (she/her) and because of that I noticed it, which sort of implies if someone else had done so I would have noticed that also. It struck me because it was the first time I had seen it, rather than hearing about it.
Others have said it so I'm just clogging up the thread (as usual) but if you are dealing with the public sector, using pronouns is a thing in your email signature. Within the public sector, it is very much a thing, indeed it is often mandated by the senior leadership of these organisations.
I never had an issue with it at all - it's often a point of clarity and clarification to know how to refer to the person with whom you are dealing. Companies on the phone often ask me how I wish to be addressed and that's fine as well.
If people wish to be referred to as "they/them" that's their right and I respect it. I can't know it in advance but if they tell me I know and it's something of which I have to be aware.
I have emails from UCL Dental Hospital from 2 distinct people, DVLA and HMRC in the past week. None had pronouns. Here is a bit of the email from DVLA about getting historic tax status for my Cobra.
PS I agree with the clarity bit as I mentioned earlier. My wife has that issue with her first name and her prefix being Dr. so is often addressed as a male. Not that she cares.
PPS Also as mentioned, as per that email above, I am finding the sign offs are getting more and more informal, which I like.
Your DVLA letter shows two different features of modern life. It is signed by Eleanor, with no other name or indication of job title. The line above warns that any reply to that message will not be read.
Yes I noted that, although in fairness I was speaking to Eleanor just prior to her email and do have her details, but yes a full name and job title would be useful and not being able to respond is really annoying. The use of a single first name seems very common now. One of the others was signed off as just Ethan. I do sign off with just my first name, but my full name, telephone number and an email address that can be used is also present.
British Gas absolutely refuse to sign emails correctly, with any name at all.
Possible reasons:
1) They don't want us to know all their customer service staff are South African;
2) They don't want people to know who to send the lawyer's letter to over the false statements contained therein;
3) Their staff are so dim they don't know their own names.
What's more annoying is the way they address the customer informally, even in a dispute, viz. 'Hi X, thanks for reaching out to us.' This leads inevitably to the assumption that (3) at least is probably correct.
On other matters, I'm looking at the Canadian polling and I'm seeing telephone polls give better results for the Liberals than online polling. Like here, older Canadians tend to be Conservative, younger ones more Liberal with the NDP strongest among the 18-24 age group.
Did we have a debate on here once about the merits of polling techniques? Do we regard telephone polling as more accurate than online or Interactive Voice Response (IVR)?
Both Canada and Australia have had Leaders' Debates in the past 24 hours - will they shift polling? I'm not sure they do as it ends up more like baseline tennis. From what little I've seen and read, the Canadian debate was, not surprisingly, all about how to deal with Trump while in Australia, Liberal leader Peter Dutton has backtracked on his views on climate change which he apparently now accepts. Whether this Damascene conversion will help the struggling Liberal campaign is debatable.
The Aussie equivalent of PB, Pollbludger, gives a good flavour of the election debate.
I watched the whole Canadian debate and Carney did struggle at times especially on pushing back on any attacks.
The others are fluent French speakers which made it harder for him . I expect tonight’s English debate will have more fireworks and Carney will be much more comfortable.
Just 35% of Brits now see the US as an ally, while 34% view it as a threat. A dramatic shift in public opinion in response to #Trump. Here’s what the latest @OpiniumResearch polling reveals
That is reflected in a recent experience of mine. A friend of my family, a woman in her early twenties, recently flew to Central America for an organised holiday. Although not a political type and generally not particularly interested in foreign affairs, she flatly refused to fly there via the US because she was worried that something might happen to her while passing though. This seemed a bit over the top to me, but there are some people who, without particular reason, are sufficiently scared by Trump to avoid the US.
I'd say particular reason has been liberally supplied to anyone & everyone by the US since Mr Trump was re-elected.
Just 35% of Brits now see the US as an ally, while 34% view it as a threat. A dramatic shift in public opinion in response to #Trump. Here’s what the latest @OpiniumResearch polling reveals
That is reflected in a recent experience of mine. A friend of my family, a woman in her early twenties, recently flew to Central America for an organised holiday. Although not a political type and generally not particularly interested in foreign affairs, she flatly refused to fly there via the US because she was worried that something might happen to her while passing though. This seemed a bit over the top to me, but there are some people who, without particular reason, are sufficiently scared by Trump to avoid the US.
I think that's sensible given the destination was central America. ICE are deporting people for just being in the same room as suspected criminals. You'd be worried about something similar happening on the way back, particularly if she picks up a friend (or partner) on her travels.
If the risk was a tiny chance of deportation, I would take it without much thought.
But the risk seems to be more like a tiny chance of a few weeks in a fairly unpleasant prison followed by the deportation. No thanks.
On other matters, I'm looking at the Canadian polling and I'm seeing telephone polls give better results for the Liberals than online polling. Like here, older Canadians tend to be Conservative, younger ones more Liberal with the NDP strongest among the 18-24 age group.
Did we have a debate on here once about the merits of polling techniques? Do we regard telephone polling as more accurate than online or Interactive Voice Response (IVR)?
Both Canada and Australia have had Leaders' Debates in the past 24 hours - will they shift polling? I'm not sure they do as it ends up more like baseline tennis. From what little I've seen and read, the Canadian debate was, not surprisingly, all about how to deal with Trump while in Australia, Liberal leader Peter Dutton has backtracked on his views on climate change which he apparently now accepts. Whether this Damascene conversion will help the struggling Liberal campaign is debatable.
The Aussie equivalent of PB, Pollbludger, gives a good flavour of the election debate.
The Canadian Liberals actually do best with pensioners, the Conservatives with the middle aged and NDP as you say with the young
If we HAVE located life on one random planet, then statistically it must be all over the Universe. (So will say the Drake equation.)
The idea of it just being us was always Humanoid Exceptionalism taken to the nth degree.
This is pretty much my view. Which brings us onto the Fermi Paradox (the question as to why, if life is everywhere, why have we not seen any signs of it?). My preferred response to that is: space is vast, we are only looking for certain signals, and we are too boring to routinely visit, even if they have interstellar travel.
That's a suitably boring answer compared to some of the others...
I think I'm rather in the opposite camp, my suspicion being that the evolution of complex, intelligent life is wildly improbable, requiring a very particular series of circumstances in order to occur. On the other hand, I reckon that the evolution of simpler life forms, such as might be required to explain a particular atmospheric composition, may not be so uncommon. After all, such life has existed on Earth for most of the time of the planet's existence.
It's only seven hundred trillion miles away from us.
Trump: "So you mean we can see if they will hold our prisoners there instead of El Salvador? Supreme Court ain't ever getting them back from THERE..."
This exact discovery - via the James Webb Telescope - was predicted by a correspondent on The Spectator. So incredibly accurately you wonder if he has some kind of extrapolative gift
Steve Bannon: “You (Britain) don’t make anything anymore,”...Sure you guys make automobiles but it is nothing in the grand scheme of things. They’re kind of bespoke Jaguars and Aston Martins.”
Telegraph
Is he so stupid he doesn't know Jaguar are not making cars at the moment?
Sure they are. F-Pace is still in production on the Solihull line. I mean, nobody is buying the fucking thing but they are still building it.
Is that the X761 ?
The CSV, its shit. Poorly engineered and designed, cheaply bought tat. I worked on a part of it for a while.
Just 35% of Brits now see the US as an ally, while 34% view it as a threat. A dramatic shift in public opinion in response to #Trump. Here’s what the latest @OpiniumResearch polling reveals
That is reflected in a recent experience of mine. A friend of my family, a woman in her early twenties, recently flew to Central America for an organised holiday. Although not a political type and generally not particularly interested in foreign affairs, she flatly refused to fly there via the US because she was worried that something might happen to her while passing though. This seemed a bit over the top to me, but there are some people who, without particular reason, are sufficiently scared by Trump to avoid the US.
I think that's sensible given the destination was central America. ICE are deporting people for just being in the same room as suspected criminals. You'd be worried about something similar happening on the way back, particularly if she picks up a friend (or partner) on her travels.
If the risk was a tiny chance of deportation, I would take it without much thought.
But the risk seems to be more like a tiny chance of a few weeks in a fairly unpleasant prison followed by the deportation. No thanks.
My wife is american. We are both academics. We have cancelled all our trips to the states. Conferences (which are paid for my our universities), and family holidays. We are diversifying away from Amazon, Dropbox, products. Look at Harvard and Columbia. Researchers and grad students being deported. Lack of academic freedom.... that is a no thanks from me.
And before we get carried away with this 'discovery' on an exoplanet; scientists have had enough trouble with the suspected/alleged presence of traces of phosphine on Venus, which is a good biomarker. Some studies have found it (including re-analysing data from a 1970s Venusian probe), whilst others have found no traces.
If we have that much trouble over our near-neighbour Venus, then we need to take great care with announcements from planets billions of times further away. Hopefully this, like the phosphine announcement five years ago, will lead to more science.
(IMV the Welsh team that made the initial discovery did some very good science, and although there were flaws in their work, it still holds up in substance.)
I’ve worked for three very large telecoms companies and not once have I ever felt the need to put my pronouns on an email. I never have and never will as I can’t personally see the point.
But if somebody wants to, isn’t that up to them? I agree we should not force people to do it but assuming that’s the case would you still have a problem with it?
This seems no different than forcing me to wear a suit. I’m glad that’s over.
They can stick their pronouns up their butts, I use name or him / her, rest of the bollox they can get stuffed.
Never used pronouns. For me or for anybody else. Never had to.
That's just the way it rolls down here in Devon.
But you’re all weirdos down there in the West Country calling everybody ‘my lover’.
When I was a callow 17 year old visiting the West Country for the first time getting called ‘my lover’ was a eye/ear opener, thank Allah my mother wasn’t there, the shock would have killed her.
When I worked at Bombardier in Derby I got called Duck, or me duck, an awful lot. Quite disconcerting at first.
Just 35% of Brits now see the US as an ally, while 34% view it as a threat. A dramatic shift in public opinion in response to #Trump. Here’s what the latest @OpiniumResearch polling reveals
That is reflected in a recent experience of mine. A friend of my family, a woman in her early twenties, recently flew to Central America for an organised holiday. Although not a political type and generally not particularly interested in foreign affairs, she flatly refused to fly there via the US because she was worried that something might happen to her while passing though. This seemed a bit over the top to me, but there are some people who, without particular reason, are sufficiently scared by Trump to avoid the US.
I think that's sensible given the destination was central America. ICE are deporting people for just being in the same room as suspected criminals. You'd be worried about something similar happening on the way back, particularly if she picks up a friend (or partner) on her travels.
If the risk was a tiny chance of deportation, I would take it without much thought.
But the risk seems to be more like a tiny chance of a few weeks in a fairly unpleasant prison followed by the deportation. No thanks.
My wife is american. We are both academics. We have cancelled all our trips to the states. Conferences (which are paid for my our universities), and family holidays. We are diversifying away from Amazon, Dropbox, products. Look at Harvard and Columbia. Researchers and grad students being deported. Lack of academic freedom.... that is a no thanks from me.
My cousin, who is an Emeritus Professor at Simon Fraser, refused to travel in the US in Trump's first term. Said Trump was mad and bad in equal parts so you couodn't be sure what might happen.
He's a smart cookie - well ahead of the curve on that one.
If we HAVE located life on one random planet, then statistically it must be all over the Universe. (So will say the Drake equation.)
The idea of it just being us was always Humanoid Exceptionalism taken to the nth degree.
This is pretty much my view. Which brings us onto the Fermi Paradox (the question as to why, if life is everywhere, why have we not seen any signs of it?). My preferred response to that is: space is vast, we are only looking for certain signals, and we are too boring to routinely visit, even if they have interstellar travel.
That's a suitably boring answer compared to some of the others...
I think I'm rather in the opposite camp, my suspicion being that the evolution of complex, intelligent life is wildly improbable, requiring a very particular series of circumstances in order to occur. On the other hand, I reckon that the evolution of simpler life forms, such as might be required to explain a particular atmospheric composition, may not be so uncommon. After all, such life has existed on Earth for most of the time of the planet's existence.
Indeed.
And one form of it has risen to be President of the United States.
I’ve worked for three very large telecoms companies and not once have I ever felt the need to put my pronouns on an email. I never have and never will as I can’t personally see the point.
But if somebody wants to, isn’t that up to them? I agree we should not force people to do it but assuming that’s the case would you still have a problem with it?
This seems no different than forcing me to wear a suit. I’m glad that’s over.
They can stick their pronouns up their butts, I use name or him / her, rest of the bollox they can get stuffed.
Never used pronouns. For me or for anybody else. Never had to.
That's just the way it rolls down here in Devon.
But you’re all weirdos down there in the West Country calling everybody ‘my lover’.
When I was a callow 17 year old visiting the West Country for the first time getting called ‘my lover’ was a eye/ear opener, thank Allah my mother wasn’t there, the shock would have killed her.
As a 17 year old visiting a hardware shop in Manchester not knowing what size screws I wanted the shopkeeper said 'You're what we in the trade call Bohemian Buggeries'
It's only seven hundred trillion miles away from us.
Trump: "So you mean we can see if they will hold our prisoners there instead of El Salvador? Supreme Court ain't ever getting them back from THERE..."
This exact discovery - via the James Webb Telescope - was predicted by a correspondent on The Spectator. So incredibly accurately you wonder if he has some kind of extrapolative gift
Regarding the pronoun debate - I am bemused. I very rarely see pronouns shown, even from the public sector (contrary to claims) so I did a review of my emails where there was a personal sign off. Not one had a pronoun. They were from UCL, Royal Surrey Hospital, Doctor, Dentist, HMRC, DVLA, L&G, Standard Life, umpteen MPs.
From memory I can only recall one use of a pronoun in the past in an email and that was from Daisy Cooper (she/her).
Bizarrely it can be useful with unusual names. Even not so unusual names. My wife has a Scottish name that seems obviously female to me, but seems to confuse some and also being a Doctor her prefix of Dr does not help. So many assume she is male. So it could help. Not that she or I use pronouns.
You are a despicable liar. "Everyone is passively pressured to do that, and comply with gender identity ideology, on pain of otherwise being accused of being a bigot."
Its true. You're in denial. Everyone has to do it. Even on here.
Ian (He/Him)
Right, I've done a 10-minute very non-scientific study of my inbox.
- The majority of people in my organisation have pronouns in their email signatures. However, the incidence of people not using pronouns is probably higher than I'd imagined. - Interestingly, a similar scan through a random sample (this week, three years ago) seems to suggest fewer pronouns than a few years ago. - That said, this is difficult to evaluate fully because, also possibly interestingly, there are far more emails without signatures at all - It's hard to tell objectively to what extent we have been 'pressured' - certainly I remember emails from HR asking us to add pronouns to signatures, though this is hard to dig out with a simple search of the word 'pronoun' because the word 'pronoun' features in the signature of so many emails - but clearly many people such as me haven't: this isn't necessarily a principled objection, but could equally well be reluctance to do a very low-priority admin task - external emails from other public sector organisations are also majoritavely pronouned - external emails from people trying to sell things to the public sector through spam are almost entirely pronouned - external emails from consultants (and - while I don't know who @Casino_Royale is in real life, I think I know what industry he works in - and particularly from consultants his industry) are almost entirely pronouned. - external emails from the general public almost entirely unpronouned.
However, I'm perfectly willing to believe e.g. Foxy that he rarely sees pronouns. Maybe we're all telling the truth and it varies from industry to industry.
I've just done a very unscientific survey of my organisation - private sector but does a lot of business with public sector. We have had some gentle encouragement but it is clear it is genuinely voluntary.
A lot of my emails are replies so don't have email sigs but I counted back 15 different people, none had pronouns. Including several people where it would have been helpful, and the DEI Officer!
Jennifer Williams @jenwilliamsft.bsky.social · 1h Reply to Jennifer Williams
In conclusion, if we end with Reform councils, there will be thousands of words written about What This Means For Morgan McSweeney and Kemi Badenoch and far fewer written about the politics of bins and council tax. Then everyone will move on and local govt will continue its death spiral unhindered
If we HAVE located life on one random planet, then statistically it must be all over the Universe. (So will say the Drake equation.)
The idea of it just being us was always Humanoid Exceptionalism taken to the nth degree.
This is pretty much my view. Which brings us onto the Fermi Paradox (the question as to why, if life is everywhere, why have we not seen any signs of it?). My preferred response to that is: space is vast, we are only looking for certain signals, and we are too boring to routinely visit, even if they have interstellar travel.
That's a suitably boring answer compared to some of the others...
I think I'm rather in the opposite camp, my suspicion being that the evolution of complex, intelligent life is wildly improbable, requiring a very particular series of circumstances in order to occur. On the other hand, I reckon that the evolution of simpler life forms, such as might be required to explain a particular atmospheric composition, may not be so uncommon. After all, such life has existed on Earth for most of the time of the planet's existence.
And that's a fair position. Except in the one case where we can say life formed - our own planet - we can also say that intelligent life developed. So that's a 100% hit rate. Until we discover other planets where we are sure life is present or has developed, it seems reasonable to say that, if the planet is old enough and life forms, intelligent life is possible, or even probable.
I don't like the idea that we, or Earth, is exceptional. We're probably just boringly mundane.
Steve Bannon: “You (Britain) don’t make anything anymore,”...Sure you guys make automobiles but it is nothing in the grand scheme of things. They’re kind of bespoke Jaguars and Aston Martins.”
Telegraph
Is he so stupid he doesn't know Jaguar are not making cars at the moment?
Sure they are. F-Pace is still in production on the Solihull line. I mean, nobody is buying the fucking thing but they are still building it.
Is that the X761 ?
The CSV, its shit. Poorly engineered and designed, cheaply bought tat. I worked on a part of it for a while.
It's the Velar/XE/XF platform.
In other car news, I've noticed that high mileage 458s are getting cheap, for very high values of cheap. I might get one to console myself over missing 430 prices going translunar.
Farage is moving Reform firmly to the left at the movement. With its support of nationalisation and unions.
But doesn’t it all come across a bit hollow? Why has Farage only changed his mind now?
I know the Red Wall polling was terrible for Labour but it wasn’t great for Reform either. Farage was hardly popular even apparently where Reform is doing well. To me instinctively this feels like Farage benefiting from “not Labour”. But Labour has a lot of time to turn things around.
Reform are just being Populist. Farage used to be Thatcherite and cheered the Kamikwase budget under Truss, yet now supports steel renationalisation.
It's just typical opportunism. Labour has a big problem though. Staking everything on deliverism means they have to deliver, and so far they are not doing so. Voters are not usually known for their patience.
It depends what you mean by patient. Voters can be very patient if they believe in the goal and think the government is likely to achieve it at some point in the future, even that future is fairly distant - see e.g. the Second World War, the Conservative general election victory in 1992 despite the 1990-1 recession, etc.
When they don't show patience is when the government is clearly out of its depth, has no credible plan and in fact devotes most of its attention to making matters worse. See the current farrago of incompetence and cluelessness.
As distinct from the "farrago of incompetence and cluelessness" from 2015-2024 - remember them?
Tory "whataboutism" really is not working, which is what we see in the polls.
The fact is that after the Cameron/May/Johnson/Truss/Sunak fiasco, with failed policies and failed processes, the Tories should now be trying to establish some kind of positive campaigning message.
However with 120, mostly retread MPs, the leadership cadre is weak. Now membership is only around 130,000, mostly elderly (versus 400,000 for Labour, a claimed 220,000 for RefUK and around 100,000 Lib Dems). The Conservatives are under severe financial pressure as a result. Nether is the momentum looking good: the Tory local election campaign is invisible, even in their historic heartlands, and big losses are forecast- removing an echelon of local councillors from the ability of the Tories to put their message across.
And what s that message?
"Vote for us, the current lot is even worse" . This is simply pathetic. The Tory leader and the leadership are going to have to start mixing it with the proles- out on the campaign trail, and not simply in expensive and well tailored suits, ("I used to be a minister, you know") but actually delivering leaflets, actually canvassing.
Once they have talked to enough people, they will probably begin to understand where they went wrong (and it is not just some hollow media-crafted fake "listening" exercises). Unless they start to do this, RefUK will eat their lunch. I do not (yet) buy the extinction of the Conservative Party, but unless they can address their practical weaknesses, then their future is bleak, and maybe only a Canadian style merger of Tories and Reform (which happened nearly 20 years ago in Canada and is still a fragile entity) would rescue them from political irrelevance.
The Lib Dems take a lot of flack for their campaign stunts, but they do at least know how to campaign. Unless the Tories can fix their internal crisis, it remains to be seen how far things can improve. At the end of the day, RefUK knows what it wants- populist American memes- but what do the Tories want? Apart from power for its own sake.
What do Conservative principles even mean after the Boris clown show and the Truss tantrum? May and Sunak at least had some level of seriousness, but Kemi Badenoch has possibly already played things a bit too fast and loose. One the other hand, a seventh leader in a bit more than eight years would demonstrate, surely, that the Tory party itself was no longer serious, not even in their pursuit of power.
If we HAVE located life on one random planet, then statistically it must be all over the Universe. (So will say the Drake equation.)
The idea of it just being us was always Humanoid Exceptionalism taken to the nth degree.
This is pretty much my view. Which brings us onto the Fermi Paradox (the question as to why, if life is everywhere, why have we not seen any signs of it?). My preferred response to that is: space is vast, we are only looking for certain signals, and we are too boring to routinely visit, even if they have interstellar travel.
That's a suitably boring answer compared to some of the others...
I think I'm rather in the opposite camp, my suspicion being that the evolution of complex, intelligent life is wildly improbable, requiring a very particular series of circumstances in order to occur. On the other hand, I reckon that the evolution of simpler life forms, such as might be required to explain a particular atmospheric composition, may not be so uncommon. After all, such life has existed on Earth for most of the time of the planet's existence.
And that's a fair position. Except in the one case where we can say life formed - our own planet - we can also say that intelligent life developed. So that's a 100% hit rate. Until we discover other planets where we are sure life is present or has developed, it seems reasonable to say that, if the planet is old enough and life forms, intelligent life is possible, or even probable.
I don't like the idea that we, or Earth, is exceptional. We're probably just boringly mundane.
Given the vast vast vast size of the universe - which may actually be infinite, we do not know - it seems vanishingly unlikely that life developed on just one small planet in one star system in one galaxy amongst trillions of others
OR we are in a Simulation. OR I’m the only thing that exists
Steve Bannon: “You (Britain) don’t make anything anymore,”...Sure you guys make automobiles but it is nothing in the grand scheme of things. They’re kind of bespoke Jaguars and Aston Martins.”
Bannon the latest in the “Britain doesn’t manufacture anything” brigade. It’s a boring trope you hear repeated in the media a lot.
In fact the UK remains the 8th or 9th biggest manufacturer in the world. 10% of our GDP with some of the most advanced manufacturing anywhere.
Manufacturing employs 2.6 million people in the UK. Just because relatively few elites (people like Bannon) would know any of those people, doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
Steve Bannon: “You (Britain) don’t make anything anymore,”...Sure you guys make automobiles but it is nothing in the grand scheme of things. They’re kind of bespoke Jaguars and Aston Martins.”
Bannon the latest in the “Britain doesn’t manufacture anything” brigade. It’s a boring trope you hear repeated in the media a lot.
In fact the UK remains the 8th or 9th biggest manufacturer in the world. 10% of our GDP with some of the most advanced manufacturing anywhere.
Manufacturing employs 2.6 million people in the UK. Just because relatively few elites (people like Bannon) would know any of those people, doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
Yet even so as the sixth largest economy in the world we clearly underperform on manufacturing relative to China, Japan and Germany and over perform on services
That depends on whether or not you think we need to be competitive in manufacturing cheap plastic crap. Let the poorer countries of the world make such stuff, where we need to compete is in higher value goods, and we do okay there. Nobody rational should want to onshore making low-value products that are easily made, the competition will be brutal, and you divert capital and labour from better uses. The US will end up learning this lesson if they aren't careful.
We know manufacturing jobs are increasingly replaced with automation. Even if the USA brings them back, they are still going to get replaced by automation instead of foreign countries in the next decade or two anyway. It is madness.
If we HAVE located life on one random planet, then statistically it must be all over the Universe. (So will say the Drake equation.)
The idea of it just being us was always Humanoid Exceptionalism taken to the nth degree.
This is pretty much my view. Which brings us onto the Fermi Paradox (the question as to why, if life is everywhere, why have we not seen any signs of it?). My preferred response to that is: space is vast, we are only looking for certain signals, and we are too boring to routinely visit, even if they have interstellar travel.
That's a suitably boring answer compared to some of the others...
I think I'm rather in the opposite camp, my suspicion being that the evolution of complex, intelligent life is wildly improbable, requiring a very particular series of circumstances in order to occur. On the other hand, I reckon that the evolution of simpler life forms, such as might be required to explain a particular atmospheric composition, may not be so uncommon. After all, such life has existed on Earth for most of the time of the planet's existence.
And that's a fair position. Except in the one case where we can say life formed - our own planet - we can also say that intelligent life developed. So that's a 100% hit rate. Until we discover other planets where we are sure life is present or has developed, it seems reasonable to say that, if the planet is old enough and life forms, intelligent life is possible, or even probable.
I don't like the idea that we, or Earth, is exceptional. We're probably just boringly mundane.
I'm not sure I agree with you on the likelihood of intelligent life developing from simple life. Until very recently, intelligent life had failed to develop on Earth despite plenty of opportunities to do so. For most of its history, Earth would have been a 0% hit rate for the evolution of intelligent life from simple life.
Steve Bannon: “You (Britain) don’t make anything anymore,”...Sure you guys make automobiles but it is nothing in the grand scheme of things. They’re kind of bespoke Jaguars and Aston Martins.”
Bannon the latest in the “Britain doesn’t manufacture anything” brigade. It’s a boring trope you hear repeated in the media a lot.
In fact the UK remains the 8th or 9th biggest manufacturer in the world. 10% of our GDP with some of the most advanced manufacturing anywhere.
Manufacturing employs 2.6 million people in the UK. Just because relatively few elites (people like Bannon) would know any of those people, doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
Steve Bannon: “You (Britain) don’t make anything anymore,”...Sure you guys make automobiles but it is nothing in the grand scheme of things. They’re kind of bespoke Jaguars and Aston Martins.”
Bannon the latest in the “Britain doesn’t manufacture anything” brigade. It’s a boring trope you hear repeated in the media a lot.
In fact the UK remains the 8th or 9th biggest manufacturer in the world. 10% of our GDP with some of the most advanced manufacturing anywhere.
Manufacturing employs 2.6 million people in the UK. Just because relatively few elites (people like Bannon) would know any of those people, doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
Yet even so as the sixth largest economy in the world we clearly underperform on manufacturing relative to China, Japan and Germany and over perform on services
That depends on whether or not you think we need to be competitive in manufacturing cheap plastic crap. Let the poorer countries of the world make such stuff, where we need to compete is in higher value goods, and we do okay there. Nobody rational should want to onshore making low-value products that are easily made, the competition will be brutal, and you divert capital and labour from better uses. The US will end up learning this lesson if they aren't careful.
We know manufacturing jobs are increasingly replaced with automation. Even if the USA brings them back, they are still going to get replaced by automation instead of foreign countries in the next decade or two anyway. It is madness.
So tax companies which automate too much too
That may not be the optimal approach when it comes to improving productivity.
On other matters, I'm looking at the Canadian polling and I'm seeing telephone polls give better results for the Liberals than online polling. Like here, older Canadians tend to be Conservative, younger ones more Liberal with the NDP strongest among the 18-24 age group.
Did we have a debate on here once about the merits of polling techniques? Do we regard telephone polling as more accurate than online or Interactive Voice Response (IVR)?
Both Canada and Australia have had Leaders' Debates in the past 24 hours - will they shift polling? I'm not sure they do as it ends up more like baseline tennis. From what little I've seen and read, the Canadian debate was, not surprisingly, all about how to deal with Trump while in Australia, Liberal leader Peter Dutton has backtracked on his views on climate change which he apparently now accepts. Whether this Damascene conversion will help the struggling Liberal campaign is debatable.
The Aussie equivalent of PB, Pollbludger, gives a good flavour of the election debate.
The Canadian Liberals actually do best with pensioners, the Conservatives with the middle aged and NDP as you say with the young
If you look at the 2021 election numbers, the Conservatives led with all voters aged over 50. For those aged 50-69, the Conservative lead was about 3.5%. For those aged 70-79, the Conservative lead was 10 points and for those aged over 80, it was 15 points.
The strongest Liberal group was those aged 30-39 where the party led by nearly five points.
The NDP led among the 18-29 aged group with the Conservatives third.
The latest Abacus data (overall Liberal lead of two points) has regionsl sub samples and in Ontario (121 ridings) the Liberals led by seven (47-40).
Regarding the pronoun debate - I am bemused. I very rarely see pronouns shown, even from the public sector (contrary to claims) so I did a review of my emails where there was a personal sign off. Not one had a pronoun. They were from UCL, Royal Surrey Hospital, Doctor, Dentist, HMRC, DVLA, L&G, Standard Life, umpteen MPs.
From memory I can only recall one use of a pronoun in the past in an email and that was from Daisy Cooper (she/her).
Bizarrely it can be useful with unusual names. Even not so unusual names. My wife has a Scottish name that seems obviously female to me, but seems to confuse some and also being a Doctor her prefix of Dr does not help. So many assume she is male. So it could help. Not that she or I use pronouns.
You are a despicable liar. "Everyone is passively pressured to do that, and comply with gender identity ideology, on pain of otherwise being accused of being a bigot."
Its true. You're in denial. Everyone has to do it. Even on here.
Ian (He/Him)
Right, I've done a 10-minute very non-scientific study of my inbox.
- The majority of people in my organisation have pronouns in their email signatures. However, the incidence of people not using pronouns is probably higher than I'd imagined. - Interestingly, a similar scan through a random sample (this week, three years ago) seems to suggest fewer pronouns than a few years ago. - That said, this is difficult to evaluate fully because, also possibly interestingly, there are far more emails without signatures at all - It's hard to tell objectively to what extent we have been 'pressured' - certainly I remember emails from HR asking us to add pronouns to signatures, though this is hard to dig out with a simple search of the word 'pronoun' because the word 'pronoun' features in the signature of so many emails - but clearly many people such as me haven't: this isn't necessarily a principled objection, but could equally well be reluctance to do a very low-priority admin task - external emails from other public sector organisations are also majoritavely pronouned - external emails from people trying to sell things to the public sector through spam are almost entirely pronouned - external emails from consultants (and - while I don't know who @Casino_Royale is in real life, I think I know what industry he works in - and particularly from consultants his industry) are almost entirely pronouned. - external emails from the general public almost entirely unpronouned.
However, I'm perfectly willing to believe e.g. Foxy that he rarely sees pronouns. Maybe we're all telling the truth and it varies from industry to industry.
Interesting, because my list was from a wide variety of public sector and private sector from the last couple of weeks. I obviously didn't count generic stuff that didn't have a person's name. Not a single pronoun where someone signed off with their name. Not one. I am involved in a campaign where I get or am copied in on a lot of emails from MPs. Again not one had a pronoun next to the name of the MP. On the contrary most these days have become more informal as if I know them personally.
As far as prior to that I can't be sure obviously, but it struck me when I had an email from Daisy Cooper (generic, not just to me) where she did use (she/her) and because of that I noticed it, which sort of implies if someone else had done so I would have noticed that also. It struck me because it was the first time I had seen it, rather than hearing about it.
Others have said it so I'm just clogging up the thread (as usual) but if you are dealing with the public sector, using pronouns is a thing in your email signature. Within the public sector, it is very much a thing, indeed it is often mandated by the senior leadership of these organisations.
I never had an issue with it at all - it's often a point of clarity and clarification to know how to refer to the person with whom you are dealing. Companies on the phone often ask me how I wish to be addressed and that's fine as well.
If people wish to be referred to as "they/them" that's their right and I respect it. I can't know it in advance but if they tell me I know and it's something of which I have to be aware.
You've never clogged up the thread in the 20-odd years you've been here, Stodge! Always interesting.
I must admit, I do wince when asked to refer to a known individual as 'they'. It just seems linguistically wrong. You might argue that actually it's fine, but it feels wrong. (An unknown individual doesn't feel so clunky, oddly, though I still try to avoid using that particular form - again, because it just doesn't feel the right use of language.)
I agree with your other two paras however.
Thanks for the kind word and may I reciprocate as I always enjoy your contributions.
I do agree on the linguistic front and I've got it wrong more than once. My brain is not yet "wired" to deal with the non binary individual and rather like trying to speak a foreign language, if you're not fluent, you're trying to think about what you say (which you should anyway) all the time and in the heat of conversation, ranting or babbling, old habits emerge....
It's really quite simple, though.
As Cookie says, ..I do wince when asked to refer to a known individual as 'they'. It just seems linguistically wrong. You might argue that actually it's fine, but it feels wrong. (An unknown individual doesn't feel so clunky, oddly.. Just apply a mental 'unknown' to their gender, and it's automatic rather than clunky (which here I think means 'I'm not used to doing it').
Regarding the pronoun debate - I am bemused. I very rarely see pronouns shown, even from the public sector (contrary to claims) so I did a review of my emails where there was a personal sign off. Not one had a pronoun. They were from UCL, Royal Surrey Hospital, Doctor, Dentist, HMRC, DVLA, L&G, Standard Life, umpteen MPs.
From memory I can only recall one use of a pronoun in the past in an email and that was from Daisy Cooper (she/her).
Bizarrely it can be useful with unusual names. Even not so unusual names. My wife has a Scottish name that seems obviously female to me, but seems to confuse some and also being a Doctor her prefix of Dr does not help. So many assume she is male. So it could help. Not that she or I use pronouns.
You are a despicable liar. "Everyone is passively pressured to do that, and comply with gender identity ideology, on pain of otherwise being accused of being a bigot."
Its true. You're in denial. Everyone has to do it. Even on here.
Ian (He/Him)
Right, I've done a 10-minute very non-scientific study of my inbox.
- The majority of people in my organisation have pronouns in their email signatures. However, the incidence of people not using pronouns is probably higher than I'd imagined. - Interestingly, a similar scan through a random sample (this week, three years ago) seems to suggest fewer pronouns than a few years ago. - That said, this is difficult to evaluate fully because, also possibly interestingly, there are far more emails without signatures at all - It's hard to tell objectively to what extent we have been 'pressured' - certainly I remember emails from HR asking us to add pronouns to signatures, though this is hard to dig out with a simple search of the word 'pronoun' because the word 'pronoun' features in the signature of so many emails - but clearly many people such as me haven't: this isn't necessarily a principled objection, but could equally well be reluctance to do a very low-priority admin task - external emails from other public sector organisations are also majoritavely pronouned - external emails from people trying to sell things to the public sector through spam are almost entirely pronouned - external emails from consultants (and - while I don't know who @Casino_Royale is in real life, I think I know what industry he works in - and particularly from consultants his industry) are almost entirely pronouned. - external emails from the general public almost entirely unpronouned.
However, I'm perfectly willing to believe e.g. Foxy that he rarely sees pronouns. Maybe we're all telling the truth and it varies from industry to industry.
I've just done a very unscientific survey of my organisation - private sector but does a lot of business with public sector. We have had some gentle encouragement but it is clear it is genuinely voluntary.
A lot of my emails are replies so don't have email sigs but I counted back 15 different people, none had pronouns. Including several people where it would have been helpful, and the DEI Officer!
One of my best friends runs a DEI consultancy and doesn’t use pronouns, though some of his colleagues do.
Hardly anyone in the firm I work for use them, although a few Americans do. I wonder if this is another American culture war import that has little relevance to British life.
Looking at my LinkedIn contacts and emails, there are very few. No pronouns for any of the senior Treasury, HMRC or DBT contacts, nor for 90% of my clients. I’ve never used them myself because it’s pretty obvious someone called Tim is male.
Jennifer Williams @jenwilliamsft.bsky.social · 1h Reply to Jennifer Williams
In conclusion, if we end with Reform councils, there will be thousands of words written about What This Means For Morgan McSweeney and Kemi Badenoch and far fewer written about the politics of bins and council tax. Then everyone will move on and local govt will continue its death spiral unhindered
Cllr Matthew Snedker, now leader of the Green group of 7 Councillors on Darlington Borough Council, on how he ended up where he is. Interesting on local government processes, pressure on councillors and officers, and how it actually works.
Interesting because it is quite a traditional northern town.
Steve Bannon: “You (Britain) don’t make anything anymore,”...Sure you guys make automobiles but it is nothing in the grand scheme of things. They’re kind of bespoke Jaguars and Aston Martins.”
Bannon the latest in the “Britain doesn’t manufacture anything” brigade. It’s a boring trope you hear repeated in the media a lot.
In fact the UK remains the 8th or 9th biggest manufacturer in the world. 10% of our GDP with some of the most advanced manufacturing anywhere.
Manufacturing employs 2.6 million people in the UK. Just because relatively few elites (people like Bannon) would know any of those people, doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
Steve Bannon: “You (Britain) don’t make anything anymore,”...Sure you guys make automobiles but it is nothing in the grand scheme of things. They’re kind of bespoke Jaguars and Aston Martins.”
Bannon the latest in the “Britain doesn’t manufacture anything” brigade. It’s a boring trope you hear repeated in the media a lot.
In fact the UK remains the 8th or 9th biggest manufacturer in the world. 10% of our GDP with some of the most advanced manufacturing anywhere.
Manufacturing employs 2.6 million people in the UK. Just because relatively few elites (people like Bannon) would know any of those people, doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
Yet even so as the sixth largest economy in the world we clearly underperform on manufacturing relative to China, Japan and Germany and over perform on services
That depends on whether or not you think we need to be competitive in manufacturing cheap plastic crap. Let the poorer countries of the world make such stuff, where we need to compete is in higher value goods, and we do okay there. Nobody rational should want to onshore making low-value products that are easily made, the competition will be brutal, and you divert capital and labour from better uses. The US will end up learning this lesson if they aren't careful.
We know manufacturing jobs are increasingly replaced with automation. Even if the USA brings them back, they are still going to get replaced by automation instead of foreign countries in the next decade or two anyway. It is madness.
So tax companies which automate too much too
That may not be the optimal approach when it comes to improving productivity.
It’s certainly not. It would do the reverse and disincentivise productivity improvements.
Jennifer Williams @jenwilliamsft.bsky.social · 1h Reply to Jennifer Williams
In conclusion, if we end with Reform councils, there will be thousands of words written about What This Means For Morgan McSweeney and Kemi Badenoch and far fewer written about the politics of bins and council tax. Then everyone will move on and local govt will continue its death spiral unhindered
As has been mentioned by someone else, it's all been documented so we can see if any new Reform councils actually get anywhere near delivering what presumably are a set of unachievable promises.
When they fail, what then? "New Reform" with even more ridiculous ideas or Britain's version of Course of Freedom, which is now running second in the Greek polls in front of PASOK and the fading Syriza.
It's only seven hundred trillion miles away from us.
Trump: "So you mean we can see if they will hold our prisoners there instead of El Salvador? Supreme Court ain't ever getting them back from THERE..."
This exact discovery - via the James Webb Telescope - was predicted by a correspondent on The Spectator. So incredibly accurately you wonder if he has some kind of extrapolative gift
Regarding the pronoun debate - I am bemused. I very rarely see pronouns shown, even from the public sector (contrary to claims) so I did a review of my emails where there was a personal sign off. Not one had a pronoun. They were from UCL, Royal Surrey Hospital, Doctor, Dentist, HMRC, DVLA, L&G, Standard Life, umpteen MPs.
From memory I can only recall one use of a pronoun in the past in an email and that was from Daisy Cooper (she/her).
Bizarrely it can be useful with unusual names. Even not so unusual names. My wife has a Scottish name that seems obviously female to me, but seems to confuse some and also being a Doctor her prefix of Dr does not help. So many assume she is male. So it could help. Not that she or I use pronouns.
You are a despicable liar. "Everyone is passively pressured to do that, and comply with gender identity ideology, on pain of otherwise being accused of being a bigot."
Its true. You're in denial. Everyone has to do it. Even on here.
Ian (He/Him)
Right, I've done a 10-minute very non-scientific study of my inbox.
- The majority of people in my organisation have pronouns in their email signatures. However, the incidence of people not using pronouns is probably higher than I'd imagined. - Interestingly, a similar scan through a random sample (this week, three years ago) seems to suggest fewer pronouns than a few years ago. - That said, this is difficult to evaluate fully because, also possibly interestingly, there are far more emails without signatures at all - It's hard to tell objectively to what extent we have been 'pressured' - certainly I remember emails from HR asking us to add pronouns to signatures, though this is hard to dig out with a simple search of the word 'pronoun' because the word 'pronoun' features in the signature of so many emails - but clearly many people such as me haven't: this isn't necessarily a principled objection, but could equally well be reluctance to do a very low-priority admin task - external emails from other public sector organisations are also majoritavely pronouned - external emails from people trying to sell things to the public sector through spam are almost entirely pronouned - external emails from consultants (and - while I don't know who @Casino_Royale is in real life, I think I know what industry he works in - and particularly from consultants his industry) are almost entirely pronouned. - external emails from the general public almost entirely unpronouned.
However, I'm perfectly willing to believe e.g. Foxy that he rarely sees pronouns. Maybe we're all telling the truth and it varies from industry to industry.
I've just done a very unscientific survey of my organisation - private sector but does a lot of business with public sector. We have had some gentle encouragement but it is clear it is genuinely voluntary.
A lot of my emails are replies so don't have email sigs but I counted back 15 different people, none had pronouns. Including several people where it would have been helpful, and the DEI Officer!
One of my best friends runs a DEI consultancy and doesn’t use pronouns, though some of his colleagues do.
Hardly anyone in the firm I work for use them, although a few Americans do. I wonder if this is another American culture war import that has little relevance to British life.
Looking at my LinkedIn contacts and emails, there are very few. No pronouns for any of the senior Treasury, HMRC or DBT contacts, nor for 90% of my clients. I’ve never used them myself because it’s pretty obvious someone called Tim is male.
In my last post in a school before I retired, no one used pronouns in email signatures.
I wonder if this is one of CRs little temper rants.
Regarding the pronoun debate - I am bemused. I very rarely see pronouns shown, even from the public sector (contrary to claims) so I did a review of my emails where there was a personal sign off. Not one had a pronoun. They were from UCL, Royal Surrey Hospital, Doctor, Dentist, HMRC, DVLA, L&G, Standard Life, umpteen MPs.
From memory I can only recall one use of a pronoun in the past in an email and that was from Daisy Cooper (she/her).
Bizarrely it can be useful with unusual names. Even not so unusual names. My wife has a Scottish name that seems obviously female to me, but seems to confuse some and also being a Doctor her prefix of Dr does not help. So many assume she is male. So it could help. Not that she or I use pronouns.
You are a despicable liar. "Everyone is passively pressured to do that, and comply with gender identity ideology, on pain of otherwise being accused of being a bigot."
Its true. You're in denial. Everyone has to do it. Even on here.
Ian (He/Him)
Right, I've done a 10-minute very non-scientific study of my inbox.
- The majority of people in my organisation have pronouns in their email signatures. However, the incidence of people not using pronouns is probably higher than I'd imagined. - Interestingly, a similar scan through a random sample (this week, three years ago) seems to suggest fewer pronouns than a few years ago. - That said, this is difficult to evaluate fully because, also possibly interestingly, there are far more emails without signatures at all - It's hard to tell objectively to what extent we have been 'pressured' - certainly I remember emails from HR asking us to add pronouns to signatures, though this is hard to dig out with a simple search of the word 'pronoun' because the word 'pronoun' features in the signature of so many emails - but clearly many people such as me haven't: this isn't necessarily a principled objection, but could equally well be reluctance to do a very low-priority admin task - external emails from other public sector organisations are also majoritavely pronouned - external emails from people trying to sell things to the public sector through spam are almost entirely pronouned - external emails from consultants (and - while I don't know who @Casino_Royale is in real life, I think I know what industry he works in - and particularly from consultants his industry) are almost entirely pronouned. - external emails from the general public almost entirely unpronouned.
However, I'm perfectly willing to believe e.g. Foxy that he rarely sees pronouns. Maybe we're all telling the truth and it varies from industry to industry.
I've just done a very unscientific survey of my organisation - private sector but does a lot of business with public sector. We have had some gentle encouragement but it is clear it is genuinely voluntary.
A lot of my emails are replies so don't have email sigs but I counted back 15 different people, none had pronouns. Including several people where it would have been helpful, and the DEI Officer!
One of my best friends runs a DEI consultancy and doesn’t use pronouns, though some of his colleagues do.
Hardly anyone in the firm I work for use them, although a few Americans do. I wonder if this is another American culture war import that has little relevance to British life.
Looking at my LinkedIn contacts and emails, there are very few. No pronouns for any of the senior Treasury, HMRC or DBT contacts, nor for 90% of my clients. I’ve never used them myself because it’s pretty obvious someone called Tim is male.
In my last post in a school before I retired, no one used pronouns in email signatures.
I wonder if this is one of CRs little temper rants.
Are you kidding? In the world of the arts, pronouns are near-ubiquitous….
…. Or they were a year or two ago. In recent months I’ve noticed a distinct dialling down
I wonder if we will look back on 2022 or 23 as the year of Peak Woke, whence it all got driven into the sea
Labour getting utterly SHAFTED on the Trans judgment. Hahaha
The SNP's work is done then.
If any party deserves to be shafted over it then it’s them.
Also the MSM that has helped promote this idiocy. Channel 4 news and BBC news especially. The news cycle has presented an array of cross dressing men to opine on how this is the end of days.
Special mention for James O’Brien on LBC who came out with the ‘Trump supports this so why would you’ line. He is supposed to read it here. If you’re reading this James you’re a knob.
I’ve worked for three very large telecoms companies and not once have I ever felt the need to put my pronouns on an email. I never have and never will as I can’t personally see the point.
But if somebody wants to, isn’t that up to them? I agree we should not force people to do it but assuming that’s the case would you still have a problem with it?
This seems no different than forcing me to wear a suit. I’m glad that’s over.
They can stick their pronouns up their butts, I use name or him / her, rest of the bollox they can get stuffed.
Never used pronouns. For me or for anybody else. Never had to.
That's just the way it rolls down here in Devon.
But you’re all weirdos down there in the West Country calling everybody ‘my lover’.
When I was a callow 17 year old visiting the West Country for the first time getting called ‘my lover’ was a eye/ear opener, thank Allah my mother wasn’t there, the shock would have killed her.
When I worked at Bombardier in Derby I got called Duck, or me duck, an awful lot. Quite disconcerting at first.
Jennifer Williams @jenwilliamsft.bsky.social · 1h Reply to Jennifer Williams
In conclusion, if we end with Reform councils, there will be thousands of words written about What This Means For Morgan McSweeney and Kemi Badenoch and far fewer written about the politics of bins and council tax. Then everyone will move on and local govt will continue its death spiral unhindered
As has been mentioned by someone else, it's all been documented so we can see if any new Reform councils actually get anywhere near delivering what presumably are a set of unachievable promises.
When they fail, what then? "New Reform" with even more ridiculous ideas or Britain's version of Course of Freedom, which is now running second in the Greek polls in front of PASOK and the fading Syriza.
Probably- a bit like the way that the German Greens split into Fundis and Realos once they had a sniff of power.
Steve Bannon: “You (Britain) don’t make anything anymore,”...Sure you guys make automobiles but it is nothing in the grand scheme of things. They’re kind of bespoke Jaguars and Aston Martins.”
Bannon the latest in the “Britain doesn’t manufacture anything” brigade. It’s a boring trope you hear repeated in the media a lot.
In fact the UK remains the 8th or 9th biggest manufacturer in the world. 10% of our GDP with some of the most advanced manufacturing anywhere.
Manufacturing employs 2.6 million people in the UK. Just because relatively few elites (people like Bannon) would know any of those people, doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
Yet even so as the sixth largest economy in the world we clearly underperform on manufacturing relative to China, Japan and Germany and over perform on services
That depends on whether or not you think we need to be competitive in manufacturing cheap plastic crap. Let the poorer countries of the world make such stuff, where we need to compete is in higher value goods, and we do okay there. Nobody rational should want to onshore making low-value products that are easily made, the competition will be brutal, and you divert capital and labour from better uses. The US will end up learning this lesson if they aren't careful.
We know manufacturing jobs are increasingly replaced with automation. Even if the USA brings them back, they are still going to get replaced by automation instead of foreign countries in the next decade or two anyway. It is madness.
So tax companies which automate too much too
And here I was thinking my Khmer Rouge comparison was a bit over-the-top...
WilliamGlenn and HYUFD will have us all back in the fields.
Steve Bannon: “You (Britain) don’t make anything anymore,”...Sure you guys make automobiles but it is nothing in the grand scheme of things. They’re kind of bespoke Jaguars and Aston Martins.”
Bannon the latest in the “Britain doesn’t manufacture anything” brigade. It’s a boring trope you hear repeated in the media a lot.
In fact the UK remains the 8th or 9th biggest manufacturer in the world. 10% of our GDP with some of the most advanced manufacturing anywhere.
Manufacturing employs 2.6 million people in the UK. Just because relatively few elites (people like Bannon) would know any of those people, doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
Yet even so as the sixth largest economy in the world we clearly underperform on manufacturing relative to China, Japan and Germany and over perform on services
That depends on whether or not you think we need to be competitive in manufacturing cheap plastic crap. Let the poorer countries of the world make such stuff, where we need to compete is in higher value goods, and we do okay there. Nobody rational should want to onshore making low-value products that are easily made, the competition will be brutal, and you divert capital and labour from better uses. The US will end up learning this lesson if they aren't careful.
We know manufacturing jobs are increasingly replaced with automation. Even if the USA brings them back, they are still going to get replaced by automation instead of foreign countries in the next decade or two anyway. It is madness.
So tax companies which automate too much too
Luddites'r'us
Just the other day you were wondering why the Tories are no longer seen as the party of business.....
It's only seven hundred trillion miles away from us.
Trump: "So you mean we can see if they will hold our prisoners there instead of El Salvador? Supreme Court ain't ever getting them back from THERE..."
This exact discovery - via the James Webb Telescope - was predicted by a correspondent on The Spectator. So incredibly accurately you wonder if he has some kind of extrapolative gift
It's only seven hundred trillion miles away from us.
Trump: "So you mean we can see if they will hold our prisoners there instead of El Salvador? Supreme Court ain't ever getting them back from THERE..."
This exact discovery - via the James Webb Telescope - was predicted by a correspondent on The Spectator. So incredibly accurately you wonder if he has some kind of extrapolative gift
Why do you insist on promoting that drongo's idiocy? And two days running now. Cut it out.
If you predict everything, some of it will happen .
See Trump's comments on eg a federal abortion ban.
But that journalist specifically predicts (in January 2024) that we will soon see a study, likely via the james Webb telescope, almost-confirming the existence of non-Earth life forms
That is exactly what has happened. On a site dedicated to predictions that is surely worthy of note, even in a detestable right wing rag like the spectator
What’s more the journalist concerned seems to have gained this insight simply by carefully watching a couple of news items and comments, putting 2 and 9 together, and extrapolating
If we HAVE located life on one random planet, then statistically it must be all over the Universe. (So will say the Drake equation.)
The idea of it just being us was always Humanoid Exceptionalism taken to the nth degree.
This is pretty much my view. Which brings us onto the Fermi Paradox (the question as to why, if life is everywhere, why have we not seen any signs of it?). My preferred response to that is: space is vast, we are only looking for certain signals, and we are too boring to routinely visit, even if they have interstellar travel.
That's a suitably boring answer compared to some of the others...
I think I'm rather in the opposite camp, my suspicion being that the evolution of complex, intelligent life is wildly improbable, requiring a very particular series of circumstances in order to occur. On the other hand, I reckon that the evolution of simpler life forms, such as might be required to explain a particular atmospheric composition, may not be so uncommon. After all, such life has existed on Earth for most of the time of the planet's existence.
And that's a fair position. Except in the one case where we can say life formed - our own planet - we can also say that intelligent life developed. So that's a 100% hit rate. Until we discover other planets where we are sure life is present or has developed, it seems reasonable to say that, if the planet is old enough and life forms, intelligent life is possible, or even probable.
I don't like the idea that we, or Earth, is exceptional. We're probably just boringly mundane.
Given the vast vast vast size of the universe - which may actually be infinite, we do not know - it seems vanishingly unlikely that life developed on just one small planet in one star system in one galaxy amongst trillions of others
OR we are in a Simulation. OR I’m the only thing that exists
Steve Bannon: “You (Britain) don’t make anything anymore,”...Sure you guys make automobiles but it is nothing in the grand scheme of things. They’re kind of bespoke Jaguars and Aston Martins.”
Telegraph
Is he so stupid he doesn't know Jaguar are not making cars at the moment?
Sure they are. F-Pace is still in production on the Solihull line. I mean, nobody is buying the fucking thing but they are still building it.
Is that the X761 ?
The CSV, its shit. Poorly engineered and designed, cheaply bought tat. I worked on a part of it for a while.
You can still import Liz Truss. A BLT sandwich will become LT at the UK border.
The UK government has brought in a temporary ban on holidaymakers bringing in cheese and meat products from the EU in a bid to prevent the spread of foot and mouth disease (FMD).
Travellers have not been allowed to bring back items such as cured meat and cheese, including in sandwiches, since Saturday due to the growing outbreak on the continent.
The restrictions apply regardless of whether the goods are packed or packaged, or bought from duty free.
It follows an earlier ban of similar products from Germany, Hungary, Slovakia and Austria after rising cases of the cattle disease in those countries. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2vpp8zzd7o
I’ve worked for three very large telecoms companies and not once have I ever felt the need to put my pronouns on an email. I never have and never will as I can’t personally see the point.
But if somebody wants to, isn’t that up to them? I agree we should not force people to do it but assuming that’s the case would you still have a problem with it?
This seems no different than forcing me to wear a suit. I’m glad that’s over.
They can stick their pronouns up their butts, I use name or him / her, rest of the bollox they can get stuffed.
Never used pronouns. For me or for anybody else. Never had to.
That's just the way it rolls down here in Devon.
But you’re all weirdos down there in the West Country calling everybody ‘my lover’.
When I was a callow 17 year old visiting the West Country for the first time getting called ‘my lover’ was a eye/ear opener, thank Allah my mother wasn’t there, the shock would have killed her.
When I worked at Bombardier in Derby I got called Duck, or me duck, an awful lot. Quite disconcerting at first.
Quackers !
(Get's coat.)
Who is Get and what does his coat have to do with this?
Comments
@lewis_goodall
Bannon the latest in the “Britain doesn’t manufacture anything” brigade. It’s a boring trope you hear repeated in the media a lot.
In fact the UK remains the 8th or 9th biggest manufacturer in the world. 10% of our GDP with some of the most advanced manufacturing anywhere.
Manufacturing employs 2.6 million people in the UK. Just because relatively few elites (people like Bannon) would know any of those people, doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
https://x.com/lewis_goodall/status/1912784961150628189
Uncertainty is the new certainty
https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/16/cve_program_funding_save/?td=rt-3a
The US government has extended funding for another year. CVE is the system for classifying and tracking computer vulnerabilities to being hacked.
I must admit, I do wince when asked to refer to a known individual as 'they'. It just seems linguistically wrong. You might argue that actually it's fine, but it feels wrong. (An unknown individual doesn't feel so clunky, oddly, though I still try to avoid using that particular form - again, because it just doesn't feel the right use of language.)
I agree with your other two paras however.
Just 35% of Brits now see the US as an ally, while 34% view it as a threat. A dramatic shift in public opinion in response to #Trump.
Here’s what the latest @OpiniumResearch polling reveals
https://x.com/MrJCrouch/status/1912793440615649564
Either way the typical bravado of the far right should be greeted with strong scepticism or derision, depending on the absurdity of the statement.
At one authority, the Leader of the Council was called "Leader" by senior officers and other Cabinet members in all settings. Others are happy to use christian names all the time. There was a time when an officer would never refer to a Councillor by their christian name - they would always be "Councillor" or "County Councillor" but that has largely gone by the board now.
The world moves on...
PS I agree with the clarity bit as I mentioned earlier. My wife has that issue with her first name and her prefix being Dr. so is often addressed as a male. Not that she cares.
PPS Also as mentioned, as per that email above, I am finding the sign offs are getting more and more informal, which I like.
I do agree on the linguistic front and I've got it wrong more than once. My brain is not yet "wired" to deal with the non binary individual and rather like trying to speak a foreign language, if you're not fluent, you're trying to think about what you say (which you should anyway) all the time and in the heat of conversation, ranting or babbling, old habits emerge....
*The original plan was to keep it running but as you say, nobody was buying.
Doesn't excuse the louder manifestations of the backlash, though.
and you want these people to believe NASA has found life trillions of miles away?
On other matters, I'm looking at the Canadian polling and I'm seeing telephone polls give better results for the Liberals than online polling. Like here, older Canadians tend to be Conservative, younger ones more Liberal with the NDP strongest among the 18-24 age group.
Did we have a debate on here once about the merits of polling techniques? Do we regard telephone polling as more accurate than online or Interactive Voice Response (IVR)?
Both Canada and Australia have had Leaders' Debates in the past 24 hours - will they shift polling? I'm not sure they do as it ends up more like baseline tennis. From what little I've seen and read, the Canadian debate was, not surprisingly, all about how to deal with Trump while in Australia, Liberal leader Peter Dutton has backtracked on his views on climate change which he apparently now accepts. Whether this Damascene conversion will help the struggling Liberal campaign is debatable.
The Aussie equivalent of PB, Pollbludger, gives a good flavour of the election debate.
America is rapidly turning itself into a pariah state.
That's a suitably boring answer compared to some of the others...
Possible reasons:
1) They don't want us to know all their customer service staff are South African;
2) They don't want people to know who to send the lawyer's letter to over the false statements contained therein;
3) Their staff are so dim they don't know their own names.
What's more annoying is the way they address the customer informally, even in a dispute, viz. 'Hi X, thanks for reaching out to us.' This leads inevitably to the assumption that (3) at least is probably correct.
The others are fluent French speakers which made it harder for him . I expect tonight’s English debate will have more fireworks and Carney will be much more comfortable.
But the risk seems to be more like a tiny chance of a few weeks in a fairly unpleasant prison followed by the deportation. No thanks.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/have-we-just-discovered-aliens/
The CSV, its shit. Poorly engineered and designed, cheaply bought tat. I worked on a part of it for a while.
If we have that much trouble over our near-neighbour Venus, then we need to take great care with announcements from planets billions of times further away. Hopefully this, like the phosphine announcement five years ago, will lead to more science.
(IMV the Welsh team that made the initial discovery did some very good science, and although there were flaws in their work, it still holds up in substance.)
https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/controversial-phosphine-findings-on-venus-corroborated/4020063.article
He would threaten to cancel it every time be wanted to bully us into doing something, probably on a weakly basis.
We need to just bite the bullet and give the US a very wide berth for the forseeable future (trade, foreign policy, travel)
I would also add that Reform voters being so pro-Trump puts a very definite ceiling on their polling
He's a smart cookie - well ahead of the curve on that one.
And one form of it has risen to be President of the United States.
A lot of my emails are replies so don't have email sigs but I counted back 15 different people, none had pronouns. Including several people where it would have been helpful, and the DEI Officer!
Jennifer Williams @jenwilliamsft.bsky.social
·
1h
Reply to
Jennifer Williams
In conclusion, if we end with Reform councils, there will be thousands of words written about What This Means For Morgan McSweeney and Kemi Badenoch and far fewer written about the politics of bins and council tax. Then everyone will move on and local govt will continue its death spiral unhindered
https://bsky.app/profile/jenwilliamsft.bsky.social/post/3lmyp25rqzc2a
I don't like the idea that we, or Earth, is exceptional. We're probably just boringly mundane.
In other car news, I've noticed that high mileage 458s are getting cheap, for very high values of cheap. I might get one to console myself over missing 430 prices going translunar.
The fact is that after the Cameron/May/Johnson/Truss/Sunak fiasco, with failed policies and failed processes, the Tories should now be trying to establish some kind of positive campaigning message.
However with 120, mostly retread MPs, the leadership cadre is weak. Now membership is only around 130,000, mostly elderly (versus 400,000 for Labour, a claimed 220,000 for RefUK and around 100,000 Lib Dems). The Conservatives are under severe financial pressure as a result. Nether is the momentum looking good: the Tory local election campaign is invisible, even in their historic heartlands, and big losses are forecast- removing an echelon of local councillors from the ability of the Tories to put their message across.
And what s that message?
"Vote for us, the current lot is even worse" . This is simply pathetic. The Tory leader and the leadership are going to have to start mixing it with the proles- out on the campaign trail, and not simply in expensive and well tailored suits, ("I used to be a minister, you know") but actually delivering leaflets, actually canvassing.
Once they have talked to enough people, they will probably begin to understand where they went wrong (and it is not just some hollow media-crafted fake "listening" exercises). Unless they start to do this, RefUK will eat their lunch. I do not (yet) buy the extinction of the Conservative Party, but unless they can address their practical weaknesses, then their future is bleak, and maybe only a Canadian style merger of Tories and Reform (which happened nearly 20 years ago in Canada and is still a fragile entity) would rescue them from political irrelevance.
The Lib Dems take a lot of flack for their campaign stunts, but they do at least know how to campaign. Unless the Tories can fix their internal crisis, it remains to be seen how far things can improve. At the end of the day, RefUK knows what it wants- populist American memes- but what do the Tories want? Apart from power for its own sake.
What do Conservative principles even mean after the Boris clown show and the Truss tantrum?
May and Sunak at least had some level of seriousness, but Kemi Badenoch has possibly already played things a bit too fast and loose. One the other hand, a seventh leader in a bit more than eight years would demonstrate, surely, that the Tory party itself was no longer serious, not even in their pursuit of power.
OR we are in a Simulation. OR I’m the only thing that exists
One of those three
The only qualification with anything Bannon says is to remember that he's an inveterate liar and bullshitter.
“I’ve always supported single sex blah blah”
NO YOU FUCKING DIDN’T
People have the screenshots, the newsclips, the videos, the speeches
The strongest Liberal group was those aged 30-39 where the party led by nearly five points.
The NDP led among the 18-29 aged group with the Conservatives third.
The latest Abacus data (overall Liberal lead of two points) has regionsl sub samples and in Ontario (121 ridings) the Liberals led by seven (47-40).
As Cookie says,
..I do wince when asked to refer to a known individual as 'they'. It just seems linguistically wrong. You might argue that actually it's fine, but it feels wrong. (An unknown individual doesn't feel so clunky, oddly..
Just apply a mental 'unknown' to their gender, and it's automatic rather than clunky (which here I think means 'I'm not used to doing it').
No obligation, other than politeness.
Hardly anyone in the firm I work for use them, although a few Americans do. I wonder if this is another American culture war import that has little relevance to British life.
Looking at my LinkedIn contacts and emails, there are very few. No pronouns for any of the senior Treasury, HMRC or DBT contacts, nor for 90% of my clients. I’ve never used them myself because it’s pretty obvious someone called Tim is male.
Labour have, sadly, kicked local govt funding into touch as they did care reform.
My 10 minute video segment for the day: 'How active travel made me a politician.'
https://youtu.be/nw_gBxUx_ss?t=593
Cllr Matthew Snedker, now leader of the Green group of 7 Councillors on Darlington Borough Council, on how he ended up where he is. Interesting on local government processes, pressure on councillors and officers, and how it actually works.
Interesting because it is quite a traditional northern town.
When they fail, what then? "New Reform" with even more ridiculous ideas or Britain's version of Course of Freedom, which is now running second in the Greek polls in front of PASOK and the fading Syriza.
See Trump's comments on eg a federal abortion ban.
“Prof Nikku Madhusudhan, from Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy, said: “There is no mechanism that can explain what we are seeing without life.
“Given everything we know about this planet, a world with an ocean that is teeming with life is the scenario that best fits the data we have.
He added: “What we are seeing right now are the first hints of an alien world that is possibly inhabited, and this is a revolutionary moment”
Given the normal caution of these scientists that is… mind blowing. They’re saying THIS IS PROBABLY IT
WE ARE NOT ALONE
And it will all go unnoticed as humans argue about blokes using the wrong bogs
I wonder if this is one of CRs little temper rants.
…. Or they were a year or two ago. In recent months I’ve noticed a distinct dialling down
I wonder if we will look back on 2022 or 23 as the year of Peak Woke, whence it all got driven into the sea
Also the MSM that has helped promote this idiocy. Channel 4 news and BBC news especially. The news cycle has presented an array of cross dressing men to opine on how this is the end of days.
Special mention for James O’Brien on LBC who came out with the ‘Trump supports this so why would you’ line. He is supposed to read it here. If you’re reading this James you’re a knob.
(Get's coat.)
WilliamGlenn and HYUFD will have us all back in the fields.
Just the other day you were wondering why the Tories are no longer seen as the party of business.....
They'd be a constant, rather than occasional irritation.
That is exactly what has happened. On a site dedicated to predictions that is surely worthy of note, even in a detestable right wing rag like the spectator
What’s more the journalist concerned seems to have gained this insight simply by carefully watching a couple of news items and comments, putting 2 and 9 together, and extrapolating
Good morning, everyone.
The UK government has brought in a temporary ban on holidaymakers bringing in cheese and meat products from the EU in a bid to prevent the spread of foot and mouth disease (FMD).
Travellers have not been allowed to bring back items such as cured meat and cheese, including in sandwiches, since Saturday due to the growing outbreak on the continent.
The restrictions apply regardless of whether the goods are packed or packaged, or bought from duty free.
It follows an earlier ban of similar products from Germany, Hungary, Slovakia and Austria after rising cases of the cattle disease in those countries.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2vpp8zzd7o